#and it’s that across your entire LIFETIME? your entire childhood and teen years and fuck it even your adult life????? THAT SHIT SUCKS

[areyouwho-ithinkyouare]

haha people who have normal relationships with their fathers where they didn’t grow up being constantly made to feel dumb/unimportant/annoying…. what’s that like babes hahaha

#autism doesn’t make you a bad parent. unmanaged/unaddressed autism combined with a general lack of consideration for everyone around you… #now THAT will fuck your kid up. #autistic people often struggle with eye contact. that’s cool no problem i can still engage in conversation like that. #buuut when you’re four and super exited to tell your dad what you did that day and he literally doesn’t acknowledge your presence?? #and it’s that across your entire LIFETIME? your entire childhood and teen years and fuck it even your adult life????? THAT SHIT SUCKS #and THEN the only times you CAN get a conversation out of him it’s an argument where he WILL not stop talking over you #and scoffing at every single word you say #and raising his voice as he tells you how stupid you’re being #ummmmmmmmmm yeeaaahhhh okie dokie. a lifetime of that might ummm… lead to a few issues. #oh wait i forgot the third category of interaction: listening to him complain about something absolutely meaningless. for 20mins. #just killing the mood of any conversation. #you’re watching tv it’s fun everyone’s having fun!! yayyy yippee isn’t this nice #and then someone on tv will say ‘up and down the country’ (goofy but harmless phrase) and suddenly all you can hear is a rant #about the banality of overused idioms and phrases. #LIKE!! can you fucking lighten up for five fucking seconds. please. #idk man. my mum and i spent our whole morning travelling out to some random shop wayyyy out of our way. requires multiple buses to get there #JUST to get him a birthday present. because we thought it was fun and cute and because it’s very personal to him. #like we built our DAY around this. we spent £120 on this. FOR HIM!! because we thought he’d enjoy it!!!! #and we’re spending all day tomorrow wrapping his presents and hand making cards and planning the cake i will be baking for him #and he gets home from work and. IMMEDIATELY starts picking a fight. #like we had a lovely day. we had SUCH a good day. and a lot of it was about doing stuff FOR HIM for HIS BIRTHDAY!!! #which we were HAPPY AND EXITED TO DO!!!!! #and he fucking ruins the whole thing. #now my mum is sleeping on the sofa because she’s so angry at the way he was talking to me and i’m typing this bullshit. #and. he just. he doesn’t care. he doesn’t get it. he literally cannot comprehend why we’re upset at him. #he can’t see anything from anyone else’s perspective. he can’t comprehend the idea that maybe just maybe HE was the one being unkind.

[abloodymess]

I am a music person. One of my earliest memories is listening to Patti Smith's Horses with my Mom as we washed dishes. The Velvet Underground, weird Jazz, Chicago Blues, 70s Soul, along with all the heavy hitters of classic rock (Stones, The Who, Beatles, Kinks, etc) were always coming out the stereo my entire childhood. As a child my Dad took me to see and meet all sorts of old blues guys, he also used me to sneak back stage, it was a good gimmick and I have fond memories of standing just off stage as Bonnie Raitt was about to take the stage, and her taking a shine to the 7 year old roaming around.

Anyways, I thought this was how all kids experienced music. When we moved and I started a new school (big 4th grade) and I tried to communicate my love of music, kids my own age had no idea what I was talking about. My first sense of a disconnect between myself and my peers of this farm town. Reading Thrasher and watching skateboard videos sure planted the seeds of a whole world of modern music I had not experienced yet.

I did not come online as a modern music fan until 91. My cousin noticed I was getting drawn into metal and hard rock; he took me aside and showed me this new band called Nirvana. He had Bleach and showed me it, "you like this?, they are playing in two weeks in Chicago, want to go?" Not sure how we got my mom to say yes, but my first concert without my folks was seeing Nirvana at the 1200 person club The Metro just before the Teen Spirit video broke. I honestly was kind of scared, but the energy and the feel of the electricity in the room changed me. I knew this is something I wanted to be part of. Are there more bands like this?

91-95 felt like it should have been a lifetime, looking back its crazy how small that window really was. How fast the mainstream was able to pounce on underground bands with really progressive ideals and just decimate them. They either died (literally or financially), went back to the underground, or imploded as the machine found copies of copies that could fit in the box but were easier to deal with. If Nirvana was a Pixies rip-off, I am not sure what you would call Days of the New when they showed up in 97. God bless REM for soldiering on. (I am generalizing here because there was A LOT of music that got marketed as “Girl Music” your Tori Amos, Fiona Apples, Natalie Merchants, all of a sudden this was music for girlfriends and should be separated to the Lilith Fair while “real music” was Creed or something? and I am not even touching Hip-Hop here) There was a moment though in the early/mid 90s where it was perfectly normal to see Cibo Motto on the same stage as Soundgarden, then something changed. 

“Grunge” or whatever you want to call it was hollowed out and the imitators were fizzling out (some great singles in there but very few career groups), there was a push by radio to somehow hybrid cool DJ/Rave culture with rock culture and you got “Electronica” which was kind of soulless, but the good and pioneering electronic groups got a place in the sun. Rock though, it got hyper masculine (and not that Grunge wasn’t, but there was a sincerity and fragility that was removed) and fucking dethatched from any other feeling but anger, anything else was viewed as a weakness, there was no longer a sense of queerness or the feminine. 

By 96 I was out, I wanted nothing to do with what was going on, so I turned inward and got real into early Emo bands and old Goth records, I was a full on punk with metal leanings. Screamy boys and girls who had nothing but “feelings” and sincerity bubbling out of themselves. We formed our bands and locked ourselves in basement across the country with our own shows and did our own thing, ignoring what was going on above ground. A nice deep sub-genre of a sub-genre to keep myself with not having to associate with what I saw as the meatheads taking over. (Again, not that there wasn’t dreadful misogyny, racism, and shitty shit going on where I was). 

When I watched the documentary it was incredibly depressing. I can’t say if the documentary itself was good or bad, but the ideas presented, the where we were at that time and how we got there just kept rolling over and over in my head and how fast it happened from 94-99 a complete sea change happened. I don’t really have any insight to that, but its just staggering to go from waiting for a concert to start and having Food Not Bombs handing out flyers and a few short years later it is Girls Gone Wild getting girls to show their boobs (AND IT WAS THE SAME BAND just 2 years later and a really different fan base and energy). 

Clearly the promoters of Woodstock 99 were at best evil dummies, who after all this time showed zero reflection and just wanted to blame women and Mtv or the bands or anyone but themselves. I do not think the documentary sides with them, but presents that is what these men believe. Honestly if anyone sides with those dudes, get some help. Corporate rock sucks and even the most well meaning bands get put in horrible positions time and time again. I will never understand how Rage Against the Machine is always at the most corporate shit-shows standing there like a bunch of assholes. 

Anyways, sorry, I just needed to vomit out some words about this. I am just glad I wasn’t there, didn’t see myself reflected back, or see any of my friends. 

[epicstuckyficrecs]

Weekly Recap | September 2-8

It seems this week’s rec is making up for the short one I had last week XD Enjoy!

PS: if you’re a writer/fanartist and I’ve tagged you on Tumblr, but not Twitter (or vice versa), and you have an account on both platforms, please let me know! It’s probably because I don’t know your username(s) on every platform. 

~

Complete

This Bucky with This Steve by debwalsh/ @debwalsh​ (Actors AU | 1,8K | Not rated): Ascendant star Bucky with washed up but hoping for a comeback Steve...

💙 The Barnes Exotic Animal Rescue (for Magical Creatures) by Deisderium/ @deisderium​ (Shrunkyclunks, witch Bucky | 5,6K | General): In which Steve Rogers stumbles across the Barnes Exotic Animal Rescue for Magical Creatures, meets a witch named Bucky, accidentally adopts a unicorn, and never wants to leave.

💙 You be yours and I'll be mine by verzacefatale/ @verzacefatale (Post-CW |13K | Explicit): “Oh, god. We got married, didn’t we?” Steve sounds like he’s trying not to panic. “Seems that way,” Bucky says, before he bursts out laughing at the bewildered look on Steve’s face. “Come on, pal. It’s not the end of the world.”

Keep Me by dixons_mama (Evanstan RPF | 1,6K | Explicit): After working endlessly on interviews for Disney, filming 355, and now attending GQ's Men of the Year event, Sebastian is tired down to his bones. Yet, he he finds himself wanting to just be near Chris.

A Pal in the Hand is Worth Two in the Jacuzzi by dixons_mama (PWP | 1,7K | Explicit): Bucky asks for Steve's help getting off, being the good friend (that's also stupidly in love) he is, Steve obliges.

Quicksand's Got No Sense of Humor by paperstorm (Canon | 2,6K | Teen):  And Steve will be okay, because he doesn’t have any other option. It’s only a million tiny cuts all over his body, his heart, his soul, slowly bleeding him dry. How could be not be okay, when Bucky’s been through so much worse. (💙 Part 1 of Under the Dome)

Through the Monsoon by paperstorm/ @paper-storm​ (Post-CW | 3,1K | Mature): Steve’s expression is blank, empty, except for his eyes. A hardened, cold, unfeeling look is in his eyes, as they stare unseeing into the space in front of him. Bucky knows how this goes. It isn’t a regular occurrence, it's only happened a few times in the last half-year, but it isn’t good. Steve is an expert at shaking things off – which is either fortunate or unfortunate, depending on who’s asked about it – so when he can’t, it means things went really wrong. (💙 Part 3 of Under the Dome)

A Lifetime is Never Enough by paperstorm/ @paper-storm​ (Post-CW | 3K | Mature): Bucky reaches for him with his hand, eyes still closed, and Steve curls up against his side. Bucky’s arm goes around him, fingers sliding up to tangle in Steve’s hair. The sleep-warmed skin of his neck is a heavenly place for Steve to rest his forehead, tension going out of his limbs and greedily breathing in Bucky’s smell, his warmth, the safety his bed offers. (💙 Part 4 of Under the Dome)

Chasing The Light by paperstorm/ @paper-storm​ (Endgame fix-it | 7K | Mature): “The thing about you and me?” Bucky says, "is that the world isn’t as stubborn as we are. You’re right, I can’t promise it won’t separate us again. But I can promise we’ll find each other again if it does. Because we always do.” (💙 Part 5 of Under the Dome)

like rum on a fire by mcwho (PWP | 1,4K | Explicit): “You’re the one who wanted to see how far I could push you. You know how I like to follow orders, Buck,” Steve tells him, teasing drawl to his voice because Steve Rogers has never followed a goddamn order in his goddamn life up ‘til right about now.

Flaws by dixons_mama (PWP | 1,3K | Explicit): Steve catches Bucky scrutinizing his body, and while trying to reassure him, feels and smut ensue.

Recompense by debwalsh/ @debwalsh (Endgame fix-it | 2K | Not rated): When Steve Rogers travels to Vormir to return the Soul Stone, he’s greeted with an unexpected choice that will change his life.

Warmth by debwalsh/ @debwalsh (Modern AU | 5,3K | Mature): When Bucky Barnes receives the report that there is a guy lost on his mountain, he’s not prepared for the complications that ensue.

Wheels by debwalsh/ @debwalsh (Modern AU | 2,3K | Not rated): Teacher Steve Rogers is ready to settle into a lounger and enjoy his neighbor Natasha’s pool when he finds himself staring at the most beautiful man he’d ever seen already lounging with intent.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? by debwalsh/ @debwalsh (Shrunkyclunks | 1,6K | Teen): Steve moves into an apartment with a Captain America impersonator, and Bucky is the building super, and gets them mixed up.

💙 it takes a lot to know a man by kittyandmulder, steebadore (Modern AU |39K | Explicit): Bucky flips to the next page, and the world around him grinds to a halt as his brain struggles to process what he's seeing. The noise of the train fades and static fills the inside of his head as he looks down at the sketches of the metal-armed guy without the mask. It's—that's him. It's Bucky's own goddamn face staring back at him from this stranger's sketchbook."What the fuck."

Double Trouble by HeroicPinups, kittyandmulder/ @kittyandmulder​ (PWP, Steve/Bucky/Steve | 2,7K | Explicit): Bucky finds himself stuck in a super soldier sandwich. How unfortunate.

💙 time on my hands (could be time spent with you) by thedoubteriswise/ @thedoubteriswise​ (Post-CW | 23K | Mature): There’s no reason to be nervous. Steve’s just going to go see his best friend. This is Bucky, for God's sake, what could there possibly be to be nervous about? It's only been a little over a month since Bucky went under. He'd practically seen him yesterday.

~

Reading in progress

💙 Servitum by justanotherStonyfan/ @justanotherstonyfan (canon-divergent, Shrunkyclunks | 43K | Explicit): Steve's affection can be huge, almost palpable. His desire to take care of James can be overwhelming. But James can't think of a point so far where Steve's been overwhelming that he hasn't enjoyed immensely - and if they can roleplay some lifelong memories out of a spanking session, a shibari tutorial, and a carefully lit table, he's pretty sure providing Steve with the opportunity to do something he may not even be aware of wanting should go down a treat, and make for a pretty awesome afternoon. ( 💙Part 28 of the Honey Honey series)

~

WIP

💙 Cakes & Balances by mambo/ @whtaft (POTUS Steve | 16K | 8/? | Teen): It’s kind of hard to date the cute baker from down the street when you’re the President of the United States of America. But Steve Rogers will make it work.

oh the glory of it all by hitlikehammers (Post-Endgame | 4K | 1/23 | Mature): They end up stumbling almost unexpectedly into the white-picket-fence, apple-pie life they used to dream of. Except it’s not like that at all.

💙 An Escort's Guide to Navigating Tricky Work Relationships by Hopeless--Geek (wuzzy90)/ @hopelessartgeek​, Mystrana/ @mystrana​ (Escort AU | 24K | 4/5 | Explicit): Steve is an outspoken leader of the fight for escort legalization. He wants to show the world that they have relationships just like everyone else, but hasn’t dated in the past five years because he’s been so busy with work. Bucky’s still not quite recovered from a bad relationship with a boyfriend who degraded his choice of work. And while he can define professional boundaries like it’s his job (it is), Bucky’s not great at handling his personal life. A story of navigating tricky work relationships.

💙 This Side of the Blue by notlucy/ @notlucy (Mermaid AU | 121K | 33/44 | Explicit): A trick was the only explanation for what Steve saw floating there. This figment of his childhood. This myth. This legend. Within the tank, the siren bared its teeth.

💙 Political Animals by crinklefries/ @spacerenegades​, Deisderium/ @deisderium (Modern AU, politics | 29K | 4/9 | Explicit): Okay, so the real problem is that you shouldn’t fuck your arch-rival, political enemy, and the person you loathe the most in the world where you work. Or like, at least, you shouldn’t keep doing that.

~

Re-read

💙 straight from your heart by luninosity/ @luninosity​ (Stucky in Wakanda | 10K | Explicit): Steve doesn’t mean to have the orgasm. Not exactly. Not the first time, anyway.

💙 Tinder Is the Night by rohkeutta/ @rohkeutta​ (Modern AU, Tinder | 7K | Explicit): It’s the quality that gets him first. The profile photo looks like it's been taken with a semi-professional camera: it's sharp and remarkably unposed compared to most people on Tinder. The guy in the photo is the size of a fucking fridge but with Marilyn Monroe’s waistline, accentuated by the way he’s standing half-twisted towards the camera. He’s also in the process of getting arrested.

💙 If Only In My Dreams by odetteandodile (Modern AU | 28K | Teen): Bucky is a highly successful cooking and lifestyle blogger, the gay New England Pioneer Woman if you will. He writes all about life in his Connecticut home with his D.H. (darling husband). Only problem? It’s all complete fiction. When his agent Sam informs him that he's been offered an exclusive sponsorship deal with Stark Media and a three book contract to go with it, Bucky's forced to fess up to Sam, who's predictably...displeased. But Sam's also convinced the deal is too good to miss—even if they have to put on a little bit of a show in order to get it. So Tony and Pepper descend on Bucky and Sam's fake home for Christmas with a devastatingly handsome War Hero in tow, and their already complicated plan quickly gets even more complicated as Bucky finds himself falling head over heels for Steve. Can he keep it together just for the holidays? Did he ever have it together in the first place?

💙 took my love, took it down by LaughsAtThunder (Post-WS | 31K | Explicit): The problem, Bucky thinks now that he has most of his memories back, is that his whole entire world has always revolved around Steve Rogers. Steve has been always been half of Bucky’s identity. Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers’ best friend. Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers’ wingman. Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers’ teammate. And now, well, now Steve had other people to fill those positions. And of course, of course he’d always been a little bit in love with Steve. So when he overhears Steve telling Natasha that he’s finally found someone he’d like to date, someone with similar life experience, Bucky clings blindly to the hope that maybe, just maybe, Steve is talking about him.

💙 Sex, Drugs, & Needles by OhCaptainMyCaptain/ @ohcaptainmycaptain1918​ (Modern AU, tattoo artist Bucky | 38K | Explicit): Bucky's a bit of a masochist in that sense – needles and the buzz of a tattoo gun have always turned him on... It’s even worse that this client is what they call a ‘needle virgin’. Doesn’t appear to have a piercing anywhere on him, and he’s already made it clear that he has no prior ink. Bucky’s always found something inherently sexy about being the first person to introduce another to that experience. He has absolutely no problem popping this guy's needle cherry.

#stucky #stucky fic #stucky fanfic #stucky fanfiction #stucky fic rec #weekly recap

[cetaceans-pls]

Fandom: Batman - All Media Types Relationships: Alfred Pennyworth & Jason Todd, Alfred Pennyworth & Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne Characters: Jason Todd, Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne

Summary:

Revolution and family both run on love and carbohydrates, and you can quote Jason on that.

Or, Jason swings by the Manor to find Alfred stress-cooking his heart out after a fight with Bruce, and over the course of making dumplings, the concept of caring by way of cooking becomes clear.

June got me feeling some kind of way about blatantly showing people you care about how much you care. We’re almost halfway through 2020, so keep on keeping on, and be charitable and kind as often as you possibly can.

Fic in Tumblr under the cut, and here’s my masterlist for more sweet sweet reads:

2020, right?

Jason’s not sure there’s anything left in his tank except for spite; it’s enough to get him out and about making sure that the GCPD watched their fucking step, but even spite is (surprisingly enough) not endless. That’s the hallmark of this most accursed of accursed years; prickly energy up-down his back that leaves him restless, and a complete inability to actually do any fucking thing about any fucking bit of it.

Times like these, there’s really just the one sure-fire way to re-find centre, and if it involves hacking into the family calendar to find just the right time when most everyone’s out of the house, well. There’s a reason Bruce never revoked his access, even if he’s got a second lifetime left to regret his pre-teen e-mail address ( ‘ [email protected] ’, where the w’s are of course for Wonder Woman, and the x’s are for Cool).

It’s a shitty hot June day, depression and distress are heavier in the air even than the choking humidity, and the Manor is quiet and cool in comparison. It’s tomb-like, yeah, but it’s not coffin-like and that makes all the difference. Jason comes in through the front door because he knows the house is mostly empty, and sheds layers as he goes. By the time he reaches the kitchen, he’s a full-grown man in ratty sweats and a sweat-damp undershirt, and Alfred looks up at him with endless warmth. “Why, Master Jason, if you had rung the bell I could have greeted you at the door.”

Jason looks both ways just in case, because this family is full up to the neck in people with horrific timing, before ducking down and pecking Alfred on the cheek; xxwwDangerBirdwwxx is not the only thing that stayed with him from childhood. “Heya, Alfie,” he says, already feeling 15 degrees better than he did outside. “I just let myself in, don’t sweat it. Am I interrupting something?”

He very clearly is. Alfred doesn’t have his coat on, and looks achingly domestic with his shirt sleeves neatly folded up and his soft fuzzy sweater-vest. His hands are a floury mess, kneading dough the size of two Dick-heads, but Alfred’s already moving away to wash his hands and put the kettle on. “Hey, no, you don’t have to, lemme just make my own-”

“Nonsense, Master Jason,” Alfred says, mild-mannered and a thousand times more menacing than Batman at his absolute worst. “It’s no trouble, there’s leftover roast beef from dinner yesterday, it won’t take a moment to make you a snack.”

And in less than said moment, Jason has tea-with-honey-and-milk, and a roast beef sandwich that smells like the dream ideal of every roast beef sandwich. He’s already eating before his brain can tell him to protest Alfred waiting on him, and the appreciative groan comes in right on queue, under a second after that first bite.

There is A Father, A Son, and A Holy Ghost, and they manifest all at once as an elderly British man with the finger strength of a mid-sized mountain gorilla. That dough is being beaten into absolute submission as Alfred gets back into the swing of things, and over the course of the consumption of a sandwich, it becomes a smooth, perfect lump that gets lovingly plopped into a bowl and covered with a damp tea cloth.

Alfred doesn’t ask Jason if there’s something wrong, or if he needs something. The clearest need is obviously the need to be home, and home Jason is, so whatever thing that next goes wrong had best be prepared to face Alfred and his selection of awful terrible knives that line the kitchen. He puts the bowl away on a shady spot on a windowsill and pulls out a mountain of onions instead, and gets to peeling.

Jason pulls out a switchblade from somewhere about his person, blitzes it with the hand sanitiser they’ve all been guilted into bringing with them at any and all times, and starts helping. His kitchen in his ratty apartment is where all the rats in the building like to hold Communion or something, so he’s long since given up having fresh produce around. Happily, vigilanteeism with a side of crime bossing keeps your knife skills sharp, and there’s something alarmingly freeing about peeling and chopping onions while unavoidable tears start up, in a sunny kitchen with your granddad.

“What’re we getting all these onions ready for, anyways?” Jason says, enjoying the excuse to have a stress cry. Alfred doesn’t suffer from waterworks, but that’s because he suffers from chronic dry eyes instead. It's a condition that persists despite every Robin in a long line of Robins buying every eye drop product on the market between them for him to try.

Crying's a funny ol’ thing in the Manor, and it’s also funny that Alfred’s probably seen the most tears despite being the man least capable of them.

“Everyone has been running ragged across the city recently, and I thought that dumplings might be quite a nice treat for dinner tonight. I assume you’ll be joining us, won’t you Master Jason?”

“Of course,” Jason says because there’s no point getting between Alfred and dinner participation. There’s a bigger issue at hand anyways; dumplings are delicious but also obnoxiously difficult to make in any quantity fit to feed Bats and Birds and their oversized appetites.  Everybody in the household has a favourite type, but everybody in the household worries when they get their wish, because Alfred only ever makes dumplings for a full meal when he’s stress-cooking out of his mind.

The man can’t even stress-cry while cutting onions, for fuck’s sake.

It’s best to broach the topic with a soft touch, which sucks entire balls because it’s not exactly Jason’s specialty. “So, uh. What dumplings are we making today?”

“Only 3 types,” Alfred says with a hint of apology. “Xiaolongbao, because I wanted to finish up the last batch of stock I made and Master Dick does so enjoy soup dumplings. A side of cheese-and-spinach momos for Master Damian, who has mentioned missing Tibetan food. And seeing as how you’ll be joining us, as many gyoza as these old hands of mine are able to make, Master Jason.”

Okay, cool, so an infinity of endless, delicious potstickers then, all right. What a time to be alive, Jason thinks to himself. “Not making anything special for B, huh?”

The mood takes a turn for the spoilt, goes off faster than tipping a fistful of salt into a cup of milk. “Master Bruce will have whatever is available, and he will enjoy it,” Alfred says frostily, and chops the end off an onion with significantly more force than reasonable.

That’s the answer, then. Christ, what has Bruce done now? “Saw on the schedule that he’s got a board meeting for another couple of hours, Alfred, so you can lay it on me. What happened? Are you okay?”

Alfred looks at him at that, looks at him and smiles the smile he gets every year when he’s inundated with gifts on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and the arbitrarily set Alfred’s Day (September 8th, as decided by Dick on a whim entire aeons ago), and Jason tries not to feel embarrassed because he’s a whole-ass adult but he doesn’t pretend he’s not pleased to have made the mood ease up. “I’m well, Master Jason, thank you for your concern. I’m afraid I can’t say the same for Master Bruce.” He sighs, and they fall into silence. B brings bad communication out of the best of men, what else is new.

The mound of onions done, Jason is assigned ginger and garlic and potatoes and more things fresh from the garden and greenhouse, while Alfred starts taking his frustration out on a mountain of meat.

Jason’s careful to keep their produce separate, as is Alfred; wouldn’t do to cross-contaminate meat into momos, after all. They work and they work and they work, until all the prep is done and all that’s left is the dough and the stuffing.

The duties get divided like this: Jason gets the cheese and the seasoned spinach to make vegetarian dumplings for Damian, and Alfred gets literally everything else. Despite this, though, Alfred’s sure fingers and devastating dexterity churn out beautifully-shaped dumplings at 4 times Jason’s top speed.

Jason’s got 8 done and Alfred’s putting an entire tray away when Alfred finally breaks their quiet and sighs, looking as old as he is (and isn’t that the most horrifying thing this horrifying year, hey). “Excuse my dour mood, Master Jason. I had an altercation with Master Bruce this morning, regarding his workload and his reluctance to delegate. It grew unfortunately heated, and I turned a blind eye to his extremely broken hand. I did not stop him from leaving the Manor for work." A little additional violence goes into the folding of the current gyoza, and Alfred's lips twist and turn down like a dumpling fold. "Decades I've spent looking after the man. It's alarming how he can still rile me up so."

Isn't that a Universal Truth. Alfred's Angry Gyoza still looks better than Jason's best go at a momo, which is also a Universal Truth. He just needs to try again, till he gets better. Alfred’s good at indirectly teaching patience, and directly practicing it himself, but everyone’s got a line and it’s not the first time somebody’s crossed this one. “It’s his special gift, swear to God. You know what they say, Alfie. Hell really is other people.” Oh, the pleats on this one are looking mighty fine. “Uh, just. How bad a break are we talking about here? What exactly did he do to piss you off this time?”

“He hasn’t had more than 2 hours of sleep a day since, oh, April, I believe. Master Bruce is trying to effect systemic change at both his day-time and night-time jobs, and he has been running on little more than righteous anger and painkillers for weeks. Master Tim has tried to talk him down, as have I, but yesterday he shattered his wrist in a fight with far too many pigs and I found him working down below when I woke up this morning with his hand wrapped up in duct tape.” Alfred sighs, and rubs at his forehead with the back of his hand. “Duct tape and batarangs for splints, Lord help me, because he didn’t want me to worry about the true extent of his injuries.”

And now Bruce is in his civvies with an unknown number of broken bones and a blood opium level that’s over 9000, trying to do good in a no-good world, and all Alfred can do is to become more dumpling machine than man to avoid the deep unpleasantness of it all.

Jason whistles. He thought he’d been having a bad time but at least Alfred was a surefire source of comfort. Alfred’s place to turn to until he’d walked in was just a lump of dough, shit. “Sounds about right for him. But Alfie, how ‘bout you? You’re the one co-ordinating the largest band of crime fighters outside the League, and you’re most of the reason why the man that does co-ordinate the League is even a little bit functioning.” Bruce is a whole entire adult man filled to the brows with idiocy, sure, but… “If everyone’s running ragged you’re gonna be running ragged-est, and if I thought that was the case, we-ell. Duct tape starts looking better and better.”

Alfred looks affronted and gently outraged. “I have been doing just fine, Master Jason. I am not the man running around in costume trying to punch unkindness out of his fellow man. I am just the butler, sitting at home making dumplings, while the master of the household is tripping across the financial district in screaming pain.” Uh oh, here comes another Angry Gyoza, perfectly-shaped and squeezed just a shade too hard.

Jason puts down a slightly-less-crappy momo on his tray, and reaches across the small kitchen table to catch Alfred by the wrist, gentle as anything. “Alfie, I’m saying this as someone who loves you so much I’d literally kill for you,” and boy Jason sure does mean literally, “but hard-headedness is a learned trait, and we got it from B and B got it from you. The man’s an idiot, sure, but sounds like he’s probably at least as worried ‘bout you as you are ‘bout him. Does that sound about right?”

Ah, he really does suck at this whole sweetly-softly thing, but it’s clear once you think to look. Alfred’s game face is in many ways more impenetrable even than a cowl and a mask, but there’re dark circles under his eyes, he’s sallow instead of just pale, and there’s an exhausted stoop to his back that’s usually hidden under a perfectly-tailored suit jacket. Jason’s seeing it now after weeks of work keeping him away from the Manor; if he’d been seeing Alfred like this every day for the past god-knows-how-long, self-care with tape would suddenly seem incredibly appealing.

Alfred looks at his hand, Jason looks at Alfred, and they’re both quiet for a while. Jason thinks he should let go, but he also can’t help but feel that if he does, Alfred’s going to go back to being ‘just the butler’, and that’s not right, not right at all.

In the end, Alfred makes the first move, pulling away just so that he can pat the back of Jason’s hand. “It’s always a pleasant surprise to see how you have grown into such a fine young man,” he says absently, devastatingly. “Especially given the role models you were saddled with. Master Bruce…. may have brought up that I was working more than I should, though he did not come up with a viable alternative.” Alfred rolls his eyes, a rarity in public view. “He tried to give me a curfew; off the comms by midnight, Alfred, that’s the rule.”

They both snort at that. No one’s respected curfew in any format at any age in this household, and it’s almost sweet how Bruce nevertheless keeps trying it on child, adult, and parent alike.

“Nevertheless,” Alfred continues, hand still on Jason’s, “it’s a fair point to say that my and Master Bruce’s worrying over each has grown somewhat out of control, and changes need to be made. It… would help to have another pair of hands at the Manor.”

Oh, no. Alfred’s about-turn raises Jason’s suspicions, but it’s too late for him to do anything about it.

“Oh,” Alfred says with an exaggerated sigh, a smile hiding in plain sight, “it would do my old heart good if Master Bruce were to have more assistance during his night-time escapades. And if someone were available to help me cut onions and dice garlic, that would help too.”

Jason’s already fucking sunk, because he’s learned how to say ‘no’ to many things and 'fuck off' to a few more, but he’s never learned how to turn down an Alfred who works harder than most anyone to never ask for more than what his family can give.

He groans, completely trapped. “I’m a grown adult and I’m not moving back home with my family, Alfie, c’mon.”

Alfred pats him again, and goes back to making Jason’s favourite dumplings. “Of course, Master Jason, but that’s no reason why you couldn’t have dinner at home more often. Besides, who will badger and bully Master Bruce into being a more reasonable man if not for you?”

That’s a reasonable ask, because post-resurrection Jason has carved out time in his busy schedule to constantly prod and poke Bruce into being less of an asshole. And if Jason’s willing to go on a murderous rampage at Alfred’s behest, coming by more often to work together and help out isn’t much of an ask at all.

“Stop it, you already know I’m gonna say yes,” Jason grumbles, moving back to his task. “Alfie, you’re the absolute worst manipulator in the entire house, and this house is full of bastards.”

Alfred just laughs quietly, seeming more at ease and at peace than he was at the start. "I'm afraid, sir, I'll have to respectfully disagree. Hell may be other people, but this family, I think, is about as good as it gets."

And really, what's a good comeback to that?

Jason's setting the kitchen table for dinner while Alfred handles the steamer baskets and griddle with tremendous aplomb when the door creeps open timidly. That has Jason immediately on high alert, because nobody in the Manor does anything timidly.

It's Bruce, looking how he looks when he's about to go 3 rounds with the Joker while Killer Croc's nipping at one heel and the Penguin’s gnawing on the other. His right hand is wrapped in a blue cast, strapped to his front in a utilitarian white sling, and his left arm is weighed down with a grocery bag filled to bursting with what looks to be a guilty gift of assorted snacks and baked goods.

(Alfred is a nightmare to shop for; anything from a pet rock to a chef’s knife made of Damascus steel and beaten gold would be received with the same expression of fond long-suffering. Literally the finest analytical minds in the country still don't know if he's a Coke or a Dr. Pepper man, urgh.)

“Hello, Jason,” Bruce greets him, but his eyes are stuck fast on Alfred, calculating and hesitant.

“Hey, B,” Jason calls back, and takes the time to enjoy the sight of the big bad Batman mousily scurrying into the kitchen as he tries to gauge Alfred’s mood. “Went shopping, huh?”

“Just a few things.” Bruce carefully puts the bag on the kitchen counter and stops there, glancing at Alfred’s back warily. “It’s good to see you.”

Where Jason’s stood he can make out Alfred’s extremely indulgent smile, and it’s pretty clear he’s dragging the moment out to let Bruce stew a little. It’s a pretty worthwhile activity, so Jason just goes along with it, even though he can see Bruce tensing up as he sees the endless platters of dumplings and immediately Understands what sort of day Alfred’s been having. “Same, I guess. Your hand okay?”

That perks B right up. In a slightly too-loud voice, like he wants to make sure Alfred hears him, he says, “Could be worse. Leslie had me fixed up, and she’s putting me on strict rest for a week.” Another cautious peek at the stern line of Alfred’s back. “Doctor’s orders, and I have some investigative work to catch up with anyways, so Dick is stepping in for me for a few days.”

Christ, the peace offering couldn’t be made any more blatant if Bruce had come complete with a fruit basket and a Hallmark card of a sad-looking lamb. Jason almost wants to laugh, but he’s starting to feel a bit bad about the surreptitious glances, the uncertain line of the lip. Everyone’s been there, right? Done something a bit dumb and hurt somebody important, unwilling or unable to apologise, and when you try to make up for it it’s just butterflies-in-stomach and cheek-chewing until the other person gives a clear sign that it’s okay, it’s okay, Jaybird, I’m not upset about the car, I’m just glad you’re safe -

Nostalgia’s heavier in the air than the smell of fresh-fried potstickers. Lucky, though, that kindness is probably something you pick up from your parents too, because by the time Jason comes back to the moment Alfred’s already turned to face Bruce, an ice pack in hand. “I am delighted to hear it, sir,” Alfred tells him stiffly, but is gentle as anything as he leads Bruce to a kitchen chair and helps him ice his swollen hand.

The relief that takes over Bruce’s entire face when Alfred finally talks to him is eye-watering in its vulnerability, and the way he melts into the chair under the slightest bit of fussing is, honestly, equal parts sweet and sad.

Alfred must be similarly moved, because he procures a cushion out of thin air for Bruce to rest his arm on so that he can be free of the sling, and takes a moment to just stand there and brush dark hair away from a worn-out face. Bruce is out of it enough that he’s got his eyes closed and he’s just enjoying the careful touch, and Jason wants to scream a little, because how was Alfred surprised he grew up into an okay kind of guy when this was the standard the household set?

“Good man,” Alfred says, and maybe it’s in response to following Dr. Thompkins orders, but it’s pretty hard to misread that really, he just means 'good' in every way a man can be good when he looks at a half-asleep Bruce like that. “I’ll put the kettle on, and you can nibble on some pierogies while we wait for the family to gather, Master Bruce.”

That wakes Bruce right back up. “Are they-”

“Filled with cheese and potatoes, sir, of course. Why would I make anything but your favourite?” Alfred sniffs like he’s offended, but he’s still smiling as he pats Bruce on the shoulder before heading back to counter and Bruce’s bag of apologroceries.

He fishes out a beautiful red-and-white bakery box, and looks legitimately impressed. “Oh, my, Master Bruce. How did you find Bakewell tarts in Gotham? I haven’t had any in years, and I must confess to being partial to them.”

“Cross-referenced the ingredients of every perishable snack item available in the UK against the fresh produce that you buy often enough to be a statistically significant indicator of preference,” Bruce says around a yawn, like he’s not being absolutely insane right now. “Sorted it into an alphabetized list and sourced them from across the tri-state area. Letters A through to J are in that bag, but-,” another yawn, like Alfred and pierogies are the only thing keeping him going, “-but I’m glad I found you something you liked, Alfred.”

Jason just sits there, committing to memory that Alfie likes whatever the hell a Bakewell is, that he also somehow managed to make an entire dumpling series without Jason noticing, that Bruce fuckin’ Wayne’s favourite dump has cheesy mash stuffing, and that this is how to show care and affection when words are damn hard to get out. He sighs, because he has to fucking sigh, because now he’s so goddamn stricken over how love is inherent in groceries, and it’s so embarrassing how he absolutely, 100% would obliterate a nation in the name of the two men in this quiet little kitchen in the cursed year of our Lord, 2020.

When Alfred does return from the stove bearing a plate of piping hot pierogies for Bruce and gyoza for Jason, he feels OP enough to rip into the throat of the cruelty inherent in this world with his bare fucking teeth, and right after dinner, he really fucking will.

(Revolution and family both run love and carbohydrates, and you can quote him on that).

-

a/n: i don’t legitimately think anybody reads fic on tumblr bc i definitely loathe doing it so i mostly just write this to 1. soundboard myself and 2. wish that you’re doing okay just in case you did make it here. what a year of agonies, but the hope is that it’ll be  2021 and when you look back you think, oh, those were growing pains, and the world is tangibly better for having weathered it.

that’s the hope.

#batman #jason todd #bruce wayne #alfred pennyworth #jay & alfie #alfie & b #batfam #spoilers: this is just several thousand words of me thinking about what it means to look out for someone you care about #god cannot believe i went down the bathole and it's not the tech or the detectiving or the fighting that got me #it's just me consistently crying over the concept of familial bonds

[imperiuswrecked]

Differet anon - I love character analysis, and want all your opinions about Namor, in as much detail as you're willing to provide.

Hello Anon! I have so many opinions about Namor and if you really want then here’s a long meta that covers various things (warning long post ahead):

Now we all know that while Marvel Comics Universe officially begins with the Fantastic Four in the Silver Age, most of the Golden Age isn’t considered “true” MU canon BUT Marvel plays fast and loose with the GA characters and backstories, they pick and choose whatever they like and leave the rest, for instance many GA characters never made it out of the GA however some have in some capacity and the main three who used to be Marvel’s Holy Trinity due to their popularity in the GA were Original Human Torch, Captain America, and the Sub-Mariner. However Marvel took different approaches to bringing them into the SA. For Jim Hammond he was shelved and his superhero name and powers were given to Johnny Storm, the current Human Torch takes his name from his favorite super hero Jim because Johnny used to read comics about the GA heroes and it’s in MU canon that Jim, Steve, and Namor had comics made of their time during WWll. Captain America was put on ice (though this was not revealed until his reemergence in the comics within the pages of the Avengers after Namor’s SA debut) however for Namor, now Namor was special because Stan Lee loved Namor so much that rather than reinvent him like he and Kirby did with the Human Torch, he just brought him into the comics as he was, he gave him amnesia, and Kirby reworked the Atlanteans and Atlantis’s designs and they seamlessly integrated him into the pages of the Fantastic Four.

The reason why I find this so exciting is because Namor has always been a link for connections within the comics, he and Jim Hammond had the very first comic superhero cross over in comic history, this meant that before their crossover, Batman and Superman never hung out, and everyone was in their own universe. Namor then becomes the connection between the Old comics and the New comics when he comes into the SA. Namor connects the X-Men to the wider universe when he appears in their books, he connects Daredevil when he guest stars, and Namor is the reason Steve was found by the Avengers. His actions cause a ripple across comics. Not to mention that Namor as a creation is himself also a connection, he was the first Anti-Hero in a time where such a thing never existed, there was “bad guys vs good guys” only black and white views, there was no grey human mortality involved. His creator, Bill “Blake” Everett was a descendant from William Blake, a Romantic Age Poet and Artist. So the Romanticism and Bryonic elements to Namor cannot be dismissed especially since Everett connects Namor back to more old romantic age stuff when he named him The Sub-Mariner taking inspiration from “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” Another connection Namor has is that he is the prototype Mutant, his ankle wing origin story and how he gained his ability to fly in his teens was covered years before the X-Men were invented in 1963. (Sub-Mariner Comics #38, Published Feb 1955).

In the Golden Age Namor’s childhood is quickly glossed over, but what we do know is that Thakorr, angry at his daughter Princess Fen, for daring to love and marry a human man, locks her away in a cell and within that cell is where Namor was born. Thakorr now realizing he has a male heir but still upset with his daughter releases her and grants her, her life but he also banishes her and the newborn prince as punishment for her actions. He only allows them to return to Atlantis when Namor becomes ten years of age in order to begin his training to become ruler one day. The reason I mentioned earlier that Marvel takes whatever it feels like taking from the GA is because this fact is usually forgotten or glossed over in the comics. However when Namor was a young boy he was beloved by his mother and his only friend, Dorma, and later after she was retconned into being Namor’s cousin, Namora. Other than that Namor was often ostracized for being born different. He endured racism, taunts and his Grandfather abuse as he was growing up. However Thakorr wasn’t stupid and when he and Fen saw what Namor could do, how strong he grew and how he could survive on land, then Namor began to be molded into the “Avenging Son” a weapon of Atlantis and to be used in against the surface world to make them pay for their crimes.

Namor feeling like an outsider and trying to find his place in the world is a core element to the backbone of his character, his morally grey nature allows him more freedom than other characters.

Namor is a very flawed character and I feel he is very relatable because he makes mistakes and rather than ignoring them he faces the consequences for that.

Namor is perhaps the most honest character in Marvel, and I don’t mean as in he himself doesn’t tell a lie now and then but honest as in what you see is what you get and he will cut through the b.s. and tell you exactly what he is thinking whenever he feels like it. Namor will call you out and he makes no apologies for being abrasive or in your face.

Due to his upbringing and also due to Namor having to constantly fight and endure his cousins trying to take his throne by whispering in Thakorr’s ears, the court was not a kind place for the half breed prince, he had to command respect at every opportunity which is why when people disrespect him on the surface world he is quick to assert himself and remind all that he is the king of seas.

Legend of the Blue Marvel (2009) #4

So Namor deals with A LOT which is why he has this salty grumpy outer shell to his personality and not many people get to see the softer side of the Sub-Mariner. He wears this mask of arrogance and confidence but he also backs up everything he says with his actions. Namor is very aware of how others see him and decided long ago that he gives zeros fucks and will do whatever he wants to do, but something that not a lot of writers in the modern age comics get about Namor is that Namor is very honorable just because Namor uses a different moral compass than other heroes doesn’t mean he isn’t a good person in his own way.

Namor hates bullies, being bullied as a child he despises bullies in all forms and often steps in to stop them and takes the side of the underdog. He especially hates child abusers.

Namor respects women, omfg if I have to read another “hot take” from some writer who calls Namor a home wrecking Casanova I will fling myself into the sun. Toxic Masculinity is a thing that people keep trying to attach to Namor but it’s WRONG. This especially happens in the comics where there is Reed/Sue/Namor drama because writers want people to side with Reed and having Namor be a douche and Sue declaring that she would never be with a man like him no matter how hot he is because his personality sucks and Reed is the good choice for Sue. (can you tell I dislike the namorsue ship? lmao)

Namor treats women with respect and would actually fight others who disrespect women, he is a king and a gentleman, however this does not mean that he treats them as inferior. He has had his ass saved by women so many times, he will fight a female villain the same as a male villain, he will listen to women and trust their judgement in situations. Namor is much less likely to trust men and especially men in power due to him growing up under Thakorr’s tyrannic rule.

Namor’s an old school romantic and he loves being in love even if he doesn’t quite know how to make a relationship last (usually because Marvel kills off his love interests).

Namor gives people second chances even if they have betrayed him in the past.

Namor and his mother have a strained relationship, even though they both love each other there’s a wall between them. Fen was crafty, she would do what could to prepare Namor to be king, including keeping secrets from him.

Namor is a loyal person and friend, and once you have his seal of approval he will fight for you.

Namor likes animals far more than he likes people, and I love him for it. He treats scary undersea creatures like pets.

Namor is a very lonely creature who cares far more than he will ever let on and who, no matter what happens, will always stand up to fight for what he thinks is right even if the entire world is against him.

Namor has this thing about touch, he dislikes people touching him without his express permission and when I first starting reading his comics I chalked it up to a part of his arrogant demeanor, then I thought that it might be because he is royalty and there are certain things you just don’t do with royalty and personal touches like a hand on the should might seem to be too familiar and it was a sign of disrespect, however when I read more about Thakorr’s cruelty/abuse I have come to think that its a mix of “Don’t touch me bitch, I’m royalty” and “I won’t let anyone who I don’t like touch me ever again because of the abuse I suffered”.

His soft heart has been hardened by mankind’s cruelty so he protects it. He’s seen more sorrow and pain than others have in their lifetime and he is just a tired old man who wants everyone to leave him alone.

Thanks for letting me ramble on, lmao.

#Anonymous #namor the sub-mariner #namor #long post #meta #comic talk #marvel comics #my ramblings #thanks for asking! #i could go on but like #this is a general meta #ive been typing this out since yesterday #if there was something specific that i could hone in on i would do that too as long as i have a subject for namor #since he has such a long history and i didnt even get into his mental health issues or other stuff though i have talked about #that before on my blog

[1dffexchange]

to fight (when you feel like flying)

To: Anna @twomoonstyles

From: Inm @in-madhouses​

Summary: harry has never had a place to call home, not since one direction became a thing. zaemira has intentionally avoided home, fearing the monotony and a life not lived. their paths cross and like two lines that are meant to meet and fall apart every so often, they find a home in one another. 

a story about binge drinking, tattoos, and how sometimes, building homes out of people can be the only thing that keeps you going. also known as a tribute to brasil!harry and the (not so) secret thigh tattoos.

Warnings: some offensive language, alcohol use heavily implied, hints of substance abuse (if you squint) and sexual references. there are also mentions of hendall, hadine and hamille although not explicitly named. the timing is also nowhere near accurate but let's call it artistic freedom.

rio de janeiro

may 2014

They break up on the eve of his departure. It’s the band’s first all-stadium tour and somehow, as quickly as they were a thing, they just weren’t by the time February rolled around.

They’d clung onto one another for dear life through the winter months and the physical hole she leaves behind is filled by the pictures of her everywhere. There are fall fashion shows, and there are music festivals, and there billboards, and there are gossip rags. As far as the eyes can reach, there she is, in one form or another.

Harry leaves for the tour with the boys and it’s exactly like he expected. He is grinning from ear to ear standing atop of the world night after night, the stars in his eyes left by the glow of the headlights is eclipsed only by ear-ringing screams they are accompanied by.

Each night is a swirling tide, even when he is not on stage.

But the mask cracks eventually.

The air stills.

They do seven cities in twelve days and he’s tired already. He’d inadvertently frowns at the wrong moment, or sigh, or have a faraway look in his eyes, barely anchored to the present. And they catch it. They always catch it. But the walls come back up as swiftly as they tumble down.

He’d smile. Smile, smile, smile. Smile until it hurts.

Smile until it’s believable.

(It never is.)

He spends too much time bouncing between staring holes into his phone and wanting to go at it with a hammer. There’s just something confusingly enthralling about the pictures and the videos of her that keep popping up. The precise red carpet movements, the long lithe legs, the perfect posture, the jawline for days.

Niall sends him memes round the clock to try to distract him from looking at new pap shots, and Liam tells him to just not to think about it.

“It’s called a quarter life crisis,” Zayn announces, elbowing Louis as they chuckle at his melodrama.

As though it’s the simplest problem ever to grace the earth, Louis offers a solution, “What you need is a good bender and a good cleanser.”

He’s got good mates, he thinks.

But then he’s in Rio and there are pictures of her at the Met Gala and next thing he knows, he’s downing caipirinhas by the glassful and there’s sun and sea and sightseeing and then more caipirinhas. He remembers exactly how everything unfolded, like watching a lifetime worth of dominoes collapse into a rather large portrait of a car crash.

&&

It’s a slow night.

There’d been exactly one walk-in so far; a giggly nineteen year-old girl who wanted a Taylor Swift lyric tattooed on the middle of her lower back.

“It’s our song,” Swiftie says in regards to the tattoo, and whether the blonde haired, blue-eyed, cherry lipped teen was referring to her boyfriend or the title of the song, Zaemira will never know.

Since then, she’d been all by her lonesome for four whole hours and the tan skinned brunette is bored. She’d left her latest acquisition, a tattered first edition copy of Factotum back on the couch she was crashing on and with nothing to read or distract herself with, she is decidedly… bored. She’s antsy and she’s restless, and she’s super tempted to just flip the ‘open’ sign around to read ‘close’ and get drunk on cheap booze at the dodgy little bar down the road. That’s what soul-searching girls do when they end up working part-time at a seedy tattoo parlour in the tv shows anyway, why should she be the exception?

She’s so bored that her mind wanders and she's thinking that maybe it’s finally time to go home, not like call it a day home, but home home.

Zaemira had packed a bag and left the comforts of London right after graduating from her graphic design degree, hoping to find some kind of excitement out in the world before living out the predestined rest of her life in a cubicle churning out ad after ad for the nihilistic consumerist society she lived in before kicking it too early. But after a year on the road, honing the needle and ink in her hands and collecting first edition Bukowski’s, she is left wondering if there’s even a home for her to return to. The concept of it now so foreign to her even though her childhood had not been lacking in much.

The tinted shop door swings open right then with a squeak and a clatter of really impressively expensive sounding heels echoes through the tight little tattoo parlour space.

It’s all limbs and hair, flailing and tumbling forward face first into the floor.

She instinctively backs up away from the swirling mess.

“I’m fine! I’m—fine, just—I’m fine,” the bloke says, waving his arms about before rolling onto his back, splayed on the floor, taking up most of the floorspace, “You should—there should be a sign. Two. Yeah, two. One in English, and one in—what country are we in?”

Zaemira blinks at this hurricane on the tattoo parlor floor and studies him for a quick second.

“You’re in Brasil,” she starts saying once appropriately convinced that he’s not about to sick all over the shop floor, “And a sign for what exactly?”

He huffs, blowing several strands of thick brown hair out of his eyes in the process, “The stairs, love.”

She squats close by to examine this specimen interrupting her plans to close early and get hammered.

“There aren’t any stairs,” she says dryly, arching an eyebrow at his direction.

He sits up, coming dangerously close headbutting her and blinks at her.

“Then what’d I trip over?”

And he sounds so fucking plaintive, adorably dismayed and hilariously distressed, that Zaemira can’t help but bark out a laugh.

“Well, if I had to guess,” she starts saying, biting down on the laugh teetering on her lips because he sounds so honest to god confused and hilariously distressed sitting there on the tattoo parlour floor, “You tripped over the fucking distillery you inhaled at wherever you went to dinner.”

He squints up at her like he’s doubting the validity of this observation.

And then, “Are you English?”

She rolls her eyes at that, “What gave it away?”

He shuts one eye to peer at the girl before him, as though considering her seriously, “You’re far from home.”

“I could say the same about you,” Zaemira contests as she recognises his too young and too pretty and too distractingly familiar face, “You’re Harry Styles.”

He blinks and there are alarms blaring in her head as he smirks.

“You’re doing the introduction thing backwards there, sweetheart.”

“You don’t like people telling you who you are then?”

“Not very much, no,” he scrunches his nose, deep in thought for a second, before turning his attention back to her, “What’s your name?”

“Zaemira,” she replies, realising they’ve been on the floor way too long and her leg is close to falling asleep.

She holds her hand out to pull him up, and he accepts it all too enthusiastically.

“What kind of name is… Samira?”

She shrugs as she helps the six footer to his feet wobblily, eyes scanning the door he stumbled in through, wondering where his entourage is, “It’s Zaemira, actually. But you know what, you get to call me Mira, drunky-pants.”

“Well, I want a you tattoo,” he announces, voice a little bleary but determined. But there’s something dangerous there, too, something that reminds him of the sting of needle piercing skin.

She eyes him up and down as he wobbles and crosses her arms across her chest.

“I don’t think so.”

“No, no. You don’t—” Harry hiccoughs and takes several steps on the spot to balance himself, “—understand. I want your name— Zaemira— tattooed on me.”

He takes extra care to pronounce her name right the second time around that she is just inexplicably fucking endeared by the entire spectacle.

Zaemira blinks.

“What?”

He frowns, as though worried he’s not articulating well enough for her to understand him, “Your name— I want it tattooed on me.”

She stares.

And then she stares some more.

“It’s a beautiful name— I never—” Harry hiccoughs, frowning and stopping himself mid sentence, “I never want to forget you.”

She’s definitely not bored anymore, she thinks.

So she cocks an eyebrow at him in a wordless game of truth or dare and he’s reckless and he’s dramatic and he’s beaming at her so brightly that she’s blinded by it, and her brain goes hazy and her thoughts switch frequency with an abrupt high-pitched whine of static.

&&

cape town

april 2015

Harry thought he was doing better, he really did. It’s been almost a year since Rio and he’s Harry fucking Styles. He’s in one of the most popular bands in the world, he has a PR perfect sense of humour, sharp fucking cheekbones, and the word Brasil tattooed on his thigh to remind him that even when life feels like it’s spinning off its axis you can always find a centre again.

But then she breaks up with him, craving a more definitive commitment that he can’t offer, and they’re on tour again when Zayn, out of nowhere, announces that he’s needs to leave for a little bit which everyone knows is code for he’s tired and done with it all.

And the world just... started to spin a little off its axis again.

So he makes plans to arrive in Cape Town earlier than he needs to and heads straight to where his life last made sense when things moved too fast for him to catch up.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” he drawls from the doorway, smug and half a bottle of duty free booze dangling precariously in his hands.

Her whole body stalls, eyes the only thing that whips up from the book she’s engrossed in. The smile that carves itself onto her lips hits him square in the chest.

She sets the book aside, breathless, “How d’you know I was here?”

“I keep tabs on you,” Harry shrugs, tone casual, with a small smile playing on his lips playfully.

He had long made a mental note to keep up on her current location whenever he could since she’s far from forthcoming about her travels. Seems only fair since his movements in contrast is so easily trackable. One quick internet search and she’d be able to know if he was in Holmes Chapel or recording in Los Angeles or out grabbing a bite in New York.

“Why, because no one else will tattoo country names on you when you’re drunk?” Zaemira teases, taking a step forward, as though challenging him to crack first.

“Precisely,” he nods in all seriousness.

They both start grinning for no reason whatsoever and the laughter that sits in their chest bubbles over soon enough.

After Rio, he had gone back to his life and she went back to hers. She moved from city to city, continually avoiding home, and he went from stage to stage, seeking solace in the certainty of instability. But still, the heartfelt conversations and indelible experience they shared in various states of sobriety in Brasil bonded them together. Somewhere along the night almost a year ago, they had reached a point at which they both understood implicitly that no matter what, one could call and the other would answer no matter where they were.

And so they did.

They shared the big news; Zaemira whenever she found a new old Bukowski book and Harry whenever he was thinking about a new tattoo. To the layman, it may sound like a shallow kind of friendship, completely lacking any kind of commitment, but it wasn't.

On the contrary, it was the healthiest and longest lasting form of a relationship that either one of them ever had. Despite geographical and emotional distance, they were allowed to grow in their own way and not have to live through minute everyday highs and lows and petty dramas.

It was as liberating as it was peaceful.

And he could tell that his sudden physical presence is throwing her off.

“Seriously, what are you doing here?” She asks, tone light but the slant of her jaw more rigid than he’s used to and her posture brittle.

“We’re on tour,” Harry shrugs nonchalantly as he walks in around the tattoo parlour.

The space is small and intimate and starkly lit. The walls are embellished with clean lines and immaculate designs and it’s just like the spot in Rio where they met a year ago. Her caramel brown eyes are tailing him around the room and he wonders how someone who works with men looking to cover up prison ink all day can look so soft.

“I know that,” she says, her tone more curious than it is wary, “But what are you doing here?”

“Can’t a guy just drop by to see his friend when he’s in her neck of the woods?”

She narrows her eyes at him.

“A guy can, but a guy never has,” her voice dripping with the implication that he’s never lacking in the means to find her.

Which isn’t untrue.

He sighs.

“I was in New Orleans for all of a day, Zaemira.”

Harry likes saying her name in entirety. She prefers Mira, but he likes the unshortened version. It’s beautiful, it’s the kind of name that commands the full use of the orifice that most people use to stuff full of food or as a tool to lick and suck.

She stares at him, surprise evident.

“How could you possibly—”

“I have you on Instagram,” he replies, crisply, before taking another swig of the bottle in his hands.

“No, you don’t.”

“Only because I can’t publicly follow you.”

“So you just check my account obsessively like some kind of creepy stalker?”

Harry shrugs.

“Think we crossed that line when I fell into a certain tattoo shop a year ago, don’t you?”

Zaemira huffs out a breathless sounding laugh that hits him right in the center of his chest.

He had thought their paths would cross when after their last tour ended. He thought he might go out to New Orleans and get into that gumbo life for a couple of days. Stroll along the French Quarter and check in for a drink at Bourbon Street. Bask in the jazz and have a look around in a voodoo shop.

But when he’s back in LA after the tour, he finds out that she’s in Japan when he calls.

“Oh yeah, I’m in Tokyo,” she said over the phone distractedly, like it’s no big deal.

He frowned at that, confused. She had a tendency of not staying in one place for too long, but it was abrupt, even by her standards.

“What are you doing in Tokyo?” Harry questioned, brows furrowing so hard he felt frown lines forming.

“A bit of this, a bit of that,” Zaemira said noncommittally, “I thought Japan might be good after finding the boy I shacked up with completely naked and asleep with his ex.”

He gaped at that casual over-the-phone confession non-confession, befuddled and aghast.

“Did you let him have it?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Did you rip his dick off? Sock her in the nose? I could get some people together and hit him in the balls for you if you want,” Harry offered, only half-joking.

“No, I just packed my stuff and left.”

“You didn’t wake them up to confront him about it?”

“Why would I?”

Her confusion confused him. Harry paused, opening and closing his mouth several times, thinking back to break ups and make ups he’s been through, talked through, and fought through.

“You didn’t want any closure?”

“Why would I want to give him a chance to hurt me more?” Zaemira retorted, quick and sharp as ever, “He’s either going to lie about it, apologise and do something like it again, or completely be like whatever about the whole thing.”

“You... didn’t... think he deserved to know that what he did was wrong?” He prods along, cautiously.

Even after months of phone calls and texts, her candor and point of view never fails to catch him off guard.

“It’s not about him though,” she said all matter-of-factly, “I mean, he wouldn’t give me any kind of honesty, respect, or consideration, so fuck that closure.”

Zaemira isn’t shy. That’s for sure.

And she isn’t coy.

She’s loud and she’s outspoken and she had no qualms telling him that she didn’t want to die where she was born having realised that she’d done nothing out of her comfort zone which is why she left and took to sleeping on couches. Harry remembers how much he enjoyed that about her. How it had been refreshing to meet someone who enjoyed the newness. Someone who actually took pleasure in what life had to offer instead of just going through the motions.

“Well, now that you’re here…” she says as she moves towards the door, flipping the sign over from ‘open’ to ‘closed’, “What d’you feel up for tonight then, pop star?”

Her voice anchors him to the present. And she’s grinning up at him like he’s a firefly and she’s a mason jar, and he feels the countdown to self-destruction rumble in the hollow space beneath his ribs like the roar of a sports car engine.

His heart skips a whole beat at that.

&&

The sun is creeping up slowly and steadily on the horizon. She’s sitting fully clothed in a fancy bathtub in a fancy hotel, clothes soaked and doing a piss poor job of trying not to smile.

She gives him a look and he just laughs, sat on the edge of the bathtub, also soaked through.

“We need to come down,” she said earlier, shaking her head as though the movement would clear her head of all that they’d indulged in through the night.

The first rays of sunlight had started to dot the skyline and he grinned devilishly, taking her by the hand, promising he knows just the thing that would do the trick. Harry promising he knows ‘just the thing’ was how they ended up high as a kite to begin with but she had trusted him thus far so she decided to trust him a little bit more. Which in hindsight was where it all went wrong because that’s how they end up in his hotel room filling up the bathtub with water and foam shampoos and bath salts.

The windows are open, carrying their laughter and giggles to the streets below. But that’s not her main concern. Somehow, in an effort to make the bath as enjoyable as possible, Harry had turned on the shower head and initiated a spray war. The physical exertion and the laughter had sobered her a bit, but the tradeoff was that she now wanted a cigarette which was not possible since he all but dunked her into the tub to claim his victory.

She pulls the soggy packet from her denim jacket breast pocket, the gross brown liquid oozing from it indelicately.

“You’ve wet my cigarettes,” she says as she tries to look upset.

One glance at him though and she’s reduced to a puddle within the puddle she’s sitting in.

“You should really quit anyway.”

“Piss off,” she tosses the wet box at him.

It lands two feet off its target with an unceremonious splat and they laugh at her aim. They laugh and they laugh some more and talk about nothing and everything.

She talks about her mum. She never talks about her mum. But suddenly she’s talking about her mum and how she left and how it broke her father and it had hurt her to see him hurt the way he did. How he had let himself be hurt like that and still cling on to the hope of her mother coming back one day.

Harry is nodding and then they’re both just complaining about how unfair and shitty life is when he says it. Blurts it out, almost, like a secret that he can no longer contain.

“I want a tiger on my thigh.”

She’s so dazed that all she can do is look at him.

“D’you reckon you can do a tiger for me?” He repeats himself, almost as though in fear that she wouldn’t understand the urgency of his request.

She doesn’t question it, but she understands the symbolism instinctively.

“Sure,” she smiles, leaning her head back.

“Tomorrow morning?” He quirks his head, eyes glazing over as he tries to, in his solidly drunk state, try to remember if he has any other planned activity.

“That’s right now,” she laughs, lifting her heavy head to look at him, “And neither one of us are sober enough to walk a straight line, let alone hold a tattoo gun.”

“I trust you,” Harry says, voice dropping impossibly lower and she hears alarm bells start to ring in her head.

She’s makes a joke about him always being so eager to drop his pants around her and regrets it instantly because he’s smirking at her and looking at her the way he does and she almost forgets how to breathe.

“Maybe you just have that effect on me.”

“Careful,” she says dryly, “Or I might think you're trying to flirt with me, Styles.”

“Oh, you'd know if I was trying to flirt with you.”

“Maybe,” she concedes, before deciding that the best course of action is to slide further into the tub, “But would you?”

His smile that follows is breathtaking and the unabashed laughter that spills over is something else entirely. It’s warm and new, with some kind of never seen before sparkle in his eye. As though it’s an exclusive layer of whoever he is when he’s around her and her only. A smile that’s peeled back and raw and intimate.

Her chest blooms of something she can’t quite explain.

&&

los angeles

jan 2016

“Look, I don’t mean to sound outrageously savage here but… you have a thing for collecting winter clings,” she says.

“What on earth is a winter cling?”

Zaemira pauses.

“It’s the Harry Styles version of a summer fling,” she states simply, “But you have them around in the winter because that’s when you get loneliest.”

They’re in a bar, it’s small and it’s cosy and it’s not the kind of place that he would be recognised which is why it’s perfect. She pours him a shot of whiskey from behind the counter because it’s harder in LA to get a legal tattoo artist job (or any other job for that matter) than one would think.

“That’s not true,” he frowns before downing the amber liquid in a go.

She stares at him pointedly from behind the bar.

“You always get a girl at the end of the year so that you have a cosy Christmas and a nice New Year and then a blowout birthday party and then you break up with them before Valentine’s Day because commitment scares you. There are multiple blogs dedicated to the this specific phenomenon.”

“Maybe,” he concedes, a ball of something hard and sour and guilty forming in the pit of his stomach.

“No. Definitely,” she says as she tops him up for another shot.

“Is that what you think of me?” Harry frowns.

There's a beat of noticeably tense silence.

“Is it untrue?” She quirks her eyebrow just a touch.

Harry drops his gaze to the liquid he’s been swirling around his glass, “Is it really so bad to just want someone?”

“Not usually, but it takes twenty-one days to make a habit and you’re in too deep.”

“What exactly are you insinuating?”

“I’m not insinuating anything, I’m flat out saying that you don’t know how to be alone,” Zaemira gleefully volunteers, completely without provocation, before topping up his drink again, “Which isn’t a shocker because you’ve never really been alone. Even when you snuck out to have your solo adventure in Rio, you dragged me along for the night. And now that the band’s on hiatus, you’re falling back into old habits with an ex.”

He promptly forgets how to fucking breathe.

She does that to him a lot, he realises.

Even though the band is officially on hiatus, he’s never felt more trapped. He feels caged in and claustrophobic in his own skin. That’s why he even took up that yacht holiday up at St. Barts. He had a physical urge to flee his life. To escape. But he didn’t think that it would become another source for frenzied paparazzi shots which fueled speculation and rumours.

He throws back the liquid in his glass in another swift go and feels the burn trickle down his throat.

“You keeping tabs on me, Zaemira?” He asks, playfully, with a teasing lilt in his voice.

She merely rolls her eyes at that.

“I’m just saying. Maybe it’s time to work on solo you.”

“You’re taking this bartender psychologist thing way too seriously.”

She opens her mouth to contest that but another patron is waving over at her from across the bar and she excuses herself to see to the obviously lost Wall Street gentlemen in the suit and tie.

The moment of silence allows Harry to think back over her words.

But her tinkering laughter cuts through his reverie.

Harry glances over and sees that Wall Street has a shit eating grin on his face, and something unpleasant churns in his stomach.

His friends were all coupling up, or getting engaged, or getting ready to pop out kids, and he realises that the only constant in his life over the two years has been their over-the-phone friendship. While media was content having him as a charming albeit a little secretive little fucker, a true lothario, kicking up rumours with grainy pictures, reaching out for a comment anytime he so much as speaks to a person of the opposite sex, she’d been his odd inner balance through it all.

And increasingly, he’s finding it difficult to share her with anyone else.

&&

Zaemira has a lot of bad habits.

She knows that.

She smokes and she drinks and she gets some kind of perverse sort of thrill out of spending her inheritance from her dead father. First she spent his insurance payout on a graphic design degree that was basically just a piece of paper. And now it’s been four years and the inheritance her father willed her hasn’t run out (mostly because she takes odd jobs to earn her keep in the various cities she bums around in) and she’s certain that this is what a quarter life crisis must feel like.

Her mother left her when she was barely eight and it broke her father’s heart. She is resolved not to make the mistakes her father made though. She’s determined to live, truly live. Even if it means not having a place to call home, crashing on couches of new friends and old. Even if it means spending one way plane tickets around the world and living out of one packed bag. Even if it means sleeping with strangers and leaving the moment they showed any sign of weakness.

What it means, is that she isn’t ashamed of her life choices.

Mostly.

There’s the small matter of a newly acquired bad habit — answering a certain call from a certain pop star whenever he rang.

She knew who he was before he accidentally wandered into her temporary place of employment of course. He was the golden boy from the band. The Harry Styles from One Direction. She hadn't been aware of much else to be honest, just that he had his start in fame from that reality show everyone watched and was involved in a band that was hailed a new coming of The Beatles.

Apart from that, he had never been relevant to her life in any way.   

So when he tumbled into the dodgy, seedy little tattoo joint in Rio and practically falls head first onto her feet, she catches sight of the oddly familiar looking guy who is too long limbs and all overgrown hair, it takes a full minute before she makes the connection.

She’d seen photographs of him before, photos and headlines on Facebook shared by news organisations (or what passes for news organisations on social media anyway), and she recalled the basic impression of this Hollywood favourite in the making; the t’ shirts and the tight jeans and the expensive shoes and the barely thought out tattoos. He was basically like any young rock star in the making, cheeky and reasonably good looking, and perfectly groomed for the media and the fandom to dislocate their jaw to swallow whole.

But the boy who stumbled into the small tattoo studio is not the boy she’d seen on the interwebs.

They become friends.

He tracks her down to her exact location whenever he’s in a city she’s in and she allows it.

When she finds herself in Los Angeles, he finds himself on hiatus.

The band had been splintering since Zayn left, that much was evident. And then the band went on their ‘break’. And he’s lonely, an ailment he had long suffered from far even before he became the Harry Styles of One Direction.

So it doesn’t surprise her when he saunters into the pub she’s working at for the past month and a half.

As a rule, she doesn’t drink on the job. She’s not allowed to. But it’s hard to say ‘no’ to Harry. He’s lonely and he’s heartbroken in more ways than one and they comes dangerously close to depleting the bar’s whiskey stock because it’s a shitty little hole-in-the-wall kind of place that doesn’t really stock up often and so they go back to his place after her shift.

The too big Los Angeles house came with a pool and a view and a fully stocked bar and one moment they’re drinking some more and the next he’s on his piano, absentmindedly playing a tune he has stuck in his head and talking about life.

She’d been good at not feeling. For a long time, she didn’t even have to try. Zaemira just didn't let herself feel for people like that and it was easy. But around him, it’s suddenly not.

He’s talking about being afraid, and how he’s afraid a lot, and how he doesn’t know what to do with himself, and how the house feels too big and he’s too alone.

She kisses him.

She kisses him because she doesn't like what he's saying, doesn't like what it means, doesn't like that this boy, this rock star, this heart of gold and boots to match who had the world on his feet could be as lost and lonely and confused as her.

She kisses him so he can stop talking, and she kisses him so she can stop listening.

It works out fine.

Except—

She isn't entirely sure why he kisses her back.

His name rolls with disturbing ease off the tip of her tongue and she thinks she can get used to the way he says her name when he comes. It sounds like a prayer and a punch, a gasping exhale that hits her in the chest, or maybe in her heart, and he collapses backwards onto his bed, pulling her close to him like she belongs there.

Zaemira doesn’t sleep a wink and when morning comes she leaves her latest find from a seedy bookstore downtown, Love Is a Dog from Hell, on his bedside before she walks out the front door.

The sun hits her straight in the eye, like the glare of a cafe employee when you ask if the have soy milk instead of regular full cream. The city was a place for the hopeful, she realises. The hope that one day you’ll find love. The hope that you’ll luck out. The hope that working hard will get you where you need to go, as long as you hope and never let go of that hope.

It was decidedly not a city built for her.

She was a shitty bartender and an even shittier dreamer and the only thing that’s been a constant in her life is her slowly expanding collection of tattered Bukowski books that she will gladly throw actual wearable clothes out of her overhead carriage bag to keep said books with her. Through the years, the only thing she could rely on was the gritty, filthy words that a dirty old man could provide.

And she had no problem sharing that part of her life with him at all.

&&

paris

march 2018

It’s just a flash, but he swears he sees her in the crowd and he thinks he’s going mad.

He’s barely two weeks into his world tour. His solo world tour.

He should be thrilled. He should be basking in the victory of it all. The world is loud and roaring in his ears but in the dreams he barely remembers dreaming, he sees her there, quiet and serene and bright, as though he is finally seeing her in the light of day instead of in the cover of night. (As though his mind is trying to make up for memories that didn’t happen.)

Not too long ago, it was another face he sought out amidst the crowd in Paris. But he catches a flash of what he thinks is her and suddenly he can’t think of anything else.

Harry hasn’t seen Zaemira in two years. Two years and then some. Not since that night.

They call and they text and they avoid discussing what happened in his LA house or why she left before he woke with not even a note but just a book by his bedside table.

There was no designated moment, no exact timing, but their dynamic changed. Because life is not a Shakespearean tragedy where it’s all fade to black and bittersweet endings. There’s mundanity and somehow, they sought each other out more in that monotonous day-to-day.

Their friendship was stronger despite having flirted with the very line that kept them together. She’d gone home to London and was spending her time putting together fragments of a former life and her current life like a jigsaw, jamming the pieces together hoping they’ll fit while he, well, he had a movie to film, and then an album to write, and that same album to tour after. He’d also landed himself in another relationship. She’s a model, because as Zaemira would say, he’s a glutton for punishment and ‘no seriously, same lips red, same eyes blue, you so have a type.’

His ‘type’ gets along great with his friends and his mum likes how laidback she is when she was over for Christmas and it’s a relationship that he’s only sure has lasted for as long as it did because of the change in their friendship.

But then he realises that he hasn’t seen his friend in over two years and it suddenly doesn’t sound like a real friendship anymore.

He can’t shake the thought and the screaming fans do nothing to help set his mind straight.

His heart aches like a broken bone over something he can’t explain.

Barely off the the stage, he whips out his phone and calls.

&&

“Sorry, wrong number,” he says.

“You know it isn’t,” she says, eyes flicking toward the living room as a burst of laughter carries itself to her ears.

Zaemira grabs her pack of cigarettes and shuts the front door gently as she exits, “What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

But she’s known him long enough to read into the subtext, the world that exist in between the words he’s actually saying.

“What’s wrong?” She asks again, determinedly, taking angry long strides down the road.

He sighs, voice sounding like it’s jumped through various hoops and crossed many a timeline in many universes to reach down the phone line to her.

“It’s nothing, Z.”

But she knows something is. Knows it from the way he says ‘Z’ instead of ‘Zaemira’. Or maybe she hopes it’s something more than knows it because she wants an excuse to see him. To wander the streets of London with him. To get drunk with him. Anything with him.

Where he’s calling her from, she wouldn’t know; could be a pub, a hotel, backstage of his concert, anywhere. And she’s not sure she wants to know. They haven’t physically seen each other since that night over two years ago.

Has it really been?

He’s travelling again, on tour, alone this time around, and his schedule always seems at odds with hers. Of course, it didn’t help that he’s seeing someone. She knows because he’d rung her up to ask if he should invite said someone home for Christmas and again to ask how many times you can ask someone to come to your concerts before it starts seeming narcissistic.

She pulls out a cigarette from the pack and puts it between her lips before lighting it, taking a long drag, trying to remember if there’d been any sign that his relationship had been on the rocks the last time he called.

Zaemira inhales the fumes while he quietly stays on the line.

Harry doesn’t say anything.

“How was the concert tonight?” She prods.

“It was good,” he says, but there’s no enthusiasm in his voice, just exhaustion, “Paris is always good.”

He doesn’t sound right.

It’s the stupidest, most clichéd thing ever, but he doesn’t sound like himself.

“Harry,” she says, voice softening because he’s quiet and he’s the one who called her and she has a horrible feeling that he’s about to cry and the last time he sounded like that on the phone, she found out that Robin had passed, “Has something... happened?”  

He’s not saying anything, like he’s waiting for her to say something, and she doesn’t.

“I’m just… I’m having a minute”

Zaemira sighs.

Sometime in the past two years, she’s thought on more than one occasion that she might love him. Like proper love. More than just platonic love.

But other times he just feels so fucking far away that she’s not so sure anymore.

She heaves a not-quite calming breath and takes another drag of the cigarette before filling the line with chatter. Because she gets it. She gets that empty kick in the gut sometimes. She prattles on about how home doesn’t feel like home and even though life at home is, more or less, alright it feels like something is missing. She complains about her aunt who disapproves of her decision to spend the rest of her inheritance on getting her masters and she begins to outline in exhaustive detail just how dissatisfied she feels, how everything makes her feel like a shitty daughter and a shitty niece and a shitty friend and a shitty student and a shitty—whatever the fuck else she's failing at—when he cuts her off.  

“When can I see you?” he asks, like they can pretend for a second that they haven’t spent the past two years apart, like they live on the same street and he could see her in an hour if he wanted to.

She flicks her eyes back towards the house, thinking of her aunt and her cousins and how they’ve been going on and on about this big Easter party they’ve been planning.

“Tomorrow?” She suggests, knowing full well that he can’t. Not really. He’s got schedules and plans and commitments.

And a girlfriend, a voice in the back of her head pipes in.

She doesn’t need to silence the voice though because reality has its way of doing that and she hears him exhale on the other end of the line, as though letting go of a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding.

“Tomorrow’s no good. How about day after?” Harry suggests, “I’ll be in Amsterdam. I’ll get you a ticket.”

And Zaemira thinks about that for a bit, seriously considers taking him up on the offer.

And then she thinks about him, about how maybe they’re like those horrible math love stories; like sine and cosine, meant to meet and fall apart every so often, forever out of step with one another.

She drops the cigarette to the ground and watches it burn.

“I don’t think I can do Amsterdam right now,” she says after a second, “I mean I have it on pretty good authority that if I don’t go to my classes I won’t be able to complete my masters.”

She chuckles to herself at the terrible not even remotely funny joke.

“I’ll be in London in April,” he says and she can hear his breathing all but stop on the line, like he was holding his breath for her answer and she almost wishes she’s not about to say what she’s about to say.  

“I’ve got work on weekends.”

He sighs again and the line is heavy with words unsaid.

“See you after tour then?”

“Yeah,” she says, forcing a grin, forcing the lie, “Yeah, guess so.”

It’s quiet between for a bit. The silence is deafening and it steals her breath a little and she’s pretty sure it has nothing to do with the cigarette she just smoked.

And then the line goes dead.

&&

london

december 2018

He doesn’t call her again after Paris.

His tour ends and his relationship ends and he half-heartedly makes excuses to himself and for himself for not calling; he's busy, of course he’s busy, he’s busy catching up with his mum and his sister and his ex co-workers and his industry friends and he tells himself that he doesn’t need anyone to help him get through the cold lonely winter nights.

But then it’s December and he calls and she picks up and they pick up exactly where they last left off. It felt good. It felt like breathing again. And he thought it was enough, but two days later, despite the promises he’s made to himself, he texts her a meme.

And then he calls again. And again. And again.

It would be almost like she’s his phone therapist except he’s also sort of keeping her functioning like a normal human that doesn’t lash out at people by texting him her darkest thoughts, so it evens out.

He’s realising with every call, and every passing day of his newly found (and truly enjoyed) singledom, that he was kind of a fuck-up. Not in any obvious, tangible, measurable way. He didn’t have a dozen different child of divorce issues, or problems with abandonment that run so deep he is constantly choosing to leave before he is left, or a mile long list of insecurities and fears that leave him utterly crippled, but he was fucked up in ways that were difficult to fully articulate.

And their relationship was a home that allows for it to be okay because they were both honest about just how fucked up they were.

Harry doesn’t know when exactly he figures it out, but he decides he’ll go see her in March. He’ll ring her and say ‘wrong number’ and she’ll call him a twat and then he’ll throw rocks at her window and hold up a copy of Bukowski she doesn’t yet have that he’ll have to find by then and yell, “Did someone order a creepy stalker?”

It’s a good plan. Except it’s two days to Christmas and she’s complaining about her cousins and her nieces and her nephews and how she just walked out when they were making pies together ahead of Christmas and now she’s just going to sequester herself in her shitty flat and spend the yuletide alone and he can’t help but smile at the whole thing because that’s so painfully Zaemira and he can’t help himself.

“I’ve got it planned out,” she says, “I’ll just Netflix and eggnog myself to sleep.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, come over to mine for Christmas,” he says, words tumbling out of his mouth completely of their own accord without passing through his head at all.

“Yeah, I’ll just come to Holmes Chapel at the drop of a hat,” she says sardonically.

“I’m serious. My mum won’t mind.”

“There aren’t any flights out, Haz.”

“I’m sure there is.”

“It’s fine. I’m used to it, I just called to rant anyway,” she says dismissively.

And Harry can see it play out at the back of his mind, the way her lips quirk, all wry and self-deprecating. Except there’s more of a bite to it than it usually would.

“What d’you mean you’re used to it?”

“I mean I only exist when it’s convenient for you,” she says it so matter-of-factly that he’s not sure if she’s making a piss poor attempt at a joke.  

Her words are just so thoroughly her, and no one could say it without sounding like an attention seeking arse, but they hit him square in the gut and Harry feels all semblance of breathable air leave his body.

“Hold up—” He starts but she’s having none of it.

“You’ll see me when you see me. It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

She changes the subject and tells him to bring over ‘like ten crates of Vodka’ when he ever decides to drop by because she’s acquired a taste for it and he chuckles half-heartedly at that.

He makes a joke about her trip to Russia and she’s saying how she should have tried harder to seduce an oligarch. But he’s roughly only a quarter present. His mind is a riot. It’s like the time in school some kid hit him with a baseball bat and he feels all the blood rush to his head.

His gut twists with a vague, rumbling kind of horror.

The words left unspoken stings more than it should.

I don’t want to be your next winter cling anyway.

&&

Her door buzzes.

It’s Christmas eve and she isn’t expecting anyone, but when she rushes down the hallway to open the building door, there he is.

It’s pure electricity in his eyes and a fire so hot in her bones that it feels like ice.

It’s been a full thirty-five months since she’d seen him in person and not through her phone. That’s almost three whole years. They’re just shy a week of the anniversary of that night and he’s still just so pretty. Painfully pretty.

He cracks the weakest smile she’s ever seen, “Hey.”

“What are you—”

“You’re not a winter cling,” he blurts out, eyes ringed red and slightly swollen like he’d been crying or up all night.

Or both.

She ignores the statement, crossing her arms across her chest as they stand out in the cold.

“Did you drive here all night from Holmes Chapel?”

“I wanted to wait. I wanted to wait until after Valentine’s Day. Because you’re not something to hold onto while I wait out the loneliness.”

“Harry—”

“Do you remember the night we met? In Rio? I was tired. I was so tired of being who they expected me to be,” he interrupts her, plaintive and gentle, “It’s why I got so drunk and slipped security. I wanted something that was just mine.”

He takes a step forward and she holds her ground, still not inviting him in. She’s not sure she wants to. Like the hours she spend not sleeping in his arms, she’s not sure she wants to be another warm body to him. But Harry is staring at her, expression terrifyingly open, honest, and contemplative, like he's looking right through her to her heart.

“Like a me tattoo on your body?”

Zaemira hates that she’s doing exactly what her aunt says she does when she’s uncomfortable; makes terrible jokes and thinly-veiled badly-timed humour in an attempt to hide her discomfort which never helps.

She hates that her aunt is right and she hates that this is how she’s realising it.

“Every other relationship I had never felt right,” Harry continues, holding her gaze as though he is equally fascinated and terrified, “Something was always missing.”

The tick-tock pounding thump of her heartbeat is so loud and gushing she can practically feel it in her veins. But he just keeps going, heart on his sleeve at the door of the girl he spent three drunken nights with and fell into bed once. As though he didn’t know he had the power to so completely destroy her.

There’s a taunting, almost brittle quality to what he’s saying that it makes her nervous. He’s making her nervous and it pricks like annoyance at the back of her head. It’s jarring what he’s saying. Striking.

“People aren’t answers to whatever mess that’s going on in your life, Harry.”

It's ridiculous and it's rude and it’s out of control and out of character for her except—

Except that it isn’t.

She wonders when exactly he’d figured it out.

And how it took her so long to realise that she’s the same as what she’s accusing him of.

She wants and wants and wants and then she takes, and takes, and takes, until she inevitably loses interest, and leaves.

And most people just let her.

But Harry isn’t most people.

And he’s there now to show her exactly that.

“I don’t want people,” he says so softly it’s practically a whisper, like he’s confiding a secret, like he knows that the harder she pushes the more she wants you to fight for her, “I just…want you. I just didn’t realize there was a difference between wanting you to want something and wanting you for you.”

The words slot into her heart perfectly like a deck of cards. The words that she never even knew she wanted to hear.

They taste like a perfectly brewed shot of espresso and too expensive whiskey all mixed into one heartstopping drink and she wants to savour the shockwave-sweet intensity of the moment.

She hesitates. And then, “Careful, Styles. Or I might think you’re trying to flirt with me.”

He grins at that. A real smile curving on his lips.

“Oh, I’m definitely trying to flirt with you.”

He tucks a stray curl behind her ears, simultaneously keeping his distance and drawing her close.

Her breath hitches on a tremulous little laugh.

She's paralysed with an emotion that feels a lot like fear and it's scraping at her skull, rhythmically ebbing into all corners of her brain like a growing virus and he's just there, staring at her.

She wants to say something. Something smart or witty or funny. But instead she just lets herself fall forward into his arms and onto his lips.

It tastes like a promise.

It tastes right.

It tastes like two beating hearts and a slow summer burn.

#1dff #exchanges

[bakudekuficlibrary]

Hi. Do you know about any time travel or age regression fanfictions? Thnx.

Hello! Here is a link to the De-Aged fics mini-list and all the time travel fics I could find!

-Ellie

1 Series. 27 Works.

Once Again from Better Days by limesicle ( T | 45,569+ | 52/? )

Katsuki wakes to find himself reset. It’s a time when quirks are just starting, and he only remembers a bit about happened the first time. He remembers enough to know Deku is someone he hurt a lot. He remembers enough to know he had to watch Deku fall. He remembers enough to try to make things better this time.

Make Every Moment Last by osakakitty ( E | 6,885 | 1/1 )

There are days where Izuku Midoriya wakes in a different world. It is usually a world very similar to his own, but with noticeable changes. The thing that changes the most is Katsuki Bakugo. Sometimes he’s a friend, sometimes he’s not, and sometimes he’s something else entirely.

Canon-Divergent story where Midoriya has the uncontrollable ability to travel to parallel universes. He sleeps in one, and may wake up in another. By seeing through the eyes of many different ‘Izuku Midoriya,’ he learns things about himself and Bakugo.

[Abandoned] Fall by highlightsvt ( T | 10,431 | 3/? )

The defeat of All for One comes with a price: the life of All Might. A grief stricken Midoriya has a chance encounter, and is sent to the past to make things right. But things take a turn when Midoriya finds out he isn’t so quirkless after all.

I’ll Be Your Hero by bakudeku ( T | 2,536+ | 4/? )

Katsuki wants to protect Izuku. He wants to make sure Izuku never has to cry again. Maybe this was his chance to fix everything, to make sure he didn’t make the same mistakes as before. If this really isnt a dream, if Katsuki really is in the past, then he’d do anything his little body could to keep Izuku safe.

This time, he’ll stay by Izuku’s side.

new eyes by WabiSabi ( T | 20,965+ | 9/? )

Katsuki wakes up 22 years in the past.

With no other choice, he moves on.

A trip down future-memory lane by Tsulivy ( E | 19,977+ | 8/? )

Izuku and Katsuki were fighting a villain… How did it end up like this…

“This” being them travelling through time and landing right into adult Katsuki and Izuku’s home, and having to witness the way-too-clingy couple that is themselves, but older.

When was Then? by hollyandvice (hiasobi_writes) ( T | 2,345 | 1/1 )

The moment he tries to move however, he becomes aware of a warm, heavy weight across his stomach, holding him in place. That realization slowly makes him aware that the warmth at his back isn’t wholly normal either. He tries again to move away, but the weight around his waist tightens, holding him in place. In the same moment, there’s a grumbling in his ear, sleep-dulled and strange, but still unmistakably Kacchan.

Original prompt: A quirk sends Izuku into the future where he’s stuck with a 10 years older Katsuki, and Katsuki is left with the future Izuku. The future counterparts are in an established relationship.

[Series] Where did you go to end up right back here? by sensiblysilly ( G&M | 15,481+ | 2 Works | On Hiatus )

Main story with an optional alternative ending.

Fantasia for Two Gentlemen by pandoras_thomg ( E | 8,631 | 3/3 )

Pro heroes Ground Zero and Deku get caught in a time-travel villain’s quirk and end up spending the night with each other’s middle school selves. Truths come to light, feelings find their home, and destinies change in summertime.

[Underage]

Of What ifs and time machines by Maru_Chan ( T | 47,765+ | 7/? )

Because the harsh reality was, that Izuku Midoriya was getting married tomorrow afternoon, and that no matter how Katsuki felt about it, there was nothing he could do to change that fact.

Or maybe there was.(Or: in which Bakugou Katsuki gets the bad end, and later gets another shot at rewriting it.)

Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? by theweakestthing ( M | 8,256 | 4/4 )

There are always things we wish we could have done, but given the opportunity, would you really do them?

[Major Character Death | Implied/Referenced Suicide]

Take Me Back To The Night We Met by elizabeth_16 ( T | 19,341 | 1/1 )

Katsuki Bakugou, a.k.a. Hero Ground Zero knew he was going to die one day.

When the moment came, he realized all the things he had done.

Then he was death.

He didn’t know what being dead was like, but it sure as hell wasn’t you waking up in your three-year-old self with your mother waking you up because it’s your first day of kindergaten.

(Or: Katsuki dies and has a second chance to makes things right)

One More Chance by Dragonbooks249 ( T | 29,022+ | 6/7 )

The raid went bad. All for One had escaped and they didn’t know. The battlefield was chaos and at the center of it all, the hero Deku and All for One battled. Izuku was able to put the greatest evil to rest once and for all, but not without a price. His partner and lover Katsuki holds the fallen hero in his arms as he breaths his last.

In a desperate attack, Katsuki launches himself at Shigaraki in an attempt to kill him.

Moments later, he awakens in his childhood bedroom, 4 years old and with a fresh start to life. It seemed perfect. Until it ends in tragedy. Now Katsuki is faced with the task of having to live multiple lives, all alongside the love of his life Midoriya Izuku. Thre is only one common thread to the way all of the lives seem to end, a single burning desire.

One more chance. Just one more chance to protect him.

One more chance.

[Major Character Death]

Outted to Yourselves by GreyDayMoon ( Not Rated | 4,415+ | 2/? )

Izuku and Bakugou end up stumbling upon an intimate scene between their older selves. Bakugou explodes and bursts the intimacy bubble causing a mess of their future house and lots of confusion in the young teens.

Absinthe by cyan_rubies ( T | 4,479 | 1/1 )

They always said that time could heal all wounds. But Bakugou Katsuki was not good at waiting and he never will be.Bakugou-centric. One-shot.

[Major Character Death]

Time Waits for the Bakugous by OhShnapples ( T | 10,852+ | 4/? )

“Um can you please stop straddling Red Riot-san he’s literally 30 years older than you.”

“FUCK OFF WE’RE BOTH TECHNICALLY SIXTEEN!!!”

Or that universe where Bakugou and Midoriya’s clever/quirkless son and explosive daughter leap three decades back in time to apprehend their father’s killer.

Endless by chancellorxofxtrash (PhoebeMurdivine) ( T | 3,582 | 1/1 )

It’s been six months since the pro hero Ground Zero’s last stand, and Izuku was determined to make things right.

[Graphic Depictions of Violence | Major Character Death]

If you had been there by chancellorxofxtrash (PhoebeMurdivine) ( T | 2,117 | 1/1 )

It was at the beginning of their second year at UA when Deku had disappeared without a trace.

“If you had been there. Do you think it would have happened differently then?”

can’t let go (losing my grip) by lovedbyshadows ( Not Rated | 8,698+ | 3/? )

“People aren’t either wicked or noble. They’re like chef’s salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.” -Lemony Snicket.

[Graphic Depictions of Violence | PTSD | Implied/Referenced Child Abuse]

When It All Comes Crashing Down by vulcanhighblood ( T | 3,914+ | 4/? )

Katsuki is not having the best day, especially since it keeps ending in his death. If he’s lucky, he’ll figure out what is going on and how to stop it - and Deku - without resorting to drastic measures.

[Graphic Depictions of Violence]

[On Hiatus] Feeling your pain by Sleepy_Princess_Jade ( G | 1,808+ | 2/10 )

Some Villain quirk sends heroes Ground Zero and Deku back in time

[Bullying]

For the future by atsushisnakajima ( T | 9,681 | 1/1 )

Of all the problems and difficulties in life, there was one single trouble that was impossible for Katsuki to solve.

The green clear emerald eyes and freckled cheeks became his terror

Even though he was his hero.

War of the Roses by kewltie ( T | 2,702+ | 1/? )

In which Katsuki and Izuku are accidentally transported ten years into the future, where they come face to face with the future they both fear and want.

SeriesPart 2 of Gravitation

No Matter What, I’m Gonna Do Right By You by brichibi ( M | 1,643+ | 1/? )

Izuku Midoriya was born without a quirk, but a chance meeting with his favorite hero gives him a once in a lifetime opportunity to make his childhood dreams come true. But just how fortunate is it to possess “One For All” when you’re destined to face its polar opposite: “All For One” — a dreadful power capable of bringing ruin to the entire world. Being the bearer of “One For All” comes with a devastating price, and really, should one person possess something so monumental to begin with? Katsuki Bakugou will do anything to save Izuku from himself — even if it means demolishing the relationship he cherishes the most.

It doesn’t matter. He’ll keep walking this broken path until he gets it right.

[AU based on “Madoka Magica” where Katsuki is determined to save Izuku from a miserable future, and the hero known as “All Might” isn’t as honest as he seems]

[Graphic Depictions of Violence | Major Character Death]

we’ll cross that bridge again, and again, and again by neesaan ( E | 3,002+ | 1/? )

A dead hero, a missing hero, and a hero who never thought he’d have to be this fucking heroic.

If Bakugou Katsuki had known how much damn pain that fucking Deku was going to put him through, he’d have pummeled the shit out of him harder when they were kids.

[Graphic Depictions of Violence | Major Character Death | Implied/Referenced Dub-Con]

Before the Clock Strikes: [BakuDeku] by carmonStudios ( T | 66 | 1/1 )

Masculine death awakens from its slumber, rising from the grave. The final blow of their battle had left him in shreds, yet the dark presence of One For All still lurks in the shadowy night.

The pitch around seethed with fury.

It was HIS fault. No, not himself, but that Katsuki Bakugou who got him in this mess.

And now…

…he’ll pay for what he’s done.

[Graphic Depictions of Violence]

#BakuDeku #KatsuDeku #BNHA #bkdkfl ask #w:underage #t:s #w:mcd #w:violence #t:ptsd #t:abuse #t:bullying #t:dubcon #curator ellie