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#I’m thinking of all the illegal shit I’ve done in my teens
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Bumblebee
For an anon reader request - please read for a little more detail. Pairings: Rei x you
--
“I swear to you that I will do everything in my power to stop my precious baby sister from continuing down this path of criminal activity!” Kazuki has tears in his eyes. It’s taking everything in you not to roll your eyes in exasperation, trying to work out exactly how you ended up in this predicament.
Tiredness had made you sloppy and you were furious at yourself. About a week ago, the police had been tipped off to your syndicate’s base. It was petty crime compared to some of the other things you knew happened in the city – pickpockets, shoplifters, occasionally you pulled off a bigger heist but nothing too bad. A disused office building had been home for a good few years, heck, you’d even made one of the old units into what some might’ve considered a bedroom. You’d been out around the regular tourist spots when a text came through from an unknown number. “Base breached. Do not return.” You knew the higher ups would be working on some new accommodation - that is at least if they hadn’t been arrested – and chasing out the rat, but in the meanwhile you had to keep your head down low and put up with sleeping out. Originally, the thought hadn’t phased you – you’d done it a fair few times in your teens on first leaving the orphanage - but the first night you realized how much you’d come to appreciate your office bedroom, knowing you weren’t exposed. The result was patchy half-sleep on cold concrete, arms clamped around the rucksack which held everything you still owned.
You’d been in this particular mall a few times now, taking from different shops to then try and trade things down the market for some petty cash for food. The lack of decent sleep finally took its toll though as you didn’t quite clock the camera right above you as you slipped the perfume into your pocket. It wasn’t long after that than there was the steel grip of the security guard on your shoulder, escorting you to the back office.
“Now, young lady, tell me what this is all about, hmm?” He’s laid out the items you’d secreted into your jacket and bag in front of you. It’s all stuff you can easily resell. “Surely you have a bright future ahead of you that doesn’t involve any of this.”
You realise he thinks you’re much younger than you are and you can work this to your advantage – you’re pushing 24 now, but he’s taken your youthful appearance as a teenager at best.
Cue the waterworks. “I’m so sorry, sir. Please forgive me, I don’t know what I was thinking. It was a silly dare and I don’t know what came over me!”
“A dare?” He raises an eyebrow.
“From some kids at school. I can’t believe I let them press me into something so foolish and illegal. Oh, sir, I beg of you, college applications are so soon, I can’t believe I’ve ruined my life before it’s even begun!” You blub.
 “Now, now”, he tries to soothe. “I think we can write off this as a youthful indiscretion, but I need you to call your guardian to come and collect you.” He slides over your mobile phone that he’s retrieved from your rucksack that he confiscated whilst looking for stolen goods. “You dial, I’ll speak to them.” Shit. Your mind whirs over who to call. You can’t call your boss – you’d never hear the end of it. You can’t call your parents because, well, they don’t exist… There’s one person you could call.
You load up the contact and slide it back over. “Kazuki Kurusu?” He reads.
“Mm. He’s my big brother.”
--
It’s been a few months since you last saw him. Life’s been a little busy. He’s not really your older brother, of course, you met in the orphanage when you were four and he was eight and you’d started following him around like a lost puppy. After you’d apparently pestered him enough, he began to dote on you and the pair of you become inseparable, calling each other brother and sister. The caregivers tried to nip it in the bud. Didn’t you want to be adopted? The interested parties didn’t want two children, they just wanted a sweet little girl, but you weren’t going to be swayed. Any and all attempts at fostering you were swiftly quelled due to your incessant crying about ‘big brother Zuki’.
The two of you had stuck together up until he turned 18 and the state no longer had to care for him. Kazuki was dumped out onto the street where he was recruited - as most kids who didn’t end up being adopted from that particular orphanage - by a local gang who offered shelter and food for participating in their grifts and cons. Contact between the two of you became infrequent for a while. Kazuki wasn’t allowed to visit but he’d try and catch you on the way home from school when he wasn’t on the job. He’d spoken about you coming to live with him when you turned 18, that you’d not end up like him and had a solid start to adult life…
But, when the time came, Kazuki had entered into a whirlwind romance. He was married and there was a baby on the way and you didn’t fit in the picture anymore – and that was fine. It was always a bit of a pipe dream. When you turned 18, your then-boyfriend recruited you in with his local gang – they said you had the perfect, sweet face not to be suspected of any wrongdoing and taught you everything you needed to know about surviving on the streets. You kept in contact, sporadically – meeting up every once in a while. There was some radio silence after his wife and unborn child died and you didn’t press him. Eventually, he popped up again trying to mother you but you were fine, you didn’t need it. You knew he’d moved in with someone and had redirected his nurturing elsewhere.
“Hey, bumblebee!” Kazuki’s cheerful voice came down the line and you cringed. Of course he was still calling you that.
“Mr Kurusu?” The security guard enquires down the phone. “I’m afraid I have your sister in the security office here…”
About 20 minutes later, he appears in the office, looking flustered and wearing an apron but still the same old Kazuki. He’s left the house in a hurry and you feel a slight twang of guilt that despite your sporadic contact, he’ll still drop everything to come to your rescue. You offer a hesitant smile, not quite sure how to play this off. He stares at you, distraught.
“I am so sorry, sir.” Kazuki bows his head to the security guard. “Please forgive my little sister. She’s not normally like this at all, I assure you.”
“Yes, well, she seems a bright young girl.” You have no idea where the security guard is basing this assumption on, but you know Kazuki will run with it.
“Oh, she is! Papa and Mama had such high hopes for her career aspirations but ever since they died, her upbringing has rested on my shoulders and I have failed her as her guardian.” Kazuki begins to sob, holding up his apron to his eyes.
“Sir, please,” the security guard places a hesitant hand on his shoulder. “The store won’t be going any further with this – ah, what should we call it? - indiscretion. I trust you and Miss Kurusu here to make the right decisions from now on.”
Kazuki gains control of his sobs and smiles weakly as he dabs his face clear of tears. You need to congratulate him after, this is some A+ acting he’s developed.
“I swear to you that I will do everything in my power to stop my precious baby sister from continuing down this path of criminal activity! Sister, thank this kind man for his understanding.”
You get to your feet and nod politely. “Thank you. I will never forget your forgiveness and compassion, sir. I’ve truly learned my lesson – seeing the upset on my dear brother’s face is punishment enough.”
“Good.” The security guard smiles and escorts the two of you to the front door, watching as Kazuki leads you to a yellow car – typical Kazuki – and opens the passenger seat door. You get in and he goes over to the driver’s side, waving at the security guard before starting the engine and heading out of the mall’s parking lot. You wait until the building’s disappeared in the rearview mirror before you speak up.
“Thanks for that. Just drop me off anywhere, I can find my way.”
He scoffs. “And find your way to where, exactly?”
“Wherever.” You shrug.
A pause. “Are you sleeping rough, bumblebee?”
You roll your eyes, “I’m a little old for that nickname now, aren’t I?”
“Don’t think you can skirt around the question.”
“Just between accommodations this week – I’ll be fine.” You can’t lie to him, he knows all your tells.
“Mm, you look in need of a good meal and a good night’s sleep – both of which you can get at my apartment. Plus, you can meet your niece.”
“My what now?”
--
“I’m back!” Kazuki calls as he opens the front door to the apartment. You’re not even a step in and you can tell it’s fancy – way fancier than anything you’ve ever stayed. You’ve never been back here before – it’s usually been a café that Kazuki likes to frequent when you did meet in person.
There’s a man sat on the couch, messy black-hair, dressed in shorts and a white t-shirt with a cat on it and he looks pretty cute. He’s absorbed in the video game he’s playing on a wide-screen TV.
Kazuki has his arm around your shoulders again as he enthusiastically introduces you to his room-mate Rei, who pauses his game to stare at you.
He’s easy on the eyes, that’s for sure. “Hi.” You wave.
“You’ve never mentioned a sister before.” He frowns.
“Sure I have! You just don’t listen - bumblebee, remember?”
He stares at you again for a moment then there’s a look of realization. “Bumblebee’s a girl?”
“Yes… Wait, what did you think?”
“I thought it was a bee.”
“You… You thought all those stories I told you about my childhood was me and an actual bee?” Rei nods. “I don’t understand what goes on in your head sometimes.”
“I mean, I’m not really your sister either, Zuki.” You try and shrug out from underneath his arm but his grip remains tight.
“How can you say that? The bond we forged is stronger than any blood ties!”
“Still as dramatic as ever.” You look over at Rei. “How do you put up with this?”
He shrugs, eyes back on the screen. You take a look at what he’s playing and recognize it immediately – Morio Kart. They’d had a games console set up in the communal area in the base – pilfered from a lorry you hijacked and you often spent the night playing. “Ohhh, nice hit.” You compliment as he takes out another racer, sitting down besides him, earning you a smug grin.
--
Rei goes to pick up Miri from daycare whilst Kazuki fills you in on the last few months, though a little bit scarce on some details. That’s Kazuki though, if he thought you really needed to know, he’d tell you. Miri is a whirlwind from the second she gets home from daycare, but it’s clear Kazuki is in his absolute element with her.
The little girl stares up at you in wonder as Kazuki introduces the two of you. “She’s sorta like Papa Kazuki’s little sister, which makes her your auntie. I called her bumblebee when we were growing up.”
“Auntie Bee!” She squeals.
“Er, no,” you try and correct her with your real name, but now she’s running around the apartment, pretending to be a bee, wanting you to chase her. You know you’ve lost the battle before it even begun and Kazuki finds it hilarious. “Auntie Bee it is, I guess.” But, deep down, you don’t hate it.
You eat dinner together, Miri insists you join her Papa Kazuki for a story before bed and you can’t wipe the smile off the face as the two of you come back downstairs.
“You’ve got a real sweet thing going on here.”
“I’ve fallen on my feet, right enough.” He says wistfully, before his face turns serious. “Are you okay, though?” You know he wants to ask what you’re doing for work, how you’re surviving, but he probably doesn’t want to hear the real answer. He can’t contradict when you both live the wrong side of the tracks.
“I’m fine - promise. You do you, I do me.” You wrap your arms around his waist in a hug. “I have missed you though, Zuki.”
“Mm,” he hugs you back. “Let’s not leave it so long.”
He sets you up with spare blankets and a pillow for the sofa, lecturing Rei not to stay up too late and game when you’re trying to sleep, but you’re already a fair few matches deep with him to care and, to be honest, you wouldn’t mind spending some alone time with the man – he’s definitely very easy on the eyes.
“Oh, and Rei sleeps in the bathroom.” Kazuki calls as he heads up the stairs. “Don’t ask.”
“You do?” You raise an eyebrow at the man but he shrugs, taking advantage of Kazuki’s distraction to shoot by you on the second lap. “Hey!”
The matches are competitive, but between them you still find any excuse to put your hand on him – his shoulder, his arm, his thigh… It gets him a little flustered and you find it cute. It’s often up to the final lap as the two of you switch between first and second place. This time, Rei takes it and he playfully sticks his tongue out at you as he takes the win.
“Hm, you just got lucky.” You cross your arms in defiance.
“Sure I did. Another?”
“I think I need some inspiration – what does the winner get?”
“Bragging rights.”
“Nah, I need more than that.”
“Like what?” He sounds puzzled.
“Like…” you bite your lip, you’ve always been a shameless flirt. “If I win, you take me out for pizza.”
“Oh?” His cheeks flush a little, but he keeps his eyes on the game menu. “I guess I could do that.”
“What do you want if you win?”
“If I win, you take me to the arcades.”
“Deal.”
The next championship is neck and neck. You take the first race, full of determination, but Rei brings it back in the second. The final race is a constant switching of first and second, throwing items at each other. The finish line is in sight when your character slips on a banana peel timed perfectly by Rei, sending you crashing off into the side and three CPUs fly ahead of you. You know you’ve lost then – there’s no item blocks left and there’s no way you can get ahead of them all in time. Rei, however, is about to cross the finish line, so just before he can you yank the controller out of his hands and send his character spinning off into the wall. A CPU goes over the line but that’s the last you see as Rei tackles you off the couch.
You’re trapped between his thighs as he snatches the controller out of your hands and drives over the line in a measly fifth. He glares down at you as you grin.
“Sorry, I probably should’ve mentioned I’m a sore loser.”
He says nothing. You try and sit up but you’re firmly wedged between his legs and there’s no give. “Er, can I get up now?”
He grins, slyly. “I think I’ve changed my mind of what I get if I win.”
“Oh?”
“I think the victor deserves a kiss.”
You feel blood rush to your cheeks at that but you’re keen. “Oh, yeah?”
“Mm.”
“See, I’m not sure if you can just change the rules like that right at the end.”
“You tried to cheat, call it a forfeit.” He sits back, finally allowing you to sit up right.
“Hmm. Well, I guess I did, and we never did discuss what should happen if one of us cheated.” You’re leaning in as you speak, getting closer and closer.
“Are you two still up?!” Kazuki hisses in a theatrical whisper from his bedroom door and you bump heads together in fright.
“Ugh… No, no, just going to bed.” You whisper back to the blonde as Rei gets to his feet, sheepishly rubbing his forehead where the two of you collided.
Kazuki’s door closes back over and you smile at Rei. “Busted.”
“Lucky escape for you.”
“My big brother does always have my back…” You step up on your tiptoes and give him a kiss on the cheek. “Goodnight, Rei.”
“Goodnight,” he smiles shyly, heading to the bathroom. You collapse on the couch and sigh contentedly into a pillow.
--
You wake up early to your phone buzzing with a text. It’s a location – it looks like either a rendezvous point to be taken to the new base, or the base itself but you know you need to get there pretty quick either way. You grab a piece of paper from Miri’s colouring pile and write down a message for Kazuki, thanking him for putting you up for the night. There’s a moment’s hesitation before you write your phone number down on another piece of paper, before sliding it under the bathroom door.
“Sneaking out?” Kazuki’s voice chimes from the staircase. How in the hell did he do that without you noticing?
“No, afraid work beckons. I was leaving a note though, see?” You hold up the piece of paper in evidence.
“Good.” He walks over and pulls you into a hug. “Promise it won’t take another trip to a security guard’s office until we see each other again?”
“Mm-hm,” you nod, staring at the bathroom door behind him. “You’ll get sick of the sight of me.”
--
A few days later, as evening rolls in and Miri’s getting ready for bed, there’s a knock at the door and Rei is apparently keen to answer it. Kazuki doesn’t think much of it at first – maybe it’s a game he pre-ordered or something – but he hears more conversation at the door from Rei than he’s used to over the years of living with him.
You’re standing at the door, smiling as Rei puts his shoes on.
“Back so soon?” Kazuki chuckles.
“Actually, Rei and I are going to play some games at the arcade.” You shrug, trying to spin a casual air on things.
“The arcade?!” Miri manages through a yawn, “Can I come?”
“Not this time, kiddo. It’s your bedtime.” Rei ruffles her hair and she pouts.
“We’ll go when you’re more awake, how about that?” You soothe, crouching down to her level and she nods. Kazuki clocks how Rei’s smiling at you and he puts two and two together in alarm.
“Hey, buddy…” he warns, “you are not going on a date with my sister!”
“Mm, not really your sister…” You tease, turning around to head to the elevator. Rei goes to follow you before he pauses.
“It is a date though.” He smirks and the door slams shut before Kazuki can react.
He feels Miri tug at his leg.
“Papa Kazuki, when do I get a sister?”
--
Please see my Masterlist and Requests Welcome posts if you have an idea in mind too!
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tigerhawkpokemon · 1 year
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Origin: A Team Blackout Fic
Team Blackout forms from a chat room. 
It starts out as a simple discussion forum, five like-minded people who  get along. They just click. But that all changes when one of their own brings up the Gym challenge. 
Deci: Hey guys, have any of you ever tried a Gym run?
Lucky: Nah, met Alder once and he told me I was better off not trying. Just because my starter was a Houndour, Zekrom above
Fatale: I’m in the middle of mine atm, beat Jasmine yesterday
Sunny: Ooh, I’m starting mine tmrw! Hope to see you in the League!
Deci: @Lucky that really sucks, dude. @Deadshot you ever made a Gym run? Thinking of doing one when I get back to Sinnoh
Deadshot: tried once. made it to Lucian. he beat my ass and was a total dick about it. hate that guy
Deci: Yeesh. I’m about to ask Rowan for a Turtwig, hope things go well. @Fatale @Sunny good luck in the Johto league!
Sunny: G’night!
That’s two with motivation. But what about the other three? Well, let’s just say that those challenges didn’t go so well for them.
Fatale: Okay, Claire is OFFICIALLY a grade A bitch
Lucky: Oh no, what happened?
Fatale: Wouldn’t give me the badge after I beat her, claimed that it wasn’t a fair fight. Bitch, I used ONE hyper potion
Deci: THat’s a shitty thing to do
Deci: What Rowan did to me was worse tho
Deadshot: fuck, this oughta be good
Deci: Refused me a Starter cuz I already had Railgun and Scope
Deci: Said there was nothing he could do for me, senile old man
Sunny: OMA! That sucks soooo much! 
Sunny: I’m about to challenge Whitney, wish me luck!!!!!!!!!
Deadshot: luck
Four down, one to go. Ironically, hers is the one that started everything.
Fatale: bitch.mp4
Attached is a video of two young women having a Pokemon battle. The one on the left, a teen with frizzy black curls, has a Pachirisu. The other has a Miltank. Pachirisu strikes with Thunderbolt, breaking the Miltank’s Rollout and knocking it out. The red-haired girl stamps her foot and starts to cry. “Can I have my badge?” The other asks politely. “No way! I would’ve won if you didn’t get lucky! Now get out of my gym!” Hanging her head, the black-haired girl walks out, her Pachirisu chirping angrily.
Deci: Someone needs to teach Whitney a lesson
Fatale: She did the same thing when I beat her, I just took a badge anyway. The girl is a spoiled brat
Deadshot: not like anyone can do anything about it though
Deci: So why don’t we?
Deci: @Waddles lock down the chat.
[Admin]Waddles: Affirmative!
this chat has been moved to a private server.
Lucky: Who’s Waddles?
[Admin]Waddles: I am user Deci’s Porygon2!
Deci: Waddles is the key to all of this. Everyone in this chat has been screwed over by someone, right? So let’s get back at them. Leak their personal info. Get them fired. Something. 
Lucky: Isn’t all of this highly illegal?
Fatale: NOt like the law’s done shit for us. 
Deadshot: i’m in, fuck the elites
Deci: Sunny, what about you?
Sunny: … i’m in.
Deci: Perfect. Now we need a team name.
Lucky: Since I’ve been roped in, how about Team Vindicate?
Deadshot: that sounds like a bad tumblr fanfic
Fatale: I vote Team Blackout, since everyone here has Electric-types. 
Deci: Ooh, I like that. Team Blackout it is.
and there you have it.
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Hi! For the send a number ask game:
10, 19, 24, 43, & 92?
Hey!! Thank you for the ask!! ☀️
10.) Best thing to say in an elevator of strangers?
“Now...before we get started, would anyone like to get out?”
19.) Favorite song to belt out at the top of your lungs when you’re alone?
“Teenagers” by My Chemical Romance. I do this in the car a lot, since this is my last year of being a teenager!
24.) What do you typically wear to formal events?
Currently, my go-to has been this super pretty denim dress which is just so 🤌🏻 if I can say so myself. I pair it with dark leggings and formal boots!
43.) What time do you usually go to bed?
Well, it is currently 11:05pm—the time I usually go to bed. I’m actually under my covers right now with all the lights off, in the classic “fanfic reading” position on my side. My cat is also sleeping in the crook of my stomach. I’ve been naughty though lately, since redownloading TikTok—staying up to 2:00am last night and such. Shan’t do it again tonight! (hopefully)
92.) What’s something you would get arrested for?
Well...can’t say I’d ever see myself getting caught, but I’ve definitely done my fair share of stupid and illegal things...some I won’t blatantly admit to on here, and although I won’t admit to this publicly either, let’s just say I’ve hypothetically done things that include jumping a fence to trespass/break in, but rest assured—it was for a VERY good cause, and in the best interest of a dog. A bit of property damage there too, but ehhh...like I said; best interest of a dog
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katexrenee · 3 years
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I’ve seen a lot of criticism over ACOSF since it was published — unsurprising because people were complaining well before it was out. I’ll be the first to admit that it was not the book I hoped for. The plot was weak and the character development was lacking, and I’ve learned to accept it.
One criticism I cannot get on board with is the complaints that the IC handles Nesta’s substance abuse. Specifically, these criticisms read as entirely opinion based; it’s painfully clear that the “critics” have little to no experience or knowledge on substance abuse. I have a professional understanding of substance abuse and how it relates to mental health, but I’m going to speak from personal experience here because it’s far more relevant.
SO. Let’s get to it then. People want to shit on the IC for how they reacted to Nesta’s drinking. So, so many complaints. Rhys is mean. Feyre is abusing her sister. They “gentrified” her apartment. They made her go to the house of wind. Cassian had no idea how to handle Nesta. Amren was vicious and lashed out. How dare they cut Nesta off like that. The list goes on and on.
Everyone is so caught up on complaining about how SJM dropped the ball with the character dynamics that they’ve missed the key point:
This is what substance abuse looks like. Their reactions, feelings and behaviors are incredibly realistic.
I prefer to keep my personal experiences to myself, but I’ll share a bit. I grew up with a parental figure who was an alcoholic (and recreational drug user). I watched one of my best friends turn into a drug addict as teen/young adult — there was a time where I saw her and didn’t even recognize her because of how sickly she looked. I slowly lost touch with other friends as they took a nose dive into addiction. My other friend’s (now ex) husband was also addicted to drugs. I also have friends who struggle with mental health issues and self-medicate with drugs/alcohol because they just can’t cope.
I’ve literally seen it all. Done the “interventions”. Sat through family weekend at rehab. Been stolen from. Found someone unconscious in their car (they survived). Found one of their toddlers wandering down the street unattended while my friends husband was high (DISCLOSURE: the little one was safe and the parent now cannot have visits unless they are supervised). I’ve enabled some of them financially and emotionally. I came to terms with the deaths via overdose years after I lost touch with friends. This is just the mild stuff, I won’t even touch on some of the behaviors that ensued from months/years of drugs and alcohol.
Why am I saying this, and how does it relate to ACOSF?
The emotional toll substance abuse takes on individuals and their loved ones is unbelievable. There is heartbreak, fighting, enabling, co-dependence, financial burdens, and emotionally charged interactions like you wouldn’t believe. What SJM portrayed with the IC and Nesta was mild to moderate dysfunction. It was not abuse.
Fighting over how to handle a loved one who abused alcohol and has risky behaviors as a result?? - this is a normal reaction to stress. This is not an example of controlling behavior.
Refusing to continue making rent payments? This is an excellent example of what it looks like to stop enabling someone. It was not an example of abuse.
Relocating someone who is actively using and lives in their own filth? This is a way of promoting safety and reducing the chance of future relapses. This is not an example of controlling behavior and it is not abusive.
Ganging up on someone and “forcing” them to temporarily relocate to a secure living environment? This is also known as an intervention. There is no equivalent to rehab/inpatient psych in ACOTAR, so sending Nesta to the house and having her work with the priestesses is an acceptable alternative (it’s fantasy after all).
Making Nesta choose between Illyria or living at the house to train/work? This sounds a lot like the typical deal of “You’re drug use is out of control and *insert unsafe or illegal behaviors* cannot be ignored. If you agree to seek treatment, you will not be involuntarily committed/incarcerated”. It’s a depressing reality.
Telling a loved one to shape up or that they will be forced to leave (aka go to the mortal realm)? Hitting rock bottom is heartbreaking for everyone. It’s hard to stop enabling and to stop being enabled. Loved ones can’t force you to change, and you can’t force them to watch you destroy yourself. This is setting boundaries and it is not abusive.
You’ve been sober for months now but everyone still treats you like you’re a train wreck? It probably took a long time for loved ones to lose trust, and it takes a long time to earn it back. It’s sad and frustrating to everyone involved; developing trust and redefining boundaries is hard. This is not an example of being cruel and uncaring.
Substance abuse is scary, and it takes an incredible toll on everyone involved. Consider this: you’re driving to a loved one’s home because you’re scared that you haven’t heard from them. It’s terrifying to wonder if this will finally be the day you find them dead in their living room. I truly believe the majority of the IC acted with good intentions, and I think ALL of their interactions and behaviors were accurate depictions.
I hope this was enlightening and helpful to anyone in the fandom who do not have experience with substance abuse. Please recognize that it is a blessing if you could not relate to or understand portion of acofs.
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weighty-ghosts · 3 years
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‘Hearts of Palms’ (wolfstar)
Hearts of Palms, by weightyghosts
“A first kiss story of pining, shameless flirtations, a heart to heart under the stars, and palm reading.”
Rating: teen
Word count: 4325
Pairing: Remus x Sirius
Published: November 9, 2020
Warnings: swearing, snogging, real talk about feelings
https://archiveofourown.org/works/27379321
    Sirius Black walked out onto the deck of the Astronomy tower, gently shutting the heavy wooden door behind him. He paused to look around for a moment, breathing in the earthy scent of early Spring, before he spotted his reason for coming up here.
He couldn’t help the smile pulling at his lips at the sight of Remus Lupin. Remus was leaning against the inner wall of the tower with a plaid blanket underneath him, focused and scribbling on a scroll of parchment, a textbook in his lap to keep the paper flat.
“Hey, Rem,” Sirius called out loudly as he walked over.
Remus jumped, then cursed under his breath when he saw the big ink splotch he’d just created on his star chart.
“Shit, I thought you heard me,” Sirius said apologetically as he got closer.
“No, I didn’t,” Remus replied, smiling up at him, “You’re as quiet as Padfoot when you want to be.” He took out his wand to clear up the ink and asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Keeping you company, of course,” he shrugged nonchalantly and sat down next to Remus. Remus had permission to be up here after hours to finish his Astronomy project, which the rest of the class had done, unfortunately, on the evening of the full moon a few nights ago. Sirius technically only had an hour until he was supposed to be back at Gryffindor tower, but it’s not like he hadn’t broken one or two school rules before, and he happened to be with a Prefect who tended to look the other way when his friends got into trouble. Remus didn’t seem surprised or bothered by his presence.
Sirius stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankle as he looked out at the breathtaking landscape in front of them. The sky was painted in brilliant shades of orange and pink from the sun, which was just setting over the grassy hills. The ghost of an incomplete moon loomed above the impressive castle turrets.
Remus was watching Sirius. The cool evening breeze brushed his inky black hair away from his face, and there was a contented smile on his mouth that Remus found very distracting. He was just wishing that Sirius would look at him the way he looked at the beautiful sunset- when he did.
“What?” Sirius asked with a quirked eyebrow, his voice soft but amused.
“Oh, er,” Remus fumbled, “It’s just not often I see you admire the finer things in life.” He smiled quickly, gesturing at the sunset, then looked away, embarrassed at being caught doing his own admiring.
Sirius tilted his head to the side as a cheeky grin spread across his face.
“You see me look in the mirror every day, Moony.”
Remus snorted and rolled his eyes.
“Prat,” he said, smacking his arrogant friend’s arm.
“You know, Remus,” Sirius continued in a haughty voice, “I’ve been appreciating the finer things in life since the first time I saw my reflection in something shiny.”
“Really, Padfoot?” Remus put his ink and parchment down beside him and tried very hard to keep a straight face, “What, when you were a baby?”
“Yes,” Sirius laughed as Remus shoved him again, now attempting to tackle him onto the ground, “I distinctly remember looking in the mirror and thinking, ‘Who is that stunning baby staring back at me with those dreamy-’  Ow!”
Remus had elbowed him in the side.
Struggling to level a threatening glare at the werewolf, he threw his force into flipping Remus over on his back.
“Ha,” he exclaimed triumphantly as he looked down at his friend, successfully pinned beneath him.
“Get off!” Remus cried half-heartedly, trying to squirm out from under Sirius, but the boy on top had clamped down on Remus’ arms above his head.
“Nope, I’m forcing you to appreciate this finer thing, Moonshine,” said Sirius, wiggling his eyebrows.
Remus rolled his eyes again and stilled.
“Yes, yes,” he said, voice dripping with sarcasm, “you’re the most gorgeous creature to ever grace the halls of Hogwarts and we’re all lucky to have the pleasure of looking at your stunning form every day.”
Sirius gave a fake flattered gasp.
“Such a charmer, Mr. Lupin,” he said, batting his lashes provocatively, “and having you in this compromising position… One could almost swoon.”
“Who says I’m the one in a compromising position, Mr. Black?”
Sirius blinked at the wicked gleam in Remus’ eye, and Remus took advantage of his hesitation, rolling over with lightning speed and surprising strength so that he was now on top of Sirius.
“You were saying?” Remus asked innocently.
“Definitely swooning,” Sirius beamed.
Remus knew he was joking, but something in Sirius’ eyes made his stomach contract in a not-entirely-unpleasant way.
They were definitely looking at each other for too long now.
“I have to work on my star chart,” Remus said, a little embarrassed at how unsteady his voice sounded.
“And is my ‘stunning form’ distracting you from doing that?” Sirius asked in a low voice, with a wink.
“Right, I’m fairly certain I’m immune to your form after seeing too bloody much of it over the years,” Remus teased as he climbed off Sirius and moved over to prop himself up against the wall again.
“So you’ve been looking, Moony?”
“Only in my peripherals, Padfoot,” Remus replied, studiously avoiding Sirius’ eye as he picked up his book and parchment, placing them back in his lap, “You walk around the dorm starkers most of the time.”
“I like to air-dry my bits,” Sirius stated, as if that were a normal thing to do, and sat up facing Remus, leaning back on his hands. “You’re welcome to look, you know,” he added with a smile that should be illegal.
Remus scowled at Sirius, but couldn’t hide the rosy warmth that had spread along his cheeks.
“You’re quite cute when you blush, Moonshine.”
“I am not-”
Sirius’ smile grew even wider and Remus knew it was because his blush had deepened. Remus looked back down at his parchment and made a point of carefully flattening out the creases.
“It’s generally not considered polite to point that out to someone. It only ever makes them blush more,” he said in a measured tone.
“Yes, and as I’ve just told you how very cute you look when you blush, why should I refrain from making that happen?”  
Remus glared at him through narrowed eyes. The dazzling smile on the other boy’s face did nothing to help his pink cheeks.
“I need to focus,” he said, looking back down at his paper and dipping the tip of his quill in the pot of ink.
“Stars aren’t out yet, Moons.”
“I can see that, Pads,” Remus replied with the patient air of someone speaking to a child, “But I have to finish setting up the chart so that all I have to do, when the stars do come out, is plot them.”
“Okay then,” Sirius said pleasantly, taking off his jacket and bunching it under his head as he lay down next to Remus.
“What are you doing?”
“Settling in,” Sirius replied, finding a comfortable position, “I told you, I’m here to keep you company.”
“You don’t need to…”
“I know I don’t need to, Remus."
Remus eyed him for a moment, biting the inside of his cheek, and then went back to work.
After a few minutes of pretending to doze, Sirius turned his head minutely and looked at Remus through his lashes. He sighed inwardly at his oblivious, beautiful friend.
The sunset gleamed off the werewolf’s scars, giving them an other-worldly shimmer, and his lips parted as his focus settled on his work. His shoulders were more rigid than usual, probably still stiff from his recent furry transformation, but he looked content, apparently enjoying what he was concentrated on.
Sirius’ eyes flicked down to Remus’ hands. He loved watching those long fingers, delicate but strong. His mind wandered against his will to images of what those hands might be capable of, and where exactly he wanted them, especially all alone up here in the Astronomy tower. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, pushing those forbidden thoughts away.
Sirius had been shamelessly flirting with Remus since the start of term, which, granted he did with many people, but he recently realized how much he actually enjoyed making Remus blush, or the way Remus would shake his head and try not to smile at his antics, or even the way Remus would get exasperated with him and give a long drawn-out sigh. He realized he looked forward to those moments more than Quidditch or even pranking the Slytherins. Which was why he’d come up here tonight; just to be around Remus and try to make him laugh or roll his eyes.
The problem was that he didn’t know how Remus felt. But sometimes...Remus would look away from him too quickly, or not quickly enough, and he could swear there was something between them. Something intense and exciting.
Eventually, Sirius found the dimming sky and melodic scratching of the quill soothing, and he drifted off to sleep.
*
Sirius opened his eyes to the clicking sound of a telescope being collapsed, and was briefly disoriented by the complete darkness surrounding him. He blinked rapidly and looked down at the plaid blanket covering him.
“You looked cold,” Remus explained in a kind voice, as he packed his homework and things into his bag.
“Oh, thanks, Rem,” Sirius replied, sitting up and stretching his arms over his head, “Got your chart finished?”
“Yup,” Remus replied, “Sirius is particularly bright tonight,” he nodded at the glowing Dog Star above them.
The star’s namesake chuckled, and looked up at the sky, clearer now that his eyes had adjusted, and gloriously speckled with millions of stars and planets.
“Do you want to head back to the dorm now?” Remus asked, “Or...do you feel like staying up here for a bit?”
Sirius was surprised at the masked vulnerability in his voice, like he was nervous Sirius wouldn’t want to stay here with him. Which was ridiculous because he would love nothing more than to lay under the stars with Remus.
“I’m happy to stay here,” he said, his lips pulling into a warm smile.
Remus smiled back and rolled his coat into a pillow, placing it under his head as he lay down beside Sirius.
Sirius’ eyes lingered on his friend for a moment, trailing over his face and long, lean body, before he flung the blanket out so it covered both of them and lay down again. He tried to keep a few inches between their bodies, but couldn’t help the length of their arms pressing together.
“Would you ever go up there?” Remus queried after a quiet minute, “In space?”
“...Are you daft?” Sirius asked incredulously. Brooms were one thing, floating up to the heavens was another.
“The muggles do it,” Remus said, chortling, “Don’t you remember learning about rocket ships?”
“Aren’t those the ones that go under water?”
“No, you twat, those are called submarines.”
“Oh. Yeah, that makes more sense.”
Remus shook his head and they both laughed.
“Do you want to go into space?” Sirius asked.
“I don’t know…” Remus said, turning his gaze back to the stars, “No, probably not. It seems cold, and dark. And very lonely.”
Sirius watched Remus as he said that. They were so close to each other he could see the night sky reflected in the other boy’s hazel eyes. He felt sad all of a sudden and looked away.
“I don’t need to go up into the sky for that.”
Remus frowned at the somber and surprisingly blunt statement.
“Are you lonely, Padfoot?” He asked softly.
Sirius was about to brush off the question with a joke about how there were plenty of people at this school who could take care of his loneliness, but when he looked into Remus’ eyes and saw the concern and tenderness there, he found himself speaking truthfully.
“Sometimes,” he answered in a low voice, “I mean, I’m not alone. But sometimes... I don’t know, it’s stupid.”
“I’m sure it’s not.”
He inhaled deeply. “Sometimes…I feel like I’m on the outside looking in, you know? Like everyone is far away, up there,” he gestured to the sky, “and I’m down here, looking at them through a telescope. And I’m so- so different from them. I’ll never escape my fucked up childhood, I’ll never be normal.” He hesitated when Remus said nothing. “Do you ever feel that way?”
“All the time,” Remus said with a kind smile, which Sirius returned. “But I usually feel like I’m floating above everyone,” he continued, “looking down at them from afar… Watching them live normal lives that aren’t controlled by the moon, and I’m worried I’m going to drift further and further away. Like a loose balloon.”
Sirius couldn’t resist saying, “I knew you always thought you were above us.”
Remus poked him in the side.
“That’s not what I meant!”
“I know, I know,” he chuckled.
They looked at each other for a while, both pondering the other’s words.
“How do you think people stop feeling like that?” Remus asked, his words just above a whisper.
“I don’t know,” Sirius replied honestly, “but if I find a way to tether you to the ground, I’ll let you know.”
Remus breathed a soft laugh.
“Okay.”
He looked down and noticed Sirius’ hands resting on his chest. He had no idea what came over him, but he found himself reaching out and taking the closer hand in his.
He held it above them, turning it over slowly, feeling the smooth skin and soft hairs on the back. He traced a couple of healed-over scars that you couldn’t really see anymore.
Sirius watched Remus intently. He was surprised at first at the intimate contact, but found himself enjoying the feel of Remus’ fingers.
His warm, strong fingers.
Sirius’ pulse quickened.
Remus observed the palm he was holding, the pad of his index finger moving over rough calluses and dipping into valleys.
“Do you remember anything we learned about palm reading?” Sirius asked in a thick voice, then swallowed loudly to clear it.
“Yes,” replied Remus with a wry smile, “but it’s too dark for me to make out the lines and I don’t want to misinterpret an untimely death or seventeen children or something.”
“Seventeen children?” he scoffed, “Not likely.”
“No children for you? What, you have some growing up yourself to do first?”
“Something like that,” Sirius said, gently elbowing Remus in the ribs. “Do you want kids one day?”
Remus tensed and Sirius realized what he’d just asked.
“Fuck- I’m sorry, Rem. I know how you feel about that. I forgot- I mean, I wasn’t thinking,” he stumbled over his words, “I just meant if you ever wanted to adopt or something, but that’s- that’s not much better. Fuck.”
He wanted to kick himself. He knew Remus had a paralyzing fear of passing on his lycanthropy, and that adoption for werewolves was out of the question due to asinine Ministry regulations.
“It’s alright,” Remus said quietly, “I haven’t thought about it much.”
Which they both knew was a lie.
“Sorry, Moony,” Sirius repeated, gently squeezing the fingers still holding his hand.
Remus’ face smoothed out and he went back to his task, taking the time to feel every bone and divot of Sirius’ knuckles.
Sirius revelled in the touch. Little zaps of pleasure rushed up his arm when Remus’s fingers travelled down and brushed over the sensitive skin on his inner wrist.
After a moment, Sirius felt comfortable to continue talking, also wanting to distract his friend from the goosebumps quickly raising on his arm.
“You know, if James ever convinces Evans to have a kid, you could always nick it.”
Remus snorted.
“You could! It would almost be a public service. Can you imagine Prongs as somebody’s dad?”
They both chuckled at the image, but only half-heartedly, deep down knowing James would make a great father one day.
“Don’t worry, I would help you raise it,” Sirius added.
“Would you, now?” Remus asked with raised eyebrows.
“Yeah. I’ll be the cool, hilarious godfather and you can handle all the rubbish baby stuff.”
Remus abruptly flipped Sirius’ hand over and squinted his eyes, pretending to re-examine his palm.
“Hmm, actually I can see better now,” he said mockingly, “it says in huge flashing letters to keep Sirius Black away from all children ever- and probably puppies and kittens just to be safe.”
“Git,” Sirius laughed, reaching over with his other hand and poking Remus in the side. Remus jerked away to keep from being tickled, but Sirius was too quick, fingers digging into Remus’ ribs, making him squirm and giggle.
They stilled after a minute, a little breathless, and saw that they were still holding hands.
Remus hadn’t realized how close they were laying, but he was now acutely aware of where their thighs touched. He glanced up at Sirius and blinked, taken aback by how dark his grey eyes were, something stirring behind them. He quickly looked back down at their entwined fingers to escape the intensity.
Sirius knew he was in one of those electric moments with Remus, and it was up to him to see where it could go from here.
He twisted his wrist so he was the one holding Remus’ hand and brought it closer to his face, tracing the channels along his palm. He meant to tease Remus, make a prediction about meeting someone tall, dark, and handsome, but he was having a hard time concentrating while holding his friend’s hand so intimately.
“I predict a bright future for you, Mr. Moony,” he managed to say, his voice mostly stable.
“Oh? And what do you predict will make my future bright, Mr. Padfoot?”
“Loads of chocolate, to start-”
Remus laughed heartily, and the sound warmed Sirius’ skin as his breath blew the hair away from Sirius’ forehead.
“And tea, too much tea, some would say,” he snickered as Remus frowned at him, “Lots of laughter, of course... Happiness… Love,” his voice softened, “And me.”
“Y-You?”
“Of course. My presence makes everyone’s lives brighter.”
“Oh, right.”
“Were you not expecting my presence in your future?”
“No, no, I was.”
“Good. Plan on it, Moony,” Sirius replied with a nod.
“I’ll start preparing myself for the longevity of our friendship now,” Remus said in a serious tone, “Might take me a while to come to terms with it.”
“Oi! I don’t have to be around forever if you’re not going to appreciate me!”
“No? You’re just going to up and leave me one day?”
“Nah, you’d miss me too much. I could never do that to you.”
“Yes, how would I ever survive without a pompous, needy megalomaniac in my life?” Remus said sarcastically.
“Shut it, wolf boy. You love me.”
“Mangy mutt.”
“Hairy beast.”
They both cracked up, and Sirius was sure the dopey grin on his face looked idiotic, but he couldn’t help it. He felt like an idiot around Remus all the time lately. He didn’t know where this feeling had come from or when it started, but he knew he never wanted it to stop.
“You know I’d never leave you, right, Moony?” Sirius asked suddenly, holding on to Remus’ hand a little tighter.
“What?”
“I’ll always be there for you,” he said softly, smiling at Remus’ confused face, “Says so on your palm.”
Remus cocked an eyebrow.
“Does it?”
“Yep. Says you’re stuck with your devilishly handsome friend with the flawless body and flowing locks of raven hair.”
“So, James.”
“His hair isn’t flowing!” Sirius cried indignantly, “More like a raven’s nest, the unkempt wanker!”
“True. Must be talking about you, then.”
“As if you have any other devilishly handsome friends.”
“Pete’s alright.”
Sirius glared at him so fiercely, he had to concede.
“But you’re the handsomest, Sirius.”
“Thank you, Remus. Your palm also says you should compliment me more,” he added, pointing to an invisible spot on Remus’ hand.
“Seems to say a lot that only you can read, doesn’t it?”
“Mm,” Sirius agreed, “Also says you should bring me breakfast on Sundays.”
“Ah. Anything else?”
“Yes. Says we need to come up to the Astronomy tower alone more often.”
Remus bit his lip as he felt a blush creep up his neck. Sirius was grinning at him but there was something vulnerable about his grey eyes, and it made Remus feel equally eager and uneasy. They seemed to be in some world of their own where nothing and no one else existed for the moment, and time had stopped just so they could be here together right now.
Sirius hesitantly reached up to brush his thumb along Remus’ reddened cheek. He really did look quite cute.
Heart pounding, he took a chance and leaned in fractionally.
Remus’ eyes widened slightly in alarm and Sirius froze, worried he’d made a mistake.
But after a moment, Remus’ gaze slid down to his mouth, to the pair of lips that were now much closer to his. Sirius felt emboldened and leaned in once more to place those lips lightly on Remus’.
He drew back and Remus slowly exhaled a shaky breath.
Sirius was trying to read his face; he looked a little surprised, and a little confused, but, mostly, Sirius saw desire stirring in the werewolf’s eyes. A hot wave of his own desire hit him, like he had stepped outside from a cool room into the blaze of summer.
He closed the distance between them and pressed their lips together again. This time Remus responded, turning on his side towards Sirius so their entire bodies were touching, and breaking the hands they had still been holding to wrap an arm around Sirius’ back. Sirius smiled into Remus’ mouth, and brought one hand up to cradle his face as he tilted his own head to deepen the kiss.
Remus made a pleasant, rumbling noise deep in his chest as their tongues met, and Sirius’ mind went blank with the sounds, touches, and tastes of Remus.
Their skin felt hot and tingly wherever it connected, and Remus wanted more. As if hearing his thoughts, Sirius rolled on top of him.
Remus gasped as their hips collided and he broke the kiss, turning his head slightly, embarrassed that Sirius could now feel his growing reaction to the contact and wet kiss.
Sirius braced his weight off of Remus, concerned that he’d hurt his friend somehow. Seeing the scarlet blush on Remus’ cheeks, he smiled and bent down to place feather-light kisses on the warmed skin on either side of his nose.
“Who knew palm reading was such a turn on, eh, Moony?” Sirius teased, a little out of breath.
Remus laughed but it caught in his throat as Sirius pressed his lips to the sensitive spot on his neck beneath his ear. He bit his lip and gripped the tops of Sirius’ arms as Sirius ran his lips up his neck and along his jaw, his fingers following the same path.
Sirius leaned back to look into Remus’ eyes once more, and moved his thumb over Remus’ bottom lip to release it from his teeth.
“Don’t,” he whispered in a husky voice, “I’m quite fond of that lip now.”
Remus automatically bit his lip again to keep from moaning, but let go immediately at the scowl he got from the boy above him.
Sirius grinned and planted a quick kiss on the abused flesh, then sighed, figuring he shouldn’t push his luck with taking things any further.
He sat up, pulling Remus with him. He was about to stand when the light from the castle caught Remus’ face and he swallowed a groan. His lips were red and swollen, wet from Sirius’ saliva, his hair a little tousled. It was quite possibly the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.
“What?” Remus asked when he saw him staring, his ears turning pink.
“Do you know how bloody sexy you are?”
Remus’ eyebrows shot up in shock, but the way Sirius was looking at him sent hot blood rushing from his head to…other places, and he felt a little dizzy.
“Er, no?”
Sirius exhaled frustratingly and he yanked Remus to his feet. He leaned against the wall to steady himself as Sirius picked up Remus’ bag, throwing the strap over his shoulder, and grabbed the blanket.
Remus tried to wrap his head around the fact that he’d just snogged his best mate. His best mate who he lived with. His best mate who he’d been pining after for a year and a half.
“Was this okay?” he suddenly asked.
Sirius straightened up and met Remus’ eyes.
“Was what okay?”
“This...” Remus gestured embarrassingly between the two of them.
“You have to ask, Moony?” Sirius cocked his head to the side.
Remus didn’t answer and Sirius resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he came up close to Remus. “You know I kissed you right?”
“Yeah, but I kissed you back.”
“Well, I held your hand.”
“I held your hand first!”
“But I lay down next to you, Moony.”
“I lay down first, Padfoot!”
“I came up here-“
Remus grabbed Sirius’ face with both hands and kissed him hard, thrusting his tongue into his mouth.
He pulled back after a few glorious seconds, to look into the flustered face of his friend. Sirius blinked a few times and tried to speak, but his mind seemed to have gone curiously blank again.
“Hmm,” Remus smiled wickedly at him, “Have I finally found a way to shut Sirius Black up? I’ll have to remember that.”
He pressed his lips to him one more time, then interlocked their fingers and walked towards the staircase leading back inside the castle, trailing a thoroughly dazed Sirius behind him.
*
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pizzaboat · 3 years
Text
My brain came up with the pre-emtive theory that the reason–besides plot reasons–that the golden gaurd has an owl mask, besides him potentially being a clawthorne, is to possibly tie a parallel to Eda.
Okay so to list off the parallels, they're surface level so far, but they feel intentional, he has the owl mask, he's a genius teen prodigy, his brand of unique while definitely his own thing is kinda giving off eda vibes. He's also lazy much like eda as shown in the drawing of him with kikimora.
And let's not forget the "bye!!!" Thing that was done by both of them in the same episode, and early last season by eda too, proving this isn't some coincidence, it's an intentional detail that the writers want you to pay attention to.
Now, he's also different to eda. Morally, he's..Not great. He's a kid who has no problem giving gruesome deaths to people while completely blaze. He works for the emperor, and is from what I can see so far, loyal to him.
Because the golden gaurd is only sixteen, I'm putting this down to brainwashing. He's clearly desensitised to how fucked up the coven is.
Because we don't know much else about him, including his actual name. The rest of this is mere guessing and the result of too much time on my hands.
So anyway, the reason I think he's going to be a contrast to young Eda and not old Eda is that the current Eda has alot of history behind her at this point, and the message I'm trying to focus on is potential.
Young Eda was a genius teen prodigy. There's no disputing that, she was gonna graduate at sixteen(the same age as goldy bio leading the emperors coven now) this means she would've skipped two years at the max and would've been shooting straight into the emperors coven where with her brains, raw power and skill would've probably reached goldie Bois position fairly fast.
Things didn't turn out like that though for a number of reasons. One. Eda was cursed, limiting her magic use and leaving her ostracised. And two, she hates authority and denounced the coven publically at around his age. Something happend to sixteen year-old Eda for all of that brain washing that all the other kids her age were facing to be pealed back enough for her to take a leap of faith and not join a coven.
I think this might have something to do with the illegal history book she seems to own and the portal which she did have at that point as shown in one of the trailers.. she got exposed to the truth, if even just a sliver and could never turn back.
Eda's life took a drastic veer away from her peers and her own sister.
Now, about gold boi, he seems to live in the castle from what Dana's drawing implies, he orders Kikimora around so he can slack off(showing he also doesn't take the job to seriously like a hypothetical young Eda wouldn't have either). The emperor gives him special treatment from what we heard from Lilith and that is proof. If he's leading the coven, than its safe to assume that Lilith would've been killed for even daring to pull that kinda stunt.
I'm gonna assume. And this is only an assumption since I've only seen the first two episodes, but I think he was actually raised in the castle for this very job. Or for something atleast. Maybe a successor.
Natural talent snatched up at a young age and heavily brainwashed, far more than the other kids his age, (because he would be that close to the emperor/there also the chance he knows the titan thing is bulshit and is loyal to belos out of familiarity.)
Again. Speculation and guessing.
But what I'm trying to say is that young Eda and him are so similar in their feel, but there's this cold devide that separates them.
Young Eda was and is a violent, mischievous trouble maker, but I doubt she's a killer. Eda only lashed out to kill in ybos and agoaw because of extreme emotional distress she was in. Call it temporary insanity after her world had crumbled down around her.
Goldie kills because its his job. And while he does subtly warn Luz and eda to stay out of trouble for their own good (I think this implies there's a bit of good in him under all that) it's hidden under arrogance(another trait both versions of Eda have) making Luz react negatively to him.
He's also clearly terrifying to grown witchs that have to deal with him (because he sends the emperors threats and warnings and could probably fuck their shit up in a second.) Call him a messenger of death and other bad news.
I'm just gonna remind you again he's sixteen.
He's obviously his own character but he already feels like a reminder that if Eda had been born under different circumstances, if something happend along the way or if she was snatched up by the emperor like I'm guessing goldie was we'd have a more morally iffy Eda if that's even possible.
She wouldn't have had her sister to look out for and be looked after by. She wouldn't have met these mysterious friends of hers that I think played a crucial role in what she became. Idk.
This is an unstructured mess and I hope you're as confused as I am. I've suffered through this for a week. But its your problems now.
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anarcho-smarmyism · 3 years
Note
How would prison abolition deal with murderers, serial killers, paedophiles, torturers,kkk members,neo-Nazis and terrorists? Some people are a legit danger and cannot be allowed to roam society.
So I didn’t answer this at the time, because the anon who sent it is almost definitely the racist troll sending me shit I’m not going to publish (so like uhhh bear that in mind lmao), but I’ve blocked them now and it’s been a few days, so hopefully they’ve fucked off by now. Plus, I’ve been thinking about this question a LOT since before I received it. It’s a question that I think most people have about the concept of prison abolition and reparative justice, and not everyone with these concerns is asking in bad faith. Besides which, with the recent attempted coup and the way it looks like people who participated are actually going to face legal consequences for it (which alone was somewhat surprising to me tbh), I’ve been seeing a lot of leftists discoursing over whether it’s morally okay and intellectually consistent to be happy about cops beating up, killing, and arresting KKK members and Neo-Nazis, so it is now actually topical! Under the cut due to long response~
So the first thing I want to point out, is that literally every single one of the groups of “legit dangers who cannot be allowed to roam society”, are already out there right now. In our current “justice” system, it’s common knowledge that monsters often get off on a technicality, or because they just have the money to throw lawyer after lawyer at the charges, or because they outright bribe someone, or countless other ways to get around the law. You can look on my own literal tumblr blog and watch me argue with grown ass adults who will bold faced admit to consuming child porn with half-assed excuses, and you’ll find more open pedophiles on sites like twitter, reddit, or 4chan, or porn sites where “teen” is usually one of the most popular categories. Besides which, have you ever looked at the average sentences for convicted rapists, wife beaters, or pedophiles, as compared with the sentences for getting caught selling drugs? In middle school I had to walk a mile or two to get to school through a neighborhood we’d been warned had a convicted pedophile in it, who had just been released after less than 15 years. In that same city, I heard a story about a woman shooting and killing her rapist, and prosecutors were discussing giving her the death penalty for it (she was bragging and laughing about it on video, it was definitely premeditated, but still). Have you ever looked at the statistics of how many rapists and abusers aren’t reported, or if they are reported aren’t prosecuted, or if they are are prosecuted with a slap on the wrist (remember Brock Turner????) Also I notice how you didn’t even mention domestic abusers or rapists in your list of people who need to be locked up lolololol shows where your priorities vis a vis “public safety are I’m sorry, but the system just does not work the way you think it does, the we are taught it does.
People who make this argument always act like the systems we have now are efficient and nigh on flawless when it comes to “not letting dangerous people roam society”, but it isn’t and it can’t be and it never will be. That very fact ought to be enough to shake your faith in the idea that society will become a nonstop Purge of indiscriminate violence if everyone who’s committed a sufficiently despicable act of violence isn’t locked up for the rest of their lives -but you might say, “okay, but those are flukes, the system still works because most of the people who are “a danger to society” are usually locked up.” I’m not completely sold that that’s even true (have you ever heard of the opportunities cops had to bring in serial killers and murderers, who just didn’t care enough to try? Jeffrey Dahmer is a good example of this), but I’ll assume it is to move on to my next point.
Even if we assumed that the system as we have it, worked flawlessly as designed, that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of the categories mentioned here are people that are actively running the very systems that this rhetoric is defending. It’s well-documented that American white supremacists of various stripes have infiltrated law enforcement and the military for the express purpose of not just “roaming free”, but getting to exert the power of the State over people of color. Cops and soldiers kill people all the time, and not only are they not penalized, they’re celebrated for it. Agents of the State fucking torture people all the time, and I don’t just mean Guantanamo Bay or war crimes by soldiers; cops have been caught on camera spraying protesters with pepper spray and beating them once they’ve already been handcuffed or while they’re chained to trees or whatever -not because they think they “need” to, because they want to, and they know they’ll get away with it. Cops also systematically torture people in prison with solitary confinement. Heads of state drop bombs on civilians for “politically motivated reasons”, they do all kinds of shit that would be called “terrorism” if anybody but a State did it; and people might disapprove, but they don’t (generally) claim that the politicians and generals who made that call are “a danger to society” that need to get life in prison. If you genuinely believe that whether these acts of violence are “legal” or not changes whether they’re okay, or that a person who engages in illegal violence is “dangerous” but people who engage in legal violence aren’t... I’m honestly not even going to try to refute that here lol, prison abolition is level 5 shit and you’re at level -1, study how authoritarianism in general works before trying to understand prison abolition (not trying to be a dick here, it’s what i would tell my younger self when I believed the same thing). 
It simply does not hold up to rational scrutiny to believe that society will collapse into an orgy of violence and mayhem if we abolish prison (or that we’ll have to resort to medieval punishments instead??? lol funny take i remember from some racist troll or other over the years), when those dangers are already present (and in some cases widely celebrated as “heroes” and given the power to indiscriminately brutalize “acceptable targets” with the State’s monopoly on violence) under the current system.
The next thing people need to understand is that contrary to popular belief and despite how counterintuitive it sounds, even the brutality of our current prison system is not an effective deterrent to crime (linked a Guardian article that looks like it has some good info on this, but I recommend a book called Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice by Adam Benforado for more information). Let me say that again: the threat of prison has been empirically shown to be INEFFECTIVE as a deterrent to crime. Do you really think that a serial killer or someone who wants to blow up a building full of people is going to be more likely to follow the law for fear of prison, than regular people doing regular people crimes like selling drugs or getting into drunk fights that go too far? 
I don’t think anyone is actually willing to argue that prison “rehabilitates” anyone, or does anything besides make regular criminals into angrier, more antisocial, more desperate criminals with more criminal connections and less options for any kind of a legitimate living, so I’m just going to point out that having such a large prison population arguably creates more people who have shitty lives of poverty and are surrounded by people who are in and out of prison. It’s not like that “makes” anybody into a serial killer, but I feel like you’d have to willfully ignorant to act like it’s not a factor in increasing violent crime in affected community.
So, I’ve so far argued that prison is an ineffective solution to the problems it claims to exist in order to solve, and that in many cases, it actually makes the problems that lead to these sorts of dangerous people (”regular” murderers and the radicalization of Neo-Nazis and KKK members in particular, I think) becoming dangerous, or at least more dangerous, in the first place. What I haven’t done, is talk about what I believe is the real core of the issue when it comes to prison abolition: nobody wants to fucking peacefully rehabilitate these people. I am arguing for a system that would handle these people basically as gently as possible, with the goal of releasing them back into society eventually, and I still believe these things mostly intellectually, not emotionally. I don’t want the men who sexually assaulted me and/or my loved ones to get off scot free (they did, of course, but that’s beside the point), much less serial killers or Nazis, and I’m not about to get on my high horse about wanting revenge on people who’ve committed these kinds of atrocities. The reason I’m a prison abolitionist in spite of these feelings is that I do not believe the desire for revenge, for punishment for punishment’s own sake, is an impulse we should indulge when creating social and political infrastructures that have ultimate power over millions of lives. In the words of someone talking about abolishing the death penalty, the question isn’t “do they deserve to die”, the question is “do we deserve to kill”; and here, the question is not “does anyone deserve to be imprisoned in this system”, the question is “do we deserve to brutalize people in this way for virtually zero practical benefits to our society”. What any person “deserves” is a subjective moral and philosophical question, one that no conceivable human justice system could ever actually answer. We as a society need to build alternatives to prison (and police!) that can actually address these problems, actually prevent the conditions that create and enable monsters, and actually rehabilitate (to whatever extent that is possible) criminals -even the ones we, personally, despise. Any long-term incarceration that may end up being 100% required should be designed to reduce the suffering of the person in it, no matter how despicable of a person they are. Trying to solve “the problem of evil” instead of trying to create a more functional and just society is a fool’s errand that can only lead to more evil existing, in the end.
At the end of the day, the “irredeemable” people you listed off as justifications for the continuing existence of prison, are only a tiny fraction of the people in prison, even the ones with life sentences. A full understanding of the horror and oppression the prison industrial complex enacts on the people in it and their communities (and how the system is designed to make a profit off of human suffering and death) is something you’ll have to read some actual books about in order to acquire. However, I don’t think it’s controversial to say that any horror we as a society deem “acceptable” to do to the worst of the worst, will also be done to regular criminals, as well as to innocent people who are wrongly imprisoned. Any brutality you design with a serial killer in mind WILL eventually be a punishment for a petty thief or drug dealer or sex worker, or a person who didn’t commit the crime they were incarcerated for. Is it really worth it? Is it really, really worth all the misery and oppression prison causes, to satiate our sense of justice? I don’t believe that it is. I believe that we have a responsibility both to the incarcerated and to their communities to base our policies and institutions on actually solving these societal problems however we can, and leaving our “eye for an eye” mentality in the dark ages where it belongs.
If you are interested in prison abolition as a concept, I can recommend some good books on it. You also need to understand that concept of “reparative justice”, which I’ve alluded to here but not really explained because OH MY GOD THIS POST IS TOO LONG ALREADY. Short explanation of it is that it aims to repair the harm done by the crime and rehabilitate the criminal through through therapy and trying to get them to actually understand what they’ve done and empathize with who they’ve hurt, while also providing therapy and resources to the victim of the crime (when it’s something violent and the reparation can’t just be “give them their money back plus extra for damages” or something). The point is not to satiate anybody’s sense of justice or revenge, but to proactively try to solve the problem the crime has caused and prevent the offender from doing it again. It would need to work in conjunction with the abolition of police (and replacement with better infrastructure for the few things cops do that we actually need done) and various other social programs and measures to prevent the circumstances that lead to crime. This sounds like a long shot because it is, but just because it hasn’t been done on a wide scale before doesn’t mean it can’t be, and just because it will be difficult doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.
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septicstories · 3 years
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Never Seems to Be Enough Time (Part 1)
A/N: A Peter Maximoff and Dadneto fic! There will likely be hints of Cherik in here, because I can’t help myself. But I wanted to write a fic on Peter Maximoff, dig into his character a little bit more, y’know? I’ve only watched X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-men: Apocalypse, as well as WandaVision, but that one isn’t an X-men film. So, have some Peter Maximoff with a side of daddy issues. And a dash of historical inaccuracies. The first Walkman was created in 1979, yet Peter uses one in DOFP, which takes place in (mainly) 1973.
Genre: Angst (sorta?)
Warnings: Cursing, daddy issues, hurt and no comfort, anxiety, derogatory thinking, other things of that nature spoilers for X-men: DOFP and Apocalypse
Word Count: 3.7K
Peter Maximoff never really had some place to call his own. It never really bothered him much either. He’d run around, ending up wherever his body decided to take him, only to return to his mom’s basement.
It was never his room. He’d always been the loser who lived in his mom’s basement. The freakishly fast kid with kleptomania. The kid with no dad. The mutant. The fuck-up. And he always would be.
Up until 1973.
The hollow noises of the ping pong ball hitting the table over and over as he rushed from side to side almost drowned out his mother yelling down to him. He just heard the word cops. He paused, but only for a moment.
He left his paddle in the air as he went upstairs, seeing three men beginning to walk into the house. 
After a quick pickpocket or two, he found a folded up paper. Unfolding it, he found the car that sat in front of his house was not a cop car, but a rental car from out of town.
Somewhat peculiar for cops to be driving a rental car, right? Especially if it’s from out of town.
He made his way back to his ping pong game, grabbing the significantly lower in the air paddle and continuing to play by himself.
As the three men came down the stairs, he didn’t bother to stop.
“What do you guys want?”
He noticed the first man who had entered the basement was attempting to follow him around, seemingly astonished. He snickered under his breath, but it was short lived as the ball almost bounced a second time on one side.
“I didn’t do anything!”
The other two men who trailed behind the first quickly followed suit, trying to keep their eyes on him. Not like they could.
Peter dropped the paddle and let the ball bounce off the table as he stretched across his couch.
“Been here all day,”
“Just... relax, Peter. We’re not cops,” the first man said, approaching the silver haired teen a bit.
“Course you’re not cops, if you were cops, you wouldn’t be driving a rental car,” Peter said, his hands resting on the back of his head.
“How’d you know we got a rental car?” the man with long hair asked, his accent making any “T” he said almost non-existent.
“I checked your registration as you were walking through the door,” Peter replied quickly, almost interrupting the second man. “I also had some time, so I went through your rental agreement and saw you’re from out of town. Are you FBI?”
He stood up, stealing the second man’s wallet out of his pocket and flicking it open.
“Nope, you’re not cops. Hey, what’s with this gifted youngster’s place?” 
Just as quickly as he picked up the wallet, he dropped it only to grab a popsicle.
“That’s an... old card,” the second man grumbled, replacing his wallet in his pocket.
“He’s fascinating,” the third man said with a small smile.
“He’s a pain in the arse,” the second man scowled.
Ouch.
Not the first time Peter had been called that. Not by a longshot. But time doesn’t make things hurt any less, now does it?
“What, a teleporter?” the third man asked, looking at the first man.
Peter looked at the first man, who just seemed exasperated.
“No, he’s just fast,” the first man sighed. “When I knew him, he wasn’t so... young,”
Peter sat back down on his couch, the half eaten popsicle quickly disappearing into almost nothing as he spoke, mouth still full.
“Young? You’re just old,”
“So you’re not afraid to show your powers?” the third man spoke, his tone sounding off. 
Peter couldn’t say why it sounded wrong, it just felt out of place.
“Powers? What powers, what are you talking about?” Peter asked sarcastically. “You see something strange here?”
The second and third man shared a glance before looking back at him. Peter’s eyes met theirs, almost like a challenge.
“Nothing anybody’d believe if you told them?”
The first man gave Peter a look that made him downright uncomfortable. Once again, a look he’d get from a lot of people. Teachers, the cops, his mother. That slight head tilt to the left, that frown with pursed lips, that furrowed brow. The look he’d grown used to. The look he associated with disappointment, annoyance, exasperation.
To avoid looking at any of the men, he sped off to his Pong machine, playing through the game at a rapid fire pace, the bare popsicle stick dumped in a nearby trash can.
“So, who are you? What do you want?” he asked, his dead expression staring back at him among the ball that danced between the sides of the screen.
“We need your help, Peter,” the first man said.
“With what?”
“To break into a highly secured facility. And to get someone out.”
“Prison break?” he asked with a smirk. “That’s illegal, you know.”
After a brief pause, the first man spoke up again.
“Well, only if you get caught.”
“So what’s in it for me?”
“You,” the second guy began. “You kleptomaniac, get to break into the Pentagon.”
Peter paused, the game frozen with the score at 3 to 2. 5 balls he let slip past himself. He turned to see the three men, glancing at them all again.
The look had disappeared from the first man’s face, all of them looking at him expectantly.
“How do I know I can trust you?” Peter asked carefully.
“Because we’re just like you.”
Peter’s eyes bounced around the three men, none of them looking to have any sort of mutation or remarkable thing about them or their appearance. If all three of them were mutants, why didn’t they at least look the part like he somewhat did?
“Show him,” the second man said to the first man.
Peter looked to the first man, who made a fist and clenched it.
A sickening noise that sounded somewhat like a squelch began a series of bone-chilling sounds as a trio of boney claws sprouted from the clenched fist.
Peter’s breath caught in his throat, looking at the bone sticking out of the man’s fists before meeting his eyes.
“It’s cool, but it’s disgusting.”
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Okay, don’t fuck it up, Peter. Don’t fuck this up.
Peter continued to walk through the hallway in stolen garb from one of the guards, holding a lunch tray. A plastic gun stayed attached to his hip as he entered the area with the holding cell.
He looked down through the glass ceiling of the cell, seeing the prisoner asleep on what could barely qualify as a bed, looking a lot more like some sort of folded up blanket.
Peter placed a slip of paper on top of the lunch tray, and slid it through a chute on the floor to give it to the prisoner.
The tray slid down, waking up the prisoner who read the note. He looked up, and Peter gave a grin in response.
Kneeling down by the edge of the cell, he placed his hands on the glass, taking a deep breath. He began to move his hands up and down at an unrealistic pace, the glass shaking underneath his fingertips.
Peter’s grin grew massively as the glass shattered, the prisoner shielding himself before pulling himself up out of his cell.
“In three seconds, those doors are going to open. And 20 guards will be here to shoot us,” the prisoner said, looking straight ahead.
Peter quickly ran behind the prisoner, the guard’s hat falling off, placing his hand on the prisoner’s back and head. “I know, that’s what I’m waiting for.”
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m holding your neck so you don’t get whiplash,” 
“What?”
Shit, he must’ve spoken too fast.
“Whiplaaaaaaaaaaaash,” Peter drew the word out before turning his eyes back to the door.
The doors opened, several guards appearing with plastic guns. “Don’t move!”
Peter’s grin grew massively as they rushed into a closing elevator. The guard he had left in there still nicely stuck to the wall by duct tape.
The prisoner wobbled a bit, but he was ignored for the moment as Peter got out of the stiff, stolen uniform and back into his stiff, leather outfit.
“You’re good, it’ll pass,” Peter reassured as the prisoner leaned against the wall of the elevator. “It happens with everyone,”
That single beat of silence between the two was too much for the silver haired teen, what with all the questions swirling in his head.
“Must’ve done something pretty serious... what’d you do, man?”
The lack of response from the prisoner only helped Peter gain a more playful attitude toward the whole situation. “What’d you do? What’d you doooooo?~ Why’d they have you in there?”
Before Peter could ask his question yet again, the prisoner spoke up. “For killing the president,”
Peter’s jaw couldn’t decide whether to drop or snap shut, so he just opted to nod.
Wow... shit!
“Everything I’m guilty of is fighting for people like us.”
“You take karate? You know karate, man?” Peter asked, wanting to hop off the subject.
“I don’t know karate. But I know crazy,” the prisoner sighed.
Peter, still hyped up on adrenaline, could only smile and look down at is feet, ignoring the feeling of anxiety beginning to bloom in his chest.
After a while in the elevator, Peter piped up again. “They told me you control metal,”
“They?” the prisoner asked.
“You know, my mom once knew a guy who could do that,” Peter snickered to himself, the elevator rising steadily before coming to a halt.
As the elevator opened, Peter saw the men he learned were Charles and Logan, standing in a kitchen area, absolutely fucking drenched. The sprinklers were going off.
“Charles?” the prisoner asked quietly.
Charles’ face twisted in anger and quickly threw a punch at the prisoner’s face with little to no remorse. The prisoner fell to the ground from the force, Peter backing up.
Why was he punching the guy they were breaking out?! He could kill all of them if he wanted to!
“Good to see you too, old friend,” the prisoner said, moving his hand from his jaw. “And walking.”
“No thanks to you,” Charles spat.
The prisoner stood up, staring Charles down. Peter had no clue what to do, just standing by idly, waiting to see if he or Logan would need to separate the two.
“You’re the last person in the world I expected to see today,” the prisoner said.
“Believe me, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to,” Charles voice was stern, like that of a scolding parent. “If we’re getting you out of here, we’re doing it my way: no killing,”
“No helmet,” the prisoner said with a smirk. “I couldn’t disobey you, even if I wanted,”
“I’m never getting inside that head again,” Charles said coldly.
Peter shared a quick glance with the guard taped to the wall before looking between the two men.
“I need your word, Erik,”
The sexual tension in the room is rising faster than I can run, holy shit.
The prisoner nodded before guards burst into the kitchen.
“NOBODY MOVE!”
“HOLD IT, RIGHT THERE!”
Peter followed behind the prisoner and left the elevator, hearing him murmur “Charles,”
“DON’T MOVE! HANDS UP, OR WE WILL SHOOT!”
“Freeze them, Charles,” the prisoner said firmly.
“I can’t,” Charles muttered quietly.
“HEADS UP!”
Items in the kitchen rattled before things flew up into the air.
“NO!” Charles yelled as he placed a hand in front of the prisoner.
Things that were toppling mid air slowed to a near halt, as did the sprinkles and the people.
All except for Peter.
Turning on his walkman and putting on his headphones, he took a deep breath.
A quick crack of the knuckles, and he went off running, going up onto the walls.
If I could save time in a bottle
Wall running was always such an exhilarating experience. One that always got the blood pumping. It never failed to make Peter smile.
But running on a wall and running through droplets of water? That was something else.
The first thing that I’d like to do
A nearby pot was flying through the air, whatever sort of stew in the pot spilling ever so slowly.
Without thinking, he brought a finger up for a taste, water still splashing onto his goggles.
Hm. It could probably use some more salt.
Is to save everyday ‘til eternity passes away
As he continued along the walls, he flicked off the cap from one of the guards, and poked another in the face.
The slowness of everything else around him combined with the speed of the poke was going to make him go fucking flying. 
Just to spend them with you
Peter grinned just thinking about it. This was the most amazing experiences he’d ever had in his nearly two decades of life on this Earth.
If I could make days last forever
Peter hopped off the wall, literally dodging a bullet and throwing a plate at the nearest officer.
The plate slowly glided through the air, not even close to making an impact yet. That was going to leave an egg on the guard’s head for sure, probably shatter as well.
Okay, maybe that was a bit overkill.
But then again, he didn’t care. He was having the time of his fucking life!
If words could make wishes come true
Bullets continued to slowly soar through the air as Peter continued fucking with the guards. 
He never once thought he’d get into the Pentagon, let alone to absolutely obliterate anyone who was in there!
I’d save every day like a treasure and then
The next guard he saw, he decided to have a little bit more fun.
He took the gun from his hands, and curled his hand into a fist, making it meet his cheek. He wishes he brought a camera with him so he could take pictures of these moments.
Again, I would spend them with you
Two guards who stood next to each other had their arms cross so their guns were in each others faces. And for a extra oomph, he decided to steal a hat.
At least he’d get some sort of souvenir from this event.
But there never seems to be enough time
The guards were all going to be met with a peculiar fate, but there was one thing left in the equation to fix.
The bullets.
To do the things you wanna do once you find them
Peter ran toward the bullets, taking a look at them for a moment.
Maybe if I moved one over there... no, that’d end up nicking him in the neck. Oh, wait, that’ll work.
I’ve looked around enough to know
He lightly nudged the bullets around, making sure that they’d all avoid the three men in the kitchen. 
Their aim was absolute horse shit. One or two of those bullets would’ve easily hit Charles if he weren’t there to move them.
If they were aiming for him, that’s one thing. But if they just wanted to hit the prisoner, they would’ve failed miserably.
That you’re the one I wanna go through time with
Peter ran to the other side of the kitchen and stopped entirely.
Time went back to a normal pace around him as guards and food went flying, and the men flinched as the bullets hit the elevator doors behind them.
Peter turned off his walkman and took out his headphones, looking at the astonished trio.
The prisoner and Logan shared a glance, all of them leaving the kitchen slowly
A mere mumble of a “Thanks, kid.” came from Logan as he walked past him, but that was all.
He was too hopped up on adrenaline to care, frankly. At least, for now.
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Peter didn’t know.
He didn’t know.
She didn’t tell him.
He should’ve figured it out.
Who else could he have been?
The news said it all, though he really wish it hadn’t.
“Leaders from all communities are urging their citizens to remain calm as police and armed forces are mobilizing to find Lehnsherr before he can strike again. If anyone has information about Lehnsherr or, as he is also known, Magneto, contact your local authorities immediately and proceed with caution as he is considered highly--”
“Peter?”
His mother’s voice calling his name snapped him out of the trance the television had put him in, flicking it to the next channel and going to the Ms. Pac-Man machine in his room.
“‘Sup?” he asked as his mom came down the stairs.
“Just checking on you,” she said calmly, an empty glass in her hands.
How could she be calm about all of this?
Peter’s mind was anything but calm as his wrists flicked the joy stick much more harshly than he usually would, as if it’d release all of the tension building up inside of him.
“I’m good. Playing Pac-Man,” he internally cringed at the way his voice broke when he spoke. He couldn’t play it off as puberty, obviously. He was 27.
He heard whatever bullshit movie was playing on his TV switch back to the news he both did and didn’t want to hear.
“Sure you weren’t watching this?”
He dropped a near silent profanity from his mouth before glancing at the screen.
A picture of Magneto in the top right corner as the news anchor continued reading off of his script. Something about it being ten years since mutants and humankind had reached peace.
He helped out with that, and he realized it after the event had taken place.
And it took him ten years to come to a second realization about his break-in at the Pentagon.
“You’re going after him, aren’t you?” his mother asked tiredly.
“You wanted me to get out of the house more, right?” he asked semi-sarcastically, the flicking of the joystick having calmed slightly.
“I can’t stop you,” his mother sighed. “Nobody can. But trust me, this won’t end well. Nothing does, with him.”
Peter stopped, looking back at his mother. His poor, tired mother, who had to deal with him and his sister. His sister wasn’t the problem in the family. No, that was him.
“I’m not afraid of him,” he said genuinely.
“You should be,”
His mother’s voice barely reached above a whisper, seeming to grow more and more tired of him by the minute.
And with that, she left. She just dropped that final bomb on him, and left.
Was that going to stop Peter from what was likely to be a not-so-perfect reunion? Of course it wasn’t. Like his mother said, nobody could stop him. Especially not himself.
He pulled out the card from Charles, old and worn from years of being put in his pockets or wallet.
Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters
Charles Xavier
Professor
Beneath the name sat the address, only being a few states over. He could get there in absolutely no time at all.
But, today wasn’t the day to do it.
Peter placed the card back, laying on his bed as the news droned on and on. It had moved off the topic of Erik Lehnsherr, which was as much of a blessing as it was a curse.
He needed to know more about him, but it was going to drive him fucking crazy if he heard that man’s name again.
“Fuck,” he hissed, swallowing the steadily growing lump in his throat.
The topic never made him cry when he was a kid. So why was he crying over this now?
He knew crying wasn’t a weakness. He knew it, he heard it, he told that to others when they felt like shit for crying. But whenever he did it, it made him feel vulnerable.
That’s why he always did it alone.
He didn’t want anyone to see how vulnerable he truly was. It was much more of an anxiety issue than anything else. He’d been told things like the usual “boys don’t cry!” sort of stuff. 
But things he was told never helped him with keeping true to that statement. And time didn’t make him more mature or calm. He still acted like a child, which he never heard the fucking end of. He was still a disappointment, especially to the Maximoff family name.
His mom worked her ass off to take care of him and his sister, only for him to fuck it all up by stealing and not getting off of his lazy ass and getting a damn job.
“Fuck!”
His nails dug into his palms painfully as he smacked himself in the head with the heel of his palm. He needed to stop thinking like that. He needed to stop thinking. He needed to stop.
A deep breath in.
A heavy, shaky sigh out.
Grabbing his walkman, a hoodie, and his headphones, he left his room.
“Ma, I’m going for a run,” he nearly spat the words out so his voice wouldn’t crack.
He just got a noise of acknowledgment before he left the house.
He needed to get away.
So he ran. He ran nearly across the entire country, landing in Glasgow, Montana.
Most secluded area in the States.
What did he do?
He flipped up his hood and sprinted behind the cemetery. The small town had so much space for him to run around.
Instead, he screamed.
He screamed long and hard until his lungs were begging for him to stop. Until his throat ached. Until he couldn’t hear his brain anymore.
It was stupid. The fact that just hearing his name made him spiral. 
His brain wasn’t even thinking about him anymore, all set on insulting the place it was kept.
Bastard.
Mistake.
Fuck-up.
The words that would just repeat over and over until he started screaming again. He wasn’t built to handle that mental pain. He wasn’t built to deal with anxiety. Hell, he wasn’t even supposed to be built.
His father left his mother before he was born because it was an affair. There was no fucking love involved. Just a quick fuck and gone. He wasn’t supposed to happen.
And it was obvious that no one had told his father who he was or showed him what he looked like.
Because when he saved Erik Lehnsherr from the Pentagon, Peter Maximoff didn’t get any recognition from his father.
A/N: Part one has been finished! So, I hope you enjoyed it, because there’s going to be a second and possibly third part to this. There will be more movie based stuff, but once we finish scenes from X-men Apocalypse, we’re ignoring Dark Phoenix and just making shit up. So, for now, have angst. I don’t necessarily have a tag list for my X-men stuff yet, so I’m just gonna tag my beta reader! If you find that you’re interested on being on here, just tell me somehow! I hope you have a good day/night!
Tag list: @siivermoon​ 
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himboskywalker · 3 years
Note
Tag what is your opinion on the sequels and kylo ren And Reylo?
This feels like we’re standing underneath a tree and you’re taunting and daring me to climb it and whack down a hornets’ nest with a baseball bat and I am choosing to ✨engage✨
I feel like I’m alone in my corner as a prequels centric fan and blog and writer,because I’m one of the few that doesn’t just hate the sequels and everything about them. There were things I didn’t like,mostly what was done with Luke Skywalker’s character,but there was also a lot I loved. The Last Jedi is my least favorite film out of the three trilogies but I wholeheartedly loved Force Awakens and I even liked Rise of Skywalker. I think the choreography is phenomenal,I really like the characters,and in general they’re fun. Even more importantly kids and teenagers love them and there’s a whole new generation in love with Star Wars because of them and I would never begrudge a teen girl for loving Rey and thirsting after Kylo Ren when that’s the exact same thing prequels fans do.
I hate seeing all the antis or moral police on the internet being hateful and snide about how sick it is for people to love Kylo Ren because he’s a fascist or a horrible person blah blah blah. Like...A) it’s not real and it’s a fictional character and B) nobody flips their shit like that over prequels fans loving Anakin. The difference between their characters is that we see Anakin before he falls and see him as the protagonist before he becomes the antagonist. I think people lack the critical thinking skills to understand redemption arcs and the point of narrative themes and redemption itself and I get really tired of cancel culture and the cultish moralism of the internet.
I don’t like Kylo as much as Anakin,I don’t think he’s as well written or fulfilled his character arc as well,but I do like his character and his role in the films. I also like Reylo,I’ve talked about before of why people shouldn’t have been shocked or blindsided by the direction his and Rey’s relationship took,wether you read romantic elements into it or not,by how he was introduced in Force Awakens. It’s just something I assumed would happen from the very beginning,because Star Wars works off hallmark narrative cycles and this is another one. People who act all disgusted and high and mighty over the ship confuse me because if you lack the ability to discern fiction from reality and acceptable,healthy,relationships then there’s a larger problem here,and it isn’t people lusting after a fictional villain. Does this mean I condone how some fans treated John Boyega,absolutely not,I think it’s abhorrent and shameful. But just because you ship Reylo doesn’t mean you’re racist,or condone fascist dictators and abuse,any more than shipping obikin means you condone unhealthy or illegal power dynamics in real life. We are allowed to like fictional,taboo things without being told we’re terrible people or lack the 2 brain cells to understand that these things aren’t good or normal in real life. It’s almost like that’s the point of fiction or something.
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cutesuki--bakugou · 4 years
Text
Don’t Forget Me
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Art in banner done by me.
College Life / Mermaid / Kimi no Na wa (Your Name) inspired AU
It’s all nothing but a dream. A series of dreams that are all too real. That’s all it is. Your soul - or whatever it was - couldn’t possibly be swapping places with a Merman. One, mermaids aren’t real. Two, that’s not even possible! Is it? 
Mermaid!Bakugou Katsuki x Fem!Human Reader
Want to start from be beginning? Check the Don’t Forget Me tag. 
Genre: Romance / Angst Story 
Rating: Explicit | Adult Themes, Interspecies Sex (merman / human), Masturbation, Alcohol, Animal death / hunting (whales, fish, sharks, etc), Cursing, Descriptions of Injuries and Blood 
A/N: This is my part for the @bnhabookclub weekly collab event Just Add Water for MerMay! I know there isn’t much going on in this, but it’s just the first chapter to a new multichapter fic. Per the rules of the collab, I used the prompt “That’s just an urban legend”. I’m excited, because I’ve wanted to do a Mer!Bakugou x reader for a LONG time and could never think of anything. But when this theme was announced, I was watching Kimi no Na wa and immediately had this idea. So, full disclosure, the theme of switching bodies in their sleep / forgetting each other is inspired by that movie, but that is all that I take away from it. 
Prologue: Stone
Chapter Rating: Teen | Cursing
Words:  1,855
You were doing it again. 
How many times had you caught yourself staring at the delicate necklace in your hands? More than you could probably count on all your fingers and toes, and you were sure that number had nearly doubled just in the last week. You really weren’t sure why you were drawn to it so intensely, nor why it gave you such a deep sense of loss and loneliness. 
Where had you gotten it from? 
You couldn’t remember. In truth, you couldn’t remember getting it at all. As far as you could recollect, it had been around your neck when you woke up one morning, about two months ago. Since then, you refused to go a day without it, even if it didn’t necessarily match your outfit or any particular occasion. You felt so lost without it around your neck, like a part of you was away, off in some distant land or deep within the sea. 
Why did you think that? 
Of all things, why would you assume that this missing part of you was in the ocean? Was it because of the necklace? Probably. The silver clam shaped pendant that rested in your palm was most likely the culprit to make you think of the sea. But that particular piece of the jewelry wasn’t what kept you so entranced. Set in the middle was a small, perfectly round stone, and its brilliance is what you couldn’t help but stare into. To anyone else, it would just appear to be a small marble, with brilliant deep indigo, swirling turquoise and hints of radiant purples. There were sparkles of twinkling white, like light reflecting off a water's surface, and if you gazed into it long enough, you could have sworn that the colors were mixing and twisting, as if there truly was water inside the stone. 
It was so beautiful. Had someone given it to you? Whoever did must have cared about you so deeply to give you something so special. You had asked all your friends and family if they knew anything about how you got it, but no one knew anything. You received some weird looks and uncomfortable responses when you tried to ask them, but that didn’t bother you much, not when you had been dealing with people finding you strange for almost half a year now, anyway. 
Why did they find you weird again? You couldn’t remember.
All you knew was that it had to do with this necklace. You had tried to find out what it was made of to try and get any hints on where it may have come from, but each jewelry store or stone expert you took it to, they all had the same response. They just didn’t know. Many offered to buy it from you at varying prices, their interest peaked and their hopes of being the first person to discover a new stone pushing them forward. But you resisted, as just even letting it out of your hands so they could look at it enough to make you nearly burst into tears. You couldn’t let it go and you wouldn’t, either. Not ever. Not for anything. 
Because it was precious. It was the only thing that you had that could help to calm this nearly unending sense of longing. 
But what was it you were longing for? 
Or who? 
Why did that always pop up in your mind? There were so many pieces of scattered thoughts that you just couldn’t put together. A person. The sea. Feeling like a piece of you was missing. You wanted these feelings to end, but you knew that they wouldn’t, not until you found what you were searching for. 
With a frustrated sigh, you put the necklace back on around your neck, clasping it in place with skilled fingers. Standing from your bed, you shuffled your way towards your desk, lightly running your fingers down along the slender metal chain. Your mind was still in a hazy grip of sleep, barely registering that the electronic clock mostly hidden by books and other stationary read 5:49 AM, though that didn’t really matter. Your mind was racing with the overbearing thoughts, and as you sat down in your squeaky office chair, you were already near breaking out into tears.
The necklace wasn’t the only clue you had. Scattered among the desk were notebooks and papers, though you had refused to touch them for the last few weeks. At first, you had meticulously looked over every page and every written note, trying to do everything you could to learn about who this person was that you were missing. But now they sat on your desk, abandoned in defeat. There were many things in the notes that didn’t make sense to you now, though according to what you had written, you had understood it all at one point. 
What you had written. 
That was what was the most odd. There were two very distinct handwritings within the notebooks and scribbled on the scrap pieces of paper or sticky notes. Yours was so proper and easy to read, clean and steady. The other was rough with some of the characters almost completely illegible, requiring you to assume what the person writing must have been trying to say. Large and scratchy, it almost resembled the handwriting of a child or what you assume would be someone new to writing on paper. The phrases. The choice of words. All of it was completely different from yours. 
It had been another person. Someone sat in your chair, in your room, and wrote these messages to you. At first, you thought that it just had to be a prank. One of your friends was fucking with you. That was the only realistic solution. But none of them talked this way, and if you were honest, they weren’t exactly clever enough to pull off such a big ordeal over months and months. 
The way they talked… It was so strange. You just couldn’t wrap your head around it, and if you were honest, you thought that they must have been a little crazy. Yet, you weren’t all that rattled in most of your responses, like you knew what they had been saying to be the truth. 
The conversations were so… natural. In fact, most of it was like a diary, with the scratchy handwriting cataloging what had happened that day, how they felt about it, and what they had done. 
This school shit that you humans do is so stupid and pointless. Who the fuck needs to know about… what is it called? Calculus? You’re never going to use that shit, I’m not bothering with keeping up with it, fuck that. You always catch up on your own anyway. That bitch Midoriya or whatever gave you some fucking flowers today. I thought about stomping on them and telling him to fuck off, but I just took them and left. You need to tell that prick you’re not into him or this shit will never stop. Also, the way you humans handle courtship is fucked. I didn’t do shit today otherwise. Just stayed in the room. I did find your sketchbook though. You’re getting better, but you still can’t remember us for shit. 
Pulling your eyes up from the paper, they immediately landed on the mentioned sketchbook, which was tucked up beneath some schoolbooks. Carefully, you pulled it out, setting it down on the pile of papers to thumb through it. 
It had been so long since you had even opened this thing. The feeling of the coarse paper beneath your fingertips brought a small smile to your face, as did seeing all your old sketches and doodles. Though, the smile faded as you reached near the middle of the sketchbook, your eyes tearing up immediately at the contents of the page. The page was completely covered in drawings of what looked to be mermaids, or mermen, to be more accurate. They were mostly faceless and unidentifiable, the sketches geared more towards poses and anatomy. The only thing mostly consistent was the tail. It seemed to be the same over all the drawings, with matching fins and scribbled patterns. 
“Mermaids… I’ve never cared to draw them before, why did I…?” 
After another turn of the page, you were met with similar things, only this time they had heads and hair, jewelry, pieces of clothing, and even weapons. Only one of the sketches resembled the previous drawings, and his particular features called to you. The feeling of recognition and longing grew fiercer with another turn of the page, which was all nothing but sketches of that particular merman’s head with varying expressions and positions. He was particularly attractive, with slanted piercing eyes and a mass of fluffy spiked hair on his head. He had fin-like ears that were mostly drooped, but flared out on the drawings with a more intense expression, where his mouth was open in a yell or intense fanged snarl. 
A small gasp left your lips as a drop of liquid suddenly landed onto the paper, pulling you out of your daze. Crying? Why were you crying? Why did your heart feel like it was about to be ripped from your chest? It wasn’t possible for this to be the man that you had been longing for. You had drawn him as a mermaid! They weren’t real, and there was no way that was possible. He couldn’t even get into your room, let alone sit in your chair and write you letters. 
“I’m so ridiculous…” You whispered quietly to yourself, wiping the tears from your flushed cheeks. Had you been blushing? You didn’t even notice. “Mermaids… That’s just an urban legend. A myth. I must have just been in a phase… Maybe I saw a movie or an anime with them, and I got super invested? But then… they’re so…” 
Page after page, more sketches followed, some making you giggle while others made your chest ache so badly you thought you would pass out. But then, there was something scribbled onto a page that made your entire body grow cold, stomach twisting into such a tight knot you were sure that you’d vomit. 
Save me. 
“Save… Save you?” You choked out into the silent room with a trembling voice, more tears cascading down your cheeks as you reached up to grip the pendant around your neck tightly. It was in the familiar scratchy handwriting, though it was more frantic and messy than you had ever seen. Hiccupping, you brought the pendant up to your lips, pressing the stone against them as you struggled to calm yourself. 
Save you from what? What the hell happened? Did I save you? Why the hell can’t I remember!
It was then that you felt an odd pulsing against your lips, and as you pulled away in shock, your teary gaze was locked onto the pendant in your hands, which was pulsing slowly with a pale green glow. And with it came a thought, like a soft voice whispering in your ear that you couldn’t ignore. 
He’s calling to me… 
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juliepop · 3 years
Text
New Years Resolutions
New Years Resolutions
[Miragehound Fic] AO3 Link: here
Rating: Teen and Up Audiences (
A/N): Wow, who doesnt post for a year and comes back just to drop some fluff? Me. Hi, I've had a really shitty year and I needed to write something to make myself feel better. This is dedicated to I. They're the person who pulled me out of a really dark spot and encouraged me to take time for myself and write a little.
Summary: Elliott was taking this New Years Resolution List making seriously, or he would be if Renee wasn't insistent on ruining everything. A new addition on his little list was becoming increasingly hard to ignore. 
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"You're really funny, hysterical even," Elliott grumbled, snatching his list of Renee's hands before she could deface it anymore. She frowned at him as he crumpled it a little before curiosity got the better of him, he had to know what was written. Glancing down, Elliott almost choked at her little addition before he made sure this time to make a paper ball and hurled it at her head.
Renee caught it, of course. Pesky voices not even letting him get away with his dignity as she tossed it back, and it bounced off his chest when he wasn't fast enough to catch it. That was totally cheating.
"Elliott Witt, you are a baby."
"You're a baby," Elliott mocked, snatching his paper off the floor because he just cleaned that, and there was no way he would live down someone finding that as he tucked it in his back pocket for safekeeping.
Renee, to her credit, only bared her teeth at him, the little gremlin pointing a finger at him as if she could tell he was calling her names in his head before she pulled the concerned mom face. Shit. "What are you so afraid of? Out of everyone else I've seen Bloodhound interact with, you're the only person I've seen who they let pet their bird. The worst thing they can say is no."
"Uh, are you forgetting who we're talking about? This is the person we watched take five knives out of nowhere once, five. I'm pretty sure they had more, but it only took five of them before the security gave up and just let them pass."
That was a pleasant memory; Elliott could vividly recall how the devs had demanded all the legends stop sneaking weapons onto the dropship and set up a metal detector. Bloodhound set it off every single time they walked through, and for every attempt, they pulled out yet another wickedly long hunting knife from their coat until finally, the security guard gave up. It was a little funny at the time, maybe even a tiny bit sexy, but Elliott wouldn't ever admit to that. Probably. "What if my conf-confec-ugh. What if I say my feelings and they get offended? I'm too pretty to die."
"Pretty annoying, yeah," Renee muttered; Elliott made an offended noise before she reached out to set a hand on his arm. "Elliott, they're not going to stab you for having feelings. I mean, if they don't already know. You're kind of obvious."
"Me? I am so subtle!"
Renee stared at him for a moment, her gaze going from the top of his perfectly styled curls, the sleek yellow silk shirt that sparkled under the lights with every movement, the black leather pants and his designer ankle boots before staring him in the face.
"...okay, I meant I'm subtle about my feelings."
"You shot yourself in the foot the last time you teamed up with them because they complimented your wingman shot; you cracked your shield, Elliott. That isn't subtle."
He had done that.
Elliott winced at the memory, having taken down Bang's team with a few well-placed shots, and the next thing he knew, Bloodhound was clapping him on the shoulder. Murmuring how he'd done a powerful slatra of the enemy, and Elliott had tried to play it off, spinning his wingman around his finger to holster except the safety wasn't on. He'd struck his foot, the loud crack of his shield startling everyone there, and he wanted to die a little when they'd sweetly offered him a battery,
"Renee, you promised you wouldn't bring that up."
"It was on national television, Elliott. You were viral for a long time."
Over two million hits in one day, it was impressive and mortifying all at once.
"Listen, my main concern for the night is having this party go well. We can talk about that after. It's not like they're going to be here anyway, you know Bloodhound doesn't do parties."
"If they show, you have to tell them." Renee bartered, Elliott trying not to grin in victory because he was right. They never did parties, they were forced into one party a year for the anniversary of the games, and that was all.
"Deal."
Elliott Witt was wrong and stupid.
Bloodhound did come, they showed up precisely on time, and Elliott had nearly cried right then and there because they even greeted him softly at the door.
"Hallo, Mirage."
"Heh-ha-heeeeey, Hound! How's it hanging?" Smooth Elliott, really smooth.
They only offered a nod, mysterious and masked like always, and they smelt faintly of firewood, gunmetal and pine. Which is to say, Elliott was sniffing them, stepping close to offer a hand to shake as they wrapped leather-covered fingers around his and squeezed. "You want a tour?"
"Nei, I think I will find myself a place. Thank you, though, Mirage."
"Hey, we're outta the ring. You can call me Elliott."
"You look...nice." They muttered, the words so faint they're almost lost amidst the chattering of legends and music, but Elliott was focused solely on them. Just hearing the compliment made something in his stomach flutter, Elliott unable to stop himself from laughing softly in surprise and rubbing a hand over his beard, pretending he could rub the colour flooding his cheeks.
Elliott had heard compliments all night, some of them about the party decor, the food, or even his outfit, but this was the one that really made him feel something. He was a little bashful, fingers lingering against theirs as he slid his hand away reluctantly before offering a delighted grin. "I think you look really nice too."
"Takk," Bloodhound murmured, the moment interrupted as Octane yelled something about beer pong, and Elliott turned his head to make sure the idiot wasn't breaking anything when Bloodhound took that moment to leave.
When he faced forward again, they were gone, having found the armchair he'd tucked off to the side of the room to make space for the dancefloor and settling in. Elliott hadn't actually intended that chair to be a spot, it was blocked off by tall potted ferns lining the dance floor, but if that's where they felt most comfortable, that was okay.
He was just really pleased they even came.
Then less pleased when he heard Lifeline scream Octane's name before Elliott heard a deafening crash. Seriously ??
Two broken tables, a broken chair, and a cracked window later and Elliott was exhausted. Offering an open bar to a bunch of people who liked chasing each other and murdering their friends was dicey, it seemed alcohol brought out the crazy. Octane wanted to jump off things, Bangalore was drunk as a skunk and offering to fistfight people, and at one point, Rev had scuttled along the ceiling, and someone had screamed.
Okay, Elliott had screamed. Who the fuck does that? What the fuck does that? It must have been illegal somewhere.
Thankfully there were some ordinary people though, Gibby had brought along a special friend who seemed like an average person who didn’t want to break things. The dude was even kinda funny, and he had a knack for making the big guy laugh loudly, I mean, he totally wasn't as amusing as Elliott, but he was alright.
Even Crypto, the bitter old man had shown up, shamed into silence by sweet angel Nat when he tried to pick a fight with Elliott. A battle Ellie would have totally won, hands down. Stupid Crypie.
Midnight was coming up fast, though, and everyone seemed to be split off into their little groups, which was kinda nice. Octane was playing DJ and entertaining Ajay, Anita, Ramp, Loba, and Path. Crypto had struck up a conversation with Nat and Renee in a corner, the three of them looking real serious about something. Even Doctor Somers was there, she was talking to Caustic of all people, but those two seemed to be hitting it off and Elliott was only a little envious. Rev was nowhere to be seen thankfully or not thankfully. Elliott cast a glance up in fear, a little relieved when he didn't see the murder bot hanging there like a spider.
Then there was Elliott; he was taking his host duties really seriously and restocking the cute little finger food trays when he felt a hand land on his shoulder, Renee was reaching to steal an appetizer. She leaned against the table, expression a lot more relaxed than Elliott had ever seen her, and there was the faintest drunken flush across her cheeks as she cast a glance to Nat and Crypto. "So, I took your advice, and Natalie said she'd love to be my new year's kiss."
"Wait, my advice worked? You took it??" Elliott tried to very subtly show his approval for his friend, laughing and dragging Renee into a hug that she slapped out of with an annoyed noise.
He knew she secretly loved it though, her mouth quirking up at the corners while she tried to hide the almost smile. "I mean of course it worked. I am not just pretty; I'm clever."
"I guess sometimes you have good ideas. Maybe you should take my advice too then, ten minutes left until the new year and I know you haven't told them."
"Awh c'mon, Renee. You know I can't just march over there and do that, I have finger foods to resto—"
'Fuck the host duties, Elliott." Renee growled; Elliott was a little surprised to hear the gremlin swear before she forcibly took the tray from his hands and he was left staring in shock at his drunk friend. Well, he was staring down in shock. She was the size of a pissed off toddler. "Go talk to them. Now. You have five minutes before I march over there and bring them to you."
"You wouldn't--" Elliott started, stopping when he saw the look in her eyes and yeah, he thought she just might. Peeking over to see if anyone was listening, Elliott froze when he noticed Bloodhound's mask was pointed in his direction before he blinked and shook it off.
Of course they weren't looking at him, he was just in the middle of the room, and that's how they were sitting. Inhaling sharply through his nose, Elliott turned back and looked at Renee, who started picking at the food on the tray and stuffing her face. "I'm scared."
"I promise I'll watch over you two, make sure they don't pull out a knife."
"Haha, really funny. You're hilarious; you know that, right?"
"You're stalling. Four minutes now." Renee murmured, Elliott swallowing hard as he realized that there is a limited amount of time left, and he cleared his throat before asking real quietly if he looked okay. Renee's gaze softened, reaching up to smooth his collar for a second before she smiled crookedly. "You're a knockout, Elliott. Now go."
So he went.
Elliott tried to quiet his racing heart down as he walked, talking himself up in his head as he kept his gaze glued to his boots. He looked great, and Bloodhound was a...they were a friend. Everything would be okay, he would go over there, chat them up a little, and he could inform Renee he tried to tell them but it didn't work out. Easy.
His palms were sweating as Elliott walked up, aware he'd reached the point of no return as he saw the bottom edge of the ferns before he jerked his head up and caught sight of them again.
Bloodhound had tucked their chair even further behind the potted plants, hidden by their little jungle but he could see they were comfortable. They'd taken off their hunting coat, the jacket casually laid over the back of the armchair, and that left them in an oversized sweatshirt that did nothing to hide how broad their shoulders were as Bloodhound cocked their head at him.
They were wearing some kind of layered outfit, a turtle neck that covered their neck completely and a baggier layer over it that mostly obscured their body from view with matching pants and thick sole boots.
Overhead, Elliott had strung up fairy lights for the room's lighting, rows and rows of soft white lights glinting off their goggles and the metal parts of their mask as Bloodhound watched him draw closer. His mouth was bone dry, tongue trying to smooth over his lips, but Elliott felt like that didn't help as he took a shallow breath before clearing his throat.
Be cool.
"H-hh-hi Bloodhound!"
"Hello, Mirage," Bloodhound answered; Elliott was telling himself they did not intentionally sound soft just for him. He only ever heard them talk in the ring; Bloodhound tended to murmur commands there, and discussed creative ways to kill their fellow legends instead of small talk. The rare moments he saw them not in a tense situation were few and far between, not for his lack of trying though. Bloodhound wasn’t a big talker, they kinda tended to offer up two-word answers and stared a lot. It was cute.
Elliott liked how their accent sounded like this, though, casual and soft. Like they were having an intimate conversation, instead of Elliott stuttering over basic words and bothering them like was currently happening.
"Are you uh, do you like the party?"
"It has been an experience." They answer after a moment, the faintest hint of something lurking in their tone as they nod toward the gathering legends with their gazes glued to the holoscreen with a large timer counting down. Shit, two minutes. "I do not attend most events, but I wished to accept your invitation for this."
"Oh, I'm glad you came," Elliott says, hoping his sincerity rings through as he glances at the dwindling amount of time until the new year before he looks back. "I know parties aren't your thing, but it makes me happy you're here."
Their blank mask doesn't change, there's no discernible way Elliott can even tell what's going on behind it, but he swears he feels them smile at him for a moment. It's kind of like being trapped in a cold dark room for years and stepping outside for the first time, feeling the warmth of the sun against your face and letting it soak into your frigid core.
His mouth curved upward, returning what he hoped was a smile from them and not Elliott developing a sudden fever or something when Octane broke the moment with a shout.
"One more minute, amigos!"
"What? That went by so fast!" Elliott sputtered, caught off guard by everything as everyone behind readies themselves.
"So it did. Do you wish to go join them for the countdown?" Bloodhound asked, nodding toward the gathering crowd of legends standing near the holoscreen and readying up their party poppers and chattering. Elliott glanced over, seeing everyone seemed to be paired up already, smiling faces turned toward the timer slowly ticking down. He almost jumped when he turned back, realizing Bloodhound was standing with their coat back on magically and looked like they were ready to go.
"Are you leaving?" Elliott blurted out, unable to stop himself from sounding disappointed as he hears everyone behind counting down from twenty.
"I do not wish to keep you longer."
"Ten, nine, eight… "
"Keep me? I'd love if you kept me."
“Mirage…”
"...Four, three, two, one! Happy New Year! "
Behind everyone breaks out in cheers, the sound of fireworks going off muffled behind the thick glass panes of the windows to the side, but they still make colours dance across the room as the legends all set off their party poppers.
Bloodhound and Elliott both watch everyone breaking off in couples, Elliott laughing when he saw Octane drag Ajay into a kiss only to get slapped a few moments later, the medic calling him a grabby jackass. He sighed wistfully, surprised when Bloodhound put a hand on his shoulder.
"Is something wrong?"
"Usually, my New Years' kiss is my mom; it sucks being so far away from home."
"A kiss is a..tradition?" They ask slowly, head tilting in that distractingly cute way, and Elliott laughs a little at how lost they sound.
"Yeah, it's about str-stren-ugh, making ties with people stronger and stuff. That or not being lonely all year." Elliott answered, gesturing to the other legends, who were either kissing or hugging one another.
The fireworks outside were still going off, shooting various colours into the sky, but that was all hard to keep track of when Bloodhound used their hand on his shoulder to pull him behind the ferns. "Uh, Hound?"
Bloodhound's hand moved from his shoulder to the back of his neck, Elliott inhaling sharply as they yanked their respirator down, and his brain kind of shut down when their lips pressed against his. They tasted like orange juice, he realized, Bloodhound already drawing away and Elliott kind of flounders at the idea that his only kiss with Bloodhound was going to be a peck, before he wound his arms around their neck and he pulled them closer.
They gasp, fingers squeezing the back of his neck in surprise, and Elliott closes his eyes and kisses them for all he's worth. Bloodhound is stiff at first, and that's the moment he wondered if they were gonna stab him for pushing a boundary when they slowly softened and hesitantly moved their mouth under his. It felt like they were trying to copy his movements, Elliott sparing a second to wonder if maybe they didn't have a lot of experience before he thinks fuck it and licks against the closed seam of their lips.
Bloodhound shudders in his arms, lips parting on a shaky sigh, and Elliott takes advantage to lick past their teeth, and it's extra confirmed they were drinking juice all night when he gets an actual taste. It's endearing and hot, and all the positive things he can't think of at the moment because he was currently kissing Bloodhound like his life depended on it. Honestly, it just might if this pissed them off.
They gradually relaxed further though, the hands that were gripping his neck and now balled in his shirt as Elliott rocks up on his toes to press against them fully. They were a little taller than him, something he was secretly thrilled about as his hands slid from their neck and down their arms for a moment when Bloodhound pulled away with a soft gasp.
They were breathing hard, Elliott cursing the fact they were tucked away in such a dark corner because he could only see part of their face and the parts he almost made out were gorgeous. Kiss swollen lips, faint spiderwebs of scars laced along their cheeks and jaw, and—
"Hound?" Elliott asked concerned when they sounded like they were choking between pants, a hand lifting as if to ward him off for a moment as they lifted their respirator back in place to take a measured breath with a soft hiss. It's then that it connects that they might need the thing, Elliott parting his lips on an apology when they use the hand they were holding in front of him to cup his cheek instead. Leather rubs over his cheekbone softly, Bloodhound breathing deeper breaths from their respirator and he settles down.
"Do not worry, vinur. I was surprised; you had taken my breath."
Now Elliott knew they meant literally, but he couldn't help the soft smile curling his lips at the idea of Bloodhound calling him breathtaking as he leans into their palm for a second. He was still worried, but already they seemed to be back to normal as he could see the deep and even breaths they were taking. "You took my breath too, but in a good way. I uhm, I don't know if you meant the kiss to be romantic, but I--"
"It was meant to convey romantic feelings, yes." They interrupt, their tone brooking no argument, and Elliott gapes at them like a big dumb fish for a second before they rub a gloved thumb over his bottom lip, and he snaps his mouth closed with a flush. "I apologize for using your tradition for such a thing, but I could not let the opportune moment pass."
"I u-uh, y-yha- uh." God, he was choking so hard. Elliott felt his face heat more, cursing his stutter as he blabbered more broken consonants before taking a sharp breath and recalling something. Reaching into his back pocket Elliott takes out the crumpled paper, holding it out to Bloodhound, who glances at it before delicately accepting and smoothing it out. When they get to the last line, he can see fingers tightening on the paper before they raise their head to look at him.
"I like you; please date me." Elliott manages to get out, almost impressed by how smooth that came out, considering he was blubbering random noises a second ago. Bloodhound doesn't answer right away, well, verbally anyway.
A hand settles back on his face, Bloodhound already pulling their respirator down again, and this time Elliott is very ready for the kiss they plant on him. Unknown to either of them, Renee is watching, holding out a twenty-dollar bill, which Natalie takes gleefully.
"For someone who can see the future, you are quite bad at bets."
"I blame Elliott; he's too slow."
"The hand on Bloodhound's butt says otherwise," Crypto mutters, gagging into his drink and Renee can't help but smirk a little. Yeah, she was definitely going to tell Elliott about that later. Maybe after he finished making out with his new date-mate, the trio tilting their heads as they watched Elliott shove Bloodhound against the wall, and Renee swiftly put a hand over Natalie's eyes when it gets a lot more R-rated.
Maybe she would hold off telling him until tomorrow. They looked like they would be busy for a while.
Renee’s mouth ticks up into a smile.
Finally.
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Survey #425
“evolution repressed by our backwards contest  /  breeding our torrential demise as we come to this edge”
Serious question, peanut butter or nutella? I think Nutella is a godsend, but I use peanut butter waaaaay more often. We don't even really buy Nutella because I will destroy the jar. Do you prefer baked potatoes or mashed potatoes? Baked. What is your oldest sibling’s middle name? Kathryn. I think. Do you like breadsticks? I just like bread, man. What are your favorite things to spend money on? Tattoos, uuuuugggghhhhh <3 Which would you rather have a new puppy or kitten? Neither, really. Most puppies drive me insane (even though they're cute as everliving fuck), and I don't want another cat. Mom actually talked about getting another, but I really just want my one boy. Roman would get SO jealous, anyway. I enjoy just having my baby. How old will you be on your next birthday? 26. Yikes. Do you ever feel self-conscious when you eat around other people? As "the fat one," I can be sometimes. I would say though that more often than not, it's sort of whatever to me because I'm a human that has to eat. When you opened your eyes this morning, what were your first thoughts? I thought I slept way later than I actually did. What is one thing in the room you’re in that reminds you of somebody? My stuffed meerkat Rebel. Jason got it for me for my first birthday that we were together. Could you ever be friends with somebody who was homophobic? Never again. I was once able to think "agree to disagree," but sometimes by doing so, you're siding with evil by not enforcing what is more than just a belief. It should come with being a human. Also given my own sexuality, it would be a slap in the face to me. Would you ever want to be a supermodel, or date one? Hell no. I'd date one though, if they were modest about their position. Honestly, have you ever made fun of somebody so bad they cried? Wow, no. Honestly, would you rather be complimented on your looks or intelligence? Quite frankly, nowadays, my appearance. I need it. My self-confidence is so far below "shit." Have you ever purchased a pregnancy test, for yourself or otherwise? Nope. You can get one thing, anything, for free right now. What do you pick? Why? Hm. I know I talk about it a lot, but it would still probably be a 40 gallon terrarium for Venus. She needs - and deserves - it. Honestly, have you ever danced naked? NOOOOOOOO. What was the first illegal thing that you did? Did you get caught? Downloaded music. My mom eventually found out, but didn't care much. What is the home page on the computer you’re on? Google. Do you like to write poetry? I do, but I haven't done it in a while. :/ Are your ears pierced? Yes. If so, were they pierced with a piercing gun, or with a sterile needle? Piercing gun. Which, by the way, do not do. There are many more risks with a piercing gun versus a needle by a professional. Do you wear makeup regularly? I never do. Did you eat cereal for breakfast today? No. I've been on a bagel kick lately. When was the last time you tripped over something? Last night, actually. The rug in the living room was slightly turned up, and I tripped in the dark. I didn't actually fall, thankfully. Any obsessive-compulsive tendencies? I'm diagnosed with OCD. I experience more ruminations and intrusive thoughts more than obsessive behaviors, though. Who was the last person you yelled at? Probably Mom. Why did you yell at them? I don't remember. Favorite type of apple? I like pink lady apples. I really enjoy any, so long as they're crisp. Ever seen live horse racing? No. To be totally honest, I don't really like the concept of it. Motivating a horse to run by hurting it doesn't exactly seem moral... How about live greyhound racing? No. What’s one thing, besides the obvious, that you couldn’t live without? The Internet, haha. Have you ever touched a giraffe? No. What does your mom call you? Britt. What stresses you out the most in life? I really don't think I could pick a top one. There are so many. Do you play any PC games? What is your favorite? Yeah. Y'all probably know WoW is my favorite. If you were pregnant, how would you tell the father? Well, that would depend on the circumstances. Did we want a baby? Was it a bad surprise, a happy surprise? I can't answer this with just one idea. What’s the hardest level you can play on Guitar Hero? I used to be able to slam out Expert easily with only very few songs I had to play on Hard, but now it's been YEARS. I've played less than once in a blue moon, and my skill's definitely faded some. It really depends on the song. What ever happened with you and your first boyfriend? He couldn't handle my depression anymore. What’s your favorite country song? "When The Stars Go Blue" by Tim McGraw, probably. What is the worst thing a former boyfriend/girlfriend has done to you? Fail to communicate what he was feeling with me and then make a dashing break for it very, very abruptly after three and a half years. It put me past a state of shock, but trauma with how no less than obsessed I was with him. What were you for Halloween last year? I didn't dress up. :/ I wish I had the money and motivation alike to. Are you feeling guilty for something? I always will. Are you usually quiet or loud? Quiet. How many hours do you spend on the computer a day? Like... uh... all of them, oof. What is the show that you watched when you were little, and you still do? Meerkat Manor. Do your siblings text you? Not really. Do you want a small or big wedding? Small. Have you ever searched for your own house on Google Earth? Not the house I currently live in, but I have before. Who is your ex dating/talking to? I don't know. Ever kissed someone who smokes? No. Does it take a lot for someone to annoy you? Frankly, no. Do you own your own computer? This laptop, anyway. Did you ever have to share a room with one of your siblings? Yes, with my younger sister as a kid and pre-teen. What noises in the room you’re in, do you hear at the moment? I hear the video I'm watching, as well as my fan. Have you ever dated someone with longer hair than yours? Yes. What’s the biggest upcoming event for you? Nothing. Not like that's a surprise. What do you typically order from Wendy’s? Son of the Baconator. @_@ Have you ever been given a lapdance by an actual stripper? No. Those are so awkward to me. What do you love most about yourself? I don't know these days. Have you ever received a hickey from the last person you kissed? No. What are you doing right now? This survey and re-watching John Wolfe play Outlast 2. What’s bothering you right now? I'm immensely nervous about tomorrow. I have my first (and I pray the fuck to God not only) session with my new personal trainer then, and I'm terrified by how my body and my mental fortitude is going to react. Y'all have no fucking idea JUST how out of shape I am, and the muscles in my legs seem basically non-existent by now. I have to do something about my health, though, and I'm determined to make this shit work. More than determined. I know the first day is going to be hard, but I need to do this more than I can explain. What was the last thing you drank? ... What great fucking timing, I have a can of Mountain Dew, lol... That's another thing that needs to change. I've gotta stop the emotional and boredom-eating and chill the fuck out with soda. Be honest, do you like people in general? Quite frankly, no. There are plenty of people I love and think are amazing, of course, but I think I lean towards humanity being too shitty to like "in general." Do you want your tongue pierced? I miss my snake eyes. :/ That was suuuuch a cute piercing. I just had to take it out for the safety of my teeth. I kept accidentally clamping down on one of the balls when eating, and it would cause tiny fractures. Do you change your phone background a lot? No. Have you ever made someone so mad that they broke something? No. Have you ever been strip searched? No. Do you have a funny last name? Does anyone make fun of it? It's not funny-sounding, no, I just think it's too manly for me to enjoy as part of my name. Ever have a drug overdose? What did you OD on exactly? Yes. Oddly enough, I don't remember what I OD'd on now... You'd think I would, given how extreme the situation was. It was some cold medicine. Do you get sick of people who call themselves bipolar all the time? I absolutely do. It's extremely insensitive to people like myself who legitimately suffer - and I do mean "suffer" - from the disorder. Describe your day so far in three words: Dull. Lazy. Anxious. What was the most stressful project you had so far/while in school? Probably my senior project and the presentation I had to do for it. I taught about the fallacies and misconceptions of snakes, and I made a PowerPoint and some drawings to color and crosswords for the special ed children. I was so, so very nervous, but I got through it fine and the kids seemed to enjoy it. I actually still have the recording. Choose one- Butterfinger, Milky Way, Snickers: MILKY WAY. FUCK I love those. Have you ever stepped in dog poop? UGH yes. What was the last thing you spent money on? My niece's birthday present. Have you ever slept in the same bed with the last person you kissed? Yeah. Is there a guy that knows a lot about you? I almost said "yes," but then I realized he doesn't know me at all anymore. I've changed so much, hopefully mostly for the better. He hasn't "known" me in many years. Is there someone you just can’t imagine your life without? It's terrifying to imagine my life without Mom; Sara, too. Do you prefer Starbucks coffee or small cafe coffee? I prefer no coffee. Would you ever consider getting a piercing in your septum? Nah. Do you enjoy being outdoors? If it's cool outside and I have somewhere to sit that's not the ground, yes. Do people tell you that you have an accent? Sometimes. Do you enjoy watching fireworks on the 4th of July? They're pretty, but I don't support their usage by this point in my life. They're a fire hazard, triggering to some vets with PTSD, and beyond terrifying for animals. What’re some unspeakable subjects for you? I get most heated about child molestation. You do not fucking touch a child like that. I don't even write any of my bajillion evil guys committing it in RP because I just can't stomach it. Even when my little sister (a children's social worker) is telling Mom about some stuff she sees at work, I have to not be present, 'cuz that shit isn't rare. It's nauseating. Is there anyone you would take a bullet for? A good number of people, honestly. Do you enjoy tanning? Hell no, I avoid the sun and heat at like all costs. Are you a virgin? This is going to sound weird, but I actually don't know, but I lean towards no. Who’s your celebrity crush? mARK EDWARD FISCHFUCK Did or do you get good grades in English class? I was always excellent in English. What part of your body are you self-conscious about? My stomach. But I'm self-conscious about everything else, too. Are you expected to help fix Thanksgiving dinner? No. Everyone knows I can't cook worth a damn. Have you ever lost anyone close to cancer? Truly close, no. Unless you include pets, actually. Then a few. :/ Do you personally know anyone who is transgender? Yep. When was the last time you got a shot? Earlier this year for Covid. Get your fucking vaccine, btw. :^)
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Two things
Bucky Barnes x male reader
Fandom: Captain America/Avengers (movies) Genre: Fluff Summary: On undercover missions, hiding from the bad guys can be tough but luckily, Bucky knows what to do Warnings: mentions of violence and guns, maybe some anxiety? Words: 1.1k
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You can find a link to my Masterlist in my bio
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“Sam, are you in position?” Bucky adjusted his beanie that he had chosen as the ‘perfect disguise’ for an undercover mission. He looked like a modern man, cool, stylish, and totally not like he was about to chase after some bad guys. “I’ve been in position for the past ten minutes, Y/N and you are just hella slow,” Sam complained over the comm. Bucky only rolled his eyes at that while you chuckled. “Sam, you know that our Bucky here is an old man. Don’t be so hard on him.” Your partner for the mission sighed. “Thanks for the back-up Y/N, I hope that during out mission you won’t stab me in the back.” “Anytime, Barnes!”
The banter between the three of you was a way of relaxing a little before a hard undercover mission like this. So just like Bucky, Sam and you tried fitting in with the people around you at the mall – civilian’s clothes, only a few guns and knives hidden, almost no gear. Your mission was to stop some trade of illegal weapons. That would have been easier, if that trade was not at a public place with thousands of civilians who needed to be protected as well, so you needed to be very discreet, operate fast. Stop the trade, maybe beat them up a little if necessary, then get them into the van as fast as possible to get them away from everyone.
While Bucky and you were supposed to walk around the mall on the hunt for the buyer and the two sellers, Sam sat in the van between countless displays showing him every single corner of the mall. And if you needed him to, he would step in.
“If you keep standing there staring around like that, it’ll make you look even more suspicious,” Sam’s voice rang in your ear. With another eyeroll, Bucky started walking and you followed him.
You passed many shops, all with people going in and coming out of them. You scanned everyone’s faces, the features of your three subjects burned into your mind, memorized closely so even if they were to wear a disguise, you would recognize them, but there was no match just yet.
As you were walking, Sam kept babbling into your and Bucky’s ears. He went on about everything: a woman he saw with a strange hat, some teens shoplifting, an old man who tripped on a staircase (whom he then compared to Bucky) – but none of them were your suspects.
At some point, when you stood in front of a bakery with a snack after hours of walking up and down, Bucky turned his comm off. “Y/N, what is he doin-” was all you heard from Sam before Bucky reached behind your ear and turned off yours as well. However, you did not stop him. Sam’s voice died out and you let it happen. “What are you doing, Bucky?” “Two things, Y/N.” He took a deep breath. “I think they hijacked our comms. They know that we’re here.” You frowned, and as you thought about Bucky’s words, it all made sense. “That’s why we haven’t been seeing them,” you whispered, scared that if you would speak up, your voice would break. “They’re waiting for us to think that we’re at the wrong location and leave.” He nodded. “Shit.” You took a deep breath to collect yourself; your heart was beating incredibly fast and you felt your whole body tense up. One of Bucky’s hands landed on your shoulder with a strong yet comforting grip. His eyes met yours and he gave you a reassuring smile. “Come on, we can do this.” And with that, he turned his comm back on and started walking again.
“Wait, Bucky! What is the other thing you meant to tell me?” – “Later!”
You turned your own comm back on and listened to Bucky say, “Do you know if it is raining?” – A secret code for when you knew that someone else was listening. Sam seemed to understand immediately. “Nah, not yet. But the forecast didn’t look good this morning. We’re gonna leave before it starts raining?” – “Yeah. There’s no point in staying.” Bucky winked at you and you could not help but smile at that. You turned off your comms. “Now we wait, but I’m sure they’re going to come out soon.”
You approached an escalator that led to a lower level. People with enormous bags queued in front of it, waiting to continue their shopping. When you finally stood on one of the stairs, you turned to Bucky. “And?” He did not look at you but scanned the people again. “What did you mean to tell-” You saw Bucky clench his jaw. Upon turning around to face the same direction, you spotted some of the men you had seen in the files for this mission, still at the bottom of the escalator that went up, into the opposite direction, but coming toward you quickly. In a heartbeat, you turned to Bucky. “They’re gonna see us.”
Bucky’s reply was not what you would have expected in a situation like this and your jaw dropped. “Kiss me.” – “What?!” – “Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable.” You scoffed. “Where did you get that fro-” You were cut off by Bucky’s lips meeting yours. A noise of surprise (you told yourself that it was surprise rather than excitement or even happiness) left you, but in the next moment you decided to be a professional Avenger and rolled with it. Your lips were grazing against each other like you had done this a million times, it felt so familiar yet new… You needed more of it. Pulling Bucky closer by his shoulders, you deepened the kiss a little, making you forget everything around you, even the bad guys coming toward you. And in this moment, you realized that you were not playing a character anymore. You were not two friends casually shopping, no. You were Y/N and Bucky, in love and on a mission. And that was what Bucky meant to tell you. Your grip on Bucky’s jacket tightened and he let out a content sigh, before-
“There they are!” Bucky and you pulled away immediately. Your brain was still dazed from the kiss, everything in you screamed to just kiss Bucky again. You shook out of it and got back to your senses. Pretty much all people on the escalator were staring at you, including the two men you had wanted to fool, one of them pointing at you, enraged. “Looks like your plan did not work out,” you commented. “Well,” Bucky sighed, “I forgot that people tend to stare at two men kissing and being in love.” He shrugged. “I think we should run now.” And with that, he took your hand, interlaced his fingers with yours, before you both started running.
***
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treh-co · 4 years
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FAHC Headcanons
So I feel like a good amount of my hcs are a lot different than other people’s??? And I’ve done a LOT of thinking abt them so! Here’s kind of like a masterlist of my general hcs! I’m just gonna go through this person-by-person.
(This got Kinda Long, so it’s under a read more. Sorry mobile users,)
Geoff
Obviously, he’s the one who started The Fakes. Basically, he went into the military after high school, came back and was like “Damn. Hated that” and then some old friends are like “Hey wanna do crime” and he was like “Fuck it”. That ended up being the beginning of The Roosters, which would grow to become the most powerful crime syndicate in Los Santos.
However, when they started shifting more towards managing the organizations they controlled, Geoff felt like he was missing the hands-on action. With the others’ blessing, he branched out to create his own gang under the syndicate, which would be the Fakes.
Geoff was the acting boss, supervisor, and manager of the Fakes for many years, while still juggling responsibilities with the Roosters. After a while, he felt the stress of it all begin to weigh on him, so he decided to pass some of it off. He made Trevor the acting supervisor of the crew’s regular business, while he handed management of behind-the-scenes matters to Lindsay. He’s still technically the boss, though, and any Big decisions go through him.
Jack
Jack actually met Geoff when they were in the military together. While he was a journalist, she was a pilot, and while she’d always been a sort of straight-laced, innocent kid growing up, she discovered that she actually loved flying. More than that, she loved the excitement of a chase or a gunfight. When she got back, she found herself bored.
That was around when Geoff called her up with an offer- one that not only allowed her to get back in the cockpit, but promised twice the action way more money than she ever got in the military. Of course, she said yes.
Jack’s main role in the crew is transport and evac. She can fly or drive anything, from a city bus to speedboat to a cargobob. Unofficially, she’s a sort of second-in-command for Geoff. He usually discusses any business stuff with her before making decisions. She’s also probably the most capable medic in the main crew, though she’s not an expert, and will pass off the responsibility if they have access to someone more formally trained.
Gavin
I imagine Gavin comes from a criminal family. Nothing exciting; standard white-collar stuff, embezzlement and fraud. They were substantially wealthy from their exploits and sent him to private school and all that, but Gavin found it all horribly boring. By the time he reached high school, he was experimenting with every type of low-level crime he could think of; theft and vandalism, all that shit.
Eventually, his habit of making enemies got him in over his head, and eventually he found himself in serious hot water. Out of options, he forged some papers and got a flight out of Britain. He’d far from learnt his lesson, though. He didn’t plan on cleaning up his act, and he decided to hide in plain sight, in the most crime-infested city America had to offer- Los Santos.
That was where he met Geoff. He was working odd jobs around the city, still new to America (and, though he’d never admit it, pretty lost and scared- he’s only sixteen). He gets hired by some asshole to take out Geoff, and he isn’t familiar enough with the scene to know better, so he goes for it. When Geoff has the knife out of his hands and a gun pointed at his head in less than two seconds, he’s pretty sure he’s fucked- but Geoff doesn’t shoot. Because fuck, how the hell is he supposed to take out this scrawny, terrified kid? So he talks to him instead, and when he finds out that Gavin has no loyalties to the guy that hired him and has a much broader skill set than Geoff would have expected, he decides to take him in.
As for my take on The Golden Boy- I personally don’t see Gavin as a hacker, and tbh I personally Cannot picture him suave enough to be some smooth-talking informant. In my mind, he’s sort of the crew’s everyman. He does a little bit of everything- stealth, dealing, hacking, fighting- he isn’t really an expert at any of it, but if you need something done, he probably knows enough to help. 
Michael
Michael was raised in New Jersey with his brothers. His life was fairly normal, to be honest. He got a gig as an electrician, and it sucked, but he was doing okay. And then his mom got sick, and things started falling apart. Long story short, he ended up turning to more unsavory ways to get the money she needed for her treatment. He found out that he was pretty good at making bombs, and even better at cracking skulls. 
Michael only ever dipped into those practices to help his mom, but once you go in, it’s pretty hard to get out. He was running with a gang in New Jersey for a long time, until one day, their leader sold them out to the cops. He and some friends ran away to Los Santos, but still got caught, and suddenly he was locked up in a LS prison.
It was in prison that he met this guy named Gavin. After bonding through some good old fashioned prison fighting and saving each other’s asses, Gavin told him that he’s part of a powerful gang that was planning on breaking him out. He said that he needed help with the prep work they  needed done on from the inside, and if Michael helped him, they’d break him out with Gavin. Against every instinct, Michael agreed, and they broke out together. After they got out, Geoff decided to offer Michael a job- partly because he was impressed with him, and partly because Gavin wouldn’t stop whining until he did.
Michael is great for a steady gun or a good fight on missions, but his expertise is in demolitions. He’s self-taught, but he’s one of the best in the business, and he has fun with what he does.
Lindsay
Lindsay has always thrived on chaos. This presented itself more innocently in her childhood, but once she reached her teen years, it quickly spiraled into something more dangerous. She was always looking for something more risky, more exciting. Speeding, then shoplifting, then vandalism; it was never enough.
That being said, it shouldn’t have been that big of a surprise when some friends easily talked her into her first burglary. From then on, it was an easy slide into the more serious world of crime. She was a gun for hire by twenty, had long left her well-meaning parents behind, travelling with no real goal and making both allies and enemies everywhere she went.
When she cropped up in Los Santos, trailing gunfire and spray-paint cat tags where she went, Geoff knew she was meant to be one of them. He hired her for some odd jobs at first, just to make sure; but just a few looks at her style proved his theory. He offered her permanent position and she took it on a whim.
True to her role, Lindsay is the crew’s wildcard. Sort of like Gavin, except her skills are more specifically in the “fuck shit up” range.
Jeremy
Born and raised in Boston, Jeremy had a not-so-great home life and started hanging with the wrong crowds from a young age. He grew up through fistfights and car wrecks, and by the time he was grown, he didn’t really know anything else. He was actually pretty close with his gang back home. They were the ones who taught him the importance of loyalty; how important it is to have people you can trust. Nothing good lasts forever, though. When another gang- much bigger, much stronger- started picking them off, their leader made the tough choice to disband. Despite communal reluctance, she got them all set up to go underground in different parts of the country. Jeremy was sent to Los Santos.
While there, Jeremy saved a boy he saw being jumped in an alley. The boy turned out to be a hacker and information dealer named Matt. Jeremy was homeless at the time, and Matt offered to let him stay at his place as thanks. Somehow, this quickly turned into them being roommates and friends, and then partners, when they decided it would be a good idea for Jeremy to tag along on Matt’s deals for protection.
While helping Matt, Jeremy made a name for himself in underground fighting rings, known by his half-joke moniker “Rimmy Tim”. One night, a non-regular sat in to watch the fight, and afterwards approached him with an offer. The stranger was one Geoff Ramsey, and the offer was for a job with the Fakes. Jeremy happened to know who the Fakes were- and be a big fan of their work. He was nervous, but he accepted the offer, and it only took a few weeks for them to essentially pull him in.
Jeremy is, in simple terms, the crew’s muscle. He drives, he shoots, and most importantly, he can fight. If anything needs doing that involves those three things, he’s good for it.
Matt
Matt grew up in a small, boring town with a small, boring family. He filled his boredom with the digital world. Eventually, he started diving deeper; learning how to code, and then how to program, and then how to hack. By the time he was seventeen, Matt was going by the alias of “Axial” on dark-web forums, dealing information and breaking into everything from private systems to locked-down, international servers.
After turning eighteen, Matt decided he was sick of his home town and used the money he’d gained from his illegal business to disappear and move somewhere more exciting- Los Santos. After a few months of living there, he met a boy named Jeremy, who saved him from a deal gone wrong. He liked Jeremy, and it seemed like Jeremy liked him; despite the suspicions they both probably should have had in their lines of work, they became fast friends and roommates, deciding to work together.
When Jeremy got hired by the Fakes, Matt was disappointed, but resigned to the fact that he would be back on his own. Until he was pulled away from his work one night to a knock at the door, and found the Vagabond there, ready to take him to the penthouse. Apparently, the crew had been in need of a hacker for a while; and a certain new member had put in quite the good word for him.
Matt is, obviously, the crew’s hacker. He doesn’t really go on the field too much; he’ll tag along if there’s a proximity requirement on his part, or if a bunch of people are unavailable and they really need a backup driver or something, but for the most part he operates from the penthouse. He’s usually on comms during the heists to give directions or help with security or recon in real-time.
Trevor [TW: Sex work mention]
Trevor grew up in a trailer park in Blaine County, raised by a single mom. She loved him, but was involved with all the wrong people. When an altercation with an ex-boyfriend ended up deadly, fourteen-year-old Trevor up and ran as fast as he could, and ended up in the streets of Los Santos. He got by with begging and soup kitchens at first, but he started picking up tricks, on his own or from others he watched. Pickpocketing, manipulation, shoplifting; whatever he could use to get a bit of an advantage, he took.
It was just a while after he turned eighteen that a man he met outside a bar proposed he enter a different “path” of business. Trevor was reluctant, but he was also desperate, and the man made a lot of promises. He ended up spending two years as a prostitute, until one night he’d had enough. He killed the man who’d been selling him and ran once again. 
Once again faced with life on the streets, he returned to what he knew he was good at- lying and stealing. He came up with the alias of Reached, and became a thief and informant by commission, fairly well-known. He became close associates- maybe even friends, if such a thing existed in Los Santos- with another duo, Rimmy Tim and Axial. One day, they gave him a call- saying their new employers needed someone with his skills on a job. To make a long story short, when the Fakes met Trevor, he was pretty much already a part of the team.
Trevor is a thief by trade. Stealth, deception, and stealing is what he does best. He’s a master lock picker and an expert at slight of hand, and is far too good at putting on an innocent face. 
Alfredo
Alfredo was raised by a big, loving family; but people are a product of their environment. A combination of wrong place, wrong time, and peer pressure had him messing around with local gangs far before he should have even seen a gun. But Alfredo always had a knack for precision, and he had the aim of a trained vet, and he was probably a little too busy being cocky to understand the risks he was taking.
Eventually, those risks caught up with him. He was in a lot of hot water and he knew his family was in danger. He couldn’t let them get hurt on his account, so he ran to protect them. He considered turning a new leaf when he got to Los Santos, but quickly realized that if that was the plan, he’d picked the wrong place to do it. It wasn’t long before he was dragged back into work as a gun for hire.
He was good- really good, and when some hot shot rolls into the city with a sniper and skills like that, it shakes things up, and word gets around. Word even gets to some of the most powerful men in the city- including Geoff Ramsey, who decides that if this kid is really as good as he’s heard, there’s no way he’s letting him get snatched up by anybody else first. His invite to Alfredo is more short-notice than it was with the others, but he and the crew click in about two seconds flat, so it really doesn’t take a lot of convincing.
Obviously, Alfredo is their sniper. He’s a hell of a shot with any gun, and can do fine with up-close combat when he needs to, but he’s at his best when he’s giving cover from a rooftop.
Fiona
Fiona comes from one of France’s most infamous criminal organizations. Her parents run the group, and she was raised, essentially, as the heir to the business. She’s been trained since she was a child to be the best at any skill she might need. An array of languages, hand to hand combat in five forms, dozens of weapons, from blades to melee to guns- most of all, she studied deception.
There was a small problem, though. Fiona appreciated everything her family did for her- but there was also no way in hell she was just going to drag on the family business. She wanted to make a name for herself, and she wanted more than the stuffy, starch-white world they were giving her. So she ran away to America. She spent a few years travelling, testing out different paths. At one point, she ended up in long-term employment with a gang. Except she ended up hating said gang, and she wanted out.
Luck happened to be on her side. One day, she was told that they’d kidnapped two people who happened to be members of a powerful crew called the Fakes. Fiona knew the second she laid eyes on the two- a strangely similar looking pair named Trevor and Alfredo- that they were her ticket out. She made a deal with them, that she’d let them escape if they took her with them and kept her safe, and the three of them had a wild adventure that lasted about a week, and ended in the three of them strolling into the penthouse, ragged and exhausted but looking like they’d just had the time of their lives, with Trevor and Alfredo proudly declaring that Fiona was now their newest member.
Fiona is a master of disguise. She’s good at a lot of things, but putting on an act is what really sets her apart. Give her a wig and a makeup kit and she can turn herself into a new person in five minutes flat- complete with an accent and everything. She’s the go-to when the crew need undercover jobs done.
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schiste-argileux · 4 years
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Idw Prowl is an evil SOB (took him two years to send the Wreckers to Garrus-9 and help Maxy (who was protecting all the war crimes the Bots did), put Maxy’s torturer and a war criminal on board the Lost Light cuz why not, sent Pharma to Delphi knowing it was DJD territory)
Prowl... Prowl’s creation and competence in his area of work is astounding. He is brilliant, creative, and defiantly apathetic of this world. But, he is very human in his own way. IDW Prowl is selfish, yet not. He is a unique in that aspect because most people make decisions like his for the sole reason of benefiting themselves. But Prowl’s sole reason of existing is to create PEACE. 
Peace. Peace can only be done when people are complacent, happy, and satisfied. When things are stationary. Stable. 
But life is never stable. Elements desire to form bonds, yet are almost always leaning towards to instability... Prowl’s form of PEACE is a world where there is no fighting. But everything sentient requires to fulfill its desires. As long as there is desire, people will fight. 
A world of PEACE would be a world of full control, there are no surprises, no change. Safety, routines, and constants. No creativity, no development... nothing. stagnant. 
But I must admire Prowl’s tenacity and dedication to this world! 
He sacrifices everything for the sake of the directive, preserve cybertron, PEACE. He sacrifices his morals (Robot Gets Bullied By a Human), his dignity (Recent News, Cop Accepts Orgy For The Means of Establishing Peace, his body (Recent News, Cop gets Molested by A Spider for The Autobot Cause), and of course, thousands of lives (Not Recent News). :D Prowl respects and understands that there will always be chaos and instability, and he is so very flexible around it all! He literally can maximize everything and anything he has. He is the embodiment of consequentialism with a lil dash of politics. I wish my group project members were 1% as productive as him! Prowl tries to put everything black and white, and he gets upset when things get far more tricky, and wants to get everything in control so people can stay safe and remain in peace and not fight! And that’s a respectable goal! Control can be good, it means one understands and is able to retain themselves and the thing they are controlling. But Prowl doesn’t want to accept that there are things out of his control. And Prowl likes to think he’s justified when he controls the uncontrollable. 
I mean, yeah, if he didn’t do what he did, the autobots would have been six feet under A LOT EARLIER. Optimus is not a good leader, preserving organic life over his own soldiers? Psh. Look at Spike, he’s got valid points and can I understand why he left the ‘bots. Prowl’s probably thinking everyday, DAMN, OP, WHY R U SO DUMB. LISTEN WE NEED TO FEED OUR SOLDIERS AND PRIORITIZE OUR SPECIES LIVES INSTEAD OF THIS FUCKING CARBON BASED CIRCLE. HELLO??? And literally Prowl could have been like I’m gonna get ya assassinated so I CAN HAVE IT MY WAY. But Prowl was BORN for the RULES. To follow, to MAKE PEACE. Killing the prime figurehead is against that, even if it would make his life way easier! (hence, not that selfish and also sad that your life is the rules. That’s a short leash, but he makes due)
Honestly I feel bad for Prowl. Must suck to be so big brain that everyone hates you when you say the truths (but also you could learn some more tricks from Jazz to be nicer and hide the truth, but that’s scary because a nicer prowl means more people he can trick and use. Thanks Prowl for being so straightforward! Now people can avoid you easier). He's so straightforward about things that need to be done, he’s in constant denial about the grey area of life!
That’s why when Spike slapped Prowl with reality slaps, Prowl lost some of his shit. Remember, nearly everyone had the edgy depressed time in their teens or young adult years where you realize the world is truly unfair and nothing is black and white? Yeah. Slap that on a 6+ million year old robot with a battle computer and is capable of big brain CPU-age, and was literally built for the sole purpose of enforcing rules and making peace? And no one really cared about Prowl enough to understand him and his background. So Prowl goes through his angst moment alone with his huge titties, frustrated. THIS. IS. WHY. YOU. COMMUNICATE. YA DINGUS. 
Prowl doesn’t become a school shooter like Pharma cuz hes got bigger brain and a lot more power and control over himself, but he literally becomes Shadow The Hedgehog (Even if the world’s against me I’ll fight like I’ve always have). HE’S GONE ROGUE. MA’AM, SIR, THE FUCKING OREO COOKIE HAS TRANSFORMED AND ROLLED OUT.  like. OP was the one thing holding prowl back, which was good! But now prowl’s on the roll and bumblebee is too nice and passive to hold him back. + the bombshell brainwash? feels so bad. being prowl sucks. because Prowl is a necessary evil. 
At least he’s wonderfully blunt about his goal to create a peaceful cybertron, which makes it easier if you want to avoid him or smth. meanwhile you have fake people IRL that smile their way through and then slit your throat and you won’t even know it was them (hey jazz, no offense, but that’s what spec ops does). Fakers are the scariest enemy, but Prowl is still a threat, just not as big as a someone who fluffs you up on a balloon and then pops it. Prowl would just be like, hey, you’re really useful, come over here in my white van i wanna show you something and then maybe you get destroyed. But hey! You were the one with the highest chance of surviving compared to other people! Isn’t that great? You’re so skilled WOW. (Prowl gets punched. Again!) Prowl represents the necessary evil in society. We WILL ALWAYS HAVE EVIL people in this world. But Prowl is a far better evil than people who do evil for their own selfish reasons. It’s like how we have law enforcers and politicians . It’s basically giving them legal rights to do illegal things (lmao). BUT we need them regardless. We need those people to get their hands dirty, possibly killed, so that people can live in innocence and peace. 
I don’t think Prowl ever realized that he was a necessary evil, and when Spike showed him that, he was bitter. But he accepted it. Which I respect because most people can’t be bothered to understand themselves and just throw themselves in denial, and point fingers for their flaws. Prowl sucks up and understands who he is, and he makes the best of it to achieve his goal.  I mean, honestly? Prowl is probably a miracle worker. Not in a Ratchet sense. But look at the way modern governments run, nothing gets done, everything is stalled because no one has the guts to make sacrifices. Prowl would have gotten a shit ton of things done, man, and take quick efficient action. Even if he sacrifices many things for it.  (Warning. I do not condone any taking of lives, NO ONE has the right to judge whenever a person should live or die.)  Prowl reminds me of 秦始皇 (Qin Shi Huang), the king who unified China and sacrificed millions to make the Great Wall, canals, and road systems that last to this day. If it wasn’t for these accomplishments, China wouldn’t have been what it is today. Was it a good thing? For the future residents of China? Hell yeah. But the costs? Those are sins that can never be erased, and they are horrible and shouldn't be done ever again. Was it necessary? Perhaps. But that’s another discussion. Is Prowl evil? Depends on your definition of evil. Perhaps he’s justified, perhaps in his world, he’ll go down as the Qin Shi Huang of the Cybertronians. Regardless, Prowl like Pharma, is an EXCELLENT example to study on public ethics, and administrative officials should analyze him and learn from his mistakes and sins.  I think Prowl is not evil in a sense that he wishes to harm others, but evil in a sense of his apathy. Prowl is a necessary component to a functional society (someone to plot, to use people, to enforce rules even if some are sacrificed, someone who can get their hands dirty). He lives a terrible and sad fate, and I do not wish ANYONE to live a life like Prowl’s or look up to Prowl. Yes, he’s so clever and brilliant, but that kind of power will make you the loneliest person on Earth.
Thanks Prowl for taking the entire load of sin on your shoulders! Big MVP! You get nothing from the world except hate and contempt.  I would go on about him more but I have IRL stuff to do. I love Prowl as an example to tell people that MODERATION. COMMUNICATION. AND COMPASSION are important factors to have a healthy and good mental state. Prowl is the perfect example of someone who doesn’t want to empathize (haha so many people are like this today), who doesn’t want to try to use more braincells and friends help to make better plans that are more moderate and not extreme, and who doesn’t want to talk to anyone thinking its a waste of time or have difficulty explaining things.  BUT I LOVE G1 PROWL because he has far more patience and manners, and doesn’t take a darker, route for his goals. awhohdohd he’s baby,,, i wish all cops had patience and manners and in general open-minded yet cautious enough not to be taken advantage of,,,, perhaps then we wouldn’t have so much polarization and fighting with authority in this world.... 
uwuwwuwuwuw they did prowl so dirty in idw WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH ;____;   Again, you are welcome to disagree or agree! I wrote this really quickly so I’m sure there will be points that could be clarified or edited. Prowl’s really complicated and I do not like to talk about current IRL problems, but Prowl represents a lot of problems in society. And I think it’s critical if we try to look at both perspectives to get an understanding on WHY people do these things, and is there a solution to AVOID making those same mistakes? There’s a couple of controversial things in this short essay I wrote, esp. about cops IRL. So feel free to have at it! Or ignore it! Whichever is more comfortable for you! Thanks for coming to my ted talk! Again, Prowl is a bad influence and a sorrowful life to live. please do not try to be like prowl. xD I won’t intrude on you if you do, because you have a right to live the life you want as long as you’re not hurting other people’s interests and wellbeing! 
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