#this was a good exercise for me because it forced me to condense everything i know about them in a limited amount of space

[kikuism]

get to know my ocs

so here’s some stuff about my ocs. a more or less comprehensive guide. if you’re curious about them, you’re welcome to check this out!!

vatra / 12 (16 after timeskip)

she’s on the left here and the second one here!! pinterest board 

about: hot-headed ball of rage!! will not pass up any opportunity to kick your ass. hordes gold. she’s just as bad as smaug. 

she and her twin sister aralu were taken in by fumio (who becomes their adoptive older brother) when their parents abandoned them because uh, twins = bad omen? early on she discovers she has fire powaaas! it’s like firebending except it takes a toll on her body; her fire is a living writhing thing inside her stomach, and if she gets agitated to an extreme level (extreme anger, happiness, sadness, etc), it will react badly. usually in the form of smoke creeping up her throat. and that’s not comfortable, so she figured out early on to channel it to come out of her palms instead. it pisses vatra off a lot because she’s actually a walking time bomb, she can’t not control herself, so it’s a real test to her patience and a real exercise to keep herself (and her fire) in check. 

she also clips her vowels and basically speaks like someone on the streets, because that’s who she hangs around all the time,much to the worry of her sister. she loves picking out fights and setting bets. she always comes home bloody and smelling awful. 

she also has a huge, very fragile ego, and will literally beat herself up to prove that she’s right in any given situation. she also doesn’t ask for help, thinking she can carry everything on her own shoulders. she has a lot of pride and that ... y’know ... that isn’t a good thing. the smallest grievance will make her snap.

she’s a mischievous little shit at times, but mostly she’s just. angry. like she’s always pissed about something. but really, she’s just impatient and tired with her life at home; she wants to go out and explore. she wants to use all the coiled energy in her joints and just go outside. 

but she is fiercely protective of her little family, even though she’d lick the soles of her shoes than admit that to them. she also believes in merit and hard work, and scoffs at things like lucky charms and miracles.

fun facts: has all the social grace of a stumbling cow, oh no bby what is u doin

aralu / 12 (16 after timeskip)

she’s on the right here and the first one here!! pinterest board

about: sweetheart, mom friend, wouldn’t hurt a fly!! she’s so gentle and soft and so unlike vatra that fumio can’t believe they’re even related. 

early on, when she’s just a smol thing, she wanders too deep into a mysterious forest trying to catch butterflies -- or, they look like butterflies. the ball of light she’s reaching for is actually an ancient guardian deity. it decides to take refuge inside her, to escape its fate of having to watch over the forest for eternity. when she reaches out to touch one, there’s a flash of light, and the next thing she remembers is being shaken awake by an alarmed fumio and an angry vatra demanding where she’d been; she doesn’t remember anything, and eventually they all just forget about it. 

when she’s 12, the spirit decides to make itself known to her. she freaks out, she thinks she’s been cursed, but despite its appearance (blue grayish wisps that congeal to make the shape of an eye) it’s actually friendly and curious and a little sassy and just wants to experience the mortal world the way a mortal would. aralu and the spirit soon become fast friends. when it wants to come out, it does so through her palm, so whenever she leaves the house, aralu wraps some gauze around her hand so as not to draw attention to the shadowy slit. 

besides that, she’s the mom of the house, keeps it clean and livable, makes the meals, paints and decorates. she’s the Voice of Reason and is always trying to control vatra’s shit (and it works, because she’s the only person who can keep her in check), though it’s one helluva job.

fun facts: she can get just as annoyed and angry as her sister!! takes a lot to push her there, but if you do, well good luck son

fumio / 23

ahhhh i haven’t gotten him commissioned yet, but!! he has medium brown hair which he pulls back in a scruffy tail, bangs he’s constantly blowing off his forehead, worry lines on his forehead, and the warmest green eyes that hold the entire world. pinterest board

about: fumio is the twins’ adoptive older brother! he found them in a box in some abandoned alley/part of town and was horrified that someone would just leave two babies out in the cold. 

he’s only 13 when he takes them in, and since his own parents couldn’t afford to take care of so many mouths, he decided to move out and do it himself. he loves the twins with his whole life and does everything to make sure they are well taken care of. 

fumio is naturally prone to anxiety, and because of his jangled nerves he has a lot of ticks -- tapping fingers, pushing his spectacles up his nose when they don’t need to be, moving his foot, etc. by trade, he’s an artisan, and while he does love building and taking apart things to see how they work, his true passion is reading and scholarship. in their little house, they have a whole room dedicated to his big dusty tomes which he and aralu love to pore over together and discuss. 

he’s constantly fascinated with the world around him, especially with the advent of european traders that are coming into japan. he and aralu are very curious about ‘the outside world’, and always talk about how different it might be from their own land. 

fumio has a lot of self-esteem issues; he thinks he isn’t doing enough for the twins, he thinks he isn’t doing enough in his job, etc, and that stresses him out a lot; in truth, he doesn’t know how much he’s loved!! and how much his customers love his products. he oughta have more faith in himself!!

fun facts: can play instruments really well!! aralu dances, and vatra glares from the corner the nights they decide to put on a show after supper.

jin / 23

ahhhhh, my fave? i have written 200k words about her so uh, she’s the third one here!! mostly androgynous, but slightly feminine eyes. she’s also hella toned!! vatra is jealous. pinterest board 

about: hoooo boy, so she’s a wandering genderfluid ex-samurai who left her old life in europe for a fresh start in japan. jin is a quiet, reserved soul who comes off as polite but really is a little anti social and prefers to observe from the distance. occasionally spouts philosophical wisdom. 

she ran away when she was 14 and had it pretty rough because of her red hair; japan was very superstitious and skeptical about foreigners, so they hated her for her hair color and it basically very hard for her to come out of that mindset where she flinches every time someone looks at her. she slept on the ground and ate scraps and tried rubbing dirt and mud onto her scalp to hide the red. 

eventually she learns to boil walnuts to make a black dye, and she uses that to this day. she decided to join the samurai ranks to start her new life, but after a few months of service, when her master is killed, she runs for it again and decides it’s not for her. so she takes her horse and they just .... wander. village to village. that becomes her life. eventually, she hears word of a serial killer, someone from the yakuza, and they’re paying a handsome reward to whoever can bring him down and bring him to the town square. she takes it upon herself to do it, because her money is dwindling. she almost dies and he leaves her to bleed on the grass. 

she’s saved by an old man who kicks her out as soon as she wakes up, so, injured and aching and hungry, she decides that another night on the ground is going to kill her. she makes it to yoshiwara, the red light district, and even though sex repulses her, she spends whatever last bit of money she has on a brothel just for the extra comfort that is known over there. the manager chooses a prostitute her age to entertain her; kamiko leads her to her room and she’s sweating buckets. long story short, she and kamiko become friends, and kamiko asks her all about her home and in turn tells her all about how to get around here in japan. 

kamiko becomes her first friend, even though kamiko herself starts developing feelings for her. eventually, two years pass, and jin decides to leave, because she can’t stay there forever, and she wants to go out into the world again, yearning for adventure. kamiko is upset, but she makes her promise to come back every year. jin doesn’t -- she comes back five years later, and hoo boy there is some tension between her and kamiko now.

i like to think she’s very reserved, mostly due to the fact that she was--and still is--largely by herself. she had to teach herself everything she knows about survival, and she hasn’t had the best experience with people because of their stigma toward outsiders--so she generally keeps out of their way and keeps to herself, and only engages when necessary. t

hat’s not to say she’s completely cut-off … i imagine her as being naturally curious, and thus observant, of the people around her. she has a soft spot for children, and is endlessly fascinated by their innocence and lack of awareness of the reality of maneuvering the world independently. 

she learned the language largely through observation, and since she realized talking like a commoner was going to harm the way people looked at her even more, she went the extra mile to learn the nuances and polite form of speaking, to better her chances of getting somewhat accepted into society. so when she speaks, it’s formal and concise. and so are her mannerisms.

her morality is a grey area. i feel like she tries her best to stay her hand to avoid unnecessary attention, but if an insult hits close to home, she won’t hesitate to draw her blade. she’s kept up a steady ego throughout her tumultuous time in japan, but she’s unaware of how little it can take to pierce through its cracks. i also think that in dire situations, she won’t think twice about doing whatever is necessary to ensure her survival.

fun facts: she dresses in male clothing, and has had to put up a male front for so many years that she takes the male pronouns without batting an eye. internally, though, she is always aware of her female sex, and she clings to it. 

kamiko / 23

she’s the last one here!! pinterest board 

about: kamiko!! is an absolute flirt and will stop at nothing to get in your kimono. she lives to tease people and find what makes them tick. in that way, she’s a little bit cunning, but honestly, she thrives off being around other people and can literally talk to anybody and talk her way out of any situation. she also has a dominating personality, so it’s hard to persuade her to do something, or make her see things from your perspective.

her parents sold her into the yoshiwara when she was just a little girl (a very common thing in edo period japan) to become a ‘refined’ prostitute (because they were also trained in the arts of calligraphy, singing, dancing, etc) and she’s basically never been outside its walled gate. that’s perfectly fine with her though, because when jin basically tells her ‘damn u live like this’ she scoffs and goes, ‘i’m insured a roof over my head, an education, fresh food and clothes so stfu.’ she really doesn’t feel as though she’s trapped and does not yearn to go out into the great outdoors at all; she excels at her job and steadily climbs the ranks to become a very high level courtesan, whose fees are exuberant and whom clients have to visit three times before being either accepted or rejected. 

kamiko is a very blunt person and doesn’t sugarcoat her words, so it can seem like she’s kind of a bitch, but when she gets close to someone (which doesn’t happen a lot, since her whole life is basically one client after the other, coming and going just as quickly), maternal instincts start to surface.

when she gets to know someone, and becomes closer to them, her usually larger-than-life persona dims down to someone who’ll listen and offer advice, and extend a helping hand if need be. but because she gives so much of herself to others, kamiko doesn’t really know how to process her own emotions when she’s sad or scared, so that is kind of a sticky thing for her. 

fun facts: absolutely terrified of heights, secretly wants to go see mt. fuji

kikuhiko / 16 (18-19 after timeskip)

call him kiku! that’s what everyone else does. softer and more diminutive than other boys his age. has feminine features, especially in the eyes and in the way he dresses (patterned, bright kimono with long billowy sleeves as opposed to the solid dark ones guys usually wear). he has this luxurious silky black hair parted to the side (i think??) and brown eyes. (here he is on the left)

about: kiku is one of the children of the emperor, so that means he’s a prince (right??). he doesn’t really relish this title, though. kiku couldn’t care less about politics and power -- he’d rather walk around the palace gardens and feel the breeze on his face and the grass beneath his feet. 

he’s always been a soft, shy, sensitive boy and i think he’s ashamed that he doesn’t have steely nerves like his older sister, naomi, does. he also likes boys, and that’s another reason he leaves any chance he gets, because his mother is always trying to pair him up with someone or the other, and it frustrates kiku because he doesn’t know how to tell anyone any of it. that’s why he uses every chance he gets to go outside and just -- think. get away from the stuffiness of the palace. 

kiku longs to know what it’s like to be outside, to leave what he calls a ‘real’ life. he’s very empathetic and hence cries easily. he’s always kind of conflicted about himself -- about the person he is and the person he wants to be. 

his brows are always a little furrowed, and he’s always sort of twiddling his thumbs; he’s a very inward person. on the outside, he’s a stumbling, blushing mess, but on the inside, he’s always imagining and dreaming and wondering and his mind is a very loud place. 

fun facts: he can make his origami come to life! any paper he folds into whatever animal, he can breathe life into it. he loves to prank his sister like this; it scares her to death when she sees a paper crab crawling toward her.

kouhaku / 16 (18-19 after timeskip)

“call me kou,” he says quietly, to literally everyone. this boy is such an enigma ... is he just like that or does he do it on purpose? maybe we shall never know. he has brown hair which is pulled back into a small tail, and pale eyes because he is blind. (here he is on the right)

about: kou is one of the healers at the palace. because he uses magic in his work, patients are only sent to him in special situations. he has his own special chamber underground, and kiku comes to see him nearly everyday because the sweet boy is in love with him and crushing so hard that kou can’t help but tease him a little about it, because his aura flares and zaps and sings so much -- kou can see auras, that’s how he ‘sees’ the world around him. everything gives off auras, even furniture; those are static and dim, so they’re a little harder to make out, but kou can immediately sense when someone is in a room with him, because the aura of a person is so much more vivid and complex and louder. 

kou is generally a quiet, thoughtful person, and there’s this ancient quality about him, especially in his voice; it’s somber with a lilt. a kind of heaviness, wariness to it. he’s always mixing vials and potions in his chamber, but that doesn’t mean he’s some old geezer with a love for chemistry. also has an inflated sense of self sometimes :’))

kou actually loves teasing people any chance he gets, finding their ticks and exploiting them and watching their auras react. he teases kiku endlessly about his crush on him, toes the line and leaves him with these accidentally-on-purpose fleeting touches that make kiku lose his mind, poor boy. but kou does have some feelings as well -- he finds it endearing how kiku is so fascinated with his work, and that he spends all the time with him that he does. 

fun facts: pads around barefoot all the time, because he’s a nerd and also to feel closer to the earth 

[bigskydreaming]

That last reblog has me now contemplating.

What if to mess with his shiny new little brother, but like....gently....when they first started hanging out Dick told Jason a couple of slight falsehoods as umm. A training exercise. That’s it. It was about helping Jason get up to speed with his information gathering skills and also his bullshit detection. So in the interest of being helpful and A Good Big Brother, Obviously....Dick sowed a few.....less-than-entirely-factual details about the more fantastical elements of their lives. The stuff that isn’t common or public knowledge to most of the DC Earth. And then he just.....waited to see how long it took Jason to realize Dick had fed him a handful of straight up lies when briefing him about All Things Superhero.

Look, it was for Science. That’s Dick’s story and he’s sticking to it.

Thus, for the first couple months of their new sibling relationship, Dick had Jason convinced that Atlanteans were actually aliens who landed here thousands of years ago, speedsters can run so fast they can travel back in time, and Superman once accidentally let out a burp so forceful it created a shockwave that shattered every glass in a quarter mile radius so whenever he starts to look....gassy....your best course of action is to hit the deck. Don’t even hesitate for a second, just dive to the ground and grab some floor until he’s got it back under control. And oh yeah, Diana has her Lasso of Truth, but Donna’s version of truth-related powers is that she can sense when people are up to no good....only, the way this manifests for her is she suddenly registers a distinct bad smell in her vicinity, alerting her that bullshit is afoot.

“You’re kidding,” Jason said flatly. “You expect me to believe that Donna can literally smell bullshit?”

Dick just raised an eyebrow. “Like that’s somehow less plausible than Gar being able to change into any kind of animal but only in shades of green? And oh yeah, speaking of green, Green Lanterns can do just about anything with their rings....except protect themselves from yellow paint? I don’t make the rules, Jace. The truth is sometimes superpowers aren’t super-glamorous and not everything related to magic or gods or other planets is as....sophisticated...as we presume. I mean, its not like these things exist just to match up to our expectations for them. Why should alien civilizations or the rules of magic be influenced by whether or not our society would find something weird or ridiculous?”

Jason chewed his lower lip contemplatively. He lacked an official bullshit detecting power himself, but he did have good instincts. Unfortunately for him, his shiny new big brother gave good Lying-to-your-face Face.

“Plus, if you really think about it, it does make a kind of sense,” Dick continued to explain helpfully. But only according to certain specific interpretations of ‘helpfully’ that actually mean ‘like a liar.’ “Our brains are constantly translating all kinds of input and stimuli into shapes or patterns we can actually process in a way that means something to us. So we can make use of that information. This is just the same thing. Donna’s power takes however many variables are involved in registering something as false or something she needs to be wary of...and just condenses it into a simple ‘red alert’ indicator that takes all that abstract, ephemeral data and makes it something actionable. Something she can actually do something with. Her power - or how her brain perceives it - just didn’t actually consult her or give her a choice of notification settings, because why would it?”

“I guess that makes sense,” Jason begrudgingly agreed, with a frown that suggested this particular ‘truth’ Offended his sensibilities.

“I mean, you can ask Donna to explain it herself if you want,” Dick said with a shrug. “Just a heads-up though....she’s not really a fan of how that power works either. Its not exactly a superpower anyone wants to be known for, and she’s heard allllll the jokes about it by now. Roy, Wally and I were perhaps....not the most sensitive when we were younger and she was honing that particular skillset? Though in our defense, I maintain that most of our jokes were hilarious. But anyway, just saying. If you wanna bring it up with her directly, go right ahead! Its definitely one of her favorite topics and Amazons are for sure known for how well they handle being self-conscious.”

And that’s the story of the three months Jason spent convinced that Atlanteans were from another planet, confusing the hell out of Garth with his occasional references to ‘your homeworld’ and his numerous questions about all the Atlantean Green Lanterns that he for some reason seemed convinced the Green Lantern Corps must obviously have a long history of.

And its also why Jason spent those same three months getting wide-eyed and nervous any time he noticed Donna’s nose so much as twitch when he was around. Which it did a lot more often than usual, thanks to how often Dick got horseradish to go with whatever he was having for lunch, knowing full well that Donna can not stand the smell of horseradish. (Dick’s actually not a fan either, and he hates how it tastes, but he’s not afraid to Suffer for the sake of Shenanigans. Its a fundamental part of the Robin experience and persona, after all.)

But it was the Donna thing that gave Dick away, ultimately. No matter how hard he tried to keep a lid on how entertaining he now found the sight of Donna’s occasional nose twitch...even a Batkid poker face can’t keep an empath and telepath from finding this a mystery worth untangling after the tenth time it happens.

(Not that Lilith or Raven are gonna apologize for prying any time soon. They had an obligation as his friends and teammates to investigate when he’s acting bizarre, y’see. What if its because he was brainwashed again? “We’re intrusive because we love,” Lilith insists with zero shame. Raven clarifies: “I was intrusive because she was already doing it so there seemed no point not to.” Lilith points out that this could also be construed as a sign of strong leadership potential. Dick glowers. Lilith waves a hand dismissively. “We can circle back to that later. That’s fine.”)

Anyway, the truth came out at last, Jason cites this as the Moral Justification for every single time and way he was a pain in the ass to Dick in the years to come, and Donna - who was Not Amused - gave a pointed sniff and called bullshit when Dick tried to claim this was an important Bonding Opportunity for he and Jason, wherein they became brothers ‘for real’ instead of just via Bruce. “There are intricate sibling rituals to be observed,” Dick insisted. “I did my research! We had so much time to make up for, I had to speedrun through my shenanigans to get us all caught up! Would I have done all this if I didn’t care?”

Every Titan in the room, familiar with the lengths he’d gone to when messing with Rogues and randos as Robin and thus distinctly unimpressed: Yes. Absolutely. One hundred percent.

Dick foraged on heroically. “Regardless! That’s not the case here, as all of this was clearly done in the name of brotherhood and bonding! We’ll laugh about this someday, you’ll see!”

Ten years later, after Jason’s returned as the Red Hood and reintegrated with the Batfamily to varying degrees, enough so that he accompanies Dick and the rest of the OG Titans on a mission where they’re ambushed, captured and trapped in a supervillain dungeon they’re now trying to escape...

Dick: Definitely kicking myself for not seeing that ambush coming. Where’s a bullshit-sniffing power when you really need it, huh?

Jason: Still not laughing yet.

Dick: Oh come on!

As far as the rest goes, Jason does get a kick out of the speedsters discovering that actually, they can run fast enough to travel through time. He’s like, despite your best efforts you accidentally got one right. And Dick’s all ‘was it an accident or did I actually know or have strong suspicions all along’....but Jason shuts that down. “Nope. Not giving you this one. Try it with someone else.”

However, that still left one last card in play, long after everyone - even Dick and Jason themselves - had all but forgotten about it.

See, every Batkid knows that the best lies contain elements of truth. And that’s why Dick only peppered in his fake trivia very, very sparingly amidst a massive info-dump of actually accurate and useful info he gave Jason about all that stuff, way back when.

So despite the handful of things Dick had told him that Jason eventually discovered to be untrue...the vast majority of it did check out.

Which means even once he did catch on to Dick’s game....that didn’t change his acceptance of the stuff that had turned out to be true or verified by others. But in the end, there was only one little fib that slipped under the radar. Because the scenario it was based on just never happened to come up until long after Jason had returned....and thus Jason never had reason to put much thought into actually questioning whether or not it was true. Not until long after he’d stopped scrutinizing stuff Dick had told him, in search of possible ‘traps.’

And THAT is the story of how Jason - on one of the rare occasions that he joined the Titans and Justice League for an all-hands-on-deck kinda teamup - just happened to be in the right wrong place at the right wrong time to notice Superman suddenly start to look queasy after trying some alien cuisine....

And without a second thought, Jason just instinctively dove for the floor. With this followed by Clark letting out an extremely normal-sounding burp and a sheepish apology.

Everyone else, staring at the infamous Red Hood ducking for cover because Clark had a moment of indigestion: umm. wut

Dick, staring wide-eyed at his brother and trying not to laugh: Oh shit. I totally forgot all about that.

Jason, almost conversationally, while climbing to his feet and stalking ominously towards his big bro: Hey can you believe that after all the shit we’ve been through and all the times we’ve fought over like...actual life and death stuff, THIS is the thing I’m actually gonna kill you for?

Dick, backing away, hands raised placatingly: Hey, c’mon now, Jace, we called a truce about all this ages ago, remember? It was a much younger, dumber me who did all that in the first place, y’know? You’re better than this!

Jason: I’m really not.

Dick: Well then can I just take this opportunity to mention again how sorry I am for any creative embellishments I might have once come up with, in the mistaken belief that I was honoring important traditions of brotherhood, and....

Jason: Hey, where’s Donna? Can anyone see if her nose is twitching?

Donna and the rest of the Titans, blatantly amused and offering no explanation to the very confused Justice League: Oh, bullshit absolutely detected. In the interests of Truth and Justice, you should totally proceed.

Dick, jabbing his finger at his teammates before dashing for the door: Betrayal! J’accuse!

Donna, shrugging: Sorry, Rob. Justice demands impartiality. Our hands are tied.

Jason, running out the door and down the hallway in pursuit of his fleeing brother: Yeah you better run! I’ve waited ten fucking years to get back at you for this shit. Where you going anyway, bro? I thought you wanted to laugh about this someday!

Dick (offscreen): I regret nothing! It was all worth it! You should have seen your face!

Jason (offscreen): You couldn’t even see my face, idiot! I’m wearing my fucking helmet!

Dick (offscreen): Semantics! If something’s funny enough, you can sense what someone’s face probably looks like! If you know, you know!

Jason (offscreen): Oh yeah, go ahead and make up some more shit, Grayson, that’s definitely the right way to go here!

Batman, looking to the Titans and waving his hand at...whatever all that is offscreen: Explain.

Roy: Hey don’t look at us. You’re the one who made them brothers. This is on you.

Batman: What does that even mean.

Lilith: If you know, you know. Dick’s right about that much at least.

The Titans all nod like an actual, self-evident truth was just expressed. Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose, and starts muttering under his breath.

“You need to encourage Dick to seek out and make like-minded friends, Alfred said. It’ll be good for him, he said. Its what he needs and definitely not the point everything starts to go downhill.”

Lilith picks it up loud and clear, because of course she does, and incidentally, the smug, obnoxious know-it-all teenage psychic who started hanging out with Dick when they were teenagers has absolutely nothing to do with Bruce’s profound dislike of telepaths, nooooo, that would be ridiculous and irrational, to bear a grudge against everyone with a particular skillset because one of your son’s childhood friends was a royal pain in the -

Lilith: Oh, that’s adorable. He thinks we’re the reason Dick’s so profoundly weird and inexplicable.

The Titans, in unison: LOL.

Roy: The self-deluding, it is strong in that family.

Bruce is suddenly extra glad he’s wearing a cowl that hides what is definitely not a pout but might be mistaken for one by the uninformed thus its better to just dodge that issue entirely. He crosses his arms and stares down the collection of his eldest son’s friends, whom he has been unfairly plagued by since most of them were pre-pubescent little demons. Literally no one has suffered like he has.

“I don’t like you,” he informs them officiously. Not sulkily. Officiously.

Several of them snort. There’s a couple giggles. An eye roll from Roy. An aborted response hastily turns into Wally coughing into his hand. Blatant dismissal from Victor, his attention clearly on whatever he’s browsing online. Three varying shades of raised eyebrows: unflappable bemusement from the sorceress, patronizing amusement from the psychic, naked incredulity from Donna. Garth gazing off into an empty corner which he has on very good authority is basically the Atlantean version of the middle finger.

“Yeah, no shit,” Roy drawls, apparently on behalf of the whole group.

Ugh, they’re just. The worst. Why couldn’t Clark have had a kid Dick’s age so he never had to go looking elsewhere for socialization? That’s it. Clearly this was all Clark’s fault. He can’t believe he never realized that before.

Dammit Clark.

[drarrily-we-row-along]

Day 125.3 Accidental Bonding (Part 3)

You can start at Part One, if you'd like.)

"Piss off, Malfoy," Jenkins snarled from across the room at the end of the training exercise, drawing Harry's attention from the conversation he was having with Ron. "You are such an arsehole. You think you're so clever, so much better than us," he shoved Malfoy's shoulders, "but you're just a slimy Dark Lord worshiper-"

"Oy!" Harry shouted, darting forward and physically putting his body between Jenkins and Malfoy, "Don't talk to him like that."

"I'll talk to that fu-"

"You need to back down," Harry growled, his body thrumming with energy, fingers tingling with the urge to punch Jenkins in the face, his magic racing hot and bright under his skin.

Malfoy put a hand on Harry's shoulder, "Don't," he said. "He's not worth it."

He glared at the other man for a moment before taking a step toward the locker room.

"Oh, I get it," Jenkins sneered, "some people are so possessive of their pets. He's letting you fuck him now, so-"

Harry spun around so fast that Jenkins didn't have a moment to see what was about to happen as Harry's fist connected with his jaw. "Watch your mouth," he growled, low in his throat. "We aren't sleeping together but even if we were that wouldn't change the fact that he is twice the auror you will ever be." He took another step closer, "He's smarter, faster, and has better instincts. And everyone knows that your pathetic attempts to belittle him are out of jealousy. So you can fuck off before you make an even bigger arse of yourself."

"Alright," Ron said, holding out his hands between them. "That's enough."

Jenkins spat blood at Harry's feet but had the good sense not to say anything more as he left and slammed the door behind him.

Harry turned to see Malfoy storming away from him. "Malfoy," he shouted but the other man threw him a two fingered salute and stalked off.

"What the hell?" Harry grumbled.

(Read more below the cut)

Ron shrugged, "Beats me, mate." He slapped him on the shoulder, "but I wouldn't want to be going home with him. He looked pissed."

-------------

Regrettably Ron was right, Malfoy was pissed. Harry couldn't understand it and the other man wouldn't say a word to him about it.

They went home and Malfoy shut himself in the bedroom without a word, leaving Harry standing completely confused in the living room. "What the hell?" he repeated.

Hands on his hips, he stared off after the other man and replayed what he'd said to Jenkins for the fiftieth time, trying to figure out what had made Malfoy so mad.

Giving up on trying to puzzle it out seemed like the only course of action so he headed into the kitchen and started dinner. In the past week and a half, Draco had cooked, they'd cooked together, or ordered take out. Harry hadn't cooked anything on his own since he's arrived and honestly, he was glad for the chance to cooking now.

He chopped up an onion, diced a carrot, chopped up a stalk of celery, and minced several cloves of garlic. Then he turned to the stove and heated a frying pan, pouring in some olive oil before tossing in the veggies and letting them cook down while he chopped up lettuce for a salad.

After about ten minutes, he added the ground beef, salt, and pepper into the frying pan and uncorked a bottle of Merlot, pouring himself a generous glass and dumping a few ounces in with the beef and veg.

He cast a simple spell to keep the spoon stirring while the beef browned and he turned to cut up tomatoes and onions for the salad and made a simple vinaigrette. When the beef was brown and fragrant, he added in tomato paste, diced tomatoes, basil, oregano, and a dash of nutmeg before stirring it all together.

With a pleased hum, he put the lid on the pot and cast a spell that would condense the simmering time to about thirty minutes instead of three hours.

While the sauce cooked down he baked brownies, tossed the salad, and prepped the water and spaghetti. Boiling the spaghetti, cutting the brownies, and plating everything was easy after that. Harry topped the bowls of bolongese with freshly grated Parmesan and basil.

Then, after a moment of debate, he decided to bring dinner to Malfoy instead of the other way around and laid out their salads, bowls of bolognese, glasses of wine, and brownies onto a tray. He levitated it down the hall and knocked on the door.

"Come in," Malfoy called, sounding bored and detached and Harry had to take a steadying breath to tamp down the irritation that tone of voice invoked before opening the door.

"Made dinner," he said casually.

Malfoy turned his head from where he was laying on the bed, idly catching a snitch and releasing it. He sat up, his blonde hair trailing behind him, "It smells good."

"You don't need to sound surprised," Harry teased.

Malfoy opened his mouth to protest but Harry continued as he set the tray in the middle of the bed.

"I'm just kidding," he assured quickly.

"Do you really think that it's wise to consume red wine and pasta on a white bed?" Malfoy asked, one eyebrow arched at him as he climbed onto the bed across the tray from Malfoy.

"It'll be fine," Harry assured as he picked up his salad bowl and speared a tomato. "We're wizards, we'll magic it away if we must."

Malfoy hummed but picked up his own salad. "Thank you."

He shrugged a shoulder, "No problem. I like to cook, actually."

"Do you?" Malfoy asked curiously.

Harry nodded, "Yeah. Once we left Hogwarts and I was living on my own, I was eating out all the time and it wasn't doing me any favors. So I learned how to make some simple things that taste good." He tilted his head, "What about you? You're not a bad cook."

His cheeks turned a light pink and he cleared his throat, "That's Granger's doing actually."

"Sorry?"

He sighed, "She made a really good case about house elves. I didn't want to be who my parents wanted me to be so when I moved out and joined the aurors, I basically shunned anything that whiffs of pureblood bullshit. It has no place here," he said gesturing to his home with his fork.

Harry blinked, "That's amazing."

"Shut up."

"No, I'm serious," Harry said. "You're amazing and I had no idea."

"Stop," Malfoy said. "Please, it's not-"

"Is that what earlier was about?"

Malfoy stilled, "Excuse me?"

"Is that why you were upset?" he asked. "You thought that I was taking the piss?"

"I thought that you have an insufferable hero complex that makes me want to vomit," he growled.

"You're a hedgehog," Harry said, finally understanding.

Malfoy froze, "Who told you that?"

"Told me what?" Harry asked.

"That my patronus is a hedgehog," he said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Harry laughed and Malfoy flushed cherry red, his eyes narrowed. "No, sorry," Harry said holding out a hand, "I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing because I had no idea, honestly!"

"Then what made you say it?" he asked suspiciously.

"Just," he paused and took a bite of bolognese as he searched for the right words, "When you start to feel vulnerable or like someone is going to hurt you, you curl into this defensive ball that will stab at someone no matter what they say or do."

"I-"

"You are genuinely one of the best aurors in our class," Harry said earnestly, steering the conversation to something more tangible that they were less like to fight over. "I was serious."

Malfoy rolled his eyes, "You're just saying that because the bond-"

He shook his head, "I've always thought that," he protested. "It's annoying as fuck because it always seems like everything comes so easily to you. I used to complain about it to Ron all the time."

"Says you," Malfoy protested. "You're always doing everything right; throwing yourself into danger to protect people." He shook his head, "By all accounts, what you do shouldn't work but it does. You're a good auror, Potter."

Harry swallowed, "Thanks, Malfoy. That means a lot coming from you."

"Yes, well," he said as he took a sip of wine, "Don't let it go to your head."

Harry chuckled and they took a few bites in companionable silence before Draco started to talk again.

"You didn't have to come to my rescue with Jenkins, you know."

He waved the thought away, "He's an arse. We've had it out before."

"I'm just saying," he argued, "I was fine. Honestly what he was saying wasn't even that bad."

"Not that bad?!" Harry yelped. "He-"

Malfoy shook his head, "It's the bond, Potter, don't you see that? Jenkins has said a lot worse, other trainees have said a lot worse, and you've never felt the need to jump in and defend my honor before."

Harry frowned.

"You're being swayed by what the bond wants you to feel about me."

"I'm not sure you're right," he said. "Because you shouldn't be treated like that at work. No one should be treated like that."

"Be that as it may-"

"I'm just saying, even if the bond brought it to my attention, I would have done that for anyone. If he'd been saying shite like that to Ron, I would have decked him, too."

Malfoy looked like he was going to argue with him, before visibly changing his mind, "You do have a wand, you know. There's no need to resort to brute force."

Harry shrugged, "But there's just something so satisfying about punching someone."

A laughed forced it's way up Malfoy's throat and Harry grinned at him. Shaking his head, Malfoy replied, "You're ridiculous. And this is good, by the way," he added, pointing to his pasta with his fork.

"Good," Harry said with a pleased little smile.

The conversation turned lighter as they bickered about the training exercises and the best approach, but the bickering held none of the animosity it had a week and a half before.

And Harry couldn't help but wonder how much of this was the bond's doing and how much was simply him.

-----------------

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4

[whatgaviiformes]

Fic: Firefly’s Glow - Part 8/?

Chapter 1: Part 1 | Part 2 Chapter 2: Part 3 | Part 4   Chapter 3: Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 Chapter 4: Part 8  You are Here From the Beginning: FF | AO3 Summary: Imprisoned by the Hood, Gordon dreams of his oldest brother and of fireflies - but of course the Hood had to steal that memory too, in addition to his baldric, his boots, and Virgil’s face. What else could he possibly steal? He discovers the answer is quite a bit, and Gordon has to learn to navigate his new world, its new dangers, and the overbearing presence of his brothers’ desire to help what they can’t fix. This part ~  1.2K words – the sky, the stars, and the sea (or: Scott and John take care of Gordon) TW: Thunderstorms for this part, and slight drinking.  Thanks to @godsliltippy​ for the read through.  -----

Rain trailed down the villa’s windows with a steady pitter-patter as intermittently the grey sky growled with a fervent rumble in the distance. There was a difference to the way a storm sounded, striking instead a blanket of leafy, green canopy as opposed to the plains of their Kansas home – and this time it was joined in its chorus with the tossing of the sea waves upon the sandy beaches and rocky alcoves of Tracy Island.

Muted through the windowpanes it was, but Scott was listening for it. It was the sound of life-giving water returning to its home. Sky to sea. Eventually sea to sky, and back again.

The cycle helped him breathe through the weight in his chest.

The figurative one. Gordon was hardly heavy at the moment, more a feather’s breath sleeping soundly on the pillow his torso provided, rising up and lowering down with the motion of his lungs.

There was a reason Scott kept his breaths steady.

He pressed at the space between his eyes, where his nose met his aching head. Though the slumbering form shifted at the movement, Gordon did not wake. Despite the circumstances, he couldn’t help but smile fondly down at the figure curled on top of him and the childish googly-eyed smiley face that grinned at him on the camo shirt above where Gordon’s injured right arm was sprawled over his belly.

The doll clothes had been John’s idea. After a quick net search by EOS, some call outs from the Space Elevator on John’s way to the Island, and finally a quick pallet pick up from the brand’s warehouse in Thunderbird 1 on Scott’s way home, they were now owners of a pallet of 6-inch dolls of randomized styles.

It had been easiest and quickest to buy them in bulk, and the clothes weren’t sold separately. They’d have some doll toys they could keep in Thunderbird 2 for future rescues when all this was over, and the rest could be donated to the children’s hospital on the mainland. But in the meantime, Gordon had picked a few pieces to wear, and the first order of business had been for his brothers to pry the damn dolls out of their packaging so they could get to the clothes, which were either pull over or Velcro.

Even with doll proportions where a good chunk of the size came from the large, non-anatomically correct heads, the apparel was still slightly oversized on their brother.

“How is he?”  came John’s patient, dulcet tone from around the corner, clasping two half-full glasses of amber and raising an inquiring eye when he realized Scott was in fact not at their dad’s desk where he left him, but lying on the couch propped up slightly on one arm and with his long legs propped over the other.

“Exhausted,” Scott answered thickly, his voice low. “We were just going to rest a moment.”

And they’d needed it. Debrief had been…. Hard.

They’d made it through the details of the original rescue in the standard amount of time and dreaded the next part, though no one expected Gordon to flat out refuse to talk until Virgil left.

Virgil had paled at the statement, argued for Gordon to let him help until he was hoarse with it. And Gordon just shook his head. In the end, Scott agreed that they should do as Gordon asked, because he could feel how tightly Gordon was pulling at his collar.

Scott hated that look of betrayal in Virgil’s eyes as he stormed off, the “fine” breaking off with a brittle catch of air. He’d wanted to follow Grandma and Alan to make sure he was okay, but Gordon needed him.

And though he hadn’t understood it at the time, he did now.

His heart ached for Gordon.

It ached for Virgil too. He was going to be devastated.

“Hey, Scott. You with me?” John asked with a swirl of the glass, the ice clinking against the side. He gently nudged Scott’s legs back as he sat down on the edge of the couch. “Figured we both could use one of these after that.”

Scott hummed in agreement. Once Gordon had felt comfortable with just Scott and John in the room, the story had come tumbling out. Every painful and cruel detail.

He accepted the glass and shifted up just a bit to give John slightly more room. It was a more comfortable position for sipping, but not so far propped up that Gordon would start to slide. Just in case, he also rested his left arm across his stomach so he could support him if he did.

A crackle lit up the sky for a moment, and the cool burn of whiskey slid down his throat. “Helluva day,” he whispered, his breath heavy.

John nodded, brushing back the ginger hair that fell into his face. “We can fix this, Scott,” he stated, gaze sharp as emerald green abandoned the copper inside his glass to meet weary blue. “Kayo’s out pursuing leads, and I have EOS looking. We’ll figure this out.”

Scott watched a bead of condensation cling to his glass, much slower in its run through the cycle than its raindrop cousins outside. He rubbed it gently with his thumb, which came back wet while the glass appeared silkier, smoother and yet when he looked at the world through it, everything distorted in angled amber.

John coughed, then cleared his throat. “So, I had to tell Grandma.”

Scott frowned at him. “You heard what he said.” Gordon hadn’t wanted anyone else to know.

“Right,” John scoffed. “Have you ever seen Grandma take no for an answer? She cornered me on the way to the restroom. She said she gets it. She won’t reveal anything until Gordon’s ready. But Virgil’s really hurt.”

He knew that and despised that this was something big brothers couldn’t just put a bandage on and fix. “I don’t like having to keep this from him.”

“No one does,” John agreed, “but we have to trust in Gordon. It’s what he wants. For now.”

Outside the thunder clapped, the storm closing in on the villa with a rush of rain. Even after all this time, even with listening so intently to the storm build, the volume took him by surprise. Despite the exercises, there were times – too often than he’d like to admit – that thunder didn’t sound like thunder.

Air caught, just for a moment in Scott’s lungs. He forced the fear back down with a mouthful of fire, listened to the rain, focused on the cycles.

Above his fluttering heart, Gordon stirred. “Why,” he mumbled, “...th’boat stop?” He blinked groggily up at the ceiling, at John then Scott. “Oh.”

“Go back to sleep, Gordon,” John encouraged. “Sorry we woke you.”

“‘S’ok.” Gordon tapped to get his attention, and Scott looked down at the pressure, meeting small, but just as equally determined brown eyes. “Hey. Jus’ a storm.”

“I know, Gordo,” Scott whispered. “Sleep.”

Agreement was muffled into his shirt and faded quickly as the tiny grip went slack.

Eventually glasses were emptied, refilled, and finally abandoned as the storm blew through. And finally, when Scott’s lids lowered, John cleaned up and took over at their father’s desk to pick up the reports where Scott left off, keeping a watchful eye on his brothers as always.

[ladyreapermc]

Fic: Popsicle (Henry x Reader)

Summary: Henry helps you to mown your lawn in a very hot day.

Author’s notes: I woke up with this idea in my head and I had to write it! I apologize in advance because this is so fucking cliché! LOL

Wordcount: 1519

Warnings: smut (oral; dirty talk D/S tones)

Part of Henry wondered if she was doing it on purpose. He didn’t think his girlfriend would be that devious. She always seemed such a sweet girl and even if they haven’t been together for that long, a little over a month really, he thought it was time enough to get to know her very well.

And it was, after all, a very hot day. The sun shining brightly; almost punishingly so. Not a single cloud to be seen in the cerulean blue sky to offer the brief comfort of shade. The air was dry and there was barely any breeze. Henry himself was dripping with sweat, skin flushed pink from exertion as he finished mowed the lawn. The whole reason why he came over this early on a Saturday.

She had asked him for help because her lawnmower kept giving her trouble and Henry just offered to do it himself. It was a pretty heavy machine and she was such a tiny woman. He really didn’t mind, and it could count as exercise for the day.

That was two hours ago. Now Henry’s light cotton shirt was soaked through. His shorts not fair behind. His damp curls were glued to his forehead as sweat trickled down his brow and temple, a couple of drops landing his eyes and making them stink. He knew he had green stains all over his legs and arms and the smell of cut grass, sharp and fresh clung to his skin and nostrils.

However, Henry was finally done and there she was, in the tiniest jeans shorts he had ever seen and a white tank top knotted to the side, showing a tantalizing stripe of her belly. The fabric revealed enough that he could she had foregone a bra and her nipples were hard and pressing against the shirt.

She sat on the steps of the porch, leaning back on her elbows. On the table behind her a pitcher of lemonade, the condensation gathering on the glass making his throat clench with thirst, while she made his cock harden at the very suggestive way, she had her mouth wrapped around that a popsicle.

Her lips were dyed red from the artificial color of the sweet and from what Henry could see, whenever she gave little licks around the length of the popsicle, gathering the melted drops, so was her tongue.

Henry sidestepped her to deal with the first of his body needs, pouring himself a glass of refreshment and downing in one go under her watchful eye, before cleaning his hands on a dishtowel on laying on the table.

She pulled the popsicle from her mouth with a little pop, licking her lips from the excess of juice, before flashing him a bright smile.

“Thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem.”

He kept his gaze locked on hers as she brought the sweet back to her mouth very deliberately, pushing almost all of it inside before hollowing her cheeks and now there was no question in Henry’s mind that she was doing it on purpose, being a damn tease.

“Give me that,” he all but growled, tugging on the stick of the popsicle until it left her mouth completely and she pouted at him, but there was a hint of mischievousness on her eyes. “I think this is a poor substitute for what you really should be sucking.”

Henry threw the popsicle away, before glancing around, making sure there wasn’t any nosy neighbor in sight. Fortunately, the hedge fence she kept was pretty tall and under the porch, they were mostly hidden from view.

He undid the laces of his shorts, pushing down mid-thigh, exposing his half-hard dick. She crawled closer on her hands and knees, watching him with hooded eyes before stroking his cock to full hardness. She watched him through her lashes, eyes full of desire.

“Is this what you want?”

“Yes,” she whimpered moving forward, but he caught her by the hair, making her stop. “Hen, please…”

“Tell exactly what you want,” he ordered, forcing her head back so he could look into her eyes again.

“I want you in my mouth,” she started suddenly breathless as she stared up at him. “I want you to fuck my mouth until I can’t breathe. Until I’m gagging on your cock. I want you to cum on my tongue, making me swallow everything.”

It was almost as if every word that passed her lips sent sharp bolts of pleasure through his spine, making his cock twitch, precum leaking from his tip. Apparently, his sweet, naive girlfriend wasn’t so innocent after all.

Henry let go of her hair long enough to caress her jaw, one thumb pressing gently against her pouty lower lip and she immediately took into the warmth of her mouth, tongue swirling around it suggestively, before letting go with that same dirty little pop.

“Please, sir…” she whispered against the pad of his finger. “Let me suck you, please.”

He didn’t expect the word sir to have that big of an impact on him, but his cock throbbed with want and, before Henry could even register his actions, he was dragging her close, rubbing the head of his cock against her lips, just to hear the tiny little whimper of need she let out before he finally let her take him into her mouth.

Henry groaned softly at the delicious feel of her tongue circling his crown, exploring it slowly, the tip probing his slit and making pressure build on the small of his back. Soon, it wasn’t enough; he rocked his hips just a little and she took the hint, getting more of his cock in her mouth. The way her lips stretched over his thick length was right down indecent; just like the little mewls she was letting out.

Henry watched as she took him into her mouth as far as she could manage before pulled out completely and lavishing his cock with little sucking kisses and licks, exploring his shape and veins; coating him with saliva to smooth the movement of her hand as she jerked him off.

“Does this feel good, sir? Am I doing it right?”

“Yes,” Henry breathed out, lost in the sensations. “Feels perfect, baby. Keep going.”

She took him in his mouth again, sucking harder this time around, making Henry grunt, his hand tightening on her nape at the feel of the tight wet heat circling his hardness with the perfect pressure. Fuck! She was so good at this.

He forced his eyes open to watch as inch by inch his cock disappeared in her mouth. She fixed the angle slightly, to take even more and Henry groaned at the feel of the back of her throat working around his head. He held her still for a moment, admiring how absolutely filthy his pretty girl looked with her mouth full of his cock.

Henry could already feel the telltale’s signs of his climax, the pressure increasing, his balls drawing tight. He was too close, too fast, and all because she was completely at his mercy.

Pulling almost all the way out, until only his head remained, Henry started to thrust into the welcoming heat of her very willing mouth, fucking it just like she asked, shoving it just far enough to hear her gag and splutter; tears gathering in the corner of her eyes as she watched him, eyes begging him to keep going.

“Is this how you wanted, baby?” he asked, picking up speed and she hummed in agreement, hands digging on the back of his thighs. “Did you want me to use your mouth like a dirty little slut?”

Her keening whimper sent vibrations all over his length, making Henry grunt and miss his pace, shoving a little farther than planned and she choked, pulling back and coughing slightly. Before Henry could even apologize, she was taking him in her mouth again, desperate and greedy, bobbing her head.

“Fuck! That was exactly what you wanted…” he said in awe, rocking his hips to meet her pace. “You could have just asked, baby. I would’ve given to you. Anything you want. You know that.”

Once again, she just hummed, sending vibrations up his length. Henry groaned, letting her take control once again as she brought him as deep as she could and swallowed around him.

“Fuck!” Henry hissed, the pressure of pleasure becoming unbearable.

He pulled back only enough so he could see the ribbons of his release painting her pretty little mouth. Her lips swollen from her efforts, her tongue gathering all drops of his cum she could reach, and it had to be one of the hottest things Henry ever witnessed.

He took a moment to catch his breath, watching the way she grinned at him like the cat the got the cream and he couldn’t help but smile back.

“Anything else you’d like to do and haven’t told me yet?”

“A couple of things,” she replied, getting to her feet and meeting his lips. “But for now, let’s just get you in the shower.”

xxx

Permanent Tag List (use the link on my bio to add or remove yourself)

@toomanystoriessolittletime​ @meetmeinthematinee​ @theolsdalova​ @penwieldingdreamer​​ @fanficsrusz​ @alwaydreamingofu @eevee-of-rivia​ @reid-187​ @howtoruin-someones-perfect-day​ @sallyp-53​ @anxiteyfilledcupcake​ @pinkzsugar​ @angelic-kisses13​ @futuristic-imbecile​ @wonderlandfandomkingdom​ @krazycags01​ @beyond-antares​ @cumberbatchbaps​ @sgt-morgan​ @a-really-bi-girl @nonsensicalobsessions​ @poisonedjoinery​ @soarocks​ @partypoison00​ @hnryycvll​ @keiva1000​ @shellbilee​ @ivvitm1109​ @mis-lil-red @babayagakeanu​ @trippedmetaldetector​ @missrandomista​ @stxphmxlls​ @geralt-yennefer-jaskier @jadore30​ @savaneafricaine​

Tag List for Henry fics 

@i-cant-remember-my-old-login​ @agniavateira​ @nadia-rosea​ @mary-ann84​ @littlefreya​ @cap-barnes​ @elisewithak​ @omgkatinka​ @dearlybelovedluke​ @jaskierhastwohands​ @hell1129-blog​ @rahdaleigh @peaceinourtime82​ @shadesofarrogance​ @wednesdaybraids @thiccgeralt​ @iloveyouyen​ @geralt-of-baevia​ @dancingwendigo​ @mejana @obsessedwithcavill @watermeloncavill​ @celestial-vomit​ @lovethyauthors​ @henry-cavlll​ @thethirstyarchive​ @kittyslove​ @twlohasmp​ @lifeofrileyp​ @iamtheembodimentofhate​ @savaneafricaine​ @luclittlepond​ @heelsamizayn​ @radaofrivia​

[mangobilorian]

Crash Landing | (mature) i

Pairing: Captain Rex x Reader

Genre: Fluff 

Words: 5352

Summary:  This was supposed to be a diplomatic mission between two peaceful neighbors to ensure that the Separatists wouldn’t invade your planets. And as the princess of your nation, you were expected to uphold proper decorum and exercise exact protocol at all times. So why were you laying on the jungle floor, stripped down to your under layers, curled next to a clone captain keeping watch of your tiny cave, miles away from the capital where negotiations were to be held?

White. White and blue. Those are the only colors at the forefront of your vision, aside from the black of the guns. In a stiff formation behind a robed man, are these… troops. Clones, you believe. All centered around the famed Anakin Skywalker. It has been quite a while since a Jedi or any outside military force graced your planet, much less your nation. But the creeping threat of Separatist forces would soon crash on your shores. And your nation, though prosperous, would not survive a Separatist attack without help.

“Greetings, princess. We’re here to escort you on a diplomatic mission to Theatis 06. I am Anakin Skywalker and this,” he points at a man who steps up beside the Jedi, “is Captain Rex.” The clone--Captain Rex-- salutes.

“We’ll protect you from any threat, princess. You can count on us.” You smile at the helmented man, bowing your head in return.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance. Accompanying me are my handmaidens and private guards.” Next to you, three girls in modest garb bend at the waist, and two armed men also bow. “Shall we start our journey?” The Jedi nods and directs his men to board the ship. The Captain, however, positions himself to flank you. He walks with practiced precision, his gait calculated like a routine.

Before boarding the ship, you turn to wave at the people who came to see you off. Your parents weren’t there, but that was to be expected. While your mother had gone to Coruscant and you were sent to Theatis 06, your father had to stay and rule the country. The only people that came were the senator and select members of the upper and lower chambers of Congress. They wave back. These people were vultures, their smiles hiding something evil. It would be a relief to leave their grip, so you could finally breathe without faking amity or hiding disdain. One slip up on your part, and these politicians would feast on the royal family. But politics was never your strong suit, and being the princess was tiring enough. A gentle hand on your elbow interrupts your thoughts when you realize with a jolt that you hadn’t moved.

“Sorry, your highness. We have a tight schedule,” the captain says. Your face warms at the contact while your handmaidens’ eyes widen with something akin to fear and curiosity. The guards even assume a protective stance briefly before understanding that you were not threatened. They loosen their arms after you dismiss them with a nod. However, the captain doesn’t seem to notice the intricacy of the situation.

“I… it’s alright, Captain.” You forge ahead, not minding the shocked girls, their faces quickly smoothing over to appear as disinterested as before. Thankfully, the makeup that caked your face hid the creeping blush on your cheeks.

The ship was gray and overall uninteresting. It was your first time on a Republic ship, and the whole ordeal seemed a little too excessive. Why would anyone attack a peaceful meeting between neighboring planets? A simple military convoy was enough, but sending a Jedi seemed a tad too much.

“Princess! Oh, it’s so nice to meet you.” Bounding to your side is an over-eager Togruta. Unable to contain her excitement, she bounces on the balls of her feet. “I’m Ahsoka Tano. I’m Master Skywalker’s padawan. I’ve never met a princess before!” The girl beams up at you. Amazing. Not just one but two Jedi. What was the Council thinking?

“Nice to meet you too, Ahsoka Tano. Yes, I’m a princess, but it’s really nothing special. I’m just a human.” You let out a small, graceful smile. Softened eyes, relaxed posture, eyebrows curved upwards. The facade of a princess. A face to exude warmth and comfort to subjects and allies.

“You’re so cool! What’s it like? Do you have to marry a prince?” Ahsoka sits down on a chair next to you, and you settle yourself into the stiff metal chair as well. In the corner of your eye, the captain stands, watching.

“Sometimes. You see, there aren’t many princes to choose from, so my parents pick someone worthy of ruling. In my country, the royal family is more than just a symbol. We have to be trained in politics, government, and military strategy,” you explain. “So marrying for lineage alone doesn’t cut it. One doesn’t have to be born a prince or princess to marry into the royal family. But royalty is quite tiring. Sometimes, I wish I had a break,” you chuckle. Startled, the handmaidens stare at you. Showing anything but happiness at your duty and family was definitely out of protocol. But who was here to enforce it? Certainly not the scheming congressmen. Besides, the young Jedi seems innocently curious.

“Wow… that sounds complicated. So... military strategy huh? Ever led a battle or maybe fought in one? I know quite a lot about fighting in battles, you know. I could take out battle droids with my eyes closed. And, as commander of the 501st, I’ve led a few missions myself,” she smirks, proud of her achievements. As she should be, you muse. The girl is young and already so confident in war. A sad reality.

“Alright, snips. Quit bragging,” Skywalker says, entering your section of the ship. “We’ll be there in an hour, princess.” He turns to leave for the cockpit, but the girl simply rolls her eyes and sticks out a tongue at her master’s back to which he replies in a similar fashion. The interaction causes a laugh to bubble past your lips. At this point, you feel that you’re handmaidens might be on the verge of fainting from all your breaks in protocol.

“That is very impressive, Miss Tano. War is a very hard thing. I personally have not led any military initiatives. My nation is a peaceful one, and I plan to maintain that peace. An official alliance with the prime minister of Theatis 06 would determine whether or not we can survive an impending Separatist invasion.” The girl nods in thought. She looks around, at your handmaidens, guards, and you. Probably analyzing the foreign clothes, the jewelry, the manner you and your people hold yourself. In a galaxy so vast, many cultures had nuances to everything. As her eyes wander, you eye the captain instead.

He’s standing tall and stiff. All the men had their helmets on, which unnerved you. Their eyes could be anywhere, looking at anyone. They were uniform in their blue and white, but the differences were also striking. While the captain had a pauldron, the others did not. The variances in paint differentiated one man from another. You knew that, as clones, they were supposed to look identical. But you had never seen a clone’s face before.

“Princess, is there something wrong?” You shake your head, not realizing that you had been staring at the captain. Maker, this was so embarrassing. You clear your throat before responding.

“No, captain. I was just… admiring your armor.” The man clearly wasn’t expecting your answer because he almost loses his balance. He coughs, almost shyly.

“Oh. Well, princess, there’s not much to admire. It’s just paint on plastoid.” He rubs the back of his neck with a hand, stance already loosened. The other clones glance at their captain before relaxing themselves.

“Nonsense. If you don’t mind, I’d be grateful to know what your paint signifies.” The handmaiden closest to you gasps. She tries to muffle it, but you catch it in time. Next to you, Ahsoka grins at the captain, unspoken words between them.

“Yeah, Rex. Tell us about your armor,” she teases. He sighs but obeys.

“These,” he points to the top of his helmet, “are jaig eyes. They’re a symbol of honor among Mandalorians. The pauldron is just a sign of rank. And the blue shows that I’m part of the 501st.” Hmm… Mandalorian symbol of honor, huh.

“So you’re a Mandalorian?” He shakes his head.

“Not really, your highness. Our template, Jango Fett, was a Mandalorian, and we know some basic Mando’a. But… we’re not born on Mandalore. Kamino is the closest thing to home.” His voice tapers off, probably due to some deeper feeling with Kamino, but you’re not certain. You’ve heard of the watery planet but never put much substantial thought to it, much like your knowledge about the clone army.

“I see. Thank you, captain, for sharing with me and my entourage. If you don’t mind, I’ll review the terms I’ll discuss with the congress of Theatis 06.” You pull out a datapad, glancing over at the information. By your side, Ahsoka seems to debate staying or leaving. Eventually, she stands up and heads for the cockpit, no doubt wanting to bother her master. The datapad is light in your hands, but the content is heavy. Piles and piles of documents condensed in one small piece of technology. Documents which, if used correctly, would earn you a formal military alliance with Theatis 06. If you lost the datapad, you’re sure that your parents and Congress would personally wring your neck.

The handmaidens relax beside you, finally relieved. This is what good princesses do, you mutter in your head. They focus on their task and don’t break silly rules. Rules set to protect your throne and reputation but silly nonetheless.

The silence and cold of space is not foreign to you, but it’s not common either. You rarely leave your planet, much less your system. Maybe once or twice a cycle, you go off-world for diplomacy or recreation. When you do leave, it’s always the same place. If it’s not Coruscant, it’s Naboo. If not either of those planets, it’s Yidone, Theatis 04, or Theatis 06. On its own, none of those planets were boring. But it gets tiring quickly, especially as a princess. However, that’s probably the spoiled, privileged part of you complaining. Your life of comfort is unimaginable to that of the impoverished people in your nation, the ones being sold into the disgusting sex trade, or those who suffer under an infinite number of tragedies. All of their lives, already horrible, would be even more wrecked under Separatist forces. So you push on with your boredom and complaining. For the sake of your people.

Just as you put your datapad down, a loud crash hammers the right side of the ship. Gasping, you grip the handles of the chair to stabilize, but your handmaidens aren’t so lucky. All three of them are flung from their seats and onto the floor, struggling to stand up. Your guards try to reach you, but they too are knocked off their feet.

“What is going on, captain?” You ask, almost frantically, at the approaching clone. On unsteady feet, he eventually stands in front of you, bracing himself. In this position, you won’t be forced out your chair with the clone acting as a barrier.

“Not sure, your highness. Doesn’t sound too good, though.” Another crash, this time from the top of the ship, further unbalances you. Your body surges forward, but the captain latches onto your forearms, pulling them into his chest. His chest plate digs into your arms, but at least you’re not sprawled on the floor like your companions.

A voice crackles from the captain’s comm. “Rex? Get the princess into an escape pod. A Separatist ship is firing at us. Hurry,” urges Skywalker.

“But, sir, what about you and Ahsoka? Wouldn’t a Jedi protect her better?” A second passes before a response.

“We don’t have time for this, Rex. Look, we’ll meet you down there after we settle this seppie ship. Get your ass to an escape pod, and bring the princess with you,” orders the Jedi.

“Yes, General.” The captain hauls you out your seat, an arm snaking around to grip your waist. In any other situation, you’d be blushing furiously, but only fear resides in your chest. Why was a Separatist ship already here?

The captain leads you down multiple hallways, weaving in out of the ship’s interior. All around you, other clones flit about, readying their positions for battle. In a relatively quiet area, the captain pushes a button open to reveal an escape pod. He quickly positions you inside before taking his own place. He settles in, and the both of you are launched into space without a second to spare.

As you calm your breathing, you begin to feel the tension in your muscles. The pod was obviously made for one person, as indicated by how small you had to curl yourself to allow for the captain to squeeze in. Knees pulled tight to your chest, there is still barely any space. The heavy jewelry adorning your neck only makes you tense up further. Stars, it’s getting hard to breathe. Next to the captain is a black bag, and you wonder how he had the time to grab it. You certainly didn’t remember him bringing it.

But if you two were stuck in the pod with a sole bag… that meant your clothes and, most importantly, your datapad was left behind. You didn’t even have a comm to contact your handmaidens and guards. The pain at the forefront of your head continues to build at the thought. No food, no contact, and no documents.

“Are you alright, princess?” You shake your head, trying to clear up your daze. His helmet is turned towards you, those blue jaig eyes staring.

“I think so. Why… how did the Separatists attack us?” The captain sighs, the breathy noise filtered out of his helmet.

“To be honest, it might be because they got intel about Republic ships coming to escort you. They probably realized that your planet would ally against them, and that didn’t sit well,” he considers. His hands are at the controls, expertly maneuvering them further away from the larger ship. Outside, you can see continuous beams of light aimed at the side of the craft, further jostling it. You hope everyone is okay. Especially your entourage and the excitable Togruta padawan. However, knowing the reputation of Jedi, Ahsoka and Skywalker will definitely survive the attack. You left your people in good hands.

“Captain,” you start, “this was supposed to be a diplomatic voyage. And yet, the Republic sends two Jedi and a legion of highly-skilled clone troopers. Did the Council know that something was going to happen to me? Granted, I am thankful for the extra security, but it seems excessive, does it not? And speak candidly. It’s only us two.” You shift slightly to angle your body to face him, tucking your knees under yourself. He doesn’t respond immediately, opting instead to stare out at the approaching planet of Theatis 06.

“I’m not authorized to say too much, and frankly, I don’t why we were sent either. So many other planets could use our help to directly fight off the seppies. Yet… here we are,” he sighs. “But I promise to keep you safe no matter what. As for your people on the ship, they will be taken good care of. Don't worry, princess.”  The crackle of the comm drives your attention to the console.

“Rex? Are you and the princess alright?” Ahsoka’s voice carries over, clear concern lacing her tone. Somewhere behind her, Skywalker’s commands ring out, ordering the men to keep order.

“We’re okay, commander. How is the situation over there?” The sounds of grunts and chaos pass through the comm before she speaks again.

“We’re--ugh-- fine, Rex. Just. Trying. To--kriff--stabilize this ship. See you on-”

Before the captain could respond, a loud crash sends your small pod hurtling in circles.

The momentum dizzies you, and you blindly reach out for something to grab on. Your hands tightly grip the closest thing, the captain’s arm, while the pod continues to spin. In this moment, his plastoid-covered arm and the floor below were the only solid things that existed. In front of you, the captain curses, trying to stabilize the craft to no avail.

The black color of space mixes with the blue and green of Theatis 06, circles and swirls of light and flashes. A heavy feeling of bile threatens to climb out your throat, but you push it down.

“Brace for impact,” orders the captain, and he moves away from the pod’s controls. Quickly, he encases you in his arms, one hand tucked behind your head, pulling you close to his chest. In a moment of clarity, you wrap your arms around his torso just as his free hand grabs the nearby bag and holds it behind you. He successfully entangles the two of you, making you as compact as possible. You shiver at the excessive contact. It’s been so long since you had prolonged touches with someone, much less a hug for survival. Overhead, a beeping noise indicates an oncoming collision.

You feel it before you realize. As your pod enters the atmosphere, it spirals further out of control at even faster speed. In space, it was merely uncontrollable loops. But as you crash into Theatis 06, the air pressure forces your small spacecraft to act as a bullet. There was no way you were going to survive the crash.

You close your eyes, taking a deep breath. Already, you’re praying to the Maker and to the Force or whatever higher power exists that you and the captain will survive. You just wish you could see your parents and country one last time. You hope that-

The sound of rustled tree tops interrupts your thoughts, jostling the two of you. As you peer up at the captain's helmet, the pod hits the ground, the impact shaking you to your very core. And everything goes black.

*****

It’s beautiful. The ocean waves pull up against the shore before receding back, its foamy crest creating shapes of all sizes. On the horizon, the three moons of your planet begin rising, the deep hues of red and purple illuminating the water. Next to you is someone in a full suit of armor. Mostly white with blue paint marking it. Behind him is a robed person. They take off the hood, revealing themselves. But they don’t have one face. Like a slideshow, the faces of politicians, your handmaidens, yourself , melt together. The person raises their hand, and the barrel of a blaster is pointed right at you and--

You sit up, gasping. The air in your throat is dry: suffocating and scratchy. You try to pry off your necklaces to alleviate the pain to no avail.

It was just a dream. A wonderful dream at the start but… it devolved to something much sinister. You crack your neck, stretching your arms out only to hit something hard. And that something groans . Immediately, you open your eyes to see a passed out Captain Rex laying next to you.

Slowly, pieces of your voyage and subsequent crash come together in your mind, and you realize that you probably landed on one of Theatis 06’s numerous jungles. Grunting, you stand up, joints cracking in protest. The top part of the pod was completely gone, as is a side piece. You hobble over to control panels, trying to see if the comm worked. Sadly, the whole thing seemed destroyed. This was worse than you thought.

You had one crashed escape pod, no way to contact your escort group, and one sleeping clone trooper.

“Princess?”

Well… that makes zero sleeping clone troopers. You turn to the captain to see him rise to his feet. He stretches briefly before joining you next to the control panel.

“Does anything work?” His voice is scratchy, with a hint of warmth despite being filtered. You give a defeated sigh. After button smashing the console in frustration, there is still no sign it was operable.

“Unfortunately, nothing does. I guess we’re stuck here momentarily, captain.” He doesn’t say anything, opting to grab the discarded bag on the ground. He lugs it over himself, wearing it like a backpack and motions for you to follow him.

“We’ll travel to the closest city and find a way to send our coordinates to General Skywalker. For now, we should get some shelter and stay out of danger.” You nod, satisfied. The captain looks around then, seeing a viable path, jerks his head in that direction and walks off. You follow behind him, making sure to not snag your clothes on the flora.

As you journey onward, sweat begins to drip down… everywhere. Your face, neck, back. It gathers underneath your jewelry, seeping into your heavy robes. The cloying heat of the jungle was suffocating, the humidity clinging to every part of you. You can only imagine how much heat the captain had to endure under his armor.

The jungle wasn’t a quiet place. Sounds of birds chirping, distant animal growls, and your own footsteps echoed off the forest floor. In another time, this trip would be considered pleasant. You were, after all, surrounded by beautiful, exotic nature. But the reality of the situation only deepened the further you walked.

Next to you, the captain stayed silent. He dutifully carries the bag, twin blasters at his sides, and head aimed forward the entire time. Occasionally, he steadies you with a free hand when you slip on a rock or trip over a root. Even then, he doesn’t say a word. With each step, your muscles continue to ache. Your leg muscles are especially sore, and the back of your head is tender at the touch, probably due to the crash.

After what feels like hours, the captain finally stops moving. You, however, don’t notice, and collide right into his back, almost sending the two of you flying forward. You apologize under your breath then look to see why the captain had stopped.  

A cave. A small cave with vines covering the entrance. You would have missed it if the captain hadn’t seen it. He steps towards the mouth of the cave, brushing aside the vines. You enter after him, and sit down on the ground. You sigh in the relief at the reprieve from walking. The captain sets the bag down in front of you and opens it.

Peering into the bag, you see a medkit, a canteen, extra ammo, a comm, and… rations. Maker, you didn’t realize how hungry you were until you saw those rations. Only now, the ache and noise of your stomach was noticeable.

The captain also settles down on the ground, legs spread apart, knees bent. He looks so relaxed--too relaxed-- for someone who was stuck with a princess in a foreign forest. He sorts through the supplies methodically, like he’s taking inventory.

You shrug off your heavy clothing, groaning at the air that hits your skin. Off goes your cloak, then head wrap, and lastly your skirt. All you’re left with is a black layer meant for temperature regulation and sight blaster protection. On top of that is a loose cotton slip dress, allowing the miniscule breeze of the jungle to provide you with some cooling. You try to remove your jewelry, but… you don’t know how to. You’ve never done it yourself.

“Captain? Would you mind removing my necklaces for me?” The helmet jerks up, interrupted from his organizing.

“Of course, princess.” He stands up and positions himself behind you. He shrugs off his gloves, bare, tanned hands reaching to the clasps. Grunts of concentration filter out of his helmet, probably in confusion at the locking mechanisms. It was, to his credit, a pretty complicated piece of jewelry. After a minute or two of struggle, the necklaces come loose. He sets it aside, on top of your discarded clothes.

“I’ll start a fire, stay here.” He starts to get up, but you grasp his wrist.

“This is a rainforest, captain. All the wood is wet and won’t burn. Try looking for the eyti leaves instead.” You describe the plant to him in detail, watching him nod in confirmation.

“I’ll be back, your highness. Here,” he reaches to his side and pulls out a blaster, “for emergencies.” He sets off, disappearing past the vines.

The air is thick around you, the urge to sleep becoming more tempting. You don’t even realize your eyes were closing, and jostle awake when you hear the snap of a twig. Snap .

Crack .

You rise slowly, clinging to the side of the cave. You brush aside a few vines, gripping the blaster until your knuckles turn white. You hold your breath and look out.

Green eyes. Massive green eyes stare right at you. Stars, that was a massive feline. You wrack your head for information regarding Theatis 06 jungle cats. You’re sure you learned about them somewhere in foriegn history class. But the growl leaving the cat’s bared mouth shakes you out of your thoughts. Stay calm. You’ll stay calm, move slowly, and breathe at a steady pa-

The cat lunges at you, and you raise your armed hand on instinct, frantically trying to pull the trigger. A shot rings around the area, and the cat slumps down, falling hard. The heavy thunk of its body ruffles the forest floor. You release the breath you were holding. Wait.

The blaster mark wasn’t on its front. It was on the cat’s back . From your periphery, Captain Rex steps out from between the trees. He marches over to you, setting down the eyti leaves before grasping your shoulders.

“Are you alright, princess?” You nod mutely. He leans down and picks up the blaster from the ground. You didn’t even know you’d dropped it. If he hadn’t been there… you don’t even want to think about what could’ve happened.

“I’ll start the fire.” The captain’s hands leave you, the absence of his warmth making you frown for a brief second. He piles the leaves into a mound in the middle of the cave floor. “I’ll get some rocks,” he starts, but you hold up a hand.

“I’ll do it. I’ll stay close, don’t worry.” Before he could protest, you’re already out of the cave. The search for rocks isn’t difficult, but halfway through it registers that you left the blaster. Well… you hope those jungle cats don’t travel in packs. Your small expedition was pleasant. The course you set wasn’t too far from your cave, and you get to admire the jungle without your restrictive clothes and jewelry.  

After a few minutes in the heavy heat, you gather enough rocks for a small pit to contain the eyti leaves. You use your shirt to hold the rocks, stretching the fabric to a concave and containing them. You return to find the captain at the mouth of the cave, stiff and wary, a hand ready on his blaster. He only seems to relax once he sees you.

Together, you set up the fire pit, but don’t light it yet. The captain leaves the cave with a knife, mentioning how he had to skin the dinner. You hobble over to the comm to see if you could connect to any signal. Nothing. You were too far to contact anyone. You slump in your position and stare at the cave wall. How did things get so bad?

After a while, the captain returns with the skinned meat of the jungle cat. Together, you start the fire and prepare some sticks to use for skewering the meat. Outside, the insects buzz and the frogs croak, the darkness sweeping over to indicate night. The transition between light and dark begins.

The two of you cook the meat in silence, leaving you to ponder. With each piece of meat that’s done, you plop it into your mouth with no hesitation. It tastes… like the green hens from back home. Pretty unseasoned and a little lean, but not horrible. The captain doesn’t eat his pieces immediately, setting them aside when he’s done.

Soon enough, you’ve eaten through your share, satisfied and full. A large dinner without using the precious rations is a success in your book. The captain, however, has yet to eat his food. Once all his pieces are cooked, he brings his hands to his helmet and tugs it off and… you’re speechless.

Light blond hair atop a well-structured face. Eyebrows that arch beautifully, a sharp nose, and a prominent jawline, the hard lines of stress and war prominent on his forehead. The thin line of his lips are downturned. And his eyes . The hooded, gold-brown eyes that reflect the flickering firelight. This man might have been the most handsome you’ve ever seen. And there’s a whole army of people who look just like him.

“Princess? Something wrong?” You jolt at his question. Kriff, this was the second time you had stared at him today. Heat warms your cheeks. You cough into a closed fist.

“Nothing’s wrong, captain. And you can call me by my name. I think we’re past formalities.” He lets out a small smile but shakes his head.

“Don’t think I can do that, your highness. Have to follow orders and call you formally.” You pout but don’t respond, instead taking the time to further admire him. His voice is even more captivating without the helmet. Maker, it was so smooth and melodic yet stable and- kriff when were you so attracted to a voice ? He starts eating, but those ochre eyes flit to yours, and you turn away.

To distract yourself, you pick up the canteen of water, and take a few sips. As you search through the contents of the bag, you find a compact mirror. You open and see… something horrible.

Your makeup has been smudged to all hell. The gold of your lipstick is smeared down to your chin, and the white paint on your face is half gone. The intricate golden markings that decorate you are no more than muddied lines, and there are visible sweat trails that erased the color on your forehead. You were such a mess. While you look like a melted dolly, the captain sits there looking all majestic. This was so unfair .

“Is everything ok, princess?” You close your gaping mouth and turn to the captain.

“You never told me that I looked like this ,” you frown, pointing at your face. “I look horrible!” The captain chuckles, the breathy sound sending shivers to your chest.

“With all due respect, I didn’t think it was my place to point it out. And you don’t look bad, either. We just crash landed in the jungle. Of course your makeup would be ruined.” His eyebrows arch, confused at your frustration. You huff.

“It’s just so unfair. You get to look like… that , and I’m here looking like a blurrg stepped in paint and walked over my face!” You bring a hand to your forehead in exasperation. Sure, you were being dramatic, but a princess should never have to be in such a sorry state. The captain has the nerve to look even more bewildered.

“I’m not sure I understand, princess. I look normal, like all my brothers.” A grumble about how he’ll never understand your predicament escapes your lips. The captain reaches for one of your discarded clothes and sets the lip of the canteen on top, dampening the fabric. “Here,” he gestures, “so you can wash up.”  You grasp at the cloth, gently swiping at your face. Paint stains the rich, expensive robe, but you don’t really care.

“Thank you,” you croak, face feeling fresher and cleaned. The captain nods at you, arranging your clothes to form a pile.

“Sleep. I’ll keep watch,” he advises.

“Shouldn’t we take turns? It’s no use if you’re tired tomorrow.” He considers your words then sighs.

“Alright. I’ll wake you when it’s your turn,” he decides. You lay your head atop your clothes, settling down on the hard ground. Pebbles dig at your back, and your neck aches at the lack of support, but it’s not as horrible as you would’ve imagined.

“Good night, Captain Rex,” you whisper, eyes already closing. The exhaustion from your long hike takes over your body. It seems that your adrenaline from the day is long gone.

“Good night, princess.”

[stovetuna]

I really want to ask for stevetony + Exes AU? I'm so weak for the pining and angst of the getting back together trope

same??? I know I shouldn’t but I am nothing if not weak. I hope you like it! I want to say this is 616, because Tony’s self-loathing here feels like peak 616!Tony to me, but not set at any specific point in time. 

- - -

For six months, nobody knew that Tony Stark and Steve Rogers were dating.

Which means no one knows they broke up six weeks ago.

Looking back on it now, those six months were just stolen time, a pocket-life Tony knew he’d never get to live out to its fullest, but he likes to think he took advantage of every second of it.

That’s a lie. He wasted it. He knows that now, better than he’s known anything in his entire life, and that includes JARVIS’s coding and what it felt like when Obie forcibly removed the arc reactor from his chest. He spent six incredible, heartwarming, spine-melting, almost-picture-perfect months in a relationship with Steve Rogers, a man he’d been in love with for years before that, and no one knew about it. 

Because as it turns out, Tony Stark is a coward.

Tony puts down the razor and stares at himself in the mirror. A mask of dread with a freshly sculpted goatee stares back. It’s too early for that much feeling, but this is the position he’s put himself in.

It’s also his first day back in the city after spending the past six weeks in Malibu, “to make sure SI feels equally loved,” as he told the team at their last group dinner (while pointedly ignoring Steve sitting across from him at the table and the fact that even then he couldn’t not see the way the man’s face fell at the news). 

Obviously that’s only half of the story, but no one needs to know about how Tony spent most of those six weeks moping around in that big empty house wearing grubby shirts and eating pints of half-melted Half Baked ice cream out of the container (and then exercising himself sick to make up for it).

Now, he’s got a fresh full-body tan from time spent in the sun, a slew of new tech ideas for the team (including an infinitely better low-profile tracking device for Natasha, because who says he doesn’t do nice things for people), a mostly-rested brain, and a packed schedule that will allow for very little—if any—interaction with Steve. 

It’ll be fine, he tells himself, watching condensation streak through the remnants of steam on the mirror. This is just like any other breakup, only slightly complicated by the fact that he leads a team of superheroes with his ex, and was best friends with his ex for years before they got together, and still thinks the world of his ex, and still wants his ex, and is still madly in love with his ex. 

Just like he did in California, Tony doesn’t think about the bottomless pit of empty taking up valuable real estate in his stomach as he wanders from the bathroom and starts arranging himself into a vaguely Tony Stark-shaped person. 

Autopilot is as useful a function in the Iron Man suit as it is in the rest of his life, especially these past six weeks—buttoning his shirt, Tony notices but doesn’t worry about how he can’t feel the fabric under his fingers, or the pinch of his dress shoes as he pulls those on; the world has been slightly out of focus ever since he and Steve broke up, and the feeling of walking through life with only half the lights on upstairs and a black hole where his viscera used to be is all too familiar. 

It’s how he felt years ago, dying slowly, then quickly—not quickly enough—of palladium poisoning. 

The device that is keeping you alive is also killing you.

He chooses a pair of gunmetal grey sunglasses with fluorescent red lenses to go with the Tom Ford suit he somehow managed to put on right. Before walking out the penthouse door, Tony checks himself in the massive, frameless mirror: everything is in its right place. He looks like had a nice vacation and came home without a care in the world. He doesn’t look like a man who broke his own heart out of cowardice and is now walking through life with self-inflicted blood poisoning. 

If he tries hard enough, harder than he did back then, no one will notice anything is wrong. 

It’s just Tony’s luck that the first person he runs into is Steve, glowing from a workout (it’s Thursday, Tony remembers, which mea ns cardio and time on the heavy bag) and just as beautiful as the last time Tony saw him. 

“I’ll give you space, as much as you need, I promise. Trust me, this is for the best.” 

Steve’s not crying, but it sounds like a near thing. His face is drawn, flush with emotions Tony doesn’t want to read into, but even distraught Steve is still the most gorgeous thing Tony’s ever seen. Then Steve is reaching out with both hands and he has to back away. “Tony, just, wait—”

He looks almost small, vulnerable in a way Tony isn’t used to, and the only thing he really wants to do in that moment, standing in Steve’s bedroom surrounded by moving boxes (an hour ago they were getting ready to move in together—funny, how quickly things change), is take Steve into his arms and keep him there where it’s safe. But that vaguely possessive urge living constantly under his skin is what led to this, this crossroads which finds Tony doing the one thing he never wanted to do: “I can’t, Steve, I’m…I asked you for all the wrong things and now you’re miserable, and you—God, you of all people deserve happiness. The least I can do now is let you go so you can find it.”

Tony manages to say it without dying, which might be a miracle. He’ll call the pope later and ask. When he leaves Steve’s room, it’s to the miserable sound of Steve’s voice breaking in the middle of Tony’s name. By the time he shuts the door behind him, it’s too late to wonder if this is all a huge mistake, but Tony still feels part of his heart splinter off to stay behind with Steve, where it belongs.

Funny how after six weeks away with no contact of any kind, all that R&R and R&D and B&Js and G&Ts, one look at Steve is enough to put Tony right back where he started, heartsore and winded like the hurt is forcing the air from his lungs. 

Steve looks—he looks good, of course he does, but Tony was always especially weak for slightly disheveled and endearingly domestic Steve Rogers wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants. It doesn’t help that Steve looks happy, like the past six weeks have done exactly what Tony dreaded and hoped they’d do when he broke up with him, like Steve’s had time to finally breathe freely, spread his wings a bit, experience the world in ways he never got to with Tony when they were together.

He looks lighter. Younger. Fuller. More. It’s enough to crush something in Tony that feels remarkably like one last ember of hope, the bitterly selfish hope that Steve was as wrecked by the breakup as Tony.

“Welcome back!” Steve says with a bright smile, wiping sweat from his brow with an end of the towel hanging around his neck. “How was California?” 

Tony is distantly aware of his mouth hanging open, but he’s too caught up in how awful he feels seeing that smile on Steve’s face to respond. He shouldn’t be surprised, after all, that Steve is happier not dating Tony—it’s why Tony broke up with him in the first place. Steve was miserable, and now he’s not. Mission accomplished. 

“Hey,” he finally manages to respond, even as he ducks out of Steve’s path toward the kitchen to make coffee (he’s already had a cup, but he needs to busy his hands and have something to look at that’s not Steve’s perfect fucking face). “California’s the same as it ever was. Rhodey says hi.” 

Behind him, Steve hums thoughtfully. “Hi, Rhodey,” he says, knowing Tony will pass it on, because of course Steve would, and of course Tony will. Tony scoops ground coffee from a bag, not caring which one he’s dipping into, and fills the bottom of the French press as the electric kettle comes to a hissing boil. 

“Anything happen while I was gone?”

When Steve speaks again, he’s much, much closer, and Tony wishes like hell that that didn’t make every single hair on his arms stand on end, that the low baritone of Steve’s voice didn’t make Tony shudder and want to bend himself over the counter. That part of their relationship is over. He has to move on.

“Not much,” Steve replies, easygoing, like having this conversation isn’t the last thing he wants to be doing this morning. Tony knows deep down that this is just Steve playing nice, doing his best to mend fences for the sake of the team. If possible, the knowledge just makes Tony feel worse, which he didn’t think was possible. “I’ve been working on putting together intel on possible new recruits, like we discussed. Want to take a look?” 

Like we discussed, he says, Tony thinks to himself as the kettle clicks off, ready to pour. Steve’s sense of diplomacy is truly on another level, considering how this exact topic of conversation came up in the first place. 

“I’m not saying we’re not enough, Steve,” he says, willing his hands to stay at his sides, “I’m just saying it wouldn’t hurt to have more bodies on the team so that the next time we get hit with a Galactus or something like it, we’re not scrambling for reinforcements at the last minute.”

Steve, still sitting at the now-empty conference table, pinches the bridge of his nose and frowns. 

“What we need is for the team—our team—to work together better. We need to cultivate what we have, not pad the ranks and hope for the best.” 

“And we will! But we can also think ahead and save ourselves a lot of stress and pain and suffering down the line.” Tony knows his frustration has reached its boiling point the moment he snaps: “I mean for fuck’s sake, Steve, I thought you were good at multitasking.”

The look Steve gives him is dark, but not exactly angry. It’s the kind of look he gets whenever he wants to make Tony listen to something Tony thinks he doesn’t want to hear. Usually it involves compliments or Steve verbally placing value on Tony’s life. It also usually involves—

Tony isn’t surprised when he blinks and finds himself pinned to the wall, Steve fitting himself in the space between his thighs like he belongs there (which he does. He absolutely does). One month in and the experience of Steve manhandling him like a pro still hasn’t lost its electric thrill; if anything, it’s only gotten headier, more dizzying, the best high Tony’s ever experienced, and it’s heightened by the fact that he’s the only one who gets to have it. 

He opens up for Steve’s bruising kiss like he’ll die without it. Groaning, Tony falls deep into the pleasure of it, of Steve’s tongue fucking into his mouth like he owns the place, hot, wet suction unraveling any lingering arguments Tony might have. He throws his arms around Steve’s neck and a leg around his waist, a question in the gesture that gets answered immediately when Steve picks Tony up by his thighs and wraps both legs around his hips.

Everything is heat and the raw, jagged edge of their mutual frustration, Steve scrambling at the zips on Tony’s undersuit with fumbling fingers even as his clever tongue continues its single-minded precision assault on Tony’s. Tony whines when he feels the skin of his ass and thighs meet the open air of the conference room. They’re thousands of feet above ground aboard the helicarrier, about to fuck in a public space, and even as Tony moans lewdly at the thought of being discovered in flagrante delicto with Steve Rogers, a small and insidious part of him reels at it, desperate to keep this whole thing under wraps and to themselves. 

Steve is the best thing—person—Tony’s ever had. He’s been half in love with him for years and now, having him like this, Tony can’t believe how much time he wasted. Sometimes he catches himself thinking about how it’ll be when they’re old and grey and married, the soft domesticity of their well-deserved retirement, Tony working on vintage cars in the garage while Steve fills the top floor of a house with paintings, and it doesn’t scare him as much as it probably should. 

But he hasn’t told Steve how much the thought of going public scares him. How terrified he is of losing Steve to the rest of the world, which will tear them limb from limb the moment it learns of their relationship. The Stark PR machine will kick into overdrive to smooth things over, and on the surface everything will appear fine, but it won’t change the fact that they will never know privacy again; every photo taken of them in battle, out in the world, together or separate, will be subject to a level of scrutiny Tony knows only too well, but which Steve has never experienced. It’s horrible. Infuriating. Invasive, demoralizing, and not a little bit traumatizing. When Tony told Steve about Princess Diana’s death, long before any of this—them—started, he couldn’t wipe the memory of Steve’s devastated and furious expression from his mind for weeks.

They’ll talk, eventually. For now, Steve takes Tony apart with his fingers, slick with lube he keeps in his belt, his other hand curled over Tony’s mouth so he can press up hard against him and whisper things in his ear, dirty promises that make Tony’s toes curl: “Always like riling me up, don’t you, Stark,” he grunts, fucking his fingers up into Tony like it’s his job, slicking him inside and out and grinding the heel of his palm against the sensitive spot behind his balls on every third thrust until the only coherent thought running through Tony’s mind is Steve’s name. 

Silenced by the hand over his mouth, Tony expresses his feelings by pushing back against Steve’s hand in perfect synchrony as he squeezes his bared thighs against Steve’s waist, which, fuck, he’s still wearing the suit, they need to have post-mission arguments more often. “Yeah, that’s it,” Steve rumbles against his cheek, burying a third finger, thick and dripping into Tony’s ass as he does, “you just want me to fuck you like this all the time, don’t you? Keep you pinned and open so I can slide in any time I want.” Tony keens against Steve’s palm, nodding so hard he dizzies himself; Steve groans and moves his hand to open Tony’s mouth with his thumb. “Say it, Tony,” he orders, and that’s definitely his Captain America voice, fuck—

“Want you to keep me open,” he gasps, helpless to stop from drooling all over Steve’s thumb still perched on his bottom lip as his other hand drives Tony into a frenzy, hard and insistent but not hitting him where he needs it, it’s not enough, “never want you to stop fucking me, want you to fill me up until I leak, plug me u-up—ungh, fuck, Steve…”

“I would,” Steve says before kissing Tony again, slow and sensual the way his fingers aren’t, fanning out and plunging in again and again and again until Tony can feel how exposed he is, gaping and trembling and so, so wet. Steve’s still kissing him when he pulls his hand out and, after a moment’s fumbling, drops his belt and opens the front of his uniform pants. 

Tony moans into the scorching kiss when Steve drags the head of his massive cock through the lube dripping out of him, fisting the rest of his length with what’s left on his hand from fingering Tony open. “Can’t imagine a world where I wouldn’t want to,” he whispers, covering Tony’s mouth with his hand again as he guides his dick into that too-empty place inside Tony. He slides in, watching Tony’s face with a possessive gleam in his eye, cheeks and ears red with arousal and exertion. That hot, slick slide makes his head spin every time, the stretch an incontrovertible reminder that this is Steve, Steve who slots so perfectly into place like he belongs there, who fills Tony to absolute capacity and then fucks him so good it’s any wonder Tony can keep quiet. He holds Steve’s hand over his mouth and presses down to smother the noises leaking out him, high-pitched whines and gasps as Steve drives in deep and pulls out to the tip, looking down to admire the view with a dangerous smile before plunging back in hard and fast, pinging Tony’s prostate spot-on every time like it was a fucking doorbell. He does it once, twice, slow and steady as he considers the angle and the pace, watching his dick glisten before disappearing back into Tony’s all-too-willing-body, and then he gives Tony a look, and Tony knows he’s doomed. 

It’s quick and dirty and wet and Steve has to bite Tony’s neck to keep himself quiet; Tony hangs on for dear life as Steve bounces him ruthlessly on his cock, holding him up against the wall by the strength of his chest against Tony’s and his broad, heavy hand over Tony’s mouth and the constant, driving force of his hips as he fucks him. The belly of Steve’s uniform brushing up against the head of Tony’s otherwise untouched dick every time Steve plunges into him is the most erotic kiss, a damp buss of sweat and pre-come against kevlar and leather that sets every one of Tony’s nerve endings on edge.

“So good, Tony, oh, fuck—” Steve groans under his breath, palming Tony’s thigh before pulling the leg out wide to better accommodate his bulk. Tony can’t think; he can only barely remember to breathe. He might be making a noise, but if he is only dogs and supersoldiers can hear it, probably. What were they fighting about again? What’s his last name? The only word in his head is Steve, SteveSteveSteveSteveohfuckSteve…

“Take it so good, Tony, yes, baby, yes, yes…” Steve holds Tony close in his powerful grip as he comes, shaking and gasping, inside Tony’s ass. Tony can feel the throb of it against his rim, the heat and heft of Steve’s dick inescapably everywhere inside him, and then he keeps going, fucking Tony with his big, beautiful cock in a rapid battery of thrusts, loud and sloppy with his come, never letting up on Tony’s prostate even as he trembles and gasps against Tony’s shoulder like he’s just run a marathon. Tony’s eyes roll up inside his head. Everything is buzzing, his blood pure fire with the need to come; he hasn’t shot off untouched in years, but trust Steve Rogers to surprise Tony every which way from Sunday. Steve is whispering in his ear again, praising him as the fingers of his free hand drift down to feel where they’re connected, the froth of Steve’s come easing the roughness of that touch. Tony chokes on a cry. The knot of orgasm is right there in his pelvis—all Steve has to do is fuck him, there, right, there, yes, oh, fuck…

“So beautiful, Tony. Love watching you come for me.” 

Steve pulls his hand away as Tony comes and kisses him, swallows the desperate sounds of his orgasm like he’s starved for them. He keeps Tony pinned safely to the wall as Tony’s legs give out and shoots ropes of come all over his own chest. He’s shaking like a leaf from head to toe and can’t even muster enough bandwidth to feel shame—Steve loves it, after all, and says so, kissing the words one by one into his mouth like tiny prayers. Loves the way Tony lets go, loves how he trusts Steve like this, how he looks when all he can feel is the pleasure Steve gives him. 

“Could hold you like this forever,” he says, once Tony can open his eyes. Tony smiles, his bruised and tender lips straining: there’s a drop of come on the underside of Steve’s jaw. He brushes it off with a sigh and sucks it off his thumb. The glimmer of interest in Steve’s eye is echoed by the twitch of his cock, still buried hilt-deep in Tony’s ass. 

“Deal,” Tony hums, leaning forward to kiss Steve long and heartily, one last time before they have to go back out into the world and pretend this—their relationship—isn’t a thing that exists. 

They’ll talk, eventually.

Tony pours the hot water into the press and watches the grounds float up and swirl around in the dark. 

“Sure,” he says, not turning around to look at Steve, as much as he wants to. It’s for the best, he reminds himself for the thousandth time that day. The less he looks at Steve, the easier this will be for him. For both of them. “Send ’em through the server so JARVIS can throw them up for me when I get back to the lab tonight.” 

There’s a moment of silence so immense it’s any wonder Tony can’t hear his own heartbeat. Then:

“Tony.” Oh, no. He knows that ‘Tony,’ and it’s everything he can do to not shut his eyes as he braces himself for what comes next: “Could you—turn around?”

Steve doesn’t even have to use his Captain America voice to get Tony to do as he asks. By the end, it was like that all the time: Steve would ask, and Tony would oblige, and the ease with which they learned to communicate as a couple was unlike anything Tony could have hoped for, except for the part where Tony didn’t want to go public with their relationship and could never get Steve to understand why. 

Looking at Steve now, Tony withers, wishing the kitchen floor would open up and swallow him whole. Steve still looks a million times better than Tony feels, but there’s a pinching around his eyes that Tony recognizes as concern, and it shouldn’t make his heart sing to know Steve can still feel that about him, but it does. Backlit by the morning sun coming in unobscured through the mansion’s massive windows, Steve looks like an angel come to earth, bright and warm and golden. Tony feels small and twisted and hollow in comparison. Weak. A coward, who let this man slip through his fingers for fear of losing him later on down the line.

“Are you doing okay? I know we—things kind of…ended, abruptly.” Steve says the word ‘ended’ like it tastes bad. His face screws up like he’s sucked a rancid lemon. It’d be endearing if it wasn’t directed at Tony for Tony’s sake. “I’ve been worried about you.” 

Tony waves a hand at him, smiling beatifically like the words don’t make him want to drop to his knees and beg Steve’s forgiveness. 

“I’m fine, Cap,” he replies, not Steve, and even Tony can tell Steve is pained by the change of address by the way his fingers clench around the towel in his hands. “You?”

Steve visibly swallows. “I’m fine,” he says, and he sounds like it. He certainly looks like it, smiling like the free man he is. Fine might actually be the truth, in Steve’s case, even if it isn’t in Tony’s.

“Glad to hear it!” Tony almost shouts as he pivots back to his coffee, pressing down on the plunger too soon, but he’s so harried by being there in the kitchen with Steve on his first day back to worry about a weak brew. 

“Sir, I’m being told to remind you that your ten o’ clock is waiting for you at your office.” 

Tony winces. “What time is it, J?” 

“The time is currently ten twenty-nine.” 

“I’ll let you go, then,” Steve says, already leaving the kitchen before Tony can respond with anything. He manages to catch Steve’s eye as he waves back at Tony on his way out. He looks happy, Tony reminds himself. You let him go so he could be happy. You have to let him be happy.

The coffee scalds when he drinks it, but the burn is good. It reorients the pain currently trying to wring the blood out of Tony’s heart, gives him something to focus on that isn’t this unbearable, overwhelming sense of regret. Heat to burn away the creeping chill that breaking up with Steve was the biggest mistake Tony’s ever made in his life. 

After four months of pushing the conversation off for another day, four months of dating in secret—sneaking touches when the others have their backs turned, never spending the night in each other’s beds even after bouts of sex so intense they can’t remember how their legs work, pretending not to care more than is reasonable when one of them goes down in a fight—Steve finally sits Tony down and asks him why. 

Or, more accurately, he makes love to Tony slowly and sweetly for what feels like hours, until Tony is literally crying from pleasure and the overwhelming need to come, and then when Tony finally, finally breaks and whispers that magic word, “Please,” Steve bends him almost in half with a groan that shakes the bed and then plows home until Tony is sobbing and tearing the sheets as he comes. 

Then, when they’re both sated and clean and curled up on the dry side of Tony’s California King, Steve places a hand on Tony’s stomach. Tony can feel it shaking, and he knows what Steve’s about to say. 

“I want to tell the team.” 

Tony closes his eyes and groans. “Steve…” 

“Please, Tony. We need to have this conversation. We should have had it ages ago.” 

So much for enjoying the afterglow. Tony sits upright in bed, warmed by Steve’s hand coming to rest on his thigh. The other man stays laid out next to him, looking up at Tony like he’s his guiding light when all Tony’s done is drive him to this point: Steve, nervous, looking guilty for asking for something of Tony he doesn’t have the courage to give. 

“I just…you remember, when I told you about Princess Diana?” 

Steve looks confused for a moment. When understanding sets in, smoothing his features out to an expression of wary comprehension, Tony feels a rush of love so intense he has to lie back down just to keep the blood from rushing to his head. Steve Rogers is so much smarter than anyone gives him credit for. It’s Tony’s second favorite thing about him. 

“You’re worried I’m going to get killed being chased by paparazzi?” He says, moving in close and reaching out for Tony’s hand. Tony takes it, weaves their fingers together in a perfect fit. He stares at Steve’s fingers instead of looking him in the eye. Steve’s fingers are his fifth favorite thing about his boyfriend. 

“In a sense,” Tony replies. “I’m worried about what happens to us when ‘us’ no longer involves you and me, but everyone—the team, Pepper, the board, the government, our enemies…I’m worried that once the press gets a hit of us, they’re going to drain us dry, and all of it—the gossip, the speculation, the invasiveness…it’s going to drive us apart.” 

“Tony,” Steve sighs, leaning forward to kiss Tony’s forehead. Tony can’t help but press into the gesture. He can feel Steve’s lips curve up in a smile when he does. “You’ve been holding on to this all this time?” 

“It’s a valid concern, Steve.” 

“Maybe,” he replies. “And maybe it’s something you could have discussed with me before unilaterally deciding to keep our relationship a secret.”

There’s a deep undercurrent of hurt in Steve’s voice, and Tony would beat himself with the Hulk’s fist if Steve would let him for putting it there. Tony wills himself to meet Steve’s gaze then—even in the semi-darkness of his bedroom, light seems to spill out of Steve. His eyes are bright and focused, tracking Tony’s face like he’s reading a tactical map. Naked, post-coital glow is a good look on Steve, as is pretty much anything, if Tony’s being honest. 

“Can you blame me?” 

“Tony,” Steve sighs again, like it pains him, and Tony winces at that tone coming out of Steve’s mouth. “I wish you loved yourself half as much as you love me.” 

Wow. “Wow,” Tony says, jerking backward like Steve just gut-punched him. Already Steve is scrambling, tangling his legs up in Tony’s expensive sheets as he sits upright. 

“That’s not—hell, Tony, you know I didn’t mean it like that.” 

“And how did you mean it, Steve?” 

“I just…you think this hasn’t crossed my mind before? Going public and losing our privacy in the process? You’re talking like you’ve already decided that the end of our relationship is inevitable because the world is going to drive us apart, and I know the reality is something else, something you feel like would be your fault, and I don’t like you thinking so little of yourself that I would let that happen.” 

Tony gapes up at Steve, floundering like a fish for words that won’t come. Steve bends over him, brushing their lips together in the gentlest caress of a kiss in order to kickstart Tony’s brain. 

“Just talk to me, Tony.” 

Tony places a hand over Steve’s heart to feel it beating. It’s comforting in a way nothing else is. His heart’s far and away Tony’s favorite thing about Steve Rogers. 

“It’s—this is my whole life, Steve,” he says. At Steve’s confused expression, he goes on: “The press. The world, thinking its owed every piece of your life story, including and especially the things you’re still trying to work through.” He thinks back to when he read an article about Sunset Bain shortly after her betrayal, an “investigative exposé” on their relationship and her seemingly-overnight rise to success. It was tabloid pablum, at best, but it still scraped at something raw and vulnerable in Tony. Or, even worse, the explosion of press following his parents’ death, the countless headlines, the day-in, day-out of it all, phone calls and bell ringers and paparazzi camped outside the tower. The cumulative effect put a stop to a healing process that had barely begun, and Tony was still dealing with the fallout of that. 

“I’m also terrified you’ll wake up one day, look out the window and see a throng of paparazzi outside waiting to grill you about the latest cheating scandal or accuse you of abusing me because someone saw bruises on me after I fought a Skrull wearing your face, and you’ll decide you don’t want to put up with any of it anymore.” Tony takes a deep breath. “But all of that? That comes with me, Steve. I wish it didn’t. You can’t know how much I wish it didn’t. But that’s the reality we live in, and I wanted—I just wanted to keep you to myself for as long as possible, before they got their hooks in you and you decided I wasn’t worth it.”

Steve looks at him for a long time and doesn’t touch. He stays in place, leaning over Tony, one hand next to Tony’s head, the other trapped underneath it, and just reads Tony like the open book he’s revealed himself to be, cowardice and all. When the silence reaches the point of suffocation, Tony lets his hand fall from Steve’s chest. 

That’s that, then. 

“I’ll let you get some sleep,” he says, moving to work his way out from under Steve when the other man stops him with a hand on his hip. Tony pauses and looks up, sees Steve staring down at him with all the love and consternation Tony’s used to seeing there in his smiling blue eyes. 

“Stay,” Steve whispers before leaning down for a kiss. Tony gives it to him. He’d give him everything if he could. He’s helpless to do anything else, not when he loves Steve Rogers this much. 

Tony finishes his meeting with the clean energy consultant—an engaging, exciting discussion about bringing arc reactor tech and associated jobs to underserved communities in the mid-west and Appalachia, for starters—just in time for a text from Rhodey: Don’t turn on the news. 

He’d just managed to scrounge up a good mood during that meeting. It would be a shame to ruin it so soon. Naturally, he does exactly what Rhodey told him not to do and turns on the TV in his office. He does it expecting reports of a stock drop, or Stark weapons being sold on the black market. He doesn’t expect to come face to face with footage of Steve laughing freely with his arm around Sam Wilson’s shoulders, Sam’s hand wrapped snug around Steve’s bony hip, the two of them walking together down 5th Avenue in the sunshine.  

The entertainment “news” “reporter” says this footage was taken minutes ago on a bystander’s cellphone. Tony sinks into a chair in front of the widescreen TV, helpless to stare as he watches the 15 second clip repeat itself over and over as the airbrushed talking heads gush and gossip about Sam and Steve, two all-American good guys making up the hottest couple since sliced bread. 

Of course Steve would end up with Sam, Tony thinks. Sam is the kind of good Tony could never hope to be—no blood on his hands, at least not like Tony has and can never wash off, no matter how many lives he saves. He’s Steve’s age, and smart, and stable, and trustworthy down to his core. He’s also hot as hell, Tony can easily admit, even if Steve burns hotter than anyone who enters his orbit. Tony once joked with Steve that Tony was the ugly one in their relationship, but Steve’s sour expression had stopped Tony from expanding on that particular line of self-deprecating humor.

And, god, when did Steve ever laugh like that with Tony? Sometimes he got close, coming up with little bon mots that made Steve throw his head back and guffaw, but that beaming smile and the way his laugh booms and echoes across bustling 5th Avenue is unlike anything Tony ever saw when he and Steve were together. 

He looks relaxed and happy in all the ways he never was with Tony. Because you never let the world see you together, a little voice reminds him. It sounds remarkably like JARVIS. Steve deserves happiness. It’s why Tony let him go. After their heavy-duty pillow talk (and another memorable round of lovemaking, with Tony taking the reins and fucking Steve on his stomach through the mattress until he was crying and begging for release), he’d asked for a little more time to work through his issues. Steve, ever the patient boyfriend, had granted it to him. Tony had offered up moving in together as a compromise, which had thrilled Steve endlessly. But when two weeks became a month, and a month became two, and Steve’s mood only soured further and further until every conversation became an argument and every argument ended in slammed doors and heavy silence, it became clear to Tony that this wasn’t an issue he was going to be able to work through in time to keep Steve, keep him happy, keep him his. 

So he let him go. And now Steve’s with Sam, who’s seized the opportunity to show Steve off to the world, and who can blame him? If Tony had been stronger, more self-assured, more defiant of the assumptions placed on him by the world around him—if he’d loved himself even half as much as he loved Steve Rogers—that would be him taking Steve shopping, making him laugh and smile as he tucked his hand around that lovely hip and held him close while the world watched on in envy. 

But he was a coward, and now he’s watching footage of Sam on a date with Steve play on a loop while vapid, boneheaded commentators speculate about their relationship. 

Tony’s phone buzzes again with another text from Rhodey. I told you not to watch. 

He tosses the phone away and buries his face in his hands with the beginnings of a sob, a sound he chokes down like the booze he kind of wishes he still drank. He’s not proud of the thought, but the misery of truly losing Steve—and any hope of fixing what he broke between them—has opened a window to everything he’d ignored while in Malibu, sunning himself and pretending he hadn’t wounded himself beyond repair. 

Tony leaves the TV on, hunches over on himself, and just as he’s about to let the tears fall, an obnoxious beeping rouses him. 

“Wha—?”

“Sir, there are reports of an attack on 5th Avenue,” JARVIS announces. Dread drops a block of ice down Tony’s throat, so cold and horrible it almost freezes him in place. What if Steve…

Tony is up and calling the suit before the thought can finish itself. It’s waiting for him in the lobby by the time he steps off the elevator, rushing to fill the vacancy as panic claws at his throat. “J, cross-streets.” 

“The Wrecking Crew are currently being engaged at the intersection of 5th and 26th.” 

Engaged is a nice euphemism for attacking, and Tony knows without having to ask JARVIS that the focus of the attack was on Steve and Sam, whose location was just broadcast to the entire world. 

He flies faster than he’s technically allowed within city limits, but the law can wait. Steve’s life can’t. Unlike the armor, Steve can’t call his uniform to himself, nor can Sam sprout wings and fly them out of there at the drop of a hat; they’re two against four heavy hitters, and as much faith as Tony has in Steve and Sam’s abilities, those are odds he’s not willing to gamble on. 

“For the last time, Tony, I’m alright.” 

“Oh yeah, Cap? Tell that to the eighteen inches of rebar SHIELD medical just had to surgically remove from your thigh.” 

Steve is struggling to sit upright in his hospital bed, one leg fixed firmly in place by a mummy’s worth of bandages. Tony keeps himself to the far wall so he can look at Steve—alive, thank Odin and Thor and any other Asgardians whose names Tony can’t remember—and not be tempted to touch him, hold him, kiss him like he wants to, has wanted to for years and has never admitted to. It’s hard to keep himself away when Steve almost just died, but he manages. He always does.

“Did everyone make it out okay?” Steve grunts. Tony knocks his head back against the wall hard enough to hurt.

“You got everyone out before you let the building fall on you, remember? Oh, of course you don’t, because a whole building fucking fell on you while you were still in it!” 

“Tony…” Steve is squinting and holds a hand up to his head. Tony didn’t even consider Steve’s concussion when he started shouting, fuck. 

“I’m sorry, Cap—fuck.” He wipes a hand down his face. “That rebar missed your femoral artery by a quarter of an inch. You’ve got a concussion and broken ribs and the only reason you’re still alive is because of the serum. Watching—ugh, I need to sit down for this.” 

Tony takes the shitty plastic chair next to Steve’s bed and sits down hard enough he wonders if it will break. He’s close enough now to see the mottled bruising that’s made an Impressionist painting out of Steve’s handsome, perfect face, but somehow the discoloration doesn’t detract from the beauty of this man. It just makes him seem more human—precious, even. Tony folds his hands in his lap and does not look at Steve’s hand hanging over the side of the bed in front of him.

He draws a deep breath and lets it out with a rush of words: “Watching you almost bleed out on the street was the most awful thing I’ve ever seen, Steve. The thought of losing you was even worse. So don’t tell me you’re alright when you’re not, because I’m definitely not alright, and I wasn’t just shish kabab’ed by a rusty piece of metal through the thigh.” 

Steve hums thoughtfully, like he always does when he’s thinking something new and meaningful for the first time. Tony looks up and catches his eye, or rather Steve catches his—like a fish on a hook. When his lips turn up in a knowing smile, Tony knows something is up.

“You called me Steve.” 

“Uh,” Tony frowns, “Yeah, ‘cause it’s your name.” 

“You must have been really scared if you’re upset enough to use my name.” 

“Don’t tease me, Cap. I don’t respond well to teasing.” 

Steve’s eyes light up with something Tony might hazard to call joy. 

“And what do you respond well to?” 

Tony looks at Steve, then at Steve’s hand, which has turned upside down, fingers hooked ever so slightly inward—an invitation if Tony’s ever seen one, and he’s seen more than his fair share. He stands up from his crap chair and steps in close enough to breathe Steve’s air and feel the warmth—the life—radiating off of him like rays off the sun. Steve looks like hell, beaten and bruised and only a couple hours removed from standing at Death’s door, and Tony has never seen anything more beautiful. Steve’s resilience is a wonder to behold, let alone draw from. It’s his…fourth favorite thing about him. 

But can it really be this easy? 

Tony opens his mouth and says it. “Positive reinforcement?” 

Steve’s answering smile cracks his lips again from where they split during the battle, but Tony is too caught up in kissing them—kissing Steve—to care. And then Steve takes his hand and holds it, and Tony vows then and there to never, ever let go. 

The HUD is a brightly colored mess of information: live police reports from the ground, vital signs of wounded civilians, schematics of every building between 28th and the Flatiron, but all Tony needs to know is where Steve is, and if he’s okay. 

Please, please be okay. 

He dials into the Avengers main comm line as he scans each building for heat signatures. “Cap, pick up.” 

“Tony!” Steve’s voice comes through loud and clear and audibly relieved, which melts some of that frozen terror still lodged in Tony’s chest. “124 5th Avenue—we managed to lure the Crew down to the basement, but—” Steve’s report cuts off with a startled, agonized cry. Tony curses and heads for the address, flying right through the front entrance (which isn’t really an entrance anymore so much as a giant hole in the wall) and dropping down through the gaping hole in the center of top floor all the way to the basement. The Wrecking Crew did some heavy damage in a short amount of time, as is their way, but Tony isn’t worried about the bill right now.

“Cap!” 

A sound like a hammer on an anvil echoes through the basement, followed shortly by another cry. Angry, this time, not at all like Steve’s. Tony floods the place with light from the armor, both arms up and ready for action, drawing the attention of the four behemoths fighting blind all the way in the back. 

“Candygram for Mongo,” Tony chirps as Thunderball takes a running start at him. He brings him down with a power-dampening electric net, which drops him like a sealed sausage onto the cold basement floor. Bulldozer is next, rushing Tony on his left flank while his hand is down. Classic mistake, thinking that just because Iron Man’s gauntlet is down he’s defenseless: Bulldozer takes a swing and clips Tony’s shoulder, which only unbalances Tony for a moment before he recovers and fires a volley of flares right into Bulldozer’s masked face. 

Bulldozer roars and backs away, tears streaming as he tries to see his way past the fiery sparks. 

“Cap, report!” 

“Over here, To—agh!” 

Fuck, no. Tony shackles Bulldozer with twin sets of reinforced power-dampening manacle and leaves him writhing on the floor in pain next to Thunderball before going off into the dark expanse of the old basement in search of Steve. Sam he finds on the way, locked in hand-to-hand combat with Wrecker—Tony pauses on his way to Steve to knock Sam’s opponent out with an iron hand to the back of the skull. 

“I had him!” Sam shouts, even as relief washes over his strained features. Iron Man shrugs, hovering a few inches above concrete. 

“You can take all the credit,” Tony says. He tells himself it doesn’t come out as bitter and envious as he feels, knowing that Sam has what Tony was fool enough to let go of, but now’s not the time for any of that. He jets off to look for Steve, Sam in hot pursuit; the basement is a labyrinth the further in they go. Old brownstones and their ridiculous planning are the bane of Tony’s existence, both as a landlord and as a superhero currently trying to find his ex-boyfriend in the maze of bricks. 

He banks hard around a corner when he hears Steve curse, gauntlets up so he can see: Piledriver at Steve’s back with an arm around his neck, and even against Steve’s considerable size the guy looms large, threatening the choke the life out of Steve with a smile on his face.

“Ah, there’s your knight in shining armor!” Piledriver cackles, squeezing his arm harder around Steve’s neck. Steve is turning purple, scratching and kicking at the body behind him to no avail. It’s hard to get a good shot in a dark, contained space like this—a bullet might ricochet and hit Steve, or Sam, and absolutely no way in hell is he firing off a bomb down here. Tony doesn’t linger on the knight in shining armor comment. He lowers his hands, repulsors whining as they power down. 

“What do you want, Piledriver?” God, seriously, the names these schmucks come up with…

“Just waiting for the cavalry to arrive!” With a bloody grin, Piledriver reveals his other hand: in it, an old Stark bomb that went off the market years ago. 

That cold block in Tony’s chest spreads to his extremities. Oh no. 

“Alright, Piledriver. You let Captain America and Falcon go, you can have me. Deal?” 

Steve struggles harder, gritting his teeth against the pressure cutting off his air supply. Piledriver holds the bomb out to his side, cackling again—that manic laugh always unsettles something in Tony. All he has to do is drop the bomb on its tail to hit the pressurized switch and in seconds, they’re all goners. The only good news is that the blast radius itself isn’t significant: if he can get Steve and Sam far enough out of the way, that should be enough to save them. 

“JARVIS,” he says, switching over to private comms, “single shot to the head should do it.”

“Sir—”

“Now, J.”

The concealed gun in Iron Man’s shoulder appears with a hiss of metal—the bullet is out in less than a second, hitting Piledriver square in the center of the head. It’s not enough to kill him, but it dazes him long enough for Steve to escape his grasp and knock him back with an elbow to the sternum. Tony rockets forward and grabs Steve, one eye still on Piledriver behind him. 

“Tony!” Steve rasps, holding onto the suit like a lifeline. 

“Falcon!” Tony shouts. Sam appears from behind the corner. “Go long, and take care of him.” 

Even in the HUD display, Steve is the most beautiful thing Tony’s ever seen.

“Tony, what—”

Without another word and with all the grace of a major league pitcher, Tony pivots and launches Steve bodily at Sam, who catches him in his arms in a full bear hug before hauling him around the corner behind the brick wall. By the time Tony turns around, Piledriver’s hand has gone slack. 

The bomb drops. In the spare second he has to react, Tony grabs Piledriver and hurls him across the room, mostly out of harm’s way, then launches himself on the bomb just as it hits the floor. 

Even as the world whites out in a deafening blast of fire and stone, Tony thinks he hears Steve screaming his name. 

I really do love him, Tony realizes, watching from his spot at the breakfast bar as Steve busies himself removing an entire cookie sheet’s worth of bacon from the oven. The oven mitts are the same shade of blue as Steve’s uniform and dotted with little shields, a novelty gift he bought Steve years ago that apparently has yet to yield the desired levels of embarrassment Tony had originally hoped for. He’s also wearing nothing but boxers and a white cotton tank, showing off the mountain range that is Steve’s shoulders to their fullest effect. 

“How many pieces do you want?” 

“How many you got?” 

Steve laughs. “Enough for you, anyways.” He’s still glowing with happiness, hair mussed, pillow lines still etched into his cheek. They took a risk last night—slept together in Tony’s big bed and woke up to the sun shining through the bedroom window and an empty mansion. Steve was so excited, he could hardly wait for Tony to get his bearings before he was slipping underneath the covers and taking Tony into his mouth. 

For once, Tony didn’t worry about how much noise he made in bed. 

Now, he gets to reap the benefits of one of his favorite aspects of Steve Rogers: his enviable cooking skills. There’s bacon and eggs and waffles and whipped cream and homemade blackberry jam and lemon butter and toast. It’s enough to feed the Avengers twice over, which means it’s just enough for Steve, and more than enough for Tony. 

They eat together side by side, playing footsie under the counter even though there’s no one here to see them, giggling like naughty schoolboys as they lick cream and jam off each other’s lips and fingers between bites of actual food. Steve still has a lot of eating to do even as Tony’s finishes, but that doesn’t mean Tony has to leave his mouth unoccupied in the meantime. 

He says as much, and Steve’s eyes darken to that perfect shade of dark blue. He spins his seat around just enough for Tony to fit between his legs and still be able to eat off his plate. Before Tony starts to kneel, Steve drags him in for a buttery lemon kiss that almost makes Tony think twice about going anywhere that isn’t Steve’s lips. He steadies himself with both hands on Steve’s massive thighs, being careful of Steve’s freshly-healed puncture wound, before using one hand to take Steve’s cock out. Steve’s had two orgasms this morning already, but he’s hard and hot and leaking like they never stopped. 

“God, I love you,” Tony gasps before licking into Steve’s mouth. He fits in Tony’s hand like he belongs there, big and hard, hot and wet. Tony works him slowly, firmly, the way he’s learned Steve likes: thumbing the frenulum in little circles until Steve is shuddering and making soft little ‘uhn-uhn-uhn’ sounds in the back of his throat, then slicking the shaft with pre-come with long passes of his palm and then taking him fully in hand to fuck him hard and fast within the tight circle of his fingers. Tony’s calluses bump over the gorgeous, pronounced vein in Steve’s dick, and Steve whimpers like he’s being driven out of his mind with pleasure every time they do, right into Tony’s waiting mouth. 

Finally, Tony starts to pull away from Steve so he can kneel and put his lips to better use, but Steve groans and wraps a hand around Tony’s wrist as he jacks him, stopping his descent by pressing a desperate kiss against Tony’s lips with a whine and gasping: “Please—stay up here. Stay with me.” 

Steve is so sweet like this, rumpled and needy and moving his hips into Tony’s touch with little hitching breaths, faster and faster as Tony speeds up his strokes. Tony says it, says I love you Steve, always loved you, always will, love you, love you, his hand a noisy blur over Steve’s big, slick cock, his own head cradled delicately in Steve’s big, soft hands as Steve kisses him and kisses him and kisses him like this is everything he’s ever wanted, ever needed, ever will. 

His thigh is shaking violently under Tony’s hand. Steve’s cock swells and he moans into Tony’s mouth, pulling his face even closer to him by the scalp. “Love—oh god, Tony, I love—I love you,” he says, voice watery, breaking as he tips over the brink headfirst into orgasm, “Don’t stop, fuck, don’t stop, don’t stop, I love you, love you, love you—” 

One day, Tony will let Steve shout it from the rooftops—when he does, he’ll be right there next to him. 

If there’s beeping, Tony thinks, he must be in Hell. That’s the only possible explanation for it. It doesn’t cross his mind that he’s in a hospital until he hears a sound like a relieved gasp somewhere out there where the world isn’t pain and nausea and everything spinning in the wrong direction. 

“Augh, fuck.” 

“Try—oh thank God, try not to move, Tony, hold on.” There’s a hand cradling the back of his head, all of a sudden, and a cold plastic cup is being pressed to his lips. Ice chips, he realizes. He remembers cold, a freezing sensation, terror, Sam, Steve—

“Steve…” 

“I’m here, sweetheart. I’m here.” Steve urges him to eat some of the ice chips with gentle nudges of the cup against his mouth. Tony obliges him, because of course he does. The water soothes his sore throat and clears the fog from his brain a little, enough to get a better sense of his surroundings. 

He’s in a SHIELD recovery room. Nothing is immobilized, which means nothing’s broken, which is a relief. He can hear and see, but his head hurts like a building fell on it. 

“That’s because it did,” Steve tells him. 

Oh. “Was I talking out loud again?” 

God, he missed Steve’s laugh, especially his Yes, I’m laughing AT you, Tony chuckle. He also missed that gentle brush of fingers against his forehead, right under his hairline, the way Steve knew exactly how to gentle Tony with his touch and voice and presence. 

“I missed you too,” Steve says. Tony blinks but still can’t really see straight. Those bricks really packed a wallop. “Rest, Tony. I’ll be here when you wake up.” 

True to his word, when Tony wakes again, Steve is there, sitting in the same crappy plastic chair Tony sat in last time and holding Tony’s hand, watching him come to like Tony is something magical to behold. 

“Hey, mister,” Steve smiles. His eyes are red but otherwise clear. “How’s your head?” 

Tony winces. “Harder than it looks.” Steve laughs, so, mission accomplished there, but he won’t let go of Tony’s hand. If anything, Steve just draws closer, brushing his thumb against the back of Tony’s hand like a metronome. 

“Doctor says you can come home in the morning,” he says in a low voice. The lights are dim, Tony notices, and the blinds are shut. There are more ice chips on the table next to the bed, which Steve hands to him without prompting.

Swallowing around the nameless knot in his throat, Tony blinks up at Steve and asks, “How’s Sam?” 

Steve smiles. “Sam’s fine. A little pissed off at you for not giving him enough of a heads up before you threw me at him like a glorified football, but he’ll live.” 

Tony’s relieved, of course he is, but the knot in his throat starts to taste sour the longer he thinks about Sam waiting up at home for Steve while Steve fusses over Tony, who only has a concussion and a broken heart to show for having a building dropped on his head. 

This time, he manages to keep all that to himself. Instead, Tony cracks a little smile and says, “Good. That’s…that’s good.” 

Steve, however, looks puzzled. “You told him to take care of me.” 

“I did? When?” Tony wheezes. He occupies himself and his mouth with ice chips and doesn’t look Steve in the eye when he answers: 

“Right before you launched me at him.” 

“Like a glorified football?” 

Funny, the room has stopped spinning, but Tony still feels off-kilter, like everything is a little unbalanced. Or maybe that’s just Steve, and the way he’s looking at Tony, hard and scrutinizing but relieved. Tony’s felt the same relief before, with Steve—the knowledge that despite a dangerously close call, the man he loves most in the world is still alive, and is here with him, despite everything. 

“Tony,” Steve says, leaning closer, squeezing Tony’s hand, “I’m not with Sam.” 

Oh. “Oh. No?”

“No, Tony. And to spare you the suspense, I think the cat’s out of the bag in terms of you and me.” 

“Uh. What?” 

That cold feeling floods him again, freezing his heart in place as Steve reaches for the TV remote. The screen flickers on, vibrant colors taking shape as a reporter recounts the events of that afternoon’s attack by the Wrecking Crew and how Iron Man saved the day. The footage captures the moment the bomb exploded, windows blowing out onto the street and the structure collapsing into a heap of rubble and brick dust; it had been fully evacuated by the time Tony showed up on the scene, apparently, and thank goodness. 

But what steals the show isn’t the bad guys being paraded out into the waiting SHIELD trucks, still immobilized by Tony’s tech—it’s Steve, carrying Iron Man out onto the street in a bridal carry while Sam waves bystanders back. Both of them are covered in dust, but Steve catches the camera’s particular attention: it zooms in on his dusty face, which is streaked with crisp lines of tears as Steve lowers Iron Man onto the pavement and rips off his faceplate. The camera is too far away and there’s too much ambient noise to hear it, but Tony can see Steve’s mouth shaping itself around Tony’s name, can see him gritting his teeth as he begs Tony to wake up and cries all the while like his world is ending. 

Paramedics rush in even as Steve bows his head to Tony’s chest, palm covering the arc reactor in a vice as they try to pull Tony away from him. They’re trying to move him away gently, but Steve is inconsolable, throwing hands and spitting mad, all but launching himself at anyone who dares put a hand on Tony. 

Unwittingly, Tony squeezes Steve’s hand, just to know he’s okay. They’re okay. 

The reporter is breathless as she gives the play-by-play of everything that happens next on screen: Tony’s helmet coming off in Steve’s hands, Steve sobbing openly over his unresponsive body, Steve leaning down and kissing him like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do, right before Sam and Thor come up behind him and pull him away so the paramedics can get to work. 

Steve turns off the TV with a sigh. “It’s been playing nonstop for almost twenty-four hours,” he says. He won’t look Tony in the eye. “I’m sorry.” 

“What—” Tony’s brain is still rebooting, recovering from the concussion and now trying to parse what he thinks his eyes just saw. “Why are you sorry?” 

Steve looks at their hands where they’re joined next to Tony’s thigh on the hospital bed. Tony can’t help but think how much better it would be if they were at home, in bed, together. 

“We broke up because you didn’t want the world to know about us,” Steve grumbles. “Now everyone definitely knows, and it took you almost dying for them to find out.” 

He sounds—god, he sounds miserable, is what he sounds like. Tony can sympathize, since he feels just as awful, and that was before he jumped on a bomb to save Steve’s life. 

The good news is, he and Sam aren’t dating. So. 

“I’m sorry, Steve.” 

“Don’t be, it’s my fault for losing my head. Heat of the moment, you know how it goes.” 

“Yeah, I do.” Tony squeezes his hand again, hard so Steve will look at him. He loves it when Steve looks at him—no one’s ever looked at Tony the way Steve does. He can’t even quantify it with words. There’s just Steve, and the way Steve looks at him, and Tony knows he’d do anything to keep Steve looking at him like that. Like Tony is everything, the way Steve is to Tony. “But I’m sorry, because I should have told the world about us ages ago.” 

Steve blinks. Even struck speechless and dumbfounded, Steve is the most gorgeous thing Tony’s ever seen. 

“What about your issues?” 

Tony husks a laugh. When the coughing subsides and the ice chips ease a path down his throat, he says, “I’ll probably always have them. The press is awful and it’ll only get worse. Just means I’ll need you to reassure me more often.”

Steve leans forward. “Reassure you of what, Tony?” he asks, like it’s important that Tony says the words outright. 

Tony lifts Steve’s hand and kisses his knuckles. He has so much making up to do, but now’s as good a time to start as any. 

“That you love me,” he says, “as much as I love you.” 

He can’t even finish grinning before Steve is on top of him, kissing every last trace of cold right out of Tony’s heart.

- - -

read it on AO3!  

[huilian]

Culaccino

AO3

Characters : Stephanie Brown, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne, cameo from Alfred

Summary: Culacciono (Italian): The mark left on a table by a moist glass

or, Steph took direct action in defusing an argument between Tim and Damian

A/N: 

hello! have some fluff that I wrote to exercise my writing muscles after months of not writing! and of course, writing Steph is always a fun thing to do!

“Give me that!” 

“No way in hell, Demonspawn! Get your own glass!” 

Steph, who had been watching Tim and Damian argue about a glass of juice for literally five minutes, sighed. It was great that Damian was no longer challenging Tim to a death match every other day, but if the price for that was to watch them argue about the most inane things every single day, then Steph would choose the deathmatches. At least then Dick would actually come over to help. Petty arguments, like this very one, Dick left to her, citing her ‘big sister’ relationship to Damian and her actual relationship to Tim. Damian didn’t even want the juice until Tim got a glass. They were vigilantes, for God’s sake. They were supposed to be better than this! Sure, they could work together just fine on the streets, but once inside the safety of the Manor they just would not stop arguing. 

Five minutes. Over a glass of juice. They were literally billionaires, they could afford thousands of juice boxes and thousands of glasses to put it in and still have literally billions to spare. What’s worse was that Steph knew, from experience, that if left to their own devices, Tim and Damian could and would continue this argument until patrol time. Then, being the professionals that they were, they would suspend (suspend, not stop) their argument until everyone was back safely. It sounded like it was a courtesy they gave for the other members of their family risking their lives every single night to fight crime, but it is really not. It was simply just so everyone would be treated to a front-row seat of the current TimAndDamian™ argument. 

Steph closed her eyes and tried to imagine the myriad of jerks she would punch in the face tonight to deal with the ever grating sound of the argument. It didn’t work. She even imagined their look of pure shock and the satisfaction that comes from knowing she (she! Stephanie Brown!) put that look there. 

Steph stood up and looked at the clock. Seven minutes of constant argument, now. Why she thought being a part of this family would be a good idea she would never know. 

(Why they act like this with each other, Steph would never know. They didn’t do this to any other person! Tim did not start an argument just for the sake of starting an argument with anyone else. Damian could be persuaded to see reason with practically every other person. It’s simply the other that they couldn’t stand. And that forces Steph to have to watch this kind of argument every single day, since she actually wanted to spend time with the two of them.)

The solution to a TimAndDamian™ argument, then, is to remove the object of the argument. Of course, doing so would then incite their wrath to her, but Steph would take that rather than having to sit through another minute of their pointless conversation. She calmly walked towards the glass of juice. Tim and Damian were both so engrossed in their argument that they did not see her coming. 

Steph grabbed the glass of juice, and waited. If Tim or Damian were alone, they would definitely already noticed her by now. But they were together, and in their case, that is sometimes worse than being alone. After a couple seconds with still no reaction from either of them, Steph drank the juice. 

It was heavenly. Bruce, being Bruce, bought the very best of everything, even for something as mundane as a bottle of juice. Or rather, Alfred bought it, using Bruce’s money, but hey, the principle of it remains. The juice was sweet but not sickening. The orange taste was present in every single drop of that juice, very much unlike the cheap-ass juice Steph would usually buy. It was thick enough to be satisfying, yet thin enough to go down her throat easily. The coldness of the juice soothed her parching throat and did wonders for the headache she had acquired after listening to a patented TimAndDamian™ argument. 

Of course, since both Tim and Damian were still vigilantes (and some of the best ones), they eventually noticed that Steph was drinking the juice they had so viciously fought for. However, it was too late. Steph had drunk every last drop of that juice, leaving only the glass and the imprint of the condensation on the table. Alfred would scold her for that, since Alfred is a prude like that. (Steph loved Alfred, she really do, but he is such a butler.) Or, Alfred would scold the boys for that, because Steph was sure as hell not taking the fall for this one. 

Steph knew hell would come from both of them. Tim and Damian are only ever fighting against each other until they have a common enemy to fight against together. Judging from their glares, she would become that common enemy in three, two,...

“What have you done, Brown?” Ah, there it was. The lovely Damian Wayne™ threats. He always looked so cute when delivering that. The only thing preventing Steph from cooing was the knowledge that Damian could and would follow through on any threats he would make. 

“Steph!” If Damian went to menacing immediately, Tim went to indignant. Like he could not believe that Steph would do such a thing against him. Seriously, did that boy never learn? Steph had been messing with Tim for years and Tim still pulls this exact same unbelieving face every time. Though, Steph guessed that this time it hurt extra bad, since Steph is not defending him against his sworn nemesis, Damian.

Steph pulled out her very best nonchalant smile. “See you later, boys!” She put down the glass, deliberately just shy of where it was before. It made another mark on the table. Oh, Alfred was going to be pissed. 

Steph calmly walked out of the kitchen. The boys must have been so shocked by her audacity that neither of them said a word. They just gawked at her as she left the room. 

Steph timed it perfectly so that when she left the kitchen, Alfred was coming into it. She knew he was coming, after all. Tim and Damian would too, if they pulled their heads out of their asses for a while to listen.

“Master Tim! Master Damian! What have you done to the table?” Steph walked on. Yeah, she was not going to take the fall for this one. The boys deserved Alfred’s wrath, if only because they were so lost in their own argument that they couldn’t hear him coming. Besides, Alfred’s scolding would give her time to disappear so that she would not become the new target of their wrath. Now, where would the best place be in this humongous manor to avoid two vigilantes for a few hours? 

[burlybanner]

Merge (ScienceBrosWeek2019)

Summary: Some secrets are better left unsaid - and some are better cracked wide open Disclaimer: This is different from my usual style and I’m not sure where this story is going. So I’m not sure when I’ll continue. But keep me honest; it’ll happen eventually.

Disclaimer deux: I struggled with getting chapter the way I wanted, and the theme fought me tooth and nail. But it is what it is, and I don’t want to get too far behind. So - read at your own risk!

Unbeta’d.

Reference: Dust(1), Drip(2), Bitter(3)

**

Bruce woke, remembering precisely why he didn’t like drinking with Tony. He vowed this time (why was there always a “this time”) to leave the whisky on its designated shelf where it belonged. He squinted and rubbed his thumb and forefinger beneath his eyes, still feeling the heaviness of his mind and limbs with Tony’s body draped around him.

“You awake?”

Bruce grunted. “Yeah. I guess.”

“What do you want?”

“Aspirin, coffee, and donuts.” Not that he expected the donuts. But still. He’d seen them yesterday and couldn’t get them out of his mind. 

“Side table. Check the drawers.” Tony yawned and rolled off of Bruce like a cat. Bruce glanced over, watching Tony tap his wrist twice, then his jaw. “Hey. Who’s on the donut run today?” Pause.  “Really?” Another pause. Two gestures on his wrist. “Can you grab a dozen sorted for me and bring ‘em down?” Pause. “But if you don’t w--” Long, long pause. “Okay, okay. See you.”

Jaw tap.

Bruce stared at him, hand hovering between the table and the bed. “What was that?”

Tony smirked, tapped his wrist and middle knuckle. “SIberNet. Spelled SI, for Stark Industries. The evolution of telecom patented by yours truly.”

He continued staring. “You fucking scare me.”

“I’ve always scared you. But then, we have a mutual scare pact.”

Bruce pursed his lips and conceded Tony’s point. He found Ibuprofen and bottled water in the side table, then palmed two tablets and scowled at Tony before quaffing half the water. “I bet they’re all connected to SINet, or whatever you’re calling it.”

“SIberNet. Everyone’s connected, but not everyone has access to all functions. Just the higher ups.”

Bruce finished his water and shook his head. “But of course you have access to everything.”

“More or less.”

“Emphasis on the more?”

Tony smiled.

Bruce sighed heavily and felt a stronger ache in his bones. “I’m gonna go take a piss,” he muttered. His head hurt, partly from the hangover. “Grab some coffee. Maybe take a shower.”

“Make it fast, donuts’ll be here in less than ten.”

To his credit he barely tripped from the bed. Even now, in the light of day (was there sun? How did they survive without the sun) the puzzle seemed unsolvable. Too many pieces were missing and until he felt warm, clean, and headache-free Bruce didn’t expect many answers from Tony, or his own sluggish psyche.

But donuts would definitely help.

Tony gestured to Bruce’s clothes. “Wanna put something on?”

“What for?” Was his body that repulsive, that Tony couldn’t bear the sight of him sober--? “You’ve seen me naked. I’ll grab a towel after I shower.”

Tony’s face softened, revealing too much vulnerability. But Bruce’s hangover was having nothing to do with introspection. Not this early in the day. 

“Birthday suit yourself, Brucie.”

Bruce rolled his eyes and shuffled from the room.

His mind calmed after leaving Tony’s bedroom. It wasn’t horrible sleeping with him but Bruce wanted more, so it heightened his anxiety. Luckily he didn’t need to feel anything in the front room and his mind could blunt its sharp edges. 

Bruce shuffled to Tony’s window and its great view; also luckily, Tony hadn’t bothered shutting the curtain the night before. He felt like Alice in Wonderland - like he was still dreaming. But Bruce’s mind was not savvy enough to conjure waterfalls, slick mossy crags, and winding jungle vines. His mind wasn’t nearly quiet enough to recreate this joy. 

Bruce placed a hand on the glass and briefly shut his eyes. The hum of the cave filled him but so did the urgent need to piss. His physical body forced him to leave Eden behind, to relieve himself. 

While pissing his mind roved over Tony’s opulent bathroom, top of the line of course. He glared at Tony’s walk-in shower with the perfect, pristine jets and high level stonework. He knew he said he’d shower but he needed to ground himself more, and...no. Peace first. The shower simply reminded him of the future and he needed more of now’s peace.

He left the bathroom with the sole intent of making coffee and staring into perfection. Tony would either join him, or wait, it wouldn’t matter. He just...needed this. Right now.

“Tell me when, I’ll show you around.”

Bruce squawked, visibly jumping after hearing a not-Tony voice in the corner. How long had he been there, sitting, not staring at Bruce at all? Quiet, proud, and waiting. Calmly staring into the abyss. Lost in his own mind’s prison.

“Hey, Bruce.”

“Jesus - you motherfucker - you...” Bruce closed his eyes, put a shaky hand to his chest. “You know better than that. You know.”

“Yeah, well. Guess I figured you’d notice.” James Rhodes chuckled, folded his hands over the handle of his cane. Bruce’s eyes drew to the ornate pattern of the platinum handle, a twisty network of vines and fauna drawn down into an obsidian shaft. He thought if Rhodes were a Disney villain, that this would be the cane for him. But he shot the image from his mind. No Disney villain would be as classy.

“Maybe I would’ve, if I weren’t so hungover.” A chill reminded him of how very under-dressed he was, and he finally understood Tony’s vague question, regarding his clothes. 

He hated how nervous he felt.

“It’s been a while, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Rhodey used his cane to push up from his chair, slowly limping his way to join him. Bruce frowned, eyes instinctively shifting to the rhythm of Rhodey’s shuffle. Rhodey’d either just finished his morning exercises or his other leg had been overcompensating, due to the prosthetic. Bruce wondered, absently, when the last time Rhodey had seen an orthopedist. 

“Kinda makes sense Tony has the best view.”

Bruce took a second to drink Rhodey in before sharing the pristine outskirts with him. A dark chuckle died in Bruce’s throat. “It wouldn’t be Tony otherwise.”

“Heh. True.”

His fingers slowly stroked the glass but he didn’t have the strength to stare at Rhodey directly. Instead Bruce watched the other man’s reflection, as Rhodey’s reflection watched him. “I’m sorry,” Bruce said, unable to find anything better to say.

Rhodey nodded. He shifted his stance as his left hand massaged his cane’s handle. “Nothing to be sorry about, really. It happened. We happened. Other things happened to us. It’s life, man.”

“Still.” Softly, tentatively. He reached out and gently placed his hand on Rhodey’s. Bruce felt tendons jump, then relax. The ground they shared was uneven at best but not broken; Bruce felt some relief in that. 

“It wasn’t fair. I...I ignored you. Didn’t know how to talk to you. Twenty years of friendship, and I--”

“Thirty.”

“Pardon?”

Rhodey’s expression turned wistful and he stared at the carpet. “You...always forget to include your fugitive years, Bruce. You’ve known me and Tones for over thirty, not twenty. But I get it. Happens to POWs a lot.”

Bruce’s face fell and he blinked once, twice, rapidly. He felt his mind shift but he forced his expression to remain neutral. “Oh. You’re right. Of course.”

Then Rhodey reached for him, and Bruce couldn’t tell if it were from pity or love but both equally soured his stomach. “You wanna sit?”

“Sure.”

Bruce sat at the place he’d been the night before, feeling painfully naked and cold. 

“Here.” A cup of coffee was pressed into his hands and an apple fritter suddenly appeared within easy reach. 

“Thanks.” Bruce took a sip of the coffee and a large bite of the donut. A small smile curled his lips. “You remembered.”

“How could I forget? Six sugars, a tablespoon of cream, and a bunch of donuts. Every Saturday for years. It was your go-to breakfast.”

“Go-to hangover breakfast.”

Rhodey snorted. “Well. We didn’t do Friday nights halfway.”

“No,” Bruce sighed. He slouched deeper in the chair, letting his toes curl into the carpet. “We didn’t.” The silence lingered but Bruce didn’t feel pressured to fill it. Rhodey grabbed his own cup of coffee and filled their silent space with little posh sips, while they enjoyed watching the cave’s waterfall. 

“Did Tony tell you about the clouds?”

“What? Out there?” Rhodey nodded. “You’re joking.”

“Nah, I’m serious.” Rhodey smiled and drained his coffee cup. “More like condensation, though. The atmosphere builds up and makes its own clouds. Gets so humid, it feels like a misty rain. Pretty incredible.”

Bruce shook his head, enjoying their easy conversation. He didn’t...he honestly didn’t believe they could return to this. They’d barely spoken for five years. Really ten, since when he got back he’d been too mentally unstable and...well. 

Things.

“I tried.”

Bruce finished his fritter and found the donut box. He poked his finger around the stacks until he found a jelly filled one. “Tried what?”

“Finding you.”

He’d just bit into the thing when Rhodey dropped him into the painful present. The jelly soured in his mouth but he finished chewing it. Swallowing felt like swallowing marbles of sand. “It...ah. You couldn’t. It wasn’t. It--” Bruce tried again. “There weren’t any drones, like we have now. Facial recognition software was shit back then. And I was really good at hiding.”

“But I found Tony. I should’ve found you. I’m...sorry I couldn’t.”

Bruce shook his head like an animal shaking off a collar. “No, don’t. It’s not--”

“No. Remember it wasn’t just you and Tony, and me and Tony. It was me and you, too.”

He couldn’t say anything to counter because it’d just make it worse. Sadness threatened to overwhelm Bruce but he hid it by taking another bite of donut. He had to spin it, though.  “Can’t really change the past,” he said, mouth full of jelly. “We both got hit hard, y’know? It changed all of us. Everything did. We changed.”

Rhodey nodded. “We did. If we hadn’t, you would’ve known about this place when I did. You would’ve been a part of it.”

Sighing heavily, he ran a hand over his rough skin. He needed a shave, badly. “I don’t know, Rhodey. I don’t...this is too much. All of it. I don’t know what it is, but now I’m culpable. What--what’s the end goal really? What’s the purpose? What’s my purpose?”

“Well,” Rhodey sighed. He cocked his head, peering at Bruce. “It’s always been the three of us, you know that. If one of us doesn’t make it, it doesn’t work. It would’ve never worked without you. Tony’s mind would’ve been worried. I would’ve worried. We had to have a consensus.”

“Merging of the minds?”

Rhodey shrugged. “If it makes you feel better.”

“I haven’t said yes.”

“Haven’t said no either.”

Bruce finished his donut, allowing it to settle the fear building in his stomach. “But if I do? If I walk away?”

“Nothing will happen. But I imagine we’d get shut down in a few years or we’d move up our time table. Either scenario’d probably hurt us.”

“I...shit. Rhodey, I need to know. I can’t make any decisions without knowing the big picture.”

“You willing to hear it all out, Bruce? From start to finish, without bolting?”

“What choice do I have?”

“Fair.”

“I mean...” Bruce grabbed another donut. A cruller. “Tony wouldn’t’ve dragged me out here on the guise of a two week business trip without good reason. I’d like to hear out this fucking grand plan. Besides I’m guessin’ it’s already in place. It’s just...hovering. Waiting on me to--what? Agree?”

“Probably.”

“And that’s what I’m afraid of.” He peered at Rhodey and swallowed uncomfortably. “So level with me, then. Are...are we the heroes? Or...the villains?”

Rhodey shrugged. “To be determined, I guess. You know as well as I that history’s written by the survivors.”

“ ‘You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.’ “

But Rhodey didn’t respond and Bruce followed his gaze back to the cave. They’d lobbed that phrase at each other for years, laughed at it, used it as a barb whenever one of them messed up in a major way. But it never seemed more apt, than now.

Bruce sighed. “I’m going to take that shower now.”

“Mm.”

The rest of the day would probably break him, but he was used to being broken.

[imagineclaireandjamie]

I know you might be uncomfortable about this but I’m going thro something. Could you write a fanfic about how Jamie would react if Claire were anorexic

The Meeting - Part 2

The moon was bright in the sky as they walked,their hands swaying against one another, Jamie slightly ahead of Claire as heled them forwards. Ice glistened on the path, the sparkle of the frozen waterilluminating the path as the crunch of it echoed beneath their feet. There wasa sort of delicate beauty floating around them, the winter mist encasing thepassers by, causing them to disappear before her eyes as she glanced downwards.

 Her flesh was almost blue in the evening light-as was his- the glow of it giving them an also translucent quality that caughther eye and held her hostage for a while.

 “Can I say something wi’out freaking ye out,Claire?” Jamie asked after a while when all other passers by had seeminglyvanished, the urban clearing and making way for the rural.

 “Yes, sure.” She replied, not really knowingwhether she was being honest or not.

 “When my da met my mam he kent her in aninstant. She was engaged to someone else and within the month had broken it offand eloped with my father. They were marrit not long after, had bought a houseand had my eldest brother on the way. It was madness, really, but he alwaystold me Fraser’s had strong bonds when it came to love. I didna believe him,especially no’ wi’ what happened and then dealing with the aftermath. But whenye walked into that hall tonight, Claire, it was as if the sun came out -- andI understood it then.”

 He took a breath, a long cathartic gasp of airthat filled his lungs with fresh oxygen and gave Claire a moment to digest whathe’d said.

 “Do ye think I’m mad?” He sighed, the gust ofair catching on the breeze, the cold air swirling it around his head as heturned to look over at her in the blackness.

 “No.” She returned, her voice barely a whisper.“No, I don’t. I believe you. I don’t...understand it right now, but I felt ittoo. Maybe we’re both mad?” Laughing she let her little finger graze his andbasked in the tingle that emanated across her flesh at the contact.

 “I lost control of my life the moment Frank leftme. I had a plan, everything was as it should be and then he took that andsquashed it. I didn’t even realise what I was doing with food until Joe foundme unconscious in the break room at work. It was all just a blur. But it wascontrol. I needed to feel as if everything was on course again so I amended mydiet to such an extreme that I felt powerful. Stupid, really, when I say it outloud.”

 “Nay, not at all…” Jamie interjected, goosebumpsrising along the expanse of his neck, “I get ye. For me it was exercise. ForJohn too, that’s how we met. He saw in me what he’d finally been made to see inhimself and he helped me break the cycle.”

 “PTSD then, the same as him - from your tour?”The words were barely audible on the night air but he heard her loud and clear.

 “Ach, no.”

 For a moment she thought he wasn’t going toelaborate. The tightness was there again - his shoulders just rigid enough thatshe thought he might just gloss over it as he had done in the bar and changethe course of their conversation. Not that she minded, when and if he decidedto tell her, it would be in his own time and not just because she’d asked him.But then he swallowed and she knew he was trying to form the words in order toanswer her unspoken question.

 “Even my sister doesn’t know.” He said finally,his nose pinked from the frigid air. “And she kens everything about me.”

 “Does she know--”

 “About my anorexia?” Interrupting her, hechuckled humorlessly beneath his breath before he continued. “Oh aye, everyonekens about that but they all think what ye thought --because at the time Ididna have the strength to tell them the real reason. Only the doctors whotreated me and John know the full extent of the trauma.” He spoke, barelypausing for breath, as he shook his head to clear the myriad of dark imagesthat were suddenly snaking around him.

 “Whatever it is, Jamie, you do have strength. Ican see it. I can sense the force of it flowing beneath your skin. The secondyou sat opposite me in that bar I felt it and it calmed me.”

 “Do ye ever feel like yer about to blurt somethingout? Something that perhaps needs to be said when two people have kent oneanother for longer than a few minutes?”

 Letting the wind settle around them, Jamieshowed Claire to a bench. They’d walked the length of the city and ended up ona hill with Kelvingrove in front of them and the university behind. The citywas awash with colour, glittering lights flickering in the distance as the citybegan to sleep around them.

 “It wasn’t just Frank leaving me.” Claire began,allowing the call of midnight to wash away the filth of the previous day. “Wefought a lot in later days. He wanted kids and it wasn’t happening for us. Oneday it got heated. I thought something was amiss but when I accused him ofcheating on me with work something changed in him. I watched as something cameover him, a veil of sorts, his eyes just glazed over...and then he hit me. Butit wasn’t one of those ‘in the heat of passion’ slaps you see in the tele - notthat it’s alright to hit at all.”

 Pausing for breath, she wiped the tears from hereyes, her belly aching with the memory of the moment his fist had come intocontact with her. “He sucker punched me in the stomach. Hard. I replay thatmoment over and over in my nightmares, I watch myself as I crumple to theground gasping for breath and failing miserably.”

 Sensing she wasn’t finished, Jamie sat quietly,his arm resting gently against hers.

 “It’s a cataclysmic event, isn’t it? Thetrigger. It isn’t the event or moment itself, but thefestering...thing...that’s been boiling and bubbling, waiting for something topush you over the edge and when it finds the right trauma to sink its teethinto - that’s it. You’re done for.”

 Shrugging her shoulders, she inhaled through hernose and exhaled through her mouth, watching the condensation evaporate infront of her. “I’ve never told anyone that.”

 “That he hit ye?”

 “Yes. I was ashamed. I’m a surgeon, a good one.Him leaving me was enough of a social stigma without adding that into the mixso I said nothing and buried myself in work.”

 In an instant Claire had removed the pressurefrom the situation. With her confession, she’d made herself vulnerable - shehad given him something of herself that she’d not given to anyone else.Stripping herself bare, she’d relieved the strain and suddenly Jamie didn’tfeel so exposed.

 “I was raped, Claire.” He said plainly.

 It felt cathartic. The words leaving his mouthwithout further provocation, washing away some of the residual feelings ofpowerlessness and disgust. In an instant he felt a little less contaminated,his muscles less sore from the continued pressure of carrying around the weightof his ordeal

 “Like ye I felt ashamed. Weak. I was numb forthe longest time. I’m good at hiding, Claire, so I managed. I worked. I spentall of my free hours in the gym, lifting weights and running until I couldnastand wi’out assistance. I’d moved to Glasgow before the attack so I juststayed here. I didna dare go home for fear my parents would see the truthwritten all over my face. My mam just kens me too well.”

 Claire let him talk, letting him offload-anything he needed- her knee knocking softly against his as their fingersunconsciously linked. Her heart was beating double its normal speed and herstomach twisted, it’s usual knot becoming tighter as Jamie began to jiggle hisleg, the heel of his shoe tapping against the concrete.

 Licking her dry lips, she waited for him torelax a little before slowly untangling her hand from his and wrapping her armaround his waist.

 “Have you ever read the poem ‘Courage’ byAnne Sexton?” She whispered.

 Jamie shook his head, having no capacity to formthe words any longer he simply leaned his head to the right until he restedneatly against Claire.

 ��You should. One day, when you’re alone, and youfeel so utterly lost that you feel you might finally be consumed by thedarkness - just read it. I promise you it’ll resonate.”

 “Can ye remember any of it?”

 “Yes,” she replied, “some. Why?”

 “Tell me, recite to me what you remember.”

 “Erm,” she began, shifting so that he couldmimic her actions and place his own arm around her waist, “let me see…you didnot fondle the weakness inside of you, although -or just though, I don’t quiterecall- it was there. Your courage was a small coal that you kept swallowing.”

 “There’s more?” He asked, lulled by her softvoice. There was something magical about her, somehow she seemed to steal thefestering putrescence that ran through his veins.

 “Yes, the bit directly after that I don’t reallyremember, but I think it continues like this; later, if you have endured greatdespair, then you did it alone, getting transfusion from the fire, picking thescabs off our heart, then wringing it out like a sock... I think.” Though sheknew it did, she’d read it over and over, sometimes aloud, so the words mightstick to her skin and mend the cracks that’d begun to appear over every inch ofher frail flesh.

 “I feel as if I’ve kent ye for longer than thisevening, Claire.” Jamie whispered, turning his head so that he could bury hisnose in her tames curls. “Like we’ve lived a hundred lives together and this isjust another manifestation of us. Beaten, broken and scarred - but stillsomehow alive.”

 “And yet we haven’t even had a first date.” Shejested, though she felt the truth of his words, her heart reaching out to his.

[chemicalmagecraft]

The Gamer Hero, Deku Chapter 6

A/N: Sorry for the wall of text. I just wanted to get what Izuku's passives dealt with so everyone knows.

To Silverspirit: Thanks! I really do appreciate constructive criticism like this! Hopefully I'll be able to mellow out a little more with the skills now (though I feel like Midoriya should probably spend some skill fragments soon if I think of anything to spend it on). Something I'd like to note, though, is that the reason that Bakugou is so much more mellowed out is a combination of the fact that he has no reason to be angry with Midoriya and the fact that he's had ten months of offscreen character development.

To Shadow S. Korosu: Yep, you're totally right. Bakugou shouldn't and isn't going to have the same level of magical ability as Midoriya. Yes, he is going to learn some magical skill, but he explicitly can't develop as fast as Midoriya. As in the original manga, The Gamer is stupid broken and lets its user do stupid broken things. The reason why it seemed that Bakugou was so good in that battle is because he has a fire affinity five times higher than Midoriya's air affinity, so he explicitly has the advantage when it comes to his fire spells. Still though, he can't do something stupid like gain a new elemental affinity in the middle of a fight because the one he's using isn't working. That being said, it'll be a lot easier to become powerful with magic in this fic than it will be in The Gamer because I really like it when people are super powerful in whatever media and reality can be whatever I want it to be now.

Edit: Chopped up some of the longer paragraphs because what the heck was I thinking with that?

xoxoxo

A few days after Kacchan revealed he could use magic, All Might got back to us about... whatever he had to do about the fact that we'd discovered that magic existed. Apparently, he'd had to contact some government higher-ups, though he didn't go into too much detail about it. "If anyone's discovered magic before you two, whoever did it kept it a secret," he told us. "The official ruling is that 'magic' and 'Quirk usage' are legally synonymous for the purposes of public Quirk usage laws. Additionally, you two are totally allowed to teach other people magic, but the suggestion is to only allow people who can be trusted with that power to learn about it, for obvious reasons. I've been asked to tell you that they need some notes from the both of you about the details regarding magic, like how to use it. Some scientists are going to do some serious research on the subject."

We agreed to do what he asked. Aside from that, we went on as normal, training for Yuuei. Kacchan decided to focus more on practicing his magic, with some physical workouts. I mostly did conditioning for One For All while training what magic I could at night and occasionally during the day, plus constantly having Halitus out to level grind Summon Basic Elemental without having to put in any actual effort. Aside from that, I decided that, while I would only have as many elementals as my skill's level would allow me to have out at a time, I should at least have the affinities for the other two elements just in case. Getting water had been as simple as just sticking my hands in the ocean until I got it, but I couldn't figure out how to safely get fire affinity (Kacchan smacked me on the head when I suggested just layering up buffs and then sticking my hand into a fire while using Healing Hands) until Kacchan had the bright idea to have me see if I could use Pyra instead of fire. Despite the fact that Pyra was made of fire in her fully summoned state, she would only burn things if she wanted to and was just warm to the touch when she didn't. I felt a little weird placing my palm on her forehead, but it did get me fire affinity. I found that Fire Aura gave me a 30% boost to attack damage, a 15% boost to movement speed, a 10% STR bonus, and the ability to generate heat. Water Aura, interestingly enough, gave me a 30% increase to magical defense, a 15% increase to magical attack, a 10% INT bonus, and the ability to both condense water from the atmosphere and generate it with MP. Their respective elemental weaponry skills gave similar bonuses. While I did occasionally use Elemental Aura in my physical training to see how they affected my abilities, I mostly just used my natural strength in the hope that that'd be the best for upping my VIT. It took most of the ten months before the entrance exams, but eventually...

Through rigorous exercise, your VIT has increased by one!

Congratulations! The quest Roaring Muscles was completed!

Completion Rewards: One For All (speak to Toshinori), 5000 EXP, 5000 Skill Fragments, Increased closeness with Bakugou, Increased closeness with Toshinori

Your level has increased by one! (x3)

I got my VIT up to 50. I looked at my stats.

STR: 44

VIT: 50

DEX: 46

INT: 73

WIS: 69

LUC: 49

I grinned. Most of my stats were either already past the fifty benchmark already or close enough that I could hopefully get them up to it within the next two months. But first, I had to do something. "All Might!" I called out.

"What is it, young Midoriya?" he asked, currently in his civilian form.

"I got my VIT to fifty!"

He switched to his hero form, then gave his trademark grin. "That's great, young Midoriya! Now I can pass my power on to you!"

"About that," I said. "How do you pass your power on to someone?"

"You see," he pulled off a piece of his hair and said, "for you to receive my power, you have to eat my hair."

"What the fuck!?" Kacchan asked as he walked over from the inferno that he'd made, with the fire dying down as soon as he left it. "Why the hell does Deku have to eat your fucking hair?"

"I can pass my Quirk on to someone through making them eat my DNA. I feel that the best thing to use for that is my hair."

I gulped, then took the hair that he offered me. "Down the hatch..." I muttered, then placed the hair in my mouth. It was hard to swallow, so I used the first step of a water spell that I'd made, Water Gun, to condense some water from the air to wash it down. I shuddered when I'd finished the water and, thankfully, the hair. "That was a little unpleasant..."

"I still remember how weird it was when I had to do it," All Might commiserated. "Now we just have to wait a few hours for your new Quirk to come, young Midoriya."

"Why the fuck doesn't it come automatically?" Kacchan asked.

"Does it have to digest first?" I theorized. "And maybe the Quirk factor has to take time to grow in even after it-" I was cut off my a ping.

A skill has been created by gaining the power of All Might! By having All Might pass his Quirk to you, the skill 'One For All' has been created.

One For All (Active and Passive) LV1 EXP 0.00%

When Quirks first started to come into existence, there was chaos. In that chaos, one man born with the power to take the Quirks of others and give them to others or use them for himself took advantage of the situation to amass power. This man had a brother, who was born with the rather underwhelming ability to pass his Quirk, the ability to pass his Quirk on to another, on to another. While it is unknown whether it was out of malice or compassion, the man forced the Quirk Power Stockpile onto his brother, and from the combination of the two Quirks, the Quirk known as One For All was born.

Skill grants the user a second MP bar. When skill is not in use, this second MP bar fills over time when the first MP bar is filled, using the same MP regeneration rate. This second MP bar has no upper limit.

When activated, user can draw upon the second MP bar in place of the natural one.

User can expend MP to increase the power of most stats and skills.

"Wah!" I exclaimed.

"What is it, young Midoriya?" All Might asked me.

"I just got One For All. I think that my Quirk sped up the process of me getting One For All, which actually makes sense when you think about it. In most games, whatever effect food and other edible things have is applied immediately, despite how it would logically require time to digest. I guess that that also means that I can use food to... Wait, that's not everything." I looked once more at the description. It was weird. The skill felt a little more complicated than what it said. Aside from that... "The description of the skill states that it was made by someone with a Quirk that can steal other people's Quirks and give them to others. Do you... know anything about that?" I asked.

All Might sighed. "Sit down, the both of you. This will be a shock." Kacchan and I sat down on the sand as All Might sat on his chair. "That man was called All For One. He was probably the most dangerous villain in the history of the world. He gained many followers in the early years of Quirks thanks to his abilities. Thankfully, his own brother, the first bearer of One For All, disagreed with him and stopped him. Unfortunately, however, All For One survived and, I'm assuming, took some form of life-extending Quirk. I know this because he was the reason why I got this wound five years ago. I'd like to say that he's dead, but we never found the body, so we can't say for sure."

I... didn't say anything. I couldn't say anything. Even with the Gamer's Mind, it was a lot to take in. I think that if I could have said anything, it would have been exactly what Kacchan was saying. "Fuuuuuuuuuck. That's... fuck."

"I understand if you have reservations," All Might said. "I hoped that this wouldn't come up just yet. I wanted you to have a school experience unmarred by worry about All For One."

Kacchan scoffed. "Well maybe you still should've fucking said something about that shit before Deku ate your gross fucking hair, dumbass."

"It's fine, Kacchan," I said. "I was already prepared to be a hero, so learning that I already have an arch-nemesis isn't that bad. I'm still going to need some time to process this, but for now..." I got up and walked over to an area where there was only a stretch of sand so as to avoid collateral damage. "I've always wanted to do this." I cocked my arm back. "DETROIT!" Energy flowed through my whole arm, and for some reason I got a Sense Danger warning. That really should've been a red flag, in hindsight. "SMASH!" I punched the air, the simple force of it causing a shockwave that sent sand flying. It wasn't as strong as All Might's, but it was still a Detroit Smash! My excitement was almost immediately destroyed by the fact that my arm felt like I'd punched the sound barrier, which I had.

System Warning: Using One For All at full power is inadvisable in current condition. Usage should be limited to lower power. Level up skill to decrease damage taken.

The level of the skill Physical Endurance has increased by one!

I looked at my health, then winced and activated Healing Hands and Regeneration. "I think that my body still isn't completely up to the task of using One For All yet," I said. "My health dropped about a quarter from that one punch. I think that I should probably train my physical stats a bit more in the next two months as well as One For All practice. That might be for the best."

"Deku you better not fucking break yourself in half," Kacchan scolded.

"Yes, I would prefer that you not kill yourself, young Midoriya. That would be bad," All Might agreed. "If that's the case, then you should get back to work.

xoxoxo

I stared at the school. It was huge! I got the vaguest feeling that, if not for Gamer's Mind, I would have been shaking. "We're here..." I said.

"Yup," Kacchan said to with a toothy grin. "It'd suck pretty hard if you fucked up now and got no points at all, huh?" I looked at him. Sometime during the last two months of training, his title had changed in addition to the levels and points of INT and WIS he'd gained.

Art is an Explosion

LV 27

Katsuki Bakugou

"I doubt I'll get zero points, Kacchan," I said. "My stats are all above fifty, and INT and WIS are both approaching one hundred. I'm probably the most powerful person taking the exams, and that's not even counting One For All." It had taken a tremendous amount of effort, but I felt great about myself for managing to get all of the fifty point skills before the Yuuei entrance exam.

The skill 'Heroic Strength' has been created through STR rising above 50.

Heroic Strength (Passive) LV2 EXP 2.14%

Some are endowed with the strength to move mountains. This skill grants enhanced physical ability.

10% increase to STR.

10% increase to physical attack.

50% increase to strength-based skill effects.

The skill 'Iron Body' has been created through VIT rising above 50.

Iron Body (Passive) LV5 EXP 7.21%

Some are bestowed with the vitality to endure any punishment. This skill grants enhanced physical durability.

10% increase to VIT.

10% increase to HP.

50% increase to HP-based skill effects.

The skill 'Fleet Foot' has been created through DEX rising above 50.

Fleet Foot (Passive) LV 3 EXP 3.21%

Some are bestowed with the speed to rival the wind. This skill grants enhanced swiftness.

10% increase to DEX.

10% increase to movement speed.

50% increase to DEX-based skill effects.

The skill 'Born Lucky' has been created through LUC rising above 50.

Born Lucky (Passive) LV1 EXP 87.56%

Luck can be a very fickle thing. This skill is bestowed upon those who luck favors.

10% increase to LUC

10% increase to loot drops.

50% increase to LUC-based skill effects.

Kacchan scoffed. "Like I'll let you just take that title without a fight," he said, lightly punching me on the shoulder.

"It's a contest, then!" I smiled. "Let's see who gets the most points!" "I feel really good about this!" I mentally exclaimed. Then I tripped. "Or not." Before I could even have Halitus try to stop my fall, I just... stopped. I felt odd, like gravity had stopped working on me.

"Sorry for using my Quirk on you without asking," a female voice said, "but I thought that you might not like going through your exams with a bloody nose!" Someone pulled me into a position where I wouldn't fall, then gravity reasserted itself on me and I landed on my feet. "I hope that's okay!" she said. I turned to see a cute brown-haired girl with rosy cheeks and a bright smile.

Space Kid

LV 19

Uraraka Ochako

"Oh no, it's fine!" I said. I probably would've just frozen up and blurted out nonsense words if I didn't have Gamer's Mind. I used to get really nervous when first meeting attractive people like that. "So your Quirk is some sort of gravity-manipulation power, right?"

"Yeah!" she said, then showed me one of her hands, or rather the pads on the ends of her fingers. "I can make objects weightless if I touch them with these things. It makes me all kinds of nauseous if I use it too much, though..."

"Even with that, it seems like a really powerful and useful Quirk," I said. "You'll probably be a great hero!"

She beamed. "Thanks! I'm Uraraka Ochako, by the way. Are you two here for the hero course too?"

Kacchan did that thing where he punches his fist into his other palm and makes an explosion to look cool. "Yup! Deku and I are gonna dominate this thing, so you'd better watch out."

I sighed. "Kacchan, could you please be nice to someone who could be our future classmate?"

She laughed. "It's nice to meet you two! I'll see you two in the hero course!" Then she ran off.

A few moments later Kacchan exasperatedly said, "Son of a bitch she only knows me as Kacchan now."

"We have to get to our exams, Kacchan," I reminded him.

"Yeah, yeah," he sighed.

xoxoxo

The written exams were... well, I suppose they were difficult, but my INT was so high that I breezed through them. After that, all of the hero course students had to attend a presentation (By Present Mic!) about what the practical exams would be like. The answer was robot-fighting, apparently. During the explanation, a boy stood up to ask a question and decided to scold me for muttering as well. That was embarrassing... After that, they escorted us to the fake cities where we'd be taking the exams. Unfortunately, Kacchan was sent to a different training ground than me, probably because they didn't want people who know each other working together. Present Mic announced that we'd have a few minutes to get ready for the exam, then clarified that that meant things like stretching but also things like preparing our Quirks. At that moment, I got a new quest.

A quest has been created!

Start Line

The Yuuei entrance exams include a ten-minute mock battle against robots. Get as many combat points as you can!

Optional objectives: Destroy the zero-pointer.

Completion: 100 EXP per combat point, 100 Skill Fragments per combat point. Optional: 2500 EXP, 2500 Skill Fragments.

Failure: You don't get any combat points, decreased closeness with Bakugou.

I readied up my buffs, holding them so that I could use them the moment the exam started but also regenerate my MP and use One For All to charge them up. As I looked over the crowd, I saw Uraraka. I started to walk over to her to thank her for earlier when I felt a hand on my shoulder. "What do you think you're doing?" I turned around to see the boy who scolded me earlier in a tight-fitting shirt that really showed off his muscles, unlike my tracksuit. He also appeared to have engines in his calves, which was probably his Quirk. "She appears to be getting ready for the mock battle." You could tell from his voice alone that he was really strict. "Were you going to use your Quirk on her to soften up the competition?" He looked at my left hand. I looked at the four balls of colored light in my hand. That probably looked bad, didn't it?

"It's not what it looks like!" I blurted. He raised an eyebrow. "The balls are for me, not her!" I clarified. He was actually really intimidating.

His face softened up a bit, then he bowed at a ninety-degree angle. "My apologies," he said, then came up. "What were you going to do with her, then?"

"I tripped earlier and she caught me. I don't think it would've been too bad thanks to my Quirk, but I wanted to thank her anyways," I explained. He nodded. I took a look at his name.

Class President

LV 24

Iida Tenya

"I see," he said. "I apologize for my harsh tone. It seemed at first that you were trying to distract the others."

I would have said something to him, but before I could, Present Mic yelled, "GO!" and a timer appeared on my UI, counting down from ten minutes. Everyone went quiet and started staring at him. "What are you standing there for, listeners!? You don't get countdowns in real life! Start already!" I panicked a bit, then popped my Speed Up and started using Air Aura. I dashed off into the mock city as fast as I could, looking at my minimap as I did. Now that the exam was starting, the robots were appearing as red dots on it. "Halitus, Dune," I muttered. My air elemental appeared, and next to him was my new earth elemental. I'd made her only a month ago. She had a very different style of clothing from the other two elementals I'd seen, with what looked like some sort of military desert camouflage uniform and a pair of goggles pushed up onto her hair. She had short, sandy blonde hair and dark brown skin that reminded me of rich soil. "Point me to where the most robots are," I told them. As I did, Iida ran up to me.

"A fellow speedster, I see!" he exclaimed over the wind. "I look forward to seeing what you can do if you get into the hero course!" Before I could say anything to him, he got even faster and dashed off. A few moments later, my elementals pointed me to a street where there were a lot of robots. I used the Attack Up, Defense Up, and Regeneration that I'd been saving for an encounter, then made a katana with Bound Blade and used Air Aura on it. Air seemed like it'd be the best for the mock battle because the speed bonuses meant that I could rack up a lot of points quickly. I proved myself right when I charged at the robots, carving through most of them in seconds. When there were only a few left, I shot my hand out at them and made a crushing motion, causing them to crumple like tin cans as Dune and Halitus combined their powers to destroy them with a combination of increased air pressure and their own armor pressing in on them. 

"That was so awesome," I muttered. I dropped my Air Aura and dissipated my Bound Blade to let my mana fill back up. I'd already gotten twenty-nine points and two level-ups in the span of... I checked the timer. Two minutes. "I'm doing great!" I exclaimed. As I ran to the next hot spot, a one-pointer surprised me by jumping out of the wall like an evil Kool-Aid man. I yelped, then pulled out my sword to slice at it. The robot managed to almost dodge my swing, ending up with me only chopping off its toe. Before I could utterly wreck it with a spell, a laser beam came out of nowhere and decimated it, resulting in me getting some, but not all, of the experience points from the kill. I turned to where the beam of light came from.

"Merci," a pretty boy (Was he... sparkling?) with blonde hair and a strange-looking belt said. "You and I make a great team, monsieur. You seem like excellent bait for les robots." He then ran off, likely in search of more robots. I decided to let it not bother me due to the exams being a bit of a competition and instead just continued on, destroying the robots I saw. I decided to use ranged skills to destroy them from a distance. "Air Slash!" I yelled. A blade of air shot at the three-pointer, cutting its "head" off. "Fireball!" The next robot I found was exploded and melted. "Water Gun!" The third robot was pierced by a bullet made of water, its delicate insides soaked into uselessness.

It continued on like that for a while until I found where most of the fighting probably occurred. Robot remains were everywhere. As I watched, Iida kicked a robot with his engine leg so hard that it just stopped working and Uraraka pressed her fingers together, releasing a bunch of robots to the cruel reign of gravity. It looked like everyone was resting before splitting up to find more points. I was about to leave when the ground started shaking. A towering, building-sized robot, the zero-pointer, rose up from the ground and started thrashing about. It goes without saying that this caused everyone to panic and run away. I was about to join them when I heard a familiar voice cry for help. I saw Uraraka trapped under a rock, with the zero-pointer coming closer. It wasn't even a question what I should do next. I ran as fast as I could, using Air Aura and another Speed Up to replace the one that ran out. As I ran, I used an Attack Up, Defense Up, and Regeneration on myself, then shot another Defense Up and Regeneration at Uraraka just in case. When I was close enough, I jumped, using a barely-harnessed Air Burst combined with some One For All to send me flying skyward. As I rose, I felt the glow of One For All rise up in my arm, and I let it go full-force, even added to it with some air mana. Because it was supposed to be a secret that I had All Might's Quirk, I didn't shout any of All Might's attack names. Instead, when I wound up my punch, I shouted, "LIMIIIT!" I punched at the robot with all my might. "BREAAAAAAAK!" The rush of air slammed into the zero-pointer, hitting it so hard that its face crumpled in. The zero-pointer toppled backward from the force of the punch.

Your level has increased by one! x7

I didn't feel as bad as last time, but it still hurt. I began to fall and gulped when I saw how far away the ground was. I really didn't want to know what would happen if my already low HP hit zero. I immediately activated Healing Hands, hoping to get my HP up enough that I wouldn't die upon hitting the ground. When I was closer to the ground, I made a sword and shield with Bound Blade. I crossed my metaphorical fingers and tried to use Earth Aura on myself and the shield while using Air Aura on the sword. It worked! Before I could begin the next phase of my plan (try to make a delayed Air Burst on the sword and then throw it at the ground), though, someone slapped me on the cheek and I felt myself become immune to gravity's pull for the second time that day. I stopped within half a meter of the ground and deactivated my skills as Uraraka released her Quirk. "Thank goodness!" she said sickly as the robot part that she was on touched down. "I was afraid you'd..." she started barfing before she could finish her sentence.

"Thanks, Uraraka!" I said. I jumped up to her and used Healing Hands on her. "I wasn't sure if my plan would work or not, so that was a relief."

She bolted upright as my skill began to take effect. "I don't feel nauseous anymore!" she remarked as she wiped her mouth off with a wet wipe she pulled from her pocket. She turned to look at me with excitement in her eyes. "Can you heal people with your Quirk?"

I nervously rubbed behind my head. "I guess you could say that..."

"That's awesome! Thanks for getting rid of my nausea, by the way!" Her smile was infectious.

"TIME'S UP, FOLKS!" Present Mic's voice blared over the speakers.

"Eep! I forgot about the exam!" Uraraka said. We both sighed and sat down on the robot. "It's too late to do anything now... How many points did you get, by the way?"

I counted the robots I fought up for a moment. "Thirty-eight," I said.

"I got twenty-nine," she sighed. "I hope that that's enough to get in the hero course. You're totally going to get in, though." She paused for a moment. "I don't think I got you or your friend's name, just nicknames."

"Yeah," I said. "I'm Midoriya Izuku. My friend's name is Bakugou Katsuki. Those were nicknames we've had for each other for a while."

She smiled. "Great to meet you then, Midoriya!"

"Are either of you two hurt?" someone asked. I looked down to see an old woman with a syringe-shaped cane.

"Recovery Girl!" I said. I looked at my HP to see if I was hurt, then jumped off the robot part. "I'm fine, thanks."

"I'm good too!" Uraraka said and jumped off as well. "It's cool seeing a pro like you!"

Recovery Girl nodded and then gave us some gummies. "Neither of you look hurt, though I suggest the two of you go to the doctor if anything starts hurting. Eat those one at a time, they'll help you recover your strength."

"Thanks!" Uraraka said. As Recovery Girl walked off to treat the other examinees, Uraraka turned to me and said, "Can you believe we just met Recovery Girl?"

"I know, right!" I exclaimed. "I should probably go now, but I hope I see you in the hero course!"

"Bye!" she said. I waved to her as I left.

xoxoxo

A/N: I stink at titles and names, apparently.

Yeah, I ended up using the TGWP names for two of the skills (made up my own effects for all the skills, though). It took me a few days to get Fleet Foot and Born Lucky and I just had writers' block for the other two... hope that's okay!

[introvertfics]

have a coffee

name: have a coffee (parts one and two)

rating: T

summary: a barista who can't find love and loves foam art too much meets a musician who can't control his emotions and just wants a soulmate. they might just fall in love, but it won't be easy.

warnings: near death experience (choking)

please do not repost without my permission!

likes and reblogs are appreciated!

read on ao3 instead

Part 1

The sounds of chatter and laughter filled the crowded Starbucks, the sight of people enjoying their drinks and talking amicably with each other putting a smile on Tyler Joseph’s face. His break had just begun, so he was able to finally take a rest from the afternoon drink rush, sitting perched on one of the high-top chairs pushed near a table next to one of the wide glass windows illuminating the entire coffee shop. He didn’t particularly like coffee himself, despite liking making it and serving it for other people, so his fingers were gripping a cup of ice water, the slight condensation on the foam cup soaking through the sleeves of his navy blue sweater.

Tyler let out a little sigh, lowering his gaze back to the contents of the cup. He loved his job, and he put all of his passion and effort into it. It was, quite honestly, the only source of happiness in his life. He had been forced to leave home at the age of 18 by his violent and overbearing parents, who quite frankly wanted nothing to do with him and wanted him out of the house as soon as possible. After graduating high school and just barely managing to make it into a decent college, he had been forced to juggle multiple classes with his job as a Starbucks barista, which thankfully paid a somewhat decent wage. Due to his constantly busy schedule, he had virtually no time for anything other than school and work, leaving him feeling virtually no passion for anything other than making coffee. It was a rather depressing lifestyle, considering he was actually revolted by the sight of coffee and only enjoyed serving it for others, but it gave him a slight bit of satisfaction about his life. Biting his lip as he recalled the events of his sorry life so far, he crossed one leg underneath himself and lowered his head slightly.

The quiet scrape of a chair against the tiles suddenly alerted him to his surroundings. His head snapping up, his eyes fell on a man with fluffy crimson-coloured hair pulling the other seat out and sitting down. His eyes were a stunning shade of brown, his arms covered with multicolored tattoos and a black tank top hugging his upper half. Unable to find his words for a second, he lowered his gaze back down to the tabletop, blinking quickly and nervously swinging his free leg back and forth.

“Hey there…” the man sitting across from him said softly.

“Hm?” Tyler lifted his head, his fingers digging slightly into the styrofoam coffee cup and causing several barely visible indents in the material. What on earth did this intimidating stranger want with him? “Hello…” he said in a barely audible whisper, moving his foot around in slow circles- one of the exercises he found calmed him down in stressful situations. Three circles clockwise, four circles counterclockwise. Three circles clockwise, four circles clockwise…

“You work here?” The man asked, putting his steaming hot latte cup down on the table, far too close to the edge for Tyler’s liking.

“How did you guess?” Tyler managed to stutter out, lowering his hands and gripping them in fists in his lap.

“Your apron,” the man replied, gesturing towards the forest-green apron emblazoned with the white Starbucks logo loosely hanging off Tyler’s frame.

“Oh…” His face heating up with an unhidable blush of embarrassment, Tyler let out a tiny chuckle in an attempt to appear unphased. “Yep, I do. Love it here.” he nodded, pushing a few wayward strands of fluffy brown hair out of his face as he tried to appear even the slightest bit confident.

“That’s good that you like your job…” The man let out a little chuckle, stretching one hand across the table. “The name’s Josh. You’ve got a name too, I’m guessing?” “Yes, ah… Tyler. That’s my name,” Tyler let out a giggle, finding his voice after a short pause. He reached across the table and shook Josh’s hand, not that surprised at how strong his grip was.

“Nice laugh…” Josh chuckled, his eyes traveling slowly over Tyler’s body and taking in every detail. Tyler felt as though he was being scanned by an x-ray machine of some sort, the man before him memorizing every detail of his appearance and personality with his gaze. “Everything about you is pretty nice, actually…”

“Oh, I… I don’t like guys, I’m sorry…” Tyler stuttered out with a little shake of his head.

“You sure? I’m pretty sure a few hours with me might change your mind,” Josh chuckled with a wink that sent uncomfortable shivers up Tyler’s spine.

“I’m very sure.” Tyler nodded, taking a gulp of his water and finishing apart from the partially melted ice cubes that remained at the bottom. “I’m flattered, and I’m sure you’re a really nice person, but I’m not like that. I’m honestly not interested in any sort of relationship at this point, period, never mind one with the same gender…”

“Oh come on… you can’t tell me you haven’t been at least a little bit interested in me. I saw you staring at me when I sat down,” Josh smiled, his eyes darting from Tyler’s eyes down to his slightly visible collarbone and back up again. “You looked like you were just…”

“I was staring because I was confused,” Tyler interrupted, crossing his arms. “Because I didn’t know you and I was wondering why you just sat down near me for no reason. And it’s actually really rude of you to just assume what I was thinking, especially regarding something as sensitive and personal as that,” he continued, frowning and looking down at the tabletop.

“You don’t have to make such a big deal about it, bunny,” Josh replied half-mockingly, one hand traveling under the table and touching upon Tyler’s knee. “All I’m saying is-”

“Leave me alone!” Tyler promptly pulled back and clambered out of the chair to the floor, every inch of his body trembling with suppressed rage and fear as he dug his fingers into his upper arms. “Don’t touch me, and don’t call me bunny.” He spat the last word out as though it was a vile curse, walking as fast as he could away from the table and calling over his shoulder as he headed back towards the counter. “And don’t even think about talking to me again!”

“...you okay, Ty?” asked one of Tyler’s coworkers, Jenna, as Tyler swooped back behind the counter and slammed his hands down so hard several people looked over. “Do you want me to talk to that guy and ask him to leave, or…”

“It’s fine. Just don’t let him come near me. He’s a fucking creep,” Tyler hissed, glaring at Josh and crossing his arms. He let out a little sigh and checked his phone- his break was almost over, and he wasted almost all of it dealing with Josh. Biting his bottom lip hard enough to draw a bit of blood, Tyler turned and faced one of the trays of pastries, breathing heavily and managing to calm himself down eventually. His gaze fell on the slowly growing line of people, taking one more breath and managing to put on a smile as he walked over to resume his shift.

It had begun to rain when Tyler left Starbucks at around six in the afternoon- round, fat drops that fell from the sky and plunked loudly on his black umbrella. Shivering slightly in the late autumn air, Tyler set off down the sidewalk, intent on getting home before the rain got any worse. The soaked multi colored fall leaves stuck to the bottoms of his sneakers as he walked down the deserted sidewalk, and the harsh wind blew his fluffy hair in all directions. Sighing, Tyler kept his eyes on the sidewalk, since looking straight into the wind was stinging his eyes.

A tap on his shoulder stopped Tyler in his tracks as he turned around. A man about the same height as him, dressed in mostly black and wearing a top hat that should have given him a comical appearance but instead somehow made him look elegant and civilized, stood beside him, the shadow from his hat covering most of his face apart from his nose and mouth. He had one hand in his pocket and the other outstretched in front of him, holding a gold pocket watch with a crack in the glass clock face.

“Excuse me…” the man began in a smoky voice. “Could you possibly tell me what time it is? I’m afraid my watch is broken,” he chuckled, gesturing to the broken pocket watch in his hand.

“Oh, it’s…” Tyler pulled his phone out of his pocket and squinted at the time. “6:14 pm, exactly.”

“Oh, dear.” The man frowned. “I’m going to miss my bus now… and I don’t have a way to contact anyone to pick me up. Oh well.” He shrugged, a smile almost instantly appearing on his face. “I’ll simply have to keep walking.”

“It’s raining so much, though… and you don’t have an umbrella.” Tyler bit his lip. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call an Uber for you or something? I’ll pay for it…”

“That’s not necessary, trust me. It’s only about a twenty minute walk to where I live. My apartment is right near the park,” the man replied.

“Oh, my college is right around there too!” Tyler smiled. This man seemed rather interesting and friendly, and a definite improvement from Josh. “If you want, we could walk there together… I have an umbrella, so you won’t get as wet.”

“Thank you very much.” the man nodded, his brown eyes sparkling in the barest hint of light from the streetlight. “I’ll have to repay you somehow, though.”

“You don’t have to, honestly,” Tyler insisted. “I’m just helping you out, you don’t have to do anything in return.”

“But I feel like I should, though. You’re taking time out of your day to walk me to my apartment, after all. I just need to repay you…” the man repeated.

“I mean… if you want to, but it’s honestly not necessary,” Tyler giggled.

The man nodded slowly, a wide smile overtaking his features. “I think I’ll repay you by taking that wallet and jacket off your hands,” he said in a sotto voice.

Tyler frowned at the sudden, threatening change in the man’s words and tone. Before he could ask what he meant or attempt to run away, the man had violently grabbed him and tugged him into a nearby alley, one hand clamped firmly over his mouth and the other slicing at the zipper of his raincoat with a pocket knife that had seemingly materialized out of nowhere. Letting out a muffled yell of protest, Tyler desperately tried to force the man away from him, simultaneously trying to hold onto his jacket that was being ripped away from him. Within seconds, however, the man had ripped the jacket- somehow still in one piece- off his skinny frame and had plunged his hand into his pocket, grabbing his wallet. As soon as he had pulled out the wallet and stuffed it into his own pocket, the man punched Tyler hard in the stomach, knocking the breath out of him and causing tears to well in his eyes out of pain. He sank down to his knees and landed on his side in a mud puddle, unable to even get a scream or yell of help out as the man darted out of the alley.

A split second later, however, there were a few grunts of pain and the clink of metal hitting the ground from around the corner where the man had disappeared. Confused, Tyler attempted to get to his feet to see what was happening, but had to stop and lie back down due to the lingering pain in his stomach. Whimpering with pain as tears dripped down his cheeks and onto the filthy ground of the alley, his eyes widened with utter shock as Josh stepped into the alley holding the jacket and wallet, scratches and cuts covering his arms and parts of his face. Upon seeing Tyler, he immediately darted over to him, dropping to his knees and speaking in a panicked voice. “Oh my god, Tyler, are you okay? What did he do to you? D-do you need to go to the hospital, did he…”

“He punched me in the stomach…” Tyler whispered, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. “It hurts so much, holy shit…”

“Hey, it’s gonna be okay, Tyler, you’re gonna be okay…” Josh said in a soothing voice, reaching down and running his fingers through Tyler’s hair in a relaxing gesture. “There’s a first aid kit in my car right down the street… I’m gonna run and get it and I’ll be right back, okay? I promise.”

Tyler nodded and watched as Josh got to his feet and ran out of the alley, still crying quietly. Sure enough, in only a minute or so Josh was back, a wave of relief rushing over him when he knew Josh hadn’t abandoned him. “Please hurry, Josh, it hurts…” “Shh, shh, shh, it’s okay, I’ve got you, you’re gonna be okay. I’m gonna need to look at your stomach to see how badly he hit you, okay?” Josh said gently. “I have to lift your shirt up, okay? I’m not gonna try anything, I’m just gonna check out how badly you’re hurt.”

Tyler nodded, pulling up the edge of his sweater and the white shirt underneath with a little bit of effort. He closed his eyes, exhaling softly and preparing for pain as Josh’s hands ghosted over his belly. However, he noticed that Josh was being extremely gentle with him- so gentle, in fact, that it almost seemed like just being touched by him was helping him to feel better.

Within a few minutes, Josh pulled away, wiping his forehead with his arm and managing a little smile. “Okay… you’ll probably have a bruise for a few days, but it’s not anything serious. Your clothes are soaked, though,” he murmured, gesturing towards the mud puddle that Tyler was still lying in.

“Oh… I’ll be fine.” Tyler mumbled, pulling himself out of the mud puddle and managing to get to his feet.

“You’re already shivering…” Josh frowned, reaching forward and putting a hand on Tyler’s shaking shoulder. “I have an extra jacket in my car… you can wear it, and I could drive you home if you want…”

“Thank you… thank you so much…” Tyler smiled, feeling tears of gratitude welling in his eyes,

“You’re welcome, b….” Josh trailed off, stopping himself from saying the word “bunny” and instead finishing the sentence with “...Tyler.” He sighed and shook his head. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, honestly,” Tyler insisted through chattering teeth, rubbing the goosebumps rising on the back of his neck.

“God, you’re shaking… come on, come with me…” Gently looping one arm around Tyler’s shoulders, hugging his trembling form close in an attempt to keep him warm, Josh led him out of the alley and down the street towards the only car on the street, which Tyler presumed was his. As soon as they got into the car, Tyler scrambled into the front seat, tucking his knees up to his chin and shivering violently. He felt Josh draping the jacket over his shoulders and he quickly tugged it on, seeing that it was much too big on him- the sleeves of the camouflage jacket covered his hands, and the fabric hung loosely on his body. Zipping the jacket up to his neck, Tyler closed his eyes, covering the lower half of his face with one of the too-long sleeves, feeling a bit better.

“You feel alright now?” Josh asked as he sat in the driver’s seat and turned the ignition.

“Yes… thank you.” Tyler smiled, poking his hand out of the oversized sleeves.

“You’re welcome,” Josh smiled, pushing a few strands of crimson hair out of his eyes. “What’s your address?”

“My dorm’s at the college right near the park,” Tyler replied with a little nod. “Actually, wait, hold on…”

“Is something wrong?” Josh asked quietly with a frown.

“That guy who tried to steal my stuff… should we go to the police station and tell them what happened?” Tyler asked.

“Ah, shit, you’re right… I didn’t even think about that, I’m such a dumbass…” Josh let out a dry chuckle. “We should probably stop there first.” His eyes drifted towards Tyler as he put one hand on his shoulder. “You’re going to be okay, right?”

“I will. I’ll be fine,” Tyler replied with a little nod. Josh appeared to have completely changed from a few hours ago. Rather than shamelessly flirting with him and harassing him, he was being the kindest person in the world, making sure he was a hundred percent okay. Judging from how sincere he seemed in his words, and how he had been close to tears when he found Tyler lying on the ground, it seemed as though the flirtatious personality from before was but a farce. For the first time since they had met, Tyler felt something different towards Josh- not disgust, not embarrassment, but something genuinely positive and happy that he couldn’t quite describe. He wrapped his arms around himself, nuzzling deep into the warmth of the jacket as Josh began driving.

After filing the police report and driving back to the college, Josh insisted on going as far as to get a visitor’s pass from the front office, just so he could walk Tyler to his dorm and make sure he was completely okay before he left. Tyler couldn’t help but notice the strange looks he got from a few people as they walked down the hallway to their dorm- not only did Josh appear to be at least two or three years older than him, but he stood out greatly with his vibrantly colored hair and tattoos. Not to mention Josh hadn’t removed his arm from around his shoulders since they stepped out of the car, the simple action causing Tyler’s cheeks to heat up and turn a vibrant pink.

When the two of them reached Tyler’s door room, which was completely plain compared to the other doors in the hallway, Tyler fumbled in his wallet for the key to his room. As he unlocked the door, he heard Josh mumble something. “Hm?”

“I guess I have to go now…” Josh repeated with a little laugh.

“Yeah…” Tyler nodded and turned around, shrugging the jacket off his shoulders and handing it back to Josh. As he returned the jacket, he felt Josh press something into the pad of his hand, closing his fingers around it. “What are you…”

“Just hang onto it, please.” Josh insisted with a smile.

“...okay.” Tyler nodded with a shrug. “Hey, um, before you go… I just wanna say that I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“I was wrong about you… you’re actually a really, really, really nice guy, Josh. I shouldn’t have judged you based on my first impression,” Tyler murmured.

“Tyler, you don’t have to apologize, honestly…” Josh frowned and shook his head. “I shouldn’t have acted that way back there… I should have just left you alone, I shouldn’t have made you uncomfortable like that…” He reached forward and pulled Tyler into a gentle hug, letting out a little sigh that tickled the baby-fine hairs on the back of his neck. “I’m so sorry…”

“I forgive you, Josh, it’s okay,” Tyler insisted, rubbing a hand up and down Josh’s back in a calming gesture.

“You sure?” Josh asked as he pulled away.

“One hundred percent sure.” Tyler nodded with a wide smile, pushing a few strands of hair out of his face.

Josh nodded, shrugging the camouflage jacket back on his shoulders. “Okay… I should probably get going now…”

“I guess…” Tyler let out a little sigh. “I’ll text you later…”

“But you never asked for my number?”

“I have a feeling you wrote it on whatever you put in my hand,” Tyler giggled. He opened his palm and glanced down- sure enough, on the slightly wrinkled Starbucks on his hand was written a phone number, in purple Sharpie.

“Well, look at that… you were right.” Josh let out a chuckle.

Tyler nodded with a wide grin, leaning against the doorframe. “So yeah, I guess I will text you later.”

Josh smiled, reaching out and gently ruffling Tyler’s hair before turning on his heel. “Stay safe, Ty.” And with his words of parting he set off down the hall, soon disappearing through the doorway to the elevator. Tyler watched him go down the hall all the way before turning and closing the door, his heart absolutely soaring in his chest and pounding so hard it threatened to burst right through his shirt.

I think I found someone who made me happy.

Part 2

One Month Later

“I think they’re scared of you…” Tyler whispered with a chuckle, gesturing towards a group of students from his college sitting at an outdoor cafe as they walked down the sidewalk together. The students appeared to be confused and intimidated by the sight of Tyler holding onto the sleeve of Josh, who was at least two or three inches taller than him.

“Maybe…” Josh let out a little chuckle and shrugged. “What movie do you wanna watch when we get back to your dorm?”

“It doesn’t matter, you can pick.” Tyler smiled, resting his forehead against Josh’s arm and hugging it.

“What are you doing?” Josh asked with a laugh, reaching down and playfully ruffling Tyler’s hair.

“I don’t know…” Tyler murmured against Josh’s arm. Ever since the two had met a month ago, they had grown closer than Tyler had expected. They spent almost every single weekend together at Josh’s house, usually watching Disney movies while his dog Jim sat on top of them trying to eat the popcorn. Tyler had also managed to determine within three days that Josh gave the best hugs in the world, since he received one approximately every twenty minutes when they were together. Even though he had doubted himself and denied it at first, Tyler found himself slowly falling completely and hopelessly in love with him.

Josh didn’t seem to return his feelings, however. Ever since Tyler had blatantly told him again and again in Starbucks when they first met that he didn’t like guys, he hadn’t tried to make any sort of romantic gesture towards him, other than the constant hugging. He hadn’t given him any more pet names, he hadn’t tried to kiss him or tell him anything affectionate, he hadn’t called any of their outings or get-togethers a date, even though that was pretty much what they were. Tyler had tried showing Josh how he felt, dropping as many hints as possible, eventually going so far as to give him the ridiculous childlike nickname of Jishwa, but nothing worked. Josh had even passed the nickname off as a friendly gesture, murmuring something about how silly Tyler was as he ruffled his hair and pulled him into his arms.

Tyler felt a little pang of heartbreak as he recalled the memory, biting his bottom lip and clinging tighter to Josh’s arm. He felt tears of frustration beginning to well in his eyes and quickly tried to blink them away. Keeping his grip on Josh’s arm, he turned his head away so he wouldn’t get tears on Josh’s hoodie, breathing heavily and shaking his head back and forth. The emotions he had been keeping to himself for the past month were beginning to push their way forward, and he couldn’t hide it anymore.

“Tyler?” Josh frowned, gently shaking Tyler’s shoulder. He turned and bent down to Tyler’s level, pushing his hair out of his face. “Hey… are you crying? What’s wrong?”

Tyler shook his head, stepping backwards away from Josh until his back bumped against the outside wall of the bookstore they were walking by, shaking his head involuntarily and his hands clutched in tight fists and drawn up to his chest. “Don’t…” he whispered, unsure of what he was saying as tears blurred his vision and his limbs began to shake. He felt his knees buckle beneath him as he sank to the ground, dropping his head into his hands as he started sobbing and curling his body in on himself. He felt Josh’s hands on his shoulders but ignored him, pathetic whines and sobs that bordered on screams ripping their way from his throat despite his knowledge that people walking by were staring and watching.

“Ty, please, I need you to listen to me… you’ve gotta take deep breaths and calm yourself down, okay?” Josh’s words managed to push their way through the thick fog of his hysteria. “Put your hand on my chest and copy how I’m breathing…” Despite his panic, Tyler put his hand on Josh’s chest, keeping his head lowered as he tried desperately to match the rate of the rise and fall of his chest.

Then suddenly Josh’s hands were violently ripped from his shoulders, causing him to almost topple over. Tyler lifted his head and gasped when he saw the same man who had attacked him just a month ago, pinning Josh to the ground and punching him again and again. Josh was trying desperately to push the man off of him while trying to shield his chest and face, but to no avail.

Letting out a scream of protest, Tyler scrambled to his feet, tears still blurring his vision as he rushed towards Josh and the man fighting on the ground. Without thinking, he began slamming his fists as hard as he could against the man’s back, trying to do whatever he could to force him away. However, this proved to be ineffective, as the man was able to simply swat Tyler away like he was a bug on his shoulder. Tyler tumbled to the ground and quickly got back up again, trying to hit every inch of the man that he could. This time, rather than simply pushing him away, the man took his attention off of Josh and grabbed Tyler by the neck, slamming him the ground so hard he saw stars before beginning to tighten his grip. Gasping for breath but finding nothing, Tyler desperately struggled against his firm grip, his fingers scrabbling at the man’s hands and his lungs already aching from the lack of oxygen.

A split second later, Tyler felt the man’s hands being torn away from his neck, the nails digging slightly into his flesh as they left and leaving scratches along his skin. Letting out a tiny yelp of pain and gasping in air, Tyler stayed still on the ground, still shaking from the intensity of having his air taken away. He saw that the man was being pinned to the ground by someone who appeared to be a police officer, a rush of relief rushing though his body.

Suddenly, Tyler felt Josh picking him up and pulling him into a tight hug, squeezing him like a stuffed animal. “Oh my god, Tyler, oh my god… please tell me you’re alright, please, talk to me…”

“J-Jishwa! I’m fine, I’m okay,” Tyler insisted, his eyes widening as he saw tears trailing down Josh’s face. “Please don’t cry… it’s okay, I’m not hurt…” He reached up and began rubbing the tears away with the pad of his thumb, his heart breaking when he saw the open cuts and bruises that had already appeared on Josh’s face and neck.

“I thought I was gonna lose you…” Josh whispered, tangling his fingers in Tyler’s fluffy hair and blinking slowly as he gazed into his eyes. “I couldn’t let that happen to you, I just couldn’t… I thought you were gonna die…”

“Oh god, Josh… it’s okay, Jishwa, I’m not dead…” Looping his arms around Josh’s neck, Tyler pulled him into a hug, holding him close and letting the taller man cry quietly into his shoulder. He could see several other police officers approaching, and he could hear the faint siren of an ambulance approaching, and held on tight to his friend, whispering softly into his ear. “It’s okay, Josh, I’m alive… I’m not gonna leave you…”

|-/

The two were allowed to leave the hospital after only a few hours, since neither of them had any injuries apart from minor cuts and bruises. The police told them the man went by the name Brendon and had several major felonies, including robbery and breaking and entering. After they left the hospital and got back to Josh’s house, Tyler noticed that the red haired man was still extremely quiet. Josh was curled up on the end of the couch with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his hoodie with his head lowered and his his hair hanging in his face.

“Josh… Josh, please talk to me…” Tyler whispered, climbing onto the couch near Josh. He curled up and nuzzled against Josh’s side, resting his head against his back and slipping his arms around his waist. “I hate seeing you this upset… please tell me what’s wrong, Jishwa…”

With a quiet sigh, Josh replied, “I’m sorry… I was just so worried when that guy attacked you, I was worried he was gonna hurt you or kill you… I don’t know what I would do without you, Ty.” He turned over so that he was facing Tyler, touching his temple and trailing his hand down to his chin. “I couldn’t go on without you… you just mean so, so, much to me…”

“Josh? What… are you trying to say?” Tyler asked softly, his fingers reaching out and settling on Josh’s shoulders as a heavy blush began settling over his face.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is… I love you.” Josh dropped his head, biting his bottom lip and squeezing his eyes shut. “I tried to deny it for so long, because you said you didn’t like guys and that you weren’t interested, and I didn’t wanna push you into anything… but I just love you so much, Ty, I’m sorry…”

“Josh, you don’t have to apologize, honestly…” Tyler reached up and gently lifted up Josh’s head, frowning when he saw the taller male beginning to cry again. “Hey, hey, it’s alright, please don’t cry…”

“But I know you don’t feel the same way and I know you’re mad at me now and you’re gonna leave and never talk to me again…” Josh blurted, shaking his head quickly.

“Joshie… Josh, I’m not mad at you, I’m not gonna leave,” Tyler whispered. “And I do feel the same way, honestly.”

“Tyler, you don’t have to say that. I know you’re just trying to make me feel better.” Josh shook his head again.

“I’m not just saying it, Josh, I mean it. I really do…” Tyler inisted, nodding slowly. “I really do love you, I want you to believe me…”

“Prove it.” Josh lowered his head, biting his bottom lip and rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Prove to me in some way that you actually love me, and maybe you’ll believe me.”

Tyler hesitated for a few moments, his gaze rapidly shifting from Josh’s eyes to his lips and back up again. Taking a deep breath and working up as much courage as he could, he stood up on his knees, grabbing Josh’s shoulders and leaning up to kiss him. The kiss lasted for only a few moments and was much too hesitant for Tyler’s liking- his lips just barely brushed against Josh’s before he pulled away involuntarily- but it seemed to prove his point to Josh. As soon as Tyler pulled away, he saw that Josh’s eyes had widened, his mouth open in a huge smile.

“...does that prove it to you?” Tyler asked hesitantly, settling back down on the couch.

Instead of giving a verbal response, Josh practically tackled Tyler flat on his back, tangling his fingers in his hair and kissing him again and again. Tyler let out a startled squeak, managing to realize what was happening and fell back into the kiss, wrapping his arms around Josh’s neck and pulling him closer. When the two broke apart after several long moments, both of them were visibly flushed and breathing heavily.

“That proves it,” Josh murmured with a wide smile.

“I love you so much, Jishwa…” Tyler smiled back, lacing his fingers in Josh’s scarlet hair.

“I love you too, Ty…” Josh smiled, dropping his head onto Tyler’s chest and curling up in a little ball. To anyone else, it might have been a peculiar sight; the significantly larger and older man nuzzled up to him like a cat. But it was absolutely perfect for the two of them. Tyler smiled and wrapped his arms around Josh, hugging him tightly and running one hand through his fluffy hair. Josh let out a soft giggle as Tyler’s fingers tickled his head, letting his eyes fall closed gradually.

“Are you gonna fall asleep?” Tyler asked softly.

“Maybe…”

“Joshie, it’s only three in the afternoon…” Tyler giggled. “What about that movie we were gonna watch?”

“Oh yeah.” Josh chuckled and smiled. “I forgot…”

“We could just stay like this if you want…” Tyler suggested.

“That sounds just as good.” Josh replied, wrapping his arms around Tyler and relaxing against him completely. Resting his chin on top of Josh’s head, Tyler kept the taller man close to him protectively, even though the two were perfectly safe alone in the room. His lips silently formed the words “I love you” over and over again as he gazed down at Josh, feeling an overwhelming rush of affection for him in that moment.

I found someone who made me happy.

Thank you very much for reading! If you enjoyed this story, please give it a like and a reblog. If you want to read more of my stories, give me a follow and turn on post notifications! 

[livingasaghost]

let’s talk about marie kondo!!

okay so as we know, i already binged all of her show tidying up and i ADORED it. super calming, very informative, and just really my kinda vibe. this year 2019 is all about change for me and forcing myself to become the best version i can be at this point in time. and so far...it’s working. like, granted i’m still THE WORST and i have a lot to work out, but i’ve already seen so much difference in who i was last year and who i am now. like i feel as if i’ve stopped living in fear like i once did. i still get some small usual anxieties, but now i don’t fear cooking or setting unrealistic goals or going to the gym or whatever. more than that i feel good. like, i think the no sugar thing is definitely showing some benefits, and i totally resisted a bunch of valentine’s day chocolates at a thing the other night so I AM QUEEN RIGHT NOW. i’ve also been really trying to embrace community like seeing friends and i started going to this small group that i should’ve gone to like 2 years ago (i suck) and it’s SO GOOD. i can’t believe i let myself sink so deep into my darkness -- it truly has felt like i’ve woken up from a coma or something. for so long i convinced myself that everything was fine and that i just had some minor depressive episodes but i’m good now, and like...sure it isn’t so much depression these days, but i can tell that there was something inside me that just was not clicking. and now i’m doing almost everything in my power to rewire my brain and redo my life. and it’s ACTUALLY WORKING!!! I’M SO HAPPY!! like, i still see glimpses of who i’ve always been, but i feel like i’m better at recognizing that and making myself do things that used to scare me. i changed my phone background to “if you know you can do better, do better” and reading that every day honestly does make me reconsider some of my actions. 

all that said, now is the PERFECT time for me to read marie kondo’s book. i just finished it today (the audiobook) and i ADORED IT. probably my favorite read of the year so far (isn’t that sad??? and this is book number 17 people!!!) but i just really loved it because not only does it give good advice, but it also just gave me some new thoughts and some new hope. like i found it fascinating to think about appreciating your possessions more and organizing things that should be together all in one place and truly creating a life that sparks joy. i don’t know if the concepts will actually made me a tidy person, we shall see, but i have hope that at the very least it will give me some big changes. marie says to do your tidying in a big marathon, and right now it looks like i’m going to spend march doing that. 

even though it’s all in my head, i really do feel like i’m at a point in my life where i’ve veered so far off the path of who i present myself to be that i’m starting to go in a different direction than what i really want. like i’ve been living in this messy little cave for like three years and it’s been dawning on me that i hate it. not all of it, probably not most of it, but i think if i can tackle all these areas in my life then i’ll find some new energy. and i know we can’t control everything in our lives, but i think for me this is less about feeling “in control” and more about me just taking control for once. for so long i’ve let things go on autopilot and that is just NOT GOOD. like god has been pulling me along, but i think he could tell that i needed to take the reigns back and nothing really forced me to do that...and i think this poetry book was the thing that actually did it. like now that it’s almost over, i’m closing this chapter and i feel like my headspace is already starting to clear. i’m starting to see who i bent myself to be all these years, and i want to stand up. i want to let go. i want to breathe new life into this body. 

marie kondo just really made me feel like i can do this. i was afraid that mid-year i’d hit my usual slumpy stride where i get depressed and creatively burnt out and i don’t know what to do to be better, but i can already tell that this year is a different beast. i may still have seasonal depression in august (probably, let’s be real) BUT i think the difference between this year and the last two is that 1) i have year-long projects to occupy my time -- i’m working on cooking and going to the gym and READING 100 books, so it’s like even if i don’t want to take photos or make videos or whatever, i know i can just pick up a book. or i can go for a run. or whatever. 2) i haven’t had a major binging episode in AGES. i watched tidying up, and i watched a little of ODAAT, and i think i had one or two movie nights, but other than that i’m really just avoiding tv and movies. and i feel so FREE. like it’s still fun, obviously, but i think this year i just need to chill and take a break and not stare at my tv so much. and most of the time in the summer that is my go-to. so if i can keep up this mindset, i might be safe. 3) since i’m planning on tidying up my room, and my room is where i spend the most time when i’m depressed, this could be a really great way to cleanse the energy in there and give it new life that will sustain me rather than drain me in the summer. i’m not sure how i’m going to do it yet, but i think i need to move some furniture around, even though i’ve already changed it about as much as i can with the layout i have right now. i just think if i get a different space around me, maybe if i condense my clothes and clear out my closet and move some books around, i can breathe my space back to life and i won’t feel so trapped when the heat is suffocating in a few months. 

of course, i say all of that, but i know that seasonal depression is just a think i’ll be dealing with until i move somewhere not so hot all the time. we shall see.

in any case, i felt so much peace listening to marie’s book. i felt like someone was out there thinking about me and trying to find a way to contribute to my new year’s goals. i already feel like march will be a new year. i was also afraid that i’d give up after a few months (last year i lasted until about april?) so i think if i can trick my brain into thinking that march is ACTUALLY when new year starts (lol) then it’ll give me a few more months of motivation. and maybe it’ll just help me feel more at peace as i prepare to go abroad in april for two weeks (I CANNOT WAIT!!!! LESS THAN 2 MONTHS!!!) i’m also going to cut my hair at the end of the month and i’ll have released my book at the beginning of it, and i just feel like march will be another fresh start for my new year. 

i think to me the most interesting part about all of it is that i’m learning how to forgive myself. forgive myself for taking a break, for not doing the thing, for staying up late, for being on my phone so much, whatever. so many times i do things and i think “UGH JENNA DO BETTER” and while that is accurate and i do spend a lot of my life failing to do well, i have been doing so good lately! like it’s month 2 of 2019 and ya girl has read SEVENTEEN BOOKS! SEVENTEEN! that’s like...unreal. and i don’t feel stressed. i don’t feel overwhelmed. it’s just like...chill. like, yeah i have time on my hands of COURSE i should have read almost 20 books in two months. that’s logical. and i am stressed about other things (this stupid poetry book UGH CAN IT BE DONE YET) like client projects, but not books. or cooking. or exercising. it just...is happening. and it makes me wonder why i wasn’t just doing it all along. it makes me wonder if i will keep doing this after this year is over. i’m so bad at sustaining anything (plants, a work ethic, habits, etc) that i fear in 2020 all this growth will be lost, but i think about marie kondo saying that when her clients experience such a dramatic emotional change/connection, they have almost no choice but to embrace this new life because they never want to go back. i don’t want to take two steps backward ever again. i want to go forward. i want to believe in myself, i want to support my body, and i want a space that won’t suffocate me. 

so that’s where we’re at. 

[julestriesreallyhard]

Gonna EOOD this town

I’ve rediscovered the subreddit /r/EOOD, also known as “exercise out of depression. I’m pretty excited. It’s small, and all the best subreddits are small (except femalefashionadvice which is big but lovely.) They just had a modpost showing all redpillers and incels to the door (not that they were welcome before, but this is a reminder) and the one post I’ve made has received a modest number of thoughtful and encouraging responses.

I’m aware that exercise alone won’t cure my depression! I absolutely plan to stay in therapy, set up an appointment with my psychiatrist (since I missed the last one...) and work on my sleep hygiene. I’m also aware that unfortunately, exercise isn’t for everyone, which is another reason for people to have a varied approach to tackling their mental demons, whether those be mental illness, trauma, or just some kinks you want to iron out. 

I do encourage that if your body is capable, you find some form of exercise that works for you. Exercise is chemically rewarding because of the hormones it releases, but it’s also a huge confidence boost in other ways. It’s super gratifying to reach goals, and when those goals are physical in nature, it can lead you to view and appreciate your body in a whole different light. I tend to worry about my tummy and my acne a lot, but when I climb regularly, I worry about it less because I’m too busy admiring that my body can get me up the walls! Thank you, body!

Anyway, if anyone knows of any relevant blogs or tags I could follow, I’m still learning my way around this site and would appreciate it :)

Details on my EOOD plan below the break.

I posted to the sub two days ago with a question that went approximately like this: “Although my primary reason for exercising is to improve my mood and energy levels, I find that having secondary, fitness-and-skill-related goals tends to be very beneficial. It really helps my self confidence and motivation. However, depression brain strikes again, and right now none of my goals seem worth the effort--particularly because anything that excites me feels out of reach, while other perfectly valid goals are dismissed as ‘not impressive enough.’ Please help me set achievable goals and be excited about them! Here are a few grandiose ideas that pique my interest: climbing (hiking up) a mountain; getting better at (rock) climbing; doing a handstand; doing a muscle up; running an obstacle course (Tough Mudder, Spartan...)”

I got some good responses, which I’m condensing down to:

1) Prioritize the list of dreams above. Ask yourself the following questions: which would be easiest to work on (not necessarily to achieve?) For me, that’s rock climbing because I find each workout fun. Because my main goal is just to get moving, it’s important to work with my strengths here. Which is most exciting? That would be climbing a mountain (I summitted Half Dome when I was a teen and it was an incredible experience) and running an obstacle course.

My answers: I - rock climbing; II - mountain; III - obstacle course; IV - handstand and muscle up. I prioritized mountain over obstacle course because I want to capitalize on that this summer and because I find it easier to hike than to run, even though the obstacle course sounds more exciting right now.

 2) Set smaller, more achievable milestones on the way to those goals.

I - very vague goal! Here’s a more concrete one: climb a V5. Here’s a more achievable version of that: climb three V3′s (I’ve already done one.)

II - I would love to climb Mt. Whitney, but I’ll start with something smaller, so I’m going to set the goal of climbing Mt. Tam sometime this month. 

III - the first skill to build up here is running! I signed up for a 5K in June.

3) Now set “consistency goals.” There are two ways of doing this: “I’m going to run X times per week/Y miles per day” or “I’m going to run Z distance in [longer period of time].” Either way, they’re different from “destination goals” 

I - climb 100 different bouldering problems, 10 times each, regardless of grade. I choose to ignore grade and repeat climbs because my strategy so far has been to climb as many “hard” things as possible (hard according to my personal definition) and I haven’t improved much doing it. This will force me to work more on technique. I can break this goal down further: 9 different problems, ten times each in February.

II - Take the dog for a hike once a week! (Although I don’t believe he is actually allowed up Mt Tam, so I’ll have to do that one without him.) I won’t worry about length or difficulty, just getting out on the trail.

III - I’m starting with the C25K program here. That doesn’t carry me all the way to my 5K in June. However, that race is a trail run considered much more challenging than your typical road race anyway, so I’ll spend the months between the end of C25K and the race running 5Ks on trails.

4) Track EVERYTHING. I’m a bit hit or miss here, but I do have a “diary card” spreadsheet which I print a dozen copies of at a time. On it I track things like mood and behaviors that might influence it; various ways I’ve been taking care of my dog; things I’m proud of and things I’m thankful for; and therapy skills that I’ve used that day.

5) Get started ASAP!

[cosmosogler]

i’m not sure how to begin today. i was gonna start writing five minutes ago... but then i just kind of sat there and i’m not sure what to say. i’m so tired.

well i wrote a post here when i woke up. the dream bothered me all day though. i feel like it means something but i don’t know how to unpack it and i don’t got an individual therapist to talk about it with.

it’s so hard to condense those dreams into words, especially in 15 minutes. i dropped whole... i can’t call them “plot lines” but stuff that was important for understanding the dream in order to hurry up and get to the ending to try and summarize. 

like i left out that dad always has nightmares about sharks and alligators, and the last third of the dream (which was the only part he was in at all) was in an area of my dreams that always has a big ass shark living on the coast. i don’t know what it means. but i noticed it. i recognized the coast line while i was falling out of the sky.

and i left out most of the actual ending. which was, i discovered who was manufacturing the dimensional bombs as i traveled through forests and neighborhoods, becoming more and more disheveled. i wasn’t sure if they transported all of what they touched or just cut things off in a set radius. but i was cold. i found out where the leader was. i teleported into the airship chamber and found him in a crowded room surrounded by armed guards. i knew what would happen but i still did it. i was holding one of the bombs i’d plucked off the guns outside. i threw it at him. when it hung in the air for a second i set it on fire and exploded his whole head. the 100 guards leveled their guns at me. but i didn’t care. i woke up.

i think it was interesting that at the beginning of that part of the dream i was in a store for stuff to pamper yourself with and by the end of the dream i was shoeless and covered in dirt and rain and about to die.

it also seems to be about the first time i’ve ever killed someone easily in a dream. usually the “monster” is like, a guy with a gun or a rabid dog, and i only have my weak hands and arms and i don’t want to hurt them but i need to survive. this time i didn’t even care at all and also i could set things on fire with my mind.

anyway i got ready for school. i picked up snoopy’s cat food from the front office. my home package came later in the day but i won’t have time to retrieve it until maybe saturday. booked until then. and i don’t know how heavy it will be so i can’t just pop down and grab it in five minutes before i leave in the morning.

i felt... ill, today. not sure how to describe it. “crummy” i guess is an accurate word. the feeling didn’t go away at all over the course of the day. by the end of the day i was retching every time i coughed. keegan asked if i was ok. i said i just felt sick.

it wasn’t like a sore throat or runny nose or anything. i mean i still have coughing fits but it doesn’t feel like there’s anything to cough up. it was like my stomach was just uneasy. it was the kind of thing that was maybe supposed to stop happening after i got my gallbladder out? 

eating didn’t make me nauseous or anything but... ehh describing it in too much detail is weird. if i am reading this in the future it’s THAT feeling.

so that set the stage for everything i did today!!! 

in classical, first thing in the morning, there was a screeching noise that just... was present for the first 30 minutes of class. i was going to die. i was about ready to run out of the room and go out the front door of the building and cry. poor luis must have been tired of hearing me fidgeting and scratching out stuff in my notes and being indecisive about what color i wanted to use. 

i’m still taking notes with the four-color pen. i like it a lot but god it’s gonna be hard to read those notes because i had to scratch stuff out constantly because that noise was destroying my brain and my coordination and my ability to comprehend words and pictures. and also my patience.

half the class wasn’t there this morning. i think most, if not all, of them got out of that midterm at 10 when it ended. suzanne didn’t show up. she came for the next class and later she told me she had sat down to plink at her piano and ended up just wanting to be there for an hour. i gave her my notes even though they were messy from the distant but unceasing metal on rusted metal sound.

then we went to spaghetti day! i talked to suzanne about dreams the whole way there. she said she remembers basically every dream she has every night. it was such a, i guess, relief to meet someone who also remembers all their dreams??? it made me feel less, unique, i guess. mostly it was just REALLY nice to listen to someone else talk about how they dream about the same places over and over and remember stuff they did in previous dreams because they spent so much time remembering everything. we compared notes. 

i guess i was looking for an answer or some kind of context to put this dream in. i didn’t get that information here but i did really appreciate how open suzanne was about her dreams.

so we had spaghetti. i don’t remember what we talked about while we sat in the grass. we mostly gave the halava a running commentary when suzanne noticed they had changed up the recipe. she said they used to do that more often.

then i went to group therapy. we talked about the guy talking here next thursday. he who shall not be named. the racist guy. one interesting thing happened, besides me sharing my discomfort with how to approach the danger since i’m only tangentially affected by it. 

the interesting thing was that one member was telling a story about their experience with a very sketchy person earlier in the day. they were joking around and laughing and making a face that our therapist interpreted as “smiling.” she asked why the person was making so light of this kind of pretty scary situation.

i said “no. i’ve spent a lot of time telling jokes about bad stuff, and that’s not a smile. that’s a grimace at best.” 

the person gave me a sort of look that i’m not sure how to describe. recognition? gratitude? embarrassment? maybe all of them.

i walked back to the physics building and went straight to e&m class. i took notes!!! the professor didn’t really make any sense though. but i found out suzanne works with one of my classmates so i asked her if it would be ok for us to maybe be introduced during their next meeting tomorrow. she said that was probably a good idea.

after that i bummed around in my office and worked on the new quantum assignment (due monday because god hates us). 

i showed harrison the card crusher video. i also realized while i was being sick in the bathroom that i don’t feel very comfortable... not laughing around some of my classmates. i guess i just fell into this really easy, natural pattern of telling horrible stories about my childhood and then pretending to laugh and be not upset. it’s something i did a lot at villanova too. 

the pattern is that almost every story i tell will contort itself in such a way that, in the last sentence or two, if it wasn’t already dark it will get there at light speed.

like one doozy i told yesterday when we were talking to rebika about child labor in the united states was that “oh yeah, my mom would take me to work with her when i was about ten. she’d tell me, ‘here, put this away. do this. do this. and do this.’ and she’d do that for eight hours. this happened a lot. but she wouldn’t take me out for ice cream afterward or let me keep any of the money. she’d just take me home and beat me.”

i... want to say it’s an exaggeration? but i feel like it’s kind of not. maybe some of the words aren’t quite accurate. like the beatings had mostly stopped by the time i was 10-12... more or less? but the emotional beatings never ended.

maybe i was a little older than 10 when she did actually start taking me there and forcing me to work all day. pretty sure i was 12 at that point because i was on The Forum and i’d have pretend conversations with my internet friends in my head while listening to one of the two albums i had on my ipod and removing staples for nine hours straight.

i guess i get some sort of satisfaction from the look of utter horror on harrison and jennica’s faces. 

at 6 we had a second round of quantum. classes normally go for 50 minutes but the professor decided to keep talking for another 20 minutes after that and my brain turned to mush about 8 minutes before he finally let us go. 

poor keegan couldn’t actually see the board because we were in a lecture hall instead of the classroom. i probably should have noticed that he had really bad vision. he just... never complained/bragged about it the way suzanne or jennica do. i offered to let him see my notes tomorrow morning because about halfway through the lecture my eyes stopped working. 

they felt dry and gunky and stopped focusing which was giving me a headache. like, there was a delay where i couldn’t see between looking up at the board and looking down at my notes.

i thought that things might improve since i am taking more frequent breaks and also biking home which requires ONLY long distance vision. maybe i should pick up some eye exercises.

then i was sick one more time and then i biked home. i went TURBO FAST. all the parts where i usually get tired i flew by. i mean, i was still tired and my legs burned, but i didn’t pant as much after getting up the hill and i forced myself to keep going.

then i made the rest of the tempeh tacos for dinner because i didn’t want the leftovers to go bad and waste the beautiful experience of tempeh tacos. my onion had gotten a pink spot though and i think it’s what was making the fridge/kitchen area smell funky. i need to learn how to preserve those better. 

they were still pretty good! i made the tempeh way better this time, texture-wise, and i didn’t drown everything in lime juice, but my body was just unhappy and i thought this would cheer me up but it didn’t really.

after that it was 8:40 so i just listened to some mbmbam clips and played a logic puzzle and read some real short fanfiction. now it’s 10:54 and i’m ending my journal entry late but i guess... i don’t want to sleep honestly.

i’ve got the follow-up appointment with the psychiatrist tomorrow so i’ll be talking to her for a while i think. i’ve got some notes compiled as i mentioned earlier. tomorrow i gotta teach for four hours though and i don’t know if i’m really up for that. i mean, i have to be up for it, but i don’t know if i’m really honestly up for it. which means i’ll just be tired tomorrow all day too.

something good about me. i can’t think of anything i ain’t said already. dang it. 

i think my comedic timing is pretty on point. yesterday harrison mentioned again how my sarcasm is virtually indistinguishable from my normal voice. i said something in reply... he started drawling something really obviously sarcastic and i cut him off.

“i’ve been doin this since before you were born! literally everything i say has a drop of sarcasm in it! GET! ON! MY! LEVEL!!! scrub.”

jennica died.

i’m glad someone thought it was funny. people seem to generally like my for real jokes. even the stupid puns. luis said today that “i think sammie is the only one who actually likes my nonsense” and i gave him a thumbs up. 

[greg38mcall]

The Best of the Best: My Top Organizing Tips!

I am back with part two of a four post series I am putting together with the best of the IHeart Organizing best. It's been a long time coming to take everything I have learned over the years, whether it is working in my own home or working with others, and compiling it all in a single place here on the web. The four-part series will include: Gearing Up for Your Next Organizing Project with a FREE Printable Kit! Need helping getting started or prioritizing where to begin? What is the plan of attack? What is currently working well and what isn't? What storage do you need? Trying to get rid of things, but finding it hard to decide what to keep and what to pass on? I have put together a great printable kit to help you prioritize, sort, and navigate your way through your next organizing project(s), which includes a total of TEN free printables! FIND THAT POST HERE! My Top Organizing Tips! Instead of digging through years of my archives to find individual tips, I am going to compile the best of the best in a single, very informational post! It's going to be a whopper and a really great resource for projects of any size. Labeling 101: Quick & Easy Labeling Techniques I have tried almost every type of label on the market, from vinyl to label makers to stickers and chalk markers, and they all have their place. But what are my tried and true favorites? What do I reach for with almost any project due to time, cost, practicality, and ease? I will be sharing three labeling techniques that haven't failed me yet, and that you won't need any fancy tools to utilize. Practical, Everyday Storage Solutions! If I have learned anything from raising three boys and organizing along the way, it is that storage can be expensive and that our needs are constantly evolving. Gone are the days where I purchase pretty bins and baskets to decorate with. Although I will always appreciate beautiful storage, it has to be versatile and it has to last! With that in mind, there are a few storage products that I have found that continuously work hard for me in a variety of situations, so they end up being the types of products I gravitate toward when working on any new projects. For the final post in the series, I am putting together the ultimate storage source list with tips and products that I have fallen in love with over the years. So let's dive in with part two of the four-part series: My Top Organizing Tips!

Below you will find 20 Tips and Tricks that I have learned over the year and have been crucial in setting up our home, creating more family time (what it's really all about), saving money and sanity, and even encouraging better habits by all of us. (I touched on a few of these tips in the printable post, however, they are important enough that they are worthy of the repetition). U N D E R S T A N D   Y O U R   " W H Y " 

Before you start an organizing project, it is a really good idea to reiterate why the project is so important to you. Everyone has their own "why", but I encourage you to do it because it will make your life easier, it will save you time, it will bring you joy, it will reduce your stress, save you money, and because you truly understand the positivity that results from organizing. Avoid striving for perfection, comparison traps, or thinking that organizing will ultimately solve all of life's messy problems. Stay intentional and do what is best for you to get the biggest reward for the time that you invest. In the image above you can see that we have invested in organizing our fridge, and do our best to maintain it on a weekly basis. Our "why" is that we are able to promote healthier and easier snacking, we eat more meals at home, we waste less food (and money), etc.... G E T   M O T I V A T E D

Sometimes I think getting yourself motivated can be the hardest part! Just getting started can be really overwhelming. And knowing where to begin can be even more daunting. You may feel like you have plenty of areas you want to streamline, but my first tip is just to take it one small project at a time. My recent printable post offers tools to help prioritize where to begin, and to summarize I typically recommend ranking your projects in terms of what is costing you the most time, money, and sanity. But also start small just to get the momentum going. Once you finish one project, you should feel some natural endorphins and also reap some immediate benefits. It is also important to know what motivates YOU! There are definitely times that I look at a mess and feel overwhelmed, so I personally find a way to put a creative twist on it. Getting to the creative side of the project feels like a fun reward to me (making labels, lining drawers, wallpapering, painting, etc...). The excitement I feel for the fun part of the project is what keeps me going during the messier moments. Are you wanting to get into a good book? Allow yourself to listen to a recording while you are sorting. Behind on your favorite television season? Sorting and organizing is a great time to binge watch something. Try researching some inspiration and #goals to get yourself visually stimulated. We know why organizing is so important, but sometimes that isn't enough, so look for your own ways to get jazzed up and excited about it! Most importantly, sometimes you just have to force yourself to start. When I am feeling sluggish or really dreading a project, I try to just push myself to take the first step to get it started. I am often surprised how quickly I can get invested, and that it is never as bad as it seems. You just need to get the blood flowing and adrenaline running. Do a little cardio, turn on some good music, and move your body... it is all SO helpful and really important. C R E A T E   A   S M A L L   P R O J E C T   T O O L   K I T 

I find myself reaching for a few common items on a frequent basis, so I toss a few of these things into a small, portable bin to keep handy while working on an organizing project:

Phone:  I use my phone for time management and listening to music/podcasts.

Headphones:  I prefer to utilize headphones while sorting to keep me focussed and drown out distractions.

Sorting Signs:  These are great for identifying specific sorting piles (download free here). I also like to keep a couple of empty cardboard boxes to pair with the signs and keep the sorting piles corralled and portable.

Cleaner:  Spray cleaner/wipes are key to giving yourself a clean slate. I always like to wipe down all of the surfaces of the area I am clearing out, as well as items that haven't seen the light of day for some time.

Rubber Bands:  Rubber bands work well for bundling/corralling small items like cords, pens/pencils, papers, etc...

Zip Bags:  Just like rubber bands, zip-locking baggies also inexpensively corral and categorize smaller items. I find them especially useful when organizing craft supplies and small tools/hardware. 

Scissors:  Scissors are helpful for snipping loose strings on linens and garments, opening packages and boxes, and cutting ties/bands.

Notepad, Flags, Pen, and Sharpie:  The notepad and flags are really great for jotting down ideas that arise during sorting, or for making a quick list of labels that need to be created (the sticky tags can also act as temporary labels mid-project). The pen is for note taking, while the Sharpie is nice for labeling boxes and baggies.

Label Maker:  I am going to dive deeper into my favorite label making tools in my next post, but having a basic label maker on hand is a household essential in my book. 

B L A N K   S L A T E

As you begin, I recommend removing everything from the area you are focussing on (cabinet, drawer, closet, fridge, etc...) to give yourself a clean and blank slate. There are a few benefits in doing this key exercise:

It allows you to give the area a good cleaning.

It requires you to touch everything before putting it back.

It encourages you to re-think how you are setting up/using the space.

C A T E G O R I Z E 

This tip comes in two sizes; small and large!

Starting with the bigger picture, try organizing and sorting your belongings based on categories. This can be a little challenging to wrap your mind around, but if you are sorting items in a bathroom, then bring all of the items from ALL of your bathrooms together and sort/pare it all down accordingly. This gives you a bigger picture of what you already have, what should live where, what can be condensed, what you need to add, etc... This concept applies to linens, clothing and outerwear, kitchen items, office supplies, medications/first aid, tools, etc... The same idea should be used while you are loading up your cupboards, drawers, and closets. You will want to create categories of similar item types and group them together in the space. This will help you (and others) to recognize and locate the items quickly and easily. Z O N I N G   L A W S 

Whenever possible, it is always better to keep specific item types in as few places as possible around your home, which will ultimately cut down on the time it takes to hunt something down. For example, you may keep charging cables in your living room, entryway, automobiles, bedrooms, etc... When the time comes for needing a charger, suddenly you are looking in multiple places. In that situation, I would recommend creating a zone in your home where all of your tech lives, which would not only include charging cords, but may also include batteries, tech cleaners, keyboards/mice, media, remotes, etc... With everything within that category stored in one specific place, everyone should naturally fall into the habit of checking that one place when they need something tech related. We are generally groomed to practice this concept in the kitchen (dry items go in a pantry, silverware goes in a utensil drawer, etc...), but the same idea should be implemented all throughout the entire house. Zones can be created in bookcases, cabinets, drawers, closets, nooks, etc... It is just used as a general term for an area in your home where everything with a similar responsibility is stored. G I V E   E V E R Y T H I N G   A   P R O P E R   H O M E 

Bottom line, clutter happens when things don't have a home, or when we aren't disciplined enough to put things away. While organizing, everything you sort/touch needs to be assigned a proper home. When you run out of space, that is when it is time to purge. And when something new comes in, it is a really good rule of thumb to let something go right away. It is a good idea to know how and where you are going to store your belongings prior to adding them to your shopping cart. If you notice piles/items consistently out of place, first assign it to one of your home zones. Go from there to find a way to make it fit. Paper piles? Give yourself an inbox to corral mail until bill paying day. Returns need to be done? Put a basket in your coat closet or car to hold those returns until you are out running errands. At the end of the day, if an item doesn't have a proper home, it will cause a trickle effect of frustrations. M O R E   I T E M S ,   M O R E   P R O B L E M S

I have never been a minimalist, but I have seen first hand the problems that come from owning too many things. Not only do you run the risk of creating piles and clutter (which can ultimately lead to emotional distress), you also carry the responsibility of having to maintain every last item you own. That means keeping it clean and fixing it if it becomes worn out. When it comes to linens and clothing, if you have multiple options, you may be less likely to keep up on washing duties. You may also spend more time contemplating what to wear each day. More items require more space to store those items, and space usually equates to dollars. Dollars in home size, containers, closet systems, etc... S H O U L D   I T   S T A Y   O R   S H O U L D   I T   G O ?

The sorting process can really be daunting and be the one act that slows us down while organizing. We become emotionally and financially invested in our belongings. Eliminating our items can overwhelm us and even deter us from finishing our projects. Last week I shared a list of sorting questions that can be really helpful in aiding you through the process of letting things go (download free here). I like to keep it laminated and use it as a tool to help myself and others stay on track during the paring down process. The biggest roadblock is typically those sentimental items; belongings we received from a special someone or tied to specific memories. A few tips for handling those situations:

I am typically pretty good about understanding the benefits of paring down and letting things go. But I am also a sentimentalist. I frequently tell myself that items do not equal memories, that memories live in my mind and heart. However, items can draw emotion and connection to moments in our lives. These days we are really lucky that we have the technology to help us retain those items without having to necessarily hold on to every last birthday card. Sometimes I think tech is taking over the world, and I miss the days of paper book pages and magazines, face to face conversations, and tangible items that are real and nostalgic. But tech can also be a blessing. We now have the ability to photograph our belongings, so when they are passed on we still have some sort of visual record of them. We can also scan our children's artwork, letters from our pen pals, and old photographs of our grandparents. Take advantage of technology and use it to store your memories digitally vs. in boxes around your home.

Assign each member of the household a special box for memorabilia. These boxes could be considered a bit of a time capsule or treasure chest of sorts. It allows us to hold on to the most special of items but also encourages us to keep things pared down to a single container.

Collections are best displayed in a grouping vs. spread out around the home. If you (or someone you love) collects specific items, group the best of the best on shelves or in a display cabinet. This creates more of a statement and also pays tribute to the passion while reducing the amount of clutter spread throughout.

Which brings me to my next point, what good are your memories and belongings doing living in boxes in your basement or attic? Why not get them out and enjoy them, or pass them along to someone that will. Put old photos into an album or frame them on the walls. Display grandma's china or grandpa's camera collection on your shelves. Create shadow boxes of children's clothing, artwork, or clay creations. Make a blanket out of old textiles. Pay tribute to your family history in tasteful and creative ways.

Finally, if you just can't decide, I recommend using a bin or box as a holding cell. Pack up the items you just aren't sure about, put the box away on a shelf or in storage, and set a reminder on your phone or calendar for three months down the road. In that time, if you have not reached for or thought about those items, then you will probably be OK letting them go for good. Don't use this as a crutch for everything, but it is a useful way to really decide before doing something you might regret. This works especially well when sorting down your child's toys that they are insistent they can't live without.

A   T E A M   E F F O R T

If you are organizing for more than just yourself, then make the process about everyone involved. It might be as simple as brainstorming and asking for suggestions, but I also recommend getting the individual(s) active with the sorting, moving, cleaning, and organizing. This will get them invested in the process and increase the success rate of maintaining things going forward. 

Also, be sure to consider everyone's existing habits when setting up your systems. If your spouse has a habit of dropping their change, keys, and wallet in the same place each day, then maybe consider adding a decorative tray in that exact spot to corral it and make it look more intentional. Sometimes it is easier to create a solution based on the habit than it is to change the habit itself.

In the image above I worked with my son to organize his work area in a way that caters to his study style. He needs a larger, empty surface to spread out on, so giving him wall organization allows him to keep his desk clear. He does best when there are fewer distractions so we kept things fairly basic.

K E E P   I T   S I M P L E 

The easier it is to put things away, the more likely we are to do it! One of my most basic tips is to use open-top bins and baskets as often as possible. If you have to remove a lid or move an item to put something back, then you may be less inclined to keep up on it. Only stack lidded bins that are not utilized frequently. If stacking is ultimately the best solution to make the most of a space, consider using pull-out drawers instead of lidded containers, which will allow you to quickly access (and put away) the contents inside. You can see more of how I encouraged this concept throughout this entire client kitchen here.

F I L I N G   I S N ' T   J U S T   F O R   P A P E R S 

I file anything and everything I can. When I open a drawer or closet door, I don't want to have to move a pile of items to see or access something at the bottom. Filing items will allow you to better see everything at a glance, and quickly grab from the front, middle or back. Not only can you file clothing such as sweaters, jeans, t-shirts, etc... But you can also file linens, movies, baking sheets, cleaning supplies, foods... The sky is the limit!

D I V I D E   A N D   C O N Q U E R 

It may seem like an organizing cliche, but add dividers to your drawers whenever possible. There are a few different benefits for doing this, but the two primary reasons are:

Dividers hold your items in place and prevent tipping or shifting when the drawers are opened and closed, and that means less rummaging and searching.

Dividers encourage you to stop and think before stuffing random things away. If the contents are organized and divided, then it is harder to stash and dash. The dividers should naturally aid you in keeping your drawers tidier.

DIY drawer organizer post can be found here.

T H I N K   V E R T I C A L L Y 

Space is typically maximized when you can make the most from floor to ceiling. Do this by adding storage to walls via pegboard or wall organizers, utilizing tall and narrow bookshelves, and taking advantage of the backs of cabinets and doors.

Our hallway closet organization post can be found here.

T H I N K   O U T S I D E   O F   T H E   B O X 

Your organizing solution does not have to be traditional, or what everyone else typically does. There is so much creativity in the world, who is to say what is normal and what isn't? Organize based on your routine, your lifestyle, your home, your schedule, and your style. What works for me might not work for you, and that is OK! Some of the best ideas and trends are formed when people go down their own path.

An example of this is the family closet concept. Typically speaking, folks have a dresser/closet in their own bedroom. However, I have seen families create a community closet used to store the clothing for the entire family in a single place. This cuts down on the time needed to do and put the laundry away, streamlines the process of getting multiple kids ready for school in the morning, and offers quick packing and planning for vacations. It may not be the way most families do it, but it doesn't make it wrong. In fact, if it makes your life easier, then it is absolutely RIGHT!

In the image above you can see how we set up a small document retention area in our storage room. Not typical at all, but it offered us a place to store our unsightly and bulky items like our paper shredder and waterproof/fireproof document safe. 

M A X I M I Z E   Y O U R   C L O S E T S 

Whenever possible, it is best to look beyond the stock shelf and hanging rod that is originally installed in most closets. Although I always appreciate a solid floor to ceiling closet system, I know they aren't always in the budget. Great closets can still be maximized by adding in a dresser or shoe rack below the hanging items, multiplying shelving with the help of a bookcase, adding a second rod halfway down the closet to double hanging space, etc... There are a lot of wonderful mix-and-match closet organizers for great prices at most department and home stores, and they can easily be paired with existing storage pieces to really maximize your overall closet functionality. Our teen boy closet organization post can be found here.

T O   L A B E L   O R   N O T   T O   L A B E L ,   T H A T   I S   T H E   Q U E S T I O N

Labeling is another personal preference that doesn't have a one size fits all rule.

The overall purpose of labeling is to create identification. Generally speaking, it is best to label for safety purposes or to keep your household on the same page.

Label food containers to indicate a specific ingredient (or lack of ingredient) due to allergies and sensitivities.

Label food containers/leftovers with dates to prevent serving expired and spoiled eats.

Label to indicate if an item is fragile or hazardous.

Label to identify the contents of a solid container or bin.

Label to differentiate multiple items that appear similar.

Label to help children identify where to find things/put things away (toys, snacks, clothing, etc...). 

Label to identify the possession of items between household members.

Label to create consistency or understanding between household members.

Again, it really comes down to how your household functions and the dynamic of everyone who resides there. Labels can be extremely helpful but are not always necessary. The next post in this series is all about my favorite labeling tools, but this label maker can take on just about any labeling task. If you are looking to label something temporarily, consider dry-erase options.

C O N T A I N   Y O U R   E X C I T E M E N T !

The act of organizing is FREE my friends, because organization happens naturally when you pare down and categorize. 

But we would all be silly to think that storage containers are not a beneficial part of the organizing process! There are endless benefits to utilizing dividers, bins, and baskets to separate and store our belongings, and they ultimately encourage us to maintain our systems while also providing accessibility and space maximizing advantages.

There are quite a few ways to save money on storage, but the biggest is to just wait. Once you have gone through the sorting, purging, and categorizing process, I encourage you to live with it for a bit before investing in containers. This ensures you like what you have done so far, and reduces the chances that it will be changed out in the upcoming weeks/months.

Also, you may realize that you don't need as many containers as you initially thought, and you might even find some extra storage around your home as you continue to check projects off of your list.

Bonus Tip: Once you do purchase your organizers, don't remove the tag/label right away. Tuck the receipt inside and take the storage for a spin before fully committing. This makes it easier to return if you find it isn't working out as originally planned. Deep pantry organizing tips can be found here.

M A K E   A D J U S T M E N T S

I have met quite a few organizers in my day, and I still don't know a single person who gets it right the first time, every time. So if you find something isn't working out, I encourage you to be forgiving, stay positive, and try again. Also, remember that your needs are constantly evolving and changing. That means that your systems and home need to change with you. Organizing is a process and a journey and never a one-and-done. And if you feel like you have exhausted all options, don't be scared to ask for help and advice from friends, family members, and experts. Where there is a will, there is a way! "A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new!" - Albert Einstein

In the image above you can see how our awkward coat closet went through multiple phases to finally get us to a place of easy maintenance and organization.

A   H A B I T U A L   H O M E R U N

Now that you have put in all of the energy organizing that closet or setting up a new system, you are halfway there! Only halfway you say!? What's left!?

The key to any successful organizing project is to get into the habit of using it and maintaining it. An inbox is not going to keep your documents organized if you still toss them on the counter, or if you don't get in the habit of clearing it out on a frequent basis.

No matter what, keeping a neat home takes a certain level of discipline. This is why some of the tips above are so important; especially a less-is-more attitude and keeping your storage solutions as simple as possible. Dishes, clothes, and papers are not going to put themselves away, but once you get your systems set up and give everything a proper home, tidying up will become easier and easier.

It truly takes time to create new, healthy habits. And it can be especially challenging to encourage positive changes out of others. We have found this Habit Tracker to be extremely helpful in maintaining our systems and encouraging better habits in our household. A few ways we have used it is for the boys to put their belongings away after school, for my husband to get his clothes into his hamper each day, and for me to keep our bathroom counter clear of beauty products. The goal is to begin doing these things naturally as part of our routines, and the tracker is a really wonderful way for us to stay motivated and accountable.

_______________

WOW! Talk about A LOT of information! Obviously, this is a subject that I am passionate about. This post started out as 8 top tips, then went to 15, and ended at 20! And I probably could keep going! And I have even more to come! 'Stick' around because next up I am chatting all about labeling and my no-fail labeling products!

from IHeart Organizing http://www.iheartorganizing.com/2019/04/the-best-of-best-my-top-organizing-tips.html