#stuff they want me to do before the end of the week and i was having stupid levels of task paralysis trying to think about it

[twotwofroote]

When I was a kid, I wanted to break a bone. It happened often enough to other kids and I saw how people treated them. They'd excitedly sign your cast, offer to carry your books, bring you your lunch, etc. I wanted so badly to be looked after like that; to be thought about like that.

I tried to break my bones often. I would hear how someone else did it and try to replicate it. It never worked. Breaking a bone is surprisingly difficult but oh so easy at the same time.

I broke my wrist two years ago. I had stopped trying or actively wanting that over a decade prior. It was simply an accident - a fall when rollerblading. But it was nothing like I'd imagined as a kid.

TLDR: Being sick or injured doesn't give you what you want. It's a fantasy. The reality is painful and scary. I have a support system but it's just that, support. They can't be there 24/7. At the end of the day, I can be alone with my good health or alone with bad health. I'd much rather have the former.

(more context after the break)

For starters, I live in Japan. I had been for 3 years at that point but I'd never had significant medical problems. I had to learn so much while dealing with so much.

When it happened, it felt like a cartoon crunch at first. Like that scene in Teen Titans when Robin breaks his arm. But immediately after was a blinding pain I've never experienced before. I was crying and screaming for my friend but it took him a minute to come back and see what had happened. He was sweet. Trying to comfort me and make jokes. I'm glad I wasn't alone.

But when the Japanese staff came, I had to answer questions in Japanese. I can speak Japanese well enough but that pain. My god that pain. I could hardly breathe, let alone think in another language.

My friend called a Japanese friend to come get us. I stupidly thought we'd go right to the hospital and get me patched up. But it was a Thursday. Silly me breaking my wrist on a Thursday! I quickly learned that hospitals are "closed" on Thursdays. The staff kept saying "it's a bad day for this to happen. You can't go to the hospital on Thursdays. You should be more careful."

I couldn't believe it! What do you mean they're CLOSED? It's a hospital! I found out later that of course they will accept people but only if they go by ambulance. I knew that an American ambulance cost so I thought I had lucked out not going that route in hindsight. Then, I found out an ambulance here is only like $80. Live and learn.

Instead, my Japanese friend drove me to a clinic for x-rays. And boy howdy was it bad. That gave me a temporary cast/splint situation, set up an appointment at the hospital for the next day, and sent me on my way.

At the hospital appointment, I had more imaging to see just how bad it was. The doctor said I needed surgery... but that the schedule was booked up for a week. So, I went home and I waited.

It was so lonely. Nothing like I'd imagined as a kid. As a kid, I thought people could help me 24/7 and honestly I think it might have been like that. Friends and teachers to help you at school and parents to help you at home. But as an adult? My friends have jobs. They couldn't help me for 8+ hours a day. I couldn't go to work so I couldn't get help from coworkers. My family was thousands of miles away. I was so desperately alone.

I sat on my couch for a week. Scratching at my itchy splint, struggling to shower, struggling to eat. I thought surely that was going to be the worst of it. But then the surgery day came.

For better or worse, I was naively unaware of what was in store for me. I knew I was going to have to be awake which worried me at first. But then I figured, if they keep you awake, it must not be that bad, right? So I downloaded music and books on my phone. I pictured it like a tattoo - laying on a bed, one arm stretched out. I listen to some stuff, an hour or so later and boom I'm an fixed up! Like I said, naive.

The nurses were surprised when I said I wasn't nervous or scared. I thought it was silly they thought I would be. This sucked but it was still kind of interesting. Seeing an OR and being in a Japanese hospital! It was going to be such a good story to tell!

But then it was time for surgery. They strapped me down to a table - arms, legs, torso. Covered me in blankets which I thought was odd, it was August after all. I was starting to get nervous. This isn't what I expected after all. But it'd probably still be fine!

It was not fine. It was like torture. That's an hour and a half of my life that I'll never forget. It started well enough. My arm was numb so I couldn't feel anything and there were x ray cameras that I could see showing what they were doing. That was fine, I could just close my eyes after all but the sounds? I couldn't avoid the sounds. Then, idk how long in, I started to feel pain. The numbing was wearing off and I could FEEL them digging around in there. But I'd forgotten how to speak. The doctors didn't know English and I couldn't remember any Japanese. The pain was too much, I was so cold, and I couldn't move. I started to panic. I was scratching at the bed with my good hand and twisting. I tried to speak but I didn't know how to explain what I was feeling. Everyone was panicking trying to understand what this wounded animal wanted to convey. Eventually I got out the word for "hurt" and the doctor started asking me questions. It was easy to say yes or no from there. They gave me more medicine and the pain went away but the fear didn't.

The surgery took longer than estimated but eventually it was done. They took me off the table, sweating but freezing, and put me in a wheelchair. My whole arm was red and purple. I'd never seen anything like it. It didn't belong to me. The nurse went to adjust my sling but the arm escaped, hitting the table with surprising force. They apologized but I couldn't understand why. That wasn't mine after all.

I thought the worst was over. Now I could just go to sleep and when I woke the pain would be much more manageable. But I couldn't sleep. My arm was on fire. It felt like I was clutching the sun to myself. It radiated heat. The night nurse gave me an ice pack and some medicine but it didn't help. What is an ice pack to the sun?

Eventually morning came and I was discharged. The worst was behind me now but there was so so much more ahead of me that I hadn't considered. I had to go to the doctor once a month for x-rays. I had to go to rehab for 3 months, 2/3x a week. All of the doctors were friendly and I got better little by little. But I was so depressed. I just wanted my life back, my time back.

I had friends, doctors, and coworkers to help me but at the end of the day, I was at home alone. That wasn't new, of course, but the pain was, the scar was, the lack of control in my body was. I realized that the desire I had as a kid was so misplaced.

Being sick or injured doesn't give you what you want. It's a fantasy. The reality is painful and scary. I have a support system but it's just that, support. They can't be there 24/7. At the end of the day, I can be alone with my good health or alone with bad health. I'd much rather have the former.

Me: You know how when you were a kid and you’d wish that you’d get sick or injured in a way that would justify why you didn’t live up to your potential?

Everybody, apparently: No?

[ramp-it-up]

Charm

Summary: Congressman James Buchanan Barnes has a secret. And it's so sweet.

Word count: 3.1 K

Pairing: Congressman Bucky Barnes x Reader

A/N: Yeah, I'm probably gonna be back on my Bucky bullshit for a minute. Those Norman Jean Roy photos, the movie coming out. Just block me now. Or, read, respond, and reblog! Love you heauxes!

Warnings: 18+ Only, Minors DNI. Read at your own risk. All mistakes my own. Smut! Teacher Reader, Congressman Bucky, Soft, Beefy Bucky, feral Bucky, sex almost on sight, talk of testing and precautions, but raw p in v, oral (m/f receiving) sloppy toppy, woman on top, praise kink, Dom-ish AND sort of Subby Bucky, Sargeant kink, nicknames Charm and Doll, also Sweetheart.

I do not have a taglist. Please follow @rampitupandread and turn on notifications to learn when I post! 😘

I Do NOT Consent to my work being reposted, translated or presented on any other blog or site other than by myself.

------

Congressman James Buchanan Barnes raked his hand through his hair for the third time. It was overlong, curling at the nape of his neck, caught somewhere between rebellion and control.

Just like his life.

His tie was long gone, jacket tossed over a chair, but the tension still clung to him like sweat. His fingers twitched with the restraint of a man used to control, but tonight that control was slipping.

Because of you.

He was going to meet you. Spend time with you.

You, his softest vulnerability. His secret sanctuary. You had no idea what you did to him. Or maybe you did. And that was the problem.

Underneath the pressed shirt and tailored slacks, beneath the titles and speeches and the weight of his legacy, James Buchanan Barnes was unraveling. You touched something in him, something sweet and unguarded.

You looked at him like he wasn’t just a polished man with power, but someone worth seeing. You saw past all of it, the headlines, the pressure, the myth of the man, to the boy who once just wanted to be good.

Of course you did. As a teacher, you saw the good in all of your students. And from the moment he’d met you, bright-eyed and brilliant, part of the National Teaching Conference delegation touring the Capitol, he’d been a goner.

So he pursued you. But you’d made him wait. And you’d made him want. And Bucky had never wanted anything the way he wanted you.

When he thought of you, he forgot all about The Honorable James Buchanan Barnes. 

He just wanted to be your Bucky.

—-

Six Weeks earlier:

You’d expected a polite handshake and a few photo ops when you went on the tour, but Congressman Barnes from your borough of Brooklyn was charming, attentive, and deeply present in a way that threw you off balance. His gaze lingered just a second too long when he looked at you, and your heartbeat stuttered every time his hand brushed yours.

You weren’t sure what it meant, you just knew it meant something.

The first night ended with a drink in the hotel bar, where he asked thoughtful questions about education and leaned in like your answers were gravity. When he walked you to your room, he didn’t ask to come in, just touched your wrist and said, “I’ll see you again, Charm.”

“Charm?” you questioned him as he walked away.

Bucky turned around and started to walk backwards as he replied.

“Yeah. It’s my name for you in my head,” and he grinned before he got in the elevator, looking so much younger than 110 years old.

Weeks later, you were still texting late into the night. Breathless calls. Heated messages. A video chat that ended with both of you flushed and desperate.

It was intoxicating stuff.

----

Now:

You were finally back in D.C. for the National Teaching Conference. Because you were on the planning committee, you’d been running around in a blazer and sneakers all week, putting out fires, herding speakers, and keeping the entire operation from collapsing.

But Friday night was yours.

The conference ended, the final panel was a wrap, and you still had the swanky suite for two more nights. It had a skyline view, a rain-slicked windowpane, and, within the hour, one James Buchanan Barnes.

You’d barely stepped out of the shower, steam curling in the air, when you heard the knock.

He was thirty minutes early.

You froze for half a second, heart racing, then wrapped the towel tighter and padded to the door.

Bucky stood in the hallway, soaked to the bone from the spring storm, dark hair dripping, a gray coat clinging to broad shoulders. Water tracked down his jaw and disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt.

And those beautiful blue eyes were locked on you.

“Hey, Charm,” he rasped.

You swallowed hard. “Congressman.”

That smirk flickered at the corners of his mouth.

“Gonna let me in?”

You stepped aside. The door shut behind him, shutting the world out. Bucky looked at you like he hadn’t seen you in years, not weeks.

“I missed you,” you said softly, voice a breath.

He was on you in a heartbeat. One hand cupped your chin, the other, vibranium, gleaming in the soft hotel light, slid around your waist, pulling you flush to him. You melted, your fingers slipping beneath the lapels of his coat, feeling the heat of him under damp clothes.

You didn’t find the sharp muscle of the old soldier, but the solid strength of a man who lived his life with purpose. His softness did not take the edge off your desire for him.

In fact, it probably made it worse. He wasn’t a weapon. He was a man.

Your man. 

You were going to claim him tonight.

“Been sittin’ through policy meetings imagining you riding me in the chair behind my desk,” he muttered into your skin, pressing a kiss below your jaw.

You gasped, shivering despite the heat between you.

You grew a little dizzy as Bucky dropped his overnight bag to the floor so that your hands could slip under his shirt, and drag your fingers over his soft, but still-defined abs.

“Then maybe we should make that image real.”

His eyes were dark now, pupils already blown. One arm snaked up your back and tangled in the hair at your nape, pulling your head back as he kissed you hard, like he meant to claim you. His vibranium hand gripped your waist like it was built for that exact purpose.

“Tonight, I don’t want polite. Don’t want careful.”

You’d planned for this. Took your precautions. Got tested. You both knew what tonight meant.

Bucky walked you backwards toward the bed, slow and steady, never breaking eye contact. 

“I want to watch you take what you want from me.”

Your lips curved into a smile.

“I want a lot from you, Mr. Barnes,” you whispered.

“Take your shirt off,” you said softly, watching the way his jaw flexed and the way his eyes flicked to your mouth.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a crooked smile.

God. Could you be in love?

He stripped off his shirt in one fluid motion. Muscles rippled, dog tags glinting against his skin. He didn’t pose. He just stood there, waiting. Watching you. A man made of flesh and metal and decades of ghosts, and right now, he was all yours.

You moved toward him, fingertips grazing his stomach, and watched the way he twitched beneath your touch.

“You know you can be in control tonight,” you murmured, eyes locked on his as he let you turn him around so that he was at the foot of the bed. 

Bucky’s breath hitched. 

“I haven’t been in control since the day I met you, Charm.”

You pushed him gently until he sat without resistance, and you stood between his legs, slowly letting the towel drop and pool at your feet. Bucky’s hungry gaze roamed over your body, from your lips, to your neck, to your breasts, focusing on the rigid peaks there as he licked his lips, down your stomach to the apex of your thighs, and lingering there longer.

Finally, his eyes swept down your legs to your feet on the floor, between his shiny Italian loafers.

“You sure you want this?” he asked, voice hoarse as he brought his eyes back up to yours. 

“I’ve never been more sure,” you said. “But let’s not rush this, Sergeant.”

His head dropped for a moment like he needed a second just to breathe. That word, Sergeant, hit somewhere deep. Then he looked up and drew you toward him with his metal hand and kissed the inside of your thigh, destroying you.

“Tell me what you want.”

The gravel in his voice did things to you as you carded your fingernails through his thick, wet, dark hair.

You said, “Need your mouth, Bucky,” and he almost came undone right then.

“Such a Good Girl for telling me what you need, Charm.”

His lips were at the edge of your mound, the warmth of his breath fanning out over your clit. You moaned and laid your hands on his solid shoulders, and although they each felt very different under your palms, the disparate sensations only served to make you hotter. 

Bucky made eye contact with you and then took a long swipe of his tongue over your wet slit, from top to bottom. A tremble coursed through your body, and you exhaled his name. Bucky stared lovingly at your cunt, from the fat, puffy lips of your labia, to the shine of your juices at your slit.

He licked your essence from his lips and raised his eyes to yours again. He was so fucking handsome. And you were so gone for this man.

Just when you thought that, Bucky stuck his nose in your pussy and inhaled deeply, making you jump in surprise and rapture. He took a quick lick and hummed deeply, sending more vibrations through your cunt.

His metal hand lifted your leg, draped it over his shoulder. His tongue worked in steady, devastating rhythm. Lips suckling, tongue plunging, nose pressed to your clit as he made a low, satisfied sound that vibrated straight through you.

You gasped.

He groaned.

“Good girl,” he murmured, voice muffled against your heat. “So fuckin’ sweet for me.”

And then he ruined you.

He looked up to wink at you playfully before parting your outer lips with his thumbs. He dove in and you saw stars.

Bucky Barnes sucked, licked, and grazed on you, plunging deeply into you with his tongue, fingers, and his whole damn face.

You were lost in the moment, in the pleasure, and the sensations. It was so good. No one had ever made you feel this wanted or needed. You felt the telltale spark ignite your clit and started to squirm as his vibranium hand held you in place as he devoured you like a starving man.

He felt you clench around his fingers, one inside you, one teasing that tight little rim, and you shattered. Bucky held you through it, whispering your name like a religious chant.

Because he worshipped you.

You lay in his arms, spent and limp as Bucky nuzzled at your neck, his dick standing at attention, long, thick, and leaking against you. Somehow, some when, he’d gotten undressed.

And those beautiful blue eyes held you hostage again.

“What do you need now?”

You looked down and reached for him.

“Need to taste you, Sarge.”

His cock was huge, hard, and hot against your skin, begging for relief.

Bucky groaned and his eyes shined as you rose only to sink down on your knees. He sat up on the edge of the bed to witness you gazing up at him. He took himself in hand and started stroking the length of his hardness, swiping precum from the slit at the head in passing.

It was so damn sexy. You licked your lips as your eyes were glued to the beautiful, erotic sight of Bucky Barnes stroking off for you. 

He smirked as he watched you hungry for him, impatient to taste him, to take him in, to please him. Your hands cupped and kneaded the full flesh of your breasts, and Bucky licked his lips as you pulled on your nipples. 

His flesh fingers squeezed more tightly around his shaft, while his metal hand gave a quick twist to his balls as your heavily hooded eyes drifted from his cock to his face as you moved closer. 

You wrapped your lips around him and he cursed, one hand in your hair, the other still at his balls, twisting with just enough pressure.

You worshipped him the way he had you. Took him deep, sloppy and unafraid, letting your desire drip down your chin and soak your chest.

He was losing control.

Sexy rambles tumbled from his lips as you took him deep in your throat.

“Fuck. I’m home. All this time… I thought I thought I knew. Didn’t know shit.” 

You moaned as you pulled back slightly to gently lick and suck at the head of his cock, swiping your tongue over his hard length. Then you got sloppy with it, slurping at him and taking his long, thick cock as deep as you could.

Bucky let out an inhuman sound as you gently scraped your teeth along his hard flesh, and then sucked and tongued at his balls.

“Please, baby, fuck…”

He had to pull you off before he lost it. He lifted you, breath ragged, and laid you on the bed like you were breakable but you weren’t. You were so strong. And Powerful.

He draped your legs around his waist as he lined the thick bulb of his cock with your entrance. 

As he looked into your eyes, Bucky trembled as you crossed your ankles around his back. You both watched, enraptured, as he pushed inside you, and every inch felt like a lifetime. You pulled him in like a siren, hips rising to meet him, your walls fluttering around him.

You whispered his name, Bucky, and it broke him in the most beautiful way.

He fucked you long, deep, and hard. He played with your body and spanked your full flesh. You came over and over, barely descending from one climax then he was at you again, rolling your clit between his fingers, sucking your tits into his mouth. His cock was relentless, hard as steel, and dripping with your cream. 

But he hadn’t let go and given you what you truly wanted. 

“Want to ride you Bucky…”

He rolled you over so that you were on top, truly in control, despite your trembling thighs.

“Do you know what you need now, Charm?”

“Oh, I know,” you murmured, rolling your hips as he gasped. “Need to show you that this is mine now.”

You grasped him and positioned him at your entrance. Then, you took him inside you again. His grip on your hips tightened and he nodded, biting his lip as he looked down to where you were joined.

“Yours. Always was.”

You rode him slowly; you wanted him to remember this. The way your body felt wrapped around him. The way you looked on top of him. 

The air between you was thick, charged, and the room hummed with the rhythm of your bodies. Each time you sank down onto him, every inch felt like heaven.

Bucky’s breath was ragged, his chest rising and falling beneath you, but his hands didn’t let go of your hips. They were firm, guiding, like he was fighting to hold on to control.

The sight of you was almost too much to bear: you, beautiful and powerful, taking what you needed from him with a relentless grace. His lips parted, and every sound he made was a mixture of frustration and hunger.

“I don’t want you to stop,” he growled, but his voice wavered.

You could tell he was losing his composure, even though his hands kept a firm grip, holding you steady for the next perfect movement.

The tension was building again, just like before. His fingers dug into your skin, almost painfully, but you didn’t care. You were so close to unraveling him completely; it was an art, this dance you had with him, and you were the one in control now.

His gaze flicked between your face and your greedy cunt sucking him in, his chest tightening at the sight of your expression, and at how perfectly you fit together.

“Look at you,” you whispered, leaning in to nip at his earlobe, your voice sultry. 

“You look like you’re losing yourself. Can’t hold on, can you?”

Bucky’s hands tightened at your waist, his grip becoming a little rougher. You could feel his body shifting, like he was trying to fight the pull, trying to keep himself from breaking.

“You’re killing me, Doll,” he muttered, eyes closing for a split second before snapping open to look at you again.

His expression was a mess of desire, vulnerability, and something that told you he didn’t want this to end. 

“I can’t hold back much longer.”

You grinned, a glint of mischief in your eyes.

You didn’t let up, not even for a second. Instead, you leaned back, giving him a full view of your body. His jaw tightened as he watched, his fingers trembling slightly as you began to move faster, the heat building between you both, the room filled with the sound of skin meeting skin, the rhythm of your bodies synchronizing.

“You’re not the one who gets to decide when it’s over, Sargeant,” you teased, breathless but determined.

“I’m the one calling the shots here.”

And with that, you gave him everything, taking the lead in a way that pushed him past his limits, each movement sending shockwaves of pleasure through both of you. The intensity in his eyes grew, a mix of awe and surrender, like he couldn’t believe what was happening. 

But he also couldn’t stop himself.

You felt it all, the way his grip tightened, the way his body tensed with each thrust of yours, the way he was so close to losing himself. And as you watched him, a small, knowing smile tugged at your lips.

This wasn’t just about sex anymore. This was a power exchange, a moment that was yours, and his, too. You could feel your connection grow stronger.

“Tell me, Bucky,” you whispered, voice a little raspier now, “are you going to beg for it, or are you going to let me take what’s mine?”

He groaned, the sound like a mix of frustration and raw need. You topping him was making the base of his spine hum with pleasure.

“Please, Charm.” he murmured, breath shaking. “Fuck, don’t stop.”

And that was all you needed. You took control fully, fucking him with a rhythm that made his whole body shudder. You could feel the end coming closer, and you didn’t slow down. Not now. Not when you were this close.

“Fuck,” he whispered again, voice broken as you watched him come apart. 

You clenched around him and commanded, “Cum.”

And he did, with a broken groan of your name and a full-body shudder, his face a portrait of surrender as he spilled into you, pulsing and shaking beneath you.

When he finally came to a stop, his chest heaving, his hands still on your hips, holding you steady, you leaned in and kissed him softly, a contrast to the raw energy between you moments before.

“You were perfect,” you whispered against his lips.

His arms wrapped around you, pulling you close as he breathed in deeply, the intensity still lingering. 

“God… you’re gonna kill me, you know that?”

You smiled, resting your head on his chest as he held you.

“You’re welcome.”

And you felt him become completely, unconditionally yours.

Your Bucky.

[gigiwritess]

IN ORBIT

dr. jack abbott x f!resident!reader!vega aka "wildcard"

wc: 2,047 synopsis: ten weeks of dr. vega surviving in the pitt. eight weeks of dr. vega and dr. abbot stuck in each other's orbits. tl;dr: dr. abbot and dr. vega start to get close to each other.

contents: 20-year age gap (vega is 26, jack is 46). slight mention of vega's worsening mental health issues; description of back problems (which are entirely based on my own). usual pitt dynamics. probably lots of medical inaccuracies that im not gonna apologize for. this is totally self-inserted and vega is totally based in lots of aspects of myself. gonna probably update this list when i have more creativity.

gigi's notes: whats up guys!!!! i have absolutely no words to thank all the love you've given the first piece of this thing (because i'm not really sure what it is yet). i'm in a kinda deep depressive crisis at the moment (pretty much like the one vega's in) and when i wrote it i was trying to force myself to write in the hopes that i'd feel the same joy i used to feel (and i did!!!), so seeing how many people enjoyed this bit of myself really mattered to me. thank you. ALSO: THANK YOU FOR 500 FOLLOWERS!!!!! now, about the fanfic: vega isn't exactly an oc (at least i think so), but, like i mentioned before, she is entirely based in myself (including her mental & back problems, poor thing), so i understand if any of you don't really see her as reader and it's okay. i feel like i kinda repeated some stuff too much in this piece and i feel like there are lots of things that aren't that good or i could've written better, but i still liked the way it turned out, so my self-doubt and impostor syndrome can go fuck themselves. also, like i mentioned in the previous, i HATE slowburns and i had something totally different planned for this piece, but then i started writing and having ideas and it felt right to write a short one just about their interactions. i PROMISE that the next one will be less slow and have a lot more burning. also, i had no intention to do so but i ended up following a stellar pathway to this fanfic. which is really fitting considering myself as a person. university is still kicking my ass (when is it not?), but i'm gonna try to commit to write & post weekly (let's call it exposure therapy). this was reviewed once but it's possible to have typos; english isn't my first language. i'll probably remember other things to tell you later so i'll probably update these notes in the future. enjoy!!!! :))))

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Vega was day shift. Jack Abbot was night shift.

Yet, despite that slight difference, whenever she was working, he seemed to be too. Whenever she rounded a corner, he was there on the nurses’ station, charting or talking to someone, irritating Robby, or making Dana laugh without even trying. Whenever she worked a case, he seemed to linger around. Whenever he worked a case, she seemed to linger around, too. They were in each other’s way. And they weren’t avoiding being there.

Jack attributed that to an ever-growing lack of sleep. She happened to be on his mind more frequently than he wanted. Anything she did made him aware of her—aware of her face, aware of her voice, aware of her presence in the Pitt.

He didn’t see her often; she was always busy, always treating someone or charting or doing rounds or sometimes even triage. Jack didn’t talk much with her. Not that he talked that much with anyone else—but there was something about her. Something about her made noise feel irrelevant. She was quiet, but she wasn’t shut off, not in a cold way; guarded, as if she’d learned early not to give people easy access to anything she didn’t want touched. She was assertive, self-assured in her words and actions. She didn’t say much, but when she did, it cut clean. Still, he caught himself looking when she wasn’t more times than he expected, caught himself wondering how someone so quiet could take up that much space. Physically, in the Pitt, or in his mind.

Vega would catch herself searching for him in the Pitt way more often than she intended, almost as if there was a string tethering them to each other. She didn’t want to be aware of him, but she was. She was aware of him in the way one’s body reacts before the mind does—like a storm brewing just outside the window. He didn’t crowd her, didn’t flirt, didn’t even look too long. But he watched. And she noticed.

They seemed to be stuck in the same magnetic field, like two forces stuck in each other’s orbit, getting closer each time, both acutely aware of each other. Like Andromeda and the Milky Way—two beasts that would, eventually, collide.

She’d often brush past him at the nurses’ station. Stand just a tiny bit closer than she had to. Whenever they traded words, it was usually there—like the first time he threw her a compliment.

“You did good today,” he said, not looking up from his charting, his scrubs still stained with blood from a massive bleeding they dealt with together earlier.

She turned to him. “You sound surprised,” she replied, keeping her face neutral.

He put the chart down and looked at her, his eyes always tired but always steady.

“I’m not.”

Then he put the chart away and walked away, not saying another word. But those two words stayed with her longer than they should have.

From then on, working the same cases started to be more frequent; standing side by side, handing each other equipment and charts without even having to ask. They were learning to read each other’s silences, they were learning each other’s rhythms.

The next time she found herself noticing him, he looked like hell. She was on shift; he was working overtime. That much was clear by the way his shoulders were heavy, pen moving slowly across a chart, scrub top wrinkled and littered with dark stains—he wasn’t one to change scrubs often, just like her; they always had bigger concerns. He looked like he hadn’t slept in well over three days; his brows were carved in a deep line, the fluorescent lights cutting hard lines under his eyes. He wasn’t even supposed to be there.

She didn’t think, her body moving on its own accord. Just grabbed a fresh cup of coffee from the vending machine and, silent as a predator, set it down next to him with a soft thud, keeping her attention on her tablet.

Jack’s eyes flicked up, slow and heavy-lidded, but never without that sharp flame underneath. He glanced at the coffee and then, for a beat, he just looked at her.

“You trying to earn a gold star, kid?” He said, voice low, his mouth twisting into something lazy and rough.

Vega leaned an elbow on the counter, close—too close—, her sleeve brushing his. Her eyes met his.

“No,” she said, head tilting just enough to make it feel deliberate, her mouth just slightly tugging at the corner. “Just don’t want an old man dropping dead on my shift.”

He laughed—a real laugh, low, rough-edged, caught between surprised and something else, the kind of laugh that cracked through his exhaustion. He shook his head slowly, his eyes not leaving hers, something sharp and warm and unknown stuck between them.

She liked making him laugh.

His fingers wrapped around the warm cup, his fingers grazing hers—not by accident. Vega didn’t flinch.

“Careful,” he muttered, low enough for her to hear, “or people’ll notice you have a sense of humor.”

She smiled. Small, sharp. Just for him. A silent moment passed before she answered, her eyes analyzing his almost as if trying to decide if he was worth her time. Trying to recognize what it was that she saw in his eyes, the familiarity of it.

“See?” She said in a softer voice, the glint in her eye unmistakable, starting to push away from the counter. “You’re already imagining things. Drink it before it gets worse.”

Jack didn’t answer, just lifted the coffee toward her in a half-ass salute, finally sipping from it. It tasted better than he expected. He watched her walk away, his lips tugged upward in a tired smirk that lingered even after she disappeared down the hall, his eyes trailing after her.

Somewhere along the way of starting to work together, she’d learned how he drank his coffee. That warmed something inside of him.

There was something there, something he couldn’t quite name yet. It was quiet, simmering, growing—almost like a current humming just beneath the surface. Like a prickle slowly getting under his skin.

A few days turned into a few shifts, which turned into days, which turned into weeks. In a bit over two months since joining the Pitt, Vega had been working more with Abbot than with Robby—but she wasn’t complaining.

They still didn’t talk often, but it wasn’t only the strictly necessary, either. Sometimes he’d throw her a rare comment, always adding a “kid” at the end, and she would retort with something just as fitting, “old man” always on her tongue—it usually earned a laugh from him. They always ended up drifting back to each other’s orbit, standing almost too close, brushing fingers when handing each other things, finding their eyes already on the other, sharing a few loaded glances. Working side by side in sync, reading each other’s silences and minds.

There was something about the way he didn’t push, he didn’t demand more than she was willing to give, that spoke to her; that made her see him in a different light than she expected to. He was showing her that he wasn’t quite like she expected him to be. There was something between them—something unknown, something unspoken, and she hadn’t yet realized just how deep it was.

It was a week and a half after the coffee moment—in that meantime, he’d gotten her two coffees in return. He’d learned how she drank her coffee, too, without asking, and it touched something strange inside of her that she did her best to ignore. But it was there.

This time, she was the one working overtime. Her mind was full of too many dark things she didn’t have the strength to face at the moment, so she chose to keep working. That way, she kept busy; that way, she didn’t need to spend too much time alone with her thoughts.

Around eleven pm, the ER was finally calming down—not that anyone dared to say that out loud. After a massive car pileup, the voices finally started to give way to whispers and quietness, everyone disappearing into any rest they could get. Vega was finally able to take a deep breath. So was Jack—she’d barely seen him today.

His voice was suddenly by her side.

“You should sit down.”

She glanced up at him, brows furrowing. “What?”

He gestured toward the nearest chair.

“You’ve been on your feet all day,” he replied, putting a chart away and grabbing another before pointing at her back. “It’s not good for your back.”

Vega froze, completely paralyzed in what she was doing. Her water bottle was forgotten mid-air, watching his back as he walked away normally, as if he hadn’t left her with the most dumbfounded look she’d ever had, as if he’d said the most normal, trivial thing in the world.

But it wasn’t. It wasn’t the most normal, common-knowledge thing in the world, because she had never mentioned her back problems to anyone, not even Robby—let alone Jack. She was too used to keeping her problems by herself, dealing with everything on her own, unused to asking for help. And he’d noticed.

Her back was hurting.

She had good and bad days; sometimes, the pain would barely make itself known. Other times, no matter what she did—stretches, sleeping without any pillows, pills, having the best mattress possible—, it never left, like a pointy pebble stuck in one’s shoe. Sometimes it’d start in the early morning hours and only get worse throughout the day. Today was one of those days, where with each passing hour that she was on her feet, it only worsened. The only painkillers that, in fact, made the pain go away also made her sleepy, totally knocked her out (like the time the pain was so bad she had to take a Tramadol injection), or left her feeling in a dazed state. She couldn’t be in any of these situations at the moment, so she was stuck with it for a few more hours. She was already used to it by now, had gotten good at ignoring it.

Somehow, Jack had noticed. Somehow, Jack had read through the narrowed lines across her face, had read through the way she kept trying to shift her weight to hide the strain, had read through the pain she was trying to ignore, through the way she clenched her jaw and closed her eyes when the pain got too loud to ignore, when she thought no one was looking.

He hadn’t said it to make her flinch, hadn’t said it like an accusation, hadn’t said it to tease. He simply noticed.

And it unsettled Vega—because it meant he was paying attention. Not the kind of attention that grazed the surface, the way most people saw what they wanted to see. Not the kind of attention an attending gave a resident, not just assessing her professional skills. So, she did sit down. Because, somehow, Jack Abbot saw right through her, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. As if it were simple.

She wasn’t used to that.

She was the one who saw. She was who stayed, who stitched, literally and figuratively, people back together and asked for nothing in return.

She was who always put everyone’s needs above her own—

She was who had spent her whole damn life making sure no one ever noticed the cracks—

She was who gave and gave and gave until she almost forgot she had anything left to want—

He just wanted her to sit. To take care of herself.

It hit her sideways, knocking her off balance, making her forget how to breathe. It slipped under her skin before she could stop it, sharp and tender all at once, settling somewhere deep in her chest. Like a bruise she had never realized was there until he touched it without meaning to, the part of her that still wanted—desperately, stupidly—to be seen.

The part of her that wanted it to be her turn. That still wanted to be known, to be chosen, to be kept.

And Jack—

Jack looked at her like he already had.

And it scared the living shit out of her.

gigi's notes: PLS tell me what you guys think, im sooooo looking forward to see your reactions!!! <3 i also started working on a different jack fanfic based on a request of a love triangle, so heads up for a future jack x reader x langdon (but here dilf supremacy always wins so don't worry folks) hehe AND i've been thinking... what do we think of a jack x firefighter!reader? 👀 i'm gonna take the big ass test for joining my state's military firefighters (i probably won't be approved bc i haven't studied at all but i would truly like to be approved [even though i'm graduating in archaeology lol]) so i kept thinking what it'd be like of jack in a relationship with a firefighter so i might write it anyway lol also, can you see how much i need therapy for my people-pleaser issues? im trying ok i took the liberty of tagging below the lovely people who said such nice things about the fanfic and commented and reblogged. if you'd like to be tagged in the future, please let me know! @cosmoscoffeee @mackycat11 @sunfairyy @starkgaryan @amandarobertsboyce @starlight-starbright-8080 @patatesliomlet @saynotononsense @sweetestcowboy @diaryofafeelsaddict

[wordsofwhimsy]

𝐖𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞 ⋆.˚ ☾ .⭒˚

Pairing: Viltrumite!Mark Grayson x f!Reader

Warnings: Discussion of the Invincible Wars, so series-typical violent topics. I don’t get detailed about it tho

Tags: Fluff, kinda slow burn tbh for being so short, went a bit of a different route with my interpretation of this variant – figured our boy could use a break from all that heavy stuff ❤️‍🩹

Word Count: 1,060

Synopsis: The world is ending, but for Mark, his life was only just beginning the moment he saw you.

Inspiration: ‘Thinkin Bout You’ by Frank Ocean

a/n: for my beautiful, perfect lovie @itsbuddhasbelly!! thank you for encouraging me with my dumb little works – it makes my very happy. :’)

One year ago

The world ended.

Or—something like it. Cities crumbled. Heroes fell. The sky turned black with smoke and fire. It was the Invincible Wars, they called it later. Like it was history. Like it could be measured and filed away and understood.

But when it happened, there wasn’t anything so clean about it.

You remembered standing on your front lawn, barefoot, clutching your phone with trembling fingers as the sky split open.

People ran. Screamed. Begged.

You just… stared.

And then he appeared.

Hovering in the air like something divine. Blood on his uniform, glowing eyes, an aura like gravity itself bent around him.

And then—he saw you.

It was like something paused inside him. The rage, the war, the mission—it all halted the second his eyes locked onto yours.

He didn’t kill you. He didn’t even threaten you.

He walked toward you without a word, as if drawn by a force he didn’t understand. You didn’t flinch. Couldn’t. Your body had forgotten how.

When he reached you, he took your hand, careful like you might shatter, and pressed a kiss to your knuckles.

"You’re the most beautiful woman in the universe,” he said, voice quiet and reverent. “I’d know. I’ve seen it all.”

Your mouth parted, heart in your throat. But before you could speak, he released your hand and stepped back.

“I’ll come back,” he promised, simple but unquestioning. “I want to know you.”

Then he vanished.

And somehow, your town—unlike every other—was left untouched.

Present Day

He kept his promise.

You didn’t think he would, honestly. You thought it was some twisted fluke—some battle-weary god getting sentimental in the middle of a war.

But he came back.

Weeks later. Then months. Then more.

Sometimes he brought gifts. Rare things. Impossible things.

A blue flower that glowed softly in the dark and sang lullabies in a language you didn’t know.

A ring made of a mineral that couldn’t exist on Earth—it shifted colors based on your mood, and Mark refused to tell you how it worked.

A stone orb that projected constellations from planets light-years away—“This one’s my favorite,” he said. “I used to go there to think.”

Sometimes he just sat. Both of you on the porch, your legs swinging off the steps. He'd look at you like he was memorizing your profile. You’d pretend not to notice.

He always gave you space. Always let you speak first. And when you didn’t, he never pushed.

This particular night was quiet.

The stars hang heavy overhead, bright and unknowable.

He lands soundlessly beside you, a familiar presence now. You’ve long since stopped jumping when he arrives. He doesn't make grand entrances anymore—just shows up like he’s always belonged there.

He holds something in his hand. Another gift, probably. But he doesn’t offer it yet.

Instead, he speaks.

“Do you not think so far ahead?”

You blink. “What?” He’s quiet for a second. Then—

“I’ve been thinking about forever.”

The words hit you like gravity.

You should be afraid. Should remind yourself of what he’s done. Of the war. Of the blood.

But then you look at him—this godlike being sitting on your porch like it’s holy ground because you stood on it once. And all you can do is whisper, “Forever’s a long time.”

He smiles. Not a smirk. Not smug. Just… hopeful.

“I have it to give,” he says.

You watch him, heart thudding like it’s caught between stars and soil.

He holds something out. A small, smooth crystal, glowing faintly. When you take it, it's warm—alive, almost. Inside, a swirl of constellations shifts and dances.

He watches you with that same intensity he always has—like you’re something sacred. Like this moment matters more than anything else in the galaxy.

“It’s a Viltrumite bonding token,” he says. “We don’t really do ceremonies. But this… it means something.”

You look up at him, and your heart squeezes.

He’s so sure. So ready. So Viltrumite.

But you’re not. Not because you don’t care—but because you’re you. Human. Flesh and fear and caution wrapped in something just as fierce.

Your gaze softens, and you give him the faintest, sweetest smile. “This isn’t Viltrum, Mark.”

His brows draw together, ever so slightly. Confused. Almost… angry? Hurt?

“Here on Earth,” you continue gently, stepping closer, “we take things a little slower.”

For a second, his face falters. Just a flicker. Barely there—but you see it. That moment where centuries of instinct and expectation collide with something fragile. Something new.

You reach out, closing the distance between you—not just physically, but emotionally. You step into his space like you’ve always belonged there, like gravity’s been leading you both to this point all along.

Your hand brushes his chest, over his heart.

And then—gently, deliberately—you rise onto your toes.

The kiss isn’t rushed. It’s not some desperate, fiery collision.

It’s slow.

Intentional.

A quiet promise wrapped in warmth and breath and closeness. His lips part slightly against yours, like he’s surprised—like he’s never been kissed before.

He doesn’t move at first. Doesn’t push. Just sinks into it.

One of his hands lifts—hesitant at first—then cups your jaw with reverent care, like you’re made of stardust and the whole universe is watching.

You pull back, only just, your forehead resting against his. Your hand still anchored over the steady beat in his chest.

“How about we start with this?” you whisper.

He exhales, the sound shaky—almost stunned. Like he’s still reeling, like you tilted his axis and he’s trying to find true north again.

His eyes meet yours. There's no smugness there. No grand speeches. Just awe.

“Then we’ll start here. But just so you know… I’ve seen the future. It always leads back to you.”

It takes a second for the words to sink in. You blink, stunned, as if you’re not quite sure whether to laugh, cry, or kiss him again.

Instead, you just shake your head, a breath of a smile curling at your lips.

“You really are something, Markus.”

He leans in again, his hand still cradling your jaw like he’s afraid to let go.

And somewhere above you, the stars keep burning. Quiet. Eternal.

But down here—on this porch, in this moment—forever has already begun.

[schemmentisimpasours]

You Belong With Me

Gif as always by @babytakeittothehead

Summary: This was a request by @schemmentisfavoritegirl (why is it not letting me tag you the hell).for Teen Reader that Melissa takes under her wing. Listen this one got away from me and the ending is a little muddled... but it's because I think I want to do a spin on the idea for a series. But I gotta wrap some series up first.

Pairing: MOM!Melissa Schemmenti/Daughter!Reader

Warnings: Bullying, Group Home, Small physical violence

Masterlist

2.4k words

PS: This is scheduled to post while I'm away on a mini vacation so if stuff is messed up I'm sorry! I'll fix it and post when I come home Tuesday. If I'm not stressed out and annoyed from this damn trip 😅

-

“We have 15 high school students from the National Honor Society who will be joining us for a week to help in classrooms for their community service hours. Whenever you are ready, come up and grab their file and then take them with you,” Ava announced at the quick lunch meeting she had called , pointing to the students lined up on the wall.

Melissa was the first in line and pointed at you. You were off, standing in the corner by yourself, tapping your fingers rapidly in time to the music in your AirPods, “I would like her.”

“You sure about that Schemmenti? Teacher said she is a real piece of work. This is apparently her last chance, or she faces suspension. ”

“I’m sure,” Melissa said, taking your file and walking up to you.

At her approach, you removed your earbud and placed it back into your jacket. The first thought that popped into Melissa’s head was that you were respectful, unlike the other teenagers still scrolling their phones as they were approached. You didn’t shy away from her daunting presence, but Melissa could see underneath all your hard exterior that you were scared. Like with one wrong move, everything would fall down around you.

“Come on, kid you are with me,” Melissa said, and you nodded wordlessly.

You followed behind her, head held down, until you entered her classroom. Your mind kept replaying the worst-case scenarios, trying to prepare yourself as much as you could. You had heard about Ms. Schemmenti the fiery redhead of Abbott Elementary and knew one foot out of line and you would be screwed. She pointed to where you could put your stuff, and you couldn’t help but smile at the outrageous math lesson that was on the whiteboard. Fractions of various foods like pizza, apples, and cookies were drawn with a steady hand.

“You like math?” Melissa asked as you continued to stare at the lesson.

“It’s my favorite,” You said with a smile, “The only thing in life that has one answer. No other possibilities or options. Just right or wrong.”

“Alright math wiz, you can help the kids in small groups when they get back from lunch,” Melissa said simply, and it was settled.

Every day you came in, you helped with the math lesson with the kids who struggled just a little more than others and needed the extra support. Melissa watched as you slowly opened up, revealing a little more about yourself every day. And with every fact she knew, Melissa found herself getting a little more attached to you. You worked hard when you were in her class. Taking any critique from her without flinching and doing everything you could to make sure the kids were keeping focused. You always came in with your head down, earphones turned loud, but as soon as you entered Melissa’s class, you lit up all smiles and sarcastic jokes.

Then, when the final bell rang, you would make sure you had completed everything Melissa had asked of you before running off to the bus, avoiding the other kids the best that you could. She knew by day three that you were the outsider of the group. Never talking to the other kids who arrived with you and often being pushed around like you weren’t there at all. It made Melissa’s blood boil for a reason that she couldn’t name. She had watched this type of behavior unfold in front of her before and, of course, had been bothered. But this was different. This was pure rage she felt building in her. She waited for the day that you would snap back and wasn’t surprised when it happened. She was just furious that it happened in front of her eagles.

You had been helping take the kids to the gym when another boy walked by blatantly running into you. Melissa knew this kid, the one who had been put in Morton’s classroom but who often walked around free range. He had been the one to pick on you the most. Always seeking you out just to torment you.

You had brushed off the shove like you usually did until he said, “Eat any good pussy today dyke?”

Melissa had gone to snap at him for the language used in front of the kid, but before she could, you had already punched him square in the face. His head snapped back, blood immediately running down his nose as he fell to the floor. You went to kick him, but Melissa wrapped her arms around you, pulling you away. You kicked against her trying to get back to him as she pulled you into an empty classroom.

“Stay here for a damn minute!” Melissa swore and you flinched at her anger.

You let tears of rage fall down your face as you waited for her return. Why did you have to snap? Why did you always snap? It had brought you nothing but pain and sorrow and you didn’t know how to control it.

“Come on kid,” Melissa said curtly and you followed obediently behind her.

The little eagles were gone and the boy absent. All that was left was Mr. Johnson cleaning up the blood. He gave you a small nod and mouthed the words good job. You nodded back with a small smile.

“Listen I'm really sorry Ms. Schemmenti. I didn't mean to take my shit out in front of the kids like that. I just got… upset,” You said defeatedly once back inside her class, “You heard the awful thing he said to me. It used to be a comment here and there but it is constant now. I just blacked out and next thing I knew I was fucking punching him”

“Ain’t your parents teach you how to behave around other kids, especially the young ones? You take the fight somewhere else if you gotta swing. Away from witnesses,” She asked, anger still riddled in her voice, “And watch your language in my room.”

You shrugged, looking down at the floor. " I haven't seen them since I was ten. I have been in and out of group homes since then. Six of them due to my aggressive behavior. But in my defense I had to. When you are the only queer kid shi…stuff gets bad quick. All that has taught me is to fight first and ask questions later. It’s the only way to survive.”

Melissa was stunned into silence as you played with the sleeve of your jacket. Her lack of response made your anxiety rise. You gathered your stuff, not looking at her, “Look you don’t have to sign the paper. I'll go back to my teacher and tell him it’s not a good fit. Ava can write me up and call home. It will be fine don't worry. I made this mess. ”

Melissa knew that it would have been the end for you there. If your teacher found out you had lost another volunteer placement because of physical violence again, you would have been suspended. Your grades were already hanging in the balance as is, and this teacher already believed that you couldn’t and wouldn’t succeed. She had read most of your file when Ava said that you were the one to watch, but in it, there had been no mention of the group homes or the bullying that came with it. And by the sounds of it with one phone call you could be ripped from there too.The world was constantly trying to break you down, and the dark circles under your eyes told her that you were losing the fight.

“Wait,” Melissa called out to you, placing a hand on your shoulder, “Ava is already handling the boy and you ain’t getting in trouble. She watched what happened and we all vouched for you.”

“You didn’t have to,” you whispered.

“Of course I had to. I have been watching him bully you all week. It had to stop,” Melissa sighed, “And listen mistakes happen and I ain't gonna let you off easy but I'm not abandoning you either kid. You belong here. You belong with me.”

Tears filled in your eyes as you looked up at her, “You really mean it?”

Melissa wiped away the tears from your cheeks, “Of course I do. You remind me a lot of myself at your age. Angry at the world and thinking the only way through was to go down swinging. But hun, you keep swinging, you are going to hurt more than just the bad people. You gonna push away all the good ones too.”

“I don't want to be like this anymore,” you sobbed and Melissa hugged you close to her.

“I know,” She soothed kissing your head, “And you don’t have to be. I got you, we can work through it together.”

She let you stay there for a couple of minutes, pressed against her, clinging tightly, like she might disappear before she gave you one final squeeze. She wiped away the remaining tears from your face, kissing your forehead lightly, “You got the tears out, now it’s time to work on fixing what you broke. Starting with our little eagles. You gotta go apologize for scaring them.”

Which is exactly what you did when they returned from the gym. You apologized for scaring them, but not for defending yourself. Melissa had made it clear to the class that what was said to you was not nice and that the older boy was in more trouble than you were. It felt nice to have someone stand up for you for once. And when the end of the day came and the bus was there to take you back to your group home, you ran into Melissa’s arms terrified to let go and return back to that world. Her coworkers stared as Melissa clung to you just as fiercely before giving you a kiss on the head and telling you to stay safe.

That night, you were sprawled out on your bed, working on a project for school, doing your best to focus through the typical chaos, when your caseworker told you it was time to pack your things. Your single duffle bag felt like it was full of bricks as you wondered where they were shipping you off to and when you would see Melissa next, if ever again. The fear pounded in your heart all the way up to the driveway of a house that had a huge Italian hanging from the porch. Your face twisted in confusion until you saw her. Waiting for you at the top stair was Melissa a broad grin across her face.

Before the car came to a full stop you were out the door and running up the stairs. She opened her arms and you barreled into her. She laughed holding you close to her, “Welcome home baby girl.”

That night Melissa taught you how to make spaghetti. It was simple but was just a glimpse of the many meals she would teach you. When the plates were cleaned and the table wiped down she sat down and looked through your school portal. Glasses perched on the edge of her nose she ran through your missing assignments and what teachers you had. By the end of the week with many baked zitis involved your missing assignments were turned in and your grades up. The National Honor Society Teacher who had bullied and belittled you was fired and ran out of town. You would never ask how but knew Melissa was involved when a gleam in her eye showed as you told her excitedly of the teacher who replaced him. The boy who had bullied you had gotten expelled for a different incident that week as well and you never heard from him again. You finished the year with honors and enrolled in advanced courses for your junior year.

Your room got filled with posters of celebrities and books that were crammed in every free space. Twinkle lights hung from the ceiling and you hung pictures of you and Melissa on every wall. Your bed was covered in soft blankets and squishmallows you used as pillows. When your friends were over Melissa would sit in the living room listening to the giggles and loud music glad that you were comfortable and safe in her home. When it was just you and Melissa couldn't sleep at night she would stand in your doorway for just a moment to confirm that this wasn't all some elaborate dream. That you were hers just as much as she was yours.

The Thursday before Mother’s Day when you were 17 your adoption was finalized and you became an official Schemmenti. You had been calling Melissa Mom since your first month in her home but something about that mother’s day felt different. A breath released that Melissa didn't even know she held when she remembered you were a Schemmenti. Bound not by blood but by love and devotion to stay no matter what. A huge party was thrown in honor of the adoption and Janine and Jacob could be heard down the street screaming in excitement when they were named your godparents. You gave Melissa numerous gifts that day but her favorite one was something that you had made in art class. A collage of every single photo you had taken with her creating a heart around the quote: I love you Mom. Today, Tomorrow, Always. She had sobbed not caring that all of her coworkers were watching and hugged you so tight you lost your breath for a second.

During your senior year you were selected to participate in a year long mentorship program where you taught alongside a teacher for the last couple hours of the day. You worked alongside Baraba who wrote you a glowing recommendation for University of Pennsylvania’s teaching program. Which you were accepted to with a full ride scholarship and your teaching internship was completed with Barbara. Who when you graduated slipped into retirement leaving you her spot at Abbott Elementary were you worked alongside Melissa for another four years.

When you brought home the woman you would one day marry Melissa had loved her instantly. She walked you down the aisle in tears giving the best speech of the night. She was there every step of your pregnancy and welcomed her granddaughter with a smile and a kiss. Retiring to become the best Nonna she could be transforming your old room into a space her granddaughter could play and stay every weekend.

As you stood watching your daughter sleep in her bed surrounded by the stuffed animals Melissa bought so many years ago she came up beside you and hugged you close, “Told you that you belong with me.”

-

@yoyo-w

@cupldscntrl

@milfslvr

@liliapleasesteponme

@milfjuulpod

@schemmentisfavoritegirl

[wcnderlnds]

to the moon [2] | choi seung-hyun (t.o.p)

・❥・ summary: bumping into seunghyun unexpectedly yet again leads to a night under the stars. ・❥・word count: 1.5k ・❥・warnings: none ・❥・ authors note: this kinda sucks and i didn’t proofread bc im tired but hopefully you enjoy 😭 im sorry part two took so long.

PART ONE

Why aren’t astronauts hungry when they get to space? They had a big launch.

The flash of your screen lighting up caught your attention, making you pause the words you were typing up on your computer. An almost giddy feeling filled you, knowing immediately who the text was from. Work could wait; this was more important. You slid your finger across the screen to unlock your phone, grinning like a cheshire cat when you read the text. The giggle that burst from your lips should’ve been embarrassing but you didn’t care. You loved corny jokes – you’d especially come to love corny space jokes from Seunghyun.

It had only been a week since you had met him in the bar but he had made sure to text you every single day. It had first started out with just one or two texts but it got to the middle of the week and you found yourselves texting each other almost all day long. He’d tell you some space facts, some corny jokes and tell you what was going on with his space mission. He always seemed so passionate about it. The way he talked about stars and space was so endearing.

Quickly, your fingers tapped along the screen typing up a reply. Knowing Seunghyun, if he wasn’t busy, he’d reply straight away. You’d done enough work for the day – it was mostly catching up with assignments you’d set yourself. Being an author meant that you could at least pick and choose when you worked. As long as you met your publisher’s deadline then you were fine.

Shutting your laptop, you leaned back on the couch, stretching your arms above your head. You could really go for some chocolate ice cream right now. But, you remembered that you’d ran out last week when you had a breakdown over your latest novel, deciding to stuff your face with ice cream to eat away your feelings.

It seemed like a visit to the grocery store was in order.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Being at the grocery store at 9pm on an evening felt weird. The aisles were mostly empty, only a few cashiers on the registers eagerly waiting for their shifts to end. The buzz of the refrigerators filled your ears as you walked down the frozen food aisle. There were only a couple of other people in the store. Most of them probably needing some last minute items like you or on their way to get their drinks for the weekend. It was a Friday night after all.

Reaching the freezer where your favourite ice cream was, you pulled it up but just as you were about to grab a tub – the last one, actually – another hot shot out too, brushing against yours to grab it.

“Hey,” you huffed. With blazing eyes you turned to give the person a telling off before you saw who it was. “Seunghyun?”

“Y/N?” His face lit up instantly. “Fan of the chocolate ice cream, too, huh?”

“Yep and I’m sorry but this is mine.”

“Says who? We both grabbed it at the same time.”

“Yeah, but I opened the freezer door so by default, I was first.”

“That's how it works?” His lips turned up in a smirk, both your hands still holding the tub.

“Yeah, so, let go of it,” you tried to sound stern but it wasn’t hard to notice the small giggle you were holding back.

“Alright, you little ice cream goblin, how about we share?” Seunghyun suggested. “We can go outside right now and dig in. Only catch is you have to hang out with me to do it.”

“Oh no, how will I ever survive?” You sarcastically rolled your eyes. Truth was, you were elated to spend time with him. Through all the days you’d been texting, you’d wanted to ask him if he wanted to hang out but could never get the guts to do it. He was busy, you hadn’t wanted to interrupt that but by the way he was smiling, fingers twitching against yours, he seemed just as eager.

“You’re a brat,” he laughed. Before you could even react, he snatched the ice cream from you, running to the cashier with you chasing after him.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Before you had met Seunghyun, you hadn’t appreciated just how beautiful the stars were but now as you sat here on the hood of your car with him beside you sharing the chocolate ice cream he’d bought, you couldn’t help but marvel at their beauty. They way they dazzled in the night sky, how some seemed to shine brighter than others. You’d have to ask the space nerd why that happened. Space had never interested you before but now you found your thoughts constantly drifting to wonder what actually went on in the universe. What other secrets did the stars hold?

You dug the plastic spoon into the half eaten tub of ice cream, savouring the flavour as you put it into your mouth. Seunghyun beside you had momentarily gone quiet after a rant about Star Trek. The second you had told him you’d never watched it, he launched into telling you all the lore. You had just sat there, listening, nodding when needed. Seeing his little face light up as he spoke about these characters made your heart beat a little faster. That all too familiar feeling of butterflies threatening to come to life in the pit of your stomach.

“So, I have to admit something,” you said once you’d swallowed down the ice cream. “I googled you.”

Seunghyun stiffened. “What? Why?”

“I saw an article about the DearMoon project and it said you were a Korean celebrity which you never told me by the way so… I got curious,” you glanced sideways at him, noticing how he had visibly tensed, his hand clutching at the spoon in his hand.

“Oh.” That was all he said. The way he refused to look at you made your heart ache. In Seunghyun’s mind, he thought now that you knew who he was and his past, you wouldn’t want anything to do with him. His mind was his biggest enemy, always telling him he wasn’t good enough. He couldn’t be further from the truth.

Carefully, as if you were approaching a scared animal, you placed your hand on top of his that was resting on the hood. Your voice was soft as you spoke. “It doesn’t matter to me. It doesn’t change anything. Your past is your past and, from what I saw, you were treated incredibly unfairly anyway. I don’t care about any of it. To me, you’re that nerd from the bar who texts me awful space jokes everyday.”

Seunghyun let out a breath he didn’t even realise he’d been holding. His body relaxing at your soothing words. Well, almost. Maybe he was panicking inside a little bit at the fact your were basically holding his hand but that was a problem for future Seunghyun to deal with. “Thank you.”

“Now, show me another one of those constellations,” you smiled at him, giving his hand a soft squeeze but not letting go. Not just yet. The contact was nice. You leaned back against the window of your car, Seunghyun following suit. He raised his free hand, finger pointing out one of the constellations.

“See those three star in a row? That’s Orion’s belt,” his eyes gazed up at the night sky to admire the beauty of the stars. It was calming. Especially being here with you.

“Oh yeah, I see it,” you said, raising your own hand to trace the stars with your own finger. “That’s pretty cool.”

The ice cream had been forgotten about as Seunghyun pointed out another constellation, telling you all about it. You listened intently, hands still joined. It wasn’t until his phone started buzzing that both of you were brought out of your stargazing haze. He frowned as he looked at the text telling him they needed him at the training complex. With a heavy sigh, he jumped off the hood, holding his hand out to help you down.

“I gotta go.”

“I know.”

The silence settled between you. It was evident to anyone that neither of you wanted to leave each other. Seunghyun was stalling, trying to soak up as much time with you as he could. You were about to open your mouth to speak when he beat you to it. “Hey, a couple of us are going to check out that fair in town so… if you want to come… with me, that’d be cool.”

“Yeah, I’d love to.” You rushed the words out. It should’ve been embarrassing how eager you sounded but the radiant smile on Seunghyun’s made it impossible to.

“Cool, cool. Meet you there at 7 tomorrow night?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you then.”

Seunghyun said his goodbye and left you alone with your thoughts. At first his had just been a friendship but now, you could see the small fragments of something else seeping through the cracks. It was just a matter if you wanted to lose yourself in those feelings or keep it strictly friendly.

Regardless, you couldn’t help but be excited to see Seunghyun again tomorrow. Maybe you’d have to come prepared with some corny space jokes of your own just for him.

taglist (ask to be added!): @ldydeath @infinetlyforgotten @justsisse @sherrayyyyy @loveesiren @aizshallnotbefound @gdinthehouseee @berfgrimm @fleabagspurplewife @flymetothexmoon @gemzyy @bettelaboure @breakmeoff

[stars-interlude]

HII i saw your post asking for inspo and Imma tell you about a fantasy i had. Yk how hot tubs have those jets you can turn on? Imagine spicy time in a hot tub with Scaramouche, him sitting you down nice and pretty on one of the jets until you're practically begging for him, multiple orgasms later :,)

Hot Tub

Sometimes you and your longtime boyfriend Scaramouche just wanted to get away from it all. This time he recommended a vacation house that just happened to have a pool and a hot tub.

“You know, we have the whole week off”

he brushes a stray strand of hair out your face. You smile up at him as you sit down “A little fun wouldn’t hurt” you shrug your shoulders.

Packing your stuff was always a pain in the ass especially for Scara because either you packed way too much or way too little and you end up wearing scara’s graphic t-shirts

Scara glances over at your bags “You really need to learn how to pack less..” he rolls his eyes “And you need to learn to pack more things other than black t-shirts” you throw back a snarky remark quickly. “Well black goes with everything sweetheart. No matter I’m gonna start packing the car.”

He then walked away.. You zipped up your last bags and you walked to the car yourself to find Scara sitting waiting for you. “Archons.. about time” you give him a nasty look playfully as you sit in the car “i should’ve made you wait a little longer huh”

The drive started and you had the honor of the music playing. Scara looked at you “I have a feeling that this particular get-away is gonna be.. interesting” You raised an eyebrow “Interesting? please elaborate” you smirked He just laughed his eyes still on the road and it left you wondering what could he possibly be thinking.

You decided to press further “Interesting huh? Are you gonna share or keep me guessing” Scara smirked finally giving you a glance “I don’t have a single doubt that you won’t be pleasantly surprised for what i have i store for you..” he placed his right hand on your thigh as his left hand was on the steering wheel.

No matter how much you tried he didn’t seem to crack, you settled back into your seat the music kept playing in the background as you looked out the window at the small towns and the few scenic landscapes you guys passed

The hours in the car passed by fast, and before you knew it the two of you were at the vacation house. “Darling” Scara called out to you “we’re finally here” you said as you sat up

“I don’t need all that sass” He crossed his arms. you got out the car to admire the house that the two of you would be staying in. “Babe, you know what we should do?” Scara said as he got out the car with you. you looked back at him “hm? what are you thinking?” He grabbed your waist and put his head on your shoulder “we should take a dip in the hot tub.. relax from that long ass drive” You considered his request and silently agreed

After unpacking your bags the two of you were in the warm Hot tub as the sun started to set “I must say Scara.. this is quite nice” Your boyfriend soon shifted closer to you “hey darling, do you wanna try something?” He said with a smirk, you scoffed and raised your eyebrows “and what would that something be?” you folded your arms as you said it

Scara got close to your ear like he was trying to make sure no one heard even though it was just the two of you “why don’t you sit on one of those jets huh? sit all pretty just for me” You got warmer from the idea “Uhm maybe..” you thought what could possibly go wrong? You looked back up at your boyfriend “okay..” You stood up and slowly took off your bikini bottoms and you sat back down in the same spot you were in before. Scara chuckled he then turned around and turned on the jets the hot tub got bubbly quick

He took your waist in his hand and pushed you up against one of the jets, at first it felt weird but soon the discomfort turned into pleasure. Moans started to spill from your lips even with your eyes closed You could still feel scara’s eyes watching you intensely. Your moans started to get more intense, when you opened your eyes you saw him staring at you with a grin.. “Scara.. i’m gonna cum, it feels weird” he laughed “what do you want me to do?” his eyes narrowed as he smirked at you “okay, after you cum once or twice maybe i’ll consider taking you on my cock how bout that?” you didn’t have any other choice but to nod

It felt like it had been ages, you’d came for the nth time. as you came and your eyes rolled back scara held your chin and kissed your lips gently you’d like to think of it as an apology to what he’s put you through “[name] are you ready for the real thing?” you sluggishly opened your eyes to look at him “mhmmm i think so..” he slowly pulled you away from the running jet, you felt a wave of relief wash over you after the pressure from the water was gone

But soon after he pulled you away, he pulled down his swim shorts and his cock was stiff you watched as he pumped it a few times. You were nervous at the thought of taking him after being so sensitive from the jets, you were soon pulled out of your thoughts when Scara pulled you into his lap aligning his cock with your hole. He then quickly thrusted into you, you let out a yelp of pain mixed with pleasure.

Your head fell onto his shoulder and moans began to fall from your lips “fuck baby your pussy is taking my cock so good..” Scara was groaning in your ear. He took a hold of your hips as he bounced you up and down your moans getting louder with each one “Scara! it’s to much i can’t” he let out a laugh mixed with a moan “you’re so cute baby, but i can feel you twitching around my cock” your eyes rolled back and you gripped your boyfriend’s shoulders tight enough to bruise after he said that it sparked some in you

you let out one more loud moan before you came, Scara still showed no mercy and kept going after you came for the nth time “shit.. i’m gonna cum” He mumbled his thrusts got harsher and he let out a loud grunt as he came inside you and you both laughed as you saw his cum sink to the bottom of the hot tub

a/n: see you in another 5 months, the end was so rushed so don’t be surprised when you don’t like it ! have a good day/night people

[66sharkteeth]

Weekly thoughts ep 217-

I forgot to do these last week! But you know I HAD to talk about this week's episode. I know a ton of y'all are behind and this is a spoiler but if this doesn't motivate you to hurry up and catch up, idk what will.

Jericlaude canon! Kinda lol. For like 30 seconds. Relieved most of the creeps seem to be gone by now so nobody was too viscerally angry about two guys kissing on a webtoon like they were about LGBT stuff in earlier episodes. That's the kind of audience I don't mind losing lol.

Anyway, yeah, I've been waiting to draw this one for a while, tho probably not as long as one might think. I definitely only decided to give them a big kiss scene recently, as tbh Jericho returning Claude's feelings is a newer development as well. I think I've talked about it a little, but Jericho was never originally supposed to return Claude's feelings. But as his character developed, I thought it made great conflict for him and his scion- something that I see a lot of people noticed.

I did hate breaking the 180 rule so blatantly this episode, but it was so important that these panels focus on Jericho's human side. And I think breaking it so blatantly made that clear to a lot of people, because a lot seemed to pick up on it. One of those things where sometimes the curtains really are just blue, but in this case, it was a very intentional choice. Things as well like his blank hand not embracing Claude, and it only touching him when starting to fall back into the scion's mindset and turning into a claw.

I also absolutely didn't originally plan on having Bell in this scene, but plot kinda made it unavoidable so I'm glad everyone liked that one little awkward panel of her lol.

There was a lot of thought put into this episode, and it's definitely one of my favorites, so I'm glad people enjoyed it. I've said this before, but watching Claude go from hands down the most hated character, to one of the most popular has been one of the highlights of writing this story for me. His character development has been some of my favorite to write and I feel like it all culminated in this episode.

Next week is a bit of a mid-season finale! I wasn't originally planning on pausing there, but after that, we're entering kind of the end game arc of CoB! So I really wanted to take some time to hammer out the rest of the story and give it a proper ending.

[bidisasterevankinard]

Sentences sunday

I was tagged by @beanarie (it was Saturday not Sunday, but ok, just take it)<3333 I found the idea how to start the frat boys au so the very first scene of the 1st chapter I hope to end till the middle of next week (feature 18 year old Buck and Maddie in her late 20s):

Deep breath.

Letting his chest expand fully taking in the breezy smell of rainy day, Evan smiles.

New beginnings. New chapter of his life. He’s finally free and everything, the whole world, is open for him to explore, to touch, to try. He can do anything and one would scream at him about not being careful to himseLf or forget about his existence or leave him because they have a better life. He can create his life as he wants it. Find his people. Be himself. Be Evan Buckley he never had a chance to be in that fucking ghost silent house.

He has a better life now. 

“Are you sure you have everything?” Maddie looks over his two duffel bags and backpack with a criticizing look. 

Evan just rolls his eyes. Maddie is such a mother-hen sometimes. It can be sweet, especially when he was younger, but he’s an adult already. He knows that’s best for him. 

He can care about himself. He actually already did for years since she left him. Not like Margaret or Philip did much.

“Yes, Maddie, I have everything I need. And I still have no books as I’ll get them only tomorrow.”

“What about pens, notebooks?”

“Gonna use my laptop and buy other stuff if I need,” he rolls his eyes again.

Can she not lecture him when he’s in such a good mood?

“Do you have enough clothes? Self-care products? Oh, my god, where’s your sheets, pillows? All that stuff?” Maddie grabs his bag to open it, but he snatches it back.

“Mom and dad s-shipped some of it before. They found out their old friends work here. He put it near the house and my roommates put it inside,” he nods at the house he would share with three guys for the next four years. “And I have three pairs of jeans: two everyday tight and party tight, some shorts, a lot of T-shirts and seven hoodies. If I need something, I’ll go and buy it. I’m living 20 minutes by bus from downtown, Maddie.”

He makes a face he always does when mom starts being too hysterical over nothing and Maddie hits his chest playfully.

“I know, I know,” she shakes her head, with a sigh, “I just can’t believe you’re starting college. Feels like yesterday I was given you baths,” she hugs him and he hugs her closer by her waist, putting his chin on her head.

“And you were taller those times.”

That makes them both giggle loudly. Maddie hasn’t been a taller sibling since his height spurt in 15. He still remembers her coming back from college, dropping the books she had in her hands, when he met her near the door. She was so shocked looking at him for 5 minutes straight not speaking.

“I promise to c-call and text as much as I can,” he gets his pinky up, “especially if I need my best big sister to help me, ok?”

She nods, intertwining her pinky with his.

“I love you, Evan. Have a good time in college!”

Ruffling his curls, he turns to her Jeep.

“Love you too,” he smiles at her, kissing her cheek goodbye, “And I will!”  

np tagging @quintessenceofdust88 @hippolotamus @lovetommyactually @devirnis @powersuitup @bangpop91writing @tommyscurls @bewilderedbuckley @jamieroyjamieroy @bekkachaos @robinminustherichard @tommysbignaturals @saintbobbynash @unhingedangstaddict @agentpeggycartering @aringofsalt @lavenderleahy @leashybebes @laundryandtaxesworld @mustlovelou @loulou-land @setmeatopthepyre @exhaustedpirate @racerchix21 @zeraparker @evansbuck-ley @desert--moonchild @cliophilyra @typicalopposite @diazheartsbuckley @diazsdimples @pilot-kinard @pirrusstuff @midsummersmorn @hyperfocusthusly @mustlovelou

[dameronspector]

Philophobia (Part 5)

Pairing: Joaquin Torres x Stark!Reader

Chapter Summary: After a mini panic attack, you and Joaquin leave for Maryland and you talk to an old friend. You come face to face with Walker and every one has to pull you back before you attack him. You and Joaquin are almost friends now and Bucky informs you about 2 shocking things.

Warnings: Mentions of wanting to kill a person, panic attacks, We have a major cameo(s) in this one 👀, Reader is mentioned to have hair, Joaquin and Reader are slowly becoming friends, Reader is slowly becoming comfortable around Joaquin, Talks of vandalizing a property, Jealous!Joaquin, John Walker Hatred, John Walker is an asshole, I don’t know anything about the American law,that’s all i think!

AN: sooo sorry for the delay! hope u enjoy this and the cameo ☺️

“(Name)? Honey?”

You haven’t heard that voice since the following week after the funeral. Since the day you distanced yourself from them.

You swallowed thickly and stumbled back. Joaquin rushed over to steady you with his hands on your elbows.

“(Name)? Are you okay?”, Joaquin asked, concerned.

You whispered only one word.

“M-May..?”

“Oh honey, how are you? It’s been so long since I heard your voice…”

You were trying so hard to focus on her voice but all you heard were old conversations and the laughter of a certain someone. The conversations and the laughter that you didn’t want to hear again but deep down, you knew you missed them.

“Hey, do you wanna sit down? Your hands are shaking, (Name)”, Joaquin asked you quietly. He was worried for you and felt his insides simmer with anger because whoever the person was on the other end of the phone was the reason for your current state. He touched your hands lightly and you jerked back. You shook him off and clenched your jaw before ending the call.

Joaquin maintained a safe distance from you to give you your space. He saw the way you had clenched your jaw so tightly and how you were gripping your phone like your life depended on it.

“Call a cab. I’ll pack my stuff”, you replied shortly and rushed back to the guest room.

Joaquin stood there dumbfounded, trying to figure out what the hell just happened. But he decided not to bother you anymore and made quick work of calling a cab.

Meanwhile, in the room, you were trying your best to not freak out. You ran a hand through your hair and grabbed them before taking deep breaths.

You had asked Happy to warn you any time he was with May so you could avoid moments like these. You knew they were dating. And you were happy for them. But you just couldn’t go back to being normal with May and…Peter. Just thinking about them made your chest hurt with all the memories but you compartmentalised it and began packing your bags hurriedly. You knew you had put Joaquin on the spot. You saw and felt how panicked he was. You needed to apologise to him. Once again.

-

You and Joaquin finally settled into the cab and drove off for Maryland. It was way too quiet in the car and you felt like it was your fault.

“Hey, Joaquin?”

He turned his head to look at you. “Yes?”

You hesitated. “Uh- look, I’m sorry. I keep putting you on the spot like this. I’m sorry.”

He observed you carefully before speaking up. “Don’t worry about it. Are you okay, though? You looked pretty shaken up.”

You scoffed. “Yeah, I’m fine. That phone call just..took me by surprise.”

He seemed to weigh his options and decided to ask anyway.

“Do you…wanna talk about it? Only if you’re comfortable. No pressure”, he asked nervously.

You pressed your lips into a thin line. “Maybe some other day.”

Joaquin was shocked. This means you were willing to share your problems with him in the future? This was progress.

He nodded quickly and gave you a soft smile.

He had such a radiant smile, you thought.

You cleared your throat and decided to distract yourself by calling up a contact to help with Bucky’s case.

The phone rang twice before someone picked it up.

“Nelson and Murdock, how can I help you?”

“Hey, Matthew.”

“(Name)? Did you get a new phone number?”

You sighed. “Yeah, somethin’ like that. How are you?”

“I’m good. I haven’t heard from you since…”, he paused and let out a breath. “Shit. I’m sorry, (Name)”, he responded softly.

You gulped harshly in order to keep your tears from flowing. “It’s okay. Um- I wanted your help regarding a case.”

“Why? Did you break another car?”, he teased you lightly.

You gasped. “That was one time. It was an emergency!”

Joaquin turned his head to look at you in confusion.

“If by ‘emergency’ you mean purposely vandalising a private property of a big shot lawyer because you wanted to teach him a lesson for denying your father’s case then, sure”, he responded smugly. That asshole.

You rolled your eyes and groaned.

Yes, you vandalised a big shot lawyer’s car 10 years ago because he had refused to take up your father’s case against Aldrich Killian back in 2013 and yes, you sneaked out with Happy who was extremely stressed the whole time. Your dad found out about it immediately and he was confused between getting angry at you out of concern and laughing his ass off. He hugged you tightly and made you promise him not to do this again and asked Matt to handle the situation, which he did, with the classic Murdock ease and charm. Since then, Matt Murdock has been a close acquaintance, a friend even, and your favorite lawyer because he was just the perfect amount of chill and batshit insane (reckless) to get along with you (you’re never telling him that. That man is cocky enough.) “Shut up, smartass."

Matt chuckled.

"Listen to me now. You know James Barnes, right?”

He hummed. “Of course.”

“You gotta find a solution to release him from his pardon conditions. At least, temporarily.”

“Well, what are the conditions?”

“That he has to attend therapy sessions every week.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Sure, but not when he’s getting arrested for missing them while he’s on a mission. I’m on my way to Maryland to bail him out with Sam Wilson.”

Matt sighed. “Alright, I’ll see what I can do. It can be a little tricky given who he is…but I’ll manage. Text me the details. And call me immediately once you get to the police station, okay? Don't talk to any of the cops or counselors on your own.”

"Yep, noted. Thanks, Matthew."

"Why do you use my full name?"

"D'you prefer I call you Matty? Or Red? Or Dev-"

"Okay! okay, shut up. Forget I asked, Stark", he mumbled in fake annoyance.

You chuckled. "Bye, Murdock."

You ended the call and texted Matt all the details right away.

Joaquin couldn't help but feel that irritating green monster in the pit of his stomach. Who was this Matt? How were you so close to him? Why did you talk so easily to him? Wh-

"Are you okay?", you asked, your eyebrows furrowed in concern. His eyebrows were drawn so close that it made a dent in between them. He was frowning and almost pouting while clenching his hand into a fist. He looked really cute but you pushed that thought far away into the corner of your mind.

Joaquin hadn't noticed how he had curled his hand into a fist. He immediately relaxed his hand and shifted in his seat under your sharp gaze. He gave you a tight smile.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

You scanned his face to understand what was happening and decided to leave it for now.

“Okay. Well, I’ve texted my lawyer about Bucky’s case. We’ll reach in about half an hour. Could you call Sam to inform him about all this while I finish sending the documents?”

Joaquin gave you a terse nod and chose to call Sam right away to avoid embarrassing himself any further.

-

After half an hour, you finally reached in Maryland and made your way into the police station. You could see Sam sitting in the waiting area and the two of you approached him.

"Sam?"

He pulled up his head from where he was cradling it between his hands and looked at you. He stood up and made his way over.

"Hey man, you good?", Joaquin asked him in concern.

Sam let out a big sigh. "I guess. I'll tell you the rest later. Hope ya'll didn't face any problems to get here."

You shifted in unease as you remembered your...situation before departing.

Joaquin noticed this and immediately covered for you. "Nope, we got here smoothly. We even got ourselves a lawyer, right, (Name)?"

You snapped out of your daze and nodded at him. "Yeah, Sam, he's really good. I've sent him all the necessarily details about Bucky's case and he said he'd help. What are we doing now? He's asked me to call him as soon as I get here."

Sam gave you a nod and asked you to follow him to the reception where you signed certain papers and called up Matt.

After holding a meeting with the deputy and counselors, Matt managed to convince them to let off Bucky from attending the sessions temporarily for a few months. They had agreed on a single condition, Bucky would have to go to an extra session before leaving today. You all agreed to it and let out a sigh of relief.

"Seriously, Matt, Thank you."

"I'm a really good lawyer, you know that", he responded cheekily. He was one more instance away from trademarking that line.

You cringed. "You're so corny, you know that?".

Matt chuckled heartily and you could just see the way his dimples must've popped out perfectly and the way his eyes must've crinkled at the corners. What? You're not about to deny that he's ridiculously attractive. That would be the lie of the century.

"Eh, so I've been told. Anyways, please take out time to meet us someday. Foggy and Karen miss you loads", he requested gently in that smooth voice of his.

You frowned and let out a short breath. Foggy was the sweetest and funniest person you have met in a while and Karen immediately took a liking to you, offering her support like she was your elder sister. The last time you hung out with them was after the Sokovia Accords were dissolved. And then, everything went downhill while you turned into a recluse.

"I miss them, too. I'll try my best, Matt. Thank you again."

"Take care, sweetheart", and he ended the call. You took a deep breath in and exhaled it. You went over to stand next to Joaquin and your attention was caught by a group of people surrounding someone. You moved closer to find out that it was John Walker.

"What the fuck is he doing here?", you murmured lowly. Joaquin grimaced next to you. "Oh, I'd love to punch him in the face", you growled, Joaquin huffed out a chuckle. He observed the way your sharp gaze cut into Walker. He was so sure you'd beat up Walker if they left you alone with him. Before he could stop you, you made your way over to stand next to Sam, protectively.

It was funny, yet endearing to Joaquin, to watch you protect a grown man twice your size and who was a literal Avenger. But this is why Joaquin loved you-you'd do anything for the people that you considered your family.

“-Yeah we did some field ops back in the day.”

“I heard you were working with Bucky, so I thought I’d step in.”

“That’s Barnes for you, Walker”, you spoke up in a sharp tone.

“Kid…”, Sam murmured and grabbed your arm gently to stop you.

Walker’s blank blue eyes shifted to look at you in interest. “(Name) Stark? The Golden Child? Midnight?”

You stiffened at his use of your alter-ego. You haven’t heard that name in a while.

He flashed that fake, TV-star smile at you and extended a hand to shake. “Wow. It’s an honour. I’m John Walker, Captain America.”

You folded your arms across your chest and stared at him in boredom.

Walker’s face flickered with a look of surprise but he quickly covered it up with his media training and let out a weak chuckle.

“Well…that’s fine. We’ll make up some other day”, and that bastard winked at you. Like it was a fucking joke and you were buddies. You gaped at him in shock and moved your arm to strike but Sam squeezed your arm carefully and pushed you behind him. You clenched your jaw and glared daggers at him from over Sam’s shoulders. You noticed a group of people taking pictures and you rolled your eyes in annoyance.

“Bucky's not gonna be following a strict schedule any longer", Walker announced casually as if it wasn't Matt who helped clear Bucky's schedule, you quirked an eyebrow in boredom.

"We haven't finished our work, who authorized this?", Raynor questioned.

"Um..", Walker smiled smugly and pointed at himself. You scrunched your face in disgust, what a fucking liar.

You turned just in time to see Bucky being escorted out. He sauntered over to the reception and leaned against it with a bored expression. You went over to him and Joaquin followed you.

He raised his head up and his eyes widened as soon as they fell on you. "Kid? What are you two doing here?"

"Sam called. They've excused you from attending the sessions temporarily."

"How'd you do that?", Bucky asked with his eyebrows furrowed.

"I know a really good lawyer", you smirked and Joaquin clenched his fists again. Seriously, who the fuck was this guy?

"Thanks, kid-", Bucky snapping his head up cut you off. You and Joaquin turned your heads at the same time to see Walker standing there.

Bucky let out a humorless scoff behind you. "Of course he knows my therapist."

Joaquin turned his attention to Bucky. "That's your therapist?", he asked him incredulously.

Bucky nodded. Your eyes widened. "Fuck that. I don't like her either", you muttered.

Bucky let out a small chuckle. "That makes the two of us."

"-I"ll be outside!", Walker announced loudly and retreated with a peace sign. You and Joaquin cringed. "What a loser...", Joaquin mumbled and you let out a small scoff.

"James, condition of your release, session now. You too, Sam", Raynor informed and walked over to a room, Bucky ducked his head and put his hand on his hip. Sam interjected, "That's okay, I'll be out here with-" "That wasn't a request", Raynor cut him off firmly. Bucky sighed and reluctantly followed Raynor. Sam let out a frustrated huff and gave you and Joaquin a look, to which you responded with a sympathetic smile, before following Bucky. You let out a sigh and turned to face Joaquin, "Well, let's get out of here, I can't stand this...atmosphere anymore."

You and Joaquin stepped out of the station, a silence hanging in between you two. You could see how Joaquin was on edge, wanting to ask you something but bailing out on the last moment. "Do you wanna say something, flyboy?", you asked him with your eyebrows raised in interest. Joaquin stiffened up before clearing his throat. "Uh- who's this lawyer you contacted? Is he really that good?"

"Oh, Matt? Yeah, he's one of the best. I know him since I was a stupid teenager", you let out a chuckle before continuing, "He's a...peculiar man, but that's why we get along so well. He supported me a lot when I was uh- depressed, during the Blip", you confessed off-handedly. Joaquin straightened up again, hating the fact that he was feeling jealous over another guy supporting you during a rough time, but you talked so fondly about this Matt guy that he wished it would've been him.

"Oh, I see. You seem....close", Joaquin murmured, his eyes set in front of him on the road. You turned to observe him closely, his cheeks with tinged with a shade of pink. A treacherous smile spread against your face and you bit your cheek to stop it. Was he blushing? Or embarrassed? Or-

"I feel awful", Bucky's voice cut through your thoughts, him and Sam joining you. Before any of you could make a comment, the loud blaring of a siren cut you off. You jumped, your heart pounding because of the sudden sound and Joaquin quickly put a hand on your back, gently moving it in circles to calm you down. You froze at the contact before eventually relaxing against it. Taking a notice of this, Joaquin confidently pressed his hand against your back and rubbed it with his thumb. You felt your face heat up.

"Gentlemen", he addressed Sam and Bucky with his hand raised in the air, "Good to see you again", he flashed that stupid smile again. You rolled your eyes and huffed before folding your arms across your chest. Bucky kept walking before Walker stopped him, "Look if we divide ourselves, we don't stand a chance, you guys know that."

"Listen up, Blondie, you just came onto the scene. Both of them are avengers and soldiers at the same time. They know what they're doing", you scoffed bitterly, facing Walker.

He gave you a disbelieving smile. "Damn...just like your father, aren't you. Bet you get that a lot, huh?", he finished with a sarcastic chuckle. You clenched your fists before Joaquin put a hand on your arm to soothe you. "And you try to be Steve, don't you? Bet you get that a lot", you bit back. That wiped the smile off of Walker's face and he clenched his jaw. Sam assessed the situation and tried to break the tension, "So, what do you got?"

Walker laid out all the information they had on the girl, Karli, and how they targeted the civilians who helped her move from place to place, how they were geotagging the location and scrambled the signal. The government satellites found their symbol popping up in various displaced communities all across Central and Eastern Europe and that she was taking stolen medicines to these camps.

"But, there's hundreds of those all across the planet since the Blip", Joaquin spoke up for the first time, his eyebrows furrowed. Walker looked at him with a bored expression. "So, I guess you'll have to look real hard", Bucky quipped.

"Good thing I have 20/20 vision, huh?", Walker sassed back.

"Then use that 20/20 vision and get back to work, John", you squinted your eyes at him. Bucky looked at you and smirked, Walker fixed you with a glare.

"Where is she now, Walker? Do you know?", Bucky challenged him.

Walker raised his voice, "No, we don't know, Bucky. But it's only a matter of time before we find out."

Bucky raised his eyebrows in fake concern, "Things are really intense for you, aren't they, Walker?"

Walker looked at Bucky with a lost expression on his face. Sam walked over to Bucky and placated him. "Take it easy. Look, Walker's right", you opened your mouth to argue and he stopped you, "It is imperative that we find them and stop them", Sam turned to address Walker and Lemar, "But you guys have rules of engagement, and all kinds of authorizations that you have to get. We're free agents. We're more flexible. So, it wouldn't make sense for us to work with you", Sam conceded.

You and Joaquin exchanged a look of pride before starting to walk away when that agitating voice spoke up again, "A word of advice, then", the four of you turned around lazily, "Stay the hell out of my way", Walker threatened.

You raised your eyebrows in shock. "Or? What are you gonna do?", you spit at him. Walker stared you down before smirking at you, challenging. Joaquin stepped closer to you and held your arm, gently pulling you along.

"Sam, if you don't let me blow his head off, I swear to god", you mumbled in annoyance.

The three of them let out chuckles and Sam slung an arm around your shoulders. "Imma start calling you terminator now", Sam joked and you shot him a glare. He just gave you a cheesy smile and you rolled your eyes fondly at him. “By the way, what were you two doing in Maryland?”

Bucky shifted uncomfortably at the question. “Go ahead, why don’t you explain to them, Bucky?”, Sam asked him in a sarcastic manner. You turned to look at Bucky with your eyebrows raised.

“We…well, I introduced Sam to a super soldier that I had skirmish with in the Korean War. His name is Isaiah Bradley”, Bucky confessed.

“What?!”, you and Joaquin exclaimed in unison. “And you’re saying this now? Buck-” “I know, I know. I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t want to invade his privacy. He was finally living a peaceful life after a long time. He lives with his grandson, Elijah, here”, Bucky’s voice dripping with apology.

You let out a sorrowful sigh. Joaquin spoke up, curiosity lacing his tone, “What happened with him? How does nobody speak of him?”

Bucky sucked in a breath, “The government experimented on him and put him in jail for 30 years. He was hurt seeing me in front of him after...everything. He didn’t wanna see us. Rightfully resents me and the Avengers for getting to live a normal life instead of him.”

“And because he was black”, Sam says as a matter of fact.

Joaquin frowned and you closed your eyes in sadness, nodding your head in understanding. You would love to meet him someday but you get his view point. He deserved better. You promised yourself that you'd get his name cleared after all this is over.

You grimaced as you remembered the conversation with Walker, “What do we do now? Walker is going to be a pain in the ass. We need to get to Karli before him or Lemar.”

“I can track them, keep an eye out on their moments”, Joaquin offered.

“Yeah, keep up with that, Joaquin. I’ll need frequent updates. Can’t trust those two at all”, Sam agreed. The four of you made your way away from the station and Sam acknowledged Bucky, "So, what are you thinking?"

"Well, I know what we have to do. When Isaiah said 'my people'.."

"Oh, don't take that to heart, that's not what he meant", Sam tried to explain to Bucky.

"No, he meant Hydra. Hydra used to be 'my people'", Bucky conceded. Sam looked at Bucky and scoffed, "Not a chance."

You and Joaquin followed them silently, listening to their conversation with rapt attention.

"Walker doesn't have any leads...", something about Bucky's tone alarmed you and you understood why Sam reacted in the way he did. You squinted your eyes at Bucky's back. Joaquin, bless him, had no idea about what was going on so he just looked back and forth between you and Bucky with a confused look plastered on his face.

"I know where you're going with this, no", Sam shook his head in disagreement.

"He knows all of Hydra's secrets. Don't you remember Siberia?"

And that's when it clicked you. "There's no fucking way", you chuckled in disbelief. Sam shared a look with you and turned his attention back to Bucky. "So you're just gonna go sit in a room with this guy?"

Bucky hesitated before getting out a light, "Yes", with a nod of his head.

You and Sam shook your heads in disbelief.

Joaquin looked at you in confusion, "What is happening?"

You let out a sarcastic chuckle. Sam let out a weary sigh and responded with a simple, "Okay, then. We're gonna go see Zemo."

"Okay? Sam! He's- oh my god you guys are, once again, way too nonchalant about all this. He's talking about meeting up with fucking Zemo!", you glowered with a hand gesturing towards Bucky.

Joaquin's eyes widened. "The same Zemo who-" "Who broke my family apart? Yeah. Because of whom my dad, Bucky and Steve almost killed each other? Yes!", you answered his question with fake excitement.

"Holy shit. Are you okay, man?", Joaquin asked Bucky in a distressed tone. Bucky shot Joaquin a glare and averted his gaze with a guilty look on his face.

Sam let out an agitated sigh and made his way over to the car. You stood there with an incredulous look on your face and stared Bucky down. He turned around and winced at the look on your face.

"Barnes, you better have an explanation for this."

Bucky let out an exhausted sigh, "Kid, I promise I'm doing this after considering a lotta things. I swear, if he does anything stupid, I'm killing him myself. Please, trust me one more time."

Your anger melted away at his sincere request. You trusted him, you were just spooked out at how he was the one to suggest working with Zemo. You were worried especially for Bucky.

"Buck, I trust you. It's him that I don't trust. I'm worried about you, because if he tries some shit this time around...", you trailed off and furrowed your eyebrows. Bucky nodded, "Yeah, I understand. Thanks for trusting me again", he patted your shoulder. Bucky turned to face Joaquin and quipped, "Tell your boyfriend to keep his comments to himself."

You and Joaquin widened your eyes. His face was a bright shade of red, eyes lowered and his hand massaging his neck. You were sure you were sweating.

"My WHO?!", you sputtered at Bucky who was already walking away from you two. You Joaquin were left standing awkwardly before you you two fast-walked to follow Sam and Bucky, maintaining a safe distance between each other.

You were about to have an interesting few weeks.

-

AN: i am soooo sorry for the delay! I was on a vacation and didn't get time to write. I know this one didn't have many moments between out favorite duo but it was kind of a story-filled chapter anyway. And i'm sorry if Matt is ooc!

Also, based on the little interaction with Walker, we are slowly getting into Reader's life before she joined Sam and I can finally project my hatred for Walker through Reader, hehe. Please like and reblog!

[fangirlwriting-stories]

Stanley Pines’ Quick and Easy Guide for how to Avert an Apocalypse

Masterlist

Chapter Three:

It’s nighttime when Stan wakes up the first time, but not by choice.  Instead, he immediately runs for the bathroom, yanks open the toilet lid, and once again dry heaves over the bowl.

Sleep does not seem to have done him good.  His head is killing him, he feels faint and weak like Ford warned about, and he’s definitely got that fever.  He plans to stay in the bathroom for a half hour or so, just until he feels less nauseous, but he ends up falling asleep slumped against the wall opposite the toilet.  He’s woken the following morning to Ford shaking his shoulder.

His face looks a strange kind of concerned that Stan can’t remember seeing from him in ages.

“Hey,” Stan says, shaking his head a couple times to get some awareness back into it.  “You need something?”

“Did you fall asleep here?” Ford asks.

“I mean, not by choice,” Stan says.  “Hang on.”

He braces himself against the toilet to pull himself to his feet and takes stock.  Headache isn’t any worse than it was yesterday.  The weakness is a little better after sleeping, though the fever doesn’t feel much better.

“Alright,” he says, smacking his hands together.  “Grocery shopping, then?”

Ford stares at him.

“What?”

“You’re sick.”

“Yeah, that’s been established,” Stan says.  “So are we going grocery shopping?”

“You’re not going anywhere.  You’re staying here and resting.”

Stan barks out a laugh.  “Because of a headache and nausea?  Come on, Poindexter, you act like I’m on death’s door.”  If he could run for his life with the flu, like he had in his first winter homeless, or if he could beat up Rico’s goons with a stab wound, like he had in New Mexico, or if he could handle a week of an apocalypse, period, he could do a little grocery shopping with food poisoning symptoms.  There isn’t even anyone trying to kill him this time.

“But—”

“Look, don’t worry about it.  Just give me a pair of sunglasses and a bowl to carry around and I’ll be good to go.”

Ford looks a little disturbed at that, and Stan can’t figure out why.  He’s been through far worse than this, and he’s on a time crunch here— well, not that Ford knows that.

Unless— maybe Ford doesn’t want to go with him, which is fair.  Stan will probably be around a lot more than Ford wants him to be for the next nine days, but given the fact that Ford doesn’t know anything that’s coming, Stan feels hesitant to leave him alone.

“You need to eat something,” Ford says.

“I ate yesterday,” Stan says, waving him off.  “I’m good.”

“You threw up what you ate yesterday!”

“Exactly, so I shouldn’t eat more,” Stan says.  “We going or not?”

“I— no, you’re not.  I’m going alone.”

Stan narrows his eyes.  More than just a dumb idea, it looks like one that Ford hates.  He’s looking away and fidgeting with his extra fingers, which he always does when he’s nervous about something.

“You don’t look like you want to do that,” Stan says slowly, watching Ford’s face.

Ford hunches over, wrings his wrists.  He’s got a look in his eye like he’s talking to someone he knows has it out for him, and he doesn’t think he can lie well enough to get away.  He mutters so quietly that Stan has to strain to make it out, “He says they’re watching me.”

Uh.  Okay.

“He?” Stan says warily, wondering if that refers to Bill, or someone else.

That’s clearly the wrong thing to say, because Ford turns that paranoid look right on him.

Stan instantly holds up his hands.  “Okay, nevermind.  Look, what if I come along and look out for anyone watching you, okay?  You can handle all the actual grocery shopping stuff, and I’ll just… keep a lookout.”

Some kind of desperate relief enters Ford’s eyes, and he starts nodding before he even seems to realize he’s doing it.

“Okay,” Stan says, dropping his hands to his side slowly.  “Sounds like a plan.  “I saw the grocery store on the way in, do you want me to drive us there?”

Ford hesitates for a second, then nods again.

“Cool,” Stan says, pulling his keys out of his jacket pocket.  “Let’s hit it then.  You’ve got those sunglasses?”

Ford opens his mouth, then pauses, then winces.

“What?” Stan asks.

“I— sorry,” Ford says, and Stan blinks.  “I know how hypocritical this will sound.  But I think you should shower first, Stanley.”

Stan doesn’t say anything for a second as the words process in his head, and once they do, he looks away.  “Uh, yeah,” he mutters.  “Probably a good idea.”

It’s been awhile since he was actually ashamed of his general state.  No one in the apocalypse gave a shit because they weren’t doing much better, and before that he was too busy being on the run for his life from Rico and his goons to give a shit what he smelled like.  But it was definitely noticed by the people in the convenience store yesterday, and though they’re strangers, Ford is Ford, and Stan used to be the one forcing him to take a shower at least once a week.

“It’s upstairs,” Ford says, rather than linger on the awkwardness.  “I’ll show you.”

So Stan follows Ford back through the living room and towards the entryway from yesterday, where they go up a set of stairs across from the kitchen.  Ford leads them to a bathroom on the second floor, which is larger and nicer than Stan would have expected.  There’s a bathtub against the far wall, and a shelf attached to the wall next to it with towels.

“There’s shampoo inside the shower,” Ford says, stepping back into the hallway and letting Stan through.  “I’m going to go check the locks to make sure they’ll be good while we’re gone.”

“Or,” Stan counters, giving Ford a look that he tries to make come off as exasperated instead of concerned.  “You could go pay those bills, before whatever mailman Gravity Falls has stops driving up here due to the blizzard you say is coming?”

Ford hesitates.

“Very sick,” Stan says, forcing a couple coughs into his elbow.  “Don’t want to be up here in a blizzard without heat.”

Ford gives him a deadpan look, but nods.  “Fine.”

“Cool.  See you downstairs when I’m done.”  Stan shuts the door.

He makes quick work of his clothes, because once he actually starts to take them off, he realizes how disgusting they feel on his skin.  He’s not going to enjoy having to put them back on.

For now, though, he just climbs into the shower and turns the water on.

Okay.

Okay maybe Ford was onto something.

The hot water hitting his back feels better than the couch did last night, and that’s saying something, because Stan is pretty sure that couch is magic.

“Fuck,” he groans, tipping his head back into the water stream.  He ends up standing for what has to be at least ten minutes and lets the hot water soothe muscles he hadn’t even realized were aching.

Eventually, he remembers Ford is waiting downstairs and grabs the shampoo, sitting on a rack that’s hanging off the showerhead.  He scrubs his hair until his hands come through without dirt or grease sticking to them, and then scrubs the rest of his body down with his hands until it’s practically raw.

While doing so, part of his arm starts stinging, and he finds the cut Rico gave him, during their knife fight that feels like it happened years ago.  And, well, he should probably wash that, so he ignores the sting and scrubs at it until he’s not worried about it getting infected anymore.

He stands for probably too long under the hot water after he’s done, but eventually shuts the water off.  He’s not looking forward to putting his clothes back on.  If he wasn’t still nauseous and a little weak in the knees, he’d feel like a million bucks.  He doubts putting those clothes back on is going to help.

But to his surprise, when he steps out of the bathtub Ford’s left a change of clothes on top of the toilet, a long sleeved gray shirt, a sweatshirt, and a pair of sweatpants.  Before Stan can even consider how he feels about Ford loaning him clothes, he glances around to look for his jacket, and finds his old clothes are gone.

Stan grabs the loaned clothes and throws them on as quickly as he can, then tosses the sweatshirt over his arm and all but runs out the bathroom door and down the steps.

“Ford!” he yells, running for the steps.  “Hey, you didn’t put my jacket in the wash, did you?”

“No,” Ford calls back, sounding like he’s back in the kitchen.  “We can do that when we get home.”

Stan slows down with a sigh of relief, and makes his way down to the kitchen.  Sure enough, his jacket is sitting with his other clothes on top of a chair.  Ford’s putting what looks like a couple checks into envelopes, meaning he is actually paying those bills, which is good.

Stan picks up his jacket and sets it down on the table, then puts the sweatshirt down next to it.  It says BMU, and looks very much like a college sweatshirt, which makes something in Stan’s chest loosen.  At least his mistake hadn’t completely ruined Ford’s future.

…Though it’s not like “apocalypse-starter” is a great place to end up.

The sweatshirt does have one glaring problem though, that being that it doesn’t have any pockets.  Stan doesn’t want to wear his knuckle dusters in public, but it’s not like he can leave them behind.  And there’s no way he’s leaving the picture of him and Ford behind.  That thing followed him through the apocalypse, it stays on his person.

So after a second, Stan picks up the filthy, tattered jacket and slips it on.  The fact that it’s not going on top of other dirty clothes makes it feel a little better, and he can still wash it when they get back.

Ford gives him a look, and though he doesn’t comment, the look seems like he’s offended somehow.  Maybe he thinks Stan disapproves of his college or something?  Stan can’t imagine why he would.  He doesn’t even know what “BMU” stands for.

Eventually Ford moves on though, and stands as he picks up the envelopes with the checks in them.  “You ready?”

Stan nods, and as they step towards the car, Ford hands Stan a pair of sunglasses, and picks up a mixing bowl sitting on the counter.

Stan wears the sunglasses, but Ford ends up holding the bowl in the passenger seat, in case Stan needs to pull over quickly.  His stomach isn’t feeling amazing, but he hasn’t dry heaved yet this morning, and the shower helped too.  Maybe his stomach finally got the message that there isn’t anything in there.

Ford seems comfortable enough as they drive, though he doesn’t say much, not even about the frankly disgusting state of the car (even if it was worse off during the apocalypse).  He tells Stan about how far it is to the town, but otherwise just looks out the window, eyes darting back and forth searching for who knows what.  Stan’s not sure what Ford sees in the woods that he can’t see, but whatever it is, it’s definitely freaking him out.

Stan’s not sure what to say that might help him feel better, so eventually, he just keeps his focus on the road and keeps an eye out for anything obviously suspicious, like he told Ford he would.

Unfortunately, all the tension and paranoid stress in the car makes the drive painfully awkward.  Stan runs through a couple potential icebreakers just to give his brain something to do.

“So, how’s the ‘hermit in the woods’ life treating ya?”

“Hey, does Pa still hate my guts then?”

…“Hey, do you still hate my guts then?”

“You know, I thought I saw a two-headed deer in the woods the other day.  Crazy trick of the light, huh?”

Oh, forget it.  The world is doomed.

Ford speaks as they come up on a hill that Stan thinks he remembers as being close to the edge of town.

“We’re almost there.  Grocery store is on the left side of this street.”

“I remember,” Stan says with a nod.  He turns the corner, and pulls onto the town’s Main Street.  There’s a small parking lot attached to the grocery store, and Stan pulls into it.  He aims for one of the handicap spots, but before he can reach one, Ford reaches across the car and whacks him on the arm.

“Hey, what?”

“I know what you’re thinking, and we don’t need a handicap spot,” Ford says.

“Oh come on,” Stan says, “it’s not like anyone else is using it!  Both of them are empty!”

“That’s not the point of handicapped spots,” Ford says, giving him a disapproving look.

Stan grumbles under his breath, but changes course and pulls into a regular spot.  During the panicked looting throughout the first couple days of the apocalypse, Stan can’t think of a single person who’d given a shit about handicapped parking spaces.

He lets it go this time, and turns off the Stanley mobile.  Ford’s gaze is already darting around nervously, and Stan gives him what he hopes is a reassuring pat on the shoulder before stepping out of the car.  Ford steps out after him, and moves immediately to stand next to Stan as they start across the parking lot.

The grocery store looks small, which is unsurprising given the general size of Gravity Falls. There's a handful of shopping carts just inside the doors, and Ford rushes in to grab one. With the look in his eyes, it seems as though he’d been expected someone to steal them all before he could get to one.

“Okay—” Stan starts, before cutting himself off, and ultimately deciding not to acknowledge that.  He needs to pick his battles.  They walk in through the sliding doors.  “Whadda we need, then?  What’s left at the house?”

“Uh,” Ford says, looking around the store like he’s trying to scrutinize it for flaws.  “Not much?”

“Gotcha.”  Stan gives the store a quick once-over for anyone suspicious.  Unsurprisingly, there’s no immediate red flags, so he starts towards the first row and slips a jar of peanut butter into his jacket.

“Stanley.”

Stan glances back over to find Ford glaring at him.  “What?”

“Put it in the cart,” Ford hisses, gesturing down at it.  “You can’t just take things.”

Stan looks back at the peanut butter, a little surprised.  He almost hadn’t realized that’s what he was doing.  Right.  Fully functional grocery store in a fully functional society, in a tiny rural town that probably doesn’t expect much petty theft.  Apocalyptic raids also aren’t considered normal behavior yet.  Actually, that could work in his favor…

But for now, Stan puts the peanut butter in the cart with a sheepish smile.  Ford huffs in irritation, but steps forward to grab other groceries.  Stan can’t help but notice Ford puts a box of extra-sugary cereal next to the plain Cheerios he prefers.  He decides not to comment on this.  After all, their agreement is that while Ford collects groceries, Stan keeps an eye on the other customers in the store.  So, he pushes past the slight haze in his vision and gazes around.

There’s a red-headed woman with cat earrings picking up some flour at the end of the aisle.  A woman who looks like she’s there with her son is pulling said son away from a box of cookies, saying “Get out, get out,” in an exasperated tone.  There’s another young boy tugging on his father’s sleeve, looking like he wants to throw him the egg he’s holding like a baseball.  That’s not going to go well.  Overall, they seem fairly harmless, but Stan knows better than to let his guard down so easily.  It’s unfortunate Ford understands this now too.

They reach the end of the aisle when Stan’s eye is drawn to a man who wasn’t visible from the entrance.  He’s on the other side of the store, looking at the cantaloupes and muttering, looking almost as paranoid as Ford’s been acting.  He’s not moving towards them, just pulling on the sleeves of the red cloak he’s wearing and whispering something to himself.

Well, Stan’s goal on being lookout had been to show Ford there isn’t anything to worry about, but Stan’s not liking the vibes on that guy.  He’s about to turn and suggest that Ford go look for some noodles, when he sees Ford also staring directly at the guy, wide-eyed and panicked.

“Hey,” Stan says.  Ford jerks around to face him, startled, like he’s just remembered Stan is there.

“I got eyes on him,” Stan continues, and he nods down the aisle they’re now standing in front of.  “Go get stuff for pasta.”

Ford looks back at the man, and for a second seems like he wants to walk over to him, though that can’t be right.  Besides, what would the point of lookout be if Ford just walks up to the first crazy guy they see?  Then Ford ducks his head as if ashamed and quickly moves into the next aisle, out of sight.  Stan looks after him for a second, then back at the man on the other side of the store.  Maybe Ford said something rude to him one time?  He has always been bad at letting that stuff go.

Either way, Stan keeps an eye on the man as he gathers some fruit, though that’s more difficult than usual.  Even if he's still feeling nauseous, his mouth is watering at all the apples, strawberries, oranges, and more just… sitting out, ripe for taking.  The fact that Stan is going to actually pay for them is an insane thought.  He slips a couple apples and oranges into his jacket, just to keep the balance of the world in check.

He tries to steer clear of the muttering man along with everyone else, but at some point the man turns and looks right at him.  Both of their eyes widen, and Stan tries to decide if he can take him despite the slight shake in his legs.  But before he gets a chance to figure it out, the man turns to walk quickly in another direction.  Stan does the same.  He doesn’t want to stick around and find out what he wants, and he also doesn’t want to let him find Ford.

He meets up with Ford in front of the dairy section; Ford’s looking around again like someone’s going to steal the milk he’s holding, and Stan decides he’s not going to leave him to go off alone again.

“Hey,” he says, drawing Ford’s jumpy gaze, but thankfully not making him drop the milk.  “I got fruit.”

“Thanks,” Ford says.  Stan can hear him fighting to keep his voice level.  “I want to get some vegetables too, things for salad.  Do you still hate carrots?”

“I don’t hate nothin’ anymore,” Stan says.  Living on the streets beats a lot of sensitivities out of you, like food preferences or ‘allergies’.  “Get whatever you want.”

“You don’t hate anything.  Grammar,” Ford mutters, and Stan rolls his eyes.  “We should also stock up on toilet paper and toothpaste and shampoo.  Since we don’t know how long the blizzard will last.  Has your nose been bothering you at all?  Do we need kleenex?”

Stan shakes his head.  “Nah, I’m good.”

Ford nods to himself, then pauses like he’s remembering something.  “Let me know if you need to go back and rest, okay?” he says, turning back to Stan.  “I can come back later if I need to.”

“What?”

“You’re still sick?” Ford says, like that should mean something.

“Oh, come on, I’m fine,” Stan says, rolling his eyes.  Well, his head is killing him and his legs are shaking a little, but none of that is new.

Ford gives him a once-over.  “You don’t look fine,” he says.

“I can push through a little sickness, Ford, geez,” Stan says.  “We gettin’ ice cream or what?”

Ford doesn’t say anything, just looks at him for a minute.  He almost seems like he’s concerned, which is honestly taking it a little too far.  Stan isn’t worth that.  Ford is the one worth pulling away from homework, or sci-fi novels, or nerdy weirdness research when he gets sick— he needs a sharp mind.  Nobody has to think that way about Stan.  A little food poisoning won’t stop him.  Especially not now, when he knows how to throw a punch whether the room is spinning or not.

Eventually, Ford must realize this, because he turns away and walks down the aisle a little bit to grab a tub of ice cream.  Chocolate, which is weird, because it’s Stan’s favorite, and he doesn’t like it that much.  Stan would steal another tub for him, but the ice cream would be liable to melt tucked up inside his jacket.  So instead he looks around for something else.  Across the aisle is a bottle of caramel topping.  And while Stan used to prefer to overload on chocolate by adding even more chocolate sauce, Ford tends to enjoy it.

Stan pauses for a moment, staring at it.  When was the last time he was grabbing Ford’s favorites at a grocery store?  He remembers tons of times he’d done it as kids.  The two of them had often made a game of it, trying to sneak each other’s favorites into the cart when Ma wasn’t looking, and hoping she bought them instead of taking them out of the cart when they inevitably couldn’t afford them.  Now that Stan thinks back, Ma probably knew exactly what they were doing, and just took pity on them one too many times.  But they’d stopped going to the store as they’d grown older, and gotten too old for games like that.

Stan never forgot Ford’s favorites, though.  He wonders if Ford still knows his.

He thinks back on the sugary cereal and a lump builds in his throat.  He stubbornly swallows it.  He glances around as he crosses the aisle, and when no one’s looking, tucks the caramel topping into his jacket next to the oranges.

A prickle rises on the back of his neck, and Stan spins around again, pulling the bottle back out of his jacket.  “Hey, I just don’t have a cart, I swear I’m gonna pay for this—”

No one’s there.

That is not a good sign.

Stan’s instincts don’t mislead him like that.  He’s had ten years of honing and perfecting them as his best tool to keep him alive.  If they tell him something is up, something is up, period.  If he can’t see anything obviously wrong, that means something is very wrong.

They need to get out of here now.

Stan makes his way quickly over to Ford.  “Hey, are we ready to hit the road?” he says, trying to keep his voice level now.

Ford glances back at him with a knowing glance.  “I told you to tell me if you couldn’t do this.”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry, look, do we need anything else?”

“I wanted to get some chicken and some Pitt Cola,” Ford says.  “But that’s it.”

The meat is in the freezer section close to the checkout, and soda is along the way.  That’s fine.

Stan sweeps his gaze around as they walk that way, looking for the reason his hair is standing on end.  He hasn’t found it by the time Ford puts several packages of chicken breast in the cart.

Stan's nerves are on edge as they head for the checkout and stay alert during the agonizingly slow process of scanning, paying, bagging, and walking to the car (which would have been shorter if they parked in handicap).

Stan helps Ford put the groceries in the trunk, still scanning the parking lot.  He walks him back to the door despite Ford’s weird looks, turns to walk back around the car— to see Dundgren lining up his gun to Ford's head from the shadows.

“Hey, Ford, check the glove box, would ya?”  Stan grabs the first excuse he can think of.  “I think I got an extra pair of shades in there— uh, here, you can have these back!  Shades are either there or in the back seat, keep lookin’ till you find ‘em, ‘kay?”

Ford gives him another weird look, but says, “Alright?” and ducks his head just out of Dundgren’s line of fire to look inside the glove box.

“Keep lookin’,” Stan calls over his shoulder.  “I’m gonna take the cart back.”

He walks fast towards Dundgren, and Lolph comes into view behind him.  Stan completely disregards the inside of the store, and walks with confidence until he puts himself right in between the car and Dundgren and Lolph.  He does not move, just stands there and stares them down.

Lolph scoffs, like Stan’s being ridiculous, and maybe he is.  So Stan pushes the cart over towards them, keeping it in front of his body as the best shield he’s got access to right now.

Dundgren doesn’t lower his gun from being aimed at the Stanley mobile as Stan approaches, but he does shift his gaze up to meet him.

“You should have known better than to try something this stupid,” Lolph says behind him, standing up straighter and crossing his arms.

“Oh, yeah?  I think you should have known I’d try something this stupid,” Stan says, raising an eyebrow.  “How much recon did you do?  Because it clearly wasn’t enough.”

Dundgren moves the gun threateningly, but Stan isn’t worried.  If they wanted to kill him, they’d have done it while he was walking over here.  They have to keep aiming at the Stanley mobile in case Ford moves his head.  But to hit him, they would have to kill Stan first, and that would alert Ford that something’s going on.

Still, he lowers his hands from the cart, discreetly slipping his fingers through the knuckle dusters in his pocket.  It’d be stupid not to.

“We thought that maybe the end of the world might make you not take such an unbelievably stupid risk,” Lolph snaps, sounding irritated that Stan’s still not looking at him.

Stan does respond to him, though; a slight smirk and a shrug.  “Always been a gamblin’ man.”

“Listen,” Dundgren says.  “I understand what you’re trying to do, but it’s not going to work.”

“Why, because you failed?” Stan asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I don’t think you understand how many times we tried,” Dundgren says, a definitely fake gentleness in his voice.

“Did you ever even manage to get inside the house?”

No response.

“Well, sounds like I’ve already got a leg up, then,” Stan says.  “You should back off and let me try.”

“There’s too much risk if you get things wrong,” Dundgren says.  “If your brother finds out what’s going on—”

“I’m not going to tell him,” Stan says.  “I’m not that stupid.  How would that even go?  ‘Hey bro, guess what, I’m from a future where you ended the whole world.  You wouldn’t happen to know why that is, huh?’  He’d stare at me like I was crazy.”

Dundgren and Lolph exchange a look, and Stan is definitely going to have to figure out what that means later, but for now, he slams the shopping cart forward into Dundgren’s stomach, eliciting a small “oof” and knocking the gun into the cart.

He reaches in and grabs it before they can process what happened, then points it right at Lolph, who’s got the other gun already aimed at him.

Stan sees Dundgren move the shopping cart behind them all and then look around, likely looking to see if anyone is watching them.  Stan can let him worry about that part, then.  He doesn’t seem to react in any way that indicates someone is, so Stan doesn’t move.

“Okay,” he says lowly.  “So how about we both put these down now?”

“Or what?” Lolph says, like an idiot.

Stan considers for a moment, and decides to take a gamble.  He turns the gun in his hands and presses it against the side of his own head.

Both of them react exactly how Stan expects them to— instant panic.  They do need him that badly.

Stan steps a couple steps back, out of their reach but still hidden behind the brick side of the grocery store.

“That’s what I thought,” Stan says.  “So are you going to let me try, then?”

Dundgren looks at Stan for a long moment, and Stan can’t read what he’s thinking.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally.  “But I can’t.”

He looks at Lolph, and Stan has just a moment to wonder what that means before Lolph disappears, and reappears a second later right next to Stan.  He grabs the gun before Stan can process this, and disappears again.

Then he appears on Stan’s other side, and Stan jerks aside just in time to avoid a fist to the head.

He aims a swing back at Lolph, but Lolph vanishes before his fist can connect, and reappears to kick Stan in the back.

Stan stumbles forward and bites down a cry of pain, then dodges Lolph reappearing in front of him and aiming another fist for his head.

Okay, he needs to get rid of that stupid time tape.

Stan moves towards Dundgren, then makes a show of dodging to the side when Lolph appears again.

He does both things a second time to get Lolph comfortable with the pattern.  Then, when he moves forward the third time and Lolph appears to his left, Stan braces himself and takes the punch to his cheek.

His head all but splits open, but he forces himself forward anyway, taking in Dundgren’s surprised eyes and landing a kick right between his legs.

Dundgren hunches over with a surprised and pained gasp, and when Lolph turns to face him, Stan reaches forward and snatches the time tape out of his hand.

When Lolph turns to try and grab it back, Stan jerks to the side and swipes Dundgren’s off his belt, then hurls them both at the ground and stomps on them several times, until they’re both sparking and thoroughly broken.

He stumbles to lean back against the store and press a hand to his head, pushing out a couple of pained breaths and forcing his legs to stay upright under him.  The adrenaline is wearing off, and now Stan’s really regretting that punch to the head.

“What… what have you done?” Dundgren whispers.

Stan turns back to face them and finds them both staring down at the time tapes in shock.

“You can’t… we don’t have the tools to fix these,” Lolph says.

“Good,” Stan says.  “That’s what I was hoping.”

“But you didn’t— you can’t— what are we supposed to do now?” Lolph asks, turning desperately to Dundgren.

“Don’t worry,” Stan says, pushing himself off the wall.  “You can sleep on it.  Left hook!”

…

Ford isn’t looking in the glove box or the backseat when Stan gets back to the car.  Instead, he’s staring down at his lap, and a couple items in it.

He looks contemplative enough that Stan doesn’t bother with an apology and excuse why putting the cart back took so long.  Instead, he just climbs into the car and looks over at what Ford’s looking at.

He’s holding Stan’s 2-weeks-newer pair of knuckle dusters, a Grifter (the Grime Lifter!), and the picture that was taped to the back of the visor.

“Uh, you good Sixer?” Stan asks, pulling the door shut.

“Stanley,” Ford says.  His voice is shakier than Stan would have expected.  “Why does it look like you’re living out of your car?”

Oh, yeah.  Stan hadn’t really considered it when he saw a gun pointed at Ford’s head, but he did kind of give him free reign to poke around his car, huh.

But right now Stan’s head is still screaming at him from the punch, and the fight didn’t help how exhausted he feels, so he just sighs.

“Because I am,” he says.  He pulls his keys out and starts the car.

“Stanley,” Ford says, turning to face him with a pained expression.  “Why didn’t you—”

“This is for you,” Stan cuts him off, pulling the caramel topping out of his jacket and passing him over to Ford.

“What are you— I didn’t pay for this.  You stole it, didn’t you?”

“I stole a bunch,” Stan says.  He reaches inside and pulls out the apples and oranges too, now probably more than a little bruised from getting tossed around during the fight.

“Stanley,” Ford says, but it doesn’t really sound as harsh and judgmental as it would have at the beginning of this trip, which is what Stan had been hoping for.  Instead it just sounds upset and a little pitying.  Dammit.

“Let’s go home,” Stan says.  “Check if the mailman has picked up your bills yet.”

“Stanley.  We need to talk about this.”

“We really don’t,” Stan says.  “We have bigger fish to fry.”

“No, we don’t!  What fish?  How long have you been living in your car?”

Stan turns to face him at that, baffled.  “You were there.”

Ford looks at him for a second, puzzled, and then his eyes go wide.  He looks back down at the items in his lap.

“But— no,” he says, sounding confused.  “He— he said—” he stops.

“Who said what?” Stan asks.  “Pa?”

Ford, however, doesn’t answer, and instead gets very quiet and looks down at his lap again.

Stan looks at him for a second, then sighs.

“Honestly Ford, don’t worry about it,” he says.  “It’s nothing I didn’t do to myself.  Let’s just head back.”

He shifts the car into gear and pulls away from the parking spot.  He can feel Ford’s gaze on him, but he ignores it until he feels Ford look away again.

The sunglasses help a little, but the drive back is still murder on his pounding head.  Stan’s gotten good at hiding when he’s in pain, so he’s sure Ford doesn’t notice.  He does, however, swerve a couple of times on the road, and Ford definitely notices that, even if he doesn’t say anything.  By the time they get back to the house, he feels about ready to collapse.  Thankfully the mail has been taken, meaning they don’t have to head back into town to make sure they’re not going to lose power in the middle of whatever blizzard is coming.  

Stan helps Ford carry the bags of groceries in and puts them all away, learning the layout of the kitchen as he does.  Ford doesn’t say much throughout.

Once they finish putting stuff away, Stan says he’s going to lay down and retreats back to the guest room with the fantastic couch.

So.  Whether it was Bill who said it or not, someone is actually watching Ford, though it’s not the townspeople like Ford thinks.  It’s going to be hard to convince Ford he’s being paranoid if someone really is out to get him.  Trying to kill him, no less.  Maybe Stan expected these guys to show up at some point, and maybe he took the time travel element out, but that doesn’t mean things aren’t going to be more difficult now.

They can’t just stay cooped up in the house, isolated.  Well, they can because there’s a blizzard coming, but after that it’s a bad idea.  If Stan’s trying to break Ford out of a con, keeping him isolated in the woods isn’t a good choice.

But leaving the house doesn’t seem like a great idea either when there will be two time travelers actively trying to kill him.

Stan groans and shrugs his jacket off.  He pulls out the photo of him and Ford and his knuckle dusters, sets both on the couch, and hangs the jacket on the door handle.

Dang it.  He forgot the BMU sweatshirt in the kitchen.  He should probably put his jacket and clothes into the wash too, he doesn’t have any spare outfits.

He sighs, takes a deep breath, and prepares himself to push through his screaming headache a little while longer.  He reaches down and grabs his jacket, and heads back into the kitchen.  Ford is putting together a bunch of sandwich ingredients on the counter, but he must hear Stan walk in, because he turns to face him.

“Okay, seriously, go lay down,” Ford says, pointing behind them both.  “How hard is it to get you to rest when you’re sick?”

“Not enjoying a taste of your own medicine, then, Poindexter?” Stan says with a smirk.  Ford crosses his arms and doesn’t reply.

“Relax, I’m here to grab the clean sweatshirt you loaned me,” he says, picking up the BMU sweatshirt and draping it over his free arm.  “I’m gonna do some laundry and then go rest or whatever.  Where’s your laundry room?”

“So it’s only good enough for you when we’re not in public, then,” Ford mutters, completely ignoring Stan’s question.

“Uh.  What?”

Ford glares down at the table.  “Nothing,” he says.  “Laundry room is next to the bathroom, behind the living room.”

“Okay, no seriously, what,” Stan says, because he doesn’t have enough time to just let comments like that slide.  He’s been here over a day now and barely made any progress.  “What’s the ‘only good enough in private’ comment?”

“Well I know it’s not the greatest college in the world,” Ford snaps, gesturing at the sweatshirt.  “You don’t have to rub it in.”

Stan looks down at the sweatshirt.  “So this is your college sweatshirt?” he says.  He’d guessed as much, but Ford sounds really bothered by the fact that he didn’t wear it.  Where had Ma said Ford went to college?  Back at something?  His head is pulsing too hard to think of it.

“Obviously,” Ford says, rolling his eyes.  “What did you think BMU meant?”

“Big Majestic Unicorns,” Stan deadpans, as the first thing that pops into his head, in a hope to ease some of the tension.  It doesn’t work.

He sighs, and takes a minute to rub his forehead, which despite what he hopes does not help his headache.  “Look, Ford, I wore my jacket to the store because it’s easier to steal or hide stuff if you have pockets to shove it into.  I don’t give a shit where you went to college.”

Ford levels a gaze of cool fury at him.

“Uh, wait, no, that’s not what I meant,” Stan stammers, holding up his hands.  “I— shit, Ford, I didn’t even go to college.  I’m not trying to pass down some statement of judgement, or whatever.  I think it’s amazing that you even went.  You’re already leagues smarter than I am, we both know that, you don’t have to prove it to me.”

Ford sighs, and turns to look back at the sandwich ingredients he’s set up on the counter.  “Whatever,” he says.  “Laundry room’s where I said it is.”

Stan picks up his dirty clothes, still sitting on the chair, kicking himself.  He can’t afford to make stupid mistakes like that, he’s gonna lose enough time with this stupid food poisoning.

He puts on the BMU sweatshirt before he walks to the laundry room, but Ford’s turned around at that point, so Stan’s not sure he even sees it.

[sequinsmile-x]

Stained Glass Windows - Chapter Eighty Two

Life was complicated, but they wouldn't have it any other way.

-x-

Hi besties,

Well would you look at that, an update within a month!! Still not as quickly as I'd like to update going forward but an improvement haha

I've somehow ended up writing two Emily/JJ heart to hearts back to back...

As always, let me know what you think! <3

-x-

Words: 2.3k

A full list of warnings for the fic can be found on the Series Master List.

Read over on Ao3, or below the cut

Emily had forgotten the exhaustion and discomfort that came with being 30 weeks pregnant. All the energy that came with the second trimester was long gone, and she still had 10 weeks to go. It was making her irritable, sparks flicking through her veins at all times, just ready to catch alight. Only Lily and Jack were entirely immune to it, and Aaron was more often than not, although he did occasionally do something to annoy her to the point where she yelled or cried. She knew on some level he preferred it when she yelled at him - she did too - because her tears had never been something he’d been able to handle well, something that was almost guaranteed to make him emotional too. 

She’s already irritated when she gets to her office, out of breath and annoyed at the lingering smell of someone’s breakfast sandwich out in the bullpen, so she knows that’s why her first reaction to the invitation she finds on her desk is anger. It has her leaving her office as quickly as she entered it, the pink and blue card clutched in her hand as she tells her team she’s pushing back their briefing by 30 minutes, well aware she’d be too distracted to get through it if she didn’t figure out what the hell was going on first. 

She just barely remembers to be polite enough to knock on Penelope’s office door before she walks in, the invitation held up in her hand. 

“Pen, what the hell is a baby sprinkle?” She asks, holding instead of greeting her, her anger turning into confusion since she’d left her own office, the short trip in the elevator enough to calm her down a little, “And why am I apparently having one next month?” 

“It’s like a baby shower,” Penelope says as she turns in her chair to face her, smiling widely, her excitement written across her face, “But for your second baby, so you don’t need as much as last time. It’s a sprinkle, not a shower.”

“A sprinkle?” Emily asks disbelievingly as she rests her hand on her bump and stares at her friend for a moment. Eventually, she pinches the bridge of her nose. “I almost wish I hadn’t asked,” she blows out a breath. “That still doesn’t answer why I’m having one, and why this invitation is the first I’m hearing of it.”

Penelope’s smile drops her face, seemingly catching up on the fact Emily wasn’t exactly delighted at the thought of it all, “I thought it would be a nice surprise,” she says, wincing as she pulls off her headset, “Oh, I’ve overstepped again haven’t I? Like when I reached out to your dad last time-”

“Pen.” 

“Why would I bring up my past crimes?” Penelope mutters to herself, and she forces a smile, “I just wanted to take something off your plate.” 

“I wasn’t even aware that this was on my plate,” Emily exclaims, “I still have everything from when Lily was a baby. She’s not even two yet, all her newborn stuff is in the loft waiting for Aaron to bring it down.”

“I know,” Penelope says, pouting, “But what if baby Hotchniss number two is a boy?” 

Emily raises her eyebrow at her, “Baby Hotchniss?” She asks, putting her hand up when Penelope opens her mouth to explain, “You know what, I don’t need to know,” she says, sighing when she realises she’s trapped, that she can’t explain why she doesn’t need the ‘sprinkle’ without revealing that she and Aaron knew that they were having another girl. It was something just between the two of them, a secret they’d both been able to keep, and she was determined to keep it that way, where possible. “Fine,” she says, fighting a smile when Penelope squeals in response, “But I don’t want it to be huge. I don’t need anything.” 

“Of course, I’ve already invited the team - Reid was delighted at the idea of cupcakes, not so much by the idea of the games - and I wondered if you might want Haley to come too? I know you’re kind of friends now.” 

She smiles politely, the first flicker of anxiety in her gut, but she knows Penelope won’t notice, already too busy planning what Emily was sure would be a full-blown baby shower, not a sprinkle. “You’ve already invited them all?” 

Penelope hums, “All of them have RSVPed already,” she furrows her brows, “Except JJ, she said something about having to check with Will to see if they are away visiting his mom that weekend, which is strange because she never mentioned it before that.” 

Emily presses her lips together and nods, her hand on her belly as the baby moves, rolling with the anxiety she thinks she must be swimming in. “She said something to me about it last week.” 

It’s a lie, one she again knows Penelope won’t see through. She and JJ hadn’t spoken properly in weeks, nothing beyond polite conversation when they were in a group setting, her friend’s smile tight whenever Emily walked through the BAU’s bullpen when she went to have lunch with Aaron, JJ’s eyes fixed on her growing belly. It made Emily feel guilty, which in itself made her feel bad because of how happy she really was, her heart seemingly swelling along with her bump. 

She missed her friend, she missed going to her for advice and being the person she went to, but she understood. She knew if she were the one in JJ’s shoes, if she was still reeling from a loss and watching her best friend’s pregnancy develop, she’d have to take a step back too.

She understood, but it didn’t make it any less heartbreaking. 

___

She blows out a shaky breath, plucking at the material of her sweater in a failed attempt to make it lay differently over her bump. It was Aaron’s, one of the biggest ones he had. She’d borrowed it, he’d say stolen, in an attempt to cover her bump, to conceal it as best as she could at this stage, but her pregnancy was still obvious - still visible for anyone who cared to look. 

She’d texted JJ and asked if she could come over, not wanting to turn up without giving her friend a chance to prepare herself, but also aware that this was a conversation best had in person. She’d left Aaron and Lily at home, had pressed a kiss against her little girl’s cheek as she left since she’d be in bed by the time she got back, and she’d headed to JJ and Will’s, determined to get past a conversation she knew wouldn’t be easy. It’s only when she’s on their porch, uselessly pulling at the material of her sweater, and she sighs, blowing out a slow, steady breath before she rings the doorbell. 

JJ answers the door almost immediately, as if she’d been waiting just on the other side, and she smiles at Emily, her eyes flicking down to her belly for a second before she looks back up at her.

“Hi,” she says, her smile tighter, “Come in.” 

“Thanks,” she replies, her fists tight by her sides as she digs her short nails into the palms of her hands so she doesn’t rest her hands on her bump, “I won’t stay for long, I promise,” she says, following JJ through to the living room, “I just wanted to talk to you about the uh…baby sprinkle.” 

She rolls her eyes as she says it, and JJ smiles, a real smile, as they sit on the couch, “Yeah, Pen handed out the invites this morning.” 

“I got invited at the same time,” Emily quips, and JJ chuckles, nodding as she does so. 

“That sounds right.” 

Emily laughs, and it fades along with her smile, her fractured friendship with her friend, the cracks having appeared through no fault of their own, seeming as damaged as ever, “If I’d have known she was doing it-”

“It’s okay, Em,” she says, her smile genuine as she looks at her bump again before she looks at her face, “I know you’d have warned me if you’d been given the chance.” 

“You don’t have to come,” she replies, “I won’t be offended, I don’t expect you to come. If it were me…” she swallows thickly, her hands in fists again as she still resists touching her stomach, not wanting to draw any more attention to it than necessary, to do anything that would feel like gloating, “I understand.” 

They both know she isn’t just talking about the party Penelope was throwing for her, but all of it. The lack of texts and check-ins. The polite smiles and small talk instead of the conversations that used to have them lose track of time, minutes turning into hours, until one, or both, of their husbands checked in on them. 

“Did I…” JJ swallows thickly, “Did I ever tell you the baby was a girl?” 

Emily looks up so quickly, unsure when her gaze had fallen to her belly in the first place, that it hurts, “No…no, you didn’t.”

JJ hums and nods, her smile shaking, “She’d be a year old soon. If…if things had been different.” 

Emily reaches out for her, grabbing her hand and squeezing, “I really wish things had been different.” 

JJ nods, wiping away a stray tear from her cheek, “Me too.” She clears her throat, “Did you and Hotch ever find out what you’re having this time?” 

She hesitates, unsure what to do - whether to tell the truth, to share the secret she and her husband had kept between them so her friend can be prepared, or to lie like she had whenever anyone else had asked. In the end, the desire to make sure JJ would be okay overrides everything else. 

“Yeah, we know-” she says, and before she can say anything else, JJ smiles at her, squeezing her hand as she cuts her off. 

“It’s a girl, isn’t it?” She says, her smile a strange mix of happy and sad, and she chuckles, the sound wet as it catches in her chest when Emily looks shocked, “I took the prolifer classes too, remember? No more keeping things from me.” 

Emily presses her lips together, trying to contain a smile that didn’t feel appropriate, and she nods, “Yeah, it’s a girl.” 

“Any name ideas?” 

She rolls her eyes as she laughs, briefly forgetting everything other than this, everything other than a conversation with her friend that she hadn’t realised she’d desperately needed. 

“We can’t agree on anything. It’s so much harder the second time around because you want to make sure it goes with the name of your other…” She drifts off, grimacing when she realises what she’s said, feeling careless and stupid for getting lost in the joy of it all for a moment, “Sorry.” 

“Hey, please don’t apologise, Em,” she says, “It’s not your fault. It’s not either of our faults.” 

“I know,” she replies, “Doesn’t make it suck any less though does it?” 

JJ shakes her head, her breath catching in her throat, “No, it doesn’t.” 

She stays a little longer, asks questions about Henry and Will, and just about anything to drag out this small bubble of normalcy she’d found with her friend. When she leaves, JJ hugs her, her hold on her tightening when the baby shifts between them, a kick that Emily knows her friend feels, before she pulls back. 

When she gets home, Emily feels wrung out, exhausted in just about every way. The house is quiet when she steps into it, strangely so given the time of day. Aaron was usually making dinner or doing some work in his home office, wholly unaware of how he would hum to himself whenever he did anything. She finds him asleep in the armchair in the living room, Lily fast asleep on his chest in her pjyamas, her mouth open and her cheek pressed against his chest as she drools on his shirt and silk tie. 

Emily eases Lily out of his arms, smiling when Aaron tightens his grip on her, grumbling as he sits somewhere between sleeping and being awake. 

“It’s just me, honey,” she says, smiling when she settles Lily against her and Aaron opens his eyes, “You must have fallen asleep.” 

He groans, “God, I didn’t realise how tired I was.” 

“I’m exhausted too,” she replies, turning her head to kiss Lily’s forehead, “I think as soon as we eat, we should go to bed.” 

“Oh crap,” he says, standing up, his eyes still bleary, “I didn’t even get started on dinner.” 

She smiles at him and kisses his cheek, “Why don’t you order in pizza? Then we can eat in bed and snuggle before we inevitably fall asleep before the sun sets.” 

He nods, “I like the sound of that.” he kisses the corner of her mouth, “How was JJ?” 

She blows out a breath, “It was…hard. But it was nice to talk to her. For a little while, it felt almost normal. I told her the baby is a girl.”

She thinks if he were any other man, he’d be annoyed. He’d barely hold back his anger at breaking their pact to keep it a secret, but he simply nods because he knows her well enough to understand she wouldn’t have told JJ unless there was a reason. 

“I’m glad you spoke to her,” he says, kissing her one more time before he steps back, “Goats cheese and pickle?” 

She smiles at the mention of her current favourite pizza toppings and she nods, “Yes, please,” she says, stamping her lips against his before she turns her attention to the still sleeping Lily in her arms, “Daddy must really love me if he is happy to order me disgusting pizza.” 

“Ordering it isn’t the problem,” he quips, pulling his phone from his pocket to put in their order and he winks at her, “It’s kissing you after you’ve eaten it that’s a true show of love.” 

[coldgoldlazarus]

I would love to hear more about the "Towers of the Archipelago" project, it reminds me of the Heroica games

Sure! And yeah, I can definitely see the resemblance, with this sorta "overworld" style map at least ^.^

I did have a more detailed version of the lighthouse island and the adjoining one, from last week, but I kinda got bogged down in details and cheating geometry to facilitate that, thus the switch to an even more reduced scale for the time being.

Towers Of The Archipelago is definitely still in the early sorta "vibes-based" stage of the idea, but it's also a coalescence of a handful of different fragmented ideas that have been floating around my head for the past several years, so there isn't a whole lot to talk about just yet, but I can still give a rundown of what there is so far.

It's pretty strongly inspired by Moon Rhapsody, a gorgeous but unfinished zeldalike game I found on itch.io a year and a half ago, (albeit without the nsfw stuff that one has,) though somehow the recent release of the first chapter of ENA: Dream BBQ had a hand in making my angle finally coalesce lol.

Probably mainly just because of this specific area in it, plus making me want it to be a first-person-adventure game for the vibes.

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Anyway, yeah, so as the big map and the name imply, picturing a big archipelago connected by bridges, where most of the islands have small villages on them; but every village has to have a big tower of some sort (lighthouse, radio tower, weather reading station, pagoda temple, factory smokestack, harbor crane, etc.) that kinda defines that town's role, in the big trade ecosystem they all have going on between them.

Lots of youkai and monsters and stuff just casually living alongside humans, (can swap between cute humanoid and full cryptid forms at will, picturing a kasa-obake being a major character) tech level is like, kinda random but leans more toward oldtimey industrial revolution level but with some like, 60s/70s computation stuff in the bigger towns?

And there's a spooky island further off from the rest that only appears at night; its village is completely empty, and its tower is a Numbers Station.

Also something something about the moon and sun being alive and watching people? Like big Luna and Celestia vibes, but more as deities than as rulers, though still don't know exactly what I wanna do with that. They'd be tied to an observatory tower and a heliography tower, respectively, though; in the big map here, the heliography tower is the one just a couple islands away from the southwest lighthouse, while I'm imagining the observatory being more toward the northwestern part of the archipelago, atop a more mountainous island.

In the more detailed map of the lighthouse and crossroads island, I included a wrench piece looping around a diagonal stretch of bridge, just to cover a gap between the pieces, but that led to the idea of like, there being these big ancient magic gates around the bridges, normally open by default, but which automatically close up as a defensive measure.

In general, the concept for the setting (islands all with their own towers) has been bugging me for A While, but I didn't have anything to do with it yet.

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But thankfully I do finally have something of an actual premise now, even if it's still pretty basic. A big storm with a tinge of something supernatural rolls in, making the normally-placid sea routes unsafe from turbulent waters, but also triggering all of the bridge gates across the entire archipelago to close at once; cutting off the islands from one-another completely.

The protagonist is a girl from the small southwest lighthouse village, and somehow she has a way to make the gates reopen even before their lockdown ends, so she either gets sent, or decides on her own, to go head out and try to get to the bottom of what's going on, and reconnect all the towns as she goes.

The real trouble with this is that I don't know what "the bottom of what's going on" entails either; I just figure in classic quest tradition it's something way over her head that she has to work her way up to meeting head-on.

Though it's probably something unrelated to the spooky disappearing Numbers Station island I mentioned earlier; that I see being just another feature of the islands, eerie and inexplicable as it may be; whereas whatever the storm brought is an outside factor.

Also given what I mentioned about youkai earlier, kinda wondering if it would be interesting to make the protagonist herself one, though I haven't settled on anything for sure yet.

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Just kinda picturing an animated cover or titlecard thingy, with the main character in the center, mostly in shadows but holding a storm lantern that's illuminating her face and part of her body. Then the silhouette of the lighthouse behind her in all black, except for the windows at the top; and then more distant silhouettes of some of the islands and the other various towers kinda spread out on either side of it, also all in black except for the blinking red air traffic lights on top of those. Very razor-thin crescent moon up in the sky, surrounded by clouds in the shape of an eye.

Comfortably spooky, I think that's the phrase for the vibe I'm going for.

So yeah, it's a thing. :)

[ceratedfish24]

Knowing that most wildcards if not all were made in a week between the sessions, it feels like a much bigger task than sorting through viewer suggestions and making them up from scratch, tho I can't know for sure.

Yeah, the difficulty of the tasks varied a lot, but it kinda didn't bother me too much, because then they could be done with the task and do their own thing. I did love Pearl's task of getting hearts from people, but I'm a Shadowmoon shipper and the moment it created has been ingrained in my heart.

From Etho's episode I mainly remember the part where he washes himself away, so that he doesn't actually move, but moves. I'm a Doctor Who fan and I loved the reference, but yeah, quite limiting, especially with how they have to travel some time between bases and you can't know if someone is spying on you from afar.

Hm, you could say keeping it a secret is like if everyone was a boogeyman or well, playing a game of mafia. I do remember that a few times others were able to guess the task, but if they wanted to help the person, they played a game of crocodile, not being able to say anything outright, just imply.

To me a lot of tasks felt opposingly team uniting. With how Bdubs task started the whole Mounder thing. And then Joel's task (the cult one) brought Mounders even closer in a way, pft. And sometimes guessing the task incorrectly spawned an event, like almost the entire server hanging out at Pearl's mound base. Also Pearl helping Bdubs and Mumbo with their tasks (dragon, cursed tower). So yeah, I love Matchbox and Mailbox.

Out of context, but i remember people (CCs as their characters and the fans) were saying that Mounders aren't loyal and will fall apart or something. And in the end, Mumbo started to act as a red and tried to kill his teammates a few times, but they still accepted him. You can tell I love Mounders, tho all the other teams were great. The dog boys had such a fun dynamic, them often going to talk to BigB or Scar and having silly interactions together. To me the Bamboozlers flow so well from Secret Life: the winner, the unlucky and the loser /affectionate, they're definitely my favorite team that happened in Wild Life. Pearl and Mumbo would have fitted in with them too, all a little bit pathetic.

I agree with the love island team point? They are such a fun team up and there could have been more. Definitely the fact that BigB started as a loner because of his task and leaned into the backrooms creature vibe made it seem like he had to play two different characters at a time? Perhaps, that is not what you're talking about, but people were suspicious that BigB won't stay loyal and is more by himself, but they trusted each other. I don't fully remember the moment, but I think Skizz made someone think that he believes that BigB is a traitor, but then turned on them instead. Or this is memories connecting wrong bits. I don't joke about having troubles rewatching stuff, even when I love it.

Oh, yeah. Mine is all subjective and personal heaven, which I know is flawed, but I see the good and the bad bits and enjoy it as a whole, like you are with Wild Life. I am not a Third Life lover 😔 It's good, but if I'm ranking it, it will go to the bottom (all cause Pearl wasn't in it /hj)

Yes! It all felt like wacky cartoon episodes, which to me is a high praise, as I love Adventure Time and other episodic shows with an overarching plot. Again with my hyperfixation, Pearl died a lot, she literally had the first death on the server (i am replying as I am reading or else I'll forget my thoughts, but you mentioned it and we kinda divided on it? I agree, but also I can excuse it. It's brutal and unfair, but it did help others avoid the same fate. This is also a point in the: I think they should have given themselves more time to test the wildcards, because it feels like a thing you could fix, if found). But it was all because of a part of a mechanic of a wildcard that has not been found out before, which she immediately shares with her teammates. The opportunity to play around and find a way to work the wildcard in your favor or at least to not die from it is amazing. It just felt dissapointing, when people were trying out ways to have an advantage over snails in a way and got punshed for persisting and being curious (the inconsistency of when the snail jumps in your face. I know it's like 3 blocks but some were closer or farther, and with Pearl's second death potentially being caused by Aussie ping). I understand that if there was a way to battle snails completely, everyone would have gotten rid of them in the first hour and there is no more wildcard. But the whole point of an immortal snail is that you get some advantage (money in the original case) and you can figure out things to feel at least somewhat safer.

I would have said that making each snail have their own thing to slow them down/make them stop for a moment and have some cool down for that effect is too much, but they made a whole superpower wildcard so.. It's different but something lesser, like being able to feed them a certain somewhat rare item to slow them could be cool? Idk if the range could allows it, but if you can click on snail with an item (like feeding a dog a steak) and not get it jump on your face immediately. There is a possibility of no one even figuring that out especially if the items are too rare, but at least there would have been something? For Bdubs to feed his snail a clock and make it slower or stop for a certain amount of time with a cooldown (you would have a moment to breath, but you might also forget about it, so it's still a risk). I just feel like they are smart enough to flesh it out more, and I never fully understood why they put such a harsh time limit on themselves. They were most likely concepting wildcards for longer, but when you actually get the moving snail and test it out, you might have to fix some issues and if it's too close to deadline, you'll just have to give up on a good idea.

I know that if you are creating a big time sinking project, you have to organize and pay every person who is involved in the creation, so extending the time frame or the complexity, would have upped the cost significantly. I read some comment about how they could have made a whole series out of each of the wildcard, and I am on the side that having a new thing each week is a cool concept. The only part I do agree is the superhero wildcard. I just think a superhero life series (or maybe a sibling series) could be genuinely fun. Am a sucker for AUs.

Snails were very cute and funny, but they were undeniably too much. They had to stop the session earlier and all the CCs were exhausted by the end of it. You can see how the death count skyrockets because of snail, and the balancing by giving players 6 lives worked out i guess, but them ending early means if it wasn't stopped, there could have been even more deaths or even a first person to get out of the series in session 3(4?).

And final deaths are supposed to be at least somewhat tragic or emotional (in a funny or sad way). Skizz's and Mumbo's final deaths were cool, but Gem, Impulse, BibB, Scar died in a less fair(?) way. And Grian knows how important it can be to get out of a series in a satisfying end, Jimmy and Lizzie dying was sad, but epic and he helped to achieve that.

Okay, that's a fair point. I was afraid of getting into life series, because it felt like there were so many people and all had their own unique storyline. To me, I just accepted that I will get information about their videos secondhand, and if it intrigues me, I would go and watch the episode myself. I am happy that it was enjoyable for you and easier to engage with.

Big groups feel clanky to me in a way that everybody is trying to help the team, but when you have to listen to so many people at once, it becomes either a corporate meeting or a hangout at the loud bar. I do understand the appeal of a bigger group interacting, but I always feel like a lot more people get talked over and if there is no enemy, there is no conflict and there is no one to fight? A lot of times people were trying to mention who they were enemies with and it consisted of "hmh, we are kinda okay with them, and them too, and them". To which, Secret life didn't have that much outright betrayal or enemies, it was kinda more sitcom-ey. There were a lot of rivals, not enemies. In wild life it feels like there are almost no evemies and no rivals. Even bringing up the Impossible Minecraft, it's a smaller series, but there is a collaborative process, so big groups are encouraged, because there is no competition (the winners and placements don't actually mean much in the same way as MCC or similar stuff does obviously. It's all more about people creating a narrative and a story).

I do think Scar is a pretty good player, just unlucky at times. He did win by his own strength in Secret Life and got to the end in Third Life (while being the first one to go down to red and so early), he and Grian also being the 4th(?) soulmates to die and it was Grian who died, I'm pretty sure. You might not be implying that, I just dislike when people kinda dismiss his achievements.

I also enjoyed the Gs. The only thing I have a beef is that Tango was hanging around them at the start and I was so hoping for him to join them, tho the Tuff guys is also cool. I do find it funny how Gem and Pearl exchanged teammates from last time.

This all is a toll on anyone and when you have to organize and also be involved in the project, where your friends's income partially depends on you and you have to try to cater to them and to the viewers all at once. And well, when you see your friend so exhausted and trying so much to make you enjoy the series, I think it would feel brutal to complain about anything. They're friends and I don't know how they interact behind the scenes, but I would never want to upset my friend over something like that. Of course, if someone didn't vocalize their concerns, it's partially on them for doing so, but it's understandable. There is a part of me that wants Grian to delve more into different series, and with Impossible Minecraft, it seems like something he had in mind? Fans like to find parallels and will always compare previous seasons, so anything new will be met with a bigger criticism. Impossible Minecraft didn't capture everyone's attention, but I still feel it got good reviews and players seem to enjoy it. There is a difference that even through you can analyze CCs as characters, it is definitely much less roleplay and more survival. Not everyone found it appealing, but people also weren't compelled to compare it to life series, because it is distinctly different and we got both traffic and it. If Grian makes more of completely different series with no overarching expectations or limitations, it could be cool. Some people might be angry that they have to wait for a new life series season longer because of it, but it's not like we were ever really promised it and even if we were, he can decide to not go forth with it, if he wants to, it is his project. Idk if all my blank suggestions or ideas are out of place, but I very much love all the CCs and wouldn't want for any of them to get burned out and not participate in the life series or other projects.

I completely understand and agree with your whole last paragraph. Mine is similar, just replace Wild Life with Secret life. And I still enjoyed a lot of Wild Life, and I do have my own criticism of the Secret Life. I do understand people voicing and sharing their complaints, and not all should be like, thought out essay. Sometimes you watch a movie and find it meh, but can't put it into words. People not wanting to give Wild Life or any season a chance for whatever personal reason is understandable. Grian and others are still content creators and have to take into account a criticism of a casual viewer, which most of their viewers consist of I would think. But that's kinda why still discussing those things in the fandom is important. How would Grian know what we want to see, if he can only see the passerby viewer say "meh, not the same" and nothing else. Being afraid to hurt the CC can lead to it either way, when fans lose the interest and stop watching at all. It's not that Wild Life was horrible, it's that a lot of fans felt unheard. I assume that when you are making content for a long time, it can become stale and samey and you might lose confidence of if your content is actually good or not. They became CCs, because they wanted to share something that people would love, so hearing back is useful. When you start to see anycritisism as hate, it makes fans not want to share their thoughts and CCa are left one on one with angry/indifferent redditors (idk how bad reddit is, never used it besides googling weird things).

Idk where Grian saw that fans didn't want for him and Scar to team up, most fans love their dynamic. I do know some were complaining about the sameness of the teams, like the 3Gs. But some simply called 3G toxic, which is not completely untrue and doesn't mean they disliked the team? They have a very complicated history and that's the fun part of them trying to rebuild this. It's unrealistic for them to just forget everything and forgive. You can say that you forgive, but that doesn't automatically rewrite how you feel about it. There was a great episode in Amphibia that ended with the main character Anne forgiving a side character Hop Pop, but in the next episode Anne and Hop Pop are being weird and it escalates into a fight. There were still things unsaid and Anne just bottled everything up to try to move away from the situation, they needed more talk and more time to truly understand and forgive. I know that I reference a scripted cartoon show and Life Series is not a scripted play, but it is a roleplay for a lot of CCs, and dnd shows how improvisation can create great narrativess. It wouldn't be a death series without all the drama and all the betrayals and complicated relationships.

I hope this ask won't get killed by Tumblr, idk what's the word limit and how it works in general. I also reread it just once, sorry for any inconsistencies. Thank you for your time!

Hey! Sorry that it took so long for me to respond, but this was a really long ask that I had to break down paragraph by paragraph, which isn’t a bother! It just means that it takes me a little longer to respond to.

The problem that I had with the tasks was when tasks were too hard or had players do something consistently throughout the episode that didn’t really make their episode much more interesting. For example, I loved the concept of Etho’s weeping angel task. I’m also a Doctor Who fan! It’s just, yeah. It was difficult for him to enforce when in an open space. If the tasks were consistently like that, then I wouldn’t care as much, but it felt unfair for some people to be able to progress with more freedom than others. It wasn’t that big of an issue, of course. It’s just a little pet peeve.

As a com sci major, oh my gosh I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to program all of those wild card in such a short amount of time, especially the ones that were only decided upon in response to episodes (I believe the quiz bot was originally a scrapped wild card but was then brought back to the workshop last minute in response to players’ performances, but I may be misremembering).

I totally recognize that players still found ways to help each other, I just wish out of preference that there was a way for them to have been a little freer with their firm factions. I know that such a rule would be difficult to make concrete decisions on, but I know that Impulse felt disappointed that he didn’t get much of a chance to get to know Scott as a teammate. I don’t think that it was a bad decision. After all, it is called Secret Life. I just wish I could’ve seen certain teams loosen up a little more around each other. You raise a good point about the Mounders, though! They were a really great team. It’s just a shame that other teams weren’t able to communicate with each other as subtly yet effectively as the Mounders. Honestly, I’m not sure why people insist that a team will fall apart before that team shows signs of falling apart. Each season is a fresh start. While there may be history, each person still chooses whether or not to let that go.

God, someone PLEASE make BigB the leader of a big team. I need to observe his behavior in such a role. It's for science.

Third Life isn't at the top of my list either! There's definitely parts of it that I loved, but there were also parts that I was personally frustrated with. It’s not anyone’s fault at all. It’s just a matter of preference. It also totally gets a pardon due to it being the first ever season, but that doesn’t necessarily win it more points in my heart.

Pearl’s first death, I totally excuse it too. I didn’t mean to come off as if I disagree with the decision to keep it in. It’s a game mechanic and all. It just felt like such an unlucky “first to find out” situation, but that's part of the game. As for the snails, Grian didn’t intend for this to be an easy wild card. He expected more player deaths than normal, though he did say that there were still more than he expected. However, he also said that he had a moment where he considered using the Quizbot to gift back lives and decided not to. He wanted players to really feel the cost of each life. It’s a decision that he’s very firm about, and I respect that. I will say that the players who died significantly more than other players had a lot of deaths that were simply careless. There were of course many deaths that were the cost of an experiment or were just so terribly unfortunate (double Bdubs death), but I think a lot of deaths were from not keeping an eye on their snail (Scar gets a pass because his snail was literally turned invisible by other players). Here’s the thing. The problem that many players experimenting with the snails had was that they were experimenting with their own snail. Jimmy is a great example of someone who did NOT experiment with his own snail very much, despite his crazy number of deaths. Most of Jimmy’s snail experiments were done on other people’s snails, and he learned a lot from testing on them. In other words, there were ways to test on the snails that were much less risky, especially if you have a friend helping you.

The feeding the snails to slow them down is a really cool idea! I just don’t know if it would be worth the risk of getting close to your snail nor do I think that the players would have figured out that they could feed their snails, especially if the required items are player specific. I think that it would be a really really cool concept for a longer series or just snails, but it doesn’t work well for only one episode. Grian could’ve told people, of course, but Grian was already telling people quite a bit about the snails and he evidently would have trouble remembering what each snail eats (he couldn’t remember assigned superpowers even though not even everyone had an assigned superpower. I don’t blame him, though. I can’t remember people’s names ten minutes after meeting them, and I can’t throw stones in glass houses).

I would TOTALLY be down for a whole season of superpowers. I thought the superpowers were so so so cool. I do find it weird that someone commented that they could make a whole season out of each wild card when so many people said that the wild cards were boring. I don’t think that would go well in terms of viewership.

I understand finding the snails to be too much, but every creator we know of said that the snails were fun, even if they were stressful. After the snail episode, Grian very urgently checked in with everyone more so than usual, and, according to Impulse, Grian, Martyn, and Skizz, everyone found the snail episode to be a lot of fun. I don’t think that the snails were too much, because everyone had fun and got a great episode out of it. Additionally, due to how long the season surprisingly ended up being, I worry that trying to make the wild cards safer might have resulted in a longer season than the cast was hoping. They typically try to keep the seasons to 8-9 episodes, and Wild Life hit that quota despite the number of people saying that it would definitely be the shortest season ever (which is a little strange considering Double Life was only 6 episodes long, and I doubt that Wild Life ever even looked like it would only be 5 episodes long what with so many people having all of their 6 lives for so long). All in all, I don’t think that the players minded a shorter session when they all got an exciting normal length episode.

I absolutely understand being disappointed in some of the final deaths, but that’s not really a concept that’s new to Wild Life. I mean, while Grian’s final death in Limited Life was thematically cool, it would’ve been pretty anti-climactic without Jimmy’s death. It’s something that happens, and I’ve made my peace with that, especially with how exciting everyone’s life was to me. Of course, I understand that all of that is a matter of personal preference.

I’m glad that you understand my perspective on having an easier time staying caught up. I’ve been watching Minecraft YouTubers for a long time, and I was a big fan of particular big groups. I’m pretty used to hearing them talk over each other and didn’t really think about how that was absolutely a matter of personal history of enjoying hearing 6-10 people in the same call all of the time. I’m sorry to hear that it was more frustrating for you, and I totally understand feeling like there was less content in Wild Life and that the content that was available felt socially clunkier. I hope the next seasons are more your taste!! I got my fair share of what I wanted :)

I understand what you mean about feeling like there were no enemies, but I interpreted that as feeling as though there was no specific enemy (other than everyone vs the family) because most teams had wronged people pretty equally. There was definitely enemies and rivalries, they were just more player specific than team specific, which I understand is unusual for the Life Series. Impulse vs Gem was a pretty big rivalry, as was, of course, Grian vs the Bamboozlers, particularly vs Scar. Mumbo vs Scott was a weirdly spawned in rivalry. I don’t know why Mumbo latched onto that so hard, but I respect him for committing to the bit like that. Another rivalry, which was mostly a result of miscommunication, was Scar vs the Tuff Guys. See, and this is the most insane looney toons incident in the series, Bdubs pretended to do something “tuff” to the Bamboozlers so that Tango and Etho would think he was tuff. Then, Etho actually did something “tuff” to the Bamboozlers, which Scar got payback for by burning down Tango’s base. Tango then got revenge by attacking ALL of the Bamboozlers’ parrots. In other words, I don’t really think that there were fewer enemies and rivalries. I think that the relationships between individual players were just insanely more convoluted. The only team vs team enemies who I can really think of were the Spanners vs the Gs. Grian really wanted to eliminate the try hards who were stronger in numbers (though, as Scott has said, larger groups don’t often do better in the Life Series). The whole thing was like watching a drama series. I really loved it, but I totally understand how it’s a lot more confusing compared to past seasons, where enemies are more straightforward and agreed upon within teams. The problem was that players were having a lot of personal beef with each other but then projecting that onto the other player’s whole team, who hadn’t been told about this beef and is then confused when told that something is wrong. The Gs and the Family were a little better at communicating between each other, but that didn’t mean that they always entirely agreed on how to deal with the issue. As for the storyline and collaboration points, I totally understand wanting that. I think I gave Wild Life a lot more grace, because every episode was like a first episode, where everyone is still helping each other navigate the new gimmick. That’s a part that I, personally, really enjoy about first episodes. This is much less a rebuttal against your point and more of a “this is how I understood it in the moment and a matter of my personal enjoyment, and I absolutely understand if it wasn’t for you”.

Oh I definitely agree that Scar’s a great player! I think he doesn’t really pick up on new situations as quickly, but, once he has it, he’s mastered it. He’s also just a generally skilled player. That man is INSANE in combat. Who taught him how to fight like that. It’s so strange when people say that Scar isn’t a “real” winner. Winners may statistically be more likely to rise from smaller teams, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easiest to get to the finale all by yourself, especially when you have as many enemies as Scar did that season.

I also love the Gs and the Tuff Guys, but GOD I understand what you mean. I’ve been dying for Tango to team up with new people, particularly Scott, for AGES. I want more Snowbugs content. Please, Mr. Smajor, PLEASE team up with different Hermits. I love every single one of Scott’s teams and dynamics, but I’m so eager to see him interact with people we don’t often get to see him hang out with.

I understand what you mean about not wanting to hurt your friends feelings, but Grian specifically requested criticism from each player after every session. There are of course so many ways to go about this situation, and no one way is necessarily the “correct” way to deal with it every time, but, if my friend was asking for criticism, I would want to help them feel as though they have improved their project as much as they are ready to. I’m not saying that I would complain or criticize or be harsh, but expressing an honest opinion about your own experience is so so so critical during game development. This is particularly critical in the Hermitcraft community when Hermits ask other Hermits for criticism. Grian in particular likes honest constructive criticism when he asks for it.

I absolutely agree about wanting to see a variety of series. While I understand that it doesn’t always do as well as their main content, I find it really exciting to see my favorite creators in new situations with different goals and expectations.

When I get upset about people sharing their complaints about Wild Life, I absolutely do not mean people who have real complaints about how the game operates or how it played out. Everyone is entitled to their preferences. What I mean is people who blatantly commented on Grian’s videos stuff like “Grian, these wild cards are boring” and “how is this an episode” or tweeted at him about how they hate Wild Life but didn’t have anything constructive to say about it. There were a lot of comments like this on Jimmy’s Instagram too, and that just sucks. If you have something like that to say about someone’s project that they’re so passionate about, there are more appropriate places to do so. Do I expect Twitter and YouTube comment sections to be free of hate? Absolutely not. However, people need to recognize that Grian doesn’t go on Twitter and YouTube looking for those types of criticisms. The kind of hate that pops up on Twitter and YouTube is so common that a lot of seasoned creators tend to be rather unbothered by hate on those platforms to the point where they skip over genuine criticism. Reddit would’ve probably been a more appropriate and effective platform for constructive criticism when trying to communicate your opinion with people like Grian, who don’t use Tumblr and have been on Twitter and YouTube for too long to take those kinds of comments into consideration.

The Grian and Scar thing was almost entirely Twitter and YouTube. While there are definitely people on Twitter and YouTube who LOVE Scarian, they’re also the platforms that are most concentrated with Scarian haters. It’s really tumblr with a denser population of Scarian fans, but Grian doesn’t get his feedback from tumblr, especially when tumblr and hermittwt are a lot more shy than haters tend to be.

Here's the thing about the Gs. A lot of people were insisting that the Gs were going to break up because “Cleo and Scott always betray Pearl”. This is not true. Scott’s history with Pearl is more complicated, but Scott had a good reason to not want to team with Pearl again. He couldn’t communicate this very well in character, but Scott literally could not be her teammate again, not after he just won Last Life with just Pearl as his teammate for a majority of the season. In other words, Scott didn’t really feel significant negativity towards Pearl until she started acting crazy, which Scott isn’t entirely at fault for. He wasn’t neutral in the matter, but it would be unfair to blame it entirely on him when Martyn immediately abandoning Pearl despite being in the same situation as her, Scar and Ren pushing the “5AM Pearl” character, and, of course, the fact that it was 5AM for her are all fairly equal contributions to the way Pearl decided to present herself. Additionally, Pearl chose to forgive Scott immediately after he blew himself up, which isn’t to say that frustration and resentment can’t ever resurface, especially if the event was particularly traumatic, but Pearl and Scott both gave themselves a whole lot of time to reconcile with what happened and come to forgive each other. It’s also not something that either of them ever bring up, spitefully or not. They’ve never held Double Life against each other even as enemies, and it’s not something they hold against each other when they have disagreements as allies. As for Cleo, Cleo has never betrayed Pearl. Has Cleo been enemies with Pearl, sure! But never when Pearl was ever entitled to Cleo’s loyalty by any means. The Gs was the first time where Cleo and Pearl were on the same team for the whole season, and it's not like Cleo betrayed Pearl during Last Life either. I genuinely believe that there’s an excess of attention on Cleo and Pearl hurting each other because they’re both women in a male-dominated space, because they haven’t been crueler to one another than would be expected of people on different teams. It’s kind of like saying that Scar and Lizzie are a bad team because Lizzie hated Scar in Secret Life, when what we were seeing in Wild Life didn’t show significant evidence of that grudge.

Were the Gs toxic? That’s up to interpretation, but I don’t think it deserved the amount of backlash some people gave it without criticizing other teams. I once made a post about Mumbo “manipulating” Skizz and Grian in the same way that Smajor haters claim that Scott is “manipulative”. I DO NOT believe in what I said about Mumbo. The point of the post was explicitly to show what the narrative looks like on someone who gets way less hate for behaving the same way or “worse”, and I do state that at the end of the post. The Tuff Guys, too, were SO messy. They could rarely agree on anything and almost always resorted to insults, but that wasn’t the result of people who hate each other. That’s the result of people who love each other so so so much and trust each other to know when they do and don’t mean things and to feel safe bringing it up if a line was crossed. I mean, no matter how much Tango and Bdubs insulted and rolled their eyes at Etho or were mockingly offended by his comments, the only time they acted properly upset with him was when they found out that they might not be his priority team (and they didn’t even know about the team he was actually loyal to in the end!). In that same sense, Scott, Pearl, and Cleo are best friends who love each other so much. Their friendship is apparently strong enough to withstand tough breaks in that relationship. It’s one thing to say that you like a team and interpret their dynamic as antagonistic, but it’s another to actually get mad at the actual Scott and Cleo for “teaming up with Pearl to manipulate her”, which was such a common kind of post that I was seeing throughout the first several weeks of Wild Life.

Your ask did not get killed by tumblr! I’m starting to think there may not be a character limit on these things. I copy asks and write out responses in Google docs cause it’s more convenient to access when I have time, and this ask was 5 pages long in 12 point font 1.15 spacing. Whatever kills asks, it’s not word count. Thank you for the ask! I love long asks :D And thank you for your patience! My housing situation has been... weird. I'm not in danger of losing my place or anything; it's just been over-complicated and slow to progress.

[egophiliac]

happy new year Ego!!! Just wanted to let you know that I absolutely adore your twst fanart and the tags are just an absolute pleasure to read! You are my greatest inspiration for my personal twst art and I just wanted to thank you for your wonderful masterpieces <333 if possible, may I ask what are some of your headcanons for the diasomnia family? If not for diasomnia then any other characters are fine as well!

thank you, and happy new year! 💚💜💚 that is amazing to hear; it's always a little bewildering but super flattering that other people like my silly little doodles so much!

I don't think I really have any really solid headcanons and also canon keeps validating me left and right (FLUFFY DOMESTIC DIAFAM IS REAL). mostly just kind of...impressions and general thoughts, if that makes sense! lately though I've been kind of obsessed with thinking about Lilia's hair, and specifically when/why he ended up cutting it. (l-look, we're bouncing around the timeline and I gotta make decisions about these things when I draw, it's relevant) (I mean I would probably be weirdly fixated on this anyway, but.)

I think I've settled on the idea that he kept it long until he went to NRC, partly because 1) I like drawing The Ponytail, and 2) I think he thought of NRC as a chance to reinvent himself a bit! he gets to go and be a wacky carefree teenager for a few years and have fun! (officially he's there to keep an eye on Son #1, but how much trouble could he get into, really.) so he gave himself a Cool Teen Haircut to go with his fresh new Cool Teen Persona!

also maybe he had some reflection on his hair's troubled past with three kids...

...and had to weigh his vanity versus the fact that he was going off to be around hundreds of kids on a daily basis, and. the choice suddenly seemed obvious.

[bluespiritshonour]

here's 18-19 year old aang sketches. been hearing aang is ugly discourse—no he ain't. he was just 12.