#man looking at this you can tell i am absolutely useless at outlining

[radialarch]

I WANT COP AU honestly it's probably gonna be sad BUT ALL THE OTHER ONES SEEM SAD TOO SO WHATEVER

oh my god. so cop au is the no-powers modern au where steve still fights everyone & bucky still gets amnesia & loses an arm. yeah, i’m a little baffled about why i ever started writing it myself.

HOWEVER. look. it’s time to admit i am never gonna finish this fic, it has been actual years since i last worked on it. so look, i’m gonna amnesty it here, all 3k of it + the absolutely unhelpful outlining i’ve done. farewell, ridiculous au. i loved you once.

——

Steve wakes up to his phone nearly buzzing off his dresser. The caller ID doesn’t have a name but the number’s vaguely familiar.

“Yeah,” Steve says, trying to swallow down a yawn.

“Get down to the hospital,” Natasha says, in a voice that makes him sit up straight. “It’s Bucky.”

——

He throws some bills at the cab driver and doesn’t bother waiting for change, just runs into the hospital. Natasha’s easy to spot, dressed in her usual black. Steve’s not superstitious but a part of him’s saying hysterically, “Dead, Bucky’s dead.”

“Where is he?”

“Operating room,” she says. “I’m not gonna lie, it doesn’t look good.”

“Operating–jesus.” Steve drops into a chair. The adrenaline’s wearing off and his hands, his legs are shaking. “What the hell happened? He was off tonight.”

“I don’t know, he wasn’t in uniform.” Natasha bites her lip. “I found him in an alley, by one of those garages – you know, the ones with the metal doors?”

“Oh god,” Steve hears himself say.

“Nearly took off his left arm,” she says. “And he lost a lot of blood.”

“His arm,” Steve repeats. He thinks he might throw up.

There’s a touch to his shoulder. He looks up uncomprehendingly into Natasha’s face. “Docs said they might be able to save it,” she tells him. “You gotta pull yourself together.”

Steve takes a breath. Curls his hands into fists. “Yeah,” he says, trying to keep his voice steady. “I’m – yeah, okay.”

“Listen, I can’t stay,” Natasha says. She looks sincerely sorry about that.

He’s surprised she’s even stayed this long. Neither hospitals nor cops – even ones out of uniform – are good for her cover. “I’ll be fine.” He waves her off. “Thank you. Really.”

“I like Barnes,” she says. “Hope he makes it.” Then she’s gone, with a last squeeze of his shoulder.

Steve presses his fists into his thighs and settles down to wait.

——

It’s nearly dawn when someone comes out of the double doors and says, “Someone here for James Barnes?”

Steve stands up at once and almost topples over. His legs are numb. “Yes,” he says. “How is he?”

“He’s stable now,” the doctor says.

Steve lets out a breath; he can feel the tension seeping out of his shoulders. “Oh, thank you,” he murmurs. “Thank you, thank you.”

“We couldn’t save the arm,” the doctor continues. “I’m sorry.”

Steve just nods.

“The main concern now is brain activity,” she says. “With the amount of blood he lost, combined with some head trauma, it’s possible that he might’ve lost some brain function.”

“Oh,” Steve says. He tries to stop himself from imagining worst case scenarios. “When will you know?”

“We won’t know for sure until he wakes up and we can run some tests.”

Steve looks at his feet. The tiled floor seems to blur under his gaze. “Can I see him?”

“Well, as I said, he’s not awake,” she says gently. “But if you’d like to wait in his room?”

“Yes,” Steve says at once.

“Okay, I’ll get someone to take you to him.”

Steve uncurls his stiff fingers, and breathes, and thinks, Bucky.

——

Bucky’s face is nearly white, his lashes very dark against his cheek. His torso’s swathed in bandages, but Steve can still see the stutter of his chest with each breath. He pulls up a plastic chair and sits by Bucky’s bed, taking hold of Bucky’s right hand. It feels cold under his palm; he rubs it, a little worried.

His phone buzzes in his pocket. Steve blinks a little, aware of the world outside the hospital for the first time since Nat called.

“Peggy,” he says, wedging his phone between ear and shoulder so he doesn’t have to let go of Bucky’s hand. “God, I’m so sorry.”

“You’re late,” she says sternly. “What’s going on?”

“Bucky’s in the hospital,” he says. “There was some kind of accident last night – he lost an arm.”

“Oh, god,” she says, softer. “Will he be all right?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says, trying to keep his voice steady. “They said we won’t know for sure until he wakes up.”

“Right,” she says, crisp. “Don’t worry about work, I’ll get someone to cover for you.”

“Thank you,” he says, closing his eyes. “I owe you.”

“Not a problem,” she tells him. “Let me know when Barnes wakes up, all right?”

Steve hangs up. Looks at the angles of Bucky’s face, made harsher by the lights.

Wake up, he thinks. Please.

——

When Bucky moves, it’s a sudden jerk of his hand that has Steve’s head snapping up. “Bucky?” he asks, watching Bucky’s face.

He doesn’t respond, but his mouth looks slacker, softer. His eyelids flutter, briefly. Then he’s mumbling something unintelligible, head shaking.

Bucky opens his eyes.

“Bucky,” Steve says again. He’s not sure what he’s feeling – he swallows and feels almost like he might burst into tears. “God, don’t ever do that to me again.”

Bucky struggles to rise up, but it’s too much for him. He falls back down on his pillow and turns his head to look at Steve.

He says, toneless, “Who the hell is Bucky?”

Steve freezes. That’s a terrible joke, he wants to say, except there’s no trace of a laugh on Bucky’s face. “You are,” he says carefully. “You…don’t remember?”

Bucky shakes his head. Winces.

Steve looks down at where he’s clutching Bucky’s hand. “You…don’t recognize me either, do you?” he says, slowly untangling their fingers.

Bucky looks at him. His eyebrows are drawn together in concentration and his mouth is pressed into a thin line. “Sorry,” he says, slow.

“It’s okay,” Steve says. “I’m gonna call a nurse, and then I’m gonna stay here, if that’s okay with you?”

“All right,” Bucky says in a rasp.

Steve jabs at the call button. His hands are shaking. He presses them under his thighs and tries not to think about the fact that Bucky’s turned his head away.

——

[optional: some medical exposition]

——

When they come home, Bucky stops in front of the stairs and tries to take a step up. He’s got his right hand gripping the railing – Steve can see the play of muscles in his forearm – but he’s still not used to the weight of the prosthetic and it’s throwing him off balance.

“Here,” Steve offers. “Let me help.”

Bucky looks up, hunched in tightly on himself. He doesn’t say a word as he throws his right arm around Steve’s shoulders, when Steve wraps his own arm around Bucky’s waist. It still takes them a long time to get to their apartment, and when they reach the landing Bucky nearly falls as he tries to untangle himself from Steve.

“Thanks,” he says, shortly.

“It’s–” That brings Steve up short. This distance between him and Bucky is suffocating – before, Bucky would have leaned against Steve without question, wouldn’t have needed these formalities. “Not a problem,” he says, finally, weakly. “Let’s get inside.”

——

When Steve gets into the station, Captain Fury calls him into the office.

“I’m sorry to hear about Barnes,” he says without preamble.

“Thank you, sir,” Steve says. “I’d like to know how the investigation’s been going – if there’sanything I can do–”

“It’s over and done with,” Fury says, shutting a folder with a snap. “Accident.”

“What do you mean, done with? We don’t know what happened!”

“What happened, Rogers, is that a metal garage door slipped.” Fury stares at him with his good eye. “Unfortunate, but there’s nothing more we can do.”

“But–”

“I understand you’re upset,” Fury says, ignoring Steve’s open mouth, “but I suggest you get back to work.”

Steve stands there, trying to understand. Fury’s been a good captain – he’s always cared about his officers –

“I’m not going to say it again,” Fury says. “Get back to work, Rogers.”

Steve bites his lip. “Yes, sir.”

——

“How can he say it’s done with?” Steve asks. “We don’t know what Bucky was doing, we don’t know what made the door go off, we don’t know anything!” He swallows a mouthful of beer and breathes. “Sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” Peggy tells him. “As it happens, I’ve been wondering some of the same things myself.”

“So you do think it’s weird, right? It’s not just me?”

Peggy takes a slow sip of her drink. She’s staring down at the bar when she says, “No, it’s not.” Then she makes a thoughtful noise. “Perhaps this wasn’t an accident at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Listen.” She leans forward, suddenly, her head very close to his. “I’ve been looking into the precinct’s patrol schedules. The alley where Barnes was found? That area never seems to be staffed properly.”

“Okay,” Steve says. He glances around, but nobody’s looking at them. “What are you saying?”

“I don’t know for sure.” Peggy looks troubled. “It might be a coincidence. Or maybe Barnes noticed the same thing I did, and went looking.”

“And he found it,” Steve finishes for her, frowning. “If you’re right…”

“And that’s a big if.”

Steve shakes off the objection. “You’re gonna need someone looking outside the station.” He tips his chin up a fraction.

“Be careful, Steve,” Peggy says quietly. “I don’t have to remind you what happened to Barnes.”

“That’s why I’ve gotta look,” he tells her. “Because I know.”

——

Steve opens the door and blinks at the stranger on his doorstep.

“Sam Wilson,” the man says crisply, putting a hand out. “I’m the physical therapist.”

“Oh, right,” Steve says, taking a step back. “Come on in.”

When he’s stepped inside, Sam looks Steve over with a friendly grin. “So, you’re not the guy I’m here for.” He nods at Steve’s shoulder. “Unless prosthetics have gotten really good recently.”

Steve lets out a short laugh. “No, it’s Bucky.” He looks over at Bucky’s door, which is closed. “Sorry, he’s been a little–”

“Yeah, I get you.” Sam nods. “Can’t really blame him.”

Sam makes his way to Bucky’s room to knock at the door. “Bucky?” he calls. “It’s your physical therapist. Time to get to work, man.”

It takes a moment for Bucky to open the door. “Hey,” he says, subdued.

“There we go,” Sam says easily. “C’mon. We can work in your room.”

Bucky’s door swings closed again, and Steve tries not to stare too much at it. He wants the door open; closed, it keeps reminding Steve that he and Bucky are now strangers.

He’s being ridiculous. He goes back to his newspaper.

——

When Sam comes out of Bucky’s room, he doesn’t leave right away. Instead, he takes a seat next to Steve on the sofa and asks, “So how are you doing?”

The question is so unexpected that Steve nearly laughs. “Me?” He says. “I’m fine. Bucky’s the one with ten kinds of problems.”

Sam looks at him with a knowing expression. “Just ‘cause someone else is hurting, doesn’t mean you can’t, too,” he says. “If you ever wanna talk.”

“Thanks,” Steve says. “Really.”

“Good to meet you, Steve,” Sam says, standing up. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“All right,” Steve says. He watches Sam go, shakes his head.

——

Bucky shuffles out of his room while Steve’s making dinner. He’s got pajama pants on and a sweatshirt with its left sleeve pulled over his hand.

“Hey,” he says, voice scratchy with sleep.

“Hi.” Steve waves his stirring spoon. “Making spaghetti.”

Bucky looks more alert than he’d had in days, which makes Steve smile. He’s looking around, hand shoved into his sweatshirt pocket. “So,” he says slowly. “We live together.”

“Yeah,” Steve nods. Anything to get Bucky talking more cheerfully.

“How long have we lived together?”

Steve scratches the back of his neck. “Well, we’ve lived here four years, but we were sharing an apartment during school, too–”

“We’ve lived together four years and I haven’t jumped you yet?”

Steve blinks. “I–” He looks down. Gives the spaghetti sauce another stir. “I don’t think I’m your type, Buck.”

Bucky laughs. It’s not a mean laugh but a real one, like the laughs they used to share. “Oh, you’re definitely my type.”

Steve doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he doesn’t. He focuses on draining the noodles, trying not to think about what Bucky’s saying.

He hears Bucky stepping closer. “But maybe I’m not your type,” Bucky says quietly. Giving him an out.

Steve was never much of a liar. He looks at Bucky, the way he can see a bit of his collarbone under the neck of his sweatshirt. The way his face looks, open.

He mutters, “That’s never been the problem.”

Bucky slide a hand around Steve’s waist. His chin comes to rest on Steve’s left shoulder. “So…why didn’t we?”

When Steve turns his head, Bucky slides his mouth over Steve’s own.

The kiss is soft and gentle, just a press of lips. Steve’s mouth is parted open a little and he can feel Bucky breathing.

Steve closes his eyes and pulls away, very slowly. “I can’t do this,” he says. “You don’t even remember me.” He sighs. “I don’t want a one-night stand with a stranger, Bucky. You’re my best friend.”

When he looks up, Bucky’s mouth is tilted in regret. “Sorry.”

He doesn’t want Bucky to be sorry for kissing him. “Don’t worry about it,” Steve says. He takes the saucepan off the stove and reaches for plates. “Let’s just eat.”

——

He has to text Natasha three times to get the location of the alley where she found Bucky. He has to text Natasha because records has somehow misplaced the file of the investigation, and he’s starting to doubt if they would have interviewed her anyway.

Someone’s cleaned it up – or, at least, the metal of the garage door is shiny, no sign of blood. The ground’s too dirty to tell what’s blood and what’s not. Steve lets out an impatient sigh. He’s not sure what he was expecting to find but it hurts as the faint hope leaves him anyway.

He examines the door more carefully. It doesn’t move when he tugs at it. Locked – that would make sense.

Except then how did Bucky get in its way?

Steve frowns. There’s a shiny spot near the top and he stands on his toes to get a better look at it. There are scratches on the metal, almost gouges that look like they were made with a knife.

“What were you doing, Bucky?” he mutters under his breath. Trying to break in?

Steve doesn’t want to do that just yet. He files away seek warrant in the back of his brain, to pick up if he’s running low on leads. Probably the first thing he should do is check who owns this place. He’ll ask Rollins to look it up – he owes Steve afavor.

Something clinks on the ground as he steps back. Steve looks under his shoe to find a small pin: a skull adorned with snakes.

“Huh,” Steve says out loud. “What do you have to do with this, then?”

——

Bucky’s door is half-open today. Steve knocks and waits for Bucky’s careless, “Yeah?” before going inside anyway.

Bucky’s sitting on his bed, flexing the fingers of his left hand with his right. It’s supposed to get the brain used to moving the prosthetic, Steve remembers.

He sits cross-legged on the floor because it feels a little too familiar to sit on his bed. “I went to the scene of the accident,” he says, clearing his throat. “I know you still don’t remember much–”

Bucky barks out a laugh.

“–but I was wondering if maybe talking about it might help bring anything back?”

“Yeah, all right.” Bucky waves his right hand. “Ask. Whatever.”

“Okay.” Steve lays out pictures of the scene onto the floor. “Any of this look familiar?”

Bucky frowns at them. He picks one up – the one of the door – and stares at it for a long time. “Is this–” He tilts his head toward his left shoulder.

“Yeah,” Steve says awkwardly. “Sorry.“

Bucky shrugs off the apology. He puts the picture down and looks over the rest, a slight frown between his eyebrows. Then he sighs. “Sorry,” he says. “Nothing.”

“No, it’s fine.” Steve sweeps up the pictures into a pile. “Don’t worry about it.”

He hesitates before showing Bucky the pin. “What about this?” he asks.

Bucky’s yawning when he looks at it, and his expression doesn’t change. “Is that mine?” he asks. “Did I have terrible taste, or what?”

“Naw, I don’t think so, just found it at the scene.” Steve puts the pin away. He’s grinning at Bucky, for the first time in what feels like weeks. “Although now that you mention it, you do have that one pair of jeans–”

“Wait, what’s wrong with ‘em?”

——

[trail on garage leads to nick]

——

Steve’s watching [something ridiculous] on the TV. It’s been a long day and he doesn’t really want to think.

He hears Bucky’s door open and forces himself not to look around. It won’t help Bucky to feel like he’s under scrutiny all the time.

Bucky comes nearer anyway, settling down on the arm of the sofa. “What’s up?” he asks, waving at the screen.

“Nothing much,” Steve says. “[something just happened.]”

“I can’t believe you watch this stuff,” Bucky says. “I can’t believe I’m friends with someone who watches this stuff.” But he stays, and he slowly slides down to take a seat properly. His thigh is nearly pressing against Steve’s own, and when [something funny happens?] he laughs, loud and clear, his hand coming up to clap Steve on the back.

It’s like they’ve crossed a line, after that. Bucky touches him more, comfortably moving Steve when he’s in Bucky’s way, lightly shoving Steve on the shoulder when he’s teasing him. It’s everything Steve could’ve wanted: Bucky’s hand on his when he’s about to take the last pretzel, Bucky’s arm around his shoulder when they’re squashed in a booth in [food place].

But sometimes Bucky still stops in confusion in the middle of a conversation, when a reference he should know flies over his head, and Steve wants to take Bucky’s face in his hands, smooth all the worry and frustration away.

They’re not quite there yet.

——

[nick fury’s arrest, nick says something to steve/peggy – maybe an address?]

[peggy keeps up on paper trail, starts to suspect pierce + sitwell]

[steve gets shot at while investigating]

[bucky starts to remember. he withdraws a bit. sam.]

[something something pierce implicated]

[steve & peggy go to confront & land in hydra meeting]

[shoot out + bucky coming by with half-recovered memories]

[the fbi. nat + clint]

[these two cannot communicate when nobody has amnesia. v uncomfortable]

[“how do we keep ending up like this”]

#a meme! #man looking at this you can tell i am absolutely useless at outlining #ohsweetcrepes #some kind of human interaction #you go i follow #some wip nonsense

[quindolyn]

Ma’am i am begging for a wolfstar blurb where Remus has a innocence kink and Sirius has a corruption kink

With love, my vagina

Dumb Bunny || Remus Lupin and Sirius Black

Word Count: 4,553

A/N: I hope you like this Bo, you’re my favorite and you know that. I also wrote like 90% of this in one sitting so I don’t know if it’s any good because you usually i take breaks and come back and look at what I’ve written but who knows. Love you so much my love.

Warnings: degradtion, praise, names like slut and dumb, blow job, oral virgin, dogg style, this is post Azkaban kinda

Masterlist

Kneeling at Remus’ feet staring up at the outline of his cock pressing up against his pants was daunting. You’d never actually given head before, had guys asked? Sure, but it had just never seemed worth the trouble, you’d never actually gotten a good look at any of their pricks because as soon as you’d nixed a blow job they were desperate to get inside of you.

Not that that had been all that great either, but you digress. 

You watched with wide eyes as his nimble fingers moved to the button on his slacks, pulling it through the hole before unzipping his zipper which allowed his slacks to drop and pool at his ankles. 

This left him in only his navy boxers which allowed you to get a much better look at the outline of his cock, you could almost see the ridges of the head as it was jostled around when he stepped out of his pants, kicking them to the side as he repositioned himself in front of you. 

You sat there, unmoving as you stared down his cock, not quite sure what to do now.

“Come on Pup, don’t tell me that you’re so clueless that you don’t know what to do with a cock when its been laid out in front of you,” Sirius sniped from where he stood, leaning nonchalantly against the wall as his eyes raked over your figure, clad only in the pair of pale pink panties and matching bra that you had put on hours earlier. “Don’t tell me that you’re that useless.”

“M’not useless,” You grumbled, casting your eyes down in shame, “I just, I’ve never done this before.”

“Speak up there Pup,” Remus commanded gently, slipping two strong fingers under your jaw to tilt your head up so that you could meet his gaze, “Can’t hear you when you mumble, and s’not nice to not look at someone when you’re talking to them.”

“M’sorry sir,” You apologized, trying to keep your eyes on his and not on his ever growing bulge, still straining against the material of his boxers, “I was just saying that,” You gulped, casting a sidelong glance at Sirius before moving your eyes back to meet Remus’, “I’ve never done this before.”

“Never done what before?” Sirius asked from off to the side, his smirk evident in his voice as he moved to stand next to Remus, “Come on bunny, wanna hear you say it.”

You looked up at Remus with pleading eyes but it was clear he wasn’t going to call his dog off, “I’ve never given head before, I’ve never sucked…” You felt your face heat up as you trailed off at the implication of your words.

“Oh come on,” Sirius chuckled, kneeling next to you so that you were of equal height, “Don’t get shy on me now, you can say the word puppy, I know you can.”

You found yourself not mortified by his condescending matter but rather ridiculously turned on, you could already feel a knot begin to form in your belly.

Sirius kept his eyes trained on you expectantly until you finally relented, “Cock,” As the single word slipped from your mouth you felt embarrassment bloom in your belly which was silly really, it was only just a word.

“Come on now, all together,” The dark haired man grinned mischievously.

“I’ve never sucked cock,” You admitted bashfully, looking to Remus to measure his reaction. You were nervous, not only had you never sucked someone off before but both men were a decade older than you with more sexual experience. What if you weren’t good, or you couldn’t take them and triggered your gag reflex? With all of these thoughts swimming around in your head it was hard to form a coherent thought and that was purely from nervousness, you couldn’t imagine what it would be like when you had them inside of you.

He had to restrain himself from groaning, both at your words and the innocent look on your face as you gazed up at him, “You’ve had sex though right baby? We’re not gonna take your virginity are we?” He asked, because if he and his lover were about to be your first time it was going to have to be a whole lot more special than this.

You were quick to shake your head, “No, I’ve had sex, I’m not a virgin.”

“Well in this hole you are,” Sirius captured your jaw, turning it to face him. His thumb brushed against the seal of your lips in a nonverbal command for you to open them, which you did of course.

You watched with wide eyes as Sirius gathered spit in his mouth before he spat it into your mouth, the taste of him bleeding across the expanse of your tongue. 

“Let me see Pup,” Sirius commanded as you stuck your tongue out, allowing him to see his spit on your tongue before he gave you your next direction, “Good girl, now swallow.”

Not as restrained a man as Remus he did groan watching your throat with an unguarded lust that had you shivering at the idea of what thoughts laid behind that gaze.

“Pads is right, you’re a very good girl,” Remus praised, directing your attention back towards him. Your mouth dropped open at the sight you were met with, Remus’ stiff cock standing proud and tall in front of your face with his hand wrapped around it.

“Am I going to suck your cock?” You asked, wide eyed and slightly concerned as you gazed up at Remus. Though his dick was prettier than you anticipated with its bright red, leaking tip, and the ridges caused by the veins that ran along the sides it was absolutely mouth watering, but the idea of fitting that in your mouth was nothing less than nerve wracking.

He let out a low chuckle, one of his strong hands moving to brush your hair out of your face, his eyes trained on your lips, “No, not yet baby. Gonna wrap those pretty lips around Sirius he’s a little bit smaller, it’ll make it easier for you.”

You heard Sirius grumble in discontent at the comment as he pushed himself up to undo the buckle of his belt, shedding both his trousers and boxers with far less dignity than his counterpart. Though yes, he was a bit smaller, it didn’t appear to be a significant difference and did little to soothe your woes about your potential performance. 

“Don’t worry Poppet, m’gonna teach you how to suck his dick. It's not hard I promise,” The tall man knelt beside you, his hand still on his prick as he smeared a kiss along your temple. You allowed your eyes to close at the contact, leaning into the touch as Remus guided one of your hands to his cock. It practically jumped into your grasp as oppositely charged magnets would attract each other. 

Though you’d given a hand job before Remus’ much larger, scarred hand found its way to encase your’s, guiding you through the motions of pumping up and down the shaft.

“How about me?” Sirius sounded petulant, like a child, but there was absolutely nothing child like about the way his dick rested heavily in the palm of his hand, he wasn’t as long as Remus but what he lacked in length he made up for in girth. The head of his member was more purple than red, though it leaked just as ferociously with the beginning drops of precum.

“He’s right Puppy,” Remus told you, pulling his lips away from your temple so that you would be forced to support the weight of your head on your own and meet his eyesight, “Gonna teach you how to give a blow job, okay?”

You nodded your head, “Yes, Sir.”

Impatience radiated off of the man who stood before you, the head of his cock staring you down, before you could talk yourself out of action you reached out and took the shaft in your hand, getting used to how it sat heftily in your hand.

“You’re gonna want to spit in your hand first Pup, it’ll make it easier,” Remus suggested, his length still secure in his own hand. You followed your instructions, switching Sirius’ member to your nondominant hand while you spat into the other one before resuming your previous hold.

Gazing up at him as you worked your hand up and down the length of his shaft you noticed the way his eyes were entirely consumed by lust, shining grey irises now black, blending in with his pupils.

“Use your thumb to smear the precum baby, like that,” Remus continued to coach you, watching as you ran your thumb over the sensitive head of Sirius’ member and how he jolted at the motion, “See he likes it.”

“Do you? Do you like it, Daddy?” You peered up at him through your eyelashes, cocking your head to the side without ever relenting the movement of your hand, “Am I doing a good job?”

Remus groaned from beside you, his gaze having left the dick in your hand, now landing on your face. Sirius simply smirked, dark curtains of hair framing his visage, the mere sight of him looming above you was enough to make you embarrassingly turned on, feeling pleasure begin to simmer in your belly you could only imagine how it would feel when you had him in your mouth.

“You’re doing a very good job Puppy,” It was Remus who spoke this time, “But it looks like Pads might be a little desperate to get his cock in your mouth, you think you’re ready?”

“I think so,” You nodded.

That was all Sirius needed before he was releasing his member from your hold, gripping his hand around it pumping it once, then twice before bringing the head to rest on your bottom lip. Tracing the seal of your lips with the weeping head of his prick he spoke, “Come on Puppy, wanna be the first cock in that pretty little mouth of yours.”

“You heard him (Y/N), open your mouth, time to take his cock.” Remus said from beside you.

“B-But I’ve never done this before, how am I supposed to know what to do?”

Getting more and more frustrated with the fact his prick still wasn’t in your mouth Sirius began shifting his weight from foot to foot anxiously.

“Don’t worry, it’s gonna be alright,” The werewolf soothed you, running his fingers through your tresses, “Gonna help you.”

Glancing over at Remus for one last confirmation you didn’t realize what Sirius was doing until it was too late and his member was making contact with your cheek as he slapped it against the side of your face, streaking precum across your skin, “Hurry up slut.”

You whimpered at the degradation of both his words and his action as you felt a pang of pleasure zip through your body, shivering at the filthiness of it. You shifted in your spot, trying to rub your thighs together to soothe some of the ache that resided there and that wasn’t showing any indication of relenting but neither of the older men were having it.

“Stop that,” Sirius growled, capturing your jaw in his hand, pushing your cheeks together so that your lips were forced open, “Not about you right now, you’re supposed to be getting me off,” With that, having lost all patience he pushed the head of his cock into your mouth, releasing a strangled groan as he stopped himself from pushing in deeper. 

Remus let out a small chuckle shifting so that he was closer to you, “There you go Poppet, just start with the head. You wanna be sure to keep your teeth tucked away so that you don’t hurt him,” Leaning in closer towards your ear he added something else in a low whisper, “We can do that later, yeah?”

You let out a small giggle, which because it was muffled by the cock sitting inside of your mouth sent vibrations of pleasure through Sirius, starting at the head of his member and working their way up the shaft. Unable to control himself he bucked into your mouth, not considerably deep but deep enough to jar you. 

“Careful Si,” Remus scolded gently, one of his hands going to grip Sirius’ bare thigh as a reminder not to rush. Looking at you he saw the tears brimming in your eyes at the sudden and unexpected motion, “Puppy,” He cooed, caressing the side of your face with his knuckles, “Gotta breathe through your nose, do you know how to do that baby?”

Shaking your head gently you were careful to keep your teeth tucked away behind your lips while still signaling that you had no clue what you were doing. 

“Are you choking on my cock?” Sirius mocked you, the concerned tone of voice so sickly sweet it was nauseating, “Not even doing anything with it, just sitting there in your mouth and you can’t even take it,” He thrusted up gently into your mouth, just enough for the head of his cock to brush up against the roof of your mouth as cause you to gag around his length.

“Be nice Sirius,” Remus seethed through gritted teeth, glaring up at him while he pet your hair, grounding you as you focused on inhaling and exhaling through your nostrils. Concentrating on that helped you to calm your gag reflex, no longer having a problem with how his member was positioned in your mouth.

“Daddy can be mean can’t he?” Remus directed his attention towards you, his tone was so falsely sympathetic that it worsened the need bubbling up inside of you as the pleasure in your stomach continued to simmer. 

You stopped yourself from nodding again, this time letting out an affirmative hum which pleased Remus as he watched Sirius’ hips stutter as he refrained from forcing his length all the way down your throat.

“You can suck harder bunny, it’ll feel good and he’ll tell you if something hurts or doesn’t feel good, gotta trust him to do that.”

Taking his advice you sucked more harshly at the member inside of your mouth, swirling your tongue around the head while looking up at him to gauge his reaction, he was still looking down at you, unblinking as though if he lost sight of you for even a moment the pleasure would stop. 

Remus slid his body behind yours so that your back was pressed to his chest with his cock achingly pressing into your bareback, smearing precum along your skin.

“Gotta hollow your cheeks Pup, like this,” His fingers found their way to either side of your face, pressing gently on your cheeks until he could feel the cock inside of your mouth. “It’ll feel good for him, make it tighter like it would be if he was fucking your cunt.”

One hand quickly abandoned your face, sliding its way down your stomach until his fingers were brushing the top of your lacy panties before slipping just his fingertips beneath the material. He simply cupped your pussy possessively, not working his fingers between your folds or into your hole, but just resting there, clutching you.

“Fuck Moons,” Sirius gritted, “She’s a fucking natural, hollowing her cheeks so prettily for me it’s like fucking her actual cunt.”

You whined at his words, squirming once again trying to relieve the ache burning between your thighs, the way he spoke to Remus, to Sir, like you weren’t even there. It was deliciously objectifying, degrading, and you loved it. 

Remus smiled into your neck as he moved to nip at your ear, the contact subtle, but still enough to have you shivering as pleasure tickled at your nerves which felt frayed and exposed, with every motion, every exhale against your skin it was like on fire had been set to each of them individually.

“Gonna make him feel even better now poppet, bob your head up and down and you’re gonna take your hand,” He took one of your hands, which had been resting on your thigh, and guided it to the base of Sirius’ member, “Just move it a little bit, on what you’re not able to fit into your mouth, don’t wanna neglect it.” 

Following his instructions you worked the exposed length of him in your hand as you bobbed your head up and down the rest, taking about half of his cock into the velvety warmth of your mouth. Running the brunt of your tongue along his shaft you acted upon the courage you felt surge through you, using the hand not at the base of his cock to grapple at his balls. 

You were more than pleased with the strangled moan that fell from Sirius’ lips, you’d gotten groans out of him earlier but not a moan. Remus noted this as well, his mouth still pressed against your ear, “Look at that, he’s so pretty with his head thrown back like that, moaning, and all because of your mouth.” 

One of his fingers found your bottom lip which was dripping with saliva, and he ran the pad of his finger along the cushion of your lip, pressing gently. 

“How’s it feel, Pads?” Remus looked up at the other man.

“She was born to suck cock,” He exhaled sharply as you took him deeper in your mouth, making a point to continue to hollow your cheeks.

The hand cupping your sex slid a finger between your folds, collecting your wetness on a singular digit causing you to jump at the contact before you rolled your hips towards his hand nonverbally begging for more.

Moving his lips to suck dark purple hues into the delicate flesh of your neck Remus spoke into your skin, “Once you make Daddy cum then it's your turn Bunny, don’t be greedy, you gotta give before you get.”

Taking his words at face value you became even more determined to make Daddy cum, knowing that not only would it be a personal feat, your first blow job, but that when it was done you would be getting so much more.

Breathing in sharply through your nose you willed your gag reflex not to act up as you pushed your head down on his cock, taking in as much of Sirius as you could which you were pleased to see that it was a majority of his length inside of your mouth by the time you hit your limit. 

You sucked more harshly at his member, swirling your tongue around what you could before Remus rose from where he had rested behind you, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head before moving to stand next to Sirius. You whimpered when his fingers slipped from your cunt but were intrigued as you watched through your lashes. Observing as Remus’ hands slipped under the smaller man’s shirt, palms running up and down the toned planes of his stomach as he meshed his lips with the other man’s.

You were unsure but you thought that you heard a command for Sirius to rid himself of his shirt as he quickly undid the buttons, letting the dress shirt fall to the floor with Remus’ quickly following suit.

Watching the two men make out with each other, Remus’ hands nestling themselves in Sirius’ long hair and Sirius’ gripping at Remmy’s bare ass, spurred you on in your efforts to make him cum.

Adjusting Siri’s length so that it sat comfortably in your throat and that so you could feel where it bulged against your throat before you swallowed around his length.

If the feeling of his load being shot down your throat wasn’t indication enough that your little trick had done the job then the sharp, “Fuck” the man released from above you certainly was. 

You swallowed his cum just as you had his spit before easing yourself off of his length, taking extra care to keep your teeth from his sensitive cock. Looking up at him with wide eyes you watched him lay his head on Remus’ chest as marks similar to the ones left on your neck were left on his, and though yours were beginning to feel a bit tender you knew that Sirius was loving his as much as you were loving yours.

“Did I do a good job Daddy?” You looked up at him owlishly, cocking your head to the side.

“Fuck Moons if you don’t fuck her I will,” Was all you got in response as Remus chuckled into the newly bruised skin of his lover pulling away to assess you. 

He frowned looking at you as he noticed that you were still in your underwear, “Up,” He ordered, once you were on your feet he was in front of you in a single stride, strong, scarred arms were extending around your torso to undo the clasp of your bra, pulling the straps off of your shoulders allowing the garment to fall to the floor before kneeling in front of you to tug your panties down which you then stepped out of.

“On the bed,” He ordered simply, your panties hanging from the crook of his finger as he moved to deposit them in the pocket of his blazer, cock bobbing in the air as he moved about the room.

Positioning yourself on the bed, on your hands and knees you caught a glimpse of Sirius lounging on an armchair in the room, cock resting against his thigh as he recovered from his first orgasm of the night. He shot you a lazy smile before raking his eyes along your form, studying each ripple and ridge hungrily. 

On your hands and knees, you felt uncomfortably vulnerable but you knew it was all worth it when you felt Remus settle in behind you, his hands moving to grip your hips and pull you back towards his pelvis.

You pushed your bum back towards Remus as you felt the head of his cock run through your soaking folds, you were almost embarrassed by how wet sucking Sirius off had made you but you couldn’t quite summon the energy.

“Don’t rush bunny, I got you, I promise,” With one hand guiding his cock and the other anchoring you to him he pushed just the head of his member inside of you. You clenched around him, trying to suck more of his length up into you because though you technically had him you needed more.

Not feeling particularly patient himself Remus wasted no time before pushing the entirety of his length inside of you, growling as your cunt pulsed around him. 

“Sir!” You moaned feeling yourself stretch around him, having never taken his cock before you weren’t ready for the way that he stretched you so wide it was bordering on painful just barely avoiding tipping over the edge. 

Allowing you a moment to adjust to his length he pulled out of you until his member barely rested inside of you before thrusting himself all the way back in. A hand running down your back signaled for you to arch your back for him which of course you did.

His pace was fast but deep, the depth of his strokes consistent as he reached depths inside of you you hadn’t even known existed before. Pistoning his hips in and out of you the rhythmic sound of skin slapping up against skin filled the room and you could feel his balls slapping up against your clit which each and every thrust.

“Pretty bunny,” Remus’ low voice sounded through the room, accompanied by the sounds of your skin against each other as he leaned back to watch his member disappear in you before pulling back out, “Such a pretty bunny for me, so sweet and innocent aren’t you?”

“Yes Sir,” You responded, allowing your head to drop and hang as you fell onto your elbows rather than your hands.

Sirius tutted as he rose from his seat in the corner, his beautifully tattooed body still glistening with sweat as he began pumping his cock while walking towards you, “Please, she’s not a pretty bunny, she’s a little cum slut. Dumb little bunny.”

You whined out at his degradation, your eyes squeezed shut as a wave of pleasure coursed through you causing you to let out a ragged breath. 

“See, she likes it, dumb bunny.” Though you couldn’t see him you were sure that he was grinning wickedly down at you.

“No m’not! I’m a pretty bunny,” You insisted, though your message was a bit undercut as you slurred your words.

“That’s right, pretty bunny,” Remus cooed, groping the globes of your ass in his hands, squeezing the flesh before pulling away to observe the handprints he left on your skin, if only for a moment.

“She wants to be, but she’s not, she’s just a cock hungry slut.” Sirius countered and you looked up at him with pleading eyes, desperately seeking his approval but all you got was a sneer as he pumped his cock next to your face.

“Not nice, Sir says you’re mean,” You whined as Remus continued to thrust in and out of you, rather enjoying watching the interaction between his two lovers.

“Oh is that right? Well, I don’t fucking care if I’m mean, you’re a dumb fuck bunny and if telling you that is mean then oh well,” He grasped your jaw in between his hand, forcing your head up at an uncomfortable angle to make eye contact with you, “Guess I’m mean.”

The whine you released at that was perhaps the most pathetic of the night, you felt pathetic at the gush of wetness you felt at his words, the pleasure in your belly progressing from a simmer to a boil as Remus’ hand reached around to find your clit, pinching the sensitive bundle of nerves between his thumb and forefinger.

“Don’t listen to him,” The man buried deep inside of your cunt told you, “You’re my pretty bunny, keep on being my pretty bunny, prove Daddy wrong.”

It was all too much, the contrast between Remus’ praising words and Sirius’ harsh ones, the sight of Sirius’ tattooed hand working up and down his shaft, Remus’ pace in and out of you and his hand on your clit. 

It was just all too much.

You could barely see straight as the pleasure boiling in your belly overflowed, like hot lava flowing you felt pleasure flow through your veins as you climaxed. Your orgasm left you feeling warm in every nook and cranny as your eyes rolled back into your head. It felt like you were underwater as your thoughts swam around you, mingling with the noises in the room around you.

Your head was still heavy as you opened your eyes which you hadn’t realized you’d squeezed shut, you jolted forward as Remus continued moving in and out of your pussy, trying to get away from his cock. Your orgasm had been electrifying leaving you sensitive but Remus didn’t seem to be relenting.

“Don’t recall telling you you could cum Poppet,” Remus said from behind you, and that’s when you realized why he wasn’t stopping, “Maybe Daddy was right, maybe you are just a dumb bunny.”

tagging: @randomoutsiders @weasleyposts @amourtentiaa @kittykylax @superbturtlemakerathlete

#harry potter fanfic #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter #marauders #marauders x reader #harry potter imagine #marauders fanfic #marauders fanfiction #Sirius black #sirius black fanfic #sirius black fanfiction #Sirius black smut #Remus lupin #remus lupin fanfic #remus lupin fanfiction #Remus lupin smut #wolfstar x reader #wolfstar x reader smut #marauders smut

[angelfishofthelord]

"I know what you did"

Whumptober Day 4: pushed. (also on a03)

From a dark au idea I've had for awhile where Cas goes off to be a vigilante post 15x03. And after seeing @dadstiel liveblogging about the end of s14 I wanted to write a scene about what happened in 14x19.

There’s been half a dozen similar stories in the past few months: a child trafficking ring in a state up north was busted and all the men holding the children were discovered either dead or comatose; an abusive father of two young girls was dropped off at the steps of a police station, reduced to a drooling crippled mess; an anonymous call about a factory with underage workers, and when the authorities arrived they found the teenagers huddled in the corner and the burnt, sightless body of the boss under the desk.

“He saved us,” the teenagers were quoted as saying in the article. Similar words used in the most recent news where a local gang that was using eighth graders to sell their drugs was uncovered in the same mysterious pattern. “It was this man...he just came in like the wind,” said Timothy Grant, one of the 14 year olds who was a runaway that had been promised protection by the gang but was then forbidden to contact his parents. “Everyone who ever hurt us was….gone. And he said we could go home now.”

Sam closes the laptop with a sigh. The descriptions in the reports vary, but there are always a few that are consistent: a man with inhuman speed, and the glowing light that either destroys the evildoer or heals the injured. It could be a rogue angel, or one of Chuck’s little comebacks like Lilith.

He ignores the other option, the faint suspicion niggling in the back of his mind.

No. It can't be.

Whoever it is, he’s finally close to finding them. They’ve been smart; security footage has shown that they change cars frequently. The most recent one was a blue pickup truck left under an overpass in the next town. Sam has been staying in the area, checking headlines and talking with local police to see if they’ve seen anyone with a penchant for dispensing judgement on those who hurt the innocents. Like some kind of vigilante, Sam thinks as he pulls up a few feet away from the dark outline of the barn. He got a call from the lady at the diner across from the motel he’s been staying at, saying her friend saw something outside the abandoned Miller farm. It’s probably nothing, but he's here to check, just to be sure.

The first floor of the barn is empty but Sam knows that someone’s definitely here. There’s a flicker of light in the loft above and the muffled sound of grunting. Sam puts the flashlight in his mouth and ascends the ladder carefully. He keeps one hand free and on the hilt of the angel blade in his jacket. As he gets closer to the top he sees a pair of black shoes and the bare, bloodied feet of another man tied to a chair. The man with shoes has his back to him; he looms over the seated man, one hand pinning his shoulder against the spine of the chair.

Sam reaches the last rung of the ladder in time to clearly see the standing man shove his hand into the other’s chest. Light swirls around the invasion, blazing and white-hot, before he withdraws his hand. The man in the chair slumps back, eyes blank and jaw slack.

He knows who it is even before he turns around. He always knew, in a way. “Cas?”

Cas glances back at him with a twinge of surprise in his eyes before he turns back around. “Sam.”

Sam steps closer to the man in the chair. His fingers are still close to the angel blade in his jacket. “Is-Is he dead?”

“No.” Cas keeps his back to him, folding up a map on the wooden table at his side. He sounds strange. Frigid. “That would be a mercy he doesn’t deserve.”

“W-What are you doing?”

“Recharging.”

“No, I mean--that’s not--” Sam rubs a hand over his face. “You’ve been doing all of this? All those people--you killed--why, Cas, why are you doing this?” He knew Cas must be devastated after Jack’s death, after Chuck’s betrayal, and some kind of subsequent fallout with Dean, but the reality of what he's been doing still feels like being hit by a tank.

“I’m saving people. Children,” he adds.

So it is about Jack. “Cas,” Sam moves closer, trying to sound placating. He puts a hand on Cas’ shoulder. “I know losing Jack wasn’t easy. I miss him too but this isn't--”

Cas whirls around, eyes burning blue, and Sam finds himself being hurled across the room, crashing into the wooden boards of the wall before landing hard on the ground. He gasps, trying to find his breath, and looks up to see Cas hovering above him, palm outstretched, face wreathed in fury. There’s a slight pressure on Sam’s shoulders; he’s not being pinned to the wall, but it’s enough to tells him that he absolutely will be if he tries to move.

“C-Cas?” Sam breathes. Maybe he's possessed, maybe Chuck is controlling him. He has to get through to him before it's too late. "It's just me."

“Don’t talk about Jack that way,” Cas says, voice low and lethal. “I know what you did. He told me everything.”

“What are you talking about?”

The shadows darken around Cas’ face. “You prayed to him. He was locked in that box because he answered your prayer.”

Oh. This isn't someone else manipulating Cas, this is really him. Sam feels the tug of shame sloshing in his gut but he brushes it aside and instead makes a faint attempt to rise, only to feel the firm nudge of being pushed back. “Look, I know it wasn’t the best thing to do, Cas, but there was no other way, Jack was dangerous, and he--”

“Did you even try to find another way?” Cas snaps. “You fought fiercely to keep Dean from his fate in that box. Yet you were ready to condemn Jack to an eternity of that same fate without a second thought.”

Sam swallows hard. He tries to remember all the mental gymnastics he did to convince himself why Jack had to go in there, but Cas is still talking. “Do you know why other angels don’t usually answer prayers? Because it makes us vulnerable. It’s not considered a wise strategic move because it calls an angel, by name, to a specific place. There’s no time to scope out the destination for danger or to evaluate the potential risks.” He moves in closer, towering above him. “Or if it’s going to be an ambush.”

“I’m sorry, Cas.” He really is. “We didn’t handle it right, and I wish to Go-” he catches himself. “I wish Jack was still here so he could know how sorry I am. But Cas…what you’re doing isn’t right either. You must know that.”

The eerie glow of Cas’ eyes pierce through the night. “You know, when the Bunker’s alarms went off, it wasn’t just because Jack was trying to break out of the box. I could hear him. He was screaming. The same way he was screaming when….” the light in his eyes suddenly dims and Cas’ hand drops back to his side.

The pressure on Sam yields abruptly and he immediately leans forward, gulping for air. He knows what Cas didn’t say; the sight of Jack collapsing in that graveyard, crying out as searing light ruptured from him, still frequents Sam’s own nightmares. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, useless as the words are. “It wasn’t--”

“I loved him.” Cas isn’t looking at him now; he’s focused on some distant point above his head, blinking hard. “You have no idea how much Jack meant to me, how much I--” his voice catches and he turns away. In between the shafts of light Sam can see his jaw working, the bob of his throat and clench of his fist as Cas struggles to compose himself. A cold, sickly way of guilt washes over Sam and he feels almost nauseous. Every excuse and reasoning dries up on his tongue.

After a minute Cas glances back at him, his expression once more glacial. “You and Dean have each other. Don’t come looking for me again.”

#my spn fic #whumptober 2021 #userjeb #slipper007 #plantdadcas #seraphcastiel #rambleoncas #thisisapaige #dadstiel #angst fic #spn s15 #castiel #sam winchester

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 307: The One With Shindou

Previously on BnHA: Endeavor and Hawks (and Jeanist too, although he didn’t really do anything, but BY GOD, WHAT IS UP WITH HIS NECK) held a press conference and were all, “everything you’ve heard is true, so we would just like to say, from the bottom of our hearts... our bad.” U.A. opened its doors to the public as an evacuation shelter. Deku and All Might told basically EVERYBODY about OFA, which is absolutely wild, and yet somehow we hardly paid any attention to this at all. Mostly because the chapter ended with Deku being all “I WALK A LONELY ROAD, THE ONLY ONE THAT I HAVE EVER KNOWN” and peacing out of U.A. to embark on a solo journey of angst. So this is either gonna be the best or the worst thing that ever happened to this series, so TIME TO FIND OUT WHICH IT IS.

Today on BnHA: Horikoshi is all “so who do you guys want to see next? Deku? Bakugou?? Well how about SHINDOU?” Shindou is all “hi :) I’m Shindou :) :) remember me :) :) :)?” Horikoshi is all “I’m so sorry for depriving you guys of Shindou for so fucking long, how about an ENTIRE CHAPTER ALL OF HIM” and then he REALLY FUCKING DOES IT because, I don’t know?? Did we make him mad?? Am I being punished for something I did in a past life?? It really is, honest to god, seventeen whole goddamn pages of Shindou, punctuated by a few pages of Muscular, and topped off with one (1) whole appearance by Deku at THE VERY END. And we don’t even get to see his face. I am beside myself lmao I’m sorry you guys, you can skip this recap if you want. Or just skip straight to the end, because movie 3 promo.

“long time no see” now what could this mean?? can’t think of too many characters this phrase would apply to right now. although I can think of one big one, and I know that fandom has been trying to manifest his deadbeat ass to finally show itself for years now. could it finally be that time? if Hisashi shows up and debunks DFO a big chunk of the fandom is probably going to riot lol

(ETA: why oh why did I get my hopes up like that lmao. I’m pretty sure Hisashi doesn’t actually exist and Deku was either immaculately conceived, or the stork really did bring Inko a lil green baby from the cabbage patch.)

anyway, so the chapter is opening on this random scene of CRIME and DISARRAY

was this all done by that big villain from the previous chapter? utility poles knocked down, random holes in the sides of buildings, and it looks like this one car pulled over in a hurry and the driver just hopped out and ran

who are these people talking

OH NO, OH GOD

I am immediately struck by the urge to push Shindou off of this ledge. is that mean? probably that is mean, but also fuck this guy lmao. every year you cheat someone out of their well-deserved spot in the popularity poll, and every year I want to punch you in your stupid face for it

bah. and how are you doing, Tatami. love that hero name even if you do have arguably the dumbest superpower in the entire series

listen, though. here I am shitting on these Ketsubutsu kids for no good reason, and I’m sorry about that, and truthfully it’s mostly because I just want to see Deku and/or Kacchan and so it’s hard to give a fuck about anything else right now. BUT, I will immediately cease and desist ALL of my complaining if this means we also get to see my best girl Ms. Joke, omg. Horikoshi please

sdlkfjlskalk

FUCK YOU SHINDOU OMG. I’M SORRY GUYS I CAN’T HELP IT, EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM IS SO EMINENTLY PUNCHABLE AND DETESTIBLE. IT’S LIKE SOMEONE COMBINED WESLEY CRUSHER WITH JEAN RALPHIO

but LSKJFLEK at this random reminder that Bakugou refused to shake his fucking hand. like, that’s his “fun fact” apparently lol. it’s what he deserves

also living for this “cringe” here, too. fuck you Shindou. I am so, so sorry to any Shindou fans out there you guys because I’m just going to be like this the entire time he’s here. the hate is flowing through me

how has it been three whole pages and I still have to look at his stupid face

anyway so it seems like the kids are having to pick up the slack for Old Man Samurai and all those other assholes who retired. I’m guessing the U.A. kids will be seeing a lot more action as well

but in the meantime let’s hope no villains attack here all of a sudden, because all Tatami can do is make herself shorter while Shindou creates an earthquake to bring the entire building down around them dflkjslk

these guys don’t particularly want to go with them and I can’t say I blame them

so now Shindou is saying that yeah, they can probably handle the looters and such by themselves, but it’s a different story when it comes to the Noumu and the escaped Tartarus prisoners. Shindou how dare you make a reasonable point that I can’t immediately argue with

he says that one of the escapees was sighted in the area, so that’s why they’re trying to evacuate everyone

and the guy disagrees and says he doesn’t trust the heroes and thinks they’re pompous

fdskljk. fucking...

ME: Horikoshi can we please stop and get Deku HORIKOSHI: we have Deku at home THE DEKU AT HOME: 

Horikoshi. please. we get it, the civilians don’t trust the heroes anymore. I UNDERSTAND. I COMPREHEND THIS. so unless there is some other point to this scene I respectfully ask that you hurry things along because omg

did Tatami always have this habit of speaking in meme language and such? I thought that was Camie’s thing but hey

listen, I’m here for anyone who’s willing to drag this man down into the depths of the earth. I would just also rather not spend the entire fucking chapter on this oh my god. Horikoshi do you have any more of those chapters where things happen in them?? those are good, I like those

YESSSSSS FINALLY

so whoever’s on the other end of the call (ETA: it’s that rock-looking guy who can harden anything that he touches. why does BnHA have so many hardening powers) is telling them to run because there’s apparently a villain heading right for them, oh my

WHO IS HE

depending on who it is I can’t promise I won’t be rooting for them over you, buddy

ohhhhhh shit

huh. well that’s... hmm... but on the other hand...

okay lol no, I know it’s bad. Muscular fucking LOVES murdering kids. not even Shindou deserves that. I’m sure he has a family that loves him and stuff. and Tatami seems like a sweet girl. they don’t deserve to be murdered

that is the question isn’t it? are we really going to spend the entire chapter with Limbs-Retracting-Girl and her boyfriend, Joseph Gordon-Levitt from (500) Days of Summer??

YES OMG

YES PLEASE CALL YOUR SENSEI. my god do you know what I would give to see Ms. Joke take down an S-class villain??

(ETA: all I’ll say is that we were robbed here, you guys.)

now Tatami is running away while Shindou stays behind omg

Horikoshi I know I said I hate the guy, and I do, but my god. seems I don’t hate him half as much as you do you. been nice knowing you Shindou my man

are you serious Tatami really ran all the way back up here to try and evacuate these guys one more time

SHE’S SUCH A GOOD PERSON omg if you assholes don’t listen to her you deserve to get murdered

BRO

HORIKOSHI DID YOU REALLY FUCKING DO IT I CAN’T BELIEVE IT

LOL OKAY NO, SO FAR HE’S ONLY MESSED UP HIS FACE

WHAT A SHAME WHAT A TRAGEDY. THE WORLD MOURNS

okay but seriously, now he has to be dead

r.i.p. Shindou. he died doing what he loved, talking a lot and being utterly useless

then again, damn Shindou are you really gonna come out here and be a badass?? gonna make me eat my words there kiddo?

I have absolutely no idea if I should expect this to work or not. all I know is that this is page 14, and so it would seem we really are going to spend the entire fucking chapter on fucking Shindou. this beautiful chapter had so much potential, Horikoshi. and now look at it. I hope you’re happy

nope it didn’t fucking work at all lmao

IT’S JUST LIKE I SAID. r.i.p. you pretentious handsome lump

OHHHHHH SNAP

DEKU YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO LOL. anyway but it’s good to see you!! it’s good to see ANYONE other than these guys sob but especially you

FINALLY SOMETHING COOL OMG

somehow Horikoshi actually made the bunny mask look badass?? I don’t think this is sustainable, but I am here for it while it lasts

Shindou should by all rights be nothing but A HANDSOME PASTE at this point lol but WHATEVER. it’s BnHA; getting smashed into walls and cliffs has more or less the same consequences as being set on fire. slap a band-aid on it and you’re good to go

we are REALLY ENDING IT HERE huh

well. and that’s it. I just did not care about any of that lmao. a rare dud of a chapter. well, but we’ve had something like ten in a row that ranged from “pretty good” to “amazing”, so I guess that’s fair

anyway I feel like I owe you guys something other than endless bitching and moaning, so! BONUS:

now this is more like it

first of all, I’m absolutely living for this promo’s “YEET THE CHILDREN OUT OF A HELICOPTER” vibes. FUCK YEAH WE’RE HEROES BITCH

is Deku wearing a jetpack/parachute?? let’s hope he is because I’m assuming he doesn’t have Float yet, so if that’s not a jetpack then it is a LONG WAY DOWN kiddo

these maniacs actually got Deku to wear something other than his red shoes holy fuck. I’m speechless. are we sure that’s not an imposter??

Shouto has the funniest falling position I’ve ever seen. I’m assuming his left arm is not in fact tucked under his leg like it appeared to be at first glance?? like, wtf is the outline of your body right now Shouto

this is what I think it is after careful analysis, but at first I thought this kid had some hidden contortionist abilities

and then there’s this guy

I MISSED YOU YOU BIG GOON. loving the new gauntlets!! and he’s changed up his impractical metal neck thingy into arm thingies! but most importantly, ARE THESE WHAT I THINK THEY ARE

ARE THOSE WEENIES. KACCHAN. KACCHAN HAVE YOU GONE NATIVE OMFG

and meanwhile, look who’s with them! Endeavor makes perfect sense of course, but Hawks is a very welcome surprise. does this mean we can expect to see Tokoyami too? because I would fucking love that

lastly, so this confirms the whole “world heroes” thing! which we all pretty much guessed anyway lol. I wonder if this movie will take place in another country (fingers crossed). the city in the background doesn’t look particularly familiar, but this image probably wasn’t meant to be analyzed in that way lol. anyways, looking forward to this so much, PLEASE GIVE US A TRAILER SOON omg

#bnha 307 #shindou you #nakagame tatami #muscular #midoriya izuku #bakugou katsuki #todoroki shouto #bnha movie 3 #bnha world heroes' mission #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #'I never knew shindou was so popular' said horikoshi not understanding memes #'I guess I better give the people what they want' #smdh #this chapter should be called 'horikoshi's revenge'

[incorrect-ikevamp-quotes]

why does jean warn up to mc so quickly? ikevamp makes it clear that jean is a pretty reserved person and doesn't open up or let people in easily but he seems to let mc in quite quickly and it confuses me quite a bit.

Oh boy, where to begin with this one.

Well, I have a lot of Feelings^TM about this, but I'll try to be concise. Essentially, I think Jeanne doesn't recover in the other routes--or the general storyline--largely because he's just a lot to unpack narratively speaking. And without some pretty direct intervention, he has a hard time healing. MC’s direct intervention was meaningful because it was focused, consistent, and adapted to Jeanne’s specific needs. She also doesn’t make light of his experiences which is key; she fully understands that she can’t fathom what he’s been through. There is a very weighty respect and acknowledgement, a seriousness with which she treats his wounds that’s important.

It’s easy to make this a “why is MC nOt LiKe ThE oThEr GiRlS” but honestly that’s just not the sense I get when I look at all the information available to us. 

That being said, I also just feel like every person's recovery from traumatic events doesn't really look the same? I mean Leonardo’s cptsd isn’t going to operate the same way Jeanne’s wartime/Inquisition cptsd is going to operate. Some people require very individualized healing, others will often require a large scale group effort to lift them up.

Typically people don't ever just get over what happened to them and never worry about it again, either. It's usually a process of coping; the hope is that with time you find healthy ways to deal with grief and move forward. Therapists aren't magicians, they just help people process painful experiences/thoughts. It's honestly up to individuals to find meaningful ways to implement these tactics. 

Tl; dr: My contention is that Jeanne doesn’t open up or choose to stay alive because MC magically heals him, rather his recovery is a convergence of many people’s efforts and hopes that he stays alive. Gilles (he insists that Jeanne must live, asks him to promise), MC (affirms and bolsters that promise), Comte (makes a second life and recovery possible)--and in no small measure Mozart and Napoleon--all make an active effort to buoy him. As people often say, it takes a village to raise a child.

While Jeanne seems to respond most powerfully to MC’s attempts, it feels more like a product of chemistry/compatibility than it does a random cop out. There is no insinuation that only romantic love can heal; after all, MC gets close to him without any romantic intentions at first. They’re just good friends? It’s more that their feelings simply moved in a different direction after a point, which doesn’t necessarily happen all the time. Jeanne is also incredibly moved by Mozart’s love for him as a friend, Comte’s love for him as a father, and even Gilles’ love as a comrade to an extent. If anything, without their input Jeanne’s capacity for romantic love would be questionable at best.

Now, because I can never for the life of me stop analyzing, I have a more large scale outline of my thoughts below. Spoilers for Jeanne’s route:

If we look at Jeanne's life history, he has pretty specific trauma. Most of the harm he endured was a direct result of human rights violations after the war itself. He didn't enjoy fighting and killing people, but he's also very much a man that sees the reality of his position: it's either kill or be killed. His entire goal was to defeat the enemy as efficiently as possible in the hopes of ending conflict, and with his enormous resolve turns the tide. He had no innate interest in inflicting harm, or lack of control when engaging. He isn't pathological about it, and doesn’t dehumanize the other side. He was more "this was an act of necessity, but those are still human beings." So as far as I can tell he has a very strong moral compass and sense of duty, he doesn't show much delusion/confusion in that regard. (Also evident in his conversations with the young orphan boy.) Furthermore, he has been shown to have a sense of humor--cracking jokes with Gilles and boosting morale for his fellow soldiers.

His childhood abandonment is significant (he left his home because he was "not an adequate farmhand and they had no ability to feed all their children") but I don't know if I would consider it a huge trauma point for him. It seems as though he deemed it an act of necessity--not spite. It was simply the way of things, and he couldn't help his wiry constitution. You'd be surprised how common that was once upon a time, tbh... While it's certainly not right or fair, it does appear that in his perception it was the choice he made and he moved on after he became a soldier. Just focusing on what he could do, rather than everything he lacked. For people in his position, they often feel it is useless to linger on what should have been. There’s no time to linger or doubt, life hangs in the balance.

That leaves us with his time under the Inquisition, just before he was slated to be burned alive. I think this is the keystone trauma point for him, because there are a lot of moving parts to his powerlessness here. The first part is that his entire life's mission--ending the war so that people would no longer have to die and/or starve as a result of senseless violence--was just sabotaged. All those years of doing things he never wanted to do (wartime violence) and being forced to leave his family to ensure they didn't all starve, all of it treated like some kind of joke. Like he didn't sacrifice years of his life and sanity to protect a people who were happy to call him a monster and watch him burn alive. The second part is the overt gaslighting and rewriting of Jeanne's personal history (and overall French public perception) for the sake of the King's political agenda. To call him a treasonous danger to the country when he was once lauded a hero. The third portion is the actual physical helplessness of being arrested, starved, and continuously maimed for no reason beyond pure malice. While it's never right to do that to any human being, this was done to a man who prided himself on his stalwart moral code. To abuse and torture him for something egregious that he would never do (at the risk of death) is just another slap in the face to everything he is and believes in.

I just feel like the context clarifies why that period of time would be the tipping point. His entire moral code and life’s work is being called into question and swept aside, as well as his agency? He believes very powerfully in a sense of right vs wrong, what's fair and what isn't fair. Somebody else deciding that for him--and deciding in a way that is openly unfair/incorrect--further makes him lose himself and his sense of reality. A person in that situation begins to doubt if they are good or bad. His belief in god all the more pressing; if he was a good person, why would fate bring him so much suffering? Honorable soldier or not, his blade has drawn so much blood...

People often reference his stilted social skills (and I am of the belief that he is on the autistic spectrum) as a reason why he is so "people-adverse" but tbh? I don't agree. His memories before the onset of this trauma reveal that he was actually a very warm person, and that people were more than willing to fight under his banner. He had friends, and he had comrades--his country loved him. He was the picture of well-meaning civic duty. Just because he doesn’t integrate smoothly into larger social groups or adapt well to socially shifting circumstances, doesn’t mean he just hates people lmao. When people give him the space to exist within his comfort zone and don’t take advantage of him, he thrives. Compounded by that, we also have his actions in the present to further prove what is true and what isn't.

While he is stern with the orphan boy (I'm sorry I can't remember his name, damn it) there is no malice or cruelty in what he has to say. He doesn't punish the kid or do anything out of line. It may not be fair in terms of the adult level of discretion he asks of him, but the kid also didn't have a lot of options realistically speaking lmao. Same thing with MC, she and the orphan boy are nearly identical in how Jeanne treats them. He's a little rough, but the route reveals that his intentions are just a reflection of what he's been through. He truly believes that if a person isn't strong, they won't survive--because his entire life was a series of trying to be strong/reliable because nobody else would. There was nobody to protect him, and nobody to care for him went things went south. It was him and his sword against the world, and even his exceptional skill as a fighter did not protect him from the Inquisition's arbitrary torture. He has lived in a world where good acts can become absolutely meaningless, where following rules and helping people still gets you slaughtered. That's going to take a considerable toll on his mental health: where do you find the will to go on when the next second of your life could mean the devastation of everything that matters to you?

Spoilers: you don't. Or if you do, every minute of the day is a fight to stay alive. That is the point at which we meet Jeanne. Caught in the hellish whirlpool of wanting more, wanting better--but being terrified of the cost. The cost of hoping, only for his entire world to go up in flames again. It's not a small thing, in my view.

If you have any doubts as to whether or not that is the case, I direct you to literally every singular instance in which Jeanne's emotional sensibility goes visibly dark/south. When do these instances happen? When it rains, for one. And when Shakespeare deliberately starts pressing on his sensitivities: about the soldiers he was forced to kill, about the nation that spurned him, how he's truly "wicked" at heart and doesn't deserve to be happy--seconds before flames erupt for the festival. Does that really sound coincidental? I mean lmao. The rain is a painful reminder, but MC transforms that memory into something a little lighter with her bet. He has nothing to lose in her game, all she does is ask for time with him or offers him something if she loses. There's a playfulness there, a restoration of agency and ease that's invaluable to his recovery.

As for Shakespeare's deliberate retraumatization...I can't even begin to explain how damaging that event was. Shakespeare is undermining Jeanne's agency in that he--not unlike the corrupt monarch of Jeanne's era--is twisting Jeanne's beliefs to work against him. He knows full well that Jeanne doesn't feel like he deserves somebody so bright and understanding (we need to remember it's not really a luxury he's had much in life, especially after the war ended). He knows Jeanne has a tendency to impose that strict moral code on himself even more than he does on others. To reaffirm his every worst fear and lurking terror only throws Jeanne into a vicious downspiral. Jeanne doesn't reject MC out of disgust or hate. He rejects her because he literally cannot handle the concept of trying to be happy again, or of burdening her with his constant struggle to move on while he’s in the middle of a bad episode. He knows he won’t be able to stop reliving the past, that every second of his life and breath will be colored by his gruesome memories. He's trying as hard as he can to keep the intrusive thoughts quiet, to move on. But I'm not going to lie to any of you, that is incredibly difficult to do alone.

The next obvious question is, well why can't the other men help him? This isn't to say that they can't--we see how much solace Jeanne finds in Napoleon and Mozart. Even Isaac is gentle with the veteran. But there are limits to how much they can do. Napoleon is struggling with his own wartime trauma, and it's not identical to Jeanne's. Plus there’s a distinct difference in their sensibilities? Napoleon is the type to habitually seek comfort in helping others when he can't help himself, he's not as in tune with answering his own personal feelings and regulating them. (I mean just look at his new ES: he knows what he wants, but it takes a nudge from Isaac for him to go through with it.) He’s very communally reliant in ways Jeanne isn’t; Jeanne is a very private person, and typically prefers one on one from what I can tell.

Mozart is the definition of repression, and if you look at their interactions it's usually Jeanne that's smoothing over Mozart's rough edges. Mozart says as much himself: that he feels like a rotten friend because he knew Jeanne was struggling with a lot of intense trauma, but he didn't know how to unravel it without hurting him in the process. Mozart calls it personal cowardice, but honestly I just feel like they both had too much going on to be able to help each other effectively. (And Jeanne expresses this sentiment too? This idea that he's not angry with Mozart? He knows they're both carrying a lot, he's just touched Mozart cares about him in return.)

Okay, briefly unrelated, but like. Am I the only one that wheezes uncontrollably when Mozart is like "?????? Idk what it is about MC...I don't want her to be scared of me..." in his own main story in the baths. And Jeanne. IS TRYING SO HARD. NOT TO SPILL THE BEANS ABOUT HIM O B V I O U S L Y BEING IN LOVE. THE HILARITY I CAN'T DO THIS. Jeanne was like "yeah....yeah that's rough buddy.......[screams internally, give your boy time Jeanne he's fragile]"

Honestly? That's the thing about Jeanne too--he has incredible self-awareness and hyperarousal-related (I mean the PTSD kind, get your head out of the gutter) awareness to the people around him. He's very, very conscious of the fact that he is surrounded by geniuses when he can't even write his own name. Just because he has the fortitude not to lash out with his insecurities, doesn't mean he never feels stupid or inferior. And it doesn't help when there are people in the mansion who call him--a fucking war veteran from 500 YEARS AGO--nAiVe. He's not naive lmao. He just doesn't know how the world works so many years later, and it's a ridiculously steep learning curve? Leonardo and Comte are nearly 500 years old, but they lived throughout every hour of that time in a linear fashion. It is a big deal to be moved from 1430 to 1890 in the span of a second asynchronously, and then be expected to function without a hitch??? Given the circumstances he adapts well.

That atmosphere--this constant impatience with what he doesn’t understand, his inability to be caught up to speed quickly--is going to hinder his recovery lmao. He feels like a burden most of the time, and agency and freedom are crucial.

Another thing that occurs to me about the mansion's arrangement is that there is a power dynamic, just as any space with people in it has some level of hierarchy (unless you live with miraculously chill people). Jeanne is acutely aware that Comte is the most powerful being in that space, and he is not only hatefully angry at him--but likely afraid too. We have to remember that the biggest betrayal he witnessed in his life was at the hands of a monarch; it was the aristocracy that turned on him and erased the truth. Comte is openly a child that resulted from both that era and that type of lineage, I don't really blame Jeanne for being wary. He intimately knows how willing rich people are to throw normal folks under the bus to suit their ambitions/whims. Comte, while not deliberately threatening, also seems to be painfully aware of this impression he gives off. His "chad persona" as I've mentioned allows him to navigate his life in secret by necessity, but it’s actively damaging to his son. He can't reveal the truth because of Vlad's betrayal, and he's openly unsettled by what it could mean to be honest. Will they wonder about Vlad and find themselves ensnared under his mind control as Charles and Shakespeare are? Will Comte himself be subjected to the mortifying ordeal of being known only to lose them?? That's a risk he isn't willing to take--and that leaves him in a double bind.

What is it that they say, the truth will set you free? This is where MC and Comte come into enormous play when it comes to Jeanne's recovery. One thing to keep in mind is that most of the people in the mansion have their own traumas they're trying to carry, and I feel like a lot of them are unsure how to approach Jeanne. Or if they do, he's very guarded. It takes a lot of consistent effort to get through to him. What does MC do when Jeanne unleashes his harsh worldview on her? She's understandably frightened, but Jeanne isn't malicious (so she chases him around). In fact, he openly avoids and runs away from her--well aware that what he's done is wrong. If anything, he did it on purpose, bringing us right back to Shakespeare's verbal undoing; why does Jeanne attack her in the first place?

LMAO. He attacks her because she essentially says "oh thanks for helping me!" "I am not nice. Watch yourself." "But you seem like a nice guy to me?" "REEEEEE" Does the pattern become a little clearer? When people think kindly of him, his instinct is to shatter that illusion with an impulsive reprehensible act. When people think poorly of him or lash out, what does he do? When that orphan boy starts yelling and screaming, Jeanne is nothing but calm. He explains the situation, and offers the kid a choice, perfectly happy to be the bearer of bad news. This operates on many levels I’m sure, but I have a feeling it has something to do with him being hailed a saint and a war hero only to be tortured and branded a monstrosity (and he probably thinks being a vampire is doubly monstrous). He’s more comfortable being hated because he feels it’s what he deserves in a lot of ways.

Jeanne has a lot of internalized self-hatred because of what he's done, and because of how much harm was inflicted on him outside of his control (he's Catholic and he was tortured, come on this writes itself). If I'm honest, I think that's actually the greater part of why he hates Comte lmao. Comte refuses the very concept of being cruel no matter how much Jeanne lashes out. Sure he lectures him and scolds him, but he never actively limits what's important to him or controls or harms him. Comte fully realizes the tragedy of how Jeanne's life was used by a nation in dire straits, and knows he needs time and acceptance to heal. No matter how dismal or unhappy, Comte doesn't stop--he fully believes Jeanne should have time in his life where he can really live for himself for once. But therein lies the issue, Jeanne doesn't know how to live for himself.

Which brings me to how MC and Comte "heal" Jeanne. I feel like they give him the space he needs to recover, and that's what results in his gentled temperament and happiness. Remember that so much of his main story is MC endlessly chasing after Jeanne. No amounts of his hissing or running or threatening stops her. Even if his refusals are empty of real dislike, they're enough to deter most people. Not MC. She's able to see through to the depths of who he is, and doesn't just use him for her own ends? She actively seeks to teach him (to read and write) to help him settle better in this era, she actively tries to ease his distaste for rain with a well-meaning bet, and she never gives up on him. (Actions mean so much more to him than words in general too, tbh...). Love is more easily defined by work and effort than it is by attraction.

When he has his episode at the festival, sure she's rattled; but that's because she truly believed that he didn't want to be around her anymore. When she notices he really doesn’t want to be followed, she stops like any normal person would. It’s only when she reads his notebook and sees the truth for herself (that he’s given up despite having the same feelings for her) that her determination is rekindled. She doesn't approach him fearfully, doesn't treat him like he's made of glass either. She just wants him as he is--accepts and loves him as he is. Scarred, bloody, exhausted, abrasive, terrified. She doesn't define him by how easy he is to love. That is a huge issue with traumatized people lmao. Because of their maturity, people always just assume they don't need help, or they rely on them to an extent that isn't sustainable. The second they reveal need or that they struggle, people walk away or victim blame them because it’s easier than taking them seriously.

While MC's attempts may be a little more obvious (cherishing his lily field, wearing the hair pin he gave her, careful about his gruesome injury, really listens when he talks about the horrors of his life and accepts that he experienced a level of agony/terror she can never understand, tries to express her feelings no matter his evasion) I think it's also important to consider Comte's large scale effort. I don't say this to undermine MC, I say it because Jeanne's life was defined by a complete lack of security. He left his parents to make their lives easier, he lived in a war that meant life or death any second, and his country's leader branded him a traitor which lead to his endless torture and public execution. Jeanne does not know a life in which safety is the norm. Point blank. He does not understanding going outside and not expecting the worst anymore.

Comte not only understands that level of despair, but treats it with dignity and respect. He fully accepts being hated if it means Jeanne can use that hatred to live on and find a way to heal. And most importantly, when Jeanne begins to move forward with MC and Mozart's help, Comte never once holds it against Jeanne when the truth is revealed. He's not angry, this isn't about reprisal or reparations or revenge. It's just love.

Jeanne doesn't really have a concept of this? His entire life was mostly transactional, defined by strength and efficiency. Nobody gives a damn about your feelings. You either hurl yourself at the problem or die. Nobody is going to help you or carry you or save you. While he may have had a little more support while he was in the military from his fellow soldiers, that support system was ripped away from him during the Inquisition.

One very common sentiment regarding elongated imprisonment and torture is that survival occurs in pairs. It is an undeniable fact that people need others to survive. It is the nature of who we are. Individualism has never proven to be successful, or if it is, its dividends are astronomically minimal when compared to people working together.

What does it mean to be the most reliable, steady person in the room? Usually it just means you don't know how to ask for help when you are no longer capable of maintaining that stance. Napoleon is guilty of it. Leonardo, Comte, and Jeanne all are too. It's part of why MC and Comte's capacity to see what he needs and provide as much as they can is such a big deal. That sort of consistent support (without a constant necessity to beg for help) allows Jeanne to be able to re-integrate into his new reality and find joy. Even if his nightmares and memories never go away, they are now being actively overrun by positive experiences. That's the thing about recovery, really--it tends to be more about drowning out the negative as much as possible and coming to terms with it, than it is about forgetting or never feeling it again. It’s about softening the sharp edges of pain like sea glass.

So is MC magical and randomly got Jeanne to open up? Nah, I don't think so. I think it was a series of persistence and real acceptance of who he is that made him warm up. People really seem to underestimate how deeply affecting understanding is, but that's how damage is undone. Jeanne can't really linger on the idea of his own monstrousness, his unworthiness, a lifetime of misery, when the person in front of him actively listens and cares about him. Makes him laugh and smile and lose himself in warmth for the first time.

If I'm honest, I feel like people also just...underestimate the level of traumatic resurgence that's perpetuated and inflicted by society’s standards in general lmao. This rhetorical structure in which good and bad exist in moral extremes, this idea that people should be able to recover and never experience relapses or periods of sensitivity. The refusal to radically listen to people and their problems, and make active attempts--not matter how small--to mend/ease those hurt feelings. Granted there will always be people in the world who do not want to improve, but I feel like most people want to. It's hopelessness, silence, and stigmatization that remain the true enemies of traumatized/mentally ill people everywhere. And among that population are always war veterans...

#ikevamp #ikemen vampire #ikevamp jean #ikevamp jeanne #ikevamp meta #ikevamp saint germain #ikevamp comte #sorry i have a lot of feelings about this topic kjahsflkjhsjkghfd #but yes! #i think mc being able to help him was more about her sensibility and the mental fortitude/space to be able to care about him as he needed #i don't think it's necessarily that she's SpEcIaL #trauma is a sensitive subject--especially considering he's a war veteran #but i also think it's simple and complex at the same time #simple in the sense that people really do just need consistent support and love to be able to care for themselves again #complex in the sense that support can come in so many permutations and some of them are very delicate and multi-faceted #and thus must be handled with extreme caution in some regards #anywho not that i'm any kind of expert this is just what i understand and see #also in case it wasn't clear i love him and cry every day (look away comte it's my whoring hours) #though i hope this helps??? i went off harder than anticipated lakjhglkj #thank you for the ask!!! <3333 #asks #rambles #not incorrect quotes

[dadsbongos]

Psyche Taxi

Movie/Game/Show: Danganronpa: Killing Harmony Dynamic: Shuichi Saihara/Reader Warnings: chapter 1-2 spoilers, this whole thing is a delusion, mentions of a hit and run (psyche taxi shit), brief description of hit and run aftermath (psyche taxi shit) Summary: Shuichi reunites with a woman he's never known inside his psyche taxi. ~~~

The sun was hot and it felt as though her skin would begin to peel at any moment if she didn’t get a taxi soon. Pink sands kicked up with the wind and the occasional bright red bird passed by overhead. There was the outline of purple buildings far in the distance and yet she knew that they were unattainable. They were just as real as she was, which is to say, nobody knew for sure.

All she knew was that any time she tried going near them, her body found itself right back at the corner in the road she was at now. Though, she’d always been traveling by foot - maybe a ride via car would work better. It wasn’t technically the same thing as all the other times she’d tried, and therefore, it wasn’t technically insanity.

Along the vividly purple horizon, she spots an aggressively yellow car swerve into the lane nearest her. She taps a foot in waiting and looks down at the driver as he pulls up.

His golden eyes are sunken and weighed down with heavy bags, bangs hang low in his face to hide the pale flesh of his face. His complexion lacks sweat and that’s how she knows his vehicle is much cooler than the desert she’s always known.

There’s blood and chunks of meat in his taxi’s grill and that’s how she knows he doesn’t pay attention to his surroundings.

His lips hesitate in their question and he sounds tired, if slightly horrified, “Was it the lab window that Ryoma was brought from?”

She circles around the car and gets into the passenger side, pulling down the visor and unshielding the mirror to look at her makeup. Perfect condition despite her sweating in the sun. That’s when she notices that all traces of sweat have vanished from her inside this taxi. Putting the visor back up, the woman of the night shrugs,

“Would that not be the victory of common sense?”

Silently, he nods and she learns that he claims to be a man dubbed Shuichi Saihara.

She’s not sure how she knew Ryoma - but she’s certain she knew him her entire life. A man of short stature and ambitions larger than life - all of them were ripped away, to which he responded by ripping right back. And she couldn’t blame him. The world was rotten and it was only a matter of time that the people would follow.

“His heart wasn’t always frozen solid,” she watched Shuichi flinch at her statement, “But, of course, you know that, don’t you?”

He nods once. Then twice. Then his brows furrow.

“I thought he’d be okay.”

“You had hoped he’d be alive when the morning came.”

“I wanted everyone to be alive when the morning came.”

“You are a kind man but you hold too much weight on your own brain,” she looks out the window as the desert fades away and streetlights begin flooding in, neon signs burning her retinas. She looks back at Shuichi as he keeps his eyes tight on the road, “The anxiety inside you masks itself as care but one day, when there is not many of you left, you will realize it was never your fault and there is nothing you could have done. It is better to accept this now rather than cling to a blanket that will wither away at the slightest hint of winter.”

“I could’ve stopped by his lab and offered to walk him to his room…”

“You could stay up all night and be just as useless as you would be if you’d gone to bed. There is nothing you could have done,” she feels him shiver and his heartbeat quickens and while she remains in the dark as to how she can feel him, she knows it’s real, “He was destined to die.”

There’s silence passed between them as the car drives through a rest stop and into more desert. But this desert is new. It’s muted in comparison to the one she’d always lived in.

Yellow sand, blue sky, brown rocks piling high to the heavens, she reaches a hand out the window and notes that it doesn’t feel as insufferably hot as her street corner. It’s unnatural. They pass billboards with a woman of white hair and yellow overcoat and Shuichi barely spares it a glance.

She almost asks if he knows her when she remembers that not only does he not know anybody, but she also knows everything he does. She can feel his brain and heart and they intertwine dangerously. Just barely separating long enough for him to clear a murder case before letting the execution rest over his aching bones for the rest of his short life.

He picks up speed, “Ryoma was brought to the gym from the gym window, correct?”

She barely nods, “You already know what happened.”

“I’m not convinced.”

“You’re absolute.”

The billboards morph again and the lights grow stronger, an overhanging blue settling over the scenery. Bright buildings shining their obnoxious show into the taxi.

Cars begin pulling along the road beside them, weaving in and out of their window views. Shuichi’s tires screech with every swerve and his shoulder crunch into his torso at the unpleasant sound.

The purple tinted city she’s pretty sure she’s always aimed to enter comes closer into sight.

Shuichi turns his head to look at the woman, “Was his body transferred from window to window?”

More neon signs scorch into their eyes and its bright shades of purple that are stuck in her brain as they pull closer to the city of her nightmares.

“It would be impossible to do so via the pool, no?”

“Right.”

He takes his hands off the steering wheel to rub at his heavy eyes and the car continues straight.

“What will you do now?”

“Tell the others what I know,” his heart grows heavy at the sudden thought that this woman who he’s given a face, voice, and personality - almost - will disappear, he grabs one of her hands, “Where will you go?”

“I don’t know,” she answers honestly as the purple city she always wanted inside begins vanishing, she peeks in the rear view mirror and sees nothing but blank whiteness behind them as well, “But you should convict her. Before you are accused of hiding the murderer.”

“Kirumi’s kind,” he opens his car door and thinks back to the piece of glove he’d found at the pool, “I don’t know why she’d do this.”

“Motivation runs strong in people with steeled hearts.”

He nods once. Then twice. Then throws his body out of the taxi as it continues speeding down a nonexistent road.

She looks down and sees her legs have also disappeared with the end of Shuichi’s taxi daydream. It’ll be mere milliseconds before her consciousness does too.

But at least he’ll have solved another case. And the class will be saved.

#shuichi saihara x reader #shuichi x reader #saihara x reader #ndrv3 x reader #drv3 x reader

[peachyunjinnie]

— 04. https://sugarbaby.com  | bgc

bang chan/reader/ ― ft. hyunjin | a little angst, an introduction of every member | sugarbaby!au mafia!au

wordcount: 1k

content warnings: I decided that Lee Know will be a cocky dickhead, sorry!

― synopsis: through your urgent and acute need for any kind of financial income, you see the ad of a sugarbaby website. you decide to overcome your pride and hit ‘sign up’.

note: part four! i know i said it would be out on saturday or sunday but i had some time today so i wanted to post it today. enjoy!

⤿ taglist: @seungmins-sunshine​ @mikoto-ica-fics​ @britishvamps​ @thealert​ @mini-meanhoe​ @lilacyeonjun​ send a ☁ to be added or taken out.

blog masterlist

ɪɴᴅᴇx: ―   one - two - three - four - five - six - seven - eight - nine

© peachyunjinnie 2020. do not repost, modify, or translate.

He took off this blindfold and I could finally see a light. I couldn’t tell how long I was sleeping but this burn in my eyes from the lamplight was the absolute worst. My eyes could not get used to the bright light. With a short second, it became easier and I saw the outline of his face, his heart-shaped face, his blond hair, his cocoa-colored eyes, and his bulky nose. How he leaned against the table and looked down at me from above.

“Like what you see, Babygirl?” He smirked out, exposing his dimples.

“I will take off the handcuffs. If you do something dumb, believe me, It’s not going to help you here. Any kind of resistance is useless.” He had put his big hands on the cold and hard iron and pulled a small key out of his pocket. He shook the handcuffs a little and I was finally released. 

I stepped back and jumped off this desk I was lying on with this dress I was wearing for god knows how long. The long stare I was giving Chan was unbelievably cold, showing how much I was scared and disgusted by him and these other people. How they could just fucking take advantage of people in need of money.

“Hey, you can trust me. I won’t hurt you.” He stated and looked at me, avoiding every single move he made to approach me. With every step he took toward me, I took two steps back.

I shook my head, not wanting, and being able to listen to him. I did not want to hear his voice. I did not want to get close to him or even look at this kidnapper. Hot tears still running down my cheeks.

“Yeah, of course, I can trust you-” I immediately stopped talking as well as my sarcastic undertone. Trust, of course. I have to gain their trust to leave them. With their trust, I'm gonna dump these assholes and run. As fast as I can. But what was the quickest and best way to do that? By obeying this Chan and becoming one of them. I have to get into this system and consider myself part of this group. I have to think and act like there’s genuinely no big deal that they kidnapped me. Like I am thankful for what they did to me, that they are trying to help me in my need for money.

I didn’t walk backward anymore and just let him get closer to me. I couldn’t believe how close he has gotten and I didn’t even move a single muscle. As stiff and motionless like a streetlight. I couldn’t tell what he wanted to do to me now but I stood there. He came down to my level and smirked at my shocked and frightened eyes.

“It’s time for you to meet my members, Darling.” He took my hand and I squeaked loudly. My hand twitching in his big clutches, I felt so disgusted by his touch but at the same time. It’s the first act of affection I had for days maybe even weeks. I felt vulnerable and...weak with my small hands in his.

He took me out of this basement and yanked me upstairs. Pulling me by my arm up to the door. He opened it and revealed a beautiful and breathtaking kind of foyer, with a brown and white theme. White glass floor with a light brown couch and a humongous flat-screen TV. Also not to overlook where the 7 faces staring at me and condemning me from head to toe.

Chan let go of my hand as the others were looking at our intertwined fingers and raised their eyebrows. He cleared his throat as doing so and started to look at every single one of the boys, an obvious reminder to ‘be nice’ to this strange girl in a half ripped and dirty dress.

A boy on the sofa stood up and kindly approached me in small steps. He had blue-dyed hair and the chubbiest cheeks I could ever imagine on a person. He smiled at me and hesitated a bit for a second.

“Hello, I am Jisung.” They then continued to stand up and approach me slowly, one after one.

“Hi, I am Jeongin. It’s so amazing to have you here!” He seemed childlike and...cute..?

“Hey, I’m Changbin. Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Woojin.”

“Awesome, I’m Felix.”

“I’m Seungmin.”

And lastly, there was one single man on the couch, sitting there like a king on his throne. His legs open and spread to signal dominance and power. His arms on the sofa and the look at me. Unpleasant staring at my body, up and down. Scanning every single inch of my barely covered body. I felt the uncomfortable glare on me and his luscious lips form into a smirk. He raised his eyebrow and bit his lip seductively.

"The best is saved for last, I'm Minho but for you, I'm Lee Know."

#Stray Kids Scenarios #Stray Kids Smut #SKZ Smut #Stray Kids #SKZ #Chan Smut #Bang Chan #SKZ Bang Chan #Stray Kids Bang Chan #Stray Kids Chan #SKZ Chan #Chan #Stray Kids Fanfic #SKZ Fanfic #Smut #Stray Kids Bang Chan Smut #Stray Kids Chan Smut #Stray Kids Reactions #SKZ Reactions #SKZ Imagines #Stray Kids Imagines #Chan X Reader #Bang Chan X Reader #SKZ Scenario

[hypmic-writings]

Congrats on your 2nd year! So glad I came across your account. Your fics truly inspire me to write again. I’m the one who asked for the father-daughter bits but that could defo wait. For now, a 73 for Doppo, pretty please with a female colleague who’s slightly his opposite. Thank you so much! 🥰

73. “How did they…how are they doing that?”

Thank you, and I’m glad I was able to inspire you a bit! Yes, once the askbox is open again, definitely send in that request, it was super cute!

I’m so sorry, I don’t know what this is. You don’t know what this is. Your cat doesn’t know what this is. I know this was a suggestive prompt, but I just had this idea and decided to run with it. There’s definitely more suggestive Doppo in the inbox though, so don’t worry, you’ll get some NSFW with him, I promise! Hope this is okay and that you enjoy this regardless~

Word Count: 1,867

Genre: NSFW (PG-13); Fluff

⋘ ──── ∗ ⋅◈⋅ ∗ ──── ⋙

You walked through the empty hall of the art museum, tapping your pen against the clipboard and going over the itinerary once more. This was the 10th anniversary for the annual gala that your company put on and you were easily chosen to be on the planning committee due to your friendly demeanor. You had taken on the duties with a smile and grace only you possessed.

“Should this go here?” Doppo asked, pulling you attention away from your clipboard of action items and towards a box of party favors.

“Yea, that’s perfect, you can leave them right there. The others will be back tomorrow morning so they can finish up before the evening,” you said, shooting him a smile. You watched him closely as he nodded and shuffled off to grab the rest of the boxes before sighing to yourself.

How could a grown man be so…cute?

You had been working with Doppo for over a year now and you still weren’t sure if he considered you a friend, although if you had it your way, you would be much more than friends. What had started as admiration for your colleague’s work ethic quickly into a small crush which then quickly turned into wanting more.

But you had only ever had conversations in passing with Doppo before this. Maybe that was why you had chosen him to be a part of the planning committee for the gala. You remembered back to when you had first asked him to join you and how stressed and flustered, he had reacted. You had immediately retracted your invitation, but for some reason or another he insisted that he had time for it.

Unbeknownst to you, Doppo felt quite the same way.

Whenever he was constantly under the stress and pressures of work, you were his saving grace. If coworkers were trying to chat him up in the break room and he was becoming anxious, you were always there to turn the attention elsewhere. Whenever he didn’t know how to respond to his boss or a client, you were somehow there with a solution or answer.

Your happy-go-lucky personality mixed with your hard-work and determination made you someone that Doppo admired. Well…he admired you in other ways too. Your eyes were always sparkling with happiness or excitement and it made him feel comfortable around you. Along with thinking you were absolutely stunning, he would always watch the way that you smiled and laughed around other colleagues, and would feel a little jealous.

There was no way someone as perfect as you could ever love a useless nobody like him…right?

“Okay, that should be it,” you said, marking off the last box on your To-Do list. “Thanks for all your help, Doppo!” you exclaimed enthusiastically. Doppo nodded and walked over to you.

“It’s kind of late…were you going to take the bus back? We can get a cab if you want. That might be safer…” he offered, his voice small, but echoing in the large room. You hummed a little as you looked around.

“Actually, I wanted to take a look at some of the paintings before heading home,” you mentioned, glancing around the room. “Do you want to look at them with me?” you offered sweetly.

Doppo felt his heart race in his chest at the prospect of spending more time alone with you as he nodded slowly.

“Yes, I wouldn’t mind that at all,” he said, rather quickly, feeling the heat rise to his ears as he turned his gaze away from you. Your smile faltered a bit at his reaction and you wondered if he was feeling burdened by your ask. Was he only staying because he felt obligated?

“O-okay! Let’s start here then!” you said, pushing away your doubts and walking over to the closest wall.

The paintings lining the walls were all complex, abstract pieces. This was the modern wing of the museum and most had been donated by wealthy individuals. You gazed over each one, taking your time to look at them, fascinated by what you thought you could see and what the artist was trying to portray.

Doppo was silently watching your intensely focused face from beside you and noted the way that you mindlessly bit into your lip when you were concentrating hard. It was something he had noticed when you were working on projects together and something he had found extremely adorable.

He took a deep breath to calm himself, preparing to ask you the question he had been preparing all night.

“Y/N – ”

“Hey Doppo – ”

You both glanced at each other in surprise as you spoke simultaneously. You smiled a bit and offered him to speak first but he insisted that you continue.

“I was just going to ask what you think this painting is,” you said, turning towards the painting and tilting your head slightly. “It’s called Lovebug but I can’t really make out anything,” you added, bringing a finger to your chin.

Doppo followed your gaze to the painting and took a step closer to you as he looked into the bright, vibrant red hues that covered a white canvas. He followed your lead and tilted his head, trying to make out any shapes.

“Oh wait…that kind of looks like a man,” you said, pointing towards the left side of the canvas. Doppo imagined the outline of a man and squinted ever so slightly.

“Ah, yes…it kind of does,” he said, nodding a bit. He was still nervous from moments before, but the painting was a good distraction and he was now interested to figure out what it was.

“Oh, that also kind of looks like…” you mentioned, trailing off a bit. Doppo raised eyebrows as he looked over at you. To his surprise your face was flushed and your eyes had widened a bit.

“What?” he asked, suddenly confused as he looked back at the painting.

“Nothing…uh…,” you began. You feared having to explain exactly what it was you saw, but by the look in his eyes you knew he was concerned.

“Y/N, are you okay? W-what did you see in the painting?” he asked, hurriedly, his voice filled with worry. You shook your head, feeling the heat rise to your face as you pointed back to it slowly. The picture that was blurry was now clear as day and you found yourself embarrassed when looking at it.

Especially when the man you were interested in was standing right next to you.

“Nothing…just…” you began before sighing a bit. “It’s…um…it also has an outline of a woman in the middle,” you explained, trying to get Doppo to see what you were seeing. Now it was Doppo who was intensely staring at the canvas as you watched him closely.

“I don’t…” Doppo began, before the imagine in front of him suddenly became clear. There was a moment of silence as he stared at the painting before he tilted his head slightly. “Oh…how did they…how are they doing that?” he mumbled, his face also flushing a bit.

His mind was screaming at him to say something, anything, to make the situation less awkward. But the idea of commenting on such a sexual, lewd painting when the current center of his affections was right next to him seemed cruel and impossible.

You glanced back at the painting, clearing your throat quickly. This was ridiculous, there was not reason to be this nervous in front of a colleague. It was a painting in a museum, not some picture on a shady internet website.

“I’m…not sure…” you stated, plainly. “But, I’m sure the artist meant to convey strong meanings of lust and passion or something like that…red as a color is used that way a lot,” you explained, trying to lighten the tension of the room. Doppo nodded along in agreement.

“Yes, I’ve heard that as well,” he added, actively avoiding glancing back at the painting.

“Like this one!” you exclaimed, quickly pointing to the next painting. “Look at how the red is used to convey passion, but as anger instead of lust,” you explained, already feeling less awkward.

You and Doppo finished looking at the paintings rather quickly and before you knew it you were back where you started.

“That was nice!” you exclaimed, you usual exuberance returned. “Thanks for looking at them with me. I think tomorrow is going to be a complete success,” you added, giving Doppo a thumbs up.

“Yes, I agree. Thank you for letting me join you…” he said, his voice a bit softer than usual. “Ah, and yes! The gala tomorrow is going to be good. You worked really hard on it, so I’m sure it’ll be wonderful,” he added, more strongly.

You were about to mention that you were going to take a cab home when you suddenly remembered something.

“Oh hey,” you began, turning to face Doppo. “What were you going to tell me before? I cut you off and you never told me,” you said, smiling kindly at him, trying not to think of the awkward moment with the painting that had taken place after that conversation.

Doppo felt his heart skip a beat at your words. He knew exactly what he was going to ask you, he just needed to do it.

‘What if she says no? What if I ask her and she shoots me down? Will she hate me forever? Would she laugh at me? There’s no way, right? What if she thinks it’s harassment? Will she tell my boss and everyone at work? Oh god, am I going to get fired? But I need this job for the money for rent! Am I going to get kicked out of the apartment if I don’t have it in time? And what if I get put on a list and then I can never have another job and I won’t have any money and I won’t – ’

“Doppo?” you asked, as the man in front of you seemed to snap back to reality. You frowned a bit and looked at him was worry. “Are you okay? You were kind of mumbling something but it sounded like you were in pain,” you explained, reaching out, but stopping before you put a hand on his arm.

“Ah, no, it’s nothing like that!” he exclaimed quickly. He took a deep breath and tried to remember what Jakurai had told him to do whenever he felt a mild panic attack.

You waited patiently for Doppo to compose himself and once he did, you were surprised to see an unusual look of resolve and confidence in his eyes.

“Y/N,” he began, his voice strong. “Will you accompany me to the gala tomorrow night?”

As soon as his words left his lips you felt your heart rate speed up. You were surprised, of course, but you were also beginning to feel ecstatic. You bit back a grin as you discovered that Doppo in fact did return your feelings and you quickly nodded at him.

“Yes, I would really like that,” you said, nodding happily.

You watched as a smile of relief covered Doppo’s lips as he excitedly asked you what time you wanted to meet and where.

#2 year anniversary #hypmic #hypnosis mic #doppo #Doppo Kannonzaka #doppo x reader #doppo kannonzaka x reader #imagines #scenarios #drabbles #hypmic imagines #hypmic scenarios #hypmic drabbles #i fucking hate this piece #so much #I literally wasn't going to post it #because i despised it #hate #hate hate hate #but it took two fucking hours to write #and I refuse to back down #not today satan

[michaelbogild]

Quotes by Fernando Pessoa

All I’ve ever done is dream. That, and only that, has been the meaning of my existence. The only thing I’ve ever really cared about is my inner life. My greatest griefs faded to nothing the moment I opened the window onto my inner self and lost myself in watching. I never tried to be anything other than a dreamer. I never paid any attention to people who told me to go out and live. I belonged always to whatever was far from me and to whatever I could never be. Anything that was not mine, however base, always seemed to be full of poetry. The only thing I ever loved was pure nothingness.

And I have the others in me. Even when I’m far away from them, I am forced to live with them. Even when I’m all alone, crowds surround me. I have no place to flee to, unless I were to flee from myself.

And, like the great damned souls, I shall always feel that thinking is worth more than living.

At first I felt dizzy - not with the kind of dizziness that makes the body reel but the kind that's like a dead emptiness in the brain, an instinctive awareness of the void.

Being tired of all illusions and of everything about illusions – the loss of illusions, the uselessness of having them, the prefatigue of having to have them in order to lose them, the sadness of having had them, the intellectual shame of having had them knowing that they would have to end this way.

Blessed are those who entrust their lives to no one.

Eternal tourists of ourselves, there is no landscape but what we are. We possess nothing, for we don’t even possess ourselves. We have nothing because we are nothing. What hand will I reach out, and to what universe? The universe isn’t mine: it’s me.

Everything around me is evaporating. My whole life, my memories, my imagination and its contents, my personality - it's all evaporating. I continuously feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else, that I thought something else. What I'm attending here is a show with another set. And the show I'm attending is myself.

I am nothing. I'll never be anything. I couldn't want to be something. Apart from that, I have in me all the dreams in the world

I bear the wounds of all the battles I avoided.

I carry my awareness of defeat like a banner of victory.

I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.

I know nothing and my heart achesto know how to think with emotions and to feel with intellect…

I realize that I was all error and deviation, that I never lived, that I existed only in so far as I filled time with consciousness and thought.

I suffer from life and from other people. I can’t look at reality face to face. Even the sun discourages and depresses me. Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful — only then do I find myself and feel comforted.

I wasn’t meant for reality, but life came and found me.

I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.

I'm sick of everything, and of the everythingness of everything.

I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect

I've never done anything but dream. This, and this alone, has been the meaning of my life. My only real concern has been my inner life.

In order to understand, I destroyed myself.

In the ordinary jumble of my literary drawer, I sometimes find texts I wrote ten, fifteen, or even more years ago. And many of them seem to me written by a stranger: I simply do not recognize myself in them. There was a person who wrote them, and it was I. I experienced them, but it was in another life, from which I just woke up, as if from someone else's dream.

In this metallic age of barbarians, only a relentless cultivation of our ability to dream, to analyse and to captivate can prevent our personality from degenerating into nothing or else into a personality like all the rest.

I’ve dreamed a lot. I’m tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake. In dreams I have achieved everything.

Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely, more tumultuously than others who have lived their lives purely externally.

Life is what we make of it. Travel is the traveler. What we see isn't what we see but what we are.

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.

Lord, may the pain be ours, And the weakness that it brings, But at least give us the strength, Of not showing it to anyone!

Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face – there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes. Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself.  The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.

Masquerades disclose the reality of souls. As long as no one sees who we are, we can tell the most intimate details of our life. I sometimes muse over this sketch of a story about a man afflicted by one of those personal tragedies born of extreme shyness who one day, while wearing a mask I don’t know where, told another mask all the most personal, most secret, most unthinkable things that could be told about his tragic and serene life. And since no outward detail would give him away, he having disguised even his voice, and since he didn’t take careful note of whoever had listened to him, he could enjoy the ample sensation of knowing that somewhere in the world there was someone who knew him as not even his closest and finest friend did. When he walked down the street he would ask himself if this person, or that one, or that person over there might not be the one to whom he’d once, wearing a mask, told his most private life. Thus would be born in him a new interest in each person, since each person might be his only, unknown confidant.

My hapless peers with their lofty dreams--how I envy and despise them! I'm with the others, the even more hapless, who have no-one but themselves to whom they can tell their dreams and show what would be verses if they wrote them. I'm with those poor slobs who have no books to show, who have no literature beside their own soul, and who are suffocating to death due to the fact that they exist without having taken that mysterious, transcendental exam that makes one eligible to live.

My past is everything I failed to be.

My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, books, boxes, snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool.

My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.

My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me.

My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while. […]. I'm two, and both keep their distance — Siamese twins that aren't attached.

No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it

Sit still with me in the shade of these green trees, which have no weightier thought than the withering of their leaves when autumn arrives, or the stretching of their many stiff fingers into the cold sky of the passing winter. Sit still with me and meditate on how useless effort is, how alien the will, and on how our very meditation is no more useful than effort, and no more our own than the will. Meditate too on how a life that wants nothing can have no weight in the flux of things, but a life the wants everything can likewise have no weight in the flux of things, since it cannot obtain everything, and to obtain less than everything is not worthy of souls that seek the truth.

The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.

The unnatural and the strange have a perfume of their own

There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street. There are images tucked away in books that live more vividly than many men and women. There are phrases from literary works that have a positively human personality. There are passages from my own writing that chill me with fright, so distinctly do I feel them as people, so sharply outlined do they appear against the walls of my room, at night, in shadows... I've written sentences whose sound, read out loud or silently (impossible to hide their sound), can only be of something that acquired absolute exteriority and a full-fledged soul.

There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.

There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.

To be great, be whole; Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you. Be whole in everything. Put all you are Into the smallest thing you do. So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendor Because it blooms up above

To have opinions is to sell out to youself. To have no opinions is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet.

Today I suddenly experienced an absurd but quite valid sensation. I realized, in an intimate lightning flash, that I am no one. No one, absolutely no one.

Today, suddenly, I reached an absurd but unerring conclusion. In a moment of enlightenment, I realized that I'm nobody, absolutely nobody. When the lightning flashed, I saw that what I had thought to be a city was in fact a deserted plain and, in the same sinister light that revealed me to myself, there seemed to be no sky above it. I was robbed of any possibility of having existed before the world. If I was ever reincarnated, I must have done so without myself, without a self to reincarnate. I am the outskirts of some non-existent town, the long-winded prologue to an unwritten book. I'm nobody, nobody. I don't know how to feel or think or love. I'm a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I've even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breathe life into me. I'm always thinking, always feeling, but my thoughts lack all reason, my emotions all feeling. I'm falling through a trapdoor, through infinite, infinitous space, in a directionless, empty fall. My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, books, boxes, snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool. And I, I myself, am the centre that exists only because the geometry of the abyss demands it; I am the nothing around which all this spins, I exist so that it can spin, I am a centre that exists only because every circle has one. I, I myself, am the well in which the walls have fallen away to leave only viscous slime. I am the centre of everything surrounded by the great nothing. And it is as if hell itself were laughing within me but, instead of the human touch of diabolical laughter, there's the mad croak of the dead universe, the circling cadaver of physical space, the end of all worlds drifting blackly in the wind, misshapen, anachronistic, without the God who created it, without God himself who spins in the dark of darks, impossible, unique, everything. If only I could think! If only I could feel!

We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin.

We are two abysses - a well staring at the sky.

We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love.

We worship perfection because we can't have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.

What Hells and Purgatories and Heavens I have inside of me! But who sees me do anything that disagrees with life--me, so calm and peaceful?

When all by myself, I can think of all kinds of clever remarks, quick comebacks to what no one said, and flashes of witty sociability with nobody. But all of this vanishes when I face someone in the flesh: I lose my intelligence, I can no longer speak, and after half an hour I just feel tired. Talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial.

Whether or not they exist we are slaves to our gods.

Without madness what is man But a wholesome beast, Postponed corpse that begets

[felicia-parker]

Prompt: 01 - “No, come back!”  Fandom: dcau/dc comics  (the huntress/the question) Rating: T TW: none.

He often forgets how Gotham really smells when he returns. It smells like a mix of industrial pollution, brackish water from the harbors, and nothing at all like Hub City. He leaves the train with his head ducked down, hat on his head, no one notices him anyways in the flurry of snow falling in the city for the first time all year. People are already complaining of scraping driveways come morning, but he ignores them all as he passes. His mask is balled up in his pocket, bare face being kissed by flurries. It makes his cheeks match his hair. Vic shoves his hands in his pockets, feeling for his gloves and hastily shoving them on his quickly numbing fingers. 

“I should call…” He mutters to himself, “that’s what you do.” 

He tries to pull up the social cues she has so painstakingly drilled into him on the last six months, twenty-one days, fourteen hours, and thirty-five minutes. She reminds him to call since he refuses to text, there’s too many hands those messages could fall into, cell phones aren’t safe but the Government is slowly killing the payphones making his anonymity harder and harder. Helena gave him a phone, sleek and black, the screen already has a chip from him dropping it after a night of scrolling internet sleuthing led to him falling asleep in his favorite chair, the phone becoming victim to the floor. He only has one contact in it,  one photo, no messages, one voice mail saved-- she had pocket dialed him, her useless mutterings forever recorded on his digital answering machine.

He listens to it when the nights get a little too long and the trains stop running.

Vic pulls out the phone and double taps the little screen. It illuminates amongst the darkness of the city and he stops on the sidewalk to quickly type in a code too long for anyone to memorize, before turning it back off and stuffing it down in his pocket. He decides he doesn’t need to call. If he has anyone tailing him, they can’t know where he’s going. Vic glances over his shoulder.

The paranoia is getting a little worse, but Helena doesn’t seem to mention it anymore. She just sighs and reminds him of how many ‘bad guys’ she’s tossed into gutters. It doesn’t soothe him like she thinks it does, but he lets her brag until she’s content. He crosses the street right over the crosswalk which leads him into a burrow of the city. Tall buildings are illuminated with door lights and street lights that seem to stretch on for an eternity. All of the buildings look the same, except every other one has another color slapped onto the brick. They are all cookie-cutter, cheap apartments, ones that the working class usually fill.

He walks until his feet start to ache, the old dress shoes he’s wearing are worn down, dried blood is caked on the underside of the heels, excellent for remaining invisible, poor for snowy nights in a city that didn’t particularly belong to him.  Vic stops outside of a light gray building on the corner and begins to count the windows. On the sixth floor he sees the light on, the fire escape is decorated with a dying plant and nothing else, window closed and curtains open.  When a shadow passes by the glass, his heart skips a beat and he glances up to the sky overhead. The clouds are thick and dark, no moon, no infamous signal in the sky.

He breathes a sigh of relief and begins to climb. The old iron squeaks every few steps, he notes the rust on the third floor and makes a mental note to not put too much weight there on his way back down and climbs until his breath clouds the window of the sixth floor, corner apartment. The edges of her window are slick with moisture, she must have cooked tonight, filled her apartment with the heat of the kitchen as she worked. His gloved fingers trace over the sill and he moved to lift the glass.  It didn’t budge. She had locked it for once.

The sound of the television vibrates against the window and he peers in with hands cupped around his face to see her stretched out on the couch, papers everywhere, red pen between her lips as she holds a paper above her head. Her hair is spilling over the couch in wave of dark curls and he marvels in the simplicity of it all. She looks absolutely normal.

Helena is anything but normal. He knows this. He dares to even love such an idea, of this woman who is an unstoppable force with no concept of white and black, her world is shades of gray and personal vendettas.  Helena stretches once more on the couch, taking the red pen from her mouth to mark something on the paper with ease.  

He knocks, the pen goes wild over the page as she all but throws herself off of the couch and onto the floor. A momentary flash of fear crosses her face, followed by anger as she pulls her pen up like mini dagger, set to throw it with deadly precision at the window when she recognizes the outline of him. Her shoulders sag and she stomps over to the window. In one quick yank the glass comes up and he’s met with the lingering smell of homemade food, warm and tinged with garlic, but all of it is forgotten as she shouts at him with her voice sharper than any knife.

“You’re supposed to call! I gave you a phone Q!” Helena’s cheeks are flushed red, her teeth are clenched tightly together and he can see the muscle in her jaw is strained. Anger radiates from her form.

“I wanted to…”

“No!” She shouts the word and slams the window back down in his face. It’s a miracle the glass stays in place. She keeps her hand on the window, glaring at him when he takes the step back to leave. A minute ticks by and then a second, a third, and finally he backs up to go back down the escape, shoulders slumping. He should have called, he should have warned her, should have asked if she even wanted to see him after being apart for so long.

His foot touches down on the ladder when he hears the window open back up, “No, come back!”

Her voice isn’t as angry and this time her hand reaches into the cold for his. She manages to grab hold of his coat sleeve, pulling him impatiently over the threshold. Vic stumbles a bit, but once he’s inside she closes the window behind him, putting the lock in place before grabbing at his coat again. Helena is far from gentle. She pulls at his coat until he’s leaning over, close enough for her mouth to find his. She kisses him until he’s gasping for air, until he has to pull back to recover his bearings.

His eyes glance over her  living quarters,  there’s a half-decorated tree in the corner where her desk usually sits, the desk now stowed away for the holidays no doubt, leading to all the school papers being strewn across her coffee table and couch, markers and highlighters all around. The television drones on and on with the nightly news bleeding into a late night talk-show.

“Am I…” He clears his throat, “Not welcome?”

“Don’t be an idiot.” She waves a hand at him, reaching behind him to pull the blinds down, drawing the curtains for privacy. “I just wish you would use that phone.”

“Trackable.”

“Yeah, that’s why I got it for you. I’d like to know when you’re coming here. It’s not like we have…” It’s her turn to trail off and she walks to the kitchen as she does so, opening the fridge and pulling out the leftovers of her dinner to warm up for him. He doesn’t tell her no. Vic learned a long time ago to never reject food from her.  Helena mutters something else and slides the homemade plate of lasagna into the microwave.

“Are you listening?” She asks him.

“Yes. No set schedule.” He nods to her and stands still for a minute too long, feeling like an obscure piece of furniture in her little home. His own home is empty, soulless, untraceable.  Hers is full of art, plates, second-hand furniture, and little things here and there that just fit the woman in the kitchen.

The microwave dings as she’s pulling a glass out of the cabinet and setting him a place at her kitchen bar, “Come, eat.”

He eats like a starving man. A home cooked meal is such a rarity in his life, something he only gets when Helena is around. She refuses to eat an abundance of ready-to-eat frozen meals, instead spending hours in the grocery store to find fresh ingredients, an unnecessary thing in his world.  Helena pours herself another glass of wine, gives him one too but he only sips that, going back to scraping the fork over the plate until it’s all gone.

“Thank you,” He murmurs the soft appreciation, he no longer feels cold, but warmed from the inside out. She crosses behind him and pulls at his coat. Vic lets his arms go limp, lets her pull his coat away. She takes his hat too and hangs both by the door, coming back to pull him free from the bar stool, drawing him towards her couch for more comfort. He lets her lead him around. He can’t seem to stop his feet from following her. He would follow her to the edges of space, hell, and everything in between, but can’t seem to say the words to her. Instead he settles for the silence between them. She sets him on the couch, pulls the blanket from the back of it and tucks it over his shoulders, kisses the top of his hair before making it messy with a ruffle of her fingers.

“I always forget how bright red…” She snickers softly, teasing him for not wearing the mask, for giving himself over to her with no second skin to block the way.

Vic tilts his head up to her own, frowning slightly, “Would you prefer the mask?”

“Don’t be an idiot.” She repeats the words from earlier. Her brows knitting together in concern before she crosses in front of him and takes the place next to him on the couch, gathering up more papers to grade, “Don’t ask that question again.”

“Can I ask another?” He turns his head over, watching her pull her legs up, tucking them under her, pen cap already in her mouth as she begins going down the line of questions, looking for the incorrect answers.

“Mhm,” She hums softly, not glancing up at him. Instead she runs the pen over the top, making a perfect one-hundred in a little loop, following with a little star at the corner of the page. He watches her work with ease, moving onto the next page with her little red pen on the hunt of mistakes.

His mouth forms the words, “Can I stay?”

Her pen scratches an ‘x’ over an answer. He waits for her to put an ‘x’ on him as well, but she does no such thing.  

“I was expecting you to,” she doesn’t look up from the papers still, “I hope you’ll stay for a while.”

Helena shifts now, moving to lay her back against his side, “You hope or want?”

“Does it make a difference to you?”

“Yes.” He answers her matter-of-factly. He wants to hear her say the words. Vic wants her to say she wants him to stay, wants him to be with her even if it’s for such a short time. Christmas is four days away, three nights, he can make the train on the fourth, be back in Hub before she grows too used to his body in her bed.

“Then,” Helena shifts again, this time picking his arm up and sliding under it, she lays now half against him on the couch with her legs stretched to the other end, she smells of floral shampoo and ink, “I want you to stay, but you have to actually stay. You can’t skip breakfast.”

Vic takes a moment as she makes herself comfortable against him before he fully relaxes. He lets his arm slide over her stomach and pulls her into him until there’s no space left, she’s draped comfortably into the curve of him, papers to grade in her hand. His hand twitches for the remote, to turn away from the channel of mind-numbing late-night television, enjoying the warmth of her finally returning to him after months of being away.

“I think I want to stay.”

She marks another one-hundred across the top of the page, adds a little star to the corner before tilting her head back against his chest, the word leaves her with a soft sigh and a curve of her lips, “Stay.”

#fictober20 #vic x helena #the question x the huntress #my writing

[definitleynotrennylars]

@if-im-only-daydreaming @mrblueremeberyou  y’all ready to see what I wrote 

(it’s just the plot outline right now I just wanna see if y’all think it’s good)

So wheatley’s in space

It’s pretty lonely, but he finds things to do

Space won’t talk about anything besides space, but at least it’s something to talk about

It started with “what’s your favorite thing about space?” but when wheatley got bored of hearing about that, he’d make up these elaborate scenarios for space to think about, like “you’re an astronaut doing repairs on a space station when the whole thing gets pulled in by an alien tractor beam, what do you do?”

He doesn’t answer most of the time, but still, it’s something to do

And he thinks about her

He didn’t even know her name, but he felt more at home with her than he ever had with anyone else

He’d open a door for her or promise her they’d be out soon and she’d give him this little half smile that made him feel all warm inside, like he wasn’t just needed, but wanted, like he wasn’t completely useless after all

And he thinks about the future they never had, the world he never got to see

He never really thought about leaving aperture until it started breaking down, after that he started thinking about all the places he’d seen in movies (the scientists didn’t really need him for much, so he had a lot of free time) and how cool it would be to see them, to feel the wind, to see the ocean (from a safe and comfortable distance of course) to be in a big city with all those lights and people, and a billion other places that he was sure he’d never get to see

He’d rehearse his apology to her, so that’d it be perfect if he ever saw her again,

Which he was trying to do, he’s got the ability to call people with like an antenna or something idk scientific accuracy is not my strong suit

He’s been trying to get ahold of someone, anyone, for god knows how long, and finally he does

“He-hello? Is anyone th-(this is where a voice cuts in) Oh thank god, i’ve been trying to get to someone for so long!”

“Who is this?”

“My-my name is wheatley and i’m stuck in space, I know that might not sound quite believable, but it’s true, you need to send someone up here to get me.”

The person on the line tells him he’s from nasa and that they haven’t sent a manned mission in years, and that there’s never been anyone named wheatley on any of their missions (he’s pretty creeped out at this point, because what the mad hell?)

“Oh-oh, you’ve got it all wrong, i’m not an astronaut, i’m a robot.”

Nasa man, absolutely bewildered: ‘W--what?”

This is the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to him in all his years of working here

He goes to check where the signal is coming from, and it is indeed, coming from space

And he, along with the other scientists that are watching this, are like, hey what the fresh fuck

They track wheatley’s signal and basically interrogate him, how’d you get up here (it’s a long story that he doesn’t want to tell, but they get out of him that it involved portals, which just raises more questions) who/what are you (he refuses to mention aperture, he doesn’t want them finding it and getting themselves killed, but they know sort of what he is and what he looks like)

This whole thing makes it onto the news because there’s a sentient robot man in space

Chell lives in this (slightly shabby) house in this little Michigan town, and she’s just been trying to get back on her feet

She doesn’t remember much about her life before aperture, but she still remembers how the outside world works don’t worry

She doesn’t have a whole lot of friends besides this one family that helped her get a job and stuff after they found her wandering the streets all gross and hungry and stuff

This is mainly because she doesn’t like talking to people because it feels sort of personal to her, like she can’t do small talk, she doesn’t know how to do social things

Also she has some trauma that she can’t talk to people about because they’d think she’s crazy

She just wants to forget about what happened back there and move on

But then she’s watching the news, doing one of her many hobbies that she uses to keep herself occupied, when she sees the news story on tv

Wheatley’s alive, they found him and are planning on bringing him back to earth

Chell’s freaking out, he’s coming back, should she leave him or should she go back for him? He’s probably mad at her for sending him to space, he probably still hates her like he did back then

But what if he doesn’t?

What if he’s sorry?

Goddammit, he may be a bastard, but he’s her bastard

She heads down to the ol’ space center and tells them that she knows him

So she’s there when he finally gets back

Wheatley is not expecting to see her at all, he was expecting to have to search the country for her, but she’s right here

“You’re-you’re here.” he pauses as he lets that sink in. “Oh my god, you’re here! I thought I’d never see you again, I really did, I-” He sees the real serious look on her face. “I...I am so, so sorry.”

So, Chell thinks, he really does care after all

He just looks down for a bit, ashamed

(he’s on a desk) chell leans on the desk beside him and she asks him, “Why?”

He’s stunned for a bit, he didn’t even think she could talk

“I...I didn’t want to do it, not really. You- that- being in there, it just does something to you, it messes with your head, and I thought you’d leave me behind, I thought you didn’t care, I-I thought that maybe I could be in control for once, but I- I never would have done it if I’d known,” and he goes on like that for a bit

His voice is shaking and it almost sounds like he’s about to cry, but chell can’t really tell

He takes a (metaphorical) deep breath

“And… and it’s okay if you don’t want to forgive me, I understand, I won’t hold it against you if you want to leave.” And it hurts so much to say, but he can’t just try to force himself back into her life if she doesn’t want him there.

And why would she even want him around? He’s been awful to her, even if he could convince her he’s worth forgiving, she’d find that he’s not worth being around (and then i could go on if i wanna fuck him up real bad, but idk)

(god i feel awful about this)

But chell doesn’t leave

She picks him up and holds him real close, running her fingers along the dents in his shell

And that tells him all he needs to know

She carries him out to her car and puts him on a box in the front seat so he can see out the window

He checks with her to make sure they’re going to her house and not like, directly to the nearest garbage incinerator, and she gives him a little wave and a smile

(a scene where they’re driving and wheatley’s pointing out all the stuff he sees because wow earth. Idk i don’t feel like writing what happens at this particular moment)

They get to chell’s house, and it’s a little small and, for lack of a better word, janky, but it’s home

Also it’s fall because i like fall

She gives him the guest room, and he’s all like “oh no, it's okay i don’t need it, you can just put me anywhere, i don’t care” but chell says no, this is yours now

Things are a little awkward between them, they still care about each other, but they haven’t seen each other in so long and y’know, there was attempted murder involved the last time they did

But eventually they warm up to each other again, and after a long while, chell forgives him and they’re like regular friends again

And that’s where all the fluff happens!

So basically i’m gonna use this whole thing as a starter for a bunch of fluff pieces so i don’t like have to explain why wheatley’s here all of a sudden

[hold-our-destiny]

if you can't breathe- chapter 7

its finally here!!! a bit longer than the other chapters! I worked really hard on this one! comments are always appreciated!

read it here on ao3

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

Peter was fading in and out. At times he could feel the ghost of pain across his skin, that's when he wished to fade out, and when he did, he wished to be present again. it's been so long he's become slightly numb- at least that's what he thinks, he knows that he damaged his wrist at some point, but he can feel the pain there now, it was slightly relieved. His thoughts are mostly blurry now, if they're even there at all. He hasn't moved in, what was it? 5 days? There’s no way to tell, no light, no windows. Peter knows it's been a while. His lips are dry, lungs wheezing slightly, when he can feel pain it's almost always in his stomach.

Peter fades in again, his eyes focus slightly and he recognises the faint outline of the cell door. God how much he wished someone would walk through there at this moment. Anyone.

His brain flicks back to the last memory he had before his master left him there. He was bending down in front of him, saying- something. Peter tried to concentrate.

“I know what it's like. To wait. I waited for weeks for my friends, they ever came. And neither will yours”

The way he said it was almost soft, as if he hadn't just spent weeks terrifying the boy.

Peter blinks as he remembers, he knows it's not true, it can't be, but at this point he’s starting to doubt himself. What has it been? Three and a half months last time he heard, probably longer now, Tony wasn't looking for him, he couldn't be, the video would've been enough to assure him peter was dead.

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

“I haven't seen him out if his room in a week, steve”

“I know, im trying to get him to at least have a shower but he hasn't left his bed”

“He can't keep going on like this, it's been weeks”

Tony could hear the conversation from his bedroom, his position in the bed had not moved in days. He couldn't bear it. His mind was permanently rushing with thoughts of ‘what if we found him in time, what if we found him the first day? What if they never got to him? He would still be here, living, breathing, he isn't, all because of you’

Rationally, Tony knows he shouldn't be thinking like this, that they did all that they could. But it just wasn't enough was it? They didn't get there in time, and Tony had to reassure his kid as he slowly gaped for air that would never come. Tony squeezed his eyes shut and after a full day of the thoughts circling his head, he drifted off.

Outside though, steve and nat were still talking, trying to figure out how to help the grieving father, knowing that they’ve already tried everything.

“The only thing we can do now is wait and be there for him, hope that he sorts everything out soon,” Steve said solemnly, bowing his head and walking to the kitchen, him and nat both wished they could do something, anything to help.

Steve essentially dragged tony to the kitchen the next day to get him to eat something. He didn't take no for an answer. Tony was sat on one of the kitchen bar stools, hair mussed up and clothes crooked in every way. Around the kitchen were also nat and sam, making their own breakfasts and making casual conversation (Tony couldn't see how they could talk as if they didn't watch a child die a few weeks ago).

“You know Tony, you can't keep beating yourself up about this,” Tony blinked and noticed now steve was leaning over the counter towards him and speaking in hushed tones.

“I-” tony tried to intervene

“it's not your fault, you have to accept it, that kid’s gone, we all know” steve had a sad look on his face, tony was absolutely raging. ‘that kid’?

“Peter.” he essentially spat. Steve looked surprised that he actually spoke, let alone the fact that he was angry.

“I- what?” the captain spluttered

“His name. Was peter.”

“Oh”

“And don't you dare say that it wasn't my fault, it was all of our faults, we couldn't find him in time.”

“Tony-”

“No, steve” he hissed out his name, “don't say it, it's our fault, and yes, I am aware that he is- that he isn't here anymore- im very aware of the fact, so you can keep your damn mouth shut”

Nat decided to speak up now.

“Tony , we know you’re grieving” tony growled, yet she continued “your kid- peter. He's gone, there’s nothing we can do about it now but its been months, you’ve got to move on-”

“I cant!” tonys hands found themselves yanking at his hair, making it more messed up than it already was, “don't you think ive tried? Hes always here, i cant go down to my lab without seeing his things, hes room is opposite mine for fuck’s sake. And I can't even sleep! All i see when i close my eyes is his face, as he gasps, searching for reassurances as he fucking dies! And what did we do? We watched it happen! That's what we did!” Tony's face was now covered in tears streaming down his face, not intending to stop.

Tony took one more look at the three people in front of him, before turning on his heel and leaving, heading straight to his room, throwing himself on the bed and passing out.

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

“Boss, you have one new message”

“ugh, ignore it fri”

“Sir-”

“I said. Ignore it.”

“Okay boss.”

Tony was sat in his room, staring mindlessly out the window for the last, hour now? He didn't keep count. With every second sat there, he wished one more time to just forget everything.

Two minutes later, friday spoke up again.

“Boss, you have been sent one video”

Tony groaned.

“Who’s it from fri?”

“You don't have them saved in your phone sir, the video contains two people, one identified as peter parker, the video is dated from a week ago I believe-”

Tony jumped up at once, not wasting a second before running into the hallway and heading straight into the lounge where the others were, they all looked surprised at his presence.

“He sent another one” he directed the statement to steve.

“What?”

“That- that- that guy sent another video,”

“Tony calm down, what guy? The guy that took peter?” Tony didn't bother wasting a breath, already hyperventilating at the realisation, peter, his kid could be alive, very much hurt but breathing. He was reeling. He still had doubts circling in his mind, it could be an old video with a different date, or it could be his body, oh god-

“Fri, play it on the screen”

The tv screen turned over to a black screen before flicking to a frozen picture of peter- god peter- tied to a chair, that bastard of a man stood behind him. Tony stood in shock, tears building in his eyes as he processed what was in front of him. The video started playing and the man started speaking, circling peter in the chair as he did so.

“Ah, hello again mr stark, so sorry we haven't been in much contact recently, today is- the thirteenth- so about a week before ill bother sending it to you.” Peter looked up slightly, eyes glazed over, gliding over everything, never locking onto anything, “such an unlucky number isn't it? Thirteen? I never found out why, something to do with the devil. Anyway,” he clapped, making peter flinch and tony curse under his breath, the others all stood in silence, stone faced and in shock, “so stark, this child right here is finally perfect, granted it took a bit of- conditioning, we got there in the end, didn't we pet?” the guy put a hand on Peter's shoulder and his eyes grew wide, finally processing everything.

He nodded, staring straight ahead, almost in a trance.

“Yes we did, though his vocal chords did get a bit damaged, this little one cant talk properly, partly because of the shocks and also because of- well you can guess. Anyway, im finished with him now, you can come get him,``Tony opened his mouth in disbelief, the man suddenly looking bored, peter’s face not changing, “yes, I know, you can really have him back, he’s useless to me anyway, no fun anymore. So here’s what's going to happen, ill send you this video along with the location in about- a week, and when you make it here, the child will probably be dead or dying from his injuries, who am I to say?” he chuckled.

“Oh and one more thing,” peter flinched, “before I leave, ill be sure to make my last mark on him, give you something to remember him by, you know?”

Peter looked straight into the camera for a moment in shock, before it cut out. Tony called the suit to him, the rest of the team already suiting up.

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

The base was almost empty, FRIDAY’s scan only picking up one heat signature. Tony decided to go alone, the rest of the team waiting on the jet if he needed backup. The team were all in their gear, except from bruce, who was on standby with medical.

“Tony, are you sure about this, we’ll all be fine going in with you?” steve grabbed his arm as he was about to fly to the base.

“I'm sure, steve, trust me on this, i'll call you if i need you.”

Without another word, Tony took off in the suit, helmet flipping down and friday marking out where the heat signature was.

Granted, it took a bit of searching, but eventually tony found the room, standing just outside the door he froze for a moment. What if peeta wasn't there? What if it was someone else?

No, it had to be peter. Without another word, Tony opened the door.

It was dark in the room, Tony's suit glowed in the darkness as it shone a light around the room. Tony’s eyes landed on a body in the corner, suit retracting as he stepped forward, He raised his hand to his mouth in shock as he got a closer look at the kid.

Peter didn't seem to be badly hurt, his right arm was bent at an odd angle, making tony grimace. His left ankle seemed slightly swollen, dried blood coated nearly all of the kids bottom half. He was deathly thin, he looked more like a skeleton then anything. Tony reached forward to rest his hand on the boy’s curls but gasped when his head fell limply forward.

Tony tapped the comm, activating it.

“I-i've got him, bringing him back to the jet now, get bruce ready,”

He then deactivated it before he could hear a response from steve. He stood up and scooped peter up in his arms,careful not to hurt him any further. He let his suit guide him out of the facility and back to the jet, he only looked up when he reached the others, laying peter down in the stretcher ready for Bruce to help him. He didn't take his eyes off his kid once.

You're okay now kid

tags:

@dreamingformuses

@baloobird

@keep-a-bucket-full-of-stars

@just-the-daydreamer

@verdonafrost

@tmifangirl21

(msg me if you wanna be tagged!!)

#irondad #spiderson #Tony stark and Peter parker #whump #hostage situations #kisnapping #angst #injuries #blood #sorry not sorry #slight mention of panic attack #grief #bargianning

[xsteriism]

You Are The Reason

You Are The Reason

by celestial-irondad

——

There goes my heart beating.

Because you are the reason,

I’m losing my sleep.

Tony knew from the moment he saw the framed picture from his kitchen shelf that he’d do anything to get his Peter Parker back. He’d been selfish, only thinking about himself, not wanting to dig up his old wounds, his loss of someone so important to him. Frankly, he didn’t want to remember that his kid died. He didn’t want to relive that horrible moment when his spider-ling grabbed onto him, calling his name in the most frightened and scared voice he has ever heard. But he couldn’t get it out of his mind then, he couldn’t get it out now. His spider-baby was on his mind twenty-four seven, his shaky voice, his terrified eyes.

He didn’t want to remember because he hurt. His heart hurt. And he knew what he needed to do, whatever it took, because Peter deserved a life he never had and it would be unfair to him if Tony didn’t at least try. His kid was the one who made him better, and he couldn’t even save him, didn’t even say he loved him.

Peter deserved better than that, better than him. So, he sketched a rough outline of what would be a time machine, to undo what Thanos did, to bring back his spider-son. Because Tony owed it to him to at least try.

——

Why weren’t they back yet? Where was his spider-baby?

Please come back now.

“Mr. Stark!” Peter was here. He’s safe. “Do you remember when we were in space? And I got all dusty? And I must’ve passed out, 'cause I woke up and you were gone, but Doctor Strange was there, right? He was like, it's been five years! C'mon, they need us!”

There he was, his unruly hair, his big doe eyes. Tony’s spider-man. But this wasn’t how Tony envisioned he would reunite with his spider-ling. He expected their reunion to be in his house, with all the privacy they had so that Tony would finally confess how much he loved him, how much he missed him and how sorry he was for not telling him sooner. For giving up. And listening to Peter ramble on and on about his resurrection and how Dr. Strange did his magic thing for them to fight alongside with him made him realise that…

That as long as his spider-son was with him, he’d be happy. Satisfied.

But then he remembered. His fight was most definitely not over. Their war was not over. His children were still in harm’s way, so Tony did the first thing that came to his mind. Grabbing Peter and pulling him into his embrace never felt so good. He wanted to hold him one last time in case something goes wrong. In case he had to make one last sacrifice.

“Huh, this is nice,” Peter’s voice sounds like a melody in Tony’s ears.

——

There goes my mind racing.

Because you are the reason,

That I’m still breathing.

Tony hated Obadiah Stane, but he absolutely despised Thanos. How dare he take away his spider-son? How dare he take away the kid that had so much potential, so much life, so much promise?

He genuinely thought, that with everyone here to help, he’d be able to go home to Morgan, safe and sound. But there he was, on the battle field, while the other Avengers busy with Thanos’ troops, fighting the big purple grape alone. Tony only managed to get the infinity stones at the very last second, as he predicted. Just before Thanos threw him to the side like some useless rag doll.

I’m hopeless now.

He had to do it. Had to protect Morgan, even if it meant that he would die. He couldn’t risk Thanos harming anyone else that he loved.

“I am,” Tony breathed, knowing fully well that his might be his last words. “Ironman.”

——

I'd climb every mountain,

And swim every ocean,

Just to be with you,

And fix what I've broken.

His spider-ling was smiling up at him, eyes twinkling like the stars. They were back at the workshop, tinkering with his web-shooters while Peter rambled about his day. Tony couldn’t help but listen and smile at his kid who hung the sun in the sky, his kid who lit up his world.

But suddenly, they were in Titan again, and Peter was trembling, voice shaking as he called Tony’s name.

“I don’t know what’s happening— I don’t, I don’t—“

Tony’s heart broke as he held his sun in his arms.

“Please, Mr. Stark, I don’t wanna go,” Peter’s breathing was laboured, voice shaking. “I’m sorry.”

Tony’s kid was hurting and he couldn’t do anything to stop him. He was frozen, scared and afraid, as his spider-baby faded into dust.

He had to fix this.

Because I need you to see,

That you are the reason.

——

There goes my hand shaking.

And you are the reason,

My heart keeps bleeding.

He had nightmares for days, on the spaceship and on earth. He couldn’t stop thinking about his spider-ling. His Peter Parker that helped him, that laughed at his lame jokes and whenever he did something stupid. The same Peter Parker that showed him that it was okay to love, okay to trust someone. It was completely fine to mess up and fall, because at the end of the day, he had Peter who would still look up to him, still love him because he was simply his Mr. Stark.

Peter was the Bucky to Tony’s Steve.

I need you now.

——

If I could turn back the clock,

I’d make sure the light defeated the dark.

“Peter!” Tony shouted, as he watched the red and blue fall from the forty-ninth floor where his webbing had been cut. His gaze focused back on the monster that was finally in his grasp and nearly cried with desperation.

“Mr. Stark! I’m sorry,” Peter’s voice sounded through his intercoms. “I didn’t see it coming, I— I’m out of web fluid, Mr. Stark!”

“Boss, Peter’s heart rate is dangerously high, I would recommend saving him before it’s too late,” Friday informed, as if Tony didn’t already know. He threw the monster away in anger, blasting it with the strongest repulser and took off, knowing fully well that the monster didn’t die. Tony didn’t have a choice. It was either saving Peter or killing the thing that was the cause of the in the first place.

Tony barely got to his spider-baby in time. One moment later and Peter would be spider-pancake on the New York roads. “I’ve got you, kid, I’ve got you. Go to sleep, you’re safe.”

He could see Peter smile through the mask. “I know, Mr. Stark. You always keep me safe.”

I’d spend every hour, every day,

Keeping you safe.

——

I don’t wanna fight no more,

I don’t wanna hurt no more.

I don’t wanna cry no more,

Come back, I need you to hold me closer now.

Tony had never felt so much pain before, both emotional and physical. He would never get to see his Morgan again, never get to tinker with Peter in his lab again, never kiss Pepper again.

“Mr. Stark,” Peter sounded like he was choking. “Hey, Mr. Stark.”

Oh, my sun, I’m here. I protected you again. I will always protect you.

Peter’s eyes swelled with unshed tears as his voice shook. “Can you hear me? It’s Peter.”

I know, my spider-baby. How can I not? You saved me, so it’s my turn to save you.

“Hey, we won, Mr. Stark,” Peter cries. “We won, Mr. Stark.”

Of course, kid, I’m here. You’re safe. You won’t hurt anymore. I saved you.

“We won,” Peter repeated, to reassure Tony or himself, he wasn’t sure, but he let his spider-boy talk. “You did it, Mr. Stark. You did it.”

Tony closed his eyes and remembered all the times Peter smiled, all the times he laughed. His sun, the one that lit up his world, the one that guided him away from the mind-numbing darkness that surrounded him.

“I’m sorry, Tony.”

No, you have nothing to be sorry for, Peter. I love you.

Just a little closer now,

Come a little closer now.

I need you to hold me tonight.

——

I'd climb every mountain,

And swim every ocean,

Just to be with you,

And fix what I've broken.

Because I need you to see,

That you are the reason.

My sun. My light. My spider-baby. My spider-ling. My spider-man. My kid.

I love you 3000, Peter Benjamin Parker.

------

message me if you want :) 

i don't bite :P

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1403320

tags: @bestofirondadfics 

#peter parker #tony stark #avengers endgame #death #love #iron dad #spider son #spiderman #iron man #angst #celestial-irondad #i love you 3000 #peter parker angst #tony stark angst #tony needs a hug #peter needs a hug #fluff #? #marvel angst #not starker

[i-r-o-n-d-a-d]

You Are The Reason

You are the reason 

1, 384 words

———————

There goes my heart beating. 

Because you are the reason, 

That I’m losing my sleep.

Tony knew from the moment he saw the framed picture from his kitchen shelf that he’d do anything to get his Peter Parker back. He’d been selfish, only thinking about himself, not wanting to dig up his old wounds, his loss of everyone important to him. Frankly, he didn’t want to remember that his kid died. He didn’t want to relive that horrible moment when his spider-ling grabbed onto him, calling his name in the most frightened and scared voice he has ever heard. But he couldn’t get it out of his mind then, he couldn’t get it out now. His spider-baby was on his mind twenty-four seven, his shaky voice, his terrified eyes. 

He didn’t want to remember because he hurt. His heart hurt. And he knew what he needed to do, whatever it took, because Peter deserved a life he never had and it would be unfair to him if Tony didn’t at least try. His kid was the one who made him better, and he couldn’t even save him, didn’t even say he loved him.

Peter deserved better than that, better than him. So, he sketched a rough outline of what would be a time machine, to undo what Thanos did, to bring back his spider-son. Because Tony owed it to him to at least try. 

—— 

Why weren’t they back yet? Where was his spider-baby? 

Please come back now. 

“Mr. Stark!”

There he was, his unruly hair, his big doe eyes. His spider-man. But this wasn’t how Tony envisioned he would reunite with his spider-ling. He expected their reunion to be in his house, with all the privacy they had so that Tony would finally confess how much he loved him, how much he missed him and how sorry he was for not telling him sooner. For giving up. And listening to Peter ramble on and on about his resurrection and how Dr. Strange did his magic thing for them to fight alongside with him made him realise that… 

That as long as his spider-son was with him, he’d be happy. Satisfied. 

But then he remembered. His fight was most definitely not over. Their war was not over. His children were still in harm’s way, so Tony did the first thing that came to his mind. Grabbing Peter and pulling him into his embrace never felt so good. He wanted to hold him one last time in case something goes wrong. In case he had to make one last sacrifice.

“Oh, this is nice,” Peter’s voice sounds like a melody in Ton’y ears. 

——

There goes my mind racing. 

Because you are the reason,

That I’m still breathing.

Tony hated Obadiah Stane, but he absolutely despised Thanos. How dare he take away his Spider-son? How dare he take away the kid that had so much potential, so much life, so much promise? 

He genuinely thought, that with everyone here to help, he’d be able to go home to Morgan, safe and sound. But there he was, on the battle field, while the other Avengers busy with Thanos’ troops, fighting the big purple grape alone. Tony only managed to get the infinity stones at the very last second, as he predicted. Just before Thanos threw him to the side like some useless rag doll.

I’m hopeless now.

He had to do it. Had to protect Morgan, even if it meant that he would die. He couldn’t risk Thanos harming anyone else that he loved. 

“I am,” Tony breathed, knowing fully well that his might be his last words. “Ironman.”

——

I'd climb every mountain,

And swim every ocean,

Just to be with you,

And fix what I've broken.

His spider-ling was smiling up at him, eyes twinkling like the stars. They were back at the workshop, tinkering with his web-shooters while Peter rambled about his day. Tony couldn’t help but listen and smile at his kid who hung the sun in the sky, his kid who lit up his world. 

But suddenly, they were in Titan again, and Peter was trembling, voice shaking as he called Tony’s name. 

“I don’t know what’s happening— I don’t, I don’t—“

Tony’s heart broke as he held his sun in his arms. 

“Please, Mr. Stark, I don’t wanna go,” Peter’s breathing was laboured, voice shaking. “I’m sorry.”

Tony’s kid was hurting and he couldn’t do anything to stop him. He was frozen, scared and afraid, as his spider-baby faded into dust. 

He had to fix this. 

Because I need you to see,

That you are the reason.

——

There goes my hand shaking.

And you are the reason,

My heart keeps bleeding.

He had nightmares for days, on the spaceship and on earth. He couldn’t stop thinking about his spider-ling. His Peter Parker that helped him, that laughed at his lame jokes and whenever he did something stupid. The same Peter Parker that showed him that it was okay to love, okay to trust someone. It was completely fine to mess up and fall, because at the end of the day, he had Peter who would still look up to him, still love him because he was simply his Mr. Stark. 

Peter was the Bucky to Tony’s Steve. 

I need you now. 

——

If I could turn back the clock, 

I’d make sure the light defeated the dark.

“Peter!” Tony shouted, as he watched the red and blue fall from the forty-ninth floor where his webbing had been cut. His gaze focused back on the monster that was finally in his grasp and nearly cried with desperation. 

“Mr. Stark! I’m sorry,” Peter’s voice sounded through his intercoms. “I didn’t see it coming, I— I’m out of web fluid, Mr. Stark!”

“Boss, Peter’s heart rate is dangerously high, I would recommend saving him before it’s too late,” Friday informed, as if Tony didn’t already know. He threw the monster away in anger, blasting it with the strongest repulser and took off, knowing fully well that the monster didn’t die. Tony didn’t have a choice. It was either saving Peter or killing the thing that was the cause of the in the first place. 

Tony barely got to his spider-baby in time. One moment later and Peter would be spider-pancake on the New York roads. “I’ve got you, kid, I’ve got you. Go to sleep, you’re safe.”

He could see Peter smile through the mask. “I know, Mr. Stark. You always keep me safe.”

I’d spend every hour, every day, 

Keeping you safe. 

——

I don’t wanna fight no more, 

I don’t wanna hurt no more.

I don’t wanna cry no more, 

Come back, I need you to hold me closer now.

Tony had never felt so much pain before, both emotional and physical. He would never get to see his Morgan again, never get to tinker with Peter in his lab again, never kiss Pepper again. 

“Mr. Stark,” Peter sounded like he was choking. “Hey, Mr. Stark.”

Oh, my sun, I’m here. I protected you again. I will always protect you.

Peter’s eyes swelled with unshed tears as his voice shook. “Can you hear me? It’s Peter.” 

I know, my spider-baby. How can I not? You saved me, so it’s my turn to save you. 

“Hey, we won, Mr. Stark,” Peter cries. “We won, Mr. Stark.”

Of course, kid, I’m here. You’re safe. You won’t hurt anymore. I saved you. 

“We won,” Peter repeated, to reassure Tony or himself, he wasn’t sure, but he let his spider-boy talk. “You did it, Mr. Stark. You did it.”

Tony closed his eyes and remembered all the times Peter smiled, all the times he laughed. His sun, the one that lit up his world, the one that guided him away from the mind-numbing darkness that surrounded him. 

“I’m sorry, Tony.”

No, you have nothing to be sorry for, Peter. I love you. 

Just a little closer now, 

Come a little closer now.

I need you to hold me tonight.

——

I'd climb every mountain,

And swim every ocean,

Just to be with you,

And fix what I've broken.

Because I need you to see, 

That you are the reason. 

My Peter Parker. My spider-baby, spider-ling. My sun. My light. 

I love you 3000, spider-man. 

#i cried #sobbed #i am broken #irondad #spiderson #tony stark #peter parker #pepper potts #pepper stark #morgan stark #endgame #avengers endgame #marvel endgame #death #ironman #spiderman #spoilers #im sorry #i have no idea what i'm doing #first post #many regrets #hope you liked it #celestial-irondad #im new here #angst #marvel angst #not starker #don't tag as starker

[themachiavellianpig]

Prodigal Son, Episode 10: Merry Christmas with the Whitleys

Episode 10 of Prodigal Son, and Malcolm really honestly tries to follow orders. For at least a whole minute. Promise. Meanwhile, Ainsley and Jessica have an honest conversation, and Gil tries desperately to juggle the Whitley’s never-ending nonsense. 

As always, full review and spoilers galore below. 

The episode begins with the highlights of Ainsley’s interview with Martin, which Malcolm is watching as some sort of self-inflicted penance. Ainsley included the footage of Martin absolutely losing it at the accusation of being a bad father; it’s less clear whether or not she used the footage in which she outlines her brother’s personal mental health diagnoses to boost her own ratings. 

The appearance of Jessica in Malcolm’s apartment is heralded by her shoe going through Malcolm’s television - seems she’s about as happy with Ainsley’s interview as I am. Her main worry, though, is the Girl in the Box - more specifically, the way in which she and a whole lot of well-meaning adults told young Malcolm over and over again that his memories could not be trusted. The revelation that Malcolm was chloroformed by his father is another blow to an already unsteady woman; the idea that Martin had, at the very least, been a good father seems to have meant more to Jessica than we might have earlier realised. But of course, how else could you rationalise inadvertently raising children with a monster? By believing that the monster only really happened to other people. 

Malcolm gets called away to a crime scene in a busy hotel, everybody but our hardworking detectives in full Christmas mode. The crime of the week includes a dead high-ranking police officer and a prostitute in a hotel room in an apparent murder-suicide. Given the way that such episodes go, it’s hardly surprising that Malcolm deduces that it wasn’t a murder-suicide in less than a minute. 

It’s more surprising that everyone in the room just lets Malcolm wave around a loaded gun, including pointing it at his own chest and head and even cocks the damn thing before anyone calls him out on it. Good gun discipline is needed, especially when you don’t want a double homicide to become a triple. 

Special Agent Colette Swanson makes a grand entrance, taking over the conference room, throwing Malcolm’s new lack-of-job-title in his face, and then accusing him of misogyny-through-profiling before claiming Dani for her team. She comes across as staggeringly unlikable in this scene - a bit of a disappointing choice, to be honest, given that it would likely have been far more interesting to watch Malcolm and the team hand over the case to someone who wasn’t instantly the bad-guy. 

Malcolm, meanwhile, consoles himself with a box full of Turner’s old cases, trying to find someone who hated him enough to murder a bystander to get to him. He finds a photo of Owen Shannon (played by Sean Pertwee), a detective who had borderline harassed little Malcolm after the arrest of Martin. Shannon doesn’t seem to have calmed down at all in the intervening years, answering his door with a loaded gun pointed at their heads. 

Shannon, it turns out, is massively jealous of the fact that Gil arrested the Surgeon, the man who Shannon had been hunting, and doesn’t have a huge amount of time for Gil, Malcolm or their accusations that he should be the prime suspect in Turner’s death. He’s far more concerned about Emily, the young woman in the hotel room - who couldn’t have been hired by Turner, given that the man was apparently gay. 

In a brief interlude, Colette continues to have issues around Malcolm, so self-evident that they could probably be seen from space, and can definitely be seen by her colleagues - even the usually professional Dani accuses her of coming here to bury Bright rather than catch the Junkyard Killer. 

Jessica comes to speak with Gil, desperate to identify the Girl in the Box and find her body so that Martin will finally go away for good - I’m not sure why one more body would take away Martin’s freedom to have visitors or give interviews or consultations, but Jessica is convinced. Not convinced enough to sway Gil, who wants to save her from the case which is already destroying Malcolm, and so who can really blame Jessica for nosing through his files and stealing a photograph of the Girl in the Box’s bracelet. 

Dani and Malcolm have a sweet moment, in which they commiserate about their respective cases and Malcolm opens up a little about his difficulties with Eve - although saying “screwed up” instead of “nearly attacked her with a knife during an intense hallucination” is a hell of understatement even by Malcolm’s generous standards. Dani insistence that Malcolm isn’t beyond fixing is pretty gosh-darned optimistic at this point, but goodness knows that boy needs all the encouragement he can get at this point. 

Ainsley goes to Jessica’s for Christmas and they finally talk about the interview - harsh words are exchanged, especially when Jessica accuses Ainsley of throwing not just their family but the families of all of Martin’s “real victims” back into the media storm purely to serve her own ambition. Ainsley’s claim of retaking control of the narrative of the Surgeon seems a flimsy defence at best - especially when she takes off immediately afterwards, reclaiming the bottle of rosé she’d brought with her for dinner. 

Malcolm gets waylaid on his way to this fun family dinner by Shannon, complete with creepy flashbacks to Shannon’s attempts to get little Malcolm to confess to helping his father with the murders. Malcolm opens up a little - Shannon was right, there was another person involved, but Malcolm can’t find him without help. Shannon offers some help in exchange, in the form of Turner’s private stash of information. 

Gil and JT, left to their own devices, have managed to do some actual proper policework and have tracked down the Madame of Caged Bird, Emily’s “matchmaking” service. She admits to sending Emily to trap Turner in a compromising position, in an attempt to stop Turner coming after the Caged Bird business. 

Turner’s private stash is so private that I genuinely thought that Shannon was going to try and torture Malcolm for information in an isolated storage shed; fortunately, that doesn’t happen and instead they discover that Turner was investigating the Junkyard Killer, complete with all of Shannon’s old files. Despite Shannon’s belief that Turner gave up on him and the case, just like everyone else, Malcolm points out that Turner must have been trying to help - to prove that Shannon was right, that the Surgeon wasn’t working alone. 

They find Shannon’s old list of suspects - useless at the time, but with the new information that Martin met his accomplice at a specific hospital, they managed to whittle down the list to a single name: John Watkins. 

And now they do maybe the stupidest thing that Malcolm has ever done, and I’m included the earlier incident with a loaded gun - he goes to the last known address of a serial killer without telling Gil what the address is, even when Gil calls to ask him where he is. Seriously, Malcolm, backup is a wonderful thing and needs to be far more than a drunken cop with an unregistered firearm. 

Award for Most Awkward Moment this week goes to Gil, who has to go and admit to Colette that not only have Malcolm accidentally been working on the case that he was repeatedly ordered to leave alone, but that he had no idea where Malcolm is. If someone doesn’t LoJack Malcolm in the second half of this season, I will be most surprised. 

At the house, Malcolm and Shannon find Matilda, the Junkyard Killer’s blind grandmother. After Malcolm’s glee at being inside the childhood home of a serial killer (the apparent “Holy Grail” for profilers”, he starts trying to gently unravel John’s childhood - in between trying to escape being force-fed microwave ready-meals by the woman who raised a serial killer. Matilda quickly hits all the buttons Malcolm was probably looking for - she writes off her own daughter as a sinner, a filthy whore who chose heroin over her family, thus giving us a neat one-sentence summary of the beginning of John Watkins’ messianic mission of “salvation” for addicts and other such “sinners”. The only missing components were given when John’s grandfather died - crushed underneath a car right in front of the young John - and when someone installed a lock on John’s cupboard, complete with metal restraints and claw-marks inside it. Where John himself was punished a child, or where he kept his first victims? A flashback suggests the former, but who knows?

Malcolm returns to the table to find Shannon’s throat slit and blood pooling into the ready-meals; Matilda called John and is utterly unconcerned by the dead man at her table, as “Johnny takes out the trash!”. Malcolm grabs Shannon’s gun and goes outside to be smacked down by John, at last revealed to be being played by Michael Raymond-James with a most impressive beard, who Malcolm finally remembers as the other man on the camping trip. With the promise that “they’ll never find us where we’re going”, he drags Malcolm off into the dark for one long mid-season hiatus. 

Finally, trapped in her own home by ambitious paparazzi, Jessica finally decides to try directing the narrative herself. She steps out of her house to give a statement, showing the photo of the bracelet and begging for help to identify the Girl in the Box - complete with a million dollar reward for any real information. 

As far as mid-season finales go, Silent Night was a strong contender, yanking the ongoing plot of the Junkyard Killer onwards to the reveal of John Watkins, leaving us on an acceptable cliffhanger for the second half of the season. I can guess the bare-bones outline of episode 11, but am still interested to see these characters moving forwards - and, in a era of endless crime dramas, the characters are all we’re really here for. 

The only thing missing was Dr Tanaka and her delightfully inappropriate flirting, but I suppose they had to save something for the mid-season premiere. 

Other Prodigal Son Reviews are available here. 

#prodigal son #tv review #episode review #Episode Recap #Thomas Payne #bellamy young #sean pertwee #michael raymond james #themachiavellianpig watches

[crazyfreckledginger]

Jason Todd x Reader (ft. Roy Harper) - “Crimson On Her Hands” Colour AU

In a world where soulmates are the only ones able to see in colour, life seems difficult for those seeing in black and white. Being a mercenary deemed easy for you however. You found ways of overcoming the problems that accompanied this, even though you constantly dream of meeting your soulmate and seeing in colour. All of this puts you in a difficult situation when you are sent to kill Arsenal but meet his best friend first. 

Requested by anon: “Could you do a soulmate au for Jason where when you meet your soulmate you can see color for the first time but his intended is a mercenary who had been tasked with killing Arsenal?”

A/N: I know this is a requested AU but this was an exception. I won’t feel obligated to write for a requested AU, I will write it if I have inspiration!

Killing was something easy for you. It was a quick and painless task. At least it was now. As a child, you grew up controlled, manipulated, where your only purpose was to kill targets, leave and report back to your superior. It was a repetitive task, but it got interesting sometimes. You looked over your assignment, reading every detail meticulously, twirling your knife in your left hand as you skim through the pages. ~Target: Male Ginger, No more than 6'0, muscular build, Ginger 

Alias: Arsenal~

[x]

That was the only information on the current status of your target. It wasn’t much, but it would still be easy for you to find him. You typed away on your computer, content when you found numerous articles about him and a certain ‘Red Hood.’Regrouping them and printing them, you then looked at the time. Nearly midnight. 

Time to go to bed for the mission tomorrow. You walked around your luxurious apartment, taking a quick shower and then snuggling into your warm bed. You haven't closed the curtains yet. Instead, you watched the activity below, heart clenching slightly. Moments like this –where you stopped and appreciated the small things – were the times you remember your mother. She used to go on and on about how she met your father, the moment they both knew they were meant to be together forever. 

You had been dreaming of meeting your soulmate since then. It was the only memory of your past life that the Institute hadn’t managed to get rid of. That was the only thing that didn’t make you a monster like everyone else. It was the only thing that made you stand out from the others. You weren’t an assassin anymore. You were a mercenary. Bad people either admired you or were terrified of you. You could make the strong decisions and not become a psychopath. But that slowly faded away. 

Meeting your soulmate was a dream you had always wanted to come true. You wanted to see in colour. You’d always wanted to know what not seeing in black and white was like. But that day never came. You sighed, closing your curtains and setting your alarm to an early hour, before closing your eyes and relaxing under the soft blanket.

----- You woke up, surprisingly feeling very rejuvenated and rested. Someone must be looking over you. You prepared a small breakfast, going immediately going to your computer, reading your articles and writing down important information on a separate sheet of paper.

****

“We should just chill tonight,”Roy stated. Jason hummed in question, going over the papers they stole from a drug lord after beating the shit out of them.

“Yeah! We work every night. We need a break.”Roy explained.“that means no working on paperwork tonight either!”he stood up, slapping it out of his best friend’s grasp. Jason glared up at him, seeing the disapproving look he was giving him. “Fine, you’re right, day off!”He groaned, laying back in his chair. “Chinese food?” Roy proposed. “Its only 11 am,” Jason smirked. “So? Food? Hungry!”the ginger pointed to the fridge and then his stomach. The raven-haired boy laughed loudly, always impressed at how time has never affected his best friend’s appetite. ***** She calculated a rough area in which 'Arsenal’ appeared to be. She narrowed her search down to a kilometer radius. Pulling out her infrared radar, she placed it in its box and carefully tucked it in her bag before moving to her sniper and polishing each part. 

She watched TV, informing herself on the news of Gotham to understand how this city worked. The mercenary travelled a lot for her numerous jobs - she didn't mind, she loved taking a few days during a task to visit, even if the jet lagged killed her sometimes. Her eyes gazed at the time, finding how useless her watch had become. She stood up, reflecting upon the time and approximations in her calculations. 

It was time.

The girl got off her chair, removing each piece of her gun delicately in its place, before setting them in their cases, also placing it in her bag. 

Her bag dropped on the kitchen counter as she marched confidently to the bedroom, putting appropriate clothes on and stuffing knives in her usual places. Without a second thought, she paced out of the apartment, off to kill the person that was going to bring her a very comfortable amount of money. 

**** "But Roy, we really need to go," Jason insisted, sliding his jacket on his shoulders.

"Nooo, we've worked so hard, we deserve to chill." The ginger denied. The black haired boy groaned.

"Suit yourself, I'm going," He nodded, placing his helmet on his head and jumping out of the window.

**** Her journey was quick and easy. She camped on the top of a rooftop, pulling her infrared radar out. She knew she couldn't see the numerous colours and that frustrated her - but at least she could see the various shades of grey instead. She inspected her surrounding with the device, distinguishing two hotspots. She grasped ber binoculars, scanning both areas. One of them had a woman with a child - probably related. 

The lady was sitting on the couch watching TV as the small child played on the floor at her feet. (Y/N)'s eyebrows furrowed as the woman's head snapped behind her, wondering who was the figure behind the curtains that was conversing with her. Soon, a man's head popped out from the fabric, capturing the woman's lips in a kiss. 

(Y/N) shook her head, quickly shrugging off the thoughts that nearly got through to her. Her binocular view twisted to the other area. A small smile tugged at her lips as she perceived a man sitting on the couch, watching TV, arm on the back rest. 

She could distinguish a tattoo that was also on her file. To be sure of herself, she turned on the small device she created to read colours. It analysed an image and escribed it's color onto the area. Very clever for her and most people who hadn't found love. 

She grinned as the outline of the man's hair escribed Yellow/Brown/Red. That was ginger. She deposited the device back in her sac and assembled her sniper. She had a clear shot from where she was, there was absolutely nothing stopping her now. 

[x]

Her eye stuck to scope and aimed at the back of his head. She bit the inside of her cheek as her finger held the trigger and pulled it very slowly. A thump beside her made her jump out off her skin, her head snapped towards the sound, eyes widening at the frightening huge figure above her. She could clearly see the sold armor and helmet shielding him. The girl knew exactly who he was.  

The Red Hood. 

Her gun swayed in the air as it pointed to him, only to be blocked by one of his kicks. He pulled her off the ground, slamming her into a wall. She groaned, her hood nearly falling back at the impact. 

Her glare hardened on him as she pulled out a knife, slicing his chest through his armor. It was his time to groan, letting her go and failing slightly as she swiped her legs below his. He crashed to the floor, grunting as she kicked her side and tried thrusting the blade into his shoulder. 

He intercepted her wrist, pushing it away as she winced from the grip on her. Another body came colliding with hers. Slamming her yet again into the concrete before holding her back tightly against the figure's chest. 

"Get off!" She ordered, hitting the person's face with the back of her head. He faltered as well - but it only made him tighten his grip. She gritted her teeth.

"Who are you?" The robotic voice sneered, he lifted her hood up, revealing her face in the already dim sky. 

"What the-" Red Hood sputtered, moving away. The girl gasped as well as her hood fell on her shoulders. 

"What the fuck is going on?"the person holding her stared between them. (Y/N) shook her head, blinking uncontrollably and scanning her surroundings. Arsenal stared at them like they were crazy.

"I can see..." Red Hood breathed out in realisation. The ginger scoffed, finding them completely mad.

"... in colour," She finished. Roy's eyes widened, and he let her go instinctively. The girl walked up to the anti-hero cautiously, pocking his chest. He grabbed her, swingling off the ledge and into their apartment. She gasped, hogging him. 

The ginger followed soon after with her things, dropping them on the floor and staring at the interaction.

The girl took her time as she approached him, running her fingers along the smooth helmet.

"Red-" 

"No, leave it," The man shook his head, leaving the girl to remove his helmet. Her heart beat quickened as his face was revealed to her. Her thumb grazed his cheek, admiring the features before removing the domino mask. She gasped softly, inspecting the beautiful eyes that was staring back at her with the same intensity. They explored each other's faces like they were aliens.

"Seriously? You are both humans get this Croc magnon business out of the way!"Arsenal scoffed, clearly jealous his best friend has found his soulmate already, "She wants to kill us remember?" 

"You actually," The raven-haired boy muttered. (Y/N) snapped out of her trance and started at her soulmate.

"What's your name?" She asked. 

"J-,"

"He's not telling you!" The ginger frowned.

"I think I will turn down the job," The girl mumbled. 

"What?" Red Hood asked.

"I was sent to kill Arsenal for 100k, I'll turn the job down." 

"Did you get the money already?" The target in question asked, scratching the back of his head.

"No, I usually get my payments after I deliver the dead target. Why?" she raised an eyebrow. The boys looked at each other and grinned.

"We can get you the money."

"Together," 

"I don't even know your names," She shook her head.

"Roy," The ginger smirked.

"Jason," Her soulmate smile softly.

"And why would you want to help me?" (Y/N) asked.

"Because," Jason grasped her waist, pulling her into his chest, "we're soulmates!"  

Comments, reblogs and feedback improve motivation, writing and publishing, so it is in your best interest to leave some! :)

Want to be tagged? Let me know in which ever way you are the most comfortable with!

Tagging: @lumifuer @ijustwantmyshipstobehappy @plethora-of-things @xlatinaaxx @lostnliterature @batette @pythiaaa @nxttime @gearsinice @mizmahlia 

#jason todd #jason todd x reader #red hood #red hood x reader #red hood imagine #jason todd imagine #aresenal #arsenal x reader #arsenal imagine #roy harper #roy harper x reader #roy harper imagine #the outlaws #the outlaws x reader #the outlaws imagine #red hood and the outlaws #red hood and the outlaws x reader #red hood and the outlaws imagine #dc #dc x reader #dc imagine #batboys #batboys x reader #batboys imagine #batboy #batboy x reader #batboy imagine #au