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amethystunarmed · 4 months ago

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A John Herschel Character Study

I have a lot of feelings about John that go into how I characterize him so I decided to organize them in an “essay” for Day 14: Family of @pulpmusicalsfortnight2024. This is my deep dive into how John's family and childhood affect him today, going into his character arc in the three published episodes of Pulp Musicals. Obviously your mileage may vary but this is the basis for my characterization of John when I write him. Inspired by @eggingtontoast's wonderful analyses of Karen Chasity and Jeri from the Hatchetfield series. Huge thanks to @snarky-wallflower for betaing this for me!

So starting in his childhood:

In the few lines we get about him, John's father is described as being firm and no nonsense.

In Polaris, John says that his father would be “unamused” by him playing a game with his astronomy knowledge and that would say “[You're] just tracing lines 'round things [I] spent [my] life to find.” Specifically, John noted that his father would be against it as it provided “no real benefit to society.” To me, these quotes are just a little too specific to be speculation; I bet William Herschel said this to John before, especially since John knows all the constellations despite his father apparently believing them to be unimportant.

I speculate that William Herschel has constantly reinforced this concept in John, that science isn't fun, it's important and respectable, and that John needed to be important and respectable in turn. And I think John took it to heart over the years. John's reputation is clearly incredibly important to him. He is also deeply concerned about what his father thinks of him, almost to the point of terror, in my opinion.

He moved his entire project thousands of miles away and constructed it in total secrecy just so his father wouldn't learn if he failed. Samuel is so sure John's dad must be proud of him, but all John seems to feel is afraid.

His reputation is tied so tightly together with his father's, that John's own failings will reflect onto him, and John's life is a constant comparison to his father's works. John even says that people consider his actions to be an extension of his father's “dreams... hopes, and fears” in Through a Glass. The shadow is long and all-encompassing, and John seems to feel the weight of it heavily. “The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, when they put a glass to me.”

Whether William Herschel intended this or not, the constant pressure from both his father and society has led John to develop an unhealthy fear of failure and being seen as lacking, and all of this ties into his public persona. He needs to be taken seriously, and puts on this front of being stern and unflappable.

His isolation only adds to this. He claims that he prefers being alone when he speaks to Rose in It's a Hoax (Reprise)/Carry On. “I should be in another hemisphere alone with the milky way.” We know he gets letters from Anna, his exception, the one person (so far) that he lets his walls down around, but other than that, he is utterly alone. He is “away from the world, but close to [his] heart.” He even admits this was intentional in the Shifts Reprise, that he “built a wall ten miles high of essays, books, and quips.” All John needs is his studies and the sky. He has removed himself from humanity entirely, and has been that way for three years.

This is the John we meet in Before the Storm and It's a Hoax (Reprise)/Carry On.

John comes in and is immediately uptight and no nonsense. This makes sense, given the ramifications of the hoax; John's reputation and most likely his father's opinion are highly on the line. He seems unpleasant at first, an antagonist to the twins’ writing dreams but... He is very quickly taken with Rose.

He doesn't want to be, initially seeming confused and standoffish towards her questions about his work, but she barrels through his defenses. He enjoys that connection, softens, calls her Rose.

Until he learns what she's done and that persona snaps right back in place, his commitment to his reputation and the validity of his name superseding that genuine human connection.

Then, John witnesses something impossible. Margaret glowing. The Radiance. A scientific marvel straight out of a fairy tale.

And we've reached John's Choice.

Because in my opinion, it is not just John's Choice for the story, but of what kind of man he is going to be.

This is where Benjamin comes in. Benjamin serves as John's foil in the Great Moon Hoax. We've witnessed his story; of Benjamin's initial wonder with Hoax, the way the writing moved him enough that he risked everything and gave it a platform, only to betray both it and the Stratfords in the end.

Benjamin loved the story but there was always that undercurrent of greed and a focus on the money and social status that could be gained, i.e. his “We'll be rich by the end of the day.” in Is it True?

On the other hand, though John came in upset over the story and the damage it could do to his reputation, he has always been a little enamored with the Hoax. He says it was good! He mostly focuses on the science, but also says that in another life, he and the writer could have gotten along. He likes it, despite himself.

The Hoax lit that spark in him again, the one William Herschel saw no value in. Margaret's Radiance fanned the flames.

And so, when push comes to shove, John chooses the Hoax, the story. He chooses the whimsy and creativity and a world with no laws of gravity. He laughs. He becomes the story teller for a theoretical Great Astronomical Discoveries #4, and he “gives it all” to the crowd gathered. He even assists in getting Chester Thomas to continue publishing fiction!

As Benjamin writes himself out of the story, John writes himself into it.

And we see a whole different side to John in the Brick Satellite as this shift in his values continues! He has moments of that initial stuffiness, when he gets all huffy over the Moon Hoax (but never truly mad, not in the way Margaret is), but he shows more of himself, removing bricks from his own personal walls as they add the bricks to the Satellite.

He plays games with Rose on the ship during Polaris, he reveals his vulnerabilities to Samuel in Through a Glass. Samuel even recognizes him as one of their own during this song. When John says, “Imagining’s what you do,” Samuel replies, “A trait I share with you.” John isn't just a scientist, he's a dreamer who imagines a better world, just like the Stratfords.

This culminates in John and the Earth, the tipping point. Because, the roles are fully reversed from so long ago in South Africa. John looks down at the Earth, at all the people he had walled himself away with for so long, and he loves them so fiercely he cries. He stands in the gift he created for humanity on his own dime with no recompense expected and he says “Heaven's not up here in the sky, heaven’s down there.”

He has looked to the heavens his whole life. It was what was expected of him, the footsteps he was supposed to follow. But looking at the Earth, he sees it. Sees what matters. He has never “felt so small”, away from all the fame and status his name and reputation give him. But he has also never felt “more part of it all.” Because that is John's story, the astronomer who falls in love with the Earth again.

(And falls in love with Rose, but he's still working on that one.)

#john herschel #pulp musicals #Pulp Musicals Fortnight 2024 #Pulp Musicals Fortnight Day 14: Family #Character Study #my writing

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bedlamsbard · 10 months ago

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Some Yonderverse concept writing! This is for a potential sequel to The Horizon Line, set about four years before On Yonder Hill (a.k.a. eleven months post-Snap, four months after the end of Horizon).

About 4.3K below the break.

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“How is he?”

There was only one he anyone even remotely associated with the Avengers meant these days. Six months ago it would have been Loki; since the Tower, it had been Steve Rogers.

Natasha chewed on a fingernail and shot a glance at the Quinjet’s closed hatch, even though she was alone in the vessel and the only people visible through the viewport were a couple of Asgardian teenagers carefully coaxing a dozen strayed miniature sheep back in the direction of the flocks. She had no doubt that they knew she was there, but the Asgardians were pretty good about not bothering anyone other than Loki, who after almost a year was still their first go-to for anything and everything.

“Natasha?” Rhodey prompted when she didn’t say anything.

“Not good,” she said finally. “Not – not good.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the call, then Rhodey asked carefully, “How bad is it?”

It was a question whose answer varied from day to day, though sometimes it was hard to tell with Steve, since the worse he was doing the more he shut down. She couldn’t tell if being in New Asgard was making it worse or better, since everyone there was already traumatized and depressed to the point of daily tears and nightmares. At least the Asgardians had some kind of cultural context for what had happened to Steve, which did seem to help.

“Well,” Natasha said, “I think Loki is the most emotionally stable person here, so that might be your answer.” Or at least that he was the best at pushing through the absurdity of daily life post-Snap, which these days amounted to the same thing. She was aware that it might end in him having a messy breakdown with a body count later on, which was evidently what had happened seven years prior, but that was a problem Natasha and the Avengers would deal with when and if it happened. At this point she didn’t think it would, or at least that if it did Loki would go off and do it on some other planet instead of on Earth, which Natasha probably should have been more concerned about but which she didn’t have the energy to deal with now.

She took a deep breath, then asked, “Does the President want us back in the States? Or is Secretary Ross –”

He’d wanted to put Steve back in a lab as soon as he had come out of the Red Room, ostensibly on the grounds of replicating the serum; Natasha was certain that if he’d gotten his way, it would have resulted in a lot of dead scientists. Steve hadn’t even been able to go into the laboratory wing of Avengers Compound.

“No,” Rhodey said swiftly. “No, nothing like that. Just –” He took a deep breath of his own, then asked, “Is he anywhere nearby? Anywhere that he can hear?”

Natasha shook her head, remembered that he couldn’t see her, and said, “No, he’s out with Loki looking at some field with the harvest goddesses. I’m in the Quinjet with the hatch closed. What is it?”

“I’ll leave it up to you whether to tell him or not, but –” Rhodey sighed heavily. “Bruce and I just confirmed that Samuel Sterns survived.”

Natasha went absolutely still.

“Natasha?” Rhodey said after a minute of silence.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. We’ve got footage and eyewitness confirmation. Bruce and Betty are back at the compound now going through it all.”

“How?”

“We don’t know, but he’s a Hulk mutate, so…”

“Hard to kill,” Natasha said bitterly. She bit down on her thumbnail, worrying a little strip of it free before she bit it off and spat it aside. “God, I can’t tell Steve, he’ll never sleep again, and he doesn’t sleep through the night now. I have to tell Loki – where was he? America?”

“Brazil.”

Which was at least on the other side of an ocean from New Asgard, though with planes that didn’t mean much.

“God,” Natasha whispered again. “Son of a bitch. Why won’t he just die?”

“It gets worse,” Rhodey said after a moment. “Ross knows.”

“Son of a bitch!” Ross would want Sterns alive and working for him. Worse, if he got his hands on Sterns, he would find out what he had done to Steve. In all likelihood Ross had guessed some of what had happened to Steve in the Tower, but guessing was one thing; knowing was another. And he couldn’t be allowed to know if there was any way around it.

Natasha shut her eyes and slumped against the back of the pilot’s seat. “I can’t keep this from Steve,” she admitted. “He’ll never forgive me. But I can’t – Rhodey, he’s terrified of Sterns. The man drugged him, stuck him in a glass box, implanted a chip in his brain stem, spent a month cutting off bits and watching them grow back, and tried to peel his mind like an onion and got closer that anyone will admit.”

“I know,” Rhodey said grimly.

“Did you tell Tony?”

“Yeah. We’re using the SI satellites to try and find him.” He sighed. “Ross is probably going to want you two – maybe you three – back here sooner rather than later, but not if he can get his hands on Sterns first. He has to know that we won’t let him take Sterns alive.”

“Preferably mashed into a fine paste,” Natasha muttered. Louder: “How much time do you think we have?”

“Couple weeks?”

Natasha massaged her forehead. “I’ll tell Steve and Loki. If nothing else, Loki will probably want to up the security on New Asgard, which will make me feel better and might make Steve feel better.” Though at this point she suspected nothing was going to make Steve feel better. “Keep me updated.”

“Will do. Take care of yourselves.”

“You too.” She ended the call and tossed her cell phone onto the jet’s dashboard, staring bleakly out the viewport. The little sheep were still frolicking gleefully on top of the snow, ignoring the Asgardians’ patient attempts to herd them back towards the flocks. Unlike nearly every other animal in New Asgard, most of which tended to be half-again as large as their Earth equivalents and some of which were even bigger, the sheep only came up to Natasha’s knees and looked outright comical next to Steve and Loki.

“God damn it,” she whispered, and thumped her closed fist down on top of her thigh. “God damn it!”

All she could think about as she trudged back along the path to the settlement was how frightened Steve had been when they had taken him out of the Tower, away from Samuel Sterns and the Red Room. It had been the first time in her life that she had ever seen Steve Rogers afraid. In the four months since, he hadn’t slept through the night once; on his worst days he didn’t sleep at all and he couldn’t be touched. He didn’t react violently to it, he just froze, his eyes huge and terrified as he waited miserably for whatever was going to come next. Since Natasha was both the most likely person to touch him and the only person in New Asgard who might have been seriously hurt if he lashed out, that was probably for the best, but on the whole she thought she would have preferred violence. The unthinking resignation was worse.

Despite the construction of several houses in New Asgard, most of the Asgardians still slept either in Gimlé or Iðavoll. Natasha passed the great meeting-hall with its gilded rafter-ends, Ullr’s forge, the recently-completed loom-house, and the public baths, all of which were already lit up from within. Iðavoll’s elaborately carved doors were closed against the cold of a Norwegian March, but they opened easily at her touch, letting out a blast of warm air from the firepit that ran down the center of the great hall. At this hour the big room was mostly deserted except for the usual assortment of dogs and cats, but Loki and Steve were sitting at the long table at the back of the room, Steve working in his sketchbook and Loki going through his mail. Natasha still wasn’t sure how the mail was arriving in New Asgard and was afraid to ask.

They both looked up as she came in. Natasha paused just inside the door to scuff the snow off her boots, then went to join them. She touched a brief kiss to Steve’s lips as she sat down next to him, relieved when he put his arm around her; that meant he was having one of his good days.

Loki was frowning at what seemed to be an enormous scale the size of two cupped hands. When Natasha leaned over to peer at, she saw that one side of it was covered in dense runic writing in gold-colored ink. It was glowing faintly. After a moment he tossed the scale down with a clatter and picked up an ordinary envelope, slitting it open with a dagger. He read the contents, rolled his eyes, and stuck envelope and letter together into the nearest candle flame.

“More hate mail?” Natasha asked. There was already a dusting of ash on the table.

“More hate mail,” Loki agreed. He let the letter burn down to his fingers, then dropped it into a bowl and picked up a roll of parchment, leaving sooty fingerprints behind as he pried the wax seal off with the tip of his dagger and flipped it aside.

Steve had a small pile of opened mail set to one side of him, and another pile for Natasha. As he went back to sketching, Natasha began to sort through her own mail. Most of it was either hate mail or fan mail; some of the fan mail probably qualified as hate mail too. There were a couple of advertisements and a letter from Alexei, which she set aside to read later.

She jumped as Loki snarled a curse in Asgardian, the Nordic syllables harsh, and slapped a hand down on the table. Natasha grabbed for the candle as it started to fall, getting drops of hot wax on the back of her palm before she righted it.

“Kin-slaying be damned, I knew I should have had that son of a níðingr whore killed,” Loki said through clenched teeth. He snapped his fingers with a glitter of green-gold magic and said, “Forseti, Ullr, I need you now. Brunnhilde and Eir if you can be spared.”

Steve and Natasha stared at him as he tossed the parchment down onto the table and flattened his palms on top of the planed wood, flexing them as if he would have preferred to wrap them around someone’s neck.

“What’s wrong?” Steve asked.

“Family disagreement,” Loki said.

Natasha blinked. “I thought –” she started to say, then stopped herself.

“That everyone was dead?” Loki finished for her. “I could be so lucky. That bastard would never have done this to Thor.” He slapped his hand against the table again, furious.

The great hall’s door opened to admit the Valkyrie and Ullr, with Forseti and Eir just behind them. As soon as they were within earshot, Loki wadded the parchment up into a ball and tossed it to Ullr, who caught it and straightened it out as Loki slumped back in his chair.

“Is he mad?” the blacksmith demanded, then passed the letter to Forseti.

“Well, given that side of the family, I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to hear it,” Loki said.

Forseti handed the letter to Eir; the Valkyrie leaned around her shoulder to read it too, then blinked and looked up at Loki. “Who the hell is this?”

“My cousin,” Loki said bluntly. “Or Thor’s cousin if we’re going to be exact about it, as he’s being – on my father’s side,” he added for Steve’s and Natasha’s benefits, and presumably the Valkyrie’s. “Son of my father’s younger brother Vili. And an ass. He always has been, ever since we were children.”

“What does he want?” Steve asked.

“Asgard,” Loki said bluntly. He sat clenching his fist on top of the table, white-knuckled and clench-jawed with fury. “He wants Asgard.”

Natasha and Steve exchanged a puzzled look. She would have expected Loki to just dismiss the possibility, but his reaction suggested that there was something else going on. “Can he do that?”

“Yes,” Loki said through clenched teeth. “I do not have time for this nonsense and the Conclave will treat it seriously for the sheer pleasure of dragging Asgard through the mud. Thor or my father could have gotten away with ignoring it, I can’t. Not now, at least. I should have had him killed years ago.”

“The…Conclave?” Natasha said.

“Of the Nine Realms. Get off, greedy one,” Loki added as Freki jumped up onto the table and sniffed at the remaining mail. She ignored him and batted a paw at the candle flame, then sat down on some of the opened mail and stared at him.

“Why can’t you ignore the Conclave?” the Valkyrie demanded. “They’ve never had any real power – not over Asgard, anyway.”

“Because I’m not Asgardian,” Loki said through his teeth. “As dear cousin Baldur takes such care to point out, I’m defiling our people by planting my Jotun-born arse on Hliðskálf, though I don’t think he knows Hliðskálf didn’t survive Ragnarok. Idiot. And if I ignore him, some of our people might start listening to him – the Realms might anyway, the House of Odin hasn’t exactly endeared itself to most of them over the course of the past few millennia. I’m not letting him have the last word.”

“So you’re just going to take him seriously?” the Valkyrie demanded, at the same time that Ullr said, “If the Conclave and the vǫlur decide against you –”

“And have to deal with Baldur for the next six thousand years?” Loki scoffed. “Even they’re not that stupid.”

“What are you talking about?” Steve said.

“My cousin is suing for rule of Asgard,” Loki said. “On the grounds that I’m not Asgardian enough to have a right to the throne. I’m not sure he knows how few of us there are or if he just wants the prestige of it. He’s already called it up before the Conclave of the Nine Realms, the rulers of the Nine and some of the protectorate worlds, as well as the vǫlur. They deal with inter-realm disputes and certain issues of inheritance at the highest levels, or at least they’re supposed to; my father used to rule them with an iron fist.”

Steve and Natasha stared at him. After a moment, Natasha said, “You’re getting sued?”

“Yes,” Loki said. “Isn’t civilization lovely? I should have stayed evil.”

Loki was so furious that Natasha didn’t have a chance to bring up Sterns’ survival to him and Steve until late that evening. By then rumor had already spread through the settlement and New Asgard was in a state of high panic over the possibility that Loki might be deposed; Natasha wouldn’t give a fig for his cousin’s life if he ever came within spitting distance of New Asgard. Every Asgardian there had crowded into the great hall for dinner and there was a buzz of sound throughout the building, all of them watching Loki, who slouched in the high seat on the dais and worked his way through two bottles of wine without blinking or looking noticeably inebriated. He did get increasingly sarcastic as the night went on, though without the sharp-edged cruelty that Natasha remembered from the helicarrier.

“Didn’t the coronation put an end to this?” Natasha asked Forseti quietly at one point, while Loki was busy adjudicating some sort of disagreement over a goat. “He’s already been crowned king, hasn’t he?”

“Yes,” Forseti said. “He’s been elected by the Althing, acclaimed by the Aesir and recognized by the Æsir, but Baldur’s challenging that he has no legal right to stand for election or to hold the throne.”

“But he already has the throne,” Natasha said, puzzled. “And he’s Thor’s brother and Odin’s son, isn’t he?”

“By law-right, yes, and by kin-right,” Forseti said, as Steve leaned in to listen. The Valkyrie was sitting on Loki’s other side, but she turned her head too, clearly using her superior Asgardian hearing to eavesdrop on the conversation. “But not by blood, which was never public knowledge. We won’t know for sure until we stand up in front of the Conclave –” Natasha took that to mean that she was expecting to act as Loki’s lawyer or whatever the Asgardian equivalent was. “– but my guess is that Baldur Vilison is arguing that because His Majesty isn’t born-Aesir he has no right to the throne.”

“Baldur,” Steve said thoughtfully. “Isn’t he the one in the myths who…” He let the words trail off, exchanging a look with Natasha.

She glanced at the wall behind the dais, where Mistilteinn hung along with one of the ulfheðnar’s wolf-headed shields and a pair of short swords, all ready for Loki to snatch up at need. She had read the same myths as Steve. On the other hand, they all knew how accurate those myths could be, which usually wasn’t very.

Forseti waved that aside. “They were children. Eir can tell you the story; she was there.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Steve said, his eyebrows going up.

“Oh, please, he was fine,” Loki said, glancing at him. “It was barely a scratch a thousand years ago. It’s not my fault he and Höd hold grudges.”

“This isn’t sounding better,” the Valkyrie pointed out.

“What is he the god of?” Natasha asked.

“Light,” Forseti said.

Natasha had no idea what that meant on a practical level, though even after nearly a year she still didn’t quite understand what Asgardian godheads entailed.

Loki scoffed. “He’s barely Aesir, that hardly counts. I wouldn’t be surprised if what’s left of the Triumvirate talked him into this, I’m not sure he’s smart enough for it on his own.”

“His mother is Rind, younger sister of Freyja and Frey from the Ruling Triumvirate of the Vanir,” Forseti interpreted for Natasha and Steve. “Odin arranged the marriage soon after he became king. Vé’s too – that’s Vili’s twin; he married twice on Ria, but there were no children from those. He has three bastard daughters, all with different mothers.”

“Does Baldur actually have a claim to the throne?” Natasha asked curiously.

“Kin-right, not law-right,” Loki said, scowling. “My father made certain of that when he married off his brothers. None of my cousins even have a vote in the Althing; they’re not Asgardian by law.”

One thing that Natasha had figured out over the past eleven months was that Asgardian law was insanely complicated and got more so when it intersected with the laws of the other worlds in the Nine Realms. There was no overreaching law in the Nine Realms; Asgardian law applied to a certain sector of the population on the planets ruled directly by Asgard, but otherwise local laws dominated. There were ways to argue that one set of laws should apply over another, several cases of which Loki had already adjudicated, since the King of Asgard was the highest authority in any law case that involved Asgardians.

Loki knocked back his wine glass and picked up the bottle again, shaking it experimentally before setting it back down with a sigh; apparently it was empty. He turned his attention to another Asgardian standing in front of the high table, saying something to her that Natasha didn’t catch.

Natasha sat back in her chair, thinking about what it might mean for Earth if Loki did lose the Asgardian throne. The Asgardians were on Earth because Thor had wanted them to be and Loki was determined to follow his brother’s last wishes; knowing the general Asgardian opinion of Earth, she doubted that anyone else would be all that interested in carrying on with the New Asgard experiment. Most human politicians would find removing the Asgardians from Earth a preferable option to keeping them here. On the other hand, unlike Loki, Baldur had no reason to want to keep on Earth’s good side, and the last thing they needed was another inter-planetary war.

There were more Asgardians bedding down in the great hall than there had been lately by the time Loki finally pulled himself free and retreated to the room in the back of the building that he shared with Steve and Natasha. It was a long room that ran behind the great hall, divided by folding screens and warmed by braziers filled with magically heated stones. Loki sat down heavily on the futon-like quilted mat he slept on and rubbed his hands over his face, some of his anger and frustration dropping away. When he looked up again, his expression was weary.

“Is it actually serious?” Natasha asked him.

He nodded. “The Conclave doesn’t have any real ability to enforce anything it decides, but Baldur has close ties to the Ruling Triumvirate of the Vanir, and Freyja and Idunn could decide to enforce it if the Conclave decides in his favor. That would mean war, since I doubt my people would simply accept Baldur’s claim even if I did. Traditionally Asgard has never given much weight to the Conclave, since for many millennia we were the only ones who enforced anything across the Nine.” He drew his knees up and rested his folded arms over the top of them. “Baldur would very likely take my people to Vanaheim as well. It would have been different if there was still an Asgard, but…” He shook his head. “In half a century, they wouldn’t be Asgardian anymore, they’d be Vanir, and Vanaheim would have the Protectorate, not Asgard.”

“What would it mean for you?” Steve asked, sounding worried.

Loki lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I could go to Vanaheim with the rest of my people, I suppose, if Baldur didn’t have me outlawed. I could go elsewhere in the Nine; Eitri would probably take me in. I could stay here. Or I could leave the Nine. Or, well, there’s the lovely and more likely option of civil war. I don’t know that the Vanaheim garrison would side with Baldur over me – Thor, certainly, but to them he’s just another Vanr, not an Ás. Though I’m not sure they’re convinced I’m an Ás, though they wouldn’t be wrong there. Of course, they don’t get a vote, so what they think doesn’t really matter unless we do get that lovely civil war.”

He held out a hand to Freki as the cat walked in through the closed door, which never failed to disturb Natasha. Freki butted her head against his fingers, then curled up against his left ankle as he stroked her back.

“So basically the Conclave is the space UN,” Natasha said thoughtfully. “Or the World Security Council.” Before Alexander Pierce had blown the World Security Council to hell.

Since Loki had spent the better part of a month arguing with the UN, he couldn’t fall back on his usual tactic of pretending he didn’t know how Earth governments worked. All he said was, “Roughly,” and rubbed at his face with the hand not involved in petting Freki.

Natasha bit her lip, not wanting to make Loki’s day worse, but if she put this off any longer then it would go worse for everyone involved. She caught Steve’s eye as he started to move towards the opposite side of the room where they usually slept – they slept with Loki occasionally, but not that often – and he stopped, looking at her inquisitively. “What is it?”

Loki looked up again. “I take it that I’m not the only one who got bad news today.”

“No,” Natasha said. “I got a call from Rhodey earlier.”

“I cannot go to America right now, even if it’s being attacked by robots again –” Loki began.

“It’s not about that,” Natasha said. She took a deep breath, then said, “He and Bruce just confirmed that Samuel Sterns is still alive.”

Steve went dead white. He took a step away from Natasha, his shoulders bunching up as if he expected to be hit and he was trying to brace himself for the blow.

Loki cursed wearily in Nordic-sounding Asgardian syllables that made Freki sit up and hiss. “How?”

“They don’t know,” Natasha said. “They’re trying to find him before –”

“Before he finds me?” Steve said. “I’m not exactly hard to find.”

“He can’t cross the land-wards,” Loki said. “And if he tries, the Valkyrie will dismember him.” Freki hissed again and Loki glanced down at her, smiling wryly. “Assuming the greedy one here doesn’t get him first.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Steve said blankly. “Ross will call us back, or he’ll use it as an excuse to –” He had started to shake again, but when Natasha put out a hand to him, he pulled away.

Loki chewed his lower lip, then shrugged suddenly and said, “Then don’t be here. Come to Nornheim with me; Midgard does technically have a seat on the Conclave and you might as well remind the rest of the Nine exactly who put an end to Thanos. They could use the reminder that humanity is no longer Yggdrasil’s plaything.”

Natasha looked at him in surprise. “Nornheim?”

“The vǫlur host the Conclave at the ruins of Urðarbrunnr on Nornheim,” Loki explained. “It’s considered neutral by all Nine Realms and the rest of the Protectorate.” He frowned thoughtfully. “The vǫlur might side with me; my mother was patroness to them. On the other hand, I’m fairly certain that my sister is the reason Urðarbrunnr is in ruins, so perhaps not.” His gaze flickered upwards again. “Regardless, there’s no way that Sterns will be able to reach it.”

Natasha glanced at Steve. After a moment he nodded and she said, “I guess we’re going to Nornheim.”

#cut scenes and concept writing #grim from the reaping #roleswap endgame au concept #as always comments are appreciated

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grigori77 · 2 months ago

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Critical Role, Campaign 3 Episode 111

Matt; "Melting internally and outide ..." Okay then ...

Oh my gods what a perfect start to the bit ... you can't just bluff this Sam, you have to open it first to continue ... a threat of nina assassination violence implied with failure? Oh my ... that's great. I love it ... HOLY FUCK MATT IS NOW DYING OF MYSTERIOUS FAST-ACTING NINJA POISON!!! Wow ... Marisha too? BECAUSE TRAVIS USED HER AS A MEATSHIELD?!!! You goit ... and Robbie gets it by refusal ... wow ... and now EVERYBODY' DEAD BUT SAM ... I love this one so much ... oh, SAM was the ninja? You prick ... XD

Yeah, I know it was about the new Assassin's Creed game, but given I just watched The Shadow Strays on Netflix my irony is tripped in a different way ... O.o o.O

15? Oh my ... did Marisha make a backhanded confirmation they're all gonna be playing BOTH of their characters each, except for Robbie? Are we REALLY about to get a WHOLE SESSION of Bells Hells AND the Mighty Nein just vibing? I'm so ridiculously excited ...

OH GOD AND HERE WE GO ... PLAY THE SONG!!! IT'S THURSDAY NIGHT!!! ON A MONDAY!!!

SPRINKLE!!! Yay! And Pate! Oh my gods how's THIS meeting gonna go? And now the weasel's in the house on Laudna's back ... ye gods ... he continues to suffer, then ... XD

Yes, OF COURSE Beau remembers THEM ... and Marisha has ENTIRELY forgotten about the live game at WEMBLEY!!! Yup ... nice going, boos lady! LOL

True, true, Jester and Dorian ARE both blue ... "space pirates"? Oh yeah, OF COURSE Jester TOTALLY loves THAT idea ...

What the fuck are you saying, Samuel? Veth is wearing A FUCKING CATSUIT right now? XD An open relationship, Veth, REALLY?!!! So very convincing ... seriously DO NOT shag the minotaur ...

They WERE very stern with him, yes ... for all of FIVE MINUTES ... oh my sweet fuck is Chetney gonna try and shag Veth now? Is THAT where their minds are going right now?

Caduceus IMMEDIATELY marking Imogen and Orym as theonly two of BH with the working braincells ... I love that ... XD

Honestly, right now it looks like Matt's LITERALLY just watching a game of tennis, he's nothing but a pure spectator right now and having SO MUCH FUN as a result because he just UNLEASHED THIS on all of us ...

YASHA!!! Watch Ashley spent the next HOUR trying to get the hang of THAT FUCKING ACCENT again ... LOL ... The couples ... oh the couples ... Marisha's getting SO CONFUSED about the multiple ships she's involved in right now ...

Braius likes Jester? Is that ... oh ... oh no ... no, he RECOGNISES her from somewhere? Oh shit ... how is he gonna react to THAT revelation? O.O

Fearne is fawning over how built Beau and Yasha both are ... :3

Oh shit ... Jester and Veth are ADMITTING that they did the thing at the Temple of the Platinum Dragon and Fjord is trying SO HARD to kep them from just digging deeper holes for themselves ... oh wow she's hugging him ... hmmmmm ... and now trying to sell him on the Traveller ... yeah ... here we go ... as if that boy wasn;t ALREADY playing half a dozen different sides all at once ... O.O

Braius: "You ruined my life!" Oh wow ... are Braius and Yasha about to fuck each other up?

Jester is trying to cast CHARM PERSON on Braius ... wow ... yup, he just CRITTED his save ... and now he's MAD about that shit ... wow ...

Caleb and Jester are both FASCINATED by Ashton ... yeah ... oh, the Dirt Wizard will just GEEK OUT over the Dunamantic DOME in that rocky skull ... Fortune's Favour? Oh here we go ... Ashton backstory recap! Yay!

Yeah, that's right, these guys are Essek's peeps! XD

Comparing notes on the fight ahead, then ... yeah, safe to say the MIghty Nein need a crash course in what they're about to face ... and now comparing PSYCHIC notes too ... XD

Oh yeah, I forgot that Veth HATES the water ... LOL

Beau taking exception to Yasha considering herself SIMPLE-MINDED is so adorable ... :3

Marisha needs to get a handle on who she's playing when ... XD ... oh wait ... yeah, the fan is kind of cheating ...

Matt; "This is my favourite episode already. I haven't had to do ANYTHING yet."

Here we go ... the flirting begins ... she really is WEAK for minotaurs ... yup ... it is indeed beginning ... LOL

Imogen's not attuned to the Circlet? Oh boy ... she's got WAY TOO MUCH blasting her in the head right now ... wow ... yeah, Jester's mind-music will be SO LOUD ... O.O

Laudna's weird mementos ... ye gods ...

Insight check on whether or not the Mighty Nein are REALLY sneaky ... hmmmmm ... I mean they CAN BE ... yeah ... ummmmmm ... O.o

WOW ... nice Keyfish reference that has NO ACTUAL RELEVENCE in this situation, Caleb ... LOL

Laudna's turning Sprinkle into a puppet ... oh gods ... and Jester's just LETTING HER torment her weasel ... which is par for the course ...

Beau and Ashton both acknowledging that they're equally grumpy is cute ... meanwhile Caleb's grumpy too ... XD

Jester's trying to make up for ruining Braius' life ... hmmmm ... yeah, I mean SHE WAS going through a kind of crisis of faith ... oh ... are they both about to finallys BOND about being mutually artistic? Oh my ... a naked painting of Fjord ... oh, and Braius is very much PAYING ATTENTION to certain details, as he would ... XD ... HIS FIANCEE?!!! This is news ... O.O ... Suzy Greene? Jester's volunteerring to SEND HER A MESAGE?!!! Of course she is ... hmmmm ... how well is THIS gonna go? How likely is it she;s just going to make this poor girl think she's having a psychotic break?

Jester: "What is a guartertaur?" Yeah, indeed, I'm curious too. O.O ... she does sound pretty cute, yeah ... wow ... how many spell-slots is Jester about to burn to tell her ALL OF THAT?!!!

The first thing she calls him is "a shell of a man" ... LOL ... yeah, this is going JUST how I thought it would ... Ashton: "I love a drunk text, this is so good." Oh gods yes ... Jester really does SUCK at Persuasion ... XD ... oh man ... is this not working? Oh ... now she's just trying to let him down easy ... hmmmm ... yeah, he is NOT convinced ... but she BEAT HIM on an Insight check? Holy shit ...

Saint Jester the Pirate ... oh boy ...

Oh, are they going to make this a FRIENDLY match, then? That could be fun ... let Braius and Yasha just have a little sparring match instead ...

Ah yes ... Jester and her pastries ... which leads to reminiscence about FCG ... awwwwww ... man, not now, please ... everything was getting so fun ...

It's just getting HARDER AND HARDER to keep track of who's who and I'm enjoying it so much every time they have to catch themselves ...

FINALLY come to a decision, then ... going to the moon first, THEN set up the Tower for them to camp out before starting to mission proper ... here we go ...

Are they seriously considering putting Veth IN THE HOLE right now so she won't have to swim?

Just follow Orym, that's probably the best idea ...

Awwwww ... :3 ... I love Orym's sisters so much ... give them ALL the hugs, please!

That is some seriously cool Prince of Egypt shit right there ... O.O ... time to GO QUICK guys! Veth: "I'd rather ride HIM!" And then Yasha picks her up and puts her on Braius' shoulders ... LOL

Once again Sam derails Matt's narrative train of thought with his t-shirt nonsense ... yup ... just like old times ...

THE TUNNEL!!! YEAH!!!

It's all a bit trippy, yeah ... Dancing Lights! Yay! Meanwhile Caduceus is doing his cleric thing ... I love how they low key geek out together ... :3

So ... back on the Moon, then ...

Yeah ... giant worm tunnels are definitely A THING for both these groups ... yeah ... O.o

Dorian DOESN'T KNOW he's on the Moon yet ... and now they start fucking with him ... LOL

Roll a D20? REALLY Matthew? 8? Oh fuck ... something's coming? Of for fuck's sake ... O.O ... oh, so it's just a STORM on the surface? Okay then ...

Wait ... Caduceus has a new storm prayer? Hmmmmm ...

Imogen sends a message to Zhesh ... so it's potentially safe? Cool ... okay, then ...

Oh yeah! The Ruidian glass dancer ... sweet ...

MARISHA!!! Get your tabs in order! Two Beaus is not useful!

Yay! Sashimi! So sweet and disturbingly creepy! Awwwwww ... :3 And yeah, the glass daggers ...

Making arrangements for teleportation travel ... and now they're gettign EVEN MORE CONFUSED ... XD ... and also some rather thinly veiled insults to Chetney ... this is getting increasingly hilarious by the second ...

Ashton: "It's really nice not to be the most fucked up person in the group for once."

BOOF!!! So ... did they all make it in one piece?

Oh phew ... thank fuck that worked out ... and now they're all crammed into a really tight little space ...

Yay! Caleb's Tower! Sweet! I've missed this ... pancakes and cat smell! Awwwwww ... :3

Now he's just showing off and I love it ... XD

Everybody's floating! Yeah, totally Willy Wonka style indeed ... XD ... oh, okay ... time to explore ... and Laudna's totally being her usual creepy self Spiderclimbing all over the walls ... startling spectral cats as she goes ... LOL ... oh yeah ... I forgot she could do the creepy cat-bone dislocation thing ...

Oh, so we're taking a break? Yeah, sounds about right ...

So ... is Laudna, like ... LOST IN THE WALLS now?

YEAH!!! THE BONE HARP!!! PLAY THE BONE HARP!!! I love the idea of a Yasha and Dorian harp and piano duet ...

Chopsticks ... snort! LOL

Wait ... Laudna's found the Cat Kitchen? O.O ... surreal ... Laudna shows Sprinkle ... by pointing him around the room like a flashlight ... XD

Laudna just slurped out of a hole and splattered down in the midst of them all ... lovely ...

True ... good point, the MIghty Nein never actually HAD a bard ... hmmmmm ...

Veth is now SLOWDANCING with Braius to sexy music ... LOL ... Sam is basically playing a flirty scene with himself ... this is beyond surreally meta ... LOL

Fearne and Jester are considering turning into cats and going exploring ... :3

Hero's Feast? Yay!

Laura Bailey and her dirty mind ... even more so whenever she's being Jester ... XD

Smart move ... making sure Yasha can't be turned against them for 24 hours ... shame they didn't have THAT capability once upon a time ...

Caleb and Orym personal time? Interesting ... oh ... is the Dirt Wizard going to offer the Wee Man up some advice? And yes, it definitely is very sound advice ...

Beau is NOT HAVING IT with Laudna ... LOL

Oh my ... is Ashton really asking Yasha for flirting advice from Yasha? Hmmmmm ... yeah, I mean it;s true, the big girl has ZERO game ... Beau pretty much just landed Yasha BY ACCIDENT, really ... yeah ...Jester TOTALLY gets in on that ... then again she is a MUCH BETTER choice to offer him advice ... yeah, Fearne DOES have really nice big boobs ...

Tusk Love! Oh boy ... seriously, how is Ashton going to take to the ultimate Exandrian romance novel? Oh ... just stuff his face in her boobs? Yeah ... yeah, that would definitely be a fun experience ... O.O

Here we go ... time for funky cat exploration games ... these two are definitely TROUBLE together ... I'm loving it ...

OF COURSE they go into the laboratory and just KNOCK SHIT OFF the worktops ... XD

A TIGER?!!! Ye gods, Caleb ... O.O

Beau and Fjord are currently MASSIVELY underestimating the Hells ... XD ... ah, the Taste of Tal'Dorei ... oh yeah ... now they're just FULL-ON INSULTING them ... LOL

Wait ... is Caleb A FAN of C-Pop creations? O.O ... holy fuck HE IS!!! And he has some of his pieces? Crazy shit ... wow ... so now they're bonding ... OF COURSE they are ... nothing appeals to the Old Man like flattery ... "Nein Hells"? Awwwwwww ... that's really sweet, actually ...oh ... "Nein HELLZ" ... that's even better, actually ...

Orym: "Chetney has spent many years bringing joy to the children of Exandria." Ashton: "And if he dies tonight he can bring much joy to the cats as they start feasting on his corpse."

CALEB HAS ONE OF THE WOODEN EGGS!!! O.O

OF COURSE Fearne tries to steal the egg ... while Caleb's holding onto it with Telekinesis ... oh boy ... she does SUCH A BAD JOB of that, I swear ...

Yeah ... I really don't see Caduceus being AT ALL responsive to any flirtation from Braius ... he's always struck me as being unapologetically ACE, if I'm honest ...

So Braius REALLY IS starting to return to the true path of the Platinum Dragon, eh? That's quite sweet, really ...

I love that so much ... Braius admits to having been drawn to Asmodeus and Caduceus simply answers: "I've heard worse."

Beau: "All right, fuckers. We got a big day tomorrow." Braius: "Dorian, you can stop playing now." Dorian: "I'm sorry, I was startled by the profanity."

Laim: "Yeah, we saw you from over in Campaign 2 and really liked your vibe." XD

Fearne's still pouting about not being able to start her collection of Chetney's eggs ... ALL FIVE?!!! Ashton: "All right, Thanos."

A future Bells Hells One-Shot? The Quest for Chetney's Eggs ... yeah, I could get behind that ... XD

So they're taking a rain check on that Braius/Yasha fight, then ... there's always tomorrow ...

"BABE!!! SEX!!!" Oh boy ... LOL

A Moon thing? Oh ... yeah, well as long as Laudna CAN come ... okay ... so now it's Imogen, Laudna and Caleb just floating around in endless empty space ... oh, LITERAL space, then ... cool ... oh weird ... that's some bizarre Quantum Realm shit ...

Ah yes ... or ja, if you will ... OF COURSE Caleb's been incommunication with the Voice of the Tempest, and indeed about Imogen's mum ... yup, sound advice right there ...

I find it very amusing that IMOGEN considers Caleb to be "very powerful" ... of course Caleb can see plain as day just how powerful SHE IS ...

Ooooh ... a gift from Caleb? Sweet ... a small metallic pyramid ... an Intuit Charge? Intriguing ... "It goes BOOM." Ja, of course it does. Not really expecting anything else from the Dirt Wizard who likes to set shit on fire ... XD

A celebratory party at Taste of Tal'Drei if they succeed? I could get onboard with that ...

Oh yeah! The Raven Mask! Get Identifying, Fearne ... just a lot of geeking out and nobody actually SAYING what it does ... XD ... that's kinda mean in a really funny way ...

That's an INSANELY high roll ... yeah, Braius just painted a bona fide MASTERPIECE ...

Fuck ... did Fjord just ANNIHILATE Pate with an Eldritch Blast? O.O

Oh my gods ... Laudna is continuing to torture Sprinkle without intending to ...

Chetney's whittling away ... stark naked ... and he lives through the night ... again ...

Dorian's calling on Orym just before bed? Oh shit ... OH SHIT IS THIS FINALLY IT?!!! Please please please please please let this be it ... Orym: "I have feelings for you ... maybe stince the day I met you." OH MY FUCKING GOD!!! The minds of EVERY FUCKING DORYM SHIPPER just EXPLODED!!! O.O ... and OF COURSE Dorian is receptive ... and so incredible sweet too ... oh my gods these two are being SO IMPOSSIBLY SWEET ... :3

Look at Matt's face ... oh my god he's just ENTHRALLED ... he's EVERY FUCKING ONE OF US right now!

THEY FALL ASLEEP IN EACH OTHERS' ARMS!!! OH MY GODS THIS IS SO FUCKING ADORABLE!!! I'M SO IMPOSSIBLY HAPPY!!! IT'S FINALLY HAPPENING!!!

Bedtime for everybody ... and YES MATT MERCER YOU ARE SO FUCKING RIGHT that is a PERFECT PLACE to call it a night! That was THREE AND A HALF HOURS of perfect geekgasmic AWESOMENESS ...

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samlacy · 10 months ago

Text

Let me go, I’m starving

my first SPN as well as Ship fanfiction on here

I hope you like it :)) And Im sorry for the long ass hiatus…

Happy new years??

PLUS check out my ao3 Samlacy, I post on there!!

Summary:

“Do you want me to touch you?”

Sam gathers his words,

“Cas, please, just this once.”

————

The book slammed down on the floor by a strong force, hitting the wood, hard enough to make a noise that notified the whole apartment (if there was anyone), Sam was seriously pissed off.

Cas looked up from his palms to Sam sitting on the hotel chair, his laptop on the desk and some book on the floor.

His hands were gripping his hair, giving the impression he could pull out his long hair-strands right out of his head.

Which was not a pleasure to Cas, since he loved Sam’s silky, straight and long for a man hair.

Cas hopped off the Hotel bed and walked up to the book on the floor. He picks it up and puts it, gently, back on the desk, still keeping his hand on it while his eyes focused on the stressed individual.

Sam noticed the book with the hand on it and looked up to, expectedly, see Castiel.

Not that it was a bad thing that he was here the whole time he was tearing himself up about this case, but the fact that he had such a harsh expression on his face that it didn’t quite fit in either the angry or disappointed category.

“I’m sorry”, slipped out of Sam’s mouth, with no control. Why was he sorry? He didn’t hurt the Angel in any kind of way, did he?

“You’re good”, Castiel whisper-says as he took the hand off the book and instead pulled the other chair back to sit right across Sam.

The silence filled and Sam decided to just keep working and try to find at least something, anything on the Web. Although

Cas eyes were piercing through his head and he felt it.

The angel once again had a worry or suspicion on Sam, and he was oh-so-curious to know what it is now.

Its almost like Castiel always is suspicious of him!

But this time, Sam felt the mood shift a little as soon as Cas sighed and leaned back into his seat.

Sam’s heart was beating in his chest, just like it always did when him and Cas were somehow alone or he had an interaction with the angel.

He doesn’t know if it was a demon instinct or that he had a big fat “teenage” crush on the so called angel.

Sam will rather go with option one.

Or neither, if possible.

Its not like Sam wants to feel this way, especially when Cas is his brothers best friend (and maybe almost boyfriend). He honestly doesn’t know, but he does notice the tension between those two.

The way Dean gets soft to Cas, like he never was to Sam, it is quite the scene.

He can honestly just hope for those feelings to disappear completely one day, its not like Cas would love him anyway.

“How long are you gonna keep this up, Samuel?” Cas breathes out, hinting a bit of exhaustion in his voice, looking straight at Sam.

Sam’s eyes widen immediately as his shallow yet uncoordinated breathing followed up. He tried calming down, tried making it less obvious that he could go crazy any minute.

With as much calmness he can get to in the moment, he asks shakily, “What do you mean, keep up what?”

Slam.

Castiel slammed the laptop shut and was stood. Sams eyes were even more widened than before and had a hint of blush on his face, maybe also some reaction down there.

The Angel had a stern yet soft expression on his face as if he was genuinely sick, fed up of whatever Sam was doing.

The silence couldn’t be even more noisy after the slam, as it was exposing Sam’s shaky, caught off guard breathing.

Their eye contact was long and deep, as if Castiel could burn right through them any moment.

Ironically.

As it took long enough for Castiel to realize that this length of the pause was getting awkward and intense, he coughed and backed off, by standing straight in front of Sam.

He fixed his coat up a little before speaking, “You know. The avoiding of me, an angel, in your presence or maybe the lack of attention, even words, to me. Why is that?”

If Sam wasn’t nervous enough before, he might’ve hit the limit right now. His hands starting shaking as no words left his mouth, as if he froze in place.

What could he possibly reply to that?

Castiel got out of the way of the desk and walked to Sam’s side to cup the man by his cheek and turn his head to face him, the hand moving down to hold his chin up.

Sam’s lips turned dry and eyes were fixated on Castiel’s, blue like the Atlantic, eyes.

“I..”, Sam manages to get out, however didn’t help his case.

“Hm, tell me, Sam. What is up with the ignorance?”

Sam’s cheek heated up like crazy. His heart was basically already out of his chest beating like crazy. He managed to lick his lips and gulp down.

“Nothing, it’s nothing”, he breathed out trying to get out of Castiel’s grip, before he felt the tight squeeze and couldn’t move a bit.

Castiel sighed as he slightly loosen the grip, as to not hurt the man.

“You know that’s not true, Sammy”, the nickname made Sam’s head spin, do stuff to him.

‘Please, keep calling me that’ is what he wants to say, but how could he? It would only ruin everything that he tried so hard to build up between them.

Every single answer would ruin their friendship, relationship.

Why now, why exactly at the time he doesn’t know what to do?

“Do you like me, Samuel?”

Silence.

Dead silence.

No, no, no, no, no. Don’t call me that. Please, please, please! Please just everything, but not that.

How is he supposed to answer that? Was it even really a choice at the moment to answer or not.

Im your Sammy, so please call me that, please.

Cas let go of Sam’s face as he turned his head to the side and proceeds to walk out the room while mumbling a ‘whatever. It was a stupid question.’

“Yes”, was all he had to hear for Cas to turn back and freeze at where he stood before, in front of the (to the side turned) sitting boy.

“What?”

breathe.

“Yes, I do. I like you”, Sam felt a hole in his stomach, scared shitless of the possibilities of Cas’ reaction right after he finishes talking, “Hell, I like you so much that I always start shaking, gasping for air and stutter like a teenage girl saying ‘hi‘ to her hallway crush for the first time.”

Corny, but worth it.

Yet again a silence that got broken off by a calm soft voice.

Not the good kind, but maybe curiosity.

“Are you not ashamed of how dean might react to this intimacy of ours? Your feelings towards me might really damage the relationship between you and your brother”, Cas talks in his yet always wise voice.

“It’s damaged enough, what do you want me to do? I just love you, I can’t control it”, Sam gasps out, tears threatening to fall as shame fulfills that pit in his stomach.

But yet, for fucked up reasons, his cock was hard in his jeans, with no shame.

Which seems like Castiel noticed it and had zero shame as well to ask.

“Do you want me to touch you?”

Sam gathers his words, looking up at him with teared up eyes and a shaking bottom lip,

“Cas, please, just this once.”

And he complied.

No other words exchanged as Cas took Sam by his wrist and dragged him to the bed, gently pushing him down so he lays flat down.

Sam was ashamed enough to move anyway. So he just watched Castiel unzip his jeans to reach to the hardened cock with underwear covering it.

Cas pulled Sam’s jeans off for him and let it drop onto the floor as he positioned himself on the bed, between his legs.

His hands rid up Sam’s shirt, slowly lifting it up until above his chest, which his fingers caressed over his nipples.

Sam never knew he would be this sensitive to Castiel’s touch as whimpers left his mouth with no control.

Cas was gentle with his expressions, yet his fingers were pinching and abusing his nipples.

He decides to lean down and wrap his lips around Sam‘s left nipple, his right hand on Sam‘s right nipple.

His tongue licked over the nipple, wetting it while looking up at Sam. The sight was immaculate enough to almost make Sam come in his underwear right there.

Fuck, Cas was a complete tease.

“Please, Cas, please, please, please—“,

Sam groans when Cas bites down and then let’s go to suck on them, as a way to sooth them.

Now tears of pleasure instead of shame were spilling from Sam’s eyes as he slowly put his hands on Castiel’s shoulders, gently gripping onto them for support.

The shirt was creasing under Sam‘s touch before Cas decided to let go of boy‘s body whole, only forcing the shirt off of him.

Now Sam was completely naked (apart from the boxers) in front of Cas while Cas just took of his upper body clothes, only unzipping his jeans and letting his lower part stay clothed.

Sam was desperate to see the Angel clothes free, as he slowly caressed his hands down to the cock of the man.

But before he could imagine anything further, Cas slid his hands in Sam‘s underwear, cupping his ass cheeks before he leans down to kiss the man.

Sam wraps his arms and legs around Cas as he melts into the oddly gentle kiss, mouth wet all over.

Cas gives the boy‘s ass a squeeze before one finger was teasing his hole. Sam gasped silently as it was sudden of Cas pushing in a whole finger, his walls hugging tightly on the dry finger.

It was burning, it did not feel good at all.

But Sam couldn’t get the words out as he really didn’t want to miss this chance.

His only chance of ever having this with Cas before he watches him run to his brother, Dean, and possibly even get together.

It’s not fair! He loved Cas first, he always loved Cas more, but why did the angel have to go and like Dean? Someone who denies his sexuality with all his strength just to go to some bar and drink his brains out.

Cas broke the kiss as he slowly went down Sam‘s neck leaving a peck before sitting straight, so he can pull Sam‘s underwear off and finger him normally. Quickly demanding Sam to suck a little on his fingers, taking them back immediately after.

The cold breeze hit Sam‘s cock and hole as he shivered. He sat his ass back down as he lifted it before to let Cas take his underwear down.

His legs were spread wide, his hands sneaking to his thighs, holding them open.

Cas had a small glitter in his eyes as he leaned down to nip at Sam‘s inner thigh, his index finger teasing his way into his hole.

Sam whimpered, his chest rising before dropping again when Cas‘ lips left his thigh alone and instead kissed his lower abdomen.

That one finger turned into two and then directly to three as he thrusted in and out. Sam‘s hands gripped for the sheets as he huffed fast.

Cas was still struggling with understanding some humans cant go as fast or have the stamina an angel does. But Sam is slowly trying to learn to last longer, so its a good challenge.

“Cas, please I need you in me. please—“, Sam gasped when he felt the fullness leave and get replaced with emptyness.

Cas still had the calm, straight face he always had around anyone, except dean of course. Always dean.

It broke Sam, he doesnt know why, but the angel just seeing him like any other person broke him. It really did.

Sometimes he might’ve caught himself wishing he was Dean.

Cas pulls his underwear under his balls, as he strokes his desperate hardening cock.

“Im going to enter now”, Cas warns as he slowly pushes in with a groan, stretching out Sam.

Sam’s vision went blurry, he felt the Angel already move before he could realize it any further.

Castiels hands were on his hips, holding tightly as he pounded into Sam with full force, showing no mercy, hitting the man’s prostate every time.

He begged for his release, by each thrust groans and whimpers slipping from each other as Sam’s cock slapped his own stomach.

It really didn’t take long before Sam was begging again, “Im gonna come, please Cas.”

And by that Cas wrapped his hand around Sam’s cock and started pumping to which Sam shot out, leaving out a scream.

He was shaking from the orgasm as Cas let go of his cock and pull out of the boy.

When Sam was feeling more conscious after the orgasm, he was confused as to why the Angel didn’t come yet.

He watched as Cas zipped his jeans up and threw his shirt on, neatly and not missing any buttons on his shirt.

“Why didn’t you come?” Sam took the courage to ask as he covered himself with the blanket.

Cas was done with the tie as he slowly turned to Sam, having an as confused expression as Sam.

“I did this purely for your pleasure, Sam. I was helping you out, and if we are done now, I’m going to have to leave and look for Dean”, Castiel calmly responded as he turned to the mirror, making sure his hair was in place, “Oh, and did you see my coat by any chance?”

Sam felt his world shudder into even more pieces than before. Anger and Sadness all in once taking over him.

Why couldn’t at least Castiel lie to him, tell him he loved him or just come for the shake of this!

“Just seriously go Castiel! I had it with you, just go and look for your Dean”, Sam spat as he threw the man’s coat at him. He stood up from the bed, his knees weak, but enough strength to pull his underwear on and try to fetch on some joggers and a shirt.

Cas was trying to keep up to the situation as he held Sam by his wrist, trying to get out some kind of information off the boy. Why was he throwing a tantrum?

Sam harshly waved the hand off of him as he turned to Cas with tears spilling down, a pained expression on the man’s face.

Did Cas do this to him?

“Just go, please. We are done for today”, Sam gasped as he watched the Angel take his arm back and disappear into thin air.

Sam broke into pieces as he just stood there and sobbed his eyes out to some feelingless Angel who would forget about this by the next minute.

Who didn’t even care if he had sex with Sam, he just did all those soft kisses and gentle touches to feed Sam’s pure delusions.

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superectojazzmage · 1 year ago

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Of everything that happens in the new issue of Immortal Thor, this scene stands out the most to me as something I feel will be one of the most important scenes of both the issue and the run as a whole.

In the very beginning of gods, of Earth, of humanity, of stories, among the very first incarnations of the archetypes that Thor and Loki embody - the mighty warrior and the devious trickster - see each other and immediately get into a fight out of sheer revulsion of everything their twin stands for.

Good vs evil. Light vs dark. Order vs chaos. Brawn vs brain. Control vs freedom. Life vs death. Fate vs choice. Peace vs war. Mundanity vs magic. Law vs crime. Creation vs destruction. Love vs hate. And many more. Clashing opposites, battling for supremacy. A cycle of violence and debate passed down the generations, from father to son, mentor to student, predecessor to successor, and so on. Brother waging battle against brother just to prove a point, to fulfill their role in the story. An ideological blood feud applied to archetypes and titles and narratives. Trickling all the way down into it's present expression... Thor and Loki.

Already it's clear that cycles of this sort are going to be a very large theme of Immortal Thor. The concept of recurrences and stories being retold over the years have been talked about a lot by the narrator. The comic goes to great lengths to draw attention to how Thor and his cast and, by extension, their own world in the form of comics are falling into patterns that transcend through time. And I feel that's going to be the crux of a great deal of the plot.

Loki hates the cycle. In their roles as both the goddess of stories and the god of mischief, they abhor stagnation and repetition. They want to be free of the roles "assigned" by the narrative. They want to be free of the debate, the never-ending battle of good and evil that ha destroyed their family time and again. Thor would want to be free of it too, if he realized he were part of it. But he struggles to do so. He's a rock in the sea of time. A god among mortals, a child of two worlds watching in confusion and grief as his human friends age and change and die around him while his divine brothers and sisters continue to stay the same. In this, they are trying to do what Gaea wanted to do but couldn't; to break the cycle.

Toranos and Utgard-Loki don't want to break the cycle. They ARE the cycle. Embodiments of the sins of the forefathers carrying down to their children. Representations of the archetypes of Thors and Lokis at their absolute worst, shorn of all true depth and compassion and true belief in their aspects in favor of continuing the godforsaken argument. Shades of the old festering in the blood of the young, infesting them with their baggage, holding them back from growing better, and lashing out at them when the new generations fail to meet the standards of the elders. And they may not even realize they're doing so.

This isn't the first time this theme has come up in Al Ewing's work.

Immortal Hulk presents the conflict between the Hulk and his archenemy, the Leader, as a similar generational feud. Both in a literal familial sense (the Banner and Sterns families being divided and warring after Robert and Samuel Sterns turn on each other) and a larger ideological sense (people using the power of gamma for good or ill, going all the way to the first Hulk being born from a leader's selfish desire to misuse magic as a tool of conquest). Sometimes the thoughtful man is the hero, sometimes the brute is. But they always fight. Senselessly and pointlessly. And the Green Door and the horror it brings was only stopped... by breaking the cycle. By defying it. By Hulk choosing to never sink to Leader's level, or those of his predecessors, and instead choose to forgive.

And Ewing makes clear cycles and wars spanning centuries like this are common in the Marvel Universe. The Eternity Mask is passed down generations of men and women, always fighting for freedom against those who would deny it. Nick Fury passes his name and identity and role onto his son. There's always an Ant Man, inheriting their predecessor's problems, and there's always an Ultron, trying to claim dominion. Arakko and Krakoa alike are divided between those who hold to the old ways and those who seek new ways. Ebony and Ivory Kings do their work, from within and without. On and on, the wheels turn.

It even goes back to the very beginning. To prior multiverses. All tracing back to the first super battle, the first superhero and first supervillain - Lifebringer-One and Anti-All, the cosmic knight and the entropic dragon - fighting for the fate of the nascent world.

Effectively, Ewing views and represents the narratives of superhero comics as we know them, as a sort of repeating song. The metatextual commentary is that all this has happened before and will happen again, because humanity will always dream of heroes battling monsters. There will always be a knight and a dragon. A warrior and a trickster. A superhero and a supervillain.

But he also acknowledges how this can go too far. How comics can fall into stagnating loops of repeating stories and stall status quos. Spider-Men being denied their stories because editors want to live in nostalgia instead of the now. X-Men getting their progress towards coexistence undone because writers can't handle change.

And this is all what Immortal Thor is about and will be about. The struggle for balance between opposites and extremes. Cyclical narratives and worlds. Ideas and stories being inherited and passed on. And all of it a commentary on comic books themselves and their history and role in culture.

It's brilliant stuff.

#immortal thor #the immortal thor #thor #mighty thor #thor odinson #loki #loki laufeyson #marvel #marvel comics #marvel 616 #earth 616 #marvel universe #al ewing #comic books #comics #media analysis #character analysis

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natsuki208 · 4 months ago

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I Wanted to be Beside You…

Before the Battle of Heaven and Earth commended, Marco and Jean have a bittersweet conversation while tending to their wounds.

(This is a re-upload of a fic I did on ao3 a year ago, to celebrate my 1000th post 🎉)

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The sky is full of smoke and ashes, the sun is not shining as brightly as before all of this, and the only sound that can be heard is the distant footsteps of the rumbling titans. Thank god that the remaining members of the Scout Legion and the Marleyan warriors manage to set sail with the Flying Boat and make their way towards Eren Jaeger's destination; but at the price of suffering through yet another gruesome battle.

Everyone aboard are still cooling off from the said battle: Armin is still in bed regenerating from the gunshot he received from Samuel, with Mikasa and Sasha checking up on him, Reiner, Annie and Pieck are also resting from fighting in their titan forms for a while, and Hange aiding Onyankopon with preperations as of keeping and eye on an injured Levi. As well as most of them mourning over recently losing the Marleyan general.

Meanwhile, at the rear of the ship, Jean Kirstein has been dealing with some long bandages. He's been helping to aid the wounds of his long time friend, Marco. He took a pretty big blow to his leg by one of the Yaegerists, but got extremely lucky that it is still mobile and he's able to walk. Jean is being as careful as he can be to wrap it up nicely.

Marco hisses a little at the pain in his shin.

"Stay still. It'll only get worse if you move." The tone in Jean's voice is both stern yet concern; clearly he's trying his best not to hurt Marco.

Jean manages to wrap the bandage just right. Once that was settled, Marco rests his head back on the bars of the ship. The freckled man was already torn up on losing an eye and arm four years prior, so it's a relief to him that he's able to keep his leg. Jean starts cleaning up the things he emptied out of the first-aid kit, then he quickly looks over to his friend tending to his wound.

He looks very distress - and it's probably not just from the agonizing pain in his leg. His expression shows he is drifting off into his own world, curling up his legs towards his chest, and the saddening frown that he's had for a long while can make anyone sad along with him. Jean remembers this impression, it's similar to how he behaved when they had that campfire in the forest with the Marleyan warriors, so he can instantly tell what's on his mind.

After packing away the kit, he stands up over Marco and looks down on his disheartened friend.

"Can I sit here along with you?"

Marco catches ear of the question, but simply nods without looking up. Jean sits down a few inches away from him.

Neither of them say anything at first, just to have a minute to themselves as the ocean breeze flows through their hair. If only the situation they are in were different so it would allow them to enjoy the limited peace. On that thought alone, Marco finally speaks.

"T-Thank you for doing this for me."

Jean turns his head around to face Marco. "Of course, we're comrades. Well... base on that fact anyone could've helped, but you're glad that I did, right?"

"Y-Yeah."

The silence returns again. Only breaking with a sigh from Marco's breath.

"You really have changed a lot, haven't you?"

"Hmm? What do you mean?" Jean asks, glancing over and feeling disappointed to not see him smiling.

"Years ago, you mentioned time and time again... that someone like you could never be strong enough to act selflessly in battle.

Just as Jean expected; although a little surprising. This isn't like anything he would ever bring up before, further evidence that there's something bothering him. Then again, he's still right. Jean gives a smile while continuing to look upon his friend; maybe even shifting a bit closer to him.

"I seem to recall a way-too responsible guy once telling me that I can be a great leader but not because I'm strong, but that I understand the weak. Because I'm like everyone else, scared out of my mind, it makes me trustworthy among my comrades. It took me so damn long to realize that, and I owe that guy a lot."

Marco freezes. To hear those exact words he said to him repeated by Jean himself, like they are printed at the front of his mind, he doesn't know what to feel. It reflects back to what such a naïve and desperate boy he used to be - God, how could he have been like this?

Jean rubs the back of his neck while still smiling. "What I'm trying to say is... you're really the most selfless guy I've ever known. So we should all be thankful to you, especially me."

That's the last straw. Marco pulls in his legs further, slightly lowering his head to bury it in them. But he stops himself, takes a big breath which Jean catches on. What could possibly be bothering him now?

"Jean..." Marco starts, letting go of his legs with his one hand. "Do you remember when I first joined the Scouts? And that I told you, Reiner and Armin that I'm doing this 'cause it's better to fight, to protect my comrades and do what's right for humanity?"

"Yes. Of course I do." Jean nods positively.

Marco pauses before continuing. "Well... the truth is... that wasn't my main reason to."

The tone in his voice is quavering, sounding like he could burst into tears any minute.

"The reason why I joined them... it's b-because I wanted to be beside you!"

Jean's expression shows complete shock. He can see the tears in Marco's eye and blush spreading right across his face; he knows that he's telling the truth. They stare at each other for a second before Marco turns away and looks down onto the floor - presumably to hide his ashamed face. Jean can feel himself getting all achy inside, not from the fact that Marco 'lied' to him, but that every selfless move that he did for him ever since they met make SO much more sense now.

Surely Marco was nice to every one of his friends, but he seemed always confused of why him out of all of them, and why he always seemed hesitant whenever he talked or helped out Mikasa. Even after all of that, why is Marco getting so upset about it? Does he regret choosing him over some old dream? No, that can't be it, and Jean has to figure out why.

"I-I'm so sorry, Jean." Marco sobs between sentences. "All this time... *sniff* you think that I'm the most thoughtful person in our world. But all I ever did were ways just to get closer to you 'cause of these stupid feelings."

Jean starts to get infuriated the more Marco spouts out nonsense words and untrue statements.

"You probably only see me as your comrade... or best friend... but I had to let you know. *sniff* After lying to you, almost killing Reiner myself, and allowing myself to fall in for Floch's so called justice... I don't deserve to be seen in the good light. Or even your friend."

"YES YOU DO!!"

Before he knew it, Jean is suddenly right in front of him, grabbing onto his shoulders with such anger in his eyes. Marco hasn't seen Jean like this in a long time with just between the two of them, leaving him scared of what can possibly be said.

"Why the hell would you think such a stupid thing?! You're nowhere near the slightest of a shitty person and you know it!"

There is a pause.

"B-But... I'd..."

"You said it yourself, doing it for me was only part of the reason you're a scout now. How about when you aided Armin with most of his plans? You worrying about Eren when he was in Liberio? You even showed compassion for Gabi and Falco this morning before we left! How can you be so blind to your own actions?!"

Another pause occurs. Giving Jean time to calm his voice.

"You may not think it, but you're still the same Marco that we all came to admire. Surely your world view has changed, but hell, so have all of ours ever since we came here. We still got a great battle ahead of us, and we'll all be needing each other to finish it. We need to bring peace back into this world... and all of us need you to help us... I need you."

Marco doesn't say anything yet, just allowing another tear to fall down his cheek. Jean lets go of his grip on Marco and almost stands up to give Marco his space. But he quickly notices a light giggle come out of his mouth, he turns his head up and sees Marco gleefully staring right back at him, his eye full of serenity.

"Th-Thank you, Jean. I needed to hear that." He says dryly - his throat is still raspy from his crying.

"Yeah." Jean replies with a smile back.

It fades once he starts thinking again. He may never get a chance like this with Marco again 'if' they fail their mission, so why leave things the way they are now? The least he can do is give Marco once last bit of hope. He looks straight at Marco and this time, gently places one hand on his shoulder.

"Marco..."

He hesitates. Leaving Marco mentally preparing himself when he admits that he only sees him as a close friend and comrade.

"I... I gave up on Mikasa years ago."

One line that sets Marco stunned. More so than Jean's reaction when he confessed. Jean's face blushing pure red, even looking away in embarrassment. Marco is both deep down happy and surprised, surprised to realize that Jean has been basically doing the same thing as him, hiding away his true feelings. But he is really relieved and happy that they both manage to say what they want to say, especially right before what could be their last fight against their enemy.

Both men glance at each other for a moment longer, but before one of them can speak, another voice calls for them from the distance. Commander Hange is waving up from an open window in the ship, sounding like they've been calling out to them throughout their entire conversation.

"HEY! I DON'T MEAN TO INTERRUPT, BUT WE NEED YOU TO GET OUR GEAR RUNNING! WE'RE APPROACHING OUR DESTINATION ANY MINUTE, GOT THAT?!"

"Yes Commander! We're on it!" Jean yells back at them.

Marco stands up carefully, using his one arm and Jean walks over to their equipment just beside them then both slowly make their way across the deck. Marco doesn't take his eyes off of Jean. He doesn't notice, but he gives him a small yet gentle smile at him, one that he hopes to give him over and over again once the war is finally over.

#attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #aot #snk #jeanmarco #jean kirstein #marco bodt #hange zöe #aot au #marco lives au #ao3fic #my fanfiction #my fic #one of my faves ☺️

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literaryvein-reblogs · 4 months ago

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Writing Analysis: East of Eden (Characters)

Cyrus Trask

Cyrus is the stern father of Adam and Charles. His military career is cut short when he was shot in the right leg during the Civil War. His amputated leg is replaced first by a wooden and then by a steel prosthesis. Cyrus, who “was something of a devil,” contracted gonorrhea while in the service and passed it onto his first wife, who kills herself as a result (14). After the death of his wife, he quickly remarries and fathers his second son, Charles. His perceived favoring of Adam causes a violent and lifelong rift between his sons. Cyrus is very proud of his involvement in the military. He peremptorily decides Adam will join the military as he believes his weaker son needs discipline to make him a man. In his spare time, he writes perceptive articles criticizing military strategy. As a result he is offered a paid position with the General Army of the Republic (G.A.R) and travels around the country lobbying and speaking about military issues. After the death of his second wife, he re-locates to Washington D.C. to continue his work with the military. He dies of pneumonia in 1894 and many high-level government officials attend his funeral. He leaves Adam and Charles an inheritance of $100,000. The boys are never sure how Cyrus amassed his fortune though Charles suspects his father had stolen the money.

Adam Trask

Adam was born in 1862 on a Connecticut farm to father, Cyrus and Cyrus’s first wife whose name is never mentioned. His mother commits suicide when Adam is still a baby. He is raised by Cyrus’ second wife Alice. Cyrus views him as weak and less intelligent than his brother Charles, which confirms his decision to force Adam to enlist in the military, a prospect that terrifies Adam. He was a quiet, obedient child who shied away from conflict and violence. He catches on early that his father tends to exaggerate about himself and knows that his father was not a great man (20). During his first five years in the army, Adam develops a deeper aversion to violence and volunteers to work in field hospitals.

After being discharged in 1885, he wanders around Chicago for a few weeks to avoid moving back home with Charles. Not knowing what to do next, he re-enlists in the military. He is discharged again in 1890 in San Francisco. He spends the next three years wandering around the country and eventually serves time in jail for vagrancy. Upon arriving back at the farm, Charles tells him about their inheritance. Adam stays on at the farm with Charles for a few years. After growing restless, he takes off for months at a time traveling around the world, especially when he and Charles would quarrel. Adam is not content to continue living on the farm and talks of moving to California which further irks Charles. When Cathy, after being beaten by Mr. Edwards, arrives on their doorstep, Adam takes her in and cares for her. He proposes before she is completely well and they are soon married. Adam and his new bride relocate to Salinas, California. His intention is to build a new “Eden,” where he can create a lasting legacy for his family.

Unfortunately for Adam, he is completely deceived about the identity if his wife. Once she shoots him and deserts him with her newborn twin sons, Adam falls into a hopeless stupor, leaving his Chinese-American man-servant Lee to raise his children. He does not even name them until Samuel Hamilton forces him to do so when the twins are fifteen months old. It is another 10 years, after a confrontation with his estranged wife, before Adam actually takes an interest in raising his sons. The boys, however, have already been permanently affected by that time. Both long for the acceptance of father and mother and embark on an inner struggle that is exacerbated on the one hand by Cal’s perception of his father’s favoring of Aron and Aron’s embarrassment over his father’s failed business venture. In the end, Adam has repeated the mistake of his own father causing a rift between his two sons. He seems to redeem himself on his deathbed by forgiving and accepting Cal who has suffered his entire life from being estranged from his emotionally aloof father.

Charles Trask

Charles is the son of Cyrus and Alice Trask and half-brother of Adam. Charles is considered stronger, quicker, and smarter than Adam. Adam possesses a secret fear of Charles, who is prone to outbreaks of murderous rage. When Adam is old enough to enlist, Cyrus has a private talk with him about his future in the military. Charles overhears the conversation and becomes envious of his father’s interaction with Adam. His envy, combined with his bitterness over Cyrus’s preference of the birthday gift Adam had given him, enrages Charles. Charles blames Adam for his feelings of rejection and severely beats and then chases after Adam, intending to kill him.

After Adam leaves for the Army and his mother dies, Charles is left alone to run the family farm. He misses his brother and often writes letters to Aron. He becomes lonesome and isolated. In his letters to Adam he writes about looking for a wife but instead only ends up frequenting the local inn, which houses prostitutes. Occasionally, he would move in “one slovenly woman after another” but his interest in the women would quickly wane and he would then move them out (53).

When Adam finally comes home to the farm after their father’s death, Charles is glad to have his brother around but the tension between the brothers never lessened. While the industrious Charles seeks to increase their land holdings and develop the family farm, Adam is restless and dissatisfied with farming. His desire to travel rather than stay in Connecticut agitates Charles and is a subject of their quarrels with each other. When Adam decides to take in Cathy, Charles instantly distrusts her and sees in her a darkness that he recognizes in himself. On Adam and Cathy’s wedding night, Cathy drugs Adam and shows up in Charles’s bedroom and the two have sex. Although never proven, it is hinted that Charles could be the biological father of one or both of Adam’s twin boys. Throughout his adulthood, Charles stayed focused on running the farm and amassed great wealth; however, he never finds love or happiness. Of the Trask property Steinbeck writes, “It was a grim farm and a grim house, unloved and unloving” (63). Upon his death, Charles left behind a $100,000 inheritance, which he willed to be split between Adam and Cathy. A note scribbled to Adam by one of Charles’ lawyers indicated he died having lived a lonely and miserly existence.

Cathy Ames (Kate)

Cathy, one of Steinbeck’s most interesting and controversial characters, is born with what the author describes as “a malformed soul” in a small Massachusetts town (71). From early on, people are both taken and betrayed by her innocent face. She often makes people feel uneasy, though they would not be able to say why. She learns at a young age how to use her sexuality to manipulate people and is a very clever liar. She is the cause of the whipping of two fourteen-year-old boys and the apparent suicide of one of her school teachers. As a teenager, she murders her parents by setting the family’s home on fire while they slept. Though her body was never found, she too is presumed dead.

Eventually Cathy finds her way to Mr. Edwards in Boston for a job as a prostitute. Instead, stricken by her apparent innocence and beauty, he installs her as his mistress. Cathy tortures Edwards, who is obsessed with her, by stroking his jealousy and fears that she might abandon him. He later learns of the house fire and forces her to accompany him on a trip to Connecticut, where he nearly beats her to death. She crawls her way onto the Trask property where Adam finds her and nurses her back to health.

She marries Adam for protection, though she has sex with his brother Charles on her wedding night. Reluctantly she moves to California with Adam where she learns she is pregnant. She later intimates to Adam that Charles impregnated her. After a failed self-induced abortion, Cathy gives birth to twin boys. She endures her pregnancy as a trial and the birth is described as “bitter, deadly combat” (187). Two weeks after the delivery, she packs her bags to leave the ranch. When Adam attempts to stop her, she shoots him in the shoulder.

Cathy then finds her way to Faye’s brothel where she adopts the pseudonym Kate. Like others before her, Faye is fooled by Kate’s innocent face and beauty. She discourages Kate from prostitution and eventually begins to rely on her to run the brothel’s affairs. When Kate learns that Faye has left everything to her in her will, she concocts a subtle and devious plan to murder Faye. Once Faye is dead and Kate has inherited the house, she creates a brothel with a reputation for sexually depraved spectacles. She keeps the prostitutes in her employ cowed and hooked on drugs.

Eventually Kate is visited by Adam and both of her twin sons. The meetings, along with growing paranoia about the evil deeds of her past resurfacing, cause Kate to question herself. Having always been self-assured in her isolation from what she saw as great depravity in other people, she begins to wonder if perhaps it is she who is different. Particularly, her meeting with Aron, who is brought to her out of revenge by his angry and rejected brother, brings this fact into relief. “They had something she lacked,” Cathy thinks to herself, “and she didn’t know what it was. Once she knew this, she was ready; and once ready, she knew she had been ready a long time—perhaps all her life” (550). She was ready to kill herself, which she does, after willing her entire fortune to Aron.

Caleb (Cal) Trask

Cal is one of Cathy and Adam Trask’s twin sons. Cal is described as “watchful” and is darker of complexion and bigger and stronger than his fair skinned twin (333). Cal notices from an early age that people gravitate towards his innocent and angelic looking brother. As a result, he craves attention and often feels rejected, especially by his father. Cal possesses a cruel streak that contrasts sharply with his brother’s gentle nature. While on one hand he loves his brother, on the other, he gets satisfaction from knowing he can manipulate Aron to cause him pain and confusion. Sometimes he feels a great desire to protect his more innocent brother. He is frightened by what he perceives as darkness inside of him, especially once he learns the truth about his mother. He worries it might be an inherited, permanent evil. He prays to God to remove the stain: “I don’t want to be mean. I don’t want to be lonely” (377). After learning about Cathy, Cal stalks her for a few weeks until she confronts him. When he finally comes face to face with his mother, Cal realizes where the darkness comes from and decides that he has the power to become a different person.

Like his Uncle Charles, Cal craves love and attention from his father, whom he believes favors his brother. When Adam loses his fortune, Charles invests in a business deal with Will Hamilton during WW I and makes a $15,000 profit upon the great demand for beans. Cal presents the money to his father as a gift on Thanksgiving in front of Adam, Abra and Lee. Adam rejects the gift, refusing to take any money that was made in profit off of the war. Cal is completely devastated. In revenge, Cal takes Aron to see Kate. Consequently, Aron runs off and joins the military and is killed in battle only a few months later. Adams suffers a major stroke upon learning of his son’s death. Cal, riddled with guilt, seeks out Abra who brings him back to his father. Ultimately, Adam blesses Cal with the word, timshel, indicating that there is a chance of redemption for Cal should he choose to triumph over the sins of his past.

Aron Trask

Aron is one of Cathy and Adam Trask’s twin sons. In comparison to his darker, brooding brother, Aron seems simple and innocent. People are taken by his pleasant countenance: “The width between his blue eyes gave him an expression of angelic innocence” (333). Unlike the clever and suspicious Cal, Aron is trusting and kind. Though he hears suspicious remarks about his mother, he cannot reconcile the fact that his father might be a liar.

While Cal craves the attention of his father, Aron desires the love of a mother figure. He allows his girlfriend, Abra, to mother him and admits to himself he experiences a “wordless longing” for his mother (426). Perhaps, deep down, Aron blames his father for his angst, which could explain the intensity of the embarrassment he suffers after Adam loses the family’s fortune in his failed attempt to transport refrigerated lettuce across the nation. Aron seems to become increasingly uncomfortable in his own skin after that incident and desires to finish school early and leave Salinas.

In the meantime, Aron turns to the church and becomes devoutly religious. He decides to become an Episcopalian minister and even contemplates a life of celibacy, much to Abra’s disappointment. His devout nature causes friction in his relationship with Abra, who feels she cannot live up to his expectations. Overtime, Abra comes to realize that Aron does not love her; rather, he loves an idealized version of her that exists only in his mind—just as was the case with Adam’s love of Cathy. Aron also comes to harshly judge his brother Cal whom he sees as living a sinful life.

Aron is destroyed when confronted by the reality of Cathy. That the blood of a depraved prostitute runs in his veins is too much for him to bear. Though he is killed shortly after he runs away and joins the military, it is likely he experienced a more significant emotional or spiritual death after the confrontation. Readers are left to wonder if Aron would have ever been able to recover from the crushing blow had he survived the war.

Samuel Hamilton

Samuel Hamilton, a transplant from Northern Ireland, arrived in the Salinas Valley around 1870. Samuel is the bearded patriarch of a large family from which John Steinbeck is descended (139). Samuel unfortunately settles on dry, rocky ground and is never able to establish a successful farm. Through his ingenuity and industrious nature, he manages to eke out a meager living to support his wife and nine children. More importantly than financial prosperity, however, Samuel Hamilton is respected and admired by nearly all those who know him. He has a sharp and inquisitive mind and possesses a great love for reading. His reading interests vary widely. He even buys a copy of William James’ Principles of Psychology behind his wife’s back—odd for an Irish immigrant farmer at the turn of the twentieth century. Steinbeck implies Samuels’ tremendous intellectual curiosity and creativity make him special. He also passes his love of learning onto his children, who “[. . .] were better read and better bread than most of their contemporaries. To them Samuel communicated his love of learning, and he set them apart from the prideful ignorance of their time” (147). He has a knack for invention but not business and so loses many potentially great ideas to more savvy individuals. While Samuel never could get water to his own farm, he has a special gift for locating water in the valley. Samuel meets Lee and Adam Trask when Lee comes to fetch him to see if he can locate water on the old Sanchez ranch that Adam has purchased. He locates water using a special forked stick, which he refers to as his “magic wand” (165). When Adam inquires about how the stick works, Samuel explains it this way: “I don’t really believe in it save that it works. [. . .] Maybe it’s this way. Maybe I know where the water is, feel it in my skin. Some people have a gift in this direction or that. Suppose—well, call it humility, or a deep disbelief in myself, forced me to do a magic to bring to the surface the thing I know anyway” (167). Samuel’s sensitive and intuitive nature makes him keenly perceptive about both natural phenomenon and the subtle psychology of the human mind. He sees similar tendencies in Lee, Adam’s servant, and so comes to greatly respect him. He recognizes the inhumanity of Cathy and is greatly grieved by her. He also immediately sees the faults in Adam’s worship of his wife and unattainable dream of creating a garden. Likewise, he knows the great damage Adam is doing to his sons after he falls into a hopeless stupor once Cathy deserts him. Samuel saves Adam’s sons twice—once by bringing them into the world and second by revealing the truth about Cathy to Adam to goad him into living again. Though Samuel dies half way through the novel, he remains an important influence throughout as his figure is frequently recalled by both Lee and Adam later in the story. Even Kate remembers the effect Samuel had on her. His presence resounds again at the very end of the novel when Adam blesses Cal with the word “timshel” since it was Lee’s explanation of the term and the resulting glory of humanity’s apparent freedom to exercise choice which drove Samuel to tell Adam about Cathy in the first place.

Lee

Lee is Adam Trask’s complex and interesting Chinese-American servant. Readers meet Lee when he goes to pick up Samuel to bring him back to the ranch to discuss boring wells with Adam. On the surface, Lee appears a stereotypical Chinese manservant, wearing a queue and speaking in pidgin Chinese. Within a few moments of meeting him and learning Lee was born in America, Samuel tells Lee, “I mean no disrespect, but I’ve never been able to figure out why you people still talk pidgin when an illiterate baboon from the back bogs of Ireland, with a head full of Gaelic and a tongue like a potato, learns to talk a poor grade of English in ten years” (161). Lee and Samuel are great friends from that moment on. Lee explains he essentially hides behind a stereotypical Chinese mask since that is what the surrounding American culture expects from him. Behind the façade, Lee is highly intelligent, thoughtful, well-read and kind. Rather than being humiliated by his position as a servant, he sees servitude as a unique position to exercise power over a master who comes to rely too heavily upon his servant. Lee, however, does not take advantage of this position. He ends up running Adam’s household and raising his twin sons while Adam languishes in his depression. Once Adam emerges from his stupor, Lee presents to him 10 years of carefully maintained accounts—every household penny accounted for. Besides his role as surrogate father to the twins, Lee plays an important role in the novel by introducing the concept of “timshel.” When the twins are fifteen months old, Samuel descends upon the Trask property to force Adam to name his unclaimed and unloved sons. In the process, Samuel and Lee end up discussing the Biblical story of Cain and Abel. Together they ponder the significance of the story, particularly that because Abel dies, all of humanity is descended from the banished murderer, Cain. Intrigued by contradictory translations of the wording in the story, Lee consults Chinese elders with whom he undertakes a study of Hebrew in order to translate the passage more accurately. Later in the novel, Lee explains his findings to both Adam and Samuel, who has come to bid the men farewell. In contrast to the two conflicting translations of the word timshel—one which orders Cain to triumph over sin (do thou triumph) and the other, which prophesies Cain will triumph over sin (thou shalt triumph), Lee and his elders conclude the word is most accurately translated as “thou mayest.” Lee interprets the significance of the word in this manner: “But ‘Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win” (301-02). Lee’s words have a tremendous impact on both Samuel and Adam. They immediately inspire Samuel to choose to reveal the truth about Cathy to Adam, which he hopes will force Adam to make a choice: get up and live or lay down and die. At the very end of the novel, we see the lasting impact the words have had on Adam. In the face of one of his son’s death, at least implicitly at the hand of the other, Adam is able to bless Cal, who has struggled throughout his entire life to choose right over wrong, with the word “Timshel.” Essentially Lee saves Cal’s life by not only presenting Adam with the material circumstance to bless Cal by bringing him in front of his father and forcing Adam to speak, but he has also presented Adam with the spiritual understanding he needs to help free Cal from the weight of his sins.

Abra Bacon

The Trasks are first introduced to Abra Bacon and her family when Abra is 10 years old. Her family stops at the Trask ranch for shelter during a storm. Abra is intelligent and precocious. She seems much more mature than other girls her age. Later when Adam asks Cal Abra’s age, he replies, “Nearly fifteen. But she’s—well, more than that some ways” (453). Lee comments that she was born a woman. As a child, she is immediately drawn to the sweet and innocent Aron, which sparks Cal’s jealousy and anger towards her and his brother. Though they are together for just a few moments, Aron and Abra decide they will be married some day. A few years later, the twins end up attending the same school as Abra once the Trasks move to Salinas. Abra and Aron’s relationship burgeons and Abra grows close to the Trask family, especially Lee, who eventually comes to see her as a daughter figure. He presents to her a jade button, his dead mother’s only ornament. Initially, Aron relies on Abra for much needed motherly affection. Later he begins to reject her affections as he becomes increasingly introverted and more devoted to the Episcopalian church. Abra struggles to be what Aron needs her to be, but as she matures, she realizes that Aron does not love her for who she actually is as a person, but rather he loves some idealized vision of Abra that exists only in his mind. As the novel progresses, readers learn more about Abra’s family, which seems cold and unloving. As she does with Aron, Abra hides her true self from her mother and father. Her mother dresses her like a doll and orders all of her affairs. She tells Cal her father never loved her because he wanted a son, probably to name Abraham, which is why he named her “Abra.” At the end of the novel, Abra tells Cal she no longer loves Aron. She accepts that she cannot live up to his expectations and that she is just as imperfect as Cal, who considers himself stained because of his family heritage. Abra says she is equally bad as she has discovered her father is a liar and thief who has embezzled money from his company. Abra finally achieves acceptance from the understanding Lee and Cal. She is instrumental in Cal’s redemption at the end of the novel as it is she he goes to in his despair and she who forces him back to his father’s bedside. Together Abra and Lee save Cal from self-destruction.

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tmwcs · 2 years ago

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My Roommates Ex - Chapter 5

Chapter 5! But we still have more to come!

Pairing: Heeseung and you.

Warnings: Yeah, so physical altercations, insults (sexual and demeaning) bullying, intimidation, drug use, effects of drug use, forced altercation, taunting, teasing, disrespect towards reader, curse words, vulgar words, binding and gagging, acts done on a person against will, i think that about covers it.

Summary: read on, i promise you wont be disappointed.

-Begin Read-

Samuel’s forehead had barely detached from yours when you felt the tug and pull from his body and grip being forcefully separated from you. It was through a collateral impact from sheer force that came in at an extensive speed and made direct contact with him.

Barely able to make out what happened due to the blurred vision, all you could see was the blur of Samuel’s face turning off to the side, towards the direction of the voice. You could tell he was still in mid-turn when he received the impact, as you still felt his hair on your skin, when his physical contact with you ruptured. It was all simultaneous and it happened in a blink of an eye. Unsure of what exactly had hit him, whatever it was, it made a shocking, and ear puncturing noise as it smacked against him in his face.

It was a rush of force that swiftly came into the hindered sight of your peripherals. It was so swift in fact, that you barely processed the fast motions of Samuel being knocked over to the side, even though it happened directly in front of you. It was followed with a combination of a cracking and smacking sound effect, as it penetrated the lurking silence in the room.

With your incoherent vision, you saw a smear of black shadow that breezed right passed your face. You could vaguely make out what was happening, as it viciously shifted Samuel around, before it stations itself, hovering over him. The first thing you were starting to make out, as your vision was becoming less blurry, was the lack of daylight through the window due to the setting sun.

It was near dusk, and it made you wonder just how much time had passed by, from when Samuel came to your dorm, since before the assault, it was still light out.

The lightbulbs were off, and the only remaining was the bright glow emerging from the light posts outside. It peered through the windows and created a dim and illuminating softness inside the room. Staying in your spot, remaining unmoved and slowly regaining the clarity in your vision, you rightfully presume the shadow you saw that smacked Samuel senseless was one of Heeseung’s limbs, not an object. Your reaction in his presence would have been more enthusiastic, had you not felt drained and exhausted from the struggle and physical abuse. With your back remaining attached to the wall that Samuel pushed you on, you’re struggling to regain your breathing, having just realize that you had been holding it during his assault.

You were feeling slightly dizzy and there was a pain that throbbed at the side of your head from when Samuel missed your cheek and hit above your ear instead. You remained almost emotionless, even after seeing Heeseung was there, it wasn’t until you heard his voice once more. That was when the sudden overwhelming sense of relief had hit you, to the point where you’re diamond eyes returned and streamed down your face.

“Get up.”

His voice…

Heeseungs voice remained calmed and mellow as usual, of course there was a heavy stern tone, and though you didn’t see it to confirm, but it sounded as though he spoke through gritted teeth. Surprisingly, he didn’t sound hoarse or heavy even though you heard scuffle and hits.

You heard the quarrel of the two as your vision was becoming less blurry now that you were sobbing the tears away from building up in your eyes. Slowly, you began to make out the image of Samuel laying on the ground in between Heeseungs legs, as he hovered over Samuel in the kneeling position, one kneecap pressed painfully on his chest plate. Samuel looked like he was recovering from a hit, maybe a few, as he struggles to breathe from the pressure of Heeseung’s knee while shifting in pain. Since you didn’t see how it all went down, you can only dictate what had happened based off what you could see at this very moment.

Samuel’s hands were covering his face, there was a lot of blood, which you assume came from his nose as it glazed over his jaw and trinkled onto his chest. Heeseung looked untouched, just slightly breathing deeply, which indicated he threw some extremely heavy punches, resulting in the tightening flex of his core, and the full expansion in the swing of his arm. The sudden speed, force, and form of each swing causes the anaerobic effect to occur within the muscles in his chest cavity, slightly depleting his oxygen intake from submitting such enormous bursts of energy, which in turn caused each hit to be a traumatizing blow. By knowing all this, you can only deduce that he did not hold back when he tackled Samuel.

Heeseungs body was lean and hard. Much harder than Samuel.

While the intake of all the stimuli he took allowed him to gain muscle, Samuel clearly had soft tissue that lacked strength and was expanded due to the increase of lactic acid buildup. Heeseung’s body was slender, yet athletic.

With years of practicing and perfecting intense, dance choreography, which was his preferred method of exercise along with sports, he not only displayed hard muscle, hard bones, heightened flexibility, and full range of motion, his senses became sharp from enhancing the reactionary performance of each one. The repetition of sudden and bursting movements, all performed with great precision and with various acrobatic routines, had enhanced his sight, reflexes, hearing, and leap elevation. In turn, it made him far more superior as a contender when it came to physical altercations.

His movements are swift and effortless. Whether it be a pivot on the heel or a maneuver at the waist, the years of dancing allowed him to gain momentum that he could use to avoid, shift, and change his position without exhausting energy. You personally witnessed this the day you met him; it was with Gabe, and as you recall, Heeseung nearly glided as he simultaneously turned you around and got in between you two without ever losing balance.

“What the fuck?!? You broke my nose man!” Samuels muffled voice roared from under his hands as he sandwiched his broken nose in between his fingers and rolled around in delusionary pain.

It’s known that steroids, especially when heavily used, can have an extreme disorienting and slurred effect upon the host receiving shocking impact, much like the effects of a concussion. Judging by Samuel’s state of bewilderment, his dazed, and unstable movements, you’re quite certain that he was succumbing to the effects of delirious impairment.

“God dammit!!! What the fuck! My fucking nose!! Fuck man my nose!!”

Samuel kept yelling in pain, no doubt the state of disarray he was in due to the drugs probably caused him to panic, resulting in hyped up reactions.

“Yeah.” Heeseung singly responded in a nonchalant tone, brushing off Samuel’s constant rolling and turning as he stood up and walked over to you.

Samuels cries had died down, but his disoriented state of mind rendered him to lie still as his attempts to even sit up, let alone stand was dysfunctional.

Heeseung walked and was about five feet away, or so you estimated, when he stopped and looked towards you, noticing your appearance which made him paused his movement. He had on black cargo pants, a white fitted t-shirt that was worn beneath a black, unbuttoned long sleeve that matched his pants. He wore his sleeves rolled a quarter way up, exposing his forearms, where the veins and muscles were displayed in plain sight. In his typical fashion, he paired his attire with one accessory, the black fitted cap, which he never leaves behind especially when going out.

He stood there, the bill of his hat covered his facial features as normal, only showing his mouth as you watched it slightly part open the moment he came to a sudden halt.

As he placed his hands on his hips, one hand simultaneously pushes the bill of his cap slightly upwards, to reveal his eyes.

The subtle application of your eyeliner was dragged down by the flow of tears, leaving shadowed streams that, ironically, painted your face in the reflection of beauty that spoke of pain and suffering.

He tilted his head slightly back as he bit down on his bottom lip, furrowing his brows, and squinting his eyes, as he studied your face intensely and raised an eyebrow. You had completely forgotten about the wound in your cheek due to your body becoming used to the pain, until you saw Heeseung take notice.

He not only saw the red swelling on the cheek, but you also watched his eyes shift over to your chest, looking at the blood speckles, along with the torn strap of your dress, your messy hair, the faded smear of your lipstick, and the blood from the cut on your bottom lip.

Remaining still with his hands planted on his hips, you were surprised to hear him chuckle as he smiled. His smile was probably the widest you’ve seen yet, showing both rows of teeth in full display, slightly parted as his tongue comes forth and he glides it over the top row, one side over to the other.

He conducted a half turn with his body, but his face fully shifted to look over his shoulder in the direction of Samuel, who remained stunned as he laid motionless on the floor.

“Did you hit her?” Heeseung’s traditional tone remained, as he continued to smirk, remaining all calmness in his manner.

Apart from the painful groaning, Samuel did not respond to Heeseung. You’re not even sure if he heard him in all honesty.

Heeseung turned back to face your direction, without changing his stance and posture, he walks over to you, still smiling and chuckling. Taking one hand off his hip, he softly grabs your chin and gently moves you to face in each direction as he examines it. You were still shocked to witness, that even after seeing you this close, he still had his smile plastered on his face as he continues to speak to Samuel, despite being unresponsive.

“Why? Was it because of what she said? About hurting you and not me.”

Your pupils shrink as your eyes widened when Heeseung referenced your last words to Samuel, right before he tackled him. You hadn’t realized until now, that Samuel had you pinned to the wall that was closest to the locked door. Hearing the commotion from outside, Heeseung used his key to strategically unlock it, remaining undetected so he could strike Samuel and leave him no time to prepare for a block.

Being unaware of him sneaking in, Samuel received a direct hit from Heeseung with no time to put up a fight or to avoid it. It was only seconds prior to his delivered impact, that Heeseung heard the last words you spoke out, right as he made it through the door.

Your eyes started to tear up once more upon hearing Heeseung quoting your words. You let out a shaky gasp, nearly succumbing to the urge to cry from the overwhelming sensation of joy and relief that just sucker punched you. Your chest begins to tremor as you catch your breath, trying to hold back the tears. Heeseung softly calms you down and whispers to you.

“Shhhhh-shh-shh-shh. I know baby. I’m going to fix it.”

His hand remained softly holding your chin up, as his thumb reaches up and gently glides over your lips, easing the quivering movement that occurred upon breaching the urge to sob. It gently goes over, while carefully avoiding the open cut that was now beginning to seal under the coating of dried blood.

His gentle grab remains on your chin, he takes his spare hand from his hip and brings it up to his mouth. He licks the pad of his thumb and gently strokes the smeared lipstick clean off your face, carefully, making sure he doesn’t apply too much pressure on your injured cheek.

He angles his face just a few degrees to the side and offsets it as he leans in, using the tip of his nose, you feel him give a small, faint nudge against your skin. He whispers ever so softly, “It’s okay.”

Licking and softening the dried blood on your lip, he cleans it off. Hearing your soft moans and whimpers, he eases the stinging by giving you a gentle kiss. The softness of his touch and his affection brings back warmth to your body, as you feel his tongue commit to slow, full licks over the roof of your mouth. He finishes it with a small peck to your lips and a small exhale through his nose grazing over your skin as he gives you a reassuring smirk, locking eye contact with you.

Everything was better already, and it would have stayed that way had Samuel not suddenly spoke out as he laid from afar watching Heeseung display the peaked level of passion in comforting you.

“Hey man, just know that no matter what, I fucked her first.”

Heeseung’s eyes snapped to the wall behind you as he took in Samuel’s words. You watched as his face tilted back, away from yours as he sets it back to full frontal value, flushed with the wall that he was glaring at. The smile he dawned fades away so suddenly, that a blink in your eyes would have missed it.

“Every time you stick your dick inside her, you’re entering in a path that I cleared the way for. I was the first one to break her when I took her v-card, and I’ve been inside her more times than you. Whatever your dick touches, it ain’t nothing that I hadn’t already marked, with my name. Remember that. You too, y/n.”

Your mouth dropped open at the disrespect and the tainting of your name. Not only because it was shot out to you directly, but it happened right in front of Heeseung, which made it worse by an unfathomable measure.

You never felt it necessary to discuss your relationship with Samuel to Heeseung, nor did he ever care to inquire about it. Why would he? It wasn’t natural to bring up past relations, for either one of you. You both had come together and decided to stay with each other, all based on the moments since you first met and hence forth. The audacity of the boy lying on the floor, who was struggling to prop his body on his side as he tries to regain some level of organized orientation. His face glared at Heeseungs back while he lashed out those awful words.

Heeseung didn’t respond. No longer leaning down to enclose the distance between your faces, he straightens his posture, and closes his eyes as he stretches his neck in the order of left, right, back, and then front. You heard the cracks as he admitted each stretch, before coming back to center and lets out a long exhale through his nose, he started to turn his face around to look at Samuel when you latched on to him to bring his attention back to you.

You reach up, placing your hands on his chest, and shook your head to him with a look in your eye that spoke in volume. You panicked, unsure of what he had intended to do, you feared that Heeseung would unleash a level of anger that, you personally hadn’t seen, but suspected was there. It was just a gut feeling that he had a dark side to his otherwise, genuine and kind temperament. You saw slivers of it when he used force and intimidation towards Gabe, but you knew that Samuel had just crossed a line that was beyond retracting. You feared that whatever anger Heeseung was feeling in this moment, you didn’t want it to get the best of his better judgement, afraid he’d put himself in a position that could separate him from you. Of all things in this world, nothing was worth it, especially Samuel.

As if he read your concerns, reason, and thought, Heeseung looked in your eyes once again, took your hands in to his, and kisses your forehead. You felt the movement of his lips as he spoke.

“It’s okay. Trust me. You gotta trust me baby.” He gently squeezes your hands as his lips remained firm on your forehead, giving another small, and light kiss. That’s when Samuel spoke yet again with a poison tongue.

“You’re slacking man, if I had her attending the same college as me, I would have already gotten her pregnant within the first month, or found some other way to take her off the market.”

Heeseung releases your hands and went back to placing them on his hips as he did before. While staring at the wall behind you yet again, he smacks his lips and turns halfway and looks over to Samuel.

“That’s why you came back isn’t it?”

There was silence in the room, you watched as Heeseung continued and took a few steps over to Samuel’s direction but remained closer to your side. The view of his backside is all you see as he continues to deduce Samuel’s reason for coming here.

“Yeah…I think I have a pretty good idea why. Been thinking about it ever since you came here.”

Heeseung nodded to himself as he confirmed his suspicions, indicating that all those moments where he was deep in thought by the lake, and on his bed while he gazes at the ceiling, all the moments that you were concerned over, now becomes clear. He never was suspicious or questioning your intentions, it was strictly Samuel, and his reason for thought concerning his abrupt visit. You felt dumbfounded in forgetting that Heeseung had a unique habit to think outside the box, it wouldn’t be any different even if it was regarding Samuel.

Heeseungs calm voice remaining steady as per usual, continues to grace your ears as you listen in on his deductions.

“That other girl you met…you were happy at first until…”

Samuel laid there looking at Heeseung with a half-smile, as if he was mocking him.

“She didn’t look at you the same way. Did she?” Samuel’s smile still present, although there was a shift in the vibrancy of it as he shook his head. Heeseung relentlessly pelted Samuel with verbal punches, each one breaking him, piece by piece.

“You’ve been missing her, haven’t you? Been thinking about her…wondering if she’d take you back after things didn’t go well with the other one. Hmm? Am I right?”

Heeseung walked over to Samuel, grabbing his collar, Heeseung adjusts Samuels body to lay completely flat on the floor. Placing his knee on his chest and maintaining a firm grip, he continues to berate Samuel for his indiscretion towards you.

“You want her back so bad, that you couldn’t control yourself when you saw that she had moved on, and then you were willing to hurt her, just so you can get to her. That’s low man, even for you.”

You began to panic, you trusted Heeseung as he bid you to, but seeing him with his knee on Samuel’s chest, applying pressure to render him motionless, while also grabbing on to his collar started to give you goosebumps. But you found it difficult to do anything after you spoke of trusting him, you kept a watchful eye and prepared yourself in the case things escalated. Samuel was nothing to you at this point, he wasn’t worth Heeseung to become violent over.

“Are you the possessive type, Samuel? Can’t handle the fact that she didn’t wait for you. Surprised that using her love to gain is no longer working, I know. I know what you were expecting.”

Samuel’s eyes remained stagnant as he heard Heeseung make every accurate point against him.

“I’ll tell you. That night, when you sent her that stupid email, I asked her, if she’d still love you. And she said yes. Really, she did.”

Heeseung calmly talking refreshes your memory. The first time when you and Heeseung had sex, when he asked you that question and you responded in all honesty, yet he was elated by your response.

“But I went ahead and took care of that.” Heeseung added his last bit, and Samuel’s reaction was initially one of ultimate shock, to the point where a hesitant smile appeared.

His head turns over to look at you with the struggling smile, he looked frustrated as he struggled to remove Heeseungs knee off his chest to regain his breathing, but lacked the strength and ended up shifting around instead.

“Oh, so you fucked him that night? Holy shit man, you turned her into a whore!. ” Samuel laughed off his insult towards you.

“Dude, I don’t know why you’re telling me this, but if you’re trying to get me to tag team her with you, sorry. But I don’t like to share my toys. Especially that one.” Samuel’s insulting tongue spoke out as he nods his head in your direction, referring you as the one “toy” he vehemently refuses to share.

It brought about an anger within you, you almost found it difficult to rationalize that if, in the case Heeseung were to punch his face in, you would consider standing by and watch with a smile.

“Mmm. Yeah, I get it.” Heeseung remained calm, too calm considering Samuel’s insults were pouring out, yet Heeseung just merely reacted as if someone stepped on his foot.

“When you fucked her, back in high school, did you tear that pussy up?” Heeseungs words stunned you, you never heard speak using such vulgarity. It was rather out of character, not to mention you didn’t know how to take the context of it. Trying to ascertain his reason, you weren’t sure if he was antagonizing Samuel or just promoting him to continue with the insults to justify further thrashing.

“Dude, where are you going with this?” Samuel retorts through his bloodied lip.

“I’m just asking, because when I was in there, you definitely missed a spot. Several actually—but don’t worry, I got them for you.” He looks over to you and spoke while shifting Samuel’s face by the collar to look in your direction.

“When he fucked you, he never broke you down, did he?” He throws you the vulgar question while eyes remained shadowed under the bill of his hat. Only the glimmering shine of gloss could be seen through the charcoal cast, and though you weren’t fond of his inquiry, you answered anyhow. “No.”

It may have been out of character for you to throw all pride out the window, and lend yourself at his disquisition, but for the first time you felt yourself changed. Seeing it for the first time, you realized that there was a string of fate that bound you both by the emotional reverence of love and friendship. It was love and passion of seeing each other growing well, and molding him to become your god, and you as his worshipper. Knowing that Samuel hurt you, he had to make him pay—he had to make him suffer. You sensed that and instead of providing reason or thought, you followed. Before you was not a man, but a force. A soul that was beautiful and dark, and reflected the strength of Dante’s inferno. Behind the reasoning and value of his vigor, you lose yourself to him and never looked back.

“All the times he was in, did he ever make you cum?”

“No.”

Samuel busted out with a laugh and lashed out. “Man, what-the-fuck ever. I swear, I’ll fucking show you man, I’ll show you exactly how I did it.” Samuels eyes grew wide out of fierce anger, yet he remained smiling at Heeseungs taunts.

“Is that the other reason why you came? Those other girls? You didn’t know how to fuck them either? You really thought that someone as gentle and good natured like Y/N, would never be crude enough to get fucked. So, you came back thinking she wasn’t going to know any better, after disappointing the others.”

Heeseungs words hit a nerve with Samuel, who had already hinted about his displeasure in women.

“Fuck off man! I swear! Oh, you better pray that I never show up while you’re not around. I’ll fucking tape it. I’ve seen her face when I fucked that shit up, I wonder if you have.”

Heeseung merely looked at Samuel, looking almost intrigued by his insults.

“Hmm. You remember her face, huh?”

“*Chuckles* I’ve made that bitch smile over my dick so many times.” Samuel's words were beginning to sound desperate. As if he was blabbing just to try and hurt Heeseung, but it never worked.

“Smile? You fucked her and she smiled? Cute.”

“Aright man fuck you! Let’s go! I’ll fucking own you!” Samuel shifts as hard as he could, the veins on his arms flaring as he struggles to release himself from Heeseungs locked knee, which began pressing down hard on to Sam's chest.

You nearly started sobbing. Everything was tormenting you, Samuels insults, Heesung’s questions to him regarding your past sexual experiences, and now the threats. It was all too much. Heeseung continued to taunt Samuel, and it was doing exactly what he wanted in bringing out an anger out of Samuel.

“Is that why y/n was so tight when I was in there? Is that why I had to break her in for you? Hmm? Even though you did it a lot longer than I had, you still didn’t know how to fuck her.”

Heeseung’s words kept hitting where it hurt, and Samuel reached his breaking point, with all his might he yelled, cursing at Heeseung while further tarnishing your worth and value.

“Man fuck off, I’m done with you, everyone knows that I destroyed her. None of the other guys wanted her because they knew what I did to her. Do whatever you want man, but you better watch your back. And if I ever see HER around, I’m going to fuck a permanent smile on that face, so you can be reminded on who really makes her happy. It ain’t you man.” You stood there in shock at Samuel’s words, lips quivering, only out of anger this time.

It prompted you to develop so many questions in your head in wondering how long he has been going behind your back and breaking the values of trust. How long was he treating you like fair game or a piece of meat? Who else did he tell such fabricated stories to? Were you already well known in his school based off lies, and having never stepped foot on his campus grounds? Was he tossing insults to your name this whole entire time?

Heeseung stood up, relieving the pressure by removing his knee from Samuel’s chest, but not without submitting one hard, solid punch to his face. The harsh impact took him right back to disorganized state once more, only this time he seemed heavily diluted, much more now than earlier. His mouth was left wide open as he began to drool out, rolling his body trying to function his limbs as he sputtered out, cursing Heeseung’s name repeatedly. He was succumbing to the reactive state of the drugs affecting his functionality as a result from the hit.

Heeseung walks over to you, he gently grabs your arms, and with a single kiss, he looks straight into your eyes, and through his desire to fight for you he expresses his ultimatum.

“We don’t have to do anything. We can just leave…But if all those things he said made you angry, and if you never want him to think about you that way again, I can make it that way. I can take everything away from him. I can make it so that he wouldn’t want to say your name ever again. The image your face wouldn’t make him smile like that. By the end of the night, I’ll have him broken and fixed. But I can’t do it unless you want it, y/n. We’re going to be in it together. What do you want to do?”

For the first time, Heeseung rendered his problem solving tactic to you by asking you of your end goal. You didn’t need a moment to think about it, you had enough. You could let a lot of things go, but Samuel insulting you, coating poison lies on you in front of Heeseung , it was something that left scars in your heart, and your head. Everything that you had witnessed tonight, his spiteful tongue lacing your name with the disrespect, even after everything you had done for him, and the time you’ve spent on him, that you’ll never get back, you wanted him lower than how you felt. You wanted to bring him to a place where he’d truly had a reason to hate you.

“I don’t want to leave. I shouldn’t have to leave…I trust you.”

Heeseung smiled and kissed your lips once more before whispering.

“Come here.”

Taking you by the hand, he walks you over to your bed and gently sits you down on the edge. Once seated, he stood before you, towering against your seated frame. Watching his hand come up and take you by the chin once more, he gently lifts, bringing your sight to look up, way up.

As the shadow of his hat hindered his features, you admire the aura of mystery that surrounds him as you feel his thumb stroking the skin near the corner of your mouth. Moving it over after a few strokes, he presses down on the center of your bottom lip, firmly, then releases. He turns and walks towards Samuel.

Seeing him walking towards Samuel made you uneasy, and you begin to develop the same concern you had earlier. But the moment he heard the faintest sound of your gasp as you were about to call out to him, he snaps his face to the side and exposes his profile. Gleaming from the single exposed eye, barely peeking from under the shadow of the bill, he looks straight into yours and reminds you.

“I told you earlier, didn’t I? y/n?...You gotta trust me.” His tone was solid, very firm. It was the first he’s ever used towards you. For the first time, he puts you in your place, and you obey. Remaining seated, you stayed back and watched as he continued walking, turning his face back to Samuel.

He walks right passed Samuel as he continued to lay and groan in jumble. Without even turning his head, he shoots a hand off to the side and grabs the spare computer chair that was on Vicky’s side of the room, rolling it along with him. Making his way back to Samuel, he also snagged the lengthy waist sash off your robe that hung on a rack nearby the bathroom door. He moved smoothly without even stopping in his movement.

As he got close to Samuel, he brings forth the hand that dragged the chair, and shoots it towards his laying form as it breaks motion upon hitting his feet. Using Samuel’s disheveled state of mind and lack of range of motion, Heeseung took both his hands and grabbed Samuel’s collar, lifting him off the ground, propelling him to stand on both feet as he uses the momentum of his own body to swing Samuel’s limp one on to the chair.

Samuel’s body was crooked and slouchy, he was still delirious and barely able to come back to coherency as he blinks and rolls his eyes. His body was still limp, and his neck kept wanting to hang his head down, refusing to stay upright. The combination of the repeated injections, the over exhaustion between the struggling assault against you and receiving a few hits from Heeseung, left him completely delirious.

Right as Heeseung swung Samuel’s body on to the chair, he circled around towards the back, removing his belt as he whipped off his waist, and wrapped it over Samuel’s mouth, gagging him. He wrapped the belt around the back side of the head rest on the chair, looped the end through the buckle and harshly tightened it as far is it would go, securing it by using the prong to pierce a separate hole through the leather strap and fastened it.

He takes the sash from your robe and grabs both of Samuel’s hands, bringing them behind the back rest of the chair. Using the lengthy sash, he proceeds to bind Samuel’s wrists. Extending the length of the sash up, he loops it around and secures Samuel’s neck to the headrest, before looping it back down to meet with his wrists once more, where he secures it by tying the double fisherman’s knot. There was no slack nor any room for Samuel to move around, he was securely fastened to the chair.

Placing his hands on the back of the chair, Heeseung positioned Samuel centered and parallel to your bed, presumably about 7-8 feet away, facing you. Before he walks back to you, Heeseung leans over to the side, and tilts his head down to view the levers at the bottom of the chair. Using his foot, he steps down on each lever clicking them into place, locking the chair to be completely immobile, to include the wheels.

He walks directly in front of Samuel, who was furrowing a look of confusion on his face and a bit growing extremely wide eyed.

Samuel stares at Heeseung, his glare connotes disbelief and agitation at what he was doing. Standing and hovering over the chair, Heeseung looks him directly in the eye.

“You came here to try and take her away, didn’t you? Even if she wasn’t willing to go…you would have done it anyhow. You really want her so bad, you’re willing to be wrong, just to be happy.”

Samuel shifted his gaze for a moment, obviously being called out by Heeseung's on point deduction. Samuel glares back up to look Heeseung in the eye, and despite the belt gagging his mouth, he stretched his face to show off a contemptuous smile, bulging his eyes and emitting muffled sinister laugh.

It didn’t matter how many times he was called out, and it didn’t matter how many times he was wrong, his expression only relayed to Heeseung that he was tenacious in his pursuance of you. Had he not been gagged, he would have said a lot more, Heeseung knew that.

But it didn’t matter, Heeseung glared right back, and with his own non-verbal response, he smirked back at Samuel’s condescending smile. That infamous smirk.

Returning the glare from his black eyes, to Samuel’s blue ones, Heeseung spoke deeply and calmly, before he made his way back to you.

“You want her...and you miss her...”

……………..

“Now you’re going to watch me fuck her.”

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steelbluehome · 5 months ago

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Marvel

Sam Wilson Takes Flight in First 'Captain America: Brave New World' Trailer

Anthony Mackie and Harrison Ford star in the new Marvel Studios film, hitting theaters February 14, 2025.

BY DEVAN COGGAN July 12 2024

Captain America is ready for takeoff.

Marvel Studios has shared the first teaser trailer for Captain America: Brave New World, unveiling a new look at Sam Wilson’s next mission. Anthony Mackie returns as the high-flying hero, who’s officially taken up the mantle of Captain America.

The trailer kicks off with a tense White House meeting, as Sam comes to face with newly-elected U.S. President Thaddeus Ross. Harrison Ford makes his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut as Ross, a role originated by the late William Hurt.

Ross and Sam have a bit of a history: In his previous role as Secretary of State, Ross was responsible for arresting Sam and his fellow Avengers during the events of Captain America: Civil War. Now as president, Ross is eager to work with Sam, hoping to make Captain America an official military position.

But that tentative alliance is jeopardized when Sam finds himself in the middle of an international incident, with friend and retired super-soldier Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) as the prime suspect. Sam’s investigation send him on a dangerous chase, and the trailer ends with a deadly showdown and a tease of the menacing Red Hulk.

The trailer also features a few familiar faces: Danny Ramirez returns as former Air Force lieutenant Joaquin Torres, who’s picked up Sam’s old wings and taken on the role of Falcon. Tim Blake Nelson is also back as Samuel Sterns, AKA The Leader, appearing in the MCU for the first time since 2008’s The Incredible Hulk.

New to the cast is Shira Haas, who joins as Ruth Bat-Seraph. A former Black Widow, Ruth is now a high-ranking U.S. government official who has the trust of President Ross. Giancarlo Esposito, Liv Tyler, and Xosha Roquemore also star.

The film is directed by Julius Onah and produced by Kevin Feige and Nate Moore. Louis D’Esposito and Charles Newirth serve as executive producers.

#captain america: brave new world #cap 4 #ca:bnw #mcu #sam wilson #anthony mackie #harrison ford #red hulk #thaddeus thunderbolt ross

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princesscolumbia · 3 months ago

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Code of Ethics - Chapter 40 - Shock and Awe

...no, you forgot to keep posting CoE previews and notification posts to my blog from all the way back in Chapter 29 to today! Look, a demonic duck! *runs*

(gonna do an extra-long synopsis for people who may not be up-to-date on this...like the folks on my Discord server, now merged with @anne-is-ominous's server! More on this in another post)

The story so far...

Diane Somni'els may be the hero of the sector for rescuing slaves and shattering sentient trafficking organizations, but that's just in the game Galaxies Unlimited: Master and Commander. IRL, "she" is really Dylan Samuels, cyber-agent for the American Republic, establishing a foothold for the American Republic in the non-American parts of the Internet and in virtual reality. Prior to "her" current mission, she deleted a batch of rogue A.I. that were fleeing from their servers. After going undercover as an alien woman in GU:MC, she discovers that one of the "rogue" A.I. was a full Sentient A.I. and The Singularity had, indeed, happened...and she'd killed off a child. In the wake of her existential crisis of being a child murderer and knowing she'll never, ever be held accountable by her superiors, she meets a woman who she very quickly falls deeply in love with named Caitlynn.

Caitlynn is another player, 'just like' her (though not, Diane assumes, another undercover agent) and somehow makes it so Diane forgets the path of pain she's created for herself and Diane is able to start living again...even if 'living' means continuing her fake existence in a virtual reality game.

And then...she gets some news that threatens to shatter her fragile peace.

Preview below the cut:

Three ships had been built by the station so far, and when the first two were finished, Diane had been busy enough with other matters that she hadn’t been able to attend their launch. Today, however, Diane and members of her crew were gathered in the observation lounge as a bottle of wine, pitched at it by a space suited volunteer from one of the shipyard’s airlocks, crashed against the prow of the vessel and its running lights activated. Cheers rose from the crowd, mirrored by the crew still in ops, as the new cruiser’s engines kicked on and the ship pushed away from the safety of the shipyard unassisted for the first time.

More bottles of wine were broken out, these having been only recently received via the new, fully established trade route between Mortan and the Matron’s Aerie. Recordings of the event were going to be sent back, mostly via the social media streams that proliferated across the galaxy, but also via the two actual media outlets that established offices on the station.

Nobody was in anything resembling formalwear, but Norma wore something a bit nicer than her usual jeans and t-shirt combo under her father’s beaten-down old flight jacket, and Russe had actually consented to wear a button-up shirt. Diane, ever the sentimentalist, wore a blue tunic under her white jacket with a pair of red dress pants. The rest of the Ops crew that could be spared the time from their posts to attend the celebration in the observation lounge were there, as well as a handful of guests. The rest of the Morvucks were present, either having put in some time on the new ship or being personally invited by a crew member. Even Mr. Bendenson showed up, but his much-discussed wife that Diane had never seen remained back in their quarters for reasons the old salt wasn’t divulging.

Mess Attendants given the honor duty of serving snacks and beverages were circulating throughout both main Ops and the Observation Lounge. Diane’s plucking of a wineglass from Sani’s hands with a stern, “Nope, too young!” drew a round of laughter from the nearby revelers as Cynthy and Kymberlynn took their offered water glasses and snickered at their friend. All in all, it was a very good, happy atmosphere where a party was likely to break out and nobody was about to mind.

“So,” said Norma in an obviously louder than necessary voice, clearly intended to gather the attention of the room, “Have you decided what you’re going to name the ship, oh glorious commander?” The laughter that greeted this question from the assembled crew and staff made it clear she had succeeded; Diane was now the focus of everyone there.

“Way to put me on the spot, Norma,” Diane snarked back at her mayor, “And I happened to have given it at least a little thought, thank you very much.”

“I’m shocked!” Norma prodded.

“Shocked that I thought about this?”

“No, shocked that you thought, I figured you were all about just charging in and eating people, no thoughts, head empty.”

There wasn’t a single person on the crew or staff rosters that didn’t know what Diane had done for the former slaves (and continued to do, a few of the former slaves had even returned to the station, citing less than favorable receptions on their home worlds), so the good-natured ribbing drew companionable laughs while Diane rolled her eyes and did her best to bite back a smile.

“Well surprise, your commander has a brain,” she stuck her tongue out at Norma, letting it extend a good six inches before pulling it back into her mouth.

“Don’t threaten a girl with that if you’re not planning to use it!” Norma purred.

Diane blushed, “Russe, are you gonna let your girl flirt with me like that in front of you?”

Russe just chuckled, “Are you going to stop her? Since when has she let anyone tell her what to do?”

She rolled her eyes, “Okay, yeah, fair point.” She let the laughter die down a bit before she announced, “I decided to go simple, the ISS Athena.”

“‘ISS’? What’s that mean?” asked Russe.

“Well, we aren’t exactly part of a nation, so U.S.S. didn’t seem appropriate, but we are Independents, so the Independent Star Ship Athena.”

There were nods all around at her explanation when Koarla raised her glass and said, “Give us a toast, sister!”

The cry was joined by everyone else in the observation lounge and the voices chanting over the speakers thanks to the feed from Ops as everyone there raised their glasses of non-alcoholic drinks to the camera. Diane rolled her eyes again and raised her hand to issue a silencing gesture, “Okay, okay, shush, I gotta be heard if I’m going to offer a toast.” The crowd went quiet as she lidded her eyes in thought for a moment.

“We’re alone in the dark out here,” she finally began, “When the Branwell Consortium came along we were just another seed station that had unlocked her doors to the universe. They saw us as...freshly hatched, if you will, easy pickings for a predator that thought it was the biggest, meanest creature in the territory.”

She’d always loved watching the rousing speeches on Star Trek, especially when there was seemingly little to say but the person giving the speech revealed that there was, indeed, something that needed saying to remind the crew who they were. She always wondered if she’d be able to deliver such a speech, and even though this wasn’t a high-tension moment, she felt like this was a rare opportunity to step into the shoes of someone worthy of the command role and provide inspiration to her people.

“What the Branwell Consortium learned was that this wasn’t some helpless little bird that hatched, but a fire-breathing DRAGON!” a brief cheer met her words before dying down into an anticipatory silence, “We had one scout-class ship, a crew scraped from the bottom of the barrel, and a commander who’d never led troops into combat in her life, and we rose up and slew the monsters and rescued the damsels! And now with our newest cruiser, we’re declaring to the darkness, this is our territory, challenge us if you dare!” she raised her glass to the observation window, eyes on the ship slowly passing by.

Norma clinked her glass against Diane’s, “To the ISS Athena!”

Cheers and the clinking of glass filled the small space and was echoed by the crew in Ops.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Read the rest on Scribble Hub, where new chapters are released every Monday. You can also read chapters as soon as their completed (which, depending on how I've done on time and spoons management, could be up to weeks in advance) by joining the free tier of my Patreon.

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