#well actual like making out w/ each other gays
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I remember how back in good old 2021 I’d gasp like a victorian middle aged woman at seeing a lady’s exposed ankles /neg at like any form of c!beeduo or beeduo in general being affectionate. Like it could be fanart of c!ranboo like touching c!tubbo’s shoulder or something and I’d be like YOU SINNER ‼️. (Obv I was respecting boundaries bc cc shipping is rlly gross if you do that BEGONE but) It was so funny and mildly concerning looking back how like uptight everyone was abt enforcing the whole platonic. And anyways. Point is I was a huge “platonic anything beeduo” enforcer but now I’m like C!BEEDUO GAY KISS GRAHHHHH 👹 which I think is an improvement. They should’ve been homosexual from the start
#again absolutely not encouraging any cc shipping#THOSE R REAL PPL DONT MAKE ME UNLEASH MY 2021 ME AGAIN#c!beeduo are the gays here#well actual like making out w/ each other gays#point is 💀#c!beeduo are literally so gay and in love#they hold hands guys#and look into each other’s eyes adoringly#with their son between them#and c!tommy staring through the window even tho he sleeps on the floor of c!beeduo’s bed he’s just dramatic#oh man I miss them#estoy LOCO#anyways cc!beeduo are more dead to me than they actually are dead#I literally crack myself up#no but fr. I could not give a damn abt either of them like I haven’t thought abt them since like last year#c!beeduo are completely unrelated to them
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Extremely funny that I cannot imagine even crackshipping Luka with anyone else in the cast besides Hyuna because thats how obsessed he is with her, shfiejfhefjek-
#dee p thoughts#alien stage#alnst#vivinos#not that I particularly ship anything too hard at all but just had this realization#well I do think luka and ivan would make a killer duo I mean that in terms of ''would in combo create the most awful vibes in the world''#and not in any actual relationship way. for funsies pretty boy ship I guess but I think theyd be better maybe-friends#I really wish ivan lived for multiple reasons but he really way too gay for a straight man#Idothinkhemaybealiveforcheckhovsgunpurposesbutanyways#sure I guess you can ship luka and mizi if you reslly hate her but to each their own whatever#the fact that till and luka is the most likely potential luka ship...#at least till has two options. hyuna as well. mizi too!#ivan sua...hmmmmm I mean at least theyve interested in interacting with other people so theres that#as for luka alls hes got is either hyuna or ''Im interacting with you to kill you right now'' either because of hyuna or survival lol#mizisua w tho remember that everyone. forever. Im beaming this into your soul.#I can oddly stretch for a luka dewey ship but its out of luka being extremely weird about dewey and hyuna's relationship lol
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Sorry not sorry to be putting this person on fucking blast but this is the most wild fucking take ever oh my god lmao
protip you can just not interact with these posts if you don't like to see them. lmao.
maybe it’s cuz i’m getting older but i’m thoroughly unamused by how every media consumption is being reduced solely to ships and the desire to have people date each other. what’s wrong with friendships. what’s wrong with found family. what’s wrong with roommates. what’s wrong with mentor relationships. why is the end goal of everything to have two+ people be shipped together.
#acting like fellow queer people are the same ones planning to take away ur human rights for being queer#protip not everyone out there is going for ur jugular#also this is in response to someone saying that in order for queer relationships w men to be more normailzed we have to normalize#men being kind/loving to each other in a platonic way#and im. reading comprehension is out the window goddamn#HEY QUEER PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS MATTER AS WELL AND THIS IS AN OBSERVATION OF FANDOM BEHAVIOR AS WHOLE#not someone going 'fuck you for shipping gay couples in fandom'#GUESS WHOS ALSO UNDERREPRESENTED? ACE AND ARO PEOPLE. (has flashbacks to ace discouse (not experienced firsthand)#and the bullshit ppl spewed abt it not 'actually being queer')#thats not what this replyer is saying but goddamn if it doesnt also remind me of that line of discourse#edit: okok last bit before i stop putting effort into a misc post on toomblr .com#but goddamn really shows how cagey ppl get over shipping if their reaction is this hostile towards someone just saying.#hey maybe we should focus on platonic relationships more#'WELL THEN MAYBE YOU SHOULD BE MAKING THE CONTENT URSELF HUH????' guess what. people fucking are. not the point of the post.#point is people gravitate towards ship content more and yeah. some people are tired of it.#doesnt mean someone's pointing a gun at ur head saying to stop making content u like. goddamn#anyways op ur correct sorry for the braindead takes in the notes <3#EDIT EDIT: OK I LIED. just a minor correction tho that screenshot wasnt in reply of op's reply like i mentioned earlier#it was. the og post. lmao.
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aaaaaanyways. pride month at Camp Half Blood?
if you remember that one post from a while ago (general hc’s about chb), I did say I would do a fully pride post eventually
so without further ado, I present to all my lovely gay demigods:
PRIDE MONTH AT CHB🗣️🗣️
SO we’ve already discussed the decorations of some of the cabins, like Percy putting rainbow hippocampi scales all over the walls, the Demeter and Persephone cabins growing colorful flowers all over their roofs, the Hecate cabin and its Sentient Gay Door
I like to think the Iris cabin is just fully blasting rainbows all the time it looks like a Minecraft beacon
they play capture the flag every June with a pride flag that has the CHB logo on it
limited edition CHB pride merch😭
Mr. D defending trans campers by driving bigots slightly insane long enough to slap themselves and then go back to normal
Y’ALL KNOW ABOUT THE PRONOUN CORRECTION AIR HORNS? THAT’S THE ENTIRE APOLLO CABIN + LEO AND PERCY
Some ignorant prick about a transmasc camper: “Oh yeah she—“
Percy: *AIR HORN* “IT’S HE, BITCH”
Ignorant prick: “Okay Jesus I’m sorry”
A different ignorant prick: *makes some dumb joke about “always being able to tell” and receives at least seven different air horns from all the Apollo campers in the vicinity*
Leo’s been following this one really irritating chick around all day because she can’t figure out one of his sibling’s genders and blasting her in the face every time she fucks up their pronouns😭😭😭
anyways yeah I like to imagine there’s a demigod pride festival somewhere, maybe in New York
or no there’s demigods everywhere I bet they have parade floats all the time in lots of cities and the Mist conceals the “fireworks” which are actually just godly light shows
Apollo rocks up to camp in a rainbow crop top and a pink drink from Starbucks just to sing Born This Way in the middle of the day and then dip again
Aphrodite blessing random queer couples with finding perfect date setups “conveniently” in their paths
all the gods physically restraining Hera when she tries to go fuck with Jason while he’s on a date w Leo
Percy and Annabeth in matching shirts that say ✨BEST BI✨ with the Best Buy price tag logo in the middle
Nico got glitterbombed on June 1st the second he stepped out of his cabin by the entire Apollo cabin (and Jason) and is still finding sparkles in his hair a week later
Aphrodite kids are walking dictionaries of all the rainbow terms, somehow, and they also all know which days in June are for which awareness or pride or whatever flag
campers who transitioned over the school year and coming back to camp a different gender and their godly parent re-claims them as their true self
Percy “I can’t believe I used to think I was straight” Jackson educating some of the younger campers on bisexuality and how, no, you don’t always know right away
Annabeth “I had a crush on Thalia and Luke at the same time and it was horrible” Chase always reassuring the nervous kids that there’s nothing wrong with being queer (and that she’ll fight any homophobic family members they may have)
actually they kind of all do that
Some little kid: “Well……. I don’t wanna tell my stepdad, he might kick me out”
Percy, remembering that his dad kept Medusa’s head after it got sent to Olympus: “Give me your address, I have an idea”
Piper will verbally eviscerate anybody she catches being even remotely homophobic. I mean she will swipe phones out of her siblings’ hands to tell off some ignorant grandmother
Jason does NOT get into physical altercations outside of sparring and literal war, but the closest he ever got was after hearing someone call Nico a slur (Percy and Leo had to physically drag him away from the other guy)
William Solace has white cowboy boots. I Will Start Sobbing On The Spot
Percy and Jason wore matching skirts for the pride festival and it was great— these 6-foot-plus brick shithouses of heroes who have single-handedly won wars aggressively waving tiny pride flags at each other and dancing to IT GIRL on the quad
Cecil and Lou Ellen made these magic rainbow smoke bombs, crawled up on the roof of the Hermes cabin, and slingshotted them into the masses Just Because™️
(Will’s hair was blue and pink for weeks)
RAINBOW WAR PAINT FOR CAPTURE THE FLAG.
Clarisse fucking kicked someone into the lake because they made fun of one of her siblings’ dyed hair
Connor thought it would be funny to leave a mini pan flag on top of Mr. D’s Diet Coke stash, mostly as a harmless joke, but the next day he noticed Mr. D had tucked it into his horrible Hawaiian shirt pocket like a handkerchief😭
watching Love, Simon in the amphitheater for movie night and half the campers had to excuse themselves early for sobbing too hard
Malcolm and Annabeth reread Red White and Royal Blue every summer. They say they’re Henry and June, Connor is Alex, and Percy is Nora
(this is confirmed when the two of them start a foot fight in the dining pavilion with a Chipotle burrito)
Leo IMing Jo and Emmie to wish them a happy pride (and tell Georgina and Waystation I said hello)
Piper and Leo getting into a HEATED debate about whether Velma Dinkley is a lesbian or not
”YOU CANNOT LOOK AT HER OVERSIZED-SWEATER-OVER-MY-PROM-DRESS ASS AND TELL ME YOU THINK SHE’S TOTALLY STRAIGHT—“
”WHAT SHE AND SHAGGY HAD WAS REAL, BEAUTY QUEEN! HOT DOG WATER AIN’T GOT NOTHIN ON NORVILLE ROGERS—“
”LEO! HER NAME IS MARCIE! AND THEY ARE EACH OTHER’S W A L L P A P E R S .”
Jason, sitting in the middle of them, now deaf in both ears: Lupa give me strength
GUYS PLEASE SEND ME SPECIFIC SHIPS OR CHARACTERS TO WRITE PRIDE HC’S FOR I WOULD LOVE TO🙏🙏🙏🙏
#riordanverse#pjo#chb#camp half blood#percy jackson#leo valdez#toa#pride#jason grace#valgrace#annabeth chase#percabeth#nico di angelo#piper mclean#solangelo#cecil markowitz#lou ellen blackstone#clarisse la rue#connor stoll#malconnor
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sparks on ice
hanni pham x reader ; fluff
synopsis: hanni’s friends force her out the house to ice skate knowing she is completely incapable of doing so and that fact is proven when she falls onto some random stranger—you.
warnings: NONE! pure fluff… ; okay well the usual… they’re GAY. ; anything else not mentioned ; not proofread
a/n: i went ice skating w some friends and our whole friend group of eight, including me, has six gay ppl and one of two straight ppl… the MAN, falls onto the MALE worker and it looked really really fruiticous and i can’t stop giggling thinking ab it and its sooo hanni core so i HAD to write it
hanni has no clue why she’s letting her friends drag her out to go ice skating.
not only hanni is aussie—and that doesn’t mean ice skating doesn’t exist in melbourne—it’s the fact that she hasn’t ice skated since primary school. the memory of slipping more times than she can count on one hand doesn’t make her the most confident in the room.
she’s squeezing into skates a size down from her usual size, feeling the pressure against her feet and letting danielle helping her lace her shoes like a mother.
“you’re not nervous?” hanni asks.
“no! i mean, i’ve skated a few times back home. shouldn’t be too bad,” danielle simply shrugs as she double knots the last laces. “i might be rusty though.”
knowing danielle, she’ll probably be gliding across the ice like a professional within half an hour, spinning and skating backward by the end of their session.
minji snickers, looking over at hanni and grinning. “i can’t wait to see you fall on your ass.”
“you’re a terrible person.” hanni nudges minji over with her shoulder. “you did this on purpose.”
“yes,” minji says before nudging hanni back, earning a giggle from danielle and hyein, “but ice skating is just as fun as it is humiliating. more fun than humiliating, maybe.”
hanni rolls her eyes, getting up and nearly losing her balance from the feeling of mere blades holding her weight. she purses her lips, sighing as she clings onto danielle’s arm while they walk over and out to the rink.
there’s a variety of others skating—families, couples, friends—it makes hanni a little nervous. minji looks over and chuckles, tilting her head over to motion the rest over. “c’mon! we have less than ninety minutes now.” she says, stepping into the rink like it’s second nature.
danielle steps in first, gliding forward with a slight wobble but quickly finding her rhythm. hanni follows instantly, clinging to the edge of the rink with one hand and danielle’s pinky with her other. she feels like a baby deer.
“you alright there?” danielle asks, a hint of worry and amusement in her tone.
“define ‘okay,’” hanni says with a wary expression as she inches forward.
minji glides past them effortlessly, smirking as she spins around to face them while skating backward. “not bad han, you look like a pro~”
“you’re being sarcastic,” hanni snaps, glaring as she clutches onto both danielle and the railing for dear life. “i hope you slip and fall on your ass.”
hyein skates up beside them, laughing. “don’t worry hanni, i bet you’ll do great. just keep clinging onto dani and maybe… you’ll learn?”
“shut up, i hate you.” hanni groans.
danielle laughs, letting go of hanni for a bit. “you should learn on your own, i can teach you a bit!”
“dani! noooo,” hanni whines, “please, i’m actually going to slip on my ass. please dani… please…”
“hanni,” danielle shakes her head as she giggles, skating a little further and closer to hyein as she watches hanni cling for her life. “just take two steps and glide, it’s a rhythm that you have to get into.”
“okay well i’m completely out of rhythm then.” hanni sighs, staring down at her feet.
she loses balance for a bit, nearly falling before she clings to the railing again. minji laughs—her signature cackle—as she captures it on her phone.
the group lingers by for a bit, watching hanni as she struggles to stay a foot away from the railing, nearing closer to a fall with each step. hanni doesn’t give up though, trailing behind danielle and hyein as fast as she can while they watch over her.
hanni improves around thirty minutes in, being able to stay a few feet away from the railing now as she develops a faster pace. she’s nearing danielle’s tempo, but her arms are still out as she tries to keep her balance. they swing around her with each step and glide, but what matters is that hanni has some grasp of the technique.
that’s what she thinks, at least.
as if on cue, contradicting what she had believed prior, her skate catches and she loses her balance. her arms flail, a small squeak slips from her lips, and for a horrifying second she’s sure she’s about to crash onto the ice.
much to her surprise, she falls into someone’s arms instead���a firm, warm hold that keeps her from hitting the ground.
“whoa, you alright?” the voice is calm but slightly startled. you steady her slowly. “i gotcha.”
hanni looks up and realizes she’s in the arms of one of the rink workers. the worker, a girl who looks around her age wears a staff jacket and a concerned expression.
the worker, you, also have a pretty face. your faces are a breath apart, and the lights surrounding the rink bring a little glint to your eyes—they also highlight your unique features that she’s glancing at in the heat of the moment.
hanni feels her cheeks burn as she scrambles to stand on her own, muttering, “i’m fine! i’m sorry, i’m so sorry. i didn’t mean to—”
“you’re okay, that’s all that matters.” you say sweetly, smiling at her as you brush it off. hanni’s heart is racing, and she can’t tell if it’s because of the way you look at her or the fall. “don’t worry about it. just take it slow, yeah?”
hanni nods.
“try to keep your knees a little more bent.” you giggle, smiling bigger now. “and your posture doesn’t have to be perfect, if it helps you can bend forward just slightly. relax.”
hanni nods again, like a stupid idot. her cheeks burn as she tries to compose herself. “right. knees bent. thanks, um, yeah. great.”
your hands linger for a moment longer than they should, but maybe hanni’s overthinking it—she doesn’t mind, though.
“and maybe don’t stray off too far into the rink. wouldn’t want you getting hurt.” you add, a teasing lilt in your voice.
hanni can’t help but laugh nervously, tucking a strand of hair behind her ears. “got it.”
your smile widens slightly, and for a moment, it felt like the noise of the rink faded in the background.
“you’re sure you’re okay?” you ask once more, gaze flickering over to hanni’s face, as if checking fro any signs of lingering distress. and maybe you’re appreciating her soft features too.
“yeah, i’m good. really—now that you’re here,” hanni breathes out before her eyes widen, “i mean! not in a weird way. sorry, that was so… intimate. oh my god. i just mean, um, thanks for catching me.”
you give her a soft laugh. “anytime.” you reply, tone warm but light.
hanni wanted to keep the conversation going, to steal you away from your job for no apparent reason. but before she could do so, you give her a quick nod and skate off, moving with an effortless grace that left hanni feeling even more off balance.
“so,” minji says, skating up beside her with a grin that spreads from ear to ear, “what happened there?”
hanni jumps a bit from the sudden awareness of minji’s presence, desperately reaching out for minji’s shoulders to stop herself from falling. “shut up!” hanni grains, her face heating up as she tightens her grip on minji’s shoulder.
“that was something out of a romance movie. you should fall into her again—for science. she’s so your type. taller, nice face, oh! and—”
“i’ll kill you.” hanni shoves minji a bit, disturbing their balance simultaneously before hanni searches for minji’s shoulder again to keep herself from falling.
danielle and hyein skate up to the two a few seconds later, giggling and furthering the teasing that minji started. hanni rolls her eyes as she skates with them, still distracted from the encounter.
the rest of the session is a mix of wobbly attempts and minor victories, but hanni can’t stop thinking about how you caught her. she keeps glanicng over, watching you glide across the ice as if it were like walking while you monitor the rest of the people there.
you glance at hanni a few times as well, accidentally making eye contact. your heart races all three times it happens.
—
if hanni had a coin for each time she had bumped into you that week, she’d have two, which isn’t a lot, but it’s mind-blowing how it’s happened more than once.
a few days later hanni is hurrying towards her bus while juggling her phone in one hand and a back of snacks in the other. she rounds the corner too fast and crashes into someone—not on ice this time, but the same person.
“oh my god, i’m so sorry—” she starts, only to look up and realize it’s you.
“it’s— oh, it’s you,” you seem as shocked as you do amused. your brows are raised and your lips twitch into a smile. “this is like deja vu, or something.” you tease, steadying her by the arm before she can drop the snacks she bought for her friends.
hanni feels her face heat up immediately. “y-you, hi. um… thanks for not letting me fall—again.”
“anytime,” you reassure, you said the same last time. hanni swallows shallowly. you have the same warm, steady presence she remembers as you look and speak to her. “are you headed towards the stop down the street too?”
“yeah,” hanni replies, falling into step beside you. “are you—? are you headed the same way.”
“yup.” you respond.
as you both walk, the conversation starts small and hanni is trying to do everything but look you in the eye. you've only given each other your names and still she’s nervous along with embarrassed from your first encounter, but also flustered from how you look even cuter outside of your work. you’re talking about the weather, complaining about the bus schedule, and when the topic shifts to ice skating—you glance at her.
your smile turns a little softer as you admit, “you know, you kind of made my night during that shift.”
hanni blinks, caught off guard. “me? you’re joking, right?”
you shake your head. “i mean, most of the time it’s just kids screaming or people falling over and pushing me away when i try to help. embarrassment gets the best of us.” you say, grinning. “but you? you were… different. you were really sweet, and amusing to help. it was endearing.”
hanni snickers, “pftt, endearing? you’re teasing me.”
“nope.” you shrug, turning your head just a bit to make eye contact with her.
her heart stumbles over itself at your words, and she fiddles with the strap of her bag to keep her hands busy. “i’m glad i could, um, help.”
you both board the bus, sit next to each other, and the conversation flows more easily after that. you ask her what she does, and she tells you about her classes and how much teasing she has to endure from her friends. you share stories about odd encounters at the rink and how annoying your major can be. it’s natural, comfortable, but there’s something more that’s in the air.
as the bus pulls up to teh stop, you turn to her, your smile turning just a little more timid. “you know, i thought— well i still do. i think… i think you’re really cute, by the way. you’re gorgeous.”
hanni freezes for half a second, her cheeks flushing. “oh,” she says then laughs nervously. “thank you. i kind of thought the same about you. you’re cute.” her voice gets quieter as her sentence had ended.
your grin widens at that, and you take out your phone, holding it toward her. “well, if you’re not completely traumatized by ice skating—maybe you’d let me teach you one-on-one?”
she hesitates for only a moment before giving you her number, feeling a mix of far too much swirling in her chest. hanni is definitely red, she can feel it.
“i’m not against it.”
“it’s a date, then? or is that too forward.” you ask as the bus doors open, stepping up onto the platform.
“i think we’re past whatever ‘forward’ is, especially after our first meeting….” hanni jokes, raising her voice so you can hear. her heart races as she nods, not sparing a second to say, “it’s a date.” before the door closes.
she catches you smiling at her, teeth and all now, before the bus drives away. hanni giggles to herself, smiling out the window before she pulls out her phone,
hanni: guys guys i just guys i have a date with the cute ice skating worker the one i fell on
minji: you WHAT.
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⭒ blurb : fwb!hamzah forces grumpy!reader out of the house for their last night together before winter break
fwb!hamzah x grumpy reader
summary: short lil blurb ab friends w benefits hamzah & grumpy!reader before, during, & after going out!
warnings: fluffy, college/uni hamzah (♥︎-♥︎), vaping, fwb, smutty lala
a/n: hiii ppl have asked for more fwb hamzah so i thought i'd give u another taste for the holidays (& if u don’t celebrate here’s some non-holiday spoiling)!!! also im well aware hamzah has said he no longer smokes but once again this is a character so irdgaf bc this is not real life <3
the week before christmas is the final week of the semester; which also means that friday night after exams are studied for and completed, the entire campus would be out bar hopping before settling onto squished economy flights or boring, hungover car rides home for the holidays.
hamzah triple-checked with you to make sure you'd still be accompanying him out tonight rather than fucking off to hide in your tiny apartment, using some excuse like your brain being too tired and worn out to party (he'd argue with his voice cracking in humor, "party?! chillin' at the tav' with a few drinks is no party, girl").
though he's starting to find your bed rather comfy and after a heated make out session he's not quite ready to stand up straight; as you dress and redress in front of your mirror, asking him "this fits me weird, right?"
for him to reply, "mm no?" he sits up and his eyes widen a bit at the sheerness of the top, "not at all actually, it looks great. i like the way it, uhhh..." he's playing with his flimsy bottom lip awkwardly, trying hard to refrain from saying anything about your soft nipples but they're on display and he can't help his thoughts that continue to squeeze at his brain with how sexy you look.
you take his lack of substance as rejection and sigh with an irritated groan, "fuck! it looks so bad!" you slip the thin fabric over you head quickly and throw it onto the bed next to hamzah's head of hair, "i knew it wasn't just me! that top is horrid." you grumble and wander back into your closet, topless.
"i did not say any of that! you jus' wanted an excuse to take it off." he sighs, struggling as he reaches under himself for the light vape hidden in his back pocket. he inhales and exhales the juicy peach clouds above him while eyeing your familiar tapestry-covered ceiling.
"i did not," your voice is faint as you cover yourself with a tee that ends up falling just below your hips. "that pink vape still makes you look gay," you giggle to yourself as you shove a few things from your floor back into your once-organized closet.
"hey! can't say shit like that, don't you know it's the twenty-twenties, you fuckin' oldie?" he pinches his eyebrows and blows smoke sleazily out from the side of his mouth.
you crawl onto him, settling yourself on top of his abdomen, "wasn't an insult you fuckin' prude," you raise your eyebrows and take the boxy vape into your own hand, raising it to your mouth.
"ohhh...now 'm the prude but you can't wear that skimpy outfit you just had on without throwin' a fit. right, okay..." he sarcastically quips while looking up at you.
you place a finger to hamzah's puffed lips as you tilt your head up and blow plumes into the air. you look down at him again and lick over your lips, "hey," you lean down closer to him, interlocking your hands, "what if we just stay in? it's so cold out and nothing's fittin' me well. plus, we won't see each other for four weeks..." you attempt to smoothly pull him in with your soft alluring tone but as your best friend he knows your tricks well enough by now.
“hmmm what if we just stay in?” he repeats in barely a whisper, taking another hit of the juicy peach vape before locking your hands together and giving it back to you. "it’s true- that's a lot of days apart..." smoke pours from his mouth and nose as he speaks; playing into your games just as he plays with your manicured hands that lie each side of his face.
"yep." you lean closer, nudging your nose slightly against his and revealing a smile that is rare for most but fairly common when you're around hamzah.
"yeah?" he breathes, "but what about our deal? you know, the one where you promised you'd come out with me tonight?"
"hamzahhhh," you whine and lift yourself up, untangling your hands from his- but maintaining your weight on his lower tummy- which he's growing obsessed with.
he laughs at your expense and reaches to grab one of your hands, "c'mon go put somethin' on so we can get outta here," he brings your wrist up to his mouth, letting his teeth playfully bite at the skin before you're loosely tugging it away and shoving his vape back into his chest.
you mumble, "fuck promises," while heading back into your closet.
༉‧₊˚.
“hamzah! what’s up, mothafucka?!” aaron yells out, catching you two walk into the tavern, decorated in ornament-covered garland and twinkling christmas lights along with its various neon beer signs hung about.
“hey man, what’s up?!” his hand leaves his pocket to give aaron a hug.
“i’m good, im good,” aaron then acknowledges you after pulling away from hamzah, “hey, how’ve you been? that stat’ final was fuckin’ bizarre huh?” he smiles into his sip of the tall heineken bottle gripped in his hand.
“yeah, it was kinda tough,” you attempt to agree even though you’d studied for an annoying amount of time for that exam so if you found any of it difficult you would’ve been more pissed at yourself than the exam itself.
he nods, “about shit myself when i saw the first few questions…” he laughs then clears his throat, “well, uh, we’re just about to start a game of darts so you guys came at the perfect time!”
༉‧₊˚.
you and hamzah genuinely are not jealous people.
you couldn’t care less about some sort of jealous nagging when he’s got girls coming up and flirting with him as you both share a drink and fries while waiting for your turns in darts, actually you think it’s funny. you like to watch and see how hamzah handles himself in games of flirting- he’s an awkward yet charming flirt and most girls only fall more the less smooth his delivery gets.
there’s nothing to be jealous of- you guess the only thing truly in danger is your spot as his best friend. if hamzah were to get a girlfriend it would only be right that you’d come second to her (at least you’d hope so, for her sake at least). but there’s no fear of that happening anytime soon anyway, you both have severe issues with committing to the idea of holding someone else’s emotions so tightly that they become apart of you without you even realizing. it’s fucking scary. plus, you both love being teases too much to ever give that up any time soon.
after losing in darts to a few of hamzah’s friends for the second time you let him be wandered over to buy drinks for a few girls who were eyeing him up (they even asked you if they could “borrow him” which grossed you out and then it pissed you off when they decided to wink at you- you almost wanted to just scream “oh my god just take him already! please go away!”).
and while he’s been leaning against the bar with googley eyes, you were dragged out to the side of the building with aaron’s on and off again girlfriend, vanessa, and a few of her girlfriends. you made sure to swiftly sneak hamzah’s vape from his pocket before heading out, needing something to keep you occupied while attempting your interact with girls you just barely know.
“he was a fucking tramp, i’ll tell you that!” ashanti exclaims, throwing her hands about and making the small group laugh through the clouds of white smoke (some from the dryness of the cold air and some from the different flavored nicotine puffs) mixed in the air. outside of the safe, warm lighting of the tavern, there’s a brisk and calming mildness. the wind pinches at any skin that dares to peek and there’s muffled up noises and voices heard from the various bars and homes along the busy road, leaving the abundantly sweet, echoey cackles of the group tucked away into the alley next to the brick building to coat the lonely midnight sidewalk.
katrina speaks up with a shake of her head, “men can do the nastiest shit, but let it be known i’m not looking for something serious and all of a sudden i’m the slut?” she points to herself before rubbing her lips together.
you nod your head, holding the thick burrows of your maroon scarf (that purposefully matches your lip shade perfectly) while you speak, “mind you his homeboy’s were just bragging about fucking girls back to back without a care.”
they giggle around you, adding “exactly”s as you take in another puff with a smile.
“it’s gross!” vanessa enthuses.
“what is, huh?” aaron smoothly comes behind her and plants a kiss on her patchy, cold cheek.
“oh, nothin’” she giggles and shrugs at the weight he’s added to her shoulders.
you roll your eyes playfully at the couple, glancing to the side and catching the surprise of hamzah approaching you; his baseball cap still slouched on his head (leaving his lively curls to peek out for a sad breath of air) and dark puffer jacket casually covering his figure, “you stole from me?” he asks under his breath with a smile as he leans on the brick wall beside you, naturally opening his palm to invite the exchange.
“yeah,” you admit, placing the vape in his palm.
he lets his fingers run over your hand for a second longer when he retrieves it from you, looking down then back up to you. “it’s dark as hell out here, who thought the alley was a good spot for a group of hot girls to hang?” he looks around, noticing the only true lighting coming through the slim windows of the tavern.
“feel like we could beat up any scary ugly man who would even dare to start shit,” you reply and turn to face him.
“you’re right. you’d probably kill his ass with your words alone,” he giggles to himself, “but you’d still save a punch for me, right?”
“right, right. obviously.” you shrug and half smile.
“obviously…” he smiles.
you both look around for a second, listening in on other people’s conversations and looking to each other when something wild is brought up. eventually, at the same moment you both sigh and whisper so only the other could hear:
“can you walk me home?”
“can we go back to yours?”
༉‧₊˚.
hamzah thinks watching you undress is hotter than sex itself.
seeing you strip down in front of him while he lays on his bent forearms, anticipating and knowing at any moment you’ll pounce on him and give into all of his desires. it’s fucking hot.
when you’ve got nothing but your lacy panties on, you finally crawl onto him, allowing him to completely lean back and collapse as you guide his head to meet your own, mouths wet and sloppy against each other. his hands lie surrendered and lazily thrown next to his head as you move to deliver kisses and licks to the stretch of his neck, he hums in amusement as always, grateful for your touch.
he lets a whisper of “c’mere,” slip and you’re immediately back at his mouth letting him kiss you deeper, holing onto your face and biting at your plump bottom lip every so often as you allow your body to grind against the sleek belt buckle you placed your clothed cunt against.
he lets one hand drop from your face, letting his arm scoop around your hips as he aids you in humping at his belt. he forces your hips to bring harder and quicker, while refusing to end his kissing, even with your head turned due to your need to breathe, he’s managed to continue kissing at your jaw and neck. you moan softly with every clank the metal buckle makes against itself as your clit gets off on the thick gold.
you draw out a moan of “fuckkk” as you begin to move yourself harsher against him, chasing an orgasm that you can just barely taste. you’re hungry for it and he knows it, but hamzah just loves the face you make when you finally cum after multiple denials— so, he lifts you with the arm that once guided you, lying you on your back as he moves to rid of his hoodie.
you whine, “h! please come back, this is fucked up. we’re gonna be gone for weeks, just let me-” you move your hand down into your underwear to find some satisfaction.
“hey, i said i’ll give you anythin’ you want in those four weeks, promise.” he assures you, now shirtless and leaning over your figure, “let me see,” he brings your hand away from playing with yourself and up to his mouth, placing the few fingers in his mouth with a small hum.
you roll your eyes back and want nothing more than to have any part of him inside you right this second, “please.”
he smiles slightly as he removes your fingers from his mouth and kisses your inner wrist, lowering your hand to his belt which you immediately attempt to unbuckle as he kisses you with a hand wrapped gently around your neck.
you flimsy fumble around with the metal before slinking a second hand down to effectively remove the belt and begin to unbutton his pants as much as you possibly could.
eventually you break the kiss to focus on freeing his dick and giving yourself some sort of release, “let me help you,” his voice is tender and out of breath as he drops his jeans and boxers, giving you better access.
he takes your hand and dribbles spit into the palm before you take it upon yourself to wrap it around him, stroking while biting at your bottom lip, watching as he lowly groans and fondles your tits concurrently.
you work him slowly but eventually quicken the pace with the more frustrated you grow— you can’t help it, you need him inside of you now. “hamzah,” you faintly whine.
he knows how badly you want it. so he brings your hands away from his length, placing them on his warm chest and along his shoulders as he aligns himself for you, letting your cunt take him in slowly.
you immediately moan out into the air above you and he shushes you, telling you “you’re amazing” and “so fucking sexy” between his kisses to you. each ridge and muscle of your walls pulls him tighter with each thrust, your slickness dripping sparingly down your warm thighs and onto his own.
your breath hasn’t caught itself yet when he brings your legs up to your chest, holding you in place with his large arms as he continues with the deeper angle. the both of your moans are harmonic and raw together, something beautiful and heated. you claw at the sides of his arms and have your eyes pinched as you take him, soaking him in the comfort of your warmth.
once he feels his orgasm has built he harshly thumbs over your slick clit making you choke on your own, drawn out groans. he’s encouraging and nothing but satisfactory when you eventually cling to him and whine out that you’re right there while humping his hand without any care.
and once you both come down from the absolute mess of your orgasms hamzah coerce’s you to let him lie with you under the covers, with his resting against your chest. unsurprisingly he’s first to fall asleep, after requesting you put on his favorite show. but you’re too tired yourself to say anything more than “okay” or “i’m gonna go pee real quick” which works just fine for the two of you.
#not my best smut but i felt bad leaving u guys hanging last time :((#hamzahthefanatasticxreader#hamzah fic#martin and hamzah#hamzah x reader#hamzah imagines#hamzahthefantastic#hamzah the fantastic#hamzah x y/n#hamzahthefantastic x reader#hamzah#slushynoobz#slushy noobz#slushy noobz virus#thatmartinkid#mandysiphone#hamzahthefantastic fanfic#hamzah fluff#hamzahsmut#hamzah angst#hamzahthefantastic x you
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we are playing in the “tommy asks buck for an open relationship” sandbox rn. just go with me on this. ok? ok. he is entirely asking for his own purposes (perhaps trying to hook up with eddie perhaps not who’s to say!) but he frames it like well YOU deserve to experiment and be with other guys :) and so buck agrees despite being a diehard monogamist bc he's desperate to be loved and make this relationship work and tommy makes it sound reasonable.
so for a few weeks tommy like casually hooks up with a few people while buck hangs back uncomfortably and eventually buck is like SIGH well i guess i SHOULD get more experience with guys. and he asks eddie to come with him to a gay bar and buck absolutely knocks it out of the park like he's Killing it he and eddie r having fun and he hooks up with someone new every weekend and unlike his buck 1.0 days he's actually just having fun with it bc he isn't looking for emotional intimacy w these people that he'll never find! he's just letting himself explore things and be happy! meanwhile tommy is going for like shitty grindr hookups that don't even show up half the time. he tries asking eddie to Hang Out and eddie leaves him on read. like he is Not doing too hot.
and i think that buck is completely oblivious to the fact that tommy is not having fun like he is. but eddie does know and he's fucking Thrilled. he's just gonna let this shit play out. eddie knows that he loves buck at this point, but he's watching buck actually enjoy himself and kinda revise the terrible relationship he has with sex and find something liberating in it so eddie's okay with sitting back for awhile and letting buck have this while also laughing at tommy. maybe eddie is also finding hookups when they go out maybe not who's to say.
so after a couple months of this buck and eddie are hanging out and buck is like sigh yknow this open relationship thing was fun for a while but i just don't know if i see this thing with tommy going anywhere... like i don't really care when he hooks up with other people and i don't think it's because i'm cool and polyamorous i think it's because i just don't like him that much. and eddie's like well you shouldn't settle for a relationship where you don't really love your partner. yknow he does his sage advice thing. and buck is like yeah you're right...
and later buck goes to tommy and he's like hey man you're really great and i do like you but i think this just isn't really working. i think we both deserve something better. and tommy's like it's eddie isn't it. and buck's like huh? and tommy's like you were with eddie last night. and buck's like oh well yeah he and i were talking and he said- and tommy's like evan stop bullshitting me we're grown-ups you can just say you're dumping me for him. and buck's like sorry Huh. and tommy's like oh come on he was just "wingmanning" all those times you two went out? and buck is like ...yeah?? he's my friend?? and tommy's like sure. whatever fine. this was fun. have a good life evan. and buck's like what da hell...
and then when he tells eddie about the breakup, he mentions it and eddie's like ha 🙄 and buck's like oh haha yeah like that's crazy right! and eddie's like 🙄 as if you'd still be with him if we had been sleeping together. and buck's like . what. and eddie's like i mean. well it's us. we wouldn't... not as some side thing. if it was us, it'd be real.
and buck's like oh. yeah. do you, uh. think about that? if it was... us? and eddie's like ...once or twice. and buck's like ...once or twice? and eddie's like yeah. each time lasts a few years though. and buck laughs and he's tearing up and eddie grins at him and he says so. us? and buck says yeah. yeah, us.
and then they are in love and get married and are happy forever and ever the end 🫶🏻
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Inchie we need your words of reason again 🙏 Newer fans have bled over from other hockey rpf and keep crossing lines 🫥
babe idk how wise I am ?? at all but I'm a firm believer in using common sense about rpf. and I haven't personally seen the stuff you're alluding to but! I've seen posts referring to it and I heard smth about another ship suffering a containment breach… so can't hurt to throw my 2c in as well ?? idk?
tl;dr that landoscar is NOT the ship for you if you 're going to try and force it to be "real" in a l*rry way*. this ship adores the real life friendship without having it compete with the guys' other many friendships - and we do NOT hate women and women partners or pretend they're beards/fakes/conveniently open relationship. and we absolutely do NOT push rpf outside of fandom. you'll get blocked/reported if you do. this is NOT the space for you to find your next "omg what if they're actually fcking" ship. Lily and Oscar are basically forever, Lando is rightfully loving his life sharing his beautiful body with people, and the fan fiction for the ship is staggeringly amazing so we're very very happy w the status quo <3
and we do NOT share rpf content with Lando, Oscar, anyone in F1, the families - basically if they're not someone you know solely in fandom, you don't share rpf with them. again, you will not find support for that here.
I "officially" joined landoscar fandom around Silverstone 2023 and these have been the hard lines taken for as long as I can remember and from all of the OG people in this fandom. esp from people who've been here since Oscar's Alpine tweet bc landoscar is unique in not having led with a PR image and we've all gotten to see every nervous, stumbling and authentic progression of their partnership and friendship along the way - at no point feeling the need to cross the boundary between fic and reality. it truly is charming and intriguing and rewarding as it exists in reality!
as far as the 'why' essay I'll drop all that where it can be ignored easily aslfgjalgf
like I said - landoscar has always been the exception of no one ever slipping over into trying to "make it real" in large part bc Lando and Oscar don't do the PR bromance/fake gay/fan service stuff which !reminder! is content in other ships I absolutely eat up and is 100% targeted to me but !! I'm also aware is connected to a lot of inappropriate fan behavior from ppl who blur the lines between amusing PR content and reality. trust me, I had to basically abandon carland0 which was my very first f1 ship bc to this day - fully out in the open - I see casual misogyny thrown around about Rebecca and ppl truly loudly thinking Lando and Carlos - who have always referred to each other as brothers and who laugh at the "gay" stuff they do precisely bc it's not real - genuinely fcked and/or dated. I will never care enough about an rpf ship to willingly encounter that shit on a regular basis. I know there's a lot of good ppl in the ship who don't engage in that stuff but I have such a hard line about wag hate that it's not worth it for me.
ironically or maybe because of, Lando and Oscar are the only drivers to NOT engage in playing gay for laughs BUT also who hit multiple progressive bullet points in things like discussing romance and dating in gender neutral terms and not making a big deal out of consuming or discussing queer media etc. they actually walk the walk in not pushing gender identity or sexual orientation on hypotheticals or on each other. they also don't do any macho/tradmasc behavior with each other or even bro-ey stuff like rough-housing or loud, aggressive humor (nothing wrong with loud bro stuff tho as long as it doesn't veer into toxic territory! I come from hockeyblr originally so it can be really sweet!)
and landoscar is also the exception in that we all ADORE Lily and have zero interest in trying to erase her let alone anyone be hostile toward her. in straight people culture they're basically already married and that's how they were when landoscar started as a ship! a lot of us have regularly made posts similar to this for newer fans to remind them that Lily (and whoever Lando ends up with as a steady partner) are NOT pawns in an rpf game. Lily is a real human woman with a real life relationship with Oscar and while no one is obliged to engage w wag content, respecting her existence is the bare minimum expected.
the last point I should make is that there's a very clear difference for instance on my blog where I see fanservice ship content about say charl0s or frand0 or n0rtrell and lose my mind over it and love it etc. but then there's Alex or Rebecca or Pietra on my blog! bc I can have fun without erasing women or losing common sense!!
whereas whenever I post stuff about a friendship that rly does make me Feel Things and write my insane essays, it's bc of what the relationships verifiably are and not what they aren't. Max F truly has a complexity and level of depth in his relationship with Lando that is unique and special to each other's lives. in the same way, Lando and Oscar truly do have a particular charm and fondness for each other that's made them approach each other unusually tentatively and slowly - while also having such intense blushing fondness as well as a uniquely intriguing maturity to their professional partnership. this stuff is fascinating and those two examples in particular swim around into all kinds of social/emotional territory.
in ways that do not require conspiracies and fan theories of them fcking or dating to make them compelling.
(and tbh the fact that Lando has some form of "crush" on a lot of handsome men and subconsciously/consciously "flirts" is absolutely fine to enjoy... as long as none of it gets outside of fandom.)
and the fan fiction for landoscar is truly TRULY staggeringly prolific and immensely talented so that's where we go for imagining them in any other type of reality <3
*do not get mad or whatever abt this - if you did or still do just want to ship l*rry privately then whatever but that's the like terrible gold standard for horrific real life repercussions of taking rpf seriously and why fandoms should never ever allow that to happen. there's no debate about that.
#inchreplies#landoscar#mctwinks#twinklaren#using all the tags bc if this is genuinely a problem then we gotta root it out#as someone who makes content about this one ship I am not saying I'm like a major blog or anything#just that with a certain amount of followers it's definitely smth I should weigh in on if that makes sense#wank adjacent#pinned post
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Hi! ^w^ I really like your writing, and I was wondering if I could give a story idea of mine? You don't have to acknowledge this, btw
It involves the 141 having a phat crush on the reader and pining after them. Maybe they all having a friendly competition with each other to see who'll get a chance to date her, only to find out one night while at a bar or something that she's a lesbian/or just has more of a lean towards femme people :P
-NN
Haha oh my gosh! This idea is actually in my brainstorming pile! This is the way a scenario like that could go in my mind (I'm going to take this from a lesbian and/or bi angle - I'm bi so this idea checks out lol):
You openly admit you like girls around the 141. And when you get a chance to flirt or engage with a girl, duh, you do!
At first some of the guys are skeptical. Are you really just gay? But as time goes on you show no visible interest in men...so yeah. You officially turn gay in their books. It's not a big deal. It's none of their business and it doesn't really matter who you're attracted to. Well, maybe to Johnny it does a little bit.
-
If you're bi, eventually they figure it out. It just makes them more confused than anything.
They've been there the whole time! So why do you always have to go out looking for a cute bf/gf?
#call of duty#cod imagines#mw2#mw2 headcanons#cod mwii#simon ghost riley#john soap mactavish#captain price#kyle gaz garrick
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could you possibly do either hcs or a fic of new itzy member reader who was the each of the girls gay awakening?? i feel like chaeryeong would be panicking and really nervous because she hasnt felt something like this and so strongly too 😭🥹
okay so you were added to the group members lineup at the very last moment, you barely knew any basic info about each members and nearly freaked out when you first actually met them. itzy’s reaction wasn’t so bad, but wasn’t very pleasant either…. at least at first. ever since you performed together, you grew closer to each members. how could they not notice how insanely beautiful you are??? and you were also kind but had a struggle with opening up to new people but anyway, you’re their bff now! or at least for now.
i guess yeji would be so dumbfounded when she realizes that she likes you??? and not in a friendly way??? girlie is so nervous about that fact and she just can’t handle it but to tell to her members but she can’t because they’ve never discussed same-sex relationship before 😭 she always thought she was into guys only, and even if she liked a girl, she would think it was just a friendly sympathy. yeji would also get so smiley around you and will often just smile to her own thoughts. if she will have enough courage to confess to you, she will make her best to do that in private, and also would try to be romantic. but my pookie is just so nervous, she will stutter and almost tripped over when she came 😭🤞🏻🤞🏻 thank goodness you just simply kissed yeji and asked her to be your girlfriend faster than her.
LIA MY BELOVED 😞😞😞 i think she will just simply accept the fact that you’re the first girl she ever liked as not a friend. eventually she’ll ask her gay friends how to confess to you properly and will ask some advices how to give you hints that she likes you lmao 😭 she will always touch your hand, always leaning on your shoulder during breaks on practices and just will rub circles on your arm while holding your hand and you’re just like 🤷🏻♀️ you’re okay w it and don’t really pay attention to it. lia would reveal her feelings by getting jealous when one of members were jokingly flirting with you 😭 she would just storm out of the room, making you confused and go after her. asking her what’s wrong and she will kiss you quickly, and after that lia would get so shy 😭😭🤞🏻 but you just chuckle and hug her tightly, kissing her cheek.
ryujin will just go 🧍🏻♀️ when she realizes that she have feelings for you. girl would occasionally flirt with you but you just laughed it off, thinking it’s just her personality and she will just be like “oh well yep 🧍🏻♀️”. she would complain to other members that it would be easier to have feelings for some guy and not you instead, but you come into the room with “have feelings for who?” and bae will just be “no one 🧍🏻♀️” help 😭😭🤞🏻how she would confess? she would get so wistful one day and it made you feel worried for her. “are you okay ryu?” and she will just automatically nod and not pay attention to anyone. at the end of the day you’ll sit down beside ryujin, telling her that you’re worried about her, and she will just go “i think i like you, y/n. no- i don’t think, just- oh well….” 😭😭😭 she’s so nervous but you calm her down by kissing her nose aww
I AGREE W YOU ON CHAERYEONG. she’s my cutie that nearly freaks out when her friend told her that she has feelings for you 🤞🏻😭 i also think that she will distance herself from you to reflect about her feeling towards you and it will also affect you by making you worried about chae. members would notice that something about you two is wrong and would try to do something about it, for example, they would interrogate chaer that is there’s bad blood between her and you? but she would get so nervous that she would just straight say that she has feeling for you 😭😭 other members would support ryeong and tell some advices how to get closer w you and how to confess. one day members would call you to help them out with something but once you’re at the place, you see only chaeryeong in the room, beautifully dressed and nervously fidgeting her fingers 😭 she would confess to you after a few minutes of overthinking, so scared about your reaction but! you took her hands in yours, telling her that her feelings are mutual and she’s just so happy to hear that 😭😭😭🤞🏻
bae yuna would giggle whenever looking at you and leaving you wondering what was that. she would feel so lightheaded about her feelings to you, that she almost forgot to do or take something. i feel like she would have some diary where she writes about you, her feelings for you and overall just you. she would hide it really hard, thinking that you would think she’s some freak 😭 but aye ryujin would’ve find it first and tease younger shin for that 🤞🏻😭😭😭 but i’m sure ryu would’ve helped yuna to confess to you, giving her some advices. yuna would ask you out to the restaurant, and will calmly confess to you after eating. after hearing your ‘yes’ yuna’s face lit up and she just started kissing your face 🤞🏻😞
#itzy imagines#kpop imagines#yeji x female!reader#lia x female!reader#ryujin x female!reader#chaeryeong x female!reader#yuna x female!reader#itzy x female!reader#itzy x you#itzy soft hours#kpop headcanons#itzy headcanons#kpop fluff#itzy fluff#yeji fluff#lia fluff#ryujin fluff#chaeryeong fluff#yuna fluff
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Title: Under Your Skin
Pairing: Jack “Whiskey” Daniels x Javier Peña x F!Reader
Summary: You’ve worked on Chucho’s ranch since you were 15 years old, grew up with Javi, loved Javi… He comes back after nearly 20 years to find you hooking up with a certain former secret agent. He’s jealous, for sure, but of who?
Warnings: mdni, 18+ post season 3 of Narcos, AU where Jack gets kicked out of the Statesmen instead of burgered, Javi being bi and repressed, Jack being a bisexual slut, SMUT, MMF dynamics, oral (f receiving), javi being a dick, oral (m receiving), javi tries to hit jack, gay kissing (!!!), making out, face sitting, reader kinda gets used and likes it, nipple play, throat fucking, Eiffel tower moment, brief f masturbation, brief m masturbation, pet names (sugar, cowboy, baby, hermosa), truly unreasonable amounts of cursing i’m sorry i talk like this, and also unreasonable amounts of southern phrasing, again sorry I talk like this, unprotected PIV, creampie, cum eating, teasing Javi, actually 90% porn with like a little backstory, kind of enemies to lovers, they’re all ranch hands technically, also they’re all romantically into each other but also javi is dumb and jack can’t believe anyone would want him for more than sex haha oops :) WC: 3.5k
A/N: This is my @pedrostories Secret Santa gift to the lovely @javier-pena!! I hope it’s everything you wanted ahhhhh. I hope it's ok that this has nothing to do with Christmas and really doesn't even take place in the winter. I saw that you like Whiskey and Javi P, cowboys , and poly fics and like... could not resist. I tried my hand at enemies to lovers, a trope I love to read, but I think it came out pretty mild. I am so excited for you to read this!!!!! Happy Holidays ❤️
credits: dividers by @saradika // Thanks for the beta @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin, @beskarandblasters, and @idolatrybarbie
Jack Daniels Masterlist | Javier Peña Masterlist | Main Masterlist | AO3 | Kofi
Working on a ranch isn’t easy, and it usually isn’t even all that fun. But it does have its perks. One such perk is currently on his knees with his face buried in your pussy. One of your legs is over Jack’s shoulder and you use it to pull him even closer, grinding your clit on his hooked nose. Just as you’re about to come, the door to the tack room slams open. You and Jack jump apart and you quickly start stuffing your legs back into your jeans.
“For FUCKS sake, Daniels. This is the third time this week. Get back to fucking work.” Javier Peña, face red and chest heaving, looks like he just caught his girlfriend cheating on him. “And you. You should fucking know better.”
You fasten the button of your jeans and smirk at Javi. “Know better than what, Javi?”
“Than to fuck around with some asshole like Daniels.”
“He’s nicer than you,” you snark before storming out, making sure to slam your shoulder into Javi on the way out the door. He ruined a perfectly good orgasm.
You’ve worked on Chucho’s ranch since you were 15 years old, taking care of the horses at first before graduating to fixing the fences and caring for the cattle as well. You and Javi had been best friends before he ran off to Colombia, spending every day after school and every second of daylight in the summer together on his father’s ranch.
You had been in the back pew the day he never showed up for his and Lorraine’s wedding. You like to think you had something to do with that. He clearly, clearly, wanted out of Laredo, wanted nothing to do with the wife and 2.5 kids and picket fence life he was barrelling toward.
His bachelor party was just the two of you drinking in the hayloft, you begging him to do what he’d always wanted to and him going on about duty and obligation. You’d almost kissed him that night, but stopped yourself. He was getting married the next day, for fuck’s sake. You’re glad he listened to you, in the end, even if he disappeared without so much as a goodbye.
In the years he was gone, you never really forgot about him. The truth was that he had been your first love, but you’d never worked up the courage to tell him, and then he was getting married and then he was gone.
Jack looked so much like Javi that when he first showed up on the ranch, you asked if he was Javi’s cousin or something, a long lost Peña. He assured you he was from Kentucky and had no relation to the Peñas. Jack had been some sort of law enforcement, and the reason he was here on a ranch in Texas was a mystery to everyone but him. There were rumors he was fired, banned from law enforcement altogether, but nothing could be confirmed. He doesn’t seem like the type to have a bad past, but you never really know.
Jack is charming in a loud, overly confident sort of way. He’s smart as a whip and funny to boot. He’s a damn good time and he’s never asked anything of you but a good fuck and better company. It’s really more than you could have hoped for with Javi gone and no other prospects in town… that you had any interest in anyway.
Now, nearly a couple decades after he left, Javi is back working for his dad. He won’t talk about Colombia, even though everyone calls him a hero. You’d think he’d want to brag about his accomplishments down there, but he reminds you of war vets, the way he shuts down when anyone brings it up.
He’s different now than the old Javi, your Javi, was. He’s surly, quick to snap at people, smokes like a freight train, and never does anything but sit in the bunkhouse and drink. You think you could handle all the change if he’d just talk to you.
You were so close as kids, but now it’s like you don’t know him at all. The bright, funny, hot-headed kid you knew is gone and some asshole has replaced him. He barely speaks to you at all, but he treats Jack even worse – insinuating Jack can’t do his job, calling him an asshole at any given opportunity, even up and leaving a room when the man walks in. It’s ridiculous and you can’t figure out why he’s acting like this. Jack has never so much as looked at Javi sideways, even after all the harsh treatment.
You head to your room in the bunkhouse, all your work taken care of for the day already. It’s not like you were neglecting your job to hook up with Jack, as much as Javi might like to think that. You push open the door to your room and find Jack lounging in your bed, shirtless and barefoot.
“Hey there, pretty girl,” Jack smiles at you, his eyes scrunching at the corners. God he’s cute.
“Hi, cowboy. Made yourself at home, did you?” You start stripping out of your work clothes, not caring about Jack’s presence. Nothing he hasn’t seen before. Jack gets off the bed and pulls your mostly naked body into his chest, nuzzling your neck.
“We got interrupted earlier.”
“Fucking asshole. He’s just mad he’s not getting any.”
“May be more right than you know, sugar.”
You quirk an eyebrow at him but shrug off the comment, dropping to your knees and working at Jack’s belt buckle.
Javi hates that son of a bitch, he really does. He’s always sneaking off work to fuck whatever willing idiot falls for his charming smile and his stupid broad shoulders and his long bowlegs.
He can’t believe you of all people fell for it, keep falling for it. Sure he’s pretty, but the guy is an asshole. Two days ago, he caught him in the store room with his hand down Jose’s pants. The guy is a slut, plain and simple. You’re too fucking good for him.
Javi isn’t completely sure why Jack gets under his skin so bad. At least not in any way he’ll admit to himself or anyone else. Jack is charming without being sleazy, smart, good at his job, funny. There were rumors that Jack had done bad things in his past, though there’s nothing about the man that indicates he had, aside from his silence on the topic. Something Javi can’t honestly hold against him, considering his own refusal to open up. There’s no real reason for Javi to hate him, but he does. Everything the other man does sets him into a rage, his face hot, chest heaving, fists clenching. He wants to put his fist through a wall.
He’s not quite sure where he went wrong with you. Sure, leaving for nearly 20 years does a number on a friendship, but he’s pretty sure it shouldn’t be this bad. You haven’t done anything wrong, other than fuck around with Jack, but every time he speaks to you now it’s a biting remark. A criticism of your work ethic, your choice in bed fellows, even your outfits. It’s like he has no control over his own damn mouth.
Javi knows he’s in the wrong, knows he should apologize for his comment earlier. He heads to the bunkhouse to find you. Your room is two doors down and across the hall from his. Javi doesn’t bother knocking, pushing the door open.
“Hey, do you have a sec–” Javi freezes in your doorway, catching an eyeful of you with Jack fucking Daniels’ cock in your mouth. Jack catches his eye and fucking winks at him. Javi ignores the twitch in his jeans and closes the door, stalking down the hall to his own room and slamming his door behind him.
Twice in one day? Seriously? He takes back the apology before he can ever offer it to you. This is just ridiculous. What do you see in Jack that you don’t see in him? And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? Javi wants you for himself and he’s pissed that Jack got to you while you he was off not catching Escobar.
There’s a knock on his door and then, “Peña?” Fucking Jack Daniels.
“Piss off, Whiskey. Not in the mood.”
Jack opens the door anyway, steps inside and shuts it behind him. Javi takes his disheveled hair, still bare chest and feet. The man hadn’t even bothered to button his jeans. Javi is on his feet in the other man’s face in seconds. “I said piss off, Daniels. Something about that you don’t understand?”
“No need to be hostile, Peña, I just wanted to check on you. Stormed out of there pretty quick.” Jack doesn’t back up an inch.
“Forgive me if I don’t want to see her with your cock down her throat.”
“Why, Jav? You like her or something?” Javi shoves Jack until his back hits the wall, hard. “Or is it because you’re afraid you’ll like it too much?” Javi sees red. He swings on Jack, but Jack catches his fist and pulls the other man into his chest.
“Fuck you,” Javi growls it, lips almost grazing Jack’s, their mouths are so close together.
“That an offer?” Jack smirks. If Jack didn’t know better, he’d think he heard Javi’s breath hitch in his throat at that. Before he can wonder if Javi is gonna try to hit him again, Javi crashes their lips together.
Jack drops Javi’s arm and grabs the collar of his shirt in both hands instead. Jack licks into Javi’s mouth, slots a thigh between Javi’s and feels the other man’s cock getting hard against his leg. Jack walks him back toward the bed, tugging at the buttons of Javi’s shirt.
Suddenly, the door opens and Javi flies back from Jack as if he’d shoved him, sprawling on the bed. Jack doesn’t even turn to look at you, just stares Javi down.
“Hey, I heard…” you trail off, taking in the scene in front of you. Jack standing in the middle of the room, looking even more disheveled than the state you’d left him in. Javi spread out on the bed, shirt half untucked and half unbuttoned, his dick clearly hard in his jeans. “What am I looking at here?”
“Nothing,” Javi spits out.
“Me and Jav had a little fight, but we kissed and made up, Sugar.” Jack winks at you and you feel your cheeks heat, feel a flutter of arousal in your belly.
“Oh really?” You run your tongue along your top teeth, trying and failing to contain a smirk.
Javi furrows his brow at you. Do you sound… excited? Jack glances back and forth between the two of you.
“Why don’t you close the door?” Jack asks you, his voice low. You kick the door closed behind you and walk over to Javi. You take his face in your hands and tug him toward you until he’s sitting up on the bed.
“Close your mouth ‘fore flies get in, baby.” He snaps his jaw shut and you press a chaste kiss to his lips. “This okay?” Javi nods slowly. You climb onto the bed, straddling Javi’s thighs, and kiss him again, deeper and longer than the first.
Jack makes his way across the room and settles on his knees behind Javi, gripping his hips and pressing his lips behind his ear.
“How about this? Is this okay?” Jack whispers.
“Y-yeah,” Javi honest to god stutters. This is not where he thought this was going. He doesn’t even like men. Not usually.
Javi kisses you like his fucking life depends on it. He sucks your tongue into his mouth, tangles his own with yours. Drags his mouth down your jaw line, your throat, leaves a mark on your collarbone. You finish unbuttoning Javi’s shirt and Jack pulls it off him and tosses it on the floor before he sucks his own mark into Javi’s neck and Javi bites back a moan at the feeling. He buries his face in the crook of your neck.
“I um- I don’t really-” Javi’s face burns hot. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.
“It’s alright, I gotcha.” Jack runs his hands up and down Javi’s sides, soothing him. “Let’s start with something you’re familiar with, huh? Or at least I hope you are.” Jack slides off the bed, silently communicating with you what his plan is.
You push Javi until he’s on his back in the center of the bed. You stand up and strip your panties and t-shirt off before you crawl up his body, dropping kisses on the soft curve of his stomach, his chest, his throat. You settle your knees on either side of his head, your soaked pussy hovering just over his face. This he can do, he thinks.
He grabs your thighs and licks a stripe from your core to your clit. You moan, one hand braced on the wall in front of you and the other fisted in his hair. He pulls you flush with his mouth and starts moving your hips for you, making you ride his face. He thrusts his tongue in and out of you while you grind on his nose, much like you had Jack’s earlier. They’re both so fucking beautiful, fuck.
Jack gets situated between Javi’s spread thighs and takes in the sight of you straddling his face. It might be the most gorgeous thing he’s ever seen. Your head thrown back in ecstasy, Javi’s strong arms pulling you back and forth on his face.
Jack palms Javi through his jeans and he hears him moan into your skin. Jack strips his own jeans off, then drags Javi’s down far enough to free his cock. Jack’s mouth waters at the sight. Javi is thick, long, uncut. Fuckin’ gorgeous. He sucks the tip of Javi’s cock into his mouth, savoring the salty taste of his precum. Javi lets out a deep, muffled groan straight into your core and it sends you over the edge. Your cries only encourage Jack more and he takes Javi to the root, bobbing his head up and down the man’s length.
Javi holds you to his face while he works you through your orgasm. He finally lets you go, and you fall to the side to catch your breath and shake off the aftershocks.
Javi slides both hands into Jack’s hair, thrusting lightly into Jack’s mouth. Jack reaches a hand between his own legs and strokes himself while he lets Javi use his throat. You just came, but the sight of the two men together has your cunt clenching around nothing. You drop your hand to your clit and rub circles in time to Javi’s thrusts.
Javi pulls Jack off him abruptly. “Fuck- you’re really good at that.”
“I know,” Jack smirks at Javi, his voice rough.
“I’d really like to come in her tight little cunt though, instead of your mouth.” Javi looks over to you, eyes full of lust. “If that’s okay?”
“More than okay, baby.” You shoo the boys off the bed and lay across it with your head hanging off the edge. Jack moves to stand by your head and slips the head of his cock between your open lips. Javi feels a twinge of jealousy at the way you both seem to know exactly what the other wants without saying a word aloud. But then you wrap your legs around his waist and pull him closer to you and he lets it go. If this is the only time Javi gets to have you, he’s not going to waste it being jealous of the guy who just sucked him off.
Javi drags his cock through your soaked folds. “So wet for us, baby.” Javi groans as he pushes inside you, slowly sliding in to the hilt. “Fuck, you feel so good.”
Jack cradles your head in one hand while he shallowly fucks your throat, playing with your tits with his free hand. He tweaks your left nipple and you moan around his cock. Every thrust from Javi pushes you further down Jack’s length, forcing him to fuck your throat. You’ve never been used like this before, like some sort of proxy for two men to fuck each other, but you fucking love it. You feel close to coming again already, and no one has touched your clit in minutes.
Jack pulls Javi to him and crashes their mouths together. Javi lets Jack plunder his mouth for a moment before sucking on the other man’s tongue, drawing a moan from the cowboy’s throat. He may have never kissed a man, but he’s been with enough women to manage that.
The two men sync up, thrusting into your holes at the same time and you feel like you’re ascending to another fucking plane of existence. There are no thoughts in your head except for Javi and Jack and how fucking amazing you feel. And, briefly, the thought of them both stuffed in your core, stuffing you fuller than you’ve ever been. You clench at that thought, and Javi has enough presence of mind to drop his hand to your mound, rubbing messy circles on your clit.
Your body tenses, back arching as you get closer and closer to the edge, which only serves to open your throat up more for Jack. Javi grabs your hips with both hands and starts pulling you onto his cock, hitting your g-spot every time. Suddenly, your entire body tenses and your pussy flutters around Javi’s thick cock. Your vision blacks out as your eyes roll into the back of your head, coming harder than you ever have before.
Jack comes down your throat with absolutely no warning, too lost in Javi’s mouth on his and your mouth around his cock to say a word. You grab his hips and hold him deep in your throat, swallowing around him. The force of his orgasm knocks him forward on the bed, hands planted on either side of your hips and face buried in the crook of Javi’s neck as he paints your throat.
Javi thrusts into you a few more times before his hips still, flush with yours. He comes deep inside you for what feels like forever, his cum spilling out of you and dripping onto the bed.
He pulls out of you slowly, dropping a kiss to your thigh before he goes to get a towel to clean you up. When he comes back, he finds you with your legs thrown over Jack’s shoulders, the man eating Javi’s cum out of your cunt. Javi’s spent dick gives a valiant twitch at the sight.
“Guess I didn’t need the towel then?” Javi jokes, tossing it onto the bedside table and climbing back onto the bed. Jack sucks your clit into his mouth one last time and pulls off with a pop.
“Guess not,” Jack smirks. You and Jack settle in beside Javi, Jack pulling the man’s head to his chest and you resting your head on Javi’s torso. You all sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes.
“You’re not uh-” Javi closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “You’re not gonna tell my old man I-”
“That you like boys?” you snicker.
“Not foolin’ anyone in those tight little jeans you wear, Jav.”
Javi presses his fingers into his eyelids and takes another deep breath. “Guys I’m serious.”
“Of course. We won’t tell anyone. Not til you’re ready.” You lean up and kiss his cheek before nuzzling back into Javi’s tummy.
“So you gonna tell her, or am I?” Jack looks like a kid in a candy store.
You sit up quickly. “Tell me what?”
“Don’t–” Javi tries to plead with Jack.
“Sugar, he tried to hit me for messing around with you,” Jack interrupts. “Think he might have a crush.”
“What the fuck, man?” Javi’s brow furrows so deep you think it might get stuck that way.
Jack ignores him and addresses you, “He’s always starin’ at you and checking up on you and asking you for shit he can damn well get himself.”
“Javi, is it true?”
Javi looks up at the ceiling as if he’s praying for God to have mercy on him.
“Yeah, hermosa. It’s true. Lo- Liked you since I was a kid.”
You smile so wide it hurts and wrap your arms around Javi, pulling him to you for another long, deep kiss. “Javi, baby, I was in love with you before you ever even got with Lorraine. And I never stopped loving you. Jack was just a stand-in, until he wasn’t.” You look over at Jack with a wince. “Sorry, Jack. No offense?”
“None taken, sugar.” Jack smiles good-naturedly and kisses you on the forehead. “Could we do this again sometime? Or are y���all cuttin’ me out of the deal now?”
“You’re not going anywhere, cowboy. Javi likes you too.”
“Wait really?” Jack seems genuinely surprised.
Javi drops his head into his hands and groans. “I need a fucking cigarette.”
Oh and here's a silly little moodboard thing I made
#pedrostoriesgift23#Javier Peña#Javi P fics#Javier Peña fanfiction#Narcos fanfiction#Jack Daniels#Jack Daniels fics#Jack Daniels fanfiction#Agent Whiskey#Kingsman: The Golden Circle fanfiction#Agent Whiskey fics#pedro pascal#pedro pascal fanfiction#pedro fics#pedro pascal character fanfiction#pedrostories
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Bees (a stucky au snzfic)
ok
ok ok
so I saw this random thing on a tumblr post:
and it got its Stucky-idea hooks so deep in my brain. It just did. And the thing is my deepest inspo is honestly in the land of snz. (This fic kind of ends abruptly sorry but i want to do more and it'll probably end up on Ao3 w like a M or E rating 😳🫣 when and if that happens i'll link to it)
Stucky au, no powers, age gap, what I'm picturing in my head goes less with the words "silver fox Steve" and more with the words "dorky Dilf Steve" like 2012 Cap fashion with current Chris Evans face? in..a good way? and longhair early-20s burnout Bucky. I have some backstory headcanons that are just hinted at here, hopefully it's tantalizing rather than confusing.
anyway have 11.5k words of this and encourage me to write more bc i have fallen in love with these particular boyz. Some light existential angst but mainly idiots pining aka the sweetest sauce
~Fic~
Sam isn’t sure how much longer he can allow this to go on. His barback and the new semi-regular square dude are once again being all awkwardly flirty while pretending they’re not, like two sad lonely white...ducks, who never learned a mating dance and have zero game.
At least Square Dude has an excuse: he’s the most obvious newly-divorced newly-out family-type guy Sam’s ever seen. He’s clean-cut, with a ridiculously handsome square jaw, wearing well-made but unstylish button-down shirts and pants that make him look like he belongs in a Norman Rockwell painting. He started coming in about two months ago, quiet, friendly when ordering his one or two beers of the evening, and firmly shy when it comes to the inevitable overtures sent his way. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this is him dipping a first toe into the pool: coming to a relatively quiet gay bar, just to sit and watch men talk to each other and let the whole notion sink in.
By now most guys would’ve found someone to spread their wings with or gone elsewhere to find em, but Square Dude, whose name is Steve, seems content to talk to the guy who pours his beer about whatever DIY project Bucky is pulling questions out of his ass about.
The crush is painfully obvious, and suburban closeted Steve can’t be blamed for having no deal-sealing abilities, but Bucky has no such excuse. Sam has watched him pull stiff-backed business bros in five minutes flat when the mood struck him, with his big blue puppy eyes and his dark wicked smirk and long lean slouch. But with Steve all he appears capable of doing is asking him questions about crown molding as though those words mean anything to him while gazing at him like he’s beaming the words You could fix me directly into Steve’s skull. Steve, for his part, just doesn’t seem to be able to look anywhere other than Bucky.
As usual, anyone that tries to strike anything beyond a friendly conversation is kindly but firmly rebuffed. “He’s not ready for that yet,” Bucky had insisted with unnecessary defensiveness when Sam implied it was time for the new guy to move from spectating to participating in the relatively mellow flirting and hookup scene the bar played host to most evenings. “People go at their own pace.”
“The only pace he’s going at is towards you,” Sam smirked. Bucky glowered at his implication. “You gotta make it weird. He comes here to, like, practice. I’m part of that, in a chill, friendly way.” He shrugged and looked at the glass he was drying. “When he is ready, it’s not gonna be for me, it’s gonna be for someone actually in his league, like a...hot college professor, or something.” Sam had rolled his eyes and resolved to stop trying to help Bucky Barnes flail around in his mess of a love life anymore, for the hundredth or so time.
Tonight is busy enough that Sam can mostly be distracted from this bad sitcom, and not so busy that he has to yell at Barnes for being distracted. Still, there are a couple empties on tables in the Steve-less side of the bar, and after finishing the drinks for the people in front of him he turns, catching Bucky’s voice, in a tone of delight he uses when speaking with only one person, saying “Wait. Seriously? Bees?”
“Yeah!” Steve responds, equally puppyish. He’s tall and broad, sandy hair and beard just beginning to show a hint of salt-and-pepper. He looks like anyone’s fantasy fireman or lumberjack, at least in the context of a place like this. He also exudes genuine sweetness and vulnerability despite his intimidating muscled height.
Bucky Barnes, Sam’s barback and old friend, leans against the bar doing the helpless-goober-with-a-crush stare, a look on his face like Steve just announced he was a Nobel Prize winner. “No way. How do you keep bees? Just as, what, a casual hobby? That’s, like, a whole thing, you can’t be an expert in so many things!”
Bucky is all shaggy longish dark hair and stupid cheap graphic t-shirts, with a striking, animated face that is used mainly for sarcasm. He and Sam had been at the same high school a few blocks away, though Sam is older, and in the funny way of life they’ve wound up good friends. He’s working at Sam’s place because, in his words, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing with his life. Bucky’s going through his own version of one of those fairly bleak lost periods of 20-something misery, but he’s smart and not a drunk and decent at what he does for Sam, and if he bangs a third of the customers he does it discreetly enough. Sam never knew dark-blond, broad-shouldered, bass-voice sad-eyed dudes pushing 40 were the kryptonite that made him unable to do anything including flirt, until Steve came in one day and Bucky sprayed himself with the keg he was tapping.
Steve chuckles— is this man blushing? “Oh no, I’m nowhere near an expert. But it’s pretty easy once they get established. Don’t need much from you. I’m not, uh, living at the place with the backyard where the hives are, right now….so….but they’ll be fine without me.”
Steve gets a little quiet and Bucky’s fangirl expression dims with distressed sympathy. It gets sad like this sometimes when talking to Steve. Recently divorced guys had this problem, where everything came back to the one topic. Steve’s not doing it pathologically, didn’t seem like, just genuinely realizing another change. Bucky looks stricken. He doesn’t always seem young, at newly 24, but sometimes it still shows.
Sam finally manages to catch his eye away from gazing at Steve to convey a quick head jerk of get-the-hell-over-there-and-do-the-job-I-pay-you-for, and Bucky peels himself away with an apologetic smile at Steve. Sam picks up the conversation with Steve as Bucky clears tables at top speed, hearing how he’s renting a place month-to-month not far away, not able to plan something more permanent just yet. He doesn’t say anything revealing, but it’s still easy to paint a picture of a small, empty apartment. Bucky’s not the only one with a soft spot for this guy, and Sam is warmed by the thought that his little bar offers him respite.
………………..
“That’s so sad,” moans Bucky a few days later. It’s just after opening on a weekday afternoon, and Bucky seemed quieter than usual so Sam is tantalizing him with what he learned talking to Steve the other day. “Did he say—you know he has kids?”
“Yeah, I know,” Sam answers. He’d been as offhand as a person could be about that sort of thing, but it wasn’t hard to see how he really felt. He was standing in the rubble of a sincere loving marriage to a woman with whom he had two 11-year old twins. Helped explain his rectitude when it came from moving from his spot at the bar, meeting someone other than the staff. Bucky’s eyes are pools of sympathetic anguish and Sam feels the need to say, “This kinda stuff happens to people, Buck,” earning an eye-roll for his patronizing efforts. “It’s good he’s coming here, learning about himself. I think you help a lot, for the record.”
Bucky starts and gives him a bewildered look. “What?”
This is aging him. Sam sighs, “He’s lonely. Maybe feels kinda lost right now.”
Bucky’s mouth gets a pained downward slant to it.
“He. Likes. You.”
At that, of course, Bucky gets uncomfortable, blushing and moving off to wipe tables somewhere away from Sam, rubbing his nose and clearing his throat like he’s been doing since he got there. He brightens when Steve comes in an hour later, and Sam rolls his eyes and leaves them to their game of mouse-and-mouse.
Steve is telling Bucky... how window insulation works. He thinks he asked, he hopes to god he did, at least. He’s been embarrassing himself for weeks, coming to this place almost every day. He’s kept it pretty well under wraps that although he liked the neighborhood simplicity, and talking to Sam, and got comfortable after the first few visits, the real reason he’s there more evenings than not is to see Bucky. With his bright grey-blue eyes and dark hair hanging past his chin, swinging against his cheekbones, with his smile and wicked sense of humor and his confounding ease in himself, the ease that gives Steve despair and hope for himself. With that mouth and that divot in his chin, and those last two thoughts are not allowed, because the need to put his thumb into that dot in his sculpted chin and kiss those ridiculously pink lips is urgent and unthinkable.
He doesn’t do that, he just sits and pines and chats awkwardly with him, and gets to know a few other regular guys and talks sports with Sam. He just likes talking to Bucky, it’s easy, easy like nothing has been in a long time, and he’s a creep, he’s a pathetic older guy using his experience to take advantage of a younger guy—
Only, he’s not actually experienced here, at all. And Bucky is so smart, he’s self-deprecating about it but it’s not like he and Steve aren’t generally on the same level beyond his inner glossary of home improvement terminology. He downplays the fact that he knows cars like an expert, insists the stuff Steve learned from keeping up an old house and the hobbies he picked up to stay sane is somehow far more impressive— Steve’s pretty sure he’s doing it on purpose, to make him feel less adrift and clueless. He has that way about him, of someone who looks after other people without realizing it.
Things were all dark there for a while, with the end of his marriage to Peggy. But he’s pretty sure he and Bucky are friends, and he feels bright when he sees him.
Tonight, though, Bucky seems just a little worn down. He’s wearing a waffle-knit shirt under his incomprehensible-thorny-calligraphy-t-shirt, as though he’s cold, and his eyes are tired. Steve waits for a reply to the last thing he said and looks to see Bucky with a dazed, spaced-out expression, before he shakes his head and rubs his nose, saying “Sorry, I thought I was gonna sneeze, what’d you say?”
Talking about the goddamn weather and window insulation was segueing into a real conversation, to Steve’s delight: “How my mom moved us out to Jersey so we could live somewhere better and I never forgave her.” Bucky gives a wide-eyed grimace of agreement and he can’t help the bright laugh that bursts out of him. “How about you, you grow up in the city?” He’d inadvertently spilled his guts about the divorce on like his third time in the bar, something that humiliated him to think of but Sam had simply said with an understanding face wasn’t too unusual, so Bucky knew the basics about Peggy and the twins, but Steve had felt clumsy asking Bucky about himself.
He rolled his eyes with his problematically attractive crooked grin and answered, “Aw man, I grew up practically around the block from this place. Went to high school at the big catholic cinderblock in the neighborhood. I was at school on the west coast for a couple years, but…” His eyes cast downward. “now I’m back.”
Steve remembers how bad it felt at that age, to not have accomplished enough fast enough. Saying that will make him sound like an old grey dad and even if that’s what he is he can still hold out a little hope of being something different here, so he just says, “Brooklyn’s a good hometown to come back to.”
That makes Bucky smile at him and look him in the eye, like he liked what Steve said, even like it made him feel better. Steve tamps his answering grin down to reasonable levels.
Bucky’s also been rubbing at his nose on and off this whole time, and he can see it give a little twitch right before he breathes out a “scuse-me” through hitching breaths, his eyes flickering closed. He pushes his nose firmly into his long-sleeved elbow. “hhh-hh-tdschuh!” He sneezes quietly and muffled. “Oh, snf, sorry,” he says, blinking and emerging from his elbow but not lowering it, the hazy ticklish look still on his face, breaths hitching. “Another—hhh—‘nother one?” He freezes, looking up at the overhead lights, nostrils flared, but after a second he deflates with a sigh. “Nope, nevermind. Snff.” Steve’s guts swoop. This crush is so unsustainable. He’s gonna fail to be cool and friendly and he’ll have to watch Bucky go all uncomfortable and pitying as he explains to Steve that he has six hot boyfriends who are not almost-forty almost-virgin losers who only know how to take up his time when he’s trying to work. According to his therapist these “harangues of negativity” are “unhelpful.” But Bucky looks tired and a little pale and like his nose is going to start turning pink and Steve is just trying to survive.
“Bless you,” Steve says softly in his gentle voice that’s so deep it takes Bucky by surprise and makes his stomach flutter every time he talks to him. He feels like he might be blushing.
“Thanks,” it comes out husky and he clears his throat hard, moving to the little sink to wash his hands.
“Allergies, or…?” Steve ventures, a little divot between his eyebrows of concern-more-like-pity.
“I dunno, something’s bothering my nose today,” he says lightly with a shrug. In truth Bucky has a good idea what’s making him sneeze. The fucking radiator that was supposed to heat his cheap shitty basement apartment had stopped working in the middle of the night, so he’d spent six hours until dawn shivering, and an itchy tickly feeling had been growing in the back of his nose and throat since around noon. It’s starting to evolve into a runny nose and an ever-present but elusive feeling of being about to sneeze, and he knows that means he’s coming down with a cold.
He sees some convenient glasses to clear and excuses himself with a smile so he can sniffle out of Steve’s earshot; he’s enough of a mess compared to Steve on his best day, he doesn’t need to show off his scraggly urchin runny nose aesthetic of tonight any more than he has to.
For the next hour, these light, tickly sneezes either sneak up on him or abandon him at the last minute, leaving his nose feeling like it’s going to start getting stuffy.
Steve watches Bucky do his job, sniffling, rubbing his nose, and sneezing furtively into his sleeve or collar; tucking the strands of hair that have come loose from his short ponytail behind his ears, and feels so helplessly tender for him that it can’t be normal or healthy even by desperate crush standards.
Bucky’s coming down with a cold. He seems to want to brush it off, but Steve can hear a slight change in the resonance of his voice that gives it away even if the tired pink starting to border his eyes and nostrils doesn’t. The place is getting crowded and he’s busy; Steve feels for him, as well as pathetically jealous of his attention as he banters with him in passing once in a while.
He glances up as Bucky heads in his direction with a short stack of empty glasses and sees his steps slow; he pauses, blinks up at the overhead light, eyes hazy, and then, wavering, starts to turn his face into his shoulder, before pausing again and then sighing and sniffing as the sneeze evaporates. He looks up and sees Steve watching him like a creep and laughs, “Damn, lost her,” and then as he continues behind the bar, “You havin’ fun watching me look stupid?”
“It’s agony actually,” he responds, gets a laugh, and feels the now-somewhat-familiar internal squeal of this is flirting! I’m flirting with a guy and I think he can tell! It’s painfully pathetic, but he can’t help but track the fact that Bucky knows plenty of the folks that come to Sam’s, that he’ll give anyone his attention if they ask for it, smiling and joking, but the only person he really goes out of his way to talk to, initiates teasing with, is him, Steve. It’s still nothing more than polite obligatory chatting, he’s sure— when you work at a bar this kinda thing is natural. Bucky is young and charismatic and gorgeous. His love life would probably give Steve enough combined envy and jealousy to cause heart failure, which would be perfectly appropriate because he is an old square divorcee. It makes him warm and bubbly enough that he seems to be Bucky’s favorite customer to pass the time with.
A guy down the bar gets his beer from Sam and sidles closer. “This seat taken?” he asks with a good-humored cocked eyebrow. This is why Steve actually started coming to this place: to meet people, to meet guys, in a way that, well, went somewhere. To call his own decades-old bluff. Not to moon over staff half his age who woulda been out of his league even if he was still in his twenties. He turns to the guy—his age or a few years older, attractively lithe with muscle, a hard but handsome face, and smiles.
Bucky gets busy for a stretch— Sam’s place is actually full tonight thanks to the playoff game. He enjoys the feeling of being a genuinely necessary part of the bar’s operation, when some nights it’s hard to believe he’s more than Sam’s charity case. Nights like this remind him that he has a real job, he’s decent at it even with a bum left arm; whether he’s living out his dreams or not he’s an adult with a job, a place to live, and people he cares about. Plus it distracts him from feeling sorry for himself for coming down sick.
His satisfied feelings fade when he looks over to the Steve end of the bar and sees Brock Rumlow talking to him. He scowls. Fucking Rumlow. He only ever comes on nights with games these days, but Bucky would be perfectly happy if he never came in at all.
It’s fine. Steve’s fine. He is a grown-up, significantly more of one than Bucky. Of all the people who have no need of his misplaced ineffectual chivalry, Steve has got to be last in line.
Maybe he finds more stuff to do in the general area of that end of the bar, and maybe he’s listening for Rumlow to say something dickish, or maybe he’s just a masochist and he wants to know firsthand if they hit it off. Sam is trying to point his “Don’t-be-Stupid” face at him like a flashlight beam but he resolutely ignores it while he replaces a couple bottles that legitimately needed it, ok, just because they’re in a convenient place doesn’t make that untrue.
“Yeah, I’m glad I found this place,” he catches Steve’s cheerful voice. A wave of bar noise obscures their next words, and then he makes out Rumlow,
“—actual sports on the TV. ‘Course,” the smile is audible in his voice, “the clubby places are good for at least one reason, y’know?” He quiets down to say it but not enough. Steve wouldn’t particularly like that, Bucky guesses, and then grinds his teeth as his brain helpfully supplies him with the memories of how easily Brock had charmed him, months ago. It wasn’t any kind of nightmare, but it was still probably his least favorite hookup to date: he’d been so happily focused on Bucky at first, then rough and selfish in bed, capped off by an unnecessarily clear implication that he wouldn’t be calling. Bucky knew the score with casual sex, but it had still given him enough whiplash to sting; it crossed his mind a few days later that it had been like Rumlow wanted him to feel like a dumb kid.
Steve has sputtered something about “not sure he’s looking for anything like that” while Bucky fumed about the past. He has to grab beers for a couple guys, and bending to get in the lowboy fridge makes his nose run suddenly, and flush with an insistent tickle. He manages, just barely, to squash the sneeze completely into a silent mmp! into his shoulder, andmakes a getaway to the bathroom. He blows his nose, but it won’t stop tickling, so then he stands there like an idiot, holding paper towels like they’re a book he’s reading, staring up into the lights and waiting to coax the sneeze out.
He can feel it coming but it still takes forever. At least the bathroom is empty. He wrinkles his nose exaggeratedly and sniffs and his breath finally starts to catch.
“hehh...heh...heh—heh-Uhh....huhh. Fuck.” There’s no way it’s not happening though, his goddamn nose tickles so bad— “hhHAh—EHSsschhooo!” It’s a ridiculous cartoony sneeze but at least it’s satisfying. He blows his nose again, then sighs. He’s definitely sick. Gonna be great sleeping in a freezing apartment. Turning into kind of a shitty night, he thinks with sarcastic pep.
When he leaves the restroom he can’t help glancing over to where Steve sits, and sees he’s now frowning at whatever Rumlow’s saying, looking politely uncomfortable on the way to annoyed. As he drifts back into earshot he hears, “….fun, but, if you’re looking for more than, um, casual, I dunno, kind of a dead end.” Then his pulse jumps as Rumlow looks right at him and finishes, “not dating material, trust me. Either way,” he leans in, “I think you can do better.”
Bucky closes the distance but puts himself behind the bar so he doesn’t immediately clock the asshole. His fists are clenched. Can he throw him out? If he doesn’t get away from Steve and shut up Bucky’s gonna end up fired and charged with assault, probably, but he doesn’t know if he can throw someone out on the grounds of being a jerk that he hates. Thank God, Sam’s caught on that something is up.
Rumlow doesn’t seem to have won Steve over, in any case. He’s turned cold and hard in a way that makes him look unfamiliar, and he says quietly but very clearly, “I think you’ve got the wrong idea.” He sounds like a straight Army Captain contemptuously shattering an underling’s heart immediately post-office-suckjob or something; in the morass of anger and panic it still registers with Bucky’s dick to his utter bewilderment. It definitely triggers some core memory for Rumlow, who turns the color of old milk before flushing and standing. He takes in the sight of Bucky glowering behind Steve and barks an ugly laugh. “It’s like that, huh?” he asks, shaking his head in mock pity. “Good luck with that rescue mission.”
Bucky feels like he did when Hank Ackerman pantsed him in 8th grade. Everything’s too bright and clear. He wants to cover his face and run into the back, but he’s rooted to the spot by the thought that that’s just what the dumb baby slut Rumlow’s been making him out to be would do.
“That’s it man,” Sam comes up beside him, smile on his face as though he’s just casually joining their conversation. “You’re done. Get outta here.”
Rumlow scoffs, takes a step towards the door, then turns with the beginning of a macho intimidation-lean in Sam’s direction. He’s hammered, Bucky hadn’t realized, and he can usually tell with people. He’s...kind of fucking scary. Had he gotten rougher around the edges, or had he been like this when Bucky went home with him? Jesus Christ.
Sam just returns his stare, all semblance of friendliness gone from his face. “Get out.”
Rumlow glares another second, but then he goes. There’s a reason Sam’s successful running a bar in the middle of the still-managing-to-be-seedy part of Brooklyn, as well as his finely tuned sensibilities to the unmet needs of Brooklyn’s grownup queer folks. He has the air, recognizable to serious troublemakers, of someone who will absolutely meet and raise any escalation. There were, in fact, a taser and a gun behind the bar, but Sam had never had to use them.
Steve stands up sharply, like he’s—what, gonna follow? Bucky opens his mouth to protest, but then—“Steve.” Sam’s got the side bar entry folded up and he’s intercepting his angry stride. “Please don’t.” He goes on, too quiet for Bucky to make out. Steve deflates and sits back down, taking a long drink of beer and then frowning at his knees.
Bucky consciously lets go of his tension as he sees Rumlow’s silhouette, walking outside, disappear from the last window on the right. He feels shaky, the way any kind of confrontation leaves him, and embarrassed as hell. He avoids Steve’s eyes for all he’s worth, scrubbing a hand under his nose and sniffing sharply.
Steve was just a customer. Bucky was just one of many people that Steve made polite conversation with in the course of a day. Feeling like this was just a consequence of getting that confused. Because he’s an idiot. He has to sniffle again. He also feels about ten times sicker than he did a few minutes ago, and successfully blinking away the brief prickle in his eyes just turns it into the need to sneeze.
Steve tries to breathe smoothly and calm down. This frat-boy rage is ridiculous, he still wants to go punch the hell out of that fucking creep. He must be drunker than he realizes, although deep down he knows it has more to do with the inarticulate surge of protectiveness he’d felt for Bucky since the guy had gestured to him with a jerk of his head as he crossed the room.
He hears a shuddering gasp and sees Bucky duck down to crouch behind the bar. His concern flares way up, but then he hears the three muffled sneezes, all in a rush, “hhhMPtchsh—hmptsschoo—hptsshhuh,”. He straightens back up, sniffing hard, more wetly than he sounded earlier. He’s rubbing his nose and glaring at the door, not looking at Steve.
“Bucky,” he says, frowning, determined to get this across, “what that asshole said about you—”
“Steve, snff, it’s fine, just drop it, okay, I’m asking you,” he meets Steve’s eyes with a downcast expression, before it flickers as his breath catches, and he sneezes again, half-pinched down into the collar of his shirt, “ihh-dtsschuh!”
His nostrils keep quivering and he lets out a shaky sigh of frustration before ducking around the corner out of sight with his hands tented over his nose and sneezing, “hiih-hih-HIDtschoo!...hih-HIH-TISchoo! ..heehh...heh—HEH—” the last one deserts him and leaves him sniffling. They’re still pretty quiet, but a lot heavier and spraying than the first sneezes Steve heard earlier. Bucky blows his nose and washes his hands thoroughly, and when he’s back behind the bar his nose is decidedly pink.
“Buck,” Steve says, and Bucky’s lips thin in exasperation— it’s not like him, compared to the guy Steve’s talked to the last few weeks. Whatever, he can’t help but say, “you do sound like you’re coming down with something, you should—”
“Steve, I’m fine,” says Bucky, in a soft tone that brooks no argument. Still tense, he turns to Steve with a crooked smile and says, “Really,” and it’s warm, if strained, between them again, and it seems like that’ll just have to satisfy Steve, and he says as much to Bucky who blushes and bites his lip for some reason.
Sam rescues Bucky by asking him to do inventory in back, letting him be sneeze and be dramatically in his feels without anyone around, especially Steve. The bar is slow enough now that he just shamelessly hides for the rest of the night. He’s constantly sniffling and sneezing and needing to blow his nose with the roll of rough brown paper towels back there, and even without that he’s too keyed up and pissed and miserable for human company, so it’s for the best.
He casts furtive recon glances to the bar where Steve sits, first craning his neck trying to spy Bucky, then brooding into his beer glass which makes Bucky feel like an asshole, then perking up at least a little shooting the shit with Sam, hopefully talking shit about Brock Dickface Rumlow. Then the misery wells up enough to get him to actually focus on work to avoid feeling it, and then it’s a few hours later and they’re closing up and he goes home to his little icebox and tires not to think about anything.
The next day, Sam chooses evil.
Steve and JB Barnes are both at least somewhat complex men, and it is always a bad idea to meddle in the affairs of others. But screw it, he’s had Bucky moaning in his ear for months now, and he was gonna have to recheck all his angry counting from last night, and these guys really seemed dumb enough to let the tension of mutual attraction strain between them until it just broke, some misunderstanding threw them both on the defensive or whatever, and they missed the chance at any of the fun part of connecting with each other.
So.
It isn’t a big surprise when Bucky calls him around 2, apologizing and pausing to make some gross “ihHgjshuhh!” noise, saying he was probably too sick with this cold to come in. What is a surprise, for poor Bucky, is Sam’s implacable response: “Duuude, I’m so sorry, but there’s some kinda convention in town and the place is packed, I need you here so bad, no matter what. You can take the next two days off, I’ll pay you.” He hears Bucky swallow back the what the hell and resignedly say ok. He feels diabolical. But hopefully it will be worth it. Steve usually comes in early on Thursdays, and he’d looked all hangdog-worried about Bucky the night before.
He’s been there twenty minutes already, chatting distractedly with Sam and staring at the TV screens but really looking all over the room like Bucky might be hiding somewhere. Bucky slouches in, ten minutes late, takes in the mostly empty room and gives Sam a betrayed glare.
“You really ndeeded mbe, huh,” he mutters as he puts his backpack away.
“You don’t even sound that bad,” Sam rejoins cheerfully, and Bucky’s mouth drops open with incredulity.
He moves some boxes around in back without issue. Then he tries to start prep by the bar. In a fifteen-minute period he has two sneezing fits that require him retreating to the bathroom to blow his nose endlessly and wash his hands. Sam decides that’s plenty sufficient. He and his customers are gonna pay a price in germ exposure for this stupid ass cupid skit he’s putting on.
“Steve, you believe this guy?” Bucky’s been avoiding Steve’s concerned hopeful looks since he got here. “He insisted on coming to work.” Bucky chokes in outrage, then coughs for real, while Steve moves a few seats closer. Sam turns; Bucky couldn’t look more betrayed if there was a knife with Sam’s name on it in his guts. Lord deliver him from dramatic white boys. “Did you take the bus here, Buck?” There was no other way for the guy to get to work, but he just replies flatly,
“Yeah.”
“You oughtta go home and rest.”
“Le me give you a ride, Buck,” Steve jumps in with the Air-Bud eagerness Sam had expected. They confirm it and bustle Barnes into a Civic while he’s sneezing too much to protest. Sam washes his hands metaphorically of the situation, and also very literally and thoroughly.
Steve’s car is a little old, and cold, and dusty. Bucky shivers as he buckles his seatbelt. He feels silently nervous and thrilled to be in Steve’s Car!!, but at the moment it’s hard to be anything but….sneezy…
“hhh-hh-hhmmPtchuh! S-s-sor-ry-hiihHIptchsh!” Holding them back when he feels like this just makes his nose more irritated and thus even sneezier. He stubbornly jams his fist under his nose to quell the tickle. He has some napkins from work, so a nose-blow is possible, but it doesn’t feel possible, not so close to Steve, who has it a million times more together than Bucky even on days when he isn’t falling apart on a cellular level.
“Bless you,” Steve says quietly. He looks at him reflexively, to see a small, sweet, sympathetic smile. “Ready?” Bucky gives a little nod and the car pulls out into the slushy road.
His nose is running onto his finger, it’s a crisis. This is why it’s always a terrible idea to leave the house when you’re really sick. “Ugh, I gotta blow mby ndose, I’mb sorry, I’mb so gross right ndow,” talking also makes his nose angry. Fucking Sam and his supervillain plan to humiliate him. What had he done to deserve this? He fumbles for the napkins with his less-dextrous left hand, the one he should have stuck under his nose, goddamnit, he’s gonna sneeze again…
“Psh, don’t worry about it,” scoffs Steve like the big huge dad he is, then with a sympathetic glance he turns the radio on, to the classic rock station, because of course, Bucky almost laughs even while racing to get tissues on his face before this giant wet sneeze overcomes him. The music is loud and it does help him feel less embarrassed.
“heh—HEH-KSSSHOOoo!” he gets the wad of napkins in front of him just in time. Blowing his nose after that demolishes them, but he feels a little closer to a human being.
“Bless you!” Steve chuckles. “Man you got a good bug, jeez!”
Why are he and Sam both so cheerful. “Thanks, I’mb glad you’re impressed,” he croaks.
“You have cold stuff at home?” Huh? When Bucky doesn’t answer he continues, “Tissues, tea, soup, medicine, you know?”
“Oh, umb, sorry, I’m tired,” Steve makes a sympathetic sound. “I usually just use toilet paper. I took the last of my Dayquil before work. I dunno if it even helped, all it feels like it did is mbake me jittery and sdeezy.”
“Why don’t we stop by a drugstore.” He sounded decisive.
“Oh, you don’t have to bother with that, really Steve—” he pauses to sniffle desperately. Technically he can afford a couple things, and he probably needs them. “Or—you could drop me off and I’ll get myself home from the store, that would totally be a big help—”
“Is the heat even on in your place?” Steve interrupts, shrewd-eyed. At Bucky’s wide-eyed sputtering response he continues, “I knew it. I used to be a broke Brooklyn kid, once upon a time. Only reason to come into work, am I right? Can’t believe landlords are still getting away with this shit.”
Bucky considers denial, then slumps. “S’why I’mb so much...hhh...worse...hh-huh-hudschuh! Snff-snff. Worse today. They said it’ll be fixed by tomorrow so...we’ll see, ha. I got a space heater and an electric kettle though, I can get in my blankets and drink tea and I’m fine.”
Steve is quiet, no response, and Bucky worries irrationally that he pissed him off. A few minutes of classic rock later, he pulls into the small parking lot attached to the drugstore, turns the car off, and turns to him, looking a little uncomfortable.
“Bucky I—” he breaks off and laughs to himself. “I know you have to be polite to customers, I don’t want to—” he makes eye contact, looking pained and rueful. “I’d like to think we’re friends. But I don’t want to put you on the spot or anything,”
“We’re friends,” Bucky interrupts gently. Steve’s face brightens like a sunrise and Bucky’s chest does a nice warm thing.
“Yeah? That’s...I’m real happy to hear it.” Steve says, sheepish but grinning. Then his eyes get the determined look that Bucky is starting to think means trouble. “Well the reason I asked is, as a friend, I really hate the idea of you trying to ride this out in an icebox apartment. I have heat. And a couch!” He hastens to add at whatever wide-eyed look Bucky’s giving him. “It’s just, I know it’s no fun being sick by yourself, and, well, honestly I wish I’d socked that asshole at the bar last night, and I really wish I’d clocked him as a jerk faster, and I’d feel a lot better if I could do something nice for you, and you really seem like you could do with some rest and medicine. Will you let me grab some stuff here and spend the night at my place—where there’s heat— and let me fuss over you?”
“Steve, that’s—that’s so nice, but I really can’t imb—snff—impose on you, and I gotta be so contagious right now…”
“I don’t care about that,” Steve says easily. “And I know you’re not gonna die on your own, but,” and, whoa, he’s deploying some kind of dignified mature version of puppy-dog eyes, it’s so sincere, and also so certain, that it starts to seem like the only sensible course of action is to let his gorgeous crush take him to his apartment while he’s the polar opposite of sexy, an unspeakable snot factory, and also possibly starting to run a fever.
….His apartment is gonna be so goddamn cold.
And lonely, incidentally.
And Steve is so nice. He’s literally, actually here, he seems to mean it that he wants to take care of Bucky’s sick bedraggled ass as some kind of friend-favor. There’s no way this is a come-on with him in this state, even if he can still muster enough energy to wish it was. No way Steve’s ever gonna want to fuck him after watching him snuffle through 200 tissues and mouth-breathe all evening, but he was nuts to think he ever would anyhow. He’s just that nice, and Bucky is that pathetic, and that might not feel great, but he wants to be Steve’s friend, he really does, and even through his own shyness he can see that the guy is pretty lonely.
“You, umb. You really don’t have to.” He says, watching Steve, who waits with obvious hopefulness. “But. Uh.” Steve raises his eyebrows and gives him a little smile, and Bucky finds himself returning it helplessly. “If you really don’t mbind. It could, potentially, be really ndice to take you up on that. You really don’t have to though!”
“I want to, though.” Jesus, he’s so sincere. Bucky feels some weird kind of protective way about the earnest honesty in his eyes.
“Well, then, okay. Thangk you, I really appreciate it.” He laughs, finally feeling how miserable it would have been to go back home and try to sleep in a cold blanket pile on his mattress on the floor. “Mby place sucks right now.”
“Alright then,” Steve beams. “Let’s get you a couple things and then get you cozy.”
Bucky’s nose is not okay with him using his face to talk instead of constantly blow it. It’s gotten completely blocked, and it’s tingling unpleasantly, and running so bad again he has to smush his knuckles under his nostrils. The tickle crests and his breath catches before he can do anything about it, but he clenches his jaw and forces it into a stifle. “hhh-huh-MMP!!” The problem with doing that is it just makes the tickle— “hh-mMP!” worse. “Ugh, sorry.” His hand is a dam against his nose at this point.
“Bless you!” They both step out of the car, but Steve hurries over to his side with a crinkle in his brow. “Why don’t you just stay here and I’ll grab a few things. Anything in particular, or just tissues and NyQuil?”
“Dyquil is just schndapps,” Bucky grumbles, then his brain catches up a little and he says “tissues,” fervently, and then it catches all the way up and he says “wait, ndo way are you buyig!”
Steve cocks an eyebrow like a handsome jerk. “You really wanna go in there?” With your current nose situation? He’s kind enough to not say.
He casts about for a moment—“Grab me a little pack and then I’ll go in!”
Steve gives him a skeptical look and says “Sure,” in a way that makes him think his orders won’t be followed, but he’s too busy squishing his nose more firmly and silently begging it not to make him sneeze again to keep arguing, or to protest when Steve opens the door for him and puts his car keys in his hand before dashing into the store with a promise to be quick.
He’s back not even ten minutes later, by which time holding his nose plugged and not letting his sneezes out has put Bucky in a state of perma-misery, stifling relentless sneezes every few seconds, unable to keep his eyes fully open. Steve tosses a box of tissues onto his lap before he gets all the way into the car because he is a saint.
“Guh,” Bucky says gratefully, pulls out a wad of about ten, and lets the miserable sneeze that had been building out into the nest of forgiving softness. “HehgSHOOmpff!!” And then blows his nose forever. Finally he feels like he can speak and have a face again; the little drugstore bag is now home to a dozen nasty used-tissue balls. “Well,” he says as he puts the last one in there, “wish I hadn’t had a witness for that.”
Steve just chuckles. “You’re fine,” he murmurs, his voice a soothing rumble. “I grabbed you a toothbrush, and I’ve got some stuff that can fit you for pjs.”
Bucky feels like he sneezed out the last of his strength. “You’re way too nice.” He sniffles and slumps against the window, looking at the familiar blur of orange streetlight. “I should be more worried you’re a serial killer.” Steve chuckles again, and he likes that, so he goes on, “Probly got a nice Jeffrey Dahmer setup at your place. Sorry if I don’t make a good steak.”
“Why wouldn’t you?” Steve replies, sounding indignant. Then laughs for real, shaking his head, “I’m not gonna chop you up and eat you, I swear.”
“It’s fine. Just mbake mbe into soup,” sighs Bucky. That would be warm. He’ll just be a big hot pot of Bucky, and Steve will stir him and season him so carefully with his big strong hands. This is a weird train of thought. He might have a fever. But he can still hear Steve chuckling.
Steve pulls into his parking spot and the car shudders to stillness as he takes his key out of the ignition. Next to him, Bucky is asleep with his head mushed against the window. He’d conked out for the last five or so minutes of the drive. “Hey, Buck, we just got to my place,” he says softly, trying not to sound too bedroom-y. His eyes flutter open, the blue of them standing out, and Steve takes a steadying breath because Bucky is so good-looking it catches him off guard and overwhelms him sometimes.
His eyes are glassy-bright and there’s a flush high on his cheekbones, and as he shifts upright in his seat Steve reaches over and touches his forehead without thinking about it. It’s noticeably hot, but not burning. The twins’ childhood bouts with the flu gave him a sense of bad-fever heat. “Think you got a temperature,” he murmurs sympathetically. Bucky just blinks up at him, a little wide-eyed, and only then does he realize his big meaty hand is practically covering half his face. He feels himself flush to match Bucky, and for a second they just look at each other.
Until Bucky sniffs a miserable liquid sniffle and they both almost jump. “Sorry,” Steve mutters awkwardly, and Bucky’s saying the same thing at the same time. They both move to get out, “Just one flight of stairs up.”
“huh—tschumpf!” is Bucky’s answer, his nose buried in a new handful of tissues. “huhh, hUH—huh.” The second sneeze fizzles, leaving him blinking and frowning and wrinkling his nose snifflishly against the ticklish haze as he shuts the door. “Fuck. Sorry, scuse mbe.”
“Bless you.” It’s probably not normal to find someone so sick so adorable.
Steve leads him up and along the hall and then he’s unlocking the door, feeling giddy that he’s letting Bucky into his apartment, and then guilty for being excited, when the poor guy is just hesitantly accepting a much-needed favor. Bucky trails in behind him and then stands still while Steve sets the bag from the drugstore and started to turn to him, saying, “It’s not much, but—”
“ASHHOO!” Bucky’s sneeze interrupts and snaps him forward into his tissues, and then he just stays folded over for a second like it sapped the last of his energy. Then he straightens, rubbing his nose into the tissues and sighing. “Jesus, sorry,”
“Bless you! You don’t have to be sorry, you’ve just got a cold.” Steve has to hold himself still to keep from rubbing his back.
“You’re...hh-huh….? Snfff, ugh. Totally gonna catch this, I owe you way mbore apologies.”
“I won’t hold it against you,” he chuckles, toeing his shoes off. Bucky follows suit and he continues, “I stopped caring after raising toddlers, they’re little germ factories, you catch everything.” Why’d you bring up your old-dad status, Steve? “I’ll grab you some things to sleep in.”
An hour and one confrontation about Steve giving up his bed later, Bucky is ensconced on his couch like the king of cold-medicine commercials, surrounded by blankets and pillows and tissues and steaming cups and bowls. He feels a little more human, which is nice, but lets him access how incandescently awkward he feels at being rescued from his idiotic life like a snotty Cinderella. Steve has been flitting back and forth between the couch and kitchen, fussing over him to a truly excessive degree while exuding satisfaction and cheer, like some kind of calendar-model Santa with a caretaking kink. He was practically rubbing his hands together at the prospect of getting Bucky blankets and tea on his couch. Now he’s giving a rundown of his TV system standing next to the couch and it feels the tiniest bit manic and Bucky can feel himself getting a little too quiet but he can’t help it. After a minute Steve notices, and sets the remote down.
“I should stop babbling at you and leave you in peace,” he says with a bashful chuckle, turning to leave the room.
“No, I— you don’t—” Bucky doesn’t really have a response beyond ‘please chill out and hang out with me and let me picture cuddling with you,’ which will not be said aloud.
“You really don’t hafta feel like you need to entertain me, Bucky.”
“It’s not, I don’t,” he sighs and then sniffles. He doesn’t want to sit here and stare at the wall and stress about this, alone in this room in Steve’s goddamn apartment. He maybe should have thought about just how much he’d fallen for Steve before taking him up on this offer, because the concern and sweetness and fussing are starting to ratchet up his anxiety, because what if there was a chance it meant—
“Is anything the matter?” Steve crouches smoothly to be on his level and torment him with his eyes’ blueness. When all Bucky can do for a moment is flounder he looks more concerned, and a little downcast. “I really don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. If anything’s bothering you, you can just tell me.”
What the hell is an ordinary sinner supposed to do in the face of this much sincerity? Act like he thinks he’s a damn grownup, Bucky guesses, and girds his nervous loser loins.
“Why’re you—” he starts, frowning, then cuts himself off and tries again with a small, apologetic smile.
“It’s just...this is such an imposition, and you seem...kinda weirdly happy about it? I just don’t get why.”
One side of Steve’s mouth quirks up, making him look dry and self-deprecating and unfairly handsome. “You’re worried I’m gonna start talkin about Scientology, or put you in my basement dungeon?”
Bucky shrugs. “Kinda.” Just ‘cause he went home with strangers didn’t mean he had no sense.
Steve seems to cast about for an explanation, and he also starts to turn pink. “It’s—you’re just so—” and then he sighs and sits on the end of the couch, next to his blanketed feet, addressing his words to the wall in a rush. “Honestly, Bucky? I have a huge crush on you, and,” he laughs in embarrassment, decidedly blushing now, “I’m just real happy to have a chance to take care of you in whatever little way.” Now he does turn to look at him, pained. “I’m sorry, that must be so uncomfortable to hear. I promise you’re not my hostage! Please don’t make a break for it, it’s cold out and you’re so sick. I swear I’m not Cathy Bates in Misery.”
“Y—hihdsschuh!” The sneeze catches him by surprise, but he has wadded-up tissues in his hand already anyhow. He has to blow his nose, and he does it thoroughly to buy time. Steve stares stoically at the ceiling as though waiting for sentencing. Is this seriously Steve telling Bucky...he likes him?
“You…” he stops, sniffs. He needs a plan. He doesn’t have one. His mouth is gonna keep moving anyway, “You said, ‘you’re just so—‘, what were you gonna say?”
Steve looks confused for a second, and then just helpless. “Bucky, you’re just so sweet. I’m happy for a chance to do something for you because I owe you, you get that, right?”
“Owe me?” Bucky asks, nonplussed. Steve laughs with what seems like disbelief at his confusion.
“Yes, Buck! For the last few months! For taking pity on me that first night I came into Sam’s. You asked me a question about antifreeze.”
“Yeah,” Bucky murmurs. His world is rearranging itself. Steve remembered that?
“I feel—real self-conscious, I guess, coming into the “scene,” he gives it air-quotes and Bucky’s heart swells a little more, “by the route I have. Y’know, married dad who woke up one day and realized the stuff he repressed at sixteen might be the real him. Sam’s was the third place I tried to go into. I just felt so ridiculous, I still do— 39-year-old brand-new gay dude, it’s idiotic. I was practically gonna have a panic attack, I was definitely gonna leave and not try again and just...stop trying in general, maybe, to figure this new scary shit out. Except you were there, this—this smokin-hot guy, and you’re acting like you actually want to talk to me, and… so I stayed. And came back.” He looks Bucky in the eyes and it makes Bucky’s stomach clench. “I feel like you’ve been taking care of me this whole time, helping me ease into things, helping me not to feel bad about being completely uncool, asking me about stuff I actually know about instead of laughing at me because I’ve never heard of ‘poppers’,”
At that, Bucky has to give in to the giggle bubbling out of him, which inevitably leads to a short coughing fit. His first instinct is to keep laughing, rake Steve over the coals, but Steve is looking at him with a careful sort of expression, and it occurs to Bucky that just because he’s older and seems like he has it all together and has great posture doesn’t mean he’s immune to feeling vulnerable. And he looks like he’s feeling really fucking vulnerable right now. Acting like Bucky is worthy of this adorable schoolboy crush is absurd, but it’s not like it was so many eons ago that little baby Bucky Barnes was having his First Gay Bar experience, and he’d been scared as shit.
He already feels like he missed the boat on his life. Steve is starting over at 39. He’s so fucking brave. Bucky...somehow, unthinkably, Bucky is in a position where he could really hurt this guy.
“I’mb, umb. Snfff. Thing is, I’m a little surprised…” And Steve must think that’s the prelude to rejection because he pulls this sad little smile onto his face that’s the worst thing Bucky’s ever seen, and he has to make it go away, “It’s just, to hear you tell it I took pity on you and I’ve been talking to you to, like, guide you along and coach you because I’m some saint!” He smiles, starting to feel amused. “Steve— I just wanted some reason to talk to you, dude.”
Steve blinks at him. “What?”
He has to laugh, putting his forehead in his hand. “Sorry. I, just, I have not been operating under the assumption that I had a chance with you? And now it sounds like you’re telling me I do? While I sit on your couch filling your trash can with my disgusting tissue mountain?”
All he gets from the man is “...Huh?”
“You said ‘crush’,” he insists, and he’s not laughing, his heart is pounding actually. “What did you mean by that?” He’s gonna awkwardly say that he wants to fuck, and once that box is checked in his Gay Awakening, he’ll move on to actually date people actually in his league, and that’s maybe not gonna feel great, but, well…
Steve looks up from staring at his hands, makes eye contact, and he looks a little confused and a lot like he’s facing a firing squad. “I meant, I mean that…” he blows a breath out. “Jesus I have no idea what I’m doing. I mean that I’ve been trying to work up the courage to ask you out on a date, since pretty much the first night I met you.”
Bucky’s head does a record scratch and Steve scoffs and rolls his eyes, “But I guess instead I kidnapped you when you were sick and blurted this out to you while you were trapped on my couch waiting to be left alone to sleep. I was never smooth but I swear I’ve done better than this.”
A giddy feeling is rising up in Bucky’s chest, making him forget completely about how tired and crappy he feels. “Well, I am smooth,” he says, “I’ve got game. At least, I did, until you showed up and turned me into a giggling bimbo. What the hell, Steve.”
“This is starting to seem like a romantic conversation but I can’t tell,” murmurs Steve with his face still uncertain but a little twinkle in his eye.
Bucky’s nose is gonna ruin this, he’s surprised it gave him that long a grace period. “Yeah, snfff, real romantic, I’mb gonna—hih—fuckin’ sndeeze—heh-heTShoo! Againd.”
Another sneeze teases out, and then he has to blow his nose for about ten years. “Bless you,” says Steve all quiet and bedroomy in his deep voice, and he’s definitely smiling, sparkle-eyes, leaning towards him the tiniest bit, but still looking like Bucky’s leaving him hanging a little, unsure, and he can’t help the wave of doubt he feels.
“Steve, you—” he stares at the blanket on his lap. “I’m a mess. You’ve accomplished shit, you have a real goddamn job, I—I’m just, ok, we’re both adults, but I feel like a screw-up kid compared to you.” He takes a deep breath and says what he doesn’t want to, “I’d be...pretty damn flattered if you wanted to hook up. I kinda can’t imagine you actually want to date me.”
He dares to look up and Steve looks more serious. He doesn’t say, “no shit.” He says, “I won’t argue if you say you don’t want anything, but I sure don’t agree with how you describe yourself. I don’t want to hook up—at least, not just that— I want to date you, get to know each other better, because I like you. I trust my judgement, when I think someone’s a good person.”
He says it so simply, and Bucky finds himself believing it despite himself, and a warm happy fire is kindling under his ribs. “Well, shit,” he murmurs, “it’s starting to seem like you’re asking me out.”
“It’s...starting to seem like you might be saying yes? If I am?” Steve looks agonized and Bucky’s doubts are no match for the giddiness fizzing up inside him, and he lets it show on his face with a grin, and whatever that looks like makes Steve kinda gulp and scootch up closer to him. Bucky makes a show of giving a slow, considering nod. Yes.
Steve has this soft, nervous little smile on his face, but his eyes hold something weighty, almost burning, as he moves even closer, and it’s just, it’s really, wow, Bucky has maybe never been taken seriously in quite this way by anyone before, it makes his knees feel watery and kindles something in his core. “I know you’re sick,” he rumbles, “but I feel like I gotta kiss you,” and how is it that the softer he speaks the deeper his voice sounds? He brushes his curled fingers over Bucky’s cheek because that’s how close they are now and this isn’t really Bucky’s life, is it? “What if I was to kiss you, right now?”
It’s hard to tell with the sexiness melting his brain but he realizes Steve is actually asking, because he’s a gentleman— a gentleman Bucky wants to be taken apart and turned inside out by. “Then you would be a guaranteed victim of my plague,” he breathes. “But I wouldn’t stop you, I’m not that selfless.”
“Sounds like a dare,” Steve murmurs, and tilts his head and presses their lips together.
It’s a short simple kiss but they each give a quiet gasp at the contact, and then stay there a moment. Steve’s beard isn’t huge but he feels it, like a firm underline to the shockingly warm plush pressure of his lips. He thankfully tragically remembers that congested people can’t make out and pulls away after just a brief press of lips, but not before giving a soft lick to Bucky’s, full of promised things to come.
They sit there a few inches apart and breathe. Bucky feels like a vibrating tuning fork. He just barely stops himself from shakily saying “wow,” like a highschool virgin, but when he sees Steve looking at him with lips still parted and a gobsmacked expression he changes his mind and lets it out anyway, “wow,” with a giddy grin.
“Yeah,” Steve breathes, blinking like he got hit with a cartoon hammer, going from pink to red, and then he swoops in and kisses Bucky’s cheek, and then stands, going, “Excuse me, just gotta go...out of your sightline, and. Do something cool. And serious. No victory dances.”
…..the next morning…….
Steve could hear Bucky in the shower, sneezing three times, but not sounding—four times—nearly as heavy or exhausted as the night before. A few minutes and one loud noseblow later, he came out wrapped in a towel, mercilessly bare-chested, his nose bright red but his eyes clear and cheerful. Steve’s attention caught on his chest as his nipples tightened in the relative chill as Bucky said sheepishly, “forgot my clo-hothes—” his voice swooping to a breathy quaver on the last word, “hhh-hh-hehh—EHisSHOooh!” he turned as far away from Steve’s part of the room as possible and sneezed over his shoulder. “Snnfff. Excuse me, sorry.”
“Can I lend you some warmer stuff, just for now while we eat breakfast? There’s no way you’re not still sick,” Steve fussed, forcing himself to round the kitchen island slowly and casually instead of rushing over and wrapping him up in his arms and kissing his red nose that was twitching again. He quelled it with another sniff that sounded a lot less congested than the previous night.
“Ah, I’m ok. I felt really bad yesterday, but I slept so well,” he said with a warm grateful smile at Steve that went to his toes, “I don’t feel shitty and run-down anymore, just all, like, shnuffly.”
Steve chuckled helplessly and went over to rub his shoulder. “You’re adorable.”
“No way!” Bucky glowered, but then a few drops fell from his wet hair to his chest and neck, and he shivered into a sneeze so quick and light it sounded incomplete, “hih—tish!” followed by “ih-hihtchoo!” and he blinked, taken by surprise.
“That was... the cutest thing that ever happened,” Steve said truthfully.
“Shuddup— heh—edschoo!”
#at some point they bone and there are like snapshots of that written#just sayin#snz fic#stucky snz fic#sneeze kink fanfiction#cute sick bucky#snzfic#lots of not-snz plot but the story is still basically Bucky Has The Sneezies You Must Save Him Steve
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hello! I hope your having a good day! If you don't mind me asking, what is your opinion on the Cupid Scene in Hoo? And if you could how would you change it?
my opinion on the cupid scene…well, i don't think a traumatic coming out scene is automatically bad. the problem i have w it is that rick capitalized on shock value instead of good writing. rick retconned a bunch of things to make nico alone and miserable so that he could have this scene, and it was completely unnecessary. ppl can have friends without coming out. and, as i’ve repeatedly said, the way hoo is written is literally a repeat of his arc in pjo but worse, because we’re acting like important events in pjo didn’t happen in a series that’s supposed to be a sequel to pjo and rick is inconsistent so the payoff is questionable.
the solution is…good writing. creating a cohesive and intriguing plotline where this scene is either necessary or scrapped if it isn’t.
thus begins an unnecessarily deep dive into all the retcons, inconsistencies, and general what-the-fuckery of nico’s arc in hoo bc i’m the verbose king and we've accidentally stumbled into something i have a lot to say abt.
first retcon. in son, frank explicitly says that nico does not make him nervous and describes nico as mysterious. not weird, creepy, off-putting, or anything similar. and nico is! he is clearly hiding things and shows up infrequently. this is a neutral description, and frank goes on to say that pluto’s powers, and specifically the underworld, isn’t enough to make him dislike pluto or nico.
also this, showing nico is comfortable enough around frank:
but then in hoh, frank thinks going somewhere with nico, alone, is terrifying.
at worst, frank would’ve felt awkward. they’ve never had to talk alone bc nico is at camp jupiter for hazel and doesn’t have any reason to talk to frank by himself. if frank didn’t want to be alone w nico bc of that, it’d make sense. but that’s not what’s said or implied! and nothing has happened! nico got kidnapped, they saved him, and since then he’s been chilling on the boat, exactly as weird as before, if a little more understandably distressed. like, nothing happened to change frank’s opinion this drastically. even the difference between pluto and hades (wealth vs death) doesn’t matter bc nico uses his powers in son. also frank literally summons a skeleton guy in son and hazel is a zombie, like…
(the source isn’t important but i've been quoting these five seconds for years)
oh! and that’s not all, it gets worse!
these scenes from hoh are incredibly infantilizing. why are we treating nico like a feral dog that needs to be domesticated??? yikes. and once again, it’s not true! nico was fine talking w ppl in pjo (if a bit over-enthusiastic). and then in son he was perfectly civil and was fine having the conversation abt the quest. his issue w ppl was that his powers/parentage put ppl off, and, even in son, that he had to keep a secret.
nico is perfectly capable of speaking like a normal person and working as part of a team (see: final botl battle, final tlo battle, the sword of hades). like, nico’s struggle in hoh should be 1) that ppl are calling him creepy behind his back (and therefore has nothing to do w his social skills) and/or 2) that he just survived an incredibly traumatic experience and is understandably withdrawn. neither of these are properly addressed and instead the implication is that nico is hiding himself bc he’s gay and everything will be solved if he accepts himself.
edit: i never actually explicitly stated this, but nico's queer coding and disability coding overlap, which is why this infantilization/ableism is important enough to highlight despite the conversation specifically being abt the queer aspect of it.
second retcon. percy…as i’ve said many times before, percy explicitly calls nico his friend in tlo.
this immediately makes hoo trying to act like they don’t know each other and were never close a retcon. they were friends, they saw each other frequently, nico made silly jokes w percy…and we’re ignoring all of this in hoo.
i've talked abt this previously (in response to tsats), but nico is the one putting distance between him and percy. percy reached out to nico repeatedly thru pjo.
when percy notices that nico excludes himself, percy finds a private place to talk to nico and assures him that percy wants him around and offers solutions to his discomfort (this is not percy’s responsibility. percy is a child). when nico insists that he won’t stay, percy sees it from nico’s perspective and, instead of forcing nico to do something against his will that may totally backfire, says “i hope we don’t have to be enemies,” leaving room for nico to decide whether he’s willing to be friends.
bc percy understands the root of nico’s issue (that no matter the accommodations made at camp, there’s always going to be the implicit message that he doesn’t belong there), he addresses it and uses his wish to make sure that nico has a home at camp.
and when nico tries to prove he’s useful, percy proves he would’ve invited him in whether nico was or not. bc he thinks nico deserves to be a kid.
“i wonder if [nico] had ever had a birthday party,” percy thinks at his own birthday party where he didn’t invite his friends bc he felt it was too much of an inconvenience, in a story where he never had friends prior to these ppl he didn’t invite, and the only person he had for twelve years of his life was his own mother. and percy uses his own loneliness to empathize w how lonely nico is.
percy is not some distant figure nico is idolizing. he's a kid trying his best to care for another kid at a time where no one else did, while experiencing his own trauma. all of their hang-ups exist bc of that.
going back to their relationship in hoo, even trying to make percy uncomfortable w nico’s powers (and therefore not wanting to associate w nico) doesn’t work bc percy has gone on record and said he thinks some of nico’s powers are cool and has neutral responses to others, not to mention percy is also a big three kid who makes other ppl wary (i could write a whole meta on how what percy finds disturbing w nico’s powers is directly tied to what percy finds disturbing w his own powers, but i’ll restrain myself. please clap).
and if that wasn’t enough, the entire reason percy stood up to hera in botl is bc she was willing to let nico die specifically bc he doesn't fit in bc of those powers.
this plotline was tired before it even began.
you could argue that all of this changed w nico’s betrayal in tlo. but then why didn’t percy tell anybody when it happened in tlo (annabeth would’ve reacted to it if he had)? why did percy trust nico to come when he called? why didn’t any of percy’s animosity come out afterwards at camp? and in the throne room, percy didn’t have to single nico out w his wish. he didn’t have to watch nico to make sure he was settling in. but he did. and because he did, any writing that suggests percy doesn't trust or care abt nico bc of that is bad writing. maybe rick forgot this, but u can be angry w and hurt by the ppl you love and still love them.
even the justification that nico lied in son isn’t good enough to completely change their relationship, bc it’s pretty clear why nico lied and percy says he can’t stay angry at nico when they rescue him, and let me remind u, anger is a core part of percy's character. while nico lying might be enough for characters like leo and jason, who have no rapport w him, to doubt him, it’s not enough for percy. and why are we so obsessed w dismantling percy and nico’s friendship anyway? why is that necessary to the story? like i said before, ppl can have friends without coming out. isolating the only queer character (at the time) isn’t necessary.
this conflict doesn’t even work in hoo bc their distance is still one-sided…
when did percy not give nico a second chance in hoo? the only times they’ve interacted prior to this was when percy remembered nico in son and tried to talk to him and then when they saved his life. and then nico brushes off percy's gratitude and tells him to back off. this is not nico idolizing percy who doesn't care abt him. this is percy reaching out and yet again nico putting distance between them.
and, obviously, this doesn’t work at all w pjo when the entirety of botl exists, you know, where percy chose to trust and protect nico and then went out of his way to make sure nico knew percy held none of nico’s anger against him. it’d be one thing if nico was supposed to be wrong, but considering how there’s an entire arc in hoo abt jason being the first person to trust nico, and tsats seriously acts like percy only ever talked to nico when he needed something, it’s safe to say this comes from a place of stupidity.
ok. this sections getting long, so i moved the it was stupid to have percy give jason a reason to doubt nico section to a new post. but know that i'm aware and i think it's stupid.
back to the point of all these retcons w percy. there's nothing in hoo that necessitates changing percy and nico's relationship from pjo. while percy in hoo is never cruel to nico, they act like strangers for some reason. so, it's changed for no reason and it's written poorly.
sigh. and then all of chb is retconned (or recycled if you’re feeling generous).
the ppl at camp accept him while his cabin gets built. pretty nice. then in boo nico reveals they got tired of him after a week–which is still summer–despite there being an influx of kids from all descents, some of whom would be weird or uncomfortable or whatever this justification is. that’s not even mentioning how percy’s own experiences (remember how he was ostracized…multiple times…) should have made them more accepting of nico.
why…was this necessary at all…? especially when u have an entirely different camp that treats nico as weird bc they didn’t have that good experience w him? this is really what gets me. if rick wanted to be lazy and repeat nico’s arc, he could’ve done so without retconning things.
for example, with the seven, leo, piper, jason, and maybe annabeth (she doesn’t have much to say abt nico in pjo), i could understand having animosity towards nico, as well as camp jupiter, but retconning established relationships to make ur only (at the time) queer character isolated and miserable only to then have his coming out be violent and traumatic is. well. bad! especially when the person who is w him for that experience is not someone he has built any sort of camaraderie w. nico isn’t choosing to trust jason, he’s being forced to.
and the whole nico-needs-to-learn-to-trust-ppl plot doesn’t work anyway bc of rick’s inconsistencies.
jason has a moment much like frank where he doesn’t want to go anywhere w nico bc nico is so weird and scary. nico has every right to pull himself away from ppl who treat him like he’s got something contagious. and there’s more:
“since when does jason defend nico,” as in they have shit on nico before and jason has not, in the past, defended nico. as in nico had every reason to not trust jason prior to this bc everyone, including jason, were talking shit behind his back. why are we acting like nico is being unreasonable? oh no, y’all are talking behind my back…clearly it’s my fault bc i push everyone away and that has nothing to do w ur behavior or anything…yes this is good writing.
and we’re supposed to believe that jason (and reyna and hedge and will) is the first person to be kind/reach out to nico, but we have this scene from botl where percy comforted nico and gave him a piece of his childhood back:
and this is after percy cleared the air to make sure nico knew he didn’t hate him and offered to make accommodations for nico at camp and then respected and understood why nico wouldn’t want to. like,
woah, you’re telling me that a character reaches out to nico after a traumatic experience in an act of kindness and this helps nico grow as a person? and it happens multiple times?! yeah, apparently rick and fandom have completely forgotten abt this (also hazel exists???). they’re even phrased similarly! “maybe it’s time to take a risk and embrace something you’ve pushed away.” furthermore, they both support their point by helping nico, percy by inviting nico into his home to enjoy cake and ice cream, jason by drinking from the chalice. once more w feeling: nico has been loved the entire goddamn time!
i get what rick was trying to accomplish w the whole cupid scene concept. which is that it’s okay to be gay and that it can feel very “othering” to be gay. nico has to accept himself in order to make friends. that’s what this
and this
are trying to say, right, but this doesn’t work when you’ve blatantly retconned established relationships to have characters push nico away for his powers/parentage/whatever. nico’s struggle is not an internal issue that can be solved by accepting himself, it’s an external issue caused by how other ppl treat him for his powers/parentage (which he has never been shown to reject btw).
the thing is, the powers-as-queerness metaphor only works when you don’t have, you know, characters who aren’t queer going through similar ostracization. not only was percy ostracized at chb in tlt for his powers/parentage (very similar to nico!), percy has a moment in this same book where his powers terrify annabeth, and then piper in the next book, in which he, you know, lets himself almost die to poison bc he feels like he “deserved it” for using those powers. again, this is not queer-coding for percy (unless…?). moreover, like i said, nico doesn’t reject his powers, so the whole queer-coding w powers and needing to accept himself is already iffy (...rejecting powers...hold the fuck up…percy isn’t…unless…). even the out-of-time metaphor doesn’t work bc it’s something he shares w hazel, who is not canonically queer (unless…?!). so, already, we’re on shaky metaphorical ground. all of this could work, theoretically, if combined w strong writing, but combined w the retconning and inconsistencies, this plotline makes no cohesive sense.
we’re supposed to believe that nico is the one pushing everyone away while they are secretly super supportive while simultaneously being shown that everyone talks and thinks shit that affirms nico’s thoughts abt them that makes him want to pull away. and then in boo we completely ignore that these ppl have been pushing nico away and suddenly everyone (reyna, hedge, will, etc) is supportive.
pick a struggle!
also nico’s coming out scene in boo sucked (yeah this is the segue).
this is the culmination of nico’s arc in hoo. he’s finally accepted himself enough to speak the truth without pressure. we ruined percy and nico’s established relationship for this. and they don’t even have a conversation. then nico walks over to will bc percy, “regular guy” percy, is “not [his] type.” don’t look too deep into that.
so, how would i fix the cupid scene? well.
there were a million different ways to write a better arc for nico and earn that cupid scene. for example, rick could’ve stuck to a plotline.
the trust plotline could’ve been good. bc this exact thing is what causes the accidental kidnapping situation in tlo. nico doesn’t trust percy enough to tell him the truth and chooses to manipulate and lie to percy instead. this choice is what sets up their conflict bc percy views this as betrayal (something that’s important to a guy who’s fatal flaw is loyalty).
it’s also interesting bc nico does choose to trust ppl in hoo; he eats the pomegranate seeds despite not knowing that someone is coming for him, he just trusts that someone will (we’re ignoring what boo says abt nico’s tartarus experience bc fun fact! that is also retconned). and it pays off, bc not only does he get saved, we see hazel and percy even willing to challenge the other members of the seven to make sure he gets saved. so, it’s not a lesson he’s already learned, it’s a lesson he’s learning. but, going back to the main question here, would the cupid scene still be necessary? was being dragged into tartarus and almost dying not enough spectacle?
regardless, my biggest problem w the cupid scene in all of this is that it gives the impression that u have to come out in order to have ppl love u and trust u. a much better message to send is that the ppl who love u will love u before and after u come out. no isolation necessary.
#shows up over a month late w an essay-length response as to why nico’s arc in hoo sucked#are u not entertained?#also hi! just realized i never said that lol#nico#rr crit#hoo crit#disability#queerness#answered#min talks pjo
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um eah platonic ships + headcanons bcuz why not
Maddie and apple
-they are literally co presidents (is that what they're called? Idk I forgot)
-apple has an interest in wonderland and Maddie clearly loves wonderland
-maddie is raven's best friend, so she would prolly cross paths w/ Apple a fair bit considering that apple and raven are roommates
-apple just needs Maddie in her life
2. Darling and Chase
-basic but for a reason
-training sessions where they would act like they're fighting to the death even tho if either actually hurt the other they would cry and bring them chocolate and flowers
-constantly gets mistaken as a couple. They are both gay
-smth abt the red/black versus the white/blue combo just gives life long friendship to me idk
3. Daring and Apple
-platonic daring and Apple for life
-they felt awkward around each other at first, but quickly started to hang out more
-very strong friendship, after literally being in an arranged marriage together for years and knowing each other since childhood it's kinda hard not to know each other super well
-movie nights every Friday. Apple makes popcorn and daring brings a new candy every week (he tries his hardest not to repeat any, so this leads to some very odd choices)
4. (Frenemies) duchess and blondie
-they love gossipping together in theory, but not in practice. Blondie thinks that duchess is too mean (Blondie is also mean but in a "I'm just giving you honest opinions and advice" way) and duchess hates how Blondie is always trying to film her
-blondie is super judgemental so whenever she sees Duchess with sparrow she's always like "him? Really? He is not just right"
-whenever she's mad at Blondie duchess will slightly damage her filming equipment (denting her microphone, cracking a camera lense, etc.). It's never enough to really impair anything, but Blondie does often wonder why her microphone that should be good for a couple years declines within a few months
-despite petty arguments, they are always casually talking shit in the hallways. This makes them think that they can have a friendship outside of the hallways. They cannot and the above is the result of that ignorance
#ever after high#eah#apple white#darling charming#daring charming#maddie hatter#chase redford#duchess swan#blondie lockes#platonic ships
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gosh this is a very gay aren ramble beware. for once it isn't about luchinini (it starts odd with like. a hc and then descends into nortorphrick hell)
ok so. to keep track of who went in and out of mineshafts miners would have a board set up. as well as the mining tag system. each miner had an identification tag. when in the mines you put your tag on the board and when you leave you take it off. subtle headcanon that norton, even after leaving the mines, keeps his mining tag in his pocket.
now for the faggoty part. are you ready.
it was taken as a good luck charm if you you kissed the miners tag before they went down. surely you see where I'm going w/this.
I actually wanted to make a mini comic of this. It was nortrick central but I wanted nudge orph in there too....id hope it is a little clear how much i enjoy theirstrange dynamic by now..... nortorphrick save me....
I think nortorphrick is peak because
nortpheus = understanding on a level that is almost scary. not even almost. just is scary. especially for norton (albeit Orpheus is a bit offput too. it's not everyday someone matches his freak). you would be scared if you resonated with Horror Twink on a personal level. you would.
nortrick = don't understand each other at all (largely different backgrounds, thought processes, etc etc) but gradually (VERY gradually) begin to... and are wildly fascinated with the person they find beneath it all. they can even empathize with eachother on a few certain fronts. gosh. I can't elaborate on this very well but I also love the nortrick dynamic a lot. Urg
orphrick = one sided understanding. orpheus sees him on a scale nobody ever has before. and (similarly to norton) it frightens him. but also. after feeling like all you are is a pretty face and no talent. it doesn't hurt to have someone hear you. (infact he goes to some strange places menatlly trying to get some more of that validation)
they're just so. BEAHHH. I am so insane for nortorphrick. it would be fun to write something for them I think. just something quick and easy. Orpheus endlessly confuses them both with his peculiar whims and infatuations and CRAZY plethora of problems.
#i left this tab and though tumblr deleted it again i almost brokr down#LET ME TALK ABOUT GAY PEOPLE PLEAAASD$#can you tell i am too invested in fictional characters#sorry gang i just like weird slightly creepy romance#is it love if he doesn't make you nauseous and put you in a cold sweat#nortorphrick#nortpheus#orphnort#nortrick#fredpheus#orphrick#arenblab#literally ignore this#note that when i make crappy textposts like these i am teying to indict people to my gay agenda#on that note. premanor luchinini lore rewrite soon#i need to clarify things that i changed#because the first plan was written at like 1am
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What started out as theories abt when the main cast died but got silly
Annabel + Lenore ✨
This one is pretty straightforward, there’s these Barbie movie redraws flynn did that shows Annabel and Lenore being caught by “NMPD nevermore police department” , with the year 1901 in the corner, implying that’s when they died and got sent to nevermore
This little 1901 in the corner is interesting on like a meta level to me bc 1. in the original Barbie meme theres no date on the slate thingies, so flynn decided to add that piece of info on her own, and 2. this was just after episode 67 came out (on fp I think) and uh little tidbit, before that episode there was a theory that Theo died in like the 1860s or something based on the logo in the newspaper abt his death, the ny daily tribune, and after episode 67 came out and ira mentioned a ship that wasn’t available for public use until 1899 on the discord we were trying to do mental gymnastics to make the 2 dates work but then red came on like “please we accidentally grabbed the wrong logo it’s meant to read new York tribune not New York daily tribune its fixed now we fixed it please” and then a few days later they streamed doing this piece
Anyway, ira talks about the oceanic, which was “the finest ocean liner in the world” the *largest ocean liner in the world* until 1901
The RMS oceanic had its maiden voyage in September of 1899, at the beginning of fall. Annabel says she arrived in New York a fortnight before meeting Lenore, presumably during the spring. Annabel arrives at lenores house in april/may of 1900, spends six months there, and then leaves around the fall, probably somewhere around September or October. Lenore then spends a few months doing her thing and then arrives at her family’s home in either December 1900 or January 1901, during the winter. HERES where it gets interesting. We can assume that Annabel died in the cold, from her spectres chilling atmosphere and all together appearance of corpse in a freezer. She even has frostbite on her fingers and toes, as well as snowflake like glitter in her veil. We can also assume she died on her wedding day, the way she wears her rings on different hands and her wedding dress in spectre form. So if she died in the cold and on her wedding day, then when was her wedding, and how could it be in winter?
heres my 2 theories
1. Lenore beats Annabel at chess just for funsies fairly quickly after arriving, then they try to elope and get caught by their dads
2. Lenore courts Annabel, wins her hand, and they get engaged. Since engagements usually lasted around 6 months to 2 years, their engagement could have been anywhere from however long it takes Lenore to win at chess to December 1901. If their wedding day was in November/December, that means Lenore got away with pretending to be a man for a whole YEAR and they spent that year just being gay and shit/doing schemes.
I personally like option 2 more bc its just sadder that they did get away w it for a while then ultimately got caught - it would also explain why Annabel is just SO into Lenore, if all she remembers is that year they spent being all sneaky and gay and shit, it would explain how she’s just used to flirting and holding onto Lenore in secret. It would also explain why Annabel assumes Lenore is up to scheming at nevermore. if they eloped a few weeks after they reunited it would still be like yeah that makes sense they are such u haul lesbians, but them becoming sneaky codependent gays ripped from each other on their wedding day just hurts more and makes more sense time/character wise
Duke - 1912, maybe even 1912 specifically, idk
Duke has a coin that’s dated to 1912, and Eulalie says it looks brand new. There’s been arguments about wether or not the coin is actually newly minted, but I don’t think we can say for sure. It might not matter either way- I have a theory that the suit cases the students carry aren’t actually random personal items of interest, but a suitcase they packed right before a pivotal event in their lives. Perhaps Duke does have newly minted coins in his suitcase, but he didn’t actually die in 1912. Also! Duke is implied to be a Houdini like figure, so I imagine he’s not later than the 20s.
Pluto - 1914 ish
Plutos spectre wears a British ww1 military uniform, its debated wether or not the jacket was his dads or his, but regardless he couldn’t have died earlier than 1914. Pluto is named after the cat in the short story called The Black Cat by Edgar Allan poe. In the story a cat named Pluto gets its eye slashed out by its drunken owner, eventually getting hung from a tree by the man. Theres obvious references to the story in Plutos design and shit overall, when he manifests a belt snaps around his neck implying he died from strangulation, his spectre has like, a pluming collar/leash of smoke around its neck, his spectre looks like it’s made of ash kinda (someone described him as a burnt rabbit to me once) which is probably a reference to the part in the story where the man’s house burns down, only 1 wall remaining erect, with the image of a black cat scorched into it. Plutos eye is covered by his hair, he walks into a door frame, he’s got spectre abilities called “blink” and “evil eye” so w Pluto until we get more info it’s no earlier than 1914 if you subscribe to the Pluto went to war theory or no earlier than like, say the 20s? if you subscribe to the Plutos dad was a vet theory
Berenice - 1920s
Shes a flapper, cmon. shes from the 1920s. Look at her. We already know she was run over by a cop car after running from some guy, and I tried to look into where the cop car was from but i didn’t have much luck. mostly just confirmed the era, when I searched cop cars of the 1920s pretty similar images to the one that killed bee show up. A few others I think have looked into it more? but im not completely sure. There’s been a lot of theories about where Berenice is from, I’ve seen Louisiana, Chicago, Harlem (Harlem renaissance specifically) but there’s not a lot of conclusive info about Berenice. we know her pearls were real, in the way they scattered, so she had so have some means of affording them. Pearls are held together on a string, but only real pearls have pieces of metal between the pearls to keep them from rubbing against each other. Bees pearls scatter in long strings, not completely all over the place like fake pearls without that structure would.
Eulalie - 1935
The song Eula sings in her death flashback is a Japanese lullaby that was rediscovered in 1935. Its a popular theory that Eulalies death was a hate crime, a fire started because of hate towards Japanese Americans during ww2. She probably died in the forties in america, I don’t think she died in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the fire that killed her isnt how atomic bombs would have killed her. The kid she sings to asks if someone started the fire on purpose, so imo it was likely a hate crime.
Morella - 1950s - 70s??
Okay so, Morella. we know the least about her. with will we can guess that he was lower class and stuff, but all we know abt Morella is that she’s Irish. Shepards pie and Guinness is pretty timeless. The reason I say 50s to 70s is bc according to Remigoesinsane the clasp to her locket started to be used around that time! that’s all I have on her tbh, a theory of mine is that she died in a factory accident trying to save someone when the machinery went crazy, but that’s mostly it.
Ada - 1930s
Ada’s clothes in her death flashback match those worn by maids in the 1930s, and the lingerie she wears in the manor also matches lingerie worn in the 30s. It would also make sense for Ada’s character to be from the 30s. That decade was called the “somber thirties” bc of how fucked up the economy was after the stock market crash. It was a major time of economic disparity, and Ada’s obsession with trying to seem upper class elite could stem from not having much when she died. She probably sees nevermore as a blank slate, a place where people will see her as more than just “the help” would also make sense that the man that killed her was a rich guy using his power to take advantage of her and get away with the crime. Especially since the poem, Tamerlane, was from the pov of a rich guy lamenting a relationship he had with a lower class girl named Ada.
Prospero ��
PROSPERO! prospero drinks espresso with his chosen last meal, which was invented in 1901. I think he died from tuberculosis. For a long time a major cause of death has been tuberculosis. So much so that Victorians made it a beauty standard. A major inspiration of Poe himself was tuberculosis, in the masque of red death, along with the grief he was left with after his wife died from it. It rots your lungs, makes you cough up your bloodied respiratory system until you suffocate in it. In the maze, prospero says he felt queasy, like something was crawling under his skin when he died. When prospero cuts his hand, he says he’s going to be sick, and tells Annabel that he’s afraid of blood. (Probably specifically his own blood bc u know he was feeding people to rats like minutes before that) This, coupled with the imagery of blood pouring out from his plague mask when he says the “queasy, like something was crawling under my skin” line, makes me think his death involved a lot of blood! And as I said before tuberculosis was like really gross and bloody and gory. Furthermore, this quote from the writer is SO interesting
In the poem prosperos namesake is in, the masque of red death, the prince prospero, hiding and ignoring a sickness ravaging his country, decides to host a huge party! Everyone’s having a grand old time, the festivities only pausing when the clock strikes, leaving everyone in a dread filled silence, the party picking up almost immediately after and brushing it off. Eventually the plague does get in though and kill them all because they ignored the feeling of dread.
The prince and the party goers die because the prince is blissfully and willfully ignorant of the disease. Bc their hubris didn’t allow them to see the threat of it. Nevermores prospero, however, is obsessed with staying healthy/hygienic as possible. He wears his gloves even when he eats, hates being touched, almost throws up when he cuts his hand. He hallucinates a thousand dirty hands grabbing him and trying to perform an operation on him with disgusting germy tools. He sees the hand he cut amputated, imagining that the wound got so infected that it had to be removed. He stares in horror at his hand before Ada even makes eye contact with him. My theory is Prospero grew up hearing terrible stories of people dying from infection, disease. He heard of people slowly drowning in their own blood. He decided to take every precaution, he simply wouldn’t allow that to be his fate. After Ada attacks him he tells Annabel “you must think me neurotic” for being so upset over the blood on his hand. This feels, so specific and intentional to me. Not just because Annabel dealt with her anxiety and her dad treating her panic attacks like he did, and this is a whole “omg look they’re bonding” moment, but bc, immediately after he tries to assure her that “im not, you know, im perfectly sane” like shit like this has happened before, where ppl called him neurotic for being that sick at the sight of his own blood, or that obsessed with hygiene. The irony being that, he spent his life obsessing over staying healthy, so much so that people called him neurotic, only to die that slow gory death anyway.
That whole, prospero dying from tb tangent aside tho, how it correlates to the time of his death. He probably died in the early 1900s, the earliest being 1901-1906ish, bc again, that’s when espresso started gaining popularity. My guess is he died around the 20s, ik the tb vaccine came out around the 20s, but people still died of it after and are still dying/contracting it today, and in the 20s there were a lot of Italians emigrating to America, and prospero is so aggressively Italian American (eating espresso and cannoli with chocolate chips for his last meal) that it’d make sense. So woo!
Monty - 1910s
Monty is a cowwwwboyyyyyy. The Wild West pretty much tapered out around the early 1900s. He can’t be that recent. He also mentions calamity Jane so that definitely puts him past the 1800s. He seemed to have a pretty wild life, kicked in the head by a horse, tooth knocked out by a human, tied to train tracks and left for dead after calling the pastors daughter loose. crazy guy crazy time
Will ???
Will is so plain i cannot get a read on where hes from im sorry
obligatory thank you for making it to the end, I barely made it myself, this was sitting in my drafts for weeks before I decided to just get it over with. <<333
#nevermore webtoon#lenore nevermore#annabel lee nevermore#white raven#ada nevermore#duke nevermore#morella nevermore#prospero nevermore#berenice nevermore#will nevermore#pluto nevermore#eulalie nevermore
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