#I'm having a really hard time writing at the moment but I can't lag behind SO many days

[dolphin-bouillabaisse]

GO-ctober Prompts, 15

Inktober except without the ink, and with drabbles instead.

Prompt #15 - Legend

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(find it all on Ao3)

“You know, there's a story in my Mami's hometown.” Anathema sounds absent-minded, which is rare, but more understandable once you notice the empty glass of wine in her hand. “Been passed down for generations.” “How utterly fascinating.” Crowley mocks, but Aziraphale's tut stops him. The evening had been so nice, and they'd gotten to such a quiet, comfortable state back in his shop, he really doesn't need the demon to break it all with a few sharp comments.

“Do go on, dear.”

“S'just a story, about... this giant snake living in the woods nearby. Eating young girls. She told me to keep me from running off to far, I think.”

“Again: how fascinating.”

“Made me think of you. You know.”

“Listen, not every giant snake story from somewhere in the jungle has to do something with me-”

“There are a lot of them, though.” Anathema grins as Aziraphale refills her wine, sharing the wicked gleam in her eye. Their regular meet-ups have done nothing but help the inner bastard of the angel come out to play, especially with Crowley. He's not quite sure he likes it.

“I couldn't even have been in all of the places people claim to have seen snakes or demons.”

“Stories like that travel, though.” Newt, up until now the quietest of the dinner quartet, speaks up in an almost rambling voice, staring at his half-empty glass (it doesn't take much for him, Anathema has learned quickly. It took much longer to convince Aziraphale not to constantly be a good host and refill his glass. She's not yet gotten it through to Crowley, who's already topping him off, no matter how much she stares him down.) “Especially in older times, like, pre-media. Word of mouth, and fear of monsters, and such. Maybe you just showed up in a few places and then they told all the neighbours.”

“Maybe dragons is your fault, too.” Anathema throws in, grinning, thinking back to their last discussion.

Crowley opens his mouth once, twice. He wants to protest, but neither of the humans are in a state to give him a proper fight instead of continuing the taunt, he decides (or convinces himself). He shrugs and throws himself back on the couch next to them.

“Yeah, yeah, sure, alright. It was all me. Every bad evil monster in fairytales, every devil legend, all me. Happy?”

Anathema giggles quite happily, but Newt's face turns into one of regret – he might not be sober anymore, but he's definitely clear enough to realise that maybe, making an actual demon angry was not a very wise after-dinner partytrick (one which Anathema had perfected by now).

“Sorry, I didn't mean to accuse- I mean-” he stammers, but Crowley waves him off.

“Whatever. Probably would've gotten me more commendations from Downstairs if it was all true.”

“Oh, I'm not sure about that.” Aziraphale interrupts and earns the surprised stare of all three of them, even as glass-eyed as they are by now. “Do you really think Hell would've been happy with you being constantly discovered? We were supposed to lay low, after all.”

“Oh, really?” Crowley hisses, and Newt, who hasn't spent as much time with them as Anathema has – hasn't seen this dance and play as often as she – shrinks down in his seat. “Oh, really? You gonna tell me how to do my job, angel? Gonna say I fucked that up, too?”

“I didn't say that.” Aziraphale wipes non-existent crumbs off his waistcoat. “Especially not with that wording, thank you very much. All I'm saying is”, and that bastardly gleam is back, as Anathema tries to stiffle her giggle and Newt's eyes worryingly dart back and forth between them, “that there are rather a lot of times where even I heard about your workings from locals before I found you.”

Crowley is silent again for a minute – not, like with the humans, because he knows there won't be a fair fight – rather exactly because he knows he will lose.

Unless he turns.

“Assss if”, he hisses yet again, and Newt sinks a little lower, “as if you weren't just as bad!”

“Well, I wasn't.”

“Oh please!”

“I was always a bit more careful than you, dearest.”

“Oh yeah, absolutely, no legends about miracles or angel sightings or helpful glowing strangers anywhere-”

“But you can't pin them on me.” Aziraphale's face is triumphant, his smile a tad too bright. “I could name several angels who've come down for messages. And miracles aren't exactly connected to a person, are they? Not like a snake-shaped monster or, say, a handsome lurker with slit pupils.”

Crowley sputters, his mouth faster than his brain, which is not able to come up with any comebacks. He blames the wine, inwardly. (He's only had half a bottle. If he blamed it outwardly, Aziraphale would set him straight once again, knowing just how much the demon can handle before becoming unbearable.)

The silence hangs over them, a string pulled taught, waiting to snap and either make or break the evening. Anathema loves the suspense. Newt is terrified by the tension.

“There is a story my dad told me.” He breaks the silence, and earns three stares at himself now. Anathema expected a lot, but not for her boyfriend to start off the penultimate argument of the evening. (She feels quite proud.) “About a local Soho cryptid.”

“A Soho cryptid.” Crowley echoes, his eyes darting to Aziraphale, who is very uncomfortably trying not to look at him. A grin grows on the edge of his mouth.

“Yes.” Newt is either too inebriated to notice what he is doing, or too spurned on by the sudden rush of adrenaline of daring to talk. “He's told me when I moved to London, about this shop that's been open for like two hundred years. Which isn't much in London, I guess. But also about how the clerk never seems to change.”

Crowley's grin grows unbearable. Anathema is stifling her giggles again.

“Told me how he visited the place once and there was a picture on the wall of the opening on, like, 18-something, and it was the same dude standing behind the counter.”

Crowley barks out a laugh. He remembers that picture. He can see it before his inner eye, clearly – mostly because it's now hanging in the small flat upstairs, after a customer had made a comment that left Aziraphale stammering and sputtering to find an excuse.

“I thought my dad was just having me on, you know, wanting to scare me when I moved to a bigger city, but then-” Newt takes a sip of the wine, some liquid courage, “I went to some shops around the area, and they all said the same, or something similar. Or they had a story about the same person helping them and their great-grandpa. Or about the strange- ...the going-ons in the bookshop on the corner. There was a lady who called it a liminal space, but back then I didn't know what that was, so I thought she was just a bit crazy.” He throws an apologetic look to Anathema, who's not even noticed the implied insult, far too busy with both being proud of him and excitedly watching Crowley rise (quite shakily) from his spot on the couch and point an accusing finger at Aziraphale, who has sunk down in his armchair almost as much as Newt on the sofa.

“Aha!” Crowley hollers, and the finger keeps pointing. “I might be in medieval legends, angel, but at least I didn't brand my liminal space with my own goddamn name! At least I don't go around in a century old costume to have people gossip about me being some kind of ghost shopkeep!”

“At least my legends are nice stories.” Aziraphale tries to counter. It doesn't do much, as Crowley is already laughing with absolute victory as he falls back on the couch.

Anathema leans over to Newt to place a kiss on his cheek – he is pretty unaware what for, but he enjoys it nonetheless.

The evening's entertainment has been sorted.

(Crowley will not let it rest with the evening, though. The following weeks, not a day goes by during which Aziraphale doesn't hear a new story about himself the demon's found out from local residents. Crowley will recite them with utter glee, about how the bakery on the corner has kept to a certain recipe for generations now only because they fear it will anger whatever-Aziraphale-is-in-their-minds if they change it, how the old lady living in number 86 down the street remembers him being ever so helpful when her mother moved in as a shunned single mother 80 years ago, how he hasn't aged a day since he showed up in that ancient newspaper clipping about peculiar shops of the area.)

(He stops one day, Aziraphale notices, and it takes quite a lot of pushing and prodding to find out why – how the stories soon switched to the equally puzzling car parked outside the shops for decades now. To the string of handsome, well-dressed, stylish gentlemen that the Soho cryptid seemed to entertain – a cryptid with a type, they all agreed, a certain taste for red hair and good cheekbones and far too long limbs.)

(The argument is at an impassé. They decide to lay it to rest. Aziraphale, as a last act of bastard-ness, hangs up an old daguerrotype of the two of them next to the shop's till. Anathema spots it on her next visit and breaks down in a fight of laughter.)

#good omens #ineffable husbands #crowley #aziraphale #my writing #prompts #october prompts #anathema device #newt pulsifer #a bit shorter than usual #I'm having a really hard time writing at the moment but I can't lag behind SO many days

[lokis-army-77]

If You Please

Chapter four

Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word Count: 1860

I'm bad at writing descriptions, so this is basically a reader insert into The First Avenger and then we'll see how it goes from there.

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After about thirty minutes of driving, we made it out of the tunnel, after another hour we made it to the camp. When the car was finally parked I slid out of the back seat and straightened my skirt. I looked over the top of the car at Peggy, she motioned for me to follow her. She led us to one of the army's many jeeps.

“The project recruits are in the training field, we’ll have to drive over to them." She hoisted herself up into the cab and I quickly followed suit. The ride to the training field was short, but in the few minutes, it took us to get there a wave of anxiety crashed onto me.

The thought of seeing Steve here was panic-inducing. I had only just seen him a few hours before but having him see me in the job that I had kept secret from him was not fun. I had a feeling that this was going to be a long day.

As the jeep came to a stop I could see the line of recruits and there stood Steve right in the middle of them. He wasn't that hard to miss, he did stick out like a sore thumb. I leaned up between Peggy and the driver and said, "I don't think i can do this right now."

Peggy looked over her shoulder at me, "you can do this Roger's, there is nothing to worry about. Let's just go do our job." I took a deep breath and nodded, exiting the jeep.

I trailed slowly behind Peggy and stopped just out of Steve's view. I watched while she introduced herself to the line of men. As she walked down the line one of the men commented on her accent. Turning to ask his name he responded with, "Gilmore Hodge, your majesty."

Peggy then asked him to step forward and once he had done so, he was swiftly met with a punch to the face. I let a small laugh out as he fell backward.

“Agent Carter, I see you’re breaking in the candidates. I also see that you’ve brought Agent Rogers as well,” Colonel Phillips called out as he and Dr. Erskine came towards the group. We both quickly gave him a salute. With the mention of my name, I knew my cover was blown and I walked out to where Peggy and Coronel Phillips stood and introduced myself. My eyes fell on Steve who looked utterly shocked.

The Coronel then proceeds to give his small speech about how we would win the war because we have “the best men”. When he noticed Steve he also added “and because they are going to get better.” He continued by telling the men about the SSR and what the goal of the program was. When the words super-soldier were said, I could see the men take a sharp breath in and puff their chests out. From the looks of it, I could already tell these men were not what a super-soldier should be. I continued to watch Steve as he sent me questioning looks. I mouthed to him that I would explain later and he nodded slightly.

After the Coronel’s speech was when the real work began. They went straight into training exercises, push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, every exercise you could think of. I stood back and watched, only chiming in when I saw one of the men slacking or doing something incorrectly. Steve was in the middle of the group, trying his hardest to keep up with the others, but he never quit.

Once night fell the recruits were sent off to the canteen for supper. They all trotted off in a group but Steve didn’t move from the spot he had been in. I looked over at him and sighed. I waved Peggy on and walked over to my brother. He started to speak but I quickly interrupted him. “Before you say anything I want to say I’m sorry for keeping this from you, I was legally forbidden from saying anything to you.”

He stood there for a minute processing, mouth opening and closing like he was going to say something but then quickly thought better of it. He raked his hands through his hair and exhaled heavily. “I.. I have no idea what to say. When did you even have the time to join the SSR?” He asked, sounding a little cross.

“Do you remember when I started taking night classes down at the community college? Well, I was actually in training here with the SSR. I’m not really sure how it happened, it just did. I really wanted to tell you so bad, but I couldn’t. I hope you understand why.” My head hung low as I spoke, this and my engagement were the only two things I have ever kept from my brother and to have one less thing weighing on my mind felt like a relief.

“I understand, you only did what was asked of you,” he spoke calmly and pulled me into a hug.

“Thank you, Stevie.” I gave him a tight hug back. I let go and started to walk to the canteen. “Now, here I am your superior, I can't be giving you special treatment because you’re my big brother.”

“I wouldn’t want you to. So do I just call you Agent Rogers from now on? I'm not going to lie, that's a little weird,” He laughed, falling into step with me.

“Yes that's exactly what you should call me and I’ll just call you Rogers from now on, maybe with a little more force.” I chuckled and shook my head, “I have a meeting to get to so go get some supper and get your things unpacked. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning at 0600, soldier.” I turned to my right and headed for the main office building of the camp.

Over the next few days, Peggy and I watched over the training of the recruits. I watched as Steve lagged behind in every exercise and obstacle, but he managed to pull through. He used his smarts to get through some of the tasks, unlike the others who relied on their brute force. Dr. Erskine kept a close eye on him whenever he was present on the training field. I knew that Steve was his one and only choice out of the group to help further the experiment we were conducting.

Today was no different than any other, I peered at the men doing seats of burpees in the midday heat. “Let's go girlies! Faster! My grandmother can do these faster than this!” I yelled, pacing back and forth behind the group. To my right, I noticed the

Coronel and Dr. Erskine had arrived. They were deep in a conversation when I heard Peggy shout from the front of the group and I turned back to watch the men do their exercises.

The next thing I knew someone was shouting “grenade”. The whole area went into a panic. I spotted the grenade and started towards it in hopes to reduce the damage it would do if it was just left to sit. Before I could reach it, Steve dove on top of it.

“Get away! Get back!” he yelled. I dropped to my knees next to him, my heart pounded in anxiety but the explosion never came. I realized that it was a dud, one of the grenades used to train with. Steve uncurled himself out of his position and looked over at Colonel Phillips and Dr. Erskine, “Is this a test?” I grabbed his arm and pulled him up to his feet with me.

“Well, that was interesting. I can’t believe you would jump on a grenade Steve,” I shook my head.

“You’re one to talk, I saw you running straight for it too. Even when I was on top of it you still stayed. I told you to get away,” he chided.

“Steve don’t scold me, I couldn't just let you blow up. That was really brave of you though. Not many people would do what you just did.”

“Mr. Rogers, Agent Rogers, please come see me for a moment,” called Dr. Erskine. Steve and I looked at one another and then walked over to the doctor. “Come, follow me.” He led us to a jeep where we hopped in and were taken to one of the office buildings.

Inside the office, Dr. Erskine pointed at two chairs for us to sit in while he went behind his desk and took his seat. “I’ll just get right to the point. Mr. Rogers, I believe you will be the best candidate for this operation. You too Agent Rogers. I believe you both will be the best options for what we are trying to do here.” He explained to us. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This project was supposed to only have one participant, not two.

“If I may, I thought this was only going to be carried out on only one person, why choose the both of us,” I questioned.

Dr. Erskine looked at Steve and then at me. “This is my experiment, I can choose however many test subjects I would like to perform on. Not only that but you both displayed what I would like a candidate for the experiment to have, and that's courage and a good heart. Agent Rogers I’ve known you for a couple years now and I have had you in mind for this for a while,” He paused and looked down at the papers on his desk, “I also believe that since I did some testing with your blood work that the success rate will be greater since the two of you are siblings.”

Steve and I nodded as we listened to what he was telling us. He continued to recount to us what he had experienced with Hitler and Johann Schmidt. He told us of the unfinished serum that Schmidt had taken and that there were dire consequences, he had gained power and strength but at what cost?

“The serum,” he paused, “the serum amplifies what is on the inside, not just physicality. Good becomes great and bad becomes worse. Not only did I choose you because of what I have seen in you but because I know that someone who is weak or has been looked down upon knows the value of strength and compassion, unlike the bully who has had power his whole life.” He poured himself a drink and then two more for us. “Just promise me that whatever happens in the lab tomorrow, you two will stay good-hearted and true to yourself, do not become the perfect soldiers they want you to be. Now, drink up, you have a procedure tomorrow no liquids or food will be allowed after 10 o’clock tonight.” He handed us our glasses and then he picked his own up. I glanced at Steve and after raising my glass in a toast I slung my head back and felt the burn of the alcohol sliding down my throat.

#james buchanan barnes #bucky x y/n #bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky x female reader #bucky fic #bucky fanfic #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x rogers!reader #winter solider x reader #marvel fic #marvel fanfiction