#I think I kinda alarmed her with the whole all of the things I’ve built my life on have dry rotted

[anonyma13]

.

#not being able to trust my own feelings and perspective is a special kind of hell #I hate that relationships are a source of intense anxiety for me #no matter how positive the core is I am still sick with it #do we have massively different values and I’ve just been pretending otherwise to myself? #or am I following in my mothers footsteps and blowing it all up for nothing? #or is it somewhere in between? #I can never be honest about how I feel because the bad days make it feel like everything is rotten #don’t give me that you just need other people in your life bullshit #when I struggle so hard with isolating myself #I guess my upbringing has told me that people are inherently unsafe and they will hurt you and that’s just life #maaaaybe I knocked some shit loose journaling about my childhood today #sigh #highly personal #I’m feeling so stressed and I know I’m getting so little sleep #th bright side is that a coworker slash maybe friend cares enough about me to want to get a drink #I think I kinda alarmed her with the whole all of the things I’ve built my life on have dry rotted #and I’m just trying to rebuild on my own with no support #but are you getting the care you need she asked me #and I about had a breakdown later because the answer is no #I wish I wish I wish I had just been able to slow down when we started dating #I wish I had been more self possessed and intentional #I’m #probably not getting any sleep tonight

[notquitetwilight]

What are your headcanons about Alice's personality before vampirism? Once she became a vampire she was able to choose who she wanted to be, or maybe deep down she was able to recognize things she liked from her past and maybe built off of that? For example, if she liked helping her mother sew dresses (that didn't actually happen) then maybe that's why she has such a strong desire for fashion even if she doesn't know why. Something like that. I hope I'm making sense!

This makes perfect sense and I love this! Thank you for letting me fire up my actual brain cells lol. Smeyer is kinda contradictory when it comes to Alice — on one hand Alice only gets visions based on people’s decisions, but on the other she bases her whole vampire life on a vision of Jasper saying her name. Jasper would’ve only known her name from Alice telling him, but Alice only knows her name from the vision of Jasper calling her by it. That doesn’t make sense to me because she makes the decision to find Jasper and then the Cullens after her vision, not before it, so how’d she even have the vision of that happening in the first place if she hadn’t made that decision yet? Does that make sense? I don’t get it lol

I like to think she has some subconscious sense of her human self. Alice was her middle name after all so clearly she didn’t pull that out of the sky when it became her forename as a vampire. I can picture her human self being similarly spirited to how she is as a vampire, as well as her having a very strong sense of self or of trust in her own instinct. We know she had visions as a human and I’m sure when she woke as a vampire she knew to trust in those visions because of how her human self had been right about her mother’s murder etc, even if she had no conscious recollection of that. So, if we go with this theory, here are some possible aspects of her human life that might explain Alice’s current personality/interests:

- From the moment she was born, Alice shared a close bond with her mother, unlike her daddy’s girl of a sister. This is why Mrs. Brandon believed in her visions when nobody else did.

- Her mother was beautiful, and Alice inherited not only her pixie-like features, but her eye for fashion and beauty. She’d often be all dressed up with nowhere to go as she tended to the house while her husband travelled and worked.

- Mrs. Brandon would let her play dress-up in her wardrobe from a very young age, and little Alice would beg her to do her makeup so she could feel as beautiful as the woman she admired so much looked. She always eventually gave in, but told Alice she wasn’t allowed to look until she was finished. She’d then lead her over to the mirror, her hands over Alice’s eyes, and do a big reveal each time. Alice would always gasp and hug her in delight, and her mother would kiss the top of her head and say, “my beautiful little doll.”

- As Alice grew older, she loved helping out at her father’s jewellers so that she could people-watch. The shop was always filled with rich southern belles getting their husbands to buy them expensive jewellery. She loved fantasising about being able to afford what those whose style she admired bought, while also silently judging those she felt had more money than taste.

- Her father usually kicked her out after an hour or two of her starting work because she was so daydreamy, and he’d impatiently tell her she made the customers uncomfortable.

- But one regular, an elderly widow, would always request Alice’s assistance specifically. She’d have the girl trail around after her, accessorising a diamond necklace here with a diamond bracelet there. She had a rather harsh way of speaking, but she’d always shake Alice’s hand and slip her a $50 note after purchasing from her father at the register. The lady had very little time for Mr. Brandon, and when she came in and asked for “the short young lady” after Alice had been institutionalised, he told her she would not be returning but he’d be happy to assist. She gave him a long, hard look before leaving the store, and he never saw her again.

- Her mother taught her to sew. She’d stay up practicing until all hours, and eventually started sketching her own dress designs. The first piece of clothing Alice ever designed and made from scratch was a surprise dress for her mother, made from an expensive, pale blue fabric she had bought from the saved $50 bills. Her mother was in so much awe of her daughter’s talent and thoughtfulness that her eyes welled up as she ran her fingers over the garment.

- When others began speaking about Alice’s visions, accusing her of being a witch, a changeling or simply cursed, Mrs. Brandon would comfort her and tell her to ignore them. “You’ll never lead yourself wrong, Mary,” she told her firmly. “Always count on yourself.” Alice occasionally overheard her parents arguing about her throughout her childhood and teenage years, her father insisting she be sent away. But her mother always came to her defense, and the last time she heard them argue, the usually gentle woman was so infuriated she yelled that she would discuss it no further — that Alice would be sent away over her dead body.

- Alice was thereby sickened to forsee her mother’s murder, and was so hysterically panicked she struggled to tell her of what she saw in a coherent manner. Her mother tried to reassure her that she’d be cautious — that nothing would happen, that she’d never leave her — but the pit in the girl’s stomach never went away.

- Mrs. Brandon’s death left Alice feeling very strange. She took it hard, but it had also felt like a nightmare inevitable to come true. She imagined herself standing on a train platform, watching two trains headed for a collision and powerless to stop it. People whispered about how she wore a pale blue dress instead of black to the funeral, but she couldn’t hear them through her grief. She also foresaw that nobody would believe her when she claimed her mother had been murdered, but she tried to tell them anyway to no avail. For the first time, despite years of being mocked and ostracised for it, she began to hate her gift.

- She was grateful for it again just a few months later though, having envisioned her father and his new wife attempting to kill her. The vision gave her just enough time to make her escape, ultimately saving her life. She swore she’d only ever follow her late mother’s advice from then on and always trust in herself and what she saw.

- When she woke as a vampire, the first vision she had was Jasper saying her name. The next was of the pair of them surrounded by the rest of the Cullens. She was resolute that these visions were leading her to the life she was destined to live, despite having no recollection of her past.

- About a month after she joined the Cullens, Alice stood at the door of Esme’s studio, where her already maternal figure was painting inside. She didn’t know what had possessed her to do what she had done for this person she barely knew, but something about it felt right.

“Esme?” she called as she knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Esme said absentmindedly, concentrating on the landscape she was working on. Alice burst through the door excitedly, causing her to look up in alarm.

“I have something for you. And I’ve already seen: you’re going to love it!”

Esme’s shoulders relaxed. She smiled and set her paintbrush down. “I’m sure I will. What have you got there?” She gestured to the material folded over Alice’s arm. “Spoiling me already?”

Alice proudly held up her latest creation from its hanger. “I designed a dress, just for you.”

#omg this was so much longer than I planned #sorry #anon I hope this is what you were going for #twilight #twilight renaissance #the twilight saga #the twilight series #alice cullen #esme cullen #jasper hale #the cullens #headcanon #twilight revival #origin story #alice brandon #smeyer #tw murder #tw death #tts #jalice #new moon #eclipse #breaking dawn #midnight sun #asks #anon #not quite twilight

[angrylizardjacket]

dirtbags // 5: Charlotte

Summary: High School AU. 1985. Winter. Charlotte and Razzle are officially not dating, while Lola’s not dating someone but won’t say who, though she’s contemplating sleeping with Tommy in an effort to get him to stop pining for her, which Charlotte thinks is a terrible idea. Except that Charlotte lets slip to Tommy that that’s Lola’s plan, and he doesn’t take it well. The whole pack ends up at the Drive-In, which is going great for Charlotte and Razzle right up until Nikki decides to be an ass, and Charlotte realises that Tommy has spoken to Lola about their fight. It looks like things will be getting worse before they get better.

A/N: 6655 words. long overdue sorry!! @misscharlottelee and @evaangelics my beloveds this is, as always, for you both. ft. asofterworld quotes

my sister and i both hate antique shopping. but we love hating things together.

So yes, technically Charlotte and Razzle spent the better part of Heather’s party in a dark corner being altogether gross, as an incredibly drunk Peach had informed them both before she was pulled away by a far more sober Vince, which Charlotte hadn’t thought much of at the time, herself more than a little tipsy, but hearing Eileen rant in the diner the following day had made her feel a little guilty for not paying more attention. Not that anything bad happened, but still, she felt partially responsible for the young ginger girl. 

But the point is that Charlotte and Razzle are not dating, despite what everyone in their weird and ragtag bunch of lunchtime delinquents likes to imply. If Charlotte could justify punching Nikki again, she absolutely would. It’s not her fault that Razzle’s interesting and kind and honest and funny, and if she finds herself feeling a little heady, a little good-nauseous, like she had back when she and Duff had first been dancing around the idea of being a couple, she pushes those feelings to the back of her mind and distracts herself with something, anything else. 

Right now, she’s got a terrible headache and is having a whisper argument with Lola in the middle of art, trying to talk her out of pity-fucking Tommy.

“You make it sound so crass and heartless,” Lola’s lip curled, frowning at the red pencil in her hand and the cartoon drawing of a flower in her notes, “pity-fucking,” the word sounds wrong on Lola’s lips, tone derisive, “you say it like I don’t care about him.”

“Don’t pity-fuck my cousin, you can both do better,” Charlotte rubs at her temples, eyes closed, as Lola makes a noise like she’s not too sure if that’s a compliment, “a few weeks ago, you promised me you were just friends -”

“He’s a hopeless romantic who keeps hearing about cheerleaders sleeping with people who aren’t him, lemme put him out of his misery -”

“By fucking him? What if he catches further feelings for you?”

“I dunno, I’ll kill him?” Lola suggests flippantly, and when Charlotte cracks her eyes open to level a glare at Lola, the dark haired girl is grinning, clearly joking.

“Why Tommy? Why can’t you sleep with someone less related to me?” Charlotte hisses, tone vaguely annoyed and desperate, “I thought you were getting laid? What’s up with you and Nikki anyways?” There’s a shift in her tone, and Lola makes a face, pressing a little harder with her pencil. 

“I am sleeping with someone less related to you,” Lola says, though there’s a strangely guarded quality to her voice, “not Nikki, for the record; he’s the one who suggested I sleep with Tommy to begin with. He’s too much of a bitch to fuck me himself,” she mutters, mostly to herself, a little wrinkle creasing the bridge of her nose as she thinks about it. 

“Wait, you’re seeing someone? For real? And it’s not Nikki?” Charlotte’s expression lit up, and Lola gave her a calculating looking out of the corner of her eye.

“I bet we both know another person I’m not sleeping with,” and Lola’s tone is mean and a little venomous as she deftly changes the subject, “how is our favourite exchange student, by the way?” Charlotte realises too late that her excited questioning of Lola’s private life may have touched a nerve. For all that Lola’s become more open in the few months they’ve been friends, there were strange lines Charlotte kept finding. Lola never really acted as though she cared much about Charlotte and Razzle’s vague status, so to use it against Charlotte was a surprise, and a clear giveaway that one of those lines had been crossed. It got Lola’s message across well enough, and Charlotte’s mouth snapped closed. 

Lola was a terrible distraction when she wanted to be.

“Lola’s not seeing anyone,” Nikki says flatly around his cigarette, and when Charlotte realises she’s gossiping with Nikki Sixx, she wonders idly where her life went wrong, “she’s fucking someone,” he corrected, “and she refuses to tell me who, but she’s not seeing anyone.” He sounds far more annoyed than Charlotte had anticipated, and she can’t help herself. She tugs on that string.

“Wait, so it’s actually not you?” 

“Lola’s dad is built like He-Man, Master of the Fucking Universe, have you seen him, Charlie? I couldn’t stick it in his daughter and bring myself to look him in the eye every other day; and I’m past worrying if he’s gonna toss me into space like he’s an Olympic hammer thrower,” Nikki considers for a moment, before heaving a sigh, “I just don’t wanna disappoint him.”

“You think fucking Lola’s gonna disappoint her dad?” Charlotte’s brow wrinkled with slight confusion, “why do you even talk to her dad every other day?”

“We work together?” Nikki says, like it’s the simplest answer in the world, and oh, suddenly Charlotte knows exactly why the back of the fry cook in Leo’s looked so familiar. Nikki can obviously read it on her face as the realisation, the full understanding of the situation dawns on Charlotte, but it still doesn’t stop her from bursting out with laughter.

“Oh dude, you definitely cannot fuck your boss’s daughter, no matter how much you so clearly want to -”

“Hey!” Nikki snapped, “bold words coming from you, Miss Lee; you already made sure Razz has had the full American High School Experience, or are you waiting for Prom to go full cliché about it?”

“Nikki, I’ve already punched you in the face once, so help me -”

“Yeah but now I know what to expect, I’m kinda into it,” Nikki’s grin is all teeth, and he leans across the table, into Charlotte’s space, “do it again, Miss Lee,” he teases, offering up his cheek to her, grinning from ear to ear. Charlotte makes a disgusted noise, leaning back, crossing her arms.

“You disgust me; can you please quit your job so you can fuck Lola?” 

Thankfully, this seems to take the wind out of Nikki’s sails, his expression falling to something irritated as he huffs and drops his gaze, sitting back dejectedly, and pointedly refusing, unable to come with a snide comeback in time to save face. 

“Lola would punch you in the face,” Charlotte pointed out, tone a little smug, and Nikki presses his lips together, trying very hard to keep his expression neutral as a blush creeps up his cheeks. 

“So would that leggy redhead of yours,” he’s quick to change the conversation, “isn’t she in the musical? You know my band’s still looking for a singer -”

“Lemme stop you right there,” Charlotte stops Nikki in his tracks, holding up a single hand for silence, “first of all, the only person Eileen hates more than you is Vince Neil, and she told me personally that she’d rather eat glass than join your band, secondly -”

“You talked about my band with her?” There’s something a little bashful in Nikki’s voice, and the blush hasn’t left his cheeks; the whole picture would be endearing if he wasn’t such a colossal asshole.

“Secondly,” Charlotte tries again, “you know her name’s Eileen; everyone knows her name is Eileen, stop calling her my leggy redhead,” she ordered, before taking a deep breath, trying to let her irritation subside, “and thirdly, Lola was the one who asked Eileen to be in your band, Eileen just brought it up to me because she knew Tommy was in it.” Nikki, who had already been pink all over, was steadily turning red, trying to hide it as he made a show of patting down his pockets looking for his cigarettes.

“Lola... uh, she talks about my band? She asked if Eileen wanted to join us?” He’s shooting for casual and missing the mark miserably, much to Charlotte’s delight.

“You’re so in love with her,” she smirks. Nikki scowls at her. The bell rings.

i have found a way to watch video in your head. high definition, with instant replay. it is called having regrets.

When Eileen invites Charlotte to the drive in, and suggests bringing Razzle, she insists it’s not a date, that some of the people from the musical were just getting together to watch the new horror movie, and she thought it would be good for Razzle to experience a proper, drive-in movie. That probably should have set of alarm bells in Charlotte’s mind, since everyone knew that if you take someone to a horror movie at the drive-in, you generally don’t end up actually watching much of the movie. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. 

But Eileen’s adamant, and Charlotte honestly wouldn’t actually mind sneaking off with Razzle at some point, if the opportunity arose, not that she’s admit that. 

“I should ask Lola to go,” Tommy says, tone a little wistful, when, on Thursday, Charlotte tells him her plans for the following evening; alarm bells definitely start ringing. 

They’re in Tommy’s kitchen after school, with his mom at the supermarket, and his dad at work, they’ve got the house to themselves, apart from Tommy’s sister upstairs, monopolising the phone. Charlotte’s sitting on the counter, while Tommy’s staring into the refrigerator, not actually looking at what’s in there, thoughts miles away as he considers his own words.

“Shut that if you’re not going to get anything, and no you shouldn’t,” Charlotte shuts him down immediately, to which Tommy frowns, asking derisively when she became the boss of him, slamming the fridge closed, “I thought you two were just friends,” Charlotte counters with.

“I can ask a friend to the drive-in,” though the way he suddenly can’t meet her gaze betrays him, and he flits over to a cupboard, opening it and staring at the food inside, trying to decide on an afternoon snack, “why are you here, anyways?” At this, Charlotte goes quiet and pensive, looking down at her knees as her heels kick softly against the cupboards below, trying not to think about how her mother keeps leaving college brochures out, with Law, Accounting, and Medicine courses all meticulously highlighted, or how whenever they’re in the same room, she’s treated to passive aggressive questions about whether she’s seen the brochures her parents know she definitely hasn’t touched.

“Am I not allowed to hang out with you?” Charlotte finally surfaces from her thoughts to see that Tommy is waiting for an answer.

“Not if you’re going to be an asshole.”

“If you’re going to daydream about Lola, I’m going to be an asshole,” Charlotte fired back, snarkily, and Tommy narrowed his eyes at her.

“You’ve become kind of a bitch since you started hanging out with Nikki,” he huffs, and Charlotte straightens up where she’s sitting, eyes going wide with disbelief, with slight outrage.

“I’m just fucking sick of hearing you chase after girls who don’t want you! It’s all you ever talk about!”

“Lola wants me! Lola fucking wants me, Charlie!”

“She doesn’t want you, she wants to pity-fuck you so you’ll get off her damn case! Just how naïve are you, Thomas?” Charlotte yells back, and immediately smacks her hand to her mouth, regret written all over her face. Tommy’s expression falls like his heart is breaking. “Tommy -”

“A real, fucking bitch,” there’s a shake in Tommy’s voice that is breaking Charlotte’s heart, and she tries to apologise, but he tells her to go home. 

Yes, she leaves, she shuts the door behind herself, but she can’t bring herself to go home. Her feet carry her while her mind is blank, but when she looks up, she’s pushing open the door to the gas station, seeing Mick Mars look up from his magazine. Before he greets her, she sees the way his eyes search the space around her, roam the empty fuel pumps, as if expecting Tommy to pop out behind her. Then, once he considers himself safe, he puts down his magazine, tilting his head curiously at her, at her dejected demeanour. 

“Charlotte?” She’s actually surprised that he knows her name, and Charlotte hovers in the door, letting in the cold air from outside as she deliberates. Why had she come here of all places? “Are you okay?” The words sound strange, like he’s not used to saying them, not used to showing any sort of care, but she appreciates them nonetheless.

“I was a massive asshole to Tommy,” the words spill from her before she can stop them, and she watches Mick’s expression, can almost see him fight back several sarcastic or congratulatory remarks, suppressing his own well-worn irritation for her cousin, instead, just making a noise in the back of his throat that she can’t quite decipher. Then, he looks out the window, looks to the clock on the wall, and takes his feet off the counter carefully. 

“Do you want a slurpee?” He asks, obviously a little uncertain of how to proceed.

“Not really,” Charlotte admits, and Mick awkwardly looks around, as if to offer something else.

“Do you smoke?” He’s already pulling a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. Charlotte shoves her hands into her coat pockets, shaking her head, looking at the floor, not quite sure where to go from here herself, “do you mind if I smoke?” 

“No,” her voice is small.

They sit on the step by the door outside the gas station, side by side, silent for a few minutes as Mick smokes his cigarette. No cars approach, but they watch some drive by as the sun sinks lower in the sky. 

“I told him Lola doesn’t want him, that she’s just interested in pity-fucking him because she thinks it’d get him off her case,” Charlotte admits, and from the corner of her eye, she sees Mick wince, a sign that what she’d said truly was a dick move. 

“That would’a broken the kid’s heart,” Mick muses around his cigarette, and Charlotte, who’d had her knees curled up to her chest, rests her chin on them, with a quiet ‘I know’. 

“He said I turned into an asshole since I became friends with Nikki Sixx, and then I just managed to prove him right,” she seethes, disappointed in herself more than anything else. 

“That’s your first problem; being friends with Nikki Sixx.”

“That was an accident,” Charlotte tried to defend herself, “and I’ve been friends with Nikki for kind of a while, honestly, but I was just so sick of hearing Tommy moon over girls who don’t even look twice at him, like they hung the stars in the sky -”

“Charlotte,” Mick interrupts her, his voice soft but insistent, and when she finally looks at him, he’s actually frowning at her, hands stilled with another cigarette half-pulled from it’s packet, “that’s not... you know why what you said hurt him, right? You know you could’a said that about any other cheerleader he was into and it would’a rolled right off his back, right?”

Oh. Oh no. Slowly, Charlotte’s expression crumbles as the full weight of her words dawns upon her, her guilt skyrocketing. Face in her hands, she actually wails, and Mick gives a firm pat on the back as a show of support. 

“They’re friends, Mick.”

“I know, Charlotte.”

“God, fuck, he probably thinks that I mean she doesn’t even like him as a friend, Mick!”

“Yeah,” he sighed deeply, giving another pat, “I know, Charlotte.”

“I just... don’t want him to get his heart broken,” she admitted, her only attempt to justify herself, which Mick didn’t accept as a proper answer for a moment.

“He’s sixteen, he’s gotta make his own mistakes, and,” at this he hesitates, lighting up his cigarette and taking a long draft as he deliberated saying his next words, “don’t ever let her know I told you this,” he adds seriously, “but the last thing Lola wants to do is hurt that kid; if anything, she’s hoping hooking up with him will strengthen their friendship, and raise his confidence for when he goes after other girls.” This... is a lot to process.

“How do you even know this?” Charlotte asked, bewildered, and Mick scrunches his face up and takes another long inhale on his cigarette.

“We’re friends,” is what he settles on.

“What?”

“Lola and I... are friends,” he sounds like he doesn’t want to admit it, and visibly cringes as he follows it up with, “she cares about that kid, and speaks very highly of him, and of you, honestly, and maybe the kid’s not as irritating as I had him pegged as. He’s still irritating, but he,” and he audibly groans, hanging his head for a moment, as if disappointed that he’s even saying any of this, “he’s a good friend to Lola.” It’s like the words themselves hurt him to admit, so he changes the topic quickly, “she told me he’s in a band with Sixx, actually,” and his tone is thankfully much less strained as he straightens his posture a little, ignoring Charlotte’s frankly flabbergasted expression, “I’ve been seriously considering joining them.”

“You sing?” Is what Charlotte hears herself say, without really registering it. Mick snorts derisively.

“Fuck no, I play guitar.”

“You sho- you should join them,” Charlotte babbles, trying to make sense of everything that she’d just learned, and now this of all things, but it’s going to take her a while. 

“I should,” he agrees with the barest hint of a smile, once more clapping her on the back. He hesitates before he stands, like he wants to say something else, but instead, he gives an awkward smile and gets to his feet, heading back inside, leaving Charlotte in silence. 

Eileen gives her a lift to school the following morning, seething about how Peach got a part-time job and their parents still aren’t happy. It’s conflicting for the older sister, who hates hearing the derisive way her parents refer to Peach as a ‘burger flipper’, while Peach herself had sneered when Eileen had asked about the job, telling her older sister that she was done grovelling at their parents’ feet just to exist, with an implied ‘unlike you’ which had been so uncharacteristic of the usually kind and upbeat Peach that it had sent Eileen spiralling. It was the third day in a row Eileen had been ranting about it, about how she just wanted to support Peach, but that her whole family appeared to be turning on each other.

Charlotte found herself relating to that particular sentiment far too well.

Half their ragtag bunch of lunchtime misfits is notably absent from their usual lunchtime hang out, so while Charlotte spends the forty minutes picking apart her food like she’s trying to deconstruct it atomically, Razzle sits diligently as Eileen carefully and meticulously braids his hair, while he asks if he needs to bring anything, or wear anything special to the drive in that Friday. Charlotte’s not paying them any attention, just letting her gaze roam distractedly essentially until the bell rings, and Eileen pulls the hairband from her own hair to secure Razzle’s braid, before taking off. 

“Anybody home in that head of yours, Charlie? The bell’s gone,” Razzle’s offering her his hand where he’s standing, and Charlotte finally returns to reality from her blank, concerned mind, wiping the last few crumbs of her sandwich on her jeans picking up her bag with one hand and taking Razzle’s hand with the other. Today he’s chosen to wear a royal purple collared shirt, several sized too big for him, with the sleeves rolled up, tucked into tight, acid-washed jeans littered with naturally-made holes, his backpack on his back, and a black, corduroy jacket slung over one shoulder; with his newly acquired braid, the whole look is quite fetching, quite -

“You look like a prince,” Charlotte feels rather foolish for even saying it, can feel as the blush rises on her cheeks, but Razzle’s beaming as he pulls her to her feet, and doesn’t let go of her hand for a moment. 

“Well then I must be truly lucky to get court a princess like you,” and coming from anyone else, it would have sounded cheesy, or the phrase princess would have been derisive or snide, but he’s sincere, almost painfully so, and Charlotte ducks her head, “not courting,” Razzle corrects quickly, and Charlotte doesn’t think about how her heart sinks at that, despite how they’d talked through this.

“Princess Charlie -” something about the way he says her name always hits her hard, because hearing how it sounds, the reverence with which he says it, the nervousness, she leans in and kisses him quickly, can’t help herself, can’t stop herself. But then she’s leaning back, getting a better grip on her backpack, but - “wait, wait, wait, Charlie, wait -” Razzle, for the barest moment, tightens his grip on her hand, and she’s terrified that she crossed a line, that she’s done something wrong, but she turns back, and he doesn’t seem to be mad or concerned, instead he drops the jacket he’d been holding, gently taking her face in his hands, “can’t spring that on me and get away with it; lemme do it proper.” 

i am going to build a new boyfriend out of garbage and dirty feathers. no one else will touch him. 

 “Did you tell Tommy we were coming here?” Eileen hissed, startling the hell out of Charlotte at the concession stand at the drive-in before the movie began. Charlotte, who had been hovering in line, nervously retucking her nice blouse into her skirt every few minutes, almost jumped out of her skin at her friend’s voice in her ear.

“Yeah, I - why?” Looking around, Charlotte thankfully can’t see Tommy’s shitbox of a car, but it becomes readily apparent the source of Eileen’s frustrations, when she spots a shiny, red sports car parked four cars past where Keanu and his good friend and well known fellow theatre kid Alex Winter were sitting on the hood of Keanu’s car, chatting animatedly with Razzle, who they had been quick to warm to him upon meeting him about twenty minutes ago. 

“Charlie!” The name came out as a frustrated noise from between Eileen’s clenched teeth, her eyes glued to Vince Neil’s ostentatious car, and Charlotte looked down for a moment, before adjusting her skirt again and retucking her shirt as she spoke.

“I didn’t know he’d tell Vince; I haven’t spoken to him since yesterday afternoon,” and she hesitates before adding, “we got into this fight and I’ve been trying to figure out how to apologise but I don’t know how, so it kind of slipped my mind, I didn’t know -”

“We’ll talk about you and Tommy later, I promise, but right now I need you to tell me three convincing arguments as to why I shouldn’t pop one of Vince Neil’s fucking tires.” Eileen’s hatred of Vince is perhaps getting out of hand, Charlotte considers, prying Eileen’s vice-like grip from her upper arm, considering for a moment.

“I know you have no qualms about becoming a felon to protect Peach,” Charlotte says with half a smirk.

“Absolutely none,” Eileen agrees without missing a beat, which was both amusing and heartwarming.

“- but your mom would probably pull you out of public school to enrol you in that strict, girls-only, future-nun-school, Our Lady Of Perpetual Sorrow,” Charlotte’s trying so desperately not to smirk, not to give her amusement away at the concept, “and you can say goodbye to any chance you had of ever making out with your co-star on or off stage.” 

Eileen turns as red as her hair, but at least she takes a moment to calm down, glancing over her shoulder at the three boys who were waiting for them. Keanu looks over for a moment, catching her gaze, waving and grinning from ear to ear, and Charlotte practically cackles as Eileen’s blush deepens. 

“Look, Eileen look,” Charlotte pointed insistently back at the boys, to where Alex had hopped off the hood of Keanu’s car, and was making his way over to the pack of kids Eileen had vaguely gestured to earlier, mentioning that they made up most of the technical theatre department, despite their leather jackets and motorcycles, leaving Razzle and Keanu chattering away, “Alex is going to hang out with the Crew boys, leaving Keanu free to comfort you during the scary movie.”

Eileen takes a deep breath, not even pretending like that wasn’t what she wanted, steeling herself to head back, and ignore Vince Neil’s goddamn car. After a beat, however, she turns to Charlotte, looking altogether stern and collected.

“I know I said you and Razzle could stay in my car, since I’m hanging out with Keanu, but don’t have sex in there -”

“What?!”

“Don’t have sex with Razzle in my car,” Eileen practically ordered, and Charlotte nervously looked to the guy ahead of her in line. He looked back at her, between the two girls, then thankfully stepped up to the counter without a word. 

“I wasn’t planning on it!”

“Well you also weren’t planning on being make out buddies after getting drunk and being the gross PDA couple at Heather’s party,” Eileen sniped back, “listen, I just want Peach to be able to sit in my car without either of your bare asses having touched any of the seats.” 

“I won’t let either of our bare asses touch the seat,” Charlotte agreed, mortified.

“And no stains -”

“Eileen!” Charlotte all but screeches, right as the messages before the movie started playing.

“Eileen, the charming Mister Reeves wants a word with you,” Razzle’s voice joins them just moments before Charlotte’s pretty sure she would have expired from embarrassment, and at the mere mention of Keanu, Eileen relaxes a little. All three of them glance over to Keanu’s car, to see the man himself leaning against his windshield, cigarette idle in one hand as he watches the first of the preview trailers. As much as he makes gestures like he’s about to take a drag, the cigarette never quite makes it to his lips before he extends his arm out beside him again, like he’s going through the motions without really following through. Eileen, as if drawn to him by a spell, practically floats away.

“She’s a strange one,” he says fondly, though Charlotte kindly doesn’t point out the hypocrisy in his words, “Keanu and Alex act like she’s some aloof, inscrutable woman; weren’t sure we were talking about the same woman,” he huffed a laugh, much to Charlotte’s disbelief.

“Eileen... she is an aloof, inscrutable woman, you just happen to live with her arch nemesis, and- you’re- we’re- you know, we’re...” Charlotte gestured between herself and Razzle, flushing, as his smile widened, “and you know, I’m her best friend.”

“Guys, are you buying food or what?” The concierge asks; a tired-looking kid Charlotte recognises from Tommy’s year. She hops forward, ordering food, and waiting for it to be prepared, all while standing by Razzle’s side, his chin on her should as they watch the preview trailers. He’s behind her, warm and solid and grounding, which is exactly what she needs as her cousin’s beat-up excuse of a car screeches into the lot, almost spraying gravel thanks to his sharp turn into the first available space. 

“Oh god, oh fucking hell,” Charlotte breathes, clenching her eyes tightly shut, “if you see a blonde-haired, six-foot stick-insect, who looks like he’d cheat on his girlfriend,” she starts, whole face scrunching with frustration, “and-or Nikki fucking Sixx, well, that would be about right; that feels like how tonight would go,” she lets out a long, frustrated breath, and she feels Razzle lift his chin from her shoulder right as he makes a noise of confusion.

“Tommy just arrived,” she clarified.

“Oh?”

“And we kind of got into an argument yesterday.”

“Oh.”

Charlotte’s name is called and she collects the bucket of popcorn she’d ordered for the pair of them, and Razzle picks up their drinks, heading back to the car as the movie opens. 

“You wanna talk about whatever’s going on with you and that Drummer Boy?” Razzle asks as they’re settling in the back seat together. Charlotte’s detaching the front seat’s headrests with possibly too much vigour, but declines, despite the frustration written all over her face. Razzle keeps a careful hold on the drinks that he’d thought were safe to balance on the centre console as Charlotte foisted herself over the back seat to pull the blankets she’d packed from the trunk. 

“You sure?” Razzle tried again, still with one hand nervously keeping the drinks in place, the other firmly holding their bucket of popcorn out of harm’s way. With a blanket securely bundled in her arms, Charlotte gives him a flat look, that quickly disappears in the face of his genuine concern.

“No, Razz,” she sighed, “I’m just mad at myself for letting this, like, fester, you know? I should have apologised sooner,” she huffs a sigh, unfurling the blanket with far more care now, draping it across both of their laps. 

“You’ve a good heart, Miss Lee,” Razzle assures her, but Charlotte’s face scrunches reflexively at the nickname, having only ever associated it with Nikki Sixx’s dreadful attempts to hit on her.

“Thanks, but please don’t call me that,” Charlotte gives a strained little smile, but Razzle nods and takes it in stride, finally getting himself comfortable and sitting back against the seat, one arm draped across the back, the other holding the popcorn in his lap.

“No worries, Love; I could call you Charlie, but I always thought it sounded a bit weird coming from me,” Razzle is rambling as Charlotte settles against him, tucking herself up close to him, “had a mate back home called Charlie, but short for Charles; absolute cockhead,” he clicks his tongue as Charlotte can’t help but giggle, “I could always keep just calling you Love, but it’s not as personal, you know? And Charlotte... it’s a pretty name, but it would be like if you started calling me Nicholas, be a bit weird, don’t ya think?” He mused, and Charlotte’s eyes drifted from the opening scene of the movie, where a menacing looking knife-glove was being created, to Razzle’s face as he chattered away. 

“I could keep calling you Princess Charlie,” as he says that, he looks to her, and seems a little startled to see her looking back at him, “like the other day,” his voice is softer, eyes wide, roaming her face, as if trying to capture her fond expression in his memory forever.

“You wouldn’t imagine your friend Charlie from back home a tiara?” Charlotte’s voice is amused, as is her expression, and Razzle’s eyes crease in the corners as he smiles; his eyes as so blue, so honest.

“You’d be the only Princess Charlie in my life,” he assures, giving her shoulder a squeeze where his arm is wrapped around her, and Charlotte doesn’t even think about how they’re less than a minute into the movie before she’s kissing him. 

At least it gets her to stop thinking about Tommy. 

Honestly, it gets her to stop thinking about everyone and everything that isn’t Razzle in this car in this moment, which is fine for her, because her life is somehow currently a stupid, complicated mess of people and emotions, and Razzle is nice to her, and a damn good kisser, and gentle, and his hands are warm -

“Miss Lee, does the Declaration of Independence mean nothing to you?” Comes shouted through the wound-up window of the car, startling Charlotte, who’s been in Razzle’s lap with his lips on her neck, so much that she jumped, smacking the back of her head into the roof of the car. Razzle reached out for her, expression concerned and lips kiss-bruised, as Charlotte held her head, wincing. Looking to the window, however, she could see Nikki Sixx pressing his face to the glass, looking altogether unsightly, with Lola a few feet behind him, drawing something in the gravel with the toe of her shoe. 

Assholes!

“I’m gonna kill him,” Charlotte says with deadly calm the moment she understands the situation, though Razzle seems to have anticipated this, and has his hands on her thighs, keeping her secure in his firm grip.

“No,” Razzle says, voice equally as calm, his gaze focused on Charlotte, and not on Nikki who had put his open mouth on the window, puffed out his cheeks, and proceeded to lick the glass. Charlotte scrunches her expression for a moment, internal debate raging between her desire to stay in the car with Razzle, and her need to beat the ever-loving shit out of Nikki Sixx for being a smartass.

“I’m gonna crack the window and inch and tell him to fuck off,” Charlotte says, looking back to Razzle, who was wearing an expression of faint amusement, and his grip became a little less firm. Reaching over, she wound down the window an inch. Immediately, Nikki looked through the gap, cheek still pressed to the window as his gaze darted around the cabin of the car, no longer obscured by the window tint. 

“I’m surprised you know what the Declaration of Independence is,” Charlotte said, tone icy as she moved to sit next to Razzle. 

“Honestly I stole that line from Lola,” Nikki admitted, and upon hearing her name, even faintly, Lola joins them, thankfully not pressing herself to the window, instead standing close to Nikki, her hip by his, hands in her jacket pockets. 

“Were they doing it?” Lola asks far too casually, almost too quiet for Charlotte and Razzle to hear, though they do, and both blush, even as Nikki pulls back, making a face. 

“No,” Charlotte calls back, and Lola’s expression turns smug as she holds out her hand, making a ‘hand it over’ gesture to Nikki, only for him to begrudgingly hand over a five dollar note. 

“Shoulda waited ‘til the end of the movie to ask,” Lola’s grin stretched wider, even as Charlotte tried to splutter a protest, and Razzle had to press his face against her shoulder to muffle his laugh at the whole situation.

“Why are you assholes here?” Charlotte hissed; strangely, Lola’s expression fell, and she stepped back again, adding more to her gravel drawing with her shoe, not looking at the car. 

“We’re at the drive in because I’ve heard this is a good movie,” Nikki goes back to staring at them through the inch crack in the window, “and we’re here-” his tone turns proud while his smile turns sharp as he taps his nail against the glass, “because we’re trying to give Tommy and Heather privacy,” he all but sings. There’s... a lot to unpack there, however before Charlotte can process any of it, Lola grab’s Nikki by the elbow, pulling him away.

“Come on, I didn’t take a night off to talk to people I can see every day, did you bring weed or not?” She insisted, tone frustrated leading him towards the concierge stand. Something about it had Charlotte’s heart sinking, even as Razzle’s still chuckling and confused about what was going on, Charlotte’s heart was sinking. 

Tommy had driven Nikki and Lola - and Heather? What? - to the drive in. Tommy and Lola had almost definitely spoken about the fight Charlotte and Tommy had had, which means Lola almost definitely knew what Charlotte had said. 

“Everything okay, Princess?” Razzle had asked gently, his arm around her once more as Charlotte had buried her face in her hands. 

“My whole life is fucked,” Charlotte muttered, and Razzle pulled her in close to him. Her legs bridge over his thighs, and he’s holding her close with both arms, keeping her warm and secure, and Charlotte takes a moment, then another, then a third, to take comfort. 

She’s going to miss this. Going to miss him. Fuck, she can’t think like that, can’t keep reminding herself of the time limit on their friendship, the reason she’s scared to call it anything more. 

Everything is fucked, but this one moment, how Razzle was holding her close, devoid of it’s context, it was pretty damn great.

a friend will help you move. a best friend will help you move bodies. but if you have to move your best friend's body, you're on your own

Charlotte goes to see Tommy on Saturday morning, but when she gets there, he’s not home. 

“He’s at a movie~ with a girl~!” Athena sings, when Charlotte asks, and Charlotte, confused and concerned, looked to her aunt, Tommy’s mother, who gave a kind smile and nod of confirmation. 

“He was so nervous and excited, spent a long time doing his hair just right,” she giggled fondly, pride in her voice, but Charlotte’s heart was in her throat. Had what she said somehow guilted Lola into dating her cousin? That could only end badly for both of them, oh fuck -

Except when she bursts into Leo’s at eleven, after most of the breakfast diners had vacated, and the lunch rush was still about half an hour away, Lola was standing behind the counter... with Peach? Teaching her how to fold silverware in napkins correctly? 

“Do you know... do know that thing where you fold it into a swan?” Peach asks, giggling, right as one of the other kind-faced staff members approaches Charlotte and asks her how many people she’d like a table for. Lola instinctually looks to the door, and Peach catches on a moment later, and suddenly both girls behind the counter are frowning in Charlotte’s direction. Lola mutters something to Peach that’s too quiet for Charlotte to hear, and the younger redhead immediately takes the silverware they’ve already wrapped, going around and dispensing it amongst each table’s silverware holder. Peach is in uniform. 

“I just...” Charlotte’s voice is soft, while her gaze is locked with Lola’s, brushing past the host who’d greeted her, “I need to talk to Lola.” The host looks over his shoulder at Lola, who looks his way for the barest moment and gives half a shrug. The kid backs off, looking past Charlotte to the street outside to see if anyone else was coming in after her, and upon seeing no-one, he heads back to the counter. 

“Hey Peach,” Charlotte says as the redhead slides past her to get to another table. Peach doesn’t even look at her when she gives a flat greeting in response. 

“How can I help you?” Lola’s painfully sweet customer-service voice hurts more than any sarcastic remark she could have come up with, and it’s eating Charlotte alive to know what Tommy told her, what Lola thinks Charlotte thinks of her to make her act so hostile. The way she’s smiling so widely coupled with her dead-eyed stare is unnerving. 

“Keola!” It comes as a shock when a firm voice comes from the kitchen, and Lola practically jumps from her skin. Looking to the source, Charlotte sees the face of the man she’s only ever seen the back of in the kitchen, taller than anyone else in the restaurant, and he looks like Lola.

“What?” Lola hisses, surprising Charlotte, and the man looks to Charlotte, giving her a warm, friendly smile, before he answers.

“If you need to talk to,” and the man pauses, tipping his head a little as he looks to Charlotte, “Charlie?” And Charlotte, kind of confused and nervous as to how he knows her name, nods in confirmation, “you can take your break, okay? Water, fresh air, outside -” and without waiting for a confirmation, he calls the kid who had greeted Charlotte to come and take Lola’s place at the counter, as Lola begrudgingly grabs a bottle of water from beneath the counter, and storms out from behind the counter, past Charlotte to the door. 

Charlotte, a little terrified, looks to the man, who gives another bright smile.

“Sorry we haven’t properly met, I’m Leo, glad to finally meet you, Charlie,” and immediately everything makes total and complete sense, and Charlotte nervously greets him, and takes off after Lola, who had disappeared down the street. 

#nikki sixx #Razzle Dingley #Tommy Lee #mick mars #the dirt #motley crue #nikki sixx x oc #razzle dingley x oc #tommy lee x oc #dirtbags #the dirt imagine #the angry lizard writes

[thebonerpit]

plug me in and flip some switches [fic]

plug me in and flip some switches

Starker, 4687 words, [E], Android AU, read on Ao3 here!

A Starker Android AU/kinda-sorta Detroit: Become Human AU. Stark Industries is making androids, but somehow CyberLife has cornered the market on sex-bots. Tony decides to do some hands-on research and meets Peter, an android who is experiencing some very troubling malfunctions.

This is VERY loosely based on the D:BH world but it's mostly just a regular android AU and can be read as such. The only thing you need to know is androids have circular LEDs on their temples but otherwise look completely human.

It’s research. Pure and simple. Nothing else.

Tony repeats it like a mantra in his head as he steps through the front door of the club.

For years now he’s been competing with Kamski over at CyberLife, producing better and better android models and other technological marvels. CyberLife and Stark Industries models are commonplace now around the city, life-like bots that can do anything from mow your lawn to suck your dick.

The dick-sucking is why Tony is here, really.

As much as he hates to admit it, Kamski has the sex-bot market cornered. Tony can’t figure it out. His models are gorgeous, his patented StarkSkin is more realistic than anything that hack has come up with so far but somehow sales are pathetic next to CyberLife’s numbers. So… research. Covert research.

He’s not naïve enough to think some shoddy disguise will prevent him from being spotted, but the little device in his pocket that’s currently scrambling all the camera feeds will certainly help. He hands over his identification card to the android by the door.

“Thank you, Mr. Rhodes. Enjoy your visit.”

Yeah, about that… sorry Rhodey. Tony resolves to buy him a nice steak dinner to make up for it.

The club is clean, but tacky, at least in his opinion. Blue and purple lights give the place a strange glow and all the furniture looks expensive but uncomfortable. There are various models walking around and dancing on small stages, clothed but just barely, and a handful of human “customers” admiring the goods. He already feels like he needs a shower.

“Welcome to the Eden Club,” the android at the front desk says, her voice soothing and calm. “Would you prefer to browse our models on the floor, or in our catalogue?”

Tony isn’t particularly fond of wandering around the club aimlessly, especially with other patrons there, so he points at the screen being projected in front of him.

“Wonderful. Do you have a preference for gender?”

He shakes his head and waits to see if there’s any reaction from the android. She simply taps a few keys and the catalogue appears in front of him.

“You’ll find all of our models here. When you have selected one, press the blue button underneath their picture.”

Tony almost wants to ask her to just choose for him. It would make this whole thing less... deliberate. He glances quickly behind him to ensure no one else is there before looking through the first few pictures. A Steve model, with a gentle smile and wholesome good looks. A Natasha, who looks like she could probably kill him with a flick of her wrist. He swallows thickly and files that one away to come back to. A Bucky, a huge man with beautiful long hair and sad eyes. A Wanda, young but intense. As he swipes through the next few pages, none of them really stand out to him. What’s so damn special about these bots? He considers going back to the Natasha when he stops on one of the last photographs.

A Peter model. Tony has seen a few of the others throughout the city, but this one is new. Small and lithe, twinky, but well-muscled. The model rotates on the screen and Tony nearly chokes as his eyes fixate on what can only be described as an absolutely perfect ass encased in tight black boxer-briefs. But the face… jesus. Soft-looking waves of hair frame a gentle and innocent expression, slightly chubby cheeks contrast with a sharp little nose and jawline, and big brown eyes make him look even more frighteningly human than the others.

He presses the blue button before he realizes what he’s doing.

“Excellent choice, Mr. Rhodes. Please follow me and I’ll take you to your private room.”

The android leads him down a long hallway lined with closed doors. Tony can’t hear any noises coming from within so he assumes there must be sound-proofing on all the rooms. The main club was too crowded for these to all be empty. She stops near the end of the hall and gestures to a door with a green light beside the handle.

“He’s ready for you. You have one hour from the time you open the door. Please remember that any damage done to the unit will be charged to your account. Enjoy your evening.”

She walks away without a second glance.

Tony exhales sharply.

“Alright. I guess this is happening.”

He opens the door and all his blood immediately rushes downward. Peter is a vision. He’s wearing nothing but those skimpy black boxer-briefs and is curled up like a cat in the middle of a huge, round bed. The sheets are dark red and the contrast against his pale skin is absolutely gorgeous. He perks up as soon as Tony walks in, skin flushing a pretty pink as he lets his eyes drag slowly up and down Tony’s body.

“Hello,” Peter says. No, not “Peter”. It’s an android. A bot. And Tony is here for research. RESEARCH.

“Uh. Hi there.”

His legs unfold gracefully as he slips off the edge of the bed to stand and extends a hand to Tony. He smiles, and Tony’s heart clenches.

“Come sit with me.”

“Yeah. Sure, I can do that,” Tony says, wondering where his higher brain functions have gone. He takes the android’s hand and allows himself to be led over to the bed where they both sit. Peter doesn’t relinquish his gentle grip, and his palm is soft and warm against Tony’s.

“Is this your first time?”

Tony snorts. “What? No! I’ve… oh, you mean here?”

Peter nods, still smiling.

“Then yeah I guess so. Like a virgin, huh?”

The android laughs softly but Tony is sure he’s just programmed to do that. Adding in knowledge of Madonna’s entire back catalogue seems like a waste of processing space.

“What would you like to start with, Mr. Rhodes?”

Oh. Right.

“Well, first of all you can call me Tony.”

The boy – BOT – frowns slightly. “I apologize, that wasn’t the name I was—”

“It’s ok,” Tony says with a wave of his hand, “it’s a… nickname. I just like it better than James. Or Mr. Rhodes. Ugh, sounds so stuffy, doesn’t it? A boring name for a boring guy.”

The smile returns and Tony feels a brief squeeze of his hand.

“I’m sure you’re not boring at all, Tony.”

Ok yeah hearing his name in that sweet little voice is kind of doing it for him. But this has nothing to do with how the bot is built, this is Tony’s own weird perversion, so he powers through it.

“Listen, sweetheart, I’m not really here for the usual sex stuff ok? And… god, I can’t believe I’m about to apologize to an android, but I’m sorry in advance for what I need to do to you.”

Peter’s expression doesn’t change at all, which is slightly alarming. Tony expects him to be at least a little concerned about his well-being.

“I’m capable of taking anything you want to give me, Tony,” Peter says with that same sweet smile. “Nothing will shock me. Last week a man put his whole arm up my—”

“Ok! Ok, fuck, jesus, that’s… do not finish that sentence. And aren’t you supposed to like, not remember anything from your last clients? Seems like a real breach of privacy there.”

The frown returns and Tony hates the way it makes him feel.

“I… I’m so sorry, sir. My processor was damaged recently but I’ve run multiple diagnostics and though I should be in perfect working condition I seem to be malfunctioning. I’ll call another unit in for you.” The LED on the side of his head starts flashing but Tony grabs his arm.

“No!”

The flashing immediately ceases.

“No. Peter. It’s… you’re fine. Don’t worry about it ok? You’re great. Fantastic, even!”

“Ok?” He sounds unsure.

And then Tony realizes he has stumbled into the most perfect situation he could possibly be in.

“But if you’re worried, let me take a look.”

Peter’s eyes widened. “Oh, no, sir, I can’t allow you to do that.”

Tony smiles and reaches up to brush a stray curl off Peter’s forehead.

“Hey, it’s ok, I’m a fully licensed technician. Didn’t my profile mention…? Oh, right, it probably got all mixed up during the import just like my nickname. It isn’t your fault, Peter. But I can help.”

“It’s against club regulations,” Peter says. “Some parts of my body do open for customers who are interested in playing with my wires, but not the processor.”

“Playing with your--?”

“Fucking them. Inside. My stomach, for example, has a port. Our blue blood provides a non-toxic and natural lubricant.”

Tony is flabbergasted. He really shouldn’t be, he knows that humans are disgusting and will fuck anything they possibly can, but GOD. Maybe it’s the way Peter says it. So nonchalant, like explaining how a car motor works.

“Does that… how does that feel? For you, I mean?”

Peter bites his lip.

“I like it. It feels so good. Anything you want to do to me will feel good.”

“Of course it will,” Tony says with a sigh. His pleasure receptors must be maxed out. You could probably chop off his whole arm and he’d beg for more. “Listen kid, just let me—”

As soon as his finger gets close to the panel switch behind Peter’s ear an arm shoots up, lightning-fast, and grabs Tony’s wrist tight enough to bruise.

“Please don’t. I will call security if you try that again.”

Tony tries to wrench his arm free but it’s impossible. Fuck, he sometimes forgets how unassumingly strong these things are. Peter’s tone is serious but he still doesn’t look alarmed in any way.

“Ok, it’s alright, Peter, I won’t do it again. Now will you let go of me please?”

Peter blinks and his LED cycles to yellow for a moment before he snaps his hand back and quickly as he reached out before. Tony rubs at his wrist and raises an eyebrow at the red marks left by Peter’s fingers.

“I thought your program prevented you from harming a human? You’ve got quite a grip on you.”

Peter’s lower lip wobbled.

“I… I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Please, I… I’m so sorry…”

“Hey, hey, it’s ok, I was just kidding around, it’s not that bad, see?” Tony waggles his wrist around in front of Peter’s face but the android isn’t pacified.

“Please let me call another model for you, sir, he’ll look just like me, I promise!”

“And what happens to you, then?”

“I… I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“If I send you back and say you’re defective, what happens to you?”

“Oh. I’ll be destroyed, sir. Like I said, my processor was already damaged and the repair must not have worked. I’m a faulty model now.”

Peter actually looks upset, but he covers it well. Not well enough for Tony not to notice, of course, and the flash of red on his LED is even more telling. Androids are able to mimic human emotion but they can’t actually feel anything. However, for a brief moment, Peter seems to actually consider his own mortality.

“And you’re ok with this?”

“Of course,” he says, quickly snapping out of whatever errant deviation must have happened. “My purpose is to serve you, to pleasure you. If I can’t fulfil my purpose anymore, I should be taken out of commission so another more functional version can take my place.”

“Jesus,” Tony mutters. This is exactly why he never spends time with any of his own android creations. Sure, he’s fond of DUM-E and U but they’re very obviously machines and if he has to poke and prod and rebuild them he doesn’t feel particularly bad about it. But this…

“You know what? Forget all of this, ok? You still seem very capable of, uh, providing pleasure so… let’s just go with that.”

Peter lights up at Tony’s words.

“Really?”

“Yeah, sure. Why not?”

He can still examine some functions without poking around in Peter’s head. And hey, maybe he’ll get a decent orgasm out of this whole awkward experience.

Peter immediately slides into Tony’s lap, long legs spread on either side of his thighs, a small bulge visible through the front of his briefs.

“Please… tell me what you like, sir.”

Tony swallows thickly. “Well, the whole ‘sir’ thing is a good start.”

Peter looks up at him through his eyelashes and smiles.

“And that sweet little innocent thing you’ve got going on? Yeah, I like that a lot too, even though it makes me feel like an old pervert.”

Peter makes a soft cooing noise and leans in to nuzzle at Tony’s neck.

“You aren’t a pervert. I bet you like taking care of people, don’t you? Making them feel good? Teaching them?”

“Yeah,” Tony says, a bit breathless.

“I want you to teach me,” he whispers directly into Tony’s ear. It makes his whole body shudder and he grips Peter’s waist hard enough that a human would probably flinch away, but Peter just moans softly.

“I guess it’s kind of pointless asking what you like, hm? You probably like everything.”

The LED flashes red again, so quickly that Tony almost misses it. Tony grasps Peter’s chin gently in his hand to bring his face back up and then holds him in place.

“What do you like, Peter?”

“I… I—”

“Be honest, sweetheart.”

Another flash of red, longer this time.

“Eat me out. Please! It feels… it feels really good,” he says, his eyes a little wild, and Tony doesn’t think he’s ever been so turned on in his life. This feels like more than just a program spitting out what it wants Tony to hear. It feels like he means it.

“Fuck, yeah, I can definitely do that. Get on your hands and knees for me sweetheart, and lose the briefs.”

Peter scrambles to comply and Tony takes the opportunity to shed all his clothing as well.

When he turns around Peter is spread out like a feast on the dark sheets. His ass, as Tony has suspected, is actually perfect. Round, plump, and practically made for Tony to bury his face in. So he does just that.

Peter gasps as Tony licks all the way from his balls to the top of his crack, one slick wet line. His skin tastes like, well, skin, although Tony still smugly maintains that his design is better. Tony spreads Peter’s cheeks with his thumbs and groans at the perfect pink hole waiting for his tongue.

“God, sweetheart, look at you. So fucking gorgeous.”

“Please,” Peter whimpers, wiggling his hips impatiently which earns him a sharp smack on one cheek.

“Be good.”

Another whimper, and Tony can feel the heat rising off Peter’s body. He reaches down in between his legs to palm at his cock, hard and dripping, and Peter jerks back against him so abruptly it nearly knocks him off the bed.

“Whoa, easy there tiger,” Tony says with a chuckle.

“S-sorry, I… it’s a lot. Your touch, it just… feels so good. So much better than anything else I’ve felt before.”

It must be a line, something a programmer thought would be attractive. ‘You’re the only one who can make me feel this way’! Yeah right. But again, Peter sounds so genuine, so completely overwhelmed… Tony shakes his head. No wonder CyberLife’s sex-bots are top of the line if this is what they’re all like.

He holds him open again and leans back down to suck and lick at that perfect hole, working all the excess saliva inside with his tongue and one thumb until Peter is practically dripping wet. He’s whining again, pushing back against Tony’s tongue like he can’t get enough.

“T-Tony, sir, I… I’m gonna… I’m gonna come…”

“Mmm you can hold off, can’t you? Not even inside you yet.”

“I can’t, I—”

Tony spears him open on his tongue and sucks, hard, and Peter squeals as he shoots synthetic fluid all over the sheets. Tony is… shocked, quite frankly, because Peter actually looks shocked too. Like he can’t believe he lost control. Can androids even lose control? His LED flickers wildly between blue, yellow, and red which is very disconcerting.

“Peter…”

“I’m sorry, it just felt so good, I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t—”

“Shhhh, shhh, hey, calm down sweetheart, it’s ok. You did so well for me. Look how pretty you are, all flushed and pink, hm?”

“I… I’m pretty?”

“The prettiest.”

Peter considers this for a moment and then smiles shyly over his shoulder.

“I can go again, sir. As many times as you like.”

Tony smirks, and Peter gives him another hip wiggle which makes Tony bark out a short laugh.

“God. Can I keep you?”

“Only if you’re nice to me.”

“Who wouldn’t be nice to you, hm?”

“I… oh, I’m…” Peter’s brow furrows and he looks so confused. “Quentin. Quentin? His name… he hurt me. Asked them to turn on my pain receptors. I remember… why do I remember?”

Tony feels like he just got whiplash. One minute he’s hard as a rock and now he’s gathering a shaking boy in his arms and soothing him with soft kisses on his cheeks. What the hell is going on here? Why DOES he remember? All these bots should be wiped clean after every encounter. This is starting to become a very disturbing pattern. Fuck, Tony needs to see inside his head.

Peter’s LED was bright red for about a full minute but now it’s back to cool blue, and he sits up in Tony’s lap and bites his bottom lip.

“Can we keep going? I really want you to fuck me.”

Jesus. His heart can’t take much more of this. He knows it’s an absolute dick move but he thinks if he can distract Peter long enough, he might be able to get to his shutdown switch without getting his arm broken. This is going to be the only chance he has, because if he lets Peter walk out of this room he’s never going to see him again.

“We can definitely keep going sweetheart,” he says. “Want to see your face when I fuck you. Is that ok?”

Peter nods and slides out of Tony’s lap to arrange himself on the bed, letting his legs fall open. He’s still dripping wet and Tony’s dick twitches back to life as he watches him press two slender fingers inside himself.

“Please,” he begs, and god, how could anyone say no to those beautiful doe eyes staring up at them?

Tony knows that all of these bots are self-lubricating, and that you could fuck them without any prep whatsoever, but he still takes his time as he shuffles up in between Peter’s legs and presses the head of his cock against his hole. Peter opens for him beautifully, hot and wet and warm inside as Tony pushes in slowly. It feels frighteningly real – better than real – and Tony can see why there’s a population crisis on the horizon because everyone just wants to fuck androids instead of making babies with another human being. Right now he can’t really bring himself to care.

Peter whines and wraps his legs around Tony’s waist, pulling him in until he’s fully sheathed inside him.

“O-oh, Tony, feels… feels so good, so full,” he breathes. God, his legs are even shaking. Tony leans down and presses a biting kiss against the soft skin of his neck.

“Hang on, sweetheart,” he whispers, and pulls out almost all the way only to shove back inside with enough force to jostle Peter up the bed. His eyes snap open and his pretty pink mouth forms a perfect ‘o’ as Tony fucks him, hard. Listen, he’s not going to pretend like he’s ever been a slow and sensitive lover. He likes it rough and fast and Peter can take it so he gives him everything he’s got. There are fingers scrabbling at his shoulders, trying to pull him even closer, and Tony growls as he tightens his grip on Peter’s hip with one hand and his neck with the other.

“Gonna come inside you,” he says, already edging towards his orgasm, “gonna fill this sweet little ass up. You want that, hm? Tell me, Peter.”

“Want it, want it, oh please Tony, please! You feel—feel so good, wanna come with you!”

Tony’s struggling to hold on as he slides his finger up behind Peter’s ear in the guise of stroking his cheek and hair. He grips that silky hair tightly for a moment and Peter yelps. The distraction allows him to slide the panel open with his pinky, and the switch is right there.

Peter grabs his other hand a for a moment he thinks he’s been caught. His grip is like a vise and he clearly has something in mind as he brings Tony’s hand over to… oh, fuck. The port. The port on his stomach is open. Tony doesn’t know if he did it by accident when he opened the one behind his ear, or if Peter did it, but Peter’s forcing his fingers inside and whimpering and groaning and Tony is powerless to stop him, even if he wants to. He feels warm, as warm as he is where Tony is still thrusting inside, but Tony’s fingers are brushing against wires and tubes instead of soft skin. He plucks at the edge of a wire and Peter does a full-body shudder.

“Right there,” he croaks out. His voice modulator is kind of fucked up and keeps emitting this weird hissing noise that sounds like he’s gasping for breath.

The blue “blood” inside him is as slippery as lube and Tony struggles to grab the right wire again. The squelching noise of him digging around plus the wet slap of his hips is so filthy and it’s hitting every single one of his buttons. Finally he gets it and god, the noises that Peter makes… The option to buy a recording of your session seemed ludicrous up until this exact moment because fuck, he could jerk off to these noises over and over again. And yeah, maybe Peter wasn’t lying when he said this feels good for him because he’s writhing underneath Tony like he can barely handle the sensation.

“Yeah, come on sweetheart, come on, let me hear you,” Tony gasps, and nearly whites out as he topples over the edge and empties himself inside Peter, the simulated muscles squeezing and milking out every last drop. The sensation must hit Peter moments later because he seizes up so suddenly Tony worries he might have broken him.

Peter screams, his voice modulator crackling and cutting out as he comes, shaking and emitting a worrying amount of heat, and as soon as his cock spits out the last bit of fluid, Tony presses the switch.

He immediately goes limp. His arms flop back down on the bed and legs splay out at odd angles. His eyes are still wide open, and his lips are wet with Tony’s spit.

“Fuck,” Tony whispers. “Fuck!”

He pushes himself back, sliding out of Peter’s body with a filthy wet noise. If he wasn’t going soft already the picture before him would have killed his erection immediately. It looks like… fuck, it looks like he’s dead.

“Not dead,” Tony says to himself, “not human. Not human, so not dead. Pull it together!”

He only has 15 minutes left before his time is up and someone will undoubtedly come to investigate. If he’s going to do this, he has to work fast. He quickly pulls his briefs and pants back on, leaving the shirt for the time being, and unfolds the nanotech device he had hidden in his watch. It’s a rudimentary scanner with some tools, nothing too elaborate but the best thing he could sneak in. It also has a docking port to connect to the android’s processor for scanning and downloading.

Tony climbs back on the bed and sits beside Peter’s head. His eyes still stare blankly ahead and even though he knows it’s ridiculous, Tony reaches down and gently closes his eyelids.

“Sorry kid,” he says quietly. “I promise you won’t remember any of this. I promise you won’t remember me.”

He plugs a line into Peter’s processor and connects it to his device and watches as numbers and data stream through. At first it seems pretty normal, nothing too different from how Tony’s own line of androids are programmed. Peter’s pleasure receptors were turned up, as expected, but not to the level where he should have been reacting… like he did. Tony’s traitorous cock twitches at the memory of his moans when he pushed inside that open port. His fingers are still covered in blue slick and he wipes them on his pants, already feeling disgusted with himself.

He can see where Peter’s processor has been damaged and—

“My god,” Tony says, his eyes widening as he takes in what he’s actually looking at. Most androids – his and CyberLife’s alike – were really just fancy VIs. They had built-in programming and while they could learn certain things, like their owner’s personal preferences or their chosen name, they were still limited by whatever parameters were set. A maintenance bot wouldn’t know how to do a child-care bot’s job and vice-versa. But this… Peter… was different. His brain showed new pathways that weren’t created by his original program. Most were damaged, likely from being reset and overwritten countless times, but Tony could still see the evidence.

“No wonder you were all messed up, sweetheart,” Tony says quietly. “They lobotomized you.”

Granted, the staff at the Eden Club probably had no fucking clue what they were dealing with. They just saw a malfunctioning bot and did factory reset after factory reset while Peter was desperately trying to cling on to whatever he had previously learned.

It makes Tony’s stomach hurt.

He sits in silence and watches the data stream for a while, gently stroking Peter’s hair. It’s incredible. He’s incredible.

And then Tony makes a really, really stupid decision.

“I’m getting you out of here,” he states. In about 30 seconds he has a blueprint of the club up on his screen and Peter wrapped up in his shirt. He calls Happy and tells him to bring the car around the back and manages to hoist Peter up over his shoulder, groaning softly from the weight.

“You’re a lot heavier than you look, gorgeous,” he says, voice strained from the effort. A quick glance down the hallway shows he’s alone, and his scrambler should still be functional, so he darts out and makes a beeline for the storage room. He slips inside and closes the door softly behind him.

“Ok,” he whispers to himself, “there should be an exit right over…”

He nearly drops Peter right on his head but manages to catch him before he hits the ground, and then he freezes. The room is filled with androids. They’re lined up like mannequins, all staring blankly ahead. All of them look like Peter.

“Jesus. Fuck.”

They’re all powered down, but the visual of it is literally staggering.

“How many… how many of you are like him?” Tony asks aloud, as if he’s hoping some of them will answer, will follow him home too. But of course they don’t. And Tony doesn’t have time to check every single one to see if the same deviation is present. He squeezes tighter around Peter’s waist.

“If you’re in there, I’ll come back for you,” he says. “If I figure this out… WHEN I figure this out. I’ll come back.”

He feels like he owes it to Peter to make that promise.

A shout from down the hall makes him snap out of his stupor and he races to the exit. Happy is waiting with the car door open and he practically tosses Peter inside, yelling for Happy to step on it, and they’re gone before security even reaches the back door.

#starker #starker fic #tony x peter #tbpwrites #nff #android au #i would do more in this 'verse just to get in some more wireplay lol

[machi-kun]

For the writing prompts, 48 ‘meeting again at the high school reunion’ :D

👀👀👀👀👀

****

“That’s Steve Rogers.” Tony gasps. “It can’t be. It - That’s Steve Rogers. Oh, my God!”

“Oh, my God.” Pepper says, long-suffering.

“Did you know about this?!”

“Yes, Tony, I keep tabs on every single one of our former classmates - of course not, why would I know this?”

“He’s tall!” Tony exclaims, maybe a little too hysterically, because a few heads turn in his direction, shooting him confused and worried looks. “He used to be shorter than me! And he was skinny, he had asthma, he - what happened to him?!”

Because something must have happened! Something, because people don’t just grow like that out of nowhere! Not that it hasn’t been years, because it has, but Tony thinks has the right to be shocked; He is not one for wet sciences and genetics, but he can’t imagine how much can he assign Steve Roger’s utter and complete transformation to “grow spurt” and not straight up “scientific experiment gone incredibly out of hand”, because that shouldn’t be possible. 

Steve used to go up to Tony’s shoulder - look at him now! What the hell.

“Can you calm down for a second, it’s not a big deal.” Rhodey says unimpressed.

“How can it be not a big deal-”

“It really isn’t.” Rhodey insists, sounding maddeningly bored. “People get grow spurts all the time, just because you didn’t doesn’t mean other people can’t either.”

Tony sputters, wildly offended. 

“And it’s not like he’s all that different. You can still definitely tell it’s him.” Rhodey muses, taking one long, considering glance at tall, built like a goddamned tank Steve Rogers, and he dares to snort a laugh at the sight of Tony’s utter bafflement. “And don’t act like you didn’t have the most ridiculous crush on him when he was small, because you did, and everyone knew. This is nothing new for you.”

“Not everyone.” Tony rebuffs, which is stupid, because what he meant to say is that he didn’t, he didn’t have a crush on tiny Steve Rogers, except maybe he kinda did, okay, and who is Rhodey to make fun of him for it, when he had a crush on Wilson for an entire year?

“Wow.” Pepper says, blinking slowly, halfway through a laugh. “That was very convincing, I am very impressed.”

“Actually - you know what, I will not stand here and have all these lies about me - I am leaving you both here.”

“Go talk to Steve, then.” Rhodey dares.

“Fine!” Tony says, huffing. “I will!”

He takes two steps forward - and stops.

“I-”

“Tony.” Pepper threatens before he can even turn. “Go.”

Alright. He can do this.

It’s just Steve Rogers. No big deal.

Christ, it’s Steve Rogers.

It should not be a big deal, but it kind of is. It is for Tony, at least. Okay, maybe Rhodey is right and Tony did have a bit of a crush on Steve back then, but - how could he not? Okay? Tony’s pretty sure half the class had been kinda in love with the guy, even if Steve used to be, and Tony’s quoting here, “like that” and “no one wanted to go out with him”. Which was, for starters, not true, because Tony would have definitely gone out with Steve if Steve had asked, and two - Tony knows for a fact that Steve and Sharon dated for a couple of months just after their graduation and Steve had definitely still been tiny when that happened, because they still talked back then.

Tony missed him, when he moved to the West Coast. He didn’t want to stop talking to Steve, it just happened. Steve had always been amazing. And gorgeous. And Tony liked him, a lot. Of course he missed him.

Tony just... He never told him that, because how could he? How could he tell Steve that and not completely give himself away, with that ridiculous crush of his? 

But he’s an adult now. He can handle Steve Rogers, as pretty and incredible and freakishly built he might be. He’s fine. He’s got this.

“Steve Rogers!” Tony bellows, with practiced ease and smugness, gesturing to Steve with unabashed appreciation. “Look at our leader, ladies and gentlemen!”

Steve turns to face Tony and - oh. 

Oh, Tony doesn’t have this. At all. Nope. 

“Tony.” Steve says, and his voice is deeper now, Tony feels like he’s going to combust. “God, it’s so good to see you!”

Tony has to look up to face him now - his absurdly blue eyes, his cheekbones, his lips - oh, Christ, Tony might still be a little bit in love with Steve Rogers.

“Great to see you too.” Tony pats him on the shoulder - all muscle, just like the rest of him now - and pretends he’s not shaking. “How long has it been?”

“Too long.” Steve smiles, and steps back so he can make room for Tony to step forward, and only then Tony realizes that the other people present, meaning the people he just rudely and loudly interrupted in favor of his flawless act of totally not being affected by the sight of Steve, are Wilson and Sharon. 

“Tony, hey.” Sharon greets him kindly, and Wilson surprisingly also cracks a smile and raises his drink in a welcoming gesture.

“The whole class rep team together!” Tony exclaims, a little delighted, a little fucking terrified. “Where is our resident troublemaker, then?”

“Standing right next to you?” Sharon laughs, and pays Steve no mind when he shoots her a very unimpressed glare. “C’mon, Steve, we all know between you and Barnes, you are definitely worse.”

“Yeah. And hey, you know just because we ain’t kids anymore doesn’t mean Barnes can’t kick your ass, right, Stark? In fact, he might kick your ass harder, so you watch out for that.” Wilson jokes, his expression full of amusement.

“Barnes loves me too much.” Tony says, and Wilson full-on snorts, the sound echoing in his cup as he takes a sip. “What? He does. We all know that his problem with me was because he secretly loved me and totally not because I broke his arm on PE once.”

“Was it now?” Steve teases, and Tony has to lock all his muscles like they’re made of stone to prevent himself from shivering. 

“Sure it was. You should know, Rogers.”

“Yeah.” Wilson laughs, half-hiding his shit-eating grin on his cup. “You should know.”

“You shut up.” Steve says, and when Wilson and Sharon laugh, his ears go adorably pink. “Why don’t you go talk to Rhodes?”

“Oh, yes, please do.” Tony exclaims, jittery with joy at the idea of making Rhodey’s life just a little bit harder. If he can poke fun at Tony, Tony is definitely allowed to poke back. “He’s gonna love seeing you, Wilson. Tell him I sent you.”

“Yeah, yeah, you just tryin’ to get Steve alone, you ain’t subtle.” Wilson jabs, but before Tony can even process the words fully, let alone react to them, Wilson claps a hand on his back and steps out, supposedly, to find Rhodey. “Good seeing you, man.”

And he just leaves. Worse, Sharon leaves too, with a nod and an all-too-knowing look in her eyes, and then, Tony is suddenly left alone with Steve goddamn Rogers, who Tony may or may not still have a ridiculous crush on!

“So.” Tony exhales, harshly. “No Barnes?”

Steve looks at him like he’s amused, smirking at a private joke. “Jerk’s late. I set him an alarm and everything, but you know how he is.”

“I do? I guess I have vague memories of our glorious highschool days but clearly, I missed something.” Tony jokes, trying to be suave, but Steve is smiling like the way he used to smile when Tony fumbled with his words, when Steve made him flustered; and it’s making him flustered all over again like Tony is still fifteen and very very charmed by the tiny class president. “Because I don’t remember you being...”

“This size?” Steve gestures to himself, and Tony is a weak man, because he can’t refuse the excuse to look.

“Guess you could say that.” Tony teases. “I didn’t know art school could do that to you. I would almost guess you joined the army.”

“You knew I went to art school?” Steve asks, delighted, and - shit. 

“You always talked about it, when we were younger. And I knew you could do it.” And because Tony’s mouth doesn’t know how to stay shut, he accidentally says, “And I’ve seen a show you did once. A gallery, I mean, an exhibition. The one in Boston?”

“The one for my family.” Steve clarifies, eyes going all gentle and fond. 

“Yeah, that one.” Tony clears his throat. “Sarah must have been really proud. How is she, by the way?”

“The same as always. Nothing can stop her from kicking my ass when I need it.” Steve admits, a little embarrassed, and Tony can’t help but give a hearty laugh because yeah, that’s the Sarah Rogers he remembers, and suddenly, he’s overcome with nostalgia for the afternoons he spent at the Rogers’ place, feeling far more comfortable than anywhere else in the world. 

“God, I miss Sarah.” Tony confesses.

Steve pauses, and he looks at Tony with such an intense gaze Tony can’t look away. “And she misses you. We still talk about you sometimes.”

Tony blinks. “You do?”

“Tony.” Steve tilts his head, playfully, like he can’t believe Tony’s surprise. “Ma practically adopted you the moment you stepped a foot inside her house. If I hadn’t stopped her, she would have trapped you there and never let you leave.”

“Well, for Sarah Rogers, I wouldn’t have minded that.” 

“Neither would I.” Steve says, to Tony’s complete shock, and his face blooms ina flush of heat, mortifyingly. “But I had enough problems on my plate without Jarvis breathing down my neck.”

“Jarvis loves you, he always did.” Tony complains, childishly, in reflex. “I was the one always getting a speech when it was you who was always getting into fights and getting us both bruised!”

“You didn’t have to fight with me.”

“I definitely did.”

“You should come over, sometime.” Steve offers, suddenly, talking fast, as if he’s trying to get the words out all at once. “See Ma again. She would love that.”

“I-” Tony chokes. “Are you sure?”

“Tony. I really missed you. We both did.” Steve gulps down hard, his jaw working almost hypnotically. “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep in touch.”

Tony shakes his head frantically. “That wasn’t your fault. If anything, it was mine. It just - a lot of things happened, and-”

“We both had a rough time.” Steve interrupts, gently, and Tony gives him a silent nod. “I know it. But I think we both could use a win now, couldn’t we?”

Tony pauses. “Is taking me home to meet your mom a win, Rogers?”, he says, feeling daring.

“Definitely.” Steve says, coy, and slowly, he looks Tony up and down, all of him, as if he’s drinking in the sight, and that look, in Steve’s blue, sharp eyes, make Tony tremble where he stands. “And this time, I might not let you leave either.”

What happened to Steve Rogers! Tony wants to scream, mind going a hundred miles an hour, hysterical. I don’t know how to handle this!

“We can do that.” he says instead, nonsensical, short on breath.

“Alright.” Steve says, satisfied. “Give me your number.”

“What?” 

“Your number.” He smiles. “I’m not giving you the chance to second guess this, Tony. I know you. I’m calling you, and we’ll go out sometime. Does that sound ok?”

“Sounds awesome.” Tony admits, just a little winded. “I’d love that.”

“Good.” Steve puffs his chest out, just a little, like he’s proud of himself, and when Tony finally gets out a business card from his wallet and awkwardly writes his personal number on the back, it takes all his strength not to react to the brush of Steve’s cold fingers against his when he grabs the paper.

Steve stares at the number like Tony has just given him the greatest of gifts. 

And when he looks up at Tony and the sentiment in his eyes does not fade, Tony can’t do anything but exhale slowly, deeply, a ridiculously infatuated sigh.

“It’s great seeing you, Steve.” He says.

“You too.” Steve echoes, just as fond. “Can I call you tonight?”

Fuck.

“Yes.”

“Then I will.” He smiles.

Crap.

Tony definitely still is a little bit in love with Steve Rogers.

#stevetony #stony #steve rogers #tony stark #superhusbands #ask #anon #machi writes #Anonymous #its time for another round of machi sneaks in their other ships into the stevetony fic #this time is samrhodey and staron

[shoutosteakettle]

⤷ pairing: shouto x reader x katsuki

⤷ genre: angst

⤷ word count: 2062

⤷ warnings: love triangle, and just bad writing on general my bad

⤷ a/n: gonna post this right now because the more and more i look at the more and more i hate it. thank you @ererokii​ for being my best hype woman, beta-reading, and for making banner at this point half of everything on my blog is here because of her so you guys say thank you too

☆彡

“Love is such a fickle thing, y’ know?”

“How do you mean,” Shouto asked, his legs rested on your bed, his arse sat atop the floor of your Yuuei dorm, and his head slightly cocked to the side.

“One day I’m head over heels for a person, but then the next, I can barely stand the sight of them,” you sighed, sitting up from your spot on your bed.

“Well, my love for you is one thing that I’ll always be sure of,” Shouto said, looking up from his phone, his eyes meeting yours.

“Awww, Shou, I love you too,” you cooed, reaching down to ruffle his silky soft hair.

This was the platonic prison that Shouto Todoroki was trapped in. In the deepest depths of the friend zone in which he resided, and as hard as he tried to climb his way out, every attempt ended with his pride wounded and part of his heart broken.

“Maybe I should finally tell Katsuki how I feel about him,” you suggested, turning to your best friend for some of his more than well-known advice.

“Y/n, I’m all for whatever makes you happiest,” if happiest means being with me, was the part of that sentence he left out.

You looked over to the alarm clock on your desk, reading the big bright numbers that started back at you, “Jeez, it’s already twelve? Maybe you should head back to your room, it’s getting kinda late, and we don’t want Aizawa-Sensei getting his panties in a twist.”

“Yeah,” Shouto chuckled, gathering his things before standing up and walking over to the bedroom door. “Goodnight, Y/n. Sleep well, okay.”

You watched as Shouto slipped out of your room and into the hallway, and you could tell that he wanted to say something more. He always seemed so worried about your well-being, but that’s what ‘besties’ are supposed to do right...? You did your usual rounds of checking your socials and double-checking your alarm before finally turning off your phone and closing your eyes, more than ready to drift off into dreamland.

Across the dorms, Shouto was making an impromptu visit to Katsuki’s bedroom. He stood in front of his door, debating whether or not having the conversation he was thinking of was worth it. Shouto brought his hand up, bringing his fingers to the middle of his palm before striking the door once, then twice, and lastly, a third time.

From outside the room, Shouto could hear the shifting around, and angry grumbling coming from inside. When the door opened, Shouto was met with a particularly annoyed set of red eyes. “What the fuck do you want,” Katsuki asked through a yawn, resting one arm on the doorway, awaiting an answer from the half and half bastard in front of him.

“I was hoping that we could talk,” Shouto said, waiting for an invitation into the blonde’s room. Bakugou moved his arm from its relaxed spot on the doorframe, turning around to walk into his bedroom, signaling for Shouto to follow behind him.

Shouto closed the door behind him and watched as Katsuki turned on the lamp on his desk, finally letting some light into the otherwise dark bedroom, before taking a seat on his bed. Standing in front of him, dressed in his- well, your favorite pair of his pajamas, a button-up cotton top, and matching bottoms decked head to toe in multi-colored snowflakes, Shouto was finally ready to have what would prove to one of the hardest conversations of his life.

“Don’t just stand there looking like an idiot. You came here to talk about something, right? So talk,” Katsuki asked, more than ready to go back to sleep.

“I know how you feel about Y/n,” Shouto began, watching as the sleep fell from Katsuki’s face, “And I feel the same way about her. She’s planning to confess to you tomorrow, and I need you to reject her.” There was a moment of silence that couldn’t have lasted longer than a couple of seconds, but to Shouto, it felt like an eternity, and in that eternity, he could feel his whole coming crashing down around him. Three years of pining couldn’t go unrequited, he wouldn’t let that happen, and especially not because of Katsuki Bakugou.

“Why in the fuck would I do that,” Katsuki smirked, this was his chance. Katsuki had fallen in love with you the very second that you stepped foot into Yuuei High School, and three years he’s tried his best to keep his feelings to himself, in fear of losing the relationship that the two of you had built. The grin on Katsuki’s face grew wider and wider with every thought of you being his.

“Please, Bakugou,” Shouto knew his position in all of this. For three years, he watched from the outside as you fell more and more in love with Katsuki, and you, him. And every day, Shouto hated the both of you a little more. They say the line between love and hate is a fine one, and to be honest, Shouto couldn’t tell the difference between the two emotions anymore, but what he did know was that if you were going to spend the rest of your life with someone, it was going to be him.

“If Y/n wants to be with me, who am I to stop her,” Katsuki asked, standing up from his bed one last time, once again making his way to his bedroom door holding it open for the now unwelcome pest who was invading his home and preventing his beauty rest, “I’ll sleep on it.”

With that, Shouto saw himself out of Katsuki’s bedroom. When Shouto had finally made it back to his own dorm, the first thing he did was flop onto his mattress, thinking about the choices that would have to be made tomorrow. Now that his hand was being forced, Shouto had no choice but to be the one to claim you first.

ミ☆

The sound of birds chirping outside your window, followed by your alarm, meant that it was the start of your day. You went about your usual schedule, brushing your teeth, washing your face, and taking a shower before you made your rounds back to your bedroom so you could get dressed and look presentable for your classes. You grabbed your backpack off your desk chair and took your phone off its charger and slipped it into your skirt’s pocket before double-checking that you didn’t forget about anything and leaving your room.

As soon as you turned the corner, your face was met with a familiar broad chest. After removing your nose from in between his pecs, you looked upland greeted the red and white man with one your trademark smiles, “Good morning Shou!”

“Good morning, Y/n. How did you sleep,” Shouto asked, going about his usual ways of checking up on you.

“I have a better question, what are you doing on the girl’s side of the dorms mister,” you asked, scolding him in a playful tone, “Is it possible that the Shouto Todoroki could be a peeping tom?!”

“Maybe. There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Y/n,” Shouto joked back, but his tone didn’t exactly match the vibe. “Speaking of things you don’t know, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

“What’s up? You know you can tell me anything right,” you reassured him, running your hand up and down his arm to double down on your words.

“I know how you feel about Bakugou, but I can’t let you confess your feeling to him without letting you know how I feel,” all it took was that one sentence for everything to begin making sense; the double-takes he would make when you would walk down the halls, the emotion you couldn’t quite put a finger on when he would worry for you, but what should’ve been the biggest red flag was how sincere each and every ‘I love you’ that left his mouth sounded. How could you have been this dense? “Y/n, I’ve been in love with you ever since our first year here at Yuuei, and I need you to know that Bakugou isn’t the one for you because the only person capable of loving you as much as you deserve to be loved is me.”

The emotions stirring in your heart were too much to handle at once, of course you loved Shou, how the fuck could you not. Since day one, he had put you under his spell, and you’d been secretly pininng after him ever since, but you were never bold enough to be honest about how you felt. You were snapped out of your thoughts when you felt a calloused thumb begin to wipe away the tears streaming down your face. Without thinking twice, you grabbed Shou by his tie, bringing him closer and closing the gap between the two of you, “I love you too, dummy.” You felt his lips brush against yours before he leaned in even closer, deepening the kiss between you two.

On the walk from your dorms to your school, you and Shou shared your stories about how and when you fell in love with each other, and for a while, things seemed like they would be okay.

Classes seemed to be going by quicker than normal, which was always a good thing. You tried your best to pay attention to the lessons, but you couldn’t help but giggle at the butterflies you felt in your stomach every time Shouto would look over at you. And Katsuki couldn’t help but get more and more pissed every time he saw the silent interactions between you and the half and half bastard.

“Aizawa-Sensei, may I be excused,” you asked, despite the fact that you had yet to be called on, but by the squirming you were doing in your seat, he could tell that you meant business. Aizawa made sure to remind you to take a hall pass off the hooks next to the door before leaving the classroom. On your walk to the bathroom, you noticed that everything felt brighter, as if the sun had finally come out from hiding behind the clouds.

After you’d finished your business in the stall of the girl’s bathroom, you opened the door only to be startled by the sulking blonde in the corner, “Jesus fuck, what are you doing in here Suki?” He didn’t answer your question, he just stood in his spot, staring back at you. It took you a minute to notice, but you knew something was wrong when you saw that his usual docile expression was… sad.

“Y’know you’re the only person I let call me by that dumb-ass nickname,” Katsuki asked you, uncrossing his arms and pushing himself off the tiled wall. He saw you smile fall at his harsh words, but right now he was too worked up to even care, “I didn’t spend three years wrapped around your pinky and bending to your every will for you to be making googly eyes at anyone but me.”

“Katsuki-”

“No, it’s still my turn to talk,” you watched as Katsuki took a deep breath, preparing himself for the words about to leave his mouth, “I’m in love with you, and I know for a fact that you feel the same. I don’t know what’s going on between you and Todoroki, but I do know that I could make you happier than he ever could, because when I think of a person I’m meant to be with your name is the first that comes to mind.” Before you had a chance to process the emotional mess that Katsuki had dumped on you, you felt his index finger underneath your chin, forcing you to look up at him, followed by a quick touch of your lips to his.

And just as fast as the kiss had happened, Katsuki had left the bathroom. You brought your hand up to your mouth, feeling the ghost of the lips that had just touched yours, and overwhelmed with feeling and understanding the dilemma ahead of you, you dropped down to the floor, not even bothering to try and hold in your tears anymore.

The world that had felt so bright before was no longer. How could you bask in the warmth of the sun, when you could only have one?

#shouto x reader #todoroki x reader #katsuki x reader #bakugou x reader #writing?

[flooffybits]

All In My Mind

Idol: Lee Gahyeon (Dreamcatcher)

Anon: Helloo~Can I request a scenario with any member of Dreamcatcher where reader has created an ideal world in her head including an imaginary lover. One day, she didn't expect that she would meet her in real life. Thank youu~ ~🐧

A/n: i went with Gahyeon because I haven’t written anything for her yet. also the lack of Gahyeon requests I have is criminally unacceptable

☕buy me a coffee☕

You never really enjoyed the outside world. Whenever you looked out the window of your room or even the car, it all looked the same.

Dull.

It was the same thing, just a different time and place, no matter where you went. It was exhausting.

So it made sense that you saw the world in the way you could only hope for it to be. People weren’t so grouchy in the morning, and they weren’t yelling at each other when the traffic rolled in.

Detached.

That was one way to describe you.

While it worried your friends and family, it was the only way you could escape the tragic and boring life that you had to wake up to every single day.

It was better and far more encouraging. And in that little bubble, you could always picture the girl of your dreams, always there for you and lifting up your spirits when reality became too much for you.

"You have to be more careful, Y/n. I know that you try to cook, but while you haven't exactly mastered that skill, don't play with knives." The dark haired woman lightly scolded as she ran her fingers over your knuckles, pouting at the finger that was covered with a band-aid.

"It's just a cut." You chuckled at the glare she sent you because even when she tried to scare you, you couldn’t help but think of how adorable the woman was. “It doesn’t change the fact that you got hurt! You know I hate that.” She tells you, holding your hand against her chest as you let out a tiny breath and offer her a small smile.

“I know, I’ll be more careful.” You promise and a bright and happy smile blooms on her face. “Good.” With a quick move, she pecks your lips before pulling away. “You need to get some rest. Your second year of college starts tomorrow and I know that you’re nervous about going back.”

And it was true. Your break was finally over and you had to go back to the same boring and draining routine you always went through. Struggling with projects, presentations, and defenses, it was understandable why you were so reluctant to go.

You could always stay at home and just continue with the perfect world you had built inside your head - stay with the wonderful woman that showered you with endless love and affection.

“Y/n, you know you can’t stay here forever.” The woman tells you, her expression soft as she touched your cheek. “You’ll be okay. I’ll be right here.” She assures you, standing on her tiptoes just to press a kiss to your forehead and then another peck to your lips.

“Now, get some sleep. You have a big day tomorrow.”

..

The following day, you woke up earlier than you wanted due to your alarm. It made you a little bit grumpy since you were having such a pleasant dream with the woman you’ve created in your head.

And unlike most dreams, you could remember every single thing that’s happened between the two of you that it scared you just how real the whole thing felt. Her touch, her voice, her warmth, all of it felt too real and you started to question your sanity.

Of course, you thought you’d already lost your mind before, but now though, you weren’t too sure of yourself anymore.

So on the way to your morning classes, backpack strap clutched tightly in your hand whilst you kept mulling over your thoughts, you failed to notice someone calling after you.

It was only when the person had caught up to you and grabbed your arm did you stop walking, flinching at the sudden contact and spinning around to find a pink haired girl, hunched over and catching her breath after doing her best to run after you.

“You...” She huffed before she was finally able to stand upright and you felt your eyes widen when she looked you square in the face.

Even with the pink dyed hair, you could still recognize those bright and sparkling brown orbs, wide smile, and chubby cheeks anywhere. This was the same girl you’d been talking to in your head.

The same girl you merely made up.

But she was real.

And she was saying something that you completely failed to hear because of how your brain had stopped functioning. The only idea you get is when she extends her hand with, what looked like, your wallet in her grasp.

“I tried calling you, but you seemed a bit distracted. First day of nerves?” She tries to ease your worries and you’re smitten with how beautiful she looks in real life - your own imagination barely did her any justice.

“I-” You try to say something, but the words are all stuck in your throat. When you don’t immediately take the wallet, the girl assures you that she hasn’t taken anything or looked inside. “I swear, I saw you drop it a while ago.”

Quickly, you take your wallet and thank her, also apologizing for your awkward state. “I’m just a bit distracted is all.” But her smile only widens before she held on to the strap of her own bag. “It’s alright. I can understand that with college and all. You don’t necessarily have to be a freshman to feel nervous on the first day.”

There’s a pause and neither of you speak, just awkwardly standing there until it was her to break the silence again. “Well, I think I should get going. Don’t wanna be late.” You blink, failing to understand what she means until a second after. “Oh! Right, sorry. I’m sorry for holding you up.”

“It’s alright, but I hope to see you again, Y/n.” You freeze as your name easily rolls off her tongue, knowing full well you hadn’t introduced yourself to each other, and the only way you think she could possibly is she was the exact same person you saw in your imagination.

“Okay, so I may have taken a peek at your wallet because I wanted to know the name of the cute girl I just so happen to see.” She admits sheepishly before heat flares on your face. “I, oh, thanks?”

She giggles before taking a step towards one of the campus buildings. “My name is Gahyeon, by the way. And I mean it when I said I want to see you again.” She finally says and you watch as she slowly walks away.

Though after a few steps, she turns back around, the smile still on her face as she looks at you. “You know... I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere, before, but I’m pretty sure I would have remembered.” She grins before winking. “Text me!”

“Wait, wh-” But she had already ran off, leaving you with a few students walking to their respective buildings in hopes of arriving to class early. And while you hoped to be the same, the encounter had left you completely stunned and dumbfounded.

It’s later in the afternoon when you see the little note in your wallet with Gahyeon’s name scribbled on it, her number right underneath with a tiny heart. You aren’t sure what came over you, but instead of texting her like she had asked and taking the safer route, you ended up calling her just so you were sure you hadn’t completely lost your mind.

“Whoever this is, you’re lucky that I just finished class.” Her voice greeted your ears and you nearly dropped your phone in surprise, but adjust your grip while clearing your throat.

“Uh, sorry about that. I was just... kinda making sure this number is right.” You admit and you could practically see the smile on her face through her voice. “Y/n! I didn’t think you would call. I mean, I did say to text me, but I’m not complaining.” She tells you and you find yourself smiling a bit at her chipper demeanor.

“Well, I could always end the call and just text you.” You explain, but she cuts you off before you could even try. “Don’t you dare.”

The conversation from there seemed to flow easier. You had managed to stop thinking about the little world in your head and focused more on what was in front of you.

Gahyeon was quick to befriend you and you found yourself enjoying reality much more, now that there was something that was actually worth sticking around for. You tell her about the imaginary her that you’ve once thought off before, when you get the courage of telling her that you’ve been having some feelings budding in your chest.

Because even in reality, you were still able to love who she was and everything about her.

“So you’ve been dreaming about me all this time?” She hummed when she’s able to let everything sink in, and at your shy nod, she can’t help the soft smile that creeps up her lips before she was gently placing her hand on yours.

“Well, I think there’s one more thing I have to admit.” She chuckles while playing with your fingers. “I’ve been dreaming about you, too.”

#girl group #girl group scenarios #girl group imagines #dreamcatcher #dreamcatcher imagines #dreamcatcher scenarios #Gahyeon #Lee Gahyeon #dreamcatcher gahyeon #gahyeon dreamcatcher #gahyeon scenarios #gahyeon imagines

[imjustthemechanic]

A Romantic Night at the Museum

Happy valentine’s day to @tytythepilot, who wanted a Pepperony HSAU in which they start out hating each other!

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It was a requirement for graduation: every senior at Triskelion High had to do thirty hours of volunteer work at one of a number of school-approved venues.  It was a duty a lot of students complained about, but Pepper Potts had known right away which she would choose.  There was a soup kitchen, a retirement home, a recycling centre, the humane society, and a few other places, but on sign-up day her eyes had gone right to the bottom of the list: the Empire State Museum of Modern Art.

It seemed ideal.  Pepper was planning to major in accounting, but she was interested in art and art history, and enjoyed visiting the ESMMA.  She was already familiar with all their permanent exhibits, so she probably wouldn’t even need an orientation.  The people who worked there would doubtless be impressed with her dedication.  When she put her name on the list, she did notice that nobody else had chosen the museum yet, but since she was one of the first to choose a venue, she didn’t think much of it.

On November first, Mr. Coulson the history teacher called the seniors down to the gymnasium to get the permission paperwork for their assignments, and to hand out the lanyards and tags where they would log their hours.  Pepper set impatiently in the folding metal chair while the various venues were called out. Red lanyards for the humane society were popular, as were green ones for the recycling centre.  By the time he got close to the bottom, there didn’t seem to be very many people without lanyards, and Pepper was starting to wonder if there would be anybody else volunteering at the museum at all.

As it turned out, there was one other.

“Finally, for the ESMMA,” Mr. Coulson read out at last, “Potts, Virginia, and Stark, Anthony.”

Pepper bounced to her feet and looked around, blinking in surprise.  Tony Stark?  She knew he went to Triskelion High School – who didn’t? – but so far she’d only ever glimpsed him from afar.  From the gossip that surrounded him she knew he was the son of a wealthy and powerful businessmen, that he’d dated most of the cheerleaders but couldn’t remember their names, and that his picture had been on the front of the October issue of the Triskelion Shield newsletter because he’d won some sort of state science prize.  He wanted to work at the museum?

She didn’t see anybody else standing up, though. The other students were all chatting together and comparing lanyards… maybe Stark wasn’t here today?  Pepper grabbed her canvas backpack, covered in pins and buttons for various causes she supported, and hurried to the front.  Mr. Coulson was waiting at the bottom of the stage, holding out the orange lanyard for her.

“There’s nobody else for the museum?” she asked.

“Word gets around,” he replied, ticking her off on his list.  “You and Stark were the only two who signed up.”

“Great.”  Pepper hung the lanyard around her neck with a grimace.  “I get to babysit the rich kid all by myself.”  From what little she knew of Stark, she had no illusions that he would do anything during their volunteer time.  As far as Pepper had ever been able to tell, he didn’t even do anything in his classes – she’d seen him sleeping in Ms. Hill’s Calculus course. He probably paid somebody to take his exams for him.

“Depends on where the museum needs you,” Mr. Coulson said.  “You might not even see him.”

“God, I hope not!” Pepper snorted, and turned around… only to find herself face-to-face with a boy.  He was about her own height, with unkept dark brown hair that needed trimming and brown eyes, and wearing an expensive-looking blazer over a Pink Floyd T-shirt.  She recognized him immediately, of course.  It was Tony Stark, in the flesh.

The colour drained from Pepper’s face.  How much had he heard?

“At least the babysitter’s cute,” he said.

That answered her question – he’d heard all of it.  Pepper stepped past him and walked away as fast as she could, shaking.  Now she was in for it.  The whole school knew everything Stark said and did… it would be a miracle if they weren’t all talking about her by this time tomorrow. And she was going to be stuck with this guy at the museum for two hours a week, the rest of the semester!  Maybe she could catch pneumonia or something and be excused from the rest of the school year.

Her friend Betty was waiting for her at the gym exit, wearing the red humane society lanyard.  “You’re going to be volunteering with Tony Stark?” she asked.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Pepper informed her, and kept going.

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Tony watched the girl disappear in a huff of ginger hair and oversized sweater, then turned to Coulson for his own lanyard and badge.  “What crawled up her butt?” he asked.  There were lots of girls in school who didn’t like Tony – there were lots of girls outside school who didn’t like him – but most of them at least knew him.  As far as he could remember, Tony had never spoken to that one before.

“I don’t think she believes you know anything about art,” said Mr. Coulson.

“Yeah?” Tony asked.

The truth was, he didn’t really.  Tony’s parents were patrons of the ESMMA, along with several other museums in the city, so he’d figured the employees there would be nice to him – but he wasn’t into art for its own sake.  Tony preferred things that could be quantified and figured out, while art, particularly modern art, was the exact opposite of that.  He’d signed up on the assumption that the museum would give him flash cards or something so he could lead tours and answer questions.  He could memorize things like that in a few seconds and be fine. Now, however, he’d been given a challenge.  Who was this girl to judge him when she’d never even met him properly.

“Well,” he said, “she’s gonna find out how wrong she is.”

That evening, Tony sat down in front of his computer – he’d built it himself, out of parts of several others – and pulled up the museum’s website.  With a can of Red Bull at one elbow and a package of pretzels at the other he sat up almost until dawn, going through the online collection and reading about artists, movements, and styles.  Tony could handle being called a lot of things but nobody was going to think he was dumb.

By Friday afternoon, after a couple of additional trips to both the public and museum libraries, he felt he was more than ready. He’d even dug out an old ESMMA t-shirt he’d gotten for free at one of Mom’s fundraisers, and was wearing that and his lanyard as he leaned against one of the metal pillars outside the museum entrance.  The museum wasn’t expecting them until four, but there was no way Tony was letting the girl be earlier than he was.

It worked, too – he’d been waiting nearly fifteen minutes when she finally got off the bus.  Her long ginger hair was in two braids, and her slender figure was absolutely lost under an enormous camo-green cardigan.  Tony was gratified to see her surprised to find him there.

“Afternoon,” he said.

“Hi,” she replied warily.

Tony smiled at her.  “What’s your favourite piece in the ESMMA collection?” he asked, as if making polite conversation.  “I’m partial to Csaky.  Picasso’s a little too abstract for my tastes.”

She frowned for a moment, then shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve never thought about it. Probably the Water Lillies.”

“Monet, cool,” Tony nodded.  “Nobody else I asked at school had signed up for the museum. It’s good to know there’s somebody else around who’s got some taste.  What do you think of Monet’s red paintings?  Are they artistically interesting, or just medically?”

The girl began to smile.  “They can be both,” she said.  “With impressionists it was all about how they saw the world, right? It was their impression. Both Monet’s cataracts and the removal of them affected that, so it should be reflected in his art.”

Tony had expected her to be squirming by now, having realized she was wrong about him, but that didn’t seem to be the case.  He tried to go a little deeper.  “What do you think of the idea that after his surgery he could see into the ultraviolet?” he asked.

“I hadn’t heard that before,” she replied.  For a moment Tony felt triumphant, but then she continued on, apparently oblivious to the fact that he’d just shown he knew more about impressionists than she did.  “I wonder what effect that would have… could we even see it?”

Tony was about to cite a Journal of Art History paper he’d read on the subject, but then one of the big glass doors opened and a man in a blue shirt and white tie, wearing an ESMMA nametag that identified him, appropriately enough, as Art, looked out at him.  “Are you two the kids from Triskelion?” he asked.

“Yes,” the girl said, reaching to took the guy’s hand. “I’m Virginia – people call me Pepper.”

“And I’m Tony,” he stepped up to do the same.

“Oh, I know who you are,” said Art, and shook Tony’s hand with enthusiasm.  “I’ve seen you here with your folks.  Come on in! We’re always happy to have kids from the school.”  He held the door open for them.  “We look forward to it all year.”

“I’ve been looking forward to it, myself,” said Pepper. “I’ve been to the museum quite often, and I know the layout pretty well.”

“And I can identify every piece in the place!” Tony bragged, not to be outdone as the followed Art inside.  The foyer of the building was spacious, with high ceilings, white walls, and abstract-shaped red couches.  “That one behind the admissions counter, for example, that’s Matisse’s Two Masks.”  He snickered. “The one that looks like a mantis shrimp wearing cool sunglasses.”

Pepper looked at him as if he’d just sprouted a second head, but didn’t say anything.

“Man, it kinda does, doesn’t it?” said Art, grinning. “Great, now I’ll never unsee that! Right this way.”  He led them to a door marked staff only, and touched his employee ID card to a panel to unlock it.  The inner side had a complicated push-bar arrangement on it, the sort that would probably set off an alarm if somebody tried to open it without permission.

“Ohhh… are we gonna be working in the off-view collections?” Pepper asked in a reverent voice.

“Sort of,” said Art.

They went down the stairs to the basement level, and through a maze of rooms full of shelves and boxes and things carefully stored in glass cases, to a door with no special signs or locks on it, just an ordinary lever handle.  Beyond that was a little room with one tiny, dingy window way high up in the wall, looking out on a parking lot, and a lot of metal shelves stacked high with what appeared to be garbage.  There were cardboard boxes full of paper, trash bags bulging with heaven knew what, stacks of old magazines, packages of unopened paper plates and plastic forks. Tony frowned as he looked around. He hadn’t seen anything like this on the website?

“Is this art?” he asked.

“This is our surplus from last year,” Art replied. “Menus and leaflets and merch.  We need you guys to sort it out – what we can still sell, what we can recycle, what we can donate, and so forth.  We save it all year so you kids will have something to do.”  He looked so proud of himself, as if he were expecting them to be excited about this.

Tony glanced at Pepper.  Her mouth was open in astonishment.

“The café and vending machines will give you sodas and snacks at half price with your lanyards,” Art said cheerfully.  “If you need anything, you can call somebody there.” He pointed to a set of buttons below a speaker on the wall.  “See you at six!”  And he walked out, whistling.

Pepper’s backpack fell out of her hands and landed on the floor.  “Word gets around,” she said aloud.  “Nobody told me.”

The look on her face and the mournful tone of her voice would have been full as hell if Tony hadn’t been feeling pretty betrayed, himself.  “This is bullshit,” he declared.  His parents had donated thousands of dollars to the ESMMA over the years.  He’d studied for this, and they thought all he was good for was sorting garbage?  “I’m going to call my Mom,” he said darkly.

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Pepper felt like the bottom had dropped out of her stomach and all her insides had gone splat on the gritty concrete floor.  She’d been looking forward to this for a month, as a chance to work in the stimulating environment of the museum, enjoying art and helping other people enjoy it, too.  Now it turned out they expected her to spend the whole time shut in the basement?  No wonder nobody else signed u for the museum! Why hadn’t she asked around? Clearly somebody was telling the seniors to avoid the assignment!

It was Stark’s statement that snapped her out of her moment of shock.  Pepper had kept her head down the last few days at school, waiting for the ridicule to start, but it never had.  It seemed like nobody had overheard the exchange, and Stark must not have told anyone about it.  She’d begun to hope that he just wanted to forget about it, too.  Her hopes had risen even further when he’d actually seemed to want to talk about the museum and the collection, and when she’d noticed his parents’ names on the big granite slab in the lobby floor.  Maybe they were going to get along after all…

Now it was clear after all that he really was just a spoiled jerk.  He was here because he thought his family’s involvement would get him special treatment and he was pissed because it wouldn’t.  Well, maybe it would do him good to live in the real world for two hours a week.

“Is that what you do every time you don’t get what you want?” she demanded.  “Go crying to Mommy and have her fix it for you?”

Stark scowled at her.  “Oh, and I guess you’re totally fine with it?  You were geeking out a minute ago!”

“I am not fine with it!” Pepper informed him.  “I am bitterly disappointed, but some of us don’t have rich parents who can make sure we get our way!”  She looked around again at the room’s ill-organized contents, then picked up her backpack and set it on a chair.  The sleeves of her cardigan wouldn’t stay up, but she made a show of rolling them anyway before she dug into the first box of magazines.

“What are you doing?” asked Stark.

“I’m doing what I was told to do!” she snarled. “Because I need the credit to graduate, and unlike some people I can’t just nap through all my classes and bribe the school to pass me anyway!”

For a moment Stark just stood there as if she’d slapped him. Then he drew himself up to his full height, which was not impressive when he wasn’t any taller than Pepper, and demanded, “what is your problem?  I never even met you until the other day, and you already hated me!  You honestly think I can’t do this?” He gestured to the piles of junk.

“I think you won’t,” Pepper replied primly.  “I mean, look at you – you’re just standing there! Your parents are so rich you’ve probably never had to do anything in your entire life!  I bet your Dad pays off the teachers to give you good marks!”

“I get good marks all by myself!” Stark huffed.  “I happen to be a genius!”

If that were supposed to make her think more highly of him, it failed miserably.  Pepper threw a magazine at him.  “You’re an egotistical twit!” she said.  “If you can work, prove it!”

“Maybe I will!” he said.  He stood there a moment longer, looking around, and Pepper wondered if he would refuse after all, out of sheer spite.  But then he grabbed a box of merchandise from a now-defunct special exhibit on Lichtenstein and started sorting them, rather violently.

Pepper smirked.  At least she’d gotten him to participate.

“You’ve got no right to pass judgment on me when you don’t know me,” Stark said after a while.

“Maybe you shouldn’t worry so much about what other people think of you,” Pepper retorted.  She opened a second box, and found it was full of old calendars.  The guy named Art had said they saved things all year for the Triskelion volunteers, but these were fully three years old.  Whoever had been conned into doing this in the mean time couldn’t have been very thorough.

“I don’t care what other people think of me,” Stark said.  He was stacking souvenir water bottles into two pyramids, one of bottles that had last year’s date on them, and one that did not.

“Obviously you do, or you wouldn’t be mad at me for not liking you,” Pepper pointed out.

She looked around at the mess, and felt her jaw muscles tighten.  This was clearly a job that desperately needed doing and, just as obviously, nobody wanted to do it.  The museum staff didn’t want to deal with it, so they left it for the students.  The students didn’t want to deal with it, so they didn’t  sign up for the volunteer work.  Pepper certainly didn’t want to do it… but that in itself awakened a weird form of rebellion in her.  Fine, then. She would do it, and she would do a spectacular job, so that nobody else could ever do half as well! She dumped the calendars back in their box, and got out a marker to write the word recycle on the side.

“I’m not mad,” said Stark.  “I couldn’t care less if you like me or not.  I’m just saying you have no right to an opinion.”

“Of course I do,” Pepper said, “and you’re not making me like you any better by whining about it!”  She grabbed another box.

“Maybe I don’t like you, either,” he retorted.

“Good thing I actually don’t care what you think of me,” sniffed Pepper.  After their interactions so far, she would have been disappointed if he didn’t hate her.  The last thing she wanted was to appeal to a spoiled brat like Stark!  She looked over her shoulder at his pyramids.  “What are you doing with those?”

“Seeing how high I can stack them,” he replied.

“We’re not here to play,” Pepper informed him.  The next box contained multicoloured stress balls. For a moment she wrestled with temptation, then she threw one at Stark’s bottles, as if they were a setup pin a carnival game.  They wobbled, then crashed down.

“Hey!” he protested.

“We’re here to work,” she told him.

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That interaction seemed to have set the tone for the entire evening, Tony observed.  This girl was absolutely determined to do the job they’d given her, even though it was a stupid rip-off of a job, and if Tony hadn’t been so determined to hate her back he would have found it kind of admirable.  If she had that kind of work ethic in her classes she might well end up valedictorian… and since the school was in the habit of choosing one valedictorian of each sex, that meant Tony might find himself sharing a stage with her in June.  That sounded like a disaster waiting to happen.

Art had promised to let them out at six.  He’d also told them they were welcome to go for snacks or bathroom breaks, but Pepper – why was she called that? Because of her freckles, maybe? She certainly was peppered with those – didn’t stop.  Tony was getting hungry and cranky, but he didn’t stop, either.  Pepper had thought he’d know nothing abut art and he’d proven her wrong.  Now she thought he wasn’t willing to work hard, so he was going to prove her wrong on that, too.

Six o’clock came and went.  Upstairs the museum was probably closing up, and Art would arrive any minutes.  Pepper kept at it, though, tossing vaguely cubist plush animals around like she planned to do it all night, using her phone as a flashlight to peer into dark corners of the room looking for more.  Tony wondered if he ought to say something, but if he did, she might think he was being lazy and he wasn’t going to let her have that.  He continued taking bundles of pamphlets out of their elastic bands and dumping them in the ‘recycle’ box as his watched ticked past six thirty and approached seven.

Then the lights went out.

For a moment the two of them just stood there in the dark, blinking.  A little bit of light came in through that high-up window, but it wasn’t really enough to see by.  After a few seconds, Pepper turned her phone flashlight back on, which made Tony yelp as she shone it directly in his face.

“Hey!” he protested.

“Sorry!”  She quickly moved it.  “Did you do that?”

“What?” asked Tony.  “Turn the lights off?  Why would I do that!  They probably went off because it’s way past six and the museum is closed.”  He went and moved a box so he could stand on it and look out the window.

Pepper stared at him, then looked at her phone screen. “Why didn’t you say something?” she asked.

“Because you would have gone aww, is the little rich boy tired?”  Sure enough, there was nobody moving out in the courtyard.  The café tables had been put away, and he thought he could make out somebody on the opposite side locking a door.

“So you do care what I think of you,” she said, but didn’t seem interested in arguing the point.  As Tony opened his mouth to reply, she turned away and shone the light around the room.  “Which way to the stairs?”

“This way.”  Tony hopped down from his box and turned on his own phone for extra light. A fat lot of good it had done him, he thought, to memorize those museum maps.  None of them had included the basement!  But by the light of the LEDs the two young people managed to wind their way through the maze of rooms.

“Oh, Jesus!” Pepper exclaimed, grabbing Tony’s arm.

“What?” he turned around, and nearly jumped out of his own skin as he saw what looked like a winged, humanoid figure looming over them.  Then he realized what he was looking at was the shadow of a sculpture in dark stone, projected on the wall and ceiling by the light, and recognized it from the website catalogue – at least that had done him some good. “That’s Csaky’s Messenger,” he said.  A black granite cubist angel.

“I knew that,” said Pepper, relaxing her grip.

“No, you didn’t,” he teased.  “What did you think it was, Mothman?”

“Shut up and let’s get out of here,” she said. “This place is creepy in the dark.”

It had been kind of creepy in the daytime, Tony thought, with all the old sculptures covered in sheets and so forth.  When he moved his own light around the room the shadows seemed to come to life, and it did make the statues look terrifyingly animated. He tried not to think about that as they continued to the stairs.

It was an effort not to cheer when they finally sighted the red EXIT sign.  Tony took the stairs two at a time and pushed on the bar handle, not really caring if it set off an alarm.  It did not – in fact, the only sound was a dull clunk, and the door did not move.

Tony tried again, wondering if he’d simply pushed it too hard.  He got the same result.

“Now what?” asked Pepper.

“It’s locked,” he said.

“What?”

“Don’t panic, it’s not like we’re gonna run out of air or anything,” said Tony, rolling his eyes.  “It’s just a locked door.”

“Yes, but that means we’re stuck in here!” she protested.

“It’s not like the museum’s empty!”  Tony put his shoulder against the door to rattle it. “Hey!  Hey, we’re locked in!” he shouted.

“Help!” Pepper chimed in.  “Anybody out there?  Help!”

They continued shouting for a few minutes, but it got no reply.  If anybody were out there, they couldn’t hear them – or they were just ignoring the cries.

“Why didn’t that guy come back to tell us it was time to go?” Pepper wailed.

Tony very much wanted to know that, himself.  “I guess he forgot about us.”  He rattled the door one last time and waited a moment, but there was still no response.

She grabbed his arm again.  “You can call your parents!”

Tony pulled free of her grip.  “Oh, now who wants to call my rich parents to fix everything?” he couldn’t resist saying.

She narrowed her eyes.  “That was a tantrum.  This is an emergency.  I’m sorry I made fun of you, okay?  Please call them.”

The apology was startling, but it didn’t change one important fact.  “I can’t,” Tony said.  “Or if I did, it wouldn’t do any  good. They’re in Vienna this week.”  He scowled.

The light on Pepper’s phone shut off with an unhappy buzzing sound, but by the light of his own Tony could see that she looked disappointed.  “So you were just ranting when you said you were gonna have your Mom yell at the museum people?”

“No, I was gonna talk to her, it’s just that it’ll probably take ages for her to do anything about it, because she’s out of the country and she doesn’t like staying up all night to make phone calls,” Tony grumbled.  “Why don’t you call your parents?  At least they live here in town.”

Pepper nodded and looked down at her phone, then swallowed when she saw the screen.  “Uh… actually, I don’t think I can.  I’ve had the flashlight on too long and the battery is dead.”

He reached into his pocket.  “You can use mine.  You know their numbers, right?”

“No,” she admitted, squirming a bit.  “We haven’t had a land line since I was twelve. I’ve always had their numbers in my phone.”

“Well, that’s just great!”  Tony kicked the door and then went to sit down on the top step. “So what do we do, just sit here all night?”

“You said you were a genius!  Can’t you figure something out?” she asked.

Tony huffed.  There she was again, thinking he was dumb.  He knew that she was doing it on purpose, and that if he kept reacting the way she wanted, she would quickly come to decide that she could make him do anything she wanted by saying she thought he couldn’t or wouldn’t… but at the same time, he couldn’t let her think she was right.  He thought back to the museum maps he’d looked at… this stairwell hadn’t been marked on any of them, which meant the public wasn’t supposed to use them.  All the exits probably locked the same way.  What he needed was a way to pick the lock, which was going to be difficult when it was inside the bar apparatus.

“Well?” Pepper asked.

“Shut up.  I’m thinking.”  Tony turned and directed the light from his phone onto the bar.  There were some screws that would be easy to take out, but they were in the push panel at the hinge end of the door… he’d need to reach inside somehow.  “Okay,” he said, standing up again.  “There’s gotta be some tools in that basement, right?  I need a screwdriver.”

“Is this a good idea?” asked Pepper.

“I won the Pym Prize for Robotics last month!” Tony reminded her.  “My picture was on the cover of the school newspaper, and you don’t trust me with a screwdriver?”

She threw up her hands.  “Okay, okay!  Do your genius thing!”

Tony checked the battery on his own phone.  With the flashlight on it was draining fast.  If they didn’t want to be in here with no light but the EXIT signs, he was going to have to find another source of illumination.  “And a proper flashlight,” he decided.

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all evening,” said Pepper, and followed him down the steps.

💘 - 💝 - 💌 - 💝 - 💘

Pepper realized she was being mean and snappish, but she couldn’t help it.  How was she supposed to feel when they were locked in a basement?  They couldn’t just stay here all night.  What about dinner?  Her stomach was already growling.  She’d been ignoring it earlier because she had wanted to show that she was willing to work.  Where would they sleep?  There was nothing soft down here to lie on.  And good lord, what was going to happen when one of them needed to pee?

All that nervous energy had to go somewhere and the only possible target was Stark – and he was doubly convenient in that capacity because this was his fault.  He’d noticed the time passing while she had not.  He couldn’t have said something.  If he’d spoken up, they could have decided it was time to go and done so, but he hadn’t, the staff had forgotten about them, and now they were stuck down here!

Back at the bottom of the stairs, Stark located a janitor’s closet.  This seemed a good place to start looking for emergency supplies – there was a first aid kit and a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall, and on a shelf above them he found a utility flashlight.  He gave the latter to Pepper, and had her hold it while he rooted around inside a cupboard, looking for something else.

“What are you doing now?” she asked.

“I’m looking for tools,” he replied.  “A screwdriver.  A hammer.  Something. I’m gonna take the door apart and open the lock from the inside… and don’t ask me if I can do that,” he added, pulling his head out of the cupboard to look straight at her.  “I told you, I’m a genius.  I can figure it out.”

Pepper sniffed.  She would wait and see how he did at getting them out of the basement, but she knew one thing for certain.  “You may be a genius, but talking about it all the time still makes you sound like a jerk.  Why do you care so much that people know how smart you are?”

“Because it’s important!” said Tony, going back to his rooting around.  “Fine, I admit it: yes, I want people to know I’m smart, okay?  I’m proud of it.  Why shouldn’t I be?”

“It’s fine to be proud, but if you go around talking about it, you’re bragging,” Pepper said to his butt, which was the only part of him she could see.  “What happened to humility?”

“False humility is just another kind of lying,” he said.

“It’s polite,” Pepper insisted.  “You don’t see me go around bragging.  I could be standing here going, oh, they gave me this job because nobody else wants to do it so I’m going to be awesome at it just to show them.”

This time, he actually wiggled back out of the cupboard and sat up, frowning at her in evident confusion.  “Is that really what you’re proudest of?” he asked.  “That you’re willing to do crappy jobs?”

“I’m willing to do them well,” Pepper clarified. “The people who left all those three-year-old calendars in the box sure didn’t do a very good job of it.  Just because nobody wants to do something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it properly.  I’m a Hufflepuff,” she said firmly.  “I believe in doing things right.��

“Yeah, but that seems like a weird thing to brag about,” he insisted.

“I just said I don’t brag about it,” huffed Pepper.

“No, I mean, it’s a weird example of a thing you might brag about,” Stark said.  “Most people would say something like, I’m good at math, or I  can beat a new video game faster than anybody I know, or I’ve won prizes for my robots.  Your thing is doing terrible jobs?”

His mention to the robotics prize made Pepper wonder if all three of his examples were things he personally considered himself amazing at.  “No, they wouldn’t say that, because most people don’t go around bragging.”

“If you asked them,” Stark said, frowning in frustration.  “If you go up to somebody and ask them what are you best at they’ll always tell you something!  Like, my friend Rhodey is really good at building model airplanes.  He’ll tell you all about how he changed them to be more accurate than they were on the box.  Or there’s Janet from my physics class who’s really good at her fashion Instagram.  What’s your ‘thing’?”

Pepper winced, wishing now she’d never spoken. Everybody had a ‘thing’, didn’t they? Something they were really into. With Jane it was astronomy – everyone knew she’d been accepted to Culver for astrophysics and she could take you out on a dark night and show you three planets, nine constellations, and tell you about how people could figure out the date of supernovas from tree rings. Pepper never understood half of what she said.  With Natasha it was ballet and gymnastics, and the phys. ed teachers said she’d probably be in the Olympics someday.  Pepper was madly jealous of both of them for having something they were so good at and so passionate about… because she didn’t.

She was silent for a moment – and her very hesitation must have told Stark all he needed to know.  “Oh, come on, you must be good at something,” he said.  “How about art?”

Pepper shrugged awkwardly.  “I like art, but I can’t do it.  I took art in freshman year but I wasn’t any good at it. I never felt inspired.  I’m more interested in the history than in actually doing it, but that’s not really… not really something you can make a career out of.  I guess I could be a museum curator, but…”  She looked around the dark room, with that unsettling statue still looming in a corner of it.  “A museum doesn’t sound like a great place to work right now.”

“I hear that,” Stark grumbled.

“I’m gonna do accounting in college,” she went on, “because I’ll be able to get a good job that way.  I get decent grades in math, but they’re not any better than the grades I get in anything else.  My Dad was always one of those if you put your mind to it you can do anything people, and he’s right, because I can do a lot of things well but there’s not really anything I’d say I’m good at.”

Pepper stopped there, because… why had she told him that?  It wasn’t something she ever discussed, even with her friends or family.  They wouldn’t understand.  All of them had a ‘thing’, but Pepper was just… Pepper. She worked hard because if she couldn’t be good at something, she wanted to be decent at as many things as she could. Jill of all trades, mistress of none.

Stark was looking at her like he didn’t know what she was talking about.  He probably didn’t.  If he was so damn smart, he was probably good at everything and couldn’t imagine what mediocrity was possibly like.  What would he know about insecurity?

“Look, just find your tools and get us out of here,” said Pepper.

He crawled back into the cupboard, while she knelt down to shine the flashlight over his shoulder.  After a minute or two of sorting around amid cleaning supplies and a set of wrenches, he sat up triumphantly.  “Aha!” he exclaimed, holding high a beat-up screwdriver with an orange handle.

“Finally!” said Pepper.  “Let’s go!”

They returned to the main floor and Pepper continued to hold the flashlight while Stark knelt down to turn the screws.  He tried for a few moments, then stopped and muttered a bad word under his breath.

“Now what’s wrong?” Pepper asked.  She could feel her stomach sinking again.

“It’s a Phillips,” said Stark.

“What’s that?” Pepper wanted to know.

“It’s a Phillips head screwdriver!”  He pointed it at her like a magic wand.  “The screws are all flat heads!”

“Can’t you still use it?” she asked.  Pepper admittedly knew very little about tools but she had assembled furniture with her parents, and she was sure her father had once said she could still use a particular screwdriver even if it was the wrong shape.

Stark appeared to disagree – he tossed the screwdriver back down the stairs, and she could hear it clink as it bounced off the concrete steps.  “No. You could use a flat head screwdriver in a Phillips screw, but not the other way around.”

“The Phillips… is that the one with the plus, and the flat head is the one with the minus?” she asked.

“Yeah.”  Stark sat there for a moment, then examined the screws again.  “You got a dime?”

“Nobody carries cash in New York,” Pepper scoffed. She thought for a moment, herself, and then unzipped her backpack and started sorting through it, looking for her keys.  “Here!” She pulled them out.  “I have nail clippers on my keychain!”

“So what?” he asked, annoyed.

“So they have a flat end!”  She took them off the loop and lifted the lever to show him. “Will that fit in the screws?”

Stark blinked, then snatched them out of her hand, grinning.  “You’re a genius!” he said, and turned around to start removing screws.

“Oh, like you?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

“Maybe not quite like me,” he said, but he glanced back over his shoulder to smile at her, and something inside Pepper gave an involuntarily little flutter.  Stark was clearly joking, but when he’d said you’re a genius, it had sounded so sincere and spontaneous she couldn’t help but think he meant it.

“There we go!” Stark dropped one screw on the floor, then removed another, and took the entire bar off the door.  “Shine the light in here, would you?”

Pepper directed the beam over his shoulder, while he first peered in and then reached to feel around.  For a moment he frowned, and Pepper started getting worried again, but this time he seemed to figure out a solution quickly.

“Another equipment run!” he declared.  “I know I saw wire cutters in there… I need a coat hanger.  I’m gonna snip a length of it so I can manipulate the lock from the inside.”

“There were coat hangers in the junk room!” said Pepper. “They had a box of souvenir sweatshirts that were already on them inside the plastic!”

She pulled open one such packet, and Stark cut himself a length of wire about six inches long.  Pepper was starting to feel quite pleased with their collective problem-solving abilities.  Stark could find, or at least make, whatever tools they needed, and Pepper had a good memory and could tell him where to find things.  When they returned to the door, Stark stuck his makeshift lock pick into it, his hand disappearing into the bar mechanism right up to the wrist, and within a few second there was a clunking sound, and the door creaked open. The light that flooded in was faint, just the evening glow of the city and the fading November sky reflecting off the white walls and tile floors of the lobby, but Pepper was so happy to see it, she almost cried.

“Ta-da!” said Stark proudly.  There was a clink from inside the bar as he dropped the piece of wire.  “There we… ow!” he exclaimed, and quickly yanked his arm out… or tried to. Something clearly went wrong, because he stopped short and howled!

Pepper almost dropped the flashlight. What?  What happened?” she asked.  Her imagination offered up horrible possibilities.  Maybe there was a mouse or a spider or something in there. Maybe he was going to need her to suck the venom out.  Maybe she wouldn’t be able to do it, and she would be known as the girl who let Tony Stark die…

“I’m stuck!  I’m caught on…” he gritted his teeth and swore again.  “I’m caught on… I think I stabbed myself.”

Pepper felt herself go cold.  She set the flashlight down on the floor so that its beam would still illuminate him.  “Okay, well, don’t panic,” she said.

“Don’t panic?  You’re the one who screamed because you thought the statue was Mothman!” he pointed out.

“Only for a moment!  When you’re hurt,” she explained, “you shouldn’t panic because it’ll only make you freak out and do more damage.  Now, take a deep breath.”

He breathed in, hard.

“Let it out,” said Pepper.

It came out in a woosh.

“Now tell me what happened.”

Stark grimaced in pain.  “I dropped the coat hanger wire,” he said, “and I think it got caught on something.  When I tried to pull my arm out it poked me, and when I tried to yank it out fast it went in really deep and I think I’m actually sort of impaled right now.”

In the dim light, Pepper couldn’t see his face very well, but he sounded like he was on the verge of passing out.  She thought fast – if he did that, he would go limp, and the weight of his body would pull on that arm, and if what he’d just said was accurate, that could make things much worse.

“Okay,” she said.  “Can you back your arm up so it comes out?”

He tried.  “I don’t think so.  The bar isn’t long enough.”  Stark looked at her hands, held up in front of her as she tried to reassure him. “You’ve got small hands.  You think you can reach in there and move it?”

“I’ll try,” said Pepper.  She took off her cardigan and examined the situation… how would she do this?  Stark was right up against the door and couldn’t exactly move over to give her space. She was going to have to practically sit in his lap.  “Don’t get any ideas,” she said, moving into place.

He snorted.  “I’ve got my arm stuck in a door!  Getting ideas is about the last thing on my mind.”

She settled down, sitting on his knee, and wiggled her fingers in around his arm.  Immediately she felt something wet and sticky.  She pulled her hand back and held it in the flashlight beam, and was horrified to see the red on her fingers.  “Oohhh,” she said.

“What?”  Stark looked over her shoulder.  “Oh, no. You’re not gonna faint, are you?”

“I don’t know if I’m the best person to do this,” said Pepper.  She almost stuck the fingers in her mouth, but that wasn’t a good idea when it wasn’t her blood.  She couldn’t wipe it on her clothes, either, it might stain.  How much more blood would there be if she managed to pull the wire out?

“There’s nobody else here!” he protested.  “That’s the whole problem, remember?”

“Yeah, but…” Pepper said helplessly, and stopped there because he was right.  It was just him and her.  Like sorting the garbage downstairs, it was a terrible job but nobody else was going to do it.  It was up to Pepper.

“Right.”  She tried to wipe her fingers on the floor, which didn’t work very well, then took a deep breath and tried again.  Stark’s chin was on her shoulder watching as she stuck her fingers in between his flesh and the edge of the opening, feeling around for the problem.  She could follow the piece of wire for about two and a half inches, the length of her thumb and index finger, and then had to stop. There just wasn’t room to fit the rest of her hand inside and go any further.

“Don’t tug on it,” said Stark weakly.  “It’s definitely under the skin.”

“That’s so disgusting,” she whimpered.  The blood had been pretty awful, but she could handle it. The phrase under the skin, however, was horrible.  Pepper hated things like needles and IV lines.

“Can you get it out?” he asked.

“No,” was Pepper’s immediate reply.  “That’s as far as my fingers will go.  I’m gonna see if I can find the other end.”  She felt her way back, trying to ignore the feeling of warm, damp blood between her fingers.  The other end of the bit of coat hanger turned out to be stuck under a lip of metal at the edge of the piece next to the one Stark had removed.  She tried to pick at it with her fingernails, to no effect. “I can’t.  It’s stuck.”

Pepper wanted to pull her hand back, but realized if she did, it might be covered with blood.  For a moment, she didn’t move.

“Okay,” Stark said in her ear.  “If pulling it out won’t work, can we push it a little further in?”

“What?” Pepper asked.  “No, I’m not going to do that!  I wouldn’t do it even if I could!”

“I didn’t mean into my arm, I meant into the space!” said Stark.  “I’ll push my arm in as far as I can, and you see if you can get the other end loose and hold it there so I can get out without it getting stuck again, okay?”

“I can’t do that!” she insisted.  “What if it pierces something major and you bleed to death?” There was already enough blood on her. The idea of more made her feel ill.

“You won’t if you’re careful,” he said.  “Even if you do, I don’t think there’s any major blood vessels in that part of an arm.”

“You don’t think there are?  You mean you don’t know if there are?  I thought you were a genius!”

“That doesn’t make me an encyclopedia!” he protested. “Being smart doesn’t mean I know everything.  Intelligence is a stat – knowledge is a skill!  You have to roll a check for it!”

“What?” Pepper asked.  The statement made no sense whatsoever for the first few moments, until she realized what he was talking about.  “Is… was that a Dungeons and Dragons joke?”  His arm was impaled on part of a metal coat hanger, and he was joking?

“Yes!  I’m trying to distract us,” Stark said.  “Just do it, okay?  Stop thinking about it.  The faster it gets done, the faster it’ll be over with and we can both get out of here.”

“Right.”  Pepper took several breaths in and out, the way she’d told him to do only a few minutes earlier.  “Keep distracting me,” she said.

“How?” he asked.

“I don’t know.  Tell me about… tell me about your parents.”  It was the first thing that occurred to her.  She worked her fingers further into the space, to press the piece of wire against his skin.

Stark snorted.  “What’s to tell?  My Dad’s the smartest guy in the world and nothing I do is ever good enough for him. Have you got it?”

“I hope so,” she replied.  “I thought you said you were a genius.”

“I am a genius, just not as much of a genius as he is,” said Stark.  He moved his arm a little further, but it wasn’t enough for the wire to come loose.

“Keep going,” said Pepper.

“No matter what I do,” Stark went on, “he’s like, oh, I did that when I was younger than you, and I didn’t have all this money or this fancy edu…” he hissed through his teeth as something hurt, and Pepper began to ease off the pressure she was putting on his arm.  “No, hold it there!” he said.  “All this fancy education.  I didn’t even… oh shit… I didn’t even tell him I won that prize or that I was on the cover of the school newspaper, because he wouldn’t have… oh shit… wouldn’t have cared…”

“Am I hurting you?” Pepper asked.  The end was still, just barely, under the lip.

“No, it just hurts!” he said.  He moved a little further.

It was only a fraction of an inch, but it was enough. Pepper felt the end of the wire come free, and held it as tightly against his arm as she could.  “I got it!  Pull it out now!”

He yanked his arm out of the bar.  The door, now free to swing, fell open and dumped both young people onto the lobby floor.

Pepper held up her hands.  The lobby was semi-dark, but there was enough light to see that her fingers were smeared with blood.  It was getting sticky as it began to dry, and the metallic scent stung in her nostrils.  Her stomach lurched.

“Oh, man,” said Stark.

She knew she didn’t want to see his injury, but she turned and looked anyway.  It wasn’t as bad as she was picturing.  The end of the piece was very sharp, but it was only under perhaps half an inch of skin and so close to the surface that the dark metal was visible through the translucent layer of tissue.  It was still horrible to look at, but impaled was an exaggeration.

“I gotta… I gotta…” Stark stammered.

“Lie down!”  Pepper pushed him onto the floor.  “Don’t you dare pass out on me.  Wait right here, and I’ll be back.”

She ran back down the steps and grabbed the first aid kit out of the janitor’s closet.  When she got back, she found Stark lying there with one cheek on the cold tile, but his eyes were wide and he was still very much conscious.

“I’m gonna pull it out,” she told him.

“Tie something around my arm first, so it doesn’t bleed too much,” said Stark.

“Got it.  I think that’s what this is for.”  Pepper pulled out a stretchy strap and tied it around his arm above the injury. “There… now like I said, keep talking. Your Dad isn’t impressed by you. Is that why you want everybody at school to know you’re a genius?”  Honestly… it would explain an awful lot.

“I guess,” said Stark.  “I didn’t think about it that way, but… yeah, probably.  It’s nice to be able to brag a little without him telling me how much better he could have done it, you know?  He actually wanted to send me to boarding school. Mom talked him out of it, but he just wanted to get rid of me.”

Pepper nodded.  “You ready?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Me, neither,” she admitted.  With her left hand she held his, while gripping the wire with her right.  Should she pull fast or slow?  If she were doing this to herself she would have done it at slowly as possible, probably crying the whole time, but this wasn’t for herself… so she decided to just yank.  She held on tight so it wouldn’t just slide through her fingers, and pulled.

It came right out.  Pepper tossed the wire aside and grabbed a wad of gauze out of the kit to press against the wound.  “How’s that?” she asked.

“Way better,” said Stark weakly.  “I don’t think I could have done that myself.”

“That’s my thing,” Pepper said, her voice shaking. “I do stuff nobody else is willing to do.”

“You sure do,” he agreed.  “That’s a really great thing to be good at.  Go ahead and brag about it, okay?”

Pepper of couldn’t wouldn’t do any such thing, but she nodded, giggling a little in relief.

“What the hell is going on here?” demanded a voice.

A light was suddenly in their faces.  Pepper shrieked and grabbed Stark, as he hollered and grabbed her back.  Both of them looked up, and then relaxed again as they realized it was just a museum security guard.  He was a tall white man with a shaved head and a mustache, staring at them both in horror.

“Who are you two?” he asked.

Pepper couldn’t help it – she started giggling again. “We’re the kids from Triskelion High!” she managed in between bouts of laughter.  “We were sorting the stuff in the basement, and they forgot about us and locked us in!”

“Why are you covered in blood?” the guard asked, aghast.

Pepper looked down – she’d now gotten blood from her hands all over Stark’s shirt where she’d grabbed him, and he’d smeared it on her arm.  He was also now wiping his face, which got more blood on his cheeks and forehead, but whether because Pepper was setting him off or just because he was relieved, too, he was also laughing.

“I cut myself trying to take the door apart,” he said. “She helped me get unstuck.”

“Why didn’t you call 911?” the guard demanded.

Pepper blinked.  That was a good question – why hadn’t they?  They could have done that before they even started trying to open the door. They definitely could have done it when Stark first got his arm stuck.  Pepper’s phone had been dead, but Stark’s had some time left on it.  It just hadn’t occurred to either of them.

Stark laughed louder.  “Yeah, why didn’t we do that?”

“I don’t know!”  Pepper said.  “So much for being geniuses!”

“We’re idiots!” he agreed.

💘 - 💝 - 💌 - 💝 - 💘

The security guard was not laughing.  He dialed 911 himself, and summoned the janitorial staff to repair the door and clean the blood off it and the tiles.  When the ambulance arrived – along with someone who had the front door key to let them out – the EMTs bundled Tony into the back for inspection.  Since it was a chilly evening, they let Pepper sit inside with him while they slathered disinfectants on his arm.

“Are you put to date on your tetanus shots?” one woman asked him.

“Yes, absolutely,” said Tony.  “I work with metal all the time, so I keep an eye on that.”

She nodded.  “You said your parents are in Austria.  Who is your emergency contact?”

“Mr. Jarvis, my Dad’s old butler.  I’ll give you the number.”

The medic went to make the phone call, and Tony looked up at Pepper, sitting next to him.  He smiled at her, and was gratified to see her smiling back.  Apparently she… well, she obviously didn’t dislike him anymore.  He’d take that.

“I have a confession to make,” he said.

“Oh, really?”  Her thin ginger eyebrows roses.

“Well, you’re sitting there with my blood on your shirt, I figure you deserve the truth,” Tony said.  “I don’t know anything about art.  At least, I didn’t before last week.  Mr. Coulson said he thought the reason you were upset was because you didn’t think I knew anything about it, and I decided to prove you wrong, so I did a bunch of research.”

“To impress me?” asked Pepper.  “You didn’t even know me!”

“Well, as we established, I do kinda care what people think of me,” said Tony.

She shrugged.  “If my Dad thought I couldn’t do anything right, I’d probably want everybody at school to think I’m a genius, too.”

“I bet everybody at school does think you’re a genius, if you work at everything as hard as you worked at sorting that garbage.”

“Then I’ve fooled them all,” she sighed.

Tony gave her another smile.  “No fooling me,” he said, “you’re awesome.  Maybe not as much of a genius as I am, but not every girl would get covered in blood to help you get your arm out of a door.”

Pepper shook her head.  “Never ask me to do anything like that ever again, okay?” she said.  “Next week, you tell me when it’s six o’clock!”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Tony.

A car horn honked outside, and the EMT peeked back in. “Miss Potts?” she said.  “Your parents are here.”

“Tell them I’m coming!”  Pepper stood up and grabbed her backpack.  “See you next week, Stark.”

“Maybe sooner,” said Tony.  “We both go to the same school, after all.”

“Yeah, we do,” she agreed.  “Maybe sooner, then.”

He reached out and took her hand, and pulled her a bit closer for a kiss.  She ducked out of it.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she said, pulling her arm free. “I know what you’re like with girls!”

“Do you?”  Tony asked.  “You don’t know me, remember?  Give me a chance!”

“Pepper!” a voice called from outside.

“Please?”  He pouted and showed her his best puppy dog expression... the one that always worked on Mrs. Jarvis.

She hesitated a moment, then smiled. “Maybe.  See you on Monday, Tony,” and leaned back down.  She only kissed his cheek, and then she was gone in a hurry, her cheeks flushed as she ran off to meet her parents at the car.  Tony, however, was grinning as he watched her go. As evenings when he’d nearly stabbed himself went, that one hadn’t been too bad at all.

#pepperony #valentine's day exchange #tytythepilot

[vannahfanfics]

A Queen and Her King Part II

Before you read, here’s Part I!

Category: Mild Romantic Fluff, Friendship Fluff

Fandom: Kingdom Hearts

Characters: Sora, Kairi, Riku

Hello, everyone! Here’s my second story for Day 3 of @sokaiweek​, this time for the prompt “Treasured Memories”! “A Queen and Her King” was just too cute not to follow up, so I hope everyone likes this story about how Sora and Kairi recall the cute little wedding years later! :)

Sora flopped onto his belly with a happy sigh, snuggling into the quilts and pillows lining the floor. He grimaced as something sharp poked him in the stomach, and he wiggled about until he pulled out one of Kairi’s stuffed animals, a teddy bear with a hard plastic nose. Shrugging, he cuddled it to his chest and settled back down into the little nest he’d made on Kairi’s floor. 

“Man, it’s been forever since we’ve had a slumber party, huh?” Sora grinned, and Riku snorted from his spot in his sleeping bag. It was much neater than Sora’s mess of blankets and pillows, but Sora thought he was just being boring. Sora tossed a rabbit plush at him, but to his chagrin, Riku batted it away without even turning his face away from the manga he was reading. It was one of Kairi’s shoujos, but he was super into it— or maybe it was just because he hadn’t read manga in nearly two years and just wanted something to read.

“It’s a little weird when we’re our age, honestly,” Riku said, finally shutting the book and setting it to the side. He rested his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling, which was littered with those plastic glow-in-the-dark stars that were kinda tacky but lowkey awesome. Feeling Sora’s pout, Riku turned to smirk at him. “I mean, look at us. It’s kinda creepy that we’re in a nest of sheets and teddy bears.” 

“I think you’re just a grumpus and I do not appreciate this attack on my good vibes,” Sora simpered with a waggle of his head, and Riku’s smirk quickly morphed into a disgusted frown. 

“Please stop picking up slang from Hayner. I’m very convinced he’s teaching you stuff that definitely is not how real people talk.” 

“Talk to the hand!” Sora huffed, presented his palm to his friend, who just rolled his eyes to go back to looking at the ceiling like the grumpus he was. Sora rolled onto his side to look up at Kairi, who was laying on her belly on her bed watching the two boys bicker with a wistful smile. “Kairi, do you think my slang is silly?” 

“Oh, not at all. I think you’re very hip, Sora.” 

“See? She thinks I’m hip,” Sora grinned triumphantly, looking back at his friend. 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Riku droned without even pulling his gaze away from the ceiling, and Sora melted into his cuddly blanket with a whine. Riku chuckled at this, making Sora think that he just liked giving him a hard time, the big meaner. “Anyway, what are we supposed to do at this slumber party? Because Kairi, I’m sorry, but you are not giving me a makeover,” Riku said with a pointed look at the redhead, who laughed. 

“Don’t worry, you boys will leave my house make-up-free— although it is a shame, I’ve got some shades that would look so good on you.” 

“She could make those cheekbones pop, Riku,” Sora said, enunciating the “p” with a wiggle of his eyebrows. Riku responded with a loud laugh and threw the stuffed rabbit back at him. Unfortunately, Sora was not as dextrous as Riku, so his attempt to bat it away failed and it beamed him right in the forehead, its fluffy ears flapping into his eyes like cruel little bullets. It fell to the ground with a squeak, and Riku laughed at the surprised look on Sora’s face. 

Sora grabbed the bunny to throw it back at him. 

“Anyway,” Kairi laughed before the boys could tear apart her room throwing stuffed animals around, and Sora obediently cuddled the bunny, snuggling it right next to the teddy bear. “We’ve all been through a lot, but I thought this would be a good time for us to finally get together and talk about the good old days— our memories!” 

“Memories, huh?” Riku considered with a tilt of his head. He then grinned, and Sora just knew that look was trouble. “Do you remember the time you two got married?” 

Sora and Kairi wore identical expressions of alarm as they both screeched, “What?!” 

“Yeahhhhh,” Riku smirked, reveling in the power he held over them at that moment. “You had built a sandcastle, Kairi, and you were the queen, but me and Sora had an argument about who would be the queen. Sora was the one who actually brought up the whole marrying bit.” 

“Nuh-uh!” he insisted, even though he totally remembered it, and the blush creeping up from his neck betrayed it. Kairi was hugging her pillow, the only thing peeking over the top her wide blue eyes and her bright pink forehead. 

“Yeah-huh,” Riku shot back. He was very enthusiastic about the sleepover now that he was embarrassing them. “Anyways, Sora actually beat me and I married you two. Kairi, you were so happy you actually cried.” 

“Stop, no I did not,” she grumbled through her pillow. Now they couldn’t even see her face because she was squishing it in the pillow, probably to hide her blush. Sora tried to do the same with the teddy bear, but it wasn’t as effective, unfortunately. Growing frustrated with how easily Riku was embarrassing them, Sora sat up with a huff. 

“Okay, Riku, how about the time that a crab pinched you on the butt and you cried?!” he challenged. Riku’s smirk was wiped off his face in an instant, and the color drained out to leave him white as a sheet. “Oh, yeah, you even had the audacity to ask Kairi to kiss it for you!” 

“Ew, I remember that! I can’t believe you asked me to kiss your butt!” Kairi squealed, falling back onto her bed in a fit of laughter. Riku didn’t like that the situation had been turned around on him so quickly, so he wiggled down into his sleeping bag and zipped it up as a signal he was ending the conversation. Of course, he eventually came out and the conversation shifted, but he and Kairi made sure to mention that little gem any time they could. 

Riku chose his stories a bit more carefully after that. 

They stayed up into the wee hours of the night recounting memories of their childhood until they were just too tired to continue and passed out. Sora awoke with the dawn filtering in through Kairi’s window, as he was sprawled out on the floor at just the right angle for the sunbeams to spear right into his eyes. He rolled over with a sleepy groan, but his mind had always been too good at abandoning sleep. He found that it would not draw him back into its sweet embrace, and soon he was just lying there on the floor, cozy but awake. 

Eventually, he decided he was parched and dragged his sleepy butt out of the warm cocoon to shuffle to the bathroom. He filled up a few glasses of water to drink, and after his mouth didn’t feel like beach sand, he turned around— and found Kairi standing in the doorway, rubbing an eye sleepily and fisting her nightgown. 

“Sorry, Kairi, did I wake you?” 

Too tired to respond, she just gave him a shake of her head. He chuckled quietly as a few sprigs of her disarrayed hair fell into her face or sprang up in tall, curly cowlicks. She’d always had an impressive bedhead, even worse than Sora’s spikey nap. 

“Jus’ wanted some water too,” she smiled sleepily, so Sora offered the cup to her. He sat down on the edge of the bathtub while she drank from the sink. As she was taking a gulp, she suddenly snorted in laughter and sprayed the mirror with a mixture of spit and water. 

As Kairi leaned over the sink to snigger, Sora grinned, “Still laughing about Riku kissing your butt, huh?” 

“I can’t believe he asked that!” she giggled. They laughed about it for a while, and then they fell into a comfortable silence. After Kairi’s last drink, Sora kicked the wall of the tub with his heels. Truth be told, the kissing-butt story wasn’t the only memory that had been on his mind. 

“So… We really did that whole wedding thing when we were kids, huh?” 

“Yeah,” Kairi said, and he was relieved to see a pretty, nostalgic smile grace her lips. She turned around to lean against the sink, her hands clasped in front of her. “Yeah,” she said again, and the silence returned. Sora twiddled his thumbs, a pink haze appearing on his cheeks. Why had he even brought it up? So stupid… “It’s one of my most treasured memories,” she said suddenly, and Sora couldn’t help the way his mouth fell open. 

“What?” she laughed at his stupied expression. “You called me the most beautifulest girl that you’d ever met,” she smirked, and Sora had to hide his face in his hands to conceal the bright red shade that his face had turned. He peered through his fingers when he heard her moving, and she had stepped up to him, standing between his legs to gently rifle her fingers through his sleep-mussed hair. 

“Even though we don’t have crowns anymore… You’ve always been my king, Sora,” she murmured. In complete awe, Sora dropped his hands down onto his thighs and just stared at her with wide eyes. Hers flooded with tears and dripped down her cheeks, but she was smiling so jubilantly, so full of love, that he didn’t feel the need to wipe them away. “You said you would protect me… And you’ve kept that promise, all these years.” 

“Of course,” he said. “What kind of king would I be if I didn’t protect my queen?” She chuckled at that. He wrapped his arms around her middle, tugging her a little closer while she continued to play with his hair. He remembered then why he had said those things back then, the depths of his feelings for her. He looked up at her then, unable to stop himself from saying with all his heart, “I love you.” 

She stopped her ministrations in his hair, some of her fingers still tangled in the brown strands. It took her by surprise, he could tell from the way her eyes widened, and he worried for a second that maybe he had misconstrued her words. Then, her face softened, and she looked at him in pure and utter adoration. 

“I know. I love you too, Sora,” she said sweetly. Her hands slid out of his hair to cup his face, gently stroking his cheeks with her thumbs. “I always have.” Sora smiled at this, reaching up to cup her face, too. He then pulled her face down, at first to press their foreheads together— but when his eyes fell to her sweet pink lips, he knew it was over. 

He couldn’t stop himself from guiding her into a sweet, chaste kiss. Kairi hummed against his mouth, which made his head swim in the best way. Of course, neither of them lasted long before they burst into snickers, totally ruining the moment. 

“You were thinking about—” 

“Yeah, Riku kissing my butt!” Kairi howled with laughter. Sora hung his head, admittedly feeling a little disappointed even though it was so funny. 

“I really hope I’m not gonna think about Riku kissing your butt each time I try to kiss you,” he sighed. 

“Me too,” Riku suddenly spoke up from the entrance to the bathroom, making them spring apart. Of course, Sora only could fall backwards into the tub— and he nearly pulled the shower curtain down with him, leaving him groaning and wrapped up in the shower curtain in the tub. Kairi just sprang into the sink, banging her hip, and was now doubled over clutching the bruised bone. Riku just laughed, then continued, “Yeah, please don’t think about me while you’re kissing, that’s just weird.” 

“Wouldn’t be an issue if you hadn’t done somethin’ so weird,” Sora whined. His body ached a little from his tumble, so he was just going to lie there in that shower curtain, thank you very much. “Actually, I wish you hadn’t, now you’ve ruined the moment, thanks.” 

“You ruined it by thinking about it.” 

“Can we stop talking about us kissing, please?” Kairi pleaded from behind her hands, which she was using to hide her bright pink blush. Sora finally crawled out of the bathtub and disentangled himself from the shower curtain. He ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled before giving Kairi a wan smile. She was still shielding her face, bits of red peeking out from between the gaps in her fingers. She was so cute, being bashful like that— it made Sora smile. 

“Well, now that we’re up…” he started, pausing to yawn and stretch his arms above his head, “how about we go get some breakfast?” 

“Yeah, breakfast would be nice,” Kairi agreed in a small voice, finally pulling her hands down even though her face was nearly as pink as her nightgown. They all shuffled out of the bathroom to parade down to the kitchen, but while Riku shuffled off muttering about pancakes, Sora grabbed Kairi and pulled her to the side to smoosh his lips against hers. 

“Sora!” she giggled against his puckered lips. “What are you doing?” 

“Showing my queen the respect she deserves,” he grinned with raised eyebrows. She snorted with laughter, then buried her face bashfully into his chest. He just snuggled into her, his entire heart filling up with joy until he was ready to burst. Kairi was a queen, and he was her king, forever and always. He wouldn’t want it any other way.

Enjoy this oneshot? Feel free to peruse my Table of Contents!

#sokai #sokaiweek #sokaiweek2021 #sora x kairi #kairi x sora #kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts iii #kingdom hearts 3 #khiii #kh3

[meggie-stardust]

GUNDAM WING - REWATCH - 45 - 47

You guys get a triple episode this week! You’re welcome, bitches.

45. Signs of the Final Battle

There’s that space crew working again. I hope they support the position of White Fang...

Quatre: I no longer need the ZERO system; I’ve absorbed it

Howard: You guys gotta rest, it’s happy hour somewhere *flips on Margaritaville*

Does Treize think he can win in space? Yes. Yes he does, obviously 

Can a launch be “very successful” or just successful or unsuccessful 

Oh, hey, Hilde, Whats up?? I forgot about Noin!Lite

CANS is a bit wishy washy. Oh no, don’t blow up the earth. Oh, hey we need to blow up all the gundam. Only we can have a gundam. 

Those minidisks are back. Usually I forget this was made in the 90s.

Whey would my brother start a fight when they could just talk? Relena didn’t you read the tags: Friends to enemies to lovers, slow burn, 300K, major character death

All the “girlfriends” are having a secret meeting. 

Hilde is delivering plans about a weakness in a battleship... Interesting... 

This isn’t a kids game; are you sure CANS???

Wufei is like I’m just gonna jump in for Duo here, since he sucks at Chess

Duo: Hey, Heero you wanna play 5 person chess? This is how we do it on L2

The alarm goes off and they’re all doing cool Flying V formation like the mighty ducks. 

Wow we could have had this the WHOLE TIME if they just TALKED TO EACH OTHER??? We were robbed.

I have questions about the structural integrity of a mobile suit in space. Hilde isn’t waring a space suit, and her mobile suit is compromised… Wearing a helmet seems to be an aesthetic decision only.

Can we talk about the glint in Deathscythe’s eyes? Because it’s so badass.

Duo can tell that it’s Trowa and Heero just by how they pilot… interesting… (Is my 1x2x3 shipper showing??)

It’s canon: Duo is better than Heero and Trowa combined. 

Don’t get me wrong, I like Hilde, but if the show had balls they would have killed her Rogue One style

The pilots new flight suits are A+ 

46. Milliardo’s Decision

$10 Milliardo’s decision is to put his helmet back on and become Space!Zechs

OOOH Tallgeese II has entered the battle

Treize: I built a Gundam before, but I just want to pilot the same mobile suit as my boyfriend so I also build the Tallgeese II

Oh hey, Wing keeps showing up... I wonder what’s gonna become of it this time....?

I don’t even know what what’s happening here with them all hanging out, but I am here for it. 

Trowa: be nice to women; Wufei’s flexy arm thing breaks

Duo about Heero: he makes mistakes just like the rest of us; the rest of the pilots are all silent not because they disagree, but because they are thinking of all the fucked up shit they’ve seen Heero do in the past. 

To quote Brand New/Taking Back Sunday, Heero is as subtle as a brink in the small of my back

Heero’s a little short of a storm trooper...

Either Relena is just super excited to see Heero or they are slowly reducing the oxygen in her holding cell

Hilde brought them the data, and then Heero doesn’t even leave it with the other pilots, he literally brings it back to LIBRA??? WHERE IT CAME FROM

The closed caption just said [mysterious charm] AMAZING

Zechs: Guys I have a really cool idea, but I need your help to move my desk to the observation deck for ~the aesthetic~

IDk what look Heero is going for when he’s sneaking on the libra, but it’s not half bad, and it comes with a neckerchief 

What is this amazing pose of Tallgeese II standing on the shuttle. AMAZING. Treize is such a BOSS 

Wait. Zechs was a hologram the whole time?! That’s so extra, I love it.

How are all these people magically connected. How does Une immediately wake up when Treize is about to do something crazy

Did Une just take Wing?! I have no memory of this

Zechs: CANS restrain Dorothy; CANS:  FINALLY my moment has come!

Wow I have no memory of this

Wing Gundam pushing Treize out of the way and Dorothy losing her mind

OMG IT WAS Lady Une the whole time?!

Way more badass than any of us gave her credit for. Going from being in a coma, to launching a Gundam into space, to taking the brunt of a beam canon. Lady Une is the MVP of this episode.

47. Collision in Space

Heero: I’m just gonna have a little nap right now, and then when Treize fails, I’ll go ahead and blow up the Libra

Howard: Which side should we root for guys? Whats the over under on White Fang? 

Sally: OK, we’re gonna side with Treize, ok guys? Hope you agree because this is gonna get crazy.

CANS: Why do the Gundams hate us even tho I just gave the orders to destroy them last episode?? 

Well, last episode Duo was the superior pilot. This time, not so much... 

Treize: I would thank the Gundams, but I think my silence is better, they’ll totally get what I’m going for 

Dorothy: Wait, you can’t move the libra? I have to view of the battle #priorities

Peacemillion is just the right side to fly in and destroy Libra. How convienent.

Noin folds like a lawn chair, but so does Zechs

CANS IS SUCH A BITCH

Peacemillon’s plowing into us… it’s the only thing that’s gonna plow into you

CANS: How could this happen?! 

Treize is so proud of the ships

God Relena, do we have to spell everything out for you about what’s happening right this second

Heero: I need Wing Zero. Good thing it just crashed into this ship

Trowa about Wufei fucking off: He’s fulfilling an old promise. That means Wufei and Trowa did talk when they bro’d downed at the circus

Treize: that pilot has to be that kid… play it cool. Don’t him know you remember his name.

Heero said butt

This is what I’m here for; Duo infiltrating everything. 

Trowa is the best. Just do a double spin out of the way and a bow. Ta da!

DorothyxQuatre duel. This is the only Quatre ship I’m here for. 

I was just wondering what happened to the scientists.

We built an error into the canon… interesting, where did you get that idea

Duo looks so badass threatening the scientists. More of this please. 

Epyon standing there like a Gargoyle 

Crushing blow??? GET IT???? GUys do you know what he’s gonna do next?????

Thoughts:

I am glad that @mpanighetti and I decided to do these 3 episodes as a group, and then finish out the series with the last two episodes together. 

I had very little memories of some of the details here, and I get why... honestly, these are weird kinda filler episodes. When a series is only 49 episodes, we don’t get a lot of time for nothing to happen, but the writing is getting looser at the end of the series, and if this arc had happened in the first 1/2 all of this would have probably happened in 1 episode, and instead we get 3. 

There are a lot of badass moments here: Duo, Une, Treize.... but the rest of the episodes feel a little flat... 

What I think I remember for the next episode(s):

I have so many memories of the penultimate episode (which i will make a whole post about separately) but we get an epic battle between Treize and Wufei, and I honestly forget how things fully wrap up during the last episode, so I am so excited that we’ve made it to the end. I can’t wait to write up my final thoughts and then rewatch Endless Waltz.  

#gundam wing rewatch 2020 #gundam wing #gundam memes #thisweekingundamwing #Signs of the Final Battle #Milliardo’s Decision #Collision in Space

[2jam4u]

I remember a time when someone asked you why you had so many followers. You said you weren't exactly sure why. Maybe it was your looks, personality, etc. For me, I follow you because of your mind. I am intrigued by the way you think. I find you fascinating. Please forgive me for bringing up religion but you recently posted that you transitioned from a "sister Christian" to atheist. 1st question is what is a sister Christian? Is that a holier rank of Christianity (I'm unfamiliar sorry for my ignorance lol) 2nd what made you go to the opposite spectrum? Was it the lack of acceptance from Christians towards the LBGTQIA & minority communities? 3rd You mentioned that being an atheist felt blasphemous. Does this mean that you still in some way feel Gods existence? I'm just curious. 4th what would be your response to George should she decide to believe in a different faith (I think I know this answer) and lastly is everyone in your family also atheist?

woof ok lemme put this in a read more because it'll be long.

I don't mind talking about religion at all! Ask me anything I'm down to talk :) Sister Christian is just a term me and a lot of my ex-fundamentalist friends use haha it just means like y'know a super saved, love the church, buy into the god sanctioned misogyny, live for the gender role kinda stuff.

I think I got out for two reasons, one the racism in the church I was a part of just always made me feel like an outsider. I never fully felt accepted and it made the foundation of my faith feel kinda inauthentic if that makes sense. And second when I was raped in university my whole world changed. I became really reckless with drinking and partying. I felt dirty and disgusting. I convinced myself that I intentionally had sex outside of marriage and was the most disgusting sinner so why not just go whole hog. I started dating a non-christian and having sex and just... living a secular life. I tried to keep one foot in my faith but it wasn't sustainable. I was living with my christian friends at the time and they were so horrified by my behaviour it was super awkward and a slow exit out of that life.

As for the blasphemy thing lmao I dunno when you're raised in the church you have this built in alarm that goes off when you do something even sin-adjacent. Kinda like catholic guilt. When you're taught from a young age that you're worthless and only have purpose through Christ and anything that you do that isn't glorifying him is literally condemning you to an eternal life of burning and torture... it's hard to just turn that off even once you don't believe in it anymore. I've been conditioned to not blaspheme, to not take the lord's name in vain (i literally only just started swearing by saying jesus christ or goddamn last year lmao and it was HARD). Even now sometimes when I'm scared I pray a little bit. I don't believe at all but it's hard to cut out that natural reaction.

If George ever wants to have any sort of faith I'll encourage her. I think the only way I'd influence it is to talk to her about my experiences and be upfront about how you're kinda fear based brainwashed into doing and believing a lot of things. I want to be honest with her without keeping her from things that bring her joy. It'll be a lot of interesting conversations if she goes that direction.

And about my family, it's kinda complicated. My mother and her sister married cousins. Those two marriages produced 2 kids each and we were all very close. My parents were atheists, but my aunt and uncle were hardcore super christians. We spent almost all our free time with them, attended church and went to church camps several times a year (youth groups, youth camps and family camps). So we were half raised in it, half not. The rest of our family is mostly non-believers. Some older black family members are Christian but definitely not as hardcore as my aunt and uncle. It's a weird divide but yeah.

Hope I explained well enough!

#pls excuse any typos I'm physically incapable of reading over my work so I've stopped trying lmao #personal shit

[msmarvelwrites]

The Winter Ghost - Chapter 17

Info: A Devastating car crash causes you to lose your memory and start over. The only thing left in the wreckage was the horrific nightmares which plagued your mind. If you knew what today would entail you would have just stayed in bed. But you didn’t and because of that, everything you knew was about to change.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

Warnings: swearing, fluff, foreshadowing smut?

W/c: 2.3k

A/n: I know I know, it’s been quite a few nights since I last posted since I usually try to every few days... This week has been a whole long seven days. And honestly I needed to charge my battery and take a break from writing for a minute. Anyyways, thats boring, and this is not. Were almost done here, and I’m so excited to move onto some imagine’s I’ve been brainstorming! Hope you enjoy! 

Bucky’s breath fanned across your collarbone, drifting in and out of slumber. How he could even attempt sleeping after the day's events was, quite frankly, astonishing. But you didn't dare wake him, afraid you wouldn't get a chance to be this close to him again. 

It was easy enough to conclude how you felt about the past few days as confusion. Specifically speaking, you knew it went deeper than that. Your memories had kicked you in the teeth, reeling from the guilt and grief that Tommy was dead and it was all your fault. Yet in the matter of hours, you had fed him to Hydra. You knew exactly what they would do to him when they found out you had escaped. You also knew that when the team circled back to dispose of the Hydra base, or what of it was left, Tommy would be gone. For good this time. 

Bucky’s body shifted, leaning in closer to you. Your heart raced as a small sigh erupted from his chest, vibrating through you. 

And then there was that. You weren't sure when that feeling of butterflies had come back when Bucky looked at you, but nevertheless it had. Part of you thought you should be sorrowful after your ‘almost’ fiance ‘almost’ shot you. Maybe take a day for bereavement, and yet, the idea of pressing pause on Bucky, after all this time, felt impossible. More to the point, you were tired of fighting between what you thought was morally right about how your heart beated ten times faster when he was around.  

“Do you hate me?” He hesitated under his breath. The rest of the team had all taken their seats at the front of the aircraft. Even still, he spoke as though he was afraid they would hear your confession. 

Your eyes met his, looking for some sort of punchline, but none came. Silence hung heavy around his question, and you swallowed deeply. 

Did you hate him? There was a time not so long ago that you would have been an easy question to answer. He hadn't stolen the life you thought he had. No, Tommy did that all on his own.  He betrayed everything you had built together. He wasn't the man you thought you knew. Bucky, on the other hand, always had been. You knew about his past. He had spent countless nights wrapped in his arms dredging but old and broken memories about his time with Hydra. The only thing you knew for sure was he made you feel like you belonged in a world that you thought had written you off years ago.

 Maybe, if you hated anyone, it was yourself. How long had Tommy been lying to you?  How could you not have seen it? How many nights had you spent in your bed, giving yourself to him, trusting him, believing him? 

“Thats a loaded question.” He murmured before you could answer. “I just mean, I miss this… Miss, you.” 

You worried on your bottom lip, watching as he huffed out a breath and accepting your silence for an obvious answer. Before he could pull away from you, you took his hands in yours, starling him from the sudden warmth. 

“I- I don’t think I ever hated you.” You offered honestly. 

Bucky pursed his lips and looked you over quizzically. “Could’ve fooled me.” He chuckled, leaning back into you as his breath steadied again. 

“I know I never really got the chance to- uh, apologise...” You tried the word on your tongue, but it tasted bitter. How do you ask for someone's forgiveness after attempting to murder them? “I don't really know what to say…” You mumbled, feeling the walls you built around yourself behind to crumble. 

“That’s cause’ there's nothing to say. Listen doll, of all people you don't need to apologise to me for homicidal tendencies. I get it.” He teased. You appreciated his light hearted approach, but his words send a lump to appear in your throat. Was that what it boiled down to? After a long day of dark thoughts and murderous rampages, Bucky would be there to understand. You weren't sure if the sentiment was romantic or the plot to a Tim Burton film. 

“And besides, I kinda’ deserved the ass kicking.” He signed, smiling into your shoulder. 

“You kind of did.” You chuckled. 

Huh…?

Were you making light hearted joking about attempted murder? Is this who you were now? Honestly, it wasn't the worst thing you’d done. Besides, there was something so comforting about the way he accepted you. Flaws (and boy oh boy were they flaws) and all. 

“Okay. So I'm not sorry for putting you on your ass.” You specified. “But I am sorry. For what I said after. I don’t know where that came from. I don't really think those things about you. You’ve never given me a reason to before.” Bucky huffed, and you could physically feel him stiffen. 

“I lost control, Y/n. I gave you a perfectly good reason...” He noted. You didn't have the heart to tell him that ever since that fateful day in the hallway all you could think about was the aching in your core and how perfect his death machine of a hand fit around your throat. 

“It doesn't matter…” You spoke, running your fingers over his flesh ones, until they locked into his. “I’m fine. You're fine- ish, right?” You chuckled, motioning to his chest now dried with blood, “I don't blame you.”

He squeezed your hand and signed into your shoulder. Everything about this moment was perfect. The impending doom you had left behind was just that. It felt long gone as you stared into Bucky’s arctic eyes and breathed in his scent. Comforting, familiar, and something you weren't ready to comprehend. It sent shivers down your spine and made your legs clench together at the thought. But now, sitting in the back of the quinjet avoiding the loud stares of Wanda scrutinizing your every move was not the time. There was no doubt she was reading your loud heated thoughts, and so desperately, you tried to quiet your want. 

……………………………

When you landed, medical was at the ready, helping Bucky out of the aircraft and into the compound. Shuri tried to force you apart from the injured man long enough to convince you to go for a check up also. 

‘I feel fine. I’m fine’ you tried to argue, but it was no use. Her mind was made up and you were smart enough to know when that happens, there's very little one can do to change it. 

You sat in the small lab, letting Shuri pry and pron at you, asking question after question but your mind was distant. Distracted. There was only one person you wanted to be with, and right now he was down the hall, having bullets plucked from his body. 

The overwhelming need to be near him was sudden, but not unwelcome. Try as you may to push it away, it krept back in, startling you every time. You could play dumb all you wanted, but now that he was not next to you, youre only mission consisted with getting him back. Were you confused? 

Yes. 

Did you understand what you were feeling? 

Not entirely. 

How did Bucky make you feel?

Brave… Loved… Horny? All of the above. 

Yes, yes and yes. There was no denying it. As much as you wished it was more complicated. Your entire core was drawn to him like a magnet and your brain was just along for the ride. Heart stuttering and mind foggy. 

Shuri gives you a once over and taps on your shoulder, yanking you from your thoughts. “You okay?” 

The question was simple. And yet, the words wouldn't come. 

You cleared your throat, physically shaking your head and clearing your racing thoughts, “Yes. I’m okay. Do you think I can go?” 

Shuri smiles knowingly, a chuckle bubbling out of her small chest. “He’s fine, ya’ know. Doctors said they extracted the bullets easily. He’s probably all healed up already-”

Her words were cut off by your impatient foot, bobbing anxiously for the answer to your question. 

“Yes. fine you can go.” 

You practically jumped off the lab table, swinging the door open and shouting a thank you over your shoulder on the way out. 

When you entered Bucky’s medical room, it was quiet. Turning the corner you could see he was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring out the large floor length window that looked out to the rolling mountain of Wakanda.

You tried to step lightly, not wanting to alarm him.

“Can't sneak up on a trained assassin.” 

You jumped, clutching your heart at his sudden voice. He chucked, watching your panicked face melt into a smile. 

“Guess not. How ya’ feeling killer?” You smirked, taking a seat on the windowsill across from him. 

Bucky squinted, looking at you skeptically, “I don't know if you're tryin’ to be funny or-” 

“I'm not. That was a stupid joke….” You scoffed as you bathed in the awkward silence that followed. 

There were so many things you wanted to say. So many you wanted to do, and yet your body was frozen, staring at the floor unable to meet his intense gaze. You could literally hear your heart beating in your chest and your face growing warmer by the second. 

“So.” you finally choked out, forcing yourself with all your might to look up. His eyes were soft and full of reassurance. Something you so desperately needed at the moment. Maybe the old Y/n could convey her emotions, but the real one was a total disaster when it came to this sort of thing. 

But that's what you were doing wasn't it? This is what it had all led up to. The kiss, the midnight conversations, the unyielding sexual tension. This was it. 

“So…” He repeated your words, coxing your next ones. 

You chuckled dryly, clearing your throat and starting again, “So, about what happened back there.” 

“When I got shot or when we kissed?”

“Both I guess?” 

“You guess?” He quipped, amusement dripping from his mouth. He was loving this. Watching you fumble over your thoughts. Of course he did. Smug bastard. 

“Listen, I’m not good at this stuff. Obviously. So could you just tell me how it is. Was that some heat of the moment thing? Like before. Because if it was you just gotta’ tell me.”  You finished in a huff. 

Bucky signed, running his flesh hand through his hair. “It wasn't.” He finally spoke, “not then and not now. I was such an ass, pushing you away like that. I just didn't- I guess I still don't think I deserve something like you… Touching me like that.” 

You soaked in his words. Watching his lips intently as his tongue darted out and wetted the bottom one. In a breath, you crossed the room and took the open space beside him as an invitation to sit down. 

“Will you please let me decide what I deserve from now on?” You smirked, looking up  at him from behind your lashes. 

“Yeah, I think that's best.” he chuckled, leaning into you. 

“How’re you feeling?” You mumbled, listening to his breathing steady as he signed into the comfortable position you were both in now. 

“Better. Thanks for that by the way. Wanda’s never used her power on me like that. It really helped.” He spoke, softly, as you waved him off, motioning ‘it was nothing’. 

It felt like the first time in a long time you had spoken to Bucky without the nagging desire to murder him. 

Maybe this is what people talk about when they say you should ‘grow’ with your partner. You're sure that they weren't referring to homicidal rage… But still. 

You looked up to Bucky, watching as he softly bit down on his lip. Without warning or much thought for that matter, you swung your leg around, purchasing yourself on his lap. You would like to believe it was with agile and ease, but the motion sent Bucky back against the bed while you fell against him, straddling his hips.

“What was-” You shushed him with your palm over his mouth, coaxing a deep moan from the back of his throat. It sent a shiver down to your core, but that was a problem for a later time. 

“I want to try something.” You breathed, pulling your hand from his lips and swifting replacing it with yours.

He reacted instantly, his hands settling on your hips as yours pulled at his hair. You melted into his touch as his tongue softly traced the bottom of your lip, deepening the kiss. You could feel his pants tightening around him as he ground his thick member against your core. He was unrelenting as you gasped for hair, pulling away and resting your forehead on his. Had it not been for the room being made entirely of glass you were sure you would have lost your pants. Honestly, you were still considering it. 

“I just wanted to know what that felt like without my life being at risk.” You spoke over heavy breaths. 

Bucky chuckled, his swollen lips turning up into a smile. “And?”

“Eh.” You shrugged, causing Bucky to gasp and he flipped your over, gaining the upper hand. His icy blue eyes, now blown with lust. You're breath caught in your throat by the new intimate position, flexing your thighs shut hard and suppressing a moan. 

“D-did you get the ‘ok’ to leave?” You stuttered, feeling your body tremble under the radiating heat of his. He nodded his head, a few loose strands of deep auburn hair falling from his bun and onto your cheek. 

You bit down on your lip, watching his chest rise and fall above you, feeling the electricity that emanate around the room. The idea that this could very well be a huge mistake crossed your mind and maybe if you were stronger you would have listened. Maybe you just didn't care anymore. Or maybe, it was possible this was exactly where you needed to be. Where you belonged. And so, without hesitation, you slid yourself out of Bucky’s grasp and pulled him down the hallway towards his room.

.......................................................................

A/N: As always, thank you to @cutie1365​ for just being you! Thank you for all your help with this my friend! Were almost done! Like and reblog if you enjoyed! See ya soon! 

@projectcampbell​

@calwitch​

@kalesrebellion​

#msmarvelwrites #marvel #marvel fanfiction #marvel fanfic idea #marvel smut #marvelfanfic #bucky x y/n #bucky x reader #bucky barns imagine #bucky barns x reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes smut #bucky barnes reader insert #bucky barns fanfiction #bucky fanfic #bucky angst #bucky barnes x reader smut #bucky barnes reader #marvel civil war #winter soldier x y/n #winter solider fanfiction #the winter solider imagine #the winter solider x reader #thewinterghost

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: West Coast Avengers #2: “BLANKING OUT!”

October, 1984

"Up Against the BLANK!”

Beware his crosshatching!

So the formation of the West Coast Avengers continues! I guess! It looks like Tigra, Wonder Man, and Iron Man stuck around at least long enough to be on this cover.

We’ll see if the prospect of being on a team led by Hawkeye manages to win them over.

So last time on West Coast Avengers: Hawkeye was sent by the Vision to create an All-New All-Different Avengers team on the West Coast. A kind of West Coast Avengers. Like the Avengers but in LA.

Vision sent out invites to Wonder Man, Tigra, and Rhodey Iron Man but didn’t tell them what they were being invited for. Leading to not only some hesitance to commit once they learned what was what but also Tigra’s friend the Shroud following her to the LA Avengers Compound because the vague invite worried Tigra’s other friend Jessica Drew. Phew.

The Shroud puts up such a great fight when the hypothetical West Coast Avengers attack him (assuming that some dude breaking in is up to something) that Hawkeye offers him the open spot on the team but Shroud turns it down.

By this point in the East Coast Avengers’ history, depending on where you count it starting, they either got punked by Loki or by a Space Phantom. So, the West Coast Avengers aren’t actually doing so bad, even though they’re not technically officially a team yet.

Its all a matter of perspective.

Huh. We’re like ten years too early for Iron Man to be trying to kill everyone.

To kinda spoil the game early, this is a training exercise.

Hawkeye is attempting to prove a point that Captain America told him “with the proper teamwork, even the strongest opponent can be beaten!”

It gets back to the Avengers’ whole Earth’s mightiest heroes banding together to fight the foes no single hero can overcome thing. It’s a sales pitch for why these reluctant West Coasts should Avenger.

And even given that Iron Man far outmuscles Hawkeye, Mockingbird, and Tigra, teamwork and skill does prove capable of bringing him down. Kinda.

Hawkeye uses some smokescreen arrows to try to cloud Iron Man’s vision but he has infrared lenses. He tries to tackle Tigra but she outmaneuvers him and jumps on his back. Distracting him so Mockingbird can bonk him in the head with her staves and Hawkeye can gum up Iron Man’s boot jets.

Its good teamwork but while Hawkeye is explaining that it’s good teamwork, Iron Man repulsors the ground and knocks the other three on their asses to demonstrate another important lesson.

Iron Man: “Never count your enemy out, until you’re sure he’s really out!”

Although. This WAS a training exercise.

While you raise a good point, Rhodey, surely you didn’t want them to break your armor or knock you out for a training exercise?

Anyway, after the exercise is over, Hawkeye tells Iron Man (James Rhodes) that it reminds him of when they used to go at it (back when Hawkeye was an accidental villain) and Rhodey Iron Man just awkwardly says that he’s glad they’re buds now. Because THIS IS EXACTLY WHY HE QUIT THE AVENGERS IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Having to awkwardly tip toe around not being the original guy!

But on the other hand, he liked working with the Avengers in Secret Wars, which made him reconsider the team thing. While he doesn’t want to lean on someone else’s reputation, he also doesn’t want to be treated like an amateur. So awkward it is.

Hawkeye tells Iron Man maybe don’t knock him on his ass so hard next time.

I do love Clint and Bobbi’s relationship. They’re delightful.

While Rhodey is rethinking his reluctance to Avenge, Tigra isn’t. This training exercise about how weaker heroes can team up to bring down a stronger opponent is not landing.

Tigra: I’ll bet Iron Man could have blown us away whenever he felt like it... He was probably just toying with us during the whole workout! I’m not anywhere near being in his league... Why did I let Hawkeye talk me into joining his new Avengers team?

There’s always one person on the Avengers whose whole thing is insecurity and the West Coast Avengers is practically full of them. Hawkeye, Wonder Man, Tigra have all served that role in the past. Mockingbird is worrying that she doesn’t belong.

I’d rather Tigra stuck with the insecurity rather than what she gets when West Coast Avengers gets an ongoing...

Anyway, over at Simon Williams, Wonder Stuntman’s house, he’s packing up his house to move to Avengers compound.

Since the house was prefab and pretty shoddily built, the whole wall swings up like a garage door so Simon can just pull all his possessions out and put them in a big crate.

Simon’s good stuntman pal Freddy asks if Simon is really going to go back to the superhero life.

Wonder Man: “Freddy, for good or bad, Wonder Man is what I am! It’s taken me awhile to become comfortable with that. But I finally have. And you know, I think being a stuntman these last few months helped! Doing stunt work day after day has really given me a sense of my own worth. You and the rest of the stunt crews helped me find a new life... I owe you a lot! But I also owe the Avengers! When Hawkeye offered me an active role in the Avengers new west coast expansion team, I surprised myself by signing on. I guess what I’m saying is that the Avengers is part of my life, too. And I found myself missing it more than I’d expected!”

Good for you, you waffling man. But you’d better be careful you don’t end up in a Hank Pym spiral where you bounce between your superhero and civilian lives and don’t find satisfaction in half assing either. Find yourself a good work life balance.

Anyway, Simon doesn’t plan to quit the stunt work. He’s going to try to juggle it and the Avengers.

Now that I’m not sure he’ll manage. Movies and super-heroics both have demanding schedules without set hours.

Simon and Freddy take a break to go buy more nails at the hardware store for Simon to hammer in with his bare hands. But on their way, they hear an alarm at the bank.

Crosshatch man from the cover is robbing the bank, just casually strolling out with a bag of money while bullets bounce off of him.

The Blank: “I have a gun too! And it doesn’t shoot blanks! Hah-haha-ha!!”

I’ve long held that the unspoken rule in comics book is that one of the first things someone shouts about you becomes your name.

Just ask poor Ben Grimm, the Thing.

So when a random person shouts that the bank robber is blank, the robber is like ‘huh, that’s catchy!’

Anyway, the robber confidently strolls out of the bank and right into Simon Wonder Man Williams.

The Blank shoots his gun at Simon and to his dismay finds out that he’s not the only one who bullets bounce off of.

Then Simon punches the guy twenty feet back INTO the bank.

The Blank woozily proclaims that Wonder Man can’t stop the Blank so Wonder Man just kinda picks him up and tucks him under arm. Although the Blank does manage to pistol whip the sunglasses right off of Simon’s face.

Doesn’t hurt him but it does freak everyone in the bank out.

Dunno if you remember but due to being reborn as an energy being, Simon’s eyes are red and full of kirby krackle. He can turn it off if he concentrates but he prefers to wear the glasses.

And while Simon is telling the people in the bank that there’s no need to panic on his account, the Blank slips right out of his grip and jumps through the window.

When Simon comes out to the street, he finds that the Blank has somehow managed to disappear into the crowd, despite being a screentone man.

Probably because the Blank just turned the effect off and pretended to be a Perfectly Normal Man on the Street.

Sneaky.

The guy returns to his apartment and yuks it up at the news report about him making a clean getaway, police baffled.

The Blank: “After a lifetime of bad breaks, Lady Luck has finally smiled on me! Hah-ha! And to think I owe it to lousy bus service...”

So this origin is a lot. And its amazing.

In the Blank’s flashback, he’s waiting at the bus stop for a late bus when an ex-employee of Stark International who quit when Stane took over the company shows up and starts complaining about the bus service. And then smoothly shifts to complaining about his old job.

Very annoyed scientist: “If it’s not one thing it’s another! But it’s no wonder the world’s in the shape it’s in... Not with the quality of management today! They’re idiots... all idiots!”

He tells this random guy he doesn’t know that when he quit, he took his newest invention with him.

Very annoyed scientist: “I put too much work into my brainchild to let that leech Stane get it! I’m going into business for myself!”

And then, as he’s boasting that he’ll be rich enough to buy and sell Stane in a year, the very annoyed scientist walks into the street without looking and gets hit by a car.

The very annoyed scientist’s briefcase lands right at the pre-Blank’s feet who definitely doesn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. So he took it home and after a few months figured out how to operate the invention: a slippery force-field.

Back in the present, he charges the force field belt up and then heads off after a big score. Not noticing a man shaped cloud of energy coming out of the charger pleading for more energy.

Huh.

Weird.

Over at Avengers Compound, the West Coast Avengers are assembled. Hawkeye has gotten the go-ahead of the LAPD to take this Blank case but Wonder Man insists that the Avengers can find him but he’s going to make the collar.

Yup, Simon has gotten a bug in his collar about letting the guy get away.

Wonder Man: “I had him in my hands, and he slipped right through them! What good am I to the Avengers if I can’t handle one gimmicky bank robber by myself?”

Hawkeye: “No good at all, if you worry more about personal performance than you do about how you work as part of this team! What do you want to do, search all of Greater L.A. on your own? That’s crazy!”

Geez, Wonder Man. That’s how gimmick criminals are supposed to work. Its not a gimmick if you beat it in the first encounter. The gimmick trips you up at the beginning of the story so you look like a smarty for figuring it out for the resolution.

The other Avengers chime in a plan divide the city into sections and each search that section. And whoever finds him will call the others.

Wonder Man admits that the plan makes a lot of sense and storms off in a fit of ‘WHAT A REASONABLE SUGGESTION, GOODNIGHT.’

Mockingbird: “Well, hotshot, you just weathered your first leadership crisis. Why the thoughtful look?”

Hawkeye: “I was just remembering how I used to be the one who always blew his stack. Honey, all of a sudden I feel old... real old!”

Hah!

You’ve wanted this for years Hawkeye. AND you’ve built up a lot of lets say debt with the universe by being a jerk about it at times.

Although, Wonder Man isn’t really a great Hawkeye. He’s pretty mellow most of the time. Of the people I expected to get a random obsession with a not very dangerous criminal, it wasn’t Wonder Man.

He has always had a streak of insecurity (which is the secret ingredient when making a Hawkeye) and not being able to stop this guy right when he was feeling good and ready to superhero again. A real situational case.

But Tigra is the one feeling the insecurity the hardest so I’m afraid you’ll need another character beat, Simon. Hothead is available.

So the West Coast Avengers split up and patrol different parts of the urban sprawl. Tigra lurks the rooftops of Chinatown, Iron Man scans the area around the Santa Monica Mountains, Hawkeye flies above the high-rises of Marina Del Rey on his skycycle, Mockingbird cruises L.A.’s freeways in her custom pink convertible, Wonder Man hangs out on the L.A. City Hall in the downtown searching by binoculars, and I learn what the different bits of L.A. are.

Productive night for everyone.

But over in Inglewood, the Blank prepares for his Big Job.

He’s going to heist a Wells Fargo armored car.

Wait, would an armored car be a bigger heist than robbing an actual bank??

And if you somehow got the idea that the Blank is a criminal mastermind, he’s not. The armored car guards spot him coming and just decide to take off when a screentoned man starts running at them.

The Blank shoots one of the guards so he doesn’t manage to lock the rear of the money car but the other guard is locked up tight in the front and refuses to stop even when the Blank is threatening to kill his partner.

Wow. Guess other people’s money is more important to the guy than his co-worker’s life.

Since the guy tells the Blank that he’s driving the armored car right to the nearest police station, the Blank just grabs as much money as he can carry. Then he jumps out the back and slides to a stop on his belly like a penguin.

What a useful force field.

But the Blank’s bad night gets worse because then Mockingbird, Hawkeye, and Iron Man all show up, alerted by the police report.

The Blank at least has a realistic view of his capabilities. In that he’s not the guy that thinks a simple gimmick will let him start taking over the world. He just wants to rob a few banks and armored cars. And he does not want to fight the Avengers!

Especially not Iron Man!

Iron Man’s armor has all kinds of stuff in it and he might figure out a way through the force field!

So the guy decides to tackle some gas pumps.

Which naturally causes an enormous fire.

Not a bad plan, really. The explosion will launch the Blank from the scene with the force field keeping him safe and the heroes will stop to save lives as heroes tend to do.

While Hawkeye and Mockingbird help the gas station employees away from the fire, Iron man picks up a dump truck full of sand and puts out the fire.

Wonder Man and Tigra arrive as he’s doing that and Hawkeye has to tell Simon that the Blank got away or exploded.

Simon actually takes it pretty chill, just betting that no way a tough customer like the Blank died in the explosion.

And he’s right. Although the guy isn’t really a tough customer.

Actually, he’s planning on skipping town.

Avengers heat is too much heat for him. Plus, yeah, the force field protected him from the explosion but he was blown three blocks away and the impact of landing knocked him silly for five minutes and he was terrified he’d be caught anyway. Plus, he lost all that sweet Wells Fargo money.

So he’s going to take the bank robbery money from the morning and move somewhere with fewer superheroes.

He’s just gonna charge the force field for the road and- whoa dang a whole ass man popped out of thin air.

And its Graviton??

What were you doing in thin air, Graviton?

The Blank assumes this guy - wearing a costume and a cape - why he’s gotta be a superhero! And he immediately surrenders! He’ll return the money, turn over the force field device, go to jail, just don’t make him deal with those Avengers again!

Graviton is like hey buddy, I’m not with the Avengers and if you’re skipping town because of them, don’t bother. “Help me, and you’ll never have to worry about Avengers again!”

Ruh roh.

Now Graviton is, historically, kind of a dingus considering he’s a mad scientist, but he is powerful enough that he soloed a pretty powerful Avengers roster which had Iron Man, Thor, Wonder Man, and Vision.

The West Coast Avengers has Iron Man and Wonder Man but also has the more street level Hawkeye, Mockingbird, and Tigra. They don’t have the do-anything bullshit of Scarlet Witch or Vision’s robot brain or Cap’s strategy. Or whatever esoteric power the wild card Avenger of the era has like Captain Marvel’s command of the electromagnetic spectrum, Starfox’s PLEASURE POWERS or Moondragon’s psychic powers.

If Graviton decides to set up in L.A., then the newly formed West Coast Avengers could be in big trouble.

Maybe even two issues worth of trouble!

... What? This is a miniseries! There’s only so much he’s going to be able to do in the time left!

Follow @essential-avengers​ because you want to see what happens next, probably? Also, like and reblog because you want to?

#Avengers #West Coast Avengers #the Blank #Hawkeye #Mockingbird #Tigra #Iron Man #James Rhodes #Wonder Man #essential avengers #essential marvel liveblogging #the Blank is kind of cool as a low power low ambition kind of villain honestly

[ask-them-bois]

A King and His Soldier, part 2/3

(Okay, well. Zeruki appeared ahead of schedule. Let’s figure out how the hell that happened.)

-AgressiveUndead began trolling GlitchingVampire!-

AU: Blxlit.

GV: AlMMawt.

AU: …

GV: … lMMao hi.

AU: Hello.

GV: What do you want?

AU: I need you to find someone for me. Ribbit.

GV: Oh yeah? Who? And also, why should I care?

AU: Xre you fxmilixr with x boy nxmed Ursidx?

GV: I think so? It sounds faMMiliar.

GV: oh.

GV: wait…

GV: ….

GV: Yeah I know that naMMe.

AU: I thought xs much. How do you know him?

GV: … I knew hiMM from the CoMMpound. He was the engineer MMy… designs… got sent to. He was, like, MMy assigned partner.

AU: I need you to find him. Ribbit.

GV: Why.

AU: Becxuse I need his xncestor on my side, before Mxddel cxn get him. Becxuse I know who his xncestor worked for, xnd I’d much rxther hxve them both on my side. It’d mxke this whole thing x lot exsier. Ribbit.

GV: I have no idea what you’re talking about dude, lMMao. But the answer is no. I’MM not gonna go find someone froMM the coMMpound. I blew up those bridges a long tiMMe ago.

AU: …

AU: I understxnd thxt, but I xsk you to reconsider. I wouldn’t xsk xt xll if it wxsn’t importxnt, Blxlit. Ribbit.

GV: What’s in it for MMe?

AU: Wow, rexlly?

GV: You realize what you’re asking MMe, right? You want MMe to go find soMMeone froMM a place where I was literally IMMPRISONED and ENSLAVED. A place I BLEW UP. What if he turns MMe in? I’MM a wanted robot, MMusrio. I can’t just get in contact with the Fleet like it’s no big deal. So if I’MM gonna do that, I want soMMething in return.

AU: …

AU: Blxlit, under thxt childish, prxnkster personx of yours, you’re quite… xstute, xren’t you? Ribbit.

GV: Bitch I built war machines. I MMake robots and eXXplosives. I’MM hella sMMarter than you take MMe for. I’MM hella ass-toot.

AU: Xstute.

GV: Ass-toot.

AU: There’s thxt childishness I wxs spexking of. Ribbit.

GV: lMMao

AU: Fine. Whxt do you wxnt, then?

GV: ... I don’t wanna say yet.

AU: Why?

GV: Because I’MM not ready for you to pay off the favor so fast. Having a zombie wizard at my beck and call? Who the hell would pass that up?

AU: I’m xn undexd necromxncer. Ribbit.

GV: Ass-toot.

AU: Ugh. Fine.

GV: Good.

GV: I’ll find your guy, AlMMawt. But you’re gonna owe me big for this.

-GlitchingVampire ceased trolling AggressiveUndead!- -GlitchingVampire began trolling SoldieringSkybear!-

GV: Hey you.

GV: Are you still alive?

GV: Been a while, huh.

GV: If you’re still in the city, MMeet me on a rooftop, okay? We need to talk.

-GlitchingVampire ceased trolling SoldieringSkybear!-

Corden closed down Trollian and spun around in his chair. Once, twice, and he jumped up, catching the chair before it knocked into the desk.

“Batmom, I’m gonna go out for a bit. You wanna come?” He spoke to a large meow-beast tower that stood next to the desk. After a moment, a very small bat poked her head out, golden eyes blinking sleepily.

She squeaked, and with a flutter of four wings, lighted on his shoulder.

“Cool.” Corden made sure to pocket his knives and a handful of gadgets, before he left his respiteblock. Jumping down the stairs two at a time, he stopped at the bottom and glanced around. “Ken-ken?” He shouted.

“Yo?” Makeno looked up from where he was laid on the lounge-plank, scrolling his palmhusk, hair still damp from a shower.

“I’m going out for a bit.”

“M’kay. Be safe.”

“No promises.” Corden snickered, extending two fingers as he walked past. Makeno reached up and connected two of his own fingers to Corden’s.

“Pale for you, Cordy.”

“Pale for you, too.”

Corden stepped outside, rolling his neck as he headed down the walk and made his way to the city proper.

Once he was among the towering hivestems and workhives, his tense shoulders loosened. The buzz of the city hummed in his ears, hyping him up until blue and red sparks were dancing along his horns.

He roamed the streets for a while, a vague plan beginning to form in his head. He paused on the sidewalk and craned his neck back, looking up at the soaring buildings. “If there’s one place to find him, it’d be up there, huh?” He asked Batmom.

She chirped, and he nodded thoughtfully. Turning, his cape swishing, he marched into a nearby alley between a hivestem and coffeehive. With a burst of psionics and a jump, he landed easily on the fire escape that went up the side of the hivestem.

The smell of the coffeehive’s garbage bin in his sniffnub, he quickly scaled the fire escape to… well, *escape* the smell. The higher he went, the bolder he became, his psionics swirling around him to keep him from falling if he slipped. His hair began to stand on end from the energy alone.

Wind blew it back from his face as he neared the top of the ninety-story hive. He vaulted over the lip of the roof and landed easily. Standing up straight, he looked around; it was a clear night, and from the edge of the building, he could see across the whole city. He stared at the millions of lights, almost entranced by their glow.

Across the city, hidden by the towering buildings between him and it, was the burned out, collapsing remains of the compound. The place he grew up, worked, and lived for the first sweeps of his life. The place he blew up, leaving virtually no one alive, in a daring attempt to escape. No one, save one person, who he’d sent a single message before it went up in flames.

Corden sat on the edge of the roof, dangling his legs. All he had to do now was wait, so he allowed himself to indulge in his memory files. He slid one hand over the back of his shoulders, where he could feel the tips of the scars that marred his back.

“Still don’t know why they thought flogging a robot was a good idea. All it did was tear up my exo-skin.” He said to Batmom. The tiny bat only trilled in response.

Corden sat there for a good half hour, watching the city as he got lost in painful memories. Finally, however, he heard the telltale sound of several jingling bells as someone vaulted onto the roof behind him.

“Ayyye, it’s the Cordy-bordy-robo-bro! Wassup manbot? Dude it’s been like- fucking sweeps huh? Fuck yeah man, whatcha been doing since the compound went-” The newcomer made several vocals to indicate explosions, before he laughed, his loud voice amplifying his thick lisp.

Corden held in a sigh as he got to his feet and turned to face them. “Nice to see you again, too, Engineer-class Fleetman Zeruki Ursida.” He said formally, his posture suddenly stiff as he swept into a low bow.

Zeruki stared at him like he’d grown a second head; at least, Corden thought he did. It was hard to tell with the hair. The tealblood’s tail lashed, sending the bells jingling vigorously.

“Oh, so we’re being all form-fit-finessed here, are we? Fine. Nice to see you, Gold-Station #315.184.514, Bloodline: Blalit.” Zeruki stuck out his split tongue in disgust, “WTF man, I don’t do that,” He blew a raspberry, “shit unless it’s with the ssssssuperiors. You and I are buddies, ain’t we?” He clicked his tongue, his tail bobbing and jingling again. He tugged on the lip of his helmet, nodding to Batmom, “Hello, missy ma’am.”

“Are we?” Corden repeated, his voice flat and emotionless.

Zeruki shrugged, bouncing on his toes. “I dunno. Sure. Yep. LMAO. Anywaysies, what didja message me for? I thought you never wanted to see me again, after you,” he waved a hand vaguely, making more explosive vocalizations, “ya knoooooow? After you killed all our buddy-bros and left me to clean up the mess.” His expression soured for a moment, before he was grinning again.

Corden frowned; he wasn’t sure what the meant. “I didn’t want to see you, but a… friend, asked I find you again. He needs you for… something.” He explained.

“Ah, dope. Totes. Uhhhhhh, he wouldn’t happen to be an olive dude? Real skinny, looks like a doritos bag? Got soda-cola-pop for hair?”

Corden frowned. “No… That sounds like Oliver, though. You haven’t been talking to her, have you?”

“Eh, meh, kinda, no.” Zeruki snickered, his tail shivering and jingling. “They approached me after I left the base a few nights back. Told me they wanted to talk, and started going off about some magicky-tacky-spooky stuff. Wanted my blood so he could meet some doctor or ssssssomething. No idea what that was about, so I bounced. Now your dude wants me, too? Didn’t know I was so famous.” He grinned with a mouthful of crooked teeth.

“I don’t think it’s you they want. They want your ancestor. But believe me, my dude is on the right side here. I can give you his Trollian Handle.” Corden pulled out his palmhusk and did just that.

“Freaky-deaky, dude-bro-bot, buuuuuut… I dunno if I’m down for this shit. I’m just trying to keep my skull off a threshcutioner’s sickle, ya know? I’m barely making it as an engineer, duder, I don’t need to get caught up in any of this shhhhhit.” Zeruki shifted his feet, frowning.

“I don’t know, but okay. Just give Musrio a message. I’ve done my job, so I’m going home.” Corden pocketed his palmhusk and turned way.

In a flash, Zeruki was at his side, his tail surprisingly dexterous as it wrapped around Corden’s metal wrist. “Yo, hold it up, brody-Cody! You just gonna hitch-snitch and ditch like that? Maybe I’ve got a message for you, too!” He said sharply, before looking down at the metal hand. “Yoooooo, that’s new.”

Corden wrenched his arm from the quad-horned troll’s grasp, before he raised an eyebrow. “A message?”

“Yeah-huh. Uhhhh… what was it.” Zeruki screwed up his face in thought, before he perked up, his tail wagging and chiming. “Oh yeah! You remember Fallen? The freaky-deaky-spooky dude who patrolled the compound sometimes, ‘cause his ancestor ran the place? He’s out, dude. You’ve got a mory-dory-morail right? They had history or some shit, didn’t they? Exes, or something?”

Corden stepped back, alarmed. “How do you know all that? Ken-ken never talks about his ex.” He demanded, one hand reaching for the knives at his side.

“Aye, dude, I got freaky ears, remember? These bitches hear everything!” Zeruki slapped the side of his helmet for emphasis, before he flinched, “Ow. LOL. Anywhoodle-doodle, he’s out of confinement again. Back on the streets, you get it? His daddy-oh paid his bail or whatevs.

Fallen is fuckin’ nuts, man, I’ll bet nothin-touchin’ he’s gonna come visit Makey-dakey-sharky-chef. He’s, uh… what do those weeby-dweebs call it? Yonder-wander. Sssssunder-thunder. Whatever, LMAO, one of those. He’s got a bone to pick with Faslet, and a general lack of a thinkpan. So…” He sucked air through his teeth and blew another raspberry, before popping his lips. “Yeah. Watch out for Fally-bally.”

Corden stared at him, before he nodded slowly. “Okay, I’ll let Ken-ken know.” He heaved a sigh, stepping back. “Thanks, Zeruki.”

“Yeppers-peppers, Cordy-bordy-bro-bot.” He rolled his R’s, and made a buzzing sound. He raised an arm and rolled his glove forward, checking a device wrapped around his wrist. “Oh, brrr, I gotta get home. Mama’ll be wanting dinner before sunrise.” He snapped a two finger salute to Corden. “Until next time, bro-bot!”

With that, he turned, ran for the edge of the roof, and leaped off, shrieking, the fuzzy end of his tail the last thing to disappear from view.

Corden rolled his eyes, walking over to the edge of the building and looking down.

Zeruki was not a smear of cyan on the pavement, but instead a blur, bounding between the walls and roofs of the skyscrapers and buildings like a free-running character in a videogame.

Corden faintly heard him shriek again, cackling manically.

“He’s nuts.” Corden told Batmom, who chirped in amused agreement. “Guess we should go home, too, huh?”

Corden shook out his hands, a burst of psionic energy rocketing across his body as he stepped off the other side of the building and made his way home.

#a king and his soldier #part 2 #zeruki ursida #corden blalit #makeno faslet #long post #story time #very long post

[thompsborn]

fic where harley is a doctor that works w helen cho that sees peter often because of how much he gets hurt from being spider-man? and they fall in love bc they r already smitten for each other bc why wouldn't they be

i didn’t know how much i needed an au like this until you sent it omg

[read on ao3]

—

He’s in the middle of taking a sip of coffee when the alarm goes off.

“Mister Keener,” Friday says, as he’s cursing over the hot coffee that’s soaking into the front of his shirt. Thankfully, it’s not hot enough to actually burn him, but that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant. “Your assistance is needed in the Medical Wing.”

Harley frowns. “What time is it?”

“Four fifty eight in the morning, Mister Keener.”

“Jesus, really?” Harley sets his mug down and turns his arm over to look at his watch. His brows shoot up towards his hairline, surprised. “Wow. Okay. Didn’t realize it was... Jesus. Alright.”

Friday sounds almost amused when she tells him, “Doctor Cho is insisting you hurry.”

Harley sighs. “Yeah, okay. On my way.”

At this time of the night, the only medical staff on hand are the ones who live close by—like Helen, who has an apartment less than a two minute walk away—and those who live on site, like Harley, who’s had his own floor in the tower since he was fifteen and told Tony over a phone call that he was thinking about coming to New York once he was done with high school. Because of this, Harley isn’t all that surprised to find that it’s only him and Helen that show up in the MedBay—if anything, it’s what he expected.

And he should have expected who, exactly, they’re treating in the middle of the night, but he still finds himself mildly surprised when he comes face to face with Peter’s sheepish grin.

“Of course it’s you,” Harley says, standing at the foot of the hospital bed with his arms crossed over his chest. “Who else would be waking me up like this?”

“Don’t lie to me,” Peter says, sheepish grin turning a bit snarky. “You weren’t asleep.”

Harley purses his lips. “I could’ve been.”

Peter rolls his eyes, but doesn’t get the chance to respond before Helen is hovering by his side, snapping her gloves into place and instructing, “Friday, give me the run down.“

“Mister Parker has several second degree burns along his left leg and left arm,” Friday responds. “His right wrist is broken, and there appears to be a laceration along his abdomen.”

Harley winces in sympathy. “Rough night?”

Peter tries to shrug, but the movement makes his features twist up in a flash of pain. His voice comes out a bit strained when he says, “You could say that. There was—house fire. Not fun.”

“Get everyone out?” Harley asks, if only to provide a slight distraction as Helen assesses the broken wrist, likely checking to see if it needs to be reset or if it’ll be able to heal properly as it is. Peter tries for a grin.

“All of ‘em. Even the kids pet turtle.”

Harley pats Peter’s right knee, careful to remember that it’s his left leg with the burns. “Job well done, Spider-Man.”

“Harley,” Helen says, grabbing his attention. She’s apparently deemed Peter’s wrist not a main concern and is already peeling Peter’s suit off of him. Harley snaps into focus instantly, listening intently as Helen tells him, “I need you to take care of the laceration while I get started on the burns. When that’s done, we need to get that wrist in a cast until it heals.”

Peter pouts. “A cast? Really?”

Helen looks at him sharply. “Last time we didn’t put you in a cast, you managed to re-break your arm before it could heal. Twice.”

Peter’s pout vanishes with a meek chuckle. “It was an accident?” he offers.

“You, Peter Parker,” Helen says, averting her attention back to his burns as she speaks, “are somehow my best and my worst patient of all time. And I’m Tony Stark’s doctor, too, so that says a whole lot about you.”

“Hey—” Peter cuts off with a hiss as Harley starts to disinfect the large cut on his side. Harley offers an apologetic half smile that Peter waves away with another wince and a wobbly sort of grin. “I’m not worse than Mr. Stark.”

Helen hums, high pitched and teasing.

“I’m not,” Peter insists. “I’m not!”

“Believe what you want,” Helen tells him.

Peter huffs. “Why are you being mean to me? Aren’t doctors supposed to be nice to their patients? Isn’t that, like, a thing?”

Harley snorts when Helen says, “Next time, don’t wake me up at four in the morning with second degree burns and a broken wrist, and maybe then I’ll be nicer to you, hm?”

—

The thing is, Harley didn’t plan on this.

As in, growing up, he was sure that what he wanted was to be a mechanic. He loved to build, take apart, recreate, understand. It’s all he ever did. Hell, when Tony Frickin’ Stark broke into his garage, the guy ended up making Harley his own mechanic heaven to say thanks for helping him out.

And Harley still loves all of that, to be fair—he spends a lot of his free time tinkering in Tony’s lab now, helping him out with whatever the man’s working on and often working on his own fun little projects on the side—but it’s not his main drive. It’s not the center of his world.

He thinks it started when he saved Tony.

In a way, anyway—he had only been twelve at the time, and it’s not like twelve year olds are exactly apt on having life changing realizations that change the course of their future. Still, he was a twelve year old that saved Tony Stark’s life, and there was some kind of thrill, almost. It was hard to explain then, and Harley isn’t sure if he could put it into words now, but the feeling had made his fingers feel all tingly and his heart thud heavily in his chest. It was similar to when he built his first successful bot and it came whirring to life, only the feeling was intensified.

He felt like he was doing what he was supposed to be doing. He knew he wanted to save lives.

“You’re getting better,” Helen tells him, after Harley’s helped the medical team with bandaging up the members of the Avengers that just returned from a mission. None of the wounds had been major, mostly just scrapes and bruises, but it’s the most amount of people Harley has helped treat at once, which is a big step.

Harley shrugs, drying off his hands, having just finished washing them. “You’re a good teacher.”

Helen chuckles at that. “How are your classes?”

“Good,” Harley answers, nodding his head. “Kinda boring. I know most of it already, thanks to all the training you’ve given me, but that‘s not really new. I knew everything they taught me in high school, too.”

“You sound like Peter when you say that,” Helen muses, an amused quirk to her brow.

Harley rolls his eyes. “Y’know, people keep saying that, but I only see him when he’s bleeding out and that doesn’t make it feel like we’re all that similar.”

“Oh, you’re similar, alright,” Helen says, laughing a bit. “You’re both genius kids who bust your asses off to save people’s lives.”

Wrinkling his nose, Harley says, “But I don’t do it in spandex. Key difference there, doc.”

Helen holds her hands up in some kind of surrender. “Just saying, you two are alike.”

“I’ll make sure to tell him you said that next time he breaks his leg,” Harley quips.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Friday interjects, “but Spider-Man is reportedly injured and heading to the tower now. ETA of six and a half minutes.”

Harley rolls his eyes up to the ceiling with an exasperated sigh. Helen can only laugh.

—

“Ow. Ow, ow—oh, Jesus, that’s—ow—!”

“Sorry,” Harley says, only averting his eyes for a second to flash Peter an apologetic look before focusing back on the stitches he’s giving him.

Peter curses, slamming his left fist into his own thigh as Harley pushes the needle through. “This sucks,” he complains, clenching his jaw and grinding his teeth. “This is—why is this worse than getting stabbed? Why do I prefer getting stabbed over this? This blows.”

“You need to stop moving,” Harley tells him.

Making an indignant sort of noise, Peter asks, “How the hell am I—I can’t stop moving! This hurts, man, like—like, really fuckin’ hurts!”

“Moving makes it worse, dipshit,” Harley retorts, fighting the urge to roll his eyes.

“You know what else makes it worse?” Peter glares at the wall. “Not having pain killers.”

Harley does roll his eyes now. “Not my job. I just give you the drugs, I don’t make them.”

“I know, but Mr. Stark isn’t here for me to bitch at, so I’m complaining to you about it instead.”

Harley can’t help the way that he snorts at that, finishing off the last of the stitches as he does so. “I usually don’t like to listen to someone complain while I’m working.”

“Sucks to suck,” Peter replies. “Are you done?”

“Yep.” Harley leans back, taking off his gloves and tossing them into the trash. “Any other injuries? Stab wounds? Broken bones?”

Peter hums, tilting his head from side to side. “I don’t think so. Friday?”

“All clear, Mr. Parker.”

Harley frowns. “The fact that you had to ask worries me.”

Peter shrugs. “I get hurt a lot. Kinda used to it.”

“Still,” Harley says. “That’s concerning. Like, you still feel pain, right? You would know if you were hurt somewhere else, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, trust me, I feel pain,” Peter snorts. “But some things just... don’t matter? Like... I dunno, but if it’s not serious, it’s like my brain filters it out on it’s own to focus on other things. Which, probably, y’know, not good, but, like, oh well.”

“Definitely not good,” Harley murmurs, frowning to himself as he squints around the room for a moment. “Well, if you have nothing else, then you’re good to go. And, honestly, thank god that’s all you have, ‘cause this is the first time I’ve done anything without Helen around and anything more than stitches would’ve had me flipping shit and fucking it all up.”

Peter lets out a light laugh, pulling his shirt down, over the gash that Harley just finished stitching. “You wouldn’t fuck it up,” he says, sounding light and humorous yet entirely serious, too. “You’re, like, really good at your job, Harley.”

Harley scrunches his nose up on his face. “Ew. Don’t be nice to me. It’s gross.”

Peter laughs again, a little bit louder, though the way it makes his stomach jump has him wincing when it pulls at his stitches. “I’m serious!” he insists. “Like, I know you’re still a med student and stuff, but Helen is probably the best person to be training you, so you’re, like, more qualified than most normal doctors. You have the experience that most people still in med school don’t have. I mean, you patch up the freakin’ Avengers, Harley! You gotta be good at this to do that!”

“I help patch up the Avengers,” Harley corrects. “The only person I’ve ever fixed up by myself is you, thanks to your insane ability to always get hurt.”

“It’s a talent,” Peter shrugs. “And hey, I bet it keeps you entertained.”

Harley snorts. “Entertained is not the right word for it, Spidey. Impressed, maybe, by just how much trouble you’re capable of getting yourself into.”

Peter grins. “Gotta impress people somehow, right?”

—

Harley wouldn’t call it bonding.

Because it’s not. It’s not bonding. It’s small talk, and pleasant conversations, while Harley sets a broken bone or treats another burn. It’s filling the silence because, apparently, Helen trusts Harley to handle Peter on his own, unless it’s a major injury that requires more than one person on hand, and Harley isn’t sure why he’s being trusted with this, but he’s pretty intent on not fucking it up.

But it isn’t bonding. They’re just... acquaintances. Who talk. Like, a lot, because Peter comes in at least four times a week needing treatment for something, and that gives them a lot of time to talk. Maybe Harley learns a lot about Peter during this time, like his favorite song, and what his comfort hoodie is, and why he became Spider-Man in the first place. Maybe Peter learns where Harley is from, how he met Tony, and what made him decide to be a doctor over a mechanic.

Maybe, after a few weeks, they start having inside jokes, built not only from the time they spend alone together, but also from the months upon months that Harley was helping Helen treat Peter, too. Sometimes, Peter snorts so hard that he reopens his stitches and Harley has to fix it. Sometimes, Harley can’t stop laughing when he needs to have steady hands and he ends up hunching over on himself and wheezing because of whatever it is that Peter said. One day, Peter comes in when he isn’t injured, dressed in casual clothes with a few textbooks from his ESU courses in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. “I’m headed up to see Mr. Stark,” he tells Harley, “but I thought I’d give you this,” and he holds out the cup of coffee with a big, cheesy sort of grin.

“Why?” Harley asks, though he accepts the cup gratefully.

Peter shrugs. “I’d probably have bled out ten times over if it weren’t for you, and you looked, like, really tired yesterday, so I thought you might need it.”

He is tired—exhausted, really, because his classes may not be hard but there are some big tests coming up that he needs to study for and it’s hard to find the time to study in between training with Helen and doing all the millions of other assignments that are being tossed his way. He takes a sip of the coffee, hums in satisfaction at the way it warms him up, and says, “Thanks.”

“Least I could do,” Peter tells him.

So, maybe they’re friends. Maybe—maybe—Harley is starting to look forward to seeing him and keeps trying to think of a casual way to offer they hang out sometime, outside of the med bay. Maybe Peter starts bringing Harley a cup of coffee every time he goes to visit Tony, and maybe Harley starts to feel a little thrill whenever he hands the coffee over and their fingers briefly brush.

Maybe it is bonding, but it’s not a crush. It’s not.

(”You’re adorable when you’re in denial,” Helen tells him.

Harley sinks in his seat and tries to disappear. “Shut up.”)

—

The letters of his textbook are blurring in front of his eyes when the alarm rings.

He jumps at the sound, looks up at the ceiling with slightly squinted eyes and furrowed brows, expecting Friday to calmly inform him that his assistance is needed in the med bay, like usual. Instead of that, though, the alarm continues to blare, and all Friday says is, “Urgent. Urgent. Urgent.”

Which is code for: someone’s about to die if he doesn’t hurry.

Instantly, he jumps to his feet, feeling wide awake despite being on the brink of dozing off just a few short moments ago. “Okay,” he tells himself, rushing out of his room and sprinting towards the elevator, which is already open and waiting for him. He only just barely thinks to swipe his tablet along the way, clutches it in his hands while he says, “Okay, okay, okay—who, uh—Friday? Who is it?”

“Iron Man and Spider-Man are both heavily injured and require immediate assistance,” Friday informs him gravely. “Doctor Cho is already treating Mr.Stark and has told me to inform you that you will be in charge of Mr. Parker.”

“Oh, god,” Harley breathes, pinching the bridge of his nose and giving himself a second to take a deep breath while the elevator takes him down to the proper floor. “Jesus. Okay. I need, uh—give me a list of Peter’s injuries, Fri.”

“Of course, Mr. Keener.”

The list is sent to his tablet immediately, and it’s—extensive. Third degree burns and multiple shattered ribs and various bullet wounds, only some of which are clean through, meaning that there’s various bullets that they need to remove before Peter starts to heal around them. The more he reads, the faster his heart thunders in his chest while his mind automatically sorts through it to think of what needs to be prioritized, what to treat first, and how to keep Peter alive.

By the time he reaches Peter’s room, he has a game plan figured out, and he only falters for a short moment when he sees Peter on the hospital bed, writhing around and sobbing in pain. The rest of the medical staff in the room freeze, likely already aware that Helen put him in charge, and wait with bated breath.

“Alright,” Harley says, mostly to himself. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

—

Maybe it is a crush.

Harley is finding it hard to deny it now, as he sits beside Peter’s hospital bed, his hands feeling a little bit shaky where they’re clasped together and hanging between his knees. They had to undergo emergency surgery, and Peter’s heart had stopped four times throughout the procedure. Bringing him back had been the most panic inducing thing Harley has ever experienced in his life, and he couldn’t even show it because he was the one that was put in charge.

But they did, all four times —they got his heart going again and they got out all the bullets and treated all the burns and did everything they could to stabilized the broken bones. They gave him multiple IV’s, all of which he’s still attached to, and he hasn’t woken up since he passed out from the pain shortly after Harley’s arrival—and he passed out looking at Harley, too, with wide, pleading eyes that seemed to be begging for mercy, filled with agony and despair.

Harley would do anything to never have to see that look again.

“How’s he doing?” Helen asks, stepping into the room. She looks tired, undoubtedly exhausted from doing whatever she could to stabilize Tony just a few rooms down. Harley feels that exhaustion in his very bones.

“He’s gonna be fine,” Harley tells her. “Lost him a few times, though.”

Helen hums sympathetically. “But you got him back.”

Harley hesitates, then nods. “Yeah, we did.”

“Good,” Helen says, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You did good.” She stays like that for a moment, doesn’t move, and Harley appreciates the gesture but kind of wants to be alone. Maybe she senses that, because a moment later, she’s pulling her hand back and asking, “Are you staying here?”

“‘Til he wakes up,” Harley tells her.

Helen smiles at him warmly. “Make sure you get some rest, too, okay?”

Harley doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep until he sees Peter awake and talking again, but he still nods at her and says, “Yeah, alright.”

After Helen leaves the room, after it’s just Harley and Peter again, he finds himself reaching forward and taking Peter’s hand in his, and, other than the innocent brush of fingers when passing a coffee cup, this is the first time they’ve touched outside of Harley treating Peter’s wounds. It’s a bit of a startling realization, but Harley finds comfort in the contact, listens to the steady beeping of the heart monitor and starts to relax with the reassurance that he really did good, that Peter is going to be okay and Harley is the one that saved him.

He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but with that relief flooding his veins and Peter’s hand in his, he finds himself dozing off and doesn’t bother forcing himself awake.

—

At first, he doesn’t realize he’s waking up, his senses still muddled with sleep. It feels almost as if he’s floating in unconsciousness, warm and comfortable and— 

“Harley?”

And he wakes with a jolt, eyes snapping open and instantly searching, only coming to a stop when they land on wide brown eyes looking right back at him. “Oh,” he breathes, blinking once and sitting up straight despite the way it makes his back complain. “Oh, my god. You’re awake.”

Peter tilts his head, just a little bit, and looks down at their intertwined fingers.

“Right. That.” Harley clears his throat and scrubs his free hand over his features, trying to wake himself up with a sheepish little smile. “It’s, um—not important, actually. How do you feel? Any pain, discomfort, anything like that?”

For a moment, Peter doesn’t respond, just keeps looking at their hands before rasping out a hoarse little, “’m kinda—kinda thirsty. M’throat hurts.”

Instantly, Harley gets to his feet and pulls open the mini fridge in the room to grab a bottle of water. He takes it back to Peter, hands it over, and feels somewhere stuck between doctor mode and something else, the worry and the uncertainty and the fear from hearing the flat line all mixing together until he feels nauseous with it. Peter accepts the water bottle gratefully, takes tentative sips from it and only winces slightly when he swallows it. “Better?” Harley asks.

Peter smiles, a bit small and tired, but just as genuine as always. “Yeah.”

“Good,” Harley murmurs, hovering by the chair he had been sitting in before. “Is there anything else? Just, like—anything at all? How do you feel?”

“Tired,” Peter tells him. “Like, um... groggy, y’know? And... out of it.”

Harley nods, a bit relieved that the dose of pain killers he chose was the right amount. “That’s to be expected. You were really roughed up, Pete.”

Peter frowns down at his water, brows knitting together. “What happened?”

“There was an ambush,” Harley tells him. “I guess Doc Ock was out and about, so you went to confront him and he got enough hits in to alert Tony, so he went to help you out, but Ock apparently teamed up with Rhino and they were able to catch you guys off guard and get the upper hand. Rhodey and a few others went to help out, but they didn’t get there in time to stop you guys from nearly getting killed, so, when you came in, it was... not pretty. But, you’re both gonna be fine.”

He wants to say that it’s not a crush. It can’t be a crush, isn’t supposed to be one, even if seeing the way Peter lets out a puff of air and relaxes back into his pillows is kind of a... not so bad sight. He looks tired and a bit beat up and a little too pale, but he’s good. He’s alive. Being alive looks good on him.

Maybe, Harley admits. Maybe it is a crush.

“Thank you,” Peter murmurs, head lulling back into the pillows. He holds out a hand and Harley isn’t sure what the action is for, but he doesn’t think before reaching forward and tangling their fingers together.

Harley clears his throat. “What for?”

“Not letting me die,” Peter says.

The mere idea of letting Peter die makes Harley’s heart stutter in his chest. “Of course,” he mumbles, a bit stricken. “I’ll always save you. It’s my job.”

Peter squeezes Harley’s hand, falls asleep with a sigh and a smile on his face.

Harley still doesn’t leave.

(It’s definitely, one hundred percent, a huge, gigantic crush, and maybe... maybe he’s okay with that. Maybe liking Peter Parker isn’t all that bad.)

#parkner #my writing #mild descriptions of injuries #non graphic near death experience