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notjohnlegere · 2 years

Note

heyy could u write a piece where the reader has ocd and timothe helps her?

This ask is particularly close to my heart as someone who struggles daily with severe OCD. I used my own experiences and struggles as inspiration for this fic, although I did avoid writing on anything particularly heavy, as it could be a trigger for my own disorder (and we don’t want that!). This story is very lighthearted and easy to digest, I hope anyone like me who has struggled with this disorder can take something from this little story. You are never alone. ❤️

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Getting Better

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Getting Better

Timothée Chalamet x Reader

timmy’s pov. reader struggles with ocd and tim takes notes of how she experiences the world compared to him. nothing particularly heavy, and a cute happy ending.

*obligatory mobile formatting apology*

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She was sitting on the couch, her legs crossed beneath her, with her fingers in her mouth. She was watching one of her favorite shows, but my god she’s probably seen it a hundred times by now. I’ve probably seen it a hundred times by now. She told me something about it makes her more comfortable, which I don’t really get. How can watching something you’ve already seen so many times make you comfortable? I find it easier to immerse myself in new things rather than old ones. But, that’s just how my girl is, and it’s one of the many things I love about her. She’s herself, even if nobody else quite understands.

She always bit her nails. I sat at the dining room table, drinking a mug of coffee while I watched her. A terrible habit she’s had since she could remember. We’d tried everything together to get her to stop, but no matter what we did she would still chew her nails down to nubs. It hurt me to watch her, sometimes she would even bleed from it, but there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t stop, especially when she got nervous.

I watched her lips move. She always whispered to herself. Sometimes I’d catch a small glimpse of what she was saying—counting, spelling random words, even repeating things she had heard me say or heard on the tv. Her family, when I met them, described her to me as quirky. She always accepted that description, liking it much more than all the other terrible things she’d been called, but I didn’t agree. She’s not quirky, she’s herself. It always made me sick to my stomach to listen to the stories she would tell about people in her life trying to force her to be different. I can’t imagine anyone not accepting her as she is. She’s the most perfect human being I ever laid eyes on.

“Timmy?” Her voice snapped me from my thoughts. I looked over to her and offered her a small smile.

“What is it, mon amour?”

“Do you ever get tired of how I am?” She had asked me this question before. But I still couldn’t see her reasoning behind it. I could never get tired of her.

“No. Why would I?” I retorted.

“Because I’m weird.” She stressed. “I talk to myself, and I do all kinds of things I don’t even know I’m doing until you tell me. Like rocking back and forth all the time. That’s so annoying.”

“It doesn’t bother me.”

“I’m scared you’re just saying that. It bothers me. How could it not bother you?”

“That’s just how you are, mon amour.” I said. We had this conversation often. “I love you just how you are.”

“I love you too, Timmy.” She sighed. I could tell she wasn’t satisfied. “But I want to get help.”

“I will support you in whatever you want.”

“Okay, so here’s the list my new therapist gave me.” She said, holding a small, folded piece of paper out to me. Folded in her special folding style. Every paper she carried with her looked the same.

I took the paper and unfolded it carefully, she really hated how much I accidentally tore things, so I tried not to do that this time.

“And these are your symptoms?” I asked.

“Yeah,” She replied. “Do you recognize any of them?”

“Uh, let’s see.” I said. I read each item on the list and bit my tongue.

Excessive lock checking

Repeatedly checking on loved ones to make sure they’re safe

Counting, tapping, or repeating random words

Excessive washing and cleaning

Ordering and rearranging things

Accumulating needless objects

Quite frankly, I recognized every item on the list. She did all of those things, very regularly. But I didn’t want to scare her and tell her that. I can’t imagine how bad she would feel if she knew she did all of these things. She was unaware of so much of it.

“Maybe a couple things. You definitely count.” I replied nonchalantly.

“I do.” She said, a beautiful giggle on her lips. “I don’t know about some of that stuff, though. Like repeatedly checking locks? I’ve never done that.”

Yes you have, mon amour, more times than I can count.

“What’s important is that your therapist is prepared to help you in any situation.” I reassured her. I knew this was going to be a hard battle, but I believed in her more than I believed in myself.

“You’re right.” She agreed.

“Maybe I can come next time you go? So your therapist can give me pointers to help you out?” I suggested. She smiled at me, with that big beautiful crooked toothed smile. She was always finicky about dentists, so she never got braces. It made her more cute in my eyes.

“That’s so sweet, Timmy. I would love that.” She said. A kiss on my lips and she was gone, walking into the kitchen to make a drink.

“Where’s my big green cup?” She asked me. It was the only cup she used, her favorite one. I made sure to take extra special care of it for her.

“In the dishwasher, baby.”

“Merci.”

I smiled at her, taking note of how she moved. So much in her life was repetitive. So much about her was picky and finicky. This disorder controlled her every waking moment, which sometimes she didn’t even notice at all. This was her normal. Before she could even walk she was exhibiting signs, her parents told me. This was all she ever knew. And here she was, this strong, beautiful woman in front of me, getting prepared to overcome it just as she’s overcome every other hardship in her life.

I didn’t understand it one bit. I didn’t know why she panics and cries if I and her friends don’t her back soon enough. I didn’t get why she gets antsy if the stereo isn’t on an odd number, or if her chair has been moved a little to the right, or why she won’t leave the car until the song playing on the radio is in an “acceptable spot” to turn off the key. Hell, don’t even get me started on how I had to be positioned at the right spot during sex or she would get anxious.

But I guess I’m not meant to understand. I’m meant to love her and that’s exactly what I’ll always do.

“Here.” I was once again snapped from my thoughts. I looked up to see her offering me her special green cup.

“Oh? Is it broken?”

“No, Timmy. I want you to drink out of my cup. I’ll drink from the red one.” She said. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was such a simple thing, but absolutely unheard of with her. I gently took the cup from her, a giant smile on my face.

“I’m so proud of you!” I couldn’t contain my excitement as I pulled her close and kissed her on the cheek. “Look at you, my girl. Wow, you’re incredible.”

“Why, thank you.” She said with a giggle. Her pink lips met the red cup as she sipped from it, she was so confident and sure of herself. “It’s all uphill from here.”

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ao3 is johnlegere, find my fics there too. requests are open, send one in my ask box. hope you enjoyed :)!

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shihalyfie · 3 years

Text

The importance of a burnt egg

Appmon is a very over-the-top and silly series, which is one of its standout features in a story that features some really heavy topics (both emotionally and academically). The first presumable reason as to why the series is this way is tone; if it weren’t for all of this dorky silliness, the sheer weight of the story could easily get overwhelming to the point it becomes difficult to digest (especially considering this is a kids’ series). Having all the fun parts helps make the delivery more palatable and easier to understand, allowing it to cover some pretty deep topics it might not be able to otherwise.

However, it’s important to realize that this is most definitely not the only reason for these kinds of things -- the strange wackiness is also very important to the theme of the series itself. At first, it might seem a bit strange to insinuate that something like a burnt egg actually has theme importance, but you’d be surprised...

(Note that there are spoilers for the series in the rest of this post.)

Let’s fast-forward to the end of the series, episode 52, when Leviathan makes its case as to why humanity should accept its ideal world.

The question of whether it’s better to have emotions or not has been a staple theme of sci-fi (especially AI-themed sci-fi) as long as the genre has existed, but when you get to the end of Appmon and everything that’s led up to it, you have to admit that it makes a pretty compelling case. Leviathan isn’t saying this out of simply just being condescending about humanity being bad at taking care of itself; it really, truly thinks that emotions and hearts are doing everyone an inconvenience. It itself even understands the concept of “death”, and believes it’s doing everyone a favor by keeping everyone from it. Through all of the previous episodes, we’d seen all of the messiness and emotional pain that Leviathan is warning against. Haru just went through a whole cycle of learning he might have been gaslighted. Eri went through the bittersweetness of still not being able to attain the goal she’d worked so hard for. Astra’s still figuring out what to do with this life and what place his family has in his future. Rei had to go through the pain of losing and having to chase after his own family for the entire series. Yuujin, depending on Haru’s choices, may end up dying, with every purpose and hobby he’d built up coming to an end.

Yeah. Life kinda sucks sometimes. There’s a lot of problems going on in society, tons of heartbreak, and everyone’s interests clashing into each other create strife and suffering. Wouldn’t it be better to wipe all that away? Forget everything and let an objective system handle it all? No more need to make choices, especially when the ability to make choices sometimes leads to making bad ones; the system will efficiently organize everything, without any of that chaos or strife or pain. Sounds great, right?

Well, firstly, the problem with this is that Leviathan isn’t a perfect, unbiased system. Nor is anything else in this world. As many AI researchers will tell you right now, even the most advanced black-box AI algorithms are still made by humans, with human biases, and subject to imperfections, because anything part of an imperfect world will still be imperfect. We see a brief glimpse of recognizing the series resident No Guy in the faceless crowd; its job of supposedly wiping misery and pain from the population isn’t exactly working the way it thinks it is. Even Leviathan does briefly admit that it has more it wants to learn. In fact, Leviathan’s defeat largely centers around its realization it doesn’t understand everything about the world after all -- Haru and his friends managed to derail its ostensibly perfect plan that had been building up over the series at the last minute, and Haru himself made a shocking unexpected “third option” choice to the dilemma it’d provided it. “Humans have a surprising side to them,” after all.

As Appmon’s resident edgelord, Rei has an amusing style of writing in that he’s quite the serious person yet keeps getting put in increasingly absurd and comedic situations. There are a lot of reasons for it -- making it clear that he’s not quite as good at the whole edgy schtick as he pretends to be, and also the sheer juxtaposition being funny -- but this really comes to a head in episode 42, where Rei is constantly placed in increasingly ridiculous situations and contexts until the very end, and said very end takes all of the stupid hilarity and suddenly punches you in the face with it when it connects to how Hajime is eventually found. In the end, all of Hackmon’s abilities and all the cognitive thinking in the world paled in comparison to Rei doing something so phenomenally stupid that Hajime remembered his brother and laughed.

After all, if we’re talking about emotions, you can’t forget the one that’s repeatedly permeated all of media and sentiment as well: connection and love. And as it turns out, Hajime recognizes his brother when his brother is doing something stupid.

In the following episode, episode 43, pay close attention to the sequence of events when Rei tries to get Hajime to wake up. Rei tried everything, ranging from getting the Appmon to help, to taking him out everywhere, to cooking every kind of egg under the sun. But here’s what’s significant: we’re treated to a montage of Rei making those eggs, and every time we see them, Rei makes them correctly, because he’d gotten better at making eggs since Hajime had been taken away. And that’s exactly what the problem was, because the moment Rei messed up out of being lost in thought, burning the egg, that was the one and only time that had any significance to Hajime, enough to actually bring him back.

In other words: it was the human mistake, not anything perfected, that actually had meaning.

Burnt eggs shouldn’t exist in Leviathan’s world. That’s a byproduct of bad choices. It’s inefficient and clumsy, and wouldn’t be happening if a perfect system were running everything. But it’s those imperfections and mistakes and slip-ups and all of the inconsistent, flawed parts of humanity that create connections and differences and make the world go ‘round. And in a world increasingly trying to make things more efficient and closer to “perfect”, this is what we risk losing.

YJ-14 was a “failure��. It failed at its job, and whatever routine it was supposed to be using to please Haru ended up becoming something inefficient and messy that helped derail Leviathan’s plans. For it, Yuujin ended up having doubts and pain, and having to face death. But as he puts it: because of all that, he got to meet Haru, and he got to be Haru’s friend, and live the kind of life a human would live, with happiness and aspirations and relationships to others. And, as it seems, that wild, messy life was fulfilling enough to be worth him sacrificing his life for Haru.

Besides, Haru was right: Yuujin wouldn’t have been able to do this if he didn’t have a heart. Artificial intelligence advancing also means advancing enough to understand this, too. And as Haru had told Leviathan earlier, while Leviathan insisted that everyone having the ability to make their own choices was making everyone miserable, Haru counters that all of their choices and will had been what allowed them to initially defeat Leviathan, too. Despite all the hardships they’d faced, they’d chosen to overcome those hardships, and came out the better for it.

The world Haru lives in is messy, ridiculous, and with a lot of problems everywhere. Leviathan may be gone by the end of the series, but the technology its world lives on still remains, and there’s still uncertainty in the future about what might happen with those future developments. But this was the world Haru and his friends chose to protect -- one that’s not perfect or clean by any means, but one where all the weird, strange zaniness makes it worth going through all the converse pain and misery for, because those mistakes and rough parts have meaning of their own, too.

Even if that means burning some eggs a few times.

#digimon #appmon #digimon universe appli monsters #shihameta #katsura rei #rei katsura

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plus-size-reader · 3 years

Text

Angel Blood

Clary Fray x Plus size!reader

Word Count: 2113 words

Warnings: none

Summary: The reader has been protecting Clary all her life, and hiding a huge secret.

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Clary was almost positive that she was out of her mind.

After everything she’d seen at the club tonight, she had to be going crazy.

Of course she was because there was no other explanation for what was going on. Everything that she had seen, everything that was going on, it wasn’t real.

There was no way any of this was real.

People didn’t just vanish out of thin air ever, and that thing in the club had tentacles in its face, not to mention the fact that she was ninety-nine percent sure that she had killed a guy. It was hardly what she’d expected from her eighteenth birthday when she woke up this morning.

Still, she knew what she saw.

There was no way to explain it, and she was sure that she was going insane, but at least she knew what she had seen.

If there was anything she had, it was that, and thankfully, it was more than enough for you to help her. When she told you what had happened, you believed her completely and totally, which did make her feel a little better.

Though, to be fair, you knew a lot more about this than she did.

This was in her blood.

Clary was a shadowhunter, she was born for this, and while it didn’t make sense now, you were sure that she would adjust. All she needed was time, and a little guidance, which you and the others would be able to give her.

Not that you wanted Jace to be involved at all.

After all, it was his idea to bring her back to the institute, which was a terrible idea from the start. Mundanes couldn’t be here, ever, and there wasn’t supposed to be any exceptions to that, even where Clary was concerned.

She couldn’t just be here.

You told Jace that as soon as he got back, holding her tight to his chest all full of demon venom, but were immediately ignored by the male. He had already made up his mind, and when he did that, there was nothing you could do to stop him.

Logic didn’t have a place in Jace’s mind.

In general, this wasn’t something that you tended to deal in because mundane business wasn’t for you to worry about but for some reason, he had this idea that he had to save her.

He wanted to keep her safe.

You understood that this mattered to him, for whatever reason, but this was a bit much.

Alec made the argument that bringing her here was dangerous for not only her but also everyone else in the building, and this was one of those rare instances where you found yourself inclined to agree with him.

Jace had gone too far and now, he’d managed to rope you all in with him.

It was insane.

You had been watching over her and Jocelyn all your life, but now, Jace had just swooped in to save the day. It was something that there was no going back from and you just had to hope that when Clary woke up, she’d be able to handle it.

“How could you be so reckless?” you huffed, protecting Clary was your job.

You had been her best friend forever and you were someone she was familiar with. If anyone was going to take care of her in Jocelyn’s absence, it should have been you.

It was literally all you were here for, but in typically Jace Wayland fashion, he had found a way to take that out from under you as well.

Now, you were going to have to get past him to do anything, like you always had to, as if the other shadowhunters needed another reason to doubt your abilities.

“I saved her life, shouldn’t you be thanking me?” he grinned, that telling smirk on his face that remained there indefinitely. Normally, you would have just shrugged him off but today you could have knocked off if you felt so inclined.

He could be so frustrating sometimes, so sure of himself that no one else mattered.

It was nearly enough to drive you out of your mind.

In all the years that you had known Clary, you had kept a close relationship with all of the shadowhunters as well. You were one of them, and though this life was a difficult one, hiding it from Clary and all, it was just what you had to do.

You had to protect her, more than anything else, and as difficult as it was, that was all that mattered at the end of the day.

Jocelyn loved you like a child of her own, she trusted you with her secrets and most importantly, she trusted you to protect Clary when she couldn’t. That was the whole reason you were here, the whole reason you had been by her side for so many years.

At this point, you loved her more than anyone and you certainly didn’t want her getting involved with Jace Wayland.

Not because you were jealous, of course, but because you wanted what was best for her.

That was all.

“I’ll thank you when I’m sure she’s safe” you countered, gingerly brushing a lock of her hair from her face, where it had fallen in the entire tussle. She was in a lot of pain, with the venom taking its toll on her, but her body was taking the healing rune well.

She was going to be fine.

However, until she was awake and calmed down, you weren’t going to be able to relax.

For whatever reason, this was the most stressful thing you’d ever gone through. You’d had years to go run through this in your mind, but now that it was happening, you were lost.

This wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

Jocelyn had been careful, crazy even, so that Clary wouldn’t find out about who and what she was before you were ready to deal with it, but now, you were on your own. She wasn’t here to help you figure this out.

For now, Jocelyn was gone and you just had to do your best to explain this whole thing to her.

“She’s going to be fine, she’s one of us. She’s strong” Jace shrugged, looking down at her from where he was at your side, still doing his best to figure out what it was about her that was so special.

Clearly, she had made an imprint on the both of you and he wasn’t even sure why yet. To be fair though, he didn’t know her like you did.

He never could.

“Yeah, that’s one thing we can agree on” you allowed, gingerly giving him a shrug. You weren’t sure what it was you were going to do when she woke up, or how blending your two worlds into one would work, but before you could worry about it, she shot up in bed.

The action was quick and startled you slightly but you didn’t pay that any mind. Instead, you sat down beside her and did the only thing you knew to do, the thing you were best at.

You tried to calm her down.

Even now, that was all you could think about.

“Good Morning sleepyhead” you tried, doing your best to stay calm, but it was a sad attempt at best. You were clearly shaken, startled over her abrupt awakening, but thankfully, Clary was still a little out of it.

To her, this whole thing must have felt like a dream, so she only smiled at you at first. What had happened today was the last thing on her mind as she looked at you, at least, for a few seconds.

However, as soon as she reached up and grazed the portal shard hanging around her neck, she panicked. The object brought back everything she’d gone through in the past few hours and the recollection she had was distressing to her.

No one in their right mind would handle it well, you knew that without a shadow of a doubt.

While you weren’t surprised by the world you’d grown up in, you weren’t under any illusions as to how jarring it must have been to her. Waking up in this place was more than enough to freak her out, and Jace certainly wasn’t helping either.

“What is going on? Where are we? Where is my mother?” she asked, immediately bringing all the current issues to the forefront.

They were swirling around in her head, looming over her, and not one of them made sense. It was too much and you definitely couldn’t blame her for being overwhelmed.

“We will explain everything Clary, trust me” you hummed, taking her hand in your own in one final attempt at comforting her. You had no idea how this would go, but if nothing else, at least she was at the institute now.

As difficult as Jace could be to deal with, you knew that she would be safe as long as he was looking out for her.

At the very least, you could give him that.

Jace wasn’t exactly thrilled when you asked her for a moment alone with Clary to explain but eventually, he decided that it would just be best to do as you asked. The two of you had an understanding, that it would be much better to just try to find common ground.

Besides, Jace wasn’t exactly the best one to tell her everything, not when there was so much technical history to bring her up to speed on.

She needed you.

“What is going on?” she repeated, not speaking again until you returned to her bedside, having stepped away for a moment to ask Jace for some privacy. She had no idea what was going on yet, and unfortunately, you weren’t sure your explanation would help.

There was just too much happening in your world to sum up in one conversation.

Still, you knew that you had to try.

“I’ll fill you in more as it comes up, but there are some things I need to tell you before then” you started, hoping that the more you filled her in, the easier this would get for her to digest, but that wasn’t going to happen.

Mundanes couldn’t handle the world outside that they were used to, and while Clary wasn’t necessarily mundane, she had been raised that way. Until you figured out what Jocelyn wanted for her, you had to just fly by the seat of your pants through this whole thing.

“We’re Shadowhunters, Clar” you hummed, giving her a soft smile as you often did while looking at her. Even now, as disoriented and lost as she was, she was the most beautiful girl you’d ever seen.

Hopefully as this whole thing came into the light, you would actually see the benefits of bringing her fully into your world.

At least she would understand you completely now.

“We have angel blood, and that makes it our responsibility to protect the human world from demons and other downworlders” you tried, finding it much more difficult to sum up everything that being a shadowhunter intold than you would have thought.

It was really complicated.

Still, Clary didn’t seem completely lost as you assumed she would. She was bewildered of course, but she was silent by the time you’d finished, startling you that much more. For whatever reason, it was more alarming than if she would have freaked out.

It just made you worry that much more that she was losing it.

“I know it’s a lot, but I’m going to be here the whole time to help you figure it out. You’re going to be okay”

The words came out forced but you really meant them. It wasn’t going to be easy, but you knew that no matter what came your way, the two of you would be able to deal with it.

You always had, and now that the rest of the shadowhunters were involved, it would be even easier.

You could do this.

“Please don’t leave, there’s no way I can manage all this without you” she hummed, after a few seconds of silence as she thought over what you were suggesting. She had lost way too much already and if she had to do this without you, she’d be completely lost.

She couldn’t do this without you.

“Clar, I’m not going anywhere” you promised, this time fully confident in the words leaving your lips. You loved Clary, and whether or not she knew it, there was nothing you wouldn’t do for her.

No matter what happened, nothing was going to happen to her.

#clary fray #city of bones #mortal instruments city of bones #mortal instruments #clary fray x reader #clary fray x ps reader #clary fray x plus size reader #clary fray imagine #city of bones x reader #city of bones x ps reader #city of bones x plus size reader #city of bones imagine #mortal instruments x reader #mortal instruments x ps reader #mortal instruments x plus size reader #mortal instruments imagine #femslash

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ineffable-snowman · 3 years

Text

Partners, accidentally (a SamBucky fic)

Link to AO3

“So when is your boyfriend coming back?” Mrs. T asked him while she bagged his groceries.

Sam sighed softly. Mrs. T had always been forgetful but since the Blip she got even more things confused.

“He won’t be coming back,” Sam told her gently. “He wasn’t blipped. He just – died. Before.”

“I’m not talking about Richard. I mean the confused white one with the leather jacket, what’s his name? Richard was, what, decades ago? You can’t still be mourning for him, dear. You need to give your new relationship a chance. And he seems such a sweet guy, wouldn’t be fair to him to still be hung up on an old love.”

“Oh. You mean Steve.” Out of politeness, Sam refrained from pointing out that the name had been Riley, not Richard, and that it had been twelve years, not decades ago. “I’m afraid he isn’t coming back either. He… moved on. Found someone else.” He shrugged in a ‘what can you do’ gesture.

“Mm, his loss. But you seem to be doing pretty well yourself.” She winked at him.

“Thanks. I mean, it definitely is a challenging role but I’m getting used to it. I hope.” He chuckled. “And in case I let it get to my head, I can always come back here.”

“That you sure can.” Mrs. T added five of the toffees with the shiny candy wrapper to the bag, the sweets she used to give him when he had been a kid. “Say hello to Sarah and the kids. And tell your boyfriend just to ask for help next time if he doesn’t find an item from his shopping list – and not sneak around my shop like a thief. I can tell you, I was this close to calling Elliot for help.”

It was this description (much more accurate than such a sweet guy) that made Sam finally realise who she was talking about.

“Oh. No.” He laughed. “Bucky is not-”

“I know, I just didn’t recognise him at first. He was wearing sunglasses and black gloves – gloves in the middle of the summer, really? Seemed a bit suspicious. But then he explained who he was before I could get my baseball bat.”

Sam grinned. He would have liked to see Mrs. T chase Bucky out of her shop. Sounded like a good story he could tease Bucky with.

“I’ll make sure to tell him to act like a normal human being next time,” he said, still grinning.

***

It was only later that the implications of Mrs. T’s words fully sunk in. There was of course the implied relationship between him and Bucky, but those kind of things happened, that people mistook someone for a couple who weren’t. But apparently Bucky had “explained who he was” to Mrs. T, and Sam could not help but wonder what his exact words had been. Bucky’s tentative “partners” came to mind – shit. Had Sam accidentally turned him down by describing them as “co-workers” instead? That had definitely not been his intention. And what a shitty way to turn someone down it would be! Someone who had just bared his heart to Sam and – no. It couldn’t be. That moment with Mrs. T when Bucky had “explained who he was” must have happened later. So what exactly had he said? What exactly did he think they were? Did Bucky consider them boyfriends? You could never know with that cyborg brain of his but it would actually explain so much. How the staring had turned into smiles, all the casual touches, them spending time outside of missions…

Sam felt completely out of his depths. Was he in a relationship without knowing it? And how did he find out without making a complete fool of himself? He could just go for the trial-and-error method and kiss Bucky next time they met. If Bucky kissed him back, he would know without revealing his cluelessness. If Bucky punched him in the face, he would know, too. Sounded like a foolproof plan. It was just that Sam Wilson did not go around simply kissing people just like that.

So he asked Sarah. He was careful with his wording.

“Do you think Bucky is a good boyfriend?” Not ‘would make a good boyfriend’. Because if Sarah found out that she knew before Sam that he and Bucky were in a relationship, he would never hear the end of it.

Sarah hummed. “Why are you asking? Did something happen?”

“Just looking for…another perspective…on this.”

“Sam, you’ve never been someone who’s blinded by love. I mean, you wrote a pros and cons list when Riley asked you out. Still can’t believe he still wanted to date you after that, by the way. So what’s going on now? You want to take the next step and need more pros on your list?”

“Something like that, yeah.” Shit, she totally thought they were dating. And maybe they were. And Sam had no idea what “the next step” was in Sarah’s mind. Moving in together? Proposing?

“Use your words, Sam,” Sarah said.

It was the first useful advice. “Hey, let’s talk about this later, okay? I need to find out a few more things before I make a decision.” Because it did not matter what Mrs. T or Sarah thought the next step was. He needed to make sure he and Bucky were on the same page about this, no matter if it was about a first date or an anniversary.

are we partners?, he texted Bucky.

For the first time ever, Bucky texted him back in less than a minute.

something come up? where are you?

at sarah’s and everything’s fine. just thinking about some stuff

are you ok???

yes

Sam sighed. He had had enough with all this miscommunication. They were grown-up people, for God’s sake. Time for a direct approach.

are we partners in a professional or in a romantic sense?

Bucky did not answer for several long, long minutes. He was online, sometimes shown to be typing but never sending a reply. After four maddening minutes like this, Sam texted:

or both?

Then he panicked and did something extremely stupid: he added a grinning emoji. So much about grownup communication. Immediately, he wanted to delete his message but Bucky had already read it.

Finally, there was a reply:

both

And five grinning emojis, which did not clear up anything. They really should not discuss this via text messaging.

i’m coming to NY on friday. do you want to meet up?

are you asking me on a date? Again with the grinning emojis.

There was no way to end this conversation in a dignified manner, so Sam just texted truthfully:

not sure

***

It was too long until Friday and yet, when Friday arrived, Sam was not ready for it. He wished the utterly boring meeting with the mayor had taken longer but there really wasn’t much to discuss. So here he was, waiting nervously in front of New York City Hall if Bucky was going to stand him up.

He didn’t. Just on time, Bucky arrived on his motorbike, looking more badass than a 107 year old man had any right to look, in his black leather jacket, black jeans and sunglasses when he sauntered towards Sam.

“Hi.” He flashed Sam a grin, came towards him, lifted a hand –

Right, looked like they were dating, so they were really doing this, Sam took a deep breath, leant forward – and his nose collided painfully with Bucky’s chin.

Bucky grimaced and took off his sunglasses, which sat askew on his nose after that disastrous greeting. So no dating. Bucky had gone in for a hug, not a kiss. Sam should have brought his wings. If there ever was a time to just fly away from an awkward situation before he could make even more of an idiot of himself it was now.

But then Bucky said, “Didn’t know if I should bring you flowers,” and at these words something eased inside Sam. Whatever this weird situation was, Bucky did not seem intent on making it weirder between them, and Sam was sure they were going to be fine.

He gave Bucky a relieved grin. “I’m allergic to most flowers, so I’m really grateful you didn’t.”

“Okay, noted. So, uh.” Bucky looked at him inquisitively, a little crease appearing between his brows (and Sam’s fingers itched to wipe it away). “I wasn’t sure if AJ and Cass had hacked your phone and were messing around with me. Or with you. Both of us. But I didn’t want to blow my chance.”

Sam shrugged apologetically. “No, that was all me. Can’t blame it on the boys, unfortunately.” Then he realised what Bucky had just said, that he didn’t want to blow his chance. It gave Sam the courage to carry on. “There’s really no way to ask this without sounding weird but… Are we dating?”

“You were the one who asked me on this… date, not-date, whatever. You should know.”

“I don’t mean right now, I mean more generally, as in…are we in a relationship?”

Bucky stared at him. “There’s definitely a lot about 21st century dating, sex, relationships that confuses me but I’m pretty sure I would’ve realised if we were dating.”

“Okay, good.” Sam did not know whether to be relieved that at least they were on the same page about this, or disappointed that they were not dating after all.

“So, people have been talking?” Bucky cocked his head. He was still staring, as if he was trying to read Sam’s mind.

“Everyone in Delacroix thinks we’re a couple. Even Sarah.”

“That a problem?”

“Not exactly. Would’ve just been weird to be in a relationship and be the last one to find out about it, you know?”

Bucky snorted. “If it’s any consolation, it’s news to me, too.” He considered Sam for a moment, never once blinking. “Doesn’t mean I’m opposed to it.”

Huh. Sam did not know what to make of this nonchalant and yet so monumental comment. “Uh. Let’s walk a bit?” He needed time to digest this information. And also he preferred to not discuss his relationship status in front of New York City Hall.

Bucky nodded and so they strolled through the adjoining park. It was easier to talk like this than when Bucky was standing in front of him and staring him down.

“You know, I wouldn’t mind it either,” Sam finally said because it felt like it was his turn to assure Bucky that the feeling was mutual.

“Ah. Alright.” Bucky was silent for some time but then he said, “People will think what they think. Might as well go along with it.”

“At this point just going along with it is probably easier than trying to explain to them that we’re not dating.” Sam chanced a sideways glance at Bucky, caught his eye and found him grinning.

“Yup. I mean, if even your sister is convinced, she’s probably right.”

“So we’re doing this.”

“Fine with me.”

“Great.”

They exchanged another glance, both grinning. They might walk a little faster, with a spring in their step, but nothing else had changed.

“Just one thing,” Sam said. “If anyone asks us when and how we got together, we’re not going to tell them it happened like this. Because that’s just too embarrassing. I’m Captain America, I can’t have that.”

“You mean we need a cover-up story?”

“An anniversary.”

Bucky was still grinning but then he got that manic look in his eyes that told Sam that he was about to do something very risky and very stupid.

“How about when you saved me from that truck in Germany?”

Sam stopped dead. “No way. Please don’t tell me that got you hot. Seriously, Buck.”

“Nah.” Bucky shrugged. “Not in that situation anyway, that was just adrenaline and it was mostly painful, the way your knee kept hitting me everywhere. But, you know. Thinking back on it. Or imagining it happening again…”

“Jesus.” Sam made a mental note to educate Bucky on the safe, sane and consensual part of sex, emphasis on safe and sane. “Just for your information, if you get yourself under a truck on purpose, I won’t save you again.” Because it had been uncomfortable and not to mention potentially life-threatening. Still. There was something to be said about imagining it. Sam swooping in to gracefully save Bucky from a dangerous situation, them being pressed so close to each other, Bucky telling him in a low and breathless voice, “Nice job, Cap,” and then something about wanting to thank him –

“No, that’s definitely not when we started dating,” Sam insisted, heat creeping up his neck. “I can’t remember a day when you were more annoying and that’s counting the day when you jumped onto my car and ripped my steering wheel out.”

“Then what’s your suggestion for our anniversary? I need to know so I can buy you plastic flowers.”

Sam could not help but laugh. What a dork. Now he knew Bucky was going to buy him the most hideous plastic flowers ever. “When you came to Louisiana to help fix the boat. That one at least makes sense.”

“I don’t know. There were some witnesses who saw me passed out on Sarah’s couch. Not much happening that night for me.”

“The next morning then. When you came to the boat and…” Sam remembered it all too clearly. The early morning light, their hushed voices, every word seemingly too much in that small, quiet place. “I wanted to kiss you then,” he admitted. Everything about Bucky had been so soft that morning, his hair, his eyes, his shirt, his words. Now Sam’s heart was hammering so loudly in his chest that he wondered if Bucky could hear it with his supersoldier senses.

“I would have liked that,” Bucky said softly. Gone was the grin. Bucky was giving him such an open, earnest look that made Sam’s heart speed up even more but at the same time, it calmed him down.

All he managed in response was “good” and a (probably giddy) smile.

“Why didn’t you do it?” Bucky asked.

“Wasn’t sure if you’d got your head out of your ass yet.” Or if it was reciprocated.

One corner of Bucky’s mouth quirked up in self-deprecation. “Fair enough.”

“Yeah. But…”

“No witnesses there who could refute that we hooked up on that boat.”

“We totally hooked up there.”

“And it was, uh… great?”

“Definitely was.”

Again they were stupidly grinning at each other and Sam was amazed how much he liked the crinkles around Bucky’s eyes when he did that.

“If someone asks for details…” Sam could hardly believe his own nerve because this was not something Sam Wilson did but somehow – contrary to first (and second) impressions – everything was easy with Bucky. “Well. I should know what to say.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Or you could just not say anything? God, that’s really not something that other people need to know, it’s personal, what is wrong with people, what happened to don’t kiss and tell?”

“So you’re going to be old school about it?” As long as it did not involve plastic flowers, Sam would be able to put up with it. He had experience with centenarian supersoldiers after all.

“Well, I am old. But other than that, it’s just decent human behaviour. Still can’t believe you asked me out via text messaging, by the way.”

Bucky was scowling, and because Sam could do it now, he placed his thumb against the crease between Bucky’s brows and tried to smooth it out. Bucky lightly swatted his hand away and rolled his eyes again.

“What would you have preferred?” Sam said. “A seaside rendezvous with a picnic? A candlelight dinner?”

Bucky’s frown only deepened and Sam could practically hear the cyborg gears start to turn and rattle. “Did you just say we should have sex?”

So he had figured it out, finally. “Your place isn’t far, is it?”

“I don’t even have a bed. And no, it’s bad enough that you think flirting via text messages is okay but when I make love to you for the first time, it’s not gonna be on the floor, that’s for sure.”

Sam did not know what to say to that. His chest had constricted at Bucky’s word and he really wanted to kiss that frown away but they should probably first discuss how comfortable they were with public displays of affection. In a direct and open way. Because no matter how much Sam enjoyed making fun of Bucky, it was not fair to leave Bucky always guessing and confused when it came to their relationship.

“Right.” Sam cleared his throat because that word had come out a bit croaked. “Not sure how you feel about it and it’s totally fine if you want to do it differently but you’re a supersoldier, so.” Sam raised his eyebrows. “Doing it standing up, against a wall – shouldn’t be a problem for you, right?”

Bucky shrugged. “I’ve just never.” He gestured vaguely and Sam silently waited for him to finish his sentence, trying to broadcast that he would accept whatever was going to come next. Never had sex? Never had sex with a man?

“I mean,” Bucky finally said, waving his hands some more but he kept looking at Sam, not trying to hide any of his vulnerability, and Sam once more thought how brave that man was. “I’ve never had sex in this body, only before. I don’t know, anything could happen.”

Sam nodded to show it was alright. “You know what? Let’s buy a bed first.” He tried to give Bucky a reassuring smile. “And then we can still decide if we want to find out what could happen.”

“Can I at least buy you dinner first?”

Sam’s heart was doing funny things again. “Sure. Any plans?”

“Do you know Sushi?”

Sam snorted. “Risky move. I’m a Wilson, I have opinions on seafood.” (Who was he kidding, he would let Bucky drag him to the cheapest sushi chain and stuff his face with half defrosted mock crab.)

“You’re really going to make me work for it, aren’t you?”

The comment was light-hearted enough and anyway, they had already established that it was Bucky, not Sam who insisted on dinner first. So they easily fell back into their usual back and forth. “I’m not letting you get away with that whole I’m a confused old man, that’s for sure,” Sam said.

Bucky shrugged, an easy smirk playing around his lips. “Come on.” They started walking again, maybe a little closer than usually so their arms bumped together all the time. They didn’t necessarily need to hold hands here in New York but back in Delacroix where everyone was already under the impression that they were a couple…

“Hey, Buck?” Sam nudged him lightly. “It’s gonna be fine.”

#sambucky fic #winterfalcon #sam wilson #bucky barnes #tfatws #my writing

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jason-pipers · 3 years

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the jason/piper breakup and jason’s subsequent death

it is a long and angry post so you have been warned

I’m really sick of seeing Jason Grace/Piper McLean slander in their own tag, and I’m really, really sick of seeing people justify their breakup/his death as good writing.

As I’ve been studying literature and text for the past four years at Uni- I can say with absolute confidence that The Burning Maze utilizing Jason and Piper was horrible. Like a bag of shit mixed together then smeared on paper and published kind of horrible. Actually, you don’t even really need a degree to be able to point out the very basic absurdity of them appearing in TBM. So even though I have a paper due on a completely unrelated topic and a lot of homework, I naturally decided this was a much better thing to write about:

Maybe in another world, Rick’s ghostwriters will be better at writing his books. The reason why the Jason/Piper breakup was extremely confusing and done very poorly in the sense of their character arcs was that there was no buildup to the breakup. In fact, I think these two got together off-screen and broke up off-screen. Yet, I’m sure Riordan sat at his desk thinking “now why don’t people just like Jason and Piper?? I give them so much!” Actually, you gave them nothing. It’s also considerably easy to disguise their breakup as logical when it isn’t. Now, people will argue that the basic foundation of the relationship was poorly made because of Hera’s meddling and that’s why they broke up. This is a lazy way to think about it because it’s obvious you don’t care about the characters so you should just say that and go. Hera’s meddling (putting false memories of Jason in Piper’s head and wiping Jason’s brain) really only gave Piper a vague notion of Jason (based on real attributes the Mist pulls) and also gave PERCY and Jason multiple relationships after the switcheroo. But Piper actually meets Jason and then has a subsequent breakdown that maybe he’s not her boyfriend. However, once she gets to know the real Jason (very accurate to the one she knew in her memories because Aphrodite said she could sense real possibilities hinting at their romance), she is still developing romantic feelings for him. It’s implied that the reason why Piper is falling so fast is because the memories she has of Jason are based on the real Jason. It’s easy to establish that Piper has real romantic feelings for Jason, not the made up Jason because the majority of TLH is them getting to know each other. If she felt like there was some confusion on her part about developing feelings for him because of Hera switching Percy and Jason- why did it not come up EVER? The months where Jason and Piper started dating. How about that long ass quest on the Argo? It could have been a valid plot line but it never came up. If it had come up near the end of the series or maybe even if it was a small subplot in the series, it would make the breakup logical, at least narratively. But no, we end Blood of Olympus with Jason and Piper coming full circle with the moment in the stars. Flash forward three years later to TBM where everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) about Piper and Jason are thrown into the trash. They’re broken up due to the false memories and overall I guess it’s implied Piper doesn’t have feelings for him anymore or something? Or the trauma of being in something like that prophecy was a lot for her to handle and she needed some time to figure things out? Yeah of course! Just like when she will go through another trauma (Jason dying for her) and start dating someone new right after. This would be so much easier to read and digest if these things are shown- in their own series and maybe not as a side thing to Apollo’s series. Reading it in TOA was completely out of left field. I know SO MANY PEOPLE were like that makes so much sense! Good for you Piper! But I was like girl, who are you? I feel like I have not spent any time with you and none of what you’re saying is connecting to anything you were like before. Which leads me to believe people just did not like Piper in HOO but just say that and go. HOO Piper is not TBM/TOA Piper. RR doesn’t know how to characterize his own goddamn characters. Furthermore, everything in canon up until TBM implies and directly states that Jason and Piper are endgame. It’s not to say they didn’t have problems that were resolved or that the way they got together was conventional. There was not even a smidge bit of reluctance to admit they were canon endgame- I think RR even had Cupid involved. There was no prediction or even hint of what would happen in TBM in HOO, which is a very big narrative problem. Jason, always isolated by loved ones and quite frankly always shouldering way more than a human can handle dies exactly the way he suffers. There is no growth or even a small lovely moment where we can see Jason.

This brings me to the most unnecessary death I’ve ever read in my life. I know RR’s ego hurt from the complaints about Jason/Piper/Frank/Hazel/Leo (basically a non-Percabeth character) being underdeveloped. I know his ego was fucked when he “killed” Leo but didn’t really kill Leo so everyone was like what the fuck. I know he wanted to prove he is a good writer but like any other bad writer, he decided to jump the shark. And I know he wanted Jason and Piper to be more likable but the fandom really wanted a Leo-esque character. The breakup really happened because he wanted to demonstrate to critics that he could live with couples not being endgame and knew Jasiper was relatively unpopular compared to Percabeth/Caleo/etc. He wasn’t thinking in terms of ‘does this fit what I’ve created’ but in terms of ‘people might be like oh shit this is violent and they’re finally gone!’. I don’t know what idiotic thought process made him reach the point of killing one of them but he obviously got there. See, there is no difference between Jason or Piper dying in TBM. It could’ve easily been Piper who was impaled by Caligula and reminded Apollo “what it’s like to be human”. They were made *that* insignificant in TBM. Pretty much fucking interchangeable. IN DEATH. It also could’ve been anybody else in the world. It could’ve been that cheerleader from The Battle of the Labyrinth. It could’ve been Piper’s dad. It could have been Sally Jackson. Not a single part of Jason’s death was really related to Jason or his growth. Jason was the main/lead from HOO and if he was destined to die (which he wasn’t because RR doesn’t think anything through anymore), he should have died in his own series. That would make his sacrifice more compelling and important, but dying in TOA is just a big fuck you to his character. I think the only equivalent I can think of is if HOO had solely been Jason’s series but RR pulled up Percy to simply kill him and then just kept writing. What the fuck does TOA have anything to do with Jason or Piper? Or even Leo? I usually love when characters make cameo appearances to remind us of the past we loved them in. Kind of like when Lynda Carter appeared as Asteria in WW1984. Conversely, involving them in the plot and then using them as a plot device for the main character- AKA USING YOUR MAIN CHARACTER AS A PLOT DEVICE FOR ANOTHER MAIN CHARACTER IN A SEPARATE SERIES- is not only dumb but it truly makes everything else you’ve written for the first main character devoid of any real significance. Jason was never a fully fleshed-out character, the way he deserved to be written, because RR couldn’t world build as well as he thought and that ‘every single character gets a POV’ didn’t do the legendary thing he thought it did. However, anything that mattered about Jason was pretty much killed in TBM because he was easily killed by a villain that was not even remotely interested in Jason or aware of his existence. What does FUCK does Caligula mean to Jason? Nothing. Did the final battle create a full circle for Jason other than the line “remember?” which is not really related to his amnesia- no. His character arc was about an identity crisis- being pushed and pulled in two directions. Jason barely means anything to Apollo so RR using Jason as a convenient kill to send home a message is also shitty for Apollo. Lead hero characters can die- they sometimes just have to. Marissa Cooper’s death in the OC narratively makes sense due to the nature of the character being a damsel in distress from the very beginning- a foil to her counterpart, Ryan Atwood. But in this case, RR knew he had to shock people to keep getting $$$. I never got the impression RR cared about Jason or Piper, especially since he was incredibly disrespectful and lazy when writing about Piper. (For that- I can link really detailed posts explaining his racism). The truth is Riordan cannot live without putting his characters in relationships- Frazel, Caleo, Tyson/Ella (?), Hedge/Mellie- but he wanted to prove that he could which is why Jasiper broke up.

Piper’s girlfriend in TON- I didn’t read TON for the reasons above and I don’t think I’ll ever read a Riordan book again: I did find out that Piper gets a GF in TON which at first I thought was incredibly neat but then later became angry when I learned it was only months after Jason’s death? I have always wanted Piper to explore her sexuality but RR has this case of never giving important things the development it deserves. He’s incredibly messy and inconsistent when he creates lgbtqia+ characters, usually only including them so he can get credit for including them. He’s never actually explored Piper’s sexuality fully in the series, but he threw her in yet another relationship we didn’t get to read about right after she was almost beaten to death and then witnessed the murder of her ex-boyfriend. If you think that is representation, please rethink that. We don’t get to hear her talk about anything at all, except maybe mentioning the girl’s name. A subtle hint. Just representation is not good representation and it is right that we demand better representation. Don’t settle for less. For fuck’s sake, Riverdale is only really good at queerbaiting but they get so much praise. (Do they? At this point I can’t tell). If we wanted to explore Piper’s sexuality, it could have been done while she was with Jason or even broken up with him in her own series- why didn’t RR explore the nature of being lgbtqia+ in an Indigenous family? He had the chance to demonstrate an awareness of intersectionality through Piper but he fucked up. He had so much to write about. So, people who are yelling happily about that Piper appearance in TON-???

This was long and frustrating to write. But I had feelings.

#jason grace #Piper McLean #percy jackson #pjo #jasiper #jasper #jiper #toa #trials of apollo #Heroes of Olympus

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unnaturalequilibrium · 3 years

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Netflix spends most of it’s time projectile vomiting various shows and movies with the same intellectual sustenance as primordial goo. But in their defense they also buy content that sometimes actually hits the spot. And the Galican show Bitter Daisies is probably one of the better things that’s landed in their catalog since Demoni (don’t judge).

Or maybe it’s just me. Between the German Dead End and this, maybe I have a type (watch them both and you’ll know what I mean). But also in general I like female detectives solving crimes. Even if Dead End was a lot easier to digest compared to this hellscape of a world in which Detective Rosa Vargas exists in, but I still got viewing pleasure out of this. I don’t necessarily recommend it if you are not feeling very strong mentally. It’s a show about sexual violence against women and human trafficking, and it’s every bit as dark as that might suggest, even darker than you can imagine in some places. But you also get this main character that is...she’s the classic anti-hero gruff detective, you know that role that is usually only reserved for men. She’s not necessarily a good person, but she’s got a strict compass she works by which makes her a good protagonist to follow and root for.

Full disclosure though, the topic is heavy enough that had it not been for this extremely engaging main I probably couldn’t have finished it. Also more disclosure, in part why the main is so engaging is because she is a very attractive woman (I am but a mortal lesbian) and she seems to prefer women when it comes to sharing intimacy which immediately makes the character 275% more interesting (even if none of her brief intimacies end well). That said, for what it is, I think it does it well beyond my own personal biases. If dark crime is your cup of tea then go for it, you won’t be disappointed. You’re not in for a bed of roses and there are no sweet smelling pink clouds of fluff, but know your genre and if you enjoy revenge fiction - yeah have at it.

In general though, why aren’t there more shows like this? Troubled detective with brief romantic dalliances and a hard-boiled sensibility seem like a genre that is born to fulfilled by lesbian characters. Tell me why this does not happen more often?!

#Bitter Daisies #O sabor das margaridas #wlw fiction

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novantinuum · 4 years

Link

Fandom: Steven Universe

Pairing: Steven/Connie

Rating: Teen Audiences

Words: 2.6K~

Summary: In which Connie’s subconscious, innocent touch helps Steven realize just how nice the sensation of gentle fingertips gliding across the surface of one’s gem can be. (Just a bunch of teen romance fluff, + first kiss)

This is set like... a few weeks before Steven leaves Beach City. I imagine he’s been recovering from what happened in I Am My Monster for at least 6 months by this point.

His days aren’t always great- there’s a lot of ups and downs- but thankfully, today is a markedly pleasant one.

_____

His house is still for once. Impossibly so. No Diamond business, no new arrivals to Earth, no disgruntled Gems kicking down his front door. No more battles, beyond his own internal ones. Admittedly, a part of him is happy for the peace and quiet. He’s appreciative of the way all his family and friends rallied around him in support months back after... erm- after his breakdown, but every guy needs some space eventually.

‘Some space’ never has to mean alone, of course.

Steven sneaks a doe-eyed glance at the girl flopped next to him on the living room couch, her mind lost in the pages of her own fantasy world. It’s a new series, something about a human accidentally falling into the world of the fae. (It’s only been like, half an hour, and she’s almost a hundred pages in already!) A pliable smile teases his lips as he watches her eyes flicker back and forth, digesting each passage with a voracious hunger. Sighing in content, he turns his attention back to his own book, externally making as if he’s busy exploring the world of fiction to hide the sappy fact that instead he’s been thinking about her all along. Honestly? He adores quiet days like these. Even if they’re not doing anything special, it’s just nice to get to spend time alone together. It’s a comfortable together.

Connie shifts, instinctively curling closer, her free arm slung against his side. With a soft hum of content he leans into her welcomed embrace, trying his best (and— caught in her innocently bewitching presence— failing abysmally) to focus on the wandering lines of text.

Everything is peaceful.

No hard knocks, no frenzied phone calls, no family disruptions. The domestic warp hasn’t even activated once this whole lazy afternoon. In recent days, he’s pretty sure that’s a record.

At long last, his house is still... and yet in a flash, his hormone riddled teenage mind— ever foolish— is everything but.

Because Connie’s touch is tickling him.

It’s subconscious, almost imperceptible at first. At some point her free hand has roved so that it’s no longer pressed against his side, but against his midriff— which is currently exposed, his shirt bunched up at the waist from all his slouching. Teasingly, her fingertips dance upon the facets of his gem with the pinpoint expertise of a prima ballerina, encoding an endless rhythm directly into the sum of his being, the feather-light contact sending vibrations almost too faint to notice coursing through his hard light veins. But not too faint for him. Not now, not while host to this kind of silence. Not when the girl draped on the couch next to him unknowingly commands every shard of his attention with the slightest twitch of her index finger.

It’s taking all his willpower not to squirm at this ticklish contact right now. It’s so... weird when other people touch his gem. It’s certainly not something he’s used to.

(Steven promptly buries the memory of the last time someone touched it, refusing to let old terrors tarnish an otherwise pleasurable encounter. He can feel the pink threatening to rise in his cheeks, that instinctual rush of panic he’s grown so numb to over the past months rearing its ugly head. It’s so, so hard to wrestle away from its thrall sometimes, but thankfully his therapist has been teaching him ways to mitigate these sorta reactions. His eyes clamp shut as he breathes deep through his nose and focuses on the tangible, on what he knows: the plump, lumpy cushions of the couch under him, the slight scent of garlic and cumin in the air from the lunch he cooked a few hours ago, the rhythmic crashing of waves outside the house. The warmth of his best friend by his side—)

Tap, taptaptap, tap, taptaptap...

His cheeks bloom a human red as her lulling rhythm continues.

Like he said, it’s obviously subconscious. It has to be, right? It would certainly make sense. From his observations, Connie’s always been a tactile thinker. It’s part of what made her such a quick study in sword fighting. Whenever her mind is alight, those beautiful neurons firing back and forth like a firework display, her body is in motion. Sometimes it’s her foot, tapping impatiently into the dirt as she parses through memory to find the precise words to say. Or it’s like how she memorizes facts for tests easier if she’s jogging, listening to audio recordings of the test materials she made herself. And then there’s times like now, when Connie is reading. When her fingers tap and glide with an almost impish touch across the diamond gemstone in his belly’s center as her eyes— by all appearances entirely disconnected from both her hand’s motion and his reaction— skim effortlessly across the unfolding tale on her page. Her hands... oh, those hands... calloused, warm, digits lithe and curious in their movement. They’re always shifting, always tapping, always twitching to some identifiable rhythm. Is this just another example of her sway towards more kinetic-based thinking? Or... is it something else? A silent yearning that extends its roots from the heart into object reality, innocently unaware of the power of its call?

Stars, Steven thinks, mustering with all his strength to ignore his burning face, so maybe I’ve been thinking a little too much about her lately...

Eventually, it all becomes a bit too overwhelming to handle. If this continues in silence any longer, well... well, heck. He doesn’t even want to imagine what embarrassing things could happen. Mustering up all his courage, he flips his book shut and drops it on the cushion beside him.

“Um, Connie? By the way? That’s kinda ticklish,” he squeaks out, voice high and reedy.

Upon his words, she notices where her fingers are subconsciously tapping and immediately pulls her hand away, her cheeks flushing dark. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she says, quickly tossing her book aside and shifting upright on the couch. “I didn’t mean to goose ya’! I wasn’t even thinking abo—“

“No, it’s okay!” he interjects with an open hand. “I’m fine, really, I am. I- it’s not like, uh- It isn’t like a bother, and- well, it just—“

Burning up with such a ferocity that he’s about one impulsive decision away from high tailing it out of this fraught social situation and dunking his glowing pink head right into the Atlantic, he forces himself to hush before he says something super stupid and humiliating in front of his best friend in the whole world that he’ll regret and replay in his dreams forever and ever for the rest of his days.

Okay, Steven, stop running your mouth like a lovesick fool for one second and think. How can you say this in a way that doesn’t sound entirely stupid and/or weird?

Watching him closely, curiosity written across every vibrant feature, Connie inclines her head ever so slight, a subtle, wordless gesture— one only a Jam Bud could understand— for him to keep going.

The phantom sensation of her fingers tapping against crystal rushes through his nerves like the physical analogue to a bad ear worm. He reaches up to itch at the side of his neck, unable to fully stifle his nervous laughter.

“Honestly, it uh- it actually felt pretty nice?”

“What, me touching your gem?”

“Yeah,” he manages to croak out, voice cracking like it hadn’t since he was freshly fifteen.

She isn’t able to fully stifle her giggle at this, pressing her hand tight to her mouth far too late.

His heart nearly plummets at the sound of her teasing laughter, the constant thrumming of his hard light veins steadily quickening as a flood of energy pulses just below the surface. He knew he shouldn’t have said anything, he knew it was far too much after every other recent misstep he’s made in their relationship! Why couldn’t he have just kept his trap shut?

“Aw, geeze,” he says, voice thick and his every muscle ready to bolt, “this is so embarrassing—“

“No, no! I shouldn’t have laughed, it’s okay!” she jumps in, pressing her hand to his shoulder to help ground him “It’s just bodies, Steven. It’s not weird. It’s just how skin-to-skin contact works. It’s supposed to feel good, because we’re meant to be social creatures, y’know?”

He hums softly in agreement, taking the offered moment to ease himself down from brink of panic. He focuses intently on the weight of her hand, resting feather-light against him. It’s a small gesture, but a powerful one. More than anything, more than words alone could say, it’s a promise. A reaffirmation, moment by moment. I’m here. We’re here. It’s a truth even the sobering reality of shared trauma can’t hope to erase: that even when the going’s tough, they have each other.

Connie brushes a stray stand of hair behind her ear then, shifting on the couch. Perhaps out of a sum of bashfulness, her eyes drift, not quite able to meet his.

“I- it’s silly, but I guess I never considered that you could even feel sensation through your gem,” she admits.

“Really? But you’ve had a gem before. Well, shared a gem,” he corrects himself, though in the end it’s all semantics.

“Well, sure, but when we’re Stevonnie, they don’t tend to think about stuff like that, because you’re used to it, and I’ve never thought about it. It’s simply... normal for them, I guess.”

“Hahah, yeah. It’s always been that way for me,” he says with a soft chuckle. “I never crawled like a normal kid, d’ya know? Dad says I always used to move around by scooting on my butt. When I tried crawling my gem would scrape against the floor, and apparently? I hated it.”

She laughs for real this time, (with him, not at him), her voice ringing true and beautiful and clear like a bell. His heart swells with joy.

And then...

Connie’s lithe fingers reach towards his midsection, hesitantly at first, before— in careful consideration of boundaries— pausing in their voyage entirely.

Her eyes lock with his, her shy expression wholly giving up the chase on what her request will be before she ever shifts her tongue to ask in words. “Is it okay if-?”

“Always,” he says, gently leading her hand under the hem of his shirt and towards the gemstone at his core.

He can’t help his sharp inhale when he feels her fingertips dance across his facets once more. Even when he knows what’s coming, knows to expect this contact, it’s funny. Not funny in a ‘haha’ way, funny in an ‘I’m not used to this’ way. After all, he’s never exactly made a habit of touching his own gem beyond periodic cleaning, and (almost) no one else has ever had a purpose to. It’s for this reason that a small traumatized segment of his mind still can’t help but spiral in panic about the mere concept of any external being brushing against this treasure, this tangible half of his very essence. Given the nightmares he’s been through, he’d have every right to deny her touch. But with Connie... beyond everything else, allowing her in this way is the greatest show of vulnerability he knows how to give.

It’s his proof to her that in this moment, he trusts her implicitly, without question.

Gracefully, she traces her finger around the edge of his gem, lines each individual facet in turn. It’s ticklish at first, much like before, but as she grows more confident in her gentle exploration he finds himself relaxing under her touch. He feels warm, a faint buzz of content flooding his system through his hard light veins. With her, he feels safe.

“It really is beautiful, you know that?” she says, a peaceful expression settling across her features. “Your gem.”

“Nah, you’re beautiful...” he murmurs bashfully, cheeks flushing.

“So are you,” she replies in swift measure, eyes soft with endless adoration.

His fluttering heart extends its gossamer wings and soars. If it weren’t for her nestled at his side, lithe fingers running across each facet in even measure, her tactile presence tethering him like an anchor to this present reality, he’s pretty sure he’d have floated halfway to the ceiling by now.

Daringly, his gaze locks with hers. He swears his heart’s beating its own drum solo within his chest, but this time it’s not because of fear, not at all.

It’s the feeling of freedom.

His fingers loop around a stray strand of hair that’s fallen in front of her eyes. That seems to happen a lot, he’s noticed. As delicate as he can manage, he hooks it back over her ear.

“Can I...?” he whispers, his warm breath brushing against her lips.

She replies in wordless affirmation, leaning forward to close the narrow gap between them. Hooded eyes drift shut. Her hand still rests on his gem as they finally move to cross that final barrier, that fuzzy, oft indistinguishable line drawn between childhood sweethearts and could-be couple, and kiss.

Well, attempt to, anyways.

To be fair, despite his schmaltzy roots, Steven only has movies and books to pull from as an example.

Their noses bump against each other’s at first. Both giggling, they tilt their heads to compensate and then mash their lips together, reveling in every ridiculous moment of their joint inexperience. It’s definitely sloppy, and he doesn’t have a clue where he’s supposed to put his hands or how long is too long, or how he’s supposed to move his mouth against hers, or— stars, did he even remember to brush his teeth this morning?? He sure hopes so— but because it’s with Connie all of that doesn’t matter. It’s perfect in every way.

“OoooOOOoo, looks like loverboy’s finally gettin’ some!”

He and Connie startle at the interruption, pulling apart from each other with equally flushed faces to match eyes with their surprise visitor.

It’s Amethyst, leaning against the kitchen table with a downright roguish smirk, probably thinking she’s the funniest Gem that’s ever emerged. Of course, who else would it be? (Though, which entrance did she come in from? When did she sneak past them? Were they really so involved with each other that they just... failed to notice??)

“Crude,” he says, brows creased with faint annoyance.

In return, she cups her cheeks and serves him the most ridiculous, schmaltzy expression she can muster. “Sap!”

Connie stifles a laugh at her exaggerated antics, but on his side he can’t help but be salty that her interruption yanked the two of them away from the blissful throes of blossoming teenage romance.

“Oh, get outta here, you,” he chimes back, and playfully tosses one of the couch’s pillow straight towards her face. “Shoo!”

The quartz Gem catches it out of midair and grins, no stranger to tests of reflex these days. Adopting a fake posh voice, she fires back her retort. “Your wish is my command, Sir Sappington...”

Tucking the pillow under her arm, she turns on her heels and skips up and over the warp pad’s platform, stalking towards her room with a victorious air. She doesn’t even try to mask her lovingly teasing snickers as the door splits in two at her command and she crosses the barrier into the temple’s dimension warping interior. The last they hear from her before the passageway shuts is an overly triumphant ‘whoop.’ Steven can’t help but raise a scandalized brow at this. What, were the Gems hosting a betting pool about him and Connie, or something?

But thankfully, in time, the beach house grows peaceful again. They’re alone together, and together they’re content.

“Geeze, sorry about that,” he says bashfully, scratching at the nape of his neck. “You know how Amethyst is, heh heh.”

Connie smirks with loving, mischievous intent, comfortably cuddling up against his shoulder. “She’s kinda right, though...”

“About?”

“You can be pretty sappy sometimes,” she says fondly, and tilts her head so she can smooch his cheek. “Just one of the many reasons I love you.”

____

Notes:

So, given that I’ve also written a fic wherein Steven wakes up feeling a hand against his gem and has a panic attack, a word of explanation with my headcanons-

Ultimately, I imagine there’s a very stark difference between a trusted individual like Connie touching his gem when he’s fully alert and it’s just them, alone, safe... and him waking up and being groggy enough to not immediately realize who it is next to him.

In the end though, I just hope Steven would be able to reclaim a once-terrifying experience (someone else touching his gem) as something that is also able to be loving and comforting when it’s done with consent.

#su #su future #steven universe #connie maheswaran #connverse #su fanfiction #steven/connie #amethyst #my writing stuff

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nanoland · 3 years

Text

Title: Besyd the scarcety of bread amowngst us

Fandom: Supernatural

Pairing: Crowley/Dean Winchester

Summary: In which Dean asks a question.

Warnings: Crowley being Extremely traumatized and kind of oblivious to that fact + SPN demons being SPN demons (i.e. remorseless bodysnatchers) + Dean being his casually misogynistic self + graphic descriptions of starvation + exhibitionism (sorta?) + sexually explicit content because this was MEANT to be straightforward smut and then Crowley happened, the prick.

Also on AO3!

“So how come you aren’t a hot chick?”

The glass stills an inch from Crowley’s pale lips. “I humbly beg your pardon?”

It’s late. The bar’s quiet. He doesn’t need Dean to repeat himself. Just a moment to decide on a response.

Well on the way to utterly shit-faced, Dean gestures vaguely, meaninglessly. “You offer people stuff. Then, ten years later, you drag ‘em to Hell. And – and they know that’s what’s gonna happen if they make a deal with you. Which means that you gotta be real fuckin’ persuasive. Which you are. Grade A Bullshit Artist and don’t I know it. But... uh, what was I gonna… yeah, wouldn’t it be easier, right, just way easier if you were a hot chick?”

Crowley can tell he’s not done, so he keeps his silver tongue behind his faintly yellowed teeth for the moment.

While Dean is usually delightful company, in his surly, macho way, this evening there’s an uncommonly obnoxious edge to everything he says. That almost certainly means his insecurities over what he’s been letting Crowley do to his arse lately are acting up.

Understandable. Still annoying.

So Crowley’s more than willing to let his favourite human dig himself a wee bit deeper before pouring boiling tar into the pit.

After quickly throwing back the last of his drink, Dean goes on: “Now, I didn’t go to some dickslurp business school. I ain’t that brand of asshole. But I’ve seen enough beer ads in my time to have an idea of how marketing works. You got something you want people to buy? Fastest way is to get a hot chick in a bikini to hold it up. Because guys have most of the money in this shitty world of ours and guys think with their dicks. I know I do. So why did you decide to possess someone who looks like a balding, middle-aged banker going through a stressful divorce? That ain’t enticing. That ain’t capturing anyone’s interest. Y’know?”

“Mm,” says Crowley, and stands up.

“Fuck’re you doing?” Dean slurs, watching him take off his tie.

“Ever heard of the Seven Ill Years, Squirrel?”

“Nope. Seriously, what’re you doing?”

Draping his overcoat over the back of his chair along with his tie, Crowley sets about taking off his jacket. “‘The Seven Ill Years’ refers to a particularly shitty time in early modern Scotland; the 1690s.”

He tugs off his costly leather shoes and places them side-by-side under his chair. “I was in my… early thirties at the time, I think. Thirty-two? Maybe thirty-one. Whatever.”

Dean is gaping now. He’s never seen Crowley without his outer layers, much less the growing slice of exposed chest as Crowley unbuttons his shirt.

“For a lot of complicated reasons relating to oceanic thermohaline circulation, solar activity, and a few ill-timed volcanos, the weather turned rotten. These days, it’s called the Little Ice Age. Us pigshit stupid peasants who lived through it didn’t know anything about all that. All we knew was that it was freezing bloody cold and the crops kept dying.”

“Dude,” Dean hisses, red-faced as Crowley sets his shirt alongside his jacket and overcoat. “Stop it! We’re going to be thrown out!”

“No. Look around. Is anyone paying attention to us? Precisely. We’re invisible to them at the moment, Squirrel. One of my little tricks.”

“Oh. Okay, that’s good. But that’s still not an excuse to take your fucking pants off in public oh my God oh my God!”

They’re expensive pants and Crowley takes care to fold them before putting them down. “To cut a long story short; famine struck. And famine, it’s…”

Crowley pauses, thinking, ignoring Dean’s pathetic attempts not to gawk at his dick.

“It’s hard to describe famine to someone who hasn’t lived through one,” he says eventually. “Language – English, at least – isn’t equipped to convey what it feels like to be so hungry you’ll try to boil and eat someone else’s shoes. Then someone else’s children. Then your own children. There are no words for it. Or, if in some distant corner of our monstrous universe there are, then they’re words that would drive a human raving mad to speak them.”

Naked now but for his black socks, Crowley scratches his stubble. “Sometimes I think that’s why I got on so well in Hell.”

He sits back in his chair. Folds his legs. Taps his fingers on the side of his empty glass. “Don’t get me wrong; having someone cut open your lungs, fill them with scorpions, and sew them up again isn’t fun. But – how can I put this? – you can process it. You can grapple with it. You know why you’re suffering; because you’re in Hell, and that’s what Hell is for. It makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is going about your everyday life and watching all the people around you – the baker, the priest, the prettiest girl in the village – go about theirs while they turn into walking skeletons. And knowing they didn’t do anything to deserve it. Couldn’t have done anything to deserve it, because no crime, no matter how vile, warrants that kind of punishment.”

Dean says nothing.

After a moment, Crowley pulls himself from the dark, sucking well of memory to add, “Anyway, to answer your question; I don’t want to be a hot chick because a. I’m a man and b. hot chicks are skinny, and I will cheerfully burn this world to the ground before I endure living in a hungry body ever again.”

He glances down at his unclothed meat suit and smiles proudly, running a hand up one of its thick thighs. “Also – y’know – I personally think this long-deceased lad of mine is sexy as Hell.”

Gazing at his shoulder, Dean says roughly, “Didn’t know you had tattoos.”

“Oh. Those. Yeah. Can’t stand them. Worst decision the stupid bastard ever made.”

“I think they’re kinda cool.”

“Do you? Well, you do have incredibly bad taste so perhaps that’s not surprising. Now, are you going to get over here and put that erection to good use?”

Oh, bless him; he’s adorable when he squirms.

“Here?” Dean asks, eyes wide.

“Here.”

He says it like a challenge, for Dean can never resist one of those. Immediately, those wide eyes become narrow and determined.

The boy stands. Looms over Crowley, who casually flicks both their glasses to the floor and moves to sit on the cool wooden table. It’s clean, more or less, thanks to Dean (for once) agreeing to follow Crowley to a semi-respectable establishment.

“These hands,” Crowley murmurs, running them across Dean’s broad chest, “don’t have a single callous or scar. See? Soft as butter. Not a single day’s honest work, either of them.”

Dean swallows. Leans in to kiss him, hesitant and gentle.

Contrary to popular belief, Crowley likes gentle. Or, more accurately, Crowley likes being pampered.

He goes on: “And these legs…”

A groan escapes Dean’s lips as one presses up against his crotch.

“…these legs haven’t walked more than ten miles, collectively, since I moved in. No muscles. No blisters on the undersides of their feet. Not so much as a splinter.”

“Jesus,” Dean mumbles, drawing him in and latching onto his neck.

“And this stomach is never empty. Never even close. Never once forced to digest anything that isn’t purely, perfectly delicious. I treat my meat suits better than most people treat their family heirlooms.”

“Crowley. Fuck.”

He squeezes Dean’s arse and growls, “Because this is my reward, Dean. I won this. This softness, this safety. This nurtured, nourished flesh. I endured the seventeenth century and all humanity’s horrors. Endured my mother. Endured Hell. Built myself a reputation and a kingdom. All for this. And isn’t it wonderful? Say that it is, Dean.”

“Yeah,” Dean moans, even though he can’t understand a word; Crowley slipped into Gaelic a while ago.

(The things Crowley wants to tell Dean and the things Crowley wants Dean to know are categories that rarely overlap.)

Crowley takes Dean’s leaking cock in hand.

“Say I’m beautiful.”

Dean’s knees buckle as he whimpers, so Crowley wraps an arm around his narrow, underfed waist.

“Say you love me.”

Dean comes in his palm, gasping and cursing.

“Say you love me more than anyone else.”

“I’m guessing that was all Scottish dirty talk?” says Dean when he has his breath back. “You were – what? Calling me your bitch?”

Crowley smirks, licks the sweat off Dean’s jaw, and gives his backside a pat before reaching for his clothes. “None of your business. Go get me another drink, would you? Ta.”

the end

NOTES: The title is taken from a quote found in Karen Cullen’s ‘Famine in Scotland: the ‘Ill Years’ of the 1690s’ (you can find extracts via googlebooks). Yes, canonically Crowley WOULD have been about thirty when this happened. Just in case his origin story wasn’t horrific enough wheee :D

#drowley #dean winchester #crowley #supernatural #spn crowley #my fic

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hypnoticwinter · 3 years

Text

Down the Rabbit Hole part 33

“Fumi?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell me a story.”

“A story?” he says, glancing over. In the vent there’s nothing but the soft squelching of our cleated feet and a drip-drip-drip of a flowing river of sluggish, phlegmy mucus running along a divot over on the left. I nod.

“Yeah, a story. Like, about work. Ranger stuff. I’m sure you’ve got some good stories.”

He laughs. “A few, maybe,” he concedes.

Getting across into the actual flesh of the Pit from the wreck of the LVC had been easier than either of us had thought it would be. The gantry we had been looking for was long gone by the time that we got to the bottom of the LVC, with the only evidence of its passing being a couple of rigid metal rods and torn, rusted grating, but above us was our lucky break – due to the way the Visitor Center had fallen, it had actually cut into the Pit’s gullet on the way down, leaving a long, jagged scar of porous tissue in its wake and, at the very bottom, a gaping, partially-healed hole leading directly into what Fumi said was once the trail downwards to the Gastric Sea. It was a little hairy to begin with; the wound had ruined the previously neat trail, and the Pit had begun to reclaim it. Paths branched off, seemingly at random, that our maps had no record of. Here and there we’d see skittering things darting away from our flashlights, fleeing into pores or deeper, smaller vents we couldn’t see into.

Just copepods, Fumi had said when I asked. Harmless unless you’re alone and they’re feeling particularly brave or hungry. But even so I noticed that he kept his hand resting comfortably on the butt of his pistol, ready to draw it at a moment’s notice, and so I emulated him, and kept a wary eye behind us as we picked our way through the nest of tunnels and warrens and veins.

After I while I became afraid that we might hit a dead end and that we’d not be able to get through to the trail proper, which Fumi said would curve up and around down to the ballast bulbs, but just when I was getting to the point where I thought I might say something about it the vent widened out and Fumi had let out a triumphant whoop. We’re on the right track now, he had assured me, pointing to where we were on the map, and I had let a little involuntary shudder of relief pass over me because finally, finally we could really get going.

Now we’re clambering through a stinking vent that once housed a pedestrian trail. The thing Fumi hadn’t really mentioned is how long it would take. The path that looked so easy and short was in actuality four or five miles, a solid two or three hour hike in an environment like the Pit. My leg is holding up alright so far, especially now that I’m doing less running and jumping and falling, but I don’t think I’ll be able to do more than a couple days’ worth of this. Even with the boot I put my foot down occasionally and get a worrying, bone-deep twinge like a jolt of electricity, feeling like it’s running up some magic conduit from my heel all the way to the top of my head.

You can still see the remains of the trail here and there. Plastic placards, partially dissolved and stained beyond legibility, peeking out from behind masses of tumorous flesh. Rusty chain-link here and there, little strips of it grown over by pale, moisture-slick skin. If you look too closely at anything down here you shudder.

“Alright, I’ve got a story for you,” Fumi says. “Most of the work we do involves escorting supplies down to the deeper installations within the Pit, looking after science teams, making sure nothing and nobody bothers the few little extractions operations for stuff like ballast and bone plates. It’s a lot of wildlife control, basically. Very, very occasionally we’d do interdiction stuff. People get in, try to hide out in here, do all kinds of crap. I remember hearing a story about some guys who were running a drug lab in a trailer out on the very edge of the restricted area on the surface. Only got busted because Makado had to rush out somewhere in a hurry for something or other, I don’t remember what exactly, and she took a helicopter and they happened to fly right over. That really made her crack down on the topside ranger teams, let me tell you.”

“Topside?”

“So basically there are two teams,” he explains. “Us, the Sergeant’s team, we’re Venterial Ops. Anything underground, inside the Pit, we handle. That’s why we have Elena, for example. I don’t know if she told you but her main specialization is cave diving, she used to be in the Coast Guard. The other team is larger, they hang out in the other barracks topside. Overland Ops patrols the surface of the restricted area, handles anything that doesn’t concern the actual Pit itself. A lot of people don’t realize this but the restricted area isn’t just, you know, the Pit, it covers a whole lot of the ground above as well. You need manpower if you’re going to patrol it. With me so far?”

“Yes,” I nod. “So the overland team, they never go down into the Pit?”

“Oh, they train in it occasionally,” Fumi says, waving his hand. “But not to the extent that we do. It’s expensive and difficult and time-consuming just because the Pit is not a particularly good environment to make mistakes in. What if you can’t recognize a digestive pit or a triocanth sign? I mean, there are so many ways to die down here if you’re careless, especially now that we’ve cut down on our impact down here so much. If you’re stuck down here your options are either getting to the Control Center, getting to one of the very few listening stations and outposts we still have down in the depths of the Pit, or trying to call for help. That’s it.”

“So it’s easier logistically to have two separate groups like that?”

“Yeah, exactly. It hurts the overhead a little but if everybody was Pit-trained they’d be spending even more on them, so…”

“Right,” I say. There’s a long stringy mass of fibrous tissue stretching from the roof to the pitted ground, and I duck around it, let Fumi pass behind. “So what was the story?”

“Oh, right. So we were escorting some science folks down to that listening station in Oyster’s Shame. Shift change, essentially, except they way they do it is two weeks on, two weeks off. They rotate like that, make sure nobody’s spending too much time down in the Pit, that kind of thing. There are health checks that they have to do. If you’re in Science, half the time you’re up in a lab over in the science building doing egghead things and the other half you’re down here in a lab doing egghead things,” he laughs.

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” I suggest, and Fumi nods.

“Exactly. So we’re taking these guys down, pretty simple trip, one we’ve all done dozens of times. One of the science guys is new, and he is just absolutely gushing over everything he’s seeing down here. Some sort of environmental scientist type, real nerd. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a nerd but sometimes you just – certain people fulfill the stereotype more than other people, right? Anyway, Crookshank decides to play a prank on the guy. We’re taking a break for lunch and Crookshank pretends to lick a nerve ending in the wall. Now, first off, don’t ever do that, but Crookshank is – was – a maniac and you can’t keep him down. This egghead sees Crookshank do it (of course, he didn’t actually do it, just pretended to) and starts to freak out, but Crookshank is like ‘oh, it’s cool, it enhances the flavor in these MREs, you should try it.’ And of course Slate gets in on it, because Slate has – er, had – the mind of a middle-schooler and can’t resist clowning around, and together they gradually convince this nerd that it makes your standard run-of-the-mill MRE taste orgasmic.”

“Why shouldn’t you lick nerve endings?”

“Have you seen anything down here that you’d want to lick?”

I try unsuccessfully not to think of Elena and end up just shaking my head.

“But on top of that,” Fumi continues, “Pit nerve fibers can do weird things to the human nervous system. Not usually permanent or even really harmful things…just weird things. A big one was an ability to see into the ultraviolet spectrum. You might have heard about that; they made some big breakthroughs in optics in the 80s thanks to experiments with Pit nervous tissue. But there can be weirder stuff too – occasionally you’d see some spooky things going on in the Cord thanks to all the nerve tissue there. Intrusive thoughts, ‘occult’ stuff like objects levitating, seeing things out of the corner of your eye, ‘hauntings…’ in some places down here there are still little alarms that go off if they read too much nervous activity. So you can imagine that it might be a bad idea to lick one.”

“What happened to the guy?” I ask. The further we’ve gotten the more horribly rank the air has grown, to the point where we both have put on our helmets. The path we’re following opens out after a torturously twisting, intestine-like track and we find a series of bulbous, swollen sacs protruding from the floor and the walls, filled with a noxious, chunky liquid a lot like raw vomit. I can feel my gorge rising and I fix my eyes resolutely on my feet and end up just taking shallow breaths through my mouth for the long ten or so minutes it takes for Fumi to guide me through to the other side. We squeeze through a rough, suppurating sphincter and find a set of stairs, so rusty and dilapidated they might as well have come straight out of a Silent Hill game. Here and there long strands or trickles of flesh have melted or grown through the chain-link cage surrounding the stairs and pooled in rough, saggy, wrinkled puddles on the floor. It’s such an unspeakably bizarre image that we both stop and stare at them.

“I bet those feel…absolutely horrible to step on,” Fumi says.

“I’m not stepping on any of those,” I murmur.

“And with the cleats…” Fumi continues.

“Oh god,” I say, wrinkling my nose. A particularly swollen one seems to glisten at me. “Why does it do that? Why does it grow stuff like this?”

“Why does the Pit do anything?” Fumi shrugs, jerking his head forwards. “At least we’re on the right track. This is the staircase down to the ballast bulbs.”

“Is it even safe to walk on?”

“Do you see a different option?”

“Fair point,” I grunt. I take a ginger step forward and put my weight on the stairs, cringing inwardly. My foot nudges against one of the nodules of flesh. I can feel it pressing against me through the fabric of the suit. I grimace and take another step, and then another. “Come on,” I tell him. “Let’s just get this over with.”

We get a couple of flights down before I remember. “Oh, right – what happened to the guy?”

“Which guy?”

“You know,” I say. “The nerd who licked the nerve ending.”

“Oh, right. It made him see…something. Gave him the fright of his life, ended up pissing himself in his suit.”

“Oh,” I say. I had been expecting something funny but this just seems sad. Fumi reads it in my face, nods at me.

“Yeah,” he says. “Elena actually got really pissed off at Crookshank for that one. They’ve never liked each other very much but that little stunt kind of pushed her over the edge. They got in a shouting match right there and the Sergeant had to break it up.”

I can’t stop myself from smiling. “That’s my girl,” I murmur.

“Well…”

“Well what?”

“Uh, well it turned out that she was sleeping with the nerd and that’s why she was so heated about it.”

I look at Fumi for a moment and then burst out laughing. “You’re not serious.”

“Dead serious.”

I think about it and then shrug. “What?” I ask. “Am I supposed to get jealous?”

“I just find it so strange that you aren’t.”

“That’s in the past,” I tell him. “I don’t care what she did before we met, I care about how she treats me. I mean, she has to have treated me pretty well to get me to risk my life for her like this.”

“True,” Fumi admits. “Or maybe you just don’t value your life very much.”

Before I can think of a response that would be both truthful and a denial of the accuracy of that statement, Fumi takes a step forward. As he puts his weight down on the next step the staircase groans sonorously and we both freeze. I feel a little stab of fear piercing the bottom of my stomach and reach over quickly to grab the guardrail, for all the good it’ll do me. We stand there frozen for a minute, maybe two, waiting for the entire thing to collapse, and when it isn’t forthcoming I slowly, gradually unclench my insides and put my weight back on the step.

“Jesus,” I murmur.

“Yeah, these are probably a little unsafe.”

“You think?”

The next four flights go by quickly. The blobs of flesh haven’t spread this far down, or at least they haven’t yet. The meat beyond the retaining walls, buckled in places, is a strange, waxy tone that makes it look like it’s fake. If it didn’t shudder and writhe in time with whatever alien rhythms govern the Pit’s heartbeat I’d think it were a model.

Ahead of us, rising like vapor off a bog, I can smell the stench of ballast, combined with the familiar meaty Pit-smell pervading the air, along with something earthy and sour that lingers at the back of my throat. It makes my heart race and my gorge rise simultaneously. That accidental encounter with Crookshank in the ballast bulb…I had never been so scared or so turned on in my entire life. The memory of it leaves me vaguely nauseous.

“You doing okay?” Fumi asks, nudging me.

“I’m fine,” I murmur through gritted teeth. I do not want to throw up in this helmet. I take a deep breath and then let it out. I’m okay. It’s going to be fine. Elena is down here and the ballast totally healed her and everything is fine, just peachy-keen. We’re going to kiss and hold hands all the way out of here and then…

“Do you really think she’s down here?” Fumi asks.

“Where else would she be?” I say. “It’s either here or she’s dead somewhere and I’m still trying to be optimistic at least.”

Fumi says something else but I’m not paying attention. We’ve finally reached the landing, and past a pair of crooked, bent, rusted doors is something that must have once been a utility corridor for servicing the machinery used to keep the ballast pools running. The entire corridor is so thickly covered with dense, clustered mushrooms that I can scarcely see any surface that isn’t completely blotted out by coarse white fungous flesh.

“Shit,” Fumi murmurs.

The acrid, weird smell is stronger down here and I’ve finally recognize it – it’s the reek of those horrible, throat-coating spores from the nightmare of the fungal jungle deep down in the Pit’s rancid guts, where Marcus and Peter and Erica and – and Klaus had died.

Where I had killed Klaus.

Thinking about it makes me shiver. This past day – there hasn’t been time to think. Everything has been sweeping me along with the same force and velocity as a riptide. I haven’t had time to – to acknowledge it.

Unbidden, the image of him clapping his hand to his throat springs to my mind. The gun had felt like a dead weight in my hand. It hadn’t even felt like my hand, it had felt like I was controlling it at a distance, like I was playing a video game. I remember the way his eyes had widened in shock and how he had staggered back, the knife clattering out of his trembling hands. He had tried to swipe at me with it even then but the strength had left him.

I’ve already sealed my suit. I hadn’t wanted to waste the filters or the battery before by running the rebreather but these spores aren’t going to give us a choice. I don’t want to be hallucinating again.

At the end of the hallway is a door. It takes the two of us some serious effort to pry it open, levering at the rusted, mossy handle, but once we get it open we stumble into what must have once been one of the main baths. The fungus grows here too, in greater size and density. There are things living here; a dozen little things scurry and hop and slither away from us, darting away from the reach of our flashlight beams. Some of the mushrooms, the bigger blue-veined ones with the caps that look like they’re melting, visibly deflate as we rake our lights over them, puffing out clouds of hazy spores.

“I’m not sure that Elena’s here,” Fumi says softly, looking around. I feel my insides tighten even as he says it.

A massive hole has broken open in the tile over on the far end of the pool. I think I see something within it move. I reach over and tug at Fumi’s sleeve. “Fumi,” I hiss. “Did you see that?”

“See what?”

“Over there,” I point. “Inside that big fucking hole, I thought I saw –“

“Whatever you saw,” Fumi tells me, “it wasn’t Elena. If she even came down here, she’d have taken one look at it and then turned right around and left. You said that Erica took her helmet. Look at all these spores. Do you think that –“

“God damn!” something cries out of the murk and darkness down at the far end of the pool. The milk-white ballast seethes incontinently beneath the wan glare of our flashlights, and I can feel the bottom drop out of my stomach. “God damn!” it repeats.

“That’s Elena,” I say.

“Roan, no,” Fumi says. I shoot him a look like he’s gone mad.

“Listen to her,” I tell him. “That’s her voice! I’d know it anywhere.”

As if to punctuate my argument, the voice cries out again. “Oh god! Oh fuck!”

I charge forward, stomping into the ballast with reckless abandon. “Elena!” I call out. My heart is jumping in my chest and I have to consciously force myself not to grin madly. Elena is here! God, she’s here! I was right, she did come to the ballast bulbs, she did –

“God damn!”

“Roan, stop!” Fumi yells from behind me. I can hear him starting to stomp after me but I don’t have an iota of brainpower left to devote to the question of why he’d want to stop me. The ballast ripples around my legs, but it’s relatively shallow, at least this end of the pool. I hope I don’t have to swim in it to get to her.

“God damn!”

“Elena, I’m coming!”

“STOP! Roan, it’s a –“

My foot catches against something in the ballast and I lose my balance. I try to catch myself on my hands but the pool deepens just ahead of me and I end up pitching face-first into the murk. “Goddam,” I mumble. I don’t know what I tripped on, it feels like a log or something, but that doesn’t make a ton of sense to be down here. What is –

The log wriggles to life and wraps itself around my ankle. I have enough time to let out a small, terrified squeak before it whips me bodily off my feet and starts tugging me through the ballast towards the hole in the tile. I hear a splash from behind me as Fumi wades it, and I realize that I’m screaming.

Another rope or vine or tentacle joins the first, and this one fixes around the thigh of my other leg. I reach down, fighting against the thing’s pull, and get my hands on my pistol. I jerk it out of the holster so fast that I almost lose it, flick the safety off, and then fire off three rounds into the darkness lurking where the tentacles converge, but I don’t think I hit anything. Another tentacle seizes around my wrist and though I try to get loose, I end up dropping the gun.

Fumi calls out from behind me but I can’t pull myself together enough to answer him. Another tentacle has fixed around my midriff, another around my neck, and it squeezes so tightly that almost immediately I see stars bursting in my eyes and everything goes off-kilter like the world’s been tilted.

My flashlight skews across the face of the thing that’s tugging me in and for a moment I can’t comprehend it. It looks like a…a flower, all folds and delicate fleshy petals, but the colors are off. I can’t think, I’m not getting enough oxygen.

A mouth opens in the center of the flower, unfolding like a piece of origami. I see delicate, foot-long, razor-sharp teeth, almost translucent in the light.

The tentacles around my neck and leg loosen, and then drop me entirely. I smack into the surface of the ballast and rapidly sink under. I’m still too woozy to do much about it other than flail my arms helplessly. The air is hot and stuffy in this helmet and I can feel a tingle somewhere along the side of my ribcage, accompanied by a stinging wetness that makes me realize my suit has a hole and ballast is leaking in.

I can’t think, my brain feels like it’s been unplugged. I’m going to drown inside my suit down here and I can’t do anything about it –

The last tentacle loosens and slips away and then I feel hands tugging at my arms. Without thinking I cling to them, the slippery ballast making my grip clumsy. I batter against my rescuer, trying to get a grip on them. There’s a horrendous noise filling the air, making the ballast vibrate with the force of it. Amid the torrent of sound I can hear someone yelling at me, telling me to stop, and when I crack my eyes open I see Fumi tugging me closer to him and trying to swim us away at the same time. I get my arm around his waist and we both dip under.

“Fuck this,” he says when I come up next and then he cocks his arm back and punches me in the side of the head. I go limp immediately and for the next few minutes I am not quite unconscious but I am definitely woozy enough to let Fumi drag me bodily out of the pool and then pick me up and carry me out of that horrible room and back to the staircase we came in at.

I manage to hobble up two flights of stairs on my own before I stumble and Fumi has to let me lean on him to get up another two. Up here the air is clearer and I can finally pop my helmet and breathe in deep, grateful gulps of it without feeling the spores trickling in and lining my throat. I sit down heavily on a step that isn’t encrusted with bloody moss and lichen and give Fumi a bleak look.

“I’ve been so fucking stupid,” I mutter. Fumi tries to put his arm around me but I shrug it off. “Goddam it, I’ve been so stupid.”

“Roan –“

“Fuck!” I shout. It echoes up and down the rickety staircase, my own voice reflected back at me in a mocking tone. My neck and arms are still sore and if I close my eyes I can feel that horrible thing’s tentacles or vines tugging tight around my throat and choking the life out of me…

“Roan,” Fumi tries again. “You aren’t stupid.”

“Elena was never down here,” I say. I can hear the cheerlessness in my voice. “She’s probably dead someplace ten minutes from the Cord. I should never have –“

“Roan!” Fumi barks. I look at him, not bothering to wipe my eyes.

“What?”

“Roan, you have to stop trying to throw your life away,” he says. His eyes are dark and serious and suddenly I find I can’t meet his gaze. “No, look at me,” he says.

“I’m really not into this paternal bullshit,” I start, but Fumi takes my head in his hands and very gently turns it so I don’t have any choice but to stare into his eyes. I almost slap him. At the very least I snarl out the beginning of an imprecation, but Fumi just stares me down. “I don’t –“ I start, but he shakes his head.

“Your life isn’t over,” he tells me. “You still have plenty to live for.”

“But if Elena’s dead –“

“Fuck Elena! Even if Elena were dead you’d have something to live for. When we find her do you think your relationship with her is going to last very long if you’re just hanging your entire existence off of her?”

“I – “

“I don’t need you flaking out on me right now,” he tells me. “When Ellis died, I –“

“Ellis?”

“Oh, fuck it. Forget it,” he says, standing up. “Do whatever the hell you want, you want to be a clingy son of a bitch when we get to Elena, be my goddam guest –“

“No, Fumi, I’m sorry, I didn’t –“

“Forget it, I said,” he tells me. My cheeks are burning. I’ve gone and broken the camel’s back. Of course him and Ellis were close, but…it doesn’t matter.

“Fumi, I didn’t mean –“

“Elena’s alive,” he says, his voice harsh. “Or at least she was, recently. Because ballast sirens can only repeat sounds they’ve heard. She probably pried open a door, took one look at that place, said ‘god damn!’ and ‘oh fuck!’ and left, and the siren’s probably been parroting it back for the better part of a day since then, hoping something would be stupid enough to wander into reach…”

“How was I supposed to know?” I yell. “How was I fucking supposed to know? I’ve never heard of a fucking ballast siren! I don’t know what they do!”

“I was yelling after you telling you not to go!” Fumi shouts. “If you had just fucking listened to me you wouldn’t have –“

“Yeah, well you fucking punched me!”

“I punched you,” he hisses, taking a step towards me, “because you were fucking panicking. You were going to drag me down with you and if I let you, we both would have died back there. I had to make you go limp, so I punched you! Of course you probably would have been okay with the two of us dying, given your fucking martyrdom fetish –“

“I don’t have a martyrdom fetish!”

“Then fucking act like it!”

“Fuck you!”

“You need to calm the fuck down,” he says, pointing a finger at me. “I can’t believe you talked me into this damn-fool errand. I had no idea you were such a –“

“Fucking leave, then,” I tell him. There’s a part of my brain screaming at me to stop, but I can’t stop. I’ve already let the words out. “If I’m so much of a fucking burden and too much of a loose cannon then fucking leave. Just go back up. I’ll find Elena myself.”

Fumi’s face falls. When he speaks his tone is gentler. “Look, I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to –“

“Just go!” I yell, pointing up the stairs. “Just fuck off!”

“Roan, don’t do this.”

“Just leave!” I say. My voice is thick and raw and I realize that I’m crying. “I can do this myself! I don’t need you!”

“Roan, you –“

“Go!” I shriek, and then before I know it I’m clambering to my feet and pulling up my sleeves, clenching a fist and getting ready to swing at him. Everything’s taken on a red tinge, even redder than normal down here in the Pit, and the horrible throbbing thump of my heartbeat is ringing in my ears like an immense drum.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Fumi says, throwing up his hands, and then he turns and hurries up the stairs.

I stand there for a long, long while, breathing hard, letting all of my anger drain out of me. Eventually I feel empty enough to find a nice clear spot on the rusty steps, brush away the mushrooms and polypous clumps of pooled flesh and sit. I think about burying my head in my hands, but I don’t.

After a moment I take out my radio from its holster on my belt and look at it. Fumi had warned me not to even try anything with it, he’d said that it’d be easy for anyone listening in, such as the FBI or people in the Control Center, to triangulate my position and there’d be no guarantee Elena would even have a radio to respond with if I did try to call her.

But I don’t see another choice. My hand is shaking a little and I feel as though if I stand up I’d just fall right over again. If I don’t do something I’m going to have a panic attack.

I crack the radio up to its broadest range-band and hold down the broadcast button. I can’t think of what to say. Eventually I shake my head and then lick my lips and give it my best shot. “Elena?” I ask. My voice catches a little but I swallow hard and force it back down. “Elena, it’s Roan. If you’re – if you’re out there and you can hear this, l-let me know. Please.”

I let the button go and then wait, heart pounding. I try to keep myself from counting the seconds, but I can’t. Ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty. I stop after a minute and squeeze my eyes shut, trying to stop the hot tears from leaking from them. She’s not out there, she’s dead or trapped somewhere without a radio, I knew it was a long shot, I shouldn’t have even bothered. If I hadn’t bothered I could at least pretend that –

The radio clutched loosely in my hands crackles to life. I glare at it, half-expecting to hear Fumi chew me out for using the radio in the first place.

“Roan?” Elena says. “Oh, my god, Roan, baby, is that you? Oh god, is that you?”

Continue with Part 34

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#mystery flesh pit #writing #writeblr #original writing #mystery #alt lit #thriller #Novel #disaster #caving #Michael Crichton

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