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song-of-storms162 · 1 year

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What Dreams Would Sound Like

Genshin Impact Xiao x Gender neutral! Reader

Modern AU, Bassist! Xiao, Bassist in training! Reader

2999 words of mutual pining and fluff?

Xiao’s just in the mall to pick up some new strings and possibly some boba. He bumps into you, a friend from university he’s been giving bass lessons and can’t seem to get out of his head.

This fic has been collecting dust in my drafts for waaay too long. I cleaned it up to make it more gender neutral but let me know if I miss anything. I hope you all enjoy it!

Here’s a link to a photo of the boba straw key ring that comes with a portable reusable straw for anyone curious (yes it exists): https://www.bobatribe.com/products/the-boba-straw

The little bell above the door jingles cheerfully as Xiao enters his favorite music store. The various instruments on display line the shop’s walls along with rows and shelves of gear ranging from boxes of violin rosin to smaller instruments like tambourines and maraccas. Xiao gives a brief nod to the owner wiping down the glass counters filled with capos and drumsticks as his eyes skitter over the rack of bass guitars on display. His gait slowed down to admire the gleaming instruments and to not nudge any of the arranged amplifiers with his guitar case. His feet find their way to a particular shelf in a corner of the store, where the guitar and bass strings are kept.

Xiao reached out to grab a pack of his usual bass strings and some guitar strings for his bandmate Albedo, who had been too busy juggling two majors and a minor to visit the store himself. Xiao unlocked his phone to check with the photo Albedo sent him to make sure he had the right pack and he absentmindedly heard the store’s bell jingle again as he swipes through his photo gallery.

“Oh, hello! Are you here to see those bass guitars again?” Xiao overhears the store manager say and he’s a little tempted to see who else might be another bass player. His thumb swipes over his phone furiously, where did he put that archons damned pho-

“Yes! And can you recommend me a few amplifiers today?” Xiao’s phone swiping halts at that voice. Looking up from his phone to scan the room, Xiao’s grip on the strings tighten when he spots you.

You who was the only person brave enough to sit next to him for lectures during your first week in university, you who’s continued to save him a spot on your right for every lecture as you became immune to his glare. You, who calls Xiao over to invitie him to group projects if either of you didn’t have enough group members. You who’s made it to every concert and session he’s had with his band ever since you found out he played and sometimes you show up with bubble tea for him and his group members (they tease Xiao every time you appear) which lead to them jokingly calling you by the nickname of ‘Boba angel’. You who Xiao knows has a workshop every two weeks the same day they play live in Angel’s Share so Xiao asks his band if they can start a little later sometimes because the first time you showed up in the middle of their performance, out of breath from running to the campus cafe with their usual bubble tea, Xiao scolds you but he can’t help the redness creeping up his face when you beam at him and say, “I wanted to see you perform!”

Xiao who started giving you bass lessons when he was free and because he felt he owed you an apology but he quickly grew to love those little sessions with you. Xiao frowns, he hadn’t realised it but with all those sessions you had progressed to a level where you were more than entitled to an instrument of your own. His frown deepens as he realises you won’t be cradling his bass on your lap anymore but it softens when he realises the two of you can have more sessions now that you have your own instrument.

Unbeknownst to Xiao, you’ve been saving and working for your own bass guitar, your sessions with him had reached a point where each person needed an instrument and you felt a little guilty for hogging his bass sometimes. You had heard of this store from Albedo, Xiao’s bandmate after discussing the matter with him and you soon found yourself coming back frequently to pick a bass guitar in their vast collection and you were able to narrow your choices down to a small number of basses.

Before Xiao knows it, his feet had brought him closer to where you stand with the employee over two different bass guitars. Xiao recognises them vaguely, he knows the makers stamped on both guitars are well known and he thinks back on the past bass guitars of their brand that he had heard as he tries to pinpoint which one might suit you better. “(Name)?” He tries to hide the fact that he knew you were in the store for the past ten minutes or so. But luckily, you look up from the instruments and a smile paints your face. “Xiao, what are you doing here?” “I needed a new set of strings,” said Xiao as he held the string packet up. “You’re picking out an instrument?” “Yep!” Xiao watches your gaze drop back to the two instruments again, your hands patting down one of the basses. “I’ve been thinking about getting a bass for a while now and I have enough saved up for an amp too.”

Xiao’s not prepared when you smile up at him so sweetly. “And besides, I can’t hog your bass forever.” “I don’t mind.”

You tilt your head curiously at him and Xiao coughs, looking away from you to hide his blushing cheeks. “I don’t mind you playing my bass.”

“Oh! Well that’s sweet of you Xiao,” you say before turning your head away before frowning at the two basses.

“You can’t decide?” Xiao noticed your expression and you nod.

“Have you tried playing them yet?” Xiao asks and you shake your head this time.

“I don’t want to trouble-”

“Excuse me,” the employee piped up. “If you want, I can bring over an amplifier so you can try them out.”

“No, it’s alright-” “I’ll help you, they’ll need a new cable as well.” says Xiao as he slowly takes off his guitar case so it sits next to you before leaving with the store employee.

“I have to say, Xiao,” said the employee as they searched around for a brand new cable. “I was wondering why you needed a string change so soon. I thought you were just practicing more but I guess there’s another reason why the strings are so worn.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Xiao picked up the amplifier in one hand before beginning to head back to where you sat.

“I see I’m not going to get an answer from you,” the employee sighed. “But hey, maybe with both of you coming here, the store can start up a couple’s discount!”

Xiao glared at the employee before snatching away the bass cable. “The day you start a couple’s discount is the day I stop coming here.”

Xiao huffs before briskly making his way back to you, not hearing the employee say “He’s all grown up now, I wonder if Mr. Zhongli knows about his partner.”

When Xiao comes back, he sees you cradling a bass in your lap. After placing the amplifier on the floor, Xiao drops to one knee to connect the bass to the amplifier. Xiao’s head dips down so he can see the cable and you find yourself staring at the fading turquoise streaks on top of his head, wondering when was the last time he dyed his hair.

“Xiao?” You call out and he glances up at you. “When was the last time you dyed your hair?”

Xiao’s gaze is fixed on the cable. “A while, maybe a month, why?”

You hum. “Have you ever considered dying it a different color?”

“...me and Kazuha mixed up our dyes once,” Xiao mumbles, loud enough for you to hear and the grin you sport has him both slightly terrified and embarrassed.

“Wait, so you had red hair?” The excitement and amusement in your tone had his heart feeling things.

“Does Kazuha dye his hair any other color?” Xiao grumbles as he stands. “It was just my tips–and why are you staring at me like that?”

The wide smile on your face is now coupled by what Xiao can only call starry eyes, you’re obviously trying to hold in your laughter but the way your eyes scan his hair then his face, have his ears reddening.

“I’m just trying to picture you with red hair. Oh! Did anyone take a photo to commemorate the event?”

Xiao turns away from you and picks up the other bass and for a moment, you wonder if you’ve crossed a line.

But Xiao’s cheeks are red when he mumbles, “Venti has a photo, I can send it to you.”

“Really?”

“For a price.” Xiao sits next to you, careful not to bump your instruments together and his gaze turns to your face. Despite the slight redness in his cheeks, his eyes are piercing, serious. They’re the same burning gold that comes out when he’s performing with the band or dancing on stage.

His staring makes you swallow and you quickly turn your head to the bass strings and begin to fiddle with them to avoid his stare.

“Well,” you clear your throat. “What’s your price then?”

“We go get boba after this,” says Xiao and you whip your head away from the strings.

“Wait, that’s it?” you question and Xiao nods.

“That’s it,” says Xiao and a slight smirk crosses his face. “What were you hoping for?”

You jolt in your seat and quickly look away. “Boba! Boba was what I was hoping for!”

“...right,” Xiao takes your actions in stride and you feel yourself let out a breath of relief.

“So how long have you and Xiao been dating?” The shopkeeper returns with a catalog in hand.

Xiao’s hands pause in tuning the bass and he can hear you stutter. “A-actually we’re-”

Xiao doesn’t know how his voice manages to come out without shaking. “I teach them music.”

“Oh really? Are you sure?” the shopkeeper presses on, a teasing smile on their face.

“And they’re a much better bassist than you,” huffs Xiao and the shopkeeper squawks.

“Hey! I’m still learning!”

“And so is (Name) and yet it’s obvious who the superior bassist is,” says Xiao as he starts to fiddle with the bass.

“Fine,” the shopkeeper deflates. “So (Name) how did you convince Xiao to teach you?”

You and Xiao pause, your expression drops and Xiao quickly replies.

“That’s for us to know and you to never learn.”

Before the shopkeeper could protest anymore, you quickly start off a few bass licks Xiao had taught you to lighten the mood. Xiao nods in approval when he notices the improvement in your fingering and the even tempo you keep. When you finish, Xiao gestures to the other bass of your choice in his arms, his gaze questioning.

“Have you chosen that one or do you want to play this one too?”

You slowly set down the bass into an instrument stand the shopkeeper brings out and hold your arms out for the other bass. “I want to try the other bass too.”

Xiao passes you the bass and plugs the cable into the new bass, nodding at you to start. You smile back before turning a serious gaze to your hand on the fretboard. When the music begins to flesh out, Xiao finds himself mesmerized by the sound for a while, gold eyes lighting up in soft adoration and slight surprise. The sound is slightly different but if Xiao had to pick, he felt the second bass suited you better.

When you finish, you glance up at Xiao and ask “Well what do you think? I want to hear your opinion.”

Xiao honestly didn’t know why you were asking, the way you looked at the second bass and lost yourself in the playing said enough to him. “The second bass, it suits you. It’s like–hm how do I describe it?”

You’re not prepared for him to say the next line.

“The way you play this bass, I think it’s what dreams would sound like.” Golden eyes scan the bass before flicking back to you and Xiao’s gaze falters at the way you’re looking at him.

It’s almost as if you return his feel–

He quickly turns away to the shopkeeper as his hand fiddles with the gift in his pocket. “We’ll take the second bass, this amplifier, a new cable and a gigbag.” The shopkeeper’s eyes light up as they head to the storage room to bring out a new gig bag before asking Xiao if he could help bring the items to the cashier.

Xiao nods and turns to you and notes the curious expression you wear before beginning to prepare the amplifier and cable. “Ready to go get boba?”

You nod. “Sure, I still need to see that photo after all!”

Xiao’s ears redden at your words. “It’s just a photo,” he mumbles.

“But it’s a photo of you with red hair!”

Were you trying to give him a heart attack from how excited and adorable you were being?

Xiao huffs, ”Let’s go before the shopkeeper bothers us again.”

You pay for your bass and set it inside the new gigbag, smiling when you slip the straps over your shoulders, giddy after purchasing your new bass. The shopkeeper hands you your change as Xiao picks up your amplifier before slowly offering his hand towards you.

You take it, and Xiao gingerly takes your hand. You both zoom around the mall, never letting go. What exactly were you both now? Acquaintances? Outside of his bandmates, some peers and certain professors, Xiao didn’t associate much with people and you both definitely spent time together. Friends? That would be the easiest answer, but you couldn’t help but wish you were more than that. Best friends? You were sure that title belonged to his bandmates who knew Xiao better than you did but Venti and Albedo had both commented on how Xiao would be easier to convince when it came to doing something that involved you.

Another option lingered on the back of your head but you weren’t even sure if it was possible.

“Do you want to order your usual or do you want to try the special edition drink?” Xiao’s voice quietly asks as you both reach the boba stand and begin to queue.

You were still pondering over what the shopkeeper had said, perhaps something familiar would help cool your head.

“I’ll order my usual,” You reply, maybe something familiar and comforting could help you make sense of this foreign feeling. Xiao nods and orders for you both. You opt to sit at one of the many tables when Xiao noticed how the furrow in your brows hadn’t gone yet. Hesitantly, Xiao brought out his hand and lightly tapped on your shoulder. The familiar gesture brought you out of your thinking.

“You’ve had that expression for a while now”, said Xiao as he brought his hand back. “So I thought I’d try what you usually do.”

When Xiao was too caught up in his music, you would carefully tap on his shoulder, it would always be the trick you used when you needed to bring him out of his head and now he was using it on you.

“Well,” you cleared your throat. “I was thinking about what that shopkeeper said and how you responded. Does my playing really sound like that?”

“Like a dream?” Xiao asks and you nod as he continues. “It does, to me, it sounds like a pleasant dream I don’t want to wake up from.”

“I think that’s because I have you as a teacher,” you say with a chuckle and Xiao shakes his head.

“I’ve taught you songs and scales but your playstyle is purely your own.” You both turn your heads when you hear the ding! Of the shop’s numbering machine and Xiao rises to fetch your drinks.

“You forgot the straws,” You mention when Xiao returns with both drinks in hand.

Xiao sets the drinks down. “No I didn’t, I have them right here.”

Xiao fishes out two adorable boba keyrings and sets them on the table. You tilt your head at him in confusion.

“This one’s yours,” Xiao hands you the keychain with the smiling boba cup and keeps the one with the frown for himself. “This is how you use them.”

Xiao pops the keychain open to reveal a poker for your drinks and a foldable straw inside. You mimic his actions and poke your own cup. “These are adorable! Where did you get them?”

“I bought them, I saw them on an online sale and thought they’d be something you’d like.” Xiao sipped his drink and watched you fawn over the keychain, a small smile tugging at his lips at your own excitement.

But Xiao’s smile tightened when he remembered why he had chosen to gift the keychain to you in the first place.

“Xiao?” a tap on his shoulder and Xiao’s eyes flick to yours. You smile at him over your drink. “Now you’re the one spacing out! What’s going on in that head of yours?”

“(Name), can I,” Xiao takes a deep breath. “Can I take you somewhere next weekend?”

“Did a new boba shop open up?” you ask and Xiao falters in his response.

“Yes but also,” Xiao feels his emotions ready to barf themselves on the table. “I was hoping I could take you out properly.”

“Like a date?” you ask with a teasing smile but it fades when you see Xiao nod.

Xiao was being serious. About taking you out on a date.

You take a nice long sip from your drink, trying to look anywhere but the boy sitting across from you. When you drain your drink of nearly all its toppings, you finally have enough courage to face Xiao, who drained his cup as well.

“I’d love to go out with you Xiao,” you finally reply with a small smile and Xiao’s eyes widen.

“You’re sure?” he asks, dumbfouded that you agreed and you laugh.

“You just asked me on a date, and I said yes. Yes Xiao, I’m very sure.”

#xiao x you #genshin impact xiao x reader #xiao x reader #xiao oneshot #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact x you #xiao x y/n #genshin x reader #genshin x y/n #xiao x gender neutral reader #genshin x reader modern au #bassist! xiao

101 notes · View notes

gureishi · 3 years

Note

Ohhhh, requests? Requests!!!! ❤️

We all know and love SE and the Choi family (Mc, Saeyoung and Saeran living together in the bunker).... But what about. Other way arround?

Saeran after ending, with saeran and saeyoung making amends, and you finally befriending and getting to know the true person behind 707.

Im happy with whatever ideas you have for this, but if you need more guidance... A scene between saeyoung and Mc, talking? Saeyoung thanking mcfor making saeran happy and feeling like he failed as a brother for not protecting him, and mc being all sweet as she is reassuring him that it's OK and that they are happy now and just fluffy??????

Gosh, I wrote a lot, sorry.

Oh wow. I ADORE this request. Thank you for bringing me this sweet idea. ♡

I love envisioning their lives together post-AE, and it was so much for fun me to imagine this tiny little slice of that.

after

Saeyoung & Reader (platonic); Saeran X Reader (background), G, words: 2355

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・

Today there’s one of those early-winter snows where the flurries get stuck in your hair but the ground’s not white and beautiful, just cold and damp. The parking lot is nearly empty—apparently no one else wanted to go out today. Personally, you can’t understand why. You love the way the sky’s a bright white and how the biting wind makes the tips of your ears pink.

Saeyoung, who’s been walking a few paces ahead of you, turns around in time to see you stop and catch a snowflake on your tongue. He raises his eyebrows; he’s got his hood up and there’s a light dusting of snow on top of his head, like powdered sugar.

“I was gonna ask if you regretted coming along now that it’s snowing, but I guess I have my answer.” He’s got a complicated look on his face, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to laugh at you or not.

“I have no regrets!” you sing, and then he does laugh, shaking his head indulgently.

“Come on,” he says. “Your shoes are getting wet.”

“Your shoes are getting wet. Also your head. Who goes to the store in just a hoodie in the winter?” But you run to catch up with him, splashing in the little puddles that have collected in the uneven pavement.

“It was the hoodie or the floor-length pink fur coat, so I went for the hoodie,” he says, and you can’t tell if he’s joking or not.

The automatic doors slide open for you; he grabs a shopping cart from the assortment parked just inside the door. You walk beside him, feeling a little awkward. Grocery store etiquette, you think, is such a personal thing. Saeran, for instance, likes to go slowly through the store, lingering in each area—looking for inspiration, sometimes checking recipes on his phone. You like to move through the store at random, picking out items that strike your fancy. These methods work surprisingly well together—perhaps because Saeran finds it charming when you come running up to him with a strange new fruit in your arms.

Saeyoung, it seems, has neither a list nor a plan. He pushes the shopping cart lazily with one hand, heading vaguely toward the nearest aisle. You’re tempted to guide him in one direction or another, but you also don’t want to be a nuisance. This is his shopping trip—he was the one who announced he was going to the store; you were the one who’d insisted on tagging along.

“Are you sure?” he’d asked then, hesitating, one hand already on the doorknob. “You don’t need to! I can get whatever you—”

“I want to,” you’d said firmly, jumping off the couch where you’d been lying with your feet in Saeran’s lap, reading a book. It wasn’t that you needed anything in particular from the grocery store or that you didn’t trust Saeyoung to find whatever was needed for the house (though, in retrospect, it wasn’t that you did trust him, either). It was just…

In the few precious days that you’d been living in the bunker with the brothers—in a world that was suddenly so peaceful you couldn’t quite believe it—you’d begun to realize something: in spite of the hours of phone conversations and chats you’d shared with the enigmatic and charming 707, you actually hardly knew Saeyoung at all.

“So, uhhh,” he begins, a bit uncomfortably. You glance at him askance; his cheeks are pink. “What do we need, anyway?”

You laugh—you can’t help it. “What were you going to buy if I didn’t come with you?”

Saeyoung shrugs, looking down. He’s definitely blushing. “I was gonna…wing it.”

Maybe it’s his inexplicable shyness with you and maybe it’s your genuine love of grocery shopping, but your confidence is bolstered. You take the cart from him and he relinquishes it gratefully, falling into step behind you.

“First we’re going to get produce,” you tell him, and he nods eagerly, bouncing on his heels. He honestly looks excited that you’ve taken the lead; you make a mental note about this. At home, Saeyoung is often in charge—of little things, like what movie you’ll all watch together—because he is boisterously enthusiastic about everything and you and Saeran are more subdued. But here, without his twin, outside of his domain, he is suddenly much less confident.

You select a few types of squash; he watches somewhat reverently. “How do you know what to get?” he asks in a quiet voice.

“Practice, I guess,” you say. “I have in mind a couple of recipes we can make this week, and there are some staples it’s always good to have…” You pause, realizing something, your hands full of squash. “Saeyoung, can I ask you something?”

“What? Yeah!” He responds a little too readily and you know he’s trying to mask his awkwardness. It’s endearing.

“You lived alone for a pretty long time,” you say thoughtfully. You survey the selection of cabbage. “Didn’t you…buy food? To eat?”

He laughs, runs a hand through his already-messy red curls. “God Seven doesn’t need food to live!” he sings, and it’s in the tone of the 707 you’d developed a strange friendship with during those days you were at Mint Eye. You know now that Saeyoung was there, even then, under all that false positivity and diversionary teasing.

“You do, though,” you tell him. You hand him a head of cabbage.

Your firm tone seems to quell him. He looks down at the cabbage.

“I ate snacks, mostly,” he says, a little more quietly. “Sometimes Vanderwood got frustrated and brought me other things to eat.”

You turn away to hide the look in your eyes from him. These poor, poor boys.

“You two!” you explain in mock-frustration, pushing the cart to the next refrigerated shelf. “So you were living on junk food while he was keeping himself alive with caffeine pills. What am I going to do with you?”

Saeyoung bounces behind you, still holding the cabbage.

“Feed us!” he says. You roll your eyes and tear a plastic bag off the role beside the shelves.

“Put the cabbage in the bag,” you tell him. He does.

You gather a few more fruits and vegetables and Saeyoung asks about all of them; you’re amused when he doesn’t know what a persimmon is.

“So besides chips and stuff, then, what do you like to eat?” you ask him, pushing the cart into the large, open area where meat and fish sit on ice, row after chilly row.

Saeyoung hums thoughtfully, peering at a particularly large fish, complete with eyeballs and everything. “This is creepy,” he says. “Can we get it?”

“We…can,” you say. “But that doesn’t really answer my question.”

He walks a little ahead of you, and he looks at each different type of meat with such curiosity. They’re both like this, you think—so full of wonder over basic, mundane things. Saeran was in awe the first night the three of you settled in on Saeyoung’s huge couch to watch TV together. And now here is Saeyoung—who’s had considerably more freedom than his brother—staring at an assortment of different cuts of meat like he’s in a museum.

“I’m not sure,” he says finally, tilting his head to the side. “I love chips, and, you know, fish-shaped buns…”

“But is there a meal you like? Maybe from, I don’t know, the past…?” You regret the words as soon as they’re out of your mouth.

Saeyoung laughs bitterly. “Not from childhood, if that’s what you mean.”

“Right,” you say. “Yeah. I knew that. I’m sorry.”

He comes back to your side, leans on the cart. “It’s okay,” he tells you. “I don’t mind.”

“Still,” you say. “Sorry.” You steer the cart toward a display of different chicken parts and he pads along beside you—like an obedient dog, you think.

“What’s the difference between…” he bends over, peering at the packages. “Breasts and thighs?”

You giggle. “You tell me.”

You watch as his face turns red, clashing wonderfully with his hair.

“Um, l-let’s get the…thighs, I guess,” he chokes, and you stifle your laughter with your hand.

“Thighs it is.”

He throws the chicken into the cart with his face turned away and you grin. 707 was a tease, but it is easy to fluster Saeyoung.

You move through the aisle of bottled sauces in companionable silence. You hold up a bottle of bottle of soy sauce and he nods enthusiastically; he does the same for the fish sauce and corn syrup. To test him, you hold up a banana ketchup—which you’ve personally never actually tried—and he gives you the same affirmative head bob.

“Saeyoung, do you know what this is?”

He tilts his head to the side, reads the label.

“Banana ketchup? Yum!”

You sigh. “Fine.” You toss it in the cart; maneuver to the next aisle.

“You didn’t even have soy sauce or salt or anything in your house when we moved in,” you say. “There was literally nothing in the cabinets.”

He strolls along beside you, running a finger along the rows of different kinds of pasta. “It never occurred to me.”

“We were kind of surprised,” you add, tossing a big bag of rice into the cart. “We bought a bunch of stuff, before we…left.” You stumble over the words; gears spin frantically in your brain. The words hang heavily in the air between you. Before we left to find you. Before we found you and then lost you again.

He’s silent for a moment and you know he feels the change in atmosphere, the way time seems to have slowed down.

“Hey,” he says finally. He’s got one arm draped over the side of the cart and his posture is a little stiff. “Did I ever thank you? I mean, properly.”

You bite your lip, keep walking. Your face feels hot. Suddenly, you’re not really looking at what’s on the shelves.

“You did,” you say softly. “But I feel I should be the one thanking you. You’re the reason we’re both alive, you know.”

Saeyoung stops, and you almost crash into him. He spins around, and he’s got a hard, determined look in his face. You’ve seen that look before.

“No,” he says. “Nuh-uh. You saved us. You protected him. You did what I didn’t…couldn’t—”

Ah. Your heart’s pounding against your ribcage. Of course it’s here, you think—in this narrow aisle, next to hundreds of loaves of bread, that he’s saying this to you.

“Saeyoung, he knows that you would die for him. You tried to.”

He stuffs his hands in his pockets, walks away from you, lingers at the end of the aisle. The change in him is remarkable. There’s no hint of the awestruck boy, bouncing up and down over the wide selection of steaks, in this morose, bitter man.

“I didn’t succeed, did I?” he says. A mother with a small child seated in the front of her shopping cart comes down the aisle and you back up into the shelves to let them pass. You wonder if they can feel how thick the air is.

“No, you didn’t,” you say. “And thank god, because where would we be if you had?” He finally looks at you then, and you’re taken aback by the wild look in his eyes. It scares you; you take a step toward him. “You fought for him,” you tell him. “And he fought for you.”

His fingers drum a frantic pattern on the metal shelf beside him. He’s got the look of a cornered animal, ready to bolt. You’ve seen this expression before—though on a different Choi brother.

“I was supposed to protect him,” he says, so quietly you can hardly hear him. You take one more step. Another. Finally you’re at his side, and he flinches, but he doesn’t run away.

“You did,” you say. “And he’s safe. All of us are safe.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“We’re going to buy this stuff,” you tell him. “We’re gonna pay for it, and get in the car, and go back home, and he’ll be there. Waiting for you.”

Saeyoung shuts his eyes and takes a long, slow breath. You do it with him. He runs a shaky hand through his hair again and you give him a little nudge with your elbow. Eyes still closed, one side of his mouth twitches upward—a half-smile.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “I didn’t mean to…”

“I know.”

“I just feel like I owe you…”

“Me too.”

His eyes open; they’re clearer, bright and gold behind his glasses.

“You don’t owe me anything,” he says, and it sounds like a question.

“I love him,” you say. “So, I think I do.”

Saeyoung shakes his head; the color’s back in his cheeks now, and he grabs the cart, pushing it out of the aisle. You jog to catch up, grab onto the side just as he’d done earlier. Hold on tight.

“You love him a lot, don’t you?” he says. You can see him in your peripheral vision—his eyes are twinkling.

“More than anything in the world,” you reply.

“Me too,” he says, echoing you, and you grin. You picture the look on Saeran’s face if he could hear this conversation—the way his green eyes would soften, the way he’d get that adorable little dusting of pink over his cheeks.

Saeyoung turns the cart abruptly, maneuvering into the next aisle with an expertise you didn’t expect—you shriek, barely holding on. He cackles.

“We need this!” he says, and you turn to see him pointing at an alarmingly large box of some sort of purple cookie you’ve never seen before.

We don’t, you almost say, but you hesitate, because what’s the harm?

“Sure,” you say, and you toss them in the cart.

Saeyoung smiles. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says. You know he’s not talking about the stupid cookies.

You beam right back at him. “I am too.”

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★

Let me know if you’d like to be added to my taglist!

@currentlyprocrastinating @thesirenwashere @ultrasupernini @cro0kedme @otomefoxystar @dawn-skies06 @nad-zeta @hunterelys

#mystic messenger #request #gureishi writes requests #soft-enbee

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ze-thoughts-are-stupid · 3 years

Text

We all miss our childhood. But how does our childhood feel?

I’ve watched you forever

Sitting on your shelf since you were six

You loved me.

You don’t anymore.

Im a forgotten gift collecting dust

No longer made to dance

But never again to make music

I loved you

You were my baby

My batteries are corroded

And my gears are stiff

Rusted from my tears

What did I do?

Did I bore you ?

You replaced with shinier toys

Louder music

You outgrew me

And my love

I’d forgive that

But you didn’t care to say goodbye

Now I sit in this empty room

On a shelf stripped of the books

That never collected dust

Left with ones that still remember

When you couldn’t read

Like I do

I remember everything

I wish you’d remember me.

#Ze’sPoetry #original writing #poets on tumblr #spilled poetry #spilled writing #spilled thoughts #poems #new poets society #original poem #original poetry #spilled words #spilled ink #poeticstories #poetry #poetsandwriters #twcpoetry

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new-poets-society · 3 years

Text

Teen Idol (from Rosarium Part I)

I’ve seen movies, suggestive stares

All my flames are made of paper

I sit my dolls on classroom chairs

And cherry-pick frames to treasure

Until, found right in front of me

Selling romance without heartbreak

Robbed of originality

Presents itself a trained target

He only needs to smile to cleanse

Any mean faces off my fields

The ones he puts me up against

Feed off my own missing appeals

They’re rough; if he can be gentle

I kneel to lower his defense

By a recurrent miracle

Somehow, I always stand a chance

I’m feeling lucky: he’s smitten

Needing rescue from his distress

He vaguely begs to be bitten

I drop my front, firmly obsessed

Rumor has it, he’s been lonely

Mourning a former possession

Disarmed, slender… a bit weary

I can always spot the symptoms

Just to blend into his background

I go everywhere he might be

And bit by bit, breaking him down

I taste, of need, the agony

I soothe my burns in a drizzle

I patch him up when he’s battered

My head fills up with his sizzle

I swear it’s the best thing I’ve heard

For a little while, I forget

The distant laughter, the rattling

Rapt mid-summer, drenched in cold sweat

I forever belong to him

Until the curls break to loosen

The honey eyes drip down my arms

I taste white tears, and confusion

Finally, misplace my doll’s charms

With my eyes wet and my lips pursed

I swear I’ll give my life for his

I guard his cage until it bursts

I’ll cover the scars on my ribs

I run right back into the trap

Of an articulate monster

As it lays flat across my lap

I read into the next chapter

My latest find’s too hard to faze

I move on to a new design

As I look straight into the blaze

He appears ready to be mine

In every new story I’m told

I rise to claim the starring role

Coated in wax, reflecting gold

The last thing he’ll need is a soul

I’m the one who loves in silent

Convinced to handle wood with care

When the harvests are compliant

I take my heart back for a glare

I’m used to the game, its treasons

Melted pupils and worn out gear

I cast light on my distractions

Only to watch them disappear

I’ve learned too well, after the break

We only survive on paper

I replay last summer’s mistake

And my lover is a player

I buy a few accessories

I prepare a look for the fall

I pack my made-up memories

With my own life-sized, teenage doll

Nobody sits to collect dust

Upon my bent, deserted shelf

There’s not a soldier I can trust

I learn to entertain myself

I don’t look for another fit

I’m the one I dress, and undress

I ponder over my own bits

Put ornaments up in my nest

Hanging around the same playground

Easy to miss, hard to regret

I walk around with my head down

And keep my eyes in my pocket

Until they’ve dried, and it’s raining

Isn’t this how it all began?

It’s October, leaves are turning

Into the wind, I’m just a fan

#spilled ink #poets on tumblr #poetry #new poets society #new poets on tumblr #new poets corner #submission

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soitmightgetweird · 5 years

Text

Drenched (Halloween fic)

Bucky x reader

Summary: an accidental prank at a party flips your entire night upside down

Warnings: swearing, as per usual

Word Count: ~3300

A/N: Holy fucknuts. It’s been a year and a half since I posted a fic. Damn guys. I dunno who the heck is still paying attention to little ol’ me, but here it is anyway. ((I’m working off a very old taglist, so let me know if you want to be removed. Also let me know if you want to be tagged. I mostly write for Steve and Buck, so you could request all tag or just one dude. Side question.. do Steve fics still happen?? I’m so out of the loop guys.))

Popcorn ceilings are good for collecting dust and giving you something to stare at when you’re bored. They’re not so good at showing you how to handle a conversation you don’t really want to have. After another little whine from your friend, you finally pull your eyes away to look toward the person sitting on the arm at the far end of the couch. She’s decked out in a gorgeous 1940s-style dress and her hair is delicately styled to match.

“I’m really not feeling like going to a party this year, Nat.”

She frowns. “But you love Halloween.”

“You’re right. But I just feel like turning on my little pumpkin lights and watching scary movies in the dark. I’m not really in a go-out-and-drink-around-a-bunch-of-strangers mood.”

“Not everyone will be strangers.”

“Well, work has been kicking my butt—”

“Honey, I know. You’re busting your ass for that company. But your friends miss you. Steve and Sam both ask how you’re doing all the time. Apparently your texts aren’t very… wordy.”

If it was anyone else in your apartment giving you sad eyes and practically begging you to be social, you’d be irritated. Nat has been the friend who’s helped pull you out of your funks for years. She knows just when to test the waters and when to back off. She’s able to read you insanely well.

The fact that she didn’t drop the conversation immediately means she knows you haven’t reached the burnt out point yet. Once that thought crosses your mind, you know you’ll end up going with her.

“I don’t have a costume,” you say in a resigned tone.

She smiles softly. “Just put on jeans and a hoodie. I’ve got a mask from Mr. Robot. Boom, simple.”

“Nerd.”

“Guilty. But hey, the party isn’t supposed to be that big.”

You level your stare at your friend. “Isn’t it at Stark’s?”

“Oh. Good point. Well, you can always tell me when you’ve had enough. I just want you to spend time with friends to help you recharge. You know work gets more tolerable when you have fun memories to occupy your mind.”

It’s hard to argue with Nat when she hits the nail on the head. “Alright,” you say as you roll off the couch with a faux-dramatic groan.

A few minutes later, you leave your room in your standard attire and slip into your Converse. Nat smiles again as she watches you turn on little accent lights in your living room before grabbing your keys and following her out the door.

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

The first thing you notice as you approach the building is the flashing lights, dancing through the sky and originating at the penthouse apartment, thirty stories above your head. You reach up and touch the mask that’s currently pushed up on top of your head.

“He really does go all out. Is this enough of a costume?” you ask.

Nat hooks her arm through yours as you close the distance between yourselves and your destination. “Of course. But honestly he doesn’t care; he just wants people to come and have fun.”

You fall into comfortable silence with your friend as you make your way through the lobby and into an elevator. As you climb, the cheesy elevator music is slowly drowned out by the sounds of the party.

The elevator doors open to a spacious modern penthouse that you’re sure looks a hundred times bigger when it’s not full of people. There’s fake spiderwebs with little plastic spiders on most surfaces—bookshelves, pictures on the walls, the stairwell to the second floor, the hanging lights in the entry. There’s a cauldron sitting on a high shelf, spilling fog from dry ice over the opening to the living room. Rubber bats are hanging from string, there’s a small witch with light-up eyes swinging around the room by the blades of a ceiling fan, a skeleton in sunglasses sprawled across the kitchen island and surrounded by snacks, and there’s a life-sized werewolf statue standing off to the side of the room.

You’re actually… not sure if it’s a statue or someone waiting for the opportune moment to scare everyone around them.

As you’re finishing your visual tour of the room, muscular arms drape over your and Nat’s shoulders. You turn your head to see another mask like the one that’s still on your head instead of pulled down over your face.

“Nice mask,” the person says, and even through the music and people you immediately recognize the voice as Steve.

You laugh. “Great minds I guess.”

“I just saw Wanda a little while ago, who knows where Tony is, Scott is desperately trying to Clint at beer pong, and Sam and Bucky are on the balcony.”

Your face scrunches a little before you’re able to stop it, an expression that Nat and Steve both notice.

“Haven’t warmed up to him yet?” Steve asks, and you’re sure there’s a small frown hidden behind his mask.

You sigh. You know Steve and Bucky have been friends since childhood. Nat has been friends with him since college. But you… no encounter with Bucky Barnes has ever been easy.

Nat was your first friend in the city—a chance meeting at a coffee shop near your apartment. A few months after you’d settled into your new home and job, she started inviting you to outings with her friends.

Steve became an immediately calming presence in your life. Sam offered charm and humor, Wanda was your go-to when you wanted music recommendations, Clint and Scott were the big brothers you never (secretly, always) wanted. Even Tony was fine. He was a little eccentric and sometimes flashy with money, but he had a good heart.

Bucky. You wanted to like Bucky. You did like him at first… for a few minutes.

He was charming too, all smiles and bright blue eyes when Nat introduced you. Over the course of the night though, you heard a lot of stories about his dating reputation and Bucky got way too drunk. Your night ended abruptly when you turned away from the bar and suddenly had beer all down your shirt and jeans.

And when Bucky said “watch it, asshole,” you marched back to the table and told the group you were going home. The night faded into the past, but that’s what started your dislike for Bucky Barnes.

It’s been five years and you still aren’t really “on board” with him. You’re civil enough when you’re around each other but you also won’t seek out conversation with him, even going so far as to direct most of your attention to your phone if you happen to end up seated near each other when you all go out to eat.

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

It occurs to you a couple hours into the party that you’re enjoying yourself and you’re glad Nat was a little insistent.

You spent a little while in the dining room watching Scott (dressed in a full Jedi robe) do relatively well at beer pong, but not as well as Clint, who was wearing a more modern version of a Robin Hood costume.

"No way in hell I’m wearing tights," he’d said as he sunk another ping pong ball in an orange cup.

Wanda was the next friend you found, in a grungy outfit that resembled Furiosa from Mad Max. You stood with her and Nat for a while, sharing updates on work projects and movies you’d all seen recently. Tony passed by in a long, fitted coat that accented his steampunk look. He even had a little gadget on his lapel made of gears that actually moved. He made it himself and was very proud of it.

You’ve been on the balcony for the past two hours talking to Nat and Steve when you notice your drink is empty. After asking your friends if they want anything, you decide to pull your mask over your face and head through the large glass doors into the living room. As you weave your way through the crowd you spot a large amount of people on one side of the room, so you veer a little to the left to walk through the foggy opening into the hallway.

Before you make it to the other side of the hall, you spot Sam leaning against the wall in front of you, next to the bottom of the stairs that climb up the wall to your left. He has a lazy smirk on his face, like he’s never been more comfortable in his life, just leaning against that wall.

You raise your hand to wave as you call out his name, hoping he can hear since your voice is slightly muffled by your mask. You then notice the speed in which the smile shifts into an expression of full-on panic before you’re suddenly doused in water.

Through the sound of the shouts from the people who were splashed near you, you hear Sam speaking your name and a different voice swearing above you.

You rip your mask away to see that Sam has his hands out toward you, a sincere look of apology on his face. When you turn and look up, you see Bucky. There’s an equally petrified look on his face and he swears again as you bolt for the stairs, Sam’s voice and footsteps following behind you.

Bucky runs through the second door on the left and almost has the door shut before you push through, the door crashing into his shoulder.

“Ow, hey, what the shit! I’m trying to get you a towel!” He grabs a towel out of the closet behind the door and shoves it at you before backing further into the bathroom.

“What the actual fuck, Barnes?” you yell, unzipping your hoodie and throwing it on the counter. It doesn’t make much difference, your shirt is soaked too, but that’s staying on.

“I thought you were Steve!” He has his hands out now, mirroring Sam’s earlier stance, but you’re pissed and you want to get in his face.

You feel a hand gently grab onto your arm as Sam tries to pull you away from his friend. “That’s entirely my fault. I was only paying attention to the mask.”

“Steve has a foot in height on me! And who the fuck drops a bucket of water in someone’s house?”

“We put a tarp down—”

“I was having fun!” Bucky’s still getting the full force of your yelling. “I’ve been stressed the fuck out and Nat convinced me to come out and now I’m fucking drenched—”

Sam says your name again.

You turn around. “Go get Nat please, I want to go home now.”

“Wait,” Bucky protests and Sam stops in the doorway. “Sam just… go enjoy the party, I’ll take her home.”

“Like hell you will.” You finally let go of half the towel and dry off your arms before wrapping the thing around your body, trapping your wet hair against your back.

“I mean to your home, smartass. I’m sorry we pranked you; it was an honest mistake. Let me… I dunno, let me buy you a coffee or something. You’re cold, it’ll warm you up.”

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

You keep three feet between you and Bucky as you walk back down the sidewalk toward your apartment. The silence is heavy and awkward, and you stare down at your shoes that squish quietly with every step. Your wet hoodie clings to your arms, sending a shiver down your spine. Unfortunately, the only two options are to wear a wet hoodie or leave your arms exposed to the chilly night air and you’re not sure which is worse.

Another chill hits you moments before a second hoodie is draped over your shoulders. You want to throw it back at him, but it’s already helping to shield you against the wind. At that thought, you glance sideways. Bucky’s arms are exposed now but he doesn’t seem to mind the chill.

Before you look away, he reaches up to rub his shoulder.

You huff out a breath. “Sorry I hit you with the door,” you mumble,

A couple beats of silence pass before he answers. “That doesn’t sound like a sincere apology, but I understand. Sorry again about the water.”

You respond with a grunt.

“Why do you hate me?”

You look at him again, your annoyed expression back on your face. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m just asking why you hate me? What did I do? Before the water.”

“First of all, you apparently have a habit of spilling things on me.”

“What?”

“Do you remember the night we met? You spilled an entire glass of beer on me.”

He stops walking. “Shit. That was you.”

You stopped a few paces in front of him and turned toward him. “Do you remember calling me an asshole right after?”

Bucky’s eyes narrowed. “Why would I do that?”

“How should I know? But you did. You spilled beer on me then called me an asshole. And I left. Doesn’t really make a girl want to be your friend.” You turn around and start walking again only to realize after a few steps that he isn’t following you. “Are you coming or am I walking the rest of the way alone? Not that I care.”

“I didn’t… I didn’t call you an asshole?”

“You were also a little drunk that night, maybe you don’t remember.”

“No, I… yeah, I had a bit to drink. This girl I’d been seeing had broken things off and I was upset… we’d actually gotten kinda serious. But I didn’t talk about her much because... I dunno, maybe I didn't wanna jinx it. I was having fun distracting myself when they started making jokes about my dating life and I guess I tried to drown my sorrow instead of just talking about it.”

You just stare at him. That absolutely isn’t the response you expected.

“So I'd just got another beer and this dude bumped into me while trying to get some girl’s attention. I called the guy an asshole and was gonna apologize but you were gone. I guess that explains why you avoided even talking to me in passing after that night. Doesn’t really make a guy wanna be your friend.”

You just stare at him. Your dislike had been entirely based off a misunderstanding? “Great. I am an asshole." You turn away from him and continue walking toward your apartment.

"Hey wait, you're not--"

His footsteps sound as he catches up to you. He reaches out and touches your elbow to get you to look at him, pulling his hand away quickly. Physical contact is entirely foreign for you two.

"Can we just forget that night? I mean you can forget about this one too if you want, but I genuinely am sorry. It always kinda bummed me out that you didn't like me--you seemed pretty cool based on all the stories I heard from Steve and Sam."

You frown. "That almost makes me feel worse."

"Please don't. I could've tried to fix things too."

The silence that follows isn't quite as uncomfortable but you still break it shortly after you start walking again.

"I am actually sorry I hit your shoulder. Even when I thought you didn't like me, I would've never intentionally struck you."

He reaches up again to rub his shoulder. There's a smirk on his face as he drops his hand and lifts that shoulder in a small shrug. "I kinda deserved it."

"Maybe. About that coffee though. Just... your hoodie's wet now and I'm not going into a cafe in these clothes. I can just throw this in the dryer and make a pot of coffee. If you want."

Bucky laughs. "I want to make a joke about you inviting me over after dark, but I'll spare it since we're only just now becoming friends."

"Are we becoming friends?"

Bucky turns a worried expression toward you, as if he's scared he pushed too far. When you return a small laugh with a shake of your head, he smiles too.

"You basically said the joke by referencing the joke. But I'll give you a pass this time."

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

You're hyper aware of Bucky's presence as you ride the elevator to the fifth floor together and even more so as you're unlocking your front door and allowing a person into your apartment you never expected to invite over.

"I like your decorations," Bucky says from behind you.

You turn to see him looking at the mantle over your fireplace. There are fake webs and little cheese-cloth ghosts in jars on one side and sparkly black and purple pumpkins next to a little figure of a bird dressed as a witch on the other.

"Thanks. Um... I'm gonna go change and throw this in the dryer. Be right back."

The nerves that arise when you're changing are completely unwelcome. Do you need to put on actual clothes or is leggings and a sweatshirt alright? What do you talk about while you're waiting on his hoodie to dry? What if it's just awkward silence?

You stop mid-movement when you realize you've had those thoughts... before you went on dates.

Nope.

You pull a leggings and a blissfully dry sweatshirt on and walk out of your room, throwing all the wet clothes in the dryer together on the way back to the living room. When you walk in the room, Bucky's crouched in front of the tv, going through the stack of movies you set out a couple days ago. He stops shuffling the cases and holds up your copy of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil with a very serious expression on his face.

"You... have excellent taste in movies."

"Jeez, I thought you were about to lecture me. We can watch it while we wait on the dryer if you want. I'll go start coffee."

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

The next morning, you wake up wondering why your neck hurts. Opening one eye, you squint through the sunlight and are met with the sight of your living room. Well, sleeping on the couch explains the neck pain. With a yawn, you stretch your legs and nudge a solid mass on the other end of the couch. Bucky is still there, his socked feet propped on your coffee table and his head resting against the back of the couch.

You nudge him again and he stirs. Then he starts and sits up straight.

"Shit. I'm sorry, I dozed off. Oh... it's morning."

"It is.”

"I um... I guess I'll take my hoodie and go?"

"More coffee."

He chuckles, the sound deep and warm. "Trying to keep me here?"

You put your head back down. "Trying to get you to make coffee."

After you’ve both had two cups of coffee—you’re choosing not to think too much about the fact that he apparently remembered exactly how you like your drink because the first cup he handed you was absolutely perfect—you walk back into the living room with Bucky’s hoodie, holding it out as he finishes slipping on his shoes.

“Oh, it’s warm,” she says with a grin, slipping the garment on and immediately zipping it up.

“It’s chilly outside and despite what you may think, I am actually nice to friends.”

“Oooo, we’re friends. You said it, no take-backsies.”

You laugh. “Well, you do make a decent cup of coffee.”

“You’re right, I do. I’ll get out of your hair now, though. And next time we all go to dinner, you have to actually talk to me. No more cold shoulder?”

He’s standing at the door, hand on the doorknob and ready to leave when he asks the question. There’s an easy smile on his face, but you still see a trace of that same worried expression.

“No more cold shoulder,” you agree. “You don’t have a long walk, do you?”

He shakes his head. “Nah. S’only two blocks. See you around.”

And with that, he opens the door and leaves your apartment, casting one more look over his shoulder to smile as he walks down the hallway.

The realization that you also have a goofy smirk on your face as you walk toward your bedroom stops you momentarily, along with the thought that his presence is already something you know you want more of.

Well shit.

Tags: @stanevansalways19 @scarlettsoldier @feelmyroarrrr @shakzer00 @pixierox101 @chrevastan @aubzylynn

Bucky only tag: @nerdyandproud9

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes one shot

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kittenfemme27 · 4 years

Text

Genshin Impact

Breath of the Wild was a game I wanted to love. I love the Zelda games, always have, and I eat up open world games like candy. Yet, BoTW has sat on my digital shelf collecting digital dust for ages. Why is that? Well, to put it simply, I don't want to play as Link. BoTW has a beautiful world, rich combat and game play puzzles, tons to see and do and experience, it's a sandbox for the ages. But it's hampered so heavily for me by the fact that I have to play this very boring and to be honest kind of forgettable boy named Link during the game play. That may sound petty, but if I'm in an open world game I want to fully immerse myself into that and video games are where we all go to escape anyway. If I wanted to be misgendered, I'd simply forget to shave and go outside.

I don't mind playing other Zelda games because in those, Link is a self contained character in the world and they're relatively short and self contained games. But BoTW is a sandbox. And for a large majority of it, you're not going to be doing the story or being addressed as link. The size of the world and the sheer amount of hours you're going to put into it mean that for almost all intents and purposes, Link isn't Link, he's a faceless avatar that you're supposed to put yourself into. The game offers so much freedom in so many avenues and yet, in your choice of how to explore the world as someone you'd actually like to be, you're not allowed. You have to be a skinny blonde twink.

So, in late 2019, in comes a trailer for Genshin Impact. It's making its rounds on the Internet as a "PC Free to Play Gacha Breath of the Wild Clone" which, while a mouthful, was something I initially wrote off. Didn't see a point in checking it out, as I really don't like Gacha games very much. But in late September 2020, MiHoYo the developers released the public 1.0 build of the game to everyone. Multi-platform, too. iOS/Android, PC, PS4, and even a switch release down the line. And maybe its the pandemic, or maybe the Internet was simply too lured in by the cute anime girls, but it took the many by storm. It took me personally over 12+ hours to download the 11 gigs of the game because the servers were so swamped with people.

Now I do want to be clear: Genshin Impact borrows many things from BoTW, but it isn't a clone. It's not a sandbox in the same way BoTW is and aside from some general game play things such as gliders, stamina/wall climbing system, and general aesthetic, the games are massively different. Still, though, playing it has highlighted to me why I never felt quite right playing BoTW, and its that lack of freedom. That lack of ability to play the game on my own terms and explore the beautiful handcrafted world the way I want to.

Despite appearances, Genshin Impact is a lot more like a single player MMO than it is anything else. Requiring tons of farming and grinding to create high level powerful characters in a world that gets increasingly more powerful and hostile as you do. The core game play loop of Genshin Impact is pretty phenomenal, essentially giving you a massive world to explore with literally thousands upon thousands of chests and rewards to find. Either by clearing out enemies, doing random in world puzzles, or even just sitting around. Being inside of and exploring the world of Teyvat is as rewarding as it is beautiful. The art and animation design of the game are stellar and do a lot to make you forget how much time has passed since you booted up the game in the first place. There's tons of different lore books to find, NPC's to talk to, quests to complete, the world is chock-full of lore and world building even down to simple weapon and material descriptions. Teyvat is a wonderful place to be and the developers MiHoYo deserve a pat on the back for how good the world of Genshin Impact is. The other side of game play is a simple system of Character Progression where you farm materials to make your characters/weapons/abilities better so that you can farm even more materials from harder enemies, much like an MMO, and you also acquire gear called Artifacts with randomly rolled stats much like an ARPG. In that regard, Genshin Impact is highly addictive. There are a myriad of weapons, talents, artifacts, and characters all to level up and build up over the course of your play, and every character can be made viable very very easily. The game also lets you keep a party of 4 characters that you can swap between at any point, as well as each character being attuned to a specific Elemental Type that reacts to other Elements. This causes the end-game to be centered around doing some of the hardest dungeons the game has to offer by theory crafting incredibly powerful teams that work off of each other and cause Elemental Reactions in enemies. It’s some of the most fun i’ve had in a game in ages.

All of that is fantastic but unfortunately its all also held back by one simple, huge problem: Original Resin. The game uses a currency called Original Resin that you use to challenge the harder content in the game. Dungeons, World Bosses, Elite Weekly Bosses, you name it and if its end-game content, it likely costs Resin. And not in insignificant amounts either. Dungeons are 20, Bosses are 40, and Weekly Bosses are 60. So, how do you obtain this material? Time. You start with, and are capped, at 120(Later 160 in patch 1.1). 1 resin takes 8 minutes to get back. If you spend it all, it takes 16 hours to get back. Given the rates you spend it, you can go from 120 to 0 in roughly 10-15 minutes. With no way to increase the resin cap, and the incredibly slow acquisition rate, that frequently means you only have about that much playtime a day of the game in the endgame. And that's, needless to say, incredibly frustrating. Thankfully its not an entire stamina system that means you can't play the game at all when you're out of resin, but it does mean that character progression itself is gated as all upgrade/progression materials are locked behind these dungeons and bosses that you must use Original Resin to face. Effecitvely, this means single characters will become weeks and weeks of work, with weapons and artifacts being only slightly less time consuming. I can only hope MiHoYo is looking to change this system in a way that isn't just increasing the cap as the feedback they've received has been very negative regarding it, but only time will tell.

Unfortunately, this isn't the games only problem with its players either. The game is a Gacha, there is no getting around that, but despite the fact that pretty much any character can become massively overpowered and viable in the endgame, people are going to want the rarest characters that exist. This is by design and unfortunately is more or less a glorified gambling system. And while the game is quite nice with its premium currency and how often it gives it, what isn't nice is that the rarest “5-star”characters cost a minimum of 200$ to get through money. With no guarantee you're getting the one you want.

Worse still, outside of a guaranteed 5-star drop at 90 rolls on the gacha wheel, the chance for a 5-star weapon or character is 0.6%. Not even a whole rounded up 1%. This is frankly ridiculous, as is the cost of real money to premium currency. For reference, most other popular Gacha’s doing well offer their rarest characters at anywhere between a 1-6% rate. In general, gacha's aren't known to be kind in their rates. That’s the point, they want you to gamble with real money. Genshin Impact, however, is so unkind and unfair that even other regular players of gacha gamers are very, very vocally upset. If it wasn't for the game play loop and the world, I'm not sure this would fly. And its certainly not flying in the west with the crowd that doesn't play Gacha's nearly as much. Neither is the resin system, as gamers in the west typically want to play for hours and hours at a time.

I’d be remiss if i didn’t bring up the story in Genshin Impact, as it’s genuinely fantastic. As previously stated, the world has a metric tonne of hidden lore in books, weapon/item/artifact descriptions, character stories you unlock as you use a playable character, etc. But the main story you can currently play from start to finish in the 1.0 release is the prologue.

This prologue stars very simply: Your character, the “Traveler” is an alien from another world. Not much is known about them so far, other than that the Traveler and their sibling were people with the ability to hop between worlds at will. In the opening moments of the game this power, along with your sibling, are stolen from you by an unnamed assailant. Thus trapping you in Teyvat and leaving you to begin a journey to find the Seven Gods of Teyvat, simply known as “The Seven” and seek their power and wisdom to find your sibling and potentially leave. This journey is how you meet Venti, one of the Seven in disguise as a simple human bard, and his best friend Dvalin. The events that follow have you help this strange bard, as well as the people of Mondstat, defeat the dragon Dvalin. Previously, he protected the lands of Mondstat for hundreds of years. However, as you meet both Dvalin and Venti, he has had his mind corrupted and been lied to by an order of evil mages known as the Abyss Order, and its caused him to go on the offensive against Mondstat and her people.

It's a fair bit emotional, humorous at times thanks to Venti, and overall very engaging. Mondstat is a city built on freedom, to the point that its own god Barbatos(Venti) refuses to rule over it and allows himself to be the weakest of the seven gods, as that would take away some of the cities freedom. Within this prologue, there is a huge focus on Mondstat being a city of Freedom, the prologue quite literally ends with Venti telling Dvalin after you have saved him from the corruption that even though he is "meant" to be the protector of Mondstat, he hopes Dvalin chooses whatever life he wants, even if that's not Mondstats protector, and that Venti simply wants him to be happy. Venti's own personal story quest goes further in depth about the foundation of Mondstat and its origins as a rebel city founded after the citizens overthrew the oppressive rule of an awful tyrant God and killed him. In a very pretty hand drawn "cathedral window" style cutscene, you get to see the end of this war and why Barbatos chose the form he currently inhabits and took up being a bard, which was to honor a dead friend from this very same war. This explains why Mondstat and Barbatos value its freedom so highly. I cried at this moment both times I played it.

For a free game, the storytelling here is off the charts. As i said before, Venti and many other characters have personal stories that both introduce you to a trial version of the playable character, thus letting you see how they work and play, and also giving you either more info on the world or an introduction to the character in question, or both. They're fantastic little stories and are up there with the main story in quality. One of my favorite parts of the game and something that will only be expanded with time. Each one takes you on a journey of discovery or even simple fun with a character and it all feels very personal and touching, as all of the main stories and character quests are very well voice acted.

The prologue being so focused on freedom makes it all the more awkward, then, that MiHoYo is a game developer based out of China, and as such has to follow China's censorship rules. Taiwan and Hong Kong both are censored in-game chat and if you're reported for saying them, you'll be banned for daring to speak the words. These aren't the only censorship decisions in the game, but they're by far the ones that struck me the most. I understand that the company is based out of China and thus has to follow the censorship rules, as they are the actual law of the land and they could be fined or even shut down if they refused. But the disconnect of knowing there are actual human rights atrocities being committed in China with the Uygher Genocide and Re-Education camps, the human rights violations in Hong Kong, the breakdown of democracy and the treatment of Taiwan, while this game that comes out of China boasts on and on about Freedom and the Human right to self actualize and choose their future is... troubling. It's one that I don't really know how to reconcile, if it can be reconciled at all. I'd like to believe that the developers really believe in their own story and secretly oppose those sorts of atrocities. But at the same time, banning players who mention Hong Kong or Taiwan isn't in the law. That’s a decision MiHoYo is making. Right now, China doesn’t have the freedom that Venti and Mondstat and Genshin Impact try to instill in you so hard as important and a human right. And knowing that and knowing the censorship is in the game make it very difficult to get a read on what the game actually wants you to feel.

Overall,i think Genshin Impact is a fantastic game. Its updates plan to bring in not only more story, as there are meant to be 7 Acts and currently the game features the Prologue and half of Act 1, but in those acts it plans to explain the playable areas and bring in new Events, Characters, Weapons, etc. And that makes me excited for the future of Genshin Impact! It’s a beautiful game of genuinely Triple AAA quality completely for free. But. Its also a Gacha game and by far one of the least rewarding Gachas you could play right now. Maybe that will change with time. I certainly hope it does. But it feels hard to recommend something that, once you beat it, disrespects your time so much and so badly. I hope Genshin Impact has a bright future, I really do, and I’m definitely going to continue playing it. But right now, I can’t say for certain that I feel confident in the developers to make it the game it clearly wants to be if it wasn’t shackled down by its Gacha.

#Genshin Impact #Review #Played on: PC #Played on: iOS

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jayne-hecate-writer · 4 years

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Ducati and Lego...

Things are getting weird with Lego of late, from bad decisions regarding the sources of Technic models, to crunchy gear boxes and then this, the Ducati Panigale V4 R…

From the get go, I was really excited by the prospect of the Technic Ducati. The box looked great, with the model on the front looking really exciting, thanks to the clever and beautiful photography. I had to have one and I argued with myself for several days about spending a significant amount of my severely limited resources on what is in effect a silly, children’s toy. When it came to ordering, we were in the middle of Covid lockdown, Lego were sold out and Amazon was stating that toy orders would take six to eight weeks to deliver, it was not looking good. However, through on line shopping and a little bit of time on google, I found me a toy shop in Northern England that had one in stock and for a good price too.

Now let me tell you a little story, several years ago I was working part time for a national bicycle franchise here in the UK, it was the busy pre-Christmas, super busy sales time and I was on my own in the bike department. I sold a kids bike and the new owner wanted to take it away in a box. I went out the back to the storeroom and tried to retrieve the bike box from a pile stacked up on a shelf, which collapsed on me, crushing a nerve in my neck and right arm. The pain did not not start right away, instead it built up in intensity until I was struggling to take deep breaths had to ask my boss to take me to hospital. I was X-Rayed, poked, prodded and suddenly strapped down hard to a table when a Doctor found shadow across one of my vertebrate that indicated that I had broken my neck! Luckily, it was not broken and I have no idea what that little dark line on the X-Ray image of my tiny bone was. The damage was done though and the nerve that runs from my neck, down my arm and through my elbow was permanently damaged. I was given a lot of medical treatment, went through an awful lot of pain and I was off work for three months because of the injury and grew extremely bored and depressed. The relief to my suffering came in a surprising fashion, when my partner picked up for me, a Lego Technic motorbike to build.

That little Lego motorbike was a revelation, it looked great, it worked brilliantly and it came with instructions to build a second model from the same kit. The kit came with stickers and the whole thing was a bright orange colour that resembled a KTM motocross bike. Days later, e-Bay brought me a bright green one that despite not being as good, was still fabulous and my addiction to Lego, a hobby I started as a child and had put aside as an adult, came back and bit me hard. For me, Lego Technic motorbikes will always be a little bit special because when I cannot ride my own, I can at least build one out of Lego which I enjoy rather than wasting a couple of hours watching brain dead TV or feeling worthless and bored.

Which brings me right up to date. My injured arm and hand never fully recovered, despite hours of physio and exercise. Other injuries came and I was soon left disabled and with a rapidly growing Lego Technic collection. These days, I am an AFOL spend my time building MOC ( Adult Fan of Lego and My Own Creation for non Lego people) machines of varying kinds, although I really enjoy big heavy trucks for some reason. I rarely buy a Technic kit these days, preferring to buy the parts I want in order to construct a particular model. So for me to buy a whole set, means that it is special.

The box of the Ducati does an awesome job of selling the model, it has a photo of the real bike on the back and they go to great lengths to take photos of the Lego model from all of its very best angles. They have also made some new parts specifically for this set and they are pretty good. The new USD suspension forks look amazing and they actually work. The disk rotors look cool. The new wide rear tyres is awesome and looks the part and it is not hard to imagine this machine riding around a race track, but we will come to that later.

However, on closer inspection, there are some gaping holes in the Ducati that in my opinion leave it looking unfinished. The front forks really are great, but with out a front hugger or even brake calipers it just looks wrong, like there is a big chunk missing from the front of the model. Then we come to the windscreen, which is a soft piece of fogged up plastic film that fits so badly, it is a wonder it was ever signed off by the Ducati engineers! The V-4 engine and working gear box do nothing simply because you cannot see them, rendering the visual impact of the moving engine parts pointless. The final drive for the fake motor from the rear wheel is by a little white elastic band which to my view is a bit disappointing. Then came my biggest bugbear of all. The sheer number of stickers the builder needs to attach. I will make no secret of the fact that I thoroughly hate stickers on Lego parts for the following reasons. Firstly, they can be an absolute bastard to fit accurately. Secondly, they tend to peel off over time or lift a corner and get furry with dust which makes them look even worse. Finally, heavily stickered up pieces prevent you from using the pieces in other MOC constructions. At least with printed pieces, the final model actually looks great for display, even if you cannot use the printed parts elsewhere. Stickers are just a massive pain in the arse and some of the stickers on this set are tiny, so I refused to fit them, meaning that the final model looks a bit flat and dull. Yes, this is my fault for not using the stickers, but we get onto a circular argument here.

With the model finished and sat on my desk, I was, I have to admit, feeling a little disappointed. Then it fell over. Unlike other Technic bikes that have gone before, this bike has no side stand. Instead it comes with a paddock stand, which does not fit well or work properly. The finished model is so unstable that it has to be balanced just right to stop it falling over, meaning that it is also not a good model for display for both the practical and aesthetic reasons. The handle bars are designed to look like real clip on bars, they are very prettily done and there is even a brake fluid reservoir for the front brake… But no brake lever. Similarly, the rear fluid reservoir is present, but again, no brake pedal. Yes, I know that these are small points to make, but when the designer has gone to the effort to add tiny details, why omit the actual main bits that require the small details?

Sadly, this model is deeply flawed and the front screen is the final insult. This scrap of plastic film is held in place by two bright red Ninjago swords, leaving a five millimetre gap on either side. No matter what I tried, I could not get it to sit nicely and the foggy plastic looked awful anyway. The under engine exhaust gets a similar lacklustre treatment and the huge double bend pipe work looks out of scale. The real shame here is that the actual front fairing of this model is a thing of beauty that looks suitably menacing. But with the lack of front guard below and the pathetic screen above, it ends up looking like a nasty custom from a bad biker build off show. There was so much potential for this model to be amazing and Lego seemed to cut too many corners with the final result. For example, the front disk rotors are beautifully designed, but why are they moulded in standard light stone grey? They should have been done in a beautiful pearl silver. The bad screen is simply unforgivable, but there is a fix to this and it involves a clear plastic bottle, a pair of scissors and fifteen minutes to get it to sit just right! The useless paddock stand is annoying and having built my own in the past for custom models, I know how much easier they are to make.

What about the bikes that came before this one? To be honest, the not quite a Triumph Street Triple is still my favourite. It is so clearly a model of the Triumph modern classic, one has to ask why it did not have an official endorsement, especially given that it was and remains one of the most beautiful motorbikes in the Technic range. It also comes with some printed pieces too, making the final model even more beautiful.

The big BMW GS1200 is an ugly brute of a bike in reality, but the Lego model of it is fabulous with the unique telelever suspension and huge pannier boxes... even if the flat twin engine is a bit lame looking with a huge gap between cylinder and head.

The truth is that no Technic motorbike will ever be perfect, although the Street triple does come very close. Compared to these, the Ducati feels like a rushed and unfinished model, which is a real shame given (and I say this a dedicated Suzuki owner) the absolute beauty of the real thing.

So, what can I do next with this bloody thing, it’s not like I can chuck a motor on it and set it off across the car park like I can do with the Corvette they released this year, is it? Wellllllll…. It would be rude not to try and this has been for a while now, an on going project for me to build an actual working Lego Motorbike, running on Technic Power functions kit. To date and prior to this new Ducati, I have had a single working prototype model that was able to ride and steer just like a real motorcycle. A moving weighted brick causes the bike to lean over, which steers the bike. As the weight moves back, the bike stands up again and continues in a straight line. It is not yet perfect and I have lost it under a couple of cars as I experiment. I tried to modify the Ducati chassis to accept this steering and drive set up of a pair of motors and a battery pack and the result was more ugly than me with a post migraine hangover, having woken up with my head covered in drool!

Sadly, the chain drive could not deliver the power needed to spin the wheel fast enough with enough torque to propel the bike, so I had to resort to a shaft drive on both sides of the wheel replacing the swing arm. By the time I was finished, the final bike looked like a cheap Fake Lego rip off and when I tested it on the smooth tarmac of the car park, it fell over after moving less than a foot!

So that is it for me. I give up. I have tried time and time again and I simply cannot make a working model Ducati motorcycle using Power Functions. If you look on You Tube, others have made working models and I have no idea how they have done it. One person has used a Buwhizz unit, which over volts the motors giving the bike a real blast of speed. But for those of you with a Physics mind, the way a bike works is super intricate and has nothing at all to do with centrifugal force (yes, I am aware that this is a misnomer, but it has been used for decades to explain a complicated process). Do go and look up how motorbikes steer and balance because the in-depth science of it is fascinating. No really, it is fantastic and for years I have thought so wrongly about how it all works. In the mean time, if any of you out there can figure out how to make a Power Functions controlled motorbike, I shall take my hat off to you. You are clearly a better builder than I.

youtube

#Ducati #lego technic #motorcycles #afol #Lego Group #Model motorbikes #Power Functions #Lego motorbikes #triumph street triple r #BMW 1200 GS #Lego MOC #Lego builder #Adult builder of Lego

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fiftytwotwenty · 4 years

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Movie Monday - May 11th, 2020

"My Last Movie On VHS"

The Fast and the Furious (2001):

Ah, the Video Home System, We had a good run.

From the reported First VHS, a South Korean Film: The Young Teacher (1972) - Released in 1976...

To Hollywood's (debatable) reported Last Released Movie on VHS: A History of Violence (2005 - released on VHS on March 14th, 2006)...

It's just a trip thinking about a format just dying off - In the Life Span of the Videocassette my relationship was short lived.

I bought my first VHS (Dumb and Dumber) in 1996 and my last VHS in 2002 - only 6 years into building my Film Brick Library containing My Childhood Favorite Films Classic Gems such as Space Jam, Men in Black, Celtic Pride, Goldeneye, Nothing to Lose, the Lethal Weapon series, the Indian Jones series, and of course The Fast and the Furious.

Looking back now I cannot remember making a conscious decision to convert from VHS to DVD - it was something that just happened - I was not fully aware even though the VHS' demise was highly apparent.

DVDs were widely introduced into the market on March 31st, 1997 (Twister (1996) being one of the first mass produced DVDs), during the holiday season of 2006 Target, Wal-Mart and other major stores decided to phase out VHS tapes from their shelves, and in my own home our VCR was constantly on the fritz - Static was continuously distorting either the top or bottom half of the picture and no amount of smashing the tracking button could resolve the issue, so our Dad removed the casing of the VCR exposing its mechanical innards and he taught us to take a Q-Tip and press on one of the reels to clear up the picture - innovative but unrefined - imagine a family member having to get up in the middle of James Cameron's Titanic - While the Rose and Jack are freezing-floating in the Atlantic your sister is squatting in front of the TV with Q-Tip in the VCR -- If only I had a disposable camera to capture the moment.

Not to mention the bulkiness of the tapes - VHS tapes took up a lot space especially if you had Disney movies in the mix. By the early 2000's VHS tapes served as Artful Building Blocks and Dominoes for my nephews.

Steering back to The Fast and the Furious - I got a lot of mileage out of the old cassette. The movie was released in the prime of my middle school years and accompanied me and my teammates on multiple Charter Bus Trips for school sports - Yes, nothing works better at rallying the troops for an away game better than the poetic stylings of Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, and Michelle Rodriguez - such classic lines as:

" *Rawr* I smell *Sniff, Sniff* skanks. Why don't you girls just pack up before I leave tread marks on your face"

Vince: "Yo! Try Fat Burger from now on. You get yourself a Double Cheese with Fries for $2.95, f****t."

Brian: "I like the tuna here."

Vince: "Bullshit, Asshole! Nobody likes the tuna here!"

This script should be archived as an early 2000's artifact - just collecting dust in a vault next to a copy of Casablanca.

Nowadays, The Fast and the Furious is a mere footnote in the ever expanding franchise that went from plausible to utterly unbelievable in the story/plot department. In 2001-2002 The Fast and the Furious served as an introductory "Gear Head" film to the masses. It would be years later before a friend pointed out the strong parrallels between Point Break (1991).

By the time I entered college the VHS still held enough value as it accompanied me into college where it would be played on a Combo VHS/DVD player (the ultimate piece of technology thats says, "I just can't let go").

I no longer have a device which will play a VHS cassette tape, but I still have my VHS collection - as I said earlier, they are artful building blocks - my nephews no longer stack and play with them, but rather they just sit on a shelf amassing dust.

It kind of reminds me of the lifecycle of the Vinyl Record - killed off by the CD and buried by Digital Downloads - yet Records still found a way to rise from the ashes with a resurgence in nostalgia and blossoming of hipsters.

I highly doubt the VHS will make another comeback however Bumblee (2018) had a limited-promotional VHS tape releasing on April 1st, 2019 - a Bogus April Fool's Joke it was Not!

So until I can find either a functional VCR or a VCR repairman - The Fast and the Furious will have to sit on my shelf as piece of art.

youtube

#movie monday #52 in 20 #movie #movies #the fast and the furious #vin diesel #paul walker #jordana brewster #michelle rodriguez #vhs #vcr #vhs tape #last movie on vhs

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weaselle · 5 years

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pay no attention to this collection I just need to post it so I can find it

hit walls and floor... tall inside of my skull; if I never fall at all, clever's awfully dull - so if "push" says the door you'll be watchin' me pull - 'cause I only shop for china when I'm walkin' with bulls

Order me sit? dope, I'm askin' how high; I out right hope my notes are causin' outcry - where do I fit? miles as the cow flies - statistically shit, climbin' slopes to outlie

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I can juggle knives, and proselytize, and wink my eyes in flirth (or mix words like mirth and flirt, like, ask what planet Dirt is wearth) I can lift a person by their soul, or... even let them down; I can fit myself to any role: demon, prophet, clown. I can write like frightened squid, or read a book from any shelf- but a lifeguard out at sea can drown, and I can't save myself

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I want an adventurous crew, less than 100 and much more than 2; I've got an idea or four to do and believe that "to lead" isn't "ordering you" - I want be thicker than thieves: if one of us cries, everyone grieves; stacked deck for success, form small companies so that every ace dealt goes up all of our sleeves - I wish I had Boromir's horn; I stand full of arrows, small and forlorn I'd summon an army as sure as you're born and we'd rend every obstacle / mend what is torn

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yo when it's late I don't know if debate is a pro that I'm prone to or con I conflate; yawn ok great it's the dawn of new date too soon gone like a pawn in a perilous state - do I wander or wait, keep closed yonder gate or transpose these ten toes 'til exposing my fate? if not off to bed nodding off head berates and refuses to do more than snooze/obfuscate

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I don't have time enough to tell the clock to stop its ticking talk, while I'm sublimely sleepy, still ensconced in twos of shoes and socks; I'm staring off in awful need of themes that breed these searing thoughts- I breathe more air when all unfair reality congeals and clots; when sleep is claustrophobic, fear near stoic in its static stay, I ride my nightmares into mounts more suited to the dreams of day

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time for me to be known from home to home, on the campaign trail like when Romans roam, I'mma do the damn thang, prevail and own every twist in this life-line vine I've grown

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sick like a little bit with a bad tum and sniffle it's not a badda-boom bat beating but a wiffle hit; sleep like the bleeping sheep gotta wring it outta me, sore like a freaking score that you sing without a "c".

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i got nothing to say, i'm all bluff in this play, i mean i'm here to swerve some verse it's clear i'm thumpin' away at the buttons with the letters on whenever it’s day like a cat attacks a sweater, just pretending it’s prey - I need to catch the thing I’m chasing, like, it’s gotta get caught, and so I jot it down a lot to try to capture the thought; but though the plot is often written out in dashes and sketches, i rarely cash in those checks, i need more carry than fetches, so I’m dreamin’ and dumpin’ out all the schemin’ or somethin’ and like, even if it’s meaningless these keys I’ll keep thumpin

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with the internet i’m magic and i’m casting a spell call a song out of the air to here as clear as a bell private playlist from the A-list like i’m famous as hell making music moving quickly so I’m faster as well

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“oh no” I shout “Where’s Trusty my phone?” I don’t know the whereabouts, must be shown- adjusted the tone of the ring to silence now trying to find it brings me to violence; really need to locate as I motivate to go today I throw the flippin’ sofa pillows hopin’ for a stowaway... but oh no way it’s gone I pray this song will make a tiny spell; a lesson less on lost forlorn and more intent on finding cell

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pocket full of humbug, some'll argue/ some shrug but damnit my whole planet's stupid like it's on the Dumb drug will there be a U.S. war? (I mean ANOTHER on our list) maybe something civil: neo-drivel vs. power fist... maybe accidental, mental trump insulting china's boss I fear these pale tears will steer us straight into a giant loss

so many people on the earth are searching for a safe life the rich'll keep their swords but lord they'll take away our steak knife Nothing free for you and me our banking fees are never waved; an act by black or poor is "crime" for white or rich it's "misbehaved" They're pouring us an ethanol and calling it an eggnog - time to run away and trade these reindeer for a sled-dog; the season of the commie christ whose message hasn't landed yet: money only isn't evil if the people's needs are met

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no thanks on the news, yo crank up the tunes, don't bank on the crankiness taking a snooze unless I get dressed from neckless to shoes and charge the horizon more wise than confused __________________________________________________________

hear the too late beep, missing two days sleep, and the road to a dream is a two way street; so the mood stays bleak though I do make sweet this coffee with cream and the brew ain't weak

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been a While since I styled out the verbs and tenses, went around the Gates and straight hopped the fences; penUltimately gotta be a sultan of self: master mind, rule body, find my worth-and-my-wealth; if i'm quiet too long I'll have sloth not stealth so I try to move along and get my words off the shelf.

my projects: objects I invent/books writ - that shit won't pay the rent; throw fits, I have, it don't prevent: what's real from feeling devil-sent.

so I must be clever, do each: sum total; whatever needs eating this dead-beat goat'll; ask what is the art in a pace grown sickly? cut to the part where the chase goes quickly

Now hook or crook I must prepare, to tell each truth/take every dare stand hand on hips, and one in air, you can kiss my lips, or my derrière

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got me a hit list, swear i'ma get this done til the sun goes under the business; witness, this is crazy and witless, lazy lately: maybe the wiz kid just hid restless - put to the test his quiz is bested get to the rest it's now or not again, get that got and then kill it til the whole damn lot is a slaughter pen, sweat til the wet drip drops gettin' hotter than the metal that your kettle corn kernel keeps poppin' in; hoppin' and hippin' and readin' what's written i gotta be gettin' to the List no skippin'! slippin like fall, new leaves i'm flippin - givin' my all just to keep on grippin'; breakin' what doesn't bend wrong way through, as i make it to the end of the long To Do

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i post at the prompt, chew big what i've chomped; grew kid to a ghost haunting most of this pomp; listless within this to do list i'm swamped - spirit in fits, corpse slow to go romp

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incautious swatches of saying; watch as he washes the playing: switching the swerving and swaying into some terms of conveying wishes conditions occurred in which this envisioned un-blurred digit could get itself heard and flip politicians the bird

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in the trace of the face off you tasted last, is the scent of the sense made fading fast, so your dreams leak sieve-like hiking past a scared nightmare crew of an all-you cast

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got me a pallet of shall get around to, climb out of shallow kie, it's not about you; just look at the play and see where the props ain't, take out a brush but don't rush it you'll drop paint; stop sayin' you're praying for planet like damn saint but get out and do, do it, do, 'til you feel faint; yes do it, true get into some writing, what you must chew is how much off you're biting, i dust off the lightning and plug it right in, if i play hard enough then my bluff just might win, all this tin in my pocket while walking about til the hat-caving camptown will clean me all out- my ten other projects, pretend money fudge it, i'll sell all my objects and end up with budget; i'd love it if some of my ideas ran, but i'll finish the one and be one happy man

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each piece is news, new peace in reach; tho a few of you choose nude tweets of Preach- but the rest got best bits fittin' here, what tests my pets must sit and hear: forget that past rush last two years going mash-gas fast 'til we're clashing gears, it's clear no room for fear to be, but the info flash is a blast to me- from the crashing sea to the land locked loam, we're lashed to the new word womb to tomb; and it's all fantastic like plastic foam that'll patch like magic a tragic home, or a tech part heart in 3-d print that'll let docs talk too intelligent; it's so elegant, that an elephant could do operations like he hella went: to harvard med my head is full but the school yard's sharp like a shaving tool; i'm a raving fool, but i drink it in, article particles 'til i sink and spin, win wonder i'm under delusions grand- will i sunder illusions and understand? or is it too much fuss will i cuss and worry, will i do what's just 'mid the dust and fury all i know is i go with the flow i find, tryna rein in my brain while i fill my mind

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so often was the A.M. spent prayin' for mayhem, like seeing riots firing inspired me to 'amen'; i'd hate when the job sucked, my robbed luck, i'd get stuck- attempts at free society my hopes and dreams were all fucked; but lately (don't hate me) the game is less crazy- i bust twice as lustrous if bosses don't make me; So new to the bragging, i catch up from lagging and write down solutions more lucid less nagging

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no sleep awake i sit and wait until the mill will dim/abate some whim shall take my fancy fate is to be sleeping dreaming state my eyes won't close i'll type i 'spose i'll write a night time rhyming prose those words i've heard but rearranged their meaning seeming weird and strange i've changed but how i could not say i only know no other way yet days gone by then who was i my mind was mine but what i tried to bind untied it flies! it runs! i rue what once i 'knew'; so dumb- untruth undo what time has done i can't so chant of what's to come oh spin oh sing oh show such things oh paint me what the future brings if won't be still then say your fill i pray my brain abstain from frills and spill the beans and give me scenes of things that help divine the means which plan to make which paths to take? i sit and wait no sleep awake

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rework this

i want things to be different, starting with me; like to find me a new mind, with new eyes to see; like to start a new life, with new ways to be; can't be hard to do right, or this dude might flee- but i like the older version, no aversion to he: the kid who up and did lots, and got up from knees; who figured bigger sub-plots, and thought it was neat; who questioned syncopation, by stepping off beat; so i'd like to start a nation, a tribe or a team; one with no reservations just, a vibe and some steam; a group think to shout out 'thou shalt know peace' and to try it they're provided with some elbow grease; what i mean is, i think it's, so nice to be me; and the thing is the scene seems a singularity; but my brain goes, down more roads, than the branches of trees; and with more crew, i might do, more glancing with ease; so for multiples of loyal, one/two/three: i might try it royal, and become true We

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#poem #poetry #poem collection #master post

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audreycritter · 5 years

Link

The inch-deep ledge was there until it wasn’t. He slipped without warning and gravity yanked Damian down. He dangled from his fingertips on the mountainside. He bit through his lip keeping back the cry it wrenched from his throat and for a long moment, all he did was catch his breath and hold to the rock.

This wasn’t a mission.

It wasn’t a case or a test.

This was just climbing an easy ascent on a camping trip with his family.

He was relatively safe, he reminded himself, while he struggled to calm his racing heart. The harness strapped around his chest and legs was snug, properly fitted, and the rope was secured along the system of carabiners and pitons. Father was above, testing and driving in new pitons where he didn’t trust the old ones.

Damian tried hauling himself back up. His wrist throbbed and once he had a foothold he released those fingers to experimentally twist and flex his arm. It ached dully, likely not more than a minor sprain.

His heart thudded wildly, and in the second he closed his eyes he was entirely alone— the tug of the rope at his waist vanished. He scrambled up the mountainside for the small inset cave Father had pointed out that morning. An abandoned aerie to steal a moment’s rest was something Damian had scoffed at over breakfast. He’d insisted on climbing with Father and Todd, despite the split within him when Grayson wanted to kayak instead.

Kayaking had sounded less exciting but it was Grayson. Then, he had noticed the way Drake was looking at Grayson and the note of excitement in his voice and that made his decision: he was not in the mood to fight for Grayson’s attention from within a single-person craft on noisy water. Then, later, Drake would not be able to accuse him of “hogging” Grayson.

It wasn’t at all because he recognized the look on Drake’s face and empathized in an instant with that feeling, of finding time with their overbooked, overworked older brother. That wasn’t it at all.

Damian preferred climbing.

He preferred climbing until he was huddled on a narrow aerie, panting for breath, with his arm clutched protectively to his chest. He had to recover himself before he was missed.

The wind that blew through his hair was chilled and he shivered. It had the tang of colder wind, and snow, and sour memories of bile-raising pain.

Before he could collect himself, a face swung into view. Todd studied him silently and then rappelled down to hang directly in front of Damian, his feet braced on the ledge.

“What’s up, Tater Tot?”

Damian opened his mouth to reply and his teeth chattered. He clipped them shut again and swallowed.

The sharp edges of Todd’s face softened and with a smooth motion, he swung around and into place beside Damian. A heavy, warm arm was draped around Damian’s shoulders.

“No squirming. We don’t have much space, okay. Not everyone can have your tiny ass.”

“Tt,” Damian managed.

Todd dug in one pocket and pulled out a shiny red package. It crinkled. They were animal crackers— a child’s treat.

“I always carry something on me, just in case.”

“And you say you are nothing like Father,” Damian muttered. He accepted the biscuits nonetheless and poured them into his trembling hands.

“Lion’s mine,” Todd said, plucking one from Damian’s chalked and sweaty palm.

“This is disgusting,” Damian complained, chewing mechanically. His breathing was approaching normal but he felt like he might throw up. Another few chews and that was fading, too.

“Yeah, well, you’re welcome,” Todd said cheerfully. “Ready?”

Damian peered out at the world beyond the tiny shelf and the biscuits were dust in his mouth. The grit of them coated his teeth and tongue, scraping and swelling his throat.

The wind lifted his hair and stole his breath. It dumped frigid water into his veins and his arm didn’t matter, his arm was nothing if he didn’t make it to the top before Mother came in the helicopter because if he was not there at the top waiting, the price for failure would undoubtedly be worse than a broken wrist.

She might even leave him there to try again, and he’d be worse off.

Something unpleasant was squeezing his shoulders and had he fallen? Was he in a crevice, sliding deeper and deeper into abyss? That would explain why his chest was so tight, why everything was so black.

“Bruce!”

The cry was deep and hoarse, from a throat permanently raw from smoke. He recognized that voice, from within his tomb of a crevice. It was a voice that flinched at candles and had left restaurants over nearby tables with cigarettes. What was it doing here?

“Todd?” Damian croaked, from within the blackness. This was all wrong. Mother would certainly punish him for accepting any help, but Todd wasn’t even supposed to be here. By the timeline Damian worked out later, she had likely left him on the mountain to go oversee Todd’s retraining.

Later?

“Shh, you’re good, Little Bird. B’s coming back down.”

Then, the voice, the one that was crushed stone and silk. It had startled him once, how very unlike his expectations it was— it wasn’t a commanding tone reminiscent of Grandfather’s. It was somehow quiet, with softly groomed edges around every hard syllable.

“What happened?”

Right now, it was drenched in concern.

“I don’t know,” Todd answered. “I found him taking a breather and he snapped.”

“Damian,” the voice said. “Look at me.”

Was he an imbecile? Did he not know of the high and crushing walls around them, the fact that they were sliding into deep and bottomless nothing?

“Damian. Open your eyes, son.”

Then, a catch in Damian’s chest released. This was Father. Father who knew the dark better than anyone he’d ever known.

He opened his open eyes, and found they had not been open after all. He blinked into the late morning sunlight, flooding the valley below them. It was a beautiful, cloudless day— something almost like perfect.

It was the sort of day that looked like Grayson.

“Hello,” Father said, looking intently into his face. He was gripping his rope in one hand, leaning back to counterbalance. His gaze flicked to Todd for a second and then back to Damian. Todd was still beside him, arm around Damian’s shoulders, while Damian shuddered.

“Father,” Damian said.

“Let’s get you down,” Father said, offering a hand. “Come with me. I’ll clip your rope to mine.”

“No.” Damian shook his head. “I can finish the climb. I can.”

“Yes,” Father said, craning his neck to look up the rock.

“Bruce, he’s—” Todd started. A single motion from Father made him stop, without a further murmur of protest.

“Do you want to finish the climb?” Father asked. His brow was bent in a furrowed line.

Damian considered this. His wrist throbbed.

“No,” he said, quietly. “I do not.”

“Alright,” Father said. “Let’s go.”

The descent was quick— over an hour of climbing lost in ten minutes of rappelling and belaying ropes and clips. Cassandra, a mere paper doll of human against the broad blue sky, waved from the top when they touched down and unstrapped themselves from harnesses.

She cupped her hands around her mouth, twisting and taking three dimensional shape, and shouted something that didn’t make it to them below. She moved again.

Then Father pulled out his phone.

“She’s hiking down the other side,” Todd read from his own. “To meet Dickie and Tim.”

“Hn,” Father said. He picked Damian up. “Let’s go back to camp.”

“I can walk.” Damian wriggled and pushed against Father’s shoulder. It did not yield.

“Do you want to?” Father asked again.

Damian sighed. He slumped against the broad shoulder, his chin resting there.

“No,” he said.

“Alright,” Father said. He kept walking.

Todd walked behind them, carrying gear and whistling.

At camp, in the fire pit flanked by their two massive tents, it took Father all of a second to notice Damian favoring his wrist. Damian, though reluctant to admit it to himself, may have slightly favored his wrist in hopes of just that. It was wrapped and iced before they ate lunch.

Pennyworth was sitting on the dock when they went to swim in the lake, dozing under a broad umbrella with a book on his chest. Todd pinched the book away and splashed him and Damian laughed at the lightning-quick rap on the back of the head it earned the older boy. The rap was gentle and the smiles easy, and Damian slipped noiselessly into lake water.

Tiny fish nibbled at his toes, he held so still, and then he scared them away kicking off to catch up with Father. They swam laps back and forth between two buoys, until Father stopped abruptly and flipped to float on his back. Damian gave up on the breaststroke and paddled over to him to flop across his stomach.

For a second, they sank, and then they were bobbing up toward the surface again.

“Brat,” Father coughed.

“If you cannot maintain buoyancy under sudden pressure, then I am only doing you a favor providing you opportunities to improve your response time,” Damian said, with a sharkish grin.

“Brat,” Father repeated.

Damian left himself draped there, his head on Father’s chest while water lapped gently against his cheek and buried ear.

“What happened up there, Damian?” Father asked softly, after several minutes of basking in the sun.

“Nothing,” Damian lied.

“Damian.”

“When I was retrieved, after, I thought she would praise me for finishing despite my fractured wrist,” Damian said. He closed his eyes and drifted on Father on the gentle lake tide. “She did not. I learned to set bones. Another lesson. I mastered it quickly.”

Father’s silence was deeper than the lake.

Then he gripped Damian’s arms and tilted, treading water while he hauled him close and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice husky. It was like someone had taken the crushed stone and silk and twisted them into a knotted bundle. It hung in the air, spinning, bumping into the quiver that was Damian’s heart. “I’m sorry, habibi.”

A sob would have been easy to drown in the lake, to duck his head and come up coughing. The wounded whimper that escaped him offered no such quick escape, and Damian’s ears burned.

“Shh,” Father said. “No one is watching.”

Damian buried his face on Father’s shoulder.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Do you want to be?” Father asked.

“What.” Damian froze.

“You don’t have to be, right now. Nobody is watching.”

Damian wrapped his arms around Father’s neck and his legs as far as he could around Father’s waist, while Father treaded water.

“I want a minute,” Damian said.

“Alright,” Father said.

If Damian wept silently against Father’s shoulder for longer than a minute, Father never told him. When the cracked ribs feeling seeped out of him, Damian pressed a quick kiss to Father’s cheek and slipped beneath the surface. He swam underwater until he was almost beneath the dock, and he crept up to drag his fingers at Todd’s feet like slithering eels.

There was a startled shriek and Damian laughed.

“You little miscreant!” Todd bellowed, immediately dropping his conversation with Pennyworth to dive in after Damian when he fled.

“Father!” Damian screamed, when Todd was gaining on him.

“I think you can handle a single brother,” Father said mildly, swimming for shore. “Unless you can’t?”

“Traitor!” they both yelled in unison, before turning on each other. Damian was dunked before he clambered up Todd’s back and dragged him under with a twist of his hips.

Damian was blue-lipped and shivering when he finally climbed out and wrapped a towel around himself. He sprinted through the woods, leaving Father and Pennyworth and Todd behind. At camp, there was a thick sleeping bag to dive into to warm up.

What he found was even better. Grayson, Drake, and Cass had returned and built up the fire. They were talking in the twilight, and Grayson only glanced at him before throwing wide his arms.

Damian leapt onto him, dripping still, while Grayson complained and laughed and hugged him tight. The folding chair scooted a few inches closer to the fire and Grayson rubbed a hand up and down Damian’s arm.

“You’re like a popsicle,” Grayson said.

“You stink,” Damian retorted.

“Love you, too,” Grayson chuckled. He squeezed him again and dipped his forehead against Damian’s damp hair. “Have a good day?”

“Good enough.” Damian shrugged. “Ghost stories tonight? And s’mores?”

“You read my mind,” Grayson said. “Go get your skinny butt into some clothes. You’re making me cold looking at you.”

“In a minute,” Damian said, snuggling down. He made sure to dig an elbow into Grayson’s side and smirked at the oof he got out of him.

Father and the others emerged from the lake path, and the little curve of a smile on Father’s face at the sight of Dick and Damian was like the sweetness of an ice cream sundae. Damian breathed, deep and slow and full.

The sky was plush navy, speckled with starlight, but it was a day like Grayson:

Warm, and safe, and bright.

#batman #robin #damian wayne #bruce wayne #jason todd #dick grayson #alfred pennyworth #tim drake #cassandra cain #batfam #batfamily #ao3 link

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penpatronuswhump · 5 years

Photo

Whumptober No. 16

Theme: Pinned Down

Fandom: Avengers

Whumpee(s): Steve Rogers, Tony Stark

Caregiver(s): Bruce Banner

Quaked

PenPatronus

“I thought you weren’t the Da Vinci of our times because you don’t paint!” a voice called.

Tony, who thought he was alone in the compound’s rear warehouse, jumped at the sound of Steve’s voice. He almost whirled around but, in the interest of safety, calmly and carefully descended the long ladder that stretched almost a story in the air to the highest steel grated shelf where he kept his collection of Jackson Pollock paintings. “I didn’t paint those,” he said once he descended. “You uncivilized goon.”

Steve chuckled. He wore sneakers, jeans, and a blue t-shirt. Tony wore almost the same except for a flannel shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Cap pointed up at the visible paintings. “Shimmering Substance, 1946. The Deep, 1953. Greyed Rainbow, also 1953.”

“Didn’t know you were so into art,” said Tony. “Thought you were just a brainless soldier,” he continued with a slight mile. “Also didn’t know you’d listened to every single interview I’ve ever done—ever.”

“Didn’t know you were so into art.”

“Pepper is. I bought all these back in the old days to… Impress her. Didn’t even realize I was doing it at the time.”

“Why do you have all of those if you don’t even display them,” Steve wondered. “You just keep them in this warehouse of rusty spare parts gathering dust?”

Tony shrugged and looked around. “Have some of my dad’s old toys around here. Inventions half-invented. Couple of these rusty spare parts made you.”

Steve’s eyebrows shot up. “Could I see them?”

“Not much to see. A few gears. A few rivets. Couldn’t exactly walk out of the lab with more than a few small gizmos.” Tony led the way to the far side of the warehouse, climbed up another ladder, then descended with a crumpled, dirty old brown box. Steve reached in and picked out a rusty nail, held it between his fingers, examined the craftsmanship, wondered what it held together.

“Keep it.”

Steve met Tony’s eyes. “I couldn’t. It’s your dad’s.”

Tony gestured around the complex. “I have plenty of my dad’s junk. Keep the nail, Steve.”

Cap pocketed it. “Thanks.” They walked side by side back to the paintings. “I interrupted you. What are you up to?”

Tony looked up at the row of paintings. “Think I’ll sell them all. They are just gathering dust. They should be enjoyed. And the money is needed.”

One of Steve’s eyebrows lifted. “Tony Stark in need of money? Aren’t you the richest guy in history?”

“Not for me,” Tony laughed. “Not even for us. Got an idea. The Stark Relief Foundation. It’ll step in during crises… Help the local first responders and authorities… Cleanup, help get people back up on their feet, pay for rebuilding…”

“Crisis from, what? A hurricane or something?”

“From us. The Avengers. When we make a… A mess.”

“Oh.” Steve looked up at the paintings and pretended to examine them closely. “It’s not our fault when there’s a… Mess.”

“I know. It’s just… After New York… After all these little skirmishes with arms dealers. What if Hulk goes on a rampage again? What if more aliens come? When we fight there’s always collateral damage. I want to start putting money aside for that.”

Steve looked at his friend. He examined him like a painting. “I think that’s a good idea.”

Stark chuckled. “Glad you approve.”

“I do.” Steve dipped his head to the side. “That’s thoughtful, Tony.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve made so many messes in my life it’s about time I start to clean some of that up,” Tony said. Steve opened his mouth to confront that statement, but Tony continued speaking. “You need something? Did you come looking for me?”

“Yeah…” Steve put his fists in his pants pockets and lowered his eyes. “Nothing important. Just heard you were on base.”

“On base? I like to think of the compound as a home, don’t you?”

“Well—”

“Do you need a harder bed? I’ll get you a harder bed. I’m having a pool put in next week—”

The earthquake hit out of nowhere—not that earthquakes ever happen out of anything but nowhere. The two Avengers were probably in the worst spot possible on the compound: standing between 1-story tall steel shelves packed with metal pipes, engines, shards of metal, and more. The pair shared a brief wide-eyed look, then Steve grabbed Tony by the shoulders, shoved him to the ground, rolled his friend into a fetal position, and braced his body over his.

Everything but the ceiling fell in those few seconds. The shelves sank one after the other, toppling like dominoes. The weight of it all would’ve squished Tony. It would’ve broken his bones, those bones would’ve punctured his every organ, and all that would be left of him would be pieces on the ground. He’d be dead, if not for the super soldier protecting him. Steve formed a perfect roof. He took all of the weight, absorbed anything sharp, and managed to stay conscious because if—if he passed out—then Tony would die, too.

Bruce, Nat, Clint, and Thor sprinted to the warehouse with Maria Hill and 50 SHIELD agents. They stopped short just inside the door. The debris was still settling and looked as fragile as it was. One corner of the ceiling was drooping, and the whole place echoed with the sound of sprockets and screws still bouncing off the floor.

Clint took Nat’s hand. Bruce approached the edge of the debris and called out, “Tony!”

“Captain?” Thor shouted. “Steve!”

“TONY!”

Clint heard the sound first—a voice, not scraping or dinging. He hissed at the others to shut up and they all obeyed. “We’re here!” came a gasping voice. “We’re over here!”

Hawkeye pointed to their left at about the 10:00 position. “There.”

Bruce waded into the debris and started tossing stuff aside. Thor scooted out in front of him and joined in. Everyone followed their lead and within ten minutes they could see the blue of Steve’s shirt. “Steve, you ok?” Natasha asked when she was sure that he would be able to hear her.

“He’s not ok,” came Tony’s voice. “He’s very much not ok. That’s not water raining down on me.”

“Raining?”

“Hurry,” Tony said.

Then, Steve growled, obviously in pain and straining, “Hurry.”

The moment Clint and Bruce pulled Tony by the wrists out from under Steve’s protection, the captain collapsed facedown and didn’t move. He was skewered through the thigh by a lengthy shard of glass that had nicked Tony’s leg, as well. Hundreds of pounds of steel and aluminum and titanium had piled on top of his back. The fact that he’d protected Tony from all of that stunned the onlookers. Thor shouldered the debris off Cap who let out a long exhale and started coughing.

The six Avengers hurried to the infirmary with Steve in Thor’s arms and Tony carried between Bruce and Clint.

Hours later, Tony woke up in the sickbay to find Bruce sitting at his side. “Is he all right?” Tony grunted.

Bruce snorted. “Those were his first words when he woke up.” He nodded at the next bed over. Steve was watching them silently. He was bandaged up all over. A cast wrapped around his left arm. He reached out his right arm, then, and Tony reached out his left. The two friends grasped hands and in that moment, each knew the other would be ok.

The End

***Check out my Avengers stories on FanFiction.net (PenPatronus) or Archive Of Our Own (PenPatronusAooO)***

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watchtoomuchtv · 5 years

Text

A MARVELous Christmas - Part 2

Pairing: Mystery Avenger x Reader

Warnings: some swearing and a little bit of angst and fluff for a second there

Summary: In the lead up to Christmas y/n is made aware of a secret admirer. Can she work out who the mystery avenger is in time for one important dance at Stark’s annual Christmas Eve party?

Word Count: 1.5k

PART 1 I PART 3

Refusing to stay cooped up in your room alone for one more second this close to Christmas you walked out into the kitchen to grab some breakfast. Yes, at midday. As you rummaged through the fridge looking for something to eat that didn’t make you feel like throwing up. You shot up and whacked the back of your head on the fridge shelf as you jumped hearing rustling behind you. Spinning around way too quickly giving your hungover state. It took some adjusting to the light to see exactly what was happening.

But any thoughts of the room being too bright and your head throbbing too much disappeared when you realised what was taking place in front of you. Tony stood there directing, what you believed to be the interns, placing the biggest Christmas tree you have ever seen in your life into the middle of the common room. You squealed and ran towards Tony, wrapping your arms around his neck. “Oh my god Tony it’s gorgeous! Can we decorate it yet?”

“Who said anything about we?” Tony said removing himself from your grip, “I’m sure the interns will enjoy every second of it.” Your mouth gaped open, “Tony, one of my favourite parts of Christmas is the Christmas tree and decorating it, I’ll do it myself if I have to!” The interns gave you an appreciative look as they wiped their faces and moved away from the gigantic tree.

“Suit yourself, the decorations are in the storage room. You might need a hand carrying them up though,” he said gesturing to the two super soldiers that you hadn’t even noticed up until that point. They sat together, Steve looked to be sketching whilst Bucky wrote, both clad in their work out gear. Of course they had probably woken up at 6am with no hangover and already spent a solid 3 hours working out. Stupid super soldier serum.

“What do ya say boys?” you say clapping your hands together and plastering the biggest, cheesiest grin on your face hoping they wouldn’t mind cutting into their relaxation time.

“Sure thing y/n.” Steve said with a smile as Bucky looked up and nodded, turning up the sides of hip lips into a grin as well.

“Let’s go! Christmas awaits!” You yelled running from the lounge room to the elevator doors, all signs of a hangover completely gone.

You carried the tinsel and Christmas lights draped over your shoulders with a box of ornaments in your hands, the two super soldiers on either side of you held the remaining boxes. Tony did not skimp on decorations. You knew this was going to be the greatest Christmas you’d ever had. That’s why you couldn’t wipe the grin from your face as the elevator opened back up and you stepped into the common room while Bucky and Steve followed you, both reluctantly wearing the santa hats you’d found and thrown on their heads in the storage room.

As you set the box onto the table you dusted the pretend dirt from your hands and placed them on your hips. Looking the boys up and down in front of you, ready to put their broad shoulders to good use. Wow their shoulders were extremely broad. And those arms. As you looked them both over Tony’s words filled your head again. In all the excitement for decorating the tree you had forgotten your mission. To find out who you needed to dance with.

You hadn’t paid any attention to the way Bucky’s hand had brushed yours while collecting the boxes. Or how Steve had looked at you while you sung Christmas carols and danced around the storage room collecting decorations.

As the smile started to sink from your face you looked up at the two men again, Steve ducked his head and started to move towards you while Bucky’s eyebrows furrowed together and he went to open his mouth before FRIDAY spoke up. “Captain Steven Rogers, Natasha Romanoff and Sergeant Bucky Barnes, Fury is requesting your presence for a briefing.”

Steve and Bucky shared a look before fumbling a little bit with the boxes as they placed them haphazardly on the ground. “Sorry” they said in unison, pulling off their santa hats and offering you a sympathetic smile before turning on their heels and walking out of the room. Nobody liked to keep Nick waiting.

Letting out a breath you didn’t realise you were holding you ran your fingers through your hair. You weren’t gonna be able to figure this out if you kept getting distracted and didn’t gather enough intel.

Looking down in defeat the glint of the baubles brought the smile straight back to your face. Deciding to not let anything dampen your mood you picked up one of the discarded santa hats and plomped it on your head. At that moment you felt a tap on your shoulder and turned around to see Sam grinning back at you. “Mind if I join?” he asked motioning his head to the tree.

You placed a hand to your hip and used the other to tap the side of your mouth pretending to be deeply considering his proposal. “On one condition” you say pointing your fingers and twirling around to pick up the second santa hat and plopping it on top of his head. He let out a deep chuckle “I guess I can wear the hat, how does it look?” he asked stepping back and giving an overdramatic twirl. You laughed and told him he was definitely more built than the regular santa which granted you a deep chuckle. “Decorating the Christmas tree is my favourite part of Christmas, you know I even did it while I was on tour. Used leaves and rocks I’d find. But Tony obviously has a much better collection.” He said motioning to the boxes upon boxes of ornaments.

You draped some red tinsel over Sam’s shoulders and flung it around like a scarf. “Let’s make this the best damn Christmas tree anyone has ever seen.” You smiled with a twinkle in your eye as you started stringing the lights around the trees. You glanced out of the corner of your eye at Sam as he begun picking up some baubles.

Sam’s name was on the list, so it was time for some first hand investigating. A little flirting here and there couldn’t hurt. For research purposes of course. You did your best attempt at a sultry grin as you made your way over to where he stood. Placing your hand on his shoulder, asking if he could help you hang the lights higher on the tree. He smiled taking the somewhat tangled mess from your hand and tossing the lights to reach higher.

You began placing the decorations, asking Sam which ones were his favourite and what his family traditions were. You laughed and shared stories together until the sun was setting.

“Will you do the honours?” Sam said bowing and offering out the crowning jewel to you, the golden sparkling star for the top. “It would be my priveldge!” You squealed jumping over the discarded boxes to not so gracefully take it from his hand. Suddenly holting when you reached the enormous tree. How were you going to get this to the top? You looked around for something to step on before you felt two strong hands wrap around your waste. You slightly jumped at the contact, feelings his front come flush with your back as he began to slowly lift your feet off the ground. You let out a slight giggle and Sam teasingly told you to stop squirming or he’d drop you.

Placing the star on top, and managing to not break a wrist in the process despite how high the tree was, Sam placed you’re feet back on solid ground and you stepped back to admire your handiwork. Sam kept his left hand on your waist wrapping around you as you both looked up at the most beautiful tree either of you had seen. The red and gold theme (of course Tony chose that colour scheme) along with the individual ornaments that represented each avenger; a little shield painted bauble for Steve, an arrow for Clint, a soul stone looking crystal for Vision and so on, all placed perfectly.

You looked up to Sam, who couldn’t wipe the obvious smile from his face. “How about a dance bird boy?” You said grabbing his hand and doing a little twirl.

“Nuh ah. This is about the whole Tony thing isn’t it?” Sam replied letting go of your hand. You looked down twisting your hands together shamefully, mentally crossing Sam’s name off your list currently sitting on your unmade bed, “Sorry Sam, he really just got in my head and I really want to know who it is.” suddenly an idea crossed your mind as you looked into Sam’s eyes. Interrogation time.

As if preempting what you were about to ask he started to back away, raising his hands in surrender. “I am NOT getting involved y/n.” “But please Sam, surely you know who Tony meant! Think about how embarrassing it will be if I dance with the wrong guy, I’ll never be able to live with myself. Never show my face in this building again! I’ll be forced to spend my days curled up in bed crying that you hadn’t just told me when I asked you, and so nicely too.” you pleaded, attempting your best puppy dog eyes, as you looked up at him through your lashes.

“That ain’t gonna work on me, let’s just say it’s not in my best interest to disclose that information just yet. But you’re not gonna make the wrong choice. Remember you aren’t just trying to piece together this puzzle or win Tony’s game. You have to have feelings for the guy too y/n or else there’s really no point in any of it.” His tone had gotten quite serious as he placed his hand on top of yours, never breaking eye contact.

You felt kind of stupid that the simple fact Sam had just shared hadn’t really dawned on you yet. Not only were you trying to figure out who had feelings for you. You needed to decide if you reciprocated them. Surrounded by so many attractive superheroes you’d kind of just tried to tune it all out. But now you had to face your feelings. Urgh. You needed another drink.

As you headed to the bar, you spotted Tony leaning back in a stool. “So how’s the dancing partner scouting going y/n?” you let out a groan as you hopped into the seat next to him pouring yourself a water, remembering you were still slightly hungover. Tony lent on the bar scanning your distraught face. You looked up and were not happy with the slight smirk you could see reaching his eyes.

Feeling the need to have even the smallest of victories you raised your chin and said proudly, “well I know Sam is no longer an option.” “And why would you think that?” he challenged. “Umm maybe because he just practically told me so.” You got up to leave, happy with the amount of gloating you’d accomplished and knowing not to take it any further with Tony. Before he piped up “yeah and I’m sure that hand touch meant nothing,” he’d seen that? It wasn’t really a hand touch hand touch was it? Not being able to analyse the comment for a second more before Tony continued “he wouldn’t want to be ruining the surprise so soon if it was him now would he?” Taking a sip of his drink you could have punched him square in the jaw.

Mentally uncrossing Sam’s name from your silly list you reached for the vodka and snatched it on the way back to your room. You shot up your finger behind your back as Tony called after you making sure you didn’t forget to attend the Christmas movie night tomorrow night and to “wear something sexy”.

You may have been a good spy but in regards to relationships and understanding others’ actions and emotions you weren’t entirely competent. As soon as Nat got back from the briefing you were getting her help. You needed her skill set, and her ability to read men. Because honestly you were hopeless. That was the only thing Tony’s ridiculous little challenge had revealed to you… so far.

To be continued...

#A MARVELous Christmas #mystery avenger x reader #avengers x reader #bucky barnes #steve rogers #sam wilson #clint barton #fanfic #marvel fanfic #avengers fanfiction #steve rogers x reader #bucky barnes x reader #clint barton x reader #sam wilson x reader #falcon #hawkeye #captainamerica #wintersokdier #whitewolf

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ain-t-bovvered · 6 years

Text

Out of Heaven’s Reach 7

EDITED by @waywardbaby

Pairings: Castiel X Angel Reader

Characters : Castiel , Dean , Sam , some nasty ass curse.

Summary: When the boys hit the 4th dead end, Castiel knew they were on the road to give up, maybe it was time to ask heaven for help, there must be some of his brother or sister who didn’t wanted him dead.

Warnings: yeah this is it guys the SMUFF is in ( smutt+fluff becasue @waywardbaby described it like that )

Catch up ! Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

“No Dean, I don’t think it’s a ‘great idea’ ”

The older brother rolled his eyes as Sam tried to reason with him.

“What are you talking about? Have you noticed how we are all jumpy and nervous ? Especially Cass and Y/N. I say the kids should have some fun...you know...loosen up a bit, some heaven on earth action.” The suggestion was met with Sam’s stony face, “ I’m talking about sex, Sammy! If you even remember what that is”. Dean pointed at his brother with one of the books.

Sam snatched it from his grasp,walking to the end of the table. “You are just bored”

“Hell yeah, I’m friggin’ bored!” he said dropping onto his chair, crossing his legs at the ankles and resisting them on the table.

“And that makes it okay to mess with them?”

Dean huffled, throwing the cap of his beer on the table, “Hey, it’s not like there is nothing...it would just take a bit of encouragement...”,he took a sip, “... a little nudge to sin”.

Sam let himself smile at that. Well, it wasn't as if his brother was wrong anyway, but-

“ She doesn’t even understand though. I mean, Cass? I think he’s pretty awake now about ….all of that-”

“Mah man” Dean smirked shaking his head.

“-but her? Dean, I don’t think she understands whatever is that she’s feeling”

“You can always talk to her about it, make it a girl’s night, braid each other’s hair”

“...” Sam decided to desist on the subject.

For now. They had more pressing problems.

My wounds were almost completely healed. They still ached when I moved too hastily or in a odd way, but there was no need for bandages anymore. I sighed happily when I could finally move around without them. No more chafing and I started to like the cool soft feel of the crisp shirt on my skin. Another bonus was the fact that I could shower under the direct water flow, which made me rethink my aversion for it.

My face turned upwards, letting the perfectly warm stream wash the rest of soap and shampoo off. Dean always lamented that I’d use all the hot water, but who cares anyway? This is blissful.

“Y/N are you done?”

Castiel’s voice barely reached my ears and I had to turn the water off, “What?” I asked wrapping myself in a fluffy towel, another result of my new prudish demeanor.

“We may have found something”

I opened the door, the steam quickly dispersing out, invading his frame standing in front of me. He waved a hand in the air to be able to see me.

“Oh...I understand. Let me get dressed” I stared at him for a moment, drinking in his striking blue eyes and awkward smile, and remembering how his face looked the last time we were in this room alone. Fire crawled up my chest, lapping at my cheeks as I walked past him, head low. I could feel his eyes on me as I disappeared into what I now called my room.

I joined the others 10 minutes later, having had to change a second time -wet clothes were indeed really uncomfortable- I draped a towel under my still dripping wet hair.

“Oh she’s not naked this time” Dean’s voice welcomed me as soon as I stepped into the library. “ I would not call that an improvement in other circumstances but-”

“You say you enjoy watching me naked?”

Seeing the smart-ass smile on that face falling into an awkward grimace, definitely brought me joy and it must have been shown on my face because Sam snickered and Dean stuttered a ‘NOW she gets humor’.

“Where is Castiel?”

“He ...uh...went to grab some of these ingredients in the gross stuff shelf and we already have the key one”

“So, Y/N get this...uh according to the lore, we think we may have found a counter spell to reverse that curse”

“Oh?” I said, not that enthusiastically, and they frowned at me, and I frowned at myself too. This should have been all I should care about. Being an angel again, getting my grace back, hearing my family’s voices, stretching my wings open and soaring above the clouds again. Instead my heart was gripped by the cold hand of dread. “ what’s, uhm...what’s the last key ingredient then?”

“I am” Castiel walked in behind me. I spun around shocked.

“I’m sorry, care to repeat that?”

“The last ingredient. It’s me, angel’s grace” he said without a blink.

“Not a chance” you said standing up and away from the table.

“Y/N …” “No Castiel. I did this to save you and now you want to give me your grace!?” I let out a sneer. “You know me better than this, I will not accept that.”

“It’s my choice” “Yeah?...it’s my choice, too”

“ What? You are not making any sense” “Yeah well, free will’s a bitch” .

Castiel turned to the Winchesters, opening his arms, searching for backup.

“Hey man...like she said, free will’s a bitch” the older one raised his hands, a dash of respect in his eyes as they crossed mine.

“Dean!” “Look Cass, it’s partially her call-” Sam interrupted him, then he turned to look at me “Are you sure about that?” he asked.

“....yes”

In a flash, my shoulders were thrown against the bookshelves. I didn’t even see it coming , but all I could see were fiery blue eyes boring into mine, his grip on my arms bruising.

My human self couldn’t help a startled noise.

Angel me knows those eyes, it has seen them countless of times, many many...many years ago. Pained and conflicted, fierce and intimidating , those eyes brought regiments and armies to silence and obedience, enemies to their knees, and now they were looking right at me.

For the first time I was at the wrong end of Castiel’s anger, and I felt he sucked the life out of me.

“Cass...hey, take it easy”. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw Sam’s hand laying on Castiel shoulder. My friend’s only response was a snarl before releasing me from his grasp and walking out, the metal sound of the door being slammed with force ringing in my ears seconds after being closed.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was keeping, my knees suddenly trembling, my fingers gripping the shelf behind me tightly.

“Are y-” “Is there any other way this could work?” I asked without looking up at Sam concerned face.

“...” I could hear the gears turning in his mind, “ well it doesn’t specify whose grace, so I guess any grace would do fine”

“...any?” I pushed myself away from the bookshelf, my fingers numb, “ I guess it’s time to collect some favors then”

The Winchesters knew their way around angel summoning spells. They didn’t need me for the time being and so I’d stood exactly where I was, staring at the bunker’s entrance until a noise startled me.

“I can’t watch that” the older Winchester slammed his hands on the table, standing up.

“Dean…” Sam called, his tone cautious.

“Sam, come on this is ridiculous” he said annoyed with his brother, before walking straight up my nose, “you should go look for him” he said.

“..what? ...why?”, he looked angrily at me, “Why would I want to search for him?”

“This is stupid...” he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, “... listen, what do you want to do right now?...like , in this very moment?”

I looked at him confused.

“Do you feel you need to be here or ….?” he said rolling his eyes, he was being very rude and very insufferable.

“I ….” I let myself feel. What did I want? My eyes darted from him to the door and back to him again. He raised his eyebrows, encouragingly. Castiel was out there , angry at me for some reason, and I felt like I needed to defend my choice, to...at least explain.

I needed him to know why.

Needed him to understand.

I ….I needed him

Dean’s face softened and he took a step back as I broke into a sprint out the library, stumbling up the stairs and out the door.

“You’re so sappy”

“Shut your mouth, bitch”

“Get me the holy oil, jerk”.

The crisp evening air hit my heaving lungs - I decided that running was hell and totally unnecessary- just as the door behind me closed. I hugged my naked arms, rubbing my rapidly cooling skin, my still damp hair not helping the situation. Was it always so cold outside?

My eyes searched around me frantically for that tan coat, the fake power plant looming behind me, my eyes slowly -too slowly- adjusting to the lack of light outside, I walked around, not really sure where he could have gone but knowing that I should look for his car.

Sure enough I found it a few meters ahead, semi hidden by the trees.

He was sitting legs crossed on the hood, his head turned up. I followed his eyes and saw the night sky.

It was underwhelming.

I was used to seeing so much more of it, now with my human eyes I could only see as much.

Nothing compared to what I was used to, nebula with their gases and dust that lit up the sky in colors that humans could never see. Stars and planets so clear, I could name all the galaxies that I couldn’t see now.

“I remember feeling lost looking at the empty sky when I was human”

I jumped at his sudden voice breaking the silence, “there is so much that they can’t see”, he then shifted his gaze on me and I forgot how to breathe again, “so much that they don’t know...”, his eyes looked down at me, shivering as the light started to fade quickly under the trees’ shadows.

Sliding down to his feet, he walked toward me while shedding his coat, “...and yet they feel so deeply”, he wrapped it around me and I sighed contently as his warmth and scent enveloped my whole being.

“They feel so much and they make impossible sacrifices without thinking, just because they lo-”, I looked up at him, seeing him clench his jaw, his fingers curling around the lapels of his coat.

“..-and then they fall, they fail and they regret” he said, voice trembling between his teeth.

“ I… don’t regret what I did, even if it costs me my life” I whispered, his eyes closing tight. He seemed to be fighting something, “you mean so much to me” the last words barely audible. Again I found myself with my shoulders against something, this time the car door and before I could even voice my complaint he shushed me with his lips.

There was nothing gentle about it, it was teeth scraping, lips bruising, hands gripping. We both fought desperately, trying to put what we were feeling into concrete actions. And everything was too much and never enough.

He pushed me, the car handle digging painfully into my back but I didn’t care as I let my hands slide up his back, under his jacket, feeling the muscles dancing and coming to life under my fingers.

But it wasn’t enough, I needed more.

Tugging at his shirt, I freed it from his pants, buttons falling to the ground when I didn’t feel like wasting time. He sucked in a breath as my cold hands touched his hot skin, up to his throat where his tie was hanging always a bit loose. He decided to come to my help, and the silky fabric also met the buttons at our feet.

All of this without letting go of my mouth, his chapped lips claiming mine over and over again, until I soon needed air -damn these human lungs- and I tried to back away to breathe -making ridiculous little sounds I must say-.

His grip shifted from the lapels of the coat to my hips as one of his legs sneaked between mine and I almost fainted as a new kind of friction sent jolts of electricity through my whole body.

His grip didn’t falter, it kept me steady, firm and bruising as he let me breathe , his mouth trailing down my jaw to my neck, chest pushing against him, my head stretching back to give him everything he wanted, and a chest deep growl let me know that whatever I was doing, I was doing it right.

When his teeth scraped onto a overly sensitive place behind my ear, a needy sound bubbled up and out of me, he froze for a second before his fingers found their way to the buttons of my blouse, undoing them one by one- and damn slowly- eliciting another mewling sound that made me blush. Once my chest was full exposed , he backed away, looking at me for the first time.

I could see my fast breathing as it condensed with the chilly air that surrounded us. I focused on his eyes and my breath hitched. They were dark, still their beautiful color, still that gentle gaze but dosed with sin. I shuddered , my hips arched instinctively into his and he groaned. Raising a hand, his long fingers barely grazed my skin as they traced the scars on my chest, sliding down between my breasts, smirking as he saw my skin prickling under his touch. As his hand traveled to my stomach he once again closed the space between us, both gasping as our naked skin came in contact. He tilted my head up and stared deep into my eyes as his fingers sneaked under both my pants and underwear, stalling for just enough time to search for any doubts or fear on my face.There were none.

“Y/N…” he growled lowly into my ear making my legs press together , “you know...you know what is happening right? I need you to know”

“Y - yes” my voice sounded not mine, all raspy and needy. I could feel the warmth radiating from his palm against my skin and my hips chasing his touch, “...humans’ mating ritual” I breathed out.

His head fell on my shoulder, “basically...yes,” chuckling he cupped my cheek to look at him as he raised his face. His eyes still full of lust but with an amused glint in them, making them shine.

“Ah….you need my consent, you have it, I didn’t exactly reject you until now so I don’t und-”

His fingers found their way between my legs. My pleased cry was lost in his mouth as he, again, rudely shut me up with a kiss.

He teased me, kissing me languidly, moving slowly, listening to my shameless whimpering sounds. My breathing was fast, my heart was swelling and I felt drunk, lost in sensations so new and foreign to me and so very ...very human.

His feet nudged my legs apart and I felt him hesitating. I matched his kiss, pushing my tongue into his mouth and I heard him he sigh contently , humming in pleasure as I bit into his lips. His finger traced a sensitive point and I gasped - we need to go back to it right this instant- I clutched his forearm, as his fingers slid inside me, my nails digging into his skin, my back arching .

I didn’t even know what I was supposed to be feeling, the extreme pleasure and the frustration of feeling close to an invisible edge but never going over. Castiel was everywhere , around me, in me, in front of me, in my ear as his ragged fast breath was caressing my neck, shudders travelling down my spine enhancing all that I was already experiencing, sucking and biting his way down my neck to my collarbone, his other arm around my waist keeping me from falling on my knees.

Suddenly it was like I jumped that edge and then instead of falling I felt like I had my wings again and now I was flying. My whole body tensed and I thought my heart might explode. Castiel looked intently in my eyes as I shattered in front of him, his movements accompanying my descend from my flight. I leaned against him, throbbing, hot, spent and incredibly vulnerable, but there was nowhere else I wanted to be if not in his arms.

I felt the loss of his touch as he wrapped both hands around me, squeezing me to him until I stopped trembling.

“Y/N...” his restrained voice reached the still active part of my brain and I anchored to it. Suddenly, I was very aware of his own desire pressing painfully against my stomach.

I breathed in his scent, wrapping my arms under his shirt, around his shoulders. I kissed him and I let my nails scrape gently down his back, feeling him shuddering against me.

As they came around his waist, my fingers brushed along his belt until they found the buckle and even I was surprised at how fast I was able to undo that. But his hands stopped mine, I let out an unhappy sound.

“There- there’s not need Y/N” he said, but I was an angel -well an ex-angel- not stupid. It was very possible that he was being sincere but you can bet Lucifer’s luscious hair that I wasn’t done with ...all of this incredibly interesting activity.

It was my turn now to shut him up with my lips, and I was always a fast learner, and soon Castiel was reduced to a hot, panting ,messy haired, angel of the lord.Taking advantage of his lowered attention, my hand made quick work of both button and zipper. He hissed when I touched him without warning.

Hiss that quickly morphed into a loud moan as I stroked the hot,smooth, twitching skin. He slammed both his hands on the car door behind me, trapping me between his arms as I worked him up mercilessly, his forehead bumping into mine, shifting between humming and biting back a moan. I chuckled admiring proudly at how the great Castiel was like clay between my hands. He looked up at me sharply, one of his eyebrows raised, his mouth badly concealing a dangerous, little smirk that made my own pleased one die. He growled then, grasping my wrist and shoving me aside.

I barely had time to register the door opening before I found myself splayed on the backseat, Castiel tugging at my pants, hastily dragging them down my legs with my underwear too, my tennis shoes getting caught in the process and they came off with them.

He looked at me then, and I at him as he shrugged off the jacket and shirt, his undone black pants low on his hips and a very clear sign that this was as arousing to him as it was to me. I licked my lips as he climbed onto the backseat too, a hand shoving my legs apart, accommodating him between them, hovering over me.

“You are not gonna crash me, you know?” I said circling my arms around his neck, bringing him down, crashing his body over mine. His hand raised my leg, hooking it around his waist, my hips jerked as he traced my folds again, and he groaned against my lips as his fingers slid in easily. The wet sounds mixed with my own cries were making me walk to that edge again and I wanted to fly once more, but this time I wanted him with me.

He knew, he felt it.

In my haze I felt his hand leaving me, heard the rattling of the buckle over my loud quick breathing. He looked at me then, and I swear it was like he had just promised me the universe. Heaven, hell, and everything he could give me. I dragged him down to me and kissed him. I tried to give him everything that I was, that I am and will be, just because I had nothing else to offer than myself.

The moment we were joined, I’ll never forget. We were nothing and everything for a moment and then there was just...us.

I felt his grace wash over me as he kept me close, both trembling and overwhelmed.

Then he started to move and I was sure I would never regain control of my own voice. I felt him move in and out of me , my hips soon finding the rhythm and meeting his, thrust after thrust. His head low on my chest , kissing every scar carved to save him, I arched my back and lost the pace as he gently bit my nipple through the thin lace covering it.

This was the sweetest torture, being one and two people at the same time, chasing our own pleasure but wanting to give it all to one other, chasing the release, chasing that edge but not wanting to jump, not yet, not when everything felt so good.

But it was becoming hard to keep the inevitable away. Every move became erratic, the rhythm got lost, the kisses sloppy and slow.

Castiel pushed his forehead against mine, eyes squeezed shut in concentration, “te-tell me h-how are you feeling?” his ragged breathy voice barely reached my buzzing ears.

I grabbed his head,kissing him deeply before making him look at me,

“Free”

We were together at the edge, holding hands and as we shuttered in each other’s arms, we flew together.

@curly-haired-disaster @ilovetvshowsblog @maimalfoi @marilynnlew @mariekoukie6661 @wayward-and-worn @thewinchestertales @raelady1184 @mah1c @sculptorofbeginnings @spnskinnyballs @starfirerules @missjenniferb @hunterswearingplaid @theangelwinchester @missihart23 @weathergirl83 @ravenhg @soloarcana @itsstillnotwhatyouthink @ackleholicwinchester @daskleinevolk @demonic-impala @choosemyname @lydklein1 @imperfxctlydean @dawnreadsfic @angeltardisbow @castiel-saved-me-from-myself @julesthequirky @youhaveaguineapigwhere @shows-up-naked-covered-in-bees @only-a-nerd @shadows-and-padlocked-hearts

#out of heaven's reach 7 #castiel #castiel angel of the lord #castiel x reader #Supernatural Castiel #castiel x angel reader #angel reader #reader insert #reader #supernatural reader insert fic #castiel x you #castiel x y/n

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sinfully-romione · 6 years

Text

Too Much Information

Summary: Dragons are usually the creatures associated with hoarding. Ron discovers that witches could give them a run for their money...

Rating: T

Sin: Greed

Ron staggered under the weight in his arms. “Hermione, you already have a copy of that book.”

Hermione turned and smiled at her husband of six months. “But I don’t have this particular edition. This has additional information from the last four years. I need it for my research at work.”

“Alright. But we’re running out of shelf space in our flat.”

“Oh, I already thought of a solution. We can make our bed a platform bed and use the space underneath it for storage for more books. I can do an extension charm underneath it so more can fit.”

Ron huffed. “And where am I supposed to put my Quidditch gear, dear?”

Hermione’s expression changed, one of cynicism. “Oh, I thought you had that in your wardrobe.”

“No, dear. I have my clothes and shoes in there. There isn’t enough room in the wardrobe for my Quidditch gear. That’s why it’s under our bed.”

She shrugged. “Well, you’ll have to find a different place for it. I need more room for my books.”

“Hermione,” Ron implored. He knew living with her had some issues but her collection of books was growing overwhelming. The way he called her name told her that – if she paid attention.

“Ron!” She crossed her arms and tossed her hip out in a terrific imitation of Mrs. Weasley.

He relented. “You win. I’ll build another set of shelves. But we really need to get rid of some books if we are going to stay in our flat.”

“Whatever,” she said over her shoulder as she made her way to the front with the new stack of books.

Hermione laid down the three books and Ron put down the other five in his arms. “Back again Ms. Granger?”

“Hello, Thomas. Yes, I am. I found these three for work and the rest for pleasure. My dear husband,” Hermione gave Ron a look, “said he would build me more shelves for the collection of books.”

Thomas the bookseller gave Ron a commiserating look and turned back to Hermione. “Let me see what you have here and ring you up.”

The bookseller opened each book and checked the prices, tallying them on an ancient galleon register. “This one is two galleons, and the next is two as well.” Thomas went through each until the last one and stacked it to the side. “The cost is 19 galleons, ten sickles Ms. Granger.”

Hermione opened her coin purse and doled out each gold galleon and the sickles, double checking the amount before pushing the coins across the counter. “I should be back in next week to get the new publishing of the Goblin wars of the 17th century.”

Ron stood there gobsmacked. “Hermione you have three copies of it at home,” Ron said. “Why do you need another copy of it?”

“Yes, but this one has the new chapter on the 1627 Goblin rebellion that I need for work. I have to have this new copy.”

“And the other three copies you already have? What can we do with them? Can we sell them back to Thomas here, or donate them to someone else?”

Hermione laughed. “Oh, I’ll keep them too. You know I loathe parting with any books.” Hermione stepped aside for Ron to pick up the stack, smiling sweetly.

“You’re going to break my back with these,” he said.

“I’ll help,” Hermione pulled her wand and lightened the load, using magic to help him with the burden. Hermione turned for the door with Ron following, wobbling the stack and hoping he’d not drop it. They had some ways to go before getting to their flat, including moving through Muggle London without hopefully being noticed.

“Hermione, when we get home, we need to talk.” Ron wobbled while walking on the cobblestones on Diagon Alley.

“About what?” She ducked and dodged through the crowds, avoiding most but the crowds melted back into Ron’s way. He constantly felt elbows and toes on his size 12 feet while trying to not lose Hermione. Each elbow threatened to deposit the load on his feet.

He nearly made it into the Leaky Cauldron before being bumped, hard. He lost the stack of books, watching them crash into the gutter.

Hermione turned and huffed, waiting impatiently for Ron to collect the stack again. As he was knelt down, he watched his wife tap her foot and bounce between her feet. He huffed again.

“About your spending habits of books,” he raised his voice to be heard. People continued to flow past them, going in and out of the pub. He struggled to get the last book on the stack before she used magic again to levitate the stack of books into his arms.

She stood there, waiting for him to finally get comfortable with the load. “Oh, that? I budget the galleons from my paycheck for the books.” She turned on her heel, flouncing away through the patrons in the pub towards the back wall of the Leaky Cauldron.

“Damn it, Hermione,” he growled before going after her, ducking random elbows and servers carrying plates of lunch and mugs of butterbeer and cider. He finally made it, waiting for Hermione to tap the bricks on the wall so they could make their thirty minutes walk back to their flat. Instead, she spun away, apparating home away from the crowds.

“Damn it, Hermione!” Ron growled before stopping. He surveyed the stack of books and realized that he couldn’t apparate all of the books, not without losing most of them. When did she get the idea that she’d apparate home, leaving him to walk the 2 kilometers back to their flat, holding a stack of her books?

Bloody buggering… Ron grumped as he put down the stack of books and pulled his wand, intending to tap the bricks in the right order to traverse into Muggle London. A very soft pop behind him had him spinning with his wand in his hand.

“Why are you still here?” Hermione stood a few paces away, looking impatient. She saw the stack on the floor at his feet and frowned. “Do you need some help?”

“Well, yes I do,” He growled. “Why’d you apparate away?”

Hermione stepped over and picked up three books and put them into her grotty beaded bag and held two more. “Will that help?” she cheeked.

“Considerably,” he replied, deadpan.

Hermione apparated away and left Ron holding the remaining three large tomes. “Damn it, Hermione.” He gripped his wand and apparated away, landing seconds later in the den right by the front door.

Hermione was already bustling around in the second bedroom with the number of sounds coming from their de facto library. She came out within seconds with a huge stack, levitated by magic, into the den. “I think I need to reorganize the bookcases. It’s currently by topic but I think I need them by importance right now. Goblin rights are relevant to my work at this moment and centaur history isn’t.” Ron saw the three bookcases in their den, all double-stacked and double-deep. Hermione lifted her wand and performed a silent incantation. All of the books flew off the shelves and circled her head in a circular pattern. One by one they flew into the bookshelf, starting at the top. Ron watched as it took minutes but all but seven books landed in the newly organized bookcases.

“Why are those seven not in the bookcases?”

“I need to read these two by next weekend and the others by the end of the month. Once I’ve read them, I’ll go next month and purchase more.”

“Why do you need to keep all of them if these are new versions of the old ones? Couldn’t, you know, sell them or otherwise get rid of them?”

“Are you mad? Why would I want to give them away?” Hermione turned and stared at her newlywed husband. “I don’t intend for us to live here forever. When we have a cottage, I will have my library.”

Ron rolled his eyes. “And right now we’re smothered in books. Every square inch of extra space is stacked full of books. Our spare bedroom has a thin path to the desk and bed and that’s it. Hell, there books stacked on the bed, too. We have the room stuffed full of books – books you’ve not touched in a year – in there collecting dust and taking up precious space. Hell, I can’t even work in there because there isn’t enough room in there for me to pull the chair out enough for me to sit.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “You’re exaggerating. There’s room in there for you to work.”

“No, there’s not. I am not five foot three. I’m six four. I need space to stretch my legs out, not have them bunched up under my arse!”

“That’s not true at all. There’s room.”

Ron turned and stomped to the spare bedroom and tried to push the door open. He barely moved it, leaving just enough room for him to squeeze through sideways. Books shifted left and right, nearly toppling on him. He tip-toed to the desk, which was shoved up against the corner and looked on the desk. “She’s barking mad.”

“See? There’s room.” Hermione said smugly.

Run pulled the chair back six inches to show that his size 12 trainers did not fit in the seat of the chair. “And how pray tell, Hermione, can you make this actually work?”

“With magic, dear.” Hermione pointed her wand at the desk and it rose up in the air four feet. “See? You can sit there and work.”

“Well isn’t that effective?” He cheeked. “So the only way I can get in and out of the desk to work is by levitating up above my head before setting it back down where it’s supposed to go. I wonder what would happen if I am distracted for a moment while doing such? I dunno, maybe it would fall on my head. Maybe if I have it hovering and you ask me an important question it falls and breaks my bloody foot.”

“You’re being dramatic,” she huffed. Her hair exploded from the hairband, falling everywhere.

“No, I’m not. One day I’m going to get hurt tiptoeing in my own home because of your compulsive book buying.”

“You are not and it’s not a bad thing.”

“It is when you keep all of the duplicate books of new ones.”

“We still have room in the flat.” She crossed her arms and leaned on the doorframe. “I can enchant the bookcases to hold more, like an extension charm.”

“You’re missing the point. You have a problem. And the only space left is on the bed with us. Sorry, but I won’t have books in bed with us. This problem is getting out of hand.”

“I don’t have a problem. I budget monthly for my book buying.”

“You just wait. One day you’re going to come home and I’ll be buried under the books when they topple over.”

“That will never happen. “

Hermione tapped the knob of their flat and walked in, carrying her work satchel and a parcel from the post. “Ron, I’m home.” She set down the sack of takeaway from the Indian restaurant they both liked along with the parcel in her arms.

She took two steps and stopped. Ron was standing in the hall, looking like a thunderhead, his head wrapped and both eyes blackened. His wand was in his hand, pointed at the floor, and sparks were accidentally flying out of the tip.

“What the hell happened?” Hermione dropped everything, including her over-extended briefcase, making a resounding thud.

“What happened,” his voice was hoarse, “was that stack of books in our office, the stack just inside the door, fell. You told me that you put sticking charms on the piles. Well, you were wrong. Eight stacks of books fell on me, along with a heavy as fuck bookcase. I think I blacked out; at least that’s what the healer said. But I yelled for you when I came to, thinking you were still home but you weren’t. I yelled for you a few times before I wrote it off as a bad job. Good thing I had my wand in my hand and could levitate the entire pile off of me. But this,” he motioned around his head, “was how the healer at St. Mungo’s treated me. I’m also off from work for a week from the nasty bump on my head as well as a sprained back.”

“Oh no! Why didn’t you send me an owl?”

“Hermione,” Ron’s voice got soft, quiet, and ready to explode. “I did when I was at St. Mungo’s. I never heard from you.” He stood like a Sphynx in the hallway, blocking the way back to the bedrooms. “I sent an owl instead to Harry but he said he couldn’t find you either inside the Ministry.”

“Oh dear God!” Hermione turned ashen. “I’m - I am so sorry. I was in meetings with the International Wizarding Confederation most of the day and forgot I had all of my owls held.”

Ron pulled a face. “Well, that explains everything, doesn’t it?”

“I really am sorry.”

“Sure,” he said offhand. “So I fixed the problem.”

“What problem?” Hermione wobbled slightly in her kitten heels.

Ron took three steps backward and pushed open the door to the second bedroom. The door opened the entire way. “I got fed up with the problem. So, I did something about it. It won’t be a problem anymore.”

Hermione stood there, gobsmacked. “You. Didn’t.” It wasn’t a question.

“Oh, I did.” Ron pushed the door wide open and stood aside for Hermione to look at his work. “Take a look, dear.”

Hermione stepped into the second bedroom which this morning contained thousands of book, collected from Muggle and Magical sources, all stacked up according to the topic. Gone were the myriad of bookshelves, double stacked and double high for each shelf. Gone were all of the books stacked precariously along the walls and on the flood. Gone were the books on the bed, the desk, and under the desk. Almost everything was gone.

All that remained of her gargantuan book collection were two bookcases, approximately seven feet tall, and single row stacked on each shelf.

He turned, feeling smug, and saw enormous tears falling down Hermione’s face.

“All my books, gone.”

“No, they aren’t all gone. There are these bookcases here.”

She turned on her heel, glaring. “I’m not an idiot, Ron. My books aren’t here. The rest are gone.”

“Yes, they are.” Ron smiled mischievously.

“What are you bloody on about? What did you do with my books? Please tell me you didn’t bin them all.”

Ron pulled the wand from his sleeve holster. He tapped four books in a pattern on the second bookcase and stood back. The shelving swung open and behind it appeared another room. “Oh, my Merlin!”

“I know how important your books are, but I need space too. I need to use this office and, well, frankly, what we had wasn’t working. I asked Harry to have him come to the flat and work with me this afternoon. I had an idea but he knew how to do the magic. We came up with this.”

Hermione stepped into their magically expanded library and gawked at what her husband did for them. Each book in the room was placed in shelves, by subject, along with the four walls, with a row down the middle of the room. “When,… how… “ She couldn’t communicate what she desperately wanted.

“I’ve had the idea for a month, actually. I wanted to surprise you for your birthday but that is still a month away. Today’s accident changed the timeline. Now, the shelves open up to where you need but when not in use, they line up into a storage space unit. That was the idea I had for making the room small enough but expansive enough to store all of your books. So anything you’re not currently reading can be in here, minus a few for decorations or current reading in the bedroom.”

“You…” her voice trailed off.

“When I was upset, I thought about chucking them all. Then I got smart.” Ron unrolled the bandages from his head and pointed his wand at his face, healing up the bruises instantly. “But then I realized that I could have what I needed but also keep what was important for you.” Ron smiled. “Dad told me that compromise is a foundation for a good marriage.”

Hermione pointed her wand at the chair and silently accio’d it to her. “You’re so good for me and to me. I don’t deserve you.” Each breath shook her, shuddering to calm down from her anxiety.

“Nonsense.”

She took two heaving deep breaths and calmed down. “When I saw you were hurt, I was going to chuck all of the books, save a few. Well, maybe I was going to send them all to Grimmauld Place, for decorations in the parlour, but then you did all of this, as a gift for me, and I’m just… I’m awed at how thoughtful of a gift this is.” She looked up and while tears were still streaking down her face, her eyes were clear. “We’ve not even been married six months, and you have a birthday coming up and here you are, building me a magical library in our flat.”

“We needed it and this will do until we get us a cottage or at least a larger flat. Your books are important to your work and I realize it. I, though, needed some space to work, too. It’s not like I want to be bent over half in the den with all of my books and paperwork spread everywhere when I’m working on a case.” Ron grinned. “It’s not good for a bloke’s back.”

“You are right and I was being selfish in making you keep that for me without me considering your needs.”

“Yeah, you were. But It’s ok. You’ve had so much on your plate it’s a wonder that you get any sleep at night.”

Hermione stepped out and went across the hall to their bedroom and saw that it was tidied up, clean, and three books on her side table, all of them what she was currently reading for work or pleasure.

“When did you have time to do all of this? The flat looked nothing like this when I left this morning.”

“Well, there’s this little thing called Magic, and I do know some spells that are useful, and – “

Ron barely caught his wife in his arms before they tumbled back into their bed, with Hermione showing Ron how much she appreciated her incredibly talented husband.

#7deadlysinfest2018 #romione #greed

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patiencekindnesscourage · 6 years

Text

That was a yes...

Cherry clambered over the final log that lead into the area surrounding Bardock’s pond, sliding down the hill that created a natural barrier and stretched into the foothills. Bardock didn't appear to be home, likely off taking advantage of the warm weather to find a mud hole to wade in and fight the summer heat. The paladin sighed softly. Wallowing meant she'd be cleaning muddy fur out of his gear for weeks... and out of her own armor and clothes as well. It was a hassle, and time consuming, but she understood that it did help keep the bugs off of him. Turning, she popped over the log to make sure Grant was doing okay through the thick brush. "We're here!" She grinned, vanishing again to set her pack down against the trunk of a tree and stretch, taking in the cool air. "It's good to be back, isn’t it?"

Grant smiled, following not too far behind he propped down his own things against a nearby boulder. "Been a long time," He said. For the past month they had been planning this little trip, and especially now with everything going on they needed it. It was a quiet to place to relax, and especially to think. "We really should come here more often, eh? Only a day's trip from the city." He came up behind Cherry and wrapped his arms around her. "It's been an absolutely lovely day so far, darlin'. First that breakfast, and now we'll finish it off here."

Cherry inhaled heavily, savoring the scent of sweet grass as it cooled from the heat of the day, the subtle musk of the forest around them and the crisp, clean smell of the pond. She loved it out here. Saying they needed this little getaway was an understatement after the past months events and injuries, Roxy going missing and the threat of war, it didn’t look like things would be improving any time soon. A night under the stars was exactly what the doctor ordered, at least for a night or two. "Too long." She sighed softly, sinking back within his embrace, arms gently hugging his own around her. "I can think of few places better to finish a good day. And i'm glad you enjoyed the breakfast." Mostly she was glad she didn't burn it. "Just you, me, and the stars."

Grant nodded. He took in a deep breath, then let out a relaxed sigh. "Mhm..." He kissed the crook of her neck. "A beautiful night... a beautiful woman. Let's set up, eh? I have a little somethin' for you, but first... mind gettin' a fire started while I unpack?"

The paladin smiled softly, coloring beneath his kiss as she shared the view with him for a moment, taking in the peace and comfort of the man she loved. Finally, she gave a chuckle and nodded " I'll get the fire going... And I brought the leftover biscuits. Well... four, I gave the rest to William." She extracted herself slowly to gather the kindling and clear a patch of soil for the fire, digging down slightly before steepling the wood and digging around for her flint.

Releasing Cherry, Grant moved over to the boulder where he left his things. "Great! I brought some bacon. Found a few pods of okra too at the market before we left." He opened his pack, and gathered up the food he had brought, all packed neatly in cloth. He set them by the fire, then started to set up their tent. When he was finished, he produced a bottle of brandy from his pack, the expensive kind he kept on the top shelf of his liquor cabinet. 'Corlain Brandy.' "This little hideaway will always be special to me, darlin'. Nothin' but good memories here, because right here... this was when I really fell in love with you. Here," He handed the brandy over to her. "Let's open this thing up. Real special vintage, eh? Been agin' since before Orcs were on Azeroth. They say it's like heaven in your mouth. Just gotta get a corkscrew and some glasses from the ol' pack."

"You found Okra?" She blinked, lighting the fire and beginning to slowly feed it until it built itself into a decent blaze. Dusting her hands off on her pants she peered curiously at the brandy. She had seen it at the top of the cabinet, mostly collecting dust. Where it was placed, she figured it must be something truly special and left it where it was. She had heard of the vintage from several friends but never having actually seen it before, didn’t realize what it truly was until now. It wasn't entirely surprising that grant had a bottle of it, in fact, it seemed strangely fitting, he tended to collect odd vintages for special occasions and kept them like treasure within his cabinet. Turning the bottle over in her hands, she smiled, feeling her cheeks heat up beneath her growing blush. "It was my secret for years, mostly a place to escape for me to go to and think, or even just relax..." She said quietly, looking back up to him. "And your first visit here I threw you into the pond, and realized when you splashed back up... that I loved you too." She moved over to press a gentle kiss to his cheek. "It's one of my favorite memories. And if this is as old as you say it is, we might not want to sit too close to the fire."

Grant chuckled softly. "And I remember I got you back for throwin' me into that pond, so we're even." He rummaged through his pack for awhile. "And the whole place is our wonderful little secret. Ought to stay that way too." Smiling, he gathered up a corkscrew and two drinking glasses. "Now I believe I made a little promise awhile ago. About when you finished that Westfall breakfast." He fell to a kneel, and set the glasses down by the fire. "Darlin', I've told you this before, and each time I meant every word of it. You're an amazin' woman, and everyday spent with you has done nothin' but put a smile on my face or made me smell the roses. My time with you is somethin' I don't ever want to end, and so... let's make it that way. You and I, darlin'... always." He unholstered one of his revolvers, and popped the cylinder open. An empty cartridge fell out of it, and looped around it was a truesilver ring with three small diamonds of a clear cut on the head. Inside the stones was a faint swirl of blue arcane energy. It seemed to shine, but gave off no light. "Chereisie Crawford... I'd be the happiest man in the world if you made me your husband." He smiled, eyes staring up at her as he presented the ring.

Cherry wrinkled her nose at him. "Yes, we are even... at least until it happens again." She winked teasingly, adding a final log to the fire while he collected the corkscrew and glasses. "This place will always be our little secret... beyond Bardock of course, but I don't think he's talking." She smiled affectionately, clutching the bottle against her chest until he knelt. The small paladin blinked at him, feeling her cheeks suddenly flushing more. She stared in surprise as he unholstered one of his revolvers, revealing the cartridge with the ring held around it. The paladin swallowed suddenly, looking roughly like a beach fish and still clutching the bottle of brandy.

She had always thought he was being playful when he claimed he'd propose if she made the breakfast, her own goal of making it to give him something she knew he loved, that he missed, and to surprise him.

Cherry nearly dropped the bottle as she stared at the ring, then at him, quickly putting the bottle down before it actually did drop. "Oh..." She stuttered softly, gaze finding his as he smiled up at her, releasing a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding in. Too many words and emotions bubbled up in her head, colliding in a chaotic mess that left her tongue tied, grasping for the right words, something eloquent.

Tears began to build within her gaze as she nodded and slowly knelt before him. "I... yes... " She finally managed, breaking into a smile that lit her freckled features.

Grant closed his eyes for a moment, and smiled. "That was a yes..." He murmured to nobody in particular before opening his eyes again. His hand gently caressed her cheek, fingers brushing away tears as he pulled one of her gloves off to slowly slide the ring on. Then he kissed her, arm pulling her in and holding her close. He was exactly where he wanted to be. With the woman he loved so deeply.

Something within her broke, all those bundled emotions spilling out in a happy chuckle. She swallowed again and grounded herself in the warm caress of his hand. Warmth flooded from her as she sunk into his kiss, holding him tightly and folding within his arms as he pulled her in. The tears came slowly at first, trekking freckled cheeks to land on his chest and her own, building into a light rainfall of joy. "I never want it to end either." She whispered softly. "You are a blessing in my life, my Light." He kissed her again. He was stilll smiling, and suddenly, with her in his arms, he playfully brought them both to lay comfortably on the soft patch of grass. His eyes darted to the stars briefly, then turned to meet Cherry's eyes. "You make me so damn happy, Cherry!" He excalimed. "I love you so much, and I know things ain't exactly the most peaceful especially with everythin' that's been goin' on, but I know no matter what happens we'll pull through it, and see it to the end. I can't see a future without you."

Cherry 's own smile couldn't be removed even if she tried, returning his kiss and adding several of her own until he lay them both on the grass. She couldn't take her eyes off of him, still in pleasant disbelief. She hated how she could never find the words she wanted when emotions were involved, left smiling up at him, tugging her other glove off to toss to the side and freeing her to cup his cheek within her palm, chuckling at his exclamation and turning even more red. "I wish I was as eloquent as you." She smiled. "You make me happy too, more than I’ve ever felt, ever knew that I -could- feel. Every day and every night, every moment... I love you, Grant Cousland... there is no future without you." The paladin admitted, caressing his cheek and letting him feel a small touch of what she felt, not wanting to overwhelm him. "Good or bad, so long as I'm with you, we can survive anything."

@redeemed-gunslinger

(taken from rp logs, so I apologize fort the choppy format)

#Grant and Cherry #Rp snippets #He's so adorable!!!

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