#tech Tuesday is forever | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

goodgirlofglory · 10 months

Text

A successful trial run/ One-shot

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

Word count: 9,2k

Warnings: Explicit sexual content, explicit language, smut, making out, nipple-play, dry-humping, coming in pants hehe, me making up a lot of unconvincing sciency talk about tech and engineering and whatnot.

Summary: As a newly recruited scientist in the royal technical institute of Wakanda, your first task involves a certain Winter Soldier fresh out of cryostasis and in need of a new arm. Intrigued by his mysterious figure since forever, you’re brimming with fascination over the subject. Little did you anticipate capturing his eye in return.

Note: This takes place somewhere between Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers Infinity War. Kinda wanted to write something from the time Bucky spent in Wakanda. I enjoyed writing this one, hope you enjoy reading it😘 Likes, replies and reblogs are amazing. Luv you guys, you are the best, i am always so grateful and excited to receive all your feedback💕💕🦋

The first time the Winter Soldier entered the lab, he was flanked by the entire Dora Milaje and led by the king himself. Apart from the usual ceremony of greeting the king and his guest of honor, no one seemed jittered nor particularly preoccupied with the new project - or its primary subject. The engineers, scientists and technicians of the royal technical institute and Wakandan Design group were used to making much more extravagant and complicated designs than a prosthetic arm.

It was a regular Tuesday for everyone - except you, that was. Extraordinarily gifted from a young age, you had quickly advanced and surpassed your peers and even superiors in your studies at the university of the capitol. Subsequently, you were the youngest person in the lab - apart from princess Shuri herself.

And you were almost jumping out of your skin with excitement at having the Winter Soldier as your very first test subject. Or rather, you were on the team that was to build his next vibranium arm. You’d read all about him and watched all the news over the years, but you had started working in the lab after he’d been brought to Wakanda and put in cryostasis, so you’d never actually seen him in the flesh. Now he was out of cryo for rehabilitation and with that came the need for a new arm. Shuri had picked the team herself, and to your utter surprise, chosen you as a part of it.

Your task was fairly simple: organize and execute the fitting of the prosthetic prototypes with the subject himself, take notes and report to the team whatever adjustments the soldier would prefer. The others would do most of the engineering, creative modeling and building - the more prestigious work. You didn’t really care that your tasks were relatively simple and low level though - it was an amazing learning experience for a newbie like you. Plus, it meant you were the primary contact person for the soldier himself, which had you flushing hot for both professional and decidedly less professional reasons.

The soldier was an enigma; lethal chaos and extreme discipline spliced inside the body of what was once a regular American. His mythos was both intriguingly detailed and all at once a mystery - a sort of dangerous puzzle you couldn’t help but be drawn to like a moth to a flame. Everything he had lived and experienced and represented was so very very far from your own safe and mundane world. It wasn’t that growing up in Wakanda had been boring per se, but everything was just so… perfect, and despite yourself, you were drawn to the Winter Soldier and the extraordinary case of his unusual life. And from the moment you’d laid eyes on him, you knew you were out of your depth.

He was beautiful - in a rugged, unpolished sort of way; raw and hauntingly real, he only seemed to move when it served the explicit purpose of his visit. Otherwise, he stood still as a statue. He had an air of mystery to him, but despite his huge, menacing and burly form, he wasn’t scary. His eyes were soft, the babiest of blue, his stubble revealed tiny streaks of silver, and his hair, though washed and groomed, had a consistently shaggy look to it that made him seem…human. Just another regular white guy to everyone else in the lab - the most intriguing person in Wakanda to you.

Along with the king, the soldier had silently shaken the hand of everyone on the team, looking them in the eyes with a polite, though quite stoic expression that betrayed nothing of what was happening on the inside. You’d stared at him as he'd made his way down the line, scrutinized every inch of his face, trying to gauge the tiniest twitch of muscle, any indication or hint of emotion - to your utter astonishment, you could see nothing. Then he'd reached where you stood at the end of the line of team members, and your heart'd kicked into a sprint at the way he suddenly loomed before you in all his muscled, mystical and deadly glory. Holy shit, he was huge, surely a foot taller than you, with the most obscenely broad shoulders and thighs that bulged in a way that had your mouth going dry.

Get yourself together! Stop ogling the subject!, you had admonished yourself harshly.

By the time you got back in contact with your body and reached a hand out to him, your palms were sweaty and your face hot. And then, as he engulfed your hand in his pale, calloused one, hot like a multilayered sonic solar panel during july, you thought you saw a muscle near his eye twitch, catching your gaze the same way his eyes did a moment later when they glinted with something suspiciously alike curiosity, a flashing moment of undivided interest that had you flushing even hotter.

Oh yeah, you were in big, big trouble.

Three months later you no longer broke out in panicked sweating whenever Barnes came in for a fitting (most of the time). You’d had a total of four meetings so far, all of which had been professional, short and silent. Barnes hadn’t spoken more than a few words to you in all your time together in the lab, and none of them of much importance.

("Here?" he'd asked that first fitting when you’d asked him to take a seat on the surgical bench.

"No" he'd said when you asked if the new fastenings at his shoulder were uncomfortable.

"Yes", he'd said when you’d asked if the first prototype arm was lighter than what he was used to.

Other than that, the winter soldier mostly communicated in grunts, nods and shakes of his head.)

The hiss of the sliding door alerted you to his arrival as you were readying the newest prototype for the fitting, and just like always, the door was the only sound even hinting at his presence. He was impossibly silent for a guy his size.

“Sit down, please, I’ll be ready in a moment,” you threw over your shoulder, keeping your eyes on the clasps you would try on the shoulder today.

When he didn’t answer and you could hear no sound of the shifting padding on the surgical bench, you threw a look over your shoulder and froze.

Barnes stood by the bench, his one flesh arm raised high, fingers adjusting something on the…bun on the back of his head. His…bun of…gorgeous, thick locks of shaggy brown hair. You gulped, a tingling sensation of adrenaline starting to well up in your chest. He hadn’t worn his hair like that before, at least not around you, and man were you a sucker for a nice hair do on a man. Combined with this man it seemed to be suddenly and quite effectively lethal. His locks were collected and pulled away from his face, revealing high, chiseled cheekbones and a jawline that could cut diamonds and -

A screw fell out of your hand as your mind worked overtime to process the image before you, and then, so quickly you didn’t even see him move, the soldier was there, crouching at your feet, catching the screw before it could clink onto the floor.

It felt like an eternity went by as you stared at his bent form slowly straighten up up up to his full height, the screw looking more like a grain of sand in his big, calloused and rough hand, his body so close you swore you could feel the warmth radiating off him. The lulling scent of fresh earth and spices filled your nose, taking you to luscious lands far away.

You heard the hitch in your tiny, involuntary intake of air like a siren in a dead silent night, and your face blazed to a million fucking degrees, your heart galloping in your chest. Swallowing thickly, you looked up into his pale eyes - eyes that betrayed nothing in an equally neutral face.

Fuckfuckfuck, he’s so close. Fuck, his eyes are so blue, shit, he smells good, is that freckles on his cheek bones -

He held the screw out expectantly, and you mentally shook yourself for being so fucking slow. Stop ogling him! Take the screw! With fingers you were relieved to see didn’t tremble, you reached out and plucked it from his light grasp, furiously not hyperfocusing on where your skin grazed his.

“Um,” you started, and painfully cleared your throat before trying again, cheeks burning, “t-thanks. Please, sit.”

He stayed unmoving for half a second longer than was strictly necessary, and then he turned and moved to sit on the surgical bench.

Turning back to your table of tools, you took a few calming breaths, breathing as softly as you could in case the soldier could hear you (which he probably could quite well considering what you’d read about his enhanced body and senses.)

You turned back to find him watching you from a seated position on the bench, eyes following your movement as you walked up towards him, pulling your table behind you. You plastered on your best carefree smile and picked up the prototype vibranium arm, sleek black with silver accents, and like you always did, held it up so he could inspect it if he chose to. Like always, he didn’t seem remotely interested in the design. Only, he didn’t stare ahead out into the room like he usually did during these parts of the fittings. Instead his eyes remained on you, his form so fucking unmoving he could be a statue. You swallowed thickly, absurdly nervous. His scent still lingered in your mind.

He’d removed his shirt, revealing the new shoulder prosthesis in the same black as the arm, fitted to mold over his scarred tissue and make a clean transition from steel to skin. Your eyes caught on the tiny sliver of golden, muscled skin peeking out from where his white t-shirt had been cut above the shoulder, and you quickly averted your gaze even as your mind started conjuring images of wide expanses of soft, golden skin under the tips of your fingers as you explored under rays of soft, morning sunlight.

Why did he have to look so god damned good, with his stupid hair up in a stupid bun and stupid t-shirt that dared show even a square centimeter of his stupid skin, you thought perturbed as you started fitting the arm to the shoulder, hands working on autopilot while your mind frayed at the edges.

All through the fitting, you felt his eyes linger on you, not staring per se, just…observing. Three times you peeked up from your work to catch his eyes on yours, and three times you hastily averted your gaze back, your cheeks heating anew, your heart picking up speed. He’d never done that before. He’d always just stared at the floor or the wall during his fittings, eyes vacant, seemingly far far away. He’d never been fully present, never watched you, very rarely met your eyes. It was what had kept your own visceral reactions to such a minimum you could easily manage them. But now, under his weighty gaze, your body started tingling all over, sweat gathering on your brow, your breathing going just slightly too fast. You didn’t know if it was excitement or some instinctive fight or flight-reflex kicking into gear. Why was he looking at you like that?

“There,” you said just a little too hastily when at last the final screw was in place. You retreated to the other side of the room under the guise of organizing your tools back into their rightful place on the wall. “Please test it out, feel how it fits, tell me how it feels,” you said with your back to him, reciting the instructions you always gave him during this part of the fitting. Usually, you observed him closely as he walked around the room, lifting the arm, flexing the fingers and grabbing at random objects to test grip and reactivity. Now it was all you could do to not flee the room all together due to how embarrassingly flustered you were. The fittings in themselves weren’t really necessary from an engineering perspective - the royal technical institute all but guaranteed the highest mark of quality and a near zero percent chance of faults. The fittings were more beneficial from a psychological point of view - to give the subject a smooth transitional introduction to their new limb.

You heard him shuffling about for some time while you randomly moved tools and screws around your table while trying to collect and promptly ban all the inappropriate thoughts running wild in your head. It was so unprofessional to be affected like this! Sure, he was handsome (wildly so) but you couldn’t call yourself a proper scientist if you acted like this! It was disgraceful! Even as you scolded yourself for being this way around the poor, innocent hunk - SUBJECT - your mind flooded with the thoughts you tried so hard to keep at bay. What did his hair feel like sliding through your fingers? Did he always gaze so intently? What would those eyes look like in dark rooms surrounded by soft sheets? What would that new metal hand look like wrapped around your -

The sound of a throat clearing had you yelping - for fuck’s sake, girl - and whipping around to find him right behind you, looking down at you with that expression that betrayed nothing.

You stared up at him for a moment, heart thumping in your chest, stunned to silence by his clear initiation of contact, and then abruptly found your sense.

“Does it feel right? Is anything uncomfortable or -”

Your words died out as he extended the vibranium hand between you. He let it hover there, hand straight, expectant. You stared for a moment, and then praised yourself for daring to reach your own hand out to clasp his, a bit unused to the flip to using your left hand to shake his, hoping to God this was what he was getting at and that you didn’t just make a fool of yourself.

Your interpretation was correct, and the smooth, slightly cold metal closed around you, dwarfing your hand. The soldier squeezed your fingers and then shook your hand a bit stiffly a couple of times before stilling. You gulped, acutely aware of your heartbeat running a gallop in your chest, the silence around you so severe you could hear your own breathing like a wind tunnel. The feel of the vibranium, so alive in this form and shape, squeezing your fingers in a firm, unyielding grip had new, strange sensations slowly trickling south, and you fought the instinct to clench your thighs as unwelcome heat pooled in your lower stomach. Mortified by your own, inappropriate and decidedly unprofessional reaction, you hoped to all the dead kings and Bast herself that the soldier didn’t notice. Disturbingly, there came no sound from the soldier, not even from his breathing.

After a moment of nothing happening, the both of you just standing there, clasping hands, you dared a peek up at his face. He was watching you again, but instead of pale, dead eyes, the blue of his irises simmered with something…something hot and wicked and -

You abruptly pulled your hand out of his grasp, and gave him a far too fake gleeful smile. “Good grip,” you jipped, voice coming out far too strained and shrill to be casual. Barnes looked at you with those captivating eyes for a moment longer before looking down at his vibranium hand, flexing the fingers a little.

“It’s perfect,” he said.

It took you a moment to register the words, and then elation swept through you. You smiled and clapped your hands together and spun to go note his comment down. “How wonderful, I’m so glad,” you said, not able to keep the excitement out of your voice. A happy subject meant you’d fulfilled your task! The project could move onto its final stages of rendering and documentation. Happy progress! You scribbled down some fast notes on the screws and fastenings, how he’d tested grip by shaking your hands and his own feedback, putting his exact words down as a quote.

“The team will be so happy to learn you’re satisfied, they talked so much about the latest updates on the interface between sensory input and mechanical automobility - they wouldn’t shut up about it for days, I swear to Bast,” you said, the words falling out of your mouth in your excitement, and then you turned back towards him and again fell silent.

He was staring at you, and for the first time, you could actually detect emotions on his face. He looked…dumbfounded, or something akin to that, watching you with avid eyes, mouth slightly open and brows for once out of their trademark downturned frown. You were stunned yourself for a moment seeing him so out of character, and then you promptly lowered your gaze.

Oh great, first you’re fumbling and awkward and then you start rambling like a lunatic. What is wrong with you?, you asked yourself silently. You cleared your throat and motioned for him to sit back on the bench. He obliged, and you found yourself slightly disappointed to see him schooling away his emotion behind the stoic mask.

“So, I’ll have to take the arm off so it can be finalized, and then you’ll just have to have it fastened a final time, and then you’ll have your arm, Mr. Barnes,” you said as you got to work unscrewing and removing the prosthetic limb. He nodded, eyes glued to you like before. He didn’t seem happy, or if he was, he didn’t show it. You hoped he’d feel elated like you did, but considered how the whole metal arm thing might still be a little complicated for him. You wondered if he was going to a therapist, or a support group or anything. You didn’t dare ask, though. “I imagine the finalizing process won’t take much more than two weeks. I’ll send you a suggestion for the next appointment once it’s clear, and you can confirm using your compad like before. Sound good?” you asked, thankful you could keep a clear head through this part at least.

“Yes,” he said, still watching your eyes as you removed the arm and returned it to the table. You nodded to him, and managed to stay upright until the door hissed shut behind him as he left. Then you curled into a mortified little ball and hid your flaming face in your hands.

Fucking. Great.

Your heart had been hammering harder for every mile that passed as your cruiser made its way into the heart of the Wakandan landscape. The prosthetic arm had been finalized within a couple of days and your superiors thought the best course of action was sending you out to fasten it instead of demanding Barnes make his way into the capitol on such short notice. Which meant you were on your way to his home, to be completely alone with him…in his home.

Part of you was insatiably curious to see how he lived, to peer into such a private, revealing place. Everyone knew seeing how a person lived was like seeing a reflection of their soul. Your apartment for instance, was a hot fucking mess, but one you could navigate perfectly. You hadn’t allowed yourself to picture Barnes’s home, though, or make any assumptions. How he lived was of no scientific interest, and therefore no interest to you! Or so you told yourself, at least…

It’s fine. Everything is fine, you chanted in your head as the cruiser arrived at its destination, the small hut Barnes had been gifted as his indefinite residence. It was a beautiful place to keep a residence, right by the river, the surrounding trees providing plenty of shade from the hot sun and a gorgeous view over the plains. It only made you more curious about Barnes, and subsequently, more furious with yourself.

Everything is fine.

As you shut the motor down and climbed out of the vehicle, his large, burly figure emerged from the hut, and a spike of energy went off inside you as you locked eyes with Barnes. He was as stoic as ever, but he walked up to meet you right away and surprised you when he reached to grab the case with the arm in it to carry it for you.

“Hi,” you said, and quickly added, “um, thanks for being available at such a short notice.”

You’d felt kinda foolish for giving such a roomy deadline prognosis at his last fitting only for it to take a few days, and were sweating with the hope it hadn’t inconvenienced him in any way. There was a whole delicate, psychological process involved in getting a new limb - a process one shouldn’t meddle too much in - especially when there was significant trauma involved in losing the original limb. Fuck, you were so nervous.

He looked a bit puzzled for a moment, brows drawn down in consideration.

“No. Thank you for coming all this way,” he said a bit haltingly, and to your astonishment, he sounded almost as unsure of himself as you felt. Uncomfortable warmth spread in your chest. That must have been the longest sentence he’d ever spoken to you. His voice was low and gruff, a smooth rumble that seemed to vibrate through the ground, across to you and straight into your chest. Fuuck, how were you supposed to survive that voice, and with him being uncharacteristically timid and polite?

Suddenly you felt like laughing. Here you were, both of you so awkward and unsure, and what for? This was a joyous occasion, for Bast's sake, and you were being silly! Forcing your nerves down, you leveled him with a smile.

“Not at all. Let’s get that arm on, shall we?” you said, letting your actual excitement for the happening fill you instead. You were after all, genuinely excited to finally give Barnes his new prosthetic limb, and see him back to full mobility.

He stared at you for a moment, his eyes fluttering around your face, and then abruptly stepped aside and gestured for you to proceed him into the hut. You obliged, holding your spirits high as you dared venture past the curtain and inside the hut.

Barnes’s home was sparsely furnished but…surprisingly cozy. Brightly coloured pillows, blankets and tapestries lay everywhere, a window to the right letting in the bright, midday sun, casting a glowing light on everything. You recognised the patterns and color scheme from your own parents and grandparents houses, it was a traditional home in all senses of the words. You’d think Barnes would stick out like a sore thumb here, but really, he seemed to fit in well. There was a low table to the left with stacks of books and a mug on it, surrounded by more pillows and blankets. Your eyes caught on and swiftly ignored the cot at the back of the hut, made perfectly with a mountain of pillows.

That’s where he sleeps. That’s where he rests. That’s where he’s most vulnerable. That’s where you would lay if he - NO!

Barnes squeezed around you where you stood just inside the entrance studying the space, and you quite viscerally realized how small the hut was for the two of you, how small it was for him alone really. This was gonna be way more tight and intimate than the lab, you thought with a mix of excitement and trepidation.

Barnes put the case down by the low table and proceeded to start clearing the table of books and pens and the mug. He looked down into the mug and then over at you.

“Coffee?” he asked, and taken aback by the unexpected question, you shook your head quickly before immediately regretting it. It would’ve been more polite to accept, and you did feel a bit strung out by your morning so far.

Barnes nodded in response, and then seemed at a loss, turning the mug in his hand. Was he…fidgeting?

“Where do you -?” he started, and you cut him off.

“Right there is fine. We can sit on the floor, no problem,” you said reassuringly, giving him another smile, suddenly filled with sweetness for this big hulk of a man and his nervous fidgeting. He nodded and proceeded to plump down where you assumed he normally sat. You quelled a smile at how normalcy seemed to bleed through even this exceedingly awkward situation, and was kind of enamored by the way Barnes seemed to relax once he was seated in his usual spot. It gave you the impression that this space was a comfort to him, which you were glad to see.

You neared and sat down on your knees at his side, opening the case and swiftly taking out everything you needed as he took off his shirt to reveal the same t-shirt he used to wear underneath, sleeveless on the left side. Without further ado, you started the process of permanently fastening the arm. You slipped into a calm concentration as you worked, the familiarity and comfort of your skills calming you, a comfortable silence descending upon you both, only interrupted by the sounds of your electric screwdriver. The whole thing took no longer than ten minutes, and then you sat back and looked upon Barnes in silence as he took in his new arm, knowing it was finally, and wholly, his.

He stared down at it for a long while, and then the hut was filled with sounds of gentle, almost silent whirring as he started flexing mechanical muscles, then fingers, then the whole arm, lifting it to examine and compare to his other arm, running them both through his loose hair and picking up different items on his table and tossing them lightly from hand to hand. He seemed completely engrossed, and for long minutes it seemed almost like he’d forgotten you were even there as he explored his new arm.

It was awe-inspiring to see, to be allowed to observe such a vulnerable moment, to witness him seemingly letting himself really connect to this new possibility of having two arms and two hands again, in a way he hadn’t even seemed to entertain while in the fittings. It touched something deep inside you, witnessing with honor what you hoped might be a moment of healing, and tears pricked the back of your eyes. It felt so incredibly moving to be part of a team that could give something like this to a person who’d been through so much hardship, and the feeling filled you, making you feel all warm. This was why you’d gotten into this field, this was why you wanted to be a scientist. To be able to help people recover precious things lost.

Your heart swelled with emotion, and then Barnes looked at you, his own astonished joy blasted clear across his face, completely unencumbered, letting you see it without any pretense or facades. Your breath caught in your throat at the sheer volume of his joy, and how intimate him sharing it so openly with you was. You were stunned.

And then you kissed him.

One moment you were looking at his broad smile full of slightly crooked, white teeth, and then you’d leaned across your own knees and half across his and unceremoniously pressed your lips to his. It was closed-mouthed and a bit off-center, your bottom lip caught awkwardly on his top one. But sparks crackled through your body all the same as you felt how soft his lips were, how warm his skin was, the slightly surprised gust of warm, gentle air from his nostrils.

And then your senses kicked in, mortification hot on their heels, and you broke the kiss abruptly, all but ready to flee the hut. You didn’t get the chance to move away though, before cool metal fingers slid up the sensitive skin of your throat and back to cup your neck, gently, but firmly pulling you right back into the kiss.

A fire caught in your loins, sizzling hot sparks shooting up your body and you drew in a shaky breath through your nose only for the air to be caught in your throat, making a small, needy, desperately embarrassing sound. The metal fingers on your neck tightened at the sound.

You felt completely blown off your center. Nothing had felt this good before, nothing in your whole, perfect life full of joys and pleasures and fulfillment had felt so sensationally good as James Buchanan Barnes's lips on yours while his brand new prosthetic hand cradled your neck.

The surge of desire that welled from that feeling propelled you to buck forward and crawl into his laps, straddling him with even more clumsy frenzy as you kissed him again. He answered in kind, his flesh hand landing tentatively on your hip before moving up your back to pull you tighter against him once he seemingly caught on to the fact that you were there in his lap of your own fruition.

You kissed again and again, hungry, exploring, closed-mouthed but growing more desperate, more daring. You opened your mouth to catch your breath and was met by the shy swipe of his tongue just inside your mouth, and your whole body shuddered at the sensation before you wrapped your arms around his neck and swiped your own tongue to meet his.

A growl came out of nowhere and exploded in Barnes’s chest as you tongue-kissed him with everything you had, and then the world was spinning, and your back hit the brightly earth-coloured rug. Barnes followed you closely, and laid down on top of you, pinning you down with his huge, burly body, claiming your mouth in an honest-to-Bast breath-taking kiss.

It was explosively good, this gorgeous, muscled beast of a man pinning you to the ground, broad shoulders shielding you from everything above, leaning on his elbows while his hands cradled your face, holding you perfectly still as his mouth descended upon yours again and again, growing hungrier with every kiss. Your mind whirled with images of his metal arm wrapping around your throat, pinning you down, tearing your clothes to shreds and holding you put exactly where he wanted while the soldier ravished you, and it became even harder to pull air into your flaming lungs. You heard yourself whimpering into the kisses, your own desperation growing like a galloping crescendo inside you. You were suddenly, unexpectedly, and totally irrationally ready for him to tear your clothes off and take you right there on the floor of his hut, heat flaming in your lower stomach, a molten ache starting to let itself be known between your legs, everything else in the world be damned and forgotten if you could just feel him ins -

A small beeping sound cut through the fog of desire overtaking you, and it took you a moment for your melting brain to recognise it as your pager. You wrenched out of the kiss and put your hands on Barnes’s broad, warm chest, feeling his strong heartbeat jackhammer beneath the layers of clothes and flesh. His lips followed you for a split second, his eyes opening to slits in order to find you again. Then, as he realized you’d intentionally ended the kiss, he immediately let you push him half-way off you to fish the pager out of your pocket. It was your boss, they needed you back by lunch.

Fuck

Fuck, what the fuck were you doing? It dawned on you the incredibly inappropriate situation you were in, had put yourself and Barnes in. This was reckless and rash and completely not who you were or had ever been. With anyone! No, no, no, this was bad, you were so fucking stupid. You couldn’t bring yourself to meet his eyes as you pushed him gently all the way off you to sit back on his haunches and swiftly extracted yourself from under him and got to your feet.

You were mortified, absolutely mortified, shame and embarrassment and guilt washing over you in tidal waves, slamming into your chest.

“I’m so sorry, that was so…um…I have to go, but er, enjoy your hand - ARM and hand,” you sputtered out as you began fleeing the hut all together. Then you remembered what you were supposed to say upon leaving, and turned while halfway out the door, “If you have any trouble or complications, don’t hesitate to contact the institute. On behalf of the technical institute and design group, we hope you will be pleased with the product. Um, bye!”

Barnes remained in the same seated position on the floor while you made your stumbling exit, and you missed the look of longing in his eyes as you left.

A week passed while you marinated in your own embarrassment and guilt, trying and failing to get the whole incident in the hut out of your mind. Partly because it was the most unprofessional and out-of-control thing you’d ever done, and partly because you just couldn’t get the memory of Barnes’s lips out of your head. The warmth emanating from him like a furnace, the way his hands gripped you gently, but possessively, the thrill that had gone through you when he flipped you and pinned you to the floor like you were nothing more than a rag doll. Had he been as turned on as you? Had he enjoyed himself? Surely he’d enjoyed it a little bit with the way he’d reciprocated, but had he really wanted it?

You shook yourself out of your daydream for probably the dozenth time that day, not a single word written on the personal essay you were to turn in with your other documentation in a couple of days. Fuuuck, this was so bad, you had to be able to focus and put this from your mind! If you were lucky and if everything went as it should with the prosthetic, Barnes would have no reason to contact the institute and seek you out ever again, and you would never have to see him again after your blunder.

The project would be over soon, you would move on to new ones and the one tether you had to Barnes would be severed. It was best for everyone if you just forgot the whole thing.

Except, in your panicked flight from his home, you’d completely forgotten the case that had contained the prosthetic arm, along with some screws and your most beloved screwdriver. You hadn’t even noticed it was left behind until you were halfway back to the lab, and had been completely at a loss on what to do. You couldn’t go back after the way you’d left, but you couldn’t just leave it either. The equipment wasn’t of that much value and the lab had plenty more, so that wasn’t the greatest issue. But you loved that screwdriver, and felt it as an obligation to retrieve it. Plus, it wasn’t fair to just leave it there, in Barnes’s home, what use did he have of it? Still, you couldn’t bear the thought of going back after the way you’d left….

Your head thumped down onto the workbench at the back of your lab. You were spiraling down the rabbit hole of warring thoughts for the upteenth time that day and was about to hurl something at the wall when the clearing of a throat came out of nowhere.

Whipping your head up, you practically leapt from your chair when you saw Barnes standing in the middle of your lab, clad in light pants and a loose-fitting half-sleeved shirt, completely unexpected, looking exceedingly unsure of himself (...and obscenely gorgeous)

Your immediate thought went to his arm, but as far as you could see, it was still intact and working perfectly from the way he clenched and unclenched the vibranium hand at his side. Then your eyes slipped to his other hand, and saw the case he held in it.

“I, um, hello, I thought you might like this back,” he said, looking down and holding out the hand with the case. You immediately walked up to him and took it.

“Thank you! So much, you didn’t have to come all this way just for that,” you rushed to say, feeling sheepish and grateful at the same time.

“Oh no, I, uh…I…I have some errands in the… uh, the city and whatnot,” he said, and you almost smiled a little at the way he suddenly fumbled for words. Was this even the same guy that had pinned you to the floor and ravished your mouth a week ago? The same guy that had walked into the lab that first day, all menacing silence and calculated movement.

“Oh, okay, well, this was really nice of you, thank you again. Um, what did you say to the guards to get in here?” you asked, suddenly remembering the levels of clearing he had to go through to get here. Did he tell the truth? Would your superiors know you forgot the case? That you’d made a fool of yourself and made the whole institute look chaotic and unprofessional?

“I told them I had some more questions about the arm, and that I wanted to speak with you since you’re so knowledgeable and good at your job,” Barnes said, waving his metal hand in the air a little as if to show you it was indeed made of vibranium.

He’d protected you? Kept your secret? A warm sense of giddyness spread through you, and you bit your lip to keep from smiling to broadly.

“God, you didn’t have to tell them all that,” you said, feeling warmth bloom on your cheeks from his compliments.

“I meant it, though,” he said seriously, and then he took a step towards you, “And I wanted to, needed to apologize…for what happened at my house…last week.”

Your heart surged in your chest and you couldn’t bear to meet his eyes. Apologize? What could he have to apologize for? You were the one who’d acted out of line. Did he regret what’d happened? What if you’d overstepped his boundaries and added more to his trauma?

“No, no, please, I’m the one who should apologize here. It was completely unprofessional to do that when I was working on a project with you, and so inappropriate to force myself upon you like that, all in this emotional moment and without knowing if you’d enjoy it or -”

“I enjoyed it,” he interrupted, voice clear and strong.

You looked up to find him another step closer. So big, and strong, and handsome, your insatiable desire whispered to you as he gazed down into your eyes, only inches between you. You wanted to kiss him again suddenly, your lips tingled with it.

“You did?” you asked, only half paying attention as you lost yourself in his heavenly baby blue eyes, framed by thick lashes paled by the sun. Your eyes flicked down to his full lips, and when they went back to his eyes, they glinted with a spark of that same ferociousness that’d awakened in him on that floor in his hut. A glint that had your lower stomach going all molten.

He nodded, breathing a little laugh that surprised you. Your heart started soaring in your chest despite your best efforts to keep from getting ahead of yourself.

“Yeah,” he breathed, swallowing and licking his lips, “a lot. I, uh, I was really sorry to see you leave so abruptly too - before I could speak with you,” he said.

Arousal welled up in your body, and you felt a little dizzy all of a sudden. He’d enjoyed it…

“Me too,” you whispered, not trusting your voice not to crack.

He took a final, tiny step closer, too close for any kind of professionalism or even decency, really, so close you could almost sense the atoms sparking to life in the tiny space between your bodies. Just like that, you were back in his hut, the moment swelling to level with the heavy, sizzling churn of when he'd flipped you to the carpet and caged you in underneath him. He had such a presence, his body thrumming with life and power and fuck, you wanted it on top of you. Again.

“I’m relieved to hear that. And,” he said, slowly reaching his flesh hand to tentatively cup your neck, hot and possessive in one, tender gesture, his calloused thumb coming up to stroke over your jaw, the intimate touch sending fireworks through your nervous system, ”though I don’t want to disrespect your work ethic, I’d like to point out that we’re not working on the same project anymore, so if you’d like to -”

The case hit the floor with a loud bang the moment you wrapped your arms around Barnes’s neck and threw yourself into his arms, your lips meeting in a sizzling kiss. Barnes caught you around the waist and hauled you up into his arms, your feet dangling off the ground as he crushed you to his chest, returning the kiss tenfold.

His tongue was immediately in your mouth this time, licking hot and wet and dominatingly over your own, and you whimpered at the sheer intensity, the way it blazed to a fire in your loins.

You clung to him like your life depended on it, and moaned into his mouth as you felt him turn and lower you to the bench in the lab, not letting much space get in between you before he draped himself over you and continued putting his mouth to yours. Your hands found their agency and started moving, mapping out his shoulders, feeling the muscle ripple under your fingertips as you caressed down his chest and around his sides to stroke his long, chiseled back.

His loose cotton shirt rode up as he moved to step further in between your opening legs, pressing himself closer, and your hands were unable to resist the pull as your fingers met the hot flesh of his lower back, stroking over silky smooth skin up again under his shirt.

His whole body shuddered against you, a small gasp emanating from him as he broke the kiss, and your excitement went through the roof. You opened your eyes and stared at his expression going lax, eyes closing and mouth hanging slightly open as you continued your caress up his back. You hooked your hands over his shoulder and pulled him down to you again, nibbling on his lip before kissing his open mouth, your fingertips dancing in swirling patterns down his back.

His body shuddered again.

“Oh my god,” he whispered a little breathlessly against your mouth, mostly to himself it seemed, and your discovery made you almost feverish with desire.

He was sensitive, and probably more than a little touch-starved.

You brought your hands forward and found the top button on his shirt, staring to undo it as you breathed into each other's mouths. You’d gotten to the third one when Barnes gave a (admittedly adorable) little huff of impatience and pulled free to wrench his shirt over his head, revealing a sculpted torso right out of your wettest dream. You had to take a moment just to stare at him, hard abs, flat stomach, pecs that stretched into rounded, muscled, obscenely broad shoulders. Tight, sculpted muscles that shone in the dimmed, bluish fluorescents of the ceiling lights, one muscled arm with prominent veins running down to a calloused hand, one arm reflecting the lights in shiny, sculpted, black vibranium.

His chest rose and fell with his labored breath, his abs flexing, the muscles of his torso and arms tensing and shifting as he stood before you and it was just so different from the statuesque, almost frugal way he’d moved before, when he only exerted energy at the utmost importance. This man was alive in a completely different way. And he was looking at you like he wanted to devour you.

You’d barely raked your eyes up to his and caught the feral glint in his eyes before he was on you again, ripping your lab coat open and sliding his hands up and down your sides. His touch sent shivers of warmth through you and you moaned into his mouth as he kissed you. That only seemed to spur him on. When his hands slid under the cotton sweater you wore, exploring the folds and dips of your abdomen, you shuddered. He was touching you like he hadn’t touched anyone before, all curious and explorative with just the hint of inexperienced clumsiness, fingers curious for such a mundane thing as the fold of skin over your ribcage as you lay there crouched beneath him.

Bast, you needed more, his touch sending you into a frenzy. You wanted him, all of him.

You started awkwardly extracting your arms from your lab coat, and when Barnes caught on, he was more than willing to help you shed it before his fingers went to the hem of your sweater. He paused then, and looked into your eyes for permission. You nodded, a bit eagerly perhaps, but whatever.

He slowly slid the fabric of your sweater up your torso, and in a move more gentle than you’d anticipated from the way he removed his own clothes, he bent down and tentatively kissed your stomach - right on your tummy, soft kisses following the fabric up. It stole your breath away as you watched the movement avidly.

He pushed the fabric all the way up over your bra, and reached with a curious hand to tug the cup down, revealing a hardened nipple. You were nearly shaking with want at this point, and shuddered embarrassingly hard when he took the nipple in his mouth and swiped his hot, wet tongue on it, nibbling gently and curiously with his teeth until you shuddered again.

You let your hands wander and found his hair, finally, finally getting to feel the soft, straight locks of hair sift through them, basking in the opportunity after having snuck peaks at it for months. It was even silkier than you’d imagined, despite its shaggy appearance. You combed your hands through his hair as he moved to suck on your other nipple, pulling the cup of your bra down to free your breast to the open air of the room.

Scraping your nails over his scalp, you felt the way his form trembled atop you, and he almost purred, a deep, rumbling groan vibrating through you and into the very bench beneath you. You scraped over his scalp again and bit your lip as it elicited another rumble.

He let your nipple go, puffy and a shade darker than usual from his bullying, and you watched the string of saliva connect it to his lips with a blush burgeoning on your face. Oh, this might get filthy, you thought to yourself, almost embarrassed by how much you liked it when he closed the distance between you and licked into your mouth again, seemingly not caring about his spit getting everywhere, the kiss messy and wet.

There was a tell-tale hard bulge pressing against the heated spot between your legs, and you rolled your hips down on it. Barnes gasped out of the kiss, looking almost shocked as he quickly looked down between your bodies to where he was pressed against you, and you wondered if he might’ve forgotten where all of these horny urges came from. You rolled your hips into him again, experimentally, and watched as realization hit him, as his eyelids drooped and a tiny groan escaped him. Then he rolled his hips to meet yours and it was your time to groan.

“Just like that,” you whispered encouragingly, and met his gaze as he returned his eyes to yours, watching you intently as he rolled his hips again and again, grinding himself between your legs.

He felt…big, to say the least, and he was grinding against your clothed clit in a way that you knew had you gushing into your panties. You could already feel the fabric getting soggy, sliding along your flesh as Barnes widened his step and grinded against you with more grounded precision.

Fuck, it felt so good it was getting hard to think, and when his - oh god - vibranium hand slid down your side to grab your hip, effortlessly pinning you down into the bench so he could grind even harder against your core, the breath in your lungs fucking punched out of you. You knew just how much strength was packed into that metal arm. Knew there was a fine line between using too much strength and keeping you pinned firmly enough so you couldn’t move your hips an inch. Barnes traversed that line perfectly.

Your pussy was on fire, the grinds of Bucky’s big, hard bulge against your clit too much while - simultaneously - the layers of clothes between you made it somehow not enough. It had been so long since you’d just frotted, clothed, like this, and you now wondered how you could’ve forgotten how fucking good it felt - or if it’d ever felt this good at all before. You seriously doubted it, for you couldn’t really believe it, but the rhythm and weight of Bucky's hips while his mouth lowered to mouth at your neck was somehow actually propelling you towards the edge.

You tried to move your hips to grind back, to make him go faster, harder, but found yourself utterly - and deliciously - fully at his mercy as he nuzzled the crook of your neck and laved his tongue on your skin, tasting it in that fascinating curiosity of his.

Fuck, it was right there, you could feel it, he was gonna make you come, you just needed a little more.

Through the haze of your impending, building release, you could hear yourself start to whimper. Needy and a little embarrassing, the sounds escaping you despite you biting your lip and clutching at Barnes’s shoulders, barely holding on as he hurled you towards that precipice.

His face suddenly appeared from the crook of your neck, and it took you a second to realize he had a look of confused concern on his face as he looked down on you.

To your utter distress, his hips slowed their steady, hard thrust against yours, and he gave you a once over you had a hard time understanding. Then it hit you that he must be concerned he’d done something wrong; that he’d mistaken your sounds of need for ones of pain or that you didn’t want it or something utterly ridiculous like that. Sweet, respectful, slightly confused and apparently wildly inexperienced man, you thought with an almost woeful endearment. You could feel yourself slipping further under the power of his spell as his eyes returned to your face, flitting about to try and decipher your expression.

That elusive orgasm you were dancing up to started to slip away as his hips grinded to a halt, and you reached out to cradle his face in near panic.

“No, please, please, please don’t stop. It’s so good, please,” you practically whined, trying to move your own hips to get more of that sweet, intoxicating friction. You barely managed a little squiggle under the pinning strength of his hand on your hip and his body on top of yours.

A great gust of breath whooshed out of him, and he started up his rhythm again almost immediately, meeting your tiny writhing with thrusts of his own like he just couldn’t help it, and you threw your head back, biting your lip and nodding frantically as the pleasure built inside you again, picking up just behind where you’d left off.

His hand, the one of flesh, slid up your torso to caress the exposed column of your neck, almost curiously, exploring, holding it in an almost tender grip as you moaned in delirium. His thrust grew harder, your moans louder and his hand gripped harder like he enjoyed the feeling of your moans being forced from you by his moving hips.

You could tell the moment he started climbing his own precipice, how his movement grew more focused, more intent, leaving all exploration behind to chase a goal with an almost singular, feral possession. His breaths turned to gasps, which turned to grunts and then low growls. His movement turned frantic, almost feral in their one mindedness. He was losing himself to the pleasure and you whined, mind turning to slush under the onslaught of his ferocity. You were going dumb on his cock and he hadn’t even taken it out of his pants. Didn’t matter, you were done for.

The wild, animalistic abandon with which he chased his own high was so blastingly hot it sent you tumbling over the edge almost entirely on its own. You gasped, your body tensing and then exploding under his as his grinding thrusts sent wave upon wave of searing, orgasmic bliss crashing into you, riding you so hard you nearly passed out.

Your sight went blurry, blood roaring in your ears, but you heard the moment his breath caught in his throat, such a vulnerable sound, and then the bulge pressed to the sticky, clothed cunt between your legs started throbbing in an uneven, staccato rhythm, which you could feel against you even through the layers of clothing separating you. His grip turned to bruising steel and you gasped anew as the intensity of the pain mixed with your abating orgasm, making a shocking, intoxicating cocktail of sensation blast through you.

He threw his head back, the thick column of his neck stretching taut, and growled like he was in pain, and it sent vibration straight through you down to the table beneath you. Fuck, he was like nothing you’d ever experienced - pure, raw power, lust, shocking honesty and a sense of almost ardent fascination - mixed together in this anomaly and mystery of a man.

It felt like several minutes passed as you tried to catch your breath and gather your mind from where it’d melted out of your ears to puddle on the bench around you. Bucky’s face had made its way into the crook of your neck, where he seemed just as slow and sluggish to come back down to earth. He was like a furnace on top of you, even hotter from his exertion, forehead damp and hot where it pressed to the sensitive skin of your neck.

His weight on you was a comforting one though, making you feel safe and protected, covered and nestled into a cocoon of muscles and warmth and soft, puffing breaths. Taking a cheeky chance, you carded a hand through his hair, the brown strands soft, glinting in the fluorescents above as they shifted through your fingers. Bucky’s whole form shivered as you raked your fingernails along his scalp, and the bulge nestled tight between your thighs and his body throbbed once as he grunted softly, neck twisting to push his head into your hand, almost like a cat rubbing against your palm to get more scritches.

A chuckle left your mouth as you kept carding your hand through Bucky’s hair. He looked up at you then, and the moment caught up with you. A blush had the audacity of spreading on your cheeks even after everything you’d just done. He looked into your eyes, silent but for your deep, still slightly labored breaths. You couldn’t help smiling.

He looked a little dazzled for a moment, then a slow, beautiful smile spread on his own lips to answer yours.

"Um, it's been a long time, and I d-don't remember much, but I'm pretty sure this is not how you court a lady properly," he said a bit self-deprecatingly. You chuckled again, and he joined, his form vibrating with myrth. He made no move to get off you though. You wrapped your arms around his neck.

"I don't know, this doesn't feel too bad," you said, and you could practically feel the relief in Bucky as he let you keep him laying draped across you.

"Still. I'd like to take you out sometime. It was the real reason I came here, after all," he said.

You felt your smile turn wry.

"I thought you said you had errands...and whatnots," you said.

His gaze wavered for only a moment as he realized he'd revealed his own bluff. Then his smile grew sheepish, and so warm it sizzled.

#bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes smut #bucky barnes fic #bucky fic #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x f!reader #bucky barnes x wakandan!reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x female reader

957 notes · View notes

clone-whore-99 · 3 months

Note

*slides $900 In Monopoly money over*

Got any sub!Tech and Dom!femreader in the back?

Behave

Sub!Tech x Dom!F!Reader

Rating: 18+, this page is only for adults

Warnings: Dom/sub relationship, restraints, blindfolds, safewords, oral (M! Receiving), edging, teasing, orgasm denial, light slapping, biting, unprotected PiV, not proof or beta read cuz I wanted this up before Tech Tuesday ended LMK if I missed any (✿◡‿◡)

Authors Note: *pockets the money* your wish is my command. Okay, I wrote this really quick and I do hope it lives up to your expectations. I am mainly a sub myself, so it was a fun challenge to write this as a dom instead. Hope you like it!

If you like it, please do let me know by liking and commenting and maybe even reblogging, it would mean a lot to me 🥺👉👈

If you want to, you can also help me by buying me a coffee ❤

The waiting. The anticipation. Never knowing when or where the next touch was going to come from. That was probably the worst part for Tech… And the most exciting.

Once again, Tech found himself completely naked and sprawled out on a bed. His hands were cuffed to the headboard above his head and his vision was obstructed by a blindfold.

This soldier was completely at your mercy.

Your hand barely caressed his cheek, but it was enough for a visible shiver to run down his body.

“Have you thought about what you did?” Your voice sounded like poisoned bristlemelon. Sweet, but deadly.

“Yes.” Tech replied, his voice restraining to hide his desperation. “And I deeply apologize.”

Not letting him off that easily, you lightly tucked at his restraints. A sign for him to continue talking.

Tech let out a shaky breath. For such a genius, he could be oblivious at times. But this time, he was certain about what he did wrong. “I am sorry for having interrupted you, my dear. I will do better next time.”

Good. He’s learning.

You got up and walked towards the other end of the bed, your finger lightly tracing his bare skin on the way. “We both know you won’t. But that’s why I am here. Safeword?”

Your hand was inching closer to where he wanted it the most, closer to the inside of his thigh, closer to the only part of him that wasn’t lying down.

“I won’t need it.” He was trying so hard to hide the desperation in his voice, but lost all composure when you pulled your hand away. With a desperate gasp, his hips shot up from the bed, looking for the much needed touch you denied him.

You lightly slapped his hip, making him lie flat on the bed again. “That’s not how this works, love. If you want me, I need to know it. Now, safeword?”

“Macrofuser.”

Of course that was his safeword. You smirked to yourself and the weight of the bed by Tech's feet shifted, as you finally settled in.

“Good boy,” You praised, with a kiss to his thigh as a reward. His stiff cock twitched in response, needy and already dripping with precum.

You had made sure he was all riled up, by the time you cuffed and blindfolded him. And you had made him wait for what probably felt like forever to him, every now and then making small sounds and touches to keep him aroused.

He had been good. Only begged to be touched once, when you used a loud toy near him, to pleasure yourself. He deserved a little treat.

With one hand on his thigh, inching slightly closer to his hard member, the tip of your fingers on the other hand brushed against his shaft.

This was enough for the clone to let out a loud moan, his hips bucking into the air.

“Easy now, soldier, you want this to last, don’t you?” You asked, your voice a mix of humor and danger.

“Ah yes, apologies.” Tech’s voice was barely louder than a whisper, all his energy and focus was spent on you and your touches.

Your fingers kept running up and down his shaft, not fully grasping and stroking it, but enough to keep him whimpering and needy. Your other hand abandoned his thigh to cup and massage his balls.

The small sounds he made was like music to your ears. You loved this. The genius who never shut up, completely at your mercy. All his thoughts had been replaced by you and his voice turned into an instrument that only you could play so beautifully.

It was hard for you to control your own need, when he was completely displayed like this and his body begging for yours.

Leaning over, you replaced your fingers with your tongue, placing it flat on the base and running it up the shaft, all the way to his head. You ran your tongue in circles around his tip, before completely engulfing him in your mouth.

It was impossible to fit all of him, without choking yourself. He was long and girthy, with a slight curve to it. Every time you sucked him off, it would turn into a sloppy mess - and this time was no exception.

A mixture of precum and spit was running down the part your mouth couldn’t reach, working as lube for your hand, which was now fully grasping and working his shaft.

It didn’t take long for Tech to lose what little control he had left, for his legs to do little kicks in an attempt to ground himself, for his hips to buck him deeper into your mouth to chase his high and for his whimpers to turn into full blown moans.

You let this go on for just a little bit longer, just long enough for his balls to tighten, for him to nearly cum - and then you pulled away.

Tech cried out in frustration, his legs and hips still moving in the hopes of creating enough friction to carry him the rest of the way. Though he felt his high slip away, like sand between fingers.

You waited a bit, watching to make sure he wasn’t actually in any real distress or discomfort. Once assured of this, you patted his thigh to calm him down, while clicking your tongue in tsk-tsk sound. “You know love, if you want to cum, you need to behave.”

“It was a natural reaction, I had little to no cont-”

The sound of skin hitting skin interrupted him, as your hand landed on his thigh in a slap - not enough to truly hurt him, but enough to leave a mark.

“No excuses,” You ordered.

With a defeated sigh, your genius apologized once more, keeping it short and direct. And with no explanations added to it.

“Better,” you praised, your hand caressing the skin that was just slapped. Then you pushed yourself further up the bed, climbing his slim frame and leaving a trail of licks, kisses and bite marks on your way.

With a last playful bite to his neck, you sighed contently. “Oh Tech, whatever shall I do with you? An exceptional man in every way, and yet you still don’t know how to follow orders.”

A smirk appeared across the soldiers lips, a rare but welcoming sight. “I suppose we just have to continue these lessons, until I do.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were enjoying this.” You chuckled, as you began lining yourself up with him.

Everytime his head just graced your lips, Tech gasped in anticipation, his whole body stiffened and shivered, waiting for the glorious feeling of being inside of you.

You lowered yourself onto him, throwing your head back in a moan of ecstasy. It didn’t matter how many times you’d experience this, he always stretched you perfectly and hit all the right spots. It was like the two of you were made for each other.

Tech always managed to hit that special spot, deep inside you, that made you see stars in no time.

As you began moving, finding the right rhythm and pace, the two of you moaned in harmony, creating music like no other.

Knowing that Tech wouldn’t last long after everything you’d put him through, you began rubbing rough circles on your own clit and teasing your own nipples, to hurry your own orgasm along the way.

Tech smiled knowingly, feeling your hand against his pelvis, he knew you were working to make the two of you orgasm at the same time. He was also, between moans, stuttering the components to different metals, trying to keep himself from cumming without your permission.

In any other situation, you would have punished him for this, but you were so close yourself, that you were willing to let it go. Especially since Tech was pushing his cock even further inside of you and making it twitch in the most delicious way.

You leaned over and left open mouthed kisses on his neck, before whispering in his ear: “Cum with me, my love.” An order you did not have to repeat.

Tech’s head was thrown back in ecstasy so hard, his blindfold flew off. The groan he let out vibrated through your body, as ropes of his seeds shot deep into you.

The feeling was overpowering for you too, making you bite down on his shoulder to keep yourself from getting too loud. Your hands dug into his skin and he was struggling against his restraints.

Wave after wave of pleasure shot through the both of you, a seemingly never ending high.

You collapsed on top of him, gasping for air, as his cock began going soft inside of you.

But your job wasn’t done yet.

Reaching up, you freed the soldier from his restraints and helped him put his goggles back on. You placed your hands on his cheeks, caressing them gently.

“How are you doing? You did so well, you were so good. Do you need anything? Water? Food?”

An exhausted chuckle escaped the genius' lips, as he wrapped his heavy arms around you, holding you against him.

“Just let me hold you for a while, okay?” He whispered against your head.

“If that's what you want,” You agreed, resting against him.

Dividers by: @djarrex and unknown

Taglist: @zoeykallus @the-rain-on-kamino @ashotofspotchka @chxpsi @maulsrightleg @the-sith-in-the-sky-with-diamond @wildmoonflower @nunanuggets @lokigirlszendaya @wholesuhmsstuff @pb-jellybeans @dangraccoon @roam-rs

Please let me know if you want to be added to my taglist (✿◠‿◠)❤

233 notes · View notes

gabessquishytum · 5 months

Note

Happy Holidays!!! 🎄🎄

Dream used to be one of the most sought-after, highly priced, escorts in the city. His "boyfriend" experience was second to none, and he never caught feelings (wellllll, there was.....). In any event, he's out of the business and happy and successful doing his art. He doesn't even keep a hand in, he's done, so he wasn't expecting a call from his old madam on a random Tuesday. It's only because he owes Joanna a favor that he even picks up.

Ever direct, Joanna said that one of his old clients specifically asked for a date with him. Now this wasn't the first time that's happened since Dream got out of the business, but this is the first time the requester was Robert Gadling.

Robert Gadling was a name he hadn't heard in ages. For a time, Hob was a regular. He was a work hard, no time for play, tech guy, building his company one long night after the other, and he didn’t really have time (make time) for dating. Dream thought he was fantastic, and if their relationship wasn't transactional, Dream would have let those feelings he was catching take stronger hold.

At some point Hob met his Eleanor and had one last "date" with Dream and went off to eventually get married and live that life, a life without Dream. Dream didn't even keep tabs, that would have been so bad for his mental health, but last he heard, Hob sold his company for billions and stepped back to be with his family. Dream was (bittersweetly) happy for him.

Dream didn't know if he......, he said yes right away.

When Dream was ushered into the mansion by the sea, he wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it wasn't a giggling, streaking, wet toddler, who proceeded to use his leg to hide from his equally wet father --- the years have been super kind to Hob, "DILF" suited him. Hob still blushed, and tugged on his ear, the same; saying he hoped to have Robin down before Dream arrived. Hob never ceased to charm Dream, so Dream offered to help with bedtime.

Once Robin was down for the night (although, having a whole new,,,pretty,,, person around didn't help calming Robin down), Hob apologized for calling his old work number, but he didn't know how else to not so creepily contact Dream.

Hob was a retired widower now and could use a friend, especially one that might not mind being more,,,,without payment involved.

Oh hell yeah!!! Former lovers reconnecting is such a cute idea. I definitely think that Dream would get to a point where he's craving love, and Hob is out here with so MUCH love to give him! Truth is, Hob is so tired of being on his own (as much as he loves his son, he is clawing at the walls because he needs adult conversation). Hob would take anything that Dream would give him, and Dream is hesitantly hopeful.

As they renew their friendship, Dream sees that Hob is definitely a different man to the cocky, slightly crazy businessman he knew all those years ago. He's devoted to his son, he cooks, he's domestic, he wears jeans and football shirts and his hair is going grey. Dream falls in love at the mere sight of him. And Hob is also shyer than he used to be. He keeps blushing. Fortunately, Robin is happy to hold the conversation. Hob doesn't seem to mind having Dream around his son - he never mentions Dream’s previous career or makes any crude jokes. He just gazes, mildly starstruck, as Dream tells Robin a dozen shark facts and offers to paint one for his bedroom.

Inevitably they fall into each other's arms once Robin is tucked up in bed (Dream read his bedtime story). They snuggle up on the sofa and make out like teens, and go to bed without actually having sex. It's the reassurance Dream didn't know he needed, and when he wakes up to find Hob smiling at him and offering breakfast in bed? This time he's really hoping that he'll be allowed to stay forever.

#the sandman #dreamling #nsft

130 notes · View notes

izicodes · 5 months

Text

Tuesday 12th December 2023

End of September: I quit my first proper tech job after 2 years.

End of October: I applied for university on a whim and got a place.

Start of December: Randomly got a new tech job without searching.

God blessing me left, right, and center?! That's just a summary of what's been happening the past few months. I will go into more detail below~!

Here are some tips for talking to people on LinkedIn: post 💕

If you're wondering how I got here in terms of my coding journey: video | post 💕

End of September

I quit my job because it was getting tiring and I couldn't see any chance of me developing there. I will forever be grateful for the opportunity to do my apprenticeship with them and then go on to become their Jr Web Developer - but from there, everything felt static. When the projects being given were getting absolutely boring, I knew then I needed some kind of change. So, I just quit. I said on a Monday I was quitting and that same Friday, I left. Politely and respectfully, of course.

End of October

I was so random how I did this but my Dad suggested for me to apply to university. I told him I didn't even have the right qualifications they wanted. He said "Bet". We looked at the local universities and none mentioned any apprenticeship certifications but mentioned work experience in the field. I applied with that knowledge. Wrote the cringiest personal statement about why the universities should accept me - and it worked. I got into the university of my city which seemed super prestigious to me, 18-year-old me would be screaming that I got a place at the university that I deemed for super smart people.

I made a post about it: link 💕

Start of December

My plan now was to wait until university next September 2024. I planned to relax, level up my current skills by myself or helping via volunteering, and maybe get a few certificates (because I love my name on certificates), and, most importantly: catch up on some anime shows - which I did complete:

Ushio & Tora: 2nd Season

Hunter x Hunter

Vinland Saga

JOJO Part 5 (again)

Jujutsu Kaisen 2nd Season (still watching)

Basically, I was supposed to relax until around February time, then start looking for a new job - tech or non-tech.

!! At this point, I was not looking for a new job !!

Last Tuesday I got a message from a recruiter on LinkedIn saying my profile was cool and would love to help me get an interview for a Frontend Software Engineer position in the city. I had a hunch to tell him I was okay and wasn't looking for a new job right now, but I was getting bored recently and this to me was an exciting new thing to do, so I said yeah why not!

The meeting was on the following Thursday and I met the IT manager. He liked me (same back to him) and wanted me to meet the team next Monday (yesterday). Afterward, I was feeling "Oh wait this is getting serious, I'm only here on a whim, like I'm actually doing good?" so I thought "Okay let's make an effort on the next 'interview'!!".

Monday came and I met the funniest set of people ever in a tech team. Then I thought "Lowkey highkey... would be so cool to work here~!" and the feedback I got was really positive. I got the job. Today I talked to their HR to finalise things.

All of this is thanks to the Almighty God, Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit of course~~! 🥰🙏🏾☦️

#codeblr #coding #progblr #programming #studying #studyblr #learn to code #comp sci #tech #programmer #computer science

42 notes · View notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months

Text

Stinkpump Linkdump

Next Tuesday (December 5), I'm at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC, with my new solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which 350.org's Bill McKibben called "The first great YIMBY novel: perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful."b

Once again, I greet the weekend with more assorted links than I can fit into my nearly-daily newsletter, so it's time for another linkdump. This is my eleventh such assortment; here are the previous volumes:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

I've written a lot about Biden's excellent appointees, from his National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chair Rohit Chopra to FTC Chair Lina Khan to DoJ antitrust boss Jonathan Kanter:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

But I've also written a bunch about how Biden's appointment strategy is an incoherent mess, with excellent appointees picked by progressives on the Unity Task Force being cancelled out by appointees given to the party's reactionary finance wing, producing a muddle that often cancels itself out:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/08/fiduciaries/#but-muh-freedumbs

It's not just that the finance wing of the Democrats chooses assholes (though they do!), it's that they choose comedic bunglers. The Dems haven't put anyone in government who's as much of an embarrassment as George Santos, but they keep trying. The latest self-inflicted Democratic Party injury is Prashant Bhardjwan, a serial liar and con-artist who is, incredibly, the Biden Administration's pick to oversee fintech for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC):

https://www.americanbanker.com/news/did-the-occ-hire-a-con-artist-to-oversee-fintech

When the 42 year old Bhardjwan was named Deputy Comptroller and Chief Financial Technology Officer for OCC, the announcement touted his "nearly 30 years of experience serving in a variety of roles across the financial sector." Apparently Bhardjwan joined the finance sector at the age of 12. He's the Doogie Houser of Wall Street:

https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2023/nr-occ-2023-31.html

That wasn't the only lie on Bhardjwan's CV. He falsely claimed to have served as CIO of Fifth Third Bank from 2006-2010. Fifth Third has never heard of him:

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-occ-crowned-its-first-chief-fintech-officer-his-work-history-was-a-web-of-lies

Bhardjwan told a whole slew of these easily caught lies, suggesting that OCC didn't do even a cursory background search on this guy before putting him in charge of fintech – that is, the radioactively scammy sector that gave us FTX and innumerable crypto scams, to say nothing of the ever-sleazier payday lending sector:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/01/usury/#tech-exceptionalism

When it comes to appointing corrupt officials, the Biden administration has lots of company. Lots of eyebrows went up when the UN announced that the next climate Conference of the Parties (COP) would be chaired by Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, who is also the chair of Dubai's national oil company. Then the other shoe dropped: leaks revealed that Al-Jaber had colluded with the Saudis to use COP28 to get poor Asian and African nations hooked on oil:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67508331

There's an obvious reason for this conspiracy: the rich world is weaning itself off of fossil fuels. Today, renewables are vastly cheaper than oil and there's no end in sight to the plummeting costs of solar, wind and geothermal. While global electrification faces powerful logistical and material challenges, these are surmountable. Electrification is a solvable problem:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/09/practical-visionary/#popular-engineering

And once we do solve that problem, we will forever transform our species' relationship to energy. As Deb Chachra explains in her brilliant new book How Infrastructure Works, we would only need to capture 0.4% of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface to give every person on earth the energy budget of a Canadian (AKA, a "cold American"):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

If COP does its job, we will basically stop using oil, forever. This is an existential threat to the ruling cliques of petrostates from Canada to the UAE to Saudi. As Bill McKibben writes, this isn't the first time a monied rich-world industry that had corrupted its host governments faced a similar crisis:

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/a-corrupted-cop

Big Tobacco spent decades fueling science denial, funneling money to sellout scientists who deliberately cast doubt on both sound science and the very idea that we could know anything. As Tim Harford describes in The Data Detective, Darrell Huff's 1954 classic How to Lie With Statistics was part of a tobacco-industry-funded project to undermine faith in statistics itself (the planned sequel was called How To Lie With Cancer Statistics):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford

But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. When the families of the people murdered by tobacco disinformation campaigns started winning eye-popping judgments against the tobacco industry, the companies shifted their marketing to the Global South, on the theory that they could murder poor brown people with impunity long after rich people in the north forced an end to their practice. Big Tobacco had a willing partner in Uncle Sam for this project: the US Trade Representative arm-twisted the world's poorest countries into accepting "Investor-State Dispute Settlements" as part of their treaties. These ISDS clauses allowed tobacco companies to sue governments that passed tobacco control legislation and force them to reverse their democratically enacted laws:

https://ash.org/what-is-isds-and-what-does-it-mean-for-tobacco-control/

As McKibben points out, the oil/climate-change playbook is just an update to the tobacco/cancer-denial conspiracy (indeed, the same think-tanks and PR agencies are behind both). The "Oil Development Sustainability Programme" – the Orwellian name the Saudis gave to their plan to push oil on poor countries – maps nearly perfectly onto Big Tobacco's attack on the Global South. Nearly perfectly: second-hand smoke in Indonesia won't give Americans cancer, but convincing Africa to go hard on fossil fuels will contribute to an uninhabitable planet for everyone, not just poor people.

This is an important wrinkle. Wealthy countries have repeatedly demonstrated a deep willingness to profit from death and privation in the poor world – but we're less tolerant when it's our own necks on the line.

What's more, it's far easier to put the far-off risks of emissions out of your mind than it is to ignore the present-day sleaze and hypocrisy of corporate crooks. When I quit smoking, 23 years ago, my doctor told me that if my only motivation was avoiding cancer 30 years from now, I'd find it hard to keep from yielding to temptation as withdrawal set in. Instead, my doctor counseled me to find an immediate reason to stay off the smokes. For me, that was the realization that every pack of cigarettes I bought was enriching the industry that invented the denial playbook that the climate wreckers were using to render our planet permanently unsuited for human habitation. Once I hit on that, resisting tobacco got much easier:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/03/i-quit/

Perhaps OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al-Ghais is worried about that the increasing consensus that Big Oil cynically and knowingly created this crisis. That would explain his new flight of absurdity, claiming that the world is being racist to oil companies, "unjustly vilifying" the industry for its role in the climate emergency:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/27/opec-says-oil-industry-unjustly-vilified-ahead-of-climate-talks-.html

Words aren't deeds, but words have power. The way we talk about things makes a difference to how we act on those things. When discussions of Israel-Palestine get hung up on words, it's easy to get frustrated. The labels we apply to the rain of death and the plight of hostages are so much less important than the death and the hostages themselves.

But how we name the thing will have an enormous impact on what happens next. Take the word "genocide," which Israel hawks insist must not be applied to the bombing campaign and siege in Gaza, nor to the attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. On this week's On The Media, Brooke Gladstone interviews Ernesto Verdeja, executive director of The Institute for the Study of Genocide:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/genocide-powerful-word-so-why-its-definition-so-controversial-on-the-media

Verdeja lays out the history of the word "genocide" and connects it to the Israeli government and military's posture on Palestine and Palestinians, and concludes that the only real dispute among genocide scholars is whether the current campaign it itself an act of genocide, or a prelude to an act of genocide.

I'm not a genocide scholar, but I am a Jew who has always believed in Palestinian solidarity, and Verdeja's views do not strike me as outrageous, or (more importantly) antisemitic. The conflation of opposition to Israel's system of apartheid with opposition to Jews is a cheap trick, one that's belied by Israel itself, where there is a vast, longstanding political opposition to Israeli occupation, settlements, and military policing. Are all those Israeli Jews secret antisemites?

Jews are not united in support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians. The hardliners who insist that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic are peddling an antisemitic lie: that all Jews everywhere are loyal to Israel, and that we all take our political positions from the Knesset. Israel hawks only strengthen that lie when they accuse me and my fellow Jews of being "self-hating Jews."

This leads to the absurd circumstance in which gentiles police Jews' views on Israel. It's weird enough when white-nationalist affiliated evangelicals who support Israel in order to further the end-times prophesied in Revelations slam Jews for being antisemitic. But in Germany, it's even weirder. There, regional, non-Jewish officials charged with policing antisemitism have censured Jewish groups for adopting policies on Israel that mainstream Israeli political parties have in their platforms:

https://jewishcurrents.org/the-strange-logic-of-germanys-antisemitism-bureaucrats

Antisemitism is real. As Jesse Brown describes in his recent Canadaland editorial, there is a real and documented rise in racially motivated terror against Jews in Canada, including school shootings and a firebombing. Likewise, it's true that some people who support the Palestinian cause are antisemites:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/is-jesse-a-zionist-editorial/

But to stand in horror at Israel's military action and its vast civilian death-toll is not itself antisemitic. This is obvious – so obvious that the need to say it is a tribute to Israel hardliners – Jewish and gentile – and their ability to peddle the racist lie that Israel is Jews and Jews are Israel, and that every Jew is in support of, and responsible for, Israeli war-crimes and crimes against humanity.

One need not choose between opposition to Hamas and its terror and opposition to Israel and its bombings. There is no need for a hierarchy of culpability. As Naomi Klein says, we can "side with the child over the gun":

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/11/why-are-some-of-the-left-celebrating-the-killings-of-israeli-jews

Moral consistency is not moral equivalency. If you're a Jew like me who wants to work for an end to the occupation and peace in the region, you could join Jewish Voice For Peace (like me):

https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org

Now, for a jarring tone shift. In these weekend linkdumps, I put a lot of thought into how to transition from one subject to the next, but honestly, there's no good transition from Israel-Palestine to anything else (yet – though someday, perhaps). So let's just say, "word games can be important, but they can also be trivial, and here are a few of the latter."

Start with a goodie, from the always brilliant medievalist Eleanor Janeaga, who tackles the weirdos who haunt social media in order to dump on people with PhDs who call themselves "doctor":

https://going-medieval.com/2023/11/29/doctor-does-actually-mean-someone-with-a-phd-sorry/

Janega points out that the "doctor" honorific was applied to scholars for centuries before it came to mean "medical doctor." But beyond that, Janega delivers a characteristically brilliant history of the (characteristically) weird and fascinating tale of medieval scholarship. Bottom line, we call physicians "doctor" because they wanted to be associated with the brilliance of scholars, and thought that being addressed as "doctor" would add to their prestige. So yeah, if you've got a PhD, you can call yourself doctor.

It's not just doctors; the professions do love their wordplay. especially lawyers. This week on Lowering The Bar, I learned about "a completely ludicrous court fight that involved nine law firms that combined for 66 pages of briefing, declarations, and exhibits, all inflicted on a federal court":

https://www.loweringthebar.net/2023/11/federal-court-ends-double-spacing-fight.html

The dispute was over the definition of "double spaced." You see, the judge in the case told counsel they could each file briefs of up to 100 pages of double-spaced type. Yes, 100 pages! But apparently, some lawyer burn to write fat trilogies, not mere novellas. Defendants accused the plaintiffs in this case of spacing their lines a mere 24 points apart, which allowed them to sneak 27 lines of type onto each page, while defendants were confined to the traditional 23 lines.

But (the court found), the defendants were wrong. Plaintiffs had used Word's "double-spacing" feature, but had not ticked the "exact double spacing" box, and that's how they ended up with 27 lines per page. The court refused to rule on what constituted "double-spacing" under the Western District of Tennessee’s local rules, but it ruled that the plaintiffs briefs could fairly be described as "double-spaced." Whew.

That's your Saturday linkdump, jarring tone-shift and all. All that remains is to close out with a cat photo (any fule kno that Saturday is Caturday). Here's Peeve, whom I caught nesting most unhygienically in our fruit bowl last night. God, cats are gross:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53370882459/

It's EFF's Power Up Your Donation Week: this week, donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation are matched 1:1, meaning your money goes twice as far. I've worked with EFF for 22 years now and I have always been - and remain - a major donor, because I've seen firsthand how effective, responsible and brilliant this organization is. Please join me in helping EFF continue its work!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/02/melange/#defendants_motion_to_require_adherence_with_formatting_requirements_of_local_rule_7.1

Stinkpump Linkdump

56 notes · View notes

vivaislenska · 22 days

Text

Season 3 is about to end, but TECH TUESDAY is forever! 😄

#tech tuesday #star wars the bad batch #the bad batch fanart #the bad batch #star wars fanart #sw tbb #the bad batch art #clone trooper tech #the bad batch tech #bad batch tech #tech bad batch #tbb tech #tech tbb #tech the bad batch #tech will return squad #tech lives forever #viv art

414 notes · View notes

snugglesquiggle · 16 days

Note

I was thinking about CC again, and realized something very interesting - Uzi, at the start of MD, doesn't have solver powers. In terms of CC, it means she hasn't undergone combustion. But given the nature of her parent's work, she probably knows about how zombie drones work.

which leads to another interesting tech thing, if she tries to hunt zombies pre-combustion - she has to figure out how to detect them, which could come in a manner of ways, but would no doubt be something JCJ would want a look at.

one thing that didn't make it into the outlines yet but i've been tossing around, is that instead of opening immediately on "nori's average tuesday", the very beginning of the fic is highly edited and redacted version of the "dead drones explode" exposition

then it scene breaks to uzi & doll giving a group presentation to the class. "And what have our parents done for the past forever while the world's in a frickin zombie apocalypse? Hide our powers behind this lame as hell masquerade? Anyway, that's why my project is this totally game-changing error blaster!"

still workshopping the name, but the idea is it's a gun that harnesses corruption to allow ordinary drones to damage zombie processes.

(thinking when i flush out uzi & doll's first excursion, uzi might be still trying to find a source of corruption for the error blaster. doll ignites her core in the fight with the zombie, and that might be what lets her use the error blaster where uzi couldn't)

that said, right now the notes are written as though solvers with unignited cores can still perceive corruption. (an easy to miss detail, but when doll & adam encounter the zombie, doll reacts and adam can't perceive it).

(alice, though, does need a way to detect zombies. i was going to give her glasses, but a friend suggest perhaps this is what her antlers are for. like radio antennae)

anyway, i think it's more interesting if pre-ignition drones need a workaround to detect them, but it does present difficulties for the planned plot. because one of the major sources of tension is that even when the action is in full swing, no matter how many times uzi steps into the line of fire, she doesn't initialize a core driver.

#🐍#my answers #corrupt combustion

9 notes · View notes

tbonechessor · 6 months

Text

Idk if any other ttrpg designer has a name for this world building philosophy. I guess you might call it "Ground-up" world building or maybe "Homebrew". But I like to think it's kind of a mix between the two with a unique spin. Though, I don't think I'm the only one who's ever done this.

I like to call it "scratch build" cuz it reminds me of the dioramas/terrain one can build out of the bits n scraps you find lying around.

The idea is: You build your world from the ground up, session by session, but crucially: starting with whatever is present in the PC's backstories mixed in with whatever context/setting you need for your first session. With a focus on making the PC's lives significant or unique within the world.

In something like Faerun, someone being born with magic powers owing to a lineage of some monster with magic is simply the conceit of a Sorcerer class and therefore is just... kind of a Tuesday.

In a scratch build setting, having a Dragon parent has never been done before! Maybe you are hunted or studied by eager magic users. Maybe your Dragon mom is doing this as a science experiment.

Or maybe it STILL is just a Tuesday for this world. But You get to decide that.

Whatever makes sense for the fiction of the Active Story you are telling. Keep what is cool and gets you playing. Then you mix in random tables (for stuff you don't care about making up) your own ideas (for stuff that you do) and most importantly: whatever beautiful mistakes happen at the table (you accidentally said Wagic-technologies instead of "Magic" when referring to some megacorp specializing in magic tech and your players found it hilarious and easy to remember, okay, that's its name forever now. Make up an acronym that uses all the letters)

Throw in whatever you steal from your favorite fiction to duct-tape it all together and bam.

Scratch-build.

One of the important aspects of this is to only focus on preserving and building upon what is brought up or used in the moment. Plans are alright, but momentum is better. Nothing is canon until you bring it to the table.

There are probably Systems that do this on purpose or encourage it but I wanted to isolate it and put up my process

#ttrpg

12 notes · View notes

middimidoris · 2 years

Text

Happy 1 year of Tech Tuesdays. 🖤❤️

Read more under the cut and follow me on IG, Tiktok, and Twitter @ MiddiMidori

It’s official, I’ve drawn Tech over 80+ times and had so many Tech Tuesdays! Below is the first time I ever drew him.

Since joining Star Wars fandom in its entirety over the last few years, I have met many friends, lost many friends but learned so much along the way. I am so proud of myself for pushing to strive to draw as much as possible and continue to grow.

I am forever grateful for the support and love you all have given me. It’s so very appreciated.

This piece was a screenshot redraw of Tech from The Bad Batch season 2 trailer. I cannot wait to see what my little nerd does next. 🖤❤️

Here’s to 900 more Tech Tuesdays. 💫

237 notes · View notes

biographydivider · 1 year

Text

...I couldn’t not. Thank you to @somerandomdudelmao for breaking my heart.

April knew - from the second she saw him, the sound of rain lashing down on the New York sidewalk filling her ears. She just knew.

“Are you lost, little frog?” she asked, as she let go of her Mommy’s hand, taking a few steps into the alleyway - ignoring the shouts for her to come back, to be careful. She wasn’t going far, after all. She was a big girl, now - she was gonna be six on Tuesday! And someone might need her help, and Mommy always said to help people when you can.

A green face peeped out at her from inside a ginormous purple hoodie. He shook his head, and April came a little closer, tilting her head to try and get a better look.

“You’re not lost? Then where’s your family?”

“I’m not a frog. I’m a soft-shelled turtle,” her new friend replied, dragging his sleeve across his face to wipe away the tears. “The tax-o-nom-ic name is Trionychidae.”

“That’s a big word!”

“It is. And...I don’t know where my brothers are. We’re not meant to be up here.” The turtle-boy took in a long, shakey inhale of breath. “I went off on my own. I wanted to look at the clothes.” He pointed to a window across the street, filled with shiny, sleek letterman jackets. “I lost them. I ran back over here, but the cars were scary and...” He shook his head, like he was drying to dislodge the sound. “Now Waph’s gonna be worried about me, an’ Papa will be sad.”

April scrunched up her nose; putting on her Thinking Face always helped her. “You know what my Mommy says I gotta do when I’m lost?”

The turtle-boy shook his head. Raindrops spattered from his hood onto the floor.

“You gotta find a helper person. Like a lady with a baby, or a someone who works in a store. I’ll be your helper person!” She grinned, showing off the gap where her first baby tooth had fallen out. “We’ll find your family, little turtle.”

“My name’s Donatello.”

“Donna...Donate...Don...hm."

“My brother Leo calls me Donnie.”

“Okay! I’ll call you Donnie, too.” April slotted her hand into his, and the entire world fell into place. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe!”

...

You need to go back. Quickly.

It was a funny feeling; pre-grieving your best friend. Looking at him every day and knowing, in your gut, he’d be gone soon. Waiting for the dam to break, craving the release of all this gut-wrenching pain but knowing, after that, comes the forever-ache of missing him. Wanting to crush his stupid bones in a hug and beat the crap out of him at the same time. Hearing him talk about ‘after’ like he’d know if she didn’t respect his wishes (donate his tech, keep his plants growing, remember Casey’s birthday and where D had stashed his gift) and he would take away Friendship Points deservingly. Trust Donnie to gamify the afterlife. But when that message came, and April knew, deep in her bones, it was time, she wasn’t ready. How could she ever be ready?

She often found herself thinking back to when they were kids. Little kids; when she realised, within thirty seconds of being around him, that Donnie needed a friend. A very best, best friend. Then, at her very first sleepover, watching him beat the everloving heck out of Leo with a sofa cushion (how was she to know ninjas-in-training would take pillow fights so seriously?!) that no, what he needed was a big sister. Someone to keep him in line, to stop that big beautiful brain from spiralling into insanity. And April had always wanted to be a big sister. She’d always rushed to Donnie when he needed her and in return he’d kept her safe from malware and from the Krang and from ever, ever feeling alone. She was his helper person. And he was hers, always.

She always thought she’d be there when it happened. She thought she’d be holding his hand.

As April bolted back to base and threw the main doors wide, her boots squeaking and slipping on the tiles as she ran towards the sound of three - oh god, only three - of her brothers, their voices indistinct but panicking, she felt her pace slow, her feet grow heavy and tired. She couldn’t. She couldn’t run towards a future without her brother.

What was that thing Donnie used to talk about when he wanted to be insufferable while they ate their pizza and scrolled through Netflox? Schrödinger’s cat. Alive and dead. Well, as long as she didn’t reach the source of all that noise, Donnie was still alive. Something else had happened; he’d just fallen, that was all. He’d fallen and Leo couldn’t help him up and somewhere, buried deep inside those awful cries of ‘Donnie? Donnie can you hear me?!’, that shrill noise Leo was making was laughter. Laughing at his twin, embarassing him once again just like he always did. But as soon as she reached the end off the hall, reality settled into its chosen trajectory.

Donnie was lying in Raph’s hands. Limp. Mikey was curled up in a tight ball, eyes wide and blank and staring. And Leo wasn’t laughing; he was screaming. Screaming for a medic, for help...for his Dad...

And April knew - from the second she saw him, the sound of rain lashing down on what was left of New York filling her ears, her brain, her broken heart. She just knew.

#rottmnt #cass apocalyptic series #rise april #rise donnie #I love that she didn't get to say goodbye #and by 'love' I mean it shattered me into a million bits #so naturally I had to make it worse

31 notes · View notes

iantimony · 1 month

Text

twoweeker tuesday: redux

im really making a trend of two-weekin these huh. gonna try to Not do that bc it makes me way less likely to actually do it lol. speed-posting this before bed (and before the melatonin kicks my ass, i'm trying to reset my sleep sched a bit)

listening: hozier unreal unearth. sammy rae & the friends. leaving this pretty sparse because i don't want to dig back through my history for the past two weeks and that's definitely the bulk of it. some notes from the Release Radar(tm) that i like: good luck, babe! - chappell roan bell - rob blivion waiting. - pater ...all (feat jake clemons, live) - grouplove i had not my hat - tom rosenthal april 8, 2024: the great north american eclipse - sleeping at last (!!!) too sweet - hozier flea - st vincent lil' freak - bbno$

reading: finished the main bit of scum villain! i'm reading the extras now. officially read all three mxtx books

watching: FINISHED SERIAL EXPERIMENTS LAIN. i have so many thoughts. i was in delta-orionis' dms about it a bit but my ass has so many Notes. many thoughts. gnosticism mostly but also the obvious tech-as-extension-of-self throughline. idk it was a very weird show and i definitely need to re-watch it to let it sink in a little more.

playing: no games but a lot of horn! i have an audition tomorrow for the fall's campus ensembles, i am...not super confident about it tbh, unsurprisingly i am not back to where i was pre-pandemic so my upper range and endurance is still really crunchy.

making: i keep forgetting to charge my phone before pottery so it keeps. dying. so i made quite a few new things the past few weeks but no photos of those - i did Crack the Code a bit, so now i can more reliably get things shaped in a conscious way. basically i was sitting too far forward so when i was pulling the walls up i was actually doing it at an angle, if i sit with my nose over the center of the pot it's all *chef kiss* beautiful. anyways here's a few glaze related pics. a lot of disappointment unfortunately.

1. my fucked up teacups. god im so mad about these. they were supposed to be a cool grey-green with a white flower, and matte. it is None Of These Things. idk will get redone. big mad.

2. bowl and mug that both got bubbles because i misread the glaze labels - they're both mayco glazes that are optimized for cone 05, not cone 5, so the both the color is not as good as i thought and also the surface variation is. not great. the bowl is acceptable, it's mirror blue, it went through the kiln again and the bubbles evened out (pic is from before), and plus it's on the outside - i just put plain white on the inside - so it's fine. the mug is a little more problematic. it was green slip sgraffito with evergreen fir over top, and i really love the color effect, but there's some small bubbles along the rim...this glaze was marked as food safe in a way that the mirror blue is Not so i thought it would be fine but. well. i'm hoping nuking it in the kiln again will smooth those out.

3. One Good Thing: trying a new glaze technique! someone in my studio does this gorgeous thing where she paints on flowers with underglaze, then covers them with liquid latex to paint on the background, and finally peels off the latex. it always comes out sooo nice, so when i ordered some more underglaze i went ahead and added liquid latex to cart too :3 this is just the flowers, i will be adding the background tomorrow!

eating: uhhh good cauliflower vegetarian shawarma thing that i refused to make unless we added a can of chickpeas because where in the fuck is the protein. tonight was a miso-butter chicken with radishes that we added potatoes and onions to. both sheetpan recipes so im def a fan of those now.

misc: ouuuugh. augh. oughghghg. i need to be done with homework forever please god. i have like...7? 8? total hws left between my two classes. and then i am Done With Classes. mentally gearing up to do my preliminaries at the end of the summer. not to doxx myself but ouch. basketball yesterday. Pain. the eclipse yesterday WAS unreal. oh my god. i drove to [redacted] very small town about 40 minutes from me and it was perfect. so glad i avoided the Big City, although that's where my roommate and her mom went and apparently the traffic was fine, but i'm definitely glad to have been in a less crowded zone. i get it now. i want to take that feeling i had watching totality and eat it and keep it with me forever. i was with friends. the weather was perfect. it was beautiful.

#tuesdayposting

5 notes · View notes

melancholysway · 2 years

Text

Serendipity (2007!Raphael x Fem!Reader 4

CHAPTER IV: There’s Something About Raphael

Chapter Key:

——— = a flashback is happening or ending ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ or ====

= perspective change

~ = small time skip

You sighed to yourself as you looked in your empty camera bag. Another missed opportunity to take a beautiful picture of Stella perched up on the window sill staring into the sunset that loomed over New York City.

Sunset. A moment of peace and clarity, before street lights come on to illuminate illegal activity, crime, bad decisions, and deviancy. The moment before the moon comes in and takes over the sun with its bright light. It stays in the sky for hours before the sun claims its spot, and the cycle repeats.

It was almost time for the moment all of NYC waits for: Nighttime.

The time when every other city sleeps, yet the people of New York City fail to follow this stigma and are forever awake and alive.

Crime seems to not take a break either, and that was the downfall of this city’s tendency to stay awake. However, that’s exactly what The Nightwatcher is for, to stop the crimes that policemen are too tired to pick up or are too slow to get to.

About five weeks went by since the attack and when you last saw The Nightwatcher. Your wound had healed up fine with no complications, so there was no reason to tell Casey about anything that required Raph’s presence to fix.

Aside from this, you’ve been holding up fine.

You had the strength to go to Monday’s classes, and once your 1-2:15 pm class was done, you had the rest of the day to yourself and didn't have classes until Wednesday. You and Jade took this opportunity and had all of that Tuesday in between to hang out and grab a bite at a nearby Asian Fusion restaurant to finish off the day. Aside from not walking anywhere deserted or empty such as alleys or quiet towns far from the city, you felt perfectly safe walking around on your own. Raphael was right about the Purple Dragons moving on from you to someone else because, in the days that followed, you heard word on campus that they had mugged an older couple.

Other than that, you’ve been untouched. However, you know to not let your guard down, and to really watch what you say to some New Yorkers.

And now, five weeks later, here you are. In your room upset still about your camera.

You wondered when Raphael would grace his presence again. You were hung up on the fact that he said he was going to try to get it fixed, and were confident that you would see him again.

You just didn’t know how long it would take.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“‘Ey, Don!” Raph’s voice made Donny jolt from surprise and halt his clock in for his shift as tech support.

“What’s up, Raph?” Donnie absolutely hated when that happened. He especially hated when Mikey would creep up on him and scare him on purpose, he was the easiest to scare out of the four. However, he wouldn’t dare confront his older brother about it.

Raph smirked, “Nuthin’ much, sorry I scared ya.” He looked down at his younger brother sitting tensely in his worn-out office chair.

Donnie spun around in his chair, “It’s cool, do you need something?” the spinning element of his chair is part of the reason Donatello loved it in the first place. He banned Mikey from sitting in it because of this very reason. He just wouldn’t stop spinning, until one day, Mikey spun so much that he winded up flying out of Donnie’s chair and sprained his ankle.

“Nah, just wonderin’ if you eva finished fixin’ that camera.”

Donnie placed his feet on the ground and abruptly stopped his spinning. “I did, actually. Thanks, it got rid of my boredom.” Getting up from his chair, he walked toward the large table that was for his various trinkets and gadgets. Some were completed, and some were left unfinished. He picks up the polaroid camera that he spent in his free time fixing for Raphael. He didn’t ask questions about why he needed it fixed, he just saw an opportunity to put his mind to work and took it.

---

“Can you fix dis?” Raphael’s amber-colored eyes stared at Donnie’s brown ones through his magnifying goggles.

Donnie looked at the broken item in Raph’s hands and couldn’t quite comprehend what it was. “And what exactly is ‘dis,’ Raph?” He mimicked his brother’s accent, earning an eye roll from him.

“A camera, or more like what's left of it. I don’ know, just thought it’d give ya sumthin’ ta do.”

“Something to do…”

Raph places the remnants of the girl's camera on Donnie's table in his lab, as he backs away to let his younger brother take a look at it.

“...Give me three weeks max.”

---

“Thanks, lil bro.” Raph nudges Donnie’s head and picks up the camera, admiring his intelligent brother’s work. He notices a tiny slot on the left side, and that’s when Donnie clears his throat to get his attention.

“Before you take it, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

Donatello reaches into a nearby drawer and takes out a very, very tiny black card.

“I know whose camera you brought back.”

Donatello is smart. There isn’t a dumb bone in his mutant turtle body.

When it came to things that weren’t about science or math, he wasn’t as smart, but still was.

He was slightly clueless sometimes, yet other times could find small inconsistencies in what people said like he was a DA during trial.

That’s why Donatello was such a strong member of the team.

With that being said, he had a hunch about this.

---

Donatello wasn’t one to be nosy like Michaelangelo. So, when Raphael brought a random broken camera home and asked him to fix it, he brushed any skepticism aside and tended to the task at hand.

However, one night as he was still getting familiar with all the parts he had and some were missing, he noticed the tiny slot on the left that was still able to pop in and out.

And by pressing it, out popped the micro SD card inside. The more surprising part was that it was still intact.

It might’ve been a bit extreme on Donnie’s part, but he quickly turned on his computer and put it in a holder to insert into his PC.

He prayed to whatever higher up that there wasn’t anything invasive or…rated R on it.

He clicked through the many folders on his personal computer until he found the one he was looking for in his recent.

Taking a deep breath, he clicked on the newest folder and waited for it to load onto his computer. Donnie watched as an array of different tiny squares scattered across his screen, and he picked the first one to easily navigate through the others without missing any.

Donatello seemed to remember this face, it was of Casey and April's neighbor, Y/n.

‘This is the girl Casey and April know, is it not?’ He pondered. Donatello remembered a few times he and his brothers would have to go upstairs to hide so they wouldn’t reveal themselves to their friend's neighbor. Donatello was able to get a good look at her at times, and there was no doubt that she was the owner of the camera Raph found.

He clicked through and landed on a clear shot of her, as she stood next to someone Donnie could think of as being her friend. Donnie studied the photo. The background looked like someone's bedroom, and they both put peace signs up at the camera. Y/n’s e/c eyes seemed to shine from the flash, and they were staring back at him.

After going through a few other photos, Donnie stopped and took the SD card out of his computer.

He enjoyed this. Donatello found it interesting what humans did and what their life was like. To be fair, he and his brother's first taste of what the human world was like was seeing Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” on a big screen in Times Square through a sewage gate at around 8 years old. He could never forget that day, and although he’s grown now and constantly sees how humans talk and interact through TV and patrol (before Leo left for training,) he still enjoys seeing what their lives are like and how they live on the surface. It comes bittersweet, though, he can witness it, but never be able to experience it for himself. And this, dear readers, was the downside of Donatello’s continuous curiosity.

---

“How’d you get her camera?” Donny asked a visibly confused Raphael.

“Didn’t know it was ‘ers. Casey found it and gave it ‘ta me to give to you; thought you would be able ‘ta fix it.” Lie.

What else could Raph say?

‘Oh yeah found it while me and Casey were out beating up Purple Dragons, we saved her, and I stitched her up. But don’t worry, she doesn’t know who I am because I wore my Nightwatcher suit and got her to close her eyes while I did it.’ Yeah, like that would fly with Donny. He cannot let any of his brothers figure out he’s the Nightwatcher. The fact that he’s already defying Splinter’s orders to not fight while Leo’s gone is bad enough. Not only that, but he revealed a part of himself to a complete stranger.

“From what you gave me in the beginning, it seemed like it was smashed forcefully. I mean, there’s no way she may have dropped it.” Ah. Raph was understanding where Donnie was going with this. The purple-banded turtle didn’t have anything to go off of conspiracy-wise due to lack of evidence, but he still had a funny feeling that it wasn’t Y/n who broke it.

“Do you know where Casey found it?”

“On the street, near an alley somewhere.” Raph really felt like he was being interrogated.

“An alley? Why would it be there? Instead of dumping it, she probably would want it to be fixed, righ-” “Look, Don. I don’t know.” Donatello was a little too smart for his brother's liking. Either that or he’s a terrible liar. Or both.

Donatello walks back over and takes a seat in his chair. He successfully clocks in and waits for someone to call.

“Tell Casey to check up on Y/n, because who else resides in an alley?”

Raphael rolls his eyes for what seemed like the 367th time at his brother.

“Tha bad guys, Don.”

“Exactly. Now, shoo.” Donnie motions for Raph to get out of his lab so he can work in peace, much like how he always has to kick Mikey out while he’s on the clock. Getting the hint, Raph thanks his sibling again before shutting the door behind him.

“How about I check up on ‘er instead, Don?” Raph suggests to himself.

---

Now, Raphael was not one to forcefully insert himself into anyone’s life. I mean, how could he, anyway? He’s the complete opposite of Mikey. He remembered a few years back when Mikey found someone’s cat on the roof and went to return it, only to be called a “mutant freak” by the owner. He’d rather save himself the heartbreak of not being accepted by people and keep it pushing. April and Casey accepted him, that’s all that mattered.

He was though, once accepted and was involved with a girl before Leo had left: Sabrina.

Sabrina had been Raphael’s first crush. He didn’t know what to do around her. Sabrina’s friendship was a total mistake, remember earlier when it was mentioned that Mikey inserts himself in others' lives and not Raph? Yeah, this happened here.

All 4 brothers had rescued a girl from being robbed by the PDs, and Mikey had gotten excited because he noticed that her school bag had a pin from his favorite show. He stepped out of the shadows on accident but didn’t get screaming or fainting in return. Instead, they had a 10-minute conversation geeking out about the show until Leonardo put a stop to it. Unknowingly, they had befriended a short, brunette wavy-haired 18-year-old girl.

From then on, Sabrina had been a good friend of theirs, and somehow found a way to Raphael’s heart without even trying.

It was expected mostly from Donnie, because (although he begs them not to bring it up anymore,) he was the first one who had feelings for the only human girl they had met prior to Sabrina: April. Although Donnie got over it with time, it was also because he knew he had no chance once Casey came along.

Raph wasn’t sure why he fell for Sabrina. She was a mix between Donnie and Mikey- nerdy, crazy, you name it, but in a good way. Her clear, mocha skin and hourglass figure are something that especially caught him, as well as her forest-green eyes. She was the complete opposite of Raph, which is probably what attracted him to her in the first place. He wasn’t one to spill his feelings, so he dropped subtle hints here and there. He was a flirt, and that was what enticed Sabrina.

They became close, closer than he’d ever imagined.

He would come by almost every night, and they would talk for hours until she fell asleep. One night though, Sabrina had found the courage to flirt back, and this was the night of Raphael’s first kiss. He found that he loved it, and he might’ve even maybe loved her.

This lasted for about a year and a half until she packed up and went to college, never to come back since she was moving as well. It wasn’t like Sabrina broke his heart or anything, she just was moving on in her life, and he wouldn’t be a part of it. It became reality when her number wasn’t working, as she got a new one. There was no way to contact her or rekindle anything they had. It was a hard pill to swallow for him but Raphael eventually got over it. So, he doesn’t bring it up. It’s simply a memory of what once was.

---

Raphael seemed to like the idea of coming to see you.

He of course wasn’t comfortable with revealing himself to you, but at the same time, he wondered what you would think about him.

You already knew that he has 3 fingers, so fuck it. Raphael didn’t like change, but he also didn’t like platonic routines. He needed something to spice up his life. After all, he has so many years to live, why not live it up and do new things?

So, he decided on paying you a visit. Besides, your camera had to be returned.

Making his way to his room, Raph takes his duffle bag and slings it over his shoulder. Without being noticed by Splinter or his baby brother, he leaves the lair and opens the makeshift garage that held his bike. It was right next to Mikey’s Cowabunga Carl van, how it usually is.

Raph changes into his nighttime persona and places his helmet on as the final touch. Finally.

Revving up his bike, the red-clad turtle decides to take a spin around the city as the sun sets before stopping by at your house.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was a chilly Thursday evening, and you were cooped up in your studio apartment. After Skyping your mom to say hello and catch up, you decided to get started on some dinner. You scattered through your fridge to find something good to make, but nothing good. You were leaning toward a homecooked meal rather than something frozen.

After thinking of recipes to make, you were reminded of something that Jade’s mom made one time you came over for dinner. Although you never asked for the recipe, you could very clearly remember how it tasted with the different spices and herbs. Not only that, but you could put your slow cooker to use and have the possibility of making leftovers.

You gathered the food items and ingredients you thought you needed: Rice, an array of spices and seasonings, chicken breasts, and…

Ah.

You were out of asparagus.

Jade’s mom had pan-seared them with some minced garlic, butter, and pepper. They tasted heavenly. Even Jade- who’s known to be picky when it comes to vegetables, loved the way they tasted.

No biggie, the local grocery store was no longer than a 5-minute walk. The sun was still setting, being that it was around 7 pm. Getting on a pair of sneakers and a sweater, you left your home and toward the elevator that took you down to the lobby.

You walked the streets of New York. The air was brisk, with the occasional gust of wind tickling your skin. You passed countless people, none that you’ve ever seen before. The random drug dealers on the corner, small stand-owners that were selling trinkets or food to get by, homeless men and women asking for money, hookers that stood on the corner and tried to swoon men into buying their services, and so on.

New York City, you either love it, or you hate it. There is no in-between.

You just so happened to love it.

Despite the crime and terrible things that may happen, NYC is truly a beautiful place, a melting pot of different cultures, and people that come from all walks of life.

Making your way across the street when the light changed, you’re introduced to the small grocery store you’re very familiar with going to. The gorgeous array of fresh fruits and veggies, the deli meats that were cut to perfection, it was a nice staple in the area you were in. It also just so happened to be the closest to you.

You grabbed a plastic baggie and ripped it from the other small ones attached to the rack, and walked past the few people standing in front of the fresh veggie section. You looked toward the asparagus next to the crowns of broccoli and picked a bundle that looked the most vibrant in green.

Placing it in your baggie and tying a knot to close it, you walk toward the register to pay. A mere $2.51, is not bad at all! You hand the cashier a $5 bill after he puts it in a yellow bag for you to carry. You tell him to keep the receipt. Nodding, you’re handed your change and put it in your pocket, “Have a good evening.”

The young man smiles at you, “You do the same.”

Exiting the store, you start on your way home. The sun is getting to the point where it’ll be replaced by the moon, and the nighttime will officially be here.

“Stella, no.” For what seemed like the 30th time in the span of a few minutes while you prepared the chicken, Stella was clawing at your sweats because she was interested in eating whatever you were making.

You were pretty excited about a nice calm dinner tonight, you were putting the chicken in the slow cooker with the rice and decided to wait until that was done to make the asparagus. It shouldn’t take long, anyway.

While you waited, you connected your phone to the speaker in your room and allowed it to play loud enough to hear in the living area with the TV. During the wait, you caught up on some of your studies. It was mostly Physics. There was an exam coming up in less than two weeks, and you wanted to be more than prepared to take it. You seemed to breeze right through it, and before you knew it, about forty-five minutes went by.

You were sitting on the couch petting Stella with one hand and writing with the other until you heard a knock on your window that came from the bedroom. It sounded strikingly similar to the one you heard the last time you saw Raph. Despite knowing nothing about him, you felt an excitement bubble inside you, and anxiety beginning to form simultaneously. You hoped it was Raphael because it meant your camera might be fixed. Not only that, but this was your chance to convince him to stay awhile and chat.

Placing your Physics textbook on the coffee table, you walked briskly to your window to investigate the sound.

Looking at the window, you couldn’t help but smile at what you saw.

It was Raphael, in his full metal armor, Camera in hand.

You unlocked the window and opened it up, the gust of cool night wind entering your bedroom. It was finally nighttime, and the New York City lights replaced the sun in the darkness.

“Raph?” You were confused as to why he didn’t just knock on your door. It was extremely odd that he came through the fire escape, but after thinking about it for a moment, you would probably feel giddy and anxious if The Nightwatcher passed by you in your own apartment building.

“I uh…I have sumthin’ for ya.” His muffled voice through his helmet states. You noticed the slight stuttering with his words, almost as if he was nervous to be in your presence.

“You actually fixed it?” Taking it from his hands, you look all around your camera. It’s just like how you remembered it, old but still fully functional.

“Nah, not me. I got one of my bros to fix it.” You noticed a sense of pride in his tone, almost as if he was proud of his own brother's work.

“Tell them to thank you for me, seriously. This camera…means a lot to me.” Popping open the little slot on the side, you see the memory card there, and you pop it back in place, relief cascading over your entire body. A few weeks in you thought you had misplaced your SD card, but remembered that you left it inside the camera that day. Up until now, you had assumed your memories had been wiped, there was a slim chance the micro SD card would be preserved after what happened. But, it did.

A complete stranger had gone out of their way to fix your beloved device with no questions asked. No favor in return expected.

Without second-guessing it, you hugged Raph. Your arms going around his waist instead of his neck. You felt something rock hard on his back that felt abnormal.

It was possible that his suit could have a storage compartment back there. But at the same time, it didn’t make sense on why he would have one in the first place.

You immediately felt him tense up, and his arms didn’t wrap around you as yours did him. However, you didn’t expect them to. You were just happy someone took the time to help you.

You pull away after a few moments, and Raph clears his throat.

“How are ya holdin’ up?” He asks. It’s hard to tell what his facial expressions are because you can’t see his face through his helmet, but his tone seemed to match what his face might show.

You were about to answer until suddenly a particularly colder gust of wind shoots through the window, and you shiver in response.

“Would you want to come inside, Raphael?”

You couldn’t believe Raph was in your apartment. He still kept his suit on despite now being indoors, but you knew he wouldn’t take it off from your interaction last time you suggested it. He seemed uneasy at first, but after some persuasion with dinner, he complied. You allowed Raph to make himself comfortable, and he found your couch extremely comfortable. It looked as though Stella found him comfortable because she immediately jumped on his lap once he sat down.

The chicken and rice were finished, and while you made the asparagus in the kitchen, you couldn’t help but laugh at how Raph interacted with Stella on the couch. It was cute. Raphael seemed to like cats because he knew just the right spots to scratch that made Stella purr and meow with glee. You wondered if he had any pets of his own.

You and Raphael made small talk while you were finishing up cooking the last part of the meal, and it was pleasant. You informed him that your wound was healing up fine, and you were getting back to moving normally slowly but surely. You answered all his questions about cleaning it and dressing it with many confident “yes’s.” It felt like Raph appreciated you taking care of your own wound, and you lifted up your sweatshirt to show him the progress. Lifting it down, you thanked him again for patching you up, and for getting your camera fixed.

“What’s it mean to ya?” He asked. You continued plating the food for both of you and pondered.

“Well,” You grabbed a portion of asparagus with a pair of tongs to put on both plates. “My mom got it for me. I moved here alone for college, and it was a good luck gift.”

Finishing, made your way to the couch. Sitting down beside Raph, you handed a plate to him. “Thanks,” he muttered.

“U-Um, do you want me to like, turn around?” You realized eating required Raph to lift his helmet, and he seemed to realize that too.

“Nah, that’d be weird. You shouldn’t be able to see much anyway.” He was right. It was dark outside, and that meant the only source of light you would get is from the TV that was on in your living space in front of you both.

Raphael took a gamble and assumed you wouldn’t see.

Which you didn’t.

It surely wasn’t ideal for him, having to lift it to take a bite of his food; nonetheless, he enjoyed each time he did. You both sat beside each other on your couch (slightly awkwardly,) while the noise from the TV echoed through your apartment.

Despite the distraction of the TV, you had decided to spike up another conversation with Raphael. He winded up complementing your cooking, and you couldn’t help but smile at his words.

You firstly started by asking where he learned to fight. You couldn’t forget the type of fighting style he had, but couldn’t put your finger on the name of it. He explained that he was raised by his Japanese father that taught him ninjitsu, which he practiced in his free time (this was quite often, he mentions.) Not only that, but you also learned that he followed Bushido, which is something you didn’t expect. It seemed hard for him to open up, but at the same time, that’s all Raphael wanted to do sometimes. He winded up going on a slight tangent about his fighting skills, and he told you he had polished them to be damn near perfect. You had heard pride seer through his words and his tone.

The conversation seemed to bounce between him and you.

He wondered why you chose a college in NYC.

“Why not, you know? It’s a beautiful city with so many opportunities.” To this, he agreed.

You explained your current living situation, and how you managed to stay here and go to college at the same time. He seemed to admire the fact that you had a job and went to school. He asked you about your job, and you pointed out being a waitress at a local diner.

You asked Raph some more questions about his life, like if he went to college or anything. He explained he didn’t go to any real school but learned at home. He wasn’t planning on going to college.

How could he, anyway?

For now, his duty as a vigilante was what he was focused on.

“Someone has ‘ta keep the streets safe. These lousy cops sure ain’t,” He stated. Raphael seemed to be extremely passionate about what he did and why. Judging from his accent, he sounded like he was from Brooklyn. His accent was one you’ve heard plenty of times off the street, but he was one in particular that you enjoyed hearing. He winded up telling you why exactly he became The Nightwatcher. Not only was it to keep the city safe, but it was because of that day he heard about the Purple Dragons violating and killing a woman. Raphael’s tone was uneasy since the thought of it made him physically ill. He couldn’t believe some people existed who did such things, but this world isn’t rainbows and butterflies, he explained.

You didn’t want to pry, but you wanted to know some more about his life. Other than being a vigilante, what else was there for Raphael? There was something about Raphael that made you extremely curious.

“You mentioned brothers once, right?” You scrape your plate, gathering the scattered pieces of rice for one last delightful bite.

“Yeah, I got three.” He was able to come clean about his family and siblings. He mentioned that one of them is an I.T tech support online, the other was a host for kids' parties, and another was in a different country since last year, and some change. He seemed to like talking about his father and two brothers that were currently at home but had some sort of animosity against the one who was abroad from the way he described him.

He went (pretty vaguely) on about how they lived. Other than all learning ninjitsu and how they were all the same age (you learned he was the same age as you,) and just minutes apart, you had no clue which part of NYC he or his brothers resided in. You had assumed he was born in NYC because his accent was a dead giveaway of where he was from and where he lived. Not only that, but you didn’t know how he knew Casey.

“Ah, he’s a family friend.” Was all he said. It seemed he and Casey were pretty close, but he provided no backstory on how they met. He went into slight detail about knowing April before Casey, and she eventually brought Casey around to meet him and his brothers.

You told him about your small friend group, too. When it only consisted of your good friend Jade. Because you were still fairly new and only just close to completing your first year in college, you were still low in the friend department. You told him briefly about how you befriended Casey and April, and you went to thinking. You thought about a potential friendship between you and Raph. You already knew the same people, and Raphael saw firsthand how Casey cared about you as if he was your older brother. So, you were able to be trusted somewhat.

Raphael wasn’t about to risk it all and reveal himself to you with just over a small ounce of trust.

He couldn’t be selfish to his family and potentially put them in danger. But, he knew deep down Mikey and Donatello and even Splinter would want someone new to talk to. Someone trustworthy like April and Casey yet came from a different walk of life than they had. God knows when Leo is coming back, anyway.

So, here you were.

---

“Here I am!” The loudmouth mutant states as he skillfully flips from the stairs and onto the living room couch. The orange-banded turtle had just gotten back from another day of getting beat by kids, but his tips for the day are what put him in such a good mood in addition to the other news.

Today was the day, Leonardo was coming back.

“Hey, Mikey.” Donny put his hand out like he usually does when his younger brother gets home from work, and got a wad of cash in his hand as a response.

“Probably be the last of it, Leo’s coming back!” Mikey was extremely hyper about today. It had been a full year since Leonardo went away for training, and he was finally coming home.

Although Raphael was still upset about Leo leaving from the beginning, he was also slightly excited and relieved his older brother was coming back. Crime wasn’t taking a break just because Leo did, and the streets were getting worse.

“I am also happy Leonardo will be returning, Michelangelo.” Splinter came from the shadow of his room, gathering with his 3 sons in the living room. Leo should be home in the next hour or two, so they all sat in anticipation ready.

There had been a sound from one of the pipes outside the lair, indicating someone was entering.

Mikey couldn’t seem to contain his excitement, and he stood right in front of the wall that would soon reveal his oldest brother.

Only, it wasn’t Leo.

It was April and Casey. April held a slightly worn-out envelope that was labeled with a South American stamp.

“We got mail from Leonardo again, I thought he was coming today?” Casey asked, April handed the envelope over to their rat sensei, and he tore the top open with his nail.

“What’s it say, Masta Splintah?” Raphael asked, getting restless.

“Leonardo has decided to continue his training beyond the time I originally sent him for.” Mikey’s seemingly permanent smile faltered for the first time today, and he slouched on the couch.

Raphael looked toward Mikey, sulking now. Donnie had a disappointing look on his face, and Master Splinter sighed deeply at the news.

Leonardo had become so immersed in his training, that he forgot to take into consideration what his family thought.

“Great. Just great. Now we havta sit here without Fearless for God knows how long now!” Raph exclaimed. He hated seeing his little brother so upset. Mikey was the most excited to see Leo, and he didn’t show. Raph was especially angry because, despite Leo’s training period ending and him not showing, it still meant they had to refrain from fighting on the surface. Which also meant crime would continue to plague the city.

‘Fuck. That.’ Raph thought. He was on the brink of defying Splinter’s orders, but not yet. Raphael knew he would be the first to crack, he was never one to follow rules very well, anyway. He just didn’t know when.

---

As the night went on, you and Raph caught a glimpse into each other's lives. He seemed to like listening to you speak, and vice versa. You noticed that Raph would go on tangents and sometimes it was hard to follow, but he always went back full circle to his first point. He just had a lot to say, and this was the first time in a long time that someone was listening.

You realized you had spent 2 whole hours together in your apartment. When you and he were finished eating, you got up and motioned for him to give you his plate so you could wash it. Instead, he gets up and takes yours and insists he washes them since “It’s only right, ya fed me.” To which you complied and sat back down on the couch.

Whilst drying the dishes, the police chatter suddenly came on Raph’s radio. There was a robbery occurring at a nearby drugstore.

“How’d you get that?” You asked, Raphael, stretched his limbs slightly as if he was getting ready for something.

“I have my ways Y/n. I like ta beat ‘em to tha punch.”

“So…you’re leaving?” You asked. He nodded his head, almost reluctantly

“Thanks, fa dinna,’ I haven’t had sumthin’ that good in a while.” Raph complimented your cooking once again, and you blushed at the fact that he appreciated your amateur cooking skills.

“It’s the least I could do. After all, you help so many people every night in this city, and you went out of your way and helped me.” You watched as he walked towards the window of your bedroom from where he came in earlier, and you frowned.

“Wait, Raph.” The suited man stopped in his tracks and turned around to face you.

“I know you came back to return my camera but, when will I see you again?” You looked at his visor and hoped that you were staring directly at his eyes. Raphael wondered, too.

He wasn’t able to come around during the day, only at night. Besides, he usually caught up on sleep during the day, anyway.

You fiddled with your fingers nervously while asking your next question before he could respond to the first one. “And I was thinking…we could be friends?”

“Friends, huh?” Raphael didn’t have any friends other than Casey and April. Sure, there was Sabrina, but she was no longer in his life. He pondered about it for a minute.

“I’m determined to learn more about you. There has to be more to you than just The Nightwatcher.”

You didn’t realize it.

You didn't realize that what you just said made Raphael’s heart skip a beat.

It’s funny, he’s only known you for a little bit, and vice versa. Yet, you have this persistence to get to know him. The real Raph.

“I’ll swing by sometime, promise.” With that, he waved you goodbye and uttered “Have a good night.” To which you replied that he does the same, as well as to be safe out there.

Opening your window and standing on the fire escape, he let himself out.

As you closed the window and sat on your bed, you were confused as to what his response meant.

Were you friends, were you not?

He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, either.

However, he did promise he would come by again, and he emphasized the word ‘promise.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After jumping up onto the roof, Raphael took his helmet off for some fresh air, and a moment before setting out to find the crime as he sighed.

Despite not knowing his face, you trusted him enough to let him in and sit in your apartment, as well as know where you lived. He could’ve been one of those sleazy guys he and his brothers used to protect women from on patrol, but he wasn’t. You had some type of trust.

He felt a funny feeling brew inside him, where the all-too-familiar imaginary butterflies flew around his midsection.

He thought back to what you said before he left.

“There has to be more to you than just The Nightwatcher.”

Putting his helmet back on, he jumped from rooftop to rooftop.

As he made his presence known on the street beside a drugstore where the alleged crime was taking place and tripped the thief to stop him, Raphael concluded that he wanted to get to know you more than he already did.

What your likes and dislikes were, your little quirks, your opinion on certain viewpoints, and your thought process.

And he couldn't wait to do just that.

In contrast, you were excited for him to share the same.

PREVIOUS CHAPTER: HERE

NEXT CHAPTER: HERE

#tmnt 2007 #bayverse tmnt #donatello #leonardo #raphael #teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt 2012 #tmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt 2016 #tmnt fanfiction #tmnt fanfics #raph x reader #raphael x reader #tmnt x reader

56 notes · View notes