#the intimacy and romance of violence and consuming the other

[daisies-on-a-cup]

i cant get the cool things i enjoy and put them up in my room bc if i bring people over and they ask about them, even if they are non-judgmental and genuine, i would be unable to explain why i like those things due to the massive levels of cringe that would overwhelm my brain

[aasouthteranoswife]

The Monster’s Heart

Summary: Sukuna Ryomen, a feared yakuza leader whose ruthless reputation is challenged when he meets y/n, a gentle café worker who serves tea near his headquarters. Their unlikely romance blossoms as y/n’s warmth begins to thaw Sukuna's cold exterior, leading to a passionate but tender relationship. When rival yakuza attack the café.

A/N: Hi Hi I'm kind of back. Here an old works but with a different character. Please give me some love ❤️ 🥹

Warning(s): Violence and gunfights, References to organized crime,Mild blood/injury, Romantic intimacy (explicit),References to physical scars, Themes of moral ambiguity,Mild language, Emotional intensity.

Word Count: 4,000

18+ MINORS DO NOT INTERACT Reblog’s and feedback are appreciated

Sukuna Ryomen was a force of nature—a man who had clawed his way to the top of the yakuza world with cold, calculating precision. His reputation was built on bloodshed, ruthless decisions, and a heart that no longer had room for anything but power. He was the kind of man whose name alone could silence a room, whose eyes could freeze anyone in their tracks. A leader without equal, feared by all, trusted by none. For Sukuna, emotions were weaknesses—things that only got in the way of his ascent.

That is, until he met her.

Her name was y/n, and from the moment she stepped into his world, everything began to change.

Y/n wasn’t like the other women Sukuna encountered. She wasn’t a hardened fighter or a cunning manipulator. In fact, she wasn’t like anyone he had ever known. She was sweet—“too” sweet, some might say. Her smile was like sunlight breaking through the storm clouds of his life. Y/n’s soft laughter filled rooms with an innocence that felt like a foreign language to him. She was gentle and kind, untainted by the darkness that had consumed everyone around him.

She worked at a small café near the yakuza offices, serving tea and pastries to the men who walked in and out of the building. Sukuna’s men would often stop by for a drink, but he never had any interest in the ordinary staff—until her laid eyes on you.

Her presence irritated him at first. Her overly cheerful disposition, the way she greeted him with that polite, unassuming smile whenever he visited. But over time, something began to shift. He found himself watching her from the corner of his eye, mesmerized by the way she moved, the way she spoke, and the unshakable warmth she carried in her gaze.

One evening, after a particularly grueling meeting with rival factions, Sukuna walked into the café, his eyes cold and tired. His men scattered in a hush as they noticed his presence, but you remained standing behind the counter, unaware of the tension in the room. Her eyes were bright as ever, focused on the task at hand, and for a brief moment, Sukuna was struck by the sheer “normalcy” of it. The contrast between his world of violence and her world of simplicity.

She caught his gaze as he approached the counter, and for a heartbeat, he felt something he couldn’t quite name.

“Good evening, Sukuna ,” you greeted him, her voice soft, unperturbed by the weight of his reputation. You didn’t even flinch when he slid into a chair, her smile as genuine as always. “The usual today?” You said with a smile.

Sukuna said nothing at first, merely watching her as she poured him tea with careful, delicate movements. The sight of her was so… out of place, so out of sync with everything he knew. He had never met anyone who wasn’t afraid of him, who treated him like a “person”, not a monster.

You placed the mug in front of him with a small bow, as your eyes linger for just a moment longer than necessary. “Is everything alright, Sukuna? You look like you could use a bit of rest.” Patting him on the shoulder. He tensed up from your touch.

Sukuna’s red eyes narrowed, a hint of irritation flickering beneath his usual impassive expression. “It’s none of your business,” he replied, his voice low and flat, but there was something in the way he said it—something softening, something… conflicted.

You didn’t back down. Instead, you just smiled again, your voice a little quieter this time. “It’s not my business, but if you’re tired, I’m happy to make you something special. You’ve been coming here for weeks, and I still don’t know what you like outside of tea.”

Sukuna said nothing for a long moment, his gaze lingering on her. Something inside him shifted—something that he had long buried, something fragile, almost like a memory of a life he’d never allowed himself to have. It was absurd. He shouldn’t care. Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to look away from you, not when she had become the only thing in his life that wasn’t tainted by blood or betrayal.

“I don’t need anything special,” he muttered, but the words felt hollow in his own ears.

You tense at his words, but instead of retreating, she leaned forward slightly, her gaze gentle. “You know, Sukuna, everyone needs something “special”sometimes. Even people like you.” Kissing him on the cheek.

Sukuna’s heart thudded loudly in his chest, and he didn’t know why it felt so different this time. He couldn’t understand it.

-——————-

Days turned into weeks, and Sukuna found himself visiting the café more frequently, though he never admitted to anyone why. You became a fixture in his life in a way that no one else had, her kindness an ever-present force in his otherwise dark existence. He watched as she interacted with his men, as they cracked jokes and spoke to her like she was just another face in the crowd, but Sukuna saw something more. He saw how they softened around her, how they were drawn to her warmth.

And, slowly, Sukuna began to realize something: the thing that scared him the most was the way he felt when you weren’t around.

-—————————-

One rainy evening, after a particularly violent confrontation with a rival gang, Sukuna found himself standing outside the café, drenched in the cold, heavy downpour. He didn’t know why he was there. His men were cleaning up the mess, and he should’ve been heading back to the compound. But all he could think about was you.

He walked in, wet and disheveled, and you immediately looked up from behind the counter. The warmth in your eyes never wavered.

“Oh my good,” you said, rushing toward him with a small towel. “You’re soaked! Let me—”

Before you could finish, Sukuna pulled you close, his hands wrapping around your waist, his breath coming out in ragged gasps. The sudden motion startled you, but you didn’t push him away. Instead, you placed your hands gently on his chest, looking up at him with wide, innocent eyes.

“Sukuna…” she whispered, his name so soft on her lips.

It was then that everything that had been building inside him erupted. Without thinking, he lowered his head and kissed you—soft at first, tentative, as if he was testing the waters, afraid of what it might mean. But when you didn’t pull away, when you leaned into him with an almost desperate tenderness, he deepened the kiss, the world around them disappearing.

In that moment, he realized something terrifying: He was in love with you.

When you finally broke apart, breathless and dazed, Sukuna rested his forehead against yours, his voice gruff. “I can’t lose you, y/n. Not you. Not to anyone. If anything happens to you—if you’re ever hurt—there will be nothing left of this world. I will burn everything down for you.”

Your heart fluttered at the raw sincerity in his words, and for a moment, you didn’t know whether you should be frightened by the intensity of his feelings or comforted by the vulnerability he had just shown. But one thing was certain: Sukuna Ryomen, the monster everyone feared, was a lover on the inside.

And she was the reason why, he not longer cold- hearted.

——————————-

All of a sudden the quiet street suddenly erupted in chaos. Three black SUVs screeched to a halt outside the café, and men in dark suits poured out, their weapons glinting in the rain. The Ishida clan—Sukuna's oldest rivals—had tracked him here.

Sukuna's eyes narrowed as he recognized Ishida Kenji, the clan's second-in-command, emerging from the lead vehicle. "Ryomen!" Kenji called out, his voice cutting through the rain. "Your territory grab today crossed a line. We're here to settle this."

Through the café window, Sukuna could see you frozen behind the counter, your eyes wide with fear. His jaw clenched. Of all places, they had to bring their war here—to your sanctuary.

"You're making a mistake, Kenji," Sukuna's voice was deadly calm as he stepped away from the café entrance, drawing their attention away from the building. "Whatever grievance you have, we handle it elsewhere."

Kenji's laugh was sharp. "Since when does the great Sukuna Ryomen care about collateral damage?" His eyes flickered to the café, and his smile turned cruel. "Unless... ah, I see now. The rumors were true."

The first shot came without warning. Sukuna moved like lightning, drawing his own weapon as he rolled behind a parked car. The street erupted in gunfire, the sound of breaking glass and screaming civilians filling the air. Through the chaos, Sukuna's mind remained razor-sharp, focused on one thing: keeping the fight away from you.

He took down two of Kenji's men with precise shots, then used the cover of rain to move closer to their position. His movements were fluid, efficient—the product of years spent surviving situations exactly like this. But this time was different. This time, he wasn't just fighting for territory or respect. He was fighting for something more.

A bullet grazed his shoulder, and he responded by putting a round through the shooter's knee. The man went down screaming. Three more approached from his left, but before they could fire, Sukuna's own men—who had been trailing him—arrived on the scene, evening the odds.

Through the firefight, Sukuna caught glimpses of the café. His heart nearly stopped when he saw you helping elderly customers escape through the back door, your face determined despite your terror. Even now, you were thinking of others.

"You've gone soft, Ryomen!" Kenji shouted, emerging from behind his car with a shotgun. "Love makes men weak!"

Sukuna's response was a bullet that shattered Kenji's right shoulder, sending him sprawling. In three quick strides, Sukuna closed the distance between them, kicking away Kenji's weapon. He pressed his foot against the man's wounded shoulder, earning a howl of pain.

"You're wrong, Kenji," Sukuna's voice was ice. "Love doesn't make men weak. It gives them something worth fighting for." He leaned down, his expression murderous. "Remember that when you wake up in the hospital. And remember this: if you or anyone else ever brings violence near this place again, what I did to your men today will seem like mercy."

The fight ended as quickly as it began. As his men secured the area and called their cleanup crews, Sukuna rushed into the café. He found you in the back room, helping an elderly woman calm her breathing.

When you saw him, you didn't run. You didn't scream. Instead, you walked straight to him and wrapped your arms around his waist, burying her face in his chest. "I was so worried," she whispered.

Sukuna held you tight, his heart racing not from the fight, but from the simple fact that you were still here, still holding him, even after seeing what he was capable of. "I told you," he said softly, "I will burn everything down for you."

You looked up at him, your eyes filled with something between fear and understanding. "I don't want you to burn anything down," you said. "I just want you to stay alive. Stay with me." As he kissed you all over your face.

In that moment, as the rain continued to fall outside and distant sirens wailed, Sukuna realized that perhaps he had been wrong all along. Emotions weren't weaknesses—they were power of a different kind. And you had given him the most powerful one of all.

"I'm not going anywhere," he promised, and for the first time in his life, he meant every word. Giving you a long deep passionate kiss.

———————————————

Later that night, after the chaos had settled and the cleanup crews had restored order to the street, Sukuna insisted on taking you home. To your small apartment was a few blocks from the café, a modest space that somehow felt just like you—warm, inviting, untouched by the darkness of his world.

"You should let me check that wound," you said softly, gesturing to where the bullet had grazed his shoulder. Your hands trembled slightly, but your voice was steady.

Sukuna wanted to refuse—he'd had far worse injuries—but the concern in your eyes made him relent. He sat on your couch while you retrieved a first aid kit. When you returned, you carefully helped him remove his jacket and shirt, her fingers ghosting over his skin.

You gasped softly at the sight of his other scars—testament to years of violent survival. But instead of recoiling, you traced them gently, your touch filling him with a warmth he'd never known. No one had ever touched him like this—like he was something precious rather than something dangerous.

"Does it hurt?" You whispered, carefully cleaning the graze on his tattooed shoulder.

"No," he replied, his voice rough with emotion. But he wasn't talking about the wound.

When you finished bandaging him, your eyes met his. The air between them crackled with unspoken words. Sukuna reached up, cupping your face in his calloused hands. Your skin was soft as silk against his battle-worn fingers.

“Y/n," he breathed your name like a prayer. "You should be terrified of me. After what you saw today..."

You leaned into his touch, your eyes never leaving his. "I've never been afraid of you, Sukuna. I see who you really are—not what the world has forced you to become."

Unable to resist any longer, he pulled you onto his lap, capturing your lips in a deep, passionate kiss. You melted against him, your hands sliding up his bare tattooed chest to wrap around his neck. The kiss was different from your first—more desperate, more intense, filled with everything you two couldn't say.

When you finally broke apart, breathing heavily, Sukuna rested his forehead against yours. His hands trembled as they held yours, this beautiful, pure thing that had somehow found its way into his darkness.

"Stay with me tonight," you whispered, her fingers intertwining with his. "Just... stay."

Sukuna's heart thundered in his chest. He had shared countless nights with others, but this was different. This wasn't about passion or power or fleeting pleasure. This was about trust, about letting someone see past his carefully constructed walls.

He slowly pulls off your clothes you were wearing as he did with his. He slowly made way to your small bedroom.

That night, you two laid together in your small bed naked, your head resting on his chest, your bodies intertwined. He held you close, feeling your body heat, breathing in the sweet scent of your hair, feeling the gentle rise and fall of your bare chest against his. For the first time in his life, Sukuna felt at peace.

In the quiet darkness, you traced patterns on his skin, your touch both innocent and intimate. "I love you," you whispered, so softly he almost missed it.

The words hit him like a physical blow. In his world, love was a liability, a weakness to be exploited. But here, in this moment, with your warm weight against him and your heart beating in sync with his, he realized that love could also be strength.

"I love you too," he replied, the words foreign but right on his tongue. And in that moment, Sukuna Ryomen—the feared yakuza leader, the man who had built his empire on blood and steel—surrendered completely to the gentle soul who had awakened his heart.

You both fell asleep wrapped in each other's arms, two worlds colliding and merging into something new. Outside, the rain continued to fall, washing away the day's violence, while inside, finding shelter in each other's embrace.

For the first time in his life, Sukuna's dreams weren't filled with blood and shadows. Instead, he dreamed of soft smiles and gentle touches, of a future he never thought he could have. And when morning came, he would wake to find it wasn't a dream at all— you were still there, real and warm beside him, living proof that even in the darkest of lives, love could bloom.

—————————————

Sukuna woke to unfamiliar warmth and the soft glow of dawn filtering through sheer curtains. For a moment, he tensed—years of survival instincts kicking in—until he felt you shift against him, your breath soft against his chest. The events of the previous night flooded back, and something in him softened.

You looked angelic in the morning light, your hair spilled across his chest, her face peaceful in sleep. One of your small hands rested over his heart, as if even in sleep you were trying to protect it. The sight of you stirred something profound in him—a feeling of tenderness he'd never known he was capable of.

Your eyes fluttered open slowly, and when you saw him watching you sleep, your lips curved into a sleepy smile that made his heart skip. "Good morning," you whispered, pressing a gentle kiss to his chest.

"Morning," he replied, his voice rough with sleep. His fingers traced lazy patterns along her spine, making her shiver slightly.

You propped yourself up on an elbow to look at him properly, her hair cascading around them like a curtain as the blanket fell down revealing your bare chest. The morning light caught eyes, making them shine. "You stayed," you said softly, wondering in your voice.

"I'll always stay," he promised, reaching up to brush a strand of hair from your face. The gesture was so tender, so unlike his usual self, that it surprised even him.

You leaned into his touch, then bent down to kiss him, slowly making your way on top of him. The kiss was soft at first, gentle with lingering sleep, but quickly deepened with growing passion. Your hands explored the planes of his chest while his tangled in your hair, pulling her closer.

Slowly grinding yourself on his hardened cock before pushing him inside you, making you throw your head back in pleasure. He finally grabbed your breast, twisting, and pulling at your hard nipples, as you let out a moan.

With heavy breathing, you rested your forehead against his as you continued to move your hips on his cock "I never want this morning to end," you admitted.

Sukuna rolled your gently so you was beneath him, protected within the cage of his arms. He looked down at her—this woman who had somehow managed to crack open his hardened heart—and felt overwhelmed by the depth of his feelings. As he starts, thrusting in and out of you to get to your high.

"Then let's stay here," he said, lowering his head to press soft kisses along her neck. You moaned like music to his ears. "The world can wait."

You spent the morning lost in gentle touches and tender kisses, learning each others bodies . Every sigh, every whispered word of love, every shared moment of intimacy felt like healing to Sukuna's battle-worn soul. You cummed together.

In his world of violence and power, gentleness had always been a foreign concept. But here, with you, he discovered that true strength could be found in the softest touches, the quietest moments, the most tender expressions of love.

Later, as you lay tangled in the sheets with his cum still inside you, you traced the tattoos on his chest while he played with your hair. The morning sun had climbed higher, but neither of you made any move to leave the peaceful sanctuary.

"What are you thinking about?" You asked, noticing his thoughtful expression.

Sukuna was quiet for a moment, considering. "About how different everything is with you," he finally answered. "How you make me want to be different."

You raised your head to look at him, your eyes serious. "I don't want you to be different. I just want you to be you—all of you, even the parts you think I shouldn't love."

Your words struck him deeply. In his world, love had always come with conditions, with expectations of change. But you loved him completely, darkness and all.

He pulled you closer, pressing a kiss to your forehead. "You're dangerous," he murmured against your skin.

"Me?" You laughed softly. "I'm just a café worker."

"You're the most dangerous person I've ever met," he said seriously. "You make me vulnerable. You make me want things I never thought I could have."

You lifted your face to his, your eyes full of love. "Then have them," you whispered, before kissing him again.

In that moment, as the morning light painted your skin glowed and your hearts beat in sync, Sukuna realized that he had finally found something worth more than all the power in the world—he had found home.

And it was here, in your arms, that he would always return.

Taglist 🏷️

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aasouthteranoswife © 2024-2025 All rights reserved. Do not repost, reupload, modify, or claim my work as your own.

[spookykoolkat]

╰•★★ ᴊᴏʟɪᴇ'ꜱ ᴍᴀɪɴ ᴍᴀꜱᴛᴇʀʟɪꜱᴛ ★★•╯

hello and welcome to my main masterlist that compiles all of my written work EVER!

⇢ first i'd like to introduce myself!

i'd prefer if people would call me jolie, it doesn't matter!

i'm nineteen years old :p goth metalhead :3

and i ONLY write for fat, plus sized people, ii write stories that i would read myself, as a plus sized woman, and i hope everyone enjoys it! if not, i'm sorry that it does not cater to thinner people but i need my plus size representation 🖤

AND AS ALWAYS, its FREE FREE PALESTINE!

⇢ now to get into my written work <3

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT! - all of my writing is STRICTLY 18+ ONLY! anyone under 18 and without an age in your bio will be blocked! you are responsible for the content you consume!

all of these written works will or are consisted of dark themes, adult content, adult themes, violence, romance, SMUT, and varying emotions/tones. all written work done by me is not allowed to be shared, published or claimed as their own!

⁂ - smut, 18+ only, mature themes

⁑ - angst, intimacy, light smut

🎃 - kinktober [INCOMPLETE]

joel miller fics will not be continued at the moment.

OKAY finally, here are my stories written by MEEE :p

╰┈➤ ❝ 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐭𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫 '𝟐𝟑 ❞

kinktober masterlist

╰┈➤ ❝ 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧 ❞

you're just so sweet ⁂

✰ coming back into town for your mother's birthday wasn't difficult. it was figuring out how to be around their long time friend, eddie, without feeling that familiar throb between your legs.

you're just so sweet | 2 ⁂

✰ of course he wouldn't speak to you. he was a much older man, and you were just a naïve little girl who pushed her luck. didn't you listen to every song about daddy issues ever?

always mine, forever ⁂

✰ having your friend group spend the night at your place to watch movies was supposed to be fun! so why was your heart racing at the thought of eddie being merely feet away while you slept in your bed?

your brother's rocker friend ⁂ request

✰ dustin was always a little shit, but he was YOUR little shit. along with your nerdy brother, came along his not so nerdy, older friends. one in particular that drooled over everything you did.

the cabin in the woods ⁂ request

✰ robin's new friend caught some attention from her friends, but eddie couldn't find it in himself to make a move on you. of course robin's hot friend had to be lesbian. or so he thought.

toxic ⁂ 🎃

✰ to your dismay, you and eddie could never find the sense to leave each other alone.

taped ⁂ 🎃

✰ eddie needed a way to keep you with him forever, what's a better way than to document it on camera?

looking for a good time? ⁂ 🎃

✰ eddie was always up for trying new things. he just didn't think someone who he couldn't even see would make him feel the way he did.

trick or treat ⁂ 🎃

sorry about your boyfriend ⁂ 🎃

lucifer, my love ⁂ 🎃

╰┈➤ blurbs

after work *

tattoo shop *

more coming soon

╰┈➤ ❝ 𝐣𝐨𝐞𝐥 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫 ❞

the red - series masterlist

updates halted indefinitely

「 chapter one 「 chapter two 「 chapter three 「 chapter four*

「 chapter five* 「 chapter six* 「 chapter seven* 「 chapter eight*

「 chapter nine 「 chapter ten

[moronkombat]

Not sure if u do nsfw alphabet requests but if u do could u do it for havik :3

YES I LOVE NSFW ALPHABETS

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

Once the rather long activities have concluded do not except hugs and cuddles. What you will find are eyes that stare at you as if the body he sees is a pure work of art. To him, it is. The cuts on your body, the blood the drips and drips...he will not wipe it away. He wants to watch it fester further. He may lick your wounds but that merely so he can taste the crimson shaded iron upon your body

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

His favorite part on his partner is their back. A wonderful blank canvas to tear into and to decorate. Hails will hook into your skin and pull and pull down until his fingers are coated sticky with iron. In terms of his body, it is his chest have you seen how big his tits are wtf

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

The essence of his partner is the greatest of delicacies and Havik is a filthy eater. Finishing inside, to him, can be such a waste of fun. Much rather would he cum on your face so that he may shove it in your mouth and smear it upon your skin. It is joyous to feel that slick trail of white pearls between his fingers and draw such pretty pictures down the length of your stomach. It is barbaric how much enjoyment he gets with playing with the results of your union. Perhaps, it even his favorite toy

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

He is the type to fondle his partner when they are asleep and he does in it a way that is subtle as to not rise his partner from their dreams

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

Havik knowns his way around the bedroom and then some. He is well versed, well practiced and very eager to display this for his partner. Pain is his language and pleasure his literacy. He creates a world for his partner where both exist, they simply cannot survive without the other and he is a master at this creation

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

Positions often change during sex but he finds himself favoring the positions where his partner's back is exposed. That where he bites and tears the most but he also enjoys when his partner rides his lap while tongues perform their lecherous tango

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

Havik is as crazed as a rabid hound. There is no stoicism to be found. Only will there be a wild hunt of a predator who seeks to completely destroy its prey

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

To say the carpet match the drapes would be rather inaccurate. Havik keeps himself groomed. Could it be because he enjoys the razor burns? Most definitely

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Havik considers himself an expert at romance for the mere reason of how he perceives intimacy. From his eyes, the blood and pain are the most romantic gift he can give to his partner. Romance is to share pain and create pain within one and other. Why provide each other flowery gifts when he can give his partner the agonizing rush of raptor?

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

Masturbation is a frequent pass time for someone like Havik. His thoughts ruminate over you, drown in the memories of your last time together. How can he deny himself a reminder?

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Havik is a walking kink. Violence and gore consume him and he wishes for it to consume his partner as well. Biting, as simple as it may seem, is his favorite

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

The bedroom, or rather his bedroom because it has all he needs to make the sex rather...entertaining. He also enjoys the carnal embrace when surrounded by the viscera he's created

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Injuries and the pain of himself and others. To feel a blade cut his skin, to hear the scream as he rips open the chest of an oppressor, there no better erotic elixir

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Anything that is considered too vanilla or soft. He is not interested in the conventional love making where there are kisses and whispered nothing. No, that is far too dull for him

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Enjoys both but really prefers to give. He enjoys using his tongue on his partner. The sounds he forces from your throat having him laughing against your heat. As much as it is a delight to see his partner's mouth stuffed full, he cannot hear the sounds of you as clearly as when he is wielding his tongue to a place most defenseless

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

Fast and rough. Havik is a frenzy and a torrid storm that slows for nothing. He gets so lost in the moment of raptor that his body simply cannot control itself

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

Havik enjoys taking his time with his partner. While his pace is fast, the entire performance is tantalizingly drawn out. Do not be fooled, however, he knows how to enjoy a shorter moment. When he is experiencing that call to the euphoria, he does not resist it and so quickies can become rather regular

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

If there aren't risks or experimentations happening then something is wrong. Havik craves the thrill of the what ifs. He wants to get as close to the edge as he possibly can and he will

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

When having sex with Havik, expect it to bee quite the time consuming fun. He can last until the sun rises again having his fun with his partner

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

Toys are a favorite of Havik to bring into the bedroom. He owns a variety that is as vast as the sky and he will put them to good use

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

He is the biggest tease during oral. To hear you mewl and ache while his tongue laps at you like a cat with milk riles him up. It not only his tongue that teases but his words. Those he utilizes frequently

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Loud and blaring. He would never hide the sounds you bring from him. He begs for more. He speaks to you such wicked things that have your mind warping and twisting

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

Havik is an obsessive lover down to his very core. Love is unknown to him only the twisted desires of having someone and never letting them go

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

Large, thick and uncut. Veins run along it and curve in patterns that sensitive to trace. He is a shower, not a grower but is rather indifferent to the size he carries between his legs. His partner is most definitely not indifferent

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Exceptionally high. He seeks out sex frequently with his partner

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

Does not fall asleep after sex. He wants to drink the sight of what both you and him have created

[cosmic-whispers]

Golden (Kisses: Part 3) - Azriel x Reader

Series Summary: A series of one-shots highlighting significant kisses throughout your relationship with Azriel. Part 3 aka The Hand Kiss. 

Warnings: fluff, angst, violence, feelings of self-loathing, comfort

Word Count: 4.8k 

A/N: Hope you all enjoy this one! It took me so long to get out and I’m not entirely happy with it, but I’ve reworked it twice now, so this is as good as it’s going to get, I’m afraid. Happy reading, my lovelies! 

Azriel was a very cautious male–he guarded his court against deception and danger and he took his role very seriously. He was meticulous with every aspect of his life. He planned every mission, beginning to end, with so much detail that his spies often did not have enough time to read through the mountains of papers that he would hand them beforehand. When fighting, he was always one step ahead of his opponent, his shadows giving him aid where his own skills lacked. He liked that about himself. 

And then you came along. 

All of his plans shattered like glass. He found his pre-mission reports getting shorter and shorter, time consumed with thoughts of you and often found himself distracted in the field when he spotted something that reminded him of you. Of when he would be able to see you again. Speak to you again. Spend time with you again. Touch you again. 

He shied away from physical touch. While he did not mind occasional bursts of affection from his family, he was not one to be overly affectionate or actively seek it out. He liked his solitude, hands hidden behind his back constantly and a healthy distance away from everyone else. And although that distance was of his own choosing, he could not help the twist in his gut every time Cassian hugged Nesta, or Feyre drunkenly kissed Rhysand, or Mor and Emorie sneaked off together, a futile attempt to hide their blossoming romance from the rest of the group. 

He yearned for it. Much more than he dared to admit to even himself. The loving touch of someone who would love him unconditionally, who would shower him with praises and love and desire. A mate. The other half of his soul. He yearned for the intimacy of loving someone so deeply. But he knew that he did not deserve it. After everything he’s done, it was a pleasant fantasy, but nothing more. After centuries of waiting, he had given up hope that he would ever find his mate. He figured it was better that way.

And then you came along. 

From the moment his hand touched yours that morning you spent together in Velaris, he craved your touch. He was drawn to you in inexplicable ways—he was a male dying of thirst in the desert and you were an oasis. Your touch, your kindness, your presence made a warmth spread through his chest. When his thoughts would trail to you, he worried that he was becoming too attached, too trusting. He had known you for such a short period of time. But the sincerity in your eyes and smile every time you looked at him put his mind at ease. The touch of your skin on his made him feel safe and comfortable. He wanted your hands on him at all times. 

Azriel was usually a cautious male. Which is why he hoped you did not notice how often he was getting injured in the field. 

The first time was not on purpose. He had gone to a mission in Rask, his position became compromised, and he had to fight off several soldiers by himself. The slice to his bicep was deep and painful. When he winnowed home, his first thought was of you. He had shown up to the healer’s quarter, bloody and tired, to your horror. 

“What happened?!” you exclaimed pulling him to the cot and forcing him to sit. 

“Got compromised. One of them managed to nick me in the arm,” he said. You stared down at his wound, starting to dab bandages on it to staunch the bleeding. He took the opportunity to stare at you. You were the most stunning female he had seen in his long life. While he was often surrounded by beautiful females, when he first laid eyes on you he was awestruck. Your hair, your eyes, and that smile. He was so fucked. 

“Nothing your favorite healer can’t handle,” you teased, glancing up at his face as your hands gripped his arm, your palms pressing against the wound. He hissed in pain, sharp pain burning through his body as your hands touched the open cut. 

“What makes you think you’re my favorite healer?” 

Your eyes widened, embarrassment flooding your features. You bit your bottom lip and turned your face away from him. “It was just a joke, Azriel.” 

He felt a little guilty, making you feel embarrassed, but the way you bit your lip and the shifting in your gaze were entirely too endearing. The urge to tease you–to flirt with you–was entirely too strong.   

“I’m kidding, (Y/N),” he said, softly. “You know you’re my favorite healer.”

You smiled shyly at him and turned your gaze back to his arm. Your hands began glowing like golden daylight, the brightness leaking from your hands and slowly stitching his skin together.

“Kiss-ass,” you mumbled and he laughed out loud.

“I like your laugh,” you said. “You should do it more often.”

“It’s hard,” he said, glad that you were looking down and not at the redness spreading over his cheeks. “No one’s as funny as you are.”

“Doubt that,” you countered. “You’re friends with Cassian. He’s pretty hilarious.”

“I think you’re overestimating how funny he is. I would say the things that happen to Cassian are funnier than the male himself.” Your responding giggle echoed through his head for the next week. 

During his next mission, his mind was still occupied with thoughts of you. The mission to gather intelligence on the happenings in the Autumn Court was entirely too easy. 

His shadows concealed him, within the heavy trees in Autumn. It was his last night there and he was ready to go home and see his family. He wanted to see you. He wondered if you would mind him visiting you in the morning, but figured you were entirely too busy to cater to his need for attention. He shouldn’t bother you unless he needed your healing. He just needed to repeat it to himself until the urge to see you went away. 

“Sentry,” his shadows whispered in his ears. “Behind you, pointing a bow and arrow.”

He was always a cautious male. But with the image of your face swimming in his brain and the tantalizing idea of getting to see you as soon as he got back, made him feel reckless. Impulsive. He would not describe himself as impulsive, but for a moment, without thinking, he spread his wings wide, his shadows dispersing and revealing him in the forest. 

He heard the arrow before he felt it. It pierced through the thin membrane of his left wing, a momentary pang of pain shooting through his nerves and he braced his teeth. His shadows quickly swarmed back, concealing him and he took the opportunity to silently approach the guard. 

His hands were shaking. He placed the bow down and moved closer to where Azriel had previously stood, nothing but darkness and shadows. 

“Who’s there? Reveal yourself,” he called out, trying to look through the darkness. He cursed himself for being so careless to let himself be wounded, and he felt relief knowing the sentry did not recognize him. He left the area, the male still looking around, and took flight quickly, disguised with the cover of night. 

His flight back north was agonizing and long, sharp pain shooting like lightning down the expanse of his wing and into his back. He reached Velaris mid-morning, the bustle of the city bringing him comfort and he flew straight to the healing quarters. 

Eloise was there along with a few other healers from the Dawn court. The scar on the side of her face had faded to a thin, light line and the healer wore it with honor. She had taken to giving the most exaggerated, untrue stories about how it happened to anyone that asked. 

“Azriel!” she called out. “Your wing!”

She rushed toward him. He hesitated for a moment, backing away from her approaching hands. She lowered her arms, looking at him curiously. He felt the heat rise up his neck and onto his face and knew that the red skin was not helping his reputation. 

“Is (Y/N) here?”

Eloise did not answer for a moment, but a feline smirk was spreading on her lips. He maintained eye contact with her, attempting to keep his expression stoic. He forced himself to not glance at the other females when they giggled under their breath. 

“Oh, your sweetness should be returning from her break in a few minutes,” Eloise said and he shifted his gaze to the floor in embarrassment. 

“Azriel,” she called out, and he looked back at her face. Despite the humor dancing in her eyes, her expression was serious. She closed the distance between them and spoke low enough to avoid being overheard.

“I’ve heard about your reputation with females. About how…easily…you fall in love. She’s my best friend. I think it’s implied that if you hurt her, I will kill you.” Azriel was shocked for a moment, but not surprised. He was happy that you had such a loyal friend who was looking out for your well-being and happiness.

“Never. It’s not like that with her,” he said. Admitting more than that out loud was too much for him, but thankfully his answer satisfied her for the moment. 

The doors to the healing room burst open, and you bounded through, a tower of books in your arms blocking your vision. 

“Sorry I’m late, El,” you said, not noticing the Illyrian in the room.  “They were having a sale in the bookstore across the street! I couldn’t pass it up.”

Azriel moved towards you, your sweet scent filling his senses and he instantly felt the muscles in his back loosen with ease, despite the stinging from the arrow. He grabbed the tomes from your grasp and you gasped. 

“Oh, Azriel!” you exclaimed, surprise lacing your melodic voice, but his favorite smile was beginning to appear on your face. “What are you doing here?”

Your smile faded as soon as he gestured to his wing. 

“Azriel! We need to get that out immediately!” You ushered him to a room and his spine straightened and his chest puffed at the attention you were giving him. Eloise followed close behind, smirking at him as you pushed him into the cot. 

“Eloise! Why didn’t you heal him?” you yelled to your friend, who was making her way out of the room. 

“He had just gotten here, actually,” she said, shooting him a knowing look and a wink as she walked through the threshold and pulled the door behind her. “He’s all yours.”

“What happened this time?” you asked, moving behind him to assess the damage to his wing up close. 

“An arrow.”

A flick to the back of his neck caught him by surprise. His shadows swarmed around your wrists, amused at your antics. 

“Rude.”

“Me? Perhaps you should be nicer to the healer that’s assisting you.”

Before Azriel was able to formulate a response, the gentle touch of your fingertips on his wing made all thoughts leave his head. Warmth spread throughout his entire wing, traveling through his entire body. His body tensed, back muscles clenching and his hands formed fists at his side as a shiver overtook his body. What in the Hel was this female doing to him?

“I’m sorry, Az,” you said. “I know your wings are very sensitive. I’ll try to be as quick as possible.”

He nodded in agreement; he did not want to correct your false assumption that his reaction was caused by the natural sensitivity of the Illyrian appendages. Admitting that the reason for his reaction was your touch was too embarrassing to acknowledge out loud–especially to you. 

He reveled in your touch, even throughout the painful predicament of getting the arrow out. Once your golden hands illuminated the membranous skin of his wing,  tendrils of pleasure, relief, and desire flooded through him. 

He never intended for his intentional injuries to continue. You were always busy in the healing quarters and your days off were sparse. But if he had not spoken to you for too long or wanted an excuse to see you, he would let an arrow skim past the skin of his ear, or a blade slice through a bicep or thigh. He knew he should stop–if you knew what he was doing, you would rip his head off–but he had to see you. 

—------

Monteserre was always hell to visit; the rugged, rocky terrain and tumultuous weather made Azriel’s job much more difficult and grim. His shadows did not like the harsh winds and stinging rain, and they especially did not enjoy tracking the prolific assassin he was following, the weather blowing scents and tracks away easily. 

The assassin had been evading the Shadowsinger for weeks. Azriel was actually rather impressed with his stealth skill, but he knew that he had to deal with him sooner rather than later. After several murders in the Night Court were linked to the male, Rhysand wanted the male captured. Dead or alive. 

He followed the man to a large cave. From his vantage point, the walls and ceiling of the cave were rough and jagged, the entrance narrow. He watched for hours, the darkness of night giving to dawn and he had not moved a muscle and the male had not emerged from the cave. His shadows had not sensed any other presence in there–-was this the assassin’s home?

A hard, sudden impact to his back took Azriel by surprise. The powerful impact knocked him off balance, lurching him forward to the ground. His breath was knocked completely out of him and he knew bruises were bound to form on his chest and ribs.

He took a moment to gather his bearings. The heavy body straddled his back, pinning his upper body and wings to the ground with their knees. With a swivel of his hips, he was able to twist his body, ignoring the pain on his wings, and knocked his attacker off his back. He pulled his wings taut against his back and quickly flipped over, pinning the large male to the ground. 

It was the assassin. 

Azriel had Truth-Teller in his hand, holding it tight against the male’s throat. He was a large male, probably as large and strong as Cassian, but as furtive as Azriel. A perfect combitantion of strength and stealth. A perfect assassin. A skilled fighter. 

The male managed to catch Azriel by surprise again. Truth-teller was knocked out of his grasp, a strong punch landing across his face and pain exploded adross his nose and lip. He was shoved with great force, landing once again on his back. The pain on his face disoriented him for a moment, and the sticks from the round dug uncomfortably onto his back and wings. 

“The Shadowsinger,” the male said, his heavy accent accentuated further by his raspy voice. “What does the Night Court want with me?” 

Azriel did not let the panic building in his heart appear on his face. This male knew who he was and where he was. He left the cave, probably using another entrance, and ambushed him. He knew the Night Court was in Monteserre land and that they were spying on him. He had to die. 

The dagger pointed at Azriel’s face forced him to relax. He could not thrash about without getting the blade impaled in his skin. Azriel remained silent, pondering the options he had and the best course of action. He called his shadows to him quickly, crowding the assassin’s face and temporarily blinding him. The male began began thrashing the blade, blindly trying to stab Azriel, and he managed to nick on the cheekbone. Azriel grabbed onto the steel with both hands, unable to stop the male’s advances. The sharp edges of the blade cut through the skin on his palm, a sharp sting spreading from his hands to his wrists, and down the length of his arms. Azriel used the surprise o his shadows to pivot his lower body again, flipping the male easily. 

He grabbed Truth-Teller from the ground, driving it straight through the male’s eye. The squelch of the skin breaking apart and the feeling of the knife coming to a halt as it hit bone ensured the assassin’s death. Blood from Azriel’s hand dripped onto the male’s face and Azriel cursed. 

A waste of a good mission. Azriel had followed him for days and ended up with no information. He sent his shadows to explore the cave, hoping there was something valuable. As he waited for their return, he cut two pieces of fabric from the male’s shirt. He hissed as he pressed the fabric onto the jagged cuts on his palms, but tightly tied them around, hoping it was enough to stifle the bleeding. 

His shadows reported nothing of interest to him and they wrapped around his entire being, winnowing him back to the outskirts Velaris. He spread his large wings, stretching them after having them pulled tightly against his back, and took flight. He observed the bustling city in the morning light, knowing that you were in there somewhere. 

He debated going to you this time. He would get to see you and after a few minutes, the pain in his hands would fade. But that would mean you having to touch his hands. His grotesque, scarred hands, dripping with blood and pain. A physical embodiment of the heinous male within. Every time he looked at them, deep feelings of revulsion and disgust fill him to the brim. They brought wave after wave of shame upon him, nearly drowning him in the memories of the past. Every time he looked at them, he remembered the weak, feeble boy he used to be and wanted to weep for him. He remembered the faces of every male and female that he has killed over his long existence, and wished for the same pain to be inflicted on him. 

He could never let you see them. He could never be brazen enough to face your scorn. 

He flew away from the main city and towards the House of Wind, landing in the training ring. Cassian’s large frame was running through exercises with Nesta and the other priestesses. Yet, his eyes skimmed over all of them and were drawn straight to you. Of course you were there. Since that day in battle, you had not missed a single lesson.

Your hair was swept back, exposing your naturally beautiful face. Your skin was dewy from the exercise you had been doing and your chest heaved with exertion. Your eyes met his, a smile spreading across your face and you gave him a small wave. 

He resisted waving back, afraid to expose his wrapped hands and have you worry over him. 

“Az, are you hurt?” Cassian asked, approaching him and gesturing to his hands, wrapped in fabric, stained dark red from the blood still seeping from his wounds.

“It’s just a cut,” he said, dismissing his brother’s worry. “It’ll heal.”

“Lucky we have a healer here,” Cassian said, wiggling his eyebrows at the Shadowsinger. Azriel fought the urge to roll his eyes. Cassian had found it entirely too hilarious when Azriel started showing up with more and more injuries. He believed Azriel remained ignorant of his knowledge and of the secret betting pool he had made with all members of the Inner Circle about you and him. He could not resist any opportunity to get you to spend time with the Spymaster. 

“I can heal it for you now,” you said, making your way toward him. He wished he could agree to it. He craved your sweet touch, your soft smiles, and your gentle eyes focused only on him. As you smiled at him, your face getting closer and closer to him, he was almost hypnotized into reaching his hands out and placing them within your tiny, warm ones. But he did not. His hands did not budge from his side. 

“No,” he said, moving his hands behind him and his pulling his shadows to crowd around them, making sure that they were well hidden from view. You stopped short, furrowing your eyebrows and your expression becoming puzzled. 

“Thank you, (Y/N). But I don’t need you wasting your powers on something minor. It’ll heal on its own,” he said, turning and walking away quickly before anyone said anything else to him. He walked into the House, not daring to look back at the baffled expressions of his friends. 

He entered his room, looking down at his hands. The bloodied fabric has stuck to the skin of his hand, and Azriel groaned as he peeled it off, the gauze pulling at the skin surrounding the wound. The stinging in his palms was sharp, and he tried to even his breathing as he looked down at both wounds. 

As he contemplated his next move, his shadows swarmed around him. 

“She’s here,” one whispered in his ear, seconds before a soft knock echoed from his door. 

He sighed in resignation and moved to the door, opening it to see your gorgeous face looking up at him. You were trying to keep your face calm, however, concern danced clear as glass in your eyes. 

“Hi, Az. I wanted to make sure that you're alright. It really is no bother,” you said, gesturing toward his hands. 

He clenched his hands at his side and fought the urge to groan in pain as the skin on his wounds stretched. His throat began feeling like it was closing shut, the care that you were displaying for him making his heart swell with emotions.

“I’m sorry, (Y/N),” he began. His voice was tight, but he continued to force the words out. “I don't want you to heal my hands.” He wished he didn’t sound as rude as he did. He wished that you would roll your eyes, curse him out, and never look at him again. But you didn’t. You smiled sadly at him and nodded in understanding. 

“Alright. Can I ask why?”

He wanted to tell you everything. He knew you were entirely too kind to judge him. You were compassionate and loyal and you would never hold his past against him. But, the fear still lingered in his heart. What if you rejected him? What if it made you see him in the way he saw himself? 

You hesitantly stepped forward, past the threshold, and closed the door behind you. You didn’t make a move to close the distance between you, but the warmth in your gaze filled his heart. You took a deep, shaky breath before speaking. 

“Azriel, I know that we haven’t known each other very long, but since I’ve come to Velaris, you’ve become a best friend to me. I feel so comfortable around you, you make me feel safe. I can be myself with you, and be vulnerable with you. I am so grateful to know you, Az. I hope you know that I’m here for you, too. You can tell me anything.”

He was unable to speak, his throat tight and chest full of affection for you. He wanted to be vulnerable. He wanted to share his past with you. He wanted your support, your comfort, your kindness. He longed for it. He yearned for you. He took a deep breath, steeling himself, and nodded. He gestured towards his bed and you move towards it, still keeping your distance and you sit in the corner. 

He spoke for what felt like hours. Every word he told you felt like he was liberating his soul. His family knew about the traumas of his past, but it was never from him directly. He had kept his experiences close to his chest, unwilling to burden anyone else with his pain and troubles. But with you, it felt different. He didn’t feel like he was burdening you. You wanted to listen. You wanted him to share his story, his past with you. He shared his feelings of shame, for doing the things that he did for his Court and about how hard iit was to look in the mirror and the the monster staring back at him. He shared his fear of enjoying the carnage, of becoming a manic psychopath, and taking pleasure in the pain and death of others. 

His eyes were reddened, tear tracks streaking down his his cheeks and his eyelashes clumped together. You looked at him, gaze fixed to his face, and remained silent. You had tears in your eyes, but your expression remained calm and pensive. His heart clenched and sunk down into his stomach. He knew that you must see him for what he truly was–tainted; a murderer, death itself. Shame filled him, so deep and potent that he wished the earth beneath him would open and swallow him whole. 

Your hands raised, gripping his, and your eyes lowered to stare down at your fingers clasping over his. His palms faced up, the deep and jagged cuts standing out prominently. And yet–to him–those cuts were not the ugliest things about his hands. He stared down at your hands gripping his. Your perfect hands. Hands that healed, that brought comfort and love and hope. And his–ugly; a sinful reminder of the monstrosities of his past. Constant reminders of all the pain he had suffered and all the pain he had inflicted. It was blasphemous for him to even hold you like this. How could his tainted skin dare touch any part of you? How could you let him? 

Your hands begin to glow golden, tiny beams of bright light spidering from your tiny hands and wrapping themselves across his. The golden light illuminated your face, your features highlighted in the most beautiful light. A tear escaped from your eye, and he could not look away from you. He wished he had an eidetic memory. He wished he had Feyre’s painting skills. He wished to capture the sight of you in this moment forever. 

“I know that you feel a lot of shame about your past. But your past doesn’t define who you are, Azriel. Your actions do. Your kindness, your gentleness. Despite whatever image you want to present to the rest of the world, you are a good person worthy of a good life. I believe that with all my heart. We all have our scars, some more visible than others. But when I look at you, I don’t see this monster you claim to be. I don’t see scars. I see strength. I see someone who has survived through the cruelest things in life and has risen again and again. I think your hands are beautiful,” you said, tears brimming in your lash line. 

Your fingers squeezed his hands softly and the tears swimming in his eyes poured like a monsoon down his golden cheeks. For once, he didn’t feel ashamed. He didn’t feel like summoning his shadows forward to hide himself away. He didn’t want to hide away from you–he wanted you to see him. 

“You’re too good to me, sweetness,” he whispered to you, speechless for the first time in a very long time. 

You smiled at him and brought his hands to your face. His heart clenched in his chest as you pressed a tiny, butterfly kiss to the skin of his palm. Where a deep, jagged cut lay before, only a faint white scar remained. Your lips followed the crooked scar, each touch of your lips sending a shockwave through him and making his breath hitch in his lungs. You continued, trailing tiny kisses down each of his ten fingers. He did not know how long he sat there, staring at you in utter awe, as you kissed his hands, turning them over and beginning the onslaught on his knuckles and the back of his hands. It may as well have been an eternity, and it still would not be long enough to bask in you. He was utterly enamored with you. 

You smiled up at him once you were satisfied with yourself. His hands moved away from yours, and he raised them to gently grip your face. He leaned forward, your intoxicating, sweet scent overwhelming his senses and he leaned forward, pressing his forehead against yours. He closed his eyes, taking the moment to breath you in. He felt one of your hands touch his cheekbone, the golden light dancing behind his eyelids and the soft twinge of discomfort healing the cut on his cheekbone. 

Despite his racing heart, he felt calm. For the first time in his life, he did not want to hide his hands away. For a moment–as he gripped your face, the tingling of golden light still radiating from his hands–he dared to imagine what it would be like to lean down and press his lips against yours. He hoped he would have the chance to find out. 

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[albertfinch]

LAYING HOLD OF HIM

"He turns a wilderness into pools of water, and dry land into watersprings. There He makes the hungry dwell, that they may establish a city for a dwelling place, and sow fields and plant vineyards, that they may yield a fruitful harvest." -  Psalm 107:35-37

If you find yourself in a dry land or a wilderness season, start focusing on bearing fruit that remains for His Kingdom and watch how He begins to visit you through His Word. Before you know it, you will begin to see your life, your land, and your season transformed as you commence to move forward in action and begin to move from glory to glory (see 2 Corinthians 3:16-18).

NEW EYES

For those who desire it, the Lord allows us to look into the depth of His Word with "new eyes" whereby we will see by revelation beautiful truths in a way that we have not seen in times past; restoring the Lord's original intent and purpose for creation (to cover the earth with the knowledge of Him) With this illumination, we are given insight as to why part of the great commission is to disciple the nations (Matthew 28:19). We are to evangelize and then equp the body of Christ to effectively advance His Kingdom throughout the earth.

With these "new eyes" comes an all-consuming passion to disciple new believers into their Christ identity, their right standing with God, and walking in the Spirit.

LIVING IN THE GLORY OF GOD

The Lord wants to fill us with a holy desperation and a holy violence to lay hold of Him. It's a hunger that will drive us into holy romance with the Lord -- to enthrone Him in every area of our lives -- it's a fresh hunger to come into such intimacy with Jesus that we die to ourselves and embrace our union with Him in every way.

"Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him." - John 6:27

God is desperately hungry for us to possess the promised land and lay hold of our Christ calling. We are to live in the very Glory of God.  However, we must daily overcome the spirit of the world by apprehending the ascended life in Christ through self-sacrifice by tending to the spiritual needs of others. This is how we press behind the veil that is already torn that we might eat of the Bread of Heaven and take others into a higher knowledge and understanding of Jesus and also their Christ identity.

EAT THE BOOK

There is an impartation granted to us that will bring with it a dramatic increase in revelation and our ability to "eat the book" as John was told in Revelation 10 (see verses 8-11 as well as Ezekiel 3:1-3).

In the same way that the Lord Jesus was the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us as we beheld His Glory (see John 1:14), we too must take hold of the Word and consume all that it contains until we become the Word. It is from this place that we become His voice with the ability to change the way people think.

ALBERT FINCH MINISTRY

[con-fection]

violence and intimacy are the only universal languages | BUCKY BARNES x READER | 18+ oneshot

synopsis: In which Bucky Barnes fucks John Walker’s girlfriend, who turns out not to be John Walker’s girlfriend at all. 

[Alternative synopsis: Bucky happens to meet you, John Walker's girlfriend, and you're nothing like he expects you to be. He's anticipating a woman that's arrogant, mindless and fake, following after Walker like a lost puppy, a woman who puts on a front to the whole world, a terrible person hiding behind the girl-next-door facade. You're nothing like that - you're soft, intriguing and absolutely lovely, everything that's good in the world. And he's very much attracted to you, desperate to show John who you really belong to.]

Content warnings: 18+ This is SMUT. Contains sex/explicit language/,masturbation. 

THIS IS SET DURING EPISODE 2 AND WILL CONTAIN SOME SPOILERS AS IT USES SOME DIALOGUE FROM THE SHOW :) IT’S ALSO TOLD FROM BUCKY’S POV :)

Word count: 17K

John Walker is absolutely insufferable.

He is a man high off his own arrogance, regarding himself as the ultimate authority, and relegating every other member of this planet to being below him. He is a bastardisation of everything that vibranium shield stood for. John doesn't have bravery, but he has pride in spades, which is more than good enough for everybody around him.

Captain America had been so deeply beloved that his loss left a crippling gape in the very heart of the American dream. It was a space that required filling - and so, in the absence of Steve Rogers, the apparent next best thing was located.

But Walker wasn't the next best after a man like Steve Rogers. They may vaguely resemble one another, in their facial features, icy blue eyes and broad, towering stature, but John fails to measure up in each and every way that matters. He fundamentally lacks the most important qualities that Steve had in abundance.

Steve Rogers had been a heart-wrenchingly good man, burdened with a righteous sense of justice, a strong moral compass and compassion. His life had been far from easy, wrought with losses that left him fractured into pieces of himself. He was loyal to a fault - willing to wage a war against the United States' government to try to clear the name of a comrade so close he would have died for him a thousand times over. John would dance to whatever tune the government gave him, so long as it resulted in his name being glorified.

John Walker knows nothing of that sacrifice. Every alleged 'brave' act comes from his warped sense of reality, one that has given him the impression he simply cannot die, that he can't be wrong in any way. 

Each time he jumped on top of a grenade, or put himself in the line of fire, he came out unscathed, and so he did it again and again and again, revelling in the praise he recieved afterwards, and the eventual mantle that was bestowed upon him.

Steve had never once come out of a single fight uninjured. 

That was part of the mysticism, of his heroism. He would be hurt time and time again. And yet, he would never fold. He didn't bend or break under the pressure, under the pain. He didn't so much as waver in the face of all of it. his devotion to doing what was good and what was right always prevailed, irrespective of how many bones he may break or how much blood he may lose.

Despite the fact that John Walker, the second Captain America, lacked any of the characteristics of his predecessor, he became America's sweetheart. People were desperate to have somebody fill the space that Steve Rogers had left, and to the public, it seemed like John Walker was perfect.

He gave flawless interviews, where he came across not as an arrogant, self-serving puppet of the state, but as a humble, bashful, honest man that represented the very soul of America. Watching him talk was reminiscent of his predecessor, and of course, each public appearance had been carefully orchestrated so that would be the case. Every word that spilled from his mouth was premeditated, designed specifically with the intent to appeal to the populus.

John Walker got to parade around wearing stars and stripes, cradling a shield that he was very much undeserving of wielding. And, he got to do all of this accompanied by two people. 

The first was Lemar Hoskins, the Battlestar. Like Walker, he too had served in the armed forces, and was to be considered a decently skilled fighter, though he failed to measure up to the likes of either Bucky or Sam.

...and then there was you.

Bucky found John Walker to be absolutely insufferable, a blight on Steve's legacy, and some tiny, bitter sliver of that hatred was reserved for you, too.

The new Captain America served the country with his best friend Battlestar and his lover, you.

You weren't like them. You weren't some jacked-up soldier fresh out of the army who had kissed enough ass and earnt enough medals to be made into a hero. Instead, you were practically just the eye candy. America's darling, hanging off the arm of their beloved hero. There was something magnetising about you that made people just love you instantaneously. It was a raw appeal that nobody was safe from.

Initially, Bucky had regarded you as an odd choice. You weren't even a superhero. You didn't take up a stupid, convoluted mantle like 'Battlestar' had. Rather simply, you were just there, tagging along, looking pretty and people adored you for it.

 There was something very intriguing to the people of America about their new Captain America and his sweetheart - you, a stunning supermodel-type with a dazzling mind and a blinding smile. It was easy for them to project onto you two, the perfect superhero couple who had a fairytale romance.

Bucky utterly detested John Walker and his lost-puppy sidekick, Battlestar.

Some tiny sliver of that malice had initially been generalised to you, too. It was hard not to feel slightly bitter as he saw the two of you on TV, giving interview after interview, cuddled up to each other. It was all so terribly fake, utter bullshit that people eagerly lapped up because it was the version of reality that they desperately wanted to believe in.

 It had to be fake - nobody is simply that charismatic, especially not when they're holding hands with John Walker. There was something about the way they, they being your PR team, had styled you in a few of the earlier interviews that gave him the distinct impression that they wanted people to be reminded of Natasha Romanoff, minus the bloody past.

For a while, for your first few public appearances, you had been relegated to wearing dark clothes and leathers that made you seem every bit a femme fatale, though any semblance of danger was nullified by your friendly smile. 

It also seemed like that route had been abandoned, and now you tended to appear wearing lighter clothes, whites and creams that were more innocent, like your PR team had doubled back on itself and decided to switch from the 'whore' to the 'virgin'. You seemed more genuine like that, in florals and paler colours.

Bucky would be lying if he said he had never watched any of your interviews. It had merely been a simple fascination, a way to satisfy the nagging feeling of curiosity that threatened to consume him. They were interesting, and he consumed them with an almost ravenous hunger. Simple curiosity, that was all. That was all that he would let it be.

That interview that John had given at his old high school had just been the beginning, his very debut to the American people. Since then, there had been a few more, some featuring Battlestar, who would sit obediently at his side, and others featuring you.

You would curl up next to him, eagerly pressing yourself into John's side, smiling widely as you began the interview. There was a slightly angelic quality about you, a veil of innocence around you, your lilting voice like a siren's call, and your bright, doe eyes. With a well practiced ease, you would entwine your fingers with John's and sweetly tell him, looking at your lover intensely, that he was the best thing that ever happened to you.

It was fascinating to watch, to see just what kind of image your PR team could put across. You seemed every bit like the all-american girl, like the unattainable girl-next-door who would go to church every sunday and would be an inspiration to girls across the country. 

Despite the innocent-seeming way in which you were deliberately styled, you never once came across as naive. Instead, there was never any vapid or vain qualities to you. It was like you just didn't know how pretty you were, or the effect you could have on people.

As nice as you may have come across in all of those interviews, every bit the picture-perfect media darling, Bucky knew it was all a farce. John had managed to seem like a decent, determined man who was down to earth and wanted nothing more than to provide inspiration to Americans, no, to the whole world. But all of those things about John simply were untrue.

 Every interaction he had with the public had been carefully created to construct an image of him that incited adoration from the public. There was no reason whatsoever why you wouldn't be the same.

In fact, Bucky found it more likely than not that you were a complete inversion of that sweet, charming woman you appeared to be on TV. It left him with a sour taste in his mouth and biting back at bile rising in his throat. It was nauseatingly fake, all masquerading around as good and just using Steve's emblem.

It wasn't until he met you that the malice rescinded.

His escapade with Sam to see Isaiah had ultimately concluded with handcuffs being wrapped around his wrists and a visit to the local police station. Bucky had been taken into some tiny, isolated cell with boring blank walls that are comprised of chipped bricks covered poorly by cracking blue and white paint, constantly escorted and monitored by police officers, who were buzzing dually with excitement and tension at having both the recently-pardoned Winter Soldier in detention, and avenger the Falcon stood outside in the hall, demanding answers.

Doctor Christina Raynor had strolled into the precinct with both weariness and disappointment in her eyes. She walked almost like a woman defeated, one hand clasping the strap of her handbag and the other falling aimlessly at her side. 

Immediately, she gravitated towards Sam, who was seated rigidly in some tiny, uncomfortable plastic chair amongst a myriad of members of the public, people who were also waiting for news about their friends or family who had been arrested.

Clamoring to put on the most polite smile she could, Doctor Raynor introduced herself to Sam, barely managing to get in a complete sentence before she's interrupted.

Swiftly following the arrival of the Doctor is the entrance of John Walker. John strides into the precinct dressed in the Captain America garb, shield positioned on his back. There's something terribly strategic about the decision to be constantly wearing the suit. Perhaps it's to offer a sense of security, or maybe it's because without it John has no authority to operate on. Either way, his mere appearance results in a horde of frenzied police officers trailing after him, desperate for a selfie or an autograph, something that John mindlessly indulges them in, smiling the whole time. Sam's face instantly sours as John enters, his eyebrows tugging down into a frown.

John Walker simply saunters in, a falsely cherubic smile on his face as he stares down at Christina. "Bucky's not going to be following a strict schedule any longer."

Doctor Raynor's previously jovial attitude towards John's presence dissipates, quickly replaced by confusion. "We haven't finished our work." She protests, setting her jaw. "Who authorised this?"

There's a note of challenge in her voice as she presses John for an answer. She's the professional - she's very much the one capable of understanding Bucky's mind, and yet John doesn't take her concern into account. He doesn't even look phased by it. He's completely unbothered by any opposition thrown his way - it had never mattered to him before, and it had no reason to bother him now.

"I did," John says, pointing to himself.

Sam and Christina both stare him down, equally perturbed. They exchange a brief glance. Doctor Raynor's concerned in a professional capacity - not only is Barnes her patient, and it is her prerogative to help him take control of his mind and heal, but she is also commanded by the state to oversee his psychiatric care. 

Responsibility for him falls onto her - she's the professional. Christina is the doctor, the one who understands the human mind, and John very much is not. Sam, on the other hand, is personally concerned. As much as he pretends he despises Bucky, he does care, albeit begrudgingly. He wouldn't be here if he didn't.

A tiny beep goes off, signifying that a door is being opened. Bucky is walked in by two police officers, looking mildly agitated for one second, and completely numb the next, all emotion dropping from his face to put a cool, unfeeling visage into place. It's a mask that gives him obscurity, that allows him to distance himself from the mere possibility of being vulnerable.

Christina forces the two of them into some botched attempt at therapy, forcing them to look into each others eyes and get far closer than either of them are comfortable with whilst she presides over them, poking, prodding, inquiring. 

It's a demand of some emotional vulnerability that Bucky simply does not want to produce. It's not exactly heart-wrenching but it does make him feel robbed, like something had been taken from him against his will. It didn't feel like healing, like what therapy was meant to be. It felt difficult. It felt like a quiet rage building in his gut that he desperately wants to keep under wraps, lest he lash out at somebody.

It leaves Bucky feeling stripped raw when they finally leave the police station.

By the time Bucky and Sam step out onto the streets the sun has already set. The sky is dark, a deep navy blue that's mostly covered by thick dark clouds that besiege the atmosphere. The whole street is lit by lights that have been left on in people's windows, or blinkering blue lamps that run along the outer wall of the police station.

A blaring, almost comically loud beeping noise disrupts the fragile silence of the night. Lined up outside of the station are a series of police cars, all emblazoned with white lettering reading 'BALTIMORE POLICE DEPARTMENT'. 

The sirens of one of the police cars is going off wildly, the noise being one disruption and the blue and red flashing lights emitting from the roof of the car being another. It's an annoyance, and creates a false sense of urgency. Those sirens are normally used when somebody's life is at risk and members of the police force are going to respond. In this situation, there's no rush, no hurry, there's no crime.

Leaned up against the car, grinning wildly, is John Walker, still dressed as Captain America, all dolled up in navy blue and red, a silver 'A' on his breast.

 When he sees that he's successfully captured Sam and Bucky's attention, which he garners from the fact that both of their heads whip towards him, attracted by both the loud noise and the bright lights, he turns off the siren, restoring the tentative peace to the darkened streets.

This time, though, Walker's not alone. 

Next to him, propped up against the hood of the car is Battlestar, also dressed head-to-toe in his tactical gear, arms folded over his chest and a stoic expression on his face. There's something about him that just lacks any individuality. John masqueraded as somebody else, somebody whose mantle he had no right to use, and he's always constantly accompanied by a pale imitation of a comrade.

As likely as it is that Walker and Battlestar have engaged in combat together, they're not comrades, not in the way Bucky and Steve were. He and Steve had been willing to do anything for each other - endure any pain, run from the forces of the state if they had to, even die for one another.

 Walker didn't seem like the type to lay down his life for somebody else out of a genuine heart-felt devotion to them.

And then, stood a few feet away from both Walker and his loyal sidekick is you - the lover. There's a decent amount of distance between you and them, separated from one another by enough space that it quite literally looks like you're desperate to avoid Walker's presence. You huddle over by the wall of the precinct, jaw set like you were irritated by the ear-splitting sound of the siren, though you don't voice a complaint. Unlike the two men, you're not dressed like you're headed out to battle, like you're some kind of protector. No, you're dressed in some pale, flouncy sundress that grazes your thighs, and you're shivering in the night air. Of course you are - it's freezing.

Bucky has to bite back a sneer just at the sight of the three of you, a vile, acrid remark just on the tip of his tongue. He has just spent the best part of his day in some cramped cell that reminds him all too much of a HYDRA facility, and then being interrogated by his own therapist, who is desperate to push him into emotional vulnerability all in the name of progress. He isn't in the mood to play happy families, and especially not with the man now wielding Steve's shield.

"Gentlemen!" John calls out, waving his hands in the air as if Bucky and Sam hadn't already started their stride towards him, matching expressions of disdain on their faces. "Good to see you again. Have I introduced you to my girl yet? No?"

It, of course, was a rhetorical question. The two of them had only ever seen you in snapshots of public appearances that you had made at John's side. You weren't actively accompanying Captain America or Battlestar on any of their missions, and as far as Bucky is aware, there are no plans for you to do so. You're not a soldier. You're not built for battle - you're softer. More gentle. You're not the state's attempt at creating a superhero. Allegedly, you're just a regular girl - pretty and smart and charismatic, but otherwise perfectly regular - who just so happens to be dating John Walker, the new Captain America.

John doesn't wait for a response from Bucky or Sam, but he does gesture to you, beckoning you over to him by crooking two of his fingers.

You approach him, your dress ruffled by the wind. In that instant Bucky thinks that the two of you actually do seem nothing like how you do on those televised interviews - his prediction had been correct. The persona was lovely, enchanting even, but it was just that. A persona, an act for your public image. There's something almost mechanical about the way you approach John, your hands folded across your chest in an unsuccessful attempt to shield yourself from the cold. It's all too robotic. It's not effortless or affectionate. You don't look remotely comfortable, but you slide up next to Walker and Hoskins regardless. Clearly, Battlestar isn't the only one who follows Walker's commands like an obedient dog.

You slot yourself in between Battlestar and John, a grimace passing over your face as you press yourself into his side. It's odd, exceptionally so, for Bucky to see this - god, you look reluctant to accept some modicum of warmth from your own boyfriend, who you'd proclaimed publically that you loved more than anything. It's almost like you resent his touch.

And oh, that's nice. It's almost cathartic seeing somebody meant to love and adore John avoid his touch like he's got some contagious flesh-eating disease.

There's a great deal of recognition in your eyes as you look at Bucky and Sam. It's likely you'd already been made familiar with them as a result of Walker's fevered desperation to unite their forces. 

Bucky's looking at you intently, just waiting for the other shoe to drop, for you to open your mouth and prove him right - for you to prove that you were just as fake as Walker and Hoskins. It almost seemed inevitable, really. It's all too easy to seem good, sweet and polite on those well-orchestrated interviews. But real life is a completely different matter all together.

Bucky's well versed in being able to tell when people are lying, easily spotting their little tells, locating them in the flutter of a limb, the arch of an eyebrow or the twitch of an eye. It'll be a matter of moments until he spots yours. Any act was doomed to fail around him. Everybody gives themselves away somehow.

You introduce yourself, stating your name and giving them a shy wave. "It's nice to meet the two of you." You say sweetly, a smile lighting up your face.

Bucky's eyes widen involuntarily. Oh. It was one thing seeing that enchantment on TV, and another seeing it just feet away from him. There was something absolutely enrapturing about the silky quality of your voice, and the way your eyes sparkled even in the dim light.

 He hadn't expected you to actually be...pleasant. It was all supposed to be this fake persona, and yet, he can practically sense the genuity on you. You don't twitch like some little rabbit, or stumble over your words. There's no sweat beading on your brow, and you're not avoiding eye-contact. If anything, you're welcoming it.

There was no fucking way. No fucking way at all that you could actually be as nice as you were in those interviews and be with John Walker of all people. You should be horrible simply by being associated with the man.

"Well, now that we're all acquainted we can move onto our first order of business." John says, not even glancing at you. His gaze is focused solely on Sam and Bucky, steely and deceptive, completely dismissive of how utterly lovely you look.

Bucky's having a hard time even looking at John, not when you're right there, not too far away, looking absolutely angelic. There was no way it was some act, right? That facade had fallen through for both John and his stoic sidekick the minute they opened their mouths, but when it came to you... the complete opposite was true. Sam had definitely remarked on his staring problem more than once, and Bucky was very much hoping that in the dark you wouldn't be able to tell that he was looking at you in something akin to awe and unrepentant curiosity. He was looking at you in both fascination and scrutiny, staring intently like he was about to authenticate a work of art.

His deep rooted dislike of both John Walker and Battlestar was still very much present, but he was currently experiencing some emotional turbulence over his deep lack of hatred for you. It simply seemed to have evaporated the second you smiled at him. Which was...concerning to say the least. Shouldn't he hate you? Shouldn't your very presence have stoked that spark of malice?

"Look, if we divide ourselves we don't stand a chance. You guys know that." John says. He's all charismatic and confident, self-assured in a way that comes across as mildly condescending. It's a pale, cheap imitation of Steve's ability to rouse even the most slovenly of men and turn them into righteous soldiers.

"So what do you got?" Sam asks tiredly.

John immediately begins his speech, eagerly describing the plight of Karli Morgenthau, and how her journey around the globe is being aided and abetted by sympathisers who want to see the world return to the way it had been during the years of the blip. These sympathisers had much preferred it when half the world had been reduced to ash and something akin to anarchy had been allowed to prevail. 

Whole governments had collapsed in on themselves, and often, borders ceased to exist. It was complete free movement - there was a distinct lack of separation between different human factions, like all of humanity had been united by that grave event that took half of the planet.

Bucky had no idea what that world had been like. He'd only seen the shell of it, the hellscape that was left once the other fifty percent of earth's inhabitants returned to life.

Battlestar makes a few brief interjections, explaining a few minor aspects of the tale - the geotagging, that this threat is most likely operating out of eastern europe, and that Karli has stolen the medicine to take it to one of the camps.

 They don't tend to be sanitary places. Disease runs rampant there, and nobody tends to really care about those who fall sick and succumb to their illness. Of course they need medicine - there's probably hundreds of people who are in the throes of sickness, vomiting their own guts out, their wounds crusted over with coagulated blood, infected and festering.

"Well, there are hundreds of those all over the planet since the blip. So, I guess you'll have to look real hard," Bucky says, shrugging with a sort of apathy. It's rather vindicating to watch the way John's lip curls up in disdain.

"Well I guess it's good we have-" John begins, his jaw set and his tone confrontational, dripping with very thinly veiled rage.

You sigh, a tiny little breathless sound that makes Bucky freeze up slightly. It sounded, for a lack of a better word, rather nice. Melodic, even. "John, calm down." You tell him, not entirely unkindly, but not sweetly, either. 

There's some kind of quality to your voice when you speak to John like you're negotiating for hostages, not like you're having a conversation with your lover. It's curious, but Bucky tries not to attach too much meaning to it.  

Bucky gives you a stiff sort of nod, and you reward him with a smile, your lips curving upwards. "Where is she now? Do you know?" He says, softer than he probably would have if you hadn't been there.

"No. We don't know, Bucky." John's voice is a near yell. He shifts agitatedly, gesticulating wildly, tossing his arms about and shoving you slightly, letting you nearly collide with Battlestar, who is forced to grasp your arm to keep you upright. Battlestar's hand curves around your upper arm, pulling you back until you're steady on your feet. "But it's only a matter of time before we find out."

Relatively quickly, Battlestar's hand drops from your arm, and you give him a whisper of thanks before turning to give John a glare. He hadn't even so much as muttered an apology. He was completely focused on Bucky, the two locking stares in some kind of silent battle, one of wills.

"Things are really intense for you, aren't they, Walker?" Bucky can't fucking resist agitating him, letting the taunt roll off his tongue easily, not even bothering to resist grinning when your lips quirk upwards. Oh yes, you think he's funny - he can see it in the way you press a hand to your lips in a successful attempt to quell a rising peal of laughter.

"Walker's right." Sam is the one to turn to Bucky and snap at him. He tries to diffuse the situation, glancing between you, Bucky and John like he was watching something that had the potential to go very wrong. "It is imperative that we find and stop them. But you guys have rules of engagement and authorisations you have to get. We're free agents. More flexible. It wouldn't make sense for us to work together."

Tentatively, you set a hand on John's shoulder, feeling the coarse, kevlar-esque material of the suit beneath the tips of your fingers as he turns rigid, looking at Bucky and Sam coldly, all pretences of being nice completely gone, having simply evaporated into the cold night air. "Mr. Wilson isn't wrong."

Like Sam, you seem to have moved on to an attempt to prevent the escalating tensions from reaching their head. You try your best to soothe John, and his shoulders do sag fractionally, like he's just been reminded of your presence. There's something about the way that Walker looks at you that's utterly unappreciative. Perhaps John doesn't want to be grounded - if his will is being resisted then he'd rather be aggressive than diplomatic.

Sam scoffs at the name, "You don't have to call me that. In fact, please don't call me that."

"It's polite isn't it?" You say, smiling, even as John ruthlessly shucks your hand from his shoulder, dismissive of your touch. He gives you an irritated kind of look, a silent admonishment of you challenging his authority. It's not the kind of look that equal partners give each other, and your ensuing glare isn't, either.

"Suppose so," Sam shrugs, his lips quirking up in amusement.

"Mr. Wilson and Mr. Barnes aren't obligated to help," You tell John softly, seemingly speaking through gritted teeth. "Clearly, we all want the same things - to get that medicine back and bring Karli to justice. But, if you're not all going to be able to work cohesively on a team and get the job done, it may be best to work separately. It gives you all the opportunity to handle things the way you want to. This should be about doing the right thing and accomplishing the mission, not about who's calling the shots."

John nods stiffly, turning to you for a brief moment. There's some kind of red light coming from within one of the nearby buildings, and it's lighting up the dark street in shades of red, crimson light spilling over his cheekbones and dancing across one side of his face. He's the very image of begrudging agreement. "Alright then. Just one piece of advice for you boys. Stay the hell out of my way."

"Gladly." Bucky mutters under his breath, not missing the fact that you catch it and your smile widens.

As Bucky and Sam begin their exit, he can't help but to spare you one last glance over his shoulder. Bucky's eyes quickly roam over your form, as if he's mapping you out, or trying to emblazon the image of you within his mind - bathed in dying red light, still smiling serenely at him even as he's leaving. He really cannot figure you out. 

The line of what's real and what's fake seems awfully blurred when it comes to you. Normally he's excellent at detecting a performance, but when it comes to you, Bucky has no idea whatsoever what is going on. And it's very much intriguing.

John Walker he would have no problem whatsoever in leaving alone.

...but you on the other hand, were a whole different story.

There was some grand, captivating quality that you had in spades that was even more potent in real life than it had been on camera. It was in the way your hair was jostled by the wind, the pale sundress that skirted your soft-looking thighs, the curve of your hips, the way you smiled and that hypnotic twinkle in your eye. 

Walker and Hoskin's lovely personalities had been something of a farce, but yours wasn't. It did, however, make him wonder what somebody like you was doing with them - how you could aid and abet their actions even though it was glaringly obvious you weren't always in concordance with them.

"Man, I do not know what the hell was going on there, but I very much did not like how you were looking at Walker's girl like she was a piece of steak, or something." Sam shudders, muttering quietly once they're out of earshot of Walker and his companions.

"I don't know what you mean." Bucky feigns ignorance, setting his jaw and very much trying to push the phrase 'Walker's girl' from his mind. It just...didn't seem right.

In all of those TV interviews, the two of you had seemed like a perfect couple - you only appeared that way because Walker was plastering on a faux persona. In reality, the two of you seemed fragmented, distant from one another though Walker did have some tiny modicum of respect for you. 

There was nothing about the real, raw interactions between the two of you that indicated any intimacy. It was the complete antithesis of the united front the two of you presented, of the perpetually happy lovers that America adored.

There was just no way it could be true. In fact, it sets off something that's terribly close to jealousy in his gut. Walker's an arrogant prick who carries a shield he has no right to even look at. He especially doesn't deserve you - you with the pretty eyes and an aura about you that screamed 'holy', 'saintly', even.

Yes. That was probably why he disliked it. Because it was probably inaccurate. It had absolutely nothing to do with the way you enchanted him, nothing to do with the sight of your bare legs and absolutely nothing to do with the lovely way you said 'Mr.Barnes.'  It had absolutely nothing to do with that whatsoever.

"No, no." Sam protests. "I've seen you, you know, stare at people before - but god, never like that. Fuck, man."

And it's true. It was obvious to anybody that spent more than thirty seconds with Bucky that he had yet to acclimate and adjust to social scenarios, and that once he was focused on one thing had an abject refusal to move his gaze away from it. Bucky had heard Sam call it both 'creepy' and 'unnerving', and hoped, for some inexplicable reason, that you thought differently. 

After all, your eyes had barely left his. It wasn't staring if both of you were doing it - then it was mutual, some kind of joint focus on one another.

"Like what, Sam?"

Sam just shakes his head, looking disdainful, his nose turned up like he'd just smelled something foul. "Mmhm, like you wanted to do some things to her that, for the sake of my own mental health, I would rather not think about."

Well, technically, he hadn't thought about anything that bad - just your voice, your smile, and the way you might say his name. But, in that instant, Sam's words derail all of those thoughts. Because, really, you had looked so lovely that it would be forgivable to think about you like that.

There was that cute little sundress you were wearing, grazing your thighs whenever you moved or whenever the wind picked up. It's all too easy for him to imagine skirting his fingers up your smooth, soft thighs and let his hands explore you, roaming over your ass and your inner thighs, enjoying the feeling of your skin and the little noises he could provoke from you.

"...stop thinking about it. I can literally hear your thoughts right now." Sam says, grimacing at Bucky's spaced out kind of look - his glazed over eyes and the fingers twitching at his sides. It's all too easy for him to see the gears shifting in Bucky's head, openly reliving the few moments he had seen you.  

"I'm not thinking about it," Bucky outright lies as the two of them continue walking down the street.

"No, you absolutely are thinking about it." Sam objects. "I can sense the impropriety."

"Oh yeah? You can sense it?" Bucky glares at Sam, unable to resist antagonising him. It's safe, reliable even, between the two of them. They'll perpetually annoy one another, being challenging, rude, and utterly impolite, knowing that when it comes down to it, they'll fight side-by-side without objection, trusting each other implicitly. But in these moments when there's no imminent danger, that opposition is welcome. It's routine, even.

"Hell yes, I can sense it."

Bucky just scoffs at him, barely refraining from rolling his eyes. It wasn't really as if Sam was wrong. There was something especially fascinating about Walker's girl - if that's even what you are. He'd known you for a matter of fleeting moments that passed by like dandelion seeds in a breeze. And yet, something about it felt terribly significant. 

He hadn't actually expected that appeal to be real. He anticipated that just like Walker's carefully groomed public image, it would have been falsified.

The only thing that really seemed fake about those interviews was your affection with John. It was non-existent in real life, and for a while, you had avoided touching him, until you had to diffuse the situation. That was very, very curious. Just where had Walker found you? He had to doubt that the relationship was genuine. 

Somebody as nice, as innocent-seeming as you would never go for Walker. Not when Walker's the kind of guy that Steve would have tried to fight as a scrappy teenager, before he even got the serum. The kind of guy who Bucky would inevitably have to knock the lights out of in order to protect Steve. That kind of guy objectively did not belong with someone like you.

Bucky has to shake his head ever so slightly. It's a dangerous line of thinking. God, he doesn't even know you. He's met you once, and you'd exchanged only a few words. Irrespective of how nice you seem, how entrancing you are, he doesn't know you. It hardly matters whether or not your relationship with Walker is genuine. It shouldn't matter to him. It really shouldn't bother him.  

But it does, and that fact alone is almost as bad as the fact that John Walker is the new Captain America. It causes the same bitter feeling to swell in his chest.

Sam and Bucky fall into line next to each other, walking side-by-side, the dull noises of their footsteps hitting the pavement reverberating throughout the streets. There's a comfortable silence between the two of them. Words aren't needed now. They often aren't. For all of their antagonisation, they can understand each other perfectly fine with a single glance. That's what comradery is.

There are neon lights that illuminate the streets in shocking tones of red and turquoise, reflected in stray puddles that pool in the potholes of the roads. The lights seem dulled, boring despite their vividity. He'd seen brightness before. It didn't look like a street sign. It looked like the curve of your smile and the silent rage you directed at John Walker.

---

Bucky's flat is near-barren. 

As much as he hates empty rooms - they remind him of cold cells in underground bases that he wishes more than anything that he could forget - he's also come to the realization that he very much hates rooms that have too much furniture. 

They all feel uncomfortable, unfamiliar, a bastardisation of a normal life that he feels he has no right to live. He's so unused to the feeling of a mattress beneath him that the floor next to his bed is easier for him to sleep on. And he hates that, too. 

The simple inability to slip back into a normal life makes him feel woefully inadequate, like there's still something deeply wrong with him despite the fact that the command words had long since been removed from his mind.

Sam had returned to his own home a while ago, leaving Bucky utterly alone in the flat.

 It's not necessarily loneliness that he feels, but it is a kind of numbness that is close to it - the dulled pain of loss. Perhaps, if everything had gone the way he meant for it to, he would be sharing this place with Steve - Steve who would take a bullet for him, fight any force in this universe or the next for him. Steve who would probably encourage him to sleep in the bed and not on the floor next to it. 

That realisation prompts him to shuck off his leather jacket, toss it into the recesses of his room and try to distract himself.

He runs a hand over his face, closing his eyes and just revelling in the darkness. Mindlessly, he sits down on the very edge of his bed, already knowing that he won't be sleeping there. It seems somewhat pointless to even try. 

Despite the Soldier being gone, there are some effects of his presence that linger. Slowly, he's been getting better, but there are a few traits he doesn't know whether or not he'll ever have the courage to discard. Sleeping on the floor is one of them. That constant need to be vigilant is another. Often it manifests itself as paranoia, and at other times as staring.

Oh god, the staring.

Bucky knew it could be bad sometimes - Sam made remarks about it often enough - but today, he really felt like he couldn't help himself. 

Maybe he shouldn't have stared at you so much. It probably wasn't welcome. In fact, it had been described as 'unnerving' and 'creepy' more than once. But there was just something about you that made him not want to look away.

His eyes flutter open and he lets out a ragged groan of frustration, a low noise that originates at the back of his throat. 

Somehow, every little nagging thought always leads back to you, which is inconvenient to say the least. He does have to keep telling himself that he doesn't know you, mentally repeating those words like a mantra, instructing himself to just leave that train of thought alone completely, and to discard any and every thought that pertains to you. You're with Walker. He doesn't know you - but he could.

Bucky takes in a deep breath, hand digging through the pocket of his trousers, emerging with his phone. The internet was a pretty vast thing that had initially taken quite some getting used to, especially when he was still living in Romania. It had been difficult to become comfortable with the amount that society had progressed whilst he was with HYDRA. 

He still couldn't get used to the music or some of the fashion trends. By the time he got to living in Wakanda, he was more than used to the intricacies of modern day technology, despite the fact that once he came out of cryogenic freezing he lived a fairly simple lifestyle.

He can't really resist searching your name.

 Immediately, article after article pops up, all with headlines about you and Walker. Bucky lets out a minor, quiet noise of discontentment, opting to avoid the articles and instead look at the videos, the interviews that you had given. In most of them, you're accompanied by Walker, and occasionally by Battlestar, too. Bucky absolutely does not want to watch those ones. It feels like John simply sitting next to you is somehow corruptive.

There are a select few interviews where, mercifully, you're by yourself. Some of them are from your earlier days, where you're dressed in black leather, which was absolutely a confusing wardrobe choice. 

Privately, he much prefers you in the sundress and the pale colours. In the one that he chooses to watch, you're dressed in another sundress - this one's a pale sort of pink with tiny, blooming white flowers dotted over it. For some inexplicable reason, Bucky thinks he prefers you like this - innocent, summery, and not a pale imitation of somebody who was meant to be scary - not that you had the potential to make him afraid in the slightest.

You're in some room, sitting in front of a grand, white window, seated on a wicker chair opposite the interviewer. There's a few potted plants dotted around the floor, aloe vera, lavender, a cheese plant and some other flowers that are in full bloom, their soft petals unfurled. You're beaming happily as the interviewer begins, soft sunlight spilling over your profile, warming your skin.

"It's a pleasure to finally have the opportunity to interview you - and you're so kind to let us into your house like this." The interviewer says, looking between your angelic visage and their copious sheets of notes, each one full of questions and follow-up questions that they were desperate to ask you.

Ah. That makes sense - all the plants. You seemed like the type to like them.

"The pleasure's all mine." You say, and yes, there it is. That transfixing look about you that he's slightly hooked on now that he's seen it in real life. It's a bit addictive to watch you, and god, even just thinking that does very much make him feel wrong.

"How about we get started, then?" The interviewer says conversationally. "You know, every single person in America is curious about you. I'm just here to ask the questions on everybody's minds! Just who are you? Come on, tell us about yourself."

You don't flounder. Not even for a second. You're utterly effortless in the interviews just as you had been mere feet away from him. "Well, I'm just your average girl, really. I'm nothing special, I promise you. Honestly, I'm so grateful that everybody loves me so much. I really wasn't expecting it."

Sitting there, a serene expression on your face, you sound utterly bashful, humbled and sweet in a way that wasn't quite the same as it had been in real life.

God, seeing you in real life was different to the interview. You had been, for a lack of a better word, better than how he expected. He'd anticipated meeting female John Walker, arrogant, self-assured and willing to try to strong-arm him into fighting for their team, more like Walker's puppy than your own individual person.

 And you were nothing like that - you'd challenged Walker, hell, you even seemed reluctant to touch the guy at first, and then, you'd laughed and smiled devastatingly sweetly whenever Bucky would agitate him.

" - oh yes, my favourite flowers are - " You're still talking sweetly but he's only capturing fragments of what you're saying.

It's hard to focus on your exact words when you've shifted slightly, and that sundress has slid up your thighs ever so slightly, exposing more of your legs to Bucky's heated gaze.

 Fuck - you don't even realise what you're doing and how it's making him feel. You're just innocently trying to get through an interview, talking about something mundane, like your houseplants, and it has Bucky's imagination running wild.

If Sam were here, he would definitely be sensing impropriety right about now.

Bucky swallows thickly, biting his lower lip in an effort to stifle the ragged breath he's struggling to take. It feels almost like there's no air left in his lungs. It's all too easy for him to picture you, right there in front of him, giving him that lovely saccharine smile, your lips pulled upwards. You'd saunter into his room, sundress skirting against your thighs, and he would be utterly enraptured.

He clears his throat, squeezing his eyes shut for just a fraction of a second. He could practically feel the blood rushing south, pooling downwards until his cock was pitching a tent, straining uncomfortably against his dark jeans. 

Bucky can't even bring himself to feel any shame - he's just chasing a sensation, chasing a fantasy of you as he tugs his jeans down, shucking them off and discarding them, letting them land somewhere near his leather jacket.

With an unsteady breath, he shuffles back awkwardly onto the bed. Without so much as a second thought, he's pulling his boxers down his thighs and resting his flesh hand against his cock. He's beyond hard, steely even, and Bucky has to bite back a groan. Even the touch of his own hand doesn't offer him much relief.

He discards his phone, letting the interview keep playing, just listening to your cadence and the entrancing way you spoke, not really picking up on the words themselves.

It's all too easy to imagine you being here, in that tiny little sundress, stalking towards him. He'd want you to straddle him, your thighs framing his, sundress riding up, exposing more of your legs. He'd push the fabric up, and instruct you to hold it there. 

You'd probably give him something like a shy little nod and that dazzling smile of yours, your hands fisting the fabric and holding it up.

Fuck - it was all just too good to think about.

Bucky's grip on his cock tightens as he slowly strokes himself. He could easily tug the top part of the sundress down, too, to expose your tits. Maybe he'd even play with them for a bit, licking, nipping and sucking until there's a constellation of bruises and bites decorating your decolletage.

You'd probably beg, all whiney and breathy and absolutely desperate for him, struggling to maintain your hold on your dress, your fingers twitching as you pushed your chest towards him. It would be fucking lovely. He would finally pull away, admiring his work before bothering to address your needs. He'd trail his hands up your thighs.

He had to wonder exactly what you were wearing underneath it. White? Black? Lacey? A tiny little thong that rises high on your hips, the kind he can easily rip off with his bare hands or push aside? 

Or fuck, even more addicting, what if you weren't wearing any at all? His fingers would smooth up your thighs as you trembled, meeting your bare cunt.

Bucky doesn't even bother to try to quell the groan that rises up within him at that thought. God, that would be nice. You'd be wet - so wet, dripping, coating his fingers and trickling down your thighs. He'd rest his dark, metal hand on your waist whilst the fingers on his other hand ran eagerly through your folds, teasing your clit as he memorised all of the little sounds he could pull from you before he'd plunge two fingers into you.

You'd cry out, and he'd swallow the sound with his mouth, crushing his lips to yours and letting you gasp into his mouth. When he finally pulls away from you, fingers knuckle deep inside of you, your face would be painted a bright red, and your lips would be swollen as you begged him, fucking begged him to fuck you.

He'd deny you at first, watching you tremble and twitch on his fingers, practically fucking yourself on them.

Bucky would stroke at your clit, tracing tiny circles over it and watching your face contort in pure, unadulterated pleasure. He'd let you get off on his hand first. Would your eyes roll back into your head? Would you scream for him, yelling out his name? Would you get even wetter, impossibly making his fingers even slicker, fucking soaking him? You'd probably seize up, your spine going rigid, your mouth tumbling open and your walls flutter around his finger, convulsing uncontrollably.

And then, only then, would he fuck you.

God, you'd take his cock so well. 

Maybe the stretch of it would be a bit much at first and you'd squirm in his hold, his metal arm wrapped around your waist, keeping you impaled on him. The noises you would make would be utterly lovely - whines and fragments of pleads that never quite get finishes because you keep interrupting yourself with your own moans.

Eventually, he'd have you in his lap, your legs folded over his, one of your hands holding up your sundress so he can see his cock entering you, pushing you open, the other resting on his face. You'd bounce on his cock, whimpering like a kitten, biting at your bottom lip whilst he stared at you in awe.

You would be good - so, so good, tight and hot around him, absolute perfection.

He'd mark your neck up too, so that it'd match your tits, leaving tiny, bloodied indentations of his teeth up the column of your throat, soothing the sting by laving his tongue over them, the taste of your blood blooming on his tongue.

'Walker's girl' his ass.

It wouldn't be John fucking Walker whose name you were crying out. It would be his. It'd be his love bites littering your neck, and it would be his come leaking out from your cunt, trickling down your thighs.

He's relentlessly fucking his fist at this point, grunting and groaning at the mental image of you riding him to completion, snug around his cock, begging for him. There's some deep, nigh unholy pleasure building within him, ripping through him like a hurricane.

"God, fuck -" Bucky comes almost violently with a cry of your name, jerking quickly, hot come spilling over his knuckles. The pearly white beads trail down his hand, oozing onto the bed sheets.

He can still hear that interview playing, your melodic voice grounding him as he comes down from his high. 

You're talking about some sport you had played in high school, and the interviewer is lapping it up, eager for your attention and the exclusive interview. Bucky's chest is heaving, rising and falling heavily as he struggles to catch his breath.

Was it probably wrong to get off whilst thinking about another man's girlfriend? Yes. But, Bucky didn't particularly care, not when he'd just had quite possibly the most mind-blowing orgasm of his life, and especially not when it was 'Walker's girl' he was getting off to. 

Walker probably couldn't make you come if his life depended on it. But Bucky would.

It's definitely strange that he wants you so badly. Maybe he just wants to take something from Walker the way that Walker had taken the mantle of Captain America. 

He didn't really know how he'd react if he ever had to see you again. There's no way he can look at you in any non-sexual capacity, and he can just sense that this won't be the last time he comes whilst thinking about you.

It's probably for the best then, that he'll be staying out of Walker's way. There will be much less temptation on his part to interfere with your relationship. Yes, it's definitely for the best. He's probably just stressed and overworked, and that was the reason he felt the need to fuck his hand whilst thinking. about you. Just stress. And it's not exactly wrong to want to relieve that stress, is it? No. Not at all.

This is perfectly fine, and even if it wasn't, he wouldn't be seeing you again.

---

Just as Bucky had been getting ready to go out for the morning, dressed in jeans and some dark jacket that did a reasonable enough job of hiding the distinctive metal arm, a loud rapping reverberated through his apartment.

Immediately, he's frowning, and some of that old, ever-present paranoia is reawakening, like it's coming out of a coma, its dormancy ending abruptly. He pauses, slowing his gait and balling his hands into fists, bracing himself.

The knock doesn't sound like anybody he knows. It's not Sam - Sam either barges in, makes one single loud bang, or will just yell obscenities until Bucky stumbles out of his flat to meet him. This knock, a gentle rapping, is softer, more polite, and unfamiliar. If he's lucky, it'll have been just somebody who had got the wrong apartment number, or who wasn't yet aware that the previous tenant had moved out. It happened sometimes.

This knock could have a perfectly reasonable explanation behind it - it could be an honest mistake, or some unfortunate door to door salesperson whom he was about to scare off. Still, despite the fact it could be innocuous, it does have him on edge.

Cautiously, Bucky approaches the door, taking in a deep breath as he undoes the latches one by one. Slowly, he opens the door. It feels like ripping off a bandaid. To his surprise, it's neither somebody who's out to hurt him, nor somebody who's got the wrong apartment number.

It's you, standing outside of his door, wearing another one of your pale sundresses and a knitted cardigan, looking like something out of one of his dreams.

So much for not seeing you again.

Maybe he just had exceptionally bad luck, or the universe hated him. That absolutely had to be what it was - some grand, sadistic cosmic being had it out for him and was desperate to make his life hard.

Why the hell were you here? Was Walker sending you to harass him? That would be objectively cruel, and an unfitting punishment just for rejecting the opportunity to work with him. And - how the hell had you found his flat? That absolutely wasn't meant to be information available to anyone.

"Walker's girl?" He says, staring down at you, frowning. 

Bucky doesn't dare call you by your name, not when the last time he said it was when he was coming all over his own hand. He hates the fact that he calls you that, and even more than that, he hates the wince you make. It's perfectly understandable that you don't like being called that, irrespective of whether it's accurate or not. Which he hopes it isn't. And then he resents himself for even being bothered by whether it's true or not. 

He doesn't fucking know you. He shouldn't care.

You remind him of your name - as if he could ever fucking forget it. You brush it off pretty quickly though, smiling up at him. "Mr. Barnes, do you mind if we talk?"

Bucky is very much not enjoying the emotional turmoil you're putting him through. "Sure. Come in. And it's just Bucky."

He most definitely should not be letting you in. That would be a bad decision and he especially didn't want to get ideas about you whilst you were in his flat. And yet, he found himself readily opening the door and welcoming you in, before closing the door after you.  

You make your way into his flat, looking at him gratefully.

"What's the deal with you and Walker?" The words tumble from Bucky's mouth, gruff and awkward, before he can even think to stop them.

A look of mild confusion passes over your face as you blink up at him. "Oh, John? I mean, we're not really a couple."

"I thought not." Bucky says, feigning impassiveness, even though there's absolutely nothing neutral or disinterested about the hopeful feeling that blooms in his stomach.

"Yeah. It was meant to be good for his public image, you know. The all-American guy with the perfect relationship. And I have debt I need to pay off - tuition and all that - and they compensate me for my time." You explain, laughing lightly. It sounds like bells chiming in the wind, and awakens in him some long forgotten memory of watching the sunset. It's reminiscent of something, someplace happier where his head was a whole lot lighter.

Bucky actually feels a genuine bolt of relief skirt down his spine. Of course he had been right. There was no way that Walker could get with somebody as good as you, somebody who seemed very much like an angel put on earth.

Your eyebrows tug slightly downward, "Was it obvious?"

"You looked like you'd rather have been anywhere else."

That prompts a peal of laughter from you, and all traces of concern simply evaporate from your visage, quickly forgotten. "Yeah, I suppose so. John can be...difficult at times. He's very strong-willed and we don't always get along."

"You two seem to get along well enough on camera," Bucky remarks, voice lower than he intended for it to be. Really, he doesn't want this to descend into some kind of interrogation, and he doesn't want to scare you off.

"I'm a decent actress," You say with a shrug. "And we normally do our TV appearances when we're getting along. John's not always easy to get along with, but occasionally we manage to put it all behind us. It may seem scummy, I guess. We are practically lying to everyone, but I do need the money and it's easy work."

It further reassures him - of what, Bucky doesn't quite know, but he doesn't feel half as on edge as he had been earlier.

You're not Walker's. He fucking knew it.

He couldn't possibly even conceive of a universe in which you would ever even consider Walker's advances. That bastard was lucky you even looked in his direction.

"I get that." Bucky says understandingly, a tentative smile playing across his face, his lips quirking upwards.

"I do actually have a reason for being here, Bucky." You say, sighing softly.

Oh. Yes. Of course you did. He'd almost forgotten that you needed a reason to visit - this wasn't a social call, of course it wasn't. The two of you had only ever met once, no matter how well he thought he knew you after having seen what is probably hours worth of footage of you. It's probably not a good thing that he's feeling so familiar with you - no, it's definitely not a good thing that he's feeling so familiar with you. In fact, it's probably very bad, especially with his proclivity for avoiding any form of emotional vulnerability or attachment.

"I...have the clearance to access some information that may benefit you." You say. Right now, you're being the most serious he'd ever seen you. There was a sort of solemn expression about you - your mouth set in a firm line rather than a happy smile - it's bordering on grave, and he's immediately compelled to listen, a frown forming on his face.

"Yes?"

"You and John both want the same thing, but you're not going to work together. I know for a fact you won't, and I really don't blame you. He's planning on going to see Zemo for information about the serum."

Bucky doesn't even tense up at the name. Helmut Zemo is an absolute bastard who had almost ruined his life, in addition to temporarily forcing him into a dangerous headspace, into a part of himself that, at that point, was very much present and very much not under control. 

But now, the codewords are gone. They won't activate shit. Zemo's practically been neutered in that regard. He may not be able to invoke the Winter Soldier, but the mere mention of his name absolutely does invoke some kind of visceral, biblical rage that howls for revenge.

It's the kind of anger of the Old Testament, though Bucky isn't much for religion these days - the kind of anger that is desperate for 'an eye for an eye', to make Zemo hurt just as much as Zemo had hurt him. For retribution.

"We were planning on seeing him, too." Bucky says, a little stiffly, though he retains his composure.

"You'll want to get there before John does. He's planning on telling the guards not to let you in - Zemo will have his visitation rights revoked and you won't even be let on the premises."

Bucky lets out a tiny noise of irritation, a bitter little sound that originates in the very back of his throat. Of course, of fucking course Walker wouldn't be content with just working separately from himself and Sam. 

Rather than just let it be, he'd try to actively obstruct their ability to work on the case - to help people. There was something about Walker's willingness to possibly prevent a breakthrough for the sake of his own ego that left a very bitter taste in Bucky's mouth. It was a complete stain on Steve's legacy.

"You have two days until John and Lemar visit Zemo. They'll probably be alerted when you show up, though, so I suspect you won't have long." You continue.

There's a possibility that you are working with Walker and this is all part of some elaborate scheme to impede his involvement in this. You could be lying through your teeth. 

You had already told him you were a decent actress, and he definitely believed that to be true. Anybody that could be lovesick around John fucking Walker was either delusional or worthy of an oscar. Bucky was inclined to believe you were the latter.

That story about needing money for tuition made sense, and it also seemed reasonable that Walker's PR team would want to give him a girlfriend. A similar kind of thing had happened with Steve back in the forties. He'd been made to do all sorts of stupid campaigns, and a lot of them had involved pretty women like yourself who were willing to act, hell, even sing and dance, for the money.

Bucky wants to believe you're genuine. Surely he'd be able to tell if you're lying - he's good at that, at identifying people's tells and the falsehoods they're spewing.

"Thanks for the heads up." He says somewhat gruffly as he looks down at you.

"Lemar had a lead on the medicine and vaccines, too. But I don't know exactly what he's found." There's something about the way that you sigh that indicates frustration. "It's difficult to get information out of him. He's nice and all, but we're not close enough that he's willing to divulge a lot."

Bucky's slight frown deepens and he steps just a little closer to you, revelling in the fact that you don't stumble back or glance at the door. You're not afraid of him in any capacity.

"You're fishing for information for us? Why?"

That's the one thing he can't work out. Why show up here? Why bother to give him the warning? What could you possibly have to gain from it?

"It's the right thing to do." You say simply, that solemness receding from your pretty face to allow that sweet smile to return. "Whether it be you or John, somebody has to bring these guys down. It's only fair that you both have the same information, and I can get it to you."

How lovely. God, how had you managed to embody the spirit of Captain America more than the man who carried the shield?

"Right, right." Bucky doesn't even have a hard time accepting the answer. He should - he should poke and prod at your motives, but he doesn't want to. He finds that the desire to do good for the world is sufficient enough, especially when it comes to you. Because of course you want to help people, of course you want to help him - as if you hadn't been perfect enough already.

"I'm looking into the camps, too. It's hard to narrow the parameters, though. There's just so many of them." You say, somewhat aghast, like you're disappointed that they even exist in the first place. 

There's a haunted kind of expression in your eyes, like you'd seen too much. And you probably had. Looking into all of those camps, rampant with disease, crime and horrifically painful deaths, couldn't have been easy, especially if you weren't acclimated to something so macabre or devastating.

"Hey," Bucky places a hand on your shoulder - the human hand - and he can feel the soft texture of your knitted cardigan beneath his fingers, as well as the heat radiating from your body. "Thank you. I appreciate it. You're doing the right thing. You're good."

Words of encouragement are somewhat difficult for him to come up with. He has no idea what will reassure you, so he just tells you what he knows to be true and it's enough. It's more than enough judging by the way your eyes light up and you smile at him. There's something almost devastating about that smile, and knowing that he had been the one to cause it.

"Thanks," You say, your voice barely above a whisper, voice a little hoarse. Oh. Oh. Your pupils were blown wide, and you were staring at him intently.

He falters for a fraction of a second, wondering if he'd done something wrong. And then it dawns on him - you'd liked the praise.

You had fucking liked it when he praised you. Well, shit. The rush he got from that realisation alone made him feel nearly high, like his head was in the clouds and he'd just done copious amounts of illegal substances. It was addicting, in short.

It's then and only then that he actually notices just how close the two of you are, and suddenly he's revisiting the thought that maybe letting you into his flat wasn't such a good idea.

 Bucky can very nearly feel your skin beneath his hand. Having you here is such a unique brand of torture - you're exquisitely close, and you're looking at him like whatever it is that's between you, this mad, mutating attraction is reciprocated. It all feels a little too good to be true.

You probably shouldn't be looking at him like that. There was no way that the attraction he felt could be reciprocated. No way whatsoever.

"I should probably give you my number," You say, your voice still a little low - if anything, it's become silkier. Sultry, even, and it has Bucky's head spinning. "I'll send you everything I have."

"Yeah," He says, somewhat breathlessly. It's with a deep reluctance that he drops his hand from your shoulder, already missing the warmth and the closeness. 

He probably shouldn't have touched you in the first place. You were so small next to him, dressed in your pale little sundress, cardigan slipping down one of your arms, pooling at your elbow to reveal a single, unblemished shoulder. There's something almost painfully innocent about you, the complete antithesis to him.

He had been a killer a thousand times over. Bucky had taken more lives than he could even begin to count, and despite his best efforts to reconcile and to make amends for it, his hands were still stained red with blood. They didn't deserve to touch you, no matter how badly he wants to.

Suddenly, you're turning away from him, snatching a piece of paper that had been lying around his flat and scrawling a series of numbers onto the back of it - your phone number. Without so much as a second thought, he's peering over your shoulder as you write them, eyes carefully following every digit that you inscribe.

You whirl around, paper clutched tightly in one hand and settling the other on his chest, fingers ghosting over his shirt. You're so, so close - a mere matter of inches away from him, and your hand is directly over his heart. Hopefully you can't feel the way it beats slightly faster as a result of the contact.

There was a high chance that if it had been anybody else, Bucky would have avoided their touch and shirked the vulnerability. He liked being in control of himself, which often translated in remaining isolated. But he doesn't really want you to take your hand off his chest. He doesn't want that at all. In fact, he'd much prefer it if you touched more of him.

The tension is literally palpable, hanging about the air like a thick fog. No, more like smoke really, with the way your presence threatened to asphyxiate him.

"Bucky," You say, so softly, your voice dripping with reverence. There's just something about the way you whisper his name that's so much better than any fantasy he could ever concoct. He's half-certain that you're going to drop your hand from his chest or shove him away, admonish him for getting too close. But you don't. Your hand remains pressed against him, fingers splayed over his torso.

He can't help but say your name in turn, his voice raspy as he looks down at you. Carefully, he takes the paper with your number on it from your hands and sets it down on one of the countertops. And still, you don't remove your hand from him. You're looking up at him and your eyes are so dark, tumultuous pits of lust that bore right through him.

Bucky leans ever so slightly closer to you, his flesh hand cupping your jaw. His index finger is curled under your chin, and the pad of his thumb is resting on your plump lower lip. In response to his touch, your lips part ever-so-slightly, and he can feel your breath ghosting over his flesh in light, shallow puffs of air.

"Do you want this?" He asks, his voice a low rasp, rough and bordering on ragged. It feels very much like he's entered dangerous territory. This is like playing with fire whilst being desperate to get burnt. He just needs to be sure. He's desperate for that reassurance, for you to explicitly say that he's not crazy or creepy, that this is mutual.

"Yes," You say, lip moving against his thumb as you speak.

In an instant, he's moving his thumb to caress your cheek and then crushing his mouth to yours. There's something utterly greedy about the way he consumes you, teeth smacking together, tongues roving throughout each others mouths, completely plunderous in nature. Because that is what he's doing - consuming you, entirely ravenous in the way his lips press repeatedly against yours.

Your hands become fisted in his shirt and jacket, and his metal arm wraps around your waist, crushing your chest to his, anchoring the two of you together. It seems as if you've gone weak in the knees. You practically crumble against him, pressing yourself into his torso until his metal arm is the only thing that's holding you up.

Oh. This was definitely reciprocated.

There was absolutely no need for him to wallow in guilt or shame or wish not to see you - because you wanted him to. It didn't fucking matter whether or not his hands were stained red, not when all you wanted was for them to touch you.

All too soon, your mouths part slightly and you're panting against one another. Your lips are red, beautifully swollen, and wet with saliva. With a mixture of his and your saliva.

"Tell me to stop," Bucky mumbles heatedly against your lips. "Tell me to stop and I will. I'll never touch you again. I promise."

It's a promise he won't want to keep. Not when he feels like a single kiss has completely fucking ruined him for anybody else.

"What if I don't want you to stop?" You whisper, gazing at him with this blazing fire in your eyes, challenging him.

"Do you want me to keep going?" He asks, and he's afraid of the answer. He has no idea what he wants - he's partially inclined to want to avoid the emotional implications of getting involved with you like this, of succumbing to your allure, but he also very much wants you to say yes, to beg him to touch you like you need nothing else more than you need him.

You tremble against his chest, a soft, keening whine tumbling from your mouth that has Bucky feeling dizzy, like the world had just tilted on its axis without any warning. It's a delightful little noise, melodious and sinful. It was so, so much better than he had imagined. He can barely refrain from rutting against you, high off the sound of your moans.

"Yes." You sound absolutely fucking devastated, pushed into abject neediness. He's reduced you to some kind of desperate mess, clinging to his chest like he's a lifeline, like you're remiss to let go of him.

And fuck, that one simple word is all the confirmation he needs.

 Every single disparaging thought shatters to pieces, demolished by your eager moans. The way your chest wracks with sudden shudders, the way you breathe unevenly, perpetually unable to get enough air in your lungs as he keeps stealing it from you, your dilated pupils and your desire for his touch is all for him. 

It's intoxicating.

Eagerly, he presses his mouth back against yours, revelling in the way you groan into his mouth, your eyes fluttering closed so your lashes can rest against your cheeks. Fisted into his shirt are your hands, bunched up in the fabric, constantly tugging him towards you in eternal desperation for more contact.

In the next moment, he's using the metal arm curved around your waist to hoist you into the air, letting your feet hover above the ground. It's all too easy for him to lift you. 

Your legs had long since turned to jelly, your knees weakened and buckling. Your weight isn't a burden. He could toss a car around if he felt the urge to, which he doesn't. That is absolutely not even close to the urges he's having right now - the urges to make his fantasies a reality, to experience every lewd thought about you that had flitted through his head.

You release a small noise of surprise that Bucky eagerly swallows, biting at your bottom lip and memorising the delightful noises that the action pulled from you.

With his arm anchoring you to his chest, and you quite literally swept off your feet, it's easy for him to maneuver you through his flat, keeping his lips connected to yours as he walks you through to his bedroom.

The only time Bucky's mouth leaves yours is when he relinquishes his steely hold on you, laying you down gently on his bed, letting you rest atop his plain sheets, your sundress riding upwards. 

And even then, he doesn't allow that separation to last long, clambering on top of you and surging forwards, capturing your lips again.

He's practically caging you in with his arms, allowing you no opportunity for escape. 

Your fingers slowly unfurl from their previous position where they're been fisted, harshly gripping the fabric of his shirt, twisting it in what had been a successful effort to bring him closer to you. Now, your hands are wandering, beginning to explore. They roam freely, smoothing over his chest, tracing indecipherable shapes and fragments of words across his torso.

They easily pause at the lapels of his jacket, tugging it off with precision. Bucky has to move his arms slightly to help you divest him of the item of clothing, and he flings it somewhere across the room, not even bothering to check where it's landed. A single item of clothing seems totally irrelevant when you're beneath him, writhing at his touch.

"Please," You say between intense kisses, eyes blown wide with lust. Your pupils have expanded immeasurably, leaving a tiny ring of colour around them. "Off," You demand, tugging at his shirt.

Bucky chuckles, the low noise reverberating throughout his chest, making his torso rumble under your hands. Grinning, he pulls the shirt up and discards that too, leaving himself in just his jeans and you in your pale sundress and knitted cardigan. It's then that he falters, realising you can see the arm - of fucking course you would see the arm. There was no way that you wouldn't. It was just another horror of his existence that couldn't be avoided.  

Strangely, though, you don't look at it in abject horror, reminded of his crimes, of the despicable acts of violence he had committed in the name of HYDRA.

Instead, you look at it reverently, one of your hands coming up to trace the grooves in the arm. 

It was darker than any of his previous ones, a midnight matte black with stunning strips of gold running through the divots between panels. You trace the labyrinth of steady golden lines gently, fingertips tracing over the plates that comprised it. You were just as gentle with it as you were with the rest of him. His breath hitches in a way that is utterly obvious, though you don't outwardly react to it.

Your hand skirts down his metal arm, your fingertips coming to rest against the palm of his hand. The two of you aren't quite holding hands, but you very nearly are. Softly, so devastatingly softly, you tug the dark metal hand towards your face.

And you turn his metal hand over, planting a soft kiss to the centre of his palm before releasing it.

It was rather lovely, really. It made his chest swell up with some emotion that evaded description. Immediately, he's going back to kissing you, licking up into the cavern of your mouth, wordlessly showing you just how much he appreciated the small gesture.

Then, Bucky's mouth begins to traverse away from yours. He plants kisses down the column of your throat, only pausing in his quest to stick his nose into your neck, inhaling strongly. Your skin had a scent - a beautiful, honeyed kind of scent that he could very easily gain an addiction to. Fuck, everything about you was easy to gain an addiction to.

Before long, he's going back to suckling at the skin of your neck, interspersing his licking and sucking with bites that make your spine arch and prompt you to groan loudly. This great expanse of smooth, soft skin is available to him and he intends to take full advantage of it, making your skin bloom like some otherworldly piece of artwork, covered in red and purpled bruises. Interspersed between them were perfect iterations of his teeth, little crimson indentations from his incisors.

There was something absolutely animalistic about marking you up, covering you in aching bruises with his mouth alone. There was something about it that made him feel like he was laying claim to your skin, warding off anybody else who so much as dared to want you, somebody like John fucking Walker.

He probably shouldn't feel thrilled at the prospect of other people seeing you like this, your neck collared with a constellation of bruises and bitemarks that he had put there. Especially if it's one of your PR team, or even Walker himself.

Bucky pulls away from you, admiring the absolute mess he had made of you. Your hair is haloed around you on his bed, your throat is blotched in various shades of red and purple, your lips are swollen, your eyes are blown wide, and your nipples have pebbled against the fabric of your sundress. You look so fucking beautiful.

With some great urgency, Bucky divests you of your knitted cardigan, flinging it away and discarding it with some of his clothes. With his flesh hand, he eagerly tugs down the top-half of your dress, sliding the thin, flimsy little straps down your arms and pulling the fabric over your chest away to expose your breasts to his hungry eyes.

"Fuck," He breathes, shuffling forwards, one shin planted either side of your torso as you lay down, looking up at him in awe.

Bucky lets out a low noise of approval, sliding his hands up to your tits and squeezing them, earning him a strangled sort of noise that rips itself from the back of your throat. He pulls, tugs and pinches, listening intently to the different kinds of moans you reward him with - if he tweaks your nipple just right, you'll give him a breathy cry of his name.

"You like that, hm? You like my hands on your tits?"

"Yes, yes I do," You whimper. The metal hand and the human hand offer very different sensations. The flesh hand is warm, calloused, trembling slightly against your skin. The dark, metal hand with streaks of gold through it is no less dexterous than the organic one. It is, however, slightly colder to the touch, and smoother, comprised of plates of metal that don't have much of a texture. Both make you arch into their touch, perpetually desperate for more.

Bucky really can't help himself. He lowers his head, licking a broad stripe up one of your tits, eagerly mouthing at it whilst he tugs on the nipple of the other one, constantly keeping his mouth occupied. You're wrapping your hands around the back of his head, splaying your fingers over his skull, making desperate little noises as you drag your hands through his short hair.

He has you a squirming, pleading mess beneath him as his tongue roams over your chest, as he alternated between sucking, biting and pinching, watching reddish marks bloom over your torso. He's very much set on making your chest match your neck, painting it with bruises. There's something about this - the marking - that makes him feel absolutely feral, like some kind of rabid animal giving in to its most base urges.

"Please," You're begging for him - fucking begging. When he glances up, he can see your lips trembling, the perspiration beaded at your hairline and your glossy eyes. You look absolutely wrecked, and you sound it, too. Bucky's half tempted to ignore your pleas, but he doesn't want to be cruel. Not with you.

"Please what, doll?" The affectionate word slips from his lips and he hadn't even thought to stop it. "Do you want me to touch you here instead?"

His flesh hand slides down from where it had been cupping your tit, ghosting along your clothed ribs, down the plane of your belly. His touch prompts you to moan, despite the fact his hand isn't making contact with your bare skin. Not yet, at least. It's fascinating how receptive you are - so good for him. 

Bucky keeps going, smoothing his hand down the curve of your hip, tugging your sundress up to expose more of your legs to him. His hand splays over the top of your thigh, thumb resting at the junction of your thighs, concealed by the very edge of your sundress.

You do something that surprises him. With a desperate groan, you reach down and grab his hand, tugging it towards your cunt. "No. I want you to touch me here, instead."

Well, fuck.

The very tips of his fingers meet your panty-clad sex, and immediately Bucky is using his metal arm to yank the bottom part of your sundress upwards, folding it up onto your stomach. Really, it's been reduced to a scrap of white fabric bunched around your waist, having been previously tugged down over your tits.

The panties were lacey. White. With thin, flimsy pieces of lace running up your hips. Bucky takes in a deep breath, staring intently at the slightly translucent patch over your pussy, the delicate fabric saturated, made wet by your liquid arousal. His fingers drift up over it almost in awe. Fuck, you're soaked. Absolutely soaked for him - all for him.  

Bucky's fingers retreat from their position, but only temporarily. He slides your panties over, pushing them to the side so that he can appreciate your cunt. You gasp, your hand flying off his, where you'd previously been guiding his fingers, slapping over your mouth, barely muffling a groan.

With a renewed sense of confidence, Bucky dips his fingers into your folds. They're slippery - slick is seeping out from your neglected cunt, wetting the inside of your thighs, making them fucking gleam. You're soaked, absolutely dripping onto his fingers as he explores the most intimate part of you, slowly dragging his fingers over your clit and then circling them around your hole. You twitch and moan prettily in response to every tiny movement he makes, hypersensitive and desperate.

"Fuck." Bucky chokes out, dipping a single finger inside of you and admiring the way you convulse around him. Tight, hot and wet. His avid imagination and fucking his fist is one thing, but the sensation of you wrapped around his digit is another thing all together. Some stupid fucking fantasy could never compare - why had he even bothered to imagine that it could?

"God, Bucky, please." You whine helplessly, one hand still clamped over your mouth, muffling your words slightly.

Spurred on by your plea, he crooks his finger, pumping it in and out of you a few times before he adds a second one, using it to push against your walls, spreading them slightly in an effort to scissor you open.

"So fucking wet, aren't you?" Bucky's voice is verging on a growl, utterly animalistic as you gush over his fingers. You shuffle slightly, your hips rising and falling in a stunted rhythm. You're trying to fuck yourself on his fingers, desperately chasing an orgasm, your face contorted in pleasure. The fingers splayed over your jaw are twitching. Every single part of you is affected by him, writhing and trembling, perpetually desperate for more.

"Yes - yes," You chant, your voice a dying whisper, almost lost between your moans and whimpers.

"You're dripping," Bucky remarks, watching in fascination as your slick tumbles in steady streams down his fingers, "Fuck. All for me?"

You not emphatically, moving your head up and down, struggling to look him in the eyes, desperate to let your head fall back against the bedsheets. "Yes."

Bucky's thumb rubs harsh, unforgiving circles over your clit, his forefinger and middle fingers rocking into you, stuffed deep inside your cunt, covered in the slick arousal that's practically pouring out of you. You buck wildly against him, crying out in pleasure.

"Please - I'm gonna," You manage to stutter out, working your hips downwards, grinding onto his fingers, chasing your pleasure.

"Come for me, then." Bucky says.

He's incredibly fixated on every single thing about you as you come undone - the way your walls clamp down on his fingers, clenching tightly around the digits, the way your pretty, lust-blown eyes roll back into your skull, and the absolutely angelic noise that the pleasure he and he alone has brought you tears from your throat. Watching you come undone is wonderful. It's some kind of magical sight, made a thousand times better when you moan his name as you reach the apex of your pleasure. It's so fucking gorgeous that it threatens to make him come in his own pants like some rabidly horny teenage boy.

If Bucky hadn't already been uncomfortable, cock straining his jeans, rutting against the denim almost painfully, he would be by now. Especially when you give him that hazy post-orgasm look, a contented sigh leaving you as you finally remove your hand from where it had been clamped over your mouth.

Slowly, he drags his fingers out from inside of you. They're gleaming, coated in your arousal. Without an ounce of hesitation, he brings them to his mouth, eagerly sucking them clean, his tongue darting over every callous, every wrinkle, every crease on those two fingers, chasing your taste, completely ravenous as the flavour of your cunt explodes over his tongue.

He'd fucking ruined himself. There was nobody else after this. They wouldn't be able to compare to you in any way.

You bat your eyelashes at him, biting your already bruised lower lip seductively. Bucky's looming over you, pulling his saliva-soaked fingers from his mouth, the two of you breathing raggedly, panting like dogs.

Wordlessly, you reach forwards and palm his hard cock through his jeans, squeezing him in a way that leaves Bucky groaning, desperate for more.

"You're gonna let me fuck you, doll?"

"God, please." You breathe, eyes darkening almost imperceptibly. If he hadn't been so close to you then he probably wouldn't have caught it.

Eagerly, he undoes his belt, pulling it free from the confining loops of his jeans, and discarding it. Even as he's divesting himself of his remaining clothes, Bucky's eyes are always on you, watching you intently. 

Oh yes, you definitely sparked his staring problem, especially when you're looking at him with hooded eyes, the expression on your face one of pure lust, pure need for him. Quickly, he pulls his jeans down, readily discarding them, along with his boxers.

Bucky's hard, leaking cock slaps up against his stomach. Taking in a weak, ragged breath, you beckon him closer until he's looming over you again, his chest pressed to yours and his cock jutting into your leg.

"Please, Bucky. Don't tease. Just fuck me."

"Oh, gladly," He quips, lips tugging upwards into an infuriating half-smirk.

Your panties are still pushed to the side, allowing him to run his cock through your folds until it's coated in your warm, slippery arousal. He lines the very tip up, teasing you with it for just a moment, revelling in your breathy whimpers and ensuing pleas. The very head of him catches on your entrance, and he uses it as an opportunity to begin to enter you.

His flesh hand is resting on your hip, fingers curling into your side possessively, the black and gold metal arm being utilised in an effort to keep holding himself up. Your hands, gentle and soft, scrabble to find purchase on the plane of his back, nails raking over his skin, leaving tiny red lines in their wake. Fuck. You were marking him up, too.

 He wasn't even bothered by it. If anything, Bucky was pleased - he'd proudly wear whatever marks you gave him. They were little pieces of you, a litany of evidence that you'd touched him - that you had wanted to touch him.

The very head of his cock breaches you, splitting you open. He's thicker than you had anticipated, but the stretch is welcome. He practically burns you as he enters you the first time, stilling half of the way in to allow you a moment to breathe.

Happily, you writhe against his chest. It burns - but oh god it burns so nicely. The wonderful, near-painful intrusion of him is heavenly.

You're panting into the crook of his neck, frenzied breath ghosting against his throat. "More - please, more."

There isn't a single ounce of reluctance within him as he pushes the rest of his cock into you until he's fully seated.

"So fucking tight," Bucky babbles. His chest is trembling slightly, crushed against yours. There's just so much to feel - so many sensations to comprehend and decipher. You're so tight, gripping his cock like a vice, all wet and warm. It feels like fucking paradise - like some slice of heaven that he'd been gifted. Perhaps some cosmic being didn't have it out for him after all. If they did, there was no way they would allow him this.

Your legs shift, wrapping themselves around his waist, coaxing him deeper inside of you. You're moaning directly into Bucky's ear, your breaths fanning across his neck, fingers digging into his back as you cling desperately to him, saying his name like a prayer.

"Please - move." You're begging, on the verge of sobbing, lips pressed up against the column of his neck, mumbling little indecipherable words that all lead back to him fucking you hard.

And he does. Bucky unrelentingly pistons in and out of you, fucking you into the mattress. It's almost aggressive between the two of you. His hips are snapping up against yours, colliding almost violently, whilst your nails are shredding his back, though he barely feels the pain that he should.

You're a fucking mess. If he's destroyed by this, then you absolutely are, too.

Pathetic, mewling whimpers leave your throat, muffled only by the fact that your mouth is pressed into his neck, though your lips will occasionally move against his skin, your mouth falling open in a near-silent gasp as you try to pull air into your lungs. Your tits, marred by bruises and bitemarks that he had put there, are crushed against his chest. Your legs tremble from where they're almost, but not quite, interlocked around his waist, keeping him as close as possible.

He rocks into you, spearing you on his cock, enraptured by the cacophony of reactions he pulls from you.

"Can John do this? Can John fucking Walker make you feel this good?" Bucky's talking incessantly, those words dripping from his mouth before his mind can even register that the thought had ever even flitted through his brain.

He probably shouldn't be thinking about John fucking Walker whilst he's inside you, whilst his cock is nestled deep in your cunt and you're close to coming for a second time. 

But he is. He looks at the vibrant red and purple bruises that litter your neck and torso, the bite marks across your body, the evidence that he's been here with you, the evidence that you had let him touch you, and he can't help but wonder if Walker had ever done this to you.

He can't help but to wonder if Walker had ever taken you like this, like a fucking animal, leaving his own god-awful marks across your throat, fucking into you with one of those sundresses that you wore whilst masquerading around as his girlfriend bunched around your waist.

Bucky really fucking hoped not.

He couldn't conceive of anything that Walker deserved less than you. Walker may not have really been dating you, but he still got to touch you, to put his hands all over you in those stupid interviews, utterly undeserving of that privilege. Walker didn't have any fucking right, any fucking right at all.

You weren't 'Walker's girl'. You didn't belong to John. And for good reason, too. You were so much better than him - the kind of person who was able to look at the mission objectively, put your differences aside, and feed the other team information. All because you wanted to do the right thing.

You gasp against his shoulder, head falling back onto the bed so that you and Bucky can lock eyes as he ruthlessly pounds into you, the obscene sound of flesh hitting flesh filling the room.

"I - fuck - I never fucked John," You say, struggling to even form words.

And god, doesn't that make him glad.

"Yeah?" Bucky challenges you slightly, still grinning as his eyebrows raise a fraction. "And you're not fuckin' gonna."

Walker didn't get to put his filthy paws on you. Bucky wouldn't allow it.

You seize up around his cock, hands grappling at his back, and then sliding over to hold onto his shoulders, the fingers on one of your hands splayed over the seam that ran over his black and golden metal arm. Your fingers gently caress the border between machine and man, gentle, in complete contrast to the way you'd clawed at his back. His blood was probably under your fingernails considering how hard you'd scratched.

"'M so close," You whimper, desperately rolling your hips.

There's something utterly debauched about you. All of that angelisism had easily given way to depravity under his touch. You were practically mewling for him, making these little breathy noises that cause his cock to swell, getting increasingly desperate to climax a second time. That debauchery is located in every single moan that leaves your mouth, in the marks you've scratched into his back and in the way your sundress is bunched around your hips as Bucky fucks you.

"Yeah? Gonna come again?" Bucky asks, breathing raggedly.

He already knows the answer. Of course you're going to come again. He can feel your walls tightening around his cock, constantly fluttering, on the very precipice of your climax. You're close, probably painfully so, and so is he - but he's not gonna come first.

"Mhm," You groan excitedly as Bucky rubs at your clit, sending sparks of pure pleasure racing through your gut.

"Walker couldn't make you come like this," Bucky says more to himself than you, though you seem to really enjoy when he talks, convolusing on his throbbing cock as you desperately chase your high, all whilst he's snapping his hips up into yours, fucking you so hard that at times your eyes will begin to roll back into your skull, and your legs will shake against him. "C'mon, doll. Who are you gonna come for?"

"You. You. You."

"Good girl," He remarks, grinning as you tighten around him. "Fuck, doll. You have the best pussy I've ever fucked - 's mine. Not fucking Walker's. He doesn't get to have you like this. And I do - fuck."

It's then that he spears hard up against something pleasantly devastating inside of you. That sensation, delivered in tandem with Bucky's fingers circling your clit has you coming instantaneously. The barrage of pleasure washes over you like a tsunami, wrenching a cry from within you. You shatter beneath him, falling apart to a thousand pieces, utterly wrecked.

"Bucky," You sob enthusiastically as your orgasm crests, speaking his name over and over again like a prayer, like it's the only word you know.

It was one thing watching you climax on his fingers, and another when it's his cock. It feels otherworldly, watching you come undone as he fucks himself into you. It's probably the best, most arousing thing he's ever seen, you, beneath him, writhing, squirming, calling his name out over and over again.

He doesn't even bother to stave off his own orgasm any longer. It would be impossible of him to even try. If the image of you under him, legs hooked around his waist, trembling from the sheer force of the pleasure he's given you wasn't enough, the fucking heavenly feeling of your cunt wrapped tightly around his cock is. You clamp down around him, as tight as a fucking vice.

Bucky's own orgasm barrels into him like a truck. It's a burst of pure, blinding, hot pleasure that rips forth from somewhere in his gut.

It strikes every single nerve ending in his body, and suddenly he's coming, emptying himself inside of you, ropes of his come painting your insides, filling you up.

You both lay there for some time - it could be seconds, or it could be minutes. It's impossible to tell. Time seems hazy when he's with you. He's still laying over you, panting and grinning at the same time. The two of you just smile lazily at each other, completely spent and sated. He shifts most of his weight to be on the metal arm, lest he crush you with his weight.

Eventually, you surrender his hips from your legs, letting him pull out of you and roll onto his back so he can lay next to you whilst you both catch your breath.

Tentatively, you pull the straps of your sundress back up your arms and fix your underwear. Bucky panics internally, quickly turning his head to face you.

"Going somewhere?" He asks, as casually as he could.

"I do have to get back to work," You laugh. It sounds like bells in the wind. "I have an interview tomorrow that I have to prepare for."

Bucky just nods stiffly, trying to quell the internal disappointment rising within him. What the fuck had he been thinking? He shouldn't have touched you in the first place, and now you were probably regretting the fact that you let him fuck you.

"I'll swing by tomorrow with whatever I can find on the medicine," You say, so sweetly. "If that's okay with you?"

"It is, yeah." He says gruffly.

They need the information. The near-devastating disappointment he's feeling right now is irrelevant. Walker and Hoskins have the state's resources at their disposal. 

He and Sam have whatever leads they can scrounge up, and whatever you're willing to give them. Because you're good - so good, and he knows that, but he also feels like he's dying a little bit on the inside because of you.

"Maybe I'll let you take me out to dinner next time."

And Bucky falters, looking at you with wide eyes. "Next time?"

"If you want a next time." You say, avoiding his gaze.

Bucky sits up slightly, cupping your jaw with his hand and gently tilting your face, forcing you to look him in the eyes. Now, you look enraptured by the sight of him. "I do want a next time."

"Good," Your voice is quiet, a mere whisper, talking to him in soft, hushed tones. "Because I want a next time."

He leans in closer to you, giving you every opportunity to stop him as he lowers his lips to yours. You don't. You don't want to stop him, not when you're completely enchanted. 

Bucky hadn't been the only one that felt rather awestruck that day you'd met outside of the police precinct.

Really, you didn't much like your job. It paid the bills, and kept you ahead on your debt payments, but you didn't like it. The men you worked with lacked the heart that Captain America had. 

And sometimes, the weight of pretending got a bit much for you. It had culminated in your guilt, and ultimately you lying in Bucky Barnes' bed, kissing him tenderly.

"So, I'm sending you back to Walker, huh?" Bucky chuckles as the two of you pull away from each other, proudly eyeing the bruises that descend down your neck and below your, now rumpled and creased, sundress. 

He'd be sending you back to John Walker with small brands of possession bitten all over your torso, not to mention the fact that beads of his come were streaking your inner thighs.

Well, that'd probably show Walker that even though he got to publically call you 'his girl', you'd never belong to him in the most intimate of ways.

Bucky very much wanted Walker to see it - to see what he'd done to you. God, he'd pay so much fucking money to see the look on that bastard's face when he realised the woman he flippantly called 'his girl' was fucking somebody else.

 Not just anybody else, no. She was gladly fucking one of the people that Walker hated the most. Bucky can almost envisage the way Walker's jaw would drop and the rage that would blaze in his eyes.

"I'll be back." You laugh. "As if I'd want to stay away."

Even more beautiful than imagining Walker's reaction, though, was the prospect of you coming back again.

[absolutebl]

Manner of Death - It’s A Murdery Series

Episode 1 Analysis

I’m not sure I can do my normal flippant BL tropes analysis + pop culture crit with Manner of Death. Because: 

This is not BL, it’s romantic suspense 

Different tropes for different folks 

We are also in cozy mystery city, sweetheart

Or should I say cozy mystery small town?

Anywhowhatwhenwherewhyhow... 

Romantic Suspense in a BL blog? 

This is MaxTul and I have been waiting YEARS for them to appear in something decent, so sure, here we go...  

What’s romantic suspense? 

Romantic suspense is a literary sub genre of romance fiction in which both the romance AND the suspense/mystery/thriller elements are integral parts of the plot. This means that if you remove the romance thread the story would fall apart. And/or if you remove the crime element the story falls apart. It’s primarily consumed by romance readers. 

Why do I think Manner of Death qualifies as Romantic Suspense? 

Well at first I thought we were getting a cozy mystery with a gay romance sub-plot. (Which means if the romance element is removed, the story could still occur.) But after watching episode one, I think it’s actually romantic suspense because:

So much of this episode was built using romance tropes as well as mystery tropes. 

The gaze of the filming lens was very romance-driven in terms of lingering on longing glances and shirtless Dr Bun. 

We followed Dr Bun into his bed. Suspense (even cozies) rarely follows the protag into household intimacy zones in the first episode. (Victims = yes, protags = no.) Romance almost always does. 

Finally, we have got a kiss in the first installment for Dr Bun, plus a lot of screen time spent on their meet cute, and that kind of pacing indicates romance. 

Why is it EXCITING that Manner of Death is romantic suspense? 

Well, romantic suspense is a HUGELY hot genre amongst readers that has gotten VERY little attention from Hollywood. (Something like True Romance qualifies as do a few others but there isn’t much out there...) There’s also little to NO queer rep in suspense films in general (except as plot drivers and victims). 

Generally speaking, the Hollywood film industry prefers straight up suspense in which the heterosexual love story, while it can be present for the protagonist, doesn’t drive plot and usually doesn’t end happily (think Mission Impossible franchise). Or the alternate which is cozy mystery TV series, which I’ll address in a moment. 

In short? This is a massive untapped market in visual media. 

Cozy Mystery 

Cozy mysteries, AKA cozies, are a sub-genre of crime fiction in which:  

sex and violence usually occur off stage (AKA don’t be too graphic)

the detective is an amateur sleuth 

the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community.

While I think Manner of Death is demonstrating all core elements of a cozy, I don’t think it is going to be a cozy because they wouldn’t have hired MaxTul if they weren’t going to give us some serious skinship (violating the too graphic rule above). And it has already gotten a bit violent for cozies. 

That said, it’s a REALLY smart thing to put a romantic suspense into a cozy framework because...

Cozy mysteries are SUPER popular, often times with exactly the same demographic that tends to watch BL and read romantic suspense. Which is to say: mostly straight women of a certain age. (What Hollywood calls the apple pie demographic. Don’t blame the messenger.) 

Also cozies are more popular as TV series, rather than one-off films. And what do we have with Manner of Death? A SERIES! 

So I’m calling Manner of Death as:

A gay romantic suspense series in a cozy mystery framework. 

And if they can stick to that, and have done their marketing properly, they could have a run away hit on their hands. 

There are some things to be wary of: 

The lingering gaze and romantic lens can upset mystery watchers, who are probably going to be coming to this show fresh (expecting a cozy) not understanding what it is. 

Also the captioning of the medical terminology and awkward phrasing of certainly dialogue may turn these viewers off. They are less forgiving than BL watchers. 

The director is going to have to tread a VERY thin line with romantic suspense to keep new (non-BL) viewers. As is the script - the mystery is going to need to be executed well. Finally, much as we like Dr Oak and the comedic element, that style of humor probably won’t translate well to a mystery audience, so I’m hoping they pull back a bit on that. 

Some stuff I really loved? 

The soundtrack. It’s way more mature than BL and I am really happy to hear music that doesn’t interfere with my enjoyment or beat me over the head with its mistrust of the actor’s ability to execute emotion.

The filming style, they have left off triple shots and other BL fillers. 

The lack of comedic sound effects. I have learned not to mind them in BL romantic comedies but they have no place in romantic suspense. 

Lack of product placement. Although I worry about how they are funding this baby. 

Tul’s acting. I seriously did not think he had it in him and I am really excited to see him carry this thing. I was confused as to why they gave Dr Bun to him and not Max, but now I totally get it. Tul has a soft sweetness to him that Max doesn’t and it’s perfect for this character. I am already very worried about him. That’s one of the dramatic tensions of a cozy - fish-out-of-water driven concern for the protagonist. 

My Feels?

This is going to be a wild, crazy, sexy ride. Even if it jumps the shark I’m excited to see where it fails. And I mean that lovingly. 

From a purely academic perspective it’s so cool to watch something totally new, yet based on so much trope-riddled history. 

And on that note... TROPES! 

Mystery & Suspense Tropes  We Got In Episode One 

Opening on a murder

Fridge girl (see women in refrigerators) 

Nosy reporter 

Medical evidence explained 

Female friend in danger

Amateur sleuth 

Small town sins AKA the dark underbelly  

Public argument

Zoom in on clues 

I know the victim 

Murder disguised as suicide 

Love interest is a suspect 

Romance Tropes We Got In Episode One 

Meet Cute 

Sexual tension 

Secretive brooding love interest 

You can’t go home again 

Witty banter & innuendo 

Everyone wants the protagonist 

Get his shirt off ASAP 

First kiss in under 10%

BL Tropes We Got In Episode One 

(what you thought I’d just forget my one true love?) 

Faen fatal 

Baby is a floppy drunk 

Proximity alert 

Post-it love note 

Touch my lip and think of kissing

Head touch (the ”you have something in your hair” variant) 

In conclusion Manner of Death may be the death of me, but what a way to go. 

[ghostofnibelheim]

❣ 🥺

Random Kiss Meme || Always Accepting!

Many things could be said of Sephiroth.

But not that he was a shy man.

...Or so people had been led to believe, until now.

Of the countless new experiences his rebirth to the Planet had brought, far and few of them had caught the former SOLDIER, former demi-God, former harbringer of destruction of calamity, off-guard. And of all those that could achieve this, Sephiroth would have never expected this to be one.

The life of a man in love had opened a world before his eyes that the silver-haired had never taken the time to explore in his previous life. He, the boy deprived of the first form of love a child could know of, had become the man who shunned and ignored romance in all its forms. Devoted to his duty and mission as SOLDIER and then as messiah of Jenova, such an aspect most people would deem an essential component in life had simply fallen past his consideration like water through open fingers.

And when he and Cloud had returned in each other’s life, and those feelings long ignored -- overshadowed by hatred, resentment, and selfish autocommiseration -- had finally emerged and struck them both with the violence of a storm, it had been a steep learning curve for the both of them on how to tame the fire and thunder their naturally fierce souls brought upon them. 

What had been an easy task back when their shared existence did not go beyond the thrilling all-consuming heat of battle, had become the forge to new challenges for them as lovers. Establishing boundaries, working in tandem, reading each other’s mood and intentions; how could it possibly be easy?

Like a man walking on a tight rope, Sephiroth thought he had found his balance after a time, taking a more domineering role between them and enjoying the times this ground against the rough edges of Cloud’s own hot temperament; in moments of privacy and intimacy though, it was then that the silver-haired allowed his more vulnerable sides to be exposed, trusting the blond - and no one else- to take them at face value and without question. Sephiroth could take what he wanted, but also liked to be given at times.

When the time was proper.

Surrounded by people in the middle of an impromptu party was not appropriate timing to him at all.

Why, he wondered? What made Tifa, Yuffie and just about anyone in the bar feel so invested in someone else’s relationship? For as passionate as he and Cloud could be, they both enjoyed their privacy, and typically did not exhibit with public display of affection in public. Their exchanges in the presence of others were subtle and discreet. A complicit gaze, a faint ghosting of hands, and entering each other’s personal space for nothing more but the crave for comfort. It didn’t go beyond that, and the silver-haired had been silently grateful that Cloud was on a similar mindset.

But then the jokes had started, and the jeering, the teasing of others. The little ninja questioned the truth of their bond and demanded ‘proof’. Sephiroth had kept a stoic, deadpanned face throughout it all. He didn’t need to prove anything, he said.

While inside he slowly died little by little. An unnerving embarrassment creeping at the back of his mind, something that surprised even him. Was there some kind of self-conscious insecurity hiding in the depths of what he thought to be a reserved nature?

He didn’t know why Cloud looked crestfallen after a while. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe Sephiroth was projecting his own mood and seeing signs that were not there. Had the blond always kept his eyes low like that? Were his shoulders more slumped than usual? Was that sigh just a sigh, or the symptom of disappointment?

The more he quietly observed him, the more those doubts piled, and crippled his judgment to an uncomfortable degree. And in response, his own discomfort seemed to grow.

The silver-haired could tolerate this torture only for so long, until he could not. And then he huffed through his nose, inhaling sharply right after, leaning over to the smaller male sitting next to him and kissing him. Quick. On the cheek. It even made a small clicking noise that was so jarring to his own oversensitive awareness, it actually caused heat to reach his face. It had to be the alcohol. This tea had to be alcoholic somehow.

“There you have it.” He muttered, looking to the side whilst rising the glass to his face, in a poor attempt to conceal the annoyed flush to his cheeks.

[qqueenofhades]

(1/2) Honestly, Hilary, you are a blessing. I want to scream about your amazing Fic, how I love Immortal Husbands and the whole Immortal Family and how I had more fun learning history from your writing than in my whole damn school. But I also want to appreciate your TOG answers and meta. All the more because my friends outside the internet saw TOG as some boring movie with shitty plot and I'm just here in the corner, wanting to scream at someone who will understand about FINALLY seeing...

"(2/2) ...some GOOD queer representation, without throwing stereotypes in our faces, and I can't even begin with the found family trope because THE FEELS. Anyway, what I was trying to say with this rambling: thank you. <3"

....I’m sorry what. Who. Who is saying this. Straight people? I feel like the answer is definitely straight people. Because they have had EIGHTY FUCKING THOUSAND shitty action movies with the Boring White Man Hero, the disposable Muslim-coded (or actually Muslim) villains, the equally disposable eye-candy female love interest who either gets fridged or is secretly evil, Grimdark Everyone Is Secretly Bad And Nothing Matters crap philosophy, Moral Hand Wringing Over Superhero Violence, on and on. So of course they can moan and whine about “iT’s nOt OrIGinAL” and apparently not sufficiently Grimdark and Amoral, and how the dynamics of the team are completely reshuffled in a way that actually doesn’t prioritize THEM, and like.... this is why I never trust media only beloved by straight people, and only ever watch anything after it’s been recommended to me by a trusted queer friend. Because sometimes I remember the difference, and WHOOF.

Because: the gays and people of color DESERVE formulaic action/superhero movies as much as the Generic White Bro (in fact, we can all agree, far more than the Generic White Bro). This is the trap where every piece of media that’s not made by a Mediocre White Man has to be the best all-time of its genre, apparently, rather than using some of the same well-loved storytelling tropes but recoding them and re-deploying them for a more diverse audience. Instead of the Hard Bitten White Man Action Hero, we have Andy and Nile (two women, and Nile as a young Black woman who literally cannot be shot to death, in the year 2020, is fucking revolutionary on its own don’t @ me). As I said in my first meta, even Booker, who comes closest to fulfilling that trope, is made the closest thing to a “villain” there is on the team and even then for entirely sympathetic motives that rest on him having teary-eyed conversations with Nile about how he misses his family and feels like he failed them. His emotions help drive the story in an actually GOOD and useful way, rather than sacrificing everyone else to coddle him through his feeble heterosexual manchildness (why yes, I AM staring directly at the Abomination without blinking). Nobody in the story is EVER penalized or made a fool of for loving their found family (itself an intensely queer trope, even before the queerness of the individual characters) or trying to do the right thing even in the middle of the horrors, and frankly, I just want to consume more media with that as the main message. I’M SO FREAKING TIRED OF GRIMDARK. GOD. IF I WANTED THAT I COULD JUST TURN ON THE NEWS.

And of course, my BELOVED Joe and Nicky: an interracial, interreligious gay couple that has been wildly in love for literal CENTURIES and gives me the opportunity to do things like write the most self-indulgent historical romance backstory fic ever with DVLA. They met in the embodiment of religious conflict and have transcended that, there are never any cruel jokes or expectation for you to congratulate the narrative for being so beneficent as to give you “an exclusively gay moment” (fuck you Disney!). Joe and Nicky’s love story is central both to who they are as characters, doesn’t revolve around them being suffering or being Tormented over being gay (when the cops pull them apart for kissing, they beat the cops the fuck up, WE STAN), gets to unfold naturally in the background of the story with these beautiful little beats of casual intimacy (the SPOONING /clutches heart) and since THEY LITERALLY CANNOT DIE, no chance of the “burying your gays” bullshit. Even when they’re captured first by the bad guys, and I briefly, upon first viewing, worried that they were going the Gay Pain route just for cheap emotional points, they remain constantly united and fighting together and able to do stupid things like flirt when they’re strapped to gurneys by a mad scientist. Then the rest of the team ends up right there with them, so it’s not something that happens to them alone, and Nile comes in to save everyone’s asses, and Joe and Nicky get ANOTHER beautiful moment of fighting the bad guys and being worried about each other and tender even in the middle of this chaos and GOD! MY HEART! MY WHOLE ASS HEART! I LOVE THEM!

And just the fact that it’s not the Evul Mooslim Turrorists or Boilerplate Scary Eastern Europeans or whoever else who are the bad guys, but Big Pharma, nasty white men with too much money and not enough ethics, the CIA (at least tangentially; they could have pushed a lot harder on that but I’ll give Copley individually a pass), and the very forces that want to stop the Old Guard and discount what they do (helping the little people) as worthless... GOD. That is fucking POWERFUL. They literally take the time to explain with Copley’s Conspiracy Wall that even the little things the team does, when they can’t see it themselves, spiral out through centuries and have positive effects down the line. And it’s NOT just in the Western world (no scene in the movie takes place in America, none of the main four characters/heroes are American, and they only go to England when the English villains capture them). They’re in Africa, in Asia, in South America, in all these places where the Western/imperial world order has harmed people the most and in a way that Euro/American audience often gets to forget. On the surface this might be an action movie with Charlize Theron beating up men (which I mean, that alone is fine if you ask me) but there are SO MANY WAYS in which it achieves these deeper moments of meaning and subversion of the narrative that we are so often fed and the ways it could have done this (i.e. the same old Mediocre White Man ways).

I love the fact that the team unabashedly LOVES each other as their family members (I will never get over them all liking to sleep in one room even in their safe house in France), even when they struggle, and that they continue trying to make it right and never consider leaving Booker behind, because he screwed up but they still love him (and he them). I LOVE LOVE LOVE that this movie gave me not just Joe and Nicky but Andy and Quynh: two completely badass queer couples who kick tons of ass and have romance and Drama and rich and well-realized lives outside being used as emotional manipulation or suffering porn for straight people. (I realise it’s only been two weeks since the first one released, but where is my sequel, I have Needs. Especially Andy/Quynh and Quynh/Joe/Nicky needs). I was disappointed that they’d gotten rid of Quynh in a Bad Medieval Way to cause pain for Andy and then shocked and DELIGHTED when she turned up alive in Booker’s apartment at the end of the film. I LOVE that this movie gave me Nile Freeman and everything that she represents in the middle of this hellish year. I even love Booker! BOOKER! When he’s usually the character type I can’t stand and have the least patience with!

So yes. I have watched it three times already. I am sure I am going to watch it several times more. It just makes me so happy.

[elkrisen]

3, 4, 17; pick two OCs for each question!!

I'm going to pick my twins jack and zach because I'm enjoying seeing the contrast in their answers despite their similar origin.

3: How do they talk in a formal situation?

jack:

he was raised for transactions. his mother was a calculating and professional personality and since he patterned both his personality and occupation after her there's an aspect of him that is naturally inclined toward formal environments - however, because he is incapable of dying he often uses that knowledge to infuriate or mock formality. he lacks respect for others and situations so while he can perform well in formal situations he often uses that ability to create disastrous situations and see how they play out. he has a very childish streak and that combined with his desire to make interesting situations to distract him from boredom he often is inflammatory and inappropriate whenever faced with circumstances that require delicacy and calculation. however, if he bothers to he is good at imitating a professional demeanor but often gives up on it if he's given the opportunity. he's a very typical: I was raised by a capricorn girlbossgaslightgatekeep mother but I am a gemini at heart.

zach:

zach was raised as the transaction taking place so he doesn't have any patterns in him that make him inclined to being comfortable in formal situations. he avoids them, both jobs that require them and people that expect it in him. formal situations make him uncomfortable and anxious and usual trigger panic attacks. if he's forced to on the spot he often stammers or says something he regrets. formal situations also remind him of jack and his mother and that usual brings up a lot of anger and feelings of a lack of saftey or security and he will act out badly and then regret his actions. in general, he will do anything to not participate in them or wallflower in them when he is forced to.

4: How do they talk with close people?

jack:

he doesn't have friends or stable close relationships outside of his brother or whatever brief and destabilizing romance he's trying to consume but he's usually barefaced or startlingly reserved. in part because his closest relationship growing up was with his mother who was a very standoffish and private person who didn't enjoy emotional intimacy and jack had to learn to speak her language to remain close to her. with his brother he's a little more raw then he would be with the average person but it's also contrasted with a deep sense of entitlement and violence. jack doesn't hide much of himself in general but he's very possessive of the people he's close to him so he's also trying to make people stay with him so there's a layer of performance to the way he communicates with people. "what do I have to say to make you stay?" combined with a very honest and upfront streak that makes him not inclined to be anything but himself. jack is aware that he isn't a good person and when he's close with a person he knows they know that so he's almost worse because he knows that they know exactly who they're getting and he wants to get comfortable in their understanding of him.

zach:

zach is a very sweet person when he's close with someone - he's considerate, thoughtful, and clingy. he wants to be in the space of the people he loves constantly, he wants to know what they're thinking and how they're thinking. he is still pretty shy about the intimacy of being known, much more comfortable in prying other people open then letting them see into him because of how much shame he has around himself. he is a lot more open and less anxious around the people he cares about. when he's close with someone he likes to talk about the things he loves and try to vocalize how he's feeling. it's like he's battling the desire to be vulnerable and the fear of being rejected. when it comes to relationships like jack, he's also a lot more open about his capacity for violence. zach is not someone who seeks to overpower people unless you're someone that he hates or has hated and then there's a part of him that becomes very barefaced about his power and his desire to overtake people who have made him feel powerless. jack loves to tell people that zach dates that they might "understand him" but they haven't seen all of him because there is a very dark part of zach that is reserved solely for enemies and family that he doesn't like to reveal or talk about with people he wants to like and feel safe around him.

17: What's their breakfast like?

jack:

black coffee and a cigarette consumed in under two minutes

zach:

on a good day, avocado with lemon juice and spices on top with a sunny side egg and a cup of orange juice. on a bad day, three bong rips and a bag of baby carrots.

[recentanimenews]

ESSAY: Berserk's Journey of Acceptance Over 30 Years of Fandom

  My descent into anime fandom began in the '90s, and just as watching Neon Genesis Evangelion caused my first revelation that cartoons could be art, reading Berserk gave me the same realization about comics. The news of Kentaro Miura’s death, who passed on May 6, has been emotionally complicated for me, as it's the first time a celebrity's death has hit truly close to home. In addition to being the lynchpin for several important personal revelations, Berserk is one of the longest-lasting works I’ve followed and that I must suddenly bid farewell to after existing alongside it for two-thirds of my life.

  Berserk is a monolith not only for anime and manga, but also fantasy literature, video games, you name it. It might be one of the single most influential works of the ‘80s — on a level similar to Blade Runner — to a degree where it’s difficult to imagine what the world might look like without it, and the generations of creators the series inspired.

  Although not the first, Guts is the prototypical large sword anime boy: Final Fantasy VII's Cloud Strife, Siegfried/Nightmare from Soulcalibur, and Black Clover's Asta are all links in the same chain, with other series like Dark Souls and Claymore taking clear inspiration from Berserk. But even deeper than that, the three-character dynamic between Guts, Griffith, and Casca, the monster designs, the grotesque violence, Miura’s image of hell — all of them can be spotted in countless pieces of media across the globe.

  Despite this, it just doesn’t seem like people talk about it very much. For over 20 years, Berserk has stood among the critical pantheon for both anime and manga, but it doesn’t spur conversations in the same way as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Akira, or Dragon Ball Z still do today. Its graphic depictions certainly represent a barrier to entry much higher than even the aforementioned company. 

    Seeing the internet exude sympathy and fond reminiscing about Berserk was immensely validating and has been my single most therapeutic experience online. Moreso, it reminded me that the fans have always been there. And even looking into it, Berserk is the single best-selling property in the 35-year history of Dark Horse. My feeling is that Berserk just has something about it that reaches deep into you and gets stuck there.

  I recall introducing one of my housemates to Berserk a few years ago — a person with all the intelligence and personal drive to both work on cancer research at Stanford while pursuing his own MD and maintaining a level of physical fitness that was frankly unreasonable for the hours that he kept. He was NOT in any way analytical about the media he consumed, but watching him sitting on the floor turning all his considerable willpower and intellect toward delivering an off-the-cuff treatise on how Berserk had so deeply touched him was a sight in itself to behold. His thoughts on the series' portrayal of sex as fundamentally violent leading up to Guts and Casca’s first moment of intimacy in the Golden Age movies was one of the most beautiful sentiments I’d ever heard in reaction to a piece of fiction.

  I don’t think I’d ever heard him provide anything but a surface-level take on a piece of media before or since. He was a pretty forthright guy, but the way he just cut into himself and let his feelings pour out onto the floor left me awestruck. The process of reading Berserk can strike emotional chords within you that are tough to untangle. I’ve been writing analysis and experiential pieces related to anime and manga for almost ten years — and interacting with Berserk’s world for almost 30 years — and writing may just be yet another attempt for me to pull my own twisted-up feelings about it apart. 

  Berserk is one of the most deeply personal works I’ve ever read, both for myself and in my perception of Miura's works. The series' transformation in the past 30 years artistically and thematically is so singular it's difficult to find another work that comes close. The author of Hajime no Ippo, who was among the first to see Berserk as Miura presented him with some early drafts working as his assistant, claimed that the design for Guts and Puck had come from a mess of ideas Miura had been working on since his early school days.

  写真は三浦建太郎君が寄稿してくれた鷹村です。 今かなり感傷的になっています。 思い出話をさせて下さい。 僕が初めての週刊連載でスタッフが一人もいなくて困っていたら手伝いにきてくれました。 彼が18で僕が19です。 某大学の芸術学部の学生で講義明けにスケッチブックを片手に来てくれました。 pic.twitter.com/hT1JCWBTKu

— 森川ジョージ (@WANPOWANWAN) May 20, 2021

  Miura claimed two of his big influences were Go Nagai’s Violence Jack and Tetsuo Hara and Buronson’s Fist of the North Star. Miura wears these influences on his sleeve, discovering the early concepts that had percolated in his mind just felt right. The beginning of Berserk, despite its amazing visual power, feels like it sprang from a very juvenile concept: Guts is a hypermasculine lone traveler breaking his body against nightmarish creatures in his single-minded pursuit of revenge, rigidly independent and distrustful of others due to his dark past.

  Uncompromising, rugged, independent, a really big sword ... Guts is a romantic ideal of masculinity on a quest to personally serve justice against the one who wronged him. Almost nefarious in the manner in which his character checked these boxes, especially when it came to his grim stoicism, unblinkingly facing his struggle against literal cosmic forces. Never doubting himself, never trusting others, never weeping for what he had lost.

    Miura said he sketched out most of the backstory when the manga began publication, so I have to assume the larger strokes of the Golden Arc were pretty well figured out from the outset, but I’m less sure if he had fully realized where he wanted to take the story to where we are now. After the introductory mini-arcs of demon-slaying, Berserk encounters Griffith and the story draws us back to a massive flashback arc. We see the same Guts living as a lone mercenary who Griffith persuades to join the Band of the Hawk to help realize his ambitions of rising above the circumstances of his birth to join the nobility.

  We discover the horrific abuses of Guts’ adoptive father and eventually learn that Guts, Griffith, and Casca are all victims of sexual violence. The story develops into a sprawling semi-historical epic featuring politics and war, but the real narrative is in the growing companionship between Guts and the members of the band. Directionless and traumatized by his childhood, Guts slowly finds a purpose helping Griffith realize his dream and the courage to allow others to grow close to him. 

  Miura mentioned that many Band of the Hawk members were based on his early friend groups. Although he was always sparse with details about his personal life, he has spoken about how many of them referred to themselves as aspiring manga authors and how he felt an intense sense of competition, admitting that among them he may have been the only one seriously working toward that goal, desperately keeping ahead in his perceived race against them. It’s intriguing thinking about how much of this angst may have made it to the pages, as it's almost impossible not to imagine Miura put quite a bit of himself in Guts. 

  Perhaps this is why it feels so real and makes The Eclipse — the quintessential anime betrayal at the hands of Griffith — all the more heartbreaking. The raw violence and macabre imagery certainly helped. While Miura owed Hellraiser’s Cenobites much in the designs of the God Hand, his macabre portrayal of the Band of the Hawk’s eradication within the literal bowels of hell, the massive hand, the black sun, the Skull Knight, and even Miura’s page compositions have been endlessly referenced, copied, and outright plagiarized since.

    The events were tragic in any context and I have heard many deeply personal experiences others drew from The Eclipse sympathizing with Guts, Casca, or even Griffith’s spiral driven by his perceived rejection by Guts. Mine were most closely aligned with the tragedy of Guts having overcome such painful circumstances to not only reject his own self enforced solitude, but to fearlessly express his affection for his loved ones. 

  The Golden Age was a methodical destruction of Guts’ self-destructive methods of preservation ruined in a single selfish act by his most trusted friend, leaving him once again alone and afraid of growing close to those around him. It ripped the romance of Guts’ mission and eventually took the story down a course I never expected. Berserk wasn’t a story of revenge but one of recovery.

  Guess that’s enough beating around the bush, as I should talk about how this shift affected me personally. When I was young, when I began reading Berserk I found Guts’ unflagging stoicism to be really cool, not just aesthetically but in how I understood guys were supposed to be. I was slow to make friends during school and my rapidly gentrifying neighborhood had my friends' parents moving away faster than I could find new ones. At some point I think I became too afraid of putting myself out there anymore, risking rejection when even acceptance was so fleeting. It began to feel easier just to resign myself to solitude and pretend my circumstances were beyond my own power to correct.

  Unfortunately, I became the stereotypical kid who ate alone during lunch break. Under the invisible expectations demanding I not display weakness, my loneliness was compounded by shame for feeling loneliness. My only recourse was to reveal none of those feelings and pretend the whole thing didn't bother me at all. Needless to say my attempts to cope probably fooled no one and only made things even worse, but I really didn’t know of any better way to handle my situation. I felt bad, I felt even worse about feeling bad and had been provided with zero tools to cope, much less even admit that I had a problem at all.

  The arcs following the Golden Age completely changed my perspective. Guts had tragically, yet understandably, cut himself off from others to save himself from experiencing that trauma again and, in effect, denied himself any opportunity to allow himself to be happy again. As he began to meet other characters that attached themselves to him, between Rickert and Erica spending months waiting worried for his return, and even the slimmest hope to rescuing Casca began to seed itself into the story, I could only see Guts as a fool pursuing a grim and hopeless task rather than appreciating everything that he had managed to hold onto. 

  The same attributes that made Guts so compelling in the opening chapters were revealed as his true enemy. Griffith had committed an unforgivable act but Guts’ journey for revenge was one of self-inflicted pain and fear. The romanticism was gone.

  Farnese’s inclusion in the Conviction arc was a revelation. Among the many brilliant aspects of her character, I identified with her simply for how she acted as a stand-in for myself as the reader: Plagued by self-doubt and fear, desperate to maintain her own stoic and uncompromising image, and resentful of her place in the world. She sees Guts’ fearlessness in the face of cosmic horror and believes she might be able to learn his confidence.

    But in following Guts, Farnese instead finds a teacher in Casca. In taking care of her, Farnese develops a connection and is able to experience genuine sympathy that develops into a sense of responsibility. Caring for Casca allows Farnese to develop the courage she was lacking not out of reckless self-abandon but compassion.

  I can’t exactly credit Berserk with turning my life around, but I feel that it genuinely helped crystallize within me a sense of growing doubts about my maladjusted high school days. My growing awareness of Guts' undeniable role in his own suffering forced me to admit my own role in mine and created a determination to take action to fix it rather than pretending enough stoicism might actually result in some sort of solution.

  I visited the Berserk subreddit from time to time and always enjoyed the group's penchant for referring to all the members of the board as “fellow strugglers,” owing both to Skull Knight’s label for Guts and their own tongue-in-cheek humor at waiting through extended hiatuses. Only in retrospect did it feel truly fitting to me. Trying to avoid the pitfalls of Guts’ path is a constant struggle. Today I’m blessed with many good friends but still feel primal pangs of fear holding me back nearly every time I meet someone, the idea of telling others how much they mean to me or even sharing my thoughts and feelings about something I care about deeply as if each action will expose me to attack.

  It’s taken time to pull myself away from the behaviors that were so deeply ingrained and it’s a journey where I’m not sure the work will ever be truly done, but witnessing Guts’ own slow progress has been a constant source of reassurance. My sense of admiration for Miura’s epic tale of a man allowing himself to let go after suffering such devastating circumstances brought my own humble problems and their way out into focus.

    Over the years I, and many others, have been forced to come to terms with the fact that Berserk would likely never finish. The pattern of long, unexplained hiatuses and the solemn recognition that any of them could be the last is a familiar one. The double-edged sword of manga largely being works created by a single individual is that there is rarely anyone in a position to pick up the torch when the creator calls it quits. Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond, Ai Yazawa’s Nana, and likely Yoshihiro Togashi’s Hunter X Hunter all frozen in indefinite hiatus, the publishers respectfully holding the door open should the creators ever decide to return, leaving it in a liminal space with no sense of conclusion for the fans except what we can make for ourselves.

  The reason for Miura’s hiatuses was unclear. Fans liked to joke that he would take long breaks to play The Idolmaster, but Miura was also infamous for taking “breaks” spent minutely illustrating panels to his exacting artistic standard, creating a tumultuous release schedule during the wars featuring thousands of tiny soldiers all dressed in period-appropriate armor. If his health was becoming an issue, it’s uncommon that news would be shared with fans for most authors, much less one as private as Miura.

  Even without delays, the story Miura was building just seemed to be getting too big. The scale continued to grow, his narrative ambition swelling even faster after 20 years of publication, the depth and breadth of his universe constantly expanding. The fan-dubbed “Millennium Falcon Arc” was massive, changing the landscape of Berserk from a low fantasy plagued by roaming demons to a high fantasy where godlike beings of sanity-defying size battled for control of the world. How could Guts even meet Griffith again? What might Casca want to do when her sanity returned? What are the origins of the Skull Knight? And would he do battle with the God Hand? There was too much left to happen and Miura’s art only grew more and more elaborate. It would take decades to resolve all this.

  But it didn’t need to. I imagine we’ll never get a precise picture of the final years of Miura’s life leading up to his tragic passing. In the final chapters he released, it felt as if he had directed the story to some conclusion. The unfinished Fantasia arc finds Guts and his newfound band finding a way to finally restore Casca’s sanity and — although there is still unmistakably a boundary separating them — both seem resolute in finding a way to mend their shared wounds together.

  One of the final chapters features Guts drinking around the campfire with the two other men of his group, Serpico and Roderick, as he entrusts the recovery of Casca to Schierke and Farnese. It's a scene that, in the original Band of the Hawk, would have found Guts brooding as his fellows engage in bluster. The tone of this conversation, however, is completely different. The three commiserate over how much has changed and the strength each has found in the companionship of the others. After everything that has happened, Guts declares that he is grateful. 

  The suicidal dedication to his quest for vengeance and dispassionate pragmatism that defined Guts in the earliest chapters is gone. Although they first appeared to be a source of strength as the Black Swordsman, he has learned that they rose from the fear of losing his friends again, from letting others close enough to harm him, and from having no other purpose without others. Whether or not Guts and Griffith were to ever meet again, Guts has rediscovered the strength to no longer carry his burdens alone. 

  All that has happened is all there will ever be. We too must be grateful.

      Peter Fobian is an Associate Manager of Social Video at Crunchyroll, writer for Anime Academy and Anime in America, and an editor at Anime Feminist. You can follow him on Twitter @PeterFobian.

By: Peter Fobian

[autumnblogs]

Day 41: Caliborn: Enter

https://homestuck.com/story/4956 It’s pretty natural that Dirk’s move on Jake is going to put a strain on Jane’s friendship with him, even if he hasn’t made it yet; I think it definitely gives some insight into Jane that she reacts the way that she does. Not exactly a graceful loser, and in a way that is really pretty passive-aggressive.

She’s not as open and honest as Jade is; as the Prospit Dreamers go, in general, she’s really pretty guarded.

More after the Break

https://homestuck.com/story/4961

The AR, I feel like, gives us a pretty good look into who Dirk is, and while we already know that he impulsively jumps to the first solution he can think of, we can see through the shades that he tends to advise people to do the same things that he does.

Dirk is an extremely headstrong guy, and while he’s both very intelligent, and would really like to be a Puppetmaster, he can’t help but let his personality shine through his puppets; and he can’t help but let his first inclination determine his course of action. He’s him, after all. Why would he question his own judgement?

A bit like how Kermit the Frog is really just Jim Henson the Frog.

https://homestuck.com/story/4962

So what is a Juju?

Juju is a word which comes from French, and means plaything. It is a term that has been used to characterize the Folk Magic and/or Folk Religion of the people of West Africa, in much the same way that Totem has been, or that Fetish has been. In a nutshell, Juju can mean both Spiritual Power (as Mana), and an Object of Spiritual Power (as an Amulet) - the physical manifestation of the thing, and the thing itself are the same, in this sense.

The God and the Idol are the same - at least, they are to the external viewer. While it should be clear that this is a reductive view of it, the fact of the matter is that, a central part of a lot of religious practice in general is to treat the image of a thing, and the thing itself, as though they are the same; and we see this sort of image-based performance all throughout homestuck, through symbols, and rituals, especially where they are empty signifiers - symbols and rituals that have been emptied of their original meaning, and are now practiced only for their own sake.

Following the rules actually doesn’t seem to pay all that much in the world of Homestuck, and almost universally leads to disaster - which in no small part appears to be because the creator of the rules is Lord English.

https://homestuck.com/story/4965

I think it’s pretty interesting that Caliborn’s conception of smut is something as tame as fluffy hand-holding and caressing. While on the one hand, we can just say “Cherubs think it’s taboo because they can only enjoy Caliginous romance” I think we can also associate it with the relatively sexless nature of Homestuck, beyond how horny the characters are, and a few oblique references (which is not a bad thing; it’s about teenagers). In spite of all of the suggestive language and content, there is no possibility of consummation in Homestuck, or even until well after the end of Homestuck, because Caliborn’s vision of intimacy is a sexless one.

https://homestuck.com/story/4967

This takes a turn for the fucked up at the end. I mean, it’s all fucked up to begin with, but it’s such a non-sequitur.

https://homestuck.com/story/4968

Caliborn uses consumption related metaphors and imagery in relation to smut. Aside from jokes about Vore, what’s the significance of that? That the intention of Caliborn and Calliope is to comment on the fandom of Homestuck itself (continuing the identification of the Characters with the Audience that we discussed yesterday) is not really a secret to anyone. How does Caliborn view engaging with Homestuck, and how does he therefore view engaging with Andrew? His view is Hegemonistic and Predatory. From his point of view, the universe he inhabits is full of things to be consumed; objects to absorb, break down into the parts of themselves that make him more powerful, and the parts that can be discarded.

https://homestuck.com/story/4970

I really never get tired of Caliborn, he’s so awful.

https://homestuck.com/story/4971

His conception of human romance is one where he conceives of women as essentially objects of gratification; woman on woman is allowed, I suspect, for much the same reason that it is often rationalized that f*tanari porn isn’t gay; how could jackin’ it to two women be gay?

The idea of women as actors who exist for reasons other than to gratify men, and other than to gratify Caliborn in particular does not occur to him.

Obviously, men don’t exist to gratify each other. That’d be too mutualistic.

https://homestuck.com/story/4981

The Interplay of Sex and Violence.

As long as this sequence is pretty much over;

Why does Caliborn want to play a game? I think the answer is in line with the overall theme of Homestuck. Cultural transmission.

In his book Homo Ludens Dutch historian Johan Huizinga discusses the nature of Play as an element of cultural transmission, and as a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the generation of culture.

What this means in a nutshell is; Games aren’t the only thing that is necessary for culture to be created, but they are necessary for culture to be created. Can’t have culture without games. A big part of this is because games serve as a stage for human beings to symbolically and ritualistically practice the activities that, as a member fo their culture, they will one day have to perform in order to survive.

This is why games like Tag, and Hide and Seek are the oldest in the world; humans are persistence predators, we hunt down our prey by just not giving the fuck up.

Caliborn’s game is Irony and Porn; insincerity, reproductive activity, etc. and gaming is intrinsically competitive to him; he uses his game as a form of power over Dirk Strider, the power to make him suffer, although since he’s such a dweeb, he’s pretty bad at making him suffer.

https://homestuck.com/story/4986

Meenah likes games too, but her enjoyment of them seems to be a lot more authentic, sincere - as opposed to being a form of power for her to hold over her enemies, her little word-games, with her fish-puns, are a source of legitimate joy to her, and the fact that Aranea will engage her in them creates friendship between the two of them.

https://homestuck.com/story/5027

All this may not have a whole lot of substance to it (I’m making posts at this point almost 40 pages apart), but that doesn’t mean it’s devoid of worth. Homestuck has plenty of pathos, and in spite of the fact that Andrew adores making fun of us for caring about these characters, I do actually care about all of these characters.

They sure have come a long way.

https://homestuck.com/story/5083

As Roxy is ostensibly the stealth leader of her session, we should generally be willing to accept her takes as gospel in a way that we don’t take other characters’ (at least to a certain extent). We just got done talking about how important rules are to the cherubs, and to Caliborn explicitly - we should take heed of the fact that Roxy is very willing to throw caution to the wind and abandon the rules.

Rules in Paradox Space are largely harmful restrictions to be worked around, rather than auspicious maxims to adhere to.

https://homestuck.com/story/5071

Caliborn is a serial forced memer. We’ve already talked oodles and oodles about symbols and rituals and empty signifiers; what is a forced meme except for an empty signifier? An attempt by a malicious third party to turn a meaningless set of pictures and words into a symbol, a symbol that signifies nothing other than itself, and commands the attention and adherence of people in the culture? Rules for the sake of rules. Memes for the sake of memes.

https://homestuck.com/story/5089

Roxy’s anxious babbling is just so much like Dave’s, it’s hilarious. Their language less so.

https://homestuck.com/story/5092

The answer to what a ball’s topspin is, by the way, if you didn’t already know is

an English.

https://homestuck.com/story/5099

Why does Calliope want to be a Troll so badly?

The answer is that she doesn’t want to be a Cherub.

Why doesn’t she want to be a Cherub?

That question could probably keep me up all night, but I think I have an answer right away. Cherubs are arbitrarily powerful, and Calliope does not want to be a Cherub. She wants to be anything other than a Cherub. I can kind of relate to that, even as a human being. After all, there aren’t cherubs and trolls around, even though they are conceivable. Of all of the things we know for sure that consciously exist in our own universe, humans are the most powerful things we know exist for sure. I’d spend a lot to not be one; power, after all, makes us more inhuman.

https://homestuck.com/story/5116

Since I can’t pass up an opportunity to comment on the metanarrative indulgence of the second half, let’s pause to appreciate the term MacGuffin; in a nutshell, an object which exists to be desired. Its only purpose in the story is for someone to want it.

https://homestuck.com/story/5217

The fact that Dirk is conscious of the internal head-goings-on of Brain Ghost Dirk, and is therefore, to some extent cognizant of the head-goings-on of Jake English just opens up so many questions that I still don’t really have an answer to.

https://homestuck.com/story/5238

I rag on Dirk a lot for being a piece of shit.

But man, he is so cool.

https://homestuck.com/story/5246

This entire awful romantic escapade has been created by the Auto-responder, and while Dave has been complicit in it, he is not the puppetmaster behind it. Sound familiar?

https://homestuck.com/story/5252

This flash is just so delightful to me.

It’s the first time Roxy has ever touched another living human being and look how delighted she is.

LOOK HOW HAPPY SHE IS.

https://homestuck.com/story/5261

Now that we know who Lord English is, we have an opportunity to get to know him a little more as a person. Aside from his absurd commitment to puzzle-murders, his strange relationship with romance and sexuality, and his awful and perfunctory craftsmanship, here’s the most important thing to understand about him;

He will always destroy something irreplaceable if it means he can acquire more power.

[gayregis]

I read “A Little Sacrifice” and now I am a MESS

fun fact: i read the books out of order on purpose because i am very focused on instant gratifaction, so i read all of the hansa parts first and then went back to all of the rest of the books, thus i read the assault on castle stygga before a little sacrifice

so when i backtracked and read a little sacrifice, i had a very spiteful look on my face, like sapkowski fucking did it again, huh...

a little sacrifice has a lot of depth and it has a beautifully written sad ending but the first time i read it (with the fan translation from reddit) i didnt quite know what was being translated and what wasnt so i didnt know if i was missing any context, plus when i read, i skim and then go back a thousand times to reread it if i liked it, so i was just extremely confused as to what the fuck the relationship geralt and essi was supposed to be like, and then you get to the end and it’s like well i guess their relationship doesnt even matter after all because she’ll never show up again

also i remember being physically nauseous at reading that essi couldn’t be over 18, especially since i was like 17-18 when i read it a couple of years ago. yeah that basically was the closest i ever got to leaving the witcher fandom entirely, i had like this whole conversation with myself at 2 AM about the decision to stay in the fandom if i have to deal with this being canon, the solution i have come up with for it is that i simply do not acknowledge that part as canon and essi is like 25 in my mind and also she never fell in love with geralt

on one hand i think the story of unrequited love/doomed romance is interesting solely because it is something that you’re not meant to be like “aww cute i hope they get together” at, it’s a terrible fucking relationship in context. and geralt mentions this multiple times because he’s So Monogamous all he wants is yennefer, and this was an interesting way to develop your main romance, sapkowski does this like ten times in the series, where geralt and yennefer are fucking miles apart but somehow their romance gets developed during this period. i think it’s the embodiment of “absence makes the heart grow fonder” and it’s something that realy flew over CDPR’s heads, like they didn’t have a “hot and cold” / “on again off again” relationship, they both had a lot of issues relating to intimacy and committment and self-image which prevented them from true intimacy even though they had become very vulnerable with one another

on the other essi’s purpose in this story is literally just to fall in love with the main character and then die. like. i was genuinely mad because it wasn’t even a valorous death for a symbolic reason, such as with the hansa who die to demonstrate that an exchange of lives has occured. essi just dies because it’s sad and there’s not much place for her later in the series. i was genuinely mad because she had this really great relationship with dandelion and seeing that expanded on was something i felt we got cheated out of. all of the geralt and essi scenes we got i think should have been proportioned in a 1:2 ratio with scenes with her and dandelion / her and dandelion and geralt as a group, because she really didn’t get enough development of her own but had a lot of potential. 

plus sapkowski was just like “actually dandelion isn’t always incredibly self-absorbed and blinded by arrogance, let me demonstrate situations in which he cares deeply about the people involved and acts appropriately” and then immediately tossed that concept out of the window until we get to the end of time of contempt/roll into baptism of fire. like you’re really going to throw away the potential for depth and development for one of the main characters that’s the constant contrast to your main character. idk it was just nice to see how dandelion’s character changed to be more mature with essi in the room bc that’s his little sister ;w;

also can i just say the subplot with sh’eenaz and duke agloval annoyed me to no end. the message of the main plot is supposed to be that a little sacrifice for love is actually a really large sacrifice, and geralt refuses to hold any resentment against yennefer anymore because he realizes that she has sacrificed a lot for him and he hasn’t in return:

“A little sacrifice isn’t enough here; you’d have to sacrifice everything, and there’d still be no way of knowing if that would be enough (...) Now I know that a little sacrifice is a hell of a lot.” 

but then sh’eenaz loses her fishy tail for duke agloval ON TOP of all of the sacrifices she has made for him before? i can’t deal with this, i call bullshit. the duke has NO redeeming qualities and i still can’t see them as a couple because he was such a dick. so this relationship being part of what demonstrates “a little sacrifice” really just serves to muddle the message of the short story

i have an idea to rewrite the whole thing so to make essi x sh’eenaz real (there is potential in this ship) and the message clearer. i think there should be no romance between essi and geralt because it’s weird and for a character who is basically just Younger & Female Dandelion to immediately fall hard and fast in love with geralt is eye-rolling. i get that it’s about the message and themes of the story and not about the characters, i understand this, the characters actually matter very little, but the message would even be clearer if sh’eenaz had left the duke for essi, because it would show that sh’eenaz has already sacrificed, she’s already done so much, and because the duke never reciprocated, she left him and found love with a better person. and that could be geralt’s wakeup call that a little sacrifice really is a hell of a lot, it would send him hightailing to apologize to yennefer or at least communicate to her that he appreciates her sacrifices that she has made for him, because if you don’t appreciate the sacrifices, you will lose your loved ones.

also ofc i’d involve gerlion and all of this because i feel like there is this weird, buried trail of gerlion vs geryennefer running throughout the sword of destiny, here is my “im looking at this too closely” analysis of the path of how gerlion and geryennefer both get to exist:

bounds of reason - geralt is of course still on good terms with dandelion, but needs to mend things with yennefer, and he manages to do so by the end of the story, also dandelion and yennefer are mildly antagonistic to each other (i also cross out That Comment/Joke/Scene from my mind just fyi, its really just horrible and out of place so i cant consider it as canon)

a shard of ice - geralt and yennefer still have feelings for each other but end up separated by the end of the short story because of insecurities relating to their capacities for love and their relationships with others: there is this contrast between yennefer and istredd, which is a long relationship of friendship and istredd is someone yennefer goes to when she needs security that she will be loved, geralt is someone in contrast that she is very passionately in love with and isn’t really thinking about longtime reliability with

eternal flame - geralt and yennefer have called it quits for now, dandelion also just broke up with his girlfriend, geralt and dandelion meet in a city and decide to get smashed together. that situation alone calls for a single eyes emoji. but id like to point out the parallel here between yen/istredd and geralt/dandelion, dandelion is someone geralt goes to for security in that he will be loved, that his company will be liked and appreciated. also one of the stupidest things ive come up with is that “eternal flame” does mean some romantic interest who’s been in your life seemingly forever and you’ll always love, and the story IS called... ok anyways.... at the end of the story we are presented with this weirdly emotional scene as dudu changes into dandelion because from being geralt for a few seconds, he knows his thoughts and knows that geralt will never use violence against him & that he’ll let him go... this is a very interesting scene because of how comic the rest of the story is in tone

a little sacrifice [rewritten] - so my take on this would be that geralt and dandelion have unresolved and unacknowledged closeness and it’s eating at the both of them. geralt is just annoying because he doesn’t think he’s ‘normal’ enough for love, basically nothing really needs to change except the last 3 to 4 chapters... they still have the argument in bed, they still go to investigate the dragon’s teeth together. just instead of essi randomly confessing the all-consuming, obsessive romantic feelings for geralt that she developed in less than 35 pages, dandelion and geralt are the ones sitting down just discussing what is going on with their relationship that has been developed in-depth for i guess five short stories now (including the voice of reason) and around 15 to 20 in-universe years that have not had any affect on their ages because that’s narrative for you. instead of geralt having to console a lovesick girl crying over him and thinking that he can’t make this little sacrifice, the theme of sacrifice for love is carried over by a discussion of how much they have already sacrificed for one another over the years, and contributes to the redux theme of “sacrifice for love needs to be reciprocated.” simultaneously, after sh’eenaz leaves the duke for a better option, geralt realizes the meaning of a little sacrifice and realizes how he has acted poorly towards yennefer, and seeks to make things right with her again. THUS we can have both ships and they wont conflict.

the sword of destiny - holy shit none of this romance drama shit matters AFTER ALL. actually it’s the CHILD which has been important all of this time, and it’s time to be responsible or invite doom across the threshold... ah wait okay doom has already entered the house. doom is eating tostitos and bean dip.

something more - following consequences of the end of the sword of destiny. obviously about ciri but yennefer and dandelion also have incredibly significant scenes in this short story and i think it’s just to represent that they’re also important in geralt’s life

beginning of blood of elves - yennefer and dandelion actually have a good conversation about everything including geralt and they basically matrue up and agree to never be hostile towards each other ever again. they both see that the others give him something that they cannot, and they’re not in competition with each other at all

tl;dr

[raccoonwwx]

What are your favourite and least favourite tropes?Particularly when it comes to romance and shipping.

Oh wow, okay, had to think about this one. Unfortunately it got personal, and long-winded, but then, knowing my track record with this shit, is anyone really fucking surprised at this point? Lmao. Carry on at your own risk. 

Fair warning, there be relationship triggers ahead. 

I’m going to assume you’re talking about what I like to read/watch/ingest, but I’m also doing what I like to create b/c extra? Who, me? 

WE DON’T LOVE TO SEE IT: 

Cruelty of Any Kind, Really, At Least When It Comes To The Two Or More Individuals Romantically Involved

I’m not a huge fan of things where people who claim to have feelings for each other of some persuasion or another beat the shit out of one another for any reason. And as a human who loves things like staged violence/fight choreography/purposely skims books to find the bloodiest and most intimate of violent moments to read-reread-read again-dog ear-underline, this actually doesn’t really surprise me. I don’t like my foods to touch. Fictional love and relationships have been a lifeline for me emotionally for probably an unhealthy amount of time to even be thinking about, however, in much of the media I ingest, it’s often a safe space from whatever goes on outside of it. Part of the reason I love fictional violence is because it easily, often wordlessly illuminates who cares about who in a room. 

Friends With Benefits

Sex without feelings scares me because there’s a lot of shit I have left to deal with and I think people, when storytelling especially, can confuse a lot of boundary lines and gray areas and assume and make a lot of artistic choices.  

Heterosexuality

If anyone is waiting for me to seek out and actively consume straight media, you’re fighting a battle blindfolded in the quicksand while trying to push a boulder up a hill. It’s not impossible. (See: my recent consumption of the k-drama “was it love”) But it’s gonna take some convincing. Part of my trauma in life is believing I was straight until I was 22 years old. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but we don’t all know we’re gay when we’re four. Unfortunately for me, I dated a man for six years who is also, probably, not straight, but that’s his thing to figure out lmao.

But. I grew up watching people like me die on tv screens left and right. I developed my image of women based on how men saw them and therefore didn’t believe there was a love for me out there that fit my size. I still developed a confusing, seemingly mindless but really deep, fucked up anger and bitterness towards the world and most people in it that settled like a fist in my gut that would bubble to the surface in every interaction I had---and I still felt that fist unclench for the first time in my life when I kissed a girl.

And for better or for worse, consuming lgbt content was one of the only reasons I made it into adulthood with any kind of hope for my future. So. I’m sure as hell not gonna settle for less now. 

Furries

You know who you are and you know what you did. 

Fics Where One Of Them Dies - ESPECIALLY for LGBT Pairings

I’ve only read one fic where one of them died at the end and one of them was an Android that just, committed suicide by not plugging himself back into the wall. Hilarious out of context, I know.

Fics Where Someone Is Sexually Assaulted Regardless Of Their Function Within The Story

Oh, woof. I’m not even gonna bother explaining this one. Let’s just say that gay kids have been dealing with their shit for a while through stories and while I’m very supportive of them giving voice to the darker things - the things we cannot talk about in other spaces, I can’t be here to see this one. 

WE LOVE TO SEE IT: 

Intimacy

Ah, yes. The reason I am here ---or anywhere you’ll find me--- at all. Intimacy. Intimacy, intimacy, intimacy. The reason we didn’t die as infants. The reason a lot of us strive for emotional attachments. The final fucking frontier before we careen over the edge of the universe ---or so it seems psychologically, but let’s not talk about the terrifying, half-evolved, animalistic need to be needed and to have our needs met by other animalistic creatures or without which we welcome death--- to our eventual emotional demise.To be known. To be seen. To be heard. To be understood. To bruise when others bruise and bleed when others bleed. To surrender and to be surrendered to. Trust? Idk. As someone who’s probably on some branch of the asexual spectrum and Does Not Want To Think About That, Thanks, intimacy is lifeblood. 

Softness 

I feel like this is a good moment to pick back up from where I left off on the cruelty thing. And the anger thing. So many human relationships are harsh for no reason. And this is reflected in storytelling quite frequently. I DO love it when you’ve got both provided no boundaries are crossed (which boundaries? I’m so glad you asked! No fucking clue, but now that I’m here, I’ll make a future post about it so stay tuned). But pretty much boys being soft. Girls being soft. Humans being soft to each other. Not romantic for a second, but any kind of like, vaguely healthy familial softness is an instant cry button for me. While Watching Netflix’s The Untamed (which, yes, I am fully aware is heavily censored and I am in the process of reading the book and if you’d like a link to a good translation/would like to vibe about the concept of translating lgbt works from countries with heavy censorship laws, I am Here For That), there’s a scene where a character we, the audience, previously thought had died a tragic and horrible death is reunited with a member of his family whom he thought had died a tragic and horrible death by being given a toy he’d favored as a child and I had to pause netflix at four in the morning and lock myself in the downstairs bathroom of these peoples’ house to just sob uncontrollably about that for a good fifteen minutes. 

Why Is this important to me in terms of Romance? Because the world is not soft. It is hard, and it is cold, and it is full of pain and tragedy and manipulation. But the corners where things are soft, where softness can be allowed to grow and possibly to even thrive and to tell its own stories about life are sacred places that must be protected at all costs. 

So those are the wells I choose to drink from when I am feeling lost. 

Prolonged Eye Contact/The Gay Staring Contest

I swear I didn’t go into this intending for it to just straight up be MDZS propaganda, but somehow we arrived at this point anyway and I’m seeing no reason to fight it so I think I’m gonna just let that happen. Good? Good. 

AHEM

OTHER THINGS WE LOVE, BRIEFLY: 

Emotional Intimacy over Sexual Intimacy

I am that bitch who will read over 500K of just pining. If we get to the sex, I don’t care in most cases b/c that’s not the piece of the story that draws me. 

One Character Experiencing No Small Amount of Pain (Bonus Points If The Romantic Interest Notices On Their Own/Has To Be Told And We Witness Them Experience AT LEAST One Emotion)

Okay this one has been a guilty pleasure of mine since I was about four years old. I don’t know if it’s because most of my pain has gone unheard in my life or if it comes form a deep, dark place of wanting to witness someone care about me on that level. But regardless of the psychology behind it, in terms of instantly ripping my attention away from the world and into someone’s writing, this is like fucking crack cocaine. It probably also has deep, dark emotional ties to my narrative obsession with violence. 

Fluffy Things Like Quality Time, Sharing Meals, Daily Rituals, Building Love Slowly

Idk if I’ve made this clear yet or not, but I crave non-sexually-charged but deep and emotional and knowing human connection. So things as simple as a note on the pillow, sitting in silence on the porch watching the storm clouds roll in, settling in around one another in ways that intermingle and breathe commitment and connection is my drug of choice. Besides coffee. 

NOW FOR THE THINGS I ENJOY CREATING, EVEN BRIEFER, MAYBE, HOPEFULLY, NO NOT REALLY: 

Things That Scare Me To Create

So like, for example, I’ve decided to end Without The Skin Attached badly. If you need to know what that means, my ask box is open. I remember I wrote a lot of weird, weird shit when I was still actively dating men trying to figure out if I could be with them forever and what that would look like and if I had the right to deny myself happiness in the ways that I was at the time and still lead a life that could be called fulfilling. I put most of those stories through taboo lenses because that’s what it felt like to date someone I had no real attraction to for six years. Most of the tropes that are actively and horrifically triggering to me I write about frequently. I have several fics planned based around my experience in life because writing is how I process. I have to get it down on paper before I recognize what it is. 

Multi-Media Shit

Not a trope, but nothing excites me more than being able to throw things in a basket like, pynch. And classical theatre - or the bible - or a poem/poet - or an album of music - or a specific point in history - and follow the spine of another creation/creative entity with my grubby little fingers. Without The Skin Attached is based on No Hell by Cloud Cult. If you want to understand where the story came from, that’s the spine I’ve been following. Unfortunately, I did a Bad Thing and handed Adam and Ronan my own gay experience on a silver platter and now it feels like being burned to look at. 

Art is death. Art is torture. Be a child of Hades. Embrace the decay. 

Let’s do this. Create art. Ingest art. Art. 

But also art can be the light in the darkness. We can have both. As a treat. 

Okay, one more shoutout to The Untamed and then I promise I’m done: 

So long, space cowboys. If you made it to the end of this, I am genuinely impressed. You deserve a medal. If I wasn’t a couch hopper, I’d send you one. 

@ivell thx for asking 

[astrogrlz]

(Sorta) Comprehensive Guide to Intermediate Astrology

If you are serious about Astrology I complied a short guide of dignities, aspects, houses and planet definitions 

Planets

Each of the Planets hold a specific meaning in your birth chart. Moreover, each planet represents a specific “act.” Modern astrology includes Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto but because of their modern inventions we don’t have a concise and full understandings as that of the traditional planets (Sun through Saturn). Uranus, Neptune, Pluto are also a little sketch because they were tailored to signs of Aquarius, Pisces, and Scorpio who already had lords (fancy way of saying “ruler”) and as traditional astrology works each planet has a diurnal and nocturnal dignity (except the Sun and Moon). This doesn’t mean you can’t use Uranus-Pluto if you choose but also keep in mind that pinning rulerships of these planets can be quite confusing! 

rulership/domicile: planet LOVES being here 

fall: planet is uncomfortable but it can manage 

detriment: planet is NOT comfortable being there and must use corresponding ruling planet to achieve its energies (i.e. capricorn moons must use “Saturn” qualities to do lunar things) 

exalted: comfortable! planet is happy 

The Sun:

Rules: Leo 

Detriment: Aquarius 

Fall: Libra 

Exalted: Aries

Diurnal

Represents: Ego, Identity, Soul 

Act: The Sun represents “action” that correspond to our identity. In a simpler way, the Sun is how we express our identity but for better purpose let’s say our sun sign is how we “show” people who we are. Sun is extroverted, and within our chart it can tell us how we want to be seen. Think about the modern mechanics of the Sun. It produces light and what does light do? It reflects. How we produce or “emit” ourselves whether its through an audience or close people is reflected back to us through responses. These responses send messages to us, which then affects our ego or way simpler, how we feel about ourselves. If you are not embodying your Sun sign then it means you’re preventing the upmost authentic version of yourself from being seen; therefore, you may be receiving “bad” or “alienating” messages that make you feel shitty about yourself. Of course, this process is more complex and it’s hard to assess whether we are embodying our Sun sign (which is why everyone should consult an Astrologer at least once in their life!). Another act Sun represents is “life” or “living.” The Sun keeps us sustained and when we lose light we lose our ability to live. Why the Sun is so important is because it reminds us of why we are here and what we are meant to do with ourselves. 

The Moon: 

Rules: Cancer 

Detriment: Capricorn 

Fall: Scorpio 

Exalted: Taurus

Nocturnal 

Represents: Embodiment, Emotions, Past 

Act: The Moon represents “receptivity” as the Sun reflects, the Moon receives. Since the Moon is nocturnal we don’t always forward our vulnerable side. This is where we want to feel protected, where our needs lie without compromise. Due to living in a society that is very individualistic and void of emotions, we tend to distrust or “shame” our moon signs. Unfortunately, western culture does a bad job in valuing intimacy and sensitivity so we navigate as if our emotions are “bad” or “too much baggage.” Embodying our moons allows us to embody ourselves. We become more honest about what we need to feel comfort or to survive. We become more whole with the world rather than separating from it. The Moon also honors our lineages, where we come from, and how to sustain our legacy. Escaping our moon means we are escaping from ourselves. It means we tend to be in environments that pose harm/danger to us and where we don’t feel secured. Overall, its essential to embody our moons because we become more present with our bodies and have a better idea how to sustain it. Most importantly, maintaining our emotional health allows us to have more positive interpersonal relationships. We will be able to care for other people more since we will be tuned to their needs or on the flip side, we will know when to depart from others because of negative reception. Honoring your moon = protecting yourself. 

Mercury 

Rules: Gemini and Virgo 

Detriment: Sagittarius and Pisces

Fall: Pisces

Exalted: Virgo 

Adaptable (no inherent sect) 

Represents: Communication, Cognitive Processing, Data

Act: Mercury represents “flexibility” as it is not chained to either a diurnal or nocturnal sect. Where Mercury lies in our chart informs us how we can “finesse” or adapt in an area of our lives. Mercury has allegiance to logic but it also shares this same honor with creativity. Some of the most creative people have a strong Mercurial influence and a fine eye towards precision and perfection. Mercury is often associated with being the “messenger” or “student” because it can take magnified information and make it more legible. For example, writers or journalists act as messengers by taking important information, simplifying it and then transporting it to the greater masses. That’s pretty much Mercury’s process. However, it can also be consumed by mindless or un-important information. The “”details””. Think of Mercury like trivia--cool but not so significant information. The biggest piece of info about Mercury is that it never departs from the Sun. Mercury can only be roughly 28 degrees from the Sun. Therefore, Mercury has a stake in how we express our identity and ego. Think about it: communication is one of the primary ways we do this. We talk about ourselves. We rant about our lives. We write about our hardships or romances. Practically everything we do involving communication tells us something about who we are as people or the worlds we lived and the lives we met. In a way, Mercury can be egotistical. Yes, we want to be heard but we must also listen. 

Venus

Rules: Taurus and Libra 

Detriment: Scorpio and Aries 

Fall: Virgo 

Exalted: Pisces

Nocturnal 

Represents: Values, Social Connection, Compromise

Act: Venus works to “bind” others either through romance, familiarity, passions, or causes. Venus is a benefic which means she works to soothe and provide fertility and moisture when she can. Venus believes in egalitarian ideals. In other words, Venus says a big “fuck you” to power dynamics. She is also the planet of beauty and art. Where Venus lies in our chart not only tells us where we seek balance but also creative expression. In ways, Venus tells us about our aesthetic, our hobbies, our fashion sense. Its how we “value” tangible and intangible properties. Due to Venus’ association with womanhood, a strong or weak Venus reveals our attitudes towards femininity or women in general.  For example, Chris Brown has a Venus in domicile (Taurus) in the 10th house opposite to Pluto, the planet of power and violence. The way Chris has manifested this energy is through abuses and disrespect of women. Because his Venus is in the 10th house this is a manifestation that is very public and noticed by others thus, explaining his reputation as a total piece of shit. Values, sometimes ingrained in us at an early age, always has the ability to change. If you have shitty values chances are you aren’t kind--and kindness is one of the biggest parts of Venus. While she can be kind, Venus may prefer to be “nice” instead. Venus works towards appropriateness or within the social fabric. She does things because she is expected and it’s because what she is told to do. If you have a debilitated Venus (rx, detriment, or fall) you are more likely to give the middle finger to social norms. Because of this, Venus may be nice to keep the peace instead of kind which reflects authenticity rather than social expectations. Thus it comes down whether society’s idealization of yourself and others really matter a whole lot. The importance of mastering our Venus is being confident and kind to ourselves outside of what society tells us is beautiful or desirable.

Mars 

Rules: Aries and Scorpio 

Detriment: Libra and Taurus 

Fall: Cancer

Exalted: Capricorn

Represents: Aggression, Entitlement, Drive

Act: Mars works to “separate” others and is largely an infertile and hot planet. Mars is often described as “malefic” because of this act. But despite its negative connotation in traditional astrology, Mars’ desire to separate may be healthy additives in our lives. I always like to think of Mars in our charts as a “knife” or more dramatically, a “sword.”  Certain situations may manifest depending where Mars is in our chart (for example: Mars in the 8th house may show situations surrounding inheritances / the “money” you were born into). These situations ultimately create inflammation and excess that require us to break away from. Relating back to the example, Mars in the 8th may indicate an inheritance to be too large that will eventually spur problems such as debt or potential “money crimes” like tax invasion (esp if Mars is aspected by Jupiter). Moreover, this placement may better function without ties to such inheritances thus requiring separation. Another example: Mars in the 11th indicates problems relating to friends and communities. Despite the fact that leaving friends behind is not ideal, it may appear as a more attractive option if you think that friend or community situations may be toxic and unhealthy for the person. Sometimes, Mars offers the knife/sword to cut ourselves from situations that are no good for us. Mars is often associated to survival--its the war planet after all. Mars in our chart thus can tell us where and what we fight for, for what we feel entitled to possess. Unlike Mercury and Venus, Mars doesn’t follow the path of the Sun so by its own volition it can be just as egotistical and individualistic. Mars is often defined by the symbol related to “manhood” although, I would expand this symbolism further and say it represents the entitlement that men often possess in our society--the entitlement to bodies, the entitlement to sex, the entitlement to space, the entitlement to opportunities. While that can drive us to be more tenacious, it can drive us to willful ignorance and violence. 

Jupiter 

Rules: Sagittarius and Pisces

Detriment: Gemini and Virgo 

Fall: Capricorn 

Exalted: Cancer

Represents: Enlightenment, Travel, Higher Education, Wealth, Governance/Laws

Act: Jupiter represents the act of “expansion.” Wherever Jupiter touches it over magnifies. In this respect, Jupiter is often seen as the “Great Benefic.” However, don’t be fooled by Jupiter. As it can bring wealth, prosperity, and joy, it can equally create overconsumption and gluttony. The axis of Jupiter is as follows: charity / selfishness. Jupiter often possess the wealth to give to everyone (think of Jupiter like Oprah who yells out to the crowd: “you get a car! “and you get a car!”); however, the darkside of a Jupiter manifestation may hoard this wealth and keep it to themselves (yes, Jeff Bezos, I’m looking at you). Outside of this dichotomy, Jupiter is often described as “optimism” because its able to look at the whole picture and accept new ideas. Rather than accepting its fate or the facts given, Jupiter wishes to change its outcome. It values diversity and higher knowledge, which requires the sharing and diffusion of ideas. For example, during 1690, John Locke published An Essay to Human Understanding which was one of the setting blocks of the Enlightenment period and essentially refuted the notion of rationalist notion of “innate ideas.” it’s no shocker that during the year of 1690 Jupiter was domicile in the sign of Pisces. Mid-18th century Europe become bombarded by dogma and challenged traditional understandings of knowledge and being. While Jupiter was not domicile, it is interesting to note that Pluto (planet of transformation) was in the sign of Sagittarius (thus Pluto responding to Jupiter) during the mid 1700s. Jupiter can hold truth, advocacy and skepticism in its wing and while we can get oversaturated by complexity and knowledge, Jupiter in our charts can tell us where to reach higher and where we want to see generosity. 

Saturn 

Rules: Capricorn and Aquarius 

Detriment: Cancer and Leo 

Fall: Aries

Exalted: Libra

Represents: Structure, Reality, Discipline 

Act: Saturn represents the act of “restriction.” Whereas Jupiter is the Great Benefic and loves to expand, Saturn is more like the Great Malefic and prefers to contain what already exists. Saturn loves borders and confinement (think of prisons and fortresses) Its a cold and rigorous planet. Because it is always visible in our sky, Saturn is said to be the container of time or in other words, our reality. Saturn is also compared to architecture; it gives form and structure in our world. In medical astrology, Saturn rules our “body architecture” aka our bones and skeletal system. Thus, Saturn has symbolism related to systems and hierarchies. Saturn is not as “nice” as Jupiter and Venus so these hierarchies are often negative and power inducing; one wins, the other suffers. I usually compare Saturn to capitalism because of this very fact. The nature of the Capitalist system only benefits a specific and very small class while the rest weep and suffer. This system is unfair and in order to survive in it you have to work through its conditions. And in Saturn’s words: that’s just the cold reality of our world. So, unlike Jupiter who gives us the ability to see the world as something that can be changed, Saturn gives us the realistic picture and the facts can be overwhelming and depressing. Thus, Saturn has stakes in pessimistic attitudes. Its only way to success is working alongside the rules. Saturn is often compared to an authority figure and when we don’t do what we are suppose to do (which in Saturn’s terms is working ourselves to death) then during every 7 years when our first Saturn square hits we go through a “maturity cycle” and every 28-29 years our Saturn return welcomes us (or drags us) into another big stage in our age development. Saturn’s association with old age informs us that Saturn gets a bit gentler with age but the crises that erupts when you get an inch closer to death never ceases to exist. Despite all of this, Saturn can be mobile. One of the good things about Saturn is that you CAN move up the ladder when you put the work in. Good doings will reward you with rewards. Bad doings will reward you with consequences aka what you reap is what you sow. The Saturn in our charts can indicate areas where we suck at, and need work. It can also indicate the areas where we seek perfection and success. For example, Saturn in the fifth house indicates someone who strives for perfection in their hobbies. If an artist had a 5H Saturn they would be overcritical of their work, constantly drawing the same thing again and again until it comes out how they like it. When we do this, the leisure of art becomes grueling and hard work. Saturn takes the pleasure out of something inspiring and beautiful. However, working with Saturn in this house can create a prodigy, someone who can be the best at what they do.

Outer Planets 

Uranus = innovation, rebellion, breakthrough, sudden changes 

Neptune = over saturation, higher spirituality, borderless, projections

Pluto = power dynamics, shame, transformation 

Houses

1st house: The Rising; indicating the East Horizon. 

identity, the Self 

Veil between you and the world 

2nd House

Finances

Tangible items 

3rd House 

Communication 

Transportation 

the Mundane 

siblings 

neighborhood

“mother tongue” 

4th House: imum coeli; indicating the Planets below the Earth 

family/lineages

past 

traditional astrology views this as a place of old age and death (4th house is the 27th profection year i.e 27 club) 

whatever is “unseen” and protected 

5th House 

hobbies 

sex

pleasure 

procreation 

children 

6th House 

debt

health 

obligations / work environment 

routine

pets??? yeah pets 

7th House: The Descendent; where the Sun was setting 

relationships 

the “other”

sex again 

marriage 

8th House 

taxes

inheritances

shame/whatever is concealed or lies underneath 

9th House

travel 

higher education (i.e college) 

publishing 

foreign language 

diversity 

10th House: Midheaven; highest point of the sky 

Career

Public 

Reputation 

11th House 

Community 

Wishes

Future 

Friends 

12th House 

the “unseen” 

deception 

repression 

therapy 

spirituality 

meditation 

Aspects 

Aspects are angles in the birth chart. These angles won’t always be exact so the disparity is what we indicate as an orb 

Source: http://theastrologydictionary.com/a/aspect/

The Opposition (180 degrees) and Square (90 degrees) 

not harmonious aspect

indicates tension or friction 

the square has more immediate friction whereas the opposition will have to be worked with overtime 

Mars square Saturn indicates immediate blockages with anger and individual expression but can be mediated through activities whereas the Mars Opposition Saturn indicates a long term battle of how to correctly assert oneself and overcome the limitations set forth by society. 

Saturn corresponds to the nature the Opposition. Mars corresponds to the Square

Opposition occurs within opposite signs. Square occur within signs of the same modality 

square = taurus-aquarius taurus-leo 

opposition = taurus-scorpio 

The Conjunction (0 degrees; very close to each other) 

Neutral 

fusion of energy in planets which will yield strong manifestations 

usually occurring w/planets about 0-10 degrees away from each other 

The Trine (120) and Sextile (60) 

harmonious aspect 

flow of energy 

can lead to innate action due to how “well” the planets work together 

trine more comfortable and positive than sextile and less immediate than sextile. 

Jupiter corresponds to the nature of the Trine. Venus corresponds to the nature of the sextile.