#basilonecalling

[basilone]

Hi! Congratulations on all the followers! ❤ May I request Spina and prompt 143. Be serious for two minutes please?

Hellooo! Thank you so much for your lovely message. 💜 This took me a bit to wrangle, but I hope you’ll enjoy this little Spina piece featuring a whole lot of Bill and Babe..! (Philly natives, please accept my apologies in advance for this non-native speaker wrangling of an approximation of Guarnere Speak.) I included a small nod or two to my current Big Project in here, but you don’t need to know a lick about it to enjoy this prompt-fill haha.

143. Be serious for two minutes, please

He will never allow for Babe to be left in charge of anything ever again.

The fact that this is the sixth time in his life that he has had to have that thought is something Ralph would very much like to forget right now, though of course the result of trusting Babe again is staring him dead in the face at present with all the allure of being an impossibly large thing wedged into a very small space.

“Babe,” he says, eyeing the garish yellow towers and the drawbridge-styled entrance with no small degree of horror, “how in the fuck did you get this.. this.. monstrosity into Bill’s backyard?” He blinks as he stares at the contraptions that are the only thing standing between it and the open sky. “Actually, more pressing question: does Bill know?”

“Yeah, yeah, he knows.”

“Babe – Babe, listen to me, be serious for two minutes, please.”

“He said it was fine! Said we needed something to drop the kids onto while we’re tending to the food and all. I just.. I thought this was neat? Yeah?”

“Babe.” Ralph pinches the bridge of his nose. Heaves a sigh he has perfected since Bastogne and the cold took up residence somewhere beneath his skin. “Does. Bill. Know?”

The slightly guilty, slightly harried, and more than a little furtive look that passes over Babe’s face like a cloud before the sun tells Ralph everything he needs to know. He opens his mouth to dispute – no, absolutely not, put that thing back where it came from – or to cuss – told you half a fucking dozen god-and-hell-be-damned times Edward – or to do something else that probably involves a verbal strangulation of sorts. He thinks he’s gotten good at those sometime in the war, too, even when Gene’s got him beat at that with one well-placed feral snarl that sends even the brass scampering to their hidey-holes in a hurry.

Ralph wants to fix this, somehow, incredibly, before Bill finds out. The problem is that Bill, even one-legged and stomping around with that crutch of his, can be remarkably quiet when he wants to be.

“Hah! You thought he could sneak that past old Guarnere?” The amused shout behind him has all the loudness of a newly detonated cannon that Ralph can’t help but flinch at. “Boy might think I lost my eyeballs in those woods or somethin’, but I still got them right here see? Ain’t a thing I don’t know about before it happens!”

“Well, there was that wedding –”

“Babe, that don’t count.”

“You said Tab wouldn’t ever marry and then he got involved with –”

“I said it don’t count! Ain’t like any of ya knew better, either, because I saw them faces when he showed up with that Russian broad of his in tow like that’s a normal thing for a guy to do when he ain’t seen ya in years. He even pulled the wool straight over Nixon’s eyes! That don’t happen, Babe, I’m tellin’ ya.”

“So you’re saying you couldn’t see the Russian wife coming, even when he wouldn’t shut the fuck up about her for years and years, but you somehow saw this bouncing castle coming a mile off? That’s fucking bullshit! I kept this secret from my own mother, Bill, I’m telling ya, there’s no fucking way –”

“Yeah, way. Babe, Babe, c’mere, lemme tell ya somethin’.” Bill actually uses his crutch to tap Babe on the shoulder and nudge him closer. The look of utter disdain on Babe’s face as he is interrupted mid-argument by the crutch sneaking around his shoulder and almost bodily toppling him against Bill is perhaps only two steps removed from outright murder. “You gotta know your people, a’ight? Little birdie told me youse – you and good ol’ George Luz – was on the market for something like that.”

Ralph shakes his head as Babe’s face transforms into a similar horror that he feels on the inside when he looks at the gigantic, multicolored, irrefutable bouncing castle that Babe somehow wrangled into Bill’s backyard. Of course something like this involves the likes of George Luz – he’s probably already perfecting his circus director voice in anticipation of the goings-on later that day – and then it’s not surprising that Bill learned about it at all.

“Secrets are kept different anymore these days,” he says sagely, just as Babe opens his mouth to either whine or argue. “Seems only yesterday you was telling Toye about the surprise party in his honor, so stands to reason that Chuck caught wind of this latest contraption of yours and let Bill know what’s what.”

“I’m gonna kill him,” says Babe conversationally.

“Ya know, if ya knock him on his back and put him on that bouncing thing? Might actually fly again! Just like that, whoosh, straight up, no chute needed!” Bill’s gleeful cackle is much, much louder than the sound coming from any of the pumps that keep the castle in its current eyesore condition. “Just gotta be careful Speirs don’t spot ya doin’ it, man’s got an eye for anybody gettin’ up in Chuck’s case like that..”

“Hold up,” says Ralph, feeling a little faint, “Speirs is coming? You sure?”

“Yeah, said he wasn’t gonna miss it now that he’s stateside again.”

Ralph eyes the castle critically. “Think your bouncing theory would work on him?”

“Oh no,” says Babe.

“I’d pay to see that,” says Bill.

“We can’t bounce Speirs, he’s our CO!”

“Was.”

“Technically, is.”

“Ain’t nobody dealing in technical, Babe.”

“Except me, because I’m the one getting murdered here!”

“Eh,” says Ralph, “he wouldn’t do it in front of the kids. Just stick close to Lieb’s growing collection of tiny humans and you’ll be okay.”

“Liebgott has informed me I’m not allowed within ten feet of his kids unless I write them an apology letter saying that Cinderella’s stepsisters did not, in fact, cut their toes off when the glass shoe-thing didn’t fit.”

“They totally did that, though,” argues Ralph.

“I know, yeah? But he says it’s bad for their formative whatever. So, apology letter or death by Speirs.”

“Babe. Babe. His kids can’t read.”

“The eldest is eight,” says Ralph, patiently.

“So?”

“Eight-year-olds can read, Bill.”

“Sure, sure.. You know what eight-year-olds also do? Believe that this castle was put there in honor of Cinderelly. Babe scores points, Babe avoids murder. Stick to the old Guarnere tactic, eh?”

Ralph wants to mention that the old Guarnere tactic got them evicted from half the bars in London, brought Speirs down onto their necks like a fire-breathing dragon, and made at least five replacements cry. Out loud, he merely remarks “it’s Cinderella, not Cinderelly” and resigns himself to death by bouncing castle sometime later on this sunny Philly afternoon.

#ralph spina #bill guarnere #babe heffron #basilonefic #basilonecalling #yes this is from when I put out that prompt call after hitting a good follower count don't @ me #Anonymous #writing20202021

[basilone]

hello! i’d love to request either prompt 37 “i had a dream about you” or 57 “we could get struck by lightning, but you want to kiss in the rain” (because i’m basic af) with - you guessed it - tab and katya!! i couldn’t decide between the prompts so i leave it up to you :)

a question about your gods au (apologises if you’ve been asked this before): if you were god-chosen which god do you think you’d be chosen by? <3

i’d also like to request some gifs please! of toye’s reaction to losing at darts in replacements because it sends me every time. but no pressure because this is a heck of a long ask 😂

Hello hello! The gifset is going to come at some point, haha, but I wanted to get the prompt out to you first! As for the gods AU.. I think if I was god-chosen at all, Wisdom might be willing to go 20 rounds with me on life and the universe and everything else? I’m not sure though, I think that this is something other people can often see better than you can? Like I might think Wisdom would be good for me, but someone else might say “nah, this god would suit you better” haha! You know what, I couldn’t decide between those two prompts either! So you get both! 😂 And, uh, I indulged.. in a bit of a soulmate AU. You’re welcome. 😂

dream the soul electric

Soulmates are for other people.

It’s not that he doesn’t believe in them. He’s had the dream. He doesn’t know anyone who hasn’t. He’s seen it work – between his sister and her husband, between Winters and Nixon later – and he doesn’t care to dispute the possibility of finding that one person whose soul is tied to yours. He’s chased the thought of it in other people. Has been chasing his dreams half a decade or more. He’s just about done with that.

A soulmate is for someone else. He tries to cling to that thought, tried and tested and found true, even when he’s currently looking at the reason why that thought might not be accurate after all.

Floyd thinks he’s dreamed about her most.

“You are staring,” she remarks, not unkindly, as she glances up at him. Her cheeks dimple with her smile. “Again.”

“Sorry,” he says, not feeling apologetic at all. “I’ll stop.”

She waves a hand. “Is fine. I finish it, see?”

He reaches out for the repaired fence. Gives it a slight shake to ensure it won’t fall apart on them the way it did on Webster, earlier, after he’d proclaimed he knew exactly how to mend a dilapidated fence. This time, it doesn’t budge beneath his hand at all. The twine and wood are sturdy beneath his grasp.

“Good job. That’ll hold for a while.”

“Until we get better supplies.” She shrugs. Glances up at the sky before she rolls the excess twine up and shoves it into her pocket. “We need to move out. Rain’s coming.”

“Looks like a thunderstorm to me.”

“I like that!” She laughs as she says it. Spreads her arms almost comically wide as she comes to walk beside him. “Makes me feel this big. You can dance in rain.”

“Never done that.”

“Oh, you miss something,” she says. Her hand is warm in the crook of his elbow. Her cheek comes to rest against his arm. He slows down his walk a moment to savor the feeling before she pulls away again. “We should dance when rain comes. You and me.”

You and me. She offers it so casually, as if that’s just the way things are. Like they are not part of different armies at all, set to turn against each other if their countries decide this fragile friendship isn’t worth the hassle. Like there is no difference between her small town in Siberia and his small town in Indiana, and they were somehow raised to be the same in this world. Like it’s simple, somehow, when everything he feels for her is tied in knots and loops and makes him trip over his words or over his feet more often than not.

“We are not going to dance right now,” he claims as the clouds above their heads slowly start to break into sound. There’s a crackle of light overhead he doesn’t care for, either, and he smells the rain just a moment before the first droplets start to fall. “Not in the middle of this.”

There is nothing but open field stretched out all around them. The nearest shelter her unit uses is all the way downhill and anything his company uses is even further away than that. The looming treeline in the distance is not something he cares to take shelter underneath, either, not when thunder’s brewing loudly in the sky and new lightning flashes turn the summer air electric. The grass turns damp with rain beneath his bare feet – he should have worn his boots after all, but the war’s nowhere to be found – and tickles his skin with the same raindrops that now steadily pour across his face and shirt.

“We can do other thing,” she offers him, and still her pace beside him is slow and unhurried. “If you want.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“We could kiss in rain.”

He laughs out loud at that. “We could get struck by lightning any second now,” he says, incredulity at war with amusement, “but you wanna kiss in the rain.”

Floyd shakes his head. Turns toward her with a fond smile on his face. Almost says something else, something teasing and probably not that nice, but then the thought stops him dead in his tracks. Her words come crashing back in, louder than any thunderstorm can ever be, and the look in her eyes tells him the rest.

“You want to kiss me.” He repeats the words for himself. Repeats them out loud and watches her nod along with each one. “In the rain.” The same rain that’s soaking him clean on through. The same rain that clings to her dark hair and sticks to her shirt in a way that could make him lose his feet altogether. He hazards a guess. Is proud of the fact that his voice hardly trembles. “Right now?”

“Maybe.” Her grin teases a yes instead. “If you want to.”

“Why?”

“Because I had dream about you,” she says, as casually as the way she informed him rain was coming.

“A dream of kissing me in the rain?” He steps closer. His skin feels electric. “Katya,” he whispers, and prays the thunder strikes out at his words before she can hear them, “I dream about you all the time.”

“Floyd.” Her hand cups his face. Her thumb brushes errant drops of rain off his skin. This close, this near to her, he sees nothing but her bright eyes and the rain that curves across her cupid’s bow. “I can take risk.”

His voice turns hoarse as he dares place his hands on her hips. “What risk?”

“Getting struck by lightning.”

Katya smiles as she kisses him. Her mouth curves up against his lips and she almost trembles out a laugh against his mouth the moment he presses back and kisses her like he’s never done anything else in his life. His breath shakes as much as his hands do before he tightens his hold on her and chases the rain on her skin. He nudges kisses against her cheek, her jaw, the spot just beneath her ear that makes her shudder and almost crash against him. Nudges another kiss against her mouth, then gasps as her hand weaves into his hair and tugs his head down to deepen the sensation.

She belongs here.

The thought strikes him as he wraps his arms around her and kisses her until the soft sounds she makes turn to something of satisfaction. It hits him out of the blue, strikes him and shakes him awake when he’s been dreaming about her half his life, and there’s nothing but her and the rain while he kisses her like she’s never belonged anywhere else. With her mouth on his, her tongue teasing against his own, her hands in his hair and on his skin, her language spilling into his head and her memories along with it too, there is really no room to argue.

Soulmates aren’t just for other people. There is one for him, too.

#floyd talbert #oc: katya #tab x katya #basilonecalling #josephtoye #basilonefic #writing20202021

[basilone]

#79 and #147 for Billie and vampire!Speirs. (Hey, if I'm gonna send you asks, I'm gonna push it, yeah?) 😇

I appreciate it, my friend! 💜 I am so enamored by the fact that you requested Billie and vampire!Speirs for this, haha. I did some more borrowing off @mercurygray for this one, as I needed Molly to help spread my knowledge about zombies and other things, and while this may not immediately start with our resident vampire it sure ends with him.. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

For those of you who’re lost, this fic of mine may be a good springboard for all your vampire!Speirs needs that will also explain this current exchange between Billie and Ron a lot more..

“This is your fault, by the way” and “zombies aren’t real, I promise”, or..

can’t say no to you

She wonders, at times, which other things are real simply because he exists.

It’s something she can’t really help, even when she thinks she knows enough of the world to not hold with the idea of goblins and gnomes being as real as vampires most definitely are. Billie thinks she would know of more outlandish things – would have seen them, certainly, in a city like hers – if the earth was filled with creatures other than he. If all the rest were real, she would have been warned to stay away from them the same way she was told to stay away from ones like him.

She has never really been one to listen to that sort of advice. After all, she knows this world. Knows it better than most, and knows people most of all. She’s learned to judge first, which is something she tries to undo every day of her life. She’s learned to listen, second, and that is why she’s stuck pondering the existence of more than vampires today.

“– sure about zombies?”

“Zombies aren’t real, Floyd,” proclaims Webster, ever certain of this world in a far more pompous manner than she would ever allow herself to carry. “There isn’t a creature on this earth that would eat brains.”

“Actually,” says Molly, quieter, calmer, “there are more stories about zombies than about trolls. More diverse tales, too, and not just region-bound like the ones you were telling earlier about trolls lurking under bridges.”

“But all the stories about zombies spring from, well.. less, uh, cultured areas, Molly, you know that.”

Billie smirks as she spots the telltale twitch to Molly’s lip that spells nothing but trouble for Web.  There is something exhausting about dealing with someone who thinks he has all the answers to life, the universe, and everything else. It’s even more exhausting when someone like Molly makes you realize that at least half of those loudly proclaimed answers are false.

It’s funny, though, too, and Billie nearly laughs when she sees Tab’s face light up in a knowing smile right before Molly quirks an eyebrow and goes to war.

“Yes, David, I agree that Hollywood is not the most cultured point of origin for the zombie stories Floyd mentioned earlier and that you expanded upon so much in the past ten minutes.” Molly tucks her hair behind her ear as she continues to march beside Floyd, slightly behind Webster, and her voice carries louder than all his futile explanations did. “However, the real point of origin for tales about zombies lies in several African and South American regions. There is hardly any mention of brain-eating anything in those. What’s interesting here is that the Haitian tradition also mentions an incorporeal zombie that is related to the human soul –”

“Mahoney knows her stuff,” murmurs a voice behind them.

“She likes history,” says Billie, halting in her tracks a moment until he falls into step beside her. She nods as Molly glances back at her – I’m okay, please continue – and smiles as her friend starts to expand upon the idea that something like necromancy affects the human soul and could very well be no different from the way humans are turned into vampires. “I think she enjoys correcting Web even more, though, especially when he talks about what is cultured and what isn’t.”

“He would be surprised to learn, if he ever opened his mind.” It’s a scathing observation, spoken by one who’s seen far more of the world than she. “Zombies aren’t real, though, I promise you that.”

“Oh? Have you been to Haiti?”

“Once, long ago,” he allows, dark eyes distant a moment before he focuses on her, “when they came to me with these sort of stories. People remained adamant about their existence, for a time, until it became clear that the toxins ingested during the ritual would cause this zombie-like affect in humans. I believe I would know, if it were otherwise.”

“Or maybe there are more things between heaven and earth than even you could know.”

“I will take you to Haiti someday,” he muses, so softly that only her ears pick up on it amid the loudness of the company they are surrounded by, “so you can see it at work for yourself. You’d enjoy the rituals. They are beautiful, in their own way, and the people would enjoy having one like you to accompany them there.”

She nearly stumbles. Would trip over her own two feet if not for his hand on her arm. “One like me?”

“One who is bled, but does not die.” He nods. His hand tightens in the crook of her elbow, almost as if she is the one steering him through this world instead of the other way around. “They honor that, as it is the sign that you carry a particularly strong gros bon ange.”

“Big good angel?” she laughs, recognizing the French.

“Part of how they see the soul. Ask Mahoney, later, when she is done eviscerating Webster.”

Molly, up ahead and now gesturing fiercely at an increasingly stunned-looking Harvard man, certainly would be the one to ask about things like that. Billie’s asked before, about history and vampires and all the names that have tumbled around in her head so freely since she first bled beneath his fangs, but lately it’s Floyd doing all the asking and Molly leaning into him with a smile that’s different from any of the conspiratorial ones she shares with Billie.

“I’d rather ask you,” she decides, then, and glances up at Ron’s impassive face as she says it. There’s a flicker in his eyes that says he’s heard her, even when he doesn’t respond any other way. “You’ve got the better stories.”

“I’m no scholar.”

“Neither am I.”

“I have paperwork tonight,” he says, and she knows she is close to winning ground. “You’d need to –”

“I need to eat first,” she decides, “and then I probably need to stage an intervention between Lieb and Maggie. Latest rumor is she’s finally going to let him cut her hair, so we’re expecting a fair few screams and threats of murder to occur.” She snorts as she watches the pair in question, even further up ahead, almost trip each other while arguing. “I’ll swing by wherever you’re staying after that. Trade you for your stories.”

“Trade me?”

“A kiss for each,” she says, daring, and dances out of his reach with a laugh before he can tell her no.

“Yes,” he answers all too readily and then amends, “and this is your fault, by the way.”

“Oh? What’s my fault?”

“Me saying yes to –” He huffs. Gestures. His tone dips and weaves into deeper, richer notes that send a shiver down her spine despite the exasperation his words are tinged with. “I can’t say no to you.”

Heat rises to her cheeks a moment, quick and bold, before she finds her voice. “I hope you have many stories.”

“Can think of a few.”

“Yeah?” Billie slips closer to him, close enough for his arm to brush hers and his hand to tangle briefly with her own. “Nothing about brain-eating, I hope?”

His soft laughter is for her ears only. “I would think you prefer blood-drinking, love.”

Love. She recognizes the lilt in his voice as he says it. Knows it’s from long ago, so offhand that he couldn’t hope to control it, but the thought still makes her preen. Love, he murmurs, every so often, when she’s in his arms or huddled close to his body, and sometimes there is a kiss for her that’s void of fangs and all the toxins this world carries.

Sometimes, she thinks this is all that’s real.

#basilonecalling #ron x billie #vampire!Speirs #ktredshoes #basilonefic #writing20202021

[basilone]

Take off your shirt for Ron Speirs!! Not smut ofc haha😆

Haha, I sure managed to make this anything but smutty. 😂 This prompt gave me a really nice excuse to write my OC Darlene Mayfair, who briefly made an appearance in the blind date two-parter Salvage and has a bit of a history with our Ron here. Darlene, you see, holds half a dozen jobs in this war and is prone to landing herself in some deal of difficulty..

some grand ol’ cosmic mess

Germany is a joke. She’d laugh about it – laugh herself silly, tears in her eyes, loud and ugly joy at war with propriety – if her ribs weren’t beating a steady tattoo of hurt right now. She’d giggle at it, even, before sobering up and declaring she should’ve bombed it some more.

She should’ve bombed it, but the open skies are nobody’s friend these days.

Darlene shifts on the bed the Airborne gave her. She’s certain they’ve got no idea what to do with her – not after that discussion she caught between someone called Bull and the smaller one with the shining white teeth – but she’s not complaining. A bed’s better than the floor. A room is better than a cage. She’s got fresh water, even, handed to her by a shaky-handed private before they left her alone. They said they’d bring a medic, but priorities change all the time.

She half-expects the medic to be the one to walk in when the door opens. Half-believes that they have found someone in their ranks who doesn’t balk at the sight of an injured woman.

Germany’s a joke. A bad one, at that. She thinks she is currently staring at its punchline.

“Darlene,” he says, and of course he doesn’t stutter her name or blink in confusion at the sight of her. Of course he just walks into the room they put her in, of course he is the one with the captain’s mark on his clothing, of course it’s him at the end of all things. “They said they’d found a prisoner claiming to be OSS. Claiming to have piloted a plane all the way here before crashing. Thought it might be you.”

“Yeah, who else do ya know who fits that bill?” she bites out, glaring. “Know any other women like me, Ron?”

“Can’t say I do.” Ron Speirs almost hums the words. Almost sounds pleased with himself. “Surprised you gave yourself up.”

“Y’all sounded American enough.” She dismisses it with a wave of her hand. “I spoke German at first, mind. Then I saw Liebgott. Not many of you Normandy fellas left, huh?” She shrugs. Tries to suppress the wave of pain that shivers through her limbs at the motion. “He remembered me from the time I ran around with Susan and Bette. Still think I shoulda stayed in the air for that goddamn mission, mind.”

He acknowledges part of their history with nothing but a swift nod. Doesn’t comment on how she’d been liaised to Dog Company during one particular Normandy clusterfuck. Doesn’t ask after Susan or Bette, though perhaps he knows more about their well-being than she at this point in the fight. The only thing he offers her is a short remark void of feeling.

“You’re hurt.”

“Really?” She rolls her eyes. “Hadn’t noticed the fact that I’m bleedin’ out over these sheets of yours. Fucking genius. You’re hurt,” she mocks, mimicking his words and twisting them around in her mouth until they’re spiked and angry. “How about you get me a medic and fuck off?”

“How about you take off your shirt,” he counters, eyes flashing, “so I can tell whether I need to call you a medic, a surgeon, or a gravedigger?”

“The only one who’s gonna get buried here,” she hisses, “is probably you. You’re dead already, right? War’s gonna end and you’re gonna be six feet under long before that happens.” She leans back against the headboard. Warily observes him as he steps closer to the bed, but doesn’t halt the ire that turns her words to weapons. “No future for you at all, now is there?”

Ron sinks down on the bed, hand curled into a fist, trembling breath escaping his lips, and for a moment she thinks he might yet lash out at her. Might yet treat her like an enemy now that she’s positioned herself as one, all promise of fight between them turning the air thick like molasses, but even injured she thinks she might have an upper hand.

“How’s your wife?” She turns the blade of words sharper still. Pain hazes at the edges of her vision – all abuzz like cicadas in summer back home – but she’s never been one to yield to that. She’s never been one to back down from anything. “How’s your child?”

His hand connects with her side. Her world goes white, higher-pitched than anything, tilting and shifting and filling her mouth with cotton all over. She slashes at his face, his throat, his chest with limbs that don’t carry an edge. Can’t bite back a yowl of pain as his hand moves and presses down hard on the space just above her hip.

“Darlene,” he murmurs, shifting position until his cool bare skin touches the heated edges of her wounds, “Darlene,” he says, until she ceases her whimpering, “you know you’re trouble.”

She glares at him as balefully as she can manage. Offers a breathless response. “It mighta come up once or twice.”

He almost laughs. She can see the quirk of his lips before he hides it behind the same impassive mask he wears in every battle. “I already apologized to you,” he says, then, voice low in warning, “and I won’t be doing it again.”

“You never said why.” She snips the words out. Leans into the coolness of his touch despite herself and tries to cut the high-pitched whine of need out of her voice. Her accent flares to life as pain takes more root. “I had ta deal with your woman layin’ inta me in public like that, and couldn’t even explain to her why beyond that ya hadn’t told me shit about her or that baby of yours.”

“Can’t say no to you.”

“Bullshit. You coulda said no at any time.”

“Can’t say no to trouble,” he says, and she thinks he repeats himself in a way. Truth lurks in the weight of his hand on her ribs. “Think you know a thing or two about that yourself. Heard you nearly decapitated one of your Nazi prison guards.”

“Heard he deserved it,” she says, all teeth and sharpness, “way he was carryin’ on talkin’ about the things he’d do ta me once I stopped being useful.” She exhales a noisy breath. Almost laughs. “I coulda spun him stories until the world ended. Like Scheherazade, though out for blood.”

“I managed to talk them down from accusing you of a war crime.”

“Mighty kind of ya.” She can’t stop a fierce grin from flashing across her face. “Guess that’s why I took ya home that time, huh. Like breeds like and all that.”

“Yeah?” He tilts his head. His eyes are dark. “Where will you be when the war ends?” His touch is set to harm. She lets it sear into her side. Knows his hands will come away bloody, just as she knows he won’t let her fade away alone in this foreign land. He’s always known how to touch her. “Way I see it, Darlene, you’re gonna be six feet under just like me.”

She tilts her chin up. Meets his gaze in the same challenge she set him in that noisy pub all those months ago. She shrugs once. Ignores the pain as she always does. His body’s a mirror to her own. If this is the way the joke goes, she thinks she knows the punchline.

“Guess ya will have me for company.”

#basilonecalling #ronald speirs #oc: darlene #Anonymous #basilonefic #writing20202021

[basilone]

I got a prompt and I knew that there would be something on the list that I could make something of 😊

#146 “Pillows are over-rated.” For Chuck, Tab and Lieb.

You’re really out here givin’ me the full OT3 feels, huh. 🤣 That is one hell of a kickstarter of a prompt right there. Please don’t mind the direction this went into -- these three, when put together, have just one mindset that starts with t and ends with rouble. It’s still sfw, sorta, but you and me and everyone else will know where this is going to end up.. Here, have some established OT3 relationship fuckery!

bedfellows

It’s strange to be back in a bed again. He’s heard several men complain about the softness of the mattresses, the huge windows that provide no shelter, and many other things beside that. He caught his captain asleep on the cold floor downstairs only yesterday, with one hand wrapped around a weapon, barricaded in as though he wished to create a foxhole out of something other than earth. He’s seen how war doesn’t leave some – always earliest to rise, quickest to grab a weapon – and how sometimes sleep is a stranger.

“Stop moving,” he admonishes with a sigh, reaching out to slap at Lieb’s arm before it almost hits him in the face. Turns his head just so he can glare at the man. “For fuck’s sake, you almost took my eye out!”

“Did not.” There’s a rather petulant huff of breath. Lieb’s arm stretches across him as the man jostles closer. Wisps of his longer hair brush his shoulder before Lieb’s nose and mouth land against his skin and slightly muffle the next complaint. “There’s a lump in my mattress.”

“Yeah, it’s called your body,” quips Chuck, grinning as the answering groan reaches his ears. He tangles his fingers with Lieb’s a moment, then traces the small smattering of bruises on the man’s arm lightly with his fingertips. “You know, at some point you need to stop getting into fights with the remnants of Fox..”

“When they stop being stupid.”

“What was it this time? They argued the grass is yellow, you argued it’s green, and even though you know you’re right you still blacked someone’s eye over it?”

“Nah.” Lieb pushes himself up enough to look down at Chuck. His face is calm, but his eyes are too stormy by far. There’s still something brewing beneath the surface, hot and ruinous, that isn’t calmed by the hand Chuck lays on his cheek. “They bitched about you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, mister staff sergeant who ordered them to pipe the fuck down,” snorts Lieb, poking at Chuck’s chest with one finger, “you.”

“They were screaming outside at five in the morning,” grumbles Chuck, recalling how some idiots had actually started up a rousing rendition of Blood On The Risers at that hour. “I think that justifies the order.”

“Yeah, well,” smirks Lieb, “I reminded them of how justified it was.”

“Speirs give you any shit for it?”

“Nah. Fuck. He pretended he hadn’t seen it. Happened right in front of him, too. Fuck, all he did was tell Johnson to stop bleeding all over the rug.”

“Told ya Speirs wouldn’t be trouble.” Chuck hums contentedly as Lieb huffs out a laugh and allows Chuck’s arm to pull him down again. He presses a short kiss to the man’s forehead. “Thanks. Appreciate the whole defending my honor thing and shit.”

“Uhhuh, you’d better be appreciative.” The kiss Lieb angles at the nape of his neck is anything but innocent, though still affectionate. “You’d better show me some of that, later.”

“Later, huh?” Chuck hisses as the soft scrape of teeth runs over his skin and sends a shiver down his spine. “Joe, for fuck’s sake, keep going like that and I’m gonna make now out of that later.”

Lieb has the audacity to laugh about it. Has the foresight to grab hold of Chuck’s wrist before Chuck can do anything, too, and for a man as wiry as he there is a fair bit of strength to the way he pins Chuck in place. This is a dance they know. A dance Lieb is set to lose, eventually, and they both know this too.

“Getting started without me?”

Chuck huffs out a laugh. “The fuck does it look like to you?” he asks, trying and failing to turn his head in the direction of that new voice. “One track mind, this one.”

“Yeah, I know someone else like that.”

“Yeah, you,” snorts Chuck as the mattress dips down to accommodate new weight. “Please tell me you locked that door. Don’t wanna hear Perconte bitch about how we scarred him for life again.”

“Fucking Perconte never knocks, it’s his own fault,” huffs Lieb. “And Web, too, fuck. Always bitchin’ about this and that and how it shouldn’t be three people to one bed.”

“Web’s an idiot,” agrees Chuck all too readily. “Three people to one bed is perfectly fine.”

“I locked the door, jeez. Next person to mention Web is gonna make me unlock it, open it, throw them out, close it, then lock it again.”

Chuck locks eyes with Tab over Lieb’s head. Smiles at the annoyance that flits across the man’s features before a roll of his eyes clears the worst of it. He stretches his hand out and isn’t surprised when Tab’s warm fingers interlock with his own all too readily.

“God. You and your romance.” Lieb snorts out disgust as he sinks down and settles his head on Chuck’s chest. “You two are fucking awful. Fuck.”

“There’s a perfectly fine pillow right over there, Joe.” Chuck jostles him in place a little, but doesn’t dislodge Lieb’s warm cheek from his bare skin. They both know it’s an empty threat by now. “Or you could just close your eyes.”

“Pillows are overrated.”

“Are they?”

“Yeah. You’re better.”

“There he goes, same as always,” remarks Tab, shaking his head fondly as Lieb burrows closer to Chuck, “snuggling. Usurping.”

“Quit your bitching, there’s plenty of room.”

“No, there’s not!” protests Chuck, weakly, too half-heartedly. “Fuck off, both of you.”

Tab’s grin spells trouble. He can feel Lieb’s mouth quirk into a smile against his skin, too. He’d fight it if he were a fighting man, but those days are well and truly done. His stomach swoops a slow and treacherous flutter at the feeling of Lieb’s body pressed against his own while Tab’s hands land on either side of his head.

“That’s no way to talk to us,” murmurs Tab, eyes dark as he lowers his face until their noses almost brush. “Lieb might be fine getting bossed around like that by you – yes, you are, love, and that’s real cute  – but I’m gonna take a bit more convincing.”

“Fuck you” – punctuates Lieb, smacking Tab’s arm loudly – “would like to see you try and play it cool when he tells you you’re doing good. I saw you shiver at it last night when he pulled that on me.”

“Oh, did he?” Chuck smirks up at Tab. He knows it’s a cat-ate-the-canary smile, all satisfaction and anticipation of more good to come, but he can’t bite back the glee that swoops through him. “Really now?”

“I hate both of you.” Tab punctuates the statement with a fleeting kiss to Chuck’s lips. Punctuates it further by brushing a kiss against Lieb’s brow. “You can be in charge later, stupid. Let me work things out here first.”

“Things.”

“Let me rephrase it, for the remarkably stupid in this bed,” snorts Tab, and his hand lands in Chuck’s hair and tugs his head back so his throat’s exposed. “I will pin you down if I have to, but you’re not gonna be in charge here until I say.”

“You goddamn staff sergeants,” snorts Lieb irreverently, shifting in place and tangling his legs with both, “it’s fucking obvious that it’s me who’s in charge here.”

“Keep dreaming!”

Chuck laughs as his voice unites with Tab’s rather indignant shout. Still laughs as a rough kiss lands on his jawline, then tracks down over his exposed neck in a way that sends shivers all the way from his belly to his toes. Tab’s head comes to rest at the nape of his neck. He hears a kiss, a groan, a small mumble before the weight atop him shifts to accommodate both.

“Fuck,” he grunts out, arms full of the ones he loves, “allow a guy some movement, will ya?”

“Nah. Later.”

“When we’re done,” adds Lieb.

“Done with wha– oh.”

Tab’s fierce affection brushes against his jaw again. “With you.”

For the first time in a long time, Chuck doesn’t feel like arguing with that.

#joe liebgott #chuck grant #floyd talbert #OT3 goodies #we have them #chuck x tab x lieb is one hell of a configuration btw #get yourself men like these #basilonecalling #serasvictoria #basilonefic #writing20202021

[basilone]

Can I request any Ron/Billie(/War) in the Form&Void AU?

You certainly can, thank you for offering this intriguing thing! I thought I knew what Ron/Billie(/War) looked like in this particular AU crossover fiesta, but.. Ron was adamant that I was very, very much mistaken on that count. This one turned out heavy, fractured and almost broken, and while there might be hope at some point.. this very much is Ron not being able to make his peace. 

Billie, as always, is on loan from @mercurygray’s wonderful The Darkening Sky. This piece can be read as a continuation of this piece and the part that came before that. 

the divine knife’s blade

None of this feels right.

He wakes up wrong. Wakes to the sunlight on his face, the warmth streaking across his skin, the heat curling around his fingertips. He watches the light chase the persistent shadows on the wall. Watches it win, as the light somehow always does these days.

He wakes with an arm wrapped around his waist. With golden hair streaming into the sunlight that dances across his chest. With soft breath against his skin, and a leg wrapped around his as if he is something to possess, and a familiar weight lodged against his body. He wakes with her.

He wakes up wrong.

His hand tangles in her hair as he shifts in place. Her mumble almost halts his movement. It’s contented. Quiet. It’s against his skin, inside him, and carves him wide open as he tries to piece himself back together. There’s a tremor to it – to belonging, to wanting – and he almost swears he hears it between one breath and the next. Almost swears he hears someone else entirely, locked deep inside the sound, which is probably the only reason why his limbs now forget what rising from a bed is like.

Ron stares up at the ceiling. Glares at the ornate curls and the peeling paint. Narrows his eyes at the small crack just above his head, dark and fractured, and wonders if the whole thing will split apart while he’s beneath it. Almost wills it to, just a moment, before the weight in his arms tells him he shouldn’t want to be brought to ruin like this anymore.

And maybe, really, he shouldn’t want anything ruinous anymore at all.

He gasps out a breath. Then another. His chest constricts. His lungs flare to heated life, to something liquid and warm and nothing like the things breath should be made of. He gasps for air, scrambles after it, shoots upright with the sheer force of it. His skin isn’t his own. His skin’s not his. His nails are on the heated lines beneath his skin before they fade – clawing, rubbing, drawing tendrils of hurt that flash brighter white than the sun’s glare. His skin’s not his.

“Ron?”

He’s woken her. Her weight’s away from him and he shifts on the spot as soon as the lack of her sinks into his frame. His skin rolls with something of the tide to it – a shift, a rise, a sharp spike – before he scrambles away from warm sheets, warm skin, warm touch.

He’s on the floor. Floors are safe. He’s on the floor. His skin isn’t his own.

“Ron?” She’s quieter now. Somehow less puzzled than the first time she said his name – it’s still his name, isn’t it, even now after all he’s done and become? – and somehow more broken for it. “Ron, what’s going on?”

“Wrong,” he murmurs. If he angles the sound right, it sounds like he’s repeating his own name. “It’s all wrong.”

It’s all Ron.

He hunches in on himself. Shudders out a breath, then another. Floors are safe. He can see the window. Can see the door. Floors are safe.

“I don’t know,” he hears her say to the room just over his head. Hears her voice carry in the silence of the morning, clear as day, and wishes he could invite the night to come home. “Seems like a bad dream to me? He was like that when I woke up.”

His voice gives out between cry and scream and she is right there beside him. His god is there, like she never left, like she never said goodbye at all, like she really just passed into the next room and came running back at the first sound of his desperation. Her hands close around his arms before he can bleed again, before he bleeds for her again the way he’s done since he learned he’s all vicious hunger and raw edges, before he bleeds out on the floor and puts things right.

“Ronald, honey,” his god says, sharp and piercing and relentless, “that’s enough.”

He shudders out a breath. His eyes burn. The sting of tears is impossible to swallow. He collapses against the dark she spills into the room. Crashes into her, head bowed, and begs for her body to accommodate the sacrifice.

Her arms wrap around him. Wings follow soon after, pausing just long enough to brush errant tears away from his cheeks, and her lips burn against his brow. He burrows into the small space she crafts out for him. Lodges himself against her ribs like he is born from their marrow, like she reached into a part of her and created him from nothing and everything at once.

“Belinda,” his god commands, then, and his heart stutters at the sound of a name he’s keened into the dark more times than memory allows. “Come here, sweetheart. Come on.”

“Are you sure?”

Always hedging. Always not quite sure of where she belongs, if she belongs anywhere at all, and he knows he worsens that feeling with mornings like this. Knows he doesn’t do right by her, no matter how hard he tries.

“Belinda,” his god coaxes in lilting tones, “it’s okay.”

Billie’s hand is in his hair. Heated to life like his limbs used to be at his god’s presence, flared between fight and affection and always carrying both, and he presses against the touch before he can stop himself. She kneels beside them as if offering prayer. He tries to sound out the syllables of her name. Tries to pray, if he’s honest, to something other than the god he’s lost and found in.

“Billie.”

“Ron,” she replies, and her voice is steady even when her hand trembles against his own. “I.. I’m sorry. I should’ve left.”

“Nonsense.” His god hums the word before he can. He watches darkest hair mingle with golden curls as clear affection is nudged against Billie’s cheek. “This time is hardest on him. Peace..”

“He can’t even look at Rachel.” Billie’s voice is hushed. Her fingers tangle with his own and press down on all the parts that hurt. “Charlie’s talking about marrying her, you know? And he doesn’t say it, because he loves you, Ron, but I think it hurts that you bolt out the door the moment she walks into a room.”

“Running is easier.”

“Is that what you’re doing?”

“Yes. No.” He hisses the words out. Squeezes her hand tight and pulls her closer. “Peace doesn’t.. I can’t..”

“It hurts.”

“Yeah.” His voice is small. His breath a mere gasp of surprise against her cheek as she leans in closer still. “I thought..”

“Hurts me, too,” she said, and her head comes to rest beside his own. Comes to rest against the god he now shares with her the way he never wanted to. Her eyes are bright. Her voice is crystalline. He thinks he might love her, once. Thinks he might try, even when she’s too bright and too beautiful to claim with his bloodied hands and the belief she breathes into him is foreign to his soul. “You’ll make it through.”

He lets go of her hand. Turns his face away into darkness. Wishes the war inside him would swallow him whole.

This peace is nothing but a killing floor.

#basilonecalling #ron x billie #formvoidseries #the darkening sky crossover #Anonymous #basilonefic #writing20202021

[basilone]

Oooh what about "I found the candles, we'll be alright" with Eugene Roe and any oc of your choice???

Oh now, this is an interesting one! I haven’t written a great deal of Gene at all so far, and his voice is one of those that just.. eludes me as a writer. Still, this was a fair bit of fun to experiment with! There’s a bit of Babe in this one, too, and I’m also taking the liberty of introducing another OC from my upcoming big project! (And making references to.. more OCs. Because there are a fair few of them here, haha.)

illuminate

This is the work she knows. The labels on the bottles are written wrong, of course, but bandages and safety pins are the same everywhere. The number five in their language sounds different from hers, but the end result of her tally of scissors is the same as theirs. She hasn’t smelled disinfecting material in a good long while, but the scent curls into her nostrils and almost gives her a little shake.

You are here, Lena tells herself, where you are.

It’s something she has carried in the war. Be where you are. She’s learned to work under pressure. Learned to navigate around the strain of battle, never quite inside it, and work with worse than this. She hasn’t seen this many supplies since 1941. Hasn’t been surrounded by the quiet since that time, either.

Or, well, as quiet as one gets when surrounded by men in uniform, which Lena thinks isn’t very quiet at all.

“How are you – counting? It’s – dark, Gene, okay?”

She blinks as a voice pierces through the dark. Pauses her movements. Eight bandages set in the box. Four more to go. Gene said there are always twelve.

“Moon,” she says, nodding at the window beside her. There is still a blue shimmer in the air around her hands. Something of silver, too, streaking across the bandages and painting them whiter than the table or the box. “Is light.”

“Your eyes,” says the tall one, come to stand beside her but continuing to speak as though he is shouting through the fog, “will be.. In pain? From the.. Gene, how do you say that?”

“Don’t ask me to speak Russian, Heffron,” murmurs Gene, in front of them, and he packs up the bottles she had shoved his way. “It’s fine in the dark. Our eyes are fine.”

“He’s going to need glasses”– says Heffron, mimicking round loops around his eyes a moment –“for his eyes. You too.” He turns to Gene. “Told ya to stop callin’ me Heffron.”

“I’m sorry, Edward.”

The noise of disgust Heffron snorts out almost makes her giggle. She knows Gene makes a mess of names almost as bad as Leonid does when he is in one of his moods, though Gene seems to have an order to it that she can’t quite decipher. Heffron insists on being called Babe, but Gene doesn’t seem to want to say that. Lena thinks it’s a game, must be something of play, when Babe makes another noise of protest and she catches the gleam in Gene’s eyes.

“Babe,” she says, patting his arm to get his attention, “glasses in Russian. Ochki.”

“Ochki?”

“Ochki,” she nods.

“And pain?”

“Bol’,” she murmurs, never forgetting.

“You will have bol’ from the”–  he mimes squinting at the labels, eyeing the box – “and then you need ochki. But I have cure!”

“You have cure?” She can’t help the skepticism. Can’t help the stone her voice turns into, now that he seems to believe everything can be fixed. “Like..?”

“I found the candles! So, we’ll be all right.”

Lena stares at the few candles that suddenly gleam pale white in the moonlight as he drops them on the table beside the supplies. Slowly turns to look at a beaming, radiant Babe.

“Where is fire?”

“Fire?” He repeats it, puzzled a moment. She sees the shadow of a frown pass over his face before it clears. “Fire! For the candles! Yeah, uh, oh, yeah! Hang on a min–”

Lena blinks as he all but sprints away from the table. Babe bolts through the door before she can ask, before she can demand he explains more. She shakes her head as the door slams shut behind him.

“Your friend,” she says, after a moment’s pause, “is strange.”

“I know.”

“Right?” She giggles as she turns to face Gene. “Candles but no fire. Is not helping.”

“He tries.”

There’s a small edge to Gene’s voice. Something stubborn, almost, like he believes in Babe’s ability to make sense of this world even when Babe seems to prove he doesn’t know much of it at all. She thinks it’s the same as Katya getting defensive over Sasha, even when Sasha gets them in trouble with Sergey half the time. Something about fighting together. Something about almost dying together, too.

“I know this,” she proclaims. Nods to assure him. “He is good, yes?”

Even in the moonlight, she can see Gene’s small smile before it fades from his face as quickly as it came. “Yeah, he is.”

She bows her head. One, two, three, she counts, and four. Bandages in the box. The box closes with a soft click. There are only bottles left now. Bottles with labels in a language she barely speaks and certainly doesn’t read. Bottles that make her feel like she can’t save anyone now.

“Lena?”

“Da?”

“This is acetyl-salicylic acid,” he says, pressing a bottle into her hand and slowing the words down until she can recognize their parts. “Twelve of these together.”

“Acetyl,” she murmurs, “sali.. cylic? Acid.”

“Painkiller.”

“Isn’t everything?” she asks, before she sets the bottle down. “To stop pain?”

Gene’s inhale is sharp. His exhale even more so. She shrugs. Begins to count the bottles that contain some form of acid, as if this can cure their insides from being turned outside their bodies. As if it will stop the hurt at all.

“Gene,” she whispers, “we have candles. Is all right, no?”

“Y-yeah.” He seems to shake himself. “It’s going to be fine.”

She doesn’t believe her next words. She knows Gene does. Tells herself this is why she says them, even when she’s learned not to hope at all.

“Babe,” she says carefully, softly, “will find fire.”

She pretends she doesn’t hear Gene swallow something akin to pain, after.

#gene roe #babe heffron #lena morozova #basilonecalling #Anonymous #basilonefic #writing20202021

[basilone]

Hello!! I hope I’m not too late haha. I would love a gif set of Sledge in Part Ten of The Pacific? (if possible, the beginning of the ep when him, Snaf, and Burgin are sitting on the rock while the party’s going on?) Thank you!! ☺️

Hi! You were definitely on time, haha. 💙 I hope this one is to your liking!

#gifreq #basilonecalling #stressedinadress

[basilone]

Request for you to work your gif coloring magic on Hoosier! 😍

Always a treat to get to work with Hoos! I did a sleepy-vibed one for you right here. (I love him too much in this scene!)

#basilonecalling #gifreq #ktredshoes