#been a while since i caught a hardcore stream | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dreamerstreamer · 3 years

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Speak Your Mind

Pairing: GeorgeNotFound / George x f!reader

Summary: Usually, you left George feeling tongue-tied, but apparently not today.

Word Count: 3.8k

A/N: requested by an anon who wanted a cute, clumsy george story! another anon wanted something similar, so i hope you both and all enjoy <3 this was inspired by this quote by lemony snicket :)

George slipped into his chair with a slight groan, nudging his mouse with his elbow as he took a sip of water. He watched as his screen came to life, glancing over at the time. It was still kind of early, and he had a few hours to himself before his scheduled stream.

I could probably just play by myself for a while, he thought to himself, setting his glass down to his left as he opened up Minecraft. He reached across his desk, grabbing his headphones and settling them over his head. It’s been a while since I’ve played in a hardcore survival world.

But then his gaze flickered down to a particular server, and he found his cursor automatically clicking on it, almost like clockwork. In an instant, his avatar was standing on the Prime Path, the blocky world rendering into view around him. Shifting his mouse a few times, George smiled and opened up his inventory.

He spent a few moments sorting everything out, quietly humming to himself. A few seconds later, something popped up on the bottom left of his screen, his gaze darting over to catch it.

[y/n]: hi george!

[y/n]: how are you doing?

George’s heart almost immediately stuttered in his chest, and he spent a moment or two simply staring at the two lines of text.

He couldn’t believe just how much power you had over him.

The two of you had been friends for a long time now—nearly as long as he had been friends with Dream, even. The two of you had met almost entirely by accident, having simply been jokingly trapped together on a random server by one of the admins for a few hours. Under any other circumstances, George probably would have felt awkward to hell and back, but the two of you had just instantly hit it off together.

You were kind and cheerful, while he was practical and goofy. He loved your optimistic innocence, and you lived for his sarcastic quips. While the two of you had never met in person, both of you had most definitely seen each other’s faces before, and George would never forget the first thing he said when he saw your face.

“Woah. You’re really pretty.”

He had blurted it without warning, surprising even himself at his own words. Your face had flushed while you immediately turned off your face cam, letting out a quiet whine. “George, you can’t just say that!”

He remembered sputtering in his chair, then sending an earnest smile at his monitor. “But it’s true!”

“George!”

The image of your cheeks plastered with an embarrassed, sheepish grin and your wide, shining eyes would forever be ingrained in his mind.

Years later, that picture hadn’t changed a bit, still as clear as ever in his head, but the feelings he held for you had transformed. It didn’t happen quickly, nor did he ever want to admit it, but he was incredibly aware of it—almost too aware of it.

You made his cheeks hurt from how much he smiled around him. You filled his stomach with butterflies just with a single giggle. You made his ears turn bright red whenever you made a sly joke.

The three little words sat at the back of his head at nearly every hour of the day, and he just knew that one of these days, he was going to tell you what they were.

Hopefully.

With a smile on his face and a million thoughts swirling around his head, all of them beginning and ending with you, he closed his inventory and began to type back a response.

GeorgeNotFound: i’m doing good haha

[y/n]: i’m happy to hear that! <3

His breath caught in his throat. A heart—you had sent back a heart. He could feel his own heart seize in his chest at the sight of two simple symbols on his monitor screen.

Oh god, he was so screwed.

He walked forward a bit, his head still spinning with thoughts of you and that stupid heart as he contemplated what he should do next. An idea popped up just then, a small wave of anxiety creating over his head. With shaky hands, he began to type.

GeorgeNotFound: wanna join vc 2?

A moment ticked by, and George chewed on the side of his cheek. Then, your username appeared in the corner of his screen.

[y/n]: okay! i’ll be there in a sec :)

A smiley face. His own lips curled upwards to match the smile emoticon as he entered the voice channel, patiently waiting. A few moments later, something caught his attention from the corner of his monitor. Turning, he flinched as your avatar jumped down and landed in front of him, briefly turning red from the fall damage. A split second later, he heard a familiar ping.

“Boo!” you chirped, your voice echoing in his ear as bright as day. He felt warmth blossom in his chest just at the sound of a single syllable spoken in your voice.

“What a grand entrance,” he said teasingly, unable to hide the fact that he was grinning while he spoke.

“You know me,” you said, giggling, “I always have to make a big show of things.”

“I sure do,” he said, secretly thinking to himself.

But I wish I knew you better.

“Woah,” you suddenly breathed, something like awe seeping in your voice as your character stepped forward. “I feel like we haven’t talked in, like... forever.”

He blinked, shifting his mouse slightly toward you. “We talked yesterday.”

“No,” you said quickly, your pitch raising, “I mean like, talk talked. You know, over call or something?” Your voice grew quiet. “I missed hearing your voice.”

George wanted to throw a pillow across his room. Cute. “Well, I’m here now,” he said softly, chuckling, “so you get to hear it all you want.”

He heard you cough, but it was slightly muffled. He wondered what you looked like right now, and he half-wished that you two had your face-cams on. “Now that you’re on the sever,” you prompted a second later, suddenly sounding normal again. “what do you wanna do?”

He thought for a moment, the wheels in his head turning. “Well, I kind of wanted to work a bit more on my house.”

“Oh, you mean your new house? The one you were building during the, uh—” You paused, searching for the right words. “—big battle?”

He could imagine you making fake air quotes with your fingers, and he laughed, thinking of your scrunched up face. “Pfft, yeah. That’s the one.”

“I haven’t seen it yet,” you admitted, some rustling coming through his headphones. “Do... do you mind showing me it?”

He smiled sheepishly. “No, not at all. But I’m not a very good builder, I hope you know.”

You let out a brief shout, and he jumped in his chair. “Nope! Illegal!”

His eyebrows knit together. “‘Illegal’?” he parroted.

“Illegal,” you said in an affirmative tone. “It’s illegal to be mean to GeorgeNotFound. Even by GeorgeNotFound himself. Sorry I don’t make the rules.” Before he could even think of a response, your character began jumping up and down on his screen. “Now, show me the goods! I’m sure it looks great.”

He was pretty sure he was just a puddle in his chair, now. You were just far too much for his poor heart. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could take of this before he lost his mind.

Shaking his head free of thoughts of you, he pressed the W key and watched as he moved forward down the Prime Path and over a hill. “Here, follow me. It’s a bit far from the rest of the server’s homes, but I kind of like it.”

You hummed, thoughtful and soft as the two of you jumped your way over a few hills. “I get you. I mean, we all need our space. I think having your home being more far away is just cozy. Quaint. Probably not going to get robbed by Tommy. It’s a win-win situation!”

He snorted at your words. Probably not going to get robbed by Tommy was a positive he would never pass up. “I’m glad it’s not just me who thinks that.”

It was then that a splash of red among a horizon full of browns and greens came into view. You let out a soft gasp as his hobbit-hole house came into view. “Sooo,” he began, clicking his mouse, “ta-da! Here it is! I know it’s not much, but it’s pretty okay, I think?”

A cry of awe flew from your lips. “Are you kidding me? Your house is so pretty!” You ran forward, your eyes wide as you gazed at the hobbit-style home. “It’s so round and cozy and—oh, the mushrooms!” Your avatar jumped up and down, punching at the air towards his house. “You even added a little moat with a bridge!”

A certain sincerity flooded your voice as you added, “George, don’t lie to me and tell me you suck at building. I love your house.”

He felt his heart melt at your eager tone. Just how endearing could one person be?

“Can we go inside, can we go inside?” you asked, your voice growing bolder as you turned to look at him expectantly.

A bashful smile shot across his face, even though he knew you couldn’t see him. “I—ah, I haven’t actually built the inside yet,” he admitted shyly.

You let out a soft squeal, your avatar running around the screen with a hop. “If you want, we can build it together!” you offered. “I know you’re not super confident in your building skills, but I’m more than happy to help out!”

His heart melted. You were so kind. Too kind, really. How could he say no?

“I would love that,” he said. He moved inside the house, revealing the hollowed out, blank space that would serve as the interior of his house. “So, as you can see, it’s still a work in progress.” He glanced back at you. “Where should we start?

There was a slight pause. “Hmmm.” He could imagine the way you scrunched your nose as you thought, your fingers tapping against the nearest flat surface as you did so. “We could make most of the inside out of birch planks,” you began, “and have some dark oak details. You know, so there’s some really neat contrast between the light and dark parts of your house.”

He could hear you growing giddier and giddier with each passing second. “And we can also add some red and white carpet to match the mushroom aesthetic! Oh, that would look so good! “Your character turned to look at him, a block of birch wood already in hand. “What do you think?”

His heart beat a little faster. I like you, he thought, clear as a bell. I really, really like you, that’s what I think.

“You what?”

He froze.

Oh my god. Did I just say that out loud?

Your voice filled his ears, quiet and shaky. “Um. Yeah.”

A second passed in awkward silence. Then another.

If a Minecraft skin could blush, George’s face would be a tomato.

“I, um,” he stammered, his eyes darting every which way in search of an excuse to leave the call. Just then, his gaze caught on the glass of water he had set to his left. He barely gave himself even a second to think about what to say before he started rambling, speaking in a single, blurted breath.

“I just um spilled water all over myself and wow it’s about to get all over my set-up and that would be really bad so I’m just uh gonna go now okay great bye—”

Before he could embarrass himself anymore, he found himself pressing the ‘end call’ button and closing the window, hanging his head in his hands as he let out a long groan of despair.

Why did he do that? How did he do that?

Groaning again, he slammed his head into his desk, turning to press his cheek into the wood as he stared at his keyboard.

He was an idiot—a big, fat idiot.

In the corner of his eye, he watched as his phone screen lit up. It‘s probably a message from [Y/N], his brain helpfully supplied. She’s probably confused as hell.

“Not helping,” he muttered to himself, sitting up once more.

Well, there was really only one thing he could do now, and that was to get help. Fortunately for him, he knew two people he could definitely ask for advice. Unfortunately, he had a feeling he knew how this conversation was going to go.

Sighing, he opened up Discord again on his monitor.

He was sure things could only go downhill from here.

“You what?!”

George grimaced. He was right. This was a terrible idea. “You don’t have to rub it in my face,” he grumbled.

“I’m—” Wheeze. “I’m not rubbing it in,” Dream explained between gasps for air, “it’s... it’s just that it’s funny.”

George pursed his lips. “I don’t know about you, but that sounds like you’re rubbing it in.”

Sapnap’s voice cut through Dream’s laughter. “Okay, okay, Dream, you’re not helping. Gogy here is having, as Tommy would put it, ‘women problems’, and he needs some help.”

All of a sudden, Dream’s laughter stopped. “If I’m being totally honest,” he said, “I’m not really seeing the problem here.”

There was a beat of silence. “How are you not seeing the problem?” Sapnap said. You could hear the frown in his voice. “George just prematurely confessed his feelings to [Y/N].”

“Yeah, and?”

Another beat of silence.

“What the heck do you mean, ‘and’? That’s the problem!”

George sighed, sinking down in his desk chair. “Dream,” he muttered into his headset, rubbing at his temples, “just spit it out.”

“Look,” he began, “I’m just saying that here’s no advice we could possibly give you, because there’s only one solution.”

“Which is?” Sapnap prompted.

“You just have to tell her outright how you feel.”

George’s jaw dropped and he scrambled to sit up. “No way I’m doing that. Nuh-uh, no thanks.”

Sapnap made a noise of approval. “No, wait—Dream does have a point.”

George felt a stone of uneasiness drop into his stomach. “You’re just saying that because you want to see me make a fool of myself.”

“No, no, nonono, I’m telling the truth!” Dream cried. “Seriously, what other options do you really have? Pretend that you never said anything and just act like nothing happened to confuse her and hope that she forgets?”

“Pretty sure that’s called gaslighting,” Sapnap mumbled.

George glared at his monitor, knowing full well no one could see him. “Not helping.”

“Ignore her for the rest of eternity?” Dream continued. “You’ve already declined six of her calls!” There was a pause, then he carried on. “George, seriously. I want the best for you, and I’m not kidding when I say this is the only viable option, really.”

He stared down at his lap, his hands shaking where they lay. “What if,” he began, “she doesn’t feel the same?”

“Well, tough luck then, Gogy,” Sapnap said bluntly, “You’re just gonna have to suck it up and move on like the rest of us.”

George pressed his lips into a thin line. While it wasn’t exactly the nicest way to put it, he supposed Sapnap was right. “What if...” He swallowed. “What if I’m not ready?”

A soft sigh came from the other end. “George,” Dream said, his voice sincere, “believe it or not, but no one’s ever ready, really. But if we all waited until we were ready, then we’d be waiting for the rest of our lives.”

George fell quiet. A strange sense of comfort fell over him as he let Dream’s words soak in. Mustering up a deep breath, he smiled.

“Okay. I’ll call her back tonight, alright?”

Sapnap let out a hoot, the sound of clapping filling his headphones. “Let’s go! Get ‘em, Gogy!”

“You really need to stop calling me that.”

“Nah. It’s funny.”

Before George could retort, Dream stepped in. “Remember buddy, no matter what happens, we’ll be here for you, okay? Don’t let your fear hold you back. Hell, you know what? Don’t let your—” Dream suddenly cackled, his voice wheezing into his mic as he sputtered, “Don’t let your dreams be dreams, George!”

George let out a groan, barely able to hear himself over the deafening sound of Dream’s wheezing. “Oh my god, I’m hanging up.”

“Good luck, Gog—”

It was at that moment that he clicked the ‘end call’ button, the sweet sound of silence washing over him. Leaning back in his chair, he stared up at the ceiling, the tiniest of smiles gracing his lips.

Maybe calling his friends wasn’t such a bad idea, after all.

George stared at his monitor, the dark screen reflecting a mirrored image of himself. His hand opened and closed on his lap, itching to hold onto the mouse.

It had been two days since he’d blurted the words he’d been procrastinating saying for the last god knows how long.

Every time he closed his eyes, he could only see fluttering shots of you. You, with your mouth agape, staring at your screen with your headphones sliding down your neck. You, frantically texting on your phone about everything that had just slipped out of his mouth. You, with your face inevitably twisting in disgust at the thought of someone like him liking someone like you.

I’m not ready, he thought, his reflection blinking back at him.

That’s exactly why you’re going to do this, his reflection said back as his hand moved to his mouse, hovering over it.

You suck, he thought.

The monitor smiled back at him as he moved his cursor. I know.

His screen burst to life, Discord already open and waiting for him. George moved his cursor to hover over your username, his palm starting to sweat. Clicking, he reached over to his keyboard and began to type.

GeorgeNotFound: hey! did you wanna video call?

The moment he hit enter, he ripped his hands away from the keyboard like it was made of hot coals, wiping his hands on his pants. With bated breath, he waited, staring at the green circle accompanying your profile picture. Suddenly, his screen moved.

[y/n] is typing...

His heart leapt into his throat.

[y/n]: okay!

He exhaled a sigh of relief through his nose, his mouse moving to press the hit ‘video call’ button. A few seconds passed with the ringtone echoing through his headphones. A moment later, the ringing stopped and your face filled his screen, the familiar set-up of your room fading in at the corners. His heart swelled at the sight—both with affection and anxiety.

“Um, hi!” you said with a shy smile, your gaze darting away from the screen as you waved at the camera. Despite your bright demeanour and cheery tone, he could practically feel the tension in your shoulders the moment he laid eyes on you.

“H-Hi,” he said back, swallowing as he mustered up a shaky smile. Your gaze flickered to his for a brief second, and in that moment, it almost felt like you two were actually looking at each other in real life. Then you looked away again and something in his chest cracked.

“How are you doing?” he asked slowly, trying to prompt a conversation. “It feels like we haven’t talked in forever.”

Your lips quirked as you tilted your head at him. “We talked, um, two days ago.”

He ignored the embarrassment flaring up on his cheeks. “I mean like, see-each-other-talk talked.” He paused, then adding in a near-whisper. “I missed seeing your face.”

Your rosy lips parted in awe, and he was almost certain that he was never, ever going to forget that expression of yours.

“And, um, h-how—how are you, George?” you stammered out with a shaky voice, curling up a little in your chair. “Are you doing okay?”

George opened his mouth, then shut it. Whenever people asked him if he was okay, his mouth always defaulted to “fine” or “good” or “okay”. Rarely did he ever find himself telling the truth. But now, as he looked at your shy, bashful face, he knew what he had to do. Straightening up, he looked his webcam dead in the eyes.

“I,” he said, “am really, really nervous right now. Like, nervous out of my mind.”

You blinked, finally turning to face him directly at last. “Really?”

He nodded, his anxiety slowly falling away. “Yeah. Do you know why?”

Recognition flickered through your eyes, and your cheeks grew hot once more. “Why, George?”

He took a deep breath, steeling himself, and smiled.

It’s now or never.

“I like you, [Y/N]. A lot. What I said earlier was true. It wasn’t some bit, and it wasn’t just some spur of the moment thing. I really do like you a lot, and I would like it if you would be my g—”

He almost choked on his own words, oh-so very aware of just how hot his face was. “And I,” he began again, squeezing his eyes shut, “would love it if you would be my girlfriend.”

He couldn’t look—he couldn’t. He missed seeing your face, he really did, but he knew that if he looked now, he would only be met with disappointment. You, with a frown on your face, only deepening with each passing second. You, with guilt in your eyes for not reciprocating his feelings. You, with your soft lips mouthing four words he wish he didn’t have to hear.

I’m so sorry, George. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so—

“I like you, too.”

His eyes flew open, his mouth agape.

Those were not the four words he was expecting to hear.

He lifted his head, his gaze taking in every inch of his screen. A bright, glowing smile was plastered across your face, your eyes crinkling at the corners.

“For real?” he breathed, disbelief wracking every inch of his being.

You nodded, a laugh tumbling from your lips and lighting up his insides. “Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes.”

George felt a smile of his own creep across his face as he ran a hand through his hand, something happier than joy rushing through his veins.

Oh god, he thought, wanting to scream it from the top of the nearest building. I like you, I like you, I like you. I like you a lot lot.

“I like you a lot lot, too.”

He froze. Did I say that out loud, again?

Your grin widened. “Yes.”

For a second, he almost shriveled up in shame. But then he shook his head and laughed, basking in the warmth of your smile.

A few days ago, he might have been embarrassed. But now?

Well, if it was with you, he supposed he wouldn’t mind speaking his mind more often.

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hanoella · 3 years

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A Matter of Time (1/2)

Pairing: Bucky x healer!Reader

Word Count: Just under 3k

Summary: Healing others took a lot out of you. It was only a matter of time until it was going to be too much on your body.

Warnings: Hardcore angst, blood, grave injury, explicit description of injury, medical life support, needles? still not good at this stuff.

A/N: Another @wkemeup writing challenge prompt! Thanks so much everyone for all the love and support on my first fic!

Prompt: Believing they’re about to die, Character A confesses their feelings for Character B before they pass out.

---

It was only a matter of time.

Healing always took so much out of you. One day, it was going to be too much for your body to handle. You hadn’t explicitly told anyone that it drains you. Only the observant picked up on it. It’s the reason why Natasha never asked for your help with minor things. It’s also why Bucky plain refused your help nowadays. He was hyper aware of everything around him and that included you. He always saw the light sheen of sweat forming on your brow, the way you became slightly breathless, and the increase in your pulse. When there was a major injury, he was very well aware of the tell-tale signs of exhaustion.

The very first time that he let you work on his shoulder, he had asked what it was like out of curiosity.

“Well… it’s kind of like projecting the pain onto myself. I’ve always been very in tune with my body. So ever since this,” you pause to gesture with your hands. “I can usually tell what the problem is. For example, I can tell that this specific muscle is bothering you,” you say as you gently put pressure on the specific aching tendon in his arm. Bucky winced before feeling the warmth reach deep into his muscles. He let out a deep breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Turning slightly so that you could partly see his face, he thanked you. For a reason he couldn’t understand, a big smile slowly developed on your face.

“What?” He asked.

“Nothing, I’m just glad you finally let me work on it. I can see now that you’ve been… suffering. I’m just happy you’re feeling better.”

Bucky felt his face flush slightly and turned back to face forward. Amused, you started humming lightly as you continued your work.

Not that he would admit it but since then, there may have been… other reasons why he is always paying close attention to you. You reminded him of Steve. Somebody who was truly selfless. The one to make the sacrifice play. You may be less on the forefront of the battles but the work and the sacrifices you make for the world were just as big. Bucky found that he admired you for that. It stirred up feelings in his chest that he chose to ignore. It also made him nervous.

Every time you were needed, he was assigned as your bodyguard. You could handle yourself better than the average civilian, but you wouldn’t consider yourself a fighter. Considering that he preferred to stay out of the spotlight, as well as the fact that his relationship with the public was still rocky, it ended up being the ideal position for him. At first, he was nervous because he was protecting something incredibly important. More so than any jewel or riches that existed. You were someone that could practically bring someone back from the dead. If he couldn’t protect you, he was practically sentencing anyone who would need your help in the future, to death. Certainly, a weighty responsibility that would make anyone nervous.

It grew to be more than that though. Each time he protected you from a threat, no matter how small, your appreciation made it worth it. Your gratitude, which manifested itself into words, notes, and small gifts, sustained him. He had a hidden drawer filled with smiley faces on post it notes and cute little Tupperware containers that had held homemade sweet treats.

But his favorite reward was not anything he could bring back to his apartment. It was your touch. The small brushes against his arm grew into touches and squeezes. In turn, it grew into grasping his hand while thanking him and once, a quick hug before you jumped back and apologized. He blushed lightly and looked away, letting you know that it was okay, he didn’t mind. Actually, Bucky would’ve preferred for that moment to have lasted forever. Because when you pulled away, he was suddenly aware of how starved he felt without your touch. That one action had been the gateway to a life filled with longing. He would chase that feeling forever; He could not bear the thought of being without you. That’s what made him nervous. He felt like he couldn’t think clearly anymore around you. He was going to make a mistake.

It was only a matter of time.

---

Waiting in the Quinjet with Bucky, you listened for updates on the mission. This time, they had gotten intel about a subbranch of Hydra dedicated to chemical warfare. Fearing another threat like anthrax, you set out to stop it. Everyone was in the building and you were on standby in case any pathogens got loose. Wanda could contain it, and you could eradicate it by healing all of the infected, and then they could disinfect the area. Hopefully, though, it was just a precaution.

The atmosphere was calm, the lights off since the night sky was clear in the mountains. Moonlight filtering in through the front windshield, you were taking Bucky through the latest playlist you had curated for him when Nat radioed in.

“We’ve almost got the lab secured. No injuries.”

“Word.” You radioed back casually as Bucky looked at you confused.

You were about to explain the response and pull up urban dictionary when Steve radioed back as well.

“We had a group escape, some guards protecting the head researcher. They’re headed towards the jet. He blocked off the tunnel he used to escape so they’ll get to you before we can reach him.”

“Copy that.” Bucky radioed back as he got up.

When you got up to follow him, he gave you a look.

“Hey, don’t look at me like that! I’m not completely useless. Besides, I think I could take on a lab lackey.”

“I don’t want you to get caught up in the rest of it.” He responded seriously.

Looking at him and realizing it wasn’t up for debate, your expression sobered up.

“Okay. Just be careful, please.”

He nodded as he heard voices approaching. He headed down the ramp and met them outside of the jet. You peaked out of the opening of the ramp as he took them out one by one. When all five were on the ground, you came out and checked to make sure he was okay.

“Wow, impressive.” You commented, nudging one of the guys with your foot.

“Wait,” you said, eyebrows scrunching together. “None of these guys are in a lab coat.”

Just as he was about to respond, he glanced to the side and quickly pushed you out of the way. The lab coat tackled him where you had just been standing. They went rolling towards the edge of the cliff and you shouted his name.

“Bucky!”

He kicked the researcher away from him while still on the ground. As the man started rolling off of the cliff, he grabbed Bucky’s leg. Bucky started scrambling to find a grip as the scientist slid off the cliff, trying to take Bucky with him. You ran over to the edge, grabbing Bucky’s arm to support him as he tried to kick the guard off of his leg.

“With you out of the picture, the path forward will be successful. Hail Hydra.” He shouted as he grabbed a knife from his pocket and stabbed it into Bucky’s thigh.

Bucky grunted loudly as the scientist took the knife out and stabbed it back in. You strained to hold him up as he struggled to kick him off, blood streaming down his leg. With one more heavy kick, the man lost his grip and fell down the mountain. At the same time, the force of the kick had loosened the ground under you. There was a crack and you locked eyes with Bucky in panic.

You cried out as you used all of your strength to bring him back up over the cliff. It started falling away as soon as Bucky had found his footing and he lunged towards the jet while grabbing you. He held you with one arm and kept you from hitting the ground as the other forearm took the impact and held you both up. Looking incredulously at the strength of his arm and then turning your head back to look at him, he gently set you down. You were both breathing heavily as you lifted your head to see the platform you were just standing on was now gone.

You laid your head back down and closed your eyes in relief. Bucky took the opportunity to take you in. Your hair formed a halo around your face perfectly as it was spread out on the grass and the moon’s light made you look like your skin was glowing. You looked ethereal. Before you got the chance to see him gazing at you, he flopped over onto his back next to you, catching his breath. You looked over at him, the stars now reflected in your eyes, and started laughing lightly. He didn’t know what you were laughing at, but it made him start laughing. As it subsided, you sat up and faced him.

“Can I please heal those?” You asked, gesturing towards his leg. You had never worked on his thighs and you wanted to make sure he was comfortable.

He paused, partly out of shyness and partly not wanting to tire you out. Your gaze lingered on the wounds and he saw how much it worried you. He nodded and you leaned over to take a look. As you moved the blood-soaked fabric out of the way, he winced. The wounds were deep and bleeding still. You focused your hands overtop the injury and concentrated. The soft white glow enveloped your hands and his leg. He watched as the bleeding started slowing. After a few moments, the wound started closing and the pain started easing. Bucky tried to get up as soon as it became bearable, but you put a hand on his chest to stop him. Though your breath was slightly strained, the determination in your eyes stopped him and he slowly laid back down. Soon enough, he couldn’t even tell that anything had happened. Once it was completely healed, you then flopped down next to him.

You both settled, watching the clouds pass in front of the moon and stars. After you caught your breath, you spoke:

“Bucky Barnes, I owe you my life. Several times over. Thank you.”

“I think you’re the one who just saved my life, doll.” He said, amused.

“Ooh, doll. Somebody’s finally warming up to me.” You said, laughter in your tone as you stood up. “Do you call every damsel in distress you save a doll?”

The answer to that question was “no” but before he could respond, you held your hand out to him. Bucky sat up and accepted it, standing all the way up. As he let go of your hand, you wrapped your arms around his midsection, cheek resting against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. Bucky swallowed and then slowly brought his arms around you, his chin resting on the top of your head. Content.

Unexpectedly, he stiffened. Something was wrong.

“Bucky?” You called his name hesitantly as you stepped out from his grasp.

You peered at his face and saw his pupils so blown out that you could barely see the blue anymore.

“Bucky!?” You shouted as he fell to the ground.

He couldn’t control anything except for his eyes as muscles all over his body started twitching. You knelt down and panicked, laying your hands against his chest, searching for an explanation. You hovered your hands over his heart and felt it so tight and strained it was barely pumping. You felt as if you were choking, and you weren’t even feeling the full effect.

Cardiac arrest. How is this possible?

You racked your brain for explanations. You instantly thought of the researcher. You traced a strange substance you felt through his veins until you found where it originated- from the knife wound.

Poison.

At this point, it had reached his heart. What little it was pumping was spreading the poison. It’s completely taken over his blood. You locked eyes with Bucky and saw the pain and panic in his eyes, his clenched jaw, and the tendons in his neck, outlined clearly by the strain. He was suffering.

No. Much worse.

He was dying.

You had to save him.

You interlocked one hand over top of the other and started doing compressions on his chest. What was normally a soft white light was now blinding. You could see the outline of his heart, and with each pump, the white light travelled an inch down his veins. Slowly, with each thrust, the white light made it further and further out from his heart.

“What happened!?” Steve shouted. You hadn’t even heard the team come back.

“We saw the light and came back as fast as we could!” Sam said.

You shrugged Steve’s hand off your shoulder as you continued compressions.

“Poison.” You panted.

Thump.

“He’s-”

Thump.

“Dying.”

Thump.

You hadn’t realized you were crying. Tears now spilled freely onto Bucky’s jacket.

Steve stayed kneeling next to you as the rest of the team stood back, watching in amazement as the light made its way through Bucky’s body.

Bucky locked eyes with him. He placed a hand on Buck’s head and wiped the sweat off of his brow.

“You’re gonna be okay, Buck. You’ll pull through.” He said with a small reassuring smile.

It wasn’t himself he was worried about. He’d never seen you exert yourself this much. He was in so much pain but dying would be better than seeing you go through this.

You shouted with each thrust, trying to keep yourself from tiring out and stopping. The white light had made its way back around to the heart and Bucky’s entire body started relaxing. You felt relief as he stopped seizing and his eyes started closing. As you wiped the sweat off of your face, you realized your nose was bleeding. Just as you were about to sit back, you froze.

There’s no heartbeat. You desperately connected yourself back to his body and felt that his organs were shutting down. You started compressions again, this time more vigorously. You were going to have to filter his organs for multiple rounds to reach every part, every cell affected by the poison. You wailed, crying harder as you felt his ribs crack from the force and then heal, only to be cracked again. You were starting to get lightheaded, and your muscles were burning. You could not keep it up for much longer. Desperate to get him back, you call to Steve beside you.

“Steve. There’s. Adrenaline. In. Jet.” You gasped between each push.

Steve was so distraught between seeing the both of you that he didn’t move right away. Natasha instinctively ran to the jet and brought it back, digging through it until she found the syringe and uncapped the needle.

Natasha knew she didn’t need to confirm whether you really wanted to do this.

“Injecting now.”

She thrust the needle into your thigh and clicked the top, releasing the spring and shooting the needle into the muscle.

You wailed again in anguish, fighting through the pain until you felt it hit your heart. The light had turned into a pillar, a beacon in the sky. Your hair once again in a halo, floating around you. The team had to shield their eyes and brace themselves against the force that hit them. You put newfound strength into each push until you could feel that every single drop of poison was filtered out of his body. Finally, Bucky opened his eyes.

You stopped pushing on his chest.

“Bucky?” you asked hoarsely.

He was still coming to but was well enough to sit up. He clutched at his chest and found no pain. He then looked at his hand.

“How did you-?”

You fell over.

Bucky scrambled over to you and pulled you into his arms. You coughed against his chest, bloodying his shirt. He looked at you and then at Steve, mouth agape. Steve could only look sadly back.

He cradled you and brushed the hair out of your face, blood from your nose and mouth smearing before being covered by the new blood steadily streaming out.

“I’m sorry,” You said softly, the sleepy look on your face deceivingly masking the gravitas of the situation.

“Don’t apologize.” He said quietly, pausing to keep the tears from showing. It proved to be pointless as his voice cracked, asking:

“Why would you do this? You should’ve just let me die.”

You closed your eyes.

“Because I love you, Buck. Always have.” You slurred tiredly.

You whimpered and then stilled.

Bucky cried while rocking you in his arms.

---

Part II

You opened your eyes to a black room. No, not a room. There were no walls. You glanced down at your hands. You could still see them so it wasn’t dark, just… black.

“Well, hello.”

You spun around and saw the source of the voice.

A serene, beautiful woman who had long dark hair and dressed in a green tunic addressed you.

“What has brought you here, young one?”

Read Part II Here

#bucky barnes #bucky x you #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #kas9kwc #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fic #tfatws #marvel fanfic #marvel fanfiction #reader insert #bucky barnes angst #whump

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shihalyfie · 3 years

Text

What went down with the DigiFes situation, from the community and translator perspective

I think the events of the last few days have gotten everyone in a huge fuss, and because everything got caught up in a lot of chaotic social media stuff, there’s been a lot of questions about what came from what and who knew what at what time. Fortunately, I happen to be:

Someone who’s a veteran in this fanbase and thus has a small handful of friends in this community, who also have their own friends

Someone who understands a little Japanese (although not as much as others in this community do) and therefore can read things in Japanese myself to some degree without needing someone else to translate it for me

So hopefully I can shed some light on what kinds of things were being discussed, and what was known and not known at what time in this fanbase with all of this.

The most important thing I want to establish is that there was no organized coalition or smear campaign. (Kind of ironic I have to say this when the topic at hand has so much to do with conspiracy theories.) I’m a veteran, I know friends who are veterans, they know other friends who are veterans but don’t know me at all. My friends usually agree with and like the same things I do, and I give them advice and assistance with my skillset when I can, and they return the favor. We pass things along through the grapevine, not through some super-secret club grapevine, just via the nature of social relationships and some Discord servers (multiple; again, not everyone knows each other). So these are my impressions of what happened, based on said grapevine.

How it all started

Konaka’s blog is long. Like, really long. Which is only natural, because he was recapping basically the entire 51 episodes of Tamers in excruciating detail, so no translator in this fanbase would be able to translate all of that and not lose their mind! So for the most part people who couldn’t read Japanese had pretty much given up on reading it (with maybe a few dedicated people using machine translation), and some people who understood Japanese would point out parts they found interesting, but for all intents and purposes it remained untranslated and not super-accessible to the mainstream. (Even the Japanese fanbase itself wasn’t super aware of the blog’s existence.)

So when that first post in May about 9/11 dropped, the people who did read Japanese started going “uh...”

At the time, the DigiFes stage reading hadn't been announced yet. So, in other words, everyone reading it only knew it as, functionally, him namedropping an alt-right YouTuber and praising his observations. The reaction from anyone reading the blog at the time was something along the lines of “disappointed and mildly concerned.” (Note the mildly.)

The posts in June about the Great Reset and the anti-vaccine sentiment were when people keeping an eye on the situation started to get really worried about how far this was going to escalate. At this point, I want to make something clear that may not be apparent to those who weren’t keeping up or who are outside the fanbase: Most of the translators and Japanese-reading people deliberately chose not to be too public about this at this time.

Why?

This is the irony surrounding the fact that said translators are now being accused of trying to further “cancel culture”: cancellation was absolutely not what anyone wanted back then! If anyone wanted to create a smear campaign, 9/11 conspiracies, the Great Reset, and anti-vaccine statements are already more than enough to make a starting case. But at the time, this was a blog that very few people (Japanese or otherwise) knew about, translating it would basically just boost its platform more than it would have had in the first place (which would be counterproductive), and -- well, let’s be real, it’s not hard to imagine that people might get reactionary over it, and people would go nuts. Was there any real benefit that would come out of that? Not really, no.

So at the most, those keeping an eye on it might have vented a bit on their personal accounts, but some even tried to self-censor with “[redacted]” or vagueposting, because this was a matter that needed to be handled with delicacy. Thus, there were “mild rumors through the grapevine” about what was going on, but those who knew were trying to hold back with restraint and mostly inform people quietly in the hopes of this not needing to become some kind of huge social media campaign.

(Also, to be a bit blunt about it, it’s really hard to be in front of someone who loves Tamers and is gushing about it and showing admiration for Konaka, knowing all of this and wanting to say something, but feeling like a jerk if you pop their bubble like “also, he’s probably an alt-right conspiracy theorist now.” Not to say that the ignorance-is-bliss concept is always a good thing, but...)

But since the blog posts in question were discussing the prospect of having his sentiments in fiction, everyone reading them was on edge anticipating what might be in store for DigiFes. The hope was that it might blow over. Hopefully, everything would be in the form of subtle themes with plausible deniability, it would all stay within the realm of “it’s not worth causing a fuss over this,” that would be the end of it, and we’d all move on with our lives.

Unfortunately, “Political Correctness is activating Cancel Culture” isn’t exactly subtle.

DigiFes and the aftermath

I think it’s too easy to assign too much responsibility to the fansub group that was indirectly responsible for breaking the news for all of this, but actually, the truth is, this would have gotten out anyway.

Even when the stream itself was going on, there were Japanese livebloggers, and there were also English speakers who caught on that something was happening with “the Tamers fighting political correctness”. Some hours later, an upload of the stream went live on YouTube, and quite a few people started watching it and caught onto what was going on. If the fansub group that released the now-infamous version hadn’t done it, I’m absolutely certain someone else would have eventually (perhaps in a different language first, but nevertheless). And even before then, information about what the hell was going on was already starting to circulate in broken and incomplete forms. That fansub solidified what was going on, and perhaps accelerated the moment the bomb dropped on everyone, but if it hadn’t been there, it would have happened much more gradually and chaotically.

On top of that, while the use of Western alt-right rhetoric (seriously, please do not try to bring the “injecting Western politics into Japanese media” argument here when all of us are asking him to take the Western politics out) meant that it went over most of the Japanese audience’s heads (hence your answer to “who approved this?”), there was at least one Japanese person who was politically savvy enough to call it out for what it was in disgust. (I’m not linking them here because I’m not dumb enough to fling them in a place where some of you trigger-happy people will go after them.) They didn’t even need to be super in-tune with Western politics to get it; they understood enough to tell that there were some pretty alarming extremist views in there. If they understood that much, it was naturally going to follow that the Western side was definitely going to become aware one way or another.

Even all that aside, at the very least, said fansub is accurate; imagine how much worse this situation would have been if someone else had taken it up and confused things further with a misleading translation, or, worse, deliberately messed with the contents. Basically, this debacle could have easily been a lot worse.

I don’t think anyone expected this to get as big as it did (as in, to the point mainstream anime reporters outside the fanbase picked up on it). There was a similar tri. reading back in 2016, but even a lot of the hardcore fanbase barely remembers it exists! These aren’t even supposed to be canon, either! But when you have that disclaimer at the front, and the contents are really like that, it was probably inevitable for it to become a social media sensation. I mean the contents...sure are a thing.

One thing I should point out about the disclaimer is that it only mentions the program itself. It doesn’t bring up the blog, and it doesn’t bring up who wrote this scenario, just the fact that the program contains alt-right rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Because it does! It’s not even technically praising or condemning the content within, it just says “we don’t agree with it”! What the group did condemn was...approaching staff about it (and especially starting a fight). Because, in the end, that’s what the disclaimer was for: a heads-up about what was in there, and an added reminder that the people translating this are just translating it for the sake of informational purposes. Or, in other words:

It was a content warning. Even without the disclaimer, there were many, many people who would have recognized the contents for what they were and been caught by it unawares, and become upset by it. There were many people who said that they were glad to have that there because it at least gave them some time to mentally prepare for what they were about to be slapped with!

It really, really was a disclaimer. When you have something that level of extremely politically charged stuff, it’s only natural to start suspecting that the translation group had an agenda (official translations tend to get this a lot when content is remotely political). But no, the translation group did their due diligence, even if their opinions were starkly opposed to what was in there.

I was not personally involved in that translation, but I’ll give you this (copy-pasted with permission, from someone who wasn’t technically involved directly in it but was privy to discussions while it was being done):

no we brought up all of those questions like the fact that Yamaki's clearly off his rocker and this isn't supposed to be taken seriously in the first place or that maybe if we're lucky he'll just sound like a fake woke boomer but no matter how you slice it the plot is about him "convincing" the unbelieving Takato and co. into rallying up against the true enemy of Political Correctness and that's just literally the alt-right playbook in a nutshell

the thing even made it to YouTube, we were basically racing against the clock

I mean I really want to say this is plausible deniability but I don’t know how you can get any less subtle than this, this is not something you can mince words

like I really wish we could pass this off as “as long as you don’t know the blog you can take this innocently as political commentary or something” but I honestly don’t think this is something you can take innocently even without context

tbh the Political Correctness part is the most cringeworthy but Yamaki’s rant about fact checkers being evil and all that is probably a lot more worrying when you think about it

tbh I’ve never felt as conflicted about what’s the right thing to do as I do now

So in other words, it was not a reckless decision to just tack on a political label; it was done after a lot of consideration about the consequences to put the label on and what people would think of it with or without context, whether there might be a glimmer of light possibility to try and pass this off as more innocuous as it was, and eventually a determination that, in the end, there was indeed alt-right rhetoric in the program, and should be labeled accordingly.

The result was that, of course, everything broke out on social media, chaos burst out, a lot of hearts were unfortunately broken, and a lot of alt-righters started invading spaces accusing people of proving him right with cancel culture. Ironically, my personal observation is that, while there were exceptions, most people in the actual fanbase did honor the requests to not harass people about it, and this may actually be the most solidarity I’ve ever seen from the Digimon fanbase in my life, which is saying a lot considering how we usually tend to be a drama magnet most of the time. The ones who were actually directly messaging him were his newfound supporters locking down on offering him “support against people trying to cancel him” (I think they were more heartbroken and upset at him than anything...), and most of the harassment came from alt-righters not even in the fanbase, namesearching and sending harassing, accusatory messages to anyone involved for as much as expressing mild dismay. (You want to talk about harassment and being attacked for having an opinion? Pot, meet kettle.)

This leads us back to the question of the blog: if you’ll remember, I just said that the fansub in question did not bring it up at all. That’s because, at the beginning, there was no intention to bring it up if it wasn’t necessary; this was not intended as a smear campaign. The warning was attached to the DigiFes program because it was about the DigiFes program. But the resulting chaos had a lot of people bring up the blog because it better contextualized what was going on, and discussion led to people looking it up themselves and posting fragments of it on social media, sometimes even using machine translate.

Ultimately, that’s the reason this document was released: it was the same reason as the fansub being released at the time it was, which was “if it hadn’t been released, the alternative was watching things get disseminated more slowly and chaotically.” I will say outright that I was one of the people who got to lay eyes on that document before it was publicly released (and even helped out with some advice here and there); it’s no secret that it was being quietly passed around as an internal memo prior to the outbreak. The original version of the document had a request to not post it on public social media because of the chaos it would cause, and while I don’t know how many people got to see it before it was released, I’m under the impression that it was enough people that I was quite surprised everyone who saw it respected that request.

Why does the document contain a ton of analysis and debunking on top of just the translations? Well, when you’re translating those blog posts, you’re technically giving it a bigger platform (which was one of the reasons it was originally considered better to not post it publicly). Since the document exists primarily to inform people, especially about why certain things that may seem innocuous actually have wider context behind them, it’s going to need to contain an analysis like that.

The summary

There were a lot of decisions involved by a lot of different people through all parts of this ordeal. I think it’s fair to criticize whether they were the right decisions in retrospect or whether certain things should have been done slightly differently (including my small role in this), but nevertheless, it was one where the risks involved were thought through and taken into account in every step of the situation, with a desire to avoid chaos, or at least prevent it from getting too much worse. When you have contents like this, a controversy honestly is inevitable -- how on earth are you going to be able to put contents like Yamaki reciting off all the typical alt-right YouTuber talking points and ending in Political Correctness activating Cancel Culture and not expect that to make a stir at some point? -- and so, in the end, this wasn’t so much a conscious attempt at stirring the pot as much as it was the dam finally breaking, and a desire to keep it from spilling over too much. Nobody coordinated this! I think everyone just really hates drama.

Knowing all the steps and thoughts that went on behind all of this, I think being reactionary or accusatory for clout is the last thing anyone involved wanted to be. Considering just how many of these steps above could have easily been made into exposure, from the posts all the way back in May and June to the internal memo document that was made to keep friends quietly informed but could have been leaked to the public with only one bad actor, there was an active, common desire among people who didn’t even know each other to try and minimize the potential damage as much as possible. When you look at the situation now, of course it looks awful and hardly like something that came out of “trying to minimize damage”, but in reality there’s only so much you can do when the contents really are like that, and I personally believe everyone involved was doing what they thought was their best option as the situation kept changing.

I can’t speak for anyone else, especially since I don’t even know most of the people involved, and I didn’t have much of a role in all of this, but I think everyone involved, myself and my friends and everyone who’d been keeping tabs on this situation for months, has been going through a lot of heartbreak and conflict over what to do next, so please understand that there was a lot of thought put into all of it, and that it really was a difficult situation no matter how you look at it.

#digimon #digimon tamers

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aficwhore · 3 years

Text

Truth Is

Chapter 1: A Night Many Months Ago

Frankie "Catfish" Morales x F!reader

Summary: When reuniting for the mission in Colombia, Frankie and the reader (nicknamed "Chipmunk"), bicker due to their rocky past. After some angry exchanges, a few truths come out, changing both of their perspectives. Will the relationship be mended? Or once this is over, will they go back to the way things were before?

Word Count: 3K

Warnings: explicit language, blood, violence, guns/weapons, lots of angst and emotions, infidelity, talk of sex and sexual encounters, drinking, mentions of drugs, talk of death, and talk of mental health(PTSD, depression).

A/N: This was inspired by the song "Truth Is" by Sabrina Claudio. I want to make this a series (my first series ever), but it's still being decided, so please let me know if you want this to be continued! And I am still taking requests and prompts! Thanks Lovelies <3

"Cmon, please Chip, we can't do this without you." Santiago begged, his hands clasped together in front of him to show his desperation as he stood before me in my small apartment kitchen. I sighed, glancing around our surroundings. He had come to ask about joining one last escapade, one last job and we'd all be set for the rest of our lives.

Finally breaking the silence and meeting his weary gaze, "Who all have you rounded up? If Will or Benny said no, there's no way I'm doing it without them." I took another deep breath, turning to continue the dishes I had been doing when Pope showed up.

Santi's face began to light up, his stance growing slightly as he grinned, "Great! They both wanted in, so did Tom." Seeming relieved he leaned against the counter next to the sink and crossed his arms.

"And F-Fish?" I hesitated, pausing the scrubbing on the porcelain dish in my hand. It felt like the air in my lungs no longer existed. My heart began to pound it's way up my throat and into my ears.

His head dipped down, feeling the concern laced in my voice. Clearing his voice, he quietly explained "Haven't asked him yet, he was last on my list."

I silently placed the last dish onto the rack near the sink and wiped my wet hands on my jeans, looking down and watching the wet marks gradually making themselves known. No longer forcing myself to make eye contact, I nodded at the ground.

"Look, querida, if you two just talked I'm sure it would work out." He pushed himself off the counter and stepped towards me, reaching a hand out and gently rubbing my shoulder to console me. "But don't let this change your mind, we really do need you."

"When are you going to mention it to him?" I breathed out, wanting to keep any and all emotions at bay. His hand on my arm squeezed, as if he was trying to give me some courage.

"Tonight, at Benny's fight, I thought his spirits would be up enough to persuade him." He chuckled lightly, knowing his plan was to take a little bit of advantage of Frankie's mood.

I laughed softly, "Definitely sounds like a Santi move if you ask me."

He smirked and shook his head "I know, shame on me." As he dropped his hand back to his side he quirked, "You should come tonight, we can go out for drinks after the fight, relax a little before we leave tomorrow."

It took me a second to register what he said, but when I did I burst out "wait what?! Tomorrow? Santi, why didn't you tell me that? You forgot the biggest detail!"

He cowered down slightly, rubbing the back of his neck "Because I knew you'd yell at me, it was worth a shot putting off the anger a little longer." He smiled coyly.

Rolling my eyes I couldn't help but forgive his dumb smile. "Well it starts soon, why don't I get my things real quick and we can head to the arena together?"

His smile widened, "Of course!" I grabbed my purse and keys, making sure to turn off the lights and lock the door behind me. As we made our way down the elevator and out to his car, Santi told me a few details about the missions and the plan. But once we got into his rinky dink ford truck, I turned to him.

"About Frankie, I'm sure one of the boys told you, but just in case; his license was revoked." Santi's face contorted with confusion.

"What? How? Did he crash or hurt somebody?" He questioned quickly.

After taking a breath of courage I spoke, "No Pope. He-He was caught with coke."

Santi stayed quiet, turning the engine on. "I don't get it" A sad expression plastered on his face.

With a furrow in my brow I spoke again, "What don't you get? He was doing drugs, hardcore ones at that". I began to ramble more, "For what reason, I'm not sure, maybe the PTSD and depression. Maybe he felt he had no one to go to-"

"Stop. I know." He cut me off while finally shifting the gear into drive and moving up forward. "You can't blame anyone for this. All we can do is move on and help him. He's our friend, okay? But I know he's still the same Fish, just a little turned around."

"I know, okay. I can't help it. From what the boys told me, he seems to be a lot better." I added, stirring in my seat. "Anyways, it's been awhile since all of us have been back together. It's exciting."

Santi snickered, "But didn't you all hang out while I've been out of the U.S.?"

Seeing that we're close to the arena's parking garage I explained, "I mean, yea, but only me, Ironhead, Benny and Fish. I haven't talked to Redfly in months, we all had a fallout with him. Especially me."

"Tom didn't say anything when I talked to him, Do you wanna fill me in?" He asked with a quirked eyebrow.

Huffing, I turn to face him, telling him the events of that night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~flashback~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The four of us, the Millers, Frankie and I sat on my couch, watching TV and talking, when we hear a bang at the door. I got up to open it and find Tom slumped on the doorway. He looked rough and smelled like he had been drinking the past several days. "Woah, Tom, you're really drunk, and you drove here?"

He snapped, beginning to yell, "Who are you to judge me? Huh? My wife left me, this is how I cope." He angrily pushed his way past me and tumbled into the living room. He was greeted with the boys standing around him with concerned faces.

"What the hell were you thinking? You know how dangerous that is? You know you could've called and we would've been there for you!" I raised my voice back, causing Tom to swing around to face me.

He laughed darkly, "Oh shut up 'Miss Perfect,' just like you did for Fish? When he was nose deep in coke? Or are you too self obsessed? Or do you just have favorites!"

"Hey man, that's not cool." Will interrupted and tried to get a handle on Tom. Frankie lowered his head in embarrassment. Will reached forward and placed a hand on his back, but things escalated more.

"Oh okay, yea protect the whore, we all know she's there for you guys more than just talking. I wouldn't doubt it if you all fucked her too. But me? Nah, you leave me out of everything." Tom howled, yanking away from Will and slurring his words and no longer making sense.

Anger becoming more prominent, I spoke, "Seriously?! Whore?! How is it my fault that you push us away and don't let us help? We include you in everything, but you have your head so far stuck up your ass you never show up!" I've come face to face with him, my hot breath and voice blowing into his face above me. "And another thing, I'm not a whore, you asshole, I'm with Frankie!"

He leaned closer to me, his breath reeking of alcohol, "Just him? Does he know where you're at everyday Monday and Wednesday at 1?! I doubt it!"

Frankie speaks up, "What? What is he talking about?" A devilish smirk makes its way to Tom's face.

"Nothing, I swear it's nothing." I try to explain, making eye contact with my partially hurt lover.

"Tell him, tell him you've been seeing a 'Dr. Philips.' Go on, do it." He rubs it in.

Looking behind Tom, I saw Frankie looking like his world had just shattered. "You've been seeing someone?!"

Panicking, I speak, "Yes, but it's not what you think, I promise!"

"Then what is it?" Tom adds, stumbling back a foot and crossing his arms contently at the damage he just caused.

Benny spoke up, knowing the truth about who I was "seeing." "You need to leave man, you have no right to say shit like that. You don't know the real situation"

Tom burst, yelling "I want her to admit it! I want her to admit that she isn't the perfect bitch she makes herself out to be!"

"Fuck you! Get the hell out of my house!" I scream, tears slightly welling in my eyes. "Frankie-" I turn to him, but to find him grabbing his things. "Baby please, let me explain."

"Explain what? You've been cheating on me?" his voice is loud, and cracks slightly.

A tear breaks its way down my cheek, "I haven't, Frankie, please believe me." I grab his hand, trying to stall his movements, but he pulls away.

"You just admitted it!" He frowns and yanks his hand away and heads for the door.

"That's right Fishie boy! Leave her, she's no good anyway!" Tom squawks as Benny grabs a hold of him and shoves him to the door, Will right behind to help.

"You bastard!" I lunged forward and swung my hand, landing right on the side of his face with a loud crack. Frankie spun around, startled at my actions.

The action only fueled Tom's anger because he ripped away from Benny's grip and grabbed me. I didn't back down and started to shove him and swing my arms, hitting him in the face and chest as he fought back.

But just as quickly as the fight started, it ended. Frankie tore me off of Tom, pinning me to his chest and stopping my brutal hits. Will and Benny wrested Tom into submission and dragged him out of the front door as he yelled slurs at me, and dumped him outside with a battered face.

While the brothers were dealing with a drunk Redfly, Frankie scolded and verbally fought with me.

"Just tell me! Who is Dr. Philips!" He questioned, slightly shaking me by the shoulders.

With many emotions running through my head, I couldn't process what was going on. "I-I can't, Frankie, I can't even admit it to myself." Tears streaming down my face I brought my hands up to the sides of his face. "But you have to believe me, por favor (please)."

Francisco looked like he was fighting an emotional battle in his mind. He finally spoke, "Either you tell me, or I leave, I can't do this, not if you keep things from me."

Feeling my heart break, I whispered "Please, mi amor (my love), don't make me. I'm not strong enough." My eyes now running like an open faucet and my hands tightly pressed to his cheeks.

He blinks away tears, reaching his hands up to grab mine and pull them away from his face, "Then I have to go." He drops my hands and turns to leave.

"Por favor no me dejes! (Please don't leave me)" I call after him, watching as he heads out of the door and into the night, leaving me alone. I drop to the floor, tears blurring my vision and all that can be heard are my sobs.

After what feels like hours, Will and Benny return, picking me up off the floor and taking me to my bed. They lay me down, attempting to help my emotional breakdown. They pick up whatever mess that was left after the event of that night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~end flashback~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"And after that night, Tom was no longer invited anywhere with us. Frankie distanced himself and refused to talk to me. But Will and Benny did their best to be there for me in any way they could. They did the same for Frankie. But as for Tom, they casted him out, because he changed, badly." I finished covering the story of that night, fighting the tears that threatened to spill. "And the Dr. Philips I was seeing, was my therapist. I didn't want anyone to know I wasn't okay mentally. I was embarrassed and part of me didn't want to admit I needed help. The lives we chose aren't easy."

Santi parked, and seemed shocked, "I'm sorry love, I knew you split with Fish, but didn't know any details or about Tom." He reached over and patted my thigh sympathetically. "I really am sorry that you went through all of that because Tom was an asshole. You really don't have to do this-"

"No I want to, I'm in a better place, so is everyone else." I smiled shyly, wanting to lift the spirits. "So what do you say? Let's go wrangle up our boys and get rich?"

Pope smiled brightly, "Hell yes!" We both got out of the car, and headed to the back of the arena and knocked, hoping Will was there to open it like he told Santi he would. Much to our luck, the door swung open to reveal a tall, smiling, blonde Miller brother.

"Brother!" Santi chuckled as he pulled the eldest Miller into a hug, clapping each other on the back. They pulled away as Pope headed inside to find the others.

"Hey pretty girl, long time no see." Will joked, hugging me tightly.

I scoffed, "Will, you were just at my house last night." We both laughed and he led me into a rank smelling locker room, which I assumed was for Benny to get ready. As we rounded the corner, I saw Benny and Tom chatting on one of the benches between the lockers.

"Chipmunk!" Benny roared as he ran over, picked me up and spun me around. "I missed you! I'm so glad you could make it!" He sat me back down and stepped back to sit on the bench again.

"Of course, I wouldn't miss you getting your ass beat for the world!" I giggled as I winked at him, showing the younger of us a bit of love.

He shook his head with a grin. As my eyes left him, they met with the eyes of Tom. He seemed to have a look of regret, trying to give me a sad smile.

I walked over to him, reaching my hand in a fist forward, lightly tapping his shoulder, "Hey fly, how you been?"

A small wave of relief washed over him as he responded "I'm good Chip, how are you? And look I'm really sorry, I wasn't in a good place and I regret-"

"Its okay Tom, really, it is. I'm just glad you're better. It's water under the bridge." I sit next to him and pat his back, showing that all, or at least most, is forgiven.

He nods slowly, "Thank you, it means a lot that you're here."

"Oh cmon you have to admit it, you couldn't do it without me, the best there is." I pretend to act over confident and burst into laughter. And Tom joins in.

As Tom and I begin to catch up, talking about what we've missed these past several months, I overhear a conversation.

"Hermano (brother)! How are you?" Santi greets Frankie, I assume, he was the last of us, who wasn't already here. When I realize that it is him, my heart begins to race. My skin starts to burn and get hot, my palms becoming sweaty.

"Pope! Benny! Ironhead! What is this, a reunion?" Frankie's voice echoes as they come closer. As the three round the corner, "All we need is Redfly and Chip-" Frankie stops as we become revealed to him. Tom gets up immediately and struts over to give Fish a hug. Frankie's face lights up with glee and hugs him back. When they step away from each other, I wearily stand up and all he does is give an awkward smile and nods in my direction.

Benny attempts to whisper to Santi, "Ouch, that's cold." And Santi jabs him in the stomach with his elbow, causing him to double over and make a "hmf" sound.

Being slightly hurt, I break the uneasy tension by opening an invitation, "Alright well I'm gonna go get a beer and find us some good seats, it's close to showtime!" Faking a smile I continue, "Who's coming?"

"Me, I can't be in here with this doofus anymore." Will chuckle as he ruffles Ben's hair and follows right behind me.

When we make it to the concession stand and order beers, Will taps my arm, "How are you feeling?"

With a sigh, "Honestly I expected that, but it hurt more when it actually happened. But what can I say." I grab out drinks from the concession worker and thank her and turn on my heels to find a seat. "I love him, and if that means waiting to mend things, it worth it, even if it means waiting forever."

Will offers a sympathetic grin. "It'll work, just watch. Oh! Over there! Perfect seats!" He points as his attention was caught by an opening near the rink. He pursues it as I follow behind.

While we sit, we joke around, waiting for the rest of the gang to come sit and watch Benny get thrown around. Finally the last three show up and sit with us, Tom sat on Will's right side, me on his other side, Santi on my left, but when Frankie walks up, he bends down and whispers to Santi, causing him to scoot further away from me and leaving room for Frankie to slot himself between us. Which took me by surprise. Once he was seated, he glanced over to me and gave me a genuine smile.

We don't say a word as the lights begin to dim and the announcer's voice breaks through the speaks, introducing our dear Benny and his opponent.

Our small group starts to cheer and scream Benny's name, to show him support. As he enters the rink, he searches for us, and when he finds us, he smiles big.

In the midst of all the commotion, Frankie leans over and whispers to me, "I missed you, cariño (sweetheart)."

My face whips around to meet a very close Fish, who is smiling. "I missed you too." I give a small smile and lean to my side to shoulder bump him, as he places a hand on my knee.

#frankie morales x reader #frankie catfish morales #frankie morales x f!reader #pedro pascal x reader #triple frontier #triple frontier x reader #frankie morales #Pedro pascal #santiago garcia x reader #william miller x reader #benny miller x reader #tom davis x reader #angst #frankie morales angst

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jpegjade · 4 years

Text

The Proposal - Spencer

Request: omg I’m so happy I found your blog!! 🤩 Can you write a fic about spence proposing to the reader? maybe in front of the team? thanks!!

Warnings: if you hate fluff, this one isn’t for you. Like hardcore fluff. Like so fluffy that you can’t help but feel bad for a second. So fluffy... You get the point, I’m sure.

_____________

“Spencer, do we really have to go to Rossi’s party tonight? I wanted to maybe watch a movie, cuddle, cover you in kisses. I just wanted to do something cute with you. Alone.” You said in the passenger seat of the car.

You held your boyfriend’s hand while he drove with his other hand.

“I promise that we don’t have to stay long.” He said, smiling.

He had been quiet for the past couple days. It was strange, really. He rarely blurted out facts, he had been extra loving, which you didn’t mind, but he had also been a little more secretive. Hiding his phone, going places without telling you, even taking calls in other rooms. You knew his job required secrecy sometimes but damn, you wanted your boyfriend back to normal.

“You’re not cheating on me, right?” You asked him, chuckling. You knew he wouldn’t dream of anyone else the way your name fell out of his mouth when he was sleeping.

“Yes, with Morgan. I’m so glad to get that off my chest.” He said, eyes on the road.

“Did my boyfriend just make a joke?” You said, feigning shock.

The rest of the ride was peaceful, the sun hanging low in the sky. You loved having an excuse to wear your sunglasses outside since you didn’t get out much anymore. There was no point wearing sunglasses inside so you put them on for selfies on the porch.

Pulling up to the driveway, you heaved a big, sarcastic sigh, dropping your head onto Spencer’s shoulder the second he put the car in park.

“Only a little while, right?” You asked, looking up at him.

“Only a little while.” He confirmed.

Over an hour later, you were still there and hoping you would leave soon. You loved Spencer and loved seeing him around his team, his family, but you were tired. You had a couple different phone calls and zoom meetings during the day and you were drained.

One good thing that came from it was you got to stare at Aaron Hotchner all night. If Spencer was your number one, Hotch was your eye candy. He was growing out his stubble from being on an apparent forced vacation and you were in heaven. You told Spencer about your admiration of Hotch before and Spencer went on a nervous tangent about how infatuation lasts for 180 days while the feelings of love lasted much longer. Considering you had loved Spencer for 2 whole years before you even started dating, you were more than secure with your relationship. You didn’t really have a thing for Hotch. You just liked to mess with Spencer about it because there was this one night where you had a dream and it was weird to say the least.

You forced out some laughter because someone said something genuinely funny but you were too tired to really say anything. Between Rossi’s amazing cooking and all of the socializing, you needed a break. As soon as you sat down on the couch, Spencer popped up to sit down next to you.

“Hey, do you want to go outside? On the patio to get some air?” Spencer asked, looking at you as though he felt guilty. He knew you were tired but he just needed a little more time.

“Okay.” You said, letting him pull you up and put his arm around your waist as you put your head on his shoulder.

The laughter was silenced as Spencer closed the door. You sat down on the swing chair, facing the sunset. It was pretty low in the sky and you noticed something weird about Rossi’s backyard. There were string lights hanging up everywhere, slowly becoming brighter as the sun set lower. It was chilly outside so Spencer stepped inside to grab a blanket. It took him some time to come back and you were getting so tired so you curled up and let yourself doze off. Just for a little while.

Spencer was inside, pacing. His hands tapping on his leg while he practiced his speech. He practiced it on Penelope, JJ, even Morgan after he ran it by Hotch a couple times. He had to get this right. For once, he allowed himself some wine to help him calm his nerves. Once he grabbed the blanket, he looked outside to see you on the patio, you were curled up, hands under your head, sleeping lightly.

“Ready, pretty boy?” Morgan asked Spencer one last time.

“What if she says no?” Spencer said in a quiet voice. He looked down at his converse, noticing how scuffed they were. He should’ve gotten some new ones. This was a special occasion, why didn’t he think of that?

He flipped open the box one more time. The ring was simple, half a karat. He knew it was perfect because it wasn’t extravagant, it was easy to look at and nothing flashy. It was understated and mesmerizing, like you.

“Have you talked to her about getting married before? Have you tried to think about living without her? If you can see yourself living without her then don’t do it. But I know she’s crazy about you. She texts me when you don’t answer your phone because she’s scared something happened. She has made an effort to connect with all of us, get to know your family. She visits your mom with you, although it can be painful for her because of her own family issues. She can’t see herself without you. Do you feel the same?” Morgan said, hand on Spencer’s shoulder.

“I can’t… I can’t see the world without her smile in it. I can’t see my world as brightly without her in it, if at all. And she wants a family, just like I do. She wants to move into a house, just like I so. She wants everything I do and more. She’s a dreamer and I’m a realist. We fit together and she understands me. She wants to hear me talk and she wants to grow old with me. She wants… Me.” Spencer caught himself smiling.

“Then get out there and tell her that, not a rehearsed speech.” Hotch said, grinning.

Spencer didn’t realize everyone was listening to him and Morgan’s conversation. JJ and Penelope were both shedding happy tears. Spencer breathed a deep breath before going back outside.

You woke up when you felt Spencer lay the blanket over you. A grin spread across your face because that meant he was back from socializing and it was your turn to be with him. You sat up, letting him wrap the blanket around your shoulders. You extended your arm, opening the blanket so he could sit down but he remained on one knee.

“Baby, what are you doing? Come on.” You said, rubbing your eyes. You didn’t care that your eyeliner was getting messed up. You just wanted to rest with Spencer before going home.

“I can’t see the world without you.” Spencer said, continuing. “I know that we’ve talked about the idea of a family in the future but I also know that we’re not in a rush. We’ve been taking things slow and I like where we are but… I’ve been thinking. What if we were more? I want to be so much more than what we are now because I love you. You are my world, you are my life. You are everything to me and I want to show you that for the rest of my life.”

“Baby, I love to hear you talk but I’m really tired and I know your knee is hurting because you’re the dumbass that is kneeling on your leg where you got shot.” You rubbed your eyes again. “Please tell me what you’re going to tell me.”

“Y/n,” Spencer took a deep breath. “Will you marry me?”

You paused, not sure he was serious. He pulled out the ring box from his pocket, opening it in front of you. The ring was beautiful but all you could do was look in his eyes. They were so pretty.

“No, you asshole.” You said, chuckling.

“What?” He looked heartbroken. He immediately snapped the ring box closed and stood up. You stood up, holding the blanket around your shoulders.

“I said no. No. You know why?” You said, putting your hands in your pockets.

“Why?” He said, his voice so quiet.

“Because I wanted to propose first.” You had to dig around in your pocket a little bit but you finally found the ring you got from your grandmother. When your grandfather passed away last year, your grandmother gave you a ring that had been passed down for generations. The women in your family had a special way to get to the punch first.

You got down on your knee and you heard squeals in the background. You leaned over to the side to see everyone staring at you through Rossi’s glass sliding door. You chuckled as you noticed there were tears streaming down your face.

“You what?” Spencer’s knees went weak. It was his turn to sit in the swing chair.

“Here, I wrote a speech and everything. It’s why I wanted to spend the night at home. I was going to hide it in the bottom of your sour patch kids bag. You’re such an asshole for getting to it first.” You said, sitting in the grass. Unlike Spencer, your knees were hurting and you weren’t sticking it out for shit. He can get the message while you sit on the patio, wrapped in the cozi blanket still because damn, it was cozy.

“I’m going to read my letter to you and then we’re going to swap rings and go inside and let everyone congratulate us.” You said, pulling the piece of paper out of your other pocket.

“Spencer,” Your voice cracked. “Son of a bitch. Wait… That wasn’t in my speech although your father is a bigass bitch. I’ll get back to it. Spencer, I hate you. You have changed my life for the better. Before you, everything was so dark. There were times when I gave up on myself because I thought I deserved every bad thing that came to me. You were so sweet and so kind from the first time we met. I remember the first thing I said to you in the bookstore. ‘Hey cutie, you got a nice booty.’ Your ass does look amazing in your pants, not gonna lie. But we’ve come such a long way from there and I want to spend every day of the rest of my life loving you. I want to show you how much I appreciate everything you have done for me. I want to be there with you through the hard nightmares when all we do is cry together because the other is in pain. I want to be there in the victories when you come home and tell me the details you can about the case, when you successfully talked someone down. I want you to hold me when it’s good. I want to hold you when it’s bad. I want…”

Spencer got down on the ground with you, gently knocking you off balance. You fell on the ground and he kissed you before you could even finish your sentence.

“I want you too.” He said, sitting up.

Sitting on the ground, the two of you exchanged rings. All you could do was cry together, your emotions running high.

____________

I am on a roll bc i am sad as fuck tonight. i’ll be writing for a while bc I don’t feel like sleeping.

Tags:

@winchestertardis

@ancailinaerach

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer x reader #dr spencer reid #criminal minds #criminal minds imagine #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid imagine

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fangirlincorporated-blog · 3 years

Text

The Lucky Australian

~~ 19 Alive ~~

I wanted everything I never had

Like the love that comes with light

I wore envy and I hated that

But I survived

I had a one-way ticket to a place where all the demons go

Where the wind don't change

And nothing in the ground can ever grow

No hope, just lies

And you're taught to cry into your pillow

But I survived

They remained under the air con waiting for he heat to pass, Aurora turning on her playstation to game with Henry. Henry noticed she much preferred survivalist horror, he watched her play a bit of dying light before Henry took over.

“It would make a great TV show” Aurora remarked, watching Henry try and escape a group of volatiles during a night mission, he had to admit, his heart rate and adrenalin were up, his hairs were standing to attention all over his body, it was unsettling and scary, but so addictive.

“I have to say, I didn’t really get too much time to get into it, but this is incredible, it’s not easy”

Aurora snorted. “That’s coz I play on nightmare mode”

Henry stole a glance at her.

“That’s hardcore”

Aurora beamed at him.

After a while, Henry noticed Aurora had fallen asleep next to him, her hands curled up underneath her face. Something caught his attention, pausing the game he looked at her arms.

There were white scars littered on them, some thin, some large. They were precise. Henry knew what they were.

He put the controller on the coffee table and hung his head. He felt so drawn out, so ripped from his skin, so weary down to his bones, so sad. All this he felt for her.

How unfair could life be to a person that only seemed to be a light in the darkness, how was she supposed to endure so much death and heartache and still consistently wake up in the fucking morning?

Henry felt the wetness of tears on his face. The burden of life seems so heavy for some, so light for others.

The never ending, continuous stream of emotion, was the pain his heart was feeling for her, as if it could simply reach out to her and out her all back together. For everything she endured, she was stronger than anyone he knew, but life shouldn’t have to throw that shit at you to make you strong. It shouldn’t have you drag you to a place where the demons go to build character. It shouldn’t have happened like that for her.

So why did it?

He cried for her. Her pain, her heartache, for everything she had been through. He cried because in the short time he knew her, he knew she deserved so much more than what life had given her. Yet, she was still here, she was still alive, still breathing, still waking in the morning next to him. Aurora had issues with her existence, she had not been fond of life, but henry was glad she was a living being.

Henry felt pickles nudge her furry little face under his hands. She looked up at him with her endless brown eyes. He smiled down sadly at her and gave her a scratch behind the ears.

“Its been a big day fluffy butt!” Slowly, he raised himself up off the couch and walked to the bathroom. Washing his face, he looked at his reflection in the mirror.

The women he had dated had been easier, this was all new territory, but somehow, he wasn’t shying away from her, from this. Henry knew he loved her, he knew she was all he needed and wanted. Still it didn’t take the sting out of the day.

He walked back into the lounge room to find Aurora waking up. She looked at the spot where Henry had been, confusion plastered on her still sleepy features. Hearing his footsteps she peered up at him and smiled. Holding out her arms, Henry all but ran into them.

He held her for a few minutes before she parted from him.

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah, I’m ok, it’s just an intense game. Went to wash my face”

Aurora stared at him, she knew he was lying but she didn’t push it.

“Well, since its 3pm, most of the out of towners would’ve gone home by now, wanna go for a swim? Then we can get a drink at the beach bar? Maybe dinner out?”

“That’s sounds nice. Although you have promised to make me some Italian food!”

Aurora rolled her eyes, a smirk on her face.

“I did, so let’s go to the beach, then I’ll make dinner!” she bounded off the lounge, going to the bedroom, Henry following her.

~~~~~~~~

October rolled into November, with December fast approaching. Henry had spent the whole month getting to know the area Aurora lived in, while she was at work. She had taken him hiking in the Blue Mountains many times, he was still amazed at the travel Australians undertook all the time. A 4-hour round-trip barely tiring her out as well as hiking, meanwhile Henry would be wiped out from the whole day. His favourite days though, were the ones he got to spend at the beach, or even just wandering around the place she lived, day drinking at a few different pubs, watching the ships roll in past the horizon. Or simply enjoying wherever she took him for lunch and dinner. He particularly enjoyed the day she took him to Sydney to Bennelong. Aurora had waxed lyrical about how amazing it was, and it did not disappoint. He had to admit; he was very rarely surprised by anything, now he understood why she had told him to dress up, the restaurant was in the Sydney opera house, with a view looking out at the harbour bridge. It was fucking spectacular. Henry had tried to pay once he figured out it was a fine dining establishment. Aurora has shut that idea down quite fast, given he had taken her out in Venice; this was the least she could do. It was quite sweet. They spent the night in Sydney, Henry had stayed at a few hotels in his travels, but Aurora had pulled out all the stops when he entered the room. The room overlooked the entire Sydney Harbour. It stopped him in his tracks, rendering him breathless. Henry spent that night making sure Aurora knew how much he loved her.

~~~~~~~~

Henry found himself sitting in Aurora’s office, answering mundane emails and going over scripts he had been sent, he could hear Aurora in the other room singing along to crowded house, a new favourite of his she had introduced him too. There was so much he had learnt about Aurora, her favourite band, her favourite games, her favourite sports teams (of which he now followed by default and she had promised to take him to a game come the start of the season), pet hates, favourite ice cream. He came to really love Australia; it was going to be hard to leave. Everything he loved was here.

Suddenly, a video call came through. Noticing it was Charlie, he picked up.

“Are we getting you back to the northern hemisphere?” Charlie asked.

“Fuck no, not when you look as cold as you do! Canada in the minus yet?”

“Unfortunately. More snow too, so how is the land down under?”

“Fucking glorious, it’s so hot, but I love it! Air conditioning is the most amazing thing ever invented.”

Charlie rolled his eyes “you make it sound like it’s the worlds greatest invention you’ve never heard of. You have that in England, and in Florida. You know the other place you also live?”

“It’s not as good in England. I know, but here it’s just on all the time. I really love it here; I’m only a 5minute walk to the beach. We sat a pub the other day watching ships come in, that has to be my new favourite hobby” Henry smiled

“Wow, and here I thought it was hammertime”

“War hammer Charlie!”

“Same, same. Since I haven’t spoken to you much in a month, did you end up finding out what happened with Aurora’s last relationship? I know you were worried.”

“Charlie, hold on.” Henry got up to close the door. He sat back down and told Charlie everything that had happened.

Henry lost track of the time he and Charlie had been talking. It was nice to be able to talk to one of his brothers. He hadn’t realised how heavy things had weighed on his heart, Charlie listening to him lessened the burden. Another call came in, from his manager.

“Charlie, I gotta go, Dany is calling”

“As long as you’re ok?”

“I am Charlie, I do really love her.” He watched Charlie smile. Saying their goodbyes, he answered Dany.

“Henry, I have an invitation to the Oscars, can you be stateside in Feb?”

“Sure. Add a plus one for me?”

Dany perked up at that

“So its serious with the girlfriend? I have to say; I’ve only seen a few photos of you in Europe with her, and one of you in Sydney. I didn’t know she was Australian. How have you stayed away from the paps for so long?”

“She lives near the beach, it’s a beautiful little place, nice area, I don’t think they give a shit really, plus its almost 2 hours from Sydney, no paps will travel that far.”

Dany nodded.

“Is she prepared for what’s about to happen?”

“She’s already explained things to me for when that does happen, which I need to talk to you about next time I see you. I will do my best to help her through everything, she might not even agree to the Oscars” Henry sat back and folded his arms.

“Why? Would she be uncomfortable? Does she not have a dress?”

Henry’s eyes snapped to her closet.

“I think she has a dress, ill get back to you.”

“Alright, speak soon”

Henry hung up the call, and stood up, rolling his shoulders and stretching out his body, he walked out of the room.

#henry cavill #henry cavill fanfiction #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill imagine #henry #henry cavil x ofc #straya #australia #Spotify

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themosleyreview · 4 years

Text

The Mosley Review: Star Wars The Clone Wars : The Final Season

For 6 years long years, all of us star wars fans; hardcore, die hard and casual alike, have been waiting for this day. The day that we could see the final season of one of the greatest pieces of storytelling ever created for the beloved universe. While George Lucas was finishing the third Prequel, "Revenge of the Sith" he had announced that he was going to make a 3D animated series based on The Clone Wars itself. This was the best decision he had ever made. Not only did he expand his world, he brought new depth to characters we knew and introduced us to new characters that we'll keep in our hearts until the end of time. He entrusted a team of designers, animators and one man to spear head his vision. That man was Dave Filoni and this man delivered the same amount of love and devotion to every episode that George had when he started it back in 1977. The story arcs have become legendary among the fandom and that has carried over to this final season. For the rest of this review I'm going to talk about all of the story arcs of the season and I will do my best to not spoil the most special moments. I still want to leave the surprises and emotional beats for the viewers who are trying to catch up.

The Clones themselves have become characters in their own right and have such a range of emotion and personality. You could easily tell them apart as soon as they spoke and The Bad Batch story arc illustrates this to the fullest. I had seen the raw animatics to the first part of this arc and it was amazing to see it all completed in the way you were meant to see it. Captain Rex, Sergeant Hunter, Wrecker, Crosshairs and Tech were all given life by one of the masters of voice acting, Dee Bradley Baker. Rex has always been my favorite clone, but Clone Force 99 are a close second. Dee's performance across the entire episode was truly magnificent and should be apart of a masterclass program. This arc will definitely be on my personal Top 10 of Clone Wars arcs.

Not all story arcs are great, but they are still strong in quality. We do get the chance to catch up with Ahsoka Tano after what seems to be at least a year and she gets caught up in an all new adventure in her civilian life. The wonderful Ashley Eckstein returns as Ahsoka and she takes her on an even more heroic level as she helps her new friends. The Martez sisters, Trace and Rafa, were good for a time as they show Ahsoka how they are making a living. I found this arc refreshing, but not that great. It was at times cliche and aggravating with certain character decisions and sometimes felt like a step back from the forward moving speed of the show. There were some great lessons in the middle and towards the end and it does come to a satisfying end. It's a point A to point C story that has great moments of Ahsoka trying to keep her Jedi identity a secret and world building.

The last arc of the series is where the meat of the story is presented and it was truly one of the most heart pounding, suspenseful, gripping and compelling stories ever told in the history of animation. I don't want to ruin anything, but the series goes down the path that it had always been leading us. The story finally runs parallel with Revenge of the Sith and even though you and I may know where everyone ends up after this show, you almost forget all of that as you’re entrenched in the drama and intensity of the situation. This is where all of the visuals, choreography, world design and character development comes full circle. It was truly breathtaking.

All of the performances from the main cast are on display and this was their best work. James Arnold Taylor and Matt Lanter as Obi Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker deliver the same perfect chemistry that you've loved over the years. Sam Witwer returns once again as Maul and he has never been more sinister and perfect as the character. He brings to life the his strategic brilliance and evil resolve. I can't praise her enough and she rightfully deserves it. Ashley Eckstein has delivered a career defining performance as Ahsoka Tano. From the moment she appeared on screen as a teenage Padawan and to see her grow to the adult, was truly a privilege. In my opinion, she is hands down the best Jedi ever created in Star Wars history. The moments between her and Anakin were truly amazing and heartbreaking at the same time. Her physicality with her lightsabers was beyond impressive and even her hand to hand was amazing. Ahsoka's duel with Maul was a true highlight of the series, but the real magic is the depth of her friendship with Captain Rex. Dee Bradley Baker delivers his most heart shattering moments as Captain Rex when he’s with Ahsoka. We get to see Ahsoka go through Order 66 and it is truly the most pulse pounding and emotional moment I've ever seen in the universe. Ashley Eckstein will forever be one of the best actresses to ever grace the franchise with her talents and I thank her for the nonstop excellence of her performance.

Kevin Kiner has been the series composer ever since the show started and this season features his best compositions ever. It was epic, somber and moving throughout. Since the great John Williams has retired from composing the Star Wars films, I believe Kevin Kiner is his rightful successor from now until his retirement. George Lucas created a world in which others could play, but only very few understood his vision. Dave Filoni studied and understood everything and you see his magnificent work in every frame. I just want to say thank you Dave Filoni for creating this masterpiece of a series and delivering the perfect and satisfying ending that we've all been waiting for. This show is not only great, it is a work of art. If you are in any form a Star Wars fan, this series is required viewing and will fill the void if you've ever felt it. It is all streaming on Disney+. I highly recommend you get started. May the force be with you.

#star wars clone wars #clone wars the final season #matt lanter #james arnold taylor #ashley eckstein #sam witwer #dee bradley baker #george lucas #dave filoni #ahsoka tano #captain rex #maul #order 66 #mandalore #kevin kiner

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schrijverr · 4 years

Text

B for Chemistry, now live

Forgetting Dean was live early this week, Claire barges in to share the good news about her recent grade.

This is part of the Famous Husband verse, which is also a series.

On AO3.

Ships: Destiel

Warnings: none, but tell me if I missed something or you want me to tag something, cause I’ll happily do it without question!

~~~~~~~~~~

It had been going well for a while now, a few weeks actually. Claire was feeling a bit guilty about lying about her parents to her friends and she was toying with the idea of telling them. She had talked about it with Pops and Papa and they were chill with it, so now it was more waiting for a good moment to bring it up.

The moment came a few days later. Claire knew Pops had uploaded the burger video with Papa yesterday and she was talking with Rey and Mary about it during the break. Then it turned to theories. Rey said: “We’re not touching them with a ten feet pole on our insta anymore.”

“Yeah, we learned our lesson.” Mary agreed.

“Exactly, but it is quite curious what people have been saying.” Rey said.

“What have they been saying then?” Claire asked, never having pretended she was a hardcore fan, but a willing listener.

Rey answered: “Well, the videos have had some weird cuts since the documentary and Dean stopped himself from saying some stuff during the live streams. So, there are a few theories he’s hiding something.”

“Hiding what?” Claire asked, raised brow.

“That he has a kid.” Mary said.

Claire chocked on her lunch and there was a bit of chaos as she coughed, trying not to die. When everything had settled down, Mary asked: “Are you alright?”

Claire nodded after which Rey asked: “What was that all about?”

Deciding that something better than this wasn’t going to come, Claire answered: “They’re right.”

“What?” the two others said.

“The theorists.” Claire expanded, “They’re right about the kid.”

“And how would you know that?” Rey asked, not sure why Claire would be saying that.

“Cause I’m the kid.” Claire shrugged.

It was silent for a moment, as Mary and Rey processed the new information with open mouths. Then they both exclaimed different things. Mary yelled: “Are you serious?” and Rey: “What! Are you fucking joking? That’s not funny, Claire!”

“I’m not joking.” Claire said, raising her hands in innocence, “At first we weren’t sure if it was going to work and stuff and Pops, uhm, Dean didn’t want to give me the feeling he only took me in for the views, so we just shut up about it. I wanted to tell you, but I wasn’t sure how.”

“You aren’t joking?” Rey asked with wide eyes.

Claire smirked and shook her head: “I’m not, you can come over after school if you want to. I’ve been dying to show you my room, I got a big bed and everything. It’s amazing.”

“Oh my gosh, you are completely serious.” Rey said, sharing a look with Mary filled with disbelief and excitement.

Then Marys face fell and embarrassed she said: “Oh no, we’ve been talking with you about your dad the entire time, that must be so shit, I’m so sorry.”

Rey also blushed in embarrassment and Claire reassured the two: “I didn’t mind, it was pretty funny and at first also comforting that he didn’t seem a complete asshole from your perspectives, about Cas too.”

The two groaned again when Cas was mentioned, they had talked quite a lot about their favorite teacher/husband of their idol.

Claire laughed at them and said: “It’s okay, really.”

The bell rung and they all had different lessons. Claire stood up and told them to just come over that afternoon, before she walked off.

That afternoon the three got off at Claire stop and she walked over to her house. The Impala stood in the garage, so they couldn’t tell from that. Mary and Rey were still on the fence about the whole thing, but when Claire had opened the door they heard a very familiar voice yell: “Claire, that you?”

Claire yelled back: “Yeah, it’s me. I brought friends.”

There were footsteps on the stairs and in the hall arrived Dean, it was really him. Seeing that her two friends were speechless, she said: “This is Rey and that’s Mary. You know them right?”

Dean grinned at the two and stuck out his hand: “I heard a lot about you two, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Dean.”

Still speechless Mary shook his hand, but Rey had regained speech a bit and said: “Same, uhm, hi. I’m Rey.”

Claire laughed at her friend and Rey snapped right out of it and shoved her with a: “Shove off, Claire.”

Claire just stuck out her tongue at her friend, before pushing past Dean into the kitchen while asking what the other two wanted to drink. Dean stuck his head around the corner and said: “Do you need anything or can I go back upstairs. I was in the middle of editing when you came in.”

“Oh, no, you can go back to work.” Claire said after she’d thrown a look over her shoulder.

“Okay,” Dean said, then he asked: “Your day good?”

Claire nodded: “Yeah, just the usual. Mr. Delaneys class was pretty boring though, he spend fifteen minutes talking about his fishing trip.”

“Ugh, that is boring.” Dean agreed, then he bid his goodbye and left Claire with her friends, glad that she made them and was comfortable enough to bring them back home.

That was now a few weeks ago already and everything had still been going well Dean hadn’t slipped up during his live streams yet and all the videos were triple checked before they went up on the channel. And he had even managed to make two videos with Cas without giving it away.

And Cas hadn’t mentioned suddenly being a father in his classroom either.

So yeah, it had been going well.

But knowing the Novak-Winchesters that had to come to an end sooner rather than later.

It was ten weeks after Claire had moved in that it happened. Dean was doing his live stream on a Friday this week, since they’d planned to go on a family trip that weekend and he didn’t want to be working on it.

He had told Cas and Claire that, this morning and Cas was dutifully in the kitchen leaving his husband on his own. Although he had appeared on the channel multiple times now, he was still rather self conscious and he wanted to be able to review his words later and have a say in what went online about him, so he hadn’t joined in on a live stream yet.

Claire, however, had completely forgotten. She was home a little later that day, since she’d gone out with her friends for a milkshake and since this morning to celebrate. Claire had never been good at Chemistry, but she had studied very hard and gotten a B on her last test. So after the milkshake she had rushed home to tell her Pops and Papa.

She slammed open the door, startling Cas and Dean. She had heard Deans voice from the living room and assumed he was in there talking to Cas, so unthinkingly she barged in and yelled: “Pops! I got a B for Chemistry.”, while she ran and jumped on the couch to give him a hug.

Dean caught her, letting the laptop drop from his lap. Before the two had recovered Cas was already running through the hall, calling out: “Claire, wait! He’s doing a live stream!”

But he was too late.

When the words registered Claire jumped back with an apology and just looked at Dean with big eyes, which he returned. Cas had now appeared in the doorway and he asked: “Is it salvageable?”

Dean leaned over his fallen laptop and read out loud: “‘What happened?’ ‘Is that a girl? Is he cheating?’ ‘Did she call him Pops?’ ‘Was she talking about Chemistry?’ And it goes on and on.”, he looked over at Cas and shook his head, “You can fill in the rest.”

They both looked at Claire, who was biting her lip as she thought about what to do.

Dean was about to stop the stream when Claire surprised everyone, including herself, by saying: “Wait!”, she went on, “It’s okay, it’s my fault anyway. Besides I read everything about when Cas did this, I think I hate the thought of the theories more, you know?”

“Uh, okay,” Dean stammered, “Uhm, wanna come over here then?”

Claire got up as Dean picked up the laptop and told the viewers: “Like I said with Cas, this was a mess-up, not a promise and not a reason to pry, okay? Be nice everyone.”

Then Claire sat down next to him and waved, not really smiling, but doing that awkward lip thing. She said: “Uhm, hi everyone. I’m Claire, uh, Cas was my dads cousin and they found me and took me in.”

“And we couldn’t be more proud of her.” Dean smiled.

Claire shoved him lightly and said: “Don’t be sappy, old man.”

Dean rolled his eyes an replied: “I’m not old, I’m 28.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Claire said, but she smiled as well. Then she glanced at the screen and involuntarily commented: “Jikes.”

Instantly Dean got serious as he looked at the comments and asked: “What is it? What happened?”

“Nothing,” Claire assured him, “I just read: Dean is really Daddy now. And I suddenly felt the need to barf.”

Dean cringed and agreed: “Yeah that’s pretty bad.”

Cas also appeared in the background to read along on the screen, he pulled a few faces at the dirtier comments, but concluded that over all it could’ve been much worse. While he was reading them, Dean and Claire were still talking.

“So, a B for Chemistry.” Dean said, “That’s amazing! I know you worked hard on that. Well done.”

Claire smiled and thanked him.

Dean went on: “We are celebrating this tonight, yeah. What do you say, movies and ice cream?”

Claire smirked: “Heck yeah.”

The Dean turned to the chat, before turning back to Claire and asking: “Is it okay, if I say a few things about you?”

“Yeah, sure, go for it.” Claire shrugged.

“Wanna be here for it?” he asked.

Claire shrugged again, before answering: “Not particularly, no. Just tell them not to go digging or something that’s just creepy.”

“Of course.” Dean said, then he turned to the camera and said: “I’m serious everyone. One) she’s a minor, two) it’s basic fucking human decency, three) I will take legal action against you, no this is not a joke.”

After that Claire waved again, before leaving, but she did stay to watch, just from the other side of the lens.

Dean turned to Cas and asked: “Do you want to stay or not, angel?”

Cas looked at Claire, who nodded, then replied: “Yes, I will. Thank you, Dean.”

“Okay, lets start.” Dean said as he clapped his hands, “Firstly, sorry, but this has to be done, but I’m not risking it, so I’m just going to say this all again. I want you all out of her private life okay. Don’t go looking for her on social media, don’t Google her, just don’t, okay. Secondly, this isn’t going to be a regular thing. I’ve said it before, but I’m not here to make money of children, okay. You all weren’t even supposed to know and this is again nothing against you, but people deserve their privacy and with an online community like this I simply cannot guarantee that.”

He saw a few comments and said: “No, it’s not like Cas. He had thought about it after and just wanted the guessing and digging to end. The fact that he’s on my channel from time to time is not the same. Stop it or I will not proceed.”

Claire was feeling pretty guilty about the whole thing. If she’d just thought for a moment, before barging in this whole thing wouldn’t have happened and Pops could’ve just be having fun with his subscribers.

Castiel noticed her look and cocked his head in the questioning manner that had become so familiar to her. She waved it away and scribbled down on a post it note: Later. And showed it to him.

Dean was meanwhile continuing: “Now that I’ve said that, I can tell you all some more fun stuff. Me and Cas got ourself a real talented lady. She’s been living here for ten weeks now, which was why I took the break if you guys remember that. Anyway, she is really smart and funny, but don’t tell her I said that or she’ll get an ego.” Dean grinned at the last part, fully knowing that Claire was right there.

Cas piped in: “She really is. It’s amazing to see how well she fits into our little family here. It probably wasn’t easy for her to suddenly uproot her life and come here to live with us, but we’re grateful every day that she did.”

“Jup.’ Dean agreed, “It is great to see. Is there anything else except that, Cas? Don’t go looking for her and she’s epic and we love her and are proud of her.”

“I think that captures it quite well.” Cas smiled, then the smile dropped and he said: “Wait, for the kids at school. No drama about it, okay.”

“Good one, huggy-bear.” Dean said, “That was all then. Sorry that we have to cut this short, but I’m sure all of you will understand why. For those of you all that missed it, there won’t be a stream this Sunday, but the videos will continue on schedule.”

He ended the live stream and immediately rushed to Claires side and asked: “Are you okay? Do you need something? That was quite something, so suddenly.”

Claire shook her head and waved his concern away. She said: “It’s okay, really. I don’t mind.”

“Are you sure?” Dean pressed her again.

She blushed and said: “Yeah, I kind of like it. Just knowing that this is real and having other people confirm it or something, if that makes sense?”

Cas and Dean smiled back and hugged her. Dean gave her a kiss on the head and murmured: “Makes perfect sense, sweetheart.”

After they’d sat there for a while, Claire checked her phone. She had heard it buzzing, but hadn’t been in the mood to see. Ignoring most messages, she opened the groups chat with Rey and Mary, who had been yelling at her.

The two had lessened the Dean talk, to make Claire less uncomfortable and had decided that tey could watch the stream later when they went out with Claire for milkshakes. They’d assumed she knew, but when they’d gotten back to catch the last part they had been startled to see her and were texting her to check up on her.

Claire appreciated it and assured them that she was okay, for now. She was packing the last of her stuff and decided to turn her phone off that weekend. She let Rey and Marty know, before turning the device off and chucking it in her bag, just in case.

Meanwhile, downstairs Dean was pacing as he worried. Cas watched him for a while, but he couldn’t take it and stopped him. He said: “It’s going to be alright, Dean.”

Dean gave him a look and replied: “We don’t know that, Cas. Everything could go wrong and terrible and she could hate us.”

“She won’t.”

“She might.”

“Well, we’ll just have to see, because we can’t look into the future. Lets just focus on here, we’re going to do something fun, don’t let later ruin that for you.” Cas told him, ever so wise.

Later, he thought. Dean could do later.

Yes, later he would check up on what everyone was saying, even make good on some of the threats he had made, but for now he was too busy loving his little girl. He was busy celebrating her win over Chemistry and then he was busy making sure she had the best first family weekend she’d had in years.

Yeah, he had more important things to worry about than some people on the Internet, especially when he now had a picture of Cas and Claire leaning against each other in the back of his baby, both fast asleep.

#RR writing #dean winchester #castiel/dean #dean x castiel #castiel #Destiel #married destiel #Destiel AU #destiel youtuber au #claire novak #dean and cas are claires dads #supernatural #spn fanfic #SPN #youtuber dean #TEACHER CAS

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dropintomanga · 4 years

Text

Being Both Chinese and Otaku

I’m sure many of you may know this, but I’m a 1st generation Chinese-American. My first exposure to anime was back in the early 1990s’ through Cantonese-dubbed episodes of Dragon Ball Z. It’s been quite a ride since then. However, because I’m 1st-generation Chinese-American, my parents are both 1950s’-born immigrants from Guangzhou, China. They knew people and relatives that went through a period of time in China (the 2nd Sino-Japanese War) when the Japanese invaded the country. Even decades later, tensions between China and Japan still exist and Chinese otaku are caught in the middle of this.

I caught this 2019 Foreign Policy article “Super Patriotic Anime Youth Wars!” on one of my feed readers recently. It talked about how the Chinese government is worried about the influence of Japanese pop culture on many Chinese youth. They believe that foreign media in general will cause dissension. China has gone on to start their anime/manga stuff in order to gain some kind of control over Chinese otaku youth. Bilibili, a Chinese anime streaming service that has gotten a lot of attention over the past few years, was formed to help promote the Chinese government’s views.

I began to think about my own otaku journey and how someone else similar to me living in America feels.

Years ago, I wrote an article for an anime site about being a Chinese otaku. I forgot what I entirely wrote (link is now dead), but I remember I talked about a story that my mother once told me. It was about one of my aunts who literally ran away from Japanese soldiers during the 2nd Sino-Japanese War. My mom said that when my aunt was a young child in the early 1940s’, she carried one of her friends and searching for a hiding place with their caretaker while Japanese soldiers were looking to capture them. The soldiers yelled all kinds of profanities similar to how some anime characters say them. My aunt is still around, but has never talked about those experiences to me and I have never once talked to her about my love of Japanese pop culture.

Back in the mid-2000s’ when the anime boom was happening, my dad once said to me that he thinks anime may corrupt Chinese youth and that we wouldn’t understand the horrible things they did to China. After reading that Foreign Policy article on China/Japan tensions affecting otaku, I see that a good amount of Chinese folks, who grew up in China pre-1990, have utter dislike over otaku culture. The 2D world is full of imaginative ideas that aren’t easily controlled. What’s funny is that my parents didn’t mind me getting involved with all things Japanese. They knew it was what kept my mind occupied from depression. They knew I would probably hate them for taking Japanese pop culture away from me.

It’s hard enough being an otaku. But it’s harder when you’re an otaku and also have to deal with cultural tensions between two countries (one of which represents your nationality) that don’t like each other very much. I know China is a lot more receptive towards anime and manga compared to the United States, but the government will try to censor/ban anything with messages that sound overly rebellious against authority figures (i.e. Attack on Titan is the biggest example). It’s also very hard to businesses to ignore China because of its super-large population and the money potential.

I see a lot of Chinese youth in my area watching anime and reading manga on the train. I see them hanging around in places like Kinokuniya. That’s not going to change. I do feel that we all have our mental blind spots. I want the older Chinese generations to understand that some aspects of modern Japanese culture aren’t guilty of association for past war crimes and I want my generation and future Chinese generations to realize that Japan isn’t always some kind of great 2D holy land. It’s so easy to get caught up in the passions of whatever it is you love or hate. Follow your heart and gut is not always good advice when it comes to nuanced situations that involve complicated relationships. That thinking becomes a bit too biased for its own good.

As someone who’s been told “It’s all in the past. Get over it.”, I kind of relate to the pain that the older Chinese adults feel when they get ignored. They can’t keep up with how fast the present and future can go. My parents went through a lot to get to America. We can’t ignore the past. There’s too many untold stories that need to be told for a better future. Plus there has to be better acceptance of how random the future is. We may have a future where Japanese pop culture isn’t popular in China anymore due to politics. We may not as well. Trying to place so much control on things you can’t control leaves someone prone to endless frustration. I would love an emphasis on focusing on what someone can do now in the present moment.

I think sometimes we’re not taught to have these kinds of conversations because they make us feel emotionally vulnerable. And that’s terrifying to a lot of people. We want to look strong because that’s how we’re supposed to get through life and its obstacles according to the powers in place.

However, I do worry about China (and quite frankly, Japan as well) that focus on manipulating otaku fandom. I know that Japan’s history is awful and their tendency to not apologize for past war crimes is unnerving. I feel that otaku are being portrayed as a “dumb” kind of geekdom that only cares about getting what they want. That makes us prone to outside manipulation by people (i.e. governments) who say they care, but they don’t. That makes us no different from someone who loves to shop for brand-name clothes/shoes/etc. It’s natural to be recognized by a greater majority of people though as we have been picked on for so long. Maybe we’re getting external validation from the wrong types of people out of some desperation.

As a Chinese-American today, I don’t like China very much even though I do enjoy and respect some aspects of their culture. I’ve been there a couple of times, but I don’t feel compelled to go back compared to Hong Kong. I also can’t imagine myself living in Japan despite my fascination with the culture. I’m not sure if the country’s the right place for me as someone living with mental illness. I do see that there’s a good number of Chinese fans that have managed to find their own truths on how to handle cultural tension.

In any case, don’t let significant and mainstream in-group interference on all sides cloud all of your decision-making. Sometimes, the best kind of advice to get is from someone who doesn’t know you personally or is a part of your inner circle, but can relate to your situation and feelings. We will always have doubts and they deserve some validation.

I think the beautiful thing about otaku fandom being more widespread due to the internet is that it allows us to connect with diverse strangers of all kinds that are genuinely good to be around. For so long, we’re taught to avoid strangers growing up because they are either suspicious or not worth talking to. However, it’s those same strangers that can lead us to new paths and friendships outside of bubbles that can stagnate us. Those paths can help us make sense of our own past and current situations as well or at least come to terms with them.

I can tell you that a lot of Japanese series I followed have helped me go back to analyze and confront troubling aspects about my life in a way that matters. Maybe that’s why I manage to deal with many tensions including the Chinese/otaku dynamic instead of being just a passive consumer like most fans. I partake in a kind of “personal nostalgia” that’s more about your own growth and willingness to take on the bad stuff compared to collective nostalgia, which leads to hardcore nationalism/tribalism. I want you all to do the same when possible.

Life is strange to begin with. Maybe just embracing that notion will allow us to appreciate the diversity of all that surrounds it.

Shout-outs to anyone who is a Chinese otaku and managing cultural tensions in their own way. It’s hard work and as long as you’re not intentionally hurting people, you’re doing alright.

#fandom #mental health #psychology #China #Japan #Chinese otaku #otaku

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false-north · 5 years

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Stranger Things: Resurrections (bringing back Billy...)

Since the Harringrove fandom has begun to demonstrate an amazing resilience to certain outside forces (thank you fandom <3 <3), I threw together a list of (some) resurrection precedents and possibilities, all “borrowed” from other actual media/TV/film canons adapted and applied to one Billy Hargrove: (Please do feel very free to add, expand, use, WRITEALLTHEFICS, etc. at will).

‘We Can Rebuild Him’: Still stuffed with remnants of the upside-down in his blood stream, the Russians scrape Billy up on their way out and rebuild him. Because alien world super serum goes a long way in building a super soldier (and unlocking more gates). (Late 80s bonus points if they rebuild him with metal and wire that renders him part crude cyborg). (Re: Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier, Captain America).

Old School Resurrection: Unable to accept that Billy is gone, Max and Eleven tap into the upside-down to bring him back to life. Suddenly re-thrust into his old life that still includes systematic abuse at the hands of his father and the responsibility of facing up to all his past mistakes (including all the lives he took while possessed), Billy’s not exactly grateful to be back. (Hardcore 80s points if they forget to get Billy out of the coffin first, thereby making him have to claw his way up to the surface alla every 80s zombie film). (re: Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

Super Powers Save the Day: Another secret child product of the MKUltra style lab experiments, Billy’s powers of cellular regeneration take a minute to repair that much damage, but revivify him in the morgue in a crazy cool special effects scene where he zips back up his body…(Also canonically explaining how a kid who gets shoved around by his father that often manages to still remain unbruised and shirtless as much as he does). (80s bonus points if filmed like a late 80s body horror film). (re: Clair Bennett, Heroes).

Cloning: Having been “impregnated” by the mind flayer (first with the ‘Alien’ face hugger reference, and then with the strange moment of the alien tentacle pushing into his chest…), Billy tries to kill the monster by sacrificing himself. Only the US government isn’t too keen on letting that kind of alien biotechnology go. They scrape up Billy’s body and clone him—a process that maintains the alien DNA that they can then harvest (and making Billy “patient zero” in their new attempts to use human hosts to create more). Now confined to a laboratory cell, Billy has to fight to regain his own autonomy, not an easy feat when the military-industrial complex has labeled his body as government property. (Meta-Homage bonus points on account of Alien IV being one of Winona Ryder’s films…) (Ellen Ripley, Alien IV: Resurrection).

The Fake Out: Having made enemies of everyone in high school and knowing he’s in danger from both the law and his family (aka Neil), Billy takes the opportunity to fake his death. And yet, he can’t seem to stay away from Hawkins and the people he secretly cares about. (Re: Alison Dilaurentis, Pretty Little Liars).

Stranger Twins: Billy comes back as his brunette twin cousin to move in with the Hargroves and inexplicably looks exactly like him and might actually be him, because Hawkins is a weird dreamscape space (re: Laura Palmer, Twin Peaks)

Conspiracy!: With his body already broken and dying, Billy sacrifices himself to save Eleven, only to turn up (8) years later in a maximum security prison as a pawn in a larger government conspiracy (Cold War 80s bonus points for just being a larger government conspiracy…) (re: Micheal Scofield, Prison Break).

Deal with a “Devil”: Feeling guilty that they couldn’t save him, and unable to comfort Max, Elle uses her astral projection powers to make a deal with the Mindflayer or some other entity in the upside down to bring him back, but like all para-supernatural contracts, “the devil” wants to make a deal…(80s bonus points for really playing up any element of the “Satanic Panic” crisis) (Dean Winchester, Supernatural).

Time Travel: The alien tentacle pushed into his chest created a gateway that sucked his consciousness into the future, creating the dopple!Billy that greeted him in the upside-down, setting off a strange time line of events in which future Billy has to travel back in time to the 1980s to warn of or even jumpstart the Mindflayer takeover, as such a series of events is actually the only way to ultimately defeat it. Sacrificing his past-self to kill the monster, the ‘Billy from the future’ finds himself stuck in 1980s Hawkins, a changed man haunted by the things he’s seen (and the things he will see). Only now that this apocalypse has been averted, the things he can see in the future keep changing, not all of it for the best... (Essentially rendering Billy “The Party’s” Seer.) (The Terminator (kind of)).

Alien Parasite: Closing The Gate weakens the Mind Flayer, but it doesn’t kill it, leaving the MF trapped inside the body of seventeen year old Billy Hargrove. Now both need the other to continue to survive, and Billy needs to learn to find some kind of harmonious compromise with his other-worldly parasite (Eddie Brock, Venom).

(More theme-borrowed than direct references:)

(Psychic) Coma: After the events of the mall showdown, Billy is left in a coma with a healing fractured mind. The only problem, his psyche effects the world around him as it processes all its demons. As the gang gets sucked into the weird hellscape of Billy’s internal life made manifest on the streets of Hawkins, they must help him fight all his monsters before his lifetime of aggregate trauma destroys the town.

The War isn’t Yet Won: Billy’s demise was greatly exaggerated. The calvary came in, the ambulances scooped him up, and he’s fine now—physically. But the experience changed him, has left Billy quiet and hollow. He can still feel the mind flayer everywhere, phantom crawling over his skin. There’s only one other person who can even begin to understand—Will Byers. Everyone thinks the two former MF meat puppets are simply suffering from PTSD, but Will and Billy know better. They’ve seen the future; what the Mind Flayer has in store. The two form an unlikely alliance as the only two in town who know the war isn’t over.

(My personal head cannon for Season Four):

Nightmares on small town streets: After the events of season three, the gang starts dreaming: weird twisted nightmares that seem more vivid than the waking world. What’s more, they all meet up in their dreams: Will, Steve, Eleven, Dustin, Nancy, Lucas, Max. etc. who all physically went to sleep in different towns/places, find themselves in a sick simulacrum of Hawkins at night. What’s more, is that when they call each other up the next day, they all remember it: they were there. Soon it becomes clear that this dank space is even more dangerous than they ever could have anticipated. Whatever happens to them in the dream space follows them through to the waking world. And something is after them. They need to figure out how to defeat the shadows, but until they do, there’s only one solution: don’t fall asleep. (Meanwhile, Max and Eleven see Billy in the dream world, seemingly living at the Hargrove’s house and caught in a robotic glitch cycle of abuse at the hands of a nightmarish hybrid of the Mindflayer and his father. They become determined to bring this Billy back with them, unsure if that’s even possible, but Max refuses to leave him there. But waking him up and pulling him out is a much bigger task than they can handle alone. They bring Steve.).

(i.e. I actually do really want a Nightmare on Elm Street season…).

(And really, if all else fails, we saw *one* Billy go down, yes, but what about *second* Billy…?)

#harringrove #billy hargrove #stranger things #fix it #fanfic #bring billy back #winter soldier billy #nightmare on Hawkins street #stranger things 3 spoilers

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reddeaddufus · 4 years

Text

Pheromones

Author’s comment:

Tuberculosis doesn’t exist in RDR2 and you can’t tell me otherwise. Lycanthropy as an STD definitely exists.

This one shot is the direct result of listening to a horrific amount of werewolf - themed power metal. At some point I figured if I wrote it all down I could move on with my playlist, but it hasn’t happened yet. God, someone save me.

Warning! This includes animal death, a gory battle sequence, and hardcore smut.

The saloon was packed. The dirty, familiar room hummed with the usual array of gossip, flirtations, and insults. Arthur Morgan nursed his glass as he watched warily. Despite the bustle and the noise and the verbal pissing contests, the room felt empty. If he listened hard enough through the din, Arthur could almost hear the voices of companions long since dead. The place stank of memories. The big man sighed and reclined, leaning back dangerously far in his chair. With his hat slung low over his brow he scanned the room. He wasn’t expecting to find anything to pique his interest - nothing did anymore.

There was some drunken feller touting his miracle oils, and another fixin’ to come to blows with his neighbor. Poor prospects for robbin’ or a distraction, Arthur thought wearily. If he was being honest with himself, he wasn’t sure why he was here. It had been a long time since he’d been back in these parts. He wasn’t sure why he was back this far east at all, actually. Every vistage, every town held ghosts he wasn’t ready to face. He hurt too much.

He’d been a ghost himself, a rambler in the wind for some time since Micah and Dutch had left him for dead on the mountain. When he’d come to the sun was bright and painful on his skin. He’d managed to drag himself to cover before he passed out again. When he woke the second time he’d gathered what he could and headed west. He hadn’t looked back in the months that followed until recently, when he had found himself absent mindedly turning his gelding east. It had been muscle memory from there, and here he was. Reluctant and wary, but back in the memories again.

Arthur was ready to give up on finding a distraction in this town when someone at the poker table to his right mentioned a wolf. He listened with empty bemusement while a young man - just a kid, really - protested to his fellow players.

“Of course I could do it!” The youth argued. “You don’t think I could?!”

His closest companion snorted.

“I know ye’ couldn’t. You ain’t yet, have ye’? Bet ye’ were too scared t’ even look fer’ the thing.” Sloppy drunk, the older man sagged in his seat. He hawked something back in his throat and spat it on the floor before returning to contemplate his cards.

“I seen it!” The youngest man insisted.

“You ain’t seen it,” The third companion drawled. He poked an accusatory finger in the youth’s face. “If you’d seen it, you’d be dead, just like that Ned asshole. And we’re still feckin’ stuck with you.”

The youngest man flushed as he slammed down his fist. “I seen it!” He bellowed. “I seen it over by that Hanging Dog place! Huge, the size of some sort’a pony!” Spittle flew onto the table.

“Tell you what. You go find that thing, you bring it back, you’ll have tha’ reward and I’ll apologize to the mighty hunter. How ‘bout that?” His companion sneered. The youth scowled back.

Behind them, Arthur slid from his spot in the corner and slipped out the door as quietly as he’d come. He’d heard enough. A dangerous hunt might be just what he needed.

~~~

If Arthur pretended a little, he could imagine he was alone in West Elizabeth. It was easy to forget the squalor of civilization and all the hell that came with it when he stood in the meadows and drank in the wild. The wildflowers brushed his thighs and tickled his palms when he dropped his hands to walk among them. Pollen tickled his nose and bird calls resonated through the breeze. Somewhere, a bull bugled. Without the shouts of men and the rattle of carts, the world felt a little kinder and a little more hopeful. Arthur felt at peace here, as much as he could.

He’d ridden some time to get here and had set up camp as soon as he’d arrived. It had been a long day on the road and he and his horse were weary. He’d woken in the night with a cold sweat and not known where he was. What he’d frantically mistaken for the bright lights of a city in his sleep haze was just the cold glow of the milky way. He’d watched it until his pulse slowed and he could appreciate the vast cold beauty of it. It was fading when he finally fell back to sleep, and he slept better than he had in weeks.

Come morning he set out to restock his food stores. He intended to craft some bait from whatever he caught. With any luck, it would bring the fabled huge wolf right to him. He left his slow big bay gelding back in the meadow to graze but took his bolt action rifle. A set of fresh elk tracks led him across a stream and close to the forest. When he found the herd he settled low into the grass and let the world grow clear and cold in his sights. Time slowed as he settled on the bull. It idly flicked an ear as he pulled the hammer. Arthur pulled the trigger. His gut told him that the shot was true as soon as he’d fired it, so Arthur let the coolness of his focus flit away. His emotions flooded back just in time to see his shot land.

The bull crumpled in a spray of red mist. The cows around him blanched and scattered. Something else startled and dashed away through the tall grass. Arthur scrambled forward after the disturbance. He grabbed his binoculars just in time to see the grass at the edge of the treeline part and still. He would have missed the wolf if he hadn’t been looking for it. The tawny pelt and creamy belly blended into the grass perfectly. It was a massive thing with a lean, powerful body. Through the binoculars he watched as she twitched a caramel ear and turned to stare directly at him. The glint of cool grey eyes was unnerving and unexpected. When he lowered the binoculars to raise his rifle, she had disappeared.

He’d skinned and processed his elk as quick as he could. By the time he’d whistled for his horse and the old gelding had come, he was humming with the urge to hunt. He tracked her for hours. When it seemed like he was close he would dismount and leave Sue to graze. Arthur was startled enough by the she-wolf’s size - he could only imagine how Sue would react. But by the time he was a few dozen yards further down the track the paw prints would stretch into a lope and Arthur would be forced to whistle and mount his gelding again. When dusk came Arthur grudgingly called off the camp for the night and set up camp. With his belly full of elk and his mind heavy with the hunt he drifted off into a deep sleep beneath the stars.

~~~

The wolf had been watching him all day. When she slipped closer to watch him that night his horse wickered nervously. When the breeze shifted upwind she padded closer on large, silent paws. This man had taken the bull elk before she could, and she had been a bit bitter about it. But that had been before she slipped into his camp and past the dying coals of his fire. That was before she’d stood close and watched the rise and fall of this man’s sleeping form.

He was dirty and rough, but beneath the layer of grime and stubble was a set of ruggedly handsome features. Sandy colored hair poked messily from beneath an old black leather hat. He had a broad, crooked nose, obviously poorly set after several breaks, and a set of scars on his chin. A pair of full lips rested partly open with sleep. A ghost of a relaxed smile curved it into a peaceful expression. It made him look years younger than how he had looked earlier, the she-wolf decided. She quite liked him like this.

There was something about him that made her want to remember what it felt like to live as a woman again. Her mother had called her Nathalie, but it had been a long time since anyone with a human tongue had used her name. She had done her very best to forget it for years. To think of her humanity now was strange, but not unpleasant.

She nosed through his satchel and around his boots for a bit. When she found a small book she was so intrigued and startled by the smell of graphite and sorrow and of the man’s own unique scent that she forgot herself and bumped it with her nose. It left a muddy smear on the cover. The wolf huffed and stepped backward. When she slipped away to pursue her own sleep, her thoughts chased her through the night.

~~~

The second day Arthur had woken in a good mood. He chalked it up to the good weather and gorgeous scenery. That had lasted until he’d squatted to start a pot of coffee and placed his knee directly over a mammoth proportioned paw print. To his further horror and dismay he found them all over his campsite and even up to a foot away from where he’d slept. Sue only flicked an ear at him while he swore. He didn’t shake the deep unease he felt until he was mounted and miles away. If there was any blessing to this, it was that the she-wolf had left a clear set of tracks for him to follow. That she’d left them starting from his campsite was something he was unlikely to forget anytime soon.

The idiots in Valentine had mentioned that the wolf had killed someone. That hadn’t been surprising to Arthur. They hadn’t mentioned it’d be smart, Arthur grimaced. Smart and curious. That it had forayed into his camp and not attacked either Sue or Arthur was confounding. It was a small mercy it didn’t have a pack. The she-wolf was turning out to be a big enough headache as it was - It was no wonder that there was a reward on the thing’s head.

Arthur’s brow was firmly worried over his eyes for the better half of the morning. It relaxed on the hunter’s face when the tracks began looking fresher, but his scowl was back in full force when he realized the wolf had led him in a big loop. The loops continued throughout the day. Whenever Arthur lost the trail he’d find another in the opposite direction, too fresh for comfort. Another time he found a spot where the wolf had clearly laid down, seemingly to wait for him to catch up, before trotting through mud just a few scant minutes past. By midafternoon he was throwing his hat and cussing every time the trails looped, crossed, or were fresher than they should have been.

Nathalie was enjoying it.

He threw his hands into the air and exclaimed something indistinct when he found the carefully placed waste she had left for him. He must have given up for the day, as he shot the next rabbit that crossed his path and grumbled something when he turned his horse back towards the meadows.

She let him cool off for a bit on his own for a few hours before she loped after his scent. She caught up easily, and quickly found his new campsite. She hesitated on the outskirts, uncharacteristically nervous. She hadn’t done what she was about to do for many seasons. She wasn’t sure why she was here at all, following this man, but she wasn’t one to stop herself now.

She inhaled deeply and let herself chase the feeling the cold air being pulled through her lungs. Nathalie focused on the core of her own presence. She felt tight in her chest. The human was still there, where the warmth had always been. She tugged on it, and it all came flooding back. The shift was quicker than she remembered. Just a short minute later saw her naked and human form stumble and pitch forward. Instinctively she threw a hand out to catch herself against a tree. She felt deaf and strange without scent and sound flooding her.

Nathalie took a quick steadying breath and studied herself. She was still as she remembered herself. Her hips were wide and stocky and supported by a pair of strong, shapely thighs. She was pleased to feel her breasts again - they were full, and she’d always been proud of her figure. Her mass of caramel hair, once restrained with ribbons, hung down in wild curls. But she was different than she had been a few years ago as well. She was tanned and wild. She felt beautiful.

When she was sure she wouldn’t fall again she took an experimental step, and then another. With a little huff of breath she set her shoulders back and strode into the hunter’s campsite.

Arthur was busy with the fire when he heard something move off to his right. The big man swung to his feet in an instant, the fire forgotten.

“Christ!” Arthur started. His hands spasmed to his guns and cleared them of their holsters before he could comprehend the sight. His eyes were big as he took in the woman’s state.

“Christ,” he repeated, gentler this time. “Miss, y’ alright?” He crouched and slowly re-holstered his guns. Still crouched he slowly raised his empty hands in front of his shoulders. He looked like a man trying to tame a wild horse. Nathalie swallowed a smile at the thought. He was clearly trying not to scare her. Nathalie tilted her head a little as she watched him.

“I’m going to grab you a blanket, here. Yer’ alright, girl,” the big man cooed. This time she tucked a small lopsided smile into her shoulder. His eyes combed her body quickly, searching for bruises or wounds. There were none, of course. She hoped he liked what he saw.

“What happened, are you hurt? Are the men who did this still in the area? Let’s get you by the fire, an’ warmed up.”

He approached her tentatively, offering her an old, patched wool blanket. When she didn’t respond he gently came closer and unfurled the thing, then slowly draped it over her shoulders. The way his ears flushed red as he averted his eyes made her smile despite herself.

She would have thought him bumbling if she hadn’t been studying him the way he was trying not to study her. He wasn’t bumbling at all, of course. He moved like a predator. His movements were agonizingly slow, but smooth. He was shockingly graceful, fluid even, for such a big man. Nathalie would have been wary if she didn’t already trust him.

And how could she not trust him? She felt like she knew him. She read him like a book, from his mannerisms to his scent. And what a scent it was. She had trailed it all day of course, but now she felt dizzy in him. He smelled like leather and mint and wool, like guilt and kindness and an overwhelming, aching sadness. She wanted to curl up beside him and bathe in those smells, to replace that grief with a promise and tender touch. Instead she let him gently lead her into the campsite and down to the fireside.

She eyed it curiously while she settled. Arthur watched, brow furrowed. After a minute she spoke.

“I’m - ” Her voice cracked. She paused and tried again. “I’m well.” Her voice sounded hesitant, like the words were unfamiliar. Arthur wondered vaguely if she was foreign. He listened closely for an accent, but he couldn’t find one.

“The one who did this is -” She hesitated, seemingly looking for the right words. “He’s long gone.” At that she smiled wolfishly.

Arthur nodded curtly, watching her from under his hat while he stoked the fire. She didn’t have more to say and Arthur wasn’t going to push it. The feral woman watched the fire with alien fascination. As he studied her she held her hand up to the flame. She wavered closer, leaning too far into the fire. When a tongue of flame met her open palm she snatched her hand away and stared at it as if checking for marks.

Arthur cleared his throat.

“You hungry?” He asked. “I was just about to cook up some rabbit I caught earlier.”

“I saw,” Nathalie smiled. Her crooked grin was bold, too bold.

Arthur was taken aback by the way she carried herself. Undaunted, unabashed, and intense. The way she looked at him - was that desire? Open desire? If it was, she wasn’t being shy about it. She took her time observing him, her gaze scalding his skin. He could feel his ears and the back of his neck burning as he flushed, unused to the attention. He scratched at his hair self consciously, too aware of how long he’d let it get. He hadn’t had a woman look at him like this in a long time. He was torn between hoping she’d look away and hoping she would never stop.

His head felt heavy. He cleared his throat and turned to his horse. The old gelding was hitched to a nearby oak. Sue huffed the air and flicked his head nervously. Arthur ran his hand absentmindedly along the horse’s neck while he pulled the rabbit from the saddle bag, murmuring something wordlessly soothing. The big bay horse stilled, but his nostrils continued to flare.

“You got a horse, miss...?” Arthur asked while assembled the cooking spit. The woman watched this too. He meet her gaze when she didn’t answer immediately. She grimaced when she realized his question was twofold.

“Not for a long time.” Looking away, she replied. Her brow furrowed. “My name is…”

The outlaw waited patiently.

“Nathalie, it was Nathalie,” the woman finished, mouth quirked into a little frown. Her brow was knit tight in thought.

Arthur smiled, and shook his head a little. He lent forward to turn load the spit.

“Well it’s a real pleasure t’ meet yeh, miss Nathalie. You can call me Arthur.”

Nathalie nodded, as if this made sense.

They didn’t say much more until the meal was ready. Arthur noted with some amusement that she didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. She fisted the meat with a two hand grip. When she bit deeply into the hot meat she flinched, and immediately spat the steaming bite out. Arthur did his best not to smile and very slowly blew over his portion. She watched and hesitantly pantomimed him after a long pause.

“You need a ride tomorrow, Miss Nathalie?”

Nathalie shook her head. Deftly she ran a small, pink tongue over the grease on her hands. When that wasn’t enough she slipped her fingertips into her mouth. Arthur tried not to watch the way her tongue flicked over her fingers, but he couldn’t help but stare. Her confidence, the way she moved, even the self assurance in her own peculiarities - it was strangely alluring. He could watch her for days. And when she shifted positions and her blanket slipped, revealing the swell of a tanned breast, he flushed and looked away. If she noticed her own indecency, she didn’t care. It was several minutes before the goosebumps on her forearms led her to cover herself more thoroughly.

To distract his wandering thoughts Arthur turned and rummaged into his satchel until he returned, holding a chocolate bar up for Nathalie to see. She said nothing and just stared. Arthur grinned and peeled back the wrapper.

“I figure some of this couldn’t hurt. You ever had it before?” When she said nothing he continued, lips curved into a boyish smile. His broad, calloused fingers quickly cracked a few squares loose and offered them to her. “It’s pretty good. Sweet. Think you’ll like it.”

After a moment she hesitantly accepted, but waited until Arthur had popped a square in his mouth before she copied him. Her eyes opened wide as she chewed. Arthur chuckled when she finished and immediately looked to him for more.

They finished the chocolate bar quickly after that. He almost retrieved his last candy bar to split with her, but he restrained himself. It was delightful to watch Nathalie’s child-like bliss, but he figured it was better to save the chocolate for another, colder and lonelier night. He rolled out his bedroll for her and motioned to it. She gingerly moved onto it, and settled more comfortably once Arthur smiled at her. She shimmied to one side of the blankets and watched him. When he didn’t move she patted the blanket beside her. Arthur immediately flushed.

“You are not joining me?” Her expression was naively innocent, but the glint in her wide gray eyes was mischievous.

“I’ll, uh, be over here. I’ll keep watch,” Arthur stated lamely. He pulled his hat lower over his eyes to hide whatever he was sure was written on his face. Nathalie nodded, accepting his answer. She settled down quickly and was deep asleep within five minutes. Arthur envied her. He watched her and wondered about her while he kept guard. When he was sure she wouldn’t wake he pulled his journal into his lap and began to write. Arthur’s eyes drooped lower in time with the flames of the dying firelight.

~~~

Nathalie was gone in the morning. Arthur had fallen asleep at some point in the night, and he woke to an awkward pinch in his neck. He wasn’t totally surprised to see his guest had left. She was certainly an odd one. A feeling in his gut told him that wouldn’t be the last he’d see of her.

The shirt he’d planned on wearing that day was missing, as well as his last chocolate bar. More frustrating was a large set of paw prints bordering his campsite and leading away and into the woods.

Arthur had practically growled. Somewhat resigned, he swung himself into Sue’s saddle and began tracking once more. The morning and then the afternoon passed quickly, and both were just as productive as the day’s prior. Arthur’s frustration was dimmed by the enigma of Nathalie. She’d been strange, sure, but Arthur had met odder. It was something else that drew him to her. Her boldness had tickled him. He was hard pressed to forget the mischievous glint in her eyes and the way she’d smiled at him. Strangest of all, he’d realized with a start, was the way he’d entirely forgotten his worries and his exhaustion while they had talked. She was heavy on his mind for this reason as he rode, and it was Nathalie he was mulling over when Sue whinnied uneasily and stalled.

Arthur frowned and reined the big horse back into position on the trail. The horse’s ears were low against his skull.

“What are ye doin’, bud? C’mon, let’s move,” he murmured. He patted Sue’s neck reassuringly and gently kicked him forward again. The bay tossed his head and shifted into a fast trot. Arthur’s brows quirked as he guided his horse forward. He was looking for a cougar when the roar of a bullet deafened him. Something hot and wet sprayed his face, neck, and hands. He responded milliseconds later, but it was too late. The old gelding crumpled beneath Arthur, dead instantly.

Arthur’s shout was swallowed by the yelling of men and the crack of guns. Arthur hit the ground hard and for a moment was aware only of the air whooshing out of his lungs. That lasted until he saw the shadows of men streaming out from alongside the path. With a hoarse growl the outlaw rolled and careened into a trailside bush. He was firing his bolt action rifle before he could think to do otherwise. Muscle memory washed over his body and mellowed the kick of the rifle on his shoulder. The men looked like ranch hands, but their weapons and their aim was much better than Arthur was comfortable with. Laramie gang, Arthur’s thoughts offered unhelpfully.

His bolt action was his favorite for hunting, but the recovery speed was not assisting in Arthur’s favor. Men fell in his sights but more moved in to replace them. His hat shot back off his head following the heat a bullet come too close. Arthur swore and stumbled backwards and deeper into the woods. There were too many. Fresh rounds slipped through his fingers, slippery with his poor horse’s blood. He scrambled to reload his rifle as he crouched behind a boulder. Another bullet chipped the rock next to his torso.

Someone shrieked triumphantly in his ear and Arthur saw the barrel of a shotgun swing towards him. Arthur grabbed the length of his rifle and slammed the butt of it into the approaching man’s face. He twisted his body to the side just in time to feel the heat of the muzzle slid past his back even as he met his target’s nose with a sickening crunch. The man screamed and dropped the shotgun to clutch his face. Arthur spun to shoot the man point-blank and kick his body aside.

Someone else shouted and Arthur dove forward to down the new opponent. Somewhere in front of him, someone screamed. Arthur would have noted it as his bullet meeting it’s mark, but it was followed by another man’s scream and a new volley of gunfire, now directed somewhere to Arthur’s left. Arthur used the new distraction to down two more men. He skidded into the cover that the bodies had formerly occupied and chose his next target.

A man in a blue bandana settled in the outlaw’s sights. Even as Arthur pulled the trigger the man fell and screamed in horror. Something answered with a vicious snarl and yanked the man back several feet. The man’s leg snapped resoundingly, and Arthur saw bone as a wolf leapt forward and slammed her jaws around the man’s neck. Arterial blood spurted around the animal’s snarling muzzle.

It was the wolf Arthur had been stalking for the last day and a half. She was a huge mass of cold, animalistic fury. Rage rolled off her body like a blast of icy air - Arthur could feel it race down his own body in response. Up close, the wolf was larger than Arthur had thought. She was spectacular, a writhing force of rippling muscle and fluid movements. The power rippling underneath the wolf’s thick amber pelt was immense, and it poured from her as she thrashed her prey. Blood darkened the creamy off-white of her belly, paws, and muzzle.

The man with the bandana didn’t scream again, but the wolf did not stay stationary. The hair on the back of Arthur’s neck tingled as he watched her, his hands momentarily still on his rifle. That lasted until a bullet bit into the grass next to his foot. Arthur let muscle memory take over and guide him into a cool, time slowing haze. He fired through it and was dimly satisfied to see each of his bullets find their marks.

He didn’t have time to think about the wolf he’d been tracking or the way she tore through men’s throats as easily as wet cloth somewhere beside him. There were no questions, no time for marveling. There was only a never ending stream of targets and the comforting burn of his rifle on his shoulder. .

Fire.

Close the bolt.

Fire.

Close the bolt.

Fire.

Gunsmoke burned Arthur’s nose. Someone else shrieked.

Close the bolt.

Fire.

A rush of fur through the aspens, bright with burgundy. Something snapping.

Close the bolt.

Fire.

Close the bolt.

Fire.

The world rushed back, flooding Arthur with his senses and the normal rush of time. Beyond the dull whine of tinnitus he heard shouting, but the air was still. No bullets struck around him. Warily Arthur dropped his gaze from the rifle’s sights and rose into a crouch. As his hearing returned Arthur glanced around more fervently, scoping the trees around him for further threat of whistling bullets or unsheathed blades. There was nothing but a dull groan from a few yards to Arthur’s left.

Arthur advanced guardedly, the sight inches from his eye. When he saw the source he stilled and raised his rifle. There was a man sprawled on the ground, his hands clawed into the bed of leaves in Arthur’s direction. He was alive, although clearly hurting. One of his knees bulged and twisted grotesquely, leaving his leg splayed in a direction it should never have faced. The man’s face was contorted in pain and anger, but he wasn’t looking at Arthur. His hands shuffled through the leaf litter, frantically feeling for something.

A low grow stilled the man’s movements. Three yards back from the man’s boots stood the wolf. Slowly and deliberately she stalked forward. From Arthur’s vantage point he could see fear drain the color in the man’s face. He couldn’t see her, couldn’t twist to face the oncoming threat fast enough, but the man knew what was coming. His lips sneered around yellowed teeth as one of his fists tightened around something on the ground.

The wolf leapt. Leaves scattered in a violent cascade of colors around the man’s form as he flailed. Burgundy and scarlet joined the selection of fall colors in drops and rivulets and pools. Arthur just watched. He watched as the wolf tore into the man’s shoulder, and how the man was yanked over and onto his back between the beast’s forelimbs. He watched as the she-wolf ripped through cloth and skin and bone with a fervent, enraged need. He watched and found himself empty of fear. Empty of fear, and, to Arthur’s mellowed surprise, empty of shock, anger, loneliness, or exhaustion. In this strange, violent moment he felt right, and he felt safe. Something within him told him he was going to be more okay than he had been in a long time.

The man screamed something wordless and desperate and arced his arm high overhead. Light flashed on steel. It was a wild, frantic blow, but it was obvious that the knife would find its mark in the wolf’s neck.

Arthur acted without thinking. Some long forgotten drive in his heart told him to act, and he did. The man’s head burst with a crescent of cruor and grey matter. The glen reverberated with the sound of his shot. When the ringing ceased, Arthur found himself gazing at his quarry with nothing but a lowered gun between them. Logic screamed a warning at him, but something else made his hands drop his rifle to the leaf litter below.

The wolf whined. Grey eyes flicked up to meet his as she ducked her head. Her ears dipped back against her skull and she licked her lips once. Arthur couldn’t look away. That feeling, the one of security and hope and solid reassurance, washed over him again. Arthur’s knees nearly buckled in response and he swayed on his feet. The wolf whined again and shuffled back, away from Arthur and the mess at her feet that was once a man. She whimpered as Arthur staggered again. When he reached out a shaky hand, she turned and ran. She was gone before Arthur could even try to comprehend the feeling in his chest.

Arthur dropped to his knees. His hands clenched into the leaf litter while he gasped. The tears came then, fast and hot and out of his control. He wasn’t sure what he was crying for - Whether it was the loss of his horse or the loss of that feeling or both. He didn’t know.

He just knew that something inside him had changed.

When he found he could stand again, he rose back to unsteady feet. Dazedly he assembled what he could of his gear and said his final goodbyes to his gelding. When he stroked the big horse’s mane one more time, he was surprised to feel the heat of tears flowing down his cheeks. He hadn’t noticed he was crying again. He felt numb.

The big man left the scene of the ambush behind him and followed the first stream he found. It was near dark when it occurred to him that he needed to assemble a camp for the night. He built the fire first, stoking it unnecessarily high. His bedroll lay where he had dropped it, so he kicked it open and flat with the toe of his boot while he warmed himself. When he ground his palm over his scruff he was dimly surprised to feel an expanse of dried blood. Looking down, he realized he was filthy with it. The front of his shirt was saturated and stiff with a rust-brown stain.

He followed the sound of the river back to the waterside. He shrugged out of his shirt, thumbed the worst of the discoloration, and plunged it elbow-deep into the water. The shock of the cold was welcomed, but Arthur flinched nonetheless. When he’d rinsed it the best that he could he wrung it and tossed it to his side. Taking another deep breath he cupped the frigid stream into his hands and let it pool there. He splashed it into his face and gasped into the cold.

“They didn’t get you, did they?” a soft voice asked from behind him.

Arthur twisted to look. It was the girl, Nathalie. Something low in his gut hummed at the sight of her. She slumped her weight against an aspen and watched him, her clear grey eyes intense and guarded. Her hair was damp and dark in the fading daylight. She wore the shirt Arthur had noticed missing from his satchel that morning. Dampness pasted the shirt to her back and sides where her curls rested.

Arthur supposed he should have been scared of her, of the way she came and went and of what he was starting to suspect. Instead he felt oddly at peace. He overrode it to gather some semblance of wariness and grit.

“Nah, not this time.” He paused, and met her gaze. “Did they get you?”

Nathalie smiled gently and shook her head.

Arthur’s mouth felt a little dry.

He’d heard stories of wolf men, had even met some poor mad bastard who lived like a wolf. But this was different. Nathalie was different. He’d suspected something when he’d woken that morning, but couldn’t voice it. He didn’t know how to voice it. But having seen the wolf in the battle earlier and seeing her here now, he knew.

It felt impossible, but at the same time it felt right. How could she not be the same beast he’d been following? Maybe somewhere in his subconscious he’d known all along.

Wordlessly he pulled the damp shirt back over his body and stepped towards his visitor. When he was within a step or two away she extended her hand towards him. A bit hesitantly, Arthur slid his hand into hers. Her palm was warm and reassuring. Gently she tugged him to follow her as she stepped back to the little camp he’d managed to set up. She stilled at the foot of his bedroll. He watched the camp fire glint in her curls, igniting them into a color akin to sun-lit honey. When she sank to the ground he followed easily.

“Arthur.” She said his name like a plea or a prayer. He wasn’t sure if it was the way she said his name or the questions he was about to ask that made his knees feel weak.

"I'm sorry about your horse," she began quietly.

Arthur turned away and swatted a hand at nothing. He hid the tight, exhausted line of his grimace to the side. He didn't want to think about everyone he'd lost, even the bitter old horse he'd picked up along the road. Sue hadn't been much to look at, and he hadn't been with Arthur long, but he'd been a good horse. If they kept talking about his horse he was pretty sure he would cry again.

Considering everything that had happened that day, it was much easier to talk about Nathalie - no matter how bewildering she was. Despite what his brain told him about her, he found solace in her, in the quiet and gentle sympathy in her expression and the warmth of her small hands.

“I… ain’t ever met anyone like you before,” he started, swallowing. Their knees barely touched.

Nathalie looked down, tracing his rough hands with her fingertips. It sent pleasant, electric tingles up his spine.

“I hadn’t either,” she confessed quietly. Looks up, looking him right in the eye. “The man who made me this way - he never asked. He wasn’t a good man. He didn’t help me through it or teach me, and he wasn’t kind.”

Arthur waited while she paused.

“He didn’t want a mate, he wanted a submissive dog to order and to fuck. So I killed him.” Nathalie chewed slowly on her bottom lip. She was looking down and away from him again. When Arthur didn’t recoil or say anything she continued. “I didn’t ask for this and I don’t want to be alone. But… it’s not all bad.”

“What’s it like?” Arthur asked, voice barely above a whisper. Nathalie smiled.

“It’s breathtaking. I’m so free. I think I had a husband once, a house. I must have been happy like that, but I can’t imagine it now. Nothing compares to the power, the ease of being. I know my place in the world. I’m part of it all, in the most exhilarating way. It’s headying. You can feel everything. Even now I can feel you, and the way you feel about me. I’m - I’m not wrong, am I? Do you feel that too?” There was something like uncertainty in her voice for the first time.

Arthur absolutely felt it. She felt magnetic. His skin hummed from her proximity. He was certain he should have been scared of her, of what she was. He couldn’t bring himself to feel fear. He wanted to pull her closer, to tuck her into his arms and onto his lap. He wanted to feel the weight of her against him and to hold her tight.

He must have hesitated, gotten lost in her for a moment, because she leaned forward and even closer to him and ghosted her hand gently over his cheekbone. It came to rest there and she stilled.

“Of course I do,” he murmured. To his shame he heard his voice crack over the words. Nathalie only hummed in response. Her lips flicked into a small, satisfied smile.

“Nathalie,” he continued, swallowing hard. “What is this? What’s happening here? Between us, I mean.” Arthur dropped his head a little, leaning into her touch. It took Nathalie’s breath away when he lifted the azure of his gaze to meet hers. He was an outlaw, and he carried himself like one. He was unwavering and self-assured, but there was an uncertain and tentative man there in his eyes. Those eyes disarmed her better than any fight ever could.

“It’s a mate bond, I think,” she responded hesitantly. “I don’t really know. I’ve only heard about them. It happens when your wolf chooses someone. In the stories, they say they say your mate exhales the air you breathe. And when you inhale, your heart beats for them. I’ve never had a mate bond - it’s for life.” Nathalie paused, feeling a shiver traverse the length of her spine. “But I think, if you weren’t here, my heart might not beat at all.”

Arthur exhaled hard. He didn’t ask what she meant by that. He knew. He knew in the way that his entire being yearned to be closer to her, to feel her and to take her into his arms. His mind warred nervously against the urge. His body knew what it wanted, but logic scolded and stilled his hands.

“So your wolf chose me?” He murmured. He watched her through his lashes, flicking his gaze from hers to her skin in the firelight and back again.

“No, ah,” she started, shrugging a shoulder in discomfort. “Our wolves chose each other.”

Arthur didn’t say anything to that. He couldn’t. The wave of emotions drowning his thoughts, his reasoning, was too strong.

And then, as if Nathalie couldn’t resist doing so any longer, she slipped into his lap as if it was as easy as breathing. Arthur’s heart stuttered in his chest. He exhaled again then, long and shakily as he leaned around her. She felt right. Like this he felt whole. Something primal in him wanted to sustain that smile of hers, to make sure it never faded. He wanted to cover her and hold her and eliminate anything that dared get in his way, and that, more than anything, scared him.

She fit perfectly against him, a warm and soft force of nature. Her knees tucked perfectly into the crook of her arms, and it felt right to tuck his arms over hers and run a calloused hand gently over the tanned expanse of one of her legs. She shimmied her bottom snugger against his groin and tucked a collection of small, slow, open mouthed kisses against his biceps. The warm, earthy spice of her filled his nose and he had to swallow a rumbling groan.

“Together, we can be free,” She murmured. Her nose skimmed against his jaw as she leaned against him. “I want to show you everything. I want to take this all away.”

Arthur didn’t have to ask what she meant by ‘this.’ He knew his exhaustion and sorrow hung off him, off his clothes and the set of his shoulders. He could feel it in his bones - it was only natural that Nathalie could feel it too.

“What if I said no?” Arthur asked, his voice quiet.

“Then I’d let you go,” Nathalie croaked. She wished she could see his face. She settled for tracing Arthur’s hands with her fingers. “I would never do that, I couldn’t.”

She began to pull away. She stopped when she found she couldn’t. Arthur’s arms tightened around her, simultaneously unyielding and painstakingly gentle. She wondered if that gentleness had come naturally to him, or if it was learned. He was such a large man. He already moved like a wolf, even if he didn’t know it. But she’d bet that this aching tenderness was natural to him, as natural as the way he breathed. She ached to feel all sides of him and every duality he possessed. She wanted to have him in every way - here, soft skin against soft skin, and also free and wild and feral. There was so much to feel, to enjoy, to show him.

The big man sighed and tucked his head against her neck. Goosebumps rippled pleasantly on her body in response to the warmth of his breath. His eyelashes flicked against her cheek.

“Would it hurt?” The deep timber of his voice rolled through her bones.

Nathalie smiled against his temple.

“No, not like this. Not if you don’t want it to.”

Arthur chuckled at her response and lifted his head a little. He stared into her, his blue eyes tracing her face. Unable to resist she bumped her nose into his playfully. Her lips settled a feather-light kiss on the smile curling the corner of his mouth.

“I’d be free?” He asked, his smile fading a little.

Nathalie met his gaze seriously.

“Freer than you’ve ever been before. Free to roam, to love, free to do whatever we want.”

“And I’d be with you?” He asked, his voice still achingly low.

“With me until the day we die. You’d never be alone or forgotten ever again,” She whispered.

Arthur almost whimpered in response. She kissed the sound away then, pressed her lips so softly against his that he worried it wasn’t really happening at all. He pulled her snugger against him and kissed her back fiercely. She met him reverently. They luxuriated in one another’s lips like that until they forgot there was anything else. Their kisses were tender, but lingered with a deeper, needier edge.

When his tongue flicked lightly against hers, Nathalie was the first to groan. He surged into her, and in a second their hands gripped each other wildly. Something burned between them, something that had always been there. When Arthur ripped his head away to gasp for air it was there, smoldering in his eyes like stoked coal. The heat was there too in Nathalie’s swollen lips, in the rhythmic roll of her hips against his groin. Arthur wanted to drown in that flame, wanted it to wash over their bodies until there was nothing but a burgeoning love left.

Unable to take the distance between their bodies anymore, Arthur slid his fingers down, down to cup under Nathalie’s ass. He swallowed the noise she made in response and roughly pulled her body around and over his. His fingers created pale divets on the flesh of her ass as he gripped her. Nathalie responded eagerly in kind, gripping his hair between her fingers as she spread her legs over his hips. When she ground herself against the hard pressure in his pants he growled.

Nathalie’s shirt - Arthur’s shirt, really - was gone in the next moment, ripped clean away from her body by the hands of the outlaw. He was too impatient to worry about the clasps, and he had a feeling that neither of them would have much of a need for clothes after this. He ducked his head to her breasts as soon as they were revealed. His lips settled over a dusky nipple. When she gasped he plucked at it with a swift, light bite. Nathalie mewed and pulled his head tight to her chest. Arthur complied eagerly. He growled against her flesh when her fingers tangled and pulled in his hair. Nathalie’s only response was to tug a little harder. When his hips thrusted automatically Nathalie smiled into the back of the outlaw’s neck. She placed an open mouthed, sharp little bite there and his body shivered in response.

Despite her ministrations, the man was focused. A hand worried her other nipple while he flicked and nibbled the first. The scruff of his chin was a delicious contrast to the wet heat of his mouth. When he laved the second he looked up to watch his writhing partner. The blue of his eyes looking up at her almost finished Nathalie right there. He grinned around her as she panted and wordlessly keened.

When she couldn’t take it anymore Nathalie frantically ripped at his collar. Stubbornly, the man kept at his assault on her breasts while his shoulders rolled out of his suspenders. He growled a protest at his partner when she pulled away to tear his shirt down his arms, but was immediately rewarded by the feel of her burning flesh against hers. They both moaned at the feeling of skin on skin. Something electric burned there. Neither had ever felt more alive then they did like this, sinking against each other and losing themselves in the burning need for the other’s pleasure. It was only a moment before Nathalie was surging forward with her hands against his chest and pushing Arthur back onto his elbows and his bedroll.

When he tried to capture her lips with his again he was met with a finger. Nathalie pressed it there for a moment and tried to gather her thoughts. Impatiently Arthur pulled the digit into his mouth and laved at it. Nathalie laughed around a groan and pulled away.

“Arthur, Arthur, wait, wait,” she protested. The smile on her mouth didn’t fade, much to Arthur’s delight. She could feel the heat of his erection against her vulva while she tried to gather her words. It was almost impossible to concentrate as is, but she nearly gave up entirely when he ground his length against her.

“Arthur!” She laughed. He grinned back at her from his spot on the ground.

“Cold feet, darlin’?” Arthur asked mischievously.

“Never.” She grinned down at him. She bucked on him before she could prevent herself and relished the way his lips parted. When she found it in herself to pull away, she did.

“Are you sure about this, Arthur?” She stilled and stared down at him. Her brows and mouth were buckled into a serious, concerned lilt.

“Sure about what?” He asked, jokingly playing naive.

Her lips twitched but she didn’t smile.

“I need to know. Do you really want this? Do you know what you’re getting into?” Nathalie asked.

Before he could respond she continued. If she stopped now she worried she’d never get it all out.

“It’s not all perfect. We’ll probably rove a lot. You’d never age, not like anyone else. You’d be you still, but you’d be different,” She blabbered nervously. Arthur’s hand casually traced her shoulders, then the shape of her neck and jawline while she talked. “I mean we could still do human things like have a house and a horse but you might not want to and - ”

Arthur stilled her with a thumb gently pressed over her lip.

“But I’d be with you. Right?” He asked her gently.

“Of course.” She blinked owlishly at him. “Always. But wouldn’t you want to have babies and live in cities and …?”

Nathalie trailed off when Arthur smiled and shook his head.

“I had my chance for all of those things,” He told her with a sad smile. “I’ve tried ‘em all. It wasn’t fer’ me. Not like this, not like you.” He paused to marvel at the way she was looking at him. When he found his train of thought he continued. “I’d be a fool to pass up on this. Now that I know you’re here, nothin’ can hold a candle. If I still have a soul, it’s yours.”

It was true. They felt like two halves of a whole. Nathalie swallowed. She’d heard about mate bonds before, but she hadn’t expected it would feel like this. It felt like she was complete without ever having known she was deficient.

“What do we need to do?” Arthur asked. Nathalie searched him for any sign of unease or reluctance, but she couldn’t find one. She smiled back at him and raised a lascivious eyebrow.

“Well, I’m going to give myself to you.” She leaned down conspiratorially. “I’m going to give you everything I have,” her voice was husky. Her hands traced a burning path down from his shoulders and over his chest and lower, lower still. He instinctively arched into her touch.

“I’m going to ride you until I can’t anymore. And then you’re going to take what’s left,” she murmured against the arch of his neck. One of Arthur’s hands tensed over her hip. The other crept lower to cup her ass. It brushed dangerously close to the wet heat of her arousal.

“You’re going to take me so hard that I can’t do a thing but cum around you, over and over again,” she growled and bucked closer to his fingers.

Arthur hissed at her words. When he slipped his palm lower still, cupping her, she crumpled into his fingers. A calloused thumb casually brushed her clit, inducing her into a full-body shiver.

“And when I’m an absolute mess, when I can’t go any farther -” she gasped. Her hips rolled against his hand, which in turn ground it against the strain of Arthur’s cock. Arthur grunted in response and bit Nathalie’s collar bone. She mewed and Arthur grinned into her skin.

“When you can’t go any farther?” He prompted devilishly. Before she could respond he slipped a finger into her heat and beckoned. She cried out and arched into his palm. Her eyes were wild, her pupils huge with lust. Arthur captured her lips with his and deftly slipped a second digit to join the first. His hand was slick with her arousal. His cock strained against his trousers, but he ignored his desire to savor hers.

Nathalie panted as she rocked against him. She feverishly gripped at his chest with one hand - the other palpated over his length. The two rocked together, wordless in their pleasure.

“When I can’t go farther,” she gasped. “I’m dragging you down with me.”

Arthur laughed at that, but the sound was cut short with his own groan as she pulled his cock free and circled her thumb over the tip. She was satisfied to feel the bead of cum already there. Arthur’s fingers pulsed into her quicker in response. She bobbed on his hand haphazardly until she managed to pull down the rest of his waistband. Arthur removed his hand to help her. When she whimpered at the loss and he was as naked as she, he pulled her to the ground and rolled over her onto his hands and knees.

His fingers quickly slid back between her folds, inducing another little cry. He began to pump into her quicker and rougher. Nathalie’s grip contrasted his with torturously slow undulations. Her hand stilled entirely when Arthur placed steady pressure against the bead of her clit and pulled a dusky nipple between his teeth. His hand began to pump hard. The noises his partner made in response were frantic and unrestrained and he knew she was very, very close.

“Say my name,” he growled.

“A-Arthur,” she gasped.

“Again!” He snarled.

Her response stuttered in her throat and he felt the slick heat of her walls clench hard around his fingers. Her eyes rolled and slid shut. As she rode her orgasm he bit down hard on the column of her throat. Still pumping his hand, he used the other to guide his cock against her slick. When he felt the last of her shudders wrack her body he slid his hand away and immediately replaced them with the aching length of his cock. In a quick thrust he slammed into her, sheathing himself to the hilt.

Both Nathalie and Arthur gasped. Arthur dropped his head between Nathalie’s chest as he began to move. He started slowly, only letting himself pulse shallowly. He knew he was larger than average and he didn’t want to hurt her. In truth, she felt so deliciously good that he also knew if he let himself go now, he would lose himself and spend before he was done pleasing her. When his partner relaxed around him and arched closer he met her gaze and grinned. She matched his smirk and sunk his length deep into her. Arthur’s eyes fluttered closed with a throaty groan.

Her fingers raked hot lines up his back and shoulders. He lost himself in her heat and her cries. When she’d fully recovered her strength Nathalie met him thrust for thrust, each one more wanton than the last. The sound of flesh on flesh reverberated through the clearing. The sound drove Nathalie wilder still with need. Her legs arched around him. In response Arthur pulled one over his shoulder and leaned forward.

The new position gave him access to a new depth and fullness. He had to close his eyes to the sight of his mate before him, keening and panting his name. He was too close already. If he came now, before he made this woman clench around him and cry out again, he wouldn’t forgive himself. When he opened the shock of his cornflower blue eyes he found Nathalie’s hands cupping and fingering the bounce of her breasts. Her grey eyes met his. He snarled and set his thumb steadily against her clit. He was rewarded when she cried out his name.

He was a sight to behold. His brow was furrowed harshly in pleasure and concentration. A bead of sweat shimmered on his temple when he dropped his head back, his body taut with a barely restrained white-hot orgasm. His lips were parted and slack, the picture of burning passion. She feverishly drank in the sight. When he opened his eyes again she met them and was almost bourne away by the primal heat there.

“Whose - ”

“Are - ”

“You - ”

He growled. Each word was punctuated with a violent thrust. He was seconds away from his end. He wanted to hear it, wanted the world to hear who Nathalie belonged to as she came on his cock.

“Yours!” She cried out. “Y-yours! I’m yours, Arthur!”

He responded with a particularly brutal slam of his hips and she screamed as her orgasm flooded her senses. Nathalie’s fingers scrabbled over Arthur’s and locked there as she writhed.

As she clenched around his cock, the white heat of Arthur’s orgasm washed over him. His hips bucked erratically, and he cried out with a hoarse, wordless shout. He pulsed into her, scattering ropes of spend deep into the grip of her core. Transfixed in their pleasure, the two shuddered against each other. Electricity shot through Arthur’s veins, gripping him in awareness and bliss.

When the last waves of his rapture faded Arthur crumbled over his mate, shaking with exertion. It was an eternity before the aftershocks of pleasure faded enough to let him speak. He slid an arm beneath Nathalie’s neck and gently pulled her to face him. They rode out the last of the aftershocks like that, with his face buried in the crook of her neck and her lips against his brow.

“I love you,” he breathed. His voice was muffled against her feverish skin. He knew she could feel the words on her body and this soothed him in an exhausted, mindless sort of way. He felt drunk with the scent of her. It didn’t matter that they’d only known each other so recently. His body and the beast inside of him had known her his whole life.

“I love you too,” Nathalie whispered. Her lips pressed a smile onto his brow. She traced lazy, feather light touches over his body as their breathing slowed. His nerves sparked weakly behind the path of her fingers. It felt strange and wonderful and voltaic. He could almost swear each new touch felt more raw and more charged than the last. Every one of his senses felt sharper and vast. He would have been nervous, had he not felt so relaxed and safe in Nathalie’s arms. She pressed another kiss to his forehead and he melted into it. He let the smell and feel of her wash over him.

When he was ready to move he rolled to his knees and, in one movement, pulled Nathalie into his arms and off the bedroll’s blankets. She squeaked in protest and he smiled. She was still grinning when he gently set her back down onto the bedroll. He swiftly settled back over her and pulled the blanket up and over them. She crooned something wordless and happy and Arthur responded with a slow, lazy kiss. They stayed like that until another wave of sensory awareness flooded Arthur’s body. Nathalie must have recognized it in the way he tensed, because she murmured soft assurances into his skin until he relaxed again.

When the two of them finally drifted off to sleep they did so awash in the heady scent and feeling of each other.

~~~

Once every other month or so John found himself seeing ghosts and shadows around Beecher’s Hope. It had started off just subtle enough that he thought he might have imagined it. An outlaw never learns to forget to trust his gut. So when Abigail would groan and groggily glare when John slipped from bed, he would ignore her chidings and grab his pistols from their spot in the chest. Abigail was right of course - there was never anything there. The noise of a footstep in the kitchen never bore fruit. The shadow of a man in the barn never really was a man.

When John noticed Arthur’s hat had been moved from where he’d put it, Uncle just laughed at him. Once he’d heard something outside the house during dinner and had felt quite vindicated when Jack heard it too. He’d rushed outside only to find nothing but a pair of paw prints. He couldn’t explain his disappointment or even what he thought he would find. He learned to ignore it when he felt the hair on the back of his neck rise like there was someone nearby.

Recently the little ranch had definitely developed a wildlife problem. Wolves had never been an issue before now, but John kept seeing them. It was just two - a large honey colored female and a massive dusky brown and gray male. He’d been intent on taking them out until he’d watched the two dispatch a pair of Pinkerton agents. After that he’d figured it couldn’t hurt to let them live, so long as they didn’t bother Jack or Abigail. They never did, and he usually only saw them once or twice a year.

When he did see them, it was usually at a great distance. The exception was the time Jack had taken Old Boy out for a ride and had nearly accidentally trampled his sister. John had immediately thrown himself over her. John had been sure they were both going to die in that moment. But then the sounds of Abigail’s scream had been interrupted by a snarl and the snap of large jaws closing on empty air. When the dust of the road had settled Old Boy had flailed and bucked far in the opposite direction and left John curled over his toddler alone with a wolf.

It was the male, and he was far bigger than any wolf John had seen before.

The big animal had just stood there, watching John with cornflower-blue eyes. Two scars crossed the wolf’s chin and, at closer inspection, more flecked the length of his hide. When John had tentatively inched his hand toward his holster the big animal had huffed. After a moment of further stillness the wolf broke into body-long shake. Clouds of dust rolled free of the dense charcoal-brown coat. John coughed and closed his eyes reflexively. When he’d opened them again the wolf was gone. John still dreamt of those strange eyes occasionally. They reminded him of someone. He knew who, but he felt silly thinking it. He didn’t tell Abigail about his dreams, or about the memories they pulled from him. He knew she’d cry, and god, that he might too.

So he went on with his life. He grew old with Abigail and watched their farm and children grow. And whenever he saw the big wolf and his mate John just tipped his hat and tried not to think too hard about Arthur Morgan.

#rdr2 #arthur morgan x female reader #arthur morgan x oc #smut #possessive arthur #dirty talk #werewolf au #mating bond #no TB #arthur survives

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aetherschreiber · 4 years

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The Cycle of Fandom

I am an early Millennial. As a 1982 baby, I literally came of age in the year 2000. A lot of hay has been made about how my generation does things differently from our parents. And by now, plenty of it has been made about why, as well. I won’t rehash the talking points, but it comes down to how much things changed in our formative years. Our parents went from vinyl to 8-tracks. We went from cassette tapes to CDs to MP3 players to streaming over our phones. That’s a lot to have to adapt to and as a result adapting is just what we do.

But when it comes to fandom, the human condition really hasn’t changed that much. People like things and when they like things they obsess, collect, analyze, and sadly they eventually eventually gate-keep.

Now, let me preface all of this by saying that I don’t really have any citations for any of this. But, as someone who was thoroughly raised in fandom, I also have a tendency to get hooked on things a lot of my generation would scoff at for being old. I love the original Lost in Space and Man from UNCLE, the very first Mobile Suit Gundam is my favorite, I’m fascinated by the puppetry in Thunderbirds, and I’m a complete sucker for just about anything with Cary Grant. I will binge-watch classic Doctor Who as much as I will the new stuff and love every moment of each for what it is.

For most Millennials, this isn’t the case, for whatever reason. It’s neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It just is. Most folks in my generation have heavy nostalgia for the 80s at the oldest and just don’t really concern themselves with very much from before that. It’s not that they don’t have an appreciation, but they don’t have the resulting fangirl crush I have on David McCallum that I will commiserate with my mother about (Illya Kuryakin is an adorable badass and I will die on that hill).

I like to think that this has given me a bit of a unique view on fandom, in general. I participate in some older fandoms, where things move a bit more slowly and where the average age is usually at least one generation removed from me and therefore a bit wiser in a lot of ways. They’ve just sort of... already covered this ground, so to speak.

The difference is the pace at which they did it. But the cycle is the same.

It’s never anything that starts maliciously. No fan I know of has ever set out to point-blank keep someone else from liking the thing. Rather it starts with a sense of seniority. “You like this thing, now, too? Great! I was there for the beginning and let me tell you, back then...” It’s always like a fandom big sibling who wants to show their younger counterpart the ropes; get them proper caught-up and versed in the lore so that they can better participate.

I love fandom when it’s at this stage and it’s the type of fan I strive to be at all times. I don’t like setting conditions for fandom. I think it’s partly because I am such a late-comer to so many. The idea of being a fan of something that was made 30 years or more before you were born is a hell of a thing, but I’ve never let that stop me. And for the most part, these fandoms that are much older than I am have reached the point where they are welcoming and just sort of stuck in the big sibling stage. Sure, you have the occasional troll, the guy that scoffs that I can’t understand because I wasn’t there at the very beginning. But they’re usually slapped to the ground pretty quickly by everyone else.

There is the occasional exception, of course. But one of the things those such fandoms have in common is that there is still new content being made for it. Doctor Who is a prime example, as is Star Trek, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings (yes, I do count the upcoming Amazon series and other non-book content as new content, deal with it). There’s something about new content being made for a fandom that causes an odd anxiety that thing that the fandom loves is going to be somehow ruined.

I’m going to use Doctor Who as an example for a lot of this. The show turned 56 years old this last November. 56 years! And the fact that it had a couple of decade-long breaks in there, which were themselves only separated by a single two-hour movie, only serve to highlight the changes it went through.

My second-oldest memory is of Doctor Who. I remember the regeneration from Tom Baker to Peter Davison. Now, Whovian historians, before you freak out because that change-over happened in 1981, before I was even born, remember that back then the US got episodes around two and three years later than the BBC, in syndication on public television channels. So for me, that change happened when I was two. I remember there being some Big Thing (tm) that my dad was anticipating. I remember the burgundy and red outfit that Tom Baker was wearing while laying stricken on the ground, surrounded by his companions. And I remember him suddenly turning into a blond and sitting up, wide-eyed and mystified. I didn’t understand any of it at the time, of course. And so I also remember turning to my dad, who was watching with excitement, while the credits were rolling and asking why the man turned into another man. Oddly, that’s where the memory ends. I don’t remember the response. In fact, it’s only having since seen that episode as an adult that I have been able to identify it for what it was.

After that, I don’t have much in the way of Doctor Who related memories until the Paul McGann movie in 1996. I was 14 and not well-steeped in Whovian lore at the time and I thought it was great. My dad was more luke-warm to it because it just wasn’t the same as what he grew up with. It was a sentiment shared by many, unfortunately, which meant that Paul McGann’s wonderful take on the Doctor was relegated purely to audio adventures until the 50th anniversary in 2013. Sadly, in the early days of the internet, those of us who liked it weren’t quite able to find each other yet. In the days of Usenet and mailing lists, it was still only the most hardcore fans of a thing who got together to geek out. Meaning that most of the conversation was “oh, that’s all wrong.” Lurking in those conversations, I saw pretty much every tremulous young person who dared to say that they liked it get slapped to the ground and told they weren’t a fan of “the real thing.”

Gate-keeping. It’s nothing new. And in 1996 Doctor Who fandom ran smack into its pad-locked closed barrier. Around that same time other old but still active fandoms were starting to manifest the same thing on the internet. It was when Trekkies suddenly separated into Trekkies (who had seen the original as it aired) and Trekkers (who came long later), for reasons I have never understood.

No, that’s not true. I understand it. Us humans tend to get possessive about our stories. We have a sort of emotional ownership to them, even if not a legal one. And when you feel an ownership of something, there is an instinct to protect it, keep it pure. And to do that, it’s natural to try to set oneself up as an authority on the subject.

It took another decade for Doctor Who to come off the shelf again, in 2005. I was 24 by then, the age that marketers tend to target. A friend got his hands on a digi-copy of Christopher Eccleston’s first episode, “Rose,” that had been leaked to the internet in its entirety about a week before it actually aired. We watched it before our D&D group met and I was instantly hooked. And the friend that was responsible for the new addiction was only too happy to have new fandom friends.

The pendulum had swung. Gate-keeping was out and welcoming people to the fandom was the MO. Of course, there were and still are to this day old school Whovians who deny that anything past Sylvester McCoy exists, calling the 1996 movie and the current series a different show entirely. There will always be those people. But for the most part, Whovians welcomed new fans with open arms throughout all of Eccleston’s and David Tennant’s runs.

Now, that one cycle, from welcoming to gate-keeping, and back to welcoming, took 42 years. Most things don’t last anywhere close to that long. A show might be on for five years or a movie and its sequels be around for ten and after that, for the most part, it’s done. And in the pre-internet age of fandom, the pendulum swung slowly enough never to hit a repeat in the cycle.

The internet has sped up everything about fandom. The airing of just about any show in any country might as well be a world-wide premiere these days because it all just travels that quickly. It has to if it wants to maintain any sort of surprise in its story lines, otherwise internet chatter will spoil it. These days, things move so fast that even the few hours between an episode of Doctor Who airing in the UK and in the US is enough that one can be subjected to spoilers. And the swing of the fandom pendulum has sped up accordingly.

For Doctor Who, it started swinging back again when David Tennant left the show and Matt Smith took over. Tennant’s Doctor had a lot of fans who desperately didn’t want “their Doctor” to leave, many of whom took to the internet, swearing off the show. They said it would never be as good because David Tennant was just the best Doctor ever. By then, there were a number of us Millennial Whovians who had dug into the lore and were comfortable with the concept of regeneration as a part of it. After all, it had already happened nine times. And there was a bit of a tendency to call those people who swore off Matt Smith’s episodes as being fans not of Doctor Who but of David Tennant. Meanwhile, of course, old school Whovians were patting us all on the head going “aren’t you cute. Now you understand why Tom Baker leaving was such a thing.”

And so, the pendulum started to swing back. You started having people call other people “not really fans of Doctor Who.” That only got worse when Peter Capaldi took over and there was a significant portion of the fandom upset that the Doctor was now an older guy instead of the 30-something Doctors we had grown accustomed to.

Gate-keeping reared its ugly head for most of Capaldi’s run and, sadly, I think that kept a lot of people from the fandom and from really appreciating the 12th Doctor. That cycle has started to swing back with Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, but the gate-keeping is in a stage where it is desperate to hold on to what Doctor Who was when they became fans and therefore is very toxic right now. It’s not pretty. But those asshats are starting to be slapped to the ground on social media thanks to a new influx of fans who are now once again more comfortable with the idea of regeneration and its possibilities.

Similar swings are happening with many other fandoms. The Star Wars fandom is a really ugly place right now, quite frankly. Star Trek seems to be on the welcoming end. There are always the exceptions to every generalization, of course. There will always be “that guy” in fandom.

This swing has always existed. Millennials are just the first generation for whom it has swung multiple times in the life of the show. The internet is probably the biggest contributing factor to that. What that means is that we’re the first generation to really have the chance to see the pattern for what it is. A few of us have even been able to extrapolate back and understand that, no, this is how it always has been, just slower.

The hopeful part of that is this; by virtue of being the first to recognize the pattern, we are the first ones with the opportunity to learn from that history. And now we’re starting to see fandoms that actively abhor gate-keeping and just want more people to come in and play. But those tend to be very young fandoms.

The one that comes to mind for me is Critical Role. This is a fandom that was wholly born on the internet, as the series is streamed live on Twitch. It’s really unlike anything that has ever had a fandom this size before. It’s only been around for four years or so. But the cast is on its second D&D campaign which means it’s already had the opportunity to have the elitism gate that could be closed. But something different seems to have happened. The very moment that people started saying “I’m a real fan because I watched the Vox Machina campaign, not just the Mighty Nein,” they were told to shut the hell up and let people like things. A foot was stuck into the gate and wrenched it back open before it could close. And you know what? The fandom has absolutely exploded in the last two years. And I have yet to run into a single instance of someone gate-keeping for it that didn’t get an overwhelming and harsh rebuttal from the folks who welcome people to the fandom.

Sadly, the Critical Role fandom is distinct from the Dungeons & Dragons fandom on this point. But therein lies the difference. D&D is over 45 years old, ten times and more the age of Critical Role. And the “satanic panic” over it in the 80s made a lot of D&D players very protective of the hobby, only amplifying that. The age of your average Critter is only mid-to-late 20s or so. At 37, I’m a little bit of an outlier, I have found. The Critter fandom is big on TikTok which I... don’t grock, frankly, because I’m turning into an old fart. But I’ve never, ever, been made to feel unwelcome because of that difference. It’s been a refreshing experience, frankly.

In contrast, I really feel like I’m only now starting to be considered a “true Whovian” by the old school Whovians. It took me 15 years and required me getting hooked on the classic stuff (which I was all too happy to do). People who have never seen any of the classic stuff and don’t care to are often still looked down upon. That needs to change.

The Critical Role fandom is still young and all of this may prove to be overly-optimistic in the end. But I think it has the opportunity to be the first big fandom not to go through the gate-keeping cycle. I sincerely hope we can hold on to that. The cast and crew are a big part of that, with how they always hammer on the idea of inclusivity and engage so directly with the fandom. “Don’t forget to love each other” is Matt Mercer’s sign-off at the end of every episode and serves as a constant reminder. And if more casts and crews of more fandoms do that sort of engaging in the future, it will help break the cycle of fandom gate-keeping all the more thoroughly. This is a fact that production companies are starting to awaken to as Millennials, comfortable with social media, age into positions of authority.

So, welcome people in, gate-keep, almost cause the whole thing to collapse, repeat. That’s the cycle that fandom has engaged in for three generations and more. But I think we’re on the cusp of breaking that cycle, for the most part. The idea that you can be a fan of something without knowing absolutely everything about it has been gaining very visible traction in the last five years or so and it is wonderful to see.

Now, please, people. Don’t prove me wrong.

#fandom #Doctor Who #Critical Role #social observations #gatekeeping #toxic fandom

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