#characters that were written to be best friends but act like an old married couple
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Gonna make a compilation of silly little cartoon men who are 100% married but definitely not purposefully written to be, feel free to add on others
#characters that were written to be best friends but act like an old married couple#bert and ernie#stanley and narrator#big and small#carl and paul#llamas with hats#the stanley parable#sesame street
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•YANDERE CLAUDE•
Just imagine Yandere Claude x Childhood Friend Reader with a twist. This scenario has been stuck in my head for a week now. Before we start I just want to warn people that this is about yandere, it not that bad but still. Hinted murder is also in it.
You're a huge fan of the novel The Lovely Princess, but one day you get into an accident. When you wake up you find yourself reincarnated in the 6-year-old body of Claude’s childhood friend. For about 5 days you were just freaking out. You had died and now you’re stuck in the body of a minor character, not even an important one.
As you were going over the story in your head you realise what fate was going to happen to your character. You were going to die in the future by the heads of the soon-to-be emperor. After a while of even more freaking out, you made a plan. As you were in the young body of the character, Claude would be too. This means he’s not gone ‘crazy’ just yet. So the plan was to try and slowly distance yourself from the future emperor. Acting sweet to him, giving the young boy all your attention until you had slowly made your way out of his life completely. This plan shockingly took nearly 6 years until you were finally free. Of course, you felt bad for child Claude, but it was quickly dismissed after releasing that he would kill his daughter in the future…
After that, you began living a comfortable and rich life. That was until the day you turned 20… You knew the day would come when you would have to get married. The day you have to say goodbye to the comfortable life of not worrying about anything and say hello to a life that was filled with a husband that doesn’t even love you and some snot nose brats. But what you haven’t expected was to be engaged to Claude de Alger Obelia the emperor!
None had expected it, not even your parents. Claude had found out about your father trying to find you a suitable suitor for you, so he had written a letter saying he would like your head in marriage. You begged and pleaded in your head for your parents to politely decline the emperor's proposal, but they didn’t…This was the best suitor for you and even better you knew him! That is what your parents explain to you and sadly you couldn’t say no.
You had no idea why this was happening! This never happened in the story. Claude had not a single romantic interest in your character, so why did he want to marry you now? That’s what was going through your head as the carriage drove you to your new home. As soon as we’re at the palace you never left your new fiancé's side. There were a few times you could get some alone time when you had to use the bathroom room when he had an important meeting or at night when you both sleep in separate beds. But your rooms were right next to each other so it still felt suffocating. It wouldn’t be long before you moved to his room and start to sleep in the same bed as Claude.
You obviously felt so uncomfortable but you didn’t look much into it, maybe somehow you made the emperor fall in love with you. But how though? Was it because you actually treated him like a human or maybe it was just for personal matters? You doubted the second one…
But weird stuff began occurring, a couple of months later. You were never alone now. You always had someone with you. Would it be Claude or an assigned guard. You couldn’t leave the palace walls, if you even tried talking to any of the servants they would just scurry away muttering about a matter that they had to get to. At this point, all this was beginning to take a toll on your mental health.
But there was one thing that made you stop and realise. When you were out in the Garden with Claude, your personal maid (who had been with you since you were a teen) accidentally spilt tea all over your lap leaving a painful burn mark on your legs. You quickly had to excuse yourself to get changed and when you came back we a clean dress she was gone. The guards on duty stood there with a fearful expression and your fiancé sat there sipping tea as though nothing had happened but you knew. Even if you didn’t see it. It was your gut feeling that Claude did something to that poor woman. That was the day you began to worry something was truly wrong with the story you once had loved…
#who made me a princess#wmmap#who made me a princess x reader#wmmap x reader#wmmap fanfic#wmmap claude#claude de alger obelia x reader#claude de alger obelia#claude x reader#x reader#x y/n#y/n imagine#yandere#yandere x reader#yandere claude#yandere claude x reader#x reader imagines#imagines#fanficion#fanfic#🌸
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Helloo could I request cliff Holden (our life beginning and always) x male reader that kinda acts like a tsundere sometimes?
(You can write whatever genre you want, just please don't write angst)
oh and could I be 🤡 anon?
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝
Character/Pairing: Cliff Holden x Male Reader
Pronouns: He/Him
Summary: No summary ! Just a list of HC
Warnings: Spoilers to Our Life Beginning and Always (If you haven't played it, you should omg I love it)
Author Notes: Ooo I haven't written much about Cliff so sorry if this isn't the best, Of course you can be clown anon !
As always I love Cove and his papa （＾・ω・＾✿）
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝
You and Cliff met a few months after Cove and MC moved out.
I don't see Cliff dating until Cove is old enough to be on his own, Cliff loves his son and wasn't really open to any new relationships after moving out to Sunset, plus I don't think Cove would be too keen on his father bringing someone new into their lives.
You guys met when you went to get some ocean gear. You didn't know what really drew you to him but as you were checking out you guys talked and hit it off, becoming fast friends.
He'd ask you out after becoming good friends with you, maybe a couple months of chatting and hanging out together.
He'd ask you out on a date to the aquarium and would show you all his favorite fish.
I don't think he's the type to meet you for the first time and ask you out after one conversation, he's more relaxed and is the type to take things slow. He'd want to get to know you before taking you out to plan something that you'd like.
He finds your attitude cute and teases you sometimes just to see how much you'll react but its all lighthearted and sweet (I love him sm)
You and Kira get along great! When she comes up to visit you both, you guys catch up over tea and coffee and tease Cliff (lovingly ofc)
Kira also teases you a bit just to see how embarrassed and flustered she can make you.
She'll also tell you about the guy she's been talking to in Nevada
Cliff would let you meet Cove after a couple months of dating maybe like 8-10 month just to let Cove meet the person he was talking about to his son
Cove was slightly nervous but he brought MC with him so it was alright.
You and Cove get along, you guys don't talk that much due to him moving out from his dads place and him having his own life but after getting past that awkward stage, he'll walk in with a smile to greet you and Cliff.
Cliff will impulsively buy you gifts when he's out, he'll bring you flowers sometimes throughout you guys dating
I don't see him getting married again. Maybe if you've been together for a while, like 2+ years of dating.
Sometimes you'll just hold hands on the couch while reading or watching TV and he'll kiss your hand and watch you blush and cover your face with the other hand.
One time you kissed his tattoo before falling asleep and his face was so red, he hid his face in your hair as you dozed off on his chest.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝
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I did some design sheets for the non-OC toon characters + their OC family members in the Tooniverse and decided to post them :) a few liberties are taken (ie most characters not wearing gloves or shoes because i hate drawing them) but their designs are generally adapted from canon appearances! They’re mostly actors in the Tooniverse, so I’ve also written out what their personalities are like off-screen under the cut :)
Here’s Mortimer, Pete, and Fanny! Fanny’s here because I didn’t know what other characters to stick her with, no other reason.
Mortimer Slicker - Took his last name from the “Mr. Slicker” character in the old old Mickey comics, who was likely Mortimer’s predecessor in terms of character design. Didn’t want him to have the same last name as Mickey and Minnie. Mortimer is still kind of smarmy, but he’s not the sexist sleezeball he is in the shorts he appears in. If you look at his appearance in the “Maybe I’m a Maze” Mickey Mouse Funhouse episode, you can actually get a pretty good idea of how he acts off screen in the Tooniverse. He’s actually Mickey’s brother in law (his sister married Mickey’s sister) and that’s how they met in the first place- Mickey then offered him the spot on the upcoming “Mickey’s Rival” short they were gonna be filming. In the Tooniverse he’s actually a horse-mouse hybrid to explain his long nose and ears, since rat toons don’t exist.
Peter Percival Jr. - Peter Percival Sr. is actually the “Pete” that would appear in Oswald’s old shorts, his father. Yoinked “Percival” from the comics. Like his dad, he was born without his left foot, but that’s never stopped him. Toon tech is advanced enough he could probably get a more realistic prosthetic, but he likes his peg. Off camera he behaves a lot like Buford from Phineas and Ferb- weird and still maybe kind of aggressive, but not an out right jackass. Him and Mortimer are best friends, (And later they get together as a couple) and they’re both inspired by their appearance in the modern Mickey Mouse shorts.
Francine “Fanny” Cottontail - Oswald’s former love interest on his show- not his ex. She was simply an actor trying to get into the industry so she could be a director. I didn’t want to entirely erase her, but I like my Ostensias and didn’t want to mess with that in any way, so this seemed like a good solution! She’s actually the one that encouraged Ortensia to replace her on the show, and then she took up the role of director when the one they had threw a hissy fit about the idea of Oswald suddenly switching love interests. Sassy, kind of crude, honest, but loyal, she’s one of Oswald and Ortensia’s closest friends, having helped them sneak around the unapproving J.P. Whiskers many a time. She’s still a director over at Disney now, and usually works on House of Mouse (which runs for much longer in the Tooniverse) and the modern Mickey shorts. She loves to play match maker.
#mortimer mouse#pete the cat#fanny cottontail#toontown rewritten#toontown#Fanny and Clarabelle are probably besties i can see them both being SUPER into gossip LOL#Fanny actually helped matchmake Mortimer and Pete too#mortimer was anxious about his crush and fanny went snooping for him
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Fujiwara Natsuki
— natsuki can be written using different kanji characters and can mean: as a given name. 夏稀, "summer, rare" 夏生, "summer, life" 夏紀, "summer, chronicle" (meaning difference depending on the kanji used)
— studied at and graduated from tokyo prefectural jujutsu technical high school
— is a special grade jujutsu sorcerer and teacher
— is always on the job, so she travels a lot; hence she’s rarely seen
— occasionally visits tokyo, and will more often then not will bring sweets; for the kids and loves the face Satoru makes when she says she has none for him
— likes teasing the gojo heir, and more often then not, occasionally smiles whenever he makes a witty comment or his smug grin
— is best friends with shoko, and always remembers to bring her high quality sake from kyoto
— oldest daughter of the Fujiwara clan
— after graduation, she took up the position of clan head after her grandfather fell ill
— is a jujutsu sorcerer and teacher at the Kyoto school
— took up family traditions, and resides within the ancestral family shrine and carries on as the head clan, acts as guardian and protector
— has three younger siblings, who study and practice jujutsu sorcery; but as head of the clan, natsuki forbids them from going on missions alone
— it is told the clan is protector, keeper and guardian of an ancient spirit lingering the ancestral grounds since prehistoric times
— as a child natsuki was told of the many folktales of a mystical creature, one who possess the power to ward off evil, and has the ability to obtain immense wisdom, a kitsune they called it
— as per tradition foxes have long been worshipped as kami. natsuki grew up with such belief
— many said it is a nine tailed kitsune that was sealed within the ancestral clan’s shrine but many believe this as rumor
— it was said that one day, when she was but a child she playing outside the shrine’s grounds bordering the nearby forest where she saw a large fox; make eye contact with her before disappearing into thin air
— many believed her to see the shrine’s deity, while others claim it to be just a stray animal at best; the clan elders asked her to draw what she saw, and when she drew a white fox with nine tails, they were at first at disbelief, but no one could deny the face, natsuki was a exceptionally gifted child
— many believed it as divine blessing, since Inari's kitsune are white, a color of a good omen. they possess the power to ward off evil, and they sometimes serve as guardian spirits
— since then she has been able see and attract other worldly beings; and as such she was extremely sheltered since youth. she was only permitted to go out a couple time outside the shrine a week, it was for her protection the elders said
— after much persuasion on her part, the elders finally started letting her go to jujutsu high. she stated it was the only way to gain a more in depth understanding of this world, and how to protect the ancestral shrine
— natsuki always makes sure to regularly visit her old friend on the outskirts of the forest behind her ancestral family shrine, and bring the deity offerings as thanks for their protection
— during her freshmen year, a mission went horribly wrong, and natsuki was almost killed by a special grade curse; but at the last second she witnessed the same nine tailed fox come to her aid and save her
— so in thanks she pledged her life to serve and protect said deity. and since that day she has now been able to see and even able to talk to other worldly spirts, non curses
— as clan head, natsuki isn’t immune to the elders scolding her. many remind her, as now clan head, she must find a suitable candidate to marry
— natsuki doesn’t favor the elders’ ideas, but she dislikes the thought of them forcing her younger siblings into this life, so she made a deal. she would go on whatever arrange marriage date the elders proposed, with the deal her siblings should not be forced into marriage, and could leave the jujutsu practice if they so desired
— as promised natsuki went on a couple of arranged/blind dates with appointed jujutsu sorcerer, one or two times a month to appease the elders. but each time, a certain white-haired-blind-folded-candy-loving-sorcerer sorcerer would interfere and scare the poor soul away
— at this point the elders were so fed up, with gojo’s shenanigans and told him, he would be held responsible and be forced to face the consequences of his actions. but knowing gojo he probably smiled tauntingly, throughout the whole ordeal (you aren’t necessarily happy about his interference, but you do appreciate the sentiment behind his actions. but you told him never do it again, but like typical gojo fashion he doesn’t listen)
— and best-knowned to you, gojo finds other ways of interfering in your private matters once, again
— but all you can do is sign in annoyance and roll your eyes each time, that blindfolded-sugar-addicted-white-haired mess of a man does something else
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
— kitsune have become closely associated with Inari, a shinto kami or spirit, and serve as its messengers. the more tails a kitsune has—they may have as many as nine—the older, wiser, and more powerful it is. because of their potential power and influence, some people make sacrifices to them as to a deity. ( Ama-no-Koyane-no-mikoto (天児屋命, 天児屋根命) is a kami and deity in japanese mythology and Shinto. Ancestor of the Nakatomi clan, and Fujiwara no Kamatari, the founder of the famous Fujiwara clan.)
#sorry at the end it just turned into a gojo fic!!!#drabbles#images#profile#anime#prompt list#oc profile#nine tailed fox#gojo saturo#jujutsu sorcerer#jujutsu kaisen#jujutsu sorcerer oc#oc x gojo#satoru gojo#gojo being gojo#gojou satoru x reader#gojo sensei#teacher!reader#jujutsu kaisen x reader
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Hey! Love your stories so much I just had to ask! Do you have any favorite drarry authors/stories? I sometimes compare the quality of other stories to ROA (oops!) because ROA is just that good. My personal favorites are ROA (of course!), the Foundations Series (saras_girl), the ordeal of being known (louisfake), denouement (the_never_was), Good to Me (And I'd Be So Good to You) (AWickedMemory), and To Hurt and Heal (cassisluna). Have you read these? Have a wonderful day! :)
Thank you, so glad you’ve enjoyed my stories! And thank you for so patiently waiting for a reply. I haven’t been online much in the past couple of weeks. Unfortunately I haven’t read any of your recs, but I’m always happy to add another fic to my to-read list.
I did a rec post a few months ago, but I’ll post an updated version now. The Skyhawke Archives appear to be down, which is crushing news. I’ve had to update a lot of the links.
So here are my favourite Drarry fanfics:
And We Are At Our Apogee (PG-13) by angelgazing
Summary: Draco wanted revenge, but it didn't work out that way.
My notes: Californian beaches, supermarkets, road trips, and a bittersweet ending.
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A Reckless State of Mind (T) by Lomonaaeren
Summary: Draco is a Psyche-Diver, and his newest patient is Auror Potter, who’s been a pathological liar for over a year—and has just tried to violently end his own life.
Notes: The plot alone guarantees inclusion on this list. Probably the most creative fic I’ve ever read, and the twists and turns will keep you guessing.
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Berlin, In the Year of Our Lord (PG) by Are
Summary: Harry is a green-tea addict. Draco stalks him.
Notes: Probably my all-time favourite fic, along with Blue Vase. It’s sparse and minimal and I love that writing style.
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Blue Vase (M) by ivyblossom
Summary: Let’s pretend.
Notes: Draco finds an amnesiac Harry and befriends him, pretending they were once lovers. It’s pensive, short, and bittersweet.
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The Boy Who Only Lived Twice (E) by lettered
Summary: Harry Potter is an Unspeakable. Draco Malfoy is the wizard who shagged him. Adventure! Intrigue! Secret identities, celebrities, spies! It's all right here, folks.
Notes: Action-heavy fics are damn hard to write, but lettered nails it. The action scenes are breakneck speed, the conversations are threaded with double meaning, and even the silences are tense.
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Draco in Darkness (T) by Plumeria47.
Summary: Following an accident in his seventh year, Draco loses his eyesight.
Notes: This is one of the first fics I ever read (when it was over on FF in 2003) so it’s probably here just for nostalgia points alone. I read it when I was a kid and just thought it was a lovely golden fairytale, the best romance I’d ever read in my (very short, thus far) life. I love reading it again, even years later as an adult when I can see the tarnish on it; the things my childhood eyes didn’t notice. I don’t care. It’s my soft and fuzzy comfort fic.
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The Flesh is Frail (NC-17) by wildestranger
Summary: None
Notes: Draco has injuries from curses and spells, and Harry keeps him company. Draco is angry; Harry is stubborn. They argue their way into a grudging relationship. It’s a short read and well worth your ten minutes.
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Good-bye to Yesterday (NC-17) by furiosity
Summary: Draco felt ready to face even a million years in Azkaban as long as it meant that at the end of it all, he would make Potter pay.
Notes: It’s not a dark fic, but it certainly dips in and out of the shadows. If you like your romance to be sharp as a razor and bitter as black coffee, give it a read.
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Hymn to Color (PG) by Lomonaaeren
Summary: Months after Draco cast a curse that took Harry’s eyesight, Harry is still trying to come to terms with it. Draco still wanted forgiveness, which was probably the problem.
Notes: Probably my very inadequate idea of “fluff”. It’s a quiet, introspective fic. Draco and Harry are well-written.
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Kings among runaways (PG) by enderxenocide.
Summary: Later, the toast will be slightly overcooked, Draco will burn the eggs, and there will be another fist fight in-between the living room and the front door, but they’ll eat breakfast with second-hand plates and Draco’s great-grandmother’s silverware.
Notes: Dreamy descriptions, abstract scenes, and the characters are lovingly delineated. Beautiful writing.
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On Broken Glass (PG-13) by coffeejunkii
Summary: After the final battle, Draco is holding the shards that are left of his and Harry’s life.
Notes: Established relationship. Harry’s forgetful and seems to suffer both short-term and long-term memory loss; Draco stays by his side through six years of post-war amnesia. Very short, just a tiny ficlet. There’s sequels (in bite-size pieces) but I prefer to read the first ficlet and leave it there.
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Paper Dolls (M) by cupiscent
Summary: In the final year of the War, Draco gets a letter, makes a choice and pays the price.
Notes: Short, succinct, and packs a punch. No character deaths, in case the summary has you feeling nervous.
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Portrait (PG-13) by Silent Blast
Summary: None.
Notes: Dorian Grey, but Drarry. Of course it’s going to be good.
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Shattered (NC-17) by femmequixotic
Summary: One damned accident involving one too-lucky curse, and suddenly you'd think he was five again, with their Harry, be carefuls and their quick Levitating charms ready the instant the potion gives way and his rebelling hands lose hold of whatever's in their grasp.
Notes: Draco’s an artist. Harry’s intrigued by his sculptures and paintings.
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Snatch (PG-13) by didntyoupotter
Summary: Harry is comatose, Hermione and Ron aren’t much help, and Draco isn’t sure about anything anymore.
Notes: The opening scene fools you into thinking this will be a light read with a streak of good humour. Don’t fall for it. By the third act, you’ll be hanging onto every word and feeling a lot of emotions. Also, back in the day, this was one of the Draco/Harry fics. Everyone knew of it. Pay your respects to your fandom history and read this beloved classic.
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The Stages of Acceptance (T) by Lomonaaeren.
Summary: Harry, already happily married to Ginny, receives the news that he's Draco's mate. Law and custom don't give him the option of ignoring the news. The stages of his reaction, one by one.
Notes: This is not a romance, and I love that the author just casually chucks all the Veela tropes in the bin and says “nope”. In Lomonaaeren’s own words, this fic is more practical than romantic. Harry is unfamiliar with the Veela concepts and hates the very idea of being “shackled” to someone; he rejects Draco at once. Draco is miserable and lonely. They do eventually come to understand each other better, but it’s a huge struggle with lots of setbacks. The general air of pessimism and misery does make the small glimpses of compassion and empathy feel so well-earned. I love a fic that rations out its happiness.
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The Stately Homes of Wiltshire (E) by waspabi
Summary: Malfoy Manor has mould, dry rot and an infestation of unusually historical poltergeists. Harry Potter is on the case.
Notes: This one needs no introduction. The writing is polished, the characterisation perfect, and the dialogue is fun. I love the humour woven throughout it.
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Then Comes a Mist and a Weeping Rain (E) by faithwood.
Summary: It always rains for Draco Malfoy. Metaphorically. And literally. Ever since he had accidentally Conjured a cloud. A cloud that's ever so cross.
Notes: Another one that most of us know. It’s a lighthearted and fun read.
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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (M) by novembersnow
Summary: In the war-torn years after Hogwarts, one man has no knowledge of his yesterdays.
Notes: Another classic back in the feverish heyday of the Harry Potter fandom, when books were still being released and everyone had worked themselves up into a shipping frenzy. And no wonder this fic was an instant hit. Draco has lost all his memories and Harry’s investigating as an Auror, but the longer you read, the more you start questioning everything. Good twists and turns that lead to a tender ending.
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Turn by Saras_Girl
Summary: One good turn always deserves another. Apparently.
Notes: An inevitable inclusion on any favourites list. I think my favourite thing about it is the characterisation. Everyone is so well-rounded; the characters are brought to life and feel like old friends. All their habits, styles, mannerisms, even the way they walk or talk. While I love everyone in this fic, I have to admit that Blaise is just amazing. Of all the thousands of Blaises imagined by fanfic writers, I love this one the best. “Old bean” indeed.
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Under the Ivy (PG-13) by coffeejunkii
Summary: It is impressive how much you can learn about someone by simply sharing a few rooms. They don’t spend time together, not really, but Harry still knows that Malfoy prefers raspberry jam over strawberry, that he hums along to the Wireless when he thinks no one is around, and that his leg is bothering him more than usual when the temperatures drop below freezing.
Notes: Another old, old favourite of mine. It’s like snuggling into a soft blanket. Remus owns a cottage and Harry moves in after the war. Later, Remus lets a room to Draco, who is an outcast after the war and has limited housing options. Harry isn’t happy at first with the new lodger, but he eventually warms up to Draco. A slow and gentle romance.
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Vale Sanare (M) by rurounihime
Summary: Draco’s world gains a new component, just when he thought he’d sorted everything out.
Notes: London nightclubs, one-night-stands, loud music and lonely nights. Draco has seizures due to a curse from the war, and the seizures have led to a fear of intimacy. Short and sweet.
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The Way Down (T) by lettered
Summary: Malfoy’s all, “Come out of there,” the way you say to a cat who is badly behaved. And Harry’s all like, “No, what, I’m a hermit! And I have a chest-monster! And I am crazy magically powerful!” and Malfoy’s all, “We all have problems, bub.” (thoughtfully) “You are crazy though. I’ll give you that.”
Notes: I just adore this fic. The fic starts well-grounded, giving you a solid backstory and matter-of-fact context, but as it goes on, it slowly unravels into dreamy scenes, lush settings, and repeated motifs. It’s just such a beautiful story.
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When Love beckons to you, follow him (PG-13) by megyal
Summary: Draco wakes up, lost, somewhere in a forest. He has no idea where he is or how he got there. As he is blundering around trying to find his way home, he hears Harry's voice in his head, telling him what to do.
Notes: I generally like my fics to be bittersweet or with a bit of heartache — but this fic is just a little cloud of softness. If you need something light and lovely without being syrupy-sweet, this is a good choice!
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The World of the Living (M) by fourth_rose
Summary: A traumatised war hero and a convicted criminal under the roof of an eccentric journalist make for a rather odd ensemble, but Luna has never had a problem with oddities as long as they make sense.
Notes: The story is told from Luna’s perspective, which gives everything a lovely dreamy quality. She takes in a couple of strays after the war — first Harry, who is avoiding his other friends and has quit his Auror job — and then she offers a room to Draco right after his trial. Draco is rude, angry, and ungrateful; Harry is churlish, withdrawn, and moody. Luna doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest, and over the course of the next few months, her house guests slowly warm up to each other.
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Voices From the Fog (E) by noeon
Summary: After years of running away, Harry crosses paths with an all-too familiar face and follows him to Amsterdam.
Notes: Harry drifts across Europe, trying to forget the war. He ends up in a woodworking shop in Amsterdam, alongside a moody Draco. Atmospheric settings and solid characterisation.
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Rec list for Eddie and Symby being vaguely to very gay?
I'm sorry for coming to you with my monsterfucker agenda 😔👊 (no I'm not)
i mean, i probably could’ve seen this coming.
venom is dominated by two opposing narratives. let’s call this the “relationship narrative” and the “control narrative”. they’re not perfectly separated, like, you’ll definitely get elements of one in the other, but generally one of them describes what the story, at its core, is using the symbiote for.
now comics are an endless tug-of-war at the best of times, much less the gayest and slimiest of times. there’s a neverending backlash and backbacklash going on between these two takes. what you want is the relationship narrative.
everything very much started out with that take. eddie and the symbiote are two characters who forge an evil alliance because it lets them do what they wanna do (kill spider-man, more or less) and they have the same kinds of neuroses and complexes and syndromes. lots of early comics are also very fun about the merged consciousness, merged identity deal. that’s kind of the textbook relationship stuff.
personally i absolutely think the original stories (venom was created by david michelinie) have romantic undertones, even starting in the villainy days. eddie describes their first meeting as “a shadow moved, caressed me.” he takes the rejection of the symbiote still being “in love with” spider-man really hard. he sobs his eyes out when he thinks it’s dead and promises to avenge it bare-handed. they totally expect to live happily ever after on a deserted island together.
then there’s venom: lethal protector, which is cute on its own, but if you’re reading for slime romance, i very specifically recommend the novelisation. i won’t even spoil it. and then, planet of the symbiotes is the first comic that i would say has outright queer themes, intentional or not.
so all those recs until now are collected in this post.
we're trucking along through the 90s, we explore elements of one take and then the other and sometimes we ignore the symbiote completely, but not too much changes, overall. the next BIG stop in Gay Venom is, of course, the hunger.
miniseries by len kaminski, just venom: the hunger. plenty of people have written their essays on it, but what’s always important to me is that it DID NOT come out of nowhere. as said above, it expanded on themes that were there, it references michelinie venom very explicitly, like you get your SECOND “tenderly touching the green glass tube” scene.
but yes this one is specifically about, like, stigmatisation, otherness, mental illness, meeting all those things with care and empathy and optimism, tentacle sex. again, many essays. a venom comic that can go “look at the twisted deviance of this relationship” and then turn it around into “but how are you looking at it” is good. god how good would it be if they also did that to eddie more. anyway.
a few years later you get the first MAJOR fucking backlash, culminating in the SECOND story titled the hunger. spectacular spider-man: the hunger, from 2003. completely reboots venom and retcons their motivations and backstories, makes very spiteful references to planet of the symbiotes and the hunger, like it is not also called that by sheer coincidence. literally starts out, in a comic that wants to tackle and redefine venom, with the line “the PROBLEM is that you guys are like an old married couple”. so the new status quo is that the symbiote only ever used eddie to be with spider-man, and eddie only ever used the symbiote to not die of cancer.
the “control narrative” that really kicks in here uses the symbiote as, you know, a thing to control, eddie’s demons personified or even a completely foreign force to torment him. if eddie is evil, it’s not because of what he thinks and believes and wants, it’s because he couldn’t control the symbiote and gave in to its inexplicable bloodlust.
this is an unambiguous downgrade in terms of complexity, in my humble opinion, completely fucks up eddie’s responsibility themes, and is also a pretty clearly petty reaction to venom’s absolute oversaturation in the nineties. the bitch was everywhere and most of it wasn’t good. so there was LOTS of “look at this creepy loser” content by writers cringing themselves into self-awareness at the time. the 00s were going to be GRITTY and MATURE.
this of course means that we get to see eddie slit his wrists and bleed to death on panel after selling the symbiote to supervillains as an attempted act of redemption???
wild fucking times! it’s not exactly worth recommending as ~shippy~, but the first real backbacklash to this first round of retcons comes from dan slott, who just kind of ignores it all in new ways to die. drags eddie back to the land of the living and relevant, makes the symbiote refuse to let its new host kill him, telling that host, and reestablishing, that it loves eddie. and then, to keep him living and relevant, slott makes eddie anti-venom.
don’t even worry about it. anti-venom is essentially eddie seeking redemption with symbiote powers, but without the symbiote, except he pretty much acts no fucking different at all, just keeps on being a murderous vigilante with cracked ideas about innocence and guilt. people still act like he’s better now because, in its metatextual ways, the hunger was right.
then fucking uuuuuuhhhhhhh. agent venom. symbiote goes to flash thompson and the us military, and the writer, rick remender, goes really, really, really hard on the control narrative. the symbiote becomes a substance flash is addicted to, gives a voice to his past abuse, it’s dark times all the times.
people very much do like that narrative for flash, like at least from that perspective it was worth it. i don’t like it much for the symbiote. for the symbiote, representing everything fucked up with flash and forcing him to murder kill bite all the time is resolved via the good guy avengers literally lobotomising it so flash can wear it without further resistance or input. imagine doing that to a human person. you’re uncooperative so we’re gonna turn off your higher cognitive functions and wear you like a meat suit. happy ending for everybody! truly we’ve conquered our demons this day.
then! at the same time, there’s a cartoon coming out, it’s called ultimate spider-man. THAT one does the control narrative take with harry osborn, but then does the relationship take with flash, making it the only cartoon to outright redeem the symbiote and let it find friendship and be valued as a person.
and people loved it! so brian michael bendis gets it in his head that he’s going to redeem the symbiote and make it partner up with flash. and he does redeem it by the highly fucking questionable means of having it be “cleansed”, aka brainwashed and relieved of its memories and personality. not that it matters for long. nothing fucking matters in comics. take this with you if it’s the only thing.
so then for fun friendship times you get venom: space knight, flash and the symbiote’s adventures in space! and then that gets cancelled. eddie is off somewhere being toxin and hunting carnage (2016). many good comics but you did not ask for them.
and THEN.
it is time for the next MOTHER of backlashes.
flash gets literally discarded at fucking roadside to put the symbiote back on eddie and turn back time on their relationship to RIGHT before the FIRST backlash happened. you know, all those 2003 retcons. gone. ignored. no more. venom’s themes are now those circa 1996 again. full fucking on relationship narrative. ROMANTIC relationship narrative, and that after the symbiote was turned into eddie’s evil shadow, after he hated it and spent a LONG time seeking to eradicate all symbiotes (and not even for the first time).
the COSTA run. venom (2016). reviled and beloved.
like this comic is fucking ANGRY about symbiote treatment. i HAD to tell you all of that so you’d understand ANYTHING it’s doing. the first thing it does is flip it completely around, puts the symbiote on a military guy who’s making IT do bad things, makes his ability to control it horrifying and abusive instead of heroic and admirable. one of the later things it does (in the follow-up venom: first host) is outright feature a villain who lobotomises symbiotes, ending on a symbiote serving him swift and sweet payback by doing the same thing TO HIM. it’s exactly as unsubtle as the hunger (2003) was about its hang-ups.
comics... are a conversation.
flash remains a symbiote friend but still got fucked over big time by it all, symbiote-focused writers slott and costa also kind of use him to literally, in case anybody hadn’t caught on, literally spell out the REAL story that’s been going on in the writer's room for the past THIRTY YEARS:
you’ll notice i didn’t actually list any of the Gay Shit for you, you’ve probably already seen it or you’ll get to see it for yourself. yes, they are deeply in love, yes, it’s fucked up and flawed, yes, it is real and taken seriously and has ultimately redeeming potential. yes the concept of that nearly knocked me off my feet and in front of the subway at one point. yes there’s mpreg
it’s also fucking riddled with events, which spin off into other comics, so either ignore those and rely on the recaps OR click yourself forward through the “next issue (story)” button on marvel wikia to know what to read.
and after that must of course come the backbackbacklash, as certain as death or taxes. in the next run, we retcon everything once more, eddie just needs to control his darkness, the symbiote was an evil abuser all along, nothing on earth is ever new.
i’m not gonna go through it, i’m just gonna point you to the backbackbackbacklash issue that came out during this time: venom annual volume 2 number 1 - it’s confusingly named, it’s the one that has a blue-skinned space lady on it. this one ignores the backbackbacklash going on very pointedly and goes “it’s not ABOUT control” again, it’s pretty explicitly romantic.
and then there’s also marvel comics presents (2019) #5, which, oddly enough, does not particularly feature the characterisation you’d typically see in the relationship narrative? but it does feature eddie and the symbiote literally fucking, so you’d want to know about it.
that’s the overall, like, frame of eddie and the symbiote being in a relationship (nuh uh) (yeah they are) (NUH UH) (YEAH THEY ARE)
some stuff that’s smaller but still notable, uh.
nova (1999) 6 - 7, that’s the “we’re space married”
venom: dark origin, that’s an ALTERNATE (!!!) take on the character, don’t expect a likeable eddie but it’s very darkly funny and gay so what can i say.
venom: the end, which i would absolutely fucking hate to be canon, i think its characterisation is quite regressive, but the symbiote sure is in love, i guess.
venom: separation anxiety, the dawn of the control narrative but eddie’s characterisation did not have to go so wrong from here, like if they’d just figured out AT THIS STAGE that he's STILL acting like venom without it... i digress. it has the symbiote going eddie eddie eddieee
venom: sinner takes all, this is the first she-venom comic so that’s. hm. interesting. healing symbiote blanket
don’t read venom: license to kill just look at this panel with me
if i think of more comics worth adding i’ll add them.
the subtext slash text is heavy enough to be present to some degree in literally every cartoon adaptation of eddie brock. spider-man: the animated series goes FULL control narrative, in fact it started the “the symbiote corrupted peter” take that we to this day cannot escape, but the first few venom episodes are VERY playful about their relationship.
in spectacular spider-man it’s canon, but horrible. eddie’s in love with it, but eddie's a good boy and the symbiote is played very, very, very abusively. i think this is an evil symbiote adaptation that works well enough, at least it’s an actual meaningful character instead of just a malevolent force to resist.
in marvel’s spider-man, the only venom episode worth watching is venom returns.
i’ve actually got every symbiote-relevant episode listed right here from when we did our communal watch-through.
also watch truth in journalism. idk if it’s exactly shippy just do it
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I think you once mentioned being fond of Kataang? Even though I'm not big on Avatar ships, I am also fond of the couple and never had any real issue with the relationship, other than the fact that the two were perhaps too young when they became an item. What are some things you like about the characters' relationship, if you don't mind me asking?
Shush, I’m gonna get excommunicated!
I’m with you, I mean, I haven’t watched the show in a while but I’m just kind of, what’s not to like? I get that it’s a (biological) 12-year-old who’s in love with a 14-year-old so that’s a little awkward, but I really don’t think anyone would have a problem with it if the show hadn’t accidentally written in a really compelling alternative. My main thing is, I feel that there’s a tendency to read the relationship and Katara’s love for Aang strictly in terms of her mom status to the entire team when it was apparent to me from the get-go that Aang was Katara’s best friend. You know when she says she hasn’t gone penguin-sledding since she was a kid and Aang says “You still are a kid”? I think sometimes people forget that Katara is very close in age to Aang and only acts like an older adult because she had to grow up very fast, while Aang was raised in a pre-war world where kids got to be kids. Aang not only brings Katara hope for the world but brings her a lot of much-needed lightness, it’s not like Aang is the sole beneficiary here in terms of positive influence. Did anyone even watch “The Headband”?
I think it was necessarily a little one-sided in the way that the romantic angle was written because again, Aang is 12, but it would have been cool to pick up on them as older teenagers or as married adults and see that dynamic explored more fully, it’s a good one. Look you don’t have to like the ship to agree it deserved a better future than whatever that was in Korra
#I always enjoyed the mall goth couple of Zuko and Mai though so I have controversy for days if I cared enough to pursue it which I don’t#asks#mademoiseli#Kataang#Avatar: The Last Airbender#animation#television#Aang#Katara
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Talking to the moon
The rumors and trauma lived inside his head in fact it ate him alive. Each and everyday lifeless and a black cloud hung over his head. Except when he received and a test message from an unknown number. He knew it was unknown for three reasons. 1) Everyone knew to not text him or disturb him unless he contacted them first. 2) He could recite his entire list of contacts over anything else in his life. And the third was that he didn’t know that this unknown message would change him forever.
Word count: 15,000 *im so sorryyyy*
This is another dreaded Bucky Barnes x reader fic.
Viewers beware you are in for a scare with the: fluff, Bucky is a wanna be alcoholic, blood, angst, cheesy tropes *wrong number,etc*, bad jokes, one liners, awkwardness, sexual innuendos, mentioned sexual harassment, suicidal thoughts, depression, murder, slight dark Bucky who’s just trying to get through life, Sam Wilson mentioned, astrology and planets, knifes, ptsd, nightmares and terrors, flashbacks, sad bitch Bucky missing Steven and using the reader as a better therapist then the certified one, she/her pronouns used for the reader, mostly from Buckys POV, she/you referring to the reader JOHN WALKER SLANDER NO HATE TO THE ACTOR, glass.
(This is dedicated to my friend, tiny adjustments to buckys story and I am dearly sorry if I didn’t write bucky true to his character!)
He choked awake on the air that never left his cold lungs, meanwhile, his skin was afire. A coat of sweat coated him, he slept shirtless since this occurred so often. Always waking in the depth of night to little to no light, only the low gleam of the moon shone through his window near his kitchen along with the soft luminosity of the television sat in front of the sofa. One that he refused to sleep on. He couldn't even sleep on the soft bed tucked in the back corner of the room down the hall in his apartment. He debated why he just wouldn't move into a studio apartment instead of the one he resides in.
He huffed staggeringly and his eyes falling to the ground, searching for something that was never there. Tranquility. His brain trying to calm itself in some form, it never worked it took hours for it to. Even then it never lasted. He suffers another day's trauma trying to sort the world back into order. Sam would often notice but knew to never ask him about it. He knew from the months working together asking and attempting to comfort Bucky often led to arguments. Bucky strongly knew this was nothing and that others were just blowing it out of proportion.
That also led to bias work and Bucky not doing his best, since Sam put him in a bad mood beforehand. Bucky went to therapy. He was more forced than offered, the government felt he was more of a ticking bomb than anything else. Bucky thought of it as more of a joke than anything.
There was no sense in for him to go to the sessions. He often found himself trying to find excuses to skip sessions. He thought that the past is the past and trying to fix it wasn't a possibility. Bucky dealt with it the way he could. He pushed it deep, deep, down in the roaring sea of his mind and dealt with it later. Only in his dreams did it resurface to haunt him. Always making him uptight and tired from the lack of sleep.
However, at this point, he was use to the torture of it all. His brain is his worst enemy. Through shaky breath fanned on his arm, he was crouched over his left leg up his metal arm resting over his knee his other arm holding his weight. He watched the glow of the tv, his chest heaved in exasperation.
Nothing piqued his interest in broadcasting. It was all the same mumbo jumbo of stereotypical things like romance, the reality that was depicting the species as inhumane, the comedy he didn't understand, only one channel did hold his interest.
Perhaps it worsened his mental state but he didn't care and it was the news. It was all the current disasters of the world and the avengers trying to stabilize the circumstances and the best part of it all how disturbing the world is. Even if his bringing was normal to where he is now, he'd most likely be a deeply tormented individual.
He nearly had heart failure when a banner at the bottom of the screen read "John Walker elected as the new Captain America." In blinding letters. Above the banner was John Walker himself standing in front of the podium a hand raised in a gesture to recognize the audience's howl.
Buckys head burst with memories of Hydra and the way it evoked him. The way of how Hydra forced him to be something he wasn't. John Walker was the perfect example of an alternate reality with a substitute Steve. Everything Steve was for John Walker was against.
Images flashed in his head. He put his hands on his head his natural one warm and clammy, in contrast to the bitter cold one. It just gave his flashbacks even more fuel. Living with a constant reminder of who he is. A monster.
He grabbed tightly onto his hair the strands were being plucked as this was being written. He felt small patches of balding from this happening so regularly. His legs parted and creased by the knees. His face strained into pain. His extensive wrinkles from age, noticeable, and worsened from him doing so.
His blanket thrown away to the side with disregard, he started to rock softly front and back. The wood floor burned his tailbone from him sitting on it for so long. Suddenly he felt a different pain. A killer one.
The beige cabinets thrown open papers and documents scattered everywhere. The dark grey of a ceiling of the shelter peered over him judgingly. His arm pushed down into the metal of the chair burned from the uncomfortable position. The bolts leaving deep indentions in his skin. The helmet pressed tightly to his skull leaving him render less against the horror of hearing the words. So many times he had to go through this routine, the monitors loud and buzzing. He bit down strenuously onto the guard in his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut. The electricity drumming into his head, his brain setting fire to its system, he feels it in his muscles, in his blood, the veins that pop in his neck. The tubes behind his head generated and pumped large amounts which umped higher and higher in velocity each time an activation word was spoken loud and clearly. Spat carelessly not in his mother's tongue, he would never think of the language to be beautiful only to be a monstrosity of the world one of the greatest. His dull fingernails dug into the chair it did nothing other than to give him some sort of balance. He screamed but it was muffled to an extent of the guard doing its purpose. "Daybreak."
The announcer spoke into the fuzzy black microphone that's the only word he made out to hear. The daily news report drone on for what of which he came back into reality.
He opened his azure eyes and looked to the left the window that sat in the middle of a pale white wall and his kitchen showed the red bloom of the sun and the tall buildings of the city.
He felt resentful towards the time of day since his flashbacks usually only lasted a minute or so.
Lately, they've grown in duration and that stroke dread into him. He was horrified that someone would say or do an act that would put him in a state of mind. One that he wished to not be in.
Somedays he just yearned to be left for dead in the snowfall of the forest. Notably, so far from the arm that was taken from him that it would be hidden to the world for eons. And from the pessimism of the clouds above him.
He grew irritably hot and damp from the excessive sweat he did to himself, he felt everything was his fault, enlisting, going on the train, helping Steve.
He hated himself for a moment realizing what he thought, he felt selfish for thinking that Steve did this to punish him. He sighed and laid his head tilted to the plastered ceiling.
His neck outstretched. His legs and his arm, limp from the compression of him tensing them for so long. His muscles trying their hardest to relax. His figure seeming to be the equivalent of a sack of potatoes.
He didn't care about how he presented, perhaps it was his past with being a soldier the constant thriving to be the strongest and the son of Hercules. He pushed so far that his body couldn't endure the strength he put it through.
Super soldier serum and all, he was still just a man. He was still human deep into the last atom of his DNA. His eyes nonchalantly examined his ceiling a soft pale white like the rest of his apartment, it reminded him of the moon outside.
If he were to take out his ceiling it'd be right above him. He was enamored by how it seemed to have an ever-lasting glow. He let out a shaky huff then fell ever quiet. Until the day grew old.
Yori had scheduled a lunch meeting earlier that week, they had a routine. Yori attended and Bucky paid. This happened every Wednesday they would meet up and discuss whatever they wished. Yori was just an old decaying man who lived in Chinatown, he lived across from Bucky's building. Yori was kind to the ones he knew.
It was otherwise to people he didn't. After Yori's son died it was hard to, if he only knew who Bucky was entirely he'd die out of shock. Bucky swore to tell him but honestly, Yori was his only friend he had out of work, and even that he couldn't let himself go and confide in Sam.
So here he was in a plain-back leather jacket, some jeans and the same pair of boots he had since the war. He didn't understand the fashion trends of late. Last week he and Yori saw a woman in a bright suit, it looked like a second skin from how tight it was.
Yori was simple-minded as he was and had similar morals and interests. It was disheartening to say that Bucky had a sort of envy for Yori, Bucky wished to have lived a normal life of maybe dying in the war or growing old and gray like Yori.
Get married, have a couple of kids, live a normal life. He understood greatly why Steve went back but he never fully forgave him for it. He felt like Steve was selfish for doing so, but isn't everyone? Steve got a normal life while Bucky had to rot in the world alone and was terrorized by his brain.
He crossed his arms, the leather making a strange sound since he gripped himself so tightly. He sat up straight, his shoulders back, his face set with a profound scowl. It forever imprinted on his face the dark scruff of a new beard growing in.
He hated how it meant uncleanliness, but he didn't have the motivation to shave it off, there wasn't a reason to anyway. He hadn't been on a date in years, centuries even.
He poked and played with his sushi that Yori said was great to try at least once. Bucky felt bad and tried a bite, he had to give credit for a thing so small having to be so spicy. That was about the first and last bite Bucky had. Since then he just jabbed at it with one of the sticks.
The other laid across the small complimentary plate with the rest of the remains of the sushi he failed to eat, he lost his appetite a few weeks ago.
He's been nursing a strong drink called Shōchū. Every time Bucky ordered it Yori said that he put an accent on it and that it made him sound like a foreigner. Although Bucky didn't know how since he was fluent but that was an argument for another day.
The employees there grew to know that they should just leave the bottle there since he usually drinks half their supply on each visit.
He just simply didn't think eating was something he needed. Recently things just seemed to bore him to the point where things that he needed to do he couldn't.
All because his brain tells him this doesn't matter. He's just lived so long from numerous life-ending things and he'd be damned if he'd kick the bucket from starvation.
"That scowl of yours is going to scare the women away," Yori spoke, breaking Bucky out of his trance. Bucky only saw the select few people around them and the women that Yori was referring to were a few older women with smiles and when Bucky turned to look they suggestively waved their fingers.
When Bucky looked back Yori smiled and waved and went back to inhaling noodles. Bucky looked at the man across from him in the small sushi restaurant he grew to know too well, they always sat in the same place a small table near the front of the glass doors.
Some posters and decorations were scattered throughout the small building. The dim lanterns gleam radiantly against the cryptic night. It rained before and the droplets of rain still reside on the windows behind Yori.
Yori slurped pounds of noodles into his mouth at a time, the residue of it was left behind on Yori's pale-white mustache. Bucky was surprised that the stick didn't break from the weight of it. Bucky's eyebrows furrowed together in thought, his posture relaxing.
He laughed inside his shoulders coming up and the side of his lips curved in a smirk. The demeanor he held was appealing from afar, (specifically to the cougars adjacent from where they were.)The conversation always breaking Bucky's previous mood, Yori was very light-hearted when he wasn't in a mood. Especially when he had food and good company. He decided to further it:
"What do you know about the ladies here that I don't?" Yori swallowed a big round lump in his throat slowly going down to his stomach, he must've had a pile of noodles in it by now.
"Well first off all, don't test my ways of making them swoon over me," Yori stated it more of a threat than a declaration. He used his chopsticks and pointed them at Bucky and a warning manner.
His eyebrows perked up and the wrinkles on his forehead worsened similar to the ones that grew on Bucky. His eyes became wide at the thought of being disrespected like the way Bucky just did.
"Second of all, you don't understand how to look without your eyes." And with that Yori chowed down once again on his bucket of noodles. Bucky couldn't perceive Yori's advice, what does seeing without your eyes even could mean?
His smirk faltered into his normal resting face which Yori liked to remark and say was the equivalent to people putting the trash into his garbage can. There was no rhyme or reason for people to do so but they just did.
Just like the way Bucky was always in a sour mood it reminded him of himself always being angry at the world because of other people.
"Have you been seeing anyone lately, if not that might be the cause of your problems," Yori spoke as if he knew everything about Bucky and maybe he could Truth it since Hydra and after being the winter soldier and Steve passing.
Bucky hadn't really been ready to mingle. He just knew he had too much baggage for a partner to put on deal with him. Every now and then when he felt completely alone he downloaded some dating app he didn't actually want and deleted it on the same night.
He had flings here and there and since he met Yori he had been setting him up on dates whether Bucky liked it or not. None of them worked out since Bucky didn't try; he was too wrapped up in his own problems to be listening to hers.
Bucky's gloved metal hand wrapped behind his neck and scratched his stubble coming back down.
"You know Yori surprisingly enough I haven't," Bucky spoke grimly and clutched his teeth. He knew Yori was going to tell him off. He winced when he heard Yori's chopsticks fall into the cup of noodles. Yori sat back into his wooden chair, his arms crossed and a displeased look came across his face.
"And why is that?" Bucky began to open his mouth "Don't give me some excuse that you always give me or this will be our last meeting." Yori stated in a harsh manner with his face twisted in that fatherly manner. "I don't understand why it's a great value to you, to know about my love life,"
Bucky spoke of it as a statement but it came out more as a question. Yori quieted and thought for a moment thinking of the proper words to say. "The stars are aligned in your favor, in which that means you should try and put effort into those small details in what is grief, if not love persevering."
Bucky sat there thinking over the things Yori told him. Bucky stretched his arm out to sip on the Shōchū. He was about a quarter way through. They'd only been there for two hours.
Since Yori met Bucky he learned that people can't always be that bad. Unless of course, you're the type who knocks over his trash can and the men don't pick it up and so it rots to hell when he fills it.
Bucky sighed and reached for the half-full glass of Shōchū. Yori never favored seeing him drink. It was too similar to him drinking when his son passed.
So Yori being Yori he made a little catapult with his chopsticks and put a small piece of noodle into his device and flicked it at Bucky. Bucky glared at him and touched the spot where it hit. Right in the middle of his creased eyebrows. The residue of the noodle followed his fingers Yori went back to eating but before he did so he gave a word to Bucky
"You're not supposed to think about how to see without your eyes. It defeats the purpose entirely if you think about it as strongly as you do, I may have some years under my belt of practicing but you are going to go nowhere soon with the troubles that live in your scowl."
He paused searching into Bucky's storm-driven eyes, Yori saw nothing that lived behind them other than sorrow. It pained Yori to see his friend in such a state.
Yori rested his hands on the table interlaced in front of him, trying to find anything worth reviving if it wasn't already killed behind Bucky's aurora. But then all of a sudden a glimmer, a spark you could say flitted inside the fellow in front of him.
Yori leaned back in his chair and smiled softly, his eyes creasing. "Ah, there it is," Yori spoke softly. Bucky confused more than he had ever been in his life questioned everything.
He had no idea what Yori was doing or as to why he endured the unwanted staring contest they just had. Then his answers were spoken by the one who created the questions.
"The way you see without your eyes is simply to be at peace with yourself, look at the moon and the stars.
They have no troubles or worries and they are the most looked at things in the entire universe no matter where you are. They see everything, yet they still choose to have no regard for the ones that judge them. For you young sir, for them to have that happiness you take that amount doubled."
Bucky scoffed that he didn't intend to be disrespectful, but how in the world was he supposed to be calm when he knew Yori's speech was literal. Yori never made jokes or metaphors, he learned that the hard way.
He uncrossed his arms for the first time since they sat down, and rested his elbows on his knees, and leaned forward in the wooden chair. He squinted his eyes, questioning Yori's statement.
He knew Yori hated to be questioned and tested, they always led to night and day-long arguments that never fully were resolved. Maybe it was the half bottle of Shōchū he drank that made him confident. He spoke rough and dry from it taking over his throat and liver.
"So let me get this straight. the only way I can find peace and happiness is if I talk to the stars and the moon? Yori, you've got to be joking." Yori grew agitated but his composure remained ever the slightest of relaxation.
Yori reached towards the back of his pants to retrieve something while glaring at Bucky and the staring contest resumed. Bucky thought for a moment that Yori was going to shoot him in point-blank range in front of the small company that was set at different tables all over the place.
Instead, Yori pulled out a small crumbling paperback book with the cover filled with stars and galaxy-type depictions and inscribed above it was
"Talking to the moon, and other astronomic casualties"
Yori sat the book gently on the side of the table he got up and before he left he looked at Bucky for a long while before turning and walking out the door. Not another word was spoken between them until the next Wednesday.
Bucky walked home that night by himself. Usually, he would walk with Yori but what happened at the sushi place he felt disturbed by. He lost his temper and he never should've.
He's been put in worse situations than thinking that Yori made him out to be a fool for believing that the stars could talk. Who knows if they do. He should've been more open-minded, he's just been riled up from the flashbacks.
Shōchū seemed to make things worse but he'd forget about things for a while. He wanted to apologize to Yori;
he severely drowned the urge. With the rest of the bottle. Yes, the restaurant let him take the rest. He had to pay handsomely. He thought it was worth it until he had to walk up the stairs to get into his apartment. He swayed back and forth mostly to the left. The arm weighed more when he was like this.
He had not a thought in mind about the world other than seeing the bottom of the clear bottle made of glass.
He tried to walk up the stairs he really did but his chunky boots made it hard to judge the height of the stairs. He got about halfway up them and then he fell. He smashed his chin against the wood and his chin started to bleed. He didn't try to stop the fall.
His right hand was occupied with the bottle. His thick scarred fingers tied around the neck of it securely. He'd kill anything that would try to take it away from him. He pushed himself up off the stair and he winced in pain when his right hand was now in the pile of glass. It fell and broke when he did.
His back burned with being indented from laying on the stairs. His chin seeped down onto the pit of his neck where his jaw formed.
He pushed slowly up off the stairs entirely putting his damaged hand behind his back. How ironic that his normal flesh is the damaged one.
He lifted off with the metal one. He clutched his wrist and pinched it tightly with the metal one.
Trying to cut off blood flow so it won't get more infected than it already had. He walked to his apartment shamefully. His head hung down low, too insecure and awkward about what happened. His jaw stern and gritted he was embarrassed.
The alcohol dimmed it but it was still a major event. He'd hit the rock bottom of an endless pit.
He dug out his key in his pocket and went inside. When he entered he always felt worse than he had left. Yet he never had a problem leaving. It always felt like he was welcomed back into a deep aurora of depression.
He stepped on the back of his boots and left them by the door. He walked to the bathroom but he stopped and turned to look at the tv. There he was again in all his glory. John Walker.
Although this time in his clutches was Steve's shield. He grew saddened by the fact Sam gave it over. He felt betrayed. Sam was the only one he knew other than him how valuable that was and John Walker out of all people had it in his possession.
He'd have a long discussion with Sam in the near future about this. He was always infuriated by John but now he couldn't put it into words. Except for the word imposterous.
Bucky felt a sharp pain in his wrist and when he looked down. He soon found that he was nearly fracturing his wrist with his metal modeled fingers. He also took into mind how deep the glass shard was. Some tiny, some huge. He cursed under his breath a soft and crude
"Fuck."
He quickly loosened his grip and shook his head in regret when he looked down to his wood floor. He realized that blood trickled from him since he opened the door.
He hastily shuffled awkwardly to the bathroom trying his hardest to not make more of a mess than he already had. He walked with long strides and his white socks dirtied from blood.
The bathroom was small, with half tiled walls and a tiled floor, beige paint covered the rest of the wall. A shower shoved to the left of him, an off-white bulb accentuated the room.
He swore to change it but he never did. A mirror and sink in front of him, the mirror was a small white rectangular one, matching the shape of the sink. Sandwiched in between the shower and sink was the smallest white toilet imaginable.
He hated going into the bathroom for this reason alone. He saw how weak he was in the mirror.
A busted bleeding wound. That crept close to the imprint that marked the middle of his chin, dark drunk eyes, shaded pink lips, sharp cheekbones accompanied with a keen jawline, scars littered across his body. His face had a few abrasions, and cheeks hidden in the scruff that continued to grow.
His hair tousled and strewn every way it pleased. He never cared about it; he never tried to style it since he'd just put his hands in it. His shoulders were clad in leather and a beige henley that matched the walls. The calmness after getting pounded reminded him of when hydra made him fight the other soldiers. Then suddenly he was there.
It was a day that Bucky would think about for the rest of his life. Bucky had a lot of those days but this one, in particular, was one that made him feel excruciating pain. The fight he was trained to lose. The compound was a dimly lit walkway in between the cells. Two would fight momentarily continuously one was declared the winner and fight the champion. Bucky or the soldier.
The commanders of hydra love to evoke fear. Seeing the men riddled with fear. Some vomit, others beg. Some are like Bucky. Ruthless. They don't care who they are or what they want to be. All they strive to be or do is fight and the blood splatter after winning against the enemy, releases stress so sometimes it's a release unless you have a guilty conscience. For Bucky, it's the latter. He has nightmares, sure, but everyone does.
Bucky had perfect posture, his head tilted into the way hydra trained him to do or to be brainwashed until he was complicit. Bright ocean eyes were unknowingly dead. The thunder of the other candidates to fight by the cells on the sidelines until it was their time to fight.
Although before they went to fight they would have a fistfight with Bucky to higher their combat skills. Bucky was the best soldier they had to let them practice on. That being said Bucky wasn't being used to his full potential. Bucky hadn't fought anyone to his skill level, everyone was either at a lower or average level. They were put into groups of two in fighting whoever won would fight either Bucky or another soldier even crueler than Bucky. Bucky had some remorse and would hold back. He still deep down was a person but the other soldier killed many from going too far. And today was the day that Bucky had to fight that soldier. Bucky had three other men for the soldier to fight until it was him, all skinny and small, scrappy.
The soldier was big and unruly. He was undefeated, sure Bucky was scared but at the compound, it's kill or be killed.
No one knew the soldier's true name, just the series of numbers he was given. His confidence may be the death of him. Bucky believed-knew that he was more than the average man. He had courage, a heart of gold, and the endurance of a bull and here he was amping himself up and nervously fidgeting wondering what would happen if he won this fight. He wondered if everyone would think of him as superior or if he'd be more of a black sheep.
He heard a crack of a hydra man yelling to start. The man in front of him was next and the one that lost had gashes to the bone and blood oozing out of places where he didn't know could.
Bucky felt exposed when the man in front of him went to fight, there was still a very long list behind him to fight but he was next up. The soldier looked at him, his demeanor felt like the grim reaper and Bucky was fixing to pay his toll.
The soldier had muscles upon muscles and as broad as one can ever be. The word powerful couldn't even describe him in the lightest.
Bucky chewed on the inside his cheek he was nervous.
The soldier was known to put the others in the infirmary for days on end and those he hurt abnormally bad gotta not fight for a while and rot in their cell until. More often than none they'd put you back out in the field.
The stories of this soldier were the type you'd tell sitting at a campfire to scare kids, instead, it was grown, men. Even if Bucky was the bravest out there he wasn't like the soldier.
Bucky observed all of his techniques and styles over the weeks. Preparing himself for his scheduled fight. It was an algorithm for the soldier to react to specific hits and counter them with the same thing over and over. The hydra men taught all of the soldiers the same moves except the one Bucky was going to go against. They knew Bucky was their best soldier so they had to at least put him in a good fight. Bucky caught on to this pattern and that made him think that he could win.
The man in front of him laid in a fetal position with mud and red splatter across his pale form, the boisterous crowd making the shame feel unbearable.
Then all of a sudden Bucky felt a harsh shove on his back. One of the hydra men shoving him into the pit with the soldier. Bucky nearly fell face forward on the cement. A burst of loud booming laughter deafened him more than the crowd on the sidelines.
The soldier crouched low and Bucky knew what he was going to do. He took out the legs then beat his component to a pulp like a gorilla. Bucky did the same stance. He looked foolish, his hair stuck to his forehead, sweat-soaked his clothes which were already tightened to his skin from the excessive working out he did. Courtesy of Hydra wanting him to be in top shape. The other soldiers grew restless as they psyched one out. They went into circles staring at one other like vultures testing who was the quickest. Whoever blinks first wouldn't blink for weeks after.
A screech came from the soldier and he came after Bucky.
Now imagine a vicious lion combined with a cyclops coming at you. Bucky psyched him out and pivoted. That just angered him more since the battles never lasted more than a couple of minutes. This one was already the longest. The soldier turned slightly and looked over his shoulder and before he could do so Bucky had gotten close enough to kick the left of his knee in and he fell. It was as loud as the thunder when he did.
Although Bucky wasn't watching his feet and the soldier took his left foot and grabbed Bucky. He fell. The roar of the other soldiers boomed. His ears went out painfully, a ringing sound, and the rain flew harshly against his face.
He couldn't move, the wind knocked out of him that he couldn't breathe. He felt ashamed to have even thought that he could win. The black ceiling littered with golden beams.
The gold reminded him of the stars behind them, how someday he could be out of this dungeon to see them again. Abruptly all the ringing in his ears came back. He heard a low hum of breathing; he thought it was his own until he saw the beast above him. The soldier grabbed his arms and Bucky struggled even through his stupor. Bucky wiggled and tried to get out from his grasp but he was a god amongst men. Bucky then thought of how Steve felt when he'd get cornered in an alley and he'd come and save Steve from being killed. But Bucky didn't get saved. The barbarian struck Bucky over and over. The nurse would later tell him that she was surprised that he didn't have any brain damage. Bucky waved in and out of reality. Every time he tried to open his eyes it'd be welcomed with a fist. Bucky spat the blood out of his mouth onto the soldier. The soldier was just too strong. He was impossible to win against. The soldier rubbed the blood into his face and laughed. He leaned to Bucky's ear only so he could hear "puny."
Bucky screamed loud. Loud enough that the neighbors awoke from their sleep and he'd sure have a lot of complaints to address in the morning. In a split second, he found himself with his fist through the mirror, the glass falling every way onto the tile into the sink and toilet. Into the already damaged hand of his, the glass poked through his palm, and through the other side, the previous glass dug deeper into his flesh.
Severing the tendons. All he could think about was the pain of having to clean everything up. He didn't feel the pain he caused himself because that didn't matter. It made him feel the least bit human. Pain. Everything living thing felt alive and once he lost that. He'd feel like a complete and utter monstrosity.
He looked up from his hand and to the mirror. Shards still hung and it displayed a perfect depiction of what Bucky was. Damaged.
Bucky spent the rest of the night with a bandaged chin that kept bleeding like a waterfall. Hw picking out pieces of glass with the smallest tweezers known to man, that too ruby red water ran down the sides of his hand onto his bare beefy thighs and pooled in the middle of his palm.
He had calmed down after a couple of hours by sitting on the bumped-out window.
He often likes sitting there and watching the city. The cars zooming past the bright casinos.
The one thing he enjoyed the most was watching the constellations and making them out to be the things he liked. Often he'd see a star in the moon and he saw the shield.
He hated that one since it put him in the pain of remembering Steve and how he had no one.
He didn't need anyone. That's what he told himself but he was very wrong. His jacket was thrown over a wooden chair in the dining area. The sleeves of his henley rolled around his elbows showing the veins in his forearms.
He changed out his jeans for a random pair of dark shorts, he threw off his dirtied socks.
To say the least, he was at comfort for the first time this week. He started to read the book a little, the pages were torn and faded. Yori must've read this multiple times.
Bucky wondered why. The book was small and petite and was only a hundred or so pages. It was interesting, it was all about philosophy, it was written as if it was a big life poem.
He hated a lot of it but here and there were a few good points. He was about halfway through the book when a paragraph struck him.
Heart. Mind. Body. Soul. Great beings of life and they can only communicate by stars. Life and everything between can be carried through them. So if you speak to the sky of night. You will often hear a reply.
He thought of it as silly but then his brain began to wonder. What if he could talk to whoever he wished dead or alive. Just from talking to the stars. It seemed too easy and childish.
Although what did he have to lose the majority of the world hated him and the other half tolerated him.
He put the tweezers down and wrapped his hand with the bandage used to box. He had leftover wrappings since he used to do dirty street fighting when he got dumped from S.H.E.I.L.D's payroll.
He picked up the book that was under his thigh, holding the book open. He held it there since that was where the most light surfaced. He didn't exactly have the expenses to pay the electric bill so he always kept it off.
His eyebrows furrowed ever close as he came across a sentence he seemed to not understand.
The book looked like it shrunk in the size of his hand. His fingers twisted and ran over the cover and the letters on the page fell off onto his lap. The shorts rode up about mid-thigh and engraved their way into his skin.
He couldn't read anymore. He sighed when he read the same paragraph twice over.
All he could think about was being able to talk to Steve. He pushed it into the back of his mind, he carried the book carelessly in his hand, the feeling an odd one since he hadn't read anything for ages.
He walked over to his little place where he slept and laid down.
The news wasn't showing anything interesting. He became quite bored. He wondered if Yori was doing okay.
Maybe he should check up on him even if they weren't on the best of terms. He drifted in and out of consciousness, he played with the wrapping of his hand to try and keep him entertained.
He sat up against his wall observing everything around him how bland and monotone everything was.
He felt a buzz in the pocket of his shorts. He begrudgingly went to grab it. He didn't know who or why they were messaging him. Whoever it knew that it was just for emergencies.
He swears that he was going to murder Sam if he sent him one of the pictures with a caption that never related to the image. Sam said that supposedly there was a joke in the caption but that just made Bucky even more confused.
Bucky didn't know why he kept the phone. He never answers it and usually, he finds out everything he needs to know by watching the news.
When Bucky did finally open his phone to see the lock screen. He stared at it in bewilderment for a long while trying to make sense as to why someone messaged him.
He noticed that it was from an unknown number. That being said there was a one in a million chance for someone to know what his number was. He sighed he was going to have to change his number again. He was surprised what the message was.
"Hey! I had a wonderful time on our date today, I was wondering if we could go on another this week? If not I completely understand I'm new to this..um..blind dating thing. I really enjoyed meeting you instead of talking to a screen! Lol! Anyway, Ttyl!"
Bucky didn’t know how or what to feel. What date? Why was she (he assumed so since the person seemed vibrant and bubbly.) So happy to see him? He didn’t even know who this person was! A thought crossed Bucky’s mind.
Perhaps he could initiate the partner she went on a date with. He wasn’t exactly busy and had a girl on his arm. He realized that if he were to go on this hypothetical date that it would be very obvious that he wasn’t the man she was interested in.
He subconsciously stood up and paced his living room to his kitchen to and fro. The soft glow of his phone illuminated his face in the dark. It was wrapped tight in his metal fingers. The yellow stripes that were like a snake coiling around his arm grew more visible.
He threw his right hand into his hair, his henley slightly rising and showing a patch of skin between the waistband of his shorts and where the sweater laid. It allowed a drooling sight of a teasing view of his defined “V” of his hip bone that flowed below his shorts.
It's been a while since he felt any blood circulate under his shorts. He didn’t understand what this girl did to him but it got him going and that was certainly uncommon under his circumstances of life.
Don’t get him wrong back in his day he was a player. Now it's lessened to nothing. Not even dates, so this could be big for him. He stopped when he concluded. What the hell did ttyl and lol mean? It took an embarrassing text to Sam and Sam merely laughed at him and told Bucky to google it. That just made things worse.
What was google? He went through every single thing on his phone until he found the icon labeled google and he did google it. ‘Talk to you later and 'laugh out loud' Oh. Bucky was embarrassed how long it took him to figure that out.
He sloppily used both of his thumbs and stood in the middle of his living room texting out a reply.
'I'm totally down to go on another date with you, sweetheart."
He was proud of himself since he remembered Sam using the word totally in a sentence before. He was confident that the confidence and the suaveness from his past never left. And then the regret started to hit him with a bat.
Why’d he called her sweetheart? What if she didn’t like to be called that. God how could he be so stupid?! He started to give up after he didn’t seem to have a reply in his future.
He sat down, crisscrossed in front of his tv and his couch, and began to swim ever so quietly in his mind. His eyes burned with strain as he watched the bright screen in front of him. A festival celebrating the new captain he nearly lost his mind until he felt a buzz against his thigh and when he looked down he saw that the mysterious girl messaged him again.
He opened his phone to find three little dots appearing and disappearing continuously. He wondered what she was writing that required that attention to thinking of what she was writing to him. He wasn’t anyone special. He was a natural disaster but that was about the unique thing about him.
He grew impatient and shifted his weight every few seconds. He was very nervous about what she was going to say. He felt like a schoolboy asking out his crush and being afraid of rejection. Lord help him because he missed feeling something other than pain. Then another buzz ran up his arm and under his spine, it was the message she sent. It was short and simple of the lines of what remembered to be:
"..."
Bucky nearly threw his phone across his apartment. But then sucked a huge breath through his teeth when another buzz went through.
"It's just no one has ever called me 'sweetheart' before."
That made Bucky feel like he wanted to crawl into the deepest darkest ice chamber and live there for the rest of his life. This was it he destroyed his life by trying to flirt with someone hundreds of years younger than him. He exposed himself and he could never redo it. He should've known that this was a bad idea.
Technically he did but he just ignored it. How could he be so idiotic to spoil his chances of getting out of this cage of death. This was the epitome of a fish drowning. He was overreacting and hyperventilating solely because he doesn't know how to flirt like the modern age. He was doomed.
His fingers resisting the strength of his mind telling him not to type out sent her the message reading:
"Do you like being called sweetheart or do you prefer doll?"
He swore he died when he saw that he sent that. SWEETHEART AND NOW DOLL? He wanted to take a steaming hot bath and maybe splurge with bubbles and fall asleep and hey maybe he'd drown.
At this point, he didn't think it wasn't that bad of an idea. He put his palms on his forehead, his knees on his thighs staring at the pitch-black rectangle below him. Impatiently waiting for her response.
An on-set headache developing from all the stress he's had under the last thirty minutes. His heart jumped at the sight of the glow lighting up his screen. He quite literally jumped out of his sin to read it:
"You have no idea. It's way better than getting called mama and shawty by the fuck boys. Lol!"
Bucky was now in the crisis of not knowing what was a shawty and an *ahem* fuck boy. It was so worrying the amount of googling Bucky has done just talking to this girl. He noted to never call her..shawty or mama and to never be a fuck boy.
When he did figure out what those things were he wasn't exactly surprised. He was jealous and angry that she'd been called things that she didn't want. The feeling was common but never this strongly. It was an odd feeling it rose from his stomach to his throat and made it dry and hard to speak.
It made him clutch the sides of his phone so harshly that webs started to hatch from within the glass. His eyes cold and dead staring at the screen reading over her sentence once, then ten times over.
A little buzz came from his phone gasping for air from Bucky choking it out with his metal hand. (You wish that was you, huh?)
"I do love how polite and gentlemanly you are tho. It's hard to find guys like you."
Such short sentences made his heart gallop so fast in minutes. The logical side of his brain kept telling him that her compliments weren't for him but the attention for someone was much louder.
Maybe his old ways of flirting were beneficial, which caused him to be more at ease. His tensed shoulders relaxed along with his metal arm. Although his body felt he was burning alive. His free hand pulled his collar off his velcro skin, letting his structured collar bones come breathable. His breathing became shallow.
"It's hard not to be when you meet someone so radiant."
He didn't even know who this girl was but all he knew is that he didn't want to lose her and become utterly alone again. Not this time. His hair stuck to his face. He was going to have to take the coldest shower ever to get rid of her and even that he won't.
"LOL, Speak for yourself, I'm nothing compared to you."
He scoffed and typed furiously, how could she think such things about herself. He was deeply frustrated he didn't know why but he felt very drawn to her. He'd do anything in his power to just want her to promise him that she'd never leave him.
God, he sounded like a psycho and maybe he was. Maybe this was his last straw and when she'd break off he would too. He was so afraid of going back to the way things were to going back to being the winter soldier that he felt like he lost his mind trying to prevent it.
"Alright doll, how about this, we meet up this Friday for dinner and a movie at nine o'clock?"
He was scared that she would reject him. Fuck. She didn't even know what he looked like. What if she took one look at him and saw past his facade and into how broken he was and decided that no. All these feelings are what drew Bucky to stop searching and to think that he was a burden to everyone. Maybe that's why he felt the only place he could be himself was when he knew that he was 100% alone.
He huffed softly and threw his head back against the couch staring up at the ceiling once again. His Adam's apple bobbed as he listened to the soft murmur of the tv. All the world's troubles put onto Steve's back for years and he gets a little tongue-tied and that was it for him.
He needed help. He needed to get better. He laughed softly, his face breaking out into creases of his tanned skin, his lips parting and his teeth glowing against the white flush. He was insane and there was no going back. He laughed at himself for what seemed like an hour until he felt the familiar buzz against his heated skin.
"Hell yes man as long as we watch sharknado!"
Bucky's smile grew more and stretched his face into a radiance that made him look like he did when he was young.
Bucky didn't know what the hell sharknado was but he was glad to know she liked him enough to go on a date with him. Bucky Barnes had a date to go on Friday and he couldn't be happier. He didn't have any nightmares that night but he'd rather have a life-ending one than what he told Yori in the morning.
It was a couple of days after the fight with Yori. Bucky finished the book the day after he read it that's why he was here along with wanting to apologize for his actions at the restaurant. He was currently sat on the wise man's couch. His son's shrine right on the small table in front of him. He bit the inside of his cheek hard and let his eyes fall elsewhere. He was ashamed to have kept this secret for so long but he couldn't find a way to tell Yori.
"Yeah, hey I murdered your son but it was fine since I was brainwashed by wanna-be nazis?" He let out a small nervous laugh and ran a hand through his hair. Yori was going to find out somehow sooner or later. Bucky just hoped it was later. He didn't want what he had with Yori to end because of his past.
"What's worrying you?" Yori said softly as he walked briskly into the living room with a cup of green tea. He sat down on the couch on the right side of the Bucky. Nearest to the door. Bucky couldn't but think Yori was in some form afraid of him since he tested him that night at the restaurant. No one ever tried to test Yori.
Bucky was different. A way that Yori wanted to understand. But Yori saw the trouble of the glass downstairs when he went to put the trash away. The brand was still visible and Yori only knew one person who drank that. Bucky. Yori figured bad things came from it.
Partly the reason since he knew what came after from drunken mishappenings. Yori sat the green tea on the brown coffee table in front of them by Bucky and put his focus back onto Bucky.
"I asked a question," Yori said softly. It seemed that Bucky was in a trance his head downward and his eyes shifting searching for something maybe an answer to Yori's question but there were so many things going through Buckys mind that it'd take months for Bucky to explain to Yori everything.
Bucky looked up to Yori with a smile but in his eyes were nothing but disaster. Yori sat uncomfortably. He was disturbed not once in the few months of knowing Bucky did not smile.
Bucky ignored the question instead "I finished the book you gave me," Bucky spoke with a waver in his voice making him sound unsure. While he reached into his pocket to grab it Yori pursed his lips.
"I didn't want you to read it I wanted you to return it to the library," Bucky's smile faltered and his eyes dimmed even darker than the way they did before. "Oh" is all Bucky said before he put the book back into his jacket pocket. He messed with the wrapping on his hand that Yori took notice of. Bucky was acting odder than usual and Yori couldn't put his finger on it.
Yori took out a scratch piece of paper and handed it to Bucky. In scratchy handwriting, Bucky assumed it was another book 'life on mars.' Then Yori spoke up "Are you going to drink your tea if not I will," Yori jabbed a finger pointing to the white cup. Bucky cleared his throat "I'm not that thirsty,"
Bucky handed over the glass cup to Yori and he glared over to Bucky and he glared back. Yori smacked his lips together after he finished. "If you're here just to have a staring contest with me, then I'm afraid you'll be here for a very long time,"
Bucky readjusted his posture and breathed roughly. "I wanted to apologize for the way I acted at the restaurant. I know I shouldn't have lost my temper at something so minor."
Bucky stopped thinking of words to say he gave up. Yori got up and left the kitchen uninterested in Bucky's apology. His son's portrait started yearning to be alive again. He stared brutally into Bucky's existence. It asked to switch position with Bucky and Bucky swore that he was out of his body and then sucked back in when Yori started to swirl a spoon around the top of the lip of the cup.
"Sugar makes green tea flavorful," Yori sat down when he was finished he swirled it into the now full cup. Bucky guessed he made a few more for later. Yori came back up to the lip and dampened it with tea it made and a remarkably loud song.
Around and around it went putting Bucky into a trance his posture regained to straight and his shoulder back head high with eyes dead. "When my son, RJ, was one he used to sing this song 'a longing rusted freight car coming to an end where it went when the furnace descended.' it was quite a beautiful song when he sang it,"
Bucky heard bits and pieces before his brain went to a mush of the activation words being said in his head. "When he was nine had a tumor and we took him to the doctor but we found out it was benign."
Bucky couldn't hear. He couldn't see. The sky was filled to the brim with stars. The moon brightened and removed his appearance from the trace of a normal eye. He stepped carefully on the roof of the building. His suit blending him into the shadows. His hair stuck to his face closing him in and disguising him more than he already is. He saw RJ through the roof's window. This couldn't have gone more perfectly. He slipped behind one of the paintings and was quiet, his breathing irregular. He heard footsteps and assumed it was RJ and punched through the painting and grabbed tightly onto the neck of the man he mistakenly thought was RJ and tossed him back into the debris of the painting. A man came after him and he quickly threw the knife from the back of his belt and plunged it into the neck of his victim. Another man slammed into the stairway when he flew out of the painting the rest of the men flew down the stairs in pursuit of fleeing the winter soldier. As they shot at him he was faster and killed them first he jumped off the stairs and threw the other spare knife at the man in front of him. An old man grey in the green leather jacket he smashed against the wall even threw metal Bucky could feel the man's heartbeat quickening and then faltering to nothingness. "Hail Hydra'' The last words the man heard as he dropped from Buckys grip to a heap of a corpse in a matter of seconds. Bucky turned to his right and watched the RJ struggle to put the key to escape Bucky. Bucky wanted to laugh at how weak and puny his attempt was to get away; he was constantly looking behind him at Bucky. Closer and closer Bucky's strides were to capture his life. Bucky's shoulder swayed a demeanor threatened with authority and anyone who dared to test it would feel the stupidity of their choice. When RJ started to beg Bucky thought that was all he had in him. Bucky didn't care. He raised his hand and straightened it perfectly matching the hilt to the RJs head.
"I KILLED RJ!" Bucky yelled standing upright. Saliva flew onto Yori when he screamed. Bucky's metal arm was tightly tied around Yori's throat. Yori was in pure terror, his eyes wide, his hands in front of him wrapped around the metal as he leaned back to get away from Bucky as he confessed to him who killed his son.
His mouth was wide in shock gasping for air. Bucky's eyes widened in horror, his mind running thousands of thoughts per second he took his hand off Yori's throat and choked on air. Bucky stared down at his metallic pitch-black hand and then Bucky ran. He ran to his apartment. Hands in his hair pacing kitchen to the living room.
What the actual fuck did he just do? He felt tears brim his eyes and he couldn't believe what he just did. He ruined everything he worked for since Wakanda. His reputation was obliterated just like that in a matter of seconds. His breathing became ragged; he managed to take off his dark black leather jacket and tossed it to the couch.
The black t-shirt he had on raised slightly from his arms being on his head. His wrapped hand tore into his skin making him even more upset from the broken mirror in his bathroom that he still didn't clean up. The memory just kept running itself over in his head he couldn't stop thinking about it. Yori's reaction.
There's no way he'd be able to repair what he did to Yori and he'd had to live the rest of his life knowing how badly he fucked up. He wanted to so badly tear this goddamn arm off with everything he had. He remembered trying the old one off that Hydra gave him it never worked. He still had the deep gashes from his nails where they latched onto his shoulder.
The scars never really healed right, instead of being in the skin, they rose like mountains from it. Bucky clutched his head tightly, his form shaking with tremors. He just kept thinking of the word stupid.
"I, John Walker. Captain America has taken the super-soldier serum and in my disregard, I feel as if there are no consequences and it should be open to the public. And in retrospect of the world, I personally think that Steve Rogers was too soft on his components and since I have taken the serum I will no longer be tolerating the life of the terrorists. That being said I will in no regard will hold back. I will do everything in my power to rid this Earth of the monsters we know until their last god-ridden breath."
Bucky lifted his head from its place hanging down into his hands, his jaw gritted tight, his nose flared, and his eyes full of fury. John Walker. He was going to kill that man one way or another. Bucky was pissed so beyond natural anger that he stood up and walked straight in front of the tv.
This man was beyond no right in having that televised. What he said could destroy the world in an instant. Who or why did he get the serum from? And Bucky was the time bomb? Bucky closed his eyes, his hands turned into tight fists, and let the image of John Walker in an interview with a lady sat across from him at John's old school burn in his mind. The white noise of the crowd cheering John's opinion made Bucky's blood boil.
Bucky thought he had calmed himself until he opened his eyes he saw John look into the camera and point.
"The world would be a better place if there were more brave soldiers like me."
Bucky reared his metal fist back and pounded the tv until the screen was ridden of John Walker's face. Bucky came to the idea that when he got another tv maybe he shouldn't watch the news for a while. Glass fell on the table and pieces on the wood floor by his feet.
He fell to his knees. His knees cracked from all his weight on them with no support. His knees being crushed by the glass. His hands hiding his face from the world.
His cheeks and face grew warm from how he felt. His nose burned when tears started to fall ever so gently down his cheeks. Grey eyes becoming the most vibrant of blues. He choked softly, his throat closing as he sat there in the middle of his destroyed living room. His apartment is the greatest amphitheater in the world.
His shoulders rising and falling and stuttering when he gagged on air. He parted his hands from his face and sat upright. His hands fell into fists, his arms tensed and the veins in his neck pulsed when he let out a blood curdling scream. It was a long screech filled with his voice cracking his vocal cords giving upon him.
His tears despite his yelling still fell and stained his cheeks. He thought so many things at once and everything involved him being a monster. He was hurt and this was the worst self-harm. The arm was given to him and the brain that wasn't his own.
He decided that he needed to go on a walk to calm himself down. Maybe he'd go and return Yori's book. All he knew is that the world for Bucky Barnes was getting darker and worse by the day. Who knows how long until he loses who he is. But one thing was for sure. It wasn't going to be for long until he does.
He stayed home for the rest of that day. It was in the evening when he had gotten home from Yori's. He was still greatly upset by what happened. He couldn't think about it until he grew angry with a suicidal rage. He was alone. All over again the monster that kids are scared to go to sleep over.
He sat by the window again just in the same random shorts and no shirt out of fear of coating it in sweat. It was the least of his problems but it was still a burden. He wished he had something to listen to, his thoughts were so loud that he was surprised that mind readers didn't go deaf from it. He watched the people below him walk past the building complex.
Not batting an eye at the monster in the window above them. He wanted to laugh at how normal people were and how he was once like them but now turned into this creature. His shoulders broad and held his form up by the sides of his sculpted waist.
His legs crossed over another he leaned against the wall that joined the window in the corner. He sat across from the kitchen. His stomach growled at the thought of food, the last time he could remember eating something was at the restaurant and that was just a nibble. It wasn't like he could eat something. He never splurged on food, all the food he had was fruit sitting in a white complimentary bowl on the middle of the island.
He pushed his head against the wall swallowing thickly debating whether he should or not. He decided he didn't deserve it after what he's done. Disrupted from his thoughts he felt a buzz on his thigh in the pocket of his shorts.
He fished out the stupid little box and saw that it once again another text from Sam. He's been ignoring them since he's had Sam's contact; he deemed them not worthy of a response. They were all on the lines of are you okay? Bucky smiled at something so incredulous. He started typing out
Yeah. Just losing my mind but other than that I'm just fine. But went against it. When he read more of the missed messages one did pique his interest. Did you hear about the rumor of Steve being on the moon? Bucky's eyebrows furrowed and his face contorted. What? How could Steve be on the moon? Sam and he literally watched Steve grow old in front of them. How absurd to say that Steve was on the moon. But when Bucky thought more of it, it reminded him of what he read in the book.
Talk to the stars and they'll talk back. Bucky groaned in annoyance. Was this what he was resorting to in a desperate measure for interaction? Talking to inanimate things. He let out a deep breath his chest rose then fell shortly after. He closed his eyes imagining Steve back in Brooklyn and all the mischievous things they did.
He remembered the day Steve got rejected and then Bucky being deployed the next day. The day that started it all. The downfall of Bucky's life. Bucky didn't know what he would say to Steve but he thought he started out well enough.
"Do you remember when we were kids and we'd always have to act like we were soldiers because of you. God Steve even when we were kids you had your mind made up. Always wanting to be something when I couldn't even choose what cereal I wanted,"
Bucky stopped and thought over the words he said. It was true. Steve was always headstrong about everything he wanted. Bucky remembered that Steve was going to create this comic of this monkey who shot bananas out of a bazooka. And Steve did.
It never took off or anything it was just the thought of if anything Steve wanted he would never stop until he got it.
While Bucky always had his priorities elsewhere, the majority of the time he made Steve do his homework so he wouldn't fail. Two opposite people were the best of friends, who knew that one of them would turn out to be the villain.
"You know Steve I enlisted because I felt like I had to prove something, I had to prove that I was better at something than you. Just that one thing I ended up not even being better than you at."
Bucky's voice was dry and raspy when he spoke. The screaming fried his throat when he talked. It burned like a good bottle of Shōchū.
He'd kill for a bottle right now. He was starting to understand that this wouldn't work but he grew angrier at the thought of Steve trading him out for some girl. Bucky knew how much Peggy mattered to Steve but he still never got why he'd trade him out for her. He was jealous in a sense over the life Steve got.
"If I could I would change places with you in an instant, to be at peace. You got to live your life and I had to decay for years without my best friend. Maybe this was for the best so you couldn't see me become who I am now. Someone that we swore to never be ever since we were kids, the bad guy."
Bucky chewed on his lip after that. Til the end of the line his ass. Bucky ran his hand through his hair, the strands comforting his hand. He got up from the window and walked over to his little bed and went to sleep. The night's toll took everything out of him.
The only thing he currently wanted was this thing he had with this girl to be good. How wrong he was.
He decided that he was going to go and return the book Yori gave him. He still hated what happened and he knew trying to fix it would make it worse. The least he could do is get him the book he wanted. So Bucky put on his washed-out jeans, his shirt he wore yesterday, shrugged on his jackets and slipped his feet into his boots, and a black glove to hide his metallic arm, and went to the Library.
The library was a little old place with the roof caving in not far from the complex building. He wondered why Yori didn't just go and get it himself, Bucky didn't really care about having to go but he just wanted to know if Yori was okay and doing well.
Bucky went down the stairs and found a few remaining pieces of the glass bottle he broke last week. The memory of him falling and breaking it etched in his mind vividly. He felt a chill run up his spine at the feeling of someone seeing him like that.
He hurried down the last of the stairs and opened the glass door and went outside. The warm air wafted itself around him in a soft summer breeze. It was warm but not hot enough for him to go without a jacket and the chilly breeze lightened it up. It felt relaxing since he forgot how long it's been outside of his apartment.
He took long strides on his walk. But he couldn't shake the paranoia of being stalked. He was about halfway when he saw a shadow mock him. He walked faster not wanting to have to deal with this today.
The other person's shadow grew larger and bigger as Bucky walked further. When Bucky saw the library and a few he nearly bolted to the building. When he was inside he saw that it was just a lost dog. He was losing it. He sighed his mind relaxing and then jolting when he felt a hand touch his shoulder.
"Hey, are you okay mister?"
A warm voice made his heart pump faster than it already was he felt like he was going to have a heart attack. When he turned around he was met by easily the most beautiful girl. It was you. He thought in that instant that everything about you was perfect the way your eyes looked at him, the way your face was adorable, the way your hair fell behind your ears, the way your lips looked the most perfect shade along with your eyes. He promised himself when he got home that he'd paint his whole apartment that color.
He went cross-eyed from staring at the shape of your lips and how they shaped around the words he couldn't hear from being so entranced by you. He started to feel his heartbeat out of his chest. When he thought of how you'd look with pretty lips wrapped around him and dull bedroom eyes looking up at him through thick eyelashes. He needed to stop, he just met you and now he's so hard against his jeans that he was sure that he was bruised.
And your hands on his shoulders shaking him wasn't helping him. His trance was broken when he realized what was happening. "Huh?" That is all he managed to make out through his lust-clouded mind. You did this face that made him die, it was when your eyebrows furrowed and your lips went to one side pursed together. Your eyes were cut at him and he knew he was in trouble but he just couldn't help being enticed by you.
"I asked if you needed help," You stopped and wagged a finger in his way "You're all sweaty." He looked down at himself and you were right, his hair stuck down and his shirt showed pools. Shit. Way to embarrass yourself, Buck. You're sweaty, you're horny for some girl you just met. He was a trainwreck embodied. "I'm okay, it's just the heat," Bucky spoke with uncertainty. He had no idea what was happening why he was acting like this. He usually never felt like this around a girl, especially one he just met.
Your face was still cut, your lips went back into the fullness of how they are naturally. "Weird but okay." You spoke under your breath since it wasn't sweating weather outside. You were going to be the death of him and thankfully there were only a couple of other people in the library since it was the morning of a weekday.
"There's a cool spot where the ac is over there." She turned and pointed towards the left somewhere. He couldn't concentrate in the slightest even if he tried. And god your body from just the standard shirt and jeans you wore he felt his turn into skinny jeans.
"But anyway if you need me just yell, its y/n." And you left and when you walked away to assist someone else he got the perfect view of your ass. He scurried into the thick of the bookshelves and triple-checked if anyone was around him and adjusted himself.
It was so painful to not jump your bones right there. He rubbed his face with his hands and groaned. Get it together Buck. He realizes that he was going to have to go and talk to you again since he had to check the book in. He mentally stabs himself in the neck.
He calms himself down enough so that he could talk to you again. He feels like a prepubescent boy talking to his crush. Bucky guessed that he lost his cool with talking to girls over the years since he stopped. This was hell. You were at the front desk, the one in front of the door. You were reading some book that he didn't know.
He took a moment to admire the way your hair frames your face, the way your ass jutted out so you could lean over the desk on your forearms. Your free hand, the one not holding your page was used as a support beam for your face under your chin. God you were so beautiful, he hooked his finger under the collar of his shirt and started to flick it back and forth to generate air.
He was the human-dog drooling over a mate. He hated himself for not getting to know you and he already felt like this towards you. He was a monster but he wasn't impolite; he drew the line there. He was in the clouds that he didn't notice you staring at him with squinted eyes. "Can I help you, sir?" Your voice hung on sir in his mind.
He couldn't help but envision you beneath him moaning sir. "Uh, yeah, there's this book" He startled himself when his voice croaked out a response. He patted the pocket of his jacket and had a crisis when he thought he left it at home. But when he shoved his hands into his pocket he let out a smile of relief and grabbed it and slid it over to you on the other side of the desk.
"I need you to check that in and then" He stopped and searched for the piece of paper Yori gave him. He found it crumpled as lint in the bottom of his other pocket and the words faded. "Shit, uh, and check out this." He shoved his hands in his pocket and looked at his feet afraid of confrontation. You silently grabbed the book and checked it in and grabbed the note. You couldn't make out a single letter. Your eyebrows pinched together and when he looked up quickly and then darted his eyes away. He knew that you couldn't.
He wanted a sinkhole to open up and swallow him whole. You scratched the back of your neck trying to decipher the note "I can recommend something similar to the book you turned in, I'm sorry but I can't read this." You spoke with sincerity. And walked out behind the desk and poor Bucky followed you like a lovesick puppy.
You cursed Jordan, another employee for putting the desired book on the top shelf. The bookshelves were very tall and you weren't short but you weren't 7' foot either. You pinched your nose shutting your eyes and put a hand on your hip. "Do you see the book at the very top with the red back?" You muttered and Bucky looked up and saw the issue. "Do you want me to grab it for you?" Bucky looked at you with the softest eyes and you couldn't help but admire them.
You shook your head and lord you were about to melt. His body was brushed up against yours, you could've moved but you really didn't. You could feel the texture of his jacket against your soft skin and you cursed yourself for blushing. He took notice and let a small smile creep on his face when he handed you the book and your head was hung low when you walked back behind the desk.
Bucky guessed that he didn't completely lose his effect on girls. When you were checking out the book he noticed the book you were reading. It was The hobbit. He actually enjoyed the book when he read it when it first came out. He didn't take an interest in fantasy and so he shrugged it off until he actually read it.
When you stamped the books inside the page and slid it back. Bucky smirked "You know they all die in the end." The pure confusion on your face was amusing and with that, he left.
When he got home he started to feel the metal of his arm become rusted and thinking back it had been a while since the last time he cleaned it. He was wanting it to fall off so bad that he forgot he actually needed it.
He wondered where the girl went that texted him before. He didn't want to bother her by texting her first that to him was unnatural. It didn't bother him that much since he used to. And that the date was tomorrow so she would either show up or not and he'd suffer the consequences either way.
He went to the bathroom to grab the grease and a rag he uses every time in the cabinet under the sink.
He stopped shortly catching himself in the shattered mirror. The bandage on his chin began to fall off God forbid it started to at the library. He took it off slowly, the hair of his stubble getting caught in the crossfire. There was a bright pink little scar where the gash was. His skin healed relatively fast but it never cured the scars. He figured if his chin was healed that his hand should be.
He unwrapped his hand slowly for some reason he was scared of what it looked like. When he finally finished unwrapping his palm was littered with scars ranging in size. He touched the scars to see if they hurt with his metal hand and nothing.
Just a scar.
Bucky grabbed the grease and took off his jacket and boots and the first time he moved in he sat on the couch.
It was stiff as ever and it never got out of the store phase. He poured some grease on the white rag and it turned brown and he started to put it in the creases where he noticed it too slow. His mind ran back to you that never happened to him. God he was caught red-handed too, he'd have to take a very long and cold shower when he was done cleaning his arm. The rest of the evening all he could think about was what would happen tomorrow and how he'd destroy the girl of his dreams.
Bucky spent Friday constantly checking his phone for two reasons.
1) to see if his admirer would message him and
2) always checking the time.
He honestly couldn't wait; it's been forever and he was excited about something new. For change. The only source of entertainment he had was the book he checked out earlier. It wasn't the book he was supposed to get. The book in contrast was called American Psycho.
Bucky was about halfway and he fairly enjoyed it. Although it disturbed him since he found similarities in himself with Patrick Bateman. Bucky laughed at all the dark jokes and liked all the points where Patrick lost all sanity; it was the highlight of the book.
Bucky flipped one of the knives carelessly in the hand that wasn't occupied by the book. Bucky loved the power a single knife had. A single slip of the wrist could end something as fast as it began. Time flew by when simple hobbies turned into jobs. He cursed himself because it was seven o clock and he had only an hour to go to the restaurant which was the sushi place that he and Yori used to eat at.
He texted the directions to the girl, he grabbed his glove and jacket and shoved the knife in the back of his belt and fled down the stairs and out the door, and ran the rest of the way.
You sat at the small petite table, your phone clutched in your hand carefully watching the time. When it turned to 8:55 your gut twisted. Maybe he didn't like you as much as you liked him.
The waitress came by once again asking if everything was okay and if you'd like to eat and each time and you'd have to politely decline. You crossed and uncrossed your legs, they grew numb from you sitting in the wooden chair for the past hour. You didn't know what to wear so you opted for a sleek white dress and some heels.
You hoped you didn't overdress and make the wrong impression. You sipped on your water looking through the window to find any hint of your lover boy. You knew what to look for since you knew who it was. But maybe he didn't come and you were set up. How embarrassing this was. Yori told you that he was stubborn but he seemed pretty into you at the library. You know Yori through Leah, an employee at the restaurant who was a friend of yours.
She promised you that she would pay for your meal every time you ate there. How could you refuse? You sighed and began to get up and leave since you thought Bucky gave up on wanting to go on the date. You quickly sat down when you heard the bell of the door ring open and then there he was in all his glory.
Bucky Barnes, in the same leather jacket but you couldn't believe how good he looked underneath the dim light. His bandages were now gone and his face was sullen and structured from the shadows that made his face deepen. You smiled your ruby lips catching Bucky's attention and he hadn't seen something so pleasing to the eye in ages. Although he was confused since he didn't know that it was you who he was texting was there something going on that he didn't know about?
He pulled out the chair and sat across from you with his face stern. "Why didn't you tell me it was you that I was talking to?" He spoke slowly and his head tilted in question like a puppy's. "Yori told me about how you are with dating and he was afraid of you always being alone, and he gave me your number, I'm sorry I didn't tell you."
You fiddled with your fingers when you talked you were nervous about his reaction. You knew all about Bucky's reputation and embarrassing enough growing up you developed a crush on him, so you jumped for this opportunity.
You loved how strong and brave he was and even though he was brainwashed you thought of him as a good person. He chewed on the inside of his cheek thinking of what were the right words to say. "Just no more secrets from now on." With that, he waved down the waitress for a bottle of Shōchū.
After the half, the bottle was gone you couldn't help but be in wonder from how he managed to be able to drink all that meanwhile you were still sipping on your first shot. Every sip you took you gagged and your face turned into a kid who took their first sip of alcohol which made Bucky laugh.
Dinner was going along nicely there were many jokes and stories shared but Bucky couldn't help but be skeptical of how this could work. Bucky was severely messed up and couldn't care for another. He wanted to but he was just incapable, maybe he could just live this lie and things could be normal.
When they called for closure Bucky finished laughing at some remark you made, you and he were sat there talking for a couple of hours. It was just so easy to talk to him. Although you did notice a few times he would wince in pain and put his face in his hands. You thought it was odd but shrugged it off from his excessive drinking. Speaking of the devil he asked
"Do you want to go to my place. There have been complications with my tv so we can't watch a movie, but I can keep you company." You smiled a drunken buzz of Shōchū. Not nearly did you drink as much as Bucky but it was still written across your features. Your face flushed pink and your body made of jello hung off of Bucky's arm the whole walk to his house and Bucky every now and then had to pick you up.
Bucky didn't want to do anything rash to you but in the back of his mind, something kept itching it made it so painful that he couldn't ignore it. It kept making him shake his head and wince it was like a headache but much more painful. When he got into his apartment you took notice of what he meant by complications of a totaled tv. You shed off your heels and sat on the tv nervous to be in Bucky's house, your form off-putting to Bucky.
He sat down across the couch from you and he became hurt by you sitting so far away from him. "Are you scared of me or something?" He spoke grimly staring at the floor, his face holding no emotion to his words. "What? no!" You were shocked by his words. How could he assume that you were scared of him? Bucky looked your way and a strange look appeared in his eyes.
"Then why are you sitting so far away from me?" He gritted his teeth and his hands turned into fists, they were clamped tightly together on his thighs and this side of Bucky did scare you. He wasn't Bucky, he looked like him but his whole persona changed in the span of minutes. You wondered if it was something you said or did.
You became fearful when he fell off the couch onto his knees his head clutched in his hands. He started to scream not like the ones before this one was full of pain and torment. The moon's light made this scene unfold a lot more sinister. What was happening to him, why was he acting this way? Then all of a sudden he grew very quiet nothing could be heard other than your breathing.
You were confused and scared but you did care for Bucky and in his position, you assumed he was in serious need of help. You walked carefully taking notice to not step loudly to provoke him. You crouched down your dress falling over your feet, you reached your right hand out hesitant towards Bucky.
You stayed with your hand on his shoulder
"Bucky?"
You whispered softly, scared to disturb him. Everything was at ease at a calm one that felt too unrealistic.
That was true because a few seconds later Bucky grumbled out
"Who the hell is Bucky."
He slung around his body twisted and grabbed a knife from the back of his belt and stabbed you straight into the heart with it. Before you could even have time to run it was over.
The white of your dress now became a soaking deep red. The way your eyes forever open to the moon the way the moon took your life. And that day was when Bucky Barnes lost his sanity and forever came the winter soldier.
*A few months later*
She sat with her legs crossed, her hair tied up perfectly.
Her posture evenly to the ceiling while sitting. The only one that a soldier would perfect. She read over his portfolio over and over to get every last detail to stick in her mind so she wouldn't forget.
She breathed heavily finishing the last sentence. She took off her glasses and shut the case file on her lap, and put her right elbow up on the white seat, her glasses in the same hand.
She pursed her lips staring at the man in front of her and sat on the white couch in front of a forest mural. He was in all black a blank face, his hair a little longer and his stubble now thicker.
He played with the pink protruding scar on his right hand. Pushing and watching the blood rush to it. She wrote that in the notebook.
When he caught notice he stopped and tilted his head slightly. He narrowed his eyes and stared at her.
He was convicted of third-degree murder and numerous accounts of other convictions.
She thought over all the things that were stated in the portfolio but what struck her the most was that he drank excessively and faked being drunk just to feel
"more human."
She thought of a way to form a sentence to not upset him about what he's telling her to see if what he recollected matched what was in the documents but there was no easy way to do that.
She listened to him finish the last of what he was telling her:
"And that's how the story ended."
Fin.
#bucky barnes x reader smut#bucky barns x reader#bucky x reader#bucky x you#bucky x female reader#bucky fluff#bucky x y/n#bucky barnes x reader angst#angst#fluff fic#fanfic#writing#marvel#marvel fic#mcu fanfiction#mcu spoilers#the falcon and the winter soldier#sam wilson#tfatws#bucky barnes#steve rogers#yori nakajima#suhi#library#flirt dates#wrong number#fluff#dialogue prompt#ship tropes#sebastian stan
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I don't go here but I have nosy bitch disease I need to know who Tommy and purpled are and why that fic is so bad
LMAO okay. so if you're on my blog at all i'm assuming you know what the dreamsmp is because i am far too lazy to go into a long explanation of that. strap in, there's a lot of context needed for this.
so tommy and purpled are both streamers that play characters on the dreamsmp. if you can't tell from *gestures vaguely at my entire blog* i'm a huge purpled stan, both the streamer and the character he plays. now, there's a huge distiction between streamer and characters, but because of the way the dreamsmp is, where the lines between streamer and character can get blurred a little, and streamers often have boundaries that also apply to their characters. in this instance, both purpled and tommy have strict boundaries of "don't ship me or write fanfiction about me where i have romantic relationships", which is generally extended to their characters. additionally, tommy and purpled are both recently turned 18, and they were underage when this fic was written.
the "platonic marriage" theme stems from the OTHER two 18 year olds on the dreamsmp, ranboo and tubbo. these streamers have different boundaries, instead of discouraging shipping fics about their characters, they made their characters be canonically in a relationship and married, and their marriage is debated in the fandom on whether it is romantic, ambiguous, or platonic. this basically gave the fandom permission to write borderline or straight up romantic fanfiction about the characters ranboo and tubbo.
now, here is where a lot of background knowledge of the fandom and characters comes in. i'll try my best to summarize it. tubbo, ranboo, and tommy's characters are all friends and fairly often interact. purpled's character is not friends with them, and very rarely interacts with them, but his character used to interact with tubbo and tommy about two years ago. for some reason, the fandom decided to make a lot of headcanons regarding the grouping of these four, for the sole reason that they were the only minors on the server. which, for the record, is dumb as hell.
so, this leads to some people thinking "well, since tubbo and ranboo are a couple, then the other two should be a couple too!" which not only is stupid, but completely disregards the difference in canon relationships between tubbo and ranboo vs tommy and purpled. but because they can't make tommy and purpled a romantic/ambiguous couple like they can with tubbo and ranboo, they just slap a "platonic" label on it, and act like that changes everything.
in summary, the entire "tommy and purpled platonic marriage" concept is not only untrue to their characters most of the time, but also is weird (if not boundary-breaking) because it comes very close to portraying their characters as romantic and just covering it up with a "platonic" label.
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Every so often I’ll come across a fic that has a summary that essentially reads: “after JFM brings WWX to Lotus Pier YZY takes JC to MeishanYu where he becomes the sect heir” and it always acts like this situation is a fix-it for the entire plot of the novel. And I was thinking about this premise over the past few days and realising just how little it makes sense. (I would like to clarify that I have not read any of the fics with this premise but that is because they all look to be written by JC stans and I decided a while ago that I wasn’t interested in anything like that. I would also like to say that I have only the vaguest understanding of Chinese culture so if something is glaring wrong in here I accept corrections.)
So. The logistics of the events coming to pass. The summaries imply that YZY left Lotus Pier with JC in tow, marched into her natal sect and without question JC was named sect heir and never had any problems ever.
Firstly: if YZY is such an amazing mother to take her son away from the ‘awful’ environment of Lotus Pier under JFM, why does she leave her daughter there? There never seems to be any mention of JYL also going to Meishan so this really just feels like YZY doesn’t actually care about anyone other than JC (in a similar way to the author not caring about anyone other than JC).
Secondly: the actual inheritance thing. As far as I can tell YZY and therefore JC are so far down the line of inheritance for the MeishanYu sect that it doesn’t actually matter. JFM calls YZY ‘Third Lady’ which based on my understanding means that she has two older sisters who would be the First and Second Ladies. In the line of succession her eldest sister would be first, then her children, then her second sister, that sister’s children, and then YZY and JC behind them (this isn’t even taking into account any older brothers she might have). I think I read somewhere that marriage order is based at least partially on age so we can assume that the two older sisters got married before YZY, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the eldest child of the eldest daughter could be fifteen when JC is nine, so at the very least the eldest sister could have a child who is close to being of age (though I freely admit that I have little idea as to what is classed as ‘of age’ within this world) while the son YZY brings is a child who throws a tantrum over having his pets sent away for someone else’s mental health and being told he’s going to share a room.
(Sidenote: I know JFM has JC’s dogs sent away but for all we know they’re just taken out of Lotus Pier itself (as in the bit where the cultivators live). We know there’s a market area where non-cultivators live literally right outside so rather than sending three puppies miles away to other cities, couldn’t JFM have just found someone living outside of the cultivator’s part of Lotus Pier to give the dogs to? Wouldn’t that have been the easiest option? And one that could potentially allow JC to visit the dogs he was so upset about? Did he just not ask to see them so JFM decided that he didn’t actually care about them? Did JC go see them every week until they died and was just angry that he wasn’t allowed to own them anymore? What proof do we have that JC never saw those dogs ever again?)
Anyway, back on track. Thirdly: YZY married out of the MeishanYu sect and into the YunmengJiang sect. She was very insistent on this. She wanted this a great deal even though we know that JFM didn’t particularly want to marry her. I believe that by the culture of the time marrying out of a family meant you were no longer part of that family. Like you might visit or write and introduce your children to them but you weren’t part of the family in the sense that you weren’t in the line of inheritance for anything of that family. So YZY marching into her natal sect with her bratty son behind her, declaring that he would be the sect heir to MeishanYu honestly reads to me as YZY flat out not understanding anything about how family inheritance works. She married into YunmengJiang. By the rules of the time, she should be devoted to building up the YunmengJiang sect, not leaving and returning to her natal sect because she doesn’t like the mother of the child her husband brought in off the streets. JC especially isn’t in line for inheriting MeishanYu because he is a member of the Jiang clan. Honestly the best equivalent I can think of is if people expected Jin Ling, heir (and sect leader and the end of the novel) to LanlingJin to also take over the running of YunmengJiang even though nowhere is it implied that he’s in any way in line of that — JYL married out, any children of hers were part of the Jin clan with no inheritance in the Jiang clan (it’s also for this reason that I am firmly of the belief that Jin Ling was mostly raised at Koi Tower rather than Lotus Pier, who lets the heir to a sect be entirely raised by another sect? For all we know Jin Ling spends a couple of months a year with JC and the novel just happened to take place during those months, and it’s saying something if Jin Ling spends the entire time he has per year with JC running away on night hunts without JC there). So, to put a long point short: YZY married out of the MeishanYu sect and has literally no inheritance there and neither do her children.
Also, at this point hasn’t she essentially kidnapped the heir to YunmengJiang? I doubt JFM is going to say “oh you don’t like my best friends’ son so you want to take our son away. Of course you can do that I have no problem at all with losing my sect heir due to your petty dislike of someone who has been dead for years now. Goodbye.” JFM may not really stand up to YZY, but there’s some things even he isn’t going to tolerate from her. So YZY is causing a political disaster between her natal sect and the sect she married into by kidnapping the sect heir of one and attempting to make him the sect heir of the other. At the very least I feel like JFM could divorce her on the grounds of kidnapping his son and trying to depose the sect heir of her natal sect in favour of a child who by law cannot inherit that sect.
From what I can tell these fics look like they’re set up to be fix-its. Again, I haven’t read them, but I can feel just by reading the summaries and glancing over the tags that they’re intended to be stories about how without the father who ‘hates him so much’ and ‘that awful WWX who always held him back from his true potential’ that JC is so much happier and more skilled and also absolutely going to be the best person in their generation at everything and in at least one of these it looks like he ends up marrying LXC (which is just. No). Honestly it could be a fix-it for JYL and WWX who would no longer be being berated for their general existence (WWX) and hobbies (JYL, specifically how she likes to cook). Them growing up without YZY constantly breathing down their necks and having better mental health as a consequence? Yes please.
Honestly I wouldn’t mind seeing something where the concept was written by someone who didn’t think that ‘actually all the positive traits of other characters are JC’s character traits and also JC should have been the main character’. Something where it’s set up as YZY taking JC with her to Meishan, expecting everything to obviously work out the way she wants, only to be shot down. Her eldest sister is potentially sect leader if their parents have stepped down and has a fifteen-year-old child who everyone in the sect is pleased with as their sect heir. YZY and her expectations get shot down, it’s made clear that she and JC aren’t even in the line of succession since they’re officially part of YunmengJiang and not MeishanYu, and she’s told to leave. She returns to Lotus Pier, angry but still convinced everything there will go her way because JFM has never stood up to her before, only to get back and find JFM in the process of organising their divorce. This isn’t an internal matter due to her not doing the duties expected of the mistress of Lotus Pier anymore, this is a political matter where she kidnapped the sect heir and tried to depose the sect heir of MeishanYu. She’s legally part of YunmengJiang, her actions reflect on the sect as a whole and could be taken as hostile intent. Really the only way to keep this from potentially escalating is to divorce her so that everyone knows her actions aren’t condoned by JFM individually and YunmengJiang as a whole. The end result is that instead of JC somehow fixing everything as a result of having less political influence/lower status than before (sect heir of MeishanYu which is a minor sect compared to the sect heir of YunmengJiang which is a great sect) and without an extremely loyal WWX supporting him, YZY instead undergoes some consequences for once in her life and the family dynamic of the Jiangs + WWX might even manage to be healthier without her constantly being around to antagonise everyone.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure YZY’s children would be so far down the line of succession that they’d have to murder a bunch of people to stand a chance of ruling Meishan, and her taking JC, the heir to the Jiang sect, to another sect without his father’s permission and with the intention of deposing the rightful heir of that sect would be... just a bit of a problem, yeah. Also like. I suspect the reason YZY doesn’t canonically do that is because not even she is that stupid. That goes beyond being a bitch and straight into Actual Crimes. Also love the idea that JC, the most useless of all the great sect leaders, would be less useless in a position of infinitely less power. ...To be fair he would certainly do a lot less damage.
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Old Hollywood AU- The Lucky One
Here is the first chapter/one shot of this AU that is a collab and crossover that @tolstoyamericanrevolution and I have been working on it since November! Please keep an open mind to character interpretation because this is AU territory and a lot of a character who isn't necessarily the focus of the AU can be warped for plot and time accuracy purposes over character accuracy! So let's get to it and happy last day of TURN WEEK 2021!!!!
Global media was in a buzz, Today was the Hollywood equivalent of a royal wedding. With all the bells and whistles belonging to the West Coast set. New & old money all united around the superficialities of silver screens and unions and dubious desert deals. All neatly swallowed down with a glass of wedding champagne- the same brand as Buckingham palace yet here it looked slightly gaudy, American.
The media was here to adore, this was a decade before your Grace Kelly’s and other exports could wear centuries-old crowns.
Here it was harsh, fiscal, temporary, silver over platinum yet it was royal, majestic, lovely- every bit worth the soundbite.
This was the American monarchy, all a blend of the finest breeds and worst mongrels.
Dressed up in such a lovely, splendid crowd that Philadelphia, New York, Houston, Los Angeles & Chicago would all be running titles.
“Adoring Crowds rewarded at last! The Marriage of America’s Sweetheart”
“Hollywood Royalty! Adrienne Fairfax & John Laurens tie the Knot”
“ Media Heiress & Tobacco Heir; Los Angeles’s Marriage of The Decade”
Those picking up the papers would all sigh the same thing; how lovely.
The crowd was lovely.
At least, she was sure it was. Adrienne Fairfax had not yet been seen by a single member of the crowd, anxiously sitting before a vanity in a wedding gown three times her size, wringing satin gloved hands until the gloves began to crease. Her hands shook with the same fear that was responsible for the turning of her stomach as she removed them.
Today was her wedding day and it was exactly as she had always dreamed. Every detail was perfect and precisely to her liking.
Every detail was impressive.
Every detail would impress them.
The crowd was lovely.
The crowd had cheered for her, applauding her on the engagement just as they did when she was on the movie screen. Adrienne had been just as shocked as them to hear of her engagement. She would certainly remember being proposed to at the ripe age of seventeen. She certainly would have remembered if the man who did so was twenty-three years old, making him five years her senior.
The crowd had buzzed with conversation, just as they did now, outside of the open windows that were meant to cool her down. The cool breeze in the mountains this time of year should have corrected the heat filling her face and chest as it billowed through the open windows of the room, carrying the sounds of society in with it.
Her wedding was exactly as she had always dreamed.
It was in the mountains, away from the pollution of the billboard lights and American mile cars. She could see the stars from here, the real ones, in the sky. Not the ones in the velvet curtains in the ballroom, or the ones on the tule that coated the tablecloth in the grand dining room of the house she had barely spent a night in since she was a very young girl. Not the ones taking their seats in a church to watch Adrienne make the most irreversibly horrible decision of her life.
The crowd was lovely.
She was sure it was, and she was grateful for them. Their own chatter drowned out the echoes of old ghosts that still haunted this house’s halls. Adrienne’s eyes fluttered down to the picture frame propped up on the vanity in her childhood bedroom. She had been watching it like the smiling couple in the photo would decide to leave their seats on the terrace and walk away.
It was impressive.
The woman had light-colored hair, and the man’s was some odd form of grey in the yellowing black and white photo. She wore the most beautiful gown of pearly ivory layers and lace, the very same gloves Adrienne had just pulled from her own clammy hands graced the woman’s hands, the tiara atop her head in the photo matching the one atop the pile of blonde curls that she had just arranged in the vanity mirror.
It was just as she had imagined it.
Adrienne had found her mother’s wedding planning book years ago, and she fell in love with it the moment she first laid her eyes upon the beautiful fair-haired woman, leaning happily into the man in a finely tailored tuxedo and a wide smile in his eyes with an odd grey color to his hair.
Adrienne had not stepped foot over the threshold of this impressive Georgian English Manor style house since the last time she was dressed head to toe in black.
Adrienne had not crossed the threshold since the day of their funeral when she crossed from the foyer to the stairs down the drive with her belongings in tow.
She had gone home with a family friend that her parents had entrusted with her care and upbringing. The Washingtons were more superficial people than her parents had been. Not to say that they consumed more, that much was about the same. Rather, they were more concerned about success than they ever were with her. Growing up with the Washingtons, Adrienne had so many nannies, nurses, and governesses she often forgot their names. Not that it was important really, none of them integrated with her more than they absolutely had to.
Martha Washington had been insistent that she was to be the only maternal figure to the young heiress. Which would have been perfectly alright if she did not despise Adrienne’s own mother so deeply, making her maternal affection very few and far between.
Today is her wedding day.
It was Martha that had opened the door without a word, simply raising her brow, impatient with the blonde girl before the vanity. Adrienne managed one last look in the mirror before rising from the small chair she had sat on, donning her gloves over the clamminess of her sweaty hands, and breathed.
She breathed carefully as Martha pulled the veil to cover her face.
In and out.
In and out and suddenly she could pretend she was not being made to act as a witness as George signed over all she was to gain upon her 18th birthday to a man named John Laurens. He had shown up to sign the papers himself, a courtesy to George, she was sure. He was to be her husband, or so she had been told.
He had not even looked at her.
He did not greet her when he came through the door, only George. He did not converse with her, only George. She could have gotten up, smacked him, and walked out of the room and he would still not have noticed her.
He was to be her husband and she had not met him but once before. She knew who he was, vaguely. He worked at the studio as an actor. He was the son of an influential South Carolina politician who had a family fortune in the tobacco trade. But she had only met John Laurens once before her wedding day was set for the day of her 18th birthday and not a single day later. A week after watching her life be signed away into his hands he had paid her a visit.
Another courtesy to George, she was sure.
He had arrived with no specific plan, and walked through the gardens with her, talking now to her for almost an hour straight. She had even tried placing both tea and whiskey before him to shut his ramblings, both attempts failing miserably as he continued on about himself. He visited for almost two hours and had not asked her a single thing about herself.
He was to be her husband and he did not know a thing about her.
They met four other times during the short engagement, most of which were public niceties, another courtesy to George. There was not a single newspaper, magazine, or television hour that did not wish to have some kind of word with her on the topic of her wedding. None of them dared to advise her, she had been out planning the very best in the country since her earliest teenage years. A popular anecdote she had heard more in the past few months than she had anything else in the rest of her life went as following:
The Pope had come to visit the re-elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the White House but found the most pleasant time in the company of the most eligible girl in America, all the way on the West Coast.
The crowd was lovely.
That is what George had told her with a peck of a kiss to her cheek before he took his seat. She would walk herself down the aisle.
The harp and violins played as the grand doors to the ballroom opened on her, exposing her to the crowd and their whispers. The ceremony looked stunning. It was just as she had imagined it when she was little.
She only now began to wish that she had imagined the man at the end of the aisle so that there might be at least something she could find fault with.
There were familiar faces among the crowd that she passed on her long and slow walk to the man at the other end of the grand room. The clicking echo of her heels on the floor being the only thing keeping her trembling legs on course, but even worse was searching as discreetly as possible for those familiar faces. Anything to not have to face the harsh reality of who— no, of what— waited for her at the end of the crowd.
Among the crowd, her eyes locked with another blonde-haired man and she begged herself not to look desperate. He saw her looking too, but he managed far more composure than Adrienne did. Of course he did.
He must be thrilled.
Adrienne had the thought before she could stop herself. John Andre was another executive at the studio alongside George. Before her engagement, there had been pressures from all around for the two of them to marry. It would be a fitting trade, they justified, the daughter of an executive to the wife of an executive. It was a natural transition.
Perhaps that is why he had not spoken out about her engagement and marriage being written into her contract. He stood there, pretending he was not looking at her in his black tailored tuxedo, hair done in the most fashionable way with a small wave curl to it. He pretended that she was not on a death march.
He pretended far better than her.
He had his vices, that much she knew, but he was respectful. He spoke with her, not just to her. She knew him. She knew him and even though she had never found him more than physically attractive she found herself wishing it was him at the end of the aisle, and not for the first time since her engagement.
Today was her wedding day.
In a few minutes, she won’t be engaged anymore.
In a few minutes, she would be married.
In a few minutes, she would be married to a man that did not know a single thing about her.
She would be married to a man in less than a few minutes, and suddenly Adrienne understood all those runaway brides, leaving their fiance’s at the altar. Her heart pounded, hammering in her chest as she composed herself with a warm indifference. She had been doing so well. Then she saw him.
John Andre was an executive at the studio with George. There was pressure from all around for them to get married.
It was a fair trade.
He remained silent for his own sake. One cannot be forced to marry a woman who already belongs to a husband of her own.
She would be married and he would remain a bachelor till the end of his days, just as he wanted, receiving pity for her engagement everywhere he looked, exempting him from the very idea of marriage. Exempting him from being held accountable for his vices.
He must be thrilled, signing her life away to a man who doesn’t know a single thing about her for his own peace of mind.
It was a fair trade.
He had played the game and played it well.
He had won. And it was fair.
This will all be over soon, and she could find solstice in the stars over the sleepy Manor estate, talking to a ghost from the lawn as if he never left her. He had never left her, calling her to look up and scour the sky for stars whenever she felt lonely.
He had called her “my star.”
She was his star, and soon it would all be over. She could disappear into the night and be with the stars, chatting with ghosts from a happier past.
It will all be over soon.
She was looking through the crowd for familiar faces.
She was doing so well. And then she saw him, in the doorway she had just come from, a man in a finely tailored tuxedo and a wide smile in his eyes with an odd grey color to his hair. “It will all be over soon.”
And she heard him from the other end of the aisle, loud and clear, as if he were right beside her, as he should be.
Executive’s daughter married,
Media magnet meets Southern industry
John Andre: Hollywood’s Most Wanted Bachelor Remains Unwed
It was easy to feel remorseful, heroically guilty when you had nothing at stake.
No real risk to gamble.
It was the prisoner that escaped the hanging and looked sympathetically to the damned, fingers crossed behind their back. That was John Andre on this fine nuptial day.
If it had been him standing at the end of the aisle, where another John stood, he would be less prone to sympathy and instead resentment. Resentment of having his wings clipped and arranged around him, in exchange for a slip of a girl whom he felt no connection with.
By no connection, he meant romantic or intimate or lustful- none of the trilogy of connections worth considering matrimony.
Instead, he felt an observer's connection, a connection of pity, of sympathy- lightly powdered amusement and a genuine kindness that came from recognizing another piece on the chessboard of the older generation.
You could have as much power or success as you wanted in this city, as an executive you would assume John had made it to the top, and yet you would always be a puppet on someone else’s string.
Ask any man and it would be a woman, a mafia deal, a boss, an older competitor, or simply the moths that floated around the sparkles of fame ready to consume you if you stepped out of line.
#lbl#luck be a lady#turn amc#turn: washington's spies#adrienne fairfax#john laurens#old Hollywood au#an American dream#turn week 2021#turn week#amrev#american revolution#turn fanfic
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SLS 2021 Creator Reveals
We’ve reached the end of the exchange and that means it’s time to reveal the creators of all our works!
Thank you for putting so much love and effort into Stony Loves Steve 2021, you really made it a great experience. We hope everyone loved it as much as we did!
Giftees, be sure to leave a comment and kudos on your gift if you haven’t already. All our creators worked hard to make this event a success, so show them some love.
You can now post your work publicly outside of the exchange. Tag it as #stonylovessteve2021 on tumblr and we’ll reblog you. @ us @stonylovessteve on twitter and we’ll retweet you.
Below the cut is the final list of all the works produced for the exchange and the creators.
Cold as Ice, Warm my Heart by lil_aussie_girl for parkrstark (MCU, 1.5k)
The cold took away one love already, and his greatest fear is that it will do it again - before he has the chance to say those three important words.
Strength Like The Sea/A Familiar Yet Foreign Face by Lacrimula_Falsa for funkyspacegirlfriend (AU, 3k)
There had to be another explanation for the ugly burning feeling in his chest because this wasn’t a rom-com and he’d known Steve for less than a day.
After years of his father fruitlessly searching for one, Tony finally gets to meet a real-life vampire.
· · ·*‒*‒ ‒ ‒*‒ ·*‒ · ‒ ‒
Anthony.
No, not Anthony, because Anthony had crumbled to dust right before his eyes. But this man looked so eerily similar to him, he could have been Anthony’s twin brother. Only the eyes were different, warm brown instead of cold blue.
After being woken nearly a century after he went into stasis because the pain of losing his lover Anthony was too much, Steven meets a man who looks just like him.
I Know There is Comfort Where We Overlap by jellybeanforest for ghosthan (Ults, 10k)
As a relic of a bygone era, Steve struggles with feelings of isolation and severe depression made worse by his recent breakup with Jan Pym. He secretly hooks up with random strangers chasing a sense of connection with someone, anyone. Things are going (not) well when he and fellow Ultimate, Iron Man, are tasked with infiltrating a Thai resort serving as a front for illegal arms dealing. Only catch: They must go undercover as a married couple on their honeymoon.
finding steve rogers by jacobby for geekymoviemom (MCU, 6k)
Steve sighs. “Sorry. I wasn’t a very good tour guide. Ma always told me about the town, but she never got into specifics.”
Tony takes Steve’s hand in his and places it close to his lips. “It’s your first time here too. We understand.”
AKA
After a botched mission with SHIELD, Steve takes a vacation with his family to a town in Ireland.
Things are knot as they seem by BladeoftheNebula for DepressingGreenie (AU, 3k)
Everyone assumes Captain America is an alpha and Steve doesn’t see the harm in not correcting them. After all, Alphas command respect while omegas are still considered far too delicate for leadership.
And sure, it sucks hiding his designation when he’s in love with Tony Stark, the hottest alpha he’s ever seen, but what alpha would want an omega who could lift them with one hand?
So it’s fine. It’s not as if anyone was ever going to find out his secret anyway…
A drop of love by CapAL for Perlmutt (AU, Comic)
After sleeping for 70 years Steve wakes up to a world that he doesn’t understand. As an age-old vampire he’s seen a lot of things in his life, but nothing has ever confused him as much as the bubbly Starbucks barista Tony. They meet by chance and Steve stays. He falls for him, even though he knows he shouldn’t, and together they explore modern New York, while Steve tries to hide his true nature from Tony, afraid that he would send him away if he knew the truth.
The Fake Prince and the Cat by Neverever for Fluffypanda (AU, 5.5k)
Steve is sent in place of Prince Brock to marry the libertine Tony Stark. It's better than he thought it would be, plus he makes friends with a cat.
father to son by parkrstark for HogwartsToAlexandria (MCU, 2.5k)
Steve had been planning on asking Peter to be his son, officially, for weeks now, but he always chickened out because he didn't thik he was good enough for the boy. Funnily enough, Peter had the same idea, but when he showed the adoption papers to Steve, he didn't have the best of reactions.
The Best Half Of Me by Huntress79 for RoseRose (AU, 1.5k)
An encounter with one of his exes at a charity gala opens Tony’s eyes about how much he really loves Steve - and how much he’s looking forward to their future together.
neither here nor there by ghosthan for Welcoming_Disaster (616, 18k)
Captain America comes back from Dimension Z changed. He has had over a decade of his life taken from him, as well as the woman he loved. Stoic, secretive, and traumatized, much of what he experienced remains a mystery to SHIELD and the world; Tony is there to help him heal, and uncover the truth about how much Steve has lost.
The Eventide Aspect by geekymoviemom for ishipallthings (MCU, T, 12k)
“Yeah, Cap, about that,” Tony says, looking rather sheepish as he scratches at the back of his neck.
“Yeah?” asks Steve.
“Well… remember those half-baked ideas that I mentioned? I’m afraid this might be one of ‘em,” says Tony.
“Okay. Care to explain it to someone who doesn't speak technical?”
“Ahh…” Tony trails off, mumbling under his breath again. “Yeah. Um… if my theory is correct, I’m thinking that when we stepped through that window, we might’ve entered another dimension.”
Looking by Robin_tCJ for Vento_Lunar (MCU, E, 4k)
After a raid on a HYDRA base, Steve's body reverts back to the way it was before the serum. Tony still wants him.
You Had Me in the First Half by Corsets_and_Cardigans for Robin_tCj (MCU, E, 2k)
Steve is on his way to meet Bucky for a movie before their football team goes away for a game. Too bad Tony has plans for him! He'll apologize to Bucky for it later.
the rest is history by starksnack for muchmoremajestic (Avengers Academy, G, 2k)
It's Steve's birthday and he usually likes to spend it alone. Of course, Tony has other ideas.
Basically just some soft AvAc fluff.
(Let Me) Love and Be Loved by HeLovedYou for wikketkrikket (MCU, T, 6k)
Steve forgets how to self-sabotage his own happiness.
He also forgets his team, his soulmate and the last three years of his life.
avengers featuring steve’s doppleganger vol 1 (FANCOMIC) by wingheads for jellybeanforrest (616, Art)
tony dates a man who looks a lot like steve. everyone can see it, everyone knows what that means, except tony, who doesn't seem to realize he's dating steve's doppelganger. steve doesn't see the resemblance either and actually comes to like tony's new boyfriend, but then one of the other avengers spills the beans that they look exactly alike to tony, who can't unsee it now and breaks up with the new guy, only for steve to be sad that his baseball-buddy won't be around anymore.
Hart Island by Amber_Skye for lil_aussie_girl (MCU, G, 12k)
Steve is acting out of character, and Tony and the other Avengers can’t work out why.
the soul of dragons by funkyspacegirlfriend for Amber_Skye (MCU, T, 2k)
Steve’s dragon companion is the largest Tony’s ever seen up close. And she captivates Tony from the very first moment.
Just in the Knit of Time by DepressingGreenie for picturecat (Avengers Assemble, T, 2.5k)
Steve only has a week to tell Tony he loves him before his secret is leaked to the world.
Learning Curve by picturecat for Huntress79 (Avengers Academy AU, G, 2k)
Freshly defrosted, Steve Rogers is the newest teacher at the Avengers Academy—an attempt to guide and teach the newest generation of heroes before they have to take on the burdens of their teachers. Steve himself has a lot of learning to do.
First Impression by veryvincible for wingheads (616, M, 7k)
The Avengers find the schematics of a deadly weapon in the hands of an up-and-coming villain. To safely retrieve the data that led to its creation and keep the city safe in the process, they have to take a very subtle approach. The man-- Jack Marshall-- has an eye for hunks and a tendency to get vulnerable with them. The team could use this to their advantage, if they have the right assets.
Enter Steve.
Dandelions and Lilies by Wikketkrikket for CapAL (AU, G, 4k)
Written for CapAL for the StonylovesSteve event 2021.
A summer job in the florists is pretty good, as summer jobs go; and when a handsome guy comes in with some very particular requirements it gets even better.
Or it would, if Steve wasn't lying about the meaning of every bouquet he sold.
Potshot by jellybeanforest for jacobby (AU, T, 2.5k)
In an expansive wasteland infested with hordes of the undead, Steve, leader of a group of ex-military operatives known as the Avengers, searches for survivors and supplies in the ruins of the old world.
That’s all well and good, but Tony would do just about anything for an American cheeseburger.
For Stony Loves Steve 2021. Based on a prompt by jacobby.
Remorse and Rapture by oliverparker for optimusprime13 (AU, E, 6k)
When Steve's mother falls ill, he's forced to move in with the family she works for. He's not thrilled about it.
Shards of Eternities by Perlmutt for starksnack (AU, T, 5k)
Rumor had it that the war would soon be over. It could not end soon enough. Until then, Anthony would wait for Steven. He would wait and protect their child. He would wait and write another thousand letters for his alpha, his mate, his husband, if only he would come home, come for him, come for them.
Two Can Play That Game by JehBeEhh for Becci Barnes (BeccEEE) (MCU, T, 4k)
Tony Stark is many things. Patient isn't always one of them. Especially not when there's a happily ever after at the end of that bout of patience.
Uncovered by mariana_oconnor for Corsets_and_Cardigans (MCU, G, 6k)
Steve didn't think the tip-off was anything more than the usual nonsensical conspiracy theory. He only went to check it out because he was curious. He definitely wasn't expecting it to be a trap.
Build Me Up Buttercup by ishipallthings for BladeoftheNebula (4k, M, MCU)
Tony sees the gold letters spelling “Stark” on the edge of Steve’s hood and his mind grinds to a halt. Steve looks good wearing his name. Too good.
(In which Steve starts experimenting with a new style. Tony does not find this infuriatingly attractive, thank you very much.)
Discovery [Art] by Fluffypanda for captainstars (Art, G, Noir)
Renowned adventurer Tony Stark discovers a carving of a lost civilization's protector.
I left my heart (at home with you) by captainstars for UisceOneLove (2k, G, AU)
It shouldn’t have surprised him as much as it did.
The man grinned at him, wide and beautiful. Steve couldn’t help sneaking another glance towards the heavens. They really lost their citizens fairly easily. Steve would like to say this was the first white robed beauty he had come across until now, but he wasn’t.
(OR)
Steve moved to a cabin in the woods hoping to live the life of a hermit werewolf. When Tony Stark decided to become his new neighbor, it threw a bit of a wrench into Steve’s plans.
(OR)
A werewolf and an incubus cuddling in a tree.
Raspberry Beret (I Think I Love Her) by ralsbecket for oliverparker (4k, M, 3490)
When Steve looked at Natasha, he knew in his heart that she was what put his derailed train back on its tracks. For the first time since they met, Steve felt like he had some semblance of a plan for his future. And he wanted Natasha to be a part of it.
Savior Complex by optimusprime13 for HeLovedYou (18.5k, G, AU)
Wealthy businessman Steve Rogers stumbles into barely-getting-by Tony Stark in a cemetery, and they hit it off immediately. Steve is enamored by Tony’s razor-sharp wit, his startling intelligence, and his penchant for building stuff. He has a problem though - he can’t stop wanting to save everybody around him, especially Tony - who is struggling to make ends meet. However, Tony is too proud and stubborn to accept any help from Steve. But when Tony gets kidnapped to act as bait for Steve, how far will Steve go to save Tony when it means sacrificing himself?
Through His Stomach by RoseRose for JehBeeEh (2k, G, MCU)
Steve decides he wants to try to cook with all the new ingredients he has found in this new time, but he needs someone else to taste-test his creations. Tony is holed up in his workshop, so he makes the perfect guinea pig. The two of them grow closer over several meals.
Iron & Sapphire by Becci Barnes (BeccEEE) for Lacrimula_Falsa (AU, 5k)
Steve can always sense him, long before Tony enters his cave. It makes his blue scales tremble and his big wings flutter in excitement. Tony brings light and warmth into this musty hideout he calls home. And food. And while they may be as odd a couple as you can imagine, that won't stop them from bantering and cuddling just like anyone else.
Man On The Moon by Welcoming_Disaster for veryvincible (616, 7k)
Things haven't been the same since Steve has found out about Tony's secret identity. A mission that goes wrong forces both of them to confront why.
I Love You to the Moon and Back by muchmoremajestic for mariana_oconnor (MCU, 3k)
After Steve gets attacked in the woods, certain changes start happening.
Happy Birthday to America's ass by njava97 for ralsbecket (MCU, 2.5k)
It's the night before Steve's birthday and something is very wrong.
Magic's in the Moving Portrait by UisceOneLove for neverever (AU, 9.5k)
Without his ma, Steve's lost his ability to make art. In walks new wizarding student Tony Stark, who also happens to be his new roommate. All hope might not be lost just yet for him and his brush.
Reach The Sky by Vento_Lunar for njava97 (MCU, art)
Non-serum Steve Rogers saves the world. (And Tony saves him)
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I'm looking forward to seeing how they deal with mal and alina's, relationship in the second season. for me I really enjoyed them in the third book but not as much in the second (mostly due to us not seeing what mal was thinking and feeling so I think it will definitely be interesting to see that on screen). what are your thoughts?
YES. Bardugo really didn’t SHOW mal and alina. Frankly, imo, in the whole trilogy.
So I’ve been writing and reading romance almost exclusively for the last two years... make that five or six years, because before that, I was writing and reading fanfiction, and that is essentially romance, and what I saw in The Grisha Trilogy is the set up for an epic romance. The plot was based around this romance of two children, best friend who grew up together, Alina’s unrequited pining, then Mal’s longing for her as soon as she left, a love triangle with the Darkling, then a love triangle with Nikolai, Mal as an alpha male who never sleeps with another woman after realizing he’s in love with Alina, that whole ‘meet me in the meadow’ thing, and then the final thing which I’m not going to mention because it’s too much of a spoiler but which is SO MUCH a meant-to-be true love thing.
But there was very little romance written in the narrative.
Most of it was about how they CAN’T be together. And yeah, that’s kind of an essential part of any romance-- what keeps them apart-- but it lacked the moments that drew them back together. There were few interludes that explored what their connection WAS. And I mean, that doesn’t make sense because they ran away together. They were sharing a BED. Sure they weren’t. EVER. alone. But we should have gotten confidences and connection and emotion. And we just didn’t.
For a series ABOUT Malina, honestly when you come down to it, since being together or NOT being together was such an essential part of every book, and it was always bracketed by an intro about the girl and boy and ended with the resolution which required Mal and Alina, (and had an epilogue about Malina) I feel like it should have shown more of their relationship and interactions and intimacy. Maybe it was because it was all Alina’s internal monologue, which kept Mal out. IDK.
It was like it was TELLING us it was a romance, without ever (or rarely) SHOWING us the romance.
I think we won’t have that problem in the show. They’ve already shown to be more interested in showing the connection between Malina, and seem to know how to do romantic tension. Also, a lot of it is about the *looks* they give each other, which Bardugo never really showed. It’s subtext. Which Bardugo left out. You can keep the romance subtle and just read into actions and visual shots and parallels and such. But in the books, most of the romance was displayed with JEALOUSY. Well. I think she didn’t know how to write romance, that’s why jealousy was the only aspect we really got on a regular basis.
I mean, Mal’s jealousy was understandable, but it’s the only thing that was explored as romance. She was ALSO jealous, so it was used for both of them, and they both wrote letters regularly and when they got no response they both went, *shrug* ‘I guess I didn’t mean anything to them.’ But this was the person each was closest to in the world. WHY would they come to that conclusion? Makes no sense. I mean, the boy got a giant tattoo, and the emotional and romantic resonance of THAT was ignored. He was devoting his life to her. He would sacrifice his life for HER. And while the actions were there... there was little direct discussion of it. Men kept asking Alina to marry them and Mal acted like he had no claim on Aline, which he DID. They ran away together. It was romantic. And Alina was just like *shrug* I guess I should think about marrying some other guy not my soulmate, even though he’s RIGHT there and just risked his life for me AGAIN. And never talked to him about it? And I frankly did not understand that.
Maybe she’d never been in love and didn’t understand what it felt like? But I think she wasn’t that young when she wrote it. Maybe she just didn’t know how to write romance? MAYBE she didn’t VALUE romance and so never bothered with it. Frankly I think that’s it, because she went to Yale, and let me tell you about academia’s disdain for genre-- ESPECIALLY romance-- as a non literary form of narrative. Or perhaps there was a bit of the disdain which kept her from understanding what it means to write a romance or learning how to. That might also explain the kind of confessional writing style. Because even though this IS fantasy, and academia has disdain for SFF (not as much as romance) lit fic focuses on character over action or plot, which that internal monologue fits better. I went to college only five years before Bardugo, so essentially the same era, and it took me YEARS to get rid of that naval gazing internal monologue.
So what do I think of Malina in the books? I think it did not live up to the promise of the narrative. And I think the show will probably be able to make good on that promise, because romance is good tv, so they won’t shy away from it. The scaffolding of a great Malina story is there, but the details that make it rich and compelling are missing.
So my opinion of book Malina is not that it’s toxic like some people believe. It’s not. It’s probably IMMATURE. But that’s not really wrong for a couple of twenty year olds, both of whom are immature. I think the writing didn’t go far enough. It wimped out on the romance, and whether that was deliberate or unintentional, it’s a flaw in the story of the great epic romance that it was honestly narratively designed to be.
I’m looking forward to what they can do with it in coming show, though.
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In Honor of Bogey
Born on Christmas Day at the turn of the century, the acting legend Humphrey Deforest Bogart is considered the greatest male acting icon of the Golden Age of Hollywood. He was an early Christmas gift to the 20th century and eventually was recognized by the AFI as the greatest male star of classic American cinema. This is quite a title to hold with all the great actors of the last one hundred years, so I wanted to take a little space in my analysis of the AFI top 100 to recognize this acting icon.
He was a kid with a lot of potential and intelligence, but his parents were not very affectionate (according to him) and he grew up with a chip on his shoulder. He went to some prestigious East Coast schools but was expelled or left on many occasions and ended up in the Navy. He joined up following the end of WWI and was part of the time of American Military glory. He loved it. He even tried to re-enlist when WW2 broke out, but he was too old and was instead registered as a volunteer reserve with the Coast Guard. He didn't get started in films until 1930, but started stage acting after his naval service in 1921. He might have gotten his trademark scar on his lip while in the Navy, but he got in a lot of scraps so it is not really certain where it came from.
Scars aside, Humphrey Bogart was a very good looking person that just exuded the ideal of manliness for the time. He started playing roles of young impetuous men and moved on to gangsters and villains. He did some work with James Cagney in a film called The Roaring Twenties. He met many woman with his star power and brutish manliness, marrying 4 times over his life before finally settling down with the fabulous Lauren Becall in 1945. He was part of the famous "Rat Pack" of the 50s. He was just so cool.
Since this is part of the AFI top 100 review, I want to cover the four movies on the list he was in as well as a couple other American classics:
High Sierra (1941) - Nominated for AFI Top 100 but not ranked
This was a big opportunity for Bogart because it was a leading gangster role written by his drinking buddy John Huston. The part had been turned down by some of the great actors of the time, including James Cagney. Bogart had been getting a lot of small roles and appeared in as many films as he could at the time (he is credited in 20 movies between 1937 and 1939), but this was a big break as a leading man. He worked alongside Ida Lupino, which caused jealousy issues with his wife at the time, Mayo Methot.
The Maltese Falcon (1941) - AFI #31
This was a career starter for Bogart as the no nonsense anti-hero with a chip on his shoulder and a heart of gold. This film was also turned down by other more established leading actors (George Raft) because it was a remake of the same story that was done in 1931. He played the part of Sam Spade (great name), a detective in search of a bejeweled object while getting in way over his head. Bogie had a great smoky voice and his film noir narratives set the standard for the genre. It was also the directorial debut of John Huston. Humphrey Bogart was known for downplaying his work (such a hipster), but this was a film for which he openly showed pride.
Casablanca (1942) - AFI #3
This was Bogart's first real romantic lead as an expatriate in Africa at the outbreak of WWI. As far as my generation is concerned, this is his most famous role and cemented the man as a Hollywood icon. This movie won Best Picture and got him nominated for Best Actor, vaulting Bogart past James Cagney as the highest paid actor in Hollywood at the time (half a million a year; that is nothing to sneeze at now much less right after the Great Depression).
The Big Sleep (1946) - Not on AFI Top 100
This was arguably the most well known of the four movies that Bogart starred in with Lauren Bacall. His wife at the time, Methot, was jealous and was afraid that Bogart was cheating on her. He was. He and Methot got a divorce and he almost immediately married Bacall. Bogart also got a little bit weird at the time because he tried to sign up for the Navy and then bought a yacht, allowed use of it by the Coast Guard, and then patrolled around the California coast with numerous weekends around Catalina. The film was actually scheduled to be released in 1945, but had a bunch of scenes of sexual innuendo added in to play up the real life relationship of Bogart and Bacall.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1947) - AFI #38
This was a film that showed the genius of Huston's writing and Bogart's acting. It was a chance to for Bogart to show off his grittiness and willing to suffer for his art. He character was one of three greedy men with stake on a gold claim that was more than enough for all three, but constant fear of backstabbing (literally and figuratively) causes problems. The movie was filmed in the Sierras during the summer heat and Bogart looked pretty bad. The movie lacked a love interest and highlighted dissension amongst a group, so Huston and Bogart (an outspoken liberal democrat) were mentioned in the Un-American Activities trial that was looking for Communists. Bogart wrote an article entitled "I'm No Communist" and distanced himself from anyone accused, but still had a slight reputation for being outspoken about first amendment rights.
Key Largo (1948) - Not on AFI Top 100 but nominated for AFI Top 10 Gangster Films
The last film that featured the couple. In this movie, their characters were stuck in a Florida hotel during a hurricane. It was another John Huston directed film noir and featured Bogart's character boating around and taking out gangsters one by one. There is a somewhat racist subplot of hunting down some wanted Native Americans that a known gangster pins a murder on. That aspect of the movie always bothered me. A real standout that somewhat upstages Bogart (interestingly enough with his help) is actually the gangster's girlfriend who sings a song for the group to earn a drink. She plays a great part as a woman attracted by the villainous lifestyle and then becomes trapped in an abusive relationship. Actress Claire Trevor, who Bogart liked very much and encouraged throughout the film, won Best Supporting Actress for her part in the story.
The African Queen (1951) - AFI #65
Maybe the film with the most star power during the Old Hollywood Era, this film starts Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, perhaps the two biggest stars of American film. It was his first film in Technicolor and the role won him his one and only Oscar for Best Actor. The film was shot in the Belgian Congo and once again proved Bogart's toughness. This was again a John Huston directed film and it is interesting that both of the stars of the film had friends in very high places that kept them acting in great roles: Humphrey Bogart had John Huston and Katharine Hepburn had Howard Hughes. I want to note that, in my humble opinion, this was neither actors best work but they both were given a lot of credit for braving the elements and appearing on screen looking haggard.
The Cain Mutiny (1954) - Nominated for AFI Top 100 but not ranked
This was the last film that Bogart was relatively happy with, although he had to drop his salary to get the part and he was bitter about it. The part of a paranoid captain earned the actor his final Oscar nomination, but it did not really bring the same satisfaction as earlier roles. Huston wrote Bogey's characters as a loner and an antihero with an internal warmth and humor. This character did not have the charm that exuded from Bogart, the person.
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Humphrey Bogart continued with high profile roles like starring with Aubrey Hepburn in Sabrina (1954) and Ava Gardner in The Barefoot Contessa (1954), but he was starting to get sick from a life of smoking and drinking. He was also in his mid 50s and couldn't play that charming young loner that he was so famous for. He had started to come across as old and didn't have his youthful charisma. He really hated working with Billy Wilder and didn't want to be the distinguished older gentleman in Sabrina. He didn't want to work with Ava Gardner because she had just broken up with his drinking buddy, Frank Sinatra. These films were successful and Bogart was a true professional, but I would not call it his best work by any means.
Humphrey Bogart was a great actor and a true Hollywood icon. Through research and watching interviews, I don't think that he would have been somebody that I liked personally because he drank and smoked heavily while enjoying arguments and confrontation. He came off as a bit of a contrarian in his later interviews and that is something that has bothered me. Don't meet your heroes. It does not lessen his accomplishments as an actor nor does it reduce the number of great films he has starred in. Just because he wouldn't be my best friend doesn't mean he wasn't a great man. I still believe that he deserves the AFI honor of being Hollywood's most famous actor. Check out some of his works and see what you think.
#humphrey bogart#bogey#john huston#lauren bacall#key largo#casablanca#the caine mutiny#sabrina#katharine hepburn#the maltese falcon#the treasure of the sierra madre#introvert#introverts
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Hi! You’re one of my favorite Drarry writers but I’ve also realized you like danmei (Chinese bl novels)! Heaven Official’s Blessing and anything by MXTX is awesome, but I was wondering if you know any other good novel recs? See, I would privately message this but I’m shy >\\\<
HELLLLLOOOOO. Yes, aside from MXTX, I have so many good novel recs. I’m currently obsessed with e-sport novels lol, but I’ll categories them for you~
(Also, feel free to privately message me 🥺)
But first, my absolute favourite, the only one I’ve actually written fanfic for is:
Very Happy: happy actor x unhappy CEO, SUPER SOFT, SUPER FLUFFY, (and some good, good angst), I’ve re-read this like...over five times 🥺🥺🥺 Sooo much doting and devotedness~
Okay, now for the other recs, which are ranked by favourite ness within each category. Also, warning that some of these may or not may not be completed...
*(for people who don’t know, MC is main character, and ML is his love interest~)
Cultivation & ancient china novels:
Heavenly Soul by crimson_carnation: This is an original English BL xianxia, but you WON’T REGRET IT. The MC and ML are both super strong, and ML is really good at consent and there’s a lot of explicit sex (the beauty of original English hehe). There’s also a lot of other BL side couples too!
The Disabled Tyrant’s Pet Palm Fish: This...the MC transmigrates into the body of a fish. Sounds crack, doesn’t it? BUT IT’S SO GOOD. It’s so surprising just how many interactions MC can have with ML while in fish form. And then MC gains the ability to turn into a human for short amounts of time...and the humour shoots straight up. ML is SO THIRSTY haha. There’s also fanart already on twitter
The White Cat’s Divine Scratching Post: The funny thing is the MC (gong) becomes a divine tree based human, and the ML is a cute cat that has cultivated to human form. So the MC is literally the ML’s scratching post 😂 MC is the ultimate crafting cultivator and has made many, many treasures, and also spends priceless amounts of materials and money on making cat items for his ML/master/previous pet cat.
The Jade Veterinarian by tigerine: another original English BL, the MC is a vet by accident. In the story, there are jade animals that have the ability to purify the land. However, for some reason, many of these animals have been...buried, have stopped working. MC ends up reviving them, and the jade animals love him haha
Modern novels:
Very Happy, of course.
Death Progress Bar: OMG. THIS. ACTION TO THE EXTREME! The MC goes from weak to strong AF, the ML is the leader of the biggest underworld organisation. The MC and ML protect each other~ Also, the MC’s five older brothers...they get so amusing as the story progresses.
Reborn with an Old Enemy on the Day of our Marriage: This is like enemies to lovers, but with the two main characters both being reborn back to their last year of school! SO FUN. Imagine if Harry and Draco slowly became friends and eventually got married post-war, but then returned back to Hogwarts at the start of Eighth Year, making everyone confused when H & D “suddenly” are best of friends 😂😂😂
King of Classical Music: The music, the details about how orchestras work....so good.... the MC was murdered and rebirthed into another violinist (in the same world) and he used this second chance in life to become an even more powerful and amazing violinist. The ML is an OP pianist lol
I’m Afraid I’m Now a Salted Fish: MC is a low-key actor, and ML is a boss at his entertainment company. BUT the twist is that MC wants to be a salted fish. ML wants to give him all the resources but MC is like no thanks!! And everyone thinks that MC and ML have a sugar baby/sugar daddy relationship, but it’s actually really cute and loving. ML wished he could act more the sugar daddy lol.
Rebirth of a Cannon Fodder from a Novel: MC had a horrible life, and was rebirthed back, also learning that he was a cannon fodder in a novel that centered around his sister’s amazingly lucky life. I really like this, because MC is smart, and the face-slapping is about using the law to persecute all the villains, and he only does this after they do something bad (i.e. it’s not like he’s punishing them for their crimes in his past life, grudges aside). ML is a CEO~
After Brushing Face At The Apocalypse’s Boss For 363 Days: the only “apocalypse” novel that I’ve actually read, it’s cool because the main character lives in both the original world and in the apocalypse world, and I thought the interactions of the MC and ML were amusing
Pastel Colours: The MC is a children's book illustrator, the ML works creating robots. Most of this is the MC looking after the ML’s cute little kid. There is angst about MC’s past, but overwhelming a lot of cuteness and love.
E-sport novels:
My Teammates Are All Crazy: This is SO CRACK. The MC plays what is considered the weakest character in the game. And he joins an e-sport team that...likes also to play the most random characters. This is FUN AF. When they start playing, they make the opposing team spit up blood so many times by playing the “weak” or “beginner” characters and completely trashing the opposing team.
The E-Sports Circle’s Toxic Assembly Camp: Here, “toxic” refers more to their trash talk rather than actually being toxic. The MC is the coach of the team, and ML is the team captain. Both of them are really strong gamers.
Glory: The MC...he has such a glib mouth lol, basically flirting (with the ML) 24/7 but this “flirting” is just his admiration for ML. The ML is so conflicted because he likes the MC, but the MC is completely oblivious.
PUBG Online Romance of the Century: ...MC is such a voice con lol. He’s a livestreamer, and his first backer is ML. And ML’s voice...is to die for lolll.
God Level Summoner: If I had to compare any other e-sport novel with The King’s Avatar, it would be God Level Summoner. The MC, an experienced gamer, is collecting a team, and fighting their way up the league! The battles are so detailed, and the MC and ML, although on different teams, are SO OP and BADASS whenever they pair up with each other.
Other:
Beloved Husband: (quick transmigration) A novel from the seme/gong perspective! The premise is that the seme transmigrates into the world, without any memories, but always falls in love immediately with his shou/uke. The previous owner of the body was a scum, but the main character isn’t, and does his best to love his husband~
Live Broadcasting Raising Dragons in the Interstellar: What it says on the tin, lol. It’s an A/B/O setting...that basically doesn’t come up. The MC has transmigrated and retains his abilities from his previous world. But again, it’s not so important, the important point is this calm, serious, somewhat cold-faced MC raises the cutest like dragon orphans and dragon kids. The ML is a dragon (dragons also have human form), and the ML is like...sometimes the smallest baby of all hehe
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