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redheadsinmybed · 3 years ago

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Play dates and roller skates

Wanda x Reader

Description: Wanda and Y/N have been in a little big relationship for a week now, what happens when Y/N has her first playdate???

Notes: Hi! So I’m gonna post all my stories from AO3 onto here so I get a larger audience. This is my second fanfic that I ever wrote and it’s the second part to the series ’Loving a little’ I hope you enjoy if you haven’t already read it!!!

Having Wanda as your caregiver is the best thing you could ever ask for. She knows you so well and loves you beyond anything you could have ever imagined. Having Wanda as your mama is like a dream come true.

Currently you were big, just talking over stuff with Wanda while watching a sitcom in the living room. It was about 8:45 p.m. and you were tired.

“Okay so today Pepper, Bucky, and Laura asked me if you would like to play with Tony, Steve, and Clint tomorrow. Natasha and Thor will be there too,” Wanda said looking at you.

Two days after you had showed everyone about you, you had turned back to big. You haven’t been little in a week now and it was really starting to take its toll on you. You want to slip back into your little state, but you’ve been fighting it, wanting to spend girlfriend time with Wanda.

Wanda was worried about you, since everyone knew about you she thought you’d feel comfortable switching regularly. She also knows being big for too long isn’t good for littles.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Wanda asks, reaching out for your hand to get your attention. It’s not that anything is wrong per say it’s just that you want to be little again and you're tired of trying to fight it.

“I-,” you stop not knowing how to say what you want to say.

“I want to spend time with you just as girlfriends, but it’s hard because I can feel myself slipping, but I just don’t want you to feel like you are taking care of me all the time,” you finally say after thinking about it.

“Baby that’s what I’m here for, not just as your mama but as your girlfriend too. I want you to feel comfortable switching between the two. You will never make me mad by switching, I promise. Now, baby girl, do you want to be little? I can go get Bunny for you.” Wanda suggests as she gets off the couch when she sees you nodding.

“Okay baby girl, mama will be right back” she kisses your forehead and makes her way to your bedroom where your stuffed animal koala named Bunny was.

When Wanda comes back she sees you switched when you make grabby hands at Bunny.

“Here you go baby girl” Wanda says as she hands you the koala and sits back down. You hold Bunny close to your chest and snuggle up against Wandas.

“So baby, do you want to play with Tony, Steve, and Clint tomorrow?” Wanda asks as she strokes your hair. You look up at your mama thoughtfully.

“Tasha be dare?” You ask with hope in your voice.

“Yes baby Nat will be there.”

“Otay. Do you fink dey know hows to woller skate?” You ask her. You had just recently turned 3 in your little state. Steve, Tony, and Clint were all 4 so they had a year on you, give or take. So you hoped someone would be able to teach you.

“Maybe baby, if not mama can help teach you” Wanda said assuringly.

“Mama know how to skate?!” You look at her with big doe eyes not being able to believe that your mama knows how to skate, and better yet can teach you how.

“If mama know how to skate and baby girl know how to skate, den mama an baby girl can skate togetder!!” You say happily with excitement. Wanda laughs at how adorable you are when you speak little talk.

“Yes baby, you and I can skate together,” Mama says to you. You look up at her happily ready to hang out with everyone and stake.

You yawn and snuggle closer into Wanda's chest ready to let the beating of her heart send you to sleep. Wanda sees you struggle to keep your eyes open.

“Close your eyes baby girl,” Mama says. That’s all the convincing that you need before your eyelids drop close.

When you wake up your head is still against mama's chest and she has her arms around you, but you see that you are no longer on the couch in the living room. Your in Wanda’s room- no your in your shared room with Wanda.

After you dropped, Wanda and you decided it was best to move in together. Even though you were just one door over. But you liked sharing a room with Wanda. You got to cuddle with her every night and wake up to her every morning.

You didn’t have a lot of stuff to move into Wanda's room so the move was easy. Most of your clothes were already in Wanda’s room since you spent nights with her so frequently, and the few things you do have are small.

You are still a bit tired and Wanda is still sleeping so you fall back asleep. When Wanda wakes up she is in the same position as when she went to sleep. You on top of her with your head on her chest, legs tangled together and her arms around you.

You don’t weigh enough to crush Wanda when you sleep on top of her, just enough to create a comfortable weight. You are like Wanda's weighted blanket. Keeping her warm at night and adding weight on top of her.

Seeing that it was 10:30 a.m. Wanda decided to wake you up as your play date with everyone was around lunch time.

“Baby girl,” Wanda says as she shakes you awake. You fuss for a minute not wanting to be pulled from your slumber, but when you see Wanda looking at you with love you suddenly forget all about sleep.

“Mama!!” you chirp happily. Wanda chuckles and kisses your cheeks.

“Morning, baby. Are you ready for today?” Wanda asks.

“Yay, can’t waits” You say back.

Wanda starts to untangle herself from you to your displeasure. You whine and pull on her arm.

“Baby we have to get up and ready if we want to play with everyone and roller skate”

“Woller skate!!!” You say cheerfully as you jump out of bed.

Wanda helps you get ready and by 11:30 you guys are ready to go. You put your shoes on, proud that you didn’t need mama's help, that is until she stops you.

“Hey baby, you got your shoes on the wrong feet,” Mama says as she crouches down to help you put them on the right way.

“There you go,” she says as she slips on your left splatter print croc on. She holds out her hand for you to take as you both walk down the hall.

Everyone is waiting in the common room in the compound. Steve, Tony, and Clint are already little and are playing with various toys. Tony is playing with an Iron Man action figure, Steve is playing with hot wheels, and Clint is playing with lego’s. Pepper, Bucky, Laura, Natasha, and Thor were all on the couch talking.

You spot Bunny on the couch that you and Wanda were on yesterday night. You tug Wanda towards Bunny not wanting to let go of her hand. You pick up Bunny and hug her to your chest.

“Hey Y/N,” Clint says, “Do you want to play lego’s with me?”

“No play with me Y/N” Tony insists.

“She doesn't want to play with you Tony, she wants to play with me!” Clint says, raising his voice.

“Why would she want to play with you? She doesn’t even like you” Tony says matter of factly.

“Boys” Pepper warns them.

“Y/N can play with anyone she wants, just let her choose. You don’t need to fight about it.” Laura says. You look between the two.

Letting go of mama's hand you walk toward Tony and he sticks his tongue out at Clint.

“Haha told you she wanted to play with-” Tony stops mid sentence as you walk right past him and walk over to Steve.

Pepper and Wanda just laugh and Bucky smiles.

“Guess she didn’t want to play with you guys since you were too busy fighting,” Laura says to the boys. Tony and Clint pout and look at Steve and you.

“Hi, can I pway wit you?” You ask Steve.

“Yeah, you can pick your favorite car,” Steve says pointing at the various cars scattered around him.

You spot a 2009 green Honda CR-V and instantly choose it. It reminds you of your mama’s eyes.

“I wike dis one. Mama, mama wook! It wook wike your eyes,” you exclaim. Wanda over at you and smiles while nodding her head.

You and Steve play cars for a while racing them on the floor, until lunch time. There’s hot dogs, chips, fruits, and veggies.

After Wanda fixes your plate for you everyone sits at the table. Wanda places your plate next to hers and you look up at her with big eyes, wanting to sit on her lap.

“Mama,” you say quietly, looking down as you ask her “can I sit on your lap?”

“Of course baby,” Wanda says. When she sits down you climb up on her lap with a smile on your face. You eat your hot dog and chips in a comfortable silence.

“Mama?” You ask as you eat your last chip.

“Yes baby girl?”

“Can we woller skate now?” You ask as you look up at her.

“Yes, baby we can roller skate now,” Wamda says

“OOO mommy can I roller skate with Y/N too?” Tony asks Pepper.

“Yeah I want to too,” Clint says.

“How bout we all go out and roller skate?” Wanda suggests getting cheers and noises of approval. Bucky and Pepper get skates out of the training room. Why they have a bunch of roller skates just sitting around nobody knows.

Outside the avengers compound littles and their caregivers were putting on their skates. Learning from this morning you put your skates on the right feet, but you need help tying them up. Wanda ties up your laces and stands up.

You try to stand up but can’t by yourself. You frown and try again, but the back wheels on our heels keep turning.

Wanda sees you struggle and holds out her hands for you. You grab onto your mama's hands as she helps you stand.

When you finally get off the ground you start to slowly roll forward. Luckily Wanda is still holding your hands so you don’t get far.

“You ready, baby?” Wanda asks you. You nod your head still a little unsteady, but you know mama will catch you before you fall.

“Yes mama I’m red-ready” you say as you wobble back and forth. You start to move forward when Wanda starts to move.

Wanda moves forward with ease. And your eyes go wide.

“Wooooooow you can woller skate,” you say in awe.

“Every won wook! My mama can skate!” You say pointing to your mama. Your mama smiles at you as everyone looks at her. She lets go of your arms and skates around everyone. All the littles look at her with unbelieving expressions.

When Wanda skates back to you she sees that you had tried to follow her. While trying to follow her your front left wheel hits a rock you didn’t see. The sudden stop makes you lose your balance. About to fall face first into the cement you brace for impact.

You wait. Except it never comes. When you open your eyes you see that mama used her powers to stop you from eating some cement, and stopped a big meltdown in front of everyone.

Red wisps of magic gently bring you back to her. Only once her hand is safely collapsed around yours do her eyes stop glowing red.

“You okay baby?” She asks you worried that she didn’t stop you in time. You hug her tight thanking her for not letting you fall.

Wanda shows you how to move your feet to move forward. You struggle for a bit, but Wanda helps you until you finally move forward on your own.

“Wook mama!! I’m doin it!” You say as your mama smiles and cheers you on. You look back behind you and see Pepper helping Tony skate for the first time. Clint and Steve were racing against each other already knowing how to skate.You skate slowly back to mama and hug her.

“I love you mama,” you say, and everyone around you lets out ‘awws’. Wanda looks a little shocked. You've told her that when you were big, but never when you were little.

Wanda can feel the tears brimming at her eyes.

“I love you too baby girl.”

Here in this moment, surrounded by your family, by mama, you feel the most loved.

After roller skating for a while you went back inside where mama and Tasha cuddled you on the couch until you started feeling sleepy.

“You ready to go baby girl?” Wanda asks you.

“Go where?” You ask curiously.

“Back to our room so you can sleep baby.”

“Otay,” you say sleepily. Wanda stood up and held her hand out for you. But you were too tired to walk all the way down the hall to your bedroom.

“Mama, can you carry me, pwease?” Wanda picks you up and sets you on her hip. You wrap your arms and legs around her.

“You’re like a koala baby,” she says. Which reminds you of something.

“Wait, mama, Bunny,” you say pointing to the stuffed koala. Nat is sitting by the koala and hands it to you.

“Fanks Tasha,” you say.

“Can I get a hug before you go?” Nat asks smiling, and you shake your head yes. Wanda smiles as you hug Nat. She is glad that you have found comfort in being little around people.

Wanda carries you back to your shared room and sits you down on your bed. You close your eyes ready to fall asleep, until Wanda says something.

“Baby you need to take a bath before we can go to bed.” You whine because you’re tired and you just want to snuggle up with mama until you fall asleep.

“How about mama joins you baby?” She said hoping to convince you.

You had done a lot today, after roller skating you played outside for a while before you came back inside. Tony, Steve, Clint, and you made mud cakes for everyone so you really needed a bath.

You agree to take one when you realize you can cuddle with mama in the tub. Wanda goes into the bathroom to get the water running.

When she’s done she comes out to find you half asleep, sucking on your thumb while you hold Bunny. She sighs but picks you up and carries you to the bathroom. She helps you undress and into the tub.

When she undresses she gets in the tub behind you and pulls you to her chest. She washes the dirt off your body and whispers to you about how good you were today.

“You’re such a sweet little girl for mama,” you hear her say as she finishes washing you off. You snuggle closer to her and just listen to her heartbeat.

“You ready to get out baby?” She asks you after a while. You nod your head ready to go to bed with her. Wanda helps you get out of the tub and drys you off. She helps you put on your pajamas.

She tucks you into bed with Bunny and follows soon after. When she's under the covers she wraps her arms around you. You shift as close as you can to her.

“I love you,” you say to her before closing your eyes. Wanda’s heart swells with love at your words.

“I love you too,” she says as you two drift off into sleep.

#wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff x you #wanda maximoff #female reader #age regression #caregiver #little space #loving a little #rollerskating #natasha romonova #steve rogers #tony stark #pepper potts #clint barton #writing #fanfic

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nostalgiabones · 4 years ago

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Fix It to Break It // L.H

So here is the first fic in my new Song Series, to celebrate 11,000 followers! I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who reads any of my fics or blurbs and follows me on here, I appreciate it so much, and I’m so excited to share this series with you! I want everyone to be a part of this too, so if you have any songs you’d like me to write about, let me know!

Song: Fix It to Break It — Clinton Kane. Please listen to the song as you read! It really adds to the overall vibe of the fic, I think it’s such a beautiful song.

Word count: 2,539

“Remember that time I made you laugh?”

The air in the room feels thick and heavy as Luke lifts his head, his narrow eyes on you as you avoid his gaze. Your lounge, a place that was once filled with life and laughter, almost feels unrecognisable. His voice is gravelly, almost a whisper as he speaks, like the light inside of him no longer shines so bright. Your focus is on the ground, your mind silently counting the number of panels across the floor. Anything to distract from the current moment. You don’t want to face Luke.

Things have changed.

The house that you once called home feels like an empty shell of what once was there, and all that’s left is you and Luke to pick up the pieces of each other.

“I would give in to hear that sound again.” He continues. There’s no emotion in his voice, like he has nothing left. There’s so much to say, yet so little - he doesn’t know where to start. Luke can’t bear to think back over the good times through fear of breaking down. It feels like it’s about to come to a head, like he can no longer keep it inside. There’s things that need to be said.

You were once ‘that couple,’ the one that your friends always knew you’d become; a love so pure that others wanted to feel it. They’d ask you how you do it, but neither you or Luke ever had an answer. It was just easy. It worked. The love you felt for each other overcame everything else, and that’s all there was to it.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Luke.” You admit, still avoiding his eyes.

You can feel him looking at you. He’s anxiously bouncing his knee, the sight catches your eye, and it’s not an uncommon one. He over thinks a lot. You don’t need to look at him to know how he’s feeling; the cogs are whirring in his head far too quick for even him to understand.

Luke tries to contain his temper. There’s a lot that he wants you to say, a lot of explanations he feels he deserves. He doesn’t have it in him to get mad at you. It hurts too much. A promise he once made, that nothing is solved by shouting, not after you disclosed your painful childhood to him. As hurt as he is, he isn’t going to break that. There’s only one time he raised his voice at you, and he’ll never forget the pain in your eyes when you recoiled from him. It’s enough to haunt him into never speaking loudly to anyone again.

He clears his throat.

“Things have changed,” He says, blankly, so matter-of-factly. “We’ve changed. I want you to admit that you feel it too.”

The two of you have been living in denial for too long.

Luke has woken up alone too many times. You’d slip out of bed early, blaming a morning appointment, but wouldn’t return until late afternoon. He can’t remember the last time he held you without you pushing away. There’s always a reason to not be around, always an excuse. He’d spent the whole tour wanting to be back in your arms, to feel his lips against yours. He’s been back for a month, and he still doesn’t feel like he’s home.

“You were away for a long time, Luke,” You murmur, knowing that it’s going to hit a nerve with him. Tour was always a sensitive topic. You know he won’t get mad at you, though, he never does. It’s one of the things you love about him. “Six months. I got used to being alone. I can’t just go back to normal so quickly.

He pauses for a moment.

“Did you miss me?” He asks, like he’s nervous to hear the answer.

He doesn’t get a moment to prepare for your response before you reply, “of course I did, Luke. Why would you ask me that?”

Your mind flashes back to when he was away, the late night calls when he needed to hear your voice. He couldn’t sleep without saying good night, despite what time it was where you were. Sometimes you didn’t pick up. Although, what Luke didn’t know, was that you needed to hear him just as much. It just hurt too much sometimes, to know it would be so long before you heard him in person again.

“We’ve been through tours before,” He reminds you. “It’s never taken this long for us to adjust. You’re usually so excited for me to come home. It didn’t feel like that this time.”

When he’s been touring before, the thought of getting home to you was what kept him going. Whether you managed to make it to the airport or he met you at home, the smile on your lips accompanied with the relief of a “you’re home,” made his heart soar. He’d never felt so loved, so at home — nothing beat the feeling of waking up next to you the morning after getting home. The best sleep he ever had was the night he came home from being away for so long.

It’s a feeling he misses.

He’s been home for a month, and nothing feels the same. There’s been moments where he feels as though he’s been dreaming, whether he’s misremembering your relationship before he went on tour.

He doesn’t understand how things can change so quickly.

From falling asleep with you in his arms, to feeling like you’re miles apart in the bed. Even if you somehow untangled your legs from his own in your sleep, he would search for you, craving your skin to soothe his mind back to sleep. Now, he’s on edge, he lays in the dark staring at the wall until sleep manages to encompass him. He’s lucky if he sleeps through the night.

There’s times where you sleep in the spare room, claiming you finished work too late, and didn’t want to disturb him. When really, it’s too much to be in the same bed as him, knowing that he’s hurting. You know you’re pushing him away, yet don’t know how to stop it.

You just wanted to be able to breathe.

“I just...” You sigh, brushing a hand through your hair as you slump back into the sofa. “I don’t know what to tell you. What do you want me to do?”

Luke wants to scream. He wants to tell you that he loves you, that he wants you to love him too. He knows you used to. He’s not sure you do anymore. He can’t remember the last time you told him sincerely. He still remembers the first time he told you he loved you, how even though it took you a minute to say it back, he knew you meant it. He saw it in your eyes. Now he says “I love you” and you reply “you too” — it doesn’t feel the same. Just like everything else doesn’t.

It’s the little things he misses the most. He misses talking to you, feeling connected, and just doing nothing together. He likes the reassurance of having someone around. He’s never been one to enjoy his own company, especially not after a tour, even if all you do is sit on your phones in silence. You used to put out his coffee cup in the morning, and he remembers when you stopped. He misses you singing quietly in the shower, when you think he can’t hear you. He can. And it makes his mornings that little bit brighter. He misses the sound of your laugh when you watch a repeat of a sitcom you’ve seen a hundred times.

It’s the little things that make him feel loved.

“I want you to love me like you say you do,” Luke says, as firmly as he can without his voice breaking. “I don’t want to have to remind you to love me. I shouldn’t have to do that.”

He thinks it’s unfair for you to blame him.

Tears well in your eyes at his words, the pain in his voice like a dagger through your heart as you listen to him speak. “You know that I love you, Luke.”

“No I don’t.” He replies. He’s just being honest. “You used to. I don’t know if-”

“I do.” You cut him off, not wanting to hear the end of the sentence. It makes sense that he doesn’t feel it anymore, as much as you don’t want to admit it. You’ve pushed him away. “You know the moment I fell in love with you. I didn’t lie when I said I’ve never loved someone like I love you. That doesn’t just go away.”

He does know the moment you’re talking about. It was one of the first times he took you home to Australia, to meet his family, when you saw just how loving and gentle he is. The way he loves his family is like nothing you’ve ever seen. He has the biggest heart. He glowed different that weekend; his Mum saw it too, she told you.

Everything felt like it had fallen into place.

You were in his childhood bedroom, just having a moment to yourselves, when he had kissed you like nothing else mattered, in that moment. You felt immersed by him, like you were meant to be there with him. Where you had murmured the words “You’re a real sweetheart, you know that? I’ve never felt love like this before.” and he swore he’d never love anybody else either.

Those days feel like a distant memory now.

“I got too used to you not being here.” You continue to explain. Six months is a long time. You threw yourself into work, into anything but thinking about how much you missed him. Maybe too much, because now you’ve forgotten how things once were. “I’m not blaming this on you, Luke. I know that touring means the world to you. I just had to stop myself from sitting around and waiting for you to come home.”

It’s not the first relationship Luke’s damaged by being away. It’s a common theme in his life, actually, but he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place. The band comes first. Yet he’s not sure he can do this again.

“I feel like I’ve lost you.” He admits, and now it’s his turn to tear up. There’s a lump in his throat, you can hear it in his voice. “I wanted to have this conversation for weeks now. I didn’t know if I was just making it up, that things felt so different, but they do. And I don’t know how to fix it.”

You dare to look in his direction. You find his eyes, the usual sparkling blue now dulled by the pain behind them, and it’s then you remember why you were looking away.

“I think we need to find each other again,” You admit, quietly. Easier said than done. You suddenly feel the desire to get up and sit next to him, to be close to him. It’s like he knows, like he can read your mind, and he shuffles up on the sofa to make space. You sigh heavily, your body feeling like dead weight as your feet carry you across the room. You’re almost nervous to sit next to him. “I don’t know how we do that. But we need to try.”

We. Something Luke feels like you haven’t been for a while.

“I need more.” Luke tells you. He needs more love, more affection, more conversation… more everything. He wants to feel like he’s in a relationship again. He wants to feel the love you say you have for him. He wants to feel like he’s enough for you. “I can’t go on like this. You’re worth the pain if you want to try and make this work. I just want to feel like we mean something to each other again.”

You feel like you’re lost in a crowd somewhere, or floating in the ocean, drifting further apart. Except maybe now is the time that you find each other again.

“Look at me, Luke.” You murmur, moving even closer, your hand resting on his shaking thigh to calm him down. You hear him inhale, exhale, and his eyes finally meet yours. Your voice is merely a whisper as you talk to him. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I love you so much that sometimes it hurts.”

Luke feels like he could break down on the spot when he finally looks you in the eye. It takes him back to every moment where he’s felt consumed by you, and for just a moment, he thinks that somehow, things might end up okay.

“I need to know that you’re in this for the long run.” He tells you, his eyes pleading with you more than his words are. “I’m always going to go on tour. I don’t want to go through this every time I come home. I can’t do this again.”

You nod, and your hand runs up and down his thigh in a soothing gesture.

“I’m right here,” You reassure him, your hand cupping his cheek as your thumb rubs over his cheekbones. For the first time in weeks, he feels like he can breathe, he feels safer than he thought he could in his house. “I know I haven’t been. And I know I have a lot of making up to do. But I’m going to be around to get us through this.”

Those are the words he’s longed to hear for weeks. You sit in silence for a few moments, just absorbing the conversation - just being in each other’s presence.

“That’s enough talking for now.” Luke whispers. He lays back against the cushions of the sofa, holding his arm out for you to lay against him. You oblige, sighing as you lay against his chest, the material of his jumper soft against your cheek. It’s like everything has stopped, like everything feels right once again. It feels like he hasn’t done this for months. Silently, he takes one hand to tilt your chin so your face is right in front of his. There’s pain in your eyes too, he can see it. His nose gently taps yours, and you move your face closer, before he’s brushing his lips against yours.

And then he’s kissing you.

It’s a real kiss, one that has meaning, feelings, more than anything he’s felt in weeks. The only affection he’d had for weeks was a passing kiss in the morning, sometimes before bed, but it didn’t feel like this. Your lips are soft yet slightly chapped; he tries to savour every detail. He just wants to feel close to you. His kisses taper off and he’s sighing contently, unsure where you’re going to go next, but feeling safer than he has for a while.

“Maybe we just had to break to be fixed.”

Things are far from perfect. Weeks of pain cannot be solved by one kiss. Yet you’re going to try, and that’s all Luke needs to know. You just need to find each other again.

***

Please please let me know what you think, and if you have any requests for songs you want me to write about! Thanks for reading 🥰

Masterlist

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#ahhhh I really hope you’re excited for this series!#I have some really exciting things coming up #Luke Hemmings au #5sos au #5sos fic #boyfriend!5sos #boyfriend!5sos blurbs #boyfriend!sos #boyfriend 5sos blurbs #boyfriend sos blurbs #Luke Hemmings blurbs #Luke Hemmings blurb #lhblurb #songseries #5sos blurbs #luke hemmings x reader #mywriting

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luhrmannatural · 3 years ago

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Favorite Destiel Fics of 2021

We’re a few days into 2022 now but I wanted to make a list of my favorite fics I read in 2021! I keep track of all the fics I read using notion but I thought it would be cool to also have a list somewhere of what my actual favorites were. I’m going to list 10 short fics and 10 longer fics, which I placed in arbitrary categories based on which fics I thought were long enough to download and read offline. Honorable mention to deathbanjo who I read for the first time this year and whose work will not be forgotten <3 List of fics under the cut (in order of length, not preference)!

Short Fics

The Right Time by relucant, T, 776 words. I somehow unearthed this one day after spending way too much time on fanlore reading about the No Homo Intern in the writers’ room, which was a spnblr meme literal years ago. The meme was still really hazy in my memory even after I read about it, but this fic felt like a time capsule into 2015/16 destiel fandom. None of the characters are in this. It’s basically just a scene about the writers debating whether or not to make destiel canon. It’s so true to how we as fans viewed each writer back then, and even still do to this day. This one just really made me laugh and was full of nostalgia.

Your Will Be Done by awed_frog, T, 3k. Sam centric fic that takes place during the Casifer arc and explores how Sam feels about Lucifer possessing his best friend with a side of destiel. Perfect for me because understanding Sam doesn’t come as naturally to me as some of the other characters but I love reading about him when he’s written by people who really get him. As a Dean understander I can be pretty picky about what I’ll like, but when it comes to Sam I’m just SO excited to be reading about him that I know I’ll love anything that focuses on him without falling into some of the more common tropes (ie being secondary to/obsessed with Dean and Cas).

what needed to happen by lamphouse, G, 3.8k. Post Empty rescue fic based on the New Girl cookie scene. Somehow made me incredibly emotional despite being based on a scene from a sitcom. I’ll never see New Girl in the same way again.

the nature and scope of knowledge by saltyfeathers, T, 4.4k. Coda to The Prisoner that manages to be SO tender despite how violent that episode is. I read this right after getting to this episode on my rewatch and I totally recommend that experience.

Remember us in life by a_good_soldier, T, 5.1k. Finale fix it that deals with TFW’s perceptions of self. This fic deals a lot with queerness in relation to Christianity and is probably the shortest fic to ever make me fully break down sobbing. I don’t think I will ever forget reading this. It was incredibly therapeutic for me because of my experiences, but I think even if I hadn’t had those experiences, I’d love this fic because of how incredibly the characters are written, especially Sam, who usually just doesn’t get enough love in destiel fics (as I already mentioned).

Noctambulation by MalMuses, T, 5.8k. Yet another fix it, because that’s 90% of the short fics that I read this year. Cas becomes human after being rescued and starts sleepwalking. One of the softest things I’ve ever read and the writing style reflects that from beginning to end.

what’s there to talk about by FagurFiskur, M, 6k. This fic is all about how Sam views Dean’s bisexuality at different points in his life. By now I think it’s obvious how much I love getting solid Sam content out of a fic, and anything that centers bi Dean automatically becomes a must read for me, so getting two in one was great. To me it just feels like a really honest portrait about how family members are affected by a loved one’s journey with their sexuality. I think it shows how much Sam really loves Dean and wants him to be happy without veering into shipper!Sam territory, which is not my favorite thing to read.

In Due Time (Dean Winchester is Saved) by caelum_writes, T, 11k. Post finale fic where pre-series Dean gets transported to the present day and sees what his life is like (featuring baby Jack). I love anything with pre-series Dean, but this one really stood out to me. What I love about it is how young Dean gets the space to talk with all three members of TFW in the present and get their perspectives on the path their lives have taken. And the ending brought it all together so beautifully.

Broadway Musical by Griftings, M, 12k. Heaven wants Dean and Jo to be together, and Cas is charged with making it happen. I read this one before I decided to start keeping track of what I read in more detail, so it’s a little fuzzy by now, but I remember thinking this fic was absolutely hilarious.

pieces by museaway, M, 15k. This fic is basically just a series of scenes from Cas’ POV except Destiel is canon the entire time. I read this pretty early on in the year when I was still damaged from the finale and I think it fixed me.

Long(er) Fics

an emptying by museaway, M, 26k. After falling, Cas loses his memories but keeps having nightmares about Dean. Dean eventually finds him and Cas learns more about who he is. I’m being vague so I don’t spoil it, but this one is great and very underrated compared to some of this author’s other work.

Undone by domesticadventures, E, 27k. This is an endverse fic that diverges from canon during season 4 and follows endverse Cas’ POV through the events of 5x04. Also the reason I’m making this list in 2022 since I finished it on December 31. This is a heavy fic, so mind the tags! This author simply does not miss, so if you like this one you should also check out their episode codas!

the inexhaustible silence of houses by Askance, T, 31k, MCD. I remember this fic being one of the only ones that was regularly mentioned when I first joined tumblr in 2013. It has a lot of hits, but I feel like newer fans might not know about it since I haven’t really seen it around much since I created this sideblog last year. I never read it when I was on spnblr the first time, but I remembered the title for all these years, so it was one of the first ones I downloaded when I decided I wanted to start reading fic again. I was apprehensive about it because I was afraid of being disappointed after how popular I remember it being, but it drew me in right away. The writing was so atmospheric, and it was such a beautiful story despite the heavy content. Also probably one of the best closing lines I’ve ever read.

Dark Side of the Moon by imogenbynight, M, 37k. AU where Dean gets stranded on the moon after a mission goes wrong and Cas is on the team that rescues him. This is a really creative AU that I read pretty recently. Thinking about the amount of research that must have gone into this makes me appreciate it so much more than I did just from reading it. I especially loved all the side characters and how they contributed to the story.

Put up your Dukes by saltyfeathers, E, 38k. This one is pretty popular so I don’t think I need to say too much, but it’s an incredibly h*rny case fic that also has some really sweet moments and had me laughing out loud at multiple points.

Every Part of the Animal by Askance and komodobits, M, 47k, MCD. I genuinely think this is the best komodobits fic even though I love them all. This is a canon divergent horror fic based on The Descent, which is a movie I have never seen. For that reason, I can’t say how accurate it is compared to the film, but I thought the way it weaved spn canon into a pre-existing movie was really interesting and clever. Extremely underrated as far as komodobits goes, probably because of the MCD tag combined with all the other tags. This is the only work of horror I’ve ever read that’s had me feeling genuinely scared. My jaw actually dropped at one point and I was reading with my mouth open. This story just did not stop. I also felt like there was a point to all the horror, which isn’t always the case for me.

And This, Your Living Kiss by opal_bullets, M, 56k. I think everyone has read this at this point, but I’m listing it anyway because I’d be lying if I didn’t. THEE poet Dean fic. AUs can be really hit or miss for me, but this one definitely hits. It somehow manages to be one of the best Dean character studies I’ve ever read despite not being canonverse, and it also has some of my favorite scenes between Sam and Dean across all fics.

The Goldenrod Revisions by aethylas, M, 66k. The ultimate finale fix it. Another fic I’ve seen on my dash fairly often, and for good reason. I think this fic is going to become a staple even when I rewatch the show. I don’t think I’ll ever watch (the acceptable parts of) season 15 again without reading this immediately after.

i want to do with you (what spring does with cherry trees) by sobsicles, E, 74k. Sobsicles has a lot of great fics but this one is easily my favorite. I love anything that reworks canon over the long term, but the focus on Dean losing Cas over and over and how he copes with it in this one makes it hit on a different level.

Cinderwings by bendingsignpost, M, 181k. Another well-known fic but it deserves it! Cinderella AU but it’s so much more than that. Cas goes to a masquerade ball in disguise to complete a mission that will save his people. In addition to a great overarching story, there are so many small details that really make this one stand out, like how Cas perceives the cultural differences he encounters. If you’re going to read any long fic, it should be this one.

#i have SO much appreciation for people who do fic recs after doing this because it took forever and a lot of these are already popular #destiel #fic rec #ao3 #fic blogging #a.txt

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funkymbtifiction · 4 years ago

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Re: the recent request about "merging" and also your post a while back about reminding you to talk about 9s and their interactions with entertainment media (movies, etc.) - whenever you have time I would love to hear your thoughts on this! What exactly does "merging" mean? Is it a lack of emotional boundaries? Or a kind of easy identification with characters? Thank you! I hope you're having a good week so far!

9s merge into whatever is happening around them and get swallowed up by it, whether that is other people with louder personalities or the world in general. They have no real boundary against the outer world, and it consumes them. So naturally, 9s would get ‘swallowed up’ by entertainment and merge into it, partly because the brain doesn’t consciously discern between false and real realities in terms of what we “see” happening. 9s think they lack the inner resources to stop this from happening and put up a boundary, so they are ‘helpless’ against it until they realize that they totally can put up a boundary and block things from becoming ‘part of them’ but until that happens... they get swept along.

I have at least eight separate 9 friends that I interact with on a regular basis, so I have a lot of time to watch and think about them. And one thing in particular struck me as interesting -- I happen to love the remake of 3:10 to Yuma. I think it’s a great western, but two of my 9 friends hated it and love the original... so I decided to watch it for comparison. And midway through the original, it dawned on me that the original is the “9 version” and the remake is the “8 version.” The original has a rather pleasant, mild-mannered, congenial villain who even though he is a murderer is a pleasant villain to be around--and the remake’s villain is someone who stabs people in the face with forks and shoves them off cliffs. The original villain is someone you could pleasantly see spend a few years in prison and you wouldn’t mind them getting out again, and the remake villain would probably cut your throat in your sleep. Not only that, the movies themselves are 9ish vs. 8ish in their overall vibe -- slow moving and dreamy original, intense and visceral remake. So I laughed and thought, “Of course 9s would prefer the original, it’s so much more pleasant!” There’s nothing in it to upset them particularly or make them merge into anything they don’t like.

That caused me to start thinking about the other 9 feelers I know and their movie preferences... and how I was usually the one to engage them in stepping outside their movie comfort zone and consider watching something more intense. Some of them loved it, but others did not; and I noticed they had a lot of favorite shows and whatnot where the conflict was all very muted and/or easily resolved. Several episodes into the West Wing, I commented to one that “nothing much happens.” She practically beamed as she said, “I know! It calms me!!“ Another 9 loved old sitcoms because they’re funny. One 9 had a bad reaction to a movie where her favorite actor played a villain, because it made her feel like she was a bad person too for merging into him (as usual). It’s almost like the barriers come down and they are ‘part of’ the characters or the stories; in some instances, it feels for Fi-doms like things are happening TO THEM due to the self-insertion that happens instinctually with Fi-9.

I’ve also noticed as writers, they avoid spending too much time with villains or maybe do not want to create them in the first place. This puzzled me (tbh, I live for writing villains and anti-heroes) so I asked some questions and got a lot of similar answers -- they didn’t want to “spend that much time” with a villain (same for reading about them, or someone they “dislike”) or merge into them, they did not want to think about unpleasant, mean, cruel things (because it would be them doing it in their imagination), and they want to keep things overall mild-mannered and free of conflict. Internal conflict rather than external villains is a huge theme I’ve noticed, especially with FP + 9s. Jan Karon’s Mitford books are written from a 9 point of view (everything calm, peaceful, even-keeled), and most of the direct conflict comes from inside her 9 Father Tim -- who angsts about making minor changes in his life, procrastinates about asking out the beautiful woman next door for months, and sits calmly throughout an 8′s tantrum without moving or saying anything. Karon “leaves the room” for a lot of unpleasant scenes and conversations, leaving you to imagine what was said or done / the fall-out, I presume because she doesn’t want to “live them out.” I’ve seen other 9s avoid writing too much about a bad guy, decide to take him out of a draft, or struggle with writing something with a truly evil person in it. Another 9 friend wrote an entire novel where the only villain was internal angst.

This seems to be more common in feeler 9s than thinker 9s; an ISTP 9 I know has no trouble reading or writing about bad guys, although she doesn’t like certain kinds of intensity in entertainment and admitted it once took her hours and hours to get through an hour and a half long movie, because it was “too much” (too intense, everybody dies, nothing good or nice happens).

9s want to use movies and books and writing to “relax” and relation for them is of course PLEASANT. They want to be at inner peace and that means shutting out or avoiding anything that threatens to make them uncomfortable.

One 9w8 ISFP doesn’t mind watching unpleasant or dark things, but she gets mad about all of them. Her reaction to the 1979 version of Dracula surprised me until I thought about it from a 9w8 perspective. 8s are afraid of having their autonomy taken away from them -- and this Dracula does that to people. He charms them, bedazzles them, or puts them under an “allure” -- her Fi + 9w8 did not like that and it put her on the defense against him. The idea of being ‘violated’ by having her will removed made her hate him immediately and she took it a step further by also hating his 8w7 girlfriend. She “merged” and made it about her reaction to it, rather than just sitting and watching it platonicly.

9s want to avoid intensity at all costs (that’s how you can tell them apart from 7s) which intrigues me, because my 6w7 loves intensity in fiction -- it’s a way for me to safely experience a bunch of different intense feelings and situations all without leaving the comfort of my own couch. But I even notice my 9 fix merging into movies sometimes and blurring the distance between ‘me’ and ‘them.’ It seems to happen when the narrative is too dark and/or depressing -- for some reason, I merged a lot into Mad Men and it made me depressed, and I had a hard time watching Girl, Interrupted as well. So for me it’s sporadic and seems to be based on whether there is any ‘hope’ at the end of the tunnel or not.

#question #enneagram #enneagram 9

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nevervalentines · 4 years ago

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on the nights that dani can’t sleep, jamie keeps her company.

Some nights are worse than others.

Logically, Dani knows that she fell asleep in her bed. Jamie had gone to sleep before her, but she’d stayed up late, sifting through boxes they had dragged out of the attic that morning.

The old tenant – who Jamie and Dani have started just affectionately referring to as Agnes, inventing convoluted backstories when they get bored – had left crates of her castaways in the crawlspace behind the bedroom, in the attic hatch at the top of the stairs, and their landlord promised a break on the rent if they sorted through it for him.

Dani doesn’t mind. Jamie’s been working steadily on some sort of project, eyes bright in that way Dani knows, even now, means she’ll tell her when she’s ready – but she has a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with the storefront that emptied out on Main Street a few weeks before.

She needs something to fill her days beyond worry, beyond avoiding her own reflections, a habit she feels she only had the luxury of a few days without. It’s not as bad now, not with Jamie beside her, but the prickling unease creeps up at night, a feeling like being watched, one that burns when the candlelight doesn’t.

She’d found a dusty cardboard box of beaten, well-loved paperbacks among the junk in the attic, and laid them out on the living room rug carefully, paging through the broken spines, earmarking a few to send to Miles and Flora, for when they’re older, setting aside others that she can imagine Jamie nose deep in on the porch in jean shorts and a too-tiny tank top.

She’d crawled into bed sometime around midnight, and Jamie, half-asleep, had immediately turned into her warmth, burying her face in her chest, arm snaking around her waist.

Sleep had almost come easy, tangled in a soft quilt and Jamie’s long, bare legs, but now –

Water fills her mouth, her eyes, her nose. Dani can feel the pressure deep in her ears, like she is 12-years-old again, chasing neighbors to the bottom of the in-ground pool in Edmund’s back yard, daring each other to stay down the longest, until lungs were fit to bursting, and eardrums throbbed with the rhythm of a heartbeat.

Then, it was as simple as pushing off the cool, tile bottom, straining for watery sunlight and that first, ecstatic gasping inhale. Now, there is no relief.

Dani wakes up drowning.

It’s Jamie that seems to save her. She hears the repetition of her name, a worried hum in the back of a throat, then a warm hand cupping her neck, her cheek, stroking gentle over her forehead.

“Dani, baby, it’s okay.” The hands help her sit up, a body curls around her back. “Just a dream, sweetheart. Just a dream. I’m right here. Breathe, Dani, breathe.”

She opens her eyes and it’s like she can see Jamie from a great distance, through the water. Her eyes are wild, image distorted, but she looks older somehow. She is screaming.

They are both screaming.

When she finally wrenches free from the nightmare, she is sweat-drenched and trembling. Jamie, her Jamie, is holding her tight against her chest, smoothing back Dani’s matted bangs and murmuring nonsense against her temple.

Gasping, Dani thinks she might cry, and realizes her cheeks are already wet. She turns her head to find Jamie’s wide, worried eyes.

“There you are,” Jamie says. She exhales, shaky. “That was a bad one, huh?”

Dani nods, chokes around her own voice until she manages the two-syllable break of Jamie’s name.

Soothing, Jamie cradles her closer, turns a kiss into the apple of her cheek, rubs her nose against her temple. In the sling of her hips, the warm-soft-damp of the inside of bare thighs holds Dani close, and that grounds her as much as anything – to be held, to have no one at her back but someone she trusts completely.

“Jamie,” this again, lips tucked into her mouth, a little embarrassed now. “I’m so sorry –”

Jamie clicks her tongue, chiding. “Don’t apologize.” She shifts out from under Dani’s weight, slides to the end of the bed. “I was just thinking I’d gotten my eight hours, anyway.”

Eyes cast to the bedside, Dani can see the neon digits of the alarm clock only advertise 4:30 a.m., but she doesn’t correct her, just reaches for her, a little put out that Jamie has already moved away.

“Alright, clingy, let me just get you a fresh shirt.”

Dani manages a laugh, a little tear-soaked, and sniffles. “I’m so sweaty.”

Rummaging through the top drawer of their armoire, Jamie turns to her curiously. “Like you’ve jumped in a pool. Someone tell your body it’s October, it’s well freezing in here.”

She tosses a t-shirt toward the bed, and Dani recognizes it as one of Jamie’s – black, with a scratchy decal boasting Blondie’s 1977 tour circuit. Despite the lingering sour of the dream, she feels a pulse of pleasure that Jamie would choose one of her own shirts to outfit her in. The smell alone is comforting, even though their laundry loads have long mixed, the fabric still holds something of Jamie about it.

She peels off her own shirt, skin bare underneath, and can practically hear the Looney Tune-esque sproing as Jamie’s eyes narrow in on – and instantly avert away from – her chest. It makes her giggle around another sniff, and she preens a little bit, ruffles one hand through her hair while shaking out the fresh shirt.

Jamie stops pretending not to look, wobbles a step closer instead.

“No fair,” she says, lowly. “You’re in a vulnerable state, stop showing off.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Dani says, though, yeah, maybe she is a little bit. It’s new, this – that thing where watching someone else be turned on by her also kind of gets her off. That even in the near-black of their bedroom, lit only by the glow of the clock and muted streetlights, her naked chest is enough to give Jamie that dizzy, milk-drunk kind of look.

She pulls the shirt over her head, snuggles into the fabric, dipping her nose into the collar for a whiff of detergent.

“Back to bed?” she asks, though her voice sounds unconvincing, even to her.

Skeptical, Jamie steps closer, lays a hand on her knee. “Could you sleep?”

“Probably not,” Dani admits. Shrugs. “I might just go lay down on the couch. I don’t want to keep you up.”

Jamie is already heading out of the room, looking back at Dani like she’s confused why she isn’t following.

“We’ll put something on,” she says. Holds out a hand, and says, awfully, terribly, like it’s common sense, like there’s no other option, “you aren’t waiting up on your own.”

There is still the phantom catch of water in her lungs, still faces forming in the shadows of the room in her peripherals, ghosts there, waiting with catching hands – but the inevitably of it feels impossible in light of Jamie’s certainty. Jamie who, after stepping through the doorway, knows without looking that Dani will follow.

The worst nights, the nights like these, when the Beast presses like a headache, they pop an old VHS tape into the VCR and Jamie tucks behind her on the living room couch. The blue wash from the portly, pot-bellied television set and the whir-click-hiss of the VHS unspooling triggers a placebo of near-instant calm.

The VHS tapes are also a gift from dear (likely departed) Agnes. A painstakingly catalogued box of taped Happy Days reruns, with careful handwriting detailing the original airdate, and the episode range on the cassette. Inexplicably the thirteenth episode of every season is missing. Entire nights have been spent arguing the logic of it to no avail.

Like she does every time, Dani compliments (presumably) Agnes’s organization. “Really did us a favor, huh?” she says, sinking back into Jamie’s arms, accepting a kiss against her cheek before wriggling closer.

“Is it a favor?” Jamie asks, a little snarky, nudging her hips against Dani’s, pinned between her and the back of the couch. “Or is this some sort of purgatory? Am I due to spend the rest of my life watching Happy Days reruns before daybreak with my sweaty girlfriend?”

“Hey!” It’s a difficult angle, but Dani tries to swat at Jamie anyway. Jamie just holds her tighter, buries a laugh at the nape of Dani’s neck, then a kiss.

“I’m not sweaty,” Dani says, a beat, “anymore. And we both know hell isn’t a 70s sitcom.”

Internally, the word girlfriend is spiraling through her head in a frenzied whirr. Forbidden. Delicious.

Jamie grants her another kiss, this one just under her jaw. “It better not be.”

The drone of the television in the background is enough to scare the shadows away, and Jamie drags a knit throw over the both of them, hooks her chin over her shoulder, one hand playing at the drawstring of Dani’s sweatpants. They’re lazy enough, sleepy enough, that they don’t even bother to fast forward through the commercials, just let the tape run through seven-year-old advertisements for Kellogg’s cereal and sugar-free JELL-O.

The world narrows to this sliver of couch, to Jamie stroking low on her stomach, a hand slipped up under her shirt now, unrushed, nearly unintentional. She traces shapes on the soft of Dani’s belly, inches up toward Dani’s breast like she’s considering, before running her nails gently back down.

“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” Dani says, voice slurred with almost-sleep, spooning back into Jamie’s hips until she hears her hiss.

“Who said anything about finishing?” Jamie murmurs. Teeth at the lobe of Dani’s ear, nosing into skin. The click of mouth on the metal stud of Dani’s earing, breath warm. “I could do this all night.”

Eventually, she’ll take pity, tune out the laugh track, slip her hand under the band of Dani’s sweats, mouthing at her neck until the Lady is the last thing on Dani’s mind.

Credits roll, the tape clunks to an anticlimactic finish, and the blue screen washes them, static crackling in fizzing threads.

“I change my mind,” Jamie groans. Dani turns in her arms, reaching for her wrist, digging nails in until Jamie curls two fingers inside her, swallowing her gasps, “If this is purgatory, I think I’ll stay.”

#the haunting of bly manor #dani x jamie #dani clayton #my writing #will i ever let dani actually sleep?????#remains to be seen #at least shes getting fingered i guess!!#in this economy take what u can get #dedicated to all the nice anons...u guy r the real mvps

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mimik-u · 4 years ago

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Flower Child, Chapter 17: Fall

AO3 Link

In defiance of every atom, of every primordial instinct that told her to run, Priyanka Maheswaran found herself in the slaughterhouse as the steel analog clock on the wall dragged her into the next minute.

5:55 PM.

But the hands of time were relentless. They kept moving, kept circling across the swath of smooth white. Seconds and seconds and seconds. Unthinking. Disinterested. Inexorable.

Seconds and seconds and seconds.

They piled upon the altar like dry kindling. One spark, and they would smoke; they would simply burn, and the reek of charnel would suffocate her where she languished and sat in the slaughterhouse, where all dreams crumbled—embers becoming charcoaled dust.

5:56.

In approximately two hundred and forty seconds, in four minutes more, Steven Universe’s guardians would file in through the door directly across from the nephrologist. She would implore them to sit with a terse nod of her head. She would not tell them that the medical staff who worked on the Truman Ward colloquially called the conference room directly across the nurse’s station—this very room—the slaughterhouse, where doctors brought the family members of patients in and didn’t leave them unchanged when they finally came out.

I’m sorry, they would say to someone’s mother, father, sibling, lover, friend, daughter, son.

We did all that we could, but the damage was too extensive.

We’ve tried everything, but your loved one is dead.

Your loved one is going to die.

I’m sorry, she would say.

She would adopt her best patient voice, which had only ever managed to be adequate. It wouldn’t be enough; her throat would strain against the sound, the crease between her eyes betraying that she was afraid.

They would see right through her.

I’m sorry, she would say anyway. She would plead. It would be the last defense against complete dissolution that she had.

She’d bring the cleaver down upon the smiles she’d wrought on their careworn faces only just that morning.

It would be quick and brutal.

Barbaric even.

I’m sorry.

She had not intended to come here—not for any patient if she could help it.

Not for Steven Universe most of all.

But life was perverse, and it was so damn unkind; it knew nothing of intentions and hopes, dreams and childish wishes. It cared little for found families and fourteen-year old boys who needed kidneys.

5:57.

Priyanka sat at the head of the long table, her hands clasped in a rigid temple upon its smooth, gray surface, knuckles white from the simple exertion of clenching them. And then, as the seconds ticked by, as they smoked, as they gathered, as they burned, the room dissolved beneath her, stolen into nothingness by the snatch of a memory, an echo from a ghost who died nearly fifteen years ago…

She had possessed a beatific smile.

Her hair fell across her gowned shoulders in flowing, pink ringlets.

Rose Quartz went into labor two weeks before her due date.

It was a starless August night.

Balmy.

The world outside slept, lulled by the susurrant hush of the wind.

Though her contractions were coming steadily, Dr. Howard’s parenthetically lined mouth grew thinner each time his hawklike eyes slid towards the monitor which registered the twenty-six year old’s increasing blood pressure. She’d been admitted the week prior for severe headaches, a symptom consistent with her kidney disease, sure, but her blood tests indicated that she was hypertensive, too.

They started her on corticosteroids to help the baby’s still-developing lungs.

Dr. Howard took Priyanka off of all her other cases.

Made it her priority to stick to Room 11078 and to page him immediately if Rose’s blood pressure spiked to 140/90 mm/Hg.

“Because we’ll have to deliver the baby right then and there,” he stressed gravely,“if we want any chance of saving them both.”

He was talking obliquely about preeclampsia, a birth condition which began with high blood pressure and often ended with damage to the livers or kidneys.

And Rose Quartz’s kidneys were already shit, so there was that, and here was yet another sordid item to add to the ever growing list of what was wrong with the poor woman’s body.

Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl had all gone back to the hotel room for the night—against their wills, protesting—but Rose had made them, had told them to go on ahead, to get some sleep. She would see them in the morning. She loved them.

Goodnight.

And Greg was in the hallway, making a call to an insurance provider, which left Priyanka alone with Rose, who was propped up against two pillows on her hospital bed, palming her stomach protectively as she idly watched whatever was playing on TV—some offbeat sitcom or another. Frankly, Priyanka neither knew nor care. Scrunched up in one of the hardback chairs off to the left of Rose’s bed, she scratched harsh notes on her chart for the want of something to do.

To combat the growing feeling clambering up the rungs of her constricted throat.

To drown out the laugh track.

Those nameless people, that detached crowd, they laughed and laughed and laughed.

She couldn’t see what was so fucking funny, and she intimated as much without ever realizing it, scoffing just as her pen decided to run out of ink.

(It wasn’t really about the pen.)

“You seem exhausted, Priyanka,” Rose Quartz said softly, and it was with a jolt that the resident realized that she had been caught out.

Discovered.

Seen.

She flushed as she felt rather than saw that familiar, dark eyed gaze settle upon her gently—like a blanket, warm and encompassing. She stared obstinately at her clipboard, trying to will her own scribbles to make sense in a world that had currently lost its ever loving mind.

“I’ve been working overtime all week,” she said shortly, shifting uncomfortably in her chair. The wooden armrest pressed stiffly against her back, an unwelcome hand upon her spine. “Of course I’m exhausted.”

“Then you should go home. Get some rest.”

“Dr. Howard assigned me to your case again.

“Excuses, excuses,” Rose clucked, teasing, fond, amused. “He can’t make you work overtime.”

Priyanka was simply furious with herself.

With a final click of her useless pen, she replaced it in the lapel of her scrubs and finally met her patient’s gaze with a steeliness that she hoped would wound, cut, eviscerate.

But nothing, not even the possibility of her imminent death, seemed to faze the woman, who stared at her evenly, with all the air of someone waiting patiently to explain the turn of the seasons to a child who wondered where the leaves had all gone.

Change was inevitable.

Winter became spring became summer became fall.

I want to leave them with roots, Priyanka, she’d explained in that tiny examination room, so many months ago. She’d taken the resident’s hand and intertwined it with her own. A faint floral scent wreathed her hair. Strawberries, maybe. Wild and sweet. I want them to have the chance to grow…

“It isn’t looking too good, is it?” Rose asked, her voice so casual that they could have merely been discussing a chapter from a really sad book.

And the princess didn’t get to live happily ever after. And the evil forces prevailed in the end. And Rose Quartz’s body was rapidly shutting down. And there was nothing they could do about it, or more accurately still, they were doing everything.

And nothing was entirely working.

Priyanka’s dark eyes flitted to the number she had just recently scrawled on her chart in stuttering ink.

132/90 mm/Hg.

“No,” she said flatly. She felt no need to sugarcoat a bush that was already burning. Her fingers were cold where they gripped the flat of her clipboard. Her entire chest ached. “Your blood pressure is too high. The antihypertensives aren’t working.”

“Oh, well… I figured,” Rose sighed softly, still rubbing her swollen belly. Her forehead was beaded with sweat, curly tendrils of pink hair clinging softly, like gossamer, to her pale temples. “That explains the headaches, doesn’t it?”

Priyanka stared at Rose Quartz incredulously.

Gaped at her wildly.

Like she’d never properly seen before.

(She’d seen her so many times in the past couple of months, flitting in and out of the hospital, Dr. Howard’s office, and then the hospital all over again; she’d done what she swore she would never do with a patient; she became attached; she cared; it would be her own undoing.)

“Of course it does,” she snapped. She didn’t care that she was breaking a hell of a lot of rules, all the studied lines of decorum. She slammed her clipboard onto her lap and couldn't bring herself to bring a shit that it produced such a violent sound. She wanted to shake this woman, wanted to break the calm in her face, wanted her to register the simple fact that she could very well die. “If you’re still suffering from headaches, then, of course , it means the medicines aren’t working. It’s common sense, Rose. Mere logic.”

Her shoulders heaved as though she had only just ran a marathon.

And Rose’s smile—that beatific, perfect, clandestine smile—slid, like melting ice, from her mouth.

Finally, Priyanka thought savagely, and she hated herself for it.

Guilt assaulted her, a new lump in her constricted throat.

“I’m sorry,” she said abruptly, dull color bruising her sharply drawn cheeks. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m just… I’m—”

“No, Priyanka.” Rose brought one of her hands from the top of her belly, raising it firmly against the resident’s stammered apologies. If she was injured—if she was hurting—she didn’t very well show it, her expression as impenetrably smooth as the silver face of the moon. “Please don’t say sorry… not if you don’t mean it. You only said what you’ve been thinking, what all my loved ones have been thinking, really… what an entire fool I am.”

Her soft, brown eyes briefly flicked to the multiple IVs stemming from her lifted hand. The tubes swirled all around her arm, spiraling towards a multitude of brightly flickering machines.

“Crazy,” she laughed humorlessly, the sound without familiar melody. “Throwing my life away…”

A little less than nine months had elapsed since she had first announced her pregnancy, and now there was a grayness to her once milk white skin.

A lethargy behind that calm face.

The passion, the vivaciousness, the youth all gone.

Priyanka was scarcely two years older than her.

“Priyanka,” she whispered, the name somber in the movement of that once perpetually smiling mouth, “would you believe me if I said that this ”—she gestured feebly at the hospital bed, at the medical apparatus all around her—“isn’t living? Would you understand if I told you that this isn’t who I am on the inside—all these needles and lines and medicines and awful machines?”

Without waiting for an answer, not seemingly needing one, Rose gently replaced her hand on her stomach, her palm tenderly cupping its curve.

“I know what living is, sweet Priyanka,” she continued, closing her dark eyes against some invisible memory, “and this isn’t it… this isn’t all those days I’ve stood in endless protest for a cause that I so desperately believe in. This isn’t being able to play volleyball on the beach with my loved ones, watching Amethyst and Garnet and Pearl and Greg laugh in the sand. This isn’t the fish fries we’ve hosted, nor the long nights spent planning demonstrations on the deck. This isn’t the thrill of falling in love with so many people. Meeting Pearl. Coming to understand the strange cosmos of Greg Universe. Choosing to have this child with him. Choosing this path which may very well end in my own destruction… because this , Priyanka Maheswaran, from the moment I was first diagnosed at sixteen years old, was already my destruction. And I simply have been borrowing moments of living in the full acknowledgment of that terrible truth.”

Rose did not falter.

So strong, even to the last, she did not break.

But maybe, just maybe, she cracked… just a little, just enough so that Priyanka could see.

A single tear escaped the confines of her closed eyes, slowly slipping down her cheek and into the slightly rumpled collar of her paisley-studded gown.

“So would you believe me, Priyanka?” She asked again.

She begged.

She pleaded.

“Please?”

She was asking a lot of the twenty-eight year old, to whom belief had never come easily. Priyanka was constantly interrogating her own values, checking and double checking them against rationality to ensure that they fit the meticulous schema she had constructed of the empirically observable world.

But just as there was no rationality in a twenty-six year old dying, there was no logicality in belief.

There was only a leap of faith, fingers crossed that she wouldn’t fall into the abyss.

Landing was not a guarantee.

And that was what so unfathomable to her, so cruel and so disgusting.

But what more could Priyanka say? What facts and statistics could she throw in this dying woman’s face to make her see reason that wasn’t exactly there.

The answer was nothing.

Perhaps it had always been nothing.

This student of science had no more protestations.

And in the absence of protestation, all that was left was a single choice: to jump or not to jump.

It was simple, really.

It was so damn hard.

Rose Quartz finally opened her eyes then. They were bright with her tears, and yet, simultaneously, the sheer darkness of them gripped Priyanka like the hands of a drowning sailor. The screen on the wall which measured her blood pressure had incrementally risen since they had started talking.

134/90 mm/Hg.

There was no time to waste anymore.

To pretend like they had ever possessed.

“What…” Priyanka began, her own voice hoarse, tight, strained, on the very verge of the precipice it hesitated to leap.“… what do you need me to do? Name it, and I’ll… I can’t promise anything… but I’ll try. ”

The word felt paltry, insufficient.

Trying was not an assurance, just as landing was not a guarantee.

“I’ll do what I can.”

Rose’s face simply collapsed, tears falling down both sides of her cheeks in gentle lines.

“Thank you, Priyanka,” she whispered, relief in every word, redolent in all the syllables of her spoken name.

But Priyanka did not want gratitude; she wanted an answer, something solid to latch onto, a promise she could keep.

“What you need, Rose?” She asked again, shifting her gaze her away. Her voice was abrupt—it was always abrupt—but somehow, it was not entirely unkind. “Tell me.”

The woman’s answer was immediate, unflinching; she had been obviously been thinking about it for a very long time.

It was the answer she probably would have proffered to anyone who asked.

Who took the time to wonder what exactly it was that Rose Quartz wanted.

What she needed.

What she had kept so carefully concealed behind that calm veneer of a facade.

“Take care of my baby for me, please,” she whispered. “Be their advocate when Dr. Howard and Greg will be mine… I’ll have so many people in the delivery room. I’ll have so many people rooting for me outside of it, too… but, my baby, Priyanka… I need someone in their corner, too… to root for them… to be their voice… please..."

All things considered, it was a pretty damn unreasonable request.

If Rose had to have a c-section, then Dr. Howard would need Priyanka’s steady hands to hold a clamp or provide suction; in the battlefield of surgery, her only allegiance was to the brusque orders that the old man barked to her behind his mask. The obstetrician would handle the delivery. Their own resident would whisk the baby away to the NICU.

And she and Dr. Howard would try to save Rose’s life.

That was Priyanka’s calling.

Her solemn oath.

Her duty.

But...

.... Unreasonable though it was—and it most certainly was so—Priyanka reasoned that it was likely not unkeepable.

She could help keep an eye on the baby’s heart monitor.

She could even lend a hand in the delivery procedure if Dr. Howard didn’t need her.

She could try, dammit.

She could at least promise that.

“You have my word,” she returned tersely, dark eyes still averted. She played a little with her hands on top of her clipboard, twining and untwining them, as Rose seemingly sank back against her pillows, sighing softly.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“Don’t thank me until it’s over—I haven’t done anything yet.”

“You heard me out,” Rose replied evenly. “That’s something.”

“No,” the resident heard herself say aloud. “It isn’t.”

The hands on the clock veered into 6:00 with all the bluntness of a collision and none of its explosiveness.

The door opened.

That was mundane enough.

And Amethyst and Pearl came in first, laughing about something that Garnet had apparently said.

And Greg followed, chuckling, lightly scratching his stomach.

And Garnet made up the rear, grinning, pleased with herself.

Oblivious.

They were all so happy, this extraordinary group of ordinary people—they had no idea where they were or what it all meant or what was about to happen to the smiles on their tired faces.

And Priyanka did not have time to recover her own face, to arrange it into some manner of professional acceptability, her mouth half-open, hands rigid upon the table.

And Amethyst caught her out first.

Because she was smart like that, perceptive.

And the mirth drained from her brown eyes as she perceived the nephrologist’s expression in the semidarkness of the room.

And the two women stared each other across its length.

They called this place the slaughterhouse.

“No,” she simply said. She croaked it. Panic violated the smooth youthfulness of her face, tearing it all asunder. “No, Doc.”

“I’m sorry,” Priyanka Maheswaran whispered.

It wasn’t enough.

It had never been enough.

Garnet only stared at her, disbelieving.

Her mouth hadn’t quite untwisted itself out of the ghost of its last smile.

“I am so, so sorry.”

She said it again anyway, though, like it counted for something, like it meant anything, as tears began to flow down Pearl’s cheeks.

Greg Universe made a sound that was half-horror, half-agony, bracing his hands against the back of a metal chair to steady himself against the blow.

ii.

A doctor, a washed up rockstar, and three Crystal Gems walked out of a conference room.

And the joke, the cruel punchline, was that the boy they all loved wasn’t going to get the kidneys he so desperately needed; he was going to go back on the list, which had always been more of a desperate gamble than a guarantee; he was going to degrade in that hospital bed for however many days, weeks, and months he had more.

Dr. Maheswaran didn’t think he had a year.

She was blunt about it.

Professional.

But her eyes gave her away, the lines beneath them, the consumptive shadows.

(Mere hours ago, her face had been transformed by the simple action of a smile.)

There were no comforting words, nor bracing gestures between the coterie of broken people who limped their way back to Room 11037—injured, defeated, the wounds glistening across their bruised eyes, their shivering mouths. Greg took the lead, the rubber of his sandals snapping harshly against the tiled floor with each step, every guttural, convulsive movement.

They silently decided that he should be the one to actually commit the words aloud, knew that it was for the best. He could be soft where Dr. Maheswaran was brutal. Comprehensive when Garnet couldn’t muster words. Sage when Amethyst’s youthful clumsiness sometimes made it difficult to find the right words.

And he could hold it together long enough to actually say it.

Trailing behind him, pale fingers gripping the fabric of her sweater, Pearl’s horror took the form of sniffling that couldn’t quite be concealed. She was holding herself together—the news had cleaved her apart—and he wondered again, not for the first time since Steven’s diagnosis, whether or not she had been right all those years ago, when she had told him quite plainly, in that incisively logical way of hers, that she was better for Rose.

They’d come a long way since then.

They grudgingly tolerated each other now.

They coparented the best that they could.

Sometimes, he thought that they were even friends, sharing beers together on dusk lit balconies and spending so many sleepless nights side by side at the kitchen table, poring over bills and medicines and more bills because the bills, above all, were endless.

And perhaps in the end, he and Pearl were even family in the way that they loudly and silently and entirely loved the same dying boy.

(That was how they had loved the same woman, too.)

But still, maybe she had had a point.

Pearl always tended to have a point...

The hallway was painfully short; Room 11037 arrived far quicker than any of them had ever anticipated.

His breath coming in hitched gasps, chest seized with a sudden tightening, Greg palmed the wood of the door, splaying his shaking fingers against its smooth grains as though to steady himself against an impossible reckoning. He was minutes away, possibly seconds, from breaking his own son’s heart, and that was on him.

Hell, all failures when it came to his son’s happiness were on him.

He was the kid’s dad.

He was supposed to protect Steven, shelter him, keep him safe from every quantifiable danger that he could.

And here he was, about to deliver another slap to his face and call it kindness.

The contradiction was not lost upon him.

The unfairness of it all stung.

It stung his eyes, and it stung his heart, and it stung all over, simply undid the man. He was a pincushion falling apart in all the places where he had been needled over and over again.

But he felt a hand on the small of his back then—gentle, kind.

He expected it to be Garnet or maybe even Amethyst; that had always been their sort of thing.

But when he looked back behind him, his mouth half-formed in an empty, perfunctory thanks, he saw that it was Pearl, her big, blue eyes still edged with the remnants of her tears.

Her sweater, neatly pressed, seemed to swallow her entirely.

She stood perfectly within the lines of one of the tiles on the floor, feet poised like a ballerina’s. Rose had once told him that she’d been trained to dance—once so disciplined in the art that she could stand upon the tips of her toes for as many minutes as her tutors required.

Even when she was devastated.

Even when she was hurt.

“How… how do I do this?” Greg asked before he could stop himself. The words tumbled out of his mouth in an ungainly rush. “How do I… how can I… I mean… he’s just a boy… a kid, and I—“

And I don’t want to do this, Pearl.

I don’t want to see him go through this.

Pearl swiped delicately at her nose, and she swiped at her leaking eyes, but the carnage still remained. It was unlikely to disappear for a very long time. She wrung her slender fingers together and twisted them apart. She congregated them in a prim temple just above her stomach. She eventually let them fall to her sides. She glanced down. She failed to look back up.

Shoulders shivering.

Feet still in first position.

“I… I don’t think there’s any right way to do this,” she finally said. “Not really… but I—we’re behind you, Greg.”

“Yeah,” Amethyst agreed.

Garnet nodded her silent assent.

“We’re… always behind you.”

The weight of these words, the implicit meaning behind them, was not lost on Greg. He immediately understood how much it must have cost her to say such a thing to him, and yet, he simultaneously knew that she must have meant it—for Pearl rarely ever said things that she didn't mean.

She gave silent treatments, and she evaded tough emotional conversations with all the agility of a dancer; she shot people glares that she thought to be discrete from the corners of her eyes; she kept secrets to herself, kept them tucked away in the same places where she had invisible shrines to the woman they both loved.

But she rarely lied.

Or maybe, more accurately, she wouldn't lie now.

And so, choked, overwhelmed, grateful, he could only muster something like a vague sound of gratitude in the back of his throat that he thought she equally understood because she nodded at him primly.

And then, he turned to face the door again, palming the brass handle.

On the other side, he heard a snatch of laughter.

Steven.

Assuredly.

Perhaps he was watching one of his favorite shows, laughing at something a character had said.

Greg twisted his hand downwards and pushed lightly upon the door.

iii.

The door opened upon a scene that Yellow Diamond had always intended to flee before she could be caught out, but one anecdote led to another, and before she knew it, Steven Universe had started telling her about how he’d met Blue at the cemetery where their dead daughter lay. And the conjured image of her bathrobed wife, holding a hibiscus aloft in her gently curving palm, plucked an dusty chord in her chest.

So this was the flower that had been on the nightstand for a couple of nights now.

This was the story of a boy and a woman and a cemetery and a handful—a lifetime, really—of aching, miserable griefs.

“She told me that she married you so her name would be a pun,” Steven had said, grinning mischievously.

“Something to that effect,” Yellow dryly returned.

And he pressed for more stories, more memories, more chords inside her chest. How did she meet Blue? When did they fall in love? Who proposed?

He asked so many questions, his brown eyes alight with curiosity, that she was reminded so much of Pink that it almost hurt to even look at him. But, just as she had done with her daughter, she sighingly indulged him, groaning and moaning and making it out as thought she was doing him a massive favor by relenting. And he only smiled at her teasingly—like he was in on the secret.

It was the other way around.

She was the one at his mercy.

And so she told him the story of the princess and the knight in less than fantastical terms, laying out the bare bones of her and Blue’s first meeting with a halting voice as the memories slowly came flooding back: Blue Montgomery’s sweeping ball gown, the spidery chandeliers, the waiters swerving in and out of the crowd bearing silver trays loaded with champagne, her ridiculously dramatic mother waltzing through the ballroom with all the radiance of a sun.

God, how many decades ago was that now?

Years and years and years.

“Our daughter used to love this damn story,” Yellow murmured at the end, briefly flicking her eyes downwards. “We told it so many different times to her that she could repeat it word for word.”

“It’s a very good story,” Steven returned, laughing. “Did you really think about punching that guy?”

“Fleetingly, yes,” she almost smiled, “but—”

But then the door opened so abruptly, bringing reality back in with what appeared to be a collection of harried looking people. The businesswoman’s head sharply cocked towards the far side of the room to greet an assemblage of expressions that she was surprised to find in total strangers: anger and disgust.

Complete and total loathing.

Damn, at least buy me a drink first.

“You!” A slight woman in a sweater hissed furiously.

“Uh-oh,” Steven Universe said, shrinking slightly beneath his covers. “Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh...”

But Yellow Diamond wasn’t listening to him anymore, instinctive indignation rising to her aid and defense as she stood up from her chair and mustered as haughty of an expression she could for a woman wearing silk pajamas.

“Excuse me?” She asked venomously, crossing her arms over her chest. “And you are?”

“Pearl…” The balding man standing next to the sweater-wearing accoster tried to plea, placing a big hand on her much smaller shoulder. “Maybe we shouldn’t… uh—?”

“No,” The woman named Pearl snarled, jerking her arm away from him. Yellow could see that her pale eyes were bright with tears, which seemed like an overreaction if she had ever witnessed one. She didn’t know these people from Jack, Jill, or Harry on the sidewalk! “I want to know what she’s doing here! She has no business—“

“Pearl, wait!” Steven tried to interject, jerking upwards from his pillows. “It’s okay! She just wanted to vis—“

But his voice got lost in the shuffle as the taller woman behind Pearl suddenly stepped forward, her powerfully muscled arms clenched into fists by her sides. There was an indefinable air of authority about her that Yellow only recognized because she, too, possessed it. Her bicolored glare was a weapon in and of itself; the harsh florescence of the overheads glinted off the sunglasses folded neatly across the collar of her sweatshirt.

“Leave,” the woman said. “You’re not welcome here.”

“Garnet! No! She wasn’t doing anything wro—“

“Well, frankly,” Yellow shot back before Steven could complete his thought, “I’d perfectly well surmised that without your help. But forgive me if I’m having trouble piecing together the context behind this unwarranted rudeness.”

“You know what you’ve done,” Garnet growled.

“No!” The blood inside her head churned, simply boiled. She had never known when to leave well enough alone. “I damn well don’t!”

“1999—Diamond Electric vs. Hutchings,” Pearl began to tick off names on her fingertips. “2005—Diamond Electric vs. Davis. 2011—Diamond Electric vs. Bach. Are these names ringing a bell? Unsafe factory conditions! Unconstitutional wage gaps! Leaking waste reservoirs!”

“All settled in court!” Yellow returned with a cruel laugh that she did not remotely feel, raking her cold eyes over each and very one of her newfound opponents in turn. It had always been her against the world for as long as she could remember—she the trapped lioness cornered by the angry mob. (But the mob always tended to forget one crucial fact about exchanges between lions and men. Lions had claws and sharp, gleaming teeth; she would devour them and gnaw on their bones for sport.) “What are you all? Lawyers? Reporters? Protestors? Please, spare no sordid detail as to why I’m being read case names for events that happened long ago.”

“Yellow Diamond, please—” Steven’s voice was tiny by her side; she could not hear him; or perhaps, she didn’t want to hear him.

She wanted to fight.

“We’re, like, the Crystal Gems,” the smallest woman to Garnet’s left said emphatically. Her lavender bangs fell over one of her eyes, but she blew them back with a small puff of air.

“Never heard of you,” Yellow replied flippantly and untruthfully.

Because she had heard of them—several times, in fact.

They were some small activist group that had always been a vaguely minor nuisance at her side—especially a few years ago—but they’d never done anything more than force her lawyers to spend some time haggling in appeals courts.

A waste of time and money for everyone, really.

“Never heard of us?” Pearl spluttered wildly, her complexion whitening. “Never heard of—“

“Enough, you all!” The doctor who had been at the back of the group finally seemed to have found her tongue, and a pretty harsh tongue it was because her exasperated voice clearly cut through the melee. “We’re in a hospital for goodness’s—”

But the doctor was drowned out, too, lost in the onslaught of noise suddenly coming from one of the monitors above Steven’s bed—a shrill beeping noise that put an effective end to all the squabbling. The neon green line measuring his heart rate was spiking in short peaks, the numbers climbing, climbing, climbing… and beneath it all, clutching his chest, Steven was struggling to breathe, gulping in shallow bursts of air, his skin paling. Sweat beaded at his pale templed, hid eyes wide with fear.

“STEVEN! Steven!” So many voices yelled his name; it was all a jumble, a blur, a dissonant symphony.

The white coated doctor shoved past Yellow unceremoniously, nearly knocking her to the ground in her haste to get to her patient’s side. She pulled an oxygen mask down from one of the receptacles behind the bed, placing it over Steven’s mouth and nose.

“Breathe, Steven!” She commanded, her voice tight with obvious strain. The man and the woman named Pearl scrabbled over to the child’s bedside. Tears streaming down his ruddy face and into his beard, the man placed an arm around Steven’s back, steadying him. Pearl clasped one of his hands, her shoulders shaking violently.

“In and out,” the doctor continued. “Breathe. One… two… three. That’s it, honey. There you go…”

As Steven’s breathing evened out, the monitor’s beeping died down, nearly becoming regulated once more. Exhausted, overwhelmed, so quickly undone, the boy slumped against the man who was holding him, closing his eyes heavily as the doctor took the opportunity to more securely fasten the oxygenated mask around his face.

But what happened next, if anything happened at all, Yellow Diamond did not stay to find out.

Violently tearing her gaze away, the woman turned around and did what she should have done the moment she made the poor decision to come into this room in the first place.

Shoving past the remaining Crystal Gems, uncaring that she knocked Garnet in the shoulder, Yellow limped away as fast as her sore leg would allow her to go, nausea rushing up the column of her throat, her cheeks burning with shame.

What a pathetic creature she was.

A monster.

A lioness among men.

(The lioness always tended to forget one crucial fact about exchanges between lions and men. Lions had claws and sharp, gleaming teeth; she would end up destroying the people she cared about, too.)

iv.

Pearl only had eyes for one person in the entire world, and his name was Steven Universe. Both in the absence of Rose and in the lingering presence of her, he was the center of her universe, the sun which she orbited day after day after varied, sundry day. Weak, pale, cold, he shivered in his father’s arms, barely able to keep his eyes open as his heartbeat continued to regulate itself after that latest episode.

“Acute stress arrhythmia,” she heard Priyanka explain behind her. The nephrologist had her back turned to them as she read numbers on a nearby computer monitor.

She didn’t elaborate.

She didn’t need to.

Everybody in the room knew exactly who was to blame for his acute stress.

Shame colored them all; shame welled up in the corners of Pearl’s eyes as she continued to hold on to Steven’s hand.

Garnet collapsed into the chair that Yellow Diamond had just vacated, placing both of her hands over her eyes.

What children they had been.

What fools.

Pearl closed her own eyes in a useless attempt to stem the tears that were flowing freely now, unable to hold them back any longer. Shame wrapped a hand around her insides and squeezed.

Steven was… he was—oh, God, the word was too unbearable to even think, much less say aloud—and here they all were—fighting with someone who would never see reason.

How stupid.

How pathetic.

“Steven, wait, honey. You need to put that mask back—” But Priyanka’s soft admonition was apparently ignored; Pearl looked up just in time to see Steven feebly lifting the oxygen mask from his face, dropping it just below his mouth. Each movement looked like it took something from him; he couldn’t even lift his head from Greg’s chest.

So he stared straight at her.

Directly into her eyes.

He had his mother’s eyes.

Her dark and lovely eyes.

“S-she…” She had to lean forward to hear him, for his voice was barely a whisper, an echo, a ghost. “…she really wasn’t being mean.”

“Shh, Shtu-ball. We know,” Greg tried hoarsely, pressing a kiss into his son’s mass of curly hair. “Save up your strength…”

“Steven,” Pearl pleaded, barely able to discern him through her tears. She refused to let go of his hand; it wasn't as much for his sake as she would have liked to kid herself to believe. “I’m so, so sorry. We shouldn’t have squabbled with her like that. We just weren’t… I mean… I wasn’t… I was stressed—I-I wasn’t thinking.”

“Stressed?” Again, his voice was so small that it struggled to be heard over the hissing of the various machines he was hooked up to, and the fact of it nearly undid her right then and there. Salt coated her lips. It lacquered her tongue. “Why… why were you stressed?”

No.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this... the news wasn’t supposed to come from her. It was supposed to be Greg’s job to do this; he was the one who was good at emotions; he was the one who knew how to have these sorts of conversations without completely dissolving into nothingness and rubble.

(He was the better person.)

(The one who Rose chose.)

Pearl could yell at a tyrannical businesswoman for longer than she could hold herself together in front of Steven; she could protest wars; she could hold demonstrations; she could plan fish fries; she could keep herself together on a day to day basis, bound by Scotch tape and glue.

But for him?

For Steven Universe?

Her eyes refilled with fresh tears, and she finally withdrew her hand from his, placing it over her mouth in the quietest sign of her incapacity.

Useless.

Pathetic.

Childish.

Fool.

“Oh,” Steven only rasped, understanding immediately. He was so smart like that; he never missed a beat. “The… the kidneys fell through, didn’t they?”

“I’m so sorry, kiddo,” Greg said, wrapping his arms more tightly around Steven as gently as he could manage as Priyanka took the opportunity to replace the mask over his nose and mouth.

“The kidneys were damaged during the donor’s accident,” she explained dully, “and we couldn’t detect it until we were already in surgery… I’m sorry, Steven. I am.”

But Steven never took his eyes off Pearl, those dark and lovely eyes.

They were wounded eyes.

Bruised eyes.

Goddamn exhausted eyes.

"I'm sorry, Steven," she whispered. "I am so, so sorry."

The mask prevented him from speaking.

In place of his reply, there was only the steady hiss of oxygen and the dark-cloaked presence of grief, the seventh person in an already crowded room. They sat on the edge of Steven’s bed, simply taking up precious air.

Pearl couldn’t breathe.

I'm sorry.

Night descended upon the sky like a heavy curtain, unfurling its black velvet across the horizon with dark finality, the punctuation unmistakable. Sitting atop of the bulky air conditioning unit that stretched the length of the hotel room’s window, Amethyst gazed emptily at the spectacle, knees pulled up to her chest, her still-damp hair pulled over one of her shoulders. If she was back at home, there would be a roof to clamber onto and a vast canvas of stars to behold… but here, there were only skyscrapers that stretched their supplicatory hands upwards to an unhearing god. Here, there were stars made out of lit windows. Here, there was that familiar feeling of suffocation, of being cloistered in...

Cornered.

And unlike in a good alley fight, putting up her fists wouldn’t solve a damn thing.

Three hours had passed since they’d nearly given Steven a heart attack and then told him that he wasn’t going to get those stupid fucking kidneys. And still, the scene haunted her mind’s eye in the absence of anything else to think about, to obsess over, to grieve. When they had all left for the evening—Greg the only one staying behind for the night—he couldn’t even muster enough energy to tell them goodnight, simply blinking at them from over the top of his oxygenated mask before closing his eyes.

Merely twelve hours ago, they’d all been sickeningly happy because they had thought that the nightmare was over… but that sensation had long passed, a relic of time immemorial now.

Now, there was only darkness.

A feeling of falling.

The ground giving way beneath their feet.

Now, there was only Dr. M’s only consolation that wasn’t really a consolation at all.

He’s at the top of the list now.

The door opened and gently closed behind her. Amethyst swung her head around just in time to see Garnet come in, a towel slung around her corded neck, her white tank top damp with sweat. She’d gone to the hotel’s gym to obviously treadmill away from her feelings, which was a way more productive solution than Amethyst’s choice coping mechanism. She raised her half-empty bottle of wine in greeting—reckless, loose—accidentally sloshing a little over the top of the rim.

“Hey.”

“Where’s Pearl?” Garnet studiously avoided her gaze as she lowered herself to the carpeted ground, leaning against the wall. Her shoulders hunched forward, elbows braced on top of her knees, she almost looked like some kinda statue—still, beautiful, tragic.

“Tryin’ to drown herself in the shower, I think,” Amethyst shrugged before taking another hearty swig of Moscato. The tangy notes stung her tongue. “She’s been in there for an hour now, so you might not have hot water later.”

The gym trainer shrugged noncommittally as though this was all the same to her.

And the two of them simply listened to the hissing of the water beyond the thin door to Garnet’s left for a handful of seconds; the serpentine sounds lashed the ground. Lashed their skin. Their ears. Their chests.

Amethyst sniffed and took yet another drag of wine.

There was nothing else better to do...

... but the silence was unbearable now that it was optional.

She turned her bottle upside down again.

Liquid courage.

“I met the old lady, y’know,” she said softly, her consonants a little rushed around their edges, a little tipsy, a little unsure. “Blue Diamond. It was… yesterday, I think? Hell, I think it was yesterday. God, I don’t even know at this point. But she was in the lobby, waitin’ for her valet to pick her up…”

Garnet didn’t say anything, didn’t even look up at her, but Amethyst knew she was listening from the way that every line in her body was rigid with attention.

“She’s kinda snooty, I think. Kinda looks like she’s got a stick up her ass… but she’s got a good heart, I guess. She cares about Steven…” Amethyst remembered the way her accented voice broke when she spoke of him, all of the syllables collapsing upon themselves in the throes of her gentle tongue. And she remembered the woman’s eyes, how startlingly blue they were, haunted underneath by the ravages of grief and time.

“A lot,” she added. “That surprised me.”

“I… I shouldn’t have let Yellow Diamond get to me like that,” Garnet said, reaching up and gingerly holding her head. “I know. I know.”

“No, that’s not what I’m sayin’, G,” Amethyst immediately and fiercely returned, shaking her own head. “I mean, it’s kinda what I’m sayin’, but we all got caught up in her. She got under all of our skins. I’m just, I dunno, I’m trying to—“

But she broke off then, ripping her gaze away from her roommate and back towards the window.

To the darkness.

The absence of stars.

She raised the bottle to her lips once more but stopped short of taking another swill; the sickly sweet perfume nearly gagged her.

“It’s just… it’s difficult,” she continued, setting the drink down between her knees. “That’s all I’m sayin’. God knows why, but he likes the Diamonds, and the Diamonds like him… and we shouldn’t… I mean, we should try our best not to shit on him for that because—“

But Amethyst stopped short again as the natural end to that sentence reared its head off the floor of her stomach, striking just where it hurt.

Sick, ashamed, inconsolable, she covered her eyes with both of her hands.

“Because we love him,” Garnet proffered, her voice quiet, almost inaudible over the noises coming from the shower, “and we want him to be happy.”

That wasn't the end of the sentence.

That wasn't what they had both been thinking anyway.

“Yeah,” she croaked gratefully, wiping roughly at her eyes. “Yeah.”

They resumed their silent vigil together then, mostly because it kept them from commenting upon the fact that it wasn’t just the water they were hearing behind that thin bathroom door.

Garnet reached upwards and grabbed the remote from the edge of the nearest bed, turning the volume up on some stupid sitcom to drown it out.

The water.

The weeping.

And the weeping and the weeping and the weeping.

vi.

Blue Diamond had been on the balcony for hours now, long enough for the sky to bruise from peach to blue to purple, long enough to see the first stars ascend to their storied mounts, glimmering down upon the world in silvery, distant specks.

Long enough that the tear tracks riveting down her cheeks had dried upon her long face in stiff lines.

Long enough that she wondered passively to herself if she had been here forever, a statue carved out of flesh and bone and misery and blood.

Long enough to reflect upon the fact that she wasn't referring to the balcony... but to something more abstract.

Metaphorical.

A state.

A cycle.

A condition of perpetual mourning.

Her phone laid facedown on the tiny table between her chair and Yellow’s empty one.

The last text she had received had been from Steven Universe.

It wasn’t even a sentence.

Just a fragment.

No exclamation points, no abundant elaboration, no joy.

Tuesday, 7:09 PM:

Steven: kidneys fell through

Blue had seen the boy just this morning—dropping by after she had left Yellow’s room—and she could remember, quite distinctly, how radiant his face had been, utterly metamorphosed by its own happiness.

She’d been drawn in by it, magnetized.

Oh, how the two of them laughed and smiled and played.

How many years had it been since she had last played?

It was before Pink died assuredly.

But even then, the details were murky to her; she’d been so wrapped up in her school, that she had forgot what it was to be twenty-one, and that twenty-one year olds were still children in a way, that they loved to have fun.

She’d been so strict with her sometimes.

Forbidding.

Cold.

(Her own mother would have been proud.)

But she and Steven Universe? They played, and they played, imagining all the things that Steven was going to do once he had recovered from the transplant surgery. Some of these plans were simply extraordinary in nature. He was going to run all day just because he would finally feel like it. He was going to make a massive sandcastle on the beach with all of his friends. It would be palatial, obviously, so they could live in it together, making seashell necklaces and seaweed crowns. He was going to eat all the donuts that he wanted—his diet had been so restricted since he’d taken ill—and then some.

“And if I get sick,” he had said proudly, “it’ll just be a normal sick, and that’ll be perfectly okay.”

But it wasn’t the extraordinary inventions which had touched Blue, which had moved her to the quick.

Rather, it was the simple things.

The mundane ones.

He would get to go to school with all the rest of the kids his age. He could go to a theater without worrying that his symptoms might flare up during the movie's climax. He could ride a bike through his charming, little beachside town.

He could simply be a child.

And that would be enough.

That would be perfectly okay.

“And I could come over for tea and cakes on Fridays,” he teased as she had prepared to leave, running one last hand through his curly hair as she stood up from her chair. He smiled at her gently, his mouth tilting crookedly.

“Aye,” she returned warmly, returning the gesture with an almost easiness that still surprised her. “I would love that..."

But just as quickly as these fantasies had risen—entertained, explored, viscerally imagined—they had been wrenched from his hands just as immediately, and so Blue Diamond sat on her balcony for hours on end grieving for the poor boy.

But because she was selfish, because she was predictable, because she was broken, she gripped the arms on both sides of her chair, and grieved, too, for Pink Diamond.

(She was always grieving for Pink Diamond.)

Fingernails digging into the weathered wood, she thought herself a desolate fool for ever kidding herself into believing that she could go a day without being painfully aware of her daughter’s ghost.

She thought herself a masochist for inviting the same pain again in the form of Steven Universe.

She thought herself a coward for not daring to say three words to Yellow Diamond, three words that wouldn’t make everything between them right, but three words that needed to be said nevertheless.

And she couldn’t bring herself to utter them.

Not even when Yellow was in a hospital bed, covered in lacerations and bruises.

Because how could she say such a thing when she hadn’t said it in so many years upon years?

I and love and you.

And she kept thinking these things until they chased each other around her head in circles—dizzying, unceasing, senseless circles that gradually chipped away at the tentative hope she had held aloft in her chest ever since she had met Steven Universe.

Spirals and spirals and spirals.

Fool.

Masochist.

Coward.

Circles and circles and circles.

And somehow, every time, Blue Diamond concluded where she had first begun: alone in her own misery, drowning.

Fool, masochist, coward.

vii.

The walk to the parking deck that night was slow and laborious, one foot dragged after another, the styrofoam cup of shitty coffee in her hand doing little to perk her up for the long drive home. Priyanka couldn’t remember the last time she’d stayed past her shift so long, but she’d wanted to make sure that Steven remained stable… that he didn’t suddenly crash on them after such a long, hard day on his body… that she continued to try (and miserably fail) to keep Rose’s last request.

Take care of my baby for me, please…

Ever since his episode, Steven’s breath sounds had been decreased on the right side of his chest; she instructed the intern on duty for the night to keep him on a steady supply of oxygen and to page her immediately if his stats even shifted by a margin.

“Like, even a number or two?” Dr. Stephens asked, her brow furrowing.

“Yes,” she had snapped rather harshly. “Even a fraction.”

But somehow, even as Priyanka had said it, even as the poor intern had flinched, she had known to herself from the very beginning that she could quantify every little integer and it still all be for nothing.

Chronic kidney disease didn’t care about numbers.

It didn’t care about people.

“Hey! Priyanka! Wait up!"

Oh, hell and shit—she recognized that voice.

Wincing, she tried to arrange her features into an expression that didn’t completely betray her entire disinterest with humanity before she turned to face her colleague Dr. Reed. Maisie Reed, an ER doctor, had been at Empire Regional for about a decade longer than Priyanka.

She was a good woman and good friend, but frankly, she just didn’t know when to shut up, going off on long, rambling tales that were hard for Priyanka to weasel away from once she got rolling.

This was vaguely annoying on most days, but tonight, the nephrologist simply wouldn't be able to bear it.

“Hello, Maisie,” she returned brusquely as the older woman caught up to her. Her curly, flyaway hair was tucked back in a messy bun, her wire-rimmed glasses perched a little crookedly on the bridge of her nose. “How are you?”

“Exhausted,” Maisie rolled her eyes. “Did you hear about my star patient?”

“I think I actually met her,” Priyanka said, resuming her brisk walk. Maybe if she made it to her sedan before Maisie started a story, she could make a narrow escape. “She somehow made it to my patient’s room. Goodness knows for what reason. She and the patient’s family nearly got into a fistfight.”

“Ha! You're kidding! I didn’t think that part was true, but some of the nurses were saying—”

“It’s true,” she affirmed curtly, cutting across the woman. “All of it.”

They lapsed into silence then as they walked side by side on the harshly lit concrete. The nephrologist could see her tiny car near the end of the row. She pulled the key out of one of the pockets of her lab coat, clicked the unlock button, and hoped that Maisie would finally take the hint.

“I think we’re only parked a little ways from each other,” she said cheerfully, dashing all of Priyanka’s dreams.

Joy.

They continued to walk together, the heels of their shoes clicking reliably against the floor.

“I also heard… that you’ve got a bad outcome,” Maisie murmured, her voice soft, empathetic.

Pitying.

It was the pity that Priyanka hated most of all.

Her companion’s hazel eyes raked her over piercingly, like an X-Ray, and there was tenderness in her expression.

Understanding.

“I’m so sorry, honey.”

“It’s not a bad outcome yet,” she snarled, rounding upon the woman fiercely, not bothering with polite pretense anymore. Screw her. Screw everything. Screw this fucking day. “He’s still alive. He’s still got a chance. I’ve just got to find…”

“… kidneys, yes. I’ve heard,” Maisie finished gently.

Priyanka violently turned away again, increasing her pace so that she pulled ahead of the other doctor. Her entire body strained against the sudden burst of energy.

She was tired.

So fucking exhausted.

“Then don’t resign him to the grave yet, Maisie. I’m still fighting for him, dammit.”

“Yes, I know that, too… I’ve always admired that about you, dear. You never give up.”

“Yeah, well”—she didn’t exactly know what to say to that—“that’s what we do.”

“Mm, yes,” Maisie replied. “That’s what we do…”

She finally reached her sedan with no small feeling of relief, proceeding to the driver's side with the expectation that Dr. Reed would continue onwards to her little red Nissan at the end of the row, finally putting an end to this unpleasant conversation.

Infuriatingly, though, Maisie stopped, too, her eyes bright with kindness and warmth and all the other things besides that Priyanka simply couldn’t stomach at the moment.

“Yes, well, goodnight,” she said pointedly, making a motion to open the door of her car. She threw her briefcase in rather unceremoniously. It slammed against the passenger side door and fell feebly to the ground.

“What’s his blood type, Priyanka? I’ll keep an eye out for any patients that fit the description… you know what the ER is like. We get potential donors all the time.”

Yes, this was assuredly true, but Steven’s blood type being what it was, finding a donor so quickly would be a damn near miracle.

Priyanka exhaled harshly through her nose but relented anyway—anything to end this absurd conversation.

What the hell—it wouldn’t hurt.

“It’s a long shot… but O neg, so I need an O neg donor. Had any of those on your docket lately?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

And here was the part where Maisie’s kindly face would undoubtedly fall into dismay because of course she hadn’t seen an O neg patient in a while—only seven percent of the entire population had O negative blood, which was a startlingly rare number. So, of course, she would shake her head profusely and apologize and swear to keep her feelers out…

… but Maisie Reed didn’t exactly follow the quick script that Priyanka had constructed in her head.

In fact, her pink lips wobbled into a radiant smile.

“Honey,” she laughed, “sit down and take a sip of that damn black coffee of yours because you’re not going to believe this.”

#rose quartz #steven universe #blue diamond #yellow diamond #pearl #garnet #amethyst #greg universe #priyanka maheswaran #s: steven universe #mimiku #flower child #holy shit — with this chapter #we've reached 100K words

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mushyjellybeans · 5 years ago

Text

Unrequited Part 2 (Bucky Barnes)

Pairings: Bucky x reader, Steve x reader, Thor x reader, Clark Kent x reader, Avengers x reader, DC x reader Summary: You had a major crush on Bucky Barnes, his feelings were unreturned, you try to move on but he has other plans. Warnings: Language, ANGST (I’M SO SORRY), Bucky is an asshole, bad editing, butchered carry on. Word Count: 3,014 A/N: Here’s part 2 that everyone requested. I’ve absolutely butchered this. Some wanted Y/N to move on with Steve and some wanted a DC cross over and I’m not one to disappoint my friends so you have ALL. Please give me feedback, I’m not confident with this at all. A/N #2: I don’t know squat about Superman, I’ve watched Justice League once this past week so it’s based off of that awesome battle at the end. :| Read Unrequited Part 1: Here Taglists are open // Requests are open

Masterlist

Bucky's glare seemed to follow you around everywhere you went in the tower. His behavior became even more strange after your little talk in your room a few weeks ago, considering his last words he said to you were "I hope we can still be friends." But as the time passed the more you believed he didn't mean it.

You actually did try to make conversation with him a few times in the common room when he was there alone, he would either ignore your existence as usual or storm out of the room.

You just didn't know what to do, you didn't know why he was treating you like this as you couldn't recall actually doing anything wrong. It wasn't against the law to have a crush on someone, right?

He hasn't said a word to you or even made any attempts to fix your friendship which leads you to believe your intuition was right and he just said it to keep you happy.

Happy. Far from what you were feeling, that much you knew.

Wanda told you who his girlfriend was, and you probably shouldn't have been so surprised considering they had a long history and everything, but it didn't stop your heart from wrenching when it was Natasha's name that spilled out during a private conversation you were having at the time.

You made a point in avoiding both of them, recalling all the intimate moments between them when they didn't sense people were looking at them, the glance he spared to her when you were sat next to him on the couch complimenting his gorgeous outfit at the beginning, but it all made sense now.

You had grown closer to Steve over a couple of weeks, you had ended up spilling all your feelings out about Bucky and your tears along with it.

Steve was really disappointed in his friend, told you the Bucky he knew in the 40s was a playboy but he was never a jerk towards a woman.

You spent all of your time together to the point both of your feelings were reciprocated and it was a mutual agreement to try and have a go at things.

But Steve had to go away on a mission with Bucky for 2 months. It was when they came back you knew something was wrong.

Much to your anger, it was Bucky who broke your relationship apart, barely a month in. According to Steve when he sat regrettably on your chair in your room Bucky had talked some sense into him about the whole dating thing and how perfect he would be for Sharon and how you and Steve don't fit together. Steve admitted he wasn't ready and wanted to remain friends instead. Deja vu. You tried to believe Steve, but you knew it was Bucky's sinister plan to make sure you couldn't be happy with Steve.

Your anger overrode your senses and before you knew what you were doing, you were storming down the hallway towards his door, not even bothering to knock.

"What's your fucking problem Barnes?" You yelled as loud as you could, slamming the door open so hard it left a dent in the wall from the doorknob.

Bucky was sitting on the edge of his bed in his boxers, rubbing his tired eyes when you barged in. You would have swooned over the sight if you weren’t so riled up. It took him a minute to realize what was happening.

"What? Cat got your tongue now?" You stalked towards him bravely. His eyes turning dark from your yelling and posture.

"You’re real brave little girl but who do you think you are barging into my room like that?" He yelled back, standing up and puffed his chest out slightly.

"I just wanna know why you hate me so goddamn much. Hate me to the point where you make your personal mission and break me and Steve up." You put your hands firmly on your hips.

"Y/N I don't hate you." He said, calmly?

Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"Then what, are you jealous or something?" You scoffed, knowing the answer already, of course, he wasn't jealous.

"Or something, yes."

It wasn't a lie either. Bucky had to go away on a mission for two months with Steve, the conversation came up one night about you and Steve being together and Bucky's heart clenched so tightly he was scared he would go into cardiac arrest. Jealously consumed him, the thought of you two in bed together, being intimate and cuddling Bucky hated it, he only realized then he did have feelings for you after all.

Your eyebrows shot up to your hairline. You didn't understand and you didn't want to. It was him after all who spent most of his time pretending you didn't exist, who brushed off your compliments and didn't even want to be friends. He had no right to be jealous and he certainly had no authority to decide who you can date and who you can't. He was with Natasha, so why the hell should he care so much about it.

"You know what James." Venom in your voice as he noticeably winced at the use of his real name. "I'm fucking done here. I don't want anything to do with you, I don't want missions with you, I don't want to talk to you, I don't even want to sit at the same dining table and eat my dinner with you. You have NO right interfering in MY life. Why don't you just go and mind your own goddamn business!" You used long strides to exit his room, slamming the door so hard behind you it shook the doorframe and you knew Tony would lecture you about the disturbance on the floor.

6 months after your confrontation with Bucky, you did exactly as you promised and avoided him like the death plague.

You even cut off all ties with Natasha, just because you would be sick to death hearing about her lovesick romance with the weasel. A subject you had absolutely no interest in hearing about and it was just easier this way.

You grew very close to Wanda if that was even possible. You were practically sisters and you were close to the rest of the guys, distancing a little from Steve but of course, he understood the reasons why.

You went even further and moved onto a new floor, Thor's floor which you were very happy about.

You and Thor became good friends, he was so polite and talked to you in a tone of how a man should talk to a lady, with respect. He kept calling you Lady Y/N, which you absolutely loved and his filthy hammer jokes made you roll on the floor clutching your stomach as you laughed.

He taught you all about Asgard, his brother. He talked a lot about his mother and how much she would have loved you if she was still alive.

Your relationship grew steady, he was aware of the drama that unfolded with Bucky.

You and Thor were relaxing in the common room after a day of showing him around the city and taking pictures with children who recognized the beautiful blond God.

He was wearing a gray shirt, blue jeans and his hair tied back in a bun. Your perfect God and better hair than Bucky, dare you to say.

Some sitcom was running in the background, Thor's arm was around your shoulder and your hand entwined with his. The elevator dinged and usually, you would pull away from Thor but his grip only tightened.

"Thor!" You whispered in a panic state hearing multiple footsteps approaching. He rolled his head towards you and smiled.

"I'm not ashamed of you lady Y/N. Let them see." He whispered back.

"But it could be Bucky."

"All the better." He smirked, watching as Bucky and Nat strolled in, frozen in their spot at the scene in front of them and Bucky's arm wrapped around Natasha's waist made your stomach flip, you really hated the effect he had on you.

Thor noticing your discomfort leaned his head down and grabbed your lips with his own, running his tongue along your bottom lip causing you to gasp audibly.

Thor's eyes watching over your shoulder intently as the seething jealousy evidently on Bucky's face giving him more encouragement to continue, pulling little whimpers from you until Tony's voice called out, "uhh Y/N? You seem to have a God down your throat." A blush rising from your neck to your cheeks. This was the first time you and Thor have been affectionate in front of them.

"Ah hello, team!" Thor greeted with a smirk, standing up and pulling all the guys beside Bucky into a tight hug and roughly patting them on the back.

He turned to Tony and chuckled. "Yes, the man of iron, you are correct sir. I showed her a few tricks with my hammer earlier." He laughed bellowed, earning disgusted groans from everyone while Wanda winked at you.

It wasn't true, you haven't done anything besides kissing and cuddling but you knew he was trying to rile Bucky up and by the quick glance you threw at him, it was working.

"So how long has this been going on for?" Wanda asked, sitting next to you. You just playfully roll your eyes and shift in your seat, well aware of Bucky's eyes on you from across the room.

The avengers were sent on a mission to help another team in a small village in Russia.

Thor had to return to Asgard to help repair the damage that was caused, with a promise he would be back. But it's been 3 years since you've seen him and his return was looking very unlikely.

Much changed in those 3 years. Wanda and Vision were married, Tony and Pepper had a daughter and named her Morgan, Steve and Sharon had just moved in together and you were happy for them, genuinely this time and Bucky and Nat were engaged, and you weren't happy for them. In fact, you prayed to the Asgardian gods that it would rain heavily on their wedding day, or for something to go wrong. Was it mean? Absolutely. Did you care? Absolutely not.

Bucky has hurt you enough, sure he was the victim of Hydra, used to carry out assassinations and did deserve happiness. But the way he treated you was no excuse. If he knew about your crush why didn't he just say something at the beginning instead of making you look and feel like an idiot? Maybe it was a mind game he enjoyed playing so well. He was very manipulative, you knew that much when he had persuaded Steve to break things off and stay as friends. So in your mind and line of thinking you had every right to be pissed off.

You were reading through the case file on the quinjet when you felt the seat next to you occupy itself. From your peripheral vision, you saw the shine from a metal arm and you rolled your eyes.

What does this moron want?

"Can I help you, Sergeant Barnes?" You asked still keeping your head down.

"Just wanna know if you're planning on dating anyone from the new team?" He asked casually, resting his metal arm on his thigh and leaning forward slightly.

Your mouth gaped open and your head shot towards the fossil.

"Why is that your business?"

"I don't want you to date anyone but me." He whispered you were aware Natasha, his fiancée was only a few seats away adjusting her suit.

"What the fu-"

"Look Y/N. Listen to me for a moment. Doll, when I found out about your crush I was with Nat but the more distant we got the more I actually missed you and when Steve told me about you two and I realized something..." he whispered loud enough for only you to hear.

"What's that? You finally grew a pair?"

He shakes his head but keeping eye contact with you.

"I want you Y/N. I wanna be the guy you go to bed with every night. The guy who has you in his arms. I made a mistake. I love you." His eyes glisten and for a moment your mind is blank and you don't fucking understand his demeanor.

He's messing around, your intuition is telling you that much. You're not close enough for him to have feelings for you, he's testing your reaction you're sure of it.

"Now is not the time." You whispered back, he looks pained and you're confused.

He did not mean any of that. He treated me like absolute shit.

"Doll, pleas-"

"Alright team. Suit up let's go. The other team is waiting for us." Steve orders adjusting his shield on his back and everyone on the quinjet nods in understanding.

Stepping off the quinjet, your eyes opened in awe at the beauty of this cute little village, just a couple of shacks around and so much land.

The Avengers were called in to help another team on a mission. You were pretty psyched about meeting them and they were just like the avengers only they were lucky because they didn't have a Bucky.

The sun was just rising behind the trees, the other team was waiting on the desolate field. The first person to greet your team was Bruce Wayne. Another Tony Stark with his money.

"Welcome to Russia." Bruce shook Steve's hand and nodded towards the rest of you.

“Thanks for having us," Steve replied going into details about the mission. Your eyes locked on to a sweet-looking guy in a shirt and jeans with a pair of dark-framed spectacles, you smiled curtly and he returned it melting your heart.

You felt a sharp jab on your right side, Bucky's eyes were burning holes in the side of your head.

"He's no good for you Y/N." He whisper-shouted. Earning a glare from Sam who was on your left.

"Don't you have a fiancée to worry about? Worry about her and leave me alone!" You gritted through your teeth.

Before Bucky could reply, Steve stood in front of you and got everyone's attention. His hands resting on his belt.

"Alright, avengers. Our mission here is to distract Steppenwolf's army while the other guys work on breaking apart the three mother boxes. We're a strong team, hopefully, once those boxes are apart we can defeat Steppenwolf and his army. Tony, I want you and Bruce helping Cyborg with the boxes. Y/N, Bucky, Nat, Wanda, Sam, Clint and myself will be on the ground doing the distracting with Diana and Aquaman. Are we clear?" “Yes, boss.” Tony quipped back sarcastically, earning a few laughs.

Everyone nods understanding the mission key points. Kick-ass but stay alive, easy enough. You wanted to throw up when Nat spontaneously threw her arms around Bucky's neck and kissed him.

Girl, you don't know where that mouth has been.

The mission goes according to plan. Steppenwolf is distracted on the ground just like Steve had planned out. Tony, Bruce, and Cyborg were busy separating the mother boxes above you. His army was never-ending, but it was definitely a mission you couldn't forget anytime soon.

The cute man you smiled at earlier joined near the end, you later recognized him without his spectacles as superman. And after the fight, he had shyly introduced himself as Clark.

The mother boxes were separated and Steppenwolf was defeated by everyone's hand and the boxes were put back where they belonged, both teams flew back to Kansas for the night. The avengers would leave for New York tomorrow after a good night's rest.

"Thank you, avengers, for helping us. We couldn't have done it without you." Bruce stood proudly, patting everyone on the back. "Anytime you need us please don't hesitate to call us." He walked out with his newly established team, Clark stayed behind and motioned to talk to you in private.

"I'm grateful for the avengers coming to help." He said as you two walked behind a closed door.

"Well, it's kinda our job."

He thinks for a moment.

"When do you go back to New York?"

"Tomorrow." You tucked a strand of hair behind your ear and shifted between your feet involuntarily biting and licking your lips.

"Then may I request your presence to join me for a date?" He was charming, you would admit that much.

"Yes, I would like that."

You actually had a great time with Clark. He was sweet, funny and charming and you don't recall laughing as hard on any other date.

Not to mention Kansas was absolutely gorgeous and full of friendly locals.

It was a little after 11pm when you got back to your rented room.

"How was your date?" A voice asked in the darkness when you opened your door and walked in.

Turning the lights on and clutching your chest from fright, you glared at the brooding man in front of you sitting on your bed.

"God, you don't take a hint do you?" You threw your keys on the chest next to the door. "And it was great. He was great."

"Yeah? What's so special about him anyway? A big fucking deal he can fly and all that bullshit." He tutted obviously jealous.

"Well for starters, he's not conceited like you. Secondly, he doesn't tell me he loves me even when he has a fiancée. And thirdly, he didn't treat me like a dog." You lifted your hand, fingers raising as you listed your points.

"I meant what I said Y/N. I'm gonna make you believe it." He stalked towards you, "stop fucking around with other guys." He whispered close to your ear, "me and Nat are only a pawn. It's you I want and I always get what I want and don't think for even a single there isn't a damn thing I won't do to get you. That's a promise sweetheart." He kisses your cheek and you pull away, shocked by what he just told you.

How far would Bucky Barnes go to get what he wants? You were afraid to find out.

Permanent Taglist: @morsmordrethings @sebbbystaaan @stuckonjbbarnes @infj-slytherclaw @lovvliies @livylou3333 @zeilenkrieg @iheartsebastianstan @veganfangirl5

And tagging some of the awesome fam: @chloerinebarnes @captain-kelli @valkyriesryde @ficsxreaderr @sandyclaws @dark-night-sky-99 @seb-be-holding-these-tatas (Part 3 is coming soon)

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siriusbunbryist · 4 years ago

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In defence of Abed x Annie.

Thanks to the magic of Netflix, I’ve rewatched Community at age 24, and still found Abed and Annie to have hit the heartstrings as much as I did when I was in high school watching the show for the first time.

But watching the series in its entirety just reinforces my thought that Abed and Annie had so much potential that was wasted, and it’s a shame that the writers planted all these seeds to only decide that perhaps this direction was not worth it / too risky / unfavoured by the audience. But I mean, Alison Brie herself (and I’m assuming Danny Pudi as well) endorsed them! Find here and here.

This was a pairing that with all the crumbs scattered throughout the show (I think we are all aware of these crumbs I speak of), could’ve easily played the “oh we’ve been secretly dating this whole time” trope during the last episode and it would’ve still made sense.

Naturally I did some scoping, and of course unsurprisingly the J.eff x Annie pairing takes the cake, while not a lot of love for Abed x Annie. So here are common points of contentions I see surrounding Abed and Annie, and my rationale on them.

Before I start, a note - I fully respect the J.eff x Annie ship and I don’t intend on starting a ship w.ar/debate. I understand where their support comes from! I just needed to vent because no one else in my social circle watches this show. No hate please.

1. Abed doesn’t see Annie romantically

I think on the contrary it’s been set up rather long ago that Abed at the very least is attracted to Annie.

Exhibit A: “What are you making” in Beginner Pottery

Exhibit B: “Flat B.utt and the one Abed wants to nail” in The Art of Discourse

This video basically explains it! The summary: Annie is Pierce’s favourite, Pierce constantly insults Britta, therefore Britta is flat b.utt.

Exhibit C: Not even trying to hide it in Accounting for Lawyers

But, a romantic interest has to be further built upon finding someone attractive right? There has to be intrigue to their character, such as

Exhibit D: “I can only connect to people through... movies” in English as a Second Language

youtube

It is pretty obvious here that Annie is a rare someone who has successfully broken the impartial screen that Abed filters everything through. Jeff saw it too which is why he said Annie was the ark of the covenant before Abed fell for her disney face. I can only imagine Abed to be quite struck with Annie’s infiltration.

A romantic interest should also share common interests, such as

Exhibit E: “Which makes Annie is my third favourite show” in Paranormal Parentage

I’ve said before that for Abed, a guy who lives life and communicates through comparing it with television and movies, it’s not unthinkable for him to be attracted to someone who genuinely watches his favourite shows and commits to roles during cosplay. And who, besides Troy, would fit this profile? Annie.

And finally, the biggest indicator of it all, we also see how Abed views the Jeff and Annie pairing in everyone’s favourite episode Remedial Chaos Theory. Keeping in mind that the timelines are rendered by Abed, out of all the timelines, J.eff and Annie only kis.sed when Abed left the room for pizza. As well, as conjured in Abed’s head, Evil Jeff and Evil Annie only existed as a couple in the Darkest Timeline. To me at least, it’s arguable that this alludes to Abed’s omniscient “director” standpoint that he may be the obstacle in the Jeff and Annie relationship - pointing towards him perhaps harbouring feelings for Annie.

2. Annie doesn’t see Abed romantically The general consensus on this point is that Annie is only attracted to Abed when he’s playing a character. I rather think that being attracted to someone, and being attracted to someone during role play, aren’t mutually exclusive. Let’s take a look at the different characters that Abed played.

Don Draper: serious, sophisticated, and smooth.

Han Solo: immature, flirty and a smarta.ss.

Batman: mysterious, complex, and brave.

Three different personas, yet Annie responded to all of them. Since the common denominator to all three is that they are played by Abed, I would like to offer a counterpoint that perhaps the attraction to Abed has always been there, it’s just emphasized when Abed plays a character. Who knows, role playing might even be Annie’s ki.nk. After all, during For a Few Paintballs More, it is shown that Annie is disappointed when Abed dropped the Han Solo persona after the battle ended.

Annie also loves big romantic gestures. Who’s better than doing that than Abed? Since the beginning, Abed has already been doing big romantic gestures of varying degrees for Annie. With this, it’s not ridiculous for Annie to see Abed as a romantic potential.

Exhibit F: Staying in a room for 26 hours in Social Psychology

Annie: You sat in a room for twenty-six straight hours. Didn’t that bother you? Abed: Yeah I was livid. Annie: Then why didn’t you leave? Abed: Because you asked me to stay and you said we were friends.

Exhibit G: Rescuing her from “captivity” and inviting her to move in in Remedial Chaos Theory and Studies in Modern Movement (even Troy was surprised at Abed’s invitation)

Exhibit H: Tearing down the Dreamatorium in Studies in Modern Movement

Annie: What about the Dreamatorium? Abed: Oh it's staying. The Dreamatorium is more important than any of us. But you're more important than our bedroom so we put the bunk bed in the blanket fort.

Bonus: Confirmed by Alison Brie

3. The show was about Jeff and Annie

Dan Harmon said that Community’s approach is that anything and any pairing is possible. We see this is as the series started with the classic “player vs smart snarky girl” trope with setting up Jeff and Britta as the main pairing. We also see Troy and Annie as the potential B couple in the show. The writers also threw Pierce and Shirley, Annie and Britta, Dean and Jeff, and even Chang and Britta in for a laugh.

And then the show subverted this all by introducing Jeff and Annie, and made Troy and Britta a couple, showing us that Community is a show that intends on breaking these classic sitcom stereotypes by experimenting with different pairings. Abed and Annie was no exception to this, as the writers often pair them up in different shenanigans and hint at possible grounds to explore*.

A few examples: Han and Leia in For a Few Paintballs More, Hector the Well Endowed and the Elf Maiden in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, spy partners in Modern Espionage.

No doubt that the show dabbled in and out of Jeff and Annie throughout the series. However, to say that Jeff and Annie was the primary pairing in the series would mean overlooking Jeff and Britta. Especially when Jeff and Britta have the whole love-hate dynamic, three(?) marriage close-calls, and emotional snippets such as helping Jeff reunite with his father in Cooperative Escapism in Familial Relations.

Anyway, not to discredit Jeff and Annie, but knowing that the show explores the possibility of different pairings**, why write off Abed and Annie?

* Not to mention that the cop pairing in The Science of Illusion was originally written with Abed and Annie in mind! ** We also see a stray Abed and Britta during Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps.

4. Annie is in love with Jeff To keep this short and shipper-goggle free, Annie has said on numerous occasions that she’s in love with the idea of Jeff, not Jeff himself. Specifically this scene in Virtual Systems Analysis:

Abed as Annie: "…We love Jeff…" Annie: "No we don’t, we’re just in love with the idea of being loved. And if we can teach a guy like Jeff to do it, we’ll never be unloved, so we keep running the same scenario over and over hoping for a different result."

And this scene in Conventions of Space and Time:

Annie: All right, I may have been play-acting that we were married, and then the staff thought you were cheating, and I had to save face. Jeff: Do I have to worry about this? Annie: No, I was just daydreaming. I mean, I've married you at least a half a dozen times. And Troy. And Zac Efron.

Not to mention that their conversation in the finale says it all.

Jeff: I don't wanna be fine. I wanna be 25 and heading out into the world. I wanna fall asleep on a beach and be able to walk the next day, or stay up all night on accident. I wanna wear a white t-shirt without looking like I forgot to get dressed.* I want to be terrified of AIDS, I want to have an opinion about those, boring a.ss Marvel movies. And I want those opinions to be of any concern to the people making them. Annie: Well I want to live in the same home for more than a year, order wine without feeling nervous, have a resume full of crazy mistakes instead of crazy lies. I want stories and wisdom, perspective. I wanna have so much behind me I'm not a sl.ave to what's in front of me, especially those flavourless unremarkable Marvel movies.

*Shipper-goggle on: Part of me thinks this is a reference to Abed, whose iconic style almost exclusively comprises T-shirts. What Jeff is saying is that he wishes he is 25 again with his future open before him, someone who compatible with Annie, but here he acknowledges that he isn’t, and lets her go in the end.

5. Abed and Annie wouldn’t work as a couple Another point I see is that Abed and Annie are strictly platonic and are more like brother and sister. On the basis that they have made out a couple times and are attracted to each other, I would disagree with the sibling statement.

Troy, in contrast to Abed, I think actually resembles a more sibling-like relationship with Annie. Although Troy and Annie have the strong friendship of Abed and Annie, when disregarding the high school crush stage of season 1, their storylines never dwelled further down an attraction path, nor was there any specific episode that was dedicated to a deep dive of vulnerabilities and confrontation between them. As a comparison, Troy and Britta had opportunities to explore these setups (Troy admitted to lying about his b.utt stuff story and Troy helped Britta face Blade) - an indication that Troy and Britta were heading into non-platonic territory. Jeff and Britta too, had several opportunities to confront their feelings (up till the very last season), a clear indication of a non-platonic relationship.

For Abed and Annie, what I think pulls their friendship towards actual love interest potential is best pinpointed to Virtual Systems Analysis. Annie’s participation in the Dreamatorium prompted her to not only fully submerge into the way Abed thinks and comprehends his surroundings, but she also got to understand and address Abed’s stubbornness and flaws in a vulnerable way, confronting some of her own flaws as well.

Abed as Shirley: Your hospital school, young lady, is a simulation being run through a filter of other people's needs. Abed's been filtered out because nobody needs him. Annie: I need him!

And to point out this little tidbit in VCR Maintenance and Educational Publishing,

Annie: That's why Abed is like a brother to me. You guys are so alike. Abed: I can't accept that based on one time machine story.

This whole episode, instead of establishing Abed is like Annie’s brother, I would argue is rather doing the opposite. Abed and Annie’s hyper antics in the episode were basically matched by Anthony and Rachel’s blatant indifference and confusion. For lots of Abed and Annie supporters, this episode was a major setback. But I think it instead highlights how in-sync they are with each other, which is a good thing.

Another point, despite Annie trying to prove otherwise, Abed and Anthony had different vibes, and each shared different dynamics with Annie. And as Anthony pointed out in the end, who were Abed and Annie trying to replace in the apartment? Troy. The person who they are trying to fill is Troy - their roommate, their brother, their best friend. Troy was the brother role that neither Abed and Annie can fill for each other.

In Basic Sandwich, we get this exchange:

Abed: The point is, this show, Annie, it isn't just their show. This is our show, and it's not over. And the sooner we find that treasure, the faster the Jeff-Britta pilot falls apart. Annie: Got it. Thank you, Abed. Abed: You're welcome. I have a girlfriend. Annie: What? Abed: You were about to start a kiss lean. Annie: I was not.

Not only did Abed saw right through Annie’s anxiety and comforted her in his own uniquely Abed way, but he also felt the need to remind her of his girlfriend. The fact that he broke the fourth wall here is likely the writers’ way to be meta, but simply acknowledging the tension and bond there says a lot in between the lines. If tension does not exist, there would be no need for this line.

Besides, instead of thinking that they’re strictly platonic (which of course is also okay), they would rather work great as a couple. In terms of opposites attract, Annie grounds Abed with just the right amount, while Abed clearly encourages Annie to be her true self and be immature. Such as this scene in Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism,

Annie: I’m following him. Troy: You moving in here was supposed to tone us down!

Annie also doesn’t just tolerate Abed’s idiosyncrasies, she actually likes them and fully participates as multiple paintball games and cosplays would tell us. Special shoutout to the missing lovers footage in Wedding Videography, which through Britta, actually shows us that Annie is the only one who would go along with Abed’s projects - while Britta found the project extremely weird and unhealthy, Annie thought it was fun and commits well to her role.

And while others may tiptoe around Abed, Annie isn’t afraid to call Abed out when he’s out of line and makes a point to teach him about empathy in Virtual Systems Analysis. Remember that Britta tried teaching him this but it didn’t work as well.

I am Abed Nadir... And I don't know a lot of things everyone else knows. I wander the universe with my friend, Troy, doing whatever I want. Sometimes accidentally hurting innocent unremarkables. This week, however, Troy went to lunch and I adapted. I now have the ability to enter the minds of others using an elusive new technique known as "empathy".

As well as in the entire episode of Cooperative Polygraphy.

They also know each other best. Abed knew her cushion preferences, was the one who spelled out her true pas.sion for forensics, and after living together, Annie knew how to navigate Abed’s peculiarities and to soothe him whenever he had a nervous breakdown.

Annie also knows him so well that she can predict his reaction.

They are also each other’s exception. Annie was always the one who manages to pull Abed out of a trance and back to reality, usually with touch.

Abed is also very forgiving with her. An example is when Annie seemingly lost all common sense because she broke Abed’s special edition dvd in Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism.

Annie: Well, Batman, on behalf of all of us that aren't perfect, can I just say I'm sorry I broke your DVD? Abed: Apology accepted. But I wouldn't mention it to Abed. That guy's pretty ruthless. And that's coming from Batman.

And in Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas, Annie was the only claymation doll that didn’t have a weird form (except Troy as toy soldier of course). Annie was a ballerina because Abed sees her as a creature of grace. Abed was also the first one who got her “brighter tomorrow” diorama and responded with enthusiasm.

They are also in the same stage in life. As Dan Harmon explains the choice of Abed and Annie being the ones who leave the group, with Troy gone, Abed and Annie symbolize the many possibilities of the future - a possibility that makes them viable. I like to think Annie transfers to the LA FBI office after her internship and they reunite.

And as the Spice Girls said, “if you wanna be my love.r, you gotta get with my friends”. In Paleyfest, Dan Harmon says this about whoever Troy and Abed ends up dating, “I mean a woman that comes into either of their lives is either going to drive them apart or she's going to have to be really accepting of a very special relationship”.

Britta tolerated their friendship but to a point of asking Annie to distract Abed for alone time with Troy, Troy dumped the librarian as she called Abed weird, Robin disappeared, Rachel we never got to see much of, but was pretty quiet and separated from the group. From this, logically speaking, Annie would actually be the perfect match for Abed, as we all know they’re the ultimate trio within the study group and a transition from friends to more will be natural.

Oh, and, Abed is wrong. They’re not Chandler and Phoebe with little storylines together, they’re Chandler and Monica.

Anyway, that’s it for my super long rant/analysis. Community the series is done and over, so there isn’t a need for any ship war. All I want to say is, if #andamovie happens, hopefully, the writers will actually take a leap.

#abed x annie #community #annie x abed #abed nadir #annie edison #sorry if you've seen this already i'm trying to figure out why my tags won't work #mine #thoughts

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amazingdriverfics · 4 years ago

Text

Making up

Hey, I missed some Sackler and thought of this, surprise surprise, instead of sleeping. It’s currently 2 am where I live and here I am. Anyway, hope you enjoy it!

Word Count: 3.6k

Warnings: lil bit of angst, language, smut, bisexual reader

Pairing: Adam Sackler x Reader

Summary: the last time you had seen him made you wish you would never do it again

Sitting in the chair next to the play director, you waited patiently as the actors one by one performed for their audition, it was boring, frustrating and you were almost throwing a chair at the stage. God, when did actors become so fucking terrible at their jobs? A deep voice took you from your thoughts back to what was happening right in front of you.

“Uh, hello. I’m Adam Sackler and I’m here to try for the role of George”. No way, this was not happening, there was absolutely no way that after all these years you were going to have to deal with him again, not after how things ended. As soon as you gathered courage to look at the stage your fear was confirmed, your ex-best friend was standing right there, and just by seeing the start of his performance you knew he would be the one to star it next to you. Adam always was an excellent actor, he could make you feel every single emotion he wanted, his every movement, facial expression and voice tone in character. Even in college, Sackler was simply explendid in what he did and that was one of the things you used to admire more in him.

6 years ago

In your room, already dressed, you hummed a pop melody you had been obsessed with while you finished your makeup. You intended to look the best you possibly could, that night was the night you had decided to finally talk to the girl you had been crushing hard for a couple of months. You met Angie in your part time job in the book shop in campus, she was a History major student who worked with you at mondays and thursdays, she always engaged in small talks with you and you did your absolute best not to gag while talking to the purple haired girl. One of the fraternities was throwing a party and you had invited her to come with you and your best friend slash roommate Adam Sackler.

You had moved into his place as soon as you went to college, the rent was something you could definitely afford, you would live 5 minutes away from the campus and with another acting major. At first, you found Adam very strange, the 6’3” foot man would get out of his room shirtless to have a drink of milk in the middle of the night and usually acted like you were not there while doing it, he would also engage in very strange topics, he hated when you brought any of your friends home and had very loud sex. You started to like Sackler when he helped you studying for a test, that was the first time the two of you had a decent talk. Ever since, you were inseparable, every night you would sit on the couch and watch some sitcom while judging the script and acting skills of the actors, you always went to bed with your tummy hurting from how much you had laughed. At the time, you had even developed a crush in the man, but he never gave you any signs that he felt the same so you dropped it, happy to call him your best friend.

“Are you ready? Your crush is here” Adam said bringing his head into your room and taking your mind off your thoughts about the man himself. “Oh my God, I’ll be there in a minute” you said applying one last coat of mascara. “Wait, Adam” you screamed making his head appear again. “What is it, kid?” his eyes met yours. “Do I look good?” you asked spinning around and showing all of you. “As usual, you are stunning. Now, let’s get going” the man stated leaving you again.

Slowly, you made your way to the living room watching as your best friend talked to Angie, her mere presence already making you nervous. She was so so beautiful, her purple hair was in a messy bun, she was wearing a tight black dress which hugged her body perfectly and high heels to finish the look. “H-hi, Angie, you are very pretty to-tonight” you gagged, cursing yourself for making a fool of yourself. As an attempt to calm you down, Sackler brought his right hand to your lower back. “You look very good yourself, y/n” your crush replied making your face become instantly red. “T-thank you” you replied as the three of you made your way out of your home to the party, Adam leading the way.

Getting to the party was easy, you three walked for about six minutes and you were already in the place, the sound blasting with dancy tunes, booze smell all around and a few couples making out in the grass in front of the house. The start was pretty fun, Sackler was the first to go solo - as usual - probably meeting some of his classmates or, more likely, already sucking someone’s lips out of their faces. You, on the other hand, was finally alone with Angie. After getting some drinks on the kitchen, the two of you made your way to the dancefloor, her body sensually touching yours as she danced against it, her head on your shoulder, it wasn’t long before your hands found her waist pressing her even more to you. The woman turned around and her black eyes met yours as she closed the distance between your faces sealing your lips with a deep hungry kiss. Unfortunately for you, after a while of heavy making out, Angie had to excuse herself to go to the bathroom. Her absence was starting to get too long making you nervous and worried that something might be happening.

It wasn’t long before you found her.

Angie’s purple hair was what instantly made you recognize her, she was kissing someone else and it didn’t take you much to recognize that someone as well, his black hair, tall and broad figure dressed in white shirt and jeans were impossible to mistake, you just couldn’t believe that your best friend was kissing the girl you had been talking about ceaselessly in the past months, Adam Sackler was such a jerk. Before you could stop yourself, you poked his shoulder forcing his mouth to disconnect with Angie’s as his head turned around to face you. You didn’t give him a chance to say anything since as soon as his eyes met yours, your hand hit his face making a loud slap noise muffled by the song. Shortly after, you were out of the house making your way back home.

That night ended even more terribly, the two of you had fought and said very mean things about each other, in the following day you were out there as you moved to a common dorm. Until this very moment you had never seen Sackler again.

Fortunately, as soon as Adam finished the audition and the director said she would call him to tell if he got in, the man left the auditorium, causing you to, instantly, feel lighter knowing that you wouldn’t have to deal with him today.

Oh boy, you were wrong. You only found out how wrong you were the minute you left the theatre when suddenly a hand pulled you from the direction you had been going. Your face stopped just a few inches before colliding with a defined chest that for you had just seen a couple of minutes ago.

“What do you want, Sackler?” you asked, your tone showing your discomfort with the situation. “Hello for you too, kid. After all these years you are still mad at me?” the familiar voice you had listened to so much years ago filled your ears. “After all that bullshit you said to me? What do you think?” you gritted through your teeth getting angrier by the minute. “I was a dick to you, I know and believe it or not, I’m sorry. I have an explanation for what happened that night” he replied with a pout and giving you the same puppy eyes he used to give you when he wanted you to cook dinner. You laughed, “This is going to be good, but we are not doing this in the middle of the street, come” you said unable to resist his supplicating face.

Stepping away from the man, you started to walk to your car parked just in front of the theater. Not hearing his heavy footsteps following, you turned to face him once again finding out that Sackler was still in the same damn spot you had left him in. “Are you coming?” you asked. As a reply you got an nervous nod from your ex-friend that quickly was getting in the car with you. The drive was filled with an awkward silence, neither of you knew what to say, things had ended badly and even though it had been a long time ago, losing your best friend because he couldn’t keep his tongue to himself still hurted a bit. Thankfully, the theater wasn’t far from your place, a three store building you had been living for two years, ever since you got the job in the acting company. There wasn’t a garage so you parked right outside not waiting for Adam as you made your way to the building’s front door, climbing its dark stairs while you looked for your keys in the mix of throwed things inside your purse. By the time you were finally able to open it, he was by your side switching his balance in between his legs.

As soon as you entered your living room taking off your shoes and letting your purse by the dinning table, you turned to Sackler anxious for what he had to say. In the months which followed the big fight, you had wished to speak to him a lot, but your pride just wouldn’t allow it, you had missed him a lot too, but eventually you gave up and finally let yourself leave what had happened in the past, however, seeing him in front of you took you right back to those months where you foolishly hoped that he would come to beg you for forgiveness or that you would gather the courage to confront the man and solve things.

“You can start whatever it is that you are planning to do” you said, doing your best to keep your emotions from showing in your face as you grabbed a cup of water trying to prepare yourself for what was coming your way. Adam swallowed dry before his voice met your ears. “Hm. Well, like I said before, I was a jerk to you and I know it and I also know that I probably should have looked for you earlier to say this” he started, his voice kinda shaky from the nervousness you could see in his body language. “You swear?” you mocked, a dry laugh following it. “I deserve this. See, kid, I read in a newspaper last week a review about your performance in the last play you theater company did and the minute your face showed up I was like ‘fuck this is the incredible girl I, yet again, pushed away being a total dick who can’t express his fucking feelings’. And I-i knew that I had to fix it, sure, maybe it is too late to, but I had to give it a try, I thought to myself.” he stopped looking into your eyes waiting for a reaction which caused you to nod interested in what Sackler had to say. “So I enrolled myself for the next male role they were auditioning for thinking of meeting you. I wasn’t expecting to see you at the try out, guess I was lucky” he shrugged “Here goes nothing. You see, kid, when you moved in, the first thing that went through my mind was ‘this woman is fucking hot’, but I was also really scared of being too fucking weird and end up pushing you away, I’m a master at doing this kinda shit, ya’ know, so I stayed away. That was until I saw you dying to pass in that dick Jefferson’s test and decided to help you out. You were sweet, funny and kind.” you still remembered the day vividly, it held a special place in your heart and knowing that it did the same to him, made you softer causing your indiferent facade to melt away.

“And shit, ever since then you were so fucking present in my day, helping me out with my shit, watching those stupid fucking sitcoms and judging them with me. I fell for you and it scared the shit out of me so I didn’t do anything. Then you started to talk about that Angie girl, and I didn’t even want to kiss her, but you were so fucking into the woman that the only way I figured out for pushing you away from her was fucking her. I don’t even know what the hell I was thinking, you know I’m not a very smart guy with feelings. When you catched me with her I could see in your eyes how much I fucked up so, as I made my way home, I built up some walls around me trying to keep the situation from hurting me, which didn’t work. So when I found you at our place instead of apologizing like I should’ve done, I screamed and called you names. When you left the other day I was so fucking embarrassed and heartbroken that I never went looking for you to have this stupid conversation I’m having now, six years too late.” Adam finished making you even more angry than you were before.

“Unbelievable. You are so fucking stupid, Sackler. You have zero emotional intelligence, for fucks sake. I wanted to kiss you so bad when we started to hang out, but you didn’t give any fucking signal back. Think for a second of how much easier all of that would have been. God dammit, you need to talk to people. If you had told me any of your feelings I would have never have fallen for Angie, your gigantic idiot.” you throwed up the words, mad at the man for causing a huge problem that should have never even existed. “You liked me back?” he said, voice above a whisper. “You bet your sorry ass I did, jer-”, you were stopped when his lips met yours all out of the sudden.

At first, you didn’t kiss him back still mad at him, but the part of you that never stopped missing Adam eventually won. You closed your eyes and allowed your hands to embrace his neck, your nails slowly scratching the part where his hair met the skin. As a reply, Sackler’s hand grabbed your ass tightly, squeezing it hard making you moan into his mouth and sending pleasure to your core. “Eager, are we?” he said mocking your red face and the little grunts that ended up escaping your mouth and dying in his. “Shut up, Sackler” you replied embarrassed at your own need. “Your wish is an order” he purred next to your ear before taking your earlobe into his mouth teasing it with his teeth, up next, his mouth started to make its way to your breasts leaving a tray of purple and red marks along the way. “Let’s take this thing off” he said as his hands held to the bottom of your shirt lifting it up as quickly as he possibly could. When the piece of clothing met the floor, his eyes met your exposed nipples since you weren’t wearing anything under the shirt.

“Such a fucking slut, walking out there without a bra, begging for these to be sucked” he said, his deep voice dripping with arousal as his fingers teased your hard nubs. “I guess I’ll be the one to teach you some fucking manners”. As soon as the words left his mouth, he let go of your right nipple replacing his fingers with his tongue and slapping your ass hard making you squirm under his ministrations. Shortly after, his tongue gave espace to his teeth as he carefully bit your nub. “M-more” you whispered, your cunt aching for his touch.

“More what?” Sackler replied his eyes with a mischievous glam looking directly into your as he gave your other ass check a hard slap making you groan. “Answer me, slut” he demanded, his roughness and dirty talk making you wetter. “More. Puh-lease, sir” your voice echoed through the room foreign to you since it was shaky from all the need and pleasure you were simultaneously feeling. “That’s more how I like it” the man stated taking all of his clothing of. “Undress and get on the couch” was all he said before starting to pump his length slowly, teasing its tip and gathering the precum oozing from it for lubricate his movements.

Your body reacted before your brain could form a coherent thought, in instants, your pants and panties were on the floor connecting the way from the door to the couch and you were on your hands and knees in its comfy surface, your breath loud and heavy as you watched Adam touching himself, your anticipation killing you slowly. As he closed the distance between the two of you, his hands never stopped touching his big and hard erection. It wasn’t long before he was behind you, his index finger from the free hand slowly going up and down your folds never touching your sore stiff clit. “You are such a filthy thing. We barely started and you are already dripping. Your sweet pussy begging for my big cock to tear it”, all you could do besides moaning a serie of ‘please’s was nod your head several times hoping that it would encourage him to end your pain. “You want me to make you cum? Beg for it, slut” he purred, none of his hands quitting their movements. “Please, please, sir, make me cum, make me feel so fucking good, like only you can” you begged desperate for it.

The reply you gave seemed to please him enough since his finger finally touched your clit causing you to release a relieved noise and allow your head to fall between your arms. While circling it, he took his other hand inserting two fingers in your slickery hole, curling them and hitting your g spot over and over again, following the same rhythm his other finger circled your clit applying just the right amount of pressure on it. Soon, your release was getting closer, your eyes started to close as you focused on every sensation Sackler made you feel. When your orgasm hit, you were sent to another dimension, pleasure coursing through your every atom as you moaned his name.

After you recovered from your intense climax, Sackler took his fingers away from your pussy, substituting them with his thick and long erection, stretching you open in ways you had never been before, every inch making your feel fuller. When he was finally done, his filthy words filled the air once again “Y-you are so fucking tight, you are strangling my damn cock”. His sheer length was making you squirm already, but every word that left his mouth make you unconsciously clench your cunt around him. As soon as you got accustomed to his size, you threw your hips back, a sign that he could start moving. Quickly, he was pounding in and out of you, in and out of you, in a merciless pace which made the sound of his pelvis meeting your ass echo loudly through the living room, your moans just as loud. Sackler’s hands were gripping your waist so tight that you knew it would bruise - not that you really cared -.

“Ur so fucking good to me - jesusfuckingchrist - I wished I had fucked this pussy earlier”, you tried to sassy him since he was the one to blame, but he was fucking you so well that you couldn’t form a understandable phrase, all that left your mouth were whimpers as you felt his cock filling you perfectly and hitting your cervix in a unbelievable pace. “You can’t talk back, slut?” he gave a strangled laugh “Like you better l-liike that”.

Taking one of his hands out of your waist, he took it to your clit rubbing it quickly and pressuring it deliciously, taking you closer to the edge with every passing second. The fullness you were feeling and the electricity your nub filled with blood was sending to your brain making you tighter. It wasn��t long before you climaxed for the second time, losing the strength of your arms as your body shook, if it wasn’t for his grip you would have fell with your face directly on the couch. “Sweetfuck, you are milking my cock, shitshit”.

His pace became irregular and it wasn’t long before he took his erection out of you painting your ass and back with his release. Gently, Sackler laid you on the couch asking you where the bathroom was. When he returned with a towel to clean you up, you were watching a sitcom - you had put it on after using all you strength left to pick the remote - waiting for him. “After you clean your mess, let’s watch it like the old times” you said shaking your head towards the tv.

“If you insist” he said with a smile on his beautiful face.

#adam sackler #adam sackler smut #adam sackler fanfiction #adam sackler/reader #adam sackler/you #girls hbo #adam driver #smut #make up sex

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tricktster · 5 years ago

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Honestly, I cannot say enough about my german study abroad program, in no small part because the people i met through it were the wildest bunch i have ever met. We had:

Me, a cursed American stumbling through increasingly unlikely and unfortunate situations, including:

getting arrested and hauled off in a cop car for the serious crime of not transcribing the five digit number printed on the back of my bus ticket onto the front of my bus ticket

slipping on dog poop on a crowded street while running late for class (leading a number of tourists to run over and photograph me in my undignified heap on the cobblestones) only to suffer one final indignity when i had to leave my poop shoe out in the hall outside the classroom, and subsequently discovered after class that it had been (correctly) identified as garbage by the custodian, and had been disposed of

spending the entire month of November with essentially no money after a bank error caused me to be cut off from my US checking account, thereby forcing me to figure out how to survive by my wits alone in a series of schemes, cons, and 1€ sausages

burning my thumb so badly on an oven in an attempt to make the world’s worst stuffing for the world’s saddest expat thanksgiving that my friends all had an intervention where they gave me a single black glove to wear because it was grossing them all out.

Enough about me. There were also my closest friends:

L , a horrendously wealthy New Englander who would drop lines in her stories like “so we were all smoking opium in my parents library,” and, “so every time my room gets too dirty, i just move to the next one down until the whole wing is filthy.” In spite of everything I’ve just said, she was also a genuinely good and incredibly fearless person who would throw fists without hesitation if she thought anyone was insulting her friends. She had a weird sexual relationship with her obscenely wealthy family friend in Frankfurt, which the rest of us suspected maybe been part of a business deal that their parents arranged at birth. It was better than Game of Thrones, honestly.

Y, a four foot tall Puerto Rican that I met when we were both walking down the street kind of near each other and some wild impulse called me to say to her, without so much as an introduction, “Yeah, you walk pretty cool, but if you wanna walk REAL cool, you gotta do it like thissssss,” while kinda lunging around. Just as inexplicably, she chose to continue talking to me, and several months later the two of us ended up making a harrowing 2:00 am escape from the private bar of a frat house that we had suddenly noticed had an awful lot of Nazi memorabilia on the walls for a frat located in a country that had criminalized the display of Nazi symbols. “Why are you leaving?” The frat-nazis complained as we bolted. “You will come back tomorrow afternoon for the barbecue, ja?” “Ahahhahaha nein fucking way, motherfucker,” Y muttered under her breath as we smiled and nodded politely all the way out the private garden, through the enormous iron gates, and out into the night. Once we were in the clear, we stared at each other, shaken, until Y broke the silence. “Welp. Those guys were Nazis. That actually just happened. I can’t.... man, I dunno, i’m still processing, let’s just go get some fucking falafel.”

We did.

S, the Australian, who one time invited me over to her apartment, opened the fridge, grabbed a plate of cheese, shoved it under my nose while going “HERE SMELL THIS!” and while i lurched away, gagging, cheerfully added “IT’S REALLY FOUL, RIGHT? ONE OF THE WOST THINGS I’VE EVER SMELLED!!” She was also absolutely obsessed with High School Musical, and was very disappointed every time the Americans shattered one of her illusions about the US public school system.

K, the girl from New Zealand, who had broken up with her serious boyfriend shortly before leaving for Germany, causing her to mourn his loss every time she got drunk by describing his penis with increasingly strange metaphors, such as “like a big wax candle but part of it’s gone,” and “like one leg off a spider.”

So, i had a pretty solid crew of five big weirdos. But there were, naturally, more people than the five of us in our program. For example:

R, from Minnesota, who dressed like she was about 72 and glared at anyone who was laughing too loudly near her because “i just don’t think jokes are funny.” More importantly, she would post facebook videos of herself reciting, entirely sincerely and in a steady monotone, the worst fucking poems that I have ever heard. She posted them under a pen name that was along the same lines as “the lyrical falcon.” She was in a feud with not one but two poetry clubs at her christian college, and while she never admitted this, all evidence suggested that it was because they both kicked her out. She was the Tommy Wisseau of poems. They were so bad they looped back around to good. Also, one time on the train she told me that she liked to think that she was a very good kisser because she played the french horn so she had strong mouth muscles. when i finally recovered from the mortal blow that she just delivered my soul, I asked her if she blew into people when she kissed them, and she got so insulted that she blocked me from her facebook poetry page. let me back in, R. please, if you’re reading this, let me back in.

They’re good poems, R.

Zoolander, from Pennsylvania, who was so, so handsome, but so, so, so dumb. One time he told me about this dream he had, and it was just an entire episode of Dexter’s lab. No changes or anything, he just... dreamed that he was watching that episode, and then the whole thing played in his head until it was done. He said it was the best dream he’d ever had. I once watched him pick up the same coin off the street four times because he couldn’t figure out that his pocket had a hole in it. When he noticed me, he said excitedly “Somebody left money everywhere!”

Juan, who constantly confused all the kids from Spain who went up to talk to him in their native tongue, only to discover that he was a very sarcastic man from Liverpool who didn’t speak a word of Spanish and was sick of everyone trying to bond with him. He only liked the Americans, because that’s where the tv show Family Guy was from, and only the Americans liked him, because we tend to like surly british assholes for basically no reason. At the end of the program while we were all saying our goodbyes, he came up to me, looking really upset. “I can’t believe it,” He said, uncharacteristically serious. “I can’t believe it’s all over and i’ll never...” He looked like he was about to cry.

“Oh, dude, we can keep in touch on facebook or something?” I fumbled. He blinked.

“What? No, no, ugh, it’s just the last day of the program and I’ve LOST MY FOOKIN SCARF!” he roared.

God, I know this is weird, but I still really miss that guy.

The Croatian: There was a dude from Croatia in my apartment building who outright refused to tell me his name, because, “It’s an embarrassing word in English. You’d laugh.” I badgered him for five months, until finally, his defenses down, after many earnest promises that no matter what his name was, I would not laugh, he relented.

“My name is Tin.” He said sheepishly.

His name was fucking Tin.

Beardy, Beardo, Redbeard, and Weirdbeard: four drastically different young men from all across our beautiful planet who had one thing in common: thinking that they’d try out a beard while they were abroad. We always admired them from a distance, and compared their beards’ various unique and bad properties, until one day Beardy (who was australian and had developed a sort of flesh colored goatee) walked up to S, his countryman, in a club. “DO YOU WANT TO DANCE?” he yelled, trying to get her attention, but she was in a dance-off with K, and didn’t notice, so he tapped her shoulder. She whirled around, startled, and upon recognizing him, said without thinking, “OH, HI BEARDY!”

The song faded out.

Beardy stared at S.

“...Did you just call me ‘Beardy?’” he asked quietly. S looked like a deer in the headlights. She glanced towards me, hoping for an out, but I, dear reader, was laughing too hard to be of any use.

“You did,” he went on, “you called me ‘Beardy!’ Why!?”

“Cuz of your beard, probably. That’s a better name for you than Josh.” Zoolander interjected from out of nowhere, strolling out of the club, a beautiful woman on each arm.

“My name isn’t Josh...” Beardy tried to call after him.

“Who’s name isn’t Josh? Oh! Beardy!” A drunk K could be heard deducing from the back of the room.

He shaved it a week later, but the damage was done. He was Beardy for the rest of the semester.

When I look back on that period of my life now, I can’t help but reflect - with the clarity one only gets from experience - that my time in Germany was not as weird as I thought it was at the time. I lacked the perspective to see that it was all, actually, absolutely bonkers batshit nuts. It was some sitcom shit.

All in all, I highly recommend it.

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normal-thoughts-official · 4 years ago

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I think both Magnus and Alec have a big part of their lifes that have nothing to do with eachother. Okey, they are happily married and the live together but anyway... What about their hobbies? What about their own personal projects? Friends/queerplatonic relationships? I want to know who they are, besides of great politic leaders or someone's husband

i mean, i agree. i hate it when ppl reduce magnus and alec to malec or just generally care more about the romantic relationships than the other ones, nevermind bothering to develop other aspects of their lives that are just... theirs

to be fair i feel like we got a reasonable amount of that for them (for shadowhunter’s standarts of giving us content anyway). i mean, less for alec but that kinda makes sense considering that he’s spent most of his life avoiding any kind of close relationships that weren’t with his siblings like the plague and generally being, like, raised in a military based society with the weight of the world on his shoulders and also gay. but i totally agree that we should have gotten more of him getting out of his shell and finding hobbies and friends beyond just a romantic relationship. and for magnus, well, we know that he likes physics and science and studying magic as a whole, and dancing, and we know about his friends aka catarina and ragnor and raphael and dot, we know about his found family and his club and that he likes parties and good food and drinks, travelling, and meeting new people and cultures. you know?

but anyway, other headcanons with little things about their lives:

alec is totally the workout gay who likes fucking, idk jogging every morning and shit, and for some reason i can see him being into mountain climbing???? and magnus is like No Thank You. I Will Do Literally Anything Else because yikes the amount of effort and sweat and it’s just generally unpleasant. magnus is far from being sedentary, but also, no. yikes

he’s more into taking long walks in nice places and admiring the view and shit like that and he’s all like “isn’t it great? :)” and alec is like “haha yeah how far are we” because he’s just... goal-oriented and when he’s doing sports he likes to have a clear goal, something to achieve, or to push himself to his limits and all that bullcrap. while magnus likes to do it for the sake of doing it and enjoying himself and getting in contact with his own body & mind & soul and shit. they find some sort of enjoyment in it with the way alec always makes magnus laugh with his grumpiness + inability to truly understand what this whole thing is about + just general himboness, but as a whole, magnus likes to take his walks alone, so he can get that space for himself. and he’s definitely not joining in when alec is doing his weird sportsman training gimmick whatever-thing, either

same with tai-chi! magnus tried to get alec into it (altho somewhat awkwardly since magnus does magical tai chi and alec very much does not have magic) but it just, didn’t work out. one second into it and alec was already making that painfully concentrated face and he’s stiff as a board and it’s the opposite of what it’s supposed to be and magnus breaks down laughing and alec is all offended and they just can’t get past a few seconds and end up giving up. alec is the bitch who sits down to medidate and is immediately like BOY I AM GONNA GET IN TOUCH WITH MY INNER SELF SO FAST AND HARD FUCKING WATCH ME I’M GONNA BE THE BEST MEDIDATOR THIS SIDE OF THE PACIFIC FUCKING OOHMMM BITCH. introspective arts are just not for him

i like to think that alec gets closer to aline, and i can see him and helen hitting it off, too. like seriously guys let alec have friends who aren’t just magnus’ friends (and let magnus have friends that are HIS friends, too)

i know underhill is implied to become his friend but also, like..... he’s so boring i just can’t have any hcs for them as friends daoijsdaiouja i think they have more of a solidarity, nodding when walking past each other in the halls thing than actual friendship you know

obviously there’s alec’s siblings as he will always be the one izzy loves the most and she will always be one of the most important people for him, and even as magnus and izzy totally are friends too, she is still alec’s sister and they make it a point to see each other, just the two of them, at least once a week. izzy always smiles and loops her arm through his and alec’s immediately huffing but he loves it and she knows that he loves it. she was like, his only source of physical contact for so long, and god he really needed it and he loved her for giving it to him even as he pretended it was something he hated. neither of them want to shake that habit, so it stays

but there’s also a particular brand of friendship magnus has with her that alec doesn’t. like when they get all weird about dead bodies or go shopping? alec’s out

magnus does a lot of studying (mostly languages, physics, and chemistry, as well as magic) so he has his own study room (plus the apothecary) that’s a whole damn mess filled with books and notes scattered around and shit and alec is not allowed in because he always wants to organize it and GOD FUCKING DAMN IT IT’S NOT DISORGANIZED I KNOW WHERE EVERYTHING’S SUPPOSED TO BE and if alec moves a single pen, magnus Will Know About It

in exchange he always keeps the door closed or spelled so alec doesn’t have to look at it

obviously there’s archery, which is something alec loves to do and practice, especially as he starts to get more into the bureaucratic parts of shadowhunting. he needs his bow and arrow to feel connected to himself and his body and safe, and he also has his own practicing room. magnus can do archery fine, but it’s not really among his interests

magnus of course has his regular meetings with the immortal squad and his breakfasts with raphael :) not that raphael isn’t part of the immortal squad but they also enjoy having a time just for the two of them. they are father and son after all, and besides, they lived together for quite a while, and the dynamics of them versus them + ragnor + cat are different

while magnus loves taking alec with him in his trips and to art galleries and out to eat in great restaurants and shit, they both know it’s something that alec, while very curious to know about, does not appreciate the same way that he does. not more or less, just, differently. if they go to an art gallery, magnus is gonna be looking at every piece and musing and maybe talking about the painters of x and y movement that he knew, and analyzing the technique or whatever. alec is less interested in the paintings themselves and more in the artists, what their life was like, what the period/place they lived in was like, how that shaped their art, you know? like he’s just not a very visual person haha me projecting never so what interests him is more outside of the paintings than inside. so even when they go to these places together, they’re just having completely different experiences? and a lot of the time they end up straying and meeting each other later, where they’ll chat and generally be ridiculous. but the both of them also enjoy going to those on their own or with their friends who Get It, you know? because again just completely different rhythms and interests and stuff

i feel like they both enjoy trashy television, but like, in completely different ways? like magnus loves him a terrible sitcom even if he’ll never admit it, where alec is more into like..... really bad and dramatic mystery shows

they both enjoy watching reality shows though. magnus wasn’t that huge on it before, but with alec? man, that’s a riot. he’ll judge absolutely everyone and make faces and just generally be fucking hilarious

ok i know that i’m talking about things they do together but my goal here is to talk about like... who they are and what their interests are individually, even if they are together, you know? and not like, As An Unit

magnus loves music and recitals and dance shows of all kinds. also, street art! i feel like that’s something him, cat, and maia have in common

speaking of cat; there are always His Cats. like sure they like alec fine but as soon as magnus is home they all immediately flock to him. it’s like alec never existed. goodbye, tall person

tbh i feel like raphael is totally an animals person and soon the dumort kind of turns into like, a sort of animal shelter? like magnus gives him the idea and all the vampires are naturally drawn to the idea of the dumort becoming a place for the strays of the world, especially if it means they get some company.... and maybe warm cuddles. anyway, my point is, magnus loves to visit the dumort and play with the cats and dogs that are there from time to time and he’s so proud of raphael and what he’s doing with the place and i just aaa :’)

i feel like alec would have an interest in technology? like he’d be that bitch who Knows tech (probably started because of his job, but soon he found that he like, actually has an interest in it?) and who cleans his keyboard every day and only gets licensed programmes and takes care of his laptop like those guys who are weird about cars

lmao for some reason i can totally picture him and aline bonding over that?

oh man alec would be into PUZZLES. word puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, the whole grandpa shit. he doesn’t do it often but when he does, he’s just At It. him and madzie can play with jigsaw puzzles for hours and wouldn’t remember to eat. she visits one day and is like I Got A 3D Puzzle and alec is just like neat! and they just sit down and do it until they have to be forced to bed or something. then at like precisely 6AM their eyes snap open like It’s A New Day, Puzzle Time and it just keeps being like this until they’re done

also there’s magnus’ morning routine, of course, especially since he doesn’t really have a schedule, and as sociable as he is he does enjoy some alone time to make himself some breakfast, do some tai chi, maybe read a book or comic, and all that. alec is just snoring the whole time completely passed out when it’s not a work day, tbh

okay that’s all i have actually doasdiad i hope it isn’t too much or disappointing or whatever. also, if anyone else wants to add their own headcanons for alec’s and magnus’ hobbies, feel free to do so :)

#sh #shadowhunters #alec lightwood #magnus bane #malec #ask #anonymous #long post #q

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dreaminpeaches · 3 years ago

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Humble Pie Concept: Hereau Timeline

Okay so its 4am when I came up with this concept it was too hot for me to sleep so forgive me, if it's sound too weird.

Okay, so what if Beau never met Beau (walk with me to this pier before you throw me off), but instead Beau met Hera...

Hera is character from my other blog , but she exists in Humble Pie, as a famous all star athlete. She's not only know for being a talented athlete but also a beautiful athlete as well. Beau knows of Hera and is a semi fan of hers, her poster was one of the only ones he didn't take down when he was redoing his room. Anyways, Hera is also known be to a very cool and spicy athlete often called the Mona Lisa of sports because she never smiles in pictures and she has a very cool girl, competitive and cocky persona in public. But in actuality, Hera is a nervous wreck whose real dream is to break from her cool girl persona and become a cutesy idol girl.

Where as Bonnie and Beau are interesting as couple for how different they are, Hera and Beau are interesting for how similar they are, both trying to break from personas, that they made for themselves out of protect and want to be a more honest verison of themselves, and I could see them help each other through it.

Beau and Hera's relationship is more mellow than Beau's and Bonnie's chaotic relationship, like for example, Bonnie won't really have the patience to go fishing with Beau--like just watching him fish, but Hera wouldn't be really mind it, she would actually find it really calming, and would enjoy watching Beau along with playing with the cats near by.

Beau is less snarky with Hera and more gentle because Hera can be really hard on herself when she makes the slightest mistakes, and tends to fall into stress loops.

While in Beau and Bonnie's relationship, Bonnie is the one usually to make Beau laugh and cheer him up, in Hera and Beau's relationship, Beau is the one to make Hera laugh and is more goofy with her. Mostly because Hera doesn't rub it in like Bonnie does, like when Beau acts goofy around Beau too much for too long , Bonnie is basically like "You like Krabby Patties don't you, Squidward?" If you know what mean, but Hera is more is more like "Thanks, I need that" and doesn't mention again in mocking or teasing way.

Beau and Hera also have a few more things in common, they both like sports (duh) and they both grew up with fathers who weren't the best dads outside of sports. Hera's father wasn't nearly as physically abusive as Beau's dad, he was more neglectful and ignored Hera anytime she wasn't talking about or practicing some type of sport, Hera's dad secretly wanted a son and kind of was depressed when he found out Hera was a girl, and ever since she could walk he always pushed her to more masculine interest than feminine, he would completely ignore her if she wanted to show her dad and new song and dance she made up in her favorite Ariel dress but she would have his undivided attention if she finally prefected her volleyball serve. Bonnie never knew her father because everytime she would ask her mom what he was like she would say "He was a useless p@#$ who couldn't handle my energy, so I got rid of him", Bonnie's mom would as end the conversation there never really elaborating any further.

How Beau and Hera meet is basically the same how Bonnie and Beau met, but with Hera the meeting has a more 90/80s sitcom feel like "All Star Athlete, Hera Grace? What are you doing here?" But less sitcom y because Hera as a nervous breakdown at the same time her car broke down. So, not only is Beau trying to help fix her car, but is also trying to comfort Hera, while at the same time trying figure out what is All Star Athlete, Hera Grace doing in his small town driving a beat up car.

At first, Hera tells Beau that's she just in town for vacation...

Beau: "So, out of all the places you could go as All Star Athlete, Hera Grace, you chose a small southern town?"

Hera: "I guess I just like the humble aesthetic... heh heh.."

Beau:" Okay.."

Beau (internally): Grandma was right, famous people are weird..

Beau and Hera continue to meet to work on Hera's car, and people don't recognize Hera because (a. Small town folk wouldn't really believe some one THAT famous would just plop into town (b. Using superman logic, Hera wears sunglasses so nobody can recognize her. So yes, Beau and Hera are sunglasses stunting couple 😎😎

Anyways, Beau and Hera start spending more time together and get closer, there is that scene where Hera walks in on Beau playing and being goofy with his siblings, but since Hera isnt as teasing as Bonnie, Beau doesn't feel as embarrassed about it.

There is a moment where Beau walks in on Hera doing a Disney number in one of her cute idol dress, she has another breakdown when she realizes Beau is watching, Beau comforts her again, and that's when Hera reveals that she actually made a deal with her father that if she can at least start her idol career in a year, then she could quit her athlete career and become an idol full time. The reason why she came to Beau's town because all the big city entertainment and music companies literally shut the door in Hera's face, Hera suspect that her dad was behind it and was purposely making harder for her since he wasn't going to help out at all with her idol career, which is why he gave her the best up car, there's a small but ambitious entertainment company in Beau's town looking to start an idol group and since it's not connected to a big company Hera felt like she actually had a chance. Hera begs Beau to keep this a secret and she isn't ready to go public with it.

Hera: "Please, keep this a secret, if-if anyone finds out, I'll--ill--"

Beau: "Hey! hey! It's okay, I know what it's like to keep a secret, but at least yours is actually really cute.."

Hera:" (Blush) heh...heh.. thank you, that really means alot to me, Beau"

While Bonnie's hyperfixation is mascots, Hera are idols, idol culture, Idol anime shows/games, and Disney. She often info dumps about Idol stuff while helping Beau work on the car.

Hera: "Oh! Oh, there's this another idol group I like called Arashi, they're were the first idol group I ever seen, and they have this one song that oozes sparkle energy, and they're still really cute and fun despite being kind of old for idols, and --oh, I'm sorry, rambling again.."

Beau: "No, no, it's fine, you smile for real when you talk about that stuff, I like it.."

Hera: "(blushes) UMMMM!..okay, so where was I-- oh, yeah.."

For money, Hera works at a cat cafe, she was gonna work at the same maid cafe Bonnie did but Hera was still shy about preforming in front others on the spot like that, so she picked the cat cafe that was two stores down, she also coaches softball at the local rec center.

Hera is no where near as flirtatious as Bonnie, since Hera spent most of her life practicing sports, and trying to literally win her dad's affection, she didn't really think about boys in a romantic sense, although she is comfortable around guys platonically, Beau was the first guy to treat Hera like a normal girl, not one of the guys or a sports goddess, just a normal girl, Hera is used to being call Beautiful or Sexy, but when Beau calls her Cute, she considers that flirting.

Since Hera is so used to holding masculine energy and qualities and being praised and recognized for it, it's nice to allow herself to be more feminine and being recognized and complimented for it.

While Beau is more sparing but loving with his kisses with Bonnie . With, Hera he uses his kisses to comfort her and/or to stop her from falling into stress/aniexty loop, usually holding her or hugging her or at least holding her hand and say "It's Okay", "I'm here", "Don't worry about it"

Okay, that's about all I have to say for this timeline/AU, I still love both Beaunnie and Hereau equally, I like Beaunnie for it's chaotic energy, I like Hereau for it's neutral good energy, I like both Bonnie and Hera, we can stan multiple queens in this household thank you very much...

#immersive daydreaming #paraportal #paracosm #paracosm: Hereau! Humble Pie #para ship: hereau #i actually like how chill and comforting this dynamic is #hera had some gender dysphoria at times in her life #this post was brought to by 4am brain #im not getting sleep tonight rip that REM #what dynamic are these two i still haven't figured it out

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rachelkaser · 4 years ago

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Stay Golden Sunday: Blind Ambitions

Rose’s blind sister Lily visits and might need more help than she’s willing to admit. The Girls have a garage sale.

Picture It...

The Girls are having a barbecue on the lanai with their guest, Rose’s sister Lily. Lily lost her sight six months ago, and is still adjusting while Rose tries not to be a mother hen. Blanche reminisces about Southern barbecues and Lily tells a story about their St. Olafian camping trips. The Girls discuss Lily’s adjustment -- she claims she can cope with most things now, and she even still watches television. When Sophia grouses about their TV being broken, Lily gives them the idea of having a garage sale to get money for a new one.

DOROTHY: Listen, mom, we cannot afford a new TV. We’re using the household money to repair the roof and repave the driveway. SOPHIA: Great, and what am I supposed to do while every other old lady on the block is watching Cosby? DOROTHY: Well, you can sit in the new driveway and hope that an amusing Black family drops by.

Later, the Girls are gathering together the things they could sell at a garage sale. Dorothy pulls out an old doll, Blanche has a hippy outfit she wore to Woodstock (the movie), and Rose finds a pair of candlesticks she decides to keep. Lily offers to put them in the alcove, and tells Rose not to be so protective. Rose apologizes -- while discreetly moving aside a lamp Lily was about to walk into. Lily then announces she’s going to her room and Dorothy and Blanche scramble to move a half-dozen boxes out of her way without her noticing, and she triumphantly declares, when she makes it to the hallway, that she doesn’t need anyone’s help.

The next day, Lily is cooking bacon on the stove, and when she turns away for a moment, the pan catches fire. She cries out for help, and Rose and Blanche come rushing in, with Rose putting out the fire with an extinguisher. Dorothy runs in as Blanche tells Lily she shouldn’t have been cooking on the stove. Lily apologizes but says it was just an accident as she sulks out. Blanche and Dorothy confront Rose, saying Lily isn’t as independent as she’s saying she is, and she might need to go back to the school for the blind, despite dropping out due to alleged boredom. Rose agrees to talk to her.

LILY: I remember when you were six years old and dad got you that puppy for your birthday. You worried because you thought her paws were too big and that the other dogs would laugh at her. ROSE: Well they did! They used to bark and point at her! LILY: Everybody pointed at her. You made her wear a bonnet and matching booties.

Rose goes to her room, where Lily is staying, and Lily reassures Rose that she’s fine. She says Rose is a worrier by nature, and Rose says not to change the subject. She tells Lily that she’s trying to do much by herself, and the independence of which she’s so proud isn’t serving her now. Lily finally breaks and tells Rose she just wants things to go back to the way they were, but they’re not going to. Rose tells her she needs help, and Lily begs Rose to come back home and live with her before bursting into tears.

Later, Rose tells the Girls that she’s seriously thinking about moving with Lily to Chicago, but both Blanche and Rose are skeptical that it’ll actually help Lily. Dorothy accuses her of doing it out of guilt, and Blanche relates a story of how she lost a male friend because her husband made her feel guilty about it. Sophia has a slightly more relevant story about how she struggled to get back on her feet after her stroke. It took Dorothy pushing her to be independent for her to actually make the effort, and Sophia tells Rose she needs to help her sister “to help herself.” Rose goes off to think some more.

DOROTHY: *after Blanche rebuffs a customer’s offer of $1.25 for her Elvis shakers* Blanche, I can’t believe that you did that! I mean, they’re just a silly salt and pepper shaker. BLANCHE: The King is gone, Dorothy. But we must cherish the things he left behind. His movies, his songs... DOROTHY: And his seasonings.

At the garage sale, every time someone shows an interest in one of the Girls’ things, they react badly. Rose isn’t willing to give up her teddy, Mr. Longfellow; Blanche believes her Elvis salt and pepper shakers must be cherished; and Dorothy squabbles with a teenager over a hockey stick used by Bobby Hull. They come to the conclusion that they’re not willing to part with any of their things, and decide to just pay for a new TV in installments. Blanche and Dorothy go to shoo out their customers.

Lily enters and tells Rose how much she appreciates Rose being willing to help her. She asks Rose to get her a glass of water, and Rose freezes before reminding Lily that she’s capable of getting a glass of water — and if she isn’t, she needs professional help that Rose can’t give. She’s made up her mind: She’s not going to Chicago. Lily gets angry and accuses Rose of turning her back on her, storming out.

DOROTHY: *after the third time Rose leaves the house and returns* Come on now. Come on now, get out of here. You’ve come back more times than Shirley MacLaine.

Two months later, Rose is on her way to visit Lily. She’s sure that Lily is going to pressure her into living with her again and is nervous because it was hard enough to refuse the first time. The Girls encourage her to stick to her guns. She leaves, but not without kissing her friends goodbye. When Rose arrives at the airport later, she thanks the flight attendant for all the extras they provided her (including pillows, Dramamine, and 10 packs of smokehouse almonds).

Rose is surprised to see Lily at the airport, waiting for her. Lily introduces her seeing-eye dog, Becky, who Rose of course melts over (side note: I don’t think you’re supposed to pet service dogs the way Rose does here, but considering the dog is likely not an actual service dog, I’ll excuse it). Lily apologizes to Rose, saying Rose did the right thing by pushing her. She went back to the school for the blind, and is finally in a place where she can take care of herself -- with Becky’s help, of course. She and Becky take the lead to the baggage claim, with Lily tossing off a one-liner that has Rose a bit concerned:

ROSE: I’m so proud of you. LILY: Oh this is nothing! What till you see me drive home!

“If it’s a choice between the two of them, let the blind one make change.”

After Blanche and Dorothy had their turns with sisterly conflict episodes, it’s now Rose’s turn. This time it’s not long-standing animosity or bubbling resentment that sets the two against each other, but a new life change that prompts an adaptation in the relationship. As depressing as it may be, I think Lily and Rose might be the healthiest sister relationship in the show’s history, not that that’s saying much. Lily is one of the more memorable guest characters on the show, mostly because she’s given room to have complex emotions.

In the episode, Lily is played by Polly Holiday, whose main claim to fame is playing Flo “Kiss My Grits” Castleberry on the sitcom Alice -- a catchphrase I’ve always found a little baffling, but at least it’s memorable. If you’d asked me based on what little I’d seen of Alice if she’d be capable of giving one of the most memorable guest performances on Golden Girls ever, I admit I’d have been a little skeptical -- and I’d be wrong, because she really brings it. It’s not often an actor can be in a scene with Betty White and completely command all the attention (and probably some of the credit goes to White for being a great scene partner).

SOPHIA: Why are we cooking outdoors? DOROTHY: Ma, we’re having a barbecue. SOPHIA: You know what they call cooking meat over an open fire in Sicily? DOROTHY: No, what? SOPHIA: Poverty.

I appreciate what the episode does, making Lily an . . . well, I don’t want to say antagonist, but definitely the person who’s causing the conflict. She’s not actually dealing with her problems, but she wants to look like she is because she’s too proud to ask for help -- and when she finally does, it’s from a person who’s not qualified to help her. The first time I watched this episode, I was a naïve youngster who didn’t understand why Rose didn’t go help Lily -- I felt that I would, under the circumstances. Now that I’m an adult, I understand better why that situation is untenable, because Rose would have to quit her job and, given that she can’t really teach Lily to be independent, would never be able to have her own life because Lily would be dependent on her.

The show is also not shy about showing how Lily’s lack of control over her situation is making her lash out, and that this isn’t excusable: During the pivotal scenes between Rose and Lily, Lily does everything she can to deflect taking responsibility for herself. She tells Rose, “You’d be worried if you couldn’t find anything to worry about” when Rose comes to check on her (keep in mind, she’d been screaming for help mere minutes earlier), begs Rose to fix the problem for her, and finally escalates to accusing Rose of abandoning her when Rose tries to get her to take care of herself.

DOROTHY: Will you look at this? I got this doll on my 10th birthday. I can’t believe I’ve kept her all these years. *Sophia enters behind her* Her hair’s falling out, her clothes are all worn, she smells of mothballs... SOPHIA: Hey, I may not be Ann-Margret, but I’m still your mother!

There is a difference between toughing something out and truly coping with it, and I think anyone who’s gone through a major life change would agree. The difference lies in confronting the reality of the situation. For most of the episode, Lily adamantly refuses to do that, and Rose enables her -- the other Girls recognize that and try to help Rose see it. For me, the best (and hardest) part of the episode to watch is that little moment in the kitchen when Rose says Lily is very independent, and Dorothy firmly says, “No she’s not, Rose.”

I’m not disabled myself, so I looked up details on common reactions to late-onset disabilities. We never know how Lily became blind -- if it was something that had been coming on for a while or if it was the result of some kind of trauma -- but I found an article on the Royal National Institute for Blind People’s website that clarified what Lily is going through: Grief. If you watch closely, you can see Lily’s going through a few different stages of grief -- denial, anger, and fear. While her situation is resolved mostly off-camera, it’s nice to see that she’s allowed to have those emotions.

ROSE: *about Lily* She served three terms on the city council, and she was the first woman in St. Olaf’s to ever have a pilot’s license. BLANCHE: Oh really? Well we have something in common, Lily. I was the first woman in my hometown ever to have a pilot! DOROTHY: Blanche’s bed is next to the X-15 at the Space and Aviation Museum.

Still, as much as I like the episode, I do think there are a few parts where the writing isn’t as strong as it could be. Most of the episode is tipped on the serious side rather than the comedic side. The garage sale scene is really funny, but doesn’t make sense. Presumably the Girls went through all their stuff before putting it out on the lanai, to confirm they wanted to sell it and to price it. Why is it that only on the day of the sale do they decide they want to keep all their bric-a-brac? Also, I’m not exactly sure how they plan to get a new TV with a $60 down payment and paying “the rest of it” off on time. Side note: The scene of them frantically clearing Lily’s path of boxes is funny, but it’s really their fault for leaving boxes of stuff lying around while a blind guest is trying to navigate their house.

While the episode is balanced really well between the four Girls, I think Blanche’s major part of the episode -- her extended story about her male friend Andrew (an excellent lover . . . no, riveter) -- doesn’t really serve either the episode or the scene it’s in, which is a recurring problem with first-season episodes. Her anecdotes from the opening scene about barbecues with the Darcy triplets (Hank, Beau, and . . . Dove?) are much funnier and feel more appropriate to the scene.

BLANCHE: *about Sophia’s stroke* But you got better. SOPHIA: Yeah, because [Dorothy] stopped coddling me. She screamed, she hollered, day and night. She made me do my therapy. She forced me to rebuild my life because she knew I could. And for that I’ll always be grateful. DOROTHY: Aw, thanks, Ma. SOPHIA: I only have one question: Now that I’m better, why do you still scream and holler at me?

Also, bit of dubious-but-fun trivia for you: I already said that Holliday is great as Lily. That said, she allegedly wasn’t the first choice for the role. If the information in Golden Girls Forever is correct, the person who the producers originally wanted to play Lily, the actress whose name was thrown around early in the process . . . was Lucille Ball. Yes, that Lucille Ball.

Keep in mind I couldn’t find a secondary source for this information. Contrary to the impression I probably give, I don’t take Golden Girls Forever as gospel and I generally do try to confirm what’s written via some other source. If I can’t, I don’t want to present it to you as fact. So allegedly the reason Ball declined the role was that she didn’t want to do too many serious roles, and I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad Polly Holliday got the role instead of Lucille Ball. If she had, I think the whole episode, including the dramatic scenes, would have been less about the characters and performances, and more about “OMG, that’s Lucy!”

Episode rating: 🍰🍰🍰 (three cheesecake slices out of five)

Favorite part of the episode:

Sophia shows how much patience she has for haggling:

CUSTOMER: How much? SOPHIA: Two bucks. Get wild. Treat yourself. CUSTOMER: Nah, I’ll give you a dollar-fifty. SOPHIA: What does this look like, Baghdad? *pulls vase out of her hands* Get the hell out of here! DOROTHY: Ma, that’s no way to sell things! SOPHIA: Hey, go to Neiman Marcus sometime, see if they treat you any better.

#golden girls #stay golden #rose nylund #sophia petrillo #blanche devereaux #dorothy zbornak #stay golden sunday #blind ambitions #picture it #s01e23

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