#theshortywrites

[shatteredhourglass]

3, 16 Winterwidowhawk (okay, more than a pairing but....)

“Go on, ask me, Barnes.”

Bucky casts his gaze over red hair and a hoodie that’s far too baggy for Natasha to have ever chosen it. Even without the wry little smirk that’s so very Clint, it’d be easy to tell he isn’t the Black Widow from his clothes alone, despite the fact he’s wearing Natasha’s face. “Fine. What does it feel like?”

Clint had been the one to ask, but now he looks tired. “It’s like. It’s like there’s a person pressing a knife into my back all the time. Danger, always waiting for a fight, and it’s so fucking bad I can’t close my eyes at night.”

“I thought you were going to talk about having tits for the first time,” Bucky says to try and break the tension. Clint smirks again, but it looks washed-out and weak, and Bucky’s never seen Natasha with shadows under her eyes like this. “I mean. Natasha spends the night with you, right? Maybe her body remembers things. Do you want to try…?”

He gestures at his lap - and Clint’s thighs look great in Bucky’s skinny jeans, he should wear them when Bucky can admire it from an outside perspective - and Clint gives him a funny look. Bucky probably deserves it. He doesn’t ask about what Clint and Natasha do behind closed doors, because he’s not- he just doesn’t. God knows if they cuddle. 

“Mostly she’s the big spoon,” Clint mumbles, and then he’s settling on top of Bucky. It’s Natasha’s body, familiar as always, but he can’t even begin to pretend it’s her when the mannerisms and the way he curls into Bucky’s chest is one hundred percent Clint Barton.

Bucky runs his left hand - he’s never going to get used to it being flesh and not metal - down Clint’s spine carefully, wonders if he’s overstepping boundaries here. Clint would tell him if he was, though. Right?

“Clint?”

“Couch,” Bucky calls when Clint doesn’t answer the voice.

Bucky raises his eyes to see his own body tossing keys in the bowl - oh, that’s weird. He gets why Natasha is so uncomfortable looking at Clint now. He gestures at Clint and then to her when she looks, expecting that she wants to take over the physical comfort. Clint is hers, after all, not Bucky’s. Clint is Natasha’s and Natasha is Clint’s, and he’s just their- he’s just for fun.

Natasha raises an eyebrow at him.

“You should-” he gets out before Clint’s too-delicate hands fist in the fabric of his shirt. “Barton? You okay?”

“You should stay,” Clint mumbles, and it’s nearly inaudible. 

“Ask him first, Barton,” Natasha chides gently before she drops down onto the couch next to them, drapes one arm over Bucky’s shoulders and brushes cold fingers over Clint’s cheek with the other. It’s careful, gentle as she can be. “But yes, you should stay. If you want to, that is.”

“Is it because I’m-” -because I look like Clint now? He can’t quite get it out. Judging from the look on Natasha’s face, she knows what he was going to say anyway. 

“It’s because we want you here,” Natasha says, no-nonsense but with more feeling than he’s ever heard her use. Clint’s nose is cold where he’s got it pressed against Bucky’s neck, but he nods vehemently. 

It’s starting to sound like maybe this isn’t just for fun after all, and Bucky is- 

He’s very okay with that, actually.

[wilwheaton]

Baking bread is so therapeutic! Do you have a favorite kind to make? While it doesn't involve a lot of hands-on, ciabatta is interesting to make because you basically watch it turn from soup to dough to bread.

I have been chasing the perfect pure sourdough loaf with no commercial yeast for years, and I think I’ve finally gotten there. I have a production starter on the counter right now, and in about 9 hours, I should know if I finally have a starter and a recipe that works in my kitchen.

Once I have this down, and I feel good and comfortable with it, I think I’m going to lean into focaccia for a minute, because Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat inspired me to explore different olive oils that way.

[theawkwardterrier]

beautifulwhensarcastic replied to your photo “Good morning from the Beth Israel ER! Been here for about eight hours...”

Are you okay?

Hopefully on my way there! I’m home and feeling much improved and best of all I left

lavellenchanted replied to your photo “Good morning from the Beth Israel ER! Been here for about eight hours...”

Oh no, I hope you're alright!

Appreciate it - it wasn’t my favorite experience, but also not the worst experience of my life! (I interviewed for a job on 30 minutes of sleep the night after the 2016 election.)

theshortywrites replied to your photo “Good morning from the Beth Israel ER! Been here for about eight hours...”

I'm sorry you're in the ER! I hope you feel better. Also, yes. That hallway gurney is your home now. You live there. Forevermore. But given my extensive ER experience, hallways stretchers generally mean that while you may be sick as shit, you're not actively acute rapidly dying and that counts for a lot right?

That is true. And my tiny hospital house was placed right by the doors through which the people who were in the active/acute/rapidly dying phase were being whisked, so it definitely put things in perspective. (Also, when they moved me to a room, I actually longed for the gurney where I might be noticed and discharged instead of spending what seemed like the rise and fall of an empire waiting for them to let me leave.)

indiefic replied to your photo “Good morning from the Beth Israel ER! Been here for about eight hours...”

oh no! I hope you're okay

Hopefully yes, thank you!

mediocre-mee replied to your photo “Good morning from the Beth Israel ER! Been here for about eight hours...”

What happened??

Bit of a story here... (Medical stuff below)

Back on Sunday the 17th, I started having incredibly painful and weird headaches behind my right eye socket. (I was pretty certain that I took myself to paint pottery over the long weekend, but had to confirm that I actually did have the pickup receipt because it was a strange, semi-hallucinatory blur of an afternoon. Hope it turns out well!) At first I thought I was just an old woman who can’t stay up late anymore, so I was Very Responsible and got extra sleep and drank water and took Motrin and absolutely nothing helped.

The headaches got worse; toward the beginning of the week, I would wake up fine and then the pain would start toward the afternoon and escalate into the evening. Friday night, my right eye started tearing consistently for about an hour. By Saturday morning, I woke up with the same, terrible headache I had gone to sleep with, and my right eye so droopy it basically looked closed. It’s remained pretty droopy since, which neither my roommates nor people at my office seemed to notice (compliment?).

I’ll also mention here that two weeks back, I hit my head (right eyebrow, toward the nose) on the towel rod in my bathroom. Which stunned me for a second and had a tender spot and a bump, but otherwise no immediate symptoms. Now I was starting to wonder about slow developing concussion issues. 

I was incredibly reluctant to take action, in case it ended up looking like an overreaction, but also because I was worried about what next steps would look like (doctors? in MY brain???). I talked to my incredibly calm and smart mother, whose new motto is “don’t be like the lady in the endometriosis commercial” so I took myself to urgent care on Sunday. The woman who saw me there started by advising me to go to the ER right away, then walked it back and said it could just be conjunctivitis (which I’ve seen and was pretty certain I didn’t have) and to go pick up some eyedrops. Obviously I asked what would happen if it was an emergency problem and I just took eyedrops and she told me that “wasn’t a fair question” because “she didn’t know what was going on in there.” Then I asked if she would overall advise an ER visit, and she said, “well, that’s why I’m presenting you with these two options.” So that was very helpful.

Because I’m a pushover and was also afraid of an ER visit and its potential results, I took path of most eyedrops for a day or so, but then messaged my doctor (I think the endometriosis lecture has sunk in) Monday. She scheduled me for an exam and MRI at her next appointment (Thursday afternoon) but told me that if I experienced changes in symptoms especially dizziness and nausea, I should go to the emergency room.

I struggled through Tuesday with the hallucinatory feeling back and the pain getting progressively worse (my new best friend Excedrin Migraine was no longer working for more than an hour or so). Then I started feeling somewhat nauseated...and told myself it was nothing and it would pass. (I’m extremely good at health.) I took the bus home. I put together my new coatrack. I took a shower. Then I started noticing a tingling and numbness in my feet, moving up my legs.

So finally I packed a backpack with comfortable clothes, a water bottle, my wallet, and a cell phone charger, and took two subways to the hospital.

They got me checked in pretty much right away (they escalated it because of the fall/concussion risk and potential escalation, but also because I was experiencing tachycardia and I think they were nervous; I’m almost certain I had the accelerated heartbeat because I was nervous. Like potentially that I might die.) Texted my parents; my dad headed out to come stay with me.

Through that night and into today, I got a head CT, an MRI (I fell asleep inside; this happened at 3 AM ish and the weird pulsing jackhammer noises were somehow soothing), a second, different head CT, and saw an ophthalmologist and ENT. Basically my eyeball is fine, my brain is fine, the fall probably had nothing to do with anything, the theory that I was bleeding somewhere in there got thrown out, and what I probably have is a mucus filled cyst that’s been hanging out in my face (right sinus) and became infected and started pushing on my facial muscle and eating away at my bone. Which is SUCH a fun image, but also better than brain surgery or “well, you’re dead from an aneurysm!”

So now I get to be on medication to shrink the cyst and clear up the infection and then go in next week so they (please GOD while I’m asleep) can stick a camera way up in there and also biopsy the thing because even on the imaging they’re not 100% sure it’s not some kind of other mass. And I'm supposed to go see a neurologist because the tingling feeling in my legs isn’t really explicable with the other stuff.

Anyway, I’m taking tomorrow off of work. And that’s what happened.

[lodessa]

Domesticity #32 beggggggs for a J/C prompt.

#32 - Cooking together

“Your message said it was an emergency?” Chakotay questions, walking into Kathryn’s and finding her covered in flour.

“Oh thank goodness you’re here!” she exclaims, emerging from the kitchen to embrace him, “I have this VIP I’m supposed to charm coming over and the replicator is down.”

He swallows the pang of resentment and jealousy and the questions about why she’s wining and dining some diplomat in her home instead of a fancy restaurant.  She needs help. She needs help and she reached out to him, and after the last year he needs to just appreciate that.

“Just the one?” He can’t help himself.  “It could be two dozen and then we’d really be in trouble.”

“So you’ll help?” she genuinely asks, and he hates that they’ve come to this, that she isn’t sure she can count on him to have her back.

“Of course,” he says, “Did you have a particular menu in mind?”

“I was trying to make that corn and squash soup you showed me, the one your mother used to make you when you were-”

“Is this VIP vegetarian then?” he can’t resist asking and regrets as she replies.

“He is.”

He it is then.  He wonders if she knows how cruel she’s being, dragging him over here, using his family recipe to entice this mystery man of hers.  

It doesn’t matter. Trust is easy to break but hard to re-earn.

“And the flour?” he gestures to her appearance.

“Peach cobbler.  There’s supposed to be a salad too.”

“We’d better get started then,” he feigns feeling more lighthearted than he feels, taking off his jacket and setting it on the couch before heading into the kitchen.

Despite himself, Chakotay finds comfort in working side by side with Kathryn again.  He’s missed her terribly since their return, and within a quarter of an hour he finds they slide back into old habits, teasing and laughing.  

He wipes sauce from her cheek as he adds the corn to the pot while she stirs.

She playfully shoves his chest as he teases her about her slow vegetable chopping.

He remembers just how radiant her smile is.

This is what matters, he remembers, as much as there might be other things he wishes for, this closeness and comfort is everything.

“Why don’t you go get cleaned up for dinner.  I’ll wash up and make sure the cobbler doesn’t burn.”

“What would I do without you?” she sighs softly, and he wonders if she actually has missed this almost as much as him.

He cleans up the dishes, puts the salad in the cooler and the soup in the warmer and wipes down the counter. He pulls the cobbler out of the over to cool.  He sets the table, hesitating as he finds candles in the drawer and remembers countless evenings aboard Voyager lit only by such candles.

He puts them out on the table, but he cannot bear to light them.  With a heavy heart he turns and grabs his jacket as he heads towards the door.

“Where you going?”

He turns to see her standing by the table, not in even a dress uniform but in an actual dress, sleeveless and and soft looking, hair down, and he thinks his heart might fail.

“Just clearing out before your important guest arrives,” he manages.

“Oh Chakotay…” she tilts her head slightly, looking at him intently, “You are my very important guest. Who could be more important?”

The universe turns on its axis abruptly.

“Wait… what?”

What kind of game is Kathryn playing here, pretending to need his help preparing for a date with someone else and now she’s saying…?

“I know… it was a bit silly of me.  I just wasn’t sure how to ask… or that you’d want to come so I thought if I could get you here then it would sort itself out but I panicked and I don’t know-”

“The replicator isn’t even down is it?” he stalls for time, trying to take in her import.

“No,” she admits with a guilty look, “Please don’t be angry.”

“How could I be?” he confesses, “This has been the best afternoon I’ve had since we got back.  I’ve missed…” he hesitates regarding how to frame it and settles for waving his hands wildly and finishing with “this.”

“I’ll admit I didn’t lure you here under false pretenses just to resume our usual weekly dinners,” she tells him slyly, all the while lighting the candles so that her hair shines in their light.

“Is that so?” he hardly dares to guess her meaning, despite the dress, despite the implication.  For all he knows she has some ulterior professional motive.

“We’re not on Voyager anymore,” she states the blatantly obvious, “Not lost in the Delta Quadrant. I’m not your captain and you’re not my first officer.  We aren’t stuck with each other any longer.”

“True,” he responds, waiting for her to get to her point, barely breathing.

“ I miss being stuck with you.  I miss…” she hesitates, visibly anxious, “Do you think you can miss something you’ve never actually had?”

“Kathryn,” he barely contains the urge to beg, “Please just tell me what you are trying to say.  You’re killing me with suspense.”

“How did you feel when you thought I was having this intimate dinner with another man?”

“Jealous,” he replies flatly.

“Good,” she says softly, lips pursing together softly, “I had to be sure.”

She sets down the lighter she used on the candles and walks towards him with purpose, taking the jacket out of his hands and tossing it back on the couch before stepping into his personal space and reaching up to his face with both hands.

Her kiss is possessive, demanding in a way he’s more than willing to meet the requirements of.

“Let’s never have been to be jealous or unsure when it comes to one another again,” she proposes when they finally break apart.

He’s never been more eager to agree to anything in his life.

[shatteredhourglass]

17, 23... Winterhawk

“Hey, Clint,” Sadie says as she clacks over to him on too-high heels. The bruise on her shoulder is fading and Clint does a quick once-over to make sure there’s no new ones.

“Hey,” he answers. “Everyone good?”

Kate thinks it’s funny that he spends his free time checking up on the local sex workers. Bobbi thinks he just wants to sleep with them all. Natasha doesn’t know because he’s fairly sure she’d make him stay out here all week instead of checking up every now and then. 

“You scared off the asshole with the gun,” Sadie says cheerfully. “Business has never been better.”

“I’m glad,” Clint says and she wraps her arms around his shoulders and kisses his cheek, waxy makeup smearing on his face. 

“There’s a new guy,” she whispers in his ear. “Long hair. He’s kind of terrible at this, hasn’t gotten any buyers in a week, but he won’t take charity.”

She draws back and Clint blinks at her. “Are you asking me to- ?”

Sadie smiles and then shrugs  “You did it for Cara that one time.”

“I gave Cara a hundred bucks to take a nap in my bed,” Clint says. “I told her I had somnophilia and then just let her stay there for a few hours while I did a crossword.”

“Don’t think that’ll work with this one,” Sadie says. “Please.”

He sighs and thinks about his kimchi, wonders if he can get the guy to feed him before they get down to the dirty. Sadie tips her head to the left and Clint heads that way obediently. He’s got a few hundreds in cash under his copy of Dragonology for emergencies like this.

The guy leaning up against the wall isn’t even trying to look like the others on the block. He’s wearing a leather jacket and black pants that look painfully tight, gloves on his hands like it isn’t a million degrees in the summer night. His hair’s masking half of his face and he’s hunched over in a way that would give Clint a backache.

“Hey.”

No wonder no one wants to sleep with him.

The guy glares at him. It’s a full-blown murder stare, promising a harsh death if Clint pisses him off, and Clint kind of wants to piss him off just to see what happens. Also, he’s kind of stupidly pretty, blue eyes and a jaw that could cut diamonds.

Bobbi’s wrong. He doesn’t want to sleep with any of the sex workers he watches over. Clint has a habit of falling hard and fast for people who won’t feel anything back. He knows it’s the worst kind of situation for that. He’s just here to help and then go back to his normal routine of eat, sleep, fight, repeat.

He’s going to regret this.

He’s going to regret this so much.

“How much?”

[lodessa]

Could you be up for a little WeeVar using the "take it to the bank" prompt? Set during 1st or 2nd season, maybe. An interesting premise given their different approaches to what is morally/ethically right (and how to go about doing it), Neptune class division, etc.

TAKE IT TO THE BANK: write about your otp finding a ridiculous amount of cash, and what they would decide to do with it. (do they turn it into the police, donate it to a charity, or buy a truckload of pizza?)

I’m still super behind on prompts but it’s @jaqofspades birthday (well, in my timezone... I’m a little late for hers), so I figured I’d write some WeeVer and gift her and @theshortywrites at the same time.

“Wait what?” Veronica pauses mid rant to suddenly realize what he just said. 

“What? You think just because I’m just a low life thug, I don’t care about anyone but myself?”

“I didn’t say that.  I just figured you’d want to go all Robin Hood on this cash.”

She is surprised though, maybe at herself more than at him. The Robin Hood bullshit is a lie.  Both of them know the value of money in that way that rich people can’t.  They know what is much could mean for their lives.  A little part of her has to admit that maybe she was outsourcing the voice in her head that said keep it to Weevil and now that he’s not giving her that excuse she might have to own it instead.

“Maybe I will,” Weevil shrugs, “I mean no reason to give some 09er asshole their drug cash back just so they can stick it up their nose when it could do some real good.  But for all we know this is some little old abuelita’s coyote money for her grandkids or cash for bail for someone’s dad.  It could be someone’s escape money from a boyfriend who hits her.”

She studies him for sarcasm or anything other than honesty, but all she finds is long lashes and smooth skin and an awareness of just how close they are standing.  It is easier to pretend she sees something else when he’s teasing, being crude, but this idealistic streak is sharpening her senses in a way she didn’t mean to indulge.

“I’m guessing you don’t want to turn it in to the police.”

“Hell no,” Weevil scoffs, “You and I both know we’d just be funding Lamb’s personal slush fund.”

He’s right of course.  Maybe if her dad were still sheriff he might have found out who this money really belonged to, but Lamb is too lazy, incompetent and selfish to do anything but keep it.

“So you want me to find out who this cash belonged to myself?”

“I’ll help.”

“And what if it is someone like Kendall Casblancas’ party fund?”

“Maybe I take you on a vacation,” he teases, suggestion too obvious and lewd to be anything but a joke, “We could have our own private party, baby.”

She imagines it though.  The two of them lounging in a hot tub at some fancy beachside resort on some remote island, Weevil’s arm slung round her, his breath hot against her neck.  Of course, then she imagines running right into Madison, or Logan, or somehow Duncan.  She breaks free of her reverie.

“We donate it to a charity, the battered women’s shelter, or a food bank, or-”

“How about the pool,” Weevil suggests, “Those sons of bitches shut it down, it seems only fair that they pay for some necessary improvements and get it reopened so us plebs can cool off without freezing in the damned ocean.”

If she were someone else she would lower her voice and invite him to come use the pool in her complex any time.  Lilly would have in her place.  She’s not Lilly Kane though, she’s Veronica Mars.  So she rolls her eyes inside of batting her eyelashes and turns away, stepping out of the danger zone to where she can no longer feel the heat coming off his body, can no longer smell whatever cologne or deodorant or whatever it is he has on.

“Sure. Whatever.”

It’s not whatever.  Veronica takes two deep breaths and draws in a third. She forces herself to spin back towards Weevil and look him in the eye.  She’s in control here, she lies to herself.