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authornina · 3 years

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Dalonte “DALY” Dennis: (TEK)

***THIS HAS NOT BEEN THROUGH A TYPICAL EDITING PROCESS; ALL SHORTS ARE ROUGH DRAFTS***

Daly shook his head listening to his sisters go back and forth about dumb shit. It seemed like they always waited until he came around to bring up niggas. He never intruded on their personal lives because he’d instilled enough in them to know what to do and what not to do. He had been on his own with them since he could remember. Daly was only ten years old roaming the streets looking for food to feed them. Life didn’t give him much of a choice to live another way. His mother left everything up to him, so he had to do anything to survive. At first it was just he and TJ, then two more girls came, and his mother literally dropped them off home to him. Daly cared for infants alone being just a baby himself.

They were on their way to the airport to pick up the baby of the three, Erie. She went away to college four years ago and this would be her first time back in Philly since graduating. They visited her a lot, but they were all happy to have her in the same state as them again. He was so proud of Erie for sticking it out and finishing college. At first, she would beg to come home. She even threatened to drop out several times. Daly spoiled Erie the most so during each one of her breakdowns he flew to Atlanta where she attended Spelman to talk her down.

All three of his sisters even being raised by him like straight niggas turned out to be great women despite their foul ass mouths and no-nonsense ass attitudes. People always said how pretty they were until witnessing one of them in action. Daly was a cool brother to have but he sometimes was too hard on himself thinking he could’ve done better with them and their emotions. He didn’t know how to raise children let alone girls but over the years he learned so much about women, more than he actually wanted to know.

TJ was the oldest and she owned a popular hair salon. She was the wildest and most outspoken. Daly had to bail her out of jail several times, primarily for domestic disputes with her lovers. She was openly bisexual and came out to him when she was sixteen, saying if Daly didn’t accept her for who she was, he could kiss her ass. Of course, no matter what he loved his sister. TJ was five-eight, with tan skin covered by tattoos. She had them everywhere. None of them knew their fathers and Daly assumed she was biracial off her features and TJ didn’t like that. So, the long curly black hair she once had as a girl which made her ambiguity more apparent was shaved off and she chose to wear all types of colorful wigs. She was beautiful either way with her natural hunter green eyes and freckled rosy cheeks. Despite her lifestyle and appearance, TJ went to church a lot. She’d been that way since she was just a child. Always telling Daly she had them all covered on the prayer tip, so they were good. She believed the Lord protected her big brother the many nights he had to go out and do what needed to be done for them. TJ had a huge and loving heart she just didn’t have the patience for bullshit.

Ta’Kia, whom everyone simply called Kia was the calmest when considering the three of them. She didn’t bother anyone unless they bothered her. It was a different story if she knew you though, you wouldn’t be able to shut her ass up. She went to college in state at West Chester where she met her white boyfriend that she stressed out regularly. Kia was also fair skin and four-eleven of feistiness. Daly knew whoever her father was had to be black. She had 4C hair and to him that meant straight nigga. He learned all about the different types of hair black women had over the years. He didn’t assume they couldn’t have loose coils in general, but his sister came from nigga nuts with the shit that sat on top of her head. Kia kept it in all types of natural styles. She was the earthy vegan type. No man-made chemicals could touch her person and she only ate what she grew. She wore very little clothing often, even when it was cold with beads around her waist, lots of rings on her fingers and she had two nose rings and a septum. Daly didn’t know where the hell that aesthetic came from but again, he supported his sisters through whatever.

Then there was Erieon, Erie for short, Daly’s baby. TJ and Kia didn’t give into her spoiled ass the way he did. If you asked them, their little sister was selfish, stubborn and plain old evil. Erie had a bad attitude, worse than all of three put together and never liked to admit when she was wrong. The only person she didn’t get out the way with was Daly. Erie was the surprise baby and the most beautiful little dark doll he’d ever seen when his mother first dropped her off. He fell in love with her the moment he had to take her on. By then he’d become an expert at caring for infants. Erie stood out because amongst her sisters she shined like chocolate satin. While her sisters rocked baldies and bushes, Erie loved box braids, and any other type of style that hung pass her butt in individuals. Everything about her was gorgeous. She was the most regular physically but personality wise, Daly had a time with that one. Sometimes he thought she had some mental health issues but seeing Lake go through so much and learning what he could, he swore his sister wasn’t that damaged. Couldn’t be. He simply gave her whatever she wanted and hoped it never went further than having temper tantrums.

When Daly was just a child, if it weren’t for Hassan, he and his sisters would be separated and spread out through the system. It was one of the reasons Daly was so loyal to Lake. Hassan made sure they never had to worry about being taken from one another. The house they lived in, he bought it and fixed it up. They had food and clean clothes every day. When his mother would try to come and interrupt the peace they finally had, Hassan made sure she didn’t any longer. Whatever bad shit people had to say about the late Hassan Porter, he and his sisters were blinded by the fact that he was the only adult to give a fuck about them. Even his mother’s sister didn’t offer a helping hand when she knew how they were living. Hassan didn’t ask any questions or want any answers. He saw a problem and fixed it. Never made Daly feel ashamed or embarrassed either.

Once at the busy airport, they didn’t even have to park to meet Erie inside. She was sitting outside on her luggage with an obvious attitude.

“Here her ass go with the bullshit,” Kia said getting out the car. She hugged her resistant baby sister while Daly kissed her cheek before getting her stuff. TJ didn’t even get out the car because she was the least interested in what had her mean ass mad already.

“What’s wrong, Erieon?” Daly asked once they were all back in the car.

“Nothing.”

“Erie! Stop bein’ a fuckin’ brat!” TJ turned around to her sister who was in the back seat now with her arms crossed and face balled up. “You always do that like somebody supposed to know what you thinkin’.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Erie, what’s wrong?” Daly asked her in a gentle tone making TJ and Kia roll their eyes.

“The flight was just annoying. I don’t like being around people.”

“I’m sure people don’t like being around your evil ass either,” TJ said. “I’ma pray for you on Sunday demon.” She held the cross around her neck then pulled out a little bottle and splashed Erie.

“Don’t put that saltwater on me!”

“You need Jesus!”

“TJ, stop,” Kia laughed. “Stay sprinkling people with your lil holy water.”

“She think cause she got baptized that she still not going to hell,” Erie said, wiping her face. “Newsflash, you eat pussy, that’s a sin!”

“Yo!” Daly yelled. “I don’t wanna hear that shit. All y’all shut the fuck up!”

Why did he say that? All hell broke loose. They started shouting obscenities his way and he blew his breath wishing he went alone to begin with. Daly loved his sisters to absolute death, but they were a damn handful. How anybody dated one was beyond him. Man or woman.

“Wit your big head ass!” TJ mushed him. “Don’t be talkin’ to us like that!”

“I’m stayin’ with you TJ,” Erie said. They were the two who got along the least, but her sister was the most freeing to be around and let her do anything. Even though she was going on twenty-three, Kia and Daly treated her like a baby.

“Then you better act like you know, I ain’t for the walkin’ around my shit with no attitude! And I don’t clean up after grown muhfuckas.”

“Why you don’t want your own shit?” Daly asked.

“Because I don’t wanna be alone,” Erie said low. “TJ lays with me when I need her.”

“I can lay with you,” Daly said.

“You never be home.”

Erie saying that made Daly feel bad. If he wasn’t there often it’s because he couldn’t be and when he wasn’t, they had to take care of each other. They didn’t intentionally make him feel bad about it, they simply were dealt a shitty hand. No mother and their brother couldn’t be around due to the fact that he was the provider. It all affected each of them in different ways.

“I lay with you too.”

“Kia, your bed bout as big as this back seat. Then you like to sleep on the floor,” Erie said, and they all started laughing.

Daly gave his sisters the range to live much more extravagant, but Kia didn’t want to. She liked her open space loft, mattress on the floor, no curtains, plants from wall to windows, three pairs of shoes and garden full of natural foods. TJ wanted to work for her own money, so she started a business. Erie was the only one who happily ran through his pockets like no tomorrow. He was okay with him being their backup plan if they ever needed or wanted it.

“Says the homeless one,” Kia rolled her eyes.

“By choice,” Erie retorted.

After Daly took his sisters out then dropped them all off, he stopped at his old apartment. His phone was ringing off the hook and the only calls he returned were Lake, Wreck and Roddy. Mansion called him about fifty times. When those went unanswered, the texts started.

Mansion: I know you with another bitch, since you wanna ignore me for her. Stay there, and don’t call me ever again with your hoe ass!

Mansion: Bitch ass nigga! You really wanna cheat on me? And I bet she don’t look like shit!

Mansion: I was fuckin’ somebody else anyway!

Mansion: I’m gettin’ a abortion!

Daly ignored each one. Mansion would say anything to get him to argue with her. At first it was funny, but now, he was a little tired of the constant back and forth. It was childish but that’s what he got for messing with a twenty-one-year-old.

“What?” he asked, finally answering for her.

“Put your bitch on the phone.”

“I ain’t wit no bitch.”

“Right, you a hoe ass liar! Come get me right now.”

“Fuck no! Go tell the nigga you was fuckin’ to get your crazy ass.”

“I was just sayin’ that,” Mansion whined. “I love you.”

“Obviously,” Daly responded sarcastically and they both started laughing. “You gotta chill bro.”

“My anger just get the best of me, you know I would never step out on you.”

“I’m not comin’ tonight, I got shit to do.”

“Like what?”

“Shit.”

“You lyin’.”

“When the fuck do I ever have to lie? If I’ma be with another bitch, I would tell you.”

“See that’s what I’m talkin’ bout, the disrespect! I’m not about to let you play in my face with no ugly ass hoe!”

“Who ugly, Mansion?”

“SHADIA!” she screamed, and Daly hollered. His on again off again girlfriend for years grinded Mansion’s gears. “You need to tell that dog face bitch you love me and it’s over.”

“I told her that.”

“Then why she still feel comfortable to go around talkin’ about my nigga? Why THE FUCK is she postin’ you on her Instagram?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know because you keep givin’ that hoe hope!”

“Ion give nobody shit,” Daly looked at his phone beeping. “Hold on, I’ma call you right back.” He didn’t wait for a response to click over for his sister. “Yea TJ?”

“Come get Erie before I fuck her up!”

“What she do that damn fast?”

“I comes the fuck in my room and her ass changin’ shit around in MY HOUSE!”

“You got it ugly in here!” he heard Erie yell in the back. “Everything don’t gotta be green!”

“DALONTE!” TJ shouted. “Come get your sister! NOW! Jesus be a high ass fence for Erieon…” she started her prayer for forgiveness then Daly heard a bunch of ruckus. He hung up on everybody tired of dealing with women for one day. It wasn’t even five o’clock yet. He got all the bags out of his trunk and went inside the apartment building.

When he put his key in the door Tracy was standing right there with an attitude. Out of all the bitch fits, he was least interested in hers. He didn’t tell his sisters about their mother staying there and that’s why he moved because it would upset them. TJ mostly. She hated Tracy to no ending.

“The fuck you standing there for waitin’ like you caught me cheatin’ or something?”

“Because you leave me in this place, alone! I ain’t got no phone, no communication to the outside world—”

“Man, fuck outta here,” Daly said, closing the door. “You lucky you got this.”

“I want to see my children, Dalonte!”

“They don’t wanna see you.”

Daly’s mother was a rehabilitated crackhead and ex-prostitute. He wouldn’t have offered her a place to stay but she was currently pregnant and had the nerve to tell him she wanted to do right for her baby.

“Well it ain’t they choice, y’all is muthafuckin’ kids to me! I don’t care what we been through! I am your mother!”

“You ain’t shit, Tracy.” Daly took all the bags in the kitchen. “Here, all the shit you wanted. Fuckin’ prenatal vitamins,” he threw them at her. “I know your ass ain’t do none of this shit with us! You want my sisters to see this shit?” He started pouring all the stuff out. “You got it in you to finally care about one of your kids.”

“He is y’all little brother,” Tracy said, palming her stomach with tears in her eyes. Her oldest child hated her so she knew it couldn’t have been any better with the other three but not seeing them for so long hurt her heart. When she came to him, he didn’t even care at first. They owed her nothing and as a mother Tracy wished she could take every ounce of pain she caused them back.

“I almost said fuck him too,” Daly laughed, and Tracy smiled. Her son loved her; she knew this because he could be really cold when he wanted to be. There had been times she’d been on the other end of it.

“I’m sorry for putting all of this on you, if I had another option, I would’ve chosen it. I know it’s not easy seeing me like this,” Tracy expressed to her son sincerely.

“Whatever, I’m out, I gotta go break up a fight between your kids.”

“Can you at least tell them I miss them?”

“I’ll think about it.” Daly closed the door in her face. He stood with his back against the door feeling the way he did when he was younger. So many times, she would even watch him struggle with his sisters. Tracy would be home while he was trying to figure out a way to provide for them. Here she was pregnant again with another baby and needed her son all over again. Déjà vu.

#OnUs #authornina #Nina

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blackwoolncrown · 4 years

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”This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.

But enough is enough.

The reforms aren’t working. Incrementalism isn’t happening. Unarmed Black, indigenous, and people of color are being killed by cops in the streets and the police are savagely attacking the people protesting these murders.

American policing is a thick blue tumor strangling the life from our communities and if you don’t believe it when the poor and the marginalized say it, if you don’t believe it when you see cops across the country shooting journalists with less-lethal bullets and caustic chemicals, maybe you’ll believe it when you hear it straight from the pig’s mouth.”

>>Copied here in case anyone gets paywalled when they click the above. The full article is...a lot.<<

WHY AM I WRITING THIS

As someone who went through the training, hiring, and socialization of a career in law enforcement, I wanted to give a first-hand account of why I believe police officers are the way they are. Not to excuse their behavior, but to explain it and to indict the structures that perpetuate it.

I believe that if everyone understood how we’re trained and brought up in the profession, it would inform the demands our communities should be making of a new way of community safety. If I tell you how we were made, I hope it will empower you to unmake us.

One of the other reasons I’ve struggled to write this essay is that I don’t want to center the conversation on myself and my big salty boo-hoo feelings about my bad choices. It’s a toxic white impulse to see atrocities and think “How can I make this about me?” So, I hope you’ll take me at my word that this account isn’t meant to highlight me, but rather the hundred thousand of me in every city in the country. It’s about the structure that made me (that I chose to pollute myself with) and it’s my meager contribution to the cause of radical justice.

YES, ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS

I was a police officer in a major metropolitan area in California with a predominantly poor, non-white population (with a large proportion of first-generation immigrants). One night during briefing, our watch commander told us that the city council had requested a new zero tolerance policy. Against murderers, drug dealers, or child predators?

No, against homeless people collecting cans from recycling bins.

See, the city had some kickback deal with the waste management company where waste management got paid by the government for our expected tonnage of recycling. When homeless people “stole” that recycling from the waste management company, they were putting that cheaper contract in peril. So, we were to arrest as many recyclers as we could find.

Even for me, this was a stupid policy and I promptly blew Sarge off. But a few hours later, Sarge called me over to assist him. He was detaining a 70 year old immigrant who spoke no English, who he’d seen picking a coke can out of a trash bin. He ordered me to arrest her for stealing trash. I said, “Sarge, c’mon, she’s an old lady.” He said, “I don’t give a shit. Hook her up, that’s an order.” And… I did. She cried the entire way to the station and all through the booking process. I couldn’t even comfort her because I didn’t speak Spanish. I felt disgusting but I was ordered to make this arrest and I wasn’t willing to lose my job for her.

If you’re tempted to feel sympathy for me, don’t. I used to happily hassle the homeless under other circumstances. I researched obscure penal codes so I could arrest people in homeless encampments for lesser known crimes like “remaining too close to railroad property” (369i of the California Penal Code). I used to call it “planting warrant seeds” since I knew they wouldn’t make their court dates and we could arrest them again and again for warrant violations.

We used to have informal contests for who could cite or arrest someone for the weirdest law. DUI on a bicycle, non-regulation number of brooms on your tow truck (27700(a)(1) of the California Vehicle Code)… shit like that. For me, police work was a logic puzzle for arresting people, regardless of their actual threat to the community. As ashamed as I am to admit it, it needs to be said: stripping people of their freedom felt like a game to me for many years.

I know what you’re going to ask: did I ever plant drugs? Did I ever plant a gun on someone? Did I ever make a false arrest or file a false report? Believe it or not, the answer is no. Cheating was no fun, I liked to get my stats the “legitimate” way. But I knew officers who kept a little baggie of whatever or maybe a pocket knife that was a little too big in their war bags (yeah, we called our dufflebags “war bags”…). Did I ever tell anybody about it? No I did not. Did I ever confess my suspicions when cocaine suddenly showed up in a gang member’s jacket? No I did not.

In fact, let me tell you about an extremely formative experience: in my police academy class, we had a clique of around six trainees who routinely bullied and harassed other students: intentionally scuffing another trainee’s shoes to get them in trouble during inspection, sexually harassing female trainees, cracking racist jokes, and so on. Every quarter, we were to write anonymous evaluations of our squadmates. I wrote scathing accounts of their behavior, thinking I was helping keep bad apples out of law enforcement and believing I would be protected. Instead, the academy staff read my complaints to them out loud and outed me to them and never punished them, causing me to get harassed for the rest of my academy class. That’s how I learned that even police leadership hates rats. That’s why no one is “changing things from the inside.” They can’t, the structure won’t allow it.

And that’s the point of what I’m telling you. Whether you were my sergeant, legally harassing an old woman, me, legally harassing our residents, my fellow trainees bullying the rest of us, or “the bad apples” illegally harassing “shitbags”, we were all in it together. I knew cops that pulled women over to flirt with them. I knew cops who would pepper spray sleeping bags so that homeless people would have to throw them away. I knew cops that intentionally provoked anger in suspects so they could claim they were assaulted. I was particularly good at winding people up verbally until they lashed out so I could fight them. Nobody spoke out. Nobody stood up. Nobody betrayed the code.

None of us protected the people (you) from bad cops.

This is why “All cops are bastards.” Even your uncle, even your cousin, even your mom, even your brother, even your best friend, even your spouse, even me. Because even if they wouldn’t Do The Thing themselves, they will almost never rat out another officer who Does The Thing, much less stop it from happening.

BASTARD 101

I could write an entire book of the awful things I’ve done, seen done, and heard others bragging about doing. But, to me, the bigger question is “How did it get this way?”. While I was a police officer in a city 30 miles from where I lived, many of my fellow officers were from the community and treated their neighbors just as badly as I did. While every cop’s individual biases come into play, it’s the profession itself that is toxic, and it starts from day 1 of training.

Every police academy is different but all of them share certain features: taught by old cops, run like a paramilitary bootcamp, strong emphasis on protecting yourself more than anyone else. The majority of my time in the academy was spent doing aggressive physical training and watching video after video after video of police officers being murdered on duty.

I want to highlight this: nearly everyone coming into law enforcement is bombarded with dash cam footage of police officers being ambushed and killed. Over and over and over. Colorless VHS mortality plays, cops screaming for help over their radios, their bodies going limp as a pair of tail lights speed away into a grainy black horizon. In my case, with commentary from an old racist cop who used to brag about assaulting Black Panthers.

To understand why all cops are bastards, you need to understand one of the things almost every training officer told me when it came to using force:

“I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.”

Meaning, “I’ll take my chances in court rather than risk getting hurt”. We’re able to think that way because police unions are extremely overpowered and because of the generous concept of Qualified Immunity, a legal theory which says a cop generally can’t be held personally liable for mistakes they make doing their job in an official capacity.

When you look at the actions of the officers who killed George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, David McAtee, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, or Freddie Gray, remember that they, like me, were trained to recite “I’d rather be judged by 12” as a mantra. Even if Mistakes Were Made™, the city (meaning the taxpayers, meaning you) pays the settlement, not the officer.

Once police training has - through repetition, indoctrination, and violent spectacle - promised officers that everyone in the world is out to kill them, the next lesson is that your partners are the only people protecting you. Occasionally, this is even true: I’ve had encounters turn on me rapidly to the point I legitimately thought I was going to die, only to have other officers come and turn the tables.

One of the most important thought leaders in law enforcement is Col. Dave Grossman, a “killologist” who wrote an essay called “Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs”. Cops are the sheepdogs, bad guys are the wolves, and the citizens are the sheep (!). Col. Grossman makes sure to mention that to a stupid sheep, sheepdogs look more like wolves than sheep, and that’s why they dislike you.

This “they hate you for protecting them and only I love you, only I can protect you” tactic is familiar to students of abuse. It’s what abusers do to coerce their victims into isolation, pulling them away from friends and family and ensnaring them in the abuser’s toxic web. Law enforcement does this too, pitting the officer against civilians. “They don’t understand what you do, they don’t respect your sacrifice, they just want to get away with crimes. You’re only safe with us.”

I think the Wolves vs. Sheepdogs dynamic is one of the most important elements as to why officers behave the way they do. Every single second of my training, I was told that criminals were not a legitimate part of their community, that they were individual bad actors, and that their bad actions were solely the result of their inherent criminality. Any concept of systemic trauma, generational poverty, or white supremacist oppression was either never mentioned or simply dismissed. After all, most people don’t steal, so anyone who does isn’t “most people,” right? To us, anyone committing a crime deserved anything that happened to them because they broke the “social contract.” And yet, it was never even a question as to whether the power structure above them was honoring any sort of contract back.

Understand: Police officers are part of the state monopoly on violence and all police training reinforces this monopoly as a cornerstone of police work, a source of honor and pride. Many cops fantasize about getting to kill someone in the line of duty, egged on by others that have. One of my training officers told me about the time he shot and killed a mentally ill homeless man wielding a big stick. He bragged that he “slept like a baby” that night. Official training teaches you how to be violent effectively and when you’re legally allowed to deploy that violence, but “unofficial training” teaches you to desire violence, to expand the breadth of your violence without getting caught, and to erode your own compassion for desperate people so you can justify punitive violence against them.

HOW TO BE A BASTARD

I have participated in some of these activities personally, others are ones I either witnessed personally or heard officers brag about openly. Very, very occasionally, I knew an officer who was disciplined or fired for one of these things.

Police officers will lie about the law, about what’s illegal, or about what they can legally do to you in order to manipulate you into doing what they want.

Police officers will lie about feeling afraid for their life to justify a use of force after the fact.

Police officers will lie and tell you they’ll file a police report just to get you off their back.

Police officers will lie that your cooperation will “look good for you” in court, or that they will “put in a good word for you with the DA.” The police will never help you look good in court.

Police officers will lie about what they see and hear to access private property to conduct unlawful searches.

Police officers will lie and say your friend already ratted you out, so you might as well rat them back out. This is almost never true.

Police officers will lie and say you’re not in trouble in order to get you to exit a location or otherwise make an arrest more convenient for them.

Police officers will lie and say that they won’t arrest you if you’ll just “be honest with them” so they know what really happened.

Police officers will lie about their ability to seize the property of friends and family members to coerce a confession.

Police officers will write obviously bullshit tickets so that they get time-and-a-half overtime fighting them in court.

Police officers will search places and containers you didn’t consent to and later claim they were open or “smelled like marijuana”.

Police officers will threaten you with a more serious crime they can’t prove in order to convince you to confess to the lesser crime they really want you for.

Police officers will employ zero tolerance on races and ethnicities they dislike and show favor and lenience to members of their own group.

Police officers will use intentionally extra-painful maneuvers and holds during an arrest to provoke “resistance” so they can further assault the suspect.

Some police officers will plant drugs and weapons on you, sometimes to teach you a lesson, sometimes if they kill you somewhere away from public view.

Some police officers will assault you to intimidate you and threaten to arrest you if you tell anyone.

A non-trivial number of police officers will steal from your house or vehicle during a search.

A non-trivial number of police officers commit intimate partner violence and use their status to get away with it.

A non-trivial number of police officers use their position to entice, coerce, or force sexual favors from vulnerable people.

If you take nothing else away from this essay, I want you to tattoo this onto your brain forever: if a police officer is telling you something, it is probably a lie designed to gain your compliance.

Do not talk to cops and never, ever believe them. Do not “try to be helpful” with cops. Do not assume they are trying to catch someone else instead of you. Do not assume what they are doing is “important” or even legal. Under no circumstances assume any police officer is acting in good faith.

Also, and this is important, do not talk to cops.

I just remembered something, do not talk to cops.

Checking my notes real quick, something jumped out at me:

not

fucking

talk

cops.

Ever.

Say, “I don’t answer questions,” and ask if you’re free to leave; if so, leave. If not, tell them you want your lawyer and that, per the Supreme Court, they must terminate questioning. If they don’t, file a complaint and collect some badges for your mantle.

DO THE BASTARDS EVER HELP?

Reading the above, you may be tempted to ask whether cops ever do anything good. And the answer is, sure, sometimes. In fact, most officers I worked with thought they were usually helping the helpless and protecting the safety of innocent people.

During my tenure in law enforcement, I protected women from domestic abusers, arrested cold-blooded murderers and child molesters, and comforted families who lost children to car accidents and other tragedies. I helped connect struggling people in my community with local resources for food, shelter, and counseling. I deescalated situations that could have turned violent and talked a lot of people down from making the biggest mistake of their lives. I worked with plenty of officers who were individually kind, bought food for homeless residents, or otherwise showed care for their community.

The question is this: did I need a gun and sweeping police powers to help the average person on the average night? The answer is no. When I was doing my best work as a cop, I was doing mediocre work as a therapist or a social worker. My good deeds were listening to people failed by the system and trying to unite them with any crumbs of resources the structure was currently denying them.

It’s also important to note that well over 90% of the calls for service I handled were reactive, showing up well after a crime had taken place. We would arrive, take a statement, collect evidence (if any), file the report, and onto the next caper. Most “active” crimes we stopped were someone harmless possessing or selling a small amount of drugs. Very, very rarely would we stop something dangerous in progress or stop something from happening entirely. The closest we could usually get was seeing someone running away from the scene of a crime, but the damage was still done.

And consider this: my job as a police officer required me to be a marriage counselor, a mental health crisis professional, a conflict negotiator, a social worker, a child advocate, a traffic safety expert, a sexual assault specialist, and, every once in awhile, a public safety officer authorized to use force, all after only a 1000 hours of training at a police academy. Does the person we send to catch a robber also need to be the person we send to interview a rape victim or document a fender bender? Should one profession be expected to do all that important community care (with very little training) all at the same time?

To put this another way: I made double the salary most social workers made to do a fraction of what they could do to mitigate the causes of crimes and desperation. I can count very few times my monopoly on state violence actually made our citizens safer, and even then, it’s hard to say better-funded social safety nets and dozens of other community care specialists wouldn’t have prevented a problem before it started.

Armed, indoctrinated (and dare I say, traumatized) cops do not make you safer; community mutual aid networks who can unite other people with the resources they need to stay fed, clothed, and housed make you safer. I really want to hammer this home: every cop in your neighborhood is damaged by their training, emboldened by their immunity, and they have a gun and the ability to take your life with near-impunity. This does not make you safer, even if you’re white.

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE A BASTARD?

So what do we do about it? Even though I’m an expert on bastardism, I am not a public policy expert nor an expert in organizing a post-police society. So, before I give some suggestions, let me tell you what probably won’t solve the problem of bastard cops:

Increased “bias” training. A quarterly or even monthly training session is not capable of covering over years of trauma-based camaraderie in police forces. I can tell you from experience, we don’t take it seriously, the proctors let us cheat on whatever “tests” there are, and we all made fun of it later over coffee.

Tougher laws. I hope you understand by now, cops do not follow the law and will not hold each other accountable to the law. Tougher laws are all the more reason to circle the wagons and protect your brothers and sisters.

More community policing programs. Yes, there is a marginal effect when a few cops get to know members of the community, but look at the protests of 2020: many of the cops pepper-spraying journalists were probably the nice school cop a month ago.

Police officers do not protect and serve people, they protect and serve the status quo, “polite society”, and private property. Using the incremental mechanisms of the status quo will never reform the police because the status quo relies on police violence to exist. Capitalism requires a permanent underclass to exploit for cheap labor and it requires the cops to bring that underclass to heel.

Instead of wasting time with minor tweaks, I recommend exploring the following ideas:

No more qualified immunity. Police officers should be personally liable for all decisions they make in the line of duty.

No more civil asset forfeiture. Did you know that every year, citizens like you lose more cash and property to unaccountable civil asset forfeiture than to all burglaries combined? The police can steal your stuff without charging you with a crime and it makes some police departments very rich.

Break the power of police unions. Police unions make it nearly impossible to fire bad cops and incentivize protecting them to protect the power of the union. A police union is not a labor union; police officers are powerful state agents, not exploited workers.

Require malpractice insurance. Doctors must pay for insurance in case they botch a surgery, police officers should do the same for botching a police raid or other use of force. If human decency won’t motivate police to respect human life, perhaps hitting their wallet might.

Defund, demilitarize, and disarm cops. Thousands of police departments own assault rifles, armored personnel carriers, and stuff you’d see in a warzone. Police officers have grants and huge budgets to spend on guns, ammo, body armor, and combat training. 99% of calls for service require no armed response, yet when all you have is a gun, every problem feels like target practice. Cities are not safer when unaccountable bullies have a monopoly on state violence and the equipment to execute that monopoly.

One final idea: consider abolishing the police.

I know what you’re thinking, “What? We need the police! They protect us!” As someone who did it for nearly a decade, I need you to understand that by and large, police protection is marginal, incidental. It’s an illusion created by decades of copaganda designed to fool you into thinking these brave men and women are holding back the barbarians at the gates.

I alluded to this above: the vast majority of calls for service I handled were theft reports, burglary reports, domestic arguments that hadn’t escalated into violence, loud parties, (houseless) people loitering, traffic collisions, very minor drug possession, and arguments between neighbors. Mostly the mundane ups and downs of life in the community, with little inherent danger. And, like I mentioned, the vast majority of crimes I responded to (even violent ones) had already happened; my unaccountable license to kill was irrelevant.

What I mainly provided was an “objective” third party with the authority to document property damage, ask people to chill out or disperse, or counsel people not to beat each other up. A trained counselor or conflict resolution specialist would be ten times more effective than someone with a gun strapped to his hip wondering if anyone would try to kill him when he showed up. There are many models for community safety that can be explored if we get away from the idea that the only way to be safe is to have a man with a M4 rifle prowling your neighborhood ready at a moment’s notice to write down your name and birthday after you’ve been robbed and beaten.

You might be asking, “What about the armed robbers, the gangsters, the drug dealers, the serial killers?” And yes, in the city I worked, I regularly broke up gang parties, found gang members carrying guns, and handled homicides. I’ve seen some tragic things, from a reformed gangster shot in the head with his brains oozing out to a fifteen year old boy taking his last breath in his screaming mother’s arms thanks to a gang member’s bullet. I know the wages of violence.

This is where we have to have the courage to ask: why do people rob? Why do they join gangs? Why do they get addicted to drugs or sell them? It’s not because they are inherently evil. I submit to you that these are the results of living in a capitalist system that grinds people down and denies them housing, medical care, human dignity, and a say in their government. These are the results of white supremacy pushing people to the margins, excluding them, disrespecting them, and treating their bodies as disposable.

Equally important to remember: disabled and mentally ill people are frequently killed by police officers not trained to recognize and react to disabilities or mental health crises. Some of the people we picture as “violent offenders” are often people struggling with untreated mental illness, often due to economic hardships. Very frequently, the officers sent to “protect the community” escalate this crisis and ultimately wound or kill the person. Your community was not made safer by police violence; a sick member of your community was killed because it was cheaper than treating them. Are you extremely confident you’ll never get sick one day too?

Wrestle with this for a minute: if all of someone’s material needs were met and all the members of their community were fed, clothed, housed, and dignified, why would they need to join a gang? Why would they need to risk their lives selling drugs or breaking into buildings? If mental healthcare was free and was not stigmatized, how many lives would that save?

Would there still be a few bad actors in the world? Sure, probably. What’s my solution for them, you’re no doubt asking. I’ll tell you what: generational poverty, food insecurity, houselessness, and for-profit medical care are all problems that can be solved in our lifetimes by rejecting the dehumanizing meat grinder of capitalism and white supremacy. Once that’s done, we can work on the edge cases together, with clearer hearts not clouded by a corrupt system.

Police abolition is closely related to the idea of prison abolition and the entire concept of banishing the carceral state, meaning, creating a society focused on reconciliation and restorative justice instead of punishment, pain, and suffering — a system that sees people in crisis as humans, not monsters. People who want to abolish the police typically also want to abolish prisons, and the same questions get asked: “What about the bad guys? Where do we put them?” I bring this up because abolitionists don’t want to simply replace cops with armed social workers or prisons with casual detention centers full of puffy leather couches and Playstations. We imagine a world not divided into good guys and bad guys, but rather a world where people’s needs are met and those in crisis receive care, not dehumanization.

Here’s legendary activist and thinker Angela Y. Davis putting it better than I ever could:

“An abolitionist approach that seeks to answer questions such as these would require us to imagine a constellation of alternative strategies and institutions, with the ultimate aim of removing the prison from the social and ideological landscapes of our society. In other words, we would not be looking for prisonlike substitutes for the prison, such as house arrest safeguarded by electronic surveillance bracelets. Rather, positing decarceration as our overarching strategy, we would try to envision a continuum of alternatives to imprisonment-demilitarization of schools, revitalization of education at all levels, a health system that provides free physical and mental care to all, and a justice system based on reparation and reconciliation rather than retribution and vengeance.”

(Are Prisons Obsolete, pg. 107)

I’m not telling you I have the blueprint for a beautiful new world. What I’m telling you is that the system we have right now is broken beyond repair and that it’s time to consider new ways of doing community together. Those new ways need to be negotiated by members of those communities, particularly Black, indigenous, disabled, houseless, and citizens of color historically shoved into the margins of society. Instead of letting Fox News fill your head with nightmares about Hispanic gangs, ask the Hispanic community what they need to thrive. Instead of letting racist politicians scaremonger about pro-Black demonstrators, ask the Black community what they need to meet the needs of the most vulnerable. If you truly desire safety, ask not what your most vulnerable can do for the community, ask what the community can do for the most vulnerable.

A WORLD WITH FEWER BASTARDS IS POSSIBLE

If you take only one thing away from this essay, I hope it’s this: do not talk to cops. But if you only take two things away, I hope the second one is that it’s possible to imagine a different world where unarmed black people, indigenous people, poor people, disabled people, and people of color are not routinely gunned down by unaccountable police officers. It doesn’t have to be this way. Yes, this requires a leap of faith into community models that might feel unfamiliar, but I ask you:

When you see a man dying in the street begging for breath, don’t you want to leap away from that world?

When you see a mother or a daughter shot to death sleeping in their beds, don’t you want to leap away from that world?

When you see a twelve year old boy executed in a public park for the crime of playing with a toy, jesus fucking christ, can you really just stand there and think “This is normal”?

And to any cops who made it this far down, is this really the world you want to live in? Aren’t you tired of the trauma? Aren’t you tired of the soul sickness inherent to the badge? Aren’t you tired of looking the other way when your partners break the law? Are you really willing to kill the next George Floyd, the next Breonna Taylor, the next Tamir Rice? How confident are you that your next use of force will be something you’re proud of? I’m writing this for you too: it’s wrong what our training did to us, it’s wrong that they hardened our hearts to our communities, and it’s wrong to pretend this is normal.

Look, I wouldn’t have been able to hear any of this for much of my life. You reading this now may not be able to hear this yet either. But do me this one favor: just think about it. Just turn it over in your mind for a couple minutes. “Yes, And” me for a minute. Look around you and think about the kind of world you want to live in. Is it one where an all-powerful stranger with a gun keeps you and your neighbors in line with the fear of death, or can you picture a world where, as a community, we embrace our most vulnerable, meet their needs, heal their wounds, honor their dignity, and make them family instead of desperate outsiders?

If you take only three things away from this essay, I hope the third is this: you and your community don’t need bastards to thrive.

RESOURCES TO YES-AND WITH

Achele Mbembe — Necropolitics

Angela Y. Davis — Are Prisons Obsolete?

CriticalResistance.org — Abolition Toolkit

Joe Macaré, Maya Schenwar, and Alana Yu-lan Price — Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?

Ruth Wilson Gilmore — COVID-19, Decarceration, Abolition [video]

#acab

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moonlit-imagines · 3 years

Text

Next of Kin (Part 2)

Birds of Prey x Sionis-Zsasz!reader

warnings:

a/n: HDTVTVRBEHS IM SO SORRY I COMPLETELY ABANDONED THAT STORY OH MY GOD im gonna be honest with you guys. its not good. i forgot the original ending i wanted.

prompt:

prologue part 1

“Boss?” You heard a henchman wake you from your slumber in your own room. Opening your eyes to complete darkness, you tried not to lose your temper.

“What the hell do you want?” You asked with a huff.

“Right, uh, you told us to tell you when we had a location on those ‘Birds of Prey’ or whatever...we do.” You ripped your sleeping mask off of your eyes and bolted out from under the satin covers.

“You do?! Where? Tell me now!” You shouted while scrambling across the room to get yourself ready for this spur of the moment fight. The blue robe you wore dropped to the ground just before you pulled on a pair of pants and continued. You had to look good for this special occasion.

“A old factory, I guess. ACE or some shit.” He shrugged, looking away respectfully as you got your clothes on.

“ACE Chemicals?” You pulled the shoulder holster over your arms and covered it with a jacket, waiting for the oaf to confirm.

“Uh, I think so.” He was basically useless, an alarm clock at best. You swiped your weapons from your nightstand and pushed past him, ready to end a few lives. It was an eye for two eyes kind of situation.

“Should I call for backup?” He followed behind you as weapons were shoved into all sorts of pockets on your person, so you did what any reasonable person would do and shot him in the foot, the sweet sound of a yelp calmed your shaky nerves.

“Did I say we should call for backup? No, so don’t ask.” He dropped to the floor as he clutched onto his injured appendage, but you just kept on walking. This was personal, you were the only one who could avenge Dad and Papa Vic.

Now you were jogging to the car and stepping on the gas the moment you sat in the driver’s seat. There was no time to lose, no time at all. It was a bit relaxing to hear Britney Spears on the radio as you cut off traffic over and over again. There was a moment of contemplation when someone honked their horn at you, and I mean contemplation of murder. You were going to murder the person honking at you.

But you didn’t have time to stop. Who knows how long those little Birds would be at the factory and how long it’d be until you caught them again. So upon arrival, you ran to the trunk and pulled out the Thompson, your lovely little submachine gun.

With that rested over your shoulder, you left the car running and walked straight into the factory. There was no telling what they were doing here, but damn all the dangers of walking into a severely damaged chemical plant. You wanted your revenge, even if you didn’t make it out of here alive. Ideally, yes, you’d live the rest of your days sleeping peacefully knowing that you put your parent’s killers down, but as long as they were gone, you’d be fine with whatever may happen.

“This is officially the final step to my breakup! This is where I became ‘Harley Quinn.’” You heard a familiar annoying voice echo through the abandoned building.

“This place is starting to creep me out...” Another voice muttered, the voice of a singer. Someone who you and your family trusted until she stabbed you each in the back. God, your blood was boiling just thinking about having relations to these cruel women. But luckily for you, you were about to return a favor.

There’s one little detail I left out, you have been carrying a single hand grenade on your person since you learned about your Dad’s cause of death. It was the perfect revenge. In your head, at least. You yanked the ring with your teeth, you just had to give it a try! But grenades don’t work like that, that’s just a trope in media to made it look badass, as if a giant explosion isn’t badass enough. So you pulled the ring with all your might, this time with your fingers, and popped the pin out. The girls had yet to notice your presence, but that was about to change.

Timing was everything here: you had to give yourself time to escape, but you couldn’t give them time to escape. Maybe ypu should have thought this through before pulling the pin.

Fuck it, toss! The Birds were standing on the grates of the second floor, so there was an alerting clink when the bomb landed.

“Oh, shit!” Harley screamed and bolted. “Run for it!” As they scattered in all different directions, you spectated in excitement. The one that killed Papa Vic, the Crossbow Killer, hopped off the platform and landed on the concrete rubble below, then the sudden force of the explosion pushed them every which way. You, too, actually.

“What the hell? Who’s here?!” Canary cried as she checked her face for cuts, finding blood on her hands. Each of you was covered in dirt and grime, blood and bruises.

“Everyone okay?” The cop asked her company and heard a bundle of groans from the pack, could be worse?

Oh, it could be worse...especially once you revealed yourself to the little ragtags.

“Hi there!” You introduced. “A few of you remember me, huh? Hey, Harley, Miss Lance.” You waved with a pistol in your hand and Papa Vic’s sharp gift in the other.

“‘Course you’re here for revenge.” Harley blew a raspberry as she crossed her arms, but the rest of the group just stared at you. “You’re dads started it.”

“Wait, they were together?” Cass asked the wrong question at the wrong time.

“Shut up, kid. Love you.” Harley pushed the child out of the way and stepped forward. “So ya wanna get back at us, huh? Got it all planned out? Ya don’t have the discipline, sweetie. That’s what did your dads in.”

“Quiet!” You shouted with a haunting similarity to Roman. “Listen, I don’t need to kill all of you. I’d really love to, but I won’t.” You explained as you paced around shifting bricks. “Harley and the crossbow girl are who I really want. I thought about offing the songbird for being a narc, but if she flies away now, maybe I’ll let her go.”

“My name is Huntress.” The girl in distasteful purple makeup growled, you just had to laugh.

“I don’t give a shit what your name is, I just care how you die.” You held the blade out for her to see. “Stab my Papa through the neck, I do the same. It’s only fitting I use the knife he gave me to do it. Poetic, huh?”

“I wasn’t even the one that killed him! Technically it was the kid, tell ‘em!” Said the Joker’s ex-lady.

“Wow, thanks for throwing me under the bus!” Cassandra threw her hands up and you pointed your bedazzled gun at Harley’s chest. “Shit, look out!”

“It might not be a grenade, but it still goes ‘boom.’” You slowly tightened your finger around the trigger, but ducked and missed when a brick came flying towards you, courtesy of Little Miss Trouble.

“Fuck’s sake!” You screamed and came running towards the other target, who flipped you over her back, causing you to land on yours. I can’t even describe the noise you made.

“I had been planning to kill Victor Zsasz for years, alright? I had every right to do so.” She went off for the team to witness. “He murdered my entire family in front of me when I was a child! Do you know what it’s like to be an orphan?!” Huntress’s voice was sharp and rough, there was a slim chance that she’d be taking any more shit today.

“Yes, you idiot.” You glared up at her while she planted a foot on either side of your torso, aiming an arrow at your head. “I was adopted by Roman and Vic after they found me on the street.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that they took everything from me.” The others simply watched the show, how could they not? Helena’s stone-cold voice was chilling.

“And what do you think you did to me?” You asked with and unsteady tone. “I’m a goddamn orphan again!” You caught the back of her knee and escaped her reach for just a moment as you leveled the field by drawing your weapon once more. “I had it good before you came in and ruined it all.”

“Your fathers were the scum of the Earth, the world’s better without them.” It was a wonder how none of her team had hopped in yet, but it worked out for you. “If you thought they deserved to live, you would’ve shot me by now.”

“She’s got a point, y/n/n.” Harley chimed in, throwing you right off your rhythm. Leaving it to the psychiatrist to evaluate you during something like this. “Remember our nights at the club? I saw how controlling Romy was over ya. An’ how Vicky kept secrets. An’ how they put ya into some really uncomfortable situations an’ whatnot. I dunno what when on behind closed doors, but...admit it, y/n, it wasn’t as perfect as ya make it out ta be.”

“They did their best.” You watched each face turn to pity you, it broke you all over again. “Fuck! Fuck you guys!” You dropped your guard and pouted at how easily manipulated you could be.

“That’s more like it.” Renee chuckled as Dinah walked past her. Dinah had seen just as much as Harley, that’s why she went right up to you and took you in her arms.

“You should stick with us for a while. I promise we aren’t that bad.”

taglist: @locke-writes // @captainshazamerica // @ravenmoore14 // @thisetaernallove //

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batarella · 4 years

Text

The Commander - Part 13 (Arkham Knight x Reader)

ANOTHER ONE OF MY FAVORITES. I had so much fun looking back at Arkham Knight playthroughs and following the flow of this scene. HOPE YOU ENJOY.

WORDS: 3648 WARNINGS: SPOILERS FOR ARKHAM KNIGHT VIDEO GAME (CLOUDBURST SCENE) AND SOOOOO MUCH ANGST. I RECOMMEND WATCHING A PLAYTHROUGH IF YOU HAVEN’T PLAYED THE GAME

Masterlist

THE COMMANDER - MASTERLIST

------

“Commander Y/N.”

It was Scarecrow’s voice in her communicator. They’d just arrived at Gotham. By now, he should be at Ace Chemicals. “I’m in the middle of something, Crane.”

“I thought of what you can do, so your relationship with the Knight will not be such a… predicament…”

“I have no relationship with him.”

“Didn’t you and the Knight share an intimate moment at the Dark Knight’s cave?”

She almost dropped the gun, her mouth slightly parted but was too horrified to speak. She was in the middle of taking her men into their base at the department store. And even so, she stopped walking. “I told you. I have eyes.”

“What the hell do you want from me?”

“You control the Cloudburst tonight.”

“We reached that decision days ago, you dirt rag.”

Crane’s voice sounded like he breathed into her ear even closer.

“But it shall be the Arkham Knight that the Batman thinks is manning the tank.”

Her rifle almost dropped to the ground. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I am the kind of man who wants every possibility planned out.”

“Are you even a man, Crane?”

“The Batmobile is not what we’d expected.”

“Expected?”

“It’s much stronger. It’s destroyed a number of my drones just outside my station at Ace Chemicals. Tell me, Commander, what happens if the Dark Knight manages to destroy the Cloudburst?”

She remembered. They had this perfectly planned out. She, Jason, Scarecrow, and Deathstroke all agreed on the same.

First, before anything else, they kidnap Barbara Gordon. If the Cloudburst fails to release the toxin, the Knight will go after the commissioner, James Gordon, who will by then be looking for the Arkham Knight after taking his daughter.

They will then use the Commissioner to gain them access into the Panessa Studios, which according to Jason, is one of Batman’s many hideouts. Whoever is in the studios that they can use to their advantage, they will take them.

It goes on from there. The commissioner will then serve as a hostage to force Batman to surrender, if everything else falls into place.

“Kidnap the commissioner,” she said.

“The Dark Knight destroying the cloudburst has become more of a possibility than what we’ve thought, but as way to counter that, taking Batman himself, injecting that fear onto his bloodstream whilst I unmask him for the world to see, that does just as much damage to Gotham as my fear toxin.”

“And how am I supposed to help you with that?”

“I’m afraid your Knight has miscalculated. He needs far more than a few hours to get Gordon and hack into the studios. If Batman thinks it is the Arkham Knight manning the Cloudburst, he will no longer be looking for him after it has been destroyed. It will give us the time we need to kidnap Gordon and his allies,” he said.. “Otherwise, Batman will track the Knight down before we’ve done so much.”

“You seem to have these awfully planned out, Crane. For someone who thought the Cloudburst was such a prize.”

Crane let out an eerie, maniacal laugh beneath his breath.

“I am a very calculated man, Commander. Engulfing Gotham City in my reign of fear can only hold so long if the Batman continues to defend her. Unmasking him, humiliating him for the world to see, that will be the assurance I need so that the next time I release my toxin, I will be sure no one can stop me.”

She could almost feel Scarecrow’s syringes against her neck, and she stood stiff, her eyes locked onto the abandoned department store.

“It shouldn’t make much of a difference. So unless you make sure the Cloudburst isn’t destroyed, give your precious Knight the time he needs to succeed.”

Xxxxxx

The Cloudburst drove out from the tunnels.

She was alone, and the air in the cockpit was eerily cold. The Commander pulled out from one of the compartments something she’d prepared earlier that night.

A visor identical to the Arkham Knight’s.

If all else fails, at least Jason will still have a shot.

She took off her white mask, looked straight into the optics, then set it aside.

The visor was heavy, and it weighed on her neck so much she could topple at any more movement. And it was hot. Y/N had trouble to even breathe. She stretched her shoulders and pressed on her communicator, the one Jason gave her.

“Jason.”

Her voice. It sounded precisely like his. Filtered, unidentifiable, and foolproof.

“Where the hell did you get that visor?”

“Calm down. If I were you I’d take off your own visor. Batman only needs to see and hear mine.”

Their two voice were hurtful to hear on each ends of the communicator. She heard him take off his helmet, and with his real voice, he didn’t sound any happier.

“What are you trying to do, Commander?”

“Ask Scarecrow. This was his idea.”

She heard him curse, then his comms turned off and the Commander continued with maneuvering the tank out onto the streets. Out of Founder’s, and into Perdition Bridge. This will be where she releases the toxin.

There were street thugs, running out of the way, while still keeping their eyes on what was about to happen. Other than that, Gotham was empty. The Cloudburst paraded across the bridge.

“Do it,” she heard Scarecrow’s voice.

She closed her eyes, and all she could see was her uncle’s face.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Commander Y/N turned off the ventilation, made sure the oxygen tanks were in power, then signaled for the Cobra tanks to stand guard.

Her hand sweating on the lever, the Commander pulled on the cylinder, turned it exactly 50 degrees, then pushed.

The visor did much to mask the noise. But she was used to it. What she wasn’t used to was the explosion that came directly in front of her.

It was much like a bomb, and the massive blow of the toxin, in the form of smoke, tore up into the sky and sucked up any form of air in its way. It blew out all across her, over the water under the bridge and out into all three islands of Gotham. It was like a sandstorm, crushing anything in its path and engulfing the city in a hellish red cloud of the Scarecrow’s toxin.

And it didn’t take too long. The storm subsided, and when she looked up, all she could see was darkness.

No longer was there a blank sky above her. It was the toxin in the form of a heavily concentrated gas cloud that covered everything from the streets up to at least five stories. Everything below it, suffered its effects.

The same thugs that stared at the tank were now ripping each other’s flesh with their own teeth, their eyes white and the noises they made inhumane.

This was it. This was Gotham. This was the City of Fear.

Xxxxx

“Commander, a serpent drone has picked up a giant plant growing out of Founder’s Island.”

“A giant what?”

Quickly, she searched for the drone’s footage, and sure enough a plant the size of three towers stacked together sprouted out of the ground and had Batman’s car in its vines. “Son of a bitch.”

“Sergeant, there’s a weed grown tall in Divinity Churchyard,” she said to the drone controllers. “Cut it down.”

“Sending drones in now, sir.”

She opened her visor and pinched her nose. Scarecrow’s plan worked, as of now. Batman thinks it was the Knight in the Cloudburst and not her. And that plan might actually be of use, with the Dark Knight getting closer and closer to ending the toxin’s hold on the city.

Scarecrow was right. Again. She hated that man to the bone.

She kept on the footage of the Batmobile destroying each of her drones. “I own these streets, Dark Knight!” she said. One after the other, they exploded.

“He wiped them out sir,” the sergeant said over her comms. “We’re gonna need more tanks.”

“No. Now he needs to face me.” She called Batman.

“Commander. Make sure he doesn’t survive. Blow up his stupid car and kill him,” Jason said. She heard his breath heavy.

She’s never seen his face up close before, but there he was. The Dark Knight. Ready to face her to the death. “YOU WANNA FINISH THIS? COME TO BLEAKE ISLAND!”

Her hands gripping tightly on the controls. “Commander,” she heard Jason’s unfiltered voice. “He’s blocked off the bridges out of Bleake Island.”

“I’ll be okay. Batman doesn’t realize he’s going after the best markswoman in the world.”

And with that, she called for the cobra tanks to surround her, her hands gripping onto the handles to move the tank into the center of the island.

The Cloudburst’s optics circled slowly around the perimeter. She searched for any signature, any movement out of place. There was dead silence, and the sky the color of blood.

“We’ve lost a Cobra Tank. Sending support.”

She growled into her communicator. “IT’S OVER BATMAN. GOTHAM’S DEAD.” There was buzzing, like tires screeching. Her optics picked up movement, and she breathed, quick enough not to lose its sight. He was slightly peering into from a building on her right. She locked onto the target, firing her missile.

And like that, Deadshot became the first to hit the Batmobile. The damage wasn’t too much, but it was significant. “Good job, Commander. Keep firing at him. Make sure he doesn’t come out of this alive,” Jason said.

“Cobra tank down. Holding formation.”

She would have cursed if Scarecrow’s voice hadn’t interrupted her. “What do you think you're doing?”

“Finishing the job.”

It was the Arkham Knight’s voice. But it was Jason’s line on the other end. She just listened.

“This is not the plan we agreed upon.”

“It’s a plan that works. Scarecrow can choke on his toxin, Batman. I just want you dead,” Jason growled.

Then she switched onto Jason’s communicator. “Are you sure about this?”

“Just keep going, Commander. Do not back down. I trust you with this.”

Another. And another. Three Cobras down in less than a minute apart.

“JASON.”

“I SAID KEEP GOING. BLOW UP HIS TANK. KILL HIM NOW.”

She was alone. No longer with any more tanks to support her. She kept her optics rotating at a faster pace. Batman couldn’t be far. He should be here. Somewhere.

Breathe in. Breathe-

She screamed, her head almost hitting the wall when the tank blew up on the right side. Her coolant systems set off an alarm, the Batman had hit her. The Commander turned her optics to that direction, caught the Batmobile just before it sped off, then fired.

Another hit. But at such a cost. She amplified the three remaining coolant lines and sped down the roads. Y/N slowed her heartbeat, slowed her breaths, focused on the sight in front of her. Focused on what was far.

The tank exploded again. This time from the back. “Knight, he’s trying to overheat the tank.”

“THE ISLAND IS BLOCKED OFF. YOU HAVE NO CHOICE. I’M SENDING A SERPENT DRONE. KILL HIM.”

Those last two words, how she’s heard Jason say that to her more than just a few times.

The Commander turned her optics over to her side. He wasn’t there.

But she knew exactly where he was.

That road only led to one place. And on the other side was a dead end. He should pass by an alleyway in just a few moments. The Commander turned her launcher to that side, and waited.

Breathe. Follow the target. Keep breathing.

Her thumbs over the buttons, she kept her optics close. She waited and waited, facing the third coolant to that side to bait the Batmobile. There, he was coming closer.

The hood of the Bat’s tank, snaking to her side thinking she didn’t notice it. “FIRE,” she heard Jason scream into her ear.

She can end this now, it was much too easy. She pulled on the lever, her thumb hovering over the button. And then-

And then-

Uncle. He was at the front seat of the Batmobile. And he was looking at her. And he was so thin it didn’t even look like him anymore.

How many hundreds of lives has she taken?

How many thousands has she hurt?

How many daughters left without a father?

How many wives has she widowed?

How many millions will be left without hope?

How many in this city will suffer if she fires?

There have always been consequences, but none with stakes higher than this.

All that doubt, the guilt after pulling the trigger and leaving bodies left alone, it was all balled up in one. Crucial. Second.

The one second the Dark Knight needed.

Everything she’s worked for, trained for her whole life, thrown out into a deep dark hole. The Commander blindly fired at the Batmobile and slammed her head against the steel of the cockpit when the left side of the tank exploded.

And she had just one coolant left.

The alarms deafened her ears. And she was almost never deafened. It mimicked the panic of her heart racing, Jason’s voice violently screaming into her ear. The tank trembled immensely, and for once, she no longer knew what to do.

The Batmobile was alive. Somewhere in the island.

She missed.

All the voices in her head. The Arkham Knight. Scarecrow. Deathstroke. Floyd Lawton. They all screamed at her. Her hands were shaking. She’s never missed a shot at anything for so long. Everything moved too fast, too strong for her to block off. She turned off her communicators, kept her heartbeat steady.

But she couldn’t hear Floyd’s voice any longer. He’d left her. And she was alone, shaking with the tank so close to giving out. She grabbed the handles and turned around.

Just for the Batman to fire at the last coolant. The one right at her front.

She hit her head. Again. Everything was too much of a blur. She couldn’t control her breathing, or her heart. She moved the cloudburst, finding someplace where the Bat couldn’t find her.

Five missiles locked onto her. The tank was barely holding up. Everything around her went red, and her head so painfully throbbing she couldn’t see or hear anything more.

She turned on her communicators.

“Jason…”

“I’M ON MY WAY, COMMANDER. STAY ALIVE.”

She heard him scream at Batman on the other end. And she felt three more missiles hit her from behind.

Sparks were emitting out of the Cloudburst and the whole tank was shaking off the ground. It no longer moved.

And she could smell it. The toxin. It was the worst thing she’s ever breathed in her whole life. The Commander clawed on her own throat, begging for some air. She hurried up the hatch, fighting the pain in her own head. She collapsed on the tank before she could breathe anything more.

Everything was dark. And her nightmares flashed like speeding pictures projected onto a screen.

There were ghosts, floating above and around her, mauling her body and pulling her up where she could no longer stand. And she couldn’t move. There were birds, screeching into her ear, and their claws were so sharp she could feel them scratch at her open flesh, pulling out her skin. And they flew over her fast, circling around her.

At the farthest end of the sky, something so miniscule, yet so visible. It was speeding right towards her and she could do so much as move her head to narrowly avoid it. It shined a glistening silver and it was burning. Y/N could just feel how hot it was from the speed. It was a bullet.

Being on the other side of the gun. That was what she feared the most.

Bullets entered her bloodstream, too many for her to count. Onto her chest, her stomach, her arms, her legs, her neck, her spine, her face. Every hit pierced through her like a thick needle and it froze her muscles at they made contact with her body. She screamed, a horrifying scream. Some settled on her flesh, on her skin, some resting on her head. She could feel the bullets enter her, her own blood spilling and her nerves so close to giving out. Every inch of her being tugged into a stinging burst, and the cold metal the bullets almost froze her muscles.

Y/N’s spine was hit, and she couldn’t feel anything on her lower body, even when so many bullets pierced her foot, she’d never be able to walk anyways. Her bones were shattered and her face, ruined by the explosives landing right at her cheeks.

She was laying on the ground. Y/N couldn’t move.

She’s seen this happen. And she’s caused this kind of pain to so many others.

Now she knows what it was like.

She screamed, openly at the abyss, at the birds flying above her like a tornado and her own voice painfully tugging at her throat. She saw Floyd, staring at her, and she couldn’t stop screaming.

Over. And over. And over.

She felt something carrying her up a rooftop, and the Batman crashing to the ground beside her. Her lungs gave out just as she saw the Arkham Knight get to her, leaving the Bat on the ground.

Xxxxxx

One. Two. Three.

She was unconsciously counting in her head. Just up to three, then she’d trail back to where she started.

It was like a knife was stabbing at her temple and went out the other side. Handle and all. Y/N felt her eyes about to open, but she wanted them still closed. She didn’t want to look if she was dead. Or worse, alive and hunted.

Everyone will be out to kill her.

Y/N’s eyes shot open.

She was in a room she didn’t know. And it was dark.

The department store. The Arkham Knight Headquarters. In an abandoned furniture store where none of her soldiers were staying in. It was small, barely enough for a closet, a dining table, and a couch, which was where she was lying on.

She had an oxygen mask strapped to her mouth. And every part of her ached when she sat up. But her body wasn’t ruined. She wasn’t shot. Only the sides of her arms and her head were bruised when she’d hit the cockpit walls in the tank after it exploded.

After she lost.

The door open. And the man that went inside looked out for anyone following him.

“Jason…”

He hurriedly shut the door. “Don’t fucking speak. If anyone finds you here, you're dead.”

Y/N immediately looked away. He didn’t even look at her. Jason pulled the visor off his head and placed it on the table, along with a large duffel bag.

He had his eyes closed shut.

“Jason, his tank was nothing like we’d expecte-“

“Shut up.”

She choked, looking straight at the wall.

“You knew how much he hurt me.”

Y/N hugged her chest, but even that was too painful to do. She just laid on the couch and looked up at the ceiling.

“You knew how much I want him dead.”

“I…”

“I SAID SHUT UP.”

She stilled, feeling her wrists quake.

“I told Scarecrow you didn’t survive. Just so he wouldn’t come after you. Then I watched the footage on the Cloudburst…”

“I’m sorry-“

“You missed,” he cried. “He got away because you missed.”

It was something else other than her own hand holding her chest so tightly, because it was so painful she could feel it twist.

“All this would’ve been okay if I DIDN’T KNOW YOU NEVER MISSED A SHOT.”

His fist slammed against the wall. And the hole was large enough to almost collapse the ceiling above it.

“I TRUSTED YOU!”

He was screaming. Never mind what he said about being quiet.

And it dawned on her. Jason didn’t want Y/N on the Cloudburst, and she thought it was because he wanted her safe. That it would be too much for her.

But he wanted to be on the Cloudburst so he could guarantee Batman would be dead. It was never about her.

Stupid. Fucking stupid.

“That means that somewhere there,” he pointed at her head. “Somewhere, you felt guilty about all this. You hesitated. YOU HESITATED. Of all the times I’ve asked you to kill, YOU HESITATED WHEN IT MEANT THE MOST. YOU KNOW HOW MUCH HE’S MADE ME SUFFER. AND YOU JUST LET HIM LIVE.”

Jason knelt on the ground, and her muscles were too sore to move. She forced herself up, trying to reach for his head, but he pushed her hands away and she winced at the pain. ‘I love you,’ she whispered, but only on her own. ‘I would never let him hurt you again.’

Floyd’s protégé.

The Militia Commander.

Deadshot.

The machine she was raised to be. The assassin with the best aim. The world renowned.

Crying helplessly like a spineless nobody.

She wasn’t the best marksman in the world. She was nothing. Y/N failed at the most important job she’s ever been given.

“He thought it was me in that tank. We had just enough time to get Gordon.”

His voice was blank. He didn’t see much in her anymore. Y/N could tell by the look on his eyes. Jason dropped a large duffel bag on the ground in front of her.

“One point five million dollars. Take it and get out of here.”

He threw her white mask and gun optics on top of the bag. The tears wouldn’t stop pouring out of her. But she was no longer screaming. She looked blankly out in the open and heard the door shut.

And just like that, she lost everything.

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THE COMMANDER - MASTERLIST

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Taglist: everyartistwas-firstanamateur @sarcasmismyfirstlove @damned-queen-of-gotham @idkmanicantenglish @wunderstell @birdy-bat-riya @get-loki@everyday-imfangirling @comic-nerd-dc @multifandoms916 @icequeen208@offendedfishnoises @egdolan @xemiefx @arkhamtoddler @elsenthal@mythicbitchx @supremehaunter @ burning-alive @lucy-roo

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365days365movies · 3 years

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May 6, 2021: The Martian (2015) (Recap: Part One)

We’re leaving lo-fi sci-fi, people. Kind of.

I mentioned before that films like Her are what I define as “lo-fi sci-fi”, which is a category that I’ve kind of made up. Basically, it’s the science fiction version of low fantasy, meaning it contains science fiction themes contained within an otherwise contemporary setting. In the case of Her, Joaquin Phoenix’s character, along with many others, live in a world and setting basically like ours, but with technology advanced enough to generate AIs (like Siri) that are intelligent enough to actually ascend our reality. Because we live in a society.

You give me Joaquin Phoenix, I’m gonna make a Joker reference; it’s in the contract of my existence. Anyway, that is admittedly kind of broad, right? I mean, that has the capability of crossing over with a BUNCH of sci-fi genres and themes. And, considering that we’ve already seen magic, speculative technology, time travel, monsters, and artificial intelligence, we’ve already touched on quite a bit.

And with science fiction, the sky’s the limit. Literally. So, I think it behooves us to re-examine lo-fi sci-fi a little bit. Specifically, we should note that it can also be defined as an extension of currently existing technologies and possibilities. Writers would call this “speculative sci-fi”, assuming in this case that it’s set within the present or a near and attainable future. Her definitely fits in this category, as does Westworld. But, let’s crossover to another genre by speculating upon another possibility. And it begins with this man. Probably.

Hey, Elon, what’s up? Now, Mr. Musk here is a...controversial figure, for COMPLETELY understandable reasons. Instead of touch upon the man himself, I feel like touching upon one of his recent focuses: space travel. With SpaceX and the various upcoming space trips and journeys that they’re planning, Musk has made it clear that he plans to shoot to the Moon. Again, literally.

In fact, this full plan is to go even further than that, and to fuel potential commercial space flights in the future, which is admittedly very cool. And of course, if you’re going to shoot for the Moon...

Guys...guys, that’s Mars. THAT’S FUCKING MARS

Is that not amazing? We have sound and pictures from FUCKING MARS! THAT’S A DIFFERENT PLANET, GODDAMN IT! It’s cooler than I have the ability to properly express, but it IS goddamn cool. And this means that, easily within my lifetime, we could (and likely will) land on Mars. Which is amazing. God, I really want to see that happen.

And so, landing on Mars is BARELY science fiction, but since we haven’t yet done so...yeah, it’s fictional at the moment. And so, any film about landing on Mars falls within this category. Well...to an extent.

2000′s Mission to Mars, for example, was a Disney-funded film (to my IMMENSE surprise; and it’s based off of an old Disney World ride, WHAT), and a movie that I saw a LOT when I was a kid. I also barely remember it, to be honest. But that film is straight-up science fiction because of, well...aliens. The idea of Martians is, as far as we know it, fictional. And most fiction involving Mars includes these aliens somehow. Whether it’s DC Comics’ entire civilization of Martians, as seen in Justice League, Supergirl, or Young Justice...

...Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s heavily mythologized civilization, as seen in the Barsoom series of novels (and another Disney film)...

...Or one of the best Looney Tunes characters.

Mmm. Yes. Isn’t that lovely?

But, yeah, Mars and aliens go hand-in-hand in our media. So, to properly look at lo-fi science and speculative science fiction in relation to the Red Planet, we’ll need a movie that goes to the planet, and doesn’t touch upon the concept of aliens AT ALL.

Enter...Ridley Scott?

Yeah, the director of Legend, Alien, Thelma and Louise, Blade Runner, Gladiator. Also the director of Kingdom of Heaven, Prometheus, Exodus: Gods and Kings, and...ugh, 1492: Conquest of Paradise. I’ve talked about his mixed record before, in my Recap of Legend right here.

In 2014, he was brought on to adapt a book by Andy Weir called The Martian, which is a great book! I’ve listened to the audio book, and I whole-heartedly recommend doing that. And because of that, I am VERY MUCH looking forward to watching this film, especially seeing as it’s often called one of the best science fiction films made during that year, and was critically acclaimed then and now. It got seven Oscar nominations (although it won none of them), amongst other awards. So, enough navel-gazing, huh? The Martian!

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

On Acidalia Plantitia, at the landing site of the Ares III mission, a group of scientists are gathering samples. These scientists are commander and geologist Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain), pilot Rick Martinez (Michael Pena), systems operator Beth Johanssen (Kate Mara), surgeon Chris Beck (Sebastian Stan), German chemist Alex Vogel (Aksel Hennie), and overly talkative botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon).

The group seems to have a good dynamic, but that dynamic is interrupted by a massive dust storm, which is large enough to cause the entire crew to evacuate. However, in the chaos of the dust storm, Mark is hit by debris and lost in the shuffle. Although Lewis goes back to find him, she can’t get to him before they need to leave, and Mark is believed dead. This is reported (pretty callously) by NASA Director Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) to the press soon afterwards.

But of course, that wouldn’t be much of a movie, now would it? Mark’s alive! And Mark’s alone. With his suit damaged, and low on oxygen, he trudges back to headquarters, which is intact and still contains breathable oxygen. He gets inside, and realizes that he’s been stabbed in the abdomen by some debris. He removes it, and stitches up his own wound. Which is...god, it’s fucking BRUTAL just to think about, nevertheless watch.

Once he’s finished, he records a log for the future, if he doesn’t make it. It’s day 19 of the 31-day mission at this point, and Mark’s basically screwed. He needs lasting oxygen, water, and food, and he might need that for 4 years, when the next manned mission can come to the red planet. Additionally, he has absolutely no way to contact NASA, leaving him completely stranded. Another dust storm rolls in that night, and Mark looks over the belongings of his colleagues, packing them up for their eventual return. It’s somber, to say the least. However, Mark affirms that he’s determined not to die on the planet.

After doing the math, Mark should have enough food to last him for about 300 days, especially if he rations it. Until then, he’ll need to figure out how to grow his own food, on a planet where nothing grows. Which is, of course, going to be a difficult feat to accomplish. But Mark Watney’s a botanist with botany powers, and he’s gonna do it.

It’s day 31, and Mark’s brought in dirt from the outside, and uses the bio-waste from the crew’s stay there for a form of compost. After 5 days, mostly full of him watching Happy Days on TV and trying to farm, he realizes that he needs water, both for himself and for the soil. To do that, he goes chemical and decides to use hydrogen-laden rocket fuel, wood from Martinez’s belongings, and good old-fashioned fire to make water! And since hydrogen + oxygen = water, it should work. With a minor side-effect.

So, yeah, he blew himself up. As as he records a video log, the sound mixing makes itself impressively known by subtly and realistically generating a tinnitus sound. It’s VERY well-done, holy shit. Anyway, he makes a stable fire, and the place is soon covered in condensation, moistening the room and the soil successfully.

We get to day 54, and Mark’s planted leftover potatoes from the crew in order to grow them. And while he’s being mourned at a funeral on Earth, and in NASA, he’s seeing the fruits (or shoots) of his efforts.

Back on Earth, Mars Mission Director Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is trying to convince Director Teddy to let him lobby for another Ares mission, despite the risk of bad press for the callousness of the proximity to Watney’s death. Meanwhile, satellite technician Mindy Park (Mackenzie Davis) looks down at the Ares III site, and realizes that the site has changed visually, meaning that Mark may actually be alive.

Shocked by this, she tells Kapoor, Teddy, and media director Annie Montrose (Kristen Wiig) about this, and they realize the absolute clusterfuck that this whole thing is. They can’t tell the other members of the Ares III crew about it, because it’d devastate them for the 10 months they have to get back to Earth, at the VERY least. They can’t tell the WORLD about this, because they just had a funeral for the guy, and they’d reveal that they left him stranded on Mars accidentally, destroying faith in the Mars Missions Program. And they can’t save Mark, who they’re sure will starve eventually. It’s a mess. And Kapoor also wonders what’s happening to Mark psychologically through all of this.

And yet, they reveal this to the world regardless, causing the clusterfuck reaction that they think it’s going to cause. But Mark’s busy on Mars, figuring out how to get to the site of the next Ares IV mission in 4 years, at the Schiaparelli crater about 50 days travel away. This is a struggle, as his Rover has only so much power and fuel, and he can only get more power by cutting out the heater is risking death by freezing. So, problems. However, he figures out a potential solution: radioactive isotopes! In a move that is, let’s face it, COMPLETELY INSANE, he digs up a radioactive generator from the ship in order to heat the ship.

On Earth, they try to figure out Mark’s moves, as well as how to resupply Ares IV sooner for Mark’s benefit. This is with the director of JPL, Bruce Ng (Benedict Wong), and the flight director of the ship Hermes, Mitch Henderson (Sean Bean), who insists that they tell the Ares II crew. They continue to monitor Mark, and note that he’s been travelling for 17 days in his Rover towards something. Kapoor figures it out, and flies to California.

See, Mark needs a way to contact NASA, and he believes that the way to do so is through Pathfinder, the first probe ever sent to Mars in 1997, lasting for 9 months since landing until they lost contact. Mark digs it up, and the people at JPL in California start their own efforts for contact. And despite communication being extremely rudimentary, initially limited to yes/no questions that use a still-frame camera, it fucking WORKS! WHOO!

To boost this communication hurdle, the two camps figure out a hexadecimal system for communication, allowing them to communicate using a circular table of numbers that represent an alphabet. That allows them to teach Mark to hack into the Rover, allowing it to piggyback off of its broadcast signal and send them messages via keyboard. Nice! Now that communication is reasonably possible, Mark’s able to ask how the crew is handling his death. But upon learning that they haven’t told him. He’s understandably a little goddamn enraged. And so, they FINALLY tell the Ares III crew about this.

The news breaks the crew, even though Mark continues to stress that he’s all right, and that it wasn’t their fault. Meanwhile, Mark’s able to survive for 912 days with his potato plants, and things improve with the help of technicians on Earth. They plan to launch a supply rocket to him in the next year, and things are looking fine! Unless, of course...something goes horribly HORRIBLY wrong.

Well...fuck. Good place to pause for Part Two, then?

#the martian #ridley scott #matt damon #jessica chastain #kristen wiig #jeff daniels #sean bean #michael pena #chiwetel ejiofor #benedict wong #science fiction may #sci-fi may #user365 #365 movie challenge #365 movies 365 days #365 Days 365 Movies #365 movies a year #bookstofilm #whatelsecanwedonow

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elisajdb · 3 years

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GoChi Week 2021: A Fulfilled Life: Part Two

GoChi Week 2021

A Fulfilled Life

Day Two Prompt: Romantic @gochi-week

Goku added another log of wood to the dying fire. The flames grew twice its size from the thick log. Goku hoped that will be enough. It was the last one. He could go out and get more firewood but he promised to stay here and watch Celia. When Goku made a promise, he kept it.

Celia laid nearby on a futon wrapped in a blanket. Her sudden coughing had Goku rushing to her side. “Are you all right? Do you need anything?”

Celia cleared her hoarse throat. “You’re so kind. If I were well, I would cook you a meal. Seeing you eat, always makes me happy. You’re so adorable.”

“Adorable?”

“It means kind; you make people feel good. No one has reacted the way you have to my cooking.” Celia’s sickly smile was tender. “You eat every morsel and you’re always hungry for more. You’re special.”

Goku was used to being called names. Most were of criticism. Very rare he received praised for being himself and he received a lot from Celia. Celia was a kind woman. She fed him yummy meals and mended his clothes. When she fell ill, Goku did all he could to accommodate her. Goku never got sick but saw it happen to Master Roshi, Krillin and Lunch but Celia appeared sicker. Last night she was burning up and this morning she woke with chills and couldn’t move from her futon. If something wasn’t done soon, she’ll die and Goku didn’t want that to happen to a kind woman like Celia.

The cabin door burst open. A man in a bearskin coat, matching hat, knitted scarf and gloves walked in. He had a large sack over his right shoulder and logs of wood under his left arm. He kicked the door shut to keep the cold air out.

“How’s Celia, Goku?”

Goku took the logs of wood from the burly, bearded man. He stacked them by the fireplace. “Still sick. She looks really bad, Silas.”

Silas set down his sack and removed his hat and scarf as he approached Celia. Goku stared at the two confused. Celia was ill but the way Celia and Silas smiled at each other reminded Goku of those weird movies blue-haired Lunch loved to watch. She always cried watching them. Silas touched Celia’s forehead with his gloved hand. “You’re burning up again. Sorry I took so long to get back to you.”

Goku saw Celia wrap her sweaty hands around Silas’s gloved one. Celia didn’t allow any direct touching in fear she will spread her sickness to him and Silas. “You’re here now, Silas.”

“I have the medicine to cure you. I’ll make it now.” Silas grabbed his heavy bag and carried it to the kitchen. “I’ll need your help, Goku.” Silas placed the bag on the table. Goku climbed onto the seat and stood on it to peer inside the bag Silas opened.

A foul stench latched itself onto Goku’s nose. He covered his nose with his hands to protect himself but the strong scent penetrated his hands. “Yuck! What stinks?”

Silas pulled out a variety of green and color plants and wet, squishy dark red organs. “This is medicine for Celia, Goku. These plants are medicinal herbs: yellow root, echinacea, elderberry, hyssop, lemongrass and catnip. This squishy flesh is liver from bear and boar. It’s all around these mountains. It’s better than the chemical medicines used in the big cities.”

The foul stench made Goku’s head hurt. “It stinks!”

Silas grabbed a mortar and pestle. “It does. City medicines don’t have a stench. Chemicals are used to drown the smell. It makes their medicine less effective.” Silas placed the yellow root in the mortar. He began mashing it with the pestle. “Watch and learn, Goku. You may have to use this to cure someone you love one day.”

Goku wiped the sweat off his forehead. He did everything from memory: mashed the plants he collected in the mortar and pestle until they were fine crumbs, drained the blood from the bear and boar liver and boil for an hour; transfer the livers in another pot and boil again for another hour with the crushed herbs.

While that cooked, Goku made chicken soup from a recipe in the cooking books ChiChi sometimes used. He mentally thanked ChiChi for showing him to use appliances and kitchen utensils a year ago when Gohan was a newborn and she needed extra help around the house. The soup was finished an hour before the medicine was ready. Goku spent that time cleaning the kitchen. It was a mess with dirt and animal blood on the floor and table. The counter was covered with messy bowls and stains of food. If ChiChi saw this mess, she’ll kill him. Grabbing a soapy towel, Goku started his big clean. He occasionally looked up to check on Gohan in the other room.

The two-year-old sat on the sofa, clutching his stuffed rabbit engrossed with the talking animals on TV. He was wide awake. After Goku fed Gohan breakfast, he placed Gohan in a carrier and attached him on his back. He’ll take it to his grave he gathered herbs and killed wild animals while Gohan napped on his back. It was either take Gohan with him or leave him unattended at home while ChiChi slept. ChiChi was so ill she couldn’t get out of bed so Goku made a hasty decision. It was all for ChiChi’s health but Goku knew ChiChi wouldn’t see it that way if she knew the truth.

Goku finished mopping the floor when the timer on the stove beeped. Goku turned off the shrilled sound. He raised the lid off the pot. “Ugh!” he groaned. The scent was putrid. “Guess it’s ready.”

Goku filled a mug of the smelly brew. Remembering Silas’ final instructions, he sprinkled cinnamon and stirred to mute the foul scent. Now it was time for the final test. Goku blew on the mug. His lips touched the top of the mug but before he could taste the liquid contents, Goku pulled back.

“Argh!” The cinnamon didn’t help at all! “It still smells like dookie!”

Pinching his nose, Goku sipped the liquid and quickly spat it out. Still bitter and foul; exactly as it should be.

Goku heard ChiChi coughing heavily as he entered their bedroom. He cautiously walked in carrying a tray with a bowl of soup and a mug with a saucer plate covering it. “ChiChi, I got something for you.”

ChiChi groaned as she pulled the covers off her face. She felt as if she was hit by a truck. Her body ached, her head throbbed and her throat was sore. ChiChi sat up and pushed her messy hair back. She thought she was delirious. Goku held a tray of food. Was this for her? “Did you cook?”

Goku placed the tray on the nightstand. “Just medicine and soup.” Goku handed ChiChi the mug.

“Medicine?” ChiChi noticed the mug had a saucer plate over it. She lifted the saucer, “Why is this…. Ugh!” ChiChi closed it. “It’s ghastly. What is this?”

“Medicine. Drink it. It stinks but it will make you better. I promise.”

ChiChi removed the saucer and immediately recoiled. “Urrgh! How do you know it will make me better?” ChiChi sipped and pulled back. She shuddered as some of the liquid went down her throat. “I taste yellow root and lemongrass. Ugh. This smells like a dead animal.”

Goku knew ChiChi would throw the mug back at him if she knew liver from boar and bear helped created this concoction. “Fresh stuff and herbs I picked outside. When I trained for the 22nd tournament, I met Silas and Celia. They live in the mountains south of Yunzabit Heights. I got the recipe from them.”

“Who are Silas and Celia?”

“A married couple. I was living outside when Silas found me hunting dinner. It was winter and he didn’t think it was right for a kid to be living outside. I told him I can take care of myself but he insisted and invited me to his home for a meal. I stayed with them for a month before I moved on. Grandpa taught me some things, too, but I forgot. Silas showed me what plants to pick, what to eat and how to create herbs to season any meat I hunt. When Celia got sick, he made medicine with plants and stuff around his home.”

ChiChi looked skeptically at the mug. “Did it work?”

“Yeah,” Goku nodded. “It stinks but Celia was better the next day. She’s a nice lady. She made a lot of yummy food for me and fixed my clothes whenever I tore them. I think she was really nice to me because she and Silas didn’t have kids.”

ChiChi stared at the putrid liquid. After hearing that story, there was no way she could reject this. She pinched her nose and drunk the hot, smelly liquid in four gulps. She made a gagging sound as she handed the empty mug to Goku. “I hope it works.” She rubbed her throat. The aftertaste was horrific!

“Time for the good stuff,” Goku said as he handed ChiChi the soup.

This pleasing smell of the hot soup made ChiChi’s mouth water. “Is this my reward for drinking the stinky medicine?”

“Yup. Silas did this for Celia, too.”

“And you’re doing this for me,” she whispered. For several moments, ChiChi stared at the soup.

When she tasted it, Goku saw tears roll down ChiChi’s cheeks. “What?” he panicked. “Is it bad? Did I put too much salt?”

“No. Nothing’s wrong,” ChiChi sniffed. “This is so sweet. I didn’t know you were a romantic, Goku.”

“Romantic?” Goku knew that word. It always tied with flowers and doing nice gestures. Romantic didn’t tie to medicine and food. “I just made medicine and soup.”

“You did,” ChiChi cried, “but it’s more than that. You remembered something years ago to take care of me.”

“Yeah?” Goku drawled slowly still not seeing what he did as romantic. It was practical. ChiChi’s sick and Goku thought of some medicine he felt will cure her. How was that romantic?

ChiChi stirred the hot soup with a spoon before taking a bite. “Mmm,” she moaned. This was so good and what she needed to wash down the nasty medicine! “Delicious. This is the best soup I’ve ever tasted!”

“It is?” Goku tasted it. It was okay but not as good as the soup ChiChi makes. Maybe this cold weakened ChiChi’s sense of taste.

ChiChi wasn’t sure if the medicine was working but her mood was lifting at the wonderful gesture of her sweet and romantic husband. “Where’s Gohan? Did you feed him this wonderful soup, too?”

“Not the soup but Gohan’s already eaten breakfast and lunch. He’s watching TV now.”

ChiChi groaned. Gohan was only allowed an hour of TV time a day and she knew Goku broke that rule. “Did you put Gohan in front of the TV all day?”

“Yeah,” Goku knew ChiChi would be upset with that, “but he’s watching those educational videos. I had to distract him while I made your medicine and soup.”

“Okay.” ChiChi accepted that excuse. After this sweet gesture from her husband, ChiChi couldn’t be mad at Goku today.

Goku kept ChiChi company until she finished her meal. When he left, the concoction of the medicine finally got to her. She fell asleep at three in the afternoon and didn’t awaken until thirteen hours later.

Her throat wasn’t sore; her nose wasn’t stuffy, her body didn’t ache. She didn’t feel sick at all.

The medicine worked.

For the first time in two days, ChiChi got out of bed. She felt great! She was so happy to be strong enough to cook and clean again for her family, and after the way Goku took care of her, ChiChi wanted to give him a big meal and later tonight, show her thanks in her own personal way.

However, with Goku running the house these last two days, ChiChi knew she had a big task on her hands. Her house. Her kitchen. How much of a mess did Goku leave for her?

To ChiChi’s surprise, the kitchen was spotless. The floor was mopped clean. There were no food stains on the table, counter or refrigerator. All the dishes were put away in their correct spots. ChiChi was impressed. Goku was never this clean. The few times Goku cooked, ChiChi was left to clean the tsunami mess he left behind.

ChiChi went to the living room next. This was Goku’s bedroom for the last two days. When she became ill, ChiChi kicked Goku out of their bedroom. She didn’t want to risk him getting sick. If she and Goku were sick, who will care for Gohan? The television was off but the lamplight was still on. This room wasn’t as neat as the kitchen but ChiChi’s heart melted as she understood why. Goku slept on the sofa with Gohan on his chest. Her baby’s tiny hands clutched Goku’s shirt as he peacefully slept. An opened baby book was sprawled over Goku’s face and papers were on the floor. ChiChi knelt and picked up the papers. They were folded like a card. ChiChi opened one. Her eyes watered at the words inside.

‘Get well soon, Mommy!’ With it, was a crude drawing of their happy family. Gohan could write some letters but they weren’t completely legible and he couldn’t form words yet. Goku’s education was limited but he did know how to read and write basic words and he wrote the following notes on the makeshift card.

Mommy always takes care of Daddy and me.

She gives good baths and makes yummy food.

When Mommy is sick, Daddy takes over.

Because Daddy loves Mommy like Silas loves Celia.

ChiChi clutched the card to her chest and softly wept.

Oh, Goku. You are a romantic.

#Gochiweek #Gochi week #gochiweek2021 #Goku #ChiChi #GoChi #fanfic #Day Two Prompt #Romantic #ssj4 goku

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imherongraystairstrash · 4 years

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Christopher and Gabriel Lightwood

Hey guys! Someone requested I do Christopher and Gabriel, so here it is. I apologize in advance for this length, I didn’t set out for it to be this long... I guess that’s all. Also, I haven’t finished gotten my copy of Chog yet, so it might not be so accurate. Up next: Anna and Christopher (I’m glad you guys love the Lightwood Herondales and much as I do) -Ana

Benedict Lightwood was staring at Gabriel. His eyebrows were furrowed and although Gabriel was taller than he was, Benedict seemed to loom over him. His figure was frightening.

“You have disappointed me, Gabriel.”

Gabriel felt himself shrink into nothingness, meanwhile his father grew and grew and morphed into a worm. Cecily came with her seraph blade. She exchanged blow after blow with Benedict until she lost her footing, and Benedict ripped her into shreds before Gabriel’s eyes. He cried out in pain, for he had lost his strong and beautiful wife. Anna had stepped up, trying to save Cecily, only to have Benedict swat his tail and throw her against a tree, where her lifeless body slumped in the grass. Alex called out to his father, his screaming drowned out by Benedict’s attack. Gabriel was powerless to stop any of it.

“Father, are you alright?” His son’s lavender eyes looked down on him.

“Kit.” He breathed.

Before Kit could answer, a blade pierced his chest, and he fell down to his knees, gasping for air.

Gabriel woke in a cold sweat. He blinked his eyes over and over, trying to stop the gruesome images from replaying in his mind. He looked at Cecily, who had edged closer to him. Cecily was a light sleeper, and he must have woken her up during his nightmare. He planted a kiss on her head and sat up.

“Where are you off to?” Cecily said, her words slurred from sleep.

Gabriel leaned down and planted little kisses on her face.

“I will be right back.” He whispered

“You better.”

Gabriel chuckled and softly kissed Cecy one more time before getting up.

The cold floor sent a shock through him. He walked down the hallways of the London house. Although he knew it was superstitious on his part, he felt an obligation to check on his children, and make sure nothing had happened to them. The first room was Alexander’s. They had made sure to keep him in close proximity, so if he had a nightmare, the trip to their room would not be so far. However, Alex rarely suffered from nightmares. Ironically, it was Gabriel and occasionally Cecily who had the most trouble when it came to sleep. Gabriel had assumed that over the years, the pain and horrors of the past would subside, but that never happened.

He looked into Anna’s room and found his daughter sound asleep. He smiled to himself. How could he have been blessed with such wonderful children? Anna was everything Gabriel had not been in the past. Anna would not have stayed with Benedict as Gabriel had, even after Gideon had begged him to come to the London institute. Anna would not have been afraid as he was.

Gabriel walked down the hall to Kit’s room. The door was closed, but light danced under it. He opened the door to find Kit wide awake, writing something down with crazed determination. Cecily had always said that that expression always reminded her of Gabriel.

The thought of Cecily reminded him of a conversation he had had with her a fortnight ago:

“I love Christopher to death.”

“But?”

“But I wish I could understand him better. I want to understand how he sees the world, how he picks apart and analyzes situations.”

“That seems quite difficult.”

“It is. Especially considering how intelligent he is.”

“That’s our Kit.” Said Cecily with immense pride, “I fear he is more intelligent than I could ever hope to be.”

Gabriel smiled. There was a time when Christopher’s habits of experimenting had frustrated them both. More than anything, they scared them. Very time Gabriel would catch his son with an open flame, or strong chemicals, he couldn’t seem to breathe properly. It took him a while to accept that his little boy, who would throw his arms up to be picked up and rest his small head on Gabriel’s shoulder, was grown. He still remembers when Kit was newly born, and his Uncle Will offered his finger for him to hold. Kit just stared at it in wonder, as though not sure what to do with it.

“He’s going to change the world, this one.” Charlotte had said.

“What makes you say that.” Cecily laughed

“Instead of simply grabbing it, he’s thinking of the best way to approach the situation. That differs him from most children, but definitely not in a bad way.”

...

“You do know, Mr. Lightwood,” the Inquisitor had told Gabriel once, “Basilias is a fine institution for, erm, special Shadowhunters.”

“I am aware.” said Gabriel, not knowing what the Inquisitor was implying he do with this information.

“An you do know, of course, that taking your son there does not make you or Mrs. Lightwood bad parents. The opposite really, you would be doing your son a favor.”

Gabriel widened his eyes in disbelief.

“It will provide you and your wife some much deserved peace.”

Cecily stopped the conversation she was having with the inquisitor’s wife. Gabriel gave the inquisitor a hard stare before saying, loud enough for the entire room to hear:

“My son is not a burden to myself or my family, nor do Mrs. Lightwood and I need “a break” from him. I am horrified you would think my wife and I would be so quick to rid ourselves of him.”

There were many more things he would like to tell the Inquisitor, but he had to stop himself for the sake of his family. To have an enemy with that much power could ruin their lives, despite being close to the Consul herself. Instead, Gabriel turned away from him, grabbed his coat and let him out. He had only walked three step into the snowy pathway before the door opened again and Cecily came rushing out to catch up with him. Every two steps Cecily took was equivalent to one of Gabriel’s, and she tripped on her feet. Gabriel caught her before she could fall on the ground. She looked up at him, smiling.

“The inquisitor’s expression when you left was priceless. He turned as red as a tomato!”

Gabriel looked at her.

Cecy’s smile faded. “What’s wrong, love?”

“I just cannot believe the nerve of him.”

Cecily sighed and held her gloved hand to his face. Her impossibly dark blue eyes looked into his own.

“The world is going to be cruel to our Kit and it will be our job as his parents to support and protect him until he is able to protect himself.”

“I just cannot comprehend why they think him crazed.”

“Because Shadowhunters are afraid of anyone that is different. That is why they shun Tessa and why the academy tried to get rid of Jamie. That’s why they though Henry foolish.”

That was the day that Gabriel realized that it was not open flames he had to protect his son from, but his own kind.

Gabriel opened Kit’s door just a crack and found his son bent over, writing something with intensity. Gabriel crossed the room and stood beside Kit. Then, he thought about how terrifying it must be to be writing something and not know your father is beside you. Benedict had done that so many times, it started to feel like he would do it in purpose, just to make sure Gabriel was still afraid of him. Gabriel quietly took some steps back, and walked back to his side, this time with more noise.

“Kit?”

Christopher looked up at Gabriel, half of his right eye was the color of lavender in the candlelight while left eye a very dark shade of blue.

Christopher was born with his eyes open, observing the world for the day he was born. Gabriel and Cecily were sure the magnificent color would change over time; lighten to match the color of Cecily and Will’s. Sophie had argued otherwise, but everybody else seemed to agree that the color would fade overtime. Gabriel remembered holding Kit and looking down at his son and feeling a rush of emotion, similar to when he held Anna for the first time. He thought about his father.

“I will protect you with my all heart,” he’d said “and I will never abandon you the way my father hurt me.”

Kit looked at his father with fascination as Gabriel began to cry. Gabriel supported his newly born son’s head, his fingers tangling in his small, brown curls, and kissed his forehead.

“Kit, why are you awake?”

“I am writing down an idea I had.”

“Can it not wait for tomorrow?”

Kit looked at him, completely baffled. Then he whispered:

“You can tell your thoughts to come back tomorrow?” His eyes danced. “Could you teach me how?”

“Oh, no Kit, I just meant writing this down tomorrow rather then at three in the morning.”

Christopher ran a hand through his hair.

“Blimey, is it already three in the morning?”

Gabriel smiled. “Yes, and that means it is time to go to bed.”

“Okay.”

“And sleep.”

Kit was silent.

“Father?”

“Yes?”

“It might take a while for me to fall asleep. I am not very good at it.”

“Neither am I, Kit.”

Christopher looked at him. “Do you suppose I inherited an allele for insomnia from you?”

Gabriel blinked, not knowing what his son just asked him.

“I don’t know.”

Christopher looked a little disappointed.

“Do not worry, Papa, I shall find out.” He set off to work.

“Tomorrow, Kit.” Gabriel said as he led his son to his bed. “Promise me you will wait until tomorrow.”

“I promise.”

Gabriel smiled. “Alright then.”

“Papa?”

Gabriel turned around.

“I wish you fast sleep.”

“And I to you Kit.” Gabriel blew out the candle, and when back to bed.

“Took you long enough.” Cecily whispered.

Gabriel planted a kiss on her head and drew her into his arms and then slept sweet dreams of his family, together and happy.

#gabriel lightwood #cecily lightwood #christopher lightwood #cecily herondale #anna lightwood #lightwood #gabriel and christopher #tsc #the last hours fanfic #tlhfanfic #christopher and gabriel #lightwood family #tsc fanfiction

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willow-salix · 4 years

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Little something that wanted to come out for the Sensory Sunday prompt of "Smell" by @gumnut-logic

Witches rely on their senses more than anything else. Witches see the world differently to other people, they see, they feel on a different level. They feel, they notice, they pay attention. A big part of their gifts, the magic that they weave is linked to their senses, it’s linked to the conjuring up of energy which they shape, they mould to push out towards their goal. The real power lies within the heart of the witch, not in the tools, not in the elaborate rituals, not in the clothes or the magic words, but in their very essence.

For Selene her sense of smell is second to none, as finely tuned as a bloodhound's. She could identify herbs in a jar by smell while blindfolded, she was more likely to be roused from sleep by the scent of coffee than an alarm call.

Scents can be pleasant, energising, calming, comforting, arousing, alluring, insulting, horrendous, vile and nauseatingly horrible. They are many and varied but each and every one serves a purpose to her.

To her everything had a smell that was unique to it, things, people, places, they all had a scent she associated with them and they could affect her mood and her energy in both positive and negative ways.

She loved the smell of old books, they relaxed her, calmed her as she flicked through the dusty pages and felt the paper crinkle beneath her fingers. Incense was something she used every morning and evening, setting the tone for the day or helping her wind down after a hard night, lavender, rosemary, sage, nag champa, patchouli, fruits and herbs, she loved them all. The smell of baking cakes and bubbling soups could invoke calming memories of her Grandparents, the smell of the sea made her senses tingle, energising and empowering her. She was ruled by her nose as much as Scott was ruled by his stomach.

One of the first things she had noticed about her John, apart from that voice that just rubbed against her senses like a purring cat, was how he smelt. He smelt like the night, like the sky, like stardust and moonlight, all combined with a soft, calming scent of some kind of aftershave or shower gel that she couldn't identify but immediately wanted to buy shares in. She’d buried her nose in that little dip just below his ear and breathed him in, her eyes closing in pure bliss. That scent conjured up memories of late nights in quiet woodlands or on a solitary hilltop, the full moon shining in the sky.

Whenever she inhaled that scent she imagined that if she tipped her head back she’d see a blanket of stars twinkling up high, pinpricks of light in the darkness, as sure and everlasting as the earth itself. That was where she was most happy, soaking up the energy, soaking up the magic that danced in the air and he was the human embodiment of that.

She’d known from that first moment that he would be important to her, that he was destined to be in her life and to make it so much better.

She’d sat in the back of a massive craft, overwhelmed, dizzy and weak, she was shaking from adrenaline and fatigue, the gorgeous spaceman that smelt of everything that was good in the world wasn’t there anymore and for the first time in a very long time she felt vulnerable and just wanted to be at home.

She'd closed her eyes, forcing herself to take a few deep breaths in an effort to calm down and stave off the panic attack that had been threatening since she had been thrown into that blasted tree. The big machine smelt like any other mechanical device, like hot metal, grease and for some strange reason, undertones of cheeseburger. But then, mixed in amongst those nose offending scents had been the boys, comforting and friendly to her nose.

Gordon always smelt like chlorine and saltwater, which was hardly surprising given that it was him, but he also carried the warmth of sunshine on him like it was ingrained in his skin along with something tropical, almost coconutty. He gave off a happy, buzzing energy that you just couldn’t help but be drawn to, cheering you up in your darkest moments.

Virgil was a contradiction of smells wrapped up in a big, cuddly bear package. He smelt like engine oil, turpentine, paint and all sorts of manly smells, but he too had undertones of something more. He smelt of woodland forest and the earth after it rains, something fresh and natural that soothed her soul. She could imagine that he would be the very best person to send to anyone that was panicked and scared, anyone that was in need of calmness and comfort.

He’d spoken to her so kindly, had made sure she was OK and had been respectful of her tools even though he probably thought she was crazy. He looked like he should be gulping beer and watching football but had settled in his seat and lifted the big machine into the air with the bare minimum of effort. He’d checked on her one more time and then politely inquired if she minded them listening to some music. Of course she’d said no, thinking that music might be a nice distraction for her. She’d expected something with a hard beat, or energetic workout music because no one got those size shoulders without hitting some serious weights. The last thing she’d ever thought to hear oozing out of the hidden speakers of his console was the soft strains of Vivaldi.

It was Virgil and Gordon that knew her secret and had been sworn to secrecy, it was them that knew the big, tough witchy had one very real fear, a fear that could paralyse her and turn her into a blubbing, sobbing, shaking wreck. She was terrified of needles. It was Gordon and Virgil that she had grabbed hold of at the hospital for her tetanus shot and refused to let go of, it was them that had stayed with her the entire time. It was Gordon that had distracted her with an endless stream of stupid jokes as the doctor had readied the syringe and it was Virgil that had wrapped his arms around her and tucked her head in against his chest telling her not to look and that it would be over in just two seconds. Virgil that smelt like comfort and kindness, Gordon that smelt like warmth and cheer. They had navigated her fears, calmed her hysterics and not held it against her when she had sworn at them more times than she could count.

Scott had two layers to his own unique scent. He had the freshly washed, impeccably groomed, shower gel, antiperspirant, spicy cologne and hair gel of first thing in the morning and by evening, after a rescue he’d have the chemical tang of jetpack fuel, and his skin smells slightly of the material used in their uniforms with just a hint of sweat that the material hadn’t managed to soak up.

She remembered the first time she had caught a wiff of that unique Scott smell and had an inkling as to the man that was standing before her. He’d been watching out for her all night, joking and being the perfect companion but the second he’d gotten her alone had been the moment he’d made his stance perfectly clear, hurt my brother and you’ll have to deal with me. She wouldn’t say he’d radiated hostility, more of a warning, letting her know that family was everything to him. Luckily she’d passed the Scott test.

Scott had quickly become one of the most important people in her life, one that she was closest to. He was an immovable force of nature, a solid, dependable, strong presence in her life that she couldn’t do without now. Scott was strength, Scott was the protector, the one that everyone deferred to to fix everything, even when it seemed impossible. Scott gave off an aura of carefully controlled energy but with an edge of hardness that he never showed to his family only to the people that really pissed him off.

Kayo smelt almost the same as Scott in that high octane way, she didn’t wear perfume, she didn’t bother with fancy hair products or highly fragranced antiperspirants, she was a simple one, a wash and go type. Her hair always smelt of shampoo, her skin often had the same residue of jet fuel and uniform material and she had the same idiot repelling energy as Scott though she was harder to get close enough to to feel it.

Then there was Alan, gods she adored that boy more than life. She remembered the first time she’d hugged him, having known him less than four hours, having watched him fear for his brother's life but still be so brave about it. He smelt soft and warm, with a sweetness like a hint of chocolate under the usual teenager smell. He smelt faintly of soap, but it had faded over the course of the day, maybe two, since he’d showered. He had the same sunny warmth that Gordon had, with a buzzing energy of pure happiness. He was adorable and she just wanted to keep hugging him, like he made the world better just by being in it.

Everywhere she had walked in the Villa had held faint traces of their unique scents apart from John’s unless you were in his room or he’d recently vacated the couch. But it had smelt homely, welcoming, comforting, that was until Grandma started cooking and the smell of burning spices permeated the air.

Grandma smelt comforting, like flowers and cookies even though her baking could count as a nuclear disaster. Her ever present leisure suits smelt like washing powder and fresh air as she often insisted on drying clothes outside after she blew up a dryer. Her hair smelt of the same hairspray that Selene's own grandmother had used and the same lily of the valley perfume was liberally spritzed about her person. In short she smelt like love in a way that only Grandmas could.

The air of the island itself was unique, it mixed the fresh ocean air with the damp coolness of jungle plants, along with the earthy, ashy smell of the volcanic rocks. It was a smell that was hard to describe but even harder to forget once you knew it.

For her there was nothing better than walking into a room and catching the scent of moonlight and stardust in the air, that tingling of energy that signaled her love was home.

She was now used to there being an unlimited supply of hugs, warm bodies to relax against, heavy arms slung around her shoulders and the comforting scents of the people she loved more than anything. Any time she needed strength, energy, happiness, calming or love she'd focus on them, she'd smell them on the air, she'd breathe them deep into her lungs and she'd hold them close to her heart, weaving that love into her own unique magical essence to conjure up the most powerful of magic.

To Selene home had always smelt like the lingering scent of incense, coffee, warm candle wax and burning sage. She was a witch, it came with the territory, but now the thought of home was mixed in with the island and all the family that came with it.

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds 2015 #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #sensory sunday #smellsamazing #Smell

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spacesnail3000 · 5 years

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Brooklyn’s Sweetheart Chapter 7: A Force to be Reckoned With

Pairing: Stucky x Reader

Chapter Summary: The warning on the side of a box of cigarettes reads “WARNING: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, May Complicate Pregnancy, And May Lead To Your Girlfriend Breaking Up With You Unexpectedly”. Steve didn’t listen to the warning.

Word Count: 5,730

Warnings: Language, drinking, smut (fingering, “just the tip”, very light somnophilia, dubcon, dirty talk, etc.)

Masterlist / AO3

“Please, I don’t know anything about it,” the man pleaded. There was a slur to his words from where his teeth were bashed in, a nasally tone due to his crushed nose. Blood poured down his face and was spit into the air as he spoke. Hands tied behind his back, the man kneeled before Steve, his cries echoing on the brick walls of a run-down abandoned brewery in Bushwick.

The low-tier Hydra lackey had already given Steve all the information he knew about Hydra’s involvement in Loki’s business, as well as Loki’s current location, and now he had no more use for the poor guy.

Steve pulled his pistol from the back of his waistband, checked to see how many bullets he still had as the man started begging for his life.

“No! Please don’t kill me, I—”

The shot reverberated in the small space and Steve’s ears rang with it. Blood splattered on his shoes, his pants, his hands. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket, the carton almost empty. There were only two left, and he had gone through the rest earlier that night.

He had been doing so good, too, having quit a few months earlier. Sure, he replaced the habit with another. Sometimes his jaw ached from the amount of peppermint gum he chewed, but it dulled the craving for nicotine. However, this entire situation with Hydra—it was too stressful. He had bought two packs from the bodega the second he got back into Brooklyn a few days earlier, and he had gone through at least five since.

Steve found the situation with Hydra to be annoying, if he were being honest. They’d found out the Hydra men sniffing around Loki’s club were small-time guys, and after getting information out of several of them that first night, they had been through several more until they learned that Hydra was trying to usurp the deal with Loki. Several Hydra members had gone to lunch with the man to try and convince him. Apparently, Loki hadn’t made up his mind yet.

Loki would be for Tony to handle, however. Stane wanted Steve back at the Vineyard now that most of the problem had been dealt with.

Patting around in his jean pockets, he turned to Sam. “Got a light?” He left his lighter in his jacket, in the car outside.

Sam tossed him a plastic lighter and soon he was blowing smoke towards the body still leaking blood all over the concrete.

“Finish your smoke break and let’s get to work,” Sam snarked, stepping forward.

“We sending him upstate?” Steve asked.

“Nah.” Sam kneeled before the man and pulled on a pair of latex gloves, handing a pair to Steve as well. “Dumping in the East River.”

Steve smoked while they finished the job, barely taking the cigarette out of his mouth as they pulled the man’s teeth, cut off his hands and feet, and got rid of any personal identifiers the man might have. Ash fell on the floor into the pool of blood, and when Steve finished, he cautiously took the cigarette and put it out, careful not to get blood on the filter so as to avoid DNA evidence linking him to the crime.

Once they tied up the body and stuffed him into a big enough trash bag, they hauled him into the alley where they car was parked and stuffed him in the trunk. After a quick cleanup inside the old brewery, Sam drove them east towards the river while Steve smoked his last cigarette.

Once they threw the body off the dock into the black waters, the chemical smell of the treatment plant stinging their noses, Steve bummed a cigarette off of Sam on their walk back to the car.

“Wanna grab some something to eat before you have to head back to the Vineyard?” Sam asked, pulling out onto the street.

“I need to meet Peggy,” Steve answered. “Drop me off at my place.”

“You got it. She still on your case?”

Steve scoffed, remembering the last time he complained to Sam about Peggy a few weeks before. “Yeah, but for a different reason.” Last time, she had been mad about him cancelling a dinner date when Tony needed him one Friday night.

“What is it this time?”

He took a long inhale of the cigarette, voice tight as he said, “She’s mad I have to be at the Vineyard.” He blew out a puff of smoke out the window. “Not that I can control that.”

“Man,” Sam huffed a laugh, “Peggy’s a nice girl. She is one classy lady, but I gotta tell you, you doesn’t get it.” Steve knew this—he was painfully aware that she didn’t understand the demands of his lifestyle, that they lived drastically different lives. The mob came first, that was a rule ingrained into him since he was a child, rooted in his soul like the gang tattoos scattered across his skin.

“I know that,” Steve muttered. “I don’t know how else to explain to her about the mob without incriminating myself.”

Sam clicked his tongue, shook his head. “She’s way too strait-laced for you. You need to get rid of her before she becomes a problem.”

Steve flicked his cigarette butt out the window. “I’m not gonna just let her go.”

“Then she better wise up and dump your ass. She’s way too good for the likes of you.” Although Steve wanted to snap at him for the jibe, he chuckled good-naturedly and bummed another cigarette.

By the time he finished the cigarette, Sam was pulling up in front of the apartment he and Bucky shared. “Thanks for the ride, man,” he said when he got out.

“Yep, see you later.”

With that, Sam drove off and Steve hurried upstairs to change. He called Peggy on the way up.

“Steve?” Peggy asked, a little drowsy. It wasn’t too late, only a little past nine, but she was probably already sleeping because she worked the next day.

“Hey, Pegs,” he greeted her as he finally reached the fourth floor of the building. “I’m back in the city for a bit, just for tonight. I know it’s late but I wanted to see you.”

“What?” He could hear her shifting in bed. “You’re in New York?”

“Yeah, at my apartment. I can be at your place in twenty.” He fished his keys out of his pocket and managed to get the door open, flipping on the lights in the living room and going straight for his bedroom.

“Steve, it’s late,” she sighed, and he could tell she was annoyed with him.

“I just wanna see you,” he said in a softer tone, hoping she would be convinced. “C’mon, I won’t keep you up late. Promise.”

“Fine,” she muttered, although she still didn’t sound pleased.

Before she could say anything else or change her mind, he said, “Great! See you in twenty.” And then he hung up. He got ready as quick as he could, changing into clean clothes and dabbing some spicy cologne on his neck, grabbing a half-empty pack of cigarettes from Bucky’s room, and then he was out the door. To calm his nerves, he smoked through half a cigarette on his way downstairs.

He rode his motorcycle to Peggy’s Manhattan apartment, and it was a pain in the ass to find parking. Once she buzzed him in, he took the elevator up and she greeted him at the door with a tight smile. She wore a long robe and slippers, and her expression was not too pleased.

“Peggy,” he greeted her, taking her into his arms. She placed her hands on his chest, and when he leaned down to kiss her, she pushed him away.

“Steve, you smell like cigarettes.” She wrinkled her nose and walked into her kitchen. He followed her in. “I thought you quit smoking.”

“It’s been a stressful few days, Tony’s had me all over the five boroughs and I’ve been having—”

“All over, hmm?” she interrupted, turning an accusatory eye on him. “You’ve been all over New York City for the past few days and the only time I hear from you is tonight?”

He took a deep breath to relax himself before he said something he would regret. “Peggy,” he tried calmly, “It’s been nonstop. I just haven’t had the time to come see you.”

She rolled her eyes. “You never have the time to come see me, Steve. It’s getting ridiculous.”

“Pegs, don’t be like that—”

“You’ve had time to go to Martha’s Vineyard for the past few weeks. Don’t tell me you don’t have time!”

“That’s different, I’m there for work—”

“Steve, just stop.” She held up a manicured hand, eyes narrowed. “I don’t want your excuses anymore. If you wanted to make this relationship work, you’d make the time.”

“You just don’t understand!” he exclaimed, voice raising in frustration.

“Then enlighten me,” she said coolly. He hesitated—he really couldn’t tell her about the Mob, about how involved he really was. She scoffed at his silence. “I thought not.”

“Peggy, c’mon.”

“I was offered a job in London,” she said, “With MI5.”

His jaw dropped, and he quickly closed it and concealed his surprise. “And?”

“And, what?”

“And are you taking the job?”

She sighed, drumming her fingers on the counter. “I will most likely take it. I was hoping you would come with me.”

“That’s ridiculous, Peggy. You know I can’t do that.”

Her lips pressed together. “I told you I wanted to move back eventually. I told you I wanted you to come with me, to make a family there. I was hoping we’d be on the same page by now.”

He couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “And you know my entire life is here. You can’t just expect me to up and move across the Atlantic.”

“No, you’re right. I suppose that was naïve of me.” She sounded disappointed in both herself and him.

They were silent for a moment, and finally he asked, “So what, then? You’re just moving? What about us?”

“I’ll stay if you give me a reason, Steve…” When he didn’t respond, she asked, “Do you love me?”

“I want to be with you,” he said immediately, more to avoid answering the question.

“That wasn’t what I asked,” she said with a sad smile. “Steve, I think that’s it for us.”

He couldn’t believe this. “That’s it, then? We’re over?”

“I’m afraid so,” she said with an almost patronizing tone.

Frozen in shock, he simply looked at her, waiting for her to laugh, to say it was all a joke. He should be angry, he should yell at her, should hit her—although he wouldn’t, because Peggy’s the type to fight back and knock him flat on his ass with a few practiced moves. But he wasn’t angry, he only felt empty inside. He hadn’t been expecting this, and in his stupor he didn’t know how to process his emotions.

After almost two minutes of wordless staring, he couldn’t take it anymore. Turning on his heel, he walked right out the door, slamming it behind him.

He got back on his motorcycle and to his apartment, where he sat at the kitchen table and drank an entire bottle of rum before passing out on the sofa several hours later.

Bucky had been having the best time with Y/N over the past three days. Being with her was better than he could have imagined. They were still friends, still joked around the same as before, but now he got to indulge in her body whenever he wanted. She was always so soft, so sweet, so responsive to every little touch. It thrilled him to teach her, touch her in ways she had never been touched, to make her come again and again until she was crying from it.

While he had plenty of plans on how to train her, he hadn’t acted on many of them yet. First, he wanted to take his fill of her, get her comfortable with his touch. It wasn’t really a burden for him; he got off on touching her and taking her whenever, wherever he pleased, particularly when it made her squirm, push him away, and deny him until he convinced her to give into him.

On that first day, they went out on her father’s sailboat, and when it got warmer in the afternoon, she took off her white sundress to reveal a red bikini underneath. While she was laying on the deck sunbathing, he got down beside her and started kissing along her neck.

“Not here, Bucky,” she had whined, trying to push him off. “A boat could come by, anyone could see!”

Well, he just wasn’t having any of that. He pinned her down while she struggled, pushed the crotch of her bikini bottoms aside and rubbed her pussy until she was coming, growling filthy things in her ear the entire time. “You don’t say no to me, doll—it’s best you learn that now. If I wanna fuck you in public where anyone could see, then you’ll lay back and take it. If I wanna show you off to other sailors, show ‘em what they’re missing, you’ll let me with a smile on your face.”

After she came the first time, he yanked down her bikini top and sucked on her nipples until she was coming again, sensitive and soaking wet. In her post-orgasm haze, her body was limp and pliant, and he managed to peel off her bikini and tossed it over the side of the boat. She had complained, pouting and ignoring him until he forced himself on her another time. He was a force to be reckoned with, and she was learning that quickly.

Plus, he wasn’t about to miss out on an opportunity to rub sunscreen all over her naked body. “Don’t want you to burn up, baby,” he cooed sweetly when he rubbed lotion into her breasts. When she scoffed in disbelief, he pinched her pretty little nipples until she cried out.

They got back to the house at nightfall and she was sleepy from the sun. She didn’t fight him when he ushered her into the shower to wash the sunscreen and salt off, allowed him to soap her up everywhere. At that point, she was too exhausted to fight back, resigned that he was going to play with her body as he pleased.

After the shower, she was tired enough to go right to bed, but Bucky had to take calls from Steve and Tony about the situation in Brooklyn. They spent a stressful three hours planning and strategizing. It was almost worse not being there in person to take care of business, instead having to handle everything from six hours away. Once the call ended, he went up to her room and climbed into bed right next to her, falling straight to asleep.

It felt unbelievably right falling asleep with her in his arms, waking up curled against her.

He awoke midmorning, his hard cock pressed against her ass. Wondering if he would be able to wake her up by barely touching her, he ground against her until he was almost ready to come. Although she was slightly responsive, letting out occasional sleepy moans and weakly pressing her hips back against him, she hadn’t woken up. Of course, she had always been a heavy sleeper.

The thought of her sleeping as he used her body to satisfy his arousal pushed him over the edge quicker than he would admit, and then he was coming in his boxers and she was settling onto her stomach, pushing her face into her pillow and sinking back into sleep.

He spent most of that day holed up in the office on the phone with Steve, and then Sam, and then every other guy in the Brooklyn Mob who was involved in the Laufeyson deal. Then he was on the phone with connections he had all over Manhattan trying to determine how many businesses Hydra was infiltrating uptown. And then a whole other problem came in that Sam wanted him to deal with and it never ended.

During that time, Y/N took the dog for a walk and worked on some painting while sitting on the patio set. She was glad for the break from him after the long day on the boat and the night filled with dreams of him. She made Bucky lunch and brought it to him in the office, and he pulled her down onto his lap and demanded a kiss from her. She was saved by the phone ringing again, and she quickly squirmed away while he answered it.

She spent the rest of the day at the pool doing swimming drills. Since they had been at the Vineyard, she had been slacking in her swim training, and if she were truly going to be on the team at NYU, she would need to be in top shape. So far, her father hadn’t said anything against her going, and classes started in a few weeks, so she had to assume he was allowing her.

That night, Bucky made them pasta for dinner and then they watched a movie, but an hour in, Steve called him. By the time he was off the phone, she had fallen asleep and it was past midnight.

The next three days went exactly the same way, with fleeting touches from Bucky when he found the time, cornering her against the walls when they happened to be in the same room with her, kissing the daylights out of her when he got the chance, but it always ended too soon with another phone call and more responsibilities.

She really didn’t mind—it gave her time to focus on training and painting and relaxing, even if his occasional touches lit her up from the inside out. But he still intimidated her, and she didn’t know what would come next. Every time he got his hands on her before, he was pushing her past another boundary, forcing her into things she didn’t want. It caused anxiety to well up inside her every time she saw him, so she was glad he was somehow so busy with business—too busy to pay her any mind, granting her a lengthy reprieve.

But Bucky hated it. He needed to get his hands on her—he craved her touch, her smell, her sweet little sounds. On top of that, all this mob business was frustrating to no end. He had no idea how he was so busy with this stuff when he was an entire state away.

By the end of the week, he couldn’t take it anymore. He was too antsy, and even though it was past midnight and she was fast asleep, he had to do something to take the stress off.

Stepping lightly up the stairs, he slipped silently into her bedroom. She slept on her back, one arm thrown across her face, silver moonlight spilling from her window onto her skin.

Bucky considered letting her sleep, but he was feeling so deprived of touch, so he decided to rouse her with his mouth on her pussy. By the time she woke up, gasping and fisting her hands in his hair, she was soaked and on the verge of orgasm.

“Bucky!” she cried, tugging on his scalp in an attempt to pry him away. “What are you—” she was cut off with a gasp when Bucky nibbled gently at her clit and slipping a finger into her cunt. She came on the spot and, despite her protests, he pushed her through two more orgasms before he pulled away.

When he was satisfied and she was incoherent from pleasure, he wiped his chin off with the back of his hand. “Good morning, darlin’—or more like good night.” He greeted her with a cheeky smile. She blushed furiously and hid her face by throwing her arm across her head again.

“What the hell, Bucky! What time is it?” she whined softly, voice muffled by the flesh of her arm. That was the first time he had put his mouth on her, although he had suggested it before, but it came as a shock to her all the same. She still wasn’t used to him touching her like that, but he tended to do whatever he wanted regardless of how she felt.

“It’s almost one in the morning, sweetheart.” He leaned over her and pried her arm away from her face with one hand, then gathered her hair in the other and pulled her into a deep kiss. He groaned, “I missed you earlier, so I’m making up for it.”

She whimpered into the kiss and tried to push at his chest. “I wanna go back to sleep,” she said into the kiss. His bare cock dragged along her stomach and her body stiffened, not knowing what he had planned. Every muscle in her body was sore from her orgasms, and she couldn’t even feel her legs.

“C’mon, sweetheart,” he whispered, laying them on their sides facing each other.

“No, it’s too late for this,” she sighed, high-pitched and sleepy.

“Just for a little while and then you can go back to sleep,” he promised. “I’ll make it up to you.”

He knew he had tired her out, so he would be content to just make out with her until he came—and he probably could come just from that. So he kissed her gently, deeply, his tongue licking into her mouth and tangling with hers. The kiss was so sweet it made her toes curl, made her squirm against him.

His mouth tasted like her—and although he had made her taste herself off of his fingers before, it was somehow more potent coming from his mouth after three consecutive orgasms. Heat flooded her core, and even though she was exhausted, she felt her body still had more to give.

Bucky knew it, too. He could always tell when she was worked up again, and soon he was helping her grind her pussy wantonly on his thigh, her hands fisted in his hair. His hands roamed her body, squeezing her hips and ass, dipping past the swell of it to play with her perfect little pussy. She was dripping again, soaking his entire leg, and he loved it. He could never get enough of her.

“Here, baby,” he repositioned them so her leg was slung over his waist, their hips aligned. His cock dragged along the inside of her thighs, and she gasped and tried to move back.

“Wait!” she said, panicked at the thought of him taking her virginity right there. “We can’t!”

“Don’t worry,” he told her, voice gravelly. “I’m not gonna fuck you—yet.” He pulled her back into him and now his dick was settled right against her pussy, not at the right angle to enter her, but she could still feel every inch of him, so hot and hard and smooth. “I just want to feel you, baby.”

“Please don’t,” she whispered, “I’m not ready yet.”

“I know, sweetheart,” he reassured her, rubbing gentle circles on her back before tugging her into him and moving his hips against hers.

He kept her close with his iron grip and forced his mouth onto hers in her shock. It was tempting, the way her pussy felt against him, impossibly wet, slicking up his entire length as he glided his cock through her folds. The tip bumped against her clit and she mewled, and then he took her hips and grinded her down against his shaft as he thrusted forward again.

The shaft of his cock rubbed against her clit with every drag and it was driving her crazy, her pussy so oversensitive already from Bucky’s mouth. This caused her to shove him away a little, whimpering. “It’s too much, Bucky,” she cried, face scrunched up in pain and pleasure, “Bucky, please—”

“Okay, it’s okay, baby,” he cooed, kissing her forehead. While one hand continued to stroke her back, his other travelled down and shifted his cock. He was going to move away or reposition them, but then the head of his cock caught at her entrance and he moaned at the sensation. “Oh, baby, you’re so wet.” He could slide in right now with barely any resistance, just take her and make her his, come deep inside her and—

“What are you doing!” she cried as he nudged his cock again against her. “Stop, Bucky!” She struggled to get away, but his arm around her kept her close, pinning her arms against her sides with barely any effort.

He hushed her with soft words. “It’s okay, baby, shhh, you’re such a good girl.”

But as he moved his hips forward, her entire body tensed and she sniffled. “Please don’t, Bucky, I don’t want this.”

“But you do,” he assured her, still rubbing the head around her entrance. It was slick with both their fluids, his cock blurting out precum against her folds every time he thought of taking her virgin pussy. “Your pussy is so wet for me.”

“Not yet,” she whimpered, burying her face in the pillow, still trying to struggle uselessly. “I don’t want it yet…”

He paused, considering this. Sure, he hadn’t planned on taking her virginity yet—he was going to wait a few more days, see how it went. But she just felt so good, and he was so wound up from yesterday. Was it better to get it over with now?

In the end, he decided to compromise. “Just the tip,” he suggested, “I’ll just put in the tip, no more.”

“No, Bucky—” But he had already decided.

He eased the head of his cock into her pussy, only just, and she was already so tight and hot around him that he could barely control himself. Taking a minute to breathe, he closed his eyes, focused on keeping his hips still.

She whimpered. “Bucky, it hurts.” His cock was thicker than the fingers he had used on her thus far, and he was stretching her uncomfortably. The stretch, combined with how sensitive she was, and the fact that she didn’t want this yet, brought tears to her eyes, which fell onto the pillow below her.

Yet still the heat in her pelvis remained, her traitorous body tingling all over, her pussy endlessly producing more wetness. The pain only added to the flame like lighter fluid, dangerous yet addicting as her nerves screamed for something more.

Finally, he pulled out, then pushed back in, then repeated the motion, barely fucking her. She whimpered through it, matching his groans of pleasure. His hand worked the rest of his cock to bring him to the edge. He kept the thrusts shallow, careful not to go too deep or past the head of his cock—this was already overwhelming enough for her, and he was content to save her virginity for another day.

“Your pussy’s all mine, darling,” he growled in her ear. “I’m gonna fuck you hard one of these days, ruin you for other men. You’re mine, you understand?” He would never let her go, not now. Every taste he had of her only added to his obsession. She belonged to him, his to use, his to do whatever he wanted with.

She sniffled again, and when she turned her head, he saw her crying, pretty eyes rimmed with red, cheeks glistening, and she just looked so beautiful. In the back of his mind, he wondered what Steve would think of this, what Steve would think of him using her like this, taking what he wanted, just like Steve did to him.

Then his thoughts wandered to how he and Steve could use her together, how they might corrupt her, what other ways they could make her cry so pretty for them—

And then, he was coming. He pulled out of her just at the last second, spilling his come all over her pussy.

Involuntarily, she let out a shaky moan at the sensation of his come on her, hot and sticky and only adding to the insufferable wetness all over. Bucky smirked at this, at her reactions—her body loved what he did to her, even if she couldn’t admit it.

“There you go, baby,” he whispered, running his fingers through his come and through her labia. He massaged all over the outside of her cunt, rubbing his semen into her swollen skin. Sticky fingers travelled to her clit, rubbing at it with quick and intense strokes until she was coming herself, letting out a cry thick with tears.

She sobbed more once she was done, ashamed of her body’s reactions. He only pulled her onto his chest, rubbing her back and stroking her hair, whispering reassurances that she was a good girl, that she had made him feel good. He comforted her until she fell asleep on him, and he soon followed her into slumber.

Steve woke up that morning, head pounding, and he knew that a shower would be one of the only things to help his hangover. He replayed the previous night in his mind while he stood under the hot water. Peggy had broken up with him.

He had spent the entire night before thinking she would call him up and tell him it was all a joke, that she didn’t mean it, that she wasn’t going to move to London and leave him. Now, it was morning, and she hadn’t even texted him.

Their relationship wasn’t perfect, and he certainly hadn’t been very attached to her, but she was an easy part of his life, simple and consistent. Sure, he had never intended to seriously commit to Peggy, but he hadn’t planned on ending it any time soon, either. He figured that maybe they would just fall into place, that somehow their relationship would work itself out like it was meant to.

Maybe this is what was meant to happen, he mused as he dried himself off.

It still stung, though.

And now he had to go back to the Vineyard and babysit Y/N. That was almost worse. If he were able to go out to a club tonight and find a rebound, maybe this would all heal quicker, but he was stuck at Martha’s Vineyard with her and Bucky for the next few weeks.

Well, at least there was Bucky, he realized, his mood lifting a little. He and Bucky could start up again—Steve always loved it when they were on. But he knew Bucky never wanted anything serious with him, so he always ended things eventually.

For now, though, he could let himself enjoy it.

With that brightening his mind, he got dressed and shaved, dabbed on some aftershave, and slicked back his hair. He collected his bag he had brought and was out the door in no time. After stopping by the bodega for a coffee and a pack of cigarettes and a few packages of mint gum, he got on the road.

He had almost six hours to mull over the predicament with Peggy while driving. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got—for no discernable reason except that his ego was hurt.

Peggy was good for him. He knew that. Sure, he didn’t make enough time for her, but he had explained before that he had work responsibilities that he couldn’t speak much about. She seemed to understand in the beginning, but now it wasn’t enough, apparently. Now she needed more from him.

That got his blood pumping, his fingers gripping the steering wheel hard, a bitter taste in his mouth. He only got more and more worked up throughout the drive, and by the time he was pulling into the house at the Vineyard, he was twitchy, furious, needed to get his hands on something and do something physical and let out all his energy.

Bucky would be a nice outlet, he thought as he unlocked the front door and entered the house.

He was about to call out for Bucky when he heard something strange from upstairs.

A whimpering moan, high pitched and breathy.

Closing the door quietly, he creeped upstairs, not intending to alert anyone. He had a few guesses as to who it could be, and none of the options pleased him. Perhaps Bucky brought a girl home. Perhaps Y/N had a boyfriend here. Regardless, someone was getting their ass kicked.

As he reached the landing and crept towards the hallway where the noise was, another gasp came. “Bucky!” He recognized the voice. It was Y/N, and she was calling out for—

He opened the door to her bedroom slowly and froze at what he saw.

Y/N was on her back in the middle of the bed, the sheets up to her waist, her pert breasts exposed. Her head was thrown back, lips swollen, cheeks flushed, hair messed up. Under the thin white sheets, she was grabbing something—someone.

It was the shape of a body, dark hair positioned right at the juncture of her legs, moving enthusiastically. Wet sucking noises sounded from under the blanket, and then Bucky groaned into her pussy, and she shook violently, her entire body tensing up and then releasing almost rhythmically.

Steve couldn’t believe his eyes, couldn’t help the gasp that escaped his throat, alerting the occupants of the bed.

Both Y/N and Bucky startled at the exact same time, and as she tried to grab the sheet to cover herself, he popped up from under the covers, the sheet thrown behind him. He was naked, hard cock pointing almost accusatorily towards the girl in front of him. Steve’s jaw clenched when he saw Bucky still had two fingers buried in her cunt, and he actually had to close his eyes and breathe deeply to avoid knocking Bucky out right there.

Bucky’s jaw dropped when he saw Steve, eyes wide in shock. For several long, tense moments, it was silent, only the sound of her rapid breathing filling the room.

Finally, Steve spoke, voice laced with barely contained rage. “Either of you care to explain to me what the fuck is going on?”

#steve rogers #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers fic #dark!steve rogers #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fic #dark!bucky barnes #stucky #stucky x reader #fanfiction #mcu #brooklyn’s sweetheart

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inthefallofasparrow · 4 years

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“I was a police officer for nearly ten years and I was a bastard. We all were.”

“This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.”

“But enough is enough.”

“The reforms aren’t working. Incrementalism isn’t happening. Unarmed Black, indigenous, and people of color are being killed by cops in the streets and the police are savagely attacking the people protesting these murders.”

“American policing is a thick blue tumor strangling the life from our communities and if you don’t believe it when the poor and the marginalized say it, if you don’t believe it when you see cops across the country shooting journalists with less-lethal bullets and caustic chemicals, maybe you’ll believe it when you hear it straight from the pig’s mouth.”

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“WHY AM I WRITING THIS