#its all baseball and end times rhetoric

[hoshi-kawaii]

For my dad's birthday, my sister and brother went in together on a gift for my dad. My brother invited him over. His wife remade one of our late mom's pie recipes that she always made for my dad on special occasions. My brother and his wife have a 7 month old baby girl who my dad has only seen twice. The assumption was that my father would come over for pie and his gift and would see his grand daughter for a little while. The least the guy can do. My brother has been gone for months learning to be a pilot so you think he might be interested in how his son is.

But my father calls up and says he has some back pain and it hurts too much so he asked if he can just drive up and they can bring out the pie and the gift and he can take them back with him. All benefits with none of the work.

My brother is rightfully upset because his dad doesn't even want to see his own son or his grand daughter. My sister gets involved and says, "No, they won't do that. Just go in for 5 minutes it's no different than sitting in the car. BTW did you see a doctor for this pain?" No.

My father says, "no no I'm in too much pain now and I can't even drive so I'm not coming."

My sister tells my brother to forget the gift. Return it. Enjoy the pie yourselves. But my brother's wife is like I made the guy a fucking pie. Let's just bring it to him and bring the baby and he will see how cute she is.

So they call my dad up and tell him that they will come to him. But he says:

"Can we just meet halfway, I was going to drive to my friend's house (about halfway between them) and watch the Phillies (baseball)."

Like I shit you not, baseball is and always has been more important to the man than anyone in his family and whenever anyone gives him a chance to be involved in their lives the man does this. Meanwhile he goes around garnering sympathy from people because "his wife is dead and his 8 kids don't want to talk to him."

So fuck it. They ate the pie. The man went to his friend's house and stayed for three days complaining he was in too much pain to leave but constantly refusing to go to the doctor.

When my sister asked why he won't go, he claimed it would take too long to get in. She called and he got in at 9 am the next morning. They said he pulled a muscle and gave him some opiates and sent him on his way. Old white man privilege.

Meanwhile I suffer in pain every day of my life. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now the guy is in Cali visiting his old friends thanks to a plane ticket my sister bought him. He's gonna go to my cousin's funeral tomorrow and use the situation to get as much sympathy from a group of mourners as he can get. My cousin was my mom's nephew and they both died from horrible battles with cancer.

There just isn't a single thing about the man that doesn't piss me off. The stories are endless.

He treats my poor sister like a wife or a mother. It helps that she lives 10 hours away, but it doesn't stop the man from relying on her for something he could easily do himself.

She feels bad because our mom told her to take care of him (to an extent). But I think after this most recent issue, she is very much done with him.

The man had eight kids and he's been burning his bridges with all of them. He's probably about to be evicted so you would think he might want to spend time with his son who owns a house and has a spare room.

[denimbex1986]

'Picture the scene, if you will: It’s sometime in the Before Time, in the blissful ignorance of the late 2010s, and I tell you about two new summer movies that are about to premiere. One is a superhero flick featuring the long-awaited return of an iconic actor in the role that made his career. The other is a prestige, 3-hour-long biopic that consists almost entirely of a bunch of guys sitting in rooms talking. Which one would you expect to flop, and which one would you bet on to bring in almost a billion dollars worldwide? Yes, that’s purely rhetorical.

It’s a funny thing to think about, though, because earlier this year I was excited about two summer releases that fit those exact descriptions. But it seems that in our topsy-turvy, post-pandemic world, the box office really has been turned upside down because Oppenheimer became a worldwide sensation just about a month after The Flash crashed and burned. (Yes, this is me admitting I was excited for The Flash. Just roll with it.) What the heck happened?

As a movie lover generally and a champion of the theatrical experience more specifically, I will admit to being particularly anxious about the fate of the cinema as an institution after the pandemic. We all spent the better part of two years cooped up in our apartments, avoiding any semblance of crowded public spaces, and learned to just stream the latest blockbusters from the comfort of our living rooms. It’s only logical that after getting so comfortable with couch viewing, it would take more than a little coaxing to get us all back in line for the popcorn. My fear is that, when push comes to shove, not enough of us will be lured back to keep the cinema as we know it alive. And there’s good reason for me to feel that way, as the aggregate box office numbers are still significantly below where they were in 2019.

Do the shocking financial performances of The Flash and Oppenheimer offer us some clues as to the secrets of the weird post-COVID box office? Maybe, but first and foremost they tell us a great deal about those two movies. Context is everything, after all. The Flash is a long-delayed movie starring an actor who is more famous for assaulting people than for their filmography, all set in a cinematic universe that was announced by the studio (itself suffering the growing pains of a recent merger) to be defunct about 6 months before the film’s release. Oppenheimer, on the other hand, is the passion project of one of the most recognizable big-movie directors of our time—himself a significant box office draw—starring a murderer’s row of A-list actors that benefitted from a viral social media association with Barbie, the summer’s biggest movie in the lead up to its release. So yeah, there’s that.

But I do think these two movies tell us a little more than that. They are the perfect illustration of the truth of the current box office, which is that people won’t just go to the movies reflexively anymore. Gone are the days of paying to see absolute schlock because you’re at least out of the house. Indoor activities simply aren’t anyone’s first idea of a good time these days. (As a side note, I’ll point out that there’s evidence, at least in places like my home base of Richmond, that people are turning to outdoor entertainment like minor league baseball instead.) If people are going to leave the cushy, inviting embrace of their couches, you’re going to have to show them something new and enticing.

And as The Flash can attest, we’ve all seen plenty of superhero movies already. But it’s been a while since we all had a chance to see something directed by Christopher Nolan (Tenet doesn’t count because, you know, COVID), and even longer since we’ve seen anything with Josh Hartnett in it. That probably has something to do with why Oppenheimer is likely to outgross four of the last six MCU releases by the end of its run...

I do strongly believe that the movie theater business will have to adapt to our post-COVID environment, where people won’t show up to the cinema quite like they used to. That could be a good thing too, as lower attendance will likely force filmmakers to lower their budgets. I’d love nothing more than to see the demise of the bloated, behemothic, in favor of more mid-budget and independent films. You heard me right: Give me less Fast X. Bring on the Cocaine Bear.'

[kaypeace21]

Analyzing the 5 plays in this drama club poster .From the bts pics of stranger things 4.

So... some of ya’ll know I'm going through the st s4 films given to us by the official st twitter + the films reffed in the show itself or mentioned by the Duffers in interviews .

So I decided to look at the plays mentioned here. Because even if we don't see the monologues in the show directly - the Duffers wouldn't name drop anything unless it inspired them in some way. Similar to films name dropped in the show. Tw : for some dark themes .

This is just a quick little analysis I decided to do since we probably won't get any new st content today (3/22). Nothing too deep. Just mentioning things that caught my interest especially cause these plays have a lot of narrative connections to the st s4 movies I've been watching.

Invitation to a march (Authur laurents)

Reminds me of the stancy/jancy love triangle. "A young woman is having second thoughts about doing the right thing and marrying a respectable , rich, kind, young man with good prospects.By way of a prewedding diversion, this woman becomes interested in the passionate but poor and entirely unsuitable son of a local landlord.Basically, the plot concerns the efforts of Norma Brown to choose between a conventional fiance who "puts her to sleep" but is wealthy (like what her own mother did) or go for this new-poor guy. The play is principally interested in how this youthful love triangle affects the three mothers involved (whether the kids like it or not)

12th night (Shakespeare)

 - viola (el) wrongly assumes a family member (hopper) is dead. She dresses up as a man named 'cesario'. A girl named Olivia falls for 'cesario' (violet dressed as a man). "Finally, when 'Cesario' and Sebastian (violet's twin brother: assumed to have drowned - Will) appear in the presence of Olivia there is more wonder and confusion at their physical similarity. Taking Sebastian for 'Cesario', Olivia asks him to marry her, and they are secretly married in a church. Cough if Olivia is 'straight' cause she fell for Viola (as a doppleganger dressed like her twin brother).Mike being into el who multiple characters in s1 said looked like a boy and specifically like Will is...suspish and a hint he's not straight lol. just like Olivia they're both into guys . plus, this play just has a butt load of love triangles (ugh i hated that aspect). There was also romantically coded letters (which was in the s4 films) . One character is also thrown into an insane asylum and framed as 'insane'.'Pretending that Malvolio is insane, they lock him up in a dark chamber. Feste visits him to mock his insanity'. We all know the psych hospital will be narratively important- talked about it more here.

The seagull (Anton Chekhov-russian)

similar to how I believed s4 will show m*#even already broken up since the months between s3-4 : act 3 (s3) ends with Nina begging for one last chance to be with Trigorin before he leaves/moves away. They kiss and make plans to meet again in Moscow.And in act 4 there's a timeskip where it shows they've been broken up for a long time between acts- and its established they never actually loved eachother. Do i even have to spell out why this parallels the m*#even ending in s3? There is also a play within the play (this is common in a lot of the st films- they have plays- or a story within a story- which illustrate certain themes or emotions of the characters within said film : blackswan, children of paradise, highschool musical, Rushmore, book of Henry, welcome to marwen, never ending story, romancing the stone, wet hot American summer, etc).The play is Konstantin's latest attempt at creating a dense symbolist work. There is also alot of love triangles in the seagull. TW!: for se#ual ab*se/su*cidal thoughts/ inc*st (here and in other play segments). The seagull motif reminds me a lot of Jonathan's rabbit story.Konstantin romantically into Nina shows up to give her a gull that he has shot. Nina is confused and horrified . Trigorin sees the gull that Konstantin has shot and muses to Nina on how he could use it as a subject for a short story: "The plot for the short story: a young girl lives all her life on the shore of a lake. She loves the lake, like a gull, and she's happy and free, like a gull. But a man arrives by chance, and when he sees her, he destroys her, out of sheer boredom. Like this gull."  This immediately reminded me of jon's rabbit story and some of the movies on the s4 list . Like in forrest gump- Jenny (who is poor) was se*ually ab*sed as a very young girl by her father. As a child she runs away into a field-away from her alcoholic father yelling at her -there she prays that she can "be a bird so I can fly far far away" .

Jenny as an adult struggles with this unresolved trauma- being with ab*sive partners, doing dr*gs, and having su*cidal thoughts . She as an adult when contemplating su*icide, jokes 'you think i can fly like a bird ?' while looking down at a bridge.God-i'm worried about jonathan (Jenny was also a musician sort of like jon). In another s4 movie example ' mystic river ' :(in the 80s) a preteen baseball playing boy is r*ped by men in the woods. He later says he wishes he could become an undead monster to not feel the pain of that experience - cause quote " if I'm not human anymore maybe the pain will stop" (Will) . slightly off topic but he also has another personality, imagines a alternate word that dissappears when he turns his head. And as a less direct animal parallel to the play - the boy from the film also imagined his perpetrators as monsters and wolves to cope.In 'getout' the photographer character sees a dead deer in the woods and it represents a parent/his own childhood tra*ma relating to his past. similarly in 'prince of tides' the 2 siblings as kids were ra*ed by men. The older brother remembered it and the younger sibling developed DID (so didn't remember but she would draw wolves- as the perpetrators/villains in her picture stories she created . In the film they also had an ab*sive dad and were very poor. She also tried k*ling herself multiple times-but started to get better after remembering the source of her pain and trauma.  There is also the theme of multiple attempted su*cides in the play- and the play ends with yet another attempt- and the audience is left unaware of the artist's fate at the end of the play.

The tempest (Shakespeare)

Prospereo - (the perceived antagonist) is a wizard with monstrous looks, storm powers , and ability to create monster-dogs

He wants revenge on a man who tried ra*ing his family member & revenge on his other family member who wronged him years ago. I mean... pretty much my did theory.But in the end.Prospero decides to show his enemies the mercy that they did not show him twelve years earlier. He tells Ariel to bring the men to him, he will restore their sanity and then renounce magic forever.Prospero breaks the spell that the men are under .

Diary of a scoundrel (Alexander Ostrovsky-Russian)

-  I suppose this could loosely relate to Jonathan? Glumov, is a young man from an impoverished family lacking status seeking entrance into society's pampered class. A 19th-century Russian scoundrel must scheme his way out of his meager life in a small apartment -whatever it takes.He has a quick mind and some talent for seeing through the hypocrisies of people around him ( Jonathan does make a lot of social critiques about society). That gives him some advantages. A tale of one man's mission to finagle his way into upper-class society and find a cushy job. Set in 1874, this social comedy follows Glumov, a Russian youth who begins his ambitious ascent to social esteem. He progresses by wit, guile and rhetoric. Pitting one stupid person against another, he soon gains his ends. To reach these goals, Glumov will lie, flatter, and cater to the vanities of the wealthy. Unable to contain his disgust with his victims, Glumov decides to relieve his unvoiced satirical comments by recording his schemes in a diary. But he is tripped up by his uncle's wife, to whom he has made passionate love on his way to success. At the end of the play, his diary is stolen and his duplicity exposed, but he can nevertheless suceeds. The author is much more critical about the high society itself than about the main character, so the play keeps attracting generations of directors by opening possibilities for political criticism while also avoiding naming names of the current rulers.The play's aim was to overthrow bourgeois tradition and establish a class-conscious art called eccentricism giving a deliberately comic portrayal of reality.

I suppose I notice some possible commonalities-  besides s3 critiquing the wealthy/capitalism in comedic ways . jonathan since s1 has worried about his family's finances / had some resentment toward the rich . In some of the s4 movies ‘orphan’ & ‘ girl interrupted’ someone reads their diary out loud to get at them (in girl interrupted the winona character’s diary even had critiques of her new friends).  Alot of movies also have someone (usually a teen/young adult) making a documentary about their life -which could narratively replace said diary? A few movies have a poor guy adjusting to snobby rich social circles (or being poor and then getting money)- titanic, kingsmen, karate kid, the craft , godfather,  wardogs,into the spiderverse,flashdance, and many others . And movies like wardogs has a poor-young-character do shady things to finacially support his family . There’s also that whole uncle’s wife thing- which makes me uncomfortable for obvious reasons (but I’m just thinking of Lonnie’s creepy gf who was into him). A few movies had the guy’s step mom innappropriately hit on him- orange county & you got mail. And him trying to avoid her advances. Or...not to mention ... it may be a problematic coincidence /trope. But in enter the void -the guy who needs to finacially support his sibling/ does dr*gs -hooks up with his dr*g dealing friend’s married mom (who would give him money).  Or in gilbert grape- the poor teen-who has to finacially support his siblings/single mom-has his endgame relationship be a girl his own age. But before that he h*oked up with a married woman -who would give him money. Don’s plum -young film guy-propositioned by older female film director (for dream job). Not even mentioning the other films that have the guy hooking up with toxic older women (like ‘the graduate’). Or analyze this-where the therapist accuses him of having an Oedipus complex (not touching that one... but the guy in ‘enter the void’ a 100% had one). It’s possible those movies were just- inspo for s3?  A coincidence? Or s3 was foreshadowing for this in s4- but unlike s3 it will accurately be played as wrong  and a sign of Jonathan recreating past tra*ma caused by Lonnie (cough like the photos) /being desperate for money. And not played ‘comedically’ like how it mostly was in s3. But shown as self destructive  (for Jon) and immoral on the Woman’s end. Like... Billy and Jon are character foils. Both are older siblings into rock music, with ab*sive dads who shoved them into walls. Both lose it (and beat steve to a pulp when Steve accidentally triggers their daddy issues). In s3 it’s established womanizer Billy has mommy issues, than he tries ho*king up with someone his mom’s age, and the characters ref ‘back to the future ‘ and Steve incorrectly says it’s about “alex p keaton trying to bang his mom.” This could illustrate his subconscious issues with parental figures/adults cause of Lonnie’s  possible past se*ual ab*se . One film the friend even says to the guy “you don’t have friends!” guy b: i have friends! him:  no you have acquaintances! ADMIT IT! YOU’RE AFRAID OF MEN!I mean-Jonathan liked Nancy- but he initially hooked up with her cause he wanted to prove he didn’t have ‘trust issues’ from his dad. Also it’s prob a bit of a reach (and maybe a coincidence)- but the fact Murray in the same breath compares Steve (Nancy’s then bf) and Lonnie  ... uh... if you think too long about it ... it’s very sinister .  Especially because in s3: muray tells Joyce  that despite her wanting to be with a nice guy, she’s curious about “the brute” Hopper despite him reminding her of a past “bad relationship”(aka Lonnie). Like- yeah connect some dots.  Quite a few films (other than forrest gump) also have the character who (as a kid) was  r*ped by their dad/parent-  begin to do dr*gs/be pr*miscuous as adults since they never learned to properly cope with their trauma (’girl with the dragon tattoo’,  ‘black swan’, and ‘magnolia’). Unfortunately the whole relative doing such things to kid-relatives is in at least 30+ movies. 

Personally, i would be MUCH happier if Jon had a age appropriate romance- and had not a single creepy adult near him. A few movies actually imply Lonnie gets yet another ‘new model’  replacing his gf in her 20s with a new gf- who is ‘barely l*gal” and just turned 18. so there’s that possibility as well- that she’s jonathan’s age.I just want Jonathan-happy &safe. GOD. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

[mandoalorian]

Touch Starved [Frankie Morales x Reader]

Summary: You and your best friend Frankie Morales have had silent feelings for each other since the day you met. No one could’ve ever guessed the strange circumstance which occurred one fateful night, and how the proceeding events would be the push you needed to take your friendship to the next level.

Word count: 6k (what the heck this is the longest piece i’ve ever written BY FAR)

Rating: 18+ only.

Warnings: SMUT, thigh riding, oral (m and f receiving), alcohol consumption/intoxication, food/drink mention, lot of pining over each other and just some general fluff

Author’s Note: This is my first ever Frankie fic anddddd my first ever smut lol. Please be kind I hope you enjoy. PS if you want a part two let me know! xx

MASTERLIST | Submit your requests HERE

•••

Your eyes were heavy and you shuffled into the cushion, adjusting your position on the couch until you felt more comfortable. You grazed your fingers against the pages of your book, but found yourself re-reading the same sentence over and over again in attempt to keep yourself awake. Even your two scented candles were close to burning out, and you figured it was time for bed.

Gently dropping the book on the floor, you closed your eyes and felt yourself drift off into a dreamy sleep when a loud bang on your door woke you up with a jolt. Your heart was pounding as you bolted upright, clutching the thin wooled blanket that was lazily draped around your body in fear. Within seconds, you heard another bang on the door. Rubbing your eyes, you flicked on your phone and checked the time. 11-48pm. Almost midnight. You groaned, standing up and padding to the front door of your apartment. Who could possibly want to see you at this hour? You wondered. Not even bothering to check through the peephole, you let out an elongated groan.

“Who is it?” You called out and rubbed your tired eyes. You ran your fingers through your hair in hope that you would look somewhat presentable for when you greeted your uninvited visitor.

Without hesitation you heard him. A voice you were so familiar with. “It’s Frankie, man! You gotta let me in!” you noted that his voice sounded urged and your stomach filled with concern. Was he alright? Why was he at your apartment at 11-48pm? A million thoughts raced through your mind in just the second it took you to open the door. The thought of Frankie being here made you nervous, but excited. In a fluster, you stumbled with the door lock before finally managing to get it open.

There he was. His dark brown waves were tucked into one of his infamous baseball caps and he was wearing a dark green flannel and a washed out pair of denim jeans. You tried to search for answers in his face, but he truly seemed fine, other than the slight panic in his voice. He slid past you, allowing himself into your apartment and began pacing around.

“Would you like a drink?” You asked, almost rhetorically. Frankie didn’t answer, nor did he need to. You were already clicking open the bottle of ice cold Bud and handing it over to him. He took a big sip out of the alcoholic beverage, and you took the liberty of admiring him as he done so. He wasn’t watching you anyway, but instead focusing on downing the drink. That's what he needed. A drink to wash away his worries. How could he ever explain this to you?

You loved the way his chocolate brown eyes shone under the candlelight and the way his skin looked almost soft and golden. You waited patiently for him to finish drinking, never wanting to hurry him.

Frankie appreciated the atmosphere of your apartment too. He always had. It made a change from his current living situation. Frankie wasn’t picky as such, but living with his four best guy friends definitely had its downfalls. Whether that be Ben constantly hogging the living room television to play his Call of Duty video games, or Santiago bringing home a different lady every other night, making such noise that nobody but Will could sleep, or even Tom with his untidy behaviour and complete disregard for everyone else who lived with him. It wasn't great but what other choice did Frankie have? Other than you. You didn’t feel like a choice to him, you felt like a necessity. He needed you. You were his safe place, and your chic apartment felt more like home than his shabby downtown place.

“I gotta ask you a favour.” Frankie prompted eventually, sliding down into the cream faux-leather sofa and placing his bottle of beer on the coffee table. You took a seat in the chair opposite him and folded your arms, waiting for him to continue. “Actually, I don’t know. Never mind. Uhm… it’s a funny story to be honest. But, maybe it’s fine. It’s not fine. It’s just, well-”

“Spit it out Frankie!” You giggled jokingly, reaching over and nudging him slightly. He was immediately put at ease by just the simplest brush of your fingers, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with you. He found himself staring into the burning flame of your cinnamon scented candle. He felt mildly ashamed about how this whole situation had even surfaced in the first place.

“Me and Santi… we had a bet. A dare kinda thing.” Frankie explained, shuffling around with discomfort. He was definitely embarrassed that he had driven himself all the way to your apartment in the dead of night just to tell you this— or rather, ask you this. “The guys were teasing, you know how they are. About how- well, you know, I’ve never really been with a girl since…” Frankie paused.

“Marià.” You sighed, and Frankie nodded slowly. “Your ex wife…”

“Yeah. And I know it’s crazy but after the divorce and everything… I just haven’t really uh, had the opportunity. I mean I’ve had the opportunity it’s just- never felt right. I suppose. And you know, it’s not that I don’t want to start dating again. Or seeing women. Sleeping with wo-” Frankie was about to start rambling about his sex life (or lack there of) and you were not prepared to let your mind journey there. Not that you had never thought about it before… no. He was your best friend. And it would be wrong. Besides, Frankie had a tendency to over share but you were always there to help him get back on track, whereas others, namely the guys, would tease and mock him for it.

“Why are you here, Frankie?” You cut him off with as much delicacy as you could muster up. Your voice was soft, and Frankie noticed how gentle you had always been with him.

“Santi said he bet I couldn’t ask a girl out if I tried,” Frankie explained with a short sigh and you frowned. You knew Santiago well and you knew that he and Frankie were like brothers, but Frankie had been through a lot lately and Santiago never really had the best choice of words. You wondered if he had hurt Frankie, and instantly felt defensive over your friend.

“And then what happened?”

“I told Santi I could get a girl, and then, this afternoon, he asked me how I had come on. I lied, told him I asked out a pretty girl. He asked me about her and well, the girl I described… I guess… in my head I was just picturing you.” Frankie said, and finally glanced up at you, his pretty eyes shimmering in the dim light. You felt your heart rate increase at his revelation. “You know? It’s funny. This made up girl looks just like you.” He chuckled lightly. Your silence was deafening and his stomach filled with anxiety. “I don’t know why!” he assured but that was a lie. He knew why. He was your first thought at the start of the day you were his last thought at the end of the day. Every moment he got, he was thinking about you— pining over you.

“Oh,” you whispered, unable to process any more words. You weren’t sure what to make of it. You brushed away your feelings, thinking that you only came to Frankie’s mind because you saw him so much. You were the only girl he really hung out with.

“Of course Santi didn’t believe me. I’m a terrible liar. You know that. But I really don’t want the guys to catch me out on this! It’s so embarrassing.” Frankie was exasperated. You took to your feet and walked over to him, falling back on the sofa and resting your hand on Frankie’s forearm. To Frankie, your touch was like electricity.

“You do not need to be ashamed of something like this Frankie,” you assured him. Frankie took off his cap and ran his fingers through his brown locks.

“I know I know,” he sighed before looking back at you. “Santi wants to meet this fake girl. He’s been seeing Yovanna again and he’s organised a double date kind of thing. For him, Yo, myself and well… I'm hoping, you.”

You blinked hard. “Wait,” you paused. “You want to go on a date with me?”

This had to be dream. Had you just fallen asleep on the sofa? You pinched yourself and checked the wall clock above the television. Only a few minutes had ticked by. Definitely not a dream.

“Fake date.” Frankie corrected and you felt your heart sink slightly.

Or maybe it was a nightmare.

You shuffled around, not knowing how to feel. “Uhm, Frankie… I’m not sure…” you hesitated. All you had wanted for so long was to go on a date with Frankie. A real date. You had been dreaming about the day he would ask you out since you first met him, but this wasn’t what you had pictured at all.

“Please,” Frankie begged, clasping his hands together in a pleaing manner. “Just pretend to be my date.”

And how could you ever say no to Frankie Morales’ puppy dog eyes?

The night of the date, you and Frankie had agreed to meet at the restaurant. You hadn’t really discussed anything prior, but this date, albeit fake, was all you could think about. Every chance you had, you were thinking about Frankie. You wondered how it would be, pretending to be his date. And equally, Frankie was thinking the same.

He struggled to catch any sleep, and instead would lay in his bed staring at the ceiling. He wondered how to fake a date. He didn’t want to do anything to make you uncomfortable and he simply hadn’t dated anyone in so long. He was so sure that he would embarrass himself, and that you’d never want to talk to him again.

Frankie, Santiago and Yovanna were already sitting around the restaurant table before you arrived. It was a quaint little Italian place on the coast and it had the most beautiful evening view. The sky was darkening and there wasn't a cloud in sight, but instead, pearly white stars pierced the velveteen abyss above and it looked like something straight out of a romance movie. The environment was perfect. The place was slightly out of the usual burger joint budget for Frankie and Santiago, but Yovanna insisted on the high-end restaurant, and even Frankie had to admit it would be nice to eat some good quality food for a change.

You weren’t late, but rather Frankie, Santiago and Yovanna were early. Frankie had already downed three bottles of beer before you arrived, trying to wash away his nerves. By the time you came, he was already slightly intoxicated. His ease was all that mattered and besides, Frankie was a happy drunk.

When Frankie saw you enter the restaurant, it was like his whole world stopped. He always thought you were beautiful, but tonight he was looking at you in a whole different light. You weren’t in your usual sweats and hoodie, and truthfully he had never seen you like this before. Your little black dress hugged your body in all the right places, and your matching heels clicked against the marble floor as you padded over to the table. You felt a blush creep upon your cheeks when you caught Santi gawking.

“Whoa, you clean up well!” Santiago complimented, looking you up and down, grinning ecstatically.

Frankie tried to keep his cool, but he couldn’t take his eyes off you. He took in your bare legs and how fine they looked in your dress, and he admired the way you had styled your hair. It was out of your face, and he appreciated that, because now he could infatuate himself over your features. You wore minimal makeup, but your eyeshadow accentuated your eye colour and your choice of lip gloss plumped your lips slightly. Frankie’s eyes went from being drawn to your legs, to now your lips, and he cursed himself for the thoughts he was thinking. Fake date. He reminded himself; but he couldn't help but question— what if it was real? If he could, he’d take you in his arms right then and there and kiss you.

You took your seat next to Yovanna and opposite Frankie, trying to remain as nonchalant as possible, but as you felt Frankie’s eyes burn into you, electricity sparked in your in your lower stomach. A certain kind of excitement. You pushed it away the best you could, focusing on reading the menu in front of you and deciding on the food you would order. Frankie pushed over a vibrant purple drink in a cocktail glass. “I got you your favourite,” Frankie smiled, and you felt your heart flutter. “I hope you don’t mind.”

You smiled and took a sip, but scrunched up your nose when the strong taste of vodka hit. “Um, sweetie,” You thought that tonight you would have to force out the pet names but it came so naturally. “How many shots are in here?”

“It’s a treble.” Frankie bit his lip, watching you with intent as you took another sip. His heart blossomed at the little name you called him.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?!” you gasped playfully and Frankie offered you another warm smile. “I don’t mind. Actually, I need it. Had a bad day at work.” you explained.

“It was Santi’s idea.” he admitted and Santiago innocently raised his hands in response. Frankie reached over the table, taking your hands in his and brushing his thumbs over your knuckles. You felt a shiver run down your spine at his touch. “Bad day?” he furrowed his eyebrows together, concern peaking in his gentle voice.

“Talk about it later.” you promised. Frankie brought your hands to his lips and kissed them softly. You had to stop yourself from swooning on the spot. Your heart began to pick up speed again and at this point, you were finding it difficult to remember that this was all fake.

As the four of you ate your food, you and Frankie were flirting all night; playing footsie under the table and exchanging dirty jokes. At one point, you accidentally ran your heel up his leg and he let out an accidental groan, fillet mignon almost spilling out his mouth. You hurled with laughter and his cheeks rosied up in embarrassment. Both you and Frankie were enjoying yourself way more than you had ever even considered.

“Wait,” you spluttered out in a fluster of giggles. You were still laughing at one of Frankie’s jokes. “Yovanna and Santi have gone home.” You noticed, pointing your finger at the empty seats next to yourself and Frankie.

“Oh yeah,” Frankie replied. “And we didn’t even notice.” He burst into laughter again and you followed, the alcohol really letting you both lose your inhibitions. “That bastard left me with his and Yovanna’s bill too.” Frankie shook his head in disbelief.

“Let me help you pay,” you unzipped your purse but Frankie put his hand out and stopped you.

“Don’t worry baby, this is on me.” Frankie promised and offered you a cheeky wink.

Santiago and Yovanna were gone. They had no one to prove their fake date to— and yet, exchanging flirtatious comments were simply too fun to stop.

“Okay,” you laughed, taking a gulp of red wine. You were sure the warm liquid must have stained your lips crimson with how much you had drunk, but you weren’t too concerned. “But next time, I’m paying.”

“There’s going to be a next time?" Frankie asked you hopefully.

“Isn’t there?” you returned a smile. “This was the best fake date I’ve ever been on.” You and Frankie let out a boisterous laugh, even catching the attention of other couples who were sitting around you trying to enjoy their romantic candlelit dinners.

“Touché,” he agreed, taking out his wallet and signing a check before clipping it to the bill and standing up. He took your hand, pulling you forward but you stumbled to your feet, falling into his chest. He was so broad and his arms were so big. Your feelings for him picked up a notch and you were unsure how long you could keep up the charade of pretending you saw him as just a friend.

You thought about how strong he was, barely flinching when you fell into him, and honestly, it turned you on. He slung his hands around your waist, slowly pushing you off his, but even when you weren’t resting on him anymore, he kept his big hands around you as you left the restaurant and walked through the parking lot to Frankie’s truck. You were grateful because without him guiding you and steadying you, you’d probably struggle to even reach the truck.

The close proximity between you and him made Frankie overwhelmed, his palms getting clammy and his cock hardening from your scent alone. Everything felt so intense. The cool night air took his breath away and he loved the way he could feel the shape of your body through your dress. He craved more.

He hoped that in the darkness of the night, you hadn’t noticed his throbbing length under his jeans. He slid into the driver seat of the car and you sat next to him, strapping yourself in. Frankie turned the key and as you set off, you both sat there in silence. Silence around Frankie was never uncomfortable, but this wasn’t a situation you were used to. It was a big difference to the environment in the bustling restaurant, but now it was just you two, alone, in his car— and you could cut the sexual tension with a knife.

“Come home with me.” You said eventually, not moving an inch and still looking at the road ahead. You managed to find the confidence, but you weren’t yet able to bring yourself to look him in the eye. He was your best friend. And you realised that what you were asking of him was a lot.

Frankie wasn’t put off, in fact, he felt his cock twitch at your words and he had to suppress a moan from escaping his lips. Did you really want him to take you home? As if on cue, you continued your proposal.

“Stay the night.” This verified Frankie’s thoughts and you hoped he had got the hint. You looked up into the rear view mirror and watched Frankie as he concentrated on driving, his body completely tensed up. He didn’t say a word, but when he detoured, you knew he was taking you back to your apartment. You wanted to calm him. Relax him. Soothe him. You let your fingers grace his jean clad leg, accidentally brushing over his erection. Frankie cursed under his breath. “S-sorry.” you mumbled, feeling your face flush. He was already hard. You crossed your legs tight together, trying to ignore the way your cunt was already dripping for him.

“No,” Frankie said. “Was good. Felt good.” his grip on the steering wheel tightened as you contemplated his words. He liked it. You moved your hand over his crotch again and began to palm him as he drove. He felt so constricted in his jeans and he couldn’t wait to get them off. It wasn’t long before his vision began to feel hazy under your touch but luckily he soon pulled up in front of your apartment. You removed your hand from his leg and let yourself out of the truck, feeling dazed also, and hurried inside. Frankie followed, loosing his belt as he stepped foot into the building. He was throbbing and in such desperate need of relief.

You pressed the button and waited for the elevator to come. By the time Frankie caught up with you, it was here, and the pair of you stepped inside. As the doors began to close on you, Frankie crashed his lips onto yours, pushing his body against you. This time it was his turn to touch you. His rough manner made you gasp but you needed to feel his body against yours. You let his hands explore you, his fingers rolling over the curves of your breasts and the dips in your waist. Within seconds, the elevator door opened with a ping and you had reached the floor of your apartment. Hungrily, you grabbed Frankie by the collar of his shirt and dragged him to your front door, unlocking it with haste. Once you were inside, you turned to shut the door behind you when Frankie pinned you against it. His hands were on your wrists and your arms were spread out over the wood. He pressed a kiss into your jaw. “You want this?” his voice was rough and barely above a whisper, and his manner made your knees weak. He was so close to you, you could smell the beer mixed with his fragrance.

You didn’t dare move, but instead mewled out a tiny “yes”. Frankie smirked and turned you around so he could look at you in the eyes. He still had a hold of you, his grip was as tight as vice and his eyes were no longer the usual shade of honeyed brown but instead were much darker and lustful with a predatory glint. He kissed you again, hard, and his tongue swiped along your lower lip, begging for entry which you quickly granted. It was easy to get lost in the kiss; he was so good and so passionate. He worked his hands all over your body, pulling the occasional moan from your lips. Hearing the noises you made felt like music to his ears. You felt his hardened manhood press against the inside of your thigh and you shuddered, breaking the kiss to regain your breath. “Bedroom.” you mumbled out. You took Frankie’s hand and dragged him through the living room and into your small bedroom. He sat himself down on the edge of your bed and began to kick off his shoes when you took him by surprise and straddled him, wrapping your legs around him and initiating another heated kiss.

You needed some kind of release and on impulse, you began to grind yourself over Frankie’s denim clad leg. Your heart was racing as you rubbed yourself over the material, a fire burning deep in your stomach at the friction between the jeans and the thin silk panties you were sporting. Frankie placed a soft kiss to your lips, along your jaw, and down your neck as you began to get yourself off on him. He bit down gently, leaving his mark, wanting to claim you as his own. “Mine.” His voice was dark and you grabbed his shoulders, grinding on his leg harder.

“Yours.” You shakily exhaled, trying to keep your composure. You shuffled forward, further onto him and started rubbing yourself over his erection, pulling a groan from his lips, and you couldn’t help but smile knowing that this was your doing. You kept at it, enjoying the control, and watched Frankie’s eyes close from the sensation as you grinded over him.

“Yeah baby that’s it,” he praised. “Take what you need.”

Those four words threw you over the edge. You reached up, letting your fingers tangle in Frankie’s chocolate coloured locks of hair, tugging at them as you rode out your high. He opened his eyes, watching you as you dropped your head back, seeing stars. You were truly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Feeling satisfied, you scrambled off him, your legs shaky and he grabbed the hem of your dress. He began to pull it off you as eagerly as he could. Frankie noticed the damp patch on his leg from your wetness and muttered another curse. You were so wet and it was all for him. He looked up at you, watching you kick your dress to one side and felt his jaw tick. He was mesmerised by your body. In only your panties, you straddled him once more, and Frankie let his hands roam over your breasts, giving them the occasional squeeze.

“My turn.” you told him, pulling his shirt over his head and pushing him into the blankets of your bed. He let out a soft groan as his head hit your pillow and you shuffled backwards a little. You unbuttoned his jeans and unzipped them before pulling them down to his ankles. Frankie kicked them off and they pooled into a pile amongst his shirt and your dress at the bottom of the bed. A little gasp escaped your lips when you eyed up his hardened length under the thin cloth of his boxer shorts, a small patch of wetness already visible. You dipped your hands into his underwear and pulled him out, licking your lips at the sight of his precum beading at the tip.

You let your fingers wander his length, teasingly, making sure you were as soft as possible. Then, you pulled away and spat into your hand. You wrapped your hand around his cock and began pumping at it. “Ngh, s-so good,” Frankie grunted, closing his eyes as you worked at him. “Haven’t-haven’t been touched in so long.”

“Relax,” you soothed. “Let me take care of you.”

Frankie bucked his hips further into your hand and you kept going. His eyes fluttered shut and his mind was in a solid state of euphoria. This was better than he had ever imagined and he knew he wouldn’t last long. You stroked him up and down and watched him as he came undone beneath you.

“Wanted this for so long,” he admits mindlessly. “Imagined this, so many nights… imagined your pretty lips around my-”

You cut Frankie off by taking his length in your mouth and pushing as deep as you could, opening your throat up to him and gagging slightly from his length. However, it didn’t take long to become comfortable with the way his cock filled you. He let out a gasp, his back arching and his fists grabbing the bed sheets. You bobbed your head up and down and he took a fistful of your hair, only encouraging you further.

He raised his head and watched you take him. Your hand still wet, you begin to pump the remaining length of him that you couldn’t fit into your mouth and he shudders in ecstasy. With your free hand, you cradle his balls, rubbing circles with your thumb and you can feel him almost lose it completely.

“Won’t last,” he warns you. “Please, wanna be inside you. Wanna feel your pussy.” he practically begs and as soon as you feel his cock twitch in your mouth, you pull off him, leaving a trail of your saliva between your tongue and his length.

You admired Frankie’s naked body spread out in your bed, a thin sheen of sweat glazing over his chest. It was a sight you had only dreamed about. He sat up and grabbed you by the waist, pulling you down so now he was on top. He positioned himself in between your legs and gently spread them apart, eyeing up the dark patch in the crotch of your panties from where you had previously orgasmed on his leg. He let his finger glide over the material, rubbing against the bud of your clit and you whimpered in desperation. “So wet for me.” he drew out. “Can I taste?” he asked, looked up at you with his big brown eyes. You wanted to smack that innocent look he had playing on his face.

“Frankieee.” you cried out. You would never, ever deny oral from Frankie but right now you craved something else. “Need you inside me. Please.”

Frankie pulled your panties down your legs and threw them to the floor. “Oh baby,” he moaned, running his fingers through your slick wet folds. “I’m just warming up.” his voice was like honey and he attached his mouth to your clit, sucking intently. You threw your head back at the sensation and felt his mustache and stubble tickle you as he worked your core.

This was better than anything Frankie had ever dreamed about. He needed to taste every drop of your arousal. He had wanted this for so long, and now it was finally happening. He wanted to savour every moment like it was his last. After all, you two were the best of friends and he didn’t know where exactly you’d stand about all of this tomorrow. If you’d even want to see him again. You were both risking a lot but somehow, it felt worthwhile.

Frankie found it difficult to remain composed as he devoured you and felt your body shake as you neared your climax. He grabbed your thighs, steadying you as you let out a wail. “Please Frankie.” you cried out, tears threatening to spill from your eyes. “Need you inside of me.”  You reminded, tugging on his hair even harder. He took his finger and grazed your entrance while still working his tongue against you. “Stop teasing.”

For once, Frankie listened to you and pulled his lips away from you. He thought he could cum just from eating you out and he didn’t want that to happen. This could be his only chance. You groaned in frustration at the break of contact. You were so close and he had edged you completely before pulling away. You had asked for it. He was such a tease. Frankie hovered himself over you and pressed a kiss to your forehead. You felt his cock nudge against your core and you dug your fingernails into his back. You needed him now.

“Do you have a condom?” Frankie whispered into your ear. He hadn’t brought any to the fake date because truthfully, he didn’t expect the night would be ending like this.

“I’m safe.” you promised him and he smiled, kissing your lips. You laced your fingers into his hair as he steadied himself on the bed.

“Are you ready?” Frankie questioned, nudging his cock over your entrance again causing you to let out a wail.

“Please Frankie. I’m ready.”

The second those two words left your lips, Frankie thrusted deep inside you. You gasped as he slowly adjusted himself inside of you and, still experiencing your high from when he ate you out, you knew you wouldn't ask long. He felt your walls tighten around him and he knew it too.

“I’m gonna cum.” you warned him, tugging on his curls at the nape of his neck and pulling his head down into your collarbones. He pinched at your skin with his teeth and increased his speed.

“Cum for me.” He instructed, his voice dark. With a few more sloppy thrusts, you came undone beneath him, dragging your nails down his back. He didn’t stop and continued to thrust into you as you climaxed causing small screams to emit from your lips. Frankie loved the little noises you made.

“Shit,” he whispered, his coarse hands finding and massaging your breasts. “Your cunt gets so tight when you cum.”

“Frankieeee, keep doing that and I’ll cum again.” you said softly and you felt Frankie’s lips twist into a wicked smirk as he pushed himself deeper inside of you.

“Ngh you feel so good,” Frankie grunted, pearls of sweat beading at his hairline. “Can you cum for me again? Can you give me another one?”

“Yes Frankie,” you obeyed, cupping your hands around his face and forcing him to look you in the eyes while he fucked you. His coarse facial hair grazed your hands but nothing felt as good as his length filling you up, hitting you in just the right spot with each thrust.

“I want you to cum with me,” Frankie gasped, groaning loudly as he felt his cock twitch inside you. He was close, and you could feel it too. “Same time.” he instructed. He was so used to giving orders, that it turned you on even more. “Can you do that for me?” his voice was urged and he kept his pace consistent.

You managed to give him a small nod and closed your eyes feeling nothing but pure bliss and ecstasy. “I’m close!” you managed to cry out.

“Me too, n-not long baby,” Frankie promised you. “Say my name.”

“Fuck Frankie, you fuck me so good. Your cock fills me up so well. Feels so good,” you moaned, your legs tightening around his waist.

“That’s it.” Frankie groaned.

“Cum inside me Frankie,” you gasped. “Pl-please. Need to feel your warm cum inside of me.”

“Gonna count down baby girl,” Frankie said, straightening up and pushing more hard thrusts inside of you. He admired your tangled body between him and brought his thumb to your clit, rubbing at it while he finished fucking you. “Are you ready?”

“Frankieeee.” You cried out, squeezing your eyes shut.

“3, 2,” Frankie pushed one final deep thrust into you. “1.” You and Frankie both came together, your wet cunt squeezing his cock like a vice and his thick ropes of cum spilling inside of you.

Frankie rolled off you and lay next to you. You curled yourself into his damp chest and he slung his arm around you. You felt safe. Protected. You knew that Frankie would never let anyone or anything hurt you but now it felt different. He was your safety, and you were his home. For a few minutes, you both laid there in silence trying to regain your breath and settle down.

“That was-” Frankie started but you cut him off.

“So good.” you smiled and he grinned back in agreement.

“The best.” He replied and gave you a little squeeze of reassurance.

“Hey Frankie?” You asked and he hummed in acknowledgement. “If that was a fake date… what the hell do you do on a fake date?” You raised an eyebrow and giggled when you saw Frankie’s cheeks rosy up.

“Wanna find out?” He beckoned and your grin couldn’t have grown any wider. You were finally going to get your chance to have a real date with Frankie.

[lucisfavoritedemon]

Crossed Oceans of Time

Pairing: Bucky x reader

Summary: Y/n always thought her hope was lost till an unexpected call from an old friend has her traveling across time to save the man she thought was once lost in an ocean of time.

Warnings: angst, fluffy fluff, cursing, hopelessness (idk why I make the reader so depressed)

Word Count: 4122

A/N: This is written for @sweeterthanthis Quote Me On It 6k Challenge. The prompt I chose was “I have crossed oceans of time to find you.” -Dracula. This story takes place during the events of End Game. I have incorporated the quote into the story. It will be bolded AND italicized. All mistakes are mine. 

Enjoy!

Everything I had seen had been a blur up to this point. My life flashed by so quick I never had a chance to process it all. Originally born in 1922, I never believed I would be able to see the day when technology would thrive. Here I am in 2023, 101 years later seeing the miracle of technology. 

I am a super soldier. One of the first experiments before Steve Rogers, aka Captain America. I volunteered myself to Dr. Erskine's experimentation, so he could develop a better, more safe serum. 

I fought by Rogers' side in many battles, including the one that would take his best friend. There is something you do not know though, of me and Sergeant Barnes. 

I had fallen for him. Not just a usual school girl crush, no. It was full blown love. Like my body had been struck by lightning the moment I laid eyes on him. 

I could sit and talk for hours about Bucky, and how much he meant to me, but that would be pointless. Bucky was gone and yet I couldn't move on. Something was keeping my heart from finding love again. 

Steve and I fought one last time together to defeat Red Skull. We thought it was the end for us, that we would be with Bucky again, but fate is a cruel mother thing. Oddly enough, the serum in our veins stopped our bodies from dying. It preserved us and helped us stay alive. 

When I woke up, all I remembered was crashing the ship. I had no recollection of anything else after. That's when we found out we were in the year 2012. For 70 years we were on ice. Poor Steve was heartbroken about Peggy, and I couldn't help but wish I was with Bucky. 

Time flew by like it was nothing, and all I felt I did was stand still and watch it go by. Steve and I had parted ways after we got back. I was hired to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. which I didn’t mind till in 2014 it all came crashing down. Almost quite literally. S.H.I.E.L.D. had HYDRA growing right under its nose. I was again left alone with nothing but a shattered heart.

Nick Fury tried to help me get back onto my feet but I wanted nothing to do with him, or anyone anymore. I was too heartbroken to even think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I really just wanted my Bucky back. That’s all I could ever ask of the world. 

Five years ago, something happened. I felt like my life had fallen apart again. All the friends I had attempted to make, all disappeared. I wasn’t the only one who lost people they loved and cared for. I finally felt maybe other people out there were feeling the same way I did.

Here in 2023, I have been without the love of my life for almost 80 years. I kept asking why I got to live while he was taken from the world so soon. I never got the answer to that rhetorical question, asked to no one in particular. That was till I got a peculiar call from an unknown number. I answered it hoping it would be the reaper I hoped to be greeted by to take me to the love of my life.

“Y/n?” It was a voice I hadn’t heard in almost a decade. One I thought I’d probably never hear again either.

“Steve.” I sounded cheery for once since I had been out of the ice.

“Hey. How are you doing? I know it’s been years since we talked, but I wanted to see if you wanted to go for a drive? Just you and me.” He asked, and I could tell he was smiling some on the other end.

“That sounds lovely, Steve. I’ve been hanging in there. Since S.H.I.E.L.D. and the whole HYDRA thing, I’ve just been laying low.”

“Where are you living now?” Steve queried.

“I’m living in Brooklyn actually. In my old neighborhood. 

“You used to live in Brooklyn before the war?”

“Yep. I actually lived above the antique shop. You know the one.”

“Yeah. I didn’t know we lived so close, yet we never met you till Erskine introduced us.”

“Yeah. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel the way I do now…” I sounded melancholy.

“I’m not too far from where you are. Meet where the antique shop used to be. We can talk more then, I have something I think you would love to hear.”

“Okay. I’ll meet you there.” I said, and hung up quickly. I knew there was nothing he could have told me that would make me jump for joy. He couldn’t say anything that would make my smile come back. It was gone, and faded with time.

I met him where that antique shop used to be, and I could almost picture it all. The cobblestone streets, the kids playing baseball, the world used to be a different place back then. It’s not like it was anymore, and I wish that it kind of was. 

“Hey.” Steve smiled, walking up to me.

“Hi.” I gave a small smile, but he could tell I had sadness written all over my face.

“What’s wrong?” Concern spread across his face.

“Nothing. This is just how I smile now.”

“Whoever took away your beautiful, contagious smile is going to pay.”

“Time took my smile away.”

“”Come on. I want to talk to you about something.” His smile grew wider as he led me to his car. 

He opened the door for me, and I climbed in. I buckled up as he climbed into the driver’s seat. We headed out of the city, down the countryside. The scenery was beautiful, but I still couldn’t bring myself to start a conversation.

“Hey, are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. I have been for 11 years. What’s 40 more gonna do right?” I gave an extremely sad smile.

“Is this about Bucky?”

“There were so many times in my life where we could have met. Maybe just a year longer with him, and I would be able to move on, or maybe not. I was in love with him, Steve. The way I felt the night we first met, it was like everything in my life finally made sense. I felt like I had a purpose.”

“He’s actually the reason I wanted to talk to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was alive. I need your help getting him back.”

“What do you mean? That’s impossible. We both watched him die.”

“Remember when all those men were captured from the 107th, including Bucky, back in ‘43?”

“Yeah, and we went to rescue them.”

“Bucky was experimented on by Armin Zola. Turned into a super soldier himself.”

“Okay and?”

“Whatever Zola did to him, it helped him survive the fall.”

“So what I’m understanding is, you knew he was alive this entire time, and you’re just now telling me about it?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but I need your help getting him back now.”

“Okay. You keep saying that, but if he is alive, why would we need to get him back?”

“Remember 5 years ago when half the earth’s population just vanished?”

“Yeah?”

“Bucky was part of that half.”

“And you think we can get him back?”

“I think we can bring back all the life lost 5 years ago. It requires us going back in time though.”

“Time travel? You’re promising time travel in a time where we thought flying cars were going to be a thing.”

“It’s possible though. We’ve tested it, and everything is up and working. We have all the dates in order, we just need the man power.”

“Alright, if it means bringing Bucky back, I’ll do it.”

“Thank you.”

Steve drove us to a huge building practically in the middle of nowhere. There I was greeted by a group of people, one of which I recognized from a brief meeting years ago. The others I didn’t know. I mean one man looked oddly familiar, but I could quite put my finger on where I had seen him before.

“Everyone, this is Y/n. She is an old friend of mine.” Steve introduced me.

“I may be old, but I sure don’t feel like it.”

“Join the club.” Steve chuckled.

“I’m Natasha. We met briefly in D.C. a few years back.” The woman I had recognized approached.

“Yes, I remember you. It’s nice to officially meet you on slightly good terms. While not being utterly terrified by a man with a metal arm.” I smiled slightly, trying to imagine how it would feel to see Bucky once more.

“So how do you two know each other?” The man that I swore looked familiar, spoke up.

“Steve and I fought together during the war.”

“Does that mean she also knew Barnes?” The man questioned.

“Yes. She did. In fact they were together for two years before HYDRA took him.”

“How does he know about Bucky?” I asked, growing concerned.

“It’s a long story.”

“I’m Tony Stark by the way.” The man spoke up, and everything was now coming together.

“I knew you looked familiar to me somehow. You look just like your father.”

“Yeah, well, join the club with everyone who says that.” Tony sounded irritated.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Y/n, it’s alright.” Steve spoke up before Tony could say anything.

He could probably tell I was freaking out. My goal was to help, not make things worse. I could tell by just opening my mouth, I was doing just that. Steve started to rub my back to calm me down.

“Is everything okay?” Natasha asked.

“She’s been through a lot. She didn’t even know Bucky was alive until a couple hours ago.” Steve replied.

“For so long I wished that something would happen so I could be back in his arms again. Now, I have a chance to see him again, and not in the afterlife. He is the man of my dreams, the love of my life. I have never felt this way about anyone before, and the fact that I have tried to move on, but couldn't just shows that I truly did love him.”

“Does she know about him?” Tony asked.

“Not about that. She doesn’t need to know.” Steve stated sternly.

“Know about what? Steve? What aren’t you telling me?”

“Stark, I agree with Steve. If she knew about him, her opinion of him may change.” Natasha interjected.

“She deserves to know the man she loved then will not be the man she is getting back.”

“What are you all going on about?”

“Barnes was the man with the metal arm you spoke of.” Tony blurted out.

“You’re wrong. Bucky would never hurt anyone. He was someone who put others before himself. He would never kill anyone.”

Steve just gave an angry look to Tony. I didn’t know who to believe. Natasha just gave me an apologetic look. I couldn’t read anyone, they all seemed to look angry or apologetic, and I didn;t know who to believe.

“Maybe the Barnes you knew wouldn’t, but over 70+ years, people change.” Tony stated before walking inside.

“Steve? Was Bucky really the man with the metal arm? If he was, I want to know. It won’t change how I feel. I just need to know, so I can help him when he comes back.”

“Yes. He was what the world knew as the Winter Soldier. He isn;t like that anymore. I promise, but he is broken and traumatized from what HYDRA did to him.”

“Understandable. Now let’s go get him and everyone else back.” I smiled, and walked inside. I didn’t have to fake one anymore. I was just happy that I finally had the chance to see Bucky again. That maybe seeing each other again could mend our souls a little bit.

Steve led me to a room where he told me to suit up. I threw on the suit laid out for me, and met the others on the main level. Steve handed me two little vials which he told me would help take me where I needed to be. He told me I was to stay with him to make sure nothing happened to me. I was perfectly okay with that.

We were all ready to find these stones. Steve showed me a picture of the stones him, Tony, Scott, and I were to be getting. I just wanted to get this over with, to be with Bucky once more. I have waited a long time for this moment, and I just couldn’t wait any longer. 

“Everyone ready?” Bruce asked.

“See you guys in a minute.” Natasha smiled.

We all shrunk down, and our groups went separate ways. I made sure to not lose sight of Steve as we landed in our desired time. We all started walking the tattered streets of New York City, and I knew where we had landed.

“Banner, you find the time stone, Stark and Lang, you two get the tesseract. I’ll get the scepter.” Steve directed.

“What about me?” I asked, curious what my task would be.

“You are staying right here. We’ll all meet right back here once we have secured our items.”

“Why am I here then if you don’t need me?”

“In case things go south.”

I roll my eyes, “fine. I’ll stay here.”

“Thank you.”

They all walk off, and I stay put where they told me to. I listen to them talking on comms to each other. They were pretty entertaining if I was being honest. That was until they started saying they lost the tesseract. Things looked hopeless now.

“What are we gonna do now? The tesseract is gone, and we don’t have any more of the capsules.” Scott paced.

“I have an extra capsule that will get me where I want to be. Please let me do this Steve?”

“Fine. I think I have an idea where you might be going. Just be careful okay?” He hands me something, “put it in here when you grab it.”

“I will. I promise I’ll be careful. I’ll see you guys when I have aquired the tesseract.” I smile.

I plug in the time and date that I wanted, and shrunk down traveling back to January 1945. The day Steve and I put the plane in the water. I remember seeing Red Skull holding it that day, right before he disappeared actually. Maybe that’s what Steve meant by ‘be careful’.

I headed straight to the hanger, and climbed inside. I hid until I knew it was safe to come out. Which meant waiting till Red Skull took off. I waited for Steve, and I to start fighting Red Skull. I came out and prepared to grab the tesseract. I had the special case Steve handed me before I left.

When Red Skull disappeared, and Steve and I went to man the ship, I grabbed the tesseract. I plugged in the date to head back, and shrunk down again, heading back to the correct timeline. I arrived as everyone else returned as well. I looked around to make sure everyone was there, but one person was missing.

“Clint, where’s Nat?” Bruce asked, looking at Clint.

“Barton, where is she?” Tony asked, being more stern.

“She’s gone...it should have been me.” He sounded so sad. I felt for him. I knew how it felt to lose someone I cared so much about.

They all gathered by the water mourning Natasha’s sacrifice. I let them have their moment. It wasn’t my place to be with them while they grieved. It just didn’t seem right, or fair to them. I sat in the lab waiting for them to come back, and assemble the gauntlet.

Steve walked in and sat next to me, “how did it go?”

“It went well. It was weird seeing Red Skull and you, and me. I think I managed well though. Why did you give me an extra capsule?”

“I figured you would go and help us, then I’d let you go and be with Bucky. Get the time you lost back.”

“That makes no sense if I lose him in the end anyways.”

“Maybe part of me hoped you would change his fate. That way you never lost him. You would never have to know what it was like to lose him.”

“That’s really sweet of you Steve, but I don’t think that would be right. For me or him.”

“I understand. I just want you to know that your pain hasn’t gone unnoticed.”

“I’m glad it hasn’t, but I really wish you knew how much I needed you too. I didn’t just miss Bucky, you were my friend too.”

“I know, but you haven’t been the same since you thought he died. You have been more closed off, you don’t smile, or laugh like you used to. I just want you to be happy again. I want to see that beautiful smile, and hear your contagious laugh once more.”

“You will again one day. Right now though, you need to help the others make this gauntlet.” I gave a half smile before moving out of the way so the others could do their job.

I sat outside with my eyes closed. Just waiting for someone to walk up to me and make sure I was okay. The light from the sun was dimmed like a shadow moved in front of me. I smiled before opening my eyes, thinking that Steve, or maybe Bucky, was standing in front of me. When I looked, I saw something that looked like a meteor heading right for the building.

I tried to run inside, but it was too late. The ball, or cannon, or whatever had already hit the building. I wiggle my way out from under the debris, but I could tell I had a pretty severe wound on my abdomen. I tried to call out to someone, but I got no response. I hoped that everyone was alright. 

I finally was able to stand up, and walked outside. There I saw Thor standing, and watching someone. I walked over to him, putting pressure on my side to make sure I stopped the bleeding. That’s when I saw Steve walking up to him too.

“What’s he doing?” Steve asked, looking where Thor was looking.

“He’s just sitting there.” Thor responded. “He doesn’t have the gauntlet right?”

“Not that I can see.”

“Let’s keep it that way.” Steve said, walking over to me.

“Who is that guy?” I asked, looking confused.

“That’s Thanos. He’s the reason half the earth’s population disappeared 5 years ago.”

“Did he figure out what we were planning?”

“It’s not the same Thanos. The one from our time, Thor killed him.” Steve said, walking over to him.

“I used to think that destroying half the planet's life would be good enough, but the other half that stuck around seems to be ungrateful. Looks like I may have to destroy this world, and create a new one, one that will be grateful for the world I have provided.”

That’s when Thor charged at Thanos, and the fight began. Tried to fight as much as I could, but I was losing more and more blood every second. I ran at him, thinking he was going to hurt Steve, but he stopped me and threw me against some rubble. I attempted to get up, but the pain was too much to fight anymore.

I watched as Steve prepared to fight by himself. I wish I had the strength to stand up and fight next to him. I just couldn’t bear the pain anymore. That’s when I heard a voice over comms that sounded kind of familiar. 

“Cap, can you read me. On your left.” The voice said, and these vortex-like things opened up, and out walked three people.

Steve turned to me, and saw that I was on the ground. He reached his hand out to me, and I took it, standing up. He smiled at me, and prepared to fight. That’s when armies of people walked through these vortexes. I stayed close to Steve, finding comfort in the one person I knew fairly well. 

“You okay?” He asked.

“I’ll be okay. I just want this douchebag dead. He took Bucky away, and now he wants to destroy the entirety of planet earth. He deserves what’s coming to him.” 

Steve smiled, “you really haven’t changed a bit. More depressed than what I remember, but your attitude is still the same.” He chuckled lightly.

I giggled, and prepared to fight to the end. I didn’t care if I died, I just wanted Steve and Bucky to live. Steve stood at the front of the army he was leading, perhaps into our last battle. I was ready to do anything. I had found my hidden strength to keep fighting till I physically couldn’t keep fighting anymore. That was quicker to come than I thought. I knew I was losing a lot of blood, but I didn’t know how quickly. Turns out when Thanos threw makeup against the rubble, I created an even bigger wound. 

Only a few minutes into the now fair fight, I started to get really dizzy. I tried to grab a hold of someone before I fell, but there was no one around me. I hit the ground and I was out for the count.

~*~

I don’t know how long I had been out for, or if I was still even alive. To my surprise, and Steve’s happiness, I was.

“Hey there sweetheart.” Steve smiled, gripping my hand tightly.

“Did we win?” Of course that would be my first question. It was the first question I asked when we came out of the ice.

He chuckled, but his look turned sad, “we won, but we lost at the same time.”

“What do you mean? Did he snap them away again?” My heart was pounding in my chest. The fear painted across my face.

“No. Everyone who disappeared is back, but Tony...he snapped Thanos and his army away, but he didn’t make it.” Steve gave me an extremely sad look.

I squeezed his hand, not even paying attention to the fact someone had just walked into the room. I didn’t even notice the person till Steve looked over to them, and got up. I couldn’t quite tell who it was because where they were standing was kind of dark. That and my eyes were fully adjusted yet, but I could tell they were tall and well built, they also had semi-long hair.

“Go on. She’s been waiting.” Steve spoke up, seeing me stare at them.

The person came closer, and I was met with their mesmerizing blue eyes. I smiled at them as they came over to sit down. He seemed closed off, or just really shy. I couldn’t quite get a read on him for whatever reason. 

“Hey.” He gave a very small smile, almost shy.

“Hey.” I smile more. 

“I’ve missed that smile.” Steve spoke up.

I giggled, “well it’s thanks to you that I feel like I can be happy again.”

The man sitting next to me just looked down. I put my hand out for him to take. He grabbed it very gently. It was colder than I thought it would be. I looked down, and saw a metal hand. He tried to pull away, but I gripped his hand tight.

“You’re not scared?” He asked.

“Because I have crossed oceans of time to find you.” I smile wide, bringing his hand to my lips, kissing it gently.

Steve smiled, “you knew it was him the whole time didn’t you?”

“Of course. Those eyes are unforgettable, and his voice is unmistakable.” I felt the hand around mine tighten, and his smile got bigger.

“I’ve missed you doll. I’ve missed you so much.” Bucky spoke.

“I missed you too. I never thought that I would ever see you again.”

We stared lovingly at each other for a while. Enjoying just taking in the fact that he was back into my life. That I had him back. That the best thing that ever happened to me was back. It was the best feeling in the world, one that I thought I would never be able to feel again. I finally felt like my heart had been put back together, and Bucky held the mold in his hands.

[isuspectyouhavefantheories]

The Crossroads to the Sun 🌞

Takemura/Female V

Rated: M for mature themes and explicit content NSFW 18s only

Trigger Warnings: Themes of death, suicide, gallows humour

Part 1 of ???? “The Sun Series”

Link to part two :

https://isuspectyouhavefantheories.tumblr.com/post/641314624666468353/search-for-the-sun

Will eventually be posted on my AO3 account when I get this beta’d. 🤟

———

She had decided she wanted to be away from night city when she pulled the plug. If anything, she wanted it to end under the blanket of the starry skies, part of her hoping they would guide her into the next world safely. Driving through the neon jungle felt like a technicolor funeral procession. Or perhaps a walk to the gallows? She was thankful she still had most of her senses as she pulled herself from her morbid reverie just in time to avoid a badly placed bollard on a sharp turn straight down the road heading towards the city limits. She swore under her breath but continued. The pain was dull, but festering in her mind, less so than before, but enough to keep reminding her of the internal ticking clock that was getting louder with each passing hour as it neared to zero. She breathed deeply though her nose and steeled herself. But more doubts began to drift through her, like a slick fog encircling her mind she thought of all the people she would be leaving behind and hoped they wouldn’t hate her after tonight.

Goro’s name flashed up on her biomon and it took her a minute to register. She nearly rear ended a truck at a traffic light before finally answering.

“Yes?”

“Where are you?” His voice was gruff, demanding and her eyebrow crinkled in irritation.

“What’s it to you?”

“Let me help you V. Just take the deal with Hanako, we make this right and you get back your life. If I were you, I would not waste the chance.”

“You mean you get back your life.” She spat, Takemura went quiet on the other end for a moment, his eyes flinching at her tone. “Don’t try and pretend this is concern for my well-being and as far as making this right goes... You really still think you and Arasaka can fix this? Goro I know when I’m beat. Nobody can fix this. I’m done for and it’s time I just fucking faced facts and made my peace. I’m done. I’m calling it.” She hadn’t realised how hard she was gripping the steering wheel until she felt the alloy begin to crunch lightly under her guerrilla cybernetics.

There was a long pause and she thought for a moment he had hung up until she heard the shuffling of erratic, hurried movement on the other end.

“Where are you V?” He demanded, his voice was direct, to the point, no room for nonsense, no room for anything but answers.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve left a data chip with Misty. It contains all the relevant evidence, via brain dance, you need to get the vindication you so desperately require.”

“V, tell me where you are right now. ” It was sharp this time.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help more. Goodbye, Goro. It was a pleasure to have known you.” She hung up and looked down at her phone, closing her eyes a moment only to be jolted by Takemura calling again. She took a deep breath before turning it off and throwing it in the passenger seat and popping into third gear as she trolled though the gates past the city limits to security. She was quickly flagged through with little bother from security. They seemed more interested in what was coming into the city that what was going out.

It took her an hour to get to where she needed to go. The edge of the badlands. The final touch stone before she headed further in, back to all she ever knew. Just another busted down prewar gas station covered in sand, nature already claiming back its land. She parked her car outside and managed to pry open the front door after digging some accumulated sand from the way.

—————

She woke to the whistling of the desert storm on the shutters, the dilapidated old outpost rocked shakily. She almost felt as if she was in the belly of a ship at sea being pulverised, to and fro, by an onslaught or roaring waves.

She sat up, listening to them a while, until eventually the weather died down to a gentle lulling breeze. She stepped outside for a moment and thanked whatever powers that were out there that the sky was clear enough to see the moon and a dim scattering of stars. She climbed from her make shift cot and stepped outside.

“Still think you made the right call? Those Saka assholes might have fixed you up all nice.” Johnny flashed back into her peripheral vision, sitting on a bench under a busted canopy with his guitar slung across his lap.

“I dunno. I guess we’ll see.”

“Val.”

She looked up at him with narrowed eyes.

“They were just going to extract you and dump me the moment it suited them. What, you think I was just gonna put my head in a hungry lions mouth and just hope everything would just sort itself out? For all I know they would have just cut me open the minute they got me up there. I’d rather die out here, on some dusty ass terra firma in the wastes than lose my mind up in some space prison.” She flipped out Evelyn’s cigarette case, only three left in place making her sigh before pulling out one and lighting it up.

Johnny groaned at the sensation of the nicotine flooding her system from her first drag. It had been a while since she’d allowed herself such little pleasures, but for the first time in months she wasn’t on deaths door, bringing death so someone else’s door or trying to kidnap an heiress, so exceptions can be made.

“Weather out here huh? Never notice it in the city but, fuck. Mother nature sure is a feisty broad.”

“You have no idea.” She chuckled.

“Pretty good we got here before the worst of of the storm hit earlier. I would not want to be the sorry sack of shit that had to drive through that.” Johnny chuckled.

—————————

It was about 5am, sun already shining and blistering the ground, she had scavenged a few things from the outpost to keep her and Johnny going long enough to get to the Aldecaldos

Or just long enough. The thought of kicking it just before saying goodbye to Panam and Saul and the others churned uncomfortably down into the pit of her stomach but she attempted to occupy her mind, busying herself with prep work and repairs on her gear. She was going to try at least.

Before she could think of the next task, Johnny materialised again, already on edge.

“Someone’s coming.”

“Raffen? Cops? Arasaka?”

“Can’t be sure. I’d get ready if I were you.” He was gone again, and all she could think to do was get back to the gas station and ready herself for the visitors.

A Herra Outlaw that looked as if the chemical desert had taken a shit on it, genuinely one of the most out of place thing she had ever seen in the badlands and that was saying something, pulled up with a soft screech as the brakes engaged and the engine shuttered off. The pop of the car door made her grip her baseball bat tighter as she edged closer to the door, so as to be on the hidden side when it opened.

The door flung open, nearly ramming her in the face had she not hugged the wall so closely, she held her breath as a darkened figure entered the room, but the rasping baritone that filled the air made her freeze.

“V?” Takemura’s voice cut through her and all she could do was stare in disbelief.

“What the fuck?”

He whipped around like lightening, his wild searching gaze landed on her and his eyebrows all but flew up into his hairline and his eyes widened in disbelief but seemed to relax after a moment, a wave of relief washing over his features as of up until this moment he had been in a panic.

It was all a blur, he pulled the rusted metal door closed, nearly wrenching the door off its screeching hinges before his arms suddenly reached for her. He pulled her forcefully into his chest into an embrace that should have shattered her spine with the implants this man had. The newly back online ones, she noted.

She scrunched her eyebrows incredulously at him when he pulled away, his fingers tracing down the length of her arms until they still rested on her shoulders as he continued to look at her as if he was afraid the moment he took his eyes off her she would disappear into thin air.

“What are you doing here?” She breathed, still struggling for air after the uncharacteristic ribsplitting hug.

He looked down now, almost sheepish in his manner but he did not waiver when he returned his gaze to her.

“Stopping you from making a foolish choice.”

She sighed deeply.

“And since when do you have any right to tell me what I can and can’t do?”

“I do not. But I can try at least to make you see reason.” He wasn’t budging, she wasn’t budging.

“Goro...” she pinched the bridge of her nose and temple in an attempt to quell the newly forming tension migraine.

“You could have your life back. You would be good as new, Arasaka would ensure it if you testify at the board meeting. Arasaka always rewards loyalty.”

“I know that’s some rhetoric you’ve been spoonfed your whole life but unfortunately I have a very different opinion on the subject of ‘who Arasaka serves’ and it most certainly isn’t people who have a history of stealing from them.” She dead panned, making Goro groan.

“If you would just listen to me you would know that is not the case. Hanako-sama has extended this life like to you V do not waste it.”

“I’ve been listening. And watching. From the very start. I’ve seen them from an angle you have yet to even comprehend and part of me fears even then you wouldn’t see the truth.”

“They are-.”

“Only in this for themselves. I won’t argue with you about this, there is nothing you can say that will change my mind. I’m not selling my souls to the fucking devil, man, I’m sorry but that’s how this situation feels to me. I know there is nothing anyone can do for me, not you, not Arasaka, not Hellman, not even Alt fucking Cunningham’s AI ghost from beyond the Blackwall knows how to undo this so fuck this. I refuse to spend the last days of my life scrambling for answers only to whither away to nothin and die anyway. I’m leaving this hellhole on my own fucking terms. So just let it go. Just forget about me and go back to your cushty little life as Arasaka’s cheerleader or body guard or whatever the fuck it is you do.”

She couldn’t remember how, but during the course of their verbal spat, he had pushed her against the adjacent wall from the door and upon hearing her retorts he snarled in frustration and slammed his hand into the wall beside her head, denting the already disintegrating plaster, sending a cloud of dust in the air around them. The pluming cloud fluttered and caught the small rays of morning light seeping through the crags and cracks in the windows and walls of the abandoned gas station. She managed to push him off with a forceful shove only to have him lunge back to her. His martial arts clashed with her own brand of badlands fist fighting. She was flexible, contorting her body out of his reach before rounding on him with a left hook followed by a hasty jab aimed for his face. Unfortunately, he had reach, countering her wild strikes with a wave of his arm and tugging her to him. She lifted her knee between them to vault herself from his grasp but lost her footing at the end and it took only a single low sweeping kick to her other leg that sent her off kilter, but Goro followed her to the ground where he pinned again, this time on the floor with both her hands above her in each of his. She struggled against his vice grip, twisting and squirming beneath him to roll him off but he refused to be moved barely even flinching as she thrashed beneath him, awaiting her to finally stop. She roared in frustration but refused to give up. If she couldn’t knock him with her strength then she could knock him with her words.

“Hanako knew!” She spat at him, the intensity of her glare ripping though him.

“Knew what?” He asked with narrowed eyes.

“She knew it was Yorinobu who murdered her father. She knew you were telling the truth, that you were being framed and she still let you go down. Then guess what the kicker here is?” She laughed bitterly. “Saburo’s not even dead. He’s being kept as an engram, he’s been planning something with Hanako this whole time and they were going to let you go down regardless!! They were going to discard you, who served them faithfully your whole life, for their own fucking agenda. So tell me, why you think for one fucking second that they will actually help me?” Takemura was quiet, his hold on her waining enough for her to flip them, her hands balled into his shirt begging him to look at her but it was as if something had been shattered in him. They both were panting from their verbal and martial exchange, but they were far from done.

He suddenly reached up, his hand cupping her cheek gently, tracing the cybernetics of her face with the tips of his fingers before pulling her down to him without warning, his lips finally met hers in a heated kiss.

She gasped into his mouth, giving him the chance to shove his tongue in to explore her. He didn’t know when he would get the chance, if he ever would again after this. But she had yet to bite his face off so he took that as a good sign. In fact she had nearly gone limp from the shock of his sudden advance. He pulled away slowly, his face still inches from hers but his eyes bored into hers with a renewed intensity.

She pulled her hand from his now loosened grip and reached down gently and placed a delicate hand on his cheek, only for him to lean into it with closed eyes. He pressed his own hand over hers and took a deep calming breath.

“Goro, look at me.”

His eyes opened again, staring down at her with so much hope yet one word from her could shatter him into a thousand shards. And fate was a cruel mistress.

“I’m going home.” He looked down at that, his brow tugged in an unreadable expression but she chased after his gaze and held his chin so he had no choice but to stare wordlessly at her.

“I’m going home. To the people I love. To say goodbye. And maybe... maybe, for once in my life just try to do some good in this world, not for eddies or cred or some fucking illusion of grandeur, but just to do something worthwhile. I want have something real. Before I... before I can’t anymore.” She stroked his cheekbone with the back of her knuckle. “I don’t expect you to understand. But it isn’t up for debate.” Not what he had wanted to hear, but the finality in her words left him no room to argue. And so he was then left to stare down the inevitable horribleness of a world with no V.

He rested his face in the crook of her neck, her soft sun kissed skin, slick with sweat from the desert heat.

“Then let me have this at least.” He whispered against her, causing her to shiver under the weight of his words.

He returned his lips to hers, an even more energised passion driving his need and to his surprise she returned it, hands cupping his face gently. She then pushed him back down on his back and dove back to his lips. He began unbuttoning and loosening her clothes as fast as his hands could allow him. He pulled off her tank top and stopped a moment to admire her perky little breasts before pulling her back to him and lavishing her chest adoringly with bites and kisses that made her mewl against him.

“You have been taunting me since the day we met. Not wearing anything but that tight blue netrunner suit.” He growled against her chest, biting at the underside of her breast, his eyes primal and burning hers with an unspoken need to be closer.

“I’m a net runner you gonk, ah-!” He bit a little harsher around her nipple at the comment but lapped at it gently afterwards. “I-it was for practicality’s sake.” She shivered against him.

“It was to torture me.” He chuckled.

He lifted them suddenly, his hands under her thighs again as he deposited her on a near by countertop, her legs wrapping around his hips as he ground himself desperately into her while trailing his lips from her ear lobe to her jugular and back before biting then tugging sharply causing her to yelp softly.

“Maybe a little.” She gasped, casting him a delighted grin which elicited a growl from deep within his chest. He leisurely ran his hands along the hem of her jeans, tugging at them slightly before slipping his hand down underneath to grab a handful of her ass, squeezing it appreciatively before moaning at how soft and pliant her skin was under the extra sensitive touch of his cybernetic hands. He allowed himself to become lost in her for a moment. Mapping her every contour in his mind, committing each breathless sound that fell from her lips to memory, savouring her sweet breath on his tongue and wondering if he would ever again taste something so perfect as her. He felt her pull away lightly, a few centimetres from his face to gasp for a breath and still his lips chased hers. It was as if she could read his mind sometimes, she was looking at him with those confounding purple eyes, her smile faltering as if she could see how banefully torn he was.

“This won’t change anything.” She whispered sadly against his lips .

His brow creased under the weight of his anguish, another growl, not so carnal as before but instead a roar of frustration and he attacked her body with a new found, punishing fervour. He pulled her up effortlessly once again and threw her into the cot, her body’s weight caused the springs to groan and he had managed to discard his shirt fully, then turned to her. She was now only in her underwear, her golden skin glistened in the low orange morning haze. Her body was lithe yet athletic, her skin tantalisingly smooth to the touch yet disturbed by stray scars scattered about her person. Her years of fighting for her survival in this hellscape had shaped her and moulded her into this picturesque model of strength and beauty. He kneeled before her, nipping his way down her navel to the hem of her panties that he then quickly slid off in one fluid motion. He dove between her legs, basking in the sweet gasps she made as he drove her wild with his tongue. Her hands twisted and twined themselves into his ebony and silver locks, pulling his bun loose to let his hair cascade down his shoulders, grazing her nails over his scalp delicately. He introduced a single finger to her and pumped deeply inside her yet at a controlled pace, eliciting another quivering gasp that made him smile against her.

“Goro...” the way her breathless lips formed around his name drove something in him. She was able to bring out the strangest and most wonderful of feelings in him.

He was sure from her cries she was nearing her climax and before she could taste the sweet precipice of her release, he rose up to kiss her. Her taste on his lips had a lewd yet arousing effect on her, but her climax, once so tantalisingly close was now receding and the heat biting and curling in her abdomen made her squirm against him. She pulled away after a moment and gasped a quick breath.

“You ass.” He pressed his face into her neck again and she felt the rumble of his chuckling. He continued to kiss her neck and his hands pinched and rolled her nipples in a torturously teasing manner. She writhed under him, a mewling mess.

“Stop teasing me.” She pleaded, her own hands cupping either side of his face to pull him from his ministrations on her neck that she was almost certain would be bruised to absolute fuck in the morning.

He nudged her legs to open and she obliged eagarly.

He teased her entrance lightly running his tip up and down coating himself in her essence before sliding steadily inside of her. He had to stop half way and swallowed a guttural moan. She was so tight. Like a warm vice pulling him further inside her and dragging him impossibly closer to her. Her legs had wrapped around his hips, her thighs quivering around his girth. He took another moment to make some experimental, shallow thrusts and groaned once more at how deliciously slick she was.

“Oh... V...” his forehead pressed against hers and his grip around her hips tightened.

“Don’t.... stop...” she was barely above a whisper, which made Goro want nothing more than for her to be louder.

He took this as his moment to flip her onto her stomach against the cot.

His right hand held both her arms behind her back, folded and solidly trapped there. His left hand was holding her hip, dragging down to guide her over his girth once again. He rather enjoyed the view of her at this angle, he was so lost in the way she bounced against him, the feeling of her walls rubbing so exquisitely against his length, that he was sure he wouldn’t last long. The thought of having their tryst cut so short however did not appeal to him, the feeling of being fully encased by her was so unequivocally amazing he never wanted it to stop, so he forced himself to slow down to a languid yet laborious pace, favouring drawn out leisurely strokes.

“Jesus Christ...” she gasped, arching her back in a way that made him want to go back to pounding her within an inch of her life but he was controlled, no foolish young man driven by a cardinal need, but a mature and tentative lover who wanted to make his partner see the stars before this was over.

He reached around, dragging his hands from the underside of her bellybutton to glide along her ribs, up and over her breast, giving it an appreciative squeeze before cradling her throat gently and turning her head to look back at him as much as she could in the position which granted wasn’t much. He leaned forward, still thrusting inside her at a restrained pace, and ravaged her neck, suckling the flesh at the junction of her shoulder and neck before trailing his bites to the underside of her jaw, then to her ear where he nibbled her lobe gently.

“Tell me what you want.” He breathed against her, the lewd sound of their bodies meeting in their primal dance and the soft gushes of wind rattling the shutters were all she could hear above their own crescendo of panting and haggard moans.

“Don’t... be a dick...” she gasped, earning her a sharp smack on her ass cheek.

“Tell me.” He thrust inside her, harder but not hard enough to satisfy her fully, leaving her trembling for more.

“Ah... fuck! Please...” she breathed, trying to shove her own hips back into his for more friction but his hand migrated back to her hips, a solid anchor, preventing her from getting her way.

“That’s not what I asked you.” She could hear the underlying cockiness in his tone and it pissed her off almost immediately.

How could this man illicit such polarising reactions from her, she thought. One moment she wanted him to bend her over a desk, the next she wanted to snap him in two. But the sentiment remained, she wanted him.

“Please... Goro... fuck me... harder...” he hummed in satisfaction and released her arms from his vice grip.

“Then I suggest you hold onto something.” He had leaned forward his lips against her ear, the vibrations of his bassy timbre tickled her in an irresistibly tantalising way.

But her inward musings came to a hault when he began his unforgiving pace, she could feel him hitting her cervix with every thrust and she cried out, hands barely holding on to the edge of the cot as her body rocked against the force of his hips.

His hand came down to tease her slit, circling her sensitive nub in a maddeningly delicious way that caused more mewls to erupt from her lips.

Goro stared down at her, enraptured by every twist and twitch she made. Her arching back defining her musculature and he’d be lying if he was doing any better than her right now. He was holding on for dear life, dragging this out for as long as he possibly could. But eventually, the warmth and curling in his abdomen could not be ignored and he quickened his circling around her clit to drive her to her end. She screamed softly into her hand as her release rolled over her in wave after wave, his continuing thrusts helping her ride out her climax to its fullest. He followed her soon after, nearly collapsing on her, his forehead resting between her shoulder blades as he struggled to regain his breathing. She recovered before Goro and pulled him further onto the cot where they crumbled into it. He curled around her, his arms pulling her flush against him as he savoured the feeling of her skin on his. He pressed his nose and lips to the top of her head, inhaling her scent deeply, attempting to sear these details into his mind for a later date. He tried his best to keep his eyes open, but she began to stroke his chest in a soothing circle, and before he knew it he was out like a light.

——————

He woke with a jolt, the room now completely darkened by the night and a sudden anxiety disquieted his mind. He reached for where V had been but his hand grabbed nothing but empty space.

“V?” He called, sitting up and listening for anything, then scanning the area. He could see from his thermal scan she had been gone from his side for nearly two hours.

He pulled himself up, dressing quickly and wrenching the front door open to see that her Thorton was gone, whatever tracks that were left had been swallowed by the desert wind and he stood in silence.

“This isn’t going to change anything.” Her words echoed in his mind and he clenched his hands into fists, a slight shake evident from his barely controlled emotions on the cusp of breaking through to the surface.

“They were going to discard you, who served them faithfully your whole life, for their own fucking agenda.”

He tried to quell his anger, his hurt, his inescapable feeling of betrayal. He fought to keep his composure but the memory of her touch was seared into his mind and body yet it did nothing but only make him ache to have her back in his arms. He would never feel that again, never experience that intense, intrinsic connection to another human being. The thought did nothing to disquiet his mind. Eventually he broke and turned to punch his hand nearly completely though the wall of the garage as he breathed in ragged and strangled chokes. Unshed tears burned in his eyes and he wrenched his arm back to completely break through the wall altogether with the force of his strike. He didn’t stop. He pummelled the wall until his cybernetics were scuffed and cracked. Warning signs flashed in his peripheral vision but he ignored them, slumping to the ground he cradled his head in his hands and roared in futility. He stayed there a moment, still, quiet and thoughtful. He raised his head with a thud against the nearly dilapidated wall and he looked off into the distance. On one path, the further reaches of the badlands, down another was the fluorescent and blinding lights of Night City, beaconing him back with a curled finger.

And not just night city, but the ominous red looming glow of Arasaka Headquarters illuminating the night and further banishing the stars. The only life he had ever known was within Arasaka’s ranks. All he had ever been was a vassal, a loyal one at that. Traded his life and limbs for them. Let them carve him into an instrument of their empire from the moment they had deigned to elevate him from the slums, only after he had skinned his fingers to the near bone scrubbing his clothes in the chemical sickened canals. He had given Arasaka his life.

Yet Hanako knew he was innocent. Not only her but Saburo, his lord tono, his idol. He had known. It stung him to his nucleus, like nothing ever had. He was stilled, inaction gripping him to his core. He found his gaze always defecting back to the badlands. To her lands. He didn’t make a choice so much as follow an instinct.

He rose from his seated position and opened the door to his car, looking back at Night City one last time, not saying goodbye to the city, but farewell to all the possibilities it held. They were not meant for him. A defiant grin stretched over his lips before a determination set in his eyes, looking back to the badlands. He dove into the front seat and revved the engine before backing out to the edge of the main road and quickly pivoting into position then tearing out onto the dusty highway, sending a plume of dust in his wake as he made for the badlands, his spirit lightened and rejuvenated. He undid his top shirt buttons, ripping off the front Arasaka logo to his cybernetic neck plates and throwing it with a quick flick out the car window, then looking down at the Arasaka patch logo on his arm which he also tore from his jacket then sent it too flying out the window. With each metre he put between him and the city, the younger he felt.

“I’m coming V.” He whispered under his breath as he pressed harder on the gas.

[hanibalistic]

#FFCFF0 | KIM SEUNGMIN.

genre | fluff, childhood best friends au, confession au

word count | 1330 

warning | none

note | consider this a writing sample, of sort?

seungmin turned a page of the math textbook he was reading. it was a loud turn—a flap, a swipe, a hit of some kind. and, straddling within his less-than-calming page turn, was none other than annoyance.

all he wanted to do was to study for the upcoming test. his grade wasn't hanging on the edge at the moment, but with the pace the class was going (the morning lectures were often rushed, and trying to talk to the professor was always a futile attempt), he might just end up failing the course at the end, so he needed as much studying time as he could.

but, oh lord, how could he ever do that with your presence constantly looming over him?

you and your spontaneous self, one which he only adored occasionally, had done nothing but serve as a form of distraction to him this past half an hour. you jumped around in his room, looked over the top of his head, asked him insignificant questions, and whined about being bored and hungry.

he tried not to think too much about it. the side sight of your feet dancing around the corners of his room, the touch of your chin when you looked down at his textbook from above, the weight of your hands on his shoulders when you shook him to ask for food.

and, of course, the gathering frustration he felt when you kept going on and on and on about confessing to this boy from your other class.

"what is it again?" he asked, finally arching his neck up to look at you.

the stoic gleam in his eyes fazed you not a single bit. you knew it was just an honest facade he tends to put out before people's faces, but deep down he still wants to hear you out. it was just that he would look very irritated when he does, and you have learned to ignore that in your long years of friendship.

"okay, turn to me," you said as you grabbed a hold of the back of his rolling chair and turned him around to face you. you smiled beguilingly at him when you grabbed his arms and made him stand up. then you took a few tentative steps back, keeping a comfortable distance away from him.

"what is it?" he asked, bored.

"is this the perfect distance to confess to someone in?" you asked instead, ignoring his rhetorical question. putting your feet one step ahead, you raised your brows at him questioningly, and you asked, "or closer? or a step back so it's not too intimidating?"

"who are you even confessing to?"

"what–seungmin! you of all people should know," you said calmly, pointing your finger at him as if your list of crushes was universal knowledge. "of course, i'm confessing to hwang hyunjin."

"oh, yeah, of course," he rolled his eyes, "because you weren't fawning over felix like, what, yesterday? during soccer practice?"

"distance, seungmin! tell me!" you clapped your hands together to change the topic.

he could only frown at you. how was he supposed to know? he wasn't exactly an expert in the department of love confessions. he has neither the knowledge nor the courage. asking for his opinion would be like talking to a cow, probably even worse as the cow might at least entertain you with its fluffy endearment.

"just tell him you like him, [name]," he muttered. "if he doesn't like you, he just doesn't. where you stand won't matter to him."

you huffed out a breath of defeated air, finding seungmin's sudden icy intolerance toward your antics not at all alarming, just disappointing. but you understood, you have been bothering him this whole time as he was trying to study for his test. perhaps you should ask this one question and leave him alone soon.

"okay, fine," you said, standing up straight again, "can you at least hear me confess and give me some opinions?"

seungmin stared at you, not surprised you asked him such an inconsiderate question. sometimes he thought god made a plan to come for his throat when she made you such a dense person, and when she made him fall in love with you. because holy hell, he would have never made the conscious decision to love you like this, the way he has never loved anybody else.

"go on then," he said, gesturing toward you with a pursed smile.

you beamed, clapping your hands together before settling yourself down. you fixed your hair, stood in a better posture, and placed your awkward hands by your side. when you glanced straight into seungmin's eyes, prepared to confess, you felt an unfamiliar rush of nervousness.

"i–i like you," you said.

he frowned. "did you stutter?"

"i was nervous, hold on," you cleared your throat, "let me try again."

you did, much firmer this time. but seungmin didn't seem to be satisfied with your confession, even though it wasn't directed toward him and he should probably feel some sort of giddiness that you weren't doing as well of a job as you would have liked.

"you're too rigid," he mentioned. "it sounds forced."

you pulled a face. whatever that meant! you already relaxed as much as you could, how much more was he expecting. clicking your tongue, you crossed your arms and glared at him. "you try, then. give me an example."

"i don't have to do that," seungmin protested.

"i know, but i am asking you to," you retorted playfully, tilting your head to the side. "come on! help me out! show me support!"

he sighed after a long pause. he was never one to refuse, as long as the cost of the favor won't be detrimental. if there is something he can do for you, and you want the help desperately, he will very likely do so simply because he can.

or because he loves you, but he tries not to think about that too much.

"okay..." he muttered under his breath and shifted his weight so he wasn't leaning off to one side.

licking his lower lip, he raised his head to face you directly. your eyes blinked excitedly at him, watching his every little move as if to learn and mimic, and he felt his chest tighten due to the nervous sweat gathering beneath his heart.

you're so pretty, he loves you so much.

"i lik–"

he stopped, his eyes widening as his heartbeat bounced in his ears.

he couldn't. even if this wasn't real, even if this confession was asked to be made, he couldn't. it felt too legitimate, it was as if he would be getting a response after he spilled those three earth-shattering words.

and he has yet to obtain the courage for it—to face his feelings, to express his affection, and to hear your response.

he couldn't tell you that he has loved you since the beginning.

when he first held your hand at five when you two got lost during the school field trip to the amusement park, and when he scolded you for not paying attention in art class after cutting yourself with the carving knife, all the while carefully putting a band-aid around your finger, and when he wordlessly placed his cap on your head during an exceptionally hot day because you insisted on staying to watch his baseball practice.

and now, at this moment, where he has never been more present in the choices he has made in his life, where time stopped existing across the space in which his heart orbited around you, where he has no pride and no dignity and all his has was affection and love.

seungmin has loved you from the start, and he still does.

"i love you," he confessed instead, squeezing his hands together to hold down the tremors and to force himself to stand there.

and when he saw the light in your eyes flicker, he could just tell—something has changed.

[out-of-jams]

Stranger Things || Chapter 01 || kth

 Part of my Bangtan Netflix series!

Summary: When your younger brother, Jungkook, goes missing, you have no other choice but to reunite your old friend group to find him. But with government conspiracies, supernatural happenings, and a mysterious boy named V, things won’t be as easy as you’d hoped.

Word Count: 7.4k.

Warnings/Genre: Thriller. Mystery. Fluff. Angst. Friends to lovers. Smut. Supernatural. High School au. Explicit language.

All of my works are purely fiction. Everything I write is my intellectual property and therefore belongs to me. ©out-of-jams. Do not copy or repost without permission.

                   | Next | Masterlist |

Chapter 01: The Vanishing of Jeon Jungkook

“No, no, no! Go left!”

A shout accompanied by the sounds of gunshots filled the dark living room. And soft, blue light illuminated the space around the television showing two pixelated characters rushing across the screen.

“We went left last time and died. So no, we’re going right this time!” High pitched, eerie music flowed out of the speakers on the television box. And the click-click-click of fingers tilting joysticks and mashing buttons lingered in the tense, anxious atmosphere.

“We only died last time because you go us killed.” The voice was male: not quite deep, yet not high either, it fell somewhere in the middle.

“Don’t you dare blame that on me, Jungkook! You’re the one who didn’t listen when I told you to hide.” A feminine voice this time was followed by a grunt of irritation. “We’re going right.”

“Whatever.” With an annoyed click of his tongue, Jungkook leaned forward on the ugly, plaid printed couch and braced his elbows on his knees.

An Atari game controller was clutched tightly in his slender hands, fingers tilting the joystick and mashing the single button blindly. His brow was pinched in concentration and his lips were slightly parted, two prominant front teeth visable even in the near darkness. Though his mouth-breathing tendancy was most likely drying his mouth out more than helping him to actually focus.

On screen, both of your characters rushed through the room they’d just cleared of enemies and turned right at the end of the corridor. Jungkook’s character, a pixelated mass of orange, followed reluctantly behind yours as they both reached the door at the end of the hall.

“Maybe we should actually go in with a strategy this time--or not.” With a roll of your eyes, you huffed and leaned forward to unconsiously mimic your brother’s posture.

The stench of pizza grease from the empty boxes on the coffee table filtered through your nose as you grabbed up your half-drank bottle of coke. Carbonation was sweet on your tungue as light from the loading screen reflected in the pupils of your narrowed eyes. Your heart was beating so fast due to the game that you were almost positive Jungkook could hear it.

“We gotta beat it this time. I’m tired of replaying the same level over and over.” Jungkook licked at his lips, leaning forward more intensly the split second the game finished loading and dropped both of your characters into the boss battle. “Let’s get this bread.”

“The hell does that even mean?” Your question was rhetorical, attention captured by the battle music that suddenly burst from the television’s tiny speakers.

The screen zoomed in to show a blotch of green that looked more like a small plant than anything else. But as the music started to hit its cresendo, the plant slowly transformed into a humanoid like plant man with sharp teeth, claw-like fingers and no eyes. Right underneath its wiggling, twitching animated body was the word: Demogorgon.

“Here we go!” With a nod of determination, Jungkook’s fingers tightened on his joystick. “We’re gonna win this time.”

It took all of sixy seconds for both of your characters to die in a violent explosion of pixelated smoke and flames. The screen zoomed in to show the demogorgon wriggling victoriously and the game over music could barely be heard over the screams of both you and Jungkook.

“Dude!” You dropped your controller to the couch in annoyance and turned to glare over at your brother. “I told you to hide again and you still didn’t listen. And now we’re dead. Again.”

Jungkook just threw his head back and sunk lower in his seat. Even in the barely lit room you could see him tonguing his cheek in irritation. “Let’s take a break.”

You hummed, “Snack break?”

That seemed to perk him right up. Just the mention of food could light a fire under Jungkook’s ass quicker than your mother when she yelled. Until he glanced down at the table and deflated. “We’re out, though. I think we ate everything.”

You grimaced at the mess littered all over the coffee table. Empty containers of snacks and glass soda bottles covered every inch of the wooden surface. You and Jungkook had been gaming literally all day. Ever since he stumbled in earlier that morning with a brand new Atari clutched in his hands. Apparently he’d been lucky enough to borrow it from one of the boys down the street. And he’d busted into your room at 10 AM sharp to wake you up from your Sunday morning nap to goad you into playing.

Furtunately, your mother had left to visit her sister in Florida on Friday. Something about your aunt getting a divorce and your mother needing to comfort her. Or whatever. Not that it really bothered you to be left home alone with your younger brother for however long it took to console your grieving aunt. Because that just meant that you could do whatever the hell you wanted.

Like stay up late on a school night.

“Now what?” You questioned through a yawn, taking a second to glance at the clock on the VCR. 11:24 PM.

Jungkook was already standing with his arms stretched overhead to relieve his stiff muscles. “I’ll run out and get some more.”

“It’s late, Kook.” Your words seemed to have no effect on the sixteen year old boy because he’s already crossed the room to the front door.

Jungkook’s fingers fumbled with his shoes as he slipped them on, the hood of his black AC/DC hoodie flopping forward onto his head. Looking up as he tied his laces, he sent you a reasurring smile. His doe-eyed stare and large two front teeth gave him an aura of innocence that could make even the grumpy old man across the street soften like putty.

“Don’t worry, the store is just three streets down. I’ll take my bike and be there in like, fifteen minutes.” There it was again, that flash of bunny teeth as he stood up fully.

You groaned and threw your head back in defeat. “Fine. But hurry up.”

Jungkook grinned in victory, his dark eyes scrunching up into half-moons. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Better be.” Your words were punctuated by the slamming of the front door. Jungkook never learned how to shut doors with appropriate force.

Now the only sound in the house came from the game over still flashing on the television screen. You took a moment to eye it before flipping the remote into your hands and hitting the mute button. The living room plunged into silence as you streched out across the couch and threw an arm over your eyes. You’d just take a short nap while Jungkook was out in order to regain your strength to beat the game.

Yeah, just a short nap.

Jungkook should have been scared by the darkness creeping at the edge of the light beam from the flashlight attached to the front of his bike. He should have been frightened at the sheer fact that the streets of his neighborhood were completely empty. But he wasn’t.

The quiet offered him solace in a way that most things couldn’t. Sure, Jungkook was loud at times, but he also liked the comfort of his own company. Of the sound of crickets chirping in the trees lining the road he biked down. It mixed with the flap-flap-flap of the baseball card still stuck in-between the spokes of his rear bike wheel. And the crinkle of the plastic bag hanging from the left handle bar so low that it occasionally brushed against his thigh.

Jungkook’s breath came out in pants as his legs pedaled hard enough to carry him up the steep hill. He was almost home, only two streets away when the street lamps overhead started to dim. That wasn’t unusual. The powerlines in town were finicky, afterall.

Though it wasn’t until he passed underneath one that the bulb blinked one, twice, three times, before blowing out completely. And that wouldn’t have caused panic to rise in his chest if it weren’t for the fact that every single street lamp went out at the same time. And if it weren’t for the flashlight on the front of his bike, Jungkook would’ve been veiled inside a curtain of absolute darkness.

“What the..?” The words slipped from his mouth and filled the quiet street with a sense of foreboding. Jungkook didn’t know what was happening. But what he did know was that his instincts were screaming at him to get the hell out of dodge.

He pedaled faster, trying his best to ignore his heartbeat thrumming in his eardrums. And he would have succeeded if the flashlight on his bike didn’t start to flicker too. Jungkook glanced down, reaching out a hand to tap against the plastic lens in hopes of keeping it alive.

It blinked once more in a final threat before stilling and he let out a breath of relief.

And looked up just in time to see the silhouette of something-something-something standing in the middle of the empty road.

Jungkook startled so badly that he jerked the handlebars to the right sharply, sending him veering straight into a ditch on the side of the road. The front tire of his bike caught and the momentum flipped Junkook through the air in a dizzying whirlwhind. He hit the hard packed ground with a thud, grass tickling the now exposed skin of his arms. But he didn’t have time to register the pain.

Because he heard it, intermingled with the tick-tick-tick of the abandoned bike wheels spinning round and round.

A growling hiss pierced through the foilage of the trees around him, seemingly coming from anyhere and everywhere all at once. Jungkook stumbled to his feet, the knees of his jeans catching on a fallen branch and tearing. But he didn’t have time to process that either.

Through the darkness he could just make out a figure standing a few feet away, hunched over in the shadows.

Jungkook’s shoes slid across the dirt as he cut to the right and burst through the trees without a second thought. He could barely see more than five feet ahead, eyes blown wide to let in as much light as possible. As his footfalls pounded the earth, Jungkook’s beath left his body in loud exhales that he did his best to silence.

A quick glance behind him showed nothing. He couldn’t see whether or not whatever the hell that thing was, was following him. But just because he couldn’t see it didn’t mean that it wasn’t.

It took only a minute of reckless running for the familiar sourroundings to register in Jungkook’s mind. The town of Hawkins, Indiana was a rural area, filled with more trees than people. And the woods served as a maze for any who weren’t familiar with its paths. But Jungkook had lived there all his life, therefore he knew the darkened outline high up in the branches was there way before he reached the base of the tree.

He didn’t take a moment to pause, to catch his breath before he jumped, hands flying overhead to grab onto the wooden ladder. It didn’t reach all the way to the ground, having been broken off years ago. But luckily, Jungkook was tall.

His fingers wrapped around the splintered wood and he heaved himself upwards. The bottoms of his shoes slammed against the rungs of the makeshift ladder as he ascended further into the tree. Within seconds, the palm of his hand pushed against a catch in the wood above and he threw the trapdoor upwards. It gave way without a fight and Jungkook swung himself inside with adrenaline pumping vicioulsy through his veins.

The floor of the treehouse creaked underfoot as he quickly shut the door and locked it with the rusted metal latch. If Jungkook thought it was dark outside, it was even darker inside the cramped space. His hands shot out, palms forward, as he shuffled along blindly. Fingers shaking, Jungkook managed to grab onto the thin string dangling in the center of the room. And with a sharp tug, the lightbulb overhead came to life.

It was just as he remembered inside.

The air was stale from the lack of filtration, but Jungkook paid no mind as he stumbled over to one of the glass windows. Though his foot caught on the edge of a stool and almost sent him topling over. “Shit!”

Jungkook hit the wall palms first and he could feel the splinters enter his skin. But he brushed off the stinging pain and pressed his face against the glass window so close that it started to fog from his panicked breath. His eyes scanned the ground outside with a quickness only born from fear. At first he saw nothing, only his own face reflected back at him.

Until, there!

A silhouette amongst the shadows.

It stood there, unmoving, just staring at him like he was staring at it.

Until it wasn’t.

The sole lightbulb in the room flickered with familiarity as Jungkook pushed as far away from the window as possible. His stood in the center of the room turning rapidly, neck straining to glance out all four windows on each wall at once. It was then that he heard it again.

Whispered growls that caressed his eardrums with a silent promise.

Jungkook’s chest tightened. Why couldn’t he breathe?

Bump-bump. His heart pounded against his ribcage as the light overhead blinked once, twice.

Bump-bump. Three times. Bump-bump. A shadow brushed past the window pane to his right.

Bump-bump. Metal sliding against metal as the latch slowly unlocked.

Bump-bump. The light blew out. Bump-bump.

It was inside.

Jungkook turned slowly, scream caught somewhere halfway up his throat. Bump-bump.

The light flickered back on.

And Jungkook was gone.

Sunlight broke through the thin curtains hanging above the living room window, drifting across your face to shine right on your closed eyelids. A groan left your drool stained mouth, hand flying up in an attempt to beat back the light by sheer force of will.

With a sigh, your eyes squinted open and the memories of the night before rushed in. It was a surprise that you were still on the couch, seeing as how Jungkook should have woken you up by how unessicarily loud he usually was. Especially after having gone out of his way last night to be on snack retrieval duty. There was no way that he’d pass up on an opportunity to wake you up by beaming a pack of doritos right at your face.

You wiped at the dry drool on your chin and threw an uninterested glance at the clock on the VCR. 9:45 AM.

It took a moment for the importance of the time to register in your sleep clouded brain. But when it did--

“Shit! I’m late for school.” You flew off the couch, one bare foot landing on a depleted, crumpled box of Dunkaroos. Just looking at it twisted your stomach. How you and Jungkook managed to clear out your whole pantry of snacks in one day was sad.

Ignoring the mess on the coffee table, you scrambled out of the room and flew up the stairs. Your clothes fell in a heap on the floor the second the door to your room closed and you raced over to your closet. Blindly, you picked out an outfit for the day and threw it on while simultaniously attempting to brush the knots out of your hair.

Teeth brushed and Love’s Baby Soft perfume spritzed, you raced down the hall to Jungkook’s closed bedroom door. You didn’t bother to knock, instead just sending up a short prayer that he was decent before throwing the door open. It hit the wall with a crack that made you flinch. But you paid it no mind as you glared at the messy, unmade, empty bed.

That jerk went to school without you!

“I’m gonna kill him.” You growled and turned to run back down the stairs, socked feet sliding against the linoleum floor and almost carrying you past the foyer.

Skidding to a stop, you slipped on your shoes, grabbed your house keys and backpack, and flew out the front door.

The second the lock weaved through the front tire of your bike clicked into place, you hurried through the front doors of the school. Luckily (or unluckily), the halls were empty. So the obnoxious sqeaking of your shoes was heard by no one as you apprached the closed door to your English class.

With a grimace painting your face, you turned down the door handle and slipped in the classroom.

“Ah, Ms Jeon, how wonderful of you to finally decide to grace us with your presence.”

The sarcastic words from your teacher halted your steps mid-stride as all eyes in the room turned to you. You should have been embarassed at the way you’d been caught red-handed trying to slink into the room unoticed. But all you could do was give a hasty “sorry” and retreat to your empty desk in the back. Too bad your teacher wouldn’t let you go without a fight.

“First your brother, and now you? Do I need to make a phone call to your mother?”

Your hands stilled on the zipper of your half-open backpack as your head snapped up in surprised confusion. “My brother?”

The teacher merely raised an eyebrow and gave you a look over the rim of her square specticals. Her mouth was pinched in annoyance, stray wisps of hair escaping the sharp confines of her tight bun. “Yes, your brother. He wasn’t here for homeroom this morning. Any particular reason why?”

“He wasn’t here?” All you could do was pathetically repeat her words like some kind of human sized parrot. But you weren’t paying attention to the snickers from your classmates. No, you were too busy trying to stave off the feeling of dread that sunk low in your stomach.

“Need I repeat myself all day, Ms Jeon?” Your teacher rolled her eyes in exhasperation, though you were sure there must have been some annoyance in there too.

Mind clouding in barely concealed worry, you leaned forward, chest digging into the cold desk. “Jungkook didn’t show up this morning at all?”

Oh yeah, that was definitally annoyance. “Enough of this back-and-forth. Now, either pay attention or go to the principal’s office.”

Your back hit the chair. Maybe Jungkook decided to ditch homeroom? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. With your bottom lip caught between your teeth, you tried to ignore the unease that drifted through your veins like poison.

It was loud. A cacaphony of voices belonging to students as they all tried to speak over one another at once. And it was crowded, the room filled with the unmistakable stench of high school cafeteria food.

Plastic luch tray held between your hands, you slipped between lunch tables full of students until you reached the back of the room. It hit the surface of the table along with your backpack as you tossed them down and effectively scared the absolute crap out of Park Jimin. His head snapped up from where he’d been filling out his homework for his next class, startled.

“Y/n?” Your name slipped from his plush pink lips in a voice that you could only call hypnotic. Jimin dropped the pencil in his hand and ran his fingers through his soft blond hair. “What’s up?”

“Have you seen my brother?” You cut straight to the chase and leaned forward to brace yourself on your elbows, lunch forgotton.

It’d been hours and you still hadn’t managed to catch even a single glance of your brother in the hallways. Usually you’d see each other at least three times before lunch. Hawkins High wasn’t a big school after all.

“Jungkook?” Jimin licked his lips and dipped a tater tot in ketchup until it was more tomato than potato. He may as well have just dipped a spoon in.

“No. Santa Clause.” You rolled your eyes and reached out to steal one of his tots, ignoring his ‘hey, you have your own!’ “Yes, Jungkook. You see him?”

Park Jimin looked confused. “No. Should I have?”

Your eyebrows shot up into your hairline as your gaze caught his warm brown eyes. Jimin had been a part of your childhood friend group. And while everyone else had grown apart throughout the years, you, Jimin, and Jungkook stayed together. Even though he was only a few months younger, you still looked at Jimin as another little brother of sorts.

“What do you mean, should you have?” That feeling of dread was back. Not that it’d really gone away in the first place. “You and Jungkook both have photography class in the mornings. Was he there?”

Jimin still looked confused as he ran a hand through his hair once again in a nervous habit that he’d never seemed able to kick. “No. Why? Is he sick or something?”

“You didn’t see him? At all?” You knew you were starting to sound like a broken record, but you couldn’t help it. Something was wrong. You just didn’t know what.

“No?”

He stilled at the sudden serious expression that overtook your face. And Jimin’s brows knit together as he leaned forward across the table. “What’s wrong, Y/n?”

Your mouth opened and closed while you fumbled, not quite sure how to phrase what you were thinking without sounding like you were going crazy. Eyes flickering around at your surroundings, you leaned closer to Jimin and ignored the sweet scent of the cologne you knew he stole from his dad.

“Look...I,” You paused before shaking your head. “I think something’s wrong. Jungkook left late last night and never came back.”

Jimin’s lips parted in surprise. “What--”

“I don’t have time to explain, but I have a really bad feeling, okay?” Voice hushed, you waited until Jimin nodded his head before you leaned back, mind made up. “I’m going to go to the police station and report him as a missing person.”

“Y/n.” Jimin reached out to cover one of your hands on the table. He hesitated for a moment, likely in preparation for what he was about to say. “Maybe he’s just skipping school or something. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

You were shaking your head before he even finished his last sentence. “No, Jimin. Something’s wrong. I can feel it.”

The sound of your chair scraping across the floor drowned out whatever it was that Jimin said in response. Reaching across the table, you scooped up your backpack and flung it over your shoulder. “Look, I’m going to the cops. Let me know if you see him, okay?”

“Wait, Y/n!” Jimin’s shout followed you all the way out of the cafeteria doors.

“I’ve been waiting here for over an hour, Mr. Hopper.”

Detective Sejin Hopper looked up at you from over the top of the typewriter on his cluttered desk. His dark eyes were narrowed behind the round lenses of his eyeglasses in a way that should have stopped the words from leaving your mouth. But not even the intimidating aura of Hawkins’ lead detective could stop you at that point.

“Couldn’t you, I don’t know.” You were sure that the heels of your converse were wearing a hole into the rug of his office, but you didn’t care. Hand waving through the air, you muttered, “Work a little faster?”

Hopper simply raised his eyebrows at you. The man was tall and bulky and filled the space in his office without even trying. He leaned back in his rolling chair, the springs protesting with age. “Shouldn’t you be in school, kid?”

Your feet foze and you stared down at him incrediously, hands on hips. “My brother is missing!”

With a sigh, Hopped pushed the typewritter aside and clasped his hands on the desk in front of him. “Look kid, he’s probably just playing hookie--”

“No.” You interrupted with a shake of your head, ignoring the irritation that flashed in his eyes. “He wouldn’t do that without at least telling me first.”

“You never know.” He simply shrugged. “Maybe he got a girlfriend or something and just didn’t want to come clean to his older sister out of embarassment. Happened to me when I was about his age. Then again, I did date my older sister’s best friend, so that may have had something to do with it.”

You threw your hands up in exhasperation. “My brother doesn’t have a girlfriend! He can’t even talk to girls without, like, throwing up!”

“You sure it’s girls he’s into, then? Maybe he got a boyfriend and that’s why he didn’t want to tell you.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Your jaw was hanging open at the sheer audacity of what just came from Detective Hopper’s mouth. “I know why you’re not taking me seriously right now, but please, I’m not pulling another prank on you this time. My brother is gone and I don’t know what else to do.”

Hopper paused, letting the silence in the room fester for a moment before he let out a deep, bone weary sigh. “What about your dad?”

You blinked, taken aback by the question that had absolutely nothing to do with the situation. “What about him?”

His voice softened from the harsh way he’d been speaking to you before. “Listen kid, ninety-nine percent of the time if a kid from a divorced home goes missing, they’re with their other parent.”

A scoff left you before you could think to stop it. “Jungkook hates our dad. There’s no way he would just up and leave in the middle of the night and travel to another state to see him. That doesn’t even make sense!”

Hopper opened his mouth to respond, but you cut him off. “What about the other one percent?”

“The what?”

“You said ninety-nine percent. What about the other one percent?”

“Kid.” Hopper leaned forward against his desk once more, making sure to hold your wide-eyed stare with his serious one. “This is Hawkins. Do you know how many years I’ve been working here? Do you want to know the worst thing that’s ever happened? It was when an owl attacked Jackson Wang’s head, because it thought his hair was a nest.”

You pressed the tip of your tongue against the inside of your cheek in pure rage. Bending down, you scopped up your backpack that you’d abandoned on the floor and threw it over your shoulder. “You know what? I’ll find him myself. Thanks for all your help, Detective.”

He tried calling out to you, but you ignored him in favor of slamming the door to his office hard enough to rattle the stupid action figurines on the shelf perched above his head.

It was dusk by the time you made it to the treehouse.

If you were being honest with yourself, you were getting desperate because you knew for certain that Jungkook hadn’t been there in years. In fact, neither had you. But you’d searched everywhere, had gone to every single one of your brother’s usual haunts. And you’d tried to call your aunt, but the number listed for her landline was out of service. Typical. You’d even stopped by your house every hour just to check in case he’d decided to finally show his face.

But he hadn’t.

And now you were forced to do the one thing that you’d sworn you’d never do again.

Staring up at the treehouse high up in the branches, your eyes narrowed on the light shining through the window facing towards you. Which would have been suspicious enough if it weren’t for the trap door on the bottom of the structure hanging wide open. The only people who knew about the treehouse were you, your brother, and the rest of your abandoned friend group. And you didn’t think that any of them would bother going back to it.

Except maybe Jimin, but you knew he always hated going to the treehouse by himself. “It’s creepy out there.” He’d say. “You wouldn’t catch me dead out there by myself.”

It was quiet in the middle of the woods. Too quiet.

The only sound came from the leaves crunching underfoot as you trudged up to the ladder broken off halfway down the tree. You eyed it, bottom lip caught in your teeth as you tried to strategize how to best reach it. Until finally, with a sigh, you grabbed onto the lowest tree branch and started to climb.

You hated heights. Always had and always would. And as your shoes dug into the rungs of the ladder, you tried your best not to let the sense of vertigo overtake you.

“Hello?” You shouted into the open hatch, not quite confident enough in it being empty to go through it yet. But when all you got in return was silence, you lifted yourself up the rest of the way and climbed inside.

It was exactly as you remembered. Just with more dust.

Every single surface, from the half-rotten stools to the wooden box that’d been used as a makeshift table, to the faded pictures and posters tacked onto the walls, were covered in layers of dust. A wave of nostalgia hit you in a way that you were completely unprepared for. It’d been a while.

The sound of your shoes tapping on the floor reached your ears as you made your way over to a partially opened box in the far corner. It was buried underneath what was once a white sheet, but was now grey with age and dirt. Dust spread into the air as you ripped it off and your hands came up to shield your nose from the onslaught.

Dropping to the floor, you ignored the cold press of wood on your exposed kneecaps. Luckily it was still spring, so you didn’t have to worry about the cold weather just yet. But the opened tabs of the cardboard box was cold to the touch.

Inside, you dug through all of the items that’d been abandoned, untouched by time, until you reached what lay at the bottom. With careful hands, you extracted a heavy, black and grey hand radio and cradled it between your fingers. You wiped off the dirt with the bottom of your shirt, lips pulled up into a small, wistful smile.

“Haven’t seen you in a while. I wonder if you still work.” Taking a deep breath, you let your thumb hover over the “on” switch. You hadn’t used it in years. Not since you’d dropped it into the box that fateful day, never to be seen again.

“Now’s not the time to reminisce, Y/n.” You shook your head in an attempt to rid yourself of the memories that threatened to drown you in nostalgia. A shaky exhale, and then you pressed the button.

It took a moment too long in which you lost hope, before the radio sputtered to life with static. The “on” light lit up a bright red and you released a breath you didn’t know you were holding. Luckily, the settings were still set to exactly where they’d been before. Although it wasn’t like you didn’t still have them memorized.

“Okay.” You murmured, voice trembling. Not because you were afraid per se, but because you didn’t even know if they’d answer. You fingers pressed the “talk” button and held it down.

“Guys?” Hesitating, you cleared your throat before speaking again. “I don’t know if you’re listening. Or if you even still have one of these things. But um...I hope you do. Because I’m calling a code red.”

You paused. “I need you. Wherever you are.”

The silence inside the treehouse was stifling. And the sun had long gone down, leaving you to sit under the light of a single lightbulb.

You didn’t know why you were still there. Still waiting despite the numerous hours that’d passed you by. Maybe it was a sliver of hope that you dared to hold on to that kept you rooted to the floor, cross-legged and leaning back against one of the walls. Whatever it was, you were running out of time.

To find your brother, to figure out what the hell was going on, to formulate a plan. But, you supposed, there was no better way to brainstorm than being left on your own for hours on end. Which was why your backpack lay open, discarded somewhere beside you as your attention lay focused on the papers scattered across the floor.

Jungkook had left your house at appoximately 11:26 PM. It would take him about fifteen minutes to bike his way down to the store. Add in another five or so minutes to purchase snacks and exit the store. And then another fifteen minutes to bike home.

That left a window of thirty-five minutes total for him to go missing. Which meant that he had to have dissappeared somewhere between 11:26 PM and 12:01 AM.

You’d already paid the convinience store a visit earlier in the afternoon, only to have them inform you that the person who’d been on shift last night was on vacation. And they’d refused to give out the phone number of where their employee was staying. Typical. Convienent.

Suspect.

There was--

The sound of voices hit your eardums and you paused with your pencil hovered above a sheet of paper. Leaning forward in a useless attempt at hearing better, your ears strained to listen over the noise of crickets.

“--knows.”

You knew that voice. Would recognize it even though it’d been years since you last held a conversation. Your bare legs scratched against the floor as you scrambled to your feet, hands already brushing the back of your shorts to rid yourself of any possible dirt. The voices were getting louder. As well as the accompanying footsteps

“--be good.” That was definitely Namjoon’s raspy voice. “Had to ditch practice for this.”

“I’m sure it is.” Hoseok’s low vocal fry.

“How the hell are we supposed to get up there?” Yoongi’s deep, lazy drawl.

The pencil fell from your hand at the sound of someone scrambling up the treehouse ladder. You’d closed the door not too long after entering, though you’d made sure to keep it unlatched just in case.

“Can I get a leg up?” Jimin.

“Aren’t you supposed to grow taller as you age?” Seokjin’s windshield wiper laugh. God, it’d been so long since you’d heard it. “Or have you not been drinking your milk?”

You could hear Jimin scoff through the floorboards. “I’m lactose intollerant. You know this.”

Before you could make a sound, the trapdoor swung upwards and in popped a familiar head of red hair. Golden skin and cherub cheekbones: Hoseok. He jerked a little in surprise at seeing you standing there, but then the tiny dimples between the corner of his lips and the edge of his cheeks came out of hiding with a smile.

“Hey, Y/n.” He greeted you casually, like you’d seen each other less than an hour ago. Like he hadn’t abandoned the rest of you the second he landed a spot on the school dance team. “Long time no see.”

“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.” Namjoon’s voice interrupted before you could speak past the lump in your throat. “Now move before I fall down this stupid thing.”

“Sorry.” With a chuckle, Hoseok climbed the rest of the way inside, followed by the even brighter red hair of Namjoon. You would have thought they’d planned having the same colored hair, but based on the sheer fact that they hadn’t hung out in years, it was an accident.

“Y/n.” Namjoon jerked his head in a stiff nod.

As he emerged from the door, you noticed that he was wearing Hawkins High’s varsity football uniform. Like he’d rushed right over from practice. While he both acted and dressed differently than what he used to, Namjoon was still all deep dimples and plump lips and intelligent eyes.

Not all things were possible to change, afterall.

“Namjoon.” You crossed your arms across your chest and flashed Hoseok a quick, closed mouth smile. “Hoseok.”

Next to pop their way into the treehouse was Jimin, who stepped to your side with arms already outstretched to envelop you a hug of greeting. His familiar scent washed over you and you felt your tense muscles relax just a little. “Any luck?”

Jimin pulled back at the shake of your head to shoot you a sad smile. “We’ll find him, I’m sure.”

“Find who?”

Your head shot up as Seokjin entered with Yoongi trailing close behind. The eldest stood tall, his broad shoulders taking up more space than they used to. Seokjin wasn’t even in high school anymore. He’d graduated just last year, but still stayed in Hawkins to attend the community college in the next town over. Most likely so he could help take care of his mother since he his father died a few years back.

A flash of blue caught your attention when Yoongi stepped out from behind the taller man. His once blond locks had been dyed a vibrant shade of cotton candy blue. And you would have raised an eyebrow at him if it weren’t for the sheer fact that Yoongi was known for not giving a shit about other people’s opinions.

You’d been close once. So close that you used to know every single detail about his life. From the way he dreamed about moving to New York City to study music. Or that he hated pineapple on pizza. Or that he used to harbor the biggest crush on Hoseok.

But now he was a stranger.

They all were.

Except Jimin, but that was beside the point.

“Why are we here?” Namjoon spoke up over the tense silence lingering in the air. The treehouse was cramped now, filled to the brim with bodies that once used to fit together so easily.

Seokjin nodded slowly, eyes finding yours as he brushed a strand of dark hair off of his tanned forehead. “Good question.”

All attention was on you and you almost wilted under their heavy stares. “I’m surprised you came, to be honest.”

Yoongi shifted in place, a look of something that you weren’t quite quick enough to catch flashing in his feline-like eyes. With hands stuffed into the front pouch of his hoodie, he sucked in air through his teeth in a habit that used to bring you comfort. “You called a code red.”

You had to actively stop the corners of your mouth from twitching up into a smile. “Yeah, I did. Still surprised that you even heard the call though.”

“Namjoon was the only one who did, actually.” Jimin nodded his head at a now uncomfortable looking football player. “He came and grabbed the rest of us. That’s why we took so long to get here.”

Namjoon just shrugged one shoulder casually, like it was no big deal. “Mom was making me go through all of my old stuff before practice. So it was pure luck that I happened to be doing it at the same time you radioed in.”

“Convienent.” Hoseok raised an eyebrow at the other artificial redhead, who just gave another shrug in response.

“We’re getting away from the point here.” Seokjin took control of the conversation. “Why are we here?”

A pause filled the small space as everyone turned to you yet again. Jimin’s body heat sinking into your side from where he stood right beside you filled you with a confidence that you wouldn’t normally possess.

“Jungkook is missing.”

“Missing.” Yoongi stated, head tilting to the side and hair shifting to expose the pale skin of his forehead.

You nodded. “Yes. Missing.”

From his place standing across from you, Namjoon crossed his arms. “Explain.”

“Well, he left late last night to get some snacks at around 11:26.” Your tongue wet your lips as you mentally prepared for them to call you crazy. “And never came back.”

“Did you go to the police?” The question came from Seokjin as he knit his brows with what looked like worry, but you couldn’t be too sure. He was good at acting, afterall.  

“I tried.” You fidgeted nervously with the necklace dangling from your neck, fingers twisting it to-and-fro anxiously.

Jimin’s hand came up to rest on your shoulder comfortingly. “And?”

All you could do was scoff. “Detective Hopper basically told me to fuck off.”

Out of the corner of your eye, every single eyebrow raised to the ceiling. A huff of laughter passed Hoseok’s lips. “She cusses now. You guys hear that?”

You sent him the nastiest glare you could muster and watched as his eyes widened in surprise. “You’d know that if you cared enough to stick around.”

Hoseok’s flinch was impossible to go unnoticed. But you didn’t care if he was hurt by your comment because there were more important matters at hand.

“So you need our help to look for him?” Yoongi’s voice softened around the hard edge he normally carried. And at your nod, his hand lifted to finger one of his pierced earlobes in thought. “What about your mom?”

“On vacation in Florida and I have no way to reach her.” You sighed. “The phone number she left us was a dud.”

Namjoon hummed, lips pursed as he racked his brain. “Well maybe if we--”

Crack!

All seven of you jumped at the loud echo of a tree branch snapping.

“What was that?” Hoseok’s voice was hushed as he took an unconsious step closer towards the center of the circle.

“An animal?” Jimin was equally as quiet. “It could have--”

Crack!

Namjoon’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think that’s an animal.”

Your own eyes widened at the statement. “Jungkook!”

“Wait, Y/n. It might not be him.” Seokjin’s warning went unheard as you rushed to the still open hatch.

“Or it could be.”

The protests from all six men followed you down the ladder and all the way to the ground. Though they weren’t too far behind you. You turned on your heel to search the darkness around you, looking for Jungkook’s long black hair. Or his tall frame. Or his wide shoulders. Anything.

A hand clamping down on your shoulder tore a scream of surprise from your throat. Your head snapped around to greet the sharp jawline of Hoseok’s profile. His narrowed eyes were fixed past you on something that you couldn’t see. “What is that?”

You turned to look at what he was pointing at, everyone else stepping closer to do the same. At first you didn’t see it, couldn’t make out anything at all. Until, there! A flash of silver caught your eye.

“Hello?” Seokjin’s obnoxiously loud voice boomed across the tiny clearing and echoed far bayond the treeline.

“Don’t call it over here, idiot!” Hoseok hissed through his teeth, fingers unconsiously tightening their hold on your shoulder.

But his warning came too late. Because whetever was out there hidden in the darkness of the trees came closer. And if you strained your ears, you could just barely make out the sound of footfalls brushing against the grass.

“What the…” Jimin’s voice came from your other side, but you were too busy focused on whatever that thing was to care. “Wait…I think that’s a person.”

A beam of light flashed from Namjoon’s hand, temporarily startling everyone at the sudden appearance of a flashlight. At least he’d been smart enough to grab it. And shine it right in the eyes of the being that emerged from the shadows like a wraith. Hoseok’s high-pitched scream threatened to deafen you, but you couldn’t look away.

Because standing on the other side of the clearing was a boy, a stranger. Everyone knew everyone in Hawkins and you would have remembered seeing him around. Never would you have forgotten a face that breathtakingly beautiful. With golden skin and large brown eyes, he stared at the seven of you like he’d never seen another human being before.

Wavy silver hair framed his face, and his lips--the top a perfect cupid’s bow--were slightly parted in something that you couldn’t discern. But it wasn’t just his entrancing face or slim build that caught your attention. No, it was the dried blood stained on the front of his sunshine yellow, oversized dirty t-shirt.

“Who the hell are you?”

[zeffiroh]

Wikipedia just turned 20!!!

[ID: Origami W,  a gift for wikipedia END ID]

[ID: Origami models of arabic numerals two and zero, symbolizing wiki’s 20th birthday END ID]

send thanks and love to wikipedians.>>>

have a looksie at the birthday celebrations(twas on 15th), and confetti are still around.>>>

[ID: gif of puzzle globe(wiki logo) bursting, metaphorically the burst of knowledge and joy wiki gives, a gif from the creative commons bday stash of wikipedia END ID]

“Wikipedia started as an ambitious idea

…to create a free encyclopedia, written by volunteers, for everyone in the world. It seemed impossible.

Over 20 years, Wikipedia has become the largest collection of open knowledge in history. How did it happen? People, like you.

Made and sustained by humans.

Meet the movement.”

[ID: Graph,WIkipedia: citability vs helpfulness of articles on academic timescale .helpfulness increases from elementary academia to graduate academia as wikipedia articles are stuffed with knowledge from archives and enthusiasts, but elitist academic institutions have created a situation wherein the citability of these articles drops down from elementary levels to graduate studies.  END ID]

graph is taken from this aptly named article, “time to stop wikipedia shaming”

It is as if the main theme of wikipedia “ is edited by everyone” is taken as a flaw. the fascist and elitist gate-keeping control is not more evident anywhere but when wikipedia is shamed. Articles are locked, users banned and multiple people editing it makes it much more reliable than papers and books written by bigoted academics and reviewed by bribed editors (case in point- Sigmund Froyd’s theory of female sexuality, cough cough)

It is “the best thing ever,” because “anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject—so you know you are getting the best possible information.” - Michael Scott - The Office

This dialogue was used to identify Michael as an idiot, but it has the opposite effect, as this is truly the most beautiful missions of all time.

The thing about wikipedia is it is a macrogasmic entity of knowledge. Edits materialize at a rate of 1.8 per second. But perhaps more remarkable than Wikipedia's success is how little its reputation has changed. It was criticized as it rose, and it still is a matter of superiority complex in academic gate-keepers to state that Wikipedia is a blog and encyclopedias are more trustworthy etc etc, that wikipedia is not a source, and similar shaming tactics, when actually wikipedia is, in fact a tertiary SOURCE and, a more frequently updated encyclopedia.

Wiki is the only not-for-profit site in the top 10 most used sites , and one of only a handful in the top 100. It does not plaster itself with advertising(it could, but it doesn't, just to make it a comfortable and easily comprehensable resource), intrude on privacy, or provide a breeding ground for neo-Nazi trolling, and still broadcasts user-generated content. Unlike the other top social platforms , it makes its product de-personified, collaborative, and for the general good. More than an encyclopedia, Wikipedia has become a community, a library, a constitution, an experiment, a political manifesto—the closest thing there is to an online public square. It is one of the few remaining places that retains the faintly utopian glow of the early World Wide Web. A free encyclopedia encompassing the whole of human knowledge, written almost entirely by unpaid volunteers: Can you believe that was the one that worked?

Wikipedia is not perfect. The problems that it does have—and there are plenty of them—are discussed in great detail on Wikipedia itself, often in dedicated forums for self-critique with titles like “Why Wikipedia is not so great.” One contributor observes that “many of the articles are of poor quality.” Another worries that “consensus on Wikipedia may be a problematic form of knowledge production.” A third notes that “someone can just come and edit this very page and put in ‘pens are for cats only.’” Like the rest of the tech world, the site suffers from a gender imbalance; by recent estimates, 90 percent of its volunteer editors are men. Women and nonbinary contributors report frequent harassment from their fellow Wikipedians—trolling, doxing, hacking, death threats. The site's parent organization has repeatedly owned up to the situation and taken halting steps to redress it; several years ago, it allocated hundreds of thousands of dollars to a “community health initiative.” But in a way, the means to fix Wikipedia's shortcomings, in terms of both culture and coverage, are already in place: Witness the rise of feminist edit-athons.

The site's innovations have always been cultural as well as computational. It was created using existing technology. This remains the single most underestimated and misunderstood aspect of the project: its emotional architecture. Wikipedia is built on the personal interests and idiosyncrasies of its contributors; in fact, without getting gooey, you could even say it is built on LOVE. Editors' passions can drive the site deep into inconsequential territory—exhaustive detailing of dozens of different kinds of embroidery software, lists dedicated to bespectacled baseball players, a brief but moving biographical sketch of Khanzir, the only pig in Afghanistan. No knowledge is truly useless, but at its best, Wikipedia weds this ranging interest to the kind of pertinence where Larry David's “Pretty, pretty good!” is given as an example of rhetorical epizeuxis. It is one of the reminders, that the internet is a wonderful space.

In 2000, around a year before Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger cofounded Wikipedia, the pair started a site called Nupedia, planning to source articles from noted scholars and put them through seven rounds of editorial oversight. But the site never got off the ground; after a year, there were fewer than two dozen entries. (Wales, who wrote one of them himself, told The New Yorker “it felt like homework.”) When Sanger got wind of a collaborative software tool called a wiki—from the Hawaiian wikiwiki, or “quickly”—he and Wales decided to set one up as a means of generating raw material for Nupedia. They assumed nothing good would come of it, but within a year Wikipedia had 20,000 articles. By the time Nupedia's servers went down a year later, the original site had become a husk, and the seed it carried had grown beyond any expectation.

Many similar sites have languished. They came up against a simple and apparently insoluble problem, the same one that Nupedia encountered and Wikipedia surmounted: Most "experts" do not want to contribute to a free online encyclopedia.

This barrier to entry exists even in places where there are many "experts" and large volumes of material to draw from. Napoleon Bonaparte, for instance, is the subject of tens of thousands of books. There are probably more dedicated historians of the Corsican general than of almost any other historical figure, but so far these scholars, even the retired or especially enthusiastic ones, have been disinclined to share their bounty. Citizendium's entry on Napoleon, around 5,000 words long and unedited for the past six years, is missing events as major as the decisive Battle of Borodino, which claimed 70,000 casualties, and the succession of Napoleon II. By contrast, Wikipedia's article on Napoleon sits at around 18,000 words long and runs to more than 350 sources.

The Wikipedia replacement products revealed another problem with the top-down model: With so few contributors, coverage was spotty and gaps were hard to fill. Scholarpedia's entry on neuroscience makes no mention of serotonin or the frontal lobes. At Citizendium, Sanger refused to recognize women's studies as a top-level category, describing the discipline as too “politically correct.” (Today, he says “it wasn't about women's studies in particular” but about “too much overlap with existing groups.”) A wiki with a more horizontal hierarchy, on the other hand, can self-correct. No matter how politically touchy or intellectually abstruse the topic, the crowd develops consensus. On the English-language Wikipedia, particularly controversial entries, like those on George W. Bush or Jesus Christ, have edit counts in the thousands.

Wikipedia, in other words, isn't raised up wholesale, like a barn; it's assembled grain by grain, like a termite mound. The smallness of the grains, and of the workers carrying them, makes the project's scale seem impossible. But it is exactly this incrementalism that puts immensity within reach.

The stars of Wikipedia are not giants in their fields but so-called WikiGnomes—editors who sweep up typos, arrange articles in neatly categorized piles, and scrub away vandalism. This work is often thankless, but it does not seem to be joyless. It is a common starting point for Wikipedians, and many are content to stay there. According to a 2016 paper in the journal Management Science, the median edit length on Wikipedia is just 37 characters, an effort that might take a few seconds.

From there, though, many volunteers are drawn deeper into the site's culture. They discuss their edits on Talk pages; they display their interests and abilities on User pages; some vie to reach the top of the edit-count leaderboard. An elect few become administrators; while around a quarter of a million people edit Wikipedia daily, only around 1,100 accounts have admin privileges. The site is deep and complex enough—by one count, its policy directives and suggestions run to more than 150,000 words—that its most committed adherents must become almost like lawyers, appealing to precedent and arguing their case. As with the law, there are different schools of interpretation; the two largest of these are deletionists and inclusionists. Deletionists favor quality over quantity, and notability over utility. Inclusionists are the opposite.

Most dedicated editors, whether deletionist or inclusionist, are that category of person who sits somewhere between expert and amateur: the enthusiast. Think of a railfan or a trainspotter. (Wikipedians disagree on which is the better term.) Their knowledge of trains is quite different from an engineer's or a railway historian's; you can't major in trainspotting or become credentialed as a railfan. But these people are a legitimate kind of expert nonetheless. Previously, their folk knowledge was reposited in online forums, radio shows, and specialist magazines. Wikipedia harnessed it for the first time. The entry on the famous locomotive the Flying Scotsman is 4,000 words long and includes eye-wateringly detailed information on its renumbering, series of owners, smoke deflectors, and restoration, from contributors who seem to have the most intimate, hard-won knowledge of the train's working. (“It was deemed that the A4 boiler had deteriorated into a worse state than the spare due to the higher operating pressures the locomotive had experienced following the up-rating of the locomotive to 250 psi.”)

Pedantry this powerful is itself a kind of engine, and it is fueled by an enthusiasm that verges on love. Many early critiques of computer-assisted reference works feared a vital human quality would be stripped out in favor of bland fact-speak. That 1974 article in The Atlantic presaged this concern well: “Accuracy, of course, can better be won by a committee armed with computers than by a single intelligence. But while accuracy binds the trust between reader and contributor, eccentricity and elegance and surprise are the singular qualities that make learning an inviting transaction. And they are not qualities we associate with committees.” Yet Wikipedia has eccentricity, elegance, and surprise in abundance, especially in those moments when enthusiasm becomes excess and detail is rendered so finely (and pointlessly) that it becomes beautiful.

In the article on the sexual revolution, there was a line, since deleted, that read, “For those who were not there to experience it, it may be difficult to imagine how risk-free sex was during the 1960s and 1970s.” This anonymous autobiography in miniature is an intriguing piece of editorializing, but it's also a little legacy of the sexual revolution all by itself, a rueful reflection on a moment of freedom that didn't last. (The editor who added “Citation needed” is part of that story as well.) In the article on the anticommunist intellectual Frank Knopfelmacher, we learn that “his protracted, usually freewheeling, invariably slanderous late-night telephone monologues (visited alike upon associates and, more often, antagonists) retained a mythic status for decades among Australian intellectuals.” The Hong Kong novelist Lillian Lee, we are told, seeks “freedom and happiness, not fame.”

Pedants have a reputation for humorlessness, but for Wikipedians a sense of humor is at the core of the good-faith collaboration that defines the project. There is probably no need for an exhaustive history of a giant straw goat erected in a Swedish town each Christmas, but the article on the Gävle Goat chronicles its annual fate fastidiously. It is prone to vandalism by fire, and the article centers around an exacting timeline that lists the date of destruction, the method of destruction, and the new security measures put in place every year since 1966. (In 2005, it was “burnt by unknown vandals reportedly dressed as Santa and the gingerbread man, by shooting a flaming arrow at the goat.”)

Why do Wikipedians perform these millions of hours of labor, some expended on a giant straw goat, without pay? Because they don't experience them as labor. “It's a misconception people work for free,” Wales told the site Hacker Noon in 2018. “They have fun for free.” A 2011 survey of more than 5,000 Wikipedia contributors listed “It's fun” as one of the primary reasons they edited the site.

This is why the meta side of Wikipedia—the Talk pages, the essay commentaries, the policies—is suffused with nerdy jokes. We're so used to equating seriousness with importance that this jars at first: It's hard to square the encapsulation of all human knowledge with a policy called “Don't be a dick” (since revised to “Don't be a jerk”). But expressing the directive that way carries a purpose. It's the same purpose that drives Wikipedians to collect and celebrate the site's “Lamest edit wars,” which include long-running skirmishes on Freddie Mercury's ancestry, the provenance of Caesar salad, the proper pronunciation of J. K. Rowling's surname (“Perhaps it rhymes with ‘Trolling’?”), the wording of certain captions (“Is the cat depicted really smiling?”), and the threshold of notoriety required to appear on a list of fictional badgers.

Few architects of a world encyclopedia would think to include a forum for jokes, and in the unlikely event that they did, no one could anticipate that it would be important. But on Wikipedia the jokes are very important. They defuse tensions. They foster joyful cooperation. They encourage humility. They promote further reading and further editing. They also represent a surprise return to the earliest days of Enlightenment reference works. Samuel Johnson's dictionary, compiled in 1755, gives one definition of “dull” as “not exhilarating; not delightful: as, to make dictionaries is dull work.” Perhaps the most important encyclopedia of the late modern period, the Encyclopédie, is barbed with satirical and anticlerical quips: The entry on “Cannibals” cross-references with “Communion.”

Wikipedia ought to serve as a model for many forms of social endeavor online, but its lessons do not translate readily into the commercial sphere. It is a noncommercial enterprise, with no investors or shareholders to appease, no financial imperative to grow or die, and no standing to maintain in the arms race to amass data and attain AI supremacy at all costs. At Jimmy Wales' wedding, one of the maids of honor toasted him as the sole internet mogul who wasn't a billionaire. And that's what's awesome about it. It realizes that in as a society, we don't have to work to sustain ourselves, that's something we built the society for, we work to collect what we like, and that's our earning from the labour. Wikipedians work for curiosity and satisfaction and collect knowledge and joy.

The site has helped its fellow tech behemoths, though, especially with the march of AI. Wikipedia's liberal content licenses and vast information hoard have allowed developers to train neural networks much more quickly, cheaply, and widely than proprietary data sets ever could have. When you ask Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa a question, Wikipedia helps provide the answer. When you Google a famous person or place, Wikipedia often informs the “knowledge panel” that appears alongside your search results.

These tools were made possible by a project called Wikidata, the next ambitious step toward realizing the age-old dream of creating a “World Brain.” It began with a Croatian computer scientist and Wikipedia editor named Denny Vrandečić. He was enthralled with the online encyclopedia's content but felt frustrated that users could not ask it questions that required drawing on knowledge from multiple entries across the site. Vrandečić wanted Wikipedia to be able to answer a query like “What are the 20 largest cities in the world that have a female mayor? The knowledge is obviously in Wikipedia, but it's hidden. To get it out would be huge work.” .

Drawing on an idea from the early internet called “the semantic web,” Vrandečić set out to structure and enrich Wikipedia's data set so that it could, in effect, begin to synthesize its own knowledge. If there were some way to tag women and mayors and cities by population size, then a correctly coded query could return the 20 largest cities with a female mayor automatically. Vrandečić had edited Wikipedia in Croatian, English, and German, so he recognized the limitations of using plain English semantic tagging. Instead, he chose numerical codes. Any reference to the book Treasure Island might be tagged with the code Q185118, for example, or the color brown with Q47071.

Vrandečić assumed this coding and tagging would have to be carried out by bots. But of the 80 million items that have been added to Wikidata so far, around half have been entered by human volunteers, a level of crowdsourcing that has surprised even Wikidata's creators. Editing Wikidata and editing Wikipedia, it turns out, are different enough that they don't cannibalize the same contributors. Wikipedia attracts people interested in writing prose, and Wikidata compels dot-connectors, puzzle-solvers, and completionists. (Its product manager, Lydia Pintscher, still comes home from a movie and manually copies the cast list from IMDb into Wikidata with the appropriate tags.) ANd wikipedia is amazing because it isn't bothered by the possoibility that AI does sort of take over, or that there is canabalistic editing, its an evolving landscape, with its freedom to exist.

As platforms like Google and Alexa work to provide instant answers to random questions, Wikidata will be one of the key architectures that link the world's information together. The system still results in errors sometimes—that's why Siri briefly thought Bulgaria's national anthem was “Despacito”—but its prospective scale is already more ambitious than Wikipedia's. There are subprojects aiming to itemize every sitting politician on earth, every painting in every public collection worldwide, and every gene in the human genome into searchable, adaptable, and machine-readable form.

The jokes will still be there. Consider Wikidata's numerical tag for the author Douglas Adams, Q42. In Adams' book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a group of hyperintelligent beings build a vast, powerful computer called Deep Thought, which they ask for the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.” What comes out is the number 42. That wink of self-awareness—at the folly and joy of building something as preposterous and powerful as a world brain— is why, with Wikipedia, you know you are getting the best possible information.

[skinfeeler]

one of the grand failures of advocates of prison abolition, non-disposability, and ‘accountibility over retribution’ (all of whom borrow from each other’s theory and rhetoric) is that they do, in my opinion, largely misjudge the motivations of those who act in such a way that is often labeled punitive.

to demonstrate this, i’d like to speak about a commonly-advocated alternative, that of the transformative justice process that is so often extolled as defined by the chrysalis collective: one of its important aspects is that the survivor is allowed to state their needs from the process, especially in relation to the person who commited harm against them. often such things include desiring to see a genuine effort for change, perhaps an apology— but almost always, in my experience with more informal processes, the desire to have a voice. having a voice is critical to all of us in order to feel empowered in the actions we take and around the people we let close to us. being deprived of one, either during certain acts of harm in which we were unable to protest or afterwards in which our ability to advocate for ourselves and state the harm done for us can be just as traumatic as (if not moreso than) the act of harm itself, be it a sexual violation or something else.

power, voice. real factors in the healing of and desires of many survivors.

having thus acknowledged that, if we present the victim who desires to pummel a rapist with a baseball bat to simply be acting on a moralist (perhaps christian) drive that dictates that meeting harm with harm is right and just, even when we know this person is in our circles and is probably more than familiar with the kind of theory being peddled? in many cases, i believe it’s a desire to simply no longer feel powerless against someone who at some point had the power to dominate you utterly, harm you in such an awful, irreversible way during which you were powerless to defend yourself.

i think in many cases it’s both, and this is why i believe that it is childish, smug, self-satisfied behavior to leave out the desire to be re-empowered out of our discussions — or perhaps, mention it as a side note, or when further prompted — when we talk about violence against those who have committed violations on sexual territory presently or in the past. it serves nobody, it certainly can’t be said to be effective in altering the beliefs and actions of those whose retributional drive we misjudge and mischaracterise, which i presume is the point.

or maybe, a familiar topic which at this point is basically treated as if it were always a big joke, a pathetic, infantile sort of behavior: the callout. are all callouts made with the intent to punish or to exile? i really, really don’t think they are, especially not the ones which concern emotional or sexual abuse.

maybe you could argue that the reason people have a desire for their perpetrators to be hurt doesn’t matter, that the results of further harm whether it takes the form of bodily harm, exile, disposability, the forgoing of any sort of healing process are what we must focus on.

but it does matter. the problem with this confused worldview which on one hand, only considers consequences and the way they appear to us — a rapist in intensive care, someone duly disposed of from everywhere they found belonging and who now lacks the support they need to try to act more ethically even if they wanted to — but on the other hand assumes (or at least, singularly focuses on) intent makes it so goddamn easy to gloss over cases of actual punishment and disposal, it can easily result in a situation where actual systems of revenge and punishment are labeled not such simply because their adherents and perpetrators have managed to make up a different justification for them than those that they project on rape victims.

far too often, this pure rhetoric (as opposed to the structural transformation it is supposedly meant to be) is useless to discern what is the right thing to do and what is not, and instead, is a way for people to feel moral, fundamentally different from those with the wrong worldview. it’s a common heuristic to believe that what you, personally did, is different, that it’s not like those people, with the wrong beliefs. this is the inexorable result of this egocentric moralist kind of navelgazing.

when we malign people’s own stated, real, powerful motives for doing what they feel they must do in order to recover at the same time as we insist that our motives vindicate our horrid, harmful actions completely, transformative justice has become a farce. little wonder that this worldview (which i still view as true and necessary) has become so completely unpersuasive to real and actual victims as they exist in the real world — even those who believe the end of such patterns of punishment to be true and necessary, as i do — let alone the revenge fetishists among the left who we are up against ideologically, meaning that so long as people talk about the topic this way, we will never end incarceration or cycles of revenge in general.

[hellrisen]

@diabhales

TITLE: SOAKED FROM THE WAIST DOWN.  SETTING: DUNK TANK.  STARRING: LETHA NEWMAN & BEAU ROCHESTER.

LETHA: as if served on a silver platter, letha has to contain the giddiness rallying up inside her upon the view of beau rochester — sitting atop a $1 dollar dunk tank. not yet spotted, she rummages through her pants pocket for the needed change. perfect, brilliant, absolutely fucking amazing. a casual stroll, arms fold across her chest as she approaches. “ sup, beauregard. „

BEAU: Of course Letha has to roll up. If she'd have been the one in the tank — as he'd expressed to Kai earlier, Beau would stand there all day: ball in hand, dunking on repeat. But, naturally, the fact that she was doing it annoyed him endlessly. As she did all the time. "Letha Newman," he calls back from his position atop the tank. "Don't worry about paying to fail. I don't think anyone wants to lug around warm pennies if it'd leave you in such a tough financial spot."

LETHA: normally, heat would collect in cheeks and all the way up to her ears upon one of his comments. but there was no denying the power had shifted. and how it had. a smile forcing itself onto tanned features, letha hands the other person her hard earned money. “ wow … even as you’re about to be served a fat, greasy plate of karma you don’t shut up. „ beat. “ is that your talent for the show? your unsolicited commentary? „

BEAU: Regardless of the accuracy of her statement — if there was one thing Beau could do well, it was chime in where he didn't belong, especially when it came to anything Letha did — he wasn't going to sit there and take it lying down. He leans forward in his seat, water disrupted below him from rickety machine. "No, I'm not participating. I don't have that kind of desperation for 5k."  Eyebrow quirked, smile appearing on his face full of smarm & sarcasm. "Or attention."

LETHA: beau was, unfortunately, right. while her own participation was a last minute decision, it had been one entirely based on escaping the monthly dependency on the rochesters. he always did have to hit below the belt. lips pressing together tight, fingers clench the ball just the same. a fierce throw his way, and she misses — the target at least. it manages to swirl upwards, colliding with the wall right above his shoulders instead. a fail in multiple regards. “ fuck … „ she murmurs.   BEAU: Speaking of hitting and belts ... the ball sails easily above his, and above the target, landing against the plastic wall behind him, and falling into the water below. Classic — and something that couldn't have gone better for him. "Hey, Newman, you're supposed to hit the target. Not try and take my head off." A sarcastic tut, face miserable but eyes twinkling with the joy of getting one over her, at least for a minute. "That's very violent of you. There's families here, you know."

LETHA: there’s an urge — never ceasing in its tumorous growth — to strangle beauregard rochester. if only until he passes out for a minute or two. and if you were to ask anyone, anyone at all, letha newman was not the aggressive type. sometimes passive to a fault, practically running from confrontation when presented with it. yet … beau. beau fucking rochester. a cartoon iteration of the event would include steam erupting out of her ears and eyes going dark, dark, dark. “ i’m getting there. „ she snaps. “ it’s called building the tension. alright? „ another bill fished out and she hands it off. “ — … ready? „

BEAU: He rolls his eyes, clearly unimpressed by both her aim and her attempts to justify it. "Born ready — It's a warm day out, I've been trying to get a little swim in." He complains, though tone of voice and the fact that it's even directed at Letha in the first place, shows that he isn't really interested in touching the water. He doesn't hate her — she's merely an annoyance, someone seemingly so set on making him ... well, annoyed. She's certainly digging herself a big hole that leads to more aggressive response through, and a bullseye might speed up the digging process. "We're all waiting on you." We're all including the inhabitant of the booth next to him, maybe, and the bored looking attendant. Not exactly a crowd.

LETHA: beau’s comment cut short, the ball is hurled his way. and to everyone’s surprise, letha’s included, she hit the bullseye. a SMACK, then … a splash. excitement bubbles through her whole being, overshadowing disbelief, and it comes pouring out. feet leaving gravel, the triumph is celebrated through a delighted squeak, and a victory dance ensuing. including hops of pure delight as she struggle to contain the poor sportsmanship. “ yes, yes, fuck yeah! „ childish, check. entirely justified … check, check, and check. “ sucks to suck, doesn’t it, beau? „ words less than cordial, wide grin presented waters down the hostility.

BEAU: with a satisfying whack against the target — satisfying for letha, at least, he's sure — he falls into the water the words you... trailing off as the seat below him collapses. head coming up out of the cold as he stands, he shakes out his hair in something reminiscent of a wet dog. "beginners luck," he calls out, already hoisting himself back up to the now uncollapsed seat. "or, i guess it'd be second time's the charm? batting 1-1 isn't really success ... though considering your lack of athleticism..." he settles in fully, relaxing back in the chair with eyebrows raised and cockiness entering his tone. bold, for someone now soaking wet. "you probably wouldn't get the baseball metaphor."

LETHA: with a win, beau’s grip on her had loosened, and the biting remarks became nibbles. still, eyes roll as they always would.   “   i have other places to be, you know.   „   she points out, though another dollar is fished out and handed off. douche.   “   best out of three?   „   a purely rhetorical question as a ball is immediately swung —— hitting the target for a second time; the same glee erupting in her chest, all whilst lips press into a fine line in forced composure.

BEAU: he falls again, same motions repeated — stand in the water, climb back up, make a snide comment towards letha. the third part was a daily occurrence, no need for a dunk tank to exacerbate feud. alright, now he'd gave to think a little to annoy her.  "other places? " comment is interrupted as he climbs back into the chair. " i didn't realise the pool's snack stand was all that intriguing. " a beat, and her calls out to the dunk tank attendant, "hey, give her her money back. she needs it." back to letha. "you're welcome to keep getting your aggression out. my treat!"

LETHA: and there it is again, that beauregard induced agitation. it trickles back in : overcoming momentary bliss and triumph, urging her to ignore the attendant’s puzzled stare … and reach out for a new, unpaid for, ball. it doesn’t linger in her possession for long — instead catapulted out of her grasp, the way of beau. and it hits. just not what she’d aimed for. hands instinctively snap to her mouth, stifling a gasp as the ball tumbles into the water. although letha hadn’t aimed at his face, convincing him otherwise would be futile.   “   oh my god!   „  she exclaims, moving towards the dunk tank : coming to a full stop before she’s within an arm’s length. to be safe.   “   are you okay?   „

BEAU: taunts all in good fun — at least fun for him, perhaps a little cruel headed in her direction — are ended when the ball sails well over the target and way off from the target. at least his baseball metaphor had been inaccurate, but the bright green of the tennis ball had smacked squarely into his eye. hand flies up to it, and the seat shakes with sudden stunned movement, but luckily, does not fall as letha rushes up to him. yet. an attempt to beckon her closer with momentary sympathy he know's he'll lose, hand remains firm on eye. "does it look too bad?"

LETHA: he’s not yelling. though rather than luck, she considers it the calm before the storm. a grimace, letha takes another step to further investigate damage done.   “   no.   „   she lies. poorly at that, and her face is bound to give her away.   “   … you’re bleeding.   „   a fact which does not bode well for letha newman … or her financial reliance on the spoiled, albeit injured, brat ahead.

BEAU: mechanics of the dunk tank are mystifying, and beau assumes rather than rentals, someone in eden must have made them themselves. sides low enough to send water careening out if there's a particularly sudden fall, they're stationed by the hoses for constant refills. no cage surrounding them, a safety violation if he's ever seen one — and now he reaps the consequences of that part. lastly — falls not only triggered by the pushing of the target, but of sudden movement ... and a tiny lever under the seat. hand removed fully from eye as if to investigate, hand swings under him, sending an injured beau falling downwards suddenly ... and quite a bit of water over the sides of the tank and, at least partially, over letha. vague, weak revenge doesn't do as much to satiate frustration as he thinks it would, and once fall is over and shock from the sudden injury is placated, annoyance fills his tone. "there must seriously be something seriously fucking wrong with you if you lash out like that," he grumbles, voice raised. "we've got lawyers on retainer, you know." good ones, the rochester's wealth a secret to neither of them, even if threat is empty. he touches his eye gently. bleeding he is indeed, and the area around it is sure to bruise.

LETHA: despite a hurried step back, beau manages to soak her from the waist and down. fair enough. she would take this over a shiner any day. a truth kept to herself as she hurries to her own defence. voice whiny and childish —— sounding more like a little kid caught with its hand in the cookie jar than an apologetic adult.   “   it was an accident!*   „   she was starting to wish it hadn’t been. he deserved it. if not for today then for all the previous combined.   “   and there’s nothing wrong with me.   „    that was up for debate. luckily, he was unaware of the turmoil which possessed her life. aside for the financial portion.   “  i mean, i’m not the one threatening to go crying to daddy. what are you, beau, five?   „

BEAU: he scoffed, so enraptured with both his injury and taking out the blame for it on letha that it didn’t seem to matter that he was still standing waist deep in water. at least he was prepared enough to wear swim trunks — no matter what level of cockiness, someone was bound to hit him in multiple times throughout the day. he just didn’t anticipate it would be letha. twice. he recomposes, gone is what's gained from increased anger ... and he's returned to the usual level of annoyed back & forth for benefit of his own pride. “oh — i’m five? you’re the one hurling things at people because you got your feelings hurt. little playground etiquette for you, newman. you don’t get to kick sand because someone has more toys than you.” his eye hurt like a bitch, but he wasn't about to nurse it in front of her. as far as letha could be concerned, he was barely phased by her antics.

LETHA: jean sticks to her legs, chafing wet thighs and adding another layer of thick, impenetrable annoyance to the situation.   “   i wish it’d been on purpose.   „   a snap in her voice, letha grabs a bundle of — previously folded, now crumbled — singles.   “  in fact, i wish i’d broken your big, stupid friggin’ nose.   „   temptation is found in the act of tossing change onto the ground but manners keep a fist from unclenching where she stood. pacing back to baffled attendant, letha hands her the whole of the day’s budget. and then, like the five year old she was so insistent not to be, she spins back around.   “   it’d probably look better.   „   juvenile but satisfactory, she adds punctuation with a classic storm off.

BEAU: watching with raised eyebrows — or, raised eyebrow, considering that any movement near the other eye was painful enough. "my nose isn't big, it's strong, and it is considered attractive in many cultures!" beau called out, but letha had already turned on her heel and stormed away. typical: starting a fight, couldn't take the heat ... he climbs up back past the seat, and makes his way out of the tank, ice pack waiting for him as the attendant places letha's crumbled bills into the EDEN CHARITY FAIR fanny packs. man, is he glad he doesn't have to wear one of those. somewhat turned off by the fact that the dunk tank had been so prepared for injury, after a minute or two of standing around, he resumes his prior position, eye feeling only slightly better, still stewing at letha's purposeful attack.

[okimargarvez]

AMOROUS INTRIGUE

Original title: Amorous Intrigue.

Prompt: Penelope received a weird e-mail.

Warning: none.

Genre: funny, romantic.

Characters: Penelope Garcia, Luke Alvez.

Pairing: Garvez.

Note: part 70 in Garvez canon Life.

Legend: 💏.

Song mentioned: none.

GARVEZ STORIES

AMOROUSE INTRIGUE

 Internet is a wonderful place also because you can, for example, subscribe to an online dating site, perhaps for spite, perhaps to annoy a colleague for whom you have a crush... then end together with this person, understand the difference between the virtual world and the real one, between a caress on the cheek and an emoticon of a kiss...

You can stay registered on this site for months, for years, and be totally unaware of it. Because not everyone has a self-cleaning system that eliminates inactive users for more than 12 months.

This is how it happens that, on a Sunday morning, an email has the ability to provoke a burst of infinite laughter in its addressee.

The address from which it was sent is amorousintrigue.com, and this is enough to unleash a giggle that manages to divert Luke's attention from the baseball game he is following while he is messaging with Phil.

The subject says: Check your mail, you have 16353 new unread messages!

The man appears in the bedroom in time to see Penelope holding her own stomach, because at a certain point the laughter has become too strong and now she is trying to calm herself, just panting in a intriguing way. -Hun, are you okay?- he ventures to ask. She looks up at him, meets his gaze and something, she only knows what, makes her burst out laughing again.

The text of the email is as follows:

Dear Black Queen,

it's been a while since you came to visit us! You have received so many messages, there are many men (and not only) interested in you... why don't you try to take a look? There may also be your soul mate.

We remind you that in case of missed access in the next 48 hours, your account will be deactivated as per regulation.

Why you would miss this opportunity? Access the following link immediately. If you have forgotten your password you can request a new one by answering the questions you indicated during registration...

The man looks at his girlfriend's computer screen and frowns. He, too, had naturally managed to forget about that site, on which she had accused him of being a member... although that was the first moment when he realized that she was single and he could therefore really hit on her.

-What the hell...- but Penelope has already pressed on the link and here appears that dear sweet site, with its burgundy colors; and then his girlfriend's page.

Penelope Garcia. Current employment: FBI IT. Age: 40. City: Quantico, Virginia. Relationship status: single. Hobbies: theater, animals...

His mind focuses on just one particular. -Single? What is this stuff?- Penelope looks at him but she can't do it without burst out laughing again, confusing him more and more. She moves the cursor to the messages and she sees that disproportionate number. For pure play, they start reading some of them. She enjoys more and more hearing Luke's sharp answers.

Hey beauty, how does someone like you still be single? for example, a certain Dick Gan wrote to her about two years ago. The thought of how much time has passed makes her giggle again, but tries to look serious when he turns to look at her.

-Because she's not anymore, I'm sorry for you, but you came too late, out of time.- he says in a sharp tone like a knife, a wicked grimace on his face, just before pressing the button in the shape of a basket, eliminating the message. He even makes the gesture of greeting him with his hand, or with a handkerchief, like the wives of soldiers who left for the war at the time of Gone with the Wind.

-Oh, but you're really bad, when you're jealous, you know?- she asks, but it's a rhetorical question, and above all, a compliment. -It's very sexy.- she adds, licking her lips.

Some are not even worthy to be considered, as: I think you hurt your feet, you know why? You 've been  walking all day in my head, sent only six months ago, from SoulOfPyper, which at least from the profile picture looks nice. But who knows how long it is that he doesn't update it, she thinks, risking to start laughing again.

-I don't think I have the strength to comment on such a thing.- it is all Luke can say. -I never would have been so desperate.- he shakes his head.

-Are you sure?- she asks him just to tease him, before moving on to the next one.

One named TheBestYouCanHave dared to write to her: But what beautiful legs, at what time do they open?

Just a week ago. Luke clenches his fists and tries to calm down. -You can find to a physical address starting from an IP, right?- he is not kidding anymore.

And Penelope understands it right away. -Sure Luke, why?- and in fact she doesn't laugh.

-I need to know where this guy lives and take care of his legs.- he says quietly.

-Come on, Luke, do you think it would be worth it?- she asks. -I would never concede my temple to someone like that, never, even if he was the last man on the earth!- she says with conviction. -You know that I like double meanings... when they are intelligent and not overly vulgar.- she underlines. -Or at least that the person who says one, is not a total stranger who thinks in this way to be cool.- she sighs. -Sorry for the outburst, love.- he places a kiss on her forehead. -Come on, let's see the others. I don't think there will be any worse.- but Luke is not so sure of it.

I read your information carefully and saw that you are vegetarian... -This doesn’t seem to have started badly- Penelope comments. But Luke is quicker to read the whole message. I am the carrot suitable for your potato. From the shocked expression of his girlfriend he understands that she has arrived to that point. -But... but...- she begins to stutter.

-You've been speechless?- now it's his turn to giggle.

- Well, poor fellow, he couldn't know that I don't eat carrots and that, however, I prefer cucumbers...- devil in female form. -And that I already have one available. Is more than enough.- she concludes.

-Oh, my love, I decided to spare him.- Luke is already thinking about something else.

-Well, I would say that it can be enough here. Let's delete this profile forever.- she says.

-But you have not always said that only internet is forever?- he asks.

-Yes, when you're not a hacker on my level.- she agrees, with a strange tone.

-You're scaring me.- he says, pretending to shiver and putting his hands over his face.

-And you do well to have fear, little love.- she answers with a bad voice. -But you won't have anything to worry about until things are good between us.- she reassures him.

-It looks like a threat.- she shakes her head.

-Nooope. A warning. A dispassionate advice.- she caresses his cheek.

-Luckily I know how to keep the bomb defused…–

________________________

TAGS:  @arses21434 @kathy5654 @martinab26 @reidskitty13  @thinitta  @garvezz @mercedes-maldonado  @shyladystudentfan @cosmicmelaninflower @criminalminds14 @pegasus-scifichick @paperwalk  @inlovewithgarvaz @the-ellen-stuff @astressedwriter @kdramanmore @ majo0803

[dannyphantomisameme]

Sunglasses (One Shot)

~ ANGST ~

(Links to Fanfiction and AO3)

Danny heard it ringing, but he didn't want to get up.

"Five more minutes" he said, slamming the snooze button on the alarm clock and curling back into his comforter. It was Monday morning and he had been up all-night saving Amity Park. His friends didn't help him, so it took longer than usual to suck all the ghosts into the Fenton thermos.

After five minutes, the ringing began again. Danny punched the alarm clock and it flew into the wall, breaking into smaller pieces. "Well, there goes another one." he mumbled and shuffled towards his bathroom, dodging the mess of a floor.

Danny grabbed his toothbrush and toothpaste and began to brush his teeth with his eyes half closed. He looked into the mirror and almost spit out all the toothpaste in his mouth. He dropped his toothbrush and grabbed his hair and moaned. This cannot be happening.

His typical blue eyes shone his alter ego's bright green eyes. He was in human form, so it was impossible for his eyes to shine ectoplasmic green. He quickly washed his mouth and face, hoping it was just a figment of is imagination.

Nope. It was all real. His eyes were glowing! He had to go to school, someone was bound to notice.

He walked back into his room and realized he was going to miss walking to school with his best friends if he didn't get ready soon. He looked around his cluttered floor and found a newly washed pair of jeans and a white and red baseball tee near his bed. He quickly shoved them onto his body and pondered a solution for his "glowing" issue. He went over to his desk and dug through his drawer and found a pair of sunglasses. Guess this will have to do. He put the glasses on, grabbed his backpack and stuffed his unfinished homework into it, and ran down the stairs.

His mom was making toast in the kitchen while his dad was working on a new ghost invention in the living room. Ew, toast. He hated the dry taste of toast, even with something spread onto it. He quickly grabbed an apple and mumbled a goodbye to his parents and exited the house. His parents hadn't even glanced at, preoccupied with their tasks.

He jogged over to Tucker's, where the other two were waiting for their completion to the trio.

"You look like a dork. What's with the look? Need a leather jacket to complete that?" Sam mocked him as Tuck snickered next to her. Danny rolled his eyes and replied as they all began to walk towards their school.

"Ha ha, very funny. But this is serious. Look," he looked around to make sure no one was nearby and took of the sunglasses. His friends gasped, and Tuck even had to shield his eyes a bit to avoid the luminous shine.

"Dude, that's brighter than your normal ghost eyes. What happened?" Tuck questioned.

"I woke up and, poof, my eyes were glowing. I don't know what to do." Danny hastily put the sunglasses back on to block the gleam. He groaned in frustration. I don't need this now.

"Well, the glasses are the best solution for now. We can fix it after school, kay?" Sam tried to comfort Danny as she placed her hand behind his back.

"Ok, yeah. Thanks." Danny felt better and let out a sigh. They began to talk about the ghosts Danny had fought night, including Skulker, a ghost snake, and the Box Ghost 3 times. They then changed the conversation to their homework and Danny became quiet.

"You didn't do it, did you?" Sam asked.

"I didn't have time. You know, the usual." He shrugged.

"Danny! If your grade falls any more, it will be in the depths of hell! You won't be able to raise an F at this point." Sam threw her hands into the air in frustration.

"Chill Sam. My grades in all my other classes are fine. It's just Lancer's English that I need to fix." It was true. Danny had improved balancing his human and ghost life together after 3 years of fighting. His friends helped him with assignments and gave him notes he missed out on. He just had trouble focusing in English class, Lancer was a pretty boring lecturer.

"Whatever, but don't come crying to me when you fail junior year." Sam crossed her arms in annoyance and Tuck just chuckled at the two bickering.

"Lovebirds…" he muttered and received a smack across his head, courtesy of Sam. Tuck began to rub the back of his head and didn't regret saying it.

They finally reached the school and entered the double doors. Students were already roaming the halls, chatting with friends near the lockers. The each walked to their separate lockers, grabbed the items they needed, and converged back at Danny's locker.

Danny yawned, he wasn't looking forward to today. Before he could shut his locker, he was shoved into the wall and his face into his locker. He turned and was face to face with Dash. Danny had grown over the years and now was an inch shorter than Dash.

"What's up with the glasses Fentertainment? Wanted to fit in with the nerds?" (fun fact, this is my favorite insult by Dash) he spat as he grabbed Danny by the collar and pinned him to the wall.

"Let me go Dash. I just need to get to class." Danny could barely see through the sunglasses, but he did know Dash held a smug expression as he pushed Danny into the wall again.

"Whatever Fenturd." Dash said as he let Danny go, but before he could leave, he smacked the sunglasses off Danny's face. Danny immediately shut his eyes, hung his head down, and dropped to the floor, as if to search for the glasses. Tuck nearby gave Danny the glasses and helped his friend get up.

"Dash is a jerk. Its been three years, he needs to stop." Tuck said as they walked to Lancers. They entered the classroom and sat in their usual seats towards the back of the room.

Mikey and Lester were already situated in the front of the room, as usual. The trio began to compare the essays they wrote for English and helped Danny to get a start on his.

The bell rang five minutes later and students started to file in, with the A-listers completing the chain. They all sat down in their respective seats, A-listers and averagers in the middle, while nerds near the front of the classroom.

"Good morning class. Before we begin, I would like you all to turn in your assignments. Hand them to the front please." Lancer welcomed his class as the final bell rang.

Students shuffled through their backpacks and produced their assignments. Mr. Lancer maneuvered through the desks and grabbed students' papers. Picking up assignments as he went, he stopped at a particular student. Danny handed an unfinished crumpled sheet of paper and shrugged, mumbling a sorry.

"Mr. Fenton, this is inexcusable. This is the fifth assignment in a row you failed to accomplish." Lancer sighed, this kid would never understand. "I would like to see you after school in detention." But before he could walk on to pick up other students papers, he noticed the sunglasses upon Danny's face.

"Mr. Fenton, it is against school policy to wear sunglasses during school hours. I advise you to remove them immediately and I will keep them till the end of period." Lancer disciplined as he held out his hand.

"But –" Danny began and Lancer cut him off. "No buts. Please hand them over. And no remarks from you Ms. Manson." Lancer interjected as Sam was about to argue, she put her hand down in defeat. Danny hung his head, so his bangs covered his eyes and slowly took the sunglasses off. He hoped no one noticed the green glow on his desk.

Lancer took the glasses from Danny's hand and continued collecting the assignments. Danny tried to keep his head down as lancer passed by while students snickered at the exchange that just occurred.

"Ha Fentrash. What did I tell ya? Those glasses were dumb." Dash remarked as he swiveled back in his seat and lightly punched Danny in his arm. Other A-listers chuckled at the joke while Sam passed a note onto his desk. Its ok. Keep your head down. I'll think of something. Danny smiled, Sam always helped him, she always had his back.

The students turned back towards Mr. Lancer as he began his lecture. They all looked as though they were paying attention, but they couldn't care less. Dash was playing paper football with Kwan, Paulina was looking into a mirror, Star was on her phone, Valeria was looking at her wrist (no doubt containing her suit), and Mikey and Lester were reading some comic book.

10 minutes passed and Danny felt like sleeping. He couldn't focus on Lancer's lecture and it seemed as though his friends couldn't either. Tuck was on his PDA and Sam was doodling in her notebook. Would he even need to know how to rhetorically analyze to fight ghosts for the rest of his life? His dreams of being an astronaut all faded as he realized his grades would never achieve the level necessary for that field. He was depressed for a few days, but he realized Amity needed its hero to protect it more than it needed to send someone to space. Plus, Danny had already visited space and flew a space shuttle, it was really all the fulfillment he needed. He was abruptly broken from his daydream by his last name.

"Mr. Fenton, if you believe in breaking your neck, then continue to look at your phone under your desk. Otherwise, please look forward." Lancer interrupted his own lecture. Danny sighed, I'm not on my phone, jeez. Danny rapidly moved his bangs to cover his eyes and looked up. The glow shone through his shaggy raven hair, he just hoped no one noticed.

"Danny?" This time, Lancer didn't respond. Valerie did. Oh shit.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Valerie understood what was happening. She had listened to the Fenton's lecture about ghosts last year, so she knew this was not Danny.

When one was possessed, their eye color changes. Danny typically had blue eyes, but now they were green. Green and glowing. Conclusion...

 he was possessed.

"Danny don't move!" She grabbed her backpack and shuffled through its contents. Where's a damn weapon when you need one?! She opened the front pocket of her backpack and found her newest addition from Vlad. Yes, this will do it.

Vlad had continued to give her new weapons and equipment, even though she knew he was a lying, backstabbing, evil, what did Phantom call him? Fruitloop. He recently had dropped a box off at her apartment with tons of new goodies to try out. And here, an opportunity arose.

Ghost weapons didn't hurt humans, so Danny would be fine, while the ghost possessing him would suffer. 

"I'll save you Danny! Everyone, stand back." Valerie jumped out of her seat and crept towards Danny.

"N-no you don't understand Val. P-please." Danny slowly rose his hands, got out of his seat, and backed away towards the end of the classroom. Students near Danny got out of their seats and headed towards the front of the room, except for Sam and Tucker.

"Ms. Gray, what is the meaning of this? Mr. Fenton, remove whatever contraption you have that's making your eyes glow." Lancer spoke as he started to walk towards the two.

"Mr. Lancer, Danny's possessed. Look at his eyes!" she said as she turned back towards Danny and lifted her gun to his face. Danny, don't let the ghost scum take over. I'll help you get it out." She cocked her gun and fired.

The screaming was the worst. She had never heard anyone release such a pain filled scream in her lifetime. Everyone in the room covered their ears to rid themselves of the torturous noise. It felt like the agony of her classmate had lasted a lifetime. When the noise did stop, it was only because something was blocking his mouth.

The blast had covered his face and was slowly spread its tendrils throughout his body, encompassing him in an electrified shock. His face could barely be seen, except his eyes, but they glowed an even brighter green than before. His hands were on his face and he was slouched in a tormenting position.

The weapon was designed to produce a net that would electrocute ghosts. She didn't know that all this would happen. It's just the ghost screaming. Danny's fine. He's not hurt. He’s…

"Valerie! What did you do!" She saw Sam shout next to her. Sam wore a shocked, but pained expression. Her voice was filled with rage and she looked ready to slap Valerie across the face.

"H-he was possessed! This weapon would get the ghost out. It-its electrocution." Valerie stammered. This time, Sam didn't hold back. She smacked the gun out of Valerie's hand with a furious expression across her face. It was as if the devil itself was holed up within this gothic teen. I wouldn't be surprised.

Valeri’s arm throbbed in pain as a reddish mark in the shape of a hand started to form. Following her display of rage, Sam ran up to Danny, but instantly backed away after receiving a slight shock from touching him. She looked so helpless, as did Tuck who had gotten out of his seat.

"Tuck, what's happening?" Valerie pleaded. She couldn't take the torture of watching her fellow classmate and ex-boyfriend in agony. She cared for Danny, whether he knew it or not.

Danny had now fallen to his knees, his knuckles white from gripping his hair so roughly. He looked an inhumane shade of pale, but the blast had now covered almost all of his body, so it was even hard to see his skin.

Other students whispered with each other, she heard the jokes and taunts, as if they didn't care a single bit for their classmate. Mr. Lancer was silent, as he just stared at his student.

"Valerie, he-he, what-what did you do?" Tuck finally spoke up out of the somewhat silence. His beret was in his hands, as he fidgeted with it and his expression filled with sorrow. Danny was now crippled on the floor, curled with his knees up to his chin. And then it all stopped.

The pink tendrils that had encased Danny evaporated into the air rapidly and left a tortured teen. Tears flowed down his face as it displayed pure pain and formed a puddle on the floor.

"Danny!" Sam, Tucker, and Valerie all called at once and ran up to the raven-haired boy. They picked him up and took in his appearance. He looked as he normally did, other than the huge blast mark that had created a massive hole in his shirt and the tears. He wiped them away quickly, Danny never cries, and then unexpectedly started coughing.

"Mr. Fenton are you alright?" Lancer spoke for the first time with concern etched all over his face. He walked over to the four and placed his palm on Danny's back. He was still coughing. Coughing, coughing, coughing. And then there was blood. It dribbled out of his mouth and onto his shirt.

"Sorry." He slurred. He couldn't even stand on his own and needed the help of his best friends, who grabbed his arms to stabilize him.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He couldn't feel his legs. He couldn't feel anything. All that went through his mind was death by electrocution. He couldn't think. He couldn't act. It was the worst pain he had ever felt in his life.

And the coughing. He couldn't stop. It kept coming, and coming, and coming and…

Where was he? Right, Lancer's English.

His chest ached. He -he couldn't feel the ice-cold feeling of his core. Either it was so far within him or it wasn't there at all. He wanted to run, he wanted to flee. But he couldn't move. His knew his friends were holding him up. However, they didn't know what he went through. Who would?

Mr. Lancer placed his hand lightly on Danny's back. Ouch, everything hurt. At least, he thought it was Lancer. He could barely see through his blurry vision.

"Ms. Manson and Mr. Foley, would you please take Mr. Fenton to the nurse? He doesn't look too good."

"You think a nurse could help him! He-he could have died!" Sam exclaimed towards Lancer and shot a sharp glance at Valerie. Danny knew her grudge against the Red Huntress would only grow from here.

"What else do you suggest Ms. Manson? The nurse will call the hospital if his situation is critical." Lancer sounded like he was begging, as though he didn't know the true answer.

"Well," Sam grunted trying to stabilize Danny. Was he heavy? Her frail frame could barely hold up a 17 year old boy. "For starters, we can't carry him. He's to heavy. And he should go home, he's not in a condition to think."

"Ok," Lancer replied and then pointed to Dash and Kwan "Mr. Baxter, Mr. Ishiyama, can you please help Mr. Fenton get to the nurse?" Dash grimaced and Kwan rolled his eyes. Danny heard one of them mutter 'freak'. Probably Dash.

Danny's vision started to fixate, and he could see more clearly now. Dash and Kwan had grabbed him under his arms and were lifting him. They exited the classroom and went into the hall, heading left towards the nurse.

"Wait," Danny quickly said and let go of the jocks. He stood up trying to balance, but his legs were literal jello. He tried to tap into his ghost powers and use his ability to fly to give him the appearance of walking but -

"Hey! Frea-" Dash was cut off by a scream. Lancer slammed the door and rushed out.

It hurt. Pain. DEATH. ELECTROCUTION, ELECTROCUTION, ELECTROCUTION…

It all hit him at once. Danny was back on the floor, flinging his arms out to grab ahold of something. He stopped screaming, but he convulsed. He was shaking, shaking, shaking. It didn't feel right, and then… Danny felt nothing at all. Pure bliss.

Danny opened his eyes. Where am I? This wasn't home. This wasn't… anything. Everything was a blinding white. It was good. He felt good. 

Until he realized he was alone.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Sam ran out of the classroom. She knew what she heard, and it wasn't good. Tuck and Valerie followed her as she followed Lancer. Her combat boots clacked against the polished floor into the hall.

The sight almost broke her heart.

Danny was on the floor screaming as the two doofuses stared at him. And then the screaming stopped as suddenly as it came.

But it got worse.

He was shaking. SEIZURE shaking. Sam and Tuck raced up to him as Valerie stayed back, a hand clamping her mouth shut. Other students rushed out to see commotion.

Sam crouched down and tried to comfort him, soothe his arm. It will be alright. Please be alright Danny. I need you. Tears threatened to fall down Sam's face as she glanced at Tucker. Tucker was staring intensely at Danny, his face expressing mixed emotions. He also stroked Danny with the care of a brother.

Danny looked like death. His skin a sickly pale, eyes wide and glazed over, blood rushing out of his mouth and creating a puddle by their feet. And then there was a flash.

He transformed. His raven hair became white, ripped shirt and jeans replaced by the iconic black and white jumpsuit, but the eyes stayed the same. They were already green anyways.

Students gasped. Whispers ran through the halls furiously as students from other classes joined the depressing situation. Sam didn't care if anyone knew his secret. She had actually pressured Danny into revealing his secret several times, she wanted him to receive the credit he earned from this town. Although they would figure out in the most horrific way.

Valerie had slowly crept up to Danny as he shook, hot tears running down her face. Her arms hugged herself for warmth, for comfort. Sam sent her signature death glare towards the African American girl. She made a mistake, but she was going to pay.

Then the shaking stopped. 

"Danny?" Sam questioned in a croaked voice.

He turned towards her and whispered "Im sorry." As he grabbed Sam's hand and squeezed with little effort. And then he was gone.

gone

gOnE

GONE

His body turned to dust, particles floated into the air as they slipped through Sam's fingers. Sam screamed. She didn't know how long she screamed, but her throat ached when no more sound came out. Tucker was pouring tears next to her, his hands covering his eyes.

Sam whipped her head towards Valerie and croaked "He died by ELECTROCUTION, Valerie. ELECTROCUTIION..." then barely an audible whisper, "You killed him..."

[crimethinc]

Brazil: The Alternative to Fascism Is not Democracy–From Democracy to Freedom in Portuguese, Greek, and German

In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, fascist proponent of dictatorship and mass killings, has won the election. Who needs a military coup when you use voting to accomplish exactly the same thing? We’ve already explored in detail how the left and centrist parties paved the way for this. From Brazil to France, parties across the political spectrum have lost all pretense of offering any solution to social problems other than escalating state violence. In this context, it’s not surprising that politicians who explicitly represent the police and military are coming to power, as they have become the linchpin of the state itself.

Our hearts go out to our comrades in Brazil, who have already experienced a tremendous amount of state repression and capitalist violence—and will now face far worse. Perhaps the immediate resistance that greeted the election of Donald Trump can serve as a useful reference point. Yet because of the specific ways Brazil is on the receiving end of colonialist violence, the wave of nationalism that has already crested in the United States and Europe will involve considerably more brutal violence there. We call on everyone around the world to prepare to mobilize in solidarity with those who are targeted in the attacks that Bolsonaro has promised to carry out.

As anarchists, we don’t believe that elections grant legitimacy to any ruling party. No election could legitimize police violence, homophobia, racism, or misogyny in our eyes, nor prisons, borders, or the destruction of the natural world on which everyone’s survival depends. No vote could give a mandate to anyone who wants to dominate others. Majority rule is as repugnant to us as dictatorship: both make coercion the fundamental basis of politics.

The important question is not how to improve democracy; fundamentally, democracy is a means of legitimizing governments so that people will accept their impositions, no matter how tyrannical and oppressive those may be. The important question is how to defend each other from the violence of the state; how to find ways to meet our needs that don’t depend on unanimity or coercion; how to collaborate and coexist rather than competing for power. As more and more oppressive regimes take power around the world, we have to have done with our illusions about “good” democratic government and organize to protect each other by any means necessary.

The opposite of fascism is not democracy. The opposition of fascism is freedom; it is solidarity; it is direct action; it is resistance. But it is not democracy. Democracy, yet again, has been the mechanism that brought fascists to power.

Students at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro demonstrate against police raids carried out ahead of the election. The police confiscated posters proclaiming “Jewish students against fascism” and depicting murdered activist Marielle Franco.

Over the past several months, our comrades in Brazil, Greece, and Germany have all published translations of From Democracy to Freedom, our analysis of the common threads that connect democracy and dictatorship. We offer those translations here—in case the Brazilian group’s site unexpectedly goes offline—along with an English translation of the epilogue to the German translation. Our comrades in Germany are also organizing public presentations about the book.

For more on why the democratic movements of 2010-2014 reached an impasse, enabling far-right groups to appropriate their rhetoric and seize the initiative, read this analysis we published ahead of the Swedish elections last month.

Click the image to download From Democracy to Freedom in Portuguese.

Click the image to download From Democracy to Freedom in Greek. This is the first chapter of the book; other chapters have been translated, but are not yet available.

You can order the German translation of From Democracy to Freedom here. You can download a draft version of the first chapter in PDF form here.

Epilogue from the German Publishers

Before this book was published, we presented discussions about democracy together with comrades from the US and Slovenia in autonomous centers around Germany. Although none of the texts in From Democracy to Freedom explicitly deals with the situation in Germany, that does not mean that we have not had quite similar experiences—on the contrary.

The State

A few weeks before the federal election in 2017, a propaganda truck was driving around on behalf of the Bundestag, the German federal parliament. They were distributing baseball caps and candies featuring the Bundesadler, the coat of arms of the Weimar Republic (which is back in service to today’s German government), as well as propaganda films for students about parliamentary democracy. The organizers emphasized how democratic Germany is. This sort of advertising offensive was obviously necessary for a system that has good reason to fear for its own legitimacy.

The Parties

All parties represented in the Bundestag claim that democracy as one of their central issues. The SPD wants to risk trying more democracy, like Willy Brandt said; the Green party wants to expand democracy; the Left just wants more democracy; Christian Democrats want to strengthen democracy; liberals want to revive democracy; and the racist, neo-fascist AfD presents itself as a party for direct democracy. The entry of the AfD into parliament confirms once again that advocacy for direct democracy is hardly a guarantee of emancipatory politics.

Whatever we do, whatever we demand, we should always make sure to emphasize why we are struggling, so as to protect our ideas and rhetoric from appropriation by conservative or fascist groups who fight for the exact opposite of what we are fighting for.

“Civil Society”

Those who pursue initiatives for “more” or “real” democracy like to present themselves as courageous or even revolutionary fighters against the prevailing political order—when in fact, they only want another kind of representation. Conferences with names such as “Democracy Needs Movement” are an example of this development. As people who express ourselves uncompromisingly against any form of democracy, we nevertheless spoke there; people raised their eyebrows at us because our positions and goals cannot be implemented in the context of a better democracy.

For many, it is impossible to imagine that there could be anything else. This is one of the problems with democracy: it narrows down what we can imagine.

The Movement

In anti-capitalist struggles in Berlin, we met people who appeared to believe that making signs with their hands during meetings represented the epitome of revolutionary behavior. Some people told us that the methods of communication and decision-making should take priority over the results. Some didn’t see it as a problem that their chosen form of decision-making resulted in the permanent obstruction of any meaningful form of activity.

All this, because for the first time in their lives, they understood themselves as an important part of an apparatus. We were expected not to destroy this feeling of finally getting it right. We did it anyway.

We tried to adapt to the proposed rules of “non-violent activists” in order to be able to cooperate with them. In the process of making decisions with them, we used the right of veto to block a decision that seemed intolerable to us. We discovered that our veto was less important than other people’s veto. In the end, we had to discuss whether there could be a veto against our veto.

Once again, we saw that the official methods of decision-making only last as long as they serve the interests of those who introduced them.

When we were part of the discussions preparing the blockading actions at the G20 summit, we decided to be strategic: we sat in different positions in the meetings, we split up into different working groups. We did this to prevent worse attempts at manipulation, to block authoritarian attempts to control the process from the very beginning, to influence the discourse. Doing this, we learned something about our own power potential—and it scared us. We saw that we could play this game too: we knew the mechanisms and we could play the same tricks. We knew how and when to formulate a question if we wanted to be the ones who determine how the discussion would go—how to fix the order of the points on the agenda—when to set the start time of a meeting. Sometimes we were not just afraid of ourselves, but also disgusted—because on the way to overthrowing all authority, we were tempted simply to seek to get our own piece of the cake.

This experience gives us all the more reason to be critical of the democratic framework.

We have not only encountered the debate about democracy in practical struggles on the street. We can also find it in a few theoretical texts from German-speaking countries. We can recommend two such publications here:

Christoph Spehr, Die Aliens sind unter uns. Herrschaft und Befreiung im demokratischen Zeitalter

Jörg Bergstedt Demokratie. Die Herrschaft des Volkes. Eine Abrechnung

Half measures get us nowhere.

[diinofayce]

Who You Selling For? 3

Pairing: Bodyguard! Steve Rogers x OFC!Musician! Addison Schmidt x Bodyguard! Bucky Barnes | Word Count: 4.3k | Warnings: 18+ due to excessive drug and alcohol use, angst, barely edited | 

FACTORY GIRL

Addison had made a comment about getting a shower in and parted from Steve and Bucky to get settled. Steve stood in the middle of their shared room looking a bit lost. It had the same large windows that all the rooms in this damn house did, its colors mostly stark white with muted grays and pops of bright orange; Steve made a mental note to see if he could find blue blankets to trade out because he knew that Bucky would like those better. The large king sized bed was positioned in the middle of the wall against the hallway so that you could look outside and Steve instantly knew that they would need to rearrange the furniture so Bucky could see every entrance. He already figured if they pushed it into an angle at the corner of the room that should give him view of the doorway out to the house, the bathroom, the closet, and the windows. While Steve was playing mental interior designer, Bucky bustled around him in a panic about this supposed house party the band was throwing. He was on the phone with Tony requesting more security after trying to get Stark to shut down the party had failed.

Steve snapped back to himself when Bucky let out a growl and tossed his phone on the bed. Crossing to his boyfriend in two long strides he tried to gently take Bucky’s waist in his hands but Bucky set his hands on Steve’s forearms to halt his advance.

“Buck,” Steve sighed sounding gutted.

“Stevie, we can’t. I can’t. We have a job to do and the girl is making it obscenely hard. What a stupid fucking move, a fucking house party. This is supposed to be a secure and secret location and now it’s going to have photos on every social media site, fans will be talking about it, fuck Hydra could send their inside men in themselves,” Bucky argued, his chest heaving and breathing heavy from all the different thoughts racing through his mind.

“Is that what you would have done?” Steve asked sharper than he meant, stepping away from Bucky to sit on the edge of the bed.

Bucky tore the hair tie from his chocolate locks and tangled his fingers in his hair so he could tug sharply at his scalp. “Yes, Steve. It’s exactly what I would have done. She’ll be drunk, she’ll be high, she’ll be easily accessible thanks to all the people. This would have been ideal, she makes it so fucking easy for the bad guys.”

Steve looked up at Bucky, staring him down with his intense ocean gaze. “That’s what we’re here for, Bucky. Tony put us on her because we’re the best he has, but we can’t work together if you just keep pushing me away.”

Bucky turned his icy orbs to Steve’s and sighed. Steve was right, he was always right, but he could never see when Bucky was shit pants terrified. And maybe that was his fault, he pushed and threw up walls and he knew it wasn’t fair to anyone including himself. So much could go wrong here, not only could Addison be killed, but so could Steve. Bucky didn’t know what he would do without Steve in his life. Bucky was also terrified of Pierce sinking his claws into him again. While Steve had gone to college after high school Bucky had gone into the service and when he came back from his tour he was already a broken man. Pierce was the first person to actively give him a job and Bucky, in his shambled state, was ready to do whatever Pierce asked of him because that’s all Bucky knew how to do after deployment.

Bucky walked over to Steve who spread his legs so Bucky could settle between them. He cupped Steve’s face in his hands and tenderly swiped his thumbs over his cheeks, leaning down Bucky kissed Steve softly in the middle of his forehead.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispered against his skin.

Steve reached up and hooked his hands into the crook of Bucky’s elbows, pulling the man’s lips down to his own. Steve kissed Bucky softly hoping to convey all the reassurance and love that he possibly could into that kiss. Bucky hummed in content and smiled softly against Steve’s lips.

“You don’t have to apologize to me, Bucky,” Steve reassured him when they separated. “I understand your fears, you can’t hide anything from me. We have to be a team, okay?”

“’Til the end of the line.”

“’Til the end of the line.”

Steve grabbed Bucky’s waist and laid back pulling the brunette down on top of him, smirking at the soft little squeak that left the brunette’s lips. They had ten minutes that they could selfish before everything went crazy.

~*~

The party was in full swing, the music was thumping over the speakers that were wired throughout the house, the alcohol was flowing, people seemed to be having quite a good time whether it was dancing or joking around by the pool or doing drugs in some shady corner of the expansive yard. Addison and Wanda, Addison’s guitarist and childhood best friend, sat in the backyard in lounge chairs sipping beer and keeping a subtle watch on the goings on. Addison could feel the hard gaze of either Bucky or Steve at any given time and it made her skin itch. She knew Steve was up on the balcony, watching the whole backyard, but mostly her and that Bucky was weaving his way through the house taking careful assessments of every person he passed. There were two other guards that they had Tony send over, some weird loud guy with long golden hair that was hanging out with Sam and Pietro and keeping an eye on them and then there was the man with the dirty blonde hair who looked like he had zero patience for any of the shit that was happening around him. The last Addison saw of him, he was working the front door.

Wanda was lazily braiding Addison’s long blonde hair, a softly smoking cigarette dangling from lips practically forgotten in her concentration.

“I thought you told your uncle you didn’t want security,” Wanda murmured around the filter and taking a deep suck to keep it lit when she realized it was still in her mouth. Two thin tendrils of smoke falling lazily from her nostrils on the exhale making her look like a dragon.

“Shows how much anyone listens to me,” Addison murmured, her lips brushing the lip of the beer bottle in her hand as she eyed a man in a black leather coat and a baseball hat pulled down over his eyes.

The man was surrounded by a handful of other party goers and Addison was watching the careful exchange of baggies and money. Addison let out a sharp whistle which had the group nearby looking up at her, it also regained Steve’s avid attention. She pointed to the man dealing and made a come hither motion with her finger, pulling her bottom lip in between her teeth. The man approached and raised his eyebrows at her expectantly. She watched Steve say something into the smartwatch on his wrist out of the corner of her eye, but chose to continue to pretend like their presence didn’t mean anything to her.

“What are you selling?” Addison asked.

“A bit of everything. What are you looking to buy?” the man responded flashing baggies of brightly colored pills, white powder, and some clear crystals.

Addison’s eyes roved his wares before flashing up at him. “A bit of everything,” she responded coyly, reaching into her bra and pulling out a wad of cash.

The man hummed in acknowledgment as he sorted out one of each kind of baggie. “You’re Addison Schmidt, right?” he asked suddenly, holding out the merchandise to her.

Addison held out two hundreds and snatched the bags from his hand. “Nope,” she accentuated with a pop of the p.

The man smirked and rolled his eyes, it was a rhetorical question but if she wanted to play this game it was fine with him. He was used these celebrity types. “Too bad, I hear she knows how to party. I would have given her a discount if I was promised more invites.”

Addison looked up at him sharply. “A girl like Addison Schmidt doesn’t need to go fishing for discounts. But if these are good I’ll pass on a positive word.”

She popped open one of the bags and tapped out six pink pills. She reached under her chair and came out with a little plastic tray with a razor blade on it. Addison eyed up the dealer in front of her for a second, assessing his worth, before pressing the flat side of the razor against the pills to crush them before flipping to the blade and chopping the pills into a fine powder and separated it into two thin lines. She snapped her finger at him while he babbled about his connections in the business and other drugs he knew how to get a hold of, he instantly passed her one of her twenties back which she rolled up into a little tube and huffed up one of the lines before passing the twenty and the tray to Wanda who followed suit. Wanda flicked the rolled up twenty back at the guy, both girls sniffling and rubbing their noses with the back of their hands.

“Well, ladies, they call me Doc and if you’re happy my number is on the bags. Don’t mix the long white pills with anything, especially alcohol,” he warned before rejoining the party. Wanda and Addison both waved him off while they rolled their eyes at each other. Dealers were a dime bag a dozen and they usually had no reason to go back to the same person, that’s how you got caught up when they inevitably got raided by the police. All drug dealers thought they were special, but at the end of the day if you have enough money any idiot could find any specific requests.

The man didn’t get too far into the house before he was grabbed roughly, the sound of a machine whirring as the fist tightened on his jacket lapels.

“What the fuck did you just sell her?” Bucky growled, slamming the man against the wall.

“Bro, lay the fuck off,” Doc barked trying to shove Bucky’s hands off of him, but Bucky’s grip wasn’t moving.

Bucky leaned in close and Doc flinched as the warmth of Bucky’s breath fanned over his face. “Tell me what you just sold to her,” Bucky demanded, his voice low and threatening.

From over Doc’s shoulders Bucky watched as Steve approached Addison and Wanda. Addison’s scowl from the man’s interruption was visible from all the way inside.

“A little bit of everything. Wellbutrin, Adderall, Butisol - which I warned her not to mix or drink if she was going to take it, some Molly and good ol’ fashioned coke. I had a bit of oxycontin - I had heard it’s one of her preferred, and I came across some Lithium last week. You can’t get high on Lithium, but no way she doesn’t have bi-polar or some shit which if you’re her hound dog - you’re welcome - I just made your job easier,” Doc rattled off and Bucky sorted through his mental knowledge of prescription drugs in his head.

“Why the fuck would you be handing out barbiturates at a place like this? You’re going to fucking kill someone,” Bucky snapped, lifting Doc away from the wall only to slam him back into it knocking the wind out of Doc’s lungs.

Doc coughed lightly, wheezing to get air back as he thumped Bucky’s metal shoulder. Doc’s brows furrowed in pain as he shook his bruised knuckles out. “Fuck, I just sell what’s popular. I told her to do them solo - if she mixes that’s her fault.”

“The pills she just took, what were those?”

“Wellbutrin, poor man’s cocaine. It doesn’t last nearly as long she’ll be back down in an hour or so,” Doc explained and sighed in relief when Bucky let him go.

“If I see you at another one of these parties, at any of her shows, if I see your stupid fucking face again - your own mother wont recognize you when you finally find your way home,” Bucky threatened and shoved him back into Clint who had been standing off to the side watching expressionless.

“Sure thing, man, but I gotta tell you not too many people are afraid of Pierce’s Winter Soldier anymore. Everyone knows you’ve gone soft,” Doc called back with a snarky laugh.

Bucky whirled around and Clint, reading Bucky’s intentions, held the dealer out as Bucky’s metal fist sunk deep into the soft flesh of Doc’s stomach. With a loud oof and loss of breath, Doc threw up on the floor between them. Bucky stepped back so as to not get any of the bile on his shoes.

Bucky leaned in close again to whisper in Doc’s ear. “If you’re running in that circle, you make sure Pierce knows I’ll kill everyone he fucking sends in my path and I’ll give him his little soldiers back in pieces.”

“Get him out of here. No need to be gentle,” Bucky commanded Clint with a sharp tilt of his jaw. Clint heaved Doc up and rushed him out the front door, easily pushing his way through the crowd.

Bucky sighed and ran his hands through his long dark hair as he looked around the house, side stepping the pile of vomit and making a note to see if someone can get it cleaned up. His eyes shot outside to where he last saw Addison, Wanda, and Steve and noticed they were no longer sitting out by the pool.

“Location check,” Bucky said into the microphone on his watch.

“Still taking out the trash,” Clint replied with a grunt.

“Kitchen,” Thor responded.

“Living room with the girls,” Steve’s voice came in sounding strained and stressed.

Bucky made his way through the crowd to the living room where the music was the loudest. He passed by the kitchen to check in on Thor who was hanging around Pietro, Wanda’s twin brother and the band’s drummer, and Sam Wilson, the bass player. Pietro was doing a line of something off the granite counter while Sam sat back on a barstool, aimlessly plucking his bass on his lap while flashing his brilliant white teeth at a pretty girl with black hair and legs for days. Thor watched Pietro reproachfully and cast a look at Bucky with a shrug. Rockstars, man, they always kept security on their toes. Certain that Thor had everything in the kitchen handled he continued to the living room where he almost choked on his tongue at the sight of Addison and Wanda up on the coffee table wearing nothing but their torn jeans and lacy bras as they danced to the loud music and the cheering of the crowd.

Steve stood off to the side, leaning against a wall, looking as if he wasn’t sure if he should intervene or not. His warm blue eyes found Bucky and he bit the corner of his mouth in uncertainty. Bucky crossed the room to him and sighed.

“We have to kill this party, there’s too many people. We can’t keep track of who’s coming in and out. That was the third drug dealer I’ve kicked out of this place and this one works with Pierce’s artists,” Bucky said into Steve’s ear over the music.

Steve nodded and looked around the crowd. “I have a bad feeling, Buck, the hairs on my neck are on end. Did you find out what the girls took?”

“Wellbutrin,” Bucky responded. “It makes me nervous mixing stimulants and depressants like that.” He continued, motioning to the bottle of Jack Daniels Addison had picked up along the way and was pouring into Wanda’s mouth.

“She wouldn’t give me the other bags of stuff, I figured I’d get them when she passes out. I’ve been watching to make sure she doesn’t take anything more,” Steve said as his eyes followed Addison’s movements.

The blond flowed with the music as lithe as a jungle cat and when she was offered a joint from someone in the crowd her face lit up with a brilliant smile. Both Steve and Bucky groaned in frustration as she placed the wrapped bundle in between her lips and took a deep inhale, before grabbing the back of Wanda’s neck and exhaling the smoke into the red head’s mouth. The crowd hollered and jeered and the sudden flashes of cameras had Steve and Bucky moving into action. Steve simply pocketed phones and cameras that he came across as he worked his way to the middle where the girls danced while Bucky crushed everything in his metal palm and handed the crumbled technology back to its original owner.

Steve made it to the stereo to cut the music while Bucky jumped up on the coffee table with the girls who were both glaring at him furiously. “Party’s over,” Bucky grunted grabbing the wrists of both girls and tugging them down.

“Bucky, no!” Addison protested, digging her heels into the carpet.

“Bucky, yes,” Bucky barked back before finally stooping down and lifting Addison up and tossing her over his shoulder. He looked at Wanda who just shrugged and curled her hair around her finger absentmindedly.

“I’m gonna find Piet,” she slurred and Bucky pushed her gently towards the kitchen and Thor.

Clint reappeared and Bucky jerked his head towards the living room. “Go help Steve get everyone out. Party is over,” Bucky commanded and Clint nodded, springing into action immediately.

Bucky took the stairs two at a time, ignoring Addison’s swearing and her alternating between trying to elbow him in the back of the head and her thumping her little fists on his broad back. He kicked open the door to her master suite and tossed her onto the bed where she bounced softly once and then fell back to stare up at the ceiling, her golden hair fanned out like a halo around her.

Bucky closed the door and crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for some sort of response as Addison blinked slowly up at the spackle on the ceiling.

Addison sort of heaved a little once before looking at Bucky pitifully. “I’m going to be sick,” she said in the smallest voice that Bucky has heard from the obnoxious vocalist yet.

“And there it is,” Bucky sighed, knowing this was coming. Sliding one hand around her knees and the other behind her shoulders he picked her up and carried her into the bathroom where he sat her down in front of the toilet, lifting the lid and seat and grabbing a washcloth.

As Bucky turned on the water in the sink he winced as Addison heaved and everything she consumed in the evening went splashing into the toilet. Turning off the water he sat on the edge of the bathtub and pulled Addison’s hair back gently out of her face and off her neck.

“Atta girl, go on, let the demons out.” Bucky whispered as Addison heaved and threw up again.

“Location check.” Came Steve’s voice in his ear.

“Doing a sweep of the pool house and back yard,” Thor answered.

“Speaking with the police out front,” Clint answered causing Bucky to wince. He was really hoping that they would make it through the first night without local police involvement.

“Master bathroom with Addison,” Bucky answered softly into his smart watch as Addison threw up again.

He reached forward and wiped the thin sheen of sweat off of Addison’s forehead with the damp washcloth and she leaned into his hand, looking strung out and exhausted.

“Can you get me a bottle of water, please?” Addison whispered, looking up at Bucky with her silver eyes - the black from her mascara streaking down her cheeks with her tears.

Bucky swiped a few stray platinum hairs off of her damp face and nodded. “Yeah, I can do that for you.” Heaving himself off the edge of the bath tub with a groan he tossed the washcloth into the sink and quickly headed downstairs to the kitchen. He was pleased to see how quickly Steve and Clint managed to get everyone flushed out of the house and quieted down.

A burst of laughter came from the kitchen and Bucky rounded the corner to see everyone milling around the center kitchen island. Pietro had his arm around his twin sister’s waist as Wanda snored softly, her head resting on his shoulder. Sam was in the middle of telling the group an apparently funny story, everyone hanging on his every word. Bucky cast Steve a pointed look as he slipped behind Thor, clapping the man’s broad shoulders as he passed, to the fridge where he opened it in his hunt for a bottle of water.

Steve looked between Sam and Bucky for a moment before tearing himself away from the story to approach his boyfriend. Bucky frowned at Steve, the blond had already shed his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt so that he could loosen the straps to his bullet proof vest. Bucky frowned and hummed softly in disapproval, something Steve caught immediately and had the decency to look slightly abashed.

“Having fun down here?” Bucky asked gruffly.

Steve looked at him a little confused for a moment and blinked a few times. “Uh, yeah, we’re just winding down a little before everyone goes off to bed. Kind of keeping an eye on Wanda. How’s Addison?”

Bucky hummed again and held up the water bottle. “Just grabbing her this. I’ll meet you upstairs when you’re done,” Bucky made to turn but Steve grabbed his elbow softly. “Not here.” Bucky said tersely casting his baby blues to Thor and Clint who were still engaged with Sam and Pietro. Steve sighed softly and let go of Bucky who immediately bolted out of the kitchen and back up to Addison’s room.

Pushing the bedroom door open, Bucky smiled softly to see that Addison had managed to get herself into a pair of sweat pants and into the bed on her own. He walked around the side of her bed and set the bottle of water down on her bedside table. He was just turning to leave for his and Steve’s room when he heard her turn over and turned back to make sure she was okay.

“Hey, Barney. Can you stay?” Addison whispered up to him. “At least for a minute?”

Bucky snorted and gave a little half smile before sitting down on the empty half of the bed. “Do you do that purpose or are you just honestly terrible with names?”

“I think the real question, Barnaby, is are you planning on killing me?” Addison mumbled against the crook of her elbow.

Bucky’s blood turned to ice in his veins and he looked down sharply at the half asleep girl laying next to him. “Why would you ask that?” he asked, his voice coming out broken and sharp.

Addison rolled over again and placed her head in his lap, her tangled golden locks fanning out across him. He raised his arms out of the way and looked at the closed door to the hall for minute wishing Steve was in here to deal with this. Steve was much better at the touchy feely crap than Bucky was.

“Come on, Bucky, I thought you read my files. You know that I was signed with Hydra while you were working for Pierce. I remember you. So are you one of his sleeper agents? Are you going to kill me now that I’m drunk and high and alone? Are you going to kill Steve too or just disappear?” Addison rambled, her words slurred and slammed together.

Bucky cleared his throat and looked up at the ceiling, clenching and relaxing his jaw to match the quick pounding of his heart. He took a few steadying breaths and started to absentmindedly and gently unknot her hair across his lap. “I don’t do that anymore, kid.” Bucky said finally.

“It’d be okay if you killed me, no one would miss me. I’d feel bad for Steve, though, he’s a very obvious person and he very obviously likes you a lot. So you should just…be better…okay? Because it’s really easy to be a piece of shit and it’s really hard to learn how to not be.”

Bucky was startled by how observant and poignant her statement was, especially since he was pretty sure Addison hadn’t been sober since they met earlier in the day. He didn’t know how to answer her, which was perfect because after making her proclamation she immediately passed out snoring in his lap. Bucky gently put her back under the covers and tucked up around the pillows before standing and making his way out of her room. As he was closing the door behind him he saw Steve trudging slowly up the stairs.

Bucky smiled softly at Steve who was looking reproachfully at Bucky, like he wasn’t sure how to act with Bucky right now. Bucky reached his metal hand out to Steve and nodded his head down the hall. “Come on, babe, let’s go to bed.”

[lindyhunt]

Everything That Upset the Internet This Week

What is the web-o-sphere angry about this week? A pop star who claimed her lyrics will solve racism, the meaning behind the MAGA hat and a Latina actress who’s being called “anti-black.” Here’s everything you need to know.

Ariana Grande Responds to “7 Rings” Backlash With a Fan Comment

THE STORY: Everyone from 2 Chainz to Soulja Boy to Princess Nokia has taken issue with the lyrics, beat and video for “7 Rings,” Ariana Grande’s recently released single about popping Champagne, splurging at Tiffany’s and being unapologetically rich.

“Does that sound familiar to you? ‘Cause that sound really familiar to me. Oh my god!” Princess Nokia said in a since-deleted video. “Ain’t that the lil’ song I made about brown women and their hair? Hmm… sounds about white.”

Grande then (seemingly in response) reposted a fan’s Instagram Story about why the “7 Rings” hair lyric—’You like my hair? Gee, thanks, just bought it…’—was justified: “White women talking about their weaves is how we’re gonna solve racism,” wrote the Instagram user. Grande added that she had “so much love” for the fan, finishing the sentiment with a signature Ari black heart emoji.

  View this post on Instagram

  This #PostAndDelete by #ArianaGrande has fans upset because they feel she’s missing the point of the backlash. Meanwhile, #ScooterBraun says #7Rings has hit a record on #Spotify (See previous posts)

A post shared by The Shade Room (@theshaderoom) on Jan 19, 2019 at 11:32am PST

Grande’s story was quickly taken down—but not before it was screen capped and shared across the web.

THE REACTION:

When black women wear weave it’s ghetto and trash and we’re bald but now miss Ariana says that corny ass line everyone and their mom is hype ab it. I love Ariana but bitch NO. @arianagrande

— oh k . (@xchancelorswife) January 19, 2019

Soo i show up to twitter seeing that Ariana grande said white women talking about weaves will end racism….. pic.twitter.com/5emt6Inrdz

— Amen & Gin (@_HeavensAngel_) January 20, 2019

@ArianaGrande please delete ur story and apologise. it was really insensitive. if it was meant seriously or sarcastically, it doesn’t matter, it was wrong of u to post something like that.

— lola (@styIesdrew) January 19, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: Grande slid into the comments section of The Shade Room’s post, leaving a heartfelt apology. “Hi hi,” she wrote. “I think her intention was to be like… yay a white person disassociating the negative stariotype [sic] that is paired with the word ‘weave’… however I’m so sorry my response was out of pocket or if it came across the wrong way. Thanks for opening the conversation and like… to everyone for talking to me about it. It’s never my intention to offend anybody.”

A quick delete, apology and statement of appreciation for the communal conversation when she missteps—she has this whole backlash response thing down to a formula, doesn’t she? Besides, was there really ever any doubt that Ariana Grande’s hair is real…

Fox News Compares Judging MAGA Hat to Blaming Rape Victims’ Outfits

THE STORY: So you know those MAGA hat-wearing Kentucky teens who taunted an indigenous elder at a Washington protest? Of course you do. They’ve been the centre of the news cycle for the past week: the clip went viral, different narratives were spun on each side of the political spectrum and Nicholas Sandmann, “The MAGA Hat Boy,” was invited to share his non-apology on the Today Show. And then, Fox News’ The Five hopped in on the conversation to state that judging these young boys based on their Trump-affiliated merch is comparable to judging a victim of sexual assault based on their outfit at the time of the crime.

“What kills me is the idea [that], if you’re wearing something, you had it coming. We’ve learned that that’s not what you say to people,” said host Greg Gutfeld.

THE REACTION:

Aren't the Fox viewers and pundits usually the people that would do that anyways?

— Area Man | UTE (@veggiescott) January 24, 2019

#FOXNews used rape victims to defend RACIST #MAGA teens

The MAGA hat is an open embrace of #Trumpism and everything he stands for — which is BIGOTRY, XENOPHOBIA, ETHNIC CLEANSING, CORRUPTION, and HATRED.

LIKE DONNING a SWASTIKA#MOG https://t.co/3Sx79N2cf2

— Michael O'Grady (@mog7546) January 24, 2019

What does a MAGA hat signify? Does a pair of “provocative clothes” scream racism, misogyny, and other bullshit? Just say you’re a rape victim-blamer and go.

— 권치용 | 秋 (@californiaaki) January 24, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: The commentators are right on one thing: you should never judge a woman’s choice of clothing when a violent crime is committed against her. What they’ve done here, however, is set up a false equivalence. The MAGA hat is not a meaningless piece of apparel—and as far as I’ve heard, a mini skirt or tube top isn’t widely perceived to express hateful views towards marginalized people. (A Zara jacket with the words “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” scrawled on the back, however, shares its message loud and clear.)

When people put on that red cap, they know the message they’re sending. It’s really no different than any other baseball hat: when you’re wearing a blue Maple Leaf on your forehead, you’re signalling to those around you that, for whatever reason, you’re a fan of Toronto’s hockey team. Wearing a MAGA hat aligns you with the president’s exclusionist policies and hateful rhetoric, and if you’re putting one on, you should know that—even if you’re a 17-year-old high school student.

Gina Rodriguez Addresses Accusations of Being Anti-Black With Tears

THE STORY: Back in November, Porter‘s “Women in Television” roundtable with actresses Gina Rodriguez, Gabrielle Union, Ellen Pompeo, and Emma Roberts went viral online. Pompeo was praised for calling out the lack of diversity in the room, while Rodriguez caught heat for commenting on the intersectional aspect of the gender pay gap in America.

“White women get paid more than black women, black women get paid more than Asian women, Asian women get paid more than Latina women,” Rodriguez said. “It’s like a very scary space to step into.”

Her statement sparked backlash, with many accusing the Golden Globe-winning Jane the Virgin star of being “anti-black” and pitting POC women against one another. Months later, during an appearance on Sway in the Morning, she broke down into tears as addressed the controversy.

“The backlash was devastating, to say the least,” said Rodriguez. “The black community was the only community I looked towards growing up. We didn’t have many Latino shows and the black community made me feel like I was seen. So to get anti-black is to say I’m anti-family.”

THE REACTION:

Listen @HereIsGina I really wanted to empathize I did but you’re just deflecting instead of being accountable. Instead of rationalizing what you said (re: white & asian community didn’t get offended) look at the moments that the black community DID. pic.twitter.com/nyjXMziuiu

— 🍯 COME GET YOUR HONEY 🍯 (@SUGGADADDY) January 23, 2019

Gina Rodriguez on Black Panther vs Crazy Rich Asians….she really is terrible pic.twitter.com/BYDIJS1bhh

— tk (@foswina) January 23, 2019

gina rodriguez: *is anti black, constantly puts black women down to favor “all women”, probably doesn’t know the difference between race and ethnicity*

gina rodriguez when she gets called out on it: pic.twitter.com/7RhSPp46Gu

— skinty (@KIMPOSSIHOE) January 23, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: Cancel culture is toxic, and it pushes people to become defensive. But regardless of intention, Rodriguez’s words hurt, and she should have done was listened to that and taken accountability for her comments—rather than making excuses.

“Gina Rodriguez is really really really really ignorant, socially unaware, dismissive with black issues, and entitled,” writes Twitter user @culieatumami, “BUT I don’t think she’s necessarily hateful. I think she needs to talk less and listen more.”