#want you all to know that I will probably continue to do so because I fucking love it

[janeyseymour]

A Case of You

Summary: You and a certain redhead are deeply, and undeniably in love- although the two of you don't realize it. Cue Barbara and someone unexpected to fix that for you on Fourth of July.

WC: ~5.4k

(lemme know if you wanna hear my rendition of the song mentioned in this fic :))

It’s an odd situation that you’ve found yourself in. You’ve been living in Philadelphia for a while now. You somehow manage to scrounge up enough money after years of odd jobs, a few investments, and your day job of teaching at Abbott Elementary to finally be able to afford a house. It’s a beautiful little house- one that you’ve been able to turn into something of a quaint little cottage core house. Your backyard is filled with flowers and emulates what some might say is a house in the movies.

And because you finally have a house that you’re proud of, you invite your folks to the city of brotherly love for Fourth of July. There’s no place like the founding city of the country to be in for the day. From the red and blue dyed beers, to the fireworks that burst over the museum of art (and you’ll have a beautiful view of the display room your house), your new city is one of the best places to be.

Once your coworkers find out that you’ll have the view that they’ve always wanted, it’s decided that you’re going to be hosting the holiday not only for your family, but for your work family as well. So, it might be a little crowded, but… it’ll be fun. That’s what you tell yourself. It’ll be fine.

So here you are, on July 3rd, frantically cleaning your house. Not that it’s messy by any means, but you want to impress. Your house is cozy, and you want to give off the effect that it’s well lived in (and it is) while maintaining the sense that you’re clean and proud of the place that you inhabit. It’s not all that hard. There are pictures dressing the walls, beautiful paintings that you’ve done, little knick knacks that you’ve collected over the years. It all feels homey.

But still, you’re making sure that it’s presentable enough that you won’t get ridiculed and lectured by your mother and your coworkers won’t make fun of your home.

That is, until your cell phone rings. Expecting it to be your mother, letting you know that she and your father have landed, you answer the phone, “Hey Mom.”

“Not your mom,” a voice that you’ve been missing comes through the phone.

Your brow furrows as you pause your scrubbing the toilet as you glance at your phone. “Melissa?”

“Yeah, hun. Just callin’ to see if you needed any help with the party tomorrow,” the redhead tells you. “Any cleaning or want me to bring anything or something?”

You bite your lip. You wouldn’t ever admit it out loud, but the person that you’re trying to impress besides your mother is Melissa- the woman that you’ve been hopelessly in love with since you started working at Abbott. “Uhm… I’m just cleaning the last few things now,” you tell her honestly. “But I really do appreciate the-”

“What’s ‘the last few things’? Because you’ve told me that you only have a few things to get done before you head home from work, and then I find out that you stayed at the school so long Mr. J handed you his keys to lock up the building for the night.”

You have to let out a laugh at that memory. You sigh softly as you decide to tell her the truth. “I still have to finish cleaning up the living room and the kitchen. But it really isn’t all that-”

“Jeet?” At your silence, the redhead continues. “I’m bringing over drinks and dinner and helping you clean. I’ll be over in an hour.”

“Melissa,” you try to protest.

She’s quick to cut your argument off though. “I’ll see you in an hour, hopefully less than that.” 

And then you hear the phone line disconnect, and you quietly groan to yourself as you look at your appearance. You’re in your cleaning clothes that are covered with bleach stains, your hair is tied up messily, and makeup hasn’t been applied since probably the last day of school. You look a mess. With a sigh, you head for your bedroom to at least put on your face- you want to look at least somewhat presentable.

The redheaded second grade teacher is knocking at your door less than an hour later.

“Hey,” you smile softly as you open the door. She’s standing there with a case of beer and a bag of what you can only assume is dinner. And somehow, even in just shorts and a tee shirt, she looks as incredible as ever. You find yourself blushing.

“Are you gonna let me in, or should we just have dinner outside?” Melissa quips.

You let out a small, nervous laugh. “No, no, come in. P-Please don’t mind the mess.”

“You’re cleaning, I’m ready to clean,” the woman laughs. “It’s all good. Let’s eat though first, yeah?”

Dinner is nice. The two of you chat about what you’ve been up to since school let out for the summer and potential plans for trips that either of you are looking to take. 

“I just don’t have all that many friends in the area,” you admit shyly. “So, most of my trips are solo.”

“You do have friends in the area,” Melissa refutes. “You got the Abbott group. You got me.” She nudges you with her elbow.

“I do,” you sigh softly. “I just don’t want to be a bother.”

“A lot of people are bothers to me,” the redhead laughs. Then she turns serious. “You ain’t one of ‘em.”

You roll your eyes playfully. “How kind of you to say.”

“If you ain’t doin’ nothin’, I spend a lot of time down at the shore in July,” Melissa offers casually.

You can’t help but smile. “That- that’d be nice, yeah.”

“Well,” your coworker sighs as she sets down her fork and begins to clean up. “This house won’t clean itself. So what do you want me to help you with?”

“You helped enough by making sure I ate dinner,” you tell her with earnest. “You don’t have to-”

“I’m helping, so just tell me what to do, or I’ll start snooping around for cleaning supplies anyway.”

The two of you clean the kitchen and the living room as music floats through your house from your record player.

“You got quite the selection,” Melissa tells you as she dusts the case that holds all of your music. “It ain’t half bad.”

You blush. Your music taste is all over the place.

“Mind if I pick an album to listen to next?”

“Of course not,” you call from the next room over. “Pick whatever.”

You expect her to pick a rock band, so when Joni Mitchell’s hauntingly beautiful voice begins to dance in the air, you’re a bit shocked.

Still, you let the music take over your heart and your soul, and when “A Case of You” starts, you can’t stop yourself from singing along softly. As you sing the words to yourself, you realize that you would drink a case of Melissa and still be on your feet. There’s something about her that is so intoxicating and yet always leaves you on your feet. 

Apparently though, your voice travels more than you were aware of. In the living room, Melissa can hear your gentle melody. Her cleaning pauses as she silently makes her way to where she can hear your voice better.

You’re standing there scrubbing the sink as you quietly echo Joni Mitchell’s vocals. It isn’t until the song is over that you hear a different voice.

“You sing real good,” the redhead compliments quietly.

Instinctively, you jump. You weren’t expecting her to hear you. And then your face flushes as you turn to face her. “I- uh…” You can’t get much out than that. You fumble for words for a few seconds before you just barely whisper out an apology.

“You ain’t got nothin’ to be sorry for,” Melissa smiles. “I think I like your version more.”

Your jaw practically drops at those words. “Oh, I- uh, thank you. But nobody can sing it like Joni.”

“I think you did it,” the redhead tells you, and you can tell in her voice that she truly means it. “I saw the guitar in your living room too. You play?”

You shrug. “Kind of.” You don’t want to admit that you’ve been playing for quite some time and oversell yourself- better to underestimate than over.

“Well, after we’re finished cleaning, I think I should get to hear it.”

You blush. “Maybe.”

By the time the two of you have the house straightened up to your liking, it’s quite late. If you’re being honest too, with the amount of alcohol that the two of you have consumed tonight, you aren’t necessarily comfortable with sending Melissa on her way.

“So, I believe you owe me a song,” your colleague teases you as she opens up another beer and settles on your couch.

“I was hoping you’d forget,” you laugh as you sit next to her.

“I’d never forget that voice,” the redhead smiles innocently. “C’mon, just one song?”

With a heavy sigh and a dramatic eye roll, you reach for the guitar that you keep in the corner of the room. You tune it up quickly, chuckling when you see the impressed look that Melissa wears on her face when you don’t actually need a tuner.

You strum the guitar a few times to ensure that it’s tuned to your liking before beginning to play.

Of course, you play your own rendition of “A Case of You” to prove to Melissa that you simply can’t do the song justice the way that Joni Mitchell does. Your approach doesn’t work. By the time you’re finished fingerpicking the last few notes, green eyes are wide and in shock.

“What?” you ask weakly. “I told you I only kind of play.”

“That’s a lot more than ‘kind of’,” the second grade teacher says. “You should be teaching Music, not fourth grade.”

You shake your head. “If I had to do it for a living, I’d hate it. But as a hobby, I do love it.”

“Play another for me,” Melissa requests as she leans back and takes another sip of her drink.

Somehow, the two of you end up going through another two drinks as you give the redhead her own personalized concert. Those sparkling green eyes stay mesmerized with your charming voice as you tell her the stories behind why you learned a few select songs, how you wrote a few, and the way that your melodies are nothing but soothing.

“You should be out in LA writing music,” Melissa tells you. “You’re… incredible.”

Your already red and warm cheeks from the alcohol only become more flushed at her kind words. You can only set the instrument down in response.

“I think I’m done for tonight,” you chuckle as you sip your beverage.

The redhead sighs softly. “I guess I should head out for the night.”

“Stay,” you tell her quickly- probably a bit too quickly. “You’ve had more than enough to drink, it’s late, and I don’t want you out there driving.”

The smirk that tugs at Melissa’s lips, along with that mischievous glint in her eyes gets you to look at her curiously.

“Somehow I knew that when I brought drinks over that would be your response, so I packed a bag,” the redhead reveals. “Let me just go grab my stuff from my car."

You can’t help but throw back your head with laughter. “Of course you thought that.”

“Was I wrong?” your coworker teases.

The two of you end up sharing a bed that night, and when your alarm goes off the next morning, despite the fact that it’s July, you find yourself cold. You turn over, only to discover that the redhead isn’t next to you.

But you can hear soft humming coming from downstairs, along with the record player. She’s downstairs. And then once you’ve woken up a bit more, you can smell the coffee and breakfast being made. You make your way downstairs and can’t stop yourself from practically drinking in the sight of Melissa Schemmenti cooking you breakfast.

She must hear your footsteps, because she turns on her heel and smiles at you. “Hope you don’t mind that I made breakfast.”

“I’ll never pass up a Schemmenti meal,” you tease. “You know that.”

It’s only a few minutes before the two of you are sitting at the kitchen table with plates in front of you.

“You know you cuddle in your sleep?” Melissa asks.

You turn a violent shade of red. “S-sorry.”

She shrugs. “Don’t be. It was nice.”

Your heart flutters. You never thought that the rough and tough Melissa Schemmenti would be one for cuddling, but here she is.

Breakfast is nice and warm, and you can’t help the blush in your cheeks as the two of you clean in a comfortable silence. More than once, the two of you accidentally brush hands together or her hand finds the small of your back to guide you out of her way.

The both of you get ready for this party, and by the time you’re making your way down the steps to change the record, your doorbell is ringing.

It’s your parents- of course they show up first. It’s not that you aren’t happy to see them, but you wish the house was a bit more full so that you wouldn’t get the third degree as soon as you see your mother.

“Is it Barb?” Melissa’s voice floats down the steps before she comes into sight. When she turns the corner, she sees your parents still standing on the front step. “Oh.”

“Who are you?” your mother eyes your coworker warily.

“Melissa,” the redhead states. “Just a coworker of Y/N’s.”

Your mother hums quietly before inviting herself in. Her eyes glance around your place with a slight frown. “This isn’t much.”

“It isn’t,” you mumble. “But I very much like where I live and how I live.”

“When you said you could afford to buy a house, I was expecting more.”

“Jane, lay off,” your father cuts in. “Y/N, your house is very… you. I like it.”

You’re not quite sure what to say to that. So you simply smile at your father as a silent ‘thank you’ and direct the conversation elsewhere, praying that your coworkers show soon. “Did you want anything to drink? I have wine in the fridge, or I just have to set out the ice for the coo- shoot.”

“What is it?” Melissa asks, brows furrowed with concern.

“I forgot to buy ice yesterday.”

“Oh,” the redhead rolls her eyes as her arm wraps around your waist. “I can just run to the corner store real quick and grab some.”

Your eyes soften significantly as Melissa Schemmenti saves the day. “Thank you.”

“Not a problem, hun.” She grabs her purse from the kitchen table and heads out with a soft hum, only to pop back in. “You need anything else? Or… do you guys want anything?” she directs that last part at your parents.

All three of you shake your heads, so she smiles that Philly smile of hers and heads out.  You momentarily forget that your parents are present, and you can’t help the shy smile and blush that creeps into your cheeks as you watch her figure leave.

“Your little friend is very pretty,” your mother states once the door is shut.

You turn to her sharply. “Oh?”

“She’s very pretty,” your mom says again.

“Oh, good. I thought it was just me,” you mutter.

“No,” your father cuts in this time. “It’s a fact. You should probably get a move on if you want to do something about that. A girl that pretty won’t be single for long.”

“I was planning on pining from afar for anywhere from two to ten years and seeing where that got me. Probably nowhere, but I won’t know until I try,” you quip cheekily. “

"Your mother and I both saw the way she looks at you- she definitely has a thing for you too,” your father tells you. “Just… think on it. Yeah?”

You roll your eyes dramatically, and sigh. “Just… don’t go doing your meddling, please?”

“I won’t,” your dad raises his hands in mock surrender. Your mother, on the other hand though, stays quietly.

Melissa makes her way into the house again not twenty minutes later, a smile dancing on her lips. “The ice is in the cooler, along with the drinks.”

“Thank you,” you smile at her warmly. You then note that she has three drinks in her hand: a beer for her and your father, and a seltzer for you. She passes them out silently before cracking hers open and taking a sip.

She then leans in and wraps an arm around your waist again before mumbling into your ear, “If my mother said that to me about a house this beautiful, I would’ve lit the trash can on fire.”

The giggle that erupts from your soul is hard to contain. Thankfully, you don’t have a chance to say anything else because your doorbell rings. And when the two of you go to open the door, you’re more than pleased to see the entirety of the Abbott clan. Anything to get your mother’s attention off of you.

As it turns out, your mother and Barbara seem to get along swimmingly. What surprises you is how much your mother likes Janine and Ava as well. Your father quite enjoys Mr. Johnson’s tales, is able to talk sports with Gregory, and even falls for Jacob’s awkward charm. And Melissa is able to meander through your backyard with you as you ensure that nothing gets too out of hand.

When you’re chatting with your father and Mr. Johnson, your mother glances over at you. Melissa has an arm slung around your shoulder, and you don’t seem to mind it one bit.

“Tell me,” your mother implores Barbara. “Melissa.”

“What about her, dear?”

“Her and my daughter.”

“Oh,” the kindergarten teacher chuckles as she sips on her wine. “Those two have been pining for each other for years. If you ask me, it’s just a matter of time before they finally pull their heads out of their asses and get together.”

Your mother sighs a breath of relief. “I’m glad I’m not the only one to notice.”

“Oh, you aren’t, Jane,” Barb laughs. “Don’t tell either of them, but we have a bet on how long it’ll take them to finally start dating. I said by the end of July. Everyone else still thinks they’ll be dancing around it come the beginning of the school year.”

“While I don’t approve of a lot of the choices my daughter has made,” your mother sighs. “Including moving away from us, I do want her to be happy. Do you think she’ll be happy with Melissa?”

“That daughter of yours is never happier than when she’s with Melissa,” Barbara states simply. “And just so you’re aware: your daughter has done a whole lot of good while she’s been out here with us. We are very proud of her, and you should be too. I know she sometimes feels that she isn’t good enough for you.”

Your mother bites her lip, a bit ashamed at how she knows she’s made you feel- both today and in the past. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll mend that.”

“As you should.”

“But for now… my husband promised he wouldn’t meddle in her love life, but I made no such promise. Should we win that bet for you?”

The kindergarten teacher is clearly intrigued as she raises a brow. “And how do you propose we would do that?”

Their plan, as it turns out, is not the most intricate. It’s to simply get the two of you hammered while your mother quietly feeds you comments about how you’re already practically in a relationship with the redhead. Meanwhile, Barbara will plant that same seed in Melissa’s head before daring her to just make a move- Melissa is never one to turn down a dare while intoxicated; that’s how she ended up doing cartwheels on South Street one night after a particularly wild night at Oscar’s.

“You know she spent the night last night?” Barbara asks your mother. “Came over to help clean and ended up just staying.”

Your mother’s perfectly sculpted brow lifts. “I just assumed she was the first one here.”

“Nope,” your mother smirks. “I was supposed to pick her up so all of us Abbott people could come together.”

“Interesting… if you’ll excuse me, I believe I have some snooping to do.” With that, your mother rises from her seat and enters your house. Immediately, her eyes turn to the steps where your room and main bathroom are. She ascends up the steps. Melissa’s things, at least that’s what she assumes, are still scattered around in the bathroom. And… bingo: two toothbrushes. Then her eyes wander into the bedroom. Your mother knows that you don’t typically make the bed, but she is surprised to see that both sides of the bed are disheveled- bodies had clearly been on both sides.

Meanwhile, outside, Barbara makes her way over to you and Melissa.

“Where’d my mom go?” you ask.

“Bathroom,” Barb tells you gently. Her eyes don’t miss the fact that the redhead’s arm is still around you. “You two seem to be having a nice time.”

Green eyes glare at her work best friend, but you just smile and lean into Melissa. That glare washes right off of her face.

“It’s nice,” you smile. God, that smile of yours has the second grade teacher wrapped around your finger. “I’m almost done my drink though.”

That’s all the kindergarten teacher needs to hear to begin her side of the plan. “Let me get you both drinks.”

“Oh, I can get them for us,” Melissa tells your coworker. Her hand slips away from your back, and it’s odd that you feel the slightest bit cold without her holding you.

The kindergarten teacher watches the way that your eyes linger on Melissa’s figure. And when she’s bringing back the drinks, you simply attach yourself to her hip again.

“Cheers,” Barb smiles as she lifts her glass in the air. The three of you clink, and then drink. She makes a mental note to pace herself while raising her glass in your direction often. Melissa and you never turn down a toasted drink. 

When Barbara sees your mother make her way back out, she moseys over. “What did you find?”

“Those two are so in a relationship, even if they aren’t admitting it. They shared a bed and everything!”

“Well, I’ve already initiated them getting drunk,” Barb informs your mom.

“Perfect,” your mother grins. Her eyes glance in the direction that you and your coworker are in. “Those two are idiots if they don’t think they’re in love. Well, time to go start.”

When you see your mother walking in your direction, you simply tap your can with Melissa’s before downing a good portion of it. The redhead follows your actions, although her eyes do widen when she sees how much and how quickly you’re drinking.

“My dear,” your mother starts. “Can I have a word with you?”

With a soft sigh, you nod and allow her to pull you in another direction. 

“What, Mom?”

“Don’t take that tone with me,” your mother instructs strictly. Then she softens significantly, and you feel like you’re a young child again. She used to look at you with so much love. “I just… wanted to apologize.”

“For?” you raise a brow.

“The things I’ve said about your career choices and the likes,” your mother sighs sheepishly. “I- I am very proud of you. I hope you know that.”

You frankly aren’t sure what you’re supposed to say to that, so you just give a sad smile. “Thank you for saying that, Mom.”

“I know that you probably don’t believe me, but I am very proud of you. You’re shaping the future generations, and you’ve been able to make it out here on your own. You seem to have a lovely work life, and… you’re a hell of a lot happier here than you were back home.”

“I am,” you admit. “I love it here, Ma.”

“That’s all I could ever want in this life for you- happiness,” your mom smiles as she squeezes your hand. “My sunshine deserves sunshine.”

“Thank you, Mom.”

“I think I know how you could be happier though.”

“I’m not moving back-”

“I’m not asking you to move back home,” your mother rolls her eyes. “I’m asking you to pull your head out of your ass and get with that little friend of yours already.”

“I thought I told you and Dad not to meddle in my life love,” you smirk.

Your mother replicates your facial expression- one of mischief. “I never agreed to that, dear. But I mean, come on. It’s quite clear to me that you have feelings for her.”

“So what if I do?”

“It’s also quite obvious to me that she reciprocates those feelings for you,” your mother states. “I mean, the two of you act as though you’re already together as it is.”

“We do not,” you blush.

“She stayed at your house last night, the two of you shared a bed, her toothbrush is right next to yours in the holder.”

“Friends stay over at each other’s houses sometimes,” you counter.

“She’s been hanging off of you all day,” your mother points out. “She calls you hun.”

“She calls every one ‘hun’.”

“Her eyes never leave you, and your eyes never leave her. Just admit that you’re in love with her. And she’s in love with you.”

“She is not,” you roll your eyes.

“All I’m saying is: the two of you act like you’re in a relationship already. Just… think about your happiness for your ol’ Ma. I do want grandkids at some point, you know.”

Barbara grabs her work wife by the arm. “Cheers!”

The redhead only throws back her head to laugh before taking a long swig.

“So when are you gonna just tell that girl that you’re in love with her?” the kindergarten teacher probes.

“Never,” Melissa rolls her eyes. “I plan on pining from afar for… forever. There ain’t no way someone like that would ever want me.”

“I see the way she looks at you, Melissa,” Barbara reminds her friend. “She loves you, and the two of you act like you’re in a relationship as it is.”

“No we don’t.” The pointed look from her coworker has the redhead blushing. “Okay, maybe we do. But there’s a difference between acting like it, and actually being in a relationship.”

“I think you should go for it,” Barb says. “Tonight.”

“What?” Green eyes go wide.

“Why not? Nothing is more romantic than fireworks. And, the two of you are drunk, and if it doesn’t feel right you can always blame it on the booze.”

The second grade teacher bites her lip. “I don’t know.”

“Just… think about it.”

No sooner is the redhead back at your side, holding you by the hip again. And while she seems like everything is wonderful and there is nothing but pleasant thoughts going on in her head, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Her mind is swirling with what it would be like to kiss you, to be in a relationship with you.

Maybe, Melissa thinks to herself. 

Well, that maybe turns into an Absolutely I will, when Barbara dares her a few hours later to do something about the mutual pining that is going on between the two of you.

“I dare you to kiss her while the fireworks are going on,” the kindergarten teacher smirks, pretty intoxicated herself. 

“I will,” the redhead chuckles, never one to turn down a dare.

By the time the fireworks start going off, everyone is either on a blanket that they had brought or in a chair that lived at your house. Of course, you’re the last to search a seat due to your expert hosting skills, and you find yourself coming up with nothing.

“Come here,” Melissa rolls her eyes. As if you would find anywhere else to be but near the redhead. You stand beside her, ready to take in the spectacle that is about to light up the sky. And in a daring move, the second grade teacher easily tugs you into her lap. She her arms around your midsection and rests her chin on your back.

Your mother nudges Barbara with her elbow, grinning from ear to ear. “You think it’s gonna happen?”

“I dared Melissa to,” the kindergarten teacher mutters back. “So, yeah.” 

“Perfect.”

As the first fireworks go off, you can feel the excitement practically radiating off of Melissa. It’s adorable when you turn and see how awestruck she is by the lights in the sky. Your coworkers are entirely entranced by the display, and when it’s clear that the finale is about to take place, you expect to see those green eyes focused on the dark night above you. But instead, the redhead is looking directly at you.

“Lis,” you chuckle, and you try to turn her head so she can look up at the last of the fireworks. She doesn’t seem to care about the spectacle. No, her eyes are trained on you. “You’re gonna miss the finale.”

“I don’t care,” the redhead breathes.

“But they’re beautiful,” you whisper.

“Not as beautiful as you,” Melissa tells you quietly. And then her lips meet yours. And… the fireworks in the sky are no comparison to the fireworks in your heart.

Everyone that had gathered at your house is mesmerized by the display in the sky- all except your mother and Barbara. Silently, they high five before turning their eyes back to the finale of the fireworks.

Once the fireworks are over, it isn’t long before your friends and family begin to file out of your house.

“Don’t think that we aren’t talking about that kiss that I saw,” your mother whispers to you as she hugs you goodbye. Immediately, your cheeks flush red. But you can’t say anything, because she’s off of you, and giving Melissa a hug goodbye.

Barbara, on the other hand, doesn’t give any inclination that she knows what had taken place just a few short minutes ago. She heads out with a hug and a kiss to your cheek, thanking you for your wonderful hospitality.

And then you and the redhead are alone. And before you know it, her lips are back on yours.

Fast forward to the end of Summer, and Melissa has been your girlfriend since the Fourth. It’s been a wonderful summer spent down at the beach with her, and all too soon you’re walking back into the halls of Abbott.

Barbara doesn’t say anything when she sees the two of you walk in together or the way that Melissa instinctively prepares your morning beverage for you. No. She chooses to wait until the last of your Abbott family has made their way into the staff lounge.

“So,” the kindergarten teacher claps her hands together with a bright grin on her face. “Where’s my money?”

“Your money?” your girlfriend raises a brow.

“My money,” Barbara states with a smile.

“For what?” Jacob asks.

“The bet.”

“No one won,” Ava rolls her eyes. “Not yet at least. I still got my bet going.”

“That’s where you would be wrong,” the kindergarten teacher reveals. “Y/N and Melissa got together on Fourth of July.”

Your jaw nearly drops. “What?”

“You heard what I said, baby.”

“H-how?”

“While everyone else was watching the fireworks, I saw what I needed to see. So, just confirm it so I can win my three-hundred dollars.”

“Three hundred dollars?” Melissa asks incredulously. At her best friend’s nod, the redhead just continues to flounder for words.

“I ain’t payin’ until one of them confirms.”

You sheepishly smile as you raise the two of your hands from under the table, intertwined.

TAGS: @schemmentis @thesapphictimelady @marvel210 @itisdoctortoyousir @morgana-larkin @doesthatsuggestanythingtoyou @sweetcheeksschemmenti @megamultifandomtrashposts @lemz378 @http-sam @melissaschemmentisbranzino @imaginesmultifandoms @sexysapphicshopowner @lilfartbox1 @maybe-a-humanbean @imlike-so-gaydude @a-queen-and-her-throne @notinmyvocab @melanielaufeyson @dvrkhcld @cosmichymns @sasheemo @m1lflov3rrr @ricejucie @temilyrights @emilynissangtr @squinnchy @dopenightmaretyphoon @emeraldoceansstuff @shinyfaerielights  @blkmxrvel @marvelwomenrule @sarahjohannson @casualfoxwitch @babytakeittothehead @schemmentits @schmentisgf

[dem0batz]

Just Pretend

Caleb x MC // Love and Deepspace

Author's Note: I don't normally update this frequently so please don't expect me to continue to pump out chapters for this au at the pace that I have been. I'm just following the brain worms. Summary: Based on the main story track when MC is staying in Skyhaven with Caleb. You develop a minor cold and accidentally fall asleep the night you were supposed to rescue Kevi, unbeknownst to you that it was very intentional on Caleb's part. 🔞Content Warnings: Dead Dove; Do Not Eat, afab!mc, she/her!mc, yandere!Caleb, pseudocest, drugging MC, stalking (filed under “surveillance”), angst, brief mention of pregnancy and pregnancy loss, noncon, somnophilia, oral (f. rec), masturbation, breeding kink, cream pie Word Count: ~3000 words | read on AO3 | Chapter List

“Maybe you should take tonight to rest instead of meeting up with your friends, pip-squeak. You’ve been coughing all day.”

Caleb phrased it like a suggestion but you took it for what is was. Some things never change and his bossy tendencies was one of them. You had no intention of staying in tonight, cold or not— you promised Kevi you would help him and Zayne was waiting for you to bring the boy to him so he could be smuggled out of Skyhaven before the fleet found him.

As much as you wanted to trust your brother, there was something nagging at you that he was a different Caleb than the one you grew up with. You weren’t sure whose side he would take— yours or theirs should it be found out that you are secretly suspicious of the Farspace Fleet and investigating them.

“You’re probably right,” you say, exaggerating a cough.

“I’m always right,” he teases. “Besides, Skyhaven is under lockdown tonight while the fleet conducts a clean up.”

He disappears further into the apartment and returns a few moments later with two white pills in the center of his palm. You eye the pills warily.

“Cough suppressants,” he reassures.

A weight leaves your chest. You must be feeling especially paranoid with the whole Mia and Kevi situation. You don’t trust the Fleet but Caleb would never put you in danger, despite what his orders were.

You truly believed that. He was just trying to look out for your well-being. Taking the cough suppressants would probably help with the worst of your symptoms tonight anyway.

“Thanks,” you accept the medication. Caleb watches you chase down the pills with a glass of water, a satisfied smile on his face. “Why the need for the lockdown?”

“I see you haven’t gotten any less nosy over the years,” he accuses playfully.

“And you haven’t gotten any less avoidant over the years,” you counter. Still, you continue to probe. “Is it classified?”

Huffing a laugh and shaking his head, Caleb cages you against the counter. His eyes dance playfully across your face, left hand coming up to cup your jaw. You find it a little odd, considering that he was right-handed but you quickly push it from your mind, heart racing at the feeling of his proximity. His thumb strokes your cheek, subtly checking your skin for a rise in heat to ensure you haven’t caught a fever. At least that’s what he tells himself, and it’s partially true, but really he just wanted an excuse to touch you again after nearly a year of missing the feeling.

“No, it’s not classified,” he eventually gives. It wouldn’t hurt to allow you this small bit of information. “A weird fluctuation in the tunnel is riling up the Wanderers. So teams are being sent out tonight to handle it. But it’s nothing you need to worry about because you’ll be resting. Right?”

Thankful for your years of training at the academy, you school your face though guilt wracks through you for the lie you were about to tell. Yes, you believed Caleb would always put your safety first, but you still didn’t know how involved he was in this situation with the kids. You couldn’t risk letting them down. If it turned out you were wrong and the Fleet really had their best interests in mind, then you would tell Caleb the truth once Kevi was out of Skyhaven.

“First of all, I’m a Hunter and eliminating Wanderers is my job. So of course it’s something for me to worry about,” you narrow your eyes defiantly.

The lop-sided smirk on his face only grows in amusement. He always got his entertainment out of picking fights with you and then making it up to you afterward. But things were different now. You were different now. You had to learn to survive without the safety net Caleb provided. He needed to take your job seriously and recognize that you were more than capable.

“Unfortunately though, you happen to be right about me needing to rest and get over this cough. I need to return to work next week and I would hate for a mild cold to keep me from my job.”

At the mention of returning to work, his face drops, lips pursing disapprovingly. Caleb never did like the idea of you going into such a hands-on, dangerous profession but Gran always kept him from interfering with your career too much. Now that she was gone, there wasn’t anyone to bat away the insane thoughts of keeping you locked up at bay. Truth be told, his reaction was less to do with your job now and everything to do with you leaving Skyhaven. Thankfully, those thoughts didn’t win out today as he nods, backing away and changing the subject.

The distance between you was back to feeling cold and empty.

“I need to get ready for my shift. I’ll make sure to say goodnight before I head out. Get some rest, pip-squeak.”

The way he went from hot to cold gave you the worst kind of whiplash. One minute he was playful and fun, and the next he was closed off and felt far away and unreachable, even more so than when he was “dead”.

You swallow down the painful lump in your throat as you watch the back of his white sweater disappear down the hallway to the guest room he had been staying in during your visit since you have been staying in his.

After going through your usual bed time routine so as to not make Caleb suspicious, you crawl into the large soft bed. Rolling over on your side, you cozy up to watch raindrops hit the floor-to-ceiling window as yet another storm dumps on Skyhaven. You had every intention of feigning sleep until Caleb left but somewhere along the way, your eyes grew so heavy that it was impossible to keep them open. You hadn’t even realized that you fell asleep and when you did, it was like being submerged in a warm, soothing bath that you couldn’t seem to come out of, falling into such a deep sleep that not even dreams or nightmares could touch you.

Many hours later, an exhausted Caleb returns home. He doesn’t even bother shedding his damp uniform, leaving the OTTO unit to clean up the trail of water left behind from his soaked boots. He only has one destination in mind after a long night cleaning up the streets of his city. 

Caleb pushed open his bedroom door a crack. Peering from beneath the bill of his uniform cap, his eyes dart over your sleeping form. He takes a moment to admire the sight of you curled up in his bed, waiting for him to return home from work. It was something he spent his entire adult life dreaming of and now it was a reality, even if wasn’t of your own doing. Very little was when it was left up to him.

He was trained to sus out lies in interrogation rooms and could read you better than a book. After all these years, you still had the same tells though you had gotten better at concealing them. To anyone else, you likely would have been the perfect little liar but he knew your face and your body language better than anyone, despite what your new little boyfriends thought.

Yeah, he knew about them.

It was his job to know things and above everything else, you were always his first priority of business. He had continued to keep a close eye on you after his recovery post-explosion. Even if the professor hadn’t assigned you to his charge as a secret mission, Caleb would have done it regardless. His Colonel rank only gave him more resources to keep tabs on you, even if that meant occasionally having to destroy certain types of evidence to keep you safe. There were some places you went where he wasn’t able to keep watch— the N109 Zone, specifically. But it didn’t take long for the Onychinus leader to show his face in Linkon City.

Sylus may have been wealthy and full of resources competing with his own that kept his identity unknown to most other government and military entities, but he was difficult to ignore when he started showing up everywhere you went in Linkon. Wasn’t exactly subtle in the way he was pursuing you, touching you like you belonged to him.

But he would be dealt with later.

Out of all of your admirers, there was one in particular that set Caleb’s teeth on edge and that was his former best friend.

It was no secret that Gran always pushed you and Zayne together which is why Caleb invited him into your bedroom in the first place. He wanted to make sure that Zayne understood the only way he would ever get to have you was because Caleb allowed it. For years, it would seem that he received that unspoken message, never making a move on you beyond the permission Caleb directed in those intimate moments. It didn’t take long for the doctor to take advantage of your loneliness though, to swoop in and be your shoulder to cry on in his absence.

If any of your boyfriends deserved the Farspace Colonel’s wrath, it was Zayne.

This was personal.

Now that you knew the truth of Caleb’s life, there was no reason to continue to sit back and watch those four continue to take what was his. You didn’t need anyone else when you had him.

Caleb pushed the thoughts of those other men out of his mind, not wanting to spoil this rare moment he had to watch you in person again, comfortable and pliable in his sheets.

Just like when you were younger, the blanket was tossed to the side with one leg in and one leg out like your body couldn’t decide whether it was hot or cold. This gave Caleb a view of your body, his familiar oversized aviation tee that you had stolen years ago covering you. He can’t believe you still had it, and wore it regularly by the look of the thinning material. It rode up your torso, teasing a view of your stomach. The temptation to keep his hands to himself is impossible as a leather gloved finger traces the hem of your sleep shorts.

Caught in his thoughts, he’s thrown back to your sophomore year of college. He was in his last year of pilot training but made the trip from Skyhaven to Linkon as often as he could to see you. One particular weekend, he surprised you with with a visit and you surprised him with a positive pregnancy test. He was over the moon, thinking of the best way to break the news to Gran and trying to convince you to finally let him put a ring on your finger. Not that he needed your permission because he wouldn’t accept no for an answer, but hearing you say yes of your own accord would be ideal.

Yes, you were both young but he’s loved you for as long as he could remember and spending your lives together was always the plan. Not to mention, he’s been looking for a way to convince you to stay out of the Hunter’s Academy for years— a baby was the perfect reason to keep you off of such a dangerous career path. You didn’t need to risk your life when he would always be there to take care of you. Both of you.

That all came crashing down when you miscarried just a few days later.

He was devastated.

You were relieved.

Your relief broke his heart and made him angry, feeling like he was grieving the loss of your baby alone but he would never expect you to carry the burden of his pain so he kept it to himself. Regardless, he hadn’t let go of his plan for your life together; the timeline would merely be pushed back a little. He’d been patient for years at this point. A couple more wouldn’t hurt.

That was, until the explosion that left him dead to the world and confined to a bed during his recovery. For a while, he let go of that silly dream, content to watch you live your life from afar while he kept you safe from the clouds above. But now that you knew the truth and were back in his life, he felt a flicker of hope return.

Pushing the t-shirt further up your body, he hunches over to press a trail of soft wet kisses across the skin, imaging what you’ll look like swollen and heavy with his baby.

“I’m going to put another one inside you one day,” he continues peppering his lips over your stomach then resting his forehead there as his cap rolls off his head to land on the mattress. “This is my vow. As soon as I deal with the professor and we’re both safe, we will finally have the life we were always meant to, pip.”

You begin to stir under his touch, the feeling of his soft damp tendrils brushing your skin, tickling you even so deep in your sleep. The soft gasp of his name on your sleepy lips is enough to make him harden uncomfortably in his uniform pants, the starchy material leaving very little growing room. He can’t help but to bury his face in between your legs, inhaling the familiar scent of you with a shudder. It’s enough to leave the rational part of his mind behind, the last shred of his self-control slipping since your arrival as he pulls your sleep shorts down and tosses them to the side along with his jacket and gloves.

Caleb palms himself through the now unbearably tight pants before unzipping them for some relief. Kneeling back onto the bed, he carefully shoulders his way between your thighs, admiring the sight of your beautiful pussy and inhaling you again, feeling a sense of home for the first time in nearly a year. The temptation was too much to resist.

Just one taste.

That was all he needed to get by until he could convince you that this is where you belonged.

With him.

Knowing you wouldn’t wake up with the pills he fed you earlier, he flicks out his tongue to lightly spread your folds, teasing himself with the hint of your comforting flavor. He hadn’t completely lied about the nature of the pills— they would certainly heal up that cough of yours but would knock you out for a solid 12 hours before you came out of it. They basically put the consumer into a temporary coma to encourage a quickly healing process. The medication was not available for public consumption, reserved only for fleet members who needed a quick recovery but his rank gave him access that most others did not have.

Earlier, he had felt guilty for deceiving you but reminded himself that you were lying about staying in to rest and likely intended to sneak out once he was gone. He couldn’t have you wandering around Skyhaven alone at night without his protection. Not to mention, he never would have been able to do this if he hadn’t pushed you to take the medicine.

Your flavor explodes on the tip of his tongue, causing his hips to jerk into the mattress as he throws your legs over his shoulders to deepen his kiss to your center. Licking through the seam, he seeks out your clit, teasing and sucking it between his lips until you’re swollen and slick, gushing around his mouth with sleepy sighs and moans as you came on his tongue. Even if you wouldn’t remember it, he needed to make you orgasm, missing the feeling of you falling apart beneath him as if a piece of himself had been missing for ten long months.

This was the most alive he’s felt since he died.

Rising to his knees, chest rising and falling in heavy pants with your essence coating his chin, Caleb pulls his hard cock free. His head falls back in ecstasy as his hand cradles his girth. With you lying there and the lack of feeling in his right hand, he could almost pretend you were the one tugging on it, bringing him to the brink.

“Fuck, pretty girl. Missed you so damn much,” he pants, left hand climbing up your soft thigh to thumb your slick clit again. He had always been addicted to touching you, but now it was like going on a bender after getting sober and he couldn’t get enough.

Surprising himself with the quickness of his orgasm, he spurts all over you with a pained groan. Ropes of white coat the inside of your thighs and stomach, and he can’t tear his eyes away. When there’s nothing left to give, he slumps down, admiring the sight of his claim. Heart pounding in his chest, another intrusive thought invades his mind, bouncing off of the walls of his skull until he gives into the compulsion. Scooping the spend up with his fingers, he carefully stuffs you full of it, your pussy sucking them in like it was welcoming him home.

Slicking back his damp hair, Caleb feels like the storm clouds of his mind have been temporarily settled, allowing him to think clearly again. Guilt once again floods him as he thinks about what he’s done, always at war with himself when it came to you. He busies himself with cleaning you up and redressing you, ensuring to leave no tangible evidence of what he had done behind. Only the knowledge that he had left a piece of him behind for you to take back home with you. 

OpaLADS Taglist: @i-messed-up-big-time @sorryimakira

*If you would like to be added or removed from my tag lists, please let me know!

[taelortot]

The sun and the moon part zero

Walk with me for a second, yeah? So I was thinking, which is always a bad idea (according to my mother).

College student Megumi and his bimbo girlfriend would be a perfect match. At first It definitely threw his friends and passerby’s through a loop. He’s wearing all black with his little scene haircut, resting bitch face, looking angry at the world. While his dressed in all pink, short skirt, crop top, 5 inch heels girlfriend holds his hand, skipping down the campus sidewalk. She’s talking his ear off in that high pitched voice, a voice that megumi refuses to say he’s in love with. She giggles and bounces, making her tits nearly pop out of her top. She would smack her bubblegum and blow obnoxiously large bubbles just because she can. Begging her boyfriend for iced coffee with a “pleeaaseee gumiiiii” a small pout on her lips “I neeeed it” and who is he to say no to that cute little face? Those glossy pouty lips that he loves to kiss, tasting her cherry flavored lipgloss.

And he would never ever admit it, but god he nearly melts like a popsicle on a summer day when she calls him “Gumi”. He wouldn’t even make a noise as he nod his head, pulling out his wallet and paying for her daily coffee. A slight upturn to one side of his lips as he listens to her squeal with excitement.

The attitude was a different story. Megumi had his own way of dealing with her attitude, and y/n would love it. Always pushing his buttons to see how much she could get away with. Megumi didn’t mind it as much as his friends thought he would. Simply giving a a single look would put her in her place. A look that said “shut the fuck up before I make you”. A single look that y/n knew, she knew if she didn’t stop whatever she was doing, there would be a punishment waiting for her when they got back home. And as much as y/n loves punishments, she loved to be praised more. But!!!! On the off day that she was feeling a little risky, she would ignore Megumis look. Pushing his buttons, doing anything she could to get a reaction from him.

But our dear gumi would didn’t care who was watching, not one bit. Taking his thick, large hand and wrapping it around his small girlfriend’s pretty little neck. Giving her enough of a squeeze, along with a deadly look in his eyes, to stop whatever antagonizing behavior his little girl was doing. “You want to continue, baby?” He would ask, his voice low and full of threats he would most definitely follow through with. A small whimper would fall from those pretty little lips, testing every little bit of control the man has. A small shake to her head was enough to appease him, tightening his grip for just a second before releasing her. He would turn back to whatever he was doing as if he just didn’t do the most dominating thing he could to his girlfriend right in front of his friends.

It would leave y/n a little pouty (and a little damp), but that wasn’t anything megumi couldn’t fix with a chaste kiss to her lips… and her other pretty little lips.

“Where’s that attitude now, baby? Huh?” He would ask in a teasing voice, hands kneading the delicious fat of her thighs. “M’sorry gumi” she would whine, pushing her hips up, trying to get him where she needed him. But the action would earn her pretty little clit a slap. Two maybe.

“I don’t think you’re that sorry, pretty girl.” “M’sorry m’sorrryy pleaseee please gumi” he knew she was sorry, he knows his baby hates punishments. Always wanting him to worship the ground she walks on, which he does most days.

“Good girl, now lay back and let me do my thing, yeah baby?” His eyes locked with hers, waiting for that desperate little nod she does when she is begging for him to please her. Which he does, devouring her pussy like it’s his last meal. Growling into her as he tastes that sweet little cunt. It’s probably his favorite thing to do, getting on his knees, letting his tongue fuck her cute little hole. Sucking gently on her clit, because his girl is sensitive. Listening to her cute pathetic whines as she pulls his black hair, guiding him. Which he lets her do, allowing her to take all the control she thinks she has. It would be so sloppy, his tongue making lazy, languid circles around her tiny clit. Juices coating his face, nose to chin. Spit mixing with her arousal as he moans into her pussy, because this is also a treat for him. The pad of his fingers playing with her puckered hole, because one day “m’gonna stretch this pretty little ass.”

But don’t get it twisted, Megumi Fushiguro, is absolutely whipped for his pretty little bimbo girlfriend. Kissing the ground where she walks, carrying her favorite bubblegum around just in case she forgets hers. And he would never have an issue with all the guys on campus ogling his girl. Only because he’s heard y/n say “my boyfriends gonna kick your ass” to several guys who hit on her, which he does do. Megumi knows for a fact that his pretty girlfriend is so in love with him, so he has no insecurities when it comes to her. Grabbing a handful of tits when he sees a frat dude looking at her chest. Sitting her in his lap to makeout in the library when she’s supposed to be studying. Being so in love with this girl he didn’t even know a year ago.

He thanks his friend Satoru Gojo for fumbling this bad bitch, every single day. It’s not really gojo fault though, he tried to hit on her… but y/n likes the silently cocky bad boys. And Megumi is just that.

But Megumi would absolutely die if anyone found out he paints her toenails for her, giving soft kisses to the tops of her feet when he’s done. Only to hear that pretty little giggle he loves so much.

I want to write a whole fic about this. Something you’ll learn about me is that I LOVE LOVE LOVE to write y/n as a dumb bimbo. And that I shall do :)

Taglist

@vellichor01 @loveyislost

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

@dr-reids-fidget-toy#omg I didn’t know that about comic bucky that’s rlly cool

Starting a new post because I have off-topic Thoughts. Comic!Bucky contains fascinating commentary on the Cold War, WWII, and the media representations thereof. MCU!Bucky is (by necessity) pretty watered down. In the Brubaker comics, Bucky isn't brainwashed, at least not in the classic Marvel sense. He's just this guy who believes in the absolute rightness of his country, and has been in combat to support the U.S. since age ~14... and then he gets blown up by a missile, loses his memory, and Department X tells him "his country" is the USSR. So now he's the Winter Soldier. Nothing else about his personality or his politics changes. The Winter Soldier we see in the Brubaker comics is definitely a villain — he kills indiscriminately, kidnaps civilians to get his way, murders Rick Jones out of petty spite. But his personality is basically the same from childhood.

This is Steve remembering Bucky as a kid during WWII:

Brubaker retcons Bucky's role, from "kid sidekick who rushes in first and gets kidnapped, needing Captain America to rescue him," to "kid agent who infiltrates bases first, so that Captain America can follow him." With the memory loss, Bucky goes from slitting throats and setting off bombs for Uncle Sam, to doing it for Mother Russia. He's always been as cold and as willing to kill witnesses as he is as the Winter Soldier. It just never made the news reals.

And that's the other half of his retconned role: being propaganda for other child soldiers (e.g. Toro) who join up in his wake. This is Bucky and Steve watching a Cap and Bucky recruitment newsreel:

As an adult, the real difference isn't that Bucky is Soviet now; it's that he doesn't have Steve holding his leash anymore. To be clear, comic Winter Soldier also isn't free to come and go as he pleases — he's kept in a freezer between missions, he's probably not paid, he's in Department X — but he also has far more agency within the latitude of his orders. He's not dead-eyed and tortured by guilt like we see in the MCU. He goes on side quests to kill other Buckies. He argues constantly with Aleksander Lukin (the comic equivalent of Pierce). He complains about the inconvenience of not just sniping Steve in the head to steal the Tesseract.

Brubaker's point, throughout the comic, is that we have been lied to about World War II being "noble" or "good" or the story of the U.S. saving the day. And that that lie is used to prop up everything from U2 spy planes built with 100x the budget for education, to the Patriot Act nullifying the Fourth Amendment. Because not only is "WWII was a noble war fought without atrocities" nationalistic bullshit, but "Soviets are fundamentally different from us" is too. Bucky's continuity of character reveals both at once. He's a walking Soviet superweapon. Why? Because he was a walking American superweapon first, starting before he was old enough to shave.

Anyway, I get why the MCU had to change his backstory. You have to a) remind the audience who Bucky is, b) show-don't-tell why Steve is sad Bucky is trying to kill him, c) get across the idea that Bucky doesn't want to kill Steve but feels he has to, d) use Bucky to develop Steve's character, and e) set up a way for Bucky to get un-brainwashed. All within the span of ~30 minutes this movie has for this plot, amidst all the other plots. MCU!Bucky plaintively asking Pierce who Steve was, only to get slapped in the face, is sort of like AniTV!Tom constantly pawing at his ear: it quickly gets across that this character isn't acting under his own volition, in a way that minimizes audience confusion.

Plus: it's a Hollywood movie. It wouldn't get funded if it was too critical of the U.S. military. Movies are always, by definition, more conservative than other media because of their need for funding. And the MCU makes a decent effort to incorporate at least some criticism of the U.S., having Zola be involved in Operation Paperclip and having him (while working for the U.S.) order Howard Stark's murder. But a computer ghost reciting dry facts about the CIA recruiting Nazis doesn't have the same gut punch as watching the "good guys" send the literal child to knife his fellow child soldiers during WWII would have had.

[warlocksoup]

LOOPED: MIYA ATSUMU

she's stuck in a loop: texting him late on a friday night, letting him into her bed, clinging to him, silently begging for him to stay, only for him to leave again.

masterlist

tags/warnings: friends with benefits, implied love triangle, angst, hooking up, unhappy ending, kinda softcore smut but no actual smut, hardly proofread, mdni

word count: 2.2k

an: thinking abt starting a gen taglist for works like this since im planning on pivoting away from writing a bunch of series and focusing more on things like this. idk. let me know what you think if you want i can't make you. also do i think this is my best writing? no but writing has been so hard lately im proud of myself for getting this out

Atsumu likes to hold her after they fuck. 

His bare leg is hooked over her hip, and his arm is thrown over her shoulder, pulling her into his chest. It’s hot under her sheets, and Astumu’s skin is coated in a thin layer of sweat. It’s humid and unbearable, but she bears it, holding onto him by his waist, because it’s the only time he’s like this with her. 

“Thank you,” he says, and he tucks her head under his chin. His eyes are closed, and he lets out a long, deep breath. “I needed that.” 

He thanks her like she did him a favor. Her arms go a bit tighter around his waist, and she presses her ear against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. “Yeah,” she mumbles, her cheek pressed flat against his skin. “Anytime.” 

Atsumu runs a hand over the back of her head, smoothing down her hair. His fingers continue, dragging slowly down the center of her spine. “Do you mind if I stay for a little while?” he asks, voice dropping to a raspy whisper that makes her feel so desperate that shame boils just under his touch. 

Her eyes close. “No,” she says, her lips brushing against his bare chest as she speaks. “You can stay for as long as you want.” 

It’s like this every week. She always expects it to be different, and it never is. Every week, when it feels like it’s been dark for too long and she’s alone and can’t sleep, she texts him after she promised herself she wouldn’t. Sometimes he responds and says he’ll be right over, sometimes he replies and says he can’t. Sometimes he shows up without saying anything at all. 

It’s been like this for a while. Long enough for her to feel embarrassed that she’s letting him drag her along like this. 

He hums, and she can feel vibrations throughout his chest. “You’re so soft,” he tells her, “it makes it hard to leave.” 

Atsumu will leave, though. Before the morning comes, he’ll be out the door without saying a word to her. It doesn’t seem very difficult, when he does go. He always peels her off of him like she’s some piece of dirty laundry and slinks out of the room when he thinks she’s fallen asleep. 

His breathing steadies like he’s slipping into sleep. She tilts her chin forward, and places a soft kiss on the center of his chest. She won’t be able to sleep. She’s too wired, it’s too hot, and her neck lays uncomfortably on top of the pillow. When the morning comes she’s going to be sore and tired, and it will be a strain to get anything done. 

Her eyes close, and she’s sure that Atsumu’s knocked out when she whispers, “You don’t have to leave, y’know.” 

He doesn’t say anything. She wasn’t expecting him to. She keeps her eyes closed, and thinks of his warmth, trying her best to avoid thoughts of it disappearing when the morning comes. 

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡˚

Atsumu stands at the edge of her bed and pulls on a pair of sweatpants. “I’m sorry to leave so soon,” he tells her, thumbs tucked under the waistband as they settle at the bottom of his hips. “I have to be at the gym so goddamn early tomorrow.” 

Her legs are crossed underneath the blanket and she sits upright, holding the pillow he usually sleeps on against her lap. “”S okay,” she tells him, watching as he grabs his hoodie off of the floor and throws it on over his head. “I’m not offended or anything.” 

“Honestly, I probably shouldn’t have come over tonight,” he confesses, and now she’s starting to feel a bit of a sting. “I just really needed to see you tonight.” 

She doesn’t know how to feel about this. She shuffles a bit, an indiscernible feeling settling uncomfortably over her skin. Atsumu doesn’t say things like that. She doesn’t know how to react. “Is something wrong?” 

Atsumu freezes, placing his hands in the pocket of his sweatshirt. His expression is screwed up, knotted. Something is wrong. She leans forward, like she’s expecting him to whisper it in her ear, like he’s about to profess something profound and close to his chest. But Atsumu just shakes his head, “Nah, it’s nothing,” he says. He pats the pockets of his sweatpants. “Have you seen my phone?” 

She’s disappointed, but she doesn’t know why. She leans back and reaches towards her nightstand, yanking her phone off the charger and dialing Atsumu’s number. She knows it by heart, and hopes that he doesn’t notice. It buzzes from under her sheets. 

He leaves half past midnight, forty minutes after he got there. She can’t sleep once he’s gone. She stays up, scrolling mindlessly through her phone, trying to wear down her mind, make it too tired to keep thinking of him. 

Sakusa texts her. Five minutes past one. “Was Atsumu at your place?” 

She ignores it. 

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡˚

Atsumu lies on his side, and draws patterns on her bare stomach with the tip of his finger. She doesn’t say anything, out of fear of making him stop. She watches him instead, watching his face as he stares down at her midriff. He has this slight smile on his face, and it makes her feel pleasantly uneasy.

“I like your stomach,” he tells her. “I think it’s my favorite part of you.” 

The smile that grows on her face must give her away. She’s grateful for how occupied he is with her skin. “You have a favorite part of me?” 

“Yeah, I mean, I like all of you,” Atsumu tells her. “But I do have favorites. Your stomach, your nose, your thighs, fuck, just so much of you,” he sighs, as if overwhelmed. “I mean, a man can only take so much.” 

She doesn’t think it’s fair, that she’s expected not to fall in love with him when he says things like that. So unabashedly, completely unprompted. And there is this small part of her that kind of resents him, for things like this, saying all of that when he’s going to leave her before the morning comes. But she likes it more than she could ever hate it. So she smiles, and she says, “I don’t think I could pick my favorite part of you,” and means it more than she should. 

Atsumu’s hand stops, and he looks up at her. He grins, and it makes her stomach flip. 

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡˚

It’s fifteen minutes to midnight, and she’s pacing in her bedroom, trying not to look at her phone. She texted him twenty minutes ago, and she thinks if she keeps herself from looking at her phone, it’ll make him respond quicker. She can’t back her logic, but she’s well past the point of reason. 

He hadn’t talked to her all week. Which, she tries to tell herself, isn’t too weird. He’s busy. He’s a professional athlete. He has better things to do than entertain her and her whims, and what is she to him, really, besides a person to sleep with? They weren’t that close when they started hooking up, and it’s not like the fucking as brought them closer together. 

But still, her stomach knots up with nerves. She feels like something’s wrong. Maybe she gave him too much of herself. Maybe he doesn’t want as much of her as she’s willing to give. 

Her phone vibrates against her nightstand, and she nearly breaks a toe rushing to answer it. On her home screen is a notification from him. 

Can’t make it tonight. Sorry. 

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡˚

She always tries to give Atsumu what he wants. He likes it when she begs, so she begs. She gets down on her knees and begs to please him. He likes the feeling of her on top of him, thighs squeezing on either side of his hips, so she climbs on top of him, not stopping when her thighs start to burn. He likes it wet, so it’s wet. His hair tugged, his neck nibbled on, his back scratched. Whatever he likes, she gives it to him. 

And he keeps making these small little grunts of pleasure and his eyes are fluttering, but Atsumu feels far away. Unimpressed with the way her body moves against his. His hands lay lazily on her hips, not gripping tightly on her flesh. He doesn’t whisper praise in her ear. He doesn’t bite down on his lip and tell her yes, he likes it like that, keep doing that. He’s quiet, withdrawn. 

She keeps trying to give him more, and more, desperation clawing on the inside of her chest. But Atsumu gives her nothing. He takes what she offers silently, and it starts to feel like he’s keeping his eyes closed to avoid looking at her. 

After, he doesn’t hold her. Atsumu lies on his back with his hands tucked under his head, staring at her ceiling. He doesn’t say anything. 

Her body feels like it’s burning. She feels humiliated. The silence is bad but she thinks talking might be worse. She doesn’t want him to leave but she doesn’t want him to stay if it’s going to be more of this. The air is so thick she thinks she might choke on it. 

Atsumu turns his head to look at her. “Have you talked to Omi recently?” 

The question shocks her so badly she turns her head to him, face scrunched up in confusion. “What?” 

He shrugs. “He hasn’t been talking to me lately. I was just wondering if he said anything to you.” 

Her head straightens out and she looks back up at the ceiling. “He texted me the other week and asked if you were here. I didn’t know if I should tell him or not, and it didn’t really seem like any of his business, so I just didn’t respond.” 

Atsumu hums. “I think he’s jealous of you.” 

“Do you want him to be?” she asks at once, and then regrets it. 

Atsumu doesn’t say anything to this. He gets quiet, and she has to bite down on her lip to keep herself from saying something else stupid. Somehow, the air gets heavier. 

“I’m sorry,” she says after a minute of silence. 

“It’s okay,” Atsumu says, and he doesn’t mean it. He leaves a minute later, and tells her it’s because he has an early practice, but she’s not stupid. 

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡˚

Atsumu presses her against her bedroom wall, and when she closes her eyes, all she can see is him and Sakusa, arm’s slung around each other’s shoulders in a post-victory celebration earlier that day. And the way Atsumu looked at him makes her feel rotten. It hurts to remember, and Atsumu pounding into her does little to distract from it. 

She’s the loser in this war, she thinks, arms around his shoulders and leg hooked over his hip, too disconnected from her body to feel anything. It doesn’t matter how many times Atsumu has crawled back into her bed and held her against his chest. It doesn’t matter how in love with him she is. It’s always Sakusa. It’ll always be Sakusa. 

He holds her tightly after, their legs tangled together and his cheek resting on the top of her head. His phone’s in his pocket and it keeps buzzing. Atumu ignores it, and she can’t stop herself from thinking that it’s him.

She swallows. Her throat feels dry. “Someone keeps texting you,” she says, because she wants him to acknowledge it. 

Atsumu inhales deeply. “Ignore it,” he says, “just lie with me.” 

She closes her eyes, and does as she’s told. 

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡˚

Can I come over tonight? 

He texted her first. He doesn’t usually, but he did. The notification popped up over a video the MSBY Black Jackals post-match. Meian’s giving a courtside interview, but just behind him, she can see Atsumu and Sakusa, shoulders squared and tensed, keeping a strict distance from each other as they exit the court. She can feel the chill through the screen of her phone. 

She doesn’t know what it is that holds the both of them back from each other. Maybe it’s her. Maybe Sakusa doesn’t realize that Atsumu would drop her immediately if Sakusa ever asked him to. 

She’s always known that he would, though. Whatever she has to offer doesn’t seem to compare to Sakusa. She’s just a temporary fix, really. Just something to hold Atsumu over until Sakusa realizes this. 

She taps on the notification, and her conversation with Atsumu pops up. For a second, she scrolls through it. Minimal talking, mostly texts from her, with late responses from him. She can see it there, how much Atsumu doesn’t care about her. It doesn’t matter if he asks to come over or tells her he loves her stomach or how hard it is for him to leave. He just doesn’t care about her. Not the way she cares about him. 

Her thumbs hover over the keyboard for a moment, paused in contemplation, before she types out a quick, yeah, sure, and hits send without thinking anymore about it.

If Sakusa hasn’t figured it out yet, then she’s not about to help him. She’ll just keep giving and giving, until there’s nothing left to give.

[deepamuthukrishnan]

We Listen and We Don’t Judge

Pairings: Nico Hischier x OC

Warnings: Spoilers for That Sik Luv, King of Wrath, King of Sloth, God of Wrath, and God of Malice but just a lot of fluff.

Summary: You are a viral booktoker and after seeing the we listen and we don’t judge trend with couples, you put your own twist.

—————————————————————————

It’s not a joke that you are mildly addicted to TikTok. After all, by day, you worked for the New Jersey Devils as a social media girl but by night, you are one of the most viral booktokers on BookTok.

Currently you were doomscrolling on TikTok, waiting for your boyfriend, Nico, to come home from hanging at Jack’s and Luke’s place.

You suddenly come across a video of a couple doing the We Listen and Don’t Judge trend which you weren’t that completely unaware of because you had seen it on your for you page for the last few days.

“We listen and we don’t judge.” The couple both said before the woman started to talk.

“I sometimes don’t wash our fruit because I feel lazy.” She said, trying not to laugh.

The man burst into laughter. “Jesus we’re gonna get worms! We probably have worms in our bodies!”

“Well we listen and we don’t judge!” She clapped back and you began to laugh.

After about three minutes of watching that video, an idea popped in your head. You walked to your massive bookshelf that Nico assembled for you for Christmas last year and got out your copies of That Sik Luv, King of Wrath, King of Sloth, God of Wrath, and God of Malice from your shelf before walking back to the living room.

As soon as you walked back, you saw Nico walk in, taking his shoes and beanie off.

“Hey Schatz.” He said, wrapping his arms around your waist, giving you a kiss.

You pulled away to greet him back, Nico pouting a bit. “Hey baby. How was the hangout at Jack’s and Luke’s place.”

“Same old same old.” He said, his Swiss German accent being prominent.

You chuckled. “Why don’t you get changed.”

“Okay.” He gives you a quick kiss before walking into your shared bedroom before walking out in grey sweatpants and a devils hoodie.

“Hey Nico?”

“Yeah?” He asks.

“You love me right?”

“Are you breaking up with me?” He asked and you look at him gobsmacked.

“Okay no. I’m not breaking up with you-“

“Thank god.”

“I was literally gonna ask if you wanted to be in a TikTok baby.” You say.

Nico has been your biggest supporter and even though it was a mutual decision to keep your love life private, along with the occasional post of each other on your birthdays, anniversaries, and reposting posts of you guys in them.

“Oh okay. What TikTok?”

He plops down on the floor and looks at the pile of books on the coffee table. “What TikTok is it?”

You get your phone and open TikTok, going to make a new video, propping your phone on the little fake bonsai tree.

“Okay so we’re gonna do the we listen and we don’t judge trend except it’s with the books I read last month.” You say to your phone before stopping the recording.

“I say we listen and we don’t judge and tell you something about the book.” I explain.

“So I sit and look pretty?”

“Pretty much.” I answer.

I get out the first book, That Sik Luv, from the pile before clicking the button to record.

“We listen and we don’t judge,” you say, trying so hard not to laugh. “In this book, she’s in a religious cult, she doesn’t know that she is. Either way, the church that runs their town are trying to kill her so they hire this mercenary dude who becomes obsessed with her and stalks her and shows just how corrupt the church is. So one day, when she has to go to confession and he’s waiting for her in where she’s supposed to sit and they get their freak on when she’s giving her confession to the deacon and when he pulls back to curtain to pew pew her, he acts quickly and pew pews the deacon and they continue to get their freak on in front of the deacon’s now dead body.”

Nico mulls over what you said before saying, “I would read this book Schatzi.”

“What?!” You look at him horrified. “Like you’re not playing with me are you?”

“I mean I would skip over these kinda scenes but it seems interesting.”

“Oh my lord.” You muttered before grabbing King of Wrath.

“We listen and we don’t judge,” you said, forming her thoughts. “So in this book, both the characters are in an arranged marriage situation for reasons I can’t say. Anyway, one thing leads to another and he’s,” you mime fingering to him and he raises his eyebrows, “her and calls him an asshole and he replies with ‘I’m an asshole, yet youre dripping for me.’”

“Is this what you’re reading when your jaw is dropped?” He asks.

“Well like, you signed up for this.” You say.

“I love you too much.” He said, pulling you into him.

“I love you too.” You say and you grab King of Sloth.

“We listen and we don’t judge. So for context, her ex cheated on her-“

“He’s a dead man.” Nico fumes, his Swiss German accent becoming even more prominent.

“If you’ll let me finish.” You say, trying not to laugh at his outburst but you crack a smile. “Anyway, because of that, she has trust issues and when she’s telling him, so the mmc, her trust issues, instead of reassuring her, he sits her on her desk and goes to town with his mouth on her. He then proceeds to bend her over and goes to town on her and he puts duct tape over her mouth because she’s apparently loud.”

A beat of silence passes before Nico says, “If your ex cheated on you and you said that, I’d do the same.”

You whack the book on his head. “No you won’t.” You reply, both of you laughing.

“What, I need to remind him what he missed out on.” He responds chalantly.

You roll your eyes before grabbingGod of Wrath.

“We listen and we don’t judge. So in the first chapter, she wants to kill herself because her best friend killed himself and she on the edge of the cliff and she jumps, but then the mmc grabs onto her and he said that the only way he can save her life is if she performs a certain sexual act down there.”

“Like what do you mean?”

“He’s holding on to her and he’s like oh the only way I will save you if you do this certain sexual act down there for me.”

“And she does.”

“Well yeah. If we were in this exact situation, I’d do it because I value my life.” You respond.

“Okay true.” He says.

You get out your last book, God of Wrath, trying not to laugh.

“We listen and we don’t judge. In this book, she’s walking home at night with her headphones in and these two creeps are like following her but then, the mmc, who was stalking her, bears the guys up because in his eyes, he’s the only one that allowed to stalk her.”

“Oh.” He says. “That’s kinda stupid though.”

“What is?” You ask.

“Walking alone at night with headphones in. Like does she not have any sense?”

You burst into laughter at his words. “Literally the mmc asked her the exact question and it is pretty stupid.” You look at your phone before saying, “Guys, remember to not walk alone at night with headphones in. But also let me know if yall want a part 2.”

You hit the stop button and he pulls you further into him. “You know I love you, but this is the weirdest TikTok you made me do.”

You chuckle and kiss his jaw. “I know babe.”

[starcurtain]

More Phaidei Fics I Want to Read

1. Obligatory "fish out of water" fic (mostly AU because the timeline would probably not match canon, but we do what we want here!), taking place after Mydei and the Kremnoans first make it to Okhema. Okhema is already harsh on outsiders, let alone on a conquering "barbarian" tribe infamous for bringing strife to so many other city states. Mydei doesn't know the local customs at all, and while he doesn't care the slightest about how these pathetic Okhemans see him, the trouble he keeps getting into is affecting the reputations of innocent Kremnoans too. He's got to find a way to blend in, at least enough to stop costing his fellows any chance of finding paid work... Too bad the only person who is willing (and has time) to help is Phainon (who isn't native to Okhema either but done a much better job of learning to get along with the locals). The guy thinks he's the Titans' gift to Amphoreus just because he beat Mydei in a duel once. It was only once! And why does it matter whether we eat standing up or lying down? What are you laughing at, Savior Complex?! Or, tl;dr: The culture clash comedy one where Phainon and Mydei teach each other entirely opposing sets of manners, and come to learn a lot more about one another in the process.

2. Also obligatory omegaverse where Mydei is an omega born with a unique constitution: he's built like an alpha, snarls like an alpha, and dominates his opponents like an alpha. He even smells like an alpha, especially when he's in heat, so the only people who ever figured out his secondary gender were his doctor and his parents, all of whom are dead now. The whole world thinks Mydei is an alpha, and his reputation as an indomitable warrior prince pretty much hinges on people continuing to believe that. The problem is, Mydei wouldn't actually mind getting to live an omega's life, at least the part about finding a mate and starting a family. Only, who in the world would want him for a mate? Any alpha hunting for an actual omega would never think to look in Mydei's direction, betas would just be confused, and even those few alphas who are attracted to other alphas would only end up disappointed after discovering Mydei isn't one. He's nobody's ideal partner, and he'd mostly made peace with that--until Phainon. Until that upstart alpha from the middle of nowhere knocked Mydei down in a brutal spar and then pulled him up with the gentlest hand, and suddenly it mattered that no one would ever want Mydei. It mattered a lot. (Of course, the long and short of it is that Mydei is the man of Phainon's dreams, and after a series of setbacks and miscommunications and lots of silly angst, they'll find their way to a happy ending.)

3. After discovering Mydei's weakness for sweets and cute things like pink pomegranate juice, Phainon decides to engage in a bit of light-hearted teasing: He starts sending Mydei exceedingly adorable gifts and fancy candies under the guise of a "secret admirer." The joke is on Phainon, however, when it turns out Mydei finds the gifts quite charming and is determined to discover the identity of the mysterious gift giver. A reasonable person would quickly give up on the joke to avoid getting caught, but Phainon has always been weak to chasing thrills--and maybe this whole thing about being Mydei's "secret admirer" isn't too far off after all... (The real joke is that Mydei, realizing immediately who the gifts were from, invented an entire "hunting my admirer down" story just for the fun of watching Phainon squirm--and, well, because keeping the whole thing going, being showered with attention by his rival, doesn't feel too bad at all.)

4. The opposite fic: The one where Mydei's completely mismatched online personality accidentally catfishes Phainon and causes some very silly drama. Mydei's (anonymous) teletweet account is full of cutesy chimera kitten memes, aesthetic pictures of food, heart emojis, and overly punctuated (with exclamation points) recaps of shopping trips in Okhema's market... Can anyone blame Phainon for thinking this is the account of a cute girl who is refreshingly earnest about her love for chubby seals and pink milk tea? But as Phainon becomes closer and closer to "Fig Stew" online, things get more and more complicated--because he's also been getting closer and closer to his real world companion Mydeimos lately. Both Fig and Mydei are wonderful, and Phainon can barely bear the thought of losing either of them in his life. Trying to get closer to them both would be way too dishonest, but choosing one over the other... What should he do? Meanwhile, Mydei is in trouble. He wasn't planning to set up some secret identity or anything; it's not his fault Phainon mistook him for a girl online! There's nothing weird about dudes posting sparkling kitten gifs, godsdammit!! But now the charade's gone on way too long to come clean, especially since Phainon seems so invested, and... well, can you blame Mydei for not wanting to give up on the closest thing to a relationship he's ever managed to start? tl;dr: Online mistaken identity hijinks fic.

5. The required-in-every-fandom time travel fic (with bonus fake dating)! Through an outpouring of Oronyx's power, Mydei and Phainon end up in the bodies of their future selves, who, it turns out, have not only managed to end Amphoreus' war and revive Castrum Kremnos, but... appear to have also... gotten married?!! Now Mydei and Phainon have to not only find out exactly how their future selves managed to save the world (so they can accomplish the same task) then look for a way back to their own time--they've got to do all of that while also pretending to be a happily wedded pair of rulers to avoid raising everyone's suspicions. This would be a whole lot easier if either of them knew the first thing about being actual kings... or about relationships. The slightest slip up could create ripple effects that change the entire timeline permanently, but--no matter how nerve-wracking it might be to admit, after seeing the future in store for them together--there's nothing Phainon (and Mydei) won't do to make sure things go exactly as they should.

[prettyboykatsuki]

cw for the most longwinded and insane discussion of psuedocest and caleb and mcs relationship in lds.

MY THOUGHTS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE !!!!!!!!!!!!! but for now...

MAJOR CW FOR PSUEDOCEST AND SPOILERS FOR CALEB CARDS

like. not only is caleb being a siscon integral to his characterization - it also crucial to understanding what is actually going on in their dynamic because when you remove the familial context (and, in turn, remove calebs sole reason for being KJDSHJDS) none of the conflict of the story will feel meaningful or make any sense

calebs and mcs relationship is run of the mill traumatized sibling codependency. the amount and the extent in which the both of them emotionally rely on each other is reinforced in the myth where it affirms that caleb is basically fucking winter solider and that if mc had the chip in her she would end up with a similar obsession about protecting him.

but caleb has harbored a stronger desire for her since forever.

and MORE than that , i do not think his desire for her genuinely conflicts with his interest in acting as her older brother.

so much of the conflict caleb experiences is about wanting to maintain the image of protection and strength in order to make sure mc never feels completely out of depth and keep himself as a safe space in her life. he makes a promise in her bond as to not restrain her. his priority has always and will always be her family. acting as her dependable gege is something caleb goes to great lengths to do

this is proven again by their hidden waves card where he doesnt want mc to see him sick. he cant be sick, cant show weakness. because he wants her to continue to depend on him for as long as they are live. he wants to continue to be the person she relies on.

the distorted nature of their relationship exists because for calebs desire to monopolize mc and continue acting like her gege are not at odds INTERNALLY. rather, he is under the correct impression that expressing that to mc would alter her already fragile connection and feelings about family.

WHICH IS WHY THE CONVERSATION THEY HAVE IN THE MAIN STORY CAPTIVE BIRD - WHERE CALEB EXPLICITLY SAYS THAT IT WAS MCS MISTAKE TO THINK HE WOULD KEEP ACTING AS HER GOOD OLDER BROTHER IS SOOO DKJFHSJD !!!

thank you mao for the translations on that for affirming the psuedocest in it AND the tragedy in it.

based on all of that and the way i see it - i think the underlying sexual tension is probably something that has existed in their relationship for a long time. something that mc has probably felt but somewhat willfully chosen to overlook or acknowledge because of what it would mean . to what capacity she has understood it is imo still up for debate

TO ME........ i think this is about a willingness to the accept that distortion. the intentional cruelty in deying to mc that he was ever gege in the first place. i do think that this is of course partially because of his frustration over his feelings but also a way for him to make mc confront their relationship more head on. mc sees it a denial of their bond and i think this will require resolving at some point

but because i think caleb knows even better than mc that mc could accept A LOT from caleb simply because of who he is to her. but its not what he wants. he wants HER as she is. to have all of her.

to act as both. to be everything to her she is to him. in order to do that, i think he probably first intends to make mc conscious of him this way. forcefully because its the only way she'll really get it and come to him of her own volition and accept what has probably existed between them for a long time

i think this is also an act of mercy on calebs behalf. because i think it would genuinely be easy for him to get what he wants out of mc on the guise of acting as her brother only. i think it is knowing that he chooses not to do that and instead goes so forcefully in making her aware of him and his desires. i know that sounds insane but for now thats how i see it.

its a matter of caleb wanting to be both her gege and everything inbetween. above and below.

SORRY AND I AM INSANE .

[bisexualbrainrots]

Return the Favor

did it just write angst in fluffebuary? yes yes I did, but it's all because of this gifset that compelled me to.

cw: major character injury, vomit, blood.

“Guess I finally got to return the favor, huh?”

Howie smiled at him, one of those smiles that turned him into the brightest light in the room, and grabbed harder at his shoulder as they managed to walk towards an exit point of the building. Howie laughed softly, a healing sound that would normally make him smile too.

But right now all Tommy could focus on was the amount of blood that adorned his friend’s (Could he still call him friend?) face. 

Lines that had rolled down the left side of his face, mixing with the dirt and grime. Thankfully, they had discarded anything more serious than a scalp laceration, but it was still worrying.

Tommy will always worry about Howie, no matter what.

“Took you long enough, I was beginning to think we’d always be in debt,” a small cough left his throat after he chuckled, which made Tommy stop dead in his tracks “I’m okay, we probably inhaled a ton of dust in there.”

Everything started at a factory. A fire that quickly turned into a second alarm that called for multiple stations, the 118 and 217 included. Tommy guessed it was luck that picked him for ground work that shift, but Howie would probably say it was fate.

He hopes it wasn’t, because otherwise Tommy couldn’t understand why fate would collapse a story that was clear and bring both of them down, making them fight for their lives.

Fate was confusing.

Tommy sighed and they continued their walk towards safety, the roaring sounds of firefighters signaling where to find them.

“Hey, Tommy… thank you.”

Howie looked at him with a fondness he thought would never reappear, which made Tommy get a funny feeling in his chest. He really didn’t want to start crying in front of Howie.

“I know it was… wrong of me to drop you after Buck—”

“You didn’t drop me Howie, you… you did what any friend would do.”

Howie shook his head, leaning in to get a closer look at Tommy’s face “You were my friend too, Tommy. Still are,” he held the hand that was resting on his waist, giving it a squeeze “I just hope you can forgive me for that.”

He took a deep breath, or as deep as he could when he was holding Howie “You don’t have to apologize for anything, after all—” Tommy’s smile widened as he took in the view of familiar faces, minus one he found out wasn’t in the state anymore, and bumped his hip with Howie to get his attention, pointing with his head “Would you look at that, seems like someone was looking for you.”

He should’ve guessed they’d be in the front lines. Tommy wonders how many protocols and orders the 118 disobeyed to get to them. It must’ve been a ton, but he guessed they didn’t give a damn.

“We’ll always look for each other.”

Tommy loved that about them.

He let go of Howie the closer they got to the rest, and patted him on the shoulder before giving him a gentle push towards the awaited reunion. Tommy stood as his friend was being pulled into a warm embrace by Bobby, Hen and… Evan. They were all so happy, he could even spot tears in Bobby’s eyes that threatened to come out.

They were all reunited again, as they were meant to be. Tommy watched from a distance, a tired but big smile on his face that rejoiced on the family he once had, the family he could've had.

He supposed it was good he was out of the picture, after all, he never truly felt like he belonged anywhere.

Okay, that was a lie, he did belong to a place and to a person, he was just too scared to let Evan belong to him.

He held his hands on his knees, chest heaving, feeling more tired thanks to the adrenaline finally running its course. His chest expanded as much as he could, lungs begging for air he tried to get in as best as they let him.

He could hear his heart in his ears, though he supposed it had to do with the fact that Evan was looking at him, a faint smile on his lips.

A smile that faded as soon as Tommy threw up and fell on his knees.

“T-tommy!”

This is normal, it's just the adrenaline fading, you're okay. You're okay.

He was in fact, not okay. 

Tommy wanted to rest so bad, to lay on the ground and take a nap, but his former family around him made it harder for him to let go. 

“Tommy, Tommy c'mon look at me, What hurts?”

He didn't even notice the grunts, his ears feeling like he had cotton stuffed in them, unable to listen to anything other than his rapid heartbeat and labored breathing. 

He tried, though, the best he could despite the fact that even speaking had become a hardship, “My stomach…” he didn't mention the fact that it had been hurting since he woke up after the collapse, he didn't even mention to Howie that rubble had fallen on him when they fell.

They laid him on the ground, Hen hurried to open his turnouts and Howie did a quick assessment of his injuries. He wanted to get them off him, tell them there was no reason to panic yet, that they had to focus on Howie. But if breathing was already complicated, talking wasn't much better. 

A warm pair of hands held one of his and he turned his head, finding Evan and his even warmer smile that any other day would've made him melt. But the fear in his eyes was making it harder.

He wanted to lean closer, to caress his cheek and tell him everything was going to be okay.

That was the idea, until Hen pulled his shirt upwards and everyone seemed to stop breathing at once, Evan's hold tightening.

Bobby barked instructions at someone, saying something about immediate assistance and getting them an ambulance ASAP.

“W-what…” he tried to look and exhaled when he saw his belly. From what he could see, a purple and red puddle had formed on his abdomen, which made sense why it hurt so much “Oh… right, the rubble.”

Howie turned his face to him, the same panic Evan had in his eyes “You had… Tommy, why didn't you tell me?”

He smiled faintly, tired, way too tired “You have… people, Howie… I, I couldn't let you die.”

Howie's eyes glistened, his brows pulled together as he blinked rapidly and got to work, putting on a pair of gloves (When did he get the gloves?) and palpated the area, getting an immediate wince and hiss in response.

“You have people too,” he heard Evan mutter, his head ducked.

Tommy gave him a weak smile. Evan was so sweet, even when he didn’t deserve that from him anymore.

He stroked his hand with his thumb, pretending for one second that Evan’s words were true. Their eyes met, and Tommy gulped when he noticed his ex had begun to tear up. He hated to be the reason behind his tears, regardless of the situation he had found himself in.

“I’ve got a collar,” he heard Hen shout (When had she left?) and in less than 5 seconds the thing was wrapped around his neck, and he huffed in frustration to the restraint he felt because of it.

“This is… stupid… I don’t need—”

“Will you just let us help? Tommy rubble fell on you, you are not okay,” Evan’s exasperated tone made him shrink. An overwhelming wave of emotions rushed through him, which probably showed on his face given the quick way in which Evan’s expression softened “Sorry, sorry it’s just… let us help, please.”

Despite priding himself on the way he would help others without giving it a second thought, he had never been good at accepting help. Even with something so obvious as getting a cold, where help has to practically be forced onto him. With Evan though, he could never say no, his stubborn ass never giving up a fight to help him.

He took a breath and supposed there was nothing he could do, not when Evan was involved “... Okay.” He nodded slowly, his eyes fluttering shut as he felt his body being transported into something, probably a gurney.

He was way too tired to care.

“... hey, hey, open your eyes Tommy,” Howie’s voice brought him back long enough to get a feel of the gurney he was resting in. It was softer than he thought, or maybe the sleepiness was making him sink into it better. Whatever was the case, he was comfortable.

“Bu’ ‘m sleepy” he frowned. God he felt like a child again, being woken up by his mother on a school day.

He just wanted 5 more minutes.

“You’ll get to sleep once the doctors have checked you out, baby.”

Tommy perked up at the pet name. He looked for him and found those perfect blue eyes staring at him, his lips turned upwards in an attempt of a smile to give to Evan.

He was enchanted by those eyes. The way all of his attention was on them the first time they got to have a minute to talk alone. He wanted to swim in them, swim in that ocean of sweetness and craziness that called him in. He forgot he didn’t know how to swim though, not until he was sinking down and fearing that he had fallen without a lifesaver.

He supposed that was it, fear. Fear that constantly pulled him into a self-preservation mode, fear that made him sabotage every good thing he ever had, fear that made him unable to tell Evan that he loves him.

Shit, he loves him.

“Baby…” he called out, looking for his hand as they pulled him into the ambulance.

“I’m still here Tommy, I’m always here,” the strong grip of Evan’s hand on his was comforting, just like the movement of the ambulance that rocked him like a baby.

He was feeling cold though.

Tommy took a deep breath and looked at Evan, “I need… to tell you… that I—” whatever words he was meant to say were not there anymore, a sudden stop in his consciousness that had him closing his eyes and closing himself to the world.

The last thing he heard was Howie saying something about their debt. 

Maybe fate wanted this, as payback for the strip mall. Maybe this is how it was meant to be. Maybe he was always supposed to die with Howie by his side.

Fate didn’t count on the fact that Evan Buckley, his Evan, would be put by his side too. Didn't count on the fact that he would never bend to its will. It didn’t count on the fact that he was probably on top of him performing CPR by now, not that Tommy was aware of it anymore.

Damn it, he cursed out at fate, Why didn’t you let me say it?

Though he supposed it was fine, at least he wasn’t going through this alone.

He did hope they’d manage to save him on time.

Evan still owed him that beer.

[generalpenguinangel]

For my money, the most (only?) interesting thing about Frank Harkness is seeing where River Cartwright gets his crazy streak from.

River spent most of his childhood and youth raised by his grandparents, in what I can only imagine was a mostly pleasant stereotypically repressed British upbringing. His hometown is wealthy and picturesque. He probably went to a nice university and did mostly normal university things there. And yet he is, canonically, a maniac, who is ready to commit violence at any given moment. My two favourite examples:

s1: beats his erstwhile friend unconscious

s2: chokes a random cab driver (and then tells him "I'm one of the good ones". Lol, okay honey bunny)

And he also has the other side of the coin, which is that he's unruffled by the prospect of enduring physical violence himself.

And Frank sees this in him, instinctually.

When Frank tells Taverner that River is a poor fit for MI-5 and that's why he's mouldering in Slough House - ask yourself, where is the lie? River is constitutionally ill-suited for life in a modern bureaucratic institution, even if that institution does spy stuff.

He would never join Frank's operation because unlike Frank, he has good in him, or at least he wants to do good. But ooh, he also wants to be good at what he's doing. He wants to feel good in the way you feel good when you're doing something that comes naturally to you.

The most best thing about the scene between Frank and River at the bar in season 4 is when Frank gives him a few crumbs of praise and River just fucking eats it up, despite himself. Because actually he IS good at the kinetic stuff. But what drives that side of him is also what gets him continually shit on by the Service. And it must feel amazingly good to have someone recognize and validate that potential in him, even if it's coming from his nutcase absent father.

Lamb sees River's potential, of course, but he never shows it or overtly encourages him because Lamb understands him and knows that he's already got a big head and no impulse control and that he needs to learn to get over himself and calm the fuck down. He doesn't need the OB filling his head with Rudyard Kipling nonsense or Frank Harkness selling him American-style on the glamour of being a mercenary. He needs someone who can show him how the world, in all its ugliness, really works. That's what's going to keep him alive and possibly intact in some sense.

I think this is all pretty obvious but I've been trying and failing to plot a River Harkness AU so here are some thoughts that arose on father/son dynamics.

[teddiee]

Into Each Life: Chapter 16

Summary:

Howard’s expression flickers, just for a second, before his mask of controlled fury settles back into place.

Tony tastes blood in his mouth, reminiscent of that dreaded argument with his father only mere months ago.

Erskine leans forward slightly, his gaze pinning Howard in place. “Do you know what you took, Mr. Stark?” His voice is calm. “Do you truly understand? Those scribbled notes, those rough diagrams—they were never meant to be groundbreaking. They were the idle musings of a bored, brilliant, seventeen-year-old. Your son was simply playing with equations, theorizing, stretching the limits of his own mind. He never knew what he had stumbled upon.”

The room falls quiet.

Words: 14,345

Tony stares at the blank page, and the blank page stares right back—accusatory, unyielding. In the cramped, makeshift quarters the SSR arranged for him, he can’t escape it. There’s no window to gaze out of, no casual conversation with a friendly face to break the mounting pressure in his chest. The soft overhead light buzzes, washing the concrete walls in a sterile, colorless glow.

He’s supposed to be sleeping—lights out and all that—but he had convinced one of the guards (Barnett? Baxter? He can’t remember) to let him stay awake a bit longer. He’d told them it was urgent—a personal matter. He had relented eventually, albeit with suspicious glances.

Now it’s just him, a cheap fountain pen, and a single crisp sheet of SSR-approved paper. All as exciting as wallpaper paste.

The pen feels heavy between his fingers, but not as heavy as the weight of his unspoken words.  

He’d insisted that if he was allowed to communicate with anyone, it had to be in writing. Phone calls were too risky—even a short phone call, even if the SSR listened in. Because that’s the problem: the SSR would listen in, and Bucky would pick up on Tony’s fumbled half-truths in an instant.

Tony doesn’t think he could keep his voice from shaking, or keep from blurting something about the project, or the new arrangement, or Tiberius.

And Bucky—God, he was probably tearing the city apart looking for Tony already.

Tony’s chest seizes at the thought.

He sets the pen to the paper—nothing but a vast expanse of white, waiting—and tries to start. His mind runs in frantic circles: Are you okay, Buck? I’m safe—sort of—there’s nothing you can do, but please, don’t do anything crazy or reckless. Hugs, Tony.

No. That’s ridiculous. He can’t say that. Too many details, too risky. Besides, the SSR censors will strike out anything that even so much as hints at their location or references Project Rebirth. And Tony really doesn’t want to risk them deciding all correspondence is too sensitive to send.

He closes his eyes and lifts the pen, pressing it carefully against the page again.

B—

He manages one letter before panic hijacks his brain. He wants to write out Bucky’s name, to see it in ink, to remind himself that it’s real, that Bucky is real, but the pen hovers, trembling. An ocean of longing wells up behind his eyes, choking him. He wonders if he could just… scrunch the page into a ball and say to hell with it. But he needs this.

He needs Bucky to know he’s okay.

He wants to say more. He wants to say: I miss the way your arms feel around me, the warm rasp of your voice in the morning, the reckless grin you wear when you’re about to do something foolish. I miss the quiet times, too—the hush of late nights when you’d trace lines on my skin, the moments you’d catch me thinking too hard and pull me close so I’d think about us instead.

But he can’t.

And he’s no poet.

So he forces himself to continue.

B—,

I hope—

His handwriting is a mess, shaky. There’s a spatter of ink where his pen digs in too hard. Tony stops, exhales, tries to slow the hammering of his pulse. This isn’t a love letter; it’s not a war bulletin either. But it might as well be both, for all the weight of it pressing on him.

What can he say?

That he’s been forcibly “escorted” to a top-secret intelligence agency’s facility in the dead of night and can’t return to Brooklyn yet? That the arrangement with Tiberius is looming over him like a noxious cloud, but said top-secret intelligence agency says they can maybe shield him?

That physically, he’s okay, but every minute that passes without hearing Bucky’s voice feels like a fresh bruise to his soul?

He can’t say any of that, at least not in a letter that will be read by a roomful of government suits before it ever reaches Bucky. And he sure as hell can’t mention Project Rebirth or the chamber or the hush-hush details Erskine explained to him. If he tries, the SSR censors will shred his words to confetti.

Keep it brief, keep it benign, Erskine had told him gently, a paternal hand on Tony’s shoulder. Tell him you’re safe. And nothing else that could compromise the project or put him in danger.

He had tried not to bristle at the word “danger,” but, well, that ship has sailed. Bucky will always be in danger as long as he’s associated with me, Tony thinks, throat tight.

He forces his gaze back to the page.

B—

I hope you’re staying safe, and that Steve is, too.

He grimaces. It’s so formal. So not them. But what else can he say that’s safe enough for SSR eyes?

Things are…  complicated. I’ve had to take care of an urgent matter, and it’s going to keep me away longer than I thought. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.

He stops, re-reads it. Each sentence sounds like it’s wearing a starched collar—stiff, flavorless. But he can’t say more. He can’t say, “I’m being held here for my own good, so I don’t get slapped into a forced bond with Tiberius. I hate him, and I’m terrified, and I wish I could bury my face in your neck and just breathe you in until my lungs don’t hurt anymore.”

No, that won’t fly. Tony clenches his jaw, forcing himself to keep writing.

I’m okay, truly. These people aren’t harming me. They’re…

He debates how to phrase it. Helping me. They are—kind of. In a clandestine, bureaucratic, slightly traumatizing way. The memory of being dragged out of bed in his underwear, blindfolded, and tossed in a van is still fresh. Yet they’re also offering him his first real chance at freedom.

… they’re helping me sort out a mess. You’d be proud of me for sticking to my guns.

A watery smile twitches at the corner of his mouth. He can almost see Bucky’s response: a half-smirk, a cocked brow, the quiet ferocity in his eyes. Hell, yes, I’m proud of you, sweetheart. Always have been.

God, Tony misses him so much it leaves a raw ache under his ribs. He needs to keep it together.

I’m sorry I can’t tell you more right now. I wish I could. You know I would if it was safe. I promise, you don’t need to worry about me. Everything is under control.

He bites the inside of his cheek. Lies, lies, lies. He’s not under control. Tiberius’s looming threat, Howard’s fury, the swirl of war projects—none of that is under control. But if Tony writes the truth, that he’s in the Strategic Scientific Preserve’s protective custody, that he’s planning to use some obscure piece of wartime legislation to block Tiberius’s claim, Bucky will tear through every government building from Washington to the Atlantic. And that might ruin everything.

So he has to reassure him. Even if it’s a lie—especially because it’s a lie.

I can’t say when, but I’ll come back to you and Steve as soon as I can. I promise. Until then, please just… take care of yourself. Don’t do anything reckless. (Yes, I know that’s rich coming from me.)

He chews his lip, hearing in his mind the dull ring of Bucky’s voice the last time they spoke—I need you out, I need you with me. That vow they made in hushed, trembling breaths. Yours, Tony had whispered.

But now Tony can’t even hint that he’s being forced into the darkest corners of secrecy. Instead, he’s writing it all neat and bland, like a letter from summer camp.

He stops to rub at the sting in his eyes, refusing to let tears spill. If the SSR censors catch him bawling over a letter, they’ll definitely intervene, or try to stifle him, or, worst case scenario, chalk it up to Omega hormones.

He’s not giving them the satisfaction.

Slowly, he leans forward again, pen scraping across the paper.

Please pass on my love to Steve. Tell him I said not to pick any more fights with local meatheads unless you’re there to bail him out. (Yes, that’s an order.) And keep an eye on him for me. I know you always do.

I miss you. More than I can say here.

Stay safe. Both of you.

Yours,

Tony

His signature is shaky. He stares at the final word, Yours, and imagines how Bucky might read it. He wonders if Bucky will read between the lines, if he’ll guess all the things Tony isn’t saying. He hopes so—God, he hopes so.

Because he doesn’t know how to say, I love you. Not in a letter that may end up in a classified file. He’s never said it out loud before, not even face to face. It’s always been implied, scribbled around the margins of their lives: the brush of a hand against a cheek, a borrowed sweater on a cold morning, the protective half-snarl in Bucky’s voice whenever Tony’s cornered.

But never just… I love you. So he doesn’t. He can’t.

He lifts the page, scanning it one last time. It’s too short. Too vague. Too many black holes. But that’s the best he can do. He sets the pen down, heart thrumming with a complicated swirl of relief and dread.

It’s pitiful, stilted, a flimsy shield against Bucky’s inevitable fury. None of it captures the raw longing that’s been clawing at Tony’s insides ever since that phone call. He can’t even convey how badly he wants to see Bucky’s face, to feel his arms around him, to bury his nose in the crook of Bucky’s neck and let that sure, steady presence chase away the stench of Stone’s forced claim.

But it’s the best Tony can do.

A hollow tightness settles in his chest. He wonders if it’s worth sending at all, or if it will just incite more questions—more anger. Maybe it’ll keep Bucky from tearing Manhattan apart, but it sure won’t soothe that Alpha protectiveness that Tony knows runs bone-deep in James Barnes.

Still… Tony has to try.

Gently, he folds the letter. He tucks it in an envelope, addressing it to Bucky and Steve’s building in Brooklyn—just the apartment number, the street. No mention of a last name, no extra details. Tony hopes that’s enough.

The door clicks again, and Tony startles, turning to see the SSR guard. He’s a younger man, a Beta, maybe fresh out of some advanced training program, stands with his posture stiff.

Tony presses a quick palm over the envelope, then picks it up. “Hey,” he says softly. “If I need to send something out, how does that work?”

The guard glances at the letter, then at Tony. “I can take it to the communications officer on your behalf. All personal mail gets routed through them for screening.”

Tony’s heart thuds. Screening. There it is: that official word that means they might read every line, might black out references or withhold it entirely if they think it’s too revealing.

He licks his lips, feeling the dryness in his mouth. “Will they… open it?”

The guard shifts, looking faintly uncomfortable. “All non-classified correspondence is subject to at least some check, Mr. Stark. But if it’s cleared, we can send it through a discreet channel.”

Tony’s fingers clench around the envelope. “Right. Sure. That’s… standard procedure, I guess.”

He shouldn’t be surprised. He’s on government property, a potential asset with classified knowledge. Of course they’ll read his mail.

He casts one last glance at the folded paper inside. It’s just a few lines of reassurance, devoid of anything that might reveal SSR’s secrets. But it’s still his letter to Bucky. Intimate in a way no official eyes have the right to read.

Yet if Tony refuses to send it through official channels, he has no way of contacting Bucky at all—and Bucky will remain in the dark, probably thinking Tony’s been ambushed by Tiberius.

Or worse.

Reluctantly, he holds out the envelope. “I… need this to get to Brooklyn as soon as possible. It’s private.”

The guard nods once. “Yes, sir. I’ll see what I can do.”

He takes the envelope from Tony’s hand, and Tony releases it slowly, heart twisting in his chest.

Everything in his life is out of his control right now—this letter is just another casualty.

Morning comes with little ceremony. A dull buzzer in the corridor stands in for a sunrse, telling Tony it’s time to get up, to move, to work. He’d barely slept anyway—between hammering out that painfully stilted letter to Bucky and the ceaseless hum of fluorescent lights, rest felt more like a distant memory than a biological necessity.

The overhead fluorescents hum to life on their own timer, casting a sterile glow across the small, windowless room that the SSR designates as his ‘quarters.’ Tony can’t decide whether it feels more like a military cell or a drab dormitory. The walls are bare, the furniture minimal: a metal cot with starched sheets, a narrow desk, and an unforgiving metal chair. He’s spent enough years in boarding school to be familiar with crappy accommodations, but at least there, he had a window and occasional classmates to break the monotony.

Today, as the unrelenting mechanical buzz fills the hall, Tony rouses with a soft groan. He’s already dressed—he never truly changed out of the scratchy gray SSR shirt that hangs loosely off his shoulders. It’s an awkward fit, and he’s pretty sure it’s about half a size away from falling off altogether, but it sure beats sitting around in his undershirt, feeling every draft against his skin.

When the guard finally appears—the same one as yesterday, though Tony still hasn’t caught his name—Tony is pinching the bridge of his nose, struggling to shake off the headache that’s begun to pulse behind his eyes. The guard raps a knuckle on the frame of Tony’s open door, then takes a step back. He has the stiff posture of someone who expects trouble, but can’t decide what exact brand of trouble Tony might be.

“You’re wanted in the lab, Mr. Stark,” the guard says, stepping aside so Tony can pass. “They’d like you to review the project’s design.”

Tony straightens, heart kicking up a notch. Finally. Work he can bury himself in, if only to forget—for a few hours—how utterly stifling this place is. Where isolation presses in on him more than the stiff uniform ever could.

The guard gives Tony a brief, assessing look, as though double-checking that Tony hasn’t spontaneously grown fangs or decided to make a break for it. It’s still jarring to be measured this way—like a potential threat or a potential victim. Tony can’t decide which they see him as. Maybe both.

“Right,” Tony says. He clears his throat, forcing nonchalance. “Lead the way.”

They wind through a seemingly endless maze of hallways, each turn revealing more dull sameness: floors of unyielding concrete and walls painted that soul-sucking shade of beige that feels specifically engineered to kill any hint of optimism. Tony’s footsteps echo in the silence, and the overhead fluorescents keep up their irritating flicker, bathing everything in a harsh, morgue-like gleam.

The air smells aggressively sterilized, like someone went overboard with the industrial-grade cleaner. It’s sharp and a little sour, failing to fully cover the underlying notes of metal shavings, machine oil, and that electric, bitter tang of ozone or maybe just charred wiring.

As they go deeper, Tony’s gaze darts to the people they pass: SSR officers in crisp green uniforms, bootsteps perfectly synchronized, expressions locked on stoic. Some spare him a glance—too quick to be friendly, too slow to hide a flicker of… what? Contempt? Curiosity? Both? The scientists are no better—lab coats and hurried strides, clutching binders of data like shields. Even so, Tony feels their eyes skitter over him before they yank them away, like he’s too out of place to process.

And that’s the thing: Tony can practically feel how he doesn’t belong. It’s there in every lingering stare that says what are you doing here? He’s not just the newbie—he’s an Omega in a fortress of concrete and steel where not a single honey-scented trail or discreet collar signals the presence of any other Omegas. Nope, it’s Alphas and Betas all the way, their pheromones tangling in the air with a no-nonsense edge. Tony is the odd one out, the puzzle piece that doesn’t fit.

Erskine’s promise—that Tony’s necessary here—drums in the back of his head. He’s essential to their mission, or so they claim. That doesn’t stop the stiff shoulders or sideways steps as he passes by. Official clearance doesn’t magically erase anyone’s bias, and in these hush-hush corridors, old prejudices hang around like rust that refuses to scrub off.

Finally, their escort halts at a heavy steel door, ENGINEERING & MAINTENANCE stenciled in neat black letters across the metal. The guard taps a code into the keypad—each beep absurdly loud in the sterile quiet—until a tiny green light flares. With a pneumatic hiss, the door slides open to reveal the humming, mechanical heart of the facility.

“They’re waiting for you,” the guard says, stepping aside with a curt nod.

Tony swallows hard, forcing down the tight lump lodged in his throat. The moment he steps into the engineering bay, the air changes. The scent of metal and oil saturates the space, thick and unyielding. Machines hum in a low, rhythmic cadence, and the sheer size of the room takes him by surprise—wide, rectangular, crammed with workstations, drafting boards, and half-finished projects.

The design bay looms around him like an industrial cathedral, concrete walls draped in coils of wire and unfinished contraptions. Harsh fluorescent lights cast a sterile glow over the long worktables littered with blueprints, scattered notes, and abandoned coffee cups. And in the center of it all, the machine stands—a towering steel chamber with thick injection ports and an intricate harness nestled inside, cables snaking from its shell like arteries.

Tony’s gaze sharpens. Restraints. Stabilizer brackets. Injection nozzles. It’s crude, rougher than the sleek renderings Howard once flaunted. Up close, it feels more real, more dangerous.

As soon as he enters, the room stills. Conversations cut off mid-sentence. A cluster of engineers in wrinkled button-downs turn to stare, expressions flickering between confusion and disbelief. Tony knows this moment well—the weight of sudden recognition, the pause when people realize what he is.

Unbonded. No mating mark.

Male.

It takes a breath, maybe two, before hushed murmurs ripple through the room. He doesn’t catch the words, but he doesn’t need to. He can read it in their eyes.

Speculation. Curiosity. Something sharper—skepticism, maybe, or quiet disdain. The tension prickles against his skin, an invisible pressure he refuses to acknowledge. He’s used to this. The quiet scrutiny. The unspoken questions. But this time, there’s something different.

It’s the same hush-hush scrutiny he’s grown accustomed to, the undercurrent of Who let an Omega in here? But there’s something more intense this time, a sharper edge to their curiosity. He wonders how much Erskine told them—or if they were made aware of Tony's designation. Judging by their awkward, uncertain looks, probably not.

An older Beta, posture erect despite the rumpled edges of his collar, steps forward. His buzz-cut hair lends him a stern, military countenance. “Stark, right?” he ventures, voice carefully polite.

“Tony’s fine,” Tony replies, measured and even.

The man flicks a glance toward his colleagues, as if searching for backup. “Dr. Erskine mentioned you’d be overseeing the redesign. We—uh—haven’t had the opportunity to work with someone like… you before.”

Tony meets his gaze without flinching, ignoring the open curiosity and the subtext behind it. “Yeah, I get that a lot.” The massive steel contraption looming nearby catches his eye, and he motions toward it with a subtle tilt of his head. “Is this it? The Rebirth rig?”

A younger engineer, hair sticking out in all directions like he’s been yanking at it in frustration, fumbles with a sheaf of papers. “Yes, s—uh. We were making strides, but the meltdown issue keeps coming back to bite us. Dr. Erskine mentioned you might have solutions for stabilizing the serum flow.” The man’s gaze flicks—inevitably—toward the unblemished skin at Tony’s collar. “Is there… anything you need before we begin?”

“Just your data on meltdown thresholds,” Tony says, pointedly ignoring the glances. “Show me exactly where it fails, and I’ll tell you how to fix it.”

He moves toward the nearest worktable, lifting a blueprint. The quiet in the room stirs, shifting with the scrape of chair legs and shuffled feet. Some scowl, others step back, giving him space. A few move closer, watching him like something foreign, something that doesn’t quite belong.

Tony fights the urge to tense. He knows this game. He’s been inspected before—he can endure the discomfort.

His focus sharpens on the blueprint in his hands. The lines of the injection columns, the calculations scribbled in the margins—these are things he understands. The tension in his chest loosens, fraction by fraction. Because this, at least, is something he can control.

He spots the meltdown threshold logs stapled to the blueprint’s edge, nearly buried beneath a stack of dog-eared schematics and frantic notes. Sliding them free, he scans the data—temperature spikes, pressure fluctuations, sudden catastrophic failures. His eyebrows lift.

“No wonder your injection ports are frying,” he mutters, finger tracing a steep curve on the chart. “Your temperature climbs too fast—it’s torching the tubing from the inside.”

A younger engineer—lenses smudged, hands fidgeting—leans in. “We reinforced the chamber walls, but it still hits meltdown after ten seconds.”

Tony shakes his head. “Reinforcement doesn’t fix the problem if the heat spike is still there. You need to reduce friction and ease the load on the fluid pump first.”

Across the table, a tall, wiry engineer—arms folded, shirt grease-streaked—lets out a low grunt. “That’s all well and good, but we don’t have time for a full redesign.” His gaze flickers over Tony’s face, hesitating at his unmarked throat before jerking away. “We’ve got a schedule to keep.”

Tony holds the man’s stare. “You don’t need a full overhaul. Just swap out key feed lines, tweak the injection angles, use an alloy that disperses heat better. That alone should cut your meltdown rate by fifty percent.”

He taps his pen against a crucial junction in the blueprint. “Trying to brute-force it with thicker walls? That’s like putting bigger tires on a car that’s leaking fuel. It might limp along, but it won’t fix the problem.”

The first engineer, an older Beta with a measured gaze, exhales slowly. “We’d have to recalibrate the coolant flow. Maybe redo the harness. That means more downtime, more resources.”

Tony shrugs. “Do you want a prototype that works, or one that keeps blowing up?”

Silence. The overhead lights hum. Distant metal clangs against metal in the adjoining workshop. Someone mutters something—Tony catches the tail end of “know-it-all.”

He doesn’t react. Instead, he flips the page, revealing the system’s cross-section. “Here.” He jabs his pen at the injection nozzles. “This is your failure point. The serum hits too fast, the temperature spikes instantly. Add a pressure gate—think throttle control. You won’t need one massive injection. You can regulate the flow in real-time.”

He sketches a rough diagram in the margin—a compact regulator valve, half the size of the current mechanism. A concept he’s refined before: controlled input means better stability.

The young engineer peers at the drawing, interest sparking behind his thick lenses. “A pressure gate? That… that might actually work.” He drags a finger over the sketch. “We’d need better sensors for the feedback loop, though.”

“Which we can do,” Tony says, firm. “I’ll draft the circuit schema. It’s not that different from the controllers used in—”

He stops himself just short of saying "Stark Industries." Clears his throat. “—in other high-precision projects I’ve worked on.”

Spied on. Same difference.

A pinched-faced Alpha in the back scoffs. “Pretty advanced work for an Omega with no formal education.”

The retort burns at the back of Tony’s throat, but he clamps down on it. Reacting only feeds that bias, and he’s got bigger things to worry about than some jerk’s barbs. So he steadies his voice. “Advanced or not, if you want the meltdown fixed, you need a dynamic approach.”

Off to Tony’s left, a Beta with neatly combed hair finally speaks up, calm and methodical. “All right. Let’s set up a preliminary test run. Partial load only, just to see if this gate concept holds. We’ll loop in the Machinists for hardware modifications.”

Relief stirs in Tony’s gut, though he keeps his face neutral. He swivels his pen, offering it out. “I’ll help prep. If you can get me a decent calibrator for temperature readings, I’ll show you the calculations I’ve been working with.”

After a moment’s hesitation, the Beta nods and waves for Tony to follow him deeper into the bay. “This way.”

Time becomes a blur of scribbled equations, half-hearted coffee cups, and a thick current of unease that never fully leaves the room. Tony finds a spare stool next to a workbench—makeshift chaos everywhere, from coiled wires to half-dismantled servo motors—and dives into the meltdown math. He blocks out the pointed stares, the occasional scornful mutter, burying himself in columns of figures. Hours slip past unnoticed as he checks, double-checks, and tears out pages to redo them faster.

Every so often, a researcher or engineer sidles over to hand him a chart or a data set, nerves transparent in their posture. Some keep glancing at Tony’s bare throat. Others hover at arm’s length, like they’re afraid of the intangible boundary that comes with his Omega status. Still, curiosity wins out. They ask questions. Tony answers.

Eventually, Tony leans over the giant contraption itself, a flashlight in one hand, checking a bracket that secures the harness. The metal is warped, telltale signs of heat stress. “If the occupant’s heavier, this bracket might tear,” he mutters, making a note in his pad. “That’d be catastrophic once you’re at full power.” He can almost see the meltdown sequence in his head—a chain reaction of structural failure culminating in an explosion.

He’s so focused he almost misses the echo of new footsteps approaching. There’s a faint shift in the air—new scents, predominantly Alpha. Tony straightens, shining his flashlight on a weld. “We’ll need to reinforce—”

A coarse chuckle interrupts him, pitched just loud enough to make sure Tony hears. “Holy hell, that’s the Omega they’re talking about?”

“Look at that neck—spotless. Didn’t think they let unclaimed ones roam around like that.”

Tony tenses, adjusting the angle of his flashlight.

A third voice: “Christ, bet he’s never even been pinned for a rut. You see how jumpy he is? Poor thing probably hides behind Daddy’s desk all day.”

Tony forces himself to breathe. The bracket jiggles loose in his hand, and he reattaches it, letting the mechanical work anchor him. But it’s hard—so hard—when all he wants to do is scream.

He’s reminded—not for the first time—that when he’s with Bucky, this part of him doesn’t feel like a flaw. How Bucky, without realizing it, makes space for Tony to be soft, to lean into those submissive pulls without feeling like he’s giving up a piece of himself. But here, surrounded by sneering Alphas with their cheap bravado, Tony’s designation a chain around his neck.

Someone laughs. “Ah, come on. I bet a sweet face like that’s just dyin’ for the right partner to sink teeth in. Maybe that’s why the bigwigs brought him here—someone’s gotta keep morale up.”

Metal squeaks under Tony’s grip as he tightens the bolt a bit too hard. There’s a rustle of movement behind him—some of the original engineers shifting uncomfortably, maybe trying to hush the new arrivals. But the newcomers keep going.

Tony bites his lip, breath shallow. Focus on the task.

One of them snickers. “Imagine it: lockin’ him up in that harness, runnin’ your hands all over—”

“Shut it,” someone else mutters, a bit of an aside, but it’s not a strong protest—just an awkward attempt to keep the harassment from turning into a fight.

“Why? It’s not like any of us can actually do anything about it. Who’s protecting him, anyway? Brandt? That’s one hell of a way to move up the chain.”

A surge of acid roils in Tony’s stomach. He can feel his face heating, and he resists every urge to spin around and hurl a wrench at the creeps behind him. But that’d only prove every nasty rumor.

How people like Tony are hysterical. How Omegas are illogical, emotional. Incapable of thinking with their heads, only with what's between their legs.

He forces himself to breathe. The bracket jiggles loose in his hand, and he reattaches it, letting the mechanical work anchor him.

Another voice, pitched just loud enough: “Maybe he’s hoping some officer’ll stake a claim soon. I’d sure love a crack at that if I got the chance.”

They laugh.

His pulse pounds in his ears. He wonders if he can pretend he didn’t hear any of it. He’s done that before—playing deaf, playing dumb. But it always leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

The mocking conversation dips back into quieter snickers. Tony hears footsteps move away. Maybe someone intervened, or maybe they just got bored. Either way, they’re no longer right behind him.

He slowly exhales, pressing a hand to his chest. His heart hammers. He stands there, half-hidden by the metal frame, wanting to scream, or punch something, but knowing it’d do no good.

Without thinking, he rubs a thumb over the unmarked place at the base of his neck. Usually, he keeps the collar of his shirt buttoned a little higher around strangers, but it’s hot in this lab, and the uniform is ill-fitted. It’s easy for anyone to see that he has no mating bite.

He swallows hard, reminding himself: They can’t actually touch you. The SSR needs you, for now.

But the words resonate in his mind—for now. Once the project is done, if Colonel Phillips changes his tune, or if Howard shows up…

A faint panic swirls in his gut. He stamps it down. Focus on your job. Build something that can’t fail.

So he does his best to tamp it down, willing his breath to stay steady, his heart to stop hammering. His chest feels too tight, but if he lets his emotions get the best of him, he’ll smell of anxious adrenaline—ripe for the taking. And he’s learned that certain people love the spike of that hot, distressed aroma.

For Alphas like Tiberius, it’s practically blood in the water.

And sure enough, over by the chamber’s open hatch, a group of new arrivals—mostly Alphas, by the way the air thickens—send glances his way. Tony hears one of them murmur, just barely audible, “Jesus. Smell that? Already a little sweet, isn’t he? Thought these government labs had stricter codes about his type wandering around unclaimed. Don’t think I’ve sniffed a ‘mega in months.”

Laughter follows, hushed but no less grating. Tony grips the edge of the table until his knuckles whiten, forcing a calm he doesn’t feel.

Because this is the part he’s always hated: that no matter how stoic he tries to be, surrounding bystanders can always track the shift in his mood through the barest change in his natural smell.

He looks down at his notes, scribbled in uneven lines, trying to bury the heat under logic.

The overhead lights buzz, casting sterile light on the long row of tables. The engineers who aren’t openly gawking at Tony are busy at drafting boards or tinkering with prototypes, occasionally exchanging glances as though waiting for the next bit of drama to unfold. His cheeks burn; he’s not about to provide them with a show.

Tucking a pencil behind his ear, Tony squares his shoulders, lifts his chin. There’s a whiff of stale coffee and lubricating oil drifting past as someone crosses behind him. Clinging to that practical, mechanical smell helps keep him grounded.

He returns to a blueprint pinned to a metal easel. It’s the chamber’s core design, complete with injection columns and a half-dozen stabilizer arms. Even though the environment is tense and borderline hostile, Tony’s mind starts to hum with possibility. Some part of him thrives on the puzzle—it’s easier to think about meltdown thresholds than scornful remarks.

Still, their words reverberate in his head, cheap insinuations about harnesses and unblemished glands. His jaw tightens. He pretends not to see a pair of eyes flick to the curve of his neck.

It’s not worth it, he tells himself. Ignore them.

The jeers quiet eventually, fading to hushed snickers and bored shuffles. Tony hears them move away, the tension in the air thinning. He rubs at the back of his neck, hyperaware of how any flush of distress might coat his scent in fear, a beacon for the creeps to swarm. Focus, he tells himself.

So he does. He fiddles with the bracket again, notes alignment angles, tries to let the mechanical puzzle anchor him. Remembers that for now, he’s vital to the SSR. They can’t touch him. Not really. But that for now bounces ominously in his mind. If Colonel Phillips or Howard decide Tony’s outlived his usefulness, these leering Alphas would pounce at the drop of a hat.

He’s on the verge of sinking deeper into that anxiety spiral when a familiar figure steps up, the Beta with a weary but earnest expression—Reynolds, from earlier. He holds out a small stack of fresh logs. “Hey,” he says, voice low. “Test results. We tried your timing tweak. Made it to cycle ten before meltdown.”

Tony’s breath stutters in relief. “That’s… progress.”

“Yeah,” Reynolds agrees. “Something’s still off, though.”

Tony grabs the logs, flipping through them. “Then we figure out what.” He sees the data—a wave building, resonance intensifying. “If we introduce a damping function, maybe at cycle eight, it might break the chain reaction…” He’s talking to himself more than to Reynolds, scrawling an equation in the margin. Numbers form a tight pattern in his mind, overshadowing the earlier harassment.

The Beta leans in, brows lifting in surprise at Tony’s speed. “So we’d divert some of the serum to a secondary reservoir between pulses?”

“Yes,” Tony confirms. “It resets the baseline, so the next pulse doesn’t stack on the previous one. We’ll need specialized tubing, but it’s better than another meltdown.”

Reynolds nods, a flicker of genuine admiration crossing his features. “No one else came up with anything like that.”

Tony manages a lopsided grin. “That’s what I’m here for.” He tries to keep his tone light, ignoring the twinge of weariness in his limbs. “Show it to the machine shop. If they can rig a sample run, I’ll help calibrate.”

“Will do.” Reynolds lingers, gaze flicking to the small knot of Alpha newcomers murmuring in the background. “For what it’s worth,” he says quietly, “sorry about the… comments. People get stupid about designations. Ignore ’em.”

Tony’s chest tightens, a swirl of complicated feelings. He wants to appreciate the sympathy, but it also reminds him how fragile his place here is. “Thanks,” he manages. “It’s not your fault.”

Reynolds nods, sliding away. Tony exhales, setting his pencil down. The engineering bay hums with energy, half-intense design chatter, half-lurking prejudice. He can’t decide which is more suffocating.

But the small flame of accomplishment warms his chest: he’s making headway. Bucky’s face swims up in Tony’s mind—he can almost imagine Bucky’s proud smile if he saw Tony now, directing a team of wary engineers through advanced mechanics. It’s enough to keep him standing, keep him scribbling notes, keep him from storming out of the lab altogether.

Stepping back to the central blueprint, Tony runs a finger along a diagram of injection ports, mentally calculating pressure deviations. Beyond the rhythmic clang of metal and the hum of overhead lamps, he hears snatches of offhand remarks, the rustle of movement around him. But he tunes it out, drowning in the logic of meltdown thresholds.

He ignores every sideways glance, every hushed whisper about the unmarked Omega in their midst. This is where he needs to be, can be—solving problems no one else even recognized as problems. If that means enduring a few more barbs from narrow-minded Alphas, so be it.

Pen scratching across the paper, Tony outlines a new set of instructions. Another piece of the meltdown puzzle solved. He grits his teeth in a grim approximation of a smile, vision tunneled on the blueprint.

He’s here. He’s needed. And for now, that has to be enough.

Tony’s nerves twist and coil like snakes in his gut, the edges of his vision blurring as he hunches over the toilet bowl. His throat is raw from gagging—he can taste acid, sharp and bitter, clinging to the back of his tongue.

Three days.

He’s spent the last three days pouring himself into the SSR’s damn designs—barely sleeping, living on coffee and adrenaline—trying to prove that he’s vital to the Rebirth Chamber.

That he’s indispensable.

But right now, he’s just a shaky mess, palms slick with sweat, knees trembling so hard he’s not sure they’ll hold him upright.

He squeezes his eyes shut, chest tight, breath caught in that awful space between a gasp and a sob. Because if he blows it today—if he can’t convince the higher-ups his father’s math is incomplete—there’s no second chance. He can’t let them dismiss him, can’t let them toss him back to Howard’s clutches or, worse, into Tiberius’s forced bond.

A wave of nausea makes him retch again, stomach cramped and empty, and Tony can’t decide which is more painful—the heaving or the raw fear seizing his chest. Minutes tick by before he can finally straighten. His hair is damp with sweat, and he stares at his reflection in the bathroom mirror: pallid skin, haunted eyes, and the faint imprint of desperation in every line of his face.

The overhead light hums, too bright, too harsh. He presses cold water over his cheeks, splashing away the acidic tang on his lips, trying to wash off the dread clinging to his skin. None of it helps. But he forces a breath, mouth twisting in a shaky half-smile at his own reflection.

“Get it together,” he says, voice low and ragged. “They’re waiting.”

They: Colonel Phillips, Senator Brandt, half a dozen SSR bigwigs.

And Howard.

He can’t think about that too hard or he’ll start heaving again.

He dries his face on his sleeve, ignoring how the fabric clings to his clammy skin. He pictures Bucky, just for a second—the comforting rasp of Bucky’s voice in his ear, that warm, grounding presence that makes Tony feel more than the sum of his fears. If he can hold on to that, maybe he won’t crumple in front of everyone.

His stomach lurches at the thought anyway, but Tony sets his jaw. He’s got to do this—for himself, for Bucky, for this single shot at a future where he’s not bound to Tiberius or yoked under Howard.

He steels himself, forces his shoulders back, and faces the door. The violent flutter in his chest doesn’t disappear, but he locks his knees, one unsteady step after another. It’s all he can do to stay upright as he pushes out into the corridor.

He’s exhausted and half sick, and he can practically hear Howard’s derisive snort already. But that’s too damn bad. There’s no turning back.

Tony presses a hand over the subtle quiver in his stomach, takes one last breath, and steels his spine.

He has to be brilliant today.

He has to be everything they said he can’t be.

And he will.

“What the FUCK do you mean they haven’t been fully briefed?!”

Erskine, the picture of nonchalance in his slightly wrinkled suit, just blinks. His gray tie is a little askew like it might slide right off if someone tugged it too hard. “Colonel Phillips is aware you’ll be presenting,” he explains gently, totally unbothered. “But he and Senator Brandt may not be… entirely familiar with the finer details of your contractual status.”

Tony’s stomach does a double backflip, and not the good kind. “No. No, you see, I was under the impression you’d smoothed all that out,” he hisses, leaning in, trying—and failing—to keep his voice down. It bounces off the concrete walls and draws a curious glance from a pair of guards who are obviously not paid to mind their own business.

Erskine sighs, patting Tony’s shoulder as if Tony is a startled cat who might scratch his eyes out. “The War Department is on board with the overall concept,” he says, which is apparently scientist-speak for we’re winging this by the seat of our pants. “But Colonel Phillips and Senator Brandt might be under the impression that… well, Howard gave the green light for your involvement.”

Tony nearly swallows his own tongue. “Howard? Gave the green light? Seriously?” He swipes clammy palms down the front of his borrowed slacks—which he hates, by the way, they’re a size too big, and the scratchy fabric is driving him nuts. “In case you don’t remember, Howard doesn’t want me here. Or anywhere. He doesn’t even want me alive half the time, let alone leading some classified project he thinks belongs to him.”

Erskine offers one of those placid smiles that, on anyone else, Tony might interpret as pity. “You’re forgetting that you are the only one capable of fixing the meltdown issues,” he says calmly. “Phillips and Brandt will recognize that once you show them your improvements.”

It takes all of Tony’s willpower not to scream. Instead, he presses his palms together in front of his face, reminiscent of someone desperately praying for a miracle. “And if they don’t recognize that? If they think, just like everyone else, that I’m just an unqualified Omega butting into Daddy’s big war toy? If they decide to toss me back to Howard like a used oil rag?”

A jolt of nausea twists his stomach, and for a horrifying second, he imagines having to slink back to New York in shame, Tiberius Stone’s smug grin waiting with open arms. I’m not letting that happen. I can’t. The sheer terror of it all has his scent glands pulsing with anxious adrenaline. If he’s not careful, he’s going to smell like fresh panic for the rest of the day, and that’s not the confidence he needs to radiate in front of the most powerful committee in the country, thank you very much.

Erskine’s expression softens. “That won’t happen, Anthony,” he says quietly, stepping in to lower his voice. “You’ve already proven your modifications work. Phillips is pragmatic—he wants results. Senator Brandt wants a patriotic victory he can advertise. And your father needs a working machine. You hold the key to all of it.”

Tony exhales, counting to three (it feels like a millennia). He tries, valiantly, to keep the scene of him yacking in a toilet ten minutes ago out of his mind. “Fine,” he mutters. “I’ll go in there and wow them with… numbers. But if this backfires, you owe me a gigantic apology, possibly in the form of a small island far, far away from my father. And the rest of the United States Army.”

Erskine’s mouth quirks like he’s fighting a smile. “I will see what I can do.”

Before Tony can summon another protest, Erskine presses a hand lightly between Tony’s shoulder blades, guiding him toward a heavy metal door at the end of the hall. It’s guarded by a pair of stoic officers who straighten as they approach, each giving Tony that once-over glance—like they’re cataloging his unmarked neck and wondering what the hell is this undignified poser doing here?

Great. As if Tony’s nerves weren’t frayed enough.

Erskine nods to the guards, they nod back, and the door slides open to reveal a modest conference room with a big wooden table. No windows, overhead fluorescents buzzing far too loudly, and a swirl of pheromones that hits Tony the second he steps over the threshold. Not as intense as a stadium crowd, but enough that his instincts flare, picking up undertones of tension. Alpha tension, specifically.

And there he is—Howard Stark, starched shirt, tie perfectly centered, mouth set in a line so grim it’s practically a slash across his face. Colonel Phillips stands next to him in crisp uniform, arms crossed over a broad chest, while Senator Brandt hovers near the front, wearing the kind of politician’s smile that Tony’s known since childhood: polite, hollow, vacant.

With Erskine’s hand gently pushing him along, Tony picks his way to the empty seat at the head of the table, every molecule in his body screaming at him to look away, hide, bolt. But he can’t, so he locks eyes with Howard, ignoring the pure panic clenching his gut.

Howard’s eyes flash with surprise, and then something like raw, unfiltered anger—like he’d love nothing more than to yank Tony out of this room by the collar, or perhaps his hair, if they’re being historically accurate.

Tony gulps audibly.

The silence is oppressive, thick enough to choke on. Tony swallows hard, his throat still raw from earlier, and forces himself to sit. His fingers tremble against the tabletop, so he presses them into his lap, willing himself to be steady.

Howard is still staring at him, mouth thin, hands folded so tight his knuckles are white. For a long moment, no one says a word, and the tension coils tighter, strangling the room. The only sound is the faint buzz of the overhead fluorescents and the slow, deliberate tap of Phillips’s fingers against his forearm.

Finally, Howard speaks, voice clipped, each word edged with barely restrained fury.

“What,” he demands, “is my son doing here?”

A pause. The silence stretches. No one answers.

Howard’s gaze sweeps the room, sharp and accusing, but the committee members shift uncomfortably, none of them meeting his eyes. They don’t know, Tony realizes.

Colonel Phillips breaks the silence, arching a grizzled brow. “That’s what I’d like to know as well,” he says in a low, steady tone. His uniform is immaculate, pressed corners and polished insignia, and he regards Tony with the same clinical scrutiny one might give a malfunctioning piece of equipment. “Dr. Erskine said this meeting required every capable mind on the project, but I wasn’t aware young Stark here was part of the, ah… official personnel.”

Tony can’t help but reflect, momentarily, on the last joyful occasion he was in the Colonel's presence. Slumped at the family dining room table, sweating profusely through his suit as he struggled to combat the side effects of his early pre-heat.

Tony grimaces. So much for first (or second) impressions.

“He’s supposed to be at boarding school,” Howard continues, voice dangerously low, vibrating with a fury Tony hasn’t heard in years. “Omega boarding school. In New York. He’s just entered a bonding contract, actually. He’s supposed to be clearing out his dormitory.”

Tony’s fingers curl into the fabric of his borrowed slacks, nails digging into his palms. He keeps his expression schooled into something carefully neutral, forcing himself not to shrink under Howard’s glare. To stave off the nausea swirling in his gut.

“I can assure you that he is not every capable mind,” he snarls. “He’s a child, an Omega. Barely out of short pants, for God’s sake. He’s still contractually bound for a mating. This is outrageous.” He rounds on Erskine, rage seething behind his eyes. “Explain yourself.”

Erskine, to his credit, doesn’t flinch. He meets Howard’s glare with the same measured calm he always carries, adjusting his glasses before folding his hands neatly atop the table.

“As I have already stated to the War Department,” Erskine begins, voice even, “I believe your son to be an essential asset to this project’s completion. From the very beginning, I noticed that his original blueprints—the very ones that were later incorporated into your own—were the first to show any applicable, demonstrable promise of effectively activating my formula.”

Howard’s expression flickers, just for a second, before his mask of controlled fury settles back into place.

Tony tastes blood in his mouth, reminiscent of that dreaded argument with his father only mere months ago.

Erskine leans forward slightly, his gaze pinning Howard in place. “Do you know what you took, Mr. Stark?” His voice is calm. “Do you truly understand? Those scribbled notes, those rough diagrams—they were never meant to be groundbreaking. They were the idle musings of a bored, brilliant, seventeen-year-old. Your son was simply playing with equations, theorizing, stretching the limits of his own mind. He never knew what he had stumbled upon.”

The room falls quiet.

“He had no agenda, no ambition tied to those sketches. He was not seeking power, prestige, or military dominance. He was a child experimenting with ideas for the sheer joy of creation. And yet, in those pages, in the margins of notebooks you dismissed as a boy’s distractions, lay the foundation for America’s most secret, most vital weapon.”

Erskine’s gaze sharpens, and his voice drops even lower. “Before you took them. Before you refined them. Before you built upon them. Your son had already laid the groundwork for the machine that now sits, thanks to him, on the other side of this facility.”

Silence crashes over the room like a tidal wave. Tony’s pulse pounds in his ears, but he forces himself to stay still, to keep his hands from trembling against the table.

Howard’s nostrils flare. His voice remains steady, but there’s something venomous coiling beneath it. “You mean to tell me that you abducted my son, dragged him to a government facility, and threw him into a classified project without my knowledge?”

Tony swallows hard. The tension in the room is razor-sharp, balancing on the edge of a knife. He forces his voice to remain steady. “I volunteered.”

Howard’s head snaps toward him so fast Tony almost hears the crack. “Excuse me?”

Tony swallows past the lump in his throat, straightens his spine despite the trembling in his limbs. “I volunteered,” he repeats, more firmly this time. “No one… abducted me.” Lies. “No one forced me into anything. I chose to be here.”

And, alright, he may be stretching the truth, a little.

Semantics.

Howard’s lips part, probably to argue, to call him out on the obvious bullshit, but Erskine cuts in smoothly. “Your son is here because I believe that he is invaluable to this assignment. His mind is as rare as the serum I seek to perfect. If you cannot see that, then I am afraid you are letting your pride cloud your judgment, Herr Stark.”

Howard’s hands clench atop the table, fingers twitching like he’s resisting the urge to slam his fist against the polished wood. His nostrils flare, eyes dark with something venomous.

“Let me make something abundantly clear,” Howard says, voice low and deliberate. “My son is not a soldier. He is not an asset. He is an unbonded Omega who should be finishing his education and preparing for a future with his Alpha—not being dragged into classified war efforts by men who should know better.”

There’s a beat of stunned silence. Tony feels heat creeping up his neck, a fierce mixture of anger and mortification, as he’s referenced like an object to be passed off to some waiting Alpha. The small part of him that used to shrink under Howard’s stare wants to fold in on itself—wants to blurt out He didn’t drag me here; I came because I’m tired of letting you run my life. But Tony swallows, steels his spine, forces himself to speak before Erskine has to defend him.

“I’m not a child,” Tony manages, though his voice wavers under the oppressive tension. “And the only reason I’m ‘preparing for a future with an Alpha’ is because you sold me off like cattle. That contract was never my choice.”

A flicker of something savage crosses Howard’s face—outrage, maybe, at being contradicted so openly in front of Colonel Phillips and Senator Brandt. His temper is a coil waiting to spring, Tony can practically see it in the taut lines around his mouth.

Erskine doesn’t flinch. He sets his shoulders with professorial calm.

“Tony volunteered,” he repeats gently, “because his input is that essential. Whatever your personal feelings on the matter, Mr. Stark, the War Department has recognized the mechnical issues. We can’t ignore a viable solution.”

Howard scoffs, turning to the two officials.

“I’m sure everyone in this room would agree that letting an untrained, unbonded Omega direct anything related to a top-secret project is unthinkable. It’s improper. A complete violation of protocol. Need I remind you both of the enormous repercussions if this were to leak? We’re in the middle of a war, for God’s sake. The public would be outraged if they knew we had an Omega—my Omega—handling vital military technology.”

Senator Brandt sets down his pen with a pointed click. His carefully blank expression doesn’t hide the flash of discomfort in his eyes.

“We are aware of the social… implications,” he concedes. “It’s quite unusual, and—frankly—a potential scandal if the press got wind. Omegas aren’t drafted, they aren’t tested for engineering roles, and they’re certainly not expected to contribute to a project of this magnitude.”

He looks almost uncomfortable as he gestures to Tony, who’s still rigid in his seat.

“But the War Department prioritizes results above all. If your son has the only existing blueprint that can safely run Dr. Erskine’s formula, it might outweigh other considerations. Even the, ah… improprieties.”

Colonel Phillips, for his part, sits like a statue of iron.

“My primary mission is to see Project Rebirth operational,” he says gruffly. “We were on the verge of scrapping the entire harness after that last meltdown. Now Dr. Erskine says young Stark here—” a faint grimace at the word “young” “—has the data to fix it.”

Howard’s lips peel back in a bitter imitation of a smile.

“Fix it. Him. A child who has no business stepping foot in a war lab, let alone rewriting my designs. He’s incompetent—he’s never finished a real engineering course in his life. And he’s an Omega who can’t go two minutes without his pheromones distracting—”

Tony’s cheeks flare hot at the pointed jab, and he notices Colonel Phillips shift in discomfort, possibly catching the faint whiff of Tony’s anxious scent. Tony clenches his hands under the table, nails pressing into his palms, trying to steady his breathing. He hates that in a room of Alphas and Betas, they can track every nuance of stress in his smell. Hates feeling exposed.

Erskine speaks up, firm but unruffled.

“He’s not incompetent. He’s gifted. The meltdown equation was something Howard’s own teams could not resolve.” He swings his gaze to Colonel Phillips, face resolute. “And if Tony is correct, you’ll have a stable chamber that can finally handle the formula.”

Senator Brandt clears his throat, glancing at Howard.

“Mr. Stark Senior, I understand your reservations. But if Dr. Erskine—and, by extension, the War Department—deems this meltdown fix crucial, it may be time to set aside… tradition.”

He almost chokes on the word, as if the notion of ignoring the Omega stigma is personally painful. But the undercurrent is clear: the SSR might be willing to ignore an Omega’s legal contract if it means winning the war. 

They’re desperate.

Colonel Phillips, looking every bit the weathered commander under the humming fluorescents, leans back in his chair with a weary sigh. His arms cross over his barrel chest, a deep scowl etched into his face.

“Look,” he growls, “I don’t give a rat’s ass whether this kid should be in an Omega home economics class, or knitting doilies in the Hamptons with the rest of his boarding school classmates. What I do care about is whether someone—anyone—in this damn room can get that contraption operational before we’re all speaking German.”

A sharp, humorless laugh escapes Howard like a razor slicing through the tension. Leaning forward, he clasps his hands under his chin in a parody of deep reflection.

“There’s nothing wrong with the machine,” he says. “Whatever hiccups we’ve had? They aren’t in the engineering. If Erskine’s magical formula can’t handle the rig, well,” he spreads his fingers, “maybe the problem is the serum. Not my design.”

Tony blinks, half-disbelieving Howard’s audacity. A conspiracy? Seriously?

Phillips’s bushy brow arches.

“So you’re saying Dr. Erskine and your own kid are staging some big sabotage just to tank your invention? For… fun? That’s a new one, even for me.”

Howard’s jaw tenses. Undeterred, he presses on, voice dripping condescension.

“I’m saying the Rebirth Chamber works exactly as I built it. If Erskine’s serum isn’t responding, it’s his problem, not the hardware’s.” His eyes flick to Erskine, accusation crackling. “He’d like to shift the blame onto my engineering, so he brought my son into this. Kid’s got too much time on his hands, apparently.”

Erskine adjusts his glasses in that precise, deliberate way of his, refusing to be drawn into a shouting match.

“The chamber functions, yes—but nowhere near efficiently enough. Not for the timetable we face, nor for the level of power the serum requires at peak activation. Mr. Stark Senior,” he says, calm but firm, “the meltdown logs are real. Even you can’t ignore them. And if your son is correct about the conduction error…”

Howard’s glare intensifies at the mention of Tony’s theories.

“Oh, Tony said so, did he?” His sneer is lethal. “The boy who can’t even keep his grades up in a glorified Omega prep school suddenly thinks he’s an expert on advanced war machinery?”

Tony fights the urge to recoil. Instead, he gives a tight shrug. “Well, guess all that time not doing my homework freed up some brain cells to fix your mistakes.”

It’s a calculated jab—he can see the moment it lands, see how Howard’s eyes darken with the kind of fury that usually precedes broken glass or bruised ribs. Tony braces himself for the worst. But before Howard can lunge across the table and throttle him, the tension snaps under the calm, clipped voice of a newcomer.

“Well,” comes Agent Margaret Carter’s distinctly British accent, “since we’re all so attentive—” she aims a level gaze around the table “—perhaps we’d like to hear more specifics about these so-called inconsistencies, Mr. Stark.”

She’s not looking at Howard. Her focus is on Tony instead, and the entire room seems to pivot on that subtle shift—gazes snapping to the unbonded Omega at the head of the table, the one who’s apparently holding all the cards. Tony’s heart hammers so hard he half-expects everyone to hear it, but he takes a measured breath, lifting his chin just enough to feign steadiness.

“Sure,” Tony says flatly. “Let’s start with the basics.”

He pushes his chair back a fraction, just enough to free his hands so he can gesture. His tone is clinical, cool—even a bit condescending, as if he’s explaining a tired math puzzle to people who stubbornly refuse to grasp it.

“The vita radiation chamber Howard designed has a critical efficiency problem. The coolant regulation is inconsistent, which leads to thermal hotspots along the chamber walls.” He pauses, letting his gaze skim over the table until it lands squarely on Howard. “In plain terms? The machine overheats. And when you’re dealing with vita radiation, uneven heat isn’t just a design flaw—it’s a death sentence.”

A few of the committee members shift, clearly unsettled by that blunt warning, but Tony presses on, tapping his fingers softly against the table’s edge.

“Then there’s the neutron flux. It’s oscillating above safe thresholds, so the system can’t handle the serum’s activation process. Once you push power beyond seventy percent saturation, the chamber’s structural integrity fails.” He clicks his tongue. “Which means anyone inside is taking a one-way trip to kingdom come.”

He catches the flicker of unease that ripples through the group, sees Senator Brandt stiffen in alarm. But Tony doesn’t slow down.

“And let’s not forget coil alignment,” he continues, leaning in, voice low and urgent. “The current design uses symmetrical windings, but the discharge in this setup is exponential, not linear. You need to angle the coils inward by at least two degrees to stabilize the energy flow. Otherwise, you get cascading failure in under five minutes of operation.”

An ugly screech pierces the stillness as Howard shoves his chair back against the floor. The sound sets everyone’s teeth on edge, but Howard doesn’t care. He’s livid—eyes hard, mouth compressed into a furious line.

“That’s bullshit,” Howard snarls, voice brimming with disbelief and condescension. “We’ve tested and retested the coolant system. The neutron flux is within acceptable parameters, and the coil alignment follows the standard specs for this energy type. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But Tony sees it: that glint of uncertainty lurking in Howard’s gaze, almost too quick to catch. He’s struck a nerve.

“Really?” Tony says, tilting his head as if genuinely curious. “If everything’s so perfect, then humor me this, Dad: what’s the resonance frequency of vita radiation at seventy percent saturation? And how does it interact with the structural integrity of the chamber’s injection ports?”

Silence. Thick as concrete. Howard’s jaw shifts like he’s about to speak, but nothing comes out. Tony can almost see the gears in his father’s mind spinning—scrounging for the data that just isn’t there. Because this is the math Tony spent sleepless nights confirming, the math Howard overlooked.

“The—the resonance—” Howard starts, then stalls.

Tony lets the moment stretch, letting everyone feel the weight of that unspoken answer. His heartbeat roars in his ears, adrenaline sizzling under his skin. Don’t back down, he tells himself. If you flinch now, you lose.

Slowly, he leans back in his chair, reaching into the worn leather satchel at his side. The quiet snap of the clasp seems to reverberate in the tension-charged air. He can feel every eye follow his movements, the hush so thick it’s like the room itself is holding its breath.

He withdraws a stuffed manila folder, edges frayed and crumpled from frantic handling. The entire thing lands on the table with a dull, resounding thump.

“This,” Tony announces, voice level but loud enough to carry, “is everything you’re missing.”

He flips the folder open with a flick of his wrist, scattering a stack of meticulously drawn blueprints, schematics, and pages of mathematical equations across the polished surface of the table. The neat, angular scrawl of his handwriting fills every inch of the paper—corrections, adjustments, innovations that no one else in this room could’ve seen, let alone understood.

He lets the men around the table stare at the chaos for a beat before he continues, his voice gaining momentum, riding the adrenaline that’s roaring in his veins.

“This is three days of non-stop work,” Tony says, gesturing to the papers like he’s presenting evidence in a trial. “In just seventy-two hours, I’ve managed to fix the fundamental flaws in Howard’s design. The coolant regulation? I’ve recalibrated it to disperse heat evenly across the chamber, eliminating the hotspots that would’ve turned your test subject into a human torch.” He flips to another page, jabbing a finger at the detailed diagram of the neutron flux regulator. “The neutron oscillation? Stabilized. I adjusted the frequency parameters so the energy input doesn’t just spike past safe thresholds—it flows, exactly as the serum requires for safe absorption.”

Tony pauses, letting his gaze sweep across the room, meeting the skeptical eyes of the committee members, the military brass, the engineers who are still pretending they aren’t impressed.

But he’s not done.

“And the coil alignment?” He picks up the blueprint, holding it up for everyone to see. “Two degrees inward, precisely calculated to account for the exponential energy discharge pattern. Without this adjustment, your precious vita-ray chamber would’ve lasted maybe five minutes before a catastrophic failure.” He drops the paper back onto the table with a sharp slap. “But with my corrections? It’ll run as long as you need it to.”

Tony takes a breath, his chest rising and falling in sharp, quick bursts. His pulse is still a roaring drumbeat in his ears, but he presses on, letting the bravado carry him, even if it feels like his legs are about to give out beneath the table.

“This project doesn’t work without me,” Tony says, his voice dropping into a low, fierce rhythm. “You need me.” He leans forward now, his eyes burning with the weight of every insult, every dismissal, every blow he’s ever taken from his father or anyone else who’s tried to diminish him. “I’m the only person in this room who can see the math behind the machine. The only one who understands how the serum and the radiation interact on a molecular level. You want to inject that serum into a living subject and have them live to tell the tale?” His gaze swings around the room, daring anyone to challenge him. “Then I’m the one who’s going to make sure it happens.”

Silence stretches like a taut wire in the wake of Tony’s words, heavy and electric. It’s the kind of hush where everyone in the room is bracing for the fallout, for one person—anyone—to decide which way this is going to tip. Dust motes drift through the sterile light overhead, and Tony can hear his own blood pounding in his ears.

Finally, a cough rattles from Senator Brandt’s throat. He’s clearly uncomfortable, tapping a pen restlessly against the tabletop. Colonel Phillips, arms folded tight, lets out a long, measured exhale. He’s wearing an expression that hovers between grim and impressed—and something else, a lingering wariness.

“You’ve got some brass ones, kid, I’ll give you that,” Phillips mutters, leaning back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. His eyes are hard, skeptical, and they rake over Tony like he’s trying to find the catch in all of this. “But what you’re asking is for us to let an untrained, unbonded Omega effectively run the show here. This is the United States Army we’re talking about, not some private workshop.”

Around the table, half a dozen staffers from the War Department exchange uneasy glances. They’re scanning the blueprint pages, eyeing Tony’s notes, and while some look quietly impressed, others look torn—like they’d rather fight an army than defy a social norm so deeply ingrained.

Howard shifts in his seat, ice in his gaze. “I don’t recall the Army giving you the power to make that call, Colonel,” he says in a clipped voice. “And if you’re really entertaining the idea of letting my Omega son lead a federally funded operation, I suggest you think again.”

Tony forces his expression to remain neutral, though a knot of fear coils under his ribcage. He knows what that voice promises if they leave here without locking in Tony’s position. Howard will bury him, one way or another.

There’s a heavy scrape of chair legs as Senator Brandt stands, smoothing his immaculate suit jacket. He clears his throat, eyes flicking between Tony and Howard. “Tony,” he begins carefully, “your… modifications are compelling, I won’t deny that. But Colonel Phillips has a point—this is an unprecedented step. And we do have your father’s entire engineering division at our disposal. An entire team of men with formal degrees and—”

“And none of them saw the meltdown issue,” Dr. Erskine interrupts softly, his accent coiling around each word. Beneath his mild demeanor, there’s a steely edge. “They wouldn’t even acknowledge it until near-disastrous incidents occurred. Now Tony has handed you not only the proof but the solution.”

Brandt bristles, tapping a finger against the polished tabletop. “Even so, it’s… questionable, from a legal standpoint, to put a teenage Omega in charge—”

“Then put me next to whoever you want,” Tony fires back before he can stop himself. His voice echoes strangely in the hush. “Call it a consultancy. I don’t care about the title. I only care that these changes get implemented, correctly, so we stop risking catastrophe. If your entire staff can’t handle the math, I’ll stand by to walk them through it.”

Colonel Phillips’s jaw flexes, not quite a scowl but something close. “You think they can’t handle it, son?”

Tony stiffens. “I know they can’t. Because if they could, we wouldn’t be here right now, would we?”

Howard exhales a derisive noise, something between a scoff and a growl. “Oh, so we’re all idiots except for you, is that it? You can fix a multi-million-dollar machine in three days, no background, no training, just—”

“Yes.” The word bursts from Tony, surprising even himself. “Because I did.” He throws a hand out, indicating the scattered papers. “You can read it. Check it. Test it. But you can’t deny it.”

A storm brews in Howard’s eyes. “And who the hell do you think you are, telling this entire room you can do what Stark Industries couldn’t?”

Tony’s gaze flickers, but he forces himself not to look away. “I’m the only reason your negligent data hasn’t killed your project, Dad.”

He spits the last word, voice tight, heart thundering like it might punch through his chest at any second.

Before the tension can snap into full-blown conflict, Erskine quietly steps forward, placing both hands on the table. “I believe there’s a simpler path,” he says in that calm, professorial tone that seems to diffuse edges wherever he goes. He turns to Colonel Phillips, then Senator Brandt. “The War Department needs Project Rebirth operational, ja? You want my serum, my research—without which, the rest is worthless machinery.”

Brandt narrows his eyes. “We’re all aware of that, Doctor.”

“Good.” Erskine’s expression remains mild, but Tony recognizes the flicker of steel behind his eyes. “Then I will be equally plain. Unless Tony Stark oversees these modifications—personally—I shall withdraw my formula. Entirely. I am, after all, the only one who truly understands it.”

The room explodes with noise.

Howard’s chair screeches as he half-rises. “Excuse me?!” he roars, fists slamming onto the tabletop with a loud thud. Colonel Phillips jerks upright, mouth agape, while the rest of the committee erupts into frantic whispers and half-shouted protests. The hiss of shifting chairs, rustling papers, and outbursts of “Impossible!” or “He can’t do that!” fill the air.

Erskine, for his part, stands perfectly still, hands folded, letting the pandemonium wash over him. Tony’s heart spikes with a volatile mix of shock, gratitude, and fear. He knows Erskine wields significant power here, but actually watching the entire War Department quake at his ultimatum is… staggering.

Phillips recovers first, glowering at Erskine with all the intimidation a seasoned colonel can muster. “That’s blackmail, Doctor.”

Erskine inclines his head. “An ugly word for what is, at its heart, a pragmatic solution, Colonel. The SSR wants working super-soldiers. I want to ensure we do not kill the test subject or waste years and resources on meltdown after meltdown. Tony can provide that solution, or no one can. If you refuse him, you refuse me.”

Howard stabs a finger in Erskine’s direction. “The War Department owns your formula. We have contracts—”

“You have partial notes, incomplete processes,” Erskine corrects smoothly. “And you know it. Even your best scientists cannot replicate my serum without my final approval. So either we do this my way—Tony’s way—or we do not do it at all.”

The uproar intensifies, half the men in the room talking at once. Tony hears disjointed snatches: “A teenage Omega can’t command a federal project!” … “We’ll have a lawsuit on our hands!” … “Erskine’s gone mad.”

Senator Brandt tries to restore order, rapping a knuckle on the table. “Quiet!” But it’s no use; the cacophony roars on.

In the midst of the chaos, Tony stands there, heart a pounding blur of disbelief. He’d known Erskine supported him—but this? It’s like Erskine is burning every bridge behind them, forcing the War Department to accept Tony or let the entire project sink.

Howard whirls on Tony, eyes blazing. “You orchestrated this, didn’t you? You and Erskine, plotting behind my back—”

Tony bristles, but he can barely form words in the face of so much swirling argument. “I didn’t ask for this, I—”

Howard surges closer, as if he might yank Tony out of the room by force. But Colonel Phillips slams a hand down on the table, bellowing with the authority of a man used to commanding armies, “Enough!”

Slowly, the din falters. Brandt seizes the chance to speak again, voice low but urgent. “Doctor, we cannot simply place an Omega child in charge of a major military project. It’s— it’s unthinkable.”

Erskine’s eyes are tired, but resolute. “Then you cannot have my serum. Because I will not see it wasted on faulty machinery. Or see an innocent volunteer killed by meltdown. Tony’s designs are the only path to a stable Rebirth Chamber.”

Phillips glances uneasily at Brandt. The Senator’s face is twisted in an expression of profound discomfort—he knows exactly how big this bombshell is. If Erskine really walks away, the project is dead. All the money, all the time, all the political capital gone.

“You can’t be serious,” Brandt says at last, voice hushed.

Erskine shrugs. “I am quite serious, Senator. Tony either leads, or I go.”

A long moment passes. The hush now is even heavier than before, as if the entire room is holding its breath. Tony can’t tell whose side Colonel Phillips will take, or whether Senator Brandt can muster the guts to override Howard. Every cell in Tony’s body feels pulled taut, as though a single misstep might tear him open.

Howard, breathing raggedly, finally swings his gaze to Phillips. “This is insanity, Colonel,” he rasps, trying to keep his voice controlled. “We can’t let a male Omega—my son, no less—overstep every protocol we have. He has no legal freedoms. He’s—”

“He’s the only one who’s got the meltdown solution,” Phillips says curtly, echoing Erskine’s words. He scowls, leaning forward to glare at Tony. “But be damned if I let him gallivant around with full authority.”

Brandt exhales a shaky breath, color high in his cheeks. “Perhaps… a compromise,” he says, voice wavering. “Tony can provide his schematics and direct an engineering sub-division, under Erskine’s supervision. We’ll keep things quiet. Off the official record, if we must. This is a secret project anyway.”

Howard’s fist pounds the table. “Absolutely not.”

But Phillips rubs a hand over his face. “You really want to kill Rebirth over pride, Stark? Because that’s what you’ll do if Erskine pulls out. The War Department won’t have your back then, I can promise you that.”

Howard scowls, fury radiating off him in waves. But he falls silent, pinned by the Colonel’s unyielding stare.

Then, at last, Brandt forces a tight smile that is anything but happy. “We have an obligation to the war effort. We cannot afford to lose Dr. Erskine’s work. So I say we do it—quietly, discreetly. Tony… your meltdown modifications will be implemented. You’ll oversee them, at least until we have a viable prototype.”

He turns to Erskine, and his tone is clipped: “Doctor, you’ll be personally responsible for controlling the boy’s involvement. You answer to Colonel Phillips and me, and you keep him on a short leash. We can’t have the entire base gossiping about an unbonded Omega running advanced war tech. Understood?”

Erskine’s eyes flick to Tony, relief flooding them, but he merely nods, all professional calm. “Understood, Senator.”

Howard looks murderously at everyone, but even he can see that the tide has turned. He flexes his jaw once, seething. “Fine,” he chokes out, the word tasting like acid. “But if this fails—if one screw is loose—” His eyes pin Tony with lethal clarity. “You’re done. And I’ll make damn sure no one ever hears your name again.”

A charged quiet settles, as though the room itself is holding its breath. The War Department has spoken, but all Tony can feel is a cold spike of dread. The solution they’re proposing—that he hide behind Erskine’s authority, quietly enacting his meltdown fix—leaves him exactly where he’s always been: under Howard’s shadow, never truly safe. He can almost feel Tiberius’s contract tightening around his neck like a leash.

His heart pounds, and he shuts his eyes for a moment, summoning every scrap of nerve he has left. Because if he steps back now, he’ll just be trading one cage for another.

When he looks up, the gathered men see something in his face—something sharper than an Omega ought to have.

“Then I have terms,” Tony says quietly.

His voice slices through the stale air like a gunshot, and every head swivels. Eyes narrow in fresh alarm. Howard’s mouth twists into a sneer, but Tony doesn’t give him time to speak.

His voice is low, but it cuts across the stale air like a gunshot. Every head swivels, eyes narrowing in fresh alarm. Howard’s mouth twists in a sneer, but Tony doesn’t give him time to speak.

“I’m not asking for money or recognition,” Tony continues, and there’s a soft scoff from some War Department official near the back. Typical Omega, that expression says. Of course he isn’t in it for money. But Tony’s next words twist the room into a stunned hush.

“What I am asking for,” Tony says, letting the weight of it resonate, “is legal emancipation—from Howard’s guardianship and from the bonding contract he arranged with Tiberius Stone. I want it formally documented, notarized, and recognized by the SSR. And I want them—” his gaze snaps to Colonel Phillips and Senator Brandt “—to enforce it.”

A ripple of incredulity passes through the assembly, shifting chairs, widened eyes. Even Agent Carter arches a brow in a flicker of surprise—though not disapproval. Howard practically sputters, red staining his cheeks.

“That’s impossible,” Howard snarls. “You can’t— there’s no mechanism— an Omega can’t just—”

Tony sets his jaw, forcing every ounce of resolve into his voice. “I don’t care if there’s ‘no mechanism.’ You all want my meltdown fix. Dr. Erskine refuses to proceed without me at the helm. So you’ll make it possible. Or we walk.”

Senator Brandt’s throat bobs as he swallows, struggling to regain composure. “Son,” he begins carefully, “emancipating an Omega from his legal guardian—especially a father of your… standing—” He casts a nervous glance at Howard, who simmers with malice. “That’s unprecedented. It would set off a firestorm of controversy if it got out.”

Colonel Phillips grimaces, muscles ticking in his jaw. “You’re talking about a direct challenge to both your father’s rights and your Alpha’s contract, Stark. That contract is recognized under state and federal codes. Nullifying it… There’s no precedent. None.”

Tony lifts his chin. He can feel his heart skidding against his ribs, every nerve screaming this is insane. But he plows onward anyway—because if he doesn’t, Tiberius Stone will own him in a matter of weeks, and Howard might do worse in retaliation.

“Then we find a workaround,” Tony says, each syllable ringing with a steadiness he doesn’t quite feel. “You label me an essential wartime consultant—like Dr. Erskine. A special exemption—something. Tie it to a hush-hush classification so no one can protest publicly. Keep me under SSR protection, if that’s what it takes. But I’m not stepping foot in your labs without legal assurances that neither Howard nor Tiberius can force me back.”

A murmur ripples among the men gathered—a swirl of shock, grudging admiration, outright horror. Tony spots more than one officer exchanging glances that say This Omega is barking mad… but maybe we can’t risk losing him.

Howard, for his part, looks like he’s on the verge of lunging at Tony. His fists tremble at his sides, eyes blazing. “You ungrateful—”

“Mr. Stark,” Erskine interrupts with chilling calm, “I suggest you let the Senator and Colonel decide. After all, if you truly care about Rebirth—and your own reputation, might I add—you won’t want word getting around that you let the entire project collapse over your personal vendetta.”

Howard’s mouth snaps shut, though his nostrils flare in rage. His stare bores into Tony, promising retribution if Tony so much as blinks.

Senator Brandt glances at Phillips with open anxiety. The Colonel blows out a measured breath, then turns to Tony. “We can’t just rewrite the law, kid. But…” He scrubs a hand down his face. “Given this is an SSR operation, off the public record, maybe we can file a special injunction. A restricted guardianship override, or something akin to a protective detail. We’re at war—there are emergency statutes. If we prove you’re vital to national defense…” He trails off, clearly wrestling with the implications.

Brandt’s lips press into a thin line. “We’d have to handle it quietly, beneath the War Department’s radar. You’d be bound to the SSR for the duration—no public disclosure, strict confidentiality. We’d keep official recognition of you to a minimum, which means no public appearances tied to the project and limited discussion with outside parties. You’ll be free to live off-base, if that’s what you want, but you must abide by strict security protocols. No unauthorized communication about Rebirth, and any travel will need SSR clearance. Is that acceptable?”

Tony’s chest feels too tight—he can’t tell if it’s fear or relief welling up. “That’s fine,” he manages. “As long as it keeps me out of Tiberius’s reach.”

“And out of your father’s,” Erskine adds pointedly.

For a beat, no one speaks. Then Howard’s voice, frosted with contempt, cuts through the hush. “Unbelievable,” he hisses. “You’d betray your own blood, defy every code we live by, just to—”

“It’s not betrayal,” Tony snaps. “It’s survival.”

Howard’s glare could set the room ablaze, but Colonel Phillips interrupts with the air of a man who’s made a reluctant decision. “Senator,” he says quietly, “I’ll need you to coordinate with War Department legal counsel—covertly. We’ll draft the paperwork under emergency provisions. If we do this, we do it fast.”

Brandt nods, sweat beading at his temple. “I’ll see what I can arrange.” His gaze skitters to Tony. “But you realize, young man, once we make you SSR property—pardon the phrasing—there’s no going back. You’ll be expected to deliver results. No second chances.”

Tony’s stomach churns, but he forces a small nod. “Understood. It’s a better fate than what’s waiting for me otherwise.”

A strained silence follows. All eyes fall on Howard, whose fury practically vibrates the table. But with Phillips and Brandt aligned, plus Erskine’s ultimatum, he’s locked into a corner.

He forces out a sneer, each syllable dripping venom. “Fine. Sign your precious injunction, or whatever damned nonsense you come up with. But don’t you think, for one second, you’ll win.” His gaze lands on Tony, making him feel pinned. “Because when this fails—and it will fail—I’ll be sure no one ever touches your so-called ‘emancipation’ with a ten-foot pole. I’ll bury you.”

Tony swallows hard, refusing to look away. “Then I’ll just have to make it work, won’t I?”

An ugly pause stretches, thick with the promise of war—of personal war, overshadowed by the real war raging overseas. But slowly, Colonel Phillips snaps the tension. He raps the table, voice harsh: “All right. That’s enough. Brandt, coordinate with legal. Stark—” He nods at Tony, an expression akin to grudging respect flitting across his features. “Get your meltdown fix ready for the next test. Doctor Erskine, you’re in charge of containing this mess until the paperwork is done. Nobody breathes a word outside this room. Understood?”

A collective murmur of assent rises, though it’s half-choked by Howard’s silent wrath and the swirl of shock among the staffers. Tony takes a shaky breath, forcibly unclenching his fists.

He came here hoping only to salvage a chance at freedom, or at least some measure of control. Now, somehow, he’s got the War Department dancing around an Omega emancipation. It’s dizzying.

Erskine gives Tony’s shoulder a fleeting, supportive squeeze. “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse us—my associate needs to gather his notes and prepare the labs. Come. We should—”

“Tony,” a voice says.

The tension at the back of Tony’s neck coils like a striking snake. Slowly, he turns to find Howard, jaw clenched tight. Their gazes lock, and Tony’s pulse hiccups in raw, reflexive fear.

Erskine starts to step between them. “Mr. Stark, perhaps we can discuss—”

“I need a word with my son,” Howard announces. “Alone.” He doesn’t look at Erskine. Doesn’t look at Brandt or Phillips either. He only has eyes for Tony.

Tony feels the weight of every bruise, every insult, every threat that’s passed between them. The thought of being alone in a room with Howard sets his nerves aflame—he can practically feel the ghost of past violence prickling along his skin. But he meets his father’s stare anyway.

In the corner of his vision, Colonel Phillips steps closer, clearly uneasy at the request. “This may not be the time, Howard. We have a schedule and—”

But Tony draws a breath, something steadier than he expects. “It’s fine,” he says, voice surprisingly even. “Let him talk.”

He senses Erskine’s apprehension radiating beside him, but he can’t look the doctor in the eye right now. Instead, Tony squares his shoulders, forcing himself to swallow the knot of fear stuck in his throat.

“All right, Dad,” Tony sighs. “Let’s talk.”

Howard’s mouth twists, and without another word, he turns on his heel and stalks toward the far door leading into a private corridor—one not cluttered with SSR personnel. Tony follows, ignoring the sidelong looks, ignoring the tension coiling in his own gut.

The last thing Tony sees before the door slides shut behind them is Erskine, brow furrowed, and Colonel Phillips rubbing the bridge of his nose like he already regrets letting the Starks vanish from sight.

What’s a few more regrets, anyway? Tony thinks, the door’s latch sealing with a soft click.

[fernsnailz]

FEB 2025 SHOP INFORMATION/FAQ

i've been getting a lot of questions about the next plans for my shop recently, so i'm gonna go ahead and answer a lot of them here as to update everyone. yay

edit: putting this shit under a readmore. shoulda done that in the first place lmfao 💀💥

WHEN IS YOUR SHOP REOPENING? i don't know the exact date, but i'm gonna try to reopen late February or early March. no promises though, 2025 has been kinda hard on me so far and i might have to push it back.

WILL YOU BE SELLING PHYSICAL COPIES OF BORN TO FAIL? yeah. they'll be on pre-order again. i'll have some b-grades available at a discount too.

ARE YOUR OTHER KEYCHAINS/STANDEES/PREVIOUS THINGS YOU HAD IN YOUR SHOP RETURNING? yes, i haven't retired anything. however, some things will be on pre-order again and other items may be pretty low stock. the band standees in particular are REALLY low, i think i only have one team dark one left.

WILL YOU BE SHIPPING TO MORE COUNTRIES BESIDES JUST THE US AND CANADA? no. i'm really sorry, i know this is something a lot of people want but i cannot expand shipping to more countries right now. i keep shipping limited to the US and Canada to keep the scale of my shop manageable, because my shop is technically a side gig i do on top of freelance storyboard work. additionally, i quite literally cannot offer international shipping to most countries through bigcartel (the service where i host my shop) without having to jump through a million hoops to collect and remit a number of different taxes + tariffs and comply with every country's requirements for international commerce.

the EU and UK are particularly difficult to ship to right now due to the EU's new GPSR (general product safety regulations) and the UK's VAT (value added tax) (which i would be responsible for collecting and remitting since i run an e-commerce site located out of the UK). the short explanation is that even though these are the two main locations people request i expand shipping to, i literally cannot feasibly ship to the EU or UK through my current shop without facing huge legal and tax obligations.

the best way for me to expand international shipping would be to sell stuff through a different shop hosting service that either does the complicated stuff for the seller or places tariff and tax responsibilities on the buyer, but please know that i honestly just do not have the ability or time to do that right now. i'm really sorry again, but i'm not going to be offering shipping to more countries right now.

ARE YOU GONNA HAVE NEW ITEMS? yes. i already have a few things i designed for my last convention that i have yet to sell on my shop, like some bluey and mouthwashing charms.

there's also a bunch of new robot related things i really want to design (transformers stuff, nge things, misc. other robot stuff), but i haven't finished them. this is the main reason why my shop isn't opening for at least another few weeks - i haven't had time to design my self-indulgent robot merch lol

HEY IS THE TARIFF WAR THAT THE US IS WAGING ON CANADA MEXICO AND CHINA GONNA AFFECT YOUR SHOP? yeahhhhhh probably. for those who don't know: i am based in the US, and our stupid idiot shit for brains country recently placed some absolutely insane tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China. this led to all three of those countries implementing their own tariffs on US imports and a "trade battle" breaking out.

the short rundown is that the US' tariffs on Canada and Mexico were put on hold for 30 days, but if this battle continues after that then it will affect anyone in Canada who orders from me. i'll likely still be able to offer shipping to Canada, but if the tariff battle continues then Canadian customers at my shop will be responsible for paying any tariffs Canada imposes on US goods. and since the 10% tariff the US placed on China is still in effect, i might have to raise the prices of my keychains and standees a little bit since that's where i get those from.

ARE YOU GONNA BE TABLING AT ANOTHER CONVENTION ANYTIME SOON? the next convention i have lined up is Animazement (Raleigh NC) in May! i'll be tabling in the artist alley there. hopefully i'll be tabling at a few other events later in 2025, but we'll have to wait and see.

that's all for now! if i get more shop related questions beyond this, i'll probably add them to this post.

[chronicallyonline101]

hiiii!!! if u feel like writing it i would love to request some rohan x fem reader headcanons or scenario where rohan's gf is also an artist but she's way more inexperienced than him. ty <3333

hi!!! i would love to do this it sounds so sweet! I am SO sorry for the wait, i've been pretty busy, BUT it's here now and i hope you enjoy!

Kishibe Rohan x Fem!Reader || Scenario + HCs - mostly scenario.

As much as it pains him to see you desecrate art in the way you do, I think Rohan would enjoy being with someone who is inexperienced in art.

Thanks to his career, and his stand, Rohan is naturally one of the best people there is at this kind of thing - people compliment him for it all the time, but it's special when it comes from someone he loves.

He wants your approval, and thanks to your inexperience, you're full of it; every time he creates something you're clapping your hands and singing praise and he devours it every single time.

However, it may be a little frustrating for him when you do start dabbling in the world of craft because wow, you really are new to this. That painting of a dog looks like a deformed cow.

He would offer to teach you, and you'd accept; but that would quickly fall down the drain because he has a very specific way of drawing - using Heavens Door - that literally no one else on Earth could achieve.

He also believes his art style is the best, and would try to convince you to use that instead of learning your own style.

But anyways, I can't think of any more HCs so lets just get on with what I'm good at - THE SCENARIO:

There was something so calming about art - the craft, the technique, the aptitude; each fine brush of paint against canvas, a blotch of ink to paper. It was soothing, and you felt silly for having only just picked up the hobby.

It was nice knowing that even with your inexperience, you could still create. And that's what you had been doing, that very afternoon - though late into the day, the sun continued to hang high in the air. Gentle golden rays of shimmering light flittered through your open window, splaying itself across your splattered canvas.

A smile settled across your lips at the sight, pressing a thin brush to the fabric for the last, small details. The lighting was perfect, displaying a visage of your boyfriend in the elegance he deserved - while you dipped your brush into a cup of water to clean it, you found yourself hoping that the sun would remain once you had made it to his place.

Yesterday, you had bought a fresh set of utensils; it had taken some brief self-encouragement, but in the late hours of the night you had picked them up and started sketching. With no real motif in mind, it hadn't surprised you to find a portrait of your partner sat before you. He had the face of a model; the kind of looks that were easy to detail, and though you hadn't slept a single wink last night, your efforts had paid off now that the work was done.

This was probably your best piece yet. Eagerly, you plucked the portrait from it's frame, wrapped it in thin, grease-proof paper to stop it from smudging, and tucked it into a large portfolio bag.

It took you no time at all to throw a jacket over your shoulders and slip out of the door - though the sun was high and the air was warm, there was a small breeze that flittered through the air, dragging along with it small, dry leaves and puffy clouds of pollen, a sign that soon, Spring would find itself curling around Morioh.

On a usual day, you'd likely find yourself bumping into a few friends or acquaintances on your way through the small town, but today you weren't bothered much. You supposed most of your friends would still be in work - blessed as you were to have a job that didn't involve a commute. It took you only a few minutes to reach your boyfriends house, and with a giddy smile held the large portfolio behind your back as you knocked at the door.

Kishibe Rohan didn't like being bothered.

Unless he was expecting someone, the likelihood of him opening his door to a random knocker was low; there was simply no need to. If it was urgent, they could call his landline.

When it came to you, however, he didn't mind being bothered. Living only a few minutes down the street from him, the two of you would frequently visit each others houses - you, more so coming to him than he did to you. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy visiting you, he was just always so busy during the day with his work and he knew that you would definitely come to him if you needed company.

Such is why you had a special knock - you would rap your first against the door in a particular rhythm, a melody unique to you, and he would recognise immediately who it was at his door.

Stuck in a block of what to do for his manga; hearing you knock at his door brought forth relief in his soul. As frustrating as it was to take a break from his important work, he at least at the restraint to recognise that perhaps a break was needed.

He wasn't sure what to expect when opening the front door to his house, but, seeing you try - and fail - to hide a rather large portfolio bag behind your back was not it. He eyed you up and down, growing sceptical.

"And what is that?" He inquired, tilting his body forward - a weak attempt at trying to see inside the bag. You quickly caught onto his snooping, and shifted the bag out of his view.

"Just wait," Was your gleeful chirp, ushering him aside so that you could flitter inside his house. Kicking off your shoes by the front door so that you could at least retain some semblance of respect, you quickly made your way past his stairs and into the main living area.

Startled, it took him a moment to clip the door shut once you had entered. He eyed you through his peripherals, before moving toward the kitchen.

"I'll put on some tea then."

"Oh, yes please!" You called out. With him distracted, you made swift work of unwrapping the portrait you had made - setting it up so that the fabric canvas was leant against the top of his coffee table.

It took a few seconds of setting up, but eventually, you had everything perfect. The canvas was angled in such a way that it bathed in the suns radiant glow. You stood in front of the picture, facing the doorway to the room; a cocky grin splayed itself across your lips when Rohan re-entered the room, a tray of tea clutched tightly in his hands.

He paused in the doorway. There was still a lilt of suspicion to his glare - he was unsure of what you were doing, but knew that you were up to something.

Slowly edging his way further into the room, Rohan placed the tray of tea on a table near the couch - a different one from the one you had been using for your artwork.

He crossed his arms over his chest, and with his brows furrowed, cocked his head to the side. "Can I see now?"

Giggling, you uttered out a jovial: "Yes!" And took a step to the side, allowing Rohan a full view of your artwork. "Look, I made you;"

Upon hearing that you had taken the time to make a portrait of him, Rohan's eyes lit up - he was a vain man, and the thought that you had been thinking of him enough to craft a portrait in his image pleased him greatly.

However, his excitement was quick to fade when he lay his gaze across the artwork. "Oh-!"

He gasped, his expression turning sour - the kind of sour where he had to bite his cheeks to stop himself from saying anything unsavoury. "Uh, that's... me?"

"Mhm! Do you like it?" You nodded your head, eager to hear his praises - It would be obvious that Rohan was exceptional at art, and so, you sought his approval more than anyone else's. His silence proved to be discouraging.

"It's certainly," He wanted to praise you, he really did. But, it was just so unflattering! Did you even look at a reference when you were making it, or were you doing it from memory? Or worse, did you have a pixelated polaroid? He couldn't even call it abstract, it was worse than that!

He swallowed thickly. "Well... it's,"

Your expression dropped, turning narrow the longer it took him to muster up a compliment. You crossed your arms over your chest, and with a huff, spoke out dully:

"I spent all night on it."

"Did you sleep last night?" His gaze flickered from the portrait to you. There wasn't concern in his tone, what you did in your spare time didn't bother him - you were an adult, and knew better than to stay awake late at night. He wasn't going to police you around like a parent.

When you shook your head, he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Ah... that explains it,"

His attitude was infuriating you. You had spent an entire night on that painting, and he couldn't even think of one nice thing to say? You were sure if you took it to anyone else, they would compliment it - but of course, you just had to try and impress the great and amazing Kishibe Rohan.

"Explains what?" You grumbled, rolling your eyes to the side sarcastically. He didn't take kindly to your sass, but spoke nothing on the matter.

Instead, he walked to the other side of the room. Prying open a set of drawers to pull out a small, A-4 notebook and a thin ink-pen. Your eyes followed his lithe figure as he walked back toward you, narrowing in suspicion when he then sat on the couch; moving a pillow out the way so you could sit next to him. You didn't give in to what he wanted.

"You mustn't spent all night on these things," He reprimanded, frowning when he realised you were being petty. He was only trying to teach you: "It wears you out. You need to take breaks to ensure your skill doesn't deplete."

You said nothing on the matter. Huffing in disapproval. You didn't need to be taught, you just wanted appraisal - when he realised you weren't coming, he rolled his eyes and repeated a small:

"Look, come here," But offered no chance for you to move of your own accord. An invisible force seemed to push you forward, guiding you rather forcefully toward the couch where you were then plonked down.

Before you could even register what was happening, you found yourself flushing. His hand had coiled its way around your back and he held your hand with his, slipping the ink-pen between your fingers. He used your hand as a sort of puppet; pressing the tip of the pen to the paper gently.

With his lips close to your ear, Rohan murmured a quiet: "I'll show you how." You were flustered, but made no move to stop him - maybe your inexperience was a good thing after all.

[bottomsamtopdeangetwreked]

I love your baby sammy infantilization post and i would just like to add:

bartender/ waitress sees dean putting something in sammy’s drink & pulls him (sam) aside to warn him:

Bartender: Just so you know, I saw that guy you were with slipping something in your drink. do you want me to kick him out?

Sam: yeah i know he’s doing that it’s fine :3

Bt: ?????

sam’s falling asleep and nuzzling up to dean & trying to crawl into his lap like he used to as a kid. dean thinks its so cute that he just has to fuck him.

idk… your posts r so delightful

-🪼

I love the idea that Sam is completely aware Dean is drugging him, but not telling Dean that he knows. Dean thinks he's so sneaky but really, Sam is panting and getting weak at the knees thinking of his big brother roofing his drink,, also thank you for your compliments 🪼anon::)) some kinda continuation under the cut

Sam has known for quite some time now.

Well, not that Dean ever tried to hide it as well as he thought he did. The roofies were one thing, all in the pocket of his most unused leather jacket, the pills cut up in half.

He connected the dots between his ever impending sleepy-times and the fact that Sam is experienced in staying up because of college. He doesn't just start feeling sleepy if he doesn't want to.

Usually after he gets sleepy, Sam doesn't remember anything after. It's fuzzy. Comfortingly fuzzy, like his brain is telling him that he doesn't have to remember.

So when it happens again, Sam lets it happen. No protest, no nothing, just a sly look towards the roofied beer and a tilt of his head, the liquid slipping through his throat, settling in his stomach.

When he starts getting uncomfortably dizzy for one beer, Dean starts doing what he usually does, but this time, Sam will remember. He's sure of it. At least, he can try.

He hears (though muffled) "heyheyhey big guy, okay, come here Sammy. Come here Sammy." He feels (though electrifying) Dean's hand cup his side, guide him out of the bar, and take him to his car.

Dean's head is tilted to look at Sam, smile on his face like he used to when he still looked down on his baby brother from the bars of Sam's crib. He waits for a while, two maybe three minutes, before accepting that Sam probably won't remember any of this.

Sam does.

He promised himself he would.

It's a shock, but not enough that he physically reacts (probably because he's so relaxed) when Dean takes his hand and runs it through Sam's hair, cooing and whispering something about being sleepy.

When a particularly hard tug to his hair because of a knot happens, Sam freezes and his eyes start to water, his mouth opening to produce what he himself can only describe as, at the moment, the crying of an infant.

Dean panics, and he panics hard. "Fu--I mean, I'm sorry Sammy, I'm so sorry Sammy, lemme kiss it to make it better, okay? Come here,"

And Dean does, he does kiss Sam! Because that's his Sammy, and well, Sam quiets down. He doesn't know why he does (just like most of the things he's doing as of late) but he relaxes into the head kiss and whines when Dean's lips leave his hair.

At this point, he's drooling all over himself. Jesus, Sam thinks, the roofies he bought must have been from a hunter.

Sam's head falls backward, and the last thing he remembers is the sound of the engine starting.

When he opens his eyes again, he's in his bed, Dean is sitting on the edge, he could tell before he saw, because Dean does it often.

"Mm..Dee?" It's only been about thirty minutes since the drive back to the bunker, they got here at the fourteen minute mark and Dean had carried Sam like a baby to his bedroom at the sixteen minute mark. Which meant he spent at least fourteen other minutes just staring at Sam drool all over himself while he slept.

He's sporting a hard-on.

Well, can you blame him? Sammy's cute cocksucker lips covered in drool right in front of you, wouldn't you have a hard-on too? Dean asks the unavailable audience in his head.

When he contemplates going to the bathroom and taking care of himself there, he hears and feels Sam shift from his position laying on his back to crawl over (with drool still dripping out of his mouth) and plop his upper body on Dean's lap.

This time, it's Dean who freezes, and shakes, because good lord, fuck, this feels good. He's going to become a true believer in those sleeping pills if things like this keep happening.

Sam's clothes must have ridden up a little, because it's not clothes that press against his covered erection, it's his baby brother's stomach. All bare. Pressing against jeans.

Fuck. He's going to really start worshipping those pills.

He can't think about what he did after, about chuckling and grabbing Sam by the arm, about pulling Sam up and sitting him on his lap, about babying him even though he's even taller when he's sat on his big brother's lap--

Sam can though, and he will, because he was there for the entire thing. Sure, maybe he was off his game and babbling like a baby going "Dee, Dee," while lifting his hips and letting them fall back down on Dean's lap but he doesn't stop thinking about Dean breaking and finally throwing him down on the bed, eyes softening at Sam's confused face, and hands roaming all around and under those clothes.

He also doesn't stop thinking about how good it felt for his brother's cock to fill him in, and how snug it was, like a teddy bear. Doesn't stop thinking about drool coating his chin and eyes rolling back and accidentally calling Dean "dad"

He doesn't stop thinking about how that made Dean cum. Hard.

With that knowledge, Sam makes it his life goal to be as cute and babbly as ever. He's stuttering his words more, whining when he can't reach over the table for some seasoning, tugging at Dean's sleeve to tell him something.

Personally, Dean thinks he's going to hell, but fuck if heaven here didn't feel so good

[emilylawsons]

HI I’M BACK AND I FINISHED SEASON 3 AND I HAVE THOUGHTS™️

Newsreader spoilers under the cut

Okay first: THE NEWSREADER IS ONE OF THE GREATEST TREASURES TO GRACE TELEVISION AND IT DELIVERED ON EVERYTHING

ANYWAY…

The open ending as far as Helen and Dale goes—my shipper heart is a little sad we didn’t get a more explicitly romantic ending for them BUT these two have so much healing to do, and it starts with being exactly where they are. Finding peace and happiness as individuals before they give themselves to any relationship. And I think, no matter what any fan was hoping for, they can take this ending and decide how it goes for them. (Also the loving way Helen spoke to him and looked at him while she was talking to him off air. 🥹) They’re both exactly where they need to be and in their element, and that’s what the audience has been rooting for since day one.

THE PARALLELS AND CONNECTIONS TO THE FIRST EPISODE IN THE LAST ONE. Dale singing Kyrie in the car. Helen taking Dale home and talking care of him and “coming up with a plan.” Fucking brilliant.

Helen’s journey this whole season—getting a diagnosis and coming to grips with it. Being resistant at first but coming around and COMMITTING to getting better even when it’s hard and she hates it—frickin’ facing the place where she was locked up and endured additional trauma. She truly came into her own, and I’m just continuously blown away by Anna Torv and how, in every single project she does, she puts so much care and thoughtfulness into how she portrays her characters and the difficult situations they face. And she’s just a fucking incredible actress. THE SCENE IN 3.03 AFTER SHE GOT HER DIAGNOSIS AND CALLED DALE BROKE ME. I don’t think anyone else could have portrayed Helen. I just don’t. And Helen’s arc was all the more satisfying because the writers/creators decided to trust their talent and make her just as much a part of the creative process.

And Dale…oh my boy Dale. Sam frickin’ Reid the actor you are. Dale’s character arc has to be one of the most intense and challenging I’ve ever seen on TV, and Sam probably had the hardest job. Dale’s breakdown? OH MY GOD. We always knew Dale needed to break. He would have to be driven to the brink to be human again. And, just like with Anna as Helen, there was no one more qualified to bring Dale Jennings to life. Holy shit. Incredible, meaty, deep storytelling happens when you have creatives with a vision and actors they’re on the same page with. Sam got it from day one, and he saw it through to the end.

But Helen and Dale, stars of the show they are, are not the only incredible arcs we got to see. THE SATISFACTION OF WATCHING LINDSAY CUNNINGHAM GET KICKED OUT ON HIS ASS AND DENNIS SITTING IN HIS SEAT. The stuff of legends. And not just Dennis getting his moment (which we absolutely saw coming after he clocked Lindsay last season), but JEAN FUCKING PASCOE yelling at him from across the newsroom. I clapped. I cheered. And you know, I even cheered a bit for Evelyn Walters in all of it. She’s out for herself and still doesn’t get it (and Geoff was far from a victim), but she stood when it counted. She took action on one good thing. And watching them all collectively work together to get Lindsay what he deserved? Delicious.

And then we’ve got my girl Noelene who also went through The Most™️ oh… She’s got so much to figure out about standing up for herself and what she wants, and Rob’s got so much growing to do to be a better husband and father. But she did stand up for herself. She stopped being afraid to tell people how she felt and what she needed. She called Rob out on his racist tendencies and opened up to him about her work/motherhood balance, and she called out Helen for using her like everyone else and overworking her, and they both listened. She has hope ahead of her, and it was beautiful to see.

A few other small notes:

The whole Dale/Kay dynamic was so strange, but it needed to happen. Her constant comparisons of him and Geoff helped fuel his necessary fall. And it served to show what a terrible place Dale was in.

Cheryl got married!!! Good for her 🩷

Fuck Bill, and congrats to Helen for being like “I’m not gonna be punished because I didn’t wanna fuck you”

Tim gets a well deserved love and happy ending!!!

I’m really happy they brought back Linus. What a treasure.

Overall, as sad as I am to see this show go, they delivered on all counts. Everything they said they would be, they were. Every arc, satisfying. Just so beautifully and masterfully done, and with love by everyone involved. 18 episodes of perfection. And if Michael Lucas and Emma Freeman ever produce another show together and hire Anna Torv and/or Sam Reid or any of the wonderful-across-the-board cast? I will get my VPN’s worth as an American and be there for it.

[no-goodbyes-no-regrets]

Day 2: cooking together for @bucktommyfluffebruary

Short 'n' sweet today - I might even catch up soon!

It's (not) just dinner (AO3)

(this will continue in day 11 and 12)

---

"Ok you cut the zucchini, while I take care of the onions. Or do your eyes not tear up from cutting onions? Then maybe you can do that while I cut the zucchini." Buck ordered, rushing around Tommy's kitchen.

"You know you can just buy a bag of mixed vegetables that's already chopped up." Tommy suggested. "That would be easier than all of this. And less time consuming."

"We could also just buy a couple of microwave meals or order pizza." Buck said sarcastically. "Or maybe just pre-packaged sandwiches from a gas station? Or a couple of bags of chips?"

Tommy bit back a laugh and put his hands on his boyfriend's hips.

"Babe relax. It's just dinner with my brother. It's no big deal. He'll eat whatever you want to serve. It doesn't matter if it's store bought or made from scratch."

"It's not just dinner. It's the first time I'm meeting your brother and his... boyfriend? Partner? Lover? Spouse? What do they call each other?"

"I'm... not sure... Does it really matter?"

"Yes it matters! I want to get it right. I want them to like me."

"I'm sure they will." Tommy told him. "And if they don't, that's their loss." he vowed.

"Tommy... You only just reconnected with your brother... I don't want to be the one to mess it all up for you."

"You won't." Tommy insisted. "I've gone years without Donovan in my life and managed just fine. If he, for whatever stupid reason, decides not to like you, then I don't want him back in my life. You're more important."

Buck melted a little at that.

"Still. I want him and... What's his name again... Dominique, to like me."

"And I'm sure they will. Don told me Dominique owns a food truck, maybe you two can trade recipes."

"Wait, he's a chef? I thought you said they worked together? I thought he was SWAT?!"

"He is. The food truck is kind of a hobby I think."

"Great. What kind of food does he serve? What's the name of the truck? Maybe I can find out via google."

"I don't know. Don never mentioned a name." Tommy shrugged. "I've never met the guy either, only seen a picture, so he's probably just as nervous about meeting us as we are about meeting them."

"That's the spiders are more afraid of you than you are of them speech." Buck rolled his eyes. "Only this is about your brother and his... partner." He settled on.

"Maybe. But is it working?"

Buck sighed.

"Maybe." he turned his attention back to the recipe he'd found online. A slightly different version of the classic lasagne Bobby had taught him to make. "Ok we should hurry up because it needs to soak up the flavours in the fridge for a couple of hours before it can go in the oven. And I don’t want them to starve while waiting for dinner."

"Yes, chef!" Tommy said and jokingly saluted him with a wooden spoon. "Put me to work."

Buck narrowed his eyes.

"Have you been watching The Bear without me?"

"Of course not. I would never."

"So if I check... it'll still show the episode where we left off the other day?"

"Hmm"

"Thomas..."

"Fine..." Tommy rolled his eyes. "I was bored when you were on shift ok? There was nothing interesting on. I only watched two episodes!"

"We only had two episodes to go until the end of the season!" Buck said exasperated, pointing a zucchini at him. "But your brother will be here in a couple of hours so we really don't have time to get into this right now... But I'm going to remember this... For later."

"I look forward to it, chef." Tommy teased and stole a quick kiss that quickly turned into more until Buck pushed him away.

"Stop distracting me. You. Onions. Now." he ordered and Tommy grinned and gave him another mock salute.

"Yes, chef!"

"Menace."

"I learnt from the best."