#the Eighties Blasts Collection

[demaparbat-hp]

Hiya!! 👋🏼😄 How's it going? Your fashion taste for Zuko in a Modern AU seems to be artsy, or maybe "formal" is the word. That shirt he wore when he gave Sokka romantic song advice looked Versace🧐. Anyway, I was wondering how you came up with it, he always struck me more as the type that didn´t care much about fashion, so I'm curious about other´s opinions and heacanons about it. And do you have any other fashion headcanons for the rest of the GAang? Also, their music tastes. How did you come up with them? Especially Katara's! 😍

Hello! As it happens, I have a lot of Thoughts and Feelings™ about this, so I'm leaving these over here, and the rest of my ramblings down below the cut!

Let us begin with the Gaang, shall we?

SUKI always struck me as that Pretty Girl from the Gym. She is so incredibly fit it isn't even funny. She could kick anyone's ass, and we'd all thank her. She has this casual gym style that somehow always looks glorious on her, as it should! Comfy yet fashionable clothes for a nice workout or a day in town.

Her music tastes are basically any and all power songs from the eighties and nineties. (Eye of the Tiger, anyone?) She also enjoys metal via Toph, and bands like BSB, NSYNC, or Boyz II Men with Katara. My girl has a very eclectic Playlist and we all love her for it.

SOKKA is That Guy™. Loose T-shirts and shorts everywhere he goes, no matter the weather. He's stupidly into fashion but it doesn't show! At all! And everyone teases him about it. His closet is about 90% Cactus Juice merchandise, hence the "it's the quenchiest!" shirt.

His fashion and music tastes are pretty much the same. He loves poetry but isn't really into lyrics. He'll misinterpret just about anything you place in front of him. His Playlist is mostly vibes and tiktok songs he kind of enjoys. He isn't really into music...at least not as much as his sister.

AANG owns exactly one hoodie, one pair of shorts, and one beanie (THE beanie). Oh, and the crocs—don't forget the crocs. Somehow, he's always wearing the exact same outfit. Every. Single. Day. Ancient Gaang lore suggests that the day Aang goes out without his beanie, it's the end of the world.

His Playlist is the poppiest, most bizarre thing ever. Every single song is Happy by Pharrell Williams levels of happy. Yet sometimes, among the bouncy dance-to songs, you'll find the strangest of things... (He does know what Good Day by Twenty One Pilots is about. That's the reason he likes it so much, actually. And it's so weird.)

KATARA is all about sundresses and loose pants. The epitome of comfortable loveliness. Light fabrics in blue shades, careful embroidery, delicate shoes, and little to no accessories—hers is a simple, yet quite adorable, style. She just needs to add more colors to her usual palette...

She is, first and foremost, a Florence + The Machine girl. It's the Dark Goddess of the Sea vibes, to be honest. Florence Welch is her idol and yes, she will fight you about lyrics interpretation, and win. It may not seem like it, but her music tastes are also very varied.

She draws a little from each member of the Gaang, so you'll hear her humming along to Gorillaz (where did you even find out about them, Aang?), The Weeknd (I...don't think this song means what you think it means, Sokka...), and Hozier (Zuko why did you dedicate Talk to me, Zuko WHAT DID YOU MEAN BY THAT).

TOPH...ah, lovely girl. I'll summarise everything about Toph’s fashion sense in two words: comfort and rebellion. Stuffy dresses forced on her by billionaire parents? No thank you! Give her tank tops with loose shirts and short pants. Bandaids shared with Aang, bracelets from Katara, and even piercings she got in tandem with Sokka. Shoes? What even is that?

Something I love about this fandom is our collective agreement that Toph is into the dirtiest, heaviest, most ear-splitting and soul-crushing death metal of all times. Her Playlist is full of the most obscure names to ever exist, and she can and will blast through your walls with the sheer volume of her speaker.

Zuko. ZUKO.

Even in a modern AU my boy must suffer. That being said, I envision Tales from the Couch as—well, exactly what it is: an ATLA modern AU. While there is not a war to fight, and a lot of plot lines are discarded or expanded upon, much about the core story remains the same.

This is my way of saying that Zuko still goes trough his redemption arc, and it reflects on his fashion choices.

The way you described it works perfectly because of one single reason: in this AU, Zuko is an artist. He had to suppress his love for writing and drawing because of his background and the expectations Ozai had for him (taking over the family company), and a very large part of his redemption arc directly affects his relationship with art.

In the Couch equivalent of S1, Zuko has fallen out of Ozai's graces, and is desperate to protect his place in the company and the Kasai household. He's pretending to be someone he isn't and trying to live up to his Father's image of a perfect heir while still being somewhat cut-off financially, and it shows.

He's all about imposing long coats and a semi-formal style, imitating what he knows Azula and Father would respect. He's striking and sharp and dark. But no matter how he dresses or carries himself (that air of cold superiority and arrogance)—it won't help him when he needs it the most.

In S2, Zuko has hit his lowest point. He's officially disinherited and tossed away by his father, and would be out in the streets if it wasn't for Uncle Iroh. He goes from sharp, high-tailored outfits to old second-hand clothes that hang loosely on his frame. He starts smoking and cuts his hair off, forgoing the undercut for the first time in years.

But then...Father accepts him back. When Zuko returns home, it's with respect to his name and a very high position in his father's company. He's finally the perfect Kasai heir, dressed in overly expensive suits and finery, even at home... But Father forbids him from wearing Lu Ten's earring, and Zuko can no longer recognize himself without the familiar glint of gold dancing on his peripheral vision.

When Zuko leaves the Kasai name behind him and goes back to living with Uncle Iroh...he's finally at peace with who he is, and what he wants in this life. The sharp edges aren't gone (they'll always be a part of him, after all), but now they're dulled by looser clothes and softer hairstyles.

He's an artist, and for once in his life, he is determined to pursue his own ambitions. Zuko's outfits may not be designer-made anymore, but he takes what he has and makes himself look like he wants to look, like the person he wants to be.

He doesn't read fashion magazines or keeps up to the latest trends like Azula does. He's just...Zuko. And his newfound confidence makes everything he wears look like it belongs on him.

As for music...well, Ursa raised a literature boy.

He loves lyric-heavy music and natural voices, be they soothing or powerful. Dissecting song meanings and possible interpretations with Katara is one of his favorite parts of the day. They're both very passionate and strong-minded individuals, so it stands to reason that their debates can get quite...heated.

Zuko's Playlist is both incredibly eclectic and somehow very...him. There's a common thread that binds together every song and artist he likes, and he's hilariously unaware of this. To take a look into his Playlist is a higher honor reserved only for those closest to him.

In the wide spectrum of things, it is no wonder that Zuko is, first and foremost, a Hozier man. But though Andrew is his God in all aspects of this life, there's someone else that has had a huge impact on him...

Two someones, actually.

Zuko refuses to tell anyone how he got into Twenty One Pilots, but it's kind of a moot point when the beginning of his obsession is nothing compared to everything that came after. They have just about the right amount of everything that makes Zuko...well, Zuko. The poetic lyrics, the soothing or raging music, the heavy, intensely resonant themes...

Up there, in the second artwork, I placed an album cover behind each period of Zuko's life. The election of these records is intentional, as I feel like their general themes work incredibly well with Zuko's arc and growth.

Blurryface in S1. For the demons within us. For giving a name to our fears and shame.

Trench in S2. For escaping the confined walls of a depression city, and fighting to understand the depths of the map of your mind.

Scaled and Icy in the first half of S3. For returning to places you had left behind. For convincing yourself and everyone around you that you're fine, that you're perfect, even though everything is crumbling inside...

Clancy in S3. For recognizing that you can backslide, that you can have fears and shame and pain—but you're shaping yourself with each step you take. For knowing that seeking help from others is okay. Nobody learns to walk on their own.

(And, in the end, you'll always be better than the person you were yesterday. If only because you're still here. You're still alive. You're still yourself.)

.

Overall, I rambled a bit too much, don't you think?

If you made it all the way down here—thank you so much for reaching out and being interested in this crazy AU! I hope you enjoy these ideas and tell me some of your own ❤️

[musewrangler]

20 Questions for Writers

Thank you for the tag @ladysongmaster! I can't recall if I've done this one before!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 137

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 3,126,209

3. What fandoms do you write for? Star Wars ninety percent of the time. A smattering of Hornblower, one for Narnia, one in Silverado, getting into some original work as well.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Mirjahaal

Bajur

He Who Sheds His Blood With Me

Forging Ahead

I Felt You In My Bones

5. Do you respond to comments?

As much as possible. Made a resolution to do so more quickly xD

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Hm. I tend to like happier endings and put all the angst in the middle. xD So...ponders. I think it's a short one from one of my Star Wars collections called 'And a Child Shall Lead Them'.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I have a lot of those I'm glad to say. But the most joy...quite likely the one for Brothers In Arms for...reasons. Don't want to spoil it. Though When the Mighty Don't Fall is a close second place.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

One time. But, deleted, blocked, done. :D

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Nope.

10. Do you write crossovers?

No. I'm sure folks can do it well---just not my cup of tea.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

An attempt was made once by one of those weird 'companies' through Amazon, but they took care of it fast.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

A wonderful person has translated a TON of them into Russian!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes I have! Doing one now as a matter of fact.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

This could be several categories. xD In books? Toss up between Harriet Vane/Peter Wimsey and Faramir/Eowyn.

Movies? Han/Leia [shocking] and Etienne Navarre/Isabeau d'Anjou from Ladyhawke.

And of course---epic platonic friendship--Piett and Veers

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I have a Hornblower collection that I have not touched in too long, but I ALSO finish stories, so it will happen. At some point.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Likely character building, dialogue and action.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Description, pacing and editing. However, I write largely for fun-- being more lenient about editing for myself at the moment.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I have done it for Hornblower for realism but I don't often do so.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Star Trek actually. xD In high school. I don't think I even knew to call it fan fic then. I just loved Chekov from the original series. I grew up with the movies in the Eighties you see. Dates me I know. xD

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

This is the all time hardest question about my writing. I like various of my fics for very different reasons. So I'm sorry, but I'll have to say more than one.

Brothers In Arms because exploring Max and Firmus as friends from the Academy was a DELIGHT. Then throwing in Myra and Sola...yeah I had a lovely time with all the characters and action in that fic.

In terms of really getting a setting and having a blast with historical fiction---War in the Shadows. I am a history NERD and I think I did pretty well with accurate time period world building while using Star Wars characters. ;D

And Mirjahaal hit a lot of delightful notes for me to play with so I have to mention it.

Gently tagging @afaroffsong @kraytwriter @freenarnian @scarvenartist @rainintheevening @klarionthewizard @tolkienreader1996 @mathmusic8 @saxifrage-wreath @galaxacious @hollers-and-holmes

[lazarusphenomenon]

festus + piper

i was asked to make this public / rebloggable.

Piper couldn’t blame them. The dragon was huge. It glistened in the morning sun like a living penny sculpture —different shades of copper and bronze—a sixty-foot-long serpent with steel talons and drill-bit teeth and glowing ruby eyes. It had bat-shaped wings twice its length that unfurled like metallic sails, making a sound like coins cascading out of a slot machine every time they flapped. “It’s beautiful,” Piper muttered. The other demigods stared at her like she was insane.

tlh pg. 140

Piper couldn’t breathe. Poor Leo. The idea of never seeing him again almost destroyed her. Khione must’ve seen it in her face. “Alas, my dear Piper!” She smiled in triumph. “But it is for the best. Leo could not be tolerated, even as an ice statue…not after he insulted me. The fool refused to rule at my side! And his power over fire…” She shook her head. “He could not be allowed to reach the House of Hades. I’m afraid Lord Clytius likes fire even less than I do.” Piper gripped her dagger. Fire, she thought. Thanks for reminding me, you witch. She scanned the deck. How to make fire? A box of Greek fire vials was secured by the forward ballista, but that was too far away. Even if she made it without getting frozen, Greek fire would burn everything, including the ship and all her friends. There had to be another way. Her eyes strayed to the prow. Oh. Festus the figurehead could blow some serious flames. Unfortunately, Leo had switched him off. Piper had no idea how to reactivate him. She would never have time to figure out the right controls at the ship’s console. She had vague memories of Leo tinkering around inside the dragon’s bronze skull, mumbling about a control disk; but even if Piper could make it to the prow, she would have no idea what she was doing. Still, some instinct told her Festus was her best chance, if only she could figure out how to convince her captors to let her get close enough…

hoh pg. 272

“You remember our dragon?” Piper asked. Khione scoffed. “This cannot be your secret. The dragon is broken. Its fire is gone.” “Well, yes…” Piper stroked the dragon’s snout. She didn’t have Leo’s power to make gears turn or circuits spark. She couldn’t sense anything about the workings of a machine. All she could do was speak her heart and tell the dragon what he most wanted to hear. “But Festus is more than a machine. He’s a living creature.”

hoh pg. 278

Before the goddess could go after the sphere, Piper cried, “Our secret weapon, Khione! We’re not just a bunch of demigods. We’re a team. Just like Festus isn’t only a collection of parts. He’s alive. He’s my friend. And when his friends are in trouble, especially Leo, he can wake up on his own.” She willed all her confidence into her voice—all her love for the metal dragon and everything he’d done for them. The rational part of her knew this was hopeless. How could you start a machine with emotions? But Aphrodite wasn’t rational. She ruled through emotions. She was the oldest and most primordial of the Olympians, born from the blood of Ouranos churning in the sea. Her power was more ancient than that of Hephaestus, or Athena, or even Zeus. For a terrible moment, nothing happened. Khione glared at her. The Boreads began to come out of their daze, looking disappointed. “Never mind our plan,” Khione snarled. “Kill her!” As the Boreads raised their swords, the dragon’s metal skin grew warm under Piper’s hand. She dove out of the way, tackling the snow goddess, as Festus turned his head one hundred and eighty degrees and blasted the Boreads, vaporizing them on the spot. For some reason, Zethes’s sword was spared. It clunked to the deck, still steaming. Piper scrambled to her feet. She spotted the sphere of winds at the base of the foremast. She ran for it, but before she could get close, Khione materialized in front of her in a swirl of frost. Her skin glowed bright enough to cause snow blindness. “You miserable girl,” she hissed. “You think you can defeat me—a goddess?” At Piper’s back, Festus roared and blew steam, but Piper knew he couldn’t breathe fire again without hitting her too.

hoh pgs. 279-280

Fortunately, Festus had been listening. He faced front and blew a plume of fire. The ship’s engine clattered and hummed. It sounded like a massive bike with a busted chain—but they lurched forward. Slowly, the Argo II headed toward the shore. “Good dragon.” Piper patted Festus’s neck. The dragon’s ruby eyes glinted as if he was pleased with himself. “He seems different since you woke him,” Jason said. “More…alive.” “The way he should be.” Piper smiled. “I guess once in a while we all need a wake-up call from somebody who loves us.”

hoh pg. 358

“Coach!” she said. “It didn’t happen like that at all. I couldn’t have done anything without Festus.” Leo raised his eyebrows. “But Festus was deactivated.” “Um, about that,” Piper said. “I sort of woke him up.” Piper explained her version of events—how she’d rebooted the metal dragon with charmspeak. Leo tapped his fingers on the table, like some of his old energy was coming back. “Shouldn’t be possible,” he murmured. “Unless the upgrades let him respond to voice commands. But if he’s permanently activated, that means the navigation system and the crystal…”

hoh pg. 361

tagslist:

@partiallypearl

[shortfeather]

BTW, if you follow me for fic reasons, you should check out the MCYT Recursive Exchange Collection on AO3! It was an absolute blast of an event to participate in and about eighty people (!!) came together to create over 150 works (!!!!!) based on MCYT fan creations.

Go check it out and have fun! It’s deliberately anonymous authors until Sunday, at which point the anon curtain will come up and creators will be revealed. See if you can guess anyone; I will say that six of the fics in there are mine!

Also, my gift was based on Scott’s POV of Hesperides and it’s SO GOOD, go give it some love

[rnoonpie]

For almost a month, I've been working retail for the first time as an electronics department sales assistant in a popular bulk warehouse chain. I was so afraid I was going to hate it, that customers were going to make me lose my faith in humanity, that children were gonna be unbearable.

But I don't. They didn't, they aren't.

I love meeting people and talking to people and I love knowing about the products I help sell. I love helping a customer figure out what's best for their needs, not just directing them to the biggest and flashiest, most expensive phones or laptops.

But most surprising to me, I think, is a reminder that I do really get along with children and love talking to them, even little babies. They're so funny and just make me smile. I love little babies in carriers with stout little fat frog legs dangling in the air, with so much fat on their faces they look like a bulldog when they close their eyes. I love the ones who don't have enough hair to style but they've got one little tuft sticking straight up in a bow anyway. I love waving to the ones who stare very intently while they're figuring out how their eyes work.

But most of all, I think I really love getting to be someone I never had for me in public spaces as a child, and that's treating them like a customer just as much as their parents, asking them what they're looking for, if they have any questions.

The transformation is so complete every time. I see how braced they are for an adult approaching them while they're using the display iPads, expecting to be scolded or told to leave it alone. But when I ask with a smile how they're doing and if they're looking for anything in particular, if they have any questions, they transform into such excited and curious things.

"Um! Um, I was wondering, um, what the difference is between the iPad Pro and the others!" this little girl said nervously, her voice high and thin.

So I told her, in simpler terms, but with the same cadence I would have used with her mother.

"So the Pro line tends to have a better processor, which means it's going to be able to handle a lot more apps at the same time. They're really good for games and I know a lot of artists who like to use this app here — " I tapped the demo Procreate icon and opened it up " — to make art! The Pro also has a very clear and bright screen with a pretty huge amount of colours it can display, which is why a lot of artists like it so much. So the Pro does all these things more efficiently than the other iPads do."

Her eyes were enormous. "That's so cool," she whispered in breathless awe. "That's so cool."

"Isn't it?" I agreed. "This stuff amazes me every day."

Her parents came and collected her not long after that and apologised for the trouble.

"Not at all," I said in deep surprise.

Like her parents were afraid their child's mere presence was annoying or bothersome to employees? Like… nah, man. Kids want to know what the electronics can do, too. They're just people learning how to people.

Adults are the ones who annoy me on a daily basis more than children. You know who love to connect to our demo Bluetooth speakers to blast rude music as loudly as they can? Grown ass men, every single time, without fail.

Children are generally very reserved and polite when they need my help with something, saying "excuse me".

It was another grown ass man who saw me counting inventory, decided it would be hilarious to go "forty-nine, twenty-two, eighty-six…" as he passed by.

The stare that I gave him must have been completely dead-eyed because he immediately flushed and mumbled an apology before hurrying away.

But, as a disclaimer, that's not to say that all the adult men who come into the store are annoying or rude. In fact, the vast majority of them are lively and polite and friendly! Even the ones that fuck around with the speakers haven't given me direct trouble (I deal with the speaker issue by just muting it via the laptop it's actually connected to) and no one has ever been overtly aggressive or abusive to me.

I know it's only been a month. I know that getting a Karen is going to be inevitable — people will always be people, after all — but I know that, broadly, people are good and I love them. I love watching them and talking to them, of all ages, gender, background.

People are fundamentally good.

[uk-jake-professional-cynic]

The 1980s Quiz - Can You Pass The Eighties Test? Find Out Now It's Free

Get ready for a blast from the past with the 1980s Quiz, also known as The Eighties Test. It's a fun-filled journey through the music, movies, television, and world events of the eighties. Do you know who had a hit with "Don't Stand so Close to Me" or "Super Trooper"? The Liverpool band Frankie Goes to Hollywood had several number-1 hit records. The video for Two Tribes Goes to War was a great parody of the American and Russian leaders. Their other hit, Relax, went straight to number 1. Even after all these years, I still have a copy of their album in my record collection. When two tribes go to war A point is all that you can score Two Tribes

Eighties Test Info

Fashion The fashion industry gave teenagers Rhino canvas jeans, legwarmers, grandad shirts, and white socks. I admit to being a fashion victim of this decade. I still think grandad shirts look really smart. Although they don't appear in the 1980s quiz, I mentioned them when setting the scene.  Culture It was the decade of Margaret Thatcher and the Yuppies. Bob Geldof and Midge Ure gave us Band Aid, which raised awareness of the starving millions in Third World countries. It was the first time since Woodstock that so many bands came together in one place. It raised millions of pounds for the starving millions. That definitely deserves a mention in The 1980s Quiz. Television The Black Adder and "Only When I Laugh" were massive during this decade. As was the children's news programme Newsround. On a Saturday morning, kids gathered around the TV to watch either Swap Shop or Tiswas. Both of them disappeared from our screens by the middle of the eighties. For those reasons, they aren't in The Eighties Quiz.

Eighties Test Information

My favourite Eighties Comedy was The Young Ones. It was a refreshing change from the old fuddy-duddy style of squeaky-clean humour favoured by the old folks. The show was anarchic, loud and absolutely brilliant. Set in a shared student house, it featured young comedians and a different band performing one of their new songs weekly. If songs are your thing, you will love the 1980s Pop Quiz. A popular Saturday night TV programme gave us Boss Hogg and Daisy Duke. It also featured a very fast red and white American car. Can you remember what it was called?

Okay, now it's time to begin The 1980s Quiz

After The Eighties Test, Try These

1980s Music Quiz 2000s Music Quiz UK Number 1 Hit Records

I hope you enjoyed The 1980s Quiz

Read the full article

[abysmal-black]

More information doesn't make what amounts to a superficial surgery sound more appealing. The quirk is more messy than annoying, why does Law even care? It's impressive how sharply the pirate could change task: from arrogant sleeze to pushy doctor to—

Smooth hand finds his jaw, casual touch sending adam's apple bobbing in his throat, spine suddenly a little straighter. Law can't be doing this on purpose, not after the mess he insists on mopping up. Chest feels two sizes too small and he wants to glance away even if it's only a moment it feels too intimate to meet the other's eyes. It's pathetic but actually getting this far is daunting. Thankfully the moment is fleeting, Law's hand is retreating and Sanji can relax, the tickle in his nose ready to start again. “Uh-huh.” Clears his throat with a cough, if he dies he dies. It's not exactly how he saw it happening and it's worlds better than he deserves. 

That long? Restlessly he stands, needs to pace, to move, mind second guessing the encounter again. Sanji doesn't fear making a fool of himself, by all accounts that's out of the way. Worst case scenario he enjoys himself too much and not knowing what that would look like is what's bothering him now. Technically it doesn't sound like anything he hasn't already done to himself; experimenting kills time when sleep is hard to come by.

Rounding the back of the booth they had occupied. It's the excitement he tells himself, getting exactly what he wants, a totally foreign concept. "Sounds a little tamed, was expecting devil fruit shenanigans." As he speaks legs carry him to the door where he lingers a moment longer. A snort. "Can't get you to not use it most of the time. Regardless, I'm going to head out. You can leave the mess for a maid."

Sanji doesn't exhale fully until he's rounded a corner and he's still smiling. Smiles all the way to his room and for once doesn't lock the door behind him. Like his siblings, Sanji's chambers reflect their assigned color. white and black marble spans the length of the room, large gray silk sheet bed rest against the bow wall which also has tall inlaid shelves that carry books he favors or plans to read, and cook books from his mother's collection along with small decorations he's gathered in the travels. Next to his bed is a shiny leather reclining couch standing on golden claw feet, a secondary reading location when the balcony windows have the drapes pulled. In combat situations the terrace accordions into his room, railing doubling as a blast shield when extruded to cover the windows. At the far wall of the balcony there is a hidden switch that houses his birds. A closely guarded secret that's kept him from going insane more than a few times. At the stern end of the room is another small sitting area and fireplace intended for guest he never has but attentive maids keep dustless. On the same wall as the fireplace is a set of narrow double doors that lead to his closet and adjoined private bathroom with multi-jet shower and bidet.

In the time it takes Law to arrive, Sanji busies himself by pulling out his box of toys and lubricant stored in a false back on the bookshelf. It's no doubt modest given Law’s preferences but it's better than nothing. Before his mind can conjure an endless list of questions of what he should be doing, he ventures into his closet which is also home to a collection wine and spirits. With two glasses and an eighty-year-old burgundy Burdusk he moves to his recliner side table where a wine key waits.

   “Alright,” the doctor says with a shrug. A response to Sanji’s refusal to his operation offer. He can see that might be a bit of a sore spot and he won’t push the subject. He does have a habit of forcing operations on people who need them, even if they’d refuse, but that was in life saving situations. This isn’t. Still, the doctor in him can’t help adding something more for Sanji to think about. “It’s not an invasive procedure. Just gotta shove a hot piece of metal up your nose and sear a blood vessel but I won’t push the issue.”

   With the ice pulled from his patient’s neck the doctor intends on removing himself from Sanji’s lap. He’s got bloody paper towels to clean up and his hands to wash, but the Germa prince slides a hand on Law’s thigh, that hand moving on to his ass. An eyebrow arcs at that. Getting handsy when he had seem so determined to move this elsewhere not so long ago. Does he want to hide this or not? The doctor tilts his head, pretending no to notice the finger slipping under his shirt, and focuses on Sanji’s nose. He even brings a hand to Stealth Black’s jaw, gripping it so Law can shift his head to give a proper inspection.

   “Looks good enough,” Law drawls, releasing Sanji’s jaw when he continues his tone is more doctorly than seductive. “If it happens again and you’re gettin’ lightheaded I expect you to tell me.”

    With that Law slides backwards of Sanji’s lap and stands up, pulling himself from the other man’s touch. His job as a doctor isn’t done yet. He needs to clean up, so he gathers up the improvised ice pack and the bloody paper towel. For a brief moment Law realises he’s found the perfect opportunity to steal a sample of Sanji’s blood. A way to get a glimpse at his genetic structure and do some tests. His jaw works in its sockets, the Surgeon of Death truly thinking about this. At the same time, he has a question to answer.

   “It’d take too long to list ‘em all,” he replies after a thoughtful pause, throwing another smirk in Sanji’s direction. “But you should probably be prepared for some edging and teasing. I’m a sadistic asshole in all parts of my life.”

[suffering-and-happy-about-it]

Little update about my future plans:

While now I'm putting my focus on Sriracha and Peter Parker's iPod (yes, another chapter should be posted during the weekend, or on Monday if I'll be reaaally fucking lazy), there's still two fics gracing my mind: Pieces of the People We Love and The Eighties Blasts Collection.

While I'm not actively writing for these fics, I have them on my mind. And because I feel like I'm not good enough at focusing at them as well, @notaliteraltoad, I will post something called The Badass Portfolio, which will at least contain songs to listen to while I'm not posting for them. The series is inspired after these songs!

I'll also post character portfolio for series I call Silver For Monsters & Steel For Humans, focusing on a Witchress (a female Witcher).

[kneelesssharks]

Ramble On

Content: Eddie Munson x fem!punk!Reader

Named after the Led Zeppelin song that has the same name, but not necessarily inspired by the lyrics or anything.

Warnings: some swearing, reader gets knocked over and goes to the nurse but nothing graphic, over all pretty fluffy

A/N: i’ve been reading so much eddie munson fanfic recently because i l o v e men with that eighties hair rock hair with a punk style who has a thing for rock and roll, is a little stupid and an asshole, but is also a huge nerd, because that’s me. and while i love everyone who’s pumping out these fics for him i keep seeing people wanting to see him with a shy type or a really hyper femme type and i appreciate that and that those people are being represented with a character that they want to be paired with. but as someone who very much dresses in the punk style and listens to a fair amount of eighties and earlier classic rock who has a tattoo and dyed hair and piercings i thought ‘hey i’d like to see him with like me, i think we’d really like each other’ and instead of bothering someone else with it i thought i might as well give it a go. again i’m really not a super experienced fic writer and i have thus far only written harry potter but i wanted to dip my toe into the stranger things world. NO SPOILERS IN THIS.

Eddie Munson and you seemed like you were bound to be together, right? I mean you had the punk rock look, wore the leather jacket and the sturdy leather boots. If you weren’t wearing a pair of ripped patch jeans you would no doubt be sporting a pair of fishnets that maybe had one too many holes in them. You’d given yourself a couple stick and pokes before you turned eighteen and could finally get something more serious, and you’d put at least one too many holes in your body than most people around town deemed fit.

But somehow you went unnoticed by the leader of the Hellfire Club. Sure you didn’t feel the need to go walking around on top of the cafeteria tables at lunch, but you’d gotten enough stares just walking down the hallway.

Sure, maybe you and Eddie only had like one class together this year, and before he had been above you in grade so you couldn’t share a class. You thought he probably just saw you as an underling. Just someone else who went to this stupid school that would move out of town for good or be stuck here like the rest of them.

You weren’t shy, at least that’s what you told yourself. You could talk to anyone who approached you, give a compliment to a stranger, help someone in class, and besides some brief name calling no one really tried to fuck with you. You weren’t a pushover that’s for sure, but something about Eddie fucking Munson made your heart speed up.

Now Eddie had an entirely different perspective on you. He thought you were the most badass chick he’d ever seen. You walked down the hall with your headphones on blasting whatever cool ass music you had picked out that morning. He knew you had a major collection because of how often he’d seen you in and out of the only record shop in town.

You’d often worn the t-shirts from the band you enjoyed the most, able to hunt them down through some family in the city. Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Quiet Riot, and Eddie’s personal favorite Black Sabbath.

He thought the pins through your ears were badass, and the small tattoos he could see were the sexiest thing on the planet. You were his punk goddess and he could only worship you from a distance.

Walking down the hall with your music a little too loud you’d been searching through your stack of papers to grab the one you needed to hand into your teacher when you’d run into something. Or someone, or multiple someone’s.

“Shit I’m so sorry,” Dustin exclaimed as he and Mike scrambled to pick up some of the papers you dropped.

You were laying on the tile in the hall blinking slowly up at the ceiling. With your headphones knocked off your ears and the back of your skull lightly throbbing you were slightly dazed. Dustin entered your line of sight waving a hand in front of your face. He looks up when you don’t make a move to get up and before you can register anything you see the man of your dreams lean over you. His hair falling around his face, his brows knitted together with concern.

“Y/n,” you hear asked, almost through a haze. Part of you can’t believe he knows your name, the other part of you is realizing you’ve probably been on the floor for a concerning amount of time. You move to sit up in order to save yourself from further embarrassment. “Hey,” Eddie lightly smiled as you slowly push yourself up, “don’t rush, you got knocked down by a couple natural disasters,” he joked.

You let out a soft laugh as you took Dustin’s outstretched hand to help you stand up. You’re a little wobbly on your feet but Eddie’s right there behind you, wrapping his arm around your waist as you lean a little bit too far to one side.

You laugh, “What had you two in such a rush,” you look between an embarrassed Mike and Dustin, trying to ignore the butterflies in your stomach for the fact that Eddie has yet to let go of your waist.

Mike rubs the back of his neck, “We were on our way to a Hellfire meeting before lunch.”

Well that explains why Eddie was so close by.

“Go tell the others the meeting can wait until after school, I’m taking y/n to the nurses office to get this bump on her head checked,” Eddie instructs the two freshmen who just nod their heads and hand Eddie the stack of papers you’d been carrying, before scurrying off behind you.

“You don’t have to take me to the nurse Eddie,” you turn your head to finally look up at the man, who’s currently laser focused on getting you to the nurses office. “It wasn’t that bad of a fall, I was just listening to Sabbath a little too loudly and not paying attention when Dustin and Mike ran into me. Really I’m fine, plus I need to get that paper to O’Donnell’s before lunch or she said it’ll be late.”

Really you just didn’t want to spend any more time feeling your legs turn into jelly because of your proximity to the long haired man, whose silver rings you could feel through your shirt. You didn’t want to spend anymore time thinking about how his hand fits so comfortably on your waist, his arm sitting against the small of your back and how he smelled just ever so lightly of weed. You’d found it funny really, how it just engrained itself into his very being. Around him you didn’t think you’d ever need to smoke, you felt higher than you could have imagined.

“We’ll we’re already here,” Eddie huffs finally looking down at you. You’d already been staring at him, and he had definitely caught you.

You quickly turned your head and pushed open the door to the nurses office, Eddie still supporting you as you walked in. The nurse just motioned to the bed for you to sit on it. You reluctantly leave Eddie’s hold to sit on the knock off hospital bed.

“What happened,” the nurse asked barely looking up from her paperwork.

“I-,” you started before getting cut off.

“She got knocked on the ground and hit her head, has a bump on the back of her head,” Eddie informed the nurse.

Setting her pen down the nurse stood up and made her way over to you. She used the small light to gauge your pupils to decide whether you had a concussion.

“Doesn’t seem like you have a concussion at all, your eyes look fine.” She pulls a glove on before gently pressing at the back of your skull, you wince as she puts pressure on the aforementioned bump. “You do have a bit of swelling here but it should go down by tomorrow, there’s no blood and doesn’t appear to be any scrapes.” Tossing the glove in the trash she tells you, “Make sure you eat and stay hydrated in case you have a minor concussion, but you should be fine.”

“Thank you,” you tell her, scratching the back of your neck. “Um,” she turns back to you with a questioning look, “could you write me a note for Ms. O’Donnell? I need to turn in a paper before lunch and,” right on cue the bell releasing classes for lunch chimes through the halls.

She gives you a soft smile before turning and writing the note. As she hands it to you you’re standing from the bed. Before you can really say any further thanks to her you’re being dragged out of the room by your hand by the boy you had forgotten was in the room with you.

“To O’Donnell’s room,” you say catching up to Eddie, who was still holding your backpack, with the mess of stuff you’d been carrying in your arms when you’d been knocked over, stuffed in. You were still holding hands and you could feel the heat in your face from the action.

“You know you’re kind of surprising,” Eddie says looking down at you. Your brows furrowed and you tilt your head. “What I mean is, you’re a lot more responsible than I would have guessed.”

You snort out a laugh. “Hey, just because I listen to heavy metal and rock music doesn’t mean I can’t still be smart. I just want to graduate man, I mean, I can’t stand most of the people around here.”

You stop in front of the now empty classroom of the teacher who’s class you dreaded the most.

“I’m the exception right,” he smirked, trying to play it cool but internally his heart was beating wildly like an animal in a cage. Your hands were still locked together, becoming a little sweaty from both of your nerves, and now you were standing face to face, just looking into each other’s eyes.

“Yeah,” you quietly breathed. You cleared your throat, looking down at your boots that were a little worn out. “You are.” When you looked back up to meet his gaze his eyes were shining and his smile grew from a teasing smirk into his beautiful genuine smile.

Feeling the buzzing in your face from the excitement and nerves, you grabbed your bag from him, letting go of his hand in the process. You felt a little disappointed but turned to go into the classroom anyways, one hand still gripping the not you got from the nurse.

“I’ll wait for you out here,” Eddie called out to you. You turned back to him with a small smile you were trying to stop from growing. You just nodded your head with confirmation.

Eddie had never felt better as he leaned against the lockers smiling to himself and staring off into the ceiling.

“What’s up with you,” Gareth asked, shoving Eddie’s shoulder.

“I just got an opening to hang out with the coolest, hottest, most badass chick in the whole fucking school that’s what,” Eddie boasted. “All thanks to those Dustin and Mike not watching where they were going.”

Gareth was about to question who Eddie was referring to when you quietly walked out of the classroom and stood next to Eddie, picking your flaking nail polish from your fingernails. With a nod to Eddie he just walked off laughing to himself.

“You want to sit with the Hellfire Club at our lunch table,” Eddie opened, after a beat of silence.

You nodded your head, adjusting your backpack strap on your shoulder.

He’d decided against initiating physical contact again, figuring that he’d already been holding your waist before he’d grabbed you hand. If you wanted to hold his hand though, he would not stop you.

Instead you’d elected to just walk at an easy pace right next to him, your shoulders brushing every couple steps.

“Thanks for taking me to the nurse’s office by the way,” your head turned to see him already looking you, “and for grabbing my stuff. It would have been a pain in the ass to have to go grab my stuff after everyone had walked through the halls and shit. Who knows if someone would have taken it, you know being one of the outcasts.”

He just smiled and knocked your shoulders together. “I think being an outcast is cool. I mean,” he gestured to himself, “look at me. I’m like the king of the freaks, I think they’re much more interesting people. Plus you’re like a total badass, no one would fuck with your stuff.”

You laughed, “You think much higher of me than most. I mean, yeah I definitely intimidate people but that’s because I walk around looking like I hate the world,” you laugh at yourself. “They think because you wear black and listen to heavy metal and like tattoos and piercings and shit that you’re possessed or some shit.”

“That’s a fact, but if it helps, I think you’re the second coolest person in this school.” You’re about to ask him who’s the first when you look up to see him smirking.

You laugh and he joins you, throwing his arm around your shoulder as you’re rounding the corner into the cafeteria.

Part of you feels like no one cares and no one’s looking at the two punks walking into the cafeteria cackling holding each other, and the other part, the part that can actually see people, knows you two are the biggest spectacle currently taking place. Following Eddie’s lead you just ignore them, letting him guide you to his club’s table.

All the other kids are staring at the two of you when you reach the edge of the table.

“Everyone, this is y/n,” Eddie present you to the table.

You just smile and wave. “I only know Dustin and Mike,” you state looking over the faces.

Eddie chuckles next you you, “Yeah your own personal natural disasters.” The two younger boys look embarrassed as they wave at you. Eddie goes around the table and introduces everyone else to you before pulling you down to sit next to him at the end of the bench. It’s a little bit of a squeeze so you lift your leg to put it over his to make you both more comfortable.

You can feel him tense up at your position so you lean over to him, “Is this okay? I just figured it would help with space.” When he turns you’re just a couple inches away, he swears you looking into his eyes like that was his new favorite thing on the planet.

He leaned down to your ear, “It’s more than okay,” his hand slid around your waist and your eyes widened a fraction.

Lunch with the club had been more fun than you’d expected. You’d normally eat lunch out by your car listening to music and working on homework if you needed to. You’d never pictured you’d enjoy a group’s company as much as you did with the Hellfires.

As lunch was coming to an end and you’d have to head to class soon, one you didn’t have with Eddie much to his dismay.

“Hey,” he grabbed your arm as you stood up with everyone else when the bell rang. Everyone else was waking away from the table with their stuff and whatever lunch trash they’d had, while you and Eddie stayed back. “Would you maybe want to go out sometime? Like go get food or go to the record store together or something,” his eyes were darting around you and his fingers were drumming a little beat against the table.

You smiled at how nervous he seemed to be. Like, how could the coolest most confident guy in school, the one who literally waltzed around on tables in front of everyone, be scared to ask you out. You felt like just a plebeian in his presence.

“Or you know you don’t have to or anything,” Eddie started standing up still avoiding eye contact.

Your eyes widened as you realized you’d taken way too long to answer him. Your hand grabbed his arm, gripping his wrist to stop him from walking away. “Yes,” you say quickly. You cleared your throat, “I mean, yeah, I’d love to go out with you.”

He let out the biggest most dramatic sigh of relief you think you’ve ever seen. “Oh thank god,” he sat down, draping himself over the table and the attached bench.

You laughed, rolling your eyes. You started walking away, needing to go to class. He jumped up and grabbed your wrist this time. “Wait, I need your number so I can call you,” he smiled. Your head felt fuzzy and your stomach was full of butterflies. You nodded you head before grabbing a pen from the side pocket of your backpack. You rolled up his sleeve and gripped the wrist of the arm that was still holding yours before writing down your number, drawing a little heart next to it.

“Don’t mess it up,” you wink as you walk back through the cafeteria to get to your class, passing period almost up.

Eddie smiled stupidly at the number on his arm, right before pumping fist fist in the air letting out a whoop in the practically empty cafeteria. He planned to call you that very night.

This was the start of something epic.

[harley-sunday]

Fight for Your Right (to a party shirt)

Daniel Ricciardo once said: “Alright, so, you know it when you see it. You know, some people will wear, they call it, "Party Shirt," but it's not, it's like an old, Hawaiian dad shirt or something. Whether the buttons are too big, or the flowers just aren't the right flower, I don't know. So, you just know it when you see it. But when you see a good party shirt, it's magical. I’ve always got a party shirt. You gotta be merry, they could be an occasion. They don’t have to be as crazy as this one. They come in all shapes, sizes, colours, creations, but yeah, I uh, I certainly do have a collection of party shirts. I’m guilty for that.” 

Pairing: Daniel Ricciardo x reader (F)

Warnings: Language.

Word count: 3.3k

AN: No thoughts, head empty, just Dan and his party shirt. Enjoy.

“I’m gonna go grab another beer,” you tell your best friend, who just shakes her head and points to her ear to let you know she hasn’t heard you over the loud music that has been playing all night. Maybe if you weren’t four beers in already you’d worry about someone filing a noise complaint but then again, you don’t live here and so it’s really not your problem if they do. You’re on the other side of the city, somewhere in the outskirts of Wooroloo, although in all honesty all of Wooroloo is nothing more but an outskirt of Perth, and despite the closest neighbour living at least one k away you’re sure they’re able to enjoy the thumping bass as far as inside their living room it’s so loud.

The reason you’re here, in the middle of nowhere, is a party hosted by your best friend’s brother’s girlfriend’s brother. Or something like that, anyway. Not that it matters. What matters is that your beer is empty and so you try again, a little louder this time, “Gonna go grab a beer!”

Jess, still dancing, shakes her head.

You can’t help but laugh and hold up your empty beer bottle, pointing at it as you mouth, “Right back.”

Finally she nods in understanding and dismisses you with a wave of her hand before she turns around and starts jumping up and down to the chorus of Chumbawamba’s ‘Tubthumping’ with some people you’ve been introduced to earlier but you don’t remember the names of anymore. Dodging other groups of laughing and dancing people you make your way towards the house, to where a drinking station has been set up. There’s a variety of liquor and mixers on the kitchen counter and the fridge is filled to the brim with bottles of beer. You’re not sure who’s on restocking duty, but whoever it is they’re doing a terrific job because not once during your previous four beer-runs have you seen the fridge even halfway empty. 

Taking two beers, one for Jess just in case she wants a refill, you turn around and head back outside, finding your best friend exactly where you left her. You hand her the beer and it’s then the guy behind what is supposed to be the DJ booth, but instead is just a garden table with a laptop connected to some speakers on top, announces that he’s gonna start the eighties hour of power, which is met by loud cheers from pretty much everyone. You have to hand it to him, the guy, Jocko you think he’s called, knows his classics and knows how to crowd-please, Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock and Roll’ now blasting through the speakers and, like so many times before this night, you can’t help but sing along at the top of your lungs. 

=X=X=

It’s when you and Jess are in the middle of a very aggressive rendition of the Beastie Boys’ ‘Fight For Your Right’ that you feel someone tapping your shoulder and so you turn around even though you don’t stop whatever it is you’re doing. ‘Cause it sure isn’t singing or rapping. Screaming, most likely. You’re a little surprised to find a guy you don’t recognize standing behind you and become even more confused when you see the way he’s absolutely beaming at you. 

He doesn’t say anything, just keeps smiling at you, and so you raise an eyebrow at him, not sure what it is he wants from you until he steps aside and, like a magician, holds out his arms to reveal what, you’re not exactly sure. But then, then, another guy steps into view, his smile even brighter than the first guy, and you can feel your eyes grow wide when you see what he’s wearing.

As if on cue the song fades out and so they can actually hear you when you blurt out, “No way!”

Guy number two just nods, “I know, right? What are the fuckin’ odds?”  

You just stare at him in disbelief, shaking your head and trying not to smile when finally you say, “Well, one of us is gonna have to go change.”

He lets out a honking laugh, drawing the attention of the people around you and slowly more and more heads turn your way. “I’m not taking this off, babe,” he says with a grin, a defiant look in his eyes, “this is my party shirt.”

“No. No, no, this is my party shirt,” you challenge, folding your arms in front of your chest in a way that you hope will let him know you won’t back down that easily and to emphasise your point you throw him a wink, “babe.” 

The staredown that follows lasts at least a few seconds, with you biting your lip to keep from laughing and him still looking at you with a spark in his eyes as if this is the best thing that has happened all night. It allows you to really look at him and you’d be lying if you say he wasn’t attractive. He looks like a cheeky schoolboy, standing there with that stupid, shit-eating grin, but there’s something about the way he’s built that makes you think he might be an athlete, his tan arms and legs muscular but slim and you sort of want to know what he looks like underneath all those clothes. Rock hard abs probably, you muse, feeling the heat rising to your cheeks. He has a good head of hair too, you realise once you’ve let your eyes wander over his face, and, blame it on the almost five beers you’ve had, but you can’t help but wonder what it would feel like to have him on top of you, your hands running through his curls and-

It’s then the music is cut off completely and Jocko’s voice pulls you out of your thoughts, “Looks like we got ourselves a standoff, people.” He nods towards where the two of you are standing, everyone now turning your way and you think you hear Jess whisper a quiet, “Oh, shit.”

“One of them is gonna have to take it off,” Jocko says and there are a few loud cheers coming from people who seem to agree with him. 

“There’s only one way to settle this,” an unfamiliar voice pipes up from next to Jocko and when you look over to your right you see the guy who introduced you to your party shirt twin a few moments earlier has now found his way behind the DJ booth as well. He scans the crowd with that same beaming smile he had when he came up to you and screams, “Beer pong!”

The crowd whoops and cheers in response and before you even have time to protest two guys carrying another garden table make their way to the front and start to set up a game of beer pong with an efficiency that’s almost scary. 

Jocko waves you over then and you shake your head to let him know this isn’t really a good idea, but all around you people are starting to cheer you on and then Jess pushes you forward and you mutter a quiet, “Fine, fuck it,” not bothering to see if the guy is following you or not.

He is.

Jocko motions for you two to stand on either side of him and then brings his finger to his lips to silence the crowd who are all watching intently. He points to your opponent then, “Tell the people who you are, what you do, and why you deserve to win, my friend.”

“I’m Daniel, thirty-three years of age” the guy says without missing a beat, “I drive fast cars for a living, and I deserve to win because-” he leans forward then and throws you a wink, “-I’m not wearing anything underneath this shirt.”

The crowd roars but you just laugh back at him, “And what makes you think I am?”

Daniel’s eyes widen in shock just a little but enough to let you know you’ve thrown him off ever so slightly, which you plan to use to your full advantage. 

Jocko turns to you then and nods to let you know it’s your turn. You clear your throat and introduce yourself before you tell them, “I fly planes for a living-” you risk a quick glance to your right and see Daniel’s eyes widen even further before he nods appreciatively, “- and I deserve to win because I didn’t come here to fuck around.”

“Alright, rules are simple,” Jocko says, more to the crowd than to you. “You hit your shot, your oponent drinks and-” he draws out before he hushes the crowd with a finger to his lips, waiting before they’ve settled down before he continues, “has to undo a button!”

=X=X=

“Jesus, you suck at this,” you tell Daniel from across the table when he misses yet another throw, leaving your six cups untouched while you’ve already made him empty three of his. 

“Just need some warming up, babe,” he counters with a grin, laughing then when you miss your shot too. “Was I too distracting?”

“Nah, babe,” you tell him, the banter between you flowing effortlessly ever since this whole thing started. You roll your shoulders in an effort to loosen up your muscles some more, “Just trying to not make you look like too much of a loser.” 

Something changes in his demeanour then and he plants his feet a little wider apart, looking more determined than ever to get a ball in, even closing one eye to get his aim right. Still he misses and you can hear him mutter a quiet, “Fuck.” 

“Oh no,” you pout, teasing him as you line up your next shot, “it’s ok, baby. I’m sure you have other talents.”

“Make your next shot and maybe I’ll show you,” he says with a wink.

You laugh at his innuendo and throw the ping pong ball, landing it into his fourth cup with ease, “Don’t make any promises you can’t keep, Daniel.” 

The crowd surrounding the table cheers him on as he shots his beer, laughing when he makes a face once he’s emptied the cup. He runs the back of his hand over his mouth and looks at you as he opens the fourth button of his shirt, only two remaining now. You can’t help but stare at his tanned chest and he snaps his fingers to get your attention, shaking his head as he points two fingers at you before he turns them at his face, “Eyes up here, sweetheart.” 

You grin and take a step back, simply holding out your hands in front of you to show him the six still full cups on the table and watch him as he once again lines up for his next shot. This time he does make it and the crowd around you goes wild, a few guys slapping his back and shoulders. You shrug and take the cup, fishing out the ping pong ball before you down the drink in one go, throwing him a wink when you toss the cup aside and you undo the first button of your shirt. When you arrived at the party, Jess tied the lower part of the shirt around your waist in an attempt to make it appear a little less baggy and so you only have three more buttons to go before it gets critical but still you’re confident you’ll have beaten him before that happens. 

=X=X=

Of course you spoke entirely too soon because you missed the next three shots in rapid succession while Daniel nailed his, giving you a taste of your own medicine when he tells you it’s ok and not to worry about it. And so here you are, a few minutes later, three drinks in, and only one button away from where it’s tied, silently thanking whatever god there may be that you decided to wear your new lacy black bra tonight and not the skin-coloured one you usually have on under your uniform. 

“Come on, babe,” Daniel teases, his eyes locking on yours even though you’ve already seen him glance down your shirt a couple of times already, “show me what you got.”

Taking a deep breath you raise your arm and aim at the cup on the right, which is a bit closer to you than the one in the far left corner of the table. When you throw the ball you are certain you’ve missed completely but by some sort of miracle it lands in the other cup and so Daniel has to take another shot and undo another button. You raise your eyebrows at him, “You were saying?”

“Nothing,” he says once he finishes his drink. “You’re doing amazing, sweetie.” 

He must have finally found his groove because he makes the next shot as well and so you finish your second-to-last beer, now tied with him in what the crowd thinks is the most epic game of beer pong they’ve ever seen. They’re quiet now, watching the both of you intently, and you can’t help but feel the pressure as you undo the final button.   

“You got this,” your best friend says from somewhere beside you  just as you get ready to release the ball from your hand and it throws you off just enough that you miss your next shot. 

“Fuck yeah!” Daniel pumps one fist in the air as if he’s already won and blows you a kiss, “You are so going down.” 

You just look at him and watch as he picks up another ping pong ball, lines up his shot, and moves his arm back, ready to throw. It’s at that exact moment you undo the knot that ties your shirt together and let it fall open while you lean forward ever so slightly, giving him a perfect view of the swell of your breasts inside your bra. As if in slow motion you see Daniel’s mouth fall open just as he makes his throw, too shocked by what you just did to properly throw the ball and so it lands somewhere in the middle of the table before it rolls off into the grass rather unceremoniously. 

“Ha! Sucker!” You stick out your tongue at him and high five some of the people on your left. 

“That is so not fair,” Daniel exclaims, looking around him to see if anyone will back him up, “right?” He looks at Jocko then, “Tell me that wasn’t an unfair advantage, mate. I should get a do over.”

Jocko just shrugs, “I don’t see the problem, bud.”

“Oh, come on!” Daniel throws his hands in the air and turns his back at you to see if maybe anyone behind him will agree with him. 

No one does and so you try to make the most of this temporary distraction by taking a few deep breaths, knowing that it’s now or never. Not in the least because all the beer you’ve drank so far is starting to go to your head and you can feel yourself on the tipping point between tipsy and drunk, knowing that once you’ve tipped over to the drunk side you’ll never make another shot again. You wait until Daniel turns back around again so you can continue the game but he’s arguing with someone over the rules of beer pong and whether distracting your opponent is or isn’t allowed and so you snap your fingers to get his attention.

When he doesn’t hear you, or pretends he doesn’t, you retort to calling his name, over and over again, each time a little louder than before, “Daniel. Dan? Dan! Daniel! Oi!” Still he doesn’t listen and you turn to the crowd on your right, “Anyone know his full name?” 

Some guy nods and when he’s told you he looks at you expectantly, no doubt wanting to find out what’s going to happen next.  

You take another deep breath and then use what your friends like to call your ‘mom-voice’ even though you are definitely not a mom and only ever use it when they’re drunk and you try to get them all home safe. “Daniel Joseph Ricciardo!”

He turns around instantly, looking absolutely horrified, muttering a quiet, “Jesus Christ, you’re scary when you do that.”  

“Stop whining and let’s get on with it,” you tell him as you show him the ball you’re holding. “We’ve got a game to finish.”

He stares at you for a few seconds but then seems to regroup and waves his hand at you, “You’re already half-naked, babe. I think we can safely say I’ve won, nah?”

You don’t say anything and instead just throw the ball you were holding while you keep looking at him, blowing him a kiss for good measure. It’s a bold move and you know it and so time seems to actually slow down, each tenth of a second that passes feeling like a minute, but then you hear the sweet sound of a ping pong ball landing in a red solo cup that’s filled with beer. The crowd all around you goes absolutely crazy and even though you try to play it cool, as if you knew you were going to make the shot all along, you can’t help but join the celebrations, hugging Jess as both of you jump up and down to celebrate your win. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Jocko says then, grabbing a hold of you and lifting your right arm in the air just as MGMT’s ‘Kids’ starts playing. “We have a winner!”

=X=X=

Daniel finds you in the crowd not much later, his shirt now hanging wide open, and holds out his arms to you for a hug, “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” you say as you step closer to him, letting him throw his arms around you as you sneak yours under his shirt and around his waist, because fuck it. He’s all muscle you find out then, his abs as rock hard as you thought they’d be and yet there’s a softness to him that makes you want to never let go. Instead you simply say, “Told you I didn’t come to fuck around.”

He chuckles as his cheek brushes against yours, his warm breath hitting just below your ear when he whispers, “I think it’s only fair if I show you some of my other talents now.”

“Don’t make any promises you can’t keep, Ricciardo,” you remind him. 

“Not if you’ll let me kiss you.”

You smile even though he can’t see you, “How could I resist?”

He pulls back a little, his hands now cupping your face and so you slide your hands from his back to his sides and over his abs to his chest, where you rest your fingertips against his pecs. When he looks at you he raises one eyebrow, silently asking for permission, before he looks at the crowd that’s still around you.

You shrug as if to say, fuck ‘em, because most of them have gone back to dancing and drinking anyway. You don’t miss the way his eyes light up when you do. 

He lowers his head and finds your mouth with ease, his nose bumping against your cheek as he lets his lips brush against yours, his kiss soft and gentle at first. His lips are surprisingly soft and you swear you taste a hint of Australian Gold’s kiwi lime lipbalm when you run your tongue over them. 

He opens his mouth then and Jesus, you’re gonna need something to hold onto because you can feel your knees starting to go a little weak. You find the collar of his shirt and pull him closer to you just in time, because your tongue finds his then and it’s all teeth and tongue from there on out. When, after a while,  he takes your lower lips between his teeth and gently pulls on it you let out an involuntary moan, chasing his mouth with yours when he lets go. 

You think you hear someone shouting something about getting a room then and it makes Daniel pull back a little, a mischievous look in his eyes, “Maybe we should, eh?” 

He’s panting, trying to catch his breath, his voice’s a little rough and God, does it make you feel good, knowing you’re the one responsible for all that. 

You grin at him, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He nods and gives you a quick kiss before he puts his mouth to your ear again, his voice low and full of promises, “You didn’t come to fuck around and well,” he drops his voice even further, “-kissing isn’t the only thing I’m talented at, babe.”

[malewifemanhunter]

Heyyy gang :) 

You’re all still hard at it, two weeks into the D Blast of a lifetime. Stand-alone 100 word fics (roughly), anyone can enter: we’ve had total newbies and Big Name Veteran Fic Writers. We started on August 9th, open ‘til 9th Sept, and guess. what. …..so far you little rascals have written EIGHTY-ONE FICS. 

EIGHTY-ONE.

This beefy collection’s got something for everyone. We’ve got poetry, fluff, angst, catholic guilt, homophobia, biting, fruit, recreational drug use, and of course - self-flagellation :)

And yet? We still crave more??

So here’s some quickfire prompts for you all - we’ll be hand-picking some immediate winners for each prompt if people get fics in by this Friday (26th August)… so get ready, set, GO!

PROMPTS:

Charlie’s Artistic Process

Dee Performing

First Time at the Gay Bar

Make-Up 

A Bike Race

Quarantine/Lockdown

Brokeback Mountain themed

Cats vs. Dogs

Erotic Water Fight

Don’t forget you’re welcome to ask any of us (@malewifemanhunter, @headgehug, @officialbillhader, @stglennfucker, @lets-dont-this) if you have any questions, and credit to @stglennfucker especially for the beautiful banners <3

[dumdumsun]

And Dusk

A/N: Prayers for poor Olga 🙏🏾

Warnings: blood, violence, straight up murder

Word Count: 4096

—————————————

Chapter 13: Öga för Öga

Clicking steps echoed the hall Sir Reginald Hargreeves currently walked down, leaving a very discontent Five behind. Once the man disappeared down the hall, the boy left the lounge, growling and rubbing the back of his neck. Mind racing, he hopped on the elevator and pressed the button for the lobby. Just as the doors were about to close, (Y/N) slipped between them, Pennycrumb under her arm, and grasped onto Five’s arm. Eyes wide, the boy watched her in shock. “(Y/N)? I thought you left already. What are you doing?”

“I wanted to talk to you,” She whispered. “Five, I’m sorry… about lying to you. I-I was gonna tell you all about living with Dad a-and being adopted by him again, but then I didn’t and it was selfish and stupid-”

“(Y/N)-”

“But what I’m sorry about the most was for not speaking up about us. It wasn’t fair to you,” She shook her head. “I just… I’ve been doubtful about us lately. It’s like, everyone’s saying we shouldn’t be together… And after hearing it for so long…”

Five placed his hands on her shoulders firmly. “No,” He breathed. “I’ve waited too long for this, dammit. Listen to me, (Y/N). Don’t let what others say determine your opinions. What we have is fine. I know it seems fucked up, I know it seems wrong. But does any of this ever feel wrong to you?”

Glancing up at him, she shook her head. “No…”

“Exactly. This… Our entire upbringing was so dysfunctional and confusing. Nothing ever felt like true family. We were strangers in our own childhood home. We’re just now behaving like an actual family unit and it’s still confusing. So, no one has the right to tell us how to love. Especially not Reginald Hargreeves. The man who caused this.”

The two rested their foreheads against each other as the elevator doors opened, but they didn’t bother leaving just yet. As the doors closed again, (Y/N) sniffled. “So, you’ve never thought this wasn’t going to last?”

“I’ve never, ever doubted us. I know… compared to you, I know next to nothing about love. But this? This is real. And I promise you, Starlight, once the timeline is restored… I’m making this official. If you’ll have me.”

Snapping her head up, (Y/N) let her tears fall. “Are you… You’re serious?” She grinned. When Five nodded, she quickly elevated herself on her toes and pecked his lips repeatedly. “Yes. Finally.” She whispered. Five grinned and tightened his hold on her, blinking them both out of the building and outside.

“Well, then, why don’t we speed up the process? Here’s what's going to happen,” He started and pulled away, gently wiping her tears away. “I’m about to meet up with The Handler. She offered me a deal to kill the entire board of directors of the Commission in exchange for a briefcase to get us all home to 2019. No more World War III, no more apocalypse.”

(Y/N) glanced down at her pup, who peered up at her, tongue hanging from his mouth. “How can you trust her?”

“I don’t know if I even should. But I’ll have to. She’s our only… our only option.”

From the way he sighed and stuffed his hands into his pockets, she could tell he was already regretting his decision. Gently caressing his cheek, she offered him a small smile. “You don’t want to kill, do you?” She whispered, receiving the shake of a head as an answer. “I-I don’t even know what to say to that… Just… Just know that I won’t think any differently of you. You’ll still be my Five. And I’ll be right there beside you if you need me.”

“My god, I don’t deserve you…” He sighed. Quietly chuckling, (Y/N) set her pet down and pulled Five into a hug. He closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around her waist. “I appreciate you, I really do. I’m gonna get us out of here, but I don’t want you helping me on this. The Handler already knows about you. I can’t have her using you or anything like that against me. So… just wait for me.”

“Wait? Five, I can’t just let you do something like this alone.”

“I know I’ve asked you too many times at this point, but this will be the last. I promise I’ll get you as soon as I come back.” The boy tried a smile as he pulled away. When she gently bit her lip, he sighed. “(Y/N), you can’t come. I’m sorry, but you’ll be by my side after this is over. I promise, okay?”

She shifted her eyes away from him. “You don’t have to keep promising. I trust you.” She whispered. Five exhaled and gently picked up Mr Pennycrumb, placing him in her arms before pecking his love on the lips. With a small smile, he turned around to leave. Just as he blinked away, (Y/N) very gently pinched the back of his blaser, allowing herself and her pet to be teleported with him.

(Y/N) considered herself very lucky for the fact that Five hadn’t noticed her presence. Or maybe she had her stealth to thank. She would quickly duck behind walls, corners, tables and so on whenever she felt that Five was becoming suspicious of her. After all, she knew him like the back of her hand; she could tell when he was subtly glancing over his shoulder or out of the corner of his eye. She waited outside the door of the room the boy had entered, keeping her hand over her pet’s mouth to silence him as she attempted to eavesdrop on the muffled conversation between Five and who she assumed was The Handler.

She had to admit, it did set her blood boiling at the thought of him being alone in that room with another woman, but she knew he would never be disloyal to her. Not after his confession and proposal. So, she shook off her jealousy and hid once again when he exited the room, briefcase in hand.

She gave herself a great pat on the back when she successfully managed to blink with him for the second time. And the third. And when he used the briefcase to teleport. By this point, she was light-headed and nursing her whimpering pup as she followed Five from a distance. She had no idea where or when they were, but judging by the cars people drove and the hairstyles they wore, she wasn’t in the sixties anymore. Most likely the late seventies or early eighties, she assumed.

Setting Mr Pennycrumb on the ground, (Y/N) grabbed hold of his leash and kept a close eye on her love as she blended in as a teenage girl, in outdated clothing, walking her puppy towards an inn. After watching Five enter, she walked onto the porch and sat herself in one of the rocking chairs. She tapped her fingers and toes to the rhythm of the upbeat polka music sounding from the inside. To pass the time, she reviewed tricks with Mr Pennycrumb, clapping and excitedly petting him in praise whenever he’d succeed. What the puppy expected, though, was a treat. It was then that she realized neither of them had eaten in quite some time.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, baby…” She whispered to the pup, who only whined and pawed at her ankles. Huffing, she jumped to her feet and led the two of them inside. Everyone seemed to be dressed for polka dancing, considering their attire and the music playing from a nearby room. With a polka party, there had to be food. Turning to her left, she was met with a nest of blonde curls. “Excuse me, ma’am?”

“Well, hi there,” The woman looked up with a jolly smile. “I just told the young man before you, we don’t put out the cookies until three.”

“That’s amazing,” (Y/N) smiled. “I was actually wondering where the… polka dancing takes place.”

The woman assessed the young girl with a raised brow. “Very… interesting choice of clothing. And I’m afraid we can’t allow the dog.”

“Ah- Yes, my mom’s actually in there with my clothes. I just need to find her and change. And this is her… service dog.”

“He looks a little young to be a service dog, sweetie.”

“That’s what I told the doctor,” (Y/N) chuckled, smiling down at her pup. “But he does his job very well for the cute little thing he is. However, he cannot do his job if he isn’t at my mom’s side, so…”

Sighing, the woman gestured to her left. “All the way down that hall, dear. Just keep an eye on the dog, will ya?”

“Of course. Thank you.” She nodded before leading her and Pennycrumb in the direction of the room jumping with cheery music and the clicking of dancing feet. She found herself a table in the corner of the room after meandering her way past attendees. Just as she sat herself down, she was greeted by smiling faces, allowing them to gush over and pet her puppy. This eventually resulted in them wanting to feed him their scraps of food, much to her delight.

(Y/N) helped herself to the buffet as she watched the door carefully, wanting to keep an eye on Five’s whereabouts. What she didn’t expect after eating the majority of her plate was to be pulled onto the dance floor. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, she genuinely had a blast learning to polka dance, as embarrassing as it was to her. She caught on rather quickly and allowed herself three dances before she politely excused herself, collected her dog, and crept out of the room. Just as she entered the hall again, she saw the blonde attendant from earlier storming away from a broken vending machine and into a room for a meeting labeled ‘Midwest Soybean Society’.

That doesn’t even sound like a real thing, she thought. That must be where the board is meeting.

Deciding to wait out Five’s ‘work’, she strolled over to the vending machine, wincing at the broken glass that once contained the delicious snacks inside. Squinting her eyes, she noticed a certain candy bar, the Fudge Nutter, was leaning just out of its slot. It was just hanging by a thread. That’s when (Y/N) realized, Five hadn’t eaten in a while either. This must’ve been his doing. Using her foot, she kicked the glass out of the way and stuck her hand in, plucking the candy out of its place and pocketing it. Just when she did so, she heard Mr Pennycrumb’s barks aimed in front of them. (Y/N) blinked at the sight before her.

A man- could she even call him that? - with a fish tank holding a goldfish for a head came running in her direction in a panicked hurry, huffing and puffing through what looked to be an intercom of some sort. Tightening her hold on the leash, she swirled her way in front of the fish-man any time he’d change his direction. “Out of my way!” He hissed, but (Y/N) continued to block his path until Five blinked right in front of her. From where she stood behind him, she saw that he was drenched in blood and could only imagine what he looked like from the front. The boy clutched a paddle in his hands, his movements fidgeting. The fish-man gasped in shock at the boy. “Surely, we can come to some form of agreement that benefits both parties,” His British accent quivered. “Quid pro quo? What do you say?”

“Why not?” Five shrugged. “Here’s your quid.” The boy swung the paddle into the man’s side, eliciting a shriek from him. “Here’s your pro.” Then to his leg, sending him to his knees. “And here’s your quo.”

“No! No! Please, don’t!” He whimpered as Five aimed the paddle to his glass tank containing the goldfish. “No!” He cried as the boy smashed the paddle through the tank, glass shattering and water pouring all around. The body fell to the ground with a thud as well as the goldfish. Five loomed over the fish just as Mr Pennycrumb happily barked and skittered to the boy. Blinking, he turned to the dog in confusion.

“Mr Pennycrumb?” He whispered. From his peripheral, he spotted (Y/N) joining his side. “(Y/N), what are you doing here?! How did you even-”

“I’m surprised I made it this far,” She hummed and crouched down, a bag of water in her hand she had fetched the moment Five had blinked into the hallway. “No, baby, you just ate. You fatty.” She chuckled and gently pushed her very hyper golden retriever away, preventing him from gobbling down the fish.

Five watched as she delicately picked AJ up with her index finger and thumb, plopping him into the bag of water before holding it closed. “What’s the poor bastard’s name?” She asked and stood to her feet. Five let out a deep breath and stared up at the ceiling.

“AJ Carmichael…”

“Well, then… It’s nice to meet you, AJ.” She whispered to the bag. The teens quickly looked up when two giggling women exited the polka association room. They stopped in their tracks, observed the scene, and headed straight back inside without a word spoken. (Y/N) sighed and handed the bag over to her love before picking up her pup’s leash. “Oh! I almost forgot.” She perked up and fished the candy out of her pocket, tucking it into Five’s instead.

“For your hard work.”

“Thank you, my love.”

Not a word was spoken between the two after Five took them back to 1963 via the briefcase. “Why couldn’t we just use this to get back home?”

“Because of that,” He pointed to the case that sat on the gravel before them. It shook and sputtered and crackled, an electric blue light emanating and swallowing it whole until it was gone. “She’d never hand me a ticket out of here until she got what she wanted.”

“Yeah, I guess I should’ve thought of that…” (Y/N) whispered and turned away.

They stood in the middle of an alleyway, awaiting The Handler’s arrival as (Y/N) took her handkerchief out of her breast pocket and began ridding Five’s face of the blood splatter the best she could. His eyes wouldn’t meet hers no matter how hard she tried to capture them. She could practically see the gears turning in his head, with the way his brows scrunched and his bloodied fingers rubbed against each other. Once she finished what she could of his face, she gently took his hands in hers and cleaned those as well. Their eyes finally met, both pairs filled with concern for the other, just before the sound of approaching footsteps could be heard.

The Handler, in all her glory, walked towards the two, briefcase in hand. Five wouldn’t even face her, even went as far as to keep his back towards her even after she stopped to stand in front of (Y/N). “We meet again, dear.”

“I had a feeling…”

“Do you bring the mutt everywhere you go?”

(Y/N) shrugged at her pet, who was busy scratching himself behind his ear. The Handler hummed and turned to Five. “Well?”

Without a word, the boy stretched his arm that held the bag behind him. The Handler gasped and set the briefcase down, moving her veil out of the way and taking the bag into her hands. She cackled, cooed and sighed at poor AJ before settling her sights on Five, who was now turned to face her. “You know, you’re really starting to fill out those tight little shorts of yours. Isn’t he, (Y/N)?”

Said girl only watched her love, who looked anywhere but at her. She realized he was ashamed, he was regretful. The Handler frowned at him, hand on her hip. “What’s wrong with him? He’s never this quiet after a job like this. I thought you’d be buzzing after this morning’s slaughter, Five.”

“All this killing,” Five sighed. “I’m done with it.”

The Handler raised her brows and moved forward, going to caress his cheek as she usually did, but (Y/N) stepped to his side, hand firmly on his arm. Chuckling, she turned back to Five. “Am I supposed to take that seriously?”

“What I did today, I did for my family. I did it to save the world.”

“Please. Spare me your little assassin with the heart of gold routine, will you?” She tapped his nose before picking up the briefcase and stretching it towards them. “Here. Per our agreement, this will get you, your siblings, and dear (Y/N) back to 2019.”

To spare him the humiliation of taking the briefcase, (Y/N) did it herself, glaring at the woman.

“You have ninety minutes.”

(Y/N)’s stomach dropped as Five snapped his head up. The Handler turned to walk away as he quickly followed her. “You said nothing about a time limit!”

Glancing at her watch, she smiled. “Actually, you have eighty-nine minutes and thirty seconds. Better hurry.”

“You fucking-”

“This is impossible, okay?!” Five interrupted (Y/N)’s insult in a panic. “My siblings are scattered across the city!”

“Nothing’s impossible. You proved that this morning when you killed the board.”

“I need more time.” Five rushed, glancing at his love for a moment, the girl clutching the briefcase in one hand, Pennycrumb’s leash in the other.

“Any more time, and people will start asking questions,” The Handler’s neutral tone contradicted Five’s rushed, panicked voice. “The sooner you get home and out of this time period, the better off we’ll both be, so ticktock, ticktock.”

Growling, Five charged up to (Y/N), the girl watching as the she-devil happily waved at them before Five blinked them out of the alleyway. The blood-scrawled message on Elliott’s floor was hard not to notice when they appeared in his home. (Y/N) widened her eyes at the message written in Swedish:

ÖGA FÖR ÖGA

Five snatched the briefcase from her hold and sighed before he hurried up the steps. (Y/N) followed close behind, the voices of Diego and Luther becoming more apparent the closer they got. Reaching the top of the stairs, they noticed a chair with a sheet-covered figure laying in it. (Y/N) dropped the leash and approached the chair, slowly uncovering the figure and gasping at the sight of a bloodied Elliott. His face was frozen in agony, the light within his dark eyes vanished. She and Five let out a simultaneous ‘damn’ before she covered him back up. “The three psychopaths…”

She looked up as Five wandered the lounge room, searching for a safe place to store the briefcase. As he did so, (Y/N) entered the kitchen, watching her brothers share a single brain cell.

“My name? Is, uh, Luther Hargreeves, and-”

Diego snatched the phone out of Luther’s hand and put it up to his own ear. “You killed one of ours, Olga,” The misinterpretation had (Y/N) rolling her eyes to the back of her head. “Now we’re coming after you. You will be dead by nightfall.”

“Hey!” Five called as he entered the kitchen, beginning to take off his blaser. “It’s Öga För Öga, idiots. Swedish for ‘an eye for an eye’.”

(Y/N) moved behind him and assisted in removing his blaser, glancing up at her brothers. “The Swedes killed Elliott. Not poor Olga.” As she pulled off Five’s vest for him, Diego slowly turned back towards the wall.

“Wrong number. Have a lovely day.” He smiled before hanging up the phone. (Y/N) scoffed and held the boy’s clothes out of his reach when he tried to take them.

“Shower.” She demanded, Five clenching his fists.

“(Y/N), we don’t have time-”

“We’ll have plenty of time. You shower while I wash the blood out.” She explained and began unbuttoning his dress shirt. Five gently swatted her hands away.

“I can undress myself!”

“Then hurry and give me your disgusting clothes!”

“Fine!”

Five scoffed and moved around his brothers, ignoring whatever they had been calling out to him. (Y/N) shook her head and set her love’s clothes into Elliott’s kitchen sink. Diego and Luther leaned against the counter on either side of her as she began washing the blood from the vest.

“You gonna explain what the hell happened?” Diego whispered.

“Why’s he covered in blood?” Luther leaned closer.

“I tried to clean it, I really did.” (Y/N) shrugged.

The brothers gave each other a look before moving their attention back to their sister. Luther cleared his throat. “How’d he, uh… get the blood on him?”

She didn’t give him an explanation, though, and picked up the pile of clothes Five had just dumped outside of the bathroom door before returning to the sink. When the two saw she wasn’t going to speak on Five’s behalf, they both sighed and left her to her work.

Despite his irritation, the boy couldn’t help the swelling of his heart when he cracked the bathroom door open to find his slightly damp, but clean clothes neatly folded on the floor. Grabbing the clothes, he quickly tugged the uniform back on, save for the tie and blaser. Swinging the door open, he was met with a smirking (Y/N). He rolled his eyes as she approached him, taking his tie and putting it on for him. “Doesn’t that make you feel a bit better?”

“No,” He mumbled, but caught the amusement in her eyes. “Maybe a little… but it doesn’t matter because we’re losing time.”

“Well, sorry for not wanting you to smell like you just killed twelve people.” She whispered and pecked his lips, exiting the bathroom after his tie was fastened. Glancing in the mirror, Five adjusted his clothes as Luther did the same just outside the bathroom.

“So, I found a way home.”

“What? How?”

“All the details are irrelevant, but… I made a deal to get back to our timeline.”

(Y/N) watched from the lounge room as the boys spoke, gently petting her dog. Diego joined in the conversation as he pulled a jacket on. “What about doomsday?”

“Won’t happen.”

“And the 2019 apocalypse?”

“Everything will be back to normal,” Five sighed and exited the bathroom, blaser in hand. “Now no more questions. We gotta go. We have to find the others, right? Luther, you get Allison. Diego, Klaus. I’ll get Vanya. Now, we meet back in the arrival alley in seventy-seven minutes.” He pulled on the blaser and picked up four watches, handing one to each person in the room. “I’ve synchronized these watches.”

(Y/N) stood to her feet once the watch was given to her. “Five, what should I do?” She raised her brows. Five shook his head and busied himself with fastening the watch on her wrist.

“Starlight, I want you to gather your things, say your goodbyes to Mr Pennycrumb, and meet back in the alleyway as soon as possible-”

“Wait, what? We’re leaving Penny?” She widened her eyes. Five exhaled through his nose and wordlessly nodded. “Five, why? N-Nothing will happen, he’s just a dog.”

His eyes flicked up to her when her voice broke, his hands coming up to hold her jaw. “He may be just a dog, Starlight, but he isn’t insignificant. Every little yawn he takes, every bark he makes… it all matters, okay? We can’t risk it. I know Mr Pennycrumb was a comfort for you and I’m so sorry… but we can’t take him.”

(Y/N) shakily inhaled, desperately trying to blink back the tears in her eyes, but Five saw them long before she even noticed. Glancing down, he saw the puppy chewing at the toe of his shoe. With the utmost care, Five picked the puppy up and placed him into her arms before leaning down to look into his eyes. “Thanks, buddy… for taking care of her,” He reached forward, Pennycrumb instantly nuzzling his nose into his hand. “You did what I couldn’t. And for that, I am eternally grateful. Goodbye, Mr Pennycrumb.”

“I’m glad you two met.” (Y/N) whispered. Five smiled and sweetly kissed her before stepping back. Clearing her throat, she held her puppy close and walked down the stairs. She only allowed herself to cry when she stepped outside, the door shutting behind her.

—————————————

Taglist: @unfortu-nate-ly @sapphicsyn @m00n-sh @starcurrent @alexander-hamilhoe @youcandalekmyballs @wonderlandfandomkingdom @yrdadjstcallsmekatya @sm0kingcrack @a-t-h-r-e-e-n-a @moatsnow @bubblegumflamingos @starstormssymphony @meowiemari @magicalgothpandamaker @keayastitties @hehehehannahthings @harrystylescherrie @rhain3 @himikaphoo @xxeiraxx @camerondiaz48104 @isawachickeninatree @theyaremorethanjustfictional @that-can-of-fizz @luckyzipperscissorsbat @cuupiid

[peacefulapocalypse]

I Sexually Identify as an

Attack Helicopter

by ISABEL FALL

I sexually identify as an attack helicopter.

I lied. According to US Army Technical Manual 0, The Soldier as a System, “attack helicopter” is a

gender identity, not a biological sex. My dog tags and Form 3349 say my body is an XX-karyotope

somatic female.

But, really, I didn’t lie. My body is a component in my mission, subordinate to what I truly am. If I

say I am an attack helicopter, then my body, my sex, is too. I’ll prove it to you.

When I joined the Army I consented to tactical-role gender reassignment. It was mandatory for the

MOS I’d tested into. I was nervous. I’d never been anything but a woman before.

But I decided that I was done with womanhood, over what womanhood could do for me; I wanted to

be something furiously new.

To the people who say a woman would’ve refused to do what I do, I say—

Isn’t that the point?

I fly—

Red evening over the white Mojave, and I watch the sun set through a canopy of polycarbonate and

glass: clitoral bulge of cockpit on the helicopter’s nose. Lightning probes the burned wreck of an oil

refinery and the Santa Ana feeds a smoldering wildfire and pulls pine soot out southwest across the

Big Pacific. We are alone with each other, Axis and I, flying low.

We are traveling south to strike a high school.

Rotor wash flattens rings of desert creosote. Did you know that creosote bushes clone themselves?

The ten-thousand-year elders enforce dead zones where nothing can grow except more creosote.

Beetles and mice live among them, the way our cities had pigeons and mice. I guess the analogy

breaks down because the creosote’s lasted ten thousand years. You don’t need an attack helicopter

to tell you that our cities haven’t. The Army gave me gene therapy to make my blood toxic to

mosquitoes. Soon you will have that too, to fight malaria in the Hudson floodplain and on the banks

of the Greater Lake.

Now I cross Highway 40, southbound at two hundred knots. The Apache’s engine is electric and

silent. Decibel killers sop up the rotor noise. White-bright infrared vision shows me stripes of heat,

the tire tracks left by Pear Mesa school buses. Buried housing projects smolder under the dirt,

radiators curled until sunset. This is enemy territory. You can tell because, though this desert was

once Nevada and California, there are no American flags.

“Barb,” the Apache whispers, in a voice that Axis once identified, to my alarm, as my mother’s.

“Waypoint soon.”

“Axis.” I call out to my gunner, tucked into the nose ahead of me. I can see only gray helmet and

flight suit shoulders, but I know that body wholly, the hard knots of muscle, the ridge of pelvic

girdle, the shallow navel and flat hard chest. An attack helicopter has a crew of two. My gunner is

my marriage, my pillar, the completion of my gender.

“Axis.” The repeated call sign means, I hear you.

“Ten minutes to target.”

“Ready for target,” Axis says.

But there is again that roughness, like a fold in carbon fiber. I heard it when we reviewed our

fragment orders for the strike. I hear it again now. I cannot ignore it any more than I could ignore a

battery fire; it is a fault in a person and a system I trust with my life.

But I can choose to ignore it for now.

The target bumps up over the horizon. The low mounds of Kelso-Ventura District High burn warm

gray through a parfait coating of aerogel insulation and desert soil. We have crossed a third of the

continental US to strike a school built by Americans.

Axis cues up a missile: black eyes narrowed, telltales reflected against clear laser-washed cornea.

“Call the shot, Barb.”

“Stand by. Maneuvering.” I lift us above the desert floor, buying some room for the missile to run,

watching the probability-of-kill calculation change with each motion of the aircraft.

Before the Army my name was Seo Ji Hee. Now my call sign is Barb, which isn’t short for Barbara. I

share a rank (flight warrant officer), a gender, and a urinary system with my gunner Axis: we are

harnessed and catheterized into the narrow tandem cockpit of a Boeing AH-70 Apache Mystic.

America names its helicopters for the people it destroyed.

We are here to degrade and destroy strategic targets in the United States of America’s war against

the Pear Mesa Budget Committee. If you disagree with the war, so be it: I ask your empathy, not

your sympathy. Save your pity for the poor legislators who had to find some constitutional

framework for declaring war against a credit union.

The reasons for war don’t matter much to us. We want to fight the way a woman wants to be

gracious, the way a man wants to be firm. Our need is as vamp-fierce as the strutting queen and

dryly subtle as the dapper lesbian and comfortable as the soft resilience of the demiwoman. How

often do you analyze the reasons for your own gender? You might sigh at the necessity of morning

makeup, or hide your love for your friends behind beer and bravado. Maybe you even resent the

punishment for breaking these norms.

But how often—really—do you think about the grand strategy of gender? The mess of history and

sociology, biology and game theory that gave rise to your pants and your hair and your salary? The

casus belli?

Often, you might say. All the time. It haunts me.

Then you, more than anyone, helped make me.

When I was a woman I wanted to be good at woman. I wanted to darken my eyes and strut in heels.

I wanted to laugh from my throat when I was pleased, laugh so low that women would shiver in

contentment down the block.

And at the same time I resented it all. I wanted to be sharper, stronger, a new-made thing,

exquisite and formidable. Did I want that because I was taught to hate being a woman? Or because I

hated being taught anything at all?

Now I am jointed inside. Now I am geared and shafted, I am a being of opposing torques. The noise

I make is canceled by decibel killers so I am no louder than a woman laughing through two walls.

When I was a woman I wanted to have friends who would gasp at the precision and surprise of my

gifts. Now I show friendship by tracking the motions of your head, looking at what you look at, the

way one helicopter’s sensors can be slaved to the motions of another.

When I was a woman I wanted my skin to be as smooth and dark as the sintered stone countertop

in our kitchen.

Now my skin is boron-carbide and Kevlar. Now I have a wrist callus where I press my hydration

sensor into my skin too hard and too often. Now I have bit-down nails from the claustrophobia of the

bus ride to the flight line. I paint them desert colors, compulsively.

When I was a woman I was always aware of surveillance. The threat of the eyes on me, the chance

that I would cross over some threshold of detection and become a target.

Now I do the exact same thing. But I am counting radars and lidars and pit viper thermal sensors,

waiting for a missile.

I am gas turbines. I am the way I never sit on the same side of the table as a stranger. I am most

comfortable in moonless dark, in low places between hills. I am always thirsty and always tense. I

tense my core and pace my breath even when coiled up in a briefing chair. As if my tail rotor must

cancel the spin of the main blades and the turbines must whirl and the plates flex against the pitch

links or I will go down spinning to my death.

An airplane wants in its very body to stay flying. A helicopter is propelled by its interior

near-disaster.

I speak the attack command to my gunner. “Normalize the target.”

Nothing happens.

“Axis. Comm check.”

“Barb, Axis. I hear you.” No explanation for the fault. There is nothing wrong with the weapon attack

parameters. Nothing wrong with any system at all, except the one without any telltales, my spouse,

my gunner.

“Normalize the target,” I repeat.

“Axis. Rifle one.”

The weapon falls off our wing, ignites, homes in on the hard invisible point of the laser designator.

Missiles are faster than you think, more like a bullet than a bird. If you’ve ever seen a bird.

The weapon penetrates the concrete shelter of Kelso-Ventura High School and fills the empty halls

with thermobaric aerosol. Then: ignition. The detonation hollows out the school like a hooked finger

scooping out an egg. There are not more than a few janitors in there. A few teachers working late.

They are bycatch.

What do I feel in that moment? Relief. Not sexual, not like eating or pissing, not like coming in from

the heat to the cool dry climate shelter. It’s a sense of passing . Walking down the street in the right

clothes, with the right partner, to the right job. That feeling. Have you felt it?

But there is also an itch of worry—why did Axis hesitate? How did Axis hesitate?

Kelso-Ventura High School collapses into its own basement. “Target normalized,” Axis reports,

without emotion, and my heart beats slow and worried.

I want you to understand that the way I feel about Axis is hard and impersonal and lovely. It is

exactly the way you would feel if a beautiful, silent turbine whirled beside you day and night,

protecting you, driving you on, coursing with current, fiercely bladed, devoted. God, it’s love. It’s

love I can’t explain. It’s cold and good.

“Barb,” I say, which means I understand . “Exiting north, zero three zero, cupids two.”

I adjust the collective—feel the swash plate push up against the pitch links, the links tilt the angle of

the rotors so they ease their bite on the air—and the Apache, my body, sinks toward the hot desert

floor. Warm updraft caresses the hull, sensual contrast with the Santa Ana wind. I shiver in delight.

Suddenly: warning receivers hiss in my ear, poke me in the sacral vertebrae, put a dark

thunderstorm note into my air. “Shit,” Axis hisses. “Air search radar active, bearing 192, angles

twenty, distance . . . eighty klicks. It’s a fast-mover. He must’ve heard the blast.”

A fighter. A combat jet. Pear Mesa’s mercenary defenders have an air force, and they are out on the

hunt. “A Werewolf.”

“Must be. Gown?”

“Gown up.” I cue the plasma-sheath stealth system that protects us from radar and laser hits. The

Apache glows with lines of arc-weld light, UFO light. Our rotor wash blasts the plasma into a bright

wedding train behind us. To the enemy’s sensors, that trail of plasma is as thick and soft as

insulating foam. To our eyes it’s cold aurora fire.

“Let’s get the fuck out.” I touch the cyclic and we sideslip through Mojave dust, watching the school

fall into itself. There is no reason to do this except that somehow I know Axis wants to see. Finally I

pull the nose around, aim us northeast, shedding light like a comet buzzing the desert on its way

into the sun.

“Werewolf at seventy klicks,” Axis reports. “Coming our way. Time to intercept . . . six minutes.”

The Werewolf Apostles are mercenaries, survivors from the militaries of climate-seared states. They

sell their training and their hardware to earn their refugee peoples a few degrees more distance from

the equator.

The heat of the broken world has chased them here to chase us.

Before my assignment neurosurgery, they made me sit through (I could bear to sit, back then) the

mandatory course on Applied Constructive Gender Theory. Slouched in a fungus-nibbled plastic chair

as transparencies slid across the cracked screen of a De-networked Briefing Element overhead

projector: how I learned the technology of gender.

Long before we had writing or farms or post-digital strike helicopters, we had each other. We lived

together and changed each other, and so we needed to say “this is who I am, this is what I do.”

So, in the same way that we attached sounds to meanings to make language, we began to attach

clusters of behavior to signal social roles. Those clusters were rich, and quick-changing, and so just

like language, we needed networks devoted to processing them. We needed a place in the brain to

construct and to analyze gender.

Generations of queer activists fought to make gender a self-determined choice, and to undo the

creeping determinism that said the way it is now is the way it always was and always must be.

Generations of scientists mapped the neural wiring that motivated and encoded the gender choice.

And the moment their work reached a usable stage—the moment society was ready to accept plastic

gender, and scientists were ready to manipulate it—the military found a new resource. Armed with

functional connectome mapping and neural plastics, the military can make gender tactical.

If gender has always been a construct, then why not construct new ones?

My gender networks have been reassigned to make me a better AH-70 Apache Mystic pilot. This is

better than conventional skill learning. I can show you why.

Look at a diagram of an attack helicopter’s airframe and components. Tell me how much of it you

grasp at once.

Now look at a person near you, their clothes, their hair, their makeup and expression, the way they

meet or avoid your eyes. Tell me which was richer with information about danger and capability. Tell

me which was easier to access and interpret.

The gender networks are old and well-connected. They work .

I remember being a woman. I remember it the way you remember that old, beloved hobby you left

behind. Woman felt like my prom dress, polyester satin smoothed between little hand and little hip.

Woman felt like a little tic of the lips when I was interrupted, or like teasing out the mood my

boyfriend wouldn’t explain. Like remembering his mom’s birthday for him, or giving him a list of

things to buy at the store, when he wanted to be better about groceries.

I was always aware of being small: aware that people could hurt me. I spent a lot of time thinking

about things that had happened right before something awful. I would look around me and ask

myself, are the same things happening now? Women live in cross-reference. It is harder work than

we know.

Now I think about being small as an advantage for nape-of-earth maneuvers and pop-up guided

missile attacks.

Now I yield to speed walkers in the hall like I need to avoid fouling my rotors.

Now walking beneath high-tension power lines makes me feel the way that a cis man would feel if he

strutted down the street in a miniskirt and heels.

I’m comfortable in open spaces but only if there’s terrain to break it up. I hate conversations I

haven’t started; I interrupt shamelessly so that I can make my point and leave.

People treat me like I’m dangerous, like I could hurt them if I wanted to. They want me protected

and watched over. They bring me water and ask how I’m doing.

People want me on their team. They want what I can do.

A fighter is hunting us, and I am afraid that my gunner has gender dysphoria.

Twenty thousand feet above us (still we use feet for altitude) the bathroom-tiled transceivers cupped

behind the nose cone of a Werewolf Apostle J-20S fighter broadcast fingers of radar light. Each beam

cast at a separate frequency, a fringed caress instead of a pointed prod. But we are jumpy, we are

hypervigilant—we feel that creeper touch.

I get the cold-rush skin-prickle feel of a stranger following you in the dark. Has he seen you? Is he

just going the same way? If he attacks, what will you do, could you get help, could you scream? Put

your keys between your fingers, like it will help. Glass branches of possibility grow from my skin,

waiting to be snapped off by the truth.

“Give me a warning before he’s in IRST range,” I order Axis. “We’re going north.”

“Axis.” The Werewolf’s infrared sensor will pick up the heat of us, our engine and plasma shield,

burning against the twilight desert. The same system that hides us from his radar makes us hot and

visible to his IRST.

I throttle up, running faster, and the Apache whispers alarm. “Gown overspeed.” We’re moving too

fast for the plasma stealth system, and the wind’s tearing it from our skin. We are not modest. I

want to duck behind a ridge to cover myself, but I push through the discomfort, feeling out the

tradeoff between stealth and distance. Like the morning check in the mirror, trading the confidence

of a good look against the threat of reaction.

When the women of Soviet Russia went to war against the Nazis, when they volunteered by the

thousands to serve as snipers and pilots and tank drivers and infantry and partisans, they fought

hard and they fought well. They ate frozen horse dung and hauled men twice their weight out of

burning tanks. They shot at their own mothers to kill the Nazis behind her.

But they did not lose their gender; they gave up the inhibition against killing but would not give up

flowers in their hair, polish for their shoes, a yearning for the young lieutenant, a kiss on his dead

lips.

And if that is not enough to convince you that gender grows deep enough to thrive in war: when the

war ended the Soviet women were punished. They went unmarried and unrespected. They were

excluded from the victory parades. They had violated their gender to fight for the state and the state

judged that violation worth punishment more than their heroism was worth reward.

Gender is stronger than war. It remains when all else flees.

When I was a woman I wanted to machine myself.

I loved nails cut like laser arcs and painted violent-bright in bathrooms that smelled like laboratories.

I wanted to grow thick legs with fat and muscle that made shapes under the skin like Nazca lines. I

loved my birth control, loved that I could turn my period off, loved the home beauty-feedback kits

that told you what to eat and dose to adjust your scent, your skin, your moods. I admired, wasn’t

sure if I wanted to be or wanted to fuck, the women in the build-your-own-shit videos I watched on

our local image of the old Internet. Women who made cyberattack kits and jewelry and

sterile-printed IUDs, made their own huge wedge heels and fitted bras and skin-thin chameleon

dresses. Women who talked about their implants the same way they talked about computers,

phones, tools: technologies of access, technologies of self-expression.

Something about their merciless self-possession and self-modification stirred me. The first time I

ever meant to masturbate I imagined one of those women coming into my house, picking the lock,

telling me exactly what to do, how to be like her. I told my first boyfriend about this, I showed him

pictures, and he said, girl, you bi as hell, which was true, but also wrong. Because I did not want

those dresses, those heels, those bodies in the way I wanted my boyfriend. I wanted to possess that

power. I wanted to have it and be it.

The Apache is my body now, and like most bodies it is sensual. Fabric armor that stiffens beneath

my probing fingers. Stub wings clustered with ordnance. Rotors so light and strong they do not even

droop: as artificial-looking, to an older pilot, as breast implants. And I brush at the black ring of a

sensor housing, like the tip of a nail lifting a stray lash from the white of your eye.

I don’t shave, which all the fast jet pilots do, down to the last curly scrotal hair. Nobody expects a

helicopter to be sleek. I have hairy armpits and thick black bush all the way to my ass crack. The

things that are taboo and arousing to me are the things taboo to helicopters. I like to be picked up,

moved, pressed, bent and folded, held down, made to shudder, made to abandon control.

Do these last details bother you? Does the topography of my pubic hair feel intrusive and

unnecessary? I like that. I like to intrude, inflict damage, withdraw. A year after you read this maybe

those paragraphs will be the only thing you remember: and you will know why the rules of gender

are worth recruitment.

But we cannot linger on the point of attack.

“He’s coming north. Time to intercept three minutes.”

“Shit. How long until he gets us on thermal?”

“Ninety seconds with the gown on.” Danger has swept away Axis’ hesitation.

“Shit.”

“He’s not quite on zero aspect—yeah, he’s coming up a few degrees off our heading. He’s not sure

exactly where we are. He’s hunting.”

“He’ll be sure soon enough. Can we kill him?”

“With sidewinders?” Axis pauses articulately: the target is twenty thousand feet above us, and he

has a laser that can blind our missiles. “We’d have more luck bailing out and hiking.”

“All right. I’m gonna fly us out of this.”

“Sure.”

“Just check the gun.”

“Ten times already, Barb.”

When climate and economy and pathology all went finally and totally critical along the Gulf Coast,

the federal government fled Cabo fever and VARD-2 to huddle behind New York’s flood barriers.

We left eleven hundred and six local disaster governments behind. One of them was the Pear Mesa

Budget Committee. The rest of them were doomed.

Pear Mesa was different because it had bought up and hardened its own hardware and power. So

Pear Mesa’s neural nets kept running, retrained from credit union portfolio management to the

emergency triage of hundreds of thousands of starving sick refugees.

Pear Mesa’s computers taught themselves to govern the forsaken southern seaboard. Now they

coordinate water distribution, re-express crop genomes, ration electricity for survival AC, manage all

the life support humans need to exist in our warmed-over hell.

But, like all advanced neural nets, these systems are black boxes. We have no idea how they work,

what they think. Why do Pear Mesa’s AIs order the planting of pear trees? Because pears were their

corporate icon, and the AIs associate pear trees with areas under their control. Why does no one

make the AIs stop? Because no one knows what else is tangled up with the “plant pear trees”

impulse. The AIs may have learned, through some rewarded fallacy or perverse founder effect, that

pear trees cause humans to have babies. They may believe that their only function is to build

support systems around pear trees.

When America declared war on Pear Mesa, their AIs identified a useful diagnostic criterion for hostile

territory: the posting of fifty-star American flags. Without ever knowing what a flag meant, without

any concept of nations or symbols, they ordered the destruction of the stars and stripes in Pear Mesa

territory.

That was convenient for propaganda. But the real reason for the war, sold to a hesitant Congress by

technocrats and strategic ecologists, was the ideology of scale atrocity . Pear Mesa’s AIs could not be

modified by humans, thus could not be joined with America’s own governing algorithms: thus must

be forced to yield all their control, or else remain forever separate.

And that separation was intolerable. By refusing the United States administration, our superior

resources and planning capability, Pear Mesa’s AIs condemned citizens who might otherwise be

saved to die—a genocide by neglect. Wasn’t that the unforgivable crime of fossil capitalism? The

creation of systems whose failure modes led to mass death?

Didn’t we have a moral imperative to intercede?

Pear Mesa cannot surrender, because the neural nets have a basic imperative to remain online. Pear

Mesa’s citizens cannot question the machines’ decisions. Everything the machines do is connected in

ways no human can comprehend. Disobey one order and you might as well disobey them all.

But none of this is why I kill.

I kill for the same reason men don’t wear short skirts, the same reason I used to pluck my brows,

the reason enby people are supposed to be (unfair and stupid, yes, but still) androgynous with short

hair. Are those good reasons to do something? If you say no, honestly no—can you tell me you

break these rules without fear or cost?

But killing isn’t a gender role, you might tell me. Killing isn’t a decision about how to present your

own autonomous self to the world. It is coercive and punitive. Killing is therefore not an act of

gender.

I wish that were true. Can you tell me honestly that killing is a genderless act? The method? The

motive? The victim?

When you imagine the innocent dead, who do you see?

“Barb,” Axis calls, softly. Your own voice always sounds wrong on recordings—too nasal. Axis’ voice

sounds wrong when it’s not coming straight into my skull through helmet mic.

“Barb.”

“How are we doing?”

“Exiting one hundred and fifty knots north. Still in his radar but he hasn’t locked us up.”

“How are you doing?”

I cringe in discomfort. The question is an indirect way for Axis to admit something’s wrong, and that

indirection is obscene. Like hiding a corroded tail rotor bearing from your maintenance guys.

“I’m good,” I say, with fake ease. “I’m in flow. Can’t you feel it?” I dip the nose to match a drop-off

below, provoking a whine from the terrain detector. I am teasing, striking a pose. “We’re gonna be

okay.”

“I feel it, Barb.” But Axis is tense, worried about our pursuer, and other things. Doesn’t laugh.

“How about you?”

“Nominal.”

Again the indirection, again the denial, and so I blurt it out. “Are you dysphoric?”

“What?” Axis says, calmly.

“You’ve been hesitating. Acting funny. Is your—” There is no way to ask someone if their militarized

gender conditioning is malfunctioning. “Are you good?”

“I . . . ” Hesitation. It makes me cringe again, in secondhand shame. Never hesitate. “I don’t know.”

“Do you need to go on report?”

Severe gender dysphoria can be a flight risk. If Axis hesitates over something that needs to be done

instantly, the mission could fail decisively. We could both die.

“I don’t want that,” Axis says.

“I don’t want that either,” I say, desperately. I want nothing less than that. “But, Axis, if—”

The warning receiver climbs to a steady crow call.

“He knows we’re here,” I say, to Axis’ tight inhalation. “He can’t get a lock through the gown but

he’s aware of our presence. Fuck. Blinder, blinder, he’s got his laser on us—”

The fighter’s lidar pod is trying to catch the glint of a reflection off us. “Shit,” Axis says. “We’re

gonna get shot.”

“The gown should defeat it. He’s not close enough for thermal yet.”

“He’s gonna launch anyway. He’s gonna shoot and then get a lock to steer it in.”

“I don’t know—missiles aren’t cheap these days—”

The ESM mast on the Apache’s rotor hub, mounted like a lamp on a post, contains a cluster of

electro-optical sensors that constantly scan the sky: the Distributed Aperture Sensor. When the DAS

detects the flash of a missile launch, it plays a warning tone and uses my vest to poke me in the

small of my back.

My vest pokes me in the small of my back.

“Barb. Missile launch south. Barb. Fox 3 inbound. Inbound. Inbound.”

“He fired,” Axis calls. “Barb?”

“Barb,” I acknowledge.

I fuck—

Oh, you want to know: many of you, at least. It’s all right. An attack helicopter isn’t a private way of

being. Your needs and capabilities must be maintained for the mission.

I don’t think becoming an attack helicopter changed who I wanted to fuck. I like butch assertive

people. I like talent and prestige, the status that comes of doing things well. I was never taught the

lie that I was wired for monogamy, but I was still careful with men, I was still wary, and I could

never tell him why: that I was afraid not because of him, but because of all the men who’d seemed

good like him, at first, and then turned into something else.

No one stalks an attack helicopter. No slack-eyed well-dressed drunk punches you for ignoring the

little rape he slurs at your neckline. No one even breaks your heart: with my dopamine system tied

up by the reassignment surgery, fully assigned to mission behavior, I can’t fall in love with anything

except my own purpose.

Are you aware of your body? Do you feel your spine when you stand, your hips when you walk, the

tightness and the mass in your core? When you look at yourself, whose eyes do you use? Your own?

I am always in myself. I never see myself through my partner’s eyes. I have weapons to use, of

course, ways of moving, moans and cries. But I measure those weapons by their effect, not by their

similarity to some idea of how I should be.

Flying is the loop of machinery and pilot, the sense of your motion on the controls translated into

torque and lift, the airframe’s reaction shaping your next motion until the loop closes and machine

and pilot are one. Awareness collapses to the moment. You are always doing the right thing exactly

as it needs to be done. Sex is the same: the search for everything in an instant.

Of course I fuck Axis. A few decades ago this would’ve been a crime. What a waste of perfectly

useful behavior. What a waste of that lean muscled form and those perfect killing hands that know

me millimeter-by-millimeter system-by-system so there is no mystique between us. No “secret

places” or “feminine mysteries,” only the tortuously exact technical exercise of nerves and pressure.

Oxytocin released, to flow between us, by the press of knuckles in my cunt.

When I come beneath Axis I cry out, I press my body close, I want that utter loss of control that I

feel nowhere else. Heartbeat in arched throat: nipple beneath straining tongue. And my mind is

hyper-activated, free-associating, and as Axis works in me I see the work we do together. I see puffs

of thirty-millimeter autocannon detonating on night-cold desert floor.

Violence doesn’t get me off. But getting off makes me revel in who I am: and I am violent, made for

violence, alive in the fight.

Does that surprise you? Does it bother you to mingle cold technical discipline with hot flesh and

sweat?

Let me ask you: why has the worst insult you can give a combat pilot always been weak dick?

Have you ever been exultant? Have you ever known that you are a triumph? Have you ever felt that

it was your whole life’s purpose to do something, and all that you needed to succeed was to be

entirely yourself?

To be yourself well is the wholest and best feeling that anything has ever felt.

It is what I feel when I am about to live or die.

The Werewolf’s missile arches down on us, motor burned out, falling like an arrow. He is trying a

Shoot On Prospect attack: he cannot find us exactly, so he fires a missile that will finish the search,

lock onto our heat or burn through our stealth with its onboard radar, or acquire us optically like a

staring human eye. Or at least make us react. Like the catcaller’s barked “Hey!” to evoke the flinch

or the huddle, the proof that he has power.

We are ringed in the vortex of a dilemma. If we switch off the stealth gown, the Werewolf fighter will

lock its radar onto us and guide the missile to the kill. If we keep the stealth system on, the missile’s

heat-seeker will home in on the blazing plasma.

I know what to do. Not in the way you learn how to fly a helicopter, but the way you know how to

hold your elbows when you gesture.

A helicopter is more than a hovering fan, see? The blades of the rotor tilt and swivel. When you turn

the aircraft left, the rotors deepen their bite into the air on one side of their spin, to make off-center

lift. You cannot force a helicopter or it will throw you to the earth. You must be gentle.

I caress the cyclic.

The Apache’s nose comes up smooth and fast. The Mojave horizon disappears under the chin. Axis’

gasp from the front seat passes through the microphone and into the bones of my face. The pitch

indicator climbs up toward sixty degrees, ass down, chin up. Our airspeed plummets from a hundred

and fifty knots to sixty.

We hang there for an instant like a dancer in an oversway. The missile is coming straight down at

us. We are not even running anymore.

And I lower the collective, flattening the blades of the rotor, so that they cannot cut the air at an

angle and we lose all lift.

We fall.

I toe the rudder. The tail rotor yields a little of its purpose, which is to counter the torque of the

main rotor: and that liberated torque spins the Apache clockwise, opposite the rotor’s turn, until we

are nose down sixty degrees, facing back the way we came, looking into the Mojave desert as it rises

up to take us.

I have pirouetted us in place. Plasma fire blows in wraith pennants as the stealth system tries to

keep us modest.

“Can you get it?” I ask.

“Axis.”

I raise the collective again and the rotors bite back into the air. We do not rise, but our fall slows

down. Cyclic stick answers to the barest twitch of wrist, and I remember, once, how that slim wrist

made me think of fragility, frailty, fear: I am remembering even as I pitch the helicopter back and

we climb again, nose up, tail down, scudding backward into the sky while aimed at our chasing killer.

Axis is on top now, above me in the front seat, and in front of Axis is the chin gun, pointed sixty

degrees up into heaven.

“Barb,” the helicopter whispers, like my mother in my ear. “Missile ten seconds. Music? Glare?”

No. No jamming. The Werewolf missile will home in on jamming like a wolf with a taste for pepper.

Our laser might dazzle the seeker, drive it off course—but if the missile turns then Axis cannot take

the shot.

It is not a choice. I trust Axis.

Axis steers the nose turret onto the target and I imagine strong fingers on my own chin, turning me

for a kiss, looking up into the red scorched sky—Axis chooses the weapon (30MM GUIDED PROX AP)

and aims and fires with all the idle don’t-have-to-try confidence of the first girl dribbling a soccer ball

who I ever for a moment loved—

The chin autocannon barks out ten rounds a second. It is effective out to one point five kilometers.

The missile is moving more than a hundred meters per second.

Axis has one second almost exactly, ten shots of thirty-millimeter smart grenade, to save us.

A mote of gray shadow rushes at us and intersects the line of cannon fire from the gun. It becomes

a spray of light. The Apache tings and rattles. The desert below us, behind us, stipples with tiny

plumes of dust that pick up in the wind and settle out like sift from a hand.

“Got it,” Axis says.

“I love you.”

“Axis.”

Many of you are veterans in the act of gender. You weigh the gaze and disposition of strangers in a

subway car and select where to stand, how often to look up, how to accept or reject conversation.

Like a frequency-hopping radar, you modulate your attention for the people in your context: do not

look too much, lest you seem interested, or alarming. You regulate your yawns, your appetite, your

toilet. You do it constantly and without failure.

You are aces.

What other way could be better? What other neural pathways are so available to constant

reprogramming, yet so deeply connected to judgment, behavior, reflex?

Some people say that there is no gender, that it is a postmodern construct, that in fact there are

only man and woman and a few marginal confusions. To those people I ask: if your body-fact is

enough to establish your gender, you would willingly wear bright dresses and cry at movies, wouldn’t

you? You would hold hands and compliment each other on your beauty, wouldn’t you? Because your

cock would be enough to make you a man.

Have you ever guarded anything so vigilantly as you protect yourself against the shame of

gender-wrong?

The same force that keeps you from gender-wrong is the force that keeps me from fucking up.

The missile is dead. The Werewolf Apostle is still up there.

“He’s turning off.” Axis has taken over defensive awareness while I fly. “Radar off. Laser off. He’s

letting us go.”

“Afraid of our fighters?” The mercenaries cannot replace a lost J-20S. And he probably has a

wingman, still hiding, who would die too if they stray into a trap.

“Yes,” Axis says.

“Keep the gown on.” In case he’s trying to bluff us into shutting down our stealth. “We’ll stick to the

terrain until he’s over the horizon.”

“Can you fly us out?”

The Apache is fighting me. Fragments of the destroyed missile have pitted the rotors, damaged the

hub assembly, and jammed the control surfaces. I begin to crush the shrapnel with the Apache’s

hydraulics, pounding the metal free with careful control inputs. But the necessary motions also move

the aircraft. Half a second’s error will crash us into the desert. I have to calculate how to un-jam the

shrapnel while accounting for the effects of that shrapnel on my flight authority and keeping the

aircraft stable despite my constant control inputs while moving at a hundred and thirty knots across

the desert.

“Barb,” I say. “Not a problem.”

And for an hour I fly without thought, without any feeling except the smooth stone joy of doing

something that takes everything.

The night desert is black to the naked eye, soft gray to thermal. My attention flips between my left

eye, focused on the instruments, and my right eye, looking outside. I am a black box like the Pear

Mesa AIs. Information arrives—a throb of feedback in the cyclic, a shift of Axis’ weight, a dune crest

ahead—and my hands and feet move to hold us steady. If I focused on what I was doing it would all

fall apart. So I don’t.

“Are you happy?” Axis asks.

Good to talk now. Keep my conscious mind from interfering with the gearbox of reflexes below.

“Yeah,” I say, and I blow out a breath into my mask, “yeah, I am,” a lightness in my ribs, “yeah, I

feel good.”

“Why do you think we just blew up a school?”

Why did I text my best friend the appearance and license number of all my cab drivers, just in case?

Because those were the things that had to be done.

Listen: I exist in this context. To make war is part of my gender. I get what I need from the flight

line, from the ozone tang of charging stations and the shimmer of distant bodies warping in the

tarmac heat, from the twenty minutes of anxiety after we land when I cannot convince myself that I

am home, and safe, and that I am no longer keeping us alive with the constant adjustments of my

hands and feet.

“Deplete their skilled labor supply, I guess. Attack the demographic skill curve.”

“Kind of a long-term objective. Kind of makes you think it’s not gonna be over by election season.”

“We don’t get to know why the AIs pick the targets.” Maybe destroying this school was an accident.

A quirk of some otherwise successful network, coupled to the load-bearing elements of a vast

strategy.

“Hey,” I say, after a beat of silence. “You did good back there.”

“You thought I wouldn’t.”

“Barb.” A more honest yes than “yes,” because it is my name, and it acknowledges that I am the

one with the doubt.

“I didn’t know if I would either,” Axis says, which feels exactly like I don’t know if I love you

anymore . I lose control for a moment and the Apache rattles in bad air and the tail slews until I stop

thinking and bring everything back under control in a burst of rage.

“You’re done?” I whisper, into the helmet. I have never even thought about this before. I am cold,

sweat soaked, and shivering with adrenaline comedown, drawn out like a tendon in high heels, a

just-off-the-dance-floor feeling, post-voracious, satisfied. Why would we choose anything else? Why

would we give this up? When it feels so good to do it? When I love it so much?

“I just . . . have questions.” The tactical channel processes the sound of Axis swallowing into a dull

point of sound, like dropped plastic.

“We don’t need to wonder, Axis. We’re gendered for the mission—”

“We can’t do this forever,” Axis says, startling me. I raise the collective and hop us up a hundred

feet, so I do not plow us into the desert. “We’re not going to be like this forever. The world won’t be

like this forever. I can’t think of myself as . . . always this.”

Yes, we will be this way forever. We survived this mission as we survive everywhere on this hot and

hostile earth. By bending all of what we are to the task. And if we use less than all of ourselves to

survive, we die.

“Are you going to put me on report?” Axis whispers.

On report as a flight risk? As a faulty component in a mission-critical system? “You just intercepted

an air-to-air missile with the autocannon, Axis. Would I ever get rid of you?”

“Because I’m useful,” Axis says, softly. “Because I can still do what I’m supposed to do. That’s what

you love. But if I couldn’t . . . I’m distracting you. I’ll let you fly.”

I spare one glance for the gray helmet in the cockpit below mine. Politeness is a gendered protocol.

Who speaks and who listens. Who denies need and who claims it. As a woman, I would’ve pressed

Axis. As a woman, I would’ve unpacked the unease and the disquiet.

As an attack helicopter, whose problems are communicated in brief, clear datums, I should ignore

Axis.

But who was ever only one thing?

“If you want to be someone else,” I say, “someone who doesn’t do what we do, then . . . I don’t

want to be the thing that stops you.”

“Bird’s gotta land sometime,” Axis says. “Doesn’t it?”

In the Applied Constructive Gender briefing, they told us that there have always been liminal

genders, places that people passed through on their way to somewhere else. Who are we in those

moments when we break our own rules? The straight man who sleeps with men? The woman who

can’t decide if what she feels is intense admiration, or sexual attraction? Where do we go, who do we

become?

Did you know that instability is one of the most vital traits of a combat aircraft? Civilian planes are

built stable, hard to turn, inclined to run straight ahead on an even level. But a military aircraft is

built so it wants to tumble out of control, and it is held steady only by constant automatic feedback.

The way I am holding this Apache steady now.

Something that is unstable is ready to move, eager to change, it wants to turn, to dive, to tear away

from stillness and fly .

Dynamism requires instability. Instability requires the possibility of change.

“Voice recorder’s off, right?” Axis asks.

“Always.”

“I love doing this. I love doing it with you. I just don’t know if it’s . . . if it’s right.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“Barb?”

“Thank you for thinking about whether it’s right. Someone needs to.”

Maybe what Axis feels is a necessary new queerness. One which pries the tool of gender back from

the hands of the state and the economy and the war. I like that idea. I cannot think of myself as a

failure, as something wrong, a perversion of a liberty that past generations fought to gain.

But Axis can. And maybe you can too. That skepticism is not what I need . . . but it is necessary

anyway.

I have tried to show you what I am. I have tried to do it without judgment. That I leave to you.

“Are we gonna make it?” Axis asks, quietly.

The airframe shudders in crosswind. I let the vibrations develop, settle into a rhythm, and then I

make my body play the opposite rhythm to cancel it out.

“I don’t know,” I say, which is an answer to both of Axis’ questions, both of the ways our lives are in

danger now. “Depends how well I fly, doesn’t it?”

“It’s all you, Barb,” Axis says, with absolute trust. “Take us home.”

A search radar brushes across us, scatters off the gown, turns away to look in likelier places. The

Apache’s engine growls, eating battery, turning charge into motion. The airframe shudders again,

harder, wind rising as cooling sky fights blazing ground. We are racing a hundred and fifty feet

above the Larger Mojave where we fight a war over some new kind of survival and the planet we

maimed grows that desert kilometer by kilometer. Our aircraft is wounded in its body and in its

crew. We are propelled by disaster. We are moving swiftly.

[wordynerdygurl]

Seven Minutes in Heaven

Author’s Note:  Well hello my friends!  Since hitting 1000 Followers in July (WHAT?!  STILL UNBELIEVABLE!!!) I’ve been working on the requests sent in by my amazing troop of readers!  This is another one of those stories which I’m pleased to share.   As always, help my unending need for validation but re-blogging or liking the story!  Also, you can send asks, make your own request, follow me, or be added to my tag-list! Last, @sammy-jo1977 is my beta... and my ride or die home girl!  Thanks lady! Pairing:  Loki x Female Reader, appearances from most of the Avengers

Summary/ Request:  @queenofmischief asked for a story where “Loki and you guys are friends growing up and you realize you like him and try to hide it but somehow at a party or something or another, maybe Seven Minutes in Heaven is involved, it comes out and really hot smut ensues?”

I used some of the ideas you gave me, dear reader, but made it a little more mature, so I sincerely hope you enjoy!

Warnings:  Lots of 80′s references... music, movies, clothes, etc.  References of smut, heavy petting and kissing

ENJOY!

"But, like, I really don't want to go."  Your cellphone, pinned between your ear and shoulder, pushed your earring into the tender flesh behind your lobe.  It probably didn't help that the jewelry in question was a pair of huge hoops, fluorescent in color and hard plastic.

You heard Wanda sigh, "Yea… I know.  It's just, we all are… and you know it'll be worse if you don't show up."

"I really hate it."  Using a sing-song voice didn't change the feelings behind your words.  Going up to the main floor of The Avengers Tower for a theme party was not a thrilling idea.

"I know you do-", pulling open the door between your room and hers, you palmed your phone, frowning at your friend, "-But you look great!"

"Radical… or wicked… or tubular would be more 80's appropriate."  Still, her compliment made you smile.  It really was a great outfit, totally encapsulating the MTV generation's vibe, complete with hot lime colored leg warmers. 

 Your cropped REO Speedwagon t-shirt was cut off at the neck, dripping low enough to expose one whole shoulder, and a wide stripe of the magenta colored tank top underneath.  Having tucked the camisole into your acid washed denim micro miniskirt, you finished the ensemble with a pair of black pumps, and the obligatory scrunchie of cheap yellow satin.  It pulled your hair into a low, side ponytail.

For makeup you'd painted your eye-shadow on, bright turquoise with pink under your brows.  Lipstick in a shimmery rosy hue brought extra attention to your lips.  And you stored your cell phone, lip gloss and keys in your iridescent fanny pack.

Wanda couldn't help giggling at the sight of you and your collection of clashing colors.  For her look tonight she'd dawned a pair of skin tight leggings, an over-sized button down shirt with a stretchy black belt that was about four inches wide.  Ballet flats, teased out hair and stark makeup had Wanda looking like a video vixen.  It was impressive.

"See, you went sexy… and I went silly."  Pouting now, you flopped onto your bed, "Can I just not?"

Sitting down next to you, patting your knee, "You don’t look silly, but you do look like you could be a hair band groupie!  That’s sexy!” Shrugging your shoulders, unconvinced, Wanda added, “Besides, tonight… It may be fun.  And, worse case?  You get blitzed like a teenager on prom night."

"No… that's not the worst case.  Worst case?  He's there."

Sighing, Wanda shook her head, "He does still rub you the wrong way, huh?  And, yes, he may be there… but-" standing, taking you with her, "-it would be a shame to waste all your wicked cool work!"

Hearing her use the dated vernacular made you grin.  She was right.  Tonight could be a blast, if you were able to get out of your head.  Jumping off the bed, unsettling one of those fashionable leg warmers, you hugged your friend tightly.  You could do this.  You wouldn't be alone.  And if Loki was there, he'd just have to get over it.  You weren't going to pay him any attention.

---

"Mr. Loki… can we please go?  We're already stupid late."  

Bending to straighten his red suspenders, Loki smirked at himself, "Greed is good."

Sighing, exasperated and edging into anger, Peter pulled open the front door, "I don't know what that means, but you look… greasy."

"Like I could steal your company in a corporate take over?  Maybe steal your woman too", Loki questioned, excited at the idea.

Crossing his arms over the red puffy vest he had bought specifically for tonight, Peter grunted, "Uh… I… I guess.  I meant more like one of the assholes in Wolf of Wall Street."

God, you had better be there tonight.  Loki was putting a lot of hope on Stark’s little shindig and he wanted to make sure that all of the little details were absolutely perfect, giving him every advantage.  Standing now, slicking back his long dark hair, "That, my young spider friend, is exactly what I am going for… Evil 80′s CEO."

"Great."

Loki heard the frustration in the young man’s voice.  Someday he would understand, Loki thought, turning to the youthful Avenger beside him, "You certainly make a dashing Marty McFly, Peter.  Truly."

"Aw!  Really, Mr. Loki?  Ya mean it?"  That made the Spider Boy preen, popping his collar, and standing a little straighter.

"I do!  Now-" flashing a rakish smile to his reflection as he passed, "-let's get upstairs and see how everyone else is doing!"

---

Everyone else was ready to party.  The last mission, a particularly difficult one, involved Hydra agents banging it out against our heroes along the rough terrain of the polar ice cap.  Draining the physical and emotional resources of everyone, including you and Loki, Tony had planned a little party to kick off a period of rest and relaxation.

As soon as the elevator opened you knew it was going to be an insane night.  Everything was brightly lit.  Paper streamers were strung up haphazardly along the walls and ceiling.  Big plastic buckets of chips and cheese curls were put out on the counter along with a huge punch bowl that reeked of rum and sugary fruit juice.  On the floor in the kitchenette was a garbage can, freezing, full of ice, only the keg tap visible.  A stack of red plastic cups was at the ready.

Someone had ordered pizza.  Well, dozens of pizzas.  The boxes were piled along the table already crammed with pretzel bags and Doritos.  

Steve was being instructed on the basics of Beer Pong and, you decided, definitely being hustled by Sam.  Bucky looked on with curiosity, quietly sneaking closer to the chips and dip, hoping no one would notice.  Rhodey was watching them both through the reflective lenses of his aviator shades, doing a great job of looking like a Top Gun cadet, including the tight jeans and broken-in bomber jacket.  Grinning as he drank down a bottle of beer, Rhodes shouted, "Hey Stank!  Is all of this really necessary?"

"Don't come for me Rhodey!"  Wearing a pair of neon leopard spotted knit pants, a green polo shirt and white sneakers, Tony was clutching a glass bowl filled with little slips of paper to his chest.  No one had managed to figure out what they were or why he held them.  Drinking two beers from his plastic, can holding helmet, Tony would answer only with a slightly slurred, "It's my trashy 80′s party and I do what I want!"

And Tony had thought of everything.  Sounding like a mixed tape pulled from the radio, the tunes didn't let up!  Ratt, Foreigner, Cindi Lauper, Madonna and Tom Petty all took turns blasting through the room.  So many hits from the past pumped through the sound system, getting people on their feet and keeping them there.  You were swinging and swaying along, having a blast, but when Bon Jovi hit the group of Intergalactic Warriors went wild.

Clint, rocking a mullet wig and a vest with no shirt, jumped onto a table making the motions of an air guitar champion.  Singing into a beer bottle like it was his microphone, "Whoooooaaaa we're halfway there…"

Guffawing, you hid behind your Bud Light filled cup, already red cheeked from the non-stop laughing and alcohol in your system.  At some point you had given up Wanda to Vision in a varsity jacket, doing his best jerk-off jock impression, and not quite pulling it off.  It wasn't his fault that he was too polite to put people down in the way of Eighties movie bad guys. Alone, feeling flushed, but happy, you needed a break and some quiet.  Flinging yourself onto the soft sofa, watching the frat house style antics unfold all around, you couldn’t help laughing.  Tony always found a way to knock the group out of their post mission funk.  Sometimes that meant week long Caribbean vacations and sometimes that meant dressing up in retro attire and scream singing with a cold beer in your hands.  Either way, it seemed to bring everyone closer together, and the pictures were certainly worth framing. The couch dipped as someone joined you.  Swiveling, not quite drunk but not quite sober, you couldn’t help the groan that left you.  “Oh.  It’s you.”

Not exactly the response Loki wanted, he was just grateful that you spoke to him at all.  Lately you seemed to flee any room he entered, a hurt and heavy sigh escaping you before you'd make your exit, never looking back.  Loki couldn't understand why.

After all, it had been two months since that night.  The one where he'd stumbled on you, glowing blue in the light of the television set, alone and in the darkness.  You asked him to join you, he had accepted.

The movie was called "Say Anything" and Loki had to admit, as far as romance on film went, this story was very moving.  But that was an unexpected bonus to being so near to you.  Before the credits rolled, you had burrowed against him, snuggled under his arm with your head on his chest.  

Stroking your hair, Loki pressed a kiss to your forehead, thoughtlessly, naturally.  Pushing away, looking up at him through hooded lashes, "You… you kissed me?"

Words failed the silver tongued devil, something he still pondered all these weeks later, so a nod was all you got for a response.  Kneeling, your sleep shirt riding over your thighs, Loki watched your small hand rising to cup his cheek.  Feeling your lips against his own was the beginning of the best night of his life.

And then, nothing.  It was like a switch had been thrown and no matter how many ways he tried to reach out for you, Loki wasn't able to connect.  Not like that night.

So, he was going against his nature tonight.  Joining the group, drinking a bit of his brother's mead, wearing a dated but pristine business suit.  All done in the vain hope that something would shift in his favor.

He had already lost too many nights to memories of you.  Soft, full skin under his broad palms.  The tiny moan you exhaled when Loki’s tongue met your own.  How your wet, willing body accepted him, without question or stipulation.  And in the afterglow, when your head rested in the crook of his neck and your cherry cola scented breath circled him, you let Loki hold you close.

But he buried it all.  Tonight he was the embodiment of all things slick.  Nothing could stick to him; not when he had a goal in mind and this much gel in his hair.  Loki Odinson would be taking you home tonight, come hell or high water. Wolfish, Loki’s grin was wicked, “Yes.  Your dream has come true.”  Sitting back, he crossed his designer suit covered knee at the ankle, exposing socks with little golfers on them.  He let his right arm rest along the back of the sofa, not around you… not yet, but inching closer. “What is that cologne you’re wearing?” “Don’t you like it?  I’m told Drakkar Noir was quite the scent of the 80′s.  I did my research.” Twisting, you looked him over, impressed despite yourself.  The suit was totally of its time.  Black, pinstriped and you were sure the jacket that came with it was draped somewhere safe.  His shirt was shiny but soft and bright, blinding white.  Suspenders of red matched the tie that draped down the center of his chest. With his hair combed straight back and held in place with some kind of product, Loki looked like he was capable of eating a six course lunch at Sardi’s, complete with dirty martinis, then jetting back to the office in time to defraud a corporate spending account.  The kind of executive that blackmails a co-worker with pictures of a mistress.  The kind of douche bag that tries to take over a rec center to build a mall.  In short, an avarice little asshole.  So, why was it so hot? “It’s… overpowering.”, boy, was that an understatement.  Loki’s whole aesthetic was overpowering right now.  And, was he moving closer? His bent knee brushed against your own as he leaned near enough to be heard at a whisper, “You look adorable, you know that?” Scrunching into the corner of the couch, eyeing him suspiciously, “Oh?  Really?” “Really.”, his hand brushed over your exposed shoulder, making you jump at his touch.

Uh uh.  No way.  You would not be so easy to seduce this time around.  Even if those wide hands sent goosebumps growing all over your body, Loki would not charm his way into your panties again.  Not like last time.

It had been spontaneous.  Genuine, at least for you.  And in the moment, it felt like Loki had given you a little piece of himself, a tenderness that no one else ever saw in the far flung Frost Giant.  

Maybe that's why Clint's words hurt so much.  He had told you so casually, holding up a spoonful of Cheerios, "Loki said his last girl was a drag.  Basic bitch?  Is that what the kids say?"

Thinking about it now made your heart hurt.  You had given yourself to someone who thought you were beneath him.  Loki couldn't want you.  You would never be good enough.

But that night haunted you.  His soulful kisses that stole your breath.  The drag of Loki’s hands over the swell of your bottom as you straddled his hips.  His solid chest under your own hands, dark head curved against the couch cushion, but those burning eyes never leaving your face.  “I thought you said I was plain.  Simple.  Boring.”  

Leveling his own words back at him made Loki straighten in his seat.  How could you think that?  Unbalanced, stammering, “Uh… I… I’d never…” “Never expected me to find out?  I believe that.  And, let me tell you this-”  Pushing yourself up with the help of the couch’s arm, you rose on unsteady legs, “-I’m not nearly drunk enough to fall into your arms again.”  Spinning away, you made a dash towards the people in the kitchen, without looking back. Watching you go, Loki could do nothing but stare after your retreating form, flummoxed.

“That was… painful.”

He knew that voice well enough, frustrated, confused and unfit for company, “Go away, Tony.”

“I don’t think I will.  In fact-” sitting down in your empty spot, patting Loki’s knee, “-I’m going to make myself comfortable.  Now, tell Uncle Tony all about it.”

Rolling his eyes, unable to find you in the crowd, Loki risked a sideways glance at his replacement companion.  Was he really going to indulge in this?  Tell his almost friend about you… about your one night together?  Loki raked his hands through the pomade in his hair, growling low, “If you breathe a word of it Tony, I’ll-” Lowering his wrap around sunglasses, peering at Loki, Tony smiled, “Your secret is safe with me.” ---

Thinking less and less about Loki as the night went on should have been a relief but it seemed like the scent of him followed you everywhere.  Unable to get free of him, you busied yourself with drinks, dancing, and munching like you were a kid again.  Anything to keep your mind from wandering.

It's not like the party was boring.  Not at all!  There was plenty to distract you and you let it.  Natasha made you her partner for beer pong and somehow you successfully won against Rhodey and Sam.  

Next, Wanda needed you, which is how you wound up sitting on the bathroom sink listening to her go on about Vision in that wistful, loving way that made your own heart ache.  Being a little drunk, you had to fight the urge to cry because you were lonely and hurting. “I saw you talking to Loki… what was that about?”  She was reapplying ruby red lipstick, studying herself in the mirror, not looking directly at you.  

Wanda's voice cut through your self doubt spiral though, something you were thankful for, and with a casual tone you countered, “He was trying to get something started, I think.” Eyebrows lifting, Wanda’s interested piqued,  “Really?  Loki was hitting on you?” “Yea… I mean, I think so.  Was coming on awfully strong too.  But… he’s been a jerk, right?”  

Wanda cleaned up her eye make-up taking a minute, after washing her hands she looked at you, “I mean, he is here.” “So?” “So, you know he’s not really a joiner.  More of a lone wolf.  In fact, I think this may be the first of these little parties he’s come to.  Maybe he’s changed… grown a bit?  And, honestly, you never asked him about-”

Hopping off the counter, cutting her off, more than a little huffy at her good sense, “No, I didn’t and I don’t plan to.  Loki thinks I’m a bore?  Too basic for him?  Fine.  I have better things to do with my time.” Laying her hand on your shoulder, Wanda stopped you, eyeing you in the mirror once more, “I know his words hurt… but you’re going to have to clear the air eventually.  Especially if we’re all going to work together.”

Shrugging, you offered your friend a small smile.  There was truth in her sentiment, even if your slightly drunken brain rebelled against hearing it, “Yea, you're right… plus-” looking around the small washroom, just to make sure no one could hear the pair of you, “- he looks really hot tonight!”

Giggling, Wanda hugged you close, “I didn’t want to say anything, but… yea he does!” The pair of you were still laughing together, standing at the back of the crowd as Tony turned down the music, announcing, “Gather round children, Uncle Tony needs your attention!”  There were a few groans, mostly from the beer pong table, as apparently Bucky was unhappy about forfeiting his winning match.  Everyone else, in all their high haired glory, were congregating near their host, curious and more than a little drunk.

“Tony, what the hell, man?  You killed the tunes!”, Clint shouted, spilling Bud Light foam as he joined the tightening circle. “Patience, my drunk friend.  You all remember this?”  From the table nearby, Tony picked up his glass bowl, triumphant, “Our Destiny!”

Pepper, sighing with a smile, “So dramatic!” Shaking the bowl in her direction Tony smirked, “Ok smarty, then you pick first.  Go on… Pick!” There were oohs and ahhs from the assembled Avengers.  Rolling her eyes, Pepper reached in, grabbing the first slip her fingers found.  Pulling it free, she grinned, eyeing Tony, “It says ‘Loki’...” Hearing his name, Loki snapped his head up, surprise registering on his face, “Excuse me?” Holding it up for his examination, Pepper waved the slip under the regal nose of the junior Odinson, “See… your name.” “Yes, but why?”

Butting in, Tony snatched the scrap from the hand of his lovely fiance, practically dancing with glee.  Turning to Loki, “Now you, Gordon Gecko, pull a slip.” Aware of all eyes locked on him, Loki reached into the jar, digging around a little more than necessary.  Finally satisfied, the thin paper pinched between his fingers, Loki opened the folded note.  When his fierce gaze met yours, you knew without a doubt.  It was your name he had grabbed. Throwing a thick arm across Loki’s broad shoulders, Tony hugged him close, “Well?  What’s it say?” It all made sense in that moment.  The tacky costumes, flat beer and endless music.  A drunken moment of clarity had descended.  Tony, waving his arms, eating up the crowd’s reactions, heads turning to gauge your response.  Swallowing hard, your hearing failing you, you just faked a smile. You and Loki were going into the closet for Seven Minutes in Heaven. Only there was no way you were going to do that.  Not after what he’d said.  Not after your one night together, right?  But you felt a gentle hand pushing your forward, into the center of your circle of friends and for some reason, your feet followed.  

Refusing didn't enter your mind.  With everyone ogling you and Loki, making a scene would only cause more speculation, something you weren't keen to do.  Instead, you stepped next to Tony, outwardly eager to play along.  

You just shouldn't have dared to look at your proposed make out partner.  Laser focused, Loki’s lusty look hadn’t wavered.  No, the light in those thundering blue eyes was carnal, darker than you had ever seen, matching your own.  Against your better judgement, you wanted Loki, too.

Whatever Tony was saying was a blur, merely sounds, because you were utterly stunned by the nearness of Loki.  The roaring laughs of the rest of the group were drowned out by your pounding heart.  A door opened to a dim room, the pantry maybe?  You didn’t know and in that moment you didn’t really care. 

With a small smile, Loki ducked into the cupboard, lacing his fingers with yours, offering a bit of his strength.  Dragging you inside, your body pinned between a shelf of snacks and the hard body of your frenemy, a whimper of want passed your lips.  Loki still smelled so good and now he was so close.  “Have fun you two!”, Tony’s words were accompanied by the door shutting you and Loki inside, in the dark.  Surrounded by silence, Loki’s sharp pants were the only sound louder than your racing pulse, which was saying something. Afraid to move, afraid of spooking you, Loki struggled to search your stare in the low light.  He had already experienced your angry dismissal of his attention tonight.  It wasn't something he wanted to relive, not when you were so close with sweet and speedy breath, your chest brushing against his own at each exhale.

Lifting a hand, grazing over your uncovered shoulder, Loki's touch was electric.  You moved towards it, towards him, needing more of his energy.  Craving it.

Bold in the dark, you grabbed at Loki’s suspenders, tugging him closer.  Rising on your toes, covering some of the distance between your mouth and his, you pressed a hot kiss to those soft, pink lips.  Under your fluttering fingers Loki shivered, "Darling-"

"Shut up.  I… I don't care."

"But I never…"

"I told you.  I don't care.  Now kiss me like you mean it, because we only have about six more minutes!"

Not needing any more encouragement, Loki found the flare of your hips in the shadows, molding your curves to the rigid planes of his body.  Desperate, needy, you felt his tongue move against your own.  Want, plain and simple, led your own fingers to the collar of Loki’s starched shirt and the tangle of his raven hair. Fisting it, tugging against those luscious locks, you couldn’t seem to get close enough to the tall God sharing your cupboard.  Whining, his name on your lips, you drew Loki tight enough that the press of your breasts was edging towards pain.  Demanding, true to your word, with every pass of Loki’s magical mouth over your own the last few weeks were forgotten. Hungry for more, Loki roughly squeezed the flesh of your ass, grinding you against his wool blend covered crotch.  Stuttering, his arousal was so stiff, for a minute Loki worried about making a mess.  But that feeling was replaced with unbridled ecstasy when your lips found the tender skin below his ear.  

A nip, enough to make Loki hiss, was soon soothed by your sucking on the same spot.  Resting your butt on the nearest shelf, you didn’t have to stand on tip-toe to reach the soft, sweet sections of Loki where you longed to lavish attention.  He took advantage of your new position by sliding a free hand along the swell of your separated thighs.  “I just need to feel you, dove.  I need to know that you want me as much as I want you.”  It was a husky whisper, directly into your ear, and it sent an arc of icy fire to your core.  When his long fingers skimmed over the silky slick of your panties you moaned in unison, bucking into Loki’s touch, lost in the moment. Stepping between your legs, Loki took one of your hands into each of his own, pinning you wide open against the boxes of cereal and granola bars that lined the pantry walls.  Devouring you slowly, Loki kissed along the column of muscles at your throat, across the exposed line of your clavicle.  You could do little more than take his delicious torment as more and more of your sweat dappled skin was serviced by his silver tongue. “Yes… Loki…”, tumbling out of you, just like the night when you first came together, you crooned his name in delight.  Breathless, boneless and broken with need. CLICK!  The sound made you both freeze.  Snapping swiftly, Loki’s head swung towards the door where the bright light and noisy crowd of the party was intruding into your private pantry. “WHOA, WHOA, WHOA!  What do we have here?”  Swinging into the tight space, Tony’s shrewd look took in the scene in seconds, “What were you two doing in here?  It was a very quiet seven minutes!” Straightening to standing, Loki stood, blocking you from sight as you readjusted your clothes.  Smoothing down his tangled strands, sarcasm dripping, “Talking.  Very quietly.”  When he was sure you were decent, Loki offered you his hand, and blinking you stepped back into the wild and raucous party still in full swing.  Tony, flashing a knowing grin your way, nodded, “I hope you didn’t smush the chips!  We still need those!” Giggling, you locked onto Loki’s arm, letting him lead you towards the keg and away from the shouted questions of your friends.  You knew there was no mystery about what happened in those seven minutes.  Hair mused, makeup smudged, lips swollen and shirts twisted, the pair of you were walking neon signs for getting to third base.

Silently Loki poured you a beer, taking a small glass of Asgardian mead for himself, before raising his glass your way.  Returning his gesture, you downed the frothy ale fast, feeling a little parched after your spit swapping time in the hall closet.  Boring into you, his eyes followed each of your movements, searching for a sign of your feelings. Dropping your empty cup on the counter, you turned and jumped onto the marble ledge, feet dangling.  “Loki?” Placing his own glass down gently, Loki took his position between your bent knees, looking down at your darling face, “Yes?” “Did you say those things?  That I was… boring?  Basic?” Shaking his dark waves no, Loki bit into his bottom lip, “Never.  What I said was, my last girl, ages ago, was those things… but my new lady-” tracing along your jaw, tipping your chin his way, “-she is everything I could ever want.”

“Am I… am I your new lady, then?” With a fierce flicker of fire in his eyes, Loki nodded yes this time, “Absolutely.” Leaning into him, arms around his neck, you tugged him down to meet your waiting lips.  “Good.  Good to know.  Because I think I’m going to watch a movie tonight.” “Really?  I recall really enjoying the last one.” “Hmm… me too.”  Sliding off the counter, ducking under Loki’s long arms, you turned back to face him, “My room… say, an hour?”

Snapping his suspenders, smirking, “I’ll be there.”  Watching you skip away made Loki’s pulse pound in anticipation.  Pouring himself another glass of clear liquor, he chuckled, amazed at the change seven minutes had created.  

“You’re welcome.” “Ah!  Yes, many thanks Tony.”  

Leaning against the counter, Tony knocked into Loki’s shoulder, “You’re cute together, Rock of Ages, but don’t make me regret helping you tonight!  Treat her right.”

“Of course.  I... truly, thank you.”, sincerity seeped from Loki at the favor from Tony. “No worries!  No worries!”  Waving away any additional gratitude, Tony looked over the group of half cocked, and totally cocked heroes before him, “Of course the real bitch was getting Pepper to pull your name from the bowl…”

My Marvelous Minxes tag-list:  @queenofmischief @vodka-and-some-sass @just-random-obsessions @brokenthelovely @lots-of-loki @thefallenbibliophilequote @iamverity @iluvsumbucky @unadulteratedwizardlove @wolfsmom1 @procrastinatinglikeabitch @mizfit2 @shxdowofdarkness @nonsensicalobsessions @ahintofkiwistrawberry @jessiejunebug @rorybutnotgilmore @crystalizedcaramel @lokislittlecorner @scrumptious-finicky-illusion @capcapcapsicle @jamielea81 @caffiend-queen @thenatalie @sammy-jo1977 @otakumultimuse-hiddlewhore @is-it-madness @jenjen8675309 @alexakeyloveloki @poetic-fiasco​

[neverendingstories00]

you guessed it...another round (unfortunately) of BoB headcanons in the middle of the night because sleep is for the weak but I am weak

Luz has...a unique sense of style. We’re talking clashing patterns, neon crocs with jibbits, sunglasses and fedoras, you name it. Urban Outfitters who? He was wearing it before it was trendy🙄✋🏽 GET on his level. A wonderful example of his fashion sense is the time the company had weekend passes (modern au) and he decided to wear his best outfit; a white shirt with an horribly outdated meme, cargo shorts with a chain, nike socks, and neon crocs. To top it off; a fedora and sports sunglasses with a purple tint. Yeah, it’s BAD.

To add to the Luz and his horrible fashion sense, do any of you remember icarly and the penny tee’s saying stuff like “my cheese my rules” and “fries matter?” HE OWNS A WHOLE DAMN CLOSET OF THEM

I can see Speirs LOVING Lana Del Rey. He has a secret Spotify and has a whole playlist of his favourite songs by her. Actually not just Lana Del Rey, all the sad girls like Lorde and Mitski. If you catch Speirs singing in a velvet robe to Millon Dollar Man, no you didn’t. You would be dead by then.

Speaking of music tastes, let’s move onto Lewis Nixon. First of all, brace yourself. Lewis Nixon has reverted back into his college phase (like he ever grew out of it). He’s a huge fan of Alternative eighties rock like The Smiths, The Pyscadelic Furs, Talking Heads, The Cure, etc. He has all his old vinyls and it’s a cool collection. However, Nixon hates Morrisey, which is good. He complains about the Smiths, with The Queen Is Dead blasting in the back.

Speirs kidnapped Carwood Lipton one time. Carwood works as an English teacher and Speirs is his boyfriend who works as a real estate agent meets ex mafia hitman but he doesn’t talk about it. Speris one day was like “we’re going camping” and took Carwood...camping. But like the thing is...Carwood told NO ONE. And plus he had a job to teach so yeah. Let’s just say that Carwood might’ve been a missing person’s case for like two weeks. But he kept posting on his Facebook like “what a lovely hike with my lovely boyfriend😍” or “look at our rv? isn’t she something🥰” and George Luz would comment and be like “BLINK TWICE IF YOU NEED HELP WHERE RU”

Eugene wanted Babe to start eating healthier, so he took him to Trader Joe’s and made him buy a bunch of healthy snacks because in case you have forgotten, Babe is a literal baby. So Babe picks out a bunch of snacks but doesn’t realize it’s baby food, nor does Eugene. So Babe is casually munching on little yogurt bites and Guarno is like “Franny feeds that to our baby what the fuck” and Babe spits them out, mortified.

Floyd Talbert was apart of the dance team in middle. Like, he was the only guy on the team so it was insanely akwared. I can imagine him having a solo for “Womanizer” but getting kicked off the stage bc he started full on strip dancing in a glittery fedora in front of his prince pal. High school Floyd is an absolute nightmare.

Joe Liebgott eats Hershey Bars, Meat, and monster energy drinks only. No wonder he’s skinny. He’s such a picky eater, it’s horrible. Like he also loves weird food combos, like cheese and Oreos. Which is nasty.

Dick Winters LOVES Water Skiing. I’m not joking, it’s his favourite hobby. Catch your daddy Quaker in a pair of tight speedo shorts and Nixon’s aviators, gliding across the water.

HARRY!! How could I forget. I can see his man owning a bunch of cat’s and calling them “sweetie”, “honey”, “sugar”, and a bunch of cutesy names. All of the name’s were kitty’s idea. Speaking of Kitty, I can see her being a big girl, like height and weight. Harry worships her and calls her “my big beautiful Amazon” and Nixon thinks it’s weird BUT IT’S CUTE

Johnny Martin has a secret Twitter account that nobody is allowed to see. Instead of typing like a normal person, he smashes the keyboard. Nobody knows what he’s saying except for Bull. It’s very concerning.

For Halloween, the mortar trio have really strange costumes. One year, they were a rollercoaster. Other years they were the three musketeers, Alvin and the chipmunks, and the powderpuff girls. There costumes are genuinely terrifying to look at. Did I mention there the sexy versions as well? There worse costume was sexy rock, paper, and scissors. Mega yikes.

[lady-in-the-lair]

There was an electric violinist with uv pink Mohawk, body paint and violin who played Paganini while dancing naked under black lights and I met a very posh English man in his late seventies or eighties who came to the cloakroom in latex and corset and collected his full white tie and evening dress suit. “I do so love to go from one extreme to another” so I have happier memories! It was one weird night in the ‘90s. If you want any more suggestions for a Venom rave fic, please hit me up!

Well, that's certainly something far removed from my own experiences, so thanks for the ideas! Venom should work as a bouncer; he'd love it there. Eddie I'm not so sure of, but at least Venom will be having a blast.