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theartofdreaming1 · 3 years

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Katniss, bravely stepping inbetween Gale and Thread (and his whip) - she’s so courageous and protective, she deserves the world 😭

As usual, my thoughts regarding this week’s prompts and (many) random thoughts on chapters 7-9 are below the cut. (Is it just me, or are my notes getting longer and longer with each and every post? I swear, this book is so meaty, we’ll soon reach the point where I have to type out the entire chapter, with my thoughts in the margins)

heart

“Gale is mine. I am his. Anything else in unthinkable.”

I think these words are a result of Katniss being so afraid of losing Gale that she’s kinda overcompensating; their relationship has been strained these past few months and they’d just had a row, separating from each other on bad terms - and the next time she sees him, he’s been whipped so bad that he’s lost consciousness and could be potentially dying from his wounds. Of course she’s so terrified of losing him, that she’s holding on as tightly as she can to him. It’s important to keep in mind how important their relationship is to her and we see that in her preceding thoughts: What a pair we were - fatherless, frightened, but fiercely commited, too, to keeping our families alive. Desperate, yet no longer alone after that day, because we’d found each other. I think of a hundred moments in the woods, lazy afternoons fishing, the day I taught him to swim, that time I twisted my knee and he carried me home. Mutually counting each other, watching each other’s backs, forcing each other to be brave. - Gale was the first person who was her equal, a kindred spirit, her partner. After Katniss had lost both of her parents when her father died and her mother succumbed to her depression - the people who were supposed to care for her and guide her through growing up - she was stuck with the role of sole provider and protector of her family at age eleven. She must have been so lonely all this time until she met this boy who understood what she was going through and they learned from each other and shouldered their burdens together, to take off some of the overwhelming pressure. Of course that relationship, of course Gale is important to her. But also now their relationship has become more fragile, after the Games they are in danger of growing apart - it’s got to be so terrifying to feel like the one proper, mutual relationship you’ve had seems to be slipping through your fingers. With everything that’s going on, her entire life as it is teetering on the razor’s edge (heck, the president himself has been threatening her and her family!), it’s no wonder that Katniss is craving that familiarity and safety that her relationship with Gale used to provide her with. And seeing Gale in this state just has her holding on to him more tightly than ever.

mind

Hmm, no big moment is coming to my mind right now; I think I’m always most impressed by the tiny moments that show how tenacious, resilient and fiercely kind humans can be - like Darius stepping forward to stop Gale’s cruel punishment, Leevy volunteering to tell Hazelle about Gale and promising to stay with the Hawthorne children, Madge bringing the morphling, Katniss pressing Darius’s hand in the Training Center, Twill taking Bonnie with her to flee to D13 and so on.

soul

I believe that Katniss was honestly surprised to learn that Gale had feelings for her; she had categorically shut down the idea of entering a romantic relationship for herself, so I don’t think she’d seriously consider anyone being romantically interested in her in return (that’s not how that works, of course, but I think that’s how she perceived the whole shtick). Their kiss threw her completely for a loop and if anything, she mostly saw it as something that contributed to the deterioration of their previous, easy and comfortable relationship.

Chapter 7

A mockingjay is a creature the Capitol never intended to exist. [...] They hadn’t anticipated its will to live. - In a way, the Capitol continues to make this mistake with the people living in the districts, too - underestimating their will to live (opposed to just surviving)

I look in his [Gale’s] eyes. His temper can’t quite mask the hurt, the sense of betrayal he feels at my engagement to Peeta. This will be my last chance, this meeting today, to not lose Gale forever. - Okay, we don’t know how much Katniss might be (incorrectly) presuming here, but the idea that Gale might feel betrayal because his best friend is being forced into an engagement pisses me off. It’s fine if he’s feeling jealous because she’s being paired off with Peeta when he wishes he could have a shot with her, but how in the world does this even rate as a betrayal?! A) It’s done against her will and B) Just because they’re friends doesn’t mean Katniss owes him anything when we’re talking about romantic feelings... Ugh 😒 Also, it’s quite noteworthy how insecure Katniss feels about their relationship - she’s constantly worried Gale will drop her and their friendship (waiting for Gale after the camera teams left after winning the Games: I’d begun to think that he’d given up on me in the weeks that had passed.- Ch. 2) and it doesn’t help that she’s been through that extreme, traumatic experience without him and they haven’t had much opportunity to spend a lot of time with each other (with the Victory Tour and Gale having to work so much) and when they do hang out, they don’t seem to really talk much, which doesn’t exactly help...

He [Gale] tosses the gloves on my lap. “Here. I don’t want your fiancé’s old gloves.” “He’s not my fiancé. That’s just part of the act. And these aren’t his gloves. They were Cinna’s,” I say. “Give them back, then, he says. - Gale can be so petty sometimes 🙄

While I talk, [...] [Gale] occupies himself with turning the food in the leather bag into a meal for us. Toasting bread and cheese, coring apples, placing chestnuts in the fire to roast. I watch his hands, his beautiful, capable fingers. Scarred, as mine were before the Captiol erased all marks from my skin, but strong and deft. [...] Hands I trust. - Oh boy, this moment really shows how these two are at cross purposes right now - Gale’s prepping the food as you would for a toasting (romantic connotation), while Katniss is oberserving his hands, thinking how their hands used to match (not anymore!) and basically wishing herself back into the time before the Games, when things were ‘simpler’/more clearly defined (and also platonic!); there is nothing romantic from her P.O.V. - it’s all about the friendship and trust

[Gale] steps in and I feel myself lifted off the ground. The room spins, and I have to lock my arms around Gale’s neck to brace myself. He’s laughing, happy. “Hey!” I protest, but I’m laughing, too. Gale sets me down but doesn’t release his hold on me. “Okay, let’s run away.” [...] “You’re sure?” I say. [...] “I’m sure. I’m completely, entirely, one hundred percent sure.” - Yeah, and I’m sure you’re not going to change your opinion in the next five minutes, Gale... In his defense, Gale didn’t know all the details, so in that regard it’s totally valid that he might decide to change his mind after having more input... It’s just that Katniss specifically asks him whether he’s sure and his reply is so full of conviction (100% sure!), only for him to do a complete 180 just a couple of minutes later; Gale’s very hot and cold, which makes for such a harsh contrast when compared to Peeta’s more measured reaction later in the chapter

He tilts his forehead down to rest against mine and pulls me closer. [...] I don’t try to move away. Why should I, anyway? His voice drops to a whisper. “I love you.” That’s why. - Oh man, Katniss just can’t catch a break 😞 Really not wise of Gale to drop the L-bomb here (after, what? a kiss they never talked about and little else... their communication is truly abysmal and it’s really damaging to their relationship, hurting the both of them)

“Gale, I can’t think about anyone that way now. All I can think about, every day, is how afraid I am. And there doesn’t seem to be room for anything else. If we could get somewhere safe, maybe I could be different. I don’t know.” I can see him swallowing his disappointment. “So, we’ll go. We’ll find out.” - I mean, honestly, I totally understand where Katniss is coming from - she doesn’t need a romantic interest, she needs a partner, which is why she’s been so eager to talk to her hunting partner, someone she’s used to rely on for survival and now he’s also confounding their relationship by introducing that romance-angle (as if it wasn’t bad enough that her relationship with Peeta got kind of messed up when that same angle was forced upon them prematurely)... Also, telling how Katniss thinks she’d have to be different to maybe even consider a romantic relationship with Gale - Katniss as she is right now just can’t see herself wanting to be with Gale romantically; it would require a change... I’ve got to give Gale credit for still going along with it, and trying to push past his disappointment, though

“My [Gale’s] mother is going to take some convincing.” [...] “Mine, too. I’ll just have to make her see reason. Take her for a long walk. Make sure she understands we won’t survive the alternative.” “She’ll understand. I watched a lot of the Games with her and Prim. She won’t say no to you,” says Gale. - That’s interesting, I wonder what exactly Gale means by that? That Mrs. Everdeen won’t say no to Katniss because she feels guilty that Katniss had to go through the Games or because watching her daughter compete in the Games really made her realize how messed up Panem is? Or that she’s more inclined to trust Katniss’s judgement after everything that has happened?

“Haymitch will be the real challenge.” “Haymitch?” Gale abandons the chestnuts. “You’re asking him to come with us?” “I have to, Gale. I can’t leave him and Peeta because they’d-” His scowl cuts me off. “What?” “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how large our party was,” he snaps at me. - Gale doesn’t seem to have realized how close and important Peeta and Haymitch have become to Katniss... maybe because they never properly talked about this aspect of Katniss’s life (I swear, their shoddy communication must account for at least half of the damage their relationship has taken in these past few months alone)

“What if he [Peeta] decides to stay?” he [Gale] asks. I try to sound indifferent, but my voice cracks. “Then he stays.” “You’d leave him behind?” Gale asks. “To save Prim and my mother, yes,” I answer. “I mean, no! I’ll get him to come.” “And me, would you leave me?” Gale’s expression is rock hard now. - Boy, oh boy! I think Gale knows (like Peeta) that Katniss could never leave behind the people she cares about; then, he’s kind of gauging whether Peeta has already received the Katniss Everdeen Stamp of ‘Caring’ - and, as it turns out, he has! And then Gale ends up making it into a bit of competition by asking her whether she would leave him behind (or, alternately, her turning him down has him confused about the depth of their relationship, I dunno); not fun

“There’s an uprising in Eight?” he [Gale] says in a hushed voice. I try to backpedal. To defuse him, as I tried to defuse the districts. - Katniss is going to be about as successful as she’d been at defusing the districts, too - But here we have another example of Katniss trying to rein in Gale’s temper because she’s afraid he’s going to get himself in trouble (like when she decided not to tell him about Snow’s visit to her house because she was worried what he’d do with that information)... It’s really not great that she feels the need to censor herself so he won’t do something dangerous... Katniss knows first-hand how badly impulsive actions and decisions can be received in the Capitol - and she never even meant for a rebellion to happen!

“And it’s my fault, Gale. Because of what I did in the arena. If I had just killed myself with those berries, none of this would’ve happened. Peeta could have come home and lived, and everyone else would have been safe. too.” “Safe to do what?” he says in a gentler tone. “Starve? Work like slaves? Send their kids to the reaping? You haven’t hurt people - you’ve given them an opportunity. They just have to be brave enough to take it. - Katniss is taking all the responsibility upon herself again... Gale is right to point out that she was merely a catalyst, not the cause for the rebellion - the cause are the awful living conditions of the people in the districts

“Stop it! You don’t know what you’re saying. The Peacekeepers outside of Twelve, they’re not like Darius, or even Cray! The lives of district people - they mean less than nothing to them!” I say. “That’s why we have to join the fight!” he answers harshly. “No! we have to leave here before they kill us and a lot of other people, too!” [...] “You leave, then, I’d never go in a million years.” [...] “What about your family?” “What about the other families, Katniss? The ones who can’t run away?” - This discourse is so painful because they are both right - Katniss has seen more of the districts and how things are handled beyond the (relatively tame) confines of D12 and it’s fair that she wants to know that the people she cares about are safe from harm; Gale, of course, has a point commenting that not everyone has that opportunity and the only way to have a long-lasting, wide-spread improvement of their conditions is through rebelling against their oppressor - but that will inevitably come along with sacrifices and collateral damage and it’s easy to say that it will be worth it in the long run, but when those who are hurt/dead could end up being your loved ones, it’s definitely easier said than done

He throws Cinna’s gloves at my feet. “I changed my mind. I don’t want anything they made in the Capitol.” And he’s gone. I look down at the gloves. Anything they made in the Capitol? Was that directed at me? Does he think I am now just another product of the Capitol and therefore something untouchable? The unfairness of it all fills me with rage. But it’s mixed up with fear over what kind of crazy thing he might do next. - Gale getting rid of Cinna’s gloves just because they are from the Capitol is a prime example of this “us vs. them” mindset that he will be (worringly) fast to adopt - of course, perceiving the opposite side as “other” will make it easier to fight against them; however, it’s all too easy to lose sight of your opponent’s humanity when you think like that (think of how Gale has a hard time understanding Katniss’s distress upon seeing her prep team being treated so terribly/inhumanely in D13); Katniss feeling upset that Gale might perceive her as a product of the Capitol instead of its victim is understandable (and isn’t that exactly what the inhabitants of D13 are going to think of Peeta in MJ?) - and yet, she is still worried Gale could get himself into trouble with his impulsivity; she’s a good bean

”Going to town?” I ask. “Yes. I’m supposed to eat dinner with my family,” he [Peeta] says. - I’m tripping over the word ‘supposed’ here - it doesn’t sound like Peeta’s looking forward to hanging out with his fam, although it can’t be that often, since they’ve been away on Victory Tour and he is living alone (maybe the end of the chapter will give us another hint why that is 😒😒)... I can’t help but wonder whether these family dinners are mainly for public perception (in that case... it really is no wonder Peeta is so good at playing the cameras - poor guy had to fool the outside world his entire life) or because they are the only chance for Peeta to hang out with any of the members of his family he might actually want to spend some time with

“Peeta, if I asked you to run away from the district with me, would you?” Peeta takes my arm, bringing me to a stop. He doesn’t need to check my face to see if I’m serious. “Depends on why you’re asking.” President Snow wasn’t convinced by me. There’s an uprising in District Eight. We have to get out,” I say. “By ‘we’ do you mean just you and me? No. Who else would be going?” he asks. - Peeta doesn’t just blindly agree to Katniss’s proposal; he needs to know what’s going on first (he has been burnt before - no more secrets!) - and it’s a testament to how well he knows her that as soon as he’s asking whether she meant just the two of them, he corrects himself because knows that Katniss would never leave the ones she cares about behind

“What about Gale?” he says. “I don’t know. He might have other plans,” I say. Peeta shakes his head and gives me rueful smile. “I bet he does. Sure, Katniss, I’ll go.” I feel a slight twinge of hope. “You will?” “Yeah. But I don’t think for a minute you will,” he says. [...] “Then you don’t know me. Be ready. It could be any time.” - Telling how Peeta immediately agrees to the plan once he gathers that Gale won’t come - he knows that Katniss cares about Gale and could never leave him behind, ergo she’d never actually leave under these circumstances - he knows her so well. Also, Katniss’s reaction is like that of a petulant child, it’s kind of funny 😄

“Katniss, hold up.” [...] “I really will go, if you want me to. I just think we better talk it through with Haymitch. Make sure we won’t be making things worse for everyone.” - Ultimately, Peeta would follow Katniss to the ends of the earth - doesn’t mean that he can’t throw in a sensible suggestion in there as well 😉 (Also, in the next chapter we will see how Katniss, Gale, and Peeta might be a little too inexperienced/naive to be able to form accurate expectations of what is to come - Haymitch and his generation have a little more experience in that regard)

He raises his head. “What’s that?” [...] I haven’t noticed the strange noise coming from the square. A whistling, the sound of an impact, the intake of breath from a crowd. “Come on,” Peeta says, his face suddenly hard. I don’t know why. I can’t place the sound, even guess at the situation. But it means something bad to him. - Why does my sweet boy know what a whipping sounds like, Suzanne, huh?! Care to explain that? 😭

Peeta steps up on a crate against the wall of the sweetshop and offers me a hand while he scans the square. I’m halfway up when he suddenly blocks my way. “Get down. Get out of here!” He’s whispering, but his voice is harsh with insistence. - Peeta was offering his hand to help Katniss up the crate because they are a team (and he’s a gentleman)! It’s only when he recognizes who is receiving those lashes and realizes that Katniss will lose her shit once she knows, which could make the current situation even worse, that he urges her to leave, and he is not the only one to think that: - Voices hiss. “Get out of here, girl.” “Only make it worse.” What do you want to do? Get him killed?”

Chapter 8

It’s too late to stop the arm from descending, and I instinctively know I won’t have the power to block it. Instead I throw myself directly between the whip and Gale. I’ve flung out my arms to protext as much of his broken body as possible, so there’s nothing to deflect the lash. I take the full force of it across the left side of my face. - Katniss is so selfless; she knows that it’s either Gale getting hit again or a lash to her own face and she chooses the latter

“Hold it!” a voice barks. Haymitch appears and trips over a Peacekeeper lying on the ground. It’s Darius. [...] He’s knocked out but still breathing. What happened? Did he try to come to Gale’s aid before I got here? - Haymitch sure appeared quickly - I can easily imagine Peeta taking off immediately to get him (or send someone to bring him to the square) once he knew Katniss couldn’t be stopped; but if Haymitch had been at his house in Victor’s Village, there is no way he’d have made that quickly to the square... maybe he was already at the Hob and had gotten wind of the whole situation? Also, poor Darius! Wearing a uniform/being in some sort of position of power is no guarantee you won’t get punished as soon as you show the tiniest glimpse of compassion - in a place like Panem, nobody is safe from the caprice of the people in charge

I see a flicker of recognition in the eyes of the man with the whip. [...] it wouldn’t be easy to identify me as the victor of the last Hunger Games. Especially with half my face swelling up. But Haymitch has been showing up on television for years, and he’d be difficult to forget. - Getting Haymitch truly was the smartest move to make (which is why I’m pretty sure it was a move on Peeta’s part - he’d know how to use reminders of ‘appearances’ to ensure a punishment wouldn’t go ‘too far’, y’know 😢). But also - Thread must have lived under a flipping rock, to not being able to recognizes Katniss (her face must have been plastered all over the place during the Victory Tour, which just had concluded recently) - or he was just too in the heat of the moment, with someone opposing him, bleugh 😒

“He [Gale] was poaching. What business is it of hers, anyway?” says the man. “He’s her cousin.” Peeta’s got my other arm now, but gently. “And she’s my fiancée. So if you want to get to him, expect to go through both of us.” - I love how Peeta’s just laying it down as it is; his phrasing just sounds so factual, rather than provocative (although it is, of course); he really has a way with words - Maybe we’re it. The only three people in the district who could make a stand like this. Although it’s sure to be temporary. There will be repercussions. - Haymitch, Peeta, and Katniss working together as a team again! Also, a good example of the effect people with public influence can have

One [Peacekeeper], a woman named Purnia who eats regularly at Greasy Sae’s, steps forward stiffly. “I believe, for a first offense, the required number of lashes has been dispensed, sir. Unless your sentence is death, which we would carry out by firing squad.” “Is that the standard protocol here?” asks the Head Peacekeeper. “Yes, sir,” Purnia says, and several others nod in agreement. I’m sure none of them actually know because, in the Hob, the standard protocol for someone showing up with a wild turkey is for everybody to bid on the drumsticks. - It’s kinda nice to see the local Peacekeepers supporting Purnia’s claim to get this display to stop - this is the only way out of this situation where Thread’s authority is not openly challenged (and we know Thread doesn’t take well to having his authority challenged - see Darius)

There’s no stretcher, but the old woman at the clothing stall sells us the board that serves as her countertop. “Just don’t tell where you got it,” she says, packing up the rest of her goods quickly. Most of the square has emptied, fear getting the better of compassion. But after what happened, I can’t blame anyone. - It’s sad how that air of intimidation makes people want to mask their acts of compassion (and also says a lot about the precariousness of the existing living situations if that old lady is still selling that board - I’d never even consider exchanging money for that, but that’s probably my privileged situation showing here; Katniss brings up the theme of fear vs compassion - very fitting, since it seems to be her driving force (although, generally, her compassion wins out over her fear) and despite her assertion that fear appears to be getting the better of compassion we see a good amount of people reaching out to help, such as the following example:

Leevy, a girl who lives a few houses down from mine in the Seam, takes my arm. My mother kept her little brother alive last year when he caught the measles. “Need help getting back?” Her gray eyes are scared but determined. - The subtle suggestion here that Leevy might be further motivated to help out because Katniss’s mom helped her little brother is also an excellent example of how kindness breeds kindness

“Get some snow on that,” Haymitch orders over his shoulder. I scoop up a handful of snow and press it against my cheek, numbing a bit of the pain. - This moment reminded me of Peeta immediately reaching for some ice from that fruit tureen after Haymitch hit him on their way to the Games in THG (Ch. 4) - their different immediate reactions to getting hit in the face could simply be due to the fact that Katniss is a little too preoccupied worrying about Gale to think about her injury, of course, but I feel like you could also interpret them as examples for how much experience Katniss and Peeta have with being hit in the face, respectively...

Gale must have gone to Cray’s house, as he’s done a hundred times, knowing Cray pays well for a wild turkey. Instead he found the new Head Peacekeeper, a man they heard someone call Romulus Thread. No one knows what happened to Cray. He was buying white liquor in the Hob just this morning [...] but now he’s nowhere to be found. - As I’ve already mentioned regarding Darius, inhabiting some position of power does not guarantee you any safety in Panem (there is always someone more powerful who will treat their inferiors like garbage, if they feel like it)

By the time I showed up, he [Gale]’d been lashed at least forty times. He passed out around thirty. - Jesus 😨 poor Gale!

“What about Darius?” Peeta asks.“ After about twenty lashes, he stepped in, saying that was enough. Only he didn’t do it smart and official, like Purnia did. He grabbed Thread’s arm and Thread hit him in the head with the butt of the whip. Nothing good waiting for him,” says Bristel. - It’s so messed up how it is not enough to have someone who’d stand up and do something about a horrible situation - they have to do it the right way, or else they’re toast; there really shouldn’t have to be a smart way of doing the right thing

Snow begins, thick and wet, making visibility even more difficult. - (President) Snow is coming down hard on them, making it hard to see what’s up ahead

Ever so gently, she [Mrs. Everdeen] begins to clean the mutilated flesh on Gale’s back. I feel sick to the stomach, useless, the remaining snow dripping from my glove into a puddle on the floor. Peeta puts me in a chair and holds a cloth filled with fresh snow to my cheek. - Although she’s quite squeamish, Katniss stays as Gale gets treated (the force that holds the loved ones of the hurt/dying, just like when Peeta was being treated after their Games); meanwhile, Peeta is taking care of Katniss - there is so much care + love to be found in this moment

My mother has to save the strongest [painkillers] for the worst pain, but what is the worst pain? To me, it’s always the pain that is present. If I were in charge, those painkillers would be gone in a day because I have so little ability to watch suffering. - Honestly, same; I can’t stomach seeing other people suffer without feeling overwhelmed and feeling like crying... I don’t know how professionals do it

“Just give him the medicine!” I scream at her. [...] “Take her out,” says my mother. Haymitch and Peeta literally carry me from the room while I shout obscenities at her. They pin me down on a bed in one of the extra bedrooms until I stop fighting. - Oof. Poor Katniss! But yeah, it was the best call to remove her from the situation, Mrs. E. had to focus on what she was doing... Also, Haymitch and Peeta are the ones to get Katniss out of there and stay with her - these three take care of each other!

After a while, my mother comes in and treats my face. Then she holds my hand, stroking my arm, while Haymitch fills her in on what happened with Gale. “So it’s starting again?” she says. “Like before?” - Katniss’s mom has become a much more active and soothing presence in this book, I like it... Also, what does “again” mean? Does this imply there has been an attempted uprising in D12 that needed to be squashed before?

Cray would have been disliked, anyway, because of the uniform he wore, but it was his habit of luring starving young women into his bed for money that made him an object of loathing in the district. In really bad times, the hungriest would gather at his door at nightfall, vying for the chance to earn a few coins to feed their families by selling their bodies. Had I been older when my father died, I might have been among them. - Horrifying and absolutely disgusting 🤢 Those poor women! How desperate they must have been!

... when the doorbell rings, I shoot straight out of bed. [...] “They [the peacekeepers] can’t have him,” I say. “Might be you they’re after,” Haymitch reminds me. “Or you,” I say. “Not my house,” Haymitch points out. “But I’ll get the door.” “No, I’ll get it,” says my mother quietly. - Again, Mrs. Everdeen is taking the initiative! She was so watered down in the movies

[Madge] holds out a small, damp cardboard box to me. “Use these for your friend,” she says. I take off the lid of the box, revealing half a dozen vials of clear liquid. [...] “What is that stuff?” asks Peeta. “It’s from the Capitol. It’s called morphling,” my mother answers. “I didn’t even know Madge knew Gale,” says Peeta. “We used to sell her strawberries,” I say almost angrily. What am I angry about, though? Not that she has brought the medicine, surely. “She must have quite a taste for them,” says Haymitch. That’s what nettles me. It’s the implication that there’s something going on between Gale and Madge. And I don’t like it. “She’s my friend” is all I say. - I mean, Katniss could be mad because A) Gale had literally just told her he loved her a few hours ago and if there was something (reciprocated) going on between Gale and Madge, that would have been pretty shitty for both girls involved and also B) she is friends with both of them and it would be hurtful to learn that two of your closest friends had been seeing each other without telling you anything about it... also, she’s super upset over Gale getting so seriously hurt just after they’d had an argument, her feelings are all over the place

... I’m selfish. I’m a coward. I’m the kind of girl, who, when she might actually be of use, would run to stay alive and leave those who couldn’t follow to suffer and die. This is the girl Gale met in the woods today. No wonder I won the Games. No decent person ever does. You saved Peeta, I think weakly. But now I question even that. I knew good and well that my life back in District 12 would be unlivable if I let that boy die. - Yes, Katniss, you knew that your life back in D12 would have been unlivable if he died - but not because you feared that people would shun you; it was because you “couldn’t lose the boy with the bread” and because “if he dies, I’ll never go home, not really”... This is an excellent example of how distorted your memories can get when you are in a bad headspace at present

The berries. I realize the answer to who I am lies in that handful poisonous fruit. If I held them out to save Peeta because I knew I would be shunned if I came back without him, then I am despicable. If I held them out because I loved him, I am still self-centered, although forgivable. But if I held them out to defy the Capitol, I am someone of worth. - Katniss, you don’t have to be planning to overthrow a corrupt and cruel government to be someone of worth! You’re someone of worth just by being yourself! - The trouble is, I don’t know exactly what was going on inside me at that moment. - Frankly, very rarely are our motivations clearly defined by a single factor - or my professor would not have been able to teach an entire semester-long course on motivation psychology😉)

Chapter 9

Gale’s dead to the world, but his fingers are locked around mine. I smell fresh bread and turn my stiff neck to find Peeta looking down at me with such a sad expression. I get the sense that he’s been watching us awhile. “Go on up to bed, Katniss. I’ll look after him now,” he says. - Peeta! Must have been hard for him to see Katniss like this (and the underlying strength of Katniss and Gale’s relationship, when his relationship with Katniss is still not all that solidified), and yet he’s being such a good bean about it 😭

I give a strangled cry and wake with a start, sweating and shivering at once. Cradling my damaged cheek in my hand, I remind myself that it was not Clove but Thread who gave me this wound. I wish that Peeta were here to hold me, until I remember I’m not supposed to wish that anymore. I have chosen Gale and the rebellion, and a future with Peeta is the Capitol’s design, not mine. - Katniss, gurl... Maybe your instinctive desire to receive comfort from Peeta is trying to tell you something??!? Also, Katniss is forcing this strange dichotomous association of Gale = rebellion and Peeta = Capitol, when in just a bit, she’s clearly connecting Peeta to the rebellion as well (aside from the fact that Peeta was basically the first person to suggest to her that maybe a rebellion was necessary... just saying)

Fighting the Capitol assures their swift retaliation. I must accept that at any moment I can be arrested. [...] There might be torture. Mutliation. A bullet through the skull in the town square [...] I imagine these things and I’m terrified, but let’s face it: They’ve been lurking in the back of my brain, anyway. [...] I’m already a target. - Oh geez! Despite admitting that she’s terrified of what the Capitol is capable fo doing to her, Katniss is still pretty composed naming the possible horrors in store for her, which is just a heartbreaking reminder of how many terrible things she has already had to endure.🙁

Now comes the harder part. I have to face the fact that my family and friends might share this fate. Prim. I need only to think of Prim and all my resolve disintegrates. It’s my job to protect her. [...] I can’t let the Capitol hurt Prim. - 😭😭😭 Katniss has reached a point where she can put her own need for survival/physical intactness aside, but the thought of something awful happening to Prim stops her short (it’s so strange to think that, in a twisted way, it wasn’t the Capitol who’d ended up inflicting the final harm upon Prim...)

And then it hit’s me. They already have. They have killed her father in those wretched mines. They have sat by as she almost starved to death. [...] She has been hurt far worse than I had at the age of twelve. And even that pales in comparison with Rue’s life. [...] Prim... Rue... aren’t they the very reason I have to try to fight? Because what has been done to them is so wrong, so beyond justification, so evil that there is no choice? Because no one has the right to treat them as they have been treated? Yes. This is the thing to remember when fear threatens to swallow me up. What I am about to do, whatever any of us are forced to endure, it is for them. - All these things are very true and it’s also very fitting that the main motivation for Katniss would be to ensure a better future for the children of Panem (and to avenge the evils done to the people close to her heart... while Katniss of course can see the abstract bigger picture/reason for the rebellion, she always operates best when it comes to specific people/circumstances she has a deep, personal connection with)... But also: all these things apply to you, too, Katniss! Despite your tendency to feel responsible for everything and everyone, you’re still a child that had to grow up way too fast and had to endure way too much!

We need someone to direct us and reassure us this is possible. And I don’t think I’m that person. I may have been a catalyst for rebellion, but a leader should be someone with conviction, and I’m barely a convert myself. Someone with unflinching courage, and I’m still working hard at finding mine. Someone with clear and persuasive words, and I’m so easily tongue-tied. Words. I think of words and I think of Peeta. - Katniss’s idea of a great leader for the rebellion is Peeta - interesting, isn’t it (she could have considered Gale, but no)? She makes a good point, though: it helps when a leader has plenty of charisma, and our boy has that in spades; he’s got a good set of morals, is not above joining in on the action/risking his own neck when the need arises and is very genuine and purposeful with his words and actions, which is inspiring... I think Katniss is severely underselling how courageous she is, though

He could move a crowd to action, I bet, if he chose to. Would find the things to say. But I’m sure the idea has never crossed his mind. - Why would you assume that, Katniss? Peeta’s literally the one to suggest to you that trying to placate the district might not be the right thing to do... Peeta’s not someone who’d stir up trouble just for the sake of stirring up trouble, sure; he’s much more deliberate about doing things the ‘right’ way, but he’s not generally opposed to challenging authorities (he’s literally the one to openly gift some of your winnings to another district!)

She knows what she’s doing, my mother. I feel a pang of remorse about yesterday, the awful things I yelled at her as Peeta and Haymitch dragged me from the kitchen. “I’m sorry. About screaming at you yesterday.” - It’s so sweet how Katniss feels sorry for yelling at her mom and apologizes to her; their relationship really has improved so much in this book - “I’ve heard worse,” she says. “You’ve seen how people are, when someone they love is in pain.” Someone they love. [...] Of course, I love Gale. But what kind of love does she mean? What do I mean when I say I love Gale? I don’t know. I did kiss him last night, in a moment when my emotions were running so high. But i’m sure he doesn’t remember it. Does he? I hope not. - Katniss is struggling to figure out in what way she loves Gale... She definitely doesn’t want him to remember their kiss because she knows it wouldn’t be fair to give him the hope that she might be able to return his romantic feelings when she is still in the dark about her own

... and I can’t really think about kissing when I’ve got a rebellion to incite. I give my head a little shake to clear it. “Where’s Peeta?” I say. - Lol, goes on to immediately mention the guy she’s been kissing these past few weeks (see, with Peeta you could actually have both: kissing and rebellion, Katniss - he’s the perfect man, isn’t he? 😉😋)

“He went home when he heard you stirring. Didn’t want to leave his house unattended during the storm,” says my mother. - Yeah, I don’t think Peeta left because of his house; I’m pretty sure he needed some time to himself after seeing Katniss and Gale this morning - he is the type of person who needs to be alone to work through his feelings when he’s feeling upset - “Did he get back all right?” [...] “Why don’t you give him a call and check?” she says. I go into the study, a room I’ve pretty much avoided since my meeting with President Snow, and dial Peeta’s number. After a few rings he answers. “Hey. I just wanted to make sure you got home,” I say. “Katniss. I live three houses away from you,” he says. “I know, but with the weather and all,” I say. “Well, I’m fine. Thank you for checking.” There’s a long pause. “How’s Gale?” - Aww, Katniss is worried about Peeta and gives him a call, although she hates being in the study 😊 Also, her calling him must have been at least of some reassurance to Peeta that she genuinely cares about him, in some way (though, he’s still clearly busy processing her relationship with Gale, since he’s asking about him as if he hadn’t seen that dude just a couple of minutes prior)

“Have you seen Haymitch today?” “I checked in on him. Dead drunk. But I built up his fire and left him some bread,” he says. “I wanted to talk to - to both of you.” I don’t dare add more, here on my phone, which is surely tapped. - Despite everything, Peeta still made sure to look after Haymitch! And I know, there is also the issue of their houses themselves potentially being bugged, but I couldn’t help imagining how they could easily avoid the whole phone-tapping thing simply by using a tin can telephone (they do live pretty close to each other, after all) 😂

“You don’t even have a phone,” I say. “Effie had that fixed,” he [Haymitch] says. “Do you know she asked me if I’d like to give you away? I told her the sooner the better.” “Haymitch.” I can hear the pleading creeping into my voice. “Katniss.” He mimics my tone. “It won’t work.” - Okay, but Haymitch mimicking Katniss’s tone reminds me so much of when Peeta mimicked her tone towards the end of their Games, when she was trying to persuade him to climb into a tree as a lookout while he was insistent she’d show him some plants to gather; these three, I swear! 😂 On a sad note, Haymitch is talking from experience here when he’s advising Katniss not to challenge the Capitol 🥺😢

Some streets away from the square, I see a blaze flare up. None of us has to say it. That can only be the Hob going up in smoke. I think of Greasy Sae, Ripper, all my friends who make their livings there. - Katniss considers the people from the Hob her friends - honestly, even if the Hawthornes, Everdeens, Peeta and Haymitch all had agreed to leave D12, I don’t think Katniss would have been able to go through with it - she cares too much about the people in D12 to have been able to leave them to their fate

“Well, I better go see how much rubbing alcohol the apothecary can spare.” He [Haymitch] trudges off across the square and I look at Peeta. “What’s he want that for?” Then I realize the answer. “We can’t let him drink it. He’ll kill himself, or at the very least go blind. I’ve got some white liquor put away at home.” “Me, too. Maybe that will hold him until Ripper finds a way to be back in business,” says Peeta. - Another instance of Katniss and Peeta being on the same wavelength, having taken precautions to help out Haymitch so he doesn’t have to go cold turkey again

We find Hazelle in her house, nursing a very sick Posy. I recognize the measles spots. “I couldn’t leave her,” she says. “I knew Gale’d be in the best possible hands.” - The second mention of someone having contracted the measles in D12 - Why the heck does the Capitol withhold measles vaccination from the people in the districts?! They’re inflicting unnecessary damage onto the very people they want to exploit... But I guess cruelty isn’t always about playing it smart and logical...

When we’re outside, I turn to Peeta. “You go on back. I want to walk by the Hob.” “I’ll go with you,” he says. “No. I’ve dragged you into enough trouble,” I tell him. “And avoiding a stroll by the Hob... that’s going to fix things for me?” He smiles and takes my hand. - They are a team, they stick together (and they are constantly holding hands, always physically linked to each other)😩💕 Also, Peeta pointing out the irrationality of Katniss’s train of thought to calm her down and stay with her reminds me of how he’s going to use logical reasoning to calm her down after the jabberjays in the Quarter Quell arena

We go back to the square. I buy some cakes from Peeta’s father while they exchange small talk about the weather. No one mentions the ugly tools of torture just yards from the front door. The last thing I notice as we leave the square is that I do not recognize even one of the Peacekeepers’ faces. - How weird is it that Peeta and his dad just talk about the weather?! Is this supposed to illustrate how in the Mellark family they just ignored the ugliness going on in their lives *cough cough* the abuse *cough cough* and just pretended that everything was fine, on a very superficial level? Also, it makes perfect sense that the Peacekeepers have been exchanged; the more time we spend with people, the more likely we are to like them - that won’t do if you want to have a ruthless authoritarian police force in the districts

As the days pass, things go from bad to worse. The mines stay shut for two weeks, and by that time half of District 12 is starving. The number of kids signing up for tesserae soars, but they often don’t receive their grain. Food shortages begin, and even those with money come away from stores empty-handed. [...] The eagerly awaited food promised for Parcel Day arrives spoiled and defiled by rodents. - This is just so awful and despicable 😞 Life in the districts was already horrible but now the government does not even honor the extortionary rules they themselves have set up! I can’t help but wonder if the lack of food could be traced back to rebellions in the food supplying districts and, to keep this from the inhabitants of the Capitol, the reduced amount of good food was (obviously) kept for the Capitolites, so that the bad food had to be sent to the districts, anyway... It just seems like such a breach of ‘honor’/etiquette on the Capitol’s part, I dunno... Or maybe Snow was just desperate to use any means necessary to stamp out any potential rebellions in the districts that he still had some control over...

Gale goes home with no more talk of rebellion between us. But I can’t help thinking that everything he sees will only strengthen his resolve to fight back. [...] Rory has signed up for tesserae, something Gale can’t even speak about - Poor, Gale! Poor Hawthornes :(

My fingers have all but decided to release the arrow when I see the object in the glove. It’s a small white circle of flat bread. More of a cracker, really. Gray and soggy around the edges. But an image is clearly stamped in the center of it. It’s my mockingjay. - It is so very telling that the true symbol of the rebellion combines something symbolic of Katniss (which also contains a nod to Rue) and something symbolic of Peeta (the bread/cracker!) The people in the districts have rightfully recognized the both of them as symbol of the rebellion; they have a truer vision of the matter than the more artifically/forcefully constructed symbol of rebellion that D13 /Coin will push - we will also see that when the people in D13 will view Peeta as a traitor, while the rebels Katniss will visit in D8 instead ask her about Peeta and assure her that they know he was speaking under duress

#thgagain #thg #katniss everdeen #hunger games #thg meta #peeta mellark #haymitch abernathy #gale hawthorne #my sketches and drawings #thg fanart #catching fire

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miraculouscontent · 3 years

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Didn’t Need Burrow (July 13th-July 19th)

Anonymous asked:

Didn't Need Burrow: No matter how badly Alya going behind Marinette's back to let Nino know that she's still Rena blows up in the heroes' faces, the series will act as though the REAL lesson is that Ladybug should have trusted Chat Noir with HER secret identity.

Which is going to be so “hilarious” when Marinette now has confirmed trauma from “Chat Blanc.”

emikogale asked:

I don't need a burrow to know that similar to Kagami, Luka will do a 180 and declare Marinette and Adrien are "ZOMG! Made for each other!"

Bonus if the episode itself showcases the typical reasons why the love square is awful.

Anonymous asked:

DNB to know Maribug will start to have feelings for Chat after his big blow up this season (AND/OR) the big reveal

Bonus: Adrichat starts having feelings for Marinette after the reveal (kinda already confirmed in ChatBlanc ik but I mean it happens in the canon timeline too)

Ah, the eventual “joy” of Marinette falling for the guy she’s constantly picking up the slack of. :|

neyla9 asked:

DNB: At some point, we're gonna get an It's a Wonderful Life-style episode, showing Marinette or Adrien a timeline where they didn't exist Hawk Moth won or got more miraculouses and everything is awful; if it focuses on Marinette, everyone in this alternate timeline will blame and shame her for not being there, telling her it's all her fault this happened. If it focuses on Adrien, everyone will coddle and love him and talk about what a shame it is that they were never able to meet him before. Bonus points if Marinette/Adrien meet the Chat Noir/Ladybug of this timeline, and it is just the exact same thing: Chat Noir being angry at Marinette for not being there, and Ladybug stroking Adrien's ego about how funny and amazing he is, and it's no wonder she failed to defeat Hawk Moth when she didn't have him.

Honestly, just the episode being “It’s a Wonderful Life” style in general is a red flag regardless of what they do.

If they do one where everyone’s actually better off, it’ll be in specific areas to be some sort of lesson on how Marinette isn’t 100% perfect and she needs to strive to be better. If they do one where everyone’s worse off, it’ll be a lesson on how Marinette needs to solve everyone’s problems and squeeze herself dry.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: Alya will ultimately be PRAISED for lying to Marinette about the Nino situation and/or other matters, because Mari is Always Wrong. Even if her fears about the potential consequences of Nino Knowing prove 100% justified, the fallout is blamed 100% on HER, while Alya is absolved of all blame and told her judgment was sounder and that she was Right to not listen to Marinette.

The thing that terrifies me most about this one is the fact that they would clearly go for this idea that Marinette has been working herself into a panic over “nothing” despite the fact that MARINETTE HAS BEEN TAUGHT THESE RULES, SHE DIDN’T MAKE THEM UP.

It’ll basically be like Alya brushing her off in “The Puppeteer 2” (with the whole “nooo, I didn’t tell him anything... and even if I did--ugh, it doesn’t matter!”) but worse.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: Marinette renounces the Miracle Box and passes it on to Alya, nobly forfeiting all her Miraculous-related memories in the process. Alya promptly makes her Ladybug again. This does NOT restore her memories, but is used as an easy excuse for her to make more mistakes/suffer for her inexperience. Alya, Adrien, Tikki and others angst over her 'selfish decision' while Mari is expected to just keep trucking along, accepting all the blame and responsibility heaped upon her shoulders.

Honestly, it’ll probably be used as some sort of triumphant thing, like we as an audience aren’t supposed to be happy at her giving up Ladybug so this is supposed to be a good thing that she’s getting it back.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: Love Square gets reversed by Marinette giving up Guardianship to Alya and losing her memories. Alya forces her to be Ladybug again, starting over from scratch, and she starts falling for her 'more experienced' partner. Adrien, meanwhile, resents the reset because he hates that she's forgotten him, that he has to be more responsible (actual responsibility on his part optional), and other self-centered reasons, so he takes it out on her.

How did you make the above one even worse, I’m hurting!!

Anonymous asked:

DNB: The fact that Nino BLATANTLY STALKED ALYA when he suspected her of two-timing him with Chat Noir will be used as justification for Adrien amping up his own behavior and trying to stalk/spy on Ladybug, because iT's NoT fAiIiIiIiR that she's not giving him everything he wants, relationship and all.

God, these two just giving each other “””advice.”””

Anonymous asked:

Didn't Need Burrow: That Lukanette Instagram Scene was meant to push the LS or LukZoe agenda :)

Part of me is just waiting for Marinette to reveal her identity with Luka in consideration of them trying again, but Luka misunderstands in someway due to Adrien being nearby and he tells her all about how he’ll support her with Adrien (bonus if LukZoe has either happened off-screen or is clearly going well) and Marinette is just, “o-oh... yeah, right--”

Because Marinette is always late to everything since she’s living two lives at the same time and doesn’t have room to sort out how she feels at the same speed as everyone else.

Anonymous asked:

Didn't Need Burrow: Chat will get angry about LB refusing a reveal when Rena and Cara know each other's identities. He'll act like he has a right to know and since she's the Guardian now the rules should be different. They have an argument and hello, Chat Blanc 2. Alternatively they will reveal themselves and Marinette will be upset her crush is the same guy who won't take "no" for an answer.

I’ve basically just accepted “Chat should’ve been told first/Chat had a right to know,” and it’s just a matter of how...

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: Finally we will get Ladybug with wings... but this will be due to Wings Power-Up potion. Obviously Chat Noir and Rena Rogue/Furvit will also get this power-up.

If she gets nice things, Chat has to get it too.

(no, I don’t count Charm Bug considering that that’s just them putting her slightly closer to having an outfit as complex as his)

Anonymous asked:

Sort of a theory but putting in as Didn’t Need Burrow: The love square will switch with ladybug starting to feel like Chat Noir is more respectful and helps keep her balanced (she doesn’t know about his emotions so don’t anyone try and pin that on her) and Adrichat will start to like Marinette as she provides him comfort (even if she might not know the full extent). This is all done for the big ladynoir fallout to *drumroll* hurt Maribug in the most possible way!! (This can be manipulated however you like, I just wanted to share my thoughts 💖) ((And to anti-salters who want to call me out for this thought, >;P ))

So basically, Ladybug/Marinette getting closer to their respective interests just to make the hurt for her all the stronger.

Adds up, honestly.

#category: salt #Didn't Need Burrow #other: ask and answer

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morganas-pendragons · 4 years

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cuddling with the 104th | headcanons

i did this with the 501st and apparently it was a favorite, so here’s the 104th version with the alternative reader - mind!healer reader - from wolffe’s fic. healer is a therapist. she knows how to use touch to heal.

mind healer fic - admiral!reader doesn’t exist in here

- every time i do a tag list, no one seems to get notified so i’m going to abstain from it for this one

***

- one of the first things you were taught upon your apprenticeship to the halls of healing was that physical contact was an extremely important thing for recovery

- you didn’t learn what that meant for years

- not until the clone wars started

- it had taken you six visits with hysterical clones who’d come back injured and disfigured from the front lines to realize just how desperate they are for basic things

- basic needs that humans shouldn’t be starved of

- otherwise known as contact

- physical contact, emotional connections, all of it

- kriff those kaminoans for depriving them of their lives

- so when wolffe becomes a regular patient of yours in the halls of healing, you make a conscious effort to begin introducing this into your weekly appointments

- casually brushing his hand

- pressing knees together

- lingering gazes, talks that go on far longer then you intend for them to

- and after khorm, you’re the one that’s called

- the second he sees you, wolffe is launching himself out of his bed and wrapping his whole body around your form

- it’s not because he’s happy to see you

- it’s because you’re his lifeline

- ‘’wolffe, beloved... it’s just me.” you ran your fingers through his hair and coaxed him away from the safety of your shoulder to allow his face to be tended to

- he had simply looked at you, the ghost of a smile quirking his lips upward, and kept his grip on your thighs loose while the medics tended to him

- it’s your relationship with the commander that’s gotten you into this predicament

- boost and sinker absolutely adore you, there’s no doubt in your mind

- talk about overactive children

- wildfire talks to you about the poetry he writes in his spare time

- and warthog loves when you ask him question about anything and everything you can think of

- so one day, out of the blue, you make a visit to the barracks to check on wolffe

- it’s a weekly habit for you to check on your commander

- and he’d be lying if he said it didn’t make him love you even more

- but you don’t tell each other that

- ‘’ah, ner baar’ur’’ the soft voice of wildfire calls out to you from right outside the 104th barracks. it’s the middle of the afternoon. why is it so quiet? ‘’c’mere, i wanna show you something’’

- the younger brother opens the door to show you exactly what you’d been asking yourself for the last couple of years: do clones only get physical contact from each other?

- and kriff, they do

- because who else is going to give it to them?

- the sight in front of you is sickeningly sweet and makes your eyes water because it just looks so.. natural

- like they were born with an overwhelming desire to naturally protect one another even in their sleep

- wolffe and sinker are curled around each other, laying diagonally to one another while warthog and boost are sleeping nestled together in between their older brothers

- warthog has his nose pressed to wolffe’s chest and his hand resting on his arm, leg casually thrown over his own

- ‘’is this normal? is this.. what you had to resort to in order to get physical contact?”

- ‘’we saw alot on our relief mission. it gets hard.. not having anyone but each other.. and we only ever feel safe like this.’’ wildfire gestures to his four brothers. ‘’together’’

- you find yourself leaving the jedi temple less then a week later close to midnight with a stack of weighted blankets in your arm

- it helps your overnight patients, the less stable ones

- you think it’s going to aid you spectacularly in your venture to the 104th barracks

- wildfire is waiting for you when you arrive, whispering his confirmation about the pile of mattresses he’d forced the vod to put together in the middle of the room

- when that door opens and those boys beam at you (except wolffe, he just looks extremely confused until he sees the familiar blankets tucked under your arm) your heart nearly caves in on itself with love

- cause maker, you love them as much as their plo’buir does

- ‘’what are you doing, baar’ur?”

- you tucked that blanket around wolffe’s shoulders and bent down to kiss his temple, allowing your lips to linger far longer then you should’ve

- ‘’a blanket a day keeps the nightmares away’’

- the look you give him reads differently, but all the other brothers know what you’re doing

- this is your way of easing their nightmares

- your way of keeping them safe

- ‘’make room for your favorite’’

- ‘’who said you were my favorite?’’

- ‘’you did, when you were hyped up on painkillers and singing obnoxiously about your adoration for me loud in slurred basic and mando’a when i came in to visit you in the medbay’’

- ‘’aren’t you a mind healer? cause my mind’s gonna need cleansing after all this mushiness.. i need some bleach’’

- ‘’bleach and the force are not the same thing’’

- you curl into wolffes chest, expecting that to be it, that’s the furthest you can touch

- but as Boost settles on your other side and nudges his thigh between your legs and wrapping a loose arm around your waist

- wolffe tucks your head under his chin and whispers ‘'nuhoy pirusti kar'taylir darasuum’’

- it’s so warm. warm and safe and they’re.. they’re safe. they’re at peace

- you allow yourself to be encompassed in the life that radiates from each one of them

- each individual heartbeat, the gratitude that rolls off of them in waves

- the little ways they murmur words in their mother tongue in their sleep

- the way arms will tighten around you when you dare to move, let alone breathe, because it’s built into their dna to protect the innocent

- you palm wolffe’s chest and whisper ‘’sleep well’’ hoping that the force suggestion will be enough to give him peaceful dreams for the night

- when sleep claims you, you swear you feel his lips on your cheek before darkness comes

- when you wake up the next morning, they’re all smiling

- let me tell you something, sleepy and smiling clones are absolutely adorable

- it doesn’t matter if they’re trained killers

- they’re pathetically adorable, especially the wolf pack

- ‘’that’s the best sleep we’ve had in over a year, baar’ur’’ wolffe murmurs against the column of your neck ‘’please come back’’

- you hear the unsaid words there

- ‘’we need you more then you realize’’

- and maybe they do, you’ve never known what it’s like to be needed before

- but you are drawn to broken, desperate people who want to be loved

- and no one deserves it more then the wolf pack

- ‘’tell me i’m your favorite’’

- boost leans in and sleepily nuzzles your neck

- it’s not unprecedented, it’s normal for them to be so hands on, and the action makes laughter bubble in your throat

- ‘’you’re our favorite’’

- and you really are

- and wolffe might really love you

- but clones are terrible liars and he prefers to keep that secret to himself

- it’s as valuable as you are

when the 212th gets wind of another battalion being cuddled at night and sleeping more soundly then they had the entire war, cody locks his cyar’ika in a room and demands to know where he can get a free cuddler

they’ve ordered one. it’s coming.

#The Wolf Pack #The 104th #Star Wars imagines #Star Wars oneshots #The Clones x Reader #Boost x Reader #Sinker x Reader #Commander Wolffe x Reader #Wolffe x Reader

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mst3kproject · 3 years

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Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks

This movie has a real all-star cast as far as us MSTies are concerned. There’s Rossano Brazzi, who was Phineas Prune in The Christmas that Almost Wasn’t; Edmund Purdom, whom we know as Griba from Ator, the Fighting Eagle; and Salvatore Baccaro, the leader of the cavemen in Starcrash. The film itself is absolute, irredeemable trash and I love it like my own garbage child.

We begin out of nowhere with a bunch of peasants beating a caveman to death. What? Where are we? When are we? Who are these people? Why is one of them a cavemen wearing a fur loincloth and the rest are just normal people in pants? Why are they beating him? Did he do something that pissed them off, or do they just hate him because they’re, like, anti-Neanderthal racists? What the fuck is going on? We will never really find out. We just cut straight to Dr. Frankenstein hauling the troglocorpse into his lab.

That’s how this movie rolls. Don’t bother asking questions, just try to keep up.

Count Frankenstein’s daughter Maria has returned to her childhood home, bringing along her fiancé Eric and her friend Krista, who has an unhealthy relationship with polka-dots. Krista is immediately fascinated by the Count and his work, and he with her in turn. It doesn’t take long for Krista to find out that Frankenstein is carrying on reanimation experiments in his basement, but that’s actually the least of the bullshit going on around here. There are more cavemen out there, but there’re also rivalries and love triangles among the inevitable gaggle of deformed assistants, and the local villagers are angry about a spate of grave robbing and determined to run the Frankensteins out of town. The ‘monster’ (I’m not sure it quite counts) is kind of an afterthought.

See, Hans the Butler hates Genz the Dwarf (even though it’s actually Kregan the hunchback who is fucking Hans’ wife) so he gets him fired, and Genz swears revenge on the whole Frankenstein household. Wandering in the woods, Genz meets and befriends a second caveman, naming him ‘Ook’ and teaching him how to rape women in the hopes that he will do violence to Maria Frankenstein. Ook, however, kidnaps Krista instead. At about the same time, Genz sneaks back into Castle Frankenstein to free the first caveman, Goliath, whom the Count has been keeping strapped to a table after bringing him back to life, and who has also fallen in love with Krista as the latter assists the Count with his work. Goliath goes on a murderous rampage, then follows Genz back to the cave where Ook is keeping Krista. Sure enough, this leads to a caveman-vs-caveman battle for the girl!

Man, I would love to see earlier drafts of this script, mostly because I’m dying to know whether some prior incarnation of it actually had anything to do with Mary Shelley’s book or even with previous Frankenstein movies. I mean, it starts with the servants digging up a corpse, and ends with a torch-and-pitchfork mob destroying the Count’s creation… the beginning and end of a Frankenstein movie are present. In between those, however, it wanders off on this bizarre tangent about the local cryptids. As it reached the screen, the only thing Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks seems to have in common with its source material is the threat to the Count’s girlfriend, which was issued by the Creature in the original story. Technically, even the grave robbing and re-animating have nothing to do with Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus – the book never actually says how the Creature’s body was created. The idea of piecing it together from corpses originates with the Boris Karloff movie.

Let me describe some more of the stuff that goes on here, in order to give you the flavour of the experience. For starters, Salvatore Baccaro, playing Ook the caveman, is credited as ‘Boris Lugosi’ in the opening credits. The first time I saw this movie I snorted water up my nose when that popped on screen.

Later in the movie there’s a flashback to that first peasants-vs-caveman scene, and it answers none of the questions I listed above. Why are there cavemen in these woods? I dunno, there just are. What did the cavemen do to piss off the locals? I don’t know that, either… they may have been stealing livestock, I guess, but they don’t seem to have been a threat to the people until Genz taught them about rape. Kind of makes one wonder what happened to the cavewomen, since we never meet one and these guys don’t seem to know what women are, as illustrated by Ook initially thinking their nubile young captive is going to be dinner. Also, although there are two cavemen, they don’t know each other. Genz has to introduce them!

There’s a bit where Genz is hiding behind a clock to watch Maria and Eric have sex. The butler comes along and chews him out for it, sends him to his room, and then he stands there and watches them for a while.

In another scene, Maria and Krista go skinny-dipping in a mineral spring, and the longer it goes on the more the dialogue sounds like it’s going to break into lesbian porn. I am particularly fond of the exchange where Maria says, “don’t worry, this dress is designed to be easy to get out of,” and Krista, impressed, replies, “I’ll say it is!”

The subplot in which the butler’s wife is having an affair with the hunchback has no effect on the plot whatsoever. The butler never even finds out about it. There’s a scene in which they run off to the barn to slap each other and smooch, and then the movie forgets about it. Astonishingly, the same is true of the corpse the servants dig up early on. They exhume the body of a recently dead woman, Genz cops a feel and leaves some footprints at the scene so that the villagers can figure out who was responsible, and… that’s it. She doesn’t even hang around as a gratuitous zombie like the grave-robbed girl in The Atomic Brain.

According to Wikipedia, nobody will admit to directing this movie. Like many Italian films, the director used a pseudonym, and the cast apparently disagree on even such basics as his nationality. Some of them think he was Spanish, but Simonetta Vitelli, who played Maria Frankenstein, insists he was an American.

At the end of the movie, Ook is the first of the cavemen to be killed, and we get to see Genz weeping over his friend’s dead body. Then he and Krista hold each other as the mob closes in on Goliath. This is supposed to be a tender moment but it looks a lot like Genz (who is, you must remember, around four feet tall) is enjoying his faceful of boobs. Since all alternative love interests for Krista are now dead, maybe we’re supposed to think she ended up marrying Genz.

Finally, as Goliath’s body burns, Edmund Perdom intones, “there’s a bit of the monster in all of us, especially where there’s fear.” I’ll drink to that, my dude. ‘Twas beauty killed the beast. He tampered in God’s domain.

That probably is supposed to be the movie’s point. The villagers are depicted as suspicious, fearful, and quick to violence, while the cavemen seem to have been relatively peaceful types until Genz taught them how to rape. It’s very much the Homo sapiens who are the monsters there. Frankenstein’s servants are all assorted shades of horrible, from Genz the necrophile to the nasty cackling butler to the adulterous hunchback and cook. Count Frankenstein himself isn’t quite so overtly evil but it’s clear that he’s not very interested in the moral dimension of his work.

Even if that’s an intentional theme rather than just a pithy closing line, I don’t think anybody thought about it very hard. The rest of Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks is too much of a mess. There’s no real plot, no identifiable protagonist, it’s sleazy and incoherent and at times it’s horrifyingly abelist… and yet, for reasons I cannot explain, it’s weirdly entertaining.

Maybe it’s just that everything in the film is so damn ridiculous. So much of what happens comes out of nothing and goes right back into it… a series of mind-boggling what the fuck moments that surprise the viewer over and over. The impression is that the writers are throwing horror concepts at the screen to see what sticks, but nothing does.

Maybe it’s that this is another villain-centric piece. You know I like those. I guess maybe Krista is the heroine? She seems to do the fewest horrible things over the course of the story, but she’s not a good person, either. She’s totally into the Count’s creepy reanimation experiments, and makes only a token protest about the idea of informed consent. Edmund Perdom’s Inspector character is one you’d expect to try and do something about these goings on, but he never does. Maria and Eric are only in the movie so it can have a sex scene.

Whatever the reason, the result is inexplicably charming. Between the easily distracted plot, the gratuitous breasts, the bad dubbing, the complete failure to either frighten or titillate, and the fact that it tries to tie itself to a lucrative franchise it really has nothing to do with, Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks is almost the perfect example of a bad Italian horror flick from the 70’s.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #frankenstein's castle of freaks #tw: rape #tw: ableism #70s

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kaemulti · 4 years

Text

DC SUPERHERO GIRLS HEADCANNONS

i’m gonna start writing headcannons whenever i get sad/anxious for a number of different fandoms. it takes my mind off things, even if only for a little bit. this time it’s gonna be about dcshg 2019. i’m honestly obsessed with thinking about the mundane teenager things we don’t see in the show that all the superhero/villian kids go through so i wanted to write some stuff about that.

•karen is actually more popular than she realizes, people think she’s sweet even though they rarely see her/don’t have classes with her

•leslie and dorris are a thing to everyone BUT themselves; they hilariously don’t even realize they’ve basically been dating for years: carpooling together, hanging out before and after school, bullying kids like a tag team, skipping classes together, movie nights, shorting out the exercise machines at the mall to make that misogynistic jerk at the fitness store scared, buying their favorite snacks for each other without thinking much of it, etc.

•barbi not only hates diana with a burning passion but ALSO tatsu because both girls excel in both their academic and physical education classes, unintentionally surpassing barbie by a long shot whenever the opportunity presents itself

•jessica and hal hang out at sweet justice after their week day training classes and even invite barry when he has the day off

•kara is completely oblivious to the fact there are a bunch of girls crushing on her at school, she keeps wondering why they whisper about her and never make direct eye contact with her as she walks through the hallways. she only finds out what is actually going on when she opens her locker on valentine’s day and gets COVERED in cards. she doesn’t tell most of her friends about it (she knows they’ll just be annoying) but she does vaguely ask jess about how to write people back, turning them down nicely and whatnot, she’s not a monster for gods sake, she’s just not ready for a relationship.

•babs and diana like to study together the most even though barbra never really pays attention, she mostly talks about different batman articles and comics she read and new gadgets she’s created but diana doesn’t mind TOO much because she has an growing interest in modern day ‘world of man’ technology

•diana can NOT sing to save her life. the girls thought that having a karaoke night would be fun sure, but nothing would’ve prepared them for the laughing fits they had when diana started screeching into the mic. They also find out that Babs is always off pitch and Jessica refuses to sing in front of people. alternatively, however, zee, kara and karen (in that order) are the best singers in the group.

•zee keeps inviting kara to these crazy expensive-super long wait list restaurants even though she knows kara probably won’t eat any of the food. she doesn’t really know why she keeps doing it, especially after the whole giant tentacle incident, but she does know she enjoys kara’s funny comments and cute laugh enough to continue.

•when selina first saw diana she might of had a tiny sexuality crisis, no she won’t elaborate.

•tatsu helps garth work on his confidence and he helps her with her HUGE slight fear of open water. even though they don’t know the other is super, they still help each other as much as they can. tatsu will train garth to do some basic defense techniques against bullies and they’ll go swimming every other week, garth always making sure to keep as much water as he can away from tatsu’s eyes and nose.

•kara and barry like to race each other whenever they get a chance to go to the pier. kara always cheats so she never loses but barry doesn’t mind because he’s her friend and it makes them laugh.

•steve is actually really good at embroidery, his mom taught him when he was younger. he once made a wonder woman shirt for diana and when he gave it to her, she fainted.....twice.

•pam is allergic to three different types of flowers but she still nurtures them in her garden at home whenever she can. if her allergies get really bad though, she’ll ask jess to help her water them, ONLY because she needs to keep her precious flowers alive, NOT because she is actually jess’ friend...she thinks.

•the first time carol met barbie they both got into detention for loudly insulting each other’s fashion sense in the middle of math class. (they still haven’t apologized to each other so they keep acting like it didn’t happen because they both think they’re right)

•the first time harleen called pam “green bean”, pam blushed and giggled...like FULL blown diana talking to steve giggle. and then she pushed harleen off a bridge with a vine on accident. harleen thought it was the funniest thing ever and pam could only awkwardly apologize for almost killing her teammate

•oliver and zee tried to co-write a christmas play but they were so busy fighting each other on who had a better ending they didn’t actually order any props or costumes for it. leaving the main actress to perform in a pirate outfit.

•kara still hangs out with bizarro super girl every now and again and they take turns ranting about their idiot cousins, it’s all light hearted because kara still has some emotional stuff to work through.

•diana unintentionally starts a “who will come out next” contest when she asks the girls about same sex attraction. she had seen leslie and dorris making out in one of the locker rooms (yes they FINALLY got together together) and asked her friends what it meant. after a lot of confusion as kara stumbled over her explanation of the lgbtq+ community, she ends up coming out as a lesbian first, followed by babs, who is bisexual, karen, who is questioning but absolutely had a crush on kara before their food fight detention day, and zee who is trans. they end up going to metropolis pride two months after that.

•diana is still convinced there is an oracle at the pier so every other sunday the girls go so she can spend all of her money on “knowing the future”

•babs never really gets angry on the daily and the rest of the girls learn why when some jerk at sweet justice insults jess’ looks because she wouldn’t go out with him. barbra turned bright red as she let him have it, words coming out of her mouth faster than barry can make their ice cream (they didn’t think she had it in her). and if he he ended up glued to his bed the next day, well, jess will let batgirl get away with that one JUST this once. barbra will NEVER not stick up for her friends.

•kara and babs often have multiple sleepovers a week, harleen even joins them sometimes when kara doesn’t mind her LOUD presence.

•the girls never get mad at one another when someone breaks down or blows up after holding certain feelings in for too long. whether it’s kara ghosting them for days leading up to her mom’s birthday, diana overworking herself to the point of exhaustion when she gets homesick, karen refusing to go out to anywhere except for school and tough missions for weeks at a time because she thinks she doesn’t matter, zee reading too many spells at once and giving herself an awful migraine after messing up an easy one, jessica isolating herself at lunch so she can sit in the library alone and cry to herself quietly after a hard day of training, or babs not being her normal happy self after having a heated argument with harleen, there will ALWAYS be a shoulder to cry on when someone needs it. If that comes in the form a knock on kara’s door as her friends invite themselves in with her favorite foods and a mega ‘feel better soon’ music playlist in tow, an impromptu destress retreat that they force diana to go on where she is only allowed to use a weapon if there is a direct threat, making a giant list of all the things they love about karen and reading it to her from outside her window, someone closing zee’s spell book and holding her tightly as her eyes turn back to normal from flaring pink with anger, all the girls quietly sitting with jessica one by one in the library and gently holding her hand as she lets out what she can, or buying limited edition comics and leaving them as presents for babs in her section of the hideout, there is ALWAYS someone there to make it hurt a little less.

the end :))

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shyneanon · 3 years

Note

hi there!! since christmas is coming near (although there's the danger of virus) how about you create UT Sans and an alone on christmas reader? (sorry my english is badXD)

I’m a little late on this but I’ve been wanting to write it ever since I saw it! I just got other stuff in life, y’know? But here it is! It was fun :3

Also, your English is great! Especially considering how difficult English is to learn e_e

---

You set your phone aside after your unpleasant call to your family. You wanted to be with them for Christmas, but… there was drama going on between some of them, and your call had just confirmed it was getting brought up between family members when everyone was supposed to be having a good time. You were glad you’d decided not to fly all the way over there. You didn’t need to be in the middle of others arguing. Not on Christmas.

That said, the alternative wasn’t much better. Now, on Christmas Eve, you were basically alone. The tiny tree in your apartment had some lights on it, but besides that there wasn’t much up for decoration. You were just sitting by yourself, in your apartment, eating peppermint bark and half paying attention to a dumb Hallmark movie playing on your TV. Depressing.

As much as you didn’t want to be a bother to anyone, you decided to message Sans. The guy was probably with friends— a lot of people liked him, and for good reason— but he was relaxed, so he probably wouldn’t find it annoying.

You: Hey, tell Papyrus Merry Christmas for me.

Well, that had… barely made you feel a little better. You sighed, lying back down on your bed.

Your phone buzzed.

Sans: will do.

Hey, it was something.

Another buzz.

Sans: you’re out of town, right? with your fam?

You grimaced. For a moment you considered lying, and then immediately felt horrible for it. He was your friend— your best friend. He’d always been here for you when you needed him. And he was funny. And he made you feel comfortable… You liked him a lot.

Platonically. It wasn’t that you had a crush on him or anything.

There was no reason to lie. He wouldn’t judge you for being alone. So instead you turned it into a joke. You took a photo of yourself eating peppermint bark, with the TV in the background, and captioned it

You: I’m with meeeee.

Just looking at your own message made you feel a little less bad about it. Using humor as a coping mechanism. Now where have I seen that before?

“Hey kiddo.”

You jumped at the voice and then sat up. Sans was standing in the middle of your room. “Uh, hey.” You raised an eyebrow and smiled. “You just… teleported in here without asking, huh?”

“You showed me a photo.”

“I could’ve not been wearing any pants,” you said playfully. Sans’ face turned blue and that got your face to heat up. You hadn’t intended to embarrass him. Deciding to change the subject, you nodded at his sweater with a grin. “Love the sweater.”

It was hideous in the best way, and it had clearly been made for him because it was decorated with skull patterns where snowflake patterns would be, as well as a couple of depictions of himself and his brother.

“Thanks,” he said. “A good friend made it for me.”

Your smile faltered. “I don’t want to take you away from your friends. Don’t worry about me or anything.”

“You’re my friend too,” he argued, and you smiled.

“Thanks.”

“Besides, I knew it was gonna be depressing, but…” He sat down next to you, close enough that your shoulders were touching, and looked around. “... this is really depressing.”

“Gee, thanks.”

He gave you a wink, and you grinned. He could cheer you up so fast. It was like magic.

“Whatcha watchin’?” he asked, gesturing to the TV screen, where a man and a woman dressed in winter clothes were talking on a snowy street.

“I don’t even know,” you said. “I got bored and turned it on. It’s some kind of romance.”

“I didn’t know you were a sucker for romance.”

Your face got hot. “I’m not, I was just too lazy to look for something else.” You nudged him. “I’m pretty sure the twist is he’s a ghost and at the end he’s gonna leave but he’s taught her a positive lesson.”

“That sounds sad to me.”

“I think it’s supposed to be bittersweet,” you said, and then snorted when you noticed the couple were now standing underneath some mistletoe. “Oh geez, it’s so contrived. Of course with the mistletoe.”

“What, you don’t like it?” For some reason, he sounded genuinely concerned. As if there would be something wrong if you didn’t.

“Not that. It’s just implausible. Who even does that anymore? I’ve never seen mistletoe anywhere before. In public or in someone’s home.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

“There’s some in your house.”

Confused, you turned to look at him only to find that he was dangling some mistletoe between the both of you. His face was blue.

“Uh oh,” he said with a shrug, his blush darkening. He was avoiding eye contact. “Looks like we’re… gonna have to…”

He glanced at you shyly and you felt your face get very hot very fast. Despite the sudden rush of… definitely platonic feelings… you were having, your head was clear enough for you to realize something. “Sans… did you bring that mistletoe here? In… your pocket?”

“... M… Maybe.” Your lack of immediate response seemed to have made him nervous. “But… I mean it’s not like we literally have to—“

“N… no,” you said, “it’s OK. I, um, want to.”

He made eye contact with you, looking surprised, and you both blushed.

He coughed. “S… sure, yeah. OK.”

You swallowed as he started to lean closer to you. Was… was this actually happening? Were you going to kiss? Or had you fallen asleep? Maybe this was some kind of dream….

Well, it wasn’t a bad dream, so… you leaned towards him, trying to ignore how fast your heart was racing.

It was pretty much impossible to ignore once your lips and his teeth made contact. It was like a jolt of very high-voltage electricity. You immediately leaned into it, and Sans responded by doing the same. Before you even knew what was happening your arms were around his neck and his were around your waist, pulling you closer. The movie and mistletoe were quickly forgotten. After several more kisses you both relaxed, still holding onto each other.

“Wow,” you said.

His face was a deep blue. “Y… yeah, wow.”

You both looked each other in the eyes, any hesitation you’d had in making eye contact gone.

“... Do you think… we could maybe do that again?”

You didn’t say anything, just kissed him again. The adrenaline felt incredible…. You could stay like this forever. He must have been thinking the same thing, because it took a lot longer for the two of you to finish this time. His hands felt your sides and you curled up into him, kissing along where his jawline would be. Both of you made soft sighing and humming sounds.

“You decide to kiss me when I’m a mess?” you asked him in between kisses.

“You’re not a mess,” he replied, “you look amazing.”

“No I don’t.”

“You always do,” he said, lying down and pulling you with him. You snuggled into him.

“How long?” you asked quietly.

“... A while,” he confessed, wrapping his arms around you.

“... Same.” You could’ve said something too but you’d just been in denial the whole time. Like a child. “Thanks for telling me.”

“Took me long enough.”

Some silence. You were fine with that. The two of you just… lay like that, for a while. He was so soft, and warm, despite being only made of bones. You were just happy that he was here. With you. Like this.

Eventually, you realized he must have been here a while. “Y… you should… probably go now, huh?”

“Nah, I’ll stay here tonight. And you can join us all in the morning.” He winked. “All this has made me sleepy.”

You giggled, and his smile widened. “Dork.”

He pulled you closer. “I could really go for a nap right now. Like always.” He ran his fingers through your hair. “Care to join?”

You smiled softly and kissed him one more time before laying your head on his chest.

Best Christmas ever.

#one shot #fluff #christmas #classic sans #undertale sans #sans x reader #self-insert #reader-insert

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risthebrave · 3 years

Text

day 03; “ophanim”

free-form; angel harry, half-angel and half-demon louis

“In the Bible, there were three spheres of angels,” Harry explains, and Louis rolls his eyes. “The First Sphere contains the angels that serve as the heavenly servants of God the Son incarnated. Seraphim, Cherubim, and the Thrones, or Elders. To the Jews, that included the Ophanim which were seen in Ezekiel’s -”

“I’m sorry,” Louis interrupts loudly, ignoring the irritated look Harry sends him. “Why is this important?”

Harry’s eye twitches, lips flattening into a line as he stops his pacing. He looks awfully grumpy for who Gabriel said was one of their best goodness mentors, arms crossed over his white shirt and stance stiff. His wings are crisp and pure white - bright enough to make Louis’ eyes burn if he stares too long. He’s the only angel Louis has seen so far besides the archangels to actually follow the stereotype and dress in all white and the thought makes him smile. “I’m trying to explain the angel hierarchy so you can understand how things work around here.”

“Then why don’t you get to the important part instead of babbling on about shit that doesn’t matter,” Louis says, arching a brow. “I’m pretty sure I got it anyway. The Order of the Angels are part of the Third Sphere where regular angels report to Seven Archangels as the superiors and the seven report to the Second Sphere and the Second Sphere reports to the First. Really complicated stuff, I’m blown away.”

“How do you even know that?” Harry frowns. “Marla said the others barely got to explain anything to you before you chased them off.”

Louis scoffs. “I’m not dumb. I learned the basic stuff about the system ages ago.”

“The demons taught you about our systems?” Harry frowns, the distaste dripping from his voice undeniable.

“Yeah, they do,” Louis says dryly. “Hierarchies, habits, hundreds of methods of murdering angels…”

He said it in hopes of eliciting a reaction, and he gets exactly what he wants. Harry goes rigid, eyes flashing. “Don’t joke about things like death and murder,” he says darkly. “Not here.”

“Death is inevitable,” Louis dismisses. “Even for you and me. The demons taught me that too.”

Harry sighs. “This would be so much easier if you just listened,” he says flatly.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Louis asks sweetly, smirking. He swings his legs from where he’s perched in a chair, Harry stood across the room from him.

“If you listen, you can learn,” Harry insists. “Learn how to be an angel and how to maintain goodness.”

“Well, that sounds boring,” Louis says, feeling satisfaction flicker inside him when Harry has to squeeze his eyes shut in exasperation.

“You have to listen,” Harry says firmly. “Those are the conditions. You have to try.”

“But I don’t want to,” Louis says, shrugging.

“How do you know you don’t want to when you haven’t tried once?” Harry asks. “When you haven’t even tried to learn about angels and how -”

“I can’t be what you and Gabriel and the others want me to be,” Louis interrupts flatly, “and I’m sure you’ll see that for yourself eventually. I can’t be an angel or believe in any of the bullshit you’re preaching about me being able to learn something that cannot be taught. I’m not like you and I never will be.” He lets out a harsh, bitter laugh. “None of your lessons in goodness will ever change that.”

For emphasis, he stands up and plants his hands on his hips, letting his wings unfold in proof. Harry’s eyes track them, a grimace curling his lips. He doesn’t even bother to hide his discomfort and it just makes Louis even more mad.

“This unnerves you, doesn’t it?” he says, blood boiling at the sight. “My existence unnerves you because it proves everything you know to be true as wrong.” He ruffles his feathers, blood boiling when Harry averts his gaze. “You can’t even look at them.”

Unlike Harry’s pure white feathers, Louis’ wings are a stark shade of slate, lighter than charcoal and darker than ivory. The perfect shade of gray. And it’s really only fitting, he supposes. He’s the mix of both worlds - half-angel and half-demon. He’s not good or evil - he’s in between.

And that’s what drives both angels and demons completely mad.

Neither side knows what to do with him, knows what to do with the boy who crossed the bridge between both kinds that had for so long been unbridgeable and changed the game forever. He is the product of a forbidden match and the source of chaos that neither demons nor angels know how to deal with but seem to think they have a claim over him anyway. He is a source of conflict.

He tracks the movement of Harry’s jaw as he grits his teeth, frustration radiating from his figure. If Louis weren’t so pissed at him, he’d find the whole irritated facade attractive. He’d find Harry attractive. He is objectively handsome, Louis can admit. All angels are to some extent, but Harry’s looks exceed even that bar - all sharp angles and classically beautiful features. Louis would be lying if he said he didn’t notice it, or if he said his eyes didn’t linger on the angel’s biceps and how nice they look with his arms crossed like that.

But beyond that enticing exterior, Harry is no different than the other angels Louis has met - perhaps, even worse. He doesn’t get it, is the thing. He thinks he can teach Louis about goodness and that eventually his wings will turn white and any remnants of his demon DNA will drain out of him like sweat off his skin. That he can just choose a side even though his blood is woven with strings of both.

That’s what they all think - what the demons thought too when it was their turn to try and convert Louis. Because that had been the decision made when Louis’ parentage had been confirmed two years ago. Two years with the demons. Two years with the angels. And then, on his twenty-fourth birthday, he’ll choose a side.

Louis had been raised on Earth - raised with the humans. He grew up in the system, passed from foster home to foster home until he turned eighteen and was let loose on his own. That’s also when his divinity became too strong to conceal. It hadn’t even been a week since his birthday when he woke up with a searing pain between his shoulder blades - the exact spot where eventually his wings sprouted, tilting his world on its axis and sending him reeling. He remembers the day like it was yesterday, the memory making him feel almost nauseous.

“It doesn’t matter if I can look at them not,” Harry says shortly, breaking him out of his thoughts. “It’s my responsibility to mentor you - to teach you goodness. And that’s what I’m going to do whether you cooperate or not. Because I believe there’s potential in you: potential that you can learn the way of the light as you’ve learned the way of the demons in the last two years. You have a decision to make at the end of all of this, Louis.”

“Like I don’t already know,” Louis snaps, annoyed. Harry’s speaking as if he hasn’t been reminded of his impending choice every day since he grew his wings and was taken by the divine beings, poked and prodded at by demons and angels alike, studied and talked over like an object on auction. He’s well aware of what they decided for his destiny - what was decided for him since never once did either side ask his input. He spent his time with the humans being passed from home to home only to end up with the same fate here.

After two long years with the demons and these tumultuous last couple months with the angels, Louis is tired. He’s tired and he’s weary and he’s angry. He doesn’t give a shit about either side - if anything, he thinks he’s better off with the humans. Earth is a mess, he knows, but it’s also completely gray.

Humans are just like him, a mix of good and evil. They exist in the in-between and it’s allowed. Louis has spent his entire life feeling lonely, but at least in the human world, he hadn’t actually been alone. He hadn’t been the odd one out - he was just one in a sea filled with a million shades of gray.

“You can argue or fight it all you want,” Harry says slowly, brows dipping in the middle. Louis can see the way he tamps down any feelings of annoyance and frustration, determined to be peaceful and saintly like all other angels. All traces of potential anger that Louis had been thriving on have vanished from his tone along with any hopes on Louis’ side that he could truly get to him. He’s truly just the same as everyone else - angel or demon alike. “But you’re here for almost two years before you make your decision. You may think you can’t be one or the other, but you can and you will be whether you like it or not. Neither side will allow any other alternative. It’s my duty to show you our way of life and that’s what I’m going to do whether you let me or not. It’d be much easier, however, if you were cooperative and actually tried to fit in here.”

Louis scoffs. “I can’t fit in. In case you missed it the first thousand times, I’m not an angel.”

“But you could be,” Harry says easily, fixing him an intense stare. “You may think it’s impossible because of your blood, but I know you can. And I intend to prove it.”

“What makes you think you have any chance?” Louis asks, tone bored. “What makes you think you have a chance when the four other angels assigned to teach me couldn’t last longer than a week. It’s only been one day and I’ve gotten to you too, you can’t deny it. How much longer will you endure it?”

“I’m a Paragon,” Harry says calmly, still trying to be peaceful even as Louis tries to goad him. “I’ve worked my entire life helping humans choose the right path and guiding them to happiness and contentment and I’ve surpassed all other angels in my class. I was blessed with this title along with only nine other individuals, because I represent the supreme ideal of goodness. And on the day I ascended, I made a promise that I’d do everything in power to help as many people as I can choose good, including you. And you will not be the black mark on my perfect record.”

Louis’ lips curl, fingers clenching the fabric of his white tunic. “You forget my mother was a Paragon,” he says coldly. When Harry flinches this time, he doesn’t feel an ounce of satisfaction. Riling the angel up these past few days might have been entertaining, but it doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t and will never understand Louis - will never even try. He tries to keep his tone even as he continues, “She ascended like you - was just as good and noble as you to be given that title and yet she still ran off with a demon. She fell in love with and then chose to be with a demon, to reproduce with one and create me - an abomination in your eyes and the eyes of everyone else. Would you call that good? Would you call that ‘perfect’?”

Harry doesn’t respond, rendered silent.

december word prompt challenge 12/03/20

#dwpc #freeforms #word prompts #not a wip but #let's call it #angel/demon au #so i can find it #also the way that these keep getting longer and longer...#shout out to lovely jas for saying angel harry is underrated

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jawritter · 4 years

Text

Promised

**Series Warnings!! ** ABO dynamics! Smut, unprotected smut, knotting, claiming, mating, heat, rut, language, overly protective Jensen, age gap! 19-year-old reader, 41-year-old Jensen, virgin reader, loss of virginity, sort of an arranged marriage, hint at possible mob type settings.

Story Description:

In a world where your presentation can be a blessing or a curse, a newly presented Omega will come face to face with the harsh reality of Alphas, Omegas, and pack alliances that are expected to be upheld with the union of your two families…

A/N: Pt.5!!! Please don’t copy my stuff! Feedback is welcomed! If you want to be added to the series tag list, or just my tag list in general let me know! Cross-posted on Wattpad! Hope you enjoy it!! This is my first ABO series so be nice lmao!

Pairing: Jensen x Reader

Word Count: 2362

You had been at the hotel with your Alpha for two days, well awake anyway, really you had been there around four.

In those two days, Jensen had been taking care of you while you recovered from what he said was the worst fever he ever has seen an Omega undergo during her heat.

He still hadn’t tried to have sex with you again, and no matter how much you try and convince yourself that he’s just trying to make sure you’re well, and fully recovered it’s something that’s constantly gnawing at you in the back of your mind.

It’s not like he’d been avoiding you. Every night when you went to bed he’d wrap his strong arms around you, and pull you as tight to his chest as humanly possible. Tangling your legs together and holding onto you like if he let go even a little you would disappear.

He spent the last to days pretty much attached to your hip while you were awake. Pulling you into his lap while on the couch watching movies, making sure you ate, making sure you were comfortable.

That did make you believe the cares.

Waking up this his arms was quickly becoming your favorite thing. That was for sure.

Jensen was currently sitting with his laptop on his lap, and alternating between texting, and typing away on his keyboard in front of him. He hadn’t told you what he was doing, and honestly, you didn’t know whether it was okay to ask it.

You found yourself constantly craving his touch, but you didn’t know if it was okay that you approach him; or were you supposed to wait for him to come to you?

You thought your parents taught you everything you needed to know about Alphas, Omegas, and their relationships together, but you found out quickly that you knew nothing. So you kept your distance, watching him type away out of the corner of your eye.

After what felt like an eternity he looked up from his work and smirked at you over the laptop screen.

“I can literally feel you staring you know?” he says, his voice light and teasing.

You knew he wasn’t angry, but for some reason, the very sound of his voice was enough to make you shake in skin... In a good way…

“Sorry,” you mumble, picking up your coffee cup, and trying to concentrate on the show playing in front of you on the TV.

“Come here,” he said.

It wasn’t a request, you knew that. So you put down your cup on the table next to you and walked over to your Alpha, who had closed his laptop and set it on the couch next to him.

When you got close to him, he reached out and pulled you into his lap. You immediately laid your head on his shoulder, letting his scent and his touch calm you. This was what you were craving. His touch. Him scent... Him…

“Seems like your feeling better today than you were yesterday,” he said, playing with your hair, while you absentmindedly played with the button that was open a little lower on his shirt than was probably necessary; but you didn’t complain. I mean the man was gorgeous.

“Yeah, I feel more like myself today,” you mumbled, not sure what answer he really wanted out of you. You wanted more than anything to please and not anger him. You didn’t know this man hardly at all though, and you didn’t want to ruin your relationship with him before you even got started.

Being claimed in the states meant that you were not only bound to the person for eternity, or until the bond was broken and rejected, but that you were also legally married as well.

“I was sending off our paperwork to the clerk of courts office, you should get your new Social Security Card, and ID in the mail in a few weeks, along with our marriage license ...” he said, letting the sentence trail off at the end like was lost in his own thoughts.

You didn’t even think about that. You felt like such a child around him most of the time.

Which you guess that in a way you were. You were homeschooled, you were never allowed to leave the house, your only friends were family, you had never realized just how sheltered you were until you were tied to someone who you had never known, and expected to function.

Jensen had traveled all over the globe with his job. He’d seen and meet people of every variety and flavor. You had trouble making an order on the phone for food, and you weren’t even face to face with people.

Jensen swore that he’d teach you, that it was okay, not to worry about it. That it was your family's fault.

In a way, you had started to wonder if all those years, your whole life really, if you had been abused?

As if on cue Jensen cleared his throat bring you back to the present, his fingers dancing lightly over the sink of your back where he’d moved his hand under your shirt.

“Since your feeling better I think it might be best to go home today. We can use my friend’s private jet and be back in Austin within the hour. I had a moving company come in and collect your clothes and belongings that your parents had packed up for you. So you don’t have to go back there. Honestly, sweetheart, I don’t think you should go back there ...”

Your blood ran cold. This was one thing you had feared about being tied to an Alpha, the control. You stiffened before you could stop yourself. The thought of not being around your family had your heart-shattering. Yes, they were more than likely abusive and the cause of your anxiety, and inability to function in a and around normal circumstances, but they were all you had ever known.

Putting a finger under your chin Jensen lifted your face slightly to look at him. His green eyes searching yours. His face calm and unraveling.

“You didn’t like that I can tell,” he said, his voice soft, but you could hear a little concern.

The statement confused you though.

“What… How… How did you know I didn’t like it?” you asked.

When he started to chuckle it surprised you. If you would have questioned an Alpha in your family, you probably would have found your ass on the ground. He thought it was funny?

“Y/N, we’re bonded. I can literally feel the anxiety rolling off of you right now, and the fact that you're afraid of me. I can tell you what your feeling probably better than you can.”

You sat there on his lap staring at him there like a deer caught in the headlights, which made him laugh harder. His laugh was the most beautiful thing you had ever heard, and you realized you had never heard it until this point.

Once he got his features under control, licking those perfect lips that you wanted more than anything to kiss right now, but you shoved that thought down for later. One feat at a time.

“Y/N, you’re allowed to have feelings and opinions. I’m not going to beat the shit out of you just because you disagree with me. I’m not going to snap. I can control my temper. I don’t know what you’ve been subjected to in your life, but I can guess by the way you act around me like you’re constantly walking on glass that it wasn’t a good upbringing, at least not a healthy one..” Taking a deep breath he brushed a stray piece of hair behind ear that had fallen in front of your face.

“I tell you what, sweetheart, let's go home and get you settled. Then let's just take some time learning each other a little. We will figure out what to do about your family later.”

It made you feel a lot better that he did take your feelings into consideration. It was more than you would have thought possible alone.

--------------------------------

Three hours later, faster than you would have honestly thought possible, but again here you are; you were walking through Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

Jensen’s arm was firmly wrapped around your waist as you made your way through the airport with your bags thrown over his shoulder. Both of you only basically had a duffle bag a piece in the hotel room.

Jensen had said your stuff was already delivered to your new home. Jensen’s eyes scanned the airport cautiously, scanning faces of passers-by as they went. A few people did seem to recognize Jensen. You could tell by the gaggle of girls that seemed to be drooling over him in the corner by the little sitting area when you passed, but the look on Jensen’s face screamed back off, and no one made a move to approach the two of you.

Once you were both safely in your uber Jensen gave the driver the address. Leaning over and taking his jacket off and placing it over your shoulders before pulling you close as possible in the back of the SUV.

“You okay so far?” he mumbled low enough that the driver couldn’t really hear the conversation going on between the two of you.

You nodded your head, pulling his jacket around you tighter, letting his lingering scent wash over you, calming you.

“I didn’t see any cameras, but I’m sure someone caught pictures of us. At least they didn’t approach. I really am not ready to share you just yet Omega.” he said, his voice dropping a whole octave, and his teeth grazing over the shell of your ear; causing a shiver to rip through your whole being.

That was the first time he had touched you like that since the night that he claimed you.

Finally, the car pulled up outside of the house. It was surprisingly closer to the road than you would have thought it would be. Not in a gated community. There were neighbors. That was something you hadn’t expected either. Your parent's house was something like a compound of sorts. Way over walled and way overdone. There was barely even a fence blocking the front door?

Jensen got out of the car, then helped you out, walking to the door with your hand wrapped tightly in his.

The house was impressive from the outside the closer you got to it. Two levels, maybe more. The outside painted a light gray. A wood lacquer type fence around some parts of the house. A well-manicured lawn.

Everything was clean. Everything was… Normal… No grand driveways, nothing like that. It was strange. You felt so out in the open. Jensen unlocked the door, then turned to you without warning sweeping you up bridal style into his arms.

You squealed in surprise, clinging onto his neck.

Closing the door with his foot he walked you through the house like you weighed nothing at all. Jensen stopped in the hallway outside of a door reaching down he opened the door to a beautiful bedroom. Clean, sleek. Everything looked expensive and modern.

Walking over to the bed he laid you down gently before jumping on the bed hovering over you playfully. A side of him you hadn’t seen yet. Though you did like it. He seemed really glad to be back into his own space.

Leaning down he licked at your claiming mark lightly, purring over you.

“So what do you think of the house so far? Satisfactory?”

You laughed a little at him as he nipped at your jawline leaving little open-mouthed kisses down your neck. Scenting you deeply at your claiming mark.

“I don’t know. All I’ve really seen so far is the bedroom,” you try and play back to him.

He was in such a good mood you didn’t want to break it. You liked him being playful. It’s like he morphed into a different person as soon as the car pulled up at his house.

“Well, baby that is the most important room in the house,” he smirked at you.

Getting a spurt of confidence you lean and brush your lips over his. Jensen takes over at once like it was the permission he’d been waiting for you to give him for days, he connected his lips to yours. Kissing you deeper than he ever had. Stealing your breath away. Your heart pounding like you had just ran a marathon.

His tongues slipped past your lips and teeth. Gliding over your tongue with ease, pulling a little moan from your lips past your own defenses.

Purring against you he pressed his weight on top of you a little more, letting you feel him against you for the first time. His scent was coming off of him in waves. His hand trailing up the inside of your thigh. Fingers tracing over hips lightly, making their way to the button on your jeans. Popping the button loose he slid his hand inside your jeans. Just as his fingers made their way inside your panties, sliding one of his thick digits through your soaking folds…. The front door closed loudly.

A growl ripped through Jensen’s chest, he jumped off of you like someone had shot him.

“Jay? You guys home? Gen sent you guys some dinner for tonight!” you heard the voice of another man yell through the house, making his way closer to your bedroom as you hurried to fix your close.

Jensen hovering over you, his head in the bend of your neck. A deep groan leaving his lips.

“Remind me to change the locks,” he said before getting off the bed.

“Who is it Alpha?”

You couldn’t help the whine that left your lips. He chuckles slightly coming back over to kiss you softly before moving to go meet your interrupter in the living room.

“Jared, he’s a good friend of mine. We will pick up where we left off when he leaves Omega,” he said, brushing your lips with his thumb lightly before walking out of the bedroom.

You didn’t know who this Jared is, but you did make a mental note to teach him how to knock.

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If you missed the previous chapter read it here!!

Promised Series Masterlist

Tag List:

@deanwanddamons @imabitch4jensen @rvgrsbrns

Series Tag List:

@spnfamily-j2 @onethirstyunicorn @stoneyggirl @bloo-moon-freak @musiclovinchic93

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miggydiaz · 3 years

Note

for the salty ask: 3, 7, 10, 11, 15, 16, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25 and 27 for spn

I had to do this one today because I have a LOT of Supernatural feelings and so a lot of these are even longer than my CK one. But thanks for the ask @wonderwolfballoon!

UNPOPULAR SUPERNATURAL OPINIONS AHOY: INCLUDES ANTI-DESTIEL SENTIMENTS AND OTHER UNSAVORY ELEMENTS

3. Have you ever unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion? 100000000% I have unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion in the SPN fandom. SPN was the fandom that taught me to make JUDICIOUS use of the blocking feature tumblr offers in order to curate my experience. I would actually encourage anyone and everyone to use the blocking feature if they disagree with people. Honestly, we don’t owe anyone our time or energy, especially on the internet! It is much healthier than sending or responding to hate, IMO. 7. Is there anything you used to like but can’t stand now?* This is actually a hard one for me to answer, so let me start by saying -- I have not seen a SINGLE episode since 9x05? I think? Whichever episode was the Dr. Deanlittle one where he talks to animals. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the first 5 seasons, and they are all I watch anymore and I pretend nothing else exists after that (except The French Mistake because that episode is hilarious). But uh... I guess the simple answer is when I was originally watching it, I really loved Dean. He was brash, snarky, rough around the edges... but kind of soft in a I’m too toxically masculine to deal with my softness sort of way that I love seeing characters grow out of as they mature. But when I go back and rewatch now, much older than I was in 2006 when I first started watching, I see how awful a lot of his older behavior truly was. I still love Dean, and I will be a Dean girl until I die probably, but sometimes you gotta remind yourself that your faves have been problematic in the past so you don’t put them up on fandom constructed pedestals.

10. Most disliked arc? Why? AND AS A BONUS, MY ANSWER to 11. Is there an unpopular character you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why? I could write a literal essay about all of the problems I have with the later seasons (the ones I watched, which encompasses 6, 7, 8, and a few episodes of 9). But by far and away, the thing I hated most, was the Men of Letters.

Okay, this is where I am going to recognize my love of certain characters is at FUNDAMENTAL ODDS with how that character develops later and what history and background we get later on them. I RECOGNIZE this character is problematic, and I would NEVER STAND for his shit IRL, but fiction is complicated and nuanced, and fantastic circumstances do not make for normal behaviors. That being said, with all warnings I could possibly give, and with the full understanding that what I am about to say is basically fandom blasphemy of the highest order...

I like John Winchester’s character.

I know, I know. If you wanna stop reading and block me now, you are free to do that. I will not hold it against you. I am not about to apologize for anything he has done. I just need to contextualize why I have such an issue with the MOL storyline and it starts with the simple fact that I liked John Winchester as he was originally presented.

To me, and with the full understanding that I am answering this from the perspective of someone who DOES NOT regard anything past season 5 as personal canon, John Winchester is the perfect example of a truly complicated character. Here’s a parent who, if we take the pilot and the original s2 Djinn episodes at face value, could have been a great parent, who then got shoved into a fantastically impossible situation and made terrible choices that he thought were necessary in order to keep himself and his sons safe. That does not EXCUSE the heaps of abuse that he piled onto Dean in any way. We know John and Mary didn’t have a great marriage. But we also know from the pilot that John was at least a caring and present father, mostly, for the 4 years he got to parent in a normal world, and that if Mary had lived, John would’ve been a softball playing dad who raised his kids and had a loving marriage with his wife. (Again, I need to reiterate, I did not watch anything past the early episodes of s9. If there is later canon that negates this, I do not know about it, nor do I want to because I don’t think of anything past 5 as canon) This is all important to me because these things emphasize that John was “NORMAL”. He was a mechanic, from a family of mechanics, whose father didn’t bail on him (a man in the episode where Dean is transported back in time to Lawrence tells John to ‘say hi to your old man for me’ or something to that effect). He was just a midwestern dude. Giving John Winchester a fantastical background through this Men of Letters bullshit made me SO MAD. First of all, I hate when later canon negates previous canon. I cannon TELL you how much I hate it. And the later seasons of Supernatural are riddled with stuff that doesn’t make any damn sense in the context of original, Kripke written canon, which is exactly why I stopped watching. That’s not ~Evolution of the show.~ That’s conveniently forgetting stuff that made your show and its premise so successful to begin with in order to keep filming episodes so you can keep making money. It’s the sacrifice of art for capitalism and yes I know this is a stupid TV show but as a writer myself it PISSES ME OFF.

/rant

ALSO, the idea that this toxically masculine family was set on this path by Heaven, and inherited this curse that put them on this path from their mother was such a good plot twist in its heyday. We spent four seasons thinking of Mary Winchester as a victim of circumstance, whose fate could not have been avoided because she was the mother to Sam, who is effectively cursed. And then, we learn that its BECAUSE of Mary that this ball even got rolling in the first place. IDK if you were around for that time in the fandom but at least in my circle, this was a big fucking deal. There had been so much (rightful) discourse about John before this, and what kind of parent he was, that Mary became almost deified in the same way Dean deifies her. And then we find out that this whole story gets set in motion by a decision she made because this was the life she found herself in. This was great. It was interesting. And even though the MOL doesn’t negate any of this, it does give John this weirdly fantastical that isn’t necessary. Let this guy be just some Joe Schmoe who fell in love with a kick ass hunter and had no idea any of this even existed. Let Mary and her want to be ‘normal’ be a complicated moral choice that fundamentally altered the paths of her husband and sons. It’s good tv!

Also, I fucking hate the bunker. The best episodes are Dean and Sam having moments in the car, or while in motel rooms on their cases, or whatever. I don’t mind them having a home base. I’m fine with that. But if a building could ever be a Mary Sue character, the bunker is it. I hate all of the MOL storyline, starting with this place.

I may not even tag this as Supernatural, I don’t need angry later season stans in my inbox.

15. Unpopular opinion about the manga/show?

There’s nothing good about anything that happened after season 6. It’s all a bunch of retconning bullshit. Season 6 had its moments where it was interesting, so I cut it a little bit of slack, but as far as I’m concerned, the show ended in season 5. I’m not sure that’s necessarily unpopular, but it does feel that way on tumblr, so.

16. If you could change anything in the show, what would you change?

Aside from ending it in season 5?

Oooh, I’m about to blaspheme again. I am definitely not tagging this as Supernatural.

I would never have introduced Castiel, and I would’ve given that entire storyline to Anna. Or, alternatively, I would’ve flipped their story lines.

Look, for whatever it’s worth... I agree with the idea that Dean Winchester is a repressed bisexual. His Dr. Sexy love, the entire storyline with Benny in season 8, etc. I just don’t think he feels romantically about Castiel. And like, that’s okay! Just because you’re not into someone who is into you doesn’t mean you owe them a relationship or anything, no matter what the fandom thinks.

But I also think Dean has a big problem when it comes to women. Again, obviously later on in the series, Dean shifts and Charlie happens and Claire Novak and I know all of these things from gifs okay, context is not applicable here because I have none. But early on, Dean struggles A LOT with thinking of women as A) capable and B) trustworthy. He exists in a perpetual state of identifying women along the Madonna/Whore binary. Even Jo, however you feel about her, and to be clear, I loved Jo, but he doesn’t stop thinking of her really as a kid until they’re about to shoot the devil. Up until then, he’s genuinely surprised Ellen lets her out of the damn house.

Giving him a strong, capable woman who rebels against Heaven for HIM would have fundamentally altered Dean’s perceptions of women much earlier on than we get and would have forced him to examine some of that misogyny head on.

Dean has no problems trusting men. This is why the entire Gordon fiasco happens, right? It was less work for him to trust Castiel because Castiel is the inverse of Ruby. Angel to her Demon. Angels and demons don’t really have genders, but for the sake of presentation of vessels, man to her woman. Not even getting me started on the problematic parts of having significant demons mostly symbolized by women (Meg, Ruby, Lilith) and having significant angels mostly represented by Men (Castiel, Michael, Lucifer, Zachariah, Gabriel, Raphael), and how that ties into the idea of Original Sin and yada yada, but just like it’s interesting to have Mary and her decisions be the catalyst for the story, it’s interesting to have this badass warrior angel in Anna who marches down to Hell to yank Dean out, and through her interactions with him, decide to rebel against the ultimate patriarchy, while Dean gets an equally strong female counterpart to Sam’s Ruby, a woman for all intents and purposes that he respects as a soldier and an ally and not just a potential piece of ass.

Also, Castiel fans being literally unbearable is why I left the fandom. Nothing against Misha or anything, and not even anything against Cas as a character (who I very much enjoyed in seasons 4 and 5), but his fans have always been the worst and they try to insert him into everything.

19. What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?

Castiel/Destiel fans, which even though I also hated the direction the show was going, drove me out of the fandom. Not like, personally or directly, but just the sheer mental hoops they had to jump through in order to make their ship work and I just got tired of seeing all of the contrived meta on my dash. Oh, and the rampant misogyny that came out of those early Castiel fans. I didn’t appreciate it from the Wincest corner, and I definitely didn’t appreciate it from the fans of the new guy. Gross.

22. Popular character you hate?

Oof. I don’t know. I don’t really hate Castiel, because again, I liked him a lot in seasons 4 and 5. Even 6 was interesting, even if I don’t regard it as my own personal show canon. I don’t think there was a popular character in those first five seasons I ever really hated. I didn’t fundamentally hate a character at all until the MOL stuff came around. Um. Yeah, I don’t really have an answer for this.

23. Unpopular character you love?

Pretty much every female character ever. Jo, Ellen, Ruby, Meg... although Meg became more popular as the series went on, Anna. Um. OH, BELA. Bela ESPECIALLY, I recently rewatched season 3 and I cannot emphasize how MUCH I love Bela. She was the best purely human foil ever. Bela is hands down the character I love most that the fandom had frothing at the mouth hatred for. It doesn’t help that I legitimately think Lauren Cohan is one of the most beautiful women on the planet. But seriously, Bela. Hands down.

24. Would you recommend XXX to a friend? Why or why not?

I have! Many of times, and ALWAYS WITH THE CAVEAT to stop at the end of season 5. Not a single one of them has listened to me and almost all of them came to me at the end of the finale and were like WHY DID I WASTE SO MUCH TIME, and I don’t want to say I told them so, but like, I explicitly in neon colored text once told them so, so like, idk what to tell them. But yes! I think if someone is interested in some classic mystery television that has an overarching theme of family and forgiveness and striking out against the boxes that life tries to put us all into, SPN is a great show. But only the first 5 seasons. Also, be prepared for some thematically problematic parts of the show because there’s a lot of cishet toxic masculinity in those early seasons, and we should examine our media critically. There’s also a lot of good though too, and IMO, the good outweighs the bad.

25. How would you end XXX/Would you change the ending of XXX?

I would’ve ended it at season 5. I would’ve had Sam escape the pit and seen him standing under the street lamp, but then I would’ve had him walking away to leave Dean with Lisa (btw, side note, I DIDN’T like Lisa because I don’t think Dean would ever be truly happy with someone completely outside the life). Not because Sam doesn’t love his brother, but because he *does* love his brother, and because he would want Dean to be happy, even though Dean and Sam’s ideas of what makes the other happy have always been a little bit screwed up.. but that’s a different story.

27. Least shippable character?

Probably Zachariah. God, could you imagine? And... maybe Alastair, but I’m sure there are fics out there that I do not want to think about.

#wonderwolfballoon #I cannot for the sake of my own sanity tag this #I don't need angry SPN fans coming at me #I hope the bold text at the top helps people to understand what's behind the cut

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soapsilly · 4 years

Text

The other Peter - Peter Parker Imagine

Pairings: Peter Parker x Reader, Sibling!Peter Quill x Sibling!Reader

Summary/Request: Hello there, I have this funny idea in my head about the reader being star lords sister and dating peter parker. To not mix up the peters she always adds some little nicknames to their name and the other avengers make fun of it.

(Y/N/N) = Your nickname

And remember: Requests are open!

(Y/N) will be Star Lord’s adopted sister due to the timeline and age differences being wonky otherwise. Besides apdopted family is just as real as biological family.

———————————————————————————————————–

“Peteeeer!” (Y/N) screamed.

Not even thirty seconds later her boyfriend, the one and only Peter Parker, stuck his head into her room, “Yes, love?”

His girlfriend’s mood lightened immediately when she saw him, “Oh no no, I didn’t mean you. I was looking FOR MY ABSOLUTE IDIOT OF A BROTHER!”

She got louder towards the end of her sentence in hopes of her brother hearing her. Peter released a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

“Thank God. I couldn’t figure out what I did to get you this mad.”

“Yeah. I’m not yet used to having two Peters in my life. I should find a way to seperate the two of you,” (Y/N) figured, “Actually let me try right now”

She sent her lover a wink, drew in a deep breath and screamed even louder than she had before “PETER ‘STAR-DOUCHE’ QUILL! YOU GET YOUR ASS HERE RIGHT NOW OR SO HELP ME!”

“Jeez, (Y/N) no need for the yelling.. or the insult.. I heard you the first time. How was I supposed to know you meant me and not the other Peter? What’s gotten into you anyways?” her brother appeared in her room, figuratively holding his ears.

“If you don’t stop eating my snacks you’ll be downgraded to the ‘other Peter’ real soon. We’re not in space anymore. If you want snacks, you go to the store and get some!” she lectured him.

Peter Parker let out a snicker, he liked how his girlfriend didn’t take shit from anybody - but he supposed that was a side effect from growing up in an all male crime syndicate in space.

The two siblings quarreled back and forth some more which ended in (Y/N)’s older brother leaving to the store to replace her snacks.

*******************************************************************************************

“So. Your spaceships run on what fuel exactly?” Tony asked (Y/N), interested in potential alternatives to conventional gas.

“You should really ask 80s Peter about it. He knows better than me”, the girl answered, not really up for that type of conversation.

“80s Peter?” Tony was amused by her little nickname, “Am I 70s Tony then?”

“Nah, there isn’t any other Tony around, but there’s two Peters so I need to somehow seperate the two. Haven’t really come up with an effective way though. I started calling the Peter from the 80s ‘old Peter’ but he didn’t like that. Now he’s just Peter from the 80s”, she explained.

“Well alright, (Y/N) from the 2000s”, Tony teased her a he left the room to find the ‘old Peter’.

*******************************************************************************************

“What are you guys doing?” Clint and Natasha entered the living room on the main floor.

“Baby Peter is showing me how to use my new laptop”, (Y/N) explained.

“Baby Peter?”, her boyfriend furrowed his brows “I’m not a baby, (Y/N/N). Can’t you find something else to call me?”, Peter started to whine. Which caused Natasha to raise one eybrow and shoot him a look, he couldn’t be serious.

“Speter?”

“No.”

“Pete-o Burrito?”

“No.”

“Charlotte?”

“What? Like the spider in ‘Charlotte’s web’?” Peter asked.

His girlfriend nodded her head eagerly.

“Nooo”, he whined again.

“You realize you could just use ‘Peter’ for one of them and ‘Pete’ for the other?”, Nat offered. She couldn’t stand to hear any other ridiculous attempts from (Y/N) to name her boyfriend anymore.

“Well, she’s got a point though. I think Baby Peter is pretty fitting considering how cute and tiny he is”, Clint said thoughtfully.

Peter just let out an exaggerated sigh, whereas (Y/N) couldn’t hide her giggles.

******************************************************************************************

“Hey look at that meme the other Peter sent me”, (Y/N) held her phone out so her brother could see.

“I don’t get it. What is ‘yeet’ even supposed to mean?”, he asked.

“It basically means-” (Y/N) started to explain but was interrupted by Peter Quill snatching the phone out of her hand.

“What is this? ‘Peter #1′ ? He’s number one? When did that happen? You’ve known me for way longer than him. I’m your brother for crying out loud. I should be number one. I even stopped eating your snacks, so you really don’t have no excuse for downgrading me!”, his voice got high pitched towards the end.

“Goddamnit Quill. Sounds like you’re Baby Peter from the way you’re whining”, Rocket called him out.

(Y/N) left the room when her brother grew even more frustrated and started to have a fight with Rocket.

Right when the situation got heated Gamora stopped them “Peter! Enough. This is a stupid thing to fight about. What is your problem?”

“I should be number one. I’ve seen her grow up. I taught her to fly a spaceship and how to fight. What did the spider-boy do for her?”, he was upset, his little sister would just replace him for a younger Peter.

“He makes her happy, Peter. Can’t you see how she’s coming out of her shell. You did a great job being her big brother but she’s never been around anybody her age. She’s finally able to behave like a normal girl and Peter Number One is helping her with that. You should be happy she’s gained one more person that cares for her.” Gamora explained.

“Yeah I guess you’re right but… wait. Did you just say Peter Number One?”

Gamora whinced at her slip up “Well yeah. We can’t all have our own order for the Peters. Nobody would know whom the other one is talking about. So it’s really easier to just have this one order instead of two different ones.”

Peter looked at her for a short second but then threw his hands in the air and left the room.

“You know you’re my number one always!” Gamora shouted after him.

*******************************************************************************************

“Whose dishes are those on the counter?” Steve asked the other Avengers in that were gathered in the kitchen.

“They belong to the Peter with the birthmark on his butt”, Wanda answered.

“Which one was this again?”

“Quill”, Clint answered.

“No. It’s not.” Gamora denied.

Ever since (Y/N) started giving her Peters nicknames the Avengers adapted them to seperate the two Peters. At first they just used them to make fun of them but soon enough realized they were using the nicknames unironically. However as the nicknames grew more and more abstract everybody had trouble remembering which one was which.

“This needs to stop. I don’t want to know who got what birthmarks on their butts. F.R.I.D.A.Y. tell (Y/N) and the Peters to come down here.” Tony decided to stop this madness.

“Of course, Mr. Stark. (Y/N), Neater Peter and Drill Quill. Mr. Stark wishes to see you in the kitchen.”

When the three arrived in the kitchen the others were waiting for them already.

“What is this? An intervention?” Peter Parker joked.

“Kind of”, Natasha said.

“This nickname nonsense needs to stop. I understand that it’s complicated to have your boyfriend and brother share a name. I can imagine it to be quite awkward in certain situations if you get what I mean. But this has gone too far. We’ll find a solution now. Each one of the Peters gets their respective name now and then it’s settled.” Tony elaborated.

“Well, what are we supposed to do? I’ll definitely won’t start calling my boyfriend Spiderman.” (Y/N) protested.

“Pete and Peter??” Natasha grew frustrated. The solution sounded so easy to her.

“No. Too generic. Too easy to slip up. Won’t work.” Peter Quill denied.

“What else are we supposed to do?” (Y/N) wondered.

“I am Groot”, the tree offered.

The whole room turned to look at Groot. The Avengers looking at the Guardians waiting for an explanation.

“Yeah. That could work.” Quill said thoughtfully.

“Why didn’t we think of that before?” his sister facepalmed.

“Why didn’t you say anything before, you Dumb-Bark? We’ve been using those stupid nicknames for two weeks!” Rocket scolded his friend.

“I am Groot”

#peter quill imagine #peter parker imagine #star lord imagine #spiderman imagine #peter parker x reader #spiderman x reader #star lord x reader #avengers imagine #mcu imagine #guardians of the galaxy imagine

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imaginingsoftly · 4 years

Text

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time Pt. 10 - Morgan Rielly

Type: roommates to lovers, Y/N insert shorts

Requested: No

Warnings: arguing, minor meltdown, swearing, angst

(Y/N = Your name, time jumps marked with a line)

A/N: Fair warning, this gets angsty for a hot second. Also, there’s a little bit of Greek in here, but nothing that you’ll need to translate. It’s a couple of food things, a phrase, and some names, all of which are explained in-text. I have some Greek in my family, so thankfully I was able to draw off of personal experience for this.

Another win, another party. The boys were on a win streak, and had decided to celebrate every win like it could be their last. Kat and Andrei were drunkenly dancing on each other, and Y/N smiled at the way Andrei stared down at Kat. They really did make for a cute couple. Dougie was dancing next to them, some random brunette shimmying awkwardly in front of him. Morgan was standing at the bar joking with Tom, the bartender. Tom was probably talking about the game, she knew he watched all of them in between pouring drinks. “So is everything still good with you and Mo, Y/N?” She looked back at the boys sitting across from her, and smiled.

“Never better. It just works, you know?” Marty and Brock rolled their eyes, and Marty reached out to punch Y/N’s shoulder. “Stop being so corny and tell us if he does anything embarrassing,” Brock yelled over the music, “You’re our inside source for all things Mo, Y/N, so talk!” Y/N laughed, and Morgan grinned as he slid in next to her, sliding a beer over to both of the boys sitting across from him. “Go away, Mo, we were interrogating Y/N.” Marty saluted Y/N with his bottle as he spoke, and she lifted hers back at him.

Morgan slid an arm around her shoulders. “He snores,” Y/N said quickly, “and he’s a shit cook. I taught him how to flip a pancake.” Marty snorted as Morgan leaned back to look at her, betrayed, but Brock’s face made everyone laugh seconds later. “You don’t know how to flip a pancake either, Ginner, do you?” Brock’s ears turned red at her teasing, and Y/N and Marty high-fived.

The four settled into an easy conversation, most of it surrounding the various basic living skills the boys had never bothered to learn, and somehow Y/N found herself promising to teach Ginner and Marty some of her cooking secrets. The drinks flowed as much as the conversation, and Y/N found herself leaning more and more heavily into Morgan as the night wore on. She was blessed with a naturally high alcohol tolerance, but she still didn’t drink often and the guys had a foot and hundred pounds on her. Andrei and Kat finally made their way over to everyone, and Kat pulled Y/N away for a “bathroom visit.”

“So, Y/N spill!” Kat reapplied her lipstick in the semi-darkness of the bar’s bathroom while Y/N leaned on the edge of the sink. Actually, leaning on the sink was probably a bad idea. God knows what had been in it. “It’s been almost two months and you’ve given me nothing about your dating life.” Not that it was Y/N’s fault they hadn’t gotten together. Kat was the busy one, and Andrei took up almost all of her free time.

Now Y/N would ever say that out loud, but still. “It’s good. I mean honestly not that much has changed, except we swap spit sometimes.” Kat snorted out a laugh and mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “and other bodily fluids.” Which, really, she wasn’t wrong. About half of the apartment had been christened thanks to Morgan’s sex drive, and Y/N found herself in much better shape than she had been before they started dating. “He’s been good for me, Kat. And for my anxiety. I’ve been falling asleep a lot easier, and I haven’t felt like chest pains were killing me in almost a month.” That was probably the most remarkable part of the entire thing; the anxiety and insomnia had been a normal part of Y/N’s life since she was in college, and suddenly a stable relationship and someone to really talk to was lessening her episodes. It had happened before, in the one other real relationship she’d had, but not to this extent.

Kat put her lipstick away, finally satisfied that it looked okay. “I’m happy for you, Y/N,” she said, touching Y/N’s hand. “He’s a good guy. You deserve someone like him.” The two smiled at each other, and Kat slung an arm over her friend’s shoulders. “Let’s go give those boys hell before they have to go back to taking life seriously, yeah?”

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The week leading up to the playoffs was a lot. Morgan was filled with a sort of manic energy that was hard to be around sometimes, and Y/N could tell it was because of years of first-round disappointments. He was readying himself to be disappointed again. She kept him busy as much as possible, coming up with reasons to send him to the store or to clean things around the house, but even that was becoming a little tiresome. There was only so many times he could run the vacuum cleaner through the apartment before Mrs. Dagny downstairs complained.

They were eating dinner together three days before game one when Morgan stood suddenly. “I have something for you,” he announced, and Y/N was left to sit confusedly at the eating bar. He returned from his room holding something behind his back. “So I know you know about all the traditions in hockey, down to the smallest ones, and this year you’re a piece of one that means a lot to NHL families.” Morgan pulled a jacket from behind his back, and Y/N dropped her fork in surprise. WAG jackets were a big deal, and she hadn’t planned on getting one unless Morgan or one of the girls brought it up. No one had, and she’d just brushed it off. The jacket was beautiful, black and slightly worn, like someone had roughed it up a little bit to soften the denim. The alternate logo sat front and center, the hurricane warning flags spanning most of the back. Morgan’s number spread across the shoulders, and his name sat on the popped collar. She laughed at the Red Sox logo on one shoulder, and smiled softly at the Canadian leaf sitting on the other. Their two homes, combined. The only question was how he had arranged all of this.

Y/N met Morgan’s eyes to silently ask, and he grinned. “I asked Kat to set it up for you. I figured it’d be a fun surprise.” He held it out to her. “Try it on.” She stood hurriedly, and Morgan helped her slide the jacket over her shoulders. It fit perfectly, and Y/N silently thanked Kat for accommodating the wideness of her shoulders. “Perfect,” Morgan said, spinning her around. “My number looks good on you, sweetheart.” Y/N laughed. “Thank you,” she whispered. Morgan pulled Y/N into a hug and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Thanks for sticking with me this whole season, Red Sox. I know it must’ve been hard sometimes.”

“Only sometimes,” she joked. They settled back into dinner, though Y/N left the jacket on. Everything felt too surreal to take it off. “So are you ready for game one? Boston was looking scary as the season ended.” It was like Morgan could never escape the Bruins; they had been the top team in the East for yet another year, and the Hurricanes were meeting them as the wildcard. Y/N could see the strain that was setting in, and the pressure Morgan was surely putting on himself.

Morgan sighed, looking at the wall in front of him. “In a way, I’m glad it’s Boston. It might be nice to exorcise those demons, you know?” Y/N nodded. “At the same time, it’s like really? Boston again?” He rubbed his face tiredly, and Y/N reached over to grab his plate. “C’mon,” she said, “we’re going to get a couple of small bowls of ice cream and watch some baseball. I’ll even turn on the Blue Jays game for you.” Morgan nodded. Y/N headed into the kitchen to take care of their bowls, and he dragged his feet over to the couch. Y/N stopped to watch him as he walked, noticing the exhaustion behind his steps. The last couple of weeks of the season had been tough on him, and it was showing. Their win streak in early March had been the only thing keeping them in the playoffs, and they’d exited the regular season barely limping into the wildcard. Losing Tuevo at the end of that win streak had shown exactly how flawed their forwards were. If there was any consolation, Boston was the same way.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To say the season ended badly would be an understatement. Game seven, and they didn’t have a chance from the start. Boston came out swinging, literally, scoring two goals and inciting a near-brawl in the first ten minutes of the game. The boys recovered, briefly, when Kase was ejected from the game for a bad hit on Sebastian, but Boston came back with a vengeance in the second. A final score of 7-3, and the boys were done and Boston was headed to Toronto. Morgan was red in the face when he came out of the locker room, having shouldered most of the blame for the way the back end played. The press was hard on him, especially since Toronto was moving on to the second round in the first year since he’d been traded, and Y/N could tell their questions had gotten to him.

He stormed past her in the hallway, and Y/N had trouble meeting Ky’s sympathetic face with a smile and a nod. “I’ll see you soon.” She handed Emmy back to Jaccob, and took off after Morgan. “Morgan,” she called, hurrying towards the parking lot, “Mo, hang on!” He didn’t even slow down, and she was almost surprised he waited for her to climb into the passenger's seat before he sped out of the lot. His face was harder than stone, and she watched his jaw muscles ripple as he ground his teeth. Morgan was driving faster than usual, slamming on the brakes a little harder than necessary. Y/N didn’t know what to say, so she sat in silence. He was never like this. A frown sure, being a little too hard on himself definitely, but never this angry. She only spoke when they turned onto the street their apartment was on. “I know you don’t want to hear it right now, but I’m proud of you. It wasn’t the outcome I know you wanted, but you were good. The bounces didn’t go your way tonight.”

Morgan choked out a laugh as he pulled into the parking space next to her Jeep. “I sucked, Y/N. Don’t try to make excuses for me. It’s never good enough.” He barely put the car in park before he was jumping out, slamming the driver’s side door in the process. Y/N jumped out as well, knowing he would leave her behind if she didn’t. Morgan wasn’t waiting for her tonight, and his height advantage was all-too evident as he took off up the stairs faster than she could keep up. She knew he was exhausted, so this was anger fueling him.

Y/N caught up with him at the door to the apartment, where he was angrily shoving his keys into the lock. It wasn’t turning, and he punched the door in frustration. This was a side of him she didn’t even know existed. “Morgan, stop!” She shoved past him, grabbing the keys out of his hand. “I’ve got it. Just stop, please.” Y/N barely made it out of the way before Morgan was barreling inside the apartment, and she hurriedly followed behind him, stopping when they were in the living room. “Morgan.” She said his name quietly, but he paused. “I understand your anger, and I think it’s justified. Just please,” she begged, “don’t take it out on me. I love you, Mo, and I wanted to see you succeed.” A few tears she hadn’t realized were building up dropped down her cheeks. “I’m sorry that you didn’t get the series win tonight, and I’m sorry it was Boston again. I wish it had gone differently this time.” She wiped the tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand, and Morgan’s face hardened as he looked at her.

“Stop pretending to be upset!” Morgan was red in the face, and Y/N could barely recognize the person she loved behind the anger. “You don’t know how this feels, and you don’t even care about the team!” He threw his arms out wildly, and she saw Bogey run for her bedroom when Morgan’s hand came dangerously close to his perch on the couch. “You’re a Boston fan, for fucks sake! Go out and celebrate, just stop fucking pretending you give a shit about if we win or not!” Morgan’s chest was heaving with how heavily he was breathing, and Y/N was frozen from where she stood by the window. He really thought she didn’t care about him? Didn’t care if the team won or lost?

Y/N felt another tear slip down her cheek, though she wiped it away as quickly as it fell. Morgan’s face shifted slightly, like he was just realizing what he’d said. Y/N ducked her head before any more tears fell. “Y/N, I,” she shook her head, pushing past Morgan and towards the door again. “Y/N! Red Sox, come on, I didn’t mean it.” Sure he didn’t.

“Angry words are usually pretty truthful, Morgan, so I think you did.” His face was helpless as he reached out to her, and Y/N put her hand on the doorknob. “I need to cool off for a while. I think you do too.” She left before Morgan could respond, and especially before he could convince her to come back.

She was halfway down the stairwell before footsteps sounded above her. How in the hell could he possibly think she was happy he’d lost? She knew those boys; they mattered to her now, it wasn’t like they were some faceless team. She cared about him, for fucks sake. Morgan caught up with her as she reached the street. He breathlessly called for her to stop, and Y/N’s feet slowed for a step before she steeled herself and kept walking. “I need to cool off Morgan, I’ll be back.” His footsteps continued behind her, and his hand caught her arm under the elbow.

“Y/N please. I shouldn’t have said that.” She finally slowed, turning to face Morgan. His eyes scanned her face desperately. “I know you care. I know you wanted us to win.” She wasn’t ready to forgive him yet, and the eyebrow she cocked told him enough. Morgan let go of her arm to rub his face, and she could see exactly how exhausted he was. “Go, Morgan,” she said a little more gently. “I’ll be back. I promise.” Y/N reached out to squeeze his arm reassuringly before beginning to walk again. Morgan paused for a second and then followed.

He walked silently alongside Y/N until they were past the apartment complex. “I just want to know that you’re okay. I know you take these walks when I’m not around, but I’d prefer you not walk the city alone this late.” Y/N could feel him staring at her as she looked forward, and it took everything she had not to meet his eyes. “I won’t talk if that’s what you want, and I’ll even walk separate from you if necessary, but I just want to make sure you stay safe.” Well damn. When he put it that way she couldn’t refuse. She nodded shortly, and Morgan let out a breath that she hadn’t noticed he was holding.

They walked in silence through the city, and Y/N finally felt herself cool off. Morgan had a temper, she knew that, though she didn’t know it went that deeply. It didn’t excuse what he’d said, not by a long shot, but his apology was sincere. They finally reached the spot she was seeking out, a small nighttime Greek restaurant ten blocks from their building, and Y/N felt Morgan look at her questioningly as she stepped through the door. The smell of oregano and garlic hit Y/N almost as quickly as the sound of the traditional music, and she shouted out a greeting as she pulled Morgan along with her. “Ti kanete, yiayia!” The older woman behind the counter looked up as Y/N spoke, and she began to hurry out from behind the counter when she recognized her. “Ah, koúkla,” she called out excitedly, “you finally came for another visit?” Y/N melted into the older woman’s hug. Her hug was more comforting than even Morgan’s, the kind of hug only a grandmother-type could give.

Y/N pulled back, and the older woman drew her hands back to Y/N’s shoulders. “You too skinny, koúkla, too skinny.” She let go of Y/N’s shoulders to pat her cheeks gently, and Y/N gavet the first smile she’d had since the game started. “Eat. I’ll bring keftedes and loukoumades.” Y/N nodded, and looked back at Morgan as the woman hurried away, shouting at her husband to get the food going. He was standing there slightly shell-shocked, and the last of Y/N’s immediate anger dissipated with the look on his face. She took pity on him, grabbing his hand to pull him towards a table. Morgan reacted instantly, adjusting his hand to hold hers properly. As they sat, Y/N took a moment to drink in the atmosphere.

It felt homey, and smelled familiar. She had grown up on Greek foods, her mother half Greek, and the Greek thrown between Erriéta and Matthaíos was as familiar as Saturday breakfasts at her grandparent’s house. Even the furniture was familiar, plastic on the brown booth chairs and all. Morgan was still looking around confusedly, and Y/N took pity on him. “They’re Greek. Harriet and Matthew are insomniacs, like me, so they opened this place when they immigrated here. It’s the only restaurant not attached to a bar or fast food that you can find after 1am.” She smiled over at the kitchen, where Matthaíos was throwing dough balls into the air and catching them as Erriéta scolded him. “In Greek, their names are Erriéta and Matthaíos, but they mostly go by the English translations now. It’s a little easier.” Morgan smiled gently at her, and she continued before she let him suck her back in too quickly. “I came in here one night after a particularly bad day last year. I called out a hello in Greek, though it was the wrong one.” Y/N laughed at the memory. “‘Ti kanete’ is the informal way to say hello, not what you say to strangers.”

“Harriet kind of adopted me after that. It’s why I call her yiayia. It’s the Greek word for grandmother. She has a habit of adopting strays.” Erriéta appeared then as if she had been called, sliding large plates of keftedes and loukoumades between Y/N and Morgan. “Eat,” she said emphatically, “too skinny. You too, boy,” she directed at Morgan, “you too skinny too.” Morgan stared up at the woman mildly alarmed, and Y/N smothered a chuckle. “Thank you, yiayia,” she said sincerely. Erriéta patted her hand gently and swept off again, yelling at Matthaíos in their native language again.

Morgan looked mildly shell-shocked, even as Y/N pulled a plate from the stack at the end of the table and piled it high with food. “The food is good,” Y/N told him. “Eat.” Morgan still looked at the food skeptically, and she rolled her eyes. “It’s turkey meatballs and doughnuts in a nutty syrup. I promise it’s all delicious.” She dug into her own plate as she spoke, shoving an entire doughnut in her mouth. It had been a while since the last time she’d eaten the loukoumades, and it took every bit of self control Y/N had not to take the entire plate just for herself. She smiled when Morgan took a bite of meatball, immediately making a face of surprise and shoving the entire thing in his mouth. “Good, yeah?” Morgan nodded emphatically, and Y/N laughed at the way his cheeks bulged.

They ate together in semi-silence, only talking for more napkins or to argue over who would pay the bill when Erriéta brought it by. They did meet gazes every so often, and Morgan’s gentle but exhausted smile melted the last of her anger away. “I love you too.” Morgan’s words startled Y/N out of thoughts of more loukoumades, and she cocked her head in confusion. “You said it earlier,” he clarified, “and I yelled at you. You didn’t deserve to have my frustration taken out of you.” Morgan sighed, leaning back in his chair. “They wouldn’t stop asking me about Toronto. I can’t help but feel like I was the reason they kept losing all those years, and it sucks.” Oh. Oh.

“Morgan, no. It’s not your fault. They finally went out and got those pieces you guys needed to succeed all those other years. You can’t blame yourself for the front office screwing up.” Y/N reached out and gripped one of Morgan’s hands. “A few overpaid forwards and two good defensemen aren’t going to win you a cup. If the front office had smartened up when you were there, maybe you guys would have made it further. But sweetheart, it’s not your fault.”

Morgan nodded slowly, and Y/N could actually see him realize she was right. He squeezed her hand back, leaning forward again with a sigh. “What would I do without you?” Y/N smiled and shook her head in response. “Let’s go home.” Morgan stood as he spoke, pulling Y/N with him. Erriéta and Matthaíos came over to hug Y/N, and then Erriéta even hugged Morgan.

“Take care of her, boy, yes?” Morgan nodded solemnly at Erriéta’s request, and Y/N hugged the older woman again. She pressed a box of what Y/N could only assume was more loukoumades into her hands, and winked. “For later. You too skinny.” Y/N laughed and nodded.

The walk back to their apartment was much more lighthearted than when they’d left, and Morgan tucked Y/N into his side with a sigh. “Can we cuddle when we get back?” Y/N took a breath to respond, but Morgan hurriedly spoke again. “I understand if you’re still mad, but I wanted you to know that the option is there.” Y/N let out a breathy laugh, though she didn’t respond immediately. Was she still mad at him? She had been hurt at the time, and maybe still was, but honestly it didn’t seem like Morgan meant what he said. It was more like he’d wanted someone else to be as upset as he was. They both needed a hug and a good night's sleep.

“Yeah, Morgan, I think we both need that tonight.” Morgan squeezed Y/N’s shoulder as they came upon their building, and he held onto her as they climbed all seven flights of stairs. Bogey was sleeping on the couch again as they entered the apartment, and Morgan scooped him up gently. Bogey protested with a tiny meow, and Y/N pressed a kiss to the cat’s head. “He doesn’t like it when you pick him up while he's trying to sleep, you know.”

Morgan followed Y/N into her bedroom, depositing Bogey on the gray comforter. “I just wanted to cuddle with both of you. Plus, he loves my hugs.” Y/N let out a laugh, and she was still laughing as they settled into the bed. Morgan pulled her close, sliding an arm under her head and another across her lower ribcage. “I love you, Y/N. And I am so grateful that you let me hold you every night.” Y/N settled deeper into his chest, and Morgan pressed a kiss to her neck. “Goodnight, sweetheart.”

#nhl imagines #nhl imagine #morgan rielly imagine #good idea ML

30 notes · View notes

fiercyy · 4 years

Link

Chapters: 11/? Fandom: Naruto Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura & Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura & Hatake Kakashi, Team 7 - Relationship, Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura & Hatake Kakashi & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto Characters: Haruno Sakura, Uchiha Sasuke, Uzumaki Naruto, Hatake Kakashi, Tsunade (Naruto), Orochimaru (Naruto) Additional Tags: AU, Post-Chuunin Exams, post chuunin exams attack, Minor Character Death, Trauma, Team 7 Family bonding, Genin Era, Everybody moves in with Sasuke, he's got room, semi-au, Plot Twists, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Roommates, Friends to Enemies, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Dai-nana-han | Team 7 (Naruto) Feels, BAMF Dai-nana-han | Team 7 (Naruto), Team as Family, Slow Burn Series: Part 1 of Post-Chuunin Exam AU Summary:

Sakura always wished she could relate to her teammates better. She wishes she could take it back.

In which Sasuke acquires some unwanted roommates and a team becomes a family.

"You skipped training," Kakashi's one visible eye is narrowed in a foreboding expression. His large body takes up the whole doorframe when he holds himself up at full height.

Sasuke turns back to his book, earmarked not him but by Sakura, who the book belongs to. It's a historical account of the longest battle of the First Ninja War. For something so violent, it's extremely boring. "What's the point?" He asks petulantly.

"What's the point in training?" Kakashi asks incredulously. Surely Sakura's win hadn't hit him that hard.

"What's the point in the training we're doing? I'm not getting any stronger!"

"I'm teaching you restraint," begins the lecture he's heard what feels like a hundred times, "The Chidori is powerful and dangerous. You could hurt someone without meaning to."

Sasuke scoffs, "Sakura can beat me. I don't need restraint. In a fight, I'm trying to hurt someone."

"If your ego is so fragile then you're not ready for the responsibility of power."

"I am!" he argues. "But if power is such a burden then why can Sakura and Naruto keep getting stronger and now me?"

"They don't want power for power's sake!"

"Neither do I, I want power so I can use it."

Kakashi's eyes narrow, "I'm your mentor, not theirs. If you want my techniques you'll do things my way."

"Then I don't need you!" And desperate to escape the conversation, he jumps out the window.

"If you had control you wouldn't have hurt Sakura!" Kakashi shouts after him.

"I don't care!" he screams back. But that's a lie.

Sakura, for her part, has never been so thrilled to lose a fight. It doesn't feel egotistical to think that she basically won. She's just a softy who couldn't let him fall. It's a good thing, isn't it? That her instinct was to protect her teammate. (Even if, had he been thinking properly, he could have grabbed onto the wall with chakra.) That was what Kakashi was always ragging on her about, no? Not putting her team first?

She managed to surprise Sasuke and get the upper hand. She never thought she could do that. Never would have thought to… before.

Thinking about her parents brings her down. She can't do it often, it hurts too much. Since her heart to heart with Kakashi, she's being trying to focus on what she does have, not what she lost.

Her life has been in a quagmire since the attack, but at least she isn't alone. For that reason, she pities Sasuke. They both lost so much but afterward he had nobody. And she had so much. She's learning to be grateful for that, honest she is. She just gets so mad sometimes.

It's like when she was little. She was an angry kid. Her parents worked with her and taught her all the calming techniques; breaking deepy, counting, shoving it all into a box… The box worked best. All her longterm furies shut up where no one could see them. She let the bullies hit her as hard as they wanted. She wouldn't strike out. They could tease her all they liked, she wouldn't give them the satisfaction of a reaction.

She can't hold in that inner Sakura anymore. She won't be contained. Instead she's trying to come to terms with it all; work through it as best she can. It's freeing, to be a being who can feel anger again. The fight now, is to not allow it to consume her.

"Hey," Naruto starts, only for Sasuke to stalk right past him and slam the door to their room. He glances at the clock on the VCR. It's 11:00. The lock clicks. Shit. He's terrible at picking locks. "Aw man, what am I gonna do now?"

Sakura—who sits on the opposite side of the table, books open and post-its at the ready—is unsympathetic. "Sleep on the couch."

Alone in his room, the nightmares plague him worse than before. The prophecy of being swallowed by the earth came true. He finds new things to fear.

Sasuke wakes in the middle of the night.

The voices no longer reside in sleep. Orochimaru's whispers reverberate all around him; promises of power, of bargains. How will you kill your brother if you keep you as you are? He asks with condescension.

Sasuke shakes his head and for now, the pressure in his skull is dislodged. He rises and leaves the bedroom for the living room.

The apartment is dark. There is just enough moonlight to see by. He treads softly into the living room and stares at Naruto's slack body, thrown over the couch and covered in the red wool blanket. It's large enough that all three of them fit under it but in the heat of sleep he's kicked it off his feet. His soft snores, so familiar, settle Sasuke.

He didn't want Naruto to hear his nightmares. They've woken him before, but he never seems to grasp what the nightmares are about. He knew he'd be talking in his sleep tonight. It's always worse when he goes to bed angry. Orochimaru is preying on those feelings, he won't be taken in.

Except he's told no one. They might see it as a sign of weakness, or Kakashi might try and reseal him. What power reserves would be taken from him then? The temptation of more than a taste of what the curse can give him… He's stagnating here, while others flourish. He needs to be stronger. Now. And Orochimaru wants to give him strength. It's that simple.

He'll kill him before fulfilling his end of the bargain.

That thought, formulating a plan, is what makes it too real.

Sasuke's birthday is last in the calendar year and on the first morning of his 13th year, he wakes up to yelling and the sweet smells of an unhealthy breakfast.

"I made you an omelette actually," Sakura assures, plating her pancakes. It's dry and over seasoned, but he eats every bite slathered in ketchup. There's candles in it and they make him blow them out.

The day is spent in his favourite manner: outside, training. They read together in peace in the grass, for a while after that. (Sasuke and Sakura read. Naruto doodles crude caricatures in the margins of a magazine.) They go to lunch, then the baths. They henge into adult versions of themselves, laughing all the while at their absurd visions of the future. They use the illusions to sneak into a bar that's hosting a pub quiz. A jolly civilian in his 20s hosts. Naruto's only correct contribution is a question about the minutiae of the Teenage Mutant Firefighting Turtles lore.

They win second prize—a pitcher of beer. Their weak, 13-year-old tolerance ensures than they're unable to hold their henges for long after that. Once one breaks, the others do too and laughing all the while, they're kicked out of the bar.

"Technically this is your fault for giving it to us!" Sakura argues, "We didn't order any drinks!" The bouncer is unamused.

They stumble home, leaning on each other.

And when Sasuke stares at the spinning ceiling that night, he doesn't think of his childhood, his anger or the future. For the first time, he relives the same day he'll relive for years-the best birthday he ever had.

"Teach me how to unlock the Magekyou Sharingan," Sasuke demands. He doesn't know what he's asking.

Kakashi tries to tell himself this, but when he reaches inside himself, looking for compassion, he finds only rage. "No."

"It's my clan's legacy, the next logical step. I need it if I ever hope to-!"

"If you're very lucky you will never have the Magekyou," Kakashi warns, "The cost is too great."

"I'll pay it!"

"If you do," he replies, enunciating carefully, "I will strike you down myself."

They ambush him in the evening on his way home from another seemingly useless session with Kakashi. The Sound Four and all of their formidable strength and second-hand arguments (such as they are) meant to persuade him to defect on his own. Or to take him by force.

His curse seal burns, curling across his body.

The time has come to remember his purpose.

Sasuke strains against his restraints, spitting and snarling at his teacher. Kakashi's impassive eyes rove around, but his fingers are tight on the wire. The bark itches and the blood trickles down his arm where the wire has cut him.

"What's this all about?!" He demands.

"Sorry, but I knew you wouldn't want to sit still for another lecture." The second today. "Let it go, forget about revenge. Trust me, following the path of revenge never ends well. You'll only tear yourself apart. Even if you succeed, what will you have then? Nothing. Emptiness."

"Shut up!" Sasuke's blood boils, "What makes you think you know anything about it? You have no idea! Maybe if I were to kill the most important people in your life, anyone who's ever meant anything then you'd understand," he threatens cruelly, uselessly.

"Interesting theory, but everyone I've ever loved is already dead," he says it so calmly. Sasuke never knew that about him. "Besides you. And Naruto and Sakura."

Sasuke's sharp intake of breath is the only indication that his words have any effect.

"You and I are lucky. We've found new people to love, who love us."

The boy looks so small, his head drops so Kakashi can't see his face anymore. He loosens the restraints.

"That's all I wanted to say. You'll do what you want."

In the room he shares with his teammate, only feet away from his bed, Sasuke packs a bag in the dark. There's a photograph on the desk that he considers taking with him, but that wouldn't be wise. He lays it face down and leaves the room.

He hesitates at the front door and doubles back.

He doesn't know which cousin Sakura's bedroom belonged to. He never visited them before the Massacre. It's one of the reasons he feels safe here, it's untouched by death. They died at the compound with everybody else.

He opens her door a crack. The hinges are well oiled so they don't creak.

Asleep in bed, Sakura's back is to him, arm tucked under her chin and hair falling over her shoulders. He watches her for longer than he should, heart hammering in his chest. He's really going to do this.

He stays until he can't stand it anymore, it's too much.

Outside, the village is quiet. The streetlamps haven't been fixed in many neighborhoods, so he passes through the light and darkness with equal swiftness. His unhurried gait stops at the gates. They loom in front of him, a portal into his future.

"SASUKE!" Sakura shouts, breaking the stillness of the night.

He turns and can't hide his surprise at seeing her. He's a fool. He must have woken her with his goodbye. "What are you doing here?"

"This is the only way out of the village," she evades.

"Go home Sakura."

Before I say things we'll both regret.

"No," her voice breaks. She darts in front of him to block his path. "Why? I thought I understood you but I don't. I just don't. How can you throw everything away?"

"You could never understand me," he replies coldly. "I'm throwing away everything that doesn't matter. Anything that doesn't help me accomplish my goals."

"I know in the beginning you couldn't stand me. You probably hated me. But I thought-" here Sakura hesitates and the tears drip from her chin. "I thought that things were different now. You told me once that I have no idea what it means to be alone, well now I do. I do and I wish I didn't. It's horrible. But it's a little less horrible with you." She chokes on a sob and slaps a hand over her mouth to muffle it.

"You're just as annoying now as you were then." He steps up to her, so they're standing close. "Move," he commands.

"No."

"Move or I'll move you."

Her stance widens but her knees quake. "Try it then."

"Don't you understand that I'll kill you if I have to?" Move!

She laughs, so sad, "For the sake of your revenge."

"I'm travelling a path that you can't follow," in telling her so, he hopes to be kind.

Sasuke pushes past her. Like a willow branch, she moves aside then springs back to watch him walk away. All the fight has gone out of her. "You don't have to be alone. You don't think we would help you?" She cries, "Naruto and I would do anything for you. Why won't you let us?!"

"I don't need you!" He roars. "We aren't the same."

"I love you, don't you understand? Please don't walk away!"

With his back to her, neither can see the effect their words are having on the other, but they can hope. They can imagine.

"Stay," she whispers brokenly. "Or take me with you."

He turns. "Where I'm going, I have no use for you. Forget you ever knew me."

"No. You know that I can't," she says with force. He advances and her speech quickens. "If you move I'll scream, I swear I will, I-" In a flash, he's behind her. A sharp pain in her neck. Darkness descends.

Whispered words. Thank you.

12 hours earlier…

Though some ninjas choose to work under the cover of night, many realize that it's far easier to work in plain sight, in the day, hidden by the crowd. Sasuke has only been to Kakashi's apartment once before, but he remembers the way. It's not so odd that a student would visit his master in the day time.

He knocks and Kakashi's surprised to find him at the door.

"Can I come in?" He trusts that his sensei's home is secure.

"Sure, Sasuke," Kakashi replies in his usual breezy tone. "What can I do for you?"

"I need you to get me a covert meeting with the Hokage."

In under an hour they're in her office. Shizune, their only witness. Tsunade surveys the boy over her steeples fingers. "What can I do for you, Uchiha?"

"I need you to assign me an S-rank mission, to infiltrate Sound." Kakashi's eye cuts to him, "As a double agent."

#sasusaku #team 7 #sasuke x sakura #naruto #fanfiction #IYC #if you can't hold on hold on #my fic

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spidercakes · 4 years

Text

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

Tag List: @prettieststarker @readysetstarker @lover-starker@starkerprince @starker-flame @i-am-irondaddy @blush-reincarnated@c6h12o6-work @von–gelmini @caseysroses@darkobsidianquill @starkerhowlter

Warnings: bondage, light (but explicit) BDSM, smut.

Also, this chapter is hella long lmao its like 6K.

He’s looking in the mirror, admiring the shoes. He’d already sent a few pictures to Tony since he’d responded well to it the last time and they look cute with the black skinny jeans he happens to be wearing too. He hadn’t anticipated that, which is dumb because he knows black goes with everything and he’s seen Liz wear skinny jeans and heels but still. He turns a little, shifting the angle of the shoes in the mirror and smiling when someone walks into his room and he lets out a surprised squeak, turning too fast considering he’s not used to the shoes and he slips, falling on his ass.

Liz frowns at him for a moment, noticing the shoes right away. “If you want to wear those you need to learn how to walk in them and as much as I love MJ and Ned they are not qualified to teach you. I don’t think Ned is aware that things that aren’t fandom shirts even exist and MJ dresses like a homeless hobgoblin so I’m all you’ve got,” she says, arms crossed over her chest.

Peter picks himself up, which takes work in heels but he manages mostly. “I think I can manage on my own,” he says.

“Uh huh. Do you know how to walk down stairs in those?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

He frowns, “just like… go down the stairs?”

“Mmhm, see how well that works for you,” she tells him, gesturing out the door to his room. He sighs because now he has to prove her wrong so he walks with pretty good success to the stairs and goes down a few, clinging to the railing as he goes. Liz watches him judgmentally and he gives her a look.

“What? Am I doing it wrong?” he asks. How does someone even go down stairs wrong, heels or no?

“Yeah, you are. Give me a second,” she tells him, disappearing into her room for a moment before she reappears with a pair of heels on and walks down a couple stairs. “Go down them at a forty five degree angle, makes your life a whole lot easier,” she says.

He gives it a try and he frowns when it helps. “That’s so dumb why are they like that?” he asks, giving the shoes an annoyed look.

“No clue, some shoe expert probably figured it out but that’s how to do it the easiest. And you need to learn how to walk in those things, watching you makes me sad. Come here,” she says, walking back up the stairs easy. It takes Peter longer, unused to balancing the way he has to in these shoes. “What’s with the sudden interest anyway?” she asks and Peter shrugs.

“They’re cute.”

“And you decided this… yesterday?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

No, he decided that a long time ago. “Okay, this is going to sound really stupid but like… it didn’t occur to me that I could like… wear heels.”

Liz squints, “yeah, that is really stupid. You don’t even have the big man feet problem, you have baby feet,” she tells him and he wrinkles his nose at her.

“I don’t have baby feet, me feet are normal!”

“You have baby feet, Peter, accept it. So you decided out of nowhere you can wear heels, any other new discoveries? Because if you’ve suddenly decided you like women’s clothing in general I’m banning you from my closet,” she tells him.

He figures he’ll keep the skirt thing to himself, its not like she’d notice anyway. “Why not like… double your wardrobe?” he says. “We’re the same size.”

For a moment Liz frowns, “I didn’t consider that, and since MJ dresses you know… like that I’ve been stuck with one wardrobe this whole time. You have any other galaxy brain takes in there?” she asks. “And I’m borrowing those skinny jeans you’re wearing later.”

He looks down at them, eyebrows drawing together. “Liz, you have like twelve pairs of black skinny jeans why would you need mine?”

“Yours have pockets, strip them off Parker,” Liz tells him.

“Teach me how to walk in these things first and then I’ll consider it,” he tells her. Liz throws a pillow at him and he squeaks, smacking at it to deflect it, sending it flying into a wall while he loses his balance and falls on his ass. Liz walks over, looking down at him from her vantage point, “you’re at my mercy now, Peter,” she tells him.

He sighs, “fine, you can have my pants when we’re done with the heels lesson, I don’t feel like taking them off right now,” he mumbles.

Peter is trying and failing to not want to die in Beck’s class when finally, mercifully, his phone goes off. Its a text and he kind of feels bad for answering it but also if he has to concentrate on Beck for one more minute he might die. MJ gives him a look and she can stop that, she doesn’t even need this class. He does, which is probably why she’s looking at him like that, but still. He’ll pass, if only barely and that’s total crap because Beck only marks him down because of a personal vendetta against Peter over something he doesn’t know he did but still. A pass is a pass.

The text is from Tony, which is probably better than the alternatives. If it was Ned he’d definitely have to look at some horrible meme that he never wanted to see, same if it was MJ especially because she’s sitting right beside him, and if it was Liz there’d probably be a house emergency. She’s weird and prefers phone calls because apparently she grew up in the wrong generation.

Get something pretty and red.

He shakes his head, Tony and his damn obsession with red.

Any specific requests?

Might as well gather what it is Tony is looking for before he gets stuck shopping. Tony gives him a mostly non committal response so he huffs out a sigh, figuring he’ll get something similar to Liz’s skirt seems how he knows Tony liked that. And he liked the skirt too, might as well build something of a work wardrobe. MJ raises an eyebrow at him but he shrugs a little, unsure how he’s supposed to like… explain any of this.

He’s perched on Tony’s couch trying to figure out what the fuck was up with Ned’s computer when he typed all this stuff when Tony walks in. Peter looks over his shoulder and he can tell right away that Tony isn’t in a good mood. He looks more disheveled than normal and he’s frowning like its his job so Peter reaches out to him. “Come here,” he says, smiling when Tony walks over. “You look like you had a rough day,” he says, shifting in his spot so he can set his computer aside and pull Tony in for a kiss. Its a risk, he has no idea if he’ll react well but he figures Tony can pull away if he’s not interested. He doesn’t though, he leans into it and kisses Peter softly back.

“I’ve had a fucking terrible day,” he murmurs. “That’s a pretty skirt,” he adds, looking down at Peter.

“You said red. The boots don’t quite match but I still think they look okay,” he says. He doesn’t mention the little surprise under the skirt, figures if they get to that they’ll get to it. Its a surprise for a reason.

Tony leans in and kisses him again, fingers curling around his jaw, “those boots are pretty attractive too. You’re good at this.”

“I have friends that have an interest in fashion,” he says like he’s never paid attention to fashion in his life. Which, to be fair, he has but not in a meaningful way. Nice men’s stuff is either ridiculously expensive or too nice to wear out to like… normal places so he tends to wear a lot of jeans and graphic T’s. It works for him, even if he thinks women have prettier fashion. But it does come with the downside of being a lot flimsier and no pockets, he’s heard Liz and MJ complain enough to know not to take advantage of his pocket space.

Tony grins, “and you’ve never considered women’s fashion yourself? Because your ability to pick things out suggests you’ve done more than pay attention.”

“I pay attention to things sometimes,” Peter says, pouting a little.

It earns a small laugh out of Tony anyway. “Okay then, keep your secrets. And follow me, I have real plans for tonight,” he says and Peter all but jumps up.

“Really?” he asks, not meaning to sound as excited as he is.

Tony nods and holds out his hand, “really.” Peter takes it and lets Tony lead him to the bedroom he’d gone to the first time he came here. “Remember what I taught you about the stop light system?” Tony asks and Peter nods.

“Green is go, yellow is slow down, red is stop,” he says, knowing from their small training session that Tony will have him repeat it to be sure.

He nods, “good. Now this wasn’t planned in advance, so don’t feel like you have to do anything you don’t want to. Sure, you’re getting paid for this but everyone has the right to refuse work if you’re going from that angle, and from a basic not being a piece of shit angle I don’t want to do anything to you that you’re uncomfortable with. Okay?” he asks.

Peter sits on the edge of the bed and leans back on his palms. “Is it sad that I feel like I have more right to refuse work here than I did when I worked at McDonalds? Because that job sucked and people threw things at me.”

Tony frowns, maybe thrown off by the subject change or the fact that he used to work at McDonalds. “People… actually thought that their McDonalds order was so high stakes they threw shit at you?”

“Yup. I’ve had muffins, cookies, nuggets, coffee, and on one memorable occasion a bird thrown at me. That job taught me that any asshole who thinks McDonalds workers shouldn’t get fifteen dollars an hour for ‘burger flipping’ or whatever has a- never dealt with the general public and b- is probably the type of person to flip shit over a muffin and have a twenty minute long full blown meltdown. Seriously, three year olds have nothing on middle aged white women looking for a coffee. They’re the worst.” Which makes him sad because he knows middle aged white women who don’t suck, his aunt is the best, but after McDonalds he now secretly wonders which ones are the type to scream at teenagers over things that don’t, in the grand scheme of it, matter.

For his part Tony looks completely baffled. “A bird?” he asks and Peter sighs.

“Okay, Bird Man gets a pass because he was homeless, and he definitely had some mental health problems so when he grabbed that pigeon and just like… yote it at me I figured he was already having a worse day than me. But the next hour trying to catch the bird and get it out of the store wasn’t fun.” It ended up being him that finally caught the scared pigeon and he had to go throw it back outside. His boss at least wasn’t a total dildo that day and let him go home early on account of he was distraught but still. The job was the worst.

Tony shakes his head, “should have got a job at SI. You’d get benefits and an actual wage,” he says and Peter frowns.

“Like actually or do you not know the cost of stuff because rich people don’t know the cost of anything,” he says.

“We don’t,” Tony agrees, “which makes taking financial advice from us absolutely stupid but yes, SI employees get that fifteen an hour you mentioned earlier.”

Peter is sure he’s making some kind of face because Tony laughs, “what the hell? I worked at McDonalds for two years when I could have like… sold computers? Ugh.”

“You probably don’t get birds thrown at you often, at least. There was that one time the poop man attacked Toronto though and an SI store got hit. Shockingly all of the employees didn’t quit immediately because I would have.”

Now he knows how Tony felt when he mentioned the bird. “The… the what attacked Toronto?”

Tony shakes his head, “its normal for them and we live in New York, we don’t get to judge. You had a bird thrown at you, like an entire pigeon. Cities are weird- too many people in one spot and you get a bunch of squirrely ones i the mix.”

“Well, I’d rather a whole pigeon than a piece of one, in Bird Man’s defense,” he says and Tony wrinkles his nose.

“That’s a point.”

Peter lets out a soft huff, “so now that we’ve established that Toronto has poop men running around apparently and pigeons get thrown at underpaid minimum wage employees are you going to tell me what you’ve got planned?” he asks, grinning.

Tony smiles down at him, “you ever been tied up before?” he asks.

He shakes his head, “tried handcuffs once and they kind of sucked.” They look deceptively tame but they kind of hurt if they’re too tight or if you move around too much.

“Yeah, its weird that they’re considered next to vanilla considering restraint cuffs might look more intense but they’re a hell of a lot more comfortable. I don’t like cuffs though, never got the aesthetic of them and I’ve been arrested too many times to think they’re any fun. I was going to use rope- red to match your outfit,” he says.

Peter raises an eyebrow, “they make red rope? What hardware store are you going to?” Do rich people have special hardware stores where they can get rope in cool colors? Is there like… a Whole Foods equivalent to Home Depot?

“I didn’t go to a hardware store, baby. Is that where you think people get this stuff? No, I go to a specialty store that makes kink gear. The rope is silk.”

“Oh. I guess that makes a lot more sense than what I was thinking,” he says. “Silk is probably more comfortable than the scratchy stuff you’d get at a hardware store anyway.”

“It is. Here,” Tony says, turning and leaving the room for a few moments before he comes back with a bundle of dark red rope that he throws to Peter.

Well, yeah, its immediately way more soft than what he’d imagined. “Well now I feel dumb,” he says because this should have been like… common sense.

Tony shakes his head, “its fine, I made the same mistake when I was younger too and I’ve been reliably informed that I’m pretty smart,” he says like that’s not the understatement of the year. It does make him feel better though.

“Okay. So what are we doing with this? Aside from like, the obvious,” he says, wrinkling his nose at how dumb his question sounded.

“Restraining your arms- most of it is complicated knot work. It… eases my mind, I guess, is a good way to put it.”

Peter considers it for a moment and shrugs, “okay. Do you want me to take anything off?” he asks. He’s wearing a long sleeved black sweater that might be designed to look nice rather than keep him warm but its really cute with the skirt. And just a little baggy to make up for the fact that he’s got nothing going on up top.

Tony shakes his head, “no, the rope will look nice over the- did you get your nails done?” he asks, spotting them a little late.

“Um. No. Well, kind of. My roommate decided since I liked heels she now has free reign to do my nails because she likes doing it and our other roommates won’t let her practice on them. The red is kind of a coincidence, she likes red too.” The gold was her experimenting and Peter has to admit they came out really nice. Liz said its easier to do his nails than hers and he figures that makes sense.

He doesn’t really anticipate Tony walking over and picking up one of his hands, thumb moving over his nails but its kind of sweet, the way he does it. “They look nice,” Tony murmurs. “So, you ready?” he asks.

Peter perks up a little, unsure where his excitement is even coming from not, he supposes, that he’s about to question it. With a job that pays this well its best if he enjoys it. “Yeah, where do you want me?” he asks.

Tony smiles down at him, eyes crinkled a little at the corners and its a good look on him. “Middle of the bed, make yourself comfortable.”

This isn’t exactly Tony’s first time doing something like this but it is the first time he’s dealt with someone with such… natural submissive leanings. He’s heard plenty of stories but most of them seem either too good to be true, definitively made up, or weirdly misogynistic given that its never men who have a natural gift of submission. He suspects there’s still an element of truth to that but he’ll admit he might have been too quick to judge the stories as blatantly untrue all things considered.

Peter is spread out under him on his stomach, Tony perched on his thighs and Peter has already put his arms behind him, wrists crossed at his butt. He hadn’t needed the instruction at all, just went ahead and positioned himself exactly the way Tony was going to. It would be easy to write it off as a logical position to take but in Tony’s experience even subs who do this often need a little guidance. No one is a mind reader and sometimes they’ll wait for instructions on what to do. Peter, apparently, just happens to be good at doing everything he wants right away.

He places his hand in the middle of Peter’s back, just above where his skirt is sitting and he looks good like this, spread out underneath Tony with his hand on his back. His soft brown curls are brushes away from his face and his eyes are a little hooded, like he’s lost on the idea of being tied up alone. Tony does his best to keep his mouth from watering over the thought of it. He goes to sit back, grab the rope when Peter wiggles a little and Tony raises an eyebrow. “You okay down there?” he asks. Peter’s cheeks turn a little red and Tony sighs, “use your words, baby,” he tells Peter.

It results in another slightly uncomfortable wiggle but Peter speaks before Tony can react. “You can like… use your tie as a gag, right?” he asks, voice low like he’s having a hard time voicing his thoughts. Maybe he is, its not like he’s well versed in this and maybe to him there’s a level of embarrassment. Tony finds it common not that he ever dealt with it. Confusion better fit where he sat when he first got into this stuff. He likes the control, but he has no desire to control anyone in the way he’s experienced it. Made him wonder if his desire for control in this kind of situation was some sort of slippery slope that would lead to him being like Howard. So far it hasn’t happened yet so he figures he’s safe.

“I could, yeah. Is that something you want?” he asks, trying to suss out Peter’s feelings.

His cheeks turn more red, “obviously, or I wouldn’t have asked,” he says, nose wrinkling just a little.

He could have assumed that’s what he wants, but Tony doesn’t tell him that. “Relax baby, of all the things I’ve had people ask of me in situations like this that’s probably one of the tamest options. Give me a minute.” He drags himself off of Peter and then off the bed, feeling the weight of Peter’s eyes on him as he goes.

“What’s the weirdest, then?” he asks.

Never fails to be the next question out of every subs mouth if he says something like that. “You know what sounding is?” he asks, turning to catch a glimpse of Peter shaking his head. “A rod down your pee hole,” he says, laughing as Peter breaks position just to sit up and give him a what the fuck look.

“Why?” he asks, looking horrified.

“Lay back down,” Tony tells him and Peter huffs, returning to his previous position while Tony snatches his tie off the ground. “And I’ve been reliably informed that it feels like a blowjob on the inside, but not my thing.”

Peter doesn’t look like he believes him whatsoever and Tony can’t say he blames him for that. “That’s like… not cool at all,” Peter mumbles while Tony climbs back onto the bed.

“Different strokes for different folks and apparently its painless, not that I’ve ever tried it on account of no thanks.” Not that he should judge, he’s tried some weird things that he’s also discovered are not his thing but still. There’s always a thing or two that will freak a person out and that happens to be one of his, that and any kind of bathroom stuff he does not get the appeal but hey, he’s sure plenty of people don’t get shibari either. Its not like there’s a sexual element for it in the bondage itself either, even if he likes the look of it when its finished. But the act itself has more to do with aesthetics and concentration than sex.

Gags though, that’s more of a sexual thing for him and he’s looking forward to seeing Peter wear one. Especially since he chose to go with his tie. Its an intimate choice, one of Tony’s preferred though it has the downside of leaving the dry cleaning people to clean slobbery ties. He makes a knot in the middle though, turning it into a makeshift cleave gag before setting it aside. Peter gives him a quizzical look and Tony settles a hand in the middle of his back again. “I’m going to tie your hands and see if you can still snap so you can give me some indication that you want out of the ropes,” he says.

A small frown appears on Peter’s features as he considers that. “Huh. I didn’t even think of that,” he says.

“I know baby, but I’ve been doing this long enough to not over look basic stuff like that. Not that I would have expected you to come up with something anyway, that’s more my job.” He’s the one who has to pay attention to Peter’s safety and he’s the one with more experience- its Peter’s job to let him know he’s uncomfortable and that’s mostly it aside from not being outright stupid but Tony told him ahead of time not to be stupid enough to tie himself to a bed with knots that get tighter every time you struggle. Peter had immediately wrote the idea off but Tony has heard of people doing that so its not like it hasn’t been done.

He grabs the rope and eyeballs the length he’ll need to restrain Peter’s wrists the way he wants to before setting to work. Its not difficult, at least not now, to get the knot right and pull it as tight as he wants it. “Snap your fingers,” Tony tells him. Peter does so without difficulty and he nods. “Good. If you’re in any kind of trouble, snap your fingers,” he tells him.

“What if I like… have to pee,” Peter says.

Tony snorts at the practicality of the question. “Then snap your fingers, I’ll take the gag off, and then you can pee. This is not complicated,” he says, grinning down at him.

“I’m just saying, that’s hardly trouble,” Peter tells him, nose wrinkled.

“Don’t be a brat,” Tony says, “and open your mouth.” He does, without complaint and isn’t that just fucking precious. He misses this, someone who’s so pliant and willing to do what he wants when he wants. Within reason, obviously. He sticks the knot in Peter’s mouth and ties it behind his head. “You good?” he asks. He already knows the answer from the look on Peter’s face but the nod is good confirmation. “Good,” he murmurs, settling a hand on Peter’s back again. “I’m going to tie your arms up to about here, okay?” he asks, touching the spot just above Peter’s elbow. Peter gives him a soft mood of affirmation and Tony nods before he starts to work.

Its quick work, but its methodical- requires a level of talent with the rope to make it do what he wants. He can do fancier work than what he’s doing now but his goal is only partly aesthetically driven. He wants to see Peter look nice, but he also likes the busywork of it, the way it can distract his brain a little as he winds down for the day. His job is stressful, mostly because he makes a point to be more involved with his company than a lot of other CEO’s he knows probably because he’s a bit of a control freak. He hasn’t taken a vacation in over two years and he probably needs one all things considered but he has this and this helps. Especially when Peter looks like that, yes half lidded as he makes small noises of contentment while Tony ties the knots.

The red rope stands out against the black of Peter’s sweater, bright against it and conveniently a perfect match to his skirt. He’d wonder, if not for the obvious honesty, if Peter had dabbled in women’s clothing before given his ability to match things and gauge his size right. Its been a long time since someone so immediately good at this, someone so obviously compatible with his wants, has come into his life and he’s fully prepared to milk it for all its worth. He likes the time he gets with his subs, the way the dynamic works between them as they give and take what they need for each other. He likes Peter specifically.

“You look so pretty for me like this,” he murmurs to Peter as he loops the last bit of rope around his upper arms. Peter makes a small hum of affirmation and Tony smiles down at him, “you handled this better than I thought you would,” he murmurs. Peter raises an eyebrow at him looking almost offended. “Relax, I thought you’d do fine. Didn’t anticipate you liking it as much as you did. Maybe next time I’ll tie up your legs too, have you sit pretty for me for awhile,” he murmurs. Peter lets out a soft whine, hips tilting into the bed and Tony raises an eyebrow. “Are you getting off on this?” he asks. He gets an irritated huff out of Peter, like he’s annoyed to have been found out but its useful information actually. “Don’t be shy now, baby, its not like I mind. Makes taking care of you easier if I know what you like,” he points out.

After a quiet, tense moment Peter finally nods and hmm. “I’m going to sit you up on your knees, okay?” Peter nods and Tony moves off the back of his legs so Peter can shift, tucking his legs underneath himself with some minor difficulty. Tony places a hand on his shoulder and grips the knots tying Peter’s arms together and pulls him up, earning a soft gasp out of Peter when he pulls on the rope. His hands clench a little and so does his jaw as Tony shifts him into a more comfortable position. He reaches up and unties his tie, pulling it from Peter’s mouth and earning a dirty look for it.

“Put that back!” he says, almost offended about it.

Tony grins as he sets it aside, “I will in a minute, gorgeous, but I’d like to explore this apparently newfound love of bondage first,” he murmurs as he settles a hand on Peter’s thigh. Peter leans back into him, fully relaxed and that’s curious but not in a bad way. “You sure this is the first time you’ve done this?” he asks.

“Pretty sure I’d have known if I got into this before. Probably would have, if I knew how much I liked it,” he murmurs.

He nods, “and there’s another thing. What do you like about this, hmm?”

Peter gives him another dirty look but its a fair question. When he raises an eyebrow Peter gets the point that he’s supposed to respond. He gives Peter a moment while he shifts a little uncomfortably, perhaps uncomfortable with someone telling him to verbalize his desire. He’s been there, he gets it, but he needs to know what Peter likes so he can better tailor their scenes to both of their tastes. “I like the restriction,” he says eventually. “And I like the lack of control.”

That’s interesting, liking the lack of control given that Peter seemed to have been a little put off by that when they went over the stuff Tony liked. But sometimes people feel differently when they try something than when they read about it. “Flesh that out for me, the lack of control you like. What is it exactly that you like about it?”

“Kind of what’s on the tin,” Peter tells him and Tony pulls the ropes attached to his arms back a little, jostling him. Peter lets out a sharp gasp, biting his lip as his breathing picks up. Well, there’s a reaction.

“Don’t give me attitude, Peter,” he murmurs.

“Sorry,” Peter mumbles back and Tony raises an eyebrow. It takes a second for Peter to pick up what he’s trying to convey but he gets it after a moment and lets out a huff, “sorry, Mr. Stark.”

He decides to let the bit of attitude in that go because he’s always loved that, being called Mr. Stark in bed. No idea why, it should probably remind him of work the way ‘sir’ does, which is why he doesn’t use the popular honorific in scenes, but for whatever reason he can make the separation between work and something else with that particular title. “Good,” Tony murmurs, giving the underside of Peter’s jaw a kiss. “Now lets try that again. What is it about the lack of control that you like?”

Peter sits there for a moment, frowning. “I… don’t get what you’re asking, where’s the nuance in that that you see?” he’s asks.

Tony gives him another soft kiss, “thank you for asking. The headphones you wore when we first met, they’re a loss of control too but you didn’t like not being able to hear. What about this is different to you?”

That at least seems to help Peter out in regards to what he’s looking for. “I didn’t mind not being able to hear, it was just that I was stuck in total silence. It felt cold, isolated. This is like… the opposite of that. I like feeling restricted, like feeling the way you tie the knots. I like…” Peter trails off for a moment and Tony gives him time. “I like that I have no control, that you could do whatever you want to me.”

“Do you want that? Me to do whatever I want to you?” he asks. That had been something he seemed disinterested in too when they’d talked things over but Peter nods.

“Yes,” he breathes out softly, head tipped back a little as his eyes shut like imagining it is enough to get him going.

He presses a soft kiss to Peter’s jaw, “something to keep in mind for next time,” he murmurs.

“You can do it now, if you want,” Peter says, looking over his shoulder and fuck he looks gorgeous like that, half wrecked and Tony hasn’t even done much yet.

“Not right now baby, I want to ease you into this.” Peter pouts at him about it and Tony is sure he has no fucking clue what sub frenzy is so he’ll send him information on it later. For the moment he thinks he can swing Peter’s desire in his favor anyway. “You want me to put that gag back on?” he asks and Peter nods almost frantically.

“Yes,” he breathes out, squirming a little with desire and Tony smiles as he grabs the tie. He slips the knot back into Peter’s mouth and reties it behind his head before settling his hands on Peter’s thighs. He presses back into Tony, trying his best to look at him over his shoulder and only partially succeeding given that Tony is almost right behind him.

“So you like being tied up, hmm?” he murmurs as he moves his hands slowly up Peter’s thighs. Peter lets out a small whine and nods. “How about next time I tie your hands to your ankles wearing those pretty little boots of yours?” Peter’s head tips back and moans and Tony has to admit his reaction is probably almost as attractive as the real thing even if he won’t be sure of that until he sees it. “I’ll tie your legs too, just like this,” he says, fingers trailing softly up his folded legs, “make you sit there and beg for it until I think you’ve earned it.”

He doesn’t totally expect Peter to react but he’s more than happy when Peter’s eyes roll back and he lets out another moan though the tie. Begging seemed to be more his thing than Peter’s but he’s happy to trade off tying him up if it’ll get him what he wants. Shit, there’s a lot of things he’d trade off to see Peter like this. “Then,” he murmurs in Peter’s ear, “I’ll bend you over.” He tips Peter forward, hand on his neck as he presses him into the mattress and fuck the loud, extended moan Peter lets out is hot. “And touch you,” he says as he trails his fingers up the back of Peter’s thighs, toying with the edge of his skirt. Peter’s breathing has picked up and he shifts a little under Tony’s hand, making small noises of pleasure as his hand slips under his skirt.

He doesn’t anticipate the panties Peter is wearing under it and he moans, pressing his forehead to Peter’s back as he leans into his further. “God, you are so fucking perfect,” he tells Peter, “always managing to do some other little thing for me, hmm?” Peter lets out a small laugh, trying his best to wiggle his ass a little. “How do you feel about me teasing you like this, hmm? Seeing how far I can take you,” he murmurs as he cups Peter through the satin. He makes a high keening noise as he shifts his hips into Tony’s hand. “Yeah, I thought you’d like that. Could probably tease you for hours, bring you to the edge and back again until you’re so damn hungry for it you can’t even beg anymore.” Peter takes in a sharp inhale of breath and shifts his hips into Tony’s hand again. He massages Peter gently, feeling him through the soft material and smiling when Peter’s eyes flutter shut again.

“Next time I’ll use a proper gag, see what your pretty lips look like stretched over a ball gag for me. Wanna hear the way you sound when I fuck into you soft and slow, forced to move at my pace,” he murmurs. Peter whines, hips tilting into his hand as he tries desperately to draw in enough breath through his nose. “Bet you I could get you to cum like this, barely even touching you.” Peter nods frantically, whining again as he shivers. Tony smiles, “I’ll let you this one time, but after this you cum whenever the hell I tell you to, got that?” he asks and Peter lets out a loud moan, face curling into the mattress as he spills over those pretty panties of his, eyes rolling back in his head. “Good,” Tony murmurs, leaning forward and pressing a kiss to his jaw. “Glad to see we understand each other.”

Peter is on cloud fucking nine and he didn’t even expect to like any of that except now he wants to do like all of it yesterday. Tony sent him more reading material but he’s neglected it in favor os savoring the feeling of Tony’s hand on the back of his neck pressing him into the mattress and fuck it’s going to be a long time before he can think of anything else jerking off. He’s excited for the next time Tony calls him over and he’s going to complain if Tony doesn’t do what he promised because he has needs, okay, and its cruel to neglect them. That’s like… workplace negligence or some shit, he’ll look it up later.

He’s so absorbed in his thoughts that the poke to his side results in him letting out a sharp yelp and tossing the plate he forgot was in his hand across the room. Liz, MJ, and Ned snort and start laughing. “Oh my god, its like those cat versus cucumber videos and Peter’s the cat!” Ned says, clutching his stomach as he laughs. He looks down and sure shit Liz is holding a fucking cucumber.

“Can you guys like… not?” he asks, hand on his hip.

“You’re cleaning that up,” MJ tells him, gesturing to his dinner, which is now on the floor. He sighs because that’s only fair but still, its rude to scare a guy when he’s daydreaming about hot men holding him down and fucking him silly. He feels he should be left in peace with his thoughts.

“This is like… treason and I’m calling the president,” Peter tells them.

Liz rolls her eyes, “jokes on you, the president hates gays so we’re all going to jail.”

#tony stark x peter parker #starker #alternate universe #fanfiction

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