#it just comes off egotistical and self righteous | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ms0milk · 7 months

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𝟏𝟏 | 𝐖𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝

ー✧ prince!bakugou x royal guard!reader

"Being safe from sand and ocean winds doesn’t seem worth it to the Alderan prince, not worth enough to miss the sun rising every morning. How could you die in a place like this? How could you possibly be okay with that?"

no cw unless you’re averse to apprehensive touch between enemies. reader and co recover from last night’s attack in their own ways. two fools stand too close in a cold hallway. three fools finally go to the sea and one of them can’t get you out of his head 6.8k

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Bakugou’s first memory of you is doused in blood. His second is somewhat more pleasant. Just two giant, shining eyes peering at him through a crack in the library door. You’re lightfooted now, sure, but back then he could feel you coming through the floorboards from how excitedly you wiggled at your self assigned post. You thought you were hiding. Him pretending not to notice, and you pretending it wasn’t hours after curfew.

Bakugou liked to do magic for you. Sometimes he waited for the sound of your heart or your twiddling thumbs before he blew out the candles around him and lit the first pink spark on his fingertips.

The prince can’t hear well enough anymore to recognize your heartbeat, so he’s been searching for your bedroom since dawn.

Wretched flashes of you play across his ash lashes like a curse. Of you toppling off a cliff like some psalmic tragedy. The pleading in your grasp but something– something else in the blacks of your eyes on the mages back. Relief? Like the first flecks of ease he’s seen since he made warm magic for your audience. If his fists weren’t drawing blood from his palms as he marched he might have reflected on how long he’s been watching you.

All this work just to wring your fucking neck. Takoba is ill-equipped for Bakugou’s Alderan thunderstorm. Castle marble trembles underfoot.

What the fuck were you thinking?

He’d like to throw your door open, demand an answer and then not tolerate a response. It’s been three hours of his tirade. Of startling footmen and growling at maids, before he finally catches the tailend of someone useful.

“Oi, Cheeks!”

Uraraka isn’t thrilled about this and pauses, considering for a moment, before turning around. She chews her lip instead of rolling her eyes.

It’s just short of miserable where the two of them are standing, freezing in this part of the castle and somehow also stuffy. The only windows are at the long ends of hallways. It smells old. Being safe from sand and ocean winds doesn’t seem worth it to the Alderan prince, not worth enough to miss the sun rising every morning. How could you die in a place like this? How could you possibly be okay with that?

“Where is she?”

“Gods, the pair of you–”

“Where?”

Uraraka, in her padded cotton sparing clothes, sags weight to one hip, “Kats, she’s your guard. What do you mean where is she?”

Bakugou hasn’t gotten enough sleep for this. Up until bitter hours with Aizawa and his men recounting the attack and now stalking Takoban hallways. A perfectly comfortable bed beside a steady fire, ruined by the memory of you.

He spits and pushes past the soldier. Fuck her, fuck it. He doesn’t hate you more than he wants to sleep.

“Last blue door,” Uraraka barks behind him, “and she doesn’t want help. I already tried.”

She grins nervously as the prince adjusts his gait, hardly hiding his beeline for the room at the end of the hallway. Fuck sleep. And more crucially, fuck you. You, setting great fires in Aldera’s name wherever you step and bursting at your simple seams to be righteous about it.

A blind man might be more prepared than him. Might remember why he avoided you all week– what he was going to say to you in the gardens those few hours ago, before the mage and blue fire.

Your door is already open a crack when Bakugou approaches with a egotistical lack of decorum. Storming and sauntering. Morning sunlight hardly illuminates anything on this side of the castle. He’s just cold enough, just close enough to the edge of irate that the thought of swinging it fully open with a roar fills him to the brim with grim satisfaction.

At a distance, Uraraka thinks about stopping him, but his wind up, his general air and the tense of his shoulders dies before he can cause the scene she knows he wants to.

Inside the crack, Bakugou deflates as you slip into view. You keep your back turned. Dark blush climbs up the parts of your neck neither hair nor nightgown cover and you stop your gentle drifting at the foot of your bed. Steam from a tub under your window fights with the sea draft. You’re trying to reach something– a ribbon? And your fingers tremble as they graze a tie at the back of your dress. Are you in a hospital gown? Bakugou peers inside silently, completely underestimating the shock of seeing you conscious.

You don’t look right without a sword. You don’t look right at all. Turn around. He can’t see– what did Uraraka say? Help with what?

Bakugou touches golden fingertips to the door’s beveled edges at the same time as you slam your fist hard to one of your bed’s four posters. The prince’s fingers twitch instead of startling but it’s too late because your ears work leagues better than his and you’ve spun right around to catch whoever it is that’s watching you. Uraraka drifts carefully around the corner.

“Wh– Highness?”

Your door flies open inward and Bakugou can tell you’re nursing your left arm by the way you reach with your right. Though your frustration deflates with a glimpse of him, it doesn’t shift to something comfortable. He’s not what fills you with ease.

He didn’t expect to be so disarmed by the sight of you alone but now that you’re here, solid and in front of him, he can’t stop remembering the state of you in the gardens. Wet and bleeding, bubbling and burnt to a crisp and still, still swinging a spear. You shouldn’t be getting dressed, you should be dead asleep in the hospital. Bakugou hasn’t thought this far and he doesn’t think he can yell anymore.

“Sir?”

What did he come here to say to you?

You look like a proper wild Alderan this morning like he’s hardly ever seen you. Worn eyes and bed hair, battle scars and a bruise that peeks out from under your collar. It took seeing you for him to remember the last conversation you’d had.

You’re mine.

“Your arm,” he musters instead of thinking harder and tips his chin to your left.

“Do you have business with my arm, sir?”

The shallow cut down Bakugou’s chest has started to scab, the one from your sword in the gardens. His only injury from last night and not because of his skill in a fight. You are battle weary, exhaustion holding your eyes in your head and healing magic draining the life from your heart to keep your arm intact. Shame roils.

Great galloping fuck, do you ever stop staring? You look through him under the doorframe with huge dim eyes.

“What help do you refuse?”

Whoever said that has said it much too sweetly Bakugou tisks, and you seem to agree because your otherwise tired face sets itself to stone. He pities the person that would speak to you like honey, his kamikaze captain, until he realizes you are looking only at him in an empty hallway and that syrup has dripped like drool from his lips.

“Is that all?”

He would be more upset with you if you were wrong. If he hadn’t actually run out of things to say and couldn’t only focus on staying upright after a night with no sleep.

He sounds like fucking Kirishima. The same shithead who started to cry after cornering a loose-lipped Deku outside of Aizawa’s interrogation office. He might have blubbered on for hours about your injuries if Bakugou didn’t send him on a chore to collect breakfast.

The hospital you must have escaped from healed your wounds but missed more than a few patches of dark blood crusted up your neck and into your hair, and then Bakugou remembers he didn’t come here to stare. Every day of tutoring and diplomacy, every shouting match, every spar, every fist fight is failing him. What did he come here to say?

“Don’t be stubborn.” Not that.

“Is that an order?”

Takoba has sucked the soul from your eyes, day by day. They should be filled with fire. He distinctly remembers fire, but today you hang in the doorway without a weapon and just wait for him to leave. Speak too quickly for him to think. You can’t even stare at him right anymore and it’s pissing him off.

You look like shit, he considers grunting, you smell worse. You gray my fucking hair, run away home. Go die for someone else. The broad prince shuffles his tongue over his teeth when vitriol doesn’t find its way from his mouth and while the pair of you watch each other too close in this cold hallway something so much worse sneaks out.

“It is.”

He wants to spit the second the sounds leave his mouth.

“Yes, sir.”

And immediately the word ripples his skin from his bones, his sinews try to tear from his body every time you utter it and he knows now that you do it on purpose. Before Bakugou can recover and growl and kick his way through this cursed castle out of your stoney company, you turn your back to him and wait without moving, “The knot, sir.”

It’s so much worse without your staring. To stand with you alone and out of his mind with exhaustion and for your eyes to be anywhere other than burning holes through his head.

How dare you. Bakugou vibrates as he watches unmarred knuckles reach forward in time to register that his own hand is going to touch you. Even injured, your posture is still perfect, unsettling, and it’s taken twenty years for the prince to realize that you’re no bigger than a sunflower. You carry yourself like a dragon through his castle but it would take two of your hands to cover one of his. And you thought you could kill the flame mage? You thought he was worth your Alderan life?

In the time between dreading the closeness and pinching the bow at your back in his fingers, Bakugou remembers his fury. All the senseless shit he meant to say in the gardens suffocates in the smoke hate tends.

You, who orders your soldiers like an old general and then refuses to eat with them. You who hunt and kill for the queen but stumble through professionalism when it comes time to look at him. Do you smile alone, in your room or with your master? Or is subservience a full time job?

You’ve pulled the tie free of its bow with your stupid struggling and now Bakugou needs both hands to pick at a knot too small for his fingers because you can’t ask for help. You want to die so badly? Do it out of eyesight.

He focuses for one second too long to keep his magic from spiking with his anger like a teenager and with that second he finally pulls the fucking ribbon loose and– and it’s bad.

It’s ugly. You’re not bleeding, they’ve closed you up, but black bruises reach from your shoulder so far down your back he has to blink away when his eyes follow the trail too quickly. The back of the gown begins to open. Turning bruises purple, a scar like tree sap creeps out from under your sleeve, up your neck and down your spin. The burn. A pink scar like sparks in his twilight library.

Shuzenji can only do so much with bruises but this welt? It looks too angry to touch cloth. She couldn’t put in some goddamned effort? You saved her useless queen for all she knows and she couldn’t spare a fucking second to put you back together again?

Creativity given too much platform by your silence, a much worse thought surfaces. Did you escape, or were you discharged half patched like this to make room for more important patients? Royal patients. Blood in your hair.

Bakugou spent fifteen Julys in this Takoban hellhole, every summer for diplomacy or training or vacation, or whatever the fuck his mom decided to call forced socialization that year. He might as well have spent all fifteen years in the hospital for all the trouble he got into by the sea. Pirates and sparring or krakens, whathave you. There was never a broken bone bad enough, a concussion so blinding that Shuzenji couldn’t fix it.

“I’m no god, Katsuki.” She’d murmur even when he was too dazed to hear properly. Always, always she reminded him. How long had it been? How did he forget? “I can only use what you give me. If I take too much you’ll die.”

Your room reeks of the sea even with the windows closed and blue infects its every inch. Even the steaming tub at the foot of your bed tinges green at its bronze lips.

“Highness.” Your voice is a call on the wind when Bakugou realizes how tight he’s still holding your ribbons. You are a subtle source of warmth kissing his knuckles in a cold corridor and he can’t get away from you fast enough. You turn. Your shoulders drop and your gown drops with them, your big eyes catch the corner of your face and where anyone else might be coy you look through him like a hound.

“Thank you.”

The sounds that comes out makes him feel like a hound. Like a bark, tch, “Fuck back off to the hospital.”

“Is that an order?”

Your beautiful golden prince spits at your feet and turns away down the hall.

You wouldn’t have gone back even under orders. You woke up in the surgery the second Shuzenji put her hands on you. Searing wet pain and a thousand stitches and where her magic used to feel bubbly, this night was just fire. Blue fire, Takoban fire.

You were the only collateral from the attack. It should have filled you with pride that you protected not only your prince, not only a queen, her heirs, her champions, and guards, but her entire castle. Still, alone in the hospital with a rum cloth jaw clenched to keep from screaming– in the seconds or hours it took to hammer you together again– liquor was a welcomed distraction from the taste of mageblood.

Shinsou was there in flashes looking over you on the table and then in a blink holding someone back from the door, red hair like Kirishima, and hatred like molten sugar spilled from your every sweating pore on the operating table. Where was he? Your prince’s Champion left him alone in a hostile country with only one guard and the incompetence of Takoba to keep him alive. If wrath could send letters, your Mitsuki would be inundated.

“C’mon miss martyr, head down please.” Uraraka’s smiling more than you’d like as she runs a sponge across your back. The bathwater is a touch too cold for you and still so hot that her arms have gone pink in the space where she’s rolled up her sleeves.

“I can wash myself.”

“Kats didn’t send me in here to watch a pretty girl wash blood out of her own hair,” the pink guard chuckles and you hate to waste this comfort filled with fury.

Before Shuzenji could wrap any part of you in bandages, a knock at the hospital door took her from attention. Shinsou had long disappeared so you slipped from the bed and through a door at the end of the room.

Footmen and maids balked as you whisked through the halls half-dressed and bloody. The guard stationed maddeningly at your bedroom door didn’t hesitate when you burst from the darkness and growled for hot water. You wouldn’t give your prince the satisfaction of sauntering through the castle nearly naked again but you had been stripped of your padding and armor, your weapons, and a generous serving of blood. The prince had to wait.

“I won’t really wash your hair if you don’t want me to,” Uraraka murmurs this time instead of laughing and you are back in safe company.

The smell of the sea makes you sick.

A change of clothes she brought for you from her soldiers' quarters lays nervously across your bed generally afraid to be worn. Rife with silver bits and baubles, limp where your Alderan uniform would be imposing. You’ll look like a doll and suddenly you’re angry all over again.

Uraraka is gentle when she rinses suds off your shoulders but the itch over the new skin there is deep and welcomed. The brush of Bakugou’s knuckles in the hallways left streams of goosebumps that still won’t fall and that you refuse to think about. Not his hands, never again.

“Do you like looking like this?”

Uraraka leans forward so you can see her expression and gestures vaguely to the room with her elbow, “Like what?”

“Like,” you slip your good arm over the edge of the bronze tub and water platters on rugs, “this.” You're both eyeing the Takoban uniform now.

“Do I like looking beautiful?”

“Like decoration.”

“I am decoration.”

Salt carries on a breeze through the room that persists even with the windows closed and your arm drops from the lip as you settle back down in your bath. That’s right. A few weeks away from home and suddenly you’re playing Royal Captain instead of war fodder, too good for a borrowed pair of greaves.

“Alderan uniforms are beautiful too,” the guard offers, but you rest your head a bit too limply in her hands as she brings water up your nape.

Your voice is tired, “Do you like giving orders?”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“I like having a bed and sending money home to my parents.”

“Do you like fighting?”

“I do.”

Your queen is as fiery as her son, but did Jeanist have to tame her first? Or did she have to break him into a shape she liked to look at? Was it an honor? After hardly a month of travel together, Prince Bakugou had pulled up the edges of your identity like a bored child with cheap wallpaper. Fifteen years without so much as three words, then three weeks of torture and still somehow the thought of returning to Aldera where he won’t so much as growl towards your post makes your stomach ache. Where you will never be allowed to raise a weapon against him. Being decoration never bothered you before.

“I like free food and looking pretty,” Uraraka steadies her hand at the base of your neck and holds you tight, “I love my master, I love my friends, I love my city and my people. I miss my mom, I’m afraid to die, I can’t budget, I’ve never been in love,” her fingers pulse warm over your new skin, “I think I’m lucky.”

You think so too. You bring your knees closer in the water, “You look like a chandelier.”

Uraraka tilts your head gently towards the seashell uniform, smiling, “We look like chandeliers.” And then there’s a knock at the door. Your heart beats golden for a second.

“Y/n? Please tell me you’re in here.” Kirishima and his unmitigated gaul. Blood turns red again.

As you sit up properly, your pink guard shouts before you can find a weapon, “She’s in the bath!”

“Come back to the hospital, Y/n. Have you eaten? I brought breakfast, please can I come in?” Doors are made of shit driftwood here so you can hear his ragged breath even through the walls and gods, you start to sweat again.

You’re stiff, not bedridden. Your shoulders can roll again and a scar can’t keep you from raising a weapon, “You’d better arm yourself if you want to speak with me, Champion.”

“Y/n please–”

“Ei go eat without us!” Uraraka plants her hands on your shoulders when you draw your knees under yourself to keep you from rising fully, “Go on, it’s okay I’m here.”

You don’t like how slowly it sounds like he’s moving. Kirishima rests something on the floor with a click and then clears his throat, “I’ll– I’ll tell the others you’re okay.”

“You do that,” Uraraka chirps for you again. She rinses her hands in the water beside your ribs as awkward footsteps pad away from the room. You settle back down on your hips and long for hot water. “What’s your problem with the Champion?”

Your body is a rusted machine and it’s too hard to find words for your anger. Her Takoban Champion threw himself off of a cliff to save you. Your Champion ate dinner for a few hours too long instead presumably because he was staring at Lady Mina. An Alderan embarrassment. Another knock.

This one is much too loud and in no way enunciatory. Your door flies open this time with Bakugou attached to the knob.

“Shitty Hair!” He howls over the edge of the door and down the hallway, “Almost wore this breadbowl as a boot, pick up your motherfucking food!”

Uraraka’s hands go limp at your back and she must be staring as blankly as you are because your prince only looks normal– milky and ferocious– until he turns inside to speak. It’s almost endearing how quickly his shoulders and scowl drop into a look entirely foreign on his face as he takes in the scene in front of him.

The first thing you’ll do when you get home is have tea with Master Jeanist under your favorite Saturday tree and laugh over the many expressions of your hellfire prince, for he dearly loves to gossip. He thinks the Bakugous are the most beautiful family in the country, and he’s right, and it’s infuriating in a thousand ways.

The prince clears his throat, hand still tight on the doorknob, “I’m going to the sea.” And he speaks to the bed because something has stopped him from looking at you. The veins in his hands dance. The air might as well be frozen.

With one movement he blinks to the window over both of your heads and steps backwards into the hallway, door closed and absolutely uncharacteristically silent as morning air.

Uraraka’s knuckles crack when her fingers twitch but that’s the only movement or sound either of you are allowed before your door flies open one more time and Bakugou, fuming frowning and bursting with something to say, explodes inside again. This time one slippered foot is deep in a shepherd's pie. Not even your bathwater stirs. Not a single sound comes from his clenched teeth, not even when his lips part to speak.

Six and holding your hands, eleven and soaked in a fruit filled hallway, all grown up and full of hate, always making magic in the library.

“I can ride,” you spare him, and Bakugou manages to look at you for a beat, to stare with jeweled eyes, before closing the door again.

A faint smell of meat and potatoes permeates the fresh air even with a new pair of shoes on. Bakugou huffs in his saddle. Todoroki doesn’t notice. The Takoban prince is too busy tacking your horse while his grooms watch on nervously.

“Just let them do it for her, get on already.”

“Certainly not.”

He knows it’s pointless but he would still rather work himself to fury with feather-brained Todoroki than sit with the image of you. Propped up in the bath with your hair down, a huge handprint scar wrapped around your bicep.

“Almost finished.”

Bakugou agonizes at the pace, but as his airhead companion finally secures the billet strap under the chest of a mottled cream gelding, Uraraka leads you into the stable, knocking to announce your presence like that would do anything to dull the incessant shock of seeing you on two feet after just last night, wiping mageblood and tears from your cheeks.

You look insane. A black Alderan tunic you must have had tucked away somewhere and bright white Takoban riding pants. Blue strings poke off your hips at odd intervals like you’d ripped some of the baubles off but there are plenty more gems and silver seashells to catch the eye.

“Y/n,” Todoroki is animated when he says your name and Bakugou realizes he’s been staring. The Takoban prince rushes to meet you and your escort and crumples immediately to the ground.

Bakugou groans, head fully back, “Fucking– again? C’mon half n’ half, up.”

“Y/n, please accept my deepest apologies.” Todoroki always sort of sounds like he’s mumbling but this time he’s pressed his hands and face to the ground. You, with the quick wit, look between the prince and Uraraka at a loss for what to say. “You are a guest and to be injured on the grounds is unforgivable. The flame mage will be caught. Captain Hawks has returned and his men patrol the city at–”

“Y/n!” Another voice, this one less grating, booms through the open air. Kirishima rounds the corner, startling staff, and Bakugou’s no psychic but you don’t seem thrilled. His Champion rushes you– idiot– and stops just out of arm’s reach still in his bedclothes. He’s gotten more sleep than both of you combined but looks significantly shittier for it. “A soldier picked this out of rubble, I’m so sorry.” He opens his fist and perched in his soft hand like a pearl is your broach. White dragontooth. “We couldn’t find your halberd.”

There’s a moment of stillness for all involved, Todoroki on the ground, Kirishima and Uraraka beside you, before you turn sharp and stare directly at your prince. You are a painting. You’re always steadying an invisible weapon at your hip even in a nightgown, and where the fire in your eyes has died something hungry and possessive replaced it. Black like the ocean. Infinite. The jewelry in Bakugou’s ears begins to burn.

Todoroki raises his head curiously and muck and hay stick to his forehead. Groomsmen rush to wipe him off as you turn back and offer him a hand. Your bad hand, Bakugou notes from his high horse, and frowns with your next words to him. “Highness, please don’t muss yourself for me.”

One more movement after pulling Todoroki up, smooth like water– and it is so obvious that you are trained to kill– you pluck your broach out of Kirishima’s palm and fasten it to your chest as you spit at his feet.

Takoba is not endearing and Bakugou is on hour thirty-one without sleep. Everyone else might have forgotten but he surely hasn’t, the reason why Alderans are here at all. The observatory, a ball, the Takoban King and diplomatic relations. Bakugou sat through more meetings this month than the sum total of his life, in twinkling cold offices and throne rooms without fireplaces. Hardly time to breathe alone. He wraps his horse’s reins in his fingers in case he falls asleep with its canter over city cobblestones.

“Highness, there are too many blindspots.”

Bakugou opens his eyes with your words as he’s done for the whole afternoon, and frowns when he realizes for the thousandth time that you’re addressing Todoroki. The three of you ride at leisure down the central roads of the Takoban castletown. Every rocky step they take he looks forward to you, expecting this bump to be your last. Expecting you to finally slip sideways off your gelding in exhaustion like he so dearly would like to do. You don’t. You only bark at civilians to keep their distance or direct them away with tilts of your head. You are simply you again, riding tall and alert with no suggestion of the mage-eater you become in blue light. No hints that you have ever shed a tear in your life.

He shakes his head free of the thought. Citizens gawk, but generally don’t stop their errands to do anything more than watch as you all ride past.

“Astute. What do you recommend, Officer?”

Bakugou doesn’t need to open his eyes to know you hate being called an officer. He can hear it in the way you pause before responding, and then he growls through a laugh at the back of the caravan when you find the right words.

“I recommend not touring the town that potentially housed a fugitive.”

Todoroki probably planned this tour for Bakugou weeks ago, excited to show him all the developments to the city in the years he’s been away. He’s not one for change. Shinsou knocked him unconscious to keep him from fighting last night and the first thing the blue prince did upon waking from a terrorist attack was ask Bakugou to confirm today’s agenda.

“Is there a more private area included in this tour, Highness?”

“Yes.”

There’s a beat of silence and Bakugou snorts again.

“Could you please take us there?”

“Of course.”

The Takoban prince seems unaware of his dazzling presence as he guides his horse’s white head at a sharp turn to the west. Bakugou too, in his exhaustion, doesn’t realize how much attention he’s drawn from a city he’s so familiar with. A city so safe, its blue prince doesn’t need a guard.

“Oi,” you hiss on Bakugou’s other side and faster than he’s able to turn, you’re already pulling back on your reins to sidle around him. Your horse doesn’t seem the least bit disgruntled with the maneuver and flashes of consciousness pour between Bakugou’s eyes as he remembers bits of the night you arrived here, bleeding, begging. “Hands to yourself.”

Something pathetic like a dog whimpers below him and your prince peers over his thigh towards the cobblestones where a child is frozen between reaching out to touch his silver stirrup and staring in horror at you, a dark cloud behind them. The child, in modest warm clothes, backs away and flinches when your good arm jerks across your chest with your attention.

On his right, an older kid yelps and falls flat on his ass with two little hands clutching his head. Bakugou considers laughing out loud at this, husky and full of sleep; when he looks back at you, your hand hovers over your saddle’s grain bag and it becomes apparent you’ve walloped a child in the street with horse feed.

Everything feels insignificant when you’ve missed a night of sleep.

He has spent thirty one hours thinking of you. Watching you shoot, skipping lunch to hide, finding the words to speak to you. Being filled with so many things and then twisted excitement against your blade. Dread. Recounting your every step to one hundred officers. Searching for the hospital. Searching for your room.

You have spent those same thirty one hours awake, furious, burnt, bleeding, and then fully dressed on horseback. You are an exceptional guard. You are professional to a fault and it should drive him insane.

“You’re terrible with kids,” Bakugou rumbles as he rips a silver bauble off his vest and tosses it over his shoulder to the twerp flat on cobblestones.

You ride past him to follow Todoroki, “I manage you well enough.”

It doesn’t. Not even when you feign stoicism at the edge of the sea, not for a second. Because when Todoroki’s obnoxiously white horse leads the three of you past castle guards and down a private beaten path– under Bakugou’s favorite marble archway and out onto the beach, something hums in your black eyes.

It is the loveliest stretch of coast in the world, because it is protected by evil. On one side a steep grassy hill that bleeds into the marble castle, on the other, golden sand dotted with black volcanic rocks. The rocks tumble still and algaed into the blue sea, daring ships to beach there. Today the water rolls over itself in tiny frothing peaks as it does before a storm but the color is cold and charming and you have never been so close to the edge of the world before.

As your three horses trot onto soft sand, you turn your head to watch waves making their music and Bakugou can see your face outlined by the late sun. Your wide eyes. It will set soon. You are so much more adept than he is at hiding inside of yourself.

“The observatory,” Todoroki pipes up in the lead and points towards a white spire Bakugou’s never seen before, jutting like a mushroom off the side of the castle above you. In one movement, the blue prince dismounts from his horse and turns back towards you Alderans with another arm outstretched. “Come.”

Bakugou knows this beach. It’s broken his bones. He watches it every morning from his bedroom window.

Ahead of him the blue prince offers you his arm as you swing a leg over your saddle. Your body doesn’t hint to injury but you nod thankfully at the gesture and salt water rises in Bakugou’s throat.

“You were attacked in the old gardens last night,” Todoroki, standing too close, points up high towards the castle on the cliff, “All the way on the other side. The castle curves around the bend with the beach– although, it’s only cliff on that side.”

You stare as high as the sun will allow, “It’s a huge property.”

“Natural marble deposits in that cliff helped build the foundation. My family has lived here for hundreds of years.” Todoroki turns from your side and he is always so cluelessly pretty it’s irritating, to call out to Bakugou who’s frowning at the braids in his horse’s hair, “Katsuki did you k–”

But four syllables in and your prince is already waving his hand dismissively, “Fuck all the way off half n half. Give the Captain your shit tour guide speech and leave me out of it.”

So you follow Todoroki, who nods, to the edge of the sea.

“Whose garden was it?” You murmur in casual interrogation.

“My mother’s. A long time ago.”

Bakugou knows exactly what question you’re holding back and so does Todoroki, “The king,” he offers. You nod again. You can hide but you’re no liar. Something sours for just a second.

As Bakugou pulls a knapsack off his saddle to use as a pillow while the two of you splash about, you walk too slowly over the sand beside your tour guide and his first thought is injury until your lips part with timid breath. You move like a soldier, undeterred by uneven footing and fresh wounds, but you stare like a doe.

“Have you touched the sea before?”

You shake your head at the Takoban prince already a length ahead of you and tugging off his boots. The autumn air is warmed by the sun, but getting wet would make a miserably cold ride back.

“You should take off your shoes first,” he smiles. Bakugou spits over his shoulder and unsettles the horses.

You oblige the blue prince like you would any royal but you don’t do it quite so lifelessly as usual. Todoroki gives you his arm again for balance as you tug off one boot then another and bend at the waist to try and pull your pants legs away from the impending surf. You should look like a toddler, your prince should be laughing, but suddenly the sun has started to set and instead he realizes that somehow an entire day got away from him.

Bakugou formed his own opinions of the sea years ago, but he can’t remember the first time he saw it. Stepped foot in it. He reclines on the beach frowning, warm with sleep, and watches quietly.

You are mesmerized. Between black rocks you approach the water and stare. You bite your lip when you’re thinking this hard and the sun’s at just the right angle to reflect dancing shapes onto your chest. The frothing surf twinkles. It reaches for you with limp blue fingers. Two more times before you let it touch you and then your shoulders hitch.

Todoroki smiles, “Cold, isn’t it?”

“It’s alive.”

Do deer freeze in the first drops of a rainstorm? You aren’t made for the sea. You’re meant to hunt and make fires and sit under forest trees and eat plums in warm quarters. You shouldn’t have come.

Bakugou closes his eyes in the golden warmth and midnight pictures of you in the library come before sleep. Six years ago when curfew let up, you started eating alone in the library under the Great Oak and entirely ruining his time at peace to study wild magic. Sometimes you wore your uniform, sometimes a nightgown and cloak, and always he watched from the hallway above. Checking for the nights your guard assignments kept you posted elsewhere. The sight of you sores something in him.

“Y/n!”

Bakugou’s eyes fly open when the cool-headed Todoroki actually raises his voice and the first thing he dreads is a half-dead mage rising from the waves you threw him into. He’s already up on an elbow to rise, but the blue prince has raced through the shallow water to where it hits his hip and grabs your arm– your bad arm– again. You’re mid sea-strong stride and many meters farther out than before your prince closed his eyes. Your riding pants are fully gray with wet. What are you doing?

“I saw something.”

Todoroki urges you inland, “What?” But you shake your head.

Your body rocks with the rhythm of strong tides like you’re dancing. Waves roll gently through you from the left and right and even with your back turned to him, Bakugou knows exactly what kind of face you’re making. What did you see? He was right this morning and cocky this afternoon, you should be in the hospital.

“You’re not strong enough for the tides, Y/n,” Todoroki starts, and your prince also knows a lecture from anyone other than your queen is going to whistle right through those fucking ears, “The shallows drop out just past that break, and you’ll exhaust yourself before the rip current releases you.”

Bakugou can see the scene play out like a script. You’ll acquiesce for no more reason than the Takoban prince outranks you, but before you do as you always have, sunset catches the corner of your face and something bright blinks in the blacks of your eyes. Something like candlelight.

“I’m alright, Highness.”

Bakugou twitches.

“You’re injured.”

It’s just a second you take to glance over your shoulder across the horizon and in that second both eyes blaze redhot like they’ve eaten your candles whole and die black again just as quickly. You nod, “Yes sir,” and accept the guidance of Todoroki’s arm back towards the shore while Bakugou watches propped on a tense bicep, studying his ache. You are a nightmare.

A nightmare the sea wants to swallow, because as you’re led to shallow water two waves meet and a new break forms behind your thighs. The strength of the sea kicks yours and the Takoban prince’s feet uneven in the sand and the pair of you are sent backward a step and then forward by the hips into a beaching wave. In the setting sun the sea grows darker.

You resurface in just a second from clam shell surf silent and wide eyed, but Bakugou is already up. He should be laughing, especially as Todoroki rises from the water with a halo of foam blinking just as dumbfounded next to you. Seawater drips from your lips.

“We are certainly not swimming now.”

And something entirely new happens. On your knees, soaked through, you stare at the blue prince for a beat and then drop your head back in laughter. Your tunic clings helplessly to the curves of your chest, shaking and expanding with your breath. The sound is starlight. Another wave, smaller, climbs over your shoulder while you sit in the surf and washes over your head. Your hair is made of seashells.

“You’ll get sick!” Snorting on water now, Todoroki tries to help you up but the receding tide sucks sand out from under you both, knocking you gently into one another, giggling together, and doused again. The sunset frames your wide grin. You are no longer in the library, in fact you are nowhere to be found.

“Give me your hand.”

The corners of your eyes are red from salt and crinkled with a smile when you tilt your head up towards Bakugou in the pinking sunset, wet to his knees above you with a strong arm outstretched. You shiver. You without magic. You with nine lives. Him staring at your seashell crown through messy blond hair.

He draws breath through bared teeth. It’s an ill joined feeling, how quickly your new smile drops, how quickly the stars hang themselves back up in the sky at the sight of him. You aren’t a doe, you’re a dragon. Quiet pertinacity bleeds black from you into the sea.

“You’ll ruin your pants, sir.”

And he’s no longer sure he could stop you from anything without killing you first.

PREV | M.LIST | TAGLIST | NEXT

tagged angels ✧.* @nnubee @dilftaros @nonomesupposedto @zombiewarprincess @kotarousproperty @strawberry-mentos69 @sveetnn @eirlysian @lunrai @km7474 @arayoflia @annoyingleftpinky @noomaisdone @cr33pycrawler @iced-chai-tea-latte @cathwritestragediesnotsins @tragicallygray @idimmadontgiveashit @kooromin @k1tk4tkatsuki @litiri @kiwibao @kiwifuji @mmmaackerel @sarcasticlittlebook @condy-wants-a-cookie @mysticalfridge @dududubebo @falling4fandoms @katanaski @babitchsuki @romiinlove @cherripunch26 @acid-rain27 @madmayo @bakugouswh0r3 @heart-of-haunt @zukowantshishonourback @420mitskilover @ultracrii @nochuonii @carrobrumbrum @bkgthinker @chandiewashere @sleezy-axeriix @screechingdreameater @mecuryxmoonstone @onlysarcasm @ilovemushroomss @when-you-are-just-done @levisbae2 @flyhighinthesky @1astr0id1 @thebluespacecow @mizzfizz @king-shimura @butterscotch-ripple-icecream

couldn't tag for some reason :,( pls check your security settings!

#even in bkg's pov he still calls himself your prince #bakugou x reader #bakugo x reader #bnha #mha #bnha fantasy au #mha fantasy au #fantasy au #royal au #a hymn to black water

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f0point5 · 7 months

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Just out of curiosity, why don’t you like LH?

I mean, I don’t know the guy obviously, but his vibe has always just been so unappealing to me.

He comes across so incredibly arrogant to me, in the most suffocating and self righteous way possible. I don’t like how he talks about himself, or other people. He just gives off the impression that he thinks he’s bigger than the sport, and while his accomplishments are incredible and undeniable, he isn’t the only person who’s ever driven a race car, but hear him to talk it sounds like he thinks he is. He just comes across very obnoxious to me.

Also, he has many a conspiracy theory when things don’t go his way. I’m sure all drivers do because they’re an egotistical and not the most self aware bunch but I don’t like hearing about it.

I don’t think anything to do with driving or the way he is in the car is relevant to this because I think it’s unfair to judge someone for what they say while driving at 300kph so I’m not even commenting.

It’s a very personal thing though, because in every sphere of life I always gravitate to people who are quiet winners. Just do what they do and let that speak for them. LH is not that guy. And I can understand to a certain extent why he wouldn’t be and he certainly doesn’t have to be, but his (public) personality is not something I connect with.

I feel the same way about Cristiano Ronaldo, Serena Williams, and Tom Brady. Like, they’re great, but no amount of other people acknowledging their achievements seems to measure up to the praise they feel they deserve. To me there’s no charm in self adulation.

It comes down to, say less.

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foundouthatdabiistouyatodoroki · 9 months

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How would Dabi react if lost he someone important to him?

if it's a hypothetical question I can only answer in my observations of what I saw in the manga.

If we’re talking about Dabi he is distant with the LOV and never fully lets himself open up to them. Dabi is contradictory in nature even though he says he doesn’t care about the LOV he does, he cares about the LOV even if he wouldn’t be able to admit it his actions speak for themselves. he doesn’t allow himself to be emotional for a good reason he is planning to die so he doesn’t see any point in opening up to them about himself since he is going to die after killing Endeavor.

but the question is how dabi would react?

Take Twice for example, After hawks stabbed Twice in the back literally Dabi went ballistic at Hawks to the point of burning his back and stomping on him

showed a video of Hawks killing twice to the public as a way of getting revenge for deceiving and killing twice.

After the war, Dabi gives Twice's blood to Himiko as a way of mourning twice why Dabi gives Himiko his blood because Dabi wouldn’t be able to mourn twice since he is going to die.

another scene the most infamous one is the snatch scene and what comes after it,

there were a lot of interpretations in this scene it's supposed to tell us that dabi does think about his family all the time to the point of going crazy and also I think it supposes to show that dabi is emotional and does possess a heart even if he won’t show it.

I would say for Dabi, When someone he loved dies he would mourn but in different ways, their death would weigh heavily in his mind he wouldn’t show it there are moments where he is deeply emotional like with Snatch.

Dabi doesn’t fully intend to know not only because he knows he's going to die but he doesn’t see a point in learning about someone who is dead.

the dead do not suffer since being dead means that they don’t suffer expending compassion on them serves no purpose since It is the living who suffer and can benefit from compassion. The pity someone felt for the dead that pity you feel is for yourself not for them. so if you say stuff like “Did you think about how the family would feel” or “This is not what they would want” the thing these two things have in common is how they come off as egotistical since they lacked understanding and empathy towards the person they are saying it to and it grants them the ability to be self-righteous like they're the good guy and thinks that they say is right then must actually be right but the reality it's completely egotistical. these two things lack substance one snatches words it's one-sided since it's an echo of the ideals created by a black-and-white society. the burn murders Snatch talked about are the thugs that dabi burned in the alleyway they wouldn’t be considered innocent people with families to mourn for them. This showed just how one-sided Snatch's words are since his speech didn’t enlighten those who are evil but exposed Snatch's self-righteousness. the second one much like Snatch is preachy since it doesn’t have any substance to back it up but another is that those are words that are assumptions based on limited perceptions of what that person they mentioned wants. I already talked about the dead before and these words are similar since that would be something that you would say to yourself, not to the other person. these words that you are speaking are based on the idea of someone they might do than what the actual person might really do when you don’t know about them there dead so you can’t learn more about their true feelings so you don’t know the person you are talking about. that is putting words in someone's mouths especially if you don’t know anything about the other person in particular. that is just answering on your perception this is just your perception of them you are talking about. these words exclude their anatomy and agency in favor of a person's selfish satisfaction in the words they preach if you look at it, it's just as similar to snatch they are secure in their world view being self-righteous and pretentious all the while neglecting the person they are speaking about. It basically just saying whatever you want without any regard to their will

so yeah, Dabi doesn’t see a point in knowing about what that person wants since there already dead whether that person wants it or not it doesn’t matter since this world will keep moving anyways.

Dabi is emotional but is distant due to not wanting to get close to others to carry out his goals mostly he doesn’t intend to get close to others since he planned on dieing in the beginning but if that person is important to dabi that they would be someone that dabi wouldn’t be distant with

if Twice's death and the scene of dabi thinking of Snatch's words are any indication, Their death would weigh heavily on Dabi’s mind even to the point that dabi wouldn't contain himself. how he would mourn someone is that he would think about what they are when they were alive since mourning is about thinking about what that person is alive but not dead it suppose to show that They are someone that dabi would always think about.

just like with Twice and the dead man's parade in his honor Dabi himself would do anything to carry on their last wishes in a way that dabi would do for them out of care. Their death wouldn’t change Dabi’s goals, Dabi’s goals are something that Dabi himself decided but they would become part of Dabi’s goals

if your going to write about how dabi would react if he lost someone important to him think about the relationship he would have with this said person. Their relationship would be important to how Dabi would react to their death.

#dabi #my ask #my asks #asks #ask

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volkshore · 2 years

Text

an exhaustive and gratuitous list of personal grimsley headcanons

- he’s all confidence and bravado but at least 90% of it is fake and will tumble like a house of cards the moment someone calls him on his bullshit, except for when it comes to gambling — he puts all of his acting effort into that, rendering any other venture in self-assurance extremely fragile. the belief he has in himself is an absolute zero in most subjects, hence why he goes so hard for the one thing he knows he’s good at.

- he held high status in unova as an up-and-coming young influential and an amazing battler with charm to boot, but he is literally insufferable to most people he comes across; grimsley is very much an acquired taste. most everyone who faces him wants his head on a stake by the ten minute mark and honestly, he revels in it more often than not. at the beginning of his elite four days, the other three attempted to keep a running tally on how many challengers would make some sort of snide remark about grimsley to one of them and they gave up counting a week in.

- well versed in the art of escape owed entirely to his addiction-spurred shenanigans. “every gambler knows the secret to survival” is right, and grimsley is no fool. he knows he lacks in the physical department and makes up for it with his unbelievable penchant for being able to slip away when he’s ruffled enough feathers.

- much more morally grey than people understand him to be — just because he’s caring towards his select few companions and generally good-natured does not negate his overwhelming apathy. grimsley has a very stringent code when it comes to how he designates his emotions, knowing all too well that people have the capacity to bleed him dry until he has nothing left to feel. dedicating said emotions to matters that don’t involve him has never done anything for him but waste his time and energy, thus he’s developed extremely passive views regarding moral dilemmas.

- upon reaching bankruptcy, he used the last of his coin to purchase his ticket to alola. deportation is increasingly uncommon in alola and it was grimsley’s best bet to evade the repercussions of all his actions. going broke was the final nail in the coffin; he could deal with revenge-seeking creditors and tiptoeing in the shadows to survive, though he was well aware that continuing to do so was no longer an option once he was officially plotted on the government’s radar.

- grimsley enjoys the ‘everybody wants me *is referring to every bank and government official in unova*’ gag way too much. he has this way of remaining terribly self-righteous and egotistical even though all of his misery and rejections should, realistically, nullify that. the amount of times he makes a joke along that line once he moves to alola is obscene and everyone tells him that it’s going to end up getting him in jail but he literally cannot resist making it part of his personality.

- choosing to specialise in dark types was a decision spurred entirely by his obsession with being mysterious and desirable and i genuinely cannot be made to think otherwise. 10-year-old grimsley saw dark types and went absolutely wild. perhaps the root of this also lies in some deep-seated hope that he could finally be loved and valued if he wielded a type that people found fascinating, but you would never hear that from him.

- he’s very familiar with the phrase “do you want to try that again? with the truth, this time?” from the people who know him best. he developed into a pathological liar out of necessity and is extremely good at it, and he has no idea how his circle keeps seeing through his lies. the fact that there are people who know his tells is rather unnerving, but perhaps feeling like that is just old habits.

- when he left unova for alola, he left everything behind. he refused to tell anybody his plans or keep in contact with those dearest to him — grimsley became the charming young elite four who disappeared off the face of the earth. his trust issues span thousands of miles, enough to wrap around the world twice over and still have extra. he couldn’t afford to keep anyone in his life after he moved. it just wasn’t an option to him.

- it’s a rough first few months in alola, splitting his time between casino-hopping and midnight stumbling to get home, and it’s mantine surfing that gets him back on the rails. grimsley’s addictive personality is malleable. he had been interested in the sport from the very beginning but needed a few insistent shoves and a forced sign-up to finally pursue it, and once he starts, it becomes his saving grace. it’s not a perfect solution and he does fall back into old habits time and time again, but at least he’s trying and he’s doing better.

- despite adjusting to his new home and becoming comfortable after some while, grimsley still exclusively keeps burner phones on him. he can never be too safe. the thought of finally being caught up to clings to him like a particularly pesky cologne and no amount of reassurance or safe days can completely convince him that he’s free from his past. the phone thing annoys the living hell out of the people who converse with him frequently, but he shows no signs of changing so they’ve learned to adapt.

#i’ve never played sumo/usum so idk if these have continuity errors with those games lol #grimsley is just very fun to thing about. i would love to write a character study on him one day #lots of introspection and delving into the different chapters of his life. i’d have so much fun with it #elite four grimsley #grimsley pokemon #pokemon headcanons #unova #alola

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benitez-film · 7 months

Text

What will my artist be known for? (1)

//BUILDING YOUR BRANDING//

Obstacles to overcome

100,000 new songs are released on Spotify each day.

Today’s listeners also seem to orient their listening around songs more than artists — while listening to more of both than ever before. We listened to an average of 2,001 artists and 3,272 songs each. For reference, our top streamer listened to over 6,000 different artists in 2023, and over 11,000 songs.

This translates to an average of fewer than two songs per artist. While more artists are getting exposure to audiences, it is increasingly hard to find repeat listeners as users spread their listening across a wider range of both songs and artists than ever.

So how to stand out?

Story telling and visuals are key to branding

Branding provides contextual cues to hook new listeners, which builds your audience.

"when I scroll through my Discover Weekly Spotify playlist that’s updated each week with recommendations their algorithm believes I’d like, as a consumer, my prompt to encourage me to listen to a new song is my ability to recognize their name. The environment is devoid of hints that tell me what a song or an artist is about, why I should listen to them why I should care."

Visuals do the heavy lifting

"Our visual memory is more powerful than our audible memory. When people see a song, not just hear it, their ability to recall the song is stronger so promoting music with visuals will enhance the memorability of your project"

What do you need to create - Asset checklist for a new artist campaign

→ ESSENTIAL ASSETS

• Album artwork

• Single artwork

• Press photoshoot

• Music video treatment & music video

• Logo

• Typography

• Colour palette

→ NICE TO HAVES

• Remix artwork

• Styling moodboard

• Tour admat

• Social skins

• Merch design

• Visual guideline bible

• Vinyl/CD/cassette layout

• “Coming soon”, release date reveal and “out now” graphics for social media

• Stage or livestream concept

• Website design

• Mockups for merch and physical products. To be used on website and social media

• Visualizer for YouTube

Planning for your visuals

This is taken from the process outlined by Tom Bird - who is a Creative Director for many pop artists.

Tom Bird creates what he calls his Big Book

This becomes the visual map for the promotional package.

What goes in?

The initial references from the kick-off forms the basis of a “big book” that grows with new ideas. To ensure the ideas are fresh he looks outside of music for references, “opera and ballet are exceptional sources for set design, make-up and hair references”, “I read fiction and listen to audiobooks to make up images in my head”, “landscapes, cityscapes, fashion, classic art, and film/TV are incredible visual sources”

What comes out

1. A unique and ownable visual identity

The book needs to represent the artist in a way that is true to what people understand their brand to be, but also push it so it’s new and exciting for consumers.

2. Guiding document for all staff

It sets the box they need to operate and innovate in so when he says “we need something clean” that clean is understood in the context of the project.

An example of a page from his Big Book

Applying this to “The Martini Police”

What do they want to be known for?:

- pioneer in their genre

- be a leading band

- presenting strong visuals paired with their music videos

- not fitting a certain mould or shell - breaking into various influences and genres and not being ‘boxed in’

- consistently paying homage to the 60s/70s, with nostalgia playing a large part in their music, clothing and general behaviour and aura

- particularly in “MOONDUST”, they want to achieve this overtly confident and perhaps self righteous sound, commenting on the easily selfish and egotistic persona many bands grow to embody

TWEET FORMAT:

“We would like to be known for our consistent homage to the 70s era, through both costume and music. We want to be the pioneers of our generation, whilst keeping the “old sound” alive, because its from there that we all gain our inspiration. We mix nostalgia with a modern twist, and encapsulate the “absurdist suave” feel primarily through our style and how we present ourselves, on stage and off. Authenticity is primary for The Martini Police, without that we would be no different to everyone else. We are what you see, whether you like or not is your problem.”

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someoneimnot-composed · 5 months

Text

Black Girl...

It's been so long since I used tumblr and I think I've deleted every meaningful tumblr that I ever had. This one takes it's namesake from my original, someoneimnot/some1imnot (?) I can't remember the original spelling. It was a sort of depression-cum-teenage-angst blog, full of poetic and suicidal violent references. I'm not sure how much in actuality I have changed, over 10 years later.

I've been saying ever since I started thinking about working towards my two shows next year with H and DPG that I should start a tumblr. As a way to remove myself from social media and as a way to keep a diary of pictures and influences somewhere cohesively. I guess, now I have actually set the thing up. I regularly keep a physical journal but you can't really record imagery with ease in that.

I just finished watching Ousmane Sembene's 'Black Girl' La noire de... I watched it on the first day in a long time that I have gone to bed in the afternoon out of stress and depression. I used to do this frequently when I felt down, just get into bed and sleep in the afternoon and then I would sleep again at night time. It's quite ironic given the main character in the film Diouanna slips into a depression, after travelling to the French Rivieria to take care of a white families children, and instead finds herself becoming a maid. Suddenly, I think as I write this, darkly, of my closest friendships with white girls and it's not so hard to posit myself in the position of a maid within friendship dynamics, as cruel or egotistical as that may seem, or hateful towards those said friendships. Diouanna (spoiler) eventually commits suicide to take back her autonomy, released from her confines, between the 'post-colonial' confusion of Dakar, and France, it's conqueror. My own self has entered into friendships with white girls that I thought were prettier and more confident than me. I was the silent but unrelentingly, internally opinionated side-kick. Though, not upon my own personal abuse of the freedoms of intoxicating substances. In these dynamics I felt I faded into the background, just as I had felt I had faded into the background of my own perceptibly white family, unless being heralded as particularly good at art or a good listener or source of support. I write this from the position of someone who has recently and continually fallen out with her closest white female friends, over not being able to support them enough or being available enough or not staying in her lane enough. Someone that feels very sorry for them-self, and who all to readily identifies with the idea of the black maid or that black is a representation of sadness. A black hole, a full stop.

*Who's trauma out weighs who's and who's feelings are more valid, I undoubtably seek validation amongst the feelings of drowning within my own head.*

I watched Black Girl after I woke up from this depression nap, that I took right after I felt debilitated by the financial confusion and obligations of my successes, as my accountant didn't write me back quick enough. The original and only response from my accountant with a French name, was without any sense of human to human interaction, and then not at all. You make from the soul and it becomes a commodity, both your freedom and your imprisoning, profiteering off my own identity crisis and self-righteous sense of individuality.

Black Girl is a remarkable piece of cinema and I felt upon discovering Ousmane Sembene, a sense of shame that I had not heard of him before. Then as a woman who paint's Black Girls, how could I have not come across the film before now. I am glad that I found it, though it is both depressing and complex. I am happy that it exists. I intend to watch more of Sembene's films. I hate how sad I often find the portrayal of black people, especially the portrayal of Africa.

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luicifellt · 9 months

Text

So I got some issues..

Emotional issues. This complicates communication greatly..

To try and explain my thoughts, and thought process to my new partner I decided to write some of it down. To help get him an idea.

Because I'm inept at explaining my feelings and emotions.

Beneath the read more will be a lot ... but I need to have it out somewhere. Maybe someone will read it.

I dont know what I hope to get out of this. But its fairly dramatic so ... someone might like to read it.

These are snippets of thought.

Sadness

Anxiety

Stress

Loneliness?

Self hatred

Self disgust

Can't do anything right

Won't finish what's started.

Anything created will be hated, and NOT good enough. At all times.

Am I toxic?

Do you love me? Yes?

I believe you..

But Why?

Not pretty, not talented, not smart.

Kinda phat.

Emotional but can't express it.

Depressive episodes and mood swings...

Females am I rite?

Why bother ?

Why would you pick this? There's better options.. hopefully.

Seems like a mistake to invest in me. Though I'm so happy you did pick me. Never thought I'd have a relationship.

So good to me... can't give anything back though. Its not enough.

Can't handle myself well. Will lash out..

Seems like a animal adoption form. Don't adopt me. I look soft, looks are deceiving.

No motivation hates Self for that

No inspiration hates Self for that

No dreams or aspirations hates Self for that

No hobbies doesn't do much hates Self for that

Probably the worst conversationalist. Only has about 5 witty bright and fun days where true humor truly shows (a year) hates Self for that.

Selfish! can't stand myself, but still want the nice things.

Egotistical hates Self 90% of the time the other 10% is spend on Self complimenting ???

Hates Self for that. Thanks brain.

Horrible body image. Hasn't realy looked at self more that absolutely necessary in 15 years. When mirror is used: -10 don't recommend.

Uses self deprecating humor to feel better. Bad trait.

Can't control bad thoughts, let's it spiral like a junji ito story.

See! can be funny..is not enough though, is it.

Friend(s) will tire of this.

Got nothing to add to the group.

Can't (but should) find the energie and motivation to change that short term.

Long term probably not worth it. Tho Time will move anyway.. why have people waste it.

Fear of abandonment, fear of being left alone. Also weirdly craving it, to get it over with.

Convinced feelings can be turned off and broken. Maybe it should.

Who's kidding, sobbing mess in private! But can barely cry in company. Why. Nobody knows. *ugly cryier

Should honestly, cry more... should cry more honestly. Shouldn't let it vester for months. But I will.

No fysical energy. No creative energy. Stuck In the limbo of adult life.

Gets envious of people that know how to express themselves and have dreams and can make art and spend their time productive. Hates Self for that.

Self hate trumps envy. Keeps me grounded.

Don't know where the balls to hold out like this come from.. weird episodes of righteous ideas on improvement and finding motivation to improve. Can and will not last longer than 5 to 7 business days.

Tried psychologic help. Makes head messier and can't express any thought or feeling without feeling like crying.. main reason to keep it in.

Why does it bother me? Will cry literally everytime, feelings need to be discussed. No one wants that... yes. I decided that, because I don't want that.

Convinced that whatever power the universe holds in its dark matter, it manifests as bad luck.. consistently.. Time and experience have proven this to me.

Maybe just pessimistic.

Definitely just pessimistic.

Good taste in music tho. Bit static perhaps.

Has grand ideas. Doesn't know how to express them. Dissapointing.

Will overthink most things. Takes pride in well thought out plans... overthinking still more a problem, than a benefit.

Loves deeply for a lot of things but can't invest in one thing. Took a long time to convince myself I could love. Inexperienced.

Wish I could do better for you. Wish I could like me more.

Has hope to get better with help. But the spirals... Make me tired.

Has thought about dying. Knows this is a no no. Been through this before at years 12 through to 18. Never again. Not like that.

Weight loss helped.... people around me, to behave normally.

With the exception of a few, people would be degrading, look down on me, find me disgusting.

What I later learned however is that its usually not okay to express these thing out loud, to the persons face... especially when underage.

except when you're fat apparently because people would... constantly, daily, even if they didn't know me. They'd still tell me in passing.. as if hearing it would change anything in that moment.

I have had people do double takes and track back so they could tell me I'm offensive to the eyes.

I wish i made that up to be dramatic.

I feel like I have lived 2 lives.

But the first one seems so far away. It's not just the "getting old" part, nor the nostalgia factor. I suspect I simply blocked out a lot of it. Memories have more gaps than I care to admit.

I grief over this often. Sounds dramatic, again... but its the truth. I feel like a big part of Self got lost in those years and I'll never find it again.

Regrets and heartbreak over small things seem, so big when you have a lot of them.

It hurts.

It hurts to look at all the stuff I possess and gathered over the years.

All the art supplies all the expensive materials. The tools, the airbrush, the paints and canvases. The clay, the silicone, the make up...

They mock me everytime I catch them gathering dust in the closet, or drawer. They take up endless amounts of space... but I can't get rid of it.. because, what if.. as if.

Not having these things hurts more...

I can write pretty decently. To bad everything written feels like a edgy YA novel. Dropped.

Reading used ro be a comfort.. now a pressure at the back of my head reminding me of how it USED to be. Reading now no longer an adventure, or practical pass time.

Feels like wasting time. ( and money)

Sometimes it feels like one more dissapointment away from running on empty.

No thoughts, head empty.

Sounds appealing. Where do you sign up.

Imagine being simultaneously most loved and taken care off by a partner, for the first time in your life... but also the most lost.

Feels like a disappointment.. one of many. How much more do I have, before it's to much for me, or the people around me.

Maybe i SHOULD write angsty YA novels.

Maybe not.

Wonder where the irrational thoughts and fits come from. Could it be trauma? Could it be drama? Maybe in another life I was a theatre kid after all.

Goals: be part of it, stop being a spectator.

Pick a personality that you like and stick with it. Be useful.

#emotions #feelings #train of thought #sad #quite sad #tw #trigger warning #depressing #depressing thoughts #mention of unaliving #nothing rly that dramatic tbh but i know how tumblr is #thought dump #honesty #lots of text

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chawsl · 2 years

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But there were also lying prophets among the people then, just as there will be lying religious teachers among you. They’ll smuggle in destructive divisions, pitting you against each other—biting the hand of the One who gave them a chance to have their lives back! They’ve put themselves on a fast downhill slide to destruction, but not before they recruit a crowd of mixed-up followers who can’t tell right from wrong. They give the way of truth a bad name. They’re only out for themselves. They’ll say anything, anything, that sounds good to exploit you. They won’t, of course, get by with it. They’ll come to a bad end, for God has never just stood by and let that kind of thing go on. God didn’t let the rebel angels off the hook, but jailed them in hell till Judgment Day. Neither did he let the ancient ungodly world off. He wiped it out with a flood, rescuing only eight people—Noah, the sole voice of righteousness, was one of them. God decreed destruction for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. A mound of ashes was all that was left—grim warning to anyone bent on an ungodly life. But that good man Lot, driven nearly out of his mind by the sexual filth and perversity, was rescued. Surrounded by moral rot day after day after day, that righteous man was in constant torment. So God knows how to rescue the godly from evil trials. And he knows how to hold the feet of the wicked to the fire until Judgment Day. God is especially incensed against these “teachers” who live by lust, addicted to a filthy existence. They despise interference from true authority, preferring to indulge in self-rule. Insolent egotists, they don’t hesitate to speak evil against the most splendid of creatures. Even angels, their superiors in every way, wouldn’t think of throwing their weight around like that, trying to slander others before God. These people are nothing but brute beasts, born in the wild, predators on the prowl. In the very act of bringing down others with their ignorant blasphemies, they themselves will be brought down, losers in the end. Their evil will boomerang on them. They’re so despicable and addicted to pleasure that they indulge in wild parties, carousing in broad daylight. They’re obsessed with adultery, compulsive in sin, seducing every vulnerable soul they come upon. Their specialty is greed, and they’re experts at it. Dead souls! They’ve left the main road and are directionless, having taken the way of Balaam, son of Beor, the prophet who turned profiteer, a connoisseur of evil. But Balaam was stopped in his wayward tracks: A dumb animal spoke in a human voice and prevented the prophet’s craziness. There’s nothing to these people—they’re dried-up fountains, storm-scattered clouds, headed for a black hole in hell. They are loudmouths, full of hot air, but still they’re dangerous. Men and women who have recently escaped from a deviant life are most susceptible to their brand of seduction. They promise these newcomers freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, for if they’re addicted to corruption—and they are—they’re enslaved. If they’ve escaped from the slum of sin by experiencing our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ, and then slid back into that same old life again, they’re worse than if they had never left. Better not to have started out on the straight road to God than to start out and then turn back, repudiating the experience and the holy command. They prove the point of the proverbs, “A dog goes back to its own vomit” and “A scrubbed-up pig heads for the mud.”

2 Peter 2:1‭-‬2‭, ‬2‭-‬22 MSG

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mittensmorgul · 3 years

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Today on the TNT loop... 12.23 and 13.01 (so far, it’s early and we’re going through 13.04 today). So I’m deep in the Grief Arc feels.

But again, it all hits different now. Yes, I’ve rewatched these since 15.20 aired, this is my second pass through the loop since then. But with a bit of emotional distance from that mess, there’s interesting stuff here.

Looking at the finale, at what Jack would become, at how that ties in with themes of Faith versus Free Will... it’s like this was the point where Chuck finally weaponized free will against them, where their choices would play into his story rather than fight against it. No wonder Dean was so angry after this point.

No wonder Chuck abandoned them, refused to answer Dean’s prayer to bring Cas back. Cas wasn’t SUPPOSED to come back. Chuck finally got him out of the way, and it was literally Dean’s grief unwittingly channeled through Jack’s power that woke him up again and gave him the tools to fight his way back. The fact Cas never KNEW this is still one of those things that I will scream forever about.

(In every way that actually mattered, Dean was silenced)

But in today’s viewing, I’m mostly screaming about the “drunk angel” Miriam and her vendetta against Becky.

DRUNK WOMAN: Whoa. What happened to you hand?

DEAN: Nothin’.

DRUNK WOMAN: Doesn’t look like nothing. You punch a wall or something? I punched a wall once. Well, a poster on a wall, but same diff, right? Freshman year, I had this roommate, Becky. She had this giant poster of Elsa. You know, from “Frozen”? And I mean, first, who brings something like that to college? A cartoon? Really? Like, “hello homeschool,” right?

[As she is talking, Drunk Woman is writing something in the dust of the Impala’s passenger side window, and Dean removes a bottle of whisky from the trunk. He takes a swallow and then pours some over his bloody knuckles]

DEAN: You done?

DRUNK WOMAN: Anyway, Becky was - and I say this in the most feminist, screw the patriarchy way - a giant superbitch. She’d take things, and break things, and piss people off, and just do whatever she wanted, no matter who it hurt.

[Dean is making please stop talking faces at her but she is oblivious]

DRUNK WOMAN: It’s like the whole world was just Becky to her, you know?

DEAN: Mmm. So you punched her poster.

DRUNK WOMAN: And lit most of her stuff on fire.

[Dean gives her a look]

DRUNK WOMAN: I got issues.

[...]

[As the Impala pulls away, you can see Drunk Woman has written “BITCH” in the dust on the window.]

So, we have this invented story about a woman named Becky. But after s15, we KNOW how much control Chuck has over the story, and especially of certain characters-- like demons and angels. This is why he was so infuriated that he couldn’t just control Castiel. We saw him DIRECTLY insert Lilith back into the story in 15.05, limiting her power to ONLY follow his “script.” To the point she was entirely self-aware of this and her place in the story, and the fact that she was essentially just a character in the story without free will.

And I kinda wonder how much Miriam functions in the exact same way-- the way Chuck has implied that ALL angels are expected to function.

MIRIAM: Okay. If she shoots you. (Sheriff Barker looks to Dean in confusion) I don't know what he's told you. I mean, I can guess. Some line about how he and his brother... (deepens voice) save the world. Grr. So macho. (she sighs and speaks in her normal voice) But really, he's not a hero. He's Becky. DEAN: Becky? The roommate Becky? MIRIAM: You take things and break things and piss people off, and just do whatever you want, no matter who it hurts. Also, you're a giant super bitch. DEAN: Well, it takes one to know one. MIRIAM: So, yeah, you're Becky, and Becky needs to die. You're on, Barney Fife.

Yes... she says Dean is “Becky,” this Becky that breaks things and who saw the whole world as Becky... Though... her understanding of how free will works in this context really does sound twisted and tainted by Chuck’s perspective on his own “disobedient” characters. Because to Chuck, the story is the most important thing, it’s the only thing, and it’s entirely his own creation.

No wonder creating human souls made him feel a little queasy... and I’m still not sure that was something he actually did on purpose, especially with the free will bit included in the package. Because from the moment free will existed, Chuck began to lose control of the story of creation. People could choose to tell their OWN stories, better stories than the one Chuck created the universe to tell in the first place. Humanity makes things better, bigger than Chuck could imagine, through the power of love that Chuck could never invent for himself or understand for himself. Or even possibly FEEL for himself.

And who was his original human pawn in the story, way back in 5.01? Becky. Becky who took HIS story and “broke” it and pissed him off, doing whatever she wanted no matter who it hurt (even if it was only Him as the Original Author getting precious about his story). But as we saw in 15.04, Becky refused to just take his story as he dished it out. She went out and made her own life, reimagined the Story of Supernatural as something better than it was-- filed with life and humanity and love. She stopped idolizing HIM as the creator and saw it as HER story now too, the version she was passionate about, the version that brought HER joy.

And what did Chuck do to her? Like Miriam, he “punched her cartoon poster” and then burned most of her stuff. Because Becky had the audacity to take the story she’d been written into and make it her own. She refused to “obey” the story Chuck wanted to tell. And he saw her story as infantile and uninteresting. Because he couldn’t just let it go... like Elsa... lol.

And what Chuck can’t control, he tends to destroy, like Miriam did in this episode. Only... Miriam failed too. Sure, it was only one battle in the long war of Free Will versus The Story, but it was the opening note in this section of the story which was supposed to be about Humanity and Free Will finally triumphing over the story to free themselves from it.

The story itself was telling humanity to hold on, to keep telling OUR version of the story, because that was how to defeat the story itself. Human love and choice and will as something BETTER than the story Chuck wanted to tell. Not just handing it off to someone who has been built into the perfect vessel to carry on his story, but literally allowing humanity to be free from the narrative Chuck spent all of creation trying to build for them. And that freedom was literally built upon the very human love embodied in Dean Winchester (and learned by Castiel to the point it changed him and freed him from Chuck’s control). Cas deserved to come back. Jack deserved to be freed from his destiny. Billie deserved better than being manipulated and villainized by Chuck’s final chapter. Eileen deserved the freedom to choose her own happiness. Sam deserved a chance to do the same. Dean deserved to live, and to have a chance to tell Cas he feels exactly the same way about him. And that’s the tip of the iceberg of what everyone deserved.

(they deserved to not be “burned” for their audacity to want something more than what Chuck thought they deserved)

They deserved to hang up their Frozen posters without some self-righteous bitch judging them for it, and to live their lives how THEY wanted to, rather than how Chuck thought they should for his own egotistical self-justification.

Chuck said way back in s11 that he wanted to create the universe to make something better than just him and Amara, and everything after that point reads like he was pissed off at the fact that humanity went out and actually DID grow to be better than him, in every way possible. Sure, we fuck up, we make mistakes, and some of us are actively malicious and terrible people. But... overall? We try. We keep trying to be better, to love more, to choose the right thing... to do our best in a world where it’s far too easy to do our worst, to take a few words from Cas.

And it just hurts my heart to know what we COULD have had if Chuck didn’t actually win.

#spn 13.01 #spn 15.20 #spn 15.04 #chuck's process #spiders georg of the tnt loop #that's what free will is

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kyber-crystal · 4 years

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Bulletproof

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Words: ~1.7k

Summary: In which the Captain gets a little too overprotective, but you end up interpreting his words the wrong way and taking it a little too personally.

Warnings: slight mentions of violence, angry steve, soft steve

A/N: this was so bad omg I’m so sorry.

The flight back after a mission was always quiet, whether everything had gone well or not. The team was both physically and mentally drained, falling into a comfortable silence as the Quinjet propelled itself through the sky. This mission in particular had taken a toll on all of you.

You were seated in the far corner of the jet as you glanced over at the screen of the flight details, thigh bandaged and throbbing mildly. While you were able to extract the intel you needed, you'd thrown yourself into the crossfire to do so, being gunned down by a sniper from above. You were lucky enough for it to be just a simple graze, but Steve was treating it as if it was the end of the world.

Of course, you kind of understood where he was coming from. Despite the fact that you had over ten years of experience in the field, you were the youngest member of the team besides Pietro and Wanda, being only two years behind Steve himself. But that didn't stop you from feeling annoyed every time he seemed to act a little too overprotective no matter how many times you claimed you could take care of yourself.

"He's just worried for your safety," Natasha tried to explain when you complained about this one night. "You know how Cap is. A let's-get-down-to-business and always-follow-the-rules type of guy. I wouldn't overthink it if I were you."

You still couldn't help but think that he was overreacting a majority of the time, however. And in this one case in which he'd caught your side comment, it had erupted into a full-on argument.

"The least you could've done was call for backup," he said through gritted teeth. "You went against orders and tried to handle things on your own, and look where that got you."

"Excuse me?" You rolled your eyes. Whenever he made jabs at your decisions like this it made your blood boil with a furious anger; wanting nothing more than to explode at him. "I was successful in doing my job, was I not? And it's not like there were any better options presented to me at that moment."

"That doesn't matter. You could've gotten yourself killed!" he shouted, jaw tensed and arms crossed over his chest as you stared each other down. "How could you have been so stupid, putting your life on the line like that?"

"Stupid?" you scoffed, seething with anger at this point. "If I recall, I was the one who got the intel from the controls room and shut the system down!"

"And you got shot as you were leaving because you didn't keep a good enough lookout of your surroundings. You put the entire team into jeopardy," he told you matter-of-factly. The words stung, but you did your best to remain calm despite being unable to believe he had the nerve to say something like that. "You almost ruined this mission."

The team sat in stunned silence as they watched the screaming match unfold between you two.

"I'm sorry, but you know what, Rogers?" you spat, voice now raised several notches, "Maybe I'm sorry for pissing you off, but there's no way I'm gonna keep putting up with you constantly criticizing me for every little thing I do. We all make mistakes, so I don't get why I'm the only one who gets shit on for making a slip up every. Single. Damn. Time! I'm sick of you ordering me around like you're my boss, because you aren't."

"I'm trying to do what's best for both of us!" Steve yelled. "You just can't seem to get that through your head, can you?"

"Don't need to act like such an asshole about it."

"You know, I wonder which will get you killed faster, your loyalty or your stubbornness? Because one of those things is going to be the death of you someday," he shot back, his harsh words feeling like a spear being thrust through your chest. "And I won't take any credit for it, because it'll be all on you."

You refused to look away, even as your lower lip trembled and your shoulders shook, unwilling to back down. Your lashes brimmed heavy with tears, hands clenched into shaking fists in a desperate last bid to keep it together.

"Okay, cut it out," Tony finally interrupted, Wanda pulling you away from Steve as the murderous look in your eyes told her you were ready to throw hands. "You need to stop bickering like a married couple all the time."

"Tell that to the self-righteous egotistical man who thinks he's always in charge," you muttered.

"To the ignorant woman who's always throwing herself into the crossfire without considering how it might affect the overall completion of the mission," Steve shot back.

"You little—"

"Y/N," Wanda placed a gentle hand on your shoulder, "stop. It's not worth arguing over."

You winced as she helped you sit down, the pain from your wound beginning to catch up to you after standing on your injured leg for too long.

The rest of the flight was spent in silence, with you and Steve refusing to look in each others' direction entirely.

...

As soon as the jet touched down back at HQs, you quickly changed and went straight to the gym. After wrapping protective tape around your palms, you went up to one of the punching bags and began attacking the hell out of it, imagining it as Steve's face making it easier and seeming to further fuel your anger.

You went at this for an hour, pushing yourself to the max, refusing to give your screaming and aching limbs a break. Your muscles contracted and your arms and legs felt like they'd fall off at any minute but you continued going nonetheless, the aching pains that feeling like a million tiny needles stabbing at every inch of your body. Training was probably the worst thing to do for your leg, but the bullet wound was the last thing on your mind at the moment.

I wonder which will get you killed faster, your loyalty or your stubbornness? Because one of those things is going to be the death of you someday.

You put the entire team into jeopardy.

You almost ruined this mission.

You punched the bag harder, feeling your knuckles cracking and blood running down your fingers, fresh bruises beginning to form underneath. Steve had never been this harsh towards you before, and you started wondering if he really was right about the fact that you almost ruined everything.

Yet you still didn't understand why he had to be so overprotective all the time.

"What are you doing? You shouldn't be training, or else that leg won't recover."

At the sound of his voice all his words came flooding back. Your heart began racing and your blood boiled as you stopped what you were doing and looked up at him.

"Leave me the hell alone."

Steve ignored your words and took several steps forward, stopping just a few feet away from where you stood.

"You're bleeding," he said in a surprisingly soft voice.

"I'm fine," you snapped. "Now go away."

"Come on, just—" he pleaded, voice sounding broken, "just let me bandage your hands up for you."

Knowing he wasn't going to leave, you slid down against the wall and let out a defeated sigh, allowing him to kneel in front of you and take your hands in his. The feeling of his rough, callused skin against yours despite the frustration coursing through your veins still sent a little spark up your fingers, and you never hated yourself more for it than you did now.

You briefly scanned over his features, taking note of his tired and red eyes and the crease between his eyebrows as he carefully disinfected your wounds.

"Y/N," he finally spoke up after several minutes of silence, as he finished bandaging up your hands. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean what I said."

"Okay." You refused to make eye contact with him, knowing you would break down the second you looked back up into his bright blue eyes.

"Y/N," his voice broke, the sound making your heart twist in your chest. "Please look at me, sweetheart."

"Don't call me sweetheart," you muttered. "I'm so sorry," he repeated again, "I don't think you're stupid and that you jeopardized the team. You saved us all, in fact. I really shouldn't have said any of that to begin with."

You didn't realize you were crying until you felt the salty tears roll down your cheeks and into your mouth, and you choked on a sob as you finally forced yourself to meet his gaze, breaking down.

"Then why did you act the way you did?"

"It was wrong of me," he exhaled, "I...look, I'm just worried about you, because if that extraction did go wrong and something happened to you, I'd feel like it was all on me. I'd feel like it was my fault, because I failed to look out for you. And I don't think I can handle being responsible for your death."

"As much as you hurt me," you said as you stood up and were pulled into his arms, voice muffled by the fabric of his T-shirt, "I could never bring myself to actually hate you."

"I just care about you too much, I can't lose you," he murmured into your hair, arms tightening their grip around your waist. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," you mumbled, voice muffled by his T-shirt, "I forgive you."

"I love you," he whispered so quietly that he thought you wouldn't catch what he was saying, but you just barely managed to hear it. But honestly, he didn't care. You couldn't help the smile forming on your face at that moment. "I love you too."

"Oh my god, that tension was fucking killing me," Bucky groaned as the doors to the gym burst open, and he and Sam came inside. "I was about to explode if you guys didn't kiss and make up." "Oh uh, also, Y/N, your leg..." Sam pointed out. You and Steve both looked down to see blood seeping through the thick bandaging wrapped around your thigh.

"Well, shit," you choked out. "Oops."

"Language," Steve joked. "Come on. Let's go to Bruce so we can get that treated."

"Don't have too much fun with each other!" the two men called after you.

"Shut up!" you shouted back.

#avengers imagines #steve rogers x reader #avengers x reader #captain america imagine #captain america x reader #marvel fic #avengers fanfiction #steve rogers fanfiction #captain america fanfiction #steve rogers fic #captain america fic

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inkandpen22 · 3 years

Text

Beautiful Angel of Darkness (5/?)

Pairing: Spike x Female!Reader

Warnings: Mentions of cheating

Word Count: 2.2k

Part Summary: Since Angel implemented the seed of doubt in Y/N’s mind, she’s been struggling with trusting Spike again.

A/N: sorry it took me forever to post this part today. It was was my first day of classes. I hope you like it!

“I don’t like it when things are okay,” I confess to Angel vulnerably. “It means something bad is just around the corner. An impending doom...”

He shakes his head slowly. "Not with me, Y/N I’ll protect you.”

The words fall from his lips softly in a promise.

"And why should I trust you?" I mutter.

I mean, why should I trust someone who comes at the beck and call of the Slayer? He could be lying for all I know.

"Because I'm not the one who made you choose death to be with me," he reasons, his eyes flickering to Spike behind me.

I glance back at Spike and his attention leaves Angel to be directed at me. It’s ironic, I’m undead and surrounded by two vampires yet, I’ve never felt more human. I'm utterly torn. A piece of me screaming to stop acting foolish and trust in Angel. There was a time when I exited through my humanity. When I had better judgment. Then, I met Spike, and my entire center of gravity shifted.

He became the sun and the moon to me, my entire world. I made a vow to him. I swore my love and life to him forever, and in return, he swore his to me.

I feel more myself than I have in several days. I allowed myself to slip into the darkness that comes with being soulless. Angel's ultimatum pulled me out of it. He offers me the chance to be with my family and a second chance at a somewhat normal life. Yet, I would have to give up the life I have now, Spike. My humanity or Spike.

I turn back to Angel.

His gaze is sharp, determined, and righteous. They're perceptions I don't feel when I look into Spike's eyes. When I look at Angel, I feel as though I'm in the presence of a guardian or mentor. As if I'm under a microscope of judgment.

When I look at Spike, an immense peace blesses my entirety. Many feel that way when they're faced with Angel ironically. The same people overlook the good in Spike. They accept the overt humility of Angel and ignore the Angelus that lives within him still. Then, declare him the more gracious of the two. I see beneath the superficial and see the humanity in Spike. The humility he claims doesn't exist. Spike has the ability to love soullessly. If I were to ask Angel, can he honestly tell me that he can do the same? Because at the end of the day isn't that the core of humanity, love?

I've made my decision.

"I choose him," I inform Angel.

"Y/N, you can't-"

"I will always choose him," I emphasize.

Angel clenches his jaw. "He isn't who he says he is, I can guarantee you! He seems great now, but someday and someday soon, he's going to hurt you! He's going to destroy everything you care about until there's nothing left and then he's going to desert you! You may choose him, but he'll never choose you!"

Spike interjects, wrapping his hand around mine. "Y/N, Love, let's just-"

"He does choose me, every day!" I defend.

"Love," Spike voices pleadingly, trying to get me to go.

"However," I tell Angel. "If you're right and one day he decides he's had enough, I'll accept it. I will hold no resentment or regret because even then, I will still choose him."

The older vampire sighs, "you don't know what kind of mistake you're making."

"Best of luck to you, Angel," I offer him a weak smile before turning around to walk away.

I pass Spike, not acknowledging him as I walk toward the ledge of the building and hop off the side. Strolling down the dimly lit alley, I head home.

"Y/N wait," Spike jogs after me. He runs ahead of me and blocks my path.

"Did you mean it? Everything you said back there, did you mean it?"

"Every word," I answer softly.

Calmly, I step around Spike and continue on my way. He grabs my wrist and makes me stop in my tracks. With a sigh, I glance over my shoulder at the bleached hair vamp. His eyes are narrow as they gaze at me with a crossed expression.

"I love you, you know that don't you? I'll never leave you,"

A weak smile forms on my lips again. "I know you love me right now, yes."

He shakes his head frantically, using his other hand to reach up and caress my face. "No, I'll love you forever! I'll never desert you."

"Oh, Sweetheart," I brush my palm over his cheek gently. "I know you mean that, but I also know you. Perhaps, better than you know yourself," I laugh breathlessly, suspecting I'm right.

He stares into my eyes with hurt, yet there's something else beneath them, guilt?

I nod, almost to tell him it's okay. "I look into your eyes and I see you, all of you. You mean everything you say wholeheartedly, but none of us can be certain of what might happen. We love each other today, that's all that matters."

______________________________

As the moon shines over the cemetery, I stroll home from the butcher after picking up some blood bags. Spike prefers his blood fresh, of course. Yet, after the other night with Angel, I find myself feeling guilty after feeding. Since then, I've been buying blood bags.

It's strange, the humanity that I thought had left me after I was turned has returned in specks. I haven't mentioned my change of heart to Spike, he'd be furious and claim that it's all in my head. He wants me to be who I was before Angel got in my head. He wants me to be this vengeful, cruel, entity. He wants me to give up every part of me that holds onto remorse and sanity. Is it possible to have humility when I'm soulless?

"Y/N," a familiar voice interrupts my thoughts.

A figure appears from within the shadows, Angel.

I huff, marching along. "Go away, Angel."

Much to my annoyance, the vampire walks with me on the way back to the crypt. "I've come to tell you something."

"What?" I snicker. "That you have the martyr thing going? Yeah, kinda figured."

"No, I'm serious," he wraps his fingers around my arm aggressively. "There's something you have to know about Spike!"

"Believe me, I know quite a bit about him," I dismiss, yanking my arm free of him.

I'm mere yards from the crypt. The sooner I get there, the sooner I can get away from this self-righteous demon.

"Not this," Angel growls.

I whip around to address him sharply. "Can you truly tell me you know everything about him or would I have you beat?"

"He wouldn't tell you this," he states with immense certainty.

His tone nearly makes me waver, nearly, but I trust that Spike has my best interest at heart... for the time being.

"Whatever, I don't believe you," I rush out and start marching off.

"Fine, don't believe me! But, I would ask Spike where he is when he's not with you," he shouts his warning.

I stop and my chest falls. What does he by that? Where could Spike be right now? He told me he was going to go feed and would be home after.

Slowly, I turn over my shoulder. I'm certain I'm going to regret this, but I'll ask. "Where is he?"

Angel raises a brow, amused by my curiosity. "Oh, so now you're interested?"

Geez, he's so self-satisfied. Honestly, some vampires are so egotistical. They're worse than human men.

"I'm curious about what you think I should be looking out for," I specifically.

"Oh interesting," Angel glides up to me with a smug. He circles me as I did to him on the roof. I can't ignore the change in roles. "You don't trust him."

"I don't trust myself. Now, stop playing therapist and just tell me," I hiss between my teeth.

"He's with Buffy," he whispers over my shoulder.

I swallow hard, if I had a heart it would be sinking. No, he's lying.

I snap my head to the side. "Why would he be with the Slayer?"

"He helps her," he informs me lowly.

He's enjoying this too much.

"No, he wouldn't," I reason. "He hates her."

Angel appears in front of me again, his expression troubled again. I recognize this emotion on him, it's the only one he ever holds.

"She's changing him. I've seen it," he tells me.

"How...How could she ever-"

"Spike..." he hesitates. "Spike has a thing for her."

"A thing?" I repeat, my brows scrunching together in confusion. "What are we in middle school? Just say what you mean!"

I wish everyone would stop beating around the damn bush! We may have forever to live, but I'm growing tired of not just saying what we mean!

"He's in love with her!" Angel snaps.

I stare at him, processing his words silently for several seconds. Spike in love with the Slayer?

"Ha!" I laugh in Angel's face. "Yeah okay, sure," I dismiss, starting toward the crypt again. "If Spike loves the Slayer then I love the Slayer's friend. What's his name again? Xander?"

"I know it doesn't make any sense," Angel huffs as he continues to follow me. "Believe me, I didn't think it was true at first either, but then..." he pauses, visibly struggling to say it.

I frown, slowing to a stop right in front of the entrance to the crypt. "Then what?"

Angel avoids my gaze, focusing on the cement steps beneath our feet. I tuck my finger under his chin and make him face me. His dark eyes meet mine with surprise.

"What Angel?!" I bark.

"I saw him kiss her," he confesses with a sympathetic expression.

The grocery bag full of blood falls to the ground and scatter over the steps of the crypt. I shake my head repeatedly, stepping back to get away from him. He creeps up the stairs after me with sorrowful eyes.

"No..." I whisper, unable to speak any louder.

I stumble back into the crypt as I feel as though the world is crumbling around me. He's lying. Yes, that's just it, he's lying. He's lying, that's what he does, he lies.

Out of the peripheral vision, I see Angel enter the crypt and shut the doors behind him.

"Y/N, it's going to be okay," he tries to comfort me.

"You're lying!" I scream. "Stop lying to me!"

"Why would I lie?!" He hollers in defense.

"To get me to betray him!" I reason.

The voices in my head are yelling at me to believe him. I've felt it in my gut, the indecisiveness in Spike. I love him, I do, but does he love the same? To the same depth? He promised me forever, but does he really mean it?

I comb my fingers through my hair and tug at the roots. This is too much, it's all too much!

Angel tries to reason with me. "You made it pretty clear the other night that I wouldn't be able to change your mind unless there was a valid reason to leave Spike," he fires back. "so why would I waste my time conjuring up a scheme?!"

It's not true. It's not true. Please don't let it be true!

"You're a liar!" I repeat.

I wish he would just shut up! I have enough voices in my head, I don't need another one in real life yelling at me.

Angel grips my arms, shaking me slightly. "You're just a game, a toy, to him Y/N!"

His words hit home as they're the words I've repeated to myself over the last few days. Angel planted the seed of doubt in me and since then it's been festering.

"Ask him yourself!" He instructs, dropping his grip from me. "If he's who he says he is and he honestly loves you, he won't lie to you!"

Angel drops the bomb on me and disappears through the doors leading out to the cemetery. That's his whole deal, isn't it? He shows up, drops a bomb, and disappears. Except this deed doesn't save the day, it's making me question everything I thought I knew about this life.

I fall to my knees, distraught as everything comes to head. Tears fall from my eyes as a million questions race through my mind.

What if the man I thought I loved isn't who I thought he was? The crystal blue eyes I thought were filled with wonder are truly ice cold. I believed I saw an essence of humility and love in his body, but what if there's really emptiness? He only turned me to make me burn with him. I was tempted by the devil.

My tears cease as my breathing subsides. Blankly, my focus wonders to the wide open doors of the crypt.

This may be karma for feeding into evil, but Spike was the one who created me and he should know I wouldn’t go down without a fight. If what Angel's saying is true, I have to see it for myself. I have to go find him.

________________________________

Masterlist

Tags: @shy-ginger-in-the-graveyard @mx-pibbles @currently-obsesed-with-spike

#spike imagine #Spike x Buffy #spike fanfic #spuffy #spike #Buffy The Vampire Slayer #buffy summers #buffy #btvs #btvs imagine #btvs imgaine #btvs fanfic

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starkerforlife6969 · 4 years

Text

I’ll Be Home - Starker

@starkersecretsanta @lilsoshie For you <3

The story starts when Soldier Tony comes home for a few days, and is introduced to the love of his life.

TW: Mentions of war, overload of fluff, A/O dynamics, mutual pining

Happily Holidays, my dancing sugar plums!

Tony remembers his first station.

Just off the coast of Kuwait, he was a fresh recruit, eighteen years old and awkward with a gun in his hand.

Though the army is Alpha-only, Tony had never really thought he’d want to join until he finished school. He remembers that first year, remembers the fear, remembers the confidence building, remembers the shared-smiles of people in his platoon.

Stephen had been his bunkmate during training camp, and the two have been inseparable since. Stephen’s an irritating, self-righteous ass, a damn fine medical doctor, and Tony would lay down his life for him.

One night in February, fresh off the plane, their general hires out a bar and fills it with dancers and family and lays on a huge spread. Tony’s just about to treat himself to the most expensive drink on the menu, when Stephen taps his arm.

“Anthony, I want you to meet my brother. General Rogers had him flown out as a surprise for me.”

Tony lifts his eyebrows, already a little bemused at the softness around Stephen’s eyes. He’s never seen that before. A gentle smile on the doctor’s face, relaxed in a way that’s impossible to be unless you’re home.

Out from behind the other Alpha, a little omega steps.

He can feel his lips part, feel his mouth drop open a little in awe. The omega is beautiful. Tony’s never seen anyone so beautiful in his whole life. He has dark hair like Stephen, but it’s all fluffy and curly. He’s tiny, with huge honey eyes and lips like pink oceans.

Tony doesn’t know what love at first sight is. He’s never read about it in books, never known anyone who experienced it, never heard stories. All he knows is that the second he lays eyes on the boy, he can see it all. In a flash he sees a future of shared smiles and kisses, he sees a family of curly haired children and a dog running in with the paper in his mouth. He sees the boy in white walking down an aisle, a veil framing him in all his glory, he sees-

“Peter, this is Tony, he’s the most narcissistic, egotistical, brilliant soldier I know. I’m very proud to call him my friend. Tony, this is Peter, the best little brother in the world and Brooklyn’s finest obstetrician in training.”

Okay, Stephen’s gotta be pretty drunk to be this nice, but Tony doesn’t even have the focus to mock him for the sentimentality. Peter. Perfect, beautiful Peter Strange. He’s got the loveliest blush on his cheeks, ducking his head like he’s shy and Tony’s heart-

Peter holds out his hand. “Nice to meet you,” he beams, a sunbeam, a fucking ray of sunshine- “and I’m not very good, Stephen’s the real doctor.”

Stephen scoffs in outrage and Tony grins, tipping his head.

“I’m sure that’s not true. There’s quite clearly something special in your family’s genes.” Tony murmurs, feeling stupid even as the words leave his mouth. He can just picture this omega with babies now, babbling in his arms, babies with big eyes and soft skin and-

A woman from across the bar calls Stephen’s name and he wanders off leaving the two with each other. Peter blushes again.

“Let me buy you a drink.” Tony offers and Peter smiles.

“No, no, please let me buy you one. It’s the least I can do- thank you for-for your service, it’s- so- so brave-“

Tony laughs, feeling a little giddy. “I’ll have a beer. And I’ll get you a…” he glances at the drinks on the board. “A blueberry horizon.”

The omega hops onto a barstool and Tony slides in beside him. Peter nods delightedly. “Okay. Are they nice?”

“I think you’ll like it, I have an eye.” The alpha hums, “it’s very sweet. Like you.”

Another glorious blush.

Tony remembers that night. Eighteen years old and his first time back. He remembers talking to Peter all night, remembers them leaning into each other, feeling the heat of the omega’s body, he remembers Peter’s giggle, remembers steadying him when the two had gone outside for some fresh air.

He remembers the starlight in Peter’s eyes, and the flush across the bridge of his nose.

“I want you.” He’d whispered, drunk off alcohol and lust.

Peter had blinked up at him sweetly. “Want me to do what?” He’d whispered back, and Tony’s chest had clenched something fierce.

“To…to take a walk with me.” He’d offered instead, holding out his arm like a gentleman. “To look at the moon with me.”

Peter had been speechless for a moment, looking up at him in wonder. “It’s like an old movie.” He’d beamed and Tony laughed.

They’d strolled away into the darkness and by the time dawn came up, Tony was in love.

***

It’s been a few years since then. Tony’s twenty-five now, and his six-year contract has finally come to an end.

“You’re not gonna stay on?” Stephen asks in surprise, renewing his contract as a field medic for another five.

“Enough for me,” Tony murmurs, looking up at the moon the way he always does when he feels like he could finally get everything he wants.

The problem with only being back in America a few weeks at a time is that over the past few years, he and Peter have only seen each other on a handful of occasions. They’re friends. Peter writes and sends care-packages to both his brother and Tony.

On average, Tony’s seen him maybe two days a year for the past seven years.

Each time Peter is more beautiful. Last time was at a New Years Party, with Peter breathlessly regaling him with a story of a premature birth, hands moving expressively, as the two of them leaned against the railing on the roof and watched fireworks going in the distance.

“I’ve missed you, Pete,” Tony had admitted, wincing at his own lack of tact. “I never get to see you.”

“Aw, Tony,” Peter had knocked their hips together, resting his head on Tony’s shoulder. “I miss you too. But it means we always have lots to talk about when you’re back.”

They talk and talk and they have a good time, but there are topics that are never touched on.

Tony’s never asked if Peter’s seeing anyone. Never broached it with Stephen either. It hadn’t seemed fair to express any sort of interest, to stake any sort of claim, not while he was away so often. The thought- the miraculous thought- of Peter liking Tony back, and then having to wait for him. To wait alone for a few days of snatched contact, to be lonely and unsupported and-

The thought was too agonising.

So, Tony has waited and waited and-

“I want to go home. Settle down. Be around.”

Stephen smiles, pouring the both of them some bourbon. “Any idea where you’ll go?”

Tony takes the glass as it’s offered. “Brooklyn, maybe.”

Stephen chuckles in surprise. “Well good, keep an eye on Peter for me. He adores you, you know.”

Tony’s fingers tremble and he hopes it’s true.

Stephen gives him a look then, curious and frighteningly intelligent, but he doesn’t say anything. They play cards and drink bourbon and Stephen accuses him of cheating.

At the end of the night in their bunks, Stephen talks into the darkness.

“I’ll miss you, Stark. You’re…you’re like another brother to me.”

Tony says, “I’ll miss you too,” and thinks about what it might be like having Stephen as a brother-in-law.

He thinks it might be pretty great.

***

As a young Alpha in Brooklyn fresh out of the army, he’s treated with a lot of respect. People nod at him, offer to buy him drinks and clap him on the back like he’s an old friend.

He finds a place to rent and gets a great deal even though he doesn’t need it. He’s got a lot saved up. His fingers itch to call Peter, but first he goes to a few job interviews. Tries to get a feel for living in the city and having his own space after so long of sharing and barracks.

He gets the first job he applies for. It’s as a security consultant for a big firm. It’s good pay and the female Alpha who shakes his hand is no-nonsense and impressed with him.

He buys himself a bed.

He spends a lot on it. It’s ludicrously big and the mattress is extra plush, queen, memory foam. He gets a fancy headboard and high-thread blankets. When he tries to sleep on it that night, it’s a little awkward. He sinks into the softness, feels unnatural.

He tells himself he wants a change, but he’s lying. The bed isn’t for him.

It’s for the softest, most beautiful, most deserving person Tony knows.

***

“Tony!” Peter cries, leaping into his arms in the March sunshine and clutching him tight. Tony lifts him clear off the ground: breathing him in.

Tony’s in uniform. He feels more comfortable in it, but also, he thinks that maybe- maybe Peter likes seeing him in it. A few people on the street around them aww and applaud, but Tony has eyes for none of them.

Peter’s in a bumble bee sweater and white jeans, looking so pleased to see him that Tony wants to- wants to make his move.

But no. It’s not the right time. He’s just got back, he’s just moved to Brooklyn, he’s just started his job- it’s too soon.

“Wow,” Peter murmurs, tracing his finger down the jagged line near Tony’s eye. His touch is like heaven and Tony leans into his caress. “A close call?”

“Real close.”

“I’m glad you’re safe.” Peter whispers, eyes huge, “and it’s very, very handsome.”

The scar had bled and bled and hurt like a bitch when it happened-

And Tony would do it again in a heartbeat, just for the way Peter wets his lips as he looks up at him.

***

Over the next few months, things move slowly.

Tony has a few bad dreams, writes letters to Stephen, and does his job. He buys more furniture, puts down more roots in the form of a real oak coffee table and a tv with cable.

He visits Peter at the hospital he works at. He sees Peter as everything he knew he could be. Capable, brilliant, eyes flickering over information and reassuring to the pregnant Omegas. Peter’s hands are confident, assured, as they touch round bellies or squirming, wriggly babies.

After his shift, they go and get lunch.

“It’s like watching Stephen,” Tony says in awe, “you’re brilliant.”

Peter blushes and smiles, a classic Tony adores, and takes a bite of his salmon. Tony watches it go past his lips. “Well I think you’re brilliant.”

“And devastatingly handsome.”

“It’s devastating alright,” Peter teases. “So, what’s new? Have you made any friends in your building yet?”

Tony makes a face. “Why on earth would I want friends in my building?”

“Fine, Mr Grumps, what about…um…have you been…dating, or- or anything? Seeing someone?”

Tony stills, eyes flickering over Peter’s face trying to read him. What does that mean? But the omega looks carefully schooled, focused on his lunch. Is Peter asking as a friend? Or asking because- because- “I’m not seeing anyone,” Tony murmurs, waiting for Peter’s reaction. “Are you?”

“You’re- me? No, no…”

“No?” Tony hums, “no Alpha swept you off your feet?”

Peter’s honey eyes meet his. There’s silence for a beat, before Peter looks away. “Well, I mean- it’s just hard to find the time.”

“Is there someone you’re interested in?” Tony asks, voice a little too rough.

Those big, beautiful eyes keep looking at him, and then Peter’s pager beeps and they both seem relieved.

Tony finishes his lunch alone and tries to think. Maybe it’s time, maybe it’s time he made a move. He’s wanted Peter since that night in the bar. He’s back now, he’s-

But no. No, it’s not the right time and Peter’s right. The omega works so hard and doctors’ shifts are long and tiring and-

No. Not yet.

***

Peter’s apartment is all bronze accents and fluffy pillows. It’s near the hospital and has a pretty good view that makes up for all the sirens that go by.

“I swear you’ve spoilt me.” Tony moans after he’s finished dessert. Peter’s cooking is phenomenal. After three helpings of spaghetti and chocolate brownie for dessert, he’s so content he could purr.

Peter laughs, licking chocolate from his fingertips in a way that’s obscene. “I love watching you eat. I wish I could just feed you all the time, make sure you’re getting enough.”

It’s a very omega thing to say to an Alpha. Very traditional. Very domestic. Very intimate. What does it mean?

“It’s late,” Peter says, standing up and stretching. Tony can’t drag his eyes away from him. From the gorgeous figure he makes even in his frumpy green sweater with the floral collar and chocolate on his mouth.

He pulls himself to his feet and reaches for his coat. “You’ve got an early shift-“

“No, I mean-“ Peter takes a step closer, swallowing hard, looking brave. “I mean, it’s late, you could…if you wanted, you could just stay over…”

Tony frowns, “what do you mean? The commute will be a bitch in the morning.”

Tony doesn’t understand when Peter looks embarrassed. “Nothing, no, don’t worry, I was just being silly, sorry.”

Tony doesn’t like that. Doesn’t like Peter looking awkward and humiliated. He feels like he’s missed something. “Pete?” He prompts gently, “are you alright? Was it a…was it a bad shift today?” That happens sometimes. Tragic things happen and Peter gets small and sad and needs someone to lean against for a few days, Tony gets that. “I’ll stay, sweetheart-“

“No, no, you don’t-“

“Hey, hey,” he collects the boy into his arms. “I’m here for you, okay? I’m here for you.” He kisses Peter’s temple: holds him tight. It takes a second, but eventually Peter relaxes into his embrace and they stand there, wrapped around each other.

Eventually they pull apart a little, and Peter peeks up at him.

Maybe now, Tony thinks to himself. Maybe this is the moment, maybe this is the right time-

But no. Peter’s had a long day and-

Warm and soft and perfect is the kiss placed onto the corner of Tony’s mouth.

He’s so stunned that he can only stand there, unmoving, staring down at the omega in shock.

Peter’s the colour of a rose petal, looking like the bravest thing in the world.

Tony can’t even move. Does this- is this-

Peter stretches onto his tiptoes, hands still clutching Tony’s shoulders, and slower, much slower, presses another little butterfly kiss right onto the corner of Tony’s mouth.

He can hear his heart beating in his ears- is this- does he-

He’s hyperaware of his hand on Peter’s waist, one on the small of his back, of how they’re pressed together, of how perfect-

“Tony, I really like you.” Peter whispers, breath fanning over Tony’s face. “I was um…I was wondering if-“

“Yes,” Tony croaks, “yes, yes, yes, yesyesyesyes.”

Peter makes the most adorable sound of delight, and kisses Tony right on the mouth.

He tastes of chocolate and love and Tony sees it all again. He sees the golden mornings and the crosswords in bed. He sees the dog coming into the kitchen with the paper in his mouth, he sees a future, his future, with the love of his life-

“Hey Tony,” Peter giggles, lashes all wet with tears, “I adore you.”

Tony lets out a sob and buries his face into Peter’s curls.

Coffee tables and cable can go screw themselves. He doesn’t need roots to be tethered somewhere- with Peter, he’s always home.

***

On Christmas Eve, Christine and Peter are making mince pies and competitively quoting It’s a Wonderful Life, and Tony’s in the living room, phone to his ear.

“How’s Christie?”

“You just spoke to her-“

“How is she really, Anthony?”

Tony sighs. “She misses you, but we’ve got her, Stephen, don’t worry. She understands. It’s just hard.”

Stephen’s silent for a while. Tony wonders if he’s thinking about his contract. Stephen clears his throat: “It’s a squeeze the three of you in that tiny flat, when are you and Peter going to get a house?”

“We’re gonna start searching after Christmas,” Tony chuckles, “Guess what I’ve got Pete for Christmas.”

“Something ingenious no doubt. A framed photo of yourself?”

“Ha ha. No, get this,” Tony drops his voice, “it’s a puppy.”

“Really?”

“Uh huh,” Tony grins, “Rhodes is bringing it over tomorrow morning, crack of dawn.”

“Tony, he’s going to love it.”

“I know, right? Best-present-ever-sex is definitely on the table.”

“That’s my brother, Tony.”

“Not literally on the table, Christie’s here-“

“I’ve got you something.”

Tony laughs in surprise. “Really? How’d you pull that off? You didn’t have to do that, Stephen-“

“Shut up and let me tell you what it is.”

“Is it good?”

“Obviously. You’re going to feel bad about making sex jokes.”

“I’m excited.”

“Christie should’ve put it under the tree- in an envelope.”

Tony hums in surprise, looking under the tree where all the presents are. Sure enough, there’s a red envelope with his name on it. He examines it curiously. “What is it?”

“Open it, you moron.”

Tony rolls his eyes, balancing the phone in the crook of his neck, and opens it up. Inside is what looks like an old letter. He glances at it in confusion. “What am I looking at here, Doc?”

“It’s a letter Peter wrote me a very long time ago.”

Yes, he can recognise Peter’s handwriting now, doctor-scruffy with lots of loops. It’s very sweet. Tony gets the gist of the first few paragraphs. Peter asks if Stephen’s safe, tells him he misses him, how his studies are going and then- and then-

You might not remember but you introduced me to one of your friends when you were here last month. His name’s Tony. Is he single? He’s got the prettiest dark brown eyes and he was really nice to me and I was just wondering if he’d told you about me? We went for a walk and we talked all night. Do you think he might like me? Could you tell him I say hi? Don’t make me sound like a dork! He’s not like any Alpha I’ve ever met before. And mom said to call her! And-

“Holy shit.”

“Indeed.”

“A month after we met- a month after-“

“Yes, Tony,” Stephen sighs, but his voice is fond. “I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you two pine for seven years. I thought you might like it. I don’t say it often, but I do love you, Tony. I’m very glad you’re with my brother. However, you do worry. You’re a soldier and you have a keen sense of time and when to do things, but you hesitated with Peter. I’m not sure why, maybe you thought he didn’t like you, but regardless, I think, in love, just doing what feels right is okay, from time to time. Especially with you and Peter.”

“Stephen…”

“Merry Christmas, Tony.”

“I’m so glad I met you. You’ve changed my life.”

Stephen sniffles, like he might be crying. Tony calls Christie in, to let the two of them say goodbye, and heads into the kitchen.

Peter beams at him, flour on his cheeks. “George Bailey, I’ll love you till the day I die!” He quotes merrily, skipping over to peck Tony’s cheek, and Tony thinks about Stephen, and about love and about the puppy he’s going to give Peter tomorrow and the dog it’ll grow into and the kitchen they’ll have. He thinks about timings and all the waiting and the missed moments and then- he doesn’t think, he just does.

The first thing he says is: “I love you so much, Peter.”

And the next thing he does is get down onto one knee.

merry christmas @lilsoshie your prompts were all equally amazing so it was really hard to choose, so I tried to merge a few of them together. I hope you liked this and that you have an amazing Christmas! All the love in the world1

#starkersecretsanta2019

#starkersecretsanta2019 #starker #fluff #peter parker #tony stark #mutual pining #oblivious peter #oblivious tony #Happy Ending #omega peter #alpha tony #soldier tony #doctor peter #stephen strange #au #young tony stark #getting together #peter is stephen's little brother

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