#that’s a totally normal way of thinking and not at all stripping away human decency and human connection with people | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ssaalexblake · 3 years

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a Take: In S12, Thirteen is a literal take on Frankenstein with 13 playing the part of ‘the monster’ and Tecteun as not-doctor-frankenstein, the baby doctor is their Child but actually just their experiment like the monster from Mary Shelley’s book, The Master is Also playing the part of the monster but it’s shone in a different light because of their vastly different personalities meaning that the doctor and master both shed light onto the monster’s struggle in the original text, is he is a monster or not? if he is considered a monster why not Act like one? etc etc but with the master this also goes beyond the Physical interpretation that he is genetically part whatever species the timeless child was because he is also left grappling with Missy’s actions: Was it Me who changed myself or the Doctor? Who am I and what parts of me are Them? But then we get to the total opposite side of the bridge with Yaz who is yes, fully human, but in this season we discover Yaz’s habit of emulating those she respects and admires and basically copying them into her own personality.... There is no literal interpretation of frankenstein’s plight, here, but arguably we could ask ‘Who Is Yaz’ underneath this all. How much is Yasmin Khan and how much is all the personality traits she decided to copy from other people (the police officer who helped her that day, 13, there are probably more lbr).

S12 is Very ‘Who are you’ in general. The plot is made literal by the timeless child angle, the doctor and the master both playing interpretations of the monster display different reaction to it, and then just for kicks a Literal monster made of parts of other men walks around creating horror and even more monsters who are forced to conform to the original’s wants. Ashad, notably, has free will. Had he not made the Choice to be a monster that hunts down humanity and kills them all would he still be a monster? If you remove the zealotism from him and leave a normal person who just Happens to somebody made of other peoples mismatched body parts, is he still a monster?

The narrative of the season Actually explicitly says Yes when they deliver his back story, they say even Before his failed conversion he was like this. So we have a normal average person, no funky genetics, no parts, just your average human monster.

But... The effects of the timeless child being raised in the society that victimized them made them awful as well! They did not start to walk upon the long road of succeeding in decency until the first doctor met Ian and Barbara, everything before this and they’d have been your typical time lord nightmare. This was what Tecteun Made them. Does that make the doctor a monster, they they were raised in the society that victimised them and then forced them to conform, or does it make them the victim?

There are So many existential questions asked this season, what makes us a monster? If we are parts of all the people around us what is Actually us and what is them? Can i Choose to not be a monster even if everybody thinks i am one or should i just fulfil their expectations? How much do events out of our control shape me in ways that we have no choice over?

s12 included a lot of people made up of parts of other people and discussed the agency we have as individuals despite that, and how our choices Matter, how we respond to things out of our control Matters. All to the backdrop of an enemy who takes you, strips all of your choices away and Makes you conform.

The point isn’t that the doctor was frankenstein’s monster, the Point is that when they grow up and learnt better they Choose to not be a monster once they started travelling with humans. The point is the Master could have done Anything when learning this knowledge and decided to be the worst monster he could think up. The point is Ashad was terrible all along, he didn’t become a monster after his failed conversion made him look monstrous, he was terrible all along. The point is Yaz is trying to be Good by taking in parts of other people knowingly to try to spread goodness, and stop terrible things. Frankenstein the book is a lot about choices and this season is just a big take on all of that.

#dw shit #anyway this isn't well phrased but hell if i'm opening up frankenstein to use quotes to make it more official looking #i hate romantics era prose

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trashmenofmarvel · 4 years

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Branded - Chapter 17

Pairing: Demon!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: None. Just smut and sadness.

(This is a fan AU of Falling’s Just Another Way to Fly by @araniaart . Please check out this incredible series for all of your demon Bucky needs.)

Chapter Warnings: Explicit sexual content, mentions of past rape/sexual assault

Word Count: 3k

AO3

Your back hit the duvet on Bucky’s bed, soft and plush and very inviting. But all your brain could take in at that moment was the feel of the demon above you, strong arms holding you down as your legs encircled his waist.

His mouth was on your neck, all warm lips and a hint of sharp teeth. You were 74% positive you could come just from that, as keyed up as you were and as insanely good as it felt.

Each brush of his lips and each light scrape of his teeth made you squirm and pant like an animal. Your hands were in his soft hair, crushing him to your throat as your hips desperately rubbed against the hard planes of his abdomen.

Bucky let loose one of those low growls that sent a pleasant jolt up your spine before he broke contact with your skin. You were about to complain from the cruel lack of contact until you realized he was moving downward, his hands unbuttoning and unzipping your jeans with deft, practiced movements.

Subdued and placated for the moment, you propped yourself up on your elbows to watch him, biting your lip as he removed his trademark black jacket, a long-sleeved blue Henley underneath.

He seemed to favor them, and you didn’t mind at all.

It was strange. Despite the fact you felt you were going to burst at any moment, you were more lucid now than during any of the previous encounters. You weren’t so overcome with lust that your brain was clouded, as if under a spell. You felt perfectly within control of your mind, if not totally in control of your body.

Hell, even if you could have stopped all of this, you wouldn’t have wanted to. The sight of Bucky pulling off your shoes and lifting your hips to tug down your pants left you breathless with need. You stripped off your own jacket, leaving on your shirt since taking it off required way more coordination than your trembling fingers had at the moment.

His eyes were growing darker by the second, every inch the predator he seemed to be, and those eyes never left your face, blazing blue with the strength of his own desire. Bucky had left your underwear on, a fact that would have been unfairly frustrating if he also hadn’t grabbed your hips and tugged you to the edge of the bed.

Bucky spread your thighs and knelt between your knees, leaving you dumb and speechless as he gazed up at you with a quiet sort of hunger. His wings were furled behind him, their leathery edges tickling the inside of your calves and ankles.

“I wanna try something different,” he asked in a low, gravelly tone that sent your head spinning. “That okay?”

“S-sure,” you responded, raspy.

Neither of you had other options when it came to the feeding, it had to be done, but being asked for your opinion made it feel more… normal. It let you pretend for a moment that you and Bucky were together by choice.

The mystery of his proposal was quickly answered as he turned his head to the side and planted a kiss on the inside of your thigh.

You jumped, hard enough your face immediately heated with embarrassment, and a smirk tugged at the corner of his lip as his lips continued a trail upward.

He didn’t bother telling you to relax, which you appreciated, since your body felt like a taut string about to snap. Instead, all Bucky said was, “Lie back,” and you did so, fisting your hands into the covers with near-feverish anticipation.

Your shoulder burned, your brand punishing you for the delay, but you couldn’t find it within you to tell him to hurry up, mostly because you couldn’t talk. Gone was every thought in your head as you felt Bucky mouth and lick over your soaked panties.

Your hips jolted as you released a whimper, feeling like you might die if he kept teasing you. And Bucky was teasing you, licking and prodding your clothed sex with his lips and fingers, forcing sweat to break out on your skin despite the chill in the air.

He’d never done something like this before. He’d always just gotten straight to the point, with you too much of a feverish mess to care about the lack of foreplay.

But now? Now you felt something more than the forced human-demon bond. You wanted Bucky, and you didn’t think you could hide it for much longer.

He froze when your hands reached down and touched his hair, curling into the long, soft strands. And when you wrapped your fingers around his horns and pressed your palms against the rough surface, gripping them like bicycle handles, he lost the last of his control.

Bucky ripped off your panties and buried his face between your legs, pressing the flat of his tongue hard against you as he took one long, possessive lick.

Your back arched off the bed and you actually saw stars. A noise you’d never made before, high-pitched and tortuous, came out of your mouth, and you gripped his horns tighter, pulling them toward you as you tried to fuck yourself on his tongue.

Bucky was having none of it; he wrapped his strong arms around your thighs and pulled them over his shoulders, holding them in place as he licked you again, tongue warm and wet and—oh… definitely longer than a humans.

“Fuck,” you choked out, squirming, the sensations too much but not enough. It felt insanely good, and your tightening abdominal muscles meant you were going to come soon, but you didn’t want it to end, not when he’d just started. You wanted him to climb up your body, hold you and actually kiss you, a real goddamn kiss—

—but at the same time, you couldn’t bear to tell him to stop. Not with his tongue now prodding your entrance, pushing inside and manipulating you with way more flexibility than a human tongue could ever provide.

In a move that made your vision actually swim with tears, Bucky pressed the flat base of his tongue against your clit while somehow managing to fuck you with the rest of its length.

You let out another choked noise, practically squeezing him between your thighs as your legs crossed behind his head, your hands tugging on his swept-back horns, desperate to pull him closer.

Bucky let loose a growl, gripped your hips tightly in his arms, and without warning, sucked on your clit as if to devour you.

That was all it took, pushing you over the edge as you arched your back and cried, your mind going pleasantly white for a moment before returning back to your writhing body. Pleasure pulsed across every inch of skin, the burst of energy released by your orgasm pulled down and outward at the point where his mouth met your skin.

Bucky was feeding off you. Surprise mixed with the continuous orgasm, and you moaned needfully as you kept a hold of his horns like your life depended on it. Bucky lapped at you, drinking you down as he made a groaning noise of his own.

You were completely wracked, exhausted as he finally pulled away and you were allowed to come down from your high, but you didn’t want to stop. Not yet.

“Wait…” you said, clumsily reaching out when he sat back on his heels. The sight of him licking your slick off his lips left an echo of desire in its wake. “You didn’t… come, did you?”

To your surprise, he gave a light snort and appeared almost sheepish.

“Don’t worry about that. Sit tight. I’ll be right back, okay?”

You simply stared at him, as if you had the strength to go anywhere right now, and watched as he rose to his clawed feet and disappeared from view. To the bathroom, you realized, when his retreating form disappeared into the alcove you had spotted earlier.

Shivering as you became very aware of the chilly temperature, you curled onto your side and pulled your knees up to your chest, tilting your head up to look longingly at the head of the bed where several plush, grey pillows leaned against the headboard. They were only a few feet away, but it might as well have been miles.

The obvious didn’t occur to you until Bucky returned and began gently, carefully cleaning up the mess between your legs. You rolled onto your back, clumsily batting away his hands.

“C’mon, stop that,” you mumbled, “I’m just going to get dirty again.”

You felt clumsy and warm from the aftereffects of the feeding, even sounding a little punch-drunk to your own ears. Bucky raised an eyebrow.

“What are you talking about?” he intoned, flat and unamused.

“Aren’t we gonna… you know…”

Your ears went hot as your entire face flushed, and Bucky had the decency to only mildly smirk at you. It might have been a mocking gesture, but damn he looked good while doing it.

“Why would we? The feeding’s already done. You can feel that, right?”

Did you feel the uncontrollable magical lust retreat so you could function like a normal human being? Sure, but, that wasn’t the damn point!

While you floundered for a response, Bucky picked you up from the bed and laid you against the pillows. He was always so careful when he picked you up, as if afraid you would shatter in his arms, and it made you even more flustered.

“Y-yeah, but…”

You trailed off, watching as Bucky turned to a nearby dresser. He pulled out a pair of pajama pants, blue-and-white plaid that looked super soft, and he turned back and handed it to you.

“Sorry, this’ll have to do for now until I wash your clothes. They’re kinda… ruined.” There was that sheepish look again, but from the spark in his eye you saw an echo of pride in that fact.

You took the pants from him and pulled them up your legs, sighing at the feel of the soft material against your skin. “I—I can leave in a few minutes after I catch my breath—“

Bucky was already shaking his head.

“Maybe you don’t feel it yet but it’s gonna hit you soon, especially since I wasn’t as careful as I should have been.” He licked his lips nervously and looked away. “Stay the night. I won’t bother you.”

“You don’t bother me,” you muttered grumpily, apparently not possessing your usual filter post-feeding. What an annoying side effect. You winced as you managed to pull up the covers and slip underneath them. The feel of the cold sheets made you shiver. “And you keep avoiding the subject.”

Bucky released a tired sigh, the tension of his shoulders as he stared down at the sheets obvious.

“Why would I make you go through all that again if we didn’t have to?”

You opened your mouth to answer. Nothing came out. It took a few seconds for you to give a weak answer, and not the one you really wanted to give.

“Are you… sure it was enough? Doing it that way? I mean, you didn’t…”

“Yeah, I did,” he insisted. “When you came, so did I. That’s how the feeding works; we’re connected on some kind of… energy level. I don’t understand everything about how it works, but I do know I can feed through oral sex. I mean, I’d never done it quite that way before, but… I guess the same rules still apply.”

You blinked at his vague answer, feeling incredibly stupid, like you were missing something you should be understanding.

“What do you mean… you’d never done it that way before? What way? What rules?”

Bucky grimaced, his tail returning to its usual nervous twitch whenever he was distressed.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Oh.”

You dropped your eyes and gripped your fingers on the covers, pulling them up a little as you tried not to be hurt by the statement. He still had things he wanted to keep private, and you couldn’t resent him for that, not when you were keeping too many of your own feelings hidden.

You heard him sigh, a tired, frustrated sound. “No, it’s… shit. It’s not your fault. It’s just hard to revisit that stuff.”

“You don’t have to—“ you were quick to say, but he interrupted just as quickly.

“Yeah, I do. We promised transparency, right?”

You looked up at him, just in time to see him run his normal hand through his hair. The movement was semi-distracting, especially since you knew exactly just how soft that hair was now.

Bucky leveled you with a look that made it seem as if he was bracing for something.

“Remember the whole succubus/incubus argument we had before? Well, regardless of what I am now, I was a succubus. And I was forced to feed exclusively on… on men.”

Bucky paused, shifting on his feet and looking as if he wanted to be anywhere but there. You were about to tell him it was fine, he didn’t have to tell you anything he didn’t want to, but he continued in a tense, low tone.

“I don’t know why they made me that way. If it was because I already liked guys as well as girls, or if it was because of that fucker Zola who turned me into this—this thing. Whatever the reason…”

He grimaced again, so hard it was a wince.

“…that’s how I always had to feed. That’s how HYDRA made me feed. By sucking guys off, by letting them fuck me. After they fucked with my head and made it so I couldn’t remember anything, they made it seem like the feedings were a reward.”

He shook his head, pulling back his lips over his teeth in a humorless smile.

“But the result was the same. I never had a choice. So… if I can do anything in my power to make this less invasive for you, then I’m gonna do it.”

His hand returned to his hair again, brushing it back in a restless, irritated fashion, and you were struck with the image of a predator pacing in a cage as he moved back and forth near the foot of the bed.

“One of my handlers, he showed me a book once. It had sketches, real old ones, of different feedings. One of them showed a female incubus feeding from a woman, so I thought… maybe it’d be better doing it that way than forcing you to…”

He trailed off, his expression almost sickened now.

You felt the same way, nauseous and horrified, but not at Bucky. Never at Bucky.

Bucky had had to feed before. On people other than you. And entirely against his will.

The idea seemed obvious now, but it still left you entirely speechless.

“So…” He looked away from you, flexing his jaw as he moved to pick up your clothing from the ground. “No. I’m not going to make you endure any more than you have to.”

Shame filled you so fast and so deeply it made your eyes prickle with tears as you looked away. Having to feed on people, being forced to have sex against his will, of course it had been a nightmare for him. How had you never realized that before?

And here you were, treating it like it was some kind of casual fling in the hopes that someday it could be something deeper. Pretending that this whole situation wasn’t the result of Bucky suffering at the hands of HYDRA decades ago.

“I’m sorry,” you said, dropping your eyes to your curled hands in your lap. “I’m really sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

Bucky made an annoyed huff, his tone just the same as he said, “That’s not—I didn’t tell you that to make you feel sorry for—Jesus, don’t apologize, all right? I’ll feel more like an asshole than I already do. I’m the one who should be apologizing to you.”

You couldn’t stop the annoyed sigh before you’d already made the noise, your hands curling into fists.

“Why. For accepting a toy from a kid? Come on, Bucky.” You looked up at him, slightly tilting your head as you gave him an imploring expression. “It’s not your fault. It’s not mine, either. Can we just put the blame where it belongs? With those Nazi fuckers?”

Bucky released an amused snort, looking almost startled that he’d made it. You began to hope, just for a moment, that you’d gotten through to him, but then he shook his head and turned away. He approached a light switch on the wall, pausing with his demonic, armored hand inches from the switch.

“Go to sleep. We’ll talk more in the morning.”

Without waiting for a reply, he flicked off the light with a clawed nail, leaving the apartment in muted darkness. Only the distant lights of the city shining through the clock faces made it so the penthouse wasn’t completely pitch black.

Trying not to pout and failing, you laid back under the covers, releasing another heavy sigh that you knew he could hear. Good. Let him know what an ass he was being. Not to you, but to himself. Why couldn’t he see that none of this was his fault, and he was actually an amazing, caring, wonderful person doing the best he could in a shitty situation?

It felt like you were hitting a brick wall, over and over and over again. God, why did it seem the only time you two got along was when he was holding you down and making you come?

Your own question made your cheeks flush, and you turned over on your side, pulling the blanket up to your chin. Your warm skin made it more obvious how cold the clock tower really was. Surely the guy could afford central heating? He had to be loaded to afford this place. You didn’t know where he got his money from, but it was obvious he wasn’t hard up for cash.

Despite the chill settling on your skin, and despite your best efforts to attune your hearing to the quiet apartment for signs of Bucky moving around (there were none), you eventually stumbled into a restless sleep. One that didn’t last long. You kept surfacing into a half-conscious state, shivering violently as your limbs curled into protective positions.

It wasn’t until you felt the bed dip and warm, strong arms wrap around your waist that your muscles stopped trembling, and you fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Next Chapter

#branded #demon!bucky barnes #demon!bucky x reader #my writing #my fanfiction

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thewhumperinwhite · 4 years

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Guardian Angel

OKAY SO LISTEN. this is not the update anyone was hoping for but sometimes the only thing that’s gonna keep my contrary adhd brain from Abandoning a project is to Invest Energy Somewhere else for a while. case in point, I've been plugging grimly away at both café and wkw for weeks and written ~500 words total, and then I wrote this whole thing in About Twenty Minutes.

So uh. You know how FBI is an au of an Actual WIP I have about vampires? Well this is... technically also that but it’s a lot closer to the actual canon of that WIP. If you don’t know anything about FBI or those characters, that’s great, you’re in the same spot Karim is here lmao.

Also this is heavily inspired by this very good spn fic, which I keep coming back to despite not being active in that fandom at all anymore. This goes in a very different direction than that, but they open in similar ways.

Also please note, the main character of this is a young teenager, and there will be some mild underage whump, but this is my official promise that there is no underage sex in this story.

Anyway uh let’s get this..... car wreck underway I guess

TW for: car accident due to reckless driving resulting in serious injury (or by rights it should anyway); body horror; animated corpse (of a sort); religion/Christianity.

----

For about—let’s say—the first fifteen miles away from his house, the thrill of the stolen car and his notable lack of driver’s license was enough to keep Karim in his own skin, not spiralling into rushing panicky thoughts. After a while that thrill starts to fade into the background and every time it does he hits the gas a little harder, and the new speed is enough for him for another fifteen miles until he has to hit the gas again because his brain is catching up with him.

Which is to say that when the thin pale shape of a human being stumbles out of the bushes along the side of the highway, Karim is going easily a hundred miles an hour, and no amount of slamming on the brakes is going to get him to stop in the hundred feet between himself and this person’s human body.

He hits the white shape at, optimistically, sixty miles an hour. It shoots up the car’s hood, cracks the windshield with its skull, and disappears over the top of the car. Realistically there’s no way the quiet hard thump of the body hitting the pavement many feet behind the car is audible over the sound of the car’s squealing brakes but it feels like Karim can hear it, can hear the accompanying crack of bones breaking against the asphalt.

The car rolls to a stop, and Karim spends several unfathomable seconds staring at the windshield, not bloodied but almost completely starred with a huge spiraling crack just off the center, and all he can think is, no, no, no no no no no oh no oh no.

Then he hears a muffled groan from behind him and dives for the car door, tumbles out onto the pavement on his hands and knees, scrambles back toward the pale body squirming and twitching in the middle of the left lane behind his mother’s SUV.

Somehow there’s still no blood, even back here, but it is immediately clear that there is something seriously, deeply wrong with this body.

“Motherfucker,” it says, and Karim freezes a few feet away from it, still the most horrified he’s ever been and now also very confused and between those two feelings no longer able to move. The voice issuing from the ruined and twisted body sounds, at most, annoyed. It flops horribly onto its back, like a boned fish, and rolls its head awkwardly on its shoulders to face Karim. “Going a fucking million miles an hour on an—” The body stops speaking, and stares up with wide shocked eyes in its colorless face.

“Karim,” the dead thing says.

Karim stumbles back a step, the horror already overfilling his chest growing and mutating so fast he loses his footing and falls painfully backwards, scraping his palms as he catches himself to stop from sprawling completely. The initial all-consuming terror of having killed a person with his mother’s car is turning into a—different, harder to parse all-consuming terror.

Because every instinct he has is telling him that this thing that just called him by his name is a corpse.

Watching it sit up on the pavement, in a hopefully unconscious mirror of Karim’s own half-sprawled pose, is like watching a marionette puppet being controlled by a very unskilled puppeteer. It’s movements are jerky and uneven; it falls back when it puts its weight on one of its arms and the leg on that side is stuck out stiffly in front of it and bending in places that aren’t joints. And above its wide filmy eyes its forehead is starred with cracks like an egg dropped on a hardwood floor.

“You’re alive,” it says. Its voice is—completely normal, which is somehow the strangest thing about it. About—him.

“I—I’m so sorry,” Karim says, starting to run on autopilot now, fumbling in his pocket for his cellphone, “I’ll call, I’ll call an ambulance, I’ll—”

“I don’t need an ambulance,” the dead boy says absently. He leans forward, his mangled arm hanging useless at his side, though he doesn’t move like he’s in any pain at all. “You’re—holy shit, you’re a baby.”

Karim blinks, away from his phone screen, up at the dead boy. He looks—older than Karim, but not by that much, like a college student, maybe. And he’s looking up at Karim with alarm that’s almost horror, like Karim is the weird mangled abomination here.

“I am not,” he says automatically. There’s still no blood, anywhere. There’s—he can see that the skin of the boy’s head is broken, but it’s not bleeding, not a drop.

The boy searches his face with his weird foggy eyes, still leaning forward. His hair is short, maybe even buzzed in the back, and it’s a dull sandy-brown, above a face that might be handsome if it wasn’t gray-tinged and bloodless and cracked open.

“What year is this?” the dead boy says urgently.

Karim stares at him.

His arm is dangling limply at his side and his leg is definitely broken in more than one place and Karim did that, which will continue to be true regardless of whatever else is going on with this guy medically, and Karim has no idea what to do about that, is almost paralyzed by the desire to physically twist time back ten minutes and have this not be the moment he’s in right now.

But he can’t do that, so he answers, “Uh, 2009?” in a high squeaky voice like it’s a question, instead.

The dead boy’s eyes go even wider.

“It’s,” he whispers. “You’re,” and then he stops and looks at the ground. He raises his still-working arm to scrub across his cracked forehead, maybe tries to raise the other one, winces.

“I’m sorry,” Karim croaks. “I should— I gotta get you to a hospital.”

The dead boy shakes his head. “I don’t need a hospital,” he says, “I need a church.”

Karim feels himself gasp sharply. “Oh god,” he says, “Oh no, I’m— sure you’ll— make it, man, you’re—” He laughs, the sounds grating and hysterical in his own ears. “Look, you’re not even bleeding!”

The dead boy blinks up at him, and then he laughs, throwing his head back, and it’s a full, pretty laugh, sparking up toward the darkening sky— and when he lifts his chin Karim can suddenly see a bizarre pattern of marks all over his neck, a dozen little dots, in pairs, clustered around where you would look for a pulse on someone you weren’t sure was alive.

“That’s not what I mean,” the dead boy says, his eyes squinty and warm with laughter, and then he takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly, staring at Karim, the smile fading from his pretty dead face. “Christ,” he says softly, and then, again, “Karim.”

Karim takes half a step back. “How— how do you know my name?”

“Ha,” the boy says, “that’s—” He tries to push himself to his feet and hisses, falling back like his broken leg won’t take any weight. Karim takes a step closer, unable to keep from reacting to obvious pain that he definitely 100% caused. “Actually,” the boy says, “I—would love it. If you could give me a ride. To the nearest church before I try to answer that. Karim.”

Karim stares at him. “What?”

“Catholic would be best if you’ve got it,” the boy says, with the air of somebody who knows he’s saying an absurd thing and is trying very hard to play it off. “I’m sure another kind would work but I’d just as soon not—” He shifts, winces a little; Karim looks down at his leg and squeezes his eyes shut, he’d momentarily forgotten how awful it looks. The boy laughs, sounding slightly hysterical. “I’d just as soon not drive around between a bunch’a churches if it’s all the same to you. Save you some gas money, huh?”

“Why,” Karim says, and he forces himself to look at the boy’s leg for real. There’s a place beside the— crooked, displaced— kneecap where Karim can see a strip of skin missing, and the exposed flesh is pale and bloodless; he feels his stomach squeeze in panicked nausea. “Why would you need a church right now.”

The boy sucks his teeth audibly, bowing his head, and then spreads his still-working hand wide with a fine-you-got-me shrug.

“Because,” the dead boy says, “I need holy water to put my leg back together.”

Karim blinks. Blinks again, for good measure.

“What,” he says. He shakes his head. “What. Why would that. Why.”

The boy looks away, tilts his head like he’s doing math in his head, and says slowly, in the voice of someone trying a gambit they’re pretty sure won’t work. “Because I’m... your guardian... angel?”

Karim narrows his eyes. The boy could at least have the decency to say it like he means it.

“Okay,” the dead boy says, and nods like he’s trying to psyche himself up. “Okay, yeah, no, that’s fair, I— Hold on, I’ll— I’ll show you.”

The dead boy sighs and shakes his head. “This is gonna fucking suck,” he mutters, and he closes his eyes.

At first Karim doesn’t think anything weird is happening— that an evening breeze has just kicked up. But as the wind gets stronger and he can see pebbles and bits of loose asphalt skittering away from where the dead boy sits on the pavement, it becomes clear that the sudden rush of cool air is coming from him. His sandy hair is whipping around his head, too, like it’s in a stronger wind than the one Karim can feel, and Karim realizes a second late that there’s— light coming from him too, a cold white glow growing so slowly he didn’t see it at first.

The dead boy lets out a shaky breath, his face creasing in concentration, or maybe pain.

Karim stumbles backward, hitting the back of the car and pressing his back against it, staring at the dead boy. The wind picks up and the light suddenly flashes, so bright that Karim throws up his arm to shield his eyes— and through his fingers, he can just see that the light beaming from the empty air above the dead boy’s shoulder blades, where it almost forms the shape of two enormous wings out of thin air and dust.

The wind and light sputter and die roughly in unison. Karim lowers his hand enough to stare at the dead boy in— he’s not sure what feeling, actually. Possibly terror.

The boy’s hair settles back against his cracked forehead. “Oh, good,” he says, breathing hard, like he’s just run a mile on a hot day. “It worked.”

Then the dead boy sags sideways and flops limply onto the pavement, and lies still, like corpses generally do.

“What the fuck,” Karim Mun says, with feeling.

#guardian angel au #whump #car accident #undead whump #angel whump #original whump

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bruciewayne · 4 years

Text

birthday suits and booty shorts

stevetony, fluff, humour, getting together, 2k

“Oh god,” Tony groans, “Please tell me you that you weren’t wearing a fucking nylon suit in the Battle last year?”

“Um,” Steve says, intelligently, “it’s flexible?”

Tony gives him an unimpressed look, which isn’t anything particularly out of the ordinary, “So are leggings, but you’re not going to fight gods in them!”

Steve has a sudden flashback to the time Bucky yelled at him for going into the HYDRA base in costume, not armour. It hurts less than it used to.

“Only HYDRA,” Steve quips, with a smile.

Tony looks like he’s going to have an aneurysm.

“I thought that was made up.”

“Howard told you!?”

“Called it heroic.”

“Buck called it moronic, so did Pegs.”

Tony laughs at that, “Yeah, he once mentioned it around her, and she gave me explicit instructions to never go into any sort of battle in booty shorts.”

“She always did give sound advice,” Steve says, deciding to ignore the ‘booty shorts’ comment (and if it’s because he agrees, then that’s not relevant).

Tony narrows his eyes, and Steve hasn’t known him long, but he knows him enough that he can clearly identify that as his ‘I’m thinking, shut up’ face.

“Didn’t she shoot you?”

“Four times.”

Tony looks at him incredulously, “Sounds like her, but this,” he says, waving his uniform about, “no bueno.”

Three days later, Tony has the suit made, reinforced kevlar, carbon nanotubes, biometric tracker, and a small ‘Captain Rogers’ on the breastbone. Of course, he only got it made this fast to get it out of the way, and not because he cared in any way whatsoever about Captain Uptight (that initial assessment may be incorrect and in need of revising, but he’ll get to that later).

Steve, predictably, is in the gym when Tony asks JARVIS of his location. Unpredictable is what he’s wearing. He’s doing Planche push-ups when Tony comes in, so all Tony can see of his godawful gear is the ‘PROPAGANDA’ scrawled over his ass, and damn, science in the 40s should get far more credit than it did.

Just before Tony goes to poke him, or kick him in his foot, Steve lowers his feet to the ground and jumps up, grinning and sweaty, “Hey.”

Tony would reply, with a normal, human comment, and/or greeting, but he’s too busy staring at his chest, and for all the wrong reasons, YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE TO PROPAGANDA.

Steve notices, and the light flush from exercise deepens, “It was a gag gift. From Nat.”

“Well,” Tony says, against his better judgement, “it’s not wrong.”

The thing is, they are friends, pretty good ones now, at that, but Tony has an incredibly difficult time being in public with someone who wears jeans that tight.

“Aren’t your balls like, crushed?” Tony asks, as they’re walking through the park, because that’s just something they do now.

“You’re awfully concerned with my balls,” Steve comments, taking a long lick of his ice-cream.

“I’m just saying!” Tony defends. Steve just laughs, and overly assures him that he definitely believes him. Totally.

Tony attempts to reach up to tug a leaf off a branch to throw at Steve, because, for your information, he thinks about his ass far more than his balls, but, even on his tiptoes he can’t reach it, and he’s not about to make a fool of himself jumping to reach a branch.

Steve laughs even more, and even Tony’s man enough to admit that he lost all of his dignity in the 90s, so jumping to get a leaf to throw at his no good, very bad friend is barely news. So he does. And, predictably, he falls.

And less predictably, just as he readies himself for mud-covered Armani (because, whilst Steve is young enough to dress like a fuckboy, Tony, unfortunately, is a rich businessman who has to look the part (not that he’d particularly want to have to spray-paint on his jeans every morning (not that he’s allowed to wear jeans to board meeting, because, ‘Tony, you’re older now, and they expect something from you’)), and he cannot, and just as he should hit the ground, Steve’s around him, arms bracing him, strong and sure.

Steve’s lips quirk up into a smile, boyish and joyful, and the sun shining down from above highlights his hair in a way that makes Tony think, not for the first time, that Steve’s been sent down from heaven, for god knows what reason, because there’s no logical way that someone that good, someone so unpolluted in the face of all he’s had to fear, comes from humanity and-- oh fuck.

“I’m surprised you can bend like that in those jeans,” Tony says, too softly to pretend that’s all that’s running through his mind.

“I’m Superman,” Steve says, cheekily, rightening them both, and maybe it’s just Tony’s imagination, but he seems to linger longer than should be necessary. But he moves away, and the moment is broken, less like shattering glass and more like chalk falling barely a foot, broken beyond repair, but not the end of the world, which, in their careers, is a damn good place to be.

Tony takes it all back.

“You’ve never followed an instruction in your life, one day that might just end it,” Steve growls, still in uniform, because they saved New York again, and they’re fighting about god knows what, because god knows why.

“Don’t pretend to be concerned about my life when all you really care about is controlling the team, your perfect little soldiers,” Tony hisses.

Steve glowers even more. “Stop twisting my words.”

“Stop making bullshit calls,” Tony counters.

“It’s not bullshit and you know it.”

He’s not even loud, or explosive, like Tony, then, he’s quiet, still, unbelievably angry, but calm. And something about that lights a fire inside Tony, unstable and destructive.

“They never should have pulled you from the ice if all you’re good for is pure bullshit!”

For one, rage-coloured, gleeful, glorious moment, Tony revels in where he’s clearly managed to get a hit on him: his face lights with anger, the calm from earlier rapidly fades away, practically melting off his face.

And then his face, his body, his entire demeanour drop heavily, a slave to gravity, like the common man, like a puppet torn from its strings. The guilt floods into Tony’s system milliseconds before Steve turns on his heel and walks out without another word.

Tony realises, after he’s put himself in blackout mode, that the fight hadn’t changed a thing about the other day - Steve was always going to be ridiculously infuriatingly stubborn, hell, that’s why he’s so impossibly infatuated with him, he never gives up, never runs away, never stops, and for him to not fight Tony… he’s fucked up. Bad.

“Sir, if I may, an apology may be due,” and isn’t that sad, his AI had to listen to him rant aloud and then urge him to show basic human decency and at least attempt to preserve a relationship (one that’s somehow, sometime, become to absurdly important to Tony, the more he thinks of it, the more he wants to deck his old self in the nose (and if he ever did make a time machine, he knows that the punch he’d throw would be perfect form, thanks to Steve’s tutelage)).

“Yeah. Yeah,” Tony says heavily.

Unsurprisingly, JARVIS directs Tony toward the gym, where Steve’s beating apart a punching bag. He’s taken off the top part of his uniform and left it hanging around his waist, undershirt soaked through with sweat, hiding the aggregate sum of none of the strength contained in his muscles.

Even stripped down like this, the suit dirty and torn, no shield, no cowl in sight there’s no denying his raw power.

“Hey,” Tony starts, “what I said was uncalled for.”

Steve only stills his barrage when Tony began to speak, even though he must have heard him come in, but he doesn’t turn around.

“I… I’m not unaware of my flaws, Tony,” Steve says quietly, still not facing him, “nor do I believe that you’re needlessly reckless with your life.”

Tony takes a minute to process that. The air is still between them, rebuilding after the storm. They’ve gotten delightfully efficient at rebuilding, and with better adapted infrastructure, it doesn’t take long, but it still destroys something, still hurts a little.

“I’m glad that you were found,” Tony replies, this is the closest they’ve come to saying the forbidden ‘sorry’ aloud, and even though Steve’s the one to be facing away now, Tony knows that, had Steve been looking at him, whichever expression, he would be the one to turn away.

Small steps.

Steve nods, a sharp, short downward jerk of his head, and Tony takes that as his signal to leave, feeling lighter all for it. Maybe his earlier assessment of Steve has been right.

“I want you to know,” Tony starts, just as they’re about to initiate what’s definitely going to be the most violent game of 6 people water polo that’s ever conspired, “that this is one, an awful idea, and two, going to flood this entire floor.”

“You can sit out, if you really want to,” Steve suggests, partly out of care, partly because it would disadvantage their team.

Tony laugh aloud at that, “Absolutely not, you know I’d never pass up an opportunity to beat your ass, Rogers.”

“I thought you weren’t immune to it,” Steve says, grinning back.

Thor looks supremely confused, “Your humans’ trash talk is not dissimilar to Asgardians’ courting.”

“It’s not human’s trash talk,” Natasha says, tossing the ball between her hands, “it’s just Steve and Tony trash talk.”

Both of them, in displays of the utmost maturity, splash her with water.

JARVIS takes that as a cue to start the game timer, and it’s just as aggressive and chaotic as Tony thought - what else would you get from pitting four of the most capable humans in Northern America against a god and a guy who pretty much qualifies?

It’s water and it’s violent, two things which, historically, hadn’t been the greatest of situations for Tony, but there’s no point during this where he feels unsafe, or out of control (quite possibly losing, definitely).

He’s not nearly as ashamed as he should be to admit that he spent most of the time wrestling Steve.

He was fine during the beginning - when Steve’s waist was below the surface, and he was too busy staring at his face and chest, but after he’d jumped high enough that his feet were out the water, and he’d exposed those illegally tight speedos…

It made no sense whatsoever, all of them, bar Nat, were wearing regular, normal, socially acceptable, swimwear that didn’t expose just how big their dicks were, and he knows with relative certainty that they didn’t have speedos in the 40s, so where he got them fr-- Natasha.

“We only lost,” Tony says, panting, “because your speedos were a distraction.” Everyone else had gone to the showers, reluctantly congratulating Steve and Thor, and deciding on a rematch, leaving Steve and Tony in the pool, treading water in the shallower end.

“Would you rather I take them off?”

Tony looks at him, expecting at least that adorable light flush on his cheeks, but all he gets is a grin see-sawing the line between cheeky and joking and a proposition.

“I’d hate to miss out on you finally finding your true style,” Tony replies, matching him in tone.

Steve’s laugh echoes off the tiles, and Tony just has to kiss him, he just has to crash into him with absolutely no abandon, feeling reminiscent of his teen years, kissing in a pool, tugging off Steve’s ridiculous shorts.

Through half-lidded eyes, Steve tracks him up and down once he’d ripped off Tony’s swim shorts, breathing hard, “You should never wear clothes again,” he declares, sinking to his knees. Any and all thoughts of Steve and his questionable-at-times fashion choices leave Tony’s mind along with most forms of higher function.

masterpost

#steve rogers x tony stark #stevetony #stony #steve rogers #tony stark #my fic #my writing #happystevebingo #happy steve bingo #steve x tony #steve rogers/tony stark

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