#who gets deployed something like a minute after being built with a tone that's a combination of LSOTW and the AC series

[robotsprinkles]

Anyway.

Fall of Cybertron and Destiny being the two first "real" games that I properly played (instead of getting stuck on a random level and never finishing)

combined with me being really into the TF07 DS game where you play as a custom "Create-A-Bot" character (via watching my friend play it when I went to his house. and also youtube videos) and my discovery of Armored Core some time between 2012-2016 when I saw the opening cinematic for 4A on youtube

has resulted in me really wanting (to play/make/both) a customisation-heavy transformers game where you play as an MTO

Unfortunately, my skillset amounts to being okay at drawing and painting, technically being able to kind of 3D model, making very rudimentary character rigs (and rigging two-stage universal joint mounted hydraulic pistons), and maybe being sort of okay at writing. so making it myself is out of the question.

(also even if I had all the necessary skills the amount of crap I'd need to make would be infeasible anyway so)

And hasbro seems content to let the TF game license rot in the mobile market (and possibly development hell/live service hell depending on how Reactivate goes), and I don't think they'd be that into the idea of making a tf game where you don't get to play as and/or which doesn't entirely focus on the big name characters, so I don't think we're getting anything like this anytime soon. or ever.

So I guess I'm just going to be waiting for a game that probably no one wants and will almost certainly never be made for however many years I have before I die.

.

Might start posting my dumb ideas for this hypothetical game under its own tag or something. Then again I might not because I mean.

[tomtenadia]

A Little Braver  - Chapter 4

So, chapter 4 is finally here.

It has a few funny moments but it also has angst.

This fic has so much more angst that i originally planned. 

Anyway... enjoy it.

-----------

The drive to the hospital did not take long but once inside they noticed the waiting room was swamped.

“Whitethorn, this is pointless,” she said when he placed her on an empty chair “we’ll be here for hours.”

“I don’t care, we are getting that knee checked.” His tone did not admit any protest from her.

Aelin grunted “I hate you.”

“Is that news? Tell me something I don’t know.” Rowan took a seat on the empty seat beside her  then took her injured leg and lifted it on his lap. Aelin winced.

It was three hours later when Rowan started to loose his patience “that woman came after us and she went in already.” He protested a bit too loudly for Aelin’s taste. Why was he caring about her wellbeing all of a sudden?

“Maybe she is worse than a busted knee.” She shrugged but he glared at her.

“She walked into the A&E on her own two feet. You just dealt with that damn inferno with that busted knee.” He protested and the hint of pride in his voice moved something inside her.

“I don’t need the red carpet.”

“Some fucking attention for people who bust their asses to save other people lives would be appreciated.” His tone got a bit louder still. Rowan did not seem the type to cause a scene but he seemed a bit too annoyed and to be honest she did not know much about the guy. She just hoped his military training would kick in and restrain himself.

“Doctor save lives too.”

He grunted and stood and Aelin braced for the worst. She saw him walk with purpose to the reception desk with perfect military stride. She would have laughed if it wasn’t that she was scared of what he would do.

She saw him talk to one of the nurses behind the nurses station. A few times his arm pointed at her and she made herself small and invisible. 

Then she went back spying on him and studied his posture and gasped. The man was flirting with the nurse. Stick up in the arse captain was flirting with the nurse to get her in early. She was dumbfounded. She could not believe that he had it in him.

He came back five minutes later with a smug face “Someone will come for you soon.”

Aelin’s mouth fell open “Did you just flirt with the nurse to have me seen earlier?”

“I did not such thing,” and he looked away, scanning the waiting room.

“She is looking over here. I think she is interested in you and is now wondering how it would feel to bag an airforce captain.”

Rowan huffed “not interested.”

“She is pretty.”

“Not my type…”

“Oh come on grampa, she could even play sexy nurse with you.”

Rowan rolled his eyes “you really are a menace.”

She was about to add a snarky remark when a doctor stopped in front of them “Aelin Galathynius?”

Aelin’s head snapped up “I am here.”

“I am doctor Yrene Westfall. Follow me.”

Westfall? Was she Chaol’s wife?

“Did you say Westfall? Is Chaol your husband?”

“Yes. Do you know him?”

Aelin nodded “I am a firefighter, we work a lot with the police. He was at the embankment fire tonight.”

“He told me, apparently it was hell. His own words.”

“It was bad.” Aelin stood and swore as sharp pain shoot from her knee up her leg.

“Why did you do that?” Rowan protested and lifted her again in his arms.

“You are making the nurse jealous.”

“Shut up and let’s follow the nice doctor.”

“Put her down here,” Yrene pointed at an empty bed.

Rowan placed her gently on the bed and stepped at the bottom of it. His hands behind his back.

Yrene lifted the leg of her trousers and had a look at her knee “This look quite bad, why did you wait this long to come to the hospital?”

“I was going to… but then city emergency and all and it slipped my mind.”

Rowan snorted and Aelin glared at him.

“And you walked all day on it?”

“Kinda…”

“You might have made things much worse.”

Aelin leaned back on the pillow and sighed. She knew and with the performance review on its way it had been very stupid of her.

“How did it happen?”

“We were in the middle of a drill this morning. The explosion happened, the shockwave made me  loose my balance and I fell down the ladder face first and my left knee took the impact.”

“You might have broken your kneecap. I need to send you for an x-ray and see what is the situation.” She went away and came back five minutes later “Someone will come and get you soon. You captain, can wait here until she is back.”

Rowan nodded and pinched her big toe when he noticed her worried expression “Do you want me to come in and hold your hand?”

“Screw you, Whitethorn.”

He pinched the toe again and his lip quirked up in a tight attempt at a smile.

Aelin wondered if she’ll ever see him smile or even laugh.

The porter came and rolled her bed away. She snatched a last look at Rowan and saw him standing where her bed had been I’ll be here. She saw him mouth to her.

Rowan began pacing back and forth in a very nervous state. His phone pinged and saw a text from Lorcan asking for an update on behalf of her squad. He texted back saying she was getting an x-ray.

He sat down on the chair near where the bed was and took out his phone to scroll through the news of the fire at the warehouses. In one of the articles he saw a great picture of her. She was staring at the inferno in front of her and with her hand she was pointing at something, maybe giving an order. He saved the picture on his phone then went on reading the article flushing with pride at how the journalist had praised her for handling such an emergency with professionalism and doing a great jobs at keeping the victims to a very low level. Turned out they only had lost two workers. Considering what he had seen he was impressed because it could have been far, far worse. He read a few more articles and almost seethed with rage when a journalist had the courage to criticise the TFD for having a young girl in charge of such an emergency.

It was an hour later when Aelin and Yrene came back. Aelin’s face told him that the news was bad.

“Her kneecap is badly fractured. She will need surgery. I have contacted the orthopaedic surgeon to see if he can squeeze her in tomorrow.  Then she will have to stay in the hospital for a few days. Once she gets home she can move around with crutches but it might take up to a month before she will be able to do rehab. The whole thing should last around three months if she cooperates.”

Rowan stared at Aelin and he saw her heartbroken expression. 

Once Yrene excused herself saying she was going to get her a room, Rowan moved closer to her.

“Don’t. Don’t you even try and say what you are about to say. I do not need your pity.”

He knew that the idea of not being able to participate in the performance review was killing her. Gods he wanted to hug her again like in her office and offer comfort. But that was a skill he had always been bad at. 

“Do you need anything?”

“Yes, being less fucking stupid.” She growled through gritted teeth “I knew that explosion was coming. I knew we had fucked up the exercise and let it run longer than meant to. Aedion and I had planned that explosion. I knew it and I still let it knock me off like a blasted newbie.”

She breathed deeply “I am too stupid to be a captain.”

No, he was not having that.

“Now you are talking shite.” He snarled back. He was not having her accusing herself os something like that. He took out his phone and opened the first article he read. The one with the great picture.

“Captain Galathynius has showed nerves of steel while handling a double fire that could have had catastrophic consequences. She masterfully deployed two teams to tackle emergency after emergency without ever backing down from the constant challenge. And when it seemed that the situation was taking a turn for the worst, she pulled a rabbit out of the hat and convinced the stiff necked airforce posh boys to join and help tackle a raging fire, far too big for three fire engines. Captain Galathynius and the two teams deserve more recognition for their incredible job. Far more than a pat on the back.

All the firefighters involved tonight had showed great heroism and excellent skills. Every day these men and women place their lives on the line to keep our city safe. The government should keep it in mind at his next budget review and find in itself to invest in money in services the city deeply deserves like firefighters, the police and the health services instead of flushing it down the drain to fund fancy planes built for destruction.”

“Uh…. He really does not like you guys.”

“I don’t care,” said Rowan quickly “What matters is what she said about you. She doesn’t think you are stupid. And I don’t think it either. This stiff necked posh boy thinks you are amazing.”

“Liar.”

“I am not lying. Why would I? I agree with this woman. You were fucking amazing tonight. All of you. And yes, you deserve far more credit than what you will get.”

His eyes glistened with pride and his words had helped a bit ease her anger.

“So you think I am amazing?”

“I do.” His voice much softer all of a sudden.

Yrene came back in that moment and broke the spell. She had a feeling she and the captain were about to have a moment but the magic had passed.

“I have a room for you.” And she had a wheelchair with her.

Rowan grabbed Aelin again and lifted her into the wheelchair and offered to push her.

“Chaol was my saviour tonight,” she giggled while Rowan rolled the wheelchair along the corridor following the doctor.

“How so?”

“He knows I hate reporters. So as soon as he saw a few coming at me he came and saved me before I could punch them. Plus, he and his men did an outstanding job at crowd control. I know it doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you have people running terrified from a building on fire it can end badly. And they also kept an eye to all the curious monster who come and have a peek and film it to post it social media for a five minutes of glory. Police let us concentrate on the emergency without worrying about what’s happening in the background.”

“Thank you for telling me.” The woman smiled at her.

“Make sure you give him an extra cuddle tonight.”

Both Aelin and Yrene burst out laughing.

“I will reward him accordingly, captain.”

They finally reached the elevator and the three got in. Not long after they were in the room and Rowan lifted her in bed. Yrene left them to get her settled in.

“You need clothes, damn it.” He looked around him as if to find an answer in an hospital room.

“My house keys are at the station.”

“Fine I’ll go and get them and grab some clothes for you from your house. Give me the address.”

“No.”

His face turned confused “why? You can’t stay in your uniform.”

“I am not having you in my house, going through my drawers and my clothes.”

Rowan sighed “tell me where you keep t-shirts and shorts and I will just go straight to that one. I am not a creep I swear.”

“Fine.” She texted him the address “my keys are in the black messenger bag in my locker. There is a small pocket at the front. They are attached to the hook. Actually take the whole bag with you. I have a charger and other stuff in there that I might need.”

“Ok, I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

“Captain?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

He nodded and before leaving he turned once more “you could start calling me Rowan, by the way.”

“Thank you, Rowan.”

He left thinking that his name on her lips was the most beautiful sound ever.

He reached the fire station not long after. He met Ress in the corridor.

“Captain.”

“Ress, isn’t it?”

The man nodded.

“How’s Aelin? 

“She will need surgery. She is not happy as you could imagine.”

“Damn.”

A tall man joined them a moment later. His uniform was white.

“This is chief Havilliard.” Said Ress.

So that was the young Havilliard. 

“You must be captain Whitethorn.”

Rowan nodded.

“Thank you for your assistance tonight.”

Rowan shook his head “it was Aelin’s idea. The credit goes to her. I just follow orders.”

“How is she by the way?” And Rowan could see concern in the man’s eyes.

“She will need surgery. Her knee is busted pretty badly. They are trying to book her for tomorrow. I am heading to her place to get her some clothes.”

“I will update the squad.” Dorian said “I will also try and beg the board to postpone the review. Aedion will be home tomorrow but he will be off for a week and Aelin looks like she will be out of commission for a while. And I need them to train the team. They are my golden duo.”

Rowan took an immediate liking to the chief.

Once Dorian took his leave, Ress took Rowan to their changing rooms and pointed to Aelin’s locker.

“Tell her that the team is behind her and that she was awesome tonight. Also let us know where she is in the hospital so we can come and visit.”

“Room 252 in the orthopaedic ward.”

“Thank you sir.”

Ress left him. He grabbed Aelin’s bag and his eyes spotted the pictures attached to the door and the walls. He saw some pictures with a man and he had a feeling his face was familiar. The photos portrayed a couple in love and for a very brief instant a very strange emotion he could not decipher set into him and then it quickly went away with the same speed it came.

He ignored it. Slammed the locker shut and left the station.

Fifteen minutes later he reached her house and let himself in. The house was gorgeous and very modern. He stepped into the living room and noticed the wall were painted a light yellow giving the room much more brightness. He smiled at the insane number of bookcases bursting with books. So, she was a book worm. Good, something to talk about if they had a chance to have a conversation that contained less insults and vitriol.

He walked to the door she had indicated and reached her bedroom and froze for a moment. He knew he had her permission but for an instant he felt as if he was invading her privacy.

The room was painted a pastel blue and a huge bed was was in the middle. At one end he noticed the drawer and walked to it and froze when he noticed there were two middle drawers.

Shit, she had said the middle drawer but which one. Damn, he had promised.

He opened the top one and slammed it shut when he saw the content. That was her underwear drawer. He turned and leaned against the piece of furniture. Bras… 38A she had said and now his treacherous brain was picturing the piece of clothing filled by…

“Damn.”

He opened the other one and breathed relieved when he noticed t-shirts and shorts. Good. He grabbed a few of her TFD t-shirts and placed them in the duffel bag at the bottom of her bed.

His phone went off. It was Aelin.

“What?”

“Gee, you sound grumpy.”

“What do you need m’lady?” His voice dripping with fake pleasantness.

“I am giving you permission to open the second drawer from the top and grab me some underwear as well, please.”

“You are kidding me.” Aelin could clearly hear the panic in his voice.

“Ro, I am not. I have an emergency and I will soon need new knickers. So yes, get in that drawer and grab me my underwear.”

His hand ran through his hair in a nervous gesture.

“Also, there is a small convenience store around the corner, could you please buy me tampons?”

Rowan almost choked. 

“I am sorry what?”

“You heard me. I assume you had been with other women before. You know we get periods, right?”

“Fine, I will phone you back once I am in the shop. I have no idea what to buy.”

“Just don’t blush too much.”

And he could hear the grin in her voice.

He hung up and breathed deeply and opened the drawer. The selection was… incredible.

He picked a few sports bra thinking that for an hospital stay they would be the better option. Definitely the lacy one were not proper. He rummaged a bit and looked again for something more sober when all of a sudden he found in his hands something that had little or no use as underwear but his treacherous mind painted some very sexy pictures.

Damn, that was torture. He grabbed a nice selection of the sober pieces and closed the drawer from hell in relief. He stuffed everything in the bag and walked out, in desperate need of fresh air.

Next stop he drove to the convenience store and braced himself for the next task. He walked in and sneaked to the correct section feeling like a perv for lingering in a section where he clearly did not belong to. He looked at the boxes and he had no idea that there were so many choices. He phoned her.

“Oh, you are still alive.”

“I am in the shop. Which one do you need?” He almost growled.

“Tampons.” She said matter of factly.

“I am a bloke, Fireheart. I have no idea of what you are talking about.”

He heard her sigh “the ones that looks like bullets.”

“Ok, which type?”

“At the bottom they have guidelines with drops. One with two drops and one with three. Actually make it two each.”

“Does the brand matter?”

“I am not fussed.”

“Okay. I got it.”

“I owe you another one.”

“That’s two now.”

“Fine, fine, Buzzard.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you later, get your arse back here.”

“So bossy.”

 He hang up and had a look at the brands. She had said she was not fussed but he had decided to get her the expensive ones, hoping it meant they were of a better quality as well.

He walked to the counter to pay “For my wife,” he muttered embarrassed, paid and got out quickly.

She owed him big time. Not for the water drop but for this.

When he got back to the hospital he went to her room and dumped the bag on her bed and moved away from her.

“Gee someone is on edge. Did my underwear scare you? The fearless pilot got frightened by lace.”

He scoffed an ignored her.

“Seriously man, never had a girlfriend or a date wearing sexy lingerie for you?”

“Of course.”

“Well, so what’s problem?”

He sat heavily on the chair “I was probably dating the person at the time, which implies other things.” She could still see the embarrassment in his features “you and I are just work partners. It was very weird.”

“Well, at least now you know how big is a 38A.”

The top of his ears turned red. She loved so much to rile him up.

She had look at what he had brought her and was very happy when she noticed he had picked sports bra. He had actually put some thought in it. Then her eyes caught the boxes of tampons “Rowan, these are very expensive.”

“I just thought… you know… better quality, perhaps? More comfortable? I don’t know. Again, I am a bloke.”

She wished she could stand and kiss him. He had been amazing. She never had put Sam through such torture. He would have probably died at the idea of buying her feminine products.

“I am very grateful. For everything.”

He gave her a smile. It never reached his eyes but the effort was there her heart fluttered at the precious little show of emotion.

He stood “I’ll let you change.” He made to walk away but stopped when he noticed her face.

“You need to use the facilities I guess.”

She nodded.

He lifted her in his arms and walked into the bathroom and deposited her on the loo.

“Let me know when you are done.” He left the room and walked to the corridor and sat on a chair. He took his phone and started browsing some old news about firefighters. He was still thinking about the man he saw in the picture in her locker. He had seen that face in the news.

He searched for a while until he found an article about a fireman called Sam Cortland. He opened and began to read. Shit. Sam and Aelin had been an item for five years and according to the article they had been engaged. He had been a captain at west station. He got killed while fighting a fire in a warehouse. Shit. His hands shook. They had in common more than just books. He pocketed the phone and walked back to the room.

“Are you okay?” He called through the door.

“Almost ready.”

He leaned against the wall and tried to calm down. It had been just over a year. Was she okay?

“I am ready.” He shoot off the wall and opened the door of the bathroom and saw her in her TFD t-shirt. He lifted her in his arms and he never would have wanted to let go of her.

“Back to your bed.”

Her arms were around his neck and it felt as if she lingered like that a bit longer on purpose. 

Or maybe he had just imagined.

“Do you need painkillers? Something to eat?”

Aelin shook her head “I am officially fasting. My surgery has been scheduled for tomorrow at 9.”

“That’s great.”

“I am a bit nervous.”

He sat down on the bed, just in front of her. Her hands were on her lap. He took her hand by grasping just the tip of the fingers “I can stay with you. I can be here when you wake up, or I can call someone else whose company you enjoy more.”

Aelin squeezed his hand back. She wished she had the strength to tell him that somehow she had enjoyed his company very much in the recent hours. But things were still very weird between them and she was positive he still did not like her.

Then she looked up and saw his eyes staring at her and realised that maybe she was wrong. In those beautiful green eyes of his she had noticed a spark of emotion, albeit for a fleeting moment.

“Keep me company, please.” He nodded and sat back on the chair.

They chatted amicably. She had told her about the station and her friends, then he reported that Lorcan was officially smitten by Elide and the two started making plans to set up the two of them.

At her first yawn, Rowan ordered her to go to bed. He tucked her in and went back to his seat.

When he woke up the next morning it was pretty early. He stood and stretched his back, sore from a night asleep on a chair. Aelin was still asleep so he sneaked out of the room and went in search of the cafeteria for a coffee. Then he had a look at himself in one of the doors and noticed he was still in uniform, now a mess, and a shadow of stubble on his face. His academy CO would have his head for walking around in such horrible state while in uniform. He shrugged, got his coffee and went back to the room. Jotted down a note for Aelin. He needed to go home, take a shower and get fresh clothes. He would be back by the time she returned from surgery.

On his way home he phoned Lorcan to give him an update on his whereabouts. He asked also for a few days off to help Aelin and the man agreed. Rowan snorted. Being in love was doing miracles on the old bastard.

He got home, relaxed, took quite a long shower and eventually he had breakfast and caught up with the news and saw that the big fire was still making the headlines. Then a photo caught his attention. Apparently the community had turned in support of the fire stations. They had flocked in front of the government building protesting in light of the new spending budget. Many of signs called for a cut in military spending and to give due value to corps such as firefighters and police. He realised that he would have probably been there as well if it wasn’t that his presence would guarantee him being kicked out of the force immediately. He had been disgusted when he saw how much the airforce got for the repairs. So much more than asked and then Aelin and the guys had to beg for a second engine. Yes, he was in the airforce but he did not agree with the amount of money that often got thrown at them. He eventually got dressed and headed back to the hospital but once he arrived he spotted a few reporters.

“Bloody leeches.”

He tried to walk unnoticed, but alas, his silver hair was not the most inconspicuous of traits.

One woman blocked his path and flung the microphone at him “Captain, how does it feel to save the day?”

Rowan looked at the woman puzzled. How on earth did they know who he was? He had been on a plane the night of the fire.

“You and your team stopped the fires. Without you, the firefighters would have failed.”

Anger. Fiery anger surged through him in a savage wave.

“I think you have read the news wrong.” He tried to calm down “The real heroes are the firefighters,” he shouted for all the reporters to hear “They are the ones who put their lives in danger. They are the ones who jumped into an inferno saving as many workers as possible.” He looked at all of them “over an hour. They were at it for over an hour, with no break, no one to cover for them or take their place. Captain Galathynius supervised the whole thing while injured and barely being able to stand. And you give all the credit to us?” He roared “We showed up because the captain had the amazing idea of using us. We swooped in at the end of the game, when one of the building was almost off. We just dropped some water and you call us heroes?” His hand were now in tight fists “I flew one of those planes and I do not want glory. I do not deserve glory. East and west station do. The police do.” And he walked away furious. Bastards. He hoped that someone passed the interview live, so his real words would pass on. He did not trust reporters.

He ran upstairs and when he arrived he noticed Aelin in bed and half asleep. He gave her a big smile.

“Hey you, tight-pants.”

He chuckled and sat beside her “how do you feel?”

“My hand moves funny.” She said moving her hand in front of her face and Rowan realised she was still quite drugged up from the surgery.

She was quite funny.

“Your hair is white.”

He brushed his hair with his hand “do you like it?”

She gave him a goofy smile “you are sooooo pretty.”

“Oh thank you. No one has called me pretty in a very long time.” He took her hand in his.

“I have a secret” she said and placed a finger in front of her mouth.

“Can I hear it?”

“Yes. But don’t tell the captain.” Who did she think she was talking to?

“I won’t, I promise.” He played along.

“I think  I like him. A lot.”

For a brief instant something flashed in her eyes and Rowan had a feeling she was quite lucid. 

He jumped off the bed in terror.

“I like him a lot, but he hates me.”

Sadness. That was definitely sadness in her voice. He took a step back.

She turned her head to the side.

“I really, really do.” And he saw her close her eyes.

He took another step back and walked out of the room. Once outside he ran to the car and leaned against it closing his eyes. Her words kept ringing in his ears. And her voice. It had changed so much when she uttered those words. It was her. She was fully lucid when she said it. He placed a hand on his heart and found it racing. He wanted to go back to her and say that he did not hated her. That he… he had no idea what he felt. He groaned and jumped in the car and decided to go for a drive. He had to clear his head.

Lysandra found Aelin with her head turned to the window and she thought she had heard her friend crying.

“Hey you…” Lysandra sat at her side and caressed her friend’s head “what’s wrong?”

Aelin sniffled loudly “I think I have said something stupid.”

“More than usual?” But when Aelin did not laugh she realised it must have been real and bad.

“I woke up from surgery and I felt funny for a while. I think captain Whitethorn was here. I am not sure. And I think…” she stopped, sobbing a bit more “I think I told him I like him.” She finally turned her face to Lysandra “I remember his terror and then he left.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I think the drugs were wearing off and I felt a bit more lucid. I think it was him.”

“Oh darling.”

“He hates me so much that he ran away.” Aelin resumed sobbing heavily “am I such a horrible person?”

Lysandra hugged Aelin tightly and cursed the man. If she got her hands on him he would be a dead man. Or she could unleash Aedion on him. He was just as protective of Aelin. 

“He is an idiot. A big tall idiot.” Lys brushed Aelin’s cheek “you need to rest now. You just had surgery.”

“How’s Aedion?”

“At home. Sore and bored already. The doctor gave him a week off but he is not happy. Well, you know him.”

“I heard Dorian mentioning that he might try to get the review postponed. It’s not fair on you guys.”

Aelin sighed “I will still be out.”

“I know, but at least Aedion will be there. One of you at least.” Lysandra reassured her.

Aelin put the tv on and gasped when the tv showed Rowan. It was just outside the hospital.

“What the fuck?”

“Put the volume up,” said Lysandra.

“They were at it for over an hour, with no break, no one to cover for them or take their place. Captain Galathynius supervised the whole thing while injured and barely being able to stand. And you give all the credit to us?” She heard him raise his voice“We showed up because the captain had the amazing idea of using us. We swooped in at the end of the game, when one of the building was almost off. We just dropped some water and you call us heroes?” His hand were not in tight fists “I flew one of those planes and I do not want glory. I do not deserve glory. East and West station do. The police do.” Aelin saw him walk away and she had a feeling that it was when he came back to her. He had normal clothes on. When he took her at the hospital he still had the uniform on.

“That is definitely not the speech of a man who hates you.”

“Lys, not helping.”

Aelin flipped through the channels to see the interview again.

“Don’t think too much about him.”

“Yeah,” Aelin stared at the tv “no worth it, right?”

“Totally.”

Lys kissed her head “Babe I need to go home and tend to Aedion. I don’t want to leave him alone for too long. I know the guys are planning to come as soon as they are off shift, which will be tomorrow morning.”

“Go, I will be fine.” She patted her hand and gave her a tight smile “go and look after Aedion.”

Once Lysandra was out of the room she grabbed her phone and texted Rowan. She waited an hour and tried to phone and realised his phone was off.

“Fine, message received.”

Rowan had driven all the way to the coast to Ilium. It had taken him two hours but it had been worth it. He had spent the afternoon sitting on the beach, his phone switched off. He lay down in the sand and closed the eyes, enjoying the peace of the beach. He almost thought that he’d love to take Aelin there but as soon as his brain said the name he had been ignoring for the past two hours his mood was soured again.

He had fled. Like a coward. She just had surgery and he had left her on her own because he had an issue dealing with his feelings. He was the worst human being ever existed.

Was it so wrong if she was in love with him?

His mind flashed him a name. A name he had tried to bury in the depths of his mind.

He groaned in frustration and stood and started walking on the sand along the beach. The place was beautiful.

He wandered until it was late then decided to go and find a room for the night. He was not in the mood to go back to Orynth. Then he went for dinner and finally dragged himself to a pub. Alcohol. He definitely needed a drink. Something that he hadn’t enjoyed in a very long time. Damn he was so boring. How could anyone be in love with him?

He had a few whiskies in one shot and the liquor burned his throat. He was not used anymore and the booze already started spreading a welcomed numbness through his body and mind. Good, oblivion is what he wanted.

He ordered two more whiskies and chugged them down again in one single motion. 

He looked at the tv behind the counter and he discovered the news were passing his interview. He lowered his head and realised straight away it was a stupid idea. His silver hair stood out like a sore thumb. 

“I think you look prettier in person.” Said a voice at his side, then he felt a pair of hands on his arm.

He turned his head and there was a woman at his side. Smiling sensually at him.

“Well, you need glasses.” He turned his head again and kept watching the tv ignoring the woman.

“I am Remelle.”

“Good for you.” He ate a couple of the peanuts on the small plate on the counter.

“Why is such a good looking man all alone in a place like this, drinking whisky shots?”

“None of your business.” She moved closer and her hand traced the length of his arm. He had a t-shirt on and his tattoo was on display.

“I love your tattoo.” Her fingers traced the lines of it.

Rowan got off the chair “I am sorry, but I am not interested. Not in the mood and you are being very rude.”

“I can help you make forget about her. You look like pining about some mysterious woman”

Rowan had enough. He stormed out of the pub and ran all the way back to the beach and fell on his knees. He looked up at the dark sky and then closed his eyes.

He had feelings for Aelin. Somehow his treacherous heart had decided to play tricks on him and make him feel again. Something he had forbidden himself from doing for a while. But Aelin had struck him dumb since day one with her big mouth, her defiance. The woman had fire in her and a part of him felt irremediably pulled to her, no matter how much he tried to deny it. He confessed to himself that he had enjoyed fussing over her, looking after her and even try to cheer her up when she had been down. He had told her the truth, he was in awe of her, of what she had done  and he hadn’t been in awe of anyone in a very long time. 

He had feelings for her, big damn feelings and all he could do was flee instead of facing them. But he was not ready yet. That was his biggest fear. That’s why he had ran out of the room, because her admission had touched a part of him that hadn’t healed yet. Just like her he had loved and lost everything. His feelings were just budding. He had better repress them before it got worse. It was better for both of them. He was positive she deserved someone better than him.

Rowan sighed and sat in the sand in silence, staring at the sky until the fog in his mind started to clear. Eventually he dragged his pitiful arse back to his hotel and crashed in bed fully clothed.

TAGS:

@rowaelinismyotp

@jlinez

@swankii-art-teacher

[creepychippy]

Twisted Truth - Luigi’s Mansion 3 Fanfic

The whirring of Machinery, static Noises of Light and the occasional Chit-Chatting between some Ghosts echoed throughout the Laboratory that belonged to a certain little Ghost Researcher, who was currently researching something on his Computer.

17 Spectras were given the Duty of protecting valuable as well as important Elevator Buttons that were handed out to them away from a green clothed Plumber.  “He’s a malicious Ghosthunter who wants to stuff you into Paintings.”, as they were told. Most of them have put up a Fight against said Menace but were captured by him in the End regardless, including another Ghoul that was being deployed into one of the dome-shaped Capsules at the Moment, prominent by the all to familiar humming Sound that the trapped Souls got used to after a While.

“Gloria!”, the muscular Swimmer beside her called out, knocking a few Times on the Glass to get her Attention. He in Return got a sheepish Wave from her, her other Hand readjusting the Wig she was wearing on her Head as it got a little bit messed up during the Exchange Process.

“Yeah, I... sadly got captured. The Plumber’s got some groovy Moves however, I tell ya that.”

For a few Minutes, the ghostly Residents exchanged many Words between them, which however died down after a While, as there was seemingly nothing to discuss about anymore. That is however until the quiet Pianist took Note of something.

“Kruller, you seem to be pondering about something. What is on your Mind, if I may ask?”

Upon hearing his named being mentioned, the ghostly Cop snapped out of his deep Thoughts, resulting him glancing around in a confused Manner for a few Seconds before he turned towards Amadeus.

“Ah, I- it’s just-... n-nothing, really...”, he stammered out, his Hand shakingly fixing his Sunglasses. Even though he was one of the few Ghosts who got caught early on, he seemed still shaken up about it.

“Are you sure it is nothing? It appeared as if something is troubling your Mind, at least so it did to me.”, the ghostly Pianist calmly explained while having one Arm behind his back and gesturing with the other.

“Uhm, well...”

For a Moment, Kruller hesitated, but he quickly collected himself.

“Isn’t... it weird? All of this?”

“What do you mean, Dearie?”, a sweet Voice beside him suddenly chimed in. Apparently, the Conversation between the Cop and the Pianist has gotten the Attention of the ghostly Maid.

“I mean, what I’m- uhm... what I’m going to say next may sound strange, but... I don’t believe that the Plumber that Miss Gravely t-told us about is as evil as she makes him out to be...”

Upon noticing that some confused Stares were aimed towards him, his Voice went quieter at the last few Words, as some Sweatdrops were building on his Forehead again.

“Elaborate, please.”, the ghoulish Pianist told the ghostly Cop, his Eyebrows furrowing a little bit.

“I just mean- I mean, look at him. Miss Hellen told us that we potentionally have to face off against an evil Baddie who along a malicious Scientist wants to lock us into P-Paintings and keep us trapped in them forever. However, when I-I watched him through the Cameras from Time to Time, even encountered him-... all I saw was a scared and frightened Human, p-perhaps... lost even...” 

At this Point, every Spectra’s Attention was turned towards the nervous Mall Cop, quietly listening to him explain.

“Lad, Ah fought against Enemies that wanted me dead when Ah was alive, regardless if they were wetting their Pants or not. Just 'cause he was frightened doesn’t mean that he's innocent or that he doesn’t have any ill Intentions.”, a booming Voice that had an scottish Accent to it suddenly broke the Silence that had built itself around the Room just mere Seconds ago.

“Actually... I-I think I have to agree with Kruller in this Case. For someone who is supposed to be ‘a scary and vicious Ghosthunter who wants us locked away forever’, he appeared quite hesitant with attacking me, at least for the first few Moments. Not only that, but we have been trapped inside of these Capsules for Hours now instead of these terrifying Paintings that were mentioned.”, the thin Bellhop chimed in out of the blue as he folded his Arms, him seemingly pondering about something as well.

“Erm, t-that’s not the only Thing, though... P-please take a Look at that Capsule that stands besides Dr. Potter and Ug.”

As everybody turned towards the transparent Device, it turned out that said Capsule was empty.

“N-now look at all of us. Which one of us is missing?”

Thinking about it, everybody eventually came to the same Conclusion.

Morty.

“That is indeed weird. Where is he?”, the green Gardener scratched the Back of his Head, as he was puzzled as to what could have happened to the Movie Director.

Raising his Cap slightly with his gloved Hand, the ghostly Hillbilly decided to throw his own Argument into the Round.

“Well, maybe dat good ol’ Pipsqueak of a Plumber jus’ snatch'd dat shiny Button right out of our dear and beloved Director’s Hands when he wasn’t lookin. After dat, he jus’ left him ’lone to do his own lil’ Thing.”

“B-but don’t you realize something?”

Kruller was now staring at Clem, hoping that he would understand what he was trying to get across.

“It means that the supposed ‘malicious’ Ghosthunter and his little Scientist Friend wasn’t out to capture all of us like we were told and previously had assumed, else Morty would be here with us at this very Moment.”, Serpci exclaimed as the Revelation suddenly came to her Mind.

“Exactly! A-and besides that-”, once again, the intruiged Glances were being directed at the ghostly Cop, “- I-I think there’s something else I noticed...”

Timidly adjusting his Sunglasses as they slipped off a little bit before, he voiced the other Realization he made out aloud to everyone.

“E-every Ghost, i-inside this Hotel, us included, behaved much more... how should I say this... ‘agitated’ or ‘aggressive’ than usual...”

The ghostly Residents quietly looked at each other. Now that Kruller mentioned it, the ghoulish Inhabitants of this Place did indeed act out much more strangely as of lately.

“T-take Steward for Example. Remember when we talked about the Encounter we had with the Ghosthunter?” 

“Yes, I did.”, the red clothed Bellhop answered while staring at the purple Cop.

“Y-you said that you threw the Luggage inside the Garage at him when he fought against you, right?”

“You did what now?”, the sweet Voice that the undead Maid carried turned into a much more shocked Tone upon hearing this sort of Information.

“I know that you work a lot and are probably under a lot of Stress, but it isn’t like you to suddenly act out like this, Dearie!”

“Well, I... I don’t know what came over me. I just saw the Luggage and my Mind instinctively went ‘throw it at the Plumber’.”

This Time, some concerned as well as worried Glances were shared around the Group.

“A-and you, Chambrea. Please tell us how your Encounter went again.”

“I was peacefully cleaning the Room and saw a pretty Suitcase, but the green Ghosthunter appeared out of nowhere all of the sudden. Out of Panic, I... swallowed the Suitcase and fled the Scene...”

A slight Blush crept across the Maid’s Face as some murmuring from others could be heard. Meanwhile, Kruller decided to explain his Part of the Story, and at the End he finally turned towards the ghostly Chef beside him.

“Well, I was cooking in ze Kitchen as usual, until ze Plumber and his weird Doppelganger suddenly broke into it, which caused me to drop my Dish and.... suddenly lash out... at zem...”

At first, the orange Cook was confidently telling his Part of the Story, but his Voice dropped as soon as Realization dawned on him and he uncomfortably rubbed his Neck.

“Mister Wolfgeist, do you may want to continue?”, Chambrea calmly asked him, however Worry was now stretched over her Face.

“I was playing on my Piano, until that green Plumber walked into the Auditorium. I thought I could ignore him and simply just throw some Chairs at him to scare him off, but he turned out to be much more persistent than what I had previously assumed him to be. After that, he captured some Goobs, causing my Concentration to be thrown off and ulimately leading me to become really mad at him. In a Fit of Rage and Attempt to finally get rid of him, I... possessed my Piano and tried to slam it into him... destroying it in the Process...”

The well known nonchalant Expression that the Pianist carried on his Face was suddenly replaced with that of Dread, as he slowly looked down upon his Hands.

“Um Himmels Willen... what in Lord’s Name just came over me...”

On and on the Explanations went, with most Ghosts expressing the Feelings of Regret and Guilt as well as that of Unease and Concern along the Way and everybody making Revelation after Revelation.

“Just what the Hell is going on?”, Johnny blurted out while holding his Hands against his Head, as the current Situation admittedly made him more and more anxious as well as puzzled.

The DJ next to him tried to talk to the ghostly Swimmer in order to calm him down: “Johnny, Sweetie, please chill out. I’m sure we can find out what exactly is going on!”

“I be sure that Hellen be behind all o' this! I swear on me other Eye!”

“Miss Gravely? Why would you think that she would do something like this?”, Dr. Potter questioned the aquatic Pirate while adjusting his Glasses.

As every Soul was beginning to get into a heated Argument, including Ug who only was able to speak Gibberish, the ghostly Maid noticed that the Bellhop beside her was starting to act more nervously.

“Steward, Dearie, is everything alright?”

“...’s all my Fault...”, he mumbled in a tense Manner, his Sentence being barely audible, and he anxiously rubbed his Arms.

“Steward?-”

“It’s all my Fault!”, he blurted out all of the sudden, causing the Discussions between the Spectras to come to a Halt and look at him.

“How is this your Fault? You can’t be behind all of this, now can you?”

Crossing his Arms, Amadeus proceeded to stare at Steward questioningly, like he was trying to knock some Sense into the Bellhop for even bringin up such Claim.

“A-apologies, Stress got over me again. It’s just... I could have maybe prevented this and I’m blaming myself for it.”

The ghostly Cop gave him a sympathetic Glance and spoke up: “How so?”

“All of you perhaps heard about how a special Guest came to the Last Resort to visit us, correct? King Boo, as I recall. Before he arrived here, everything was running pretty smoothly and-”

“So ya think it was him?-”

Promptly, the ghoulish Pianist held up a Hand towards the pink Electrician.

“Clem, let Steward finish, it is rude to interrupt him when he wasn’t finished talking.”

“M’sorry.”

Clearing his Throat, the blue Spectra continued: “As I said, everything was pretty normal. That is until I went onto Miss Gravely’s Floor to retrieve the Elevator Buttons as well as Instructions and hand them out to you...”

He stopped for a Moment and grabbed at his Bowtie slightly, but collected himself and proceeded with his Story.

“No matter where I looked, there were Sculpures as well as Painting of this particular Guest everywhere. I... I think I even caught some Glimpses of Merchandise of him... Gee, I-I should have warned all of you and talked about it after all of what I have seen instead of keeping it to myself. In Hindsight, it was definitely a red Flag and certainly not normal...”

Some disturbed Expressions where exchanged in the Round, until MacFrights finally spoke up.

“So ya think a small wittle Boo who calls himself a ‘King’ could’ve done all of tis?”

“It wasn’t a small Boo, far from it! He was far bigger than Miss Gravely, his Appereance was much more different as well as menacing than that of a regular Boo and he wore a Crown with a Gem on it!”

“A Gem?”

The intruiged Queen chimed in as her yellow Eyes stared into those of Steward’s.

“Yes, a giant purple one.”

“Hmm, you’re definitely onto something then.”

In a Matter of Seconds, the entire Attention was now focused solely on Serpci.

“When I was alive, I was told Stories about how Kings and Queens amongst the Lands would use Gems that contained great Powers within them to rule over their respected Kingdoms. Even in todays Era, Tales of Folks using these particular Gems to harvest their powerful Abilities and utilizing them to their Advantages still make the Rounds.”, she recalled to the Group, one Hand resting against her Cheek while the other supported her Elbow.

“Of course!”

Ths Time, everybody turned their Heads towards the Capsule that contained the Triplets, since one of them, Ginny to be precise, seemingly remembered something.

“It has to be Mind-Controlling Magic that he’s using against us! Me and my Sisters know about a Tale that took present inside of the Evershade Valley a long Time ago. A Being with powerful Abilities apparently was able to use Mind-Controlling Magic against the Ghosts that reside there in said Area. We were so impressed an fascinated by that Story that we even have a small Replica of the Gloomy Manor inside an Aquarium in one of our Rooms!”

“So-”, Soulfflé kneaded his Temples, “if I’m understanding zis correctly, all of zis Trouble is happening because our dear Hotelowner has an Obsession over a big oversized Marshmallow who decided to trick and manipulate the entire Hotel? Just great...”

Even though it was pretty apparent what was going on, there were still some unanswered Questions that lingered in the Air.

“But what Reason would they have to bring a Ghosthunter here out of all Places, let alone send him after all of us? It just doesn’t make any Sense in my Head!”

Seeing Gloria getting so frustrated, Clem let out a tiny Snicker followed by a sarcastic Comment while he casually leaned back in his Rubber Duckie Floatie that he was lying on.

“Before ya totally break yer Head over such complicated Question, why don’‘t cha ask the Lady who’s behind all of this hersel-”

A familiar humming Noise once again echoed throughout the Room, interrupting the undead Electrician in his Speech, and every trapped Soul turned their Head towards the Source of the Commotion.

A certain ghostly Hotelowner with her beloved Pet was deployed into one of the Capsules this Time.

This was going to be one long an interesting Discussion.

[rosecoloredbi-writes]

Settle (Chapter 3)

Summary: After the death of your best friend and their spouse, you went from Godparent to Parent overnight. Now, Mio is your world. Because of this new role, you move back to Tokyo, Japan in order to keep Mio with her friends and her school, even if it means you might run into *him*.

Warnings: Mentions of stalking. Swearing probably. Cannon violence. Single parenthood. barely mentions Mio’s parents passing. Mentions of needles/tattooing at home. First look at Dabi and the reader's abusive relationship...

Gender Neutral!Reader x ?????

Mentions of past GN!Reader x Dabi

A/N: So... I decided the direction for the pairing has changed and it could be anyone even though I made this with the intention of it being Shouta... but who knows!! It sure as hell isn't me in charge of this :)

Tags: @dungeons-and-awkwarddragons @encrytpta

The next day, Aizawa escorts you and Mio to a Quirk Testing Facility nearby, wary of any watching eyes. He expects Hawks to be there, maybe a few others who are involved in the case, even a few involved from afar. This is one of those multi-agency cases. All hands on deck when it comes to the League of Villains.

Aizawa watches as you step out of the changing room with Mio in matching athletic gear, although yours shows more skin for ease of use of your quirk. You go sit down in the chair next to his as you both wait for the quirk tester to appear. Mio puts in headphones to listen to music.

A scowl shows up involuntarily on your face as soon as Hawks walks in. A smirk on his stupid, punchable fa-

“Why don’t you like Hawks?” Aizawa interrupts your thoughts before they can start to get violent.

Your eyes slid over to meet his for a moment before you turned back to the man in question, “I know his type.”

“And what exactly is my type?” Hawks interrupts from across the room.

Damn his excellent hearing.

You stood, going toe to toe with the bird boy, glad in this moment that Mio is busy listening to music. “You're the kind of guy who is a little too cocky for his own good, who doesn't care if he hurts anyone else to get what he wants.” You flush slightly when you realize just how close you had gotten to him.

“Sounds like a compliment to me,” he winks, a stupid lopsided grin on his lips.

It makes you want to-

“Alright Mx. L/N,” a woman walks in with her eyes on a clipboard, “Let’s see what you can do!” She looks up to see the impending clash and gives a look that tells you this is something she is used to.

You send Hawks a mischievous glare, “I can demonstrate on him if you’d like.”

Hawks is about to volunteer when the woman, Professor Tanaka, sighs and tells Hawks to sit down.

He sits next to Mio who begins admiring his feathers.

You start warming up your muscles and make quick but concise observations of the testing room. It made you nervous. You hadn’t gone to a hero school because you never wanted to be a hero. You would have been perfectly happy being quirkless however, you weren’t. You had this quirk and now that you had Mio, you would use it to protect her. Gone were the days of others using you for your quirk.

A chime goes off and a few bots appear for the upper left-hand corner. As you turn you begin to form a staff from your right side, pulling it up and out so that it doesn’t get caught on your shorts, you’d learned that the hard way. A few quick jabs and the bots fell to the floor and different ones come in. They were built to mimic common quirks so you had no way of knowing what they’d use, but you weren’t going to give them any time to show you. You quickly create the throwing knives you had tattooed on your hands/arms and threw them with precision so that they strike anywhere a bot could deploy a quirk. Then, you pick your staff back up and strike them. They explode on each other and you duck away from the blast. A chime goes off informing you the current test was over. So, you stand up and take a bow.

They were content with your performance, so now Professor Tanaka was having you make as many things as you could in succession. You look back to see your audience, Hawks is doing his best to look bored, Mio had excitement and pride written over her features, and Aizawa… you couldn’t read him. You had no idea what he was thinking or feeling and that made you nervous.

You were getting bored, so you had Mio come over and point at a tattoo for you to create rather than you picking at random. You created vines that extended past your arms and crept around the testing room, one wrapping around Hawks’ ankles and another up Aizawa’s chair to his chest. They moved in a snake-like fashion, curling and slinking up and around whatever you wanted. This went on for about 10 minutes before they began to disintegrate back into nothingness. You were drained, but now Mio had touched the butterfly, it was her favorite of all your creations. With the last of your energy, you create a swarm of butterflies that gently flit throughout the room.

Hawks gasps. You turn, intending to give him a smug look, but your eyes catch on Aizawa, who looks on with an almost childlike wonder. His eyes meet yours and that sparkle is back for just a second before it’s gone again.

You now look back to the professor who is writing in her notebook quickly. You had anticipated this. Most people with creation quirks could only make non-living things. You were somewhat of an anomaly. Before the professor could ask questions, you began explaining your quirk.

“My father’s side is full of run-of-the-mill creation quirks while my mother had an illusion quirk. I got the mix of the two. I’ve never been able to create anything more complicated than bugs and insects. My vines seem alive, but they’re probably closer to working like Eraser Head’s capture weapon. Inanimate objects are easier. I can keep those up for hours if need be. My vines didn’t last long because I’m already worn out and I’m directing multiple parts at once. The butterflies last longer because I don’t control where they go or what they do, at least so far.”

Professor Tanaka nodded as she continues taking notes, Mio was having the time of her life running around amidst all the butterflies, Aizawa was trying not to stare, and Hawks had a look on his face that causes you concern. He stands and approaches you quickly, wings puffed, back straight.

“Y/N, why the hell aren’t you a hero? We could use someone like you!” he was exasperated, but you knew he didn’t understand.

“Hawks,” You said as you stand. Your butterflies begin to swarm behind you causing a beautiful but terrifying visual. “Why do you think you know what's best for everyone around you? Why do you think you know me? I’ve played hero before and it was hell. I am not an object, a weapon to be used by someone else!”

Your butterflies swarm him, following the emotion you carry with your words. They aren’t going to hurt him, but Hawks uses his feathers to disintegrate your creation. You shake your head at him and he feels something odd in the pit of his stomach. You almost reach Mio when you collapse and luckily Aizawa is there, catching you quickly.

“I fear we pushed them too far,” a distant voice comments. “We ought to save Mio’s testing for another time.”

“You know why we need these results, Professor,” A smoothly annoying voice responds. “I say we do it anyway.”

Professor Tanaka speaks again, “We need parental or guardian permission before we can perform testing on minors. I will not skip a step because you *need* something.”

Then a third voice pipes up, “I’m lead on this investigation and I say we wait.” His tone is bored but straight to the point.

Thank you Aizawa, you think before you lose consciousness again.

Dabi has been in this damn tree for hours by the time you return, the erasure hero helping you walk up to your apartment. Dabi moves so he can keep an eye on you as you walk through your bedroom door. You begin to shed clothing as soon as the door is shut and Dabi takes a moment to look over your naked form, taking count of the different tattoos that cover your skin. Most are new- at least new to him. But he sees the dagger he inked into your skin so many years ago placed on the back of your thigh before you jump in the shower.

Dabi had helped you get out of a scrap with some lowlifes who would have picked a fight with anyone. You didn’t have many weapons at your disposal. So far a few throwing knives and your vines, but you’d have yet to master your throw or control of the weaving plant.

The plan for the evening had been to grab some pizza, but you were left exhausted. Whatever was in the fridge would have to do. Dabi picks you up and gets you back to your dingy shared apartment. It took a few hours, but you eventually woke up and stiffly got up from the spot Dabi had discarded you on the couch. Carefully you sat down at the desk with transfer paper and began to work on a design. You weren’t sure how much time had passed when a shadow covered your lighting.

“What do you think?” you ask, still focused on correcting an edge of the blade.

“I think it’s sexy,” he whispers, lips at the shell of your ear.

He gives you a few suggestions and then you print the drawing on the transfer paper.

“Where do I put it?” you’ve got an eyebrow raised suggestively.

“Let’s see,” he circles you, looking over every inch of skin that was currently exposed. “Pants,” he demands more than asks.

You do as he said and wiggle out of your pants. He gets closer, crouching down to run a rough finger down your leg before he determines the spot, leaving a kiss just below your left ass cheek.

Then he gets to work prepping the workspace, making sure everything was sterile. He places the stencil, taking his time. When he removes the paper you turn to look in the mirror and nod.

The only time Dabi is tender is when he has the needle in his hand inking you with your drawings. This process is what keeps you there. You know he’ll never let anyone touch you, he’s too possessive… and obsessive. But, you were drawn together for a reason- you were both too broken and too angry at the society of heroes everyone worships.

Dabi sighs, feeling odd about the hero making you dinner. “How disgustingly domestic,” he mutters to no one. “I'll give you one more night of peace,” he says decidedly. “League be damned. I’m doing this my way.”

[tiwaripoojaaa]

WFH is great until your mom yells from behind “uth chai bana de”

If you’ve ever been stuck in torrential rain waiting for a delayed train after a long day at office, the chances are pretty decent that you’ve thought about working remotely at least once or twice.

There was a time when Work from home was a fantasy for everyone until we all got attacked by pandemic. Wherein we actually want the hectic schedule rather than working remotely. WFH is in favor for someone as an introvert like me and a disaster for an extrovert who loves roaming around in the office greeting everyone with a smile and gossiping with every second person in the office. Without having an office where you need to share pleasantries with your coworkers, boss, and clients, you need to find alternative methods of socializing with people on your own time.

  Challenges:

     Sounds appealing right? No more setting the alarm for 6 am. No more sitting in your cubicle all day, your only escape a measly hour for lunch. You can set your own hours and work when you feel it. Freedom is yours!

Expect it doesn’t work that way.

Juggling work, household chores, and parenting responsibilities along with fear of infection and job loss can put a dent in performance, motivation and productivity. On the other side of the coin, when you work from home, you no longer have a clear geographic division between workspace and your personal life. Ideally, your home is a place of relaxation, safety, and security. It’s a place where you subconsciously slip into a calm, easygoing state of mind , putting the stresses of the workday behind you and have a beautiful evening with your family.

Feeling of disconnection and social isolation:

   Even in normal situations, managing remote employees is more challenging than managing regular office workers because Emotional health is a priority now because living and working in confined conditions for a long time takes a mental toll. Moreover, people who have so far been accustomed to working in an office setting may find remote work very lonely. Only now have team members and managers begun to realize how much time and effort it takes to communicate properly across screens. They cannot reach out to each other as easily as they would in a physical office, and this makes people feel disconnected from the company. Direct reports may feel that their managers are out of touch with their reality and cannot help them solve their problems.

Screen Fatigue: You’re probably hearing people complain about ‘Zoom fatigue’ or ‘meeting fatigue’. Managing remote employees via video conferencing has given rise to a new challenge – that of screen fatigue due to back-to-back meetings. People are turning away from their screens in exhaustion, citing headaches and eye strain. It is more tiring to look at a screen for a prolonged time than it is to have face-to-face conversations. It is more tiring to look at a screen for a prolonged time than it is to have face-to-face conversations. In addition to the laptops, team members are also looking at conventional screens like phones, tablets, or television. It fatigues the eyes, causes loss of focus, and decreases attention span. Naturally, people cannot work efficiently because of these issues.

Breakdown of effective communication: Perhaps the biggest challenge of managing remote employees during the COVID-19 pandemic is effective communication.  As you and your team members must have discovered by now, it isn’t quite as simple as shooting off a few emails and calling a meeting. Your direct reports can’t casually walk up to your desk for a quick chat. You can’t see each other in the office and you have to make an effort to know who is working on what. This ‘blindness’ leads to an interesting situation–people tend to think the worst when they receive a negative message. For instance, if you get a brusque e-mail from a colleague who you know is having a bad day, you tend to brush it off. But when you’re working from home, you have no context on what is happening at the other person’s end. This causes more misunderstandings, negativity, and friction within the team.

Communication & Coordination Challenges

It’s hard enough to hold productive in-person meetings to coordinate different team members’ efforts to remain aligned. When everyone works from home, it becomes all the harder to stay on the same page.

Human beings rely on nonverbal communication when they speak. But emails, phone calls, and even video calls remove much of the nuance from how we communicate. Just think back to the last time someone misinterpreted an email or text message you sent for a quick example.

This problem is so inherent in virtual businesses that an entire industry has sprung up to solve it. Team collaboration and communication tools like Slack exist specifically to make it easier for companies to stay in touch and stay organized. GoToMeeting is another popular choice for companies to stay in touch using video conferencing.

  Since the majority of the global workforce is not used to working from home, this sudden change has led to many problems. They are just adjusting their seats to meet the organizational needs amidst everything that is happening around the world. Work from home is prominent but comes with a lot of challenges like communication and coordination with team, failing network is the biggest interruption “Uncle wifi nahi chal raha check karo” which impacts productivity, you may get distracted by your dog or just feel like going through some memes on Instagram (which unknowingly turns from seconds to minutes to even a hour sometimes) or just sibling’s silly fights or just in a mood to workout.

Productivity:

Sitting at home by yourself all day takes a toll. Humans are social animals. They need interaction with other people. Without a water cooler to swap jokes, stories, and shop talk around occasionally, telecommuters can get lonely. People working from home sometimes struggle with productivity. Working away from your co-workers, with only remote online meetings, risks emotional disconnection and apathy. It can also encourage procrastination .

You might find that it helps to have particular clothes for working at home. Dressing for work can set the right mental tone for the day – and avoid the awkwardness of being dialed in to a virtual meeting while you're still in your pajamas! Also, avoid going into certain areas of your home, or sitting in certain chairs, for example, so that you know when you're in "work mode," and when you're not.

Productivity at office was optimal as there were no distractions, you had a great working environment and also who doesn’t like working with their colleagues and friends like family rather than completing the given tasks alone. The lack of interaction that often comes with remote work can also be a detriment to team building – something that is built during meetings, lunches, chai/ coffee/ cigarette breaks or even water cooler conversations.

Challenges faced by HR:

HR managers have been at the center of these pandemic-generated changes from the beginning. They had to navigate new health and safety requirements, support managers in the new normal, reduce headcount in some cases, and keep up with required administrative processes. Organizations now have to rely more than ever on their HR departments to ensure their workforce feel as safe as possible during this unprecedented and unpredictable times.

Some of the challenges are-

Performance Appraisal like you actually are not aware if the employee has given its best due to working remotely as compared to work from office.

 Team collaboration like if you have to give any cross training or learn a new process.

 Employee engagement is also affected due to pandemic as there is no connect with the management and just virtual meets or seminar or activities conducted by HR but all of this has been now fixed into a rectangular display which is not giving desired results.

 Health and safety is the utmost priority of the workers and as employee is an asset of the organization especially after pandemic HR also needs to look into health and safety measures.

Promotion cycle is been simulated as company actually doesn’t have the same promotion cycle period which eventually demotivates the employee.

  Challenges in Business continuity

If you’re working for yourself and think you can disregard administrative work, think again. You’ll probably end up doing more mundane administrative work than you ever did at your old day job. Ignoring business basics, like paying your bills, preparing your taxes, and invoicing clients, is a sure fire way to not only ruin your business but possibly trigger an audit with the IRS in the process.

Traditional jobs tend to come with paperwork, such as work reports, time sheets, travel expense reports, and accounts payable requests for freelancers and vendors. Still, each individual worker’s administrative work pales in comparison to the total amount needed to run a business. Beyond administrative work, businesses need systems in place to streamline all repetitive tasks. Otherwise, entrepreneurs spend all their working time on mundane work that doesn’t actually generate revenue and quickly go out of business. 

Organizations are facing unprecedented times as the measures being deployed to slow the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) are impacting capital markets, supply chain, and business operations. The uncertainties of the current environment serve as a powerful reminder to senior decision-makers of the need for risk management and crisis planning.

Business continuity will be on a toss due to few obstacles like technical problems such as data loss, data protection, technology failure, incident management software and so on, Workforce will need to be retrained to be update as per the new changes, taking utmost care of cash flow management like does the organization have sufficient funds to continue operations or have a plan of how to address unanticipated expenses.

This pandemic poses significant challenges and unlike many crises has unfolded much advance warning or scope for preparation. Nevertheless, there is a wealth of information and resources that organizations can use to weather the pandemic and its aftermath and can be accessed here. CEOs and small business owners may find it helpful to bring this information to their boards or other advisors to stimulate discussion on the issue.

 Its just not the cons, here are some pros:

Remotely working comes with a slew of benefits from no setting up alarm, no daily commute in the morning, No strict dress code (unless you have online meeting!), get a more flexible work schedule to being work anywhere in the world, and every benefit comes with a challenge like managing your own schedule and time like we suddenly look at the clock and realize their kids want food, you need to have a proper division between workspace and personal space. Humans are social animals they need interaction with people, occasionally talk or no face-to-face interaction can get people lonely.

  New Learnings from the #NewNormal

As days progress, we see a positive adoption of the isolation, which was initially difficult to adjust to. So be it working from home, connecting with colleagues and teammates at a slightly more personal level, managing chores, and working more efficiently. People are now working around to make way for a new style of living.

Tools such as Zoom, Skype, and facilities such as conference calls earlier used exclusively for official meetings are increasingly used by people to connect with family, friends, and relatives. Every small act of kindness and courtesy, which was earlier absent, is now making a huge difference. People are now more appreciative of life, of things that were taken for granted before.

Let us know what you think of our blog and also how you manage to WFH (might help us :-p).

Blog by-

2020175-Dhwani Thakkar.

2020176- Gaurav Thigale.

2020177- Bhagyashree Tikar.

2020178- Pooja Tiwari.

2020179- Muskaan Verma.

2020180- Sakshi Vijan.

LALA LAJPATRAI INSTITIUTE OF MANAGEMENT.

[aviss]

31 or 38!

Hi @ddagent thanks so much for the prompt! Again, it turned out longer than I thought. I went with number 38, Cop/person getting a ticket. I hope you like it!

Being a cop in King's Landing was nothing like Brienne had envisioned while growing up in Tarth. 

King's Landing was supposed to be a metropolis, multicultural and exciting and a lot more progressive than a little backwater island where everyone knew everyone else and Brienne couldn't take two steps without it being reported to her father, Tarth's Chief of Police. She had imagined that once she was away from his sphere of influence and the island's people's preconceptions of what a woman should and shouldn't be, she would be able to rise through the ranks with her abilities and hard work. And yes, King's Landing was a metropolis; women wore shorter skirts and less cloth on their bodies, or lots and lots more of cloth and only black. They had colourful hair or shaved heads, and tattoos and piercings, and they dated when they wanted and who they wanted, or not dated anyone. They could wear no make-up or tons of it, they could wear heels or flats or walk barefoot for all people cared. 

There were just two things women were not allowed to comfortably be, ugly and a cop in KLPD. At least not under Captain Tarly, who made the people of Tarth feel modern and seemed to have a special hatred for Brienne for daring to be good at her job but not pleasant to look at.

That was the reason she was on the night shift for the third week in a row, relegated to traffic duties while there was a spate of crime that required all hands on deck. 

"That's why you're on traffic, Tarth," Tarly had told her when she protested that they needed everyone in the investigation. "So we can have all the real cops working."

Just remembering his words made Brienne's blood boil, though there was nothing she could do unless she put in for a transfer or quit, and she wasn't going to give them the satisfaction. Not to Tarly and definitely not to Lannister.

As if summoned by Brienne thoughts, she heard the speeding car that announced the arrival of her nemesis. Regular like clockwork, a red convertible took the corner at least ten miles over the speed limit, ignoring traffic laws and Brienne's presence equally, and rushed past her car. She sighed and turned on her sirens, lights only in deference of the late hour, and gave chase. It had stopped on the next street like Brienne knew he was going to, and the driver was already leaning on the window with that infuriating smirk she wanted to wipe.

Jaime Lannister, son of the mayor and brother of the DA, whose early retirement from the KLPD to start his own security firm had been surrounded by scandal and covered in his father's fingerprints. The first time Brienne had stopped him he had been doing just two miles over the limit, something that normally wouldn't warrant a ticket, especially at night on empty streets. Brienne had always been a stickler for the rules, though, and it had been the day she had realized that no matter what she did, she was not going to make detective in that precinct. She was never going to be more than a glorified traffic warden. 

Brienne had intended to let the driver go with a warning, but when she had approached the car a man who could be the Warrior himself, golden and beautiful, had turned to her with a fearsome scowl. "You've got to be kidding me, I was barely two miles over..." he had been saying when he got a good look at Brienne, the scowl melting from his face as he trailed off, his eyes roving all over her before they narrowed sharply. She had flushed at the way he was looking at her, feeling tongue-tied as it always happened when she was around beautiful people. Then he had opened his mouth again. "Are you a woman?"

That was the first time Brienne gave Jaime Lannister a ticket. 

It had not been the last. 

Every single night Brienne had been on duty in that intersection he had turned up, always speeding in his very expensive car, always taunting Brienne with a smile on his face. 

"Do you ever smile, Officer? Are you as boring as you are tall?" he had asked the third night as Brienne handed him a ticket, frowning down at him. Why was he there again? He must have known she was going to be in the same intersection she had stopped him the previous two days.

"So what's your name, Officer Tarth?" he had asked on the fifth day with a quirk of his mouth. 

Brienne had ignored the way her heart had skipped a beat at his smile. "It's Officer," she had said, because she had learned her lesson a long time ago that no attractive man smiled at her like that without ulterior motives. 

"No, you don't look like an Officer, you look like a Wench," he had said while Brienne narrowed her eyes at him and practically threw the ticket through his window.

She'd half expected to be called into the Captain's office after that, but nothing had happened, except that Lannister kept speeding past her and taking his tickets with a smirk and a taunt. Brienne had learned to anticipate his arrival, the butterflies in her gut had nothing to do with his smile and everything with whatever insult he would deploy that day.

His favourite was Wench, his voice fond when he said it.

"Officer Wench, long time no see," he said, his tone friendly as if he was genuinely pleased to see her. Brienne knew better, he was just pleased to annoy her. "I've missed you these past days."

"Mr. Lannister," she said, keeping her tone as neutral as possible while she wanted to wring his perfect neck. "It's Officer Tarth, as you well know. Licence?" He extended it to her with a smile. "You know why I stopped you?"

His smile widened, eyes shining with mischief. "Because you couldn't resist the temptation to spend a few minutes with me?"

"You were speeding again, in the same stretch of road where you've been stopped for speeding at least ten times," she said, holding onto the frayed remains of her self control. Tonight was not the night for Lannister's taunts. "Don't you have anything better to do with your time, Mr. Lannister, than wasting mine?"

"It's Jaime," he said as he leaned back, taking the notebook with the ticket and signing his recept, doodling something on the side like he usually did. Brienne expected it would be a dick if she ever looked at it, not that she ever had. He appeared to be the type to have a twelve-year-old sense of humour. "And not really, no." He handed it back and Brienne put it in his pocked pointedly not looking at it. "Neither do you, officer, since you are always here waiting for me instead of chasing real criminals."

And that was it, Brienne could practically hear her self-control snapping at that. "Out of the car," she said, her voice almost a growl. Lannister's eyebrow's climbed up his forehead but he did it when Brienne took a step back and opened his door. He climbed out of the car and unfolded next to her. He was almost as tall as Brienne, though he still had to look up to her, and just as wide and fit though his clothes were better tailored to showcase his powerful body. Taking complete leave of her senses, Brienne put her hands on his arms and stepped into his personal space, pressing him back against the car. Lannister's breath left his lungs in a rush, his face flushing in anger, eyes dark and mouth half-opened. He licked his lips. "You think this is a joke? That I have been put here for your amusement? That I'm not a real cop just because I am too tall and too big and too ugly?" She hissed on his face, hands hard on his biceps. She could feel the muscle under the expensive weave of his suit jacket, and the still rational part of her brain catalogued it. He was strong enough that he could push her away, and yet he stood there just staring at her with wide eyes, glaze flickering between her eyes and her mouth. "You and Tarly are not going to make me quit. He can keep me in traffic forever, can keep hiding me in the night shift so my face doesn't offend him while the real cops are out there investigating. I've dealt with sexist pigs stuck in the Targaryen era before." She couldn't believe those words were coming out of her mouth but couldn't stop herself. "You can keep insulting me, it's nothing I haven't heard before, you can even keep pretending to be nice to me so I humiliate myself thinking you like me. Again, you wouldn't be the first, though I don't know what's in it for you." She took a deep breath, her anger draining out of her when she realized how close to him she was, their bodies almost pressed together, his breath on her face. He wasn't flushing anymore, his face appeared pale now, his eyes sharp and narrow. She took one step back, then another. "I guess I won't have to quit, after all."

He didn't say anything for a moment that felt like a lifetime, then Lannister got back inside his car and drove away.

…

"Tarth, the Captain is waiting for you in his office."

Those were the words Brienne had been expecting to hear for the past few days, the only surprising thing that Tarly had waited an entire week and put her on the day shift to do it. For maximum humiliation, she was sure. She had known it was coming when Lannister had stopped bothering her the day after she had snapped, not that she had missed him, and Tarly had been strangely absent as well. She had heard some snatches of conversation, had heard her name in whispers and felt some more glares than usual. She had made her peace with it, at least she had not quit. 

"Captain Tarly," she started entering the office with her head held high. Then she stopped and looked at the man inside the room. He was definitely not Randyll Tarly.

Sitting comfortably in the Captain's chair was a man in his late thirties or early forties, tall and solidly built, with an attractive face, sharp blue eyes, and a full head of ginger hair to match his ginger beard. 

"Office Tarth, I'm Captain Addam Marbrand, I'm replacing Captain Tarly who has come down with a case of 'being a sexist pig' and 'being stuck in the Targaryen era'," he said with a straight face, though there was a glint of amusement in his eyes. "I hope I'm a better Captain than he was, not that it's going to be too difficult."

Brienne choked on air and dropped on one of the chairs. "What?"

Marbrand took some folders from the desk drawers. "It had somehow escaped the attention of everyone that this precinct was staffed with just men, like this was the old Kingsguard instead of a modern police department, and whenever a woman dared appear she ended quitting or requesting a transfer in under six months. We have spoken with a couple of them, and there is an interesting pattern everyone in HR had missed." It hadn't been just Brienne, then. "There were other irregularities, especially in a certain type of investigations, that once had come to the DA's attention couldn't be overlooked. Captain Tarly has been kindly invited to retire early and his cohorts are being reassigned." The DA, Tyrion Lannister. Brienne was now more confused than before. This couldn't be because of what she had said, or shouted, at Jaime. She was supposed to be the one fired, not Tarly. Marbrand was still talking as if Brienne's world hadn't been upended in the last minute. "I have taken the liberty of examining your file, and you have been wasted since you came to this precinct, your scores in the Academy are exemplary and you have a recommendation from Tarth Chief of Police."

"He's my father," she said, faintly, surreptitiously pinching her arm. She was awake.

Marbrand smiled slightly. "So he is, still a good recommendation. I'm pulling you from traffic, you will be assigned a partner and will join the Mummers investigation effect immediately. Officer Snow will get you up to speed with the case."

Brienne nodded, knowing a dismissal when she heard one. "Thank you, Captain." 

She still had no idea what had happened but she had been given everything she wanted, she wasn't going to complain. 

"Oh, and Brienne," Marbrand said before she could open the door. "Can I call you Brienne? Regardless of what the rumours say, I haven't been given this position because of my connections, and I won't treat you differently if you choose not to go out with Jaime."

"What are you walking about, Captain Marbrand?" Brienne asked, now certain she had fallen through the rabbit hole. 

"Jaime Lannister, blonde, pretty, rich? The guy who won't shut up about you for the past couple of weeks? You've given him a ticket or a dozen? Has been waiting for your call for weeks and missing sleep to see you?" Her shock must have been plain to see because Marbrand sighed, long and heartfelt. "I have told my idiot of a friend that insulting and annoying a person is not the way to flirt with them. You have to excuse him but being so pretty means he's never had to woo a woman, he's completely useless at it." Brienne blinked at Marbrand, mouth opening and closing uselessly. "Please check your ticket notebook and decide whether he's too much of an idiot to go out with, but please put him out of his misery before I have him murdered."

Brienne walked out of the Captain's office and went to her desk, still feeling like she had landed in a parallel universe. She grabbed her notebook and flipped the pages. Some part of her was convinced she was going to find drawings of dicks or more insults, and that her new Captain was going to be not so different from the old one. 

'Call me, Wench' was written on the margins of the latest tickets, and next to it was a phone number.

Her heart lurched in her chest, the same butterflies that usually appeared at the same time as his car fluttering in her stomach. She took out her phone and dialled before she could think better of it, half expecting the number to be fake. 

"Wench?"

"Jaime."

...

[raidbossmadi]

People Like Us : Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Night Out

Previous Chapter: here

The smell of cologne and weed alerted Sloane to Troy’s presence before the door of the technical could even open. The priest who had opened the door and led her there in the first place bowed and offered her a hand as she stepped up to the technical, these vehicles, aside from Tyreen’s personal technical were not designed with shorter people in mind. She thanked stars above that the ‘fancy’ clothing Iris had delivered to her room for this outing consisted of a mint green blouse and black slacks, she could only imagine making a fool of herself trying to get in and out of Troy’s technical in a skirt.

The God-king gave a short chuckle as she clambered into the seat next to him before he took another drag of the blunt in his hand. He offered it to her as he coughed into the furred collar of his vest.

Sloane took it looking at it rather quizzically, of course she knew Troy smoked, it was hard not to know. She however, had never seen the appeal, she’d read a lot about getting stoned but never could bring herself to do it.

“Go ahead, take a drag.”

“I uh, I’ve never done this before.” She admitted sheepishly.

“What? Really!? Not even to spice up that drab little shack in the woods.”

She shook her head.

“Alright, don’t worry I can teach you Slo, I’ve got plenty of experience.”

He mimed holding the joint and brought his fingers up to his lips and winked at her. She got the hint and took the joint to her lips.

“That’s it, breathe in.”

She did, the new taste and flash of heat as the smoke sucked into her mouth startled her but Troy held up a hand.

“No no, hold it, you gotta let it get in your lungs.”

After fighting the initial desire to spit out the smoke she held it in for as a few seconds longer than she thought she would manage before she doubled over herself coughing.

“See, you did fine? First hits a bit rough yeah, but you’re over that hurdle now. Wasn’t so bad was it?” He placed the joint in the ashtray and offered her a water bottle which she drank from greedily. “Like all things, it just takes practice.”

“Where are we going tonight? The Priest who fetched me didn’t mention anything in particular.” It was peculiar for her not to be briefed on where they were going and the fact that they were dressed down despite this being a date made her wonder what Troy had up his sleeve.

“A place where the sun does not shine. You don’t have to worry about anything tonight, it’ll all stay between us.”

“Oh poetic, but not what I asked.” She snorted as she took a cursory glance out the window. The cathedral was just a small speck on the horizon now and she realized this was the farthest she had been on Pandora. The Cathedrals' ever looming shadow over Temple town seemed so comforting compared to the harsh sunlight that shone over the barren desert.

“We have a settlement in the western desert, it’s picked up the name Scrapburg. It's where the rest of the engineers live when they’re not on assignment at the cathedral or deployed at an outpost. A bunch of my people live there actually. It’s not like Temple town, or the Cathedral, you’ll see. I think you’ll like the place.” Troy explained and patted her knee before awkwardly letting his hand rest on her thigh. She let it stay there, the willing contact with him appreciated.

The rest of the ride was mostly silent save for the sounds of the wheels as they bounced over the uneven surface of the desert. It wasn’t for lack of things to talk about, Sloane was buzzing with things she could say, but given this was a date she figured it better to save that for when they got to their destination. She had however kept her eyes on him for the rest of the drive not even noticing that they’d stopped until the door opened, their driver bowing to his gods before he spoke.

“Meet you here at the arranged pick up time, my liege?”

“That’s right, and don’t make us wait. You know how much of a pain in the ass it is to get through Cathedral gate at peak hours, even for us.”

Troy hooked his arm around Sloane’s waist, he led her away from the technical and through the gate. It was then that she got her first good look at the city proper. It was different from Temple Town in every conceivable way, where Temple Town was ever changing and movable Scrapburg immediately gave off the aura of permanence.

Instead of ramshackle buildings and tent camps,there were well built almost metropolitan buildings. They still had the typical Pandora flare but she had never expected something like this compared to the CoV capital. Solar panels were affixed to roofs and dust shields were installed on the balconies she could see.

The streets were covered by colored tapestries which she presumed were also to keep the sandstorm from buffeting the people who traveled. There were no cars, only carts pulled by large Skags and the occasional Motorbike. A bell tolled in the distance and she watched as people on the street stopped, others coming out onto their balconies and the sound rang through the city. Troy however did not stop instead speeding up his stride.

“Troy you’re gonna trip me, I can’t keep up!” Sloane protested.

“I was hoping we could avoid the attention, guess I should have known better than to send word. Even if that word was explicit, I did not want to be bothered tonight.” She could hear his fangs pressing against each other as he finished speaking, his agitation palpable in the air.

“Lord-Father Troy, how honored we are to be in your presence again.” A red cowled figure stepped out from the alley way, moving far too smoothly for a normal human.

It was only once the man was standing in front of them that his strange movements made sense. In the place of legs the heavily robed figure had four insectoid robotic limbs; two facing the front, two facing back. His right hand was also replaced with a robotic prosthetic that looked more like sleek black bone than the hulking form that hung off Troy.

“High Priest Deimos, I quite remember being very clear in our communication about tonight.” Troy glowered at the man.

“Forgive me for the intrusion Lord-Father. I was hoping I could escort you and the Verdant Lady to your residence.” Deimos said his fingers nervously bounced off each other as he spoke.

“We’re a bit busy for small talk.”

“It’s a ten minute walk my God-King, I won’t be burdensome for long. You can’t deny it’s been a fair while since we’ve spoken face to face, judging mother keeps you away from us.”

The more Sloane watched Deimos the more she realized he was more machine than man, a shift of his robe revealing a pump and tank system where his digestive system ought to be. She supposed that those who worshipped Troy would be more open to body modification but she couldn’t imagine casting away her organs for mechanical replacements.

“Fine.”

Deimos reached for Sloane’s hand only for Troy to swat it away with his prosthetic. The force behind the swipe reminded her just how easily he could crush someone with a flick of his wrist, he didn’t even need a weapon.

“And Sloane stays with me.”

“My apologies Lord-Father. I did not mean any offense.”

“Don’t get me wrong Deimos. I appreciate the hard work you all do, but Sloane and I are on a tight schedule. It was hard enough to convince Tyreen to let us have the night out.”

Troy and Deimos continued their back and forth of annoyance and platitudes as they walked Sloane tuned it out for the most part. She instead watched the street as they walked. She couldn’t recall ever seeing children in Temple Town but here she caught sight of more than one child being ushered to bow their heads like their parents before them as they walked past.

The filtered sunlight gave their procession a more somber feeling, especially as smoke from freshly lit censers wafted into the street. A bell tolled as they approached the steps she assumed belonged to the city hall. Troy released his grip on her hand and took a step forward, obscuring her slightly. Her gaze moved to the crowd that gathered at the foot of the steps.

She noted that those who had gathered seemed to be more calm and relaxed than the crowds that gathered to meet them in the great wandering city. That most of them seemed to have cybernetic parts which made sense, given Troy’s own disability it would make sense that his town would be made of people like him.

So wrapped up in taking in the foreign city’s spectacle she almost didn’t notice the men had stopped walking before she felt the tug of Troy’s grasp as she walked out of range.

“Uhh Pandora to Sloane, didn’t you hear me? We’re here.” Troy said an amused smirk pulled at the corner of his cheeks.

She looked up at the skyscraper that climbed greedily for the heaves. “Wow, sure is big.”

“Only the best for a god am I right?”

She snorted and nudged his arm with his shoulder. “Oh definitely. Totally not letting anyone think you're compensating eh.”

Troy turned red around the cheeks before he turned back to Deimos. “Well go on then you bucket of bolts get out here. And tell Phobos I’m expecting his report on my desk in the morning.”

The priest tapped his mechanical legs against the asphalt nervously before nodding emphatically. “By your will be done.” The priest skittered away back the way he had come before Troy’s temper could flare.

“Compensating, really Sloane? I could have any person in the CoV if I wanted, think I need to compensate to get that?” He was back to his jovial mood like someone had flipped a switch.

“I’m just saying it’s a big tower is all.”

“I like the view. Now, you coming in or shall we spend the night looking at my big tower?”

Sloane playfully rolled her eyes before she took his hand again.

The inside of the building was fairly standard for CoV buildings, the inverted vault symbol hung over the reception desk between two graffitied eyes. On the far wall a copy of Troy’s stained glass window from the Cathedral bathed the lobby in warm tones.

Troy did not acknowledge the receptionist simply strolling on by to the elevator. He placed his hand on a bioscanner located beneath the call button and a soft hum emitted from it before the ding of the lift's arrival cut through the otherwise silent lobby. The moment they stepped into the elevator and the doors clicked shut the atmosphere tangibly changed, Troy relaxing much the way he had been in the technical.

“I’m sorry about all that, I just wanted to get you here without being mobbed by followers who would want to meet you and ask fifty questions a piece. Tonight’s about relaxing and that’s what it’ll be from this moment on.” He smiled one of his warm and genuine smiles, unlike the smirk he used when dealing with followers this one went up to his eyes and softened his features. Sloane had come to relish seeing it in her few months among the twins.

They stepped out of the lift immediately into a fancy penthouse suite. Again it had all the design choices that made it read as Troy’s space, from the organized chaos to the books left turned over to hold their place.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tonight’s about you and I and nobody else so just tell me what you want.” He said hanging his vest over a chair as he went about the steps of removing his prothesthic. If they were going to have a cozy night in he needed to be comfortable.

“Yeah I’m starving, I haven’t eaten since Juniper brought me lunch.” She agreed, they hadn’t been gone from the cathedral more than a few hours yet it felt like ages ago now.

Troy turned to head into the kitchen when something caught Sloane’s eye. A black rectangular shaped box with a pair of controllers sat on top of it.

“Is that a Flaystation?” She asked her head tilted like a curious puppy as she spied it.

“Fuck yeah it is, we can play a game once we eat.” He reassured before he continued his quest to the kitchen.

Sloane made herself at home like Troy had suggested and plopped herself down on the plush sofa in front of the television. She was slightly surprised when a helper droid came out of a hole in the wall much like the ones back at the Cathedral. It pushed her shoes back over by the front door after she took them and returned shortly with a folded blanket on its head offering it to her.

She must have dozed off as the next thing she knew Troy was prodding her side. “Hey, hey! Dinner’s ready, sleepy head.”

She blinked awake and saw him grinning far too widely as he looked down at her curled up on the sofa. The same kind of look he gave when he had something up his sleeve in their game of bunkers and badasses, a genuine Troy smile.

Troy ran through his games library while they ate, pointing out the games he thought she would like. She was pleasantly surprised when he got it right, though they had spent months hanging out, doing their jobs, and sleeping in the same bed it had always felt like something they’d done out of obligation. When Troy had broken down the night of her coronation she had been caught off guard that she was so trusted and even now on an actual date with him it was only just clicking that he saw her for who she really was.

After a few hours of gaming, during which Sloane learned that Troy had taught himself to use a Flaystation controller with his feet which she found very impressive, the nature sire found herself yawning again. She leaned into Troy’s side, her head rested against the curve of his rib cage.

“It’s been a good night.” She sighed a content smile on her face.

“It has, I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. I did too.” He paused and took a deep breath before his hand came up and caught her under the chin, he gently tilted her head up to look him in the face.

“So, you think we can uh, make it official then. I know we’re in a weird situation where like we’ve been doing stuff couples do but it’s just been professional. I’ve really come to care for you these past months Sloane, more than I have anyone else. I would be honored and humbled to call you my girlfriend.”

Sloane’s face went red with blush as he spoke. “I would love to be your girlfriend Troy.”

She stretched up to meet his lips though she only stayed for a moment. As she pulled away she blinked in surprise as a thought registered with her.

“Holy fucking shit that was my first kiss.”

“Wait really?! Well…. it won’t be your last.”

She gave him a playful shove giggling as she did so. Her time away from Eden-4 had in general felt dreamlike and unreal if she thought about it too hard. Now however she found herself hoping that if truly was a dream that she would never wake up.

“So what changes at home? Is there anything I need to avoid doing around other people or something?”

Troy’s face steeled and his eyes darkened. There was an uncomfortably long pause between them before he spoke his voice had a hard edge, the kind that came with experience behind it and frightened her a bit.

“Tyreen cannot know. Not yet. Keep your head down, act like nothing changed unless we’re in private. I’ll handle it when the time comes.”

[areiton]

a giant sign - ironhusbands

Read on AO3

~*~ 

He’s been friends with Tony long enough to know when his sulky moodiness is a passing thing, when it’s a low simmer that will eventually explode. 

He’s been friends with Tony long enough to know when his anger is pushed at Rhodey, and when he’s just angry, and Rhodey is the nearest safe target. 

He’s been friends with Tony long enough that this--this should sink in, a lot sooner than it does. 

Pepper thinks he’s been friends with Tony long enough because they’re both idiots. 

 ~*~ 

After Vanko, Tony is sulky and short tempered, none of the normal banter and teasing while he works on the armor. He’s quiet, mouth a hard line while Rhodey plays with Butterfingers and DUM-E chirps sadly for attention. 

Rhodey shouldn’t have favorites, of course, but Butterfingers with her shy sweetness has always been his favorite. He rubs oil into her claw and she almost preens for him, and he chuckles while Tony silently codes. 

It takes almost eighteen hours, but Tony finally slumps against the worktable and the War Machine is gleaming and beautiful, deadly. 

“You’re good to go, honeybear,” Tony says, rubbing his eyes. 

There’s a smear of grease on his cheek and in his hair, and a knick on his finger that’s oozing blood, shadows under his eyes, and his smile isn’t quite right, a little tighter and colder than Rhodey is used to. “All that Hammer tech is gone and you’re outfitted with even better weapon systems.” 

Rhodey smiles, and some of the tension in Tony’s shoulders loosen. 

 ~*~ 

He cleans Tony’s hands, bandages them and drops a kiss on his forehead before he steps into the armor and flies away, and he can feel Tony’s gaze on him, chasing him across the sky. 

 ~*~ 

Tony doesn’t make weapons anymore, not for the military, not for private owners, not even for SHIELD. 

But when he opens up the AI Tony has coded into the armor, he’s greeted with an array of weapons that make the Brass pant and his dick a little hard. 

Tony always made the very best weapons. 

“Think you can get him to open the weapons division up again?” his CO asks, his voice hungry and Rhodey laughs because this--

“No. Tony hung up his weapons.” 

“That’s not what the suit says,” his CO objects, and Rhodey shrugs. 

Tony has always had rules, rules he expects the entire world to live by. 

And then there was Rhodey, slipping under them. 

 ~*~ 

The Air Force shoves a new pilot, a pretty bright eyed Academy grad, into the suit while Rhodey is tied up at the Pentagon. 

He hears about it through the chain of command, and there’s a pulse of fury, because that’s his. 

The suit isn’t like a plane, fit to be flown by any passing warm body. That is his, given to him by Tony. 

And it’s an asset of the USAF and he can’t really throw a fit, because the War Machine saved fifty children in a militant cult’s sway, brought down the charismatic leader holding a gun to the head of his seven year old bride, and all without casualties. 

He doesn’t complain, but it twists, tight and angry in his chest. 

 ~*~ 

“Rhodes. What the hell is going on with the suit?” 

“I don’t know, sir. It’s still in Norfolk and I’m in DC.” 

“It’s not in Norfolk--it took off without a pilot thirty minutes ago.” 

Rhodey sighs. 

 ~*~ 

“You stole property of the USAF,” he says, three days later. It took three days to get away and Tony hadn’t answered any calls in the days since the armor took off without a pilot. 

“I took back something they had no right to use,” Tony answers, his light breezy tone razor edged. “If you don’t want it, it should come home.” 

Rhodey huffs. “I didn’t approve the other pilot.” 

Tony stares at him, something sharp and gleaming in his eyes, something that Rhodey didn’t quite recognize. 

“That suit isn’t for the Air Force, platypus,” Tony says, sharply. “And the next time I find out someone else is piloting, I’ll remote destroy it.” 

Rhodey blinks, and then nods, slow. “Ok, genius.” 

 ~*~ 

Rhodey is halfway around the world, escorting the President back to the States, when Tony flies a nuke into space, and the armor doesn’t feel safe, doesn’t feel like Tony wrapped around him, protective and indestructible. 

It feels like a tomb, a coffin too small for the way he feels, for the way his heart is pounding too hard, for the way the world is going supernova. 

 ~*~ 

Romanov eyes the suit, the way he stands, broad and powerful, his Gatlin gun a heavy weight at his shoulder, protective at Tony’s back, in the aftermath of the attack,and her smile is small and knowing and he shoves it aside, and focuses on this--

Tony, alive, bright and beautiful and alive. 

His fingers itch, ache to reach out and touch. 

 ~*~ 

“We’re doing a rebrand,” Karen says. 

“It tested well,” Chad adds. 

“War Machine is just too--hostile,” Karen says, a moue of displeasure on her pretty lips. 

He doesn’t say, Tony named me that. 

He doesn’t say, Fuck your tests. 

He doesn’t say, I don’t want your goddamn brand. 

James Rhodes is a good soldier and this--this belongs to the USAF, despite the protests and safeguards Tony has raised. 

“We’re calling it Iron Patriot,” Karen says, brightly. 

“It tests well,” Chad adds.

Rhodey hates it. 

 ~*~ 

AIM handles the rebrand. 

The military has accepted that Tony is not getting back into weapons, wants to distance themselves and their personal watchdog from Stark and his tech, his weapons that they can no longer access. 

Rhodey understands the desire--but watching a stranger coding his armor, picking JO apart and pulling her out of the suit, stripping away the weapons Tony built to keep him safe and replacing them with AIM tech he doesn’t know--

He feels nauseated. 

They paint the suit, blue and red, stripes and stars, a callback to their greatest Soldier, and he hates it, hates it, because Tony built this, built him and he doesn’t want to lead a team of armored soldiers or super soldiers or heroes. 

He wants to do what he’s done his entire adult life. 

He wants to walk in Tony’s footsteps, familiar and recognized because of the light reflecting off his best friend. 

He doesn’t say anything, and when they tell him, brightly satisfied, that he won’t be mistaken for Ironman anymore, he chokes his screams behind his teeth. 

 ~*~ 

It goes to hell. 

The suit gets stolen, and Pepper gets stolen, and Tony’s shitty coping mechanisms save the day. 

And when it’s over, when he’s wrapped up in a suit that feels dirty and wrong instead of safe and his, he sees Tony watching him, Pepper curled in his arms, and he doesn’t recognize the look in his friend’s eyes. 

 ~*~ 

Tony isn’t speaking to him. 

He doesn’t notice, not right away. There’s the mess to clean up, the President to return and debrief. 

Tony is busy making sure Pepper doesn’t die, and working with the best in the medical field to get his own heart put back together. 

He’s there, of course he’s there, when Tony goes under the knife again. 

But Tony doesn’t speak to him, not really, not in the hospital or after, and then he’s busy with the move from LA to New York and Rhodey is deployed again.

It’s pushed aside. 

 ~*~ 

“Tony’s pissed at me,” he tells Pepper. 

“I am really not who you should be talking to about this,” she sighs. 

“Pepper--” 

“We broke up,” she says, abruptly, and that makes him go quiet. “So you need to figure out your shit, and get back to him. He needs you.” 

“I don’t know what upset him,” Rhodey says. 

She barks a laugh, because Pepper has never cared about appearances with Rhodey, something that never fails to make him smile. “You know--Tony won’t make anyone else a suit. Not even the Avengers or SHIELD--they asked. He didn’t even make me a suit, when we were dating. You’re it. And that suit--Rhodey. It’s a giant gun toting sign that says ‘property of Tony Stark, don’t fucking touch.’” 

He’s silent and she laughs in earnest, now, delighted and shocked, “You didn’t know.” 

“He didn’t say,” Rhodey protests and she laughs and hangs up on him. 

 ~*~ 

“Pepper said something interesting,” he says, stepping out of the suit on the landing pad. It gleams, silver and familiar, so close to the Iron man armor that they can be--are--mistaken again. 

“Pepper says a lot of interesting things,” Tony says, his gaze flicking back to the suit, and some of the tension in his shoulders going loose. 

Rhodey extends a sheaf of papers. “The Brass signed off on this, this morning,” he says. 

Tony eyes it warily and then huffs and takes it from him, because Tony’s hangups about being handed things never extended to Rhodey and how had he never known. 

Tony’s eyes flick up to him, shocked and hopeful. 

“Apparently saving the President’s life means I can call in favors. As of this morning, the War Machine can only be upgraded and maintained by you,” Rhodey says. “And only piloted by me.” 

“Why?” Tony asks, and Rhodey huffs. 

Reaches out and draws him close with a hand on his hip, and hope is wild, burning in Tony’s eyes. 

“Because I don’t want anyone else touching what you made me,” he murmurs. 

“Because you keep me safe,” he breathes, and Tony whines, the words brushing over his lips. 

“Because I’m yours and that suit that you gave me--I only want you touching it,” he says softly, lips brushing over his jaw and the corner of his lips. “I only want you touching me.” 

Tony makes a noise, half sob, and Rhodey smiles and kisses him.

 ~*~ 

Later--

Later, after he has spread Tony across his bed, when he has come down Tony’s throat and fingered him open, when Tony has dug crescents into his shoulders and come, white and sticky across Rhodey’s abs, head tipped back, face slack with pleasure, eyes bright and trained on Rhodey, when he’s come, spilled in the tight heat of Tony and wrapped around him, kissed him until his lips feel swollen and bruised, when he scoops his come from where it’s dripping down Tony’s thigh, presses it back in, fingers pressing in and making Tony groan--

After he carries Tony to the tub and cradles him against his chest in the water, Tony leans his head back against Rhodey’s shoulder. 

“You coulda said,” Rhodey murmurs. “Mighta been easier to write it on my forehead--property of Tony Stark.” 

Tony flushes, still shy and Rhodey smiles, kisses him gently. “It’s fair, you know.”

“Why’s that, honeybear?” 

“You’ve been mine since MIT, genius. Only fair that I’m yours.” 

[bittykimmy13]

Best Wishes (GT) ~ 1

This is G/t fanfiction of the Netflix movie The Half of It. Watch the movie if you haven't seen it. Enjoy. 

I certainly enjoyed it so much that I immediately needed a G/t version of it :') This will probably be a shorter story, with short chapters. Just something cute and light after the slew of angst the past couple years haha (but yes of course there will be angst, who do you think I am?) Anyway, this takes place in a potential future of the print universe. YEP, a print story where the characters aren't under immediate threat of physical pain/death 24/7 <333

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mid-afternoon sun beat down on the lonely stretch of road. Autumn pedaled her bike on a separate print-sized path beside the tree line, bracing herself whenever human cars roared by. Luckily, those were few and far between at this time of day. Unless humans were headed for the southern exit of the town where their kind of homes were sparse, they didn’t have much reason to be there. Mostly, all that remained at this end was a tight cluster of print neighborhoods and woodland.

It would be easier if she paid for human transportation to and from her summer job, but she told herself every morning that she needed to save money and that it wasn’t her pride holding her back. If she wanted to sustain herself through the next school year, she’d need to tough out the commute on her own.

The rumble of an engine approached in the distance. She tensed, but didn’t stop pedaling. This engine in particular was familiar—one she had been dreading.

Sure enough, as the pick-up truck slowed beside her, the human boys inside shouted at her through the open windows.

“Think you’ll make it home by morning?”

“Aww, why’re you ignoring us, mouse? Think you’re too good?”

“Why don’t you come in here and sit on my lap? I’ll get you where you need to go!”

Autumn kept her eyes trained on the path in front of her. It wasn’t worth snapping back at them. One, they wouldn’t hear her over the sound of that old-world relic of a pick-up. Two, they were all easily over six feet tall. She didn’t even reach mid-calf for them. Let them have their fun from the road, as long as they didn’t get out to stop her on the path and tower over her.

Keep it together. You’ll be free of them again in a couple months.

Their laughter faded as the truck roared ahead, and she could finally breathe again. She swore they took the long way these days just to mess with her. Now that they were gone, her tense anticipation of their approach could be laid to rest until tomorrow. However, her moment of relaxation lasted roughly five minutes.

A rhythmic pounding came from behind her—the footsteps of a jogging human. She clenched her jaw and kept her eyes forward. Why couldn’t some humans get it through their thick skulls that this path wasn’t meant for their exercise? It was meant for prints like her to get home somewhat safely if they didn’t have a ride. Besides, who the hell wanted to be running in this heat? As the footsteps became more pronounced, she groaned and started to swerved her bike off the path to let the human pass her without potential murder.

“Hey!” The human’s steps slowed as his voice boomed after her. “Autumn Yang!”

She braked so hard she nearly fell off her bike. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw a human with wavy dark-blond hair coming after her on the path. She blanched in recognition. He’d gone to high school with her, like the other boys in the pick-up. Tucker West. Had they really deployed one of the guys to come after her on foot? Her hand tensed on the phone in her pocket as she wondered if she should call for help.

There was no time. She pedaled hard.

“Wait up!” His pounding footsteps kicked up to a jog again.

It was laughable how easily he caught up. In no time at all, his shadow had fallen over her, but she didn’t stop. She didn’t dare look back, knowing she’d lose her balance if she dared to peer up at his dizzying height. From the brief look she’d gotten, he was somehow taller now since graduation.

“Autumn, hey! I said wait up!”

The shadow darkened, and her bike came to an abrupt stop. The momentum launched her over the handles, making her come to a hard fall on the asphalt. She winced at the scrape on her forearm and sat up, scrambling to face Tucker West.

He was crouched low with one hand braced to the ground, while his other fingers still pinched the back tire of her bike. His dark eyes were wide, and his lips were parted dumbly as he assessed what he had done.

“Wow, I-I’m sorry,” he stammered, giving a laugh of disbelief. “Shit, I didn’t know you were gonna fall like that.”

“You expected me to fall a different way?” She picked herself up and dusted her shorts off. “What’s wrong with you? Besides not knowing how physics work.”

“No, really, I’m sorry. But you weren’t stopping, and I…” He shrugged lamely.

Praying that he couldn’t see how badly she trembled under his shadow, she stormed over to her bike and grabbed the handles. “Give it back, Tucker. Leave me alone. We’re not in fucking high school anymore—I dunno why you and your friends couldn’t mature past your glory days, but leave me out of it.”

He cocked his head. “My friends?”

“Oh, don’t play dumb. The assholes who’ve been screeching past me every day since I came home for the summer.”

“You mean Jason and them? They’re not my friends.” He kept his grip on the bike, seemingly unaware that she was trying to wrench it out of his fingers. “Look, I saw you were back in town, and I have a favor to ask. See, there’s this girl—”

“No, I will not help you seduce some girl by pretending to be your quirky print friend to prove you have a softer side. Beat it, or I’ll tell her you stalked me on my way home.”

Cheeks flushing, he shook his head. “That’s not it! Remember how you used to write people’s assignments for them?”

Of course she remembered. How could she not? The money she’d made from that had ensured she could eat comfortably while she was away for her freshman year of college. She stopped pulling on the bike and narrowed her eyes at him. She’d written a few papers for him back then, but that was the long and short of their interaction.

“Somehow, I doubt you need a philosophy analysis written for you in the middle of summer, two years out of high school,” she said.

Despite her flat tone, he looked at her excitedly, like she was a co-conspirator in a scheme she knew nothing about. “Well, you’re right about me needing your help with the girl. I mean, not the seducing her part, but uh… yeah, okay, kinda.”

“Either give me the point, or give me my bike.”

“You’re good at writing, okay? And I need help with that.” He pursed his lips and shrugged.

“Look, I’m not good with words, so I want to write her a letter. I tried already by myself, but it never sounds good, you know?”

She gave the bike another test tug, disappointed to find that his fingers’ grip hadn’t slackened in tandem with that wistful look on his face. She scoffed. “Write a letter? Like on paper? Who does that?”

He pouted. “I thought it would be romantic.”

“I mean, I guess. If she’s into that kind of stuff. Who is she, anyway?”

“Lacey. Lacey Ramirez.”

Autumn let go of the bike and staggered back a few steps, arms limp at her sides.

“You know her, don’t you?” Tucker said. “Didn’t you used to be friends with her?” He paused, taking in her slack-jawed expression and tense stance. “Oh. Do you guys have bad blood? Shit, I figured it would be easier for you to help since you know her.”

She shook her head. “N-no, we don’t have bad blood. But I’m not doing this. I’m not helping you write a stupid love letter to Lacey Ramirez. Just go talk to her. It’s not that hard.”

“You don’t get it! It’s hard. It’s, like, super hard.”

For all his insistence, he finally let go of the bike when Autumn lunged forward and jerked at the handles again. She gave one last look at his knelt form towering over her, feeling a spike of bitterness. Of course it wouldn’t be hard for him to win Lacey over. He was tall, handsome, and built. But most importantly, human. A perfect match for Lacey. She turned around and started walking her bike away.

“I’ll pay you,” he said. She walked a little faster, worried he’d give chase again. She was still within reach of his stupid long arms, but he didn’t make a grab. “However much you need. Set your price.”

Autumn hesitated, and his voice jumped.

“I’m in love with her,” he insisted. “Please. You have to help me. I’m sure you could use the money.”

She glared over her shoulder. “What makes you say that?”

He leaned back a little and planted his hands on his lap, perhaps to make it seem like he wasn’t trying to crowd her. “I dunno. You’re working, aren’t you? That means you need money.”

She did.

Hissing out a sigh, she pinched the bridge of her nose. “One letter.” He started to grin and straighten up in excitement, prompting her to hold up a finger. “One letter! And I name my price after I finish it. I’ll type up a draft and send it so you can write it out. What’s your number?”

“What? No, hey, I want to be there with you while you come up with it. We could help each other, can’t we?”

She rolled her eyes. “Where?”

“Library, tomorrow at noon?”

She frowned, shocked that he was so casually okay with being seen in public with a print. It wasn’t exactly outlandish these days, she just didn’t figure someone like him would be alright with it.

Maybe it was the surprise that made her nod. “Fine. But I work tomorrow, so let’s make it two.”

“So we have a deal!” His hand shot toward her, and she might have fallen on her ass if he hadn’t stopped a few safe inches away. He held his finger and thumb slightly parted—an invitation to a handshake that she would much rather not attend.

But, figuring it would get him out of her hair faster, she stiffly walked closer and placed her hand on his fingertip. She braced for pressure, but he was actually  quite gentle when he pinched her hand and moved it down once. After getting tossed off her bike, she never would have expected that from him.

“See ya tomorrow.” He let go and gave a small wave. His grin was wide and blinding as he stood up.

She couldn’t help but flinch, seeing him at his full height again. He didn’t linger, though. The pound of footsteps resumed, but this time they headed away from her. It wasn’t until he was a good distance away that she, for the second time, could breathe again.

As she mounted her bike and started pedaling, her mind swam in disbelief of what had just happened. Tucker West, former football star and high school has-been, had sought out her help with a handwritten love letter. And for Lacey Ramirez, of all people.

It wouldn’t be hard finding the words—just hard to share them. She hadn’t spoken much to Lacey since sophomore year of high school. It wasn’t that they had a falling out or bad blood. It was just that Autumn had quietly pulled away from that friendship when she came to the terrifying realization that she had fallen in love with Lacey.

[haphazardlyparked]

the au coalition, part II

happy birthday, ginger! <3 <3 <3 

i have endeavored to continue this (with @gingerly-writing‘s characters Koronis and Olympéa)

Hikaj stared at the viewport—really just a digital screen composed of compiled images from a range of cameras, providing him a much broader view of the battle outside than a conventional viewport would have—and realized he was clenching his teeth. A glance to the side showed him Koronis doing the same, face pale with the horror Hikaj felt welling in his breastbone.

“The Lapurian Nest is about to deploy.”

It was an automated message, updating the entire ship on the status of the unmanned weapon unfolding in the space before them, and probably all anyone heard was the sound of their imminent doom. Nest probes were deadly, hive-type weapons filled with decades of thousands of projectiles designed for only one thing: to cut through shields and shipmetal in a destructive swarm.

“Everything is going to be okay,” Koronis said flatly.

Hikaj had promised Koronis that, once, and his second-in-command—a king, if they survived long enough—enjoyed throwing it back in his face every time he thought they were going to die. Since the start of new Alavan coalition, Hikaj had heard it about eight times; Koronis did so like to play the reluctant rebel leader, dragged into the insanity of Hikaj’s vision.

HIkaj knew what kind of drive lay under Koronis’s stiff comportment and beleaguered expressions, though. Even if the other man didn’t necessarily want to be a king of his people, a leader in every sense of the word, Hikaj knew what Koronis did want for Ilyri, and also that ancient kingship restored would give it to him.

Yet this was the first time Hikaj worried. Not because Koronis’s grumbles could be construed as fatal lack of commitment, but because they were actually about to die. A Nest probe was about to unfold into its component parts and rip them all to pieces.

“It has been nothing but an honor, Koronis,” Hikaj said, as evenly as he could. It was true. That Koronis had had faith in him, unwarranted or not, had never failed to propel Hikaj forward, added steel to his spine and a bar to straighten his shoulders against, to lift his chin up to. That anyone had believed him had lifted Hikaj.

And now that faith was going to get them all killed. Hikaj had always known it could end like this, and yet it wasn’t shame or disappointment that filled him now in their final hour.

It was gratitude.

“May all the stars realign for you. For all of us.”

A bright light flashed between the Nest probe and themselves.

“Hikaj—” Koronis started, but he didn’t need to.

Hikaj saw the small one-man fighter lurch into being just as clearly as Koronis. Slamming on his comms controls, he opened up a channel keyed to the frequency he knew that fighter would be operating on.

“Masara, clear space immediately."

“Standby, Hokiraj,” came Masara’s cool, calm voice.

"Masara," Hikaj argued. "That's a Nest!"

But Masara had already closed the communications, Hikaj could tell. He and Koronis were left frozen, watching in horror as the pirate captain flew her lone manned fighter on an unmistakeable collision course.

“She’s going to break the Nest into pieces before it can fully deploy,” Koronis realized aloud, watching as the fighter’s tiny body became a blur in space, streaking like the stars as it built up more speed than it should have been capable of.

“She’s going to blow herself to pieces,” Hikaj growled. “The probes are the most heavily shielded equipment Lapur makes.” Even a Sascrin fighter, small and swift as Masara’s was, couldn’t do anything but smash against a Nest shield.  

Hikaj wanted to shout, to make a run for their own ship’s docks and do something, but he was trapped where he was, unable to do anything but watch Masara kill herself on the screen.

“Ship, calculate impact time.”

“The fighter is on a collision course. Impact in forty-nine seconds. Forty-eight. Forty-seven.”

“She’s not even supposed to be here.” Koronis moaned softly under his breath. “Who’s defending the Astrian gate?”

Hikaj didn’t reply, not quite understanding. He lunged forward, shouting “NO!” as the ship’s countdown reached one, and Masara’s blur of a fighter flashed against the Lapurian Nest. The result was a series of light bursts—explosions—so bright most of the bridge officers turned their eyes, and Hikaj was left blinking tears and starbursts from his vision for long, long minutes after.

No one said a word as the chain of silent explosions subsided.

“Shields holding at ninety-four percent,”said the computer, with its automatic post-impact updates. 

Then a ping of an incoming comms sounded, and the comms officer read, “From the Knight Queen?” 

Hikaj suddenly saw what Koronis must have already recognized: the debris scattered by the explosion moved strangely before them, knocked to the sides of one area of clean, empty space...

Where The Knight Queen sat, Hikaj realized, fully shielded and cloaked. Just as it had been when it exited its jump from gate-space, Masara’s tiny fighter latched to its hull before she launched and de-cloaked.

“Captain Hokiraj,” Olympéa Astri chirped over the comms, her face appearing towards the right of the screens as the ship prioritized her communication. “Greetings.” 

“Who is defending your gate,” Koronis demanded in a harsh, barely controlled voice, before Hikaj could greet her back.

“Captain Kinlo and a mixed fleet of Astrian rebels and military defects,” Olympéa answered promptly, wrinkling her nose at the inherent accusation.

“We would not have left it otherwise,” Masara confirmed, stepping into view by Olympéa’s side. She was still wearing a tight silver flightsuit. 

Hikaj automatically straightened. He felt feet away from his body, like his true self hovered before the screens while the rest of himself lowered slowly, coolly, into his captain’s chair.

“Queen Masara,” Hikaj said, in his best impression of Koronis’s most unbending propriety. “I request an audience with you at your most immediate convenience.”

Masara nodded, seemingly unsurprised. “Shall we bring you aboard?” she offered.

Hikaj nodded once. “Koronis will be with me.”

“Of course,” Masara said, and nodded to someone offscreen on her side. “Standby.” 

In the moment that The Knight Queen transported them aboard, Hikaj understood in part how Masara had survived the collision and destruction of her fighter. It was easy to forget how casually superior Sascrin technology was, until he and Koronis stood in Masara's bridge between the space of one moment and the next in a seamless transport.

Immediately, the bridge's officers stood to attention. Masara and Pea made for the door, and Koronis and Hikaj followed; this was Masara's center of control, and more fruitful conversations between them were better held elsewhere.

The four of them swept out into hallway just outside the bridge, and then Olympéa and Koronis peeled off into a side room without another word to either of them. Masara watched their rapid disappearance, and frowned at Hikaj.

“He is still so upset about the gate?" she asked.

"I can’t speak for him," Hikaj said, feeling a little flat and stiff himself. "But I’m upset. You put yourself in danger, again, Masara! You put your ship in danger, your crew, Pea--and least of all that damn gate!"

Hikaj looked at Masara, unsure how she would take the criticism, but unable to keep himself from giving it. He knew the Amirrans were used to taking risks, what with the Warknights they had at their disposal and their usual technological advantage, but he still worried that even after everything Masara was a little too reckless. 

She was committed to her priorities, and Hikaj would never be able to shake the fear that living--with or without him, though he fervently hoped with--was not one of them.  

“We were as reasonably safe as we could be,” Masara said. There was a note of reassurance in her tone. “We had intercepted communications on the Nest and came out to deal with it. We've done this before, Hokiraj. I wasn’t risking anything."

Hikaj's entire thought process stuttered at that. There were pieces clicking into place somewhere in his head, but mostly Hikaj felt a bone-deep relief. Not another foolhardy maneuver then; not a potential sign of some vengeful death wish.

"How many times have you destroyed Nests?” Hikaj asked, and tried to focus all the various accidents that may have been just too routine, or notices that were slightly odd, and clearly not meant for everyone. Lapurian central command would want the defeat of a Nest buried so deep, even the dead couldn’t find it, but Hikaj thought there must be some trace of the information somewhere.

"My crew, three. Among the others, four."

"Bless it," Hikaj said, half in curse. He realized he was walking again, following Masara on the path to her maps room. "So the Nests are not infallible machines of destruction after all.” 

“No,” said Masara. 

“And I assumed the worst about... But can you blame me, Masara? You're always reminding me that you're here for vengeance and nothing else, and I can’t trust someone who look at everything with an eye towards the long-term."

Masara stopped walking again, and turned sideways to face Hikaj. “We have had this conversation,” she reminded him, though not with any sort of annoyance. Hikaj stopped alongside her, and waited for her to continue.

“And I thought about it. You were right. We need—that is, my people deserve more than an empty goal. Arlis, Inarim, and I have been speaking with the others, and we have a few proposals.”

Hikaj felt like he’d been hit in the face with a flat plank of wood, and that someone, somewhere, was laughing at him.

Masara called it a “conversation”, but Hikaj remembered a real argument. He didn’t know how they had gotten there, but suddenly they Hikaj had been shouting about needing to live for something, not living to see something ended. 

“I failed my people, Hokiraj,” Masara had said, utterly calm in the pronouncement. “I already failed them. Our planet, our moon, they’re gone, and there’s nothing but an asteroid field where they used to be. What could I do now, other than win them revenge?”

“I don’t know,” HIkaj snapped back. “But don’t your people deserve to figure that out with you? A strong queen would be a more effective leader than the memory of one.”

Masara had said nothing to that—only nodded, once. And asked, “And Koronis?”

That had taken Hikaj by surprise. “What?”

“Is he angry with me for the same reasons as you?”

“Oh.” Hikaj had frowned. “Is he angry with you? I’m not sure. I thought he was either in awe of you, terrified of you, or disapproves of something. Either one of them’s enough to make him a bit anxious.”

She had laughed then, as Hikaj had hoped she would, and then he’d continued trying to put the argument behind them. Masara had gone along with him, allowing the topic to be changed to. In the following weeks, Hikaj had thought she was more withdrawn; she would ask questions that skirted the lines of the argument, as if reminding herself of what Hikaj had shouted at her over.

Now, he was understanding her behavior in an entirely different context.

“I admit it has been new and… challenging, to think of what my people need beyond base instincts like vengeance,” Masara said, calling Hikaj back to the present. “But I think you will like at least some of our ideas. Arlis even has money on it.”

Koronis and Olympéa were already there, by some magic of corridor alignment, by the time Hikaj and Masara arrived to the maps room. The room was circular and had a domed ceiling, and was large enough to fit six or seven people comfortably around a small globe that stood in the center of the room supported by a pole. 

By a pair of doors on the other side, Arlis looked up from last minute adjustments she was making on the console and nodded at Hikaj when he entered; to Masara, she saluted and asked, “Are we waiting for Inarim, Captain?” Per usual, she made captain sound like my queen. 

“He has the bridge,” Masara answered.

As Arlis turned back to the control screen before her, Masara looked at Koronis and Pea. The former seemed a little disheveled, and the latter somewhat smug, which told Hikaj a whole different story about their little detour.

“Koronis, I understand you may not have known we have destroyed Nest probes before,” Masara said, overlooking the signs before her. “What may have looked like an unnecessary risk was actually a calculated and controlled maneuver.”

Koronis looked faintly surprised, then thoughtful, and then he nodded at Masara and said, “Thank you. Olympéa just told me as well.”

“Good, I had hoped so. We Amirrans may seem warlike,” Masara acknowledged. She was speaking to all three of them now, and not just Koronis. “But we are not ones to sacrifice life lightly, either. Weeks ago, Hokiraj pointed out how we can play only a limited role in the new coalition if our only goal is to draw Lapurian blood, and I agree. It is time for Amir to look towards building something that can stand alongside Astri, Ilyri, and Kas.”

Masara stepped to the side as the globe in the middle of the room unfolded until it was a flat, horizontal surface. From it rose the projection of the Alava coalition systems, complete with the Astrian gate—the only one left to them after Lapur had destroyed the Kassan gate in retaliation for Hikaj’s starting a war—and the principle travel corridors between Astri, Ilyri, and Kas burning orange.

And slowly, using the map to illustrate their ideas, Masara and Arlis began explaining their project to restore, to some degree, Amir.

i swear i’m not stopping it here because i don’t have a plan for Amir, i totally do have a plan for Amir, but it’s 10:00 pm already and it’s your birthday and i’d rather be earlier than later!

 happy birthday @gingerly-writing!!! 

[weartirondad]

A/N: We did a thing for @parkrstark ‘s appreciation day. You are amazing and we’re sending all our love! xx

This is inspired by Chöre by Mark Forster (a German song, most translations suck but try this one) 

Even superheroes need someone to fight for them sometimes. ao3 I FF.net

I’ll Love You (When You Can’t Love Yourself)

“Mister Parker seems to in distress, boss. His vitals suggest that he has been getting steadily more agitated over the past ten minutes.”

“Wha- Ah- Fuck”, Tony cursed when he hit his head on the underbody of the car as he tried to crunch up before the roller board was completely out from underneath his 1949 Mercury Coupe. The car didn’t seem to mind in the slightest, which didn’t surprise him, but even his AI simply kept talking as if he hadn’t just almost split his nose open again.

“His heartrate has been well over 120 beats per minute for the past five minutes. His blood pressure is significantly elevated at 170 to 100.”

He was already halfway to the nearest suit when he realized he wasn’t even sure where Peter would be. What time was it anyway? Was school over already? Was it even a school day? Good thing his AI seemed to have psychic abilities where she was lacking basic human empathy and told him before he had to ask.

“The tracker that you installed in his watch suggests he’s still in school. Though according to his time table his last lesson ended fifteen minutes ago.”

“Is- Is he involved in a fight at school?”, Tony wanted to know, halting his movements with his hand still stretched out and with half of his armor already attached to his body. Did Peter get into fights at school? Was that bully giving him trouble again? He thought they had handled the Flash issue weeks ago... Then again, Peter was really determined about keeping him in the dark about important things like his wellbeing.

“I don’t think so, boss”, F.R.I.D.A.Y. unhelpfully supplied, “There doesn’t seem to be an imminent threat.”

“Oh-kay”, he turned around, dropping his arms to his side, thinking, “Tap into the voice recording of the watch, F.R.I.”

“I think that would be a violation of the privacy setting you have discussed with Mister Parker.”

“Well, the kid would feel a lot more violated if Ironman were to show up at his school without reason. God that sounded wrong. Just do what you’re told. He can have privacy when I’m dead.”

“Very well, boss.”

Not a second later the slightly metallic version of a teenager’s voice filtered through his lab and he frowned in confusion. That voice didn’t belong to either of the two nerds Peter usually hung out with and it didn’t belong to Flash. He hadn’t known that the kid talked to more than those three people. After just one sentence, however, it became clear what had caused Peter’s current distress.

“-posed internship all you want, maybe Stark Industries does a few things right but the truth is, that your dear Tony Stark’s fortune is built on blood and death. He’s not the hero he claims to be. He never stopped being the merchant of d-“

“No.”

Tony all but flinched at the kid’s cold and steady tone. Peter wasn’t ever supposed to sound so angry. He listened to the kid argue, still unsure whether or not to deploy the suit right away or to get rid of the armor again.

“You have no idea what he’s doing to keep all of us save. He flew a nuke into a wormhole, that our government sent, knowing it would essentially obliterate all of Midtown. He didn’t know if he would make it out alive. He sacrificed himself for all of us. And he did so without hesitation or thoughts to his own wellbeing. Don’t you dare call the person who saved your fucking life the merchant of death.”

That was also the first time that Tony had ever heard Peter curse but he let it slide in favor of concentrating on the jagged breathing coming through the speakers, worried the teenager would start hyperventilating and eventually pass out.

The other boy scoffed and the billionaire could do nothing but watch the red numbers, that were telling his kid’s blood pressure, continue to rise. And his mind was still battling about what to do. Was this really an argument that Ironman should interrupt? Where the hell was Ned anyway?

“Oh yeah, maybe he did that out of the goodness of his heart. Or maybe because he was still feeling guilty. And what about Sokovia? What about all the people that died so your supposed superheroes could have a little party? What about your dear Tony Stark’s Ultron? What about that German airport they destroyed because they couldn’t get their heads out of their asses? He somehow even got Spiderman to fight on his side. That guy would be better off without ties to Ironman. People actually-“

“Shut up!”, Peter yelled and the sound made Tony’s stomach curl in hatred for the person who had elicited such a furious response from the usually calm and happy kid. “You have no idea what you are talking about! He was fighting to keep us safe from their flaws. They’re heroes, they’re not perfect. He was one of the ones who actually signed the Accords, no matter how much they needed amending, because he believes that superheroes need to be held accountable, too. And Spiderman- Spiderman wouldn’t even be alive without Tony Stark you, you-“

Before Peter could actually find an insult to throw at the other’s head, another familiar voice sounded through the speakers in Tony’s lab and he thanked the gods for Peter’s best friend finally making his entry.

“Hey Peter”, Ned called, either oblivious to the tension that was palpable even through audio or actively choosing to ignore it, “Your ride is outside and he’s getting annoyed at the delay. Sorry, Matt, we gotta go.”

A short pause in which all Tony could hear was the metallic scratching and shuffling of fabric and then hushed voices. “Come on, dude. Let’s get outta here.”

Peter seemed to follow Ned’s lead because he heard slow footsteps echoing through a wide room. And thankfully the kid’s heart rate was slowly returning to normal. Even his blood pressure had gone down to 140 to 90 since Ned had gotten there and for the first time since getting the distress signal, Tony felt his own heartbeat calm down, too, and he let out a breath.

He logged out of the watch’s audio once Ned had successfully calmed Peter down and had dropped him off with Happy and he was sure they were both on their way to the Tower.

Suddenly he felt more tired and older than ever before, well, at least ever since almost dying. He couldn’t wrap his head around someone as pure and good as Peter defending him of all people. He had never seen himself as anything other than a major fuck up and he had credited the fact that Pepper, Rhodey and Happy had kept around at all, to them all having to atone for some thing or another they had done in a previous life. There was no way they were sticking around for anything else. No way could someone, who wasn’t as thoroughly fucked up as he was himself, ever even consider loving him.

And still here they were. With Peter wanting to hang out with him, wanting to be mentored by him and defending him in front of people in his school when he was already being bullied.

His heart felt too full and he couldn’t help but feel the weight of the trust the kid had in him, press down on his torso, suffocating him. It was all too much. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t figure out how to be this person that Peter saw in him and he couldn’t bear to disappoint him again. Not him.

Fuck. No. Not a panic attack. Not now. Nonononono.

Without his command, the part of the suit he was still wearing started flying him to the nearby couch, depositing him on it before slipping off of his body so he could curl into himself.

In. 3, 2, 1. Out. 3, 2, 1. In. 3, 2…

He managed to pull himself back from the edge, something he had gotten a lot better at recently, especially when the Spiderling was about to show is face. He was refusing to let the kid see him spiraling into a full blown panic attack. So far his thick head had gotten him farther than his improving mental health, though he suspected it did play a part.

Instead of going back to working on his car, he pulled up the Iron Spider Suit and started working on a few minor improvements and new safe keeping protocols – something that never failed to calm him down – and that was how he occupied himself until Peter got there. Trying not to think of how easy it would be for him to break something so precious that he deserved no part in.

He wouldn’t.

Not quite twenty minutes later the doors to his lab slid open and Tony felt the new presence in the room more than he actually heard the soft footsteps on the floor. He didn’t turn around and for a while Peter didn’t speak up either, simply plopping down on the couch Tony had occupied earlier and watching his mentor work in silence.

Then, really quietly, barely enough to reach the mechanic’s ears hadn’t he been waiting for the words, he heard, “Why do you do this? Why don’t you tell the world what you do to keep them safe every day? Why do you let them believe that you’re not really a hero?”

Tony almost choked on his own spit. So many replies were running through his mind then and he couldn’t bring himself to voice any of them because he didn’t have the heart to tell this kid, his kid, that he didn’t believe it himself. Instead he made up some bullshit excuse about people not needing to know and about them being better off not knowing but of course that wasn’t enough to convince Peter. He had the uncanny ability to see through his crap from still a mile out and he was currently not even five feet away.

The teenager was watching him with knowing eyes. Eyes that went right through his superficial Tony Stark persona and into his soul, dissecting every inch of it without judging. He hated being so see through to people, he hated that apart from his friends who had dealt with him for years, this boy had managed to walk past all his walls and really see him. He adverted his eyes, busying his shaky hands with some (useless) reprogramming of the suit.

Still, he didn’t turn his body away and that seemed to be all the incentive Peter needed to walk up to him and rest a hand on Tony’s shoulder. Of course he had picked up on Tony not being too fond of being touched and tried to avoid it especially when he knew Tony was on edge.

Although, that wasn’t entirely true. A fact he had only started to realize himself – Peter’s touch was okay. It would always be okay.

“You know you’re a hero, right?”

The kid’s voice sounded so self- assured and certain where it was usually rambling and timid, that he had to look up to meet his eyes. He said it like there was nothing that could convince him otherwise, and maybe there wasn’t, because he was stubborn, too.

Meeting the warm brown eyes of his mentee had been a mistake, though, because at seeing the unconditional loyalty (And love? Was that love?) in them, he felt the tears that had been threatening to spill ever since listening to him defending his honor actually fill his eyes and had to blink them away in favor of being able to see Peter’s face.

Also, he refused to cry in front of the teenager.

He didn’t deserve the look he was getting but he couldn’t bring himself to look away. Something in him wanted to make him see that he was not the man Peter believed him to be but as much as he believed it himself – he couldn’t, for the love of it, bring himself to dim the hope and trust in the kid’s eyes with his own self-loathing. He refused to be responsible for Peter ever having to see more darkness in the world than he absolutely had to. And even that he would fight tooth and nail.

Instead he stayed quiet, silently enjoying that the teenager didn’t move away but after a moment it felt as if their moment was over and before it could get weird, he started to turn back to his work. The small hand on his shoulder with the strong grip wouldn’t let him, though.

The billionaire didn’t tell him how the touch grounded him, just raised an questioning eyebrow and that seemed to embarrass the kid, making him get flustered but never actually releasing his grip or loosening the strength he still projected with his eyes. Right now he was being strong for both of them and he seemed to realize it.

Tony hated that he had to.

“You’re my hero”, Peter told him quietly, unwavering even as his cheeks were turning pink, “Not just because of Ironman but because of you. Tony Stark – genius, inventor, mentor – is my hero. You are a hero.”

The repetition sounded like a mantra and maybe it was and it was all Tony could do to stare up at him, still not quiet believing. Some 15 year old kid’s words couldn’t erase everything Tony had been told to believe his entire life but they were a start because he could already feel part of the armor around his heart melt.

It was obvious that Peter thought their moment was over then, that he was close to stepping over an undrawn line, so he started his usual nervous word vomit to, metaphorically, take a step back. “And uh. I know you’re not into hugs and... uh.. touching in general but I really wanted you to know that and I’m just- I’m gonna go n-“

The grip on his shoulder tightened shortly, then the hand lifted but before Peter could stumble backwards (and right into Dum-E) Tony’s Hand shot out, holding the boy back. And then he was standing (he didn’t remember giving his body the signal) and, after just a millisecond of hesitation, he pulled the kid into a hug.

It felt awkward at first, both their bodies surprised and rigid next to each other, and he wanted to slap himself and pull away immediately, thinking that this was a mistake. But when Peter’s arm snaked around his waist tentatively and the boy’s body started relaxing against his own, he could feel, with every fiber of his being that he had wanted that hug since forever but had been afraid to ask.

He should’ve known. Peter was big on touching but he would never try to pressure because Tony was known for being really big on not touching.

After a moment, Tony relaxed, too, and tightened his arms around this kid who had somehow managed to waltz past all the barriers and walls he had so painstakingly erected.

“Thank you, Underoos”, he said in his ear before he pulled away, “That means a lot to me.”

He had wanted to give a sarcastic retort of some sort but felt it get stuck in his throat somewhere on the way and he was glad because the smile he got in return was the brightest he had ever seen and he knew without a doubt that his answering smile was just as open and that this kid was one of maybe three people he let see that smile, his real one.

Tony coughed slightly, all the emotion suddenly getting stuck in his throat, and patted Peter’s back, “Let me show you the new feature I’m working on for Karen.”

It was like a switch had been turned in the kid when he started talking about everything and nothing all at once. Years – hell even months ago – Tony would’ve threatened anyone who dared to disrupt the silence in his lab with rambling but here he was, enjoying whatever the kid had to say just because he liked listening and knowing what was going on it his brain.

Tony turned back around to the screen, knowing that Peter would follow suit, and started working again. Without looking up again he said “Oh, and Peter? Don’t get into fights because of me, will you?”

“What’s gotten your panties in a twist?”

Peter barely had the energy to look up to see his aunt standing in the living room with her arms crossed. “Uh- oh. Hey Aunt May, didn’t know you’d be home already.” He trailed off with a deep sigh and went back to staring straight ahead at the dark TV screen.

A moment passed and he would’ve thought she had gone to her room to change into something more comfy like she usually did, hadn’t he been so acutely aware of her presence – her heartbeat and breathing pattern so uncannily familiar that it immediately calmed him down. He knew he worried her by sitting on the couch without moving a muscle, still in his Spidersuit minus the mask, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it.

Another sigh, May’s this time, and he heard her drop her bag before starting to move towards him, her already soft footsteps muffled by the carpet. He still didn’t move but when she sat down next to him and put an arm around his shoulders he felt his muscles start to relax and he allowed her to pull his head onto her shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

He shrugged even though he could already hear his aunt rolling her eyes at his ‘grumpy teenager antics’ as she liked to call them.

“Okay, let me rephrase that”, she said, her arm tightening around his body, pulling him a little closer still, “Are you physically hurt because of your superheroeing beyond something I can fix with my first aid kit?”

“No, Aunt May”, he answered truthfully, turning his head until his face was buried in the crook of her neck, “I’m fine.” His voice came out muffled but even he realized that he didn’t look or sound fine right now.

“Good.” She pressed a kiss to the top of his head like she had done ever since he was a little child and he felt tears spring to his eyes at the comfort it provided. “Emotionally hurt then?”

He shrugged. She sighed.

“Teenager angst? Did something happen at school?”

He shook his head but stopped once her hand came up to the base of his neck, rubbing soothing circles into his skin.

“Superhero angst?” Shrug. Sigh.

“Do you want me to call Tony?” He shook his head, then changed it to a shrug.

At this point he knew she was humoring him despite being actually concerned. It was part of their routine. It was what they had always done when he needed to talk but didn’t really know how to go about it. May, in her eternally patient way, simply asked him yes-no questions until the dam burst and he spilled whatever was weighing him down. The familiarity of it all made the corners of his lips turn up slightly.

“Is it about Tony? Do I need to have words with him?” Now she sounded protective and Peter loved her even more for her readiness to go toe to toe with a billionaire superhero just because he might’ve hurt his feelings.

“No”, he let out a deep breath and turned his head until he was facing forward again, while never moving out of his aunt’s embrace, “He didn’t really do anything. It’s just- He doesn’t- Ugh.”

“Sort your thoughts, Pete”, she told him gently, “Then tell me.”

The teenager nodded and for a bit he simply enjoyed the feeling of her fingers carding through his curls, trying to make sense of everything he had been feeling ever since he had gotten home. He had been so caught up in his feelings that he hadn’t really tried to wrap his head around it so far, he had simply let himself get stuck in the emotional component of it all.

“I told you how today was this meeting with the rogue Avengers and Secretary Ross about amending the Accords, right?” It was a rhetorical question – they had had a very long, very emotional conversation about why Spiderman had to partake in that meeting in the first place – but his aunt nodded anyway, though she seemed a little tense, prompting him to keep going.

“It went okay, I think.” It really had gone good. Better than Tony had expected it to which, considering his fatalistic attitude at times, wasn’t all that surprising, but not even Colonel Rhodes had believed it to go so smoothly. “There was a lot of talking, not much screaming. It was a very grown up conversation, you would’ve liked it. There are going to be a few more follow-up meetings until it’s all finalized but the cornerstones are already mapped out. So, the meeting ended with scheduling another meeting.”

“But that’s a good thing, right? Why are you so upset about it?”

Peter lifted his head from his aunt’s shoulder then and leaned away to really meet her eyes for the first time that evening. “They scheduled the next meeting for next Thursday.” Pause. “That’s May 29.”

He watched the confused frown slowly morph into understanding first and then she smiled at him, ruffling his hair again.

“He won’t be busy with the meeting all day, though, right? He’ll still have time to celebrate his birthday.”

“You know what he told me, when I asked him why he didn’t veto that date?”, he wanted to know, suddenly feeling his suppressed anger and smoldering discontent flare up in his chest bright and red. “He told me that ‘getting the world its heroes back is a lot more important than some birthday’”, he recounted, his voice laced with mock when he imitated his mentor, “especially his. And I feel like he doesn’t even realize that he is a hero, too! You know, he goes on and on about how America needs its Captain back when Captain America was the one who left him hurting alone in effing Siberia. He doesn’t care about what getting them pardoned means for him! He doesn’t care that he’ll be miserable once they’ve been put under his care and supervision. He’s going to have to see them every day, May! And he flinches whenever Steve Rogers just moves too fast. Yet whenever I try to tell him that he’s a hero, too, he deflects and I hate it. I hate how lowly he thinks of himself. I mean that’s my hero he’s badmouthing and he doesn’t even realize it. He- It makes me so angry!”

“Sorry”, Peter added, breathing heavily after his outburst. He hadn’t meant for it all to come out like that, he hadn’t meant to put all that on May’s shoulders because she had enough to worry about as it was. Hell, he hadn’t meant to get so angry at Tony, he hated being angry. But he couldn’t stop it. It was wired deep into his soul that he had to protect the people he cared about. He just hadn’t ever had to protect someone from themselves.

It wasn’t that he was a stranger to self- doubt. No, he’d been different all his life and he knew exactly what it felt like to feel out of place and unworthy and just plain wrong but he had always had May and Ben telling him off for thinking like that and he’d had Ned in his corner who was different, too, and who helped him embrace it. They never let him talk down on himself. There had always been someone there to catch him when his doubts pushed him over the edge.

In his eyes, Tony Stark was just what this world needed, what he needed. With all his imperfections and the mistakes he had made and continued to make, he never gave up and never stopped caring about random teenage kids he found swinging through Queens, even though the world had told him off far too often.  

“It’s okay, baby”, May whispered, giving him exactly the right amount of time to wallow in his thoughts before pulling him back up, “Sometimes it’s hard to see all the good you’re doing when everyone only ever shows you where you messed up. And it’s a hard habit to break someone out of. But Tony’s strong, too, and he’s got a lot of people in his corner. We all just need to keep telling him every once in a while.”

“I guess”, he sighed in agreement, suddenly feeling worn out now that his anger had run dry, “It’s very infuriating, though.”

“It is”, she nodded and opened up her arms for him to fall into which he did, enjoying how every hug felt like coming home. “But you’re pretty stubborn, I think if someone will get through his thick skull it’s gonna be you.”

Peter grinned, feeling lighter than he had ever since that meeting. “You bet. And I’m getting him to shift that meeting around. I don’t care if the other Avengers had some surprise birthday gift planned. I’m not letting him spend his birthday with people who hurt him. Not on my watch.”

“You’re invited to my surprise birthday party, too, I take it?”, Tony greeted May as she stepped out of the elevator. She didn’t even seem too shocked at the revelation that her nephew had effectively messed up the only thing making a surprise birthday party a surprise – not telling the person in question.

“You don’t have too many friends, Stark”, she gave back without missing a beat, though the playful twinkle in her eyes gave away that she was joking, “I’d be nice to the ones who actually like you.”

“So you do like me?”, he grinned, accepting her half hug graciously, “Now I’ll finally be able to sleep through the night again.”

May pulled back, now openly laughing, and found the billionaire looking equally relaxed. “You’re looking good”, she told him seriously as she took in his faded blue jeans and plain black t-shirt. He was in socks and the only accessory he was wearing was a leather bracelet with an engraved spider she knew Peter had gotten him as an alibi birthday present. There were no sunglasses hiding his eyes and no watch with built-in kill switch. Right now he wasn’t Ironman and he wasn’t even Tony Stark.

He was just Tony. Pepper’s fiancée, Rhodey’s and Happy’s best friend, Peter’s sorta-dad and her sorta- co-parent partner.

It had taken her a while to separate Tony from the masks he usually put on for the world to see but it had been worth it. She could see why his friends had stuck around for so long and why Peter had kept insisting that he was ‘one of the good guys’, why he kept looking up to the man even when he screwed up.

“Don’t tell Pep, she gets jealous.”

The smirk he shot her would’ve riled her up only a few months ago but she’s seen him with Pepper often enough to know that there was no way he would ever be unfaithful to her. He was like a lost puppy without her and he was smart enough to keep the only woman who could handle him and continuously challenged him. He didn’t even seem to realize that it worked the other way around, too, for Pepper.

“Why are you up here anyway? I thought you were all meeting downstairs to get the whole surprising going.”

May nodded, “But someone’s gotta get you to go downstairs without telling you what we’re doing, don’t we?”

“Yes, because you’ve all done such a good work keeping this party a secret from me”, Tony shook his head with a bemused smile, “What did you do to get singled out like that?”

There was that low key self- deprecating that had prompted Peter to throw the whole party in the first place but May took it in stride, knowing enough about Tony to know how to talk to him when he tried to talk down on himself. Honesty usually worked best because he never seemed to expect it.

“I volunteered”, she told him with a shrug, “Peter wanted to but we didn’t think he could get a single word out without spilling the beans and we wanted to give you the chance to act all surprised to make him happy.”

“That’s very thoughtful of-“

“Besides”, she interrupted him, watching his face closely for his reaction, “I wanted to give you your present before you meet the others so you can get those tears out of the way and don’t have to pretend you’re not crying.”

His expression was priceless, May decided, and it was a shame she didn’t get it on camera. She enjoyed every second of his micro expressions, though. How his mouth fell open, actually surprised, and he looked like he was about to protest the accusation once he had gotten over the initial shock before he decided to instead mock her, the skin around his eyes already crinkling before the – undoubtedly sarcastic – words could leave his mouth. Before he had formed a sentence, though, May pulled out his present and continued to watch.

He frowned in confusion when he took the book from her that had a small spider and two bigger ones on the cover. She had personalized the two adult spiders – one was wearing her glasses and the other had an arch reactor on its body. The little spider was ambitiously climbing up the water spout while the two bigger ones stood on the ground, looking up at the little one in concern and/ or fascination (it wasn’t that easy to interpret feelings into minimalistic drawn spiders). They looked eager to catch their little one when it would undoubtedly be washed out again.

Next to the drawing the nursery rhyme was written in artful calligraphy and after a stunned moment it was that detail that Tony decided to comment on.

“Itsy Bitsy Spider? Really?”, he asked amused, “I’m starting to think that your family has a very unhealthy obsession with arachnids.”

She ignored him and instead gestured to the book, “Open it. We’ve only got twenty minutes until we’ll be expected downstairs.”

The first page of the photo album was a picture of Peter, May and Tony at Peter’s last Science Fair. He was posing proudly with his cheap plastic trophy while May and Tony stood to either side of him, sharing a grin over the top of his head.

He met her eyes then and she had never seen him as uncertain and insecure as he was looking now. His gaze screamed Are you sure? at the same time as it begged Don’t take it away. Frankly, it broke her heart but it also made her proud that he was letting his walls down so completely with her, that he trusted her so much.

She poked him in the side, an invitation to keep going, and watched him flip to the second page, her eyes filling with tears as her own gaze fell on the slightly faded pictures of toddler Peter with his parents and slightly newer ones with Ben.

Tony didn’t say a word as he continued to go through the book, pausing ever so often on pictures of Peter he hadn’t seen before, but she watched him the whole time and she saw the two lone tears that trailed down his cheeks until they got lost in his goatee. He didn’t even seem to realize, too captured by the pictures she had chosen.

There were pictures of Peter on his own, dressed up, doing stunts, just grinning stupidly at the camera or caught off guard. There were pictures of him with his parents and with Ben and her – happy memories that had taken her a long time to revisit. Then came a time when there weren’t many pictures of him at all and were his smile seemed a little off.

Towards the end the images had him laughing more and his eyes shining brighter again. There were new pictures, just with May this time, and then came the first picture with Tony. It was a screenshot of the video message Peter had sent her from his ‘internship retreat’ in which Tony looked at Peter while the teenager grinned into the camera, obviously over the moon.

“May- I can’t-“

She shushed him and turned to the next page for him when his hand was shaking too much to grab the paper.

More pictures of Tony and Peter. Some in the lab, some in the park, some in a greasy diner or at Delmar’s. There were some with May and with Pepper and with Happy and Rhodey. In everyone, Peter was the center of everyone’s attention and his smile shone through the pages, making her smile through her own tears.

On the last page was a picture of Peter from just this week. He was in his Spiderman suit, the mask lying forgotten on the chair behind him, and he seemed oblivious to the picture being taken. He was on a video call with Ned and was hanging from the ladder of his bunk bed with only one arm and leg. The other arm held an Ironman figurine he was flying through the air, mouth open because he seemed to be commenting his adventures.

Underneath it, written in May’s chicken scratch – though she had tried her best – was a tiny paragraph.

 Dear Tony,

you never had to step up like you did but thank you for doing it anyway. Thank you for encouraging him, and for chastising him when it’s called for. Thank you for being a dad and a hero to our boy.

You’re family.

May

 She read her own writing over his shoulder and had to swallow past the lump in her throat once more. This was big. For both of them. It wasn’t that she was scared he would run because he’d had so many chances to run and had decided to stick around but still, she was nervously waiting for his reaction.

It took him a moment to fall out of his stupor but when he did, she was surprised that he hugged her. Not the half hug they had compromised on for greetings but a fully body hug, in which he held on to her like a life line.

“Thank you”, she heard his hoarse voice whisper again and again and again. “Thank you for letting me be a part of your family. Thank you for this. Thank you for everything, May. You’re one of the strongest women I know to have raised such a wonderful boy.”

For a while they stayed like that, wrapped around each other, until their tears had dried up and their voices weren’t as shaky anymore.

“I’d say it was a good call to give it to you up here, don’t you think?”, she joked once she got her bearings back.

“You’re a very smart woman, May Parker”, he gave back, finding his way back to his usual snarky self. “Shall we?”

“It is my distinct pleasure.”

They sauntered towards the elevator in companionable silence, hands brushing against each other as they walked as it happened with two people close to and comfortable with each other. The photo album had gone back into hiding in May’s bag but it felt lighter now that it had been put out there, like a subconscious weight she had carried with her until she had seen the honest tears and bright smile.

F.R.I.D.A.Y. didn’t need to be told where to go and so they started their descent without a word until suddenly Tony’s voice interrupted the silence.

“F.R.I. stop the elevator.”

“Wh- Tony?”, May asked, her heart beating faster in her chest when she saw the scared look in the billionaire’s eyes, “What’s wrong?”

He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut, a fist coming up to press against his chest. His breathing was accelerating and she reached out on instinct when he stumbled forward a few steps in the tight space.

“I- I can’t do that”, he managed to get out through clenched teeth and suddenly his eyes were open again, looking wildly around the elevator until they settled on her, widening with panic.

A panic attack. Oh no.

“Relax”, she whispered, immediately going into mum-mode as Peter called it, and pulled him to the ground with her. “Breathe, Tony. It’s okay. You’re okay. We’ve got all these amazing people there to see you. We’re all with you. You’re safe.”

Tony shook his head though, fighting through his jagged breathing until he could get the words out. “I can’t- I’m not a parent, May. I’m not. I’m a mess. I-“, his voice broke and he tried to blink the tears away that threatened to take his sight, “A parent should be the one encouraging, helping. He- He shouldn’t have to throw me a party to tell me I’m alright. I shouldn’t be such a fucking mess. I can’t- I can’t, May. I can’t ruin him. Please. Please don’t let me.”

Her body worked on instinct again when she pulled his head into the crook of her neck, her hands finding his hair and soothingly carding through it like she would do for Peter.

“We’re all a mess sometimes, Tony”, she whispered, “Parents are allowed to be messes. God, you should’ve seen me after Ben’s death...”, she trailed off, voice breaking, “And I’m still here and so is Peter. We’ll get through anything, together, that’s what families do, right? You’re not going to mess him up. Just... just let him do this for you, try to listen to the people who love you more than to the ones who don’t. You can do that, right? Ignoring assholes is one of your specialties. Just ignore yourself sometimes.”

That actually earned her a wet laugh and she smiled into his hair when his arm snaked around her waist, stroking her back ever so slightly. Only then did she realize that she was crying, too.

“See, we’re all messes.” She sniveled. “Parenting is supposed to make you a mess and it’s supposed to scare you that you could mess your kid up. But you’re supposed to say ‘Screw you, doubt!’ and do it anyway. Because you’re a parent now. Parents are the strongest superheroes the world has ever seen. Nothing can come against us when it’s about our kid.”

“Sometimes part of our job is to let our kid reassure us, too. Sometimes he needs it as much as we do”, she added after a moment of silence that was only interrupted by both their heavy breathings, “This is not a one sided relationship. You get back, too, on occasions. You can’t and shouldn’t take their gratitude for granted but you should accept it when it comes.”

Tony nodded finally and pulled back, leaning back against the wall of the elevator, just as May did the same opposite of him. “Think we can get away with ten more minutes before we go in?”, he asked quietly, wiping at his eyes, and May nodded because there was no way she would go anywhere looking like this.

“Yeah, I mean they won’t start the party without their guest of honor.”

“SURPRISE!”

The doors to the elevator hadn’t even fully opened yet when he was met with the eardrum piercing yell from way up high on the ceiling and before Tony had the chance to blink, Peter was already sailing down and with him confetti started falling down from all over the place. As soon as the Spiderling had landed, he started singing – loudly, confidently and horribly off-key – and a heartbeat later everyone else had joined in, too.

Happy and Rhodey were standing in front of a huge “Happy Birthday Mr. Dad, uh, Tony” banner, grinning from ear to ear not even bothered by the purple party hats they were wearing that were complimenting their purple bowties. Each of them held a confetti gun in their hands, aimed directly at him.

Pepper stood a little to the side, rocking a dark blue glittery hat, with a champagne flute in her hand that he was about 97 percent sure was filled with apple juice. She was singing, too, almost as badly off-key as the kid and at least as happy about it, too.

When he turned around, he found that May had pulled out a green party hat, too and had joined the awful singing band, winking at him when his wide eyes met hers.

Tony had had a plan. Of course he had. He always needed plans for everything. And he needed plans in place should his plans fail. He needed so many fail saves that sometimes he ran out of letters in the alphabet to name them. Even though this had been supposed to be a surprise party, he had planned exactly how he wanted to act surprised and, as it usually happened, his plan flew right out of the window when he couldn’t even see through the thick confetti shower.

He squinted at his friends – his family – once the song had finished and was about to say something when both Happy and Rhodey made use of their weapons and added some more color to his already color-improved former black shirt. They caught him mid motion and he had to spit out a mouthful of confetti before he could start to chastise them.

“Mr. Stark! Happy birthday!”

Suddenly he remembered why this was supposed to be a happy moment – why he was supposed to be thrilled about being drowned in shards of colorful, glittery paper – just as Peter’s arms wrapped around him in the most physical hug they had shared as of yet. He let his body melt into the embrace and his hands found his curls of their own accord. The answering beam was worth the knowing smiles his friends shot him.

“Mr.Stark”, Peter giggled, still peering up at him, “You’ve got some confetti stuck in your frown.”

“Yeah, and who’s fault is that?”, he shot back with a smile even as he let Peter pick the offending piece of pink paper from his forehead.

“It’s kind of your fault for frowning on your birthday”, the Spiderling retorted and took a step back then.

He seemed a lot more self-conscious now that the adrenalin was wearing off and he was fidgeting with the sleeves of his hoodie until Tony’s hand covered his and he shot him a reassuring smile.

“You want me to throw the gang out for our heart to heart or-“

“No, no it’s fine”, Peter straightened up and finally met his eyes again, “They know why we’re here anyway. The only one who doesn’t get it yet is you. So I’m gonna need their support for this. You have to promise not to interrupt or disagree, though.”

The billionaire blinked at the teenager incomprehensively for half a minute before nodding. “Seems a little unfair seeing as this is my birthday but fine.”

“O-okay, so”, Peter started with a slight stutter before squaring his shoulders and taking a deep breath, “The Cambridge dictionary defines a superhero as someone who has-“

“Wait!”, Tony interrupted, hand raised to stop the kid from talking, he imagined his eyes had to be comically wide but he couldn’t help but stare, “Did you actually prepare a speech? Like you wrote it down and practiced it and-“

“Mr. Stark!”, the teenager whined, glaring at him, “You couldn’t keep your promise for, what? A total of five seconds?”

“Sorry, sorry. I’m just, uh”, the billionaire looked around the room and, finding no support from his friends, “I’m just gonna take a seat right… uh, right here”, he finished a little lamely as he dropped down to the ground cross-legged, watching in amusement when all the adults followed his example until Peter was the only one standing. After a moment of hesitation, he sat down as well, situating himself opposite of Tony, his gaze open and earnest.

“As I was saying, The Cambridge dictionary defines a superhero as someone who has a special strength and uses it to do good things and help other people, as well as someone who has done something very brave to help someone else.”

Tony had to physically restrain his hands by sitting on them to not start fidgeting right away. He was also biting down on his lip so he wouldn’t interrupt the speech again, no matter how much every fiber of his being wanted to protest.

“I know you don’t think you have a special strength”, Peter continued, “I know you think that special strength means being physically strong or enhanced in some way or another but that’s not true. You have so many strengths that are so much more important than any of that. Some might say that your biggest strength is your brain. You’re really really smart, Mr… Tony.”

The boy smiled up shyly at him and Tony decided then and there that he would sit through actual torture again if only he kept smiling at him like that.

“I agree. Ever since I was a little kid, I looked up to you because of your intellect. I was in awe of someone who could build their own superhero suit in a cave out of nothing but scraps and determination. Uncle Ben told me that you were hurt, too, and that made you so much stronger in my eyes. You saved yourself when almost everyone had already given up on you and you didn’t need enhancement to do it, all you needed was yourself.”

I didn’t do it alone. He wanted to scream, his chest starting to ache in phantom pain when he thought back to Afghanistan and to Yinsen. But right now he had more important things to do than fall back into that hell and so he took a deep breath and tried to listen to Peter’s words. Somehow, miraculously, the kid’s voice managed to calm him down. (It really shouldn’t surprise him anymore.)

“Then when you came back, you broke with everything you thought was wrong without a thought about what it would mean for your company. You were a hero to many for that alone. And then you told the world that you are Iron Man. You were the first superhero who held himself accountable by giving away his identity.”

Tony wondered briefly, how Peter managed to overlook all of his mistakes and all the people that got hurt on his path to rediscovering himself. If it had been some other kid, he would’ve thought they simply didn’t get it but with this particular kid he knew that to be wrong. Peter was smart enough to know that the world wasn’t all black and white, he knew about Tony’s mistakes and he was a superhero himself, he knew that people got hurt sometimes. Yet here he was, calling Tony a hero.

“Iron Man is a hero”, Peter pulled him out of his thoughts again, “But Iron Man is only a hero because Tony Stark is. You’re brave and smart and selfless and those are all traits of a hero but what makes you our hero”, he glanced around the room, waving at the people sitting around them watching him, “What makes you my hero is your heart.”

“You care so much about everyone, even virtual strangers. You care about them so much that you would give your life for any one of them and you have proven that numerous times. You cared about me when you really didn’t have to.” His voice dropped a little, sounding much softer and vulnerable now when he met Tony’s eyes again.

“You put so much time and money into keeping me safe from the moment you first made me the suit. You could’ve stopped there and I would’ve been so grateful but you didn’t. You continued to protect me from my own mistakes, saving me when I screwed up and fixing the messes I made. Again, you could’ve stopped there and I wouldn’t have asked for more, because this was so much more than I expected but, again, you didn’t. You basically took me in – me, Peter Parker, not Spiderman – and you made time in your crazy schedule to hang out with me and to teach me. You never had to do that, no one would’ve expected you to. But you did it anyway because you care so much, even about some random kid from Queens who manages to get himself into trouble every other night.”

The billionaire superhero was already blinking away tears and through the veil he saw Peter doing the same thing, but he smiled through it – the love in his expression warming Tony’s heart like only Peter could. His eyes never left the kid’s. If they did, he would’ve seen that everyone was battling with their own emotions threatening to spill over.

“You never had to step up from being a fellow superhero to a mentor. You never had to step up from being a mentor to being more – to being a dad. And yet you did. That makes you the best superhero to me. And it’s okay if you won’t believe me – us - right away but we’ll just keep telling you. Because we love you.”

Tony swallowed. Tears were running down his cheeks freely now but he didn’t care enough to wipe them away.

All his life he would’ve brushed the emotional speech off, making a counterargument to every bullet point on the list just because he never had dealt well with compliments. Now, for the first time, he didn’t feel the need, though. He didn’t want to prove Peter wrong, instead he wanted to prove him right – wanted to become that man that he saw in him – and if that meant dealing with his low self-esteem and not talking back on compliments? Then he’d work his ass of getting better at those things.

So, instead of arguing, he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Peter. It didn’t take the teenager more than five seconds to uncurl his legs and throw himself into the hug, making Tony almost topple over with the force. He let the tears run freely into Peter’s curls and pressed a kiss to the top of his head.

“I love you, Pete”, he whispered so softly only the enhanced Spiderling could pick up the words, before looking up and waving to the others with the one arm he didn’t necessarily need to keep his kid close to his chest.

“I love all of you. Come on into the hug. This is probably the first and final time I’m offering you all a group hug.”

It wouldn’t be. They all knew that. They came forward anyway.

May hugged Peter from behind, one hand patting Tony’s shoulder. Pepper came up behind Tony to wrap her arms around his waist and pressed a kiss to Peter’s hand. Happy and Rhodey gave their group hug its finishing touch by standing to either side of the bundle and acting as a cocoon around all of them.

This wouldn’t be the last time Tony couldn’t see his worth. It wouldn’t be the last time either of them doubted themselves. But that only meant the others would be there to convince them otherwise.

As a family did.

pic by @lieselfh

story by @josywbu (ao3 I FF.net)

[thesinglesjukebox]

ARIANA GRANDE, MILEY CYRUS & LANA DEL REY - DON'T CALL ME ANGEL

[3.69]

"Independent Women Part III: No Throttle"...

Josh Buck: Absolutely not. [2]

Katie Gill: "Don't Call Me Angel" is a fun piece of movie credits music. There's nothing special here, but it's a jam of a song that would fit perfectly well in the already established oeuvre of middle-of-the-road yet totally serviceable movie tie-in songs. Two of the singers know exactly what sort of song they're in and give it the sultry, radio-friendly, sexy spin the song needs. The third is Lana Del Rey and her inclusion BAFFLES me. This is so far out of her wheelhouse that it's hilarious. Seriously, was Selena Gomez busy or something? The music video for Demi Lovato's "Confident" was practically an audition piece for this type of thing, why the heck isn't she here? [6]

Thomas Inskeep: Ariana does some Grande karaoke, Miley sounds like she'd rather be singing "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," and Lana teleports in to do another take on her breathy schtick (and brings the song to a screeching halt in the process) -- nothing about this, apart from (I imagine) someone's discussion of market share, makes any sense. There's no cohesion here. There's barely even a song. [2]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: So, so, so cringeworthy. Ariana, Miley and Lana sound like reality music TV contestants who were forced to make a song together one week, couldn't get on the same page and ran out of time to rehearse, but had to release something anyways. Ariana is awkward and lonely on the hook, like she's waiting for help that never comes; Miley comes out of nowhere with a cloying shouted verse; and Lana is off in another world mumbling incomprehensible nonsense. Even the backing track has a nervous manic energy. If you want a good song about Charli(e)'s angels, just listen to this instead. [3]

Michael Hong: In high school, I worked on a group project where the only times we met up were when we decided upon a topic and to actually present the whole piece. Rather expectedly, the whole thing fell apart rather quickly and it was a completely embarrassing experience. "Don't Call Me Angel," gives off the same vibe, like Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus, and Lana Del Rey were each given only the title and asked to write something vaguely empowering for women. Each artist sounds like they wrote for a different track and made absolutely no effort to meld styles, instead forcing the producers to try and mash the entire thing together. Even the chorus buries Miley and Lana completely beneath Ariana, perhaps rather wisely as I can't see the group's vocal tones meshing together very well. "Don't Call Me Angel" survives only through the one thing my group never had, natural charisma. [3]

Alex Clifton: How did Ari, Miley and Lana end up in this? I guess it echoes the three Charlie's Angels but this trio doesn't make sense. I can see how individual duets would've worked; Ari and Lana could've done something slow and spacy, Ari and Miley taking a more upbeat route, Lana and Miley singing something retro. This, sadly, doesn't play to anyone's strengths and just ends up being overproduced mush with a decent riff. If I had to pick any artist who could make this song make sense, it would be Rihanna, and the music video would be her in thirteen different outfits kicking ass. [3]

Joshua Copperman: I didn't realize how dated the Max Martin sound was until hearing "Don't Call Me Angel." Pop music is now either created with substance(s) or has substance thrust upon it. Meanwhile, the lyrics are clunkier than ever, "you know we fly/but don't call me angel" no longer endearing melodic math but shallow feminist lip service at a time when "if you feel like a girl/then you real like a girl" can sneak onto a major label record. It's the first time I can't listen to a Martin production without thinking of this unexpectedly poignant stand-up segment about Martin and Cosmopolitan. When the tropical house is so bland, further lyrics stick out more; Miley's pre-chorus ("Do I really need to say it/Do I need to say it again") is lazy, and Ari's vampire metaphors are just baffling. Lana comes out strongest, someone who seldom charts but has more cultural relevance than the former and is much hipper than the latter. Her verse is classy when Ari is unmemorable and Miley cribs from a Rihanna album reject from four years ago. "Angel", though, feels like a reject from 2013, when Miley was in her imperial phase and Ari was just breaking out from Nickelodeon -- in fact, it probably would have had Rihanna instead of Lana at that time. But no matter what trio, one thing is clear: with this lemon, you cannot make Marmalade. [3]

Katherine St Asaph: Remember, "Independent Women Part I" stopped the otherwise great song dead on the bridge to announce it was commissioned for CHARLIE'S AAAAAAANGELS, so "Don't Call Me Angel" earns points already for not doing that. It keeps its product placement to outside context, namely the fact that the song exists despite the three artists having little in common besides having stanbases and sniping at critics. The disparate styles can work together -- see the "Lady Marmalade" remake, unfairly maligned except by a few -- but here there are only anti-synergies. Miley's verse can't decide if she wants to be the track's Mya or the Pink (probably the better idea), but its bluntness also best fits the backing track. Ariana's sighed, harmonized "angel" is a great millennial R&B hook, but one that outside of an R&B song is starved for air. Lana's bridge, though a complete non-sequitur and only empowering if you squint, is also the most sonically charged thing she's done in ages; if there isn't a reason Lana Del Rey hasn't worked with Max Martin beyond "Lust for Life" (I suspect that there is), that wouldn't be the worst career direction. Everyone's part diminishes everyone else's, the exact opposite of what you need from an event single or a Charlie's Angels shine-theory ad. [5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Every big pop collab feels a little unnecessary -- pop stars work based on the idea that they're the center of the universe, and collaborations by their very nature make that seem silly. But this sounds really, really unnecessary. Two artists coming off career highs (and one coming off of "Cattitude") should at least drive some head-to-head comparison, but none of the three credited artists interact in any meaningful way. It's the Batman V. Superman of pop music -- conflict and chemistry built mostly on reputation rather than action, with nothing to defend unless you're an unabashed stan. [2]

Joshua Lu: In which Lana Del Rey learns that her reward for releasing her magnum opus is the opportunity to limp through a thank u, next reject. Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus's voices already feel unbalanced, but Lana's mushy croons are so inapposite that they grind the song to a halt. [3]

Scott Mildenhall: It rattles along satisfyingly, but this never leaves the marks that the intermittent brass punctuation seems to signify. None of that is aided by how Del Rey, unbending in her lack of persona, has to be deployed in the manner of a guest rapper, wheeled on and off through a side door. The inability to sound at home with her collaborators in the way they do with each other is one thing, but the inability to sound anything other than lifeless in the face of them is another, and that's the precise opposite of what's called for. [6]

Will Adams: As out of place as she may seem on paper, Lana's bridge is the only point where the song becomes interesting: the key dips even more minor, and the arrangement has tangible cinematic sweep. The rest is a cluttered shamble of an Ariana Grande album cut, with her and Cyrus trading off lines with all the dubious empowerment of a Barb Wire quote. [4]

Jackie Powell: All right folks get ready for a sports metaphor, because it's coming. Ariana Grande is a bit of a ball hog on this track. What she doesn't seem to understand is if you are going to lead your team, you've got to provide the proper assist to each of your teammates. To me, saving Del Rey until the two-minute mark supports the idea that these "angels" aren't really meant to work together. I thought the purpose of this was to present a team of strong women looking to take on the world via a song that preaches empowerment for this new wave of both feminism and Charlie's Angels films. Where a point guard should pass the ball and set up her teammates on the wings (no pun intended) and under the rim, Grande instead takes all of the shots. When the mic is pointed toward Cyrus after Grande's opening hook, though, she shoots with simultaneous finesse and power, letting her head voice mix well with the potent sound in her chest. If I was reviewing the visual made to accompany "Don't Call Me Angel," Hannah Lux Davis' treatment would receive a [10]. Grande, Cyrus and Del Rey all exude a mystique, ooze sex and expel power. For a Charlie's Angels theme song, that's right on the money. But what confuses me lyrically is how the hook clearly communicates the theme, even nodding to Destiny's Child, but the verses, bar maybe Cyrus', are underwhelming. The clock-tower cowbell loop that runs through and through grabs my attention, but I think Kristen Stewart could write better poetry. [6]

[Read and comment on The Singles Jukebox]

[frequencied]

GAMMA FACTOR, OR: WHAT IT MEANS TO BE OLDER

matt is eight years, eleven months, and twenty three days older than pidge.

"so you take the reciprocal of the square root of one minus the speed over..."

"matt," pidge protests, pen clattering loudly against the desk.

"you wanna be in the garrison someday, right? you're going to be doing these kinds of equations all the time."

pidge looks at him with brows furrowed (skepticism), lips knotted tight like she's bit into a lemon (distrust). this wouldn't be the first time matt's led her on for a joke. but his tone now conveys nothing but honesty (not the first time) and simple patience, tapping the tablet's screen. a couple small equations are scribbled in pidge's hand: here, the distance to kerberos. there, the speed of the ship matt and sam will take to get there. the proposed time of the journey. pidge may have only just started learning algebra in class but there's no way in hell matt's sister is going into middle school without a grasp of the fundamentals of calculus. she's a holt.

"just trust me, okay? it'll be worth it. so you take the speed— in kilometers per second, of course— over c and square that..."

pidge follows obediently, writing out two long trails of digits.

"that's a lot of zeroes," she says.

"it's a fast ship. okay, now plug it into your calculator..."

there's the soft clacking of pidge's fingers typing the equation into her calculator. 

"wait," she squints. "why is it off?"

"why is what off?" he asks, though he can't hide his grin— the one that says I know why, I'm just not telling you.

"the time. it should be ten million. it's ten million and thirty."

lights dance behind matt's eyes like fireflies. "because of special relativity. you remember how I told you about the twins paradox? how if one twin shoots off into space, when they come back, the earthbound twin will be older?"

a second passes. another. when it finally clicks, pidge nearly jumps from her seat.

"we're the twins!"

matt is eight years, eleven months, and twenty three days older than pidge. minus thirty seconds.

they make it to kerberos. matt wonders as the ship reaches its approach velocity if those fifteen seconds come all at once, if pidge back on earth isn't running through a class like an emulator set to double speed. or maybe it happens when they slow down, he thinks maybe he can hear shiro's stretched-out tones as they run through landing procedures as they have a thousand times before. relativity is just that, after all: relative.

they make it to kerberos. they don't make it home.

he tries to keep track of the dilation with the rebels. lose a minute. lose a second. everything becomes twisty with FTL, the mathematical twisting of his equation far easier than the mental twisting he has to do to accomodate to the new circumstances and new allies. but he doesn't spend all his time in his own ship where he can rely on sub-second engine logs; some days he spends aboard vessels that aren't his, stolen from this outpost or that galra cruiser he doesn't entirely understand the nuance of. olia tells him he spent three weeks in a cryopod while his sinews stitched themselves back together after a bad mission, and no one had bothered to log the time or distance of their FTL hops while he was under. he took the average of his weekly time dilation and used that, though the answer always left him unsatisfied. inexact.

he knows this relies on pidge having a consistent velocity. he picks earth, telling himself she must be safe there. it's a comforting thought when the enemy is spotted in the same system as his listening outpost and he flips the switch he prays he never has to flip, the one that shuts off everything but the barest life support; the outpost may be positioned at the far end of a dead system, but it bleeds radiation and rebel transmissions in a way that makes it shine brighter than its pale dwarf star to anyone looking to root out these kinds of stations.

and believe him, there are a lot of people trying to root out these stations.

but the calculus is relaxing. it's relaxing, and more importantly, it serves to keep his mind sharp through the mundanity of a listening outpost. he finds new ways to entertain himself with numbers. he can see the sun from here, so he starts with that— measure the distance from the parallax. use his rebel-provided star charts to find constellations he recognizes on earth, and link them back together to see their strange, malformed shapes from a totally different perspective. orion becomes a giraffe, with an elongated neck and four lopsided limbs. cygnus? now it's a beetle.

he does the math again and again. he tries to lose himself in the numbers. he tries to not think about the fact that for however long it feels like matt's been up here, from earth, it's been longer.

matt is eight years, eleven months, and twenty three days older than pidge. minus seven days, twenty-one hours, and sixteen minutes. he thinks.

matt keeps an eye on voltron.

it's half pragmatism; the rebels need eyes on the defenders of the universe to make sure troops are deployed as necessary, either with or without voltron's backing— sometimes they need cover. sometimes it's about striking somewhere while voltron draws away firepower somewhere else. and while this war has made him a soldier, it's not something that's ever been at his core; matt's rebellion comes at the end of encrypted messages, with colour-coded maps and logs; he compiles data, he watches, he looks for patterns. a war is a puzzle.

pidge tells him they're going after lotor. pidge tells him about the fight. pidge tells him, in an overconfident tone that has become surprisingly like her— the pidge who finds matt is a far cry from the pidge who he knew on earth, but the change isn't an unwelcome one. quite the contrary. he's glad to see her so sure, full of their mother's fire and their father's good judgement— that they're going to stop him, because they're heroes. they have to, right? defenders of the universe.

matt tells her to be careful, because like him, you can never tell pidge not to do something.

voltron goes to fight lotor. voltron does not come back.

matt scrambles with shaking hands and panic screaming up his spine, fighting to keep his tone calm as he outputs for days on all frequencies: where is voltron? has anyone received confirmation from voltron? is voltron still alive?

is my sister okay?

days stretch to weeks.

did I fail her?

weeks stretch to months.

did I fail our parents?

the galra sense this absence and hammer the rebels hard. they're stronger, more voracious now; like an animal with its back to the wall, the empire senses its impending doom and only fights with the sick kind of desperation that can only be found with something coming undone. every line the coalition built is burnt to cinders by sendak and the empire. the blades fall. the rebels do, too. matt's crew of two dozen is reduced to six, and they hide away with the lights off like scared children from the boogeymen.

months stretch to years.

but while he knows the what, he refuses to acknowledge the why. pidge didn't leave a trail. but it's not because she's dead. pidge can't be dead. voltron can't be gone. they need them— they need the defenders of the universe. they're going to lose this war otherwise. she's just busy. she has other priorities. pidge isn't kind enough to leave a trail like matt had because she doesn't have time. he doesn't blame her— can't blame her. pidge doesn't understand what it is to be a big brother, doesn't understand what it is to have your entire being, your beating heart exist to protect another. even when matt was taking his tentative steps into real, tangible rebellion, his every action was guided by a single thought: find me. if shiro is out there, if his dad is out there, if pidge is out there, they'll find him. he hid the clues well, disguised them in math and tricks so deeply ingrained in the holts that only the holts could find them. they had to. they had to.

he looks for them instead in what's missing. places where things should be. the universe is now defined by her absence; so, too, is matt. every instant not spent on the run is spent looking for her.

they find her, eventually. or: she finds them. because of course she does. she always finds them.

when matt sees her again, she's in the hospital, with bae bae giving two loud thumps of her tail as matt approaches. matt pulls his limbs around her and hugs her as gently as he can, fighting every part of him that screams to squeeze and never let go. he lets her talk about the journey through the void, the road trip (he laughs at the name, but it's an expulsion of air, all reflex with no humour), the battle that saved them all. he watches transfixed at her excitement, how even in her darkest moments when they were sure they would die, she burns with the knowledge that they couldn’t. he clenches his fists well below her line of sight until four half-crescents bleed in his palms and tries to not cry.

sitting in this room, watching her body slowly heal beneath sheets and gauze, he wipes away all those calculations of fractional seconds snatched by special relativity. because minutes and days mean nothing when compared to telling their parents that pidge might be dead, to watching his friends and loved ones be taken one by one by the empire in the face of the gaping maw of their absence. 

matt is eight years, eleven months, and twenty three days older than pidge. plus four years.

[peterpcrkcr]

Like You ( part ii)

Part One ;

Peter Parker x Reader

Words: 4.4k +

Summery: Peter doesn’t want to let anyone down so he goes through on another date with Jessica despite what he feels in his heart. You go about your life expecting nothing but the average. Peter just can’t seem to be in the right place and the right time to meet you. Why can’t you two meet without barriers?

Three weeks after the group date and Peter felt drained of most social interactions. Whenever he saw Ned or Cindy, they mostly just asked about how things were going with Jessica. As much as Peter thought Jessica was pretty, or that she had a nice voice, it didn’t alter the fact that he plainly was not interested. Not interested in developing further relations other than politely answering her texts when they buzzed across his screen.

When’s date two?

She sent it on a Thursday as if it had been marked on the calendar for her. Peter was genuinely surprised because he hadn’t thought she’d been interested. When he zoned out during class he would hear the words she said when they parted ways on the date, but from a different mouth and from a different face.

Why does this have to be so difficult? He thought. I should just text her and tell her that I’m not interested in another date. That I don’t really want to see her again if it’s anything more than platonic.

“Hey Peter, about to text Jessica?” Cindy asked as she happened by him on her way to the stage. It was time to practice for a tournament, which meant he had to spend more time doing things with people he didn’t really want to be doing when there was already so much on his plate.

You have to afford yourself some down time. Band and the decathlon team are perfect. Don’t stress yourself to save the world all the time. His aunt had said during dinner one night. He nodded at the reminder and he nodded at Cindy.

“Yeah, actually I was.” Peter waved with his phone in his hand. Cindy smiled so widely it made a crinkle around her eyes. He understood why Ned liked her so much. She was considerate and cute, just like Ned.

“Okay well, maybe once you two get into a relationship we can all go out and do cute couple stuff together!” She said happily before patting his shoulder and making her way up the stage to sit next to Ned.

Next week ok? Saturday around noon we can see a matinée at the movie theater?

She took an eighth of a second to respond back to him, and her answer made a harsh force of guilt run into his stomach.

how about this Saturday? I’m like really excited to see you again

Oh shit.

So then a plan was made to meet up this Saturday for a movie and then maybe get something to eat afterward if they were feeling up to it. He knew she would be and that made him feel a little annoyed but then he relaxed his shoulders and slammed his head on the table in front of him.

He should’ve said no. He should have said he wasn’t interested. He should have apologized for leading her on, and he should’ve told Cindy and Ned that he didn’t want to see Jessica any more in that way. But he didn’t.

That meant he would have to stop being so passive about spending time with her and actually exude some effort. He could be interested, he could find things to enjoy about her that really mattered. It wasn’t that hard, he was just making it so because his mind was wrapped around the idea of another person. A person whom he has not seen walking the halls, nor seen walking the sidewalks. No matter how hard he looked he just could not find her. It was time to give up.

It was cooler outside now than it had been weeks before. When you ran into the local crime stopper. When he called you beautiful. God, every time you thought about that moment it made your cheeks take on a rosy hue and your heart skip a few precious beats. If only it had been Peter who had said it, then it would really matter because there was a relationship to be built off of something like that.

“Hot dogs! Get your hot dogs here!” A man yelled as you passed him by. You weren’t really hungry even though they had to be the best franks in all of Queens. “Two for one!”

Then you stopped, sighed, and turned around to get yourself two for one hot dogs.

“I knew you would stop once I thew in a dog for free...” the man said in his accent. You rolled your eyes as he did them up the way he knew you liked. Sadly and expectedly, you were a regular.

“Yeah well Abdul, with what you charge people I might as well be buying two.” You said teasingly. He held a hand to his chest to pretend as though he had been shot.

“You have hurt my heart!” He said in a strained voice that made you smile. “I hope you enjoy those dogs!”

“Always do, Abdul.” You handed him your last twenty dollars. “Keep the change.”

“You are the love of my life!” He said kissing the bill.

“Yeah yeah...” you said as you started walking away from his little cart.

The day was nice. It was a simple fact and one that really didn’t need elaboration. The sun was shining, the air was cool. People seemed to be in high spirits because the weekend had arrived. Friday was the best day, and no one could convince you otherwise. You took a bite of your first hot dog and felt the condiments smear over your face. It tasted almost exactly how you felt. Warm and good. Simple as that.

Warm and good until you felt someone fall in step with you.

Warm and good until you saw the red and blue tights they wore.

Warm and good until you turned your head to face him and instantly regretted it because there was still stuff on your face. You stopped walking and licked your lips as well as you could before wiping the rest off on a spare napkin you’d nabbed at the cart.

“Hey!” You said trying to ignore the fact that you were completely embarrassed.

“Hi!” He said with a small wave. “Long time no see.”

“Oh, uh- yeah... been a few weeks. I’d be upset that you never called, but I know how busy you are with your job.” You said jokingly, and he actually laughed. That made you blush so you looked down at the symbol on his chest until your face cooled off. It was quiet then save for the people and cars passing by. The two of you didn’t say a word for about two minutes. It was just sort of nice to be standing near someone who had thought so nicely of you.

“Are you headed somewhere?” He finally said in a voice you knew you would never forget. You shook your head and met his eyes again. “I mean, you have two hot dogs...”

“Two for one deal.” You held them up in your hands as if he couldn’t see them already. You could see his cheeks being pushed up by a smile.

“Who’s the second person who gets to enjoy that other dog?” He asked curiously. In a voice that was dyed in the lightest shade of jealousy. You raised an eyebrow.

“Why do you ask? Worried that you’re not the only love in my life, Spider-Man?” You asked making him visibly gulp. If only your knew how much those words really affected him. “You can have it if you like. I was just going to eat it myself, but I honestly think if I ate another one I’d get sick.”

“Are they bad?” He asked as you handed over the unbitten one. You shook your head.

“No, honestly they’re the best in Queens.” You said taking another bite yourself.

“I’ll take your word for it.” He said as he lifted up the bottom on his mask to reveal his mouth. His lips. You felt like the heat of your stare might’ve made his mouth cave in. You were utterly obsessed. With the tone of his skin and the was his lips curled. Thankfully you knew he wasn’t paying attention, because if he had been you might’ve taken off running.

Right before he took a bite, someone bumped into his shoulder which caused the stuff on top of the hotdog to smear over his mouth. You glared at the person as they walked on, but when you saw how silly Spider-Man looked, you stared to laugh.

“Don’t laugh!” He said licking the stuff off of his face. “It wasn’t my fault!”

“I know, but it’s still pretty funny.” You said covering your mouth as if to hide your smile from him.

“Well how about this!” He said leaning forward with puckered lips. You started laughing and almost squealing.

“No!” You said joyfully as you shook your head and leaned away from him. “Please don’t!”

“Why not? It’s your favorite!” He said stepping toward you. You laughed and laughed and laughed and then right when his lips moved toward yours he licked off the rest from his lips and then pressed a kiss to your cheek.

You could’ve sworn you combusted right them and there. The fire department would have all trucks deployed just to cool you off. He stopped smoking and then stood upright. His lips a taught line.

“Are you okay? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” He said in a sincere voice. You shook your head.

“Not that. You didn’t, I’m not-“ you took a deep breath. “You wanna go sit somewhere and finish these dogs?”

“Yeah, I’d really like that.” He said and then the two of you walked to a nearby picnic bench and talked about nothing in particular for an hour and a half before he had to go save someone from something you’d see on the news later that evening.

“That movie was so funny, oh my god.” Jessica said as she pulled her phone from her pocket to turn it on. Peter did the same.

“Yeah.” He said with a half smile on his face.

He hadn’t been paying attention nearly the entire length of the movie. His mind was wrapped around that one tiny interaction with the girl yesterday. He actually felt himself smile when he thought about the tiny bit of ketchup that was stuck to the side of her mouth and how cute she looked even with it there. How he lived for her laughter from that moment on. How he kissed her cheek. He never do that sort of thing, he was in shock with how heavily he’d been affected by her. He went back to reality when he heard Jessica’s voice again.

“I didn’t think a superhero movie could be so funny.” Then she was getting back to all the texts on her phone. He nodded to himself, watched her thumbs work over the screen.

“Yeah, me either.” And then he stood there and waited for his old phone turn on and then he watched as his background lit up with no messages to block it. He glanced up at Jessica and then put his phone back in his pocket. “You wanna go get some pizza?”

“Oh my god, I would love that.” She said locking her phone screen and putting it in her purse. She linked arms with Peter and then started walking down the sidewalk.

Peter kept quiet the whole walk there. Jessica talked about the movie, and occasionally she pulled her phone out and started texting. He really wondered what she was saying, he even peaked over her shoulder from time to time to catch a glimpse of what went on in her head. Not once could he fully read anything on her screen.

When they sat down in an old red booth at and old brown pizza place, she laughed at something on her phone and then set it down.

“What’s funny?” Peter said. He breathed in the scent of cooked dough and pepperoni. He watched the flour dot the air in the light of the kitchen.

“Something (y/n) sent me.” She took a sip of her drink and then shook her head. “She’s so funny sometimes.”

“That’s cool...” Peter looked around for a little and then cleared his throat. He twiddled his thumbs. “So how long have you two been friends?”

“Me and Cindy?” She asked glancing up from her phone. He shook his head, leaned forward in his seat.

“No, you and (y/n).” He said as calmly as he could, enjoying the way her name felt on his lips.

“Oh! For a long time. She’s probably my oldest friend. Our parents went to college together and our moms were actually each other’s maids of honor at their weddings. It’s so cute. We’ve planned to be each other’s maids of honor someday.”

“That’s cool...” He said trailing off. She was looking at the menu while he was trying to think of how to lightly approach making Jessica’s friend into the entire conversation. “It’s weird I haven’t seen her since she goes to Midtown too.”

“Yeah, she said the same thing about you.” Jessica said. Peter’s eyes widened a little bit.

She’d asked about him? Did she wonder all the silly little things about him as he had wondered about her? Was she tall? Short? Did she smile more than she frowned?

“Is she a senior?” He asked. Jessica nodded and then the waiter came over.

“Hey there, have you two decided?”

“Yeah, can we do a pepperoni-“ Peter started, but Jessica was shaking her head. “Oh, I’m sorry. What’s good for you?”

“I mean, we can do half pepperoni if that’s what you like. I don’t want to be rude.” Jessica looked at Peter with kind eyes and he sort of smiled at her and she smiled back. “The other half can just be plain cheese, please.”

“Sound good to you?” The waiter asked Peter. He nodded. “I’ll get that going for you.”

“Thanks.” Jessica said with a smile as she handed the menus over and watched the waiter leave. Then her attention went to Peter.

“What?” He asked with a nervous smile to attempt to cover his nervous voice.

“I’m just glad we’re doing this again.” She said honestly. He laughed awkwardly. “I mean it.”

“Yeah, this is nice.” He said meaning it, but not in that way. Not in the way that felt the same as the way she looked at him.

This was probably the time to tell her that he wasn’t interested in a romantic relationship. That maybe they could be friends. That maybe she could understand that and everything would be fine.

Peter parted his lips and Jessica’s eyes widened just a little bit, excited for what he might say.

“I-“ and then the waiter walked up with a half cheese, half pepperoni pizza.

“There you are!” She said setting it on the table. “This was actually already cooking because it’s our most popular dish. You guys are lucky!”

“Thank you so much.” Jessica said with a light laugh.

“Let me know if you guys need anything.” The waiter said before walking away.

Peter immediately took a slice and shoved the biggest bye he could into his mouth. Jessica took a slice as well, but took a much smaller bite.

“So, what were you going to say before the waiter came over?” Jessica asked wiping the sides of her mouth with a napkin. Peter shook his head.

“Nothing important.” He said and then finished chewing his massive bite. Jessica sighed.

“Okay...” She said in a high voice as she pulled some cheese off of the top of her pizza to eat.

Peter finished his meal with minimal talking. Jessica didn’t seem to mind because she filled the air with conversations of the movie and other various superhero’s in the world. She liked Thor the best, and he totally understood.

He walked with her to her car that she’d parked at the movie theater. She had other things to do that day so their goodbye was short and he liked it that way. No pressure for romance because all the love in his heart had been squared away for someone else.

“I had fun.” Jessica said.

“Me too.” Peter said, telling He truth but not meaning it in a way that meant they should do it again soon.

“Text me.” She said. He nodded and closed the door for her. She waved while she drove away and he smiled as a goodbye.

“What have you been up to?” You asked Jessica as she took a bite of her frozen yogurt. She shrugged, smiled. “Okay, so I know you saw Peter again... tell me about that.”

You didn’t really want her to. The easy idea of Peter made your cheeks turn red. You hadn’t met him and yet it seemed like you knew everything about him already. Like you’d spent time together before and you were just counting down the days until you saw each other again. It was strange because it felt like love and you just couldn’t quite shake that feeling.

“He’s so sweet and I seriously think he is so cute....” she trailed off before taking another bite.

This was the most glowing recommendation Jessica had ever given to any of the guys she’d been with. It made you nervous, but you were happy she sounded a little happy.

“Why does it sound like there’s a but coming?” You asked spooning at the pink lemonade yogurt melting in your cup. She shrugged again, sucked on her spoon.

“We don’t really get along. I mean, I think we do. He doesn’t really ever look interested in me when we’re out together. He also doesn’t talk much, and maybe that’s because he’s nervous, but I honestly think it’s because he’s not interested in talking to me in particular. It doesn’t matter about what. So I sit there the whole time basically talking to myself.”

“That doesn’t sound good, but also Jess,” You said and she looked up from her cup to meet your eyes. “Maybe he just needs time opening up. We don’t know a whole lot about him, maybe he’s super shy with things like this.”

Why were you telling her reassuring things when a bad opinion from you could help cement her insecurities in their budding relationship? Because you cared about her. Because you would never ruin a chance for her to be happy.

“Yeah, maybe.” She said finishing up her cup. “For a nerd he also looks like he’s secretly fit under his sweaters.”

“What?” You asked as you stood from your seat. She nodded.

“Yeah... I’m pretty sure his muscles are toned, which makes no sense because Cindy said that Peter mostly just did paper pushing work at his after school job.”

“Huh...” You said suspiciously.

“Yeah, I know.” Jessica said tossing her trash into the can.

You two walked back to your apartment and you listened to her talk about the cute things Peter did. Like how his eyebrows would furrow when she started talking about something she was reading on her phone. She talked about his jawline and the way his curly hair looked like a dark ocean. You listened faithfully and wholeheartedly because maybe this is what it could be like if you talked to him. The thing was that once Jessica had her sights on someone, all she had to do was wait for them to fall. For Jessica just meeting someone was falling in love for them.

Jessica eventually let that conversation topic go and the two of you settled in to watch First Wives Club to spend more time together. Of course she was on her phone most of the time and it made you slightly jealous.

Was she talking to Peter? Why wasn’t that you?

You sort of felt foolish because Peter was off limits in real life, he should’ve been off limits in your mind. You just couldn’t help yourself. Something about him simply seemed like he was meant for you. As stupid as that sounds, he was meant for you.

“Look at what we have here...” She said with her hands behind her back. Peter watched the way she walked, tried not to rip his mask off and reveal himself because that would be totally stupid and reckless. “Spiderman.”

“It’s me, you caught me.” He said happily.

“What am I going to do with you?” She said in a way that made his heart jump in his chest. It clashed against his rib cage and made him almost lose his breath.

“You can come with me?” He asked holding out his hand. She laughed.

“What? Right now? I’m not busy but I feel like you should be.” She said tucking hair behind her ear. He shook his head.

“Nah, not particularly. It’s the school year, criminals are busy taking their kids to school.” He said.

“Is that true? Criminals have kids and stuff? I mean yeah... but it sounds weird, right?” She asked. He smiled.

“It’s super weird. Especially when one of the criminals you fight turns out to be your girlfriends dad.” He said and she gasped and then laughed.

“What! You’re joking, oh my god you have to be joking!” She gripped his bicep and squeezed. He nodded.

“Yeah, no joke. Sophomore year. Dated this girl, sort of, and her dad was a criminal.” He started walking and she fell in step. People looked at the two of them and snapped pictures, but if peter asked tony politely, they would all be erased. For now he just enjoyed having her near.

“Your life sounds like it’s full of crazy coincidences.” She said. He nodded, laughed a little to himself knowingly.

“You have no idea.” He said in a way that made her wonder what he meant and what he was referring to.

They walked down the sidewalk and chatted about little things that mattered to them. Peter brought up the other avengers in an attempt to impress her, but she mostly just wanted to know how he felt about them; about how he felt about everything. They bought candy and drinks and then he wrapped his arm around her waist and whisked her away to the rooftops.

They sat on the edge and spoke about nothing in particular. He just let himself slow down. He let himself enjoy her company, and every time she smiled with those pink petal lips, he was tempted to tell her who he really was.

“Do you ever wish things could be different?” She asked as she set the cup down on the other side of her. The side where Peter wasn’t sitting. He wondered why she did that since they were sharing the soda between them until she turned a little to face him and their thighs began to touch. He tilted his head, tried not to sweat. God, he hoped she felt as giddy as he did right then.

“Are you asking about anything in particular?” He asked. She grinned, exhaled. He almost thought he saw her start blushing.

“I’m asking about this.” She took his hand and started tracing a fingertip over the fabric while the backside rested on her thigh. It took everything Peter was made of not to kiss her. Not to tell her the secrets he hides. “I’m asking if sometimes you wish you didn’t have to hide yourself away in this suit... live a normal life with the people you love.”

Peter cleared his throat and let himself fall away to the soft pressure her finger put on his palm. He enjoyed the way her thigh would tense and move beneath his hand. She meant herself, he knew it. She meant that maybe if he wasn’t in this suit they could be together. If he wasn’t such a secret.

“I wouldn’t change these powers if given the chance because I feel like they’re important, but I do every now and then. I do when I meet a person that challenges my everyday routine. When I meet a person that makes my heart rate spike just by looking at me. Someone who’s always in the right place at the right time to steal my heart.” He spoke so softly he thought his voice might stop working. Her eyes trailed up from his hand to his eyes. His breath caught in his lungs, his heart jumped to his throat.

“Like me?” She asked in a voice so soft he thought he might never want to hear another sound for as long as he lived. This was crazy, that was only way to describe it. He had never experienced anything like this before. Not only was it a crush, but it was like he had fallen in love at first sight and everything else happening between them was a waiting game to the rest of forever.

“Like you...” he whispered before reaching a hand up to rest begin her ear to bring her head to rest upon his chest. He wanted her to hear his heartbeat, to notice the way she made him feel. After a long while she sat back up and handed the soda back over to him.

As the sun went down over the skyline he watched the colors change in her eyes.

“I wish we could stay like this.” She said as she exhaled. He handed her the soda so she could take a sip and she absentmindedly chewed on the straw. He didn’t think twice about it.

“Me too.” He popped a few M&Ms into his mouth, shifted them into his cheek. He bumped her shoulder so she would grace him with a glance. “Stay like this and watch the world go by.”

“You wouldn’t get bored?” She asked. He shook his head and felt the ends of his lips turn up lovingly. “Just the two of us forever and ever?”

“Never.” He said it so suddenly her eyebrows shot up. The straw dislodged from between her teeth. He leaned his shoulder against hers. He felt his heart rate spike when she leaned her head against him. “I could never be bored of you.”

And they stayed like this and watched the world go by. Cars and planes and kids on bikes. Teens on skateboards and dad’s with babies in strollers. Peter focused only on (y/n) the whole time. His suit started to feel a little claustrophobic, but he’d live in it forever if it meant getting to spend time with her at all.

@twilight-loveer ; @lookclosernow ; @legendarydazekitten

[mymarvelimagines]

His Human Mate - Part 2

You and Loki spend the entire night talking quietly on the couch. You talk about what life on Asgard was like, what being Tony’s sister is like, what his favorite magic spells are. It’s almost like a first date, but Tony is constantly glaring from the corner.

Loki leans closer, his lips brushing against your ear causing a shudder to run through you, “I believe, that Antony is displeased with your choice of company tonight, dove”

You let out a breathy chuckle, “He doesn’t control who I let court me”

Loki lets out an amused chuckle, “I wonder who the true Alpha of your little pack is”

Clint snorts and bursts into laughter, “Y/N’s obviously the one who runs the tower. Tony can’t deny her anything”

“It’s not nice to eavesdrop, Clint. I’m trying to have a conversation” You toss a pillow at him, but it’s easily caught and sent sailing back. Yelping when it hits you in the face you glare at the archer. “Meanie”

Loki chuckles, “Will you go out to dinner with me two days from now? Is that an acceptable first date?”

“I’d really like that, just let me know where you want to go tomorrow so I’ll know what to wear. I mean,” You look up at him through your lashes, making your voice breathy, “I’ve never been courted by a prince before”

His eyes dilate and he inhales, taking in your alluring scent, and the provocative brushes of your consciousness against his. “It is not something you will regret, dove”

“I hope not” You glance up when you hear a soft whine, Tony’s watching you, His shoulders are slumped and he looks tired, but be also looks like he will refuse to leave unless you do. Turning back to Loki, you whisper, “I have to go now, but I’ll see you tomorrow”

Loki brings you hand up to his mouth, giving you the barest brush of his fangs against the thin skin on the back of your hand, then pressing a kiss there before letting you go. “Good night, dove. I will see you on the morrow”

Standing up you hesitate for just a second before darting in and pressing a kiss to Loki’s cheek, “Dream of me, my prince” you breathe, making him shudder when your breath brushes against his ear.

When you pull back you smirk at his slightly dazed look, before turning and making your way to Tony.

“Y/N …” he whines, reaching out for you. The man looks exhausted, he hasn’t slept in 49 hours, and it was past time for some sibling snuggles.

“Come on, big brother, time for bed.” Tony lets out another whine, but he follows you to the elevator.

“When we get back to the penthouse you can shift and we’ll curl up in your room together”

As soon as the elevator doors open Tony starts to shift, easily flowing from his human form into his wolf form. Now in front of you is a brown wolf about the size of a small car. Tony lets out a soft chuff and nudges you further into the penthouse.

“I need to change into PJ’s first, Tones. Go get settled, I’ll be in there in a minute”

After you get dressed you head to Tony’s room. He’s already made a nest out of various blankets and pillows, and before you even get the chance to climb into bed Tony gently grabs you and pull you in.

“You impatient mutt!”

Tony just lets out another growl, shoving his cold nose against your neck. His body is practically covering your, making it so you can’t move. “Move over! You’re gonna smother me!”

Tony just lets out another whine and refuses to move. His mind brushes against yours, and while the wolf can’t use real words he can sent over feelings and images. Right now he’s sending over fear, “Why are you scared Tones? Neither of us are in any danger!”

A flash of you and Loki, and then another feeling, loneliness. “Do you think I’ll abandon you just because Loki’s courting me?” He lets out a soft growl in confirmation, “What did you think would happen? Did you think I would train you for Loki? That I would just forget about you? I’d never do that! You’re my brother! I’d never abandon family”

A feeling of relief flow through you, “You’re so stupid Tony, you really are lucky that I love you”

With a soft huff Tony settles down for the night. You’re glad that you and Tony managed to get your problems settled. Hopefully now he’ll be a little nicer to Loki.

–

Two days later finds you getting ready for your date when the alarm to assemble goes off. Both Tony and Steve are with you, helping you get ready. Steve was doing your hair, and Tony was looking through your closet, yelling about going shopping soon.

Sir, Captain Rogers, you are needed.

“Talk to me, J. What’s going on?”

HYDRA seems to have deployed a weapon. Sensors are unsure what type of weapon; however, SHIELD has called the Avengers to assemble, Sir.

“Thanks, J. Let the team know we’re on our way, and prepare the suit for me”

Of course, Sir.

Tony walks over and presses a kiss to your forehead, “You gonna be on the comms?”

“Yeah, I’ll head there now, can’t have you out there without some sort of conscience to keep you in line”

Steve chuckles, “I’m glad someone has a leash on him”

–

“Y/N! Have the sensors managed to find the HYDRA weapon yet?”

You quickly start scanning the cameras, “It looks like the earth quakes are being generated in the warehouse district. I don’t have an exact location, but I’m working on it”

“Well, can you work any faster?! It’s a little difficult to fire these support arrows when the buildings don’t stay still” Clint shouts as he once again has to relocate.

“I’m doing my best, just give me …”

Tower breach

Tony immediately starts swearing, “Shit, J. Can you tell who’s in the tower?”

Hostiles have entered through the roof; they are making their way through the tower. Sensors are reading 45 heat signatures

“Y/N you need to get out of there. Get into the Hulk-Out room”

“I can’t leave yet, Tony. I’m so close to finding the weapon! Just give me a few more minutes!”

“Please, dove! Get to safety!” Loki begged.

“If I don’t find this weapon more people will die! JARVIS I need some more time! Can you start locking doors? And set the Bots free to cause some trouble”

Of course, Y/N. We shall make it difficult to get to you, however I fear that we will not be enough to stop all of the hostiles

“This was nothing but I diversion! Y/N I’m coming back to the tower” Loki growls

“Diversion of not there are still civilians that need help!! Everyone just keep doing what you’re doing!”

Tony lets out an angry shout over the comm, “Knew I should have made you a suit! After this shit, I’m making you one, I don’t really care how much you bitch”

“Fine, after we stop the earthquakes, you can make me a suit. I won’t even stop you from making the suits that can move on their own! Now shut up so I can get to work”

JARVIS informs you every time a hostile gets to a new floor. They are quickly working their way through the tower, and you are franticly trying to find where the weapon is before you try to escape.

“I found it!” You shout, “It’s in the sewers! There’s an opening right underneath the old textile mill!”

“Thanks Y/N, now get to safety! Iron Man and I will make sure that the weapon is destroyed.”

“I’m going, Cap! Don’t get your panties in a twist”

Suddenly there was the click of a gun behind you, “Get up. Show me your hands, and get up slowly”

“Alright settle down, no need to use guns” You put your hands up and quietly stand. Everyone is shouting over the comms, asking what was going on.

“Take out the comm unit, and place it on the table. Can’t have Mr. Stark following us.”

“Alright. Guys I gotta go, have fun finishing up.“ You quickly put the comm down on the table. “So what do you plan to gain from this? I’m not the engineering genius, if you want a weapon built for you, then your kidnapping the wrong sibling”

The guy grins, “HYDRA has plans for you. Come quietly or we will have to use force.”

You smirk, “If you think I’ll go quietly, then you definitely have the wrong sibling”

Before you can even try to fight back, his gun guns go off. Pain tears through your stomach, and you look down in shock.

“You should have listened, Ms. Stark”

You hit the floor, “If I die” you rasp, “you’ll get nothing”

He crouches down in front of where you’ve collapse, “You won’t die, you don’t have to worry about that” Then he raises his fist and slams it down on the side of your face, knocking you out cold.

–

Tony lets out a shout when he hears the gunshot. “J! What happened?!?”

Unfortunately, the HYDRA agents have disconnected my cameras, I cannot see what is happening. However, my sensors indicate that Y/N has been injured and is currently being carried out of the tower and put in a black van.

“Follow the van, hack into every camera you have to and follow them as far as you can” Tony snaps. He should have gone back to the tower, he should have left the others to take care of the earthquakes, he should have protected his little sister.

“Anthony! Where is she?!?” Loki shouts. He looks frantic, “I heard the gunshot, do you know if she is alright?!”

“JARVIS was compromised, Y/n was hurt, and the HYDRA agents have her”

“WHY AREN’T YOU GOING AFTER HER?!?” Loki roars

Steve is the one who steps forward to help, “If any of us go after her right now, they’ll kill her. They’ve already shot her once, if we try to get to her now, they won’t hesitate to kill her”

Loki snarls, “We shouldn’t have left her alone. I should have gone as soon as this breached the tower”

Steve sighs, “She would never have forgiven you if you had let civilians die for her”

“I know, but as we speak she gets further away. We do not know what they want with her, we do not know anything!”

Finally looking up, Tony makes eye contact with Loki, “We’ll find her. We’ll find her and we’ll make them pay”

Loki nods, “Failure is not an option. I will begin a tracking spell as soon as we get back to the tower”

Tony nods and claps his hand on Loki’s shoulder, “HYDRA will regret taking her”

Loki smirks, “I look forward to making them suffer. No one harms a Prince’s mate without consequence”

The rest of the Avengers all nod. They may have only known Y/N for a short time but she has managed to wriggle her way into all their hearts. HYRDA will rue the day they decide to mess with the Avengers family.

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

Part 3

[ncmagroup]

by Rob Steffens

When it comes to relationships, most are like coffee – the warmer, the better!

That’s definitely the case when you want to connect with a decision-maker by phone.

For decades, cold calling was seen as one of the most powerful tools in any sales pro’s kit. However, even in its heyday, cold calling had a dark side.

It took up a tremendous amount of time and energy for the seller and prospective buyers alike. And, the average salesperson dreaded making those calls, and the average buyer dreaded receiving them. It’s a lose-lose situation.

A tiny handful of sales experts may have built successful businesses on the back of cold calling, but for each one who did, there were hundreds or thousands who simply wasted their time.

Today, cold calling is being supplanted by a much more valuable alternative: Warm calling.

What Is Warm Calling?

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Warm calling is an approach to prospecting that puts relationship-building first by highlighting common interests.

When you come in cold, you are asking someone who has never heard of you before to sacrifice an uncertain amount of their time for a conversation they have no reason to look forward to.

On the other hand, warm calling ensures a prospect has an enticing taste of the value you can offer.

When companies embrace warm calling along with an end-to-end inbound marketing strategy, they build deeper customer relationships on a foundation of respect.

Warm Calling vs. Cold Calling: What’s the Difference?

It’s not just a temperature thing.

Cold calling and warm calling fall on completely different sides of the spectrum when it comes to prospecting. Here are some of the biggest differences:

Interruptive vs. Invited

This is the biggest thing that distinguishes a cold call: It’s an interruption.

The seller picks out a name, dials a number, and expects to be patched through immediately. Attempts to find the “best day” to make a call hardly softens the underlying assumption that others owe you their time.

Unlike cold calls, the best warm calling comes after buyers show an interest in what you offer. Ideally, this means a personal recommendation from someone they trust – but that’s not the only way. Buyers often signal interest when interacting with your content.

For example, if someone downloads The Ultimate Blogging Checklist offer, they have signaled a pain. They want to start blogging, or they’re interested in what’s needed to start blogging efficiently.

Demographics and Patterns vs. Personalized Research

Cold calling is usually adopted as a way to hurry through the sales process as quickly as possible.

To capitalize on the expected time savings, cold callers generally look at statistics like company size, industry, region, and recent buys. They know little (or nothing) about the individual buyer.

With warm calling, you use personal insight to create a genuine connection with a buyer.

You can see what pages on your website he or she has read, for example. Researching the challenges and opportunities confronting the prospect can help you foster trust.

Early in the Process vs. Later in the Process

The theory behind cold calling is that you can “drum up” business.

Cold callers don’t really expect to connect with someone interested in a solution like theirs: Instead, they want to create a desire that’s not there. Thus, cold calling is early in the sales process … often, step zero.

On the other end, warm calling is a natural outgrowth of an ongoing relationship with your brand. It’s up to you to find the sweet spot where prospects know a bit about you and are ready to have a meaningful conversation.

“Seller First” Worldview vs. “Buyer First” Worldview

Cold calling is all about the seller’s needs. If you’re not interested in a given solution – or don’t even think you have a problem – that’s ok.

As long as you fit the profile, you are a prospective buyer, and the seller will do everything possible to exhaust (“overcome”) your objections.

The final goal of warm calling is to motivate sales, of course, but the strategy is very different.

When you warm call, you acknowledge not everyone is a good customer for you. Open-ended questions and active listening are crucial to truly hear what buyers have to say.

7 Warm Calling Tips That Will Get Your Prospects Talking

3 Things to Look For Before the Call

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Warm calling starts by selecting a prospect based on your business goals. The more carefully you’ve considered your buyer personas and segmented your list of prospective buyers, the better.

Once you’ve identified a prospect, it’s time to dive into his or her background as much as you can.

You’re on the hunt for some “kindling” you can use to spark a professional relationship.

That usually means one of three things:

1. A Trigger Event

A trigger event is a change in the prospect’s business situation that causes them to have new or unmet needs.

Trigger events can be positive or negative. Although it’s a lot easier to get people to talk about positive events, negative ones can be even more urgent.

Some of these include:

The opening of a new office or retail location – locally, out of state, or internationally.

The launch of a product (or other steps in product development, like test marketing.)

A new industry award, honor, or major publication on a respected industry platform.

Downloading content from your website that highlights their pain/challenges.

Trigger events are usually related to the company as a whole. Your goal is to figure out how the individual prospect fits in: When you can talk about how their individual effort contributes to corporate goals, your conversation partner will know you invested real effort.

2. A Common Connection

In virtually any sales or marketing situation, the best advantage is to come recommended.

Sites like LinkedIn make it incredibly easy for you to find common connections. However, this does introduce another step that can take a few days.

Many LinkedIn users add people they don’t know personally, so you should message the common contact first.

If you find your contact has strong first-hand insights about your prospect, it might even make sense to have them introduce you via email or LinkedIn. This way, you can segue into requesting a conversation with some momentum behind you. You’re much less likely to get rejected.

3. A Common Interest

If you can’t find anything big and strategic to talk about, it’s ok.

You can set up a warm calling by introducing something you have in common. This is where you can deploy your knowledge of your prospects’ achievements, for example – if they gave a speech or they won an award, attribute that to them, not just the company at large.

Common interests can include anything from where you grew up to where you went to school. Some of the best warm calling experts routinely bond with their prospects over their shared love of basketball.

It’s not right for everyone, but it means you get people talking about a subject that interests them.

No matter what approach you take, this is the part of the warm calling that makes it warm. You want to start discussing the prospect’s world, then get him or her to agree to a quick phone call.

4 Things to Do During the Call

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The opening minutes of a warm call can make a tremendous difference in the outcome. Luckily, you’re much more likely to reach your goals this way than if you called up out of the blue!

Remember these pointers:

1. Remind the Person Who You Are.

Decision-makers, especially in B2B, have a lot on their plate. They could have a dozen calls and meetings in a single day.

It might seem obvious, but the first thing you should do is ensure they remember how you met. If you built rapport, the recollection starts you off on the right foot.

2. Ask Open-Ended Questions.

On a warm call, asking lots of open-ended questions is especially important.

You should think of this as a “discovery call,” since you might have limited information about the prospect’s needs. This helps you tailor your answers (and your solution) to the situation at hand.

3. Listen and Reflect.

Active listening is vital on a warm call.

When you set up the call, you give your prospects an invitation to talk about what matters to them: What they need to be done, fixed, or solved right now is usually near the top of that list. Repeat key phrases so they know you are absorbing everything.

4. Shift the Conversation Slowly.

A cold call often turns adversarial as the caller tries to get a word in edgewise over the prospect. With a warm call, be prepared for the possibility that 75 percent of the conversation may be the prospects talking.

Once they’ve got it all out of their system, shifting to solutions is easier.

Warm Calling: It’s Just Plain Better

When it comes to convenience for your prospect and better outcomes for both of you, warm calling blows cold calling out of the water.

Plus, it sets the tone for a productive, long-lasting relationship – and that’s the inbound way of doing business.

Although a warm call has several steps and requires a lot more research than the average cold call, it’s likely to double or even triple your response rate. Your follow-up emails and calls are also more likely to inspire action on the part of qualified leads and current customers.

If it seems complicated or you hit a snag, remember the golden rules:

Take a genuine interest in others and…

Always look for ways to add value!

  Go to our website:    www.ncmalliance.com

7 Warm Calling Tips Guaranteed to Get Your Prospects Talking by Rob Steffens When it comes to relationships, most are like coffee – the warmer, the better!