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#what other entry level job is going to let me do that??? and as a state employee i would have benefits that are like helpful to have as a

mochamamii · 6 months

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mafia!nct: how you meet.

▹ a/n: hello loves, wow two uploads in a day? are you proud of me ? 🤭 it’s been so long since I wrote in the mafia universe! I hope you enjoy this, have a great day or night gorgeous 😘💕

▹ pairing: mafia!nct x reader

▹ triggers: mafia!au, crime, manipulation, violence, light smut

Taeil first meets you at your job. Taeil owns a plethora of companies, both small and large, and all used as a cover to launder and legitimize his behind the scenes criminal activity. You just happened to be a regular girl working at one of these companies, only working in an entry level position at a front desk you would’ve had very low chances of running into someone like Taeil at work. That was true for the most part, it had been at a company wide holiday party nearly two years working at said company before your paths finally crossed. You were tipsy and flirtier than usual that night, completely ignorant to the fact that you’d been chatting up your boss for the better part of an hour. Taeil was intrigued by your forwardness and wanted to keep seeing you. It was fun and exciting for you too, Taeil seemed like such a puzzle to you, he gave you very few details about his life and even fewer about his career. It’d be months after your secret rendezvous begins before Taeil reveals to you he owns the company you work for, and it’d take years for him to ever share that he runs a criminal organization under the table, if he ever actually did, because if he can get away with not telling you he won’t.

“Why do you always ask so many questions baby? Why don’t we just enjoy our time together and we can talk about my job another day…”

Johnny meets you at a nightclub. Because of the dangers involved in his line of work he’s become a shut in more or less, only going out when it’s absolutely necessary. He’d take drinking at home with friends over a noisy club but his associates and him had been having a string of successful pushes in the expansion of their clan. There was much to be celebrated. You were there with a group of friends also that night, out to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Johnny took notice of you right away. Shameless in his ogling of you, his eyes were fixed on you alone in the sea of bodies on the dance floor. He approached you with a pep in his step to offer you a drink which you accept, afterwards you offer him a dance which he accepts. On the dance floor your hands eagerly grip and squeeze at each other’s bodies. You two spend the night together that first night, a fairly brief and passionate situationship ensues after night one. For months your relationship with Johnny feels purely sexual, there’s not much about him or his life that you really know and he never seems eager to share. Johnny drags his feet on cuffing you officially for fear of involving an innocent person in his life.

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’ve always had serious feelings for you. The only thing stopping me was wanting to keep you safe.”

Taeyong meets you after one of his associates dragged you into his warehouse. Apparently, you had been the witness to his crew “taking out the trash” as some would say…Instantly upon seeing you Taeyong realized you really were just an innocent girl who had been in the wrong place at the right time and not a secret spy from a rival. He pitied you. You had seen his face and plenty of the others faces’, releasing you could be risky but keeping you here was tiresome and more of a chore. Taeyong decided he would give himself a few days to decide what he wanted to do with you, he let you go home, under heavy surveillance of course. He needed to know if you were going to try and run to the police and snitch on anything you’d seen so far. Taeyong starts visiting your home in the evenings, he told himself it was a strategic intimidation tactic to keep you from calling the cops. Truthfully, Taeyong just wanted to be near you. He’d become really drawn to you, his visits getting longer and longer as he gets to know you better. It’s a nice slow burn before your relationship turns romantic. Taeyong is actually grateful he had met you in the manner he did, it was refreshing to start a relationship and wonder whether he should tell them about his career. You knew from the start, and that made courting you a guilt free indulgence for him.

“You know more about me than most people do. I like that and I want it to stay that way, I promise there’s nothing I’ll ever keep from you.”

Yuta meets you during the middle of a heist of all places. In his crew he was the go to man for high intensity missions like bank heists, and assassinations occasionally. You were on your way home from work when you made a stop to deposit your paycheck into your account. Your corporate slave job had yet to transition to the twenty first century and go digital with their payroll system. You were stuck with paper checks for now. Your interaction with the bank teller across from you was almost done when you jumped due to the fire alarm suddenly going off. The alarms went off followed by the sprinklers on the ceiling, creating a heavy downpour, drenching you and everything else. Yuta and his gang strolled in confident as ever, heavy machine guns in tow. They were the picture of frightening nightmares. Yuta made it known he was clearly in charge, barking orders at his crew, all of them moving in harmony. They cleared the bank’s reserves in minutes, sweeping the vaults like they knew the floor plan by heart. Yuta floated over to you as his crew began piling the bags of cash into their van. Yuta caught you hiding under a table near the back. He thought you were absolutely adorable the way you looked at him in fear. He pulled you from under the table to get a better look at you, he gave you a quick two second once over before nodding with a content hum and tossing you over his shoulder. You squealed and squirmed to get down but he only held you tighter spewing out nonsense like he had decided to keep you for a little bit.

“Stop squirming so much bunny…I’m not that scary am I?”

Doyoung meets you through a match maker interestingly enough. Doyoung was born into an infamous crime family, arranged marriages between associates was a common practice for families like Doyoung’s. As Doyoung begins to take the reigns from his father he knows a marriage is on the horizon he’d need to find a match from another strong clan to join forces with. You happened to be the daughter of not a fellow mob boss, but a wealthy man who earned his wealth legitimately.. As an only child your parents were eager for you to settle down and give them some heirs so you went to a matchmaker for help. By fate you and Doyoung had been paired together, he was introduced to you as your average successful businessman. The attraction was there immediately and a relationship between you two quickly blossomed. It was easy, you both had similar ambitions and goals. You fit together perfectly from the start. Doyoung isn’t sure he’ll ever reveal to you his real job, why should he when things are already great between you two?

“I never thought I’d meet someone this way, but I’m glad I did. I’m glad I met you, my other half.”

Jungwoo meets you through a mutual acquaintance. He was in the market to buy a second property, it would be a safe house for himself and other people close to him. He had a friend who recommended Jungwoo contact you. He was a busy man who needed a realtor to find the perfect location for him, that’s where you come in. You’d sold a number of properties to Jungwoo’s friend already who made sure to give him a stellar review of your work. Jungwoo was running out of time and his friend had convinced him well enough so he called you. Upon the first meeting in person Jungwoo was struck by your beauty. He forced himself to remain professional not wanting to be distracted. You’d begun working for Jungwoo for months at this point, sending him several properties you’d found throughout the week. It didn’t matter what you sent him, he always seemed so unimpressed and displeased with what you’d shown him. You were growing annoyed and worried that you’d never find a property he would close on. Truthfully, Jungwoo loved nearly every listing you showed him, he loved spending time with you even more. He wasn’t ready to close on something quite yet, he wasn’t ready to stop spending time with you, he liked talking to you. Jungwoo’s crush on you grows more every day, eventually he has no choice but ti confess his feelings after you nearly threatened to quit if he refused to finally close on a property.

“I just needed any excuse to be close to you, that’s where I’d always rather be.”

Mark meets you at the hospital. You were working an overnight shift. You were in your third year of residency, working under the guidance of your seniors. That night was like any other night until the doors of the receiving dock flew open and paramedics quickly wheeled a wounded man on a stretcher inside. You were among the staff called to attend to him. You learned from the paramedics that he had been in some kind of shootout. You helped assist the surgeons during surgery as they removed any bullet fragments still remaining. The man remained in the hospital until he was well enough. During this time you cared for him everyday, cleaning and dressing his wounds, checking his vitals, etc. Mark recovers quickly, he’s upset with himself for caving and going to a real hospital, it was a risky move but his clan’s only private doctor was preoccupied and the severity of his injuries definitely called for medical attention. The only good thing that came out of risking getting his identity exposed was the cute nurse who was in charge of caring for him. He was attracted to you and it wouldn’t be long before he asked to take you on a date. You say yes to his offer and the rest is history. Mark won’t outright admit to what he does over time you come to find out on your own.

“You don’t need to know everything about me just yet, I don’t want to scare you off so soon…”

Haechan meets you at a restaurant. He’s having a celebratory dinner with his clan, at the restaurant you waitress for. As luck should have it you were the one picked to serve the loud rowdy bunch of drunk men. Surprisingly the bulk of them left you to do your job without any pushback from them. All except one. The one who sat himself at the head of the table, Haechan. He couldn’t keep his eyes and hands off of you all night. Every time you walked by he’d wink at you from afar and when you were close enough he’d try to pull you into his lap. You were used to serving drunks of all kinds and had your fair share of customers trying their best to flirt with you, Haechan was the most aggressive customer you’d ever had. Haechan was diligent and persistent, he didn’t press further that night and made sure you were tipped well. You thought you had seen the last of Haechan but you were so wrong. Haechan came in almost every day after he first saw you, always requesting you as his waitress. You were uninterested and ignored his advances every time but Haechan could appreciate a challenge.

“That’s fine, ignore me now…I’ll come in every day until you respond beautiful.”

#nct yandere #yandere nct #lee taeyong #yandere kpop #kpop yandere #kim jungwoo #lee haechan #kim doyoung #johnny seo #yuta nakamoto #nakamoto yuta #yandere nct reactions #mafia nct reactions #nct reaction #nct 127 mafia au

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is-this-yuri · 1 month

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homelessness can happen for a lot of different reasons. the lack of affordable housing is said to be the main one. no matter how hard people work, many are always at risk of being unable to afford rent.

for me, that's a huge part of it, but there's also the mental health aspect of it. i've had just about every entry level job available. i've had jobs that allowed me to pay rent, though just barely. ive worked really, really hard. and unfortunately, for me, no amount of transitional housing is going to help if i'm always miserable working. no amount of job coaching is going to make it bearable for me. and historically, the mental health treatments ive tried (which are so, so many) just haven't worked.

it seems like the goal has always been to 'get on your feet' i.e. get a job and an apartment. the fact that a shocking amount of homeless people are working (including myself at some points) and even working multiple jobs and still haven't 'gotten on their feet' should say a lot. the fact that even people who have never been homeless are closer to homelessness than to owning a house should say a lot. the fact that a percentage of homeless people actually choose to be homeless should say a LOT. it tells me that the goal has shifted. what i was raised to want is now an impossible task.

it sucks because i know half the jobs ive had would have been easy for me if it was actually worth it. if the hours were less, the pay actually let me afford things beyond the bare minimum, and the working conditions were better. therapy and medication would probably work wonders if my disatisfaction with life wasnt completely rational. but it's all fucked, and we all know it.

it's taboo to say it, especially as a homeless person, but i don't want to work. i don't want an apartment. i don't want to own a house. maybe my views will change if things ever get better, but at this point, i don't want to engage with this flawed system at all anymore. i hate that my value is contigent on how well i can slot into the capitalist machine. i know i have value much more important than that, and i'd prefer to earn my place on this earth through my actual strengths. i want life, my connections with other people, and the work i do to have meaning and significance. until the world makes space for that, i'm more than happy taking a government check and living in a van with a cat so i can make art and stream and watch the sunset every night. that's my goal now

#homelessness #just verbalizing some thoughts #i talked to my therapist about this yesterday but i was talking for so long she didnt get to give me a response lol #this has been my goal for a very long time honestly #ever since the first time i lived in my car and i was like hey wait #this is very difficult but i also feel so free and satisfied

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rallamajoop · 2 months

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Mia Winters and the Connections

There are a lot of bad takes on Mia Winters out there, a lot of really irritating shallow misconceptions. But for now, I’m just going to tackle one of the big ones that annoys me the most.

Mia Winters is not a scientist, and it's debatable whether she had any long-term association with the project that created Eveline. She may not have even met Eveline before being assigned to transport her to South America.

Mia’s not any kind of researcher. Her job when she worked at the Connections is laid out clearly in the first document you find within moments of starting the flashback ("Orders"): she’s a member of the Special Operations Division in the English version, or a 'special agent' in the Japanese (特殊工作員, tokushu kousaku-in). The English version also gives Mia the role of 'caretaker', implicitly of Eveline, but there's not much to suggest this is a role extending beyond the bounds of this particular mission (for comparison, the Japanese doesn't mention caretaking at all).

Mia's job is exactly what we see her doing in the game: transporting important assets under cover identities, and running around doing damage control with a machine gun if things go south. She echoes the same in her letter to the Bakers, stating she 'was assigned to transport some important cargo.' Even the 'imprinting protocol' she refers to seems to be mostly part of a transport protocol (going by the very little we ever learn about it), and may not even have been implemented until shortly before they left.

Even in the one photo of her standing with the research team, you might note that Mia and her partner Alan are the only people present not wearing lab coats (and believe me, with how much other photoshopping there is in this photo, Mia would have been wearing a lab coat if they'd wanted her in one). The photo itself is far more of an easter egg than a real plot point anyway, and probably isn't worth reading too much into ‒ I mean, Alan is apparently the director of the Special Operations division, so it makes no sense to assume he's part of this one science team. But if you really want a 'canonical' explanation for this photo, considering Mia and Alan are wearing the same clothes as in the ship flashback, you could reasonably assume it was taken right before Eveline was shipped off to America ‒ a kind of "Let's get one last snapshot of the team together with the transport crew before Eveline goes to South America" deal. It's completely plausible Mia may not even have met Eveline until the same day this was taken.

So where does this 'scientist' nonsense come from? The only source which does call Mia a 'researcher' is a timeline entry in this one RE7 strategy guide which has never been published in English – and it's a good example of why sources like this are usually better treated as pseudo-canon at best. You can find various translations of it online – but you can also buy the whole ebook (which I did), so here's the page where it originally comes up.

And yes, inasmuch as I’m qualified to translate, the line does state that Mia joined the company as a ‘researcher’ (研究員, kenkyuu-in) in 2010. But the same guidebook also refers to her as an operative (工作員) just a couple of pages later, so even the guidebook is hardly consistent.

Charitably, perhaps we could read that Mia was initially hired as some kind of generic, low-level research assistant before being transferred to the special operations division after showing aptitude in that area. But it's more likely that Mia was simply going to be a researcher at some point in the game’s development history, before Capcom changed their minds, and the timeline that made it into the guidebook is just very out of date ‒ it happens. Either way, one line in an inconsistent guide book hardly trumps what actually made it into the games.

I do realise that asking people to pay attention to what's actually in the games over what's repeated in some wiki somewhere (or a gazillion different fanfic) is a big ask for any fandom, but Mia was clearly never a scientist in the game we all played. She still knowingly worked for some really evil people – she doesn’t get to claim innocence here – but the idea she's personally responsible for every bad thing ever done to Eveline is absurd.

FWIW, other details from the guidebook also back up the idea that transporting assets was a major part of Mia’s job. Her bio (above) mentions that she was away from home a lot, something that strained the Winters’ marriage, and that she told people she worked for a ‘trading company’ – a solid cover for a job focused on travel and logistics.

A very little is said about Mia’s relationship with Eveline. The guidebook does mention that the reason Eveline’s so attached to Mia is because Eveline had known her since she was ‘confined to the “mysterious organisation” that created her’, which could be taken to imply she knew Mia well before their trip began, but it's not much to go on. Mia's own feelings on Eveline are described briefly in a caption: “Although Mia found Eveline creepy, she also felt compassion for her lonely situation,” which tracks with how Mia interacts with her in-game. It doesn't track so well with the idea Mia had any real authority over how Eveline was raised or treated, however, and would be perfectly consistent with the idea Mia might not have known her long at all.

The guidebook timeline also tells us that the E-series project begain in 2000, and that Eveline herself was created in "the early 2000s." This doesn't make a whole lot of sense for reasons I've talked about already, but does put Eveline's creation well before 2010, the year the same timeline gives us for when Mia started working at the Connections. Since the guidebook also tells us Mia was 32 in 2017, back in 2000, she would have been all of 15 years old. Whatever Mia's involvement, the project long predates her joining the company.

But the real issue with trying to given Mia any major responsibility for the E-series project is that the lab that created Eveline was located in Europe. Mia, meanwhile, has a driver's license telling us she's from Texas.

The European location for the lab is another detail that gets barely mentioned in the games, though it's mentioned repeatedly in the guidebook, and the Baker Incident Report even puts it specifically in Munich, Germany. Given all we learn in RE8, that location does make a lot of sense, when the mould was found in Eastern Europe, and that Miranda herself was part of the research team (she gets multiple photos and a lab coat, you may note). And even if the lab wasn’t right on Miranda’s doorstep, Munich is a heckuva commute from Texas, or anywhere else in the US. Even if Mia was often away from Ethan for long periods, as her bio implies, how involved could she realistically have been?

I don't want to overstress the idea that it "doesn't make sense" for a special agent from Texas to have been intimately involved in a European research project ‒ making sense has never held back RE lore before. But the idea that Mia was brought in only as a handler for Eveline when she was being moved to America still makes a lot more sense than to suggest the Connections were fine with their star asset’s primary handler going home to the US every other weekend.

There are possibilities between the two extremes, of course: Mia may have had sporadic contact with Eveline before the trip, either regularly or just once or twice. It's easy to assume the 'imprinting protocol' must mean that Mia's been Eveline's primary handler for some time, but heck, maybe it's better read as the opposite ‒ something that can be quickly applied to a new handler or caretaker in a hurry, to explain how Eveline got so attached to someone she'd only just met.

Given everything we actually see of her, you could even speculate that Mia was chosen as Eveline's 'caretaker' specifically because she was someone nice and motherly enough for Eveline to bond with. Eveline was pretty clearly fucked up long before Mia ever got involved, and not actually wanting to adopt a walking bioweapon whose idea of a happy family involves mould-powered mind control really does not reflect badly on Mia's character.

Whether Mia was already working for the Connections before she met Ethan also isn't clear. The guidebook tells us she began working for them in 2010, and married Ethan in May of 2011 (later confirmed by the date on Mia's ring in RE8) – though it doesn't specify when she and Ethan met. Even by Texas standards, marrying someone you’d known less than a year would be pretty unusual, so it’s likely Ethan knew her before she took the job. But even that 2010 statement comes along with the bit about Mia being hired as ‘a researcher’, so you can always take it with a grain of salt if you'd prefer.

And that's pretty much it for what the complete RE canon ever tells us about Mia and her former employers.

So here’s where I’m left with Mia’s role at the Connections. Even if she wasn’t aware of exactly what she was signing up for when she joined the company, and even if she considered all that lying to her husband about it to be a simple matter of confidentiality around sensitive research, she’s fully aware by the disaster in 2014, and plainly has a guilty conscience when she admits to lying to Ethan in her video message. However responsible she may or may not have been, she's still complicit. Her hands are hardly clean.

But they’re still a whole lot cleaner than, say, Luis’, considering that he was a key member of the science teams at both Umbrella Europe and in Saddler’s cult, and I don’t see him getting a fraction of the same hate as Mia. They both regret what they’ve done, and they’re both willing to give their own lives to make up for it. No, Luis never lied to a spouse about it (that we know of), but he's every bit as shifty and secretive. And frankly, most of the other shit that gets dumped on Mia’s doorstep is just as much bullshit (like, people do realise the “Mia” we see having “marital problems” with Ethan at the start of RE8 isn’t Mia, right?) But that’s material for other posts.

We don’t know how Mia got involved with the Connections, or how she felt about working for them, because the games never give us this information, and that’s a real shame. But in the capitalist hellscape we’re all living in, she’d hardly be the first to find herself stuck working for truly terrible people, one way or another.

Meanwhile, everything we see her doing during the outbreak on the tanker speaks to a basically good person, desperately trying to run damage control in a fucked-up situation. She tells Alan she’s not going to let him die, even though what’s going down is his fault. She tries so hard to talk Eveline down. After she’s rescued by the Bakers in the Daughter's DLC, she insists on staying in the trailer, meaning to leave at her first opportunity – pretty significant, considering she knows she’s infected already. She also leaves them a message warning them to stay away from Eveline, even sharing information on how to make a serum if they are infected. If you pick her over Zoe on the dock, the first thing she does is try to convince Zoe to come with them anyway. Even under Eveline's mind control, you'll catch her ranting about needing to contain the outbreak, blaming herself, and telling Ethan she loves him with her last breath.

And after being infected herself, the first thing on her mind is to try and protect Ethan, recording that message admitting she’s lied to him, and warning him to stay away (Ethan never gets that message, but you can’t say Mia didn’t try). Mia loves Ethan enough to die to save him – and she will, if you choose the Zoe path, and she’ll do it without a second thought.

Mia is fascinating to me as a character because she’s so full of contradictions: a woman who leaves syrupy video messages sending ‘tons of kisses’ to her husband, but who is completely comfortable running around with a machine gun killing mould-monsters, and who shrugs off an Eveline jump-scare with 'fucking hallucinations!' Someone who’s done bad things and knows it, and is trying so hard to make up for it, but whose background and motivations are left frustratingly undeveloped. But if you haven’t caught that Ethan and Rose mean more to her than anything, you really haven’t been paying attention.

Whatever you assume about Mia’s full story, she’s complicated in a way that makes her so much more interesting to me than most of the franchise’s more popular playable characters. I am very serious in saying I want RE9 to be just the full Mia-Winters-story, because to me that’s the only remotely satisfying justification for keeping her such a mystery for so long. I know that's not at all likely, but fuck it, I can dream.

Mia’s made her share of mistakes, but holding her responsible for everything the Connections has ever done is no kind of fair.

#Mia Winters #Resident Evil Village #Resident Evil 7 #Mia Winters week #The Connections #RE lore #Mia is THE BEST character I WILL FIGHT YOU ALL

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dmercer91 · 6 months

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ebug's sister, dm91

ok, first post where blake is blake!! also, excuse the absolute dumpster fire that is my life, and is the reason that this post is one post and not like 47

last season! (2022-23) part one / part two / part three / part four / part five / part six / part seven / part eight / part nine / part ten / part eleven / part twelve

(2023-24)! part one /

blakefriarr_

liked by dawson1417, adamfantilli and 6,947 others

blakefriarr_: so many things have happened since i last popped up on all your timelines and made them immeasurably better!

this is episode one of season two of i-am-both-the sister-of-the-devils-home-emergency-backup-goaltender-and-also-happen-to-be dating-dawson-mercer-forward-for-the-devils series!

these pictures are in no particular order, because, i am moving into a new place with afore mentioned dawson mercer and have spent the last several weeks making it look like it's not the most depressing back alley murderous apartment any of you have ever laid your eyes on

and apparently, i have a ball ton of stuff!

regardless, here's what i've caught up on;

the entire nhl draft! though i have not acquired any new adoptees, it did come to my attention that the anaheim ducks as an organization did personally victimize me during the 2023 entry draft (they also took a BALLSY amount of time to re-sign bitch one and bitch two. what the literal fuck, dudes). also- if you are seeing this and you need help to flee, blink twice (not you adam) (you know who you are)

2, the entire preseason was also missed while i was one, curing myself from jetlag and the absolute dread of going back to uni and two, moving my egregious amount of shit with a spiteful level of independence. the devils won every preseason game! dawson scored that clusterfuck of a goal on slide two and we also got to see goalie bonks again! (i told you those pics weren't in order and i meant it)

three, (or four, i forgot what came first) quinneth played his first regular season game as captain of the canucks ad they kicked ass against the edmonton dudes. goncrats captain ;p

four (probably) rookie had both his first reg season nhl game AND his birth on the same day! he cried on camera for thousands of viewers and made me question kidnapping his brother and locking him in an abandoned building in ohio (who am i kidding i don't want to be in ohio). the blue jackets have since been doing blue jacket things (losing)

five (it's all blended together these days) the devs started their regular season and now i get to go to the arena and watch in peace as nico makes dumb faces, jack gets into petty scrums and goes to the box (apparently? that ones new.) and dawson does dawson things (be hot)

sixth and finally, assistant coach and captain quinn (he should probably drop a title for his mental health, me thinks) turned 24! i giggled profusely at an edit of him as tracksuit rob. good job on aging, kid 🎉

that's all, i think. (probably not, what do i know)

view 712 comments..

jj.friar31: remember when we were roomies??? siblings defying the odds?? i've been left out to dry. i'm MARINATING in my loneliness. you've basically shot me and left me out for dead, blakey.

→ blakefriarr_: this is a touch dramatic, that's MY thing

→ jj.friar31: if i agree to never steal your dramatics again will you come back

→ blakefriarr_: have u seen how pretty my boyfriend is?? no dude

→ jj.friar31: blake pls

adamfantilli: of every picture you could've used you just decided to screenshot me crying

→ blakefriarr_: hi im blake have we met??

→ adamfantilli: also, do not kidnap luca.

→ blakefriarr_: oh so you just don't want my love?? is that what this is??

→ luca.fantilli: do not kidnap me

→ blakefriarr_: BOOORRRINNNGGGGG

nicohischier: every day i wonder what it would be like if we didn't let the ebug's come into the room

→ blakefriarr_: do you want dawson to be lonely and bitchless

→ nicohischer: yeah kinda??

→ blakefriarr_: oh

jackhughes: why.

→ blakefriarr_ ehehehe your bucket doing weird things

_quinnhughes: ??????? why am i tracksuit rob????

→ blakefriarr_: who else would be tracksuit rob

→ _quinnhughes: nobody needs to be tracksuit rob, friar.

→ _blakefriarr_: WRONG! you do :)

_connorbedard: am i who i are???

→ blakefriarr_: no apparently you are timbaland

→ _connorbedard: oh. okay?

→ adamfantilli: @/_connorbedard you get used to it

→ _connorbedard: do i want to??

→ adamfantilli: eh. 50/50

dawson1417: oh how i've missed the chaos

→ blakefriarr_: fbejdbsjshdghshsb

→ dawson1417: sometimes it's almost like you say words

→ blakefriarr_: :p i love you

→ dawson1417: i love you too, my girl <3

tannercharlotte: this is my reality tv

→ blakefriarr_: i'll leave him for u say the word

→ dawson1417: HEY??

→ blakefriarr_: shhhh baby go sleep

→ tannercharlotte: don't leave him b he doesn't have to know

ryangraves27: she back

→ blakefriarr_: i back!!

nhlblackhawks: ??

→ njdevils: don't '??' her she's right

→ blakefriarr_: thank you (trade for charlie)

→ nyrangers: i can excuse hawks slander but i draw the line at trying to take our char

→ nhlblackhawks: you can excuse hawks slander?

→ jj.friar31: why do teams keep doing this you have ENOUGH leverage over me

trevorzegras: am i bitch one or bitch two

→ trevorzegras: actually yk what don't answer that i don't wanna know

→ blakefriarr_: too bad you're actually both jamie is an angel

view more comments..

#ebug’s sister series !#dawson mercer #dawson mercer x reader #hockey imagine #nhl imagine #new jersey devils

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qqueenofhades · 4 months

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as a starting history major i wanna ask how do you read/evaluate academic history papers/books? i'm trying to avoid just blindly agreeing with whatever the author is writing because it seems correct. how can you tell what is good scholarship and what is more shaky?

This is a great question for you as a freshman history major to ask (many of my toiling colleagues and I can attest that we wish more of you would!) and shows that you're already taking initiative and investment in your studies and want to be the best prepared you can. So truly -- thank you! Us on the faculty/staff/administrative end of academia can feel as if we are pouring into an empty bucket at times, and it's always gratifying to hear otherwise. We really appreciate it.

As a college freshman and/or underclassman (or so I'm assuming) your first job is learning how to collect basic information from the things you read, collate and cite them accurately, and make them converse intelligently with each other in an entry-level piece of academic writing (such as an essay responding to an assigned prompt). So before you have to worry about understanding complex nuance and granular-level fact-checking, the first step is just getting comfortable with academic forms, styles, and conventions. There's an occasional anti-intellectual strand of thinking that pops up on Tumblr, basically insisting that everyone everywhere should be able to understand everything in fifth-grade words and if not then it's Elitist Gatekeeping, but this is a symptom of TikTok brainrot where people's brains have been literally rewired to only process spoon-fed chunks of incredibly simplistic (and uh, often wrong) information, and literally can't parse anything longer, even if it's written in accessible language. Yes, many academics are not necessarily great writers, but you also have to let go of the mindset that you can speed-read once and understand everything. You will need to slow down, take your time, and make a note of concepts that are confusing or that you want to double-check, words you need to look up, and things that make you say "hmm I should look into that more," whether because you're interested or they seem questionable. I always read academic texts or papers (I prefer hard copy, because I am Fucking Old) with a pen in hand, because if I don't, I often feel like I didn't read it at all.

Basically, this is an interactive process between you and the text, and requires you to develop a different kind of reading mentality than just buzzing through a novel or fanfic for pleasure. You have to expect that it will take time and that if you regularly skive off the readings, you won't be prepared for class, your professors will be annoyed, and you won't be able to write good essays, because you haven't engaged with the material. In your case, it sounds like that will be less of a problem, because you are eager to know how to do it right, but I can tell you from my experience that nothing frustrates us more than students who just won't do the reading (and you know, use ChatGPT to write their essays) because then what are you even DOING here? What do you want to get out of this? Why are you wasting your precious tuition money like this? Yes, you probably have to fill a requirement, but STILL. It's disrespectful to your teacher, who has invested a lot of effort in being here to help you with this and doesn't want you to just quit because it looks hard, and your peers, and to you. So anyway, /Captain Holt voice/ apparently that's a trigger for me. Basically, if you learn nothing else from this ask: please do the reading. Even if it's only to admit you need more help or want to talk about this concept in class or otherwise take advantage of all the structures that are in fact there to help you understand it! Thankee.

Likewise, because you're an underclassman, you have an advantage in that your teacher will select the class readings for you ahead of time. That means you will be receiving things that a professional has already checked, decided are useful and trustworthy, and you don't have to do independent research and vetting yourself (that will come if you decide for some godforsaken reason to pursue graduate and/or doctoral study). So you don't need to spend tons of extra time and effort deciding if the sources given to you in class are reliable on a basic and functional level; your professor has already done the work for you to make sure that they are. Your job is now to read those sources, keep a record of what they say (hence the aforementioned pen or other way to make quick notes) and figure out how to put them together in an essay. For example, if Author A cites Factor A as, say, the main cause of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and Author B insists that Factor B was in fact more critical, what is your best approach to reconciling that information? You would search in the rest of those texts to see what else they say in support of their position, and you would probably end up with a qualified statement to the effect of, "While Author A argues A, Author B thinks B, representing the lack of consensus and the difficulty in attributing one single cause to an event as complicated as the fall of Rome." (And then because you're smart, you would go on to mention Byzantium and the Eastern Roman Empire and show that you are aware of the further context.) All of which is true! Historians do that all the time! You don't need to select THE RIGHT ANSWER and vigorously discredit all other theories, ever, and we tend to look suspiciously on people who do (cough cough Philippa Langley).

In other words, we are certainly not expecting you as a freshman, and even as a more advanced student, to be able to pick out ONE ANSWER from the material. We just want to see evidence that you have in fact read it, are able to evaluate and place theories side by side and possibly make a judgment as to which one you find more compelling, and also to properly cite where you got that information. We've seen a lot recently about plagiarism and that being the pretext on which Harvard president Claudine Gay was forced to resign (which is a whole other can of worms, but never mind). A lot of professors think that saying "Don't Do Plagiarism" is enough, but then don't explain what it is and the different forms it can take. It's not just a matter of copying verbatim chunks of someone else's work (or you know, ALL OF IT, like certain recently discredited YouTube scumbags) and acting like it's your own. If you are relying substantially on someone else's work, whether in their wording, arguments, conclusions, structure, or anything else, even if you've changed some of the words (yep, still plagiarism!), that needs to be cited appropriately according to the relevant style guide. Direct quotes from anyone need to go in quotation marks or indented blocks and have the author cited immediately afterward. History usually uses Chicago, MLA, or MHRA, and you can find cheat sheets for how to do that online. It's a pretty simple and straightforward style, and your professor will be extra impressed.

If you're expected to do an independent project or a senior research thesis, as some undergraduate history students do, then it will come when you have already had three years of experience in reading, evaluating, and writing historical scholarship, you will probably have a faculty member assigned to you for one-on-one mentoring and personalized feedback sessions, and they will be able to provide suggestions and support for useful sources. So even then, you still don't have to do it entirely on your own. They'll probably also be MORE than happy to debate with you which ones are good and which ones are suspect, because it's all a part of developing your ability to flex that muscle for yourself. (And as noted, faculty members Will Have Strong Opinions.) That likewise doesn't mean you just have to copy whatever they say (at least if you have a good teacher who wants you to think for yourself and not just be a mini-clone of their pet theories), but it means that by the time you reach that stage, you will have been prepared enough to feel confident in taking more steps on your own. I think not enough people realize that studying history (or anything, really) isn't just throwing you out there and being like "tough luck sucker, do it all yourself."

That's why academia is so collaborative, why plenty of historians with doctorates and tenure will still have to say "I don't know, let me get back to you" when someone asks them a question at a conference, and you don't have to fear that if you don't have The One Right Answer, you will be immediately exposed as a fraud and thrown out. History as a discipline is also moving away from the 19th-century German approach that attempted to systematize it as a singular social science with One Right Answer, and to focus more on multiple perspectives and incomplete answers. That's why the goal is not necessarily to know everything (which alas, is impossible), but to make better sense of what we can know and search for ways in which the existing record is flawed and needs to be revised, expanded, or reworked with new perspectives (which have existed all this time, but haven't been privileged by the white male western academy for the obvious reasons). And that work is fun and important! I don't want you to be scared of getting to that point, because someone will be there to support you the whole way and by the time you do, it will make sense to you in a way it probably doesn't right now, just because it's a new skill and like any new skill, it takes a long time to learn and to be able to apply confidently, consistently, and at a high level. And plenty of us who do it as a career still often have to say "I don't know, let me ask Dr. So-and-so who specializes in this," so yeah. It's a process of becoming comfortable with both learning how to answer what we can, and to ask others for help with that, and it never really ends. Which is the fun part. There's so much more to do.

Good luck!

#anonymous #ask #history #school stuff #academia: not even once

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just-my-latest-hyperfixation · 4 months

Text

Just another manic Monday

Written for the @steddieholidaydrabbles, day 17

Prompt: Platonic Stobin

Rated: G

CW: monsters

Tags: Urban fantasy AU; Magic AU; Creature AU; background Steddie; background Buckingham

Notes: Based on an idea and the gorgeous art by @house-of-the-moving-image - so happy I got to throw a little something together for it. 🥰

“I don't understand this,” Steve yells, jumping over another garbage bag like a hurdle sprinter. “That thing is fucking huge, where was it even hiding?”

“Gee, I dunno, Steve!” Robin skids to a halt beside him and impatiently hops from foot to foot while he pulls out their scooter from between two dumpsters. “I didn't ask, you think we should wait up?”

Somewhere behind them, something lets out a loud, gargling roar. A giant body scrapes against the walls of the alley.

Steve gulps.

“Nah, I'm good,” he says and tosses her the egg. It's larger than his own head, and Robin sags briefly under its weight. “Get in!”

Sometimes, Steve really, really wishes he was normal.

In a world where ninety-seven percent of the population are either magic users, non-human, or hybrids, people like Robin and him tend to get the short end of the stick. Take the job market, for example. What's a guy to do if most entry-level positions require basic flight skills, or rudimentary knowledge of summoning spells, or two years minimum of experience in applied runology?

The job at Fleetfoot Delivery is actually okay, all things considered. The pay is decent, the uniform isn't completely humiliating, and his coworker is his best friend and platonic soulmate who happens to be just as lamely human and completely unmagical as himself.

It's easy work. Customers trade items via the app, Steve and Robin deliver the goods from the pickup location right to the lucky new owner.

Basic stuff.

Simple.

Boring.

Except for the days you get chased by giant fucking monsters.

“Who even sells a phoenix egg online?” he asks while he waits for Robin to clamber into the side car. “I mean, shouldn't we be calling child protection services or something?”

“Phoenixes are extinct, Steve, everyone knows that!”

He hums vaguely. He does know that, of course, but the question has its desired effect - namely to send her off on a tangent and get her mind off things.

“The eggs that are left are infertile, but they're highly coveted in certain circles. Rumor has it that consuming one will boost your magic like nothing else. Chrissy says there's a sea witch living off the coast who's been looking for one for-”

“Chrissy, huh?” Steve grins and swings a leg over the saddle. The scooter stutters to life. “The cute little mermaid with the milkshake order from last week? You two on first-name terms now?”

“Oh, fuck off!” Robin jabs him in the ribs, but quickly clutches the egg again as he needs to swerve around a stack of old, soggy cardboard boxes. They're picking up speed, but not nearly enough in the crammed, narrow alley. Behind them, the roaring and scraping are getting louder. “You don't get to berate me for flirting with clients. If I see you do that ass-wiggle in your stupid shorts in front of that dragon dude one more time-”

“His name is Eddie,” Steve snaps, neck erupting in heat. “And I don't think he has any idea what my first name is. Or my last name.”

“Yes, Steve, of course,” Robin deadpans. “That is why he calls you big boy and honey and sweetheart. That is the actual reason.”

Steve lets this statement simmer for a few seconds.

“Shut up and tell me where to deliver this thing,” he then says.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Robin smirk while she fishes her phone from her pocket and tells him the address.

“Oh, freaking great,” Steve grouses. “That's only on the other side of town. Won't take forever at all at this-”

“Steve?” says Robin. Her hand is tugging at the sleeve of his uniform jacket, like she's been trying to get his attention for a while. “Steve, you may wanna go faster.”

“I know!” he groans. “Need to beat rush hour, or we won't be home until-”

“That's not what I meant!” Robin shouts. Her voice goes all shrill and grating towards the end, and he almost crashes them into the wall in his impulse to cover his ears.

“Well, what do you-” he starts to say, but doesn't get any further.

There's a loud crashing sound as the dumpsters are mowed over. He glances over his shoulder, just long enough to see a slimy, clawed something that's roughly the size of his house erupt from the alley behind them. It shrieks. The rush of hot, stinking breath sends garbage flying in all directions. A fist-sized glob of spit hits the back of Steve's head with a wet splotch.

“Ugh, what the fuck? I just washed my hair this mor-”

“Drive!” Robin slaps his arm. “Oh my God, drive, drive, drive!”

Steve does.

They shoot out of the alley and onto the main road, just narrowly avoiding a collision with a flock of banshees. As their scandalized shrieks and the roar of the monster fade behind them, Robin's wristwatch buzzes.

“Oh,” she says. “Today's your lucky day. A certain dragon just ordered an entire crate of aventurine, express delivery.”

Steve groans and takes a right, reaching up to disentangle half a banana skin from his drool-coated hair.

The day is shaping up to be a real Monday.

All my holiday drabbles

#platonic stobin #platonic soulmates stobin #Steve Harrington #Robin Buckley #steddie #steve harrington x eddie munson #steve x eddie #buckingham #robin buckley x chrissy cunningham #robin x chrissy #steddie holiday drabbles #steddieholidaydrabbles #hype's holiday drabbles

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catboybiologist · 7 months

Text

Random actual vent that is probably more venty than my usual random little things, but occasionally I have to step back and think how asinine the salary system for PhD students can sound to people outside of academia. I really just want to like... lay it on the table, because it really is fucking dumb and I occasionally want validation that its fucking dumb.

Note that this is all coming from a traditional lab sciences, in the US perspective. Also, I'm really fucking ADHD and have a really, really shitty brain for bureacracy, so this is a rant and isn't really intended to be informative and might be wrong in places, its just me word vomiting.

Let's start with something straight off the bat- grad school isn't really school. It's work that creates value for the university, and you happen to take one or two courses on the side that the university has determined will make you better at that work (your mileage may vary). It's an entry level job, essentially. You create value for the university in one of two ways- you either contribute to research that gets them grant money, or you teach undergrads that pay tuition. We'll get back to how that affects you later, but first lets talk about something else: what the university claims they pay you vs what you actually get paid.

On paper, my income is approximately 3 times as much as my actual, take home income. There's two reasons for this. The first is that I am technically charged tuition by the central university, which is then immediately paid off by the source of my income. In official job titles, that's technically included in what you're getting paid, although most universities don't even bother advertising that. The other confounding factor is that you're literally always considered part time. The exact % time varies depending on your exact schedule, and of course your university, but its actually weirdly consistent even between universities. Technically, the work you do on your thesis isn't "work", and the university doesn't technically pay you to do it. Even though the work you do on your thesis literally generates revenue for the university in the form of grant overhead. But we'll get to that. If you're a researcher for a given appointment term, you're expected to also do research activities that are unconnected to your thesis- which is ridiculous, because there's no lab in existence where the work isn't all interconnected in some way.

Half time appointments are common, but lots of different percentages exist.

So, if you ever see a figure that says that a grad student position is paid at about $80k a year, that's whats going on. The highest take-home income I have EVER heard of in the US for PhD students is $54k, at Stanford neuroscience. I think its a bit higher now, but that at least gets you a ballpark. Most STEM PhD students on the high cost of living coasts are paid 30-40k ish, and in cheaper areas you can expect to take 5k off of that. These are for degrees that usually make six figures on the job market.

And then there's the other convoluted problem- the source of the funding. This is where the academia salary model really has a unique brand.

Basically, when you're a PhD student, you're not working one job for the full 5-7 years. You're constantly flipping between job titles within the university, and who exactly is paying you changes as a result.

The most basic distinction is researcher vs teaching assistant. TA is easy- you work "part time" (but oh my god those workloads are not part time sometimes [although the class I'm TAing now is very chill so its w/e][fuck you molecular genetics at my master's uni tho]), and the department you're teaching for pays for your tuition and your salary as a result.

Researcher is a bit weirder. Basically, each lab is conducted as its own independent financial unit, managed by a Principle Investigator (PI, or to any grad student, the professor/boss/research advisor/liege/monarch/authority of the lab). The PI is constantly writing lab wide grants to supply the core funding of the lab, including the salary of the grad students. Grants can be pretty general, but there are also very specific ones that check in how the money is being spent. These include training grants/fellowships/tbh the name is arbitrary for a lot of these. Those are grants that are written to supply the salary of a specific grad student.

Couple things to note- the university charges the PI in a lot of ways on this. Notably:

They charge tuition on every grad student, as mentioned previously, which under a researcher appointment is paid from the PI to the university.

They charge overhead on grants- basically, they take money out of every grant the PI gets.

If the previous two sources aren't enough, oftentimes universities will pay rent on the amount of building space a lab takes up (although this is very inconsistent between universities)

Researcher appointments are considered favorable to teaching appointments, because they mean you can spend more of your time on your thesis. But, its dependent on whether your PI has the funding to pay you all that, which is a big if. So, every quarter or semester or year or however much your university decides to renegotiate it, you essentially switch jobs, in a way. Obviously its a lot more simple and streamlined than actually switching jobs, but your title, responsibility, source of income, and sometimes your actual pay changes constantly.

And to anyone who has been through a PhD, you're nodding along like this is all the basic stuff, because all this is so NORMAL. Like this is all the normal system, and this is the bare basics of it as well. And it's weird that it's normal, right? Like, most of my career has been tied to academia, so I don't have a fantastic benchmark for this, but this isn't how it works outside of academia like... at all.

Over the course of late last year and bleeding into this year, multiple graduate student unions have had strikes or negotiations regarding pay scale, but its been a very difficult situation for the average grad student to untangle because of how weird the source of pay is. Because technically, even though you functionally work a single, salaried job with slightly changing obligations, what's happening behind the scenes is that you're essentially hopping between jobs every couple of months. In an ideal system, those jobs always have the same pay, but that's increasingly becoming not the case. Sometimes that means getting paid more overall, sometimes slightly less. Union negotiations have made this pay slightly higher overall, but its still a mess of a system.

And obviously, there's paperwork associated with so many of these steps.

So in my last post, when I said "getting a grant", that was what I was referring to- applying for training grants that will guarantee that I don't have to teach extra or get extra money from my PI for the time I'm here. I'd love to get more teaching experience, but ofc I want to do it when I want to, not when I have to. I'm applying for multiple training grants over the next couple of months that will hopefully fund my salary specifically, and hopefully I'll get at least one of them. And tbh, I don't even care that much about teaching, I more want them because it'll dramatically simplify all this for me.

I love what I do to death, but untangling this shit is what gives me imposter syndrome more than anything. I think my arrogant streak shows when I can genuinely say that I've never felt imposter syndrome based on my scientific knowledge. I have felt it over two things- my motivation/productivity (which is a different rant entirely), and the fact that I am really, really bad at untangling the level of bureaucracy required to just... exist here. Just give me my fucking paycheck and let me do my science, and tell me when you want me to teach.

#vent post #like an actual one lol

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lazyrunawayphilosopher · 9 months

Note

*slams hands on the table* drop your fave fics rn

Hold my hand (and I'll hold yours)

Kim Dokja and Yoo Jonghyuk are stuck holding hands at school for one week. (This has smut)

Sour then sweet ( This has smut)

Yoo Joonghyuk and Kim Dokja ran a lemonade stand as kids. Yoo Joonghyuk made good lemonade but sucked at selling it, so Kim Dokja was his little salesman. Years later, Yoo Joonghyuk is a successful CEO and Kim Dokja is the new employee looking for an entry level job, but Yoo Joonghyuk immediately puts him as sales manager.

Overtime

Kim Dokja, in a very brief moment of stupidity, sees Yoo Jonghyuk and thinks that he has met a kindred soul, a fellow slave to capitalism. Or in other words, a fellow modern day salary worker.

How the might fall (in love)

Yoo Joonghyuk confuses sexual tension with anger issues while Kim Dokja's censored face annoys the life out of him, so he takes matters into his own hands, quite literally, to get rid of it (and it works).

Keep your enemy close and your heart closer(lest it falls in love)

Police Chief Yoo Joonghyuk’s neighbour is one of the city’s most notorious mafia bosses—but he doesn’t have the evidence to prove it.

Study reveals: you can't suffer if you are dead

In which Yoo Jonghyuk takes being a Tsundere to the next level, Kim Dokja is very confused, everyone else is very tired, and help comes from the last place they'd expect it.

Dating Yoo Joonghyuk

Dating Yoo Jonghyuk is like dating a really buff leech.

This is how it feels

“Don’t you dare,” Kim Dokja warns, already tensed. “Don’t you even think–”

The protagonist then proceeds to roll over once more, making Kim Dokja the victim of gravity and a muscle bound terror once more.

“I hate you! Do you even know how much you weigh?! Joonghyuk! Get off!”

Honey,line and sinker ( This has smut)

So Kim Dokja is a pretty little thing.

So Kim Dokja is a pretty little thing that isn't Yoo Joonghyuk's.

The tidal pain of wanting

Kim Dokja is transmigrated into a different world. He's determined to keep to himself and wait for the narrative to reach it's end so he can go home. He doesn't mean to get attached.

He doesn't expect to be loved, either.

Raising a protagonist

In which Kim Dokja learns to hate reading, but he still manages to find his protagonist.

You are the colours to my skies

“I didn’t sign a consent form for this,” Kim Dokja announces, after giving up the valiant struggle.

Yoo Joonghyuk takes his win as what it is, and presses a long, sweet kiss against Kim Dokja’s neck. “You did,” he mumbles. “It was our marriage certificate.”

A king's consort

The Constellations become restless on a fine Friday evening, and take it upon themselves to torture a helpless Kim Dokja by starting an unnecessary scenario.

It’s goal?

For Kim Dokja to be loved.

How foolish.

Yoo Joonghyuk can't be this clingy!

Such close touch gave Yoo Joonghyuk great satisfaction. He could feel each subtle breathing and heartbeat from Kim Dokja. The rise and fall of the chest, as well as the warmth of the body, giving him immense peace of mind.

Faithful fate

[Spoilers up to Ch.310 of the webnovel]

AU where Yoo Joonghyuk got the star in the 46th Scenario and picked a different option.

Would you roll for me if I was on Rate-up?

The three times Kim Dokja made Yoo Joonghyuk jealous of a jpeg. and the one time Yoo Joonghyuk turned the tables on him.

Re calibrating love and logic

Yu Junghyeok and Kim Dokja are dating; he just doesn't know it yet.

Can't dream alone

5 times (?) Kim Dokja tried to help Yoo Joonghyuk rest + 1 time it's Yoo Joonghyuk's turn (?).

Darling dance

In which an assassin slow dances with his target crown prince

The casualty of casual touch

Kim Dokja knew something about their relationship had changed when Yoo Joonghyuk began assailing him with casual touch.

Human and something like magic(it's love)

At least you celebrate your birthday, Kim Dokja had thought, before banishing the thought entirely. No use harping on it and letting his cheap, one-day expired convenience store cake taste bitter on his own birthdays.

The fox and the snake

A godling snake of the forest piques the interest of a fox.

Figuratively and literally

Sequel to dealing with the duke by baked m potato.

home, an irrevocable condition

Kim Dokja would rather die than let Yoo Joonghyuk know where he works. And he succeeds. At least for two full years.

the art of getting caught-a guide by kim dokja

4 times kim dokja and yoo joonghyuk were found in compromising positions, and 1 time they were actually getting it on

The story in a sunset

Yu Junghyeok used to think he'd learnt everything about himself already. Now he knows that, ever since they'd met, he's only ever wanted answers Kim Dokja could give.

There are more but these are ones I highly recommend.

#joongdok #orv #fic recs #ask

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chaifootsteps · 3 months

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It’s honestly so sad to see how little solidarity here is in the indie animation community. If this stuff with Viv has taught us anything, it’s that indie makes it for too easy for people like Viv to get away with being awful to their artists because they’re able to easily target younger, less experienced, and less financially advantaged people who just want to do what they love.

I’ll just go ahead and say it. Indie is where most artists get their careers started these days because mainstream animation is so insular and the bar to entry is higher than ever. Plenty of amazingly talented artists will get turned away over and over because their resume doesn’t use the right words, or their portfolio is good but it’s not the exact thing the producers are looking for at that particular second.

And even when they have the right stuff, entry level positions have pretty much vanished. They pretty much don’t want you unless you’ve worked on like x amount of award winning big budget blockbusters so if you weren’t lucky enough to have graduated from school 20 years ago when the job market was less hostile, you’re fucked.

That means indie is CRUCIAL to the success of younger artists. And look at the state it’s in. By now it’s obvious that people in the community have known about Viv and her horrible behavior for a while, but no one wants to say or do anything. They don’t want to start ‘drama’ which is just…when did standing up for the right thing become synonymous with ‘starting drama’????

I understand being afraid if push back, but at some point you have to ask yourself wether or not it’s worth it to keep being part of the problem. Even if you aren’t doing what Nico did snd outright refusing to hire her artists, you are still doing her work for her by saying nothing. I’m sorry, I know it’s harsh, but if you stay silent when you see abuse then you are knowingly allowing it to continue and therefore a part of the problem. I’m not trying to shift the blame onto other people in indie Viv has burned, but that’s the sad reality of stuff like this. Keeping silent about injustice isn’t the same as doing it yourself, but your silence empowers the abusers to keep going.

I remember when Erin first came out there was a lot of talk about Dave and Ashley. People wanted to know their opinions on the situation, and as far as I’m aware neither of them spoke up. Again, I understand the fear of backlash, but Ashley is a pretty big name in indie now. She has influence in the community, and that means she has a responsibility to speak out. Same with Goose, who I’m pretty sure has worked with Viv extensively in the past.

If relative no names with no social parachute like Ken and Erin can have the guts to speak out, then what’s stopping those with bigger reputations from doing so? Why let vulnerable people keep getting eaten alive like this? Where is the solidarity?

I think I remember Erin saying they went to TAG about Viv but TAG was powerless, because Viv, her studio, and her artists aren’t part of the guild. Do you know what that means? It means that indie workers, especially the younger ones, have no one to protect them. They’re more vulnerable to abuse because there’s no structure in place to protect them. The only thing that comes close is the indie community itself, and idk if you’ve noticed but indie is kind of cannibalizing itself right now.

It’s just so sad. Indie was supposed to be better than mainstream, but right now it’s honestly kind of worse. At least people in mainstream are entitled to benefits, get paid a living wage, and have some form of push back when treated badly because of the union.

It’s just….sad. This whole thing makes me so sad.

Anon, know that I really did sit here for a good while trying to think of something heartening to say, something hopeful. And I've got nothing.

Well, not nothing. I get the rhyme and reason to why certain people are keeping quiet and I do think things will be okay eventually, but I don't know. This whole thing has revealed a side of indie to me, a side of people, that I don't like.

#Anonymous #viv stuff #actual blog post

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nightowlwriting · 2 years

Text

summary: you are used to people hating what you can do. sometimes even you hate what you can do - and how isolated it makes you. steve rogers is one of the people that you expected to understand the weight that you carry on your shoulders, but he doesn’t. not until he has to see it firsthand.

word count: 18.6k

reader specifics: no race/gender/sexuality/body type mentioned, no pronouns for reader used, telepathic!reader, insecure!reader, lonely!reader

warnings: mean!steve (in the beginning), brief descriptions and allusions to violence against women, brief descriptions and allusions to sexual violence, brief allusions to sex trafficking, brief mentions of nazi violence and terroristic threats

note: this literally took me months to write and idk why. i’m not even sure it’s GOOD. i like it and that’s all that matters (except i, like other artist’s thrive upon reblogs)

title credit: against me!

fic aes: here

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When Clint Barton appears in your office wearing his official A-Team uniform, you know what’s coming next. Wanda and Tony had both texted you that morning and let you know that they might need you for an interrogation, but you hadn’t held your breath. Sometimes they sent you those texts once a week and not once had they made good on your promise to help if they needed it. The coworkers that pay attention to the comings and goings of people in the office are staring as Clint Barton stalks over to your desk, tapping one knuckle against the hardwood you inherited from a retiree - possibly the nicest desk in your row of cubicles. You watch his mouth move more than you hear him speak. “Need you on three.”

Three? One of your nosier coworkers, Lisa thinks rather loudly during a pause in the song you’re listening to, That’s the interview level. Wonder what’s going on there that they need someone from Data. There is, of course, a deeper thought below that one where she believes that you’re either sleeping with someone in the Big Team or doing something underhanded and about to get reamed within an inch of your life. Neither of those things are true, but you don’t care enough to correct her as you click off your computer and stand to follow Clint. There really isn’t a way to correct her, either, without painting a big, red target on your back for what you can do. You’re sure that if they’ve sent one of the Avengers to collect you that the situation is dire - and you don’t think that because you’ve wormed around in his head, either.

That’s just the nature of people needing you.

Besides, when you’re working you have the most mind-numbing metal playing through your headphones at all times. It makes it easier to focus on your work instead of the thoughts around you. You wouldn’t be able to hear Clint if he was holding onto your shoulders and screaming into your mouth. That’s the way you like it - the way you need to keep it so you can actually make a living as a data entry grunt for the Stark Association. (Although most of the work that you do is for the new Avengers - handling all of the absolute bullshit paperwork that comes from the times that they’re out and saving the world.) He seems to understand you the most out of anyone you’ve met besides Wanda and Tony - not that you see the A-Team much, but you’ve caught him several different times rolling his eyes and stepping away from the group or just reaching up and turning off his hearing aids. If anyone is going to not feel weird about not saying anything to you as you walk through the hallways, it’s Clint.

He leaves you at the elevator, not bothering to take you to floor three. Clint cuts you a look as the doors close that essentially says you know where to go, right? If you hadn’t been putting your entire body and mind into keeping yourself out of his head, you might have even heard it. As it is, you can’t keep your music playing and do your job, so as the elevator descends you unplug yourself from the music and tuck your phone back into your back pocket. As you pass floors, voices come in and out of focus. It makes you slightly dizzy at the rate at which you gain access to strangers’ heads and are then yanked out of them. Even after your entire life like this, you’ve never gotten used to it.

-I think my brother is cheating on his-

-And then Rhonda from HR said-

-Did you see the guy they hauled in-

-So much fucking paperwork-

You practically throw yourself off of the elevator when it stops on the third floor. It’s much quieter there but that’s only because you’re too far away from the interrogation room that everyone is gathered in. Clint didn’t tell you what room to go to, but you know when you’re close. You can feel Wanda prodding at the air, waiting for you and reaching out to you - plus, there seems to be a rather large crowd waiting for your arrival.

Before you even open the door you know that Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, and Wanda are waiting behind it. You stop short when you also see James Barnes and Natasha Romanoff. You hadn’t heard them. “Crowded room.” You deadpan before stepping into the hug Wanda is offering you. It’s hard, then, to keep your cool façade on because physical touch amplifies your connections and she doesn’t have a lot of the limits that you do - just like she has limits that you don’t have. You’re hit with a wave of everything before you kiss the side of her forehead and take three large side steps away from her. Everyone but Tony and Wanda cut you suspicious looks but you’re used to it. It’s been like that since before Tony flipped open your file and saw what you can do.

“Can’t crack this one?” You gesture to the man behind the one-way glass - his body language shows that he’s proud and open, not all worried about what’s happening or where he is. There’s an easy grin on his face, teeth all white and straightened by money, and his blond hair is tied back in a high bun.

“Not even Cap can get it out of him,” Tony leans against the glass casually, like he isn’t resorting to activating the last clause in your employment contract. Steve Rogers bristles at the nickname. His thoughts wash over you briefly, despite the fact that you were trying to keep out of everyone’s head.

-Pointless to bring in some stranger from data entry. Probably doesn’t even know the first thing about running an interrogation-

You shake your head, blinking long and slow to try and push him out. Wanda watches with furrowed brows as your hands subtly begin to shake at your sides. Coolly, you shift your weight and tuck them into the pockets of your slacks so nobody else picks up on it. So that she can’t call you out on it. “What’s he in for?” You say as you open your eyes. Barely two seconds have passed. The frown has fallen from your face.

-Can’t even look at anyone in the room besides Tony or Wanda. I’ll give this two minutes before it crumbles and we have to pick up the damn mess-

You sigh and press your lips together in a tight, tense smile. Sam and Bucky share a look at your sudden change in facial expression but you’re more focused on the information that Natasha begins reading off of a folder in front of her.

Well, reading is a strong word.

She’s staring straight at you while reciting everything, like she’s trying to gauge your reaction. You’re pretty talented at not having any reaction, despite being self-trained. The man behind the glass is Tanner Smith, a known Nazi sympathizer, and extremist. When his coworkers reported strange behavior to his boss - being late, excessive sweating, talking about a big event and the change that would soon be coming - his boss reported his suspicions to the higher-ups. Strange, considering how calm and collected he is now. How had he been so careless about the plans only to stare the barrel of an Avengers colored gun down like a pro?

Still, after a brief investigation and dive into his electronics by the boys in blue, he ended up in the Avengers compound. There’d been chatter online between Tanner and a group of extremists. Natasha only briefed you on that a little bit, telling you that one bomb had already been planted somewhere and another was in the works. Nobody knows where the first one had been put, except maybe Tanner and he isn’t talking. But he will talk, you know this. Maybe that’s why when you catch a stray man, I really hope Tony knows what he’s doing bringing in an analyst to interrogate from Sam, and then we shouldn’t be bringing in insignificant rookies to do our jobs from Steve that you grind your teeth a little bit.

“Don’t worry,” You take a deliberate breath, in through your nose and out through your mouth, just like you taught yourself, “We’ll have the location before the end of the hour. I may just be an insignificant little analyst but I know what I’m doing.”

Sam doesn’t seem to catch what you’ve said but Steve, who had been standing with his arms crossed while he looked away and toward the floor, snaps to attention with his mouth slightly open, eyebrows furrowed. The only reaction you give is a twitch of your upper lip, the urge to peel it back and expose your teeth angrily sitting heavy in the hollow of your throat. You know he’s Captain America, but come on, man! You keep the compound running just as much as he does! (If not more. Who else would reply to the invoices sent your way for the damage he does when he throws a desk out the window or something?)

Natasha moves to hand you Tanner’s file but you wave her off before she can get too close. You’re getting nothing from her right now and you want to keep it that way. There aren’t many people that are hard for you to read, and you think that if she’s still blank after being this close to you for a little bit - well, you might just have to become friends with her. That goes for Bucky, too. He’s standing even closer than Natasha is, a little over six feet away from you, and you’ve got nothing. He watches you refuse the file and his eyebrows hike to his hairline, mimicking Steve and Sam who stand on either side of him.

How arrogant.

Huh, really confident.

The latter thought from Sam helps keep you from bristling at Steve’s assessment of you. You wonder what his issue is with you not needing the file when Natasha didn’t need it either, but you understand he’s probably strung tight about finding that bomb and bringing a stranger in to do his job. (And you’d taken a thought he’d had in the privacy of his own head and thrown it back in his face to be petty.)

As you shed your jacket you think about how he was only in his late twenties when he went into the ice. Perhaps he’s over one hundred years old in the eyes of the law, but mentally he’s not even halfway through his life or the development of his self-identity.

As you breeze into the interrogation room, you wonder how much of his self-identity revolves around what they did to him in that lab so many decades ago.

That doesn’t really matter though, because now you have to focus everything you have on getting into Tanner’s head and peeling away whatever weird protections he has that make his thoughts so… Mundane. He’s currently watching you amble about the room, hands clasped behind your back, and all he’s thinking about is his fucking grocery list. You know that he’s doing something to mask his thoughts because there’s not even an undertone to those thoughts - something everyone has. They have the thoughts they think to themselves and then the reason behind them.

Conscious and subconscious.

Tanner Smith is only having conscious thoughts and that is suspicious. You purse your lips and drop down into the chair across from him, putting the mirror the Avengers are standing behind to your left. You watch Tanner, still scanning his thoughts, for several minutes of poignant silence until he finally cracks.

“So, who are you? Their secret, special weapon?”

You tilt your head slightly, a ghost of a smirk passing over your face. His thoughts flicker and you hone in the strange reaction. “Something like that, Tanner.” You catch a glimpse, a flash of color and dirty blonde curls on a little girl who’s running away, sun flares lighting up the world around her. Warmth fills your chest as laughter echoes somewhere behind your mind, like the call-and-response of a cave, and then it’s gone, sucked away by whatever Tanner was taught to disperse his thoughts.

Surely the A-Team had Wanda try to break past his defenses, but she can’t do what you can do. Nobody can.

“What? I’m too strong so the Avengers had to run to their boss?” He sneers, clearly shaken up by your non-reaction to everything he’s done - clearly, everybody else who’s tried to get the information out of him had some sort of reaction. You’re not mirroring him, sitting purposefully neutral to oppose his faux-openness. Nothing about your interrogation technique is by the book, and it’s upsetting him. You catch another glimpse of the little girl in his thoughts, this time snagging a name from the ether. Like bad TV reception, another voice worms into your head.

We’re getting nowhere. I told Tony this was a waste of time. I should go in there and put an end to this right now.

“Oh, please, don’t flatter yourself.” You sigh, slapping your palms against your thighs half-heartedly. “Also, Captain Rogers?” You let his name hang in the air for a second, but never break eye contact with Tanner, “I would appreciate it if you took three large steps back. Or, perhaps, if you could stand at the very back of the room.” It’s only when you wait three seconds and clear your throat that his thoughts recede and your mind clears.

“Oh, so you’re crazy.” Tanner grins, leaning forward, “They thought locking me in here with a freak would make me talk and, when it didn’t, they moved on to the nut.”

You outright laugh before standing from your chair. “I hope you’re not referring to my good friend, Wanda. Compared to me, she’s normal.” You round the table once but then stop in front of the mirror, watching Tanner’s reflection over your own reflection’s shoulder. There’s something to be said about your psychological training - that is, you have none. But you do have an open funnel into the human psyche that allows you certain knowledge about how to manipulate it. This - standing at the mirror and making indirect eye contact with Tanner? It’s all about distance and showing him how insignificant he is to you.

That and you want to show Steve Hasn’t Had A Good Thought About You Rogers what he’s really fucking with.

“How’s your little sister?” You finally ask, clasping your hands behind your back again. You watch the color drain from Tanner’s face, his mind opening up as his sympathetic nervous system goes into overdrive to activate his acute stress response. He has four options now that you’ve put him in panic mode: fight, flight, fawn, freeze. “What’s her name again? Tanya? Trish? No, Tilly. Tilly and Tanner - that’s cute. Your Mom’s name is Tricia, right? She likes a theme, I suppose.”

He doesn’t respond. It seems he’s chosen to freeze.

“None of that was in your file, of course, because Smith isn’t your real last name. The social security number you’re living under isn’t your original social security number.” You blink once, pulling on that loose thread until Tanner’s mind completely opens to yours. From the corner of your eye, you watch as a milky sheen begins to cover your iris and obscure the color. Tanner whimpers as his iris begins to dissolve, falling away until he matches your white, colorless eyes. You feel more than hear the thoughts on the other side of the glass turn to panic, but it’s easy to shut them out when you’re so focused on the link you now have with your suspect.

When you speak again, your voice is overlaid with his despite his mouth not moving. “Oh, you care about your family.” He flinches but can’t say anything. Won’t say anything. “I see it, right there.” Your head tilts as you begin to dig through his head, prying at seals and locks he’s put on memories - both painful and happy. “Oh, she’s only nine. So precious, so young. So naïve to the ways of the world. To what her older brother does for a living. To what he believes, and what he’s willing to do to support those beliefs.”

“Stop it,” Tanner says, your voice underneath his. You hum more than laugh, but the energy is the same and it makes him shiver.

“And lucky, too,” You continue. He’s not even fighting anymore, not that he could if he wanted to. Now that you’re inside of his head, there’s nothing anyone can do short of knocking you out. “Tricia is smart. Went to Harvard. Has Tilly living all cozy in the Hills and going to a nice, private school. Far away from you and your friends. How are the holidays? Do you go visit them? Or does your Mom ask you to stay away?”

Milk white tears break your waterline and run down your cheeks, eyes unblinking as you keep Tanner in your hold. “Please,” His dual-tone voice whimpers, “Leave them out of this.”

You click your tongue, a hint of a smile ghosting over your lips and the crinkles next to your eyes. “I don’t think I will. See, I know where they live. I know where they sleep. I know how you get in contact with them. I know everything about them now. You’ve given that to me.” He physically jerks but can’t get away from you - you’re everywhere in his mind. He’s falling further and further into you just like you’re falling into his mind. Soon, the two of you will fall into one person. You’ll have to get the information quickly so that doesn’t happen. “You’ll give me where you planted that bomb, too.”

“No,” Tanner resists. You feel the tug on your own mind, his psyche - whether consciously or subconsciously - trying to sew up the hollow you carved out for yourself. Your eyebrows furrow, but barely. “No, I won’t. It needs to happen. They need to see that we’re serious.” He slams one fist down on the table in front of him and fights against you even harder.

You sigh, shoulders barely moving with the breath. The world begins to fall away piece by piece as the white in your eyes slowly begins to shift; swirling darker and darker until your once white eyes are filled to the brim with gray and then, a second later, black. It leaks down your cheeks as you speak directly into his brain, mouth never moving. “If you do not tell me, I will take it from you.”

The room around you crumbles until you’re standing in a black abyss, still looking at Tanner in the reflection of a mirror that’s not there. He reels back in a chair that’s not there either, clutching at the sides of his head as you dig around in his memories.

Childhood, his first kiss, the indoctrination into his extremist beliefs. Somewhere around last week, you slow down, peeling layer from layer until you find what you’re looking for. With the exact location and the time it’s set to explode, you sever the connection and you’re back in the interrogation room. The inky proof of what you’ve done is tacky on your face and Tanner is facedown on the table, shoulders heaving as he sobs and claws at the side of his head, incoherently mumbling about the things you showed him in his head that he doesn’t even remember. Memories that are his, but aren’t, because they’re yours. But, no, that’s not right - right? They’re his, taken from some place in his brain that only your mind can access.

The door is heavier than you remember when you leave the interrogation room and it echoes when it slams shut behind you. Everyone, bar Wanda and Tony who have both seen you do this once before, is staring at you as if you’re going to snap on them too. Blissfully, your mind has shut everything out in order to try and recoup from what you’ve done. It won’t last long. Wanda hands you a wet wipe and smiles sadly, knowing, or maybe feeling, how much you hated doing that to someone.

To climb inside their skull and take the precious privacy of memories is the loss of your humanity. To take that sacred space from someone is the unholiest sacrament you’ve ever taken. Despite the gnawing hole in your chest, you’d do it over again if it means saving lives - even if it ruins one or two in the process. You’ve had many years to come to terms with what you can do if you put your mind to it.

Though, you suppose, that doesn’t make it any easier.

Nobody speaks as you clean your face and neck. Sam does, however, gesture to the chest of your shirt where your shirt is stained. You ignore the look on his face and turn to Tony. “It’s in Central Park,” You’re almost surprised when your voice is just yours, not overtone or undertone to pollute it, “No specific target, not really. Just to create fear. The group will take credit. They probably set Tanner up to take the fall because, for all intents and purposes, he’s a single man with no living family. It’s buried four paces from the tree with an x carved into it, set to go off in three days at exactly noon. I can write down the coordinates for you.” Tony grins and makes to clap you on the back, but you step away and rub at the bridge of your nose. “Don’t touch me.”

He holds his hands up, still smiling even though everyone else in the room recoiled when you snapped. “Sorry, Cullen. Good job in there. Although, will the special effects cost me more?” Underneath all of his jokes, you catch the worry in his mind as yours begins to open back up. It always works like this - the emotions are always the first to come back because they’re the building blocks of thought. Before mankind had speech, they had feelings.

And before they had feelings, they had instincts.

Several people in the room are fighting down their instincts to tear into you because you’re a threat. Blanketing that instinct is agitation and some terror at your unknown. Sam can barely contain his instinct to learn, mind humming with bright curiosity and a healthy dose of fear. Wanda and Tony are both fighting the urge to bundle you up, followed by the love and affection that they normally have when they think of you.

Your jaw snaps together with an audible click as Tanner comes back into focus, the shadow of his mind nearly drowning you. It arches over the room, the celestial body that is the human mind reaching out for the connection that you severed when you pulled away from him. It nearly takes you, too. It’s only when you’re nearly unconscious, body swaying and knees slowly buckling and eyes rolling to the back of your head, that Wanda realizes what’s happening and catches you with strong arms around your waist. Her bare arms slide against yours and you latch onto her mind; it’s bright and strong and wraps around yours to protect it. It takes only a second to get your bearings, but a second is enough for the sharks in the water to catch the scent of blood and strike. It’s Steve’s fists shaking that let you know he’s about to speak, but his thoughts that let you know he’s about to say something horrible. They’re muddled, running about three hundred miles a minute, but you get the gist of what he’s thinking past the fog of Wanda’s skin against yours.

“So nobody thought to inform the team that there’s a bio-weapon on the compound’s campus?”

“Steve!” Sam exclaims, looking more shocked than he actually feels. The term had floated through his prefrontal cortex once or twice since your eyes had flooded white. “Chill out, man.”

“No, I will not chill out,” Steve sneers, “Didn’t anyone think that was important?”

“I’m sorry,” Tony interrupts, moving to stand between you and the Captain, “Weren’t you the one who yelled at me for calling someone a weapon of mass destruction?” You groan deep in the back of your throat when Wanda’s emotions flash through you like lightning and she immediately lets you go, moving to sit next to Natasha on the metal table that lines the wall opposite of you. The distance helps, but there are a lot of strong personalities in one room and you’re a little more open and sensitive than usual.

Your stomach churns and you think about pulling your phone out to put on some music, but that might make Steve actually snap. Bucky knocks him on the shoulder with the back of one hand, “Cool off, pal. You hardly get to take the high ground here when you essentially started another world war for me.”

“That’s different.” Steve grits out.

“What’s your name, kid?” Bucky ignores him, leaning around Tony to talk directly to you. He repeats your name after you give it, grinning, “Does this mean you’re pokin’ around in all our heads now?”

“Probably,” Natasha supplies before you can answer, swinging her legs. “You saw what happened in there. I’m surprised we’re not leaking CSF out of our ears.”

“It’s not like that, I can’t do stuff like that,” You protest weakly, leaning against the wall, “Besides, you and Barnes are like steel freakin’ traps. I don’t have shit on you ever.”

“What about me?” Sam tries to take a step forward, eager and bright in the darkness that surrounds the outskirts of your vision with the tension in the room, but Steve stops him with a heavy hand. “I bet you don’t have anythin’ on me either.” He boasts from behind his friend’s grip.

“You’re an open book,” You shake your head, trying to bite back your small smile, “Always have been. I can catch your thoughts practically before you have them.” Tony finally relaxes as you push off of the wall, putting a hand on your shoulder and carefully avoiding touching his skin to yours. “Tony and Wanda, too, but that’s only because I know them so well.”

“If you can’t fry us from the inside out, what can you do?” Steve narrows his eyes at you and it’s almost like he’s aiming his thoughts at you, trying to test how you’ll react. Your name, wondering about your file, wondering about your life from birth until now, some scenarios that involve grievous bodily harm to you should anything happen.

You don’t need to be a telepath to get the memo: Steve Rogers does not like you.

“Mind stuff,” Tony supplies when you’ve been silent for too long, focused on how much one man can possibly hate a person he’s just met. “Y’know, the Edward and Jasper Cullen combo. Without the confederacy and racism, of course.”

“Mind reading,” Wanda fills in when only Sam and Natasha get the reference, “And, with intense focus and strain, peeling away the layers of the human brain that protect from people like us. I’m not as good, of course, because mine’s not exactly natural, but what you saw was the extreme end of the spectrum.”

You nod, leaning further and further into Tony’s grasp. She’s right when she says it’s the extreme side of the spectrum - you’ve only reached that far into someone once before and then, when you were nearly a decade younger than now and not as half as confident that you really were hearing thoughts and not just voices, it left you bed-bound and comatose for eight months. Even now, with another ten years and endless experience under your belt, the only thing keeping you from woozily toppling over is Tony’s hand on your shoulder. “Mostly it’s just thoughts and their constructs. Instincts. Emotions. Every mind is different and every person thinks differently. I just have tools to put the puzzle together and figure out what it means.”

“What about Steve?” Natasha cocks her head, taking a sharp left in the conversation. “He’s going to have a stick up his ass about this until you tell us if he has a steel trap of a mind, too.” And, shit, they’re all looking at you. You hate being looked at, being watched, being feared. If you were normal, if you couldn’t read someone’s thoughts or pry them open like an overripe fruit, nobody would pay any mind to you.

Tony shakes you to bring you back to earth and his hand barely glimpses over your bare bicep. You get coffee and good morning kisses and burning around the metal in your chest before you step away from him too. You curl in on yourself, tucking your shoulders up and crossing your arms over your chest so nobody will be tempted to fucking touch you anymore. Your stomach is rolling as the dark edges around your vision threaten to take you again. You just want to leave, run away, make your way into the forest like you used to dream about as a child.

Sucking your teeth, you look away from everyone and try to figure out how to explain what Steve’s mind is like. “He’s like a fucking beacon,” Is what you finally settle on, “It’s like he’s projecting every thought he’s ever had, or standing next to my ear and shouting down a megaphone.” When you glance back everyone has bristled, which is to be expected. They deal with a lot of confidential information - Steve reads every mission report from the agents. He reads the team’s, too. “I don’t try to listen, but man you’re loud. But go stand in an elevator with someone while they read their grocery list for three hours and see how much you actually pay attention to what they’re saying, though. I don’t retain anything if we’re ever close enough for me to latch on.”

“Stop reading my thoughts.” He says, hands balled into fists at his sides, “Get out of my head.”

“I would get out of everyone’s head if I could,” You spit back, looking at him just as angrily as he’s looking at you, “I get that even being alive with these abilities is nothing but a huge invasion of privacy to you, but have some empathy. Do you think I like havin’ everyone in my head twenty-four-seven? The shit I deal with that I can't explain to anyone? If I could stop doing this, I would - even if it fucking killed me.” The silence that falls is nearly suffocating and it does nothing to help you pull away from the black hole suction of Tanner’s mind. You rub the bridge of your nose again, fingers moving to smooth over your forehead, and squeeze your temples. The pressure in the room is driving you to the edge, and if you don’t get away soon you’ll either crack everyone in the room open like walnuts or fully mind-meld with Tanner and lose the essence of who you are.

“Oh,” Steve volleys back, head rolling back dramatically, “Right, have empathy for you.”

“You don’t even know me,” It doesn’t go unnoticed by anyone in the room as you begin to shuffle back toward the door. Your head feels like it’s going to explode if you don’t get away from so many open and prying minds. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know enough,” Steve says coldly. His chin tilts up, a small but sharp smile on his face. It doesn’t startle you because you can practically taste his thoughts at the back of your throat. He’s throwing them at you now, wanting you to see what’s coming before he says it. That doesn’t mean everyone else in the room isn’t surprised at how strangely he’s acting - and you know the next thing he says isn’t only going to hurt you but hurt Wanda as well. “I know enough to know that anyone who can do what you do is a monster.”

The paper taped to the front of your door is bright yellow and horrifying. You know what it says the second you lay eyes on it because Tony and Wanda have been floating the idea of making you a member of the A-Team for days after they peeled you off of Steve Rogers in the interrogation room. And, well… So, yeah, maybe you got a good punch in and, yeah, maybe you were suspended for a week without pay but who wouldn’t have done that? Who wouldn’t have felt the wash of excruciating pain from one of their best friends and sought retribution for a shitty thing said? You’d do it again if you were being honest. Since you threw that punch Steve Rogers hasn’t said one bad thing about you or what you can do - at least, not when Wanda can hear.

It’s something, you guess.

The paper on your door is exactly what you think it is: a fucking eviction notice signed by Tony Stark himself. He cites nonpayment and noise complaints despite the fact that he is not your landlord nor have you had any complaints or missed payments. The smiley face after his signature is enough for you to know that he already has an apartment for you ready and waiting in the Avengers wing. You unlock the door with your key and find all of your things gone.

Sighing you toss the key into what used to be your hallway and turn around. You just want to go to bed, really, because work sucked today and has been sucking since word got out that you’re a mind reader who attacked Captain America. (Gee, wonder how that got around.) By the time you make it across the compound to where Wanda and Tony are lounging unnaturally in the common room grinning at each other when they catch sight of you… Your back aches and your nerves are fried.

“So, I will be killing you, Stark. It will be a cruel and unusual death. I’ll probably violate the Geneva Convention for fun.” You drop your bag near the couch, kick his feet off the coffee table, and then land another kick to his shin. He yelps. “You can’t just move my shit out of my apartment without asking and put me in the same wing as Ye Olde National Hero That Wishes I Was Dead.” Wanda pulls you into the seat next to her, draping her arm around your shoulders. Thankfully, you’re both wearing long shirts but you still pull your sleeves down over your hands just in case.

“But we’ll be so much closer to each other. We can have movie nights.” She pouts at you because she knows it’ll work, and it does. “You’re not even in the same hallway as Steve.” You feel the weight of his name on her mind because their relationship still hasn’t healed despite how ardently he’d apologized after Tony enlisted Sam to push you from the interrogation room. You’d heard his voice echo down the hallway, paired with Natasha and Tony lighting into him over his attempt to make it right.

“Hey now,” Someone says from behind you, “You shouldn’t lie about that.” Sam comes into view, grinning at the way you tilt your head over the edge of the couch to see him. “Hey, what’s up, Vulcan? Get your little love note from Tony?” Sam had warmed up to you rather quickly after he saw how easily you extracted information from that little Hydra-wannabe-freak and how easily you would throw yourself at people who could crush you to protect the honor of your friends. He moves around the couch to perch in one of the large, cushy chairs. You wrinkle your nose and shake your head as he laughs.

“You can call it a love note when he finds a bucket of pig’s blood above his Iron Man suit before your next mission,” You reply coolly, “But yes, I did. I assume all of my furniture is already set up? Clothes unpacked? Privacy rifled through because you have no boundaries?” You cut a dark look toward your friend - and now, technically, boss.

“Of course it is, and of course I do.” Tony says, reclining like he hadn’t been massaging his sore shin for the last few minutes, “And Wanda isn’t lying, per se, Feathers. She just doesn’t know I had to make changes to the housing arrangement.”

Wanda makes an affronted noise. “You said that the room between Natasha and I was free and that would be the best place. Because of the mind-stuff.” You look between them, and hone in on Tony - but he catches on to what you’re doing and snaps his mind shut. Christ, you wish that Wanda hadn’t taught him how to do that so effectively. He used to be so easy to read.

“What did you do, Tony?” You sit up, moving away from Wanda as something like fear swells in your stomach. It’s probably the look on your face, but he looks almost ashamed and shifts uncomfortably. “Sam?” It becomes clear that Tony isn’t going to answer, so you look to another ally for any sort of answer. The smile slips from his face and he shakes his head.

“You’re between Buck’n Steve. I’m across the way, though.” He shrugs and you scoff, looking back at Tony.

“That’s what we’re doin’ now?” You snarl, pushing off of the couch just to pull away from Tony as he does the same. He says your name, ready to explain why he’s done what he’s done, “No, no! You know what he said to me - what he thinks of me. This may be a joke to you, but that man has single-handedly ruined every friendship I have outside of this team, Tony. Do you get that?” You swear you’re not going to cry, but your throat is burning in the sort of hollow way that indicates that you’re absolutely going to cry. “This is such bullshit.”

Instead of crying, you turn and run. Everyone watches the familiar mask slip over you, the way that you turn on your heel and head for the back garden of the compound. There aren’t a lot of people who know of or go to the back garden and that’s why you like it there. It’s small, overgrown, and when you sit or lay in the middle you can’t be seen unless someone is nearly standing on top of you. Once upon a time you’d tasked yourself to take care of it until that left you feeling vulnerable and just a little too seen without the tendrils of vine that tend to get out of control and hide your body. You crawl under one of the bushes and find the hollow you’d made for yourself, settling in on your side so you’re fully hidden.

This is the quiet that you like. There’s nobody around, so no need to put your headphones in. Just you, your breathing, and the rustling of leaves and flowers. It’s the only real quiet that you get - that you’ll get for the foreseeable future. The Avengers are notorious around your office for almost being like a pack. When there’s one, there’s always another lurking around somewhere. You suppose that comes from whatever trauma bonds they’ve formed living and almost dying together for so many years, but you’ve lived most of your life in a self-imposed solitary confinement of sorts. (Until Tony found you, that is.) The quiet helps you sort through your thoughts, and as you let the sunshine filter through the foliage above you and warm your skin you try to think of what you’re going to do. You can’t spend the rest of your life with headphones in your ears, volume turned up to eleven just so you can keep some semblance of dignity and self esteem.

But you can’t quit, either.

It’s a conundrum, because leaving means that you won’t help people. What’s the point of being able to read minds if you can’t help people with it? You can keep yourself safe, keep the team safe, keep civilians safe. You can pull information without ever making contact with a target, you’re perfect for undercover ops, perfect as a plant to support undercover ops. Your powers make you useful, and you’ve always known that.

The clear air and warm sun presents you with a solution: if Steve Rogers is the only one that hates you for what you can do, you have to make yourself integral to the team. You have to prove that you belong, that you’re simultaneously not a threat but also one of the biggest threats. it shouldn’t matter what he thinks of you, but it does. Of course it does. You’re not immune to hearing the stories of the nation's number one hero throughout your childhood. You’d found a fucked up little comradery in his story: someone who thought he was useless but wanted more, someone who had done everything in his power to make himself important and strong, someone who’d faced more than anyone could ever imagine but still kept going, someone who did good despite everything they saw.

And, just perhaps, you harbor a crush on the man after seeing him in real life your first week at the data analyst job. So what? Who didn’t have a crush on the six foot four American hero? You’re pretty sure even Tony has a little bit of a soft spot for the Good Captain’s strong jawline and broad shoulders.

You sigh, a little sleepy as the sun warms you. The thoughts of what you’re going to do fade away as you drift to sleep, relaxing into the grass and other leaves that surround you. It’s nice to be able to relax fully, not worried about what you’re going to overhear as you let your mind wander. As sleep begins to take you further and further into their grasp your mind opens up - like hiking through the mountains and then coming to a split: the humdrum of your everyday life and struggles are the mountains, careening into the open air and sleep is opening up your eyes to the sky between them. You relish in that, the moments between sleep and wake when you’re most relaxed.

You’re always half-conscious of where you’re at when you’re asleep, never fully resting, so when someone enters the garden on the other side you catch onto their mind right away. It’s always harder to figure out who’s mind you’re invading when you’re like this - light and half gone - so it doesn’t dawn on you that you’re hearing Steve until it’s too late to get up and leave. Slowly you wake up, trying to pull yourself out of his head, but it’s hard to do that when he’s thinking about you. Your name crops up again and again - he’s worrying about what to do with you, but in an abstract way that’s hard to decipher what he means. Clearly Steve has thought about this before so he’s not exactly spelling things out for himself, so it’s hard for you to understand what he means when he thinks things like I wonder how Tony would take it and I’m getting ahead of myself, here. He’s frustrated, that much is clear, and he’s sitting on the other side of the decrepit, overgrown, unused fountain. Too close for you to pull out your phone and start some music in your headphones, definitely too close for you to get up and escape. You’re stuck.

It feels like more of an invasion of privacy than normal, which makes your stomach churn. A lot of your life is spent trying to be the least invasive you can be for the comfort of others and, while the rest of the team doesn’t care that you do what you do, he’s made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t like you or your telepathy. So now, curled up in your safe place with Steve twelve or thirteen feet away, you can’t even enjoy the day before you have to spend the night on the other side of his wall. Your thoughts are so loud, so upsetting, that Steve’s fall to the wayside.

At least there’s that.

By the time he gets up and leaves you’ve made the decision that the garden can’t be your spot any longer. If there’s a chance that Steve will show up in the back garden while you’re there you’ll just have to find another place to go for quiet. It’s just another sacrifice you’ll have to make because of the way you were born. It’s another sacrifice that nobody knows you’re making.

When you finally extract yourself from your hiding spot the sun is dipping toward the horizon and your joints are stiff. You’ve calmed down from the initial shock of being stuck on the other side of Steve’s wall and come to terms with it. Plus, Bucky will be on the other side of you and he’s blissfully silent. You’ll struggle with having Sam across the hall, but if you spent eight hours a day with headphones in when you were just a data entry grunt, you can probably handle eight hours a night with headphones strapped to your skull like you're going through medical tests.

The common room is empty when you walk through, but it’s not like you need help finding your room. All you have to do is follow the sound of Sam and Bucky’s laughter, followed by a groan from Steve. Once you’re in the right hallway it’s easy to find your room - Tony has left another little note on your door and you rip it off without even reading it and try to make as little noise as possible. Sam’s thoughts don’t change, but Steve’s takes such a sharp turn toward you that you freeze in place. You know it’s a moot point because he can hear your heartbeat and he’s thinking about how he can hear your heartbeat. True to Tony’s word, your furniture is in the same spots that it was in your old room - down to the socks you left behind your couch three days ago. This helps you throw yourself blindly toward your bed, snagging your headphones on the way so that you can drown Steve and Sam out - and hopefully get some sleep.

As the music kicks up and you have something more than thoughts to focus on, the tears well in your eyes and crest down your cheeks. There’s no telling how long you’ll have to stay on the Avengers before you can fade into the background - there’s no telling how long you’ll be able to stay on the Avengers, really. How long can you sacrifice yourself just to save other people? How many months before you lose who you are in an interrogation room to try and bring justice about? How long before you can’t stand to be around Steve and his thoughts that still stray to you?

The first time Steve thinks a complimentary thought toward you is during a group training exercise in preparation for a mission that’s coming up. You’re off to the side with Peter - who thinks way too fast for you to pick up anything more than a word here or there, thankfully - when you catch a thought from another observing agent. It’s a big deal to be offered an observational spot when the Avengers are training, so the fact that your subconscious filter for nefarious thoughts picks up on anything from the other agents is surprising. The thought makes your stomach twist and you squint your eyes toward the man that they're coming from.

They’re lewd - that’s not really surprising because people have the right to think lewd thoughts and if you weren’t you nobody would know they were having them - but this man’s thoughts are leaning more toward dangerous than horny. Natasha’s face swims in his head, his inner voice thick with lust. His thoughts come in waves as he watches Natasha spar with Bucky, but none of them are on how lethal the fight would be if it were anyone besides Nat and Bucky on the mat together.

I bet she’d taste good.

I wonder if she’d scream.

I bet if I found her alone I could -

Your head begins to spin and you clamp a hand over your mouth and partially collapse into Peter’s side. The man’s thoughts turn darker and darker and you’re stuck, forced to listen to them. He doesn’t even know and that might be the worst part. Peter calls your name slowly, shaking your shoulders when you don’t respond.

“I’m fine,” You finally say, despite the way that you’re shaking and the fact that you didn’t even hear what he said - not really. The man’s thoughts take up most of your bandwidth because he’s so eager, and so loud, that you can’t even reach for the team’s minds to cover them up. “It’s fine.” Blood swims behind your eyes, but it’s not real. The man wishes it were real.

“Do you need me to go get Tony? Or - or Wanda, maybe?”

“I’m fine, Peter.” You shake your head and push yourself back up to support yourself. It might be because you’re focusing on the man in your quest to not focus on him, but you’ve missed the fact that Bucky and Nat are done sparring. You also realize that his thoughts are the only ones you’re catching, even with Peter sitting on the mat next to you. You’re not peeling back at his mind’s defenses like you’d done to Tanner but his mind is in such clear focus because of the danger his thoughts present that you might as well have been opening him up layer by disgusting layer.

When he gets up and makes toward Natasha on the edge of the mat, you move without thinking. Peter calls your name again, drawing more attention than you’d care for, but the man doesn’t look away from his target. When you reach him it’s like your vision tunnels. The only thing you can think about are the disgusting images in his head, the way he’s planning on asking Natasha out so that he can get her alone, the things he wants to do to her. Without thinking about the consequences to what you’re about to do you shove at the man as soon as you’re able to. He stumbles sideways but catches himself before he eats shit.

“Hey, what the fuck?” The man, Rick someone thinks, is almost two feet taller than you. He’s built like a super-soldier without the serum but that doesn’t deter you. “What was that for?”

“I know what you’re planning,” You stare him down, snarling, “I know what you want, and it’s not goin’ to happen.”

To Rick’s credit, he doesn’t even flinch. He does, however, think: What is this freak going on about? “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” He glances over his shoulder at his friends, gesturing at you and snickering. You laugh darkly, lips peeling back over your teeth, and shove at his shoulders again.

“Fine, you don’t know what I’m talkin’ about? Spar me and you can go on and ask the Black Widow out.” He pales and your grin widens. “Oh, do you know what I’m talkin’ about now, Rick?” It's easy to slip into a person that you're not, just like you had in the interrogation room.

He scoffs and crosses his arms, mind sizing you up in all of the ways he thinks he could hurt you. “I’m not going to fight you. I’d break you like a twig.” Rick squints his eyes like he’s said something important but his thoughts are still half on Natasha - who’s watching you with curious eyes. Most of the team is, actually, and Peter is whispering harshly to Tony.

“So do it,” You challenge, jerking your chin up with a feral grin on your face, “If you break me like a twig you can ask her whatever you fucking want,” You keep your voice low so that your threat can’t be heard, “But you won’t win. I’ll stomp your ass into the ground and make you wish that you'd never been born.” That must be the straw that breaks the camel’s back because Rick heaves one of his meaty fists back and goes for a sucker punch. You’re one step ahead of him, because you’re you, and you take one step back to avoid it. He tries again, but you duck out of the way and slide around him to sweep his leg out from underneath his body. Rick stumbles but you don’t give him any time to recover before you’re on him, wrapping your arm around his neck from behind and using his own weight to drop him on his chest to the mat. It takes all of twenty seconds.

He struggles to unlatch you from his neck, but can’t get a good grip because as soon as he manages to get his fingers around your arm, you pull tighter around his neck. His thoughts are scrambled as he tries to figure out how to get you off of him and turn the tides of the pitiful fight he’s put up, but you’ve already decided that Rick will either tap or you’ll keep pressure on his throat until he passes out. Part of you - the dark and vengeful part that gets stuck in other people's heads and sees the most disgusting, evil parts of humanity - wants to keep his throat pressed against the crook of your elbow until he goes limp and cold. That part of you wants to neutralize the threat he presents, but there's a rational part of you that knows a thought is not a crime. There would be no justification to kill him - that doesn't mean you can't teach him a lesson, though.

Rick begins frantically tapping when his vision begins to tunnel, and you can practically taste his fear. His skin pressed to yours heightens everything about his thoughts, blurring your own until they're nonexistent and you can't hear anything but the floundering, heart-stopping fear that blooms in his chest when you don't let up. You want to kill him, want to erase his fucked up thoughts from the earth forever but you can't. When Rick goes limp in your arms you drop him, taking several small steps away from where his body is splayed face down on the training mat. You’re heaving in breath like you’re drowning, feeling phantom blood dropping down your arms, off of your fingers. It’s not real but it’s real, it’s Natasha’s, it’s swimming in your brain and pooling in your mouth and making your body shiver as it cools on your skin.

The blood is not real, but it feels like it is.

Tony is the first to reach you, but Wanda isn't far behind him. Your chest is heaving and your head is spinning but they help ground you as you collapse in on yourself, whispering the things you'd heard to just get them out of your head. Tony, to his credit, holds you tightly against his chest as you sag and confess to sins that aren't yours but you've had to take on because of the things you can do. His skin pressed to yours is a balm, but he's shaking, too. His thoughts are turning dark in the same ways that yours had and, well, so are Wanda's. It's overwhelming.

The bright side of having two people who know you so well is that they know when they have to pass you off to someone else or risk sending you hurtling over the edge. Tony's chest rumbles with his voice as he does his best to remove your arms from around his waist, "Cap, need you to take over here. I've got something to deal with." Somewhere in your haze, you realize that Steve has taken you into his arms, but stiffly. He’s practiced and sure in avoiding your skin and it almost makes you weep. Coming off of your adrenaline is rough - and you want nothing more than to feel someone’s skin on yours. You need the balm of someone who’s not afraid to touch you, someone to tell you that you are not a weapon, you are not dangerous, you deserve to be held.

Steve doesn’t say any of those things. He takes you back to the common room just to get you out of sight of the observing agents, but the walk there is a blur of aching muscles and the beginnings of a headache. When he drops you on the couch you begin to spiral, panic welling in your chest at the thought of what’s about to happen to you. You’d attacked someone unprovoked for what they were thinking. Thoughts are not crimes - but he was going to act on them, you rationalize. He was on the move. Still. Still. Still.

Steve has dumped you on the couch and left the room, there’s no doubt in your mind that your tenure as an Avenger is coming to an end once Tony gets a hold of you. You curl around yourself as the throbbing in your head begins to recede and other thoughts begin to filter in from people in the area. Steve must be close because his are the loudest. He must be in the kitchen and, as much as he hates the fact that you can read his mind, you focus on what he’s thinking. His thoughts are a bright spot in the dark cloud that’s grown over you in the moments since Rick’s thoughts started coming in clearer.

Maybe some water. Looks like a panic attack - what did Buck say helped?

He doesn’t sound like he’s angry and that makes you calm down a little bit. At least he’s trying to take care of you, although it sounds like he’s fumbling around the shared kitchen like he’s fumbling over whatever Bucky’s told him about how to calm down panic attacks. You haven’t moved except to curl into the fetal position so when Steve comes back with a wet and cool washcloth for your face he practically has to peel your arms away from your head. The moment his fingers wrap around your wrist his thoughts are injected into your head like he’s speaking them out loud.

-Good form. Surprisingly quick. Must be the mind reading thing, can see the attacks coming before the opponent moves.-

He presses the washcloth to your forehead and you shudder, leaning into the gentle touch. It’s strange and you’re surprised that he didn’t just leave you on the couch to suffer until someone else found you - but you won’t mention anything about that. Steve Rogers is being nice to you and, better yet, he’s thinking positive things about you. It’s like Rick actually did snap you like a twig and this is a fever dream. Or a death rattle.

-Quick fight. That agent didn’t even stand a chance. Bet I wouldn’t either if we sparred. Glad we didn’t get to that. I’m not sure that I could do that thing that Wanda’s been trying to teach me-

His thoughts screech to a halt even though he doesn’t move his hands from your head. Clearly Steve has realized that he’s been feeding you his thoughts like an IV; you can feel the embarrassment welling up in the back of his head as he tries, and fails, to occupy his mind with anything but the replay of your short but impressive takedown of Rick. Finally, you pull away from his hands and sigh. “Sorry,” You move the washcloth over your eyes so that you don’t have to look at him as he kneels in front of you, “Know you don’t like me pokin’ ‘round in your head.”

To his credit, he only hesitates for a few seconds. “Do you always react like this? Almost pass out when you’re in someone’s head like that?”

“Didn’t go searchin’,” You practically groan, “Didn’t have to. Always tried to find the bad thoughts to keep an eye on people havin’ ‘em. Rick was loud.” You jump when Steve’s hand curves back over your shoulder and that’s when you realize that you’re shaking like a leaf and starting to cry. “His were bad. Had to do somethin’ before he acted on ‘em. He was goin’ to, otherwise, I would have just dealt with it like I have before.” It doesn’t make sense as to why Steve’s thoughts haven’t turned sour, but you’re not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“See a lot of this stuff?”

“People don’t believe in mind-readers,” You shake your head and immediately regret it when your stomach rolls and you groan lowly, “And, and thoughts aren’t always intentional. Some are intrusive. Hard to tell the difference when you’re not the one havin’ em.” You have to be imagining the turn his thoughts take - clearly, Rick actually got one good hit in because Steve’s being nice, sweet even, to you. It’s strange, but you’re not going to complain. The skin-to-skin contact is so nice you’re almost afraid that you’ll start sobbing when Steve pulls away again, the sound of him standing making your lip wobble and your body shudder.

“Hold on a second,” He says like he’s the one reading your mind, “I’ll go get a bowl of ice water and another washcloth so that you always have a cool one.”

Steve goes back to normal after that day. Tony had come and informed you that several cadets had reported Rick for inappropriate behavior but nobody had any proof until you beat his ass. He was proud of you, but worried about how you reacted. He’d never seen that before, and neither had Wanda. Scared Peter half to death, too, but you assured them it was normal. Told them to imagine someone describing what you’d heard out loud and then imagine not getting sick to their stomach or losing their cool. Then everything goes back to semi-normal.

Natasha finally lets you in, and that’s about the only thing that really changes. The both of you become fast friends and you know it’s real because you can’t read her thoughts. She doesn’t have to be afraid to be around you when she’s in a bad mood or just having a bad day, making the bond that you form much stronger. It seems with her acceptance of you, the rest of the team follows suit. Sure, Tony and Wanda had already been your friends - family, really - and Sam had been interested in being your friend but after they saw Natasha suggesting books for you to read it was like they all decided you’re one of them. A real, bona fide Avenger.

If only your parents could see you now.

Even Steve stops giving you the stink-eye when you join them for movie night, typically squashed between Nat and Bucky or curled into Wanda’s side with a blanket barrier between the both of you. It’s like the day he’d nursed you through the migraine until Tony and Wanda came to the common room had flown a white flag between the both of you.

You still don’t go back to your garden, though. And you miss it, especially on days like today when you’re stressed out about your first real undercover mission. If you fuck it up, and you won’t - can’t, you’re sure that the progress you’ve made in making yourself integral to the team will be gone. (And so will the first real friends you’ve made in a long, long time but that thought makes you crank your music and hide out in your room so you don’t even bother with that.)

The mission isn’t even really a mission - you’re going into a country club to figure out who the mark is; the intel that Tony was given only says that there’s someone there funneling girls from middle-eastern countries to America illegally for… Well, for nothing good.

So you’re going to go in, hang out at the country club and hopefully pick through the target’s mind and figure out who they were. After that, they’d send in Wanda, or maybe Nat if they thought she wouldn’t be recognized, and take down whatever smuggling ring was set up inside of the club. You sigh and try to get over the nerves of going in alone. Nobody there if you get overwhelmed, no way to muffle the thoughts from all sides, the weight of the world on your shoulders and nobody there to help you carry it. Although, hasn’t that been your life before the Avengers?

At least, you thought you were going in alone. The day of the mission finds you dressed to the nines, location transmitter tucked into a fake crown on one of your molars and comm disguised as a hearing aid tucked over your ear. Clint had warned you that they programmed the comm to squall if your head got too close to someone else’s - something that the older models of hearing aid it was made to look like did. When you finally made your appearance at the car that Tony rented out for you, complete with Peter undercover as a young driver, Steve was there. He was dressed to the nines in a black suit - it made his already large frame loom larger and his broad shoulders seem never-ending. Sweet Lord Jesus Christ Above.

“I can do this on my own,” You say as you approach, frowning at Tony. You know he’s the one that put Steve up to accompany you and the man confirms it in his thoughts. “I know I spent years being an insignificant analyst, but I’m good at what I do.”

“I know that,” Tony cuts a look toward Steve at your jab, and Steve has the decency to look and feel a little guilty, “But if we send you with an Avenger, you’re more likely to have to see and talk to a lot of people. It makes everything easier.”

“So why not go with you?” You cross your arms and try to pry Tony’s defenses from his mind so that you can find any ulterior motives that you know he has, “It makes more sense for Tony Stark to be at a country club.”

“I told you,” Steve leans against the car like he doesn’t have a care in the world, “Doesn’t make sense to have me there.”

“Come on,” Tony claps you on the shoulder and shakes you a little bit, “Live a little. Cap gets all embarrassed when people swoon over him. It’ll be fun.”

-It’ll be real fun when I put the shield through your suit during training. Could’a gotten anyone else for this mission, but had to pick me because he knows-

Steve’s mind doesn’t snap shut like Tony’s, but he does push you out of it rather quickly before he can finish the thought. You ignore him, for his sake and your own, and scowl at Tony, “Fine. You’re technically right that I’ll get to come in contact with more people, but it makes my job damn hard when they’re focused on an Avenger and not their next pickup.”

With you on board, the mission starts quickly. Peter is nervous driving you to the club, but that much is to be expected from someone so young and won’t cause any concern at the valet. He’s to stay in the car, headphones in, and pretending to study while you and Steve are inside.

Steve hasn’t had a thought since he pushed you out of his head. He hasn’t locked his mind down like any of the others are slowly learning to do - he’s just not thinking. There are waves of feelings, and instincts, but no concrete thoughts. It makes you feel shitty, but then you wonder if he’s doing it for his own peace of mind or for your benefit. Either way, you should probably tell him to knock it off because one of the perks of being able to read your partner’s mind on a mission is having a one-way link to set up plans without having to say them out loud. You won’t bring it up, though, because your relationship with Steve has finally stopped being enemies forced to share a wall and has become people who can stand to be in a room together sometimes. It’s not much in the scheme of things and still hurts your feelings - because you still have that ridiculous crush on the man, but it’s nice.

The country club is huge. The ceilings are easily thirteen feet high and dotted with grand, hanging chandeliers. The walls have arches, expensive paintings, and large stained-glass windows. It’s more lush and expensive than anything you’ve seen in your life and the spark of jealousy has you gritting your teeth. You hate rich people, have a distinct disdain for the way they hoard money while there are so many people who could use just a fraction of what they have - but yet, you find yourself wishing you lived in the lap of luxury.

With your arm taken in Steve’s, you suppose you do live in the lap of luxury. Being an Avenger doesn’t pay the best, and you’re acutely aware of just how many people on the team are exactly the thing that you find yourself hating. Tony has more generational money than he knows what to do with - even without counting how much money he’s made on his own. Steve has enough backpay to pay off the college debts of the state of Ohio. Bucky was given a settlement when it was revealed that, despite Steve and the other Commandos rallying for the Army to retrieve his body, there was no search made for him which allowed Hydra to do what they did.

You blink, take a deep breath, and push those thoughts from your focus. Steve looks down at you. People are starting to notice him, now, but that’s not a hard thing to do. Out of seventy people in the room, about one-third have their thoughts turned to Captain America and the person on his arm. “Are you okay?” It takes you a second to realize he’s spoken out loud and shifted to block your view of the room. He’s frowning.

You smile as politely as you can, trying to calm him. “Peachy. It’s just a lot. Where would you like to start?”

“The bar?” Steve leads you further into the room and more thoughts turn his way, “We could start with a drink, and then mingle?” You hum and slip your hand down to press just the tips of your fingers against his bare wrist. He stiffens but manages to keep his cool, despite cutting you an unreadable look.

“Easier to communicate,” You have a wisp of a smile as you meet curious eyes, trying to focus on the thoughts that swim between your ears.

-Why’s he here?-

-Who’s with him? Why would an Avenger bring a date to-

-Holy fuck, it’s Captain America-

Can you hear me over everyone else? Steve isn’t looking at you, but his voice cuts through the noise. It’s high and clear, a distinct dichotomy to his speaking voice. Before you answer, your mind wanders to whether or not that’s how he sounded pre-serum. You lean against the bar with him, pretending to be perusing the menu while you tap your finger once against his wrist, sliding a line, and then tapping three more times. He orders matching glasses of wine for both of you and doesn’t respond.

The bartender is looking closer at you than at Steve, and you wonder if you’re as nervous as you seem. His thoughts aren’t untoward, not really, just wondering if you’ll like the dry white that Steve’s ordered. (You don’t, and won’t. Not like you’ll be drinking any - unlike the super-soldier on your arm you’ll get tipsy, your mind will get fogged, and the mission will be compromised.)

It’s not until Steve passes you the glass, smiling at you like he has a secret or wants to tell one, that you focus back on the mission. Good, he thinks, I suppose it will be easier this way.

You take a micro-sip of the wine and try not to scrunch your nose at the taste. “The wine is really good. Thank you for ordering, Captain.” He huffs under his breath, a twinge of annoyance tickling the back of your senses. So he doesn’t like being called Captain, which is interesting. You resolve to keep that in mind as you survey the room, looking for anyone who’s more nervous than anyone else. Thoughts come and go as you shift your focus.

-Yes!-

The thought is so sharp and out of place among the throng of people trying to get up the courage to speak to Steve that you physically flinch, hiding it by pressing your face into the bicep of the man who, in theory, hates you. You take a deep breath and shake your head when Steve opens his mouth to speak. It takes a lot of focus to be able to hone in on someone with just their thoughts, but you manage to do it by taking your skin off of Steve’s and putting his suit sleeve between your hands and his wrist again. The thoughts come loud and clear then, and your eyes trace the room for the head they could be coming from.

Everyone’s distracted by Star-Spangled Asshole over there with his stupid little date, nobody will notice if I sneak off… Fuck, the God damn door’s locked.

You take Steve’s wine and set it down on an unoccupied table next to your own glass, and lead him to the small dance floor that’s shown up as the afternoon progresses. He takes position without a peep. Clearly, he knows you’re on to something or listening to someone. He’s good enough of a dancer to lead you in a way that makes it seem like you’re the clumsy one - his dancing gives you just enough time to catch sight of the only person frowning at the emergency exit.

“You’re a lovely dancer, Captain,” You finally glance up at him, and then let your eyes slide back to the doors, “Where’d you learn?” His answer goes over your head as you use the small talk as an excuse to keep your mind on your newest, and only, lead. You hope that Steve won’t be offended that you’re making small talk but not listening to his answers, but really, what’s another thing about you for him to hate?

If I’m not at that meeting in fifteen, Frank is going to kill me. If I don’t get the pictures of the girls from Frank, Chris will kill me and then I’ll be double dead. How am I supposed to get paid if I’m double dead?

In your surprise that the man is thinking away his whole plan, you accidentally stamp on Steve’s toes. Of course, you’d mentioned it to Steve before - nobody believes in mind readers. But still, not a lot of people think as frantically about what they’re doing as That Guy is. Two names are better than one name, but one name with the last name attached would have been the best. Still, they have to be connected in some way to the country club, and maybe Tony can figure it out.

“Oh!” You smile up at Steve a second after he jerks back from your clumsy feet, “Sorry, I was just thinking about the party last week.” You reach up under the pretense of fiddling with your hearing aid, and click the connect button on the comm. Steve’s eyes catch the motion and he begins the dance again, as if you hadn’t nearly stumbled over yourself and toppled over. Several thoughts turn your way and they’re… Less than flattering. You sigh and soften your smile, until it could almost be called fond. “Did you see how antsy Frank was to get to that meeting? And all Chris wanted to do was look at pictures.”

To anyone else, it was idle small talk, but to Peter, in the car, it was clear that you were giving information. You had all the confidence in the world that he’d be on the phone to Tony faster than you could blink. Hell, he was probably already on the phone with Tony and relaying the information as Steve’s eyebrows rose as the clicking of laptop keys began to softly play from your comm.

Get it together Derek. Oh, shit it’s raining now. Oh, that sucks.

“And Derek,” You continued, laughing a bit under your breath as if he was an old friend, “Such a klutz. Can’t tell a push from a pull door.” Steve spins you and catches sight of the man panicking at the emergency exit. A frown pulls on his lips for a moment, before he’s back to acting the night away with you, looking down at you in a way that anyone else would see as sentimental. But you understand how Steve feels about you, what you can do, and know that he is an incredibly good actor. An unreasonably good actor, since nobody else at the club is looking into his eyes.

There’s a pulse where your hands are connected, skin slipping against skin, and it startles you. Steve’s thoughts come through louder and clearer than ever before - he’s thinking with purpose. He’s thinking so you’ll hear him. He’s thinking at you. Good work. Three names is even better than we were hoping for.

You read a little too much into that, a frown tugging briefly on your face before you remember that you’re being watched. It melts into a smile easily and Steve watches the way it changes with an unreadable expression. It’s nice, dancing with him. Just a little too nice, and it makes the saliva in your mouth sour. It would be one thing if you only had a crush on the man, but he despises you. Or, he did. Maybe now, holding on to you and dancing like he might like you, he only… Dislikes you. Tolerates you. Realizes that you’re just a person saddled with an impossible ability and you’re drowning under the weight of it.

You wonder if he ever looks at you and sees himself.

The thought dies as he tracks Derek over your shoulder, putting a little fond smile on his face - although you know its fake - and ducking down to breathe the man’s movements into your comm. It’s closer, intimate, and you press your lips into a thin line to repress your shudder at the way Steve presses close to you. “I should get back home,” You finally say, “My babysitter said that she has an exam tomorrow. It’s no fair to her for me to overstay my welcome.” It won’t make sense and will definitely look untoward, because the two of you have only been in the club for forty-five minutes. If that. But you can’t handle being so close to Steve, even if he’s done whatever he’s learned he can do with his thoughts and shut you out of them despite your hands in his.

Steve catches both of your hands in his, smiling down at you. “Allow me to walk you out.” And your brain half short circuits because for a brief moment he lets you in. Your mind lights up with his thoughts and they’re scrambled, frantic, anxious. Your name is there, your face, your lips, your favorite color, the scent you put on specifically to blend in with the rich and famous. Steve’s mind is awash with you and it’s so much, too much, that it makes you dizzy. He seems to catch on the moment you turn to look at him, swaying on your feet with question in your eyes. His hands leave yours and find a home deep in the pockets of his slacks. You watch ruefully as his face hardens, imperceptible to anyone around the two of you.

“Of course,” You finally say, voice slow and quiet. You hate watching people close off from you once they realize their private thoughts aren’t private. It sits heavy in the back of your mind, though, that he was thinking of you. Not the mission, not your powers, not how awfully close he had to be to someone he seemed to hate. Just thinking of you in a way that nobody else had, not in a long time. Not if they knew what you can do. Nobody has ever loved you before - nobody can love you - and you’re not about to start convincing yourself that Steve will be the first.

Abruptly, as if the two of you hadn’t spent the better part of three minutes staring at each other and saying nothing, you turn toward the door. He follows you outside where it’s raining while you ask Peter to bring the car around.

“I’ll be right there,” The teenager confirms, “Also, that Derek guy is getting into a Jeep Wrangler and leaving. Should we tail him?” You jump when a heavy hand curls around your elbow, but you tell yourself it’s because Tony’s voice is crackling to life on the comm and not because Steve is pressing close again.

“I have agents already prepped for that. Just get Thing One and Thing Two out of there before someone realizes we’re onto them.” Peter hums and you hear the car kick to life in the background.

Steve, you realize, doesn’t have a comm in. You turn to relay what Tony said to you just to find Steve already nodding along as if he’d heard. He might have, you think. He can hear your heartbeat through the plaster and drywall back at the compound. Still, he’s looking at you as if he’s waiting for you to relay it, and when you don’t speak - he frowns.

“About what you heard,” He clears his throat and looks away. You’re used to that, really. Tony used to do it after he realized you picked up everything and Sam still does it sometimes. When people figure out that you’re a walking privacy violation they get embarrassed and when that happens they can’t even look at you.

Another thing that your powers have taken away from you.

With a wry smile, one that Steve doesn’t see because his eyes are closed and he’s flushing, you console him. “It’s fine. I understand this is the last thing you want to be doing.” You hesitate on his name and choke his title back, trying to keep the peace between the both of you. His eyes flash to yours, but only for a second, “I told you the first day that we met that if I could change this part of myself, I would. Good work I’ve done be damned.” The smile on your face then is as sad as it is sweet, and Steve looks lost. “It’s not fun to be alienated in a way that nobody else can understand.”

God, and if you were to look back on it, you never would have said that. But you do, and it’s out in the world and in Steve’s head - which is still blessedly silent. Maybe that’s why you miss Derek’s thoughts growing louder and louder, getting closer to where you’re standing faster than Peter’s are; you’re too focused on Steve and his thoughts and how the moment today stands in dichotomy to the moment on the interrogation floor.

Maybe you’re just too focused on him in general.

Derek’s thoughts hit you like a freight train just a second before you hear the squall of struggling tires on the pavement. Knew they were following me, knew it, knew it! You watch from Derek’s eyes as he guns it straight for where you’re standing with Steve - and then you’re back in your own body and finally reacting. You turn to Steve and grab his lapels, shoving him out from underneath the fancy awning. He stumbles out into the rain before his feet get tangled against each other and he tumbles to the ground, shouting your name.

Going for the date, take the Captain down by hurting the person he’s with. He’ll be so guilty, won’t be able to think, won’t be able to get me.

You surge backward into the brick wall at the last moment, Derek’s thoughts filling with rage once he realizes that he’s missed you. Fuck! Fuck, no! Frank is going to kill me. Well, maybe not if I kill both of them. The car takes a dangerous u-turn and revs as Derek stares you down, sweating behind the wheel. “Peter!” You call into your comm, “What’s the holdup?” Steve springs to his feet, brow furrowed and battle ready.

“I’m almost there!” Peter’s voice cracks and you hear the humming of the engine in the background as he presses his pedal to the metal.

“You should hurry!” You dart into the rain when Derek aims the Jeep Wrangler toward you again. Crashing into Steve’s side you urge him away, the both of you already soaked to the bone. “You have to get out of here. He’s aiming for me because he knows you’ll get off of his tail to help if I’m hurt.”

“I’m not leaving you!” Steve’s thoughts are loud, angry, and you wonder what it will be like to be on a combat mission with him. “Move!” His arms wrap around your body and he swings the both of you into the bushes on the other side of the driveway, stumbling to his feet and tugging you out of the other side of the foliage.

If he thinks I won’t run over those bushes, he’s wrong. I’m going to make that meeting, and I’ll make it without an Avenger on my fucking tail!

“You’re playing into his hand!” You have to yell over the rain and the screaming of Derek’s tires, “Get back to the car with Peter, I can handle myself.” Steve’s jaw sets and he takes a glance behind you, body tensed to move again but you’re also watching the world from Derek’s eyes and the way that he’s definitely going to hit the tree that stands among the bushes of the road verge. You stand your ground when Steve surges toward you to take you off of your feet once more, holding him in place as you shrink into him and close your eyes.

“We have to move - !” His voice raises to a shout and breaks on the last word but you grit your teeth and hold him still. If Steve really wants to move, he will. You know he can overpower you and you hope that he doesn’t. Derek is half-blind with fear and rage and he’s aiming directly for you, not paying attention to anything in the way. Your hands clench in the back of Steve’s jacket as you hold him to you, trying to convey that he’s safe as long as he stays where he’s at.

The crash from the front corner of the Wrangler hitting the large and sturdy tree makes your ears ring. You feel more than hear Steve gasping, his arms tightening around you as he takes a step back in shock. The world spins around you when you close your eyes and look through Derek’s eyes again, and his thoughts are as scrambled as the Jeep Wrangler is. It crashes in an arc around where you stand with Steve in the rain, not even coming close to hitting you. Your knees buckle when parts of the bumper come off, striking the back of your calves and Steve keeps you upright even as the pain streaks through you and your knees give out.

Peter is there half a second later, and then a second after that Tony is in your comm, telling you to scram because the agents are only a minute out. Steve shoves you back toward the road verge and you take the path that was cleared out by the Jeep. Peter is there in the sleek car, face pale and shocked behind the wheel. Steve darts around you to throw open the passenger door, thoughts intent on throwing your body in and hoping he can make it into the back seat before Derek gets his wits about him. You grit your teeth and throw your body against his, snagging the pistol you’d felt in his waistband out as he stumbles again.

“What the fuck?” He shouts.

Derek is getting out of the ruined car, hysterical and terrified. His thoughts spin around you as you put your body in front of Steve’s - between his body and the gun that Derek is wielding. It’s like that motherfucker is my head, have to stop that. Have to get to the meeting, have to get the photos, have to get the girls It’ll be my head! Mine! If I don’t get this done, can’t do that. Can’t have that. You aim Steve’s gun for Derek’s center mass, but you don’t shoot. Not yet. His thoughts haven’t turned and you haven’t felt that jolt that comes when someone prepares to shoot in the back of his mind. Steve is in your head, too, wondering why you’re not shooting and why you’re in front of him, and how to regain control of the situation so that he can suffocate the fear building in the front of his consciousness. He thinks about bodily picking you up but Peter’s frantic voice is distracting him.

You hold your ground, gritting your teeth so that you don’t peel Derek like an overripe pear. His eyes are focused on the gun you’re wielding and the distinct lack of trigger discipline. He’s wondering if you’re the better shot and you wink at him.

Rogers isn’t the one in my head.

The realization puts him on the backfoot. “You can’t beat me!” You call into the storm, hoping he’ll hear, “I’ll know you’re going to shoot before you will!” Derek’s gun begins to shake and Steve’s breath halts in his chest. “Do you want to take that chance, Derek? Want to see who has the faster trigger finger?” An unmarked car pulls fast into the parking lot and sirens begin to wail in the distance. The commotion finally caught the attention of the club and someone inside must have called an emergency number. The hesitation is written all over Derek’s face, especially when he glances over his shoulders to see agents in Kevlar rapidly approaching. “Surrender yourself.”

Steve’s hands tighten on your shoulders, but after a moment Derek puts the gun down.

The moment you’re out of medical, you’ve shed your dress clothes and changed into something comfortable. There’s no need for a debrief because it was supposed to be just a recon mission and Derek had cracked like an egg the second he was put into the backseat of Peter’s car with you - so you’re free for the night.

It takes you just a second to make sure Steve is in the gym before you escape with your phone and headphones - both upgraded as an apology from Tony - to the Garden. True to your personal promise, you hadn’t been back since the day you’d been trapped in the bushes by Steve being there. But you need to go back - you need silence. You need just a few moments of fucking freedom from thoughts in your head that aren’t yours, and you need to be able to get it without explaining to someone why you need them to leave the weird, abandoned garden so that you can get it.

You leave your music loud enough to numb your mind through the compound, smiling at people who wave at you or say something you’re in no mood to figure out. When you clear the back doors you’re free, cutting your music and taking in the soft sounds of nature. The garden isn’t empty when you arrive, and it makes you stop short when you find Natasha perched casually on the fountain. There’s stress in your back seeing her there, but you can’t read her mind so it’s fine. It has to be fine.

She hears you coming and turns to you with a small smile on her face. She sighs your name, head tilting to the side. “So you’ve finally decided to come back.” It makes your steps falter, but you still wade through the overgrowth to sit next to her, leaning your back against the grand statue in the middle of the fountain that nobody takes care of.

“I shouldn’t be surprised you knew about the Garden, and yet I am.”

“Who do you think told Steve about it?” You sigh, unsurprised that out of everyone Natasha would have picked up on the fact that you don’t come here for his sake. “It’s nice that you’ve decided to come back.”

“Steve is in the gym.”

Natasha leans into your side, one hand gripping yours tenderly - in a way that only a few lucky people are allowed to see her. “How is he doing, by the way? Keeping you out of his head?”

“What do you mean?”

She cuts you a look that has you flushing, “Please. Either he’s really struggling or you’re playing coy. He’s been practicing with Wanda since you moved into his wing.” That makes you frown because, God, that just makes you feel worse. Your entire life is lived around making people comfortable with what you can do and you’re searching for a solution to the problem when Natasha shakes you lightly. “He’s doing it for you, not for himself.”

“Sure,” You snort, “It’s for my comfort.”

“Seeing you after Rick did a number on him.” She hums, leaning her head on your shoulder. You sag into the human contact and the blessed blankness of Natasha’s mind. “He was worried. It finally got his head out of his ass about how embarrassed he was.” There’s a lilt to her voice that you don’t really understand.

“Nothing new for someone who spends an extended period of time around me,” You mumble, feeling yourself get sleepy against her body heat, “People who can do what I do don’t get friends, or days off, or relationships. Doesn’t matter what I think of what he thinks of me because those are personal thoughts.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Natasha’s hand comes up to pet the side of your face, making you sigh. It’s so nice to be touched by another human without getting their thoughts injected into your mind, “What I mean is that, for a while, Steve was taking our reports to Data instead of emailing them. He was coming back flushed, and talking about how there was someone there who kept their head down and worked hard, never looked his way, and didn’t react to the fact that Captain America was handing them a report. Sometimes he’d come out of the elevator like that, too.”

“Hm?” You’re not following her. At least, you don’t want to be.

“I’ve known him for a long time. When you walked into Interrogation he was caught off guard to see you there. Tony had told us he was bringing in his Special Weapon. Never expected you to show up.”

“I wish he’d stop calling me that.” You grumble. Natasha pinches you and you squirm away.

“Let me finish,” She narrows her eyes at you, but there’s mirth behind her eyes. You sigh and curl back into her, wondering if this is better than the hour you were planning on spending alone or not. “When Steve realized you could read minds, I’m sure every thought he’d had around you came to the front. Poor guy looked like he was going to shit himself.”

“They didn’t, at least not how you’re insinuating.” You sighed, remembering what he’d actually thought and then biting the bullet to tell Natasha even though they were his private thoughts, “He thought I was dangerous. Came up with some really creative ways to kill me, though.” She laughs, jostling you. “Seriously, he should teach some of those as self defense.”

“The thoughts came later, then. Call his reaction an instinct, but he’s been beating himself up for it since. I shouldn’t be telling you any of this, so keep your mouth shut. He came to me, terrified that you’d heard every single thought he’d had about that person.”

“I would never tell them,” You frown, shrugging your shoulders, “I may be a confidentiality risk on wheels, but I’m not a jerk.” She sighs like you’ve mortally offended her and you feel her head shake against yours. “The things in their heads stay in mine - most of the time. I thought I’d managed to convince you all of that already.”

“I have to spell it out for the both of you, huh? The emotional labor of a best friend never ceases.” Her hand drops from yours and she pats your thigh before extracting herself and stretching in front of you. “He wasn’t worried about you hearing those thoughts because he thought you’d tell - Steve is worried about you hearing those thoughts because it would be him telling.”

“I don’t understand.” You say, hoping to backpedal the conversation to something other than the convoluted idea that Steve Rogers could feel the same warmth in his chest looking at you that you feel when you look at him.

Natasha cuts you a look that says you definitely understand me you stubborn little motherfucker; then, she smiles over her shoulder at you and then she’s gone, disappearing around the corner before you can process what she’s said without saying. That’s one thing that you’re still not used to about her: the fact that you can’t read her mind means that you have to try and parse her meaning from her words and body language like you’re… Not you. It makes you feel incredibly uncomfortable but also incredibly normal. A true, blue catch-22. Your stomach swirls with unease until you curl up on your side in the fountain, the concrete hiding you from view and making you focus on the unobstructed sky overhead.

Absentmindedly you hum a Mazzy Star song, something that you like to listen to when you’re not using music to numb your extra sense so that you can live like a regular person. You wonder if anyone has shown Steve and Bucky things like Mazzy Star, or if people are still trying to shill them what they think the two men out of time will like instead of expanding their world view. Maybe they don’t want to remember the before.

You don’t want to remember the before.

Before Tony, before the Avengers, before you figured out that you can’t be peeling people apart at the seams just for shits and giggles. Before you found yourself tipping face first into a personality and memories that weren’t yours - things you still see in your nightmares.

Before you almost died.

You were a different person back in the before. More open, easier to talk to, trying to make and keep friends. You tried to have things for yourself but in the moment you opened up the man who was trying to kill you, say the things that he’d seen and done and said and thought, the moment your brain started whirring like an overheating laptop and then went dark to protect itself… You knew when you woke up eight months later your life would be nothing but lonely, watching from the outside like the only sentient person in a movie. You sacrifice, you push people together if their thoughts match and there’s a mutual interest, you have four different degrees just for fun because you don’t need to study.

When you hear someone approaching the garden you get up and dust yourself off, ready to give them the space that they need.

It’s almost surprising to see Steve wading through the unkempt foliage, but it’s not. The surprising part is that he doesn’t seem angry to see you. He almost seems relieved that you’re there.

You step out of the fountain, white-knuckling your phone. “Sorry,” You smile wryly, “Didn’t know you were comin’ out here today. I’ll, uh, head out.” The only way out is past him and you try to hustle before he says something that you’re not expecting - he’s doing whatever Wanda taught him to keep you out of his head and you’re happy. Really, you are. It just puts you on the backfoot and sends anxiety twisting around your spine like a ribbon.

Steve reaches out and grabs your elbow, still careful not to touch your skin with his. “Do you do this a lot?”

While you’re trying to process what he’s asking, you blink slowly at him and his painfully earnest, blue eyes. Steve almost looks like he’s in pain, and his voice sounded like he was struggling not to let it break over his words. “Uh,” You finally manage, voice nearly lost to the light wind and the shake that’s permeating your whole body, “Not lately, no. Just had some rough stuff, y’know, floating around in my head. Figured some fresh air would do me good.”

“No,” He shakes his head and then takes another step toward you. Instinctually you match his step forward with a step backward, his voice somewhere in the back of your head calling you a monster. Nat’s voice is there, too, telling you something you’re unwilling to believe but her voice is so much quester than Steve’s. “That’s not what I mean.”

“I’m not sure I’m following, then,” You clear your throat and have to look away from his face because it’s almost unbearable. You’re used to people looking at you a certain way - even Tony and Wanda look at you in That Way sometimes - but the way that Steve is looking at you… He’s bearing his soul more than any moment in time when you’ve been in his head. It’s unsettling in a new way, making heat and goose flesh crawl up your back and crest over your neck. “Look, I’ll head back to my room so you can enjoy the Garden.”

Steve takes another step toward you but you’re so shocked that he’s so close, looming over you. It reminds you of the way that he danced with you, the way that he looked at you even though he was acting.

You blink slowly, meeting his eyes, and remember the way that he thought about you in that moment before you both left the country club. Your throat tightens when you start to piece everything together and something inside of you, a big something that’s been there since you woke up from your eight month coma, tells you that it’s not right. Can’t be true. Steve sighs and his eyes flutter shut. “Do you…” He chokes on his words, like he’s not sure what he wants to ask you, “Do you sacrifice a lot for other people?”

“Don’t we all?” Your answer is knee-jerk because you do not want to go there. Not with anyone, but most certainly not with Steve.

He doesn’t open his eyes but his fingers tighten on your arm, his other hand moving to ghost over your shoulder. It’s almost unnerving to see Steve so unsure of himself. “That’s not what I meant.” His voice comes out small and strangled. Instinctually you reach up and clasp his bicep, dipping your head to try and see his face as his head turns toward the ground. It doesn’t take more than a second to convince yourself that you’re imagining the flush that’s crawling up his cheeks, making the soft freckles stand out against the ruddiness of whatever he’s feeling.

“Steve…” You’re lost for words and he sighs through his nose. It’s startling when his eyes snap open and he pulls you toward him. Your arms are stuck out at awkward angles in the hug, but you let him hold you close because… Well, again, you have a crush on the Good Captain - but also because you can feel him shaking.

“How much do you sacrifice for other people? How much do you give up for them that they don’t even know - that they don’t understand?” You struggle to hear him over your own blood rushing in your ears because you can feel his voice rumbling from his chest to yours. He’s clutching you like you’re his lifeline, like he’s drowning and you’re the only thing that can keep him above water. Maybe it’s what he’s asking or maybe it’s how he’s so warm in the dying light of the day, but you finally secure your arms around his waist.

“It’s not a sacrifice,” You finally whisper into the front of his shoulder, where you’ve planted your face so that he can’t pull his head back and see how you’re on the edge of breaking, “It’s just what I do.”

Steve shudders. “I didn’t know - I’m so sorry.” If you didn’t know better - and you don’t, because he’s doing a beautiful job of keeping you out of his head despite how clearly emotional he is and how the two of you are pressed together from head to toe. “The things I’ve said, I’ve thought…” His voice breaks.

“You’re not your thoughts, Steve,” You try to reassure, “I understand that.”

“I called you a monster,” His head shakes once and then it drops against your shoulder, “I called you a monster because I’m a coward and I was afraid. Afraid that you’d heard, that you knew about how I felt. How I feel.”

“Steve, it’s fine.” It’s really not, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“It’s not fine.” It seems he knows that.

Eyes fluttering shut against your own will, you inhale his cologne. He must have showered after the gym and the familiar scene of At The Barber’s makes you relax against him. “People have said worse. What,” You stutter, unsure you want to know the answer to what you’re going to ask, “What brought this on? You don’t have to feel guilty for my sake.”

Steve pulls back and you can feel his eyes on the side of your face - he doesn’t stop holding you though. You’ll take it. You’ll take it with you into lonely nights and being alone and your cold bed. In those moments you’ll remember how he feels against you and how his eyes feel on you and what it feels like to dance with him. “Nat told me that you stopped coming out here because of me.”

“She doesn’t know that.”

“Did you?” He tries to catch your eyes but you won’t meet them. Can’t see the pity that’s in them - or the guilt that’s there. He says your name, mangled by the emotion in his throat, “Please, please look at me.”

“Yes,” You admit when he manages to catch your eyes, “I did. I can go anywhere to think without being spied on. You can’t.”

Steve says your name again and presses his face even closer to yours. “I’m so sorry. For everything - for calling you a monster and thinking those horrible things and taking this away from you. I’m sorry you’ve sacrificed anything for me.” The honesty in his voice takes your breath away.

“I’d sacrifice everything for you, Steve.”

He blinks, shocked, but you’ve never been more sure of anything. Even though the beginning of your relationship with him was rocky, the months spent living and working alongside of him has solidified that not only do you look up to him and what he’s sacrificed, but your crush has a foundation that’s unshakable. Steve flounders for a second, searching your eyes but then he surges forward.

The kiss is something that you’ve imagined in the place between wake and sleep - but the real thing is so much better. Steve kisses like he’s apologizing and sacrificing and begging at the same time. His hands cup your face when you sigh, hands clutching in the back of his t-shirt to draw his body closer to yours. You can feel your body heating up underneath the thrumming of shock, feel yourself reacting to the way Steve whimpers against your mouth and follows your lips when you gasp for air. God, he kisses like he’s making up for lost time and like he’s desperate to tell you something that he can’t express with his words.

Steve, in short, kisses like a God.

You’re still struggling to catch your breath when he presses another chaste kiss against your lips - and then against your cheekbone and next to your eyes and then another on your forehead. “Steve…”

“I’m yours,” He confesses in a soft voice with his mouth pressed against your temple, “I realized that while we were dancing today. Holding you like that, seeing how incredible you are and how much I must have hurt you… I’m yours, if you’ll forgive me. Always have been, I think.” You shake against him, unsure and unstable.

“Steve…”

“You can say no,” He whispers into your skin, “You can say no and nothing will happen. I’ll keep my distance, I’ll be respectful.”

“I’ve never…” This time you pull back to look at him and the way his eyes are swimming makes you dizzy - in a good way. “Nobody ever wants me after they have me. It’s - it’s okay, but you can’t… It’s not going to be like you think. It never… I never work out. You have to know that. I can’t be friends with anyone who can’t block me out… How can you want…” How can you want me?

Steve’s eyebrows pull together and he shakes his head slightly. “We’ve been practicing, me and Wanda. I can keep you out and, and… I don’t care.” He says firmly. “I don’t care if you can see into my thoughts. I… I did, I cared a lot. I have to admit that, but that’s because - I’ve thought a lot about you before. I used to go to Data just to be able to see you,” His cheeks flush with color again but his eyes never leave yours, “I was tryin’ to get the courage to ask you out properly when you walked into that interrogation room and…” Steve sighs, eyes falling shut only briefly before they open to find yours again. His eyebrows are still pulled tight, wrinkling his forehead and making him look contrite. “I don’t know what I was thinkin’, saying those things. Thinking them.”

“You shouldn’t have to hide your thoughts from your partners,” You’re not sure why you’re pushing him away while you’re still wrapped in his arms, but he’s not budging.

“I know,” He breathes, “But I don’t care. I don’t care because it’s you. You’re good and you’re self-sacrificing and you’re… God, I don’t even know how to describe you.” Steve kisses you again, stealing your breath, “If you’ll have me, I’m yours. I swear it.”

You take a few shallow breaths, trying to digest your thoughts while he gazes at you like he did while you were dancing. “Steve…” He closes his eyes like he’s expecting a fatal blow and trying to come to terms with it but you can’t do that to him - won’t do that to him. “If you’ll… If you’ll have me I’m yours,” You parrot his words back to him, “If you can stand to be with me when I can do what I can do, you have me. You’ve had me, Steve. You have.”

He kisses you again and you don’t even flinch when the first of his tears drop against your cheeks.

#steve rogers x reader #steve rogers/reader #steve rogers imagine #marvel imagine #mcu imagine

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raaorqtpbpdy · 14 days

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The Undead Adventurer (2)

When an interrupted resurrection spell leaved Danny halfway between life and death, his adventuring career should have been over. But Danny Fenton won't let something as minor as being regularly mistaken for a member of a zombie horde, or kidnapped by an unknowable monster of death stop him from becoming the strongest adventurer in the world with his best friends by his side.

For the following prompts:

His head spun. He couldn’t see past the light above him. What was it? [from @q-gorgeous]

Fantasy/rpg setting. Danny died, but the resurrection spell went wrong, and now he’s trapped as something not quite dead but not fully alive either. Not that he’d ever let that stop him from becoming an adventurer, even if he does get mistaken as a resident dungeon monster by other adventuring parties every now and then… [from @lexiepiper]

Danny catches the eye of something he shouldn't. (Eldritch affection or soft horror encouraged) [from Ventisette Stars]