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yerimbrit · 8 months ago

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lovergirl : m. danielle

synopsis: even after she left you, you still came crawling back.

# : pairing ! danielle marsh x gn!reader

# : tags ! angst with a happy?? ending, this is set in like 2026, i'm... sorry(?), part 2 here

# : wordcount ! 3.6k

# : warnings ! none i think just swearing

do you know why you're at the airport?

you're 21. she's probably 21 around this time too, since her birthday was last month. you wonder where she is now, if she's doing well. but knowing her, she's probably thriving, unlike you, stuck behind deadlines and finals.

you see her everywhere. not just on billboards, advertisements, and songs, but also in the little things around your neighborhood. the small candy shop around the corner, where your parents took you and her when you behaved. the local family-owned diner, where you and her stopped by on the weekends. the playground that connected to the park in the heart of the city, where you and her played on the swings after curfew.

instead of elation that hit you when you saw these things, though, it was bittersweet nostalgia.

...she didn't even say bye before she left.

it's not like you could blame her, though. she knew that you would convince her to stay, to not leave you alone because she was your everything. that you would take her hands in yours and look at her like she puts the stars in the sky, whispering sweet nothings into her ears like the world was going to end after midnight.

she wasn't there for graduation. or at least, you didn't see her there—she was promoting her first comeback album, or so you've heard. you'd muted nearly everything that had to do with her. it was cruel, you know that, because she hasn't even done anything wrong. but it was for the sake of your heart. you never did get to confess to her properly.

sheltering your heart was the least you could do, in the process of recovering from your heartbreak. but if you knew if you saw her again, that shell would be broken instantly.

so no, you don't know why you're at the airport, on the way to seoul to go to some fansign that you heard about just two weeks ago.

the air of the crowded gate is suffocating, a reminder of how you felt whenever a video of her showed up on your for you page before you blocked the fan account and muted all the tags.

you breathe in, hearing a familiar-sounding laugh behind you, and you whip around only to see two random strangers talking to each other.

'not good,' you grit your teeth. if you saw her right now you would've broke down.

cacophonies of conversation between the crowd rang in your ears, and you groan, covering them. you couldn't wait to get on the plane so you could put on the noise-canceling headphones that you'd bought specifically for this 14 hour flight.

thankfully, your wishes were granted, and you were allowed entry onto the plane. it was a cheap economy seat—you were still a student, after all. your parents offered to pay when you told them you were going to korea, but by then you'd already bought the ticket.

two hours in and it hits you that you're an idiot. a big idiot. you know nothing about the group she's in. buying multiple albums to go to a fansign for a group known worldwide, without even knowing the names of the members?

you pull up their page on kprofiles and start reading, assimilating yourself with the world of... kpop. yeah. you've never bothered with kpop, even though she was an idol. it's not like you hated it, you just didn't bother getting into it. plenty of your friends were avid listeners, pouring details after details about their favorite groups to you, and that was fine. you didn't mind.

'kim minji,' you read to yourself. 22, the oldest... representative animal is a bear... yeah, you can see it. the next was hanni, the vietnamese-australian member of the group. two aussies? what a coincidence.

you read on, studying each member thoroughly before moving to the next. you make a note to watch videos on youtube about them when you get to the hotel. you read about haerin and hyein, the youngest members, then scroll back up to the member you skipped.

'danielle marsh.'

you knew what she looked like already because of how popular the group was, but…

'she still looks the same after all these years.'

the same smile, the same eyes. you wonder if anyone else has ever seen the way her eyes twinkle under the moonlight after dark.

'hobbies: drawing, listening to music, swimming... guess she's the same girl after all.'

your seatmate nudges your shoulder, and you almost jump. "hey, are you interested in newjeans?"

he looks at you excitedly. he seemed about the same age, maybe a bit younger than you. figured there'd be at least one of their fans here. why'd you have to get seated next to one of them?

"um," you hum, "something like that."

you don't bother to tell him about your past with one of the members, or the fact that you bought albums for a chance to see them without any knowledge of who they were, because it was none of his business. god knows what would happen if you told him the truth.

he starts blabbering about how he was a fan since debut, and you tune him out, closing your eyes and putting on your headphones. it's not like he noticed, anyway. maybe you can catch up on some sleep you missed while studying.

you dream of her during your impromptu nap, waking up with tears in your eyes. the guy next to you stopped talking too, fortunately. at that rate, you thought he would've continued after the flight.

you check the time on your phone. surprisingly, a few hours have passed, and the flight is almost over. you must've passed out completely once you shut your eyes. the flight attendant comes by to remind you to unplug your phone from the power outlet, and you patiently wait for your plane to land.

one look outside and you could see fluffy white clouds perfectly set in the air, like a painting or piece of art you could find on social media. you swear you see a rabbit shaped cloud. or maybe you've been staring too hard.

("look, y/n! doesn't that one look like a bunny?

"nah, it's definitely a cat. where are you getting bunny?"

"where are you getting cat? it's most definitely a bunny!"

"okay, okay, fine. you're right, it does look like a bunny, dani."

"see? told ya!")

'fuck,' you shake your head. you try to think about something else. the seat in front of you. the loud sound of the airplane taxiing on the runway. the aircraft marshaller directing said plane.

breathe in. one, two, three, four, five. breathe out. one, two, three, four, five.

you and your seatmate get up to exit the plane, and he flashes a polite smile at you. you offer a tight-lipped one back. the aisleway is cramped, as it always is when you fly economy, and you bump into some people. there's a gross spark of electricity every time you brush shoulders with someone, and you shiver, suddenly reminded of the need to shower when you check in to your room.

the first thing you notice when you step into the airport from the ramp is that there are many products with an idol's face plastered on the front. twice on a candy bag, bts on a bag of chips, le sserafim on a sports drink... the list goes on. it's like they worshipped these people.

...whatever makes them happy.

a crowd comes stampeding towards your direction, causing your survival instincts to kick in. you take refuge in a nearby gift shop to avoid them. the airport was already loud, but the noise increased once the crowd came bursting through.

"minji-ssi, look here!"

"hanni! i love you!"

"please do a heart pose with haerin, danielle!"

"hyein-ssi, over here please!"

your hand twitches. it's not like they were going to see you, but you inconspicuously make your swift escape anyway. there's a bittersweet twist in your stomach at the mention of her name.

instinctively, you whip your head around just in time to make eye contact with her. her mouth is agape and her eyes are widened, and she looks as if she were going to say something, but you turn back around and start power walking to the nearest exit.

does she still remember you? maybe she does, considering the expression she made when you two met eyes. and you can't help but to think, 'does she miss me?'

does she think of you the way you think about her, 24/7, 365 days a year? does she remember the memories you made together, all those years ago? and does she treat them like precious jewels in a well-kept box, or like a constant reminder of what could've been, like you do?

but you also can't help but to think about how beautiful she looked. she's matured, something that you could only sense outside of the pictures provided by the internet. and she holds herself in a poised manner with an air of elegance, but also with a sense of cheeriness and innocence well-placed.

it has been 6 years since you have seen danielle in person.

6 years since you have lost the light of your life.

and you would do anything to change that fact, but, alas, it would never come.

you think you've memorized all the members by now, binging videos of them for three days straight. of course, you went out and explored, since you were in a foreign country, but even when you were out you were still trying to learn everything you could about the group that she's in.

the night before the meeting, you don't sleep well. you wake up on your back, sweating, because you've just had a nightmare. a nightmare where you reunite with her, but she said that she never liked you, and walked away. with every step you took, the distance between you two only increased.

wiping your sweat, you take a few gulps of water from the bottle on the nightstand, taking deep breaths to try and calm your heart. it's around 7 am, looking at the digital clock on the table. the meeting starts at 12, and you have to get there by 11 before it gets too busy for you to even get in.

you walk over to the bathroom with a sense of dread, intending to take a refreshing shower to clear your head.

(it did not help. your mind remains clouded with thoughts of her. impending doom awaits you in four and a half hours.)

not knowing what else to do since you woke up too early, you get dressed and go for a walk. there's a nice, humble café two blocks down the street from your hotel, and you get a warm welcome when you walk through the doors of the establishment. the bells chime in a familiar tune, lifting your spirits ever so slightly.

of all the places you've been to since landing in korea, more than half of them have played at least one newjeans song as background music. and, lucky for you, this one is not. although it is a bit jarring to hear smooth jazz rather than the energetic voices of the girls you've been seeing everywhere.

the café is mostly quiet, aside from the clacking of the dishes and the soft chatter of the few customers also spending their morning here. you mark it as somewhere to visit again, if you ever come back to korea.

with every sip of coffee, there's an added chill to combat the blazing heat that the sun is emitting outside. the sun reminded you of her, who shines just like the sun that breathes us life. the moodmaker between the two of you, who cheered you on even on days where it felt hopeless.

but the iced beverage also filled you with energy, giving you confidence to make it through the big obstacle of the day. (and also the entire reason you even came all this way) you could face her. it's been 6 years. and, well, if it doesn't go well, then at least you'll have an excuse to never come back.

with newfound courage, you exit the café with long strides and return to your hotel room, preparing for the journey ahead. a charger, cash, and a water bottle are all secured in your small crossbody bag.

it's 10:15.

your uber comes in around 10 minutes, and you decide to wait outside in the front to save time.

the drive from the hotel to the venue is about 30 minutes. during that time, you listen to the playlist full of newjeans songs that you made on the day you landed, and take a brief power nap. 'hurt' is the last thing you hear before you drift off to sleep.

you don't feel like you belong here. there's dozens, maybe around a hundred fans talking amongst themselves. from your limited korean, you could tell they were talking about their excitement for the fansign that's about to start in 15 minutes. you really wish you could share the feeling, even though you tried to get into them for three days straight.

a fan approaches you, tapping your shoulder, and you jolt. what is with people and sneaking up on you?

"hey!" oh, they're speaking in english. that makes this easier for you.

"hey," you echo, waving to them. upon closer look, you could see that their tote bag is decked out in merch, from keychains to stickers and a... hanni photocard? you think it's hanni. it's hard to tell when they change their hair colors every comeback.

they notice you staring, and smile at you. then they reach into their bag and pull out a clear goodie-bag containing some stickers and a lomo card.

"would you like one? i ran out of the others, sadly, but i do have hanni and danielle," they say, pulling out another bag which you presume has the other member mentioned.

the iridescent glow of the transparent bag shimmers in your eyes, and you blink. "oh," you start, "i think i'll have hanni."

the goods are handed to you, and you exchange friendly goodbyes. you wistfully look at the card inside the bag, mixed feelings swirling in your gut. it's for the better.

you have a couple more interactions with other fans, some giving you freebies like the first one, and some enthusiastically chatting to you about the group. your initial feelings of discomfort, are, admittedly, still there, but there's an added layer of pleasantness on top now.

weaving through the crowd to get to your assigned seat, you clutch the strap of your new tote bag containing all the things fellow(?) fans have given you.

the tote was another one of the things given, and you think the design is pretty neat, with a nicely placed logo and slogan in a chic style. you might actually use it after today, too.

the announcer calls for the fansign to commence, and five girls file in from a side entrance, their managers and bodyguards following alongside. immediately, the venue erupts in cheers from the audience, shouting affectionate phrases to the members, similar to what happened at the airport.

influenced by the majority, you cheer as well, although it was cut short when you realized that internally you were so out of place.

the group begins with some simple conversation starters, such as 'how are you' and 'have you eaten?' with as much energy as when they came in. you don't exactly know what's happening, so you sit and wait patiently for the event to start. everything seems so daunting.

finally, after around 5 minutes of greetings, the actual signing is starting. you're seated in the middle, which works out in your favor; not one of the first ones to come up and have to face her, but also not one of the last ones and lose your courage. you watched the interactions, the delusion-inducing actions that each of the girls provided, and the poses that they did together. the people around you were either taking videos, pictures, or excitedly talking to their friends beside them.

as the amount of rows in front of you remaining to go up and talk to the girls dwindles down, your heart sped up, thudding against your chest. an even bigger sense of dread instills in you, legs unmoving when the row directly in front of you comes back to sit down. you get nudged by the person next to you to move, and you shakily bring yourself to apologize and get a move on.

what would her reaction be? would she be shocked? happy? maybe mad, because if she actually wanted for you to be involved in her life all this time she would've said goodbye to you, or kept in touch. maybe you should just leave. you got yourself in this whole predicament, anyway. no one even told you to do it.

your palms are sweaty as you make your way down the velvet stairs, and you wipe your hands on your pants in nervousness and fear. eventually, the line slows down once your row reaches the table that the girls are sitting at, and you take it as a chance to try to relax.

breathe in.

five things you can see. seats, the person in front of you, the ground you are standing on, the album that you're holding to get signed (in your extensive research, people usually brought theirs to be signed on), and the table that seems so close yet so far from you. okay.

breathe out.

four things you can touch. the album, your shirt and jacket, and the bracelet on your wrist.

in...

three things you can hear. the increasingly obnoxious whirring sound of the air conditioning, the buzz of the audience, and...

fuck.

"hey, how are you?" a somewhat familiar voice asks. you say somewhat because you've only heard her voice in videos. you find yourself now kneeling in front of minji, the oldest member of the group. she's a lot prettier up close, all of them are, but it's a bit jarring to suddenly see her with your own eyes.

you clear your throat, blinking rapidly to try to focus yourself on the girl. "i'm, i'm gooth-"

...you bit your tongue. you try to laugh it off, awkward giggles slipping from your lips, and thankfully she joins you in laughing.

"that's good," she smiles, and it puts you at ease. no wonder people idolize these girls. she signs the front of the album, asks about your life, and you tell her about your school and how you're a newer fan. she waves at you with another gummy smile once your two minutes are up.

the next is haerin, who is the more reserved and quiet member of the group. there's a pair of cat ears sitting on her head, probably a gift from one of the previous fans, and she blinks at you owlishly, almost like she knew you, before a small smile settles on her face.

it is slightly unsettling, but the more you converse with her the more that feeling dissolves. she really is reserved, and the two of you exchange witty remarks with knowing grins. she signs your album just before the two minute mark.

hyein is super friendly, very high energy. you feel like she'd be a great person to be around on any given day. your conversation with her is mostly centered around food, and how she wants to visit australia again once you mentioned where you're from. she signs the album in the middle of your discussion about the best korean foods to try during your stay.

your time with hyein ends with a staring contest. (she won) and you give her a handshake after, joking about how you would win the next time. you think the sparkles in her eyes are very endearing.

hanni signs your album as soon as you set it down on the table. she's a very likable person in general; you think you could've been friends with her if she went to the same school as you. you also share the same music taste, spending your time together talking about the latest sza album and comparing hand sizes (yours were bigger, unsurprisingly)

but nothing could prepare you for the girl at the end of the table. her laugh rings in your ear from diagonally across from you, and you get a splitting headache. you mask it well enough for hanni not to notice, though, and you're able to finish the interaction smoothly.

how could anyone ever hate danielle? definitely not you. as much as you had reasons to hate her, you just couldn't bring yourself to do so much as dislike or be angry towards her. instead, you just drowned yourself in your sorrow and confusion.

she's perfect. the exact opposite of you, and yet she stayed with you until she didn't. those memories that you have together, they're so engraved in your mind, and you don't even know if she feels the same.

you slide over to the next slot, keeping your head down as you placed your album back onto the table.

heartbeat thudding in your chest. cold sweat running down your cheek. teeth biting your lip. is this the end for you? because it sure does feel like it.

when you finally do look up, and make eye contact with danielle, it feels like time has slowed even though it's really only been five seconds. her expression is mirroring yours: widened eyes, lips slightly parted. you gulp.

tears well in the corner of her eyes, and fuck everything, because you made her cry.

she blinks them away, and clears her throat, taking a second to regain her composure, and timidly calls out to you.

"y/n?"

a/n : 🤗 not the best at writing angst i hope this is ok !

#newjeans x reader #newjeans #danielle marsh x reader #danielle x reader #mo jihye x reader #danielle newjeans #danielle marsh newjeans #girl group imagines #girl group x reader #newjeans imagines

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starflower-witch · 1 month ago

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Soulmate (part 2)

Pairing: Agatha Harkness x Fem!Reader

Summary: You've been searching for your soulmate for what feels like an eternity, yet now, instead of reveling in the moment, you’re consumed by a desire to understand who she truly is. This overwhelming curiosity leads you to make a significant mistake. After all, as they say, "Curiosity killed the cat."

Word count: 2026

Warnings: light swearing, mentions of killing and kidnapping.

You went through a whirlwind of emotions in just a few minutes.

First, there was excitement and surprise. You had finally found her!

Then came confusion. Why had she pretended to be someone else? Was she just playing with you?

Sadness followed. she seemed like the type who enjoyed toying with the minds of her victims for fun.

Next was fear. Had she tricked you into letting your guard down to kill you? Was she planning to steal your magic and get rid of you once and for all?

That final thought triggered your fight-or-flight response. Your eyes shifted color, enveloped in a golden mist, and you bared your teeth at the older woman. You had chosen to fight.

“Harkness!”

If she was going to kill you, you were going to make it as difficult as possible for her.

The purple witch watched your attempts to escape her magic with amusement. She had a feeling about what might have triggered your anger, but she decided to tease you a little longer before explaining anything.

“Yes, love?” she said, smirking.

"Free me, now! You two-faced witch!" You summoned an explosion of golden mist, a desperate attempt to regain your freedom, but it was futile. Agatha's magic was far stronger than yours.

“What a mouth!” Her smile widened. “Didn’t your mommy teach you any manners?”

"I'm sorry, your highness, my mistake," you shot back, fury burning in your eyes. "I should’ve said bitch instead!"

You decided to use explosive magic again. This time, golden mist engulfed her, but an equally powerful burst of purple mist from her hands extinguished your magic in an instant.

She raised her index finger, shaking it from side to side in front of your face. "Don't be so impatient, pet. We'll have our fun eventually. Let me just get a good look at you first."

Circling around you like a shark eyeing its prey, she drank in every detail of your form. From time to time, she made a few appreciative noises, clearly savoring the moment.

"Am I approved?" you snarled.

"Definitely!" she declared, clapping her hands together. "Destiny spoiled me rotten this time."

For a brief moment, her words made you blush; at least she liked what she saw.

Trying to regain focus you quickly shook your head. Liking her approval was nice, but right now, you needed to escape.

You rolled your eyes and looked away, causing her to frown at the loss of eye contact.

"Don't." She gripped your chin firmly, turning your face back to hers. "Don’t deprive me of your gaze."

You wanted to laugh at how corny that sounded, and you were about to, but something stopped you.

Her eyes glowed with a mesmerizing purple that left you completely captivated.

You'd heard that Agatha’s eyes could only reflect anger and greed, but as you gazed into them, you started to wonder if those rumors had been wrong.

"You’re scared." you said without thinking. She laughed, but you smiled knowingly. "You are!"

"I’m incapable of such a thing," she snarled, her gaze hardening as her expression turned sharp. "Why would I be scared?" She released her grip on your face and took a step back.

"I would like to know too," you tilted your head, voice laced with mock curiosity. "Why would the great Agatha Harkness be scared?"

“I’m not scared.” This time, she was the one to look away.

Sensing an opportunity, you couldn’t resist teasing her back. "Oh! Don’t deprive me of your gaze, beautiful. I might just die if you do." She laughed.

Her laugh woke something in you. Like some type of spark that started on your abdomen and spread like wildfire, tingling through every part of your body.

You had heard that soulmates often shared a special connection, so it didn’t surprise you when Agatha's emotions began to flow into you as well.

The shared emotions were just the beginning of the bond that the two of you would experience as time went on.

It was a connection that would grow deeper with every moment, intertwining your souls in ways neither of you fully understood yet.

Focusing on the emotions you could read in her, you noticed a few of them swirling around.

There was amusement, desire, and… fear? but why? What could have the great Agatha Harkness so terrified?

You noticed her standing still for a moment, as if processing this newfound connection.

The intimacy of it was overwhelming for both of you, as if you were standing naked in front of each other.

Her expression changed, there was something softer in her eyes now. Something close to… Vulnerability.

"You looked for me for so long," Agatha said, her voice suddenly fragile, something you'd never expected from her. "No matter how many times I escaped, you kept looking for me… why? Why didn’t you give up on me?"

So that was it. That was what she was scared of. She thought that after meeting her, you'd lose interest, deem her unworthy of your search. You shook your head softly. "Harkness… I don’t…”

"Answer me"

You sighed, gathering your thoughts. "I wanted to meet you, to talk to you. I thought maybe you weren’t interested in soulmates… in me," you admitted. "but if you really wanted to be left alone, I needed you to say it to my face. I didn’t want to give up without even trying."

"Now that you've met me, what?"

You hesitated. "Well… I think you're really beautiful and you're clearly an impressive witch, but I don’t know who you really are."

Agatha's eyes narrowed. "I’m exactly what you're seeing right now."

You shook your head. "I saw something different not long ago. Did you forget, Agnes?"

Her expression darkened instantly. "Don’t call me that"

"Then explain to me what the hell that was! Why the act? Why lie to me?" Your voice trembled with hurt. "If you wanted to get rid of me, to kill me, I would have preferred that you stab me in the front!"

Agatha flinched at the pain in your voice. "I wasn’t planning anything." she whispered, her voice laced with hurt. "That wasn’t me."

"Then who was it?" you pressed, refusing to let it go.

Agatha tried to avoid the topic. "It's a long story…"

"I have all eternity." you shot back, determined to hear the truth.

Her eyes flared with frustration as she glared at you.

"I lost a fight to a witch, and she put a spell on me!" Her voice rose, trembling with anger. "I was trapped, playing the role of the nosy neighbor, unable to control myself, my actions, or what I said!"

"How did you escape, then? Why are you here now?”

Agatha placed a hand on your cheek. Her touch was electric and warm, sending shivers down your spine. The sensation made you feel unexpectedly calm and protected.

"You freed me," she whispered. "Your soulmate mark… the magic on it… it got me out." You moved your head away from her hand.

You didn’t believe her for a second. The idea of the greatest witch in all the continent losing a fight to some random witch? That was the ugliest lie you had ever heard. You narrowed your eyes at her.

“Really?” you scoffed, voice dripping with disbelief. “You, the infamous Agatha Harkness, losing to some random witch? You expect me to believe that?”

She held your gaze, her face serious, almost pleading. “It wasn’t just any witch,” she said softly, her voice laced with a hint of bitterness. "You don’t understand the kind of power she has… what she can do.”

You were ready to tell her that you weren’t buying her lame excuse and that her act wouldn’t work on you this time, but then you noticed something else.

Agatha had lowered her guard for just a moment, lost in her thoughts and the memories of everything she had endured during her fight against that witch and the torment that followed.

You seized the opportunity to cast a spell, breaking free from her hold. Instantly, you stepped back and conjured a golden shield around yourself.

Agatha regarded you with surprise, her expression a mix of admiration and amusement.

“Sneaky little mouse.” she taunted, her hands glowing with purple energy as magic swirled around her fingertips, crackling with intensity. “I was having an emotional moment, you know?”

“I’m sorry, dear. I saw the opportunity and took it” you smiled at her. “I’m just trying to keep myself safe.”

“And you really think a shield will be enough to keep me away?” she said, a sly smile creeping across her lips. With a smooth flick of her wrist, your shield dissolved into shimmering particles, leaving you exposed.

Raising your hands in surrender, you tried to play it cool. "Please, Harkness, I think you're a bit over the whole kidnapping thing." you said, attempting to sound casual. "Just let me go."

You knew if this turned into a fight, you'd be the one to lose. You needed another strategy, something to get you out of this situation in one piece.

"Sorry, pumpkin," she said, her voice laced with playful menace. "But I can't let you loose. Someone might steal you away from me, and I can't have that."

“I would love to stay with you, I really would…” you began, taking cautious steps backward. “However, I don’t want to die just yet.”

A wicked smile curled on her lips, and her eyes sparkled with mischief as she stepped closer.

“You’re scared.” she taunted, echoing your earlier words back to you.

“I’m at the mercy of the most powerful witch I know; how could I not be?” you shot back, trying to maintain a brave façade.

“Weren’t you searching for said witch all this time? Why would you be scared now that you found her?”

“Because you seem interested in me,” you replied. “And let me tell you something I learned long ago.” You placed a hand behind your back and began to trace sigils in the air, the magic swirling around your fingertips. “If you ever pique the interest of the great Agatha Harkness, you might as well dig your own grave.”

Her laughter rang out. “You learned that?” she asked, amusement dancing in her eyes. “How fascinating.”

“It’s not a lesson I took lightly,” you replied, your focus unwavering. “The stakes are high when it comes to your kind of interest.”

She raised her hand and snapped her fingers. In an instant, she was behind you, her grip tight around your wrist stopping you from tracing any more sigils.

Her other hand slid to your neck, tilting your head upward. It wasn’t necessary, but the groan that escaped your lips made it all worth it for her.

From the corner of your eye, you caught the look of pure satisfaction on her face as she held you firmly, savoring every second of control she had over you.

“Oh, but you thought you could outsmart the powerful witch, didn’t you?” she murmured into your ear, her breath warm against your skin.

Her sultry voice, soft and alluring, wrapped around your thoughts like a spell, clouding your judgment.

For the first time, you truly felt the danger of being in Agatha Harkness's presence.

You felt utterly confused. You wanted to know if she was just toying with you, or if this was as confusing and intense for her as it was for you.

What was really going on in her mind? You would never know.

Wait… you could answer that question yourself, couldn’t you?

Then, without hesitation, you casted a spoken spell to enter her mind.

The fear that flashed across Agatha’s face was immediate. She quickly spun you around, trying to stop you, but it was too late.

“Could you be more stupid?!” she shouted, frantically attempting a counter spell. But you were already slipping away, losing consciousness.

"See you around, pumpkin…" you managed to say with a big grin, just before everything went dark.

She screamed your name and grabbed onto your body as it went limp in her arms. Now, you were inside Agatha Harkness’s mind.

(Honestly, I wasn’t planning on making a part 2, but you all have motivated me to keep writing. Thank you!)

#agatha harkness x reader #agatha harkness #fem reader #agatha harkness x female reader #reader insert #soulmates

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cowplant-snacks · 2 months ago

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Cowplant Academy Class of 2026

The Cowplant Academy is a place for youth with special abilities to hide and well… maybe thrive? I originally shared these teen sims last year, however, they have been updated and now have families!

They are CC free and have at least 1 outfit in every category, pronouns, preferences, likes and dislikes, lifestyles, established relationship dynamics, skills, & turn-offs and turn-ons. Some also have jobs and/or are signed up for after school activities as well.

Gallery ID: Cowplant-Snacks \ alt download (sfs, free, no ads)

The Halversons are Werewolves

The Halverson are a family rooted in their community. Silas can be found conducting lectures on werewolf history and acceptance, while Genesis is often in the kitchen cooking for community events and giving out relationship advice to neighbors. Amaya is such a big help with her siblings and is always putting her parents' goals before her own, but she recently started a streaming channel playing her favorite games. Will she be able to keep up with all the demands of her time?

The Boldens are Spellcasters

Isaias Bolden is a notorious crook. While his very presence can make other sims cower, you can often find him doting on every single whim his beloved daughter, Aaliyah, has. He hopes that his son, Abram, will follow in his footsteps. However, Abram finds himself wondering what life might look like outside of organized crime but gosh… he's sorta good at it. He's at a crossroads, what will he do? Hopefully his pals at the Cowplant Academy can help him find his own way.

The Londons are Werewolves

The London's are a loud and chaotic werewolf family working to achieve their individual dreams. Poor Duffy can barely hear his own thoughts or his favorite TV shows over the cacophony of sounds his family creates. Whenever a family member is feeling down, Duffy is always there to cheer them up with one of his corniest jokes. But who cheers Duffy up? Hopefully that girl he's been crushing on at school has a matching romance bar.

The Comer & Gale Families are Mermaids

As a beloved King of a prosperous and peaceful Kingdom, you’d think there wouldn't be anything troubling Tobias but the reality is he is surrounded by a mess of his own doing. He ventured outside of his marriage and brought a second child into the world. After creating this riff, can he bridge the gap and bring these two families together as one? Poor Kingston and Madeleine can feel everyone's curious stares at school; they both avoid the topic AND… each other.

The Hernandezs are Spellcasters & Humans

Pedro fell for Annabelle's quick wit and creative spirit. For her, it was his commitment to family and his big beautiful brown eyes. While they may not always be on the same page about their love life, they both agree that their children are their greatest joy. Theo fills his time climbing trees and collecting knee scrapes. Lizbeth's happy place is Theater Club and it’s the only reason she stays in that crappy high school, but will it alone be enough to get her to graduate?

The Sus are Vampires

Mei and Hao are old fashioned and enjoy living a simple life unburdened by the advances of technology. However, their daughter, McKinley, prefers to keep up with each new changing decade as they come. Can these #technophobes and their tech obsessed daughter bridge the gap and coexist in a loving and peaceful household? That's not the only thing her parents don't understand. The other is her choice in a crush. A mermaid? Why can't she just fall in love with a decent vampire?

The Benedicts are Vampires

Leonard and Keisha have drifted apart over the centuries. They hoped bringing Caiphus into the family would solve their problems, but unfortunately, all it did was bring another soul into their mess. Caiphus attends the Cowplant Academy and plays on the football team, He’s only truly happy when he’s gripping pig skin, racing across the plastic turf, and tackling boys. He finds himself curious about one young man in particular, will he get up the nerve to ask him to the next school dance?

Important Notes:

I didn’t make the pets so they are not included. However, I am happy to answer WCIFs about them if folks are interested.

Stairwell pose: Thanks @keirosims for this awesome pose.

(Optional) default eyes + skin are here

Original post of the teens is here

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luckykiwiii101 · 3 months ago

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Tough Love, Oops, I meant Tough *Hate

(There’s nothing comforting or kind for you to read in this post, and i’m going to be very harsh, if you can’t handle that, then don’t read.)

Hey Pathetic Upper East Sider.

Here are some fun facts about you! ->

- You’re the reason you don’t have what you want. You blame your circumstances…when in reality it’s actually all your fault and only your fault.

You’re pathetic.

- You aren’t persisting because you’re too lazy to pick a new story and fulfill yourself with it. Talk about self harm, but mentally.

Pathetic

- You’re going to continue to stay miserable because you find comfort in it.

Pathetic

- Ignore all the bloggers that tell you that you can manifest anything you want. Plot twist. You can’t. Because you won’t persist.

Pathetic

- You clearly don’t love yourself. At least not enough.

Pathetic

- You have no aura. Infact, you are an insult to aura itself. Aura runs from you. At full speed.

Pathetic

- You can’t even do something that requires not even moving a muscle.

Pathetic

- The audacity. Of you. Burning in hell. When you’re not even dead yet.

Pathetic

- The devil himself would be kinder to you, than you are to yourself.

Pathetic

- I always wondered how much self hate it took to destroy your own life, but looking at you…now I know.

Pathetic

- You’re not even living, you’re surviving.

Pathetic

- When your life goes downhill, how does it feel knowing even you wouldn’t have the will to save yourself..?

Pathetic

- No one will be there for you, because nobody understands that you have the power to change your own life. They’d never understand. No one is here for you. No one understands you. No one.

Pathetic

- Way harsh but suicide doesn’t seem any worse from this.

Pathetic

- You’re the reason you’re going to end up crying tomorrow. You’re the reason your pillow is drenched at night. You’re the reason.

Pathetic

- You’re never going to be happy. And it’s all your fault.

Pathetic

- You’re the villain that the audience actually wants to get rid of.

Pathetic

- No one on this app cares about you.

Pathetic

(Do I sound harsh enough yet? Well maybe because you let the truth be harsh).

- Again, it’s all your fault.

Pathetic

- People younger than you are out there living their dream lives.

Pathetic

- Let go of all that hope for the future. The future’s got nothing for you apart from eternal misery. I would say you have nothing but misery is far from nothing.

Pathetic

- Delete your vision boards, they’ll never be your reality. Now they’ll only make you miserable. What sane person stares at things they know they can never have?

Pathetic

- If you really had it in you, you would’ve done it by now. Or at least tried.

Pathetic

- The fact that you think this is all difficult.

Pathetic

- The audacity you have to feel bad for yourself. Don’t cry at the fact that your life is miserable. Cry at the fact that it’s all your fault.

Pathetic

- You’re powerless. With power comes persistence. And you’ll do anything but persist.

Pathetic

- You’re not going to persist today, you’re not going to persist tomorrow, you’re not going to persist next week..

Pathetic

- Tomorrow you’re going to wake up, with nothing you want. And your lack of care for yourself is the reason why you’re going to live like that forever. Enjoy your 9-5. If you can even get one..

Pathetic

- The fact that you think i’m kidding.

Pathetic

- The fact that right now you’re telling yourself “maybe i should persist” when you told yourself that months ago…and here you are. Same old same old…

Pathetic

- It’ll reach 2026 and you still won’t have anything you want.

Pathetic

- Remember all that excitement you felt reading those success stories?…funny how it’ll never be you…

Pathetic

- The fact that the only reason you probably saw this is because of the #loasuccess tag, when you can’t even relate..

Pathetic

- You’re never going to have what you want. You gave up ages ago when you decided to not persist. I think it’s time you truly accept it. You’re never going to have what you want. Read that again.

Pathetic

- You don’t have tomorrow to redeem yourself because you’re never going to stay consistent with yourself and persist. You’ve already tried that before.

Pathetic

- You’re hopeless.

Pathetic

- The fact that all this is to you, is just words on a screen, and not your actual reality.

Pathetic

- And the worst of them all…you’re going to read this, feel bad, and just keep scrolling. As usual.

Pathetic.

Happy miserable scrolling, as your miserable little finger scrolls from this post, and your miserable little eyes skim the words of the next, as your miserable little child self watches you crush their dreams, and take away everything. everything. everything.

You are actually just…pathetic. It’s pitiful. I know.

P.S. Did I forget to mention? You’re pathetic.

- gossip girl

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xjaylyn · 5 months ago

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*EDITED* PART 1 - Bad Boys: Second Chances

Pairing: Armando x Black! OC (Rya)

Warnings: blood, graphic, guns, death, mature, language (use of the n word), and some other stuff I probably forgot about sorry

Summary: Its been two years since Captain Conrad was framed. Another mission brings the team back together and new relationships are formed. It's said everyone deserves second chances and room to grow. So maybe this is that second chance.

…3 DAYS EARLIER…

"Pl-please-please…i-i-i promise I'll fix it! I'll fix it ju-just please."

The helpless man begged on his knees in the center of the church foyer. The dim light shone through the broken painted glass, grazing the man's bruised and beaten face. Begging for mercy to the devil himself.

"Just give me a day I'll fix it I promise…please."

A loud bang echoed through the foyer, causing the people watching to flinch. Said devil looked down on the unfortunate man, shaking his head.

"A DAY-I fucking-" another loud bang could be heard followed by the sounds of glass shattering as they hit the floor.

"Look at me-" grabbing the helpless man by his neck. "I gave you a fucking month to do this one simple job and you fuck it up," watching the drool spill from the man's mouth and land on his suit jacket. Taking a deep sigh, quickly dropping the man to his knees, listening to him struggle to catch his breath. Slowly walking back to the podium where a selection of items laid.

The faint sound of metal being picked up caused the helpless man to panic.

"N-no-no-no PLEASE PLEASE LORD HAVE MERCY ON ME PLE-" the helpless man's body dropped to the floor. His blood splattered everywhere, forming a thick puddle beneath him.

"Clean it up," watching as no one moved to the request. Irritation filled the man's veins.

"CLEAN THE FUCKING MESS UP," running a hand through his long hair in frustration.

"And not just the body…fix what the fuck he couldn't…NOW."

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

…MIAMI…PRESENT DAY, 2026…

"Happy birthday to you."

The soft giggles of a baby could be heard in the singing crowd. The Stevie Wonder version of the birthday song played lightly in the background. Megan, Marcus's daughter, walked into the dim dining room where the crowd was with a gleaming smile on her face. Gently, sitting the birthday cake with the big number 1 on it in front of the small family sitting at the table. Mike holding the chubby baby girl in his lap and Christine, Mike's wife, next to them recording.

"Baby girl, don't get your baby drool all on the cake. Uncle Marcus wants to enjoy a slice or two, okay."

"Marcus, you're not getting no cake. Back up," Mike looked up at his best friend cooing at the little baby staring down at the cake, causing the man to stop smiling.

"Mike, it's a special occasion. I can't just not eat the cake. That's rude, ain't that right, baby girl?"

Both men watched as the little girl squeezed her little hands and jumped towards the cake. Big little eyes targeting the pink frosting.

"Woah, calm down girl," Mike stood up, wiping the frosting on her chubby cheeks. "Acting like your uncle when he sees Skittles."

Almost two years had passed since the two were on a mission to clear Conrad's name. Not long after its success, things went back to normal. Christine fell pregnant and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Amara Marie Lowrey. Mike was ecstatic to become a father. Feeling blessed to have been given the opportunity to raise his child. Something he had missed with his first son, Armando, whom he had not heard from or had contact with since his farewell when he got on the boat.

"You wish he was here, huh?"

So deep in his thoughts, he didn't notice everyone had left and Christine took their daughter out of his arms. It was only him and Marcus in the dining room. "What?"

"You do that every time you think about him. You know he can take care of himself…hell, he has better survival skills than us, making fires and shit," patting the taller man's shoulder.

Shaking his head, he sat back down in his chair. "I know, but it's been 2 years and nothing. As fucked up as it sounds, at least I knew where he was when he was in jail."

Sighing, Mike looked out the window and watched as everyone was outside laughing. His wife holding his precious daughter with the biggest smiles on their faces. Love was seen all over. He couldn't help but wish to experience that with his son or at least have his son experience what it's like to be around the people you love to celebrate you.

The sudden sound of a cell phone going off disturbed the silence between the two partners. Quickly looking at the phone and seeing that it was Rita, their Captain, calling. Knowing it must be urgent because she knows today is his daughter's birthday and strictly a family day, he answered the phone.

Marcus watched as his partner's face scrunched up in confusion. "Woah, slow down, what happened…yeah…yeah…okay, we'll be there, bye."

"We gotta go," grabbing his keys and heading to the back to inform the family of their dismissal. Marcus followed behind, "Yeah, I got that before you hung up. What happened?"

"I don't know. Rita just said she needs us in the office now. Something about a murder," walking back towards the front to head to the car.

"But Mike, hold on, let me get my slice of cake," Marcus says turning towards the kitchen.

"Nigg-" stopping in his tracks to look back at the man.

"Come onnn. it'll be gone before we get back!" Marcus pleads with his eyes wide.

Mike rolls his eyes and grabs the man. "Man, carry yo grown ass to this car…too damn grown to be acting like a little-ass kid over some cake."

"Aye, now I'm a grown-ass man, Mike. Don't talk like I'm not one. I just wanted a piece of cake, okay? That a crime?"

"Marcus, let's go."

Whining before getting into the car. "Fine, damn."

a/n: Sorry y'all, I suck at descriptions. But yayyy, I decided to write a Bad Boys fic for the first time. Just please excuse the poor writing, I did not edit AT ALL, and it's been a minute since I wrote anything (literally back when Wattpad had no ads😭). So, we're just a lot rusty. I hope y'all enjoy because I have no direction in which this is going; we just gon go wherever the wind takes us. Feel free to comment! I love feedback, and active readers make the experience fun! And to my silent readers, hey pookies🫶🏼.

#armando aretas #armando aretas x reader #armando aretas x black reader #armando imagine #armando x reader #armando x black!reader #bad boys #bad boys ride or die #bad boys for life #marcus burnett #mike lowrey #jacob scipio #will smith #martin lawrence #bad boys second chances

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laguezze · 5 months ago

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PAC: A letter you're meant to receive

I'm baaaaack~ (kinda) (pretty casually, life's been tough)

As always here are the rules:

Minors DNI

Don't take everything to heart, this is a general reading! Take what resonates!

It's honest, I don't sugarcoat. If you're not liking what you read, keep scrolling! It may not be for you or you may not be ready for that message yet!

Let's take a look at the piles!!!

Pile 1

Pile 2

Pile 3

Let's go!

Pile 1

Signs this may be for you: unicorn, South Korea , the letter S, Squirrels, Love, Skydiving, birthday, anniversary, 12, 6, 16, 2006, 2001, 2026, 1970s, Billie Eilish, John Lennon, glasses.

Dear ____,

How could you think I'm not proud of you? How could you think that minor thing you did would erase all the love I feel for you? It doesn't. I don't think anything can at this point. You're human, you're allowed to make mistakes. And while I do still think you need help, you're still doing your best, even though you don't feel like it. You're trying and I see that. You're wonderful and magical and although your light is dimmed at the moment, I know there's a bright sun under that blanket of darkness you're currently holding over your head. Everything will be ok. Have you ever not gotten a resolution to your conflict? Trust me. You're going to be fine. Let yourself be, enjoy the people around you, breathe. Treat your life like you treat your dreams. Be as excited as you can. You're alive! And while you are not responsible for this darkness that has been placed upon you, you are the only one that can take it off. I understand it's difficult, but you can do it. You're tired of fighting, but you're not just anyone. You're a legend. Legends don't have it easy. Go get them.

Pile 2

Signs this may be for you: Harry Styles, Fashion school, blood drives, nurse, 😜, smoke, laughter, blonde, blue eyes, "that boy is mine", 0%, Rihanna, water, rain, Hawaii, Jumping, Rave, Cindy, the letter C, N, and A. Numbers 5, 8, and 30, AMANDA.

Hello, it's been a while.

How are you?

This is awkward, you probably didn't expect to hear from me. I have been okay, I honestly can't stop thinking about us and how it ended. It pains me to think that you left with the impression that I didn't care. I do. I did. I just want to let you know that in another life, maybe we should try again. I don't have much to say, I'm not sure why I feel so compelled to tell you this. It's so basic. I'm being channeled right now (ok aware) and it's weird because it shouldn't be this deep but I really wanted to come through and say sorry. And say that I know you miss me and I do too. And one day we will reunite and we might be able to show our love then. Sorry it ended that way. Sorry that was the last you knew of me. I think of you each day, I dream of you each night.

Pile 3

Signs this may be for you: YES GIRL, happy, cheerful, spaghetti, squash, "I'm allergic", ibuprofen, love is in the air, matchmaker, fruits, VSCO, musically, Harmony, dating apps, Jenna, Lisa, "I stan", Twitter account, laughs, pigs, 25, 23, 2022, 2001, 2000, Beyonce.

Wow, am I impressed with you,

Not only are you grown and beautiful, you're also such a good person. I'm immensely proud of you. You're doing exactly what you need to, you're living life to the fullest and I am here for it. Remember our trips to the beach? I miss you. You should call more often. I love that you're meeting new people and having fun but sometimes I need to see you and hear from you. Please call me from time to time. I know I may seem clingy, but I just miss your presence. I also don't know when I'll actually see you next, you've become so unexpected and exciting. I love you, that's why I need to hear from you. Tell me everything, I'll listen. I'm here for you and I want what's best. Come back from time to time. Please. That's the only thing I ask of you at this time. I can't say this to you normally, you'd get uncomfortable. But please listen and take this opportunity. Let's talk more often! I wanna be part of your life again! 🥰

Hope it resonates! 💕

#tarot readings #tarot #free readings #tarot blog #pac tarot #tarot pac #pac #pick a card #pick a picture #pick a photo #pick a pile

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nyaagolor · 10 months ago

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Klavier knows he is in for a very terrible day when he sees Ema Skye smiling. She’s in the lobby, hands behind her back and bouncing on her heels like an excited child. When he spares a glance at the secretary, he shoots a desperate expression back. It seems like he is not the only one concerned with the detective’s strange behavior.

“Good morning Prosecutor Gavin,” she says, falling in line with him as they walk together to his office. She brandishes a latte, which she offers to him as they round the corner. Klavier pales. Something is definitely wrong.

Klavier pops the lid off and wipes at the edges with a tissue, not trusting her enough to not poison him. There are no crumbs on her collar, no energy drinks in sight, and her hair is properly brushed for once. She looks put-together, happy, and excited for a new day… and it’s eight thirty in the morning on a Tuesday. When they reach his office, she opens the door for him with a cheerful “after you.” She is definitely trying to kill him.

Feeling apprehensive, Klavier steps into the room and settles at his desk, refusing to take his eyes off her. She doesn’t shut the door behind her, and finally Klavier lets himself deflate.

“Alright, out with it. What happened?” he says. Ema’s smiles only grows wider, and in a sudden burst of motion she reaches out and slides all his papers onto the floor, leaving his desk bare. When he gawks at her, she slams down an unmarked manilla folder. Slowly, Klavier opens it, then looks up at her. It looks like some kind of multiple choice exam, or at least a cheap photocopy of one, but Ema is grinning at him like it’s full of important evidence. Slowly, he flips through the papers, not bothering to read the frantic chickenscratch handwriting that covers every available spot.

Formulas and notes are scrawled all over his thing, and Klavier frowns as he wonders what exactly he’s supposed to be looking at. The pages are in reverse order, too, and the closer he gets to the front the more excited Ema seems to become. He suddenly freezes on the front page, a fistful of papers in each hand. He notices three things at once.

The first is the title, 2026-2027 cycle Forensics Exam. Applicant Ema Skye.

The second is a stamp in the upper right corner that says “passed”.

The third, impossible to miss, emblazoned across the entire page in striking red sharpie– I QUIT.

He barely has the chance to look up in shock before Ema has all the pages in her arms and launches them into the air with a triumphant cry.

“VERASCHIEDUNG, BITCH!” she cheers, and the pages of the forensics exam flutter down on Klavier’s head like post-trial confetti. He’s frozen still, eyes still wide and staring at the door as he hears her tear down the hallway, happier than he’s ever heard. It’s only when he hears another, equally ecstatic scream from the parking lot that he finally shakes himself off and goes to look. When he peeks his head out the window, he sees Ema throwing herself into someone’s arms, crying with joy as she’s bundled into the passenger seat of the car. Just before her guest disappears into the driver’s seat, they lock eyes with Klavier. He stares, slack-jawed, as former Chief Prosecutor Lana Skye flips him off and drives away with his now former detective.

#ace attorney #ema skye #Klavier Gavin #Lana Skye #vex writing #mod vex

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rambleonwaywardson · 14 days ago

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Clegan Astronaut AU - Epilogue

Masterpost Read on AO3

AU Summary: the boys as modern day NASA astronauts. Taking place in 2025, Bucky is heading to the moon as mission commander of Artemis III while Buck is CAPCOM at NASA. Established relationship (obnoxiously in love).

Author's Note: We made it. Thank you a million times over to every single one of you who has engaged with this story. It means a lot to have you along for the ride.

---

Something funny happens when you fly faster than the speed of sound, nothing but a hunk of metal separating you from the sky. Time doesn’t seem to work right anymore; everything can move slow and fast all at once. You take a breath. It feels peaceful, somehow. Sacred.

Even when you pull so many Gs that it presses a stone to your chest and strangles your lungs until they burn, as long as you can push through the tunnel vision and the dizziness, suddenly everything becomes clearer. Perspective, some might say. Others just call it exhilaration. Freedom. The feeling of being alive.

Bucky Egan is seriously addicted to that feeling. For months now, he’s gone without it. He spends more time than he should standing out at JSC’s Ellington Field, closing his eyes and breathing deeply as other astronauts perform flight tests and training exercises overhead. He listens to the rumbling sounds of the jets, wondering if he’ll ever be up there again. Free.

A jet, a prop plane, a space capsule. He’d take any one of them, really, if he can’t have all of them anymore.

Some things are written in stone. Bucky knew seemingly out of the womb that he wanted to fly. He wouldn’t settle for anything else, wouldn’t settle at all. He was going to become an Air Force pilot, and then – once he learned that there were real people flying aboard something called the Space Station, orbiting around the planet 16 times per day – he was going to become an astronaut. From the very second he even knew it was an option, he wanted his feet to be off of this Earth. He wanted to feel what it felt like. He wanted to see what it looked like. He wanted to hear what it sounded like.

He wanted all of it, and he never much minded the risk. Flight, after all, was his first love, and Bucky Egan will do just about anything for what he loves. A part of him always figured, if he had to die, he wanted it to be in the sky. If he had to die, it would be worth it, as long as flight was what claimed his life. Commit his soul to the stars, a supernova in the dark.

But then, of course, there was Gale.

The night they met, two young boys standing awkwardly in a college dorm, Gale told Bucky that he didn’t intend to be an astronaut. He had Bucky wrapped around his finger from that very first smile, but he wanted to become an engineer for the Air Force. Maybe, if he got lucky, work his way into NASA’s space program. Someone back home to keep his feet on the ground may have done John Egan some good. But, in the end, it was him that looked at Gale and told him that all of that was bull. It was Bucky that pulled him along with strings tied to their hearts, convinced him to just give it all a shot – what’d he have to lose? And here he is, nearly two decades later, an everyday flyboy.

This life they’ve built, orbiting one another like a binary star system, is greater than any adventure Bucky ever could have imagined. The way he’s lived it, he figures he’s lucky he’s made it as far as he has. He’s lucky to be alive after that little stunt on the moon. He’s lucky to have the most amazing husband this side of the universe. He’s damn lucky for all of it. Maybe he’s a fool to ask for more.

But he’s not ready to keep his feet on the ground.

Not yet.

—

July 17, 2026 Houston, TX

Admittedly, this was maybe not Bucky’s brightest plan, taking a video call in the dimly lit Orion cabin, where he has to lay on his back, legs elevated, staring up at a brightly lit screen. He can feel a bit of a headache coming on, and he isn’t sure if the vague throbbing in his leg is real or just a figment of his haywire imagination. He might be losing feeling in his feet; he isn’t really sure. Is he setting himself up for failure? Maybe. This afternoon he needs to be in top form, or at least as close to it as he can get. But he’s committed now, and he’s too stubborn to move.

So here he is in the mock-up, like any other mission sim, tucked into his commander’s seat. Or, really, he supposes it’s Gale’s now. The Artemis 4 crew has been doing their fair share of sims in recent months, and Gale has been pulling longer and longer hours as they get closer to launch, as Bucky needs him at his side less and less.

Maybe that’s exactly why Bucky’s sitting here now. To feel close to his husband during a time when their careers, as usual, tend to pull them apart. Or maybe he’s sitting here because he needs the reminder, a silent dedication to who he is, what he’s meant to be doing, what he so badly needs to keep striving for.

Or maybe, he’s only sitting here because the seat of a cockpit is always where he’s felt the safest.

Safe isn’t the right word.

In control, maybe. Most like himself. A cockpit is always where he’s best understood the world around him: sky above, Earth below, his heart strangled with a love for the unknown. The Orion capsule is another home to him. Things might go wrong – sometimes horribly, horribly wrong – but everything about it was constructed and tested with the singular goal of helping Bucky and his crew break boundaries, make history. Every single thing about it is so specific, so familiar, so carefully planned and crafted. John Egan knows this spacecraft better than he knows himself. In the chaos that is his life, it’s the capsule that carried him away from this planet that best keeps him grounded.

So he sits, laying on his back in the commander’s seat that once was his and is now Gale’s. He doesn’t really remember the process of getting here, but he remembers the intense need to be here, like he didn’t have a single other choice. When he first answered Gale’s video call, his husband stared at him for a long moment, then laughed and said something about “only John Egan has an emotional support spacecraft.” He didn’t say anything about how strange it is, considering Bucky almost died in this spacecraft. Maybe, in some weird, fucked up, convoluted way that he’ll have to talk to his therapist about later, that’s one reason he finds being in this tiny space so reassuring.

He’s not a psychologist. He’s hardly even an astronaut.

In any case, fully convinced that this was exactly where he needed to be to call his husband today – a day that has his nerves all shaken up like a can of soda – he duct taped his phone to the console above his head so that he can look at Gale without having to hold it up above his face the whole time. It fell and smacked him squarely on the nose once at the beginning of the call, but it’s been holding well enough since then.

He doesn’t know how long they’ve been talking. Surely it’s been longer than they’d scheduled for, and someone’s gotta be looking for him by now, grabbing onto unassuming JSC employees and asking in a mild panic “Have you seen Major Egan?” Gale’s crew is no doubt waiting for him, too, perhaps just out of view of the camera, reminding him that they have to get started on some task or another. A part of Bucky feels guilty for holding Gale up for so long, but the rest of him needs this desperately.

This is the first time since Bucky splashed down in the Pacific last November that they’ve been apart for more than even a day. Scratch that, for more than 12 hours. Gale has stayed at his side, for better or worse, since the night he first laid eyes on Bucky again in the hospital. It feels like forever ago, and yet it feels like yesterday. Sometimes Bucky still wakes up convinced he’s dying, convinced that his hands don’t work, phantom pain burning through his leg, unable to speak.

It was a long winter, and a long spring. Bucky has gaps admittedly, times when the brain fog whisked him away from reality, made it hard to stay in the moment, hard to figure out what was real. It all but disappeared with time, thankfully. He still has a moment here and there, especially when he first wakes up or if he’s stressed or nervous (not that he’ll admit to anyone but Gale that he’s even capable of being nervous), but they’re becoming less and less common.

Getting that leg to heal was a complete bitch. Turns out micro- and zero-gravity aren’t very kind to broken bones. Eventually the cast came off, and he progressed to a brace, walking with a cane, slowly, slowly working toward walking on his own again.

Gale was there the whole time. Holding him up, steadying him, cheering him on, taking the brunt of Bucky’s frustration and fear. No matter how many times Bucky lost his temper or wanted to give up or refused to get out of bed or go to PT or OT or his CT scans, Gale stayed. Gale didn’t give up on him. Gale loved him through it all.

It’s July now. Almost eight whole months since Bucky fell to this Earth, broken and barely breathing under a bright Pacific sky. It’s the dog days of summer, long and hot and busy as ever here at JSC. Gale has been gone for six whole days, training in Iceland with the Artemis 4 crew. Weirdly enough, the volcanic, rocky landscape of Iceland’s arctic desert is a perfect training ground for astronauts headed to the moon, and it has acted as such since the Apollo days. With Artemis in full swing, NASA has started sending the lunar crews out there again to conduct simulated missions that mimic what they’ll be faced with on the lunar surface.

Bucky misses those days, training and bonding with his crew – his best friends – as they bounded across the dark, eerie Icelandic rock in fake moon gear, out of their minds with excitement for what they were training to do. He’s spent much of this video call asking Gale about Iceland and their simulated missions, half wanting to relive it and half hoping maybe Gale would forget why Bucky wanted to call so bad in the first place. He can see on Gale’s face that he’s failing.

Sure enough, after indulging him for longer than Bucky honestly expected, Gale sighs and tilts his head, raising an eyebrow. “How do you feel?”

Bucky doesn’t quite know what Gale means when he asks this. The implications have changed so much over the years.

In college, he’d ask Bucky How do you feel? when he woke up with a hangover after a night of drinking too much with their friends. Or that time he got terribly sick in the middle of midterm season and shoved through a Statics exam with a fever. When he pulled an all-nighter trying to finish a class project. When he passed Thermo by the skin of his teeth. From the first day of classes to the day they graduated.

How do you feel?

As young adults in the Air Force, or at NASA, he’d ask Bucky how he felt before going up for a mission or a training exercise. Or after survival training in the desert, wandering to the finish line dehydrated and sunburnt but alive and ahead of the rest of their astronaut class. He’d ask him after long training days or messy flights or after they’d been apart for days, weeks, months. He asked him when they both sat, shell-shocked, after losing a friend in the flames of a crash landing. How do you feel?

Before their wedding day, when Bucky was terrified of their future but knew without a doubt this was everything he ever wanted, Gale asked him, How do you feel?

During quarantine. Before the launch. On the pad. How do you feel?

Every day over CAPCOM or video call. Even when Bucky couldn’t hear him, couldn’t say anything back. How do you feel?

When Bucky came home, Gale would ask him that question several times a day. It was tough; there’s no use lying. There were times Bucky wanted to give up, couldn’t bring himself to leave the house or do much of anything. It was painful and it was confusing and it was messy, and sometimes all Bucky could do was stew in silence or, once or twice, tell Gale to fuck off. But every time his awareness drifted or he had to be moved with his bum leg, every time he woke up in pain or had to be left alone for any period of time, Gale, his voice gentle and concerned and so full of love, would ask him, How do you feel?

So what does he mean now?

Bucky doesn’t know how he feels. He should feel good. Excited. It’s about damn time this day came around. He’s John fucking Egan, not afraid of anything, born for the sky. He should feel as sure of himself as the day he climbed aboard the SLS.

So why doesn’t he?

He is excited. Don’t get him wrong. He’s been waiting for this since he woke up in a Houston hospital. But there’s a pit in his stomach and a weird, fluttery feeling in his chest and a weight settling over his shoulders that he can’t seem to shake.

He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel. He wants it to be the same as it was before. But it isn’t. It can’t be.

Not anymore.

“I’m fine.”

Gale frowns in that concerned, knowing way that he does. He looks so soft now, comfy in Bucky’s Yankees sweatshirt with his hair messy, no doubt fresh from debriefing after a ‘mission’ or about ready to get prepped for another. But Bucky squirms and looks away from his gaze; it sees right through him. It always has.

“Try again,” Gale insists.

“I’m…” Bucky feels a weird phantom twinge in his leg. Blinks and it goes away. He rolls his eyes. At the question? At himself? Get it together. “I’m fuckin’ nervous,” he admits uncomfortably. “Of course I’m fuckin’ nervous, Buck. What if I get out there and…”

What if I get out there and I can’t do it anymore? What if I can’t handle it? Physically. Mentally. What if today just proves what we were all so worried about months ago: Bucky Egan is grounded. For good.

“Fuck.” He can’t say any of it, can’t risk speaking the death of his career into existence. The melodramatic part of him thinks the bugler might as well start playing Taps right damn now if today doesn’t go his way. Fold up a flag and present it to Gale as the jets fly overhead.

He can only imagine the way Gale would frown and grit his teeth if Bucky said such a thing out loud.

His husband full well knows what Bucky means, though, and he’s quiet, thinking it over. Bucky can see half formed placations tumbling through his head like desperate dreams running on fumes. But eventually, he says, “it’s gonna be okay, John.” His voice is careful and easy, and he doesn’t even sound like he’s faking it.

It makes Bucky’s heart clench.

“Gale,” he whispers, and he hates how vulnerable his voice sounds. It rings in his ears, echoing back and forth and back and forth as he roughly scrubs a hand over his eyes, squeezing them shut tight.

He’s always felt most in control inside of a cockpit. He knows the way an aircraft moves better than he knows anything or anyone on this Earth, except maybe his husband. Flight makes him know who he is, gives him his metaphorical wings. And yet he’s also never felt more out of control than he has in a cockpit.

If he goes up there, he has no idea what’ll happen. He has no idea what his body will do when it gets crushed into the seat by several times the force of gravity. He has no idea if the thing that used to lift him up will carry him again, or if it’ll spit him onto the ground in a pathetic heap of has-been.

So how is he supposed to feel right now?

Starbursts of pain color Bucky’s vision. Skull-splitting. All-consuming. It’s burning him alive from the inside out like a physical force trying to rip him apart. He thinks falling into a black hole would hurt less.

He feels sick. The G forces are too much.

He can’t think a coherent thought that isn’t something along the lines of ‘please make it stop.’ Somewhere, deep in his brain that won’t work, he hates himself for that. Knows he should be better.

And out of all of that – this crushing, crunching, nausea-inducing pain that has Curt yelling at him not to throw up in his suit – the words that pop up into his head like a cartoon thought bubble are “the Big Crunch.”

It’s Gale’s favorite theory for how the universe might end. Because Gale is a space physics nerd that has a favorite theory for how the universe might end.

It’s like the opposite of the Big Bang – an exploding outward from an infinitesimal point, 0 to 73.3 kilometers per second per megaparsec in about a trillionth of a second flat. The Big Crunch would be an imploding inward, a collapsing into a single infinitesimal point at a similarly impossible to comprehend rate. Theoretically, this point could be anywhere in the universe.

John wonders if that would feel something like how he feels – crunching, disconnecting, reconnecting, blinding, unbearable. He sort of wishes it would just happen right now, with that point somewhere in this spacecraft. He’ll take the whole universe down with him. He doesn’t really mind, if it’ll make this stop.

“Gale?” He finds himself crying out the only word he can get past his lips. The only word that matters. The only word that can come remotely close to making any of this better.

“Gale?”

Why won’t it work? Why won’t Gale save him?

He’s getting more desperate. Please.

“Gale?”

“John? You with me?”

Bucky blinks. He looks back at his phone, sees Gale’s face, all worried and shit. It makes his heart sink, because Gale’s been looking at him like that a lot in recent months. Today is a big day, and Bucky knows Gale is worrying he won’t be able to handle it. He also knows that Gale feels guilty for worrying he can’t handle it.

But Bucky’s worried, too.

“I wish you were here.” He says these words so quietly he isn’t sure Gale will hear them. He isn’t sure he wants Gale to hear them. He looks away from the phone as he says it, feeling too vulnerable and too raw on this day when he’s supposed to be Major John Egan: cool, cocky, composed.

He can pretend for everyone else. Everyone besides Gale. He’ll tell them that he’s ready, even if he isn’t.

He won’t ever be ready until he does it anyway.

The lights are dim around him. In the glow of the console in front of his face, he strokes his fingers gently over the tactile buttons beside the screen. They feel so familiar; he thinks he could press one with his eyes closed and know exactly what it would do.

“I wish I was, too.” Gale’s voice comes back soft and real, bringing Bucky’s attention back to his phone screen. The way Gale’s face is so open and genuine – so unlike what the rest of the world gets to see of him, with a crooked half-smile half-frown accentuating the mix of emotions in his eyes, wide and searching Bucky’s for some answer he doesn’t have – makes Bucky want to pull him through the screen and hug him tight.

He wants Gale to hug him tight. He wants Gale to pull his feet back down to this planet and tell him he’s safe and protect him from everything that has hurt him so badly. He wants Gale to make sure the stars keep burning at night and the world keeps turning and the darkness doesn’t swallow them whole. He wants Gale to quiet the buzzing in his brain and the ringing in his ears. The little voice that’s telling him he can’t do it, can’t do any of it. He wants Gale to come home right damn now and make all of it go away.

But Gale won’t do that. Because he knows that, right this very moment, Bucky needs to climb the rest of the way up this mountain. He needs to stand at the top himself in order to understand that he can do it, he can make it. Gale can’t do anything but stand beside him.

“Do you think I’m ready?” Bucky asks. He says it with a mindless air, looking away as he traces his thumb over the bottom of the console, but there’s a jagged edge to his voice that gives him away. He doesn’t know if he wants Gale’s reply. There was a time when it didn’t matter what anyone else thought – even Buck. Bucky Egan would do what Bucky Egan wanted to do, whatever he convinced himself he was capable of doing.

Some things change. Sometimes forever, and sometimes only for a moment.

He makes tentative eye contact with his husband through the screen. Gale nods – a curt, somewhat hesitant little thing. “Maybe,” he says honestly. “You’re ready to at least try. But if it doesn’t go the way you want it to, you just keep workin’, and you’ll try again. You’re Bucky Egan. Nothing can keep your feet on the ground forever.”

Bucky is about to say something snarky and maybe self-deprecating back, but before he can, there’s a voice in the background of Gale’s side of the call. His eyes widen and he looks off screen, putting a hand up to whoever was trying to get his attention. He looks back at Bucky and sighs. “I gotta go, darlin’. You’ll be alright, hear me?”

Bucky forces a smile. “Yeah. Yeah, obviously.”

“I love you,” Gale says, shoving every bit of adoration he has into those words, and Bucky wants to bottle it up somehow, hold onto it for when he needs a reminder.

“I love you, too,” he says.

The corner of Gale’s mouth lifts into a shy smile. “Ad lunam, ad astra,” he says, and then he’s gone.

Alone again, Bucky reaches up to turn off his phone, and he lets his hand fall down to rest over his chest. He rubs his thumb over his wedding band, twists it around and around his finger. “Ad lunam, ad astra,” he whispers to himself.

When the master alarm starts blaring through the cabin seconds later, red lights flashing in Bucky’s eyes, his heart rate shoots up as he instinctively starts thinking through every single thing that could possibly be wrong. His eyes scan the console in front of him, searching for system statuses that aren’t there, and he blinks in confusion before he shakes his head, remembering that he isn’t in a training exercise. Someone’s tracked him down.

He turns off the alarm and lets silence fill the cabin again.

“You know, when you said you were gonna find somewhere quiet to flirt with your husband, we thought you meant your office or a shady tree or somethin’.”

Bucky turns his head awkwardly to see Rosie outside, his head ducked down to peek through the hatch at him.

“It was quiet before you came and scared me half to death,” Bucky retorts. He reaches up and rips his duct taped phone off the console, picking the tape off and rolling it into a ball.

“If that scares you, you’re in the wrong place,” Rosie quips. He freezes, just for a second, his eyes going that little bit wider, and Bucky sees the moment he realizes what he said. A harmless joke. A truth, if nothing else. Something that would’ve made Bucky throw a meaningless little insult right back at him a year ago.

Everyone’s been walking on eggshells for a while now. No one would dare even insinuate that John Egan doesn’t belong here, especially not while he’s working so hard to claw his way back.

But he takes Rosie’s words for what they are, rolls his eyes, and brushes a hand back through his hair. “If you ain’t a little scared you’re doin’ it wrong. Or you’re crazy.”

Rosie lets himself smile, shaking his head, and he crawls in through the hatch. He pulls himself into the seat beside Bucky, where Curt would usually sit. Bucky sticks the tape ball to his shoulder, and Rosie grabs it, shoves it into his pocket before Bucky can bug him with it any more.

“Man, can you believe we spent weeks cramped up in this thing?” he muses, his eyes skimming over the industrial walls of the tapered conical cabin. He’s talking about the real Orion capsule, not to mention the hundreds of hours logged in this very simulator.

Bucky glances around. This glorified minivan of a spacecraft is the stuff of his childhood dreams, like something straight from science fiction. “We’re astronauts, Rosie,” he points out, as if he doesn’t wonder every day how he managed to make it this far. “I can’t believe we left the planet at all.” Rosie scoffs, and they share a look, like neither of them are certain anything that’s happened in the last year was real.

Bucky shakes his head, adding, “not like we ain’t used to it.”

“At least on the station we got more than one cramped space.”

Bucky doesn’t ask the question that surges through his brain at the mention of the station: Do you think I’ll ever go back? He isn’t ready for the answer. And he doesn’t want to hear ‘I don’t know’ or ‘Of course you will’ or ‘You’re John Egan, you can do anything.’

John Egan couldn’t sign his own name with a pen a few months ago.

Instead he looks over at the fake window on the side of the fake capsule, assessing the distance from it to him. It’s so close. “Felt like that window was a world away during the return trip.” He remembers being led over to it. The feeling of Beary Egan’s fur between his fingers. The throbbing in his head. The unbearable burning in his leg. The nausea in his stomach. Everything spinning around him.

But out the window, stars. So many stars. And he was going to get to them one way or another.

Rosie looks at the window, then back at Bucky. The crew physician remembers all of it, all too well. Part of him wishes he could forget the worst parts, but another part of him feels a need to be the keeper of those memories. He thanks the universe everyday for guiding all of them home. “Everything seems further away when your body doesn’t know if it’ll make it to tomorrow.”

They’re quiet for a long time, just two crew members in a capsule mock-up. It has snapshot memories flashing through Bucky’s mind, and he rubs his thumb over his wedding ring again to ground himself. He thinks about Rosie’s words. “I made it,” he whispers.

“Yeah,” Rosie agrees. “Yes you fuckin’ did.”

It’s a truth that John has been trying to remind himself of every single day for months. He made it; he’s alive.

But is that enough?

What do you do when the best experience of your life was also your worst? What do you do when the thing you love nearly killed you? What do you do when all is said and done, when there’s nothing left to do but forgive, even though you will never, ever be able to forget?

What do you do when the universe tries to strip away your identity, leaving nothing but a trembling shell, the pieces strewn about for you to pick up one by one?

You rebuild yourself, step by step. And what do you do when the edges don’t fit anymore, rough corners scrubbing at wounds that won’t heal, nothing but sheer grit and determination gluing you together?

Is it enough? Do the pieces fit well enough for you to be whole again? Will time sand away the jagged edges, sew together the messy seams? Pieces lost and pieces gained, and all you can do is search in the dark for who you were and who you thought you were and who you still can be.

And you wonder, is it enough?

Bucky holds his hand up in front of his face. Out in zero G, there’s no up or down. You’re weightless, every part of you. Holding your hand up in the air takes no more effort than holding it out to the side or down or back or forward. On Earth, though, there’s good old gravity. 9.8 meters per second squared. 32 feet per second per second. A reliable force keeping your heels on the ground so you don’t just float away. With the way Orion’s seats are oriented, Bucky and Rosie lay on their backs, staring up at the tapered ceiling of the capsule and the screens set up in front of their faces.

Here on Earth, holding his hand up in front of his face takes effort. He’s not weightless down here, and as he experimentally pinches his fingers together, he watches the way they shake.

He bites his lip, takes a breath, closes his eyes. He doesn’t open them.

Gale once told him about the conversations he had with Dr. Huston – the fear that even if Bucky even made it home, he may never be the same. Now he wonders if that fear came true. Is he the same? Will he be the same? He doesn’t know.

He wonders if Gale does. He wonders what Gale sees now, when he looks at him.

He squeezes his eyes shut even tighter.

Ad lunam. Ad astra.

“You’re gonna be fine, John.” Rosie’s voice cuts through the ringing in Bucky’s ears, quieting it. “This is what you’re meant to do.”

Bucky swallows thickly, willing his voice not to come out a strangled mess. “What if… what if I’m not anymore? What if it doesn’t come back like it’s s’posed to?”

“You’ve been training.”

“What if I never...”

“Take a breath.”

Bucky does. There’s no room for panic. No room for doubt. Just him and the sky.

“Open your eyes.”

When Bucky releases himself from the darkness, his hand is perfectly still in front of him. He straightens his fingers, bends them again, straightens them. They don’t shake.

“You’re ready, John.”

—

The sun is bright over Ellington Field late that afternoon, and Bucky pushes his aviators up the bridge of his nose. He tugs at the collar of his flight suit as he strides down the runway, adjusting it beneath the straps of his parachute pack, and he squares his shoulders, lifting his chin. He feels the hard pavement beneath his boots, hears the beat of his footsteps. The ground crew waits for him.

When he stops in front of the Northrop T-38 Talon, he squints against the light reflecting off its sleek white side, and he feels his breath catch in his throat at the sight of this beautifully engineered machine that will launch him into the blue. He curls his fingers into a fist, spreads them out wide, and slowly, steadily, he presses his hand to the nose of the jet standing in front of him, just waiting to come to life. The T-38 jet trainers are used by NASA for training exercises and keeping the astronaut corps’ flying skills up to par. He knows this aircraft as well as he knows Orion, but he hasn’t flown it since last July, a whole year ago now.

“Hey there,” he whispers, letting his eyes roam over it – the fuselage, the engines, the wings, the tail, the wheels. A beautiful bird. It was designed long before Bucky was even born, but it doesn’t look it. “Long time no see.”

“Worried she won’t remember you?”

As Bucky’s eyes stay trained on the ground, studying the wheels, his hand still pressed to the nose, he feels someone else’s presence at his side. He looks up, pulling his hand away. Curt’s there, watching him with a teasing smile on his face. He’s wearing the same gear as Bucky: blue NASA flight suit, G-suit, parachute pack, a helmet tucked under his arm. His other hand grips the shoulder strap of his harness.

“Not one bit,” Bucky replies.

Curt chuckles and pulls Bucky into a tight one-armed hug, as if they haven’t seen each other in months even though Curt makes a point out of bugging him every day. “You ready?” he asks when he pulls away.

Bucky nods and grins in that wild, daring way, as if he hasn’t had a single doubt this whole time. As if he wasn’t just freaking out to Gale and Rosie over what he’s about to do. He brushes his hair back and gazes at the jet again. “Let’s see how well I remember her.”

After passing his sunglasses off to a ground crew member, he climbs the ladder leading to the Talon’s second seat, behind Curt’s. They each stow their procedure documents in the cockpit and hang their helmets on the rail before hopping back down for a walkaround inspection. This thing’s been checked at least twice over by ground crew already, but Curt and John don’t fly without giving their own seal of approval.

When Bucky climbs the ladder again and, at long last, settles into the tight cockpit of a real, flight-ready jet, adrenaline rises in his chest at the same time that a sense of belonging presses him into the seat. He sits back, and staring at the instrument panel just beyond his fingertips feels something like coming home. He can’t stop the grin that spreads over his face. The crew chief helps Curt and Bucky strap in and connect their G-suits, and then Bucky slides his helmet over his head so he can hook up to the oxygen supply and comms. He sighs deeply; for the duration of this test flight, this jet is a part of him, or he’s a part of it.

Ladders stowed and systems checks complete, Curt gives the signal for air, and the ground crewmen oblige, pumping life into the Talon’s engines. Once they’ve completed the last of their pre-flight checks, Bucky hears Curt’s voice buzzing in his ear. It crackles over the comms, a sound Bucky hasn’t heard coherently since he was bounding along the side of Shackleton crater.

“It feels damn good to fly with you again, Major.”

“Cut the crap, Biddick,” Bucky teases. “Without me around, you’re officially NASA’s best pilot.”

Curt scoffs at that, and Bucky imagines him rolling his eyes as he double checks the takeoff and landing data. “Should’ve left your ass on the moon… astrofag.”

Bucky rolls his eyes right back, but he can’t help but laugh. Whether he’ll admit it or not, the name is growing on him. He shrugs, reviewing the same numbers. “Only one way to get back there.”

Chick’s voice cuts in from the tower, and it makes Bucky feel something like relief to know Harding is here for this, rooting for him. “One step at a time, boys.”

As Curt starts taxiing, Bucky looks out over the side of the aircraft. The wings of the Talon and the still-open canopies shake as the tarmac rolls by beneath the wheels, bumping them along. He and Gale have taken their prop plane out a few times this month and last; Bucky even took over the controls for a while one time. But this, today, is his first time back in a supersonic jet trainer. He’s only flying second seat, leaving most of the piloting to Curt, but today is a major stepping stone toward feeling whole again: today he finds out if he can handle supersonic flight.

Since his neurologists cleared him for it a couple months ago, he’s been training for this day in earth-bound simulators. At first, the Gs were too much for him, leaving him feeling weak, pathetic, and discouraged as he passed out or started feeling sick at embarrassingly low G forces. But it’s been coming back to him in recent weeks.

The Talon – capable of flying at Mach 1.3 and climbing 30,000 feet in just one minute – can easily pull 7 Gs. Bucky thinks he’s ready. He wants so badly to be ready. He wouldn’t be flying today if anyone thought he wasn’t ready.

They’re at the end of the runway, staring down the length of it as Curt pivots the Talon so its nose points straight ahead. When Chick clears them, they lower their canopies, and Bucky feels the cabin pressurize. He blinks in surprise as they lurch forward, and then they’re barrelling ahead, faster, faster, faster, until they lift up off the ground, ascending into the clear sky.

He breathes deeply as they climb, picking up speed as they shoot up into their airspace, approaching 16,000 feet. They coast there for a minute, making sure everything is still in order up at altitude.

“Doin’ alright back there?” Curt asks as they both check their systems again.

“We’re go back here,” Bucky affirms. “Let’s fuckin’ do it.”

“Your wish is my command, Major,” Curt says. He lowers the nose of the jet, and they pick up speed as they drop again, getting up to about 500 knots, three-quarters of the speed of sound. Curt brings the stick back then, sharply pulling the Talon’s nose up, and Bucky watches the G-meter gradually kick up to 5 as they shoot upwards. The force presses him back into his seat, making it hard to breathe, and he clenches his muscles as he feels his G-suit get to work trying to keep the blood from draining away from his head. The needle creeps toward 6, goes a little over it. He grits his teeth hard, feeling his heart start to beat harder, faster as his vision starts to tunnel. His head feels funnier than he wishes it would, but he forces himself to focus, strains to breathe, determined to keep going.

“Fuck,” he mutters, tensing his lower body as he and his suit fight to prevent G-LOC.

Chick’s voice crackles in Bucky’s ears. “You’re doin’ fine, son.”

Curt keeps pulling back until they’re up around 20,000 feet and the nose passes vertical; they’re now flying inverted. The nose of the Talon is like an arrow, going wherever you point it, and currently it’s looping them over backward at Curt’s command, with the ground through the canopy where the sky should be. The G-meter starts to chill out, dropping again as they lose speed. Bucky’s vision clears as the blood returns to his head, and he breathes in deeply.

Through the canopy, he catches a glimpse of two lonely, fluffy clouds in the distant sky, and below, little buildings and invisible people and dark, sparkling bodies of water spread out across the Earth. Stardust, he thinks, smiling just a little bit as he watches the world around him, trying to see it through Gale’s eyes. Bucky’s always found it beautiful, but more than anything, he’s always cared about the flight, the adrenaline, the excitement. Gale cares about the beauty, the wonder, the imperfect perfection.

“You still with me, Bucky?”

“Yeah,” Bucky assures Curt. “I’m here.”

Curt expertly flips them around and levels back out, upright once again and coasting along at a smooth 400 knot clip. “You ready?” he asks after giving Bucky some time to recover.

“I didn’t come all this way not to be.”

“I don’t need the sass,” Curt shoots back, but it’s light, like normal. “You have the controls.” Bucky’s pretty sure he hears the word ‘asshole’ muttered at the end of that sentence, and it makes him smile.

He shakes the stick in confirmation, and suddenly he has all the power of the Talon right there in his hands. His eyes flick down to where his fingers grip the stick, his heart skipping a beat, but his hand is perfectly still. “I have the aircraft,” he says, and he hopes Chick is still listening.

He sends them into a roll, feeling giddy as his head gets snapped to the side and his body seems to remember exactly what it’s supposed to do. Flying this thing is ingrained within him, like riding a bike – a bike that’s 46 feet long with a 25 foot wingspan, 3,000 pounds of thrust, a 55,000 foot altitude ceiling, and a top speed of 858 miles per hour.

He asks the plane for a little more, a little more, pushing them higher, faster, forward. He hears Curt whoop loudly into the comms: “Come on baby! We’re fuckin’ back!” And Bucky hasn’t felt this alive since he was on the moon.

After a few minutes of unfiltered glee at the helm of his long-lost ship, feeling pieces of his soul sink back into him, he banks them around and hands the controls back over to Curt for the grand finale, their final test of the day. At about 32,000 feet, they enter a shallow dive, using it to increase their speed again. Bucky feels himself being pressed back, but with a more comfortable amount of force this time as the sky blurs by. He watches the airspeed indicator. Mach 0.92… 0.96… 0.98… 0.99. The indicator jumps, out of sync, as the bow shock passes.

Bucky nearly gasps as they hit Mach 1… 1.02… 1.06… 1.11.

A strange feeling of calm descends on him. They’re flying faster than the speed of sound; they’re flying faster than anything else on Earth. There’s a certain beauty to it that Bucky’s missed in the last eight months, and he blinks away stubborn tears as the world starts to make sense again. He looks out the window, sees nothing but blue skies, and he lets oxygen fill his lungs as he grins beneath his mask. He laughs, and he hears Curt laugh with him.

—

Back on the ground, once the canopies are up and Curt’s parked them squarely in the Talon’s hangar, the crew chief secures the ladders to the side of the aircraft, giving the pilots their exit. He asks Bucky if he feels alright, and Bucky nods once his helmet is off, leaving dark, sweaty hair sticking up in all directions. “Never better,” he says.

In his head is a steady mantra: I am an astronaut. I am an Air Force officer. I am a pilot.

He just proved it to himself, even if he still has more work to do. He is a pilot. He is all of those things. Not was… he is.

He climbs down slowly, gripping tight to the sides of the ladder in a way that has him second guessing how much brain power he needs to dedicate to his grip strength. Just a few months ago, his fingers wouldn’t listen well enough to do even this. But he studies his hands for just a split second, one foot on the rungs of the ladder and the other hanging mid-air, and he realizes that his fingers are working just fine right now. His legs feel a little weak as he steps down, down, down, and he holds his breath as he lowers himself the last big step to solid ground. His head goes just a little fuzzy, and for a nerve-wracking half second, he worries his knee might give out and send him crashing to the pavement, but his toes find contact, and he lets himself hop down. His head clears. He takes another deep breath.

His heart is beating fast; he still feels the adrenaline thrumming in his chest, and it makes him feel so goddamn alive. The world around him feels so unreal, the feeling of Curt clapping him on the shoulder so far away that it makes Bucky stumble to the side. He laughs and shakes his head before turning to press his hand to the jet one more time.

“Next stop, flyin’ her yourself,” Curt says.

For the first time in months, Bucky actually believes it might happen. It’s not even a half-truth said to the media, a manifesto spoken to shove him through PT, a dream to get him out of bed in the morning. It’s right here in front of him, just inches away, and he’s so close.

He doesn’t say any of it out loud, but he knows Curt can see it, too. They all can see it. Someday soon, John Egan won’t be grounded anymore.

He tucks his helmet under his arm and takes his aviators from the crew chief with a nod of thanks before putting them on. With a glance over at his best co-pilot as they walk away from the aircraft, out of the hangar, he ruffles Curt’s sweaty hair. “What the fuck?” Curt says, but he’s looking somewhere out ahead of them when he says it.

Bucky squints into the early evening summer sun at a small silhouette running fast toward them. After a second of confusion, he laughs and sinks down to his knees just in time for a wriggly husky to crash into his chest. “Pep!” A second one runs up to his side, licking at his ear before going after Curt. “And Meatball,” Bucky laughs. Pepper shoves her nose into his face, making him lean his head back, pushing her away even as he curls his fingers into her thick coat. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Flyin’ looks good on you major,” a voice calls out. Bucky’s heart skips a beat, and his head shoots up, his hands freezing in the middle of scratching Pepper’s ears. Meatball trots away, toward the group of people approaching them.

There’s Benny and Marge – here for support and for media updates respectively – as Bucky expected. Then there’s Chick, fresh from the tower and looking something like a proud father, or maybe just a relieved boss.

And then there’s Gale.

Bucky’s husband – the same one that Bucky was supposedly video calling in Iceland just hours ago – is now also in a NASA flight suit with his hair gelled back. He’s walking across the tarmac to him, illuminated by the sun.

“Holy shit, man!” Benny exclaims, giving Bucky a firm, excited side hug before slapping Curt on the shoulder. “Bucky Egan is back.”

“That’s right, you can’t get rid of me,” Bucky jokes as Marge comes forward to hug him. He knows she’ll want some pictures of him and Curt by the Talon in a minute, but for now she just whispers in his ear that she’s proud of him, and she squeezes him tight.

Chick pulls him into a rare hug, patting him on the back. “You did damn good,” he says. “Damn good.”

And then there’s Gale. He stands in front of Bucky, looking a little sheepish but tall and proud and beautiful. He raises an eyebrow, and Bucky can’t do anything but stare at him for a long moment. He stares, and stares some more, before finally he blinks and surges forward. Gale grunts at the force of Bucky’s body hitting his, but he firmly plants his feet and wraps his arms around him. “Hello to you, too.”

“Hey, angel,” Bucky whispers. He presses his nose into Gale’s hair, inhales the scent of his shampoo and product. He smells like Houston, like the gulf, like waking up to sunlight shining through the windows, like all the things Bucky loves. He smells like home. “All that about what you were doin’ in Iceland today was bullshit, huh?”

Gale shrugs. “Surprise?”

Bucky grips the fabric of Gale’s flight suit, twisting it in his fingers. “Were you… did you see?”

Gale nods. “I saw all of it.”

Bucky bites back a grin, hiding it against the side of Gale’s head. He hears Marge take their picture. It’ll be framed and on his desk within the week.

—

By the time the sun’s gone down, the Talon tucked away in its hangar and the ground crew gone for the day, Bucky is back at Ellington Field, sitting on the hard pavement of the runway. There’s the lightest breeze drifting around him, carried in off the bay to relieve Houston from the oppressive heat of the daylight. Major Egan is still in his flight suit, adorned with patches – his name, John Egan, written in neat script beneath a set of wings; the NASA logo; the U.S. flag; his ISS mission patch; and finally, Artemis III.

There’s a crescent moon peeking out of the darkness, set against a backdrop of dark blue-black sky pockmarked with the stars that have guided Bucky his entire life. He stares up at them, the moon and the stars, his mind jumping from one thing to the next. Running through his flight today, everything good and bad about it; thinking through how much further he still has to go until his body is 100% ready to fly alone again; wondering if Gale is looking for him, if he knows Bucky well enough to know where to find him. He’s remembering walking on that moon – every day he works to reconcile it all in his brain, what went wrong and what went right. He’s thinking about what it will be like when Gale goes up there in just a short four or so months.

He can hear footsteps walking over the pavement, and he breathes out in a huff. His husband knows him like the back of his own hand after all.

He spares a glance over as Gale settles on the ground beside him, pulling his knees to his chest in a way that Bucky thinks can’t possibly be comfortable anymore at their age. They sit, close enough that their arms brush, and they look up at the sky that has laid the path for their entire existence.

“Everyone’s headin’ to the Hundred Proof,” Gale says. “Thought you’d wanna drink to being back in the cockpit.”

Bucky hums. “Guess that’s somethin’ I oughta do.” Since he was released from the hospital last December, the Hundred Proof has become a place of celebration and camaraderie again, rather than one of collective grief and worry. His Artemis portrait went up on the walls of the bar just before the new year, along with Curt’s, Rosie’s, and Alex’s. Soon enough, Gale’s ISS portrait will be switched out for his Artemis 4 one, too. Buck and Bucky; one is never far behind the other.

Bucky crosses his legs and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, still looking up as if he can see the entire universe if he only squints hard enough. “We’ve been through a lot together, haven’t we?”

“Have we?”

Bucky looks over at Gale again, scoffing in disbelief, but he finds Gale hiding a smirk as he presses his cheek to his knee, watching Bucky. His hair is messy again from running his hand through it, the gel never holding for long, and Bucky rolls his eyes, reaching a hand out to ruffle it some more.

“It’s worth it,” he says matter of factly, letting his eyes drift back to the stars.

Gale scoots closer and lets his head fall against Bucky’s shoulder. “It’s our life,” he agrees. He doesn’t need to emphasize the our; it’s as if there was never any doubt in this universe that his life would be John’s and John’s would be his.

“Sometimes I can’t really believe I made it here.”

“You were never gonna take no for an answer.” Gale doesn’t know exactly which part of Bucky’s life they’re talking about. He wasn’t going to settle for less than the astronaut corps. And he wasn’t going to settle for less than Gale either.

“I said sometimes,” Bucky mutters, but there comes a point, no matter how badly you’ve always wanted something, where it doesn’t feel real anyways. He doesn’t quite know what he did right to make it to this very spot, even if he can trace his exact path, every single step and crossroads and difficult decision. Sometimes, all he feels is fucking lucky.

Gale scoffs and turns his head, pressing his nose against Bucky’s neck, above the collar of his flight suit. He kisses the delicate skin there. “I never had a doubt,” he whispers. “I’m proud of you.”

Bucky leans back, pulling Gale with him until they’re both laying on the hard ground. It’s uncomfortable as hell, but Gale curls against Bucky’s body anyway, shifting so his head lays right over his heart. Bucky’s fingers curl into his hair. They don’t shake. They don’t even hesitate.

“It’s a damn good life,” Bucky breathes out, the words floating up to the heavens and wrapping around them both. He means it with everything he has.

Gale hums in agreement. With his ear pressed to Bucky’s chest, he can hear his heartbeat, steady and strong. It’s a sound that he took for granted before, but he never, ever gets tired of it now. He squeezes his eyes shut and silently counts along. One. Two. Three. Four.

“You’ll come home, right?” Bucky asks. Few people in this world would be able to distinguish the slight tremble to his voice, the way it jumps almost imperceptibly, nerves twining through it. But Gale hears it loud and clear. With his cheek pressed to Bucky’s chest, he feels the rise and fall start to slow, feels the way Bucky is nearly holding his breath.

Gale closes his eyes, bites at his lower lip. He knows that Bucky knows better than to ask that question. Both of them know that their line of work has never, not once, come with guarantees. They know better than anyone that promises like that are as good as empty. And yet, without promises, what is there to keep them moving forward?

So Gale buries his face in Bucky’s chest and says the only thing he can say. “When have you ever known me not to come home?”

Bucky scoffs quietly at that, but Gale knows that’s all he wanted to hear. They both know that, technically, the odds of him making it home are high; the opposite outcome, statistically, has little to no standing. Bucky takes Gale’s hand, and he mindlessly fiddles with Gale’s fingers in a way that feels normal and domestic, like they’re just any other married couple in this funny little world. Like they’re just them – awkward teenagers and reckless young adults and newlyweds all at once.

Gale could count the days until he launches out of this planet’s orbit. The hours. The minutes. He could mentally tally them as they tick by, pulling them closer and closer to the next adventure, the next mission, the next dream. The clock is running.

But, despite it looming over them, with all of the excitement and adrenaline and worry that it entails, at this exact moment, beneath a sky full of stars, it feels far away. He could count down the seconds. He could feel the anticipation of it winding through his body with every beat of his heart.

But instead, he focuses on Bucky. He counts his husband’s heartbeats, the purest sign that they are both alive, that they are both exactly where they need to be. One. Two. Three. Four.

“Ad lunam, ad astra,” Bucky whispers into the night.

Gale hides a smile against the fabric of Bucky’s flight suit. It smells like flight – fuel and sweat. He focuses on that, on the rise and fall of Bucky’s chest, on the feeling of warmth between them, the sticky summer air drifting through their hair.

“To the moon, to the stars,” he repeats back. And with a soft smile, he lets himself breathe.

#I feel so many feelings about this ending #can't believe we've made it this far tbh #I love these gay space boys #And I'm glad you love them too #Thank you #ad lunam ad astra #clegan #clegan astronaut au #to the moon and back #mota #masters of the air #my gay space boys #john egan #gale cleven #clegan fic #buck x bucky #bucky egan #buck cleven #mota fic

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