#his food waste bin was on the curb

[saint-mona]

Paul wasn't home....

[earaercircular]

New York to Expand Composting Citywide, Targeting Trash and Rats

Mayor Eric Adams will announce the program at his State of the City address as part of his efforts to improve trash collection and fix New York’s rodent problem.

A decade after former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg co-opted a line from “Star Trek” to declare composting[1] the “final recycling frontier,” New York City is finally poised to unveil plans to implement what it is calling the nation’s largest composting program.

On Thursday, Mayor Eric Adams will announce that the city will commit to a 20-month timeline to bring composting to all five boroughs.

The announcement will be part of the mayor’s State of the City address on Thursday at the Queens Theatre in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

The program allowing New Yorkers to put biodegradable refuse into brown bins for composting will be voluntary; there are no current plans to make the composting program mandatory, a step that some experts say is key to its success. But in an interview, Jessica Tisch, the commissioner of the Sanitation Department, said that the agency was talking about the possibility of mandating the composting of yard waste.

“This program is going to represent the first time that many New Yorkers have ever had access to curb side composting,” Ms. Tisch said. “Let them get used to it.”

The announcement comes a month after the city paused a popular boroughwide composting program in Queens, a move that sowed distress among the city’s avid band of food recyclers.

The city’s timeline calls for the program to restart in Queens on March 27, expand to Brooklyn on Oct. 2, begin in the Bronx and Staten Island on March 25, 2024, and finally launch in Manhattan on Oct. 7, 2024.

As Mr. Adams enters his second year in office, he has continued to focus on crime, the budgetary challenges of accommodating an influx of migrants from the southern border, and street cleanliness, with an unusual[2] (and unusually personal[3]) focus on rats.

“By launching the largest curbside composting program in the country, we’ll be dealing a blow to New York City’s rats, cleaning up our streets and keeping millions of pounds of kitchen and yard waste out of landfills,” Mayor Adams said in a statement. “By the end of 2024, every New Yorker, all 8.5 million people, will have the solution they’ve been waiting two decades for, and I’m proud my administration was able to get it done.”

Municipal composting took off in the United States in the 1990s after San Francisco became the first city to offer a major food scrap collection program[4]. It is now mandatory for residents in cities like San Francisco and Seattle[5], and Los Angeles just introduced a composting mandate[6] with little fanfare.

Absent a mandate in New York City, the program “is not economically sustainable and fails to reach the environmental impact that the current crisis moment demands,” said Shahana Hanif and Sandy Nurse, two City Council members who released a joint statement on Thursday, after this story was published, highlighting their work on a bill that would mandate composting.

New York City sanitation workers collect about 3.4 million tons of residential waste a year, roughly one-third of which could be composted. Ms. Tisch cast the announcement as part of a broader agenda to make New York’s waste stream more sustainable, a decades-long goal with which the city continues to struggle[7].

Two years after Mr. Bloomberg called for mandatory composting, his successor, Mayor Bill de Blasio, promised in 2015 to divert all New York City residential waste[8] from landfills by 2030.

The city’s progress toward Mr. de Blasio’s goal has been nominal[9]. Its so-called curb side diversion rate for recyclables now stands at a paltry 17 percent. Seattle, by way of comparison, had a nearly 63 percent diversion rate in 2020, according to the Citizens Budget Commission[10], a nonpartisan watchdog group.

In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Tisch acknowledged that the city had not made enough progress since 2015 to “realistically believe that we will reach zero waste by 2030.”

But she also predicted that the new composting program would dramatically increase the amount of waste diverted from landfills — part of the city’s efforts to address climate change. When added to a landfill, yard waste and food scraps produce methane, a gas that traps heat in the atmosphere and warms the planet.

New York City’s composting program has gone through many fits and starts over the years. Today, the city requires many businesses[11] to separate their organic waste, though it is unclear how effectively the city enforces those rules. The city said it does not collect data on how much waste the program diverts from landfills.

The city was also already offering voluntary municipal curbside composting in scattered parts of Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan when Mr. Adams announced in August that it would come to every single residence in Queens that October.

As part of the program in Queens, which paused for the winter in December, collection times coincided with the pickup of recyclables. And residents did not have to individually opt in to the new service. The program cost roughly $2 million, the department said.

Some composters who had successfully altered their habits to accommodate the new program said the December pause was frustrating[12] and, by upending newly established routines, counterproductive.

But city officials quickly labelled it a triumph, saying it outperformed the prior, existing program and was cheaper, too.

“We finally have a mass market sustainability program that will meaningfully move the diversion rate in New York City,” Ms. Tisch said.

The program will cost $22.5 million in the 2026 fiscal year, the first full fiscal year when it will be running citywide, she said. The city will also have to spend $45 million upfront this fiscal year to buy new trucks to collect the compost.

Once collected, the department will transport the compost to anaerobic digesters in Brooklyn[13] and Massachusetts, and a city-run compost facility on Staten Island[14], among other places.

Citing a potential recession and the drop-off in pandemic-related federal aid, Mr. Adams has been taking steps to reduce costs, including cuts to public libraries that leaders say could force them to reduce hours and programming. The Sanitation Department has been one area where he has shown a willingness to fund new programs.

Sandra Goldmark, director of campus sustainability and climate action at Barnard College,[15] said she was “thrilled” by the mayor’s commitment and hoped that the program would eventually become mandatory for businesses and residences, just like recycling.

Barnard has worked to implement composting, she said, but it requires a “culture shift” to help people understand the benefits.

“It’s actually so much better in your home — there’s no big, giant trash bag with smelly, gnarly stuff,” she said. “You put wet food scraps in a separate container and it makes all of your trash less gross.”

Source

Dana Rubinstein and Emma G. Fitzsimmons,   New York to Expand Composting Citywide, Targeting Trash and Rats, in: New York Times, 25-01-2023; https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/nyregion/composting-garbage-nyc.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Dana Rubinstein is a reporter on the Metro desk covering New York City politics. Before joining The Times in 2020, she spent nine years at the publication now known as Politico New York.

Emma G. Fitzsimmons is the City Hall bureau chief, covering politics in New York City. She previously covered the transit beat and breaking news.

[1] Bloomberg Plan Aims to Require Food Composting. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has tried to curb soda consumption, ban smoking in parks and encourage bike riding, is taking on a new cause: requiring New Yorkers to separate their food scraps for composting. Dozens of smaller cities, including San Francisco and Seattle, have adopted rules that mandate recycling of food waste from homes, but sanitation officials in New York had long considered the city too dense and vertically structured for such a policy to succeed.

[2] Mayor Adams Has Rats. Curtis Sliwa Has Cats. What Could Go Wrong? The ongoing saga of Mayor Eric Adams and his war against rats reached a new level of absurdity, with Curtis Sliwa and feral cats entering the mix. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/nyregion/adams-rats-curtis-sliwa.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

[3] Mayor Eric Adams, Fined For Rats on His Property, Takes on City Hall. Mr. Adams, a noted rat antagonist who once endorsed a special rat-drowning device, on Tuesday contested a summons and fine over an infestation at a rental property he owns.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/06/nyregion/adams-rats-summons-apartment.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

[4] Food to the Rescue: San Francisco Composting. https://www.nrdc.org/resources/san-francisco-composting

[5] Compostable and recyclable materials are not allowed in the garbage. It's the law. They can be used for other purposes instead of being sent to the landfill. Compostables are locally made into compost and put back into the soil. Recyclables are made into new materials without needing to extract raw materials from the earth. Seattle Municipal Code sections 21.36.082 and 21.36.083 require that residents and businesses do not put food scraps, compostable paper, yard waste, and recyclables in their garbage. Food Waste Requirements - Utilities | seattle.gov

[6] This week Los Angeles launched its long-awaited curb side composting program citywide, requiring that residents change how they dispose of food scraps. Starting now, chicken bones, orange peels, coffee grounds, pizza boxes and the like belong in green yard waste bins rather than black trash cans. Editorial: Los Angeles quietly rolls out curb side composting. Maybe too quietly - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

[7] How New York Is Turning Food Waste Into Compost and Gas. New Yorkers already have blue and green bins for recycling glass, metal, paper and plastic. But now brown bins for organic waste are starting to appear all over the city. These plastic totems are part of the city’s multimillion-dollar campaign to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on landfills, and to turn food scraps and yard waste into compost and, soon, clean energy. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/nyregion/compost-organic-recycling-new-york-city.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

[8] Mayor de Blasio Releases One New York: The Plan for a Strong and Just City. OneNYC establishes bold goals and specific targets for a strong, sustainable, resilient, and equitable city – 800,000 people out of poverty by 2025, Zero Waste, eliminating long-term displacement after future shock events, and much more.

[9] New York City fails zero waste pledge. Why it’s going backward. During his first “Earth Week” as the city's mayor, Eric Adams is confronting a growing waste crisis he inherited with no end in sight. Mountains of trash are getting steeper as the country’s largest city inches away from its ambitious goal of nearly zeroing out residential waste by 2030, emblematic of the nation’s struggles with more garbage and limited recycling options.https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/22/zero-waste-new-yorkers-recycle-00026708

[10] Testimony on the State of New York City Recycling. Submitted to New York City Council Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management.  https://cbcny.org/advocacy/testimony-state-new-york-city-recycling

[11] Certain New York City establishments are required under Local Law 146 of 2013 to separate their organic waste. If your business meets the minimum requirements outlined below, you must comply with the NYC Commercial Organics Rules. https://www.nyc.gov/assets/dsny/site/services/food-scraps-and-yard-waste-page/commercial-requirements

[12] Pause in Queens Compost Pilot Leaves Participants in the Dumps. Concerns about breaking good habits and overflowing landfills are clouding otherwise sunny outcomes for popular program that’s gone on a winter break after just starting last fall. https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/1/6/23543107/pause-in-queens-compost-pilot-burns

[13] Visitor Centre at Newtown Creek. Located at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the Visitor Centre at Newtown Creek is the only facility within the five boroughs where you can experience New York City’s water infrastructure. Through guided education programs, students can discover the journey our drinking water takes to get to our taps, the process of cleaning our wastewater before it is released into surrounding waterways, and stewardship opportunities.  https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/visitor-center-at-newtown-creek.page

[14] The Staten Island Compost Facility is a sight to see. Millions of pounds of NYC's waste goes here so it can be processed and distributed across our city. It's part of the reason our Queens composting program was so successful! https://twitter.com/NYCMayor/status/1610380337011650560

[15] How a Fix-It Guru Spends Her Sundays. Sandra Goldmark can repair a tattered sofa or a broken coffee maker. So many of her neighbours, trapped amid their stuff, are seeking her out.  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/nyregion/how-a-fix-it-guru-spends-her-sundays.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

[iamnotparticularlyproud]

PPB Square: Kink Discovery | @peterparkerbingo

word count: 2.7k rating: mature warnings: none ao3 link: https://bit.ly/3xpiBdx

Summary: Bucky and Peter have been together for a while, but Peter can’t bring himself to talk to his boyfriend about how their sex life is a bit - uh, well, boring. Instead, Peter searches Bucky’s laptop while he isn’t home for any sign of kink whatsoever. To say it doesn’t go as he planned would be an understatement.

Bucky’s amazing. So, so amazing, and Peter could go on about it for days - about his silly nicknames, the way he makes the Brooklyn drawl sound adorable, his unexpected dorkiness and razor sharp wit, how his hands are so calloused but he holds Peter so softly--

Days, Peter could come up with these for days. 

So, it’s not like there’s anything he wishes he could change about their relationship. It’s - they’re - perfect, everything’s been perfect. Bucky’s just so nice, and after Beck, Peter wasn’t sure he’d ever be in a relationship again, let alone one so - so good. So healthy, and so supportive. 

It’s just--

Their sex is so vanilla. Painfully vanilla. The most unconventional Bucky gets is with his dirty talk, and, yeah, Peter loves how his boyfriend will call him his sweet lil boy, and tell Peter how good he takes a thick cock in his tight ass, but that's about as far as Bucky ever goes. 

And that - that isn’t a bad thing, Peter knows that, it’s just. Boring, sometimes, is all.

Peter wishes he could talk to Bucky about it, because the man always stresses communication and talking problems out, but it’s just so embarrassing. Peter’s just thinking about it and he’s flushed, so how could he say the word kink out loud? 

He can’t. He really, really can’t.

So Peter does the only other thing he can think to do.

He steals Bucky’s laptop and rummages for any signs of kink - anything to suggest his boyfriend isn’t as vanilla as it seems. Peter knows he doesn’t have long - Bucky’s out getting takeout from their favorite Thai place, and it isn’t too far - so he doesn’t waste time as he searches all the keywords he can think of in Bucky’s unorganized folders, his internet history that’s never been cleared, the hard drive Peter got him because he complained about memory but Peter was 99% sure he never touched - he was right - and then tries his luck with the recycle bin, but--

There’s not just no sign of kink.

There’s nothing. There’s no porn at all.

Peter’s mind is blown. He hadn’t even considered that he wouldn’t find porn, he thought that everyone watched porn - and unless Bucky knew how to delete specific pages from his browser history, which Peter heavily doubts, because, c'mon - but apparently, Bucky doesn’t.

He considers that, maybe, since Bucky is nearly a decade older than him, he consumes his porn in a different way. Maybe physical movies or, godforbid, magazines.

Peter’s considering looking through Bucky’s drawers and closets until he finds proof of pornography consumption, but then someone’s clearing their throat behind him.

“Jesus, how do you--” Peter exclaims, because it’s nowhere near the first time this six foot hunk of a man has snuck up on him. Then, he glances at the clunky computer in his lap that is obviously not his, and back at Bucky, who’s looking at the laptop, and then at Peter.

“What’re you doin’ with my computer?”

Peter panics, not because Bucky seems upset, because he doesn’t, just - confused, but it’s such a weird thing to be doing, and he can’t lie at all, and this isn’t--

“Does that say porn?” Bucky asks, suddenly leaning over Peter’s shoulder, and he just sounds amused, but Peter goes on the defensive anyway.

“I-It’s just, you never, and I - this isn’t me wanting you to change, or--”

Bucky moves quickly when Peter starts that familiar stress-ramble; he circles around the couch, puts the plastic bag filled with food down on the coffee table and sits next to him, wrapping an arm around his back and shushing him kindly.

“Slow down, doll.” Bucky smiles, sincerity etched in his crow’s feet, “Can’t understand you when you’re talkin’ too fast, remember?”

Peter stops. He nods, then he takes a breath. When he lets it go, Bucky tells him to take a deeper one, so he does, and as he breathes it out, he feels the alarm fade.

Not completely, though. Not with the evidence of his snooping in his lap.

With a glance back at where porn is still typed out in the recycle bin’s search bar and a chuckle, Bucky asks, almost laughing, “What were you doin’, sweetheart?” 

Peter doesn’t expect it, but the fight drains from his body. It’s him accepting his fate, he realizes belatedly.

“I, uh,” Peter pauses, because it’s still so difficult to say the words, “was looking for porn.”

Bucky laughs for real this time, and Peter closes his eyes with a sigh. That wasn’t what he meant to say, at all.

“No - I was looking for y-your porn, like, what you watch,” Peter explains, and Bucky is still laughing, but he waves a hand.

“Yeah, I got that.” He says, making an effort to curb his laughter, “Why, though?”

Peter bites his lip. "Do you watch porn?”

He was scared that meeting Bucky’s question with a question would frustrate the man, but he only looks more amused.

“Why would I?”

Huh?

“What?”

“Why would I watch porn?” Bucky sounds genuinely confused, “We have sex almost everyday.”

Almost, Peter nearly stresses, but catches himself. Obviously, he’s dramatically misread the situation. 

“Y-Yeah, but,” Peter tries to come up with something, anything, “like, maybe, before we dated?”

“I know it’s kinda old, but I got the thing not too long before we met, actually.”

That bit of information also sends Peter reeling, and he almost argues about it - because the laptop isn’t 'kinda old,' it’s ancient - but Bucky speaks before he does.

“Were you lookin’ for the kinda porn I’m into?”

Peter nearly sags with relief. How does he always manage to get it before Peter has to explain? 

“Yeah.”

Bucky’s smile shifts, and it’s - he likes that, Peter notices, and, it’s - it's sexual.

“What, did you wanna tease me?” Bucky licks his lips, “Rile me up?”

Oh. That works, and it’s pretty true, even. Peter can work with that.

He nods. Bucky continues, and he looks so pleased.

“It’s you, sugar,” Bucky brings his hand to Peter’s cheek, and his hold is so gentle, but the calluses are rough, and it’s such a satisfying dichotomy that Peter can’t help but lean into it, “You get me wild.”

If only. Peter’s never seen him be wild. 

But he couldn’t say that. Not when Bucky sounds like he absolutely means it, and it makes Peter’s heart flutter.

Peter has been a bit weird lately. 

Well, Peter is always a bit weird, but it’s a part of his charm. He’s been acting extra weird lately, Bucky’s noticed, and while it’s just as endearing, it’s confusing, too.

He almost calls Peter out on it after he’s found him searching for porn on his computer - more than he had already, anyway - but he just gets so tense when Bucky tries to make him really talk about something. He doesn’t want to bring up that energy - not so late, anyway. 

So Bucky plans to talk to him about it tomorrow.

And Peter thwarts that plan as soon as they wake up. Usually, he’s eager to spend the last day of their shared weekend off together, but before they’ve even had their coffee, Peter’s rushing out the door with the excuse of meeting up with his college friends at a cafe. Not too long later he texted they were going to do an impromptu study group for an upcoming quiz, then, after five hours, texted him they were going to hang out more.  

Bucky tries not to be suspicious of or retaliatory to Peter even more than he’s learned to be with his partners, because the kid’s not had a great track record with boyfriends, to say the least, but this is ridiculous. When he’s been gone for a whole seven hours, under the guise of shoddy excuses, Bucky decides his curiosity needs to be sated more than Peter needs to be coddled, and his new plan is to snoop into Peter’s computer like the kid tried with him. Obviously, if he assumed Bucky would have porn on his laptop, Peter’s got some on his. 

Bucky doesn’t plan to look until Peter texts that he’s on his way home, though. He thinks it’ll be funny if the kid finds himself where Bucky stood last night.

So, after Peter texted that he’s omw, Bucky pulls out his computer. It’s so sleek, thin and light, yet wide, and he hates using it, but he’s dying to know. How much porn could Peter possibly watch, considering how much they have sex, and how busy he’s kept as a student and part-time employee?

Not very much, Bucky assumes.

And holy fuck is he wrong.

He takes a wild guess and searches porn in the convenient - but too bulky, and ugly - search engine in the toolbar, and a stupidly obviously labeled folder, not porn don’t look, comes right up. There’s several subfolders - distinguishing the videos by kink, dear God - and dozens of videos in most of them, over a hundred in a few.

What the fuck.

Bucky’s surprised - Jesus Christ, so surprised - at so many things, but - where the fuck does Peter find the time to watch so much porn? What does it mean that he’s amassed such a collection? How has Bucky never walked in on him watching it? Is there a way to see how many hours of it there are, because it’s a stupidly high amount, definitely--

Bucky takes a breath. He leans back, too, because the little previews are too much to look at, and he takes a moment to appreciate just how understandable it was that Peter was so confused yesterday. It must be unthinkable, to not watch porn, to him. But - Peter’s never even mentioned porn before, not in the half-a-year they’ve been dating, so what was so different about yesterday?

The question has Bucky sitting back up, ready to delve deeper. He starts by reading the names of the folders closer, finding it’s not just organized by kink, but by his favorite pornstars, too. The kid’s got several, all with typical pornstar names, and according to the previews, he’s got a type for big and buff. Checks out.

With another deep, grounding breath, Bucky clicks on the folder name Ultimate Favorites. It’s only got thirteen videos in it, but all the titles are a fuckin’ doozy. It’s shit like Small Twink Fucked Hard, and Daddy Pounds His Boy Until He Cries, and - Jesus fuck - Dom Verbally Abuses Sub While Anally Abusing Him. 

Bucky’s nauseous just reading that last one. He never would’ve guessed Peter was into such rough sex. Not just because the kid gets all wide-eyed and stuttery whenever sex is even mentioned, but because Peter’s just so - soft. In all the ways a person can be, really.

Bucky doesn’t know how to reconcile what he knows Peter to be like with this new information about him. He distantly knows that he doesn’t have to - that Peter’s kinks don't reflect anything about his personality, and acting like they do is only reductive - but the instinct is so strong, he can’t help but fruitlessly try.

Before he can reconsider, Bucky’s clicking on one of the more mildly titled videos - not that any of them are mild at all - just to understand better what Peter’s so into. 

The video loads almost immediately, and it doesn’t waste time with any kind of introduction - there’s suddenly two men on the screen, their size difference resembling Bucky and Peter’s to a ridiculous degree, and the larger one pushes the smaller onto a bed carelessly before climbing on top of him. It’s a bunch of shoving and aggressive groping along with cruel words and name calling, and Bucky’s never been more turned off in his life. He can’t believe this porno is among Peter’s favorites - his boyfriend’s never once let on that this is the kind of sex he’s into.

While he’s staring, Bucky’s on screen lookalike finally quitting with the rough teasing and moving onto the brutal fucking, he hears Peter enter his apartment. Bucky doesn’t mute the video, and Peter’s light footsteps stop immediately. Bucky can just see the look on his face - that caught-in-the-headlights one that makes Peter look more like a deer than Bucky thought a person could - and he stifles a laugh as the steps pick back up, this time much more hesitant. When Peter’s a good foot into the living room, Bucky turns around, acting as if he hadn’t heard him coming in.

With the computer filling the room with sounds of slapping and exaggerated moans, Bucky greets, struggling to keep a smirk off his face,  “Hi, honey. How was your day?”

Peter doesn’t answer him and - yep, there’s that look. Instead, he gapes like a fish at where his computer is steadied on Bucky’s lap, eyes wide and frantic.

“Why’d you never mention this, doll?” Bucky asks, dropping the act as Peter keeps looking like disaster is seconds away. He pauses the video and sets the laptop to the side, motioning for Peter to join him on the couch.

Peter does join him, albeit uncertain and his eyes still trained on the graphic image on the computer screen. He’s quiet as he sits as far as he can from Bucky.

“I--” Peter starts, gaze transfixed on the laptop. “Can you - close that?”

Bucky does. Peter keeps looking at it.

“You okay?” Bucky asks, chuckling.

Peter finally looks at him. He seems scared, Bucky realizes. He closes a bit of the distance between them, leaving some incase Peter feels suffocated, and puts a hand on the back of his neck, a touch Peter always leans into.

He does this time, too. He relaxes some, and Bucky prompts, “Were you scared to tell me?”

Peter relaxes even more, his shoulders falling. He nods. “I know you probably don’t care--”

Bucky interrupts to confirm with a nod of his own, “I don’t.”

“But it’s just--” Peter huffs, eyebrows furrowing, “Embarrassing.”

Bucky nods more. “It doesn’t change how I think about you.” He reassures Peter, “At all.”

“That's good.” Peter breathes, and Bucky can’t help but laugh softly. “I was starting to think it would gross you out.”

It kinda does, but Bucky doesn’t say that. It isn’t important how the porn he’s into makes Bucky feel. 

“No, baby. It doesn’t.”

Peter leans into his side, and Bucky shifts to embrace him. Silence attempts to settle around them, but Bucky can’t help his need to tease.

“So… where’d you find the time to make such a collection?” 

Peter cringes. “I, uh, started it years ago.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows. He doesn’t know why he didn’t assume that - it’s a seriously massive collection - but thinking of how far back years suggests, and how Peter is just twenty-two, he can’t help but ask for clarification.

“How many years you talkin’?”

“Uhh…” Peter trails off, seeming to really think about it. Bucky can see the moment he finds the answer, and his expression closes.  “...several.”

Bucky decides to wager a guess. He doesn’t really know why he wants to know this answer, but he thinks it might help him understand just how into kink Peter is.

“Sixteen?”

Peter whines. “Jamie.”

Bucky’s eyes widen. “Fifteen?”

Peter pulls away a bit to cover his face with his hands, and he whines unintelligibly this time.

“Christ, it wasn’t younger than thirteen, was it?”

Peter shakes his head. “N-No, I--” His words are muffled by his palms,  “I was fourteen.”

Bucky breathes a sigh of relief. Peter can’t lie for shit, so Bucky can tell he isn’t just appeasing him. 

Then it hits him just how long Peter’s been fantasizing about this kind of sex.

“You’re really into this stuff, huh?”

Peter burrows further into his hands. Bucky rubs his back, and considers his next words carefully.

“If you want, we could explore some of the tamer stuff you have in there.” 

Peter drops his hands from his face and he looks excited for all of two seconds. Then, his expression falls. “None of it’s… tame. I mean, I guess--” Peter cuts himself off to cough, wincing as he tries to get the words out, “uh, im-impact play isn’t, you know, hardcore, I guess.”

“Spanking and stuff?”

“...and stuff.” Peter says with a flush. 

“We’ll start with spanking,” Bucky laughs, adding just in case, “if you want to.”

But it wasn’t necessary, because Peter brightens immediately. 

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.” 

Peter smiles wide, and Bucky can’t help but return it with one of his own.

[slippinmickeys]

Five Seconds (6/8)

If you’d like to read this on AO3, go here. 

October 21, 2018

It had been years since he'd had to employ tradecraft. Mulder pulled to the curb one block over and two blocks up from Darlene's. He triple checked that his Glock was loaded and dashed across the lawn of the house he'd parked in front of, running past the house and through the backyard, vaulting over a low fence and into another backyard. A black and white cocker spaniel came running at him, angrily barking, but lost its nerve when it got within biting range, opting to jog alongside Mulder as he ran through the yard and then down a sidewalk, eventually losing the dog as it reached the end of its invisible fence.

He slowed as he got to Darlene's block, scanning the street for any sign of an idling car, a criminal, an accomplice. He saw nothing but Scully's car -- the one Lily had lately been borrowing -- parked in Darlene's driveway, the hood still warm.

He was quietly approaching the side yard when a shot rang out, and then another.

Heart in his throat, Mulder vaulted over the small railing that bordered Darlene's small patio and skidded to stop in front of her sliding glass door which had been left open, the curtains fluttering outside on the breeze. He moved on tiptoes, waiting until the curtain blew away from the doorway, showing him a clear view into the house. He saw nothing. He entered, gun-first, his breath coming in adrenaline-laced gasps.

He heard a shuffle from further inside the house, then a low female curse.  

When he quiet-stepped his way past the kitchen counter and looked into the dining room, he saw Darlene slumped against the wall, a hand pressed to a blood-soaked shoulder. The arm that had been shot hung limply at her side, her fingers still curled loosely around the handle of a pistol. Her brow was pale, laced with sweat. They made eye contact.

Darlene held up a blood-soaked finger. One. "In the bedroom," she mouthed, and he nodded at her, moving cat-like on rubber-soled shoes, wishing he could feel the snub-nosed steel of Scully's Sig backing him up.

He could practically feel the movement on the other end of the hallway, the air tense as an execution chamber, the whispered rustling of clothing, the sharp smell of cordite still hanging in the air.

When he finally got to the bedroom doorway at the end of the hall, it took him a second to see the man in the room, crouched down next to the bed, the gun hidden behind his back.

"Come on out of there, princess," the man said, softly, like he was coaxing a hissing cat.

Mulder felt a blaze of red-hot anger, a parental rage so acute it felt like a tuning fork had pinged off his bones.

"Hey," he said, more of a hiss than a word, and the man's eyes went wide and his gun swung up just as Mulder fired, three times center-mass. The man fell back on a spray of blood.

Mulder threw himself to the floor on the other side of the bed.

"Lil, it's Dad," he said, "Look at me."

Lily was prone under the queen-sized bed, face-down on the other side, but she was looking at Mulder, wide-eyed, but apparently unhurt.

"Are you injured?" he asked calmly.

She gave a quick shake of her head and licked her lips, and Mulder could see that she was about to turn to look at what was left of her attacker.

"Come this way, baby," he said, holding out a hand to her while she shimmied slowly toward him. When she finally reached him, her hands were like ice. He pulled her the rest of the way out and onto her feet, where she stood, dazed, touching her hair and getting her bearings. He moved his body in between her and the dead man on the floor on the other side of the bed, ushering her quickly out of the room and down the hallway.

When they got to the dining room, Darlene was breathing quickly but was still conscious, and she tossed a keychain at Mulder, which he caught one handed. There was a smear of blood on the ring, which he wiped on his shirt.

"Silver CR-V, two blocks east," Darlene wheezed, "don't stop for anything."

Mulder, not heeding her advice, stopped by where the phone hung on her kitchen wall and dialed 911, stretching the cord as long as it would go and pressing it into Darlene’s hand. He pressed his gun into the other and kissed her cheek.

“Thank you,” he said seriously, then grabbed a shocky Lily by the hand, pulled her through the theater-curtain of the breezy drapery and out into the daylight.

XxXxXxXxXxX

They'd had go-bags packed as a matter of course -- Scully had thrown them into the back of the CR-V in the parking lot of the defunct Family Video where Mulder told she and Will to meet them.

He’d leaned over and thrown open her door for her as Will swung into the backseat. He was driving before she’d even buckled her seatbelt.

“Plan C?” Scully asked. Mulder had been checking the rearview mirror more than he was checking the road. He nodded once, curtly. “We should head East,” she went on. “If they’re tracking our phones, let’s let them think they know where we’re going before we lose them.”

“On it,” Mulder said, merging onto the highway.  

After a few miles, the tension in the car eased slightly.

"Hey Dad?" said Will from the back seat. Mulder looked in the rear view mirror and connected eyes with his son. "What about the cats?" the boy asked.

Mulder thunked his head back against the head rest. "We'll figure it out, bud."

"Travis could probably do it," Lily volunteered shyly.

"How do we know Travis wasn't the one who tipped them off to our location?" Mulder asked, barely keeping a rein on his anger and fear.

"Mulder," Scully admonished quietly from beside him. She peered back at their daughter who had tears in her eyes.

"Because it was me," Lily quietly, whose face then crumpled.

Mulder slammed on the brakes and pulled the car over hard to the shoulder of the highway, gravel and dirt spitting out from under the tires. The cars that had been behind them honked liberally as they flew by. He craned his neck back at his daughter before the car had stopped moving.

"What?!" he said.

"I -- I," she started, then took a deep breath and continued, "I did a search in a university computer lab a few days ago. Then someone started following me. I lost him-"

Mulder and Scully both interrupted her at the same time.

"-What did you search-" "-And you didn't tell us-"

She looked between the two of them, clearly trying to figure out who to answer first. Finally, to Scully she said, "I wasn't even really sure he was following me. And I didn't want to scare anyone. I did what you taught me to do -- I shook him and then I went to Darlene. I didn't want to lead him home." Scully reached back and put her hand over her daughter’s, who clutched back at her desperately. "And now Darlene might be dead!"

"I think Darlene is going to be okay, Lily," Mulder said. She would have reached out to the Gunmen first thing, who would have sent someone in to protect her. “I called 911 -- she was shot in the shoulder --" he looked to Scully, passing off the conversational baton.

"Was she conscious when you left her?" Scully asked. Lily nodded, sniffing. "Shoulder gunshot wounds are easily survivable. I'm sure she'll be okay,” Scully ‘finished, sounding more sure than she felt.

Mulder took a deep breath, gripping the steering wheel like a vice.

"Lily, what did you search?" he finally asked, his voice as calm as he could make it.

The girl sniffed again and looked up. "You," she simply said, looking at her father.

Scully looked at Mulder and could feel his heart breaking for his daughter from where he sat. He sighed heavily.

“Pass up your phones,” he finally said, “everybody.”

The kids complied, handing over their phones to their mother. Mulder looked at Scully, then signaled and pulled back on the expressway when there was an opening.  “Can you pop the SIMs?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Good,” he said. “Think you can make a Faraday bag, Scully?”

“What’s a Faraday bag?” Will asked.

Scully was studying the phones, looking for the SIM trays on the side of each device. “It’s an enclosure used to block electromagnetic fields,” she said without looking up.

She looked to Mulder and smiled briefly. “I’ll only need a few supplies.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

Mulder pulled the ball cap low over his face and donned a pair of sunglasses. While the car was filling up, he went inside the gas station and grabbed a small shopping basket, filling it up with junk food and bottles of water, aluminum foil from the small kitchen section, batteries. On his way to the register, keeping his face down to avoid the cameras, he grabbed one large foil-lined bag of potato chips and plunked them all on the counter, paying for the lot in cash. He muttered a thank you as the cashier handed him the plastic bag of loot, and he whisked through the door of the station, pulling out the large bag of chips as he made his way back to the silver CR-V. He wordlessly handed Scully all the food but the chips as she was resecuring the gas nozzle and closing the car's gas hatch. Mulder tore open the bag of chips, dumped the contents in the waste bin next to the gas pump and jumped in the car with the empty bag. He pulled out of the gas station so quickly that the tires chirped on the asphalt.

"Mulder," Scully said shakily, a warning: calm down.  

Three miles later on Southbound I-69, he pulled illegally into a utility pass-through. He reached into his pocket for his cell phone, and handed it to his wife.  

“Last one?” he asked, and she nodded. She had the other three phones up on the dash, their SIM cards already removed.

She went through the supplies he’d gotten at the gas station and looked critically at the empty potato chip bag.

“Do you have what you need?”

She nodded. Five minutes later, her work complete, she looked up.

“Done,” she said.

He took the bag from her, dropped the phones inside and shoved it into the console. They turned north.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Mulder pulled the CR-V to a stop when a sapling in the middle of the two-track made further driving impossible.

"End of the road, guys," he said, and cut the engine. "Get your bags out of the back," he said to his children, "Will, I want you to carry your mom's."

"'Kay," said his son, and made his way to the trunk.

Lily had been quiet for hours. He moved around the car to help Scully out and she gave him a look. Give her something to do . He nodded.

He pulled the handwritten map that Lauren had given him out of his back pocket and handed it to his daughter. "I'm going to stick with your mom," he told her, "see if you can suss out this map."

Lily nodded and looked around to orient herself. When he came back to Scully's side, she gripped his arm and took a bracing breath. Alarmed, he bent his knees to try to look into her eyes.

"Scully?" he said, trying to keep the worry out of his voice, "you okay?"

She nodded after a moment and gave him a toothless smile.

"Just… feeling heavy today," she said.

Moments later, Lily led the way and he lifted a low hanging hemlock branch for his wife to pass beneath. He tried not to think too much about how slowly she moved through the duff.

XxX

When they broke through the clearing, the autumn light was waning, and the shadows lay long upon the ground. They were all of them covered from the knee down with burrs and leaf detritus, and though the cabin looked low and shabby and damp, it did offer the eyes a break from the monotony of forest, and for that it was a welcome sight.

It was a small structure, the original part of it a log cabin hewn from large hardwoods, with an addition on the south side of what looked like a combination of particle board and tin that had been at one time painted red. The corners of the addition -- held up by several two-by-fours nailed together -- did appear to have been chewed on at shoulder height, supporting Lauren's handyman's assertion that moose had been here.

Above the door of the main cabin, which was secured with a latch and rusted padlock, was nailed a grey and weathered sign, hand carved with "Camp Hi-Early."

"Come on guys," he said, taking Scully by the elbow and digging his other hand deep into his pockets to pull out the key Lauren had given him months back in a polished high rise in DC. It felt like a lifetime and another world ago.

It took several tries with the key before he was able to unhinge the creaking lock, and he then had to drive a shoulder hard into the door, where the wood had expanded in the damp and stuck to the doorframe. It knocked back into the interior wall and he finally stumbled inside.

It was dark and smelled of old mold layered with the pungent brine of red cedar — the wood of which was frequently used in construction to ward off vermin. Mulder hoped it had worked. The floor was an old grey linoleum scattered with grit and bits of leaves which had blown in from the small crack at the base of the door. To the right of the doorway stood a tall newer looking gas can which Mulder found was nearly topped off when he bent down to pick it up. Next to it was a long black Maglight which he handed to Scully. He held up the gas can as she stepped into the cabin, her face one of skeptical distaste.

"I'm going to go fire up the genny," he said, as she clicked on the flashlight and shone it into the cabin's dark corners.

The generator, out back on the far end of the cabin near the outhouse, rested on a sturdy-looking wooden platform, and appeared to have been serviced at least somewhat recently. He was more than a little relieved when it started after only three tries.

When he came back into the cabin a moment or two later, Scully already had the overhead lights switched on, and was having the kids pull tarps and coverings off of the bunks in the cabin's addition. She was standing in front of a cedar cabinet, cautiously sniffing at several wool blankets that were folded within it.

"There are some mice droppings," she said, nodding toward the interior of the space, "but it's not bad. Needs to be swept and given a good scrubbing, but I think we'll survive."

Mulder nodded at her and eyed the pot bellied stove that took up most of one corner. There was a chill and it lent the cabin a dank, depressing air. The sooner they got the place warm, the better.

"There's a woodpile out back," he said, "see if you can get the kids to bring in a few armfuls."

She nodded brusquely and then braced her hand against the cabinet for a moment.

"I'm fine, Mulder," she said when she sensed his concerned gaze. "It's nothing."

When she appeared to move about normally, Mulder peered around the cabin as the kids headed out for the wood pile. The walls were mostly bare, but for a handful of cheap Kmart picture frames with fuzzy black and white stills of men dressed in flannel and Stormy Kromers standing next to the rigor-stiff remains of various woodland creatures. There were several mounted deer heads, most looking glassy-eyed and mangey, but for one 12-pointer on the far wall who had a dusty, archaic looking rifle balancing on his impressive rack. In the kitchen, on the wall above the yellowed, bowing countertop hung one color picture -- the patina of the paper suggested it had been developed sometime in the mid to late 70's -- of Clio with her arm around the shoulder of a raven-haired, gap-toothed child, who Mulder instantly knew to be Lauren, whose hand was resting around the barrel of a rifle that was taller than she was. It looked to be the same firearm decorating the taxidermy.

Scully gave a sniff from over his shoulder and he turned to see her looking at the piece.

"Think it still shoots?" she asked.

The thing probably hadn't been cleaned in thirty years, inside or out.

"Think I'll stick with your Sig," he replied. Though his wife had better marksmanship, she'd handed over her service weapon when they'd arrived, deferring to his instincts and the fact that he was currently more fleet of foot. Mulder had left his own weapon at the scene at Darlene's, pressing it into her hand with a quick kiss to her cheek and an inadequate thanks.

He had carried in not only his own pack of clothes and toiletries, but also the meager supplies that they'd picked up in a small IGA outside of St. Ignace, just over the bridge to the Upper Peninsula. It was mainly powdered Lipton soups and Ramen, crackers and Gatorade mix; lightweight supplies that were high in calories and easy to store and make with water from the hand pumped well just outside the cabin's door. He kept them in the zipped duffel he'd carried them in and left it on the small counter that served as the cabin's kitchen.

The kitchen itself was meagerly supplied with a couple of old pots and pans, plastic cups with the scratched and faded visage of Bozo the Clown on them. Thin, hand-me-down plates and bowls. A colander. A ceramic pitcher. In the middle of the countertop, in front of a small window was a large porcelain basin that served as the sink, under which, behind a faded gingham curtain sat an old, gummy bottle of Dawn, a gallon of generic white vinegar and an old metal pail.

Reconnaissance completed, it took him several minutes to figure out how to open the flue on the pot bellied stove and he built a small fire, hoping nothing had built a nest or somehow otherwise stopped up the small metal chimney. When it seemed to draw okay, he added more wood -- which was well seasoned and fairly dry, considering -- until he had a roaring fire. The wood popped and crackled as it burned, cheerful.

XxX

“The seat in the outhouse is fucking freezing,” Lily said as she came in the doorway.

Dawn had barely broken and the light outside the cabin was cold and gray. It had been a long night. The woods surrounding the cabin weren’t quiet, and everyone was jumpy, having slept fitfully on the creaking twin beds in the bunk room.

Mulder looked to Scully, who normally would have at the very least leveled a firm look at their daughter for language, but Scully merely sat there, and when she caught him looking at her, said:

“It is, though.”

By noon, cabin fever had set in. They’d played Hearts with a deck of cards Scully had found in the kitchen with a Joker sitting in for a missing five of spades. They’d eaten lunch. Mulder had massaged Scully’s lower back when she complained of pain. The minutes passed like hours.

By the time it was early afternoon, Will had found a long stick in the trees near the cabin, the end curved like a hockey stick, which he was using to hit pinecones into the side of the structure, each tatty thud further fraying already scattered and jumpy nerves. Mulder finally had to go outside and tell him to find two saplings to aim through because one more thunk into the wall outside where the rest of the family sat and Lily was likely to try to break the stick over her knee and impale him with it, and as far as Mulder and Scully were concerned, no jury would convict her.

Boredom was getting the better of them. Will sat on a bed in the bunk room, running the improvised hockey stick round and round though his fingers in a circle on the floor. Scully fitfully napped, Lily sulked and cracked her knuckles. Even Mulder felt the occasional pang for the dopamine hit of a checked handheld screen.

Mulder stood.

"I'm going to run out to the road," he said, "try to check in with the guys."

Scully, who was laying on her side on a cot that Mulder had pulled closer to the potbellied fireplace just for another place to sit, opened her eyes.

"Are you sure that's wise?" she asked.

"I'm sure the guys have buried the signals on our phones by now," he said. "And I should check in with Lauren -- it's been a while."

"Be careful, Mulder," Scully said, and gave him a significant look.

He nodded, looking at her a long moment before looking away.

Scully had dark smudges under her eyes -- she had slept worse than anyone, the old mattresses dipping her abundant hips into uncomfortable positions. She had reached the stage of pregnancy where everything was swollen and sore. Mulder couldn't think of a more miserable situation for her, his chest clutching in sympathy.

"Can I come?" Will piped up suddenly from where he sat.

"Me, too?" asked Lily, who was looking wan and morose from the small dining table in the corner.

"I want one of you to stay with your Mom," Mulder said, looking at Will when he said it, who got the message and smiled sweetly at his mother.

"I'll stay," he volunteered.

Lily shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans as she rose and shuffled to the door. Once they were outside, she turned to him, but didn't make eye contact.

"Lil," he said, anticipating what she was about to say, "we'll check on Darlene."

His daughter pulled her lips into her mouth and nodded, sniffing once.

XxX

Mulder pulled the phone out of their improvised Faraday bag and stood on the side of the road, turning it on on a surge of adrenaline. The guys would have known to scrub the phones and whatever voodoo that was needed so that they couldn’t be traced, but he still felt anxiety. Lily stood beside him, hugging her arms around herself. It was October and cold, and she was only wearing a long sleeved tee shirt.

Once the phone was booted, he looked at the screen. There was hardly a signal, which he supposed wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. He walked up and down the road a few paces to see if the signal got any better, but it only ever got worse, losing bars completely. Finally, he stopped and dialed the number for the Gunmen that he’d memorized for emergencies. There was a click after only one ring, and then a buzzing sound. Finally, he heard Langly’s voice, though it was garbled from the bad signal.

“Talk to me,” Langly said.

“Are we clear?” he asked.

The first few words of Langly’s answer were cut off. “--s okay, you’re good. Do not relay your loca--” he was cut off again.

“What’s the status of Melvin’s sister?” he asked, cutting his eyes to Lily.

“--going to be okay.”

He nodded at Lily and gave her a reassuring smile, at which point Lily visibly relaxed.

“Ears to the ground,” Mulder said, “what are they hearing?”

“--put -- unconfir -- danger. If you -- wife -- do not --”

The call dropped. Frustrated, Mulder squeezed the phone in his hand and walked further up the road, his daughter tailing him like a puppy. He tried a further three times to connect back to the Gunmen without success. He was about to turn off the phone again when he realized that he owed Lauren a check in. He decided to try to text her instead, hoping it would go through.

Plan C, he wrote, FM. He pressed send. The phone’s ‘sending’ message shone for at least thirty seconds when he thought he heard the approach of a car over the rise to the west. He quickly shut off the phone and threw it back into the potato chip bag, grabbed Lily’s elbow and they darted into the trees lining the road.

A minute later a truck roared past, pulling a trailer nattily painted in homemade camouflage.

“Dad?” Lily whispered from where she was crouched next to him when the truck was long gone.

“It’s fine,” Mulder said, standing. Lily rose next to him. “Lots of sportsmen up here. It’s almost hunting season.”

They trudged along the two-track as they headed back to the cabin and Mulder put the bag with the phones back into the glove box as they passed the car. Before they left it, Mulder asked Lily to help him cover up the reflective lights and license plate with brush. That finished, they walked on in silence.

They weren’t far from the cabin when he finally spoke.

“You know none of this is your fault, right?”

"What?" she asked, as though she didn't hear him.

He stopped walking and so did she, looking at him in question.

"None of this is your fault, Lily."

"I don't-"

"Lily."

Realization started to dawn on her and he saw tears form in her eyes.

He said it again: "None of this is your fault, Lily. Darlene, being at this cabin, none of it. Your mother and I don't blame you, and no matter what happens, we never will. None of this. Is. Your. Fault."

With that, tears fell from her eyes and she launched herself at her father, pressing her head into his chest and squeezing him around the middle tightly. "It's okay," he whispered into her hair, brushing it back from her forehead. Her breath hissed out from her as though from a release valve. He held her for a very long time.

[cbairdash]

Bear with me, I just reblog the occasional funny thing here and there so this will be difficult.

My cat of 15 years is... was a funny, smart companion. He learned to bark like a dog, fetch and play all sorts of games. He was there for me in bad times and the good.

He was diagnosed with large cell lymphoma in Nov 2019. It progressed rapidly.

I want to say this now ... please DO NOT send me ANYTHING related to the rainbow bridge. That... poem makes me extremely uncomfortable and has the opposite effect on me that it does for other people. Of any wish I have, I would like to ask people to honor that one. No rainbow bridge things.

If you meet me in person, please don't mention anything about this. Just let me be quiet with my memories and let the day continue on.

You see, I've been a caregiver in various forms for more than one person/living being/living soul with cancer. You could say I've been around that block way more than once. It's a hellish disease that wastes a victim away. It eats the victim from the inside out. So, I'd rather not talk about the end.

Instead, I'd rather talk about the beginning.

He didn't come from the pound or anything like that. I rescued him you see. Fourteen / fifteen years ago, I was driving home from work. It was a busy afternoon driving on Old Monrovia Road after work when I saw this tiny ... so tiny ... kitten sitting on the curb crying and was alone.

Naturally, I stopped immediately.

I pulled over to a gas station yards away and got out. The grass was dry but the air was a bit moist. Work had been hard that day but the day itself was still nice. Full of promise. I knelt and said, "Hey there. That's no place for you."

He looked at me, tilted his head to the right and meeped at me. Then he trotted over, tail high whiskers out and almost bouncing. The little guy was no larger than my open hand with a little space left over. That was when I had noticed he had scuff marks on his muzzle and nose. I confirmed this with the vet later but someone had tossed this barely eight-week-old kitten out to the side of the road and drove away.

So I took him in. I named him Mifune ( pronounced Mee-Foon-ay ) after Toshiro Mifune, a Japanese actor who's work I always admired.

Mifune spent his formative kitten years with two half-border collie, half-St Bernard dogs that *adored* him. He adored them right back, and the two other cats at the house at the time.

From the dogs, he learned to bark. Yes, actually bark. The tone and pitch were perfect to match a puppy. It shocked the vet once when he did that during a doctor visit. He learned to play actual fetch and it was his favorite game. The little guy had no actual favorite foods, they changed all the time. From the other cats, he learned how to "cat" which was always at odds with his "being a dog".

The only thing he found was a 'favorite' was a tiny beat-up cat toy shaped like a skunk and spending time with me. It didn't matter what. If I was cooking, he wanted to see what I was cooking. After I would pick him up and show him what I was cooking, he would be satisfied and go walk away to look out the door. He never actually wanted to taste it, just see.

Of food he shouldn't eat, well that was dry dog food.

Great lengths were taken to get him to not get into the dog food. Once the food was placed in a tall Tupperware bin with a lid. I get up one morning ... there he was ... the bin lid was open and he was face down, butt up in the air with the back legs on the Tupperware rim.

He was steadily eating at kibble bits that were 1/3 the side of this head a the time. Oh, how I wish I'd had a camera at that moment.

Mifune loved riding on my shoulders. It was another of his favorite things. He'd wrap his tail around me for support, balance and off we'd go. Upstairs, down or wherever. He saw the world from my shoulders.

I have kept him safe, he has kept me on an even keel. We kept each other happy.

...

I suppose I'll end with something simple.

"What's loved, lives" Diane Duane once wrote ( thank you @dianeduane )

There is power in those words and a lot of truth.

...

What’s loved, lives ...

[dopescotlandwarrior]

Sinners & Saints-Chapter 3

                       A special thank you to @statell​ the best beta ever

Previous chapters at AO3

Chapter Three

Claire strained to get the bodysuit up her arm and over her shoulder. She had been at this for thirty minutes and had one more arm to go. She felt sweat roll down from her temple and grunted the rest of the way into the bodysuit that instantly made her morbidly obese. She pulled her fat clothes on and stuffed her hair into a shag wig that layered hair against her cheeks and forehead. Blue contacts were centered in her eyes and she was ready.

Jamie addressed his team at breakfast, giving last-minute positions and handing out the castle floor plan.

“There is a ten thousand pound bonus to the man that catches Casper in the act. Let me know where he is and stay with him. I only need three minutes with the man then you can arrest him. He has this coming.”

Claire came in through the air shaft and looked through the grate . It appeared to be someone’s office and it was empty. She popped the grate off, preventing it from bouncing on the hardwood floor. Cracking the door, she rushed out when the hall was empty and joined the other handlers unpacking the treasures. The statue was a foot away from where she was working and when she scooted her bulky body around the display, blocking the camera, the statue disappeared for just a moment, and then it was back. It was time to go.

She told her partner, “I gotta take a shit, right back.” When she walked briskly around the corner, she felt the air get sucked out of her lungs and instantly changed direction. James Fraser was walking directly for her, fortunately with his head down. She needed to get out of the castle before someone recognized the statue was a fake. She started running from room to room looking for a way out. She ran through a kitchen and saw a delivery truck behind the castle and the door standing open. She leaned forward to make a run for the door but jumped back into a pantry when Jamie’s voice was coming toward her. Struggling to quiet her breathing she could see his outline through the vent in the door. He was less than a foot away and she could smell his aftershave. Jamie spoke into his walkie and assembled his team in the exhibit hall.

Jamie looked down at one of the handlers.

“The fat girl said she was going to the lu and never came back. I didn’t see her scan out. Just letting you know.”

Jamie and his men spread out and searched the castle for a fat girl looking for a bathroom. This waste of time was irritating. He wasn’t here to manage the handlers or look for a girl with a gastric issue today. His walkie crackled.

“Ah, we have an issue in the exhibit. One of the pieces has been replaced with a fake.”

Once Jamie was out of the kitchen, Claire made a run for the door praying she wouldn’t be seen and pushed her long legs as fast as they would go. She headed for the woods and cover, trying to get her direction so she could find her car.

People in the castle were shouting and running outside to look in every direction and then back in. They discovered the fake statue and if she didn’t get very lucky in the next few minutes Jamie Fraser would finally catch Casper. She said a Hail Mary and chose a direction. Five minutes later she ran right into her rental car.

“Christ almighty, thank God.” The little green bug was pushed to its limit and came bursting out of the woods at the bottom of the hill the castle was built on. It was dangerous and terrifying to race the little car through the woods, but she would not be seen getting back on the road this way. Claire was panting from fear and heat as she flew down the road in her rented bug. She parked behind the hotel and took the service elevator to her room, ripping her bodysuit off as she came through the door. She reached into a hollowed-out pocket in the fat abdomen and pulled out the statue. She might have the hounds of hell coming down on her, but she took a minute to admire the ancient artifact before rolling it into lambswool and placing it in a fake two-liter soda bottle.

Claire checked out of the hotel by phone and headed to a toy store to buy an assortment of toddler toys that she ripped open and dropped into her carry-on. The toys would act like a cushion for the statue after she got it through the x-ray scanner. To do that, she wrapped the statue in carbon paper and affixed it to the bottom of her bag. A sheet of Teflon was laid over it and glued down to the case. When the glue was dry she piled the toys on top.

She raced to the airport and dropped off her rental car then headed for the terminal. She had no idea if the X-ray scanner would pick up the gold statue. If it did, she would be caught and her life would be over. She placed her carry on in the bin and waited at the other side almost fainting with relief when it popped out of the scanner and rolled toward her. Her legs could hardly hold her up as she walked away. Sticking her hand in the bag she pulled at the Teflon until it ripped away. The carbon paper was next and she balled the material up and pushed it into a waste receptacle. Now If her bag was inspected, the statue was just another toy.

Claire requested stand-by, first available flight to Paris, and was told to board flight 312. The woman pointed to the gate that was a brisk walk away and Claire boarded gratefully. When the plane lifted into the air, she allowed herself to exhale and relax. She pulled her phone out and sent a text to Javier. ..’Coming for spaghetti dinner, extra meatballs on mine. Landing 1h10m.’

Javier looked at the text and couldn’t believe it. The code was set between them five years ago and never used. Spaghetti dinner meant, I’m in trouble and coming in hot. Extra meatballs meant go dark, get off the grid.

“Gentlemen, cell phones off, batteries out, this is not a drill. Joseph, the Bear lands in forty minutes, find her.”

Claire pounded two shots of whisky and closed her eyes so she could think. What the hell was Jamie Fraser and his team doing at the castle, today of all days. He would not go there unless someone tipped him off and that thought was terrifying. Forty-five minutes of considering every conclusion to this horrific situation and she was coming undone. Were they waiting at the terminal to arrest her? Had Javier already been arrested? She felt the plane descending and saw the green earth beneath them. Hold on to your sanity, she told herself, you’re almost home.

Claire was very protected by Javier. She would hand off the stolen piece to one of his men, usually within the hour of her possession, and leave the country clean. This was the first time she boarded a plane with the evidence that would convict her, and she was completely unnerved by the experience. Someone was assigned to take the statue in Germany, but she didn’t trust anyone at the moment.

Joseph weaved through traffic at the airport and finally saw Claire walking briskly away from the terminal. He pulled up to the curb and she jumped a foot off the walkway. Not a word was spoken during the ride back and Joseph pulled into the lower garage at the mansion so Claire wouldn’t be seen. Javier was waiting for her and pulled her to his office.

Javier waited while Claire caught her breath. “When was your last sweep in here?”

My darling Bear, spaghetti and meatballs is not a dish quickly eaten. One moment, I will get you a cocktail. One of the men came into the office and swept it for bugs, leaving quickly shaking his head no.

“You may speak freely.”

“What are the odds of James Fraser and his team showing up at a German castle for the Pharaoh exhibit, today? With the statue in my possession, I nearly ran right into him. What reason would he have to be there? Why was his whole team at Sotheby’s two months ago?” Claire put her hand up and exhaled loudly. “He ranted from anger when we were stuck in the rubble. He got control of himself but not before saying his black market snitch told him the Rembrandt would be in play.”

Javier waited for Claire to get it all out. He almost lost it when her eyes filled with tears and her chin quivered as she pushed back on her fear.

“Javier, someone close to you is passing information to Jamie, or the police, and he is hearing it from them. All your men know who I am so I must assume James Fraser knows the true identity of Casper. Jesus Christ, the time he spent with me in Paris, why not arrest me right there? He needs to catch me in the act or risk losing his case to good lawyers is why. You have a rat in your house Javier and he nearly cost me the next twenty years of freedom.”

Javier leaned back in his chair with an expression rarely seen. It was murderous.

“It would seem so. Have a bath and some food and rest a bit. It will not be quick to catch this rat so you must be a teacher for a while until I can catch him. Okay?”

Claire nodded and made her way upstairs leaving the statue on Javier’s desk. She was completely exhausted and confused about Jamie Fraser. Had he known her identity from the start? If so, he was very good at hiding his hand, she never suspected a thing. The smell and serenity of her room were the last straw holding her together, so she sank into the familiar covers and cried.

Claire stayed with Javier for a week before she felt brave enough to board a plane to Chicago. She was out of the thieving business for the foreseeable future, possibly a year Javier said. He tried to convince her to quit but she wasn’t ready. On her trip back to Chicago, she considered the fortune she had amassed in real estate, gold, art, and more stock than she could remember. It was more money than she could spend in a lifetime so why risk everything on the next coveted piece? Her eyelids closed and she slept all the way home.

Frank laughed at the jokes and slammed his shot with the others, smiling at his growing euphoria. He looked around the room and saw shadow people in various sexual positions. It was arousing as hell and he absently grabbed his balls.

A gorgeous girl smiled and pulled on his arm, “common big guy, I think you’re ready.”

He was led into a smaller room with a bed and the woman was taking his belt off and pulling out his dick. Throughout the night the girl would morph from an adult to a very young girl and then back again. He didn’t care as long as she kept it up.

For the rest of the weekend, Frank consumed three roofies dropped in his drink, had sex with women, men, boys and girls, and didn’t remember a thing when he stepped off the billionaire’s plane in Washington. This was his fourth trip to the island, and he looked forward to the next.

Later in the year, snow fell heavy in the Highlands and Jamie leaned against the barn and watched the fields turning white, a sight he never tired of. This year, he arrested five burgeoning art thieves, a counterfeiter, and shut down a major black market railway in Europe, but Casper eluded him still. He could not attribute a single theft to Casper in over a year and decided he had gone underground, but for how long? The men who recruited Jamie were putting pressure on him to make an arrest because someone had to be punished. It wasn’t enough that Casper wasn’t stealing art anymore. Jamie had a network of informants that had been full of information at one time and even they were disappearing or just stopped talking. He shook his head in disgust and went into the house to pack for Paris. He would be there for the week, maybe more, to add another five agents to his team. It was his first time back since the explosion as Sotheby's.

Claire walked quickly through the townhouse throwing items in her suitcase while Frank followed her like a complaining puppy. She couldn’t take it anymore and stopped abruptly feeling Frank bump into her back.

“Frank, I have hardly seen you this year. I agreed to the lecture four months ago and a new DaVinci has turned up in a French basement that I have got to examine. I will be home on Christmas day so why don’t you go see your parents while I’m gone?”

God the man was irritating, she stormed in her head. He wanted to direct her every move, dictate her social schedule, and preapprove her trips and lecture schedule. Now he wants a wedding planned for five hundred people. She wasn’t sure she even liked him anymore. The door closed on Frank Randall’s face because he was making her late. Claire was fuming as she finished packing and stormed out of the bedroom saying goodbye like an afterthought.

Claire got in line to check into her hotel and called Javier to say she landed and would see him for dinner. Jamie was completing his transaction in the line next to Claire and walked the other direction to find his room. An hour later Claire walked across the lobby in a short black skirt, black heeled boots and an oversized sweater. She pulled her Maurizio Braschi cashmere coat around her and hailed a cab. She had not been back to Paris since the ill-fated Germany job, her last job, and she was so excited to see Javier.

Jamie sat through a security workshop and pinched his leg to stay awake. His on-again-off-again girlfriend, Laighaire, was bombing his phone, knowing he would be in meetings all day. Such a pretty girl, he thought, but when the holiday parties were over and there were no more gifts to get, she would be off again, looking for a man who was everything Jamie wasn’t, primarily present and accounted for. He smiled wryly and shook his head to wake up.

Joseph drove Claire back to her hotel after dinner and she gushed about the decorations and lights around the city. The minute he pulled away she was back outside to walk around and look at all the decorations. The temperature was a comfortable thirty-two degrees, so she kept walking.

Jamie stumbled out of the workshop bleary-eyed and needing to find some fresh air. He wrapped a scarf around his neck and headed for the door. His taxi dropped him at the hotel, and he headed out for a brisk walk before dinner.

He saw her sitting on a bench, her ponytail was long and rested on her shoulder. Her lips were pink frost and she smiled at the night. Just lovely, he thought. The woman stood and walked toward him, he kept looking until his feet stopped, and he froze. Impossible. As she got closer, Jamie’s smile was like a beacon and she searched his face.

“Jamie Fraser!”

She jumped into his outstretched arms and kissed his cheek. Jamie smelled her neck and had the same happy grin he had the first time. “God, you smell like heaven. Can you walk with me a bit, we need to catch up.”

They walked through Paris arm in arm for the next two hours, and as before, thoroughly enjoyed the company of the other. Claire was trying to get a signal that he knew she was Casper and decided he was a fantastic liar, or he didn’t know. When they had a nightcap in the hotel bar, she looked in his eyes and asked if he had caught Casper yet. All she saw was sincere sadness and he shook his head no.

“No, lass. Casper went dark a year ago. He retired, or he’s dead, neither work in my favor. I think the team will be disbanded and I,” his eyes looked haunted for a moment, “will be reassigned if I can’t catch him in the next six months.”

Jamie shook his head, “let’s talk about something more pleasant.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek.

Claire told Jamie about the changes in Frank, his estrangement, and her decision to follow her own path and then she leaned over and kissed Jamie’s cheek.

“Well, it is fortuitous we landed in the same hotel and I hope to spend more time with you while you’re here. Be a good lass and tell me when that will be.”

“Dinner, tomorrow?”

“Perfect, let me walk you home.”

At her door, he said goodnight and moved to kiss her cheek again but instead he held his head close to hers and then looked her in the eye. “Kiss me, Claire, like you did once before,” he whispered. Claire turned her head and kissed his mouth, sucking air at the intensity of the moment. Jamie gorged himself on her lips being careful not to take more than she wanted to give. He felt the key card in his hand and opened her door, kissing her inside, pulling is coat off and then hers. He broke the kiss and looked at the woman who haunted his dreams.

“Goodnight sweet Sassenach.”

Claire was startled at first but realized he felt her hesitation. She really liked Jamie, but he was an art cop and she, an art thief. One thing that was perfectly clear to her, she was done with Frank. The attributes that once attracted her were starting to crack and it was a deal-breaker for her. Besides, he never made her feel the electric current going through her body like Jamie did.

The next night, after a long day of lecture and appraisals, Claire swung the door open with an excited smile. She should be dead on her feet but spending time with Jamie tonight was exhilarating. She kissed him long and deep sending a message there would be no hesitation tonight.

They chatted throughout dinner and the silence was comfortable when they allowed themselves to stop talking and eat. Claire confessed her decision about Frank was partly due to how she felt with Jamie. He inched closer to her.

“Sassenach, is it wise to tell me such things? This lad is head over heels for you and now I know you’re free.” Claire giggled until he kissed her.

“Check please.”

Jamie grabbed her hand and helped her with her coat. “I have already paid Sassenach. Do you want to walk back?”

They stopped to kiss every other minute, so the block-long walk took thirty minutes. He kissed her in the elevator until she broke the kiss, “thirty minutes to call Javier and rinse off.” She walked briskly to her room and Jamie watched like a starving man.

The shower calmed her racing heart and she slipped into a satin nightgown that was very short and felt divine to touch. She knew seduction was the main event tonight and set candles all over the room, a purchase she made between appointments while a happy cab driver waited. Pulling her straightened hair into a ponytail and heard him knock.

Jamie brought champagne and fine chocolates and received the smile of approval from the object of his desire. He waited for her to put them in the frig and then pulled her to him, running his hand up her side and groaning at the feel of the fabric. He didn’t want to race to the bed, instead, he would see how high she wanted to go. He picked her up and sat on the couch with her across his lap. The kissing was slow and sensual as their bodies found their way to a comfortable position. They whispered in the other’s ear, smiled and kissed while their hands explored.

Jamie’s shirt was unbuttoned slowly and she helped him out of it kissing every inch she could reach. Jamie pulled the band from her ponytail loving the soft shiny hair between his fingers.

“You want champagne love?”

Jamie grabbed the bottle and chocolates, pulled Claire to her feet, and poured two glasses. He could not stop touching her and needed to see her naked. It was two years ago she invaded his space so sweetly and he could not wait any longer. While she stood in front of the mirror, he moved his hands up her body under her nightgown and pinched her nipples slightly. He could see the rosy glow on her cheeks as she pressed back into his chest. He lifted the fabric very slowly in case she pushed back until it was over her head and he was stuck staring at her body. His eyes slowly covered every inch and she watched him look her over, confident in her own skin, aware that he needed this visual experience.

The give and take between them made the night exceptional, sweet, erotic, and satisfying. Her body was so responsive to his touch and that thrilled him. When he dropped to her side, panting for his life, she pushed him onto his back, laid her head on his shoulder, and fell asleep, followed by Jamie a short time later.

Claire was hyper aware of Jamie in her bed all night. She woke up several times and went back to sleep with her hand or arm touching his skin. This gesture was sweet and tender to Jamie as he woke each time she moved, anxious to feel her hands move across his skin again.

The beeping of Jamie’s watch brought them both to consciousness as the morning rays were streaming in the windows. He jumped out of bed worried he was late for his interviews and looked around for his clothes. Claire was on her knees on the bed and spread her arms wide, still half asleep, she wanted a morning hug that made him feel weak. He pulled her close and hugged her, kissing the top of her head and asked how she felt, if she was ready for the day, if she would think of him today, and if he could get her anything. He pushed the hair out of her face and realized she was sleeping, somehow still on her knees.

“Sassenach, do you need to get up?”

She nodded her head yes and held her arms up for another hug which was warmly given.

“Dare I ask if you’re free for dinner tonight?”

“If you can wait until seven o’clock, I would love that.”

“See you at seven then.”

Claire checked her email and was shocked to see a coded message. She sent it to Tom remotely and then read what Javier had to say. ‘Rat found, extermination complete, you are safe. Do you want a new project?’ She sent her response to Tom before sending it to Javier. She passed on the project, wanting more time with Jamie to explore her feelings. She jumped to her feet and danced her way to the shower. It was going to be a great day.

[optimistic-dinosaur-nacho]

Bloodshed AU

Chapter 2

Warnings: Nudity, Gore, Language, Violence Summary: Steve Rogers works in a research and tech company in New York. He’s been digging into myths and footage on a creature known as the werewolf. Vicious as they are, he hunts them. With a lot of failures, his team thinks he’s crazy. He may prove them wrong.

Author’s Note: I freaking love this series! Do you?

Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8

The trucks drive through the deserts and dry lands towards the village in Gore. Natasha and Steve sat in the back of the truck with Tony and his friend James. “What’s the plan?” Tony asks.

Natasha glanced at Steve who was looking at her, directly. “The plan is to sneak into the village. Steve, Sam and I will be taking the refugees. Clint and James are the lookouts so if anything comes our way, you’ll tell us, right?”

Tony nods, “Sure.”

The curtain towards the front swings open to the dark haired man, “All right, guys. We’re getting close to the abandoned place. It’s not much but something to stay if this mission takes a few days.”

Natasha smiles, “Relax, Scott. I’m sure we’ll finish it less than two days.” Steve looks over to Natasha, “Do we have enough trucks?” Natasha nods. 

“Plenty that the boss got,” She said.

“I’m not the boss,” Tony says, “I just build stuff, buy stuff... make everyone look cooler-” The billionaire jerks forward and everyone holds onto the sides of the truck as they run over bumps on the road.

“Woah!” James says, toppling on Tony’s lap, the man shoves him off. “Hey, personal space! Do you mind?” James grabs onto the wall and glares at Tony. Everyone stumbled in their seats and the trucks began to slow down till they all come to a halt. 

“We’re hear!” Scott calls. Sam and Scott jump out and they watched the other trucks park. Steve grabs Natasha’s waist and plops her onto the ground. She dusted off the sand and looked over to the building. 

“Not much, but it’ll do,” She said.

Tony turns to them, “You kidding? This costed millions. I made so many calls with Ross. You know how much I hate talking to him,” Tony mutters. Steve walks up to the small building. Looked like it was made out of clay and not cement. No tile floors, no glass windows.

Nat follows him behind and looks around as well. “It’s enough to fit the team here.”

“Why get this if you say we’re gonna finish this less than a day?” He asks. Natasha looks at him and smiles, “Just being optimistic. This team needs a little bit of positivity.” He watches her continue throughout the structure as the team moves in.

The chatter throughout the diner never ended. The music and the sounds of the sizzling food of the breakfast hour. The bacon raw and thick could be tasted on the tip of her tongue as she leaned on the counter.

The smell of ham and eggs. People ordering burgers during this hour. It was around 10 at the time. She watched the chef move in the back. Her gut feeling getting to her head and she bit her lip.

“Ma’am?” The waiter says, Y/N shoots her head to the left and saw the woman hand her two cups of coffee. “Oh, thank you,” She said, the waiter nods. “Enjoy.” Y/N takes the cups, headed over to the side to grab sugar packs and cream before heading outside.

She sees him leaning on the wall, that strong cologne with the mixture of pine and toasted almonds was his aroma which was a strange smell to her at times. “Took you long enough,” Bucky says. Y/N scoffs and puts the coffee on the back of her bike. “It was busy in there,” She remarks.

“I know. I can smell the bacon from here,” He said, reaching over to pull the top off his coffee. She hands him the cream and sugar, adding it to his cup. “Thanks,” He says.

She hums and pulls the coffee up to her lips. “Have you seen the police these days?” She asked. Bucky furrows his brows and takes a sip from his coffee, “No, why?”

“They’ve been more cautious about the forest. Shutting down the parks and trails now.”

“Where?” He asked.

“California. Washington,” She shrugs, “They think there’s some mass murderer roaming in the forests.” Bucky chuckles at that and takes another sip. Y/N’s known Bucky for a while now. Yes, they hooked up once. Never denied there were good nights. 

They preferred just friends. And Bucky appreciated that just like she did. 

His eyes stare out into the road of the Oregon County. He looked like he was thinking. She looked over and just stared at his leather jacket. That thing was old, but it was still in good condition. She liked it on him.

Out of nowhere, he spoke, “When’s the last time you’ve hunted a human?”

Y/N huffs out a laugh, “Bucky-”

“No, seriously. Like how did it feel?” He asked. Y/N held the cup in her hands and looked up, the wind blowing the strands against her cheek. “Didn’t feel right,” She replies.

“At first?” He asks, his brows lifting.

Y/N looks over to him, skipping the question, “What about you?” She asked. He pushes himself off the wall and walks over to her. “Well, if I’m honest, they’re better than bacon cooking in a pan. But, we must just stay on the diet.”

Y/N grins as she looks down. “Don’t you ever think this was just some curse?”

“Curse?” He asks, leaning beside her. She turns her head up to him. “Well, if you think about it,” She asks. He chuckles. He remembered with a grin.

“Some say the Natives summoned us,” Bucky laughs at that. “Maybe they did. Roman admitted he killed half a tribe back in the 1500s. He said he didn’t remember much but ripping their throats out.”

“We can’t say things like that here. People can hear,” Y/N says, Bucky looks around and nods. “Right. But you know what I mean. This isn’t a curse. It’s just who we are. It’s family.” 

Y/N’s eye squint towards the morning light as Bucky grins down at her. After a couple more sips, he tossed the cup into the bin. “You up for a ride?” He hops onto the bike and revs the engine after turning it on. 

Y/N hops on hers. “Let’s just get back before dark. It’s our usual night, you know?” 

Bucky kicks the stand up and turns to her. “Of course.” He slowly pushes the bike over to the curb and Y/N tosses her cup into the bin and followed Bucky down the road.

.

The smoke flows passed his lips once he pulled the cigarette away. The ocean moving in the distance as he stared at the golden sand and deep blue waters. He turns his head a bit when Natasha walks in. “Thought you’d be out here,” She said.

He hears her sit next to him and follows his gaze out. His eyes squinting out. “Now about that plan-” He began, looking down at his hands.

“Steve,” Natasha said causing him to look at her. She turns, “No ones gonna agree on that.”

“I didn’t want the others to go. I want you. Only you,” He said. The night when he came over with maps and papers. Natasha didn’t fully agree on it, all she did was listen to his rambling. Rambling about those werewolves.

That mission could possibly take longer than the one they’re on now. Natasha shakes her head, “I’m sorry but...” She lowers her head and he looks away from her. Getting the hint.

“You don’t believe me.”

“I’m not saying that-”

“It kind of sounds like that, Nat. The whole damn team doesn’t believe me, they think I’m some wacko like my dad,” He remarks, lifting the cigarette to his lips again. Natasha inhales deeply, her red and blonde hair hung up in a bun blew against the wind.

“Steve...” She starts, “Not many people in this world believe what your father or anyone has said about these folktale werewolves. Can you just give it a rest for a moment? Once this mission is over?” She asks, he felt her eyes on him. Natasha had that power to force words out of people. Her stare was more intimidating than anyone else.

Steve lowers his head and stares at his fingers that played with the cigarette in between them. He nods, “Okay.” Natasha nods in approval and hears Tony walk in. “Oh, there you guys are,” He says, “We were just about to head out. Getting dark soon, get this done quicker we can all leave soon.”

Natasha stands up, “Okay. Is everyone ready?”

Tony looks around and nods, “I guess we are. Just waiting on you two.” Steve puts the cigarette out and stands up. “Well, let’s not waste time.”

.

The trucks were just miles away from the village in Gore. The team had the trucks on the trail. Steve held onto the bar as he looks over to Natasha. Je watched Natasha cock the gun, “What the hell are you doing?” He asked. She looks up, “What? In case something goes wrong.”

“Nothing is gonna go wrong. Optimistic, remember?” He asks, Natasha grins and doesn’t stop when she slipped the gun into her jeans. Tony held his hand up to his ear, “Clint, what’s your status?”

“James and I are jumping out the trucks... Now.” Tony looks out the back and sees the two run up the hill to be their hawk eyes. “Okay, Barton and Rhodes are going for position. We should stop the trucks here.” Each truck stopped just behind the hill where the village was at.

Men guarded the front entrance of it. They needed to get inside from the sides. “All right, turn off headlights,” Tony said. The trucks headlights all go off and the team step out.

“I will stay here, you and Rogers go in with Wilson. Lang, keep the trucks running till they arrive with the refugees.” Lang nods at Tony. Natasha looks up to Steve who stared at the village over the hill.

“You ready?” She asked. Steve sighs, “Sure.”

Steve heard Sam jump out the truck, “All right, tic-tac, you behave yourself.”

Lang pops his head out, “All right, I will.” Sam scoffs and nods at Steve. The two grab each others hands and they patted each others shoulders. 

“Let’s get this mission done. It’s late, I want a drink,” Sam said, Steve grins. “Don’t think they have drinks over here, bud.” Natasha smiles at them and they all rushed over to the village.

It was quiet. A few dog barks and small chatter. Steve and the other two had their heads hung low. 

They slipped through the gate and hid behind the buildings. “They keep them in that building over there. If we take them through that screen door, we can save all of them,” Natasha says, pointing to the building with the screen door.

Steve squints around the corner and nods, “Let’s go.” The three walk through without getting spotted. They reached the gate. “It’s them,” Someone spoke. Steve opens the screen door and saw a woman walk up to them. “You’re the Stark team?”

Steve nods, “You are?”

“Okoye. Do you think you can take all of us?” She asked, Steve looks around the room and nods. A good amount. “We have about 5 trucks. It’s enough. Follow her out through the gate. Don’t make any sudden sounds and just follow her, you’ll be safe.” Okoye nods and speaks towards the group. 

Steve watched as they all walk out and Natasha guided them out, Sam gently swaying his hands down for the refugees to follow in a straight line. Steve hears Okoye speak towards the others as he turns to her.

“You know T’Challa?” He asked, Okoye turns, “I’m the General of the Dora Milaje. When they were captured I was here to help them.” Steve nods. After a few more minutes, the last bit of them had been guided back with Sam. 

Okoye looks at Steve, “Go, I’ll be behind you guys.” She nods and walks down to her people. Steve looks in the room again and heard whimpers. The whines were close as he walks in to check the last bit of it. 

He saw the blood on the cloth and the evident body shape. It didn’t look human. He kneels down and prepared himself for this horrifying look of a dead body. He rips the cloth over and saw a dog.

A brown and white fur of a dog. His hand instantly strokes its fur, “Hey, buddy.” Steve sees the wound in his leg. Looked like it was just injured at the slightest. Could heal up, but he couldn’t walk. 

Steve pets his head. “You’ll be okay, bud.” Steve slides his arms under the dog and lifts him up. Holding him in his arms, he rushes out and follows the group.

“Where’s Steve?” Natasha asked, Sam looks over, “He was left behind. Checking to see who was left.” Natasha looks over and spots him with something in his arms. “Oh, my God.” Natasha slams her hand on the truck. “Ready them up! We’re leaving!” Natasha rushes to the back while Sam goes for the other truck with Lang.

Tony sticks his head out of the truck, “Come on, Cap! We got no time to lose!”

Steve rushes towards Natasha and she jumps in, “Here, I’ll take him,” Steve puts the dog into Natasha’s arms as she lifts him in. Steve jumps in after and lets out a loud sigh. The trucks move out and Steve instantly grabs the edge to hold himself.

His eyes open to see Natasha petting the dog. “Where did you find him?” She asked.

Steve pants, “He was under the cloth. I had to get him.” Natasha lifts up the dog’s leg to look at the wound. But the dog swiftly slips his foot out of her grasp. She nods at him, “Hold him. I can wrap his leg up.” 

.

The trucks had to be abandoned. The refugees all gathered together as Okoye reassures them in their language. Steve and Tony threw sticks at the flames they put under the trucks. They needed to go on foot so the men won’t track them.

Natasha held a map in her hands. “If we follow this, we can reached Wakanda in half a day. If we move fast and quick, maybe less.” Steve looks up to the group and sighed. “Well, Okoye suggests we take it slow. Some are injured.” Natasha nods.

“Steve,” Sam says, the man turns around to see Sam holding the dog. Steve instantly walks over and takes the dog into his arms. The pup instantly licks his face. “He likes you,” Sam said.

Steve turns his face away from him, “Only because I saved him.” Tony smiles at the sight. “You got yourself a dog now, Cap.”

“He looks like a mix-breed boxer,” Natasha says, never looking up to them. “I had a friend who had a similar dog like that but it was a she. Darker fur.” Steve looks up to the sun, feeling the burn on his skin.

“Well, let’s keep moving. They’ll know they’re gone.” Steve turns and the journey began.

Carrying the dog in his arms. Steve needed to get this dog some water. The dog’s mouth foamed out of thirst, the drool dripping down his tongue. Steve glanced behind him to see the whole team helping the refugees.

Clint Barton was their hawk. He had a sharp eye in the team. James was a Colonel in the army and he was one of their gunman. Almost part of the team were from the army. James, Sam and Steve were part of it. 

That’s how Steve and Sam met. 

After that the two somehow ended up in this company. Clint never really told them how he was skilled with bows and arrows. They never asked where he worked before. Sometimes they’d have agents come to the company. One of them was named Phil Coulson, Steve remembered.

But after that, they never returned in a while. 

After hours of walking, they met the river. “We’re not far, now,” Okoye says, Steve looks over. “We cross the river, a few more miles we’ll be there by dark,” She said. Steve looks over and saw the water run down.

His arms lift the dog a bit more. “We keep moving forward,” He says. Steve and Natasha take a step onto the water. The cold water soaking up his pants and shirt as he held onto the dog. They all began to hold onto each other so they don’t lose anyone in the water. He watched them come up one by one.

“Everyone okay?” Steve called. Tony holds up his thumb. After everyone got back on land, they moved forward. The night a growing cold and they looked exhausted. 

Okoye walks on ahead, “We’re here,” He heard her say. He walks up and sees the city. They thought it was some village, but there were buildings. Steve stared in awe. 

They continued forward and reached to the tallest building in the city. “Welcome to Wakanda,” Okoye says. Tony walks next to Steve and pats his back. “Good job, Cap.”

They walked in and a man comes up to them with a grin. “You must be the Stark team,” He says, his accent thick. Tony grins, “You’re T’Challa?”

“King T’Challa,” Okoye corrects, the man looks at her and nods, “Get the others to the medical.” She nods and guides the people to the health bay.

The king looks back, “Thank you for this.” Tony nods. “Yeah. You sure you have anything else?” T’Challa nods, “I’m sure those were the last ones we couldn’t save.”

Natasha smiles, “Thank you for calling us.” T’Challa grins at her but his head tilt. “How will you guys get back to New York?” T’Challa asked. Tony was the one everyone looked at. He looks at them confusingly, “I called Fury, he’s sending a plane over to us in Tanga.”

T’Challa turns his shoulders, “In our gratitude, I can have my men drive you back. Maybe leave in the morning. We can give you food, water?” Steve turns to the group who were all exhausted, covered in dirt and sweat. Steve nods. 

“Okay.”

.

The next morning, the group left the city and drove to Tanga. Steve held the dog in his arms as they went over the bumpy roads and Natasha gazed at him and the dog happily.

“He’s a good dog,” She said. Steve looks down to see the dog in his arms asleep. “He is.” 

Natasha grins. “Are you gonna keep him?”

Steve had his shades on as he glanced up at her, “There’s a lot of homes for him. Not mine.”

Natasha pierced her lips, “Well, you have the next hours to decide. I think he likes you more than anyone.” Steve looks down at the dog and watched the dog’s ears bounce to the trucks movements. Not knowing what the plan is with him.

After the next hours of driving. They reached the runway for planes. Spotting one in the distance. “There’s our ride,” Tony taps the truck, “Tell T’Challa we give him our thanks.” Steve and Natasha walk over to the plane, seeing a woman standing outside.

“Rogers,” She greets, Steve nods. Maria Hill. Natasha smiles, “How’s Fury?” She asked. Maria shrugs, “Doing fine. He’s in Berlin for now. He’s sad he couldn’t be here.”

Natasha grins.

“But you know him, he’s sarcastic about it so he doesn’t really give a shit,” Maria gestures to them, “Hop in.” The team hopped onto the plane and they flew back to New York. After they got there, everyone had a drink.

A celebration for success. Steve had to leave, taking the dog with him. Steve puts him in the truck. 

He goes in the driver’s seat and looks down at the dog who looked at him happily with his injured leg. Steve smiled softly at him, “You dodged a bullet there, bud... I might as well just call you Dodger.” The dog looks up and licks his muzzle.

The man smiled as he drives back home. 

It was around 12 at night and he opened his apartment door. Carrying Dodger in the small room. “All right, buddy.” Steve puts him on his bed.

“Wait here.” Steve walks into the bathroom and stripped out of his dirtied shirt. He stared at himself in the mirror. His chest had grown a few hairs, his face was dirty and the sweat already dirtied on his face.

His hair was oily and it parted a bit. He sighed and turns to the shower. He steps inside after stripping the rest of his clothes. The cold water hitting the top of his head. Running down the curves of his back and chest. 

He felt the relief in it and sighed. 

The howls echoed through the forest and the wolves rush through the brush. Y/N jumps over Bucky with a harsh snort as they reached a trail in the forest. On usual nights Bucky and Y/N would go out and do patrol for a bit. 

Randall wasn’t feeling it today, so they did it this time. Bucky comes to a stop and ruffles his fur, “I smell gasoline,” He sniffs. “Yeah, there’s a freeway not too long from here. Be careful,” Y/N replied.

The two continued on and Y/N jumped onto the hard ground. Her nose caught the ground when she lowers her head. “Y/N!” Bucky barks. The bright lights made her look to her right. A large truck comes into view and she jumps out of the way.

She stumbled on the other side of the road and rolled down in the dirt. Bucky ran across the road and rushed down to her side. “You almost died,” Bucky lowers his head to support hers as she stands back on her paws. “I know. We should head back. The trucker, of course, saw me.”

Y/N ran on ahead and she kept running. It was dark, dangerous. Roman told them to be careful at this time of night. She was panting heavily. Bucky followed a few feet behind. 

He watched her in the distance till she disappears in his sight. And a loud yelp erupts from his friend. He low growls, stopping. The whine erupts from him and there was chatter.

“We got something!” A man shouts. The men walk up to the scrambling and saw the large white hound. “Damn! Look at this big fella!” The two men stood a few feet away from the large dog as it growls at them. 

“I don’t think that’s a normal wolf, Jerry.”

“It’s gotta be a male, usually them dogs are bigger than the females,” The man cackles lightly at the hound. “Hunting season is almost over, Alex and you want to lose this one? I’m sure it’ll make a good use of a rug. Look at the colors. Like snow white.”

The hound growls loudly, it could’ve rumbled the ground. The man shook, “We should just leave it.” The other guy scoffs, “Alex! This a big one, you want to lose it?” The man pulls out his gun and aims it at the hound.

“Sleep tight.” The gun fires and seconds later the man screams in terror. The other man watched as the grey hound pounces on his friend, ripping him in shreds. 

The man scatters off and screams. Bucky looks over to Y/N who was caught in the bear trap as he gave her the soft eyes before leaving her, chasing after the man who ran.

After biting and chewing on the trap, she growls under it. The smell of blood and flesh landed on her taste buds. Her guts getting that familiar feeling. No. She continued to chew on the trap.

The blood oozing out of the man’s throat, she shakes her head to tear the trap off. No! Bucky comes back with blood dripping down his chin. Y/N looks up at him. “You killed them!”

“I did what I had to do.”

“Why did you-!” She growled.

“Because I didn’t want you to die!” His growl was mixed with a whine. She stared at him as he rips the trap open and she limps out. She held her arm up to her chest as she glances at him. 

He snuffles through his muzzle, “I didn’t want to lose you.” She was struck by that. Bucky had to deal with this stuff, too. He almost lost his arm when they caught him in a trap and he fell down a cliff. He was lucky enough to be alive. 

Y/N limps up to him and she nuzzles her head against his. Bucky brought his head over hers and gently licked the back of her white fur before they pulled away. 

“We should go.”

Dodger had been added to the story! Wooh! We needed some more dogs up in here!

Also that Defending Jacob episode has me squealing for no reason. It’s 11 over here and I’m squealing like a high school girl.

TAGS: 

@jtargaryen18​ @joannaliceevans-fanficblog​ @chrisevans-imagines​ @patzammit​ @art-estrange​ @sourpatchspinster​ @kayteewritessteve​ @anjali750​ @axen-gers​ @princess-evans-addict​ @ifuseekamyevans​ @navispalace​ @elliee1497​ @sweater-daddiesdumbdork​

Want a tag? Just ask!

[susoftjockau]

Second Time of Consideration - SU Soft Jock Fic

Summary: After tutoring Steven Universe, Connie Maheswaran is brought to a familiar question.

Sequel to First Time of Consideration.

Created by @borkthemork.

—–

Suspicions were always a breakthrough to revelation; either by profound curiosity or persnickety cajolery, Connie always found a way to get the answer she craved when it came down to problems in her life. If there was a situational problem—such as with an algebraic equation (with its word sentences and its fetish for formula implementation) that needed more logical thinking than basic run-down memory—then she would zone out for a few minutes to test the pathways she had. Of course, she didn’t fully zone out, but her moments were full of focus, honed in on answering the small question like a dog to a bone.

When it came to Steven, it was a chase for answers that she never expected to be fully requited for. He wasn’t an enigma, per se, but he was definitely someone that she wanted to know more about. It all came down to a few questions, but the most important being: how far will they go as ‘friends’ now that she trusts him?

It’s a silly thought if she pondered about it too much, yet it made sense to her. There was a new feeling of relief ever since that night—nestled in the arms of a legitimate friend, warm to the touch from shared heat—and she couldn’t help but ponder over it again and again and again. Jeez, it made her feel like an infatuated YA protagonist from just thinking about it; it wasn’t like she was leaning towards him for romance like the schlock she’d find at the bottom of a dollar store bin, she just had to wipe her mind of that idea and just think about the main picture.

He’s now her friend. That was the start, but will it work out?

What was supposed to be expected from her?

—–

It was a beautiful evening, and Connie had a lot of thoughts to peruse over.

For one, she had to organize the upcoming tutoring sessions. Discussing with Steven’s dad over the phone had allowed her to get a better idea of what needed to be done; just the standard change in schedule, the shift in what should be focused on, and the typical thought process of what she was going to use to help him remember a formula or symbol. It wasn’t overwhelming. It’s enough for her to fiddle with her hair, frustration simmering low in her stomach, but it’s a tolerant feeling compared to other intense scenes from her life.

The second one is where the true introspection came about. Steven had asked her to come over to the café to talk about something—why he never asked about it through text was something she wanted to ask but it was too late now, she walked all the way here with her laptop bag and going back is just going to be a waste of time. Might as well get her favorite order for a day such as this.

An expresso.

Five creams. One sugar.

Enough to bring her through the day like always. Like any other day, actually. This is just the first time she’ll ever do this where her pupil invited her without the intention of tutoring. Huh.

First time for everything? She had no clue how to describe the feeling—she wanted it to go away.

“Oh, hey!” She looked up to see the boy in question. His smile gleamed, the sunlight hitting him in soft hues that made her nestle more at his expression. She had been used to seeing his chipper self like this for a few months now. It was relaxing to look at. “Sorry if I’m late.”

“It’s fine, you did mark the time as one p.m. after all, so you’re on the dot.”

“Oh,” he blushed before pulling back a chair. “Yeah, you’re just early.”

Connie couldn’t help her giggle.

He was in his typical clothes—the letterman, the cartoon shirt, the crisp yellow and blue—but the casual air around him was potent. There doesn’t seem to be a worry on his mind for today, an elation seeping through from how he tapped his fingers on the table and gosh, his smile just kept beaming at her like he was seeing the aurora borealis. What was he thinking about?

“Sooo, I want to talk to you about something.” He started.

“Don’t you want some food though?” She took a sip from her espresso. It wasn’t piping, thank the lord. “They have a special on pastries today, one of your favorites too.“

Steven went starry-eyed. “Mega-classic éclairs?”

“Three fifty-nine.”

“Aw, man.” He groaned, nestling his face onto the table. “I should’ve gotten my wallet.”

“Why didn’t you bring your wallet?” She asked. “It’s a long trip from Beach City to Ocean Town, did you have snacks in your car and you ran out?”

He gave her a nervous laugh. “You can say that; snacks sound great right now, though.” Suspicious, as always, but she couldn’t help but feel sympathy over it.

“Let me buy one for you.”

He stiffened. “No, I wouldn’t want you to go that far for me.”

“I’m just gonna buy an éclair.” And a hash brown to curb his hunger. And an additional salad. With a cup of warm cocoa. Now that she’s looking at him closer, he seemed to be shaking—hypoglycemia, perhaps?

“Really, I wouldn’t.”

“Steven,” her voice was stern, eyes piercing into him with intensity—the other staring back with pooling uncertainty. “I didn’t walk three miles to have you deny that you’re starving in a café. I have money, and I know you’re hungry, so let me treat you for one day.”

He just rubbed his neck. Looking back at the displays of food, Connie noticed him shift in his seat, until he gave her a quick nod and a small thank you under his breath. There it was, the go-to. She stood up, motioning him forward to come along; she needed to know what he wanted.

When they returned, their tables were decorated with food platters. One of them continued to sip on her coffee, and the other gorged on his egg salad and banana bread without a moment’s notice (his éclair and hot cocoa on stand-by in a napkin). She wondered if it was enough for him, from how his form twitched every so often, the sight of him plowing through like a lawnmower. “You need to be careful about this stuff, Steven.”

He looked up, his question muffled by the contents in his mouth.

“Uhm, Steven.”

He swallowed. “Sorry. Like what?”

“Your diet. There were no snacks in the drive here, were there? Did you eat lunch? Breakfast?” Worry was one of those vital things to feel about something like this. She doesn’t know how frequent his episodes were, but she knew the tell-tale signs of someone who’s health was weaker than the cafeteria awning.

“I had a protein shake for breakfast.”

“And what else?”

His stare became unfocused. “An orange.”

She brushed a hand through her hair, hoping the tension growing in her body would dissipate. He had to be joking; she knew the college diet was horrible—especially with the growing money problem—but she couldn’t stand the idea of him, in particular, doing that to himself.

Connie inhaled, focus boring at the weight in her bag. “I’m going to buy more food for take-out. We’ll split it—fifty-fifty.”

“But you already gave me so much,” he wiped a bit of egg salad from his lips, a frown now adorning them. “What about you get all of it?”

“Fifty-fifty.” She grimaced. This was getting a bit too much. She didn’t want to argue with him. “Okay, wait, what about sixty and forty?”

“That could work.” Steven fumbled with his fork. The prongs poked at the remains of his food, the éclair still uneaten. “But are you sure? I won’t be that hungry when I get back.”

“Just see it as a thank you from me.”

“A thank you?”

“For being my...friend.” Her throat was heavy, cotton-like, but she kept going. “You did so much for me, I have to show off my gratitude somehow.”

Connie hated sentimentality. There was something about it that brought submission or nakedness to these conversations that she didn’t enjoy by a long shot, but the way Steven beamed at her—even through his continued tremors and their small tension—made her relax more than she ever would’ve predicted. It was comforting. It didn’t accuse her of weakness; he understood, even if only a little.

“You deserve the best after all.” He told her, plopping the last of his banana bread into his mouth. “You’re amazing.”

Okay, this is getting too sentimental.

“All right!” She coughed, trying to ignore the heat from her cheeks. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

“Hm?”

“The thing you wanted to talk to me about. The reason why we’re both here.”

”Oh!” He took a swig from his cocoa. “Almost forgot about that. I wanted to know if you’re okay with going to a party with me and the girls.”

She tapped at her coffee. Why does this feel so familiar? Connie bit her lip. “What type of party?”

“Just a normal party. Natalie told me it’s near that huge park area with the big tree in the middle.” Oh no. “There’s gonna be a DJ, lots of music, food, games.” Oh God, no. “And the best part, a buttload of people to dance with!” How can he call it normal even after all that?! Is he out of his mind?

Connie swallowed, the lump in her throat remaining even after her best effort. “And...you want me to go?”

“Yeah!” Steven’s smile hurt her more and more—he really wanted her to go. “I mean, you don’t have to go if you don’t want to, but since we’re friends, I wanted to see if you’re comfortable with it now.”

Connie Maheswaran. What are you supposed to do? You can’t just say no.

“Connie?” She looked at him again. His features contorted in a frown, her heart sinking at the sight. “Is everything okay?”

”I’m fine. I’m just thinking.” Thinking lead to worries, and worries lead to anxieties. But she knew that she had to keep her cool, she didn’t want to be a mess over one of her first-established friends, she might as well be waving red flags that she can’t be his friend at all with the way she’s acting. “I’ll gladly go, it—it sounds like fun!”

His eyes lit up. “Really?”

“Yeah.” She pushed down the protests in her head. If she was going to make the effort of being his friend, she would have to push some boundaries. “I want to go with you guys, just tell me the date and when you’re picking me up, then I’ll prepare.”

Even with the fear toiling in her gut, Steven’s flushed elation—his little squeal calmed by the munch of his éclair—made it sound worth it. It shouldn’t be that bad, right? It wouldn’t be like the previous times? Her doubts, turbulent and murky, kept themselves present even as discussion changed, leaving her to feel a sense of foreboding when the two of them departed moments later at the door: one holding a big takeout bag in their hand with sunshine radiating from his gait, the other trying to curb the idea of stress eating as she embarked on her miles-long walk back to her dorm.

[let-me-write-shit]

Like We Used To: 13

A/N: I started writing this chapter thinking it would just be a filler, but I ended up really liking it!

Message me what you’d like to see in the upcoming chapters

[Click here for previous chapters]

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

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The loud chimes of Elizabeth’s phone alarm started blaring, shaking her from a deep sleep. She reached over to turn it off. 7 AM. Harry stirred beside her before settling back down and she smiled, still blown away that he was even here with her. Not wanting to wake him, she cautiously slid out of bed, grabbed a change of clothes, and headed towards her bathroom in the hall to take a quick shower and wash away the filth from last night’s activities.

Today was Elizabeth’s first day ‘back to work’ since her best friends’ wedding, and even though she worked from home most days, she did feel more productive when she got dressed and ready for the day. After her shower she brushed her teeth, put her damp hair in a perfect low messy bun, got dressed in a black halter top, tucked it into a pair of high-waisted brown plaid pants, and layered it with a chunky knit beige cardigan and gold necklaces before creeping downstairs to make breakfast.

There wasn’t much food because she wasn’t able to do her weekly shopping yesterday, but she did have eggs and veggies, so she decided to whip up a couple veggie omelettes for her and Harry and make some tea.

While the tea brewed, Elizabeth grabbed the trash out of the can and took it out to the waste bin. Wednesdays were trash collection day and she always took hers and her elderly neighbor’s trash to the curb to collect. It was drizzling outside so she tried to hurry.

“Oh, Elizabeth!” 

Elizabeth looked up and smiled politely at her neighbor who was watching her from her window “Good morning, Judy! How are you?”

“I’m well, dear! Thanks for taking my trash again! Will you be joining me for dinner tonight? I’m making stuffed peppers!”

“That sounds wonderful, Judy, but I actually have a friend over for a few days.”

“Is it that handsome fellow that showed up yesterday?” she asked, making Elizabeth silently chuckle to herself. Judy resembled a younger Iris Apfel in appearance. She was an eccentric 83 year old retired widow with no close relatives, so she spent most of her time staring out of her window and observing the neighbors. Just is very sweet, but she’s not afraid to say what’s on her mind. “You can bring him along if you’d like. 6 o’clock, then?”

Elizabeth nodded, you can’t say no to Judy, “Ok, we’ll see you at 6, then.” before scurrying inside to see Harry, still only wearing his boxer briefs, in the kitchen pouring two cups of the now-brewed tea, .

He looked up, confused, “What were you doing out in the rain?”

Elizabeth kicked off her shoes, eyeing his body and his perfectly placed tattoos, “I was taking mine and my elderly neighbors trash bins out.”

He smiled at her, “You take your elderly neighbor’s bins out? What are you, perfect?”

“Yeah, I’m an absolute saint and don’t you forget it,” she laughed, taking the cup of tea from him, “Speaking of how amazing I am, I made you breakfast. I’m gonna take mine to the office and get started on work.”

Harry pulled her closer to him before she could leave, looking into her eyes for a moment. They smiled at each other before he kissed her forehead and let her continue upstairs.

Work seemed excessively mundane today. All she found herself thinking about was how much she wanted to go downstairs and hang out with Harry, wondering what he was even doing, and thinking about how she could just save some of this work for another time, but she really wanted to get as much done as she can so she didn’t have to do a ton of work later. 

It was lunchtime and her video conference with one of her clients and some members of staff was running over time. Elizabeth jotted down notes as they wrapped up their meeting. She was in the middle of talking when her door creaked open and a still-shirtless Harry tip-toed in, carrying a plate and a drink. 

She powered through the interruption and continued, “...So I think we’ll let Connor take reign of that particular platform and we can have that ready for approval by Monday morning, how does that sound?” she said, gesturing for Harry to have a seat on the sofa on the other side of her desk so that he was out of view.

“Yes, that’s perfect,” her client agreed with satisfactory approval from her team, “And you’ll be sending us the agenda for our next call?”

“Yes, I’ll get that over to you by the end of the week,” Elizabeth assured, feeling Harry’s gaze, “Alright, everyone. Well thank you for another constructive meeting. I’ll let you all go so you can grab some lunch and I’ll see you on our next call in two weeks. Kathy, if there’s anything else you need just shoot me an email.”

Everyone sang their goodbyes and Elizabeth closed her laptop, deflating in her chair and turning her attention to Harry who was looking at her with a lopsided smile and an eyebrow raised.

“I don’t know why,” Harry started, “but seeing you working is really hot.”

Elizabeth chortled, rolling her eyes, “You bored yet?”

“No, I’ve actually been catching up on emails and calls, too. My publicist just sent me this,” he lifted his phone up to her to show a few pictures of Harry at the club he attended with their friend group on Sunday. Her and her friends were seen in the background, “The article said nothing of the fight and just mentioned me being there with friends in passing, so everything is still in the clear. There was nothing of me at the carnival, either.” Elizabeth blew out a ton of fresh air in relief as he continued, “Anyway, I just thought I’d bring you some lunch because you never came down,” He placed the plate on her desk that carried a beautiful turkey sandwich and some chips with a glass of water.

“Wow, I’m spoiled.”

“I figured it’s the least I can do since I invited myself over.”

“That reminds me,” Elizabeth swallowed a chip, “Judy invited us over for dinner at 6.”

Harry hesitated, “Uh….who’s Judy?”

“My neighbor. The one with the trash bins. She’s 83 and has no relatives in the area, so I have dinner with her every few weeks and we do a puzzle together.”

“Alright, now you’re just showing off. You’re gorgeous, smart, GREAT at sex, and you play puzzles with your elderly neighbor?”

“My god, you’re such a flirt!” Elizabeth crooned, rolling her eyes, “Anyway, I doubt she’ll know who you are. She saw you at my door yesterday and called you ‘the handsome fellow’.”

Harry laughed, “Judy’s got good taste. Maybe I ended up on the wrong doorstep.”

Elizabeth scoffed and shooed Harry away, “Okay, let me get back to work so I can be done earlier. And please go shower. Judy’s 83, she’s not stupid. You wreak of sex.”

“You sure you don’t want to have another quick go at it? We can make room on your desk.”

“Out!” Elizabeth demanded, laughing.

By the time 5:30 rolled around, Elizabeth had completed double the amount of work that she was meant to. She was eager to check out what Harry was doing, because she thought she couldn’t hear the faint sounds of a guitar. Sure enough when Elizabeth reached the end of the staircase and peered into the living room she saw Harry sitting on the edge of the sofa with a guitar in hand, humming and muttering along to a tune and occasionally stopping to jot something down in his phone. The floorboard creaked and Harry sat up straight.

“Whatcha singing?” Elizabeth smiled, walking in.

He put his guitar down and sat up, “Just...working on some music. Gonna work on it a little more when I see Mitch and the guys next week.”

Elizabeth nodded and the two got ready to head on over to Judy’s house. She was slightly worried how Judy would react.The odd’s were small, but what if she did know who Harry was? Or what if she had said some things that were a bit inappropriate? How would Harry react? Elizabeth was used to Judy’s eccentricity and knew how to communicate with her, but would Harry be able to manage? She could be a bit much sometimes. But, given the amount of interviews Harry’s been in over the course of almost ten years, surely he knows how to handle himself. 

They decided to make their way over in the pouring rain, using their jackets for cover, as they were greeted at the door by a thin, pale woman who had way too much pink blush on and the brightest red lipstick imaginable. Her eyes looked magnified behind her bold, black squared glasses, and her white hair peaked from underneath an emerald green headdress with gold brooches of bumblebees and butterflies along the side. Her long blouse set was almost disorienting as it was covered in bold chartreuse and magenta geometric shapes and she wore layers upon layers of gaudy costume jewelry. 

“Come in, come in, dinner is just about done!” She ushered them inside.

Elizabeth glanced over at Harry to see his eyes widened as he looked from Judy to her home that was an antique hoarder’s dream and she giggled to herself, following Judy towards the dining kitchen. 

“Judy, this is my friend, Harry,” Elizabeth introduced, grabbing some plates out of the cabinet for her.

Judy turned to look Harry up and down, noting his tattoos before saying, “He’s not the prick that cheated on you after three years, is he?”

Harry smiled as Elizabeth laughed and said, “No, that’s not him.”

Judy nodded in approval, “Alright, then. This boy’s got a nice face,” she declared, turning to Harry, “Are you having sex with her?”

Harry’s eyes widened and Elizabeth shouted, “Judy!”

“What?” She shrugged her shoulders, turning the stovetop off and stirring up the pot before looking back at Harry, “All I’m saying is if you’re having sex, just make sure you’re getting her off, too. You young men these days are so selfish in the bedroom.”

Harry laughed as Elizabeth asked, “Is that from personal experience, Judy?”

Judy cackled, “Honey, I may be old, but I’ve still got it,” causing Harry and Elizabeth to bust into laughter.

Dinner was delicious and Elizabeth noticed Harry getting more comfortable as conversations went on. She saw him loosening up, realizing he could joke with her. When dinner finished up, she brought out a puzzle for them all to start together. It was small enough for them all to be able to finish before night’s end. 

By the time they were halfway finished, Judy asked, “So, are you two dating or just screwing around?” When she noticed the look Elizabeth and Harry gave each other she waved her hands, “No judgement to ya! Everyone needs some casual fucks every now and again.”

Harry cleared his throat and took a sip of water, “Well I’m trying to get her to date me, but she’s playing hard to get.”

Judy looked over at Elizabeth, “What’re you doing that for? Is he bad in bed or something?”

Elizabeth laughed, pushing a puzzle piece into its spot, “No he’s fantastic in bed. I’m just trying to...take it slow.”

“Taking it slow is for the birds if you found a guy that’s handsome and good in bed. That’s rare.” Judy scoffed.

Harry grinned, “Tell me about it. I’ve been trying to date her since I was 15 years old.”

“For that long?!” Judy exclaimed, shocked, “What are you making this poor boy wait so long for? Does he have a shit job or something?”

Elizabeth shook her head no while Harry, jokingly, kept adding fuel to the fire, “I’m rich, Judy! I’ve got money, the looks, I’m good in bed, I’m a gentleman. What more could she want?”

Judy shook her head, “She’s out of her mind, is what she is, I’ll tell ya that!”

Harry winked at Elizabeth before turning back to Judy, “Might just cut my losses. What do you think, Judy? You and me?”

Judy hooted, “Ooh, I’ll tell ya what. If Elizabeth doesn’t come to her senses soon then I’ll snatch you right up! It’s been a long time, but I reckon I still got it!”

Harry laughed, “Judy, I’m trying to convince Lizzy to come travel with me for a bit. You think you can help me out?”

Judy looked over at Elizabeth, eyes wider, “This handsome boy wants to take you away from this god forsaken city, and you said no?”

“Because he wants to leave on Saturday! I wasn’t properly prepared!” Elizabeth defended herself.

“Girl, you need to learn how to live a little! The best adventures are always spontaneous! You should go! I can take my own damn trash out while you’re gone!”

Harry smirked over at Elizabeth. Judy was smitten with him, now, and Elizabeth knew that she would never hear the end of it from Judy if she didn’t go. There were too many factors working against them, though. Again, he was famous. Every step he made was scrutinized. People would eventually notice a different woman being seen around him. What would the backlash look like? She also had her own work to worry about. Sure, she could manage to do her work on the road, but would she even have the time to? Who knows what his PR touring looked like? And what about the people that worked for him? What would they say about her tagging along? She wanted to go, but she wasn’t sure if she should.

KEEP READING

[perditaalottachocolate-blog]

The Collector 2

Summary: When Adrien and his cat leave for university, the Agreste mansion suddenly becomes a very empty and quiet place. What better way to bring back some joy and laughter than to take in a new cat? Or two? Or three? Five at most. But why stop at five when you have such a fine feline collection? Besides, Gabriel has never known when to stop, has he? 

Part 3 of the Felinotherapy Series. Also on AO3 / Fanfiction.net

(Part 1 - “New Kitty on the Block”) (Part 2 - “Felinotherapy”)

Happy Birthday, @goblin-alchemist​! I hope you like your Gabe gift, wink wink.

An enormous thank you goes to @sheeoni​ , for her invaluable beta-reading assistance!

>^.^<        >(^w^)<       =(^ ‘ x ‘ ^)=

It started innocently enough. Adrien graduated from lycée and left for Cambridge, taking Lady Noir with him. She was his cat, after all. Gabriel never would have thought that their absence would bring such silence and emptiness. The mansion was a huge house; one teenager and one cat couldn’t possibly have made such a difference. And yet, even with Emilie at his side again, Gabriel felt something was missing. Was he turning into an old softie after all these years? Nah, impossible. 

Still, even Nooroo’s mood seemed more wistful. Lady Noir was like a younger sister to him, and she certainly knew how to keep the violet sprite occupied. After Gabriel had dropped his second gig as a supervillain, both of them suddenly gained plenty of free time—more than they could fill with work. Seriously, had Gabriel known supervillainy was such a demanding job, he’d have been more reluctant to terrorize a city in search of magic jewels—which he had never gotten in the end, anyway. 

Although not obtaining their Miraculous had stung, Gabriel took solace in the fact that nobody had discovered he was Hawkmoth since he'd just stopped appearing. Despite akumas no longer being a threat to the city, Ladybug and Chat remained in the public eye, and had apparently become a couple. It didn't take long before their relationship caught the attention of the media, and in their eagerness to supply the public with breaking news, they'd prioritized the superhero couple over figuring out what had happened to the gaudy akumas and the apparent shortage of supervillains.

While Gabriel still had his fashion empire, his brand and his family, Nooroo did not have any job other than being a kwami. And maybe Gabriel should have let him slumber inside the Butterfly Miraculous, but the truth was he’d grown used to the magical company. The sight of Nooroo frolicking with Lady Noir had always warmed his heart; he liked having the sprite around. 

So in the end, it was that need to fill the gaping hole left by Lady Noir that brought it upon them. 

=(^ ‘ x ‘ ^)=

It was a chilly evening but Gabriel decided to take a stroll nevertheless. His steps took him to Champs Élysée. Just as he was walking by a dark alley, he heard a faint squeal. He stopped, intrigued. Nooroo popped his head out from Gabriel’s pocket and listened intently. 

Something mewled miserably behind the trash bins and cardboard boxes that occupied the narrow space. The containers shook and another desperate wail broke the silence. 

The sound was so doleful Gabriel’s heart clenched. His empathic powers weren’t even required for him to know the creature needed help. Yet the alley was dark, and he couldn’t find the source of the noise. 

‘Can you see anything, Nooroo?’ he asked his companion.

The kwami shook his head and, without further prompting, he flew to investigate the stash of boxes. He phased through the cardboard just as the first droplets of rain splashed on the pavement. Gabriel reached for his umbrella, but before he could open it, Nooroo called him. 

‘In here, Master!’ He hovered over one of the containers. ‘I need help, she’s trapped.’

She? 

Careful not to make a sound, Gabriel creeped closer and raised the box. Underneath he found the most pitiful cat he’d ever seen. It was a bit bigger than Lady Noir and more round in shape. Its fur was dull, dirty and wet. Gabriel could only guess the cat’s hide must have been silver once, as it looked a bit like a Russian Blue, but now it was a toneless grey. 

The cat looked tired and scared, but it didn’t flee at the sight of a huge man. Maybe it was already done with running, and was just seeking help?

‘We can’t leave her like this, Master,’ Nooroo turned to Gabriel with his big pleading eyes. 

‘Can you understand her?’

‘Not really, just her emotions,’ the kwami admitted. ‘She’s scared and exhausted.’

Gabriel could clearly see it for himself. He crouched and extended a hand. The cat sniffed it once, twice, then tilted her head to rub against his skin. 

Slowly Gabriel took off his jacket and placed it on the ground. ‘Can you tell her we can help her if she comes with us?’ he asked Nooroo. 

The sprite pursed his lips. Then he flew to the jacket and plopped himself in the center waving invitingly at the cat. Hesitantly the animal followed and settled next to the kwami.

‘I’m going to take you somewhere safe and dry,’ Gabriel promised softly. ‘We’ll take care of you.’ 

Gingerly he wrapped the jacket around the cat and Nooroo. Pressing the bundle to his chest he walked back to the mansion as fast as he dared. 

When they returned home, Emilie gasped at the cat’s state; she barked a few orders to the staff. Soon, a bath and fresh towels were ready, followed by a nourishing meal and a comfortable basket where the now fluffy and content cat finally found some rest. 

Chomp Élysée—what Gabriel had decided to name her despite Emilie’s complaints—turned out to be a grateful companion. She wasn’t as lively as Lady Noir, preferring to nap in sunbeams instead of chasing Nooroo over in Gabriel’s study. She purred up a storm when petted, but she always hid her tummy and chomped on anyone who dared to try and stroke the area. She also ate twice the amount Lady Noir would typically consume, which was reflected in her round shape.

‘You need to restrict her diet, dear, or soon she won’t be walking but rolling,’ Emilie would chide Gabriel, but every time Chomp Élysée came demanding food, he simply could not refuse her; the cat’s distressed look in the alley was still too fresh in his memory. 

Maybe he was going soft after all? But Chomp’s happy purr and easy company finally brought back some of the lost joy from his and Nooroo’s life.

>^.^<

They say the more you do something, the easier it becomes. It turns out this same principle works for cats very well. Gabriel had never been more reluctant than when he’d decided to allow Lady Noir into his home. It had taken a lot of time for her to weasel her way into his heart and heal his soul. Taking Chomp Élysée in was a bit simpler precisely because of the Lady Noir experience. Moreover, Emilie didn’t object to the mansion’s newest dweller, and even helped take care of the cat. 

So it really wasn’t such a big surprise when a few weeks later, Gabriel arrived home with not just one but two scrawny striped cats. Emilie didn’t say a word, yet her look was more guarded this time. However, an unexpected ally—Chomp Élysée—left his wife no choice but to accept the newest additions to their flock. The grey cat inspected the pets, gracing each with a friendly lick over their pink noses. She took them straight to her bowl. She held Gabriel’s eye as she allowed the hungry kitties to devour every bit of food in there, including two helpings. Then she nudged them in the direction of her basket and curled with them as the proudest mother hen. It was a miracle in itself that three cats could even fit in there.

Thus it was settled that the Agreste family had just gained two new members: Pusskin and Shakespurr. The cat corner in Gabriel’s study expanded to accommodate two more pets, their beds and a cat tree. Unlike Chomp Élysée, the new cats knew how to have fun. Suddenly Nooroo had his nubs full with keeping an eye on the feline writers. 

That was also the last time Emilie allowed for punny names, which was a shame because Gabriel had enough for a herd. Purrudence, Tabbytha, Margaret Scratcher, just to name a few for the ladies, or Fuzzinator, Catapult and Miraclaws for the boys. Such a waste. Even Clawsby was out of the question. 

>(^w^)<

Someone would say that three cats were a crowd (that someone being Emilie), so the circumstances of the next arrival were a bit unclear. One day a golden maine coon—Croissant, by Emilie’s insistence—just showed up at the mansion’s door. He regarded the Agrestes with his astute green eyes and took over as if the house had been always his. Gabriel supposed Emilie allowed this because the maine coon was basically a feline version of Adrien—from the slender posture to the fine blond fur, from the poised manner to the unnerving green gaze, there was something in Croissant that made it impossible not to fall under his charm. 

Of course, the fact that Croissant curbed Pusskin and Shakespurr’s temper helped a lot. Croissant hadn’t done anything in particular, yet he became the ultimate leader of the feline family. It took one growl from him and the mischievous kitties toned down their shenanigans in an instant. 

And since Croissant was definitely Emilie’s cat, she couldn’t really object when he brought Macaroon home. She was without a shadow of a doubt his partner and shared his intelligent gaze. Her eyes were deep blue. She must have been of Birman breed—not the kind usually associated with strays. Emilie and Gabriel went through no small amount of trouble to find out if anyone was looking for a lost maine coon or a birman cat, as they didn’t want to be accused of stealing other people’s pets. However, in the end it seemed both Croissant and Macaroon had no previous homes or owners. 

Five cats became the point where Emilie drew the line. True, their house was big, and with Adrien abroad they had a substantial supply of space, time and love to share, but enough was enough. 

‘We don’t want them to take over, do we, dear?’ she jested observing the cat colony in Adrien’s room, that had been redecorated to suit the feline needs. 

Confident that the cat limit was firmly established, Emilie left for England to check on their son and to spend some time with her sister. 

Gabriel decided not to tell her that barely three days after her departure he’d agreed to foster Athos, Portos and Aramis (at least he’d kept his promise with their names). It really wasn’t like he’d had any choice in the matter: Gorilla found the first one wandering around the patio, Nathalie then located a box with the second one next to the dumpster. The third decided to sleep under the limousine’s hood and it was a miracle he was discovered before he was grilled on the engine. 

The three musketeers were black with white collars and paws. They might have been brothers with their identically fluffy tails and impressive whiskers. They preferred Gorilla’s company, yet since his wife was allergic to cats, Gabriel graciously decided to let his bodyguard keep them in the mansion. There wasn’t much difference between five and eight cats,  after all. 

=(^ ‘ x ‘ ^)=

What was a lonely ex-villain supposed to do in an empty house? Spoil his cats of course! If it wasn’t for Nooroo and Croissant’s joined efforts, the pets would have walked all over him—especially Pusskin and Shakespurr. But somehow, the cats could always pick up on Gabriel’s mood and knew not to push him beyond his limits. 

Besides, whenever he felt wistful or sad, at least two felines accompanied him. Emilie had been gone for about a week when he let Chomp Élysée into his bed and the other cats followed. He loved how soothing a cat’s purr was. Chomp would settle at the foot of the bed, while Croissant and Macaroon took over Emilie’s side. Pusskin and Shakespurr each secured Gabriel’s legs, while Athos, Portos and Aramis usually fought for a place on any of the pillows. And once Gabriel sank his nose into the soft black fur of a musketeer, there was no way he could throw the cats out of his bedroom. Goodbye, headaches— welcome, good night’s sleep. 

Gabriel’s only complaint was that Chomp would wake him up at dawn with a bite on his big toe, demanding that he feed her, while rousing the rest of the feline family in the process. Gabriel would then descend the stairs to the kitchen, knee deep in cats, who rubbed at his shins affectionately—not so subtly urging him to move faster. 

One day though, Chomp Élysée didn’t wake him. Gabriel blinked the sleep away from his eyes, gently lifted a sleepy Portos from his chest, and looked around. No sign of Chomp in the bed. Gabriel appreciated routine greatly, so immediately he started to worry. He went to the kitchen, the rest of the cats at his heels. He picked Chomp’s favorite food and banged her bowl loudly and repeatedly, but she didn’t come. He left the other cats wolfing down their breakfast and set to look for his first cat.

When he finally found her, in her basket, under his desk, the mystery of Chomp Élysée’s recent appetite and shape was revealed. Gabriel was now the proud owner of twelve cats. 

>^.^<  >^.^<  >^.^<  >^.^<

The kittens were the cutest thing Gabriel had ever seen, baby Adrien excluded. Chanel, Dior, Givenchy and Ricci—absolutely punless nods to his favorite designers—were four little balls of grey fluff. They had him wrapped around their tiny claws in a blink. 

Having them around was so much fun. He could watch them play for hours, with their wee fluffy tails and clumsy movements, sweet mewls and an appetite for life rivalling their mother’s drive for food. Gabriel began to reminisce on how he used to watch little Adrien the same way. He briefly wondered when his son and Marinette would produce a grandchild for him—not that he’d ask, mind you. They were still so young, barely starting their adult life. Besides, he had sworn he’d never be one of those parents, but still it would be delightful to hear baby steps and giggles echoing in the mansion’s cavernous hall. For now Gabriel settled for miniature paws and excited squeals of the four most adorable designer kittens ever.

Yet good things rarely last long. Just as Chanel and her siblings got bold enough to start exploring the mansion, with their mother’s tender supervision, Emilie announced her return. Not only that, she bore auspicious news of Adrien and Marinette’s engagement (yay! one step closer to that grandchild). The happy husband-and-wife-to-be were returning for their break at the same time as her, and Emilie already decreed a dinner with the Dupain-Chengs should be held at the mansion upon their arrival. 

Under normal circumstances Gabriel would be overjoyed to finally get his human family back. There was just one teeny tiny problem—he was eight cats over the limit his wife had set. He was almost sure he could persuade her to keep what he started to think of as probably the biggest cat herd in Paris, but the dinner party was something of an obstacle. Not the best way to introduce new and unauthorized members of their household. He needed a cunning plan.

That’s when Nooroo stepped in with his brilliant idea: Gabriel just had to transfer the surplus cats to the only place in the building no one would visit—his former lair. Before Hawkmoth had risen to power it had been a neglected sunroom, forever waiting on renovation, but now it would do nicely as the cats’ den with a special nursery section for his little treasures. 

Nathalie and Gorilla turned out to be very helpful in furnishing the ex-lair. With some broom work and a fresh coat of paint what was once an akuma hatchery became a feline paradise. Cat trees, scratching posts, tunnels, shelves, beds, baskets, fountains, toys—only the best for Gabriel’s kitties. The team effort allowed the cats to be moved a few days before Emilie’s arrival, giving their pets the necessary time to adjust to a new place. 

The plan worked like a charm. The cats were happy to explore their new playroom and they didn’t even feel inclined to leave the lair. They had everything they needed there. Gabriel had his favorite armchair installed in the sunroom as well, so that he could spend some time watching the cats, and maybe even take a comfortable nap during his lunch breaks.

>^.^<

The celebratory dinner was in full swing and Gabriel was nailing it. He had finally found a worthy match for his pun game in Tom Dupain. The resulting pun-off was definitely the highlight of the evening. The ladies were chuckling, the youngsters were groaning. The only present felines included Lady Noir, who meticulously inspected every corner of the dining room, and Croissant with Macaroon. The two cats decided to act as the guard of honor for Emilie, flanking her chair and chirping happily at their favorite human’s return. The looks on Marinette and Adrien’s faces were priceless.

Everything went smoothly until Lady Noir’s tail turned into bottle brush. Croissant and Macaroon exchanged worried looks. Then all three cats bolted for the door and disappeared. Gabriel seemed to be the only one to notice. He surely was the only one to understand where they’d gone. He excused himself from the company in order to check on the situation in the secret room.

He found all thirteen cats in the lair, all right. Thirteen tails bristled and lashed behind them. In front of them, on the window frame was a pigeon. And not even Mr. Pigeon, just one of those flying rats. It dawned on him that this was the reason for their odd behavior, and Gabriel snorted out a laugh at the ridiculous sight. Unfortunately, it startled the bird, and the stupid creature decided the safest plan of action would be to dive inside a cat lair.

Thirteen pairs of eyes followed the pigeon’s trail inside the dome; thirteen throats uttered a growl. Within seconds, the cats sprang into action, and all hell broke loose! The pigeon, sensing eminent danger, did the only sensible thing it could—it decided to hide in a nest. Only it wasn’t a nest, but the neatly trimmed hair of one Gabriel Agreste. The man yelped, the cats attacked. 

Gabriel went down under the onslaught, losing balance thanks to a vicious kitten which attacked his shoelace (as if it had anything to do with the pigeon taking refuge on his head). The bird apparently had enough brains to know when it was outnumbered, and finally flew outside, leaving the man and his cats in a disoriented heap of limbs, tails and claws. 

And then someone cleared their throat. 

Gabriel raised his eyes to the door. Everyone was there—the Dupain-Chengs, Adrien, Marinette, and Emilie. Tom and Sabine wore matching grins, while the kids were rather horrified. 

Emilie smoothed her dress and raised a brow—it meant an inevitable private conversation would soon follow. For now, however, his wife slid back into the perfect hostess routine. Well, almost.

‘And this, Sabine, used to be our sunroom, where my husband now keeps his hoard of cats,’ she said without batting an eyelash.

‘Awwww,’ Sabine coed, as Gabriel started the process of untangling himself from the said hoard by removing Dior from his jacket’s pocket.

Tom released a mischievous chuckle and stroked his mustache. He looked Gabriel straight in the eye and said, ‘I believe, dear Emilie, the proper name is a meowntain.’

The designer bristled at that; he had just been humiliated in front of his guests! His secret was out, but he saw a chance to save his face. He couldn’t allow for anyone to defeat him on his own turf!

‘I’ll have you know,’ he drawled, pulling himself up to his full height and brushing cat hairs from his clothes, ‘this is not a meowntain.’ He wrinkled his nose in disgust. 

‘This-, ‘ he proudly opened his hands and gestured to the feline paradise and his collection of pets, ‘-is haute cature.’

 -(^The End^)-

[thesustainableswap]

Pre Owned = Pre Loved!

In a world dominated by consumerism and having the newest product as soon as possible, it’s nice to take a step back and see what items you can source from others. From electronics, to furniture, there are a huge number of websites geared towards finding pre owned items a new home. But where to begin? What websites and apps are out there? I’m going to spend this blog telling you about a few you might already know, and a few you might not.

For electronics, I recently discovered BackMarket, a website which sells refurbished goods. From smart phones, to games consoles, to cameras, to laptops... if you’re looking for anything electronic you’ll most likely be able to find it here. A lot of people question what the difference between ‘used’ and ‘refurbished’ is, but Back Market have that explanation covered on their website:

‘In both cases, the two devices are pre owned or "second-hand" but that's where the similarities end. A refurbished [product] has been tuned up and brought back to perfect working condition in a factory before being sold on Back Market. So basically a refurbished [product] has the double advantage of being both cheap as well as also having a professional refurbisher guarantee its excellent quality.’

I made a purchase from Back Market recently and was so overjoyed by it. My laptop speakers are on their last legs, and music is a huge part of mine and my partners life but it became frustrating when my laptop speakers started distorting every single sound. We’d been discussing the idea of buying a bluetooth speaker my partner remembered Back Market. We bought a JBL Flip 5 (which has a recommended retail price of €130) for €100. It was advertised as having visible scratches and wear, but when it arrived we were happily surprised to see that it looked brand new. I love being able to purchase something of good quality, without having to contribute to consumerism, by giving a ‘used’ product a new home. 

For second hand items that haven’t been refurbished, it’s good to check websites like Gumtree or your Facebook marketplace. Consider these websites, however, as similar to that of a charity shop. There might be a lot of spam (or what my dad calls ‘tat,’) to get through before you find what you’re looking for. When me and my partner were moving from the UK to France we sold all of our furniture on Gumtree either for free or for around half the cost of what we originally paid. They were all picked up quickly, were wanted and resulted in us having a bit of cash in our pockets. Other alternatives to Gumtree are Craigslist, Ebay, Etsy, Wallapop, Trove Market and Krrb. In France we have Paruvendu and LeBonCoin. It only takes a moment to find the website for your area, and then you’re sailing!

If you live in a big city, you probably also stumble into things left on the street. Me and my partner found and brought home two HUGE epic mirrors last year, which were originally part of a dresser which had been dismantled and left on the curb. We also found an ikea clothes rail that, once given a clean, now has a new home in our flat. If it doesn’t gross you out (which it shouldn’t, because almost everything can be cleaned and fixed up) you can find some real gems out there.

It also takes no time to hit up your family and friends and see what they have that they don’t want any more. Myself and my partner recently moved, and were lucky enough to have lots of his family members give us their old furniture. If you’re handy or creative, it takes little to no time to give these items a new lease of life. Something small that bugs me with furniture is that I don’t like having lots of different wood tones in a room. It makes me feel like the room is disorganised. On the flip side, I love painting. I’m not good at it, but I love it. And so when we were given some different tables in varying sizes I decided to give them a bit of a makeover.

(Image of a coffee table painted with a white base and orange, green and pink lines to look somewhat like a road map, inspired by Lucy and Yak’s ‘Sundaze’ collection as well as Samiir Saunders, and also of a round end table, painted in circular stripes in the same colours.)

When it comes to fashion, check out shops that sell vintage fashion or dead stock (I’ll insert a link of two previous blogs here & here on the topic!) Otherwise, check out what fashion swaps there might be in your area. These kinds of markets are becoming increasingly popular, where you take some items from your wardrobe that you wouldn’t mind saying goodbye to and swap them with others to keep your wardrobe fresh and to ensure that the clothing is not mindlessly being thrown into a charity bin. If you can’t find a swap market in your area, start one with your friends and make it regular thing. Otherwise, if you have a special event coming where you feel like you need a one off, special item, look into renting (one to check out is The Endless Wardrobe)!

And what about one of the most wasted products on Earth? Food. Food is thrown away at an alarming rate, and for reasons that can seem pointless. An apple has a bruise? Some bread has a bit of mould on the corner? You have leftovers from a new days ago and they look a bit sad now? You only needed one pepper, but they only come in a pack of three? Food waste is a huge issue, and a huge emitter of green house gases. (Check out this Deliciously Ella podcast episode where she speaks to Tessa Clarke.) There are a number of ways this can be combated. By joining the sharing app OLIO, which allows you to share unwanted groceries with your neighbours. Or get your community on board without apps by heading to local council meetings and speaking up on the issue. In some areas across the world, fridges are set up in public spaces to provide a solution to this problem (you can find another article on public fridges here!)

By adapting this way of consuming products, you inadvertently begin to lean towards a more circular economy. Instead of throwing something out and replacing it with something new, you learn to search for what is already out there. You begin to make use of someone else’s unwanted items, and in turn, be more aware of what you already own. ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,’ rings a bell here.

What items have you found that, without you taking them, would have been thrown away? What methods of reusing and re-purposing do you have using items you already own? What websites do you check before buying something new? Let me know by commenting below.

Until next time,

The Sustainable Swap.

[jhsbrat]

stories that never were pt. 6

this ain’t a whiskey drowned ballad, there ain’t nothing here that’s valid

genre: stories that never were pt. 6, sweetbitter au

word count: 1.7 k

warnings: mentioned drug use

It started just like how all beautiful beginnings do. With a bang.

Or rather, in truth, with a clash. Two people crashing into each other, like celestial bodies colliding, one going this way, one going the other. The contact knocks them both off course and sends everything flying. Clatter. Clang. Crack. There’s total silence for a split second. Then, the explosion.

“Watch where you’re fucking going, newbie!” The other back waiter snaps at you, still managing to balance a trio of dishes precariously in his hands. The same couldn’t be said for the ones you were previously holding, now strewn in smashed pieces across the kitchen floor along with pieces of halibut and shrimp scampi.

You’re frozen, cheeks aflame as the man brushes past you and onto the dining room floor, bleached blonde head there one second and gone the next. There’s wetness in your eyes, which snap up in that moment at the sound of a snicker. In the corner, Momo and Nayeon are huddled together, hands covering their wide grins as they laugh to themselves at your embarrassment. Next to them is Jin, ever stoic and ever calculating, waiting to see what you do next. Evaluating. Judging. Assessing. You can’t breathe.

“Let’s fucking go, newbie, I got dishes that need to go out,” Yoongi, the sous chef, snaps from his station, where his deft hands have already moved to fry up another cut of fish.

Your lungs expand with air and then you’re moving, grabbing the broom and sweeping away from the floor the shards and gory remnants of what was to be table four’s meal. Your brain has shut down and your body moves mechanically through pure muscle memory, not giving yourself a second to freak out over your major gaffe. There are dishes to run, ice buckets to fill, plates to bus, pans to clean, drinks to pour, and food to sell to too rich people who’d love to spend too much money on too little food.

“I got the halibut and the scampi round 2, I need a runner,” Yoongi calls out, already turning back to the grill to fire up the next dish. You go to grab the plates but he tuts, back still facing you. You’re secretly convinced he has a second set of eyes in the back of his head, hidden behind tufts of black hair and his white bandana.

“Not you, butterfingers. Momo, get over here.”

The girl comes forward, picking up the hot plates carefully and balancing two on her left forearm with ease, grabbing the last one with her right hand. She turns to smile at you, thin lips lifted up in a petty smirk, before whirling out through the kitchen’s double doors. You resist the urge to roll your eyes, only because Jin is still watching to see if you’ll keep your cool.

Instead, you breathe in deeply, once, twice, then turn to start scraping off food from the bin of plates Taehyung just bused in. Piles of unfinished meat and vegetables, worth hundreds of dollars on the menu, begin to mount up in the trash can you’re staring into. There’s some sort of metaphor to be made about the irony of waste and wealth you’re witnessing, but you’re just trying to make it through the night.

Nayeon hip checks you on her way back into the kitchen, pausing at the back shelves to take a swig of her water bottle.

“Nice moves, newbie. If you wanted to get his attention, you could have just asked for his number.”

Your back is to Jin this time, so you let your eyes roll in response. Plop. Splat. Squelch. You watch more food fall from the plate in your hand into the depths of the garbage below. The wet spinach is starting to congeal with the lard from the duck and the smell makes you want to retch. You grab another plate.

Nayeon smiles and sidles closer, hand reaching out for a plate herself and joining in. “Or maybe you really are that clumsy and don’t care about Jimin at all.”

You glance up then. “That’s his name? Jimin?”

Nayeon’s grin turns positively wolfish and she leans in, nose brushing against the tip of your own, lips close enough for her breath to slither from her mouth to yours. She whispers and it smells like the shot of bourbon she downed before the doors of the restaurant opened that night.

“He loves the whole innocent schtick, you know, and you’ve got virgin written all over you.”

You feel your face heat up and you jerk away from the other girl, twisting to grab another plate. “I’m not.”

“Not what? A virgin?” Nayeon slowly straightens back up and dumps her still dirty plate into back into the bin, hands reaching up to tighten her ponytail. “Honey, you could have fooled me. You’ve got that small town hick, first time in the big city, blushing Mary look down.”

You bite the inside of your cheek before daring to glance over your shoulder, in the direction of where the man named Jimin is standing with the other busboys. He’s in the middle of laughing at a joke Taehyung made, probably something vulgar judging by the way the other boy is wagging his tongue, when he pauses and turns to look back at you, as if he heard you call his name.

Eyes widening in shock, your mouth opens, then snaps close, and you twist back to stare determinedly into the Hefty bag of rotting food. Nayeon giggles and leans back in, her fingers twirling around a lock of your hair.

“He’s still looking.”

The music is loud, some trashy Euro trance beat, and you can’t breathe again. But this time, it’s because there are too many bodies and too little air. You push past the throngs of people, heart starting to beat faster from whatever Momo had you take earlier. You could have asked what it was, but it’s unlikely you would have known anyways.

You stumble past the table your coworkers are currently sitting at and hear their voices call out your name, but their faces are a blur and your focus is singular.

Barreling through an emergency side door, you make it outside into the alleyway beside the club and slide down to sit there on the pavement. Someone probably recently took a piss there, or puked, judging by the smell, but you’re too preoccupied with taking gulps of fresh air to care.

“That’s concerning.”

You roll your head around to look deeper into the alley, a slender figure with a bright halo striding closer until you have to strain your neck to look up at them. You want to ask if they’re an angel before the figure squats down and Jimin’s face comes into focus, bleached blonde hair mussed and clothes wrinkled, as if he had just thrown them on moments before. Then your mind registers that he said something.

“I’m okay just-“ you exhale, rubbing at your bloodshot eyes. “Just needed air.”

The man straightens back up to look down at you with a bemused look in his eyes. “No, I mean the door. It’s supposed to ring an alarm if someone exits through it, but I don’t see any people evacuating, so it must be faulty. Concerning.”

You blink, brain lagging behind a few seconds, mouth unable to formulate a response other than garbled speech. You’re really going to have to ask Momo what you took because you’ve never felt this spaced out before.  

Jimin sighs and grabs both your arms, yanking your body up to lean against him. “C’mon, newbie, let’s go.”

He all but has to drag you to the curb, one arm wrapped tightly around your torso to keep you upright while the other flags down a cab. Your hands creep up to his shoulders, clutching the silk there like it was a lifeline, and it makes it difficult for him to separate from your grasp long enough to buckle you into your seat. The ride passes by in a blur of twinkling city lights and then the motion ends and you find yourself at your apartment’s stoop, the door unlocked and pushed open after Jimin wrestled the keys from where they were tied around your wrist.

He pries your fingers off from their clutch on his shirt collar, fabric forever wrinkled by your insistent tugging for him to follow you inside, and he turns to walk back to the curb. You huff out a breath in frustration and the words tumble out your mouth before you can reel them back in.

“You’re such a fake.”

“What?” Surprise colors the man’s features and he stops trying to hail another cab to turn and look at you in disbelief.

“You strut like-“ your eyes squeeze shut because the world decides to twirl a little faster at that exact moment. “Like you’re some kind of bad boy. You’re not.”

“Yeah?” The disbelief slides off his face and is replaced with that smugness he wears so well. The corner of his mouth lifts and you want to tear into that smirk.

“Yeah. If you were really bad, you’d just come in with me.” You try to make your voice sultry, but your body betrays you, swaying in the non-existent wind.

Jimin steps away from the curb and slinks toward you, smirk still there. “What would you know about bad boys?”

You’re not sure where the words are coming from, probably somewhere inside you where greed and lust and jealousy are born. You let them spring forth anyways, not caring about the consequences of speaking with a tongue that doesn’t belong to you, but to the chemicals pounding through your veins.

“Come closer and I’ll tell you.”

He listens and you silently rejoice in that small victory. He smells like citrus, sharp scent cutting through your senses and you’re drunk off it. When the warmth of his body comes close enough to envelop your own, Jimin stares down into your eyes and you feel the hold of his gaze down to your beating heart. He opens his mouth and you open yours, coming close enough for your lips to barely graze, your breaths mingling, belonging to neither of you and both of you. Eyes fluttering shut, you inhale him in.  

Then, with his eyes locked on your own and mouth still just barely on yours, he speaks.

“I don’t fuck strung out girls who can barely walk on their own,” he straightens up, twirling to walk back down the street. “See you tomorrow, newbie.”

It’s only later you realize you never told him your address.

e/n: listen to “shiver” by maroon 5 and you’ll get it

[sa-gt-tarrius]

How to Survive The Fall — Chapter 1

Starting route to 23 Amber Street. Turn left onto memory lane, keep right, and pray you won’t find the answers you’re looking for.

Warnings: Death mention (no main characters), dysfunctional families, Deceit as a major character, Remus mention

***

It couldn’t be stressed enough just how average Virgil’s family was.

As dysfunctional and estranged as it could be, Virgil had been assured time and time again how completely and totally normal the Sanders household was. Virgil was just a regular guy in a regular town. Life had always been normal for Virgil—and it would stay normal for the rest of time.

Or maybe normal was the wrong word. Boring was way more accurate.

Virgil huffed, twisting his pen around in his fingers. Of all the boring things in Virgil’s life, college was the most boring. Lectures would drag on and on, droning until it became nothing but white noise. Virgil’s mind scarcely stayed focused on the class’s topic, which often led to some confusing tests and staggeringly low grades. But it wasn’t his fault—the professor couldn’t be duller if he were a rock with glasses.

Virgil glanced at the clock. 3:05. Ten more minutes until his brother came to pick him up. Dante promised him a pizza night today, full of video games and brotherly bonding time. Virgil was looking forward to that. It sure beat watching youtube all night by himself.

Ten minutes had never dragged by so slowly. By the time the bell rang, Virgil was certain he was about to go insane. He wasted no time in slinging his bag over his shoulder and jogging out front. A familiar blue van was there, parked too far from the curb to be even remotely legal. Virgil held back a snort of laughter as he flung the door open.

Dante was sitting crookedly in the driver’s seat, frowning deeply. “Careful with the door, Virge,” he deadpanned.

“You’re too far from the curb again.” Virgil plopped the bag at his feet, leaning as far back as the chair would let him. “Ready for tonight?”

“I don’t want to scratch the tires. And yeah, I’m ready. We’ve just got to order pizza when we get back.“

“You’re not picking it up on the way home?”

“I’m not wasting gas,” Dante replied, flicking his turn signal on and shifting into drive. “Seatbelt. Now.”

“Fine,” Virgil groaned. He reached over to buckle himself in, then shot Dante a funny face. “There. Seatbelt.”

The ride proceeded as it usually did. Dante focused on the road while Virgil drowned out his thoughts with music. He slipped on his gigantic headphones and stared out the window, tapping his finger to the beat. To an outsider, Virgil would appear rude or uninterested. But Dante knew better. Virgil had his ways of coping; music was one of his favourites.

Dante knew Virgil better than anyone else, which wasn’t too surprising. For many years, all Virgil had to rely on was Dante. His parents died a long time ago, leaving Virgil in the care of his older brother. They had a third sibling, Remus, but he lived on the other side of the country. Sometimes he and Dante would receive packages from Remus on their birthdays with strange gifts inside. Freeze-dried space-food calamari, a paper crown from a fast-food restaurant, and a multi-tool with 14 different blades were Virgil’s favourites.

Aside from Remus, Virgil also had two cousins who lived in the state next to them. Emile, the younger of the two, was nice enough. He was a school therapist at a small high school who visited Virgil and Dante as often as possible. Practically every interaction Virgil had with him was uncomfortable, if not painstakingly awkward. Emile would sit Virgil down on the couch, pull out a notebook, and ask about Virgil’s life. Every conversation became a therapy session of sorts. The therapist’s work life always bled into his personal relationships. Oh, and Emile also really liked cartoons. The two sometimes watched anime together. 

As for the other cousin, Remy was an enigma. He was in the army... or something. Or was it the navy? Nobody detailed the details. Virgil bet that Remy was a submarine janitor—or something just as uncool—and that’s why no one talked about it. Virgil had met Remy once or twice, but not enough to know anything about him aside from his caffeine addiction. He seemed eccentric and a little too moonstruck for Virgil’s taste, but not too bad overall.

But aside from the rare visit from Emile and the even rarer visit from Remy, it was just Virgil and Dante. On one hand, Virgil liked it that way. It meant more time with Dante. Unlike his friends at school, family commitments such as christmas parties or easter dinners never bound Virgil. But on the other hand, Virgil found himself feeling lonely far too often. When Dante was working, Virgil had no one to talk to. Even the blaring noise of his favourite bands couldn’t drown out the unbearable silence of the empty house. 

Virgil figured he had it lucky. He knew some people with ridiculously strict parents, while others had nobody to care for them. Dante found himself in the goldilocks zone between being chill and being responsible. Dante was also a lot of fun. Pizza parties and gaming nights were very common when he was home. 

...Maybe boring wasn’t the right word, either. Virgil decided steady was the best way to describe his life. And regardless of how dull it could be, Virgil was truly thankful for what he had. 

It didn’t take them long to get home. Virgil left his headphones in while making his way inside. He’d just have to unpack and get changed before they could settle down. Virgil arrived at his room and dropped his bag onto the bedroom floor next to a dirty pair of pants. Then he took off his hoodie and threw it haphazardly into the laundry bin. There—unpacked and changed.

However, his absolute banger of a playlist was so rudely interrupted by a soft dinging noise. Someone just sent him a text. Huffing indignantly, Virgil took his headphones off, opened his messenger app and checked the text. It was probably a reminder from his professor about some project.

The front door slammed closed. “I’m down here when you’re ready,” Dante hollered from downstairs. “Don’t take too long.”

Virgil didn’t answer. The text had him too preoccupied. He read it twice, three times, four times, blinking rapidly as he tried to wrap his head around the brief message. “What the hell?” was all he could bring himself to say.

we are alive and well come to 23 amber st please respond asap logan 

The message was brief, likely written in a hurry. Virgil checked the phone number; it wasn’t from anyone in his contact list. He didn’t recognize the name Logan either. 

Why would someone send him this? Was this a joke?

“Come on, Virge! Let’s get set up!”

Virgil nodded absently, shoving his phone into his pocket and shuffling downstairs to the living room. Dante was on the couch, untangling a mess of controller cords. “There you are. Go pick a game. I’ll get this sorted out.”

“Okay.” Virgil knelt by the game box, sifting through various cases of game. “Yo, Dante?”

“Yeah, Virgil?”

Virgil picked up a copy of Shoot Shoot 7, cringed, and put it back into the box. “Do you know anyone named Logan?”

Dante whirled his head around, eyebrows raised. “Uh, why?”

“I got a weird text today,” Virgil drawled, glancing between their copies Bosom Blossom and ATV Versus. “Fighting game or racing game?” 

“Racing,” Dante replied, looking distinctly suspicious. “What do you mean, weird text?”

“I don’t know. It said something about going to 23 amber street. Sent by some dude named Logan.” Virgil grunted as he struggled to open the game case. “I don’t know a Logan. And I don’t recognize that address.”

“Me neither,” Dante shrugged. He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat, focusing on the tangled cords. “I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s probably just a prank.” The elder brother’s voice was calm and collected, but for a fraction of a moment, worry flashed in his eyes. That wasn’t surprising in the slightest.

While Dante was permissive and amiable, Virgil often noticed traces of parental instincts in certain situations. Whenever Virgil had to come home late, he would find Dante wide awake on the sofa, no matter how late it was. And whenever Virgil’s response to “how was your day” was anything less than “fine,” Dante would mysteriously obtain a pair of movie tickets or amusement park passes. Dante showed his love in subtle but meaningful ways, and Virgil always noticed.

Maybe he shouldn’t have told Dante about the text. He’d probably get all worried about Virgil now that he knew.

“Yeah, it’s probably a prank.” Virgil finally inserted the disc into the game console, happy to see a green light flashing softly. “There we go. I'm gonna go order that pizza while you, uh…” The younger brother held back a snort as Dante seemed to tangle the cords even more. “...figure that out.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dante muttered, twisting the ball of wires around in his hands. He was hiding his frustration pretty well, but Virgil saw the absolute seething anger building on his face. “Get something with onions on it.”

“Alright.” Virgil quickly dialled the pizza parlour, taking the phone to the kitchen as to not to howl with laughter at Dante’s unfortunate plight. “Yeah, hi. Can I get a large bacon and onion pizza? Extra onions, too.”

Life in the Sanders household was normal, boring, and steady. It had been that way for many years. But little did Virgil know that his entire world was about to get very, very weird… and a strange text message from an unknown number was only the beginning.

[specthrum]

“Hey Izuku, you wanna know a secret?” 

Jolted by the sound of his brother’s voice, Izuku looks up from his coloring book, hands smeared in the wax from using the crayons a little too enthusiastic. Mikumo, taller only for the fact that he is standing while his twin lays flat on his stomach leans down so they’re eye level; wide grin spreading across rounded features.

“Yeah!” The green haired boy cheers, enthusiastically. He rises to his feet with the help of his brother, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. “What is it?”

“C’mon I’ll show you,” The purple eyed twin takes the lead, grabbing him by the wrist and taking him over to the desktop computer. Once there, Mikumo relinquishes Izuku’s wrist so he can climb onto the chair; standing up so he can reach the mouse an keyboard.

“I can use the computer by myself,” he says, young voice full of pride “lookit,” 

With a few clicks and some time drumming on the keyboard he brings up a familiar video; one they’d both seen at least a dozen times.

“Woah” Izuku says with wide eyed admiration, clambering onto the seat next to his twin to watch the video of their shared idol. He breathes out a sigh of longing. “I wanna be just like All Might when i’m bigger.”

“We’ll be even better,” Mikumo asserts “‘cause we’ve got each other.”

_________________________

“I’m sorry, it’s just not going to happen,”

The words seem to echo through the Midoriya’s tiny apartment with a sense of mourning. With the doctor’s assessment earlier that afternoon it was official; both boys were never going to develop their quirk. Not fire breathing. Not object attraction. Nothing.

Quirkless.

Izuku sits in front of the computer, sniffing quietly; watching that same video on repeat. Mikumo had taught him, how to bring it up and play it on his own. Their mother catches him, but can’t bring herself to scold the boy upon seeing his face, tears welling up in those forest eyes.

“...Can I be a hero too?”

Instead of an answer Inko Midoriya hugs her son and whispers that she’s sorry.

Mikumo, tiny and heartbroken as his brother; watches from the doorway.

“We’ll be heroes, I promise,” he murmurs under his breath, clutching at the doorframe with feeble fingers; blunt fingernails nowhere near strong enough to leave so much as a chip in the paint.

_____________________________

“Ouch,” Izuku hisses in pain as a cotton ball full of peroxide is pressed to the scrape on his knee. 

“Stop squirming,” Mikumo scolds, carefully cleaning little bits of gravel and dirt out of the wound. It was becoming more and more common these days for Izuku to come home battered and bruised. The world was like that. Cruel and cold and wanting to snuff out every last bit of light.

The gangly boy looks down at his twin from his perch on the sink’s counter. Expression concerned. He can always tell when Mikumo is upset. It exudes from him almost in waves.

“ ‘m sorry” he mutters, chewing on his bottom lip as the purple haired boy peels the plastic cover off of a band-aid.

“For what?” The purple haired boy asks, tone a forced neutral as he purposely focuses on the task at hand; applying the bandage over Izuku’s wound.

“Always causing trouble,” He says, rubbing his thumbs together meekly.

“Bakugo’s the one causing trouble,” Mikumo replies, with more snap to his tone then what’s necessary. “He’s nothing but a bully. And so’s that other kid. I don’t know why you were defending him, anyway.”

The target that day had been another kid from their class, one who had no problems ignoring it when they were the ones on the receiving end of the explosive boy’s entourage and their antics.

“Hanada-san was in trouble,” Izuku says as if it were that simple. “I couldn’t just watch.”

“He just watches when it’s you. Don’t forget that. He doesn’t deserve your help.” Mikumo’s frustration shows in his voice as he drops the wrapper from the bandages and used cotton ball into the waste bin.

“All Might always helps everyone.”

Mikumo doesn’t have a response to that. ‘You’re not All Might’. He thinks, but doesn’t say. Because Izuku will take it the wrong way. Won’t understand that he simply means that All Might doesn’t have to deal with what they do, doesn’t understand what it’s like at the bottom of the food chain. It’s easy for him to take the high road.

“Besides,” Izuku continues in his twin’s silence “This year we’re starting middle school. Maybe things will be different.”

“Yeah,” Mikumo says with an awkward smile, knowing full well that nothing will be different. “Maybe.”

________________________

“Wanna know a secret?” Izuku speaks in a whisper, leaning over the edge of their shared bunk bed just after midnight.

“Hmm?” Mikumo responds sleepily, arm thrown haphazardly over his eyes to block out the light emanating from his brother’s phone. 

The unenthusiastic response does little to curb Izuku’s own excitement as he dangles his notebook over the edge and near Mikumo’s face. “Look,”

Mikumo sighs through his nose and accepts that it’s one of those nights where he won’t get much sleep. He takes the notebook gently and sits up in bed with a yawn.

“Phone,” He says drowsily, holding out the palm of his hand. He’d rather not root around for his own phone to use as a light. Izuku, seeming to understand, places his phone in the palm of his twin’s hand. The low light briefly illuminating his eager grin.

The purple haired pre-teen points the screen towards the page so that he can read the notes. They’re about All Might, of course. Primarily about his quirk, which Izuku is apparently theorizing as some sort of stockpile rather than a simple power boost.

“I think I've finally figured it out,” Izuku speaks with such rare pride in his voice that Mikumo can’t bring himself to admit that he doesn’t really care about All Might anymore. Let alone his quirk. 

“You’re right. There’s definitely a difference between his early career and now, even taking into account for experience.” 

“Right?” Izuku replies, practically vibrating with enthusiasm. Green eyes wide and happy. “Especially when you think about seven years ago when he fought those…”

_______________________

“You wanna be a hero so bad? Why don’t you hope you’ll have a quirk in the next life and go take a swan dive off the roof.”

Mikumo growls, low and angry; steps forward, fist clenched, when he feels a gentle tug on the back of his uniform.

Izuku. Even with tears burning at the corners of his eyes, rage boiling underneath his own skin; gives his brother a pleading look. Doesn’t want him to get in trouble on his behalf.

“Yeah? What?” Bakugo speaks with venom, setting off explosions to intimidate.

“It’s not worth it.” Izuku says softly. And Mikumo can hear it in his voice. The unspoken ‘I’m not worth it’. And that causes him to swallow his rising anger. Because what his brother needs now more so than revenge is support.

“C’mon, let’s go home.” Mikumo leads him out of the classroom, holding his hand and giving Bakugo and his followers a wide berth. They fish Izuku’s notebook out of the koi pond.

“Stupid. Stupid, stupid,” Izuku murmurs under his breath as he flips through the soaked pages. The sound of it breaks Mikumo’s heart, he tries to find something to say. Anything to make this less devastating.

“It’s not that bad,” He speaks eventually, taking the notebook and inspecting it himself. May as well start with the issue he can actually fix. “The words are still readable, if we get it home and dry it soon enough we can stop the pages from sticking together. Then we can just write it in a new notebook.”

Izuku’s face briefly lights up before falling once more. “It’s pointless. Kacchan’s right. I can’t get into UA without a quirk.”

“There are more important things than quirks, Izuku. You and me. We’re going to be heroes together, right?” he places his hands on his brother’s shoulders, making eye contact despite his unruly bangs.

“I’m not like you!” Izuku snaps, shoving his hands away. He looks down. And Mikumo can feel his frustration returning. He wants to make Bakugo pay for this. For everything he’s done. For beating down his brother so relentlessly.

“Let’s just...go home.” Izuku whispers dejectedly, taking the soaked notebook back and beginning the long trek back to their apartment.

Mikumo follows him in silence for a few steps before halting. “Shoot,” he mutters, loud enough for his twin to hear. “I forgot my textbook in my desk. I need it for the homework assignment. You go on ahead, I’ll catch up.”

With that he turns on his heel and rushes back to the school; determination burning in amethyst eyes.

____________________________

“You’re gonna pay,” The words come out firm, but eerily calm. Causing Bakugo to actually turn to face the shorter student. Mikumo stands his ground, even as the blonde gets close.

“Hah, what was that?” He pops an explosion in the palm of his hand. Mikumo doesn’t even flinch, extending his own palm towards him, flat and open.

“You’re going to pay to replace the notebook you destroyed,” He explains further, fighting to keep his tone even; though his expression betrays his anger.

“Yeah? And why would I do that? What’s worthless Deku need with that anyway?”

‘He’s not worthless!’

“Go, shoo, before I turn you into a smear on the pavement. I’m in a bad mood and your ugly mug is just making it worse.”

‘I’ll show you!’

Breathe in. Breathe out. What would Izuku do. How would he handle this? The other boy had always been so much better at handling people.

“You want to be a hero too, right?” Mikumo tilts his chin up, hand still outstretched. “There’s more to being a hero than having a quirk. You know what you did was wrong. Own up and make up for your mistakes. Otherwise you’ll never be a hero.”

Crimson eyes flit from the smaller teen’s expression to his open palm. Then lips pull back in a snarl and he cracks his knuckles.

“I don’t need to play nice with a couple of worthless bugs. I’m gonna be the best hero there is, because I always win,”

‘Oh, well. I tried it Izuku’s way.’

With a battle cry of his own, Mikumo lunges forward; punching the taller teen in the nose and grinning at the cracking sound it makes.

_____________________________

When Mikumo returns home hours later with a distinct limp and his own blood staining his uniform, Izuku is already in bed.

His ruined notebook sits on their shared desk, open, and with fresh ink on the page. The sight of it brings a smile to his face. His brother may be soft and kind at heart, but he was resilient as well.

Maybe Mikumo didn’t have to worry so much, after all. 

He closes the notebook and pulls a blanket over his brother’s sleeping form. Feeling much too sore to climb, he flops on the bed next to him and allows the night to overtake him.

____________________________

Izuku has a quirk.

It just. Appears one day. The day after the notebook incident.

Mikumo wants to be happy for him. He never bought into the idea that powers are necessary to be a hero, but there’s no denying it would make things easier. And Izuku definitely needs the boost in confidence.

But it’s strange.

‘Eclipse’. The strange emitter type quirk that’s nothing like their parents’ quirks. Like nothing on their entire family tree (Mikumo had researched it, just in case). It came out of nowhere, too. After fourteen years of being quirkless.

Izuku’s the expert in quirks. Mikumo spends more time fiddling with technology. Re-purposing old computer parts he finds thrown out or buys for cheap at pawn shops. But even he knows enough that his brother’s explanation sounds fishy. Shaky and unsure.

He’s hiding something. Talking to himself late at night. Eating more ravenously than normal. Staying up to the small hours of the morning. Working out like he’ll die if he doesn’t keep moving.

Mikumo tries to ask. His brother shuts him out. Shakes it off, tells him it’s nothing. And if he presses the issue then green eyes well up with tears and he urges that he ‘needs this’. And the purple haired boy relents. Leaves him be.

________________________

Mikumo is alone.

He and Izuku don’t walk home from school together, anymore. Izuku always has something to do. His twin doesn’t bother to ask anymore.

It had been a week since their graduation from Aldera. And was weeks more before their first day at UA. They had tested in separate areas.

Izuku hadn’t told him how it went. He’d assumed that he’d done badly, didn’t want to talk about it. But they both got accepted. Different classes.

They had always had each other, growing up. Them against the world. That was how it had felt.

It had never bothered Mikumo. He didn’t care about the jerks at Aldera, anyway. He had his mother, and they both had Izuku. They were a happy little family. Just the three of them.

Or, they had been.

_________________________

“Izuku!” Mikumo runs up to his twin the moment the paramedics dispersed. He grabs him by the shoulders, no longer small and frail, filled out from all the training, and looks him over frantically; as if there was something the professionals had missed.

“I’m ok,” Izuku says mildly “Just a little shaken up,”

“You were attacked! There’s no way you could be ok!” He feels on the verge of tears, something that’s much more rare for him than it was for his brother.

“Those villains...when I find them…!” Mikumo growls out, looking at the doors of the USJ with a manic, enraged expression.

Something about that changes something in Izuku’s own expression. He frowns, pushing his twin roughly away. Looking like he’s about to argue.

Like he’s about to defend them.

But just as quickly it disappears and Izuku gives him a gentle smile.

“I’m fine, I promise. Thank you for always looking out for me.”

‘Did Izuku just...lie?’

_______________________

“Midoriya-kun” One of his classmates, a girl with fiery red hair and a friendly smile, leans on the purple haired boy’s desk to get his attention.

“Kendou-san,” He says back, looking up from his notes. He wasn’t much for making friends. But the girl was nice. Nice enough that he felt bad being aggressive towards her. “Is there something you need?”

“I heard about what happened. With class A,” She says, voice low to keep others from hearing. “Your brother is in that class, right? I wanted to make sure everything was alright.”

No, nothing was fine. Izuku was avoiding him even more than usual.

“I..” He opens his mouth to brush off her concerns, but somehow the truth comes spilling out instead. “I don’t know, he won’t talk about what happened. He didn’t get injured or anything but I have no idea what he’s thinking--we used to tell each other everything.”

Before he knows it, tears warm and wet are rolling down his cheeks, and Kendou is ushering him out of the room; arm firm and strong around his shoulders. She takes him to the roof and he spills his guts. Tells her everything about what’s bothering him.

It’s not something he would do, normally. They barely know each other, despite being classmates. The girl was kind, the type of person who acted like an older sibling to all. Likely, she had just been trying to be nice. And now he was unloading everything on her like she was his oldest friend.

And the entire time she gave him a sympathetic smile, rubbed small circles on his back as he hiccuped and sobbed.

“I’m sorry,” he manages. “I’m sorry, this is ...I shouldn’t even be this upset in the first place. I should be happy for him, right?”

“You’re worried” Kendou says gently “Anyone would be. Maybe Izuku-kun misunderstood, maybe he thinks you’re mad at him.”

Mikumo...hadn’t considered that. But from Izuku’s perspective...maybe he would think that. Maybe he thought his brother resented him because of his quirk. Maybe he was avoiding him because of all the suspicions he’d shown right off the bat.

“I think...maybe you’re right” he says, eventually, finally calming down. “Thank you, Kendou-san. You’re very wise.”

“Ah, not really,” she replies, pulling back her hand and rubbing the back of her neck. “Just have a lot of experience, that’s all.”

“I didn’t know you had siblings,” Then again, Mikumo didn’t know much about her at all; let alone the rest of his classmates. He’d been keeping to himself, like he always had.

“Not by blood, but I went to middle school with Neito. He’s like a brother to me...you remind me of him, actually. He likes to pretend he doesn’t care, too.” She elbows him lightly in a teasing manner. “I’m glad I got to see another side of you today, Midoriya-kun.”

Mikumo flushes scarlet red, suddenly realizing what a blubbering mess he’d been just moments ago. There goes any semblance of a tough image.

But.

He looks at his classmate, now laughing at his expense in a playful sort of way, and smiles. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all.

________________________

Weeks pass. The sports festival comes and goes. Monoma gets worked up into a frenzy over Class A. But even without talking to Kendou, Mikumo can see that he’s just being defensive of his own classmates. The quirkless teen is starting to feel the same. Starts to look forward to school in a way he never had before.

More so as things remain tense at home. Despite Kendou’s advice, Mikumo still hadn’t managed to hold a solid conversation with Izuku since the USJ incident. He was completely shut off from the rest of the world. Even their mother had begun to worry.

He doesn’t know how to close this gap.

______________________

“Kendou-san!” Mikumo calls out uselessly into the fog through the mask a girl from Class A had made him. His classmates had gone rushing off in pursuit of the source of the smoke. He’d heard gunshots.

“Tetsutetsu-kun!” He calls, again, stumbling through, blindly. He’s unarmed and he doesn’t have a quirk like his classmates; but like hell is he going to sit still while they risk their lives.

They mean too much to him, now.

He hears another gun shot, and another, and another, runs towards where the sound seems to be emanating from. Sees a crumpled form on the ground.

“Tetsutetsu!” He moves to go to the large student’s side when he hears the click of a revolver reloading. Looks with wide eyes at a middle school student with a gas mask and a gun. “Don’t! Don’t you dare!”

Without even thinking, he shields the steel form with his own body. He can see the cracks forming; the boy can’t take another hit. 

And then something inexplicable happens. The young boy doesn’t shoot. Points his gun at Mikumo and studies his face carefully; as if contemplating something.

The moment of hesitation is enough for Kendou to come to their rescue. They all make it out alive, somehow.

Mikumo has no explanation as to why he wasn’t shot. Has no explanation as to why, in that moment, he swears he saw his brother’s shadow behind that boy.

______________________

It’s luck. Really. Or, perhaps it’s the opposite of luck because, considering, Mikumo would rather not know.

He looks at the horrific appendages covering Izuku’s limbs. The way the eyeballs move and blink. It’s disgusting, makes him want to throw up. But the worst part is knowing. Knowing that this thing has hijacked his brother’s body.

A vile monster disguising itself as a quirk. Tricking Izuku into being its host.

And now. His brother. Sweet, kind, naive, born to be a hero Izuku was....

Behind all of it. 

He remembers the sight of Tetsu’s fractured steel. How close he had been to dying. And feels anger, bitter like adrenaline fill his veins.

Like usual, though. He’s not angry at Izuku. He’s angry at that thing. The villains, for tricking him. Himself, for letting this happen.

He babbles on about some ideology about returning the world to the way it was. Tries to get Mikumo to join him.It doesn’t sound at all like the Izuku who wanted only to save people.

“Stop! Just shut up! Can you even hear yourself?” Mikumo trembles, but not in fear; even as he lunges for his own brother. Adopting a much more straight forward fighting style than normal. Izuku dodges easily, with the help of Abyssal.

“What about you?” Izuku accuses “Are these people really so much more important to you now? I thought it was supposed to be us, sticking together.”

And. That does exactly what it’s meant to. Sends a throbbing ache through Mikumo’s chest. But this time. This time he pushes through. Can’t afford to back down.

“I’m not just doing this for them,” He says, rising to Izuku’s challenge, tossing smoke pellets at the other’s feet “I’m trying to save you, too. This isn’t you, Izuku. I won’t let this thing control you anymore!”

__________________________

‘How did we get here?’

That’s the only thing Izuku can think. On his knees and clutching his own ribs and howling in agony as he tries to force Abyssal out. He doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to give up his power.

But if it’s for Mikumo. If it’s for the sake of protecting his brother. He doesn’t want to lose his family, not for anything.

‘And what the hell do I do now?’

It won’t leave. The creature hangs on desperately. Won’t leave him be. Won’t give up its host. Especially not with the quirkless hero poised and ready to attack the second it leaves.

Instead, it lashes out. Takes control of Izuku’s body, even as he fights for dominance. Forms his hand into a blade.

Time seems to move in slow motion, in the next moment. Mikumo, still moving forward. Arms raised, still reaching for his twin even as he looks deranged; completely overtaken by the being using his body for its own means. It’s almost as if he skewers himself. Almost.

Izuku lets out an entirely different kind of wail at the sight of his own arm piercing through his brother’s stomach. So distressed that, for a moment, he regains control. Pulls his arm back, watches it go back to normal, still soaked in blood.

Catches Mikumo’s now limp form as he falls.

_______________________________

“Hey, Izuku….wanna….know a secret?” Mikumo manages, eyes wide and unfocused as his chest heaves with every breath. Izuku doesn’t know what to do, panicks. Tries to stem the flow of blood from the hole in his twin’s stomach.

“I didn’t forget my books.” The dying boy continues without being prompted. As if oblivious to Izuku’s turmoil. “I went….to fight Bakugo,”

“Shhh” Izuku whispers. “Hold on just. Hold on. I’ll fix this. Just. Rest, don’t speak.”

“I knew I shouldn’t. Knew you wouldn’t like it. But I was so angry, you know?” He ignores his brother’s pleas, lips turning purple. “Because of that...because I…”

“It’s all my fault you were by yourself that day.” Tears stain his cheeks. His own. Izuku’s dripping from above. “I’m sorry…some brother I turned out to be.”

“It’s not your fault. You’re the best brother I could ever want. So please. Please don’t leave me behind.” Izuku clutches Mikumo’s hand in his own, smearing it with the boy’s own blood.

Despite his pleading words. Despite the fact that, historically speaking, Mikumo always caves when Izuku cries. There is no response.

“Don’t leave me alone.”

The body is already starting to grow cold.

[osie-wildr]

I saw it all from 2 wheels: Vietnam

a dog urinates on a bush next to a telephone mast a woman in rice hat and face mask and tabi socks and flip flops fans lottery tickets at the side of the road a man squats in jeans and flip flops and kisses his young son between his arms a man uses a band saw on the floor outside his auto shop a man welds part of an iron structure while squatting on a breeze block cement wall, barefoot

a guard salutes a mini van arriving through its gates a man washes his chicken outside of his home 3 men and one young girl get off one moped to urinate at the side of the road 

a dog chases its 4 friends down the street an old lady in pyjamas sweeps her sloping driveway a lady drives her moped one handed across the street, holding steady polystyrene boxes for seafood 2 women wait at their banh mi stand, smartphones glowing in their faces a lady in rice hat sandals and socks peddles her bike, laden with full black bin bags 

next to the mint green warehouse, mopeds ride next to a small canal mint green houses mint green extravagant mansions mint green corrugated iron

a lady rocks her baby in its basinet, in a hammock, while the ocean roars

a man lights incense on the threshold of the dragon costume shop 

3 men sit on plastic chairs and smoke a man in security uniform hoses down the sloping driveway 2 men in the road pop the bonnet of a truck and look inside a woman fixes her son to her bike, slipping him under her cross body bag strap and is on her way

a lady rinses her cooking utensils in a dish and empties the water over tree roots a man peddles his cart across the intersection with 3 m metal poles attached a man cuts a hard right to stop after the intersection with a double mattress singly softly on the back of his bike 3 dogs dig noses into a fluffy of waste at the side of the road

on the night Vietnam wins the football, a boy loses his kazoo off the back of his mother's bike in the flurry of flags and noises

a lady rides with a swaddled baby held to her middle a man smashes a terracotta slab on the loose concrete paving to get the right shape he needs a stripey dog sits down to scratch his ear a sausage dog waits knowingly behind the man making engine repairs on the floor outside the shop

2 ladies in wide brim hats and hard hats sit and talk while sat on the curb of the road, flip flopped feet in the road a dusty pig walks in between construction vehicles for hire a dog sleeps curled in a circle on the pavement

2 men leave the scrap metal site by bike with a 6 foot metal sheet widthways between their bodies 

a man sets out 8 large cockerels under chicken wire domes a lady sells bright vegetables on sheets on the ground by the bridge a young couple wait on plastic seating for cart food by the roundabout at 5pm all bikes join together and move as one

4 men sit in plastic chairs and baseball caps chain smoking taking it in turn to do karaoke 

a lady sits in wide brim hat and face mask making alterations on her sewing machine under a brown parasol

men with heavy bellies fold their tops up to their armpits to air off. a man with a tiger tattoo across the stomach

a woman sleeps with her arms and head rested on a stack of small stools in between sells cold drinks outside the bus station

a lady hoses the flowers and wall outside her shop a lady squats to the ground and talks on her cell phone in front of the vegetables she has laid out for sale a man helps his 9 grey cows cross the road into the paddies a man hoes widely and with force at his paddies

mint green and that everlasting sound of revving

the sound of all life ripping past your exposed ears

on the back of a motorbike taxi

[rossialessia80]

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