#unfortunately torture falls under the games category

[magicaldogtoto]

You must be from an alternate universe where Magia Record wasn't filled with the same bullshit torturing girls for their wishes, treating Mami like a prop and sex object, and portraying sapphic girls as predators.

Hm, never thought I’d get one of these before… how naive of me.

I get that “this franchise tortures girls for their wishes” is a common rallying point for people who don’t like it, but frankly it always confuses me. Yes, the plot is that the Magical Girls are being used by the Incubators in the long run. But it’s also pretty clear that this isn’t a good thing. The crux of the original series is literally that what the Incubators are doing is bad. MagiReco also goes with this idea, because why else would there be so much focus on the cast trying to stop them.

I guess I just don’t get what the issue is here—is it that bad things happen to people in a story? Because if that bothers you, you’re going to have a hard time reading and watching a lot of things. Is it that the ending isn’t wholly a happy one, no matter what? I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but I do like happy endings. But I don’t get this thing where anything that comes short of a happy ending is written off as worthless.

I saw someone say this before, but it bears repeating: I don’t think the series is mainly focused on portraying punishing girls for their wishes as a good thing when it’s quite literally filled with protagonists whose whole deal is “That sucks, I need to stop it somehow.” And if that was the main thing, why does it portray the Incubators as amoral/lacking in empathy? If punishing and torturing was the endgame, why have the protagonist argue with Kyubey about it?

Mami’s whole thing is just a unfortunate trend you see in a lot of anime. I’m not saying it’s something we should accept—it’s not—but I never felt that it was that oppressive in the overall framework of the story.

I’m not sapphic, so I’m not sure if I’m equipped to address that final point, but I think “both series portray sapphic girls as predators” is kind of a gross oversimplification of what goes on. Also, you are aware that there is more than one character or group of characters who fall under that category, right? I can think of a couple who are most definitely not in any definition a predator.

I’m assuming you found me because of one of my posts. If so, I hope you’re aware that MagiReco’s game and anime differ a lot. And I don’t like what the anime changed.

#anonymous #ask and replies #magia record #madoka magica #magical girl #sorry for the ramble #it’s 5 AM

[ao3feed-undertale1]

Unfeel

read it on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/52887097 by Wingless_Hummingbird “Unfortunately, I know someone who possesses the ability to bend even the most twisted souls into a… proper shape again. Which means I can never rely on you fully, not without bearing the risk of betrayal.” Killer may have lost his emotions, but not his impeccable perception. This isn’t a worried expression, but the face of someone who is about to commit the ultimate sin under the guise of self-defense. He tilts his head, black liquid spilling from his eye-socket. “Pretty sure there’s already a solution for that.” Nightmare’s face lights up. “Possibly. I need your soul.” Or: Killer realizes how messed up he really is. Words: 1788, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Fandoms: Undertale (Video Game) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Categories: M/M Characters: Nightmare (Dreamtale), Killer Sans — Character Relationships: Sans/Sans (Undertale), Nightmare/Killer, Killermare Additional Tags: Unhealthy Relationships, Developing Relationship, Falling In Love, Twisted, Romance, toxic, but kinda sweet, Killer-centric, Non-Violent Torture, Consensual Soul Touching, Obsessive thoughts, First Signs of a Caring Nightmare, Killer Doesn't Have a Survival Instinct, A little spicy, Coming Untouched, they have a good time, i guess..?, NSFW read it on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/52887097

#ao3feed #ao3undertalefeed #fanfic #undertale #undertale-fanfic

[matchasprouts]

Listen Closer - Chapter 2

[ your honour, i simply love him. also this may become my focus for a while so idk if The Walls and Ashes will keep getting semi-regular updates ]

First || Next || Previous || Last

“Do you ever think about making traps that aren’t iron maidens?” Amanda asked, looking up from her own work to watch Garrett attach a chain to a literal iron maiden.

Garrett glanced at her before scoffing and placing the collar on the chain down on the ground as he went around to the back of the maiden to check the pulley the chain was attached to. “I think about plenty of traps. Iron maidens are just my favourite. Would you rather I-”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Amanda cut him off, already knowing he was about to spew some shit on medieval torture methods. “I was just curious. I mean, they work, so I’m not complaining. And it keeps you busy.”

Right. Because if he wasn’t building or designing a trap he was writing, and that would be falling back on what he was trying to unlearn.

When he went to respond, he was cut off yet again by his phone ringing. He answered it almost immediately, since the only people with that number were his Jigsaw associates. “Yeah?” he greeted, tucking the phone under his ear as he got back to work.

“Garrett. I am in the car, outside. I need your help,” came the voice of John through the phone, the way he spoke making Garrett chuckle to himself. “Be prepared to carry a person.” Oh! There was no scheduled game for today?

Garrett once again tried to reply, just for John to hang up. He let out an annoyed groan, but flipped the phone shut and tossed it on the table. “Don’t touch my trap,” he told Amanda, before pulling down his sleeves and jogging outside to help John.

He was ninety percent sure he heard her fucking with his trap as soon as he left.

---

“Who in the FUCK is this guy?” Garrett asked, struggling slightly to keep John’s newest victim standing, his limp body leaning heavily into him. Garrett was the strongest of the three of them, sure, and the second tallest but this guy was HUGE. He had to be at least 6’0, and carrying him was like carrying a brick wall.

John glanced at him, a vague amusement in his eyes but a neutral look on his face. “That, Garrett, is Detective Mark Hoffman. Normally I don’t go after cops if I had no evidence that they’re dirty, but he attempted to frame us, and I cannot tolerate that. Getting caught myself doesn’t matter. Keeping you and Amanda safe does.”

Aww, murder dad moments. Better than the dad Garrett used to have. “Right,” he let out a huff, readjusting Mark as he dragged him through the room, FINALLY dropping him into a chair in the middle of the workshop. “No wonder he’s a detective, the man’s a fucking giant.”

He stood in front of the still passed out detective, giving him a proper look over. He was big, like he’d already said, with short dark brown hair that had looked black outside. He had surprisingly well formed lips for a presumably cis white guy, and Garrett surprised himself with the thought that they looked awfully biteable.

Ah, there’s his gay instinct. He’d been wondering where it had gone, since it hadn’t fucked him over when he’d met that Adam Faulkner guy- who was definitely cute, but also now haunting him, which kind of ruins the appeal.

Moving on from that, Hoffman also had a little bit of scruff on his jaw, which Garrett quickly realized was what he’d felt on his temple while he was carrying him to the chair.

His little inspection was cut short when John began setting up the trap, strapping Hoffman to the chair with a shotgun strapped to his chest, the barrel directly under his chin.

“That doesn’t look very escapable,” Garrett joked, sending a short look to Amanda, who immediately looked away, at least having the decency to be embarrassed about her rigged traps.

“You would be surprised what human beings will do to escape entrapment,” John replied simply. “But this one is not built for him to escape from on his own. I’m going to make him an offer.”

He looked at his two apprentices, gesturing for Amanda to come over to them. “I want both of you to keep working on your games tonight, out of the warehouse. I know much about the detective, but not everything. I’m not going to risk him lashing out.”

Of course. John Kramer was nothing if not protective of his apprentices. Theoretically, Hoffman would fall into this category when the night was over. “Well, my iron maiden’s done,” Garrett said, glancing back at his newest device. “My game could take place soon, if not tomorrow. I know where the player will be.”

John nodded at this. “Good. Run your game then. If all goes as planned tonight, it will be good for our newest recruit to see one of you in action. Maybe he’ll learn something. Now go, both of you.”

Usually, Amanda argued when he dismissed her, but apparently she could see that he was serious, and simply packed her things and left. Garrett looked at Hoffman one last time before doing the same.

He could hear Hoffman begin to stir as he stepped out the door, and he found himself hoping that everything would go smoothly tonight.

Gay ass.

---

“Man, just carrying bodies is giving me a work-out,” Garrett muttered under his breath as he readjusted the woman slung over his shoulder, finally lowering her to the ground of the room her game would be taking place in.

As much as he wanted to do one of those big, multi-room games he’d seen John put on, he just didn’t have enough experience for those yet. So, it was a single room, with a single trap. Since it was small, he’d chosen someone with a small offense.

He’d even gotten to record the tape himself.

The collar let out a satisfying click as he fixed it onto the player’s neck, humming a soft tune as he gave it a tug to ensure it was one correctly.

There was a key for her to get in the middle of the room, just barely out of reach of the chain. She’d really have to get creative with getting to it. He checked the chain itself as well, ensuring it wouldn’t break off. He finished his check-up with a look at the hinges on the doors of the iron maiden, and the pulley attached to the chain.

The player was starting to stir, so he placed the tape recorder next to her and took his chance to leave. After all, if she survived, he really needed her to not see his face.

Soon enough, he took his place in the camera room, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet up on the desk.

“Do you always watch your games like that?” he heard someone speak up, looking to the door that Hoffman had just come through. He tilted his head at the detective, before grinning at him.

“Sure do,” Garrett replied, turning back to the screens. “Well, I would, if this wasn’t my first game. Usually I’m tinkering with something while John’s games are running.”

The player had woken up by then, clicking the tape on and cutting off the conversation.

“Hello Cara. I want to play a game,” the tape said, the voice making Garrett smile. It had been hard work getting his distorted voice to sound similar enough to the original Jigsaw’s. “For years you have kept yourself in a closet of your own creation in order to help others rise above you, allowing them to steal your work.”

“Well, unless you want that closet to become your death, you will rise above that today. Before you is a box, and inside it is the key to your freedom. You will have to work to get it. You have ten minutes. If you do not get to the key in time, the closet behind you will become your coffin. Live or die, Cara. Make your choice.”

The tape clicked off after that, and Cara did exactly what Garrett guessed she would- run straight for the box and find out the hard way that the chain was just barely short of the required length to grab it.

“This is usually the part where they start screaming for help and panicking. I gave her ten minutes because I knew she would, and that’s when a lot of people tend to die. I wanted to give her a fair chance.”

That almost seemed nice, but it was a lie. Garrett liked watching them thrash around and panic. The more time they had alive, the more time they could slowly go insane.

Hoffman had moved closer at some point, now sitting next to him in a chair that he’d pulled over to the desk. This was the first time Garrett had seen him since last night, so he finally got a chance to look at his eyes.

For someone who wasn’t a fan of blue eyes, Garrett thought Hoffman’s were gorgeous. He very, very quickly looked away, turning his attention back to his game.

“Did you build the iron maiden yourself?” Hoffman asked, and Garrett scoffed at the question.

“No, unfortunately. I didn’t have enough time to build one from the ground up,” he answered with a soft, disappointed sigh. “I found most of it from a collector that built replicas of medieval shit, but never got around to completing it. I finished it off, added the extras.”

Hoffman gave a hum of acknowledgement, his gaze glued to the screen in front of them. “How is this supposed to help her? How did it even help you?” There it was. Since Hoffman hadn’t gone through a real game, he didn’t feel the same as Garrett and Amanda. He didn’t understand it like they did.

Garrett readjusted himself in his chair, tilting his head at the screen. “I don’t want to tear every person I see to shreds anymore,” he offered with a shrug. “I don’t feel like screaming for hours on end until my throat bleeds. I’d say it worked pretty well on me. Sometimes you just need that kind of release.”

“For her, she’s supposed to learn her worth. She’s not just the sum of what she can do for others, what’s more important is what she can do for herself. And she needs to figure that out. I don’t want her to die. Why would I? That’s not the point.”

He didn’t notice Hoffman turning to look at him while he spoke, so he almost flinched when he glanced over and made eye contact with him. They held each other’s gazes for a moment, before they both looked back to the screen.

Cara really was trying to get that box, having now resorted to removing her belt and attempting to loop it around the box. It took a few tries, but she finally got a grip on the box and pulled it over to herself.

She scrambled to open it, and Garrett glanced at the timer.

Eight seconds.

“She’s not going to make it,” he realized aloud. He hadn’t even noticed how quickly time was passing, but he didn’t feel anything when the timer went off, or when Cara screamed as the chain yanked back, dragging her into the iron maiden.

Her screams became wet and gurgled when the doors of the maiden closed on her. Blood seeped out of the cracks at the bottom of the door. He just stared at the screen.

“Huh. Maybe ten minutes wasn’t enough time. Shame. I was really looking forward to seeing her get better.” With that, he stood up, turned off the screen, and headed back to the room to leave the iconic jigsaw piece in her skin. Hoffman followed, and watched him do it. “Most important part, if they die,” Garrett told him as he cut the skin with a scalpel John had given him, closing the door again when he was done.

And then he turned to Hoffman, his head tilted to the side in a curious motion. “Will you be the detective on the case? I suppose this will be your first test of loyalty, hm? I’d hate to kill you. You’re very pretty.”

He gave Hoffman a pat on the shoulder as he left the room, leaving him to think on what he’d said. It wasn’t a threat, but it was clear that he would kill him if needed. But he genuinely did not want to.

A smile formed when he heard Hoffman follow him out of the room. It was nice to have another apprentice, and it was looking like they’d get along.

#story tag: listen closer #self ship fic #self shipping #self insert #scrap.writing #scrap.ships #romantic: ⛓🕵️‍♂️ #s/i: garrett whitlock #mark hoffman #chapter 2

[rainbowwing251]

This is completely random but, what do you think the laughs of all smash fighters would sound like? I’m low-key kinda curious. You can ignore this if you want

This ask has been sitting in my inbox since May, and I feel terrible about it. I’m very sorry for the late response.

However, the delay might have been a good thing? I mean, it wouldn’t have taken me long to add Kazuya to this post if I posted this back in May or June, but who knows? I might have to do a bit of research when the final DLC Fighter gets announced, so this delay could save me some time in the future.

Alright, so before we begin, I need to make a confession: when I first saw this ask in May, it kind of broke my brain. I think I even got a little flustered at the idea of describing the laughs of all of the Smash characters. I had absolutely no idea how to respond to this ask at first, but I think I got an idea.

I’m going to use the following categories to describe the laughs of each of the fighters in the most simple way possible. If you want me to elaborate on a specific character’s laugh, I’ll gladly respond to your questions.

Here are the categories and all of the fighters that fall into a specific category:

A mixture of squeaks, squeals, and uncontrollable laughter: Corrin, Daisy, Dark Pit, Inklings (all 8 of them), Joker, Pit, Roy (Fire Emblem), Robin, Shulk, Sora, Toon Link.

These fighters sound as though they are going to die of laughter if you don’t stop tickling them (and they probably would. Most of these fighters are deathly ticklish).

Light laughter that may contain sweet-sounding giggles: Eleven, Ice Climbers (both Nana and Popo have laughs like this), Isabelle, Jigglypuff, Link, Marth, Min Min, Ness, Palutena, Peach, Reflect (this is the name that I use to refer to female Robin), Rosalina & Luma (both of them fall under this category), Roy (Koopaling), Wendy, Sally (Sally is what I call the female Wii Fit Trainer), Zelda.

If you like cute things, you might want to tickle these fighters.

Silly-sounding laughter: Alph, Banjo, Bowser Jr., Chrom, Dr. Mario, Eight, Greninja, Iggy, Kazooie, Mario, Larry, Lemmy, Luigi, Olimar, Sonic, Terry.

If you don’t want to lose yourself to laughter, then you might not want to tickle these specific fighters. Their laughs are highly contagious, even to the fighters who are known for their stoicism.

Belly laughs: Bowser, King Dedede, King K. Rool, Morton

Strained laughter: Blythe (this is the name that I use to refer to female Byleth), Byleth, Charizard, Cloud, Erdrick/Arusu (Dragon Quest III), Fox, Falco, Lucario, Lucina, Meta Knight, Mythra, Samus, Sheik, Solo

What I mean by “strained laughter” is laughter that sounds forced. This type of laughter might be painful to the fighters who laugh like this, since they are not used to laughing. So if you tickle these fighters, they might end up with a bit of chest pain if you tickle them long enough.

Gruff-sounding laughter: Ike, Ken, Little Mac, Richter, Sal (Sal is what I call the male Wii Fit Trainer), Snake

Nervous laughter: Kamui (this is the name that I use to refer to female Corrin), Lucas, Pichu, Pyra

Why is Kamui here? Well, she’s terrified of tickle torture (or at least in my headcanons, she is). She’s seen what her Nohrian siblings can do to their unfortunate victims, so she’ll always get nervous when she is the lee.

As for Pichu, it’s worried about electrocuting the person who’s tickling it. We all know that Pichu is not the best at controlling electricity, so I don’t think anyone would blame it for being afraid of shocking someone. It’s happened to a couple of the fighters in the past.

Innocent-sounding laughter: Ivysaur, Kirby, Leaf (this is the name that I use to refer to the female Pokémon Trainer), Mega Man, Pikachu, Red (this is the name that I use to refer to the male Pokémon Trainer), Squirtle, Villagers (all 8 of them), Young Link

Light chuckling, but otherwise nothing: Bayonetta, Captain Falcon, Incineroar, Ryu, Sephiroth, Simon

These fighters are not that ticklish, but you likely got the idea straight away, given the name of this category.

They can laugh, but they are not ticklish: Duck Hunt, Ganondorf, Kazuya, Mewtwo, Wario, Wolf

Can’t laugh at all: Dark Samus, Enderman, Mr. Game & Watch, Piranha Plant, Ridley, R.O.B, Zombie.

Are these fighters capable of laughing? If so, is it possible to tickle them? Would they even be ticklish? I have no clue: Alex, Diddy Kong, Donkey Kong, PAC-MAN, Steve, Yoshi.

No definitive laugh: Mii Fighters

Since each Mii Fighter has a different voice, and there are 12 different voices in total, it would be impossible for anyone to describe the laughs of all of the Mii’s with a single description.

#Tickling #tickle tour #the colorful words of the color gray #I feel somewhat embarrassed about this post #I had a lot more confidence in it back in May #but for some reason I lost it #the information in this post might be inaccurate #so feel free to share your personal headcanons on the laughs of the fighters in Smash #you can also ask for me to move a fighter into another category if you think they should be in a different category #or if you think that a fighter should be in their own category #feel free to let me know #came back to this post just so I could add Sora to the list #I said I would do it!

[elizabear]

body language will do the trick

OK, so I know this is going to be fully AU in about five seconds when The Falcon and the Winter Soldier airs, but those couples counseling scenes in the trailer got me WAY TOO EXCITED and I really couldn't help myself.

Title: body language will do the trick

Rating: Explicit

Category: M/M

Relationship: Sam Wilson/Bucky Barnes (background Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanoff)

Additional tags: frenemies to lovers, coworkers to lovers, couples counseling, because sam and bucky can’t stop flirting at work, post-avengers endgame, but it’s au because, steve rogers isn’t old, and natasha romanoff lives, captain america sam wilson, shield agent bucky barnes, past steve rogers/bucky barnes, but it’s minor, bucky and sam fall in love, but COMPETITIVELY, oral sex, anal sex, tender railing, idiots in love, praise kink

Words: 12,598

Link to AO3: here

Summary:

“There’s no way you’re going to win this,” Bucky tells Sam. “I am going to love language the shit out of you.”

Sam gives him a considering look. “You do seem like you’d be really good at that.”

Bucky’s cheeks flush with heat. “Thanks, pal, I—”

Sam smirks, and Bucky’s eyes narrow. He shoves his elbow into Sam’s side and stalks off, leaving Sam cackling behind him.

“Your ass looks great today!” Sam yells.

Bucky reaches up to flip Sam the bird, and he definitely does not feel grateful that he wore his good jeans today. Bucky’s ass looks great every day.

Bucky Barnes is pretty sure that these counseling sessions—supposedly for Bucky and Sam’s “interpersonal issues”—are Director Fury’s revenge for that whole fake assassination situation. Which, to be fair to Fury, came about as the result of Bucky’s very real assassination attempt, even if the subsequent “assassination” was fake, so Bucky can’t exactly blame Fury there. What Bucky doesn’t understand is why their possibly-fake counselor—is she a real counselor, or just another one of Fury’s spies?—chooses to conduct her “therapy” sessions in the unlikely and frankly suspicious location of an underground bunker.

Dr. Carson’s therapy bunker is probably just a temporary location, since usable office facilities with running water and electricity are still pretty limited after the Blip, but Bucky was definitely under the impression that modern American therapists’ offices were supposed to be more soothing than this. He’d expected a bland but tasteful space filled with a cushy sofa and watercolor paintings and the calming sounds of nature recordings. Instead, Bucky and Sam are sitting in uncomfortable chairs in a dim room with bare cement walls and unflattering fluorescent lighting. Is Fury even trying to sell this fake counseling op?

Bucky and Sam’s counselor/interrogator is most definitely hostile. Although Dr. Carson looks lovely in her delicate green silk blouse and expensive silk scarf, her expression is stern and sour. She’s styled her glossy dark hair neatly, in gentle waves that summon a distant memory of the way women used to wear their hair in the 1940s, and Bucky wonders if this is Dr. Carson’s authentic style or if it’s just part of another SHIELD spy game, meant to trick or manipulate Bucky into confiding in Dr. Carson because she looks familiar and nonthreatening.

Bucky considers it an insult to the memory of Peggy Carter if Fury thinks he could’ve worked with Carter for two years in the SSR and still underestimate a woman just because she has nice hair and a pretty outfit.

Also, if Dr. Carson’s trying to lull Bucky into a false sense of security, why is she doing it in this weird basement?

Honestly this whole counseling thing really does seem like it’s secretly just a poorly planned interrogation.

Like right now. Dr. Carson asks, “Are you having a staring contest?” and Bucky isn’t going to disclose valuable intel by admitting that while Sam is definitely having a staring contest with him, Bucky is just using this as an excuse to look into Sam’s eyes, which are warm and brown and make Bucky feel all sorts of confusing things. Bucky is trained to resist interrogation, and that piece of information definitely falls under the category of “unexpected and alarming potential weaknesses.”

Also Bucky’s still sort of figuring out how he feels about Sam’s whole eye and face and shoulder situation, so the staring contest is actually a pretty great cover for whatever the fuck is really going on with him. Half of successfully surviving an interrogation is letting your captors fill in the blanks themselves and then pretending like their waterboarding is the worst thing you’ve ever endured.

Unfortunately, while Bucky is congratulating himself on successfully maintaining operations security—and winning their staring contest, no reason he can’t do both at once—Dr. Carson seems to reach her limit for the amount of shit she’s willing to endure from them today.

“You’re not taking this seriously.” Dr. Carson shoots them with a hard glare. “I’m giving you a five minute break, and if you’re not ready to open up and work on your communication and compatibility issues, I’m going to have to advise Fury to put you both on leave.”

Bucky’s fine with being put on leave, and he’s fully prepared to wait out SHIELD, Fury, and Dr. Carson. It took HYDRA fifteen years to break him down enough to send him out on missions, and no matter how much they tortured him Bucky didn’t shed so much as a single tear until they showed him newspaper headlines about what a bad pilot Steve turned out to be.

Also, Bucky’s not entirely sure that he’s not actually immortal, so he figures his patience will probably far outlast Fury’s determination to punish him for shooting him a few times when he didn’t even die. Actually, now that Bucky thinks about it, Fury’s probably less mad about the whole fake assassination thing than he is about Steve forcing him to offer Bucky a job and then grit out the most begrudging apology Bucky has ever heard in his life for SHIELDRA holding Bucky hostage as a brainwashed assassin while Fury was the Director of SHIELD. Right in front of Captain Marvel, too, Fury’s favorite Avenger, who had looked very disappointed in him. Apparently Danvers had her own history as a superpowered amnesiac brainwashed into working for the bad guys? Bucky’s unclear on the details, but when Danvers’s mouth tightened and her head shook in dismay, Nick Fury’s shoulders had slumped like a chastened schoolboy.

God, Steve is such a dick sometimes. Bucky loves him so much.

Dr. Carson’s high heels make clipped little clicking noises that speak volumes about her frustration with them as she strides purposefully out of the room. As soon as she closes the door, so firmly that Bucky can just tell that she had to have put conscious, controlled effort into not slamming it behind her, Bucky turns to Sam with a satisfied grin.

“Well, I think we’re doing great,” Bucky says. “SHIELD’s going to have to work a lot harder to get any real intel out of us, and I was definitely promised that they wouldn’t be using any drugs or brainwashing techniques this time so I think we’re going to nail this whole interrogation.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “This is therapy, man, not an interrogation. We’re supposed to be, like, opening up and becoming a better team.”

“Yeah, well, if this is real therapy then where are the goats?” Bucky says, raising an eyebrow toward the most likely location of the nearest camera as if to say gotcha, Fury, your goatless fake therapy interrogation tactic isn’t fooling me.

“I’m sorry, goats? Why would there be goats?”

Bucky leans back in his chair and folds his hands behind his head. “I’m just saying, in Wakanda I always got to hang out with animals when I did therapy. And look how great that turned out! I hardly ever kill anyone anymore, and when I do it’s on purpose because I decided to. Anyway, I really feel like this is all just a plot by SHIELD to find out why we—”

Bucky and Sam bicker for a while about whether or not this is real therapy until they’re interrupted by Dr. Carson’s return, her face looking a little damp now, like maybe she spent her time away from them splashing water on it and doing some deep breathing exercises in the bathroom.

“OK,” says Dr. Carson, visibly relaxing her spine. “We’re going to take a new approach. Have you heard of the five love languages?”

Sam’s eyes widen in horror. “No, we are not doing the five love languages.”

Bucky hasn’t heard of the five love languages, but he can tell from the look on Sam’s face that they definitely don’t want to do this, and Bucky’s pretty good at improvising when he needs to. “Oh, you know, I think HYDRA already implanted the five love languages in my brain when they were doing the rest of the Romance languages. So we can just skip those, I already know them.”

Bucky offers Dr. Carson his blandest and most innocent smile, the same one that sometimes worked on Sister Mary Angela back at old St. Charles Borromeo, but Dr. Carson’s face remains as stony and unmoved as the church itself, still standing in Brooklyn Heights in the year of our Lord 2023. Instead she says, “I think we need to take a couples therapy approach.”

“Couples therapy,” Sam repeats, sinking lower in his chair. Bucky winces as Sam’s knee starts to crush his balls.

“According to this file,” Dr. Carson says, opening it up to read aloud, “the two of you are here because your colleagues have complained about your, quote, romantically-charged bickering, your constant flirting, and your unnecessarily sexual sparring.”

Dr. Carson punctuates these damning statements with some truly savage air quotes.

“Listen, when I slap Sam’s bare ass in the locker room after a good sparring session it’s with purely collegial respect for a worthy opponent,” Bucky says, folding his arms across his chest. “I only ever treat Sam with the same level of professional respect I give Steve and Natasha.”

Sam nods in support. “Steve and Natasha never have a problem getting sweaty and physical with us, and I’ve personally witnessed Steve and Natasha slap Bucky’s ass dozens of times.”

Dr. Carson raises a single judgmental eyebrow. “Don’t you think there might be a reason why Fury’s banned the four of you from using the gym at the same time?”

“Uh, yeah,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes. “The other SHIELD agents get intimidated by Sam’s shredded abs and Steve’s and my super strength. Plus everyone’s scared of Natasha.”

Dr. Carson closes her eyes and visibly counts to ten. Bucky can see her mouth forming the words.

“All right, we’re just going to move on here, because I’m really only able to deal with just the one dysfunctional relationship at a time.” Dr. Carson passes them some worksheets and pencils. “I want you to fill these out, honestly, and then hand them back to me when you’re done.”

Bucky reads over the worksheets, which are filled with questions like, “Do you like it more when your partner reacts positively to something you’ve accomplished or when they do something for you that you know they don’t particularly enjoy?” There are a lot of questions about hugging, and holding hands, and Bucky gets distracted trying to picture holding hands with Sam, who has big hands, strong and capable and—

“Stop trying to copy my answers,” Sam says, when he notices Bucky glancing over at the way Sam grips his pen as he fills out his worksheet. Sam shoves his knee harder into Bucky’s crotch and Bucky stifles a gasp.

“I’m not!”

“Bucky, stop cheating.” Dr. Carson presses her lips together in a severe frown.

Bucky scowls and scooches his chair back several inches. It makes a loud scraping sound as it drags against the cement floor. But before going back to filling out his form, Bucky gives Sam’s ankle a sharp kick for getting him in trouble with Dr. Carson, and the two of them engage in a brief but brutal silent kicking war below the front of the desk where Dr. Carson can’t see.

When Bucky and Sam finish their kicking war and their quizzes, they hand their worksheets back to Dr. Carson for grading and rub their shins as they wait.

“Bucky, your primary love language is words of affirmation, and your secondary love language is physical touch,” Dr. Carson announces. “And Sam, your primary love language is acts of service, while your secondary love language is quality time.”

Bucky frowns. On the one hand, he feels like he’s received some pretty valuable intel about Sam that he could use to his benefit. But on the other hand, he’s probably given up some valuable intel of his own. He wishes there hadn’t been so many questions that made him think about hugging and touching Sam—somehow those made him so distracted that he forgot to respond with lies.

Bucky’s stomach knots up a bit at the thought of Sam learning his potential weaknesses, but really, how much of a psyop could Sam possibly launch with the results from a couples counseling questionnaire? (Natasha could probably execute a successful psyop based on the information from a Buzzfeed quiz meant to reveal your “celebrity mom,” so Bucky really hopes Sam doesn’t talk to Natasha about this.)

“Your homework is to try to learn to speak each other’s language.” Dr. Carson stands up and walks around the desk to touch Bucky’s shoulder. “Good job today, Bucky.”

Bucky smiles, and the knot in his stomach releases a bit. He is so nailing this therapy thing, he knew he’d be better at it than Sam.

Dr. Carson helps Sam back into his coat as she ushers them toward the door, and Bucky’s pretty sure she’s meant to be modeling an act of service except that mostly it seems like she’s just trying to rush them out of the office.

“See you next week.” Dr. Carson smiles stiffly, like she is not at all looking forward to seeing them next week. Her expression is full of determined professionalism right up until the click of the door latch, and then Bucky hears a dull thudding noise that is pretty unmistakably the sound of Dr. Carson hitting her head against the doorframe.

“There’s no way you’re going to win this,” Bucky tells Sam. “I am going to love language the shit out of you.”

Sam gives him a considering look. “You do seem like you’d be really good at that.”

Bucky’s cheeks flush with heat. “Thanks, pal, I—”

Sam smirks, and Bucky’s eyes narrow. He shoves his elbow into Sam’s side and stalks off, leaving Sam cackling behind him.

“Your ass looks great today!” Sam yells.

Bucky reaches up to flip Sam the bird, and he definitely does not feel grateful that he wore his good jeans today. Bucky’s ass looks great every day.

***

They’re on a mission together the next day, battling some Doombots in New Jersey, and wow is Sam committed to this whole words of affirmation thing.

When Bucky deflects a punch aimed straight for Sam’s head with his vibranium arm, Sam whistles and says, “Nice save, man, you’re killing it today.” Warmth rises up in Bucky’s chest at Sam’s praise, and Bucky is filled with panic and dismay when he realizes that the fight to squash it back down is honestly more taxing than their battle against Doombots. There’s absolutely no reason Bucky should be having such a physical reaction to basic battle camaraderie.

When Bucky stretches his leg up above his head to nail one of the bots with a vicious kick, Sam smirks and gives him a distinct how-you-doing sort of nod. “That was—seriously hot, man. Have you been doing yoga or something?”

So apparently Sam is choosing to interpret words of affirmation as “wild flirtation,” and Bucky’s cheeks are choosing to betray him by radiating at Sam’s attention. Bucky knows there’s a flush spreading down his neck, and he’s hoping Sam will attribute it to exertion from the fight, because there’s no way Bucky can let Sam know that Sam’s sort of winning at their therapy homework—not when Bucky’s entire mental health journey and, like, the honor of the Wakandan animal-assisted therapy program is at stake.

But after they board the Quinjet and set the autopilot on a course back to New York, Sam gives Bucky a slow up-and-down perusal with his eyes, and Bucky feels Sam’s gaze like a physical touch. “You look really good after a fight, Buck. That messed up hair and pretty pink blush are giving me all kinds of ideas.”

Bucky’s cock twitches at that, and huh. Bucky blinks and looks down at his crotch.

So that’s working again.

A dirty smirk spreads across Sam’s face, like maybe Sam knows exactly what just happened inside Bucky’s pants, and fuck, this whole situation is spiraling rapidly out of Bucky’s control. Like, yeah, Bucky kept Sam from getting a pretty gnarly concussion, and that was probably an act of service, right? But it’s pretty clear, to both of them, that Sam is winning this competition, and Bucky is not about to go down without a fight.

Which is—an idea.

Bucky drops to his knees in front of Sam and bites his lip in a way that he knows, instinctively, will make him look hot. Sam inhales sharply in response, and Bucky reaches up to grasp Sam by the hips before he can take a step backwards. The material of Sam’s uniform bunches up and shifts under Bucky’s hands, and fuck, Bucky’s cock is aching now, throbbing and filling up in his tight uniform pants. Bucky forgot he could feel so good.

“What are you doing,” Sam protests in a half-assed sort of way.

“Servicing you,” Bucky replies with a wicked grin, sliding Sam’s zipper down slowly over his thickening cock. Bucky can’t remember if he’s done this before, but the way his mouth waters and his throat aches in anticipation makes him feel pretty fucking confident about how this is going to go down.

But before Bucky can pull Sam’s cock out of his briefs, Sam slides his fingers into Bucky’s hair and tips his head gently backward, using his other hand to tilt Bucky’s chin up to look into Sam’s face. Sam’s pretty brown eyes are already darkening with arousal, but his expression is serious.

“You don’t have to suck my dick for therapy, man.”

Bucky huffs. “Sam, this is the first time my dick’s been hard since 1945. Do you know how many times Steve’s let me watch him jerk off trying to heIp me get hard again? I am definitely not doing this only to win at therapy, pal.”

Sam’s hands freeze in Bucky’s hair and his cock swells visibly in his briefs. “I’m sorry, Steve let you do what now? Dude, I thought Steve was straight.”

“Oh, he’s definitely, like, straight-ish,” Bucky assures Sam, with a little so-so wave of his hand that hopefully conveys the correct amount of ambiguity there. “He’s mostly just a really great friend.”

Sam’s eyes close for a long moment, and then Bucky’s scalp stings when Sam clenches his fist in Bucky’s hair and pulls. “Jesus,” mutters Sam, his voice gruff and husky. “Yeah, OK, baby. Go ahead and suck my dick.”

Bucky’s heart pounds as he pulls Sam’s cock out of his briefs and licks a wet stripe up the length of it, groaning at the feel of Sam’s skin under his tongue. Sam tastes salty with sweat, and his scent is musky and thick after their fight with the Doombots. Bucky teases him for a while, the way he’s seen people do in porn, trailing wet kisses along the shaft and mouthing at the head, and Sam lets out a ragged moan when Bucky’s mouth finally engulfs him. Bucky’s feeling pretty cocky about this, loves the rush of power he feels as Sam’s hips twitch and jerk to keep from thrusting into Bucky’s mouth—but then Sam fucking escalates shit, because Sam is an asshole.

“Christ, you feel good,” Sam murmurs, reaching down to rub his thumb against Bucky’s mouth, stretched wide around Sam’s cock. “You look so pretty with my dick in your mouth.”

And then Bucky’s the one moaning, eyelids fluttering shut and heat coursing down his spine at the sound of Sam’s husky voice. Bucky should have expected Sam to counter his act of service with more words of affirmation, but somehow he wasn’t prepared for the unbearable ache he’d feel at Sam’s dirty talk. Bucky feels inexperienced, outclassed at this sort of sexual warfare, and the only way he can retaliate is by sinking as far down on Sam’s cock as his throat will allow him. He reaches up to grab Sam’s hips, urging him to fuck his mouth, and then he hums a little inside his head to try to tune out the sound of Sam’s praise.

“Fuck,” says Sam. “God, that’s it, baby. You take it so well, Buck. So fucking good for me.”

Bucky whines, his jaw aching, eyes filling with tears as Sam’s cock stretches his mouth open. Sam keeps offering him filthy praise as he slides his mouth up and down Sam’s thick cock, and Bucky doesn’t know why this is doing it for him when all of Steve’s pale skin and strong thighs and big dick couldn’t, but maybe seventy years of torture and captivity have left Bucky with a few new kinks. Or maybe Bucky’s just healing or whatever. Bucky honestly doesn’t care, as long as Sam keeps letting him fill his throat with Sam’s dick.

Sam’s voice is rough when he says, “God, you fucking love it, don’t you,” and Bucky pulls off Sam’s cock just long enough to nod eagerly and gasp for air before diving back in. “Take your dick out, baby. I want you to come sucking my cock.”

Bucky’s rhythm stutters at that, his hand reaching down to pull his cock out of his uniform pants. He wants to be so fucking good for Sam, wants to come just how Sam says, wants Sam to keep telling him how good he looks, how much he loves fucking Bucky’s mouth, how much he likes giving it to him.

Sam’s praise grows hotter and filthier as he gets closer, and Bucky whimpers as he feels his own orgasm approaching. God, he hasn’t come in so long, hasn’t felt that hot rush and that familiar ache in his balls in forever and he wants it, wants to come, he just needs—

“Come on, baby, come for me, I know you can do it, just keep sucking my cock, God, you look so good, baby, don’t stop, don’t stop—”

And Bucky spirals over the edge, cock pulsing and spilling over his fist. He lets out a choked moan around Sam’s dick before his mouth is flooded with bitter, salty fluid. And then Bucky feels so fucking full, like he could drown happily in Sam’s smell and his taste and his fucking words of affirmation.

Fuck.

Bucky definitely did not win that round.

***

The whole blow job thing was an outstanding idea, really, one of Bucky’s best. But fuck, he did not anticipate Sam using that as an opportunity to completely turn the tables and affirm the shit out of him. Bucky can’t help but privately acknowledge to himself that Sam is completely winning at love languages so far.

They’re in counseling the next week, still in Dr. Carson’s depressing therapy bunker, and honestly, Bucky can’t imagine that this setting is good for, like, anybody’s mental health. His therapy in Wakanda always took place outdoors, under the warm African sun, surrounded by the wild, earthy smells of mud and animals and Lake Turkana. It made him feel open and free and connected to nature or whatever. It was peaceful.

Therapy at SHIELD is not very peaceful, especially because Dr. Carson clearly hates them, and she isn’t at all impressed by what Bucky considers some very impressive progress by them. Bucky and Sam are getting along.

“So,” Dr. Carson begins, apparently deciding to just start right off with more hurtful accusations from their colleagues, “according to Carl from the gun range, the two of you have been subjecting your coworkers to your, quote, uncomfortable bickering-slash-foreplay, and Maria Hill reports that you’re still, quote, cluttering up comms during missions with the most embarrassing flirting I have ever heard, I hate it so much.”

Dr. Carson’s air quotes are fucking vicious.

Despite the fact that they’ve only just started their session, Dr. Carson looks tense and aggravated already. She’s wearing another pretty silk blouse today, but her earrings don’t seem to match and it looks like she didn’t bother to curl her hair today. Maybe she just realized that Bucky wasn’t fooled by those forties waves?

Also, even though it’s Friday, Dr. Carson’s giving off a very Monday sort of vibe.

“Sam and I are working on it, OK?” Bucky says, with a mulish set to his jaw. “Obviously I’m doing my best here, but it’s hard to do therapy in a cement basement that gives me flashbacks to 1970s HYDRA facilities where I was tortured. And there aren’t even any pets at all to comfort me. Didn’t you receive the note from my Wakandan therapist stating that I require animals during therapy?”

A blood vessel in Dr. Carson’s forehead throbs, and she raises her hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. “I’ll see if I can get us a room upstairs for our next session, but I’m telling you for the last time that we don’t have any therapy goats.”

“Well, I don’t have any issues doing therapy without goats,” Sam says, like the worst sort of teacher’s pet. God, Sam’s teachers probably loved his charming smile and his quick wit and his stupid handsome face. “Maybe Bucky is using the goats as an emotional crutch.”

“Listen, goat therapy works, OK?” Bucky counts out on his fingers as he lists the many examples of real progress he’s made since his time as a goat farmer in Wakanda. “I started off as an amnesiac brainwashed assassin, and now I have a steady job, a haircut, an apartment leased under my own shell companies, and I only kill people when I want to kill people now. And I wash my hair regularly. And if I don’t wash my hair, I use dry shampoo. And I don’t turn into a mindless killing machine when people speak Russian at me.”

“Dude,” Sam says.

“Anyway, it’s fine if you’re not as good at therapy as me.”

“Not as—not as good at therapy as you? Man, I am a certified peer specialist. I was so good at my own therapy that they let me give other people therapy,” Sam says, throwing his hands up in frustration.

“Yeah, in America, where they’re not even familiar with things like advanced goat therapy.” Bucky clucks his tongue and shakes his head. “Did you even keep up with your continuing education requirements while you were fugitives with Steve?”

Sam sinks lower in his seat and frowns. “No. But speaking of Steve,” Sam says, perking up a bit as he follows a new thread of argument. “Whose PTSD recovery was so complete and inspirational that Steve Rogers trusted them with the responsibility of carrying the Captain America shield, hm?”

“Listen, Steve is reckless as shit and he’s so irresponsible with that shield that he’s constantly losing it in rivers and getting it broken by alien supervillains,” Bucky points out. “I’m so recovered that the king of an entire country, a man so responsible that they put him in charge of running literally everything in the most advanced nation on the planet, trusted me with a prosthetic arm powerful enough to crush the skull of an ordinary man with a single blow. Probably even his skull, and he’s been enhanced by some weird plant that makes him even stronger than Steve.”

“Yeah, well, I’m so recovered that—”

Dr. Carson interrupts them here, pinching the bridge of her nose. “OK, listen, I think there’s actually something pretty interesting here in how you each relate your recovery to your ability to wield weapons. Why don’t we stop bickering and discuss that a little further?”

“Yeah, OK,” Bucky mumbles.

Sam sighs heavily. “Fine.”

***

So the blow job thing is working perfectly—like, so perfectly, God, Sam’s dick is amazing—except for the fact that Sam is able to talk the entire time. Words of affirmation spill from Sam’s pretty lips every time Bucky swallows his cock, and Bucky is still fucking losing the love languages competition.

It’s time to create a Pinterest strategy board to figure this thing out.

Bucky is a visual planner, and he believes in tactical flexibility. He might not remember a lot about sex, but there’s tons of porn on the Internet. He just needs to find a couple of ways to service Sam while Sam’s mouth is otherwise occupied. How hard could that be?

After a lot of research and the creation of several Pinterest mood boards, Bucky calls Steve down the hall to his apartment to help him out. They all live in the same building since it has the best security in the city—and Bucky and Natasha are very particular about security—and it makes sense for the four of them to basically live together when they already spend all their time together. When Steve arrives, they head right to Bucky’s bedroom, get undressed, and survey the porn board on Bucky’s laptop.

“OK, so what about sixty-nine,” Steve suggests. “Let’s try that.”

They get themselves into position, mouths hovering over each other’s flaccid dicks like totally normal best friends.

“See, I feel like this works, but is it really servicing Sam if he’s, like, servicing me at the same time?” Bucky flops over onto his back in frustration and worries at his lower lip with his teeth.

Steve nods and tilts his head in thought. “Yeah, I see what you mean. Depending on the grading rubric, the two acts might cancel each other out. How about rimming?”

“I feel like rimming is a great idea, and I definitely want to do that, but how do I shut him up while I do it?”

Steve frowns. “Can you reach up and cover his mouth with your hand? Hold on, let me bend over and we’ll see.” Steve gets on his hands and knees, tilting his ass up for Bucky to simulate a rim job.

“You know, your ass really is kind of amazing.” Bucky takes a moment to admire the jewel of Howard Stark’s empire. “I mean, it was cute as hell when you were little too, but Scott Lang definitely wasn’t wrong in that podcast episode about which superhero has America’s ass. Don’t tell Sam I said that, by the way.”

“Thanks, pal,” Steve says, flashing Bucky a quick grin. “Your ass is great too, Sam’s a lucky guy. Now bend over and pretend to rim me.”

Bucky leans down and uses his hand to cover Steve’s exposed hole, then presses his mouth against the back of his hand to simulate a rim job. He reaches forward with his other arm to see if he can put his vibranium hand over Steve’s mouth. He could—maybe? If he releases the catch on his shoulder?

“I don’t think this is going to work,” Bucky says with a frown. “Here, maybe try getting on your back and holding onto your legs?”

“Like this?” Steve asks, shifting gamely into position. Bucky folds him over and pretends to rim him while covering Steve’s mouth, which—works, actually. And this is probably the most erotic scene Bucky’s ever been a part of—Steve really does look incredible like this—so it’s kind of a shame that it does absolutely nothing whatsoever for Bucky’s dick.

Except then Bucky pictures Sam in Steve’s position, bent over and whining under Bucky’s vibranium hand, and Bucky’s cock gives a little twitch. Fuck.

Bucky sighs and releases Steve with a short nod. “Not bad, pal. I think this one’s gonna work. Let’s write it down.”

They test out a few more positions, taking careful notes on the comfort and degree of mouth coverage of each one. Bucky finds a few more pictures to add to his Pinterest board, and they sort through every image and assign them to the correct position number. Then Bucky and Steve print off their pictures and tape them to Bucky’s wall for inspiration, mapping out a sequence of actions that will lead to orgasms for both Sam and Bucky with a minimum amount of talking on Sam’s part.

Which is a shame, really. Sam’s dirty talk really does it for Bucky.

Still nude, Bucky and Steve stand in front of the vision board and assess the plan.

“I think position two is really going to work,” Steve says, stroking his chin, and Bucky’s brain flashes back to an image of Steve in pretty much this exact pose, assessing a map of HYDRA facilities in Western Europe with no less gravity and passion. God, Steve Rogers is a great fucking friend. “And if you really want to service the guy, I mean, you’ve already got him all loose and open. You might as well give him your dick too, right?”

Bucky nods in agreement. “Yeah, I mean, as long as I keep kissing him, he won’t be able to affirm me too much. I think this really is the winning scenario.”

“Great teamwork, pal,” Steve says, slapping Bucky’s bare ass. “This was fun! Just like the old days.”

Bucky smiles wistfully. “Yeah, there’s nothing like planning an op with The Man With the Plan. Hey, you want to grab dinner after this?”

“Nah,” Steve says, too-casually, angling his pelvis away from Bucky as he pulls his pants back on. “I think I’m gonna go see if Natasha’s busy.”

Bucky grins. “Give her my best.”

“Will do. Love you, pal,” Steve says, giving Bucky a quick kiss before he leaves.

Steve doesn’t bother putting a shirt on before he goes, and Bucky can hear him whistling cheerfully all the way down to Nat’s apartment.

***

Steve and Bucky’s plan was great, so naturally it goes to shit as soon as Sam gets involved.

Bucky’s sucking Sam’s dick, which OK, yeah, wasn’t technically in the plan, but God, Sam’s got such a great dick. How far behind can Bucky really fall in the standings from just one blow job?

“Your mouth feels so fucking good, baby,” Sam says, sliding his long fingers through Bucky’s hair—which Bucky washed before he came over, because he is killing it as a recovered assassin and also because this afternoon Sam grabbed his hips and leaned in, breath hot against Bucky’s ear, and murmured how much he wants to smell Bucky’s shampoo on his pillows tomorrow morning.

Which was both smooth as hell and very convincing. Bucky immediately bought like three more bottles of that shit and accepted Sam’s invitation over to his apartment that night.

So now they’re in Sam’s apartment, and Bucky’s sliding his mouth along Sam’s cock, and Sam’s telling him how much he loves the way Bucky sucks him, loves the way Bucky’s pretty face looks with Sam’s cock in his mouth, lips slick with spit and tears leaking out of his eyes. And then Sam says—

“Are you gonna let me fuck you tonight, baby? Gonna let me see how well you take it?”

And before Bucky knows it, he’s moaning around Sam’s cock and nodding his head, and Sam’s pulling a condom and lube out of the side drawer, and then Bucky’s face down on Sam’s bed, gasping and clenching around Sam’s long fingers.

When Sam finally turns him over and pushes inside him, Bucky feels his brain just—fully vacate his skull. Pleasure buzzes up and down Bucky’s spine like an electric current, and he’s only barely conscious of the wet-sounding gasp that comes out of his mouth when Sam finally slides all the way home.

Sam gives it to him slow and sweet, fucking into him at a dreamy, leisurely pace as Bucky grabs fistfuls of Sam’s sheets and scrabbles at any leverage he can get to try and push back against Sam’s cock. Bucky wants Sam to grab his hips and pound him hard, overwhelm him with stimulation and keep him from sinking under the gentle wave of that languid rhythm. It’s too intimate, too vulnerable, and Bucky’s chest is cracking wide open for Sam to look inside. He’s a little afraid of what Sam might see within him, but instead Sam’s expression is full of awe, his face open and tender as he runs a thumb over Bucky’s cheekbone.

“God, you’re so fucking gorgeous, so fucking sweet for me.”

There’s a lot of eye contact after that, and romantic face touching, and Sam telling Bucky how much he loves the way he feels, loves the way he looks and smells and tastes. Warmth pools deep in Bucky’s gut, spreading through his veins like the burn of whiskey, until Bucky feels like he’s going to burst into flames around Sam’s cock. Instead he comes, long and hard and messy, all over his stomach.

Sam’s eyes are hot as he looks down at the sight of Bucky’s abs covered in pearly fluid, and then he slams his hips into Bucky three more times, hard, before groaning and collapsing on top of him.

Fuck, Bucky thinks.

He takes a few minutes to catch his breath, and then suppresses a half-hearted sigh when he realizes that he completely blew the plan. Like, yes, that was some fucking amazing sex, Sam gave him the dicking of a lifetime, but somehow Bucky ended up even further behind in the love language competition. How does Sam keep winning?

It’s too late now to offer another act of service. Even if Bucky could get it up again, Sam definitely couldn’t.

Shit.

But wait, what was Sam’s secondary love language? Quality time? Perfect.

Bucky rolls over to give Sam a few open-mouthed kisses on his shoulder. Sam is sweaty from exertion, and he tastes salty and amazing. God, Sam is the best.

“You mind if I stay the night, sweetheart?” Bucky murmurs.

Sam’s lips curve up in a soft and pleased smile. “Yeah, baby, I was hoping you would.”

“C’mere, you can be the little spoon,” Bucky says, reaching around Sam’s waist to reel him in, and Sam huffs out a surprised grunt and then a happy sigh when Bucky wraps his arms and leg around him.

They fall asleep within minutes, and it turns out Sam really was into the smell of Bucky on his pillows because they fuck again in the morning, and this time Bucky forgets to keep track of who’s winning at therapy homework.

***

They fuck constantly after that, which is amazing, but unfortunately Bucky is still staying in this game only by the skin of his teeth. Like, yes, Bucky is performing acts of service for Sam on the regular, but somehow Bucky finds his self-control dissolving like sugar melting into caramel when Sam spreads him out under his dirty mouth and his clever hands.

So now when Sam collapses on top of him at night, fucked out and shaking, Bucky nuzzles his face into the back of Sam’s neck and wraps his arm around him to pull him close. Bucky stays the night, every night, and at work he sticks to Sam more tightly than one of Steve Rogers’s t-shirts. But the more quality time Bucky offers Sam, the more acts of service Bucky ends up performing—which, sure, sounds like a plan that would put Bucky pretty solidly in the lead, except for how Bucky always ends up a sobbing, needy mess dripping onto Sam’s sheets while Sam smirks and tells him how good Bucky is for him.

They fight together even better now, in sync in a way that Bucky hasn’t felt since he worked with the Howling Commandos, and when they finish a skirmish they turn to each other, flushed and grinning, flying high on adrenaline and oxytocin and arousal. They kiss savagely, mouths wet and open, and they don’t care who hears them pant and groan over the comms.

“God, you were so fucking hot—”

“Sam, yes, god, please—”

Bucky and Sam have died and come back to life already this year and somehow they’re still bringing each other back to life. Bucky swaggers through SHIELD headquarters with champagne flowing through his veins, bright and bubbly, and Fury yells at them twice for passing dirty notes to each other during briefings. They’re obnoxious about it, obvious and messy and shameless, and Bucky’s pretty sure that Maria Hill is going to resign in protest if she has to work surveillance for even one more of their ops.

Somehow they’re generating even more complaints to HR than before.

***

Dr. Carson has finally managed to find them a room with a window for their counseling sessions. They’re on the fifth floor, and there’s not much of a view—just the brick wall of the building next to them—but sunlight streams in through the sheer curtains and highlights the cut ridges of Sam’s frankly incredible cheekbones. God, Sam’s so fucking handsome.

Bucky and Sam are grinning broadly, but Dr. Carson looks stressed out and irritated today, even though they just started the appointment. Her hair is stringy and a little greasy at the roots, and Bucky wonders if Dr. Carson knows about dry shampoo. He isn’t sure how to ask, or if it would be rude to offer her a few sprays from the travel bottle he keeps in one of the pockets of his tactical pants? She’s still wearing a nice silk blouse, but it looks like she’s buttoned it incorrectly, and the tail is hanging out of the top of her slacks.

Are those even slacks? They kind of look like yoga pants.

Privately, Bucky thinks that an outsider might be hard pressed to figure out which of them was supposed to be the mental patient here. Are Bucky and Sam actually driving this woman insane?

“So you’re sleeping together.” Dr. Carson’s tone is flat and dismayed. “You know this is against SHIELD employee regulations, don’t you?”

She taps her pen against their folders in agitation, and Bucky wonders if those folders are their actual permanent records. Does Bucky’s folder still have all of the notes from Sister Mary Angela about his “distracting” and “unnaturally close” relationship with Steve? God, Sister Mary Angela hated Steve.

Sam waves a careless hand and props his ankle up on his other knee. “We’re independent contractors, and Steve and Natasha made sure that our contracts didn’t include any kind of anti-fraternization policies. They were extremely thorough about it.”

Dr. Carson sighs heavily, and it looks like she’s doing literally everything in her power not to roll her eyes. Instead, she tips her head back and looks at the ceiling, probably hoping to roll her eyes where Bucky and Sam can’t see them. “Nevertheless, the two of you are still required to be discreet and professional when you’re at work. We’ve received complaints from several of your coworkers about your behavior in the last week. According to Carl, you’ve been bringing, quote, unwanted and uncomfortable sexual energy to the workplace.”

Bucky scoffs. He knows how to handle this sort of situation. “Listen, I didn’t lose my life fighting Nazis so that a little homoerotic banter and ass grabbing would get me in trouble at work. And anyway, this is how Captain America and I behaved at work back when we were fighting fascism and defending the free world—in the 1940s, even!—so I can’t imagine that somehow you’re just not allowed to give each other friendly hand jobs in closets in 2023. If anything, I should be able to give Sam a friendly hand job outside of a closet. Those are exactly the kinds of freedoms I fought and died for.”

Sam nods in support and says, “That’s a great point, Buck,” and Bucky feels warmth curling in his belly before he realizes, fuck, Sam’s doing it again, and right in front of Dr. Carson too. Jesus, Sam is so good at therapy. “And it sounds like Carl might be just a tad bit homophobic. Maybe we should be complaining to HR about him. You know, I didn’t serve during the long years of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell just to hear—”

“Carl is happily married to his male partner of thirty-seven years,” Dr. Carson states, clenching her jaw. Bucky has literally fought people to the death who look less bothered by his general existence. “Also, you didn’t actually die fighting Nazis, Agent Barnes.”

“It was a metaphorical death,” Bucky defends, because this is important to him. “The old Bucky Barnes died in that ravine. We went over it all in my therapy in Wakanda, the most scientifically advanced country in the world. What even are your credentials and where are your goats?”

“I have a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from Harvard and doctorates in clinical psychology and neuroscience from Oxford. I was a Rhodes scholar, I’ve received a MacArthur Fellowship for my work in PTSD and polytrauma in returning veterans, and I literally wrote the textbook for most Introduction to Psychology courses.”

Bucky waves his dismissive hand at this. “Yeah, well, Sam did eighty hours of coursework and an eighty hour practicum to become a certified peer counselor. Plus he has experiential knowledge, which is more important than book learning. Also, Sam isn’t HYDRA. Are you HYDRA?”

The wood in Dr. Carson’s pencil cracks a bit under her hand. “I’m not HYDRA.”

“But, like, would Nick Fury know if you were HYDRA?” Bucky presses.

“That’s an excellent point, baby, you’re killing it in therapy today.” Sam pats Bucky on the thigh and then leaves his hand there, bare inches away from Bucky’s cock, and Bucky bites the inside of his cheek to keep from moving his hips or making any noises. “Nick Fury would definitely not know if Dr. Carson were HYDRA, his Nazi-finding track record is, like, dismal at best. I vote that we suspend therapy until there’s been an independent investigation into whether or not Dr. Carson is HYDRA.”

“You can’t suspend therapy,” Dr. Carson says, her expression pinched. “These counseling sessions are mandatory.”

“Look, we’ll keep doing the love languages thing as a show of good faith, and once the investigation’s concluded we’ll come back so you can decide which one of us is winning at therapy,” Bucky says. “In the meantime just, like, prepare to have all of your secrets uncovered and all of your loved ones and ex-boyfriends questioned extensively about your most private and intimate memories.”

Dr. Carson covers her face with her hands. Is she trying to muffle a scream?

“For the last time, no one wins at therapy,” she grits out.

“I mean, I think I’m pretty obviously winning,” Sam says. Bucky tips his head in reluctant agreement. “Anyway, we’ll talk to Natasha and Steve about the HYDRA thing since they actually know how to find Nazis. If Steve and Nat clear you, then Bucky and I will agree to let you judge which one of us is winning the love languages competition. In the meantime, it would be nice if you could get some therapy pets for Bucky. He likes animals. Goats might be a bit unreasonable for downtown D.C., but I’m sure you could rustle up some cats or something, right?”

Bucky hums. “I like dogs better.’

“All right, cool. Dr. C, get us some dogs.” Sam raps two knuckles against the desk. “Bucky and I are going to go to the gym to work out a bit. Bucky’s shoulders are looking really good lately.”

“Sam!” Bucky hisses, squirming a bit in his seat. “Not in front of Dr. Carson!”

“Sorry, baby,” Sam says, holding out a hand to pull Bucky up out of his chair. “See you next week, Dr. C!”

***

It hasn’t exactly escaped Bucky’s notice that Natasha has been avoiding him ever since Bucky and Sam started their love languages competition, so when Bucky sees Steve walking alone down the hallway toward his office, he reaches out from the broom closet where he’s hiding and yanks Steve inside.

“Is Natasha helping Sam win the love languages competition?” Bucky hisses.

There’s no real reason that they need to have this conversation in a broom closet instead of Steve’s office, but Bucky’s feeling nostalgic today, and Steve doesn’t seem at all bothered to suddenly find himself in a broom closet with Bucky.

“I mean, probably?” Steve says with a shrug. “It seems only fair, since I’m helping you. Also her dirty talk has really leveled up lately, and that’s probably not a coincidence. Why, what’s Sam doing?”

“He’s, like, constantly flirting with me. And the touching! God, Steve, I’m horny all the time now. And you wouldn’t believe the things he says to me in bed! Do you know how hard it is to concentrate on all the sex routines you and I’ve choreographed when Sam’s telling me how pretty I look with his cock in my mouth?”

“Natasha is definitely helping him then—she says that to me all the time when she’s using her strap on,” Steve says, chewing his lip thoughtfully. “Are you sure you can’t keep it together enough to service him without getting distracted by his words of affirmation?”

“Yes,” Bucky says, his cheeks growing hot. “You have no idea, Steve, like Sam just gets so filthy. I know my brain’s been fried like an egg and I don’t actually remember a lot about sex, but I don’t think people talked like this in the ‘40s, right?”

“I mean, you and I shared a bedroom in an apartment with paper thin walls and then spent a few years in a warzone. There’s not much opportunity for dirty talk when you’re just doing your best to get off without waking anybody up,” Steve says. “But that does give me an idea. Sam’s secondary love language is quality time, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“So date him! You may not have the sexual repertoire of someone who’s watched hundreds of hours of modern porn or even someone who remembers much about having sex before like three weeks ago, but you do know how to pull off a good old-fashioned wooing.”

Bucky’s forehead wrinkles. “Do I, though? Do I still know how to pull off a good old-fashioned wooing?”

“I believe in you, pal.” Steve claps him on the shoulder and then looks around the broom closet thoughtfully, taking in the dirty mop and the shelves of cleaning supplies and filthy rags. “You’re honestly not even doing a bad job of wooing me right now. Want to trade hand jobs for old time’s sake?”

Bucky shoots Steve a withering look. “I’m not wooing you right now, Steve, you’re just easy. Go find Natasha if you’re horny.”

Steve shrugs. “Eh, it was worth a shot.”

***

Two months later, once Steve and Natasha have completed Dr. Carson’s background check and confirmed that she isn’t HYDRA, Sam and Bucky return to therapy. Even though Dr. Carson hasn’t seen them in months, she looks pinched and irritated, and the deep wrinkles in her forehead and the sudden explosion of gray in her hair make her look as though she’s aged five years since she started giving them therapy.

Bucky frowns and squints in suspicion. “We haven’t gotten Blipped again, have we?”

“What?”

“You just look—” Bucky gestures toward her hair and the bags under her eyes.

Dr. Carson’s expression shifts from exhausted indifference to polite fury, and Bucky’s just about to apologize when Sam gestures toward the floor under the window and says, “Hey, look at that! It’s about time you got Bucky a therapy puppy, you know that his doctors in Wakanda strongly encouraged it.”

When Bucky follows the line of Sam’s arm, he sees the cutest puppy in the world sitting in a fuzzy little dog bed with pictures of bones on it. Bucky gasps in delight. “He’s so cute, Sam, look at his little face!”

The puppy’s face is perfect, with big brown eyes and a short little snout with a tiny black nose. When he wags his tail, his little butt wiggles and Bucky wants to die about it. He loves this puppy so much.

“I’m naming him Paddington after my favorite movie,” Bucky declares.

“I love it,” Sam says immediately, pulling out his phone. “Put him in your lap so I can get some pictures for Steve and Natasha. They’re going to be so jealous when they find out that we got to have a dog in our therapy.”

Sam and Bucky spend the next ten minutes playing with Paddington and taking photos of the two of them with their adorable new therapy dog while Dr. Carson rubs her forehead like she just fucking knew this puppy would be a distraction.

“I think we should get started,” Dr. Carson interrupts, glancing pointedly at her watch.

“Yes, perfect!” Bucky pulls a small notebook out of his back pocket. “OK, so let me catch you up on everything we’ve done to each other since our last meeting, and I especially want your input on the scoring system that Sam and I have developed—”

Bucky and Sam spend the next half hour recounting their every interaction over the past couple of months in explicit, pornographic detail while Dr. Carson repeatedly clenches and unclenches her fists. When they spend ten full minutes alone on the rim job Bucky gave Sam last Saturday, Dr. Carson’s eyes go distant and glassy like a shell shocked veteran of the Great War or something. Bucky has literally seen torture victims make less of an effort to dissociate from their surroundings than Dr. Carson right now.

Honestly, who would have expected a therapist with thirty years’ experience to be so faint of heart? It’s absolutely critical to Bucky and Sam’s scoring system to determine whether Sam let out a “choked moan” or a “strangled gasp” while Bucky ate him out, and Bucky doesn’t appreciate Dr. Carson’s frankly lackluster participation when they stage a reenactment of events to try and settle the matter. She doesn’t even seem very decisive when she finally renders her judgment, like maybe she just doesn’t care what kind of sound Sam made, even though it was the most erotic noise Bucky’s ever heard in a hundred years.

When Sam concludes his argument for why words of affirmation during sex should count for more points than praise at work, Dr. Carson sighs heavily, looks off into the distance for exactly ten seconds, and then states, “I think we should discuss how you two can erect boundaries between your work relationship and your sexual relationship.”

Sam raises a skeptical eyebrow at Dr. Carson’s audacity. “Do you really feel like you’re qualified to counsel us on that particular issue?”

Dr. Carson’s jaw clenches. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I mean, after everything that went down between you and Dr. Fitzgerald back in Philadelphia, I hardly think—”

Dr. Carson’s face whitens like curdled milk. “How did you find out about that?”

“Remember Natasha’s background check? Anyway, I’m just saying that it’s a tad bit hypocritical of you to suggest that Bucky and I shouldn’t be fucking during work hours, I mean, Bucky isn’t even married—”

Dr. Carson bites her lip so ferociously that she draws blood. “Bucky may not be married, but he is technically your subordinate, and that means there’s an uneven power dynamic to consider here—”

Sam smirks like he’s fucking Benjamin Matlock and he knows he’s just one pointed question away from making the guilty party break down and confess right there on the witness stand. (Bucky makes a mental note to ask Sam later why he and Natasha always snicker when Bucky and Steve get together to play cribbage and watch Matlock on Sunday afternoons.) “You mean like the uneven power dynamic at play between you and that doctoral student whose dissertation committee you chaired at UPenn?”

Dr. Carson gasps, and her face turns as red and furious as Sister Mary Angela’s that time she caught Steve’s skinny arms nailing a copy of Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses to the heavy wooden door of St. Charles Borromeo.

Bucky’s mind wanders a bit at that memory. God, Steve Rogers really was such a bad influence—maybe Sister Mary Angela was right about their distracting and unnaturally close relationship. Because of course Bucky couldn’t leave that stubborn asshole to face Sister Mary Angela’s wrath alone, so Bucky had ended up confessing to abusing his powers as editor of the student newspaper to let Steve use the school’s small printing press. Bucky emerged from the experience with an ass that burned for a week and a few uncomfortable new kinks.

Now, Bucky looks speculatively over at Sam’s strong hands and shifts in his chair.

“I just remembered, Sam and I have something really important to do,” Bucky announces. “So we’ll see you next week, right? OK, cool. C’mon, Paddington!”

Bucky grabs Paddington’s cute little dog bed and Paddington hops down from Sam’s lap to follow them out of the office, his tail wagging happily as he trots along beside them. God, Paddington is so fucking cute, Bucky cannot believe what a great dog he is.

Dr. Carson calls out after them through gritted teeth. “You’re not supposed to take the therapy dog with you!”

“Sorry, what?” Sam shouts back, cupping his hand around his ear. “I can’t hear you!”

“Bucky, I know you have super hearing!”.

“Sorry, I’m a hundred and six years old and I left my ear trumpet at home!” Bucky raises his hands in an exaggerated shrug to convey the hopelessness of trying to communicate at this great distance of about forty feet.

“God, I need a fucking vacation forever,” Dr. Carson mutters.

***

Later, after Bucky and Sam collapse against Sam’s sheets in sweaty exhaustion, Bucky mentally tallies their points and comes to the frustrating conclusion that Sam is still absolutely wiping the floor with him in this love languages competition. God, how is Sam so good at everything? He’s so fucking handsome and charming and athletic and just, like, absolute dynamite in the sack—

God, no wonder Bucky’s losing. There’s no way he can win this competition with his dick alone. Time to channel Tommy Dorsey and play it from the heart.

“Hey, Sam,” Bucky murmurs, leaning up to nuzzle his nose against Sam’s jaw. “Let me cook you dinner tonight, doll. Wanna treat you right.”

“‘M not your doll,” Sam grumbles. “But yeah, OK.”

Bucky kisses Sam’s shoulder and plots.

Three hours later, Bucky and Steve survey Bucky’s dining room with the smug satisfaction of Scarlett O’Hara stealing her sister’s fiancé to get her greedy hands on his general store and sawmill.

“I think we nailed it, pal,” Steve boasts. “This looks just like your date night mood board.”

“I mean, I feel like half the credit should go to Pinterest user donkeydick2004—who would’ve guessed that he’d have such a sensitive soul.”

Bucky’s dining room table is covered with rose petals sprinkled over Bucky’s mother’s best lace tablecloth, liberated from the archives of the Smithsonian along with the rest of the contents of Steve and Bucky’s old Brooklyn Heights apartment. Two lit candles rise proudly from the gleaming silver of Sarah Rogers’s candleholders—the only wedding gift she’d managed to save from the pawnbroker during those lean years of Steve’s childhood—and the Victrola crackles with the smooth tenor of Enrico Caruso singing an aria so romantic it once brought a tear to the clear, flinty eye of Bucky’s father. Bucky’s grateful now that the Barneses were a Victor Talking Machine Company family—those Edison wax cylinders decayed faster than American democracy after the invention of Facebook.

The first time Bucky saw the familiar red logo of that Caruso record again—faithful Nipper the dog, his head tipped toward the horn of a gramophone playing the sound of his dead master’s voice—Bucky drove straight out into the desert and screamed until he was hoarse.

And now tonight Bucky’s using that very record to romance the shit out of Sam Wilson, so Nick Fury and Dr. Carson can fuck off with their so-called “therapy” because Bucky Barnes is doing great.

Steve clears his throat and gives Bucky a meaningful look. “You know, if this is all just some competition between you and Sam, you didn’t have to drive out to Maryland to dig all of our most personal and intimate memories out of storage for this dinner.”

Flustered, Bucky replies, “You have no idea what a canny opponent Sam is! Every time that man talks, my heart flutters and my stomach’s all full of butterflies. Besides,” Bucky says, “my grandfather paid fifty extra dollars to get the Circassian walnut veneer put on that old Victrola—he would haunt me if I didn’t ever use it, Steve.”

“You know your Aunt Margaret spit on her own father’s grave when your grandfather left that Victrola to your dad instead of her?”

Bucky laughs. “Is that why they had that big falling out? I couldn’t remember.”

“Peggy said that your Aunt Margaret wrote Howard Stark a letter every month until the day she died demanding the return of that Victrola.”

“Well, I hope that greedy old hag is looking down at me right now,” Bucky says, shaking his head in disbelief. “She deserves to watch me seduce my gay lover with that Victrola, it serves her right. You know she called you a fairy once?”

Steve gestures toward the intimate tableau featuring all of Bucky’s most precious memories and dryly states, “Well, as long as you’re clear on spite as your motivation for all of this.”

Bucky bites his lip as a sudden fear strikes him. “Do you think Sam’s going to like the chicken? People still roast chicken, right? It’s not just, like, sushi and gluten free vegan desserts nowadays?”

Steve opens his mouth to respond but is interrupted by a knock at the door. Paddington dives off the sofa like he’s responding to an Avengers Assemble alarm—which, oh my god, could Paddington wear a little outfit and come with the Avengers on ops? Bucky needs to look into this immediately—and dances around in elation when Bucky opens the door to reveal Sam, who is looking fine as hell in a lavender button-down and navy trousers.

And Bucky’s heart is—honestly not reacting much differently than Paddington right now.

“Aw, hi, baby!” Sam says, leaning down to pet Paddington and scratch him behind the ears. When Sam’s finished giving Paddington the attention he so richly deserves, Bucky’s pulled in for a long, heartbreakingly tender kiss that sends a shiver of want down the entire length of his spine. Sam and Steve exchange their own greetings while Bucky surreptitiously reaches up to rub at the goosebumps prickling at the sensitive skin at the back of his neck.

“Steve, you’re going to be OK watching Paddington tonight, right?” Bucky’s voice is threaded with the justifiable suspicion of someone who has known Steve Rogers for a lifetime.

Steve’s mouth drops open in offense. “Yes! Bucky, I know how to watch a dog.”

Bucky lifts Paddington’s tiny body and curls his arms protectively around him. “OK, well, Paddington is the most important thing in the world to me, and you are literally the least responsible person I know, so.”

“What? Bucky, I’m—that’s—I’m Captain America. I’m famously responsible.”

“Sam is Captain America, Steve. I feel like you’re not moving on. Also my brain might be a giant lump of small curd cottage cheese now, but I still remember that you’re a reckless idiot.”

Sam gives Steve a sharp look of his own and says, “Steve, Paddington is very important to Bucky’s therapy and also to our therapy as a couple—” Sam pauses, then adds, “of coworkers. So make sure you give him his favorite treats, but don’t give him too many treats, and make sure he doesn’t pull the squeaker out of his stuffed alligator—”

Bucky and Sam lead Steve to the door while Sam continues to debrief Steve on all of Paddington’s most important feelings and preferences. “You should really be writing all of this down, Steve,” Sam says with a frown.

Steve sighs. “I have an eidetic memory.”

“All right, well, if we pick him up in the morning and he has an upset tummy, I will literally kill you, and Sam—the trustworthy Captain America—will be my alibi,” Bucky says.

Sam nods in solemn agreement.

Bucky and Sam part from Paddington with identical expressions of worry as Steve walks him down the hall to his apartment.

As soon as Steve’s door closes, Bucky is all over Sam, pressing him against the wall and skimming his lips over the warm skin of Sam’s neck. God, Sam smells incredible, like tobacco and vanilla and oiled leather, and somehow the masculine scent of him travels down Bucky’s windpipe and directly to his cock.

“Hi,” Bucky breathes.

“Hey, baby,” Sam murmurs, tipping his head back to let Bucky’s lips trail along his throat to his jawline. Bucky’s just getting really into it, his hips pressing insistently against Sam’s, when the timer for the oven goes off.

Over dinner, Bucky and Sam talk and laugh about their coworkers as the candlelight does frankly amazing things for Sam’s bone structure. Bucky squirms in his chair and tries to will away the flush he can feel spreading up his neck when Sam compliments Bucky on the romantic lighting and the beautiful place settings. Fuck, he’s supposed to be giving Sam quality time here, and instead Sam’s using that quality time to offer Bucky more words of affirmation. Bucky’s not really ready to concede this battle just yet, but he’s definitely starting to craft a defeat narrative for himself about the lack of shame in being beaten by the best.

And Sam is definitely the best.

“That chicken was incredible.” Sam pats his stomach and groans in satisfaction. “You know that’s just how my mama always makes it?”

Bucky wonders if it would be weird to divulge that he actually broke into Sam’s mother’s house to sneak a look at her recipe cards. That’s normal intelligence gathering, right? Bucky made sure Sam’s mom was out of the house when he entered, and afterward he sent a team of security specialists to give her a better alarm system setup—”compliments of SHIELD, ma’am”—when he realized that her house was way too easy to break into. And Bucky’s dad always said to leave things better than you found them, so if anything Sam’s mom is probably safer now than she was before the world’s most legendary assassin crept into her house to rifle through her personal belongings.

He feels like Natasha would agree with him but he also feels like Natasha is probably just as batshit insane as Bucky and Steve are. Bucky has literally no normal friends and he should probably start spending more time with Sharon Carter.

After dinner, Sam looks relaxed and sated, his eyes warm and heavy-lidded as he watches Bucky shiver under his praise. “You know you have a praise kink, right?”

“Yes, Sam,” Bucky says, and tries to refrain from rolling his eyes. “Steve and I did a ton of research and watched, like, hours of porn together. We figured it out.”

“You and Steve have some serious boundary issues.” Sam shakes his head and grins in amusement. “But seriously, though, you’re not just hooking up with me because you imprinted on me after I made your dick hard or something, right? I mean, I remember the first time I got a boner after being deployed. I cried like a baby, so I get it, man, but—”

“Actually, I sort of wanted to talk to you about that,” Bucky says, his stomach swimming with nerves. This is the moment he’s been anticipating and dreading since he planned this whole date night op. “I was thinking—how would you feel about taking this competition to the next level?”

Sam’s brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I just think we’d both have more time and energy to devote to this competition if we were competing, you know, exclusively.”

“Ah.” Sam’s expression clears and a slow smile spreads across his handsome face. “You want to be boyfriends.”

“I want to be boyfriends,” Bucky confirms with a decisive nod.

He may be losing this love language competition by about a hundred and fifty points, but Bucky still has some fight in him yet. And between work and sex and co-ownership of Paddington, Bucky’s already spending so much time with Sam that there’s no real way to increase the amount of time in “quality time”—but he can improve the quality of that time. If Bucky and Sam are boyfriends, Bucky figures, all that quality time should automatically count for more points than the quality time they spend together as coworkers with confusing feelings for each other, right?

Bucky’s lungs burn as he holds his breath held in anticipation of Sam’s response.

“Yeah, let’s be boyfriends,” Sam says, with a grin tugging at his lips.

Bucky’s heart soars in victory.

***

Bucky and Sam have decided not to bring Paddington with them to any future therapy appointments just in case Dr. Carson tries to take him away like Cruella de Vil.

This week, however, Dr. Carson shows up their session with a whole new vibe. Instead of striding imperiously into her office in her usual stern fashion, Dr. Carson blows in fifteen minutes late with the casual energy of a high school senior during the last week of school. She walks over to her desk, flip-flops slapping against her feet, and reclines back in her chair to prop her feet up onto the polished surface of her solid oak desk. She’s dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie like a suburban mom in an airport waiting to fly down to Miami for a Caribbean cruise.

“So how’s it going this week, boys?” Dr. Carson asks, slurping from the straw of her Big Gulp soda.

“Um, great.” Sam eyes her cautiously. “Bucky and I are boyfriends now.”

“No shit!” Dr. Carson says, and tilts her head back to squint down at them. “Huh. What do you know about that.” Then she shrugs. “Tell me how it happened.”

So Bucky and Sam tell her every detail of the last week, including the way they tenderly made love after Sam agreed to be Bucky’s boyfriend. Dr. Carson is clear-eyed and engaged the entire time, even during the five full minutes Sam devotes to the ripple of Bucky’s abdominal muscles as he strains toward orgasm, and Bucky’s just starting to think that maybe they can get some real therapy out of Dr. Carson when she says—

“So Fury’s transferring me to Hawaii.”

Bucky’s mouth drops open. “What?”

“Yup.” Dr. Carson burrows deeper into her chair and lets out a relaxed sigh before taking another loud sip of her soda. “This is our last session!”

“So do we have a new therapist after this, or?” Sam waves his hand uncertainly.

“Nah, I’m just gonna go ahead and tell Fury that you guys are doing great. You’ve officially graduated therapy.”

Bucky chokes on air. “Excuse me, what? We graduated therapy?”

“Sure, why not?” Dr. Carson says with a lazy shrug. “Despite literally all of my expectations to the contrary, it seems like you guys have actually formed a stable partnership. Just, you know, maybe stop fucking so much at work.”

Bucky scoffs. “Listen, I didn’t give my life fighting Nazis in World War II—” he begins.

***

After Bucky and Sam’s appointment with Dr. Carson, Sam receives a text asking him to meet Fury in his executive suite.

Bucky heads back to his own office—his real one, buried deep within the bowels of SHIELD in a secret interrogation room someone bricked up the entrance to and then forgot about years ago. Bucky discovered it while crawling through the air ducts to place surveillance equipment in the offices of Nick Fury and the major SHIELD department heads. Once Bucky disposed of the mummified body he found inside—which, wow, super gross—it made the perfect private office space and server room.

Bucky opens his surveillance software just in time to hear Fury tell Sam that Bucky broke his best therapist.

“Dr. Carson is a highly trained professional at the top of her field,” Fury says, his voice stern. “I had to offer her a fifty percent raise to lure her away from private practice, and now I’m sending her away from D.C., where all of my elite agents reside, to Honolulu, which is where I send all the useless nepotism agents I’m forced to hire by the World Security Council. I don’t know what Barnes did to that woman but he just cost me a very experienced and expensive mental health professional.”

“And what makes you think Agent Barnes is at fault?”

“Dr. Carson is obviously not at liberty to divulge any specifics about what was said during your therapy sessions, but she did note that your bickering was ‘maddening’ and that she, quote, hadn’t even realized it was possible to overshare during therapy. She also indicated that Barnes instigated an invasive and traumatizing background check that caused her a great deal of personal distress.’”

“Given Agent Barnes’s history with SHIELD, I think it’s perfectly understandable that he may have sought reassurance that Dr. Carson wasn’t an agent of HYDRA.” Sam’s voice is bland and pleasant. “It’s hardly Agent Barnes’s fault that Dr. Carson turned out to have a surprisingly messy personal life.”

“Be that as it may, I’m suspending Barnes from active duty until he passes a second psych eval from another therapist.”

“With all due respect, sir, Agent Barnes has been nothing but cooperative in this retaliatory investigation into his mental state. He’s a skilled and creative fighter, a selfless and generous partner, and a brilliant tactician. He deserves to be treated with the same respect as any other SHIELD agent who hasn’t shot you.”

Jesus Christ, is Sam offering Bucky words of affirmation even when he’s not there to hear them? What kind of love language master is Sam? God, how can Bucky possibly compete with this?

Fury’s voice is strangled. “Retaliatory?”

“Yes,” Sam says firmly. “As far as I’m aware, Agent Barnes has cleared all mandatory psychological evaluations and then some. If you have a problem with his—or my—behavior in the workplace, I suggest you carefully review our employment contracts and initiate the appropriate disciplinary proceedings. In the meantime, I will be continuing with Agent Barnes as my partner. There will be no suspension.”

The sound of Fury’s office door slamming shut is unexpectedly erotic.

By the time Sam slides through the secret passageway into Bucky’s office, Sam looks calm and collected, like he hasn’t just returned from facing down a man with the power and authority to send him to one of a half-dozen black sites so secret they probably exist on other planets.

“So how’d the meeting go?” Bucky asks, suppressing a grin.

“Oh, it was fine,” Sam says with a nonchalant wave of his hand. “We don’t have to do therapy anymore.”

Bucky lets his smile spread across his face. “Oh, yeah? No more retaliatory investigations into my mental state?”

When Sam realizes how Bucky must have overheard that remark, his eyes widen in delight. “I’m sorry, did you bug Fury’s office? Bucky Barnes, you crazy asshole, I love you so fucking much.”

Bucky freezes. Sam loves him? Adrenaline and exhilaration race through Bucky’s veins, spreading through his entire circulatory system until he feels like he’s going to buzz right out of his skin. For the second time in Bucky’s life, he’s been flung straight over the side of a cliff, except this time Sam has wings to catch him. God, this is why they call it falling, isn’t it?

Bucky is feeling so fucking affirmed right now. He has never felt so affirmed in his entire life.

And Bucky’s lost that stupid competition now, hasn’t he. There’s no way Bucky can compete with that declaration, no way he can pull off a victory after Sam just earned himself, like, fifty million points—but when Bucky looks at Sam’s gap-toothed grin, he thinks maybe, just maybe, he’s secretly won after all.

And he does have one last, best card to play.

“Hey, Sam,” Bucky says, with a wide grin, “how do you feel about moving in together?”

#marvel cinematic universe #bucky barnes #sam wilson #bucky barnes x sam wilson #winter falcon #steve rogers #natasha romanoff #steve rogers x natasha romanoff #old man steve has no power here #fuck old man steve #natasha romanoff lives #idiots in love

[realanimeguru]

Heyyy do you have any kinda sadder anime to rec∩^ω^∩

okay!!! sad is a little vague, so i’ll do some different recs on various levels and kinds of sad. i’m also going to try to be a bit vague, so i don’t spoil anything. also, the category’s are subjective, somebody else might put a series in a different category (i also haven’t watched most of them and i’m going off assumptions and what other people have said!) this is going to be.. very long because i have no self restraint lol.

the most obvious Will Make You Cry bunch: Your Lie In April (for obvious reasons)Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day (don’t need to explain this one either)Angel Beats (particularly the last few episodes)Clannad (particularly Clannad: After Story)Grave of the Fireflies (two young kids try to survive world war II)

a bit more obscure sad, Might Make You Cry:Colorful (a soul gets another chance at life, in the body of a boy who committed suicide)Wolf’s Rain (a pack of wolves try to find paradise. has a 4 episode OVA series that continues the plot to its end)Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 (tokyo gets hit with a magnitude 8 earthquake, about kids and a biker lady who looks after them) A Silent Voice (the main character almost kills himself. at the beginning of the movie. about bullying, depression, suicide, and healing)

Moving, but probably won’t cry unless you’re Weak:Given (also deals with suicide. a shounen-ai about boys in a band)Death Parade (people who died at the same time play games to decide which one will be reincarnated, and which one will be sent to the void) Erased (a guy wrongfully accused of murder gets sent 18 years into the past to prove his innocence)Stars Align (a tennis anime about awful, terrible parents and good friends)King of Nabari (the anime is sad too but the manga fucking eviscerated me. seems like a typical shounen from the get-go but then the protag joins the bad guys)Natsume’s Book of Friends (a boy with a troubled past who can see youkai. the ending of season 4 is especially heartbreaking)Natsuyuki Rendezvous (a man falls in love with a flowershop lady. unfortunately, she’s being haunted by her dead husband)Searching for the Full Moon (a girl with throat cancer refuses to have her vocal cords removed until she becomes a famous enough singer that her songs reach her crush in america)No. 6 (another shounen-ai. two boys attempt to overthrow a dystopian government)(^most of the saddest parts are the endings)

Sad in an Anxiety Inducing kind of way: The Promised Neverland (kids being raised as livestock to feed the rich and powerful try to escape their orphanage)When They Cry (a boy moves to a town right before their biggest festival of the year. the story loops to the starting point every time someone fucks up and kills everyone. heavy on the dementia)Madoka Magica (a cute story about cute magical girls :3)D. Gray Man (this is what it feels like to watch a losing war. more than enough comedic relief at the beginning, but the closer you get the the end the more stressful it is)Made in Abyss (small kids explore a very big, deep cavern filled with monsters that even adults have trouble getting back out of)Banana Fish (a young man runs away from a mafia boss to investigate a drug that destroyed his brother’s mind and is hunted down)Rainbow (about teenage boys in a “reform school” (a prison) who plot to escape together. warning for extreme child abuse)Now and Then, Here and There (a guy tries to save a girl from kidnappers and is transported to a desert world. also a warning for torture)

Angsty, bad things happen but in a campy way: Re:Zero (a guy in a fantasy world has the power to reset time when he dies. which he does. often)Akame ga Kill! (a group of assassin’s overthrowing a corrupt government)Elfen Lied (a tortured woman escapes experimentation, earning herself a split personality on the way out)Guilty Crown (a guy who can make weapons out of people’s souls joins a war against an evil government)School-Live (i HIGHLY recommend you just watching the first episode without reading the synopsis…. but if that isnt enough to convince you, this is a zombie show)Charlotte (from the creator of Angel Beats and Clannad, guy with ability to use other people’s bodies helps track down other people misusing their abilities)Magical Girl Site (a girl who is bullied at school and abused at home plans to kill herself but suddenly gains magical powers)

Love Triangle drama/sad romances:Toradora (starts off as a pretty perky comedy, but when it gets sad it stays there)A Lull in the Sea (kids who live underwater have to transfer to the school above ground when their highschool is under construction, only to face discrimination)Fruits Basket (a girl meets a cursed family who, when in contact with the opposite sex, transform into zodiac animals) ef - a tale of memories. (3 interconnected stories of romance and tragedy)Golden Time(a guy with a bad case of amnesia starts college in tokyo and meets a lovely girl)

#so-long-sadgirl #anime rec #anime recommendation #your lie in april #anohana #my post #my rec #recommendation #sad anime

[writingismyhappytime]

Ryan Teaser

So, Ryan is getting a demon story! I’m going to introduce them through a Good Little Demon excerpt because I don’t have a name for his story yet. But here you go as a taste of them!

The Reaper is upset.      

Ryan can see it easily enough, she's never been very good at bluffing, he'd own her in a poker game. In fact, with her mottled cheeks and narrowed eyes, and the way she keeps grinding her teeth, he would say she was very angry at him.

"I can't believe you got us trapped down here!" Hailey hisses at him, pacing back and forth beside an old, cracked sarcophagus, her eyes glinting in the bright light of the flashlight she happened to have.

"Well, it wasn't intentional," Ryan says innocently, growing amused. He leans back on his heels, his hands slipping into his black coat pockets. He didn't mean to get them trapped in an underground tomb, but really, sometimes things just happen.

If he's being honest, it's the Reapers fault.

If they hadn't come meddling where they didn't belong, this wouldn't be an issue. He was trying to wrestle with the witch, he didn't have any intentions of killing her, he just needed information from her. Unfortunately she wasn't very willing to cooperate, and if her witch buddies hadn't called the supernatural police saying that a rogue demon had crashed their vigil, again they wouldn't be trapped!

"It's going to take hours before the Reapers can get us out of this place!" The Reaper hisses again, looking like a caged animal pacing back and forth.

"Not a fan of small spaces?" The demon asks curiously, gazing at her. Out of all the silly Reapers, this one has always intrigued him. She showed up a little over a year ago, fresh out of the Academy, obviously with no idea what she was doing --- she's still terrible at her job. He's heard her fellow officers grumble when they see they're partnered with her, and he doesn't blame them; he's yet to see her do anything Reaper-related successfully.

To him, it's hilarious.

She's a terrible Reaper and really does need to find a different occupation, he's not sure why she's even still clinging to the job, she obviously doesn't enjoy it. She always looks so out of place, so uncomfortable in her own skin; she has secrets, she's not good at hiding her expressions, and she jumps at the littlest noise --- Ryan's always liked mysterious.

"So? A little time off the clock won't hurt anything." Ryan casually sits on the lid of the sarcophagus, causing the girl to eyeball him warily; she's dressed in the typical uniform, black shirt and jeans, black boots that come up nearly to her knees. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, and she has a couple dirt smears on her face and hands, it's a tomb after all. She doesn't carry weapons, but she doesn't need too; the most dangerous weapon is the mark on her palm, where the power to materialize a scythe out of thin air and chop his head off in seconds resides.

Reapers are the only creatures on earth able to handle anyone who's supernatural, able to kill any one of them if they break the laws. The laws aren't strict, actually they're quite lax, so long as no one makes a big fuss for the humans no one really cares. Obviously demons, being the top of the food chain, are always meddling and getting into trouble.

Ryan himself seems to be a magnet for it.

It's why he knows this Reaper, and pretty much all of them. If there's a row in one of the districts, Ryan is in the thick of it.

The Reaper glares at him again. The moment he stepped into the city, there's been problems. He's always right in the middle of it, goading someone, getting into fights. She heard he used to run around with one of his brothers, one that kept him in check, but since he's taken off on his own, he's an issue --- yet none of his brothers will intervene!

Aren't demons supposed to stick together or something?

Honestly, she's not that good with the lore, there's so much of it and she has such a hard time keeping track! All the other Reapers make it seem so easy, they just read and process the information effortlessly, but that's not the case for her; all those other Reapers are also descendants, the Reaper mark is in their blood, whereas her --- well, her side of the family held dinner parties and galas, and her cousins were the Reapers.

This isn't supposed to be her world; she's supposed to be running the family, not defending it! She shouldn't be in this mess, she shouldn't be in this claustrophobic tomb trapped with a demon and no way out!

"Why don't we play a game?" Ryan suggests suddenly, growing bored. The entrance to the tomb collapsed in on itself, and he could dig them out, but he doesn't want to get his hands dirty, not when he knows someone else will be doing it. It'll take the humans several hours even with some help to reach them with how far back they are, so he might as well try to entertain himself.

He already got what he came for from the witch, he was just going to torture her for fun afterwards. He supposes it's mercy on her behalf she was killed by collapsing rubble running away from him before he could get his hands on her again, although the Reaper had certainly done her best to save the witch under the circumstances.

"I don't want to play any games," Hailey sounds annoyed, but Ryan just grins at her, flashing his pearly white teeth. She's always in such a fuss, she never relaxes --- he's so curious about her. Where is she from? She won't talk about herself, and sure the Reapers are stoic for their reputation, but hers seems more like she's hiding something rather than she has to maintain an image.

She's nothing like Alex, the Reaper he knew before, the blonde who interested him. This girl is in a whole category of her own.

"How else should we pass the time?" Ryan watches her move back and forth, amused as he leans back on his hands. "Aren't you curious as to why I was down here?"

"I don't really care."

"Shouldn't you? Shouldn't you take the opportunity to interrogate me whilst we wait?"

She hesitates, glancing at him; should that be what she's doing? Or is she supposed to wait for a higher ranking officer considering who he is? They wouldn't typically give free passes to anyone, but a demon of his status, and the consequences of doing anything to him, is an issue. It has to be handled delicately in case they upset his brothers.

He pretty much knows he's untouchable, doesn't he? That's what she finds so frustrating, that no matter what he does his actions have no consequences! He's spoiled and entitled, and thinks the things he does doesn't hurt people --- or just doesn't care!

He's just like her cousin!

He picks at her, he always does. Any time he sees her, it's like he singles her out for his stupid comments. He goads her, trying to get some reaction out of her, but most of the time she refuses to give him the satisfaction. She already has it hard enough that not a single Reaper she works with respects her or even wants to work with her!

She just... can't seem to fit in.

She can barely even fight, the scythe doesn't even feel natural in her hand; it's as if her own weapon doesn't even think she's good enough.

"Tell you what," Ryan slips off the edge of the stone lid he's sitting on, depicting some fallen witch of old; she hadn't been excited about going beneath the city into the old tombs, and even less pleased when she realized it was the demon causing trouble and destroying remembrance day for the witches --- they're really pissed about it. "How about we call a truce?"

"A truce?" she frowns.

Does this Reaper even know how to smile?

"Yes. You stop glaring at me for fifteen minutes and I'll make you smile."

"Don't be ridiculous," she scoffs instantly, prowling around the edges of the black stone walls; it's so dark she has a hard time seeing, whereas Ryan doesn't seem bothered. If it wasn't for the flashlight she'd had, it would be pitch black this far below ground! "If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be trapped down here worrying about smothering to death!"

"Nah, we'll be fine. Obviously there's plenty of oxygen." He can feel a draft anyway. He runs his fingers through his hair, silver rings glinting in the light.

The Reaper has to admit, he's a very good looking demon, which is part of the problem.

Short black hair, just long enough to get a handful of, and such a mischevious smile. Bright green eyes that there's something just not human about, pale skin and he's taller than her, always looking down. He's wearing a black jacket over a plain t shirt and casual jeans, but anybody could still look at him and know those items of clothing are ridiculously expensive.

Soft, probably.

She shifts unhappily, wrapping her arms around herself to fight the chill of the room. It doesn't help the demon has control over the cold and ice, he's probably making it chilly on purpose just to be a jerk!

She wishes she could just ---.

"So, Hailey, tell me about yourself. Where are you from?" Ryan is so bored, she's his only source of entertainment. Joshua always told him that his inability to keep himself entertained is why he's always getting into things, that his attention span is too short.

Ryan doesn't disagree, Joshua does know him best.

Did know him best.

The demon decides not to think about the brother who abandoned him, who chose a woman over his own family. His fingers clench, and he exhales heavily as if dispelling the bad memories quickly.

"London." The Reaper replies, which explains her accent. "That's where my family is from."

"You're a long way from home."

"The Academy is the best Reaper school in the world, the best to train at." She echoes the words she's heard all her life, and even to her it sounds practiced. She never intended to be a Reaper, that was supposed to fall on her cousin, but --- well, it's a long story, and not memories she wants to revisit.

Now this is just where she is, and it's what she's having to do.

Surviving at this point is key.

"Ahuh. So you crossed the sea just to train at a fancy school for a job you don't even like." Ryan comments, seeing her nose curl at the remark. "Family force you into it?"

"Something like that." She isn't sure why she's telling him that. She has to be careful, she can't reveal too much or he'll figure her out. She has to keep telling the same story over and over, at least she was close enough with her cousin that telling her life story is easy, she was always such a loud gossip.

Taking over her life went a lot smoother than expected.

Not like her cousin can even care, she's dead.

Ryan gazes at her, from the top of her auburn hair down to her regulation boots. She hasn't stopped stalking back and forth yet, he must make her uncomfortable. "You know, if we were running out of oxygen, you huffing and puffing over there would be using it all up."

She sends him a vile look over her shoulder. "It wouldn't matter to you, you don't need air to breathe."

"No, but my body has a habit of it, so it would be very uncomfortable." He pushes away from the cold sarcophagus, hands slipping into his pockets again; he always looks so relaxed, always has such a stupid smirk on his face! Doesn't he realize how bad of a situation this is!?

What if they never get out!?

Even he would starve to death eventually, he still has to feed!

She hates small spaces!

Ryan watches her for a few more minutes, checking his watch. They've been trapped for about an hour now, but that's not too long. They maybe have three more together, tops, and honestly, he can think of far better ways of spending time with this obviously energetic woman than watching her pace wildly.

#ryan sitkowski #ryan sitkowski demon #ryan sitkowski fan fiction

[steamjunk23]

I’ve drawn a baby!

#Ok turns out my art app does have an eraser #I’m just a dumbass #pride art #pride #art #digital art #mtf #trans #Funnily enough in her world she’s the most feared #mostly because she’s insanely smart and strong #has connections with three gods and can alienate anyone with a point of her finger #She works with the god of torture #She’s also the only god to earn their god status #but the only thing she wants to do is play games and vibe #unfortunately torture falls under the games category #she also has memory problems #one of her abilities is to delete memories but only for herself #she gets it from her mom #except her mom can delete other ppls memories #anyway the heart is stored here #also if you can’t tell I drew the flag from memory because I didn’t feel like using a ref #Blue lagoon #another fun fact! Her name is pretty similar to one of my fav monster high charas! #it’s just a funky coincidence

[meetthetank]

Spond[Y]lodesis

Rating: Mature Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Category: F/M Fandom: NieR: Automata (Video Game) Relationship: 2B/9S (NieR: Automata) Characters: 2B (NieR: Automata), 9S (NieR: Automata), Original Characters Additional Tags: Robogore, Hurt No Comfort, brief mentions of OCs - Freeform, Angst, Bad end Summary: Third time’s the charm.

Despite her insistence to the contrary, 2B is a creature of strong emotion. She forces them down each time they come bubbling back to the surface so that they don’t interfere with her work. However, more often than she’d like to admit, they break her down from the inside like a violent infection of the flesh. All logic, reasoning, even common sense is abandoned when these long ignored, irrational subroutines finally take their toll on her.

And it’s all his fault. Every single time 2B breaks it’s because she can’t bear to take his life and memories from him again. Every time they grow close it makes her job that much harder to do. Sometimes she fails. Sometimes she fails and clings to the dim hope that maybe this time, they can escape this damned cycle together.

Which is why she’s fleeing for her life with 9S’ gasping torso clutched under her remaining arm and her broken sword between her teeth.

The order had come a little less than two days ago. As usual, she steeled herself to see her mission through to the end hours in advance, but when the time came she failed. She couldn’t do it this time and she wasn’t sure why. The sequence of events was nearly identical to how it always goes, but she couldn’t bring herself to kill him. So they ran. They tried to put as much distance between them and whoever might have been sent after her to fix her mistakes. The first day was quiet, 9S had disabled their Pods’ ability to send messages to the bunker and jammed any location tracking abilities within the first hour on the run.

She expected another E Type to get sent after them. She did not expect 24E and 42E.

She should have anticipated it really. 9S and herself were high priority targets, of course, YoRha would send the cleanup crew after them. It was only a matter of time before two ruthless executioners such as them caught up. 2B had no idea they were attacking until 24E had 9S by his hair while 42E kept her busy with a flurry of strikes from her flaming swords. It would have been a simple fight. 2B was far stronger than either of them and far more experienced in unfair combat. However, they knew her weakness. Any time 9S would cry out in pain she would rush to his rescue only to be cut off and clipped by 42E.

Even with those odds, she still would have won, had 9S not decided to fight back. He hacked 24E while her guard was down, but something had gone wrong. 9S had failed, and 24E did not take this pointed attack on her few weak spots lightly. Her retribution was swift and exceedingly cruel. Just as before, 2B was helpless as 9S was slammed to the ground and cleaved in two with 24E’s great spade, a cruel and brutal tool nearly twice the size of its victim. It only took three strikes to reduce him to the state he’s in now, clinging to life with what remained of his internal systems falling out of him piece by piece.

2B retaliated, of course. Blinded with fury she tried to do as much damage to the executioners as she could. But she was careless, sloppy. She fought with the ferocity of a feral animal, but without the cunning and technique of a YorHa android. It cost her her right arm, along with quarts of coolant that seeped through the various wounds she suffered. Perhaps if she had run immediately, 9S would have a better chance...

He’s a lost cause, 2B knows that. She has limited knowledge of field treatments, she’s down an arm, and their Pods were the first things that the two executioners destroyed. She should have fought to her death back there, but instead, she chose to run. There’s a voice in the back of her head that chastises her for dooming them both, not that she listens to it. So long as there’s a sliver of hope that they can make it out, she’ll use all her remaining strength to see it through.

…

...But is it worth it to keep 9S suffering like this?

He sputters and gasps in her arm, the only signs she gets that what’s left of his body still clings to life. They’re weak sounds that make him shiver with effort, more of his internal structure falling out of place as he does. A quick glance behind them confirms 2B’s fear. A trail of coolant, broken parts and bits of flesh leads back the way they came. It wouldn’t be long before the cleanup crew would be on them. If she wasn’t missing an arm she might be able to do more to cover their tracks, but all she can do is put as much distance as she can between them.

No, she can’t give up. Not when she’s gotten this far. She risks decommissioning at this point, for both of them. Giving up now means certain death. Pressing on, another death sentence, also means spitting in the face of the Commander and the wretched cycle she forced her and 9S into.

But that spite could only carry her so far. Her body feels heavy despite losing a limb, each step is a fight against her joints locking place. The errors that flash across her vision tell her she’s lost more fluids than she thought. They need to rest, she needs to try to repair 9S at least a little or he’ll die before they can escape the forest zone. But the growing trail of android viscera leads their pursuers right to them…

“Ri….ver…” 9S sputters. He grabs at 2B’s hand that holds what remains of his body, his fingers leaving bloody streaks across her gloves.

With blood caking one of her eyes shut, it’s difficult for 2B to see the shallow stream winding deeper into the forest. But even in his delirium, 9S is right. If she wades through the river for a mile or so, it should be enough to throw the executioners off their trail for a little while. It might give her some time to think of a more long term solution.

Setting one foot in the water nearly locks up her foot. The stream is only deep enough to reach just underneath her knees, but it’s far colder than she expected. She stumbles on the uneven rocks, nearly dropping 9s into the stream. The cold cuts right through her boots and drops her body temperature a few degrees. She forces herself to break into a lopsided jog, as staying in the icy water while missing this much fluid would bring her core temperature down to dangerous levels. If she were to become incapacitated, 9S would die for sure.

2B staggers through the stream, occasionally forcing out questions to 9S to make sure he’s still alive. Just as she suspected, anything that fell out of him simply floated downstream. All she has to do now is bear the icy waters for a little longer and their trail would go cold. It seems simple enough, but 9S’ groans and sputters grow weaker by the minute. Even the rough jostling of 2B stumbling over a loose rock only gets a pitiful gasp from him. She tightens her grip on him and picks up the pace.

She forgets how long she’s been running for when she sees the mouth of a cave. Hidden behind a grove of ancient trees, she nearly misses it. That fact alone makes it the perfect place for them to stop and attempt repairs. The moment 2B leaves the stream, however, 9S groans as loud as he can. He must mean for her to continue through the water, but his plea falls on deaf ears. Not like he can put up much protest anyway.

The forest floor is more treacherous than the streambed. 2B falls to the ground when her foot catches on a root, and all 9S can do is bare his teeth in a silent scream. His exposed spine seems to writhe on the ground and a pale blue fluid leaks from severed tubing. 2B wraps her arm around his shoulders and tries to lift him up again, but it’s all she can do to find the strength to drag him into the cave. His body shudders as some large component falls from his wound. 2B can’t make out what it even is, maybe his material containment. She kicks it ahead of her, just in case.

2B’s vision switches to accommodate the low light of the cave. The colorless view of her surroundings is oddly comforting. It’s simple, much less information for her to process. She can feel her mind clearing if only a bit.

Her arm gives out finally and 9S drops to the ground. Fluid pools underneath his torn body. The remains of his abdominal muscles twitching and writhing as his body tries to move his missing legs. He tries to force his arms to pull his pathetic body up, but all that it accomplishes is scraping his face against the stone earth. His visor is dragged down, snagged by a rock, revealing eyes darkened by blown pupils that don’t focus on anything. They roll back and flutter shut as tremors make his broken body shiver and convulse. His mouth hangs open, mouthing words or even just sounds, but nothing escapes his pale lips.

The sight is torturous to 2B, and one she’s seen far too many times, though under different circumstances. She wants to simply stop and cry, cry for the freedom ripped from their grasp in the most brutal of ways. Cry for 9S, for even if he survives he’ll be a shell of his former self. Cry, because this is all her fault. All because of her cowardice and recklessness and failure to make it simple.

But she can’t. Not now. Not when 9S needs her to ease his pain.

She forces her pain receptors to shut down. Unfortunately with that comes the inability to feel temperatures...or really anything for that matter. Flexing her hand, she gets a quick idea of her remaining range of movement. At least her arm, up to her shoulder, can move without impediment. With only one, it’ll be more difficult to do 9S’ repairs. No...It’s going to be impossible to do the delicate work is required for his body to function a fraction in the way it used to. The most she’ll be able to do is...try to put what she can back in.

Taking a deep breath, 2B rolls 9S onto his stomach. His head lolls to the side and instantly 2B begins to panic. She reads for a black box signal and sighs when she detects the faint signal emanating from his chest. He must have entered a hibernation state while she was distracted. She has to keep him from completely shutting down. Luckily the sensation of severing the frayed wires and containing everything would force him to stay awake.

Unluckily, he would have to feel everything.

The first thing she does is peel off his jacket and what was left of his shorts. The coat comes off easily but the shorts are tangled in synthetic flesh and muscle and stuck to his skin with rapidly drying coolant. They pull ruined cords of abdominal muscle with them. His body shudders awake with a low groan. 2B catches a glimpse of his eyes before they snap shut in a twisted grimace.

2B mutters an apology as she sets the ruined clothes to the side. With a limited supply of staunching gel, she can’t simply coat his whole lower body in it and leave it at that. She has a few tools, a few packets of gel, one arm, and no pod. The most she can do is stuff what she can back in, sever the frayed wires and circuits, and use what little gel she has to seal the wound before using his clothes as a makeshift bandage.

9S lets out a pained gasp as 2B grabs a mess of frayed wires and lines them up as gently as she can. She holds them down under her leg, then severs them with her sword in a clean cut. Before they scatter too much, she tosses the sword to her side and snatches the wires up again. An attempt is made to tie them off, but all she can do is jumble them together in her hand. Sparks fly from where the ends cross each other, making 9S twitch and groan despite 2B not being able to feel a thing. She repeats the process again with another batch of wires, intentionally making the wires spark to keep 9S awake from time to time.

She grabs a bundle of muscle cords in her fist. He twists and writhes as she forces the ruined systems back into his body one by one. It takes far longer than she anticipates, every so often she has to hold his arms down as he claws at her hands that rummage around inside him. He accidentally tears away pieces of loose skin that get caught under his cracked fingernails.

There are times where she debates on deactivating her aural sensors. Hearing 9S pitifully fail to cry out in pain, only letting out small whimpers and nonsensical phonetic noises, it’s unbearable. It chips away at her resolve to press on, to keep trying to save him. It’d be so much easier to just...wrap her hand around his neck and...He wouldn’t even feel anything….

She wraps her hand around a malleable cooling tube that had slid out of him while she was focusing on his displaced muscles. A low growl of frustration echoes through the cave as another tube falls out of place, and third shortly after she replaces the last. Gritting her teeth, she takes the growing bundle of coolant tubes in her fist and shoves them as far into his abdominal cavity as her arm will allow. 9S gags from the sensation, a slow trickle of blood falling from his mouth. His frantic movements now reduced to involuntary twitching and spasms.

Now soaked in coolant fluid, 2B’s arm shivers despite her not being able to feel the biting cold. The trembling makes it difficult to handle the few packets of staunching gel but she manages to tear them open with her teeth and a bit of determination. Since she can’t close up 9S’ wound entirely with the meager handful of packets she has, instead she uses the sick yellow gel to hold everything in place while she’s preoccupied with making a bandage of discarded clothes.

The last thing she has to do before dealing with that problem is tending to his ruined spine. Her first instinct is to cut it down so it doesn’t dangle outside of his body, but the pain would force him into a shutdown state and put him at a greater risk of death. Curling it up could work, but too many vertebrae are shattered with the synthetic neurons exposed and fraying. Forcing it back inside his body at that kind of unnatural angle would have those delicate systems come into contact with the other stripped wires and ruined muscle cords, creating an agonizing feedback loop. But she can’t just leave it sitting in the dirt…

9S’ glassy eyes give her an idea. She takes both his bloodied visor and her own and ties them together, then wraps the fabric around the fractured end of his spinal column. It’s sloppy and it’s barely tied together, but the delicate inner workings are no longer sitting in mud. With the end of this hacked attempt of first aid in sight, the determinant strength she had built up fades till she can barely lift 9S’ ruined coat. The intent is to wrap the coat around his body, but all she manages to do is lay it over top of his stomach.

Suddenly, it becomes difficult for 2B to hold herself up. She collapses to the ground parallel to 9S’ body, taking deep breaths of stagnant cave air. An alarm blares in her head warning her of coolant loss, motor function impairments, overheating...but it doesn’t matter to her. All of these issues pale in comparison to what 9S is feeling. All of her available resources have to go into fixing him as much as she can, she can’t let him down….

….

But she can shut her eyes for a moment.

….

2B snaps awake. Her internal clock tells her she’s been in preservation mode for several hours. Several hours where 9S was alone. She moves to stand up but something catches her arm. Glancing down she sees his hands clasped around her own, holding it close to his chest. If she only looks at his face, she might have thought he was peacefully sleeping back at the Resistance camp. His weak breaths ghost across her arm, giving her silent reassurance that he’s still alive.

She pulls her arm from his grasp to cup his cheek in her palm. He leans into her touch, savoring the warmth on his frigid body. Well...she assumes he’s cold, her tactile sensors are still deactivated.

9S opens his eyes a little. His blue eyes, usually full of life and spark, are dull. They hazily attempt to focus on 2B’s face, but only stare beyond her.

“Tw….B…” He chokes, a bit of blood dripping from the corner of his mouth, “Are you...Okay?”

2B is dumbfounded. Here he is, lying on a cave floor in a pool of his own blood, missing half of his body, and he’s asking if she is okay.

“...Been better.” She responds, “You?”

“C-...Hurts...Stiff.”

“Here…” She retrieves a batch of E-drug from her inventory, “For the pain…”

The stimulant takes effect immediately, 9S’ pupils widen and darken his eyes and his jaw goes slack. Phonetic nonsense is all that can come out of his mouth, along with some saliva, as the

E-drug courses through his systems.

2B strokes his face as he drifts off into a drug-induced stupor and she stares out to the forest beyond the cave’s mouth. He’s no longer in pain but...how long will it last? She doesn’t have an endless supply of E-drug or any other supplies. The drug will wear off, the staunching gel will crack and dissolve. It’s only a matter of time before they either break down completely, or the executioners find them.

What was her plan? What did she really think was going to happen? They would escape the executioners and then what? Eventually, something would break down, and they would have no way to fix it, and they’d end up in roughly the same position they’re in now.

...She should have just finished her job. All she had to do was plunge her sword through his neck, severing his spine at an irreparable point. He wouldn’t even feel anything, and then she’d be right back at the beginning with him. Instead, she was selfish, she’s making him suffer for some half baked dream of freedom. All this in addition to the threat of permanent decommissioning. Either she gets shelved and 9S gets paired off with another E-type, or they both never see the light of the sun again.

If she had known things would turn out like this…

Maybe if she-... No that’s too dangerous. It’s a gamble but…

It’s the only option she has.

“Nines…” 2B mutters, forcing herself to stand.

His eyes snap open at his nickname, “Wh-...”

“I need to see if I can find some materials outside.”

Through the haze of the E-drugs, 9S can hear the icy determination in her voice but can’t piece together what it means. All he knows is that it makes him feel...hollow? He isn’t sure, but he knows he doesn’t like it.

“Ok-...ay.” he slurs.

He groans as he tries to use his head to push himself up. 2B lays him back down on his back as gently as she can, her hand lingering on his face just a moment too long.

Something soft and slightly wet touches his forehead, but it’s gone so quickly that he barely registers it was there in the first place. His eyes fluttered open to see 2B limping towards the mouth of the cave. Her lips move, but no sound reaches him.

She disappears from sight before he can muster the strength to say goodbye.

He isn’t sure how much time passes, his timekeeping functions were deemed inconsequential and shut down. Things stop hurting, however, he’s lucid enough to recognize that. Sometimes tremors wrack through his body and jolt him back to consciousness. Sometimes he stares at the little beetle scuttling across the cave wall until he drifts back into unconsciousness.

9S cycles through reawakening and drifting off five times. The sixth time a surge of energy rushes through him, bringing him to agonizing lucidity. He grits his teeth together as waves of pain take over his every thought. His muscles spasm with phantom pains, but the most pressing thing is the aching thirst that burns in the back of his throat.

It makes sense, he supposes. He’s lost about….a lot, of coolant. The fastest way to lower his internal temperature would be to ingest as much cold water as he could, or even just sit in it. A fuzzy image of 2B carrying him through a river comes to mind, and he can hear the faint running of water nearby.

Using what strength he can manage, he flings his arm across his chest again and again until the momentum flips him over onto his stomach. Something cracks inside of him, but he feels no new pains. It must be the old staunching gel beginning to decay. He suppresses a gag, the sensation of flipping over makes his stomach roil. As he reaches one arm forward and digs his blunted fingers into the rock his loosening insides shift around. A sick feeling that does get him to dry heave into the dirt.

The taste of acid in his mouth only amplifies his thirst and renews his determination to just get a goddamn sip of water. 9S drags his useless body a few inches before his arm gives out. A blast of chill air stings his open wound as his coat falls away. It barely even phases him, 2B will put it back on him later anyway.

9S’ struggle for purchase on the slick cave floor, but with sheer willpower and the discomfort of thirst he manages to find a rhythm. Between pulling himself along the ground and flexing the ruins of his abdominal muscles, he writhes towards the sound of water like a dying snake. Rocks dig and tear into his skin, but he doesn’t care. The sunlight blinds him, overloading his visual sensors to the point of shutdown. But he doesn’t care. The staunching gel cracks and all of 2B’s hard work to put him back together comes spilling out, leaving a trail of viscera behind him.

But he doesn’t care.

He’s so...thirsty.

The rock changes to cool blades of grass and rotting piles of leaves. It’s more difficult to pull, but sharp rocks no longer shred his belly. He considers lying there for a moment just to revel in the relief, but the quiet babbling of running water is stronger than ever. It sounds so close it’s like he could almost reach out and-...

9S recoils at the sudden cold wetness that envelops his fingers. Shock turns to an exhausted elation as he realizes he found it. He did it, he really did it!

With a grunt, he heaves his body into the water barely deep enough to cover his hand. He submerges what he can of his face and drinks deeply, till his lungs cry for air. Again and again, 9S nearly drowns himself in the stream, taking in more water than he thought he could hold. His body temperature drops degree by degree until the agony of overheating fades, and the phantom pains are numbed away. All he can feel is the cool water lapping at his broken body...and the faint vibrations of encroaching footsteps.

A shadow engulfs the light that cripples his vision, accompanied by heavy boots coming to a halt near his face.

He turns his head to the side, letting part of his face rest in the water, “...Tw-”

The last thing he sees is sunlight glinting off a blade.

  “It’s a shame,” 42E says with a low sigh, “Such a waste.”

24E regards her partner with a quiet grunt, as she cleans the scanner’s blood from her spade.

“...What should we tell the Commander, 24E?”

She shrugs her heavy shoulders, “Same thing we normally do, I s’pose.”

“Yeah,” 42E reaches down to close the eyes of the scanner’s severed head, “She did her job in the end. Came to us willingly, told us where he was.”

24E nods, “Command don’t have to know the details.”

“We can say the damage to us came from some wild machines. It’ll make it easier for 2E later. Not that she’ll remember it.”

“How many times is this now?” 24E asks as she begins to dig just inside the cave.

“Attempted desertions or dead scanners?”

“Former.”

42E reclines against a tree as her partner works. She toys with the useless feather in her hat in thought, “Hm...Three I believe. Only the second one you and I have had to deal with, though.”

“You think three out of twenty-odd times is enough?”

42E shakes her head, “No, she’s too good at most everything else. They’ll just roll out another 2E and try something else.”

“What about him?” 24E gestures her muddy weapon at the scanner’s corpse.

“Same thing. Poor guy...You didn’t have to do that to him, you know.”

She sighs, “Yeah, I know. Could’a just killed him right there. I got mad.”

“I see that.”

“You ever been hacked before? It’s not fun, havin’ someone else rootin’ around your head to see which pieces they can turn off.”

“Can’t say I have. Just...Don’t be so cruel next time. We might be executioners, but we don’t have to be monsters.”

“That’s startin’ to sound like sympathy, 42E.”

She glares up at her partner, “Say’s the one digging a grave for the two of them.”

24E chuckles to herself, “I s’pose you’re right. YorHa don’t need to mourn, after all.”

“Emotions are prohibited,” 42E says in her best impression of her fallen friend.

“That they are. Now, make yourself useful and see if there are any of those glowin’ flowers around here.”

#nier automata #nier fanfiction #2B #9S #2B9S #Tanks fics #fanfiction

[k-popscenxrios]

High School Hierarchy (AU!Hoseok x OC)

Omg I am SO happy to finally post something for Hobi! He’s the only one I had yet to post for! Credit to the anon(s) who requested a Hoseok fanfic! I’m glad I was able to finish this as fast as I was!

Sorry for any mistakes. I didn’t proof this

Summary: Seoul High takes it’s social statuses seriously- to the point where unless you’re popular, you can’t speak to those who are. The only ones yet to challenge that narrative would be Minah and Hoseok, even if it wasn’t necessarily by choice.

Words: 6,800+ Genre: angst and fluff. slight drama?

⇨ Masterlist ⇦

As everyone knows, there is a popularity system that seems to only exist in high school. There isn't any other explanation to this needed since literally every high school ever has some kind of hierarchy. No one really ever attempts to mess with said hierarchy, because if you mess with the it, chaos is inevitable.

The only exception of that in this particular school, however, is a very peculiar one. It’s one that most people don’t know about since social norms have pushed it to be this way. The unusual circumstance taking place outside of school was slowly breaking the way everyone in high school seemed to co-exist.

The aforementioned events refer to the interactions between Lee Minah, a forgotten student of Seoul High, and Jung Hoseok, one of the most popular guys at Seoul High. The ripple in the system wasn’t one done on purpose- it was purely accidental. Neither of them asked to live in the same house, and neither of them asked to become friends.

However, they had rules set for each other. They weren’t allowed to address each other in school, and they weren’t allowed to talk about living together at school. Even their closest friends weren’t allowed to know, because it would risk letting the secret be known to everyone in the school.

The longer the ruse was in action, the longer Minah grew tired of it. It didn’t feel great to be super close with Hoseok only in the confines of their house. He wouldn’t even allow them to go eat together in public because it would risk his reputation.

She was willing to abide by his rules for the sake of just making him happy, but the closer they grew, the harder it was to follow his rules.

“Minah, I don’t get it,” her friend Jenna would often complain, “You never let me come over, and it’s making me feel like you’re hiding something from me.”

“I’m not,” she would lie through her teeth, “Your house is more entertaining than mine will ever be. I’ll invite you over once my house becomes comparable to yours.”

Jenna was used to dropping the subject all the time after hearing those words, but after the hundredth time hearing them, she was growing tired of it.

“I’m not asking to have an odyssey at your house, I just want to know what it’s like. I don’t even know if you have siblings.” she pressed, but Minah was on autopilot to reject her. It was for Hoseok’s sake, after all. She couldn’t risk tarnishing his reputation by associating him with the likes of her.

“I don’t have any siblings,” she shook her head, “But I promise I’ll invite you over once something actually happens at my house.”

“Well something could happen if you would just invite me over,” Jenna crossed her arms across her chest in an annoyed fashion, “Just once. If it gets boring, we could just head to my house and hang out over there.”

Minah looked up at her friend while subconsciously playing with her macaroni and cheese. She was opening her mouth to reply to her, but when her eyes caught sight of Hoseok, she slightly froze. He was wearing his baseball jersey since it was game day, along with a pair of shorts that complimented his thighs in a way that made it hard not to stare. Minah slightly prided herself in having picked them out for him while she was shopping for herself. She had wandered to the men’s section just to look and saw the jean shorts on sale. It would have been a crime if she didn’t buy them.

His eyes didn’t even bother looking her way as I sigh found its way out her nose. The sigh caught Jenna’s attention as she spun around to see what had caught her friend’s eye.

“Hoseok? Are you crazy?”

Minah’s eyes widened as she looked back at Jenna. Her train of thought derailed as Jenna turned back around and shook her head, “You are crazy to even look at him like that. You don’t want the cheerleaders to start beating you up for trying to overstep our status, right? We’re too unpopular for your eyes to even land on him.”

“I know,” Minah moved her eyes to look at her food again, “I wasn’t looking at him as if I was interested. I sighed because of how dumb it is that they are popular just for their looks.”

“And because they play sports,” Jenna added with a wave of her fork, “They would be a nobody without brain or brawn.”

Minah just nodded in response and shoveled some food into her mouth with a little too much force. Jenna was correct by every sense in her words, and the guys who had both brains and brawn were nearly untouchable. Unfortunately for her, Hoseok fell into both those categories, along with his fellow teammate Kim Namjoon. They often competed on tests, and Hoseok would always rant about Namjoon’s potential cheating on tests since he always got a higher score.

“How can he always do better than me? You even helped me study, and you’re pretty good at math.” he groaned as he draped his arm over his eyes, “He has to be placing a cheat sheet under his desk or something.”

Minah smiled and slightly rolled her eyes, “Why is it that every time you lose to someone, you accuse them of cheating?”

“Because it’s possible that they did!” Hoseok laughed and sat up on Minah’s bed. She turned around in the rolling chair that was at her desk as he pointed a finger at her. “Don’t deny it, because one time we did catch someone cheating.”

“You mean I caught someone cheating and then told you,” Minah’s eyebrows raised and Hoseok just laughed.

“Yeah, sure.”

If Minah hadn’t been sitting with Jenna, she may have let out a few frustrated noises. How could he be so nice to her at home, but at school he didn’t even look at her? How could he just ignore how well they went together?

You’re just upset because you like him, her conscience began scolding her as she gave in to her own thoughts. She might be able to deny it to Jenna, but there was no lying to herself. She was definitely falling for Hoseok, even if he was so far out of reach.

“Earth to Minah,” Jenna’s voice cut through her thoughts as she looked up to see her friend waving in her face, “Are you up for it or not?”

“Up for what?” she asked blankly as Jenna rolled her eyes. She wasn’t surprised that she didn’t hear her, though.

“For hanging out at Jun’s,” she pulled out her phone and showed Minah her texts, “He wants us to hang out with him and Minhyuk. I’ve heard that Minhyuk might like you, so you should come.”

Minah didn’t think twice before she shook her head. She had promised Hoseok that she would help him study for finals again tonight. He was keen on beating Namjoon, and she as willing to help him do that.

“I’m sorry, Jen. I have plans with my dad.” she used her usual excuse for when she had plans with Hoseok. Jenna would usually just shake it off, but she seemed to be fed up with the usual today.

“Okay, you’re keeping something from me,” she glared at her friend, “I don’t like it, and I want you to tell me what’s going on. You know you can trust me if something’s wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong,” Minah was quick to respond as she got up from their lunch table, “But I’ve gotta go. I’ll text you after school.”

Without waiting to hear Jenna’s protests, she stood up and made her way out of the lunch room. Her eyes couldn’t help but travel over to Hoseok’s usual table that he shared with his friends, and to her completely and utter surprise, he was looking at her, too.

She thought that the torture of pretending to not know each other at all might be done with over the summer, but once school started back and they jumped into senior year, they were back to being strangers. Hoseok couldn’t have been crueler to her at this point as he pointedly told her the week before school started that the ruse was still on. It was like he wanted to pretend like they hadn’t become insanely close over the summer.

Minah was able to deny her feelings before, but at this point, her love for him was obvious. It was painful that Hoseok, the one she saw the most, didn’t even see it. He didn’t seem to care about all the blisters he was giving her from the words that burned her heart. She had forgotten how painful it was for her to have to reorder her habits to treat him like she didn’t know him over and over again. Was his reputation still that important to him?

“That’s it,” Jenna frowned and grabbed Minah’s arm. Minah jumped out of her thoughts as she was being forcefully pulled away from their classroom and into the hallway. Classes were about to start, so the hallways were almost completely clear. “You are going to tell me what is bothering you, and you’re going to tell me now.”

Minah swallowed and tried to shove her negativity to the hole in her heart that she always hid her feelings in. She was about to speak in protest to her friend’s demands, but her confidence was whittled away when Hoseok turned around the corner behind Jenna. It was almost as if she was an ametuer at hiding her feelings, even after doing so for so long.

Their eyes locked as Minah’s heart dropped to her stomach. She started to feel sick as she tried to tear her eyes away from, but they didn’t want to leave his. It was rare for them to have eye contact in school, and she wanted him to be the one to break it, even if it meant Jenna finding out at this point.

As Minah suspected, Jenna turned around and spotted Hoseok walking in our direction. She didn’t seem surprised that he was the one that Minah’s attention was on, but she was surprised that Hoseok was actually looking in her direction as well.

Jenna spun back around, but Minah’s eyes were still on Hoseok. He gave the smallest nod to her before walking past them, into the same classroom she and Jenna were in seconds before. Great, now I’m actually going to have classes with him? This year is going to be impossible…

Minah found herself giving a Jenna a ride over to her house later that week. It was like she was in a rebellious mood, even if Hoseok would be super pissed with her for it. She was super pissed at him, so it was like a payback for all the pain he’s been putting her through. It was cruel to lead her on, only to step on her toes with no hesitation. She obviously meant nothing to him, so maybe it’s time that she treat him the same way.

Even if doing so would kill her a little bit on the inside.

The second that Jenna stepped inside the house, she could feel the tension. There was commotion in the kitchen, but Minah just walked past it with Jenna in tow. Her dad and Hoseok’s dad were in the kitchen, having a friendly conversation while Hoseok’s mom was making some cupcakes. Hoseok had a game today, and his mom liked to spoil the team with sweets after the game whether they won or lost.

Hoseok was obviously home since his car was in the driveway, but he wasn’t in his room when Minah checked. The two of them had to walk past it to get to her room, so Minah glanced in it on their way to her room.

“The house is nice,” Jenna nodded, “But you told me you didn’t have any siblings… Whose room did we pass on our way in here?”

“You’ll know soon enough,” Minah sighed, her nerves coming back to her. Regret was slowly sneaking up in her gut, but she was already in too deep to get out at this point.

Jenna seemed to be satisfied enough with her answer as she let the topic go. She began to inspect Minah’s room carefully, not failing to notice the collage of pictures that she had on her wall. Most of them were pictures of her, her mom, and her dad before the death of her mom occurred. Due to her dad’s incompetence in being able to keep up the two of them, he took up Hoseok’s dad’s offer to stay with them for a while. It was originally supposed to last only a couple months, but Hoseok’s family quickly became part of their family.

“Minah, what…” Jenna’s eyes widened, “Why is there a picture of you and Hoseok up here? And why is his arm around you? And why is he smiling at you as if you two of you are close?”

“Hey Min, I was wondering if you had a minute-”

The tension in the room multiplied as Hoseok’s eyes met Jenna’s. A million emotions flashed in both of their eyes before they both looked at Minah with so many mixed emotions at once.

“You live with Hoseok?!” Jenna nearly shouted as Hoseok’s face began to turn red. Minah could see the rage in his eyes as he looked from Jenna to Minah over and over again.

“Yeah,” Minah weakly answered as she looked away from Hoseok, “I have for over a year.”

Jenna was about to say something to Minah, but she paused when Hoseok practically charged at Minah and grabbed her by the arm. The grip that he had on her caused her to slightly wince as he dragged her out of her room and into his.

“What are you doing?” he asked through his teeth, “I thought we agreed to not having friends over!”

Minah swallowed her nerves as she tried to hold back her tears. Hoseok has never yelled at her before, and she would be lying if she said that it wasn’t affecting her. She wanted more than anything for him to calm down and tell her that it was okay. She wanted him to hold her and tell her that status didn’t matter to him anymore.

But instead, he stood in his room, scolding her about everything under the sun. She wasn’t sure when she had tuned him out, but by the time she came back to her senses, he was still talking. He didn’t get it. He just didn’t get it. She obviously cares about him way more than he cares about her.

In the midst of his ranting, a single tear fell from her cheek without warning. She had been concealing the tears very well, but one little tear rippled down her face as she tried to swallow down the rest of them.

Hoseok’s rant paused the second his eyes landed on the tear that was making a home on Minah’s face. It was like something in him snapped as he finally noticed how incredibly broken she looked. He might as well have been yelling at a puppy who knew it did something wrong but didn’t know how to deal with it.

He swallowed his anger and stepped closer to her, but he froze when she stepped away from him.

“I’m sorry,” she sent a broken smile his way as her eyes met his for less than two seconds. She backed away from him and moved toward the door, “I was just starting to feel lonely.”

“Lonely?” Hoseok’s eyebrows creased as he took a step toward her yet again, “But you always have me here.”

Hoseok was super smart: he’s in the top ten percent of their class. He took the hardest classes he could every year and made all A’s with little effort. He was brilliant…

But the words that just came out of his mouth were so incorrect that Minah actually laughed. She backed away from Hoseok again while shaking her head, finding his “comforting” words humorous.

“You have never been more wrong, Hoseok.”

With those words, she turned around and walked back into her room. She partially hoped that he would chase after her and tell her that he was sorry for mistreating her the way he was. Anything would have been better than the silence that followed her exit.

Minah hoped that opening up to Hoseok would make things better, but it just made things worse. He was beginning to ignore her at home as well as at school, and it all just felt like a slap to the face. She spent a lot of time over at Jenna’s to stay away from Hoseok since his presence was just walking negativity.

Jenna didn’t say much about the whole situation since Minah’s mood told the whole story. She didn’t know any details since Minah hated talking about Hoseok, but she could tell nothing was going right. She considered calling Hoseok out on it, but she figured that would just make everything worse.

Minah decided to spend the night at her own house for the first time in what felt like years, when in reality, it had only been two weeks. She didn’t care that Hoseok was completely ignoring her at that point, she just wanted to be around him. Her sanity was running low the longer she spent without seeing him at home.

However, the second she walked through the door, she felt instant regret.

Her eyes met the eyes of Park Jimin, one of Hoseok’s best friends from his baseball team. Hoseok had invited his friends over since she had been away from home for so long. She wasn’t sure whether she was more hurt or more embarrassed to walk in and face the most popular guys in school.

“Hyung, what-”

Hoseok appeared from the kitchen, and Minah felt her heart shatter. He had never looked so disappointed to see her, and it was enough to drive her emotions over the edge. She needed to get over him, and she needed to get over him now. She was done being hurt like this just for living. She couldn’t just let him walk all over her like this.

“Minah…”

She wasted no time in rushing inside and heading to her room. She ignored all the looks she was getting from his friends as she entered the hallway her room was down and disappeared from their sight.

The first thing she did when she walked into her room was call her friend Minhyuk, ready to pour her heart out to him. He was much better for her than Hoseok, and it was about time for her to give up on her hopeless feelings.

Minhyuk was a great guy. He was sweet in every sense, and he didn’t fail to make Minah smile all the time.

But in her mind, he wasn’t even close to Hoseok. She couldn’t help but constantly compare the two guys in her head while going about her day, despite her efforts to forget Hoseok.

Minhyuk had asked her out time and time again, but each date felt the same. She enjoyed them, but not nearly as much as he would.

She found herself explaining to Minhyuk after their last date that she just didn’t feel the same way about him that he did about her. He seemed to take it well at the time, but once the date was over, he didn’t bother trying to talk to her again. She wished she regretted saying what she did, but instead, she felt better for being honest with him.

After her encounter with Hoseok’s friends, they all acted slightly strange when she was around. It was either that they felt super awkward around her, or that they wanted to say something to her. If she didn’t know any better, she would say it was the latter.

Nothing new had been happening as Christmas break was slowly creeping up on them and midterms were coming way sooner than everyone liked. Despite her efforts to not pay attention to Hoseok, it was killing her to notice that he was having issues with his study guide. Jimin was trying to help him, but the two of them would just confuse each other to the point where they would both get mad and move to another question after a few minutes.

At home, she knew that Hoseok was dying to ask for her help, but day after day, he continued the silent treatment.

She wasn’t sure if she just wanted to try and address him first or if she wanted to wait it out. She woke up every day hoping that he would say something to her at all, but every night was filled with disappointment as she would hear his door close for the night.

As exams came closer and closer, she noticed that his friends Jimin and Jungkook would be over almost every day. They spent a decent bit of their time working on homework that Minah had already finished, but they never spoke a word to her.

It wasn’t until a week before exams when Jimin’s annoyed voice rang through the room. The three of them were loudly arguing over what was the right answer, and no one could agree on anything. They had been fighting for nearly ten minutes over it when Minah heard her name fly from Jimin’s lips.

“Lee Minah, please come here!”

She hadn’t heard her name come from any of the guy’s mouths except for Hoseok’s, so to hear her name being called by Jimin was appalling. It made butterflies rise in her stomach as she headed into the living room to respond. Hoseok’s eyes were on her the second she walked through the door, and her nerves spiked. She was too afraid to look his way, so she gave Jimin a shy look and softly asked why he called her.

“Jimin-ssi, did you need something?” she sounded as confident as she felt as a little laugh and a smile appeared on her face. Her eyes nearly popped out of her head as his eyes looked her up and down. She wasn’t wearing anything special, but she did have on some makeup and her hair was pulled to the back with stray hairs framing her face. She was planning to go out with Jenna later, so she decided to get ready in advance so that she didn’t have to worry about it later.

“None of us can agree on the answer to this question,” he huffed while giving Jungkook an annoyed look. He looked back over at her and gave her a soft smile, “You’ve done the homework, right?”

She shyly nodded and spun around to fetch her paper. Seconds later, she lightly ran back into the room and opened the packet, “What question were you wondering about?”

Jimin stood up and walked next to her, leaning over to look at her paper. Her heart jumped in nervousness as her nose was filled with his cologne, and he was so close that she could hear him breathing.

Without warning, Jimin grabbed her arm and pulled her to sit down in between him and Hoseok, “She has D marked down! I’m right!”

“Just because she has D marked down doesn’t mean that it’s the correct answer,” Jungkook rolled his eyes, “But why did you answer the question that way, Minah-ssi?”

Minah swallowed and took a deep breath, “I read the whole chapter looking for the answer. The book doesn’t straight up say that, but I know it’s the correct answer.”

“Wahh…” Hoseok grabbed her paper and their shoulders brushed for a second. Minah would be lying if she said that she didn’t notice. “You read the whole chapter?”

“Not everyone is naturally as smart as you,” Minah spoke in a soft and sweet voice, and Jimin let out a laugh.

“Omo- what is this?” he had a slight teasing tone, “Hoseok isn’t that smart. You’re being generous.”

Hoseok glared as Jimin and reached across Minah to smack him with her paper, “Yah, I make better grades than you.”

Minah tried to not notice that Hoseok’s chest had pressed up against her arm.

Hoseok moved back to his original position and handed Minah her paper back. He opened his mouth to say something, but after a few seconds, he closed it again. Minah slightly frowned, but tried to wipe it off before anyone saw.

“Thanks, Minah. You can go now.”

She wished she could say that Hoseok’s words didn’t hurt her, but they hurt so bad. The way he said it sounded emotionless as well- as if they weren’t friends in any way. She had to remind herself that they were around Jimin and Jungkook, which is why he was acting so cold.

“What? No- we need her around to keep the peace,” Jimin protested, “...and also because she has all of the answers with her.”

Minah shyly smiled and looked Jimin’s way. He sent her a smirk as he bit his lip slightly, causing Minah to look away in embarrassment.

Jungkook rolled his eyes, but he didn't protest. If having Minah around meant that he didn't have to work on the homework anymore, he wasn't going to complain.

Hoseok didn’t say anything, and Minah was too afraid to look in his direction. He was acting really different lately, and she was afraid that one look would make her know that she wasn’t wanted there. His voice already said enough for her to know that.

The next half hour was filled with the guys starting to argue over an answer, only for Jimin to flirt an answer out of Minah. Hoseok was tensing up next to Minah every once in a while when Jimin would compliment her, but she still refused to look Hoseok’s way. If she ignored him, maybe it would be easier to pretend that he actually wanted her there.

Jimin and Jungkook started to pack up their things around 7:00 since they both needed to head to bed early. They had an off season practice tomorrow, as well as more exam reviews to go over, so they needed as much sleep as they could get.

“It was nice studying with you,” Jimin smirked to Minah before getting up off of the couch. It was just the two of them in the living room at that point, and Minah felt some slight anxiety kick in. She was sitting in a room with a hot guy, and no one else was around the two of them… that was a recipe for disaster, especially since he kept flirting with her.

“Y-yeah,” she nodded and smiled in reply. Jimin’s eyes practically smiled with him as he checked her out yet again.

“It was cool getting to know you,” Jimin stood up from the couch, “I never thought I’d be interested in the innocent type.”

Minah was practically begging for Hoseok to walk back into the living room and save her from this embarrassment. His flirting was doing nothing to her but making her nervous as she stood up with a red face. She tried not to seem like she was running to get away from him, but since she wasn’t rushing away from him, he caught ahold of her arm.

He lightly spun her around as the fear she was feeling started to show in her eyes. Jimin just continued to smirk before grabbing her hand and placing a soft kiss on it. Her eyes widened in horror as Jimin just laughed and swung his backpack around his shoulder seconds later.

“I’ll see you later, Minah,” he winked as he walked away. Minah just stood frozen in place as she watched Jimin walk away with a satisfied smirk on his face. She had no idea what had just happened, but she didn’t necessarily like it.

Hoseok had started talking to Minah again after Jimin and Jungkook left, but he was hardly giving her anything to work off of. He seemed almost upset with her, but she didn’t try to deal with it. She had plans with Jenna soon, and she didn’t want to make him more upset than he already seemed to be.

The next day at school was as normal as ever. Jimin acted like he never saw Minah and she acted like she never saw him. She didn’t dare tell Jenna that Jimin had flirted with her the day before, and after being at school the next day, she felt that it was a one time thing. She couldn’t say that she didn’t at least hope that Jimin would glance her way. Anything to break this barrier in between statuses… but of course, he didn’t.

Everything was exactly as it was before.

The following days felt like they were on repeat: go to school, go home, Hoseok’s friends come over, Jimin flirts with Minah, Hoseok gets upset at Jimin, and repeat.

Hoseok had been more open to talking to Minah like they had before their friends found out about them living together. Minah was really grateful for that, except for the fact that he was constantly telling her to stay away from Jimin. As if she wasn’t going to if he hadn’t said anything…

“Minah…” Hoseok groaned as he stared at his homework. Finals were in two days, and he called Jimin and Jungkook to tell them that their study session was off. Minah didn’t say it out loud, but she was relieved that Jimin wasn’t coming over.

“Oppa, I’m telling you, this paper looks fine,” Minah reassured, “I read over it three times for grammar errors and I didn’t find any.”

“I’m still unsure,” he sighed and put his pencil behind his ear, “I’m afraid Namjoon’s will still be better than mine.”

“Oppa, he’s really hard to beat,” Minah moved her rolling chair away from his desk so that she was now in front of his bed where her phone was. “I would just be happy that you got a higher score on your history paper.”

“But only by one point,” he sighed and looked up at her with a pout on his face. She smiled and placed her head on her knees that she moved up to rest on the chair she was sitting in, “He normally beats me by two or three.”

“Oppa,” Minah continued smiling, “You’re still the second in our entire class. I don’t get why you need to be better than Namjoon. You’re perfect enough.”

Hoseok cleared his throat and smiled to her. She wished she hadn’t noticed the faint blush on his cheeks, because that caused her to blush.

“Thanks Minah,” he sighed and stood up from his chair. He moved his arms above his head to stretch as Minah admired the little bit of stomach that peaked out when he did so, “You’re a lifesaver. I really don’t know what I would do without you.”

Minah’s blush darkened at his words, and it didn’t help that he walked over to sit on his bed. He sat down close to where she had rolled her chair over to, and he spun her chair around to face him. She slightly squeaked as he did that and moved her feet off of the chair to catch her balance.

He grabbed her arms and pulled her out of the chair and over next to him, an action that left Minah a blushing mess in his hands. She complied with his wishes as she plopped down next to him with a small smile on her face.

The two of them sat in silence for a few seconds as they moved to lay down on his bed. They laid down so that their feet were dangling off the end and they had to puff his comforter up to act as pillows since Hoseok was too lazy to move his real pillows.

Minah closed her eyes and sighed as Hoseok moved to grab her hand. He didn’t hold her hand often, but he had done it enough times that Minah was used to it. Her heart didn’t fail to race at the contact, though.

“Minah, does it bother you when I don’t talk to you in school?”

Minah slightly tensed up at the question as Hoseok moved his head in her direction. She continued to look at the ceiling and attempted to swallow her nerves.

“W-Well… Of course it does,” her eyes stayed on the ceiling, “I feel so distant from you when I’m there. I mean I have my friends, but it still feels bad to not be able to say hi to you in school.”

Hoseok stayed silent for a few seconds before he let go of Minah’s hand to prop himself up with his elbows. He slightly hoovered over her as his weight moved from both elbows to his left elbow. Minah’s eyes slightly widened for a split second so Hoseok didn’t have enough time to notice.

“Do you blame me for it?”

His question rang through her mind as her mouth slightly opened.

Do I?

No, I don’t. It’s the school’s social standards that I blame.

“Not really,” she finally voiced her thoughts, “The school pushes for it to be that way.”

Hoseok was silent for a few more seconds as he just studied Minah’s face. She moved her eyes over to look into his, only to look away a few seconds later as her face heated up.

“Do you blame me for falling into peer pressure?”

...Now that one, Minah wasn’t sure. Did she blame him for just going with everything instead of breaking the rules? The ones who typically broke the rules were the lowest of the low. Sometimes even teacher would act like they didn’t exist.

But did she blame him for not wanting to be one of those people?

“I-I… I don’t know,” Minah shook her head and dared for her eyes to meet his, “I don’t really blame you. I’m just frustrated that it is the way it is.”

Hoseok was silent yet again as Minah continued to look into his eyes. He let out a long sigh through his nose before he slightly leaned closer to Minah. She tried her best to not seem affected by it, but on the inside, she was screaming.

“I wish I wasn’t a coward,” Hoseok frowned, “I don’t like upsetting you like I have.”

Minah swallowed her squeals as she let a small smile peek through, “You’re not the only one, Oppa. Everyone in school does it.”

“But they’re not hurting someone that they care about when they do it,” Hoseok argued as Minah’s heart rate quickened, “I’m the only one who’s secretly breaking the rules.”

“I know, Oppa,” Minah slightly leaned up so that her face was level with Hoseok’s. Her heart was beating faster at the prospect of what could happen between them, but she knew better than to get her hopes up. She always got her hopes up during situations like this, and every time, her hopes were crushed when the night would end in nothing. “But in a way, the rest of your friends are, too. Especially Jimin.”

“Jimin’s an a**hole,” Hoseok grumbled, “I want you staying away from him.”

“Aish, I know,” Minah smiled and playfully pushed on his stomach, “How many times do you have to tell me that?”

“Until you never even look at him again,” Hoseok said with such a serious voice that it sent shivers through her body.

“That’s an awful lot to ask for,” Minah smiled, but she didn’t dare release a laugh. He didn’t seem to be in the mood for her to laugh at what he had said.

“Please?” he raised his eyebrows in hope, “I hate how he talks to you. Sometimes I think he’s just doing it because he knows I hate it.”

“Okay, okay,” Minah placed her hand on his chest again as her mind started to wander to how firm it felt. It wasn’t like she didn’t already know it was, but it was nice to feel every time she got the opportunity to, “I don’t like being around him, anyway.”

Hoseok smiled and put his hand on her chin, an action he did often, but never when they were this close. She expected him to just slightly knock her head to the side has he’d done time and time again, but as the room grew silent and his hand didn’t budge, she felt herself growing nervous.

Their eyes were still locked on one another’s as Hoseok’s smile slowly faded away. His look turned insanely serious as Minah was taken off guard by it for the first few seconds. At this point, she was dying for the thinkable to happen. There her hopes went again.

“Minah,” Hoseok said in a terrible intimate way as Minah’s face heated up insanely fast. His eyes didn’t leave hers as his head began to move closer to hers.

This is it… Is this really it? Is it really going to happen?

Minah felt her eyes close as she found herself just waiting to feel the pressure of his lips on hers. She waited… and waited…

Eventually she opened her eyes again to see that Hoseok was looking at his phone that had lit up behind her. Minah assumed it was one of the guys, but whatever it was made him seem really upset.

“Oppa…?”

His eyes moved back to hers as his face lowly turned a shade of red that Minah found cute when brushed upon his cheeks.

“I’m sorry. I got a text and I started second guessing myself.”

Minah’s eyebrows raised, “It was that deep of a text message.”

Hoseok smiled at that, “Not at all. It was just a message from Jungkook about wanting to throw a end of semester party over here.”

Minah gave him a confused look, “How did that make you second guess yourself?”

Hoseok stayed silent for a few seconds before letting out a breath that brushed against Minah’s arm that was between them.

“What would you say if I proposed that we invite your friends over, too,” he spoke as Minah gave him a confused look, “Like, more than just Jenna.”

Minah felt her eyes widen as she thought of her friends being in the same from as Hoseok’s.

“Why do you propose that?” she asked, her voice dripping with curiosity. Hoseok’s eyes just pierced into hers as his hand that had been loosely holding her chin suddenly moved her face closer to his. Her eyes widened as he just sent her a sweet smile.

“Because If I want us to work, we have to start somewhere.”

Before Minah’s poor brain could process his words, her lips felt the very pressure on them that she had been waiting so long for. At this point, she didn’t even remember how long she had been waiting or what she imagined it would feel like.

But her imagination was pointless right now, since the very pair of lips she had imagined over and over again were finally on hers.

Once their lips were pressed together, Minah subconsciously leaned into him. He moved the arms that was supporting him slightly so that his hand was on her arm that was supporting her. He was careful with how much force he put into the kiss, because despite what Minah thought, he had been wanting to kiss her for just as long as she had wanted to kiss him.

He ended up moving his free hand to pull her body closer to his, and she complied with his actions. Their lips parted for a few moments as Hoseok moved her body slightly on top of him so that he could use both of his hands to caress her like he had wanted to for so long.

Their lips connected again as they moved in rhythm with the other. He didn’t bother deepening the kiss too much since it was enough for him to just kiss her. He didn’t trust himself enough to move past light kissing.

Minah’s hands moved to massage his scalp as he played with his hair. He sighed into her touch as a shiver ran through both other them at the same time. He had to push her away before he took anything any further, and their eyes met seconds later. Minah couldn’t help but smile to him as he returned the expression.

There was no doubt in her mind on how Hoseok felt about her. The kisses he gave were mind blowingly sweet and gentle, and all his smiles were as genuine as they’ve always been.

“I don’t want to hide us forever,” he brushed his nose against hers, “So let’s fight this barrier once and for all. It’s about time we challenged this school’s safety net.”

Part 2? xD I will write one if I get requests to~ But I’m actually pretty proud of this! I hope everyone enjoyed! Don’t hesitate to leave feedback! ^.^

Omg I stayed up till 3am to post this help me

⇨ Masterlist ⇦

-Admin Jinnie

#bts #bangtan #bts fluff #bts angst #bts scenarios #bts fanfic #bangtan fanfic #bangtan scenarios #bangtan fluff #hoseok fanfic #hoseok fluff #hoseok scenarios #jhope fanfic #jhope fluff #jhope scenarios #hoseok #jung hoseok #jhope #seokjin #jin #suga #yoongi #rapmon #rap monster #namjoon #jimin #v bts #bts v #jungkook #kpop

[hermanwatts]

Revisiting: The Spicies

This article was originally posted on 1 December, 2018 as “A Peep at The Spicy Pulps”. Next week, we’ll return to normal with a quartet of reviewed new releases, including the newest offerings in Fenton Wood’s Yankee Republic series and Larry Correia’s Saga of the Forgotten Warrior.

Last week, we examined how Martin Goodman, future publisher of Marvel Comics, combined science fiction with the popular “Spicy” genre to bring renewed interest to science fiction, fueling the first science fiction boom in the late 1930s. This would not be the only time the Spicies would shape the future of the pulp market. What once were stories intended to feature sexual content without obscenity soon turned into the salacious tales of sin and sadism of weird menace, the loss of the children’s market to comics, and government censorship of the pulps.

Between 1929 and 1934, many publishers, from the pornographic to the mainstream, were experimenting with ways to bring the spice of sex to popular fiction. Everything from toned-down porn to bad girl romances was tried, with the actual act disappearing behind the editor’s ellipse, leaving details to the imagination. But none lasted for more than a handful of issues until 1934’s Spicy Detective Stories sold out. Soon, a number of copycats followed suit, including Spicy Adventure, Saucy, and Spicy Mystery Stories, the last of which birthed weird menace.

The Spicy tale charted a perilous course between mainstream respectability and the thrill of sex. Anatomical descriptions were out, as was complete nudity and any details of the act the heroine submitted to. The women could disrobe voluntarily or have their clothes torn from them, but some scrap of cloth had to remain. The idea was to have a strong sexual element without being obscene or vulgar. After all, government investigation would reveal just who bankrolled these magazines, and the Mob did not want the attention.

That said, many of today’s YA stories, light novels, and romance novels would be too explicit for the Spicies.

But with (the barest hint of) sex selling, the rest of the story not surprisingly fell by the wayside. Many of the spicies chose exotic settings as to offer more convincing opportunities for the ladies to be in undress. Unfortunately, the exotic settings and plots don’t compare to the descriptions found in the hero pulps and Weird Tales. Everything was a thin excuse to get to the ellipses, where the real action occurred in the readers’ minds.  As a result, the combination of thin story and muted thrills led The Blood ‘N’ Thunder Guide to Pulp Fiction to declare of the Spicies, “Read one, you’ve read them all.” However, it took about five years for pulp fiction readers to agree.

The Spicies remained popular with authors is because they PAID. Not just on time, which was a novelty for many pulp magazines, but well–as in 5 cents a word at a time where 1 cent a word was professional rate. Many respectable pulpsters could not resist this lucrative market, including Norvell Page. Guess how many of those were Weird Tales authors. At least the Spicies paid, which wasn’t always the case with Weird Tales under Farnsworth Wright. R.E. Howard appeared under the pseudonym Sam Walser, Jack Williamson, as Nils O. Sonderlund, and E. Hoffman Price and Henry Kuttner used their own names.

That said, the rest of the field wasn’t quite up to the Weird Tales quality. In a genre limited to innuendo and indirect description of undress, only a score of authors could write within the rules. The catch was being able to write suggestively without resorting to tab A into slot B depictions of the act, and few could deliver.

To no surprise, with the restrictions of the Spicies compare to outright girlie or “smoosh” magazines such as Stage and Screen Stories and Tattle Tales, which both featured far more revealing covers, writers made up for lack of titillation with a penchant for peril, which became impending torture, which became weird menace. Afterwards, the Spicies burned out as stronger thrills and more explicit images became easier to acquire. But for five years, the Spicy was queen.

Now, to tie this back into science fiction, and the main concern of the Castalia House blog, the Spicy tale did leave an imprint on the development of the genre. Even as early as the 1930s, science fiction strove for respectability. During the Campbelline Revolution, Jack Williamson recounts that”science fiction had to be pure as snow”. Isaac Asimov was scathing of Marvel Science Stories:

“For some half a dozen issues or so, a magazine I won’t name published “spicy” stories about “the hot passion of alien monsters for Earthwomen. Clothes were always getting ripped off and breasts were described in a variety of elliptical phrases” for its “few readers” before “the magazine died a deserved death.”

And the censors in place after weird menace’s fall kept sexual content out of Amazing, Astounding, and their competitors. Or as much as possible, for:

It became a grim or frivolous game for some of the writers who were, of course, not fools, to see what they could slip by without editorial knowledge or consent. One famously was able to get through J. W. Campbell and Kay Tarrant a description of a tomcat as a “ball-bearing mousetrap” and Asimov’s 1951 “Hostess” in Galaxy reeked of the perversity of sexual attraction between an alien diplomat and a repressed academic’s wife but these triumphs were few and, more to the point, unnoticed. If they had attracted wide attention, the writers would have paid the price. 

(Malzberg, Barry N.. Breakfast in the Ruins (Kindle Locations 523-528). Baen Books.)

Barry Malzberg further explains in Breakfast in the Ruins that “as late as 1965, science fiction was still a genre which in the main denied the existence, let alone the extent, of human sexuality” and that it wasn’t until “the beginning of the nineteen-seventies, [that] novels of great or relative explicitness (Silverberg’s Dying Inside, The Second Trip, and The World Inside, my own Beyond Apollo) bore the label of category science fiction.”

In short, fan backlash against the Spicies and government backlash against the daughter of the Spicies known as weird menace removed sex as a topic of science fiction for over thirty years, until the rise of the New Wave.

Revisiting: The Spicies published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[torentialtribute]

Ike Ibeabuchi – the tragic tale of ‘boxing’s most dangerous man’

Ike Ibeabuchi kidnapped the 15-year-old his girlfriend from his estranged girlfriend and was one night in 1997 and rode with him on Interstate 35 in Austin. car when I decided to ram him into a concrete pillar in an attempt to end everything.

Ibeabuchi was only 24, a heavyweight boxer at the height of his powers, but who was slowly being consumed by his inner demons. He was torn away from the rubble, covered with blood and dust, with big eyes and raging, he thought he had ended his nightmare.

It was only a few months after he had surpassed David Tua in an epic battle that still has the record for the most punches thrown in a heavyweight competition (1,730). The victory had struck him in a fight for a world title fight. He had come a step closer to emulate his hero Mike Tyson

Ike Ibeabuchi stood on the eve of the big boxing

Ike Ibeabuchi stood 20 years ago on the edge of big boxing

<img id = "i-f03b8429ef74738d" src = "https://ift.tt/2TACWYE 9858050-6708241-image-m-5_1550232140520.jpg "height =" 729 "width =" 470 "alt =" But his life was unraveled because of his mental illness "class =" blkBorder "

Ike Ibeabuchi was

Ike Ibeabuchi was on the verge of boxing great time 20 years ago, but his life unraveled due to his mental illness

But that dream would only be a carrot dangling for him;

As it was the torturing months and years of persistent headaches, hearing voices and seeing demons that followed his victory over the highly regarded who would eventually frustrate him of his fulfilling potential.

It drove him to a kidnapping on that fateful night in Austin, where two lives were changed forever. The boy in the passenger seat of Ibeabuchi & # 39; s car sustained serious injuries and would never walk the same again. Ibeabuchi was sentenced to 120 days imprisonment for false imprisonment and forced to pay $ 500,000 in a civilian settlement.

Ibeabuchi served his time and returned to the ring in the following year, winning two comfortable wins over modest opponents to extend his flawless record to 19-0. On March 20, 1999, Ibeabuchi – despite being a broken man inside, tortured and converted daily by his alter ego & # 39; The President & # 39; – he really announced himself on the world stage with a spectacular victory against Olympic silver medalist Chris Byrd.

& # 39; I am now ready, I am ready for the heavyweight world championship & # 39 ;, I then declared in the ring. One of the nodding heads agreed. Few would argue that he was not. Some even claimed that he would blow away the rulers of the division at the time, Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield, that it would not even be a competition that he would just have to appear to win a world title.

This was his 20th consecutive victory – and so far most impressive – since his professional, who had all come to an American audience – the place to be an upcoming heavyweight in the 90s. Ibeabuchi, it seemed, was destined to reach the absolute top in the blue-riband division of boxing. But it should not be.

Instead, it was here, just as he had created new heights, that his career slipped away, descended into darkness, and was at the mercy of the footnotes of heavyweight history. ]

Nine years earlier, Ibeabuchi was just getting ready to start his boxing trip. Initially he had hoped to become a soldier at the Nigerian Defense Academy, but that dream was thrown away after spending the night with his uncle. & # 39; 42 -1 & # 39; underdog James & # 39; Buster & Douglas shakes up the boxing world by stopping Mike Tyson in 10 laps to capture the heavyweight title. He was immediately addicted.

His home was Isuochi, an area of ​​Umunneochi in southeastern Nigeria. But for Ibeabuchi it was necessary to leave his home country and travel to America to fulfill his ambition to become a professional boxer. I grew up with a little to appreciate and decided to leave. I knew that as a teenager I was driving across the Atlantic with his mother, Patricia, who had acquired a job as a nurse in Dallas

Ibeabuchi was dedicated to his handiwork and would not spend most of his days in boxing school Spending far away from his house to improve his skills. He was gifted with natural, devastating power and quickly established the fierce reputation, noting remarkable victories as an amateur. He won the Golden Gloves in the Dallas and Texas State tournaments in the heavyweight category in 1994 and defeated Duncan Dokiwari, who would advance to bronze medalist for Nigeria at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, before turning to paid ranks [19459003

The Ring Magazine suggested that he could become a big heavyweight "class = blkBorder img-share"

The Ring Magazine suggested that he

The Ring Magazine suggested that he

Thousands of thousands of home, in a downtown, filthy Louisiana convention center on October 13, 1994, Ibeabuchi made his professional debut for no more than 100 people.

He won 16 victories in the trot before he started competing in the class against New Zealander, three years after his first fight. At this point I was the bill for 10,000 spectators in California.

IKE IBEABUCHI FACTFILE

] [19459]

worth. Ibeabuchi was sensational, impressive with his relentless attacks and progressive style. The two went off in a slug festival with fans on the edge of their seats and applause on their feet as the end. Ibeabuchi took a unanimous decision victory.

He tried to kill himself months later and began to act more capriciously as time went on. I have the nickname & # 39; The President & # 39; taken from fans and glorified in that name. Sometimes he believed that this was his real identity and would insist that people give him & # 39; president & # 39; called. His late promoter Cedric Kushner said: & # 39; It was his alter ego, where & # 39; I am not the president of the United States, but perhaps the president of the world.

In the ring everything was fine still going to be planned while outside things are falling apart. Ibeabuchi earned a position at the front of the line to challenge the world title after the brutal suppression of Byrd in 1999, but would never catch up with that opportunity – or fight again for that matter.

Shortly thereafter, he was accused of sexually abusing a dancer he had hired from a local escort service to come to his room in a hotel in Las Vegas. The 21-year-old woman told the police that she had tried to rap her in the closet when she asked for money in advance. When the police arrived, Ibeabuchi had barricaded himself in the bathroom and only came out after police had used pepper spray under the door.

He denied the allegations and was initially released and placed under house arrest to allow him to train and fight while awaiting trial. Cases were exacerbated by the reopening of an earlier case of assault against him. The incident occurred eight months earlier at the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino. He was arrested again and detained after a number of similar allegations came to light in Arizona.

] His fight against your set to remember I am a researcher by medical experts and amid the fear of his mental state before the procedure for his interrogation. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

He was transferred to a state-owned medical facility and was violently medicated for eight months with the permission of the judge. He was later considered competent to initiate a plea and agreed to submit an Alford plea – which in US law means that one pleads guilty without admitting to commit the crime on the grounds that the evidence is unfavorable to the accused.

The belief rocked the boxing world, but no more. The conviction rocked the boxing world, but no more than his mother did. Ike was all she had and her punishment left her. However, she was adamant that he was innocent, and insisted that he had fallen victim to an evil conspiracy. She claimed that promoters had tapped their phones, broke into their homes, put chemicals into all of their food, and had paid and paid women to bring accusations of sexual violence against her son.

Ibeabuchi was undefeated after 20 fights, winning the WBC International heavyweight title, before being sent to prison "Ibeabuchi was undefeated after 20

Ibeabuchi was undefeated after 20 fights, winning the WBC International heavyweight title before being sent to prison "

Fighting, winning the WBC International heavyweight title before being sent to prison

He wrote in a letter six years after the verdict: & # 39; Cedric Kushner chased Ike to renew his contract with him, Ike informed Cedric that I need to look around to better understand what his value was and if he fit it that he will continue with him. Cedric was not happy with this because I knew he had underpaid Ike while other promoters and managers were very interested in Ike because of his promising boxing career. Managers and promoters do not want boxers to negotiate deals;

& # 39; Because of these dealers and their methods, we had to leave Dallas and move to Arizona to take refuge. Unfortunately they followed us to this situation and the nightmare went on. They have overheard our phones, forced themselves into our house, put chemicals into all of our food and drink and they would turn off our house alarm and our house any time of the day or

& # 39; These promoters are so went a long way to fly and make false accusations against Ike in Gilbert and Scottsdale while living with me in the same house, paying a few women to accuse him of attempting kidnapping and assault. The police investigated these charges and threw them away because there was no basis for these charges against him.

She also claimed that she was not mentally ill and the proper legal representation was denied, adding in her letter: "Ike has never really been tried or convicted for these false accusations or allegations." The Las Vegas court sent Ike to the Reno psychiatric hospital for evaluation, but before his arrival, the staff had been told that Ike was dangerous, crazy, and many other suggestions that frightened the staff about coming. When Ike arrived at the hospital, the staff discovered that these statements were not even that close to the truth, but found that Ike was peaceful, respectful, loving, and cooperative. "

However, the people who worked closely with Ibeabuchi had a very different story. Kushner, who was his promoter, told several incidents that led him to believe that Ibeabuchi was mentally ill during a TV interview in 2012

He said: & We had a nice meal in a nice restaurant in the middle of the city. Ike took a big carving knife, threw it in the table and shouted: "They knew it! They knew it! The belts are mine! Why didn't they just give them back? "That was a special experience."

Respectful matchmaker Eric Bottjer also believed that Ibeabuchi was mentally unstable and claimed that he refused to enter the ring to fight Byrd, unless he had a Snickers bar, and made a member of his entourage run to a nearby supermarket to buy one.

Ibeabuchi spent time in prison for false imprisonment, battery, and assault attempt "

Ibeabuchi spent time in prison for false prison sentence, battery and assault attempt, battery and assault attempt "

<img id =" i-2b66099f97641f46 "src =" https://i.dailymail.co .uk / 1s / 2019/02/15/17 / 9871108-6708241-image-m-33_1550251381864.jpg "height =" 703 "width =" 470 "alt =" He is shown after his release in 2014 – but he is Soon ended up in jail. Now, 46 years old, he is available again for release in September this year after nearly 20 years in jail – and he is still considering a comeback to boxing "

<img id = "i-2b66099f97641f46" src = "https://ift.tt/2YjQ87I" height = "703" width = "47 0 "alt =" He is pictured after his release in 2014, but soon ended up in jail and is now, at the age of 46, available again for release in September this year after nearly 20 years in jail – and he is considering still the comeback to boxing classic

Ibeabuchi has spent time in prison for false imprisonment, battery and attempted assault. He is pictured (right) after his release in 2014 – but he soon returned to prison. Now, 46 years old, he is available again for release in September this year after nearly 20 years in prison – and he is still considering a comeback to boxing

He also said during an HBO documentary: & # 39; He is the only fighter I have ever worked with who was mentally ill. The cliché when you work with certain fighters is "Oh, he's crazy, he's crazy" because they misbehave and they do things that normal people wouldn't do. But Ibeabuchi was mentally ill. And it was a dangerous person. And that made many people around him uncomfortable.

& # 39; I knew that from the beginning. And we asked him why we even promoted him. I had a conversation with Cedric one day. When he first tried to get him out of jail, I said, "Do you want to sit on ESPN one day as the promoter of the world heavyweight champion who killed someone?" I was scoreless. I said, "This man's crazy. He's going to hurt someone. I don't want him to be me or anyone else." But he is very capable of killing someone. "

& # 39; He was delusional. I lived in his own world. And his mother – I know she died recently, I don't want to say I'm sick of the dead, but she was also crazy. And she supported him. And Cedric had to deal with this. And of course Cedric saw the following: "I have the future heavyweight champion, I must do something about this." But what I should have done was take this guy to And no one has ever done it. No one has ever done it. & # 39;

Ibeabuchi's story took another bizarre turn when in 2007 the Supreme Court sentenced Las After rejecting a trial, Vegas refused the lower courts to release him, and eventually was released by the Nevada prison system in early 2014, but was directly transferred to US immigration and customs enforcement, who imprisoned him in Arizona.

Ibeabuchi was placed on a lifelong conditional release at 42, began to plot his return to the ring. However, promoters were reluctant to cooperate with him and only five months after his release, he was arrested again for violating the conditions for his probationary period and he is still in an Arizona prison today.

Even now, approaching the 20th anniversary of his last fight, thoughts remain about & # 39; what if? & # 39; & # 39; What if you haven't done some of those awful things? What if I have received the help I need? What if I previously had a title photo?

The overwhelming impression is that, if it were not for the failure of the offenses, Ibeabuchi would have been the next big thing.

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#Ike Ibeabuchi – the tragic tale of ‘boxing’s most dangerous man’"

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A Peep at the Spicy Pulps

Last week, we examined how Martin Goodman, future publisher of Marvel Comics, combined science fiction with the popular “Spicy” genre to bring renewed interest to science fiction, fueling the first science fiction boom in the late 1930s. This would not be the only time the Spicies would shape the future of the pulp market. What once were stories intended to feature sexual content without obscenity soon turned into the salacious tales of sin and sadism of weird menace, the loss of the children’s market to comics, and government censorship of the pulps.

Between 1929 and 1934, many publishers, from the pornographic to the mainstream, were experimenting with ways to bring the spice of sex to popular fiction. Everything from toned-down porn to bad girl romances was tried, with the actual act disappearing behind the editor’s ellipse, leaving details to the imagination. But none lasted for more than a handful of issues until 1934’s Spicy Detective Stories sold out. Soon, a number of copycats followed suit, including Spicy Adventure, Saucy, and Spicy Mystery Stories, the last of which birthed weird menace.

The Spicy tale charted a perilous course between mainstream respectability and the thrill of sex. Anatomical descriptions were out, as was complete nudity and any details of the act the heroine submitted to. The women could disrobe voluntarily or have their clothes torn from them, but some scrap of cloth had to remain. The idea was to have a strong sexual element without being obscene or vulgar. After all, government investigation would reveal just who bankrolled these magazines, and the Mob did not want the attention.

That said, many of today’s YA stories, light novels, and romance novels would be too explicit for the Spicies.

But with (the barest hint of) sex selling, the rest of the story not surprisingly fell by the wayside. Many of the spicies chose exotic settings as to offer more convincing opportunities for the ladies to be in undress. Unfortunately, the exotic settings and plots don’t compare to the descriptions found in the hero pulps and Weird Tales. Everything was a thin excuse to get to the ellipses, where the real action occurred in the readers’ minds.  As a result, the combination of thin story and muted thrills led The Blood ‘N’ Thunder Guide to Pulp Fiction to declare of the Spicies, “Read one, you’ve read them all.” However, it took about five years for pulp fiction readers to agree.

The Spicies remained popular with authors is because they PAID. Not just on time, which was a novelty for many pulp magazines, but well–as in 5 cents a word at a time where 1 cent a word was professional rate. Many respectable pulpsters could not resist this lucrative market, including Norvell Page. Guess how many of those were Weird Tales authors. At least the Spicies paid, which wasn’t always the case with Weird Tales under Farnsworth Wright. R.E. Howard appeared under the pseudonym Sam Walser, Jack Williamson, as Nils O. Sonderlund, and E. Hoffman Price and Henry Kuttner used their own names.

That said, the rest of the field wasn’t quite up to the Weird Tales quality. In a genre limited to innuendo and indirect description of undress, only a score of authors could write within the rules. The catch was being able to write suggestively without resorting to tab A into slot B depictions of the act, and few could deliver.

To no surprise, with the restrictions of the Spicies compare to outright girlie or “smoosh” magazines such as Stage and Screen Stories and Tattle Tales, which both featured far more revealing covers, writers made up for lack of titillation with a penchant for peril, which became impending torture, which became weird menace. Afterwards, the Spicies burned out as stronger thrills and more explicit images became easier to acquire. But for five years, the Spicy was queen.

Now, to tie this back into science fiction, and the main concern of the Castalia House blog, the Spicy tale did leave an imprint on the development of the genre. Even as early as the 1930s, science fiction strove for respectability. During the Campbelline Revolution, Jack Williamson recounts that”science fiction had to be pure as snow”. Isaac Asimov was scathing of Marvel Science Stories:

“For some half a dozen issues or so, a magazine I won’t name” published “spicy” stories about “the hot passion of alien monsters for Earthwomen. Clothes were always getting ripped off and breasts were described in a variety of elliptical phrases” for its “few readers” before “the magazine died a deserved death.”

And the censors in place after weird menace’s fall kept sexual content out of Amazing, Astounding, and their competitors. Or as much as possible, for:

It became a grim or frivolous game for some of the writers who were, of course, not fools, to see what they could slip by without editorial knowledge or consent. One famously was able to get through J. W. Campbell and Kay Tarrant a description of a tomcat as a “ball-bearing mousetrap” and Asimov’s 1951 “Hostess” in Galaxy reeked of the perversity of sexual attraction between an alien diplomat and a repressed academic’s wife but these triumphs were few and, more to the point, unnoticed. If they had attracted wide attention, the writers would have paid the price. (Malzberg, Barry N.. Breakfast in the Ruins (Kindle Locations 523-528). Baen Books.)

Barry Malzberg further explains in Breakfast in the Ruins that “as late as 1965, science fiction was still a genre which in the main denied the existence, let alone the extent, of human sexuality” and that it wasn’t until “the beginning of the nineteen-seventies, [that] novels of great or relative explicitness (Silverberg’s Dying Inside, The Second Trip, and The World Inside, my own Beyond Apollo) bore the label of category science fiction.”

In short, fan backlash against the Spicies and government backlash against the daughter of the Spicies known as weird menace removed sex as a topic of science fiction for over thirty years, until the rise of the New Wave.

A Peep at the Spicy Pulps published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

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Mahoutsukai no Yome – 13

This week’s cold open drips with dread as an evil-sounding guy asks what the adorable Chise will find “at the end of her journey with the failure born in the shadows of the forest”, which doesn’t strike me as the nicest way to describe Elias Ainsworth. Maybe the guy has some kind of grudge? Or maybe he’s jealous that Elias found a Sleigh Beggy?

After that, things take a much lighter tone, as Chise, Ruth, Elias and Silky deal with a sudden infestation of “woolly bugs” in dire need of shearing. Just when Elias steps away for a moment, an icy bug steals Chise’s body heat, but she isn’t in any lasting danger. Elias merely needs to warm her back up.

As a result of that objective, Elias stays with Chise until she wakes up, and the opportunity arises for the two to finally talk a little more about how they feel about each other. Chise had been torturing herself about the “timing” of what she’d say, not the content, and that’s evident here as she’s quite eloquent once the obstacle of when to tell him is gone.

She’s able to clear up a couple of things with Elias—that she’s not afraid of him like most humans are, and that she wants to keep the memory of him going wild, even if it wasn’t pleasant, because it’s the memory of “someone important to her”, which is to say, someone she cares about.

Elias continues to emphasize that he can’t truly emphathize with Chise, or even honestly tell her what his feelings are, because the creature that he is just doesn’t allow for that, or at least hasn’t up to this point.

Elias can say that his home was dreadfully cold when Chise was gone, now it’s much warmer, and he prefer the latters. He also knows that while he may be Chise’s magic teacher, Chise is his human teacher. They have a lot to teach one another.

Chise, unfortunately, doesn’t know not to answer the door alone late at night if she’s not expecting someone, and Elia’s door sadly lacks a peephole, so when Chise opens the door to find the many millennia-old Ashen Eye on the other side, she’s wide open for whatever Ashy might want to do.

Ashen Eye is, of course, the creepy guy we heard talking at the beginning. He seems to be obsessed with Chise, but at least partially informed by a longstanding resentment of humanity he’s built up over the centuries.

He claims he has no intention of “harming” Chise at all, but apparently “transforming her into a red fox” doesn’t fall under the “harm” category of “harm.” So what’s Ahsen Eye’s game, and how will Elias (or Fox Chise, for that matter) deal with him?

I’ve learned not to immediately think everyone who does something weird like this to Chise is automatically a villain with ill intent. It’s possible he’s just teaching both of these youngins a lesson in not answering your door. But that creepy cold open weighs on me…it’s more likely he’s up to no good.

By: magicalchurlsukui

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