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strawberrysoup · 4 years

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Let’s Review || Chapter 22

Peter Parker knew that his big sister would do anything for him to be safe and happy. She’d given up everything for him twice over already and would do it again in a heartbeat. And that’s why, when the criminal mastermind Tony Stark started inextricably following him around, he didn’t say a word. Because he knew without a doubt Penny would do whatever she had to if it meant keeping Peter safe. He had to protect her, just like she always protected him. He never considered what would happen if Stark decided both Parker siblings were worth taking. Never considered who else in Stark’s inner circle would agree. He just wanted to protect her and yet somehow, they both ended up with needles in their necks.

relationship: Steve Rogers/Original Female Character/Bucky Barnes, background Peter Parker/Tony Stark rating: Explicit warnings: Dark Steve Rogers, Dark Bucky Barnes, Dark Tony Stark, Dark Avengers, kidnapping, non-consensual&dark sexual situations, underage Peter Parker, emotional and psychological abuse, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat additional warnings: open the read more, CTRL + F and search “content warnings” to skip to the additional "spoiler-y" tags for trigger warnings

hey guys! i made a ko-fi! if you enjoy this and have some cash you could spare to help me out with my bills, id really appreciate it! if you follow the link and check out the ‘posts’, there’s a snippet for ch. 4 of posies!

Their parents had died a few months after her thirteenth birthday and Penny essentially blacked out for the next 8 months. She didn’t remember anything from that school year, although she’d evidently scraped by in all of her classes—actually, Penny was still convinced that little Peter, who was already showing signs of being a tiny genius, had done at least half of her homework. She didn’t remember Hanukkah that year, or the first Christmas she’d ever celebrated with Aunt May and Uncle Ben. She had zero friends coming out of that year, having accidentally pushed everyone away in fits of rage or sadness that she couldn’t even remember. The pain cut just as deep every time she remembered showing up to school the first day of her freshman year only to receive the cold shoulder from half her grade.

That was actually one of the first memories she’d retained after coming out of 7 months and 3 weeks of complete emptiness, how none of her best friends wanted anything to do with her. Everything had been confusing, somehow devastating all over again but… it was less. Her parents were gone and it hurt so much but it was nothing compared to the agony that had beset her form seconds after being informed her mom and dad were dead. When Penny racked her brain she could almost remember Aunt May crouched in front of her while she sat on the couch at home, holding her hands.

Somewhere in her brain, Penny had known that plane crashes were possible. Like, as a concept she understood the idea. The plane that was flying through the air stops doing that, and all the people inside the plane die. But it couldn’t possibly happen to her parents—they were her parents, they were infallible. Plane crashes happened, yeah, but her parents couldn’t be gone. Aunt May had told her several years later that she and Ben had been petrified she would try to kill herself, especially when the state tried to take the young girl away from the Parker’s.

They’d never had the money for therapy and Penny figured she’d never regain the memories from those months but honestly, she didn’t want them. The gaps were reprieves, the missing conversations, the absence of any and all detail. Wasn’t she sad to not remember her eighth-grade graduation? Fuck no, it was a blessing to forget how she’d felt like everyone in existence had their eyes on her—except for the ones she wanted.

There were times she absently wondered how disappointed her parents would be that she didn’t finish college, let alone get an actual high school degree. Her dad had been so smart, a genius in his own right. And her mom… Penny tried not to think of her mom often, not when it hurt so deeply. Mary Parker had been a gentle soul with an IQ of 150 who made Penny feel safe and loved and understood every day of her life. Her mother would’ve been understanding, she would’ve seen the necessity in her dropping out but it would’ve hurt that gentle soul to know the opportunities her baby had missed.

It hurt Penny in a special way that neither of Mary and Richard Parker’s children would be graduating from high school. Neither would attend university. They wouldn’t go on to press the limits of their parent’s knowledge or make an impact on the world. Somehow despite everything she’d sacrificed, Peter would never get the opportunity that he deserved. Her genius baby brother, his potential capped before he had a chance to try. God, it was an agonizing burn in her chest, a searing pain that made her nauseous and light-headed.

Her heart was pounding so hard she wondered if her ribs would crack. The cabin was lovely. Dark wood and an A-frame, a nice deck in the back and lots of windows. It was surrounded by trees, with dark needles or thin pale trunks, the purple mountains of the Rockies a lovely backdrop. It was colder than she’d expect for summer, especially considering the overcast sky and the breeze. The clouds moved so fast at such a high altitude and Penny watched trembling as a shadow passed over the house, chasing the light away before the sun followed its path ravenously once more.

Steve and Bucky were unloading suitcases from the back of the SUV, passing each other calculating looks as Penny stood practically frozen in place. Her shoulders were hunched almost to her ears, arms wrapped gently but tightly around the white kitten in her arms. It was purring quietly, the same way it had been for hours now. The little thing had cried the first few hours after they’d left the tower and subsequently the chubby cheeked orange kitten behind, only settling when Penny laid down across the middle seat in the SUV and let it burrow into the crook of her neck.

If Penny turned around she would’ve recognized the mournful looks on their faces, the pain in the lines of their eyes. The soldiers knew the hurt she felt, to be separated from their most important person—they understood that Peter was the most important person in Penny’s world. This separation was on their heads, but what could they do? They’d worked themselves into a rut, the three of them, wearing such deep treads into their negative behaviors that they couldn’t climb out. A complete shakeup was the only solution.

Both winced when she abruptly folded at the waist, clutching the kitten to her chest, and vomited over the pine needle strewn dirt of the driveway. Her hair fell in heavy, curly curtains around her face as she heaved again, hiding her tear-streaked face from the soldiers’ view. The sound of them setting the bags they held down registered in Penny’s ears but she couldn’t find the strength to collect herself before they converged on her.

“Come ‘ere doll, lemme take you up to the bathroom,” Bucky stated quietly, sweeping her and the cat up into his arms as gently as he could, “you can take a bath while me and Steve get everything unloaded. I think you’ll really like the cabin baby, we… well, we designed it just for you. If there’s anything you want to change, you just tell us. We want it to be perfect for you.”

She mostly caught flashes of green and white and brown, tucking her chin to look at the kitten snuggled into her cleavage. It felt cruel, to have taken the white one and left the orange, but the little chubby-cheeked kitten had taken to her brother so well—better than it had taken to her, even. Peter had named it Malcah and while it still didn’t like being picked up or held, it twined his ankles and meowed at him for love.

“Sit here baby,” the soldier set her carefully on the lid of the toilet, after having climbed a set of stairs and turned multiple blurry corners, “let me run your bath.”

It was all white tile, the toilet built into the wall. The tub was a freestanding clawfoot, with a spray nozzle and high sides. It was surprisingly small, considering how large the tub in the tower had been. Penny idly speculated that only perhaps one of the soldiers would be able to fit at time and it would certainly be a tight squeeze if she was forced in with them. There was a standing shower on the other side, where the roof wasn’t so sharply sloped by the A-framed roof. The nice thing, that Penny would never admit was very nice, was all of the plants. The entire room was predominantly white but there was a long-vined philodendron hanging gracefully over the tub, snake plants sitting on the shelf before the toilet. She could see a rubber plant and another type of vine by the sinks, framing the mirror.

They’d obviously gone to great lengths to make sure it would be something she liked, clearly evidenced by the bathroom alone. There were even candles waiting to be used on the antique, hunter green shelves and bath bombs with lovely scents. If she’d been able to design a personal bathroom, Penny figured it would probably have looked something like this and that made her hate it all the more.

The bastards were so in their heads they could barely see the sunlight. Penny was convinced that they were so distracted orchestrating her nightmare they’d lost the plot. They kept throwing stuff at her; beautiful plants, nice clothing, cute cats, lovely homes—but it didn’t mean a single thing. All of the possessions in the world didn’t make up for the gaping, rotting hole in her chest.

“Alright doll, let’s get you undressed,” Bucky shifted towards her once the water was at the right temperature and filling the tub, a small smile on his stubbled face.

“Do you think I’m debilitated?” She rasped after a moment, rolling her eyes up to stare him in the face before spitting a vomit speckled wad of phlegm onto the rug by her feet and setting the kitten on the shelf next to the snake plants. “Last time I checked I didn’t need to be treated like a baby. Are you gonna keep standing over me like a pervert? Get out.”

The soldier’s eyebrows shot up his forehead, surprised by the calmness behind her cutting tongue. Usually, when Penny got an attitude, it came with fury and fists and resulted in broken bones or bleeding wounds. This was overwhelmingly controlled; a bitchy rebuttal. Her voice was the gravelly tone she usually got after screaming or crying, dark brown eyes nearly black. When he didn’t move, Penny rolled her eyes and stood, whipping her t-shirt over her head and dropping it to the ground.

“You’re bein’ a little moody, babe,” Bucky watched calmly as she undressed, her clothes piling up on the floor. “Wanna think about reigning it in?”

Penny’s hair was big and curly around her face, framing the clenched jaw and sneering nose. “What are you gonna do, kill me? Whatever.”

“Penny, what—”

“Peter is a thousand miles away,” Penny’s voice started out sharp but very quickly faded into a tired drawl, “you can’t hurt him from here. And what do I care if you hurt me? So could you either get the fuck out and let me take a bath or fucking drown me in it? Whatever it takes for this interaction to be over.”

“Are you looking for a punishment right now?” Bucky’s lips pulled down at the corners, eyebrows furrowing, “‘Cause you’re working your way towards one really quick.”

“What’re you gonna do? Kill someone in front of me?” She groaned, reaching up to dig her fingers into the roots of her hair, tugging sharply before dragging it into a tangled, thoughtless bun on the top of her head “Or spank me until I can’t sit? Rape me? Could you just get it over with? I want to be alone, please!”

Bucky was silent for several long seconds before sighing through his nose, pushing his sleeves up to his elbows. “Take your bath, think about your fuckin’ attitude. Steve and I are gonna bring the bags in.”

He left the door open and Penny was further irritated to learn he had too much dignity to stomp down the stairs the way she’d hoped he would. His break in composure had been so good for her it was unbelievable—but there was likely a punishment on the horizon and Steve wasn’t likely to let her off easy once the brunet told him what she’d said. The bastard was stone cold when it came to that shit.

She stared idly at the steaming bath, naked with her clothes piled around her feet—the question was whether she wanted a bath or if she’d been resigned to it? The water was scented, because of course it was. It was even one of her favorite citrusy scents, she noted disdainfully, another thing they had paid so much attention to while keeping her locked up in a tower like fucking Rapunzel. Now in a cabin, she figured she was a Jewish Goldilocks surrounded by hungry bears.

But it smelled nice and her body ached from the long car ride, it had already been run so why not hop in? Besides, it would keep her busy while the soldier’s fucked around and she wouldn’t have to see them for a bit. They were shuffling around and she could hear the sounds of bags being placed around the cabin. The door banged off the walls several times, always accompanied by a groan or a curse, one of which she recognized as a Yiddish swear—which she refused to find endearing. The kitten meowed at her from its position on the shelf, looking put out to be so far away but Penny shushed it quietly.

“You won’t like the water, just stay there,” she murmured quietly at the distraught little creature, picking up a washcloth and dunking it into the perfumed water. “If I come get you I’ll make a huge mess.”

She ignored the kitten as it continued to communicate with her, chittering in annoyance and pawing the edge of the ledge for several minutes before evidently surrendering and lying down with its little paws draped over the edge. Penny smiled to herself, the cat’s tail was roughly the size of its body and when it curled the fluffy mass of fur around itself it became unrecognizable as a cat. The orange one would’ve continued to complain until Penny let it down, would’ve just barely given her ankles a rub before running off to hide somewhere.

That’s why she decided to leave Malcah with Peter; the orange cat didn’t run from or scratch him. She twined his ankles, sat next to his thigh on the couch, kneaded her little paws against him. Peter had decided both kittens were female, based on the very reasonable basis that he wanted them to be. Penny wasn’t sure, didn’t quite care. The only thing she ever referred to the cats as was Chatul—which literally meant cat in Hebrew. She’d shortened it to Tuly for the white kitten, for the sake of ease, but refused to say it in front of the soldiers. The cat was hers, she didn’t have to share it with them.

The sounds of the soldiers were becoming more consistent throughout the cabin and Penny figured they must’ve brought in all of the bags and were focused on unpacking. She could hear someone down in the kitchen, unloading the masses of groceries they’d brought up the mountain while the other was in the bedroom. Penny rubbed the washcloth over her skin lightly, the oils from the fragrance making her skin soft and slippery.

She didn’t hear him come in, she felt Steve come in. The blond’s presence was just as overwhelming as Tony Stark’s, an aura bigger than his body that filled the room. She could feel the disappointed stare, even as she continued to wipe herself down with the washcloth. Her teeth ground together as he watched in silence, just waiting.

“Bucky said you’ve caught an attitude, baby doll.”

“Caught an attitude?” She rolled her eyes. “Wow, if only I hadn’t become desensitized to living in constant terror—you never would’ve realized I’ve had an attitude the whole time!”

“We’re supposed to be turning a new page, Pen.”

“Turning a—” Penny scoffed, face appalled as she abruptly stood from the bath and ignored the water going everywhere, “we’re not turning a new page—You burnt the fucking book!”

The blond’s eyes widened; Penny had gotten angry in the past, furious even. She’d broken things, broken skin, broken bones and it was always accompanied by outraged screaming. But Penny didn’t make unnervingly straight eye contact while she did it. She was barely coherent at the best of times, mostly she screamed to the room at large before flying into a violent frenzy—it was different. It was startling, the light in her eyes and the way her voice cracked.

“There is no page turning, there’s no fucking—fucking reconciliation here, Steve,” she snatched a towel from the rack behind the tub, wrapping the light green fabric around her chest tightly, “I can’t believe after, fuck, how long has it been? A month and a half? Two months? What fucking day is it?”

“…It’s July 2nd,” he found himself choking out, still feeling shell shocked as she stepped out of the tub.

“A month and a half,” Penny’s face twitched, just barely concealing the distraught look he could see she wanted to make and she started shifting past him, “Jesus Christ after a month and a half you guys still don’t get it—you know what, never mind. After a month and a half, I should’ve been smart enough to realize what dumbasses you both are.”

“Penny—”

“God, fuck!” She shouted up at the ceiling, stopping in place halfway out the door. “I have listened to you two talk at length for what’s apparently been a month and a half! I have tried to listen to your stupid fucking rules, I put in the fucking effort and you still decided to take away the one thing I care about! I’m sick and tired of you saying my name in that fucking tone, I’m tired of constantly internalizing and I’m tired of being fucking walked on! So I’ll tell you what I told Bucky—either kill me or leave me alone, but for fucks’ sake just give me space!”

A low mew followed her statement and Penny made an abrupt about face, stomping past him to snatch up the kitten from where it had been sitting on the ledge and storming past him again. It was like getting brushed by a wildfire and Steve fought the urge to take a step back when her wet hair whipped against him.

She dug through one of the bags that held her belongings angrily, kitten on her shoulder, knowing that the blond continued to watch her from the bathroom doorway. Shorts, underwear, a sports bra, a t-shirt, and a hoodie over that. She would’ve put on socks but she knew it bothered Steve when she went barefoot.

“Come downstairs, precious,” he sighed after watching her dress, gesturing towards the stairs, “we’ve got to talk.”

“We’ve always got to talk,” Penny snorted derisively but started down the stairs anyway, Tuly back in her arms, “but it’s usually just you two telling me what I can and can’t do. Stop bossing me around.”

Steve followed after her, aghast and confused—Penny had always been brave in the situations she was forced into, whether it was taking custody of her fourteen year old brother or dealing with being kidnapped from her apartment by a billionaire criminal, but she hadn’t ever antagonized before. She’d talked back, got irritated, snapped, but she hadn’t ever just been flat out bitchy.

On the main floor, Bucky had already put away all of the groceries and was folding up the cloth shopping bags to tuck away for next time. The brunet’s eyes locked on Penny for several long calculating seconds and her hackles raised; whatever was coming was going to be annoying. She refused to be afraid though, not when there wasn’t anything to lose. Not anymore.

“Sit on the couch, let’s talk,” Steve directed, watching as she seemed to contemplate following the direction before doing so, “things are obviously going to be different here, precious.”

“The cabin is equipped with the same AI as the tower but its restricted to monitoring and safety protocols,” Bucky explained, gesturing to the open layout of the main floor, “you’ll be able to go outside so long as you ask first, there’s plenty to do out there. When Steve bought it there was an overgrown vegetable garden out there, we had it cleaned up for you and the shed fixed up and stocked. A lot of good hiking around here too.”

“I can’t talk to JARVIS?” She asked, eyes tracking the way the soldier’s exchanged glances. “Of course not. Then I would have some sort of interaction beyond the pair of you. Damaging to your plan, huh?”

“Penny, the rules didn’t end just because we’re out of the tower,” Steve had one hand braced on his hip while the other rubbed over his forehead, “be—”

“If you say Be Sweet I’ll find a way to kill myself,” Penny intoned, a dry look on her face. “Jews don’t have an afterlife you know, I’m not afraid of going to Hell.”

“Penny, we’re trying—”

“Penny we’re trying,” she mocked in a high-pitched voice, dead eye stare once again boring into Bucky’s, “I’m not. I’m done trying. You’ll either kill me or drive me insane, I’ll never see Peter again—I…I failed. I couldn’t protect him, I couldn’t even keep him safe until he was an adult, isn’t that insane? Grand total of three years and some change and I fucked it up.”

Penny stood up from the couch, shaking her head as she went. The kitten was quick to jump off the couch and follow after her, meowing while that massive fluffy squirrel tail curled over its back. The open floor plan of the cabin came in handy for the soldiers though, because she couldn’t really escape even as she walked across the living room and into the kitchen.

It was hard to pretend she didn’t actually love the cabin. The kitchen was small, located beneath the loft that held the bedroom and bathroom. The railing to the loft was covered in live vines that hung down to create a tiny illusion of separation between the living room and kitchen, the kitchen itself was sage green with white and dark brown accents. There were more plants, open cabinets mounted to the walls, the sink was small but there was a dishwasher. She loved the spiral staircase that led up to the loft, framing the kitchen to the left with small shiny baubles hanging from it.

There was a hamsa and a cross, both stained glass and hanging from the tallest step. Pretty cat toys hung from the lower railings, just within the kitten’s reach. It made Penny’s skin itch, just how lovely and perfect the whole cabin was. More evidence that they were paying a freaky amount of attention to her and every move she made.

“You didn’t fail, doll,” Bucky’s tone was quiet and he hesitated for a moment before following after her several paces, ending up on the edge of the kitchen, “You didn’t fuck it up, Peter—”

“Peter is trapped in a prison in New York with a creep more than twice his age who wants to violate and brainwash him,” Penny was on her knees in front of the fridge, digging through the crisper drawer in the bottom. “Literally all I had to do to prevent that from happening was pay more attention to his daily life. Fuck, kid was practically raising himself with how often I was gone—never stood a chance, you know?”

“Don’t think like that Penny,” Steve sighed, leaning down to pick up the kitten that had circled back to his ankles and setting it on his shoulder, “there’s nothing you could’ve done. You know who Tony Stark is, you know what he’s capable of. You can’t heap that guilt on your shoulders.”

“Oh, can’t I?” She hummed, absently throwing a package of bacon onto the floor, followed by a flat of raw chicken and beef. “There can be dairy in here or there can be meat, not both.”

“We might need a second fridge,” Bucky observed quietly, watching Penny drop a couple of deli bags with sandwich meat onto the ground before she started shuffling everything into different places within the cooler. “We could keep it in the shed?”

“No room,” Steve shook his head absently, “garage?”

Penny had collected a stack of items from the fridge and piled them onto the counter, not even bothering to look back on the soldiers as she began puttering around. The open-faced cabinets on the walls held mostly dishes and containers filled with ingredients and she ducked down, opening the lower cabinets and digging out several pans.

“Do you… do you want a hand, doll?” Bucky asked hesitantly after several moments, watching her collect ingredients and tools and turn on the stove.

“No.”

“Penny—”

“Can I make lunch please?” She whipped around, an irritated look on her face and a spatula in hand, looking like she was about to use it to beat them both, “I’m hungry and I want to die, I figure you’ll only allow me to fulfill one of those wants so can you let me cook?”

The next thing she knew, Penny had been swept up into Bucky’s arms. The solider looked confused, lips curled in frustration but his brow furrowed with dismay. She stiffened at the action when he stomped back to the couch and sat down roughly, dropping her over his knees and landing a smarting blow to her ass through her shorts without warning.

“Thirty for this fucking attitude,” he barked, yanking the shorts down until the waistband settled under the curve of her ass against the tops of her thighs, “count.”

A sharp inhale followed the first skin to skin hit and Penny snarled in response, “one.”

“Apologize,” Steve’s fingers tangled into her hair, extracting the hair tie and letting the curls fall in chaotic waves over her shoulders and face.

“Two,” she counted dutifully and angrily, narrowed eyes landing on Steve’s face, “I’m sorry you’re a fucking monster!”

“That just added ten more, Penny,” Bucky sighed through gritted teeth, “you better reign it in.”

“You better just kill me,” she rasped, nails digging into his leg where she was holding on for balance through the hits, “because I won’t reign it in. I’m sick to death of you motherfuckers—Oh, fuck, three!”

“No cursing during punishments, start from one,” Steve ordered darkly, the hand in her hair pulling taught as he glanced into Bucky’s eyes—the baffling combination of anger and dismay and loss in the brunet’s eyes let him know he wasn’t the only one scrambling.

“Fuck you!” Penny shook her head roughly as if to dislodge his hand, canting her head to the side the best she could manage to look him in the eye, “beat me black and blue, I don’t fucking care. Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter anymore! Nothing fucking matters.”

content warnings: spanking *edit, addition content warning: disrespectful terminology for Jewish people

#steve rogers x reader x bucky barnes #steve rogers x reader #bucky barnes x reader #steve rogers x oc #bucky barnes x oc #steve rogers x oc x bucky barnes #dark!fic

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barnesandco · 3 years

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Fly Home

Sam and Bucky get stranded in Siberia with their only way out damaged from an explosion during the mission that brought them out here.

This is an entry for @star-spangled-bingo 2020. Word count: 1591. Square filled: “Sam’s Wings”

Pairing: Platonic! Sam Wilson x Bucky Barnes

Warnings: I am not a mechanic, much less someone with any knowledge about the workings of mechanical wings, so please forgive me for my technical failings.

The wings are a mess. Sam, thankfully, has gotten away from the explosion that tore holes in his flying rig with some cuts and scrapes, as the wings bore the brunt of the blast. So now he and Bucky are in the snow-clad, Siberian wilderness with no plan of extraction. They weren’t allowed to bring radio or cell phones because it’s traceable equipment, their comms fell out during the fight, and they’re probably hours away from any sort of civilization. Truly, truly lost.

Bucky sits down as Sam removes what remains of his wings from his back and lays them on the ground before joining Bucky. The cold is mostly kept out by the insulating gear they are wearing, but he is certain that will change soon.

“You got a plan for this one?” Sam asks as Bucky opens his bag. Retrieving what seems to be a toolbox from the bag, Bucky reaches for Sam’s wings and tugs them over.

Bucky stretches the wings to their full span, and scanning the damage, says, “If we can fix your wings, you can fly us outta here.”

Sam laughs, the tension lifting just a little, and when Bucky looks up, deadpan, Sam stops. “Those wings are Swiss cheese, man. And even if they weren’t, how do you know how to fix them?” He asks.

“You have the blueprints, don’t you?”

And yes, Sam does. Riri Williams, the genius spotted by Sharon Carter at Stark Expo last year, redesigned Sam’s wings and walked him through the entire process. He knows how they work in theory, and he has the blueprints stored in his arm panel, but, “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

Bucky laughs, now, and something in Sam’s stomach swells with warmth at the sight and sound. “ ‘Course not. That’s why you’re going to help me, Cap,” Bucky tells him, and Sam pulls forth the blueprints, taking off the control panel on his arm and presenting it, with a roll of his eyes. This centenarian is going to be the death of him. “We’ll need parts, though,” Bucky says, looking at Redwing, who is laying in the snow, also having been debilitated earlier in the day.

Sam is horrified. “No!” He says, reaching for his metal companion before Bucky can get his hands on him. “Riri put some spare panels in the pack,” Sam informs, keeping Redwing behind him and opening the pack. He’s still not on board with this DIY plan, and if they weren’t already sheltered by a forest, he’d have tried to find a safer location, but right now, there’s no way of knowing if there is one. So he lets Bucky survey the equipment.

“This is good. We can work with this.”

And with that, they get started. They only need to repair the upper surface of the wings to ensure that air stays trapped underneath so that Sam can fly, and the blueprints help. Sam’s knowledge of his wings and how they operate, when added to Bucky’s knowledge of metallic body parts, make for enough understanding to fix these wings.

They work mostly in silence, allowing the failure of the mission to hover in the background while they put their way out of here back together again. Helmut Zemo, having escaped from the Raft during the Snap, has slipped from their fingers yet again. Sam thinks about what must go through Bucky’s mind every time he sees his face, whether in combat or during a mission briefing.

What goes through Sam’s head is white-hot rage. Zemo killed a lot of people in Vienna, and caused that much more havoc, amongst the Avengers and otherwise. Now, many of them aren’t even alive to see him roam free.

The world is struggling, upside down, and going all the wrong ways, after the Blip. Fear reigns stronger than ever, and so does mistrust. Sam’s been carrying the weight of the shield in a world that doesn’t want to see him do so, a world that longs for that old-fashioned symbol of heroism now more than ever, and it’s taking its toll.

He has help, of course. He sees people who help with it. He firmly believes that he is the right person to carry it, no matter what the world says. He has always fought for what is right, and what he believes in, and he believes that this is his calling. He still has the VA, and Sharon, and Bucky, of course.

Bucky, who now studies a larger hole near the shoulder of the left wing with determination. His eyes are narrowed at it like it’s a miniature battle all on its own. Bucky walks the Earth with his shoulders tense and braced, and a fight in his fists, waiting for the next battle in this war that isn’t ending. Except for when he’s with Sam, away from conference rooms in the Compound or in the busy streets of New York. In their apartment in Queens, he unwinds.

They laugh together at silly sitcoms that Sam has been introducing him to, he relearns the history he wasn’t allowed to remember, and he marvels at the advancements of technology. They spent a month’s worth of weekends exploring every science museum Bucky could find in the area thanks to Google. And he’s really taken to cooking.

Not only does he enjoy eating the stuff Sam makes and that he has quickly learned how to replicate, he loves discovering a new smell wafting from somewhere in their diverse neighborhood and asking Sam about it, before going online to see the nearest place they can get it from. Takeout for a taste, another google for a recipe, and a new dish added to Bucky’s ever-growing repertoire. Queens is a good place to expand one’s palates and horizons.

They chose it when the remaining enhanced individuals of the world had recuperated enough to get back out there. Brooklyn came with too much pressure for Bucky to remember, to be something he no longer is, and living in the Compound would mean living at work, which didn’t feel healthy, either. Sam felt that Queens would be a good fresh start, for them both. A blank page. Not to mention it helps to be nearby in case the Parker kid gets in trouble, which he does quite a bit.

Sam smiles down at the panel he’s repairing when he remembers Bucky’s paternal ranting and raving after they caught Peter trying to take on some robbers with alien equipment. When Sam looks up, Bucky is staring at him, and he feels his cheeks heat.

They’re almost done, with just one more hole in the upper surface left when Bucky pierces the silence. “We don’t have this piece,” he says, pointing towards that gap. Riri couldn’t give him a full set of backup wings for obvious reasons, so she gave him the panels for the regions of the wings likely to experience more wear and tear. Her calculations must not have considered an actual bomb, Sam thinks.

But Bucky is already working on the solution. “It kind of matches this part in my arm,” Bucky says, tapping a human forefinger on his upper arm. Near the crook of his elbow is a metal panel that does, indeed, look like it might fit in the damaged part of Sam’s wings.

“We’re not takin’ your arm off, Barnes.”

“You don’t have to. Just the one part. Shuri taught me how,” Bucky says so matter-of-factly that if Sam wasn’t aware of the context, Bucky could’ve been talking casually about any number of every day tricks the Wakandan princess taught him. As it is, Sam does know the context, and he does not want to mess with his partner’s arm.

He tells him as much. “Fine.”

“I can’t be the one to do it,” Bucky tells Sam, and the latter’s eyebrows raise as he suppresses the want to roll his eyes heavenwards. “There’s some sensitive circuitry near that panel and if I try to open it from my angle, I might hit it. It’s better if you do it.”

Sam looks at Bucky, hoping he’s bluffing, pulling some stupid joke in a situation that it doesn’t fit in, but no. No bluff. “Fine,” Sam repeats, huffing, and scoots closer. The screwdriver in Sam’s hand is dirty with soot and traces of grease. “I don’t need to sterilize this, do I?” He asks.

Bucky shakes his head but wipes the screwdriver on his pants anyway before handing it back. “You might need some lubrication, though.”

That is the kind of comment that Sam would have cracked a joke at around an hour ago, but now, he coats the tip in some machine oil from the toolbox and sends a prayer above before starting to pry at the panel in Bucky’s upper arm. Bucky’s breath is warm against Sam’s ear, and he struggles to ignore it. Bucky’s eyes are bright blue in his periphery, and he focuses on the gleam of black and gold in front of him. The panel lifts, and he reaches for it with light hands, a paramedics steady fingers, and removes it.

Bucky takes it from him and starts altering the shape with a knife he has produced from nowhere and once that’s done, hands it to Sam for the final honors. The piece clicks into place. It looks a bit different, a darker shade amidst the red, grey, and white of Sam’s wings, but Sam thinks it’s a good fix. A job well done. A way home.

#SSB2020 #ayesha writes #sam wilson #bucky barnes #mcu #marvel fanfiction #captain america #the winter soldier

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just-some-sad-bitch · 4 years

Text

Back Home

The return from the battlefield was tough, the few that remained alive went back to their respecting villages leaving only a couple of hundred shinobis from the leaf returning together in a mass. The more critically injured set the peace going all the way on the front with units still able to fight just in case defend was needed, in the middle section the groups that were still standing, in the last group the strongest defended de mass, which was why Sasuke had been wondering. Why the heck was he all the way in the back? He literally had one arm blown to pieces a couple of days ago. Not to say he couldn’t stand, of course he could, more than that in fact, if needed he would have been able to fight, with less strength and less precision, but fighting was still kicking and punching as far as he was aware. But if he was honest, he knew why he was in the back. In case he decided to attack, he was surrounded by shinobis in way better form than he was. It was basically a big escort, just for him. Not that they were stronger than him of course, its just that at the moment, he was weaker than them.

Still, his condition was extremely debilitating to him and the trip back was infinitely uncomfortable, the looks most people gave him were full of hatred and disdain, he couldn’t blame them really, he was a missing nin, a criminal and he was fine with the looks. He would endure every look, every murmur, every degrading word they sent his way, his resolution had already been made, he would pay for his sins whatever way the Kages deem acceptable. After all, if that was the price to pay to stay with him, he was ok.

“How´s the arm?” A sweet voice pulled him out of his thought. Right next to him was Sakura. Her pink hair had grown out since the last time he saw her the day he left the village, wait, no, there were a couple of times after that. The day she and the rest found him in Orochimaru´s hideout, and once more after that, oh yes, the time he tried to kill her, right after she tried to kill him. Some friends they were.

The smile she was offering was honest but wary, like trying to convince a stray cat to come closer but still fearing the claws. They were still afraid of him, how could they not, after everything he had done.

“It´s fine” he responded dryly, he was by no means trying to be rude at all but after so many years he had no idea how to talk to her, to anyone, actually. Except for him apparently.

“Once we get back we can treat it better, I promise… There are a lot of injured but, I´ll make sure to help you” She was so kind it was actually hard to not come off as rude to her, still he tried his best.

“There’s no need for that”

“oh… ok” he´d done it, he came off as an asshole, he tried, god knows he wasn’t trying to drive her away, but he didn’t know how to talk to her. So, he resorted to the only topic he knew they shared.

“Is he… still making his rounds?” He knew the answer was yes, and of course there was no need to say his name out loud. Her look once she realized he was starting a conversation was tender and happy, finally, he did something good in regards of Sakura.

“Yeah, he is trying to check up on everyone around, you know how he is, Mr. sunshine worried for everyone except for himself. I told him a thousand times to stay still or the wound WILL eventually open but he doesn’t listen. Ugh its so hard to heal a hyperactive hero” The way she went off about him made him feel like old times, they really didn’t change after all, team 7 was still a couple of orphans and a whiny girl lead by a perverted teacher. He might have been weak at the moment, but he was not so weak to admit he had missed them, out loud ate least.

“Well, like you said, once we are back you can tie him to a hospital bed” She laughed, maybe too hard and too loud, it wasn´t funny but he appreciated the effort she made to make it seem like it was.

“Yeah sure, like he´s not going to jump right into rebuilding the village, or helping the others, or just training. He´ll do anything to avoid a hospital bed”

“Rebuilding the village? When was it- “Oh, right as the sentence left his mouth he remembered. Akatsuki’s leader, Nagato, had destroyed the entirely of Konoha. Surely that was a bitter memory for Sakura, a point he might have rather not touch at all. “Sorry I- “

“No, it´s ok… you weren’t there” A heavy silence fell between them, the implication of her words meant more that just his absence in battle that day, he knew it.

They kept moving, after a couple of hours they saw the gate of the village. A cold shiver went down Sasuke´s spine. A sudden realization that his resolution was to become real, he was about to be either locked for life, exiled from the country of fire or just plain death sentence. He stood frozen in his place, he wasn’t exactly afraid, he wasn’t a coward. The feeling was closer to that of nausea, he had hated the village for so long he didn’t have any other feeling for it up until that moment.

“Sasuke?” Sakura had noticed the moment he stopped moving. She was kind enough to stay by his side in silence.

They stood a couple of minutes right when he took a heavy sigh and started moving again. Whatever was going to happen was out of his control, trying to fix something that was yet to happen was meaningless, so he just kept moving.

The rest of the way they kept silent. It was heavy but not uncomfortable exactly. It was like having a peak into the future and then coming back, it was a feeling similar to knowing you had already lost, that you had failed at everything but you were not there yet, so the only thing left to do was reach that point and have the weight of your defeat be dumped on top of you. But even with all that he didn’t feel bad, he knew he still had, at the very least, two teammates that had gone to the end of the world and back for him, they were not about to give up on him just yet, he knew he wasn’t alone. But he felt that way despite having that knowledge.

The gate grew larger each step he took, imponent and inescapable.

The entrance back was organized as followed; The first group of more delicate soldiers were to reach the hospital immediately. Once the shinobis in need of medical attention were in the hospital, the third group would stay stationed near the entrance acting like a filter, deciding who, from the second group, was fit to go home and who had to take a break, who would be able to help the injured and who would be designated to keep building facilities if needed. It would have been a disaster, had it not been for a blond head screaming to the top of his longs encouraging everyone and organizing the entry through the gates.

Sakura and Sasuke sat near a tree waiting for the first group to go through. Sakura was getting ready to enter when a particular gray head was approaching them from the sea of people. His sensei no longer had a sharingan but the scar adorning his left eye was visible to everyone now. Sasuke would lie if he said he wasn’t uncomfortable near his teacher. Was there even one single person in this village that had not tried to assassinate him or the other way around?

“Sakura you can’t go inside yet” Kakashi said, almost ignoring Sasuke had it not been for a polite nod he gave him after talking to Sakura.

“What do you mean? I´m a medic nin, I am supposed to head directly to the hospital once the first group is through”

“Just trust me, no one is expecting you right now, but after you cross that gate, head to the hospital… just wait a little longer until people scatter, which, could take a while” he then directed his gaze to Sasuke. “You as well, until the area is cleared please stay here for a while. I need to head back but trust me”

Seating by the tree was agonizing, he was so close, and yet, here he was, about 20 meters away from the gate, “talking” with the girl next to him. Their talks consisted mainly on Sakura making some kind of comment and Sasuke agreeing to it with a small “hn” or the every so spicy “yeah”. That was until Sakura said something out of the ordinary, something he had wished never to discuss with her at all.

“You know… I really thought I loved you for a very long time” She said in a very monotone voice, calm, with almost no feeling behind it. “I had convinced myself that I loved you and the only reason you didn’t like me was because I was weak…”

Sasuke didn’t know what to say, he remained in silence fearing what was to come. He expected anger, a series of questions of “why didn’t you love me back?”, “what was I lacking?”, and possibly the worst one; “What can I do for you to love me back?”.

“I’m sorry, for how I acted for so long” That… took him by surprise. “It must have been uncomfortable to you… I should have been a friend to you and instead I was a virus. Always clinging to you despite you not wanting me there I am so sorry”

“Sakura you- “

“But what I really want to apologize for is … for the night you left the village. I compared the worst thing that ever happened to you to… you leaving me alone. I didn’t know, I am truly sorry. No wonder you didn’t stay, what kind of comparison was that? I was so selfish and mean without thinking about how you felt. I only cared about my feelings and my crush on you that I never really stopped myself to ask… did you even like me at all?” She had been calm all through her declaration, no tears, no cracking in her voice, she had obviously thought about this for a very long time. “I’m sorry I wasn’t a friend to you”

Her words meant more to him than wanted to admit. He stared at her and for the first time he thought of her as a comrade. He gave her a small smile and looked down. Then looked up again at the gates, even if he wanted to try, once he went through those gates, everything was over. As if Sakura could read his mind, she placed a hand in his shoulder. Strangely enough that was the first time in a long time they touch without an ill intent.

“Don’t worry about what is going to happen, he is going to make sure you are safe. Even when you were away, he had always looked after you, now that you are finally here, he won’t allow anyone to touch you” Him again, the only constant in his life. Sasuke felt warm, and from that moment on, talking to Sakura was easier and honestly, more enjoyable, they talked about current events mainly, about how much the crowd of people had disappeared and how many of the members of Konoha´s eleven were helping. That spiral into her new Chunin rank and even a little joke about how Sasuke was still a Gennin.

“Ok kids, are you ready to enter?” Kakashi interrupted their memory of D Rank missions and the catching of many felines in their days. “There are only few of us who need to go inside so let’s go”

Approaching the gate was somber to say the least. He had reassurance again and again about how everything was going to be ok, people still thinking he was afraid of Konoha when in reality, he felt nothing for the village, its people, and their history. They hadn’t deserved his forgiveness then so why now? People think he was afraid for what they would to him, they were wrong, he was afraid of what he was capable of doing to the village. Once he had drowned in hatred and disdain for this peace of land, so being back again had awaked terrible feelings.

He was mere steps from entering. He remembered his team, his brother, the day he left, the day he killed Itachi, the day he swore vengeance against the leaf, but most importantly, his resolution. He remembered the pain in his arm, the warm blood leaving his body and every other aching part of his body. But he also remembered the golden hair beside him, his words filled with heartache, and promises, and so much devotion. At that moment Sasuke swore to himself “I´ll never let anyone hurt you… I won’t run from you again; I won’t make life difficult for you again. From here on out, I´ll make sure you don’t suffer because of the likes of me”. The reason he was truly there.

“STOP!” and so he did, he was a few steps form the gate, he turned back and saw him running up to them. One arm waving them, pleading to reman where they were.

“What are you waiting for you idiot?” Sakura asked him once he had reached the entrance. “What is the big idea?”

“Just let him do his thing Sakura, he has been waiting for this moment for over 4 years” Kakashi approached them. In front of them stood the most annoying, untalented, loud-mouth idiot ever. And the three of them waited and listened to whatever he had to say.

“Almost five years ago, in this same gate I made a promise to you Sakura” So this is where he was going. “I promised you I would bring back Sasuke” he looked at the black-haired boy with a smile. “It took me five years, fighting a war, fighting a GOD, and one arm, but finally… Sakura, here I fulfill my promise, I have brought back Uchiha Sasuke!” his hand motioned to him.

Sakura looked like a mess, tears leaving her face in heavy cascades. She ran up to hug him, calling him an idiot and thanking her for everything. The most charming, trusted, and beloved idiot had never gave up on him. Kakashi stood close to him.

“He had been planning this since we were near the gate”

“I assume this is why you stopped us from entering” His teacher only smiled ate him. Sometimes he wandered how was his teacher able to demonstrate his emotions when literally half his face was covered.

Sasuke looked back at Naruto, he and Sakura were now looking at him, waiting for him to cross the gate, finally.

“Naruto…” Sasuke stared at him “aren’t you going to say it?” he smiled smugly.

“Say what?” Naruto looked at Sakura and Kakashi, has he missed something? Oh, right. “Oh right… just remember you asked for it.” He stepped away from Sakura, approached Sasuke until he was a few meters away from him, Naruto took a big breath and screamed from the bottom of his lungs.

“UCHIHA SASUKE, WELCOME HOME!!!” his scream was loud, so loud in fact that the few people around stared back at the four dumbasses in the gate. Kakashi and Sakura stared at him fully embarrassed of being near the blond idiot, that was until.

“UZUMAKI NARUTO!” They looked back at Sasuke, the most out of character for him to that point was screaming the other boys name at the top of his lungs. “IM HOME!” He finished finally.

Naruto ran up to him, embracing awkwardly with one arm and almost loosing balance, ugly crying and laughs were coming out of Naruto while Sasuke embraced Naruto with a smile. This was his home, afraid of the village? Afraid of the future? How could he fear anything when this beautiful person was right beside him? Sakura and Kakashi leaned into the hug even more awkwardly than it had been before. If people had seen them, most of them would be confused and thrown off. To the people that knew, well, they just knew.

Uchiha Sasuke was home.

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So yeah, this is the first, sorry for the grammar

#sasunaru #fanfic #sns #naruto #sakura #kakashi #sasuke #canon sucks so here it is #english is not my first language so forgive my bad grammar

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alison-anonymous · 4 years

Text

flawsome bandits pt. 9 ♡ sonic

Flawsome Security

I AM BACK!!! This chapter may be a bit short, but it’s just because this is the second half of the story and I needed to introduce some new concepts!

I have brought you all some more Flawsome Bandits for you special little darlings <3 I got a little excited and wrote an entire plot line for the rest of this story in a day, and I just finished writing this part tonight! So the next update might come soon, the next chapter is a bit more complicated so I still have to figure out how to write it. I hope you all enjoy this new chapter, and please let me know if there is anything or anyone you would like to see in the chapters to come! I love you all and please let me know what you think!

Warnings - some hEaRtWrEnChInG fluff

♡♡♡

Five months later…

If Y/n had to pick one period of her life where everything was perfect, it would be this one.

It had been five months since the great attack between Y/n, Sonic, and Dr. Robotnik had occurred and no one had seen or heard a thing about the crazy man in ages. While Y/n and Sonic had been staying in isolation inside the Wachowski residence, the government was sweeping the streets and subtly interrogating citizens in order to see if they had any knowledge of their whereabouts. After a couple of months, they eventually gave up and plopped the case into the cold. Once things were finally deemed safe, and after a thorough inspection by Tom, Y/n and Sonic were able to roam about Green Hills freely again.

You would think that the people would freak out a little bit whenever they saw two alien hedgehogs walking down the streets, cracking weird jokes and singing or zipping around the place. But they actually saw the two as their own special town heroes; like they had their own unique Superman and Superwoman. Y/n was even asked to start helping Crazy Carl again in his notorious escapades of eliminating all the racoons, who he claimed were secretly geniuses and were rummaging through our trash to find anything valuable to power their supercomputers.

I mean… he was right about Sonic, so why not give him a chance?

Sonic was even asked to help around the bakeries and grocers with some doordash delivery services, making some extra cash for his Less Than 3 Seconds delivery service. He liked to brag about the fact that he could take literally anything from the store and hardly anyone would bat an eye. This also meant that anytime Y/n even mentioned that she needed something, he would disappear and then be back in a blink holding that exact thing. With Sonic and Y/n being able to make some extra cash helping around, it encouraged Tom and Maddie to work even harder at their jobs as well. Tom reclaimed his throne as Green Hills’ favorite cop, and Maddie went back to the pet hospital. The shared strange experiences that the four had encountered only proceeded to bond them together to form an even tighter family than they ever were before. Tom and Maddie had to admit that it did take them a while to get used to Y/n’s true form, but they loved every inch of her and were simply happy that she was happy.

Of course, enrolling them into public school was still a huge no, so they kept up the homeschooling as well. Knowing Sonic, he caught up to Y/n super fast, and it wasn’t too long before the two were helping each other Quick Study using flash cards and exercising at the same time. Speaking of their relationship, Tom had finally listened to Maddie and backed off a little bit to give room for their relationship to flourish. Because hey, if Y/n’s boyfriend was living under his roof, then he could control him like a puppet if he ever did anything to hurt her, right?

But… there was one teeny tiny, itsy bitsy little problem.

Y/n and Sonic never talked about… that night. You know. When they said “I love you.” Of course, they had always planned on it. But they were never quite able to find the right time. Just as they were about to get ready for the talk, Tom or Maddie would walk in or they would suddenly remember needing to do something and race off without even thinking. Maybe they were subconsciously intentionally avoiding the subject. It was a pretty intense conversation after all, and the damper as to whether or not the other had changed their mind always remained a prominent issue.

Fear is very debilitating, you know.

But their feelings were growing stronger by the day. Every second that they spent with one another was a moment that they never wanted to end. This evening was one of those moments.

Tom and Maddie had been invited out to dinner with some of Tom’s work buddies and their wives, so while they were out drinking finely aged wine and trying to figure out what the best angle was to bite on some cheese bread, Y/n and Sonic had the house to themselves.

Of course, Ozzy was their chaperone.

The two had planned an amazing afternoon of relaxation by plucking out a huge pile of movies to watch until they passed out from exhaustion. Most of them consisted of horribly rated horror movies so that they could make fun of them, while others consisted of action and romcoms that you just had to watch one more time. They had decided to take a break to make themselves a nice and healthy dinner, just like Tom and Maddie had wanted them to. It ended up looking more like an ice cream sundae, filled with (favorite ice cream), banana slices, sprinkles, chocolate syrup, waffle cookies, and a bunch of other stuff that Sonic had thrown in there.

“Oh, damnit,” Y/n sighed as she stood on the kitchen counter, arms holding the cabinet doors open. “We don’t have any Eggos.”

“Fret not, M’Lady,” Sonic cried dramatically from his spot on the kitchen island. His green eyes sparkled with excitement as Y/n chuckled, her cheeks turning red at the nickname. He had gotten a bit too into the fantasy movie they had just finished watching. “Your hero is here!”

And in a blue flash, he was gone. In the time that it took Y/n to blink, he was already back, holding three packs of her favorite kind of Eggos in his arms. He tossed two of them in the fridge and held one package out to her proudly.

“Why, thank you, Sonic,” she giggled, deciding to keep her mythical accent in order to please him. Her gloved hand brushed against his as she took the pack out of his hands, a little flicker of electricity excitedly floating across their skin at the contact. She quickly ripped it open and plopped two of the waffles onto the sundae, smiling proudly.

“Dinner!”

Another dozen switched positions on the couch and two more movies in, Y/n and Sonic finally ended up settling on The Conjuring. Their bellies were full of junk food and were covered up with soft blankets as they huddled together. There were a few jumpscared that actually got Y/n, but for the most part the only tension came from the decreasing distance between the two hedgehogs. Just as the credits were rolling across the screen, Sonic had wrapped his arm around Y/n’s shoulders in a totally casual manner. They listened silently to the eerie music as the actors went floating up the darkened screen. Ozzy lay passed out on the floor in front of them, next to the coffee table that held all of their dirty dishes. Y/n’s heart began to pound and her stomach felt like it was going to crawl up and spew out of her mouth as she finally turned her head to face Sonic.

“Hey, Son…?”

“Yeah?” He turned to her, the darkened screen making his emerald eyes grow paranormally in the dark. Hers were doing the same. They scooted away just an inch or two so that they were facing one another, Sonic’s arm still splayed across the back of the couch as he looked at her with curious, yet affectionate eyes. Y/n cleared her throat, trying to figure out how she wanted to begin this. It was now or never, right? And they had already waited for quite some time.

“I… I know that we never really talked about… um… you know,” she silently kicked herself for making things so awkward, but her nerves were getting the better of her. She could practically feel her tail shaking behind her. “I meant what I said. And I need to know if you did too…” Her heart was pounding so rapidly she could barely think over the sound, nerves skyrocketing through the roof. E/c eyes began to fill with a mixture of hope and fear as she looked up into Sonic’s emerald ones. His mouth opened and shut like a fish, void of any sound. She could only fear the worst… he didn’t mean it. He didn’t care about her the way that she did about him, did he? He secretly hated h-

“Of course I meant it! Y/n, I’ve been in love with you for as long as I can remember. I guess I just never really realized it until now,” He gave her a sheepish smile, his seriousness being a completely new side of him that only ever came out when he was sincere about something. Y/n felt the butterflies go nuts in her stomach, a blush rising across her cheeks. “I think we both know that we’re kind of entirely new to this, but I was just afraid to ruin things between us. We’ve been running for most of our lives, never really having a place to call our home. But throughout all of the hard times and adventures we’ve been through, you were the one constant. Whenever I look at you…” Sonic’s emerald gaze softened as a loving smile game across his lips. “I’m home.”

A huge grin took over Y/n’s face, her eyes beginning to fill with tears of happiness. “Sonic… you’re my home, too.” Before he had a chance to say more beautiful things to make her heart melt, she threw her arms around his furry neck and buried her head in his neck. Sonic was quick to return the gesture, wrapping his arms around her waist and hugging her tightly. It felt like cloud nine being there with one another, knowing that they felt the same. That they would make things work just like they always did. They fat together like two pieces of a puzzle; the one person that they could never get tired of. The one person that they loved everything about. The one person who was their home. Home never truly was just one place, was it?

It was them.

“Okay, okay,” Y/n slowly breathed as they finally pulled apart. She ran a nervous gloved hand through her quills and gave him a bashful smile. “We’ll take things slow? Since we’re so new to this and everything.” Sonic eagerly nodded.

“Yes! I mean, yeah sure,” he attempted to play it cool by leaning back against the couch, but his excitement remained ever present in his eyes every time he looked at her. “Slow. Oh, and um, how are we going to make sure Donut Lord doesn’t kill me?”

Y/n giggled, moving closer to her partner and snuggling up into his side. Sonic happily obliged by wrapping his one arm around her and pulling her closer into him. The warmth of his body heat made her never want to leave as she hummed softly to lift the TV remote over to hand.

“You let me take care of that. By the way, Conjuring? Yay or nay?”

“Oh my god, don’t even get me started! First of all, every single person in here is suffering from an extreme lack of Snickers. Like seriously. They just ain’t themselves when they’re hungry.”

♡♡♡

At around eleven o’clock, Maddie and Tom Wachowski quietly slipped through their front door. After the very interesting dinner with their friends, the gang had wanted to go out and get some drinks. Seeing no way out of it, they decided to tag along. It was only when Wade tried to strip and ride a mechanical bull at the same time that they called it a night. They knew Y/n and Sonic well enough to figure that they would have passed out on the couch watching movies, and their suspicions were confirmed when they saw the TV still flashing scenes from Dead Silence across the quiet living room.

The couple quietly made their way into the hall and peered into the room to see the two hedgehogs passed out on the couch. Sonic lay on his back with his arms wrapped around Y/n, whose head rested on his chest and her legs were splayed across the other half of the couch. The sight was so adorable that it brought Maddie back to her young love days as she pressed a hand against her chest. A smile formed across her face as she watched the steady rise and fall of their breathing. Unfortunately, Tom was not quite as happy.

“W-what the hell?” His grip on their leftovers tightened as he stared daggers at Sonic’s arm wrapped tightly around his daughter’s waist. “Please tell me I’m dreaming.”

“Oh, come on, Tom,” Maddie playfully smacked him in the chest. “They’re just kids. They’ve known each other their whole life, remember?” Tom let out a defeated huff, but his lips were still edged in a frown.

“But… that’s my daughter right there. And that’s a boy. With his arm. Doing things.” He turned to stare intensely at his wife. “Things I don’t like.”

Maddie laughed quietly at his expression, and grabbed his arm to tug him with her into the kitchen. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to take off these high heels that feel like nails and take a nice long bath while you put the leftovers away and raid the icebox to see if we still have those macaroons the kids got us for Valentine’s day.” She pecked him on the cheek, a warm smile floating across her lips as she looked him in the eyes. “Okay?”

“Y-yes ma’am.” Years of being married, and Maddie was still able to catch him off guard.

♡♡♡

A couple hours later, the house had fallen completely silent. Even Ozzy’s snoring had ceased to an open mouthed whistle as he lay on his stomach, belly exposed to the air of the living room. Maddie and Tom lay fast asleep under the covers of their bed, and Y/n and Sonic remained asleep on the couch. Everything was silent until a slow, melodic tune floated through the air.

Y/n stirred on Sonic’s chest. She unconsciously buried her head deeper into his fur in an attempt to float back into the REM cycle. But the tune came once again, this time more forcefully. Demanding attention. When it realized Y/n was still asleep, it wafted through the air, this time louder.

Y/n’s e/c eyes popped open. She gulped, recognizing the sound instantly. Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Last time she acknowledged the sound, it shot her on a brand new adventure in which she almost lost the love of her life. She turned her head back to Sonic’s chest, pointedly glaring at the air around her in hopes that whatever it was would get the hint. A couple of moments passed in silence, and her heartbeat finally slowed. Her eyelids gradually fluttered closed.

Ah~, ah~...

♡ a.a.

#sonic #sonic x reader #sonic imagines #sonic the hedgehog #sonic the hedgehog x reader #sonic the hedgehog imagines #sonic the hedgehog 2020 #sonic the hedgehog 2020 x reader #sonic the hedgehog 2020 imagines #sonic the hedgehog movie #sonic the hedgehog movie x reader #flawsome bandits #sonic the hedgehog 2020 sequel

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officialtrashbin · 4 years

Text

Scraps of Dreams

Commission for anonymous who wanted Corvus x Proxima smut! (Did I mention commissions are open again? Cause they are!)

Rating: Explicit (aka shameless smut) Corvus x Proxima or: Thanos: Death Sentence left their sexual tension unresolved so I fixed it. Anon wanted Corvus to be more dominant and give his wife a little TLC.

* * * * *

The hotel room they lent him was fifty stories above what could be considered ground-level for a city that felt built into a fault line, with streets and skyscrapers varied in length and curvature like personal desire, not reflective of an idea but of a transitive notion of accomplishment in its smallest form to amass into something bigger than mere individual value. Corvus Glaive supposed the want to leave proof of one’s existence in the universe stemmed from the underlying oppression of meaninglessness. To find purpose or to forge it.

It came as no surprise when he thought it all a waste.

* * *

They didn’t talk about what transpired today. Not the emotional ups and downs, or the political navigations, or the pathetic mess Corvus had been afterwards, realizing he might have finally reclaimed his destiny at his rightful Master’s side. It was difficult to process, let alone address, the hazardous accumulation of transgressive narrative from the last few hours. In fact, it felt like an utter chore to say anything at all.

Proxima had her body turned away from him as she undressed in favor of clothes that reminded him suddenly of their normalcy; he didn’t have to see her face to know her exhaustion was present, palpable, even, with how she moved like her limbs were filled under their surface with water. In the low light from the fluorescence of the city outside, her body took on the quality of water, too—translucent blue, hair rolling up and crashing down across her back, her motions so overstated by the constant occurrence of mere existence he wondered if he might just buckle under the weight of her enormity.

“Oh, Midnight—”

It had been so terribly quiet. His words shattered the very foundation of stillness. She snapped her attention to him, eyes widened, doe-like, in the low ambiance of illumination.

“Yes, my love?”

Corvus was beyond modesty, especially in the dark, where the shadows accrued across his lithe chest to replace the cloak he’d left thrown carelessly on the desk chair. He knew his horrible visage was worsened in the night. A beast by nature, or by universal law to counterbalance all the do-gooders that were compelled beyond his understanding to Make Things Right, assembled of equal parts horrible intent and predatory design. Maybe he was merely accustomed to justifying his own happenstance.

He said to her, “I think I will never know if I’m making the correct decisions,” and thought of the time he’d seen Black Dwarf break open a Shi’ar’s ribcage to expose their tender, beating heart, and the way it jolted, jolted, jolted in its meaty cocoon. The explicit, horrible vulnerability. “I think I will never know certainty again. What am I supposed to do when my life has been devoted to all that which has amounted to nothing?”

Proxima approached him slowly. She was the opposite of hesitation, always moving and speaking and thinking with the same absolution of momentum; a constant force awaiting a collision regardless of pace.

“My darling,” she whispered to him in the dark, her hands framing his face. “Am I nothing?”

They hadn’t been alone with each other in nearly five standard months. He’d been reminded of his loneliness when they reunited, albeit briefly, earlier that day—the swollen warmth of her mouth, the bend of her skin in his hands, their insatiable togetherness under the veil of his office shadows.

“That is not what I meant,” he said, stroking her cheek with his thumb. Without his gauntlets or battlesuit to disrupt their closeness, he could feel the lingering static of her power traversing the neurons under her skin, jumping to his fingertips by proximity. Something inside him unknotted. “No, you aren’t. Of course you aren’t.”

“But are you?”

That was how he felt, sometimes, when he wasn’t in her presence. “No,” he said, pressing lazy kisses along the length of her jawline, noting the dampness of her scent with each sudden intake of breath. “Yet, as of late—”

One of her hands went to the back of his head and anchored him in place. Their exposed skins, gray-on-blue, blue-on-gray, melded together, indistinguishable in the low light, in the encompassing darkness. “We are trying to get our footing,” she said. Her logic (and, he thought softly, her love for him) stood as a counterpoint to all the instances in his life that made him feel less than what he’d earned. “No matter where we are, when we are, or why—you are everything to me.”

He trembled in her embrace. He wanted to echo her words, to intake the sanctity of their marriage and every little fulfillment, and transpose it all into the atrocities of war, or of whatever was required of him, with or without purpose; to tear, to maim, to love. The truth of them.

“I am nothing without you,” he said, his mouth hot against her skin. His confession rang through her mind clear as a bell struck calmly and with total acceptance. “Oh, my dear Midnight.”

His teeth captured the soft junction of her neck, stimulating her nerves. She groaned at the reception of the desperate, self-contained violence in his actions. He bit her hard but not hard enough, the method of practiced power that didn’t hurt when it so easily could. Her leg entwined with his. Her fingers curled against his ribs, splaying out where she could feel his pulse fluttering beneath hard bone.

The wet heat of her lips pressed to the blade embedded in his skull, which tethered him to his unending existence, and he reasoned there wasn’t any meaning in that either.

“Take me to bed.”

* * *

Most times, the victor was decided by the basis of conviction alone, filling the precious time allotted to them with little, violent tendencies until one surrendered the struggle. If they hadn’t been interrupted by their Kree escort earlier in the office, Corvus suspected he would have retained the utter dominance that compelled his desire to make Proxima come for him right there against the wall. But he was so debilitated by exhaustion that his sense of time skewed at the edges where one memory met another, and it felt to him like that morning occurred in an entirely different time and place. He didn’t have the energy reserves in him to instigate or resist.

Proxima pushed him easily up against the cool metal that composed the headboard. She must have noticed his absence of strength because he saw the way her head tilted in silent questioning, suspending her weight above his left thigh. “My love?” she said, stroking the centerfold of his chest with her forefinger.

“Your beauty is distracting.”

Her thumb slipped into the waistband of his undershorts, running casually over the jut of his hipbone and raising bumps on his ash-gray skin. “I can be distracting in other ways.”

It felt natural to be alone with her again. He growled low in his chest, and his hands worked their way up her sides to her full breasts, contrasting her rain-cold skin with the dry heat of his palms. “I’ve missed you terribly,” he said, kissing the center of her sternum. “I often refrain from asking too much, however—”

“You can ask anything of me.”

“Then I want to enjoy this night. I want to worship you.” His hands went to her hips and he pushed her back, meeting only a moment of resistance from her weight before she submitted to his motions. He laid them out across the bed, which became, he thought, suddenly too small for the conjoined mass of them both. “Slow,” he added. “It’s been too long since I’ve given you all of me.”

Proxima’s expression was one of knowing. She guided his chin down and kissed him, always combative by fault of genetic disposition, her tongue pushing against his own and her teeth working at his bottom lip; she brought them so easily together in the privacy of a room he’d slept in for months alone, not easily, and only out of necessity.

Corvus gazed at her as she worked his mouth open, but she must have sensed his attention was on her because the pads of her thumbs pressed against his eyelids, forcing them closed. He became acutely aware of the featherlight pressure in her touch and how easily she could crook her fingers and gouge his eyes out. His spine prickled with the anticipation of her lethality.

“We really mustn’t make a habit of being apart for so long,” she told him quietly, when she finally pulled away to settle on her back. Corvus delicately traced the swollen plush of her lower lip, already missing their connection. “I was not beyond taking you in the office, despite the interruption, though that speaks volumes on our lack of common decency.”

Corvus’ forefinger trekked along the curve of her shoulder, following the dip of her chest to her breast. “I should have cut his head from his shoulders and had you anyway.” His fingertip ran the circumference of her areola and she took in a sharp breath. “I care little for decency.”

Proxima groaned when he replicated his motion again, the fondness understated by the sweetness of it, how gentle he was being when he hardly ever was before. “And I care little for your—oh—stalling—”

“Am I distracting you?” he asked, flicking her perked nipple with his tongue.

Proxima’s only answer was a groan, barely emitted but somehow like a sudden gunshot in the stillness of the night. It rattled his entire being. Taking in her sounds and her presence, and threatening to shake apart under the strength of her existence alone.

Corvus’ mouth indulged on her breasts, leaving love bites along the inner blue skin before settling on one nipple, and she arched her spine, pressing closer, telling him without words what she liked (as if he didn’t already possess such intimate knowledge. As if they hadn’t defaced every ship, bed, or closet they’d ever been in just to experience the emotional implications of how desperate they’d been when taking another body against their own). Her legs parted around his waist. One of her hands curled into the threadbare sheets.

Corvus placed his touch everywhere she wanted him to: on her other nipple to ensure they were both treated properly, on a seamed scar above her stomach from stray shrapnel of their first mission together, on the soft inside of her thighs where nerves roped into the junction of her hip. He nipped at the dip of her navel, startling a laugh out of her, and then a frustrated moan when he gently bit the band of her skivvies.

“Corvus, do not tease me, I’m—”

“Enjoying this quite a lot, apparently,” he said coyly, tracing her labia from over her garments with the tips of his fingers, and gathering the wetness that had accumulated. She rolled her hips in countermotion to his hand. “You are as insatiable as you are impatient. Look at me, my love.”

She opened her eyes and gazed down at him, noting the way his eyes flared crimson in the dark. A feeling of ice slid down her spine. “Corvus—”

“Don’t I always give you what you want?”

She hesitated. He kissed the scar on her stomach again, devoting himself to the repetition of ensuring every part of her, especially the damages that made her feel imperfect or skewed, was loved, and she said, “It’s been so very long since we were last together. Don’t you know how I ache?”

“I will remedy that very soon,” he said. “Be patient, Wife. Be patient and I will take care of you.”

She exhaled, sinking into the mattress, into the swirl of sheets, allowing him the ease of her surrender. His mouth was hot against the slope of her crotch and he worked his fingers under the hem of her skivvies, pulling them down her thighs as if shedding a layer of skin. The black fabric slid from her ankles. He bunched the cloth up in his hand and looked down at it in disbelief, realizing in that moment the horrifying fact that he’d been without her for entire weeks of his life—that he had felt for five agonizing months the quiet, enrapturing terror of loneliness in the universe, and wondered how he ever survived before her.

The skivvies were discarded to the floor. He sank easily between her legs, pulling one over his shoulder and bending the other open at the knee. “You’re beautiful, my lady Midnight,” he said, and saw her chest hitch. He transposed his words into his actions—into unfurling his tongue from behind the cage of his teeth and pushing it lovingly against her clit.

Her moan broke the shadows in the room. “Oh, my love…”

Corvus was experienced with how she liked to be treated. Five months wasn’t nearly long enough for him to forget, and muscle memory guided his hands so he was stroking her sides, her hips, her thighs, slow and tender, feeling her muscles flexing under the impressions of his fingertips—and his tongue worked at her opposingly, rough and steady, increasing the pressure and pace of his technique. He alternated the pleasures as he went, stroked her labia, circled her entrance, sucked her bud. Made her louder, made her gasp and roll her hips and utter his name.

Proxima thumbed at one of her nipples, still swollen from Corvus’ treatment, and whined into the dark as the pleasure tumbled through her body. She reached down with her other hand and took his into it, their fingers interlacing, offering a semblance of resistance against her oncoming orgasm. He glanced up from between her thighs, and she must have sensed his intentions because she met his gaze and the look in her eye ignited him inside, like a flare diffusing behind his chest. It was the surest feeling—even in the moments when he doubted this all wasn’t simply, absolutely, the final fleeting memories of his brain in death—that he was truly alive.

Corvus dutifully lavished her with his tongue. He gave her no indication of letting up, forcing her closer to the edge, maintaining his violent, loving pace even as she began to buck her hips against his face, amplifying the friction of his wonderful mouth against her beautiful cunt.

“My love—”

He knew. She didn’t have to say it, but gods did he adore hearing it.

“My love, I want to—”

A warning. A desperate plea. The fire burning low in her belly and raging upwards, burning a bright, hot path throughout her entire being.

“—come for you—”

He growled an acknowledgement, focusing on her clit as her sounds became erratic and loud and deliciously desperate. Her entire body seized up. Corvus had her at the edge and he left her there, right at the peak of coming, for a single moment to take in the pressure of her thighs suddenly around his head, of relishing in the knowledge that he was the only person who could make her feel this way, who could bring Proxima Midnight of the Black Order to the point of begging for release—and he sucked on her clit again, sending her careening into an orgasm so intense she cried out as if in agony, bucking her hips violently while he locked her against him with his other arm across her hips. His tongue stroked her womanhood as she rode through her ecstasy. His name slid from her mouth in a euphoric chant. Her body pulsed with each wave of pleasure; coming undone, falling apart.

Corvus maintained his momentum until she settled into the bed again; he easily released her, redirecting the affections of his mouth to her stomach. She twitched hard beneath him. Groaned and fidgeted and tried to regain control, never once releasing her grasp on his hand.

She came back to herself several long minutes after. “Corvus,” she whispered to him, earning his gaze. His eyes still burned with hunger, though they appeared more calculated—pensive, even, akin to the look of a wolf considering its own brood. He was anticipating her response, obvious as it was: “I have been patient.”

“Yes, you have.” He loomed over her and took in the sight of her hair fanned out beneath them, furling waves of water tinged silver like starlight. She possessed the aura and presence of a goddess, he was certain. A trifecta of beauty and power. The embodiment of mortal absolution sending a king to his knees and all she had to do was look at him.

Corvus wanted to worship her until his final breath.

She said, “I want to have all of you now.”

And she would have all of him, wherever and whenever, for now and for always.

“Oh, Midnight,” he said, taking her into his arms. “Now, and until the end. Forever.”

#corvus x proxima #corvus glaive #proxima midnight #commission fill #proxivus

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johnny-and-dora · 5 years

Text

all was golden in the sky

59. "wow." requested by anonymous in which amy has a (non-die hard related) honeymoon surprise for her husband. (post 6x01)

read on ao3 -

“You ready?” Jake’s favourite voice in the world calls lightly from the en-suite of their hotel room; he pauses briefly to double-tap Gina’s latest photoshoot of Iggy before putting his phone away, eager to give his full attention to whatever ‘surprise’ his brilliant, beautiful wife has for him this time. The soft pink and orange hues of the sunset filter in through the windows and they’re married, they’re actually married and a sea turtle looked right at him earlier and he’s pretty sure he’s never felt more content in his entire life.

“Born ready.”

“Okay – close your eyes. I want to do this properly.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You’re not going to draw on my face, are you?”

“Just do it, Peralta.”

“10-4” He affirms, restraining the urge to tell her it’s technically Santiago now as he dutifully squeezes his eyes shut.

(They haven’t officially decided, yet – double-barrelled, singular, whether they should swap or remain unchanged. Really, Jake doesn’t think that it matters – they don’t need to share a last name to be safe in the knowledge that they’re in this for the long run.)

“Okay, you can open your eyes…now.”

He’s not sure exactly what he’s expecting to see when he does – he’s seen her in beautiful floral dresses and Die Hard cosplay and some seriously stupid hot lingerie over the past two weeks. He’s totally certain that she looks amazing in pretty much everything. And yet, predictably, he can’t help but stare like an idiot as Amy beams at him.

Because standing before him is Amy Santiago in her wedding dress.

Her wedding dress – not the dress that she borrowed from Gina, even though she looked beyond perfect in that too. He knows it’s hers in an instant – it’s so elegant, intricately decorated with the floral patterns she adores only this time delicately embroidered in lace. It compliments her curves perfectly and flows behind her like she’s some kind of awesome badass warrior princess.

“Wow.” It’s the only thing he can manage to stutter out. It’s hard to find the right words – she’s still Amy. Amy, vibrant and brilliant and beautiful in absolutely everything from her pantsuits to her sergeants uniform to her dresses to his hoodie and sweatpants. Yet she’s softer somehow, almost more herself, all her hardships scrubbed away and there’s only her, bright and shining and as golden as the twilight outside currently painting her a halo.

She is completely and utterly radiant.

And, as if all the fates have aligned in the midsummer evening’s sky, she looks like a mermaid.

Her dress makes her look like a mermaid, and it’s almost cruel how vividly he suddenly remembers a money laundering case and a debilitating crush on a girl with a boyfriend and the way he’d shamefully revelled in the tiniest fleeting chance to hold her, to make her laugh, to let her step on his feet. And now they’re here, on their honeymoon, and so unbelievably deliriously happy.

Jake can’t believe just how lucky he is.

“Done staring yet?” She teases, bringing him out of his reverie, eyes glittering with soft amusement.

“You look incredible, Ames.” He grins – she blushes and does a dorky theatrical twirl for his benefit and yeah, that confirms it. He’s so lucky.

“Man. Have I mentioned that I love your butt?”

“It may have come up once or twice.” She laughs; he shifts his weight to make room for her in the bed and she settles down beside him and okay, now he’s really never felt more content.

“I was packing and I just realised – you never got to see me in it. And well…I don’t know. It just felt important, somehow.” His heart breaks a little thinking about everything they missed out on. Their wedding was never going to be traditional, but it’s hard not to mourn the day he’d spent so long building up such a vivid picture of in his head. He shifts his weight to make room for her in the bed and she settles down beside him.

“I’m sorry.” He wants to say more, but when she meets his gaze Jake can tell that she already understands- it must be the psychic powers you get when you marry the love of your life.

“Hey, don’t apologise. It wasn’t your fault.” She moves to take his hand and squeezes it gently – the glint of silver on her hand catches his eye and he absentmindedly twists the ring on his own finger. He’s not quite used to the weight of it yet and he’s almost lost it twice and he never ever wants to take it off.

“I know. I’m still sorry. All that planning and effort you put in…”

“First of all, that wasn’t just me. You did so much, it would have been impossible without you. And second of all, you were right. All that planning didn’t matter because at the end of the day all that mattered was that I got to marry you.” The sincere affection Amy pours into her gaze tears through every single last one of his fears. “I know we joked about the dumpster but I seriously would have clambered into one if that was our only option.”

If there was ever the tiniest shred of doubt that she was his soulmate, it’s lost to the wind now. The exact right way to tell her that is lost to him for the moment, though, so instead, he kisses her tenderly and it seems to pretty successfully articulate what he was going for.

“Just for the record, you could have worn a garbage bag down the aisle and still looked totally perfect.”

“I can’t believe less than a month of marriage has made you this cheesy.” She pokes his shoulder playfully.

“I just…It’s so us, y’know? Like, of course, our wedding day was casually interrupted by a bomb scare and we just got on with it and had a beautiful ceremony anyway.”

“I think we’re pretty much indestructible at this point.” She says; he hums appreciatively as she nestles closer into him and now he’s really, truly certain that he’s never felt more content. It makes their terrible, agonising separations seem trivial now, the rings on their fingers a defiant and tangible promise that they’ll never really be apart again.

“Indestructible.” Jake grins. “I like the sound of that.”

#b99 #b99 fic #peraltiago #jake x amy #my writing #happy two years since halloveen please enjoy this shameless fluff #shut up sian #sian does prompts #can you believe i'm still going with these from february? i can #they're MARRIED and they're going to have a child okay bye

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lisatelramor · 4 years

Text

Truth and Lies

I’ve wanted to write something for FF15 since I started playing the game and reading fic, but hadn’t had any ideas my brain latched onto. So here, finally, is something it deigned to write. @vulcansdarkest, hope you enjoy <3 (It’s not detective!Ignis, but it is Ignis-centric ^_^ ) To everyone in quarantine or living their lives, hope you can keep safe!

***

“I’m bored,” Noctis groaned, flat on his back in the tent. It was raining outside as it had been all evening. Ordinarily, this would mean a round of King’s Knight, but their phones were on the last dregs of battery life after days of hiking in the wilderness. Their second-best option would have been a card game, but a mishap during one of Noctis’s fishing marathons had taken away that option.

“Read a book,” Gladio said, tossing one of his paperbacks at Noctis’s head.

“Ow! Not all of us are into whatever historical epic-romantic whatever you’re reading at the moment,” Noctis grumbled tossing the book into the Armiger.

Ignis was about to suggest Noctis help go over their inventory and funds if he had such a dire need to keep himself engaged when Prompto sat bolt upright with a wide grin.

“Ooh, I got an idea!” He pulled something out of the Armiger and set it on the tent floor with a soft thump. “Ta-dah! We could play a drinking game!”

“Prompto,” Ignis said looking over the bottle of high proof vodka he’d pulled out. “Where did you get the funds for that?”

“Psh, I didn’t raid our budget, Iggy,” Prompto said with a wave of his hand. “I sold off some bits and bobs I collected a while back. Sometimes you can find neat stuff near all those fishing spots. I figured it might be nice to relax and have a drink once in a while.”

“I’m not sure we can really afford a night of drunken revelry,” Ignis said, though it was tempting. They’d been working hard lately, pulling hunt after hunt to gather up a better buffer of money. And when they weren’t doing that, they were looking for any hint of a royal tomb around them. It was wearing them ragged even when they weren’t roughing it camping for over a week straight.

“Please?” Prompto asked with the puppy eyes that were far more effective on all of them than they would ever admit to Prompto lest he abuse them. “It doesn’t have to be drunk-drunk, just like, a few shots?”

Gladio examined the bottle. “Vodka’s crap, but you got a less shitty brand so, sure, sign me up. Noct?”

“Sounds better than staring at the tent ceiling,” Noctis said.

Outnumbered three to one, Ignis sighed. “Very well, but we’re not drinking straight vodka.” He had a can or two of fruit juice in the Armiger to water it down with.

“Yes!” Prompto did a little seated dance. “Ok, what’re we playing? Never have I ever? Buzz? Most likely?”

“Dude do you just have a list of drinking games you want to play?” Noctis asked.

“Uh, maybe if you’d have come to one of the parties in school you’d recognize them.”

“Yeah, that was never going to happen back then and you know it.”

Prompto pouted and Ignis and Gladio exchanged an amused look. Ignis pulled out juice and a carafe and started mixing the alcohol. “Well it’s not like we can do the games with other props,” Prompto said after a moment. “No cards. No cups and balls for beer pong. Not drunk enough for the games like Thump.”

“I can’t even remotely imagine what any of those games are with names like that,” Noctis said with a yawn. “Hey Ignis, what game do you think?”

“Well, considering there’s only four of us and we don’t have props, games like never have I ever are probably the better choice. Although given how many shared experiences we have here…” Everyone grimaced. Between growing up together in the citadel to running around all of Lucis on this trip, Prompto would likely get them all drunk very fast on the sheer principle that he had more unique personal experiences that the rest of them lacked. But a game that involved talking was more or less a given. “How about… two truths and a lie?”

“Not truth or dare?” Prompto asked.

Ignis gave him a look. “With everyone’s competitive streak and magic to fuel drunken shenanigans, I think not introducing the possibility of wild dares is the best option.”

“Ok, yeah, fair enough.”

Ignis still remembered a memorable occasion where Noctis got stuck on a roof when he was still new to warping thanks to one of Gladio’s dares. They were not going that route. “Besides, two truths and a lie will be a good test to see how well we actually know each other.”

Prompto sighed. “Dude, you guys all grew up together. Kinda rigged.”

“And yet we have very little knowledge of your life,” Ignis countered. “So if any of us has an advantage, it’s Noctis for knowing all of us.”

“Ooh, good point. Guess it works in the name of bonding.” Prompto grinned. “Gonna know you guys better than I know myself at the end of this trip.”

“Quite.” This hadn’t been what any of them expected when they left but leave it to Prompto to find a glimmer of brightness in the mess. “Here’s how we’ll play: we each have a cup, no more than two helpings of the drink to work with, and will take turns telling various facts and lies while the next person in the circle guesses which was the truth or lie. If they guess wrong, they take a drink, if they guess right, the person whose turn it was takes a drink. When you run out of alcohol, you’re out of the game. Does this seem fair?”

“Geeze, Iggy, that’s a lot of rules for a drinking game,” Prompto says. “But sure, sounds great, gimme the booze!”

Ignis rolled his eyes and handed around glasses of vodka mixture.

Gladio sniffed it. “Smells more like juice than vodka.”

“The point is not to have a debilitating hangover tomorrow,” Ignis said drily.

“Ok, but those two are lightweights and I have an iron liver.”

Ignis rolled his eyes again and added a shot to Gladio’s cup. “Is that satisfactory?”

Gladio grinned. “Yeah, that’s a bit more like it. Now who goes first?”

“Specs,” Noctis said, sniffing his own cup with a wrinkle of his nose. “Since you chose the game.”

“Very well.” Ignis sat in their loose circle. Two truths and a lie… “I speak six languages, I stabbed a man when I was five, and I can do a backflip in heels.” He looked pointedly to his left at Prompto.

“Damn, starting things out on hard mode,” Prompto said with a grimace. “Uh… The flip in heels is the lie?”

Ignis smirked.

“Aw man.” Prompto took a drink. He at least didn’t seem to dislike the taste. “Wait, you can do a flip in high heels?” A beat. “You’ve worn high heels?”

Ignis kept smirking.

“Iggy!” Prompto groaned. “What was the lie?”

“He only speaks three languages,” Gladio said. “He can read six. I don’t remember you stabbing anyone when you were five though.”

“It was an accident learning how to use daggers.” Ignis’s lips tilted into a real smile. “I never said I stabbed someone purposefully.”

“None of you are surprised by the heels?” Prompto asked.

Noctis and Gladio exchange a look. “A bet,” they said in unison. “Though only Ignis would take it as a challenge to master movement in high heels in general,” Noctis added.

“One never knows if that skill might be useful,” Ignis said. He wasn’t exactly going to admit that he’d liked how they’d accentuated his legs.

“The more ya know,” Prompto said. “Okay. My turn! Uh, lesse…” He tapped his cup absently. “My first kiss was with Jessia from eighth grade, I love cucumbers, and I have a whole USB filled with nothing but dog pictures.”

Noctis pointed at Prompto. “The first kiss is the lie.”

“Bzzzt,” Prompto said.

“What? You’d have told me if you’d had your first kiss!”

“Dude, I had it before we were friends. Also, like, it went horribly and she never talked to me again so I don’t really bring it up much.”

“Wait, so either you don’t have a USB of dog photos—which you totally do—or you secretly hate cucumbers? I thought you liked vegetables.”

“I eat healthy cuz it’s healthy not cuz I like all of it,” Prompto said. “You should try it.”

“Pass.”

Ignis made a mental note to avoid giving Prompto anything with cucumber in the future. “Drink up, Noct,” Ignis said when Noctis kept giving Prompto a look like he’d just destroyed one of the pillars of his understanding.

Noctis rolled his eyes and took a swig. “Whatever. Ok, Gladio. My favorite character in King’s Knight is Toby, I once pet a cat that had ten toes on each paw, and I caught a two-headed fish one time.”

Gladio raised an eyebrow. “That’s not even hard. You’d have talked our ears off if you caught a two-headed fish.”

“Eh, fair enough.” Noctis took another swallow of his drink.

“You just want to get drunk, don’t you?” Gladio said, amused. “My turn. I can bench a hundred and twenty kilos, on one of my camping trips I hiked forty kilometers in one day, and I once ate eight cup noodles in one sitting.”

Ignis hummed, turning the numbers over in his head.

“You know,” Prompto said, “I honestly would believe all of those actually happened. You’re not normal.”

Gladio snorted. “Thanks for the backhanded compliment.”

“You’re welcome.”

“The hiking one is a lie,” Ignis said after a moment. “I know your average bench press numbers and I remember you trying to prove something stupid with how many cup noodles you could eat in one sitting—and definitely remember you throwing them back up.”

“Worth it.”

“So the hiking distance has to be the lie.”

“You would logic it out,” Gladio said, snickering. “Yeah, you win.” He took a drink. “Your turn again Iggy.”

“Wait wait wait,” Prompto said. “I’m not going to have to guess Ignis every time am I? He’s like, way too good at deadpan for that.”

“Hmm, you have a point,” Ignis said. “Noctis and I can swap positions this next round and then you can swap with Gladio and by alternating like that we can keep things fair.”

“You’re making this way too complicated,” Noctis said, but he obligingly swapped places in the circle with Ignis.

“It makes things more interesting,” Ignis countered with a sharp grin. He had every intention of playing this game to win—by which he meant he intended to stay as sober as possible while watching his friends fall into drunken antics.

“Whatever, just get on with it,” Noctis said with a sigh.

Ignis glanced at Gladio. Gladio was privy to far more of Ignis’s private life than perhaps anyone in part because while he couldn’t always talk to Noctis—because friend or not, there were still the occasional professional boundary lines—Gladio was someone who shared a responsibility in caring for Noct and as such someone who could commiserate over some of the worse aspects of their prince’s personality. Still, he didn’t know everything about Ignis’s life. “My favorite knives are a gift from my uncle, I’ve always loved the taste of Ebony…” He pretended to put an extra second of thought into this, like he was hesitating over a lie. “One of my earliest memories is of reading a book.”

He could see Gladio labeling the knife fact as truth; Ignis hadn’t been subtle about his preferred weapon choice in combat and the topic had come up before. But Ignis was also banking on Gladio’s association of Ignis and Ebony; he’d been drinking some form of coffee since his early teenage years, and for as long as he and Gladio had any significant interaction.

“As hilarious as the idea of baby-Iggy reading is, I’m calling that out as a lie,” he said after a moment.

Ignis smiled triumphantly. “While not my earliest memory, I was reading full sentences by the age of three, so yes, it is one of my earliest memories. I actually detested Ebony the first time I tasted it and poured the can down the drain. It was only the lure of caffeine that ever got me to pick up another can.”

“No kidding.” Gladio didn’t look the least upset by guessing wrong, but he was probably happy enough to be ingesting some alcohol. “Sometimes I think you pretty much run on the stuff like the Regalia does gasoline.”

Ignis snorted. “It’s not an inaccurate assumption.” Thank goodness for caffeine for his overworked, frequently sleep deprived body.

Gladio took a larger-than-necessary swallow from his cup. “Right. So. I ran away from home when I was six, I tried to give Iris away when she was first born because she kept crying, and I can’t float when I swim.”

Noctis frowned. “I’m pretty sure everyone can float. That’s swimming 101.”

“Take a drink because I can’t.” Gladio grinned, then grimaced. “It’s actually a downside to muscle. It’s dense as hell and sinks more than my lung capacity can make me float. I can swim just fine, but it’s kind of hell trying to tread water for long.”

“Huh. You learn something every day,” Noctis said taking a drink.

“Did you really try to give Iris away?” Prompto asked. “Because I can’t see it.”

“No. I mean I was tempted because she was the worst, colicky baby ever but I was old enough that I wasn’t that impulsive.” Gladio picked at the edge of his cup. “Now if I was a couple years younger at the time…”

“I remember hearing your dad complaining to my dad,” Noctis said. “She was only quiet when she was asleep and even then that was almost never the first month.”

“Yeah, I feel so lucky she grew out of that.”

“Noctis’s turn!” Prompto chirped. “Go easy on me, buddy.”

“You wish,” Noctis said, sticking his tongue out at him. “Okay. I’ve killed every plant I’ve tried to grow, I broke three priceless vases as a kid and told no one, and I set Iggy’s first boyfriend on fire once.��

“Noctis Lucis Caelum!” Ignis said, scandalized and more than a little annoyed. “That was you?!” Ignis had been dumped very soon after that incident.

“That guy was a jerk,” Noctis said.

“I could have dumped him myself instead of the indignity of it being the other way around!”

“Uh,” said Prompto. “I’m guessing that’s not the lie.”

Ignis huffed, and Noctis waited.

“Plants are the lie?” Prompto said tentatively trying to steer things back toward the game.

“Nope. Actually it was Gladio that set the guy on fire.”

“Way to throw a man under a bus, Noct,” Gladio grumbled. He held up his hands when Ignis turned his glare on him. “Hey, he’s right. The guy was a dick.”

“Gladiolus!”

Gladio leaned a bit away from Ignis, a sheepish grin on his face. “I mean, no one got permanently injured.”

“Which of you ran off my next boyfriend, then?” Ignis demanded. Neither of them met his eyes.

“Uh,” Prompto said again into the tense silence. “So… Iggy, you like dudes?”

And Ignis had the horrifying realization that Prompto didn’t know.

“Oh shit,” Noctis said. “Uh, sorry Specs…”

“It’s fine,” Ignis said, hoping that it actually was fine and this revelation hadn’t just made their current close-quarters living arrangements strained. He’d forgotten for a moment, too comfortable with Noctis and Gladio being in the know, that not all of his friends actually had the knowledge that he was more interested in men than women.

“No, hey!” Prompto waved his hands frantically. “It’s cool, I’m fine with it, shit, I wasn’t trying to make things weird!”

“Prompto…” Ignis took a breath. “If this is—”

“My turn next,” Prompto blurted over him and Ignis frowned, trying to cut in only to have Prompto keep talking over him. “I’ve only kissed girls,” he said, which stung a bit considering what was just revealed, “I’m bi,” oh, “and I’ve never, uh, never had a crush on anyone here,” Prompto finished, his confidence draining into nerves. There was a faint blush on his face.

“Prompto,” Ignis said softly, “you didn’t have to do that.”

“What, continue the game?” he said with a forced smile. “Uh yeah I did, we still have booze so…” His gaze pleaded for Ignis to play along.

And Ignis couldn’t refuse considering his friend had chosen to out himself just to make Ignis feel less uncomfortable. “I take it the last one wasn’t a lie,” he said gently.

“You got me there.” Prompto took a large swallow of his drink. His cheeks were pink and he couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes.

“Shit,” Noctis mumbled. “…I wasn’t trying to make this real, I just wanted to tease Ignis.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Full disclosure, you’re not the only one who’s had a crush on someone here, Prom.”

Prompto’s jaw dropped. “Wait, is Gladio the only one here that’s straight?”

Gladio snorted. “I mean I’m mostly straight,” Gladio said. “But if we were playing a game of never-have-I-ever, the only one of us who wouldn’t drink to having a crush on Ignis is Ignis.”

Ignis went bright red.

“There was more than one reason we didn’t think your boyfriends were good enough,” Gladio said with a snort of laughter.

“…Did either of you approve of any of them?”

“Uh, the one Glaive was okay but…”

Noctis finished for him, “You weren’t into him half as much as he was into you.”

Ignis pinched the bridge of his nose. He was going to have to reevaluate so many previous interactions with a new perspective.

“Wait, Prompto, is that why you keep taking ass shots of Gladio?” Noctis asked.

Prompto sputtered. “I do not take ass shots! Of anyone!”

Gladio laughed. “Uh, hate to break it to you but you kind of do. Don’t worry, I don’t mind.”

“You take ass pics of Gladio, Ignis whenever he’s doing acrobatics, and usually half of what you take of me is mid-warp.”

“That’s just because you’re always warping, Noct,” Prompto said, settling into an embarrassed pout. “And Iggy’s usually doing backflips or setting something on fire like a boss so…” His shoulders hunched. “Also Gladio’s always rushing in so of course I get pictures from behind in battle.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Noctis said with a shit eating grin.

“Well,” Ignis said, feeling vaguely uncomfortable and ready to finish the game, “I think we’ve learned enough about each other for one night.”

“No, no,” Gladio said. “Prompto’s right. We still have booze. Also you and Noct haven’t interacted yet and I haven’t traded lies with Prompto.” He swished his cup around. “Besides, we’re still bored. Scared you’ll get embarrassed more?” he teased.

Ignis rolled his eyes. “Not at all.” It was just that if things continued along the current lines of affairs things could get complicated in ways that their trip didn’t allow for. From the way Gladio gave him a teasing eyebrow wiggle, he was thinking along the same lines without considering the fallout. He sighed. Ignis was not going to let things run in even more flirtatious directions thank you very much. “Noct.” Coming up with something for Noctis was about as hard as Gladio. On the one hand, Noctis could be unobservant. On the other, when he did use his powers of observation, they were uncannily accurate and stuck in his memory. “I choose to keep my accent,” he said after a moment of thought, “I had tutors before I was chosen to train to be your chamberlain, and I hated cooking when I first started learning.”

Noctis frowned. “I could see you keeping the accent because you like it and it reminds you of home. I know nothing of your life before you came to the Citadel more or less, and knowing you you’re probably banking on that. So, weird as it is to think of you hating cooking, I’m calling the second one a lie.”

Ignis smiled ruefully. It figured that he’d apply logic to it. “You’re correct.” He took a swallow of his drink and was pleased at its flavor, the alcohol a faint aftertaste on his tongue.

“If you didn’t like cooking, why’d you stick with it?” Prompto asked.

“Because it’s a useful skill,” Ignis said. “Knowing it is an important life skill as well as useful for caring for others; it was non-negotiable to learn. It just took a bit of a learning curve to get good enough at it that it wasn’t troublesome. Once I started looking at it as a puzzle made of ingredients it was a lot more enjoyable.”

“You know, you’re allowed to like or dislike something based on other things than usefulness,” Noctis said with a slight edge to his voice like he was somewhere along the lines of sad and exasperated.

Ignis, of course, knew that. But when growing up with a large job to fill, there had never been much room for non-useful things. Even his hobbies were chosen to be practical. “I can also enjoy things that also happen to be practical,” he pointed out. He liked languages. And while he couldn’t say he liked cleaning, it gave him a sense of satisfaction. Cooking was similar. These days it was one part puzzle, one part challenge, and the satisfaction of an end result. Baking on the other hand… “I do enjoy baking though.”

“Oh?” Noctis said.

Ignis smiled. He’d started because he’d hoped to make Noctis smile. And every time Noct ate one of his desserts and looked a bit happier, it had made Ignis happy. “I’d have to to make the same dessert over and over with slight changes for years.”

“Wow, that almost sounds like you’re accusing me of something,” Noctis joked.

“Accuse? Never,” Ignis said, grinning back. “I am surprised you never got sick of me trying though.”

“They were good,” Noctis said. “Even the worst of the failures. And they were…”

“They were?”

Noctis looked faintly embarrassed. “They were part of how you showed you cared so… it meant a lot.”

More than the cleaning and cooking or giving condensed reports ever did if Noctis’s embarrassment meant anything.

“And this is getting weirdly emotional,” Gladio cut in. “I know Noct drank a bit, but you only took a sip.”

Ignis rolled his eyes. “It’s reminiscing and nostalgia, Gladio.”

“Uh huh. Sure.” Gladio gave him a look that had Ignis blushing slight enough that hopefully no one would notice. “Anyway, Noct, either you go or I’m going next.”

“Fine.” Noctis drummed his fingers for a moment. “I like traveling and helping people out. I don’t like how crowded we are. I sometimes wish that things could always be this simple.”

Ignis had the strong desire to give Noctis a hug, like he’d done when they were children. There was vulnerability and defensiveness warring under his attempted nonchalance and if they still had the sort of uncomplicated relationship that children had, he’d already have Noctis in an embrace. But they were adults and Noct might accept side hugs and slaps on the shoulder from Prompto and Gladio, there had been a wall of propriety between him and Ignis for a while. A wall that he should really start to take down. Propriety was pointless when there wasn’t anyone left who would care.

“The second one is a lie,” Ignis said softly.

Noctis smiled, lopsided. “Yeah.” He took a drink.

“Aw, we like crowding you too,” Prompto said, nudging Noctis with an elbow. “I mean, sometimes a little privacy would be nice, but honestly you can’t feel lonely like this and that’s been good.”

Left to their own devices they weren’t the sorts to spend every waking moment with another person, but they had been spending more or less that for months now. Ignis, if asked before their trip started, would have thought that they’d have gotten on their last nerve at some point or another, but they hadn’t. There was quiet, introspective time on car rides, or brief moments at havens to break away from the group and have a private moment, but surprisingly they hadn’t needed more than that so far. It was almost nice if Ignis didn’t think about the circumstances. And for Noctis who had never really had enough time to spend with friends with his busy life… Well, Ignis, having a busy life of his own, could more than understand why the lifestyle they’d been living appealed.

“We can’t forget our purpose though,” Gladio pointed out.

“Dude,” Prompto said, “I don’t think any of us could no matter how many fetch quests people send us on.”

“I’m just saying,” Gladio grumbled.

“And I’m just saying that tonight’s time to not think about the things that are always looming over us,” Prompto said, pushing back more than he normally would. “Please? Like we’re all strung out, that’s why we gotta relax and recharge sometimes or we’ll just burn out.”

Gladio rubbed a hand down his face and took a drink even though it wasn’t part of the game. “Yeah.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Noctis added in a quiet voice. “I promise.”

“We’re really missing the point to this game,” Prompto said with a sigh. “Getting too real, guys. On that note, Gladio—Two truths and a lie. I’ve always wanted a pet, I bought my first camera with allowance money, and I am naturally a morning person.”

Gladio took a second to switch gears but when he did he relaxed in a very deliberate looking manner. “Well considering how you go on about chocobos, I wouldn’t be surprised if you always wanted one as a pet. And how you’re friends with Sleeping Beauty over there, it’s a mystery because you don’t need coffee in the morning like Ignis and you don’t sleep in like Noct. So, how’d you actually get your first camera?”

“I bought it with money from a part time job,” Prompto said after taking a drink. “Technically I had a phone camera before, but I was kind of frustrated at the limitations and after taking a photography class… Yeah, I was hooked.” He smiled. “So I saved up and bought this beauty,” Prompto said patting his camera. “It’s not like high end, but with multiple lenses and filters and a hella good zoom, it’s a pretty dang good first camera, you know?”

“I commend your work ethic,” Ignis said, though Prompto’s work ethic had always been good, even if he and Noctis were enablers in indulging in their gaming interests at the expense of other tasks at times. Prompto had gotten decent grades his whole life, and worked from no prior combat knowledge to full-fledged Crownsguard, pulling his own weight on this trip purely because he cared for Noctis. It wasn’t really surprising that he’d seen the goal of a nice camera and put the effort into getting it.

“Thanks, Iggy,” Prompto said with a pleased grin.

“Now if only Noct had a bit more of that,” Gladio joked.

“Of all of us, I think Prompto and I have the best work-life balance,” Noctis shot back.

“Besides,” Ignis added, “Noctis is hardworking. Unfortunately he just has a tendency to drop less pressing tasks in favor of immediate ones.”

“Is this about not sewing the button back on my shirt? Because I’m going to sew the button back on my shirt.”

“I’ve actually been impressed by how much help you’ve been with tasks like dishes and laundry,” Ignis said, a bit mean to do, but it was a sore point between them. Then again, Noctis was more likely to drop what he was doing and help than Gladio. Prompto was fine if given directions at least. Goodness knew Ignis couldn’t run every minutia of their lives no matter how much he wanted to.

Noctis groaned. “You’re never going to let high school go are you?”

Ignis smiled. “If it was only high school, I would.”

“He’s got you there, dude,” Prompto said. “You’re kind of a trash master when you get distracted.”

Distracted being anything from work, to a gaming binge, to one of Noctis’s occasional depressive episodes. Ignis was sympathetic to the latter and exasperated by the former.

“It’s Gladio’s turn,” Noctis said pointedly turning the conversation away from himself.

“Fine,” he sighed. “I am a dog person, I kill houseplants no matter how I try to keep them alive, and I kind of wish I’d gone to college.”

Prompto squinted at him. “This is the sort of thing I was worried about playing this. I have no idea which of those is a lie.”

“Guess,” Gladio said unhelpfully.

“Plants?” Prompto asked more than stated.

“Bzzt. I’m not a dog person. They’re cute and all but they’re high maintenance compared to cats.”

“Harsh, dogs are great,” Prompto said taking a drink. “They’re loyal and hard working. Don’t get me wrong, cats are adorable, but they’d abandon you for a sardine.”

“Lies and slander,” Noctis said.

“Dude, they’re super picky and you fall for their begging every time.”

“You feed every dog that looks your direction,” Noctis countered.

“Uh, no, we’ve seen like three dogs and one of those is Dave’s. You’re the one busting out super expensive cat food. Anyway, we can all agree chocobos are best.”

Noctis laughed. “I think it’s just you there.”

“Nah, chocobos are more useful and better fighters than either of them,” Gladio said, “so they win in my book too.”

“Why didn’t you attend university?” Ignis asked.

“You think I’d have had the time? I don’t know how you did it, honestly. I had my plate full learning everything I needed to protect Noct.”

Ignis could see a small, guilty twitch from Noctis. Ignis’s own university years had been…hmm, eventful. And the largest reason for his caffeine addiction. “Out of curiosity, what would you have studied?”

Gladio shrugged. “I dunno. I like history, and some of the stuff I’ve talked with Sania about’s pretty cool.”

“Oh yeah, you are friends with her aren’t you?” Prompto said. “Are frogs really that exciting?”

“Okay, the frogs are just one of the things she studies,” Gladio said. “Her greater research is on wildlife in general and you’d know that if you listened to what she said when we help her that she’s been looking into the change in daylight and the increase in scourge infected wildlife—”

“Holy shit have you been hiding a nerdy side this whole time?” Prompto said with the expression of a man who’d just witnessed something life changing. “Gladio, are you a science nerd under all that muscle?”

Gladio frowned. “Could you not say it like that? Also, I haven’t been hiding anything. I already know a lot about physiology from training, and nature is a thing I clearly enjoy as you guys love to complain about how I like camping. At least one of the books I’ve read on this trip was Sania’s research.”

“Well shit, man.” Prompto downed the rest of his drink. “The more you know. I think we all learned something today.” He blinked. “I should not have drank that all at once.”

Noctis laughed. “So we’re all on board to just drink now, huh?” He took a pointed swallow of his drink. “Might as well.”

“Really?” Ignis sighed.

“Eh, let ‘em,” Gladio said, taking a drink from his own cup. “As you guys keep saying, we’re trying to relax. Besides we were getting nowhere fast with the game.”

“That’s the point,” Ignis said. “To not get drunk.”

“They can’t get that drunk,” Gladio pointed out. “You made sure of it.”

Ignis pursed his lips, but Noctis and Prompto were elbowing each other and laughing and no one was going to end up so inebriated they were hung over the next day. It was almost like back in Insomnia…

Gladio slung an arm around him. “Don’t think too hard.”

“I am trying not to but…” They hadn’t really given themselves any proper time to grieve had they? One moment they were watching Insomnia burn and the next they were throwing themselves into seeking out royal arms and helping random strangers and going on hunts with barely any time to breathe because if they relaxed too much it might all fall apart. Ignis was used to setting how he felt aside, and so were the rest of them, but that didn’t necessarily make it healthy. Noctis and Prompto could laugh like this, so they would be okay. But sometimes Ignis wondered if he would be. That if he ever stopped he’d pull himself back together again.

“Drink if you think it’ll help,” Gladio said softly under the shriek of Noctis engaging Prompto to an impromptu tickling fight. “If you think it’ll be worse, leave it. Be in the moment, not the past.”

“I know that,” Ignis said. “I have been.” But the game had been about the past. On automatic, he saved the alcohol from getting spilled all over the tent floor as the tickle fight got wilder. Gladio gave his shoulder a squeeze.

“How about we team up against them, hmm?” Gladio offered.

Ignis pushed the mess of feelings back to deal with another day and managed a smile that almost reached his usual standards. “Would that be fair?”

“Anything’s fair in a tickling fight,” Gladio said. “Noct or Prompto first?”

“Noctis; Prompto is easier to subdue.”

“I’ll get his arms.”

“And I’ll handle his feet.”

Noctis and Prompto jumped when they entered the fight and Noctis yelped as Gladio caught him and Ignis exploited his weak points until he was gasping. Prompto laughed at his misfortune. At least until Ignis and Gladio shared a glance and turned to him, leaving Noctis to recover.

Later, much later, after more alcohol and Gladio ultimately emerging the victor of the tickle fight—he was only ticklish on his neck and that was hard to reach even when he wasn’t guarding it—they collapsed into a comfortable pile of bodies, curled up around each other, propriety and personal space be damned. They needed this, Ignis thought hazily on the edge of sleep. The laughter. The contact. The reassurance that they were still friends and close even after—or perhaps because of—everything that had happened.

“I haven’t done something like this in ages,” Gladio said, breaking the silence. “Not since… Hell, I don’t know. When I was a teenager?”

“Same,” Noctis said.

“Do our elbow fights over racing games not count?” Prompto asked. “Because we did that less than a year ago.”

“Yeah, but that’s… different,” Noctis muttered. “For one, Ignis joined in this time.” He lifted himself on one elbow long enough to fake-scowl in Ignis’s direction. “You’re brutal, by the way.”

Ignis laughed and had to stifle it on the nearest surface, which happened to be Noct’s thigh. When the laughter ran out though, he felt a bit drained, happy and sad at the same time. “I don’t think I’ve let go quite this much before.”

“Eighteenth birthday?” Gladio countered.

“Mm, but not everyone here was present for that.” And it hadn’t ended in a cuddle-pile on the ground. This was much better and would hopefully have less hangover-induced nausea the next morning.

“Well we’re all here now,” Noctis said, and like that was all that needed to be said, they went quiet, just the soft sounds of breathing and the occasional shift of limbs as they got comfortable.

Ignis ended up with Prompto’s head on his stomach and his own in Noctis’s lap. Gladio was both Noctis’s pillow and a heat source in how he managed to curl around Noctis and half of Prompto in the process. They were all going to wake up with limbs asleep and cricks in their necks, but for the moment it was all terribly comfortable.

Ignis drifted, letting the familiar sounds of his friends existing lure him toward sleep.

He was almost there when Prompto shifted against his chest.

“Ignis?” Prompto whispered, easily heard above the whistle-y start of Gladio’s snores and Noctis’s softer breathing.

“Mm?” When Prompto was silent, Ignis let a hand curl against his back, reassuring.

Prompto breathed out, relaxing minutely. “Do you think we’ll do this again someday?”

Ignis hummed. They didn’t have much downtime, though playing games happened when they did, but he knew that wasn’t what Prompto meant. They’d all shared parts of themselves tonight and boundaries had been crossed in other ways too, or they wouldn’t be curled up like this. But would it last beyond the morning?

Altissia loomed in their future and Ignis, for all that he would be glad to reach the city safely, equally dreaded it. It was one more step along some pre-destined path Noctis had laid out for him that only seemed to grow more burdensome the more Ignis let himself dissect what little he knew about Noct’s fate.

No, Ignis didn’t think that they would do this again. Not with this level of uncomplicated friendship, with their burdens as easily set aside. Those burdens only grew as days trickled by.

But he knew that wasn’t what Prompto needed to hear though, so for the moment he pulled on comforting hopes instead of his more realistic fears.

“We will,” he said, making himself sound sure.

“Promise?” Prompto asked.

He was so young, all of them were, but Ignis felt it in this fragile moment. All the more so because Prompto didn’t come from a life where things were predetermined. He’d forged his own path here, and perhaps that made him the most driven out of all of them. But because of that, he didn’t hold the same assurances. He didn’t see that he’d forged his own bonds here or that they were just as strong—if not more—as anything Ignis or Gladio shared with Noctis. Or with each other truly.

They were all friends and more than by this point. Comrades. A family of a sort, the last that each other had.

Ignis wanted to protect that with all his heart.

“I promise,” he said gently.

“Double promise,” Noctis slurred, patting randomly in Prompto’s direction. “Now go t’sleep.”

Prompto stifled a giggle. “Back at you, dude.” Noctis, apparently, fell truly asleep at that. Or perhaps he was already asleep and in one of his odd, in-between lucid moments.

“You’re one of us,” Ignis murmured, “and we’re going to stick together.”

“I’m holding you to that,” Prompto said, getting comfortable again.

As Ignis relaxed again, letting sleep pull him under, his last thought was how lucky they were to still have so much in each other.

#final fantasy 15 #fanfiction #my writing #chocobros #i was gonna hold off on posting this #but i like validation and was asked to post :p #hope you like it mae #i like ignis very much yes #also i am incapable of writing anything entirely happy and i accept this by this point #hope i got their voices down ok

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pamphletstoinspire · 4 years

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Divine Mercy Sunday Solemnity; Liturgical Color: White True power pardons

In the Nicene Creed, we say that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father. When a judge walks into a courtroom, the bailiff announces, “All rise,” and the judge sits in judgment. In his see city, a bishop rests in his cathedra, and in his palace, a king reigns from his throne. A president signs legislation while seated at his desk. The chair is a locus of power. The power that emanates from such seats of authority judges, condemns, and sentences. Today’s feast reminds us, though, that authority also exercises power by granting mercy. When a judge pronounces innocence, the sentence is no less binding than one of guilt. The absolved exits the court into a new day, ready to begin again. And when the priest’s voice whispers through the screen, “I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” guilt evaporates into thin air. The purest and truest expression of power is the granting of mercy.

Mercy is a superabundance of justice, not an exception to it. When faced with a wound to the common good, those responsible for repairing the damage do not have two contrary options: justice or mercy. Justice and mercy are not mutually exclusive. Mercy is a form of justice. Mercy does not ignore the tears to the fabric of the common good slashed by crime and sin. Rightful authority notes the torn fabric, weighs the personal responsibility of the accused, and distributes justice precisely by granting mercy. Mercy does not turn a blind eye to justice, but fulfills its obligations to justice by going beyond them. After all, one cannot be absolved of having done nothing. Similarly, where there is no guilt there is no need of mercy. When justice calls out, two words echo back off the hard walls: “condemnation” and “mercy.” Mercy runs parallel to, and beyond, the path of condemnation. This is the mercy we celebrate today, the mercy whose greatest practitioner is God Himself. Because He is the seat of all authority, God is also the seat of all mercy.

God plays many roles in the life of the Christian—Creator, Savior, Sanctifier, and Judge. Our Creed teaches us that God the Son, seated at the Father’s right hand, “will come in glory to judge the living and the dead,” both at the particular and at the final judgment. At that moment, it will serve us nothing to state, in excusing our sins, that “God understands.” Of course God understands. To state “God understands” is just another way to say that God is omniscient and all powerful. “God understands” implies that because God knows the powerful temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, that He could not possibly judge man harshly. Yet “God understands” is a lazy manner of exculpating sinful behavior. When nose to nose with God one second after death, the repentant Christian should plead, instead, “Lord, have mercy.” Faced with the scandalous behavior of a friend or relative, the response should again be “Lord, have mercy.” Appealing to God’s mercy will melt His heart. Appealing to His knowledge will not.

The private revelations of Jesus Christ to Saint Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun and intense mystic who died in 1938, are the source of the profound spirituality of today’s feast. Sister Faustina was a kind of Saint Catherine of Siena of the twentieth century. She lived a regimen of fasting, meditation, liturgical prayer, and close community life that would have crushed a less resilient soul. But Faustina persevered, amidst debilitating illnesses, sisterly jealousy, and respectful but questioning superiors. Her diaries are replete with the starkest of language from the mouth of Christ, showing that moral clarity precedes the call for mercy. Sister Faustina faithfully recorded Christ’s manly commands in her diary. One of these commands expressly desired that the Divine Mercy be celebrated on the Sunday after Easter. In an age old pattern familiar to an ancient Church, Saint Faustina’s private revelations were challenged, filtered for theological truth, sifted for spiritual depth, and granted universal approbation by the only Christian religion which even claims to grant such. In the soundest proof of their authenticity, the profound simplicity of the Divine Mercy revelations and of their related devotions were intuitively grasped and adopted by the Catholic faithful the world over.

Pope Saint John Paul II first inserted today’s feast into the Roman calendar on April 30, 2000, the canonization day of Saint Faustina. Saint Pope John Paul II was also canonized on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2014. And so the Church’s third millennium was launched with a new devotion that quickly eclipsed many older ones, a new piety rooted in the most ancient truths, a fresh appeal to a side of God that had not been fully understood in prior ages. Divine Mercy is the new face of God for the third millennium, a postmodern Sacred Heart. This is the God who leans in and waits with bated breath for us to whisper through the screen, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” This is the God who at the end of time, whether our own time or all time, waits to hear from our lips those few prized words “Lord, have mercy.” Having heard that, He need not hear anything more. And having received that, we need not receive anything more.

Divine Mercy, do not hold our sins against us. Be a merciful Father who judges us in the fullness of Your power, punishing when needed, but granting mercy when we need it more, most especially when we are too saturated with pride to request it.

__________

April 19, 2020 Divine Mercy Sunday (Year A) The Eighth Day in the Octave of Easter Readings for Today

On that day all the divine floodgates through which graces flow are opened. Let no soul fear to draw near to Me, even though its sins be as scarlet. My mercy is so great that no mind, be it of man or of angel, will be able to fathom it throughout all eternity. Everything that exists has come forth from the very depths of My most tender mercy. Every soul in its relation to Me will contemplate My love and mercy throughout eternity. The Feast of Mercy emerged from My very depths of tenderness. It is My desire that it be solemnly celebrated on the first Sunday after Easter. Mankind will not have peace until it turns to the Fount of My Mercy. (Diary of Divine Mercy #699)

This message, spoken by Jesus to Saint Faustina in 1931, has now come true. What was spoken in the solitude of a cloistered convent in Płock Poland, now is celebrated by the Universal Church throughout the whole world!

Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska of the Blessed Sacrament was known to very few people during her lifetime. But through her, God has spoken the message of His abundant mercy to the entire Church and world. What is this message? Though its content is endless and unfathomable, here are five key ways that Jesus desires this new devotion to be lived:

The first way is through meditation on the sacred image of The Divine Mercy. Saint Faustina was asked by Jesus to have an image of His merciful love painted for all to see. It’s an image of Jesus with two rays shining forth from His Heart. The first ray is blue, indicating the font of Mercy coming forth through Baptism; and the second ray is red, indicating the font of Mercy poured forth through the Blood of the Holy Eucharist.

The second way is through the celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday. Jesus told Saint Faustina that He desired an annual solemn Feast of Mercy. This Solemnity of Divine Mercy was established as a universal celebration on the Eighth day of the Octave of Easter. On that day the floodgates of Mercy are opened and many souls are made holy.

The third way is through the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. The chaplet is a treasured gift. It’s a gift that we should seek to pray each and every day.

The fourth way is by honoring the hour of Jesus’ death every day. “ It was at 3 o’clock that Jesus took His last breath and died upon the Cross. It was Friday. For this reason, Friday should always be seen as a special day to honor His Passion and ultimate Sacrifice. But since it took place at 3 o’clock, it is also important to honor that hour each and every day. This is the ideal time to pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. If the Chaplet is not possible, it’s at least important to pause and give thanks to our Lord every day at that time.

The fifth way is through the Apostolic Movement of The Divine Mercy. This movement is a call from our Lord to actively engage in the work of spreading His Divine Mercy. This is done by spreading the message and by living Mercy toward others.

On this, the Eighth Day of the Octave of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday, ponder the above desires of the heart of Jesus. Do you believe that the message of Divine Mercy is meant not only for you but also for the whole world? Do you seek to understand and incorporate this message and devotion into your life? Do you seek to become an instrument of mercy to others? Become a disciple of The Divine Mercy and seek to spread this Mercy in the ways given to you by God.

My merciful Lord, I trust in You and in Your abundant Mercy! Help me, this day, to deepen my devotion to Your merciful heart and to open my soul to the treasures that pour forth from this font of Heavenly riches. May I trust You, Love You and become an instrument of You and Your Mercy to the whole world. Jesus, I trust in You!

#divine mercy sunday

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polarishq · 4 years

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Meet WREN THERON. They are TWENTY EIGHT years old and hail from NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK. Wren embodies the star, RIGEL. They use she/they pronouns. Their faceclaim is HALEY LU RICHARDSON.

Rigel reminds me of the quiet click of a bathroom door locking, the stutter of words and breaths and hearts and back to words, locks of hair twisting around a shaking finger, the difference between a vessel and a person, the slip of a needle through fabric, the excited chatter among the stars as something new blossoms into the world. .

BIOGRAPHY

TW for drug abuse.

Typically, stars don’t meddle in the creation of humans. They have power, yes, but they also have limits. They were never meant to create men. But Rigel has always been the one to push the envelope. When the idea of something new bursts into the minds of men, Rigel is lingering in the shadows, anxiously awaiting the opportunity to meddle. So when the newest Theron child’s eyes opened with the idea of an imaginary friend, Rigel leaped at the chance to give birth to a dream.

The child was unexpected and unwanted, to say the least. At first, no one knew where she came from or how she ended up in the same incubator as the Theron heiress, but they found it impossible to get rid of her. Any attempts to separate her from her apparent twin resulted in both children growing inconsolable. When the doctors tried to take the mysterious child away, only a few hours passed before her skin grew pale and her lungs began to lose function. Fearing what would happen if this continued, the girls were put together again and Wren was officially considered a Theron.

The thing is—- stars were never meant to make humans. So when Rigel crafted a person out of a newborn’s fantasy, it was bound to turn out defective.

First, it was the speech impediment. She’ll grow out of it, they all said. After all, she was just learning how to speak, just like every other child. So no one gave much thought to the way she stumbled over her words, face turning red as she struggled to form ‘s’ and ‘p’ and ‘t.’ Words would die on her tongue and she’d receive patient looks because you’ll get it one day.

Then, it was the clumsiness. She’ll grow out of it, they all said. After all, she was just learning how to walk, just like every other child. So no one gave much thought to the way she stumbled over her own two feet, scraping knee and cheek against concrete as her ankles crossed in the wrong direction. Her hands would fumble and drop Lego blocks and she’d receive mildly irritated sighs but it was fine because you’ll get it one day.

Eventually, it was the learning disabilities. They were less forgiving, because that’s a ‘d,’ Wren, not a ‘p’ and it’s simple addition, stop using your fingers. She’d spend hours hunched over her reading assignment, tutors slowly pronouncing words over and over again, encouraging her to use the calculator, there’s nothing wrong with needing help. Still, some people had faith that you’ll get it one day.

She never did. The only thing Wren ever really learned was how to survive not being in the same room as her twin. She grew accustomed to distance: a few inches, a few feet, a few rooms, twenty miles. Still, she never learned how to really stand on her own two feet.

As years passed and her tongue, feet, hands and eyes continued to stumble and stammer, the Therons grew less patient. It was bad enough that this abnormal child was invading their perfect family; it was much worse that she couldn’t do anything right.

The only good thing they could say about her was that she had a great deal of magic. Rigel’s mark had been proudly resting on her heel since the moment she appeared. While it’d never intended to stay with her, it did, as if its companionship could serve as an apology. Its way of saying, I’m sorry I did this to you. I would undo it all if I could. Since I cannot, I’ll stay with you. We’ll get through this together. While the mark did not save Wren from all of the Therons’ malice, it spared her from total disownment.

That doesn’t mean things were okay. Their patience grew thin as Wren got older and clumsier, her defects harder to ignore. By the time she was twelve, she was pulled from public view entirely. She was homeschooled, never to be seen at any galas or events where the Therons needed to attend as a family. Her parents’ disappointment couldn’t have been more obvious if they’d written it on a skyline. Wren Theron was a mistake and one that they could not get rid of.

The clear disdain from her family pushed Wren into the furthest corners of herself, replacing any cheer and joy with debilitating anxiety. The days where she couldn’t get out of bed in fear of throwing up angered her mother; the days where she cried over her textbooks angered her father. There was no way to win, so she did what anyone would do in a situation like hers: turned to drugs.

With Theron money, it was incredibly easy to get drugs. She didn’t have to give a name or connection; as long as she had enough money, then she could get whatever she wanted without any questions. She fell into a rabbit hole, wasting her days away with drugs that did nothing to ease her stutter or her frazzled mind, but did everything to help her escape the pressures of her every day life.

She was sixteen when things finally reached a head. The tongue-lashing her mother delivered (over a stupid and meaningless mistake) was one for the ages. Humiliation and self-loathing led to a familiar scene: the private bathroom attached to her rom, sleeves rolled up and needle pressed against skin. She’d love to say she could remember what happened next, but she’s never been a good liar.

What she does know is this: Rigel is a star of creation. It can create, create, create, but it cannot destroy. So Wren can make all that she can dream, but she can’t kill. Bugs, dreams, animals, people; certainly not herself.

The close call was enough to shake her out of her own abyss. She ditched the drugs she’d stashed throughout her room and checked herself into rehab. She knew her family never would; none of them even knew she’d gotten addicted in the first place. For the first time in her life, she stopped pitying her circumstances and decided to do right by herself.

It was in the midst of rehab when she met a father-daughter duo who offered her a bit of reprieve. Freshly seventeen years old and just learning how to stand on her own two feet, Wren jumped at the chance to escape. When she approached her family about separating from them, they were all too happy to let her go, so long as she didn’t carry their name anymore. With no desire to stay and argue, Wren agreed and moved in with her newfound companions.

Her stay didn’t last long. It was long enough to develop some unrequited feelings; it was long enough for a seed to be planted in her mind. When Wren went off to Polaris at nineteen, something that already changed within her, though she would be the last to know it.

Her anxiety eased with time away from her family, but it never fully left. It’s still debilitating, even on her best days, but there’s less pressure to be perfect these days. With Rigel’s help, she’s started up a business of making things for people, usually for free. Most face-to-face transactions are done through a dependable middle man, so most people don’t even know who’s behind the creation. She doesn’t mind that so much; as long as her customers are happy, she won’t ask for any sort of fame or recognition.

She still has self-harmful tendencies, but they’re manageable. At the very least, she isn’t shooting up in the bathroom anymore.

INCLINATION

Rigel, whether or not they are aware of their “maker” abilities before they are sponsored, has long been known as the creator star. Rigel typically sponsors those who have a gift for craftsmanship magic, or rather, the creation of magical objects for witches to use. Rigel is a creative thinker and a tinkerer, preferring to do things their way rather than let someone else tell them how they’re supposed to operate. They are particularly gifted at transfiguration, which is the basis of their magic, but they also possess a wide knowledge of tools and workmanship in order to create whatever it is their heart desires.

CONNECTIONS

Filling Verity Anwar’s Teach Me, Oh Wise One

Middle Man: Basically the fact of Wren’s business! They do all of the interactions and communication, unless they absolutely cannot. This person has all of Wren’s trust, if only because they never hold her difficulties against her, and they actually have her best interest at heart.

Helping Hand: Literally… someone who doesn’t mind Wren holding their hand once in a while, just so that she has something to hold onto when her anxiety gets bad. She isn’t totally dependent on them, but they help stabilize her when she feels incredibly unstable.

Penned by Ricki ★

#fire.#rigel.#ricki.#student.#taken.

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markrichardson · 5 years

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My Year in Spotify Listening

Like a lot of people I checked out the Spotify year-end summary thingy, and since Spotify is only a certain percentage of my listening, the results were surprising, and I tried to figure out what it meant. In general, I listen to new music via iTunes, if I am sent promos. That only encompasses a certain amount of new music of course, but if I’m sent a download, I tend to use that for my listening all year long. Often, I’m “done with” an album more or less by the time it comes out, but sometimes I’ll keep listening (as w/ DJ Koze this year) and I do that with my promo files. My Spotify listening tends to be a mix of things I stick on a few different playlists based on mood or genre, and they could come from anywhere (but they aren’t usually new).

In terms of my favorite artists (Bill Evans wound up in my top spot, somehow, followed by Joni Mitchell) it was hard to figure out how it’d happened, because I didn’t spend the year obsessed with either. Then I looked at my 100 most played songs, and that did bring back a few things. I’m not sure if the whole list is in order, but the first 5 songs in the playlist are the 5 listed when Spotify gave me my most-listened-to tracks of the year, so I think so? Anyway, that’s what I am going with here. This is how my Top 10 songs show up on the playlist, in order, with one exception: in the middle of the list was Bow Wow Wow’s “See Jungle,” which I already wrote about on Tumblr 8 years ago (and about which I have very little to say now, except that yes I do still listen to this song a fair amount), so I’ve omitted that and included No. 11.

Wussy: “Runaway” This was my favorite song of the year, it has 600 plays on Youtube and 5,400 on Spotify, which makes me a little sad. Technically it’s not from this year—Wussy put this out on a small-release tape or CD-R a few years ago—but I’m still counting it. This is the rare case where the streaming media playcounts tend to match the responses of folks I’ve talked to about this song—I mentioned to 4 or 5 people, and in each case they said “Yeah that’s kind of nice I guess...why do you like it so much?” I’ll try to answer that here.

First I should say that I have no real interest in or knowledge of Wussy. They’re an indie rock band from Ohio, most notable at this point for the fact that Robert Christgau loves them, and has written rapturous reviews of their work over the years, which surely has helped them to achieve whatever small amount of notoriety they have. I checked them out here and there but they didn’t make much of an impression on me. I wish I could remember how I came across this particular song, but I can’t, probably either Twitter or a streaming media algorithm. But I loved it immediately, like, stop-what-you-are-doing-and-listen kind of loved. It just clicked.

The first thing that comes to mind is the chorus: “I love you, let’s run away.” That’s the theme of so many of my favorite songs, I mean, the first album I bought in my life was “Born to Run,” and if you could sum up the first three Springsteen albums in in 6 words, “I love you, let’s run away” wouldn’t be bad. And I think I liked that this song didn’t try for poetic phrasing, just said it in the simplest way possible.

But the romance of a song like this has a shade of darkness to it, and that draws me in even more. Escape is never a long-term strategy. Eventually you have to figure out how to make life work when you’re in the thick of it. So while it’s such an appealing dream to exit the world with someone you’re crazy about, there is a shelf life to that sort of gesture. I relate to this idea of being fed up with everything in the moment and wanting to jump in the car with the only person who gets you, but eventually, the car is is going to need gas. What then?

I didn’t know when I first heard this song that it was a cover, so the immediate impact of it was as a Wussy song. But I learned that it was written and recorded by another Ohio artist that people in the band had known, a woman named Jenny Mae. She died last year. Pitchfork did a news story on her passing. She was 49. And when I found that it was her song, I listened to her version and I loved it almost as much (but not quite), though her take also made my Spotify Top 20. I did think enough of her version to order the 7-inch, which was her first release. When I read about Jenny Mae’s life, the song took on another layer of meaning. She suffered from mental illness and self-medicated with alcohol. And she was described by people who knew her as brilliant and creative and hilarious but also impulsive and self-destructive. Which for me gives a sentiment like “No one likes us anyway / I hate my job / Sweet, sweet are the innocent / I love you, let’s run away” and “40 ounce between your legs/ Shakin up my heart / Turn around and look at me / Light another smoke” a different tint. These are the kinds of things you say when in the throes of a rush of feeling, but they’re not impulses you can safely follow for a lifetime, even though goddammit, sometimes I want to.

Bo Diddley: “Nursery Rhyme” In Richmond early this year I bought an old Bo Diddley album called The Originator. I saw it in a used bin, it was $20, and, it was pure instinct, I had a feeling it was interesting. For me, buying used records, $20 is a fair amount of money, I don’t pay that for something I’ve no idea about, typically. But something compelled me to pick it up. I was intrigued that it had none of the hits I knew. And I took it home and when I put it on a short while later it blew my mind. This surprised me because on the one hand it sounds so much like the idea of “Bo Diddley” I keep in my brain, the one rhythm we know from the song he named after himself, but this was just so controlled, so well rendered, with so much atmosphere. The whole thing is brilliant. I became particularly obsessed with this cut from the record, and then I started exploring the “Bo Diddley” beat in general, reading whatever I could about it and listening to examples. This kind of random deep-dive is the best thing about the internet era for a music fan.

Mulatu Asatke: “Tezeta (Nostalgia” At nights when I hang out with my Mom at her condo in Michigan I play music over a Bluetooth speaker I bought a year ago. My Mom’s default has for a while been to put the television on, but at some point I asked her about playing music instead so we could talk or just hang out, and she grew to like it. Sometimes we’ll chat about stuff, and sometimes she will play Candy Crush on her iPad while I do things on my phone, which sounds distant but is actually very comforting to me. One of the things I’m doing on my phone during these evenings is finding songs to play. It’s quite fun (and interesting) for me to say to myself “What is a playlist that would make my Mom happy?” and then try and figure out what that might be on the fly. She was never really a music person so I don’t have a lot to go on, mostly her age, a story or two about a song she liked, and a vague knowledge of what she might have heard on the radio in my lifetime.

In September, my Dad died, and I stayed with my Mom in her condo for a number of days that month. I felt a strange mix of feelings. On the one hand, he was father, I missed him, I thought about never being able to talk to him again, to not be able to share the things in my life. I thought about the fact that I wouldn’t be able to learn more about his life, my knowledge of which is pretty sketchy. There were all the usual things a person would be sad about. But then there was the fact that he had a severe and debilitating case of Parkinson’s disease for the last eight years, and at times he suffered so terribly. I remembered how on a few occasions he called me while he was delusional, he would tell me that he was sure he was going to die. One time, he told me that he saw someone in the driveway who was going to kill him. Another time, he said that it was hard to explain but that he had been split into two people, and he couldn’t take it, he was terrified. I told him that it would be better tomorrow and he yelled, “I’m going to be dead by tomorrow!” I would get calls like this while I was walking to work in Brooklyn 700 miles away, and I would feel so helpless. And so when he passed, I thought about him during situations like that, and also felt like maybe not he had some peace.

A night or two after my Dad died I was sitting with my Mom, talking, and playing music. She dug out some old photos and we were looking at them, pictures from her in high school that I had never seen. I wanted to see everything, learn every detail. And over that Bluetooth speaker I was playing some random playlist I had found called something like “Jazz for late night.” I wanted background music. And while we were hanging out and talking, this song came on, “Tezeta” by the Ethiopian jazz bandleader Mulatu Astatke. And man, it’s hard to describe, but the mood of this song so perfectly captured the exact feeling I had. The phrase that comes to mind is “bombed out,” that’s the way it seemed, like I’d been beaten up and thrown in a ditch and my ears were ringing and now I was trying to reorient myself after all that had happened. There was a feeling of weariness and sadness but also a feeling that life continues, that we have to gather our memories and keep on. And this impossibly beautiful song captured every bit of that, the one-chord riff moving ahead, in spite of it all, while the sax line captures all the sadness dripping off everything at the same time. I listened to it constantly in the weeks afterward.

Galaxie 500: “Fourth of July” (live) One of my favorite songs by one of my favorite band in my favorite version. This song is indicative of how (as with all songs on this list) when I’m in the mood I can listen to one track over and over. On a couple of occasions in 2018, I listened to this maybe 8 or 9 times in a row, immediately hitting “back” when it had finished. And the thing I was typically listening to was Naomi Yang’s bassline, which to me holds the lion’s share of the song’s feeling. Her bass playing in Galaxie 500 is so incredibly emotional to me, and it was never more so than here.

Pusha T: “Infrared” The one truly “new” song on here.” I didn’t have an advance of this record so I listened on Spotify when it came out and I loved it. And this song in particular seemed so perfect, the carefully constructed rap, executed as if it’s coming off the top of his head, the sample—I listened to this many times in a row on a few occasions, and it also sent me to revisit Clipse, which brought me a lot of joy.

Joni Mitchell: “Carey” Another song about freedom, but here it’s real. Blue is a perfect record but I probably revisit this one more than any other single song because I’m so in love with the production—that bass, that hand percussion...sonically, an album recorded almost 50 years ago simply cannot be improved upon. I remember hearing this one on AM radio when I was very young. It was a single, b/w “This Flight Tonight,” one hell of a 7-inch. I’ve always thought the picture it painted was so incredibly romantic—”Maybe I’ll go to Amsterdam, maybe I’ll go to Rome / And rent me a grand piano and put flowers 'round my room.” Hey, why not! And if Carey is indeed keeping her in this tourist town, we know it’s only for another hour, another day, another week, whenever she’s ready, she can’t be tied down. But then, that’s the future: this night, now, is a starry dome, and we’re alive, inside it.

Arthur Russell: “That’s Us/Wild Combination” Sometimes w/ my favorite Arthur Russell songs you can hear the strain as he creates a new genre trying to get a particular unnamable feeling across. But not this one. Sitting in a room with his friend Jennifer Warnes he made a song that feels as natural as a breath.

Carole King: “Pleasant Valley Sunday” I’m in awe of Carole King’s ability to write songs that sound perfect on the radio. Even if her prime hitmaking years only lasted a bit over a decade, the number of her songs with her name on them that left a huge mark on culture is staggering. Her demo for the Monkees hit “Pleasant Valley Sunday” shows how perfect everything was before the artist who would bring the song to the public got anywhere near it. I found this one on Youtube 8 or 9 years ago and it’s been in regular rotation since.

Hank Williams: “The Angel of Death” In February and March I was doing research my Pitchfork Sunday Review on Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. It’s one of my favorite records, and I’ve wanted to write something long on it for years, so spending time w/ it as the winter wound down was an intense pleasure. It’s common knowledge that Springsteen was listening to a lot of Hank Williams when he was writing the album, and when I came across this song, I became obsessed with it. One, the melody sounds right off Nebraska, and “My Father’s House” (another song I listened to a lot this year) especially seems directly modeled on it. But this song has so much going for it on its own. It’s about death and the moment of judgement, but Hank’s melody and phrasing don’t sound frightened. It’s hopeful, a prayer instead of an admonishment.

Guided by Voices: “Motor Away” I’ve loved this song for years but I listened to it intently around the same time I was playing the Hank Williams, when I was thinking about leaving Pitchfork. I’ve never been a big fan of Robert Pollard’s lyrics (though I love many of his tunes), but he second line here is the one I couldn’t put out of my mind: “When you free yourself from the chance of a lifetime.” That’s where I felt I was. Editing this music magazine that I cared so much about was the culmination of a dream that took a long time, a ton of work, and a fair amount of luck to realize. When the chance of a lifetime comes along, you’re supposed to hold on to it as tightly as possible for as long as possible, until someone finally pries it away, which will happen eventually. I knew that. And yet, deep down, I knew that after 11 years, I wanted to try something else. Run away, motor away, drive away. Sometimes a song can give you the tiniest push.

#writing #myfather

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sohotthateveryonedied · 6 years

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My Review of Joss Whedon’s Terrible Wonder Woman Script

I’ve seen a lot of posts about how bad Joss Whedon’s original script for Wonder Woman was, and I just had to read it for myself. And...boy was that a bad idea. This thing was atrcocious. I’m pretty sure my eyes are still bleeding. So please, because I can’t seem to suppress my rage at this, enjoy a super long post about how incredibly Bad this screenplay was.

Warning: I’m gonna be cursing a lot because this was one of the worst things I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading in my life. Enjoy!

Let me begin by saying that this entire screenplay is basically about Steve Trevor and what a burden it is on him to have to save the world and deal with Diana the whole time. What a fucking tragedy. If I wanted to watch a misogynistic movie about a man being weighed down by unfairly-written women, I’d watch literally any other movie in Hollywood.

Not to mention that it doesn’t even include anything about Diana’s backstory? Like, at all? It basically begins with Steve’s plane crash because apparently he’s the most important character in this movie despite it being called Wonder Woman. My deduction is that Joss has no idea who Wonder Woman is and didn’t want to read the comics because he was afraid of what reading something about a woman hero would do to his masculinity, so he decided to just wing it and ignore her backstory completely.

Also wow, it’s plain within the first few lines of dialogue that Steve is reduced to nothing but a sarcastically jerkface, such is the tragedy of all characters who have the misfortune of being written by Joss Whedon. Makes me wonder if maybe, just maybe, misogynistic assholes shouldn’t write movies because their characters will end up like them? Just a thought?

Okay one: WHY IS STEVE TRYING TO MAKE HER FEEL GUILTY FOR DOING LITERALLY NOTHING WRONG?? Gee, sorry if her curiosity about the world is such an inconvenience to you, what a terrible offense. I had no idea insults were the newest form of flattery. I should have known that women actually enjoy being insulted, because of course Joss Whedon knows more about what women like than I, an actual woman, would. How silly of me.

“‘‘Let’s keep in touch’ is American for get the hell out of my face.’” WHAT?? THE FUCK??? WHY IS HE BEING SUCH A JERK??? She saved your goddamn life and you repay her by rudely shoving her out because she’s such an annoyance despite your unfortunate situation of being executed tomorrow. Cry me a freaking river. He is in no position to be anything less than grateful that she saved his sorry life in the first place.

Not only is he insulting her mother, he’s also using “Princess” as an insult, which is such a douchey thing to do?? And the fact that despite his knowledge that she is clearly an incredible fighter and stronger than he’ll ever be, he still thinks she’s not strong enough to take on the real world. Who is this man because this is NOT Steve Trevor this is some monster and from now on his name is Stupid Terrible and I don’t know him. If Joss wanted to make a movie about an asshole saving the world with his sidekick girlfriend, then go make that garbage heap on your own. Don’t sacrifice our Wonder Woman movie to do it.

Oh yes, that’s right, Joss, have someone call Diana a whore. Because that’s obviously what feminists love to see in movies. *Looks into office camera*

It’s funny that despite not being a woman, Joss Whedon seems to think he knows how we want to see ourselves depicted in movies. Newsflash, Joss! You’re not doing it right.

I CAN’T.

I NEVER THOUGHT I’D EVER IN MY LIFE HAVE TO READ ABOUT DIANA BEING TOLD TO SHUT UP BY STEVE TREVOR AND GETING SHOT ON THE SAME PAGE.

WHAT, WITH ALL DUE RESPECT, THE FUCK.

WHAT RIGHT DOES STUPID TERRIBLE HAVE TO TELL HER TO SHUT UP? THE REAL STEVE TREVOR WOULD NEVER THINK OF DOING THAT BECAUSE HE IS AN ACTUAL GENTLEMAN AND NOT SOME ASSHOLE WHO WANTS DIANA TO SIT DOWN AND BE QUIET BECAUSE SHE’S IN THE WAY OF HIS FRAGILE MASCULINITY.

STEVE AND DIANA’S RELATIONSHIP IS ONE OF MUTUAL LOVE AND RESPECT, AND JOSS IS AN IDIOT FOR EVER SUGGESTING OTHERWISE.

“An outfit skimpier than Diana’s.”

Do I really need to comment on this one?

And what a surprise, Diana is being called a bitch. Someone should play a drinking game with this where every time someone calls Diana a disrespectful name everyone takes a shot. Guarantee they’d all be blackout drunk by the end of the movie, since words that degrade women are the only ones in Whedon’s vocabulary.

Yeah that’s right, tell Diana what she can and can’t handle, that’s a good idea.

Also.

WHAT

THE

FUCK

!!!!!!!

Why is she literally naked for the entire next scene so Stupid Terrible can patch her up even though the real Diana collapsed a building by smashing into it and was completely fine and even had a cute dance with Steve right after? Diana would never be debilitated by something like that, but I guess according to Joss Whedon’s image, Diana is a weak damsel in distress who is in over her head and needs a strong male to help her overcome her fragile feminine obstacles and fix her when she’s broken. And I’ll bet you all the five dollars and forty cents in my wallet that had this horrific script actually made it on camera, there would no doubt be tons of side boob shots because, as everyone knows, movies exist only so men can see half-naked women. 😒

Just this whole page is so gross I physically cringed when I read it and screamed into my pillow.

Oh look everybody, it’s time for the moment we’ve all been waiting for: The time in the movie when the Man must tell the woman what he thinks she is because of course he knows her better than she knows herself despite only knowing her for a few days.

And don’t forget to feel bad for the poor Male because sadly, his attraction to her is such a burden to him and she should stop being so distracting because it’ll get in the way of his manliness.

And oh, what’s that I hear? The sound of Stupid Terrible hilariously admitting he is secretly hoping for her to flash him? Oh, well of course that’s just comic relief, obviously not contributing at all to rape culture or how men believe it is their right to see women as sex objects and sex objects only.

No problem, just laugh and agree that it’s the funniest thing in the whole world that his priority is seeing Diana naked, rather than be disgusted by the fact that Joss Whedon literally typed this page out and decided it was good enough to include in this god awful script.

Please note the fact that Diana and Stupid Terrible being rejected from the club contributes nothing to the plot whatsoever. Joss just got it in his head that the best idea was to add in a situation with the bouncer just so he could remind the audience that Diana is “fine” and it’s the only way she will ever be allowed anything.

What an inspiring message to little girls who came to see a movie where someone like them could be a hero. Sorry kids, apparently, according to the wise Joss Whedon, women can only get what they want if they are attractive enough to earn it. Thanks, Joss, go burn in hell you pig 😊

(Also, Diana being called a bitch yet again, but what else is new.)

Not only is Diana being called a bitch for I don’t even know what number time, but this guy is taunting her by calling her scared and crazy and sad. So far, nothing in this entire garbage heap of a script has included anything that depicts Wonder Woman as wonderful.

They may as well rename the movie Pathetic Woman or, if you want some better alliteration, Weak Woman, with the way this is going.

This scene.

May this scene please burn in the depths of Tartarus for eternity.

What, pray tell, is the fUCKING POINT OF THIS? WE HAVE DIANA SEXY DANCING HERE FOR WHAT EXACTLY? SO JOSS GETS THE CHANCE TO DESCRIBE ALL THE CAPTIVATING WONDERS OF A WOMAN’S BODY BECAUSE HE KNOWS HE’LL NEVER ACTUALLY GET TO SEE ONE UP CLOSE SINCE HE IS SUCH TRASH THAT NO SELF RESPECTING WOMAN WOULD WANT HIM??

Please,, someone,,, just pick up a sniper and take me out right now. I can’t read another line or I’m afraid my eyes will melt.

Though you know what, on second thought maybe I shouldn’t get my brains blown out because judging by this script, Joss would probably just find it sexy and include it in his next movie.

Here’s a delightful example of Stupid Terrible making the misguided assumption that blaming Diana for everything that goes wrong and telling her she does nothing but create chaos is a good idea.

Here’s the deal, people. Telling someone they’re a failure and everything is their fault? Yup, not as good an idea as you may think it is.

Now, dear reader, you maybe be asking yourself right about now, Why isn’t it clear to other people that what he’s saying is awful and he should stop being an asshole and respect Diana’s ability to make her own decisions?

Excellent question!

You see, my friends, that’s the thing about Whedon Science. You notice how he slipped in that Wise™ and Insightful™ elephant and mouse analogy in the middle of his (probably menstruation-caused) pissy rant? The logic of Whedon Science clearly states that by throwing in an intelligent analogy that somewhat applies to the situation, it reverses his argument completely and shows that clearly his rant is meant to be an inspiring pep talk to push Diana to be the best she can be, rather than a gross speech intended to tear down her confidence. Isn’t science fun, kids?

And oh, the dreaded feelings. Here we’ve got Stupid being the Cool and Mysterious character by treating his feelings like a dreaded disease that will kill him on contact.

Though you know what’ll kill him faster? Me when I murder Stupid Terrible with a bulldozer for telling Diana she doesn’t know what it means to be human and she doesn’t belong in the real world.

I can’t even with this part. What kind of human being writes something like this?

Here we have the great and powerful Male Character ranting angrily because right now his feelings are so passionate and important that they must be yelled into Diana’s face, threateningly enough to scare her.

Now I don’t know what this reminds you of, but to me it sounds a lot like what one would picture domestic abuse as. It seems that Joss apparently thinks it’s okay for men to show women who’s the boss by intimidating them into submission. That’s emotional abuse right there, and I will tell you right now that MY Steve Trevor would never even think of doing this to Diana. Ever.

He wouldn’t yell in her face to inform her on what she isn’t capable of. He wouldn’t make her feel like trash and like she should just go back to Themyscira so she can’t mess anything else up. And he definitely, without a doubt, would never ever call her a Fucking. Tourist.

What’s an action movie without a female protagonist being groped by some disgusting perve.

And can I just say that it’s bad enough Joss spent the whole screenplay making Diana seem like nothing but a sexy prop. But now he has the audacity to compare her to a “plague dog” and make aforementioned perve toss her away for fear of catching disease?? This isn’t what we wanted when we demanded you stop treating female characters like they exist only to be desirable, Joss. Nowhere close.

*cups hands around mouth* PRINCESS DIANA AND THE REST OF THE AMAZONS CAN SPEAK HUNDREDS OF LANGUAGES YOU IGNORANT SWINE

*sigh* I don’t even have the energy for the his one. Fuck you, Joss Whedon 🖕

Why???

This entire screenplay was filled with Diana doing incredible feats that Stupid Terrible didn’t believe she could do, but she proved him wrong anyway. So of course when she tells him she can fly, his immediate thought is “Of course you can’t fly, that would be crazy.” Here’s an idea. Maybe...don’t have male characters constantly tell women what they are and aren’t capable of?

So yes, this script is garbage. Every time I watch the real Wonder Woman movie, I thank my lucky stars that Patty Jenkins exists and took over this project and made it amazing.

Though I have to say, the fact that Whedon is still planned to direct Batgirl is worse than Hitler being a fashion designer. I would rather have no Batgirl movie at all than have this guy do it. This is the same guy who made Diana sexy dance for no reason and called her a bitch at least three or four times. If Joss directs Batgirl, I guarantee there will be at least one naked scene, sexual tension between Barbara and Bruce, she’ll have an estranged relationship with her dad because according to Whedon, women aren’t capable of loving familial relationships, and she will definitely be in too over her head at some point and need Batman to save her, after which he’ll yell at her because she’s not fit to be a hero. And that’s just off the top of my head.

So yeah. Fuck you, Whedon. 😊

#Wonder Woman #diana of themyscira #Diana Prince #steve trevor #Joss whedon is a dick #wonder woman movie #dc comics #joss whedon #batgirl movie

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rewrite-the-wrongs · 4 years

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ever get in a fight with your own brain? / ADHD & RSD

I spoke in my first post about the pace at which I create, and the constant mental back-and-forth I go through when reading or writing. The thing I didn’t mention, though, is that it can take a nearly-insurmountable effort to get to the point that I’m actually producing anything.

For instance: After I wrote the first two sentences of this post and four words of the next, I left my computer on my bed and went to have a shit. While there, I spent about fifty minutes on my phone (it’s no wonder I have fucking hemorrhoids, my poor butthole). Even as I continue typing now, I can’t stop flipping to other tabs. Sometimes I even pick up my phone and look at the same fucking apps I have open in Chrome.

I spent about three years talking with a therapist about this same issue nearly every week. She would ask me, “Easy, do you still want to be a writer?” and I would feel this horrible knot in my stomach, like if I said Yes I would be lying, even though that’s just not the case. No matter what I would press through the discomfort and say, “Yes. This is what I want. It’s what I love.” But something in my assertion felt hollow.

The question becomes: Why? Why in the living hell does my brain try so goddamn hard to prevent me from doing a thing that I spent countless hours practicing as a child straight up through my early twenties? Why has it taken me so long--I’m 27 now--to get back on the horse, even when I know that holding all of this creativity in can very literally make me ill?

I present to you an article a friend of mine shared a while back, and the first time I considered the very real possibility that I’m dealing with ADHD that is most certainly comorbid with my depression and anxiety:

https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/rejection-sensitive-dysphoria#1

That’s a rudimentary rundown of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD), a common symptom of ADHD. Basically, rejection (perceived or genuine) can trigger a stress response, which subsequently can lead to extreme emotional responses to said rejection.

Nobody likes to be rejected, but this shit takes it a step further, into a place that can be utterly debilitating. When I try to get creative, I often freeze up or get incredibly sad after a short time working. This is because, on some semiconscious level, I’ve convinced myself my writing will be rejected before anybody’s ever had the chance to read it. I completely overwhelm myself with the idea of an audience--I can’t help but think about how hard it is to be published, or how huge the internet is and how easy it is to be drowned out in a sea of voices, or how my absurdly limited human brain can’t possibly come up with something nobody’s thought of before.

This issue becomes even worse when I have a personal connection to my audience. I went to school for writing, and I was surrounded by talented people, some of whom I’ve maintained contact with. Many of them publish pieces in lit mags or online pretty frequently, and a couple have books out. I’ve contacted two of them directly to ask about writing reviews/essays on their work, and they’ve enthusiastically said yes. Unfortunately--and predictably, if you’re following along--that’s as far as I’ve gotten. Those messages both went out some two years ago.

I actually came out to one of those two writers on a whim recently, and mentioned/apologized for the lack of review--and she’d forgotten about it completely.

It used to be that most of my rejection sensitivity was aimed at my lack of social grace. I was a pretty hapless kid, lost in my own thoughts, almost never tracking the conversation around me. I would frequently offer non sequitur distractions in class, to the chagrin of my teachers and often my classmates. I can distinctly recall many occasions during which I

1) Patiently waited with my hand up for ten solid minutes, thinking only about whatever random fact or opinion the conversation had brought to mind;

2) Relayed said fact or opinion;

3) Was corrected or chastised, either by the teacher or kids around me or both;

4) Put my head down on my desk and began to quietly cry and hope nobody would ever look at me again.

But it wasn’t just in the classroom that I struggled to be social. Cue an image of me watching at least a solid hundred kids and parents do the Cha Cha Slide while I sat entirely alone in a corner of the gym. Cue an image of another gym, where I was watching my younger sister and several friends play in our elementary school’s steel drum band alongside every band in our county’s program; all of the players gathered on bleachers opposite our audience bleachers, and a few non-players traipsed over to sit and socialize, and I sat there thinking about crossing that gym the entire time I was there. Cue an image of a moment at a swimming pool when I misspoke and offended a friend-of-a-friend, and tried to make myself apologize but just sat there and felt queasy, and I never found the courage to speak to either person again.

When I got to high school, things got worse before they got better. I became so stressed out by rejection that I began vomiting simply because I was around somebody I was attracted to who didn’t reciprocate my feelings. In the span of maybe two months, I dropped from a hundred eighty pounds to about one-fifteen. RSD literally nearly killed me.

At this point I was writing fervently, producing upwards of a hundred thousand words between a few different shitty novel concepts. My art was the one place I could go that rejection couldn’t touch me, the one thing I would share with anybody who would have a look. I enrolled in those writing workshop classes I mentioned last post. Whenever I had a spare moment that wasn’t reserved for video games or books or my eventual girlfriend, I was creating. And my brain and I kept at it that way for years.

This is the internet, so you’ve heard of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, yeah?

I found myself very firmly at the peak Mt. Ignorance when I entered college. My high school program had prepared me extremely well, and before long I was singled out by more than one professor, and even a couple upperclassmen. It went to my head quickly.

Enter a very tumultuous, extremely unhealthy relationship that began with me cheating on my high school sweetheart (no way that could go wrong). By the start of spring semester, this older woman realized she’d invented a version of me in her head I couldn’t possibly live up to, and I--being a deeply closeted egg, still, and steeped in learned misogyny--collapsed in on myself and turned into a borderline stalker for a couple of months. (I have since apologized, and we’re still in touch, albeit it very, very distantly.)

I deeply internalized this rejection, to the point that I started to denigrate myself as an artist, and my brain connected RSD more inextricably to my writing. When I hit sophomore year, my confidence had begun to waver, and even though I was still learning and improving, by the time I was a junior that confidence had all but dissolved. I was flat on my ass in what a political scientist friend of mine calls THE VALLEY OF DESPAIR, or the trough at the very bottom of the Dunning-Kruger curve.

This lack of confidence culminated in an independent study that I should have failed. It was spring semester of my junior year. I had the opportunity to work one-on-one with my favorite professor and, in my opinion, the most talented writer we had to learn from. But I was nearly out of creative energy, and I found it nearly impossible to write anything I felt would be good enough, especially for someone I idolized so intensely. I wound up sending him stories I’d written for a fiction workshop the semester before, and even then I wasn’t able to complete the course. That professor left my grade unmarked until I graduated, at which point he aced me out of what was probably a mixture of pity and a need to keep our small private school’s GPA high.

Senior year, I found poetry, which gave me the opportunity to produce less in terms of volume. I stayed in poetry the whole year, and wrote less than I had since I was eight. When I left school, I stalled out almost entirely.

This is all a rather long-winded way of saying that my brain is my own worst enemy when it comes to writing. RSD leaves me prone to catastrophizing everything, and the general trajectory of my life felt downward for a long time.

But I went to therapy, and I came out to my partner just about a year ago now, and I’m happier every day. I’m relearning the patience with myself and my artistic process. I’m pushing myself to keep learning and gaining experience and knowledge. I’ve got a couple different creative projects going. And I’m here on Tumblr, blogging for the second time in a week (ish--where the hell are the time stamps on these posts?!).

Every time I start to feel the crushing weight of the world above me--every time I feel like I’ll never climb out of the Valley of Despair, like I couldn’t possibly contribute anything good to the world--I’m going to remind myself of this image:

TL;DR: Fuck you, brain. You’re not the boss of me. I’m a writer, and I will remain one. And my writing is for me. Any other readers are a bonus.

Much love, y’all--

Easy

#writing #ADHD #RSD #Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria #process #creativity #diary

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