#he gots a big rectangle that supposed to be a gun

[matchstique]

Comic redraw of a scene from Cass’s Apocalypse AU

Storyline and original comic panels by @somerandomdudelmao

Storyline and original comic panels by @somerandomdudelmao

[rotworld]

23: Wetwork

art by @exorbitantsqueakingnoises

you begrudgingly work for a task force that neutralizes breach lifeforms, dangerous interdimensional predators with a habit of fixating on specific prey. the most dangerous thing you have to deal with isn't your targets but your own partner.

->original work. explicit; contains non-con, graphic descriptions of violence, surreal gore, workplace harassment/degrading language, gun violence, tentacles, terato, hard vore/cannibalism.

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The support team didn’t read the briefing. 

Skimmed it, maybe, glanced down for the keywords confirming they’re playing second fiddle to somebody else today and tossed the rest in annoyance. You can tell because the perimeter they’re supposed to be holding has devolved into a gossip circle. They’re at their posts, sure, strategically placed around the cavernous interior of an empty factory complex with a clear view of the gaping abyss taking up most of the concrete floor, pacing the proper patrol routes, but they’re too relaxed. The comms channel is clogged up with useless bullshit and questions they should know the answers to. They’re giving you a hard time because you’re an easy target, the only part of the insertion team left behind to set up a stabilizing field. Obvious egghead in a room of mercenaries. Blood in the water.

They wouldn’t do that if they’d read the briefing. They’d stay as far away as physically possible and try to pretend you weren’t there.

“You must be a pretty big deal,” the guy next to you says. Somebody called him Talbot earlier. You don’t learn names because you don’t want to be here and you hope you never see these people again, but it’s best to keep track of potential problems. Talbot looks the same as everyone else, an imposing silhouette of black tactical gear, featureless and near faceless with just his eyes visible through a balaclava. The patch on his shoulder is a green rectangle with a golden keyhole. Epsilon-Green—colloquially, “Locksmiths.” Being relegated to lookout duty must be frying what little patience he had to begin with. 

You ignore him. The stabilizing field generator is a finicky piece of equipment that needs constant attention if you don’t want the breach opening any wider. Talbot seems to take this personally.

“Don’t think I’ve even heard of you guys before today. Theta-Ultraviolet?” He slaps the patch on your shoulder just a little too hard for the gesture to be friendly. It bears the silhouette of a ship stitched with silver thread on a dark purple background.

“We’re specialists,” you say. 

“So are we,” Talbot says. Utterly disinterested in a dick-measuring contest, you go back to turning knobs on the generator. “Don’t think I’ve seen you around back at base, either. Must be new.”

“Looks nervous,” somebody else says. It’s one of the guys up on the catwalk, arms crossed over the railing. Leering at you. “Probably should be. Your whole team violated protocol and jumped right in before we even got here. They’re in deep shit if they get out alive.” 

Your team did not, in fact, violate protocol, not that they’d know without reading the briefing. “Do you need something?” you ask.

“Just making conversation. Not much else to do.”

The generator lets out a chime and a green light comes on when you’ve got everything configured right. There’s a burst of static on the comms as physics realign and the bottomless darkness in the floor rejoins reality, no longer stranded on the other side of a schism in some impossible un-place. It makes the floor shake and the factory groan all around you. It also brings the insertion team back into comms range. You hear the click of reconnection and then the sounds of a nightmare.

There’s something viscerally upsetting about breach lifeform vocalizations. Before they’ve fully coalesced and mastered the imitation of other species, the noises they produce are something you hear with your whole body rather than just your ears. It’s the stomach-churning chills of nails on a chalkboard without the shrillness, fight-or-flight given a voice. It doesn’t quite sound like shrieking or wailing or laughing, but it feels like all of those things; loud, distressing and mocking. It dances just at the edge of what your ears are capable of detecting but it completely fills your head. 

The operatives of Epsilon-Green visibly recoil. You hear some quiet curses and prayers over the comms. More comprehensible but no less worrisome are the sounds of carnage—the crunch of blunt force pulverization, flesh ripping and tearing. Bone creaks, cracks, snaps loud and ugly. Gunshots are rare—solitary, precise, a muffled bang before the squelch of organic unmaking becomes unbearably loud again. It sounds like mastication; like the abyss is a hungry maw churning everything inside into meaty paste.

“Holy shit,” Talbot says. He leans forward just a bit to peer into the pit. “Your guys alright?” 

You wouldn’t check unless you were required to. “Come in, Theseus,” you say.

Static. More disgusting, sticky noise. A gunshot. Then a deep, gravelly voice. “Still alive. Aw, were you worried?” 

You frown tightly. “Sitrep?” 

“Twelve total, mostly concentrated in the lowest chamber. They’re partially coalesced. A bit hard to kill.” Something scream-cry-snickers, abruptly cut off with a sound like a hammer tenderizing meat. “I’m expecting a reward when I climb out of here.” The words are ambiguous but his tone is oozing innuendo. 

“You’re on shared comms,” you remind him, but the damage is already done. Epsilon-Green’s operatives are eyeing you with a combination of interest and amusement. 

“So that’s how Theta-UV does it, huh?” Talbot asks. “Guess I’d be more efficient, too, if I had something nice waiting for me. How many on your team, Theseus? You feel like sharing?” 

No answer. You listen to something die painfully, a squeal that becomes a squelch. Epsilon-Green adopts something resembling professionalism, alert and attentive. Chatter continues but focused now, the possibility of combat putting all of those strict warnings from their training at the front of their minds. Maintain at least one meter of distance from the edge of the abyss. If something crawls up, hold fire until it’s finished aligning; waste of bullets otherwise. Keep faces concealed—scarf, balaclava, dark glasses, visors, more is better than less but something is always better than nothing. 

“You need a mask?” Talbot asks. He’s your best friend now that he thinks there’s a chance he could get laid. 

You shake your head. “I’m good.”

“No, you’re not. If one of those things sees your face, it imprints.” 

“I know,” you say.

“It gets obsessed,” he insists. “It follows you around until it's fully coalesced. Looks mostly human, sounds mostly human, but the face gives it away.”

“Yeah, I know.” 

“You’ll be the first thing it eats.” Understanding dawns on his face after a moment. He looks you up and down with something close to morbid fascination. “Shit. Are you—?” 

“Yep,” you say, turning your back to him and hoping he’ll get the hint. Cat’s out of the bag now, though, and you hear them wondering aloud in the hopes of baiting a reaction. Wasn’t that a thing not long ago, where Breach Response and Neutralization teams were going around looking for imprint victims? Using them as bait, basically, right? Not a bad strategy, they muse. Why go digging around for weak spots in reality when you can make them come to you? 

“Your team got some skeletons in the closet, Theta-UV?” Talbot asks. “Guess you have to be good if you don’t wanna keep tracking down new bait.” Again, no answer. The death rattles of creatures caught between forms of matter and states of being make your head hurt. He returns his attention to you. “No wonder you look so wet behind the ears, you’re a fucking civvie. How long have they had you?” 

“Don’t see how that’s relevant,” you say. “How many left, Theseus?”

“Hmm. Eight?” You wish he wouldn’t purr in your ear like that. “You sound testy. Promise I’ll pick up the pace if you let me fuck your mouth before we leave.” 

“Just hurry the fuck up,” you hiss, hot in the face and humiliated. Someone whistles over the comms. The sounds coming from the abyss are bloodcurdling. Something shreds and splats. 

“Theta-UV, all good down there?” someone says. “Sounds rough. Should we expect trouble?” 

Of course, Theseus doesn’t respond. You see Talbot scowling in your periphery. “You only talk to your cocksleeve, Theseus?” he snaps. “Or are you using a private channel down there? UV thinks it’s too good for the rest of us?”

“Sorry, who is this?” Theseus asks. He sounds faintly amused. 

“This is Epsilon-Green, your fucking support team. Do you have it under control or not?” 

“Epsilon-Green, that’s…Locksmiths, right? You’re supposed to be pretty good.” There’s a long, considering pause. You can just picture him, standing there with his head cocked, something reckless and dangerous and potentially fatal forming in his mind. 

“Theseus,” you say, your tone warning. 

Too late. You hear a shrill, warbling howl, and the ground quakes beneath your feet. “Oh no,” Theseus says, the smile audible in his voice. “Looks like a couple of them slipped past me, heading your way fast. Real sorry about that. Try to keep it contained and I’ll be there in a second.” 

You abandon the generator and run for cover. Talbot yells at you, demanding to know what the fuck is going on, but he gets his answer soon enough. It’s a skittering sound at first. Swift, spidery movements echoing down a long tunnel. Epsilon-Green has only moments to react before three breach lifeforms come surging out of the chasm in the floor. 

The things are hard to look at. Like the noises they make, your brain can’t parse the information you’re getting. Light bends around them strangely. Their shapes don’t make sense. They move in jerky snapshots, sudden and seemingly nonsensical lurches. They hunt like a pack of wolves, herding and harrying their prey into the proper position to be ambushed from every side. To their credit, Epsilon-Green doesn’t start to panic until someone gets yanked by the ankle into a whirlwind of constantly shifting forms. 

They eat him alive. Pinning him down with sometimes-claws and gnashing almost-teeth, it looks like he’s drawn and quartered in infinite directions, flesh and muscle and sinew unraveling, peeling apart, drawn into the breach creatures who become even more real, tangible and dangerous. One of them grows sharp with protruding human bone. Another has his face and his voice, screaming the way he screamed as he died. The thunderous rattle of gunfire becomes constant, bullets shredding through fresh, growing membranes of human flesh and tufts of hair. 

“Sitrep?” Theseus asks coyly. Epsilon-Green is nothing but chaos. Mindless, primal screams of terror fill the comms. One of the breach lifeforms takes a shot through what was slowly becoming a human head and shifts its body, concentrating its vital organs elsewhere. Another one clamors up the catwalk and soon there’s blood raining down from above. 

“You’re going to get in trouble for this,” you say. Your voice is terse and quiet, your throat constricted in terror, but he hears you anyway. He always does. 

“I’m doing this for you,” he coos. “The coordinator told me we’ll get upgraded to a bigger room if we both prove we’re effective—”

“You’re doing this because you want to.” 

Theseus chuckles. “I’m doing my job. Time for you to do yours.” 

There’s a sharp click; disconnection. Theseus turned off his comms. You watch the fight unfold in front of you with a sinking feeling, waiting for what comes next. Epsilon-Green should be thinking about it, too. They should be watching the chasm more closely. They’ve had plenty of warnings. The breach lifeforms have been reckless, lashing out too eagerly and failing to protect their backs. If anyone but you was paying attention, they’d realize it was because they were fearful. They didn’t rush up here out of hunger but out of the simple instinctual drive to flee a larger, more dangerous predator.

You wonder how many other briefings they haven’t read. That bait experiment wasn’t about neutralization. They wanted to see if they could catch a breach lifeform alive, train it somehow—use imprinting as a means of control. The governing body that oversees the work of all breach response operations would say they succeeded. You would beg to differ.

Theseus emerges from the chasm with a bestial screech. You can tell him apart from the other breach lifeforms easily. He’s much larger. He moves like a wave or a fog bank, an unstoppable force of nature that spills across the factory floor. Epsilon-Green tries to kill him but he’s fully coalesced, his control of his own form so precise that he can decide when and where he is real and physical. He engulfs his prey like an eclipse and everything inside him turns to liquid gore. The other creatures shriek and whimper. One of them tries to run but Theseus is faster, spearing it through the side and dragging it back into his all-encompassing maw. 

It’s over in moments. The last breach lifeform twists itself into knots trying to crawl away but it’s impaled through its nearly flesh form, consumed like all the others. Someone in Epsilon-Green has managed to establish order again and a repeated command to hold fire is finally heeded. 

They watch in mute horror and fascination as the thing in front of them constricts and shrinks and shapes itself into something closer to human. A man in tactical gear. He looks just like they do but is unmistakably taller and larger, black clothes straining around his bulk and bulging muscle. His face is completely covered by a helmet with a mask and reflective visor—an absolute necessity to prevent the thing underneath from appearing in their nightmares. The patch on his shoulder is Theta-Ultraviolet’s symbol.

“Mission complete,” Theseus says. He surveys the crowd with an exaggerated back and forth glance as if he doesn’t know your exact location. “Hm. But where’s my handler? I hope they didn’t just leave me here. Not when I’m still so hungry.” 

The nearest operatives scramble to get away from you. Reluctantly, you walk down the path opening in the crowd until you’re right in front of him. You spot Talbot, his eyes wide and his balaclava drenched in sweat. 

It doesn’t matter that Theseus keeps his face covered. He’s not human. His emotions aren’t an arrangement of features but something he radiates, an ambient feeling in the air. He doesn’t just stand up straighter when he sees you. The factory suddenly feels claustrophobic, the air hot and oppressive. “There you are,” he purrs. “Now come here.” You don’t want to, but you’ll be reprimanded for denying him post-mission requests. You might lose some of your privileges at base, just enough to make life unpleasant and difficult. 

“Can’t you wait until we get back?” you ask, glancing pointedly at Epsilon-Green who are still standing there gawking.

You can feel that he would be smiling, if he decided to give himself a mouth. “No. I have to prove a point.”

He unravels in the blink of an eye, his form engulfing you. Your mind goes blank with terror being trapped in this cramped space of shadows and redness, everything soft, squishy and damp. Theseus could kill you if he wanted. He could squeeze until you were nothing but sticky red dust.  He could suffocate you. He could start eating at any moment, pulling you apart like the man from Epsilon-Green, claiming everything you are for himself. You’re still not sure that he won’t someday. They say he’s tame but they’re not here, watching him sabotage missions on a whim. They don’t have to sit in the tight, pulsating chamber of his body reshaped for ensnarement. 

“You��re shaking,” he purrs, delighted. “It doesn’t matter how many times we do this. You’re always so afraid.”

Theseus knows you better than anyone. He imprinted on you. He hunted you for years before the agency stepped in. He knows what you’re afraid of and what you like. He knows exactly how to torment you. You feel him shift and change around you, peeling off parts of himself to form tendrils. Long snaking ones circle around your limbs to hold you still while smaller frilled growths tease you. They dissolve your clothes and start to suckle on your skin. You can’t help the whimper that slips out, a noise of interwoven fear and pleasure. A thick tentacle pushes past your lips.

“Your mouth is so perfect. Just the right size. So warm and wet. You were made for me. Only me. And I’ve made myself for you.” Theseus quivers all around you, babbling like he always does. The things he says are a frightening reminder of exactly what he is and what he’s capable of. He changes the tentacle as he pushes it deeper, making the tip bulbous and the length veined like a cock, desperate to prove that he can be human if he tries. The smaller tendrils become hands—hands that are strange and lopsided with too many fingers or too few, all touching at once, all caressing and fondling. He gropes your chest and flicks your nipples. He traces your spine and strokes your cheek. 

It’s only a matter of time before he gets hungry for more. Disembodied hands hold your hips still as another tentacle nudges inside your entrance. Theseus alters it with almost frustrating frequency, never allowing you to get used to the shape or texture. He keeps it small at first and then expands it in gradual, rhythmic pulses, stretching you between slow, prodding thrusts. He’s teasing you. He doesn’t need to search for the places that will make this truly humiliating. He waits until you’re trembling and whimpering, so frightened you strain and twist in his grasp. Just when you’re on the cusp of sobbing around the girth fucking your throat, the tentacle curves slightly and sinks deep, pounding right into the spot that makes your eyes roll back in your head. 

It feels so good it starts to hurt. This is your other greatest fear: that Theseus will keep you here. He won’t kill you, won’t pluck off your limbs or shred you to gristle, but he’ll never let you leave. He’ll keep teasing you, stroking you, and fucking you forever. Your mind goes blank and you become the perfect thing his instincts crave—his center, his anchor, his first love, his reason for being, his. He can fill you and taste you and hold you close, and nothing can take you away from him. 

Mercifully, it does end. Does someone contact him through Epsilon-Green? Does he simply grow bored, or change his mind? You don’t know why. Theseus savors you as he begrudgingly slows his movements. He whispers about your sweetness and softness, how no one will ever know you like he does. Your throat is raw and your jaw is sore when he pulls the tentacle out of your mouth, your saliva sliding slowly down the length. The other one stays longer. He’s not satisfied until he’s made you cum. It excites him to see how hard you fight against the pleasure and his precise, merciless thrusts until he forces you over the edge. The tentacle withdraws only when your thighs are shaking and you’re limp in his grasp. 

Theseus shifts again, rippling open. His form cradles you and drapes over your body, concealing everything below the shoulders. He shapes the upper half of his human disguise, hunched over you with an arm wrapped tightly and possessively around you. You don’t know how much Epsilon-Green saw or heard but some of them are, thankfully gone. The ones who linger flinch when Theseus’ helmet turns towards them.

“Do you need something?” he says wryly. “I guess I could still eat.” That’s all it takes to clear the factory. Theseus turns his attention back to you and you feel that familiar warm vibration of happiness and desire. 

Being this close to a breach lifeform is inherently dangerous, but there’s no one who knows Theseus better. For now—until the next mission, the next frenzy, the next reward that might be your last—there’s nowhere safer you could be.

[whumpdoyoumean]

Whumptober #3

part 1

xxx i warned you

Charles tenses when he hears the door open, and footsteps coming up behind him. He takes a deep breath through his nose, and instantly relaxes a little. The smell, a particular combination of cheap cigarettes and expensive cologne, is one he knows well.

"I thought it was weird that you just happened to be nearby the other day when that guy came after me. And here you are again. You gonna tell me what the hell – " He turns, and the question dies in his throat. Drowsy is wearing that blank expression he's so good at, the one that reveals absolutely nothing, and he's got a gun in his hand, pointed right at Charles. The anger is hot and instant; Charles can feel it twisting his face into a snarl, and curling his hands into fists as he stares down the barrel. "Asshole."

"I did warn you," Drowsy says.

He pulls the trigger.

It's the second time in as many weeks that Charles has been shot. The last time he'd barely noticed it at first. All it had done was fuel him, sending him into a blind rage. And even when the fury and adrenaline had faded, it felt more like an inconvenience than anything.

This is different.

The bullet hits the right side of his chest, just below the collarbone. There's no anger this time, just shock. Because he knew that he and Drowsy were on opposing sides, and he knew – he knew – that something was going on with Drowsy during that last encounter. But he wasn't expecting this.

He's on the ground. He doesn't remember falling, but he must have landed hard because he can't seem to catch his breath. He's had the wind knocked out of him before, so he knows it'll pass. Any second now, it'll pass...Only it doesn't. It doesn't, and the small breaths he does manage to pull in aren't enough to alleviate the horrible feeling of not being able to get enough air.

"Charles," Drowsy's voice says, close to his ear, and Charles wants to turn, to look into the face of the man that's just shot-maybe-killed him, but it seems it isn't just his lungs that refuse to cooperate. "I was supposed to kill you."

What an asshole.

He's patting Charles down, like he's frisking him for a weapon. Which is stupid, because Charles isn't sure he could even lift a gun right now. If he could, Drowsy would be down here bleeding with him. Another few seconds pass, or maybe minutes, or hours. Charles isn't actually sure. But then Drowsy is shoving something into Charles's hand, a hard rectangle that feels like it weighs a ton. It isn't until he hears a faint, distant trilling that Charles is able to recognize the object resting on his palm.

It's his phone.

"Charles?" a tinny voice says. He can barely hear it, but he knows it's Blood Boots.

Help, Charles wants to scream. I need help. But he can't get enough of a breath to even whisper. Blood Boots is going to think it's a mistake. He's not going to come, and Charles is going to bleed to death or suffocate before anyone ever finds him.

And then a second shot rings out. There's no second impact, though, no fresh pain, no blood spilling over a new part of him. Just receding footsteps, and Blood Boots, shouting now. Telling Charles to stay on the line, that they're coming. And the door opening, as Drowsy leaves.

Drowsy, who Charles knows for a fact is an excellent shot. Who was only standing feet away.

Somehow, through the noise of his mind (through the dying), Charles comes to a realization.

"I was supposed to kill you," Drowsy had said. What he hadn't added, not aloud, was but I didn't.

Charles might be dying. But he's only alive because Drowsy let him live. Because Drowsy chose not to kill him.

If Charles makes it out of this, Drowsy is going to regret that decision. It's a pretty big if. His vision is starting to go dark at the edges, and he's losing a lot of blood, the warmth spreading over his chest and spilling onto the ground. The rest of him is cold. He's bleeding and hurting and gasping.

His eyes close.

-

"Charles! Open your eyes!"

Commands, coming at him in rapid-fire Mandarin, and hands, pressing to his chest and touching his wrist, his neck, his face.

"Hang on."

-

The ground is moving. Or – he's moving? And the surface he's on is softer than the last time he was aware. His chest is killing him. Someone groans, and it must be him because someone says his name, and then someone else says, "Who did this?"

He doesn't answer. He can't.

Even if he could, he doesn't know if he would.

-

He wakes up under the thick haze of pain meds. They're not heavy enough to drown out the pain in his chest completely, but it's tolerable. Opening his eyes takes a few tries. Xing is sitting in a chair near the end of his bed, and she looks up at him. She doesn't smile.

"Your father wants to know who did this to you," she says.

Charles knows who did it. He could tell Xing right now, and Drowsy would be dead by tomorrow. Maybe he deserves to be. He certainly doesn't deserve Charles's protection, that's for damn sure.

Just say it.

His mouth opens, and he hears himself say, "I don't know."

"You have no idea?"

He's already falling asleep again, his heavy eyelids drooping. But he says, "No."

Because if anyone is going to kill Drowsy Lee, it's going to be him.

(That's what he tells himself, anyway.)

xxx

[l4verq]

fight back | b.b

bucky barnes x enhanced!reader

in which bucky won’t lay a hand on you no matter what :(

tags : a little brawl, fluff cause icanthelpmyself, mentions of blood, john walker (idk if we're supposed to like him now ??) bucky is a cat lady okk

fic : one shot

a/n : inspired by that scene in the final ep of tfatws when karli is screaming at sam to fight back lol😳

|| gif by @unearthlydust ||

-

one world, one people.

you repeat it in your head one more time, when he comes into view, vibranium gleaming onyx with loops of gold.

you know that he knows you’re here, back to the wall a few feet away, peeking at him.

he doesn’t know that you let him know.

doesn’t know that you laid out a trap and just like the foolish mouse, he walked right into the lion’s den.

although you’re not sure who the fool actually is, when you meet his eyes, knees almost buckling at the sight just cause of how long it’s been without them.

“y/n.” he breathes out, almost in disbelief.

it’s been fourteen months since he woke up to an empty bed and a handwritten goodbye letter folded in a clean white envelope, tucked under a pillow still marked by the soft indentation of your head.

fourteen months since you took off in the dead of night, pulling your- his hood over your head, the cold wind nipping at your skin, almost like it was punishing you.

maybe, it saw what you did.

oh, but fred definitely saw what you did, that damn cat always followed you two around even though it’s owner was the blonde next door. her name wasn’t even fred, bucky came up with it after the third time it snuck into the apartment.

he swore he hated it but always seemed to have a treat lying around in case it did come.

and it did, a lot. neglected by it’s owner, it chose to seek comfort in the couple next door, and sometimes a meal or two.

“sorry, no treat today bub.”

fred scowled - honestly, you wouldn’t be surprised if an actual human was living in it - mewling as it came up to you for the usual chin rubs and cooes.

you sighed, caving into it’s antics, squatting to pet it.

cradling it’s head into your palm, she was purring, a very uncommon sight. fred doesn’t purr, she scratches and hisses at anything and everything that moves.

“you’re particularly nice today.” you commented, getting up. it mewled even louder this time but you turned on your heels and headed for the stairs.

you were already late.

your legs picked up pace quickly, easily crossing multiple blocks over in a few long strides owing to the blue serum coursing through your veins.

though your mind remained stationary, fixated on a single face, how it’d crumble at the sight of the letter, how he’d probably end up hating you.

“took you long enough.”

her auburn locks were tied into a loose braid that curved around her neck, the tip sat just below her collarbone, a piss poor job held together by a thin maroon colored band.

it was quintessentially her, the lack of utter patience to spend two minutes looping three knots of hair one over the other.

you jogged over to the other side of the black suv, noticing a stark white rectangle where a liscence plate should be.

“he’s knocked out cold,” you asked as soon as you grabbed the door handle open, “how?”

lazropthalein.

it came in the mail in a brown package, no return address. bucky wasn’t home, he had a scheduled therapy session down the block.

just a pinch is enough.

the text from the unknown number read.

it had no odour, a clean, white colour to it that blended in seamlessly with the flour.

“you baked without me?” bucky gasped, dramatically, hand covering his gaping mouth. his other hand carried two plastic bags, filled to the brim, a purple razor was poking out the top.

he even had to drop the poor bags on the floor, just to emphasize the utter shock he felt.

“i got bored.” you giggled, wiping the countertop with a wet cloth, remnants of flour on the sleek marble turning goopy under it.

“traitor.”

“it’s just cupcakes.”

“still a cake.”

you sighed, “you’re a five year old.”

he huffed, trudging towards the living room, shoulders hunched to really hone in on just how devastating this was for him.

“don’t i get a hug?” you held your arms out, making grabby hands, following him.

apparently, the devastation was to the point where he had to bring out the big guns, the sad baby blues.

the act lasted for another minute? at best. hours later, he was happily munching away.

“i know why it tastes so good.” he moaned, smacking his lips.

your smile faltered a little, did he kn- no, there’s no way he could have known. you burned that little plastic bag as soon as you dumped a pinch in.

“yea?”

he grinned, popping the last bit left in “it was made with your love.”

“how did it work?” your voice rose several octaves higher, amplified further by the cool, silent night.

drugs and sedatives don’t work on supersoldiers yet a certain blue eyed one was back home, unmoving even if you screamed right into his ears.

“dr wilfred, he invented it. the power broker wanted something to balance out our,” she flared her hands at both of you, “super-soldierness, so that we don’t have an upper hand when all’s said and done.”

would the either of you even be alive when all was said and done?

“look, i know you didn’t want to do this but james, he won’t understand. he’s not one o-..”

“yea, can we jus- let’s just get out of here.” you get in beside her, whipping the seatbelt over your torso.

the car was stuffy, felt like a choke around your neck that only seemed to tighten more and more.

“if we go now, there’s no coming back.” she glances at you, hand curled over the gearstick ready to position it in place.

she was giving you an out, one last chance. karli was a lot of things and having a heart inside that cold, bitchy exterior was one.

“i know.”

you sunk deeper into your seat, the hoodie had a faint smell of burnt toast and that cologne which was on sale, almost half off if you cut out the taxes.

it smelled like him, too much like him.

until it didn’t after a few days. but you still slept with it, just outright refusing to wash it despite karli’s snarky remarks about hygiene.

hygiene could go fuck herself, for all you know.

compared to the motels and basements you guys shifted around in, that hoodie was a doctor’s scrubs.

when the moon hung low on the black sky, you tried not to think about him too much. the silence didn’t help, you needed something to drown out your thoughts. that’s when the ‘socialising’ with the other flag smashers started. they were nice.

nice cause you were the leader’s little sister. but also a huge fucking liability because of a certain supersoldier hot on their heels in search of you, ruining every goddamn plan so their niceness was.. limited.

karli was a natural when it came to it, all of it. the talking, rallying of supporters - fuck, she just had a way with words. she could make you believe she hung up the stars in the sky.

probably how she convinced you that holding a room chock full of council members hostage right smack in the middle of nyc was a good idea.

the only idea, more precisely.

you guys had the upper hand, more than a handful supersoldiers at your disposal, capable of taking down the entire military force if you so pleased.

the only playing card they had was one supersoldier, who was better off distracted, kept off the field.

so who better to send to do the deed than the love of his life.

“fred had a baby. multiple babies, spawn of the devil if you ask me. always running around, thrashing the place up.” he takes small steps towards you, slow and calculated, as if a lion stalking around a prey.

“you shouldn’t be here.” you lie through your teeth, a tiny white compared to the ones that’ve rolled off your tongue before.

“i think the neighbours call me a cat lady now,” his eyes shift around and he leans in to whisper, “they haven’t even seen my knitting skills yet.”

“stop.” you think you said it or much rather whispered it, your voice was failing you. he’s getting close, too close for your liking so why aren’t you backing away from him?

“fred misses you, you know. she wonders where you went.” he smiles but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

the hairs on your neck shoot up, a slight twitch of your brow. the way bucky’s ear perk up, you realise it’s not just you and him here anymore.

someone else has arrived.

“i’ve got it handled, john.” bucky turns around, plants him directly infront of you, blocking john’s view of you.

sure enough, it’s john limping in, a nasty gash across his chest.

your blood runs cold because this isn’t how it’s supposed to go.

john isn’t supposed to be here, he’s supposed to be fighting.. oh god. you notice the various splatters of blood on his cowl, on his boot, on his shield.

it’s too much blood from a guy who’s barely bleeding.

“really? i was thinking you should do more than just talk.” he spits on the ground and wipes his mouth.

you notice, the spit’s all blood too.

“i’m giving you a chance to walk away, right now.”

john snorts, leaning sideways to get a view of you, neck craned out.

“and leave this prize all to yourself?” he grins, “i’d be an idiot.”

“you have a death wish then.” you lift your chin a little higher, praying your quickening heartbeat doesn’t give away your calm exterior.

john whistles, grimacing as he straightens, “so, she does talk.”

you scowl, crossing your arms.

he’s in bad shape. he has no chance, not that he ever did even in his best shape. he knows that too yet he’s still here. that sends a chill up your spine.

“go, i got this.” bucky tips his head, glancing at you.

“i don’t need you to save me.” you hiss at him, which comes out a little harsher than you intended. an apology dies in your throat as he flinches just the slightest.

“trouble in paradise?” john’s barely finished saying it before he’s reached behind his back and swinging the vibranium

you hear it before you see it stopped mid air by a gloved hand. then you charge.

it’s all a hazy mix of blue and red until your fist connects with his jaw, sound of something breaking ringing in your ear.

something pulls your waist back, a grip far too strong to be just flesh.

“go, i’ll ta-..” bucky’s barely said anything before an upward cut from john connects to his neck, violent coughs ensuing.

you grip john’s arm before he’s even retracted it back, jump up his back, settling around his neck and twist until you hear a crack and a bloodcurling scream following suit.

he whips his head back right into your stomach, seizes that moment when the wind knocks out of you to pull you by your hair off him.

“i told you to go.” bucky growls, kicking john right in the shin that makes him kneel and you almost fall off but you keep your fingers tightly looped around john’s hair, pulling as hard you can.

but he’s relentless.

your head hits something hard and you realise you’re on the ground now, legs loosely around john’s shoulders, him also on the ground.

it’s like the both of you realise at the same time but you’re quicker. your legs tighten around his neck, against the spot where a thick neck muscle throbs. he claws desperately around, straining for oxygen

soon, his hands lull down, the dull thud on the ground confirming his unconsciousness.

“are you hurt?” bucky’s hovering over you, seemingly unfazed by john’s neck in a chokehold by your legs right now.

you reject his hand he extends and push yourself off the gravelly concrete on to your feet.

“this was a mistake.” you trail off, saying it more to your own self.

you weren’t the lion, you were the stupid fox who thought it was.

stupid enough to believe you were over bucky and that everything wouldn’t come rushing back as soon as you laid eyes on him.

he whips you around by your hand and before you know it, he’s already caught your other fist heading for his sternum. you barely feel the grip, it’s soft, just so incredibly soft and fits so right.

you hate it.

rage bubbles inside you, mostly at yourself. partly at him because he’s not screaming at you or slamming you against the wall or jus- anything.

you wrench your hand away, land a swing which he does nothing to block. his grip on your other hand loosens and he still does nothing when another hit to the jaw leaves him staggering,

instead, he looks at you softly as if resigning himself to your anger, to let it simmer off.

“fight back!” you scream, outstretched palms pushing him back.

he stumbles a few steps back, hands reaching out to yours resting on his chest, fingers intertwining yours tightly.

“stop.” it’s a soft plead, tears spiking the corners of his eyes.

“hit me!” you’re practically begging at this point, thrashing your arms around.

his hands grapple at your shoulders, bringing you to his chest, “it’s okay.”

he smells so sweet, just so sweet that you almost believe him.

“i drugged you and i left you and i-,” you inhale sharply, “i killed so many people, bucky.”

the last fourteen months had escalated quickly from doing what’s right to doing what’s needed, lines blurred between moral ethics and survival.

“it’s okay.” he repeats, hand patting your hair, gentle and soothing. your body betrays you, sinking into his touch, his warmth.

“you should hate me.” you whimper.

you wouldn’t blame him if he did. you doubt he could hate you more than you already did yourself.

he pulls back, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear, “i couldn’t if i tried.”

god, why does he have to be so.. bucky?

frustated, you spit out, “this? this was a distraction to separate you and sam.”

you don’t say it but it’s understood, understood that you wouldn’t have met him if not for it.

the inner corners of his brows angle up slightly, a ghost of a smile on his lips, “i know.”

your breath hitches, if he knows then wh-

“then, why..?”

you finally look up at him, vision blurry because of the stupid tears pooling at your eyes.

his thumb wipes away a tear dribbling down your cheek, the coldness of the metal a clear contrast to the warm moisture, “you know why.”

-

a/n : this one’s been sitting pretty, collecting cobwebs in my drafts so thought i’d take it out lol, also haven’t been posting fics in a whileeee cause im dumb and i’ve been working on multiple things all at once lol yea this is me rambling and also i just wanna say that i. love. folklore. sm. that whole album has me crying and sad and just :((

[silenceofthecookies]

Shigaraki x reader - memories

My second entry for @quirkyseastone​‘s challenge! Another story I felt very inspired for. Did I mention I love angst? Pretty sure I mentioned that a lot. For this entry I had to combine angst with a photographer AU, so here you go! Please read the warnings below so you know what to expect ❤

Genderneutral reader Warnings: mentions of past crime, jailtime, murder, guns and character death Word count: 1.7K

The spring feeling had gotten to you, and you decided to finally clean out that old storage room. Over the past year, you had dumped everything in there, saying ‘I'll sort through that tomorrow'. Tomorrow became next week, next week became next month, and next month became next year. You were a little embarrassed to have let it come this far, but today was a good day and you decided that this room needed a good cleaning. Dust had gathered over time and you were pretty sure this was slowly becoming a health hazard.

As you sorted out boxes and bags, a big trash bag next to you to immediately throw away whatever was no longer needed, you came across a very familiar bag. A small, black, rectangle-shaped backpack. You opened it up and carefully took out your camera. Because you always kept it clean, and because you had neatly put it away in the bag, it still looked as new. It felt like it was only yesterday when you were still working as a photographer and though you had lost your job and had gotten a new one, you remembered the joy taking pictures had always brought you. You placed the bag next to the door, eager to try it out again once you were done. First things first though, spring cleaning.

You were nearly finished when you knocked over one of the remaining boxes. It fell open and out came several, pictures you recognised you once took. You sat down on the ground to get them sorted out again and back into the box, when you noticed a very old picture.

The very first picture you had ever taken of Tenko.

Back then you didn't even know his name. You were hired to take pictures of a group of young adults going to the amusement park. All of them went to juvenile prison before they even became adults, and once they got out they entered a support group which was supposed to help them stay out of trouble. The leader of the organisation was a kind man in his early 50ies, who had gone to jail as a teenager himself and wanted to make sure other kids found their way back onto the straight path faster than he had. While taking pictures of the members of the group, you had unknowingly taken the first picture of the man who would come to mean to much to you.

You found another picture, this time it was a selfie, though still taken with your camera, of you and Tenko. You had caught him looking at you, but every time you tried to make eye contact, he turned away. Figuring he was shy, or at least camera shy, you pulled him close to you by the arm and took a picture. It was off centre because you couldn’t see what you were taking a picture of, so your face was only half on the picture. Tenko’s face was smack in the middle though, his expression screaming surprise. It was how you started your first conversation with him. When you came home that evening, you noticed that he had slipped a little note into your pocket with his name and phone number. Shigaraki Tomura, the note said. It earned him the nickname Shiggy, a nickname that would last even long after he told you his real name.

You smiled at the memories. It had been so many years since you and Tenko met now and you had many good memories, but you couldn’t help but think your first meeting was a special one. As you continued sifting through the pictures more, you found another picture with Tenko in it. This time, of your first date.

The two of you had agreed to meet up for lunch. Tenko had come out in black pants and a black sweater, something he came to regret when he saw you. Even if you didn’t put any effort in it, you just looked so good. You didn’t know this at first, of course. It’s something Tenko told you many years later, looking at this exact picture. The picture was of him standing in front of the restaurant, still unaware that you had already arrived. The nerves were clearly visible on his face. In the end, the date was a little awkward yet fun, and you had the next date not too long after.

You went over some other old date pictures, when you found the picture of yet another special occasion with Tenko. Your very first anniversary. Tenko was standing in front of the mirror, fiddling with his tie. The both of you had decided to dress up nicely and go to a fancy restaurant, though Tenko had rarely ever worn a suit. In the end you had to help him tie it, much to his embarrassment. In this date, he came clean about a lot of things to you. He told you about the crimes he had committed that landed him in jail, about the fears he still held to this day, about him lying about his name,… You had asked him what brought up this sudden will to come clean, and he told you it was because he was serious about you. About being with you and about spending possibly his whole life with you. And he knew that if he wanted to make it work, he needed to be honest with you, because he just wanted to be accepted for who he was.

The next picture that caught your eye was a picture basked in orange and red, as it was taken during sunset. He had your hand in his and was placing a kiss to the back of it. It wasn’t visible very well in this picture, but you clearly remembered the glittering ring that adorned your finger in that very picture. Tenko had just asked you to marry him, and you had said yes. Tears welled up in your eyes at the memory. Both you and Tenko had cried the moment you said yes, though the red light of the sunset masked most of the redness of Tenko’s eyes in the picture.

You found another picture that clearly showed a ring, though this ring was not your engagement ring, it was your wedding ring. The picture was your hand on top of Tenko’s, both showing off the glittering bands around your fingers. His hands were dry, as his skin always was, and in the days prior to the wedding he had been so nervous he had started biting his nails. You figured it was better than scratching his throat, which he used to do whenever he got scared or nervous. The moment Tenko saw you pull out your camera he started to scold you, saying that this was your wedding day and that you should leave the pictures to the other photographer you had hired, but you insisted on taking at least one picture yourself. Tenko sighed and allowed you to position his hand as you wanted before taking the picture.

One of the final pictures that laid on the floor was a rare picture that Tenko had insisted on you taking. It showed him in a smart blouse with a tie and dress pants, his hair tied back into a ponytail, and a small nameplate pinned to the chest of his blouse. Due to his criminal record, Tenko had had a rough time getting a proper job, even years after he had gotten out of jail. Due to his determination and diligence though, and a little recommendation from an acquaintance of yours who worked there, he had gotten a job at a bank. He’d just be at the register and do mostly supportive administration work, but to Tenko, it felt like he had just won the lottery. He had even learned to tie his own tie. He was so proud of himself, the had tackle hugged you the moment he got the call which told him he’d gotten the job. You were so proud of him at the time, but looking at the picture now, your chest only felt heavy. If only you had known what this would’ve lead to, you would have never let him work there.

The final piece of paper on the ground was not a picture you had taken, but it contained one. It was a cut-out from a newspaper. To the right of the article was a picture of Tenko, his profile picture on social media at the time. A picture obviously taken by you. He was smiling brightly at the camera – you – as you took the picture, so much that his already dry lips cracked, which ended up in him both wincing and laughing at the same time because of the stupidity of the situation. When you asked him what he was thinking about to smile so brightly, he said it was because he thought he was the luckiest person on earth for having you. It was a sentiment you shared.

Your eyes fell on the article, and you started reading it despite knowing better.

Bank robbery gone bad, 8 wounded, 1 dead

Yesterday around 5, just before closing time, the local bank was robbed by two masked individuals, both armed with guns. The clerk had set off the silent alarm, though one of the individuals had seen him do it and shot him. In a fit of rage, the robber shot him several times and also shot at the hostages. The clerk was transported to the hospital but died in the ambulance. The other-

Your eyes became too blurry to see the letters clearly and you threw the article to the side. He was gone, and you never even got to say goodbye. You never got to tell him you loved him one last time. You never got to tell him just how proud you were of the person he had become. All you got was a call from his phone, with an unknown voice on the other side, telling you to come to the hospital immediately. That simple call was enough. The nurse didn’t say what had happened, but you knew it. You had lost your precious Tenko.

[something-fanfiction-ie]

Guardian Angel

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reader

Warnings: Mentions of abuse of kidnapping. Again, details of murder/crime scenes, curse words.

A/N: Hello, hello, hello! So, again, I find myself having to cut this in half. I originally planned on the team getting to you at this point in the story but I got a little carried away. I’ve been thinking about this series so much that it’s ridiculous. Low-key wish I’d been able to direct a CM episode like this. The things I could do with a camera... solely focused on Matthew for a 45 minute episode. Heh. Anyways, remember to like, comment, reblog, send me asks, and basically do the job of producing serotonin for me like my brain is supposed to do naturally. Thank you so much for sticking around and I’ll be sure to get the next part out to you ASAP!

___

[ Part One | Part Two | Part Three ]

It was hours later before Spencer felt the incessant buzzing of his phone against his thigh.

Immediately annoyed and already tired of the day, he didn’t even bother to look at the caller ID before sending it straight to voicemail. Blindly, he rummaged around in the bottom of his satchel for his keys. Spots danced across the back of his left eyelid as he tried to rub the exhaustion away.

Everything about today had been awful. From finding out the girl of his dreams, who he had only known for three weeks, mind you, could be a serial killer to the fact that, without you, nothing made any sense in this case. Even if you weren’t the unsub, you were an integral piece to finding out who was.

After you had left the office earlier this afternoon, Spencer had made it his mission to investigate every other person connected to you. He’d even gone so far as to track down your father to the other side of the globe, having somehow made his way to Europe in order to stay out of you and your mother’s lives.

Try as he might, every possible lead led to a brick wall spray painted to say, ‘She’s the killer.’ Having spent most of the day trying to convince himself that you were the unsub, he was tired of fighting his instincts for fear of compromising himself. Something wasn’t right in this investigation and he just couldn’t figure out what it was.

When his phone started to buzz again as he pushed the key into the key hole, he couldn’t help the sudden surge of anger that seemed to take over his body. Hastily yanking one hand from the door, he reaches into his pocket and presses the answering button.

“Hello, this is Dr. Reid.” His tone is harsh and mechanically echoes back into his ear. Whoever is on the other side of the line is quiet for one second, then two. For five seconds no one responds and Spencer has the time to balance the phone between his cheek and his shoulder so that he could go about removing his bag and shuffling into his car.

“You really thought it was her, didn’t you, Dr. Reid?” Although the natural pitch of the voice suggests a woman, or maybe even a young boy, there is an underlying tone that suggests that it’s a man. Spencer is frozen in place, his bag sitting in the passenger seat of his car, one hand on the inside of the door and the other on the steering wheel.

Slowly, he reaches up to relieve his shoulder from the duty of holding his phone, his long fingers curling around the device. His eyes squinted, the way they usually did when he was thinking. With his other hand, nervously, he reaches up to push away a curl that has escaped from behind his ear.

“Who is this?” He regrets the question the moment it falls from his lips. Someone who has gone the painstaking lengths that this man has gone through to keep himself out of the investigation would not simply reveal his identity when no one even had a suspicion of him.

“Wrong question, Doctor. Try again.” Swallowing past the lump that has started to form in his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the action, Spencer stretches back across the driver seat of his car to grab his bag. The leather strap digs into the palm of his hand and he drags it toward him, feeling like he was stuck on rewind as he goes about undoing everything he’d just done.

“What do you want?” The click of the door lock is the only sound for three seconds before the man responds again, a sadistic excitement escalating the pitch of his voice.

“Out of life? From a specific restaurant? Be specific in your questioning, Doctor.” He laughs a little breathlessly. In the moments where he doesn’t talk, Spencer strains to hear anything that could help him, but he can’t even hear the guy breathe let alone identify background noise.

“What is your purpose in calling me?” Getting back into the building is a hassle while on the phone, but he manages it nonetheless. There would be no sleeping tonight after a call like this. The elevator button glows a pale yellow as Spencer stabs it with one of his long fingers. For now they are steady, his hands that is, but the full effect of what is happening and what it means hasn’t actually hit him full force yet.

“To inform you of two things; the first being that you are wrong. I killed all those people and I killed them because of you.” The breath in his throat hitches. All of his worst dreams and nightmares have come crawling out of the woodworking and across his skin like thousands of tiny spiders.

“The second being that I’ll be hanging out with our mutual friend for a while, so you may not see her for a little bit.” There is a creaking of a door before he hears you. Your voice is already hoarse from screaming and the sound of restraints clacking against a concrete flooring puts the picture of you in a dungeon deep into his head.

“Spencer?! Spencer his name i-” The sound of a hand making contact with skin makes Spencer’ blood boil with rage.

Curling into the corner of the elevator, hunching his shoulders into himself and covering an ear with the palm of his opposite hand, Spencer speaks slowly and deliberately into the speaker.

“Do not touch her.” The man on the line chuckles, reaching out to run a finger along the edge of your jawline. You snatch your head away, your slapped cheek already turning pink, and push back against the wall.

“I’m afraid it’s already too late for that. Happy hunting.” The doors of the elevator open as soon as the line goes dead. Everything in Spencer kicks into overdrive, his mind flying so fast that he could barely manage to keep up with it himself.

Hotch, ready to leave for the day, stands in the opening. The tired look in eyes only grows when he sees the young profiler standing in his way, his face drained of blood and his phone still desperately clutched to his ear.

“What’s happened?”

Not so far away, the door to the empty, concrete basement shuts you in by yourself. Around your ankle is a handcuff attached to a car chain that is anchored to the floor. If you crawl to it, dragging your injured leg behind you, you can see the shoddy soldering done to create this makeshift dungeon.

In the corner is a mattress with a thin cotton blanket probably from dollar general or somewhere equally as cheap. A lamp sits beside it, the wooden bottom nailed into the floor to keep you from using it as a weapon. The only other thing is a wooden chair that is planced just below a high rectangle window. A couple of desperate shakes against the leg confirms that it is also nailed to the floor.

With nothing of use, save maybe the blanket, you go about taking a collection of your injuries.

The top of your head is leaking a steady stream of blood that drips down the side of your face and sticks your hair to your cheek. The sight of so much blood coming from your head is alarming at first, but just as quickly as you started to panic, you remember that head wounds can bleed quite a lot. No matter how small.

On the opposite side as your head injury is a deep cut on your cheekbone. It has stopped bleeding, dry blood clogged around the torn skin and flaking along your cheek when you run your finger over it.

Your thigh is a different issue all together, the knife wound throbbing with pain no matter how you shift or apply pressure. You’ve coated your hands in gloves made of your own blood trying to staunch the bleeding, hissing and whimpering the whole time.

All three injuries had happened in a matter of minutes, starting with the knife to your thigh.

You drove for an hour and a half toward nowhere in particular, only pulling off the road when the gun jammed into your neck and Harvey snapped at you from the back.

“Turn right on the dirt road.” The tiny car bumped and bounced around the dirt and gravel, driving straight for another fifteen minutes. You were surrounded by nothing but trees and hills and although you’d been familiar with the area where you’d pulled off the road, you weren’t sure where you were.

When the gun jammed back into your neck and Harvey screamed for you to stop, you slammed so hard on the brakes that he rocked forward and hit his head on the back of the passenger seat. The crunch of his breaking nose was sickening to your ears, but the bite of the seat belt digging into your collarbone and neck was enough to keep you from vomiting.

“You bitch!” He cried, the hand not holding a gun to your neck flew up to catch the blood that fell from his nose. Despite his attempts, a drop or two still managed to fall to the floor and soak into the fabric. His DNA would be on this car, you could only hope that he was in some sort of system. Even now, after everything you’d been through today, you still trusted the team of FBI Agents to find you before it was too late.

The safety on the gun made a clicking noise, your entire body freezing in place as you looked at everything around you. You were in a big dirt field, trees surrounding a patch of land that may have once been the grounds for a home. Now, only your car, a red SUV, and red soil were the only things there to see.

Harvey moved around in the back seat, you could see him in your rear view mirror as he pulled tissues from his pocket and shoved them into his broken nose. When he was finished he pulled out a pocket knife. His eyes were two beady slits of black as he met your gaze in the mirror.

“We’re going to get out of this car, and get into that car right over there. I’ll get in the driver’s seat, and you get in the trunk. Understood?” Sweat slicked your hair to your temples as you shook your head, your grip on the steering wheel so tight that your fingertips had started to tingle.

“You aren’t a good shot, Harvey. The moment we get out of this car, I’ll run.” The knife in his hand popped to attention at your words, gleaming in the sunlight. Somehow, it was only four o’clock in the afternoon and you had already been through hell.

“You won’t be able to.” He said, his hand shooting forward and sinking into your leg. Through the shock of it all, you’d barely felt it even after he pulled the bloody knife back and flipped it shut. You gaped at the wound, watching as the blood seeped out, soaked into your pants, and smeared onto the leather covering of your seat.

The back door opened, the car still alive and thrumming underneath you as he hurried over to your side of the car. You didn’t think, you just acted, throwing the car out of park and letting the adrenaline pumping through your veins mask the pain it caused you to slam on the gas.

Maybe you would have made it, drove out of here and been able to make it to a hospital before you bled out in your own car, but it had been raining nearly nonstop for three weeks and your car was not made to go fast in mud. Your tires spun long enough for Harvey to throw your door open and slam the butt of his gun into your head, causing your face to slam into the steering wheel and render you unconscious.

By the time you came back to yourself, Harvey had been carrying you down the steps and into a basement or cellar of some kind. You had no idea where you were or how long you had been out, only that your entire body was sore and cold.

“Ah, you’re awake. Good. I wanted to apologize about earlier, you just made me a little angry. But we’re better now. I even took those bloody clothes off you. I’ve got your room made up for you and if you’re good, I might let you talk to a friend of ours.” His tone is cheerful, his dark eyes complimenting the dark bags underneath them.

Harvey had been in several of your classes when you went to Georgetown, a friendly face amongst all the older kids who used to sneer at you when you tried to do anything. You wouldn’t actually say you were friends, just two people who were kind to each other. Later, once you parted ways after graduation, he became the personal assistant of your agent. He told you he was just trying to make ends meet while he was going back to school for his masters. It was such a surprise to see you again!

Then last month he quit after the death of his mother, thanking your agent for the experience and moving back to whatever town it was he used to lived in that you never bothered to ask about. Agents have multiple clients, yours was no exception, so you thought nothing of the change in personal assistants based solely on the fact that you barely noticed. Her life didn’t revolve around you and yours didn’t revolve around her.

But now, locked in a basement wearing nothing but your underwear and a tank top, blood soaking through a bandage around your thigh, with the really cute man you’d based a character on believing that you were a serial killer, you wish you’d noticed him more.

...

Garcia was the one to suggest looking at the security footage of the parking lot. She’d been clacking away on her tablet and trying to not seem disappointed about being dragged back to the BAU so quickly, when someone asked where you would have gone from here.

“What if he took her from here?” Everyone had looked at her with varying degrees of peculiar looks. Someone being kidnapped from the parking lot of a building full of FBI Agents? It would be comical if kidnappings weren’t a serious issue. Ironic. That’s the word Penelope was looking for. It was ironic.

“I mean, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to look at the security footage but her lawyer walked her to her car, it was broad daylight. What are the-” Prentiss’ mouth snaps shut and her lips purse just a little when Penelope brings up the video on the big screen.

Just thirty minutes before you walk outside, a small and stocky figure jimmies open your back door and slides in. He must slide to the passenger side of the backseat because he disappears from view. While he isn’t dressed in an extremely unusual manner, the hat and the black hoodie he is wearing help to hide his identity from the camera hanging over him.

Fast forward thirty minutes and all eyes trained to you as you drop your keys and bend to pick them up. Guilt hits every single member on the team, Spencer probably more than the rest, when they watch your head drop into your hands once you’re in the confines of your car.

An arm extends across the backseat, coming into view of the camera as the unsub presses a gun into your neck. In a matter of fourty-five seconds, you start the car and pull out of the parking spot.

“So we can rule out Jeremy.” Spencer says plainly, shuffling the papers in front of him as he thinks. Across the table Hotch nods his head in agreement. Jeremy was tall, maybe an inch shorter than Spencer, and he while he had an athletic build it was more lean muscle than the wide and stocky build the unsub had.

Penelope is quick to gather her things and head for her office, already planning on trying to follow your path through traffic cameras. It would be a grueling process, but it was the least she could do after digging through your life to, unintentionally, frame you for eight murders you didn’t commit.

“We interviewed everyone she has a connection to, in state or not. She’s an extremely low-risk victim, her circles don’t run that big.” Morgan has his own tablet pulled into his lap and he tilts his chair this way and that. A coin weaves in and out of his fingers and his forehead wrinkles as he goes over the list in his mind.

“Then we’ve already talked to our unsub, we just have to figure out which one it was.”

The first names to go are those out of state; your mother, your father, your best friend, and a handful of people you were connected to through the publishing firm. While the remaining names are few in numbers, it still puts Spencer on edge. They didn’t have the kind of time to be wasting energy of persons of interest, they needed one name identifying their unsub.

Nevertheless, the names are split amongst the group of profilers who work tirelessly through the night. The sun soon rises and glares through the window of the BAU conference room, putting Spencer Reid right into it’s spotlight.

There are bags under his eyes, eyes that take longer to open every time he blinks. He’s read the same paragraph eight different times, his cheek perched against the heel of his palm and his elbow propped on the tabletop. When he pushes back from the table, taking the file with him as he tries to walk away the exhaustion, it isn’t for the first time that night.

All he can think about is that final look you gave him as you walked out the door. It was a look of complete and utter betrayal, like you’d been trying to convince yourself that he was somehow oblivious in your being accused of the murders and seeing him there had been a punch of truth in the gut. He’d gone forward when you stumbled, reflexively reaching out to steady you on your feet before his mind could process the action.

Spencer has been doing that since he met you, trying to protect you like he was a giant ball of bubble wrap around you. He’d done it that day in the bookstore, throwing all precautions to the wind when he held the back of your head to keep you from hitting that bookshelf. He’s done it several times at a coffee shop you both enjoy visiting on his days off, physically maneuvering your body when he realizes that your current trajectory will cause you to ram your hip into a table corner.

One time, he’d been walking with you across the street when a man on a bicycle had come flying out of nowhere. You’d been just a step in front of him, your head tilted over your shoulder and your hands flying around with animation as you told him a story. Truly, he wasn’t sure how he knew to reach out and grab your shoulders, you have a way of telling stories that makes the entire world fall away. Yet, as if he was Spider-Man or something, every cell in his body suddenly cried out and he didn’t hesitate in pulling you back.

The force Spencer used to pull your body into his chest had sent you both tumbling to the sidewalk behind you.

“Are you okay?” You’d said, turning so that you were hovering over him with the sun framing you like a halo around your head. Surely you could feel the rapid escalation of his heartbeat with the way you tenderly place one of your small hands over his chest.

In the end he had to pull you to the side of the busy street to put a band-aid on your elbow where it had hit the concrete. It had been in the bottom of your bag and it had Scooby-Doo on it.

Despite his eidetic memory, some moments always manage to fade a little more than others. Some moments stick out more, like when you had reached out to smooth a stray curl away from his face. Your fingers were featherlight against his temple, your head tilted just a little to the side, and a soft smile stretched your lips.

“You’re my guardian angel.”

Some guardian angel he was, accusing you of murder on eight accounts and then letting you be kidnapped by someone who had no qualms about slapping you. God only knows what else he was comfortable with.

“I’ve got a lead!” Garcia burst into the room, her chest heaving as she sent videos and pictures to the screen for everyone to see. Spencer couldn’t see her face as she bent over her tablet, punching in information and instructions, but he nearly peppered it with kisses when she started to explain what they were all seeing.

“I managed to track (Y/N) to a little town about and hour and a half away when she, probably on purpose, ran a red light just in front of a gas station.” The video of your car creeping through a four-way traffic light until it turned red and captured you on camera was time stamped for yesterday afternoon around four o’clock.

“If you look closely, she turns onto a dirt road just a few seconds later,” Sure enough, every eye in the room watches as your car disappears behind a cluster of trees across from the BP on the left side of the video. “Satellite pictures show that little dirt road leads to one house that burned down a year ago.”

Mouths open, cogs turns, but Penelope Garcia once again proves her intelligence when she merely waves one hand in their direction and uses the other hand to pull up several documents and articles.

“Don’t sweat it. There’s no connection at all. Belonged to a Martin and Elisa Lewis back in the fifties before it was abandoned in the seventies. It was a local haunt where teenagers went to smoke, get drunk, have parties, and do the crazy and reckless things teenagers love to do. One of these reckless things led to a fire and burned the place down. But what’s important is what leaves this place fourty-eight minutes and twenty seconds after (Y/N)’s car enters.”

The video jumps forward in time, resuming as a red SUV pulls off the road and comes back for the stoplight. They can’t manage to get a license plate, the car being recently purchased by the unsub and the paper temporary being stuck to the inside of a tinted window, and they don’t manage to get a good image of the unsub driving. It feels, for a quarter of a second, as if there is no lead at all, until Spencer jumps to his feet.

“We need to see if her car is still there.”

The hour and a half drive takes fifty minutes with their lights on, mud kicking up beneath their tires as they pull into the empty lot. Your car sits abandoned in the middle, your back tires sunk into a pile of mud. The mass collection of blood on your driver’s seat makes Spencer nauseas. Rossi gives him a reassuring pat on the back.

It does nothing for Spencer’s nerves. He is truly the worst guardian angel ever.

[cagestark]

A Hole in the Head//4

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight

Tw: Spanking, graphic depictions of violence (not between our ot3)

SORRY ABOUT THE REPOST. Still being shadowbanned. Always going to be pursuing why </3

-

The dining room table is far too big for two, but Barnes refuses to join them for dinner. He takes up residence in the doorway leaning against the frame, his eyes on his phone. Earlier in the day, Pepper had received an anonymous threat via snail mail that had everyone on high alert. Since it was impossible to tell by the ambiguity whether the letter was in connection with Toomes or just with her work at Stark Industries in San Francisco, no immediate quarantine measures were being taken.

Apparently Tony’s mother was so far off the map in Italy that her own security detail had spent the last three days just trying to find her. Tony had laughed and cursed in equal measure, surrounded by anxious men who couldn’t decide whether to laugh as well or apologize. Afterward, Tony and Peter had spent time in their room unwinding, and that was when he had given the man every last detail about his day. The car. The mall. Running from Barnes. The alley. Tony had listened, thoughtful. He’d stalked to the window and looked out over the grounds, and Peter (not for the first time, not even that day) regretted having such a big fat mouth.

Tony had enough on his plate without adding Peter’s bullshit.

Enough on his plate, including the vegetarian tabbouleh salad with edamame and feta that they’re having for dinner. It’s so rich with pesto that just the scent of it makes Peter’s stomach grumble eagerly. Tony selects the wine because Peter knows nothing about wines (“Your palate needs work, sweet thing,”) and pours a generous glass only to place his hand across the top before Peter can pick it up. The message is clear: wait.

Tony takes his seat, unbuttoning the top button on his suit jacket. He unfolds his dinner napkin, but before Peter can touch his fork, he speaks: “Barnes.”

“Yes, Mr. Stark?”

“Come and take Peter’s seat.”

There is no invitation. It’s an order. Peter finds himself slipping from his chair and standing awkwardly beside it while Barnes crosses the room with slow, thoughtful steps. He brings with him the scent of leather and cologne. It makes Peter grit his teeth.

“Where am I supposed to sit?” Peter asks. He tacks on at the end, “Sir?”

Tony points to the space between his chair and Barnes’s. To the floor.

“But it’s tabbouleh salad night,” Peter whines.

“I won’t repeat myself,” Tony says. His tone rumbles over Peter like thunder, makes the hairs on his arms stand on end and his head bow. As embarrassing as it is, Peter moves to kneel on the hardwood floor, sitting back on his heels. Tony’s hand cards briefly through his hair before returning to his fork. “Please,” he says to Barnes. “Eat.”

Barnes, who ‘hadn’t been hungry’ ten minutes prior, is no idiot. He picks up the fork.

“Peter told me about your eventful day together,” Tony says. Barnes just nods, the movement visible from the corner of Peter’s eye. “And now I want you to tell me your version of the events.”

“You left at a quarter ‘til seven. Peter slept until nine in the morning. Breakfast at nine-thirty. We left for the mall in the black Cadillac before ten. Traffic outside Manhattan was typical. We made it to the Brookfield Place mall at eleven-thirty, where I parked at the—”

“I’m so tempted to let you go on,” Tony says. “I really am. I bet I could quiz you about anything from what Peter had for breakfast to what the license plate on the Cadillac was and you’d know every last detail.”

Barnes bows his head.

“But I think we both know the parts I’m most interested in. Pick it up from inside the fitting room.”

“I told him to stay out of the fitting rooms from now on. He said that he wanted to grab a shirt to go with the pants he was wearing, and that if I let him, he’d come without a fuss. It was an error on my part. I factored thirty seconds for him to find and return with the shirt, but within ten, my phone pinged to say that he had gone further than twenty feet away from me—”

Peter’s head snaps up. “You’ve been tracking me? Are you kidding? That’s such an invasion of privacy!”

Tony grips Peter’s hair in his fist, close to the roots so that Peter can’t squirm away. With his other hand, he reaches out for his wine glass to take a generous sip. “You’re in enough trouble, Peter,” he says after he swallows. “Say another word without me explicitly asking you to and you’re looking at astronomical trouble, baby. The likes of which you’ve never seen. Understood?”

“Yessir,” he murmurs, lowering his chin when Tony lets go of his hair.

“Bucky—go on.”

“I figured there were three options. He would stay in the mall, he would leave the mall for the street, or he would leave the mall for the car. I took my chances and went down to the bottom floor to head him off should he leave. Based on his rising elevation, he rode the elevator or escalators up to the top and then took the stairs down. He went out onto Vesey heading east. It wasn’t hard to cut him off.

“Once I did, I lost my temper. I broke his sunglasses. I pressed him against the wall and threatened him.” Barnes stops speaking. In the abrupt silence, Peter feels like everyone is holding their breath, waiting for confirmation of what they all know is coming.

“It’s okay,” says Tony, face no more expressive than a wall of stone. “Go on.”

“He—pressed against me. And he felt it.”

“Felt what?”

“That I was hard.”

Tony hums. Barnes is no longer eating, just holding the fork in his hand with knuckles turning white. For a moment, Peter sees the knife with the silver handle clutched in Beck’s fist, the one they had melted down and destroyed afterward. He has to blink away the illusion. “And then what?”

“I told him it would never happen and to give it up before he got us both killed.” Barnes pauses, and when Tony doesn’t fill the silence immediately, he asks, “Are you going to kill me?”

Peter doesn’t believe that Tony would kill Barnes, but there is a seed of doubt in him planted by Beck’s betrayal and Peter’s own inexperience when it comes to strategy. His tongue feels thick and useless in his mouth, unsure whether he should speak up and try to save the man’s life (he doesn’t want Barnes dead ) or stay silent and out of trouble.

“Only one thing will ever get you killed here,” Tony says. “And that’s betraying me. Are you going to betray me?”

“No, Mr. Stark,” Barnes says. His shoulders lower a fraction, the only hint of his relief. “My loyalty—it runs deep.”

“Loyalty to me or to Steve?”

Barnes frowns. “Both.”

“Loyalty to Peter?”

Barnes gives Peter a glance where he kneels on his heels in his Armani outfit, stomach aching with hunger because tabbouleh is his favorite. Peter keeps his stare on the edge of the table, stomach doing rolls knowing that Barnes is looking at him. At last, the man nods. “Yes.”

“If he wished for it, you could bend Peter over this table and eat his ass instead of this edamame, and I wouldn’t kill you for it.”

“I’m—always grateful not to be killed.”

Tony laughs, the sudden noise startling a flinch out of both of them. “You really are hard to get a rise out of. No wonder Peter was so, ah, animated telling me about your time together in the alley. I think if I managed to get a reaction out of you like that, I’d probably do cartwheels.

“My point is that if a part of this...tension between you and Peter centers on fear of me?—that’s needless. Baseless. I knew from the day you volunteered in my office to watch him that you must have had an ulterior motive. I didn’t think there was anything in the world that could have parted you from Steve’s side, but there you were, begging him to let you go. I knew then, and I was fine with it. Peter is handsome, he is smart, he is fun. I’ve seen straight men get hard-ons for him. It’s nothing new, and if we’re having honesty hour? I like it .

“You’re valuable to me, and I am not willing to lose you for any forgivable indiscretion. Understood?”

“Yes,” Barnes says, voice raspy. “Thank you, Mr. Stark.”

Tony smiles. “Call me Tony. Actually, don’t , I like the way you say my name like that, Mr. Stark . Fucking gold. Now, Peter on the other hand is in very big trouble. I had a long talk with him just the night before about how important it was to listen to your directions and follow any rules you laid down. Running away from you in a crowded public place definitely broke those rules, didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Peter, apologize to Bucky.”

“Sorry,” Peter mutters.

Tony laughs as if Peter’s sulking insincerity is the funniest joke he’s heard all day. “That? That was just the preliminary apology, Bucky. You will be given a second and much more sincere apology as well, and he will keep apologizing until you see fit to forgive him. Understood?”

“Yes, Mr. Stark.”

Tony stands, the legs of his chair scraping against the hardwood floor. He removes his jacket and lays it gently over the back of his chair so as to minimize wrinkles. Peter’s eyes fall to the gun on his hip on instinct, even though he feels no fear from it. Next to come off are Tony’s cufflinks, two palladium rectangles that he sits beside his half-eaten plate. Both Barnes and Peter are entranced watching him roll up his sleeves to the forearms, revealing tanned, scarred skin. Those hands break men all the time, and tonight they are meant to break Peter.

“Peter, Peter,” Tony sighs. “What the fuck am I going to do with you, kid? Give me an answer, just for giggles.”

“Forgive me, sir?” Peter asks, showing every last tooth in a winning smile.

“Of course, sweet thing,” Tony says, petting a fond hand through Peter’s hair. He grips it tight, like slapping away the softness of a kiss. “ Eventually . Now, stand up and drop your pants.”

“What?” Peter gasps. His eyes flicker to Barnes who stares hard at the plate in front of him, fork still clenched in his fist. “What for, sir?”

“For a spanking. What else do rotten little boys get?’

“In front of him ?”

“They were his rules you broke.”

Peter shakes his head. The idea of Barnes seeing him that way is a delightful cocktail of embarrassing and arousing. He wants it and dreads it in equal measure, and for much the same reasons. Humiliating himself in front of people has more repercussions than just making his cock hard. It changes the way people see him.

Then the fear rolls off of him like water off a duck. Maybe he doesn’t want to give in. But a larger part of him wants to be forced to give in, and tonight, it’s exactly the thing he needs. Choices (he’s always fucking up these days, always making choices that get him in trouble or get him hurt) wrenched from his hands. Except that, for them to be taken away, he has to be holding on to them in the first place.

On the other side of the table, Tony plants his palms flat on the glossy wood, his eyes glittering because he knows . Their safeword sits between them like a dish they know neither of them will touch. Not tonight.

“No, sir,” says Peter, prolonging the inevitable. “I won’t.”

“Would you like a choice?”

His eyes narrow—Peter knows that when Tony gives a choice, it’s only because either will benefit him. His tone alone hints at a scheme, but begrudgingly, Peter nods. Curiosity killed the cat.

“You can bend over this table and take a spanking. Or ! You can sleep in the guest room tonight.”

Oh , he thinks as numbness prickles over his skin. Right. Either Tony knows he will win either way, or one option is so terrible that he knows it won’t be chosen at all.

Spankings are barely punishments—both of them know that. Tony had to find a real way to discipline Peter many years ago, and the options are all loathsome to the younger man: spending time in the corner without acknowledgment, eating dinner separate from Tony, or sleeping alone in the guest room. In all their time together, Peter had never done something serious enough to warrant sleeping alone. The meaning is clear. This is the worst thing Peter has ever done—and this is the angriest with him that Tony has ever been.

Peter doesn’t bend to his will, he breaks to it.

His eyes prickle as he stands and unbuttons his chinos. He undresses with shaking hands, taking off the jacket to lay it over the back of the chair atop Tony’s and then slipping his pants down past his hips. Leaning forward, he puts his elbows flat on the table, choosing instead to look down at the swirling wood grain rather than stare Barnes in the eye.

“You don’t need to count them,” says Tony, putting a hand on Peter’s flank and squeezing gently. It’s tears on a pillow to Peter’s hurt, the knot in his chest that’s wound tighter than a fist. But he appreciates it. “You can make whatever noise you need to, including your safeword . Understood?”

“Yessir,” Peter mumbles. His lips feel a little tingly, like when he gets stung by a bee.

Tony begins a strong rhythm over the fabric of Peter’s boxer-briefs. Peter braces himself so the force of the spanks don’t have his elbows squeaking across the polished wood, and still he can’t bring himself to look up at Barnes. He doesn’t want to see himself being seen.

When Peter’s skin is warm and red, Tony tugs the boxers down. Across the table like this, Barnes can’t see any of the goods, not Peter’s cock (which is hard, though he’s hardly enjoying this, it’s nothing but a reflex thanks to the Terrible thought of sleeping alone poisoning Peter’s arousal) and not his ass, but still, Peter feels exposed. Even more so when Tony begins to speak, his sentences punctuated with spanks from the flat of his palm that crack like thunder in the large room.

“You think I’m being unfair, sweet thing? Threatening you with the guest room?” Peter doesn’t answer or look up. With his head ducked down, at least if his eyes go misty, no one will be able to see. “I will do whatever it takes to make you see that there is a time for play and a time to be serious. You think one night apart would be rough? Imagine if Toomes took you. Killed you.  Imagine how many nights both of us would spend alone then, Peter.”

“Quit, please,” Peter says around the lump in his throat, eyes burning with imminent tears. He’s got that fuzziness in his brain, the kind that reduces his world down to only Tony. Tony, who he let down today. Who he is always, always letting down. “I get it now.”

“You don’t . I bring in my most capable man to watch over you; he agrees to put his life before your own, and you put him at risk in every way. My fucking heart lives in your chest, and you put it at risk.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter says through his chattering teeth. Tears drip from his eyes onto the wood beneath his face and he wants to reach out and smear them away with his hands, but he’s worried he won’t be able to support himself again. As it is, he feels them shaking, sapped of energy.

“Will you run again? Next time you’re bored, next time you’re scared, next time you have a few moments too long to think, are you going to run again?”

“No!” Peter cries, his whole body shivering with the force of Tony’s strikes. The pain goes deeper than his skin, deep, deep inside him. One arm gives away, sliding against the glossy wood and he lets himself go, clothed-chest pressed flat to the table. He cradles his arms around his head and lets himself shake with tears inside his hiding place.

But there is no hiding. Not when Tony presses flush against him, leaning over his bent form to take a handful of his hair and coax his head up from his arms.

Directly in his line of sight is Barnes. The look on his face isn’t something Peter can identify. There is no pleasure there, but no disgust either. His brows are lower than ever while he watches, still as a statue, like a man trying to be polite at the strangest dinner-and-a-show. Tony uses his free hand to take one of Peter’s wrists in a gentle grip, and Peter realizes that Tony has spoken only for it to be lost.

“Tell him you’re sorry, sweet thing,” Tony says again in his ear.

“’m sorry, Mr. Barnes,” Peter says, tears dripping off his chin. He searches the other man’s face, looking for the forgiveness that he needs. It feels like life or death.

But all Barnes does is nod and say, “Call me Bucky.”

#

-BUCKY-

In the den, Bucky pours the drinks. Help yourself to whatever you like, but grab me a whiskey neat, Tony says from his spot on the couch. Peter lays with his head in the man’s lap, dressed in nothing but his little see-through sweater and navy pants, the boss’s jacket thrown over him to keep him warm. The kid’s eyes are closed in rest though not in sleep, not for the way he shudders and sniffles.

Bucky keeps his eyes on the glasses while he pours expensive whiskey for the both of them, but in his mind he sees the young man bent over the dining room table, the arch of his back, the defeated slope of his neck as he braced himself on his elbows and took a pounding from the flat of Tony Stark’s hand. It’s a sight he won’t forget.

Something inside him has shifted now, maybe something that’s been shifting all along but slow, like tectonic plates moving against each other until an earthquake brings down everything. He won’t be able to look at either of those men the same.

His hands don’t shake when he crosses the room to hand Tony his glass, not even when the man tilts his head back baring his throat and drains the two fingers’ worth of alcohol in one gulp that has Bucky’s mouth feeling dry. God, to put his lips against that throat, to suck livid bruises and leave the imprints of his teeth on that throat...

“Thanks,” sighs Tony. “I could use about a dozen more.”

Bucky takes the glass back to the bar where he shrugs one shoulder and pours another drink. “It’s your whiskey,” he says.

“Don’t enable me,” Tony says, half his handsome mouth lifting in a smirk. He takes the drink, one hand slipping warmly through the kid’s curls (and curls have no right looking so soft, Bucky thinks bitterly) before nodding towards the armchair closest to his end of the sofa. “Sit, will you? Peter won’t be up for conversation while he’s locked in like this. But I have something I want to discuss.”

Bucky sits, hoping that the pounding of his pulse isn’t visible.

Tony is right about Bucky having an ulterior motive for offering to guard Peter, but it doesn’t seem like the man has any clue about the real reason, about the effect the older man has on him. It was grossly self-indulgent and more than a little masochistic for Bucky to take a job just beneath the boss he has an unhealthy obsession with.

And that was before he met the terror (the wild, beautiful terror) that is Peter Parker.

“He’s special,” Tony says, stroking the hair back from Peter’s forehead. Bucky realizes that he’s been staring at the kid’s face, glass of whiskey unsipped in his hands. Wincing at being caught, he lifts the glass to take a generous drink, savoring the flavor. “Like holding a live grenade. I knew from the moment I met him, but I thought even then that if it all exploded in my face, it would have been worth it.”

Bucky says nothing. He’s never experienced anything like that.

“But I didn’t keep you here to wax poetry. The explicit information I’m about to tell you is information only three other people have—” Tony smiles, coldly. “And one of them is dead.”

In his lap, Peter shivers where he’s feigning sleep, squeezing his eyes shut tighter. Maybe it’s easier that way. Bucky stands and goes to the closet where he knows the linens are kept (he knows every closet of this house, every nook and cranny). The blankets are the softest he’s ever touched, thick and rich. He drapes it over Peter and only notices at the end the tender, grateful look Tony is giving him.

After he takes his seat again, Bucky says the name: “Beck.”

Tony touches his nose with the finger of the hand that holds his whiskey.

“Quentin Beck. Born in California. Moved to New York after a less than sensational acting career finally was pronounced dead. He came to me the same way all of you do: through a friend of a friend, through some relation or acquaintance who refers you to me. He was good at stealth and had a flair for creative liberty during the year he worked under Vis in the Bronx. When the time came for promotion, he was lifted through the ranks and had the chance to come and work here at the house.

“Peter acted the way I would have expected Peter to. He flirts. Maybe his mother didn’t hold him enough as a child,” Tony says, smirking when Peter wrinkles his nose and pinches the man’s thigh. They all pretend not to see it. “But he craves the attention and the flattery. He’s always had my permission to find enjoyment when and where he can—I’m a busy man, and not nearly as young as I once was. But it seemed like every time someone began to return his, ah, affections, Peter would lose interest.

“Beck was the first to keep him enthralled. He was handsome enough. Sometimes, I would walk in on them kissing like teenagers, and getting caught just seemed to make Peter burn hotter. He wanted me to watch. I wanted to watch. We spent so many nights fucking and talking about it; we built it up in our minds, the way we expected it to go.”

Tony pauses, and Bucky finds that he’s been leaning forward more and more, entranced by the story. After Tony’s injury and Beck’s death, there had been much speculation about what had happened. The basis was obvious and well known: Beck had fucked Peter, and Tony had killed him. But in the details—that’s where the devil is. That’s where Bucky is right now, lost.

Beck, you lucky son of a bitch, Bucky thinks to himself. You didn’t even know what you had, and you fucked it up.

“I made a mistake, though,” Tony says at length. In his lap where Peter lies with his eyes closed, the kid reaches out, looking for his hand to lace their fingers together. There’s no room there for Bucky’s hand, he thinks to himself. God, he’s fucked. “Whenever they were together, I was looking at Peter. And that meant that I never really saw Beck.

“The sex between them was poor. Maybe Beck was nervous, maybe Peter was too. Maybe he was too used to me and the tastes we’d, ah, cultivated together. Anyway, it was a bad show, and I could tell that Peter was disappointed. He hadn’t even cum before Beck was blowing his load—into a condom, of course. I wasn’t letting anyone fuck my boy raw. After they fucked, we were supposed to end it, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Peter looked half-debauched. Hard, annoyed, naked on the bed we made together. Before I knew it, I was unbuckling my pants. Just the look in Peter’s eyes—God, I’ll never forget it. He knew what was coming. A real cock. A real man to fuck him within an inch of his life. I pressed his legs up, nearly folding him in half and then I gave him what he needed. He was just a little loose from Beck’s cock, no more than if I had opened him up with a few of my fingers.

“The whole time, my mouth never closed. Fuck, the things I said to him. Asking him how it felt to be with a real man, asking him if he’d even felt Beck inside him, telling him how no one else could ever fill him up the way I did. It made me all the hotter to know that Beck was right where I left him sitting in the armchair, tugging on his clothes, ready to slip away and take his walk of shame. Peter looked fucked-out, his hands clutching the bedsheets, eyes squeezed shut and mouth open. But—! That was always my problem, wasn’t it? Whenever I was looking at Peter, I should have been looking at Beck .

“Maybe Beck was in love with him; I wouldn’t have put that past him. Peter is very easy to fall in love with. We didn’t factor that in, didn’t consider that Beck might not be up for sharing. I still remember Peter’s face when he saw Beck coming up behind us. I turned, and for a moment I thought he was trying to come and join us, can you believe it? I barely felt the blade. It struck my sternum and slid off the bone, down and away from my heart, piercing a lung. Beck had poor form.

“Peter was the one to crawl to the bedside table for his gun. Beck had dragged me from the bed down to the floor, and I think he was planning to finish me off—that was his mistake. He was looking at me when he should have been looking at Peter. The kid is only an okay shot with a handgun, but at close range, he blew Beck’s fucking head off. The end.” Tony’s hand pets at Peter’s hair, tracing the shell of his ear. “Kept pressure on the wound, too, until Bruce could get there and get me to one of the hospitals where I have pull. The kid saved my life.”

“Jesus,” says Bucky. “That’s a hell of a story.”

Tony smiles. “He’s a hell of a kid. I thought it was important of you to know all this. If you’re going to be afraid of anyone, you should probably be afraid of Peter. He’d kill for me. Won’t you, baby?”

Peter hums. His eyes begin to flicker beneath his lids, thin mouth going lax as he drifts off into sleep.

“We have that in common,” Bucky says without thinking.

“What’s that?” Tony asks.

Bucky finishes his drink, stalling, trying to think of an explanation that doesn’t sound so fucking lovesick. When none comes and he’s stuck with the truth, he resigns himself to it. To how lame it sounds coming from his clumsy lips and in his rusty voice: “We’d kill for you.”

Tony stares at him with an inscrutable expression, and for a moment Bucky thinks that he’s gone too far, made himself too obvious. Then it’s almost worth it for the way the man’s mouth slips up into a half-smile. So handsome it hurts, but it’s a good hurt, the kind Bucky would subject himself to again and again.

“I’ll drink to that,” Tony says, holding out his cup in solidarity before draining his glass.

[ifyoulovemeletmebinge]

We’re All Monsters

destiel au where everything in canon is used at the wrong time and oh also cas is a monster. 

for @beingforcedtolivebadwriting

RATED M 

read it on ao3 here:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Dean Winchester knows he hates monsters.

That’s one thing. It’s almost the first thing. In almost every situation.

Dean wakes up and all he can think of is how much he hates monsters.

Some of it comes from the fact that John is a shitty dad and that’s not because of him being a shitty dad. Dean can’t remember much at all from his life before the fire, but from what John tells him, they were The Perfect American Family. He knows that at least.

He also knows that because monsters fucked that dynamic up for his family, he hates them unconditionally.

None of that has been truer than how he feels tonight. Tonight, his hands are still shifty on the wheel of the Impala, tonight his feet are still struggling to reach the brake pedal without stretching, and tonight the sky is pitch black and the air is warm and humid, and tonight he’s gonna kill some monsters.

Well. Maybe not.

John’s instructions were to stop by (by which he means break in) the morgue, take an extra look at the bodies, and identify any marks that stand out for a tell of what kind of son of a bitch they were dealing with.

John usually does this himself, but Dean thought it best to not bring up the fact that his dad needs to drink himself to blissful unconsciousness on the week of the anniversary of his dead wife. The case was bad timing, thus, Dean is the lucky pick to do the dirty work.

Not that he minds. This is something he wants to do. This is something he craves. Dean has been getting taller and bigger and stronger, and his hands have been itching more, and he can’t stop shifting his weight, and lately he feels like doing something that will fully transition him into the man he’s supposed to be. Except all he knows is John, and John is a hunter.

But Dean doesn’t mind. He’s good with a gun, and he’s a quick runner (he would have joined the track team if John had let them stay past Christmas break at his last school), and if that’s all he’s got, he’ll use it to do something. He’ll figure it out.

He’d way prefer to risk himself getting arrested, and going to juvie (again), than Sammy. Sammy, who’s back at the motel. Sammy who’s hopefully, peacefully sleeping. Sammy, who he hopes won’t be awake to see John come back from the bar. Dean intends to make it back before that. It’s only 11pm. He’s got time.

Dean parks the Impala (he only struggles for a few seconds with it, alright) a couple blocks down from the police station. His shoulders crowd up around his ears, cotton of his sweatshirt brushing his jaw, as he walks, as silent as he can, between the shadows of the decorative trees in this stupid suburb, to the back of the station.

He’s already scouted the place earlier in the day, so he knows which window leads to the desired formaldehyde smelling room. The station is only one story high, so he’s easily able to unlatch the outside lock with his pocket knife, and heave himself up. He shimmies himself in (fuck, that window’s tight) and ends up doing a supported handstand on the morgue floor. He throws his legs to the side--only hurting his ankles a little on the edge of the window--and then he’s finally got both his feet on the ground.

Dean stands up from his crouch, slowly. Then he scoffs to himself. Who the fuck is gonna hear him in here?

He moves closer to where the target is. There’s a sleek metal table in front of him, and yes, there’s a dead person on it, covered by a thin white sheet. Dean searches for gloves in the dark, because he’s a teenage boy but he’s not that gross, and he snaps them on, pulling back the sheet and averting his eyes from the corpse’s face. He goes straight to where the money is.

At the junction between the corpse’s shoulder and jaw, right in the middle of the neck, there’s a big bite. It’s not anything his dad has seen before, as he kept complaining so much since they found the case, and Dean has to swallow back bile at how ugly it looks. Black and protruded, half scaly-like, half-raw ripped skin, at least under the moonlight coming from the window. He should have brought a flashlight.

Dean is cataloging the patterns to draw for his dad later, tracing his fingers over the lines carefully, really feeling the texture and the way it’s swollen the skin. He thinks he imagines the sound at first.

Then he stops his hand, and he thinks again.

That’s definitely a sound. Like a real movement that wasn’t him, and it’s coming—it came at least—from the room right next door, the main storage for the other bodies. Dean turns his head to look at the door, and oh, would you look at that, it’s peeking open to more darkness on the other side. Where the sound came from. Except how is there a sound at a morgue in the dead of night?

Dean was not prepared for this. His heartbeat starts announcing itself in his ears, and he’s almost vibrating with fear. He thinks of his dad. What would John do at a time like this? Probably start shooting.

But Dean didn’t have a gun. Even if he did, it could just be the doctor, or a policeman staying after (they always got in his way), and he can’t go around shooting random people. It’s hard to explain to a dead person: “Hey! Sorry! Thought you were a monster! My bad!”

Then he remembers his pocket knife, whips it out, and holds it tight in his right fist. Dean starts walking towards the door, but he wants to knock the whole wall down and skeet the fuck out of there.

He holds his breath as he gently kicks the door with the tip of his boot (he figured out a way to make Sam convince John to get him new ones, and yeah, these loggers are pretty fucking cool), and then he’s in the room.

The first thing he notices when his eyes adjust to how dark it is in there (honestly, would it kill a monster to turn on a light?), is the two figures bent over what he assumes is another poor corpse being taken advantage of. He also hears… ew. Those are chomping and chewing noises. He never gets the clean ones.

Dean doesn’t know what to do! Does he shout? Scare them? Lunge at them? Anything he does next could be the last thing he does. Is he ready to die?

Luckily, Dean doesn’t have to decide his first move because the figures do it for him.

It happens too fast—and maybe he’s reading too many comics because his first thought is I wish I had super speed like Barry so I could gank these fuckers, except he doesn’t, so it’s fast.

He’s on his back in a blink. There’s a bony arm on his neck and another holding one of his wrists in a grip so tight Dean wants to make a eulogy for his circulation. There’s also a normal-ish weight on his hips and his stomach, which suddenly lurches because fuck. Fuck. The monster’s on him, he’s pinned. And for some reason he’s still alive.

Still. Fuck.

After a moment of heaving breathing from the guy on top of him, the figure lurking around, and his own wheezing lungs, Dean grunts out: “You guys gonna eat me or what?”

The guy above him doesn’t let up, but Dean does feel the other one walking around. Like the ground shakes with his every step as he comes closer to Dean’s ears near the floor.

“Personally,” says Figure 2 from way above him, and Dean feels disoriented at how far away his voice sounds, “I’m fairly content. My son here, however… well, he’s just famished.”

Dean’s eyes flick to the guy on him, trying to make out his features but it’s just too dark, and all he can feel is the terribly tight grip on his wrist, the way his forearm is crushing on his neck, and—hey. His pocket knife is still in his hand. His free hand, the one trapped under the small of his back, where he can feel the butt of the handle digging into his skin slightly.

“Go on, son.”

Figure 1, aka The Son, seems to be hesitating, and Dean doesn’t want to wait till he decides if he wants more salt on him or not before the meal, so he wriggles his hand out, and drives it across his body and downwards in a surprisingly strong stroke. He knows he hit something when the arms on top of him lift up entirely, and there’s a pained groan resounding amid the darkness.

He rolls on his side, scrambles up, and flies out of the room, back into the main morgue lab, through the door, down and down the long hallway, past the reception desk, and he’s out the main entrance, not caring one bit about the obnoxious ringing of the alarm behind him.

His calves are burning by the time he throws himself in the Impala, and he clumsily fishes out his dad’s keys, turning the car on. He drives 50 above the speed limit until he gets to the motel.

Dean tells John everything. He draws what he remembers with shaky hands. He neglects to mention how many of them there were.

<15 years later>

“And then, like a fucking Clint Eastwood movie, he comes back home--”

“You mean the motel?” Sam interrupts.

“Yeah, whatever. So he barges in the door--” Dean frames a rectangle with his hands “--silhouetted by the moonlight, and he tucks his gun in and he swings his dirty machete over his shoulder and he tilts his head and then he says: ‘Boy, pack your stuff. Our job here is done.’ I mean… it was fucking awesome,” Dean chuckles.

“I think your memory is unreliable.”

“Sam, you were dead to the world that night. On my bed, might I add, so you didn’t even see any of this. John kicked ass!”

Eileen’s smile is a little forced, and a little awkward, but Dean can’t blame her. His energy is hard to match when he’s a few beers in. Sam keeps eyeing her, like he's checking in on how she’s receiving this story about their dad. Like she would ever judge him for it.

“He sounds like a brave hunter,” she signs and says. Dean feels way too proud.

Sam tries and fails to keep the grimace off his face. “Yeah. Babe, is it late? We should…” he trails off, tilting his head in the direction of their bedrooms. Eileen nods in agreement, seeming relieved. She squeezes Dean’s hands as she leaves. Sam is standing now, and he waits until Eileen is gone to turn his bitchface on.

“Dean, please stop doing that.”

Dean furrows his eyebrows. “Doing what?”

Sam sighs, exasperated. “Praising dad. I don’t know, sugarcoating him, painting him as the hero. You know damn well he wasn’t.”

Dean’s throat tightens. If that’s what Sam thinks he was doing, he really doesn’t know him at all. He's full of indignation when he answers: “That’s the last thing that I would do. I know firsthand, more than you, how shitty John was. Sam, I know. I was telling the story how I remembered it. ‘Cause back then? Yeah, he was my hero. I’m old enough to know better now, but--what the fuck do you care? You think I’m purposely lying to Eileen? For what?”

Sam can’t meet his eyes. “Dean, no that’s not what I-I just can’t hear that shit. It makes me… uncomfortable. I don’t wanna talk about dad like that anymore. I'd rather not talk about him at all, actually! I just… I can’t hear that shit from you.”

Dean balks, mouth open. He scoffs, “Fine.” He stands up and puts his jacket back on, checking his pockets for his keys and his wallet.

He’s halfway up the stairs when Sam calls from the library, “Dean, come on. Let’s talk about this. Or not! Dude, we just got back from a hunt, don’t leave. Let just-let’s forget about it, alright?”

Dean pauses at the railing. He turns around and shouts down at Sam: “Yeah, sure, Sammy! Let's forget our whole heritage. It never fucking mattered to you anyways.”

He’s slamming the door to the bunker closed behind him, and hopping in the Impala (which he didn’t have time to wash or put in the garage since their hunt), and then he’s off god knows where. He needs a drink.

Dean picks the fourth bar/restaurant place he sees. That seems like far enough away from his brother for now. It’s one he hasn’t gone to yet. Fun, new, and exciting!

He’s working on his third whiskey, maybe half an hour after he arrived, when the bartender puts down another glass in front of him.

Dean glances up. “Hey, um. I’m good for now, really.”

The bartender is tying his long cornrows in a ponytail on the back of his head, and when he meets Dean’s eyes, he gives him a shit-eating grin. He nods off to the side, “Courtesy of your secret admirer.” Then he winks at him and leaves for the kitchen behind him. Dean feels all warm inside at that, but he doesn’t have much time to revel in it before a man sits down on the stool next to him, a non-respectable four inch distance away.

Dean is appalled before he takes in this dude, and okay. Not bad. Looks about the same age, dresses like a grandpa from the trenchcoat he sees, has spiky black hair that Dean might want to run his hands through, and shit, fuck, he’s looking at Dean, say something!

“Hello,” the man says and whoa, who died and made you Batman? His lips are plumper than a guy’s lips usually are (look who’s talking, Dean) and chapped and they’ve got a nice shape. Dean likes the cupid’s arch on his upper lip, it looks classy. His nose is pointy, and maybe a bit small, but damn if it doesn’t work well with his sharp cheekbones. By the time Dean can register his eyes, all his brain can think of is wow.

Dean’s never seen bluer eyes. They’re as clear as the sky, but Dean feels like he could drown in them. Or maybe that’s just the way this man is looking at him. Dean’s rarely been stared at with this much intensity, and he feels a blush spread to the tips of his hot ears.

He clears his throat. “Hi.” Dean has to look away now, back to his own glass before he combusts. He’s surprised a dude like him would buy him a drink.

Apparently, the man can’t sense how awkward and unprepared Dean was for this because he starts talking again, keeping his voice low so that only Dean can hear him, so it’s only a rumble in his chest. “I hope I’m not overstepping. You looked like you needed some company. Is that the kind you like to drink?”

Dean is so flustered at the sheer… whatever this dude has, he has to remind himself this is a normal human interaction. Be nice. Make eye contact.

“Yeah, it’s uh--it’s great. Thanks. For buying it. Um, I’m kinda driving tonight, though, so I might want to stop at this--” Dean raises his own drink in his hand “--You can-you want it? I'd be a waste otherwise.” He’s cringing so bad inside that his stomach hurts.

The man levels him a neutral stare. A few seconds later, he nods and reaches over to pick up the extra whiskey. Dean follows his hands and fuck they’re nice. He’s got long fingers, and for some reason the way his metacarpals shift under his skin is incredibly attractive.

The fun doesn’t stop there though, because then the guy is bringing the glass to his mouth, and he’s not taking his eyes off Dean’s own wide ones, and he’s taking a drink and it all looks sinful. The way his trachea shifts as he swallows, the opening and closing of his enticing jaw, and especially the way his pink tongue peeks out from his mouth to lick at the rim of the glass.

Dean swallows what feels like sandpaper.

“My name is Castiel,” he says, putting the glass down, holding it between his hands like he's bracketing it. He shifts his hands and the glass follows, rotating back and forth.

“Dean.”

Castiel nods, his lips quirk up a little, and this might be the first sort-of smile Dean has seen from him.

“Why’d you buy me a drink?” he blurts out.

The grin grows by a millimeter. “You looked like you needed one.”

Dean snorts. “That bad, huh?”

“Maybe that good.” Dean sees a peek of teeth from Castiel and he can’t help but shiver.

Dean recognizes it for what it is, so he turns on his own charm, slipping into familiar flirting territory.

“So what do you do, Castiel?”

Castiel’s eyes flick to Dean’s mouth for the quickest moment, and then his mouth is a neutral plane again, smirk vanishing completely. He thinks for a few seconds. “I’m an accountant.”

Dean knows that could mean literally anything, except the guy is wearing a tie and there’s a trenchcoat, so yeah. He’s an accountant for real.

“Cool. Numbers, huh?”

Castiel narrows his eyes, like he’s squinting. Dean finds it both intimidating and endearing. “Yes. How about you, Dean?”

He blushes harder at hearing his name in that gravelly voice, but keeps his cool when he answers, rehearsed: “Odd jobs, here and there.”

Castiel doesn’t miss a beat. “Fascinating.”

Dean blinks. Okay. “Is it?”

“Yes. You must travel a lot.”

“I do, yeah,” he nods, feeling a little vulnerable.

Castiel is back to staring at him intensely, and it makes Dean’s veins sizzle a little with want. They’re upgrading from Flirting/Small Talk Territory to Let’s Go Like Now Territory. Dean’s breathing comes a little deeper.

“Would you like to travel right now?”

“What?”

Castiel is definitely looking at his mouth. “Would you like to go outside?”

Dean raises his eyebrows in surprise. This guy does not waste time. Not that he’s complaining, he’s been feeling hot all over since Castiel sat down, and he’d give himself at most another half an hour before he proposed they move this interaction somewhere else himself. So Dean downs the rest of his whiskey, feels the buzz in his ears and the tips of his fingers, and he stands up. “Let’s go.”

Castiel follows him outside.

The night is more humid than it should be for August, but Dean can feel the chill of Fall coming, and he’s grateful for his jacket. He’s shoved his hands in his jean pockets as he walks to the corner where the sidewall of the bar meets the front wall of it. He stops and leans one shoulder right at the edge of the wall to the side, facing the parking lot. Out of options for what to say, Dean waits until Castiel comes closer (his hands are in his trench coat pockets and it’s weirdly cute), and he points at his Baby, thirty feet away.

“That’s my car. She’s my Baby.”

Castiel stops two feet away from him, but right in front, and he turns his body to the side to follow where Dean’s finger points. He stares at the Impala for a bit, before he turns his head to Dean again. The light coming from inside the restaurant is what brightens Castiel’s face and Dean is a little breathless as he admires his illuminated features.

“She’s very beautiful.”

Dean smiles, proud and sheepish. “Thanks. Um, what about yours?”

Castiel inhales, taken aback. “Oh. I didn’t drive here tonight. I like walking.” he says slowly.

“Oh, okay.” Dean answers stupidly. It’s not that he’s disappointed they can’t talk about cars, it’s just… what else are they supposed to talk about at a moment like this?

“So what brought you here tonight, Cas?” Dean doesn’t catch himself in time, and the nickname is out. Oops. Castiel seems to inflate a little in response though, so he’s fine. For now.

“Rough day.” He says, then like an afterthought he adds, “At work.”

This dude is so fucking weird. Dean is obsessed with him.

Suddenly, he doesn’t want to wait anymore, he just wants to take what Castiel offered. He’s been wanting to taste him since he looked at his lips, so he smirks at Castiel and he asks, “Come here, Cas.”

For a moment Castiel tilts his head, and Dean can’t figure him out, and he kinda loves that, the anticipation of not knowing what this guy is gonna do or who he is. Dean beckons him with a hand. He’s drunk enough on the beers from earlier and the whiskey and the adrenaline drop from the finished hunt that he’s allowing himself this tonight. A little recklessness can’t hurt.

Castiel walks closer than Dean expected him to, and Dean turns to press his back to the side wall, his shoulder barely off the edge where the front and side connect. Castiel follows the twist of his body perfectly because suddenly he’s crowding Dean against the small space with his hands on either side of his head on the wall. Their faces are mere inches apart.

Dean loves the way the air shifts then, like someone pulled a lever down and the current of electricity started running. They’re breathing each other’s air, and Castiel’s eyes are glued to Dean’s mouth, while Dean alternates his staring between Castiel’s darkened eyes and those chapped lips. Dean feels like he's vibrating.

He forces his hands to unfreeze and brush the trench coat flaps aside, coming to rest on top of Castiel’s hips, over his belt. This moves their bodies closer still, Dean subconsciously opening his legs wider to let Castiel slot a knee in between them. Their hips press, Dean shivers, and then he shivers even more when he feels Castiel’s lips pressing against his.

It’s exactly like he imagined, except it’s about a thousand times better. Castiel’s lips are soft and pliant, and he presses brushing kisses and pecks Dean’s lips for a bit, leaving them tingling for more, until he starts to really get into it. Castiel softly clamps his mouth around Dean’s bottom lip and he pulls back, and Dean is so fucked. He tries to keep his knees from wobbling, and then he gets what he wants when Castiel presses forward again, kissing him open mouthed, and there is his tongue, and it tastes really sweet and Dean feels positively intoxicated.

He can’t remember when he closed his eyes, but there are fireworks exploding behind them, and his dick is saying “Hell, yeah!” and he’s tilting his head to kiss Castiel deeper, chasing more of his mouth and his taste and his smell. His hands are gripping Castiel’s hips in a vice.

Dean can’t help the moan he lets out when Castiel’s tongue does a thing, and he also can’t help his surprise when Castiel pulls back abruptly after the sound has registered. His shock is almost overshadowed by the crude things his brain is thinking when he takes in Castiel, whose lips are shiny and wet, and whose pupils are enormous.

Dean holds his breath, furrows his eyebrows, and waits. Castiel is looking at him, pained.

“Dean, I can’t,” he whispers.

There is a moment, and then Dean blinks, understanding everything. He’s a little upset, but mostly embarrassed, except his brain can’t fully express that, so it’s put through a well-oiled machine that converts it into anger. Now, that he can do.

He’s pushing Castiel off him, walking five steps away then pivoting and walking back. He repeats this path, running a hand down his face as Castiel just fucking stands there, looking at him sadly.

“Dude, what the fuck?” Dean bites out.

“Dean, I can-” Casties tries.

“No, seriously. What the fuck is wrong with you?” he whirls around to stare right at Castiel a few feet away. Castiel’s shoulders fall and it enrages Dean even more.

“You know what, Cas? Go fuck yourself. You got some issues to figure out, and it’s not gonna be with me. Go to hell, asshole.” Dean spits out, fixing Castiel with a furious stare, feeling his jaw tick in anger, and then he’s stomping away.

As he gets closer to the Impala, he crosses his arms, feeling indignation constrict his chest. This is not the first time this has happened with Dean and unfortunately, he thinks it probably won’t be the last.

Damn it. A guy like that? Probably has a pretty little wife, probably hides his wedding band right in his front pocket, which Dean completely skipped on his way to grab at Castiel’s ass. He groans internally as he rounds the back of the car till he reaches the driver’s door. He’s going home with the worst case of blue balls he’s ever had.

“I’m sorry, Dean.” He hears as he fishes out his keys and puts the right one in the slot to unlock the door, and hey, Castiel’s voice is much closer than he expected, but Dean doesn’t have time to turn around and yell at him some more because suddenly the ground is completely gone from under his feet. Dean’s vision goes blinding white, and then pitch black.

The pain finally registers on the back of his head, and the last thing he sees before he's out, is the key chain dangling from the lock on the Impala’s door.

****

The world slowly slots back together as Dean wakes up. There’s four, then three, then two, and then it all merges into one again. Dean acutely feels the pouding in his head.

He’s… laying down? Yeah, he’s on a bed. The mattress is nice. There's even a thin blanket on top of him, dark grey. He turns his head to the side-nope, that’s a wall-tries the other side and okay good, there’s the rest of the room. He feels a little less claustrophobic now that he’s seen the whole space. It’s dark just because the lights are off. It looks like a normal basement, unfinished ceiling and all, with boxes stacked in the corner covering a whole wall. There’s a couch facing him, parallel to the bed, and there’s a figure sitting there. Dean eyes his phone, wallet, car keys, and pocket knife on a night stand next to the bed. It’s just out of his reach.

He pinches his eyes shut, wiggles his toes in his boots (no brain damage done, yay), and then he groans out: “What can I do for ya, Mr. Monster?”

When he opens his eyes, Castiel has turned one of the overhead light bulbs on. He looks serious.

“Firstly, I want to apologize, Dean. I didn’t want to have to do this, and I didn’t plan for it.”

Dean is more than confused. “What.”

Castiel stands up from his couch, he’s only in his suit now, tie loosened, and damn Dean’s stupid (probably concussed) brain, but he still looks yummy. Monster, Dean. Focus.

Castiel crosses his arms, and plants his feet. He keeps a very respectable distance away from the bed, and Dean’s gut twists at the thought that he was playing him all along.

“I didn’t… want to seduce you. I just wanted to talk. I might have derailed from my plan slightly.”

Dean’s jaw ticks. “And what was that amazing plan of yours, Castiel? If that’s your real name.”

Castiel narrows his eyes at Dean’s tone. He huffs a breath out his nose, frowning.

“You know, Dean, you may not remember me, but I remember you. Fifteen years ago, your father killed my father, and I’ve been keeping tabs on you ever since.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dean breaths out after a few seconds of stunned silence, propping himself up to fully sit up on the bed. He feels his bruised brain click things together. “You’re the second one. You survived.”

Castiel is silent, and that’s all the confirmation Dean needs to know he was pinned down by this guy way before tonight.

Dean laughs. “What kind of fucked up revenge plot is this? You’ve been stalking me for years? Well, then you must know my father died of alcohol poisoning almost a decade ago. It was ugly and painful, and you missed your chance, asshole.”

Castiel rolls his eyes. “Dean,” he says sternly, “I didn’t want to kill your father. And I don’t want to kill you. That’s not why I ended up kidnapping you tonight. I’m grateful for what your father did for me.”

Dean does a double take, swings his feet off the bed and onto the ground. “You’re what?”

“This may come as a surprise, but not every monster is a monster. Not fully, anyway. I’m half-human. And I need your help to go all the way.”

[peachnewt]

Midnight Snack - Playing House

Fluff to the max. Intimate times between two men insinuated but not graphically described in text.  Deep kissing is present.  Skip between the &&& if you prefer to not read it.  The Getting In Deep series and it’s short stories are my own creation.  Do not steal or alter.  

 Papers, magazine cutouts, and equations sat in piles on Will's desk.  Will, headless of the slippery magazine paper that threatened to kiss the ground, kept taking notes from his screen.  

When Reese arrived, he was surprised to see Will at work before everyone else in Main Tech.  

"Getting a head start on a case?" asked Reese.  

"No."  Will tabbed his screen and frowned.  "I'm helping Louis find a house."  

"Really?" Reese wondered how far Louis and Will had gotten in their relationship.  "Why would he want to move?"  

Reese walked around Will's desk to look at the screen.  

When house hunting, most people imagine realtors, property tax, curb appeal, square footage, and zoning issues.  The average challenges one would find on HGTV shows.  Reese expected to see Zillow listings, or Homefinder.  He hadn't expected Barbie's Malibu Dream Home from Toys-R-Us.  

Reese blinked, wondering if the morning caffeine had yet to kick in.  "A dollhouse?"  

Louis walked into Main Tech with two mugs.  "Yeah, because everything I found is, in Will's words, "dinky plastic trash"."

"They don't even have it proportioned right.  I did the calculations," said Will, scrolling through the preview images of other child- sized dollhouse.  "The bathtub is right next to the door, who does that?"  

"Those things are meant for playing with, not living in," said Louis, nursing his second cup of coffee and handing Will his tea.  They had spent the last half hour descending into a research spiral of toy sites looking at houses and miniatures.  Louis began thinking this was actually worse than real house hunting.  

"I have a civil engineering degree, I'm allowed to be offended," said Will.

"You would be offended at the construction of a gingerbread house."  

"Those are for decoration and eating.  It's not the same thing."  

"One moment.  I feel like I need a little bit of clarification."  Reese struggled to catch up with the train of thought Louis and Will had gotten on, apparently leaving him behind at the station.  "Louis, why are you in the market for a dollhouse?"  

Louis sat and spun his chair to catch the slipping pile of magazine clippings.  "Because some nights I'm sleeping in a shoebox on Rachel's desk."  

There had been nights when Louis was too exhausted to switch back from his tiny sized self and had to sleep in Rachel's office.  His "room" consisted of a shoe box with a tiny flat pillow for a mattress, a linen square for a blanket, a charging stand for his large sized phone, and a rectangle hole for a door.  

"I feel like a kitten awaiting adoption by the side of the road," Louis continued.

"I see.  I wouldn't mind sleeping in a shoebox on Rachel's desk," said Reese, a dreamy look in his eyes.  

Beni, carrying a dozen doughnuts in one hand and a RockStar energy drink in the other, paused as she entered Main Tech.  "I think I need context."  

***

Ten minutes later, Beni had been pulled into the communal craze of looking up tiny dollhouses.  They pulled up everything from antique houses made in the 1950s, to Lego replicas of Hogwarts.  By a stroke of a keyword during Beni's search, she hit the mother load with DIY Dollhouse kits sold on specialty hobby sites.  They ranged from Modern loft apartments, to Chinese homesteads complete with a throne room.  They even had miniature cafe's with tiny pastries.  Each dollhouse listing came with a video on how to construct it.  Of course, with a specialty hobby, it came with a specialty price.  

"It's a friggin' bed," said Louis, gesturing to the miniature furniture on the screen. "How hard is it to make a proper bed for at 1/24th scale that isn't going to cost a fortune?  That's what... eight popsicle sticks?"  

"If you want quality at that size then you are going to pay what its' worth," said Reese. "What is more expensive, a Rolex, or a bedside clock?"  

Will pulled up a video with a house similar to a few of the magazine cutouts.  "Most of these do-it-yourself kits use either hot glue or E6000.  Not keen on having a building kept together with hot glue."  

Louis grunted, mesmerized by large hands setting up a tiny living room.  "Are we spiraling again?"

"Yes, but it's a very satisfying spiral."  

Louis, Will, Reese, and Beni gathered around one screen, tallying the pros and cons of certain designs, and pulling up more DIY dollhouse videos.  

When Cetz arrived at Main Tech, he saw four of his agents picking out dollhouses.  

Cetz felt a headache coming on.  "Know what.  I don't need context.  Meeting in ten."  

**

Eventually Louis picked a DIY kit for a cabin that put him back sixty dollars.  It arrived a week later and Louis set up shop in a spare workroom at the Watch.  He proceeded to burn his hand with a hot glue gun while trying to assemble the walls.  Will approached with ice, tweezers, and a small tube of craft glue.  They finished the small dwelling in an afternoon.  

Half of the tiny furnishings, flower pots, pictures, cute figurines of boats, never made it into the cabin.  They were pasted together for posterity to say it had been finished, and they left in a heap by the dwelling.  None of the furniture went where it was supposed to; Louis didn't trust the stairs to hold if he walked up to the second floor.  The bed ,made of thin wood, looked better than the tiny pillow in his shoebox.  If nothing else, it looked more like a bed.  It looked like a dwelling meant for a human. It even had lighting he could turn off and on with a switch at the bottom of the display platform.  

Louis stood back from the cabin and cracked his back.  His fingers had nearly been glued together while applying wallpaper, and his eyes ached having to look through a magnifying glass.  Will clicked on the light to the house.  They looked proud of their creation, showing it off to Beni, Reese, and Rachel when they came by.  

"It's a good starter home," said Rachel, handing Louis a bag of coffee grounds with a bow taped on it. "Happy housewarming."  

Louis grinned.  The cabin itself was slightly wider than his shoebox but twice as tall, and the platform it stood on was as big as a desk blotter.

"I want one," said Beni, flipping the switch on and off.  

"Make your own," said Louis.  

"I will!" said Beni, a spark of competition in her eyes.  "I'll make one so nice you'll want to sleep there instead!"  

Reese, enticed leaned over. "Care to make a wager?"

The next day, Beni and Reese also ordered DIY dollhouses.  

Louis vowed to never set foot in any of their deathtraps.  

Will vowed to make sure neither of them burned their fingers or used adhesives that could cause respiratory distress.  

While Beni and Reese awaited their kits, Louis ended up exhausted after a long day of testing, and unable to switch back to normal size.  The first night in his new, self-made home.  Rachel left him on her desk, the shoebox on one side, and his cabin on the other.  Louis stumbled wearily to the cabin.  When he laid down on the bed he immediately regretted the thin bit of padding he had mistaken for a mattress.  It had looked fluffy enough when he had glued the stuffing down.  He dragged the cheap pillow out of the shoebox and into the cabin.

Will found him the next morning splayed akimbo on the cushion, wrapped up in the thin "bed spread" like a croissant.  

"Bed not work?"

"I could feel beads of dried glue under the mattress."  Louis snuggled tighter into the pillow until Will coaxed him onto his palm and into the lab to "grow up".  

Louis had been so miserable with the construction of his tiny bed, he actually looked forward to Beni and Reese's dollhouses

The two kits arrived and Will made sure the construction was a surprise to Louis, warding him from the workshop as Beni and Reese unpacked their kits with child-like glee.  

They wondered if the two former thieves ever got something like a dollhouse in their younger years.

Instead of cranking out the houses in an afternoon, Beni and Reese took half hours off between shifts to work on them.  Both seemed to find contentment in their distraction.  After a week, they were finished.  

Reese had constructed a gothic themed Victorian home with a tiny staircase hidden behind a bookshelf full of miniature books.  Several windows were painted to look like stained glass.  And the bed was a four-poster with a canopy.  His pride had been renovating the kitchen area to have a tiny fridge that actually worked and held tiny shots of pudding he had made himself. And on one wall he had put up a tiny grandfather clock, made with a working clock face.  

"Somebody likes their gothic," said Will as he squinted to see inside the hidden staircase. "Good detail."  

"Classic taste is good taste."  

Beni had gone modern with a split level house.  White on silver furnishings with touches of neon purple and one of the accent walls for a workout room consisted of an entire mirror.  The bed was covered in multiple pillows, each a shade of gray or white.  Her pride was adding a slide from the top level to the bottom, the landing cushioned with a layer of cotton balls.  

"Very playful," said Will.  

"Got most of the style stuff from a Home & Garden magazine.  But who wouldn't want a slide in their house?"  

Louis shrunk, bypassed all the fancy additions and special furnishings, shooting like a tired arrow towards the beds.  First the canopy bed, then a gray bed with all the pillows.  

Louis groaned in defeat. "It's still not comfortable enough."  

However, he did try the slide, the hidden stairs, and the pudding in the tiny fridge.  Beni and Reese then made Louis promise to shrink them so they could experience the houses themselves.  

Will eyed the beds and the shoebox a warm glow coming to his eyes.  It had been a while since he had done a construction project.  

***

The magazine clippings came back out; Will organizing different furniture pieces and photos from Architectural Digest.  Over the next month, between date entry and retrieval missions, Will peppered Louis with random questions.  

"Dark stain or light?"  

"Oriental, log cabin, industrial, modern?"  

"How much do you cook verses eating out?"  

"Do you like gardens?"  

"How about koi ponds?"  

"Silk sheets or cotton?"  

"How do you not know the answer to that?" said Louis, setting aside another patent.  "Cotton."  

"I mean if you won the lottery and could afford anything, silk or cotton?" said Will.

"Still cotton."

It wasn't until Will pulled Louis over to look at a blueprint that he caught on to what Will had been doing.  

"Are you designing a custom dollhouse for me?"  

"Kinda.  I'm not an architect, but I thought I could make you something more than a shoebox or a DIY kit."  A light blush bloomed on Will's neck.  "I want your input on it.  You'd be sleeping there after all."  

"All I want is a better bed," said Louis.  "I respect that little pillow, it's gotten me through some rough nights, but I want a real bed."  

From the blueprint it looked similar to some of the custom DIY dollhouses the three of them had constructed.  Everything from the steps to the sofa had equations measuring out its diameters so it would match Louis' stature when he shrunk.  Multiple chambers, the front wall of the house on a hinge so the insides could be exposed or not, a set of stairs, all on a platform with an outside space with a...

"Is that a gazebo?"  

"Yep," said Will. "Do you want a pond or a pool?"  

"It's a place for me to sleep when I have to stay the night, fanboy," insisted Louis.  "You don't have to go all out with this.  I just wanted something better than a shoebox."  

"But I want to."  

Louis smirked. "Feeling a little competitive after Beni and Reese made their own houses?"  

"...little bit."

"I thought so." Louis brushed his lips to the side of Will's mouth, leaving a coffee ghost of a kiss, and grabbed Will's empty mug. They both needed refills.  "Have at it, fanboy.  Surprise me.  Just... no koi pond.  Especially no koi; those suckers can get huge."  

***

A month later Will led a blindfolded Louis to Rachel's office.

"Are we there yet?" asked Louis.  

"One moment." Will let go of Louis' hands with a squeeze.  "Stay here.  No peeking."  

Louis heard the flicking of switches and the opening of a door.  

"Okay, you can see."  

Louis peeled off the blindfold.  Rachel's office was dimmed, the majority of the light coming from another dollhouse. His jaw dropped. ��It spanned half of Rachel's desk.  The house was modern, mostly white trimmed in dark blue and splashes of red.  Like most of the DIY dollhouses the insides were exposed for "play", but this one had a full roof and a panel that acted like a door to the whole front half of the house.  However, the house only took up a third of the platform.  

Behind the house stood a stately garden of green moss, flat pebble paths, and a gazebo overlooking the rise of real seedlings from a small herb patch.  In the center of the garden rose a bonsai strung up with tiny lights like a Christmas tree, and a swing.  The bonsai stood small in comparison to a regular sized shrub, but to an almost three inch human, it would look like a grand tree.  

Louis came closer, leaning in to see the tiny details of the dollhouse.  "How in the world did you do something like this?"  

"Civil engineer, remember.  A lot of my college projects were making models of infrastructure.  That and a lot of model kits."  

Louis motioned to the hinged front of the house.  "Can I...?"  

"I made it for you, yes!"  

Louis opened the front of the house to an open floor plan, tiny lighting, bits of shiny tile, and dark stained furniture.  The DIY houses had similar plans, but this one seemed polished, more real than play.

"Cetz and Reese helped assemble most of the house," said Will.  "Beni picked out the bonsai."  

"The furniture." Louis gently picked up the coffee table from the living room.  I weighed heavy in his hand, not balsa wood or cardboard.  "Those aren't popsicle sticks.  How the hell did you...?"  

"I have some crafty friends on the con circuit that were willing to do some detailed commissions. A lot of it was 3D printed, but the finer furniture was done by hand.  Not a hot-glue stick in sight."  

Louis set down the coffee table and took a closer look at the kitchen.  "Those drawers actually pull out?"  

"Yep."  

"The sink... holy shit there is actual water."  

"Yeah, actual plumbing. We'll have to do the dishes by hand, no dishwasher that size.  But there is water in the kitchen area and the bathroom, both connected to a gallon water heater under the desk."  

Louis noted the "we".  One of them washing while the other dried with the tiny towels and the tiny drying rack. A domestic image he never thought he'd get in real life.  Well, really tiny life.  

"Reese installed his patented snack fridge, I see," said Louis.

"Snacks are a must," said Will.  "Fully stocked with bits of cheese, chocolate, pudding, and a slice of pepperoni. Eating like borrowers."

"Every window has curtains."

"And blackout curtains if you need some dark space."

A refuge, Louis realized.  If I need space or time and I'm stuck, I don't have to feel like a lab rat.  

"That's actual leather on that couch," said Louis, dragging his mind back to the house tour.

"I could afford a quarter yard of real leather."  

Louis saw two charging ports for phones set into the wall so the screens could act as a television. He could imagine the movie nights. One giant kernel of popped corn between them.  

"The doors actually shut and lock?" asked Louis.

"Tiny magnets in the door and door frame.  Also..." Will pointed to where the front of the house closed, hiding the view of the inside.  "Push a latch here, and the whole front of the house will lock from the inside so you can have privacy."  

Louis reopened the front of the house.  He followed the line of sight from the living room, up the stairs, to the bedroom. Dark wood furnishings and soft gray upholstery.  The bed looked neat and tidy as a stuffed envelope, lined in silvery blue and deep red pillows.  

"I made the bed."

"Like you folded the sheets or you made the bed and bed frame personally?"  He had to ask because it seemed Will had been willing to spin his own thread for the sheets.

"Both.  Took a couple of live video tutorials for the frame. No craft glue, or double sided tape. Half a drop of wood paste, tiny dove joints, and teeny finishing nails.  I know you said cotton, but I got denier microfiber silk fabric for the sheets so the thickness is comparable what you would have at normal size."

Louis pressed a finger down on the tiny bed, eyeballing the measurements.  "California King?"  

"Yep."  Will skipped over the fact he had carved by hand a bed definitely made for two.  "Cut the mattress out of memory foam."  

Louis examined the rest of the bedroom.  Interesting that Will had included a washbasin and washcloths when there was an en suite bathroom.  No closet or wardrobe, instead an empty trunk lay at the foot of the bed.  Louis wouldn't need changes of clothing since whatever he shrunk with would have to grow back with him.  The lamp on the bedside table gave a golden glow.  When he opened the bedside cabinet he found a few extra amenities that made the back of his neck heat up.  

Will's bashful look said it all.  

"Wow." Louis cleared his throat, trying to draw his mind away from the bedroom.  The gesture of it all struck him deep.  Will and he still lived in separate places.  Will had made a place for them to be together.  A home that belong to them, not one or the other.  

Okay.  No tears.  Suck it up.

Louis sniffed, needing a distraction.  "So, random question, what was the most expensive thing in this whole house?"

"Well, parts of the electrical plan and plumbing nearly cost me my patience."  

Louis snickered, pulling Will in by the back of the head to kiss his temple.  "Your poor brain.  Let me guess, the leather couch?"  

"Nope.  Made from scraps.  Very cheap."  

"The tiny fridge?"

"The way Reese made it, no.  It cost me a dozen maple bacon doughnuts and a cheesecake."  

"The bonsai. Gotta be the bonsai."  

"Actually the bonsai was the second most expensive thing.  But Beni did some good bargaining."  

"Really?"  

"Mh hm."  

"What was the most expensive then?"

Will touched the fine sheet on the bed.  

"The bed?" said Louis.

"The sheets," Will clarified.  

"How are a tiny set of sheets that expensive?!"

"When you include express shipping from Japan."  

"Fanboy!"  

"You said the bed was the most important thing, so I made sure it got the right stuff!"  

Laughter took over when Louis refused tears.  He hugged Will closed, his nose brushing into hair that still smelled of soap.  

"C'mere.  Thank you.  I can't believe you went so far for this."  

"I wanted to," murmured Will into Louis' neck, leaving a soft touch of breath.  

Will had wanted to give him a home.  Louis wanted Will to know he was home.

&&&

It sent a shiver down Louis' back, making his belly flutter.  He leaned back on the desk until he sat on it, his thigh close to pushing off a pencil box.  Then he pulled Will by the hips until he stood between his legs, chest to chest. Louis curled his head under Will's neck. Will's hands draped across Louis shoulders as if a buoy to a drowning man and breathed in deep.  Warmth surrounded them like an atmosphere growing around a new planet.  

Louis looked over at the house and smirked.  He wouldn't mind spending the night, if he had company.  

"Wanna test out the bed?" said Louis, pulling back.  "Make sure it's up to your standards?"  

"You mean you want to see if you can wreck the bed," said Will.  

"I know I can wreck you on the bed; if I can wreck the bed with you, bonus."  

The blush at Will's neck charged over the hinge of his jaw and conquered his cheeks and nose.  Louis knew by experience the blushing army had already conquered collarbones and sternum.  He planted the final flag of victory by drawing Will's head down for a kiss, deeper than the rest.  Will relaxed into his embrace like a puddle needing earth to sink into.  Their chests expanded wider with each breath, trying to catch each other in the air around them to pull into their lungs and keep.

Will pulled back, nipping Louis' jaw.  "I dropped the bed, twice."  Nip.  "Survived both times."  A kiss on the chin.  "I'd like to see you achieve what my clumsiness and gravity could not."  

"That a challenge?"  Louis bent his head down, pressed his lips around Will's Adam's apple, and sucked.  

Will moaned, his voice buzzing against Louis' mouth.  Louis pulled Will in by the shoulders as he leaned back further onto the desk, and then focused on the light.  In a breathless flash, they both sat on the desk, just short of three inches tall. After a moment to orient themselves, and calm down enough to get to their feet, they both ran to the door of the dollhouse.  

 The bed did not break. Though they tried.  

 They collapsed under sheets of light silk, catching their breath as sweat cooled on their aching bodies. Will had been wise to include a wash basin, thought Louis.  He didn't want to go all the way to the bathroom for a washcloth.  

&&&

Will tucked himself into the curve of Louis' body.  "So... home sweet home?"  

"Maybe." Louis leaned down and kissed right below Will's sternum, tasting heated skin.  "I've got a home here too."  

Oh, that blush would not go away for hours now.  

"Yeah, you do," whispered Will.  

A well deserved exhaustion overtook them.  

 Louis woke before Will. Making sure Will kept dreaming, Louis scurried out of the house and over to the side of Rachel's desk that still held the cabin.  To the side lay the pile of extra frills that had come with the DIY house; bits of potted plants, fake books and posters.  He picked up a piece of thick printed cardstock about the size of a large postage stamp, and carried it back to Will's house.  It had been a miscellaneous bit of inspirational word art one could find in any furnishing or poster aisle at a craft shop, but it seemed very appropriate.

"Where there's a will, there's a way".

Louis set it by the front door of the new house and then went back in.  He would see if Reese had put anything in the tiny fridge that could help construct a breakfast in bed.

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

 If you enjoyed this short, consider buying me a ko-fi!  

[merryfortune]

Cuter with the Glasses On

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! Sevens

Ship: Nico/Romin

Word Count: 2.7k

Synopsis:  Romin is enlisted by Nico to help out with a photography competition as a model for her entry. The two bond from there.

  Flash after flash of the camera, Romin’s eyes were dazzled as she oscillated through various poses that she could strike. Some awkward, some sultry, some she hardly thought about, and others she thought way too much about. She simply wanted to do her best for Nico.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” she cried out at the top of her lungs, all but thrashing about where she stood, and she snapped one last photo for posterity in her frenzy. “I’ve definitely got some goods in here, thanks Kirishima.”

  “N-No problem.” Romin said, her hands behind her head, her elbows all stuck out, one leg popped. “C-Can I unfreeze now from this one?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah, totally.” Nico said and she flapped a hand about flippantly.

  “Thanks.” Romin replied and she sighed as she let her body slacken.

  Suddenly, her whole body ached and so did her eyes. She had definitely had enough screen time after this one, she thought and then she could swear that she could feel her phone burn a hole in her back pocket in spite for having such a thought.

  Nico, meanwhile, was completely oblivious to how Romin commiserated. She was too busy flicking through the photos that she had taken. It felt like she was going through them a dozen a second and she had easily taken hundreds of Romin. She made for such a good subject and then- yes!

  “Score!” Nico squealed to herself.

  “Huh?” Romin said and she wandered closer, her high heels feeling clunky underfoot as she peered around to look at the screen of Nico’s camera. “Did you take a good shot?”

  “Oh, absolutely, I did.” Nico enthusiastically replied. “This here? It’s the money shot. I’m definitely going to take home that prize.”

  Romin blushed. “Glad to be some help.”

  “Definitely, definitely.” Nico replied. “The lead guitarist of RoaRomin in my Junior Youth Photography Tournament entry? I’m a shoe-in.”

  Romin was suddenly less sure of if she was being complimented as a person or as an entity. But she tried not to let that get to her. Nico was an insensitive person, bit of a blunderer and a touch awkward, so she likely didn’t mean anything harmful by it, au contraie, she probably meant it as a compliment but still, Romin thinks to herself, it would be nice to be complimented as a person once a while.

  “Yeah, I only listened to you and your bandmates’ music recently. I’d heard it a couple times before, thought it was okay, maybe catchy, but I never sank my teeth into your discography ‘til now.” Nico explained. “See, when Chief handed me the flyer for the photography competition, I knew I had to go big or else I’d bust so I tried to look around. What’s big around here ‘cept for the man? No way I’m gonna support the censors and do something Goha Corp. themed so I looked for something else, and bingo-”

  Nico latched her camera back onto the lanyard around her neck, so she was free to use her hands. Both her hands. She held them up in rectangles to frame Romin between the slats of her fingers. She cocked a quirky smirk.

  “Who is bigger than the most famous girl in school?” Nico said.

  “Oh, uh. No one. I guess.” Romin said and Yuga did float briefly through her head but his prescence in the big scale of things did seem outweighed by her own thanks to RoaRomin. Nico cackled to herself and Romin perked up. Perhaps she was being complimented on her own merit and not anyone else’s. Nico shuffled in and unlatched her camera again, she seemed to love to fidget with it.

  Nico’s eyes flicked up towards Romin and she angled the camera towards Romin, too, she defensively put up half a hand over the screen to prevent the glare, “See, look at this one.” Nico said.  

  “Wow.” Romin gasped. “That looks better than most RoaRomin’s promotional material.”

  Nico was proud as punch to hear that. “Mama says to snap photographs of what you love the most, and I do love your guitar skills nowadays. Hey, have you considered modelling?”

  “Not yet. My agent wants to me to get a bit taller first since, you know. Only a few more inches, he said.” Romin replied.

  Nico nodded to herself. “Yeah, that makes sense.” she said. “You know, I might be really tall one day, I’ve got good genes. I’ll probably get a helluva growth spurt soon, you know?”

  “Really?” Romin blinked, a little intrigued by Nico’s declaration. “How tall are your parents?”

  “Papa’s six foot one and Mama’s about five foot three,” Nico replied, “I think,” she was chewing hard as she tried to imagine herself standing beside her parents in height order.

  Still, Romin gasped. “Wow, your Papa is really tall.” She exclaimed. “But your Mama sounds like she’s on the shorter side, are you sure you won’t be her height?”

  “I think I’ll be a little bit taller than her one day. Don’t people generally grow taller than their same gender parent?” Nico asked.

  “I suppose that’s true…” Romin murmured as she began to wonder about how tall she’ll ever get…

  “Not that it’ll matter much in family photos or anything, Papa makes everyone look tiny. Especially me.” Nico laughed.

  Romin laughed too. She could definitely imagine that. Some big, strong, tall father beside a nice-looking woman and of course their shaggy haired daughter. Still, she wondered who Nico’s parents were now and of course, she blurted out even her faintest wondering, “So how did your parents meet?”

  “I’m so glad you asked.” Nico all too quickly replied.

  Romin, however, was spooked by her zeal as she had been chastising herself for prying into Nico’s personal life.

  Nico excitedly clutched her camera and she grinned. “My Papa is a retired Duellist, he used to be really famous back in the day and now he’s not even yesterday’s news.” Nico laughed devilishly as she made that remark about her father but then she smiled an unexpectedly soft smile. “He was my Mama’s famous Duellist, see, my Mama is a photographer and a reporter, doing a really big story on my Papa was her first big break. It was this whole ordeal, like you wouldn’t believe. But they met through Mama’s work and have been inseparable since…”

  “That sounds like a movie.” Romin replied.

  “It should be.” Nico replied. “But they haven’t sold the rights yet. Only ‘cause I told ‘em to wait for me. I want to be the one to direct their love story.”

  Romin laughed but Nico looked really proud and sure of herself.

  “I want to be like Mama when I grow up.” she confessed.

  Romin’s heart fluttered and she smiled. “I’m sure you will be.” she said brightly. “And the first step will be winning that photography competition, yeah?”

  “Actually,” Nico began to snidely correct her, “the first step was getting my own camera to take photos with. The second step was joining the Newspaper Club, the third step was becoming the official photographer for the club, that one was easy since there’s only three of us… Now, the fourth step was publishing my first photo to the Seventh Elementary Newspaper, the fifth step was creating a good name for myself locally, and the sixth step was to cultivate my own personal gallery of photographs which I’m especially proud of.”

  Nico paused and she had a sudden gander at Romin’s face. She looked… just a little bit offended. Only a little bit. With how she seemed disappointed that Nico had gone and dashed her well wishes like that.

  “But you’re absolutely right,” Nico added without too much of a beat between, “winning that photography competition is the seventh step and the seventh step is just as important as the ones that came before it. And the ones that will come after it.”

  Romin smiled, confident that she could see Nico’s eighth step. “And the next step is winning the competition?” She offered a sympathetic, bemused smile, too.

  “You betcha!” Nico replied and she gave Romin a finger gun hand gesture.

  It was strange, but Romin couldn’t even see Nico’s eyes from behind those thick, trifocal glasses that she wore but she didn’t need to see her eyes to know that they would be unbelievably all lit up with enthusiasm and excitement.

  “Alright, I’m gonna go and head off to the clubroom so I can upload all these sweet pics of you and hit that submit button on my form but let me tell you, together, we’re gonna rock this comp.” Nico boasted.

  Romin grinned. “Heck yeah.”

  Nico held her hand out for a high five and Romin obliged her. Their hands met palm to palm and without thinking, they both locked onto each other, fingers intertwining and the like. Nico’s hand was just that bit bigger than hers, it was nice, even if her hands were a little rough because, unlike Romin, she didn’t moisturise religiously. And the moment lingered until it was fit to snap.  

  Nico gave a funny expression. “Okay, you can stop holding my hand now, Kirishima.”

  “O-Oh, yeah, totally, it’s just-” Romin panicked and she let go suddenly, “it’s just, er, we’re friends now, you can call me Romin, I don’t mind.”

  “I didn’t want to be too in your face.” Nico abruptly said back. “I’m the press and all.”

  “We’re friends, Nico,” Romin insisted, “I want you to see me as your equal. Not just your… journalistic inspiration.”

  Nico laughed at how earnest Romin was being, but it warmed her heart. She just didn’t know how to play off more serious feelings.

  “Well, it’s been great collaborating with you, Romin, my friend, but I gotta be goin’ now.” Nico said.

  “Yeah, well good luck, break a leg and all that.” Romin replied, friendly and totally casual.

  Nico smirked. “I don’t need luck.” she boasted.

  Romin could half envy that confidence. How nice it would be to go through life that sure of one’s self. It was certainly different.

  Nico made sure to secure her camera to her lanyard around her neck before throwing her head back to laugh. Confidence; assurance; somehow all these sorts of words paled before the might of whatever it was that Nico saw in herself and her talent. Romin barely felt that way about her guitar skills and she was in a popular, established band. If Nico could bottle that, she’d make millions…

  “Okay, well, see you later.” Romin said.

  “Yep, laters.” Nico nodded her head.

  Then, with all that fanfare, she finally strode off.

  Only to completely faceplant not even a second later.

  It felt as though it had happened in slow motion. Nico had twisted on her foot, took one step forward and her toe immediately made contact with some stray little pebble that neither girl had even noticed was there until this very moment. Nico screamed and Romin paled until she was paler than a page of the newspaper. Although, she was screeching too. Possibly even louder than Nico who was the one sailing through the air, primed for a really bad collision when she got there.

  Nico groaned when she went nose first to the ground. She was damn lucky when she pulled herself up and out of the grass that she hadn’t twisted, sprained, or broken anything. The worst she got was a minor bloody nose. She held her head and moaned as she came back up. Everything spun. Everything was so… blurry.

  Romin brought herself to her knees beside Nico, taking her hand to steady her, “I’m so sorry,” she said, “that is so not what I meant when I said break a leg.”

  “Ugh, I’m right. I’ve had worse falls…” she grumbled. “I won’t lie, I am a little bit clumsy. Too fast for my own feet.”

  Nico yanked her hand from Romin’s and she tried her best not to feel offended but then she got a proper look at Nico. Her glasses had been knocked off in the fall. Nico began to search for them, her hands snaking through the grass as she tried to find them. Romin, however, opted to be useless and just stare.

  All she could think was that… Nico looked a lot cuter with the glasses on. It kind of flustered, her to be honest. The difference in Nico’s face. She lost a lot of that bluster that Romin found endearing over all her quirks. Nico grumbled, eyes straining, barely open, as she searched the grass.

  “Oh, uh, do you want any help?” Romin asked.

  “It’d be nice.” Nico replied.

  Romin hummed to herself as she looked around. Her eyes skirted through the grass, only to catch something shiny. A glint of sunshine off glass and she reached forward, half crawling. Wow, she thought to herself, Nico’s glasses were quite heavy, she was surprised that they could be knocked off Nico’s face at all given their weight. She was careful with them as she came back down onto her calves where she knelt beside Nico who had, obviously, made very little progress in her hunt for her glasses.

  “Here you go.” Romin said, offering Nico’s glasses back to her.

  Nico’s hand flailed about but she eventually found her glasses. And also, Romin’s hand. She slid them back onto the haunches in which they ought to rest and flashed Romin a big smile.

  “Thanks again.” Nico said. “Ugh, we should probably get up.”

  “Y-Yeah.” Romin nervously laughed.

  With a huff and puff, the girls held onto each other’s hands and pulled one another to their feet. Romin dusted down her skirt and Nico barely gave herself a shake off.

  “So how do I look without my glasses?” Nico asked as she took a handkerchief out of her back pocket. “I’ve needed ‘em all my life. Papa says I have Mama’s eyes and Mama says the same thing, but they say it very differently.” She laughed at her private joke whilst cleaning up the mess of her bloody nose. It was good that it was only a very, very minor bleed.

  Romin gave a half-hearted snicker in regard to Nico’s private joke. She could suddenly imagine Nico being quite the chip off her mother’s block, all of a sudden, wearing the same or similar pairs of trifocal glasses. It was quite the vision.

  “I bet.” she said, half-heartedly, only to smile softly. “I think you look cuter with your glasses on.”

  “O-Oh,” Nico squeaked and she began to fuss with her fringe, “I don’t really care either way, I’m happy with how I look,” and then she started to pat down her capris as well and then straightened her jacket, “but its nice to hear that from someone as stylish and pretty as you, Romin.”

  “Thank you, Nico, that’s very kind of you to say.” Romin awkwardly replied, blushing. She averted her gaze and was very swift to change the topic of conversation because she thought Nico looked very trendy and low-key the way she was already, especially behind that fluffy fringe of hers, too. “But, um, is your camera alright? It’d suck if it got damaged.”

  Nico doubled checked her camera and smiled assuredly. “My baby is all good, don’t worry Romin. My – our? – win is still guaranteed. But, um, hey, we have drinks in the clubroom, wanna join me after all? Snacks, too.”

  “That sounds nice.” Romin said. Eyes alight, aflame, even, because she was a highly food motivated person.

  Nico chuckled. Together, she and Romin tottered off, perfectly safe and sound this time. Nico rambled about the specs of her camera and Romin happily listened, eager to learn something new but also definitely daydreaming of the types of snacks which might be hiding the Newspaper Club’s mini fridge that they had stashed in the back. Still, she was incredibly fond to think about again that Nico looked cuter with her glasses on but cutest when she was talking so animatedly about her one true passion. Yep, that was very cute.

[caffeinated-mendes]

Failed Mission - Peter Parker & OC - Chapter 1

masterlist

previous work

synopsis:  Eliza Brooks, an eighteen-year-old Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and friend to Tony Stark is given a mission after Tony's death: Attend Midtown Tech and keep an eye on Peter Parker. With the use of her mysterious powers, Eliza had never slipped up on her assignment. That is until Peter's life is in danger, and she has to save him. The cost of her exposing her identity could very nearly mean the end of her mission, and the ending of her chance to become an Avenger.

word count: 2.5 k

a/n: Hi everyone :) Here's a new fic for you all with an OC of mine that I've created with the help of my friend @fallinallincurls <3 I loved Peter so much that I had to make a multi-chap fic for him! Anyway, I see this as Post Endgame, but a few months before FFH. Hope you all enjoy <3 comments likes, and reblogs are always appreciated!

warnings: none

*if you prefer, you can read this on my ao3 instead of here

“Can anyone tell me the answer to number twenty-seven?” Mrs. Codds asked, to which the class silently responded. “Anyone?” Eliza didn’t raise her hand, even though she knew the solution to the problem. Her eyes were trained on the figure in front of her. His leg was bouncing nervously in his desk, watching the clock that taunted them at the front of the room.

Eliza fiddled with her pen, waiting for someone to be called on without their asking. “Ms. Brooks?” Her eyes shot up to the board, examining the problem.

“Uh, thirty-two.” 

“That’s incorrect. Anyone else?” Mrs. Codds’ narrowed eyes found her next target, Michelle Jones.

Eliza raised her hand, but spoke without being called on, “Mrs. Codds? Isn’t it thirty-two, though? X equals fifteen, and the square root of sixteen plus y, which is thirteen, equals thirty-two.” With a bit of fright, she pushed her long hair behind her ear.

Mrs. Codds examined the board once again, “I suppose you’re right, Eliza. My mistake. Thank you.” Heads turned to her, including MJ, who mouthed ‘thanks.’ She nodded, moving her gaze back to the board.

“Everybody was so surprised that Mrs. Codds didn’t scream at you or something. She usually rages if anyone speaks out.” MJ said, clutching her book to her chest as Eliza took her bag from her locker. 

She chuckled, “I know, I was surprised too. By the way, I can’t hang out today. I’ve got work.” Eliza turned to look around, “But you could invite someone to partner with you in AcDec.”

MJ’s ears turned red, “Eli, no. It’s not gonna happen.”

“He’s cute, though! I know you like him.” Eliza grinned, pulling her navy blue backpack onto her shoulders. MJ pulled on the strings of her hoodie, shaking her head and looking at the ground. “Alright, I won’t terrorize you anymore. See you tomorrow. Oh, and don’t forget, we’re studying on Sunday.”

MJ nodded, “I won’t. See you!”

Eliza hurried her way down the halls of Midtown Tech, her black vans making squeaking sounds on the tile. Turning to look into the window of the library, she saw Peter Parker, MJ, and the rest of the team reading their textbooks. She took out her phone, and called the latest number, walking out the doors of her school. The day was a bitter, cold February day. Eliza had to pull up her hood to not shiver on the spot. “Hello?” A man’s voice answered the phone.

“Hey, Happy. Just the daily report. Peter’s fine. He’s at practice right now, so I’ll be going out later today. You know, the usual.”

“Alright. Thanks for letting me know, Eliza.” He sounded relieved, like Peter would never catch a break.

“Of course. Have a good day.”

“You too. You still coming over to Pepper’s tomorrow for dinner?”

Eliza pounded on the steps to the railway, responding, “Yep. See you.”

“Bye, Eli.”

She hung up, pushing her way into the crowded train. Eliza didn’t know how much longer she could keep the whole thing up. The whole routine of high school didn’t suit her. She longed for the days of training with her mentor. Somehow, she thought that training to be a spy was easier than being a high school student.

Perched up on the roof of a building, Eliza watched as a blue and red figure swung through the borough of Queens: the beloved Spider-Man. She had to hop rooftop to rooftop just to keep up with him. Luckily, her suit helped her jump farther, but landing always hurt. The flexible black and navy blue material let her move swiftly in the shadows, though it didn’t matter. Just one thought, and she could become invisible. She watched as Spider-Man made his way into a bank that was screaming with alarms.

Willing herself to turn invisible, she jumped down onto the steps of the bank. The best part of not being seen was people not noticing you. The worst part was having to maneuver your way through, as nobody could move out of the way for you.

Checking her surroundings, she quietly opened the door a sliver and slipped through. This was the worst part of the job. Watching Peter defeat the bad guys, and not being able to help. A woman at the counter trembled at gunpoint, a masked man clamping his hand over her mouth. Two other goons raided the available containers behind them. As if right on cue, Peter screamed, “Hey! Don’t you have other people to rob? I mean not like you should rob them-” He cut himself off, shooting a spider web to grab the gun in his hand. The action made the man angrier, but before he could do anything, Peter ran, jumping onto the counter and swinging his legs into the man’s side. He doubled over in pain, but as Peter stood over him, he didn’t see that the man’s big, beefy buddies were right behind him.

Eliza wanted to scream, tell Peter to watch out, but she knew better. She watched in horror as one of them hit Peter in the head with a bat, knocking him to the ground. Peter didn’t get up. She couldn’t stand there anymore, so she ran for the two of them, pulling a gun from her belt. Thankfully, whatever she held became invisible too, so she didn’t have to worry about people seeing a floating gun. Making two shots, she hit them both in their legs, not wanting to kill. 

Her fingers trembled. She hadn’t done anything like that for real, and hadn’t shot her gun in months. The woman at the counter shrieked. Seeing two men get shot from nowhere was justifiably scary. Eliza jumped over the counter, seeing that Peter was breathing, and conscious. It seemed like he had just woken up. Eliza didn’t think of the consequences as she hoisted Peter up, still invisible. “Whoa! Who’s pulling me?” He grabbed for her, and Eliza was too late to move, as he’d gripped her wrist. “Show yourself! He looked not in her eyes, as he couldn’t see her, but at her neck. Eliza had a couple inches on him.

Eliza knew she’d failed. She lost her grip on her invisibility, and soon she was fully visible. Peter still wouldn’t know it was her. She had a mask on, not unlike Peter’s, but it was black with three stripes of blue on each side. The eyeholes were shaped like upturned rectangles, an almost clear mesh. His spidey-eyes widened. “Eliza?”

Eliza’s breath hitched. Peter didn’t know her. She never spoke to him. Calmly, she replied, “I don’t know who you’re talking about. Let’s get out of here. The police are on their way.” She shook her hand from Peter’s grip, and started running out of the bank, Peter on her tail. They made their way into a dark alley, lit only by a flickering streetlight. 

“Are you sure you’re not Eliza? Because you sound like her too. Wait, why am I asking you that? You know who you are.” Peter caught up to her. Eliza tried to turn away, walk in the other direction, but then, Peter pulled on her mask, taking it off. Her long, blonde hair cascaded around her face. “It is you.” He didn’t say anything else. 

“How’d you know it was me, Peter?” Eliza’s heart sunk. She failed her mission. At least it meant she got to go home.

Peter almost choked, “How’d you know- I mean, I’m not Peter-” Eliza pulled Peter’s mask off to reveal his terrified face. “Uh- your eyes. They’re blue. Just not a normal blue, it’s like a weird blue. I don’t know why. When you showed up a few months ago to school, and the teacher introduced you to the class, your eyes glowed. I don’t know if everyone else saw it, but I did when you looked at me. Then they went back to normal. They glowed so bright when I grabbed your arm that it went through your mask.”

Eliza looked down. “Peter, I’m not allowed to tell you this, but I failed my mission anyway. I’ve been keeping an eye on you since you went back to school, after, well, you know-”

“Since the blip ended?”

“Yeah. Tony found me, kinda like he found you. I was fifteen, it was right after, um, Sokovia. I blipped too, so I’m only eighteen now. But it was eight years ago. When I blipped back, Fury gave me a mission. He told me that Tony intended it for me when he was gone. I’ve been reporting back to Happy, giving him updates. I follow you when you go out into the city.” Eliza looked down at her feet. 

Peter’s face looked disappointed. “Oh.”

“What?” Eliza looked back up at him. Peter played with her mask in his hands. The scene must’ve looked weird. The two of them, holding each other’s masks.

“Well, it’s just that, I thought Mr. Stark thought that I could take care of myself now.” Peter looked up at Eliza, shrugging. His brown eyes looked sad.

Eliza hung her hands, “I’m sure he did. I think he just wanted to have me make sure you were safe. In a way, I was supposed to be the big sister you never had. At least, that’s how Pepper put it.”

Peter nodded, holding out her mask. She took it, and gave him his. “I think this means my mission’s over.”

He looked away, then back at her, “Maybe we can convince Happy to let you stay. He doesn’t have to tell Fury. You could join me, the media wouldn’t know, because you can turn invisible!”

“That might work.” Eliza started to think that she wanted to stay in New York a little bit longer, “Also, I’m not just invisible. I can turn into other animals, too.”

Peter’s eyes widened, “No way! Turn into… a monkey!” He grinned expectantly.

“How about I do something a little more convenient?” Eliza laughed.

“Yeah, okay.”

Eliza felt the familiar sensation encapsulate her body. It was like your entire body was falling asleep, but intensified, as the pins-and-needles feeling grew stronger, her vision changed, and suddenly, Peter got much taller. Her suit, designed to only appear in her human form, was gone. Peter spun around.

“Where’d you go? Eliza?” Eliza scuttled up Peter’s leg, all the way to his hand. She saw him look down. “Ugh. Of course you’re a spider. Deja vu. Can you turn back now?” Eliza hopped off his hand and landed back on the ground. She envisioned herself as herself, a human, and was enclosed in the prickly feeling again. She flexed her fingers, looking back at Peter.

Eliza grinned, “Uh, weird question, but out of all the situations I might’ve had to save you from, how’d you let it be a bank heist?”It seemed too easy for him. Peter didn’t fail like that. Eliza knew that he’d been in much higher-stake situations. 

As if reading her mind, Peter replied with a red tint to his face, “I have a fifth sense, it’s kinda like I can feel what's going on around me. Stupid to say after I didn’t realize two guys were behind me with a bat, but you were distracting me, I think. I didn’t know it was you at the time, of course, but I felt this weird power. It pounded through the room, and it distracted me.”

“I guess you can sense me, too. Have you felt it this whole time?” Eliza lifted her hair into a makeshift ponytail, and put her mask over her head. Peter put his on, too.

Peter shrugged, “Well, sort of. Just not that strong. I had a feeling like someone had their eyes on me everywhere I went in the city.” Eliza nodded. 

“Well, if I get sent back home, I’d like to make this a night to remember. Wanna fight crime as a team?” Eliza laughed.

Peter shook his head, “We’ll ask Happy to let you stay. I know it’ll work. But sure, let’s do it!” Eliza took this as a cue to change, morphing her body into a creature that could jump easily from building to building.

Looking down at her now, Peter’s spidey-eyes widened, “A monkey! Sweet!”

“Hey, Penis Parker! Did your face always look that stupid?” Flash taunted from behind Peter and Eliza. Peter pushed his face further into his locker, biting his lip.

Eliza, on the other hand, was not the quiet type. “Flash, why don’t you quit taunting Peter so you don’t have to keep hiding your insecurities? I think it’d be a better look on you.” Kids laughed and turned to face her from their lockers, watching as Flash choked on his words. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Eliza slammed Peter’s locker for dramatic effect, making him jump.  “Let’s go, Peter. The trash in here stinks.” This was responded by a chorus of laughter from their classmates. Peter pushed his way through to catch up to Eliza, hiding a smile. Flash was left sputtering behind them.

“That was amazing, but you didn’t need to do that. You know I’m not supposed to draw attention.” Peter shouldered his bag as they climbed up the staircase. Last night, the two of them bonded pretty well, beating up thieves and returning stolen items. It felt like Eliza had already known Peter forever. It was a shame she couldn’t stay with him much longer. She was going to tell Happy tonight, at dinner with Pepper and Morgan. 

Eliza shrugged, “It’s not like anyone is gonna suspect me of anything.” Eliza’s phone buzzed. It was MJ, asking if she was coming to class. Eliza responded, Yep, I just finished telling Flash off to the entire hallway. She pushed her phone in her back pocket, “Sorry, that was MJ.”

“MJ? I didn’t know you were friends with her, she’s really cool.” Peter said this in a high pitched voice, looking at Eliza and then in front of him.

“Isn’t the AcDec team going on a Europe trip this summer?”

Peter cleared his throat, his voice a little deeper this time, “Yeah, I’m hoping I’ll be able to actually relax on that trip.”

“That’s understandable. I mean,” Eliza lowered her voice, “I’m not really an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., but I still kinda get it.”

Peter smiled, his voice hushed too, “I have a feeling you’re gonna be more than an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Maybe an Avenger. I mean, we’re kinda down on members.” He looked towards their history class with glassy eyes.

“Thanks for the encouragement.”

“Remember, I’m not letting you leave yet.” With that, Peter walked into their class and found his seat, turning his attention to the girl in front of him. Eliza smirked. It was only obvious that Peter liked her. Ah, to be oblivious to shared love!

Eliza found her seat on the opposite side of the classroom. She looked up at the board, and her heart sank. In big messy handwriting at the top of the chalkboard was written The Sokovia Accords. Eliza put her head down on her desk, and closed her eyes. A voice went through her head, a familiar ghost of her past. It’s okay. Breathe in. Hold it. Breathe out. Breathe in. Hold it. 

Breathe out.

[heartslogos]

newfragile yellows [716]

Bull regains consciousness knowing full well that he is dead, that there is something wrong aside from him being dead, and that he’s alone.

His vision doesn’t come together so much as he becomes aware that he is seeing things, his eye did not close in death. He is seeing, his eye is open, but there is nothing for him to see right now. It’s dark. It’s an absolute darkness. When he moves there is resistance.

Water.

Over the sound of water in his memory of his last moments of being alive and conscious simultaneously he remembers alarms blaring, people yelling, the gurgle of people already defeated and overpowered, and the crackling of the ship’s system broadcast.

Faintly, the signal already fizzling out, Ellana.

But what if he gets lonely down there?

Her voice, half laughing with shock, half genuinely concerned, and nothingness.

Bull moves. The Inquisition has been infiltrated. He is alone, at the bottom of the ocean — or at least somewhere deep — with an unknown amount of time passing between death and now. He moves, slowly patting down his jacket and pockets for anything useful.

He feels the tangle of his dog tags that haven’t managed to drift off, the useless rectangle of his cellphone, his knife, his gun, a spare magazine, his keys —

He pulls his keys out and flicks the miniature flashlight. If it works it works, if it doesn’t it doesn’t. What’s the worst that can happen? It electrocutes him to death?

It turns on. If it’s trying to give him a shock he doesn’t feel it. His days of having pain receptors that work are most likely over.

He slowly navigates the ship, mostly blind, seeing flashes of silver fish that have already invaded the wreckage. Recent wreckage, some rooms still have emergency lights going, and some rooms haven’t been breached at all creating air pockets. None of the other corpses are overly decayed or bloated. But judging death of drowning victims isn’t his area of expertise.

Bull was the only high ranking Inquisition personnel on this ship. It was a last minute change of plans. Half of them were supposed to be here, half on the other, but this ship had the bigger carry capacity of cargo and there was an unexpected transport issue that meant either they load up on this one or they’d be suffering a shortage.

He doesn’t think that’s true, now.

They wanted this ship slowed down and emptied. Easier to sink while pursuing everyone else on the other ship. The Inquisition loses a great deal of resources and its high command is set on the back foot, if they aren’t cut off entirely.

Or, they could have wanted everyone on the slow moving larger, less armed ship.

He’ll never know now.

He makes his way out of the ship and lets nature’s laws do the rest.

Bull rises.

He thinks.

The Inquisition has rats. Traitors. They’re a lot deeper in than anyone thought and chances are that now that they’ve pulled this stunt off they’re going to start moving onto other targets, taking riskier moves. They’re going to start picking at the higher ranks for real, now that they know that they can. It’s just a question of whether the Inquisition can root them out faster than the infiltrators can hack them down.

It’s going to be hard. How do you find a traitor in your midst? You need to look at it from the outside. You need fresh eyes. Fresh eyes that you can trust.

Ellana’s small voice, cracking half a laugh half a whimper fading in and out over the sound of what was previously his thundering heart and is now just endless water, what if he gets lonely? echoes in his ears.

What if they get her before he can get them?

Bull made a promise. Her parents didn’t hate him, but they also didn’t like him, either. And Ellana loves her parents. Bull loves Ellana. Transitive properties, they had to learn to like each other, and a big part of that was a promise. Bull promised — not on his name, not on his reputation, not any of that, but on this. By this meaning them. By them meaning Bull and Ellana.

He promised.

I’m going to protect your daughter like she’s protected me. He promised them. He looked her mother and her father in the eye — and those words don’t mean to him what they mean to her, but he knew that they loved her as much as he did if not more and he knew that if someone ver hurt Ellana it would hurt him too, and if they loved her like he did t hen it would hurt just as much if not more. He looked them in the eye, serious as anything, as sure as he’s ever been sure of anything in his life.

I love your daughter, he said. And as long as it’s within my ability, I’m going to take care of her.

Bull is dead, but it’s still within his ability to take care of her.

He’s dead and that gives him an advantage of surprise. Granted, he doesn’t have shit except for his useless keys, a knife, and his dog tags. But he has his brain and he has almost twenty solid years worth of experience working as elite intelligence for an enemy nation. He knows how this game works.

By the time he’s drifted to the surface, breaching the water and seeing the glimmering white of the moon he has a plan.

He’s going to find the traitors and kill them.

He just needs to find one, and the rest will be easy. That first one is going to be the hard one. But he’s got time. They don’t know he’s looking. No one knows he’s still, literally, kicking, if not alive.

Bull pulls out the compass in his pocket — a whistle, compass, and, now useless, flint all in one courtesy of the Inquisition trying to arm its people with as much as they can at once — and triangulates what direction he needs to start swimming in.

He’s got a job to do.

[mst3kproject]

1008: Final Justice

I had a patient a while back whose name was Geronimo.  He was very impressed that I pronounced it correctly on the first try.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him how I knew.

Thomas Jefferson ‘TJ’ Geronimo III Mitchell is deputy sheriff in the middle of nowhere because that’s how they punish mass murderers in Texas. He has a shootout with mobster Joseph Palermo literally right in front of his office door, which ends in a couple of people dead.  Mitchell beats the shit out of Palermo, then arrests him, and is told to escort him back to Italy so he will no longer be Texas’ problem.  Naturally the mobster escapes on the way, and Mitchell II sets about pissing off the entire island of Malta in the attempt to hunt him down and recapture him.

I take back what I said about both Gregorio Sala and Joe Estevez. At the time I reviewed Track of the Moon Beast and Werewolf I had totally forgotten that the reincarnation of Mitchell here is supposed to be an Apache.  Joe Don Baker is officially and forevermore MST3K’s whitest Native American.

I know we’re supposed to consider Mitchell, the Sequel an antihero who plays by his own rules, and cheer him on in his attempts to recapture Palermo.  I know Wilson turns out to be a bad guy and Palermo has probably killed more people than Mitchell has. But this asshole spends the whole movie stomping around, being rude and obnoxious and shooting people and belittling the woman who’s trying to help him and generally leaving me sitting here thinking so this is how Europe sees Americans.  The Superintendent calls him ‘a walking disaster area,’ ‘leaving bodies in the streets’, and he’s right.  This man is the personification of police brutality.

Do you know what would have happened if Mitchell had gone the hell home when he was told to?  Yes, Palermo would have gotten away, but absolutely nobody would have died, way less property would have been destroyed, and the population of Malta as a whole would have had much nicer weekend!  Do these people not matter?  How about the woman who saw her son nearly killed in front of her?  How about the stripper who got her throat cut?  If Mitchell had just sat his ass down none of that would have happened.

In fact, I think I can make a case that this Mitchell is a significantly less appealing character than his predecessor.  See if you can follow me here.

Mitchell Senior was completely lacking in social skills and basic hygiene, but his motivation throughout his movie was to get justice for a murder victim nobody else cared about.  He followed the rules to a T – the bad guys tried to bribe him with a prostitute, and he arrested her for possession of drugs.  The only guy he killed was the villain, and while he did shoot Bocca he deliberately minimized the chances of a fatal injury.  He rebelled by following his assignment so hard his boss wished he’d never given it to him.  Having been told to follow Cummins, he follows him almost all the way to Mexico. And it was the 70s, so he has an excuse for being badly-dressed!

Mitchell 2, Electric Boogaloo, ignores the rules.  He’s a guest in another country, their police are telling him to stop breaking their shit, and he goes out and keeps doing it.  He commits more on-screen crimes than all the bad guys put together.  He starts a fight over a glass of milk and nearly drowns a bartender.  He shoots dudes down in the street, steals boats, and destroys property.  Having been asked to give his word he lies through his teeth, and he dresses like he might as well be wearing a sign that says asshole from Texas.  He’s so awful he makes Mitchell One look good.

He wouldn’t even be a good character for a comedy, since the point of an asshole in a comedy is that he does things we wish we could get away with, and when comedy assholes are supposed to be the good guys they usually end up learning something (often that they’re assholes).  2 Fast 2 Mitchell learns nothing. He doesn’t come to respect this foreign culture he’s encountered.  He doesn’t realize he was acting out of line.  I honestly think that, like MacGuyver in Atlantic Rim, he’s meant to teach the rest of the cast that assholes should be free to be assholes so they can save the rest of us who aren’t brave enough to shoot first and never fucking bother with the questions.

I’m not sure Final Justice is a comedy, anyway.  It did occur to me… there are at least parts of this movie that I’m pretty sure are meant to be funny.  The idea of transposing cowboy movie shootouts and chases to a European landscape of renaissance art and architecture is probably supposed to be funny.  You’ve got a so-called ‘hero’ who’s a rootin'-tootin'-shootin' cowboy and a villain who’s an honour-and-family-obsessed Italian mobster… that’s a genre crossover, and those are usually comedies, right?  I’m almost certain that Mitchell getting repeatedly arrested and yelled at by the Maltese police is a joke, and the old Nonna trying to confess her sins to a mobster disguised as a monk feels joke-ish.  Yet it’s just missing something.  What could it be?

Oh, right, a main character who’s actually funny.

There is one thing that actually made me laugh in the movie, rather than because of Mike, Crow, and Tom’s commentary – and that’s the blurred rectangle over every shot of the Smuggler’s Tavern strippers, to make sure we won’t see a nipple.  It could not draw more attention to itself if it tried, and maybe it’s just the edition I watched but there was not a single wardrobe malfunction in the shots they used anyway!  There were bits with the strippers topless in the original cut, but those didn’t make it into the version MST3K used. So they blurred it out… just in case?  Did they not want us imagining nipples?  Did the tumblr staff edit this movie?

So the main character sucks… sometimes entertaining side characters can save a movie.  Sadly, there are none here.  The villains are stock mobsters with it’s-a-me, Mario! accents.  The Maltese police chief talks big but seems unwilling to actually do anything to back up his threats to Mitchell.  Then there’s Maria, who is supposed to be a policewoman but mostly acts as a tour guide.  She’s very nearly another example of a sexy lamp.  She does nothing of any importance in this movie except for turning up to spring Mitchell from a jail cell.  The writers clearly couldn’t think of any better way to get him out of a locked room, either, because they have a stripper do the exact same thing.  This other woman never has much by way of personality, and is otherwise just there to look pretty.

The other function Maria serves is to repeatedly tell her superiors that Mitchell didn’t start any of the fights he gets into.  Anybody who has been watching the movie knows that this is a giant fucking lie.  He’s the one who challenged the mobsters in the courtyard and he shot first.  He could have shrugged off the weirdo in the Smuggler’s Tavern pouring beer on him but he didn’t.  Every time things go wrong in this movie it is always his fault.

As far as thematic material goes, I’m pretty sure Final Justice is trying to examine the difference between ‘law’ and ‘justice’.  This is a worthy topic of discussion.  The law is not always just, and even when it is, people do not always apply it in just ways. But a guy who wanders around a foreign country shooting people with only a suspicion that they work for the bad guy, who walks into a bar and announces ‘I don’t want any trouble here!’ before punching everybody in sight, is not the best spokesman for that idea.  Mitchell probably has extra guns stashed all over his house in case The Gubbamint tries to take them away.

The fact that the Maltese are not shown doing anything except yelling at Mitchell 2: Through the Portal of Time, seems to imply that they would have been completely unable to capture Palermo on their own.  Boy, good thing Mitchell was there!  Do Americans really think other countries can’t handle their own problems without an intervention by some bald-eagled ass-whoopin’ liberty?  Looking at the history of the twentieth century, I’m gonna say that yes, they do.

Really all Final Justice is, is a bad cop movie with some unusual accessories.  If it were set in New York or Los Angeles it would be entirely forgettable.  The art and architecture we see in Malta, and the glimpse of their culture (I will admit that the floats in the festa parade are just slightly nightmare-fuel-ish) is pretty much the only reason to watch it.  Even then, there’s not enough of that stuff to make up for how fucking awful the movie’s entire mindset is.

I used to feel pretty meh about Final Justice but I’d never bothered to actually try to analyze it like this.  The more I think about it, the more layers I uncover, the worse it gets.  Everything about it is terrible.  The only level I can find to praise it on is that the photography is decent and you can always tell what’s going on, but even that is wasted on fucking Mitchell 2: Hellbound doing stupid offensive shit. Even the title sucks.  The movie was shot under the working title The Maltese Connection, which at least sounds kind of cool even if the movie it were attached to would still have been Final Justice.

Fuck this movie.

[mtraki]

Morning greeted Arthur at the closing of the front door.  Still as stiff and hurting as the day before, his ribs protested when he struggled to his feet from the floor to peer around the curtain, out the window.  He could see Samuel heading for the stables in the dim light.  In this room shared with Lenny, there were no new notes today, and the tray from earlier was gone.  Breakfast would be downstairs.  Lenny was still out.

“Wake up soon, kid…”

Hosea was also still sleeping when Arthur went to peek in on him, and he thought his color looked a little better than it had some hours earlier.

Downstairs, he followed the scent of coffee into the kitchen, and there he found Miss Carrie working the stove with eggs and toast.

“Good mornin’, miss.”

“Mhmm,” Was the response, “An’ you.”

“Can I get some coffee?”

“Sure, gimme jus’ a minute to get you a cup.” Taking a moment to arrange the skillet, the woman turned and opened a cupboard a bit down the kitchen, plucking out a cup, “You want me to pour it for you?” “Nah, I think I can manage,” He chuckled, “Ain’t used to bein’ waited on like your Miss Bligh…”

It was apparently the wrong thing to say, as the dark eyes leveled at him, “… I know you ain’t comin’ in my kitchen to talk some nonsense about Miss Bligh…”

“Now, now… No, I did not, miss.  I’m jus’ sayin’ it how I see it–”

“–Well, then either you blind, mister, or you an idiot.  What?  You think ‘cause I’m colored, an’ Miss Bligh rich I’m some kind of slave or servant?”

“I see you in here doin’ the cookin’, an’ last evenin’ too– maybe I got it wrong…”

“Sure, I do the cookin’!  Not all of it, but enough of it.  I do some cleanin’ as well, as it needs doin’, but if you didn’t know, that’s how you care for a house, mister outlaw.  You gotta keep it clean an’ keep folks fed.”

“Well sure– Look, I meant no offense, Miss Carrie, just forget I said anything…”

“You’d best hope I do, mister outlaw.” In a huff, the woman turned for her skillet again, then remembered she still had the cup.  Even more irritated, she set the cup down firmly by the pot of coffee on the preparation table, “Here.  An’ don’ make a mess or I’ll have you cleanin’.”

Arthur quietly poured himself some coffee and started to retreat out of the kitchen.  Back at her skillet, Miss Carrie gave one last scolding.

“You take yourself outdoors, mister outlaw, an’ keep quiet.  Miss Bligh was up all night seein’ to your outlaw friends, so you let her sleep now.  Don’ let me catch you botherin’ her.  You ain’t so big…”

Outside, the morning was cool, almost cold, and Arthur slowly walked the property, deciding to avoid the stables for the moment, sipping coffee.  Immediately he was caught in the realization that this brew wasn’t burnt– as tended to happen in their camps fairly often– and there was something different about the taste itself.  Maybe something different with the coffee beans?  Wealthy people coffee.

Besides the stables and the house, he discovered the gardens and the chicken coop not far from the porch.  One turned over plot was lined with bricks in an oval and grew flowers and flowering herbs.  The other were neat rows of vegetables in a rectangle.  Further behind the mansion was another building that looked like a barn, but upon closer investigation– the doors weren’t locked after all– he discovered was the carriage house, with a very fine, custom carriage and harnesses for four, all well-oiled and waxed under their dust cloths.

He could probably get over a hundred dollars for it at the fence in Emerald Ranch, if he could get it there in one piece.

Out behind the property, the land grew rockier and steadily climbed up toward the forested foothills.  It was a good place from which to approach the property if somebody wanted to attack, though dangerous for horses.  Watching the slowly rising rocks and trees, Arthur had the feeling he was being watched by unseen eyes.  He wanted his guns.

When nothing made itself known, however, the outlaw turned and headed for the stables.  Samuel had apparently finished his fence repairs and was hauling hay bales from the barn.  Trotting in from the run behind his stall, Slim whickered at Arthur’s approach.

“Hey, boy,” He greeted warmly, “You been good?”

The long black tail swished in response and the big Ardennes trotted back out into his run.

“I know, you don’ like bein’ stalled, boy…”

Maggie was enjoying her run as well, and seemed altogether much more content.  Silver Dollar was on the other side, still half-asleep.

Lancaster’s stall was empty, and looking out into the paddock, Arthur could see the big black stallion, mane and tail long, big hooves full of feather.  He was a majestic animal, the outlaw could readily admit, and he carried himself like he knew it, trotting energetically around the perimeter before plunging and blowing, getting the concern of the mares in their pasture.

Feeling Samuel watch him watch the resident stud, Arthur turned to meet the look, taking a final sip from the coffee– the dregs cold by now, “…Miss Carrie don’ want me in the house,” he said, as way of explanation, “and I figure I ought to see to my own horses… but looks like you already done feedin’… Can’t say either of ‘em are used to grain like this…” The young man just blinked at him, flexing his work-hardened hands.

“Say, feller, you mind tellin’ me where our saddles and gear got stowed?  Or… showin’ me rather?”

After a moment, Samuel gestured to an open door between two stalls– a little room, tucked in there.  Moving to investigate, Arthur found a room full of saddles– but only four of them looked like any proper saddle he’d ever seen, and one of them was his, a second was Lenny’s, and a third was Hosea’s– it was propped on a stand instead of on a rack on the wall, and the leather looked recently cleaned, though it was still stained with blood.  The others were too small, and too sleek, hornless, and stirrupless.  Some others had crooked protrusions of leather off to one side, making the outlaw wonder how somebody was supposed to sit on the horse’s back at all.  But his saddle, saddle bags, longarm holsters, and bedroll were there, and as far as he could tell, so were Lenny’s and Hosea’s.  Their weapons, ammunition, and provisions were not.

There was a big trunk on the floor that was about to get Arthur’s personal attention, but then he heard Miss Carrie hollering from the porch about breakfast, and Samuel appeared in the doorway of the little room, gesturing for him to come along.

“… An’ she tol’ me to be quiet…” The outlaw muttered to the younger man who shrugged and gave the ghost of a wry smile.

Breakfast turned into a tense occasion.  Miss Bligh’s appearance caused her companions alarm and Arthur some mild curiosity.  Her face betrayed her sleepless night, but more than that, both her forearms were black and blue from wrist to elbow like she’d been on the wrong end of a fist-fight.  But nobody said anything about it.

They weren’t asking, and Arthur didn’t want to make it his business–though he had his suspicions and decided he would not be taken by surprise.

She informed him pleasantly about Hosea and Lenny’s conditions, mentioning how she was certain they were both recovering well.  Then there was a repeat of the chatter from dinner, asking after everyone’s night and plans for the day.  The outlaw did not feel it overly uncouth to interrupt– and even if it were, it wasn’t as if he minded them thinking him uncouth.

“Miss, I don’ mean to sound ungrateful for all your help, but I’m gonna have to ask you where you put the rest of my and my friends’ things.”

When the silent staring stretched too long, he pushed back noisily from the table, aware of the aggression in his movements.

“Miss… I’m gonna have to insist you tell me…”

Samuel was climbing to his feet as well, in a much less abrupt manner, folding his cloth napkin and setting it aside instead of letting it fall to the floor as Arthur had.  But the outlaw’s gaze was on Miss Bligh’s face, on her bruised-looking, lake water eyes.

“Now?” Was her question.

“Right now.” He affirmed, “Unless you got a good reason for keepin’ them from me.”

Well,” She said quietly, “I don’t intend to keep your things from you at all, mister, though I can’t imagine you have a reason for needing them, right now, at breakfast.”

“I’ll accept them after…”

“I’ll be happy to furnish you with them, then.”

Watching her expression carefully, still, Arthur added, “… The guns as well.”

She blinked at him, but otherwise that kind, quiet patience never shifted from her face, “You must excuse me, but I do not at all understand what you may need any weapons for.  Nobody here means you any harm, mister.”

“You’ll excuse me if I insist on them anyway, Miss Bligh.”

Still her expression never changed, but she looked him in the eyes, and Arthur felt the moment stretch.  There was something surreal in it, and he felt gripped by whatever power was in the space between breaths.  Like he was being pinned down and examined, body and soul, by those lake water eyes.

 "… Alright,“ She said at length, "but for now, please sit down and finish your breakfast.”

[mandareeboo]

Unfinished Work #24: “Opposite Axes”

Wellll this is less ‘unfinished’ as it is ‘I’mma have to rework the SHIT out of this bc of the special and I can’t NOT put my beautiful Sunstone and co in there somewhere’ so I’mma probably scrap this part of my third in line of the Steven and Fam Fusion Musical Show and redo from step one.

Title: Opposite Axes

"Absolutely not. There's growth and then there's insanity."

"Oh, let's give it a chance, Yellow," Blue pleaded, one hand cupped over her mouth thoughtfully. "Steven's already brought us so many interesting proposals. What's wrong with this one?"

"Interesting?" Yellow repeated dubiously. "Era 3 has been a massive failure so far. Production has gone down by over forty percent!"

"Yes, but they're so much happier."

"They won't be happier when we have no more planet to live on!"

Steven's ears were ringing as the Diamonds' voices began to lift. He puckered his lips and whistled. "Look, I know I'm no good at stats like Pearl is- who, by the way, really wanted to do this presentation, and the fact that you won't even let her in the room is extremely rude-"

"Do you know how undignified it'd be if we-"

"But," he plowed over her. "This will expand production enough to make up for lost time. Pearls are far less destructive to create, and they can be beneficial in so many fields! Just imagine how many happy faces with pointy noses we could make!"

Yellow sighed and pinched the junction of her nose. "It concerns me that we've come to a point where this is making sense," she said wearily. "Listen, Steven. Having an Era 3 Pearl being made without typical refineries and allowed to run wild can cause a lot of trouble for all of us. Especially compared to the older models. We could face a full-on revolution."

"It'd kind of be one we'd deserve, don't you think?"

"Perhaps. But you know as well as I do that there are many Era 1 and 2 Gems who would still leap at the chance to be shattered to protect us. We'd be causing dustshed all across Homeworld."

"I wonder," Blue said, "What an unrefined Pearl would look like?"

"It doesn't matter what they look like," Steven stressed. "What matters is that this is the safest option- for us and for the rest of the galaxy."

"How do you know what's safe or what isn't?" Yellow challenged. "I understand that you were raised with different values, but you can't force change overnight and expect it to right everything."

"I've been working with Homeworld for three years!"

"Three years?" The Diamond stood up, running her fingers through her hair. "Stars help us, it's only been three years. How did we manage to go from galactic superpower to galactic embarrassment in three years?"

Blue took her arm. "Perhaps we should adjourn for now."

"That might be for the best," she reluctantly agreed. Yellow clapped her hands. "That will be all, Steven."

Steven saluted the typical Earth salute, turning away. Frustration bubbled just below the surface, but yelling at Yellow and Blue rarely seemed to do much good. It usually just made it all drag out more.

"He's so different from her," he overheard Blue murmur on the way out. "Yellow, what if he never remembers being Pink?"

Yellow's eyes fluttered shut. "I'm not willing to consider that option, Blue."

Overall, Steven spent the least amount of time on Homeworld as physically possible. As important as maintaining connections was, especially as the fully realized Ambassador of Earth (and, as some Gems felt the need to tack on, Keeper of a Diamond's Stone), there was something about the hard planes and structures that had never quite sat right with him. Unfortunately, Steven couldn't stay away very much anymore, seeing how pivotal his voice was for Era 3.

It had been two weeks since he'd stopped by the beach house, and it was of very little surprise to him that no one else was around when he warped inside- save for Bismuth, of course, who even after almost half a decade of peace refused to even contemplate returning to Homeworld. She tended to the house while they were away, drawing up plans and designs for various Gem machines designed more for safety and protection than war. Not that her impressive sword collection ever had the slightest chance to grow dusty, as she built and sculpted them in her free time.

"Hey," she said, sequestering over half the couch with her size. "How'd it go?"

Steven groaned. "Politics are horrible."

"Yellow being a butthead again?"

He flopped down beside her. "I get why she does it. I do. She asks the questions, I answer, nobody can pull them out later and blindside us. But does she have to be so mean about it?"

"Sounds rough, buddy." Bismuth leaned over to nudge his shoulder. "Hit me up if you ever get sick of hurdles, alright? I'll make you something nice and sharp."

Steven smiled. Homeworld seemed like it was constantly moving in some way or another- hustle and bustle, destruction and construction, who White Diamond was not pleased with that particular day- but the Gems themselves didn't change. He hadn't changed. "Thanks, Bismuth."

He doesn't recall falling asleep.

Connie's official title was Protector of the Ambassador- which is overtly long and means almost nothing to anyone; but, in Homeworld's defense, the Gems have always gone by their type. They've never needed official titles before the Crystal Gems brought them home with them- but most of them just referred to her as The Connie. At thirteen, that had bothered her greatly. At sixteen, she hardly even noticed.

But a lot had changed in three simple years. Connie had nearly tripled in height, finding herself at the same height as Pearl. Her arms and face held a scattering of scars from various violent exchanges as debates had gone on- scars that Steven could have healed up, of course, but Connie had demanded they stay, noticing that the discolorations intimidated Gems. Maybe they were reminded of Jaspers when they saw the scratch that went from her lip and over her eye, or the deep line on her shoulder she had tattooed over with a single star- and, if so, they'd have every right to be frightened. Her sword, made by Bismuth, was swirled with pink and white like a Cookie Cat, tapered to her specific height, and hung carefully from her hip.

Another sign of change was the Gems who met her at the door- not Agates, but an Amethyst and a Ruby, who gave her a respectful salute and sheepish smiles. Connie saluted them back with the signature diamond shape before going inside.

"Diamonds," she greeted, not particularly worried by how they both snapped to attention as she strolled into the room. Connie felt bad for interrupting whatever private moment they'd been sharing, but duty is duty. "I just wanted to stop by and tell you Steven's gone back to Earth for a visit."

"Of course," Yellow said, bitter, as she rubbed at her eyelids. "Make a big speech before vanishing off the planet to goof around with his rebel friends. That's so typical."

"He wants us to bring Pearls into the workforce," Blue explained, as if Connie didn't already know.

"I'm aware, ma'am."

"You were trained by one, correct? What do you think of all of this?"

"I give the proposition my full support, ma'am," Connie said firmly. "No one has the right to tell anyone what they should be, and that's what Homeworld's done for centuries now. If you really wanna change, you have to go all the way."

"Where does that put us, then?" Yellow challenged. "Diamonds are created to rule. If we break all the barriers, what happens to our system?"

"No one ever said it wasn't going to be messy, ma'am."

Yellow seemed to sink under the weight of that statement. For once, it's Blue who says that's all. Connie saluted again and walked back out, wondering with a shake of her head if there had ever been a point to any of this.

Lion seems to enjoy hopping between her and Steven, taking random Ruby ships from Homeworld to Earth and back. Today he's waiting for her outside the palace, eager to get back to what could technically be called an apartment, if apartments didn't require rent or have basic plumbing. In it's own right, it's an honor they even built a room semi-suitable to human cohabitation in the first place for them. It was just a shame that they had such limited knowledge.

The apartment is a perfectly set rectangle in the wall of one of Homeworld's many spires. It's an ugly, washed out shade of blue- like the ocean but ten times less beautiful- and contains exactly one lump that she expected was supposed to be a bed or couch or both. Her parents had insisted on getting her a comfy armchair, which was a brown smudge in the corner. The cherry on top of the horrifyingly ugly color-nightmare was Captain Lars, snoring in said ugly brown chair, in said ugly blue room, his pastel pink skin glaring.

"Back from shipment?" she asked, dismounting Lion.

"Hmm?" Lars tipped his head back, reluctantly opening his eyes. "Oh. Hey. Yeah, I'm back."

"You sound ever so pleased about that."

"I'm bored. Whatever happened to cool boss fights and daring space chases?" He flicked his cape over his shoulder dramatically. "Now I just haul cargo. You're basically a door-holder, and Steven spends his days telling giant Diamonds that maybe people should be allowed to actually think for themselves."

"The cool boss fights and space chases didn't do as much as we hoped, I guess." Connie shrugged, setting her sword aside. "It just kind of evolved into this."

"Hey, I got my buddies to Earth just fine."

"I know, and it was awesome." A giggle erupted from her, remembering her involvement fondly. "They still tell stories about you in the public octagon. Especially the Emeralds."

Lars clicked his tongue and shot some finger guns her way.

[nebulous-wanderings]

Tokyo Trip/Kurenai Enishi October 19-21, 2018

Wow look who procrastinated writing a blog post for this for 2 months (me). I made a mini-post when I got back but I didn’t really explain everything I saw and did in my 48hrs there so I’ll do that here. More pictures and me rambling about Tsukista below~

I only went on this little weekend trip because my friend and I had gotten tickets to see Tsukista’s 6th Stage Kurenai Enishi. I would’ve stayed longer but I wanted to save my vacation days for next year :P Luckily, my friend was able to meet me in Tokyo from the area of Japan she currently lives in and stayed with me for the weekend to watch the show.

I arrived Friday evening and checked into the hostel. It had the best prices for the area and was super clean and easy to check in and out - I would definitely stay there again! After that I met @lavendermintrose at Animate since I wanted to buy a penlight and shop around for a bit. We then made a spontaneous visit to the karaoke place with the Tsukista drink collab~

My other friend arrived at the hostel later that night, and we ate a late-night meal and were up until like 2am drafting fan letters on our phones to write onto stationary the next day.

On Saturday we went to Harajuku for breakfast (see first pic at the top) and scoped out the Tsukipro Harajuku Shop. We had timeslots to enter on Sunday, but we passed by it to take a look at how it was set up. After that we tried to get to the train station as fast as possible in order to get to the theater in time for the merch queue to start but Takeshita Dori was looking like this:

which is sooo much worse than Times Square so we were crawling at a snail’s pace back to the station. After the trainride, we got off in Shinjuku where the theater was and it was a bit complicated to find since Google Maps had us cross through and mall and back outside to find the theater (that’s also connected to a movie theater). The line had only opened up 5mins before we got there but there were already so many people ahead of us:

(the entrance is a little past that white sign board with colored rectangles). The wait didn’t feel too long ince they opened sales a bit earlier than the scheduled time and it moved pretty quickly.

My and my friend’s matching tsukiusas (+ my Sing Together Forever usa). I don’t do itabags so I at least brought these little guys.

The merch form~ They got stricter with the purchase limit for this stage (like one copy of each CD per person). (+ check out that girl's Aoi and Yoru itabag in the background)

The hallway to the merch sale tables/entrance to the theater was lined with Kurenai Enishi posters with art of the nenchuu by Jiku-sensei. They matched the red walls nicely lol.

(My face looks really weird in this pic so I covered it lmao) but I was super excited in line 😂 After buying all of out stuff there was a little over an hour until the show started so we got some food and the food court next door and started writing our letters:

My friend wrote one for Yuusaku and gifted local omiyage from her region. I wrote one for Yuusaku and one for Yuusuke. Technically my friend wrote it for me since my handwriting absolutely sucks and we were pressed for time (I would’ve taken forever to write the kana) but I wrote the whole message and she just copied the Japanese onto paper. I handwrote the English I included at the end and also signed it. I included some gifts I brought with me from NY to give to them as well.

We got to the theater as doors opened and placed our letters and gifts in the boxes then picked up the premium seat bonuses (2 group bromides and a shrine charm in the 3rd pic from the top). The charm was one of six color combos depending on which day it was and luckily for me that day was the Rui/Iku colors! Ours were in the 6th or 7th row off to the right. The stage was very wide and we were right in front of the little side-stage area where the actors come out from.

I won’t spoil the plot but I will say that people cried during one of the more dramatic scenes. I wouldn’t say it’s as sad as Yunemigusa though lol (I saw ver. Red btw). It was really cool seeing the new cast for the first time, and I think they all did a fantastic job!

The Mutsuki-kun higawari had Gaku (Haru’s actor) as some evil guy trying to defeat Kakeru who is trying to become a stronger ninja. At first it was just a pair of sunglasses talking while Gaku did the voiceover from backstage but then he appeared on stage in a white lab coat. It was really funny, but I can’t put my finger on what exactly his character was supposed to be referencing lol. Also random note: there was a reoccurring mushroom joke that I also found really funny lol.

The songs in Kurenai Enishi weren’t my favorite per se (I’m not a huge fan of slow songs) but they matched the mood and tone of the show very well. However, I do love the theme song since it’s catchy and makes me want to chant along with it lol.

Since I watched the Red version with Procellarum as the focus, the dance live was their group songs and solo character songs from the 2nd season of CDs. The background dancers were the Six Gravity counterparts from the same age group. Rui is my fave and Yuusaku was soooo cute performing “Oh… Yes!” Ryoki did a great job as Iku, and his dancing looked so pro I was amazed. I was really bopping to You’s “Manatsu no Summer” and he went into the crowd for fanservice as usual lol. For the entirety of Yoru’s song, I was just staring at Yuusaku’s face cuz he’s so bright and sparkly~ He had a big smile on just like Tani’s Yoru and looked like he was having fun. During Kai’s “Beast Master,” I was on the side Haru was mostly dancing on, and let me just say Gaku went IN on the hip movements and overall risqué dance moves lmao. Can’t wait to see that again on the DVD 😂 Taka had big shoes to fill as Shun, but he was great throughout the play and dance live (sasuga idols) and his Shun voice was even super similar to Tomoyuu’s.

At the end they performed “Tsuki no Uta” with both groups which was a lot of fun. I was debating whether or not to change penlight colors at each verse but it would’ve been too difficult lol. I had them on Rui and Iku for the whole duration of the song, but did all the name-yelling fanchants which was fun to be a part of (this was my first time at a jp live event). At the end when everyone runs back and forth on the stage waving goodbye, I was sitting close enough to the stage to tell who in the crowd they were looking at, and I got waves from Iku (who probably saw me frantic waving my green and brown penlights) and Kai! Kai also did a finger gun shoot to the girl 2 seats away from me (sitting next to my friend) since she had a Kai uchiwa and she was crying tears of joy all after that lol.

The closing message for that performance was from Yuusuke, and I could tell he was a bit nervous trying to get words out but he looked genuinely happy to be up there on stage. (Honestly, stan Akiba Yuusuke, he’s adorable).

After it was over, I wanted to watch it again, it felt so short! But we met up with Lavender for some more Tsukista collab karaoke and talked about the show and fangirled over stuff. I kept getting Shun coasters when buying the collab drinks, but in the end I ended up with a Rui at least so all was well. I need some more Growth fans to karaoke with so we can all harmonize on the songs 😂

On Sunday, we went to the Tsukipro Harajuku Shop, but I’ll include that in a separate posts since I hit picture limit in this one already. Overall, I had a fun time and I’m super glad I was able to fulfill one of my goals which was to watch a Tsukista show live! I landed back home at 8pm on Sunday and thankfully I was able to wake up in time for work the next day (due in part to me sleeping most of the plane ride back). 10/10 would do a weekend trip (or longer) again for a stage play or concert 👍