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sexiestpodcastcharacter · 6 months

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Sexiest Podcast Character — Unscripted Bracket — Round 5

Propaganda

Glenn Close (Dungeons & Daddies):

#Propaganda for Glenn Close: one of the other PCs mentions multiple times how hot he is #Actually several characters point it out but especially Henry #Also the only person in a podcast that has to put a disclaimer about not being a BDSM podcast to have had sex during the course of the show

Young hot rocker dilf

Loyal to his dead wife <3

Does in fact smoke weed

BARD!! HES A BARD. HE WAS LEAD GUITAR IN HIS BAND (that he was kicked out of)

His band was a Christmas cover band btw.

Literally the fandom had hot Glenn summer which consisted of drawing him being incredibly hot and sexy

Anti government (ofc)

Kind of cringefail (Disney adult) (was on dilfs of disneyland)

Young and sexy not your style? Then how about HIM AFTER YEARS LOCKED IN A TIME PRISON WITH A DAMN HANNIBAL MASK ??

Lost an eye and wears a fucking eyepatch

One incredibly buff arm

Has a pet rat named after his son <3

Immeasurable amounts of trauma in this man- becomes progressively more unhinged

OH OLD HUMAN BARD ISNT CUTTING IT? FINE

HE BECOMES A FUCKING DEMON

A COOL HOT ONE-EYED DEMON WHO WANTS TO KILL HIS DAD (also sexy)

HE CANONICALLY ENDS CHRISTIAN HELL VIA CHRISTMAS

IS ALSO WAY OVERLEVELED

Becomes a demon hunter for the rest of his existence

Also nonwhite !!! We are done with cringefail whiteboys !!!!!!!!!

I can’t put into words ok just know he is the best plz love him.

Okay but Glenn made a minivan cum by talking to her so

HE HAS A BOOK THAT HE MARKS X’S AND CHECKS FOR EVERY DAY TO SEE IF THAT DAY WAS A SUCCESS OR NOT. TO SEE IF HE DID GOOD THAT DAY. ITS ALMOST ENTIRELY X’S. HE WAS CUCKED OUT OF A SON. AND A DEAD WIFE. HE DIDN’T EVEN GET TO KILL HIS DAD IN REVENGE. There’s absolutely nothing going for him except his sex appeal in his life. Nobody he loved remembers him. He lost his eye. All he has is a pet rat and friends who admit they don’t really like him that much. He was kicked out of his own band. The band was named after him. He was kicked out of the Glenn Close trio. All he could do was deez nuts the big bad and be sexy. If nothing else, then pity him. Look in his eyes. Look at his heart and soul. He did not do the BDSM episode for this I’ll tell you what. Do this for my his sake. Do it for Nick Jr, who needs the prize money to pay for his rat snacks. Do it for his son. For Morgan. Ganbatte.

Glenn is the goofiest sexiest character there is and I will die on this hill! I will ride into battle for him! what Dndads created is truly unique and Glenn is a key part of that and for that he deserves to win. I said it before and I'll say it again - GLENN SWEEEEEP

Can we talk about how he says ‘baby’ casually? Like he just calls people that?? That’s HOT. THAT IS HOT!! He’s also bilingual and knows Japanese!!!! He’s a big dumb idiot with a lot of charisma!!!!!! HE WORKED AT A BDSM PLACE FOR TWO SEPARATE ONE SHOTS. HES SO SAD BUT PLAYS IT OFF LIKE HE’S CHILL ALL THE TIME!! HE DOESN’T THINK OF HIMSELF AS SINGLE BECAUSE HE DIDN’T DIVORCE HIS DEAD WIFE!!! He’s like.. the perfect guy. We need this win.

I’d also like to add the fact I made this. Which is the first 11 episodes edited to (almost) only have Glenn in them <3 which is a level of insanity I hope to reiterate. These took hours to make. I wouldn’t do that for anyone else.

Mod Note: While I will still take "bad dads are sexy" propaganda and "bad dads aren't sexy" anti-propaganda, I kindly request no more discussion on whether or not he was a bad father. This is a sexypoll, not a parentingpoll. If you see a post you strongly disagree with, you can just not reblog it.

Mod Note 2: This tournament is about fictional podcast characters. Please do not vote for the real actress Glenn Close.

Amber Gris (The Adventure Zone: Ethersea):

Middle aged woman who punches sharks to death. My hero

If you love me you'll vote for amber gris I swear to everything holy on earth amen

Amber is butch, instant win

Amber Gris has a negative charisma modifier and she pissed her pants on purpose in order to trick a guard and knock him out. She tied up a dude. She once killed an evil magic shark (they're out for murder. not like real sharks) by punching it and then picked it up and smashed it into another shark, also killing it. She talks in a southern accent. She calls people guppy because it indicates a lack of respect. She has a big pair of magical green arms that come from her stomach. She got a fancy jacket and immediately ripped its sleeves off. She has a gay thing going on with one of the political leaders in the city. She gets in fights with people and doesnt do vulnerability and tries to lay low and not get in any social trouble she doesn't have to. She jumped through a portal into a new world because she could. She's now the god of said world, alone with only afformentioned political leader, who was previously possessed and she had to fight. She spends her time in a bar called the Cloaca. She calls people she doesn't like claspers, because it means shark penis. She and her friend, an old man named Uncle Joshy, sneak attack each other and yell VIBE CHECK! She tries to talk fancy to impress people and she's really bad at it (verily).

She’s everything and more. She’s irreverent. She punches sharks for a living. She becomes God. What more do you need in a butch.

amber gris propaganda: she is straightup the physical embodiment of "women want me, fish fear me." also she's an appalachian post apocalyptic sea captain. that's just objectively cool.

AMBER GRIS IS PUNCHES SHARKS AND IS (one of) THE MOST BADASS BLACK WOMEN PCS IN DND SHOWS IVE EVER SEEN. SHES INCREDIBLE AND A WIN FOR DYKES EVERYWHERE

amber's creator said she was based off of the type of working-class woman you commonly see in appalachia where "this is the sort of woman that you see walking past CVS, and you know that a truck could hit her and it would just split around her as she continued to go pick up whatever she had to do that day." and that's pretty hot

guys Amber becomes lesbian god of the new world with her childhood “”friend””

#amber gris is LITERALLY a middle-aged butch #she would win this entire tournament in a just world

Last time Amber got horny was when she killed that shark

"it was a savage bummer though, don't-- trust me, there's nothing that great about a history. You know? I got one. What did I do, killed a bunch of sharks? Last time I got horny, god and christ I can't even tell you-- well, it was when I killed that shark. But! Hey. We're all just kinda figuring it out."

Moonshine Cybin (Not Another D&D Podcast: Bahumia):

She's a hot elf with mushrooms growing on her. She has 1 level of barbarian. She's bisexual. She shapeshifted into a dragon and ate a god.

how tf does the post not mention Moonshine’s giant boobs her greatest asset

Moonshine has canonically gone down on a woman for a solid hour without asking for anything in return. Moonshine edged a dryad just by kissing them. Moonshine faced down someone being controlled to kill everyone in his path and told him if he still wanted to hurt her, she would take his blows as a friend. Moonshine makes jambalaya for her family and friends. Moonshine mispronounced someone’s name for a month and that woman still wanted to hook up with Moonshine. These are just a few of the reasons why Moonshine is sexy.

shes illiterate

canonically huffs dirty water from a bong

has big tatas

wears a belly chain with a demon trapped in it

almost became the queen of hell

ate a god

turned into a pregnant moose & gave birth

The woman she went down on for an hour asking nothing in return is still hung up on her, 200 years later. Moonshine is unmatched

To be clear the woman whose name Moonshine mispronounced for a month and then hooked up with is the same woman she went down on for an hour, and the same woman who is still flustered over her 200 years later. The rizz is unparalleled. She’s also incredibly kind and accepting of others, and goes out of her way to bolster her friends. The party always requests one big bed.

moonshine cybin is a druid who learned counterspell through sheer force of will. moonshine cybin turned one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse into a dolphin, flew him 60 feet up into the air, dropped him on the ground, and then spit spores into his face to kill him. moonshine cybin turned into a dragon and bit the head off of a double god. moonshine cybin was willing to confine herself to an eternal hell to save the world. moonshine cybin is a dragon rider. you know what you must do.

Amber and Moonshine Together

Look at them. They should not have to fight when they could be gay instead. Imagine the power they would have combined... Every lesbian in a hundred mile radius of the post would swoon. It may be an odd alliance, but from an Ethersea fan to Bahumia fans, i believe this will strengthen both our odds. I have always been insane about Amber Gris but through this poll I have also learned about Moonshine and come to love her too. Take my hand... We can do this together...

OKAY HEAR ME OUT MOONSHINE AND AMBER WOULD GET ALONG SO WELL

appalachian sapphic solidarity!

Art of Amber and Moonshine from @pirateknight.

#Round 5 #Glenn Close #Glenn Close DnDads #Moonshine Cybin #Amber Gris #Not Another D&D Podcast #Bahumia #The Adventure Zone #TAZ Ethersea #Dungeons & Daddies #Dungeons and Daddies

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slashingdisneypasta · 1 month

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Erik Destler x Fem!StageActress!Reader || Would Include...

Erik Destler always learning your on-stage romantic interests part totally and then 'dispatching' of the poor guy just before he's meant to go on so he then can always taking his place would include...

Warnings: Contemporary musical references, I don't care, shoot me. Also just basic Erik creepiness; murder and not-super-consensual kissing/touches (dub con at most).

Tagging: @marinerainbow and @masqueradeball .

🥀 Erik falling for you almost the moment you entered the Palais Garnier for the first time. He has no chill, we know this. He's like a Disney Princess. One song and he's fallen hopelessly in love.

🥀 Erik always keeping an eye on the cast lists when they come out- checking who you are and if you have a romantic interest. If you do, that person is now his main target. He may not kill them immediately, he'll wait until the final show on the final night, but there is a big red bullseye on their back now.

🥀 Erik practising 'his' lines (The lines of your on-stage romance) in his sewer room, reciting them to a dummy wearing some... familiar clothing. What? No, he didn't sneak into your chambers in the middle of the night and steal them from you! No, no! Absolutely not!... though you are missing a dress exactly like the one the doll is wearing. *cough*

🥀 Erik treating that doll of you with the utmost care. Almost as much as he'd treat you, the real you, with (Or, how he'd like to treat you. Only the lord knows if Erik could actually be gentle if given the chance to hold you). Its really creepy. Imagine his fingertips only grazing the dolls cheek very gently, but his eyes drift downwards (even though, again, its JUST A DOLL- ITS JUST STUFFING, ERIK!- Y O U ' R E T H E O N E W H O S T U F F E D I T- ) with very desire-filled eyes. Imagine him on one knee before the doll, holding its hand in his, its dead-eyes staring off into space while he professes deep speeches about love that are supposed to be romantic but just come out wrong and infatuated off Erik's tongue. Imagine Erik's hand wandering in the middle of a particularly heated scene; completely lost to his imagination.

🥀 Erik n e v e r, ever stealing the part of a villain. Even if that villain gets much more heated, or charged scenes with you then your actual love interest (Duke Monroth, Professor Callahan, Judge Turpin, Scar, etc). He wants to be your hero. Your prince, your true love.

🥀 Erik watching your every show, in his special box 5, studying you with eyes so hot you swear you can feel them on your skin every night. Paying so close attention, so he knows exactly how to compliment you on stage; how to be your perfect stage partner. This is why your scenes in every last show at the Palais Garnier are so impossibly electrifying to the audience- and, to you.

🥀 Erik allowing your casted partner to appear in the first few scenes with you during that last performance on that last night, so you never really know when its going to stop being the one guy and start being Erik- you're on your toes. Waiting the whole performance for the hand you grab onto to be Erik's. (He's waiting for the perfect moment to step in. The moment when you're really, really in character; lost to your art.)

🥀 Erik being the Christian to your Satine during 'El Tango De Roxanne' (His eyes upon your face. His hand upon your hand. His lips caress your skin. It's more than I can stand), 'Crazy Rolling' (See how I leave with every piece of you. Don't underestimate the things I will do), and 'Your Song Reprise' (Look at me... Satine... Why else live, if not for love?) in Moulin Rouge.

🥀 Erik being the Fiyero to your Elphaba during that super fucking charged 'As Long As You're Mine' scene in Wicked. You know? With you both on your knees on the stage surrounded by dramatic mist and you cant keep your hands off eachother?? *cough cough* I mean, with you both on your knees on the stage surrounded by dramatic mist and Fiyero and Elphaba cant keep their hands off eachother??? XD (Kiss me too fiercely, Hold me too tight; I need help believing, You're with me tonight, My wildest dreamings, Could not foresee, Lying beside you, With you wanting me // Every moment, As long as you're mine, I'll wake up my body, And make up for lost time.)

🥀 Erik being the Prince to your Sleeping Beauty, Snow White during the True Love's Kiss Scene. Oh yes, he definitely goes there. Did you doubt it?

🥀 Erik AS THE BEAST IN 'EVERMORE' TO YOUR BELLE IN BEAUTY AND THE BEAST!!!?

🥀 Erik never appearing at the end of the production to bow- he cant. You know that. So he makes his last moments on stage with you last, because honestly- who knows when the next time will be?? Its not like he can come call on you like a normal person... 🙄he's a dramatic freak. He holds your hand a few moments longer then necessary, or a little tighter. He kisses you one more time even though its not scripted.

🥀 Erik leaving you a bouquet of flowers in your dressing room after that last show on that last night. Signed simply, ceaselessly yours.

🥀 You tell yourself every time that the show must go on. You tell yourself, that thats why you don't stop it; Don't do anything.

🥀 You are lying to yourself. You cant deny the electricity crackling all over your skin every time you see Erik on stage with you, every time Erik touches you under fake pretences. You've never felt quite the same on stage then when he's there with you; you feel like you're really the characters... and there is nothing on earth like that feeling. No one else can give you this. No one but him.

🥀 You expect it now and anxiously await the moment when your practise partner (Just Erik's understudy. Thats what you're thinking of them now; the men who are actually cast) dematerialises from the stage and its Erik.

🥀 You always leave the flowers from Erik at the grave of the man who died. Its sick, the game (?? habit?? r e l a t i o n s h i p??) you're in, but you cant stop. And you cant apologise, so you can only do this.

🥀 You working extra hard to get lead roles at the Palais Garnier. As soon as one show is over, you have a hunger to do it again. Get another part, get Erik back on that stage with you.

Its like an addiction.

#just- aghhhhhhhhhhhh #being on stage with erik being on stage with erik being on stage with erik-#Erik Destler x Reader #Erik Destler #POTO 1989 #Phantom of the Opera 1989 #Erik Destler 1989 x Reader #Erik Destler 1989

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fdelopera · 6 months

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Antisemites are going mask-off. And we Jews see you.

So some shit for brains antisemite sent me this message the other day. This is one of several antisemitic Anons I've gotten recently, but this one is the most blatant.

My first response was to taunt them. I thought of writing something like this:

"Hey, you fucking loser, you forgot the part of your Nazi script where you try to deny that the Holocaust happened. Lame ass motherfucker, you can't even get your own lies right. Next time you try harassing a Jew online, at least try to tow the Nazi party line, you white supremacist. Also, you fucking COWARD, how dare you come to my inbox on Anonymous. If you’re going to tell me you wish I would die in a Nazi gas chamber, at least have the common courtesy to tell me your username so I know who I am blocking."

But then, I thought: No. That's not how to respond. Because that's not what this is about.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. Making fun of a stupid a Nazi by telling them that they forgot to deny the Holocaust when they decided to harass me for being a Jew — that is gallows humor of the darkest kind. But a morbidly glib zinger of a reply doesn’t actually address the real issue here.

The real issue is that a lot of you with antisemitic tendencies have been going completely mask-off the last few weeks, and you have been diving headfirst into Jew-hatred.

You are finally feeling liberated to speak the Jew-hating words that you have been dying to say.

You have been practically champing at the bit to tell a Jew that you wished there would be another Holocaust so you could get rid of all those millions of "bad Jews" that you don’t like, and now you feel liberated to scream those words from the rooftops.

Over the last few weeks, we Jews have been watching you, some of you that we considered to be friends, and we’ve seen many of you turn on us and spit out the most vile, hateful things about us.

And we know exactly what you will be doing when the next Nazi craze spreads like wildfire from country to country, throughout cities and towns.

You like to claim that you would have been punching Nazis in the face during World War II. You like to claim that you would have protected us. Some of you even like to claim that you would have sheltered us, like the heroes who hid Anne Frank.

But we know better.

No. That’s all just romantic bullshit that some of you like to tell yourselves to make yourselves feel important.

In reality, you would have been deciding who is a "good Jew" and who is a "bad Jew." You would have been deciding who you should rat out to the police for a reward. You wouldn’t be protecting us! You would be saying, "I really don't like that Jew. I’m going to go tell the Gestapo about them." Or worse, you would be saying, "Oh, that Jew over there, they’re just an animal. They’re barely human. The Nazis can kill them, I don’t care."

Most of the people who turned against their Jewish neighbors in Nazi occupied Europe weren't monstrous, inhuman beasts. Most of them were people, just like you, who had been conditioned to hate Jews by nearly two thousand years of Christian antisemitism coupled with a targeted campaign of white supremacist propaganda. This widespread antisemitism allowed the Nazis to transform an irrational and enculturated feeling of distrust towards Jews into a feeling of intense hatred, where gentiles demonized Jewish people and blamed "those Jews" for all the bad things that were happening in the world.

And the white supremacists are doing it again. And YOU are falling for their trap. Again!

Don't you get it? This is the oldest trick in the book! Periods of antisemitic violence usually erupt every 70-100 years or so, after most of the Jewish elders who hold the living memory of the last genocide have all passed away. And the Holocaust was 80 years ago. And here we are. Again.

And just like the Christians in Europe who turned on their Jewish neighbors, you are starting to turn on us.

You buy into antisemitic conspiracy theories, just like the white supremacists do.

You stand in the streets, screaming "gas the Jews" and "die Jews die."

You sound like the Proud Boys. You sound like Nazis. Do you even hear yourselves???

You pretend that all Jews are all a monolith and a hive mind, and you try to convince yourselves that we are all a proxy for the fucking Israeli government, which the vast majority of Jews fucking despise. If we could, trust me, most of us would strangle Netanyahu with our bare hands.

You celebrate Jewish deaths because you have convinced yourselves that killing a random Jewish civilian is "just the same" as killing Netanyahu, because you have manipulated yourselves into believing that all Jews are the Israeli government.

And you don't see how fucking STUPID that is!!

Jewish people are no more the Israeli government than YOU are YOUR government.

A people are NOT their government.

According to Tumblr statistics, nearly half of you reading this will be from the US. Shall I blame YOU personally for the actions of the US government? Of course fucking not! And you'd better fucking not blame random Jews for Netanyahu!

And some of you Jew-haters, in pretending that Jews are all a monolith and a hive mind, even say vile, antisemitic shit like, "Looks like the Jews are becoming the Nazis."

You choose those words carefully, twisting the Shoah, our greatest tragedy, into a knife. You try to weaponize the slaughter of our people against us. You try to reduce the 6 million of us who were murdered into a white supremacist meme.

YOU SOUND LIKE THE FUCKERS AT A TRUMP RALLY, FOR FUCKS SAKE. DO YOU EVEN HEAR YOURSELVES???

And you do that to dehumanize us. You do that to feel morally superior. You do that to feel less uncomfortable when you laugh at our deaths.

But we know that WE are not becoming Nazis. But YOU are. The reason you say that shit about us is because YOU are projecting YOUR insecurities onto us.

Because you know that you are slowly, insidiously being coopted by the Nazi ideology of David Duke and Richard Spencer.

And perhaps somewhere deep down, you feel uneasy about it. So you accuse Jews of being a monolith, a hive mind, and then you say stupid antisemitic shit like, "Maybe the Jews are the Nazis after all."

And you say that to yourselves so that you can turn off your empathy and celebrate as you watch us die.

What a disgusting way to try to absolve yourselves of YOUR guilt.

And we Jews are watching you. We’re watching you very carefully. And when the dust settles, you will have found that we have vanished from your life.

Very soon, you won’t see us again.

And no, that won't be because we'll be walking into the gas chambers, as much as you'd like us to, like some historical movie about the Holocaust that you watched when you were a child but turned off halfway through because you just didn't care.

NEVER AGAIN MEANS NEVER AGAIN.

As much as we know that you ENJOY watching our deaths (sanitized, of course, with a blur filter over the video so that you don’t have to feel too guilty about watching us being tortured and murdered), that’s not the reason you won’t be seeing us again.

The reason you won’t be seeing us again is because we will be walking out of YOUR life.

You have lost us as friends, and you might not even know it yet.

We are gone from your life, because we know that we can’t trust you.

We know that when the Nazis come to our community and march down the street hoisting their swastikas and doing their Sieg Heils (I've seen it with my own eyes) … when the Nazis harass us Jews in the street (I've seen it with my own eyes) … when the Nazis SHOOT US DEAD (it happened at a synagogue a block away from my synagogue, and many of those who saw it will never open their eyes again) — we know you won’t help us.

You will shove us into the line of fire.

And we know that you’ll absolve your conscience, so you won’t feel too bad about our deaths. You’ll tell yourselves, “It’s okay. Why should I have protected that one? That one was a bad Jew.”

We Jews see you. We see your hypocrisy on full display.

And we are telling you this:

If you see Jewish civilians being tortured and murdered, no matter what country they are from, and your first response is to CELEBRATE … if your first response is to post memes that say shit like, "The Jews fucked around and found out" … if your first response is to say that mass murdering Jews is "brutal but justified" … if your first response is to behave like a Q-Anon believer or a MAGA-hat wearing Republican and treat all Jews like we're a monolith, a hive mind…

When THAT is your response to seeing a tragedy unfolding, you are a FAILED ally, and a FAILED advocate.

You are an antisemite.

But mostly, you are just a really horrible, shitty person.

And we don’t want you in our life.

#jumblr #judaism #jewish #jewblr #a message to the next person who sends antisemitic bullshit to my inbox - at least don't be a fucking coward about it!#sending anon harassment like this is the most chickenshit thing you can do #and no i won't be turning off anon so that if there are more cowards who want to send anon messages i'll be able to block them #oh and as always i'll be monitoring the comments and if anyone posts antisemitic bullshit here i will be reporting and blocking you #antisemitism tw #holocaust tw #shoah tw #nazi tw

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mask131 · 2 months

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There is one thing people should get more accustomed to: when talking about a piece of folklore, of legend, of superstition, of anything - it should become to norm the add a brief explanation about the "why" of the folklore or superstition. The cultural, religious or historical context that explain it. Because there are a lot of people who just repeat some specific facts about myths or legends without explaining why it was so in the context, and as a result people lose a lot of background info needed to understand it.

For example, I'll invent an example: In France, an actor, a theater-performer, a comedian had much higher chances to become a vampire, just like people committing suicides. (I made this up, except for the suicide part, it was indeed believed people who died by suicide had a likely chance to return as vampires).

If people repeat this fact again and again because it was in the legend, in turn other people are going to say "Oh yes, being an actor was what caused the vampirism". When in fact no. Why would actors be more likely to become vampires? Because for centuries and centuries, in France, actors were not considered Christian people, were refused any right to be part of the Church or partake in religious rituals, and as such they were denied a proper grave in Christian soil, or a place into a cemetery. And thus just like suicides, they were buried in un-sacred, non-consecrated earth, outside of any proper funeral ritual - hence the threat of returning as an undead monster. [Note: While I invented the part about actors being vampires, the whole burial thing is actually true. Up until the late 18th century in France, actors were considered mortal sinners by virtue of doing theater, and thus they were refused all Christian rites and rituals, from weddings to funerals, and even the greatest and most beloved actors were thrown into large corpse-pits and unmarked crossroad-graves like vulgar criminals]

This is just an example, but this shows how an important thing when dealing with folklore and legendary beings and other traditions of various cultures is to place it back into the religious, social and historical context that explains it. Today a lot of people consider that blacksmiths should have been "good" people in terms of folkloric beliefs - because media popularized the idea for example of how iron was used to protect from fae, and how legendary blacksmiths forged the weapons of great heroes, and thus there is this tendency in folkloric-fiction to depict blacksmiths as these positive, helping figures. But a lot of people don't know that in some parts of Europe during specific centuries, blacksmiths were rather seen with suspicion, fear and dread if not hate - because due to them being these massive, powerful men wielding dangerous tools, due to them living by heat and fire and soot, due to them knowing a mysterious and hard craft some associated with things such as alchemy, there is a recurring belief that smiths were sorcerers, warlocks, or associated with the devil, or that they would return after their death as vampires.

But if you just say randomly "Oh yes, it was believed blacksmiths could return as vampires", people might read this as "It was the job of being a blacksmith that caused the vampirism", when in fact the real reason behind this belief was the smith's association with devilish/hellish elements like fire and flames and soot, and the equation of his secretive and marvelous craft with other mysterious prodigious arts like "magic". Hence a tradition of blacksmith-warlocks...

I have been using European vampire beliefs here, but the same can be applied to anything. Someone who doesn't know about the concept of "hubris" will misunderstood half of Greek mythology. Someone who doesn't know what is wrong with being "effeminate" in Old Norse society will miss half of the subtext of Norse mythology. Someone who doesn't know about the tradition of "Jack tales" will be quite puzzled upon finding so many folktales involving a "Jack"...

#folklore #legend #mythologies #vampires #explaining folklore #vampirism #superstitions #beliefs

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alicewritingstories · 4 months

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I finally started writing the fic I planned based on a combination of two of @kikker-oma's Whumptober arts!

First, Day 3: Make it stop/Empty Room + Moon.

They had been in this new Hyrule for two days and the overwhelming impression was simply that it was huge. Time wasn't sure how they could even begin to track down black-blooded monsters or this era's hero.

At least they had been able to get some directions at the odd horse-crested tent they had encountered earlier that day: the Dueling Peaks Stable, the man at the desk had proudly informed them. Another nearby whose entire job was apparently to give directions had pointed them to Kakariko Village just up the road, tucked away in the mountains.

This Hyrule was huge. By the time they trudged wearily into the village, night was falling. They treated themselves to beds in the inn, filling it to the point where Time ended up in his own tiny room in the attic. The innkeeper apologized as she put fresh blankets on the bed, but Time shook his head with a smile. "It's far better than many places I've slept," he said. "Thank you."

They ate dinner together - it was Time's turn to cook and he grilled some fish at the communal cooking fire, trying not to char them for once - then retired to bed early. Apparently this era's Impa was the village elder. In the morning, they would try to get an audience with her and find out more about this world.

Time removed his armor and flopped down on the bed, looking out of the curtainless window. The village was entirely surrounded by the odd, tall pillar-like mountains, but he could see some stars gleaming above the peaks. Below, he could hear the voices of his boys as they settled for bed and he smiled, his eyelid drooping wearily. Perhaps soon their group of eight would be nine. He wondered what the new hero would be like. A soldier like Warriors? They'd not seen much sign of organized armies. In this huge, sparse realm, he was probably a wanderer like Wind or Hyrule.

As he fell asleep, Time hoped he'd meet him soon.

He woke suddenly and his eye fell first on the window.

And on the moon glaring down from over the mountains.

It was blood-red.

Time bolted upright in bed, staring up at the moon, gasping for breath. This couldn't be real. He was dreaming. He had to be.

Still struggling for air, he raised a hand to pinch his arm. The sharp pain changed nothing, so he did it again, harder.

The moon above was still red.

Time felt like a hand was squeezing his throat. He twisted aside, swinging his legs off the bed and turning his back to the window, struggling to breathe, frozen as his mind stuttered.

He had to move.

You're not there.

He was frozen in place.

He could feel the seconds running by.

Where was his ocarina?

This village… They were all…

There's no face, it's not the same, it's not, it's not…

He stared at the red light on the floor.

He had to reach his boys before…

He had to…

Why can't I move?

#my fanfic #lu time #trauma tw #kikker oma

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mountymase · 1 year

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MAD ABOUT YOU - DAD!PULISIC

SUMMARY: Christian misses your son’s first steps but you’re there to make sure he knows he’s the best papa.

WARNINGS: slight sex mention.

AUTHOR: Reposting this because there was a major formatting error. I won’t take any responsibility for what thinking about Christian as a dad does to me. This is fiction, have fun.

Christian had been acting all weird lately and you knew why. Though he wasn’t treating you bad, he was… distant. He shut off. But all the time, he’d cup your face on his hands, look so deep into your eyes you’d feel like he was eating your soul, and tell you that you were the most perfect woman and mother in the world. And how much he loved you, so much it was nearly overwhelming. It eased the knot on your throat but then he distanced himself again, spend most of the time watching Liam, your 10 month old son, and every little move he made.

It seemed to amuse the little one, who was absolutely obsessed with his old man. Those two were like magnets. You were the love of Liam’s short life but his dad was clearly his hero, his best friend, from the very first kick when you were still carrying him and Christian used to talk to your bump.

It was when you were having breakfast and Christian had his eyes glued on Liam, barely touching his food, that you decided to finally say something. “I need you to talk to me, Christian.” As if he was waiting for it, he sighed and simply nodded, gaze lowering to his barely untouched food. He knew you were serious about it because you rarely called him Christian. “You have to say it, love. Don’t keep it to yourself.”

You reached out for his hand, brushing the back of his hand with your thumb. The slightest touch of your skin on his instantly made him relax. Christian was mad about you, his love language was touching you as much as he could, praising you. You were not only his fiancé, but also the person he trusted the most.

“I wasn’t here.” He started. “I wasn’t here, I missed my son’s first steps.” It seemed like he was almost embarrassed of finally say it. “What else am I going to miss because I’m away for a match? I’m feeling like the worst father, like I don’t give him enough of my time. I’m scared he won’t know how much I love him and how I’d jump in front of a bullet for him.” Each word just made him shrink a bit more until he was back looking at his food. The sound of Liam clapping to a bird that was near the window, making him giggle to a point he had to catch a breath, made Christian gulp. The sides of his lips curling into a smile. “Do you like the bird, buddy?”

“Dada!” Liam pointed at the bird, clapping again, now making Christian giggle. Your heart melted. Those interactions were pure joy.

Before Christian could go back to feeling awful about something that was far from being his fault, you stood up and walked towards him, sitting on his lap with your hands cupping his face. That man was so beautiful. “Baby…” Your man.

He raised an eyebrow, waiting for you to continue. “You can’t control everything,” Christian tried to look away, but you didn’t let him. “You won’t be able to control everything and be here 24/7, and I need you to understand that it’s fine.” He shook his head, disagreeing on you. “Yes, Christian. It is fine.”

“How can it be fine, me missing the most important things in his life?”

“You’re not, baby. It was just two clumsy steps, and I know it’s a huge thing but you’ve been here all the time. What if he had taken those steps while you were in the shower, or something? Children can’t be predicted.” He knew you were right, remembering you had missed Liam saying ‘mama’ for the first time because you were in the shower yourself. “You make this kid so happy, my love. So fucking happy, he’s mad about you.”

He sniffed. “Do you think so?”

“I know so.” You reassured, starting to spread soft and short kisses across his face. “You’re his best friend, his hero, the best papa in the world. He’s already so proud of you and I’m so happy it’s you, because you’re absolutely perfect and…” you sighed.

“And?”

Your cheeks flushed a bit. “I get so horny seeing how great you are with him, I want to have all the babies with you.”

Christian wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you closer as he simply touched your lips with his. “Woman, I love you so fucking much. We can definitely have the most fun trying to make those babies, and I won’t mind seeing your bump growing again when I put another one in you.”

“Gosh, you’re such a soft perv…” You both giggled, and even more when Liam kept clapping in approval each time you did, enjoying how happy his parents were. “I love you too.”

#christian pulisic #christian pulisic fanfic #christian pulisic imagine #christian pulisic x reader #dad!pulisic

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mylight-png · 6 months

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I just got a stupid reblog saying that "Hamas doesn't want to kill Jews it wants to get rid of colonialist Zionists" and shit. I've already addressed that, being indigenous to Israel, we literally cannot be colonists there, and the history confirms this. That is not the point of this post, however.

If the antisemites will not take my word for it, maybe they will listen to their beloved "resistance group" Hamas and when they are clear about their goals.

So, with that being said, let's take a look at their founding charter, shall we?

"The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:

'The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.' (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem)."

Hmmm. Yes, they definitely only want to get rid of Zionists. For sure. That's why the word "Zionist" was mentioned so many times in this statement of genocidal intent. For sure. (Sarcasm, by the way.)

Let's take a look at another part, hm?

"Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps."

Right yes, their struggle is against the Zionists. Not the Jews. For sure. How could I not have seen this before? (Again, sarcasm. Obviously.)

They also mention Jews in addition to Israelis and Zionists as a group of the people they don't like, as well as Christians, such as here:

"'But the Jews will not be pleased with thee, neither the Christians, until thou follow their religion; say, The direction of Allah is the true direction. And verily if thou follow their desires, after the knowledge which hath been given thee, thou shalt find no patron or protector against Allah.'"

Uh. Who is gonna tell them that Jews do not seek to convert anyone? (They might just be referring to Christians, I'll give them that.) However, they still do very clearly vilify those who do not subscribe to their beliefs, and it almost seems as if they wish to violently convert them. Y'know, with the "thou shalt find no patron or protector against Allah". Just saying.

So yeah. Hamas aren't your "freedom fighter" heroes. They are a terrorist group based in genocidal intent.

If you ignore this and fail to condemn them, maybe you just hate Jews. Just saying.

I feel like I'm being a lot more... Not blunt, but I suppose more sassy? With my tone? If that makes sense? But you know what, I'm so fed up with these people not bothering to read a document that is incredibly easy to find online. How can you support something you know nothing about?

So yeah. Hamas's original founding document says it all.

The Antizionism movement is founded, steeped, and marinated in antisemitism.

#jumblr #jewish #judaism #jew #opinion #proud israeli #israel solidarity #discourse #fuck hamas #fuck antisemitism #jewish and proud #antisemitism has no place here #antisemitism #antizionism is antisemitism

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writingwithcolor · 1 year

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Hello! I am currently developing a villain oc for a universe where superpowers are a normal part of human history and happen regular citizens, written primarily from the perspective of the villains. However, after doing some research, I worry that I may have accidentally made the main villain as an antisemetic character, specifically which dealing with blood libel.

The main villain is an older woman who’s main goal is to stay young in an attempt to live forever, as well as grow extremely rich. Her power allows her to drain the life force of others which kills them and also in turn makes her stronger and younger. She also mainly commits large-scale heists and has gathered herself quite the pool of wealth. To aid her in her plan to become as rich as possible, she had begun to target very young children with powerful abilities and trained them to become near-perfect killing machines.

Now, I feel like it is important to note that:

- She does not harm the children, especially not with her power

- She does not consume blood

- None of her physical features are Jewish-Coded

But even so, I worry that, with the combination of her targeting children, having a near-obsession with wealth, and her power being the ability to drain people of their life energy, that it may come across as antisemetic, which is in no way my intention. Do you have any advice on what I can do to fix this, or is it okay as it is?

Is my villain protagonist playing into blood libel tropes?

Thank you for catching this! You are spot on, all three of those characteristics (stealing children, hoarding wealth and draining others of life) are antisemitic tropes, especially when used together. I’m also getting strong Mother Gothel vibes from this, so you might want to research what Jewish people have said about that character for more insight.

An easy fix is to deliberately and explicitly distance this character from Judaism, probably by having her be part of another religion (though not a real-life marginalised religion or one that could be read as similar to Judaism, please!).

It would also help to have some actually Jewish characters who play positive roles. As a villain, she could even be hostile to these characters to create even more distance.

Good luck and thanks again for spotting this in time!

Shoshi

Agreeing with Shoshi here--in the past, when a villainous character has been in danger of reinforcing antisemitic tropes, I’ve also advised having that character specifically and overtly practice Christianity albeit perhaps in a warped way; specifically Christianity because Christianity originated and perpetuates the blood libel trope in the first place. If you’re writing in a world without real-world religions, avoiding associating this character with an in-universe marginalized religion or ethnic group (or more to the point, specifying her membership in a dominant religious or ethnic group) may serve the same purpose.

Likewise, if you’re writing in a world with real-world religions, having heroic Jewish characters directly opposing her and citing Jewish values as their motivation does a lot to negate any assumption that you intended your villain to be a statement in support of antisemitism. If you’re writing in a world without real-world religions, I’m going to link you to this ask as a caveat:

Jewish characters in a universe with author-created fictional pantheons

But if there is a marginalized religion or ethnic group in your story that does echo Jewish ideas or is overtly Jewish-coded, having heroes with a strong connection with this culture may serve.

Meir

#antisemitism #Jewish #Blood libel #Villains #Jewish tropes #Jewish stereotypes #asks

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vivwritesfics · 7 months

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Could do a mini vestappen where he’s older and crashes and max is worried or he’s sick and still tries to race either one you choose!🩵

Prodigy

I think I understood this request right. If I didn't then I'm so sorry

When Fabian Verstappen turned eighteen, he had his debut season in Formula One. Everybody was proud of him, but no one more than his mother and father.

Fabians debut season just so happened to be Max's last season in the sport. It was odd, father and son racing against each other. Fabian didn't often race against his father, though. He was stuck in the mid field while Max was up front with the top teams.

Y/N spent her time wearing Fabian's team colours. It was something she and Max had spoken about at great length when Fabian first got signed. As much as Max wanted his wife there, supporting him, he understood.

During Fabian's debut season, he shared a podium with his father. It was a truly magical moment, Max and Fabian spraying the champagne onto each other.

After Fabian's rookie season, Max retired. His retirement was later than anybody had expected, especially after having Fabian and his sister (who was given the choice between coming to watch her brother race or staying at her grandma's. She chose her grandma).

When Max retired, the sport lost a hero. So, they looked to Fabian. Fabian got his fathers seat in Red Bull Racing after he retired. His parents attended every race he went to, both of them wearing Red Bull shirts with Fabians number on them.

With Max now being retired, it meant he had time to follow his sons career around the globe. Most expected him to make a return like Alonso, but Max knew it was Fabian's time to shine.

Max knew the circuits better than anybody else. He knew which ones his son would excel around, but he also knew which ones were the most dangerous. He never let it show on his face how nervous he was, not when he knew how much it would upset his wife.

Singapore and Spa were the circuits which had Max the most panicked. In the Red Bull garage, he and Y/N watched as Fabian raced around, the lead car on the grid.

"Like father like son," Y/N said as she leaned against Max. It was raining, making the Verstappens all that more nervous. Fabian hadn't get come in for a pair of wet tires. His mother was ready to have a heart attack.

On the wet track, the Red Bull car spun. It span, the rear end hitting the wall. The back of the car completely disappeared as the barrier pushed it back around. "Fabi!" Cried Y/N, pushing away from her husband.

Max had to hold Y/N back as they looked to the engineer. "Is everything alright, Fabian?" He asked. No response. "Fabian? Can you hear me? Let me know you're all right."

Again, silence.

All Y/N could do was watch the screen focused on his car. Fabian hadn't yet climbed out of his car; Y/N chewed on her nails as she waited. When the other cars came past, her heart felt like it was leaping out of her chest with anxiety.

There was a crackling on the radio. "Don't tell Christian, but I may have fucked up the car," came Fabian's voice.

The engineered turned around to give Fabian's parents the good news. Y/N let out a cry, ready to fall to her knees. She watched her son climb out of the car and give the crowd a thumbs up.

The entire incident had called for a red flag. An ambulance and a car were sent out to Fabian, but the Dutchman refused the ambulance, instead getting in the car to drive back to the paddock.

Y/N and Max were waiting anxiously for Fabian to return. When the young driver did, he walked towards his parents and pulled off his helmet. "Fabi," said Y/N, taking his face in her hands. She kissed him all over his face smoothed down his sweat slicked hair.

Placing his hand on his shoulder, Max pulled Fabian in for a hug. "I'm so proud of you," he whispered, squeezing him tight.

"Thank you, papa."

#max verstappen #max verstappen imagine #max verstappen x reader #max verstappen x female reader #max verstappen fluff #max verstappen x you #max verstappen smut #f1 #f1 imagine #f1 x reader #formula one #formula one x reader #formula one imagine #formula 1 #formula 1 imagine #formula 1 x reader #mv1 #mv1 imagine #mv1 x reader

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astoundingbeyondbelief · 1 month

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Kaiju Week in Review (March 17-23, 2024)

Mere days to go before a new Godzilla movie... didn't we just do this?

Before we welcome that latest entry, let's look back on one that just commemorated its golden anniversary. With Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla turning 50 on March 21, every member of Toho's Big Five has now hit the half-century mark. The company didn't mark the day itself with much; as has become typical, the celebration of Mechagodzilla (and presumably King Caesar) will be spread throughout the year. I wrote a bit about the magnificent machine, who I consider the best Godzilla antagonist, here. The film itself is one of Teruyoshi Nakano's masterpieces, an onslaught of animated rays and gorgeous explosions. The humans are forgettable, but they keep the pace brisk—and the alien commander Mugal is almost as devilish a villain as Mechagodzilla itself, especially in the English dub. Speaking of that dub, you can watch a video breaking down the entire voice cast here, thanks to the tireless work of the Save All Dubs! group.

Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong #6 finally gets to the good stuff, with Lex Luthor piloting Mechagodzilla and commanding an army of Titans to raze Metropolis while the heroes counter with not one but two giant robots. It doesn't quite measure up to the Godzilla: Rulers of Earth finale, but like that double-sized issue, it required two artists (Christian Duce joined by Tom Derenick) to draw all those characters, and the results are impressive. The story hasn't grown any more complex, but I'm at least interested to see how it all wraps up.

In other Godzilla comic news, a Godziban manga by Sakuju Koizumi has started up, hosted by Telemaga, a tokusatsu-focused Kodansha site. The first installment was pretty short, so I'm guessing these'll be updated weekly. It isn't the first comic version of Godziban, as one called Godziman ran during the 1st Season, but this one's actually illustrated.

youtube

Tokyo's Ikebukuro district made Godzilla the honorary chief of police on March 16 to take part in a parade promoting traffic safety. The stunt made international headlines and generated no small amount of angst over Cop Godzilla. I think Gamera would've been better-suited to this campaign myself.

youtube

Here's the trailer for Season 2 of Chibi Godzilla Raids Again, revealing Gabara, Gigan, and Titanosaurus's designs. Looks as funny as the first one. Maaya Uchida, who sang the ending songs in SSSS.Gridman and SSSS.Dynazenon, will voice Chibi Minilla. It's gone weirdly neglected by English Godzilla social media accounts, but X user @MakoMattari translated it.

The Music Box Theatre in Chicago has a Godzilla program for the ages scheduled for June 7-13, in honor of his 70th birthday. There's not a weak day on the schedule, but the clear highlight is a 24-hour marathon of the entire Showa series on the 8th, which I don't think has ever been attempted before.

G-Fest has also started announcing guests: Ayako Fujitani (Asagi in the Heisei Gamera trilogy) and Rie Ota (Baragon in GMK), both first-timers. Frankly, they could carry the con themselves if they have to; not sure who I'm more excited to meet!

#kaiju week in review #godzilla vs. mechagodzilla #justice league vs. godzilla vs. kong #chibi godzilla raids again #gfest #godziban #godzilla #kaiju

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astxrwar · 3 months

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drops of blood [1/4]

SYNOPSIS: Bucky Barnes has some wires crossed. He fixates on a barista at a coffee shop near his apartment, and tells himself it's fine as long as he keeps his distance. Except you keep making that distance smaller.

Rating: M

Word Count: 7k

CONTENT WARNINGS: Off-screen violence. Series will enter gray territory in later chapters; angsty guilt-ridden stalking, exhibitionism, consensual-but-not-safe-or-sane vibes all the way down. teehee.

Read on AO3

[ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ]

When you’re a teenager— no, not even, when you’re a preteen, in middle school— a crew of surveyors for a Russian oil company finds a plane frozen in the Arctic. You’d just finished up the section on World War Two in history class; two weeks ago you’d been sitting in a hard-backed chair with the lights off trying not to fall asleep while watching a Netflix documentary about the life and death of Steve Rogers, the prototypical American Hero, that your teacher put on presumably to get out of having to actually teach. You had to fill out a worksheet about it. You had homework asking about the ways that national ideals of heroism have changed over time. You spent a whole class period talking about that, comparing and contrasting Captain America and Iron Man. You had to write a five-paragraph essay about whether or not you thought the American Hero archetype would even exist without Captain America’s death.

Except Captain America is not dead.

Captain America is alive.

It is 2012, and a lot of things are popular. The Hunger Games. Gangnam Style. The new Batman movie, the one with Christian Bale. A type of teenage and pre-teenage girl exists—has existed, will continue to exist— and while there was NSYNC and Backstreet Boys and whatever the fuck else in the 90s; right now there’s Twilight and One Direction and Justin Bieber.

Captain America comes out of the ice. Captain America is 6’4 and muscular and blond and blue-eyed and unfailingly kind, and then he goes on to join up with a bunch of other people—superheros— and saves the world.

The end result, the one that anyone with a brain could have seen coming a mile off, the one that gets referenced by late-night talk-show hosts and poked at in grocery-store gossip rags and sometimes said outright in interviews with the guy on national television, is that Steve Rogers— Captain America— kind of ends up rounding out the “teenage girl obsessions during the ‘10s” list.

And—

Well.

You were never big on any of that.

Your friends were, though, and so you let yourself be dragged through the onslaught of new Netflix specials and you dutifully and appropriately emoji-reacted to every Battle of New York youtube compilation and Vine edit they sent to you and you even went to the movies to watch the new remastered docudrama about the life and now the not-death of Steve Rogers, and—

You never really liked blonds, so.

His friend, though—

His friend was kind of cute.

Sergeant James Barnes. Twenty-eight, dark-haired and blue-eyed and attractive, in a charming, boyish kind of way.

Fast forward ten years. There’s some weird drama with a helicarrier and some entirely anticlimactic fight at an airport and then an alien kills half the population of the world and then they all come back again, courtesy of Iron Man’s sacrifice and your middle school history teacher one-hundred-percent predicting the future with the whole “the American Hero trope is dependent on the hero’s death” shit that you totally didn’t understand at the ripe age of twelve—

Anyway. Life happens, basically. You grow up. You’re not even friends with those girls anymore. Not uncommon. And that crush on cute little baby-faced James Buchanan Barnes lasted all of something like three months— one of those fleeting childhood infatuations you have on people who are safely unobtainable, like rock stars or fictional characters or guys who are very, very dead— after which time you never really thought about it again.

And now you’re twenty-three and working closing shifts at a coffee shop in Brooklyn while figuring out what your life trajectory is even going to be, adjusting as best you can to your fucking daily customer base having quite literally doubled in the last six months, that part of you that’d read his entire wikipedia page on a phone with an actual physical slide-out keyboard at two in the morning an entire eleven years ago so far away it feels like something even less than a memory.

Except one night in April this guy walks in. He’s dark-haired and blue-eyed and wearing a leather jacket and matching gloves; he comes up to the counter and he makes startlingly unbreaking eye contact that freaks you out a teensy bit— a lot— and orders a coffee, black, and nothing else, and you stare right back kind of temporarily immune to the weirdness of it because you know him, why do you know him—

It clicks as you’re pouring the coffee into a reinforced cardboard cup and it stuns you so completely that you almost overfill it and wind up less than a second away from burning the shit out of your hand.

Sergeant James Barnes.

He looks the same, kind of, but also not at all— you sneak glances at him while you fumble for a lid, the harsher angles of his cheekbones and the wider set of his jaw, the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and the lines setting into his forehead and the way he doesn’t really have any of the baby fat left in his face that he had in all the photos you’d seen of him.

“Thanks,” he says, when you give him his coffee.

His smile, or his attempt at it, looks more like a grimace than anything.

You expect him to leave, then, but he doesn’t— he goes over to one of the tables in the lobby, the one by the window in the corner of the room, and he sits there and he drinks his coffee and he stares out at the street. It’s dark already; late November, almost December, the solstice approaching. It’ll be a long while before it’s still light later than 4:30.

He stays there for a long time, and the awareness of him prickles at the nape of your neck as you work, filling orders for a dwindling trickle of customers and starting the long and arduous process of cleaning up everything for close.

Sometime around 9:30 you go into the back to try to get started on dishes; the doorbell chimes when you’re about halfway through, and you grumble under your breath and rinse soap suds off of your forearms and resolve to pretend you hadn’t lost track of the hose and accidentally soaked the whole of your shirt from about the sternum down—

There’s nobody waiting at the counter when you come out, though.

And Sergeant James Barnes is gone.

You expect it to be one of those things. Everyone in New York has one of those things. They’re great party stories. One time I sat next to Denzel Washington on the subway. Michael Keaton bought a phone from me when I worked at Apple in Midtown. I ran into Steve Buscemi at this one mom-and-pop bagel place.

I served coffee to Captain America’s not-dead friend in Brooklyn.

Except next week, same day, he’s there again.

The lady in front of him is getting something stupid complicated and being annoying about it. Two pumps caramel, two pumps vanilla, two creams and two skim milk, three sugars and make sure to melt it first, if you don’t, I’ll know, Jesus Christ, make your coffee at home—

The guy who is maybe potentially Barnes laughs.

You said that out loud, apparently. Mumbled it under your breath, or something, quiet enough that the lady hadn’t heard, just shot you a suspicious look and sipped at her drink and then left without a thank-you, apparently satisfied. It’s just you and him now, your coworker off doing food prep in the back room and the lobby empty.

Somehow, he’d heard you. And he’d laughed. It was a weird sound, sharp and rough and cut short like he hadn’t meant to and like he’d tried to make himself stop; his expression is flat, and he’s not smiling, but there’s something— lighter, about it, than when you’d seen him last.

“Black coffee?” you blurt out, before he can say anything.

He blinks. He’s doing that thing again— the staring.

“Easy to remember,” you say, by way of explanation. “Simple.”

His mouth twitches at the corners, not really a smile, yet, but still— something. That lightness to his expression, impassive as it is, hasn’t faded. “Yeah, just black,” he says. “Thanks.”

You make it for him— ‘make’ is a stretch, you pour it, and that’s all, really— and he takes it back to that same spot by the window in the corner, nurses it as he looks out into the street, the sky cast that bruised purple color when the sun’s gone below the horizon but the light hasn’t faded, yet.

You try not to stare.

Same deal as the last time; he stays.

“Hey,” your coworker’s voice drifts from the back room, “You want to sweep the lobby or do the dishes?”

“Lobby,” you reply, extremely fast, thinking about last time and the hose mishap and how your shirt hadn’t dried until basically the end of your shift, but also thinking about maybe-Barnes sitting by the window and how part of you really fucking wants to know. Even if it’s not him, if it’s just some particularly uncanny lookalike, you wonder if it happens a lot. The being mistaken.

You make it through about maybe five minutes of actual lobby-sweeping before you become physically incapable of resisting your curiosity.

“I always got pretty good marks in history,” is what you tell him. Because saying “are you Seargant Barnes” seems kind of— rude.

He stiffens, and he drums his gloved fingers on the lid of his coffee cup, and he doesn’t look up or say a word.

“Your photo was in a bunch of the textbooks,” you add, twisting your grip on the broom handle, back and forth. It’s definitely him. The haircut. His face. Older, a lot less boyish, but the same eyes. “Sergeant Barnes. 107th.”

He doesn’t look at you. Speaks very deliberately. “Are you going to tell anyone?”

There’s this bright jolt of satisfaction at being right, followed pretty quickly by a pang of guilt at the thought you’d irritated him.

“Oh—um, no, definitely not, I’m sure it’s— annoying, probably, getting recognized,” you say, stumbling over the words. “I— sorry, I shouldn’t have— bothered you.”

He does look at you, then. He stares. You’d been fidgeting, still, but under the force of his gaze every muscle in your body goes tense and still, frozen solid, and nerves prickle up at the back of your neck, raising the hairs there. You have to fight back the urge to shiver.

“No,” he says. “It’s never happened before. Don’t— don’t be sorry.”

You open your mouth. Close it again. Your hands resume their twisting around the broom handle before you abruptly decide you do need to actually finish the chore you’d set out to do.

You tell him one last thing, before you go back to it. You’d always kind of felt weird about saying this kind of stuff; it gets touchy, particularly after Vietnam. Not really a great practice to get into, the whole “thank you for your service” schtick, because a lot of them don’t see it that way, and every war after that was even more complicated and your opinions on those are— similarly complicated. But World War 2– that was different. It wasn’t US military overreach. It was necessary. And he’d been drafted, you remembered that.

“Hey,” you say, very soft. “I just— Thanks. For— you know. Serving, when your numbers came up. It couldn’t have been easy, I mean.” you clear your throat, shift your weight, suddenly feeling very self-aware. “Coffee’s on me, next time, okay?”

Something flickers across his expression, like a ripple over the surface of a lake. Whatever it was, it’s gone before you can make sense of it.

You spend most of the week thinking he won’t come back next Friday. But he does. There’s nobody in front of him in line, this time, and like the time before your coworker is off in the back, which means it’s easy to slip him his coffee and conveniently forget to ring it out.

“Thanks,” he tells you, his voice a lot quieter. Softer, too.

You smile at him. His mouth twitches back, like maybe he’s not sure if he should return it, but wants to.

He takes the seat by the window again.

He keeps coming back. You try to make small talk but it feels stilted and awkward. It kind of makes you sad, a little bit, seeing him sitting there for hours, alone.

On your day off, in early January, you go grocery shopping.

You spend about 25$ in total and you make a split second decision to grab something out of the ordinary that’s on-sale. Dude was raised during the Great Depression, you guess he’s not the most experienced in the realm of the great big world of Weird Things You Can Purchase At The Modern Day Grocery Store. It’s meant to be a sort of peace offering, a look-I-can-be-normal-about-it, let’s-be-friends kind of deal, if he’s going to keep hanging around the coffee shop. You’re not sure if he, like— wants that, friends, or if maybe it’s just that he doesn’t want to be alone, but you figure it’s worth a shot.

Part of it is that he interests you. Part of it is that your job, as much as it sucks less than a lot of other service jobs, is very mundane, very normal, often very boring, and James Buchanan Barnes being a regular customer is easily the most interesting and least boring thing that has ever happened to you at work. Or— ever, honestly.

And maybe that’s selfish, to want to talk to him for that reason, but— whatever.

On Friday, like last week, you get there and you clock in and you try to casually scan the lobby, the floor littered with straw wrappers and crumpled napkins and empty sugar packets, the tables tacky with flavored syrup and coffee stains that you’d need to clean later, chairs around them arranged haphazardly and not pushed in, and—

And in the back corner, sitting low in his seat, baseball cap tugged down and shade over his eyes and fingers drumming restlessly against the side of a paper coffee cup, is James Buchanan Barnes.

The excitement you feel, then, is not really the kind you’d expected to— the last time you’d thought about him had been middle school, and even if it’d been just that three months, you remember with startling clarity that girlish, daydreamy kind of interest, how it felt, pleasant and mild and entirely harmless. Whatever you feel right now is not like that at all. It’s sharp and it’s visceral and it’s real, not a fantasy or the result of your imagination, not directed towards some fiction of a person that functioned as a safe receptacle for the things going on inside your head, but an actual individual human being.

It’s just interest, just curiosity, what you feel— you don’t have a crush on him, it’s not like you’re still in middle school and still interested, like that, in even just the general category of person that crush had represented. And the person sitting in the lobby isn’t the person– the fiction– you’d even felt that type of way about, anyways. You don’t know him, and he’s obviously nothing like the guy memorialized in every Captain America docudrama miniseries on Netflix. No, James Buchanan Barnes is a real human being, a very different human being, one that’s a stranger to you and you think— you guess— probably just as much of a stranger to that other, safer, softer, more boyish version of himself.

You keep thinking about how he looked at you, unbroken and unwavering and eerily fucking precise, how his eyes hadn’t even move at all, focused so intently that it’d made the hairs on the back of your neck raise and goosebumps prickle across the tops of your shoulders and all the way down your arms and your gut instinct yell, loudly, there is something not right about this guy!

You’d read his Wikipedia article again. It’s been updated since; lots of shit came out since 2012. You’d heard about the Winter Soldier stuff, but reading about it in detail— it’s bad. There are probably several things that are not exactly right about him, now. That’s fine, though. The way the world is these days, there’s stuff not right about everyone.

You’re occupied with a steady and annoyingly constant stream of customers until about 8:00, making coffees and sandwiches and trading on and off with your coworker in the back room, where you’re trying to get the brunt of the stocking and dishwashing done before they leave at 8:30. You’d been fucking busy, and you’re annoyed, you got cream from the dispenser machine all up one of the sleeves of your sweater so you’d had to take it off, and there’s fucking caramel sauce stuck to the hairs on the flat of your forearm near your wrist and gluing them to your skin and that grocery bag of fruit is sitting on the back table next to your jacket and your gross sweater and your house keys and it’s staring at you. Accusingly.

Your coworker leaves.

You steal a careful glance over the coffee machines at the lobby, just checking, just to make sure that he’s still—

And he is.

Cool.

It takes you a few minutes to kind of— dredge up the guts to go talk to him, another few more for the last trickle of late-night coffee-getters to start to finally taper out, and then you do it. You gather your resolve and your nerve and whatever else, courage, too, probably, and you go out into the lobby and you stand in front of his table and you wait for him to, eventually, look up from where he’s been staring, kind of sullen-looking, out of the window.

“I looked it up,” you blurt out when he does, before you can think better of it, “Online. Apparently supply chains were really small, in like. The 30s. So people could get stuff, right, but a lot more of it was— local. You know that, obviously, but, um.”

He just looks at you. Unblinking.

“Anyway,” you say, trying to ignore the weird kind of twisty feeling of your nerves in the pit of your stomach; jesus christ, he stares, a lot, “Anyway, I had this neighbor when I was a kid, right, and he was— his family, they were refugees. Immigrants. He was learning English, but I made friends with him by using my allowance to buy things at the grocery store, like, weird things, stuff that he’d never had before. So we could— try it. For– fun. And I thought– well. There was a sale, today, so.”

You gesture to your hand; awkwardly, helplessly, god, this is weird, like ice-breakers on hard mode, if the ice were less like a frozen-over pond and more like one of those miles-deep Antarctic glaciers. A tissue-thin plastic bag, the knotted top of it held in your fist, the lone fruit inside just kind of– sitting there.

He finally blinks, and then he shifts back in his chair, and he looks at you some more, his gaze unwavering and solid and heavy like it has actual, physical weight to it, like it’s pressing down on your shoulders and forcing you into the ground. “Are you— have you been trying to make friends with me?” he says, in a tone that’s kind of incredulous and a lot disbelieving and tells you absolutely nothing about whether or not he’d actually be amenable to that.

Whatever.

Fuck it, you think, and then you lift your chin and you meet his eyes and you make yourself stare right back, stubborn and deliberately unflinching. “Yeah,” you tell him. “I have.”

His expression– it’d been flat, impassive and unreadable, but something cuts right across it for a fraction of a second when you say that, quick and sure as a knife. For that one heartbeat of a moment he looks expressive and alive– you think he might even look stricken, actually, and you wonder far too late if maybe this had been a mistake, if you’d upset him. Done something wrong.

But then it’s gone, so quickly that you think you must have imagined it.

He leans back in his chair, and he looks down at his empty coffee cup as he taps it absently against the table, like he’s thinking it over. When he looks back at you the sum of his features are wholly neutral, except for his mouth, which is quirked up at the corners, just a little– not a smile, not with the way his lips are pressed together, into a hard, unwavering line, but it doesn’t look like something bad, either. It doesn’t look negative.

“Okay,” he says. “All right, shoot.” He jerks his chin towards the bag in your hand. “What’ve you got?”

You tear the side of it with your fingernails and dump the contents on the table. “Pomegranate. Had one before?”

His mouth twitches up more, and this time it does look like a smile, the beginnings of one, like he’s repressing it. He clicks his tongue and stretches his legs out under the table and shakes his head, just a little. “Yep,” he says. “Struck out on your first try.”

“No way Mr. Great Depression is more worldly than me.” You decide you’re going to interpret that as an agreeable reaction. There’s only one chair at his table, so you drag one over from nearby, the legs making this awful grinding sound against the tile floor. “I’ve never had one, so I’m taking half. Only fair.”

You fumble in your pocket for your knife to cut into it. He stares at it, when you pull it out, and then stares at you, “What do you have that for?”

Some nameless tension inside of you unwinds at the realization that he’s not just sitting there in stone-faced silence, anymore.

“Walk home after close,” you reply with an easy shrug; the conversation no longer feels like the world’s most awkward one-person performance or like actually physically pulling teeth, and that’s— pretty cool. Feels like a victory. “I usually finish at like, eleven-thirty. Not super dangerous, or anything, but better safe than sorry.”

Barnes makes a disapproving sound— what you think is a disapproving sound— under his breath when you flick the blade open, and grabs the pomegranate from the center of the table. “Too short,” he says, jerking his chin at it in your hand, “Gonna be a pain in the ass, let me.”

The knife that he pulls from what you think must be a sheath on his boot is a straight blade without a handguard, matte black and tapered to a point and without a doubt longer than four inches. Long enough to halve the pomegranate in one clean cut, sharp enough to bite into the laminate surface of the table underneath, just a little.

“That’s definitely not street legal,” you say, mostly joking.

Barnes stares at you. It takes you a second to realize that’s— new. Relatively speaking.

“New York made anything over four inches illegal, plus butterfly knives and switchblades,” you inform him. “I think in the 50s.”

He makes some noncommittal sound of what you assume is probably distaste, and stows the knife back in his boot.

“Don’t worry,” you say, “I’m not a snitch.”

He doesn’t smile, but his expression lightens a little.

On the table, the pomegranate is split neatly in half, and the little pebbled fruits inside the open skin glint in the warm light from the overhead fixtures. Like flecks of garnet. Or drops of blood.

“Could get these in the fall, sometimes,” he says, looking down at it. “Used to pick the bits out with a sewing needle. Made it last all afternoon.”

Your brain conjures up the image of the baby-faced Barnes, maybe sitting on the curb or the front steps of a building. You wonder what the details of the memory are. You wonder if little scrawny Steve had been there, or if he’d been alone.

You don’t ask.

“I don’t have a sewing needle,” is what you do say, “But—“ your nametag is clipped to your shirt, a flat slip of plastic with a pin on the back, and you unfasten it and slide it across the table.

Behind you, the door hinges creak and the bell chimes and you sigh, long-suffering, and get to your feet with an exaggeratedly affected eye-roll.

“I’ll be back,” you tell him, “Customer.”

You go to take the order and then midway through making it the doorbell sounds again. Midway through making that, same deal. This happens, at night, a trickle of customers just fast enough to keep you working nonstop, now that you’re the only person running the store. It goes on for something like ten minutes, which irritates the shit out of you despite the fact that it is technically your job. It’s nine-thirty at night and you’ve been at work for six hours and what you want to be doing is picking this dude’s brain, not making fucking coffee and bagels.

And also because a part of you is aware that he usually leaves around now.

He’s still there, though, when you come back; on the table there’s the husk of one half of the pomegranate, this pale and washed-out color like corn silk, and a neat pile of seeds on a recycled-paper napkin. Barnes has the other half and he’s poking out little grains of red with the safety-pin end of your name tag and biting the pieces off the tip, breaking the fragile skin between his teeth. He looks— calmer. Kind of wistful.

You realize this must be the first time he’s done this since he was a child, all the way back in a Brooklyn that doesn’t look anything like this one. Living alongside different people. Walking different streets. Breathing different air.

“That’s for you,” he says, nodding at the little bits of red, the empty husk, “I thought— since you’re working.”

You blink at him, and then you smile, a small, grateful one. Something flashes in his eyes, when you do; you aren’t paying much attention to it, still thinking about him, being so out of time. How strange this all must be. How much you really did mean it when you said you wanted to be his friend.

Barnes seems to realize when he brings the pin to his mouth again that it’s attached to your nametag. “Sorry,” he says, stilted and stiff and awkward-sounding, again, “I— you probably don’t want this back, now.”

“‘S fine, you can throw it out, if you want— I have so many.”You slide back into the chair and fish out of your apron pocket a blank one that you’d grabbed from the back, not knowing he’d gone and picked all the seeds out of your half already. “I forget them in my pockets, they keep ending up in the washing machine.”

His expression relaxes, a little. He catches the kernel of fruit at the end of the pin between his teeth and bites down until there’s a burst of red in his mouth. Stabs another, works it free of the shell, the flimsy little white membrane around it wilting in on itself. You watch him do that for a minute, contemplative and silent. His mouth is red. His tongue, too, when it darts across his bottom lip. Makes you think about rocket pops from the ice cream truck in the summer. Makes you wonder if they had those, back then.

“Did all that work for nothing, huh?” he says, after a while. You startle out of your thoughts and blink at him, nonplussed; he glances down at the pile of seeds on the napkin. “Thought you wanted to try it.”

“Oh,” you say, eloquently. “Oh, yeah. Duh.”

The first gem-glittering marble of fruit is softer than you’d expected and ruptures between your thumb and forefinger, staining the pads of them all red. You think about summer, as a kid, when you’d fall and scrape your hands on the asphalt hard enough that they bled. It’s almost the same color.

The second time the seed is firmer and it bursts sharp and tart and faintly sweet between your teeth. “Kind of like cranberries,” you say, taking another.

The pile is gone quickly, leaving just the napkin, the juice, like a dark wine stain. You lick your fingers clean. He’d been staring, the way he kind of always stares, but when your lips close around your thumb, he looks away.

You learn a bunch about food in the 1940s, mostly by accident.

Mangoes were a thing; they’d had some growing down in Florida, and you could get them seasonally. Pineapples used to be so rare that rich people would display the whole fruit as a centerpiece at parties and things, way back in the very early 1900s and up through the Great Depression, too; but by the time the 30s rolled around you could get the canned kind at the store. Watermelon was a thing, too, but they all had the solid, jet-black seeds you weren’t supposed to swallow; somebody’d bred those out of the commercial ones sometime after Barnes had slipped out of time.

“I gotta just go straight for the really fucking weird stuff,” you muse, mostly to yourself. It’s late and it’s quiet in the shop and it’s raining outside, the street slick and black and reflecting the light from the lampposts. He stays later, now, leaves closer to 10:30; you’re kind of proud of that. That he seems to like you, your company. Or at least doesn’t dislike it.

“You could just ask,” he says, sounding just the slightest bit exasperated, “If I’ve had something before.”

“No,” you tell him, deeply serious, “No, that fucking ruins it, Barnes, it ruins the surprise.”

He looks at you blankly. A few seconds too late, you realize you’ve never actually said that, out loud. His name. You don’t call him Sergeant in your head anymore, it seems too formal, but James seems too intimate, and you hadn’t asked— hadn’t wanted to ask, hadn’t wanted to pry— if he still thinks of himself as Bucky.

He doesn’t say anything.

Barnes it is, then.

Gooseberries used to be way more popular, all the way up into the 1920s, even though technically it was made federally illegal to grow them a few years before he was born. It was an attempt to stop the spread of this fungus that’d jump from the bushes to pine trees, killed huge swathes of them up and down the Northeast, decimated the lumber industry. He tells you his Ma used to make tarts and pies from them, in the fall when they were in-season, but eventually the farms upstate started getting shut down, and it was too expensive. The federal ban lifted in the 60s, you learn via Google, but production never really ramped back up again— they didn’t even have them at your regular grocery store, you’d had to go all the way to Trader Joe’s.

They taste kind of like green apples. He’d looked the way he did with the pomegranate, that first time, wistful and softer and like he’s remembering. It’s really the most you’ve ever seen behind whatever practiced and controlled exterior he maintains, beyond flashes of almost-smiles and eyebrow-raises and pointed looks. You want to peel that veneer off like peeling the skin from a fruit, get underneath it, get to the flesh of him; when this thought occurs to you, you bury it immediately, as deep as it will go.

“White pine blister rust,” you read aloud off of your phone, crossing the lobby to his table, coffee cup in one hand. You set it on the table for him and he reaches for it with a mumbled thanks. “That’s what it was called, the fungus-thing. According to wikipedia.”

Barnes blinks at you. He takes a long, slow sip of his coffee, even though it’s still probably a little too hot, not that it matters to him; and then he sets the cup down and frowns and says, “What the fuck is wikipedia?”

You laugh without meaning to.

The skin slips, a little, whatever’s underneath peeking out, bruised and soft and bloody, but then you blink and he’s fine. Watching you, expression light and practiced. Whole, again.

In February something happens.

Your coworker tells you before he leaves, pulls you aside in the threshold of the door to the back room to mumble, “there were some dudes out back by the garbage when I took it out before. I was getting bad vibes, I don’t know, just— be careful.”

There’d been a string of robberies through the borough, all within some convenient distance of the subway line, and the store is probably three blocks away from one of the platforms. The back door is one of those that opens only from inside the store, the other end flat and lacking a handle; you leave it propped open when you run to take the garbage out. You’re not stupid, is the thing. The guys, whoever they are— it could be nothing, but it could be that they’re waiting. Waiting for it to be just you, waiting for the door to open, waiting for the opportunity. You have a knife, but it’s a flimsy ten-dollar gas station piece of shit, mostly for intimidation and not for actual use; you’re also well aware that using knives in confrontations tends to make things worse rather than better. Bring that shit out and you’re asking to get it taken from you. Asking to have it used on you.

You could try to call the cops, but more than half of them have been requisitioned by the GRC, and you know what they’d tell you. Unfortunately at the moment we’re understaffed and can’t afford to respond to predictive calls. Please let us know if and when something illegal occurs. Practiced and perfunctory and something people joke about in your neighborhood, because there’s really nothing else any of you can do. Your coworker can’t stay, either; he can’t afford to pay the babysitter another hour, not on minimum wage.

“It’s okay,” you tell him, “I’ll be fine.”

And it is okay. You will be fine.

Barnes is there.

It’s a Wednesday, so it’s just sheer fucking luck that he’s here at all; he must be able to see it, in your face, when you come bursting through the little swinging gate-thing and out into the lobby, because his hands tighten into fists where they’re resting on the table.

“Oh my god I’m so glad you’re here,” you say, breathless and frantic and very much meaning it.

There’s a flash of something on his face that makes you think of heat lightning or splintering ice of the second right before a pomegranate seed bursts between teeth. You are not thinking enough about things that aren’t your immediate anxiety to register it.

“I need your help,” you tell him.

He grows progressively stiffer as you explain the situation, and when you’re done he says nothing, just stands up and pushes his chair in and says, real low, “I’ll go— talk to them. Don’t worry.”

The bell above the door chimes when he leaves.

You stand there at the edge of his table for what feels like some impossible amount of time, every muscle in your body wound up like a spring, jaw clenched so hard it’s starting to drive the beginnings of a headache somewhere on the top of your skull—

He comes back.

“Are you— did they—“ you break from nervously picking at your fingernails to make some vague and anxious gesture. Barnes looks fine, unscathed, cool and neutral and controlled as ever, but when he looks at you it makes something base and instinctive deep inside of you buzz with— alarm. Or— something.

“They were just— being stupid, just drunks,” he says, and maybe you’re imagining it, the thread of tension in his voice. “It’s fine. It’s all— it’s fine.”

You feel yourself visibly relax. “Oh, god, thank you so much, dealing with drunk guys is— it’s the worst.”

He flinches, when you say the first words, just a little, his eyes almost closing and the muscles around them going just briefly tense, like he’d managed to suppress most, but not all, of the instinct. “You don’t— you don’t need to thank me.”

You study him for a minute, like maybe if you look hard enough that flicker of whatever it was would come back, linger long enough for you to make sense of it.

“All right, fine, no thanks. Thanks rescinded,” you say finally, bemused. “I’m going to refill your coffee, though.”

You say it with your hand already half-outstretched, close enough that he can’t stop you even with his reflexes, and whatever entirely reactive and entirely accidental noise of triumph you make when his hand closes around empty space is— not on purpose.

His mouth twitches, the closest you’ve ever seen to an actual smile.

Something in your stomach flips.

You shove that shit down, too.

When you come back with the coffee he’s sitting back in the chair with his legs stretched out and he’s staring out the window again.

“Thanks,” he says, when you set it down.

“Oh, so you can thank me, but I can’t thank you?”

His mouth twitches again. “Yes.”

You make some entirely performative tch sound of affected annoyance as you retreat back behind the counter; you still have to take the garbage out, clear out the pastry display case, start emptying and scrubbing down the coffee pots you’re not using now that business has slowed to a crawl.

“Are you still coming Friday?” you call out to him, over the hum and hiss of the espresso machine running through the automated cleaning program, the milk foaming wands steaming in pitchers of sanitizer water, all of it loud enough that you’d never be able to hear him over it, something you realize too late, “Sorry, hold on, I should have asked before I—“

“Do you want me to?” His voice is clear and close and you startle reflexively; he’s at the counter, at the register, staring. Always staring. You thought in the beginning you’d get used to it. It’s not uncommon; those with power stare, and those without cast their eyes down and away. It’s the nature of customer service jobs in New York City. You meet a lot of powerful assholes in suits who make more money than you probably will ever handle in the entirety of your life, and they look at you and talk at you rather than to you, like you’re nothing, a rodent or an insect or something even less than that. You’ve never once flinched away from any of their stares, and never so much as felt like you wanted to, either.

James Buchanan Barnes doesn’t look at you like that at all. He doesn’t look at you like you’re lesser. He looks at you like he can see you— like he can see right through you, like you’re transparent, like everything going on in your head is out in the open, visible, vulnerable, or maybe like he just wants it to be. Like he’s looking for a door hidden somewhere in the minutiae of your expression, some way to force himself inside and pull all of your thoughts and secrets out like unraveling a spool of thread.

He doesn’t look at you like you’re not human. He looks at you like he knows, precisely, intimately, exactly how human you are, and that’s—

Kind of worse. Or maybe it isn’t. It’s definitely weird.

You realize with a start that he’d asked you a question, and you’d been silent for way too long. You tear your eyes away from him and focus on pulling all the cup lids out of the tray at the edge of the counter, sweeping the donut crumbs and sugar crystals and coffee grinds out and onto the floor.

“I mean—,” your tongue feels thick and clumsy in your mouth and it trips over the words, the syllables, stumbling and uncertain. “Not if you have plans, I— you don’t have to.”

“I never have plans,” he scoffs, scathingly self-deprecating, and then there’s the steady rhythm of his fingers drumming against the counter and you feel it on your neck, the hairs raising there, that he’s staring at you still, “I just—since I came today, I thought maybe you wouldn’t— I don’t want to bother you.”

You freeze, stack of iced coffee lids in one hand, half-lowered back into the now-spotless tray.

You force yourself to look back up at him.

“You’re not bothering me,” you say, stressing each word, like it’s important. It is important. “You’re— I like you. We’re friends.”

That thing, from before, the almost-maybe-flinch; it happens again, and you feel your own expression do something reflexive in response, your lips part and your brow furrow in the seconds before you can school your features back to composure. Whatever he does, the control he has over his affect; you’re not very good at that.

“Besides,” you say, into the silence, eyes cast back down and focused on filling the lid tray, “I found something you’ve never tried before, this time. And since I paid for it already, you are, in fact, contractually obligated to be here.”

He laughs, the same kind of laugh, the only kind of laugh you ever get from him; the cut-short one, like he doesn’t mean to, like he’d tried to stop it.

Like he couldn’t.

Barnes leaves at about 10:45, and you bring the trash out right before he goes, just in case. You wouldn’t have seen it if it weren’t for the fact that you were still kind of nervous and had your phone in hand, shining the washed-out beam of light back-and-forth across the little fenced-in area by the dumpster, trying to keep the garbage bag at arms’ length to avoid getting some disgusting coffee sludge mixture on your shoes where it’s leaking out of the corners.

The light catches on it. It glitters, captures your attention, red against the sun-bleached gray concrete. Pomegranate seeds. Shards of garnet.

Drops of blood.

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #i'm uploading all of the things to tumblr. finally.#fic; drops of blood

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