#plus some of it went on my sketch book and almost ruined a drawing

[yetanothersomebody]

Desmond screaming in the air because I'd love to but can't cause where I live is fucking late

Happy Sycamore Sunday!

[rebsrams]

A case of you (Ethan x F!MC)  part II

Book: Open Heart

Pairing: Ethan Ramsey and MC (Dr. Rebecca Valentine)

Warnings: none. Just utterly romantic fluff.

Summary: part II of my fic A case of you. Find part I here.

Word count: 1,377   

@openheartfanfics​

"On the back of a cartoon coaster

In the blue TV screen light

I drew a map of Canada

Oh, Canada

With your face sketched on it twice"

Then he saw her.

Just standing there, in the gloomy blue reflection of the tv placed on a shelf above her head.

She was swiping her finger delicately on the rim of the glass, a few coppery curls partially blocking her view.

He noticed than she had a map of some place he didn't recognize from that distance, with something sketched upon it, a few lines which from where he was standing didn't make any sense. 

"Rookie."

He called for her, breathless from the run and completely stunned by her natural beauty. 

But most of all, he was thankful to see her there, still waiting for him.

She looked up, her eyes glimmering with surprise and pure joy.

She hadn't heard him call her like that in a really long time, and suddenly they both someway felt brought like a rush to the start of it all.

That first day at the hospital, the first nights they gazed at each other through glasses of scotch on the rocks with the chattering of her friends in the background.

The coffees they secretly shared, because he couldn't stand that anyone else knew the existence of his precious and miracolous coffee machine.

That night spent together next to baby Ethan, while Ethan senior was still grieving for the loss of his mother.

That was the night he knew that anything was the same anymore. 

That he couldn't live peacefully without her.

 And he wouldn't. 

She immediately stood up, her lower lip already trembling for the excitement. "Dr. Ramsey." she managed to say, voice shaking and weak in the knees. 

She dreamed so much about this moment. 

She knew he was gonna tell her something that was going to change her life, for better of for worse. 

They finally met in front of the table, merely a couple of inches between them. He just gazed into her eyes, afraid that by saying anything he would have ruined the incredible moment they were living.

 A moment of awareness.

 "Listen, Ethan, you don't really have to say anything at all, I-I'm incredibily sorry for what..."

"I love you." 

The sentence cut into her clumsy speech like a shard of glass, sudden and sure. Eyes wide and gaping, a thin "what?" was everything she could actually manage to say in return. 

He quickly took her by the shoulders, as if to shake some sense into her, and repeated, even more sure than before: "I love you, Rebecca. Your clumsiness, and your incredible kindness, and altruism, your impatience and the little wrinkle on your forehead that it causes you when you have to wait for an important result. I love that you always take the same time to come to my office after I paged you, always a little breathless because you ran up the stairs to be quicker. I love your freshness, and the incredible irony you have, worthy of your stunning mind. I love the fire that you hold inside, igniting you from the bone, even when it's directed towards me." at that point,she let out a small chuckle, beginning to sniff loudly. 

"I love that you're so emotional" he continued, wiping her tears with his thumb "that you cried all night after that one of your long time patients left the hospital for good because you could heal him. I love you, Rebecca. And I don't want to hide anymore." 

Now, he was cupping her cheeks with both of his big and warm hands. 

"Are you going to make my heart stop?" she said, nearly choking with her tears. "Couldn't you just... I don't know, deliver the news in small doses?" 

Now was his turn to chuckle, a giggle which turned into a deeply laugh that filled his chest. 

"What was that saying of yours... Go big or go home, right?"

Just like he imagined, she threw her arms around his neck and began to pepper his face with kisses, until their mouths finally encountered in what seemed the seal to a silent pact. 

No more lies. No more running.

They stood there, in each other's arms, foreheads touching and inebriated grins on their faces for what seemed an eternity.

Eventually, they sat to share a drink together, cherishing the moment a little more.

"What is it that you have there?"

He pointed to the map she was sketching upon, catching her cheeks turning red.

"Oh, just a little... Nothing, really"

He could easily smell the lie, picking the map of what looked like...

"Canada? And... Is it my face that you were drawing?"

"It's a long story."

"I have plenty of time. Plus, I'm not going anywhere." he said, kissing the back of her hand.

She let out a long sigh.

"Well, long story short... I was offered a job at the Toronto General hospital, a few days ago. I must admit that I really thought about moving my residency there, escaping from my problems and starting a new life. I even bought this map yesterday, hoping it would have gave me the courage to finally face the decision.Then... I found myself sketching your face on it, twice, and hoping that you wouldn't forget me once I got away. That you could forgive me, if I went there. Now I'm so ashamed... I just want to dig deep and hide!"

She let go of his hand and dug both hands in the mess of her curls, a dismayed expression on her face.

"Rebs, sweetheart. I should be the one ashamed, here. You have to forgive me. For the way I treated you, for backing away when you needed me the most, for being so fucking scared of making you suffer just by being by your side that I hurt you anyway. That is a thing I could never forgive myself for, but you have to. I couldn't live otherwise."

He tilted her chin up to make her face him, giving her a quick nod.

"Let me take you home." he said almost in a whisper.

Now was her turn to nod, a brief smile hanging loose on her lips.

"You're in my blood like holy wine

You taste so bitter and so sweet, ohI could drink a case of you

Still I'd be on my feet

Oh, I would still be on my feet"

Three years later, Dr. Ethan Ramsey was sitting on the couch of his apartment, her wife's head in the slope of his neck while he gently caressed her belly, swollen by six months of pregnancy.

"Judy, dear, I already told you that you'll have to wait a little longer before meeting us. We're quite impatient too, your mommy especially, but that is no reason to kick the hell out of her." Ethan whispered softly to her womb.

"Ethan! That's not quite the way to talk to a baby, you know."

While playfully reproaching him, she shuffled his hair in a way that made his heart melt like the first time she laid her hands on him.

"Maybe we should blame it on the alcohol. I think that three glasses of that pinot noir i drank with Naveen this evening had me quite dizzy. I still can't imagine how a man of his age who once was on the verge of death and ready to let everything go could take the alcohol that way."

"Maybe it's my presence that makes you so dizzy, uh? I saw you enter that door quite decently just half an hour ago." she mocked him, remembering him stumble through the doorstep.

"Trust me, my dear, you're the only thing that's keeping me on my feet and going. You, and this funny little thing in here" 

He kissed her belly affectionately, unspoken prayers carried with the simplicity of that gesture. 

"Have I ever told you that I love you, Doctor Ethan Jonah Ramsey?" she replied, giving him a peck on the lips.

Something about his full name said by her wife's full lips filled him with pride and a touch of lust that he could never resist, no matter how hard he tried.

"Quite a few times, I guess."

With a swift movement, despite her several months of pregnancy and his actual dizziness, he lift her up and brought her to their bedroom, ready to cherish her once more as he always did since that night of three years before. 

Aaaand here we go! Hope you liked the second part.

I had a lot of fun writing this.

Feel free to report any mistake (as I already said, I’m not a native speaker and I’d really like to improve, so your help is more than well received!)

Also, I’m trying to gather a taglist, so let me know if you’re interested in my writing and want to stay up to date on my MC adventures!

[mcrmadness]

Madness draws: Behind the Scenes of the “Alleine in der Nacht” die ärzte fan comic.

A few weeks ago I posted this comic:

This post is yet again just another drawing behind-the-scenes post but You can go and reblog the original post here.

And as always, all my ramblings are under the cut!

This one was relatively easy to do because I just woke up one morning and internally died from laughter because this idea just happened like a random pop up window in my brain. I wrote it down to my phone notes and later on also into my sketchbook:

I was laughing out loud when I was drawing those images, Bela’s face still is cracking me up :D And because I’m yet again trilingual with my comics, there’s only one word in my mother tongue and it’s: Bela laulaa = Bela sings.

And other fans might recognize the lyrics of the song, I needed to write them down in order to decide which ones would fit the comic the best.

This one is then again me trying to see how it will fit on a A4 paper. Originally I saw it in my head more like a short, regular comic strip with 3 panels but somehow I couldn’t get it to fit into 3 panels. And 4 panels was too many in a row so I decided to go for a full page then. That caused bits of trouble to me because I normally don’t draw the comic book faces THAT big and it’s surprisingly hard to draw them in bigger scale. (With pencil drawings it’s the opposite, the bigger the better. It’s much easier to draw an eye the size of a finger instead of a size of a tip of a needle.)

Here’s the first sketch! Just the shapes to see how and what I need to draw. Sorry for the awful photo quality again, my phone’s camera has really gotten really bad after these 3 years of use...

Anyhow, the third panel caused me some troubles because I knew how I wanted Bela’s arms and hands to be but I didn’t see them that good in my head so what I did next was to try different postures into my sketchbook:

I also tried this foreshortening technique I saw in a video of after a Tumblr post, even tho I don’t find that too hard to do myself anymore but it was still interesting and can really help making the eye and brain to see the image in 3D. So here I finally figured that I wanted Bela to have is arms like he was singing something very theatrically. I think it turned out pretty good.

Next I struggled with the bedsheets and I figured that I am a bit too good at blocking out information when I draw because I tried to draw unmade beds from reference photos and I’m able to follow a line but also able to completely not see any other lines around the line I’m following. Like I’d often follow a line to somewhere and suddenly notice that wtf there’s SO MUCH MORE lines all over the place in the photo but I just did not see them.

^Here’s two pages in my other sketchbook that I got for the comic stuff especially because the paper is actually white. The bigger sketchbook has light yellow tint to the paper so it can mess up with the colors when I need to try out and look for perfect colors from the colored pencils. (This sketchbook is also smaller aka A5 because Derwent sketchbooks are expensive but this was the only A5 one with a bit grainy paper in white. The A4 one is cheaper and from Mont Marte.)

After a while I was done with the besheet and the rest of the second sketch. I don’t have a photo of the comic with just the lineart, only a photo where the first panel is already colored and now I actually need to talk about the coloring.

That caused me lots of trouble because I really love playing with lights and shadows in everything (drawing, photographing... everything) and I do know how to do the night effect in black and white, but I have only once before done that with colors and it’s never that easy. Plus that one was my first comic when I started drawing again in 2018 and it was not that good to begin with.

I run some tests with the pencils, as well as some shading tests:

Käsi = hand, iho = skin. I use Derwent Flesh Pink (I have a 72 set of Derwent Watercolour pencils) for the skin color and was then trying out other colors to see which one would look the best for shading. It was actually really difficult to do and my sister suggested that I’d use only cold colors but like... how do you use cold colors on a skin without making the character look dead? :D

I imagined that there’s a moon shining in from a window that would be behind the “camera”. I almost ruined the first panel because I wasn’t exactly sure what was I even doing and what did I want from the colors:

Here’s the lineart and almost finished first panel in colors. I really liked the lineart and this would have looked so nice in black and white too, maybe even better. But I just saw that blue background so strongly in my mind that I just had to go for it.

The first panel was really difficult to do like I said and I almost ruined it at some point. But it also taught me something because with the rest of the panels I knew to start with the skincolors and end with the black (I started the first panel with black, I think... kids, never do that, always start with the light colors! :D) and I think the last panel is the best what comes to the colors in the final comic. I also added light blue here and there to make it look more like the colors of a moon at night:

I’m actually very happy with all of the other colors in this panel! It also reminds me of a book I had and used to read as a child. It was about this girl that went to an appendix surgery and all the images were drawn with either colored pencils, pastels or crayons and it looked grainy the exact same way as this one too. It also had lots of red and orange and brown colors in it. (I wonder if I still have the book here...)

Then there’s also the title and “Das Ende”. Originally I was going to do the late 80s logo they have e.g. on the 80s live vhs/dvd but then I just saw another post in my dä blog’s queue and I just needed to do this logo instead!

I had just a couple of weeks prior ordered a pack of white Sakura Gelly Roll pens and needed to test what would make the best compination and with which black!

I also had bought a white paint pen but it’s useless. As you see, it just looks grey after it dries and it just... doesn’t look nice. Plus it takes so much time to dry AND it’s extremely messy and I have paint more in my hands and a puddle on the paper but barely none where it should be. So my choice for the logo was to use either Pigma Microns or Promarkers (I think I chose the latter) and the thickest Gelly Roll aka 10. This was the result:

And I’m actually super happy about how it came out! Couldn’t do that good looking spots on the letters because can’t make splashes with a gel pen so I did a few bigger ones here and there and then just poked everywhere with the pen to make it look more random. You can actually see how it’s slightly whiter than the paper if you look closely, but it’s not too strongly whiter so it looks pretty nice like this.

So, this was less work than the “Widumihei” one but it was also an interesting piece to draw. And I think I have now this comic drawing more freshly in mind so that drawing the next ones (there’s three waiting for sketching already) will be much easier as well :)

[kristallioness]

2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019

*arrives a month late*... Happy 2021 to all of you, my dear followers! *raises a glass* It seems that my tendency to finish my artwork or personal posts on time has only gotten worse over time (I blame work *lol*). Oh well, better late than never, since there are things I would still like to take with me from this extraordinary year of 2020.

It is cringeworthy that I have two huge red X-s this year. But after I'd put these puzzle pieces together, I remembered far too well what was going on in my (work) life at the time, so it's completely understandable why I didn't have the time nor the energy to draw at all during those two months.

What were those typical statistics that I wrote about again to compare the years? *goes to read last year's post*.. Oh, right! In 2020, I managed to finish 3 full digital drawings (from the months of April, July and December) as well as work on several sketches. I wrote 28,154 words worth of fanfiction (oohh, that's a lot better than previous year), plus 3,126 words in English (I dare say I wrote an equal amount in Estonian) for the prompts I got during UYLD (making the total 31,280 words, which is quite impressive!).

I finished reading the 1st Kyoshi novel in the evening of the 20th and slightly past midnight on the 21st December (barely before the holidays, but I set this goal for myself and I did it!). Am already looking forward to starting with the 2nd part some time this year. Besides that, I ordered and received all the other new Avatar books that came out (3rd part of "Ruins of the Empire", "Katara and the Pirate's Silver", "Legacy of the Fire Nation") as well as BOTH Avatar series DVD sets (I still can't believe I found these on sale on some random online store in Estonia, but these are now among my most prized possessions!).

I finally started my Avatar rewatch last January, but merely got to the Ba Sing Se episodes in Book 2 (I need to continue with "The Earth King") and now it's been 5 YEARS since I last saw Korra. Reading through my journal personal posts from last year, I know far too well that it's not about rushing through it as fast as possible. Instead, I should enjoy the ride and continue watching the episodes when I'm well rested and in the right mood. That way I'll end up feeling much more at peace.

As for the entire year as a whole? I don't think anyone in this world of ours was prepared for the way this decade would begin - with an uncontrollable pandemic, the virus of which is randomly attacking and threatening to wipe out the weakest amongst us. If any of you (or even if you know someone who) have lost a loved one to this plague, there is not much else I can offer but my sincerest condolences! Me, my family, friends and colleagues seem to have managed to avoid catching it so far. *spits 3 x over her shoulder*

I had such high hopes for this year in so many ways. Event-wise I was looking forward to watching the Eurovision Song Contest in May (where Uku Suviste was supposed to represent Estonia for the 1st time ever after so many unfortunate failures to get selected as the winner of our local competition), the European Football Championships in June (asking my colleagues which countries they support, perhaps make fun bets / guesses with them to see whose team would win the matches), the Tokyo Olympic Games in July-August, the President of Estonia (Mrs. Kersti Kaljulaid) coming to visit my hometown to celebrate our Victory Day by taking part in the parade together with the Defence Forces (after 15 years *sigh*)...

I will always remember my last big event, which took place when life used to be "normal", so to say. It was the 102nd anniversary of Estonia on the 24th of February, when I took part of all the most important celebrations in Tallinn on our Independence Day, FULL-TIME (whenever I scroll through my Facebook timeline, I see the photos I uploaded of that day, my heart melts and I smile fondly). But the day after that.. utter hell broke loose. We had our first infected person in the country.

I will also remember the last day I went to work in "normal" conditions. Friday, the 13th of March (typically my lucky day-number combination): I missed the tram I wanted to get on in the morning, at work my team received great news that one of our colleague's family had grown bigger by a new tiny member the day before, we had our last team lunch together, we discussed the safety measures that we should take and joked about what might happen next week, I took the bus home instead of the tram (as the tram's route came from the airport and that place was considered to be more dangerous and with a higher risk of catching this virus).. It was another 2.5 weeks later by then (since the 25th of February) - Estonia (along with the rest of Europe) went into full lockdown.

The beginning was frightening and people were on edge, nobody really knew what to do nor what was gonna happen next. But in time, things began to shake into place and everybody developed a comfortable routine for remote work, including figuring out how to get everyday things done (such as grocery shopping). I found solace in taking photographs of various beautiful bird species, who began to fly around and serenaded me during spring, visiting the trees around my "nest" i.e. rented apartment (with a pair of them ACTUALLY building a nest in the chestnut tree right beside my window, thus turning me into a protective godmother of their chicks).

To be honest, I was awestruck by the positive / surprising aftermath of this lockdown: how the world / environment began to heal itself from the pollution that was normally caused by humans. I was taken aback by how dead silent our usually loud capital became in my neighbourhood (I could only hear trams passing by my house according to their schedules, practically no cars whatsoever, streets were empty of people.. absolute silence).

By May-June, things started to look up in Estonia (as well as the rest of Europe) and people were allowed to start travelling / moving around more freely. During my vacation in July, I managed to go to my last (open air) event (for the rest of the year) under these new "corona" conditions and ended up having a blast at the Open Farm Days in my home county for the first time.

Our country's shining moment came during the first week of September, when we hosted the first ever Rally Estonia of the World Rally Championship (WRC), where our very own Ott Tänak and Martin Järveoja won. The event was so well organized and successful that nobody caught the virus nor did the spectators / participants spread it to others, which surely must've helped in ensuring us a spot in the WRC calendar for 2021 as well.

The remainder of the year was rather dull, with the exception of the US Presidential elections in November, when we were all holding our breaths that Joe Biden would win (congratulations, my American friends!). This eventually led to the painful downfall of THE WORST government the Republic of Estonia has ever had, and to the rise of our first female Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas (both happening in January 2021, I couldn't believe it all spiralled so soon, ha-ha!).

Anyways, during the last 4 months, work was very stressful and driving me nuts, so badly that when I eventually went on vacation before Christmas, I had a slight anxiety disorder that wouldn't let me relax for several days (luckily it went away just as quickly once I began to take it easy and managed to get some proper rest / sleep).

In hindsight, I kind of get this weird feeling as if I saw this whole thing coming, given how actively I was living my life throughout 2019. My final year of the 2010's was so full of important events and personal achievements. It's almost as if something mysterious inside was driving me, telling me to visit all the places and do all the things I wanted to do, cause I wouldn't have this sort of a chance again for a very long time.

This must be the main reason why I am thankful for 2020 for going the way it did. Sure, I'm disappointed that a lot of events were cancelled, that so many people have had to leave this world so soon due to this unpredictable disease.. But I think there are so many lessons to take from what came out of all of this. I believe the world needed some sort of a restart or break, given in what direction we were headed (politically, economically, environmentally, socially etc.). I'm just sorry it's had to come with such a high price of innocent lives.

I have even higher hopes for 2021, given how amazingly January has already passed for me and my country, and what is to come in my hometown in February. Let's take the lessons learned from 2020 with us and keep on heading back towards the "normal" lifestyle we used to know. Except this time, let's improve our ways, put all the hatred behind us, be more considerate, keep a distance, stay safe, but still try to make the world a better place for everyone. Thank you so much for reading, for remaining by my side, and for your support and love throughout the years, my friends! I hope to see you all alive and healthy at the end of the white metal ox year of 2021! *virtual hugs*

[wwounu]

Still in shock, you continue to ask Seokmin questions ever since he has taken you upstairs to his comfy studio, asking you to take a seat as he takes a small break, cleaning the room.

“How long have you been doing this again?”

“Two or three years?” Seokmin replies, leaning more to a question than a statement. “Something like that.”

“Oh cool. Pretty long then.”

“Yep, it’s crazy thinking about it… Really crazy…”

“Aren’t there any clients after me?”

“Nope. My shift would be over right now since I usually work at the dog cafe this time, but I called in that I was sick so shush don’t tell anyone.”

The male lifts a finger to his lips, his lips forming a curl.

“So!” He claps his hands after your giggle. “You can get as much as you’d like. We can be here all night — What would you like to have?”

He’s now seated, in the middle of putting his gloves as you speak. He swivels in his chair to get a plain book and pen, opening to a clean page.

You awkwardly begin, “Uh… I’d like something simple — and hidden — so no one can notice it upon first glance.”

“I get you, ‘small and simple’.” Seokmin jots down his words in the book. “Anything else?”

“I’d like it to be a flower.”

“Ah, of course! Anything in particular?”

“A cherry blossom.” You cringe once saying it aloud. “I must sound basic right now, but I’d like to keep it minimalistic. Maybe not so much because I want there to be detail, but I think the blossoms should be the focal point of it all, while they’re growing scattered on the branch…”

Not knowing why, your voice says away at the end, watching Seokmin’s hand move left to right.

“So like this?”

He holds up his notebook, showing an ideal sketch of the tattoo you imagined perfectly, and you hum in agreement. “Damn, you really get me.”

“I guess I do.” The man grins. “That would look great on the ankle I think. It’ll sting a bit, are you ready for it? You can choose anywhere else if you want.”

“No I’m good with your decision, I trust you.”

Seokmin pauses at your final words, almost zoning out, but he eventually comes back on earth and gets himself started. “Attagirl!” He laughs, getting straight to work

A few minutes in and the silence is unbearable for you. You didn’t want to distract Seokmin either, but you quietly say, “Can I talk while you work? I don’t want to ruin your focus or anything.”

Seokmin hums. “Feel free too. I love talking to clients about anything — And you as my client makes it even better.”

“What made you want to start doing all of this?”

“It came out of nowhere, really. Soonyoung was busy doing thumbnails for a drawing of his, I think it was a back tattoo? For one of his characters, and I would it pretty cool, asked if I could contribute to some ideas. I think he only told me to go for it because he couldn’t care less.”

“And then?”

“I get to work too and after a few songs yada yada, I show him my ideas and stupidly start talking about the details I included. It was rushed but I don’t think Soonyoung realised that — You should’ve seen his face! I felt intimidated and proud. Next thing you know it, he tells me I’m really good and that I should be a tattoo artist. And now look at me! A very stupid story, but it’s close to my heart.”

“Cool! What do you prefer to do on people?”

“I’m cool with anything but I love doing complex tattoos — people are always satisfied when I do them, it feels really great helping them. But when it comes to myself, I prefer something uncomplicated.”

“Hm, why?”

The male snorts, rubbing his nose shyly. “Mainly just the backlash and looks from everyone… Plus I don’t think big, bold tattoos would look great on a guy like me-“ He’s stopped by the slip of your laugh, which is caught on by Seokmin too.

“Don’t your friends know about this? That you do this for a living?”

In reply the male chuckles. “Well… At first they didn’t, I wasn’t vocal about it and everyone already knew about my jobs with dogs. I think hearing about me being a tattooist would freak them out…”

“Tell me about it!”

“On one night my four friends were gathered somewhere near the parlour to hang out — at the time a friend was new to the city so they brought him there often to familiarise himself as the others were regulars…”

“My friend — Wonwoo; the new one back then — told me that he heard my laugh a bit away from the parlour and ‘knew my laugh but didnt at the same time’. He gets closer to the studio, and I don’t realise his presence, and he sees me laughing with some guys I’m close to while adding another tattoo onto his sleeve of ink…”

“With someone like Wonwoo, he doesn’t look like the strongest man but never underestimate him…” Seokmin shudders, flashbacks in his mind. “Um anyway, he has really bad eyesight and was too lazy to step into the parlour so late at night, but he apparently mistook me as Soonyoung because of our smilier hairstyles and laugh. Plus, it’d make sense for Soonyoung since the latter’s an artist, but even Wonwoo knew that Soonyoung wouldn’t do something like that at all…”

“At that exact moment, Soonyoung texts Wonwoo asking him to convince Minghao — Our model friend — to be his model, which didn’t add up for Wonwoo, and it was by the time Vernon yells out his name, wondering why he’s there, and I happen to hear it, seeing the two of them stare at each other Wonwoo stares at me, followed by Vernon, before yelling out my name in shock...”

“Apparently I’m ‘way too precious for that’ which is why they were all in disbelief. Only Joshua and Soonyoung knew about it before the accident, and apparently Jihoon too since he wasn’t phased by it.”

“I wouldn’t blame them,” You agree, smiling. Seokmin pouts but eventually smiles afterwards. “So have your friends asked you to do tattoos for them?”

“Here and there. Minghao asked me to do an infinity dragon for him in return of a favour. Other times it would be dumb tattoos my friends would want and I’d have to refuse the offer… Especially when it’s Soonyoung!”

Now adding the colour — and mainly because you had stopped distracting Seokmin from your non-stop chattering — you feel the pain come through on your ankle.

You’ve tried so hard not to feel the pain (as well as kick your foot due to how sensitive that area was), but the male puts you at ease, hushing you and telling you how good you’re doing.

A few more moments, chatting to Seokmin here and there, and you finally hear the “Ta-da!” From the latter.

“How does it look?”

“Why don’t you see for yourself?” Grinning, Seokmin grants you to sit and passes you a mirror, seeing the tattoo more clearly. “So…?”

“I don’t know what to say-“ You stammer, “It looks amazing! You’re amazing Seok’!”

“Ah, don’t flatter me…” He huffs, resisting his smile. “I’m just happy you like it. Oh, but I need to give you some heads up before you can enjoy your tattoo.”

You nod, letting Seokmin protect the tattoo with a bandage, watching him do the process before he sits back down again, cleaning his studio once again.

“Don’t take the bandage off after a day. Take extra care with it, sometimes the ink takes a while to settle, so no long showers or baths, and keep the tattoo dry — It’s better to gently wash over it frequently, but don’t go crazy with it though…”

“Got it. What else?”

“Do be aware that it will itch, so I beg you not to scratch it since it’s the ankle and that’ll definitely do a thing or two to you. It’ll be hard but I believe in you! Also, use moisturisers too. Do this for two to four weeks and you’ll be all set!”

You hug the male, thanking him countless of times before you let go. You couldn’t thank Seokmin enough. After letting go, you pay for the tattoo and he asks you to stay around as he cleans up the parlour.

What ended up feeling like an hour suddenly turned into six, with the sun beaming its golden hour and the streets filling with more people while you converse with Seokmin, listening to his oddly fascinating dog walking stories.

“What other tattoos do you have? I’m kinda curious now.” Casually, you look outside the window and notice the sky gradually turn darker. When you turn back to look at the male, he scares you another time as to how close he was. “I swear you need to stop scaring me like that.”

“Sorry!” He chirps, humming a little at the end. “Should I tell them in order?”

“Alright,”

He shows you each inked drawing one by one.

The first tattoo was one you’ve already seen. An inked outline of a sunflower, running down his inner left bicep. As it was his first, he was scared what the outcome of his tattoo would be, since the what ifs wondered in his head and that a mistake will be made, yet things went the opposite for him — in a good way — and the old man who tattooed him became somewhat of a father to him as he was desiring to become a tattoo artist.

The second, a tiny doodle of a puppy’s slanted eyes, upside-down triangle nose and ears shaped in an ‘M’. That was his first self-made tattoo, located on his ankle. And of course it was directed to his unconditional love for puppies. For a first try, it wasn’t that bad — The tattoo was mainly credited to Soonyoung who drew the tiny doodle in the exact location (You had no idea how he managed to draw on his ankle, but you went with it), which Seokmin looked at afterwards and thought ‘This is nice’ and behold the tattoo.

And for credit, he had his friend put his initials — ‘KSY’ — to tattoo it additionally, just to the corner of the tattoo itself.

Thirdly; A constellation. Seokmin had to remove his shirt for this one, which was awkward at first, but the awkwardness was taken away the moment you laid eyes on his shoulder blade to the right hand side. The tattoo didn’t have a special meaning to it, but as it’s Aquarius, he got it as he was one himself (quite obviously).

‘Say yes’ was what you remembered about his fourth tattoo. Just underneath his inked constellation, it was tattooed in a typewriter font. Briefly, he explained that it was a duet he had to with his friend for Jihoon’s project. All he said was that it hit home, which you thought he was going to continue, but he fell silent for a few beats and his shirt back on.

“Finally,” He heaves, the mood feeling heavier than usual, “this.”

He lifts up his left arm, stretching it out to move his sleeve, revealing the small tattoo you had a glimpse on his wrist.

“It’s a — uh — lock. It’s really small, you can’t really see it. I did it myself. It-“ All of his words sounds disjointed, panicked, “It means a lot.”

With the vague description, he didn’t look like he wanted to go further, and it was only for you to respect that. If it meant a lot, then it’ll take time for him to tell you. One day, maybe, one day.

He acts more quiet now, with less words and less liveliness in him. It was a long day for the both of you, and you didn’t want it to end on a bad note.

Fiddling with his hands, Seokmin doesn’t acknowledge your head weighing on his shoulder.

“Sing me a song Seokmin.”

“A song? My singing isn’t that great…”

“Either way — I like your voice, I want to hear it.”

“But…”

“Just sing to me, I won’t judge, you have a pretty voice. ‘If I’m good at it, I shouldn’t hide it’,” You mimic his words, choking a laugh out of him.

He silent for another moment, then begins to softly sing the lyrics to Half Moon to you, going falsetto when he reaches parts where it would be more pronounced at, and adding a breathiness to his singing. To you, it felt like you were on the moon — lost in space — because of his singing alone.

And your eyes begin to get heavier, Seokmin’s voice lulling you to sleep. You did it; You made the day end well. And for you and Seokmin, neither of you wanted to ruin it.

OPPOSITES ATTRACT PART TEN — Tattoo Artist!Seokmin x Florist!Reader

finally back to updating! (hopefully...)

one • two • three • four • five • six • seven • eight • nine • ten • eleven

masterlist

[queenofpurgatoryx]

Hey if you’re still doing the song prompt: Crisana + Fletcher: Wasted Youth

You're the ultimate high that I'm tripping on

You're the edge of the cliff that I'm hanging on

Until tomorrow comes

This is how we run

.

Before, Joana hated being around drunk people when she was sober. Now and then, she would get responsible and she would not drink or get high even when she wanted to, and she would find all the people around her fucking annoying, basically.

It was more than getting drunk for the fun of it, sometimes she used to drink in parties because she couldn't stand being the only one with clear thoughts.

That was before, though. Now with her, it was slightly different.

Yes, she was not more mature or she did not finally became fully responsible. She still drank and got high sometimes, after all, she was a teenager who needed to fail from some time to time but it was less frequent now. Finally, she had found herself someone that did not feel fake and annoying when they were drunk and Joana was sober. Like with (almost) everything Cris did, Joana found it endaring when her girlfriend got drunk and became a giddy party animal.

She enjoyed being sober enough to remember those nights were they danced like there was no tomorrow or went for a swim at night or ran in the empty streets because Cris was feeling like it. Joana could never stop to take a picture because she was afraid that the moment would be gone. Yet, she remembered it all the next morning, sometimes made a drawing about the night, made little sketches for Cris if she had any parts where it was blurry.

That night, they were at Jorge's birthday party and Cris had drank, a lot, and was feeling the regret of it all. (Lately, she hadn't been getting completely hammered, only tipsy, Joana thought it was to keep her company when she didn't drink. Cris never said anything and Joana found it a bit endaring, with a strange kind of feeling proud because Cris Soto was growing up, enough to stop at tipsy on some nights.)

Well, everyone needed to make mistakes sometimes, it was Cris' turn that night.

"Don't follow me into the bathroom! Don't want you to watch me throw up." Cris' words were slurred and she was barely walking properly. No, Joana was not leaving her.

"Who will hold your hair, hm? We cannot afford that pretty hair getting puke all over it," Joana said as they stepped into the bathroom, locking it behind them.

Cris groaned a little as she slumped down on the ground, holding to edge of the toilet seat with a frown on her face. "If you dump me 'cause I'm disgusting or something, I will tell everyone that you have lots of Twilight posters at home with a vampire books collection."

Joana rolled her eyes and scoffed at the other girl. "You wouldn't dare," she said with mock offence, going down on her knees to stand next Cris.

"I would so! I will-"

Cris wasn't able to finish that sentence as her stomach finally had it, and decided relax by letting it all out. With a swift motion, Joana held Cris' hair that, gently holding it as pony tail, kind of enjoying the smoothness of the hair between her fingers.

Surely, it was not a pleasant sight but with Cris, everything was a bit of fun, a new adventure and a new memory that they had made together.

Before, she felt a strange kind of disgust at people who drank too much when she was sober but she became hammered the very next day. Now, she found Cris' drunk ramblings cute and she did not judge that easily.

"Sorry for ruinging your night. You're not gonna dump me, right?" Cris said once she was feeling better, leaning against the toilet, hugging her knees, looking at Joana with wide eyes.

Joana laughed at sat next to her, pressed against her, and tugged a strand of hair between her ear. "You did not ruin my night, I'm more than happy to waste night away in a bathroom with my girlfriend," she stated, felt a bit smug when Cris blushed. "Plus, there is no other person that I would want to be with when they puke. I'm glad its you."

Cris chuckled and rolled her eyes, but rested her head on Joana's shoulders subsequently. "There is no one else I want by my side to hold my hair either," Cris said, her voice was a bit rough and it sounded sleepy, yet Joana found it to be sweet. "I would kiss you, like, so hard but It would be gross. So."

They both laughed at that and Joana felt warm and a bit fuzzy, almost intoxicated when Cris held her hand in hers.

There was no else, truely.

.

It's my life

If I'm gonna waste it

Gonna waste it on you

It's my life

If I'm gonna waste it

I'll be wasted on you

.

send me a song + a ship!

[kyidyl]

Can we talk about art for a second?

I’m pretty sure none of you are following me for art content because that’s just not what I do normally, but I’ve been working on some stuff and I just wanted to share. Here’s my current WIP:

I’m using sketchbook on my iPad Pro, and...can we just talk about process for a second? I’m gonna put this behind a cut just in case it gets long and because this isn’t my normal content. 

So I’ve been drawing almost my entire life, but I didn’t really start teaching myself anything good until around 9th grade (which is like...14 years old.). I started by copying Disney characters and then I was introduced to comic books and I copied those. I was in college when digital art start making its way into the art world. People would color their pencil drawings (this was shortly before tablets, so...with a mouse.). I grew into an artist around the time people like Aimee Major and Stephanie Lostimolo were really starting to stand out. And I don’t know about other fandoms, but I was in the gargoyles fandom and from what I can tell...a LOT of modern digital art has its genesis in that fandom. Anyway, what I’m trying to say here is that I started using photoshop with version 3.0 and I’ve had a Wacom tablet almost since the day they came out (gen one graphire tablet represent!).

I’ve never, in all that time, gotten the hang of digital painting. I have a hard time with tablets because you can’t tilt them like you can tilt a paper and it takes a weird sort of hand-eye-screen coordination that I just never mastered. But digital art is so beautiful that I’ve always WANTED to be able to do it. I can make graphics and edit photos but I have a hard time with painting. I have seen the million myriad ways of doing it, and most of them start with the same idea: lay down flats and then lighten or darken as necessary. And this never worked for me because a, the airbrush tool isn’t painterly enough for me and b, it takes for goddamned EVER. For. Ever. And I’m a fast artist! I can spit out a whole line drawing in like a half hour-45 mins with traditional media. But I have adhd, and so finishing long term large scale detailed projects is often not in the cards for me. So dumping like 48 hours of work time into a painting isn’t going to work for me.

But recently I’ve gotten back into art again and I’ve been watching the sky artist of the year and I decided I was curious about oil painting and, well, one hyperfixation later, here we are. I don’t have the money or space for actual oil painting, so I went to sketchbook to see if there was an alternative, and there is! So because I wanted to learn how to oil paint I finally figured out how to digitally paint and I’m gonna share that with you in case you, like me, struggle with the time input and focus required to do digital art.

First, I started practicing poses by drawing an outline over any image that caught my fancy. I have a good understanding of human anatomy because of my science background, but my poses aren’t creative and I especially struggle with perspective and multiple figures in an image. So I started to do line drawings over an image. Here’s the stock image I used for the WIP:

Look at all that fabric! Look at the movement! I love it. So I traced it:

Yes, TRACED, because tracing is a tool like anything else.

Then I choose colors. I pick 5: a midtone (the color you want the thing to be perceived as. In my case, you can see it in the WIP at the top.), a slight dark, a slight light, a blackened tone for deep shadow, and a very light tone for highlights. I always default to white light when choosing these colors, and I’ll get to my reasoning further down. The palette for the robe looks like this:

(Ignore the tan and blue, they’re for another project)

Then you start to lay down flats. Now, I do this with the synthetic oil brush in sketchbook because I like the texture (this image though I’d laid down the flats with the airbrush months ago and didn’t want to redo it, hence the lack of texture and the 100% opacity.), and as with oils, my approach to digital now is to layer rather than cover. Staying in the lines isn’t important. In fact, you should go outside of the lines because it will help you get shadows and highlights along the edges later. What IS important is putting everything on different layers. When in doubt, new layer. I work from back to front, which means that the base layer is the background. In front of that is the skin, in front of that is the robe, in front of that is the teal inside of the robe, in front of that is accessories. Hair varies depending on what’s going on with the image. Here I’ll probably put it between the skin and robe. Ask yourself: what is this covered by? And the use that to decide layer placement. Special effects are a whole other thing, as are highlights. I’ll get to that in a second tho.

The next step is to create an oversketch. This serves much the same function as an undersketch in oil painting, only in reverse because your reference photo is under - and covered - by your work. I started doing it because as I was painting I was flicking the layer on and off, making it transparent, whatever just to see where the shadows are on the reference image. It was a real pain in the rear. So I started making the blobs and borders of the highlights and shadows with an oversketch. You don’t need a method for telling which boundaries are for shadows and which are highlights because for that you can just turn the layer on and off. Just mark where the General shapes are. Here’s the oversketch for this drawing:

See? Blobs of General Area. When you’re painting, use them to lay down color and then turn them off when you’re blending because they’re not part of the final image and you don’t want to end up with gaps that were covered by the over sketch. To do this, I use the 9b pencil tool and black, but tbh just se whatever you like. That’s just my preference.

Now, for the shading. I started by trying a bunch of different natural media brushes but I eventually ended up sticking on a kind of weird choice: the fan brush. I keep the flow around 20%, which gives me these nice textured marks to lay down color, but then if I don’t lift the pencil up it stops laying down color and instead starts to blend. This means a, I can make it as smooth or painterly as I like with one tool and b, I can paint and blend with the same tool. No more muddying up my drawings by over-blending with the smudge. No losing the texture while blending because it blends with the texture. And the shape of the fan brush allows me to be smudgy with I like, but also will do hard edges. Plus the blending thins out the colors so I can get neat effects by laying down colors on top of each other because it stays a little transparent. You end up needing to lay down a lot of “paint” to get opacity but that’s ok because it allows you to make more complex colors. That’s good, because things like skin aren’t a color. They’re chemical: they’re melanin in cells over blood vessels and muscle and skin is transparent. Even very dark skinned people have undertones. So when you build up paint this way you can capture undertones without ruining your painting. Which, I’m pretty sure, is how it works in oils. But it translates well to digital.

So at this point, painting your image is basically a calming adult coloring book. You lay down color, blend, check your reference, repeat. But a few things to keep in mind:

- Take note of the darkest and lightest areas of the image. Nothing should be lighter or darker than these areas. Nothing in the drawing above will be darker than her back because that’s the darkest area of the painting.

- See the trees and the forest. Sometimes a detail doesn’t make any sense until you’ve seen it in context. Trust your guide and your photo reference. But also make sure that you don’t get so stuck in the details that you can’t relate one area to another. A fold that goes through two areas should be consistent across those two areas, even if you painted them separately. An area might seem dark in comparison to what’s next to it, but it isn’t as dark as the darkest area of the image so don’t go whole hog. Keep it in context.

- Folds in clothing aren’t nonsensical. They are a result of the movement and weight of the fabric. Ergo, the shadows and highlights that create them should also make sense.

- If you’re having a hard time figuring out where the highlights and shadows are, make a copy of the reference image layer and desaturate in, then turn off the colored reference layer.

Lastly, I’m finding it helpful to keep the highlights from colored light on its own layer. I didn’t used to do this, I used to use the colored light as one of my highlight colors. But the truth is that most objects are shaded by more than one light source, and so I’ve decided to do all the shading as white light and then the green (which will eventually be from some kind of green magic.) is on a different layer. My reasoning for this is that it helps keep the integrity of the shading and it prevents the colors from bending too much and getting muddy. So if I add a green highlight and I don’t like it then it’s easy to remove. I don’t have a highlight and shading that’s now ruined by green because I’ve been using light flow brushes. So colored light on its own layer. How much of a highlight you give it entirely depends on how strong your light sources is and whatnot. So far I’m satisfied with just hitting the high points, but I may change that later on.

When you’re done painting the area, go ahead and erase all of the excess paint around the edges of it and clean it up. I like to leave the black outline as part of the image, but if you don’t want to do that you should turn it on and off as necessary while painting so you can make sure to fill in gaps and get clean lines between the areas of color.

So if you made it all the way down here, thanks for reading my ramble. :)

[hylla-yea]

It's literary 12am on a Sunday morning and I spent all fucking week writing this, this better go viral. Anyway have some shit writing, I didn't edit this either, so sorry for any errors

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

Hazel was tired. More than usual to be honest. She looked awful, she felt awful. Hazel hated it, but she needed to finish all of her makeup work. Then there was all her preator work. Hazel was busy, she didn't have the time to sleep. There was work that needed to be done, she could sleep later. That idea would've been fine, if it weren't for the fact Hazel hadn't been actually been sleeping. Not even taking naps.

The longer it went on, the more obvious it has gotten. None of the older demigods had realised it until it had really gotten out of hand. First there was Leo.

“Hey!” The young Latino boy say causing Hazel to jump a bit. “Oh, hi Leo!” Hazel smiled sheepishly rubbing her eyes. “Is everything ok? You look..tired.”Leo said a little concerned. “Oh no, I'm fine. I've been sitting down working for too long” Leo frowned looking at all the work Hazel had around her on the counter top. “Well, don't forget to take a break and a nap.” Leo said before running of to do gods know what.

A few days later, on Wednesday, Percy had woken Hazel up in the same spot Leo had found her. This time Hazel seemed to be a lot more tired. Hazel was hardly awake when Percy had found her. Percy gently tapped the dark skinned girls shoulder. Hazel jolted up from her sleep. She had been asleep. Hazel looked around dazed hitting Percy in the face with her hair.

“Ahh!” Percy spat. “On your left Hazel!”

“Huh!? Oh sorry Percy!” Hazel blinked a few times. “Hazel, you're way too tired you need to go to bed. Plus, you have a test tomorrow, you can hold on the preator stuff for a bit. Take a nap.” Percy said as he started sorting some of Hazel's work. “Hey, wait what are you doing!?” Hazel said covering her papers with her arms.

“Cleaning up your stuff so you can rest.” Percy said. “I'll sleep in a bit, I promise, just a few more minutes!” Hazel pleaded looking Percy in the eye. Percy looked Hazel back in her eyes. He regretted it instantly. After only a few seconds he caved. “Alright fine! But only a few minutes.” Percy sighed and put Hazel's papers down walking away.

--------

Friday morning, a day were most would be happy and on their toes. Hazel wasn't. Far from it. She'd been stumbling across the halls of BAG hopelessly. She had artist statements and essays in her arms rushing go get them to their respective teachers.

It wasn't until Lacy had finally got Hazel's attention did she stop running. “Hazel is everything alright?” Lacy asked before she could look at Hazel.

“Gods, Hazel you look awful! Have you slept at all this week?”

Lacy asked clearly worried about her girlfriend. “Oh, yea..a few hours or so…” Hazel said as she made her way to the first class to drop off the work. “How long is a few hours?” Lacy asked following Hazel around the school. “Enough to get my work done.”

“Hazel, please, tell me.” Lacy pouted. It wasn't often that Hazel acted so cold towards Lacy, unless Lacy really ticked her off. Lacy quieted herself and continued to follow Hazel around school. Luckily they had the same classes so Lacy wouldn't be too far away from Hazel.

As the school day continued Lacy noticed how sleepy Hazel had been acting. She'd been doing off during classes. She some managed to fall asleep standing up. Lacy wanted to say something, but Hazel insisted she was fine.

Lacy bit her lip nervously. The school day was almost over, maybe she could convince Hazel to sleep in. Lacy cleared her throat catching Hazel's attention. “Um Hazel, did you- I mean could stay with you this weekend?” Lacy was clearly nervous. “Um, sure. Want to walk home with me?” Lacy nodded happily.

Lacy felt nervous, it wasn't that she had any bad intentions, she'd never been in Hazel's room. The thought of being alone in Hazel's room made Lacy feel weird inside. Like a happy weird.

“Lacy, are you ok? You look spaced out.”

Lacy shook her head focusing on the real world again. “Oh, yeah, I'm fine!” Lacy could tell she was blushing. She ate her food quietly not wanting to say anything stupid.

The rest of the school day went on fine.

The rest of the classes went by smoothly for both Hazel and Lacy. Nothing happened, no threat of having to rush back to either of camps or some monster attacking them. It was peaceful. Well as peaceful as a Friday even in school could get.

Walking home was sweet too.

“Hey, can I show you a new song?” Hazel asked suddenly. Despite how sleepy she was, Hazel was more than happy to be around Lacy. “Of course!” Hazel pulled out her phone and scrolled through her Spotify playlist. “There it is!” Hazel said as she pressed her thumb against her phone screen.

“I'm forming my own cloud here.”

Hazel sang along with the song. Lacy could only smile. Hazel's voice was sweet. Hazel kept singing until the song finished. Lacy was grinning from ear to ear. Lacy had it bad.

Lacy didn't realize that they finally reached Hazel's house. Despite how many people lived in the house, it was fairly clean. A few books there, a couple of blueprints rolled up in a pile. A couple of tools on the couch, but still clean.

“Come on, my room is this way!” Hazel grabbed Lacy's hand pulling her down the hallway and quickly entering a room.

If Lacy was going to be honest, she wasn't sure what she accepted Hazel's room to look like. When she did wonder she assumed it'd look like what she thought Nico's would. Dark, all the colors would've dark if they weren't black. Maybe a few records laid around.

It was far from it.

Hazel's room walls were painted white, it would've been boring if it weren't for the things that covered the walls. For starters, there were lyric notes painted across one wall while the one across from it was lined with pictures of all her art. Her bed was placed in the corner and had yet to be cleaned and had stuffed animals laid on the pillows. Next to it was a set of cubes that seemed to be connected. The roof had a few large lights on top, they seemed normal. The floor was clean minus the small pile of music and books in the corner near the window.

“Do you like it?” Hazel excitedly. Lacy nodded happily. “I love it! It's really pretty!” Lacy smiled as she walked over to the wall with all of Hazel's art work on it. “You made all of these?” Lacy was examined the wall in awe. The art was realistic and seemed to pop off the page. “Yea, Annabeth gave me the idea. She said I could see my improvement.”

Hazel blushed, she always got compliments for her art, but Lacy's made her feel..happier. Hazel feel soft inside. “Is this one me?” Lacy asked pointing at one turning to face Hazel. “U-um…yea, I painted when we first started dating..” Hazel blushed rubbing the back of her neck. “If you don't like it-”

“Hazel, I love it!”

“Really?” Hazel thought it would've been weird to draw Lacy, mostly cause she drew it from memory. “Of course, I wish I could paint like this.” Lacy pouted a little. “Hey you can dance!” Hazel said. “You're great at doing things, I wish I could do!”

Lacy blushed a bit. She was never good at taking complaints. “Uh..thank you..” Lacy quickly changed the subject.

“Can..can I stay for the night? I already have extra clothes.”

Hazel paused for a bit. “I'll go ask Percy!” Hazel ran out the room. Lacy looked around Hazel's room silently. She looked in the cubes Hazel had near her bed. She wasn't expecting to find much. She found a few art ideas and supplies. She found a few CDs with weird names for each one.

After looking for a bit more shed found a diary. She bit her lip. She shouldn't read it. It wouldn't hurt to just look at it. Lacy looked at the cover. It was painted. It had Hazel's name written in Latin she assumed.It was nice. She flipped over and looked at the back. It was just as pretty. It was covered in stickers on it

Lacy put the book down only to find a little remote. She clicked a button and suddenly the colors of the lights changed. Lacy giggled and kept changing the colors. Hazel came back into the room smiling happily.

“You can stay!”

“Good, now I can trick you into taking a nap!” Lacy said. Lacy stood up and pushed Hazel into the bathroom. “Now take a shower! You need to relax!” Lacy threw in some random clothes and waited patiently for Hazel to shower. Once Hazel finished Lacy wasted no time taking her shower not wanting to waste anytime.

Lacy came out the bathroom smiling. “Great, that's out the way.” Hazel looked up from her phone grinning. “Good, I wanted you to teach you how to paint.” Lacy smiled, she wonder how long Hazel had been practicing that. “I'd love to learn!”

Hazel rushed over to her closet. She pulled out a canvas, a few paint brushes, and a lot of paint. Lacy moved out the way to allow Hazel to place everything out. “Don't we need something to cover the floor?” Lacy asked sitting down next to Hazel. “We should be fine, this paint doesn't dry quickly.”

“How about we try painting a dove? So you can hang it up in your room!” Hazel said as she began to sketch the bird out on the canvas. Lacy was expecting it to take at least an hour. It only took Hazel around thirty minutes to finish sketching. “You draw fast..” Lacy looked at the bird. It looked very pretty and Lacy didn’t want to ruin it. “You sure it's ok for me to paint this, I don't wanna mess it up.”

Hazel nodded excitedly. “Yea, I want you to learn.” Hazel looked around. “I'll be back we need water!” Lacy nodded as Hazel quickly ran off. Lacy picked up one of the paint palettes. She opened it. The colors were mostly used and white plastic that held the paint was covered in light streaks of each color. She closed it and opened another one.

This one seemed new and didn't seem to be used, looked brand new even. Hazel came back with a cup of water. “We'll use this to clean the brushes!” Hazel said placing the cup on the floor before sitting down. “Ok, so, pick one of the palettes!”

Lacy looked at the one in her hand. The colors were dark. More earthy. “I wanna use this one…” Lacy trailed off looking at another pallette. The colors were mostly pink or some version of it. “...and this one!”

Hazel grinned. “OK,what if we paint the dove pink and make it look like it's flying over a forest?” Lacy nodded. “Yea, let's do that!” Hazel picked up a pencil and added to outline for the background. Once she finished going over the pencil in sharpie Hazel dipped the paintbrush in water. “What do you wanna paint first?”

Lacy took the brush from Hazel. “The dove, I can't possibly mess that up!” Lacy said as she ran the brush across the pink pigment in the pallette and began to paint.

Lacy had never painted a day in her life and had no idea what to do.

[nyabi132-blog]

Unique Artist

Okay this is my first ROTG fanfiction, and well it’s not a prompt just something I thought of, and I love winter (even if I can’t go outside and play in the snow). It’s so pretty and I just love it so much.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Rise of the Guardians (not sure if I need this here, but just in case)

Jack has travelled a lot in his 300 years of impromptu isolation. He had the Wind to fly him any place it wanted to take him. He never cared where he went. He just let the Wind take him wherever he needed to go and spread a little snow. It wasn’t like he had any obligations anyway, his schedule was always free. So wherever Jack needed to spread his snowdays, the wind would take him there. He often circled the globe to do his rounds of said snow spreading, routes of which were agreed upon by the other three seasonal spirits.

Despite popular belief, they actually didn’t bother each other much. That isn’t to say they liked each other, but they had a respect for each other's work, because they had similar jobs, and did their seasonal bidding where it made sense. For example, the spirit of summer wouldn’t make it hot in the Himalayas and the spirit of winter wouldn’t make it snow in July, unless it was supposed to snow in certain areas. They wouldn’t get in each other’s way and if they happened to cross paths, they wouldn’t even blink at the other’s direction. Just keep going. It was pointless to fight, they were immortal anyway and they sort of needed one another to flow into the seasons correctly. Plus they all had their own ways of knowing where their magic needed to be spread, weather it be the clouds or the wind. They understood that sometimes their fellow seasonals had reasons for what they did where they did it. They weren’t so gung ho about their seasons that they’d hurt one another for it. So they would accept the rare occasion of snow in mid fall or a bit of heat in December.

Anyway, Jack spread winter and snow all over the world for a very long time. He’s seen almost every place there is to see. From snowy tundras, to deserts. Although he only passes through those at night, he can’t really take too much heat. All the natural landscapes were beautiful. Flowers and sunsets, and the night sky with all the twinkling stars. From silver linings to the sun hitting a glacier or the water or even his ice just right.

Not only that, but he also has seen modern culture develop. People were forever changing, and technology was evolving. As the years progressed, bigger and more modernized buildings and inventions were made. Watching cities be built and people go about their different lives. It’s amazing how none of them ever did the same exact thing everyday and a routine would never once be repeated exactly. There was always something different.

Just like two snowflakes were ever the same.

With so many references there never would be two of the same kind of snowflake. It was impossible for Jack to think of the same thing twice when he thought about one topic it would flurry into a billion things that associated with it.

Jack loved drawing them too, albeit he never had the time to make every little snowflake, just the ones he likes most. He’d draw them in the frost on a window or in a little never ending notebook he kept in his hoodie pocket. He’d never put words to the snowflake, because the drawing was enough. It was unique and it told exactly what or whom it was based off of.

It was also a way to spend the summer months when snow wasn’t often needed or when he just had nothing to do and was bored. He’d draw whatever was on his mind into a snowflake. It was a good way of remaining positive, or at least not brooding about his seemingly sempiternal loneliness.  

It became like a habit more than a hobby. As a winter spirit he was supposed to be cold and emotionless. Jack was a bit wayward though. He wasn’t so much cold and emotionless as he was fun and mischievous. But it wasn’t often that he expressed deep emotions with anyone, it was just his nature. But there were tell-tale signs of what he was actually feeling and people who knew him knew what they were. Like when he was bored he’d draw snowflakes.

But no one really knew him.

So when he was at the North Pole with nothing to do, because he’d already pranked the yetis one too many times today, and froze a bit too many elves for Phil’s liking - even though sometimes he was grateful for not having to deal with those delusional imbeciles. He was sent to an area in the globe room as to not disturb anyone and to wait for North.

It was late spring and he didn’t have much to do, and he didn’t want to be in a hot place, so North decided that he should come to the work shop and just relax there for a while. Keyword: decided. Jack really didn’t have a choice.

But the big man was now working on toys leaving Jack to his devices. Which didn’t turn out to be such a good idea, because it left many toys to be broken. Not enough to set the ever busy yetis behind schedule, but enough to have North reinforce punishment. North was not going to act like a parent, though he should, he never did. Jack was 300 years old and capable of taking care of himself, but when it came to his own work, he felt it acceptable to lay down some rules. Even if he secretly did find some pranks funny, if he messed up the work by accident consequences would be reinforced to make sure it didn’t happen again.

 He sat at the window sill and absently frosting the window beside him deciding to make another base snowflake. He sketched on the window sill and his frost made it fairly easy to erase and he made multiple angles in different patches of frost. He didn’t know what he was drawing but he’d know once he finished. When he finished a rough sketch on the windowsill, he transferred it to his never ending notebook so he could add details. Every so often trying the designs on the windows first, as to avoid most eraser marks on the paper.

He didn’t get to finish because he felt someone walk into the area he was currently occupying and he turned around. But instead of a large Russian, or fury beast, there was an anthropomorphic rabbit. That threw Jack a bit for a loop, but he guessed it wasn’t unnatural to see the rabbit here. It was a few weeks after Easter, and he could sometimes find the bunny hanging around North’s workshop for insight with his fellow guardian.

“Hey Bunny. What’s up?” Jack greeted casually and letting his notebook slip between him and the windowsill absently.

“I��m ‘ere on b’half o’ North, ya gumby.” the rabbit said crossing his arms and standing a bit taller.

“ But it’s May. North can’t be busy.” Jack said and cocked his head in a curious jester.

“Do ya know how many toys ya broke, Frostbite?” Bunny continued ignoring Jack. So that’s what this was about. It was really not a big deal. He hadn’t seen the Russian after the incident, but he figured on of his furry helpers told him. Bunny must have been there when he did and when North decided to blow it off like he’d normally do, Bunny didn’t like it. The rabbit always had a way of staying on track, no matter what. North wouldn’t do anything in this situation, but Bunny would.

“As I said it’s May. It doesn’t matter now.” Jack said and nodded his head as if agreeing with himself and started to focus his attention back on his highly detailed snowflake. Though he missed Bunny’s indigent stare.

“That ain’t the problem.” Bunny hopped a few steps forward. He wasn’t even sure that Jack was listening to him. “Ya could’ve set ‘im behind schedule.”

“And if I did, why isn’t he the one telling me off?” Jack asked not looking up from his notebook.  Bunny let his ears flatten against his head. Bunny swore he acted more like a 15 year old then a 317 year old.

“But what if it did? ‘e’d ‘ave ta fix the error and couldn’t come ‘ere ta tell ya off.” Bunny reasoned.

“It’s May.” Jack said again but distantly and half heartedly, he’d make this line just right- And just like that his notebook was yanked away by a furry paw.

“Hey!” he said and looked at the irritated bunny, “ I was doing something!” he said and stood up and grabbed his staff that was leaning against the wall and glared at the rabbit.

“Fer ye’re season?” The rabbits asked in a neutral voice.

“Well yeah, sort of.” Jack said like it was obvious. It really wasn’t, but he’s been working on that snowflake for well over an hour dammit. It’s not like it mattered though. No one actually cared what they looked like, it was just him who’d ever know what they truly looked like and represented. Bunny wasn’t ruining anything but his pride. And one and a half hours of drawing.

“Did I mess you up?”

“Yes, you did.”

“Why are ya so mad. It’s only May.” That made Jack stop. Bunny was trying to prove a point. And he did. Jack suppressed the urge to roll his eyes.

“Okay, you proved your point. But I doubt North would want any of my help, I would offer it, but I’d probably make it worse. Then he’d really be behind. And for the record the season could’ve went on without that.” Jack said and Bunny raise a brow and looked at the book. “I mean I don’t need it, but I’m not finished yet so can I have it back.” Jack said rather then asked. He knew bunny would give it back. He wasn’t really paying attention to what the rabbit was doing as he turned back to the window sill.

“Are these snowflakes, Frostbite?” the rabbit asked and Jack swung around seeing Bunny flip through the pages of the incredibly detailed designs. Bunny would be lying if he said he wasn’t impressed, though he wouldn’t admit to any kind of talent, beside freezing stuff, the kid had. The detail in each one was insane. He looked up and the frost teen shrugged.

“I got bored.” the rabbit looked at him more which made him slightly uncomfortable. “It’s really nothing.” Then the rabbit spotted the planning in frost behind the winter spirit. In the temperatures at the North pole it wasn’t unbelievable that the frost stayed longer than usual.

“Fer nothing, it sure took a ton o’ planning, mate.” Bunny said matter of factly gesturing his head to the frost pictures behind him.

“I just didn’t want to get smudges on the paper.” Jack said because it was the truth. His lack of urgency made it easy to believe. Still deep down he was embarrassed someone had seen his private collection of ‘special snowflakes’.

“These are pretty detailed too. Must’ve taken some effort.” the rabbit raised a brow. It was pretty interesting, Jack’s comebacks weren’t as snarky as before. He wanted to see where this went.

Jack only shrugged “Not really. They aren’t really anything like yours or Norths.” Then Jack laughed a little, but there was no bitterness to it, or maybe a little. “Heck, no one even seems to care how they look.” There was some silence between the two for a bit then.

“North would take ya.” Bunny said, and it through Jack for a loop.

“Huh?” was all he could answer with a surprised and curious blick.

“North would like ye’re designs, mate.” Bunny rephrased “So do I.” he smirked at the shocked and disbelieving stare the frost teen was giving him. It was priceless seeing the usually carefree but guarded face so not.

“Wha- You don’t- it’s not-” If Bunny wasn’t getting a kick out of this before he sure was now. See the gracefully smug winter spirit trip over his words was a sight, and a funny one to someone who had a relationship with him like Bunny. He started to laugh and clutching his stomach.

“Wha? Bunny stop laughing! That was a joke right?” Bunny’s laughing died a bit after a while. He looked at the frost teen who had his eyes cast to the side. “You and North… wouldn’t really..?” He mumbled off the rest, but Bunny knew where it was going. In the three years he’s known the winter spirit - and like really known him - he could tell when a few things were off. But Bunny wasn’t much of a comforter, that wasn’t his type. So he tapped his foot twice and a rabbit hole opened beneath Jack and the unsuspecting teen fell through, he heard the indigent gasp and rolled his eyes with a smirk Bunny let himself fall through too.

When they emerged through the hole into the warren Jack seemed to have caught his balance again and gracefully landed on his staff balancing on the hook part.

“What was that for kangaroo?” Jack asked looking at the rabbit who just grabbed him by the hood and ignored the protests and threats of being frozen. He was finally placed down near the paintriver under a shady tree and there were paint brushes in a jar with some paints around it.

“What the heck! Why are we here?” Jack said head and eyes following the rabbit from his place on the grass as he sat next to him and Jack continued to glare at him.

“Would’ja quit complain’en, Frostbite.” the anthropomorphic rabbit said irritably and Jack promptly shut up. Bunny looked around for a second and picked up an egg. As he turned around Jack looked at him with an unamused look, which grew curious when the egg was placed in his hand. He looked back up at Bunny. “The paint brushes ‘re there an’ ys can use the paint river fer the colours you need and ya can mix it ‘ere.” The rabbit put a pallet in his hand that wasn’t holding the egg and pointed to the other materials and then sat down and picked up his own egg to start painting.

Jack’s face turned back to the unamused look and waited for Bunny to look up again.

“Somethin’ wrong, mate?” Bunny looked confused and raised a brow at the frost teen.

“Why are we here? What is this?” Jack said trying to keep his voice down which he had success in but the place where he was sitting was starting to frost over and it expanded.

“Snowflake, ye’re frosting the grass.” Bunny felt the need to point out and smirk.

“Okay, I’m upset. But you threw me down a hole and gave me a pallet and an egg with no context!” He didn’t like telling Bunny his emotions but there was no other way for the rabbit to know. It might’ve not been a big deal, but Jack didn’t like people knowing when he was upset when it actually mattered, because when it mattered the most it would just make others pity him and be upset that they wouldn’t know how to fix it. When it was trivial matters like this, he didn’t mind. He liked to think this was the worst of his problems, but it wasn’t and they both knew that. But they’d pretend for as long as they could.

“There ain’t no context needed, Snowflake.” Bunny smirked and went back to his egg. “Jus’ paint an egg.” Bunny paused to think for a second “Fer North.” he added

“North’s not upset.” Jack groaned.

“Okay, fer me.” Bunny said not looking up from his egg.

“Why would you be upset?” Jack asked irritably.

“Why does someone ‘ave to be upset fer ya ta do yer told?” if you listened closely you could hear the hint of exasperation.

“They don’t I just don’t see the point in this.” Jack mumbled. But they both knew the real reason, or at least Bunny did. Jack didn’t want anyone to be upset. He was the guardian of fun so obviously if no one was upset or sad he didn’t have anything to work with. Bunny understood that.

“‘kay, I’m upset yer talent’s ‘re wastin’ away in tha’ notebook no one’s gonna see.” Bunny said and Jack looked away a little and  Bunny sighed. “Jus’ paint an egg.”

“Just one egg?”

“Yeah, jus’ one.” Bunny agreed. And Jack picked up the paintbrush and started to paint. He decided to draw all the snowflakes that came to mind. Not anything special just to get it over with. He ambraid the background in blues, getting lighter as it went up and then in a darker blue and medium blue and white he painted snowflakes and as the background got lighter the snowflakes got small until about halfway up the egg they completely disappeared. They were fairly simple snowflakes, ones he could draw in seconds but none of them looked the same.

“There.” he showed the egg to the Easter Bunny himself and he smiled a little.

“Not bad, Frostbite.” Bunny smirked.

“Well, I told you I wasn’t good. It’s on you that you wasted one of your eggs.” Jack justified before he could be accused.

“I said they were good.” Bunny said with a bit of amusment.

“You said they weren’t bad.” Jack shot back.

“Which means they were good.”

“No.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“No it’s not.”

Bunny rolled his eyes. “Listen, ye’re good at this.” Bunny got up and walked over to Jack and knelt beside him. “And people may not see ye’re snowflakes, but they aren’t any less pretty, Frostbite.” He handed back the notebook he’d taken earlier and went back to his spot. “Ye’re allowed ta stay and paint more.” Bunny said not looking at Jack and grabbing the egg he was working on instead.

And Jack did stay.

So yeah that’s that! Snowflakes are really really detailed and they are so small. People don’t appreciate how different they are, and in that sense snowflakes are just like people, and that’s cheesy because we’re all different. But also snowflakes are like everyday, that’s confusing but like think about it. Everyday you do something different, even if it’s a routine, something is always different. So each day is like a snowflake. Unique.

[evanstandefensesquad-blog]

Paper Moon Part 15

MB - @thecountessakasha - back again. I hope you’re ready for Part 15! There’s no smut, it’s literally all fluff, so apologies in advance.

I’m going to tag a couple people who I’ve told about this and my really special love who keeps betaing this for me @evansscruff - thank you, darling.

A/N: Bucky and Steve end up at a venue that has a 40s night and meet an OFC, Melissa Rose, a singer in a local club. They both are smitten by her, and start to vie for her affections. They end up finding out more about themselves in the process.

This honestly started out as maybe a one shot but as I got going, I decided it’ll be chapters. How many? No frigging idea. This is my absolute first time writing a fic of any sort and yes I did base the OFC on myself. I hope y'all enjoy.

Word count: 3300+ because I am a wordy bitch.

Warnings: FLUFF to the Goddamn max. Gonna rot your teeth. Oh, and cussing. Like always.

STEVE’S POV

To say that the past few months were rough would be an understatement. Word got out about Bucky and me; and that, of course, led to word getting out about Melissa, Bucky, and me. It was strange; there was almost no animosity aimed at him and me, but just as she predicted, there was plenty aimed at her. People had taken to the Internet and the airwaves to voice their opinion of the “old” woman whom they decided was “ruining Steve and Bucky’s happiness” by “insinuating herself” between us.

Hate mail piled up at the club for her. She quit checking it altogether. Bucky would always gather the multitude of envelopes and go through them to sort out what was important and what was trash. Let me tell ya, her recycling bin has been packed full.

People would pop up at her shows to heckle and ridicule her. Finally, the owner raised the ticket prices and added extra bouncers which helped. Though on the plus side, more people came to actually see her perform. She wowed every single one of them. There were rumors of other places looking to steal her away, but she had vowed to never abandon Club Onyx. Or the owner. He’d been far too good to her and she appreciated it more than he would ever know.

The fact that she’s stuck with us is astonishing to me. And every day I fall deeper because of it. She’s so much stronger than she thinks. Not to say there haven’t been some rough patches. Her depression took over, and at times we couldn’t even get her to speak. There were days upon days when she just refused to get out of bed. Pretty sure she’s upped her rum intake. Even now she’s rarely, if ever, seen outside of the club without Bucky unless it’s to come to the tower. But for the most part we’ve really weathered the storm.

I think the biggest change has been with Bucky. He’s no longer chomping at the bit to take every mission he can get his hands on, trying to keep his mind on anything other than his life. He’s actually been turning down those offered to stay with Melissa during this tumultuous beginning.

For the first time since coming back from Wakanda, the light has truly returned to his eyes. And it’s her. Well, I mean it’s probably me, too. Us. But I really think it’s Melissa more than anything. She’s changed him. Made him more comfortable in his skin. Shown him that there’s more to “Bucky” than just “The Winter Soldier”.

He’s taken to staying at her place more and more. So have I, just not quite as often. It’s not like I get as many opportunities to turn down missions as he does. Part of the mantle of being Captain America, as Natasha is fond of reminding me.

I spend every moment I can with the both of them. Usually at her place. Not because we’re unwelcome at the tower. Far from it. Everyone would like it if we came around more often. They all really like Melissa. Especially Nat, Wanda, Clint, and Sam.

She finally got to meet Thor and was practically gushing about it. She couldn’t stop asking him questions about Asgard, what it’s really like there. She knew all the myths, of course. And how often do you get to meet a god? He in turn, is quite taken with her. Much to Bucky’s dismay.

It’s amazing the effect she has on people. She puts it off as the “southern thing”. Like she’s a novelty. As if that’s the only reason everyone here just adores her. That’s a piece of it, sure, but not all. She’s simply … captivating.

The night after Melissa first came to the tower, we had everyone out to the club to see her perform. Her nerves were on edge all day long.Because of that Bucky and I tried everything we could to keep her calm. She ended up going for a walk, alone, to clear her head. She puts so much pressure on herself.

A good bit of time had passed but Melissa still hadn’t made it back. I was starting to get really worried. Bucky suggested that I head back to the tower to make sure everyone was ready for the evening and that he’d go look for her.

He found her instantly, of course. She’d gone to a little park she discovered one of her first days in New York. It’s a place she and Bucky like to go when they need quiet and anonymity. They’ll put on hoodies and sunglasses and do their best to hide from the world and just sit in the middle of the park, right on the grass. Most times, they don’t even speak. They just exist there in that moment.

Bucky had gathered her up and walked her back to the apartment. The night went off without a hitch and the club received a boost of publicity due to our attendance.

I’ve noticed a change in myself as well. I’m sure Bucky and the others have seen it. I’m not as reckless. That’s the main thing. The idea of not coming back to the two people I love more than anything in this world is a very sobering thought indeed. The mere notion that I would irrevocably hurt them by not returning from a mission is too much to bare.

There are selfish reasons, too. To never be able to look into her dazzling green eyes again, or his shimmering blue ones cuts me to the core. That I wouldn’t be able to touch them, to see them smile, hear their laughter, or the noises they make in the heat of passion is like a stab in the gut.

My world revolves around them. Melissa and Bucky. My twin dark muses. Mes deux muses sombre, as she would say. They hold my heart in their hands. I am nothing without them and I strive every day to show them what they mean to me.

It’s to that end that I’ve decided to surprise them with some gifts. The first one is a simple thing; a sketchbook full of little drawings of the two of them doing mundane activities. Some are individual. Snippets of our everyday lives. Melissa lying in the middle of the living room floor, sheet music strewn around her, forgotten as she buries her nose in some book about Irish peat farmers. Bucky draped across the sofa, headphones on, feet kicking away to the beat of a “new to him” song that she’d turned him on to.

Some are of them together. Bucky is sitting crossed legged on the floor with his back against the overstuffed recliner while Melissa’s legs and arms are wrapped around him as she’s perched in the chair. His head tilted and resting against her thigh as they binge watch House of Cards, discussing what they’d like to do with Claire and Francis. The pair of them in the little kitchen, dancing and singing while they cook dinner for the three of us.

Once I snuck up on them in their little park and sketched them there, laying back on the grass, hoodies and sunglasses on. I watched their chests rise and fall with their breathing, wondering what they’d talked about, what they had been thinking about. Melissa was unaware of my presence, but I’m sure Bucky knew. You can’t fool the super soldier senses, after all.

The other gift is much, much bigger. It’s really a gift for the three of us. I’ve purchased an old brownstone in Brooklyn and am having it renovated into a single dwelling. This dual residence life is wearing on us. We need our own place, private, away from the hustle and bustle of Manhattan and the tower. Melissa needs to be able to detach herself from the club. She’s finally gotten the hang of the subway, so I feel confident she’ll be fine with the move. As for Bucky, he’ll be over the moon. He’s been wanting to move back home. And now I can give that to him.

Tony has decided to throw me a big birthday bash this weekend, so I’m going make the announcement then. Probably doesn’t make much sense for me to be giving gifts on my own birthday, but like I said, this is for all of us.

I can’t wait to see their faces.

BUCKY’S POV

I feel like the luckiest man alive. How I ever was good enough to deserve the pair of them, I’ll never understand. Steve, all the hell he went through to bring me back. He fought the world for me. Not many people can say that about their lover. I am his forever.

And Melissa. My beloved Angel. Her love has forged me into the man I am. The one I was meant to be. The longer I’m with her the harder I fall. She believes in me. I cannot explain what that means, how that affects every action I take.

I’ve been spending more and more time with her, staying at her place. I should really just move in with her. She’s suggested it several times and each time I brush it off; I feel like I’m imposing. But I feel far more comfortable at her apartment than I do at the tower. There I feel like a visitor. Not a true part of the team. At her place, it feels like home. Especially when Steve’s able to stay with us.

Melissa and I like to take care of Steve when he’s around. The missions wear him down so we do our best to help him relax when he’s home with us. It feels good to care for him again, like I used to when we were young.

One of my favorite parts about spending so much time with her is having someone to just be with. We go for walks, we do the shopping, we take in movies, we cook meals, we explore the city. She does try to keep herself incognito, because of everything. I dare someone to try something while I’m around. It’s mundane and domestic and I fucking love every second of it.

No missions, no emergencies. Because of her I feel like a normal person. I’ve even been more comfortable about showing my arm in public. Melissa’s not afraid of it and she always, always makes sure that’s the hand she holds.

She sees herself as undeserving of both Steve and me. Especially after all the shit we’ve been through recently; she feels like it’s all her fault. Oh, but she’s wrong. So very wrong. She deserves the goddamn world on a silver platter. And I aim to give it to her.

I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out a way to show her what she means to me. How she’s helped me, how deeply I’ve fallen for her.

Pieces of my life from before have been coming back periodically, and something I’ve discovered recently is that I can play piano. Not only can I play, I’m actually quite good. I’ve been sneaking downstairs to the club while it’s closed with handfuls of her sheet music to practice. Steve has caught me a few times. He must forget that he can’t sneak up on me. He’s never interrupted or bothered me, merely observes, more than likely sketching.

There’s a point to all this. I have quite the surprise for her. I want to play for her, with her. I can’t sing for shit, but I don’t need to. It’s her voice everyone wants. She’s the real star. I just want to be a part of it, to back her up, support her. And it calms me, I really enjoy it.

I’ve been working on one song in particular. I’m going to spring it on her at Steve’s party. By chance I heard her singing it in the shower one morning. She likes to practice there; the acoustics are phenomenal. The piece makes use of her smokey, lower vocals. Mmmm, her voice is like Tupelo honey. I am awestruck every time I’m blessed to hear it. The lyrics themselves, well let’s just say I can picture her saying these things to me and Steve.

I’ve got something for Steve too, of course. It’s hard to think of things to give him, the man who sacrificed everything he had, everything he was, to save me. But I know what makes him happy, what centers him. Anything art related. Anything.

So, with the help of Tony and Natalia, I was able to get a private tour of the Museum of Modern Art for Steve, Melissa, and myself. The card with all the arrangements will be hidden in a whole shitload of art supplies Melissa and I bought for his upcoming birthday.

And well, since we can’t resist, Steve and I have also conspired to give her a gift from the both of us. One we know she’ll appreciate more than anyone else probably ever would. We’re going to give her each one of our dog tags to wear. The originals. We … acquired them from the Smithsonian. Like they would refuse Captain America anything.

If it seems overly sentimental and nostalgic, well, tough shit. I think Steve and I have earned that right. Melissa will understand the significance. She’s a military brat coming from a long line of veterans stretching all the way back to the Revolutionary War. She gets it and I honestly don’t care if anyone else does. Just thinking of her wearing them makes me heart soar.

I love discovering little things about her. I love how she leads me to rediscover things about myself. I love watching her and Steve together, even if it’s just them doing something as simple as lounging together on the floor, books on history surrounding them as they pour over the words. Their heated discussions will go on for hours; I learn more from listening to them than I ever would reading on my own.

The way she looks at him when she doesn’t think anyone is watching her. Him doing the same. The way she’ll sit still, posing for hours on end for him while he draws or paints her. Most times it ends up with her teasing him mercilessly until he drops his tools and quiets her with passionate kisses.

And oh the way we all seamlessly flow into one another in the bedroom. Sometimes with heated, fiery, gnawing need. Sometimes with giggles and laughter until we can’t take it anymore. It has never felt so natural, so right.

I love these idiots more than I could ever express. I would be lost without them.

MELISSA’S POV

My boys, my beloved boys.

I can’t believe they’re mine. I can’t believe they’re still with me after six months of insanity. Six months of all the hate and worry and stress. I can’t believe Bucky has given up missions to stay by my side. I can’t believe Steve continually professes his love for me. I can’t believe they put up with all my baggage. My anxiety, my depression, my health issues.

Without even realizing it, I have fallen head over heels in love with them. Happiness, something that has always been elusive in my life, is now a constant. Which of course leads to the occasional panic attack, since my brain can’t wrap itself around the notion that I deserve this happiness and likes to construct various scenarios where I lose one or the both of them. Either on a mission or from them simply growing tired of me and leaving.

Nightmares haunt me every now and then, my fears manifesting themselves in my subconscious. I’ll thrash and sweat and full on cry until Bucky finally wakes me. He’ll hold me tightly to him as he waits for me to calm down, all the while whispering to me how he’s here, he’s real, he’s not going anywhere, how much he loves me.

One such incident happened when both Steve and Bucky were home. It must have been a particularly powerful one as it nearly sent Steve into a panic before Bucky explained what was happening and showed him how to deal with it. It took the both of them to bring me back around that night.

Bucky puts up with my shit every time we leave the apartment. Hiding myself under hoodies and sunglasses and baggy clothes. He understands. He was at that point himself not long ago. God, he takes such good care of me; he always makes sure I’m comfortable with it all, that I feel safe, loved.

And the way Steve dotes on me, I’ve never had someone so attentive to my each and every desire. Sometimes before I even know what they are. He has a knack for knowing exact what I need when I need it.

Things like that. Dealing with me on days where I couldn’t even function inside my depression. Nights when my anxiety was so high I would just drink myself into a stupor and couldn’t even perform.

And through it all they’re still committed to me. Because of that I’ve taken on my own mission. To keep them happy any way I can. To give in to every whim or wish they might ever have. If it’s in my capacity to do, then it’s done. Period. No questions asked.

These two, I know they have something up their sleeves. They may be super soldiers but they’re shit at keeping secrets. Something fishy’s going on. And Nat! Oh my god, she’s been teasing me to no end about something she knows that I don’t.

She and I have become quite close. Oh, she is fiercely protective of me, too. I adore her. And Wanda and Sam and Clint. They’ve been so, so great to me. The other members of the team have as well, but these guys. Well, let’s just say they’re by far my closest friends here in the city.

I’ve got news for my two big boys. They’re not the only ones who can be sneaky. I’ve got something up MY sleeve. With Steve’s birthday party coming up, I’ll make some time before we leave to give them their presents. I want it to be special, something just between the three of us.

Of course Bucky and I went overboard on our joint gift. We have a tendency to indulge Steve quite often. I’m not sure all the art supplies we bought are even going to fit into the area we’ve cleared out in the living room for his makeshift studio. Oh well. I’m sure he’ll deal just fine. I can’t wait till he sees what we’ve done.

As for my gifts to the pair of them, I hope they’re comfortable wearing jewelry. I didn’t get anything fancy, or gaudy. That’s just not our style. With that thought in mind, I’ve I found a pair of matching stainless steel cuffs. They’re small, like a little bracelet, but you attach them with screws. And I hold the screwdriver.

On the inside of Steve’s I’ve had engraved Mon Soleil. Bucky’s sports Ma Lune. My Sun and My Moon. My two very large, powerful, all consuming forces.

The light and the dark.

Watching them together is one of my major addictions. I love catching each of them looking at the other. It’s like they have a silent language. They’re always in sync. Whether it’s cleaning the apartment, binge watching a show, or when we’re in the bedroom. It’s like they have one mind.

They speak often of having claimed me. Getting me before anyone else could. Snatching me off the market. As if I was even on the damn market to begin with. It always makes me laugh and shake my head. But, if they’ve claimed me then I’ve done the same to them. They’re mine and I will defend that claim all the rest of my days.

I’m with them to the end of the line.

Tagging:

@alievans007 @buckysbackpackbuckle @justareader @anice-1 @hardcollectiontrashworld @always-an-evans-addict @mewsiex

Thanks everyone!

[thecomedybureau]

The 100 Best Things in Comedy We Were Witness to in No Particular Order of 2016

2016 is officially, finally, thankfully over (as long as you don’t think about time largely being a human construct, a new number of year doesn’t make things automatically better, and Trump becoming POTUS).

So, it’s time for our year end list, The 100 Best Things in Comedy We Were Witness to in No Particular Order of 2016.

For reference of how we do our year-end, best of lists, which is a far cry from most other comedy best of lists anywhere else, check out our lists from past years: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.

Got it? Great.

Here’s 2016′s edition:

1. Jake Weisman's Send Up of Peter Travers Reviews-Rolling Stone has gone through so much recently, you might have forgot this amazing NSFW parody that Weisman made of Travers movie reviews.

2. Rory Scovel’s set on Conan Where He Went Into the Crowd-Rory Scovel pushes the envelope in stand-up in the best ways imaginable and this latest Conan set is evidence of his juggling of being fearless and silly at the same time.

3. Conan Without Borders-Conan O'Brien's trips overseas to Berlin and South Korea highlight every single comedy gear that Conan can shift into and proves that he can almost make any situation hilarious.

4. "Killer" by Matt Kazman-Kazman achieves one of the best comedic payoffs on screen in 2016, including film and TV, with this incredibly crafted short film.

5. The Jackie and Laurie Show-Jackie Kashian and Laurie Kilmartin found a way to make a podcast where comedians talk comedy and have it be original, damn funny, and crucial.

6  Hebecky Drysbell-Reigning all time UCB Cagematch champions Heather Anne Campbell and Rebecca Drysdale showcase such virtuosity as an improv duo that is as hilarious as it is, when we think about it, beautiful.

7. Chris Estrada-If you’re looking for diamonds in the rough right now, we’d say catch Estrada’s next set and you’ll see how great his jokes are drawing from his life growing up in LA. 

8. Cool Sh*t/Weird Sh*t's Neighborhood Walking Tour-the LA outfit of the experimental comedy show brilliantly took its audience, one night, around the block and staged such moments as a couple fake fighting in a real Food 4 Less, a woman crying trying to explain the plot of a movie in a Walgreens, and running into an adult orphan waiting to be adopted off the street.

9. Womanhood with Aparna Nancherla and Jo Firestone-Nancherla and Firestone compliment each other so well in being goofy on this show that goes through absurd explanations of  “womanhood” that it should be the next web series that gets made into a full fledged TV show. 

10. Fleabag-Phoebe Waller Bridge has the UK's fantastic, epic answer to You're The Worst.

11. Giulia Rozzi's True Love-Rozzi’s hour achieves what a good rom com achieves by skewering love and all of its faults as much as it celebrates it.

12. Mike Leffingwell's 12 Angry Men: The One Man Show-The concept of a single man doing a solo show adaptation of the classic courtroom drama 12 Angry Men is funny enough, but Mike Leffingwell then pulled off performing it perfectly.

13. Josh Sharp doing an hour while dipping in and out of singing D'Angelo's Untitled (How Does It Feel?) with a live band-Sharp's stories are wonderfully crafted and told, and then, accentuated by his lovely voice singing D'Angelo’s most well known song like there's no tomorrow.

14. Not Safe with Nikki Glaser's Remote Segments-Glaser fed porn stars lines for scenes, visited a foot fetish convention, and highlighted sex in such a fun way that wasn’t attempted by any other TV show.

15. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver's Make Donald Drumpf Again-Oliver and company's take down of Trump was one of the best researched, strategized, written, executed pieces on Trump during this whole election cycle.

16. Disengaged-Jen Tullock and Hannah Utt's web series following a lesbian couple rushing into marriage was one of the best pieces of romantic comedy we saw in 2016

17. [F*ck This] Late Night Show with David Brown-In a way, David Brown sees Eric Andre’s rebellion against the traditional late night format and raises it some more chaos. He has a separate creative team ruining his talk show as it happens via flashmobs, waterboarding, etc.

18. Baron Vaughn’s Blaxisential Crisis-Baron Vaughn’s latest album oscillates perfectly between deep and crucial issues of race, class, purpose and flights of imaginative fancy putting Vaughn almost in a class by himself.

19. Crabapples with Bobcat Goldthwait and Caitlin Gill-the odd couple pairing of Goldthwait and Gill is unlike anything comedy has seen before. Because it lives in truth (they really are roommates), it’s one of the best hosting duos in comedy today.

20. Megan Gailey-Gailey, with her stand-up, is simultaneously an undeniable delight and a force to be reckoned with, which only doubles up how delightful she is to watch.

21. Liartown USA-When it comes to parodying covers for books, magazines, Netflix menus, etc., Sean Tejaratchi might just do it better than anyone as you can see above.

22. This Bill Burr joke: “How many Toyota Camrys do you have to see before you realize most people’s dreams don’t come true?”-We usually refrain from transcribing jokes out of context and in print, but we haven’t stopped laughing at this searingly honest joke from Burr since we first saw him work on it several months ago and felt it imperative that it be on this list.

23. Sing Street-The 80s, Ireland, young love, and diegetic musicals get married perfectly in this film by John Carney that spent far too little time in theaters.

24. Derek Sheen's Tiny Idiot-This album made it clear that Sheen could be an heir apparent to Patton Oswalt, bu very clearly has his own, unique comedic take on the world today.

25. Stephen Colbert's Close to His Election 2016 Live Special-For once, the world got to see the real Stephen Colbert who is so intelligent, well spoken, caring, and one of the only people that could pull of dealing with immediate aftermath of an impending Trump win on TV.

26. Will Hines' A Soundly Defeated Man-Hines, in a series of sketch vignettes, takes the comedic self-deprecation to a new level of artistry by showing how defeated one man really can be.

27. The Lobster-Yorgos Lanthimos might have made the best dystopian rom com in recent memory and, possibly, for several years to come.

28. Jena Friedman's American C*nt-Friedman is unrelenting in her dismantling of the patriarchy amongst other several other controversial issues. She handily deals with them in this special, placing her in a very important position in comedy going forward in 2017. 

29. Jamie Loftus-Loftus is that amazing rare breed of comedian that blends dark, absurdist humor with genuine vulnerability and she can do so in her stand-up or through own self-styled animation (ex. doing her own animations for old tapes of how to tell children about someone dying). 

30. Chris Duffy's You Get a Spoon-Duffy’s NYC based, curated variety show is filled with so much positivity from celebrating the favorite things of his favorite performers that you almost can’t leave the show without a smile on your face (or winning a prize).

31. Bear Supply-The quick, music fueled scenes of Mike Castle, Shaun Boylan, Joey Greer, Jordan Bull, Morgan Christensen and James Heaney is impeccable improvisational comedy. 

32. The Cooties-Musical comedy is alive and well with the satirical power pop songs of The Cooties.

33. Aparna Nancherla’s Just Putting It Out There-Aparna’s album is proof positive that her wondrous version of self-deprecation can be ultimately uplifting. 

34. Hunt for the Wilderpeople-Taika Waititi continues his film streak with a charming-as-can-be film about a troubled youth surviving in the wilds of New Zealand.

35. Don't Think Twice-Mike Birbiglia gets really close to hitting too close to home for some people in comedy, but that draws out one of the best depictions of life in comedy (or attempting to do so) that has ever been put into a movie.

36. The Opening of The Pack Theater-The DIY, punk rock, spirit that runs in the veins of much of LA comedy got a new, wonderful outlet at The Pack Theater.

37. Jetzo-Chad Damiani and Juzo Yoshida mash-up improv, clowning, kimonos, dramatic live musical accompaniment, and breaking the fourth wall to make the marvelous whirlwind known as Jetzo.

38. DJ Real (Nick Stargu)-SF comedian Nick Stargu’s alias DJ Real mixes an uncanny command of musicianship with an über-clever style of comedy that dazzled and had us doubling over laughing at the same time.

39. Daniel Webb-Hailing from Austin, TX, stand-up comedian Daniel Webb is a splendid rush of charisma that probably has a better Obama story than almost anyone you know. 

40. Laurie Kilmartin's 45 Jokes About My Dead Dad-Kilmartin’s special, born out of jokes she tweeted while her dad was passing away, is so darkly funny and has an unmistakable humanity, which has us rethinking that maxim of comedy equals tragedy plus time. 

41. Kristin Rand-LA got a brief glimpse of the unstoppable charm of Rand when she moved here from Denver and was all the better for it.

42. James Fritz's Still Together-The way Fritz exquisitely channels rage and bleakness into this debut album is magnificent.

43. Roast Battle-What started as two open mic’ers fighting in a parking lot has now earned its way to a March Madness style tournament shown on Comedy Central and we’re betting that Roast Battle still has much more potential ahead of them.

44. Josh Fadem-Fadem made a return to performing more regularly in 2016 and his magnetic positivity and pure, unabashed goofiness (complete with impromptu costumes) definitely got us through the whole of last year.

45. Sam Jay-Jay moved to LA from Boston and took her insightful, brash, unfiltered comedy (that happens to come through the lens of being a newly married lesbian) and has become a the LA scene favorite almost instantly.

46. Dave Waite's Dead Waite-Dave Waite's latest hour takes being a goofball to new heights of brilliance.

47. Of Oz The Wizard by Matt Bucy-Absurdity doesn't get more pure than Bucy's re-editing the classic film version of The Wizard of Oz and alphabetizing the entire thing, start to finish.

48. This Friday Forty-Most other quiz shows can’t compare to Scott Gimple and Dave Holmes' This Friday Forty that not only has topical trivia, but fantastic sketch characters to introduce said trivia.

49. Jay Larson's Human Math-Few comedians so deftly explore the minutia of human nature like Larson does on this album.

50. Josh Gondelman's Physical Whisper-Gondelman's craftsmanship in observational humor is exceptional on this album and accentuated nicely by his sunny stage persona.

51. Kyle Mizono right after the election-There was a lot of raw nerves exposed in comedians right after Trump's win and few did it so purely and well as Mizono. For a whole set, she screamed her jokes with legitimate fury, but without being off-putting (well, if you’re not a Trump supporter that is). 

52. Lady Dynamite-Maria Bamford’s truth and Mitch Hurwitz’s wildly imaginative way of making episodic television combine for a comedy series that is blazing its own trail at a time where that gets harder and harder to do in a show about the life of a comedian.

53. Hail, Caesar!-The Coen Brothers’ latest comedy set in Hollywood’s Golden Age is one of their sharpest and most beautiful works that has plenty of scenes that could be amazing short films on their own.

54. Moses Storm's Sweater-Moses Storm never ceases to amaze us as he, this time, wore a sweater that had several strings attached to it for audience members to grab so they could literally be connected to him while he's telling a story.

55. Full Frontal with Samantha Bee-Samantha Bee has cemented a legacy in her short time on the air with her take-no-prisoners-and-then-some style of satirical news coverage.

56. Gene Wilder and Fidel Castro's New Year's Rockin' Eve (in Limbo)-UCB’s Beth Appel and Rose Marziale put a hell of a show to end 2016 with as they used the whole of the UCB Sunset complex to have an immersive comedy show (a la Sleep No More) that included karaoke with dead celebrities, a fake newsroom, and the woods where Hillary Clinton is living. 

57. Morris From America-Chad Hartigan’s refreshing coming-of-age story following an American black kid trying to grow up in Germany with his single father hit a very sweet, feel-good note that everyone needs to see (especially since it had a short theatrical run). 

58. Britanick’s “The Foul Line”-Though BriTANick had gone a few years without a new video, this absurdist folly makes up for all that time lost.

59. 20th Century Women-Mike Mills' latest is a great follow up to Beginners and is an award worthy comedy that might actually be able to compete with heavily favored dramas this year.

60. Three Busy Debras-The comedy trio of Three Busy Debras got to play Carnegie Hall through this devilishly fun crowdfunding campaign. 

61. Paul F. Tompkins' on Political Correctness-One of comedy's best gave one of the best explanations of political correctness' necessary role in comedy.

62. The Dollop-Shining a light on the dark corners in American history is as important as it has ever been and Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds do so with a devilish laugh and their effortless riffing up comedy gold.

63. Floor Knobs-This AOK sketch from Heather Anne Campbell is one of our absolute favorites and, rather than spoiling anything, we'll just leave it at that.

64. David Gborie’s Late Night Stand Up Debut-Gborie takes an unexpected move in his opening to this performances that sets up a truly wonderful late night stand-up debut.

65. Cholofit-Frankie Quinones' cholo exercise guru is done so well that it leaves you wanting it to be a real exercise program.

66. Oh, Hello-John Mulaney and Nick Kroll took two characters from just being a small bit to the heights of Broadway. George St. Geegland and Gil Faizon are just so fully realized and funny that it doesn’t matter if you miss one of their references or not. 

67. Chris Garcia's Laughing and Crying at the Same Time-Garcia meshes deeply personal stories and utter silliness that do the album title justice.

68. Cole Escola-Escola’s solo show follows him playing several outrageous characters (switching wigs and costumes while on stage) allowing for another fun layer in between the cavalcade of delightful, short monologues.

69. Catastrophe season 2-Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney have kept their devastatingly funny look into an unplanned family up to the very high standard they set in season 1.

70. Triumph the Insult Comic Dog's Election Watch 2016-Robert Smigel might have not known that having a dog puppet on his hand roasting people to their face for years would be the perfect preparation for covering the 2016 election (on both sides of the aisle), but, as the handful of Hulu specials prove, it really was.

71. Joel Kim Booster’s set on Conan-Just telling the story of being adopted by a Midwestern white family from Korea and being gay is fascinating enough, but Joel Kim Booster made that story blisteringly funny on late night.

72. Angie Tribeca-Physical comedy and sight gags would almost seem out-of-turn in comedy these days, but the proudly silly Angie Tribeca on TBS is thankfully changing all of that.

73. Trump vs. Bernie-While ‘Trump vs. Bernie’ will probably be a presidential candidate match-up that more people will long for than ever, Anthony Atamanuik and James Adomian's Trump vs. Bernie will go down as one of the best bits (that includes the live tour, the Fusion series, and album) of comedy to come out of one of the worst elections in U.S. history.

74. Joe Pera’s Set on Seth Meyers-Pera’s weirdness is one-of-a-kind in comedy as it’s very warm and inviting. He got to share that with the world with his set on Late Night with Seth Meyers.

75. Vice Prinicpals-When Danny McBride and Walton Goggins’ diabolical teachers one-up, in the best way, any other teachers in any other comedies that go off-the-deep-end in this HBO series.

76. Brad Neely's Harg Nallin' Sclopio Peepio-Neely's latest creations seems to offer up bits from the weirdest corners of Neely's mind and this animated sketch show is all the better for it.

77. Hari Kondabolu's Mainstream American Comic-Much is deservingly said about Kondabolu’s expertise in talking politics, class, race, etc. in his comedy, but this album also shows that his comedy is stellar no matter where you fall on the political spectrum.

78. Jon Glaser Loves Gear-Glaser does meta comedy better than almost anybody else working right now and his new show on TruTV is proof of that.

79. How to Win at Feminism by Reductress-This whip-smart manifesto about feminism solidifies Reductress’ place in modern satire next to The Onion and Clickhole.

80. Great Minds with Dan Harmon-Harmon getting to spend time with some of history's most notable figures ended up being one of the best shows that the History Channel has done in years.

81. Derrick Brown-Very few poets can reach the point of being laugh out loud funny and still deeply emotive quite like Brown, both on stage and in his book, Uh-Oh.

82. Natalie Palamides' solo show Laid-Palamides makes a solo show that's so absurd and funny, it might almost be in a unique category of its own.

83. W. Kamau Bell’s Semi-Prominent Negro-Bell explores all of today’s hot button issues (racial inequality, transgender identity, gentrification, etc.) comedically, as he is very skilled at doing, but does it in such a jovial way that they don’t seem so controversial anymore. 

84. Other People-Chris Kelly’s hilarious and heartbreaking movie based on his own life in dealing with the passing of his mother from cancer is one of Kelly’s finest work, which is even more impressive as his first feature done while being an SNL writer. 

85. Emo Philips improvising with Jason Van Glass-Emo's comedic prowess is so great that he can improvise with Van Glass like they're a veteran improv duo.

86. Return of MST3K-Of the things from our childhoods that are being brought back, Mystery Science Theater 3000 returning with a sweeping mandate in the form of a record breaking Kickstarter campaign is one that deserves to be revived.

87. Wyatt Cenac’s An Angry Night in November-Cenac’s EP captures lightning in a bottle (it’s his set from his weekly Night Train show) of immediate post-election comedy that is pure, raw, and biting.

88. Justin Sayre’s Gay Agenda-Sayre makes a compilation of his “meetings” as ‘Chairman of the International Order of Sodomites’ that give a hysterical look into the many great, complex layers of LGBTQ life.

89. Ahamed Weinberg-Both as a stand-up and a filmmaker (watch Rasberries), Weinberg is on a path to being another great modern comedy multi-hyphenate. 

90. Jon Dore Gets a Bad Backstory-Dore once again shows how to toe the line when entering the darkest territories of comedic material and do so successfully while being utterly absurd. 

91. Ron Babcock videos-A dying reel and an ad for his old CRV really showcase the cleverness and ingenuity of comedy’s Ron Babcock.

92. Reggie Watts’ Spatial-Watts’ latest special is his best and most ambitious one yet as it includes his beatboxing, a faux sitcom, tap dancing, and way more.

93. Alex & Jude-Alex Hanpeter and Jude Tedmori have figured out how to give slapstick, physical comedy the proper twist for 2016 audiences, which includes a literal bit of audience participation of making Jude a target.

94. Conner O’Malley-O’Malley takes satirical field pieces to a whole new level as he plays and wholeheartedly commits to dark, fully realized characters inspired by vaping, Alex Jones, and Cubs fans. He interacts with real people at Trump rallies, vape conventions and outside of Wrigley Field and goes along with whatever happens.

95. Doug Stanhope’s No Place Like Home-Stanhope has an amazing take on mental illness in this special and opted to shoot it in his own hometown of Bisbee, AZ. Overall, No Place Like Home ranks high up in Stanhope’s extensive catalog of stand-up.

96. “Tond” by Kelly Hudson-Hudson’s short film is one of our favorite bits of existential absurdity of 2016, a year seemingly saturated in nothing but questioning ‘what it all means’. 

97. Brett Gelman's Dinner in America-Gelman's last special on Adult Swim is one to remember, especially for how searing the satirical commentary on race relations are in it.

98. Miguel Marquez-Marquez bridges a gap, almost literally, between art and comedy as his wry art installations are way funnier (intentionally that is) than nearly anything you’d see in an art museum.

99. Chris Fleming's Silver Lining-The week following the election seemed as hopeless can be if you voted for Hillary and Fleming offered up a powerful, albeit one with a bit of tomfoolery, message of hope.

100. Norm MacDonald on Conan-Not only is there the expected long, winding roads of Norm’s jokes and stories in this particular appearance, but Conan does an impression of Norm out of frustration that’s spot on.

[magess]

Star Wars: The Golden Saber: Chapter 2 - The Archives

Aylee

They dimmed the lights in the Archive at night—she couldn't recall if she'd even known that—perhaps in deference to a time when Coruscant ever slept. The whole structure took on a somber, more ancient air as the white lights warmed into reddened dusk. Row upon row of datacrons glowed steadily in their casks, blue and nearby stars. Aylee's end of one of the long tables was ensconced in a halo of yellowish light meant, she supposed, to imitate candles. Everything a simulacrum of a real thing.

She tapped on a datapad, entering notes. Picked up one of the decrees of Duro monarch Rana Mas Trehalt and read it. Again. Partway. Dropped it and switched to a map of Duro's surface, muttering as she traced a finger along a valley, then shuffled through a stack of datapads for the one on climate change, their slick, hard surfaces clicking against one another loudly in the quiet hall.

Her mind raced with the possibilities. History might have been wrong. She thought it was wrong. A few more hurried notes, and then she unfurled a paper copy of one of Rana's last decrees, written in the original dialect. Damn rusty Duro. She scowled and opened a dictionary on her lap, balancing it so she could hold the paper scroll open and translate.

And she hadn't touched the holocron still buried in her bag yet! Who knew what lay in there.

Her hands, her attention flitted between the gathered records, alighting on a point, a detail, and then off again to another, mapping a web of references in her mind that she tried and forgot and reminded herself to write down. The queen, convention said, drove her people to disaster, her planet to ruin. But the Rana Mas who spoke through her decrees... Aylee could not believe that that woman was as corrupt, as blind, as the histories said. It was intuition on her part, perhaps. A sense of knowing someone so long dead that her dust had returned to the stars.

But it was a knowledge that burned. And she intended to prove it. Greed had brought down the Duro monarchy. The greed of nameless enterprise, elaborate legal fictions. The type of greed described as a force of nature to those unable to see beyond its horizon. Greed was as inevitable as a dying star to such constructs. For a machine built to consume, consumption is the only law of the universe. How could it be otherwise?

Aylee rubbed at her temple and stifled a yawn. She turned in the hard chair, noticing for the first time an ache in her back, and called, "Tir-Zen!" in a voice pitched for libraries. She needed more on Duro food production and industrialization. A sketch of the palace. Someone to hold this damned scroll.

A moment later an arm reached passed her and set a cup on the table, well out of range of elbows and the corpses of books. Aylee blinked at it, at the steam rising and the welcome aroma of fresh caf. She set the scroll aside and stretched for it, greedily, wrapping the cup in both hands. She smiled up at her padawan as he took a seat at her side.

"What would I do without you?" she said, and took a sip. It spread through her like nectar. A soft, sweet wave of contentment.

Tir-Zen turned to her, his tan skin deeper in the low light, and blinked slowly, grinning—an Iridonian preen. "Sleep, maybe," came his rasping reply, sandpaper scrubbing.

She narrowed her eyes at him and drank a little more. Already she could feel the threads in her mind drawing closer to one another, some thickening, some fading away. The details that picked at her attention lost their shine, and she could feel a calm center starting to bloom. She gazed at her array of research materials and tried to imagine them falling into order, feeling her way through what she knew and needed to know. She clutched her cup and drank, thoughtfully.

"Will Rana Mas be dead tomorrow?" Tir-Zen asked, breaking what, in retrospect, may have been quite a long silence.

Aylee swiveled her gaze from her desk to look at him. Tir-Zen sat balancing his chair on its edge, with his boots kicked up on the table and his hands clasped easily behind his head. Black undershirt, cream tunic, gray tabard. He was the very picture of confidence and nonchalance, and by all appearances was studying something high in the Archive ceiling. It was all very precisely calculated for the effect, and Aylee leveled a look at him.

Under the pressure of her gaze, he finally turned. The angle of the light from the lamp lit his eyes like fire, and the tattoos from his coming of age took on the specter of deep shadows, misshaping his face. Despite it, he managed to project utter innocence.

Aylee narrowed her eyes. "Feet off the table."

Tir-Zen's guileless expression—an abject lie—broke into a smirk and he dropped the chair back onto all its feet and swung his legs down, opting instead to stretch out.

Aylee glanced back at her collected research, knowledge she hadn't had access to until a few days ago, and took his point. Even if she had no intention of telling him so. Twenty-five thousand years plus one day would hardly make a difference. But it was strong, the need to prove, after a decade of study, what she'd always felt to be true. To publish for the whole galaxy to see. It would change...history. Literally.

Perhaps the Temple would be a permanent placement, then.

Surely the Council couldn't overlook a contribution to the understanding of galactic history.

Envy and jealousy were not a Jedi's way.

But she could long for things. Like these stacks.

Aylee let her gaze travel up from her work to the darkened, empty rows of tables, the glowing datacron shelving twenty feet high, the vaulted ceiling encasing them all with its sunset sky. The archivist in her could imagine no greater honor than shepherding the chronicle of the known universe into place. Guarding truth. Expanding knowledge. The Republic kept its memory in the Archives; that which is remembered still lives.

She spun her chair so she and Tir-Zen stretched out in opposite directions and scooted until they were side by side, sloshing a bit of her caf onto her hand and gold tabard. She tsked and sucked the drops from her fingers.

"So." She turned her newly gained focus on him. "Tell me about your day."

Tir-Zen's expression split into a smile, and the boy in him returned some. "I went to a lightsaber training session!" he said.

She lifted her eyebrows, encouraging him to go on.

"The training master said he was surprised to see me," he rasped.

Aylee's back stiffened as her hackles instantly rose. "Why? Because you're a Zabrack?" Her tone sliced the hush of the Archive, and she started to sit up, only stopping at Tir-Zen's easing gesture.

He shook his head. "No! No... He said he didn't know I'd been taken as an apprentice. I think...he remembered me as a child."

Aylee let go of her anger in a calming sigh and then reached out. She hooked a finger around one of the horns that ran in double rows down Tir-Zen's head, like racing stripes. "Well"—she tugged a little, smiling—"you do stand out."

He bent into the gesture and returned her grin, obliging and patient with his master as ever. Aylee wrapped her hands around her mug again and looked at him. Almost ready to be a knight.

"I do you no credit as a master," she said softly, a wistful pain needling at her chest.

He frowned and met her gaze squarely. "Why would you say that?"

She shrugged and looked up around them. The Jedi Temple. The heart of the Order. And they, so many years gone...

"Well, you're wrong," Tir-Zen said, his voice only a rough whisper. "My training would have ended. I'd be fixing the Temple's skypods."

"You like fixing skypods."

"I like being a Jedi."

And fixing skypods, she added in her own mind. Aylee glanced at him and offered a small smile, unsure what had brought on her mood. She took a sip of caf and settled further into her robes.

"So you went to a training class..."

Tir-Zen nodded vigorously and held his hands up in a ready position. "Ataru!" He said the word like it cast magic. "The training master led us through two katas. It was"—he searched for the word—"exhilarating!"

Aylee laughed.

"And then after, we had a free session against droid opponents. I threw my saber, and the room just...it went silent." Tir-Zen's orange eyes danced with his excitement. "It was like they'd never seen it before! The other learners gathered around me. They made me do it again. And they cheered when I hit a droid!"

Aylee smiled into her caf until her cheeks hurt.

"I think...they thought it was exotic."

At that, she chuckled. "Because they're learning lightsabers, and throwing is more a force technique." She shrugged at him. "You could do it with a broom."

Tir-Zen made a low hum of assent and leaned back in his chair to watch the ceiling. "We should tell the cleaning staff," he said.

Aylee smirked and gave his horns a tug, making him wheeze out a laugh. They fell into a silence, and Aylee found herself wondering what he made of all this.

"Tee."

He glanced over.

Aylee set her empty cup aside. "I don't... know why we've been summoned back. What changed the Council's mind. Or...or how long this sudden luck of ours is going to last." She watched his throat bob in a swallow, but he said nothing, so she pressed on. "I want you to concentrate on learning the things I can't teach you. Like your lightsaber forms."

"You taught me forms."

"Only a few," she replied, shaking her head. "Because that's all consulars need to know. And you know it's not my strength."

His silence was as good as agreement.

"So. Just promise me?"

Tir-Zen's expression grew troubled, and he clacked his teeth once before nodding. "Do you really think—"

"I don't know. That's...that's the problem. And I don't want to cost you more than I already have."

She stood and jiggled his front horn lightly. "Come on. Help me put these back." She turned and started picking up the old paper books. "We won't get much sleep as it is, and we have class tomorrow!"

[anonymouslydeadwriter]

Day 20: Surprise

Surprise you’re a superhero

@nathmarcnovember

Sorry for the fic spam I just wanted to see how posting a fic to tumblr would go it’s basically crack and full of page breaks but *shrugs*

“Just tell him you like him.” Nathaniel repeated for the umpteenth time. He opened his mouth.

But, what if he doesn’t like you? What if he’s disgusted by you after? What if he never wants to see you again?

Nathaniel closed his mouth with a slight sigh.

“Pssst. Kid.” Nathaniel looked around the park, looking for the source of the voice. He didn’t find one. Marc was sitting next to him on the park bench busy looking up the meaning of some strange word on his phone. There was no one in else in the park looking at him.

“Look down kid.” The voice hissed again. Nathaniel frowned, immediately looking down. A pin rested on the ground right by the bench’s legs. Nathaniel picked it up. Beside him, Marc stirred.

“Did you hear something?” Marc asked looking around.

“Say something and I’ll destroy you!” The voice hissed in his ear.

“No. Nothing.” Nathaniel lied. Marc looked skeptical. He looked around a bit longer before settling his attention back to his phone.

***********************

Nathaniel walked back into his room with a sigh. He dropped his bag by his desk before dropping into his chair. Another day. Another chance to tell Marc about his feelings. Only he chickened out. Again.

Nathaniel groaned. Why did he have to have a crush on his best friend? It made things so difficult. Why couldn’t he have a crush on someone where he couldn’t ruin what he had with them-

“Ok, look kid.” A...thing suddenly flew in front of Nathaniel. “I don’t have much time to explain. My name is Longg and-“

“What the hell?” Nathaniel jumped back grabbing his chest. The thing - Nathaniel guess it was a...dragon?-sighed.

“Please don’t make me go through a lengthy explanation.”

Nathaniel blinked at it. A tiny black and red dragon floated in front of him. It’s tiny wings flapped lazily in the air. “What the hell?” He asked again.

Wow, one sided love really does make people crazy.

The thing sighed again. “Ok, how do I explain this quickly?” He looked around the room. He soared over to a drawing of Mightillustrator pinned to the wall. “Do you want to be a hero like this guy?”

“Yes.” Nathaniel quickly answered.

“Then put my pin on already.”

***********************

“You know what kid? You need to stop thinking. Just act. You’ll learn. That’s how all the Miraculous holders work.” Longg had told him after he tried to ask multiple questions to the “kwami”. <p>

Nathaniel sure hoped he was right, because otherwise, what he was about to do was incredibly stupid. <p>

Longg did say he could fly though, and who was he to question a “kwami”. <p>

Nathaniel took a running start off a rooftop- the tallest one he could find- spreading his ribbed cape out as he went. When he jumped off, his cape acted like a hang glider. He soared over the Parisian streets. <p>

Nathaniel let out an excited cry. The rush was amazing. The view of the city from above was breath taking. This better than he ever could have imagined. <p>

He soared over a few buildings. He slowly descended as he glided. He kicked his feet out when one roof came close enough. His feet scraped against the concrete roof. His balance was thrown, and he tumbled to the roof hard. <p>

Nathaniel just laughed it off. He climbed to his feet, dusting off his black scaled suit. <p>

He couldn’t get over it. He was a superhero now just like Ladybug and a badass one at that. A black suit lined with red spines. A grey cape that looked like wings. A frilled mask. A sword sheathed at his waist. How much cooler could this get? <p>

“Hello?” Someone called. There was a distinct boing before someone landed beside him. Nathaniel whipped around, hand fumbling for his sword. <p>

A person in a white and black suit backed away from him. Their green eyes went wide behind a bunny snout mask. He held up his gloved hands. “I come in peace?” <p>

Nathaniel relaxed with a sigh but not before eyeing them over. He looked a lot like the other heroes he seemed...except a rabbit. “Who are you?” <p>

“Well...I’ve been thinking of what to call myself. I mean Bunny is too cute for a superhero. I had considered Hopper, but that’s just weird.” The rabbit person shrugged. “I didn’t really think up anything. I haven’t been at this all that long. But then again, Fluff suggested Lepus. That wasn’t too bad. Lepus like the constellation.” The rabbit person stopped his train of thought to nod at himself. He smiled at Nathaniel. “Yes, I’m Lepus.” They extended their hand. “You must be the holder of the dragon Miraculous. My kwami told me I’d meet you.” <p>

Nathaniel hesitated for a moment before taking his hand. “...Yes, that’s me.” <p>

Lepus shook his hand excited. “Nice to meet you! I can’t wait to start working with you!” <p>

“On what exactly?” Nathaniel asked. <p>

“Defeating akumas silly!” Lepus bounced a bit, making the floppy ears behind their mask flop. “Didn’t your kwami tell you that?” <p>

“No, he kind of rushed the tutorial. Said to just do it.” Nathaniel chuckled. <p>

“Huh, that’s strange. Well, mine is a chatterbox. She goes on and on. She told me I need to talk more. Can you believe it?” <p>

“No, I really can’t.” Nathaniel said. “Longg did tell me there’s an emergency though. Do you know anything about that?” <p>

“Oh right.” Lepus hit head with his hand. The puffy, almost cartoonish glove deflated on impact. “There’s a stray akuma. Ladybug and Chat Noir are out of commission right now so we’re up! Come on!” <p>

Lepus ran of the rooftop, bounced off the side of a nearby building, and flew down the road. Nathaniel watched him go before remembering smacking himself. <p>

Duh, he’s a hero now. He ran off the rooftop, spreading his cape out. He took off gliding after Lepus. <p>

*******************<p>

Cute. Nathaniel quickly learned that Lepus was really good at being cute. <p>

It was like Lepus was a cartoon character, a rabbit someone dipped in ink. They bounced into their first akuma battle with childlike enthusiasm, screaming taunts at the akumatized librarian. He’d quickly dodge the flaming books she’d throw with a cheeky comment and an infuriating smirk. <p>

But, the giddy smile he gave Nathaniel at the end of the battle after they defeated the librarian. That. That was cute. <p>

And so was the puffball tail he had on his costume. And his long black hair that got in his eyes sometimes. And those green eyes that were always wide and excited. <p>

And his bubbly personality. At first, it put Nathaniel off. How the hell could he keep up with so outgoing? <p>

But, it was just cute after a while. He was always so talkative that conversation was always moving. Their fights were always filled with clever quips and quick thinking as they took down akumas. <p>

Plus, his cheery demeanor was so contagious. Nathaniel couldn’t help but smile thinking of the bunny hero. Just the thought of their inevitable next meeting was enough to make him as happy as the rabbit hero. <p>

******************<p>

“Shouldn’t you be working on homework, right now?” Longg floated over to Nathaniel at his desk. “Oh, you’re drawing your boyfriend.” <p>

“He’s not my boyfriend!” Nathaniel spat, covering his sketch of Lepus. “I’m drawing up concept art. I’m going to see if we can maybe add him to the Ladybug comic.” <p>

“You want your old crush to write about your new crush?” Longg raised an eyebrow at him. <p>

“I don’t have a crush on Lepus!” Nathaniel reddened. <p>

“I’m centuries old. You can’t hide this kind of thing from me.” Longg huffed. “Do you know how many times this kind of thing happened? Too many! So, stop lying.” <p>

Nathaniel groaned. “Shut up, Longg. It’s not like that!” He folded his arms on his desk and his his reddening face in them. “It probably wouldn’t even work out anyway.”<p>

Longg’s face softened. He floated over to him, giving him a pat on the shoulder. “Come on, kid. Don’t be like that You just have to-“ <p>

“Do it. Yes, I know. That’s the advice you give for everything!” <p>

“It’s true though!” Longg frowned. “How can you know if it’ll work if you don’t try it?” <p>

Nathaniel sighed. “You can’t.” <p>

“No, you can’t, so stop moping. You have nothing to lose. Do something.” <p>

Nathaniel thought for a moment. “I could ask him out, I guess.” <p>

“There you go. Be proactive.” <p>

“I could ask him out. I will.” Nathaniel laughed, feeling a rush when he first took off flying. “I’ll do it next time we meet.” <p>

“Hell yeah, kid. Do it.” <p>

“I will!” Nathaniel smiled. But first, he needed to fix Lepus’s costume on paper.<p>

[tsfrbss]

Paper Moon Part 15

MB - @thecountessakasha - back again. I hope you’re ready for Part 15! There’s no smut, it’s literally all fluff, so apologies in advance. And don’t worry, their saga will continue.

A/N: Bucky and Steve end up at a venue that has a 40s night and meet an OFC, Melissa Rose, a singer in a local club. They both are smitten by her, and start to vie for her affections. They end up finding out more about themselves in the process.

This honestly started out as maybe a one shot but as I got going, I decided it’ll be chapters. How many? No frigging idea. This is my absolute first time writing a fic of any sort and yes I did base the OFC on myself. I hope y'all enjoy.

Word count: 3300+ because I am a wordy bitch.

Warnings: FLUFF to the Goddamn max. Gonna rot your teeth. Oh, and cussing. Like always.

STEVE’S POV

To say that the past few months were rough would be an understatement. Word got out about Bucky and me; and that, of course, led to word getting out about Melissa, Bucky, and me. It was strange; there was almost no animosity aimed at him and me, but just as she predicted, there was plenty aimed at her. People had taken to the Internet and the airwaves to voice their opinion of the “old” woman whom they decided was “ruining Steve and Bucky’s happiness” by “insinuating herself” between us.

Hate mail piled up at the club for her. She quit checking it altogether. Bucky would always gather the multitude of envelopes and go through them to sort out what was important and what was trash. Let me tell ya, her recycling bin has been packed full.

People would pop up at her shows to heckle and ridicule her. Finally, the owner raised the ticket prices and added extra bouncers which helped. Though on the plus side, more people came to actually see her perform. She wowed every single one of them. There were rumors of other places looking to steal her away, but she had vowed to never abandon Club Onyx. Or the owner. He’d been far too good to her and she appreciated it more than he would ever know.

The fact that she’s stuck with us is astonishing to me. And every day I fall deeper because of it. She’s so much stronger than she thinks. Not to say there haven’t been some rough patches. Her depression took over, and at times we couldn’t even get her to speak. There were days upon days when she just refused to get out of bed. Pretty sure she’s upped her rum intake. Even now she’s rarely, if ever, seen outside of the club without Bucky unless it’s to come to the tower. But for the most part we’ve really weathered the storm.

I think the biggest change has been with Bucky. He’s no longer chomping at the bit to take every mission he can get his hands on, trying to keep his mind on anything other than his life. He’s actually been turning down those offered to stay with Melissa during this tumultuous beginning.

For the first time since coming back from Wakanda, the light has truly returned to his eyes. And it’s her. Well, I mean it’s probably me, too. Us. But I really think it’s Melissa more than anything. She’s changed him. Made him more comfortable in his skin. Shown him that there’s more to “Bucky” than just “The Winter Soldier”.

He’s taken to staying at her place more and more. So have I, just not quite as often. It’s not like I get as many opportunities to turn down missions as he does. Part of the mantle of being Captain America, as Natasha is fond of reminding me.

I spend every moment I can with the both of them. Usually at her place. Not because we’re unwelcome at the tower. Far from it. Everyone would like it if we came around more often. They all really like Melissa. Especially Nat, Wanda, Clint, and Sam.

She finally got to meet Thor and was practically gushing about it. She couldn’t stop asking him questions about Asgard, what it’s really like there. She knew all the myths, of course. And how often do you get to meet a god? He in turn, is quite taken with her. Much to Bucky’s dismay.

It’s amazing the effect she has on people. She puts it off as the “southern thing”. Like she’s a novelty. As if that’s the only reason everyone here just adores her. That’s a piece of it, sure, but not all. She’s simply … captivating.

The night after Melissa first came to the tower, we had everyone out to the club to see her perform. Her nerves were on edge all day long.Because of that Bucky and I tried everything we could to keep her calm. She ended up going for a walk, alone, to clear her head. She puts so much pressure on herself.

A good bit of time had passed but Melissa still hadn’t made it back. I was starting to get really worried. Bucky suggested that I head back to the tower to make sure everyone was ready for the evening and that he’d go look for her.

He found her instantly, of course. She’d gone to a little park she discovered one of her first days in New York. It’s a place she and Bucky like to go when they need quiet and anonymity. They’ll put on hoodies and sunglasses and do their best to hide from the world and just sit in the middle of the park, right on the grass. Most times, they don’t even speak. They just exist there in that moment.

Bucky had gathered her up and walked her back to the apartment. The night went off without a hitch and the club received a boost of publicity due to our attendance.

I’ve noticed a change in myself as well. I’m sure Bucky and the others have seen it. I’m not as reckless. That’s the main thing. The idea of not coming back to the two people I love more than anything in this world is a very sobering thought indeed. The mere notion that I would irrevocably hurt them by not returning from a mission is too much to bare.

There are selfish reasons, too. To never be able to look into her dazzling green eyes again, or his shimmering blue ones cuts me to the core. That I wouldn’t be able to touch them, to see them smile, hear their laughter, or the noises they make in the heat of passion is like a stab in the gut.

My world revolves around them. Melissa and Bucky. My twin dark muses. Mes deux muses sombre, as she would say. They hold my heart in their hands. I am nothing without them and I strive every day to show them what they mean to me.

It’s to that end that I’ve decided to surprise them with some gifts. The first one is a simple thing; a sketchbook full of little drawings of the two of them doing mundane activities. Some are individual. Snippets of our everyday lives. Melissa lying in the middle of the living room floor, sheet music strewn around her, forgotten as she buries her nose in some book about Irish peat farmers. Bucky draped across the sofa, headphones on, feet kicking away to the beat of a “new to him” song that she’d turned him on to.

Some are of them together. Bucky is sitting crossed legged on the floor with his back against the overstuffed recliner while Melissa’s legs and arms are wrapped around him as she’s perched in the chair. His head tilted and resting against her thigh as they binge watch House of Cards, discussing what they’d like to do with Claire and Francis. The pair of them in the little kitchen, dancing and singing while they cook dinner for the three of us.

Once I snuck up on them in their little park and sketched them there, laying back on the grass, hoodies and sunglasses on. I watched their chests rise and fall with their breathing, wondering what they’d talked about, what they had been thinking about. Melissa was unaware of my presence, but I’m sure Bucky knew. You can’t fool the super soldier senses, after all.

The other gift is much, much bigger. It’s really a gift for the three of us. I’ve purchased an old brownstone in Brooklyn and am having it renovated into a single dwelling. This dual residence life is wearing on us. We need our own place, private, away from the hustle and bustle of Manhattan and the tower. Melissa needs to be able to detach herself from the club. She’s finally gotten the hang of the subway, so I feel confident she’ll be fine with the move. As for Bucky, he’ll be over the moon. He’s been wanting to move back home. And now I can give that to him.

Tony has decided to throw me a big birthday bash this weekend, so I’m going make the announcement then. Probably doesn’t make much sense for me to be giving gifts on my own birthday, but like I said, this is for all of us.

I can’t wait to see their faces.

BUCKY’S POV

I feel like the luckiest man alive. How I ever was good enough to deserve the pair of them, I’ll never understand. Steve, all the hell he went through to bring me back. He fought the world for me. Not many people can say that about their lover. I am his forever.

And Melissa. My beloved Angel. Her love has forged me into the man I am. The one I was meant to be. The longer I’m with her the harder I fall. She believes in me. I cannot explain what that means, how that affects every action I take.

I’ve been spending more and more time with her, staying at her place. I should really just move in with her. She’s suggested it several times and each time I brush it off; I feel like I’m imposing. But I feel far more comfortable at her apartment than I do at the tower. There I feel like a visitor. Not a true part of the team. At her place, it feels like home. Especially when Steve’s able to stay with us.

Melissa and I like to take care of Steve when he’s around. The missions wear him down so we do our best to help him relax when he’s home with us. It feels good to care for him again, like I used to when we were young.

One of my favorite parts about spending so much time with her is having someone to just be with. We go for walks, we do the shopping, we take in movies, we cook meals, we explore the city. She does try to keep herself incognito, because of everything. I dare someone to try something while I’m around. It’s mundane and domestic and I fucking love every second of it.

No missions, no emergencies. Because of her I feel like a normal person. I’ve even been more comfortable about showing my arm in public. Melissa’s not afraid of it and she always, always makes sure that’s the hand she holds.

She sees herself as undeserving of both Steve and me. Especially after all the shit we’ve been through recently; she feels like it’s all her fault. Oh, but she’s wrong. So very wrong. She deserves the goddamn world on a silver platter. And I aim to give it to her.

I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out a way to show her what she means to me. How she’s helped me, how deeply I’ve fallen for her.

Pieces of my life from before have been coming back periodically, and something I’ve discovered recently is that I can play piano. Not only can I play, I’m actually quite good. I’ve been sneaking downstairs to the club while it’s closed with handfuls of her sheet music to practice. Steve has caught me a few times. He must forget that he can’t sneak up on me. He’s never interrupted or bothered me, merely observes, more than likely sketching.

There’s a point to all this. I have quite the surprise for her. I want to play for her, with her. I can’t sing for shit, but I don’t need to. It’s her voice everyone wants. She’s the real star. I just want to be a part of it, to back her up, support her. And it calms me, I really enjoy it.

I’ve been working on one song in particular. I’m going to spring it on her at Steve’s party. By chance I heard her singing it in the shower one morning. She likes to practice there; the acoustics are phenomenal. The piece makes use of her smokey, lower vocals. Mmmm, her voice is like Tupelo honey. I am awestruck every time I’m blessed to hear it. The lyrics themselves, well let’s just say I can picture her saying these things to me and Steve.

I’ve got something for Steve too, of course. It’s hard to think of things to give him, the man who sacrificed everything he had, everything he was, to save me. But I know what makes him happy, what centers him. Anything art related. Anything.

So, with the help of Tony and Natalia, I was able to get a private tour of the Museum of Modern Art for Steve, Melissa, and myself. The card with all the arrangements will be hidden in a whole shitload of art supplies Melissa and I bought for his upcoming birthday.

And well, since we can’t resist, Steve and I have also conspired to give her a gift from the both of us. One we know she’ll appreciate more than anyone else probably ever would. We’re going to give her each one of our dog tags to wear. The originals. We … acquired them from the Smithsonian. Like they would refuse Captain America anything.

If it seems overly sentimental and nostalgic, well, tough shit. I think Steve and I have earned that right. Melissa will understand the significance. She’s a military brat coming from a long line of veterans stretching all the way back to the Revolutionary War. She gets it and I honestly don’t care if anyone else does. Just thinking of her wearing them makes me heart soar.

I love discovering little things about her. I love how she leads me to rediscover things about myself. I love watching her and Steve together, even if it’s just them doing something as simple as lounging together on the floor, books on history surrounding them as they pour over the words. Their heated discussions will go on for hours; I learn more from listening to them than I ever would reading on my own.

The way she looks at him when she doesn’t think anyone is watching her. Him doing the same. The way she’ll sit still, posing for hours on end for him while he draws or paints her. Most times it ends up with her teasing him mercilessly until he drops his tools and quiets her with passionate kisses.

And oh the way we all seamlessly flow into one another in the bedroom. Sometimes with heated, fiery, gnawing need. Sometimes with giggles and laughter until we can’t take it anymore. It has never felt so natural, so right.

I love these idiots more than I could ever express. I would be lost without them.

MELISSA’S POV

My boys, my beloved boys.

I can’t believe they’re mine. I can’t believe they’re still with me after six months of insanity. Six months of all the hate and worry and stress. I can’t believe Bucky has given up missions to stay by my side. I can’t believe Steve continually professes his love for me. I can’t believe they put up with all my baggage. My anxiety, my depression, my health issues.

Without even realizing it, I have fallen head over heels in love with them. Happiness, something that has always been elusive in my life, is now a constant. Which of course leads to the occasional panic attack, since my brain can’t wrap itself around the notion that I deserve this happiness and likes to construct various scenarios where I lose one or the both of them. Either on a mission or from them simply growing tired of me and leaving.

Nightmares haunt me every now and then, my fears manifesting themselves in my subconscious. I’ll thrash and sweat and full on cry until Bucky finally wakes me. He’ll hold me tightly to him as he waits for me to calm down, all the while whispering to me how he’s here, he’s real, he’s not going anywhere, how much he loves me.

One such incident happened when both Steve and Bucky were home. It must have been a particularly powerful one as it nearly sent Steve into a panic before Bucky explained what was happening and showed him how to deal with it. It took the both of them to bring me back around that night.

Bucky puts up with my shit every time we leave the apartment. Hiding myself under hoodies and sunglasses and baggy clothes. He understands. He was at that point himself not long ago. God, he takes such good care of me; he always makes sure I’m comfortable with it all, that I feel safe, loved.

And the way Steve dotes on me, I’ve never had someone so attentive to my each and every desire. Sometimes before I even know what they are. He has a knack for knowing exact what I need when I need it.

Things like that. Dealing with me on days where I couldn’t even function inside my depression. Nights when my anxiety was so high I would just drink myself into a stupor and couldn’t even perform.

And through it all they’re still committed to me. Because of that I’ve taken on my own mission. To keep them happy any way I can. To give in to every whim or wish they might ever have. If it’s in my capacity to do, then it’s done. Period. No questions asked.

These two, I know they have something up their sleeves. They may be super soldiers but they’re shit at keeping secrets. Something fishy’s going on. And Nat! Oh my god, she’s been teasing me to no end about something she knows that I don’t.

She and I have become quite close. Oh, she is fiercely protective of me, too. I adore her. And Wanda and Sam and Clint. They’ve been so, so great to me. The other members of the team have as well, but these guys. Well, let’s just say they’re by far my closest friends here in the city.

I’ve got news for my two big boys. They’re not the only ones who can be sneaky. I’ve got something up MY sleeve. With Steve’s birthday party coming up, I’ll make some time before we leave to give them their presents. I want it to be special, something just between the three of us.

Of course Bucky and I went overboard on our joint gift. We have a tendency to indulge Steve quite often. I’m not sure all the art supplies we bought are even going to fit into the area we’ve cleared out in the living room for his makeshift studio. Oh well. I’m sure he’ll deal just fine. I can’t wait till he sees what we’ve done.

As for my gifts to the pair of them, I hope they’re comfortable wearing jewelry. I didn’t get anything fancy, or gaudy. That’s just not our style. With that thought in mind, I’ve I found a pair of matching stainless steel cuffs. They’re small, like a little bracelet, but you attach them with screws. And I hold the screwdriver.

On the inside of Steve’s I’ve had engraved Mon Soleil. Bucky’s sports Ma Lune. My Sun and My Moon. My two very large, powerful, all consuming forces.

The light and the dark.

Watching them together is one of my major addictions. I love catching each of them looking at the other. It’s like they have a silent language. They’re always in sync. Whether it’s cleaning the apartment, binge watching a show, or when we’re in the bedroom. It’s like they have one mind.

They speak often of having claimed me. Getting me before anyone else could. Snatching me off the market. As if I was even on the damn market to begin with. It always makes me laugh and shake my head. But, if they’ve claimed me then I’ve done the same to them. They’re mine and I will defend that claim all the rest of my days.

I’m with them to the end of the line.