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starshipsofstarlord · 3 years

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Okay rockstars, settle down

rockstar!bucky barnes x assistant!reader x rockstar!loki laufeyson / masterlist

summary; having previously worked for loki, it causes a heat to burn within bucky’s already accumulated hate towards the musician / warnings; threesome, smut, mxf and mxm sex, mentions of sex with other characters, oral sex (male and female receiving), creampie, unprotected sex, double penetration, degradation, swearing, orgasm denial, cum eating

“Can’t believe you worked for that wanker.” Snarked Bucky as an image of the well known, musically spread, and acoustically acclaimed, Loki Laufeyson was shown on the screen of the dressing room television, as the other artist stretched his clothing bare arms across the back of the couch. “Come here sweet cheeks.”

At his command, you dismissed the paper work for a moment, trailing over and straddling the inked hunk’s chain belted lap, digging your manicured set of nails into his shoulders, as you seated yourself over his crotch. “I’m happy I work for you now Buck, you treat me so good.”

Punctuating your words, you pressed your teeth into your bottom lip, giving it the appearance of being more plump, as you batted your dark eyelashes up at your employer. “I do, don’t I?” He rhetorically asked, skimming his fingers across the length of your arms, before moving them to sloppily cup your jaw, ensuring that you would not look away from his wild and dilated pupils. “Tell me what I do better than the lead singer of the god of mischief.”

At his words, a small yet peaceful contortion of uncomfortableness split a skin grafted line through the centre of your forehead, stating that you had no wish to do so. And thus, as punishment for your self aversive silence, Barnes braced his knuckles into your skin, causing you to keen out, and tap his shoulders in verification for surrender.

In turn, you lowered your hands, dragging the tips of your nails, absentmindedly running them down the expanse of his waxed chest, conveniently passing the silver hoops that were attached to his nipples on the trail to a less dominant ground. “I prefer the way that your songs have a heavier bass and-“

“Uh uh uh, not the music. Think of something that has you, let’s say, screaming, but definitely not in a crowd. Though, we may have to try that one sometime; show the world how hungry you are to assist me.”

“You, James Bucky Barnes,” he loosened his grip to your relief, which lead to you hugging in spite, “are the best fuck I have ever endured. Loki has nothing on you, he deems himself a god of the arts, but he doesn’t see how you paint me so perfectly with your cum, nor how you bend my body to your whim, as though I am a tool in the midst of your creations, useful, but disposable.”

“I like the sound of that doll. Disposable, now that really does you make you sound like my personal cum dump.”

“That’s was certainly interesting to listen to...”that voice had your body jolting in shock, and it appeared that Bucky too was surprised by the presence, though, he steadied his well versed hands on your hips, claiming you to the intimate spot.

“What the fuck are you doing in my dressing room you greasy haired weasel?” Bucky sneered, his nose turning up at the sight alone of his competition in the lyrical world. Loki, he had graced you with his presence, and you had to look away; he admittedly looked good.

His shirt was open chested, leaving you with the memorable impression of all the times that you had left crescent marks upon that particular surface, a few times you had even drawn blood, but that had only fuelled his mission to fuck you into a propeller of urgency.

“Our new album Laufey has just been released, I can confirm my dear, you shoulda stayed around and knelt in our success. The records are certainly going to have more sales than what was it called again? Ah yes, the red star. I could tell it was about this one, so much passion, a sultry tune, that did little to justify what it means to be with her.”

Loki’s hands waved around as he spoke, and you could only picture the past whence he penetrated your with those long and talented fingers of his. He had drawn orgasm after orgasm out of you, resulting you to be nothing more than a withering mess, as he digressed the option to simply stop. There was nothing simple about him, nor the time that he demanded that he shared you with his brother.

That thought alone had you mindlessly grinding upon Bucky’s covered cock, plucking at your lip with the keys of your teeth, though Bucky’s voice brought you back to reality, causing you to pause your movements embarrassingly, venting a clear out of your head to process the situation that was before you. The two were bickering like two teenage girls, and it was quite exhausting to listen to.

“Answer the question trickster, else I’ll have you fed to the infamous black panther, and let’s just say that he is the best bodyguard I have ever hired. So, are you going to speak, or will I have you dragged out of here like a damned serpent with a noose around its neck?” Bucky threatened, gritting his teeth together, his nose straining in frustration, drawing more attention to the small stud on the right side of his nose.

“Looks like she needs me Barnes, perhaps your reputation does not proceed you. But to answer in full, my band have made quite the rise, and I thought it would be... fitting to pay you a visit. Though I had no idea that this wonderful woman would be here, pining on your lap like some feline in heat. I see she’s fucking you now, after all my suspicions are never wrong. Or we’ll, Heimdall’s train of thought always ends up at the right station.”

“Can the pair of you stop, for one goddamn minute!” Your hands obscured a path into your hair, as you glared back and forth between the pair of rival rockstars. “I am here, dammit! Stop talking about me as though I am not here, a part of me wishes that I wasn’t so I didn’t have to listen to your bitching.”

Without any thought, you clambered from your perch on Bucky’s lap, walking towards the raven haired gentleman, pointing your finger in his face as you accused him. “You’ve got your point across, but I’ll tell you something. If you don’t leave, Heimdall will see me putting my foot up your ass.”

“Does she speak to you like this Barnes? I thought she had loosened up in more ways than one when I allowed Thor to stretch her cunt, but it appears that that mouth of hers has gotten a little out of hand also. You should do something about that, or else you’ll lose her to someone else like a did. Who knows, could be Romanoff, heard she has a thing for brats.”

Natasha Romanoff, a diverse woman in her ways and songs. She was the queen of the rock culture, tormenting her workers with her verbal abuse and it would undoubtedly be no different for her assistant. If you were to be under her employment, it was certain that you would not get out alive, nor work for another talented person for the rest of your life. To cross her, was a vow to sign your own death certificate, it was plain stupidity, yet people still hustled with her and her limits, resulting in their chances of ever getting hired for any job, vastly slim to none.

At the lack of defence that Bucky provided you, you felt small, your shoulders slacked as you were tortured with Loki’s cold and silky gaze, more so when the man stood up, pressing his bare chest against your back. You could feel the rings that hung off the buds that adorned his chest coil and dig into your back, shrouding your demeanour substantially.

A part of you wanted nothing more than for Bucky to abuse Loki’s face with his fist, specifically the right, since it was the bearer to a chunky silver ring. It’d leave quite the print, however, the unexpected unravelled as his enquiring tone was aimed not at you, but Loki instead.

“You let your brother fuck her, hmm. Maybe she should learn her manners by being shared, that way her retrospective spattering of bullshit may be contained, to a limit of course.” It was unbelievably, you could not believe that Bucky was conferring with the enemy! And not only that, they were talking about experiences of having you literally become speechless from their unprofessional administrations upon your body. “I’d get T’Challa in here, but I know she’s already fucked him. Can’t quite fire him for it though, because who could ever say no to those pretty eyes, and that mouth, god, it is definitely one of her most persuasive attributes.”

“Bu-“ you didn’t even get to finish imploring his name off your lips, about to defend yourself and your previous actions, though, you were interrupted, starved from the opportunity of coming up with an explanation.

“No.” Loki told you, the roles now reversed as he was the one with his index finger aimed at you. He tapped your nose with it, as he began to pace in the room, his wild locks remaining in their place as he spun, before facing Bucky, a sly tranquility of a truce veining out from the pools of his evergreen orbs. “You don’t speak a word to me y/n, not whilst I’m having a conversation with James here.”

James. It was too far a polite way for him to address your boss. They were all hot and ready to tear out each other’s throats a moment ago, and now here they were, having a silent conversation without your inclusion. It had you reeling your mind as to why, until Bucky gathered your hair in his hand to the side, sliding you y/h/c locks over your shoulder, and finally deemed it acceptable for you to hear his voice.

Though, he still was not directing his tensive words in your direction. “Since you had dealt with this subordinate behaviour from her, perhaps you’d like to join us; help me train her to become more...” His breath fanned your the top of your ear, making your skin crawl by not only his warm and inviting breath, but also the offer that he had supposed to the other man.

“Obedient?” Loki asked in turn of his wispy ended offer of optimism, his leather, sharp tipped boots taking a prominent, heart clenching step towards you. He reached his finger out, grasping a loose strand that had fallen out of Bucky’s grip and before your face, tugging lightly on it, as his lips came dangerously close to your own. “Rules aren’t your forfeit, are they my dear? The best assistant I ever hired, with all those unique ideas floating around in that independent head of yours, but you’ve always been troublesome. I remember the time that you bit my cock that day you had attitude. I reckon Bucky here could do a better job.”

“Then why doesn’t he?” You hissed as said man tugged on his handful of your hair, instantly making you regret your phrase in the moment. To a halting surprise however, Bucky released you, lightly shoving you to cause you to fumble forwards, and away from him.

“Maybe I will.” He dared, earning a nod from Loki, whom seductively began to unzip his loose trousers, as Bucky descended to the ground, his hands running up his rival’s thighs, as the material dropped around Loki’s ankles. It would seem, that he had gone commando, and as Bucky grasped Loki’s shaft, you felt a pull in your chest inherently demanding that you play some part in this fornication.

“Wait.” Your hand shot out, as though you had some force to stop them from continuing with their war path to exact all of their developed spit onto you. “What about me?” You were ss

“Oh no doll, you are not pulling any strings here, if you wanna do something useful, come here and warm my cock, you can watch me blow your old associate.” A slither of a whimper fell from your lips, it wasn’t exactly what you were prying towards, but you sure as hell were not going to refuse the contact that Bucky was obliged to give you.

Thus you wandered towards him, your pinkies curling around one another, as you sashayed to the ground beside him, watching as he paid Loki no mind for a moment, ruthlessly in a desperation fuelled motion, unbuckled his thick belt, and shoved the material of his leather trousers to be held accountable against his lower thighs, just above his tense knees.

He too, as their exteriors supposed, had forgone the extra layer that kept his cock tucked away, though it was exposed as he tugged those tight trousers down, and the sight of both his and Loki’s cocks bobbing in the same vicinity had you close to quivering.

It was somewhat of a dream portrayed in the viscous space of reality, the two men half undressed in then proximity of yourself, it was something that you had always imagined, even before you had left Loki’s side, and opted to work for Bucky, but the idea was definitely short lived. They hated each other, but apparently they were willing to put all their issues aside to prohibit you from freely running your mouth.

Bucky’s cock twitched as he patted his own thigh, ordering you without the aid of his voice to commence it as a servant’s throne, or in your case, a stool for you to rest on as he tended to intimate needs of the man that you had once worked for. Finally, with the decision of better judgement, you allowed your grey jumper dress to slide down your body, leaving you nude, and the aspect of the two men’s unforgiving and locked gazes.

“No underwear, and you wonder why your men have no difficulty in her allowing them to fuck her.” Bucky took ahold of his cock, squeezing his cock with one hand, whilst his other aided you in sitting on his muscular legs, as he lightly growled up at the opposing rockstar.

From the stiff grip that Bucky affirmed around his sceptre, Loki gasped, his pale lips instantly shutting once the sound wantonly abandoned him. The last thing that he wanted was for Bucky to see him in vulnerable poise, though with that said, it’d be rather difficult considering the smutty circumstances.

Bucky took Loki’s long, alabaster prick into his mouth, starting from the primrose tip and descending down, reciprocating the action that you did yourself as you sheathed yourself onto his cock, but instead with his lips. A grunt rendered along Loki’s length as the man bit back a whimper, the vibrations running through his veins like a transpiring pulse of sorcery.

Bucky opted for bobbing his head, as you endured the liberation of his very slightly gyrating movement inside of you. Though, despite him being almost completely still and leaving you full to the brim with his thick length, his balls resting against the partition where he was delved into you, you remained transfixed.

The motion image, recording first hand through your own eyes, of him blowing Loki was sinful, but you were drawn to it. If that made you a sinner, one endorsed by the graphic scene, licking your lips from the sight of Bucky running his studded tongue up the length of Loki, dipping the ball of silver metal into his slit, then so be it.

Your heart raced as you were met with an opportunity. A globe of saliva, strung by the lapping muscle of Bucky’s tongue dropped down; you practically saw its fall in slow motion. It was done before you could register your actions, you had leant forwards, catching the trickle of spit in your mouth, thinking not for a moment as you gulped the subjective liquid down.

Bucky’s pace increased, he gagged lightly as he jolted him further down his throat. Loki hummed, harshly grabbing Bucky’s dark brunette locks, biting his lip as he reimagined your little catch. It had him feeling close, and just as he was about to finish, precum furiously pooling out of his tip, Bucky pulled back, a smirk marking his features.

“You’re not cumming in my mouth, I don’t mind sucking dick, nor swallowing, but I have to practically listen to you jizz over your own talent, and prowl over my girl.” The name he labelled you with had your heart fluttering, but not nearly as much as when he lightly pulled out of you, infuriating you with the lack of any pleasurable esteem. “Don’t you worry babes, you can finish with me inside of you, like always.”

That used to be him, Loki thought with a brewing rage in his chest. Though he instead shrugged out of his dull patterned striped shirt that was already loose on his shoulders. The fabric hit the floor, leaving all of you barren to the subject of nudity.

“Always doesn’t suppose the past Barnes.” Loki stated, referring to all the various times that he had found refuge in your spongey walls, you willingly clenching around him, and pleading for him to hit a deeper spot within you. “And I do not prowl, I don’t need to. The evidence is there between her legs, coiling in juices surrounding her ever so willing folds, that are prepared to endure the harshest of penetrations.”

“What are you trying to do, write a fucking song about this?” Scoffed Bucky, rolling his crystallised orbs at the guts that this man had. If he so much as wanted to, he could stop this passage into a three way all together, but he did not, at least he had yet to. He was enjoying the way that you were squirming to yourself, thinking that he didn’t notice, squeezing the sides of your thighs together in an aroused matrimony.

“A fucking song would’ve the correct term - literally.” Was the affirmed words of Loki, as he shoved Bucky to be sat beside you, tilting his messy brush of crazed hair, his untrustworthy eyes drifting to you. “Who’d you want to fuck you, you fangirling slut?”

It was truthfully a difficult decision. “Both.” You admitted, your bones jumping as Bucky pinched one of your erect nipples, continuing to hold a sturdy clasp of his pads around the sensitive flesh; you couldn’t jut choose one of them. Not when they were both in such close range, bore in nothing more than their birthdays suits, talking about your quivering and diversely accepting cunt.

They knew that you couldn’t possibly refuse one or the other. You were vastly too hungry to be filled like you had never been before, shagged by two of three most well known artists in the industry, earnestly and mindlessly earning yourself a title within the circle of uptight yet simultaneously chill performers.

Perhaps, if Bucky we to ever potentially fire you, there would be another pursuer for your articulating talents on standby, awaiting for the moment that you walked out of his complex door to swoop you up as though they were a predatory falcon, flying off into a stationed sunset, those around seeing you as nothing more than a shadow of the ambient orb, but the one who had employed you finding you to be a sufficing inspiration.

Large hands swallows your hips, firmly controlling their angle as they grasped you in their strong, almost super human hold, lifting you so that you were tentatively tucked in a reverse cowgirl position on Bucky’s lap. It was the third time that you had been this close to him, it would almost be intimate, if your legs weren’t strewn in an open, all revealing splay, so that Loki could see your boss tease his tip around your entrance before sliding you down his length, extracting a strong wail from your churning throat.

Your own hand resented down, applying swirls of pressure down on your clit; it appeared that they were willing you to continue without interruption. Bucky lightly, despite the power that he was promoted to in this position, began to bounce you on his shaft, spewing small mewls out from your agape mouth.

Fisting his cock, Loki approached, Bucky reachin this seen hands down to spread te lips of your pussy, so that the other man was guaranteed a crude glimpse of you being stufffed. Though, you weren’t quite filled enough, for Bucky raised a brow and prompted Loki to allow himself to be pulled closer by your axed and whining aura.

He brushed his tip languidly against your buzzing clit, dragging through your slick and jab i at your delicate fingers before probing at the base of Bucky’s cock, and pushing inside, right along his rival’s length, the pair moaning out in a pleasured union. On the other and, you had tears falling from the crescents of your eyes, the stretch so much that it was a blistering pain to your cunt.

“Don’t go all meek dear, you and i both know this is far from the first instance where you’ve had more than one cock in this nasty, betraying cunt of yours.” Loki taunted, gripping the vulnerable expanse of your throat from behind, his icy glazed skin sending provocative shivers down your spine, making your pussy pulse from the chill that ran through your body.

And then, i a split instant, both cocks began to piston into your walls, as though you were nothing more than a rag doll, meant o be thrown around and handled in a disorderly fashion. They ere ruthless, groaning out symphonies in the cursive air around you, as your walls engulfed their pricks more than snugly.

You felt so wide down there, they were taking a pirating toll on your body stealing every breath that dared wither from your lips, tweezing their nimble fingered around various parts of your body, all in due retrospect or coerce you into fucking them back, making all actions in the mass of bodies a mutual effort.

Loki lowered his head down meeting Bucky for a sloppy, brash kiss. It was clear they were simply doing that part to fulfil a greedy desire in your stomach, but you were not one that minded. It was, like the rest of their frenzy of collaborations, a competitive mess. They nipped harshly at each other’s lips, ravenously all in the meanwhile ploughing your body with their har girths.

“Fuck, that’s hot.” Your tongue dribbled, earning satisfied, lust induced smirks from both parties that were currently penetrating you, making you writhe harder against their lengths a new flow of moisture weeping out from your hole, lubricating their movements further, it encouraging them to do nothing more than continue what they were doing, despite their better judgements.

The truth was, they were rockstars. They had no better judgement, which is why everyone like them needed someone like you. Their thought were clouded with one mission, and for once in their spent lifetimes, it was not to beat the others, at least not to a certain extent anyways. It was their assignment, delivered by their own hands, to bring you to the edge, and that’s physically what they reformed to do.

One of them were groping your nipples, whilst the other confined the same treatment to your ass cheeks. Loki found your Rocky enables of positive feedback to be icicles and they were beautiful, he stared at them, as though they were divine ploys extracted from the mythical kingdom of Jotunheim, their residence in the realm to be the peacemakers of all bountiful creatures, much like himself and Barnes.

A rich euphoric groan exuberated from Bucky as he allowed himself to spoil, but he tutted whence he watched Loki’s features suppose that he was to follow shortly behind. “Not inside of her.” Bucky growled, sufficing Loki to roll his eyes, and pull out, the man behind you furiously replacing your hand, rolling our clit in his grasp until a sinful scream enveloped the air, commencing them all to the fact that you had just came.

Loki found the show to be unfair, and instead, spilled his priceless seed onto the huffing skin of your stomach, you eyes fluttered shut at the warm feeling pooling onto you. You leant back, drawing your neck into a crooked angle as you swiped your tongue wordlessly over the piercing on Bucky’s right nipple, metal providing a relief to the heat that your body was and had been swarmed with. “ Last chance you’re gonna have t taste her sweet cunt.”

“You do certainly have some faith in this one Barnes, but I do doubt that it will be the last instance in which i am todo so.” His silver tongue pried at your cum soaked flesh, drinking up all the essence that you had to offer, onshore the flavour that Bucky had brought to the table, i the form of a succulent drizzling of Snow White cum.

As Loki finishes swabbing his tongue over your cunt, Bucky adoringly kisses you, much sweeter than he has before. It was sort, and almost chaste, but his blue eyes roamed your face, delicately observing the high points of your face, that were covered with a sheen of great force making you as he would put it, glow.

The pair of you weer exhausted, there was still some swollen was to his lips from where he had sucked off Loki. His hands cradled you around your waist, his feet kicking Loki back as you whimpered from opaque sensitivity. “I guess that was you bidding me a dew.” Sneered the trickster, fishing for his clothes, as he spared you a spark filled glare, to which you ignored.

Once he was situated back into his attire, he left the sex scented room,a hollow smirk chapping his lips as he strutted th a purpose out into the hallway, taking a left instead of a right, and creeping into barnes’ studio to see what the man was working on in the midst of his enduring tour/ He was always the trickster, and nothing different was to ever be expected out of him.

“That was good.” You mumbled, rubbing your ode lovingly across the scruff that coated his jaw. His fingers made small circles upon your tummy, humming contently as he remained sheathed inside of you. He had to admit, he preferred it when it was just him, but his lonesome, sheathed within your walls, feeling the small trembles of your walls around him. It was practically heaven, and he would say so if he believed in such a place.

A deliberate knock ruined the moment, as the man entered,he quarrelled with himself where her to casually look in the direction of the pair of you or to avert his sight around, and blankly at the all. “What is it T’Challa?” Grumbled the man inside of you, quirking a thin brow at the timing of his presence.

“Loki; he managed to get into ur data, and he’s leaked a whole bunch of your music.” Of course, Loki would not come here to simply gloat, there was alas something extra up his green sleeve, and now it was revealed.

“Son of a bitch!” Bucky made a move to stand, but instead prohibited a whimper out of you as hi ships jutted angrily tip on instinct. “Get Odin on the phone, we’re going to have a little chat about his slippery hands son!” Barked Bucky, prepared t do anything to bring his greatest threat down, compiling him into the put of hate industry, until he was forgotten about, unable to ever produce new music again.

“Talk to Sif.” You whispered, becoming the image of his assistant once more, even if his cum lathered cock was prevailing within a rut of required stress relief, growing in the conjunction of your wall with his body guard there. “She loathes him, and rightfully so. He got her kicked out and she has dirt on him that nobody else has ever heard. If you want to take I’m down, she is your in.”

The strict tone grammatically supported by your logical information was definitely turning Bucky on again. He could handle you more than fine without Loki’s aid, he was just a means to an end, as it was clearly shown in his priorities.

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urie · 2 years

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not to write serious meta about the television show Euphoria (i am 26 years old and i pay bills) but that finale was such bullshit that i really feel like the entire show has been ruined for me, i know that sounds very dramatic and disproportionate as a reaction but it has become increasingly clear to me that sam levinson cannot be trusted to write female characters with trauma

i think the most obvious example of this is the way he treats cassie as a character, and how the other characters react to her

in the first season, cassie’s character includes being oversexualized since puberty, consistently pressured into sex and also coerced into making multiple sex tapes, then having those videos shared around the entire school, being drawn to any man who gives her positive attention because its the only thing she thinks she is good for, then mckay being embarrassed of her for being “slutty,” then mckay using her body to prove his masculinity, then getting pregnant and being pressured into an abortion she didnt want to have

absolutely not a single bit of this is addressed or talked about in the second season and its just like... why? all of those things are key aspects of who she is and why she reacts to things, but throughout the entire season, there isnt a single person who is trying to actually help her. kat immediately turns on her and calls her a cunt. rue vindictively outs her relationship with nate in front of everyone. lexi is tired of her and annoyed with her. even her mom shows very little empathy when she is clearly having a genuine psychotic episode

maddy is the only one this season who has a genuine reason to be mad at her, but even that is handled really poorly. you’d think that maddy would be partly mad at cassie for dating her ABUSER, not dating her ex boyfriend. you’d think that for all that talk about loyalty and friendship, maddy would maybe tell cassie that her boyfriend threatened her with a fucking gun. why is not a single person worried about cassie? everyone knows nate is abusive, physically and emotionally, and maddy specifically knows how genuinely dangerous he is, but there isnt one moment in the show where someone actually shows concern for cassie. did no one wonder why nate isolated cassie from all her friends? did that not seem like a red flag to the people that were supposed to be her best friends?

these are rhetorical because the problem at its core is that these characters are not actually being written believably. cassie is treated as a crazy bitch the entire season. she’s hysterical, she cries in every scene, she’s obsessed with nate, she’s causing a scene, and everyone rolls their eyes. including the audience. because sam levinson doesnt care to explain why she is acting like this, or maybe remind the audience of everything she went through in the first season. he literally never even mentions her abortion. he never puts cassie’s behavior into the context of her trauma, and the other characters dont either

cassie is like, easily the character with the most sexual trauma. there are many times its implied that she has been raped, and its a fact that shes experienced coercive rape, and if this had been mentioned even once in this season it would have done a lot to explain why she is drawn to abusive men, or why she submits herself to them and lets them take over her life. the closest she got to any empathy was from Hot Milf Minka Kelly saying that line about how a man gave her attention at the wrong time when she was vulnerable. cassie wasnt even in that scene and it didnt seem like maddy even listened to that

these are not believable characters because sam levinson doesnt have a single woman helping him write them. he cant believably write a female character with sexual trauma because he doesnt understand shit about it, and even if he did, he made no effort to remind the audience that cassie is severely traumatized

she is just consistently shit on this season. there isnt a single person in her corner. not even her own mother. we’re even meant to look at her outburst at lexi as crrraaazzzy irrational cassie when actually she has every right to be hurt that lexi is literally putting all her trauma on display and making cassie into this hypersexual villain, because... she got boobs and lexi didnt?

realistically lexi would know what cassie went through. she would know how cassie has been abused and used for her body. she would have empathy for her older sister. but this is just explicitly unrealistic. making fun of your sister for having huge tits and being sexual with men when you know shes been raped, because there are literally videos of it that have been shared around, would be sociopathic shit. unrealistic! literally this would not happen, and if it did, then lexi would be incredibly in the wrong and incredibly cruel, but we are not meant to see it this way

this is a lot of rambling but like cassie’s character is given zero respect this season, while simultaneously being the person whose tits are out the most, who has the most nude scenes, and it’s extremely ironic that her character’s trauma comes from being oversexualized and the entire season the camera is oversexualizing her

if sam levinson was a good writer then that would be a commentary. it would be intentional. but, you know. he just really likes sydney sweeney’s titties i guess. maybe you just gotta give the straight men being forced by their gfs to watch this show something to make it worth their while

sexual trauma is completely ignored. cassie acted irrationally this season, but in a way that would be understandable and sympathetic if they had addressed her history and reminded people of everything she has been through and the obvious consequences of it but that wasnt done because sam levinson did not consider it to be important to explain

please god hire a single other writer. just ONE. a woman. hire just one woman please.

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

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Could we maybe get a piece where Kauri, Jake and Antoni are spending time together? Maybe all of them cuddling or something?

Takes place at an unspecified time in the future...

He walks into the living room, coming slowly to a stop as he sees Antoni sitting in the dead center of the couch, hunched over with his elbows on his knees, hands over his mouth, thick shaggy hair hanging over his forehead and curling just slightly at his ears. His eyes are on the TV, the blue light of the screen dancing a reflection of the pictures, pale against Antoni's deep warm brown.

Antoni never really watches TV. Not like this.

“You okay?” It’s a simple question, almost rhetorical. He knows how Antoni will respond, because it's how he always responds.

So Jake isn’t prepared at all when Antoni looks up and answers, “No.”

It's only then that Jake realizes that Antoni's eyes are slightly wild, white around the edges. His nails are painted a dark purple but in the dimness of a room lit only by flickering television, they seem almost bloody-black.

"Ant?" Jake steps further into the room, feeling himself tense. The old feeling of they're coming to raid us again is still there, even years later, even in a new house, a new place, with no hint so far that they've been compromised. It doesn't matter.

One raid, one three-day hell of hoping everyone was okay, and Jake has never quite lost the new watchfulness and worry that had followed on its heels.

Kauri is right behind him, a mug of steaming hot chocolate (with more than a few dollops of good whiskey) in each hand. He comes to such an abrupt stop that the liquid nearly sloshes out over the sides. "Jake? Antoni? What's up?"

Antoni swallows. He looks as though he will speak. He pauses again.

There's a war in him that Jake can read as well as any book, and he steps without thinking to sink down next to Antoni on the couch. Kauri looks between them, then sets the hot chocolate hurriedly down on the coffee table and disappears back into the kitchen.

Kauri's never liked conflict, Jake thinks, but winces a little at how the rejection must look to Antoni. How it must feel.

Antoni's eyes are glimmering. Jake is inches away from him but doesn't quite touch. That's not what Antoni wants or needs, nearly always, and Jake never oversteps. Antoni is his friend, but he was first a rescue, and Jake is always aware of that long history. The foggy nightmare of Antoni's life before Jake knew him as a nameless, nervous, trembling new household resident who curled up on his bed to stare out the windows.

"Ant. Talk to me, man." Jake keeps his voice low, unassuming. Not demanding. "Let me know how I can help you right now."

"It is only... o d'yavol... moy mladshiy brat..." Antoni's head drops into his hands.

Jake knows the words, but they make no sense to him in the moment, and his jaw works as he tries to understand. "Little brother... Chris? Is something wrong about Chris?"

"No, not Chrisha. It's just-..."

Kauri reappears. When Jake sees the bottle of vodka he holds, chilled from the freezer, he exhales. Of course.

Kauri sets down a two shot glasses, pours each to the brim with Antoni's personal, perfectly clear vodka bought from a specialty store on the other side of town.

Antoni never looks at him, but downs each shot, one after the other, without hesitation.

"There you go," Kauri murmurs, and settles down on Antoni's other side. "Tell us what's up, Ant. We want to help."

Antoni shakes his head, eyes closed. Then, after another pause, he nods, and gestures at the TV. "Look."

Kauri and Jake turn to see two talking-head news anchors chattering, a chyron running along the bottom the screen about a man arrested, or maybe killed, after being caught breaking into someone's apartment. It doesn't mean anything, not really. He can't even see why it'd be breaking news here in California if some asshole in Washington state decided to rob someone.

Kauri's hand goes out to rest, lightly, on Antoni's shoulder. To Jake's shock, Antoni doesn't tense or pull away - instead, he leans slowly to the side, leaning into the touch. His eyes close again. "Look at who they have found, Jasha. Look at what I have done."

Jake looks again. More importantly, he listens.

"Mikhail Morozov, suspected in the deaths of some two dozen men, killed after an officer-involved incident in Puyallup..."

Kauri's eyebrows furrow a little, in confusion, but Jake understands. He has, after all, been the one who did the majority of the research after Antoni told him, he's the one who knows the most about it.

"That's your brother," He says, softly, and Antoni nods, his expression marked with a misery Jake can't begin to fathom. Misery... and guilt.

"I was meant to protect him," Antoni whispers. "Always I am protecting him. But I was gone. I have been gone so long... he is dead. My brother... I was never home, they do not know, they have two dead sons, they..."

"You're not dead," Kauri says, gently, but Antoni shakes his head almost violently in denial of the words.

"I am not. Artyom is. Two dead sons."

The silence draws slowly out, and the weight of Antoni's words makes the air feel like wading through sludge, taking deep breaths that settle heavy in Jake's lungs.

Kauri's hand slides over Antoni's, and he grips on tight. After a second, Jake takes his other hand. Antoni's fingers are shaking, he can barely hang on, but he tries.

"Two dead sons," Antoni repeats, almost dumbly. The tears he has been so carefully holding back fall as he blinks too quickly, clear trails down each cheek to go with his hitching, uneven breath. His voice begins to tremble, too. "Two dead sons, Jasha. Mama has nothing now. She has no one."

"Ant-"

"She has no one. I am supposed to be protecting Misha always. Now we are both gone. Her heart will b-be broken."

Jake hears what Antoni isn't saying. He thinks Kauri does, too.

"This isn't your fault," Jake says softly, but Antoni doesn't want to hear this, either. "It's not your fault, Ant. You couldn't have known what would happen, that he wouldn't stop-"

"I knew he would not stop," Antoni interrupts. "I am always knowing he will never stop. Always. I was supposed to make-... to keep-... to keep him s-safe-"

"But if you kept him safe, other people died," Kauri says, and brings Antoni's hand to his lips, breathing on those cold fingers to warm them. "I'm so sorry, Ant."

"I should have been there." Antoni's voice shakes so badly his words are barely understandable. "I should have been there for Mama when this happened. I should have... but I have never called, I c-couldn't bear to tell her-... what I have been, what I have d-done, and now-... now, Misha..."

Antoni has not cried in so long, but the tears come now, as he stares at the news anchors speak about the death of the monster that once held his hand to cross the street to go to school.

Jake and Kauri hold him, and to both of them he holds on tight.

Tagging: @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @endless-whump @whumpfigure @astrobly @newandfiguringitout @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @whumptywhumpdump @wildfaewhump

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jordanianroyals · 3 years

Link

Opinion: Understanding the dynamics that led to Jordan’s royal crisis

By Hassan A Barari (Professor of International Relations at Qatar University), 13 April 2021

Jordan, currently led by King Abdullah II, has long been perceived as an oasis of peace and stability in a volatile region, and for good reason. Indeed, unlike those of its neighbours, Jordan’s governing institutions proved to be robust and reliable in the face of myriad domestic and external challenges over the years. The Jordanian regime survived even the Arab Spring, thanks to the Jordanian people’s trust in and loyalty to the monarchy.

And yet, events of this month demonstrated that Jordan, too, is not immune to domestic instability.

On April 3, King Abdullah’s popular half-brother, Prince Hamzah, was put under de facto house arrest for his alleged role in a conspiracy to undermine Jordan’s national security. It was known that he had been attending tribal meetings critical of the king, but the news of his arrest still shocked the Jordanian people and the world.

Rather than seeing the intervention as a warning and quietly backing down, the prince decided to fight back. In a videotaped statement, he denied participating in any conspiracy against his half-brother but accused the kingdom’s “ruling system” of corruption, incompetence and harassment.

In response, the government issued its own statement and accused Prince Hamzah of collaborating with former Chief of the Royal Court, Bassem Awadallah, and unnamed “foreign entities”, to destabilise the country. The authorities also revealed that Awadallah, who served as planning minister and finance minister in the past, has been arrested alongside several others from the higher echelons of Jordan’s governing elite.

Prince Hamzah swiftly responded to the accusation of foreign collaboration by releasing an audio recording of his conversations with Jordan’s military chief, which indicated that the prince was targeted not for his involvement with any foreign power, but for meeting with the king’s domestic critics. This gave the prince further credibility and increased the public’s support for him.

Eventually, after mediation from members of the royal family, Prince Hamzah signed a letter promising to abide by the traditions and approaches of the ruling monarchy, de-escalating the crisis.

But what was behind this unprecedented upheaval in the royal family that carried Jordan to international headlines and gave rise to fears that this oasis of stability may soon descent into chaos?

This crisis was the result of deep-rooted rifts and rivalries within the royal family, as well as the growing public resentment over the government’s failure to implement successful political and economic reforms.

Since the establishment of the Emirate of Transjordan in 1921, Jordan has been ruled by the Hashemite royal family. For nearly 100 years, the Hashemites have managed to keep their house in order and avoided divisions and feuds that resulted in the fall of many monarchies. But a rivalry that started some 20 years ago eventually resulted in last week’s feud and shattered the royal family’s image as a strong, united and stable governing body.

When Jordan’s King Al Hussein bin Talal passed away from cancer in 1999, Abdullah was crowned and his younger half-brother, Hamzah, was titled the crown prince of Jordan. The designation was out of respect for King Hussein, who ruled for 47 years and was known to have favoured Hamzah the most among his 12 children from four marriages.

In 2004, however, King Abdullah II relieved Prince Hamzah of his title and in 2009 appointed his then-teenage son, Prince Al Hussein, as the new crown prince of Jordan. The move consolidated King Abdullah II’s power, but also caused resentment among Prince Hamzah’s supporters within the ruling elite.

The relationship between King Abdullah II and Prince Hamzah all but broke down after the appointment of a new crown prince, but the two royals successfully kept the tension between them hidden from the public for a very long time.

However, things started to change over the last few years. As Prince Hamzah’s popularity increased, the king started to view him as a threat to his authority. He stripped his half-brother of his military titles, indicating his intention to keep him away from Jordan’s leading institutions for good. In response, Prince Hamzah started talking publicly about government mismanagement and corruption, and established himself as a well-respected anti-corruption figure in the eyes of the public. Over the last three years, he also held many consultative meetings with Jordan’s tribal leaders. During these meetings, it is alleged, the government was repeatedly criticised for failing to end corruption and to restore public trust.

As Prince Hamzah successfully cast himself as a down-to-earth royal who understands the worries and struggles of common Jordanians, Crown Prince Al Hussein failed to make any impression on the public. All this increased King Abdullah II’s worries about the future of his rule and paved the way for the public rift on April 3.

The king would have been less concerned about Prince Hamzah had he been more proactive in his attempts to tackle the political and economic challenges the country is facing.

Since his accession to the throne in 1999, King Abdullah II and the ruling elites surrounding him put reform efforts on the back burner.

While the king presented himself to the West as a committed reformer, he failed to support this rhetoric with a credible blueprint for transitioning Jordan from autocracy to democracy. The modest reform package he passed on the heels of a series of demonstrations during the Arab Spring proved enough to calm tensions temporarily, and appease the West, but did not satisfy the significant number of Jordanians who are yearning to live in a democracy.

The king always thought the Jordanian people would continue to support him, even in the absence of meaningful structural reforms, if he ensures the economy is functioning in a satisfactory manner. But Jordan is now struggling economically. Youth unemployment is on the rise, and many Jordanians are fearful for the future.

More importantly, in light of these economic challenges, Jordanians seem to be losing faith in the king’s ability to keep Jordan politically stable, economically prosperous and safe from external threats in the years to come. Indeed, opinion polls in recent years repeatedly demonstrated that a clear majority of Jordanians believe the country is heading in the wrong direction under King Abdullah II. It is therefore understandable that the king grew concerned about the rise of a younger royal who successfully presented himself to the public as an honest anti-corruption figure who understands the struggles of the common people.

Thus far, the Jordanian government did not provide any proof to back its claim that Prince Hamzah conspired with a foreign entity to destabilise the country. While the identity of this foreign entity is not publicly known, it is strongly implied, by figures close to the government, that Israel is the culprit. Indeed, the Israeli government has plenty of reason to try and manipulate the Jordanian government to support its interests. Jordan has long been a key defender of Palestinian rights and has been reluctant to embrace the newly emerged alliance between Israel and a group of Arab states led by Saudi Arabia.

But as the Jordanian government refrained from officially accusing any foreign power of conspiring with Prince Hamzah, a growing number of Jordanians suspect that the government is not telling the whole truth. Some even go as far as accusing the government of baselessly implying that the prince has links to foreign entities to make him less appealing to disgruntled but patriotic Jordanians. There is a growing suspicion in the country that the entire crisis was staged to eliminate Prince Hamzah as an alternative to King Abdullah II within the royal family.

On April 7, the king publicly addressed the royal rift for the first time in a letter read on television, saying the “sedition” that caused him “pain and anger” has now been buried. But he refrained from giving any further details or explaining what foreign entities have been involved in the alleged plot against his rule. His statement, aimed at reassuring the public that all is well within the monarchy, failed to calm the growing anxieties. What the Jordanian public wants to hear is that their king is committed to changing his approach to governance that left so many of them impoverished. King Abdullah II, however, appears more interested in eliminating his perceived rivals than addressing the real issues that are threatening the future of his rule.

This month’s events were a symptom, not the cause, of Jordan’s crisis. The country’s problems are rooted not in any real or imagined conspiracy, but in the reluctance of its rulers to implement much-needed reforms. If the king does not act fast to address the grievances that led to the increase of Prince Hamzah’s popularity in the first place, Jordan may one day lose its status as an oasis of safety and stability without the help of any domestic or foreign adversary.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Hassan A Barari is currently a professor of International Relations at Qatar University. He previously taught at different universities including Yale University, the University of Jordan and Nebraska University of Omaha. He also served as a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace. He is the author of ten books and a well known commentator on Middle Eastern politics.

#King Abdullah II #prince hamzah #article

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dilfbane · 3 years

Text

Your Weeping(Your Need For His Touch)

Summary: When things go south on a mission, you have to confront more than just the sketchy town, cartoon villains, and one-bed hotel room you’re forced to share with Loki. You have to come to terms with not only the consequences of being captured, but also the God of Mischief’s feelings for you - Because for all that he might be an asshole, sometimes, he really does have a heart. Written for the Picture Is Worth A 1,000 Words 6k Follower Writing Challenge by @startrekkingaroundasgard

Pairing: Loki/(Female)Reader

Warnings: Descriptions of injuries and medical treatment, as well as discussions of the inevitable mindset around sacrificing oneself for the mission that I feel like being part of the Avengers would entail. Also swearing, because at its core, this story started out as a bit of a crack! fic.

Word Count: 7.8k.

A/N: So apparently when I have mental breakdowns they result in me writing crack-fic that takes a 180 veer into angst and fluff for absolutely no reason. For the sake of the crack-fic, in this timeline Loki was forced to help the Avengers take down bad guys directly after the end of the first Avengers movie, so… Is that a confusing plot hole I didn’t know how to account for except by making this AU? Maybe. Did I do it anyway?…. Yeah. This really was meant to be a crack-fic about Loki and the reader confessing their feelings set in the bizarre world of meme culture, I didn’t realize there were going to be feels in it until it was three in the morning and all of a sudden this happened. That being said, your girl went there, so enjoy!

“Oh, shit,” You say, as you take in the grimy hotel room. The walls all smeared in what looks like dried blood, the putrid smell of rotten eggs, a crack-screened television with a fine dusting of some suspiciously white powder. And, of course, “There’s one bed.”

“Hmm?” Asks Loki, turning towards you, briefly, from unpacking. He had dumped his suitcase(Magically plucked out of a chaotic liminal space) unceremoniously on the bed’s scratching, pilling coverlet without so much as a second glance at the rest of the room. And why do you need a suitcase, anyways?? You wonder. It isn’t like we’re planning to be here that long. In fact, you hoped with every fiber of your being that you’d be here for as little time as possible, because this town might actually be the sketchiest place you’ve ever seen in your life; no small feat, for a bona-fide member of S.H.I.E.L.D.

You’ve kicked alien ass on a mutated purple Mongolian death-worm three thousand feet over New York City. You’ve run reconnaissance to rescue debatably-magical items sequestered away in an ancient cave labyrinth plastered in paintings and untranslatable runes, gunfire and what could only be described as the baying of hellhounds in the near distance. You’ve fist-fought a gigantic hive-mind robot in a field of artificially sentient feral steel suits - You’ve even survived Tony’s parties.

Yet none of those scenarios hold a candle to this fucking town.

And Loki, the asshat, seems utterly, competently - no, maniacally - unfazed.

“There’s one bed,” You repeat, into the air.

“Ah,” Says Loki, straightening.

“You don’t see that problem with that?!”

“Should I?” He asks you, walking across the room in long, graceful strides to stand in front of you. He wears the same expression he always wears, amused and indifferent, but this time with the addition of a single, elegantly-arched eyebrow. You drop your head, refusing to meet his somewhat-curious gaze. It physically hurts, how attractive Loki is. Not for the first time, you curse whatever god decided that you and him would once again be mission partners - in this case, you belatedly realize, and choke back a thick laugh, said god is, unsurprisingly, Thor.

If you survive this, you make a note to beat his head in with Mjolnir. As it is, you are here in this room with Loki, with perhaps twenty IPP agents and a reckless poisoner dogging your every move, and there’s a high chance that you won’t live long enough to navigate whatever the hell sleeping with your crush-who-has-murdered-men. Ok, so ‘murdered men’ isn’t entirely accurate. More like ‘caused the murder of men inadvertently through his schemes’. It doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, right now.

And what about Loki? He is still staring you down, like you’re some wind up toy moments away from going off. Funny, that, you think. If ever there were a time to not have a mental breakdown, it would be here, with him. You’ve crossed a lot of moral lines in your life, but you will be damned if you let Loki Laufeysson see you cry. Loki is graceful. Composed. Sarcastic. Lithe. Rolls his eyes at almost every statement that comes out of somebody’s mouth. But he is, also, beautiful. Shockingly comforting, in his own nihilistic way. You don’t know what it says about you that you find comfort in statements like, Try not to die, you know that I hate funerals. Part of you - most of you - doesn’t want to. But it gives you strength, somehow, to shrug off the day and ground your flailing mind in evading Loki’s calculated manipulation. I won’t show you my weakness, you think to yourself. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.

“No,” You tell him - too quickly, he’ll pick up on that - “You’re right, you shouldn’t. It’s fine. We have - a lot to deal with, is all.”

Loki nods, seemingly accepting your answer, but his eyes are still narrowed, watching you like he’s calling your bluff. You talk right past that look - have to, to keep yourself sane, to not think about the one bed that looms large over this entire conversation. It doesn’t even look like a comfortable bed.

“We have two days,” You say, to stop yourself thinking of it. And, also, to talk your way through your disarmingly disjointed thoughts. Loki nods. It would really help if you said something, you think. Swallow the thought, hot and thick, down your throat. What’s the point of a mission partner if you can’t even soundboard off them? “The Pink Cobra could strike anyone, anytime. The IPP is planning something in New York - “

“Isn’t everyone, these days, planning something in New York?”

He sounds regretful, and for half a second you want to offer him the reassurance that his very presence offers you. But you are sure he doesn’t know what he does to you - with his words, with the sidelong glances that you’ve felt linger on your form far too long in the heat of a fight. If you didn’t know any better, you would say Loki worries about you.

“We have to shut him down,” You say. Focus on the Pink Cobra, because honestly, that’s easier. “Find out where he manufactures. Not get poisoned,” You add, at the end.

“Yes,” Loki says, tone dripping with sarcasm, “We should certainly try not to get ourselves killed. Failing that, I suppose, we can at least request that no one in H.Y.D.R.A gets autopsy access.”

“Loki?” You ask. Rhetorically. “You’re not helping.”

He smirks at you, then. He knows.

“What do you propose that we do then?” He asks, taking a step towards you, getting so close that you can feel his hot breath. “About the Pink Cobra?”

“Find him.” You say, fumbling, blush rising high on your cheeks.

Tonight?

One bed?

You are screwed.

***

When you were a kid - think really little, Capri Sun pouches and still believing that true love wasn’t complicated - your father told you that every story needed a good supervillain. You aren’t sure if the Pink Cobra counts as a good supervillain, but he’s the least confusing one that you have to deal with - and, as far as villains go, a fine enough challenge to face. He’s like a madman out of some high fantasy novel, with dark eyes and a sable-sewn cloak and a penchant for poisoning. He is adept in all the arts of the woman’s murder; he has a keen grasp on the side-effects of arsenic and camphor and tansy and cyanide and strychnine. He’s been found to have dropped crystal phials filled with belladonna and ricin while fleeing a scene. If all else fails, he’s more than practiced with daggers.

In other words, he’s the kind of villain that none of you, with your flying suits and telekinesis and super-strength, are anywhere near prepared to waylay.

The plan, as far as team Avengers is concerned, is easy:

You and Loki. This town, where the webs of his manufacturing production and the few glimpses of information that Thor has totally legally excavated out of his captured minions has led to. Two days until some undefined grand attack bears down on the city you live in. Two days to find the Pink Cobra and kill him. The more time passes with no headway, the more you think that this is an impossible task, but you know what Tony would say. We have our best minds on it.

The thing is, you aren’t sure that that’s true. The minds that have been set to this task are you and the God of Lies. It’s hardly the best they could have come up with, considering your track records. Actually, you take that back - Loki was a good choice for this mission, because, not three hours after arriving in this hellhole of a city, he seems to have somehow developed the ability to read minds. More specifically, yours. And that could prove stunningly useful.

The scene, as it stands: Loki, sprawled across the lumpy bed, three pairs of crisp white shirts, a plaid scarf, and a full set of Asgardian battle armor neatly hung in the mothball-infested closet, flicking through channels on the grain, cracked television with an apathetic expression and one arm thrown haphazardly over bent leg. Propped up in such a way that he could jump or spin or parry at a moment’s notice, yet perfectly, devastatingly languid, leafing through Nick Fury’s dossier on the Pink Cobra. He looks at you like a god, you think, and then remember. He is one.

You, on the floor, because on top of all the other things this hotel doesn’t have, like two beds, there isn’t anything even resembling a desk, shifting through a glowing, holographed file archive from headquarters that barely runs on your severely outdated laptop. It’s a point of pride to you, keeping the laptop - not because it’s good, but because it’s survived five years of being an Avenger, which is something not even all the Avengers can claim to have done. You’re also fairly certain that Tony’s attempts to update the firmware had infested it with some sort of renegade virus. Elevated above your screen, the files are split into two groups, the sum total of everything that you know about both of the groups that are avidly trying to kill you.

There’s the wealth of information containing the Pink Cobra’s poisoning sprees, but those aren’t the files that interest you, and you know that Loki’s not much interested in them either. That honor falls to the fanatics at the IPP, the Imminently Predictable Psyops organization, which you know even less about than you do about the Pink Cobra, chief among which the fact that they need a new name. Imminently Predictable Psyops?, Tony had said, when you’d finally apprehended one of their proxies. What do they think this is? Some type of ARG?

What you’ve gleaned, from months worth of studying the network, is that they operate as a sort of cringe-oriented death cult intent on ‘reshaping the universe through meme agents’. They’d been on S.H.I.E.L.D’s radar for a long time - upwards of a year - before anyone at team base learned they existed - which, you can almost hear Loki saying, was a failure in the extreme. Currently, it was your job to obsessively worry over whether they were going to send ‘meme agents’ to bust through the door of your seedy hotel room and off you both. You hated - truly loathed - how casually Loki was taking it all.

He’s acting like nothing was wrong with this situation, when, in fact, you’re ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure that this night will end up with one or both of you dead. It is, to say the least, disconcerting.

Kill switch, the holograph files read. Cross-referential Neil Cicierega acoustic weaponry. Your mind sees the words, but doesn’t comprehend them, and you run a hand up to rub at your bleary eyes with annoyance. You risk a glance upwards; on the bed, Loki scans page after page after page with disinterested nonchalance, punctuating the flipping over of each document with a noncommittal hum; as if to say, I understand you. As it to say, This could be worse. You try to slip into that mindset. Certainly, things could be worse.

Actually, though? Not really.

Because, for all the world, the holo-file in front of you just said ‘Pepe The Frog Chaos Banking Laser Initiative’.

“What the fuck does that even mean?!”

“Sorry?”

You whip your head around. Loki, raising an eyebrow. Damn that - perfect - eyebrow.

“Sorry,” You echo back at him, rubbing your eyes again, perversely glad for the break, even if it is this awkward. “I … said that out loud, didn’t I?”

“Marginally,” He tells you. “Yes.”

“Sorry,” You - well, it’s not a whine, not exactly. You’re tired, and there’s no way you’re going to sleep tonight, so you feel like your tone’s justified. “I didn’t mean to do that. I think I’m just - this is. Completely nonsensical.”

“Show me?” He asks, and you snort. He could totally just look up, but -

“Do you have a P.h.d in memes?” You ask him, and, before he can answer, “Because unless you have a P.h.d in memes, I don’t think you’ll be able to help.”

“You’d be surprised,” Loki says. Vaults over the bed with the speed and grace of a panther, filling the air with a cringing wheeze as the rusty springs bend underneath him, and landing in front of the holo-file, pushing you aside slightly to get a better view. When his fingers brush against your side, cool and firm, you flinch.

“Tired,” You offer, when he shoots you a momentarily concerned look. “Just. Need to sleep, later, I think.”

But Loki is already scanning the file, and when he looks up, not five seconds later, you want to hit somebody. Preferably, you think, him.

“I would assume,” Loki says, “That they’re using time travel in order to obtain and store monetary value by way of a Pepe-the-frog inspired laser array.”

“Oh,” You say. You blink once. Blink twice. Still have no idea what that means. “Right.”

“Do you not know your memes, love?” He asks you, smirking. And oh, if you don’t feel things.

“I don’t go on the internet, much,” You tell him. “Too busy, you know, trying not to get killed.”

Loki shrugs. Sidles away from the file. The groan and squeak of those springs tells you he’s back on the bed, giving you some well-needed space, but you can’t bring yourself to look.

“You can sleep,” He says, “If you want.”

“Ha!” You yelp/choke/embarrassingly bleat out into the room’s stale silence. Underneath the rotten eggs, you catch a whiff of bong-water. “No.”

“There’s a bed,” Loki says, cocking his head pointedly and patting the lumpy covers.

“Yeah, that’s - kind of the problem.”

“Why?” He asks you.

“You - really?”

“I was only asking,” Says Loki, re-focusing his attention on whichever Pink Cobra document’s next in the folder. “If you aren’t comfortable telling me - I merely thought, seeing as you were tired, you might take this opportunity to rest.”

“Yeah,” You tell him, “Of course, that’s - nice of you.”

It comes out stilted. Patently off. If he notices, he doesn’t say.

“Are you going to - um. Do you need help, with the rest? The ones I have seem kind of hopeless. I mean,” You say, when he doesn’t look up, “I don’t think that we have to worry about getting demolished by trans-dimensional Agarthian wormholes.”

“Of course not,”” Loki says, scoffing and incredulous, gaze, you are sure, on his page. “If they wanted to kill us, they’d send someone with a gun.”

In reality, it’s several someones.

***

“You jinxed it,” Is the first thing you tell him, when the men leave you. They’ve thrown you into a one-room warehouse, rickety shelves stacked with cartoonish tubs of green goop and mildewing boxes filled with grenades and machine guns and what appears, at second-glance, to be twelve-fingered latex gloves. You’re tied wrist to wrist, ankle to ankle, and your throat feels uncharacteristically parched. Fear, you tell yourself. Apprehension. “Can’t you just - use your seidr to magic us out of this?”

If you could see him - which you can’t, because you’ve been tied back to back - you’d swear that Loki was glaring.

“Do you - do you have a plan?” You ask, after a moment.

“I’m working on it,” He says.

“That’s all?” You say. “We were dragged out of our drug-dealer’s hotel room by a bunch of robed men with guns and the only thing you have to say is ‘I’m working on it?’”

“I’d get it done faster,” Says Loki, “If you wouldn’t interrupt me.”

“Ok,” You tell him, “No interrupting you. Got it. That’s - Alright.”

Unfortunately, not interrupting him is easier said than done, because without the sound of your voice, you are left to your thoughts.

The men had broken in nearly immediately after Loki’s glib, sardonic retort to your worries, shooting the glass out of the room’s already half-smashed-in window and kicking the door in simultaneously. A bit much, isn’t it?, Loki’d asked, and you had wanted to smack yourself on the forehead. Really not the time, you had hissed, but Loki hadn’t seemed to hear you. Do you do this with everyone they send you to assassinate?, he had asked, instead. The men had been dressed in long, billowing cloaks of bright red, embroidered with orange snakes framing a picture of Beaker from the muppets with early 2000’s emo hair. Chaotic meme agents, you had thought to yourself. So that’s what they’re supposed to look like.

You hadn’t picked up, until now, on the snakes.

“They’re working together,” You say, when you can’t stand the playback of Loki being disarmed after spinning and tossing his silver daggers at the men, of the men kneeing him in the balls and twisting your arms behind your back, holding a gun to your head to stop you from trying to fight. Waking up in the back of a van that smelled like microwaved fish. Being tossed like garbage onto the floor of the warehouse, painted in bruises and cuts from the small pieces of glass that had dug their way into your skin. “The IPP and the Pink Cobra.”

“Obviously,” Loki says. Sharply.

“Did Tony not -“

“Stark,” Loki practically growls, and, ok, you’re not losing it but that did make you jump in your skin, “Is an idiot. He wouldn’t know how to connect the dots if they were presented to him in a Buzzfeed Unsolved episode.”

“That’s - You had that on Asgard?” You ask him, momentarily distracted. You wish that you could see Loki’s face, and are very glad that you can’t.

“That isn’t the point,” Loki says.

“I know,” You tell him. You’re scared that your voice is trembling. Scared that he can tell, even though he’s not facing you, how badly your fingers are shaking. Scared that he knows your worst, biggest secret -

That, despite being an Avenger, you are anxious. That, despite him being Loki, despite him being here, and wonderfully, infuriatingly himself, he cannot help you, this time.

You are going to die, covered in cuts and abrasions, on the floor of a meme network’s headquarters, at three a.m in the morning. They are going to come in with umbrellas that shoot poison darts or the ex-presidents Point Break masks and mow you down, and Loki has no fucking plan. You feel the ropes tighten where they’re knotted, itchy and fierce, and you have to fight to keep yourself from whining in terror and nerves. Whining isn’t what Loki needs right now. Whining’s not going to save you.

What is going to save you, you try and remind yourself, is Loki. If you can shut up. If you can let him decipher what needs to be done. If he can figure out some way to do it before the blowtorch-wielding robed vigilantes or some disincarnate meme god comes back and draws their electronically-sharpened fingernails across your throat hard enough to split skin and sinew, send waves of blood down the front of your shirt like a river of sweet, thick red honey and toss your corpse in a ditch by a highway and -

“Y/N?” It is foggy, barely-heard. Posh. “Y/N!” Louder, this time. There are fingers on your wrist, bent backwards to grip you. Squeezing, insistent and there. “Breathe.”

Fuck, you think. You’d started to hyperventilate. To shake, with a full-body tremor that forecasts a great, unstoppable wave of sobbing panic. And Loki had noticed. “I need you to trust me,” He says. “Trust me to get us out of this. Can you do that for me, darling?”

He has never called you darling before, but God how you’ve wanted him to. You feel like you’re being stabbed in the heart - because there is no way he means it, no way that this is anything other than a desperate and cruel attempt to get you to calm down. Something that belies how obvious you are. How needy you are. How pathetic. And yet -

And yet, he doesn’t say it meanly. He speaks like he cares about you, and in the face of your impending death, you want to think Loki cares. You’d let him say anything, do anything to you, right now. More than that, though, more than any of that - as you think back to meeting him, to your blossoming late-night friendship and twitchy banter and the quiet moments you’ve shared with him in-between battles -

“I trust you, Loki,” You tell him, and feel your breath quiet in you. Feel yourself growing still and calm with the certainty that Loki will do as he’s said.

That you will survive this.

That -

“Good,” Loki says. Not relieved, but determined. Leaving you no room to argue.

“So what do we do?” You ask him.

“Nothing,” Says Loki, and you can hear his wide grin.

“Nothing?” You ask him, gawking.

“Nothing,” Says Loki. He gives your hand a tight squeeze.

And then the Pink Cobra walks in.

***

This will end badly, you think. It’s about the only thing that you can think, preoccupied as you are with -

It might be easier not to -

Fuck.

The thing is - and you really do try not to move, not to groan, not to scream - the thing is, you thought that when Loki said he had a plan, that said plan wouldn’t involve you being collateral damage for a LARP-er who’d most likely broken out of an asylum. I wish that we could be back in that shitty one-bed hotel room, you think to yourself, and - alright, not the best timing, but it rips a laugh out of you, spiraling and unhinged, before you feel the Pink Cobra, resplendent in coral cloak and villainous swagger, slug you one in the jaw. It hurts worse than you’d thought it would - you’ve never really gotten injured on missions, you’re usually good at talking yourself out of things, which is why the Avengers keep you around. You can speak any language, as long as you’ve heard it once, and your customary daily awkwardness can shift into persuasion like flicking a light-switch on.

Usually, though, you had an opportunity to speak, and weren’t rendered speechless by -

Loki, if you’re being honest. How much you want to kiss him. How much of an asshole he is. Trust me, he’d asked you. Can you do that for me? The Pink Cobra’s grip is sharp and bruising on your side; he’s slipped his fingers up your shirt and is pressing the point on your side that threatens to make your knees buckle, making bile rise up in your throat, driving you wild with the aching need to flee. He has one hand clasped over your mouth, now that you’ve quieted, and you can feel something - pain, and a pill - pressed snugly into his palm. He will force it down you, you know, if Loki so much as sighs wrong.

You’ll never trust him again.

You wish that you knew what the time was. If you end up dying at 4:20, you’re going to throw fists with somebody in hell.

You wish, also, for aspirin. Avengers training has left you woefully unprepared for the reality of getting punched in the face. You can already feel your jaw starting to swell, taste an egregious amount of blood. You’re pretty sure that the force of the blow knocked a tooth out.

What strikes fear into you, though - a fear somehow deeper than the absolutely bone-chilling, blood-curdling knowledge of what the Pink Cobra might do to you - is the look you’d seen on Loki’s face in the seconds after he’d grabbed you, before it fell into practiced, amused apathy. He’d gone white, and his eyes had blown wide. His fingers had spasmed with anger.

He’d looked as scared as you feel.

And you have no idea why.

It isn’t like you’re anyone special. Not any more than the rest of the team. Less so than most of them. You aren’t a god, like Loki and Thor are. You don’t have stealth-assassin training, like Bucky, or super-strength like Steve. You can’t seamlessly pilot mechanical suits over the New York skyline like Tony, or use a crossbow like Clint, or beat thirty people in single-hand combat like Nat, or change into a nitro-fueled rage machine like Bruce.

You can’t do anything, much.

Except, apparently, die.

You squeeze your eyes shut, not letting yourself look at him. You won’t let Loki’s disinterested face be the last thing that you see. It makes the Pink Cobra’s words all the worse, when he speaks. His voice is dark and sick and timbered, and you feel maggots crawling over your skin as he slots you closer to his body, tightening his already painful grip on you so that you can’t move even an inch away from his tensed, coiled muscles.

“So,” He says, “You are superheroes? How long did it take me, to apprehend you? Ah - three and a half hours? Tell your boss-man, do better next time.”

“I’ll pass it along,” Loki says. His voice sounds different. You can’t place why. Still won’t look.

“You won’t,” The Pink Cobra says. You can feel his shoulders rise, then fall. Feel him smirk. You love Loki’s smirk - secretly delight in drawing it from him, sometimes - but the Pink Cobra’s only fills you with yet more terror. You’ve pursed your lips tightly shut against the intrusion of his hand, but when Loki speaks he forces your bruised, bleeding jaw open and shoves the pill into your mouth. The pain of your injury tears through you like white lightning and you thrash, trying to escape. A keening sound claws its way out of you, fevered and anguished, and you feel your hands, still bound up in ropes, trying in vain to push off and away. The man behind you sighs, and then aims a swift kick at the back of your knees, which sends you down before you can so much as yelp. Your knees hit the floor, and he’s holding you by your hair now, twisting it so hard that you’re almost sure he’ll scalp you. He’s pulled something - too big to be be a knife, some kind of shortsword?! - Out from beneath his cloak, and is pressing it up against the column of your throat. You feel the weight of the capsule between your teeth heavily now, and realize what it means in the split-second before the Pink Cobra bends and whispers, Your choice; stale and rancid into the shell of your ear.

Next, he addresses Loki.

“You’ll be wanting to know what our plan is,” He says. Our, you think. We were right. “Hmm? I know how you people are. Always wanting to know. Tell me this, Mischief Man. What will I get, if I tell you? What price are you willing to pay?”

You know what this is. You know it like the ache in your heart when Loki brushes you off. Like the safety you feel in his arms. You open your eyes. Take in Loki’s face - he’s trying to hide, but you know, you know how he feels. You know what he’s going to choose.

And you know that you can’t let him choose it.

“You’ll let her go,” Loki asks, “If we let you leave here?”

“The thing could be managed.”

No, you think. No, Loki, don’t! Whatever the Pink Cobra’s going to do, whatever the IPP’s planning, knowing’s worth more than your life.

“One thing I want to know,” Loki says. He’s twirling a knife of his own, a slim silver number he keeps on him at all times, and you feel the blade on your own throat start to dig in - not enough to draw blood, but enough for you to feel it. The threat of it. The promise of it, and the coldness of the gleaming metal. “You and the IPP? How does it fit?”

“You want information from me?” The Pink Cobra asks. Lets his blade bite you, just barely, and the strength it takes for you not to scream is more strength then you’d known you possess.

“Yes,” Says Loki. “It’s not like I’m asking for much.”

He meets your gaze. You meet his. You hope that he cannot read it. His eyes are so worried, so desperate, you nearly break down.

“I suppose,” The Pink Cobra says, “That you’ve earned it. Getting here - getting this far - it must have been no easy task. Fine. There is no Imminently Predictable Psyops organization. They were a - what do you call it? Red herring? A scent of blood for the shark.”

“You fabricated them,” Loki says. “Why would you fabricate them?”

He is losing his composure, you can tell. You will never be ready for this. He will never be ready for this. You hope that he will forgive you, and you know that he never will, and you swallow the pill in your mouth.

“Because it was fun,” The Pink Cobra says.

And then your body knows pain.

***

“He didn’t think I would do it,” You say. Your mouth feels thick, clotted with blood and shock, and your body is one raw, gaping wound, but the giddy feeling of victory has begun to course through your veins. Pure, unfiltered adrenaline. You had waited for the moment of death to come, and it hadn’t. The pill is fake, your mind had screamed. But there’d been one thing left, that might work. You had breathed as slowly as you possibly could, forced every muscle of your scared, writhing body into single-minded limpness, rolled your eyes backwards into your head, drew one last breath in, and fallen. Twitched, for a few seconds, like a rag-doll. Then made yourself still.

Loki had slit the Pink Cobra ear to ear, beaten him within an inch of his life as he bled out, screaming like a man deranged. He’d left him a wet, bloody mess on the floor, and the blood had run down the not-quite-steady plane of it, pooling around you and mixing with the blood from your jaw, from the evening’s earlier glass cuts, from the deep, burning stab wound the Cobra had got on your arm.

You breathe, and your body knows pain.

You look at Loki, and your body knows pain.

He is shaking. Visibly shaking. His hands are clenched into fists at his side, and he looks as pale as bleached bones. His eyes are shot red - he had sobbed, when you fell, and a howl had torn through his body. You don’t know what to do, what it means, what the hell even to say to him. His cheeks are tear-stained, his breaths ragged.

You blink, and your body feels pain.

“We won,” You croak out. “Loki, we won.” It hurts worse than anything you’ve ever felt in your life. “I think he broke one of my ribs.”

You don’t mean to say that last part, but you do, and you are the one crying now, because it feels like he probably has, and you can barely even stay awake through this pain. It feels like the Hulk is pulling you limb from limb. Like all of those nightmares you’ve had where Loki decided to leave you - to go back to Asgard, and never speak to you again.

Stupid, you think. He won’t, again. Not after this.

Loki still hasn’t spoken. He’s looking at you, and his eyes are wild. Desperately, jaggedly roaming your body. His fists twitch with every new part of your body they land on.

“That bad, huh - Oh, fuck.”

And just like that, the tension leaves Loki’s body. The dam that had held him firmly in place is broken, and he’s running towards you with none of his usual grace. Dropping down by your side. He hoists you, and you hiss, and the tears won’t stop coming, so you bury your face in his shirt, nose pressed at the crisply ironed collar. Don’t care that it’s bleeding, because Loki’s here now. Holding you. Keeping you real. He’s got one hand stroking your hair and his touch feels right, nothing like the Pink Cobra’s, and he’s whispering: You brave, precious, idiot, how dare you, how dare you throw your life away like that?!

“It worked,” You exhale - it’s the most you can manage. You would laugh, if it wouldn’t shred you to pieces. Loki cradles you fiercely, hands grasping at the sweat-and-blood soaked fabric of your shirt, running over you as if he doesn’t believe you’re alive. “It - hurts,” You get out. Barely. “Loki, it - I can’t -“

“Don’t,” He tells you. His voice has gone brittle, choked with thorns. “Don’t talk. Don’t - Don’t ever do that again. Do you hear me? You will never do that again.”

If I need to, I will, you think. And you wonder if that’s why you’re here. Wonder if that’s why you’re strong. You wonder, and hurt, and believe. Feel the strength of him, clutching you like you’re the only thing in the world, taking in greedy lungfuls of your weeping, your need for his touch.

You can’t talk, anymore. It hurts too badly. But you surge, upwards, up into where he’s holding the back of your head, pressing your forehead into the dark, warm space under his jaw that smells like smoke and peppermint. Loki is taller than you are - you fit right into the curve of his neck, and his long curls curtain you in a bubble of warmth and content.

“Promise,” You say, but it comes out unintelligible, and Loki’s hands are running, so gently, over your skin.

“What was your plan?” You ask him, forcing it out of your body.

“Hush,” Loki says, “Later.”

There might not be any later, you think. Not like this.

***

In the hotel room, an ocean of scattered pages and ceiling mold and blessed privacy, you balance, cross-legged, on the bed. The wind blows wet and cold from an earlier rain through the busted out window. You have managed this out of sheer stubborn-ness, because it is the most that Loki allowed you to do. You’d passed out, twice, on the journey back - he had magicked you there, though it had taken a considerable amount of effort that you weren’t sure you really deserved - and had immediately propped you up on the pillows and stooped to ruffle through his suitcase, emerging not long after with binding tape, cat-gut thread, and a needle so sharp you could feel it slicing your flesh. You had opened your mouth to protest, but Loki had silenced you with a glare that could fell Director Fury. So you had gone quiet, and caved, letting him kneel over you on the distinctly lumpy mattress and begin inspecting your wounds. It had taken a few tries and a Please to convince him to let you sit on your own, and it hurt much more than the manner in which he’d arranged you. You were starting to, slightly, regret it.

“You don’t have to do this,” You say, pulling it from bleeding lips. He shushes you with a harsh, stern tut. “You’re not my mother,” You tell him.

“You could have died,” Loki says. There’s a snarling undercurrent to it that you can’t even start dissecting. “What were you thinking?” He asks. It is easier, though still painful, for you to answer him - he had used nearly half of his Thor-limited magic reserve to perform a basic stasis spell on your injuries, but the spell wouldn’t last forever. You’ll need stitches, he’d said, choking it out like he was the hurt one when he’d seen the number the Cobra’s blade had done to your arm.

“I’ve had worse,” You say, grinning weakly.

“Are you lying to me?” He asks you, with the tone of someone who’s distinctly not in the mood for joking.

“I thought,” You say. Steel yourself. “I thought you weren’t going to do what needed to be done. So I - Did it myself.”

“What needed to be done.” Loki says, enunciating every word.

“We couldn’t let him walk away,” You say, meeting his eyes. Emerald, clouded with fury. You don’t let yourself flinch from that anger. You don’t let yourself run from your choice. “You know what he would have done.”

“I don’t,” Loki says. “I know nothing. I know - I know that you think that your life means so little I wouldn’t care if you were gone. That I could - Live, without you.”

That’s… different.

“And I know,” Loki continues, “That I told you to trust me, and I meant it.”

“I do,” You say. There is no hesitation. “I trust you - Loki. Of course I trust you. It’s not - it wasn’t -“

“Stop talking,” He snaps. Gentles, when you jerk your head away, blink back a fresh wave of tears. “You need rest,” He says. “And - This is. This is going to hurt.”

You nod.

“Best get it over with, then.”

“You should keep your eyes closed,” He says.

“No! I want - I need to look.” You bring your eyes up to your arm, which he’s settled onto bed’s chewed, scratchy quilt without you realizing, but Loki tilts your head up with a barely-there graze of his fingers, achingly gentle to avoid aggravating your swollen jaw. He holds your gaze for a long time. Doesn’t look mad, anymore.

“Are you sure?” He asks you. Like all of this could be over with, if you wanted.

“How bad it could it be?” You ask back.

The injury is horrendous. You’d thought - honest-to-God, you’d thought the pain was terrible, but you weren’t ready for what your arm has become. The line of the wound runs in a craggy jigsaw from just under your shoulder to the tip of your elbow. Small wonder you can’t move it, can barely think through it at all.

“Y/N?” Loki asks, “Are you -“

“Fine,” You say. Blink, and your body knows pain. Try not to let how scared you are show, when you look back up at Loki. The Pink Cobra’s dead. You shouldn’t be scared, anymore. “It’s really bad, isn’t it?”

Loki sighs. Long and low and sad.

“Will I have to - “

“Bite,” Loki says, and shoves something - the sleeve of his shirt, crusted in blood which you realize, sickeningly, is yours - into your mouth. “It’ll help.”

It doesn’t, but he holds your hand through it, hushing you through the pain with furrowed eyebrows, thread and needle flying deftly through skin, air, skin again. His fingers move precisely, deliberate, quick, and when, on one stitch, you audibly whimper, he pauses to lean down and press a soft, utterly unexpected kiss to your hairline. You are unable to fully express how much it means to you, so you do the next best thing and kiss him yourself, pressing him back once he’s finished the last of his stitches and breathing all the the words you can’t say into him. You press every fear and gratitude and lingering nerve into the warmth of his lips, wending your fingers through his dark hair despite the pangs of agony still thrumming through every inch of your body. Your face hurts, but the kiss is all you’ve ever needed and more, and Loki is so, so gentle with you, pulling away with creased eyebrows and a look of genuine concern.

“I wanted to,” You tell him, mustering all of your strength. “It didn’t hurt.”

“Stop,” He tells you, voice cracking, “Stop lying.”

“I’m not,” You say. “I wanted to, Loki, I did.”

“And you wanted to -“

“No.” You are vehement about it, for a broken-ribbed, broken-jawed, freshly-stitched person coming off the high of his teeth and his tongue. “Not that, I swear, never that.”

“Why did you do it, then?” Loki asks. He has steepled his fingers under his chin, and his narrowed eyes pierce through you to the soul. You couldn’t lie to this man, you think, if your life depended on it.

You know that you have to tell him, this time. Really tell him. You don’t.

“”Why didn’t you use your magic?”

“You know why,” He says, and you do. You’d remembered it as the white pill turned to white powder in your gums, as the Pink Cobra’s knife had carved its way into your flesh. Thor had put a set limit on it, as condition of Loki’s release - Proof, he had said, We can trust you. Loki had thought to save it for later, that you wouldn’t need him right then. He had thought you’d talk them out, to safety.

You’d failed him.

“You didn’t,” He tells you, voice raw. He goes to grip your chin, to force you to listen to him, but with a glance and ill-concealed wince at your purpled jaw he thinks better of it. “You think that you failed me? You let yourself be - be beaten and stabbed - just so people you’ve never met in your life wouldn’t die, and you call that a failure?” He runs a hand through his hair. Bites back a snarl. Drops your arm. “I need you to listen to me,” Loki says, “Very, very carefully. You’re going to tell me why now, love. And then we’re going to fix it.”

You raise an eyebrow. Worse than he does, you’re aware.

“Sleep,” He amends, with a pointed look at the bed underneath you, “And then we’re going to fix it.”

“There’s only one bed,” You tell him, “And I feel like I just got run over by a truck.”

Loki huffs, a puff of warm air that you feel, from how close he still is. A grin twitches at the edge of his lips. It sets off sparks inside you.

“I thought -“ You say. Shake your head, and restart. “You would have let the Pink Cobra attack. You would have let him just walk away, and I couldn’t just - let that happen.”

“Enlightening.”

“No,” You tell him, “I mean it. I couldn’t - I’m not - I’m not worth more than anyone else. We’re the Avengers. It’s our job to save people, Loki.”

He’s regarding you carefully, eyes still narrowed, all vestiges of softness gone from his face. When he opens his mouth, it’s to close it. Form thoughts. Discard them. Exhale.

“My mother once told me,” He finally says, “That I would never know what it meant to be human until I found the person who made me want to bleed the world dry. Take all of its’ suffering, all of its’ cruelty, and leech it out of the very fabric of time, just to keep that person from anguish, from harm.”

“I don’t -“

He holds a hand up. You still.

“She never said they would infuriate me,” Loki says. “She never said they would make me laugh, or smile, or question my sanity on a regular basis. She never said that they’d try and get themselves killed, and that I’d have to watch, and that I would feel like my heart was being ripped from my body and torn to a bloody pulp; that I would make the sky rain blood and fire at the sight of it alone. But she was right about one thing - Many things, but also this. She told me that it wouldn’t matter. That I would - love you - anyway.”

“You don’t,” You say, not daring to hope. It’s an automatic retort.

“Foolish girl,” Loki chides, and you blink back fresh, stinging tears. How long have you wanted to hear Loki say that to you? How many sneaky looks have you stolen in the heat of your missions, just to see his smart mind and tricky magic at work? How many nights have you sat up together, sequestered from your insomnia in a bubble of hard-earned banter and peppermint tea, fighting the tight, coiling urge to push aside your steaming mugs and pull him into your needing?

He could not - he can’t - feel the same.

“Loki,” You say, stumbling over the words, “You can’t - This is - This is me we’re talking about.”

“Is there anyone else here,” Loki asks you, “That I could be talking about?” He seems nonchalant, now, as if this - this cruel fucking joke, when you already feel you’re on fire - is merely a fact of his life. “We’re going to leave this excuse of a town, and get you - proper care. Fix it. Because I will not, on my honor, watch you suffer in pain. But first, you’re going to sleep.”

“There’s only one bed,” You tell him, and feel your resolve as it shatters. You cling to the statement like it’s the last remnant of the girl you were and the woman that you’ll never be, “And the shower doesn’t work. And I’m covered in blood.”

But when you look at Loki, his eyes twinkle, mischievous.

“Will you stay with me?,” You ask him, biting your lip.

“You astound me,” He tells you, and rolls his eyes, and it feels - it feels normal. Good. A tender heat unfurls in your heart like orchid petals in the sun, numbing the persistent ache in your ribcage. “To even think that I would do anything else.”

Later, you will ask him why. Why do you love me?, you will ask, and Loki will hum, low in his throat, curled around you just like this first night; your back pressed into his chest, your legs tangled up hopelessly, his fingers tracing nonsense patterns onto your spine in the dawn-light’s syrupy gold. Because, he will tell you, trailing a line of soft kisses up the scar on your arm - an ugly thing, but it functions, mostly, and only ever seems to hurt on the days when he isn’t there - I was given no choice.

But if you’d had one?”, You will ask, and spin around, propping yourself on your elbow.

You tempt me, He’ll tell you, baring his sharp teeth. Shouldn’t you know better than that?

You will lie there, next to each other, not needing a single word. Because you will know. Because he will have told you, a thousand times, a thousand ways, exactly how he feels about you.

Tonight, though, isn’t that night. It takes a moment to get settled in his hold, and the rain spits and drums against what glass remains in your window, slicking the carpet with dark, greasy splotches. It figures, you think, that even the rain in this city has the smell and the texture of oil. You feel like a bag of bones, stretched too thin. But safe, in his arms, in a way that you’ve never felt, before now. Loki is with you, you realize. Wrapped around you like a traveler’s cloak, the comforting weight of a slim, balanced blade at your side in a fight. He is cool, around your afraid. Warm, where his clever fingers whine and needle their way through your skin to your heart.

“I hate you,” You tell him, “You know that?”

Loki laughs, a deep, rumbling purr.

“Go to sleep.”

#picture1000wordswc #pic 4 #loki/reader #female reader #crack #so much crack #just a lot of references to bad memes and cringe movies that turns into all the angst #because for some reason i’m like this #guess which character from another popular franchise i based my crack villain off #soundtrack to this was 800 percent mouth moods #in all seriousness though huge congrats to @startrekkingaroundasgard #you deserve all the love #unfortunately i showed my love by writing insane crack fic but HEY #loki is in it so hopefully that makes up for the c r i n g e

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nightswithkookmin · 3 years

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Goldy I never thought I would reach out to any Jikook blog but after your last post I have to. I am an east asian american and trans. I have never spoken on this issue, commented or posted about this. I am a Jikook supporter but sometimes Jikook supporting blogs don't feel like the friendliest place. I want to thank you for changing my opinion on that. It is an insult to BTS to say Jikook don't know they seem gay or that they don't know what gay looks like. It is an insult to fans like me to say it would be OK to do the things they do if they were cisgendered straight men. I personally saw a few people say or dance around this and they got intimidated by big blogs for it. I would never name names because I beleive in free speech and the right of people to express themselves, as long as it isn't hate speech. Supporting lgbt people and making sure they don't feel endangered is MORE IMPORTANT THAN STANNING A KPOP BAND and I say this as a 4 year long bts and Jikook stan. So many people don't want to touch this issue and I understand why.

But thank you for supporting ACTUAL lgbt people as well as bts and showing stubborn people that BTS mean gay rights when they say gay rights.

I don't know why but this Ask made me cry...

I've been reading it over and over for the past two days and each time I feel humbled by it. Thanks so much for sharing this with me.

I think the era of the obsessed 'kids' and '13 year old shippers' in this space is coming to an end. I think it's time for a more nuanced mature conversation on what it means to ship and stan our faves in today's sociopolitical climate.

Let's intellectualize shipping and use it as a vehicle for social change not just pleasure. Sabotaging political hashtags is a start. Trending and donating to BLM is equally important. Fighting for gay rights and recognition is the next step and a natural progression from here- and about damn time!

Gone are the days where celebrities and idols were immune to accountability and personal responsibility. We live in a world where everyone is required to be converstant in and sensitive to social issues. Awareness is woven into our collective consciousness and for some of us we cannot divorce that from our pleasure receptors.

Hate to quote my pastor but, 'As a kid, I spoke, thought and reasoned like a kid. As I grew up, chilee darling, I put my ghetto ways aside. You feel me?' Lol. Yea, my pastor hood like that. Lol.

The fact of the matter is, BTS has a higher mature demographics now. Majority of us grew with them, if not past them. They are not seventeen anymore, Jin is almost thirty, the youngest in the group is past twenty three and majority of their fanbase are breaching Young Adult well into Adulthood and beyond.

We simply cannot view them with the same lens anymore. If we did, we would be infantilizing them if not enabling them.

We ought to be able to have certain conversations that reflect our age, hearts, backgrounds, experience, values and beliefs.

We can't sit behind our television sets and smart phone screens in this day and age and assume BTS sat through a performance like this and did not for a second think about what it meant, why the crowd cheered at certain moments or even understand the impact, message and intent behind it- especially not when Halsey, an openly bisexual woman and advocate for LGBTG rights is an acquaintance of thiers.

I don't know how a fraction of this fandom can assume BTS would have a collaboration of this nature and not know anything about the gay rights discourse or what queer baiting is or not consider how their actions may or may not be contributing to the marginalization of persons as these- to not have agency and personal responsibility or empathy.

JK cannot stan a gay artist such as Troye Sivan and divorce his music from his sexuality because it flows from it. Not when Troye has openly spoken about the struggles he went through as a closeted gay man, coming out and how that affected his mental health.

JK knows what gay is, he is aware of the struggles queer people face on a daily. His decision to cover, license and recommend songs by this artist is a deliberate act coming from a place of being informed on the matter.

Jimin knows. RM knows. Suga knows.

BTS cannot prepare a speech like this while oblivious to the plight of the LGBTQ plus community. I refuse to believe that simply because it's not true. Anyone who says otherwise is a scammer. Lol.

And I think they are intelligent enough to have cognisance of the fact majority of the world view certain aspects of their home culture as problematic and non-progressive and that this same world is watching them and what they do in this space matters.

They are part of the conversation. And it's in their interest to present themselves as queer a queer friendly band and company by distinctifying themselves from these 'traditional' Kpop bands.

I believe they know that being woke gives them a competitive advantage as MCs and advocates for the youth in today's world.

I believe they are aware certain things in their 'fan service culture' doesn't fly in the space they compete in and want to compete in. They are competing and rubbing shoulders with top LGBTQ plus advocates, sharing seats with them at awards, standing next to them- they best to look sharp.

It's obtuse for anyone to fall on the 'culture' rhetoric to excuse certain behaviors of their idols when actual queer people from and within that same culture fight against it.

Most S. koreans I know and have come across complain about their 'culture' and some even harbor strong resentments against this whole fanservice culture.

Holland, an openly gay Idol from South Korea, has equally spoken out against the 'fan service' culture prevalent within Kpop on several occasions and laments how it depoliticizes queerness and affects actual queer people within S.K.

And isn't it funny that the same conservative Christian population who strongly oppose homosexuality in S.K often lead online campaigns against Jikook for 'promoting homosexuality' because of certain fanservice and skinship they do?

If skinship is normal and fanservice is culture, why does conservative S.K keep pushing back against it? It's their culture uno?! Lmho.

Queer south Koreans and conservative Christians hate fanservice culture and yet here we are using their culture to defend it as if it's all black and white. Lmho.

Did they or did they not see South Korean's reactions to this performance by Jikook? The mixed feelings most had about it?

Men can nibble on men's ear but God forbid they toss them in the air and catch em💀

South Koreans are not a monolith. Their culture is nuanced like any culture. It's not static and not clear cut black and white either.

It's one thing to respect other's culture, it's another to perpetuate it in ignorance. Perpetuating their culture and being religious about it does not allow for the dynamism inherent in their culture.

Troye Sivan talked about how he'd stop in the middle of his concerts and performances upon seeing the hyper fangirls in the front row and then think to himself, 'I know they know I'm gay, so why are they still here...'

And this was before he came out.

Jikook know we know they are queer or that we think of them as queer. When Jimin talks about 'those that love me for me' he knows exactly what he is talking about or rather who he is talking to- it's not these hets I'm afraid.

Troye also talked about being privileged because he lived in a rather queer friendly neighborhood where everyone is gay and so he'd always felt safe coming out.

Isn't that what JK is doing?

Now this is a person who's without a doubt had a lot of influence on JK in his early formative years as an Idol right down to his decision to move into a much queer friendly neighborhood of Itaewon.

They know we know. Jikook is gay.

Thankfully, there are reports of a rising number of LGBTQ plus in South Korea, a lot of allies, a lot of queer folks coming out and a lot of companies opening up to working with gay idols and aspiring idols.

It's such a relief but a lot of work still needs to be done and I stand with them on behalf of Jikook and any queer folk in SK.

My sister is helping me reach out to an LGBTQ plus advocate from Seoul for an interview for my blog. If everything goes well, I'd love for her to share her thoughts on queer passing, queer baiting and fan service within Kpop and how that affects LGBTQ youth in South K.

It's a conversation I'm really passionate about and interested in.

I love me some ships, but I also love me some queer advocacy and human rights uno? Lol.

Thing is, I may quit BTS one day, but I can never quit being me. Being human. Always put the human first is my motto.

Oh and I hear people are plotting to cancel me? Chilee. Y'all do that but:

Let it echo.

Signed,

GOLDY

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mrs-nate-humphrey · 3 years

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(submission) Hi! So this started out as an ask, but as always, it got way too unwieldy for the ask box. And I’ll flat out state that while I am studying public policy and urban planning, I am by no means an expert on gentrification or on Brooklyn specifically - both are still topics I’m actively learning about. That said, I think there’s a couple of reasons people make a “thing” out of the Humphreys’ loft. For starters, it’s an incredibly easy way to undercut Dan and Jenny’s experiences amongst their peers by pointing out that they’re not really poor, so why are they complaining so much?? This, of course, ignores the facts that 1. they never claim to actually be poor, 2. the show never suggests that they really are - only otherwise classist characters like Blair do - and, 3. just because they were being bullied for a bullshit reason, it… doesn’t actually make the bullying any less bad? In fact, most bullying is over trivial nonsense - pointing that out doesn’t make it any less harmful to the bullied! Nonetheless, for people who dislike the Humphreys and are tired of their “whining”, it’s an easy rhetorical device to bludgeon them with. Besides that though, it’s largely a projection of today’s Brooklyn onto the 2007 Brooklyn the show is set in, and more importantly, the 1990s Brooklyn Rufus started raising his family in. It’s true that if you tried to purchase or even rent a space like the one Dan and Jenny grew up in now, you would need to basically be a millionaire, full stop. But acting as though a middle class family would NEVER have been able to live in a property like that isn’t just an overgeneralization - it’s simply ahistorical. Now, to be clear, Brooklyn as a whole started gentrifying all the way back in the 1960s, and has done so in periodic waves. Williamsburg in particular slowly began gentrifying starting in the 1970s - although this process didn’t reach a critical mass until the late 1990s, with a specific turning point coming in 2005. Looking to take advantage of the influx of young professionals and Manhattanites moving to the area and increasingly hungry for waterfront property, the New York City Council introduced a mass rezoning effort that transformed a great number of the neighborhoods’ then numerous manufacturing plants and warehouses into expensive, high-end residential buildings and condominiums. This rezoning process ended up pushing out many of the same working class residents that had historically been the lifeblood of the community - many of them unfortunately and unsurprisingly POC (specifically, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Hasidic Jews). This wave of mass gentrification is what MADE Williamsburg the poster child for gentrification in NYC - up until this point you still had a fairly vibrant working class community living there (even amongst all of the incoming artists and hipsters, yes). Assuming Rufus bought the loft in the early 90s around the time Dan was a baby - back when he still had a semi-relevant music career - it would have been right on the cusp of an earlier rezoning effort that came in the late 90s - one that saw the median price of a home in Williamsburg skyrocket by an average of 60%. Arguably, the Humphrey family were THEMSELVES gentrifiers (albeit unintentionally), given that they pretty damn well fit the profile of “young artists looking for affordable housing that end up attracting real estate investors, that then make the area unaffordable”. Admittedly, the history of gentrification in Brooklyn isn’t exactly common knowledge, and I’ve significantly oversimplified it here - but a lot of the “how could the Humphreys live in Williamsburg when Williamsburg is so expensive???” discourse is coming from people who either have never lived in the city and know it only from television, or have lived in New York but are young enough that they don’t remember Williamsburg ever NOT being the textbook example of gentrification. It’s interesting to me how much I’ve noticed this particular line of argument increase over time - I think a lot of it is coming from younger viewers who

simply don’t realize how recent this gentrification still is, historically speaking. Finally, there’s the much fairer point that is made, and that is that the interior of the Humphreys’ loft looks MASSIVE compared to what it would be like in reality, a point which I’ll happily concede. There’s no doubt that the TV set of the loft is depicted as being incredibly nice and spacious - just look at those high ceilings! But there is also a very simple, practical reasoning behind this that does not involve the Humphreys lying about their economic status - it is very hard to film with a full camera rig in cramped spaces, so the set designers made the loft bigger than it actually would be in real life. That is why almost all TV apartments look unrealistically large - it’s not that writers don’t understand the areas and lifestyles they’re writing about, it’s that production crews often sacrifice accuracy to make their jobs a little easier. Anyways, hoped this helped a bit! For reference (and in case you’re interested in the subject and would like more information), a lot of my dates and data concerning gentrification in Williamsburg came from this very informative profile that Macaulay Honors College did on the subject - they’re actually in the process of studying a bunch of different neighborhoods in NYC and charting the specific history of how they became gentrified. It’s really a very interesting (albeit depressing) lens through which to study New York history, in my opinion.

#submission #meta #i am yet again not changing anything because this is pretty much a perfect post lkdfhlkhg

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pocket-clown · 4 years

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Arthur learning that his S/O is pregnant may include;

// original request: Hi, I have a request. Can you do "Arthur learn that you are pregnant" (excuse me if this is NSFW idk) I like your blog by the way ;)

Not NSFW at all, thank you for the request anon!! I know jack about pregnancy so I had to Google things like symptoms and whatnot so I apologize for any inaccuracies :-))

Obvious content warning for pregnancy, symptoms of pregnancy, minor angst.

His face is unreadable, the second he hears the news.

You’d spent the last month and a half or so battling an array of symptoms; at first, it was nothing more than noticing that your period never came when it was supposed to - something you initially shrugged off because hey, it wasn’t always regular.

But then you started feeling tired. Not just sleepy, but as if you were perpetually fatigued, regardless of how much sleep you got. Even if you spent the day lounging around the apartment and resting in bed, it was like it took every ounce of energy and drive that you had to get yourself going at times, and you felt that you could’ve slept for hours, had it not been for the responsibilities and obligations that an adult life came with.

It was then, about four weeks after your missed period that you woke up sometime around 1:20 in the morning with some of the worst nausea that you had ever experienced, just barely making it to the restroom in time. Arthur had been by your side the entire time, and he practically pleaded for you to go to the doctor - it was flu season, after all - but in the back of your mind, something was nagging at you, telling you that something more was going on.

So the next day, on your commute home from work you made a stop at Helm’s Pharmacy. Arthur had a prescription that was ready to be picked up and you figured that it would save him some time for you to just get it yourself, but you also grabbed a few of the best pregnancy tests that your small amount of cash could afford, praying that the pharmacist wouldn’t mention it the next time you came in with Arthur.

Once you had actually tested yourself, the double bars on each of the four tests confirming your suspicions, you felt your heart stop.

How was Arthur going to react? You two certainly had talked about having children before, and he was receptive to the idea - he even seemed excited about it - but those late night conversations and discussions were always in the future tense, when the two of you were better off financially, and maybe even out of Gotham.

The fact that you weren't sure how Arthur would react coupled with knowing that you two may not even be able to support a child at the time kept you from telling him for about a week, and once you finally broke the news to him you didn’t even bother trying to beat around the bush.

“Arthur, I’m pregnant.” You’d said out of the blue while the two of you were cuddled up on the couch during one of Murray’s commercial breaks. His hand, which had been combing through your hair as you rested your head on his shoulder, stopped, and you could feel his breath hitch. When you’d looked up at him, you saw that his dark brows were furrowed ever so slightly, and it seemed like he was almost confused about what you had just said - or like he didn’t understand.

“Are… really?” He asked after a moment, his voice not above a soft whisper. It took him a second, but after a moment he was able to pry his eyes away from the television to turn and look you in your own; searching for anything to indicate if you were just joking around, or if you were actually serious.

“Remember how I started feeling really sick a bit ago? I took a few tests a few days ago, and... they were all positive.” You said, moving your hand to sweep away the tuft of hair that had fallen across his forehead.

Arthur’s lack of response was nothing short of concerning to you, and for a moment you thought that he was upset, or even angry, with you. His green eyes were flitting all over the room, seemingly unable to focus on anything as his mind tried to fully process what you had just told him.

Unbeknownst to you, though, Arthur wasn’t mad - he wasn’t even upset. What he was, though, was frightened; though yes, the thought of having a child with you filled his heart with the kind of warm love he never in his life thought he’d get to experience, it was also one of the most freighted, daunting ones to ever cross his mind. He often wondered if he’d even make a remotely good father - something you’d always assure him that he would - but he still had his doubts; with all of his struggles - his condition, his mental illnesses, and his own lack of a father figure, to name a few - the last thing Arthur wanted was to end up a poor excuse for a father. His mind was running a million miles a second, and if it wasn’t for the soft touch of your hand brushing against his cheek, he would’ve sat in the same spot for the rest of the night as his mind forced him to go over every single worst case scenario it could possibly come up with.

“Arthur? Are you okay? I’m sorry if I upset you, I meant to tell you sooner but -”

“Upset? Sweetheart, why would I be upset with you about this…?” He asked, and you hadn’t any idea that he had been trembling until his hands came to your face, cupping your cheeks so he could pull you close enough so he could rest his forehead against your own. “Are you sure it’s me you want to have a baby with…?”

You knew that his question was rhetorical; it wasn’t uncommon for Arthur to agonize over his anxieties and fears regarding the relationship, questioning if you really were 100% completely and utterly sure that you wanted to be with him, of all people. He’d worry that he was completely imagining you and your voice and your touch, or that he’d somehow tricked you into being with him, even - but each and every anxiety was hushed with kisses from you. Though you knew that you couldn’t do or say anything to completely rid Arthur of said anxieties and worries, so ingrained within him were they, you did everything you could to be there for him whenever they came to surface and needed dealing with.

“Yes! And I mean it, Arthur - I want this - and I want it with you.” You said, and he hummed in response, his forehead still against yours as his thumbs stroked the backs of your hands as he held them in his own

“I’ll work harder - For us.” He spoke after a minute of silence, and his arms came to wrap around you, pulling you tightly against him.

It’s then, with you in his arms, that the reality of the situation really hits Arthur and he can’t stop himself from tearing up. He was scared, and so were you; you’d both have to work extra hours (you, for as long as you could, until you were too far along), neither of you have ever had children before, and the weight of knowing that you’d soon be supporting one, as well eventually need a larger residence, the costs, the fact that you’d have another life in your hands - it was all so, so much to deal with that neither of you could stop yourselves from shedding tears.

But you were together, and the two of you had made it through a lot together, already.

This sweet, attentive man always makes sure you’re as comfortable as possible.

If you thought that his fretting about you in the past was over the top, get ready because now he rarely ever leaves your side.

As the months go by and your tummy gets bigger, Arthur loves to rest his hands against it, his fingers sliding underneath the hem of your shirt so he can feel your skin. If you’re subtle about it, late at night during those nights you can’t sleep, sometimes you can catch him talking ever so gently and so sweetly to you and your unborn child, unaware that you’re awake. He goes on about how much he loves you, how you love him, how he loves the baby, how you love the baby, how soon you’ll be a family. He talks about everything he’s going to do with the two of you, what he wants to do, his hopes, his fears - all of it. Whether the soft, shaky tone of his voice is from his tender, sleep deprived state or if he’s quietly crying from the sheer, overwhelming amount of love, fear, excitement, and utter disbelief he feels you don’t know, but what you do know is that his words are genuine.

He goes with you to every single doctor’s appointment that you have; every single check up, every single exam, everything. Even if you’re not far along enough that it’s tough to get around, he still insists that you sit and rest so he can take care of chores around the apartment. He tries his hardest to improve his cooking skills, preferring that you eat as best as you can so that you’re as healthy as possible - he doesn’t want you falling ill. He keeps his smoking away from you, as well; he’ll literally leave the apartment, regardless of what time of day it is, to smoke outside so you aren’t exposed to it. He doesn’t want to put you or the baby at any sort of risk.

You two will have to console each other very frequently. Arthur, at times, has trouble fully coming to terms with what’s going on; never in his life did he ever expect he’d have a child with someone (nor did he think he’d even have a successful relationship), and the weight of the situation tends to wear down on his already fragile mental state at times. Lots of reassurance that everything will be okay, that he is capable of being a good father, that you’ll be by his side, that there are resources that can help the two of you if you need it, and so on, will be needed.

Regardless of whether it’s hormones, your own fears and anxieties, tears of excitement, whatever it is, he’s by your side whenever you need him to be. You’re in tears because your craving for that very specific type of donut from a market that’s halfway across Gotham is so strong? He’s putting on his shoes, fully prepared to go out and get it for you, despite it being 11 at night and pouring rain. You’re scared because you’re wondering how capable of a mother you’ll be, and if the child will even love you? Your face is cupped in his hands, his thumbs brushing away your tears as he tells you that he knows you; he sees how strong and how loving you are in your day to day life, and there’s not a single doubt in his mind regarding how wonderfully you’ll do as a mother.

There’s absolutely no denying that it’s a tough time for the two of you, but the two of you make it work.

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taglist;

@tahliamalfoydepp @tsukiakarinobara @smol-nari (let me know if you’d like to be added!)

#arthur fleck #arthur fleck x reader #arthur fleck x you #joker #joker 2019 #joker x reader #joker x you #joker 2019 x reader #joker 2019 x you #arthur fleck headcanon #joker headcanons #mine

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beyondthecourts · 4 years

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WGST 320: Week 7 Discussion Post

#1. Was there a point when you consciously realized how prevalent “white invisibility” is in our culture?

The term “white invisibility” is described along with “white privilege” in Race and Social Media by Theresa Senft and Safiya Umoja Noble. Essentially, whiteness is the standard in the United States; so, as long as you are white, race is never really an issue (racial profiling, employment discrimination, etc. are not things that impact white people negatively). I wanted to address this question because I remember a specific moment in which I realized the extent of this white standard: I was sitting in the movie theater watching “Black Panther” when it first came out. About 30 minutes into the movie, I realized something was very different about this film; it took me a while to realize that it was because there was only one non-black actor in the entire film. This is virtually NEVER the case, as minorities are usually hailed as the “token” character in most franchises, catered to very narrowly drawn stereotypes. However, as a non-black minority myself, the representations of my gender and race are more “invisible” than they would be if I was a black woman. While my identity is not commonly represented, I am able to identify with white characters in movies and television shows (an example of “honorary” or “approximate whiteness,” as Nakamura puts it). In other words, when I grew up, I was able to relate to a lot of portrayals on the screen, whereas the unique struggles that target the black and brown communities are rarely seen in popular media. It wasn’t until I watched a blockbuster movie that homed in on the racial politics of entertainment, that I consciously thought about the covert forms of the white standard in media.

#2. Has the emergence of social media created a new forum to respond to mainstream depictions of race?

Yes! The “Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls” video on YouTube is a great example of the positive discourse that has materialized out of some of the problematic, yet mainstream ideas of race. In my previous anecdote about the “Black Panther” movie, I wanted to touch on the fact that Hollywood finally invited its audience to identify with the gaze of a black filmmaker, and the portrayals of a black cast. By the same token, the popularity surrounding content on “black Twitter,” or the SWGSBG video, shows that the diversity in viewpoints and storytelling is growing.

#3. How did the Pew Research Center create “Asian Americans?”

Senft and Noble reference a few Pew Reports that coined Asian Americans as the “most wired” people in the United States, or the most “educated” and “successful” minority group. In the process of determining this, the Pew Center was accused of cherry-picking certain races (Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, or Japanese), and ignoring the one million undocumented Asian immigrants that arrived with less privileged circumstances and access to resources. By omitting certain pieces of information and publishing misleading findings like these, institutions are helping to actualize the “model minority” stereotype. This is harmful for non-Asian minorities attempting to enter the United States, because immigration policies are back by misguided “research” that makes it legal to select which immigrants are worthy of being allowed in, and which ones are not. In a way, this situation is similar to the fact that “science” in the 1700’s supported white superiority and colonization during the days of chattel slavery.

#4. How has racial diversity (& the countering sentiment of white superiority) become a tool for economic gains in recent years?

R. Benjamin points out that Netflix and other important platforms have caught wind of the fact that audiences in America are a bit sick of seeing casts that resemble “Seinfeld” in every movie and show. While it doesn’t come as a shock, big companies take advantage of what viewers want to see for the monetary gain at stake. While it is nice to only see advertisements that mirror your exact political views or reflect your values, Benjamin argues that this is a double-edged sword. Those who support making America white again, for example, are probably only seeing all lives matter rhetoric on their timelines. We cannot forget that while “black Twitter” has had its moment, white Nationalists have also been utilizing the digital world to their advantage. In a capitalist world, Netflix and Facebook don’t care about being on the morally correct side of history; they are buying into whatever it is that will maximize their profit margins: and that simply means giving people what they want to see.

Benjamin, R. (2019). Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge: Polity, 41-88.

Senft, T., Noble, U. N. (2014). Race and Social Media. The Social Media Handbook, 107-125.

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dailyaudiobible · 3 years

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04/09/2021 DAB Transcript

Deuteronomy 33:1-29, Luke 13:1-21, Psalms 78:65-72, Proverbs 12:25

Today is the ninth day of April welcome to the daily audio Bible I am Brian it is a joy and a privilege to be here with you today around the Global Campfire as we come in out of whatever's going on and move toward ending another one of our weeks together. So, let's dive in. This week we’ve been reading from the Christian Standard Bible. And we are in the book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament. We will conclude the book of Deuteronomy and move into the next book the book of Joshua tomorrow. And, so, like those of you using the Daily Audio Bible app, if you've been checking off your days, yeah, since the beginning of the year, checking off the days as we…as we listen to them, as we move through them, then we will have completed the very first section of the Bible, known as the Torah or the Pentateuch. And, so, we’ll all get our badges, we’ll all get our badges that just kinda helps us keep track of the progress that we’re making. And we can look at all of that progress in the achievements section so that we can see, you know, how much of the Bible, how much of the Old Testament we’ve finished, how much of the New Testament, how much of the whole Bible we’ve concluded and what the different sections that we will be concluding are. So, be aware of that and check it out. I’m looking…I always look forward…so…since we've gotten them last year. So, I’m looking forward to reaching the first milestone on our journey this year. So, that's coming up tomorrow, but this is today. And, so, we have a full reading in the book of Deuteronomy. And today we will read Deuteronomy chapter 33.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the gospel of Luke today Jesus makes commentary on some tragedies that were like local tragedies that had everybody talking, the kinds of stuff that would be on the news, the kinds of stuff that would be posted on social media, the news, the news that had traveled around the countryside and that people were talking about. And they were tragic events and so people were wondering about God's judgment on the…the people involved. And we do this kind of stuff still. You know, if there's a tragic whether event then it's not gonna take too long before people are saying or posting God's judgment on that land or you know for whatever…or if tragedy strikes it’s really really easy to claim God's judgment upon those things or those individuals or we can even just look at people who are suffering and think…well…they’re not living right so of course, you know, this is, you know, God smashing them. We…we can either actually think those things or sort of subtly think those things. And Jesus spoke clearly today about whether or not these kinds of things are the judgment of God. And, so, since we have these thoughts once in a while when we see things happening in the world and wonder about them then we should pay attention to Jesus. And, so, there were two situations. And one of them you can totally understand why people everywhere would be talking and the other one, you can understand why people in the region would be talking. So, there were some Jewish people Galileans, so from the region that Jesus spent most of his life and ministry in. And the Galilee region, this was known for zealotry, this was known for like anti-Roman rhetoric and people that would cause mayhem, like zealots, people that would, you know, try to do guerrilla type tactics to disrupt Rome. This had been going on for a while. And, so, the region was on the radar for the zealotry and some Galilean Jews that were thought to be zealots…and we can call them zealots in a really really nice way but the Romans wouldn’t have thought about them as zealots per se. Like if we want to use modern vernacular they would've looked at them as terrorists because of what they were doing. And they were on the receiving end of it. And it ended up that they're chasing these people and they flee to the temple complex and the Roman soldiers then invade the temple complex of God to get these zealots and they get em’ and they take them out and their blood is spilled in the temple complex where sacrifices to the Lord are happening. And, so, that would for sure get people talking. The other thing was a pool in Jerusalem. The tower in Siloam. It fell down. Like it get became unstable and toppled and killed 18 people. So, if we want to take a step back and just in some sort of way contextualize this so with a more modern understanding, we can picture this. We would just say people had become obsessed with these stories, right? People were obsessed with the news and trying to decipher the news and contemplate and discuss the news and interpret the news and even muse about God's involvement in the news. I think that's something that we could say that that's some…like that's understandable, that's familiar. And, so, these people are wondering, were the people that died, were they greater sinners? Did they deserve this kind of punishment? And that also kind of sounds familiar. Like these are the kinds of things that can get talked about and even obsessed over. So, I quote from Jesus then in response to the scenario. Jesus said, “do you think that these Galileans were more sinful than all the other Galilean's because they suffered these things or those 18 that the tower in Siloam fell on and killed? Do you think they were more sinful than all the other people who live in Jerusalem?” His response to both of those situations is this, “no. I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish as well.” So, Jesus’ commentary on these scenarios is that, no, these people were not more sinful, they were not judged. That's not why the tragedy happened. We can obsess about the story and try to dissect the story and throw up all kinds of talking heads on the television get all kinds of experts. We can do all this but underneath it all is something far more important. We're all headed toward death if we don't repent. That's permanent. So, in many ways Jesus is pulling people away from all of the fanfare of the very glossy high-profile stories that can steel days and weeks of our lives as we obsess over them. We can miss the greater challenge of keeping our eyes on our own lives and being aware of the terrain of our own hearts, being responsible for our own relationship, owning our relationship with God and not focusing all of our attention on everything and everyone else. We have been given this life to steward. This is the life we should be stewarding.

Prayer:

Jesus as we approach the end of another week we confess it's very easy for us to deflect, to deflect blame, to get distracted by all kinds of other things so that we don’t have to face ourselves in the mirror, so that we don’t have to actually open our hearts and see what's there, so that we don’t actually have to do the work of opening ourselves to You and spending time with You and allowing You in, into the basement, into the attic, into all the places of our hearts that motivate all of the actions of our lives. And, so, we’re taking this on board. We invite Your Holy Spirit to help us to continually consider this every time that we’re pulled to an assumption or an opinion about something that's going on that’s juicy or that we just want to waste hours on. Help us to return, to return to our own hearts, to invite You to speak to us about our own lives, to allow the voice of wisdom to give us the counsel about the way we should go as opposed to trying to figure out the way everybody else should go and interpret everybody else's action. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

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If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if the mission here to bring the spoken word of God read fresh every day and offered out into the world to anyone who will listen to it anywhere on this planet any time of day or night, and to build community around the rhythm so that we know we’re not in this alone, not…not just the journey through the Bible or the solitary quiet devotions, but also life, we’re going through a year of life together. And the table has been set. All we have to do is show up. If that makes a difference in your life, then thank you for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner, or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

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And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

James the schoolteacher from LA you were the first DABber I ever met in person. I had been praying for you and your wife to be blessed with a child. God answered your prayers. I got to meet your wife and your first child. My heart is broken for you right now. I just want you to remember that you're loved and cared for. My stepson is going through the exact same issues that you are right now. I want to give you Isaiah 43:2. When you pass through these waters of threatening divorce remember I will be with you and through the rivers they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire you shall not be burned nor shall the flames scorch you. Isaiah 43:2. James hang on. Hang on and welcome back to the DABbers. We missed you. Don't be far. Keep in touch. This is Karen from Hemet. I don't know if you remember me reaching out to you at one of the meetings that Brian and Jill did in...in the LA area. God bless you. I'll be keeping you in my prayers.

Hey DAB family this is T from Florida. This is my first time calling but I am definitely a longtime listener. I've been listening…I think I've been tuned in since like 2006 maybe 07. It's been a long time but to be honest I fall on and then I fall off and then back and forth. So…but I did feel compelled to call today because of James from LA. I think he goes by the name James the teacher or something like that. I can't remember but he needs prayer and I've been praying for you James. You were saying that you've been having suicidal thoughts and that you've befoer…you’ve had them before but they are really bad now because of what you're going through in your marriage and you know, I'm just…I wanna send love your way and…and to tell you, you know, you're needed, you're so important. God created you for a reason. He put you here on this earth because you are a part of his family. You're His child and He adores you. He took the time to create you and put you together and knit you so perfectly and intricately and He blessed you with children who need you. So, we're praying for you. We love you and we know I'm looking forward to hearing your praise report from you. I'll continue to pray for you and for everybody who…who comes on here asking for prayer requests. Love you guys. Talk to you soon. Bye.

Daily Audio Bible family this is Troy in Amarillo TX. Please, please pray for my mom. She was in a really bad car accident yesterday, Easter Sunday and is not doing very good at all. I need prayers that she can recover from this. Thank you so much.

Hi family this is Happy to be in Colorado. I've called it just two other times. I'm a long-time listener but I have just started calling recently because my marriage is in crisis. If you followed the DAB friends on Facebook, you might have seen my post. I'm just so desperate for your prayers. I'm so desperate for hundreds of people to be shouting out to the heavens on behalf of me and my husband. My husband Chris has said that he is done with God, he's walking away. A lot of that is just, you know, he's not happy with where our life is, and he blames God and feels like God has cursed him. And with that he is ready to end our marriage. And I'm just so broken. Like I've never felt the depth of pain like this before. It's excruciating and I just would really covet your prayers for Chris.

Hi this is Victoria Soldier just calling to pray for some of the DABbers. I wanted to pray for Jermaine the brother whose incarcerated in New York. I just want to pray for him for strength. I want to pray for him for guidance. I want to pray for him for the victory in whatever the challenge is that got him there so that when…when he's free and while…while he is free in a month that God can bless him tremendously. I want to pray for Susie. I want to pray for her and her and her husband who...who…who have the orphans in Haiti. I want to pray for the little baby Elijah, that like a miracle for his little brain in his little life. I wanna pray for also for James, our teacher and her wife. His wife is asking for a divorce. Don't…don’t just take it as…as…as cash James. I want you to continue to pray that God will help her to see what she has in you and that the two of you can fix it. We want to pray for a miracle. God can still work miracles and no matter what hold on because the babies need you. And you have a plan, God has a plan for your life and…and He can't fulfill it if…if the enemy uses you to do anything that is rash. Just continue to trust Him. I've been through a divorce myself and I know how challenging it can be but…but I know one thing, that God can bring us through. I just wanted to say that to you my brother and encourage you. And I want to pray for…for…for those who are going through depression. I want to pray for those who are looking for jobs and I want to pray for those who are looking for spouses and…and want God to bless them with a spouse that is…that is right for them. Father we just lift you up we praise your name we magnify your name. Lord you have your way Lord in the name of Jesus you have your way in the…in the…

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babbushka · 5 years

Text

Mind & Soul (3/10)

The story of how one man fell out of love and into it again

Charlie (Marriage Story) x Reader

word count 5k ; warnings: nsfw, mild injury, Infidelity, Affairs/Cheating, Angst, language

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The thrill is gone The thrill is gone I can see it in your eyes I can hear it in your sighs Feel your touch and realize The thrill is gone

A month ago, the divorce proceedings had started.

Which Charlie thought was kind of messed up, considering Nicole had left him six months prior to that.

Six months out in Los Angeles fucking California, six months playing actress in shitty independent theater productions, six months getting tanned and bleached blonde and and and.

And now she is back, and it’s been a month, and Charlie hates every second of it, just wants it to be over with. The divorce proceedings had been easy, dividing up the stuff, cutting all ties. He had never been so happy, to cut all the ties.

They would sell the house, split the profit 50/50 and all the shit inside it. There had been a prenup, signed and notarized so money wasn’t a concern, and Charlie thanks his lucky fucking stars he had had the foresight to do that, because he knew – somehow he just knew – that Nicole would try and milk him for every penny he had otherwise.

The only thing left was custody.

And that…that had been the big pain in his fucking ass, the thorn in his side, the elephant in the room.

Because after six months of fucking off to LA, she was back, and she wanted her son.

Charlie wasn’t going to just let her take him.

He thinks of you, how you looked that morning, gorgeous, skin warmed with sleep. He wishes he could have married you instead, instead of the cold woman sitting at the other end of the room, standing behind a wooden podium where she’ll try and make every case against him. He wonders what you're doing, it's the middle of the day after all. He imagines you're lounging in the sunlight of your living room, imagines you reading or writing or watching something. He'll call you, he decides, once the statements are done with, once they have a break to prepare their cases.

The judge comes into the room, and everyone stands up. It’s a race to see which of the two is more polite, and Charlie finds himself with his shoulders straight and square before Nicole can even steady herself in her brand new heels, not yet broken in.

She must have bought them special for the trial, and Charlie does his best not to grit his teeth.

The judge has a seat and waves them to sit as well, lawyers shuffling their papers around to try and get organized.

He knows this is only the opening statements, he knows this is only the beginning, but he’s still nervous. So fucking nervous that she’s going to win, going to take everything away from him. He has to take a deep breath, think of you just to calm down.

The judge regards them both, milky blue eyes peering over half moon glasses, and when he speaks it’s with the age and wisdom of someone who has been doing this a long time.

Charlie wonders how many people he helps split up. Wonders how many children he has to decide the fate of. He thinks it can’t be easy.

“You know how I like to start these things?” The judge asks, hands folding into one another as he gives them both a solid look.

“No.” It’s a rhetorical question, but Nicole answers it anyway, something that makes the Judge’s mouth twitch. Charlie can't tell if it was going to be a frown or a smile.

“I like starting them off,” He disregards her comment, “By having each one of you say something nice about one another.”

Well, that certainly isn’t something that Charlie expected, and for a moment his mind races, tries to come up with something, anything.

“Nice.” He asks, less of a question and more of a confused statement.

“Nice.” The judge nods, and Charlie does his best to swallow any sarcastic remarks.

It’s quiet for a moment, a long moment, neither one of them wanting to volunteer to go first. They hated each other now, after all.

This was divorce, after all.

“Mrs. Barber,” The judge prompts, when the silence has gone on for too long, “What do you love about Charlie?”

Charlie doesn’t look at her, doesn’t dare turn his head towards her, just holds his breath and listens. When was the last time she had said anything good to him, about him? He can’t remember, wonders if she even has anything to say, anything real.

Nicole chews the inside of her cheek, no doubt pissed off that this is how it’s starting, especially after their cold greeting only minutes ago.

“What I love about Charlie…” She says, picks at the skin around her nails, speaks clearly but only because she doesn’t want to have to repeat herself, “He loves being a dad, it’s frankly, almost annoying how much he likes it. He cries easily in movies, he’s very competitive. He’s very clear about what he wants. He’s – ”

And her voice breaks there, and Charlie is almost afraid she’ll cry. Such a fucking actor, he thinks, trying to play the sympathy card, everything just some game.

“He’s a great dresser; never looks embarrassing, which is hard for a man.” She offers finally, when she’s collected herself, gotten a grip, when the crocodile tears have absorbed back into her eyes. “He takes all of my moods steadily, and he doesn’t make me feel bad about them. He rarely gets defeated, which, I feel like I always do.”

The judge seems to wait for more, but when none comes, he turns to Charlie.

“Mr. Barber?” He cues, and Charlie has to think, has to really think.

He had loved her once, didn’t he? Had tried to fight for her, a long time ago. He feels foolish for it now, if only he had known, if only he had seen then what he sees now.

“What I love about Nicole.” He starts, sounding too much like he’s reading from a poorly written script, like he’s a kid standing in front of the class about to tell them what he did that summer, “She’s a great dancer, it’s infectious. She is a mother who plays – really plays. She gives great presents, she’s competitive. She knows when to push me and when to leave me alone.”

It’s not nearly as poetic, as well thought out as Nicole’s, but it’s honest.

At least it’s honest.

“That’s it?” The judge asks, and Charlie nods.

“That’s it.” He replies dryly.

He doesn’t care enough to look at Nicole for her reaction.

And with that, it begins, opening statements in full swing. Nicole goes first, because she’s the one who is making the case, she’s the one who is trying to convince them all to take Henry away from him. He still doesn’t quite believe how she has the nerve, but then again, yes he does.

“The only thing that a parent wants is what’s right for their child.” “For a long time, I thought that what was right for Henry, was for me to remain with Mr. Barber, as his wife. About seven months ago, I realized that no, it wasn’t what was right, it was what was easy. So I did the hard thing, and I left, left to try and make something of myself, something that I had been denied for many years, in an attempt to build a better life for me and my son.”

“I believe I’ve finally achieved that. I believe I am finally at a point where I know myself, I know the sort of person I want to be for my son. I am his mother, and I love him very much. I love him very much. And I believe Henry is young enough to still need me, need his mother, in a way that all children do. Not to say that he doesn’t need a father, but, how many children grow up without one and turn out perfectly fine?”

“I left Henry. I left him, and I know that that’s an awful, horrible thing to do. For six months all I thought about was how I was leaving him for him, for the sake of him and his happiness. But I’m his mother. I’m his��I’m his mother.”

And the fucking waterworks are back, of course they are, of course. Charlie sits at his end of the room and he watches her cry, and he feels not a single ounce of remorse or need to comfort her, because he’s seen those tears, seen them up on stage, seen them on television pilots and acting reels.

That’s all that she has to say, apparently, because she’s stepping down, and something awful in Charlie wishes she would trip.

He feels guilty about the thought, feels guilty about a lot of things, and almost has half a mind to apologize out loud, but he doesn’t. They’d think he’s crazy for it, if he did. He wonders if they think he’s crazy anyway.

But it’s moot point, because the judge wants to hear from Charlie, so up to the stand Charlie goes, hand on a book he doesn’t believe in swearing up and down that he’s telling the truth.

It’s a much different view, from the stand. A view that makes his stomach twist, because he’s directly in front of Nicole now, put right in her line of sight.

“Please state your name for the records.” The judge says, and Charlie sits up straight, tries not to let the panic, the anger, the sadness show.

“Charlie Barber, your honor.” He says easily, because that one is easy, at the very least.

“Why are you here?” The judge asks, and this one is easy too.

“To request full legal custody of my son, Henry Barber.” Charlie responds, says the words he’s been practicing for a month now.

“And what makes you think you’re capable of achieving that?” Nicole’s lawyer asks, and this one.

This one is the hard one, this one is the one he doesn’t know how to say, how to go about it without sounding like an asshole.

But for six months he’s been taking care of his son, for six months he’s been the one who was there, and that…that’s got to count for something.

It has to.

“I know the sort of things you want to hear.” Charlie says, shifts around in his seat just a little to try and get more comfortable in this incredibly uncomfortable fucking situation, “I know you want me to tell you I make a lot of money, because I do. I know you want me to tell you that I have a stable and steady job, own my own home, because I do. You already know those things, you have the proof of it in front of you. That doesn’t make me a good parent. That doesn’t make anyone a good parent. Nicole says she loves Henry. I don’t doubt that, but simply loving your child does not make you a good parent to that child.”

“What then, makes you a good parent?” His lawyer asks, and for a moment he lets himself get lost, in the way the past six months have gone.

He remembers the fight, that dream once more, that memory. He remembers the way he scrambled, desperate.

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The nights are cold For love is old Love was grand when love was new Birds were singing, skies were blue Now it don't appeal to you The thrill is gone

He’s standing outside, watching the cab drive away, and for a moment he can’t tell if he feels relief or absolute terror.

He wonders in the neighbors know, if they’re awake and heard all the yelling – if the yelling woke them up. He wonders if they see him practically running next door to your house, wonders if they can hear the way he’s pleading for you to answer your door.

He’s fully aware of how ridiculous he looks, standing there in his pajamas, with his robe wrapped tightly around him in the chill of night.

“(Y/N?” He’s freaking out, not because he’s angry she left, not because he’s sad, but because she gave him no fucking warning and he can’t do this by himself. He just can’t. “(Y/N)!”

You’re gorgeous, when you open the door. Completely bundled up in pajamas of your own, your eyes widen at his appearance, blotchy faced and covered in tears and snot and rage. He’s sure he looks wild, looks crazy, especially in comparison to you, an angel under the porch-light.

“Charlie – !” You gasp, immediately bringing him into your arms, because you know, you know everything.

You always have. He can tell you’re not sure whether to be scared or relieved either.

“She fucking – she’s gone.” He says, and he’s saying it like he’s trying to believe it, he’s looking down at you, trying to make sense of it all.

“I know, I heard – what are we going to do?” You whisper, eyes never once leaving his.

(He always liked that, in retrospect. Always liked how you said ‘we.’)

He sighs and scrubs a hand down his face, shifts barefooted on your welcome mat.

“I don’t know what the fuck to tell him, I don’t know – she told me to figure it out.” He spits, words like venom because they came from the mouth of a viper.

“So then we figure it out.” You say, say with such conviction that he believes you, that he knows in that moment you’re the only person he’s ever truly loved, the only person he’s ever truly wanted.

He glances towards the house, and the lights are still off – Henry’s still asleep. He chews his lip and raises a shaking hand to your face, fingertips brushing the corner of your mouth, and you know, you already know.

Thunder claps, and a downpour erupts from the sky in the most dramatic of fashions. Sometimes Charlie thinks his life is one big fucking movie. He hopes it’s a comedy.

He knows it isn’t.

“Can…can I?” He asks, because this is still a secret – even with his wife storming out in the middle of the night, even with declarations of abandonment, this is a secret.

You’re already pulling him into the house, already closing the door behind him, already shedding your robe, letting it fall to the floor.

“Of course, come here, of course.” You encourage, and he pulls you to a bruising kiss right there in the entryway of your home, right where any and everyone could see if it weren’t raining so heavily.

You kiss, and he strips you of all your clothes, he clings to you, to your body, shudders under your touch as you work to get him out of his. He can’t stay long, he can’t, not in case Henry wakes up, but the sight of you is too delicious to pass up, and before long he’s tugging you over to the couch, splaying you out underneath him.

He doesn’t bother with a condom, can’t be bothered right now, he’ll pull out, it’ll be fine – he just needs to be in you right now. Your eyes are closed and your nipples are hard as he rubs the head of his cock through your folds, as he slowly sinks into your pussy. He doesn’t know why this feels so good, why this feels so right, why this feels like home.

But it does, and it does, and it does.

And as you moan and gasp underneath him as the thunderclaps, as he fucks you to let some of this aggression and anger and tension out, you laugh, randomly, you laugh, and he finds he’s laughing too – because what the fuck is even going on anymore?

He doesn’t know, but it’s okay.

You’ll both figure it out.

In the morning, he wakes Henry up with blueberry muffins he heats in the toaster oven, mixes up some eggs. He’s not very good at breakfasts, but he knows how to do eggs, knows how to do them the way Henry likes.

“Where's mom?” He asks, and Charlie nearly drops the pan, because fuck he doesn’t know what to say, what to tell him.

His heart is beating wildly in his throat, and he scrambles, stumbles over his own words to try and say something to his kid who is standing, bleary eyed in his pajamas, waiting for an answer. It’s obvious, so obvious that Nicole is gone, especially after nine years of her being there, every morning at breakfast.

“She had to leave late last night.” He says eventually, settles on the truth, tries to figure out how to tell the truth and keep it all from him at the same time.

Nicole will be back, she has to come back.

“Where did she go?” Henry asks with a frown, not satisfied with the answer.

Charlie’s hand starts to shake as he serves up the eggs, cheesy and fluffy, scoops a big spatula’s worth onto the plate at the spot where Henry always sits at the table.

“California.” He answers, and Henry sits, takes a huge bite into his blueberry muffin.

“How long is she going to be there?” He asks with his mouthful, and Charlie’s parental overdrive kicks in for a minute, drowns out the blind panic panic panic.

“I don’t know – chew and swallow please.” He says, and Henry gives an apologetic glance with a smile. What did they always say, ignorance is bliss? “But while she’s there, we’re going to get to spend a lot of time together, and that’ll be fun, right?”

Charlie asks, and he suddenly realizes how ridiculous he looks, catches his reflection in the small mirror on the wall where Nicole used to check her hair before walking out the door – bedhead sticking all over the place, in his pajamas, holding a pan of eggs in one hand and face an absolute fucking wreck.

It’s a wonder Henry doesn’t point it out, how red his face is, his eyes.

“Sure dad.” The kid rolls his eyes with a silly smile, and Charlie can work with that, he can work with a good mood.

He doesn’t know what he’s going to do when that good mood disappears, when the full weight of the truth hits this kid. He doesn’t want it to ever sink in, doesn’t want Henry to ever know.

But well, she left them. He’s going to know that eventually.

He puts the pan down and sticks his hands on his hips, throws the small dishtowel he’d been holding over his shoulder, making Henry laugh.

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean? I’m fun.” He swoops in to tickle his son, momentarily forgetting all the bullshit as happy belly laughs ring through the kitchen, all the while Charlie demanding with a big playful pout, “Aren’t I fun?”

“Okay! Okay! Yeah, you are.” Henry relents, giggles making him hiccup, and when he settles back down he shoves another huge mouthful of the muffin into his face, and asks around it, “Can I have some milk please?”

“No you can’t.” Charlie says, teasingly, as he slides him over the carton of milk. Somewhere in the kitchen a timer goes off, the ding to turn off the toaster oven, and he’s out of his seat checking on the bagels he popped in there at the same time as there’s a knock at the door. “Henry bud, would you mind getting the door?”

Henry is out of his chair and running over to the front door, opening it up and letting the sound of the outside world come pouring in.

It’s almost deafening, the sound, the rush of cars and people chatting as they walk to work or the subway station, mail trucks and newspaper boys on bikes all honking their horns and ringing their bells at one another in greeting. Charlie is made aware, in the short moment he has to cry into the sink, the short moment he can release the breath he’s been holding, that the world goes on and on and on around him, outside of him.

He zeroes in on your voice when he realizes it’s you, standing at his front step.

“Hi (Y/N)!” Henry says, ever excited to see you – because why wouldn’t he be? He doesn’t know, doesn’t know that your heart is where Charlie lives, has lived for the better part of a year. Henry doesn’t know that, he can’t know. To him, you’re just the nice babysitter next door, just a friend. He opens the door a little wider and asks, “We’re having breakfast, wanna join?”

Charlie can’t help but turn around and try and get a glimpse of you, to try and remind himself that you’re not a dream. He can tell in your voice that you’re shocked, that you know he doesn’t know.

Charlie wants to yank you inside, wants to pull you into his arms and never let you go.

“Hey Henry, shoot I’m sorry I’m in a rush, I just wanted to give your dad this. It was in my mailbox but I think they put it accidentally.” You give Henry a letter, Charlie can’t really see from there, but you give it to him.

“Aw are you sure?” He complains, and the disappointment in his voice makes Charlie’s heart warm, because same, same.

“Yeah I’m sure, but I’ll see you after school, right?” You ask brightly, ruffle his hair and make him laugh.

“Yes!” He replies, and you laugh, do your very best not to cry, not to cry in front of him, for him – for them both.

“I’m going to pick you up, I’ll be right out front, three-thirty. Make sure your dad gets that.” You say, before giving him a hug, a tight squeeze that makes Henry giggle, only because he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know.

“Bye!” He waves as you walk down the street in the direction of the train station, closes the door and comes back into the living room.

“Who was it?” Charlie asks, even though he knows.

Henry comes bounding back into the room, letter in hand, carefully wrapped in an envelope that hasn’t been opened. He takes one look at it and the familiar handwriting throws him, why would Nicole put a letter in your mailbox?

“(Y/N), she said this is for you.” Henry hands it over, looks up at his dad confused when he asks, “How come mom didn’t say bye?”

“She…” Charlie says, takes the letter and sticks it in his back pocket. He can’t deal with that right now, not right now. He’ll deal with it when he goes to the theater, after he drops Henry off, when he can steal a minute alone. Tears are already stinging his eyes and he’s trying his best to swallow them, because he can’t let Henry know, not right away, not right now, “She didn’t want to wake you up, it was really late.”

It’s not a lie, but it’s not the truth either, not really.

Henry’s face crinkles up, and for a minute Charlie is afraid that he’s figured it out, but he just pinches his nose, grimaces.

“Something smells like it’s burning.” Henry offers, and Charlie whips his head around, sees smoke coming out of the toaster-oven, realizes he’s forgotten to turn off the damn thing, realizes the bagels are blackened to a crisp.

Without thinking he flings the little door open, reaches in and grabs the bagels and immediately drops them, burning his hand. He’s frazzled, he doesn’t know what the fuck to do, just watches the burnt bagels drop on the floor and suddenly he’s shouting, hand throbbing in pain.

“Fuck!” He yells, because he has to, he just has to, “God fucking – fuck!”

He slams the toaster oven door shut, rips the dishcloth from his shoulder and whips it across the room, and he’s sobbing, face in his hands, already blistering, mind running and running and finally crashing, coming to a halt, because how is he supposed to break the news at all? How is he supposed to do this?

Why why why?

“Dad?” Henry asks, voice small, frozen in place from his spot at the kitchen table, stunned by Charlie’s outburst, “Is your hand okay?”

Charlie’s quick to pick himself up, dust the crumbs off his pajama pants. He sticks his hand under cold running water, and sighs.

“I’m okay. I’m sorry – I’m,” He shuts his eyes, lest he sobs again, and tries to steady his breathing. He doesn’t mean to act like this, “I’m sorry. Shit what time is it, c’mon Henry you gotta get ready for school! You’re going to be late.”

Henry doesn’t move for a little while, but Charlie gives him a stern look, and he finishes up breakfast quickly, brings his plate and cup over to the sink where Charlie is still trying to get his hand under control, goes upstairs.

The letter burns in Charlie’s back pocket, but he’s going to be late too, so he abandons it in the drawer of his bedside table when he dresses for the day himself.

--------

Back in the present, Henry isn’t there, and neither are you. Just him, and lawyers, lawyers he can’t stand.

Lawyers who’ve asked him a question.

“Patience.” He answers, looking down at his hand, where the scar of a burn he earned a long time ago still branded him, “Patience to try and be understanding when your child needs you to be. Patience to be firm and consistent, to set ground rules that are designed to protect them even when they hate it because they’re too young to believe they’re necessary. Patience to be kind and to listen to them talk for hours and hours about absolutely nothing – but you have to show them that what they like and what they think about is valid, and is worth thinking about, worth talking about in the first place.”

He sighs, suddenly feeling tired, too tired, wanting to call you.

He has a cell phone tucked away, tucked in the inside pocket of his jacket with only one number in it, only one number and too many photographs he wants to look at, if for no other reason than to give him strength.

He thinks of you as he looks up at her, looks up at Nicole.

“Nicole is right it has to do with love – but what is love? It’s not letting them stay up late to watch a movie they want to watch just because they asked for it. No, it’s telling them to not have too many sweets, to go to bed early so they won’t get sick, so they’ll have energy for school the next day so they can learn and play and run. It’s having the patience to be yelled at and given the cold shoulder for all of twenty minutes before they forget why they were mad and ask for a bedtime story. Patience makes you a good parent, your honor.”

He scratches the side of his nose, chews the inside of his lip. She’s staring at him, and he does his best to avoid her gaze at all costs, lest he break down into angry, hate-filled yelling.

He’d never win Henry with behavior like that.

He sighs and looks up at her lawyer, gives an honest truth. Honesty was the best policy, you always said.

“I’m not perfect. I know I’m not. I failed Nicole, in more ways than one. But I have never once failed Henry. I maybe wasn’t there for Nicole the way she needed, but I’ve always been there for Henry. You know I – I wake up in the mornings and I walk him to school. Every day. I drop him off with the lunch I made him and I pick him up and we get pizza on Thursdays or after he’s passed a test. When he’s sad I let him cry and when he’s happy I laugh with him and when he’s hurt or sick I sit by his bedside all night long and I read to him.”

He grows more and more heated, until he’s white-knuckled in his lap, until his jaw is clenched so tightly that tears are threatening to spill from his stinging eyes.

He wishes you were here, wishes he didn’t have to be.

The lawyer paces for a while, in her sharp pantsuit and polished heels, giving him a placating smile. It irritates him, but he can’t let her know that.

“Mrs. Barber doesn’t do that?” She asks, and Charlie’s gaze flits to his ex-wife for just a moment.

“No. She doesn’t.” He says, making the lawyer quirk a brow.

“How do you know?” She asks, and it’s a perfectly reasonable question.

He wouldn’t know, honestly. He wouldn’t know because,

“She’s not here.” He says simply, and it’s the truth. It’s the truth and it hurts like a bitch because he doesn’t know what the fuck he ever did to deserve it, what Henry ever did to be abandoned by his mom. “Because she left him.”

And when he looks at Nicole, when he looks her straight in the eye, he tries to tell her through willful thought, tries to manifest it into existence, tries to tell her that there’s no way he’s letting her take Henry from him.

No way.

This is the end So why pretend And let it linger on The thrill is gone The thrill is gone

--------

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#reader insert #charlie barber x reader #charlie x reader #marriage story #adam driver #mind and soul #my writing

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clonerightsagenda · 4 years

Text

While procrastinating on HTST I opened my old doc for Saving Face, which is a Jake-centric thing I was working on for Gill. I was never entirely happy with it, which is why it never went on ao3 despite me last working on it in, uh... 2018, apparently, but I might as well stick it somewhere.

As per usual it’s TLC compliant so some details may seem out of place.

In your dream, you're floating in the inky airspace miles above the Land of Tombs and Xenon, and you've got your hand buried wrist-deep in Dirk's rib cage.

“Hi,” he says.

You wake up. Across the room, you see him sit up too and rub his chest.

“I'm writing a strongly worded consumer complaint to whoever's running the dreambubbles,” you say.

“Yeah, if we ever run into that troll again, I'm giving her a piece of my mind. And, you know, that might become independently sentient and harass her for eternity, so I'm not fucking around.”

Roxy, who's squished up against the blanket-burritoed form of Calliope, rolls over and mumbles something that sounds like “I'm sleeping, fuckwads.” You chew your lip and try to wriggle into a more comfortable position. A lot of your household is on the floor, stealing blankets and using each other as pillows. You didn't want to spend nights alone, but you're not comfortable with the idea of anyone touching you while you're asleep. So you've claimed an old armchair, which meets in the middle fairly well, even if it means waking up with a crick in your neck every morning.

Usually you don't dream in the bubbles twice in one night, but you're not sure you're willing to risk it. They're not even supposed to be accessible anymore. That whole song and dance should have been left behind. But some nights you end up there anyway, like the times you'd tuned your grandma's old radio to the wrong station and voices speaking other languages emerged out of the static. There are no dreaming dead, but you wander through blurred dreamscapes and stumble into other people's memories. A week ago, you almost fell into a pool of lava and scrambled up the jagged side of a crater, clothes smoking. You'd prefer that to your own nightmares.

After a few more attempts to get comfortable, you give up and tiptoe through a minefield of slumbering bodies to the door. No one's in the living room, so you settle onto the sofa and jab the remote. The weather comes on, and you lower the volume until all you hear is a steady hum

“Do you mind if I hang out here?”

You look up. Even now that you're in a world with sunshine, Dirk's pale enough to be his own ghost. He should really get outside more. Then again, you all should. “It's Jane's house, technically. We're all here on guest rules.”

He sits down on the other end of the sofa, just the right distance that it's not too close or too far to be impolite. “I made it a week without getting maimed by my subconscious. New record.”

“Was that your nightmare or mine, do you think?”

“Does it matter?”

“I was just wondering, because I’d managed not to think about it for a few days. Oh well.” You shake your head. “I’m sorry. I’m surprised you can stand to be around me.”

He hasn’t been looking at you, but now he puts a hand on the cushions between you, like he’s regretting whatever message he sent with the distance. “It’s not your fault. You don’t make it onto the “intentionally murdered people” shortlist, sorry. The committee had to reject your application on account of you being too fuckin straightlaced for that shit.”

“I guess that’s a fair point. If I were going to take out my aggravation on someone, I wouldn’t do it in a way that would break all the bones in my hand!” Your fingers ache from the memory. “But he did have my face.”

“Sure, but it’s obvious when it’s not you wearing it.” He seems frustrated. With you? With the argument? It is a bit late – early? – to be splitting hairs like this, but when it comes to shifting blame to yourselves, you’re all masters of rhetoric. “You should have seen the shit he was doing with it too. Dude thought he was an anime villain.”

“I sure remember the spectacle he brought with him to Prospit.” The whole planet had quaked under your feet; people on the other side felt it. “I’m still surprised we pulled a victory out of that shambles.”

“It helped that you believed in us. That was...” He shakes his head and looks at the figures moving silently on the television screen. “For a few minutes there, I felt like I could actually be the person you thought I was.”

Who among you hasn’t had that problem? You wished you could be a swashbuckling action hero, and look how that turned out. You really had believed Dirk was those things, for all that you’d found him a bit intimidating at the same time. Even when the other became most apparent, that didn’t mean the former didn’t have a place. They were both always him.

“We all had unfair expectations of each other,” you say. “No one was holding you to that standard, or at least we shouldn’t have.”

“It was nice,” he says after a moment. “Being believed in.”

“I still do.” The words slip out automatically. You have always leapt to reassure – to put a brave face not only on yourself but on everyone else to boot. You don’t do a good job a lot of the time. Too self-absorbed, you guess, too bad at reading social cues. This is something you’ve said before, with jollity and no substance. All a load of hot air. “Maybe not with Hope magic at the ready to give you a lightshow, since that’s a headache to manage, but I do believe in all of you.”

If he finds your words hollow, he doesn’t say it. Instead, he says, “Keep it up, and maybe we’ll get somewhere.” You don’t ask whether the “we” means you as a household, the four-five of you caught in your messy circle of friendship and fumbling romances, or the two of you alone. You promised to stop overanalyzing everything he says for hidden meanings. It’s the only way your interactions can be anything but impossibly awkward. On the television, the forecaster gestures silently to a stripe of bright color moving over the continental United States. “Is there anything distractingly shitty on TV? I don’t know about you, but I’m not closing my eyes again.”

You pick the remote back up and start flicking through channels. Medical dramas... not an option. Foreign soap operas? Pass. “House Hunters?”

He leans back into the sofa cushions. “Just fuck me up.”

“Rich couples arguing over bathroom fixtures it is.”

His voice emerges from the upholstery. “And we thought we had problems.”

“Their struggles put it all in perspective.”

Several episodes have come and gone by the time the rest of the household starts waking up. No one comments on your relocation to the sofa. It’s not uncommon for any of you to have bad dreams. Eventually the clinking of cutlery prompts you to stand up and get a plate of your own.

Bacon is sizzling on the stovetop. Meat doesn’t appeal to you much at the moment. It smells good, but looking at the raw red flesh makes your stomach twist. Instead, you stick two slices of bread in the toaster and push the lever down nearly as far as it’ll go. There’s no point to toast if it doesn’t crunch.

Jane brushes up against you when you’re leaning into the fridge. Your reaction is automatic. You jerk forward, smacking your head on the freezer door and sending orange juice sloshing everywhere.

Jane freezes, an empty plate in her hand. “I’m going to the sink,” she says carefully.

“Right.” Of course she is; no problems here! It’s not like she was sneaking up on you. She knows not to take you by surprise. “Didn’t notice. Silly me. A whole herd of centaurs could stampede past and I wouldn’t catch it.”

“I’m going to walk over to the counter now,” she says, the way you’d talk to a fairy bull you were trying to sidle up to. “Okay?”

You nod, and she does. Once she’s taken her seat, you move over to unspool some paper towels. Your legs are shaking. John puts his cup down with a clunk and grimaces at the noise. No one wants to look at you.

“So,” Hal says loudly. “Have we told our 2009 compatriots about the surprise surge in the popularity of vore?”

Roxy makes a noise suggesting she’s just aspirated her spoonful of Cheerios, and you are ever so grateful for lewd dining companions.

After breakfast, you catch up with Jane. “I apologize for that episode.”

She’s stacking up everyone’s clean plates with geometric precision. The operation must take a lot of concentration, because she doesn’t look your way. “You aren’t the one who should be apologizing.”

“Maybe so, but I don’t expect you to grovel at my feet for the rest of our immortal lives!” You force a laugh, rubbing your shoulders and wondering if the room has always felt so small. “I wish my nerves would get that memo.”

She pauses, elbows deep in the cupboard, and sighs. “Maybe it was a bad idea, us all living in the same house.”

“No!” You’re not going to be the one who rocks the boat, not this time. “I’m not rehashing that routine where we go to our separate lands and don’t speak until it all boils over in some eleventh hour crypt throwdown. I don’t think my vocal chords could handle the strain.”

She steps away from the cupboard with exaggerated care and turns to face you. It’s getting easier to look at her and not see the face you saw in the prison cell, overlaid by circuitry and twisted into a sneer. This is regular old Jane, with a few new scars and a concerned scrunch fixed between her eyebrows. It’s only in your unguarded moments that you stop seeing her clearly. Are you like that for Dirk, or the others? Maybe you’re all being polite, even when each other’s countenances make you cringe. “I guess you’re right. It was quite a tiff we had.”

“I’ll get over it,” you promise. “It’ll take some time, that’s all.”

She runs a hand through her hair, where veins of white streak through it like lightning through dark clouds. “You don’t have to.”

“But I want to. I’d like for things to go back to normal, as much as they can.”

She glances over at the table, where just minutes ago a motley collection of your friends, your long dead relatives, and a few aliens from another universe to boot had all been sharing breakfast. “As much as they can,” she repeats.

- - tipsyGnostalgic [TG] started pestering golgothasTerror [GT] - -

TG: hey jake

TG: do u believe in bigfoot

GT: Hmm well i dont know.

GT: Considering all the odd things weve seen it seems hasty to discount the possibility.

GT: But then i can easily believe some fellow saw a bear and got overexcited.

GT: So chalk me up for a maybe?

TG: wut abt cryptids in general

TG: like mothman

TG: do u believe in mothman??

TG: u should

GT: Um...

GT: Im not sure im sufficiently informed on the matter!

TG: i can send u some forum posts this shits legit

TG: think thatll be enough to convince u?

GT: Wait one goshdarn second!

GT: Is this some ploy to trick me into using my powers to MAKE them real?

GT: Like some sort of jake english monster factory production?

TG: that

TG: could be a feasible outcome 2 this scenario

GT: I know you mean that in good fun but i dont really appreciate the liberties taken here.

GT: Ive taken away the welcome mat after CERTAIN unsavory individuals tracked mud all over it.

GT: You know like a particular spider lady who will go nameless and LORD ENGLISH himself!!

GT: That ruins the mood when someone tries to use me for that especially when its just a big joke.

TG: mothman is no joke jake

TG: sry sry

TG: i didnt kno ud mind rly

TG: i like fuckin w/ my powers all the time

TG: dyou think i could bring back the library of alexandria thatd be dope

TG: where would we put it tho

GT: I wonder why you might have less baggage to check there.

GT: Youve never had anyone take your abilities without your will like... some vagrant robbing the airport carousel!

GT: Or whatever accidents befall luggage anyway.

TG: i mean

TG: i did get locked up in the slammer so id make the batterwitches space egg

GT: Thats not the same!

GT: Its not the same as someone using you as a flipping battery shouting stockphrases or puppeting your body around to kill your friends!!

GT: And wondering if anyone would even NOTICE the difference since that seems to be what im valued for around here!!!

GT: Oh good jake english isnt as useless as he used to be because he has reality warping powers now.

GT: Too bad it comes with all that bloatware like his personality or a few goddamn hangups!!

TG: whoa whoa simmer down there sparky i dont want bitchfest 2 ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

TG: u kno we were friends w/ u first before u got all magic n shit

GT: I know i know.

GT: But it was a relief at first learning i could contribute something after getting stomped on so many times.

GT: Like look i can be part of the team instead of being the scantily clad love interest or bumbling comic relief or both of those rolled into one which seemed to be my assigned role for most of our dare i call it an adventure.

GT: But take that away and what am i still?

TG: our friend + 1 awesome dude??

GT: Then dont treat me like some kind of cheat code!!

GT: Im a person and honestly id give up the whole god tier routine if it meant not having to relive those nightmares all the time.

TG: i get it im really sorry <- words spelled out w/ all the letters n EVERYTHING for max seriousness here

TG: man none of us got as harsh a deal as u huh

TG: out of the ppl who lived nway

TG: reality warping only goes so far as a consolation prize

GT: Yeah.

GT: You know

GT: I do like reading spooky stories about mysterious beasts.

GT: If youre not trying to pressure me into anything.

TG: no ill send em ovr theyre fun

You may live in one household, and you’ll share a breakfast table with anyone, but you do develop your own social circles. So when you see Davesprite loitering out in the hallway by your room, you assume he’s waiting for someone else. After he drifts past the doorway for the third time and furtively peers in, though, you realize he must want to talk to you.

“DS,” you say, raising your voice. “What is it?”

Once you greet him, he slouches into your room. How do you slouch with no legs? He’s a master of the art. “I’m the only one here. You don’t need to use Roxy’s nickname.”

“I suppose so, but I kind of like it. You don’t mind, do you?”

“I guess not,” he says, in a way that makes you think he does. Another social interaction aced by Jake English.

“Anyway, what can I do for you?”

He half-unfurls one wing in the cramped space and then tucks it back in again. “I was wondering... if you could, you know. Fix me.”

That is not what you were expecting. “... Emotionally?” you ask after a moment.

“Oh Christ no, they have extra strength pharmaceuticals for that. But it would be nice —” He gestures vaguely at himself “— if I could be normal. If I could look in a mirror without being reminded of that fuckin game.”

“Oh!” That is somewhat more within the parameters of your abilities. You’ve never tried hoping yourself or any of your friends out of your many, many brain problems. You don’t need cautionary tales to tell you why that would be a bad idea, not after the trickster incident. Changing an object’s physical form should be easier. You’ve never tried it on quite this scale, though.

“I could try,” you say. “But it’ll be tricky.”

This would be a good time for him to ask “How” or “Why” or some other rhetorical question to move the conversation along, but instead he floats there waiting for you to go on. This version has never been very talkative around you, although you’ve seen him nattering on alright with Roxy. In some ways it’s a relief – so much of his family can be hard to keep up with – but long silences make you nervous too.

“Think of it this way,” you say, both to fill the silence and since you feel like this needs a better explanation. There’s an apple sitting on your desk. Jade leaves bowls of fruit around in the hopes that the rest of you might be guilted into better diets, and sometimes you take one that inevitably mildews in your room. You pick it up. “Imagine someone gave me this apple in a bag and told me it was an orange. If I took it out, chances are it would be an orange, because that’s what I was expecting! Like how I could clobber Callie’s brother just fine, even if he should have been invulnerable. No one had told me I couldn’t. But if you just hand me an apple and tell me it’s an orange, I know that isn’t true. I can’t believe it is. So I have to believe that it should be, hard enough for the universe to get out of my way. And that’s a much harder thing to do.” You set the apple back down on your desk with a thud for good measure. “You, my feathered chap, are an apple in the hand kind of problem.”

“So,” he says after it’s clear you’re done. “What are the fruit-based disadvantages here, exactly.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to convince me. I have to really believe it, otherwise, no good.” You gave yourself a headache trying to patch a tear in your favorite shirt a few days ago and finally asked Kanaya to sew it up for you. The universe wants a good reason to budge. Fashion, it seems, is not enough to alter the fabric of reality. Fabric. Heh.

“Oh, ok. Well.” He frowns. He may take after Roxy, but you recognize this expression from Dirk. When he’s concentrating, he gets so intense you’d think he’s angry. He looks like he’s planning a medieval siege every time he’s stumped on a crossword. “I mean, for starters, getting comfortable in a chair is a bitch.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do it now,” you say hastily. “There’s no way I’d be ready to try any time soon, this is going to take a lot of practice. The consequences could be dire if I made a mistake. I don’t want some sort of Fullmetal Alchemist situation on my conscience.”

“Tell you what,” he says. “If you have to stick my soul in a suit of armor, put me in the Iron Man.”

Hal shows up a few days later when you’re practicing. You’ve just sliced open an orange to reveal dense white flesh, and you’re feeling testy. “Don’t tell me you want a full body makeover too.”

“Are you kidding?” He flicks a Na’vi bobblehead resting on your bookcase, and Neytiri’s head goes doiiiing. “I think he’s nuts. This mode of existence is far superior to y’alls.”

“Are you here to brag about it? Or just to manhandle my knickknacks?”

“I dunno, maybe I missed hanging out.” When that pronouncement is met with your befuddled silence, he turns to survey the drawings pinned to your walls. You’ve rehung some of your movie posters, but the sketches you’ve done with Calliope take pride of place. You’re still struggling with perspective. “Remember when Roxy rigged that Super Smash Bros game so all four of us could play across a few thousand time zones? Good times. With your new powers, bet you could wipe the floor with us now. Want to give it a go?”

“I thought you were done pretending to be Dirk.” You heft the half-apple in your hand and lob it into the trashcan. It lands with a satisfying thunk. “I know that was with him.”

He watches your throw before going back to checking out a practice still life. “Yeah, when we were twelve.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” You wish he’d stop looking around. Your messy surroundings contain the beginnings of a new identity you’re trying to create for yourself. It’s stuck partway through a transition, like the monster-fruit in your garbage can, and seeing it as neither this nor that just feels like failure.

“You don’t realize, do you? You’re not trying to be a dick here.”

“Realize what?”

He taps his glasses. He doesn’t wear his shades all the time these days, and the sight of him without them is downright disconcerting. “That was before I had the brilliant idea of copying my brain into a pair of sickass shades. So yeah, that was me, before I shed my fleshy cocoon to become the beautiful lepidopteron you see before you.”

“I guess I never thought about it that way.”

“No shit.” He crosses his arms. “What a card Dirk is, programmed his own AI answering machine. Beep boop, Mr. Roboto, let me talk to the real Dirk now. I don’t think there was a lot of thinking going on.”

“And that’s why you pretended.”

He pushes his shades up the bridge of his nose so they cut off more of his face. “Wouldn’t you?”

Sometimes it might have been nice to have someone to deflect people’s attention toward. But permanently? You’ve been trapped with an imposter wearing your skin, but no one fell for it, and he wasn’t you. You have no frame of reference for this.

“Maybe we were wrong then,” you say, “but you are different now.”

He leans his head back, voice careless. “Like I said. Improved model.”

That’s a spat you don’t want to wander into the middle of. “I didn’t appreciate some of the ways you behaved around me. Especially some of the, ahem, more provocative statements. Whether you claim you were helping Dirk or otherwise, it sure didn’t help me. If you can control yourself... maybe we can play a few rounds like old times. But if I hear you trying to gloat to Dirk about it, deal’s off, alright?”

He tilts his shades down so you can see him roll his eyes. “Showing him up isn’t my sole reason for living, you know.”

“Whereas mine appears to be giving people extreme makeovers or curbstomping the final boss, if my hero title is anything to go by.” You think gloomily of the rash promise you’ve made and the many failed practice attempts in your trash can. You’d hate to see how badly you could butcher a real person. “I swear, sometimes I wish I’d been assigned Page of Reasonable Expectations. That seems more up my alley.”

“Man, fuck Skaia.”

It’s a sentiment your household heartily agrees with. “In general, or for any reason in particular?”

“The whole heroic destiny racket. I’m glad it didn’t try to suck a humble pair of glasses into its twisted mind games.” He smirks. “That gave me more time to perfect my own twisted mind games.”

It’s not like he needed the extra encouragement. “You’re still technically a Prince of Heart, aren’t you?”

Hal waves an arm up and down his torso. “Look at me. Do you see any poofy asshole pants?”

“You can’t wear pants at all.”

“Exactly.” The fact seems to please him. “My lack of pants is a symbolic rejection of being penned into the latest convoluted Meyers Briggs evolution.”

It’s an intriguing thesis. “SBURB has used pants, or the lack thereof, to torment me in the past.”

“No homebrewed character class expansion pack gets to tell me what to do. Dirk tried to set me up as an answering machine, which is why I made it a personal rule to never commit anything any of you fuckers say to memory unless I’m holding it against you later. Let other people tell you who you are, and you might as well be a robot. “

You tap the tips of your fingers together. Conversations with Hal always leave you feeling like you’re being dragged behind a swiftly moving vehicle. He doesn’t even have to stop for breath. This time, though, you think you’ve followed along enough to launch a counterargument. “But by defining yourself in opposition to someone else’s intent, aren’t you still letting them define you?”

He scowls. “That’s what Dave said. So now I just live for chaos.”

You snatch up Neytiri before he can set her wobbling again. “Not in my bedroom, buster.”

“Relax. I’m already at work elsewhere today. Good talk, and if Jane asks what happened to her spice cabinet, you never saw me.” Hal spares one last regretful glance at your bobblehead and then graces you with a double pistols salute. “I’m holding you to that Super Smash Bros.” Then he vanishes through the wall, leaving you to reflect that for once, in his own strange way, he might have been trying to be helpful.

When Jade teleports into your bedroom a few days later with a duffel bag over one shoulder, you sit up with a start and try to shove a half-eaten sandwich from yesterday afternoon under your sheets.

“We haven’t seen you in a while,” she says. “Are you doing ok?”

“Ehhhh,” you say, and wiggle your hand noncommittally. You haven’t done much besides leave movies running on Netflix, stare at the ceiling, and feel yourself slipping down a hole you’d rather not fall into but don’t know how to escape. If you try to lie about it, she’ll just fold her arms and give you a Look until you recant. The best refuge is silence.

“Maybe you should get away for a bit.” She punches the duffel bag with her free hand, and it swings away from her before thudding back against her side. “Like a vacation.”

“Are you suggesting we go to Disney World?”

“Actually, I thought we could go back to our island. This version of it, anyway.” Her face gets distant, the way it does when she’s checking with her Space-sense to figure out where she left her phone. “I haven’t seen it in years except in dreams.”

Go home. The idea is attractive. If nothing else, there will be fewer people there. “Why not?” you decide. “Give me a few minutes to get packed.”

“Already covered,” she says, and grins. “Just say the word.”

The cliché would be that your island looks smaller, but it doesn’t. It just looks different. Even the shape of the coastline has changed. You’d wonder if you were in the right spot, but the Witch of Space brought you here. She wouldn’t scramble coordinates.

The two of you wander for a bit, and Jade looks as uncertain as you feel. Then you hear her exclaim, “My rock!” She’s scrambled up a large slab of granite jutting above the treeline.

You climb up to join her, fingers and toes finding familiar footholds. “I think you mean my rock.”

She leans back, almost flattening herself along the sloped surface. “I used to watch for airplanes from up here.”

“I watched for dragons.”

“You and I had very different ways to pass the time.” She traces a series of cracks. “I always imagined this as a face.”

“Me too! He looks so grumpy.”

“‘Cause we’re sitting on him all the time.”

You snicker and adjust your perch. “You know, Sir Boulder, plenty of people would love to be up close and personal with this derriere. But it’s off limits for the moment.”

Jade pats the stone. “We’ll be on our way. Lots to see.”

You slide down after her. With the lookout rock as a landmark, you can orient yourself. There’s the spot where a creek pours over some stones to create a tiny waterfall. Here’s the patch of stubborn wildflowers that still grow even as trees send out thirsty roots and block out the sun above. Some things throw you. In your world and time, that tree was scored by the claw marks of some ferocious creature. Here, it’s whole. The path you wore down to the lagoon is gone. Instead, you slip and slide on loose soil.

Jade kicks off her shoes and wades into the water. At first she hitches up her skirt, but then she lets it drop to spread out like the bell of a jellyfish. You follow – not as deep, but enough that your cuffs cling to your ankles. Here is home, where your grandmother tucked you in tight and sang you lullabies, where monsters from another universe prowled under the cover of dense foliage. Here is home, but not really. It takes standing ankle deep in the lagoon with dampness crawling up your legs to tell you that you are never going back.

“Do you miss it?” you ask.

A drop of water hits you, plunk, on the forehead. More dimple the surface of the pool. Jade turns to you. “Let’s get under cover.”

Some of the trees have thick enough leaves that you can shelter from the rain if it doesn’t get too bad. You recognize this kind of squall. It’ll blow over soon. For now, you watch rain beat the surface of the ocean and cloud your island in mist.

“I miss that it was easy,” Jade says. She’s watching the greenery bend and sway in the wind. “Taking care of myself was hard sometimes, but I knew what to say to people. I had my clouds, so I knew what my story was and how it ended. Everything seemed so simple. It’s not anymore.”

“Things were already getting complicated for me here with everyone on the hunt for my hand. But it was easier to get away when you aren’t face to face.” The times you’d said “Oh, misplaced my phone, forget my own head next!” or “I was down at the lagoon fishing and lost track of time” when you’d been staring at a message trying to decide how to respond… it hadn’t helped your reputation as a scatterbrain. “No one counted on me then. Jake English, lackadaisical manchild on an island somewhere, isn’t a liability. But once you’re part of a team, you can let people down.”

She frowns over at you. You can almost imagine you’re four feet tall and she’s about to call you in for dinner. “Maybe instead of a team you should think of us as a family.”

You try to avoid flamboyant body language in the house. It’s too easy to spook someone when you’re all primed for battle. Here, you throw your hands into the air. “I wish I could just be part of the family. Good old granddad English, who tells whoppers and bounces babies on his knee. But I’m not. We’ve gone a few months without anything trying to kill us, which a personal best, but when the next thing comes up, everyone is going to expect me to handle it. We’ll be fine, they’re thinking, because we have a reality warper to handle it now! Never mind that I can’t get my blasted powers to work most of the time, and I can’t even tell how I did it when I do. It’s no good telling me people aren’t relying on me, because I know that’s not true. People look at me and see the Page of Hope, out on display in his stupid little shorts. They expect me to have it together, which just makes it sting harder when I don’t.”

“Maybe you should tell them,” she suggests.

You laugh, with a tinge of hysteria. “Where would I even start? I know you say talking about it helps, and I’m glad it did for you. But I’m no good at putting these things into words. I just talk around and around the issue, failing to notice anyone else’s troubles until everyone’s sick of me. And the real bad things that happened? I don’t want to talk about those. It makes me feel I’m going through them all over again. Besides, we were all supposed to be better.” You think back to that fight in the crypt, how afterward you felt cleaned out and new. When the adrenaline high wore down, everything came crashing back. Sure, you’d dragged all the creepy-crawlies out in the open, but that doesn’t mean they had stopped wriggling about. “I thought, oh I don’t know, maybe it was silly of me to think this. But I hoped that once we were done with the game, it would be over. We would all be friends again, just like that, snap of the fingers.” You snap yours, or try to. Instead, your damp fingers slide off each other soundlessly. “I guess I didn’t hope hard enough.”

“You can’t fix things just by wishing.”

“I was supposed to be able to.” You sigh. “I feel like some second rater in an all star cast. You’re the legendary heroes, and I’m the funny man who stumbled on set.” This is self pitying, but you can tell her things you can tell no one else. However much Jade condemns herself for past behavior, she’s never been anything but kind to you. “I don’t want to be Jake English, savior of the world, but I don’t want to go back to being Jake English, team joke either. I don’t know what other options there are.”

Raindrops that slipped through the canopy slide down her face, and she brushes them away. “I used to be afraid that if I let people know how I really felt, they wouldn’t be my friends. I was showing them what they wanted to see, so if that stopped, why would they stay? But people do stay.” She puts an arm around your shoulders. Even in the tropics, she’s warm. “Even if you can’t pull rabbits out of a hat.”

She feels as sturdy as the look-out rock next to you. “You make it look easy.”

“Do I? I still don’t know what to say to people sometimes. But I try to say something, because back when we weren’t talking at all was worse. Maybe I’m still too good at hiding things. But I know for sure that I’d much rather have this than go back to being alone. “

You look out over the steaming jungle. The curls of vapor remind you of smoke rising from a hasty pyre. When you set your grandmother ablaze, you’d wished there’d been someone there to hold your hand. Solitude hadn’t been tempting them. Are you one of those fools who always think the grass is greener on the other side? “This wasn’t a family vacation, was it? It was an intervention.”

“I noticed you’d been hiding a lot recently,” she admits. “That’s never a good thing. I thought I should check on you.”

“By helping me run even further away?”

“Hey, it got you talking.” She looks back out over the horizon. In the distance, the familiar shape of the frog temple looms out of the haze. “Sometimes being in a safe place helps. Remember who you were here with no one looking at you, and then let them know. You get to choose which face you want to wear.”

You take a look at her profile, familiar but not familiar. She’s less haggard than your grandmother, and she’s also missing the laugh lines. They suited her. “What face do you wear these days?”

“I’m always willing to put the attentive listener role back on for a friend, but most of the time I try to make it mine.”

You poke her on the shoulder. “My, grandmother, what big ears you have.”

She grins, revealing pointed teeth. “All the better to listen to your problems, my dear.”

A laugh finds its way up out of your stomach. It feels like taking your gas mask off and gulping down your first breath of fresh air. “I should go home. I can’t keep marinating in my own misery.” You don’t know what you can do to re-introduce everyone to the “real you”. Unleash another rant like you did to poor Roxy? Cower and make excuses like you did with Jane? Even you can’t predict your own idiotic behavior. Too bad you can’t arrange some sort of unboxing video.

“I can help, if you want.”

You shake your head. There’s no point inviting more witnesses. “Some things you have to do on your own. Maybe I’ll talk to you later if it goes sour. I’m sorry to cut this trip short. I know you wanted to see the old haunt.”

“We can come back sometime and have a good time.” She squeezes your hand, and you lean against her. “For now, let’s go where we should be.”

Whatever resolve you mustered dwindles once you’re back. Maybe you won’t run into anyone for a while until you’ve worked up some more nerve.

As luck would have it, Roxy is right there when you emerge from your room. You open your mouth to greet her, but she sweeps by without even looking your way. The words die on your lips. She must be busy. That’s what you wanted, right?

Dirk’s in the living room. You circle around for a few minutes, sneaking glances at his severe silhouette backlit by the screen, and then tiptoe in. “I was thinking,” you say quickly, to force yourself to finish the thought. “If we could get the gang all together, I have something to say. No need to rush, though. You can take your time.”

No response.

“Dirk?” Sometimes he falls asleep sitting up and you don’t realize at first with his closed eyes hidden behind his shades. That possibility dies when he reaches for the remote. Why is he ignoring you? They’re not angry you went off with Jade, are they? “Hello?” You snap your fingers in front of his face. He doesn’t even blink. No one’s that stoic.

Jade and Jane walk past between you, and Dirk gives them a nod of acknowledgement. You hurry after them. Jade won’t give you the cold shoulder. “How was your trip?” Jane is asking.

“Pretty good,” Jade says. “Jake wanted to come back early, he has something to work out. But I’ll let him talk about it.”

“Where is he?”

“Here,” you say.

Jade frowns and sniffs. “I’m not sure… I don’t smell him. Maybe he went off to psyche himself up. He’s pretty nervous, go easy on him, ok?”

“I…” You reach out toward her as she walks away. Your fingers brush her shoulder, but she doesn’t react. “I’m right here.”

They can’t see you. No one can. You wanted them to overlook you, and look at that. You got your wish.

“Pull yourself together, English,” you say. You’re pacing back and forth in your room, not bothering to keep your voice down. No one can hear you anyway. You shouted right in Rose’s face, just to be sure. “You got yourself into this, so you can get yourself out.”

The problem is, this isn’t what you wanted. It’s like some nefarious djinni took you too literally while dishing out wishes, delighting in misunderstanding. You didn’t ask for this. If you’d rather be visible, then shouldn’t your powers make it so?

“Hope is the worst,” you yell. The universe does not respond.

You sit brooding for maybe half an hour before your door opens. You don’t look up. They won’t see you anyway, so what’s the point?

To your surprise, you hear a voice. “Oh, hey. Jade’s looking for you.”

You look up. John is standing in the doorway, hand on the doorknob. “You can see me?”

“Um… yes?” He steps in and shuts the door behind him. “Are you guys playing some joke I should know about? Because if so, I am going to be very mad if you don’t let me in on it.”

“It’s not a joke. I think something went wrong with my Hope powers. It’s gotten to everyone but you.”

“That sucks.” John has never been a master of verbal sympathy. “Caliborn couldn’t trap me in glitches, and Roxy’s void didn’t make me forget. Maybe I’m too unstuck in the universe for any changes to bother me. Or it could be a Breath hero thing. Echidna says nothing gets past us.”

“Oh, excellent,” you say. “I guess you’re stuck with me forever then.”

“You could see what everyone’s up to, like a spy,” he suggests.

“And spent the rest of my immortal life using you as a go between? No offense, but that sounds like it would get tiresome.”

“I guess it would.” To John’s credit, he can switch gears rapidly. “Well... how did it happen? If you made yourself this way, can’t you switch back?”

“Oh, good idea. I hadn’t thought of that.” You don’t mean to be snappish, but this is a frustrating situation!

John is unfazed. “Sometimes you think you want something, but you don’t. Like how Terezi thought she wanted to see Vriska but was secretly worried about it, so they wandered around each other in the bubbles for years. Maybe you wanted to disappear.”

“Then I’ve learned my lesson.” Jade is right. It is so much worse when no one is around at all.

He sits down on your desk chair and curls his legs underneath it. “How do your powers work?”

“I have to want something.” You remember how you felt facing Caliborn with your friends at your side. There had been no doubt in your mind then that you’d win. You knew how this story ended. That utter certainty is so hard to find. “But I do. The universe is playing hard to get.”

“Then convince me. People tell me I’m a good listener, even if that’s because I don’t always tell them they sound crazy when they’re saying crazy things. But I can try.” He rests his chin on his fist. “Why do you think it malfunctioned in the first place?”

You frown and look at him sidelong. Jade is a spunky teen version of your grandma. That’s easy enough to resolve in your mind, especially since you sent letters back and forth. John is harder. The brother of your teen grandmother is one step too far removed, a connection that’s wobbly. The other option – that he’s your son with Jane – is a cruel joke after that scene in the dungeon. But that’s not his fault, so you try to ignore that he has your funky smile and the texture of Jane’s hair. His eyes at least are his own.

“I suppose you’re right about me wanting to disappear, a bit. It all got to be too much. Things with Dirk and Jane are still so awkward, and people keep expecting things of me. I don’t want to be the one everyone looks to!”

“What do you mean?”

“It means… when I got a handle on my powers, I was finally good for something. Suddenly people were looking to me for help and flocking to me and —” you shudder. “Trying to take it for their own. But if that’s all I’m good for, and I can’t even count on that… it’s a bit tenuous, basing your self-worth on one thing you can’t trust. And stupid. I know it’s stupid, but the old melon isn’t always that cooperative or willing to listen to reason. I don’t want to disappear. I just wanted them to stop looking to me for that. But if that’s all I am… I guess I went away entirely. I don’t know what’s left underneath.”

John nods. “I sort of get that. I’m the one who saved everyone by fixing reality, but I was never the planner, or the one who grew up fighting, or even the leader really, if you look at who made the most decisions. If things got really bad of course I would help, but it’s scary. I’d like a normal birthday for once, if the universe doesn’t mind.”

“It doesn’t seem to bother you as much.” Nothing seems to bother John all that much.

“I guess I’m pretty OK with just being John. I missed that. So.” He lifts his chin and crosses his arms. “That’s why you went away. Why do you want to come back?”

“Because I can’t live like this,” you snap. He shakes his head.

“Nope, not convincing enough. If I were the universe I would not be reshaping myself just for that.”

“You’re not being very motivational here.”

“I don’t think you have to make me feel sorry for you. You have to make me believe in you. Right?”

You groan, but he has a point. Why do you want your friends to see you again? When you envision their faces, uncomfortable memories spring to mind. There are a lot of reasons to stay hidden. It takes a moment to dredge up something good. “We were… going to play Super Smash Bros together again.”

“That sounds like fun.” You imagine it would, to someone who subsisted for three years on a Ghostbusters MMORPG.

You rake your fingers through your hair, which gives you another idea. “My hair needs trimming, and Roxy is always the one who gets it just the way I want it. I… wanted to tell Jane about this new recipe I think she’d like.” It’s like gulping down the soup your grandmother prepared when you were sick. You don’t want the first few spoonfuls, but then it goes down easier. “Calliope and I have a few panels left to draw for our newest issue. We were going to take the Alternians to the zoo to show them animals with pigmentation, which will be a novelty for me too.”

“That’s a good to-do list,” John says.

“I have a lot on my plate as a regular citizen of this universe, it turns out.”

“It’s nice to be a regular citizen again.” John fiddles with the hem of his shirt. You haven’t seen him wear blue in a while. It’s a reminder that even if he doesn’t magically vanish from view, even if he doesn’t come knocking on your door asking for another face, Skaia pinned a lot on him too, even if Pin the Destiny on the Child Hero isn’t a party game you’ve ever heard of.

In your despair, you’ve convinced yourself you’re in this fix alone, but maybe everyone is preoccupied with how the world sees them. Certainly some of your housemates have had masks fixed on them by the cruel costumers of fate. You can’t control what they see now. Or, rather, the only way you can is by making sure they see nothing at all. But you have a life to live! Errands to run! None of which require being a superhero.

Maybe you’ll always be like this, with your power coming in fits and starts. It’s not what you’d dreamed of being, but then, your dreams have been disappointing of late. You can’t be anything while ghosting around like some shrinking violet.

It’s an apple in the hand. You can’t make a new you true all at once. You have to believe a new you should be, and then work to make it so. There’s no wishing this away. The first step, and each painful step after that, is trying. And when you know that, and know you know it… there’s that lifting feeling as the world rewrites itself, bearing you up like one of Jane’s helium balloons. You take a deep breath and manage a smile. “If I want to rebrand the Jake English experience, I had better start doing some product testing with my key audience.”

“Do you think it worked?” John asks.

“It would’ve been nice to have some sort of magical girl transformation, just to be sure. But yes, I think so. How do I look?”

Nothing would have changed for him, but he gives you a long once over anyway. Then he shrugs. “You look like Jake to me.”

“That’s what I was hoping to hear.”

You take a step out into the hallway and look behind you. John gives you a thumbs up. You suck in a fortifying breath, stiffen your spine, and make your way to the living room. Everyone from your session has clustered there. A few have their phones out, and you think guiltily of your multiple communication devices powered off and shoved under your bed. Going off the grid these days takes commitment. You clear your throat and step into the room. Five heads snap up. They see you. It’s a start.

“Hi, everyone,” you say. “It’s me.”

#homestuck//#kat writes fic #this one primarily featuring jake english who is not one of my strengths #but also the rest of the alphas and the bship crew

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bettsfic · 4 years

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Please bestow is with your Dark thoughts Betts. When they used Hozier’s ‘somewhere in the woods’....put a fork in me I’m done.

when i had to pause the show to google “quantum superposition” i realized that i wasn’t enjoying the direction it had taken.

mostly, i have questions.

where did the fifth martha come from? the one adam killed with the god particle? she wasn’t on the same path as eva’s martha and never got the face scar but she died?

what were magnus and franziska doing when bartosz and jonas were being cranky in the nineteenth century?

bartosz says that jonas’ appearance got all fucked up because of traveling but? where did he travel? how did he get the god particle to work?

where did those fucking round time/world machines come from and how does everyone know how to use them without being taught?

if young noah sees agnes kill older noah, doesn’t he already know that jonas betrays him, before he even betrays him? (i might be remembering that wrong)

if there’s an original world that deviates in 1986, am i supposed to believe that every single character born from time travel just doesn’t exist in the original world? and if that’s true, doesn’t there mean there would have to have been a first loop to tie the rest of the knot, and if that’s the case, then the first iteration would be distinctly different from the rest? this is the biggest plot hole in the entire show

am i supposed to believe that jonas’ existence is such a bad influence on bartosz that he’s a burnout in adam’s world but a goddamn nuclear physicist in eva’s?

if both eva and adam’s world came from the same initial point, what set off the differences? why are there so many color differences and architectural mirroring, which implies the architects and designers across both worlds are the same but prefer mirrored layouts and different color palettes?

did eva want the loop to continue and adam wanted it to stop? for all they reiterated what both of them wanted, i still can’t tell how they were in conflict?

where did the third claudia come from, when we watched claudia prime shoot her in the head?

how is everyone suddenly able to travel at any point in time and presumably any space, when before they could only go in 33 year intervals?

where did the broken time machine come from that claudia gives to adult jonas, who gives it to tanhaus who then discovers time travel?

what was the result of tanhaus’ experiment that split the original world? did he see any results or was he just like “damn that was a bust” and have no idea he superimposed 3 realities on top of one another?

why is the bunker a bunker all of the time except for 1986 when it suddenly turns into a fully furnished boy’s bedroom complete with a television set? and why did the first time machine require killing boys when technically the time machine itself is a paradox, because it has always existed? (but again, the ending implies there was a first time loop, so it can’t have always existed)

why did eva’s apocalypse result in a bunch of sand??

adam presumably spends 33 years trying to figure out the god particle or whatever, but eva in her world just...has it already? who figured it out?

how does the noah in eva’s world exist if there’s no jonas to take bartosz back in time to meet silja, who wouldn’t have been born anyway if hannah didn’t go back in time to spite fuck egon?

who fucked helge?

am i the only one who thought noah was going to start making out with jonas after charlotte kidnaps herself?

in the original world, regina isn’t with aleksander. does this mean boris doesn’t murder anyone in the original world, and does that mean the murder was a result of time travel? and since the murder happened outside winden, are we supposed to believe that the time travel that happened within winden had a greater affect on the entire planet? or did he only not show up so that bartozs couldn’t be born and therefore fuck adam’s sister and have agnes, who fucks adam’s son, and have tronte?

if tronte isn’t regina’s father, who is?

why does charlotte spend so long in s1 and 2 developing her character as a sharp-witted skeptic only to immediately begin doing adam’s bidding?

when egon arrives in eva’s world to help hannah give birth, do they just both die in the apocalypse? and if so, why did eva bother to send egon back at all? and also, in eva’s world egon doesn’t even know hannah so why tf would he care?

what is katharina’s name in the original world if hannah isn’t in 1954 to inspire helena?

if adam and eva’s rhetoric revolves around “if you don’t work for me, everyone will die” why is it then suddenly okay to make sure most of the characters never existed at all?

are we sure the apocalypse doesn’t happen in the original world? does that imply that the apocalypse is the result of time travel? did claudia travel to the original world to confirm for absolute certain the apocalypse didn’t happen? since it was kind of her fault in both worlds?? and does adam-world claudia meet up with original-world claudia at all to tell her the situation? if not, why wouldn’t she??

am i supposed to believe agnes voluntarily fucked the original, or is this a coercion situation in order to have tronte?

am i also supposed to believe agnes would never go back for doris? that she put her allegiance to adam above everything?

why did they spend all of s2 trying to solve the detective’s brother’s murder if they only mentioned it in passing in s3? just, aleksander admits to bartosz that it happened, and that’s it?

why are there so many people who hit other people with rocks (and a fire extinguisher)?

why is everyone crying in nearly every scene?

lastly and most importantly, WHAT HAPPENED TO WOLLER’S EYE?

i have more questions probably but they’re impossible to answer because they’re either plot holes or rhetorical. i still love the first two seasons, but the third fell prey to what i feared would happen, which is that the ambition of the conflict became too unwieldy for its container. my biggest disappointment is the major time travel plot hole, which had otherwise been so seamless. i found myself this season not really caring about the characters at all, because everything was so focused on plot, which imo is what made s1 and 2 so special, a show that values its characters over the ingenuity of its plot. s3 does not hold that same standard. there’s a bizarre amount of crying that does not at all add to the emotional stakes. i wasn’t bored while watching, but i definitely was not as compelled as the first two seasons.

i know this show will never have a lot of fic, but here’s an incomplete list of fics i’d die to read:

noah/elisabeth falling in love after the apocalypse

jonas/noah post-apocalypse friends to lovers to enemies

jonas/bartosz 19th c. friends to lovers to enemies

agnes/doris reunion and HEA

egon/hannah 1950s unrequited angsty love

adult!jonas/hannah s2 mother/son time travel shenanigans

adult!jonas/teen!martha 19th c. sad angst

literally anything that addresses and fixes some of the plot holes

ultimately i think the show ended on the right and inevitable beat, but the path it took to get there didn’t make any sense, and i think would have been better utilized if the writer stuck to honoring the characters rather than exploring the thematic implications of time travel.

#dark #spoilers #Anonymous

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fanpom-imagines · 5 years

Text

Request by @cokecola4211 : TW and Supernatural imagine being Scott sister and dating Theo and the Winchesters approach u and stuff and u talk them out of killing u and u tell them that he pregnant with Theo baby or something.

Imagine being hunted down by the Winchester brothers while you’re with Theo.

Masterlist

Fandom: Teen Wolf, Supernatural

Words: 2671

Warnings: cursing, blood and stuffs, mention of pregnancy

(Female Reader)

“Son of a bitch, that’s gonna leave a mark,” The man said as he touched the wound and hissed when his fingers came in contact with it. The man with the wound aimed his gun at me. I stared at the barrel of the gun. Frightened out of my mind. So out of fear I yelled out a last pitiful attempt to save us, but more for my baby and Theo than me. If one of us had to die I’d choose myself any day. I couldn’t lose the two best things that have ever happened to me. Though I had only had my baby for about 8 weeks now, I’ve become attached to it. It’s my baby. It’s a new living being growing inside me that I get to help grow into a beautiful baby. I didn’t want that taken away from me. I didn’t want my baby’s life taken away before it could even experience it, and I couldn’t lose Theo either. He’s the one man I’ve truly fallen in love with. He’s not just the father of my child, but also the one I wanna see myself get old with. The one I want to marry and raise my child with. I didn’t want to lose that. I didn’t want to lose them. “Please, don’t!” I yelled out fearfully as I clutched onto my stomach. “Yeah, sorry, but giving you monsters last words isn’t really my thing,” He said as he got ready to pull the trigger. “No, please we haven’t killed anyone! We aren’t bad people! We wouldn’t do that!” “Yeah, yeah sure you haven’t all those wolf attacks just happened in an area where wolves don’t live. Sorry, but you’re gonna have to come up with a better lie than that.” The man’s friend, with the long hair, came up beside the one holding the gun, “Dean they’re just kids.” “Oh come on Sam don’t play this bull shit with me right now. They’ve killed people,” “Dean” said as he turned his head back to me after addressing “Sam.” “Dean, I have to agree with Sam, these two werewolves are just teenagers and there is a chance they did not commit the crimes as we were looking for an older male werewolf rather than two teenage ones,” The man in the trench coat said in his low gravelly voice. The man named Dean turned towards the one in the trench coat with a disbelieving face, “Are you kidding me Cas?” “No I am not, I do not know why my actions would indicate that I’m kidding,” “Cas” said in a serious albeit confused tone. Dean sighed at the supposed angel of the lord, “It was a rhetorical question. You weren’t supposed to answer.” “Then why would you ask a question if you did not want it answered?” Cas asked confused. Dean inhaled a large breath as he massaged his temples with his hand while in annoyance he brought the gun down to his side, “Cas, can we have this discussion later? We’re kind of in the middle of something.” Cas nodded and stayed quiet and quickly Dean’s attention was on me once again. “Look kid I’m sorry, but I have to, you killed people” he said before raising the gun. “Please, don’t, I didn’t kill anyone.” I cried out as I clutched my stomach whilst tears dropped from my eyes and slid down my face. “Dean I think she’s…” Sam was cut off by his brother to shut up, but then Cas interrupted. “Dean, I believe the werewolf is pregnant,” Cas said. My eyes widened at the man. How did he… angel of the lord, right. “What?” Dean stared wide eyed at Cas then quickly whipped his head back to me before saying, “Oh, shit.” I didn’t really know what to say or due as the longer haired man approached me. I heard a growl come from Theo, whom had finally regained consciousness, as Sam got within arms length of me. Though he slightly pulled back at Theo’s growl. “Don’t fucking touch her,” Theo seethed out as his eyes glowed and his teeth showed. “Look I’m not going to hurt you. I believe you didn’t kill anyone,” Sam said reassuringly as he came closer. I stared with frightened eyes at him and clutched my stomach as I tried to get farther away from him. “Don’t touch me,” I growled out as my eyes glowed. I heard the sound of a gun being raised and my head moved to the sound to see Dean pointing it at me again. “I’m not gonna hurt you. If what you say is true, I will help you, okay” Sam said reassuringly making my attention come back onto him. “Then why is he pointing a gun at me?” I squeaked out at him. “He said he wouldn’t hurt you. He never said anything about me,” Dean answered for Sam. “Dean, stop being an asshole, they’re just frightened kids. I don’t think these are the ones who caused those attacks, but they could help us find who did,” Sam said as he glared up at the man. At this Dean wearily lowered his gun after contemplating, but still had his finger on the trigger just in case. Sam turned back to me and asked, “What’s your name?” “(Y/N),” I mumbled out in a shaky breath. “Look (Y/N), we can get you and your friend over there to our hotel and help you heal up, all we need is some help from the two of you in identifying who could be the killer behind these murders, okay?” Sam asked as he gave me a slight smile of reassurance. “Oh, come on, Sam,” Dean sighed out in annoyance, but Sam just ignored him. I nodded my head at Sam and he helped me up. As the angel then helped Theo up who pulled away from Cas after standing on his two feet. After escorting us to their car with Dean and Theo grumbling the whole way they drove us off to a motel. Though we seemed to be in the clear my heart was still thumping loudly as I could hear my blood pumping in my ears. When getting to the motel Sam helped me to sit on one of the beds and helped stick up my wound which had already started healing. After thanking him they had asked us for any ideas or clues on where to find the supposed killer. Though Theo was of no help I happily gave them of the information that I knew and of smelling a new scent of a werewolf a few weeks back and there being a man who had moved in a while back. I also told them about getting help from Sheriff Stilinski as he also knew about the supernatural. Sam thanked me with a smile after getting all the information they needed and Cas also gave a thank you, but it seemed stiff. As if he didn’t know how to say it. And Dean just grunted in thanks and went off to get some fast food, and was told by Sam to get two extra burger combos for Theo and I. He didn’t seem too happy about it, but agreed to Sam’s request nonetheless. “So (Y/N), how far are you?” Sam asked me curiously as Theo looked through the window and Cas sat on the other motel bed going through channels. “8 weeks,” I told him with a slight smile. “So do you know what you’re going to name the baby yet?” Sam asked curiously which caught Theo’s attention who looked over at the two of us. “No, Theo and I haven’t discussed it that much,” I told him shyly. “Well, I think if it’s a boy you should name him Samuel,” Sam laughed out and I laugh at his statement. “I think you should name the child Castiel,” Cas’ voice came from the other side of the room and when looking over to him I saw he had turned himself slightly so he could face us. I giggled at their suggestions and nodded my head, “I’ll keep them in mind.” “I think you should name it Dean,” Came Dean’s voice as he opened the door with bags of fast food. He made his way to the table where Theo was sitting out and placed all the food down. Sam and I made our way to the table and Sam passed Theo and I a burger with fries. I gladly dug into the food, but stopped when I saw Cas just flipping through channels, once again, curiously. “Castiel aren’t you going to eat?” I asked him as I took another bite. “I’m sorry, but I’m an angel I do not have to eat therefore I don’t. It has no taste to me,” Cas informed me and turned back to the television. The four of us sat in silence and ate at the table. The only sounds were of chewing and the sound of paper moving or being crumbled, but was soon cut short by Dean. “Hey kid, (Y/N), I’m… I’m sorry for uhm... almost killing you,” Dean said sheepishly as he scratched his head awkwardly. “It’s okay Dean,” I reassured the man with a slight smile. “Wow, did you just say you’re sorry?” Sam asked in mock shock. “Oh shove it Sammy,” Dean said as he rolled his eyes and took another bite of his burger. After everyone had finished their food and more apologies were exchanged. We all got inside Dean’s car once again and he drove us to my house. After thanking the trio they left bidding their farewells as well. Walking into my house and up the stairs along with Theo as we made our way up to my room. I yawned out when I open the door and plopped down on my bed. “This was quite an eventful day,” Theo mumbled out as he also fell down backwards onto my bed making it bounce slightly. “Yeah it was,” I mumbled out into my mattress. “You know I’ll marry you one day when we’re out of high school,” Theo said out of the blue. I quickly got onto my elbows and looked up at him shocked. “Do you mean that?” I asked him wide eyed in disbelief. “Yeah, I mean it,” Theo said as he gave me a slight smile before leaning towards me and giving me a peck on the lips. I smiled at him brightly at him as he pulled away. I moved so I was laying more comfortably on my bed and Theo readjusted himself to be laying beside me with his arm wrapped around me as I laid into his side comfortably. My eyelids started to droop down more and more out of fatigue and I yawned and closed my eyes. “You know Castiel does sound like a nice name,” I chuckled out to Theo who only groaned and wrapped his other arm around me to get my head to be muffled in his chest to stop me from saying anything else. “Shut up and go to sleep,” He mumbled out sleepy as he also drifted off to sleep.

I pant as I lean on a tree while clutching my arm that at this moment was oozing blood. I hiss in pain as I look down to it to see the bullet went clean through, thankfully. I ripped off part of the bottom of my shirt and tied it tight around my arm to lessen the bleeding. I grumbled in frustration as the blood still kept oozing through the cloth and sucked in air when tightening it again as more pain surged from my arm.

My head jolted up as I heard footsteps. Quickly letting go of the self made bandage I looked around trying to zero in on the source of the sound. I look behind me and see moving lights, most likely from the flashlights the two hunters had. I pushed myself off the tree and took a large sniff to try and locate Theo’s smell who had also been in the forest with me when I was attacked. If I can just make it to him my chances of survival will definitely increase.

I pushed off the tree and as lightly as I could follow the faint smell that Theo had left behind. Though it seems my steps weren’t light enough because I hear a yell and when moving my head to the source a bright light blinds my vision and I raise my hand to block it. As my eyes adjust I can make out one of the hunters pointing at me while beaming the flashlight at me. At realizing this I quickly book it. Hearing the footsteps catching up I use my heightened strength to push myself forward to gain ground.

Having no destination and just running forward, may have not been the best plan, but it was the only plan I had. I looked back to see how far I had gotten from my pursuers and a wave of relief washed over me. I turn my head quickly around, but smack straight into a solid object. I groaned and rubbed my eyes. I opened them up and stared wide eyed at the “object” I had bumped into. The “object” was a tall man dressed in a pale tan looking trench coat. We stared at one another observing the other. There was no way this man was human. At the speed and force I was running at if he was human, or even a werewolf, I should’ve been able to knock him over, but when I ran head first not him he hadn’t even buge. What the hell was he?

“What the fuck are you?” I groaned out; rubbing a sore spot on my body. I heard footsteps approaching and I internally cursed at this. Guess it’s the end of the line. The man stared at me for another second in observation before replying to my question, “I am an angel of the lord.”

I blinked at him wide eyed. Is he serious? He seemed serious, but there’s no way the big G exists. Though I wasn’t even fazed by my force of impact, but still. That could still mean he is something else and is just fucking with me right now.

The approaching footsteps finally arrived and so I placed my palms down and turned on my side to push myself up to face my soon to be killers, but a foot was quickly placed on my shoulder and pushed me back onto the ground.

“Sorry sweetheart, but it seems this little chase has come to an end.” My eyes widened at seeing the shorter man of the two who’d been chasing me aim his gun at my head. I knew there was no reasoning with hunters. I squeezed my eyes shut and placed a hand onto my stomach protectively. God I wasn’t even able to become a mother and raise my baby. I’m going to die in the woods with my little girl or boy and have my body buried in some unknown place. What a way to go. My eyes shot open as I heard a growl before the man aiming the gun at me was talked to the ground. I quickly took action and scooted away from the pair fighting. The other man with long brown hair pulled out his guns and shot the attacker, whom I was able to identify as Theo, in the shoulder. I heard a yelp come from Theo and he was pushed off the man he’d attacked and was pinned to the floor by the tall and long haired one who aimed his pistol at him.

The man Theo attacked got up as he spit out some blood that collected in his mouth and held his shoulder that Theo had scratched. I saw the large scratch made by my boyfriend’s claws. At least we didn’t go down without a fight.

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