#hope the bands have an absolute blast being apart of an anime

[alexxuun]

The craziest thing for me so far about Kaiju No. 8 TV anime is the fact that the OP is by YUNGBLUD and the ED is by OneRepublic…

[xginata]

Heartbeats & Vibrations

Prompt: Gamer!Kiri, he was in a COD game with the rest of the bakusquad and you’d just gotten home from a very shitty day at work.

Warnings: M. HEAVY overstimulation/edging; toy play, sensation play, light bondage.

[!] Written to: Rehab by Brent Faiyaz, West Side by Ariana Grande, Bad Girl by A Boogie, Nasty by Ariana Grande

Notes: I really couldn’t picture this with anyone else but Kirishima aka pebble boy. I hope y’all enjoy!

ƪ(˘⌣˘)ʃ

You sat in your car, quickly gathering your thoughts and feelings in. You knew Kiri was in game right now, his stream was playing quietly in your car. He was just up and coming and you made sure to support him as much as you could. The last thing you wanted to do was accidentally cause a scene in front of his viewers, especially since he always asked for you to watch him stream and you loved doing that with him when you could.

Once you tried your hardest to appear like your regular self, you made your way up to your apartment and quietly walked in. You could hear Kiri start calling out your name from his streaming room, “Everyone! I think my beautiful, amazing girlfriend is home.” You heard him say, making your heart swell.

Your feet felt heavy as you walked into yours and Kiri’s bedroom first to change into something more comfortable. You still felt on the verge of tear and you tried your hardest to keep them in. It was just one of those days, even though you cried your whole way home it didn’t make you feel any better.

You let a couple tears fall, unable to keep them in and once again waited until you were able to put on at least a neutral expression before entering his streaming room.

Kiri had your spot set up, you’d have another gaming chair next to him, with your little set up. Kiri had made sure to stuff the basket next to your chair with a bunch of snacks. You absolutely loved this, even though he was streaming he’d still want you around him, and you were perfectly fine just sitting and watching, replying to chat for him or even playing animal crossing next to him as he played COD. It was your way to unwind as well, but today was different. It was difficult for you to let Kiri know that you needed him sometimes, and tonight was the same. You promised you’d bite your tongue for now, and not bother him during stream.

However, your emotions were easy to read, and even his chat noticed.

“Kiri, is y/n, okay??” One comment read.

“She looks upset.” Comments like this start flooding in and you started to panic. You didn’t want to ruin his stream.

“Wow, why is she bringing such bad energy in here. I don’t want to look at her sad face.” One comment chimed in, making your eyes well up.

Kiri’s whole mood changed, his character wasn’t moving anymore, instead he was reading through the comments, and then looked at you. That sent you over the edge, your tears escaped and you bolted out of your chair and into your bedroom.

“I don’t appreciate comments like yours, everyone who is being rude to y/n right now, please get the fuck off of my future streams. Honestly, it sounds shitty to say but I don’t care for “fans” like you. To all of you who are genuinely concerned for y/n, thank you. I’m getting off stream to take care of my babygirl.” He said sternly and ended his stream.

“I have to go.” He said in his in-game voice chat.

“Go! I’m gonna chew these fucking bastards out right now for saying that shit about y/n.” Bakugo said and the rest of the Bakusquad followed to defend you.

You were curled up, in a ball unaware of what was being said. You gripped tightly to Kiri’s pillow, you were so ashamed and embarrassed for ruining his stream. Your cheeks were flushed, your nose was stuffy and the tears just wouldn’t stop coming.

There was a soft knock on your bedroom door, “Pebble? I’m coming in, okay?” he said as he opened the door. You hummed in response.

Your eyes were closed but you could feel him staring at you. When you were able to open your already puffy eyes, he was at eye level. He was kneeled in front of you, next to the bed.

“What happened pebble?” He asked and all you could do was avoid eye contact with him. 

“You can tell me if your comfortable, if you don’t want to that’s okay too. Can I cuddle you?” He was treating you softly, he knew how sensitive you we’re probably feeling right now and how embarrassed you were probably feeling but not for the same reasons you thought.

While you were beating yourself up for ruining his stream, he was beating himself up for not having noticed you were feeling upset. He felt like a terrible partner, he felt like you were upset with him. And he knew you probably didn’t like your emotions being put on full blast in front of his stream, and for that he felt guilty. Had he not asked you to join his stream that night, you probably wouldn’t have shown such private feelings to over 500k viewer, but if you hadn’t gone in, he probably wouldn’t have noticed that you were upset. Either way, Kirishima felt like he failed you. 

He climb into bed with you and positioned himself to be the big spoon, his body engulfed yours and for once that night you felt better. You had plenty of time to sit with your thoughts and finally decided you were ready to talk, however, before you could let out a word Kirishima started, “I’m so sorry pebble. I feel like I’ve let you down, and I’m so sorry. I should’ve noticed you were feeling upset. I should’ve known how you felt.” His voice cracked.

“But you couldn’t have known, you’re not a mind reader Kiri and I know that. I should’ve told you how I felt but I didn’t want you to cut your stream short because of me, and now, I embarrassed you in front of your fans.” You said.

“You come first, you didn’t embarrass me. I think I embarrassed you actually. And I'm still so sorry. Will you tell me what happened?”

“I mixed up some documents that were for a very important shareholders meeting and I got chewed out for it. Then the rest of the work day I just kept fucking up. When I was driving home I cried it out so I didn’t feel too upset getting home but it didn’t work.” You said feeling guilty for ruining his night.

“You don’t have to do that, you can always come to me and the streams and the fans or whatever can wait. You’re more important to me. Before we keep going back and forth saying sorry, because we both know that will happen, just believe me when I say you don’t have to worry about closing off your emotions with me.” Kirishima finished off, leaving a kiss on your forehead.

“You’ve been so supportive of me since I became a full-time streamer and I’ve taken advantage of that. From now, I’ll make sure to have finished streaming before you come to work. Let me take your mind off of things and make the rest of the night better.” He said, his choice of words sending a tingle down your spine.

“Get undressed.” He instructed and you did as you were told. He had taken off his shirt off, leaving him in only his grey sweat, that seem to hang off his hips just perfectly showing the band of his boxers. Just the view of his toned abs and his v-line was enough to have you drooling.

He grabbed your blindfold from your nightstand, the one you’d occasionally use when you went to sleep. He motioned for you to sit up, “I’m gonna take care of you tonight.” He slid the blindfold on and let you adjust it comfortably.

“Don’t take it off.” You jumped slightly when you heard his command against your ear.

He sauntered out of your bedroom and into his game area, he grabbed his disconnected headset and made his way back to the bedroom. Still ignoring your blushing, naked body he walked to the dresser in the corner of the room, reached down to the bottom drawer and pulled out what he would need for tonight. He grabbed the cotton rope and cuff set, along with two other toys. He looked back at your ready body, letting his tongue dip out and licked his lips in anticipation. 

His touch surprised you, making you whine involuntarily. You felt soft fur cuffs positioned and tightened comfortably on your ankles, he gently flexed your right leg and wrapped the cotton rope around the middle for your thigh, then did the same for the right leg. Your cunt was on full display, only for him, you were already wet just from getting bound. 

Once you were tied up, he positioned himself to sit directly behind you. He adjusted your body against his so his legs were on either side of yours, slightly bent and your head resting comfortably on his chest. 

”I’m gonna put on the headset. If you want it off, use the safe word.” Kiri said. 

“Yes.” You replied. 

He put his headset on you, muffling all the background noises. All you could hear was the beating of your heart, you could feel the pounding of his behind your head.

Your back arched slightly, and your mouth opened as you inhaled sharply at the sensation of his finger dancing down your stomach. He stopped just above your folds, playfully tracing small circles around your core.

You were already writhing, trying to get his finger to brush even your lips, but to your dismay he took his hand away completely. Once again you were panting in anticipation, what would he do next? Where would he start touching you? Would he run his fingers down your arms, then up again and down your nipples? Would he instantly give you the touch you so desperately craved?

!

You could hear your own heartbeat again, your breathing leveled and your body calmed down. Once Kirishima noticed your senses come back down to your own bodily awareness he reached his hand down over your core, you swear you could feel the emanating heat from his hand on your wet cunt.

You bit down on your lip, your hips involuntarily bucking upwards. Kirishima wouldn’t give you the satisfaction, quickly jerking his hand back. You were desperate at this point, you wanted release.

“Please.” You moaned quietly. Kirishima smirked.

He’d finally had enough teasing you... for now. He snaked his hand down your stomach once more, gaining the same reaction as the first time. You readied yourself for when he’d ultimately decline your pleads, but when he didn’t stop you let out a small cry.

His hand covered your wet cunt, his hand laid there for a second until he felt you buck your hips up once more. He moved his hand up, flat against your cunt, his middle finger parting your wet folds.

“Fuck.” Kiri whispered to himself, small whines escaping your lips.

His other hand joined in parting your folds, his right middle finger connected to your sensitive clit. He rolled his finger in small, slow circles as his left middle finger teased your entrance. That alone could make you come.

You longed to hear his breath and his dirty words that you knew he was holding in.

“Sapphire.” You said loud enough for him to hear you. You prepared yourself for his hands to leave your core. His hands stopped working you and he took off the headset.

“Okay, pebble?” He asked.

“I wanted...to hear you.” You whimpered as he left a kiss to your temple.

“You want to hear me tell you how good you’re doing? Hmm?” His hands resumed to pleasure you. You hummed in response.

His finger teasingly entered your core, you groaned in frustration at his teasing. He chuckled lightly at your reaction, finally giving you the satisfaction as his finger entered your core. You arched your back at the sensation as his finger motioned a “come here,” movement in your aching core.

“You have to tell me when you’re almost there, okay pebble? Don’t keep it from me or else, I’ll have to punish you for lying.” He whispered against your ear.

He slowly inserted his pointer finger, joining into the small movement. Your breathing became erratic, your hips moving slowly against the rhythm of his fingers, supplying more friction.

“Tell me baby, are you gonna come?” he asked once again.

You protested, shaking your head. You knew what he would do if you said yes and you weren’t ready for his fingers to stop their sweet movements.

“Are you lying to me?” He growled into your ear and you shook your head again.

“Bad pebble.” Your climax was cut short, both of his hands escaped your heat.

“Suck.” His wet fingers were pushed onto your tongue, surprising you. You sucked and lapped around his fingers.

His free hand reached to the first toy. He took out his fingers and replaced it with the toy, the cold, velvet silicone making you flinch slightly but you welcomed it. Kiri pulled it out slowly, earning a small “pop.”

He pressed it down slowly onto your entrance, keeping an arm pressed against your stomach to keep you from bucking your hips. He would drag out your first climax as long as he could.

The tip of the lilac butterfly vibrator disappeared into your entrance, butterfly design was flush against your heat. Your clit was pinched between the small antennae designed for clitoral stimulation.

He let you sit with the vibrator in, not yet turning it on. Finally, when your breathing leveled, he clicked it on with the small remote.

One hand kept the vibrator secure to your core, as the other cupped your jaw.

“You like that?”

“You like that vibrator in you?“

“Yeah, you deserve it baby.” He spoke in between breaths, his breathing mimicked yours. Not one word left your lips, only moans and cries out for him.

“Don’t come yet, baby.” He struggled to keep you down, your hips jerking forcefully.

“I have to.” You cried out, instantly regretting it when the hand that was securing the vibrator, moved the vibrator out.

Your cunt was visibly throbbing, involuntary hip jerks following

“I love that heartbeat.” He whispered, leaving a kiss to your temple.

He grabbed one of your hand and guided your fingers to reach down your wet cunt, gathering moisture on them and bringing them to his lips this time.

“You taste so good.” He hummed. Your hand wrapped back around his bicep as it has been. You were sure his biceps were probably red and sore from you clawing and squeezing around them.

Kiri grabbed the next toy, positioned it onto your clit and clicked it on, shocking you once more, making your moan out loudly.

“You come when I tell you to come.” He demanded.

He positioned to fingers to your entrance, just barely entering your core. His fingers felt as they were being sucked into your folds.

The heavy vibration and the sensation of his fingers rubbing up on your cunt were too much, you could felt the familiar coil in your stomach. Your climax was nearing and you needed it this time.

“Please, let me come.” You begged.

“You can come, but you have to look at me when you do.” Your hand immediately reached up to your blind fold, peeling it off and sending it flying across the room.

You tilted your head and met his eyes. His cheeks and lips were flushed, his red hair stuck to parts of his sweat covered forehead. His chest tightened behind you, as did his biceps.

“Come for me.”

“Come on these fingers, baby.” Kiri kept his eyes on yours. Your stomach tightened once more, your back arched and your hips moved against his fingers, that were flushed against your core, making the same motion as before. You tried your best to keep your eyes on him as you rode out your orgasm, but you failed as they rolled back.

The vibration stopped, his finger gently pulled out of your cunt and the rhythm of your hips slowly stopped. Your stomach felt hot, your breathing slowed. Your eyes fluttering open, Kiri was still staring at you.

“You look so beautiful when you come.” He kissed your temple.

After you both calmed your breathing, he undid your ties and cleaned you up. You fell asleep that night wrapped in his arms.

[merryfortune]

A Trifling Matter

Written for 100ships on Dreamwidth

Prompt #43: Yellow

Ship: Himari/Ichika

Fandom: KiraKira PreCure a la Mode

Word Count: 2,220

Rating: G

Warnings: No Warnings Apply

Tags: Fluff, Developing Relationship, Mutual Pining

   It was almost amazing how the KiraPati building could empty its staff. It had been all five of them for so long, it felt peculiar and out of place when other commitments drew away the other girls. Aoi had band practice whilst Akira and Yukari had to double down with studying due to upcoming high school exams. So, where the kitchen was usually bustling and lively, it was just Ichika and Himari in it today. 

   Just like the good old times in a way as Himari had been Ichika’s first recruit.

   But a little bit had changed between now and then. So many seemingly impossible things had happened; there had been highs and lows and all sorts of joyful moments in between that Himari could never had imagined on her lonesome. She was all rules and logic and being a Pretty Cure seemed to break that with superspeed.

    Ichika had been Himari’s first, real friend. She had always been a little awkward and lonely but Ichika’s energy and vivacity had completely broken through Himari’s heart that had been hidden for so long due to previous social rejections. Now she was Ichika’s - and the rest of their gang’s - little sweets scientist and Himari relished that security of friendship. And now something more too.

   Ichika had become Himari’s first, real crush. Himari was just infatuated with Ichika. She gave her attention and it was meaningful. They shared things between each other - books, study tips, and of course desserts too - and spent a lot of time around each other. Be it one on one or in a bigger group, like with their fellow Pretty Cures or their fellow classmates at school. 

   At first, Himari thought that her racing heart and red face around Ichika was normal, or to be expected. She wasn’t used to having a friend around so much but it just became too much. Himari was spending far too much time thinking about Ichika, even when they were far, far apart from each other or at odd times of the day or night. It then became apparent to Himari, who was ever slow on the uptake, that these strange thoughts about her friend were not mere thoughts at all. She was pining for Ichika.

   The realisation harrowed Himari. She had never been in love or in longing for someone before. She was worried that she would undoubtedly mess it up somehow and Ichika would never be her friend again, let alone her…. No, Himari couldn’t even bring herself to say the girl and the friend combination word. It was too embarrassing. 

   Fortunately, Ichika seemed to have her head in the clouds like the whip cream airhead that she was. She seemed to think that Himari bumbling through her crush to be her usual personality. The fact they typically hung out together in larger groups definitely helped to mask Himari’s feelings and how they kept puff, puff, puffing up inside of her like a sponge cake in an oven. 

   This afternoon was not one of those afternoons. It was just Himari and Ichika in the KiraPati building. Well, they had Pekorin and [what’s Chourou floating around, but they were doing whatever it was that fairies and not-ghost fairies did. They weren’t exactly making up the company that KiraPati usually bustled with and therefore, not helping Himari at all in this terrifying situation of it just being her and her crush.

   “So what do you wanna do this afternoon, Himarin?” Ichika asked with excruciatingly bright eyes.

   “I, um, well, er, there’s so m-much to… do?” Himari mumbled.

   Ichika laughed, “Would you rather go home for the afternoon?” she asked. “I won’t be offended.”

   “No!” Himari yelled back, spooking Ichika, making her blink twice. Himari blushed, she hadn’t meant to be so loud and she became mousy - or maybe squirrelish - again. “I love spending time with you Ichika…” she mumbled and even quieter, she added, “I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

   “Aww, you're so sweet, Himarin.” Ichika beamed and she pat Himari on the head, her hair felt warmed by the sun that was streaming in from the back window, it was nice. “Well, since you seem eager but are plumb out of ideas, I can’t believe, then do you mind if I make a suggestion?”

   “N-Not at all.” Himari stammered with a wobbly smile.

   “There’s a dessert that I want to try making and I think if its us, it’ll be the perfect combination.” Ichika said.

   Himari’s eyes lit up with wonder and went wide. Ichika couldn’t have been more pleased with such a reaction and her smile grew cheeky.

   “Well, here’s my bright idea: I want to make a trifle with you, Himarin.” Ichika announced.

   “A trifle…” Himari echoed back on the cusp of a gasp. “It's perfect.”

   “I think so too.” Ichika agreed.

   A dessert with a cake and a custard element: it really was perfect for a pair such as Himari and Ichika. They got to work almost immediately. Cake, especially sponge cake, was Ichika’s specialty so she was whipping it up with no problem. Equally with ease, Himari was sorting out the custard. Soon, the kitchen was smelling homely of vanilla as these two girls independently made their own to eventually marry together. Once the cake was baking in the oven and the custard was settling in its pot, the two girls joined up again to make the gelatin. 

   For the gelatin, they decided to go with a universal lemon and pineapple flavour, thinking that would complement whatever else they decided to add to the trifle. The acidity was easy for Himari to balance as she did more of the flavour balancing than Ichika who was more than happy to provide muscle by stirring up the crystals into the fine, watery jelly before putting it in the refrigerator. 

   That gave the girls a spare half an hour whilst everything had to bake and cool and chill and whatever else they needed. So, they tried to chip at their homework in the lull of their hard work. Himari enjoyed it but Ichika was chomping at her pens wanting to get back to the cooking. She was utterly impatient and doing poorly in her mathematics for it, but that gave Himari plenty of excuses to help and when Ichika finally got to focus, the way she lit up when she finally got a correct answer was absolutely worth it. 

   The way her face lit up when she realised she could finally get back to baking, or at least closer to it, was even worthier. Her grin was huge and it made Himari’s heart skip a beat as Ichika raced around the kitchen to check on things before making a final stop at the refrigerator. 

   “So, what kind of trifle should we make?” Ichika asked as she opened up the refrigerator, assessing its internal situation top to bottom. “One with berry flavours or one with citrus flavours?”

   Himari peeked just over Himari’s shoulder as she held out the door to refrigerator, she hummed, “Why not both?” she suggested in a tiny voice.

   “Oh, Himarin, you are a genius!” Ichika exclaimed.

   She began to grab practically everything out of the refrigerator. She scooped up everything out of the fruit tray and what Ichika missed, Himari was more than happy to help cart out to the main preparation table. They sorted out the various fruits by flavour so they could layer them appropriately in the trifle. It wouldn’t be long at all now until the timer on the oven dinged and the custard was sufficiently cooled.

   Now was the hard part which would require both their brains: what kind of animal motif should they try and arrange the trifle into? It was a very trifling matter, Ichika and Himari both found as they waited out the last of the baking. And then, just with the high pitched beep of the oven timer going off, Ichika had a perfect idea.

   “I’ve got it!” she exclaimed, rocketing to her feet and spooking Himari who had almost begun to daydream in the lull of their idea creation and their baking.

   “You do?” Himari asked.

   “An animal that was both rabbit-y and squirrely: a ferret!” Ichika announced.

   “Aww, that could be cute. Let’s try it.” Himari agreed.

   Ichika beamed and they got to work. She went over and opened up the oven, removing the cake inside of it whilst Himari brought the pot of freshly made custard closer. Whilst the cake cooled, Ichika whipped up some cream and sure enough, in no time at all, she and Himari were slathering up the cake and rolling it up, just to cut it through.

   Ichika stuck groups of four rolled cake slices to the glass bowl they were using. She giggled to herself, hoping the paw print motif would come through once Himari had began to lace the blank spaces with custard. Once the outer decorations were done, it was time to fill up the bowl from bottom to the top with its various layers.

   Together, Ichika and Himari made layers upon layers of cake and custard scattered occasionally with a blend of pineapple and orange juice to help the sponge cake absorb the flavours around it. Then, they added in a couple layers of the jelly they had made alternated with fresh cut fruit, whatever they felt like. Rings of pineapple slices, clusters of strawberry slices, random smattering of various berries. They were having a blast and before they knew it, they had filled the trifle to the rim of the glass bowl it was setting inside. Now was for the final layer, the top layer, and upon it, Ichika endeavoured to create the best ferret that she could.

   Himari smeared the last of the custard on top of the cake and fruit. She then shuffled to the side to let Ichika the artist go wild. Slowly, Ichika made a very long and winding shape out of slices of strawberries for a body and wedges of peaches for limbs. She dotted the head with blueberries for eyes and a nose before finally gifting the fruity ferret raspberries for paws. Neither girl could be prouder of the end creation.

   “This looks delicious, Ichika.” Himari smiled.

   “It does, I can’t wait to dig in.” Ichika squealed.

   “We should take a photo of it to show the other girls tomorrow.” Himari suggested.

   “We absolutely should.” Ichika agreed, whipping out her phone to take a frenzy of photographs, making Himari giggle.

   When Ichika finished, she handed Himari a large ladle to scoop and spoon out the trifle from the bowl. By now, their stomachs were practically empty and were grumbling accordingly. 

   “Let’s dig in!” Ichika enthusiastically said once she and Himari had been served up equal shares of the trifle.

   “Yes, let’s.” Himari replied, matching such high energy of Ichika’s.

   In their bowls, the trifle was dazzling with the kira-kiraru that they had worked up beating the custard and mixing the cake batter and layering up the treats in between. It was a very bright and yellow end concoction that glistened with hidden gems of red and blue from the strawberries and blueberries respectively.

   Himari neatly excavated the layers and was surprised by how soft they had become soaked in juice and custard. Having a sample taste, she was blown away by how remarkably harmonious the citric and classically sweet flavours of the trifle were. It mightn’t have been a traditional pudding on Himari’s sense of the dessert but it was spectacular nonetheless. Ichika ate ravenously beside her, pleased in her own unique and messy way that the ferret trifle had been a rousing success.

   As Himari savoured the sweetness of cake, custard, and fruit on her spoon, she mumbled around it, “This trifle is exactly like us.” Her cheeks were plumed redder than usual; she sounded - and even looked - very dreamy, too.

   Ichika noticed out the corner of her eye and slowly sat down her spoon, her bowl was practically empty, all but licked clean, “Yeah it is… Hey Ichika, can I ask you something?”

   “Y-Yes, certainly.” Himari blurted out without thinking.

   “Do you have a crush on me?” Ichika asked.

   Himari just got redder and redder, shakier and shakier, she looked fit to explode like a rocket.

   “‘Cause I have a crush on you, too, is all and this trifle got me thinking…” Ichika rambled.

   Himari just froze like ice-cream. She could not believe what she was hearing. She would not believe what she was hearing. Yet, despite being as stock still as any one human could be, her heart was racing a million miles an hour and her face was going very, very red. Redder than any strawberry could ever hope to hear.

   “Uh… Himarin?” Ichika murmured and she waved her hand in front of Himari.

   Himari continued to freeze and Ichika waited, patiently, for Himari to say something. Anything. And when she did, what she was able to utter out anything loud but those whispered words meant the world to Ichika.

   Stiltedly, Himari nodded then spoke, “Y-Yes. I like you, Ichika… You are the cake to my custard, just like this trifle.”

   “Glad to hear it.” Ichika giggled. She leaned in and pecked Himari on the cheek, short-circuiting her little sweets scientist again to both their eager delight.

[heli0s-writes]

IV. I’m in the mood for love

Summary: Beyond the sass and the crass lies a tender moment Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader x Bucky Barnes A/N: Maybe I wrote myself into a pickle? Idk but I teared up a little at the end. Also this is the most politics I’ll ever put in my work-- let’s keep it civil and chill if we disagree.

Foot in Mouth Syndrome Masterpost

 It’s a miracle that you had worked up the courage to trot downstairs to return the only covering that separated two bare-ass naked men from your eyes. And not to mention yourself, who was only covered in a towel, too.

You make Steve stand so far around the corner of the doorframe that all he can do is stick out his hand. Bucky rustles the shower curtain impatiently and makes a comment on how “non-hyperverbal” you’re being and you’re too nervous to even respond back. When Buckyeye starts looking at you and the swinging white hem at your shins, you shoo him up the stairs before he gets any other bright ideas.

“Didn’t know you were such a prude.” Bucky comments later as you fiddle around in the kitchen, “But I guess it makes sense-- you still have those stuffed animals on your bed.”

You bristle and glare at him, “Just because you didn’t have a childhood doesn’t mean I can’t.”

It’s a little too mean, and you hear the venom that shoots right into him as soon as it leaves your mouth. “Sorry.” You comment. Damn it. He grew up in the fuckin’ Great Depression where everything was dusty and shit.

“Not all of us can travel the world eating caviar at the ripe age of four.” Bucky snarls. Ugh. Why’d he have to do that?

“Oh, fuck you.” You retort the same time Steve sharply calls Bucky’s name to reel him back in. It doesn’t work, as Steve knows, because when you and Bucky get into it—you get into it.

“You wish, princess. Wait, you’re such a goddamn prude, anyway--”

All Steve can do is cross his fingers and bark, “Buck!”

It’s too late. You’re across the room before Steve can say much else and you’ve launched yourself over one empty couch and straight into Bucky sitting on the other. The force knocks it slightly and it teeters before flopping back with a muffled thud.

Buckeye begins to run around in circles, unsure of the kind of play this particular moment is.

You have no idea what you’re doing, and you doubt you even want to—or can-- hurt him in any way, but you are so finished with his bullshit. You death-grip his hair as you jab both knees into his abdomen. Bucky moves to rip you off, but you clamp your teeth over his wrist and he yelps.

“Fuck you!” You scream, “fuck you so much! I—ow! I fucking apologized, you—Ugh!”

Buckeye, ever the perfect audience member, begins to bark to the rhythm of your screeching and aggressively nudges Bucky’s foot with his snout.

Soldat’s metal hand pushes your face back until its tilted up to the ceiling and further beyond, precariously suspended. The only thing keeping you from cracking your skull on the coffee table is your clinging to his hair. Steve’s concerned expression is upside down and his arms are outstretched, trying to determine the right configuration to pry the two of you apart. “Get that fucking! Aluminum foil finger the fuck away fr---”

“Shut up!” Bucky’s palm smashes against your mouth as his legs wrap around your back until you’re a squished human pretzel inside of him. You’re too crushed even to make any sounds and behind you Steve is sputtering vowels and consonants but not stringing together any real words. Finally, he nearly shrieks,

“Bucky! Jesus! You’re gonna actually kill her!”

Yep. This is how you’re gonna go, you think. The Winter Fucking Soldier has officially had enough of your bullshit, too, and he is going to bear-hug you to death. Who would have thunk it? Your fingers disengage and fall uselessly over his arms.

When time begins to slow and your soul starts to yeet itself from your body, Bucky blessedly lets go. “You’re bluer than I was in cryo.” He sneers.

Steve gasps, scandalized by the comment. For whatever reason, he’s covered Buckeye’s ears, too. You would send him an incredulous look, but you can’t feel your face.

With a pathetic whistle of air, you flop backwards and hang upside down over the couch, thighs gripped tightly by Bucky, heaving deep breaths until your lungs feel like they might burst through your rib cage. No wonder you are not a superhero—fuck the hubris, you are physically not built for this shit.

“I think I’m gonna vomit.” You mutter when Steve’s face begins to spin alongside your dog who slobbers all over your nose. Bucky yanks you up by the front of your shirt and the cough that blasts from your mouth goes right into his face. His smug expression twists into one of disgust and you take the moment to waggle your eyebrows suggestively.

Your sour mood has fled and now that you’re absolutely sure you cannot kick his ass—you return to the one thing you do know you’re capable of:

“Hey, baby. Is that a glock in your pants or are you just really happy to see me?”

To drive your point home, you bounce on his lap with a wide grin, wiggling your butt in exaggerated motions.

“Okay! That’s enough!”

Steve scoops you up and plants you back on the other side of the coffee table. “That’s too smart! Too smart!” He scolds as you pat your bottom and then curtsy. Bucky only huffs and crosses his arms, refusing to meet your gaze. Ha-ha. Winter Soldier, meet your match—Ass Woman. No, that just sounds like a porno.

“Alright, fuckers.” You declare, stepping over to the built-in bookshelf around the flatscreen and retrieving a leather-bound copy of The Wizard of Oz. “Ready for chili?”

They watch you open the front and stick your hand inside the false pages and retrieve a roll of bills. “What?” You ask nonchalantly. “Oh—shut up, Barnes. Like you guys really need me to pay back the vet fees. Technically, my tax dollars pay you.”

Steve shakes his head no. So, you casually toss him the roll of cash and then pull out another one.

“Jesus! Will you put these back?”

“Look,” You say, “For every month I don’t come home my mother puts another wad in this box.” You show them the pile of rolled bills, each encased in varying sizes of rubber bands. “She thinks it’ll ensnare me, but joke’s on her, the more I’m away the more there is to spend. She’s not very smart—a consequence of never having to think for herself.”

“And you’re fine with spending it?” Bucky ponders. The relationship you have with your family grows more confusing the longer they spend in your parents’ house. The memorabilia littered in your childhood bedroom seems to suggest that you aren’t completely detached from your family or your childhood. The way you respond to being home is paradoxical, too—disgusted at the excess one minute, reveling in it the next.

“It’s just fucking money. They make so much of it. I couldn’t bankrupt them if I tried. My father has offshore accounts in the fucking Caymans. I literally could not.”

They both pause before Steve speaks up, “Are you an only child?”

You frown. “No.” Then you aggressively push him by the shoulder and toward the exit, motioning for Bucky to follow. “It’s fucking Skyline time.”

Suddenly, you pause at the door and turn around to put both your hands on your hips. Looking both of them up and down, you shake your head impatiently. Steve is wearing his civilian Captain America outfit again. And Bucky, honestly, Bucky looks like someone cosplaying Bucky.

“Who dressed you?” You demand, exasperated, “You guys like, do spy stuff? It’s baffling to me that you don’t get caught immediately. Steve—khakis?”

Upon being admonished, he scoffs and looks around, “What’s wrong with my khakis?”

“Will you please tell him something?” You ask Bucky, who only rolls his eyes as if to say, you’re fuckin’ telling me. When it’s obvious that Steve’s poor choices are solely the result of him being an old fuck with no fashion sense, you mumble. “At least switch shirts. I’m going to take Buckeye out… please… fix this.”

-

When you come back, the sight of Steve wearing black and Bucky wearing light blue is so discomforting you cover Buckeye’s eyes. “It’s okay, boy.” You whisper loudly. Bucky flips you off but fixes the hem of the shirt he’s sporting. Steve—for whatever inexplicable reason, has decided to tuck… You quickly yank his shirt from his waistband and shake your head. “Christ, why are you like this?”

--

Untucked and uncomfortable in black, Steve looks at the menu as if the letters on it were runes from an ancient past. He doesn’t understand at all what Skyline Chili is or why it is. They’re coneys—this he does understand. But the rest of it—nope. Why would anyone ever need that much cheese? Bucky mirrors his sentiment by shutting the menu and crossing his arms.

The small bowl of oyster crackers in the middle of the table is being torn apart as you shovel handful after handful into your mouth. There is an inordinate amount of hot sauce sprayed on the top of the crisps, and you wipe your hands haphazardly on a napkin when you’re finished.

“Okay. You feelin’ spag or nah?” You ask, not even looking up. “Spagbol.” You continue, “Spag-y. SPAGHETS!” Then, in a terrible and very offensive Italian rendition, you pinch your fingers together and enunciate, “Its-a-spha-ghetta!”

Bucky slumps down into the booth until you stop. Steve puts his hand over his eyes.

“Why would you put chili on spaghetti noodles?” Bucky hisses.

The waitress arrives right after his question and you reach over to take his hands into your own— still reeking of peppers and vinegar from the hot sauce. “Shh,” You say almost tenderly, “Adults are talking now.”

“I hope you rub your eyes with that hand later.” Bucky snarls.

“I’ll cup your balls with it, instead.” You respond.

The waitress whimpers at the conversation she’s just stumbled into.

--

Six coneys arrive and as well as two plates of spaghetti. You explain to the boys that the Skyline specialty is steamed buns, mustard, special secret spice chili, raw onions, and hella shredded cheese. The noodles come with the same, sans mustard, and if you’re feeling extra frisky— beans. One plate is extra frisky today. Then you unscrew the cap to the hot sauce and shake the shit out of it onto everything.

They are bewildered at the sheer excess of American consumption as you shove almost half a coney into your face. Cheese flops down onto your plate.

“I think I’m gonna vomit.” Steve whimpers.

“Big baby, wimpy, Stevie can’t eat the cheesy?” Between mouthfuls, you’re still a dick. “Just try it! What are you, six?”

He glares at you and then sends a puppy-dog look to Bucky who already is lifting a coney to his face. You take another bite and watch them do the same.

Immediately, Steve coughs. Bucky starts laughing so hard he drops the pile of shredded cheese all over the table. You tuck into the overflowing plate of spaghetti, hot noodles melting the cheddar on top into an amalgam of gooey yellow. “I can’t do it.” Steve groans, “This isn’t right. This isn’t what God wanted.”

“God is dead, bitch.” You reply, “There is only Skyline Chili.”

--

“So what’s your deal?” Bucky asks from the couch.

The three of you have returned back to the house, winding down for the night. It’s eight now, and you’ve driven them around the city just to show them the sights. The gentrified downtown with its bustling crowd of young, white party-people interspersed with streets of dilapidated buildings and homelessness. There’s a bitterness to your voice when you talk about the changing scenery—but a kind of sadness, too. You admit you don’t really know the solution. The business brings in money to the city, but all the people left behind are really getting left behind.

You show them the more relaxed areas, like Over the Rhine and point out its massive brewery. You promise to take them there soon. There’s also the famous Cincinatti Zoo, and King’s Island, where you swear is better than where Steve wanted to go- Coney Island #2. There’s no point in taking him there, you declare when he starts to sputter, because he only wants to go to shit all over it, and because King’s Island is way cooler.

“What do you mean?” You ask back, flipping through the stations with your feet propped up on the coffee table. Steve and Bucky are sitting side-by-side under a blanket. There is a bowl of chips and hummus shared in their laps since Steve refused to eat during dinner and is now very cranky.

“All of this. Excess. Money. And then... you.” he waves to the house, then to you, sprawled out carelessly on a leather couch in mismatched pajamas. Buckeye’s head is faithfully in your lap, big eyes peering up at you, as if he’s waiting for an explanation too.

“You hating on my penguin top and pumpkin bottoms or what?”

“C’mon...” Steve beckons, knowing that your deflection is just another cop-out.

So, you groan, because they’re teaming up on you and after almost three months it’s bound to happen. They’ve told you so much about themselves already. You’ve learned all about the personal lives of the Commandos, the war stories, serums and experimentations, the cryo, the trial after the Triskelion... the blood, and sweat, and all of Steve Rogers’ tears.

“Well... it’s not as exciting as you think it is.” You mutter, tugging on Buckeye’s ear, finding the texture comforting under their persistent gaze. “Just a dumb girl born into an obscene family.”

But you tell them, truthfully and genuinely. Your family has old money- oil, or steel, probably both. As a result, you grew up in the lap of luxury, private schools, language programs, singing classes, dance lessons, horseback riding, trips to Europe and Asia, enormous birthday parties and a line of suitors as soon as you started growing breasts. The worst part, you admit, is that you loved it.

The picture they picked up in your room was from junior prom, and the date was a boyfriend- family friend- you’d been with for about six months, and he already planned on proposing. That was just how it was. Rich people marrying other rich people continuing the line of one-percenters.

Really, you say, your family was maybe the 10 percenter-range. As rich as maybe low A-list movie stars, not quite Jeff Bezos. But you know him, too.

“What changed?” Steve wonders out loud for both him and Bucky.

“Living in New York.” You half-smile at the memory of Union. “After Ohio State, I went to Union for my graduate studies and it blew my shit wide open. But that’s what happens when you start opening yourself up to other realities.”

You tell them about the immense struggle the first year at Union, feeling ostracized and realizing that your life is nothing like most peoples’ lives, and then beginning to frame your understanding of the world in a different way. You tell them you got mugged once and you felt like you probably deserved it.

“Then the election happened.” You sigh, and they both groan at the reminder. “As you know... it’s just been downhill and fucked. We had a big falling out here over Thanksgiving holiday.”

You didn’t come home in almost two years. You took out loans, you worked two jobs, took a full course load and wrote a thesis, and then went on to your Doctoral program. Your parents reached out to you and you eventually came half-way back into the fold.

“And spending their money?”

Most of the money you get you give to the local shelters. “That’s just direct action, baby.” You laugh. “We go at it, all the time. But you know, I figure... If I have to live in this shit world, might as well be a bastard about it.”

That earns a hearty chuckle from both your guests. “Jesus, that explains a lot.” Bucky grins as you nuzzle Buckeye and plant a kiss on his wrinkly face.

It feels so much better now that you’ve aired all the dirty, 1000-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets.

Steve hops up from the couch and runs downstairs, “Be right back!” He yells. You and Bucky narrow your eyes at the trail he’s padded into the carpet. In the distance, you can hear his rummaging and then thumping footsteps back up into the living room. He’s perfectly in one piece, because he’s Captain Damn America and nearly flying up a flight of stairs ain’t shit.

“I figured this would happen.” He grins, holding up a metal flask. “It’s time to break out the Asgardian mead.”

--

The three of you are drunk on whiskey and space-juice, tumbling around the downstairs living room. You are banging on the piano keys, tapping out a stuttering and off-kilter rendition of The Magic School Bus theme song while they wrestle. Why is it that no matter how old boys get, they still love to wrestle? Around their legs is Buckeye, running around in circles and panting, like a racecar at the Indy—only making left turns, having the time of his life.

“Get a fuckin’ ROOM!” You scream, throwing another shot down.

“You mean your room?” Steve laughs back, head under Bucky’s arm, tapping uselessly on his ribs.

“Captain America, fuckin’ in my room. Carve that on my grave, baby.” You mutter, as the piano lid slams down and you take a bow, knocking the bench over with a crash. “Oops.”

“Thas direct action, baby.” Bucky parrots you, “You’re so fucking lame.”

Buckyeye leaps into the air and licks him on the face. “Fuck!”

“Yeah, defend my honor, Buck!” You whoop. “Not you!” You point to Bucky, who flicks you off with a cackling laugh. The sound of it flutters into your ears like a ghost- leaving cold trails down your back. Suddenly, you get an idea.

“Hey-- you guys on Twitter?”

--

They sit crosslegged on the floor flanking you as you scroll determinedly through what seems to be endless tweets. There are other tabs open, too, of compilations of these. Thirsttweets, you explain. The internet loves and wants to bone the hell out of Captain America. Some of them want the Soldier there too—just watching, apparently.

Steve is seventeen shades of red and a little bit of purple. Bucky keeps cursing under his breath and at one point, you think, is reciting Hail Mary. It’s a million times worse than your playlist.

Who’s Got the Biggest Dick in Baseball is nothing compared to captain america could spit into my mouth and id say thank you

“I would never!” Steve gasps. “Or that!”

The tweet in question says: ruin my life big dorito daddy

“What does that mean?” Bucky groans, a little ruffled by all the lewd attention Steve is getting.

“His back is shaped like a Dorito, duh. Don’t get jealous, big boy. You’re next.”

For whatever reason, Bucky’s tweets are way worse. Maybe it’s his persona—that redeemed baddie type of thing. People eat that shit up like chips and dip—and apparently want to eat him too.

As long as I have a face, Winter Soldier has a seat rearrange my guts, Sargeant Sexy When will James Buchanan Barnes put his fist in me? WHEN? I didn’t know I was into getting choked until I saw that metal arm.

You snort whiskey into your lungs in the middle of reading one out loud and spend the next five minutes with your insides on fire. Steve has his head in Bucky’s lap and there are tears coming out of his eyes both from Bucky’s clenched jaw and you, crumpled into a heap spewing amber.

--

A jazz tune belts out from the surround sound system. Steve has picked a Music Choice station from the seemingly endless list of cable possibilities and of course, being a nostalgic thing, chose Swingers — wait, Singers and Swing. Your brain is loopy with joy.

“Didn’t you say you took dance lessons?” Steve asks nonchalantly.

“Uh-huh,” you sigh on the floor, legs crossed over Buckeye as you pull him down on your tummy. Rolling side to side with you, your dog begins to groan and flop, aggravated at your antics.

“You know, Buck used to dance.”

“Uh-huh, you sure did, didn’t you, big baby?” You kiss Buckeye on the nose.

“Bucky. Bucky, not Buckeye.”

He returns from the restroom with his hair pulled away from his face, changed into a long sleeved soft shirt and sweats. “What?”

“You used to dance!” Steve urges with a flick of his wrist, “Get on out there!” He waves his finger to the carpeted living space where you are spread-eagled, trying your best to keep your dog next to you. Damn it, you want cuddles!

“You want me to lead her? Stevie, I couldn’t lead the girl to water if she were a horse.”

“I am not a whore!” You cry indignantly, shooting up from the carpet and knocking Buckeye over with a yelp.

“A horse! Jesus H. Christ, ya deaf!”

You probably are, you think, as the music slurs itself into one long whine. Bucky grabs you by the hand anyway, determined to prove some point to Steve. He turns you around until you face him and takes a second to start on the right beat.

It’s like a switch has flipped and he becomes all step and sway as he moves to the music, leading you, too. Some vestigial memory digs its way out of your muscles from all those damn dance lessons and your feet point and tap along with him, hips rocking when he spins you around and pulls you back. A grin slowly breaks across his face, big and lopsided, all teeth.

You feel like a little puppet in complete submission to him as he expertly uses the perfect amount of momentum to change your course.

Laughter bursts forth from your mouth as you whirl dizzily around Bucky, hands clamped tightly in both of his. The room is a blur of colors and the blue of Steve’s eyes, watching.

At one point, you stand hip-to-hip side-by-side and kick your feet together before he takes you by the waist and dips you low. You’re breathless as he laughs, mirroring your puffs of warm air from above, wild with motion— his hair slipping from behind his ear to hang over your forehead.

“Holy shit you got moves.” You proclaim as the song finishes and he tugs you up with a satisfied chuckle. A slower melody comes on and you move to return to the couch where Steve is sitting with Buckeye, but Bucky tugs you again, closer.

He places one hand behind your back, resting on the ridged thread-bare waistband of your pajama shorts, and the other one he holds up to his chest. You blink away the fuzzy spots from your eyes and peer at him, looking so far away even though he’s just inches apart. His expression has changed, dropping into something distant and removed and staring straight through you.

You see it now. He’s not Bucky anymore.

It hits you like a bag of bricks, that this is James Barnes, in all his glory as a beautiful Brooklyn boy. Out dancing with a girl. Laughing, just like this: bristled, square-jawed and cleft-chinned. Wide, pouty lips. Bright steel eyes. Before he was a soldier, he was just a boy.

Before he was The Soldier, he was just a boy.

His chest rises and falls slowly as he takes a deep breath. The crooning in the background is tender, melodic, with the singer’s sweet voice pining for her loved one accompanied by delicate plucks of a piano.

Once, too, he pined.

The tears in your eyes spill over when you press your mouth to his. Bucky lets go of your hands and you catch his face with them, instead, holding onto his head, fingers grazing his ears and neck and brushing away his hair. You kiss him as if he might be shipped out to war tomorrow. It hurts even more to know that he probably had a night just like this, in the arms of a girl he loved, right before his entire life changed.

And then, you tear away and look at the couch where Steve sits, chewing on his lip, red-eyed too. You sob uncontrollably when you rush around the table and into his arms. He wraps them around you, pushes his face down into your shoulder.

“I love you guys.” You whisper, curled up in Steve’s lap, because the story of Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter was never explicit in the history books, but you know it too. “Oh God. I’m so sorry it’s like this. I’m so sorry.”

Steve forgets sometimes, that they were ripped out of time. He forgets the torment and tearing of Bucky’s entire being. They busy themselves in tomorrow and moving forward so much that they bury how the things that made them also broke them.

You are clinging onto his shirt, crying for him now, for both of them. Two handsome soldiers, living, dying, resurrected again. Having only each other to know and hold.

Sergeant Barnes of the 107th closes his eyes and presses his lips together. When he opens them, he is Bucky Barnes of the terrible, modern age once more. He crosses the room quietly, as he always does, as he was made to do. He sits down next to Steve as you look up at him with love and sympathy and so much sadness he can’t stand it. He links his hand in yours and smiles in a way that cracks your heart right open.

“Don’t get weird, kid.” Bucky whispers with moist lashes. Your laugh is strangled when it escapes your throat, all wet and whine as you squeeze his fingers tighter.

“I love you. You don’t understand.”

Steve breathes a sigh into your shoulder and rubs his damp cheeks on the penguin print of your sleeping shirt. From next to him, Buckeye looks up quizzically and gives his arm a long, slow lick.

“Yeah, yeah,” He mutters, swatting at your dog’s snout lovingly, lips pressed into your collarbone. Then, he kisses you too, tipsy and torn open. In the background, Julie London sweetly croons:

If there’s a cloud above and it must rain, we’ll let it.

But for tonight, forget it.

I’m in the mood for love.

Next Chapter

[kiiruna-a]

`  ☆┆THE MINIMALIST , ABOUT .

full name : henry kempe. nickname : n/a. specie : human. age : thirty-one. gender : cis male. pronouns : he / him. nationality : swedish. residence : värmland, sweden. occupation : farmer & swing dance teacher.

hair : shoulder-length, light brown hair usually tied up in some way. eyes : hazel, a mix of green & brown.  skin : pale skin which is often sun-kissed, with prominent moles & birthmarks scattered all around his body, as well as a few on his face. tattoos : a world map with the text “ die with memories not dreams “ on his upper back, “ breathe “ written on the side of his right hand, a bee on the inside of his left wrist, a plant & a beetle on the outside of his lower right arm. body type : 180cm, slender but with toned muscles, narrow shoulders & generally rectangular frame.

favorite color : green & brown. favorite animal : cat, dog, sheep & cow. favorite food : sweet potato, soup of all kinds & homemade bread. favorite drink : tea, coffee, elderflower cider & beer. favorite place : home, wheat fields, untouched forest, library/bookshop, plains, a cliff with a view & around animals. favorite sparetime : swing dancing, working in the garden, reading, cooking, having a cup of something on the porch, attending random study circles & lectures, cleaning the house, wandering, take care of animals, listening to music, biking & pottery.

positives : generous, open-minded, adventurous, creative, down to earth & charismatic. negatives : stubborn, predictable, unstable & unorganized. fears : needles, climate change & darkness. theology : agnostic. orientation : biromantic bisexual. shipping status : dualship, single in both verses.

     henry was born & raised in gothenburg, sweden. he was always a creative kid going the artistic route. his parents introduced him to music. they were both lower middle class parents working their asses off to provide for henry & his two sisters. the parents were rarely home, leaving the children to take care of themselves. the group of siblings had to grow up fast, cooking their own meals & putting themselves to bed. however, as fast as the parents were home, the empty apartment became full of life, & music was always blasting. everything felt more alive. to hang onto that feeling, henry would grow up with his headphones constantly plugged in. he found excitement & inspiration in music, started playing guitar, bass, switching from instrument to instrument hoping to find his calling.      growing older, henry was a part of a small band with other teenagers, notoriously making dansband music. you either hate it or you love it. however, it was not a kind of music for the big city. to get people to listen to them, the band would often perform in the outskirts. two hour long bus rides were common for them to find the stages they were welcome on, that or boat rides out to the small islands outside the gotheburg coast. having grown up in the middle of the buzzling city, henry had a picture of the countryside as dead & boring, but when he came out with his band he got a whole new picture. there, people were always happy, dancing, everyone knew everyone, the atmosphere was absolutely magical. it was also there where he started to realize he was a little jealous of the people in the crowd. where he stood, strumming on his guitar, he looked down on big dance floors full of people dancing. his crowd was usually that of people in all ages doing swing, fox trot, line dancing, & the boy always felt a need to join them. that’s where his passion for dancing started. even when his band wasn’t performing, henry would take those two hour bus rides out to renovated barns & town cabins to dance. he started taking swing dancing lessons on the side, slowly but surely getting so invested that the guitar started to dust. he left his band, he left his city, & instead he dove head first into the dancing community.

     henry wasn’t very popular in school, he would usually have a hard time relating to his classmates. he was a hyperactive teenager with his mind all over the place, he would talk too much & think too little. being the outsider didn’t bother him too much though, cause he had both a good family & a good chunk of friends outside of school. studying was a bigger issue though. his parents didn’t like that his grades, that were barely average to begin with, were only getting worse as he was practicing dancing rather than studying. however, they were very open minded, & really wanted henry to get an education while also not letting him lose his soul & passion. the young man dropped out of high school, only to join community college instead, where they had a dancing program. he could work on the necessary grades for a high school degree while dancing on the side. this community college was also in the middle of nowhere, plains stretching as far as the eye could see, & henry moved to the school dormitory as it was way too far into nowhere to travel back & forth every day. a new life.

    this place was henry’s home for a long, long time. he got to hang out with people that shared passions just like him; there were other dancers, but also painters, sculptors & textile workers. he got to grow up here, with teachers that listened to him, dorm-mates that would always invite him to beer, a nature that was wide, open & exciting, old houses that with wood that would scream as the wind got a hold of them, & a dance studio just outside. he thrived. he fell in love with the school, but he also fell in love at the school. ann-marie, a classmate, became his dance partner for life. the two fell hopelessly in love, & together they were unstoppable. they started competing, driving in an old, rusty renault car all over sweden, winning price after price in couple’s competitions, winning hearts wherever they went. she was the wind under henry’s wings.

     graduation eventually came to place, henry having gotten his grades, & together the young couple decided to conquer the world. after getting a name for themselves in sweden, traveling began to other nordic countries. from the nordics it came to europe. it was a constant fight, but a fight he loved every second of. years went by. flights went everywhere. his girlfriend became his fiance. the peak came; america. dancing among the top stars, people he had looked up to since he was young. the pressure was on. it was a constant fight, & he was really struggling now. the wedding approached, the competitions got tougher, the critics louder, the flights more stressful, the calls more frequent, the voices louder, the music louder, the----      he crash landed. hospital. undernourishment. fatigue. he wasn’t allowed to work any more, doctor’s orders. cancellations. worried voices. tests. even being off from work was too stressful to handle; he shut down. he took his last flight. he shut off his phone. even to his fiance he had to turn ice cold, because she was half his worries. the fear of disappointing her, the stress she had about getting him better, it was all too much. he had one friend, a guy he met at school, that still rented a small cabin close to the place henry still called home. he went there. he slept on a couch, but he got everything served, he didn’t need to worry about catching a single bus to the grocery store; all he had to do was rest & drink tea. the birds were singing outside during the day, & crickets during the night. everything was quiet. he had a cat, a cat that sometimes crawled up on henry’s stomach & purred. bread was freshly baked every morning.

    for the first time in a long, long time, henry felt like he could breathe.

    henry couldn’t go on tours anymore. he couldn’t compete. the moment he even thought about it his heart would start racing at a painful rate. his fiance was heartbroken. he couldn’t do it, not even for her. he wanted to stay like this. he wanted to forget all about conquering the world, cause it was all too big for him. he wanted a house in the middle of nowhere where he could grow his own food & worry about one thing at a time. she thought he was crazy. from the start, henry would always hyperfixate on something. first it was dancing, then it was her, then it was dancing again, & now it was--- this? she couldn’t have it. she gave the ring back. henry was too ashamed to admit it, but relieved at her decision.      the money that was left to him from their savings after dancing was used to buy a really shitty house in värmland, many, many, many hours from home. a completely fresh start. all around the big, run-down building was cow pasture, & the man who owned the cows were extremely kind on him. or, at least took pity on him. he didn’t know how to take care of a house on his own, especially not this old & far away from all things comfortable. henry started working for the neighbor on his farm, & there the other workers would teach him a lot of valuable lessons about taking care of animals, agriculture & a house. it was a rough first two years for henry, but it was a good kind of rough again; a struggle he loved every step of. every morning he knew he would make coffee on the stovetop & drink it on his porch, take on his dirty worker’s pants & work for the neighbor until late in the evening, then go back to bed & start all over again. eventually, his own house & garden also became a priority, a project, something he studied for & practiced, failed, practiced, learned. eventually he could harvest his first own potatoes & cabbages.

     life was regained again, everything balanced, his life absolutely minimalistic & joyous. it was then, when he felt completely recovered from his fatigue, that henry started missing dancing again. his own house was fixed, but he had one little piece left on his land, & it was an old run-down barn currently only used as a dusty, dirty storage. it was his new project. he renovated the place into a simple but fresh location where he could host dance lessons, dinner parties & let bands perform; much like the bands he was in back when he was a kid. the small community was extremely supportive of him, & he would start letting people rent the spot for all sorts of classes & activities. he got to teach old ladies to swing & would then invite them to parties in the weekend, where he would offer them homemade fruit wine. his home became a hotspot for activity & laughter.

     every morning when he sits on his porch, eating freshly made bread & drinking stoven-heated coffee, with a cat purring at his feet, looking out on the pasture & dirt roads around, he thinks about how happy he is to be alive.

[godkilller]

ask meme // send “behind bars” to visit my muse in prison.  // NOT ACCEPTING. note: all asks will be answered within my prisoner verse, so characters unlikely to be within Soul Society should be wary. Gin is in the lesser levels of Muken’s equivalent meant for dangerous fugitives that pose a threat to the Gotei 13 - too important to just let mingle among low ranking criminals in the Maggots Nest - and too linked to Aizen to simply exile.

         The initial shockwave struck hard, throwing dust, debris, and stone akin to discarded leaves in an autumn breeze—-tumbling, snapping, breaking—-several massive cracks crawled up the splitting stone floor, ceiling, and walls surrounding Gin. An eruption from below; and Gin knew of no other culprit. The chilling familiarity in such warped, monstrous reiatsu… belonged to none other than the deformed, twisted remains of Aizen Sousuke. And the memories involving the dreadful sensation didn’t betray him whilst all else remained disoriented, dazed in the hurricane’s calm gaze lingering above, swirling. Gin straightened, steadying himself, and regained his balance, by the leftmost bearings of his cell. He knew that signature. The same power that now thrummed beneath him, surging, was of the same that seeped in the scars left by that godforsaken blade.

         The entirety of Muken shuddered and groaned, the aftershocks of thunder rolling through as guards shouted and delayed alarms blared. A blasting rush of power pulsed again from below in quickened waves, slamming, thrashing into the whole structured fortress of Muken’s walls which boasted itself capable of housing the most potent evils. How quickly that confidence in its security faded by the following seconds.

        Another shockwave, breathtaking, shook him into a stumble. Gin clutched for support in avoidance of nearly being thrown by the sheer weight Aizen was tossing within his aura—-of fucking course AIZEN WAS BREAKING OUT. Did no one else see this coming?! By the panicked shouting, escalations of protective Kido, barriers upon barriers upon barriers shouted into echoed corridors and down stairwells, futility dripping within feeble incantations, alarms, requests for backup echoing down otherwise emptied debris-cluttered halls, dust falling like snow from groaning ceilings–and even Gin’s guards rushed, abandoned their posts, taking up their spears. Tremors ceased for a breath, and the traitor breathed in deep, steadying again, to look above and inspect the integrity of his ravaged ceiling’s structure… how solid stone could be made to look and feel so vulnerable, fragile, now. Its wounds were gaping, fine dust and smaller debris shifting and raining down upon each settling of the thick stone as it gasped in its damages. Alone he stood, a muddled mind processing which would go first: the ceiling or the floor——and it entirely depended on just how abruptly Aizen intended to rip Muken apart. Footsteps retreated further, echoing, echoing… and nothing.

         No spears were discarded despite the panicked fashion in which the guards had collected and gathered themselves. So Gin took his chance to begin searching for a way to remove the reiatsu-absorbing seal placed upon his remaining wrist in another method, pulse racing despite the slower breaths he continued to upkeep. Stay calm. Work fast. He had to get out of his cell.

         Though subtly askew----lightly damaged during the tremors that shook his cell----the bars that made up one of the four walls surrounding Gin did not show signs of exploitable weakness. At his approach, the seal upon his wrist thrummed, heating in distaste and in warning to his proximity to the cell perimeter. Gin knew that if he attempted to touch or breach the cage he sat within... the seal would react with an unfavorably electric failsafe. But perhaps without the additional assistance of swarming guards… it’d prove to be a potential for his escape. He could overcome a few shocks if left otherwise undisturbed by any hounding guards shooting him with restraining Kido. He’d attempt that more tedious process if no other option presented itself.

         Gin would still need to weaken and break the seal placed upon his reiatsu, less he wished to remain a sitting duck. Would Aizen’s mere presence burn him if he had no ample aura to stay his oppressive air’s hand? What a terrible way to go------another brutal tremor, and Gin’s hazy senses felt several guards fall to nothingness, like lanterns blown out in the night’s wind, and the traitor then knew. Aizen intended to ascend the floors of Muken to be freed, killing all who opposed, and they would therein cross paths. By the rate in which the entire prison was unraveling, feeble failsafes dissipating, Gin had mere minutes before an unfavorable reunion.

         Eyes caught a glimmer of broken steel, a mangled piece meant to serve as reinforcement beyond reiatsu-negating stone now exposed—-and Gin wasted no time. Flaring what energies were available to him, the prisoner forced his wrist restraint to manifest against his skin----glowing faintly, though otherwise absolute in its retaining of his captain-ranked aura. Gin lined the Kido to the exposed steel, broken metal gleaming, and reiatsu-negating powers bleeding from its structure----and then promptly slammed his wrist into it. The first strike left nary a scratch upon the glowing band, though Gin swiftly struck it again, the sensation of breaking glass cracking upon impact granted him the beginnings of a result. Again, with another blemish growing in its dim light, he continued.

        Gin remained perhaps the LARGEST loose end to Aizen. Knowing so much, understanding so much, the inner workings, the casual desires, the details of his preferred method of dying even, and the secrets of Kyoka Suigetsu. Everything should have died with him that day. Or maybe it didn’t matter if Gin knew shit about his Zanpakuto—loose ends were loose ends regardless of relevance. Aizen was never one to skip out on such a formality, finality, to officially discard a piece that was used up.

        The mere thought of enduring yet another pretentious speech of his use to Aizen, how he couldn’t have ascended to this limitless plain without Gin’s failed attempt on his life, was enough fuel for the fire that snarled with a shattering blast. Shards flew, light burst, and reiatsu rose. His freed wrist scraped skin across sharp metal with no seal present to absorb the blow----though Gin hardly flinched at an ultimately small injury. Instead, he relished in the returning flow of energy, strength refining through tired veins. He had nearly forgotten the exact potency, how the walls could too tremor in his wake. Steady at first, then surging, growing--------overpowering the door’s protections felt more doable by the second.

         He’d break the door down, find Shinso, and seek out Rangiku in the midst of this breach. Get the hell away from Soul Society. Aizen couldn’t have good intentions towards the institution that so brutally and thoroughly caged him. Stole his hope to become Soul King with a single sentence given to him via the lips of a couple dozen old men he so loathed and found laughable. It’d come as no surprise if Aizen determined his wrath was best suited in fully destroying the entirety of the spiritual realm they called home.

         An outstretched hand placed upon the bars earned a mere spark in response, its restrictive powers negated by Gin’s own presence flowing, rising until the air thickened and the bars began to shake. Kido wouldn’t do well versus reinforced doors, though sheer power could provide the right amount of trembling, groaning, until bars began to bend----then burst. But the following explosion was quite the opposite of what Gin desired----rather than bars being thrown outwards, the cell structure caved forward as if abruptly forced to do so by approaching energies rather than inward force. Another shockwave much closer than all others all but threw Gin backward to swiftly strike against the opposing cell wall.

         Despite the daze of his rough impact against jagged stone, Gin had enough awareness to know that the blast hadn’t been his doing. Rather, approaching footsteps through the dark belonged to the culprit. Typical for Aizen to arrive just in time to snatch away any remaining flicker of hope Gin managed to have----------and a great heaviness persisted, pressing till breaths came shallowly----or perhaps he was beginning to lose the calmness he so numbly grasped onto during the initial panic. He felt no fear, and yet shook regardless----maybe in response to the fact that he felt all but pinned in his fallen state against the wall, cornered akin to a wounded animal now approached by its hunter, readying to administer the finishing shot. How darkly he loomed, Aizen’s form hardly visible in the black corridor. Gin’s sight shifted, fading in and out of sharpness via the straining air and a hefty strike upon his skull unhelpful to his focus. Was it just him, a trick of the light, or did Aizen have an inhuman silhouette?

         The calm before the storm as stumbling remaining guards came into the light, staggering in their bleeding futility, injuries gruesomely indifferent----Aizen likely meant no harm to them directly but dealt it regardless due to his higher power. Disfigured, whispering shadows prowled, snarled, and there was a looming power unseen. Aizen stepped closer, cloaked in darkness, and the nearest whimpering guard turned to ash in a swiftly silenced shrill scream. Instantaneous. Gin knew futility well, death well, and had welcomed both within the rubble of a fallen building. He had accepted it, looked upon Ichigo, upon a crying Rangiku, and then closed his eyes. Gin knew the futility of Aizen as a whole, how he had twisted himself to seek godhood, how far above others he remained even without the throne of Soul King within his grasp. Walking alongside him, Gin had witnessed the various victims of his ultimate indifference. How quickly he discarded a useless tool, an obstacle of laughable strengths. He could watch the remaining guard dissipate without a cringe of remorse, or fear for his own livelihood, due to the numbing familiarity of the entire scene. GIN DID NOT FEAR DEATH.

         The glimpse of multiple mouths, a distorted voice seething incoherent whispers, several eyes and limbs mangled, jagged wings flared, fanged teeth in rows, and a nose-less, skeletal and inhuman face greeted this lack of fear. There the monster of Aizen Sousuke manifested, and Gin found no shame in at last admitting to himself, in his helplessness and awaiting of death, an innate fierce fear of Aizen himself. Stone shuddered and fell in his proximity, crumbling till white lights rained in beams from above, signaling Muken’s thorough destruction by the hellish deity standing just beyond the rays of light. But his final steps from that very darkness revealed an Aizen free of distortion, mutilation, or otherwise deformed features. The nightmare faded in the daylight, the cool breeze of the Seireitei ushered in by his good work. Gin found himself at last able to breathe, slow, shaken. Aizen stood before the bars, cloaked in black tattered cloth, reminisce of his lieutenant’s uniform all those decades ago. Outstretched, his palm beckoned.

         How bitterly nostalgic, to feel small akin to a child once more.

         ❝ Come, Gin. Cages don’t suit beings such as us.❞

I made @keikakudori wait over a month for this bullshit.

[marginalgloss]

no leisure at all

Like other novels in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series, the title of The Nutmeg of Consolation contains within it a dark joke. In the story, those words* are the name of a ship, and one of the many names of the Sultan who featured in this book’s precedent, The Thirteen Gun Salute. It’s a pleasing image, a phrase which feels obscure, ancient, nicely rounded — more so because it isn’t clear exactly what it means. Comfort and fortification in its most absolute form. It might have been an odd name for a ruler, but for a ship, or a home, or simply a hearth, it seems entirely fitting. But what is it we are trying to console ourselves from in this instance? 

‘The world’ will do, perhaps. Maybe that’s for the best, because the world of this book is full of terrors. It begins as we left off in the previous novel, with Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin shipwrecked alongside the crew of the Diane somewhere in the South China sea. It is not long before they come under sustained assault from a local band of pirates; they only survive after a brief siege and a series of terribly bloody battles. It is a bleak and shocking way to open the novel; the violence is described with a cold remove, as though we were watching it through a telescope on a nearby hilltop. It’s visceral, but there is a strange silence to it. 

Here is Aubrey considering the action afterwards:

‘To some degree it was the prodigious contrast between two modes of life: in violent hand-to-hand fighting there was no room for time, reflexion, enmity or even pain unless it was disabling; everything moved with extreme speed, cut and parry with a reflex as fast as a sword-thrust, eyes automatically keeping watch on three or four men within reach, arm lunging at the first hint of a lowered guard, a cry to warn a friend, a roar to put an enemy off his stroke; and all this in an extraordinarily vivid state of mind, a kind of fierce exaltation, an intense living in the most immediate present. Whereas now time came back with all its deadening weight – a living in relation to tomorrow, to next year, a flag promotion, children’s future – so did responsibility, the innumerable responsibilities belonging to the captain of a man-of-war. And decision: in battle, eye and sword-arm made the decisions with inconceivable rapidity; there was no leisure to brood over them, no leisure at all.’

The point about ‘two modes of life’ was also invoked at the start of The Thirteen Gun Salute, only there it was in the context of a sort of holiday. Here it is life and death by comparison. But again, the intent of both passages is the same: to make us wonder which of these lives is the real consolation for the other. Perhaps a state of war isn’t always so bad if the moments in between feel like ‘time…with all its deadening weight’.

There is precious little solace to be found in the world outside the crew. The news, arriving many months late from England, is that the bank in which Stephen has recently stashed his fortune might have gone under, as so many did in those days; he might therefore be broke. Of wives and children we hear next to nothing until a scrap of hope near the end. When our heroes strike out on a chase, they end up losing the advantage and become the ones pursued by the French. It is only a happy accident keeps them from being captured or killed.

I was very struck by this haunting anecdote, told by a guest at dinner and never really remarked upon or explained, in the middle of this book: 

‘…three white bears were seen coming over the ice, a she-bear and her cubs…As she was fetching away the last piece the men shot the cubs dead and wounded her severely as she ran. She crawled as far as the cubs, still carrying the piece, tore it apart and laid some before each; and when she saw they could not eat she laid her paws first upon one, then upon the other and tried to raise them up. When she found she could not stir them, she went off; and when she had got at some distance, looked back and moaned; and since that did not induce them to come away, she returned, and smelling round them, began to lick their wounds. She went off a second time as before, and having crawled a few paces, looked again behind her, and for some time stood there moaning. But her cubs still not rising to follow her, she returned to them again, and with signs of inexpressible fondness went round one, and round the other, pawing them, and moaning. Finding at last that they were cold and lifeless, she lifted her head towards the men and growled; and several firing together they killed her too.’

This is as awful as anything else that men do to each other in this book; worse even in its brutality than the scene our sailors come upon later, on a remote island, where the entire population of natives has been killed by a smallpox epidemic. One of these scenes is pointlessly cruel, the other is merely sad. 

O’Brian never quite seems to know how to handle a scene of human disaster, but as with all the nature sketches in these books, there’s a quality to the sequence above which is immediately affecting. It is equally hard to forget Stephen’s glimpse of a dugong and its calf, for example: ‘...at all times she showed the utmost solicitude for her child, occasionally going so far as to wash its face, which seemed a pointless task in so limpid a sea.’

Is this mere anthropomorphism? I think it’s more complicated than that. (‘Inexpressible fondness’ — who chose those words? Who thought the washing a pointless task? Surely not the man telling the story at the captain’s table.) For O’Brian, looking and thinking about nature becomes a way of thinking about ourselves: a coded discourse, like art or poetry or music, which exists beyond the crude manipulations of language. It is by no means unrelated that Stephen spends so much of this book thinking about children.

Eventually we come to Australia, where the Surprise puts in some time to restock and refit. They stay longer than expected, in fact, after Stephen gets into a disagreement with an Army officer (who he ends up cutting to ribbons with one of Jack’s swords). New South Wales is portrayed as a ghastly place, rendered almost surreal with despicable inhuman misery; sketchy and weird, like something out of Beckett or Kafka. At one point there is described ‘something like a business account, with amounts carried forward from one column to another, but the numbers were those of lashes, days of close confinement in the black hole, the weight of punishment-irons and their duration.’ 

It is a blasted plain, a rare example in these books of a place almost entirely without merit — except, of course, for the wonderful wildlife. Here the animals are certainly better than the people. The one memorable character who emerges from it is John Paulton, a rare local intellectual who strikes up something of a friendship with Maturin.

Paulton, it turns out, is a frustrated novelist, who retired to the wilderness thinking that the isolation would help him finish his great multi-volume opus. It is hard not to think of the author in relation — O’Brian himself, scribbling away in that idyllic village in the south of France — except the point that’s being made here is that what Paulton doesn’t appreciate is the virtues of society and conversation as an imaginative stimulus. Paulton isn’t a failure (though the brief excerpt we read from his novel is amusingly impenetrable) — he’s just misguided. 

Here is Stephen, gently suggesting an alternative to his longing for the perfect ending: 

‘There is another Frenchman whose name escapes me but who is even more to the point: La bêtise c’est de vouloir conclure. The conventional ending, with virtue rewarded and loose ends tied up is often sadly chilling; and its platitude and falsity tend to infect what has gone before, however excellent. Many books would be far better without their last chapter: or at least with no more than a brief, cool, unemotional statement of the outcome.’

This is another one of the author’s little games; that Frenchman was Flaubert, who wouldn’t even have been born yet in the 1812 in which Maturin is speaking. What he is saying is that it’s foolish to want to end. Taken literally, it’s a sly comment on the perpetual nature of these books. But it’s bittersweet, given that so much of what we’ve witnessed in this book is a show of misery. Perhaps the only consolation to be found is in sealing one’s self tight against the seas — like those timbers of the Nutmeg herself, after she was raised — and flushing the bilges, in spite of the rats — and carrying on.

* - O’Brian seems to have borrowed the title from history, though I can’t say exactly from where; the above quote I found via Google Books in a nineteenth century miscellany.

[totallyrhettro]

The Lone Jedi, Chapter 14

Word Count: 2640 Rating: This chapter: PG. Overall story: explicit Warnings: none Summary: Jedi Knight Rhett McLaughlin managed to escape the purge of the Emperor to become one of the last of his celibate order. After years of a solitary life, he finds himself with a former slave for a friend. Despite his efforts to maintain anonymity and the jedi code, he starts to realize that doing either is easier said than done. Notes: Star Wars AU; Events take place between episodes III and IV

First Chapter

Previous Chapter

*See the end of each chapter for additional notes on star wars terms*

Rhett POV

It had been days since he last saw Link, since he stood here amongst the wisdoms of the old masters and told him to leave. Days since they had talked, argued. Kissed. It had only been a few days since he had felt those divine lips against his own, but it felt much longer. He never realized how hard it would be to live without such contact. Living by the code had been so easy, before he knew what he was missing. It was easy to say no to love, to attachments, when he didn’t have either. Now…

The jedi tried to find solace in his work, find serenity in meditation but it did no good. He couldn’t think, barely ate, and his heart hurt like it had been torn apart. Rhett spent hours combing through the archives, trying to find anything that would help him in his time of uncertainty, but the rules seemed absolute. Nothing could give him comfort, and he hated himself for seeking it. He hated himself for his mistake, his weakness. A jedi should not question the law, only strive to follow it. That’s what he was taught, how he was raised. If he couldn’t accept that what he had done was for the greater good, he was not fit to hold the title of Jedi Knight.

It seemed heresy to even trying to find a loophole but he stopped caring after the first restless night. He woke in a cold sweat, halfway between midnight and dawn, still feeling the fear from his dream deep in his chest, though he couldn’t remember any details. Looking across the room at the empty bed where Link once slept, he had a fair guess to what he had been dreaming about. Apparently even in his sleep he couldn’t escape what he had done.

Now, as he looked over the great hall that held so much of the ancient jedi’s teachings, he wondered if he no longer had what it took to be a jedi. Discipline. Honor. Focus. He didn’t feel like he had any of those right now.

In an effort to regain at least some of those qualities, one morning Rhett was in the training room, just finishing his regular stretches next to his usual training dummy. Once he was ready, he picked up his bokken from the floor and turned to face his target. His placed his feet firmly on the ground, in his familiar stance, and took a deep breath. Thwak! First strike, step, raise, swing. Whap! Another strike, pivot, raise, swing. Again and again, Rhett struck the target, as he had done hundreds of times before. Within moments he was deep set into his normal routine but while he didn’t notice it, things were different. Each strike hit with more force than the last, the target dummy taking more of a beating in a few minutes than it had in centuries, rocking perilously left and right with each powerful attack, all the while Rhett was lost in his own head.

‘I did the right thing,’ he told himself.

‘You broke his heart,’ his mind retorted.

‘His feelings were a lie.’

‘Is it his feelings you wish to deny or your own?‘

‘I felt nothing. I feel nothing.’

‘You sent the only person who ever loved you away, into a very dangerous world.’

‘I did the right thing.’

‘The only person who will ever loved you. The only person you have ever loved.’

‘I don’t love him.’

‘You can’t hide from this. From how you feel.’

‘I’m not hiding.’

‘Link is going to go right back into that world of slavery, and it’s all your fault.’

‘No.’

‘You have failed your code, and you have failed Link.’

‘I did the right thing.’

‘You didn’t save him. You just delayed the inevitable.’

‘I can’t…’

‘He’s probably dead right now-’

‘No!’ A final swing, with all his muscle and might; he struck so hard against the dummy that his wooden bokken shattered on impact. Giant splinters burst into the air and Rhett stopped in his tracks. Panting, covered in sweat, he didn’t see the damage he had done. Didn’t see the pitiful remnants of his practice sword. All he saw was Link, lying dead on the forest floor, bloodied and mangled. He told himself it was just his imagination running away with itself, seeing the worst possible outcome from his actions, but it didn’t help. His face was damp, but not just from sweat; tears had begun to stream down his face without him even noticing. Dropping the handle of his busted weapon, he looked down at his hands. They were shaking.

“Link... what have I done?”

~

As Rhett saddled Herb, the dark brown kybuck seemed to watch his every movement with great interest, as if curious as to his reasons for this early morning ride. The jedi couldn’t seem to look the beast in the eye, thinking only about what he had finally realized. In the end it had not been for any logical reason that Rhett made him go, it was cowardice, and fear that their friendship would become something more. Something he couldn’t control. Something forbidden. It wasn’t Link’s fault that the jedi didn’t have faith in himself, or the path the Force had put before him. Whatever his own feelings, Link didn’t deserve to be cast out, left alone in this cruel universe.

Maybe the old masters had a point about not forming connections, but Rhett no longer cared. All he wanted was to find his friend, to make sure he was alright, and if at all possible, convince him to come back. The chances were slim, but he had to try. For Link’s sake and perhaps the man’s very life, Rhett had to try.

“Come on, Herb. How about one last ride?”

~

Jorr the Hutt’s palace was a fortress surrounded by hundreds of guards and a village filled with his most loyal citizens. Three giant defence towards were set up to prevent any orbital attack or air raid. The main area was surrounded by twenty foot walls built to withstand any laser blast or frontal assault. It would take an immense army to get inside by force, though some have probably tried. Fortunately, Rhett had other ideas. He dismounted Herb outside the front entrance before removing the saddle and bridle. The kybuck had done his part on getting them here in record time. Rhett didn’t want him around when things got dangerous.

“You’ve been a good friend, Herb,” the jedi smiled, petting the large animal’s nose. “I’m gonna miss you buddy.” Stepping back, he patted Herb one last time and the beast gave a farewell snort. Then, quick as a kybuck can be, he dashed off into the forest and was gone. As he watched him go, Rhett threw his hood over his head with a smile. It was time to find his other friend.

Dressed in his signature tattered robes over his lighter clothing, he arrived at the gates to the village trying to be as inconspicuous as a man of his stature could be. It turned out to be remarkably easy. A number of transports carrying everything from llanic spice to exotic fabrics were being unloaded into the marketplace. The locals were too busy dealing with unloading the merchandise to worry about any strange visitors. The place was brimming with strange visitors, all looking to buy or sell. No one noticed as the lone jedi walked amongst them, heading for where he knew the slaves were being kept for sale.

The massive arena was generally empty, used for public executions and gladiatorial events. Many times simultaneously. Today it was filled with throngs of people out to buy, sell, or just browse the collection of species available for purchase. The whole sight made Rhett sick; people being treated as no more than property, and rarely as more than disposable. He could only hope that one day the jedi order would be back to its full strength and they’d be able to finally put an end to the barbaric practice once and for all. Until then he had to bite his tongue and watch.

As he entered the stands, stepping out near the top, he could look down at the whole wide area and see the lines of slaves already being carted off to their new owners. The most recent group was being escorted onto the center stage and Rhett immediately recognized his friend among them. The jedi was too far away to hear the slaver’s pitch, or the ensuing commotion as buyers bid for the slaves beside Link. Working his way through the crowd, Rhett made his way closer. He had to made sure his friend was at least physically unhurt.

Getting closer he heard the slaver boasting about Link’s prowess as a dancer. Looking up, Rhett saw his friend performing for prospective customers. He had never seen Link dance before and for a moment he just watched, enthralled by the movement of the man’s body. His steps were delicate, but confident. His hips rolled slowly, rhythmically. His arms were like water as they swayed around him, graceful and strong. It was no wonder that he had once been the Hutt’s favored slave, with skill like that, but there was no jubilance in the dance.

When Link was done, the crowd erupted in enthusiastic cheers and bids for the human slave, but Rhett saw the tears on Link’s face. He felt his own eyes moisten knowing why the man he adored was crying. He knew he had done this to him. It was his fault Link had been ensnared in this awful world once more.

“Link,” he whispered, letting a single tear fall. No one heard him, thinking nothing about the sorrow of this stranger, and even less about the pain of the man on stage. They only cared about buying another slave.

The bids came in, one after the other, and the slaver was only too happy to raise the price higher. Eventually a final bid was given and Rhett made sure to see who had won. A zygerrian female, dressed in fine cloth and gold bands, had managed that feat. A member of the furry humanoid race that once dominated the galaxy with their slave trade, the zygerrian had already purchased many of the slaves put up for auction today. Her bodyguards followed her out of the stadium and so did a certain hooded figure.

He tracked her through the streets of the town to a private docking area where several freighters and small luxury ships were parked. The zygerrian and her guards headed for one of the cruisers while the slaves she had purchased that day were being loaded onto a nearby freighter. Link was among them. Rhett wanted nothing more than to call out to his dear friend, let him know he wasn’t alone, that someone was coming for him, but he couldn’t. That wasn’t the plan.

The jedi waited as long as he could, watching them load Link and the other slaves into the ship before heading back out of the docking area. He had to meet with his contact before it was too late. Winding through back side streets and back alleys, Rhett made his way to one of the darker corners of his backwoods planet where another shady figure was waiting.

“What took you so long?” he asked. Hex didn’t stand out much; short for a human and a dressed as a merchant. “I was beginning to think our information was wrong.”

“My apologies, Hex,” Rhett began. “I got here as soon as I could.” It was a lie. After pretending to be someone he wasn’t for so long with Link, he had gotten a lot of practice at telling a fib and had gotten pretty good at it. The former smuggler shrugged, in no mood for banter. There wasn’t time.

“Whatever. I guess I’m just surprised you decided to join us on this crusade.” Making sure no one was looking, Hex got close enough to show the jedi a small device in his hand. “You just have to plant this one whatever you want gone. Give it a wide berth and count of twenty. Boom.” He grinned with a chuckle and splayed his fingers for emphasis. Rhett didn’t share his enthusiasm.

“That’s not my style I’ll be fine without it.” Hex gave him a look, but let it go.

“Maybe when this is over you’ll give joining us another think-over. The resistance could really use you,” he added, hopeful.

“Are your people in place?” Rhett asked, dodging the subject. Once again, Hex didn’t press the issue. He knew it was only a matter of time before the jedi took a bigger role against the empire.

“Ready and willing, my friend. You just give us the signal and we’ll do the rest. We’ve been waiting for a chance to strike this place for months. With your help, we’ll put these slavers out of business for good.”

“Let’s hope so.” Rhett turned to leave but Hex’s voice stopped him in his tracks.

“I gotta know,” he asked, his tone unusually serious. “What made you change your mind?”

‘Not what,’ Rhett corrected to himself. ‘Who.’

“Just… finally realized I couldn’t hide from it anymore.” There was something in his voice that gave Hex the impression there was more to that explanation, but he didn’t question the jedi’s motives. He was just happy to have the help. He knew well enough that every man and woman in this war had a reason to be fighting in it, himself included.

“Glad to have you with us.” With one last pat to Rhett’s arm, Hex stepped away to fade into the oblivious crowd and was gone. Rhett wasn’t sure if he felt the same way, especially given the methods with which these rebels achieved their goals. Yet he understood that violence was sometimes necessary. He just never thought he’d be involved in guerilla tactics himself, especially when he was trying to hide from the empire. Once again he questioned his decision to rescue Link, but only for a moment. Seeing Link on that stage, surrounded by gawking slave owners made him sick to his stomach. Link didn’t deserve that, no one did.

Despite his reservations about the whole venture, it felt good to be doing something for the cause, something to stop these damned slavers and their brutal system. It wouldn’t end slavery in the entire galaxy, but it would make a difference here. He thought back to when he first rescued Link. It hadn’t been about saving the universe, just helping one person. Sometimes it wasn’t about being the hero that defeats the mighty empire, but the man who did what he could with what little he had.

The plan was relatively simple: with the whole town, palace included, busy with the rebel attacks, Rhett would steal the freighter carrying most of the indentured servants. In the chaos, the local guards won’t care about one ship filled with slaves. Not their property, not their problem. Rhett would deliver the freighter to a predetermined rendezvous point and deliver the freed slaves to the rebel alliance. After that… he wasn’t sure. Link would be free as well, free to choose a path and safe to pick one that didn’t put him in further danger. He could go anywhere he wanted from there, far from this miserable planet.

Rhett couldn’t decide if he hoped Link would make the most of it and start a new life in peace and happiness, or hoped Link would choose to stay with him. He was still conflicted about accepting his feelings for the man, but at least he would soon have comfort in knowing that he did his best to make things right.

Next Chapter

Additional Notes-

Bokken: Not from star wars, but adapted for this fiction. A wooden sword used for training.

Kybuck:  an animal originally from Kashyyyk. They look very much like the Tauntauns found on Hoth, if you crossed one with a horse.

Zygerrian:  a humanoid species who built a powerful empire by selling their slaves.

Rebel Alliance:  a resistance movement formed to oppose the reign of the Galactic Empire.

Galactic Empire:  the galactic, constitutional monarchy and fascist government that replaced the Galactic Republic in the aftermath of the Clone Wars. 

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[tialovestelevision]

Faith, Hope, and Trick

A full day’s rest and relaxation, plus a little bit of Journey and time with friends, and the taste of “Dead Man’s Party” seems mostly to be out of my mouth. Let’s get back to the adventures of the Slayer(s)! 1. Fun fact: When Nelvana licensed the anime series Cardcaptor Sakura for American release in 2000, a year after this season of Buffy aired, they basically rebuilt the show from the ground up, changing scenes and dialogue. They also changed the name of the show from Cardcaptor Sakura to Cardcaptors. The goal of all of this was to bring the character Syaoran Li to equal prominence with series protagonist Kinomoto Sakura, because American audiences wouldn’t watch an action show starring a girl. Meanwhile, Buffy was killing it in the ratings. All of this is to say that, while the current surge of money being made by female-centered action movies (Ghostbusters and especially Star Wars) is lovely and a huge sign that I have been right all along, I don’t expect the mass market to change immediately because of it. 2. Willow is adorable. She can fight vampires, but leaving school for lunch, even when it’s allowed, is terrifying to her. Of course, given how short lunch periods at most schools are, I can’t imagine leaving school for lunch anyway - I had 22-minute lunches; that was barely time to get to the cafeteria and eat, much less leave campus to do so. 3. “What if they changed the rule without telling me?” That would be in character for Snyder. 4. “Snyd-man.” That works for Snyder. 5. “... Or do that thing with your mouth that boys like.” Joke is funny. “Oh, I didn’t mean that bad thing with your mouth.” Joke is no longer funny. 6. “I like when you do that.” Oz stays pretty great. 7. Xander can’t be encouraging without also slut-shaming. 8. “Like date and hang out and go to school and slay demons. You know… I want to do girly stuff!” In this setting, slaying demons absolutely is girly stuff; in most settings, it’s more a gender-neutral affair. 9. 89 cents for a medium soda was, as I recall, a pretty decent deal in 1999. McDonalds’s current one-dollar any size sodas are a steal, a decade and a half of inflation later. 10. Mr. Trick is the second significant character of color the show has given us, after Kendra. I’m not sure any last more than a season. 11. “Gotta admire that death rate. Makes DC look like Mayberry.” 12. The mascot of the fast food joint might be creepier than either Ronald McDonald or Bob’s Big Boy. Not as bad as the old Burger King mascot, though… ye gods. That thing was Lovecraftian. 13. Got some decent XBox games, though. 14. Dream dancing. No live band in Buffy’s dream. 15. And now flashbacks. Really unpleasant flashbacks. 16. “I think what my daughter’s trying to say is, ‘Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!’” For once, Joyce’s insufferable self-righteousness puts her on the right side of something. That was basically the perfect thing to say there. 17. “You remember the demon Acathla?” No, I don’t remember the most traumatic moment of my life. Totally slipped my mind. 18. “A smidge of this mixed with a virgin’s saliva… does nothing I know about.” Moments like that are when questions of what virginity means actually matter. In our world, there is no magic that requires virgin saliva, so virginity is kinda a useless concept. 19. Giles and Willow have among the show’s best dynamics. 20. Cordy just found a vampire, I’m pretty sure. 21. And now we have a new Slayer. 22. “Isn’t it crazy how slaying always makes you hungry and horny?” 23. Xander’s fascinated by Faith. For once, I can’t blame him - Faith is fascinating. She’s hot, which is why Xander’s as fascinated as he is, but she’s also compelling. Fills a space in a way none of the rest of the cast really does. Eliza Dushku was very well-cast. 24. Still miss Kendra, though. She was great. And replacing her with another white girl isn’t a great move for the show to have made. 25. Faith is flirting with Giles. Giles knows he wants no part of that and seems conflicted about what to do with that thought. 26. “And they say young people don’t learn anything in high school nowadays, but, um, I’ve learned to be afraid.” 27. Buffy doesn’t like Faith. Jealousy is a thing, and it’s well-performed here. 28. Mr. Trick is ready for the twenty-first century. 29. Ah, goat-hoof-hand-man. Faith making friends and influencing people. 30. Making friends and influencing demons? 31. And now Joyce is being judgey toward Buffy and treating Faith like a superior Slayer. She disapproves of Buffy being the Slayer, and is still holding up Faith as a superior Slayer. Joyce… 32. “Best mom ever.” Not really. 33. “I have tried to march in the Slayer Pride parade…” Driving home the parallel from Becoming. Is there any possible way they don’t see what they did there? 34. Faith is, in fact, a mess. 35. “I think you’re being a little…” “No, I’m being a lot. I know that.” 36. I love how used to Buffy’s modest listening skills Giles has gotten. 37. “Bestest new little sister.” Buffy, you have no idea. 38. “There are two things I don’t believe in… coincidence and leprechauns.” “Actually, it’s entirely possible that they both arrived here by chance simultaneously.” “But I’m right about the leprechauns, right?” “As far as I know, yes.” There really needs to be a story where Giles has to deal with leprechauns. 39. And Josh strikes out. Poor guy. Shot down by symbolism. 40. And Faith has been lying about what’s happened to her Watcher. You’d think the Council would update Giles on things like this, given that he’s the Watcher who’s actually doing Watching. 41. Hello, Kakistos. How are you? Apart from awful. 42. Mr. Trick is obviously the thinker in Kakistos’s cult. 43. “If we don’t do something, the master could get killed.” *pause* “Well, our prayers are with him. There’s a reason we these vengeance crusades are out of style. See, the modern vampire, we see the big picture.” 44. Kakistos makes suggestion. Faith follows it. Kakistos dies. 45. Buffy honestly wants there to be a second Slayer. She values companionship, and the Slayer is the only one who can really understand the Slayer. 46. Giles knows when to lie and what to say when he does. He’s the only character in the show that’s really true of. 47: Buffy starts to actively work on moving on, so Hell coughs Angel back up. That’s… actually totally in character for Hell. Overall: This episode was good, and quite the breath of fresh air after the one before it. Mr. Trick and Faith were both actively fun to watch, there’s lots of great fight scenes, the drama lands, and if it’s trying to make a moral point I don’t see it, so there’s no moral to totally fail to make. I very much enjoyed this episode. In a show where Joyce was the character the writers seem to want us to think she is rather than the character she’s been written to be, the scene with Principal Snyder would have been immensely enjoyable; even in the show Buffy is, it was quite fun. Xander’s awfulness was at a low ebb, and confined mostly to leering at Faith, which Faith seemed perfectly all right with. I’m in favor of leering with the consent of the leer-ee. It was a blast, and the show urgently needed it.