The Unholy Trinity

Only the three coolest people to ever exist.

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

Random Prompt from the Middle of Nowhere

Recently, the Unholy Trinity have decided to start their own web series, about modern mythological creatures and their lives. (PS: We're really excited about it!) This prompt is going to be on correlation to that! ~Prompt~ A 1500w backstory on your character for the Modern Mythological Creatures web series. Must include: • how your character got started in their career of choice • how the three main characters met Due by May 10th @ 11:59pm

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

Nuwanda actually wrote more than Ringo, and is done before Knox???? WHAT HAS THE WORLD COME TO??????

                One last time, she looked in the mirror to make sure that she didn’t look like a hobo. She did of course, but at least a slightly well-dressed one. By well-dressed hobo though, she meant that she was wearing painted-on gray skinnies with a flowing white top; and black, green, and orange high-top converse. Her brown, shoulder-blade length hair was doing exactly what she wanted it to do, aka it was wavy and messy but not unruly. Her blue eyes were rimmed with black kohl and a light coating of blue eye shadow. Any other person would think that she looked absolutely amazing, but sadly she would never see that. The brunette checked the time once more, and since she didn’t have time to fix anything else about her appearance, she grabbed her books, backpack, and keys and walked out of the door.

In her notebook she’d written down her schedule, and since she’d walked through campus with her schedule last night and figured out where to go and when, she knew that she wasn’t going to get lost. Her first class was General Studies Writing 100, and she’d been looking forward to this one for a long time. Based on the course description and some previous students of the class that she’d talked to, she knew that this was going to be her favorite class. She walked into the room ten minutes early, and was stopped in her tracks by a guy sitting in the back row of the small classroom. The male was so attractive that it hurt the brunette’s brain to try and figure out how it was possible. He had long blonde hair and glasses which were so scratched that she couldn’t tell what color that they were. He wore a sweater vest and skinny jeans with some low-top converse. The girls sat just behind him and shyly set her things down. He was absorbed with typing something up on his computer, and didn’t seem to be paying attention to anything. The girl peeked over his shoulder and tried to see what he was writing, but she didn’t get time to decipher anything before the professor stood and began to take roll call. The boy in front of her raised his hand when she asked if “Hollis, Holden” was there, and the girl let the name silently roll from her tongue for a few moments until the teacher was getting closer to her name.

“Simmons, Martha.” She asked.

The brunette raised her hand, “Martie, please.” The teacher thanked the girl and corrected her name on the sheet.

It wasn’t until after class that Martie got to talk to Holden. Holden had gotten up to leave just before Martie did, but he’d left his coffee sitting on his desk. Martie picked it up to make sure that it wasn’t just trash, and when she felt the weight of the cup she picked up the rest of her things and quickly walked out of the room with the cup.  She could see the back of his head in the crowd of students, and she started to walk faster, almost jogging. She slowly caught up to him, and when she got close enough she called his name. Confused, the man turned around and looked for whoever it could be. Martie stopped in front of him and held out the cup.

“You left this in GSW.” She swallowed and held out the coffee. The guy’s eyes lit up in recognition and he smiled.

“Oh gosh, thank you!” He smiled sweetly at her and took the cup. “God, I can’t believe that I forgot my coffee. This stuff is like my lifeline.”

The girls chuckled, “Well at least your lifeline is slightly healthier.” He watched her pull out a pack of light cigarettes and chuckled. She held the pack out to him and he accepted, the two lit their cigarettes and then Martie turned back to him and held out her hand.

“Martie Simmons.” She said simply.

“Holden Hollis.” He replied, blowing smoke from his mouth. Slightly turned on by watching him smoke, Martie’s cheeks went pink and she smiled.

The two stood and spoke for about another ten minutes before Holden stated that he had to be getting to class and they exchanged numbers. Martie went to the rest of her classes, stopping for lunch of course, and then got back to her dorm room at about 2 O’clock. She checked her phone, and saw a few messages. The first was one from her mother congratulating her on her first day at school and how proud of her she was and blah blah blah. Martie sent back some generic answer and moved on to the next one. This one was from her best friend (still in high school) asking how college was and the next was from Holden.

From: Holden H.

Hey there!

                                To: Holden H.

                                Heyyyy. What’s up?

Martie smiled at her phone and set it down while she slipped off her shoes and put on a pair of sweat pants. She plopped onto her bed and pulled her backpack onto the bed with her. In the middle of setting herself up to do some work, she heard her phone go off. She grabbed it from the other end of the bed and slid back to read the text.

                From: Holden H.

A bunch of us are getting together to screw around and watch Physician What. Would you be interested in joining us?

                To: Holden H.

                What time? Also who exactly is “us”?

Excited to meet other Physician What fans, Martie paused in her attempt at doing homework in order to wait for Holden to text back. He texted back quickly, and she got up to get ready when she saw what he’d sent.

                From: Holden H.              

Lol, that’s just me a few other people I’ve met since I got here. It’s starting now but you can show up whenever, we’re just impatient.

To: Holden

Give me like 20 minutes and I’ll be there. Wait, where am I going?

                Once she had her outfit back on and had made sure that her make-up still looked good, she eyed her backpack regretfully then stepped out of the room again.

                ************   

                Martie smelled fish fingers and custard as soon she found the right wing of the dorm. Now the only problem was going to be figuring out which room was Holden’s. Instead of checking her phone again, she followed the heavenly scent and knocked on the door. A girl with braided turquoise hair answered the door in sweatpants and an old looking Slytherin shirt, “You must be Martie.” The girl gave her a blank look before Martie nodded.

                “This is Holden’s room, right?”

                “Yeah it is. I’m Claire.” The girl with the turquoise hair replied before turning around to introduce her to a couple of other people. There was another girl with hair that she could probably walk on who was introduced her Hannah, and the girl with dark blonde hair was Chelle. Apparently she didn’t like to be called Michelle. Martie sat down next to Holden on his Star Wars bed sheets, and glanced around the room. Claire sat up on the other bed, while Chelle sat in a large pile of blankets on the floor and Hannah took Holden’s desk. Hannah was playing some sort of RPG on her laptop, but was somehow still paying attention to The Physician and his companion. There was a pile of snacks and such in the middle of the floor and a bowl of popcorn in Holden’s hands.

Martie watched the show for a few minutes before leaning in close to Holden and whispering a question, “Is Claire your room mate? Or has she just taken over your roomie’s bed?” Holden chuckled before answering.

“I don’t know, Claire are you my roommate?” Claire looked down and her eyebrows shot up, “Huh?”

“I asked if you were my roommate.”

“Of course I’m your roommate you dipshit, we’ve been living together for three days.” She tossed some popcorn from her bowl and turned back to the show.

Holden looked back to Martie, “Does that answer your question?”

Martie giggled and shook her head, “Why yes it does. Now, I have one more important question. How many of those snacks would it be socially acceptable for me to eat?”

The male raised an eyebrow at her, “Umm… As much as you want I guess.”

The brunette smirked and stood, grabbing almost all of the snacks.

“I claim them all and no one can do anything about it.” Martie stuck her tongue out at the group. Holden just shook his head, while Claire gave the bold girl an odd look; almost as if she wanted to know if Martie was really going to eat jelly beans, gummy bears, an entire bag of FunYuns, 6 mozzarella sticks and the obligatory marinara sauce, as well as a half of a jar Nutella from her bag; Hannah didn’t seem to be paying attention to Martie, but Chelle sure was. Chelle seemed to be both disgusted an impressed at the same time. Martie just chuckled and offered some jelly beans to Holden as she started chowing.

“Next time you’re buying the snacks, Martie.” Claire said from her perch, “And then I’m going to eat half of what you buy. You bitch.”

Martie laughed at the girls and watched her favorite show and continued to watch one of her favorite shows with some people who would soon become some of her best friends in the entire world. 

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

caw caw mofos - unholy prompt #3 (PS: i uploaded first mwahahahaha)

So, how exactly DID the Unholy Trinity meet? 

///

Holden looked out the window of the SUV and sighed, letting his chin rest in the palm of his hand. This wasn’t unusual, his father bashing his sexuality, his father judging his life decisions. He tried not to think about it, usually – the fact that they were growing closer and closer to the campus of the Northwest Ohio College of the Arts, where he would pursue a degree in creative writing and publishing, and he would be a total of four hours away from his hometown.

“Honey, just stop it,” his mother commented softly. “I don’t know when he’s going to be home again. Don’t push him.”

It took Mr. Hollis ten minutes to find a parking space in front of MacArthur hall, one of the three co-ed dormitories at NWOCA, and during that time, Holden had a chance to send fifteen texts to his best friend about how absolutely nervous he was.

“Well, here we are,” Laura said, turning around in her seat to smile at Holden. “Honey, we should probably go sign you in and such? You have your key and ID, right? You brought the envelope?”

“Of course, Mom,” he replied, rummaging around in his messenger bag for a moment before unearthing the tan envelope. “You’ll come with me? To sign in?”

Laura nodded, unbuckling her seat belt and grabbing her purse. “Michael, honey, you should start unpacking Holden’s things.”

“I’ll help!” Camille squealed from the back seat. She was the only one of Holden’s siblings to join them on the trip, his freshman in high school sister on a camping trip, and his younger brother spending the day at a pool party.

Holden kissed her little cheek. “Okay, little princess.” He opened the car door and stepped out onto the pavement, purple converse looking too new and too bright for his liking. He would have to throw them into dirt at some point. He waited for his Mom to get out as well, before walking towards the glass front door of the building.

The man behind the counter smiled at him. It was a different sort of smile than Holden had expected: it looked genuine and sweet, and he couldn’t help but smile back. “Hi. I’m Rick, one of the resident advisors for the building. What’s your name?”

“Holden, uh, Hollis,” he said, blushing.

Rick looked down the list until he came across Holden’s name. “Alright.” He put a purple checkmark next to his name and then looked back up at him. “Room 112. Your roommate, Claire, is already here. Your RA is Mikey, but I’m right down the hall if you need me.”

“O-okay. Thank you.” Holden smiled and turned to face his mom. “Um, I’m going to go check out my room, and then I’ll come help move stuff in, okay?”

“Of course, honey.” Laura kissed his forehead softly. “Just text your father once you’re there.”

Holden nodded, and started towards the door that led to his hall. He took out his ID and slid it over the black box next to the door, jumping a bit when it beeped and flashed green. He pulled the door open and glanced at the door numbers as he passed them. The door to 112 was propped open, and he could hear voices. He took a deep breath before stepping inside, rapping his knuckles against the doorframe.

The girl stood up quickly, knocking her head against the bed and growling. “What?”

Holden blushed and looked down at his feet. “Are you Claire?” he asked carefully. “I’m Holden… your roommate.”

“Oh… sorry about that, dude.” Claire set down the stuff in her arms and looked at him. “… Do you not have belongings?”

“I do! Definitely, have stuff… I just wanted to find the room before I started to bring stuff in,” he explained quickly, voice cracking on more than one occasion. He looked at his empty side of the room and sighed before setting down his messenger bag on the desk. “I should probably, um, go start doing that. I’ll… be back?” He exited the room quickly and finally took a deep breath when he was by the door that opened to the outside.

His mom and dad helped him carry things inside, Camille carrying in a shoebox before abandoning her job and curling up in his pile of pillows, playing with his old teddy bear. Once everything was inside, Holden smiled at them.

“I can unpack everything,” he clarified to them. “You guys should get home. It’s a long drive, a-and I know you want to be back before Matthew’s party is done.”

Laura nodded, tears gathering in her eyes. “Alright, honey.” She stepped forward to pull him into a hug. “Call us? And text? And maybe we could FaceTime, okay?” She pulled back to kiss each of his cheeks. “I love you.”

“Love you too, Mom.” He shook his dad’s hand before kneeling down to pull Camille close to him. “Little princess, I’m going to miss you like crazy potatoes. You understand?” She nodded, sniffling. “I’ll come visit as soon as I can. I promise.”

Camille pouted. “Cross your heart?”

“And hope to die,” he added.

He watched them leave, heart growing heavier with every passing moment. He looked around the room before wiping the tears off his cheeks. All of a sudden, a box of tissues was being thrust at him. He looked up, and Claire was smiling at him.

“You look like you need them,” she said, wiggling the box. “I have chocolate too? Unless you don’t like chocolate.”

“Chocolate is amazing,” he said, smiling.

She put her hands on her hips. “Holden Hollis, I think we’re going to get along just fine.”

///

A week later, Holden was sitting on the beanbag chair, fishtail braiding Claire’s longish turquoise hair and chattering about his writing class. She was playing some game on her X-Box, still managing to pay perfectly good attention to him, though.

“I just don’t understand how she expects us to get all that done this weekend though, Claire-Bear,” he said, exasperated. “It’s-…”

There was a loud thump outside their window, and they both jumped.

“Fucking shit in hell!” someone screamed, and suddenly a face appeared behind the glass.

“What the fuck!” Holden squealed, diving behind the desk. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

The girl looked between the desk and Claire, who looked supremely interested in what she had to say. “Do you have any Band-Aids? I had a… accident.” She held up her arm, a surprising amount of blood dripping on to the ground.

“Of course we do! We’re not idiots!” Claire scoffed. She stood and took a better look at the girl. “Go to the side door. Holden will meet you over there.” Once the girl was gone, she turned to look at her roommate, who was curled up into a little ball. “You okay with this?”

He nodded. “I’ll just grab something first.” He stood and grabbed an old t-shirt from his dresser before running towards the side door, pushing it open and pushing the t-shirt at her. “Hold that against your arm. Our RA will kill us if there’s blood everywhere.”

She did as he suggested and followed him down the hall, letting him push her down into the desk chair. “You’re lucky it was our window that you had your… accident in front of. The rest of our hall mates are idiots,” Claire explained, grabbing her first-aid kit and easing the t-shirt off the cut. “How exactly did you do this?”

“I tried to parkour a rock and landed in another pile of rocks,” the girl said easily. “I’m Martie, by the way. Martie Simmons.”

“Holden Hollis,” Holden said, “and that’s Claire Reynolds. Nice to meet you, even in these circumstances.” He grabbed a bottle of water from the mini-fridge and opened it. “You’ve lost a bit of blood. Here.”

Martie took the bottle in her free hand. “Thanks, dude.”

Claire cleaned out the cut expertly, covering it in Neosporin before covering it in gauze and a wrap. She wiped off the rest of the blood with an alcohol wipe before taking off her gloves and dropping everything in the trash. “There you go. All set.”

Holden cleared his throat. “We were just about to head to the dining hall to grab some dinner… you want to join us?” he asked.

Martie smiled largely, laughing a little. “Sure. That sounds cool.”

///

Years later, they would think back to that strange day, the dinner that followed, filled with talking and laughing and smiling.

“We were crazy back then,” Claire said, sitting on one end of the couch, feet resting in Brian’s lap. “I don’t understand half of what we did.”

Holden took a swig of his beer. “Yeah, we were little shits. I mean, awesome little shits, but little shits nonetheless.”

Martie was stretched out across the floor, eyes closed as she stroked her fingertips over the scar on her forearm. “I don’t regret a single moment.”

///

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

Yet another prompt!

Alrighty motherfuckers. SO, it's a new week for the unholy trinity and therefore we need another prompt. so here goes....

Y'all bitches gotta write about how the Unholy Trinity meets for the first time. Minimum of 500 words, Maximum of the entire english language (have fun you two fucks).

-Nuwanda

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

in which ringo is exhauuuuusted but still finishes the prompt like the good boy he is

When Holden Needed Some Stuff, Okay? 

///

            He looked up from his laptop, eyes wide, still wearing his outfit from the day prior. “My writing portfolio is due today,” he breathed out, “and I didn’t remember until midnight. I- I have so much left to do, this is fifty-percent of my grade, a-and -…”

            Claire climbed down from her bunk. “Sh, Holden, it’s alright. I’m gonna go grab you some coffee, okay? And maybe a sandwich?” She grabbed her ID and keys off the dresser. “Just take a deep breath and keep on typing, little engine.”

            Holden nodded, turning back to his laptop and typing furiously. He took one short moment to pull his hair back into a ponytail, and resumed his work.

///

            Claire walked back in ten minutes later, carrying a still-steaming Starbucks cup and a sub sandwich wrapped in white paper. Holden was hitting his head against the desk, groaning. She set both on the desk beside his laptop and set her hand in between the desk and his forehead.

            “Stop.” She said. “You’re going to get it done. You have, what, two hours?” She grabbed half of his large stack of papers. “I’m going to type these up and send them to you, alright? Holden, answer me.”

            He looked up at her before nodding. “Okay. Okay. Thanks for the help, Claire-Bear.”

            They worked in near silence, Holden’s favorite playlist on Spotify nearly muted, barely audible. He took breaks every so often to snag a bite of his sub, or sip at his drink. It wasn’t until about a half an hour later that he collapsed back in his desk chair, eyes fluttering shut. His laptop pinged, and he nearly jumped. A quick check to his email inbox proved the obvious – Claire had finished up typing her half. He opened the document, copy and pasting the stories into their appropriate place in the larger document. Holden had just enough time to save the document and email it to his writing professor.

            “Is it done?” Claire asked.

            Holden only nodded. “I… am exhausted.” He rubbed at his eyes for a moment. “I think I’m gonna take a shower and then go to sleep. Screw everything in this entire fucking world.” He got up and grabbed his towel before leaving the room.

            Claire slid her laptop back onto the desk and grabbed her phone from its pouch.

            TO: Martiski             I think we might need to go to SLW tonight

            FROM: Martiski             Oh? I don’t have to work.

            FROM: Martiski             I’ll be over in 15.

            When Holden walked back into the room, soft green towel wrapped around his waist, Martie was sprawled out in the bean bag chair, and Claire was tugging on a pair of jeans. “Oh, are we doing something?” he asked, both girls looking over at him.

            “We were thinking Spring-Loaded Washboard… if you’re up for it.”

            Holden thought for a moment before nodding. “Yeah. Just give me a little bit to get ready.” He hung up the towel and opened the top drawer of his dresser to rummage around for his lucky boxer briefs. “Were you two plotting in the twenty minutes I was in the shower?”

            “Naturally.” Claire grinned at him.

            “I’m really glad we’re friends and not enemies, because you are fucking terrifying.”

            He sat down in his little armchair, lotion bottle in hand, squirting some into his hand before rubbing it into the dry skin of his long legs. “Oh, it’s Friday. It’s free shots night.” He glanced over at the calendar. “I must be really out of it if I didn’t remember my favorite day of the week.” Holden moved on to the other leg before standing, stretching his arms high above his hand. “Martie, what color is your hair, exactly?”

            Martie Reynolds was known for many things, one of them being how constantly she changed her hair color. “Cerulean,” she replied, grabbing Claire’s makeup box and flipping open the lid. “At least, that’s what it said on the package. I think it may have, uh, reacted with what I already had. It looks more like indigo, if you ask me.”

            “Bitch, you had better not be planning to steal my purple lipstick again. I will cut you,” Claire said, bumping Martie’s hip and reaching into the box for her liquid eyeliner. “Holden, did you want me to put some stuff on your face?”ht for you huh?”

            “Sure,” he said, buttoning up his shirt and pulling on his Captain America socks. He folded his legs and tipped his face up, letting himself relax as Claire went to work. When she finished, he stood up again. “I am ready for a night of shots and potentially dancing with hot boys who claim to be straight.”

            Martie snorted. “So, a normal Friday night for you, then?”

            “Pretty much,” Claire replied for him.

///

            “Oh captain my captain!” Holden called out as soon as he opened the door to the familiar bar, walking inside.

            “Holden Hollis!” Captain Kirk smirked, grabbing a shot glass from the bar and turning it face up on the counter. “You’re early, kid.”

            “It’s been a rough day, Cap.” Holden eagerly walked over to the counter and sat down in “his” seat. “I need the free shots, today. I really do.”

            Claire and Martie sat beside him on either side and chatted quietly as Captain poured the shots, and Holden tipped his back immediately, slamming the glass back down onto the counter, shaking his head and panting.

            “Fucking hell I missed this,” Holden said happily, tipping back another shot as soon as Captain had it filled. “I wish free shots day was every day.”

            Captain leaned against the counter. “Holden Hollis, you are the highlight of my Friday nights, I swear to god.” He made Holden his usual Long Island iced tea and set it down in front of him. “What am I going to do without you, kid?”

            “Weep tears of pain and sweet, sweet sorrow?” he replied.

            “Most likely.”

            Martie looked between the two of them and laughed before swallowing another shot of whiskey. “Oh, that burns.” She coughed a little, taking the water that the Captain offered. “So, what’s the game plan for tonight, ladies and gents?”

            “I had a little idea,” Holden said, twinkle in his eye. “Remember Buck Johnson?”

            Claire looked at him for a moment before recognition took over. “The swim team captain? The supposedly heterosexual swim team captain?”

            “Well he didn’t seem so hetero when he was fucking my throat with his cock,” Holden replied nonchalantly, sipping at his tea. “Anyways, when he was grunting away, I snuck into his back pocket and…” he reached down to grab his keys, holding up one key that was older and scratched up, “I stole his key to the pool.”

            Martie grabbed at it. “You little asshole, I fucking love you.”

            “So I was thinking… finish up here, we could have a little midnight swim?” Holden asked. “Captain, maybe you could come with us?”

            Jim looked between the three of them and groaned. “Fine. I don’t know if I trust these three of you in a pool by yourselves on shot night anyways.” He looked down at the old, worn watch on his wrist. “Nico can take over for me at 11:30.”

            Holden clapped and shifted happily on his stool. “Does this mean I get to see you without a shirt, Captain?”

            “If you’re lucky.”

            “You two are disgusting, I swear.”  

            “No one cares about your input, Martha!”

            “Yeah, well no one cares about your face, Holden!”

            “Shut up, both of you!” Claire accepted the martini from the Captain with a smile. “At 11:30, we roll.”

///

            Holden clutched Jim’s hand while he unlocked the door, pushing it open carefully. When he signaled the coast was clear, they all snuck in and let the door close again. He didn’t waste any time stripping down, wiggling his cute little butt to get his jeans off, and he kicked them off to the side before running and jumping into the pool.

            Martie rolled her eyes, following after him, cannonballing messily. Claire rolled up her pant legs, sitting down at the edge of the pool and easing her feet into the water before leaning back on her palms.

            “Cap,” Holden said, having surfaced near the middle of the pool, “you coming in?”

            Jim thought for a minute before pulling his t-shirt off, unzipping his jeans and letting them fall. He walked over to near where Holden was and dived in in just his boxers. He tugged gently on Holden’s leg before resurfacing with a grin.

            “You’re hot.” Holden panted, kicking so he could stay afloat. “And I’m not just saying that because I’m sooo drunk right now.”

            Jim pulled him over so he could stand straight up before sliding a muscular arm around his waist and letting the younger man settle against his chest. “I know, Hollis. You’re hot too, always running around in those tight skinny jeans. It’s not fair, kiddo.”

            Martie was attempting to splash Claire on the other end of the pool and failing miserably once Claire shot her a glare that could kill. Holden glanced at them before leaning up to kiss Jim, running his tongue along the seam of his lips and reaching up to grab at his hair.

            “What the…” Martie said quietly. “Claire, are they-…”

            Claire shrugged. “I’m not gonna question it. Holden needs this right now. Hey, how was your call home earlier, hm?”

            “Oh, don’t even ask!”

            When Jim invited Holden back to his apartment, Holden agreed without much thought. When he woke up in the morning, naked and stretched out beside a still-snoring Jim, he didn’t have any regrets. Instead, he kissed him gently and managed to still make some toast, despite his raging hangover.

///

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

In which Nuwanda is really tired but still writes about the cement mixer

                Seconds later, the seat across from Martie was filled by a gorgeous looking man. He was tall with black hair and gorgeous green eyes… so basically he looked sort of like Billie Joe Armstrong except with nice teeth and hipster glasses.  He fist bumped her and she chuckled at the gesture, sipping her coffee.

                “How are you doing there, Brent?”

                “I’m hanging, me and Sabra have a date tonight. I think it’s close to time for me to get down on one knee, yaknow?” The man sat back and put his hands behind his head. The red head got a sinking feeling in her chest and she forced on a smile. She’d had a crush on Brent ever since she’d moved here, and he’d been dating Sabra almost the entire time. In fact, he’d asked her out exactly 2 months and 3 days after she’d moved in. Not that Martie had  been paying attention of course but sometimes you just know things, you know? Anyway, he started rifling through his bag to grab her stuff and also a few other things. There was a small sack which he threw at her. She put that in her bag first and watched as he grabbed his phone and his wallet for a coffee. He motioned for her to sit tight for a moment and he brought up some pictures of him and the cute blonde girl that he was dating. One of them kissing, one holding hands, even one of her face mid-dirty. Martie’s smile faltered again and she chuckled.

                “Good luck man, you deserve to be happy.” Martie stood and ruffled his hair.

                “I’m telling you, she’s the one.” That sinking feeling attacked Martie’s stomach again and she grabbed her things and left the shop. As she left she called a quick goodbye to him and she walked back to where Claire had dropped her off. As she walked, she took deep breaths to compose herself. She really didn’t need Claire to be worrying about anything else with her, let alone some stupid two year crush she just couldn’t shake no matter what anyone did. Claire pulled up next to a genuinely smiling Martie and the caffeinated girl jumped into the car.

                  It had only been a couple of hours since Martie and Holden had ditched their rom-com marathon and taken the bus into town. Now, they didn’t just hop on the bus and go. They (of course) smoked about 5 or 6 heaping bowls of weed before doing anything and had decided that it was time that they tried to drive a semi because Martie had always wanted to drive one. Now since Claire was at work, there was no one to tell them how bad of an idea that that was. So they took the first bus that they saw, and ended up in some horrible looking part of town. They couldn’t bring themselves to care about where they were or anything that would be important to a sober person. They ran off of the bus on some big street with lots of neon signs and a gas station on every corner. Holden turned to Martie and purred softly, his ‘paws’ playing with her short hair. She pushed his hands away and started to walk, “Where are all of the semis? You said that there would be semis in town that we could try to drive.”

                “I thought we went out to go and get pizza?” Holden asked confused.

                “No. Semi.”

                Martie grabbed Holden’s hand and determinedly walked across the street when the light changed. The duo walked for about an hour before stumbling across their quest. Holden noticed it first, meowing and pointing towards the ‘semi’. Martie cried out and spun in a circle of joy in response. She attempted to run towards it, only to trip and fall on her face. She laid there for a few minutes laughing at herself before Holden cuddled into her stomach and purred some more.

                They somehow ended up in the ‘semi’; though neither of them would remember getting off of the ground and walking to it, let alone breaking in and finding keys and stuff, with Martie driving and Holden cheering beside her. The redhead put the keys in the ignition and started it. She started kind of driving (as in Martie didn’t always remember which was the gas and which was the brake, headlights were not a thing, and also Holden kept trying to put his face in her neck) and got out onto the road. The height of the vehicle made her feel uncomfortably tall, and she kept thinking that she was literally running cars over. Holden was the biggest problem though, because when he tried to nuzzle her neck he would wrap his arms around her and try to make her arms wrap around him. Annoyed at the fact that he couldn’t make her cuddle him, he then tried to rip her hands off of the wheel. Martie screamed a little late since she didn’t make a noise until they’d already crashed into the small clothing store.                             

                Holden ‘sobered’ up when they hit, and he got them both of them out of the vehicle and down the street before he noticed his phone vibrating. Martie fell to the ground and started crying when he stopped to check it. When he saw Claire’s name on the screen, a mini panic attack occurred within him and he answered the phone.  Claire had her ‘Mama’ voice on when he answered, “Where the fuck are you guys?” Holden paused for a moment and then began to explain.

Claire and Holden would never let Martie live down the night she drove a cement mixer into a store wall.

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

Almost Assault Charge No. 1 (In Which Knox Retains First Upload Queen, But Has Shortened Her Word Count Because Reasons)

Tell the story of an Unholy Trinity crazy adventure in college.

  Almost Assault Charge No. 1-

              Claire had been sitting peaceably at the bar, waiting the Captain to pour the tray of shots she was taking back to the rest of the Trinity. She’d had her drunken ass parked just a little too far back on the stool, just enough cheek out in the walkway for someone to take liberty. Someone, somewhere had told her once that women in bars were supposed to protect themselves, were supposed to be calm and graceful and hidden but not prudish. She had laughed loudly and drunkenly in their face, told them to fuck off, and sauntered off on her merry way. Holden and Martie had once described her as the biggest, badest bitch on the block, taking no shit no shit from no one ever, and slaying anyone who told her she should change her ways to conform.

            When the ass pinch came, she was out of her chair like lightning.

            His face was all grins, like she had asked him to pinch and he had obliged, like she had solicited his attentions just by existing. At that point, Claire was just drunk enough to make bad decisions, not drunk enough to be unable to aim. The sight of the smug look on the unnamed interloper’s face, coupled with good old Kirk’s nod from behind the bar was enough to have her draw back and land a sharp punch square in the center of her face before she even registered what had happened. He staggered back, hands cupped over his nose, his buddies emerging, the bar suddenly silent. From the corner of her eye, Claire saw Jim, because he was all Jim now, as opposed to beloved bartender Captain Kirk, shift closer to the bar, under which she knew was where he had mounted a very old Louisville slugger with a few chips in the side. It was a weapon of zombie survival plan reverence, and Claire knew that he would toss it to her in a heart beat if he thought she needed it. Despite this, she tightened up her stance, ready to take on the whole bar if she had to in order to stand up for her right to autonomy.

            “Next time, you’ll wait until a girl asks you to pinch her, you pathetic pig-fuck excuse for human garbage,” Claire snarled.

            “What did you call my buddy?”

            She turned to see Kevin Carmichael, star quarterback of NWOCA’s less than stellar football team, looming over her like he seriously thought she’d back down any time soon. There had been only anger before, but rage settled deeply in her bones. She felt her fists tighten as she glared up at the six foot six blonde boy who everyone had called a gentle giant.

            “I called him a pathetic. Pig-fuck. Excuse. For. Human. Garbage.”

            “Bitch, I will-“

            She swung hard and tight, a straight upper-cut aimed solely for his mouth, just to shut him the fuck up. He was the leader of the pack—bringing him down would end it fast. Catching him mid sentence, and off guard, gave her the upper hand she needed to swing up with her left hand and catch him in the cheek, snapping his head to the left in silence. His buddies stood up, but held their distance, even as she brought a knee up into his groin, sending him down on all fours. A hard kick to his ribcage drove him over onto his back, and she put one foot, covered in knee length black boots that had once been billed as “able to kill men”, on his throat, cutting off his wind pipe.

            “You will go down like they all do, squealing like the little fucking piggy you are. You’re a man, just like your shit head friend over there who doesn’t understand that my body belongs to me and me alone, and you all have too many weaknesses to count. I’d recommend learning better manners, Kevin. Your nice-guy rep might suffer a little bit.”

            She took her foot off, and started away. Cap went to hand her the tray of shots, and then she felt a hand close on her wrist.

            “Shit-head, huh, you stupid fucking whore? I’ll-“

            “You just don’t know when to give up, do you kid?”

            Jim was around the bar now, one hundred percent the badass motherfucker Claire had come to know and love over the years. She watched in almost rabid fascination as the Louisville slugger found its way to the inside of no-name’s elbows and pulled him back. Claire landed a short punch to the rib cage, knocking the wind from him even as the sound of sirens rolled toward the Washboard.

            “Get out of here, Claire. Take Martie and Holden.”

            She didn’t need to be told twice. In less than twelve seconds, she was back in the dark room of the Washboard, and grabbing the remaining two members of the Unholy Trinity as she went. They were out the back before anyone even moved, running across the lawn and back to the dorms. It was a testament to their friendship that Martie and Holden didn’t even question it. They just ran for their lives, heaving out laughs every so often, until they hit the quad and Claire tripped. She went down hard into the grass, taking the rest of the Trinity with her, and suddenly they were laying in the grass laughing.

            “What the fuck happened, Claire?” Holden asked eventually, after they’d calmed down enough.

            “Misogynistic ass-hats, ‘nice guys’ being douchebags. The usual,” she replied, flopping fully on the grass.

            “Ass pinch or boob grab?” Martie asked.

            “Ass pinch.”

            “Ouch.

            “Broke his nose. May have broken Kevin Carmichael’s face and ribs.”

            Everyone fell back onto the grass laughing, until long after their noses had turned red and the sirens had passed.

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

Prompt #2: 

Hello everyone! This prompt is (moderately haha) simple! The Unholy Trinity must have had a ton of crazy adventures in college - they have even been referenced a few times! IE: the cement mixer, Martie-Gras, etc. So, the idea is to write about one of these adventures! 

where did the adventures take place? 

who did they involve? 

when did this happen? 

Be creative! Can be anywhere from 750 - 4000 words! 

Due at any point next Monday! 

-Ringo

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

Ringo is Late Uploading and Ringo is Sorry but Too Bad

You must write about a day on the job with a member of the Unholy Trinity. By a day on the job, I mean a day on their career of choice, not, oh, say, Martie’s crappy diner job. It must include: 

- The morning rush to get things done (x)

- The post lunch food coma (x)

- One work accident (does not have to include physical injury) (x)

- Lamentations about paperwork (x)

- Day dreaming (x)

- Significant other visits (optional) (x)

///

            The alarm began to sound. “Jack,” Holden groaned out. “Please?”

            Jack looked at him for a moment before reaching over to hit the snooze button, making the room silent once again. Holden kissed him sleepily in gratitude before beginning to doze again against the warm skin of his shoulder. All was quiet on the western front, until the alarm started up again five minutes later. Holden looked up at Jack expectantly.           

“You’re cute and everything, but there’s no way I’m hitting snooze again,” Jack said sweetly, rolling back into the pillows.

            Holden frowned sleepily, letting the alarm go for a few moments before slamming down on it, grumbling grouchily. He had grown far too used to Jack waking him gently, and he felt very upset… and that upset would not go away until he had showered and had some coffee. He rolled out of bed, pattering around the room in just his boxer briefs and a pair of bright purple fuzzy socks. Getting ready for work could be considered therapeutic for Holden, a familiar routine that he could count on to always remain the same.

            Holden showered, braiding back his hair and spritzing on his cologne. When he walked back into the bedroom, Jack had stretched out across the entirety of the mattress, and he was snoring loudly. He dressed as quietly as he could, tugging on his tan cardigan and straightening his bowtie.

            When he walked out to the kitchen, he found Claire asleep on her laptop, and Martie half-dead, stirring her coffee.

            “Hey,” he said, pouring his own cup and grabbing a nutria-grain bar from the cupboard. “What’s up, babes?”

            Martie shushed him. “No more words. It’s a time that is dead, dude. Plus, Claire just fell asleep, and I think we could do well to respect that.”

            “Well, I have to go to work. I’ll see you guys, later.”

///

            “HOLLIS!”

            Holden jumped, hurriedly rushing to gather his papers and ginish the last of his immaculate signatures. Finally, he ran to Turney’s office, slipping the stack of papers into his designated slot and turning to face his boss.

            Turney was smirking. “Cutting it a bit close, aren’t you?”

            “So I’m a little behind today… I’ll be back on track soon, I promise.” Holden took a deep breath and sank down into the chair in the corner. “I’m just in a bit of a funk, I guess.”

            “Well, un-funk. You’re my best editor, and I need you at your best.” Turney smiled a bit more softly then. “Go back to your work, alright? You got this.”

            “Thanks, Turney.”

            He walked back out to his desk, looking through his manuscripts and picking up his favorite pen. He had work to do.”

///

            “Mr. Hollis? Should I order your lunch, or – …”

            “That’s alright, James. I’m actually meeting up with Jack at the café.” Holden pulled on his jacket and slipped his messenger bag over his shoulder. “I’ll be back by one-thirty.”

            James nodded. “Alright, Mr. Hollis.”

            Holden walked out of Rising Sun Publishing and started towards Lunar, flicking through the emails on his phone. When he walked into the café, he found Jack at their usual booth in the corner, reading the New York Times and picking at his salad.

            “Jack,” he breathed out, sitting down. “Hey, babe.”

            Jack leaned across the table to kiss him, mouth tasting of Italian dressing with a hint of coffee. “Hey. How’s your day going?”

            “It started out so shitty, but it seems alright now, so, I’m not gonna question it.” He was surprised when a veggie wrap was placed in front of him. “You ordered for me?”

            “Of course I did. I know what you like,” Jack confirmed. “Plus, I knew you would be hungry.” He cracked open his journal and fished a pen out of his own bag. “Eat up, babe.”

            He felt a surge of love, then, for Jack Murphy. Holden blushed a little along his cheekbones, looking down at his lap, before picking up the wrap and biting into it. Jack chattered on and on to him about the work he had completed that day, the book signing that morning, followed by a meeting with a board of producers about adapting Catching Tides into a movie.

            It was comfortable to just be with Jack, to sit down and chat with him outside of their regular work days. He was sad when he had to leave for work, but he kissed Jack a few times and made him promise to text him before walking out of the Lunar with a much lighter heart.

///

            “I feel like I’m going to explode,” James said, voice muffled by the desk.

            Holden glanced at his intern and laughed. “Maybe you shouldn’t have eaten your weight in fried rice then, dear.” He saved his document and sent it to the printer. “How is Cameron doing, anyways? Everything still going alright?”

            James’s dark skin blushed. “He’s… he’s amazing, Holden. Thank you so much for introducing us, again.”

            “Of course, dear. It’s no problem. Could you maybe grab me a cup of coffee?”

            James nodded, getting up from his own desk and loping towards the kitchen. Holden glanced down at the stack of paperwork he had yet to complete, and he hadn’t even started on that day’s manuscripts. A cup of piping hot peppermint coffee was set beside his laptop, and he smiled up at James before pulling the first piece of paper off the stack and starting to read.

            The hours passed slowly, Holden going through a few cups of coffee and two chocolate muffins. At one point he even managed to spill coffee all down his shirt, promptly burning his skin and having to fill out an incident report. It was pure dumb luck that he had a spare sweater in the bottom drawer of his desk (the drawer that was meant to store files but that wasn’t Holden’s style).

            Holden tipped his head back in his chair and closed his eyes. It wasn’t too long before he would be able to go home, take a hot shower… Martie had promised that she would have Thai take-out waiting when he got back to the apartment, and his stomach began to grumble. He could open a bottle of wine, and have a glass with all his friends… and Jack would be over, which made the whole idea even better. Because that meant that after everyone went to bed, they could-

            “Hollis!”

            He jerked out of his daydreaming, looking up at Turney. “Hi, sir. What’s up?”

            “Kid, it’s nearly seven o’ clock. You were supposed to be out of here an hour and a half ago?” Turney said.

            “Sorry, I just had some manuscript reports left to finish, and I kinda zoned out a little bit.” He frowned and looked down at his lap.

            “Don’t worry about it. Just… go home, okay?”

            “Yeah, Turney, of course.” Holden began to gather his belongings, slipping his journal into his bag and turning off his personal desktop.

///

            “Finally, dude,” Martie said when the door opened. “We thought you might have died, or something.” She passed Holden a takeout box and a pair of chopsticks as he passed her. “Jack’s on his way, and don’t worry! I fed Coulson!”

            He grunted in response, going to change into flannel pajama pants a t-shirt before settling between Claire and Martie on the couch.

            “Bad day at work?”

            “Don’t even ask.”

///

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

Day In The Desert (In Which Knox Resumes Her Title as Queen of First Post)

Hallo, meine freunde! I am first, once again. It feels good to be back in the saddle, and here is Round Two, Prompt the First

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

Due Wednesday, 00:00 (aka 12:00 AM, Midnight)

You must write about a day on the job with a member of the Unholy Trinity. By a day on the job, I mean a day on their career of choice, not, oh, say, Martie’s crappy diner job. It must include: 

- The morning rush to get things done

- The post lunch food coma

- One work accident (does not have to include physical injury)

- Lamentations about paperwork

- Day dreaming

- Significant other visits (optional)

Must be more than 1,000 words, less than 6,000.

              Claire would have liked to say it was a normal day on the job. Of course, normal day on the job would imply she possessed a normal job, which was just about the most inaccurate statement anyone could have made, but that was neither here nor there. She still knew the difference between an average day on the set and a not-so-average day. July 6th was not, in fact, an average day on set. It didn’t even qualify as an above average day on set. It was a below average day, worse, perhaps, even than a below average day. It was a new low, the biggest low. Maybe even the worst.

            Claire rolled out of bed at ten o’clock in the morning every day of the week, regardless of whether or not she had to work. She moved through her morning routine with military efficiency, showering, dressing, brushing her teeth and hair, settling herself into some kind of order all by ten-thirty. In college, she would have been haphazard at best by that point, but she also didn’t give too much of a shit in school about whether or not her hair was all up in her face. She hadn’t had to do desert shoots or upside down shoots in her film classes. On July 6th, however, she was woken up at nine by her husband of two years crawling down her body, leaving a feathery trail of kisses down the muscles of her abdomen. He turned her into a melted puddle of goo before nine forty-five, and she was fifteen minutes late getting out of bed. Normally, this would not have been an issue, but Claire had a desert shoot scheduled for twelve-thirty that required her to leave her car at the studio. Fifteen minutes when headed into Studio City from Topanga was the difference between half an hour and three.

            Claire forwent the shower, the teeth brushing, the meticulous hair care routines. If she could have forwent getting dressed, she would have. Instead, she haphazardly tugged on ripped up jeans and an old Ramones t-shirt, before grabbing her go bag and running out the door. On that one, single day, however, there were three accidents resting between her and Studio City. Normally, traffic was slow but smooth. Not so when accidents ravaged the highway system. Everyone wanted to see what was going on, and no one was really all that concerned with where anyone else wanted to go.

            Claire decided to take the back roads.

            She was through and across in about an hour and a half, which was less time than she had expected but far more than she had wanted to spend in traffic. She owed it mostly to the roundabout way she took, but it was still a trip. That left her with half an hour to pack her equipment, less than half the time she’d accounted for. It led to her driving her team like she never had before, throwing things into the van with a ferocity she hadn’t had since Goldenglow, when every second wasted was a dollar down the drain. By the time everything was all said and done, they were only five minutes late out of the parking lot, and, in Hollywood at least, that could be considered on time.

            Claire’s stomach was complaining a half an hour later.

            They were headed into Nevada when she spotted the signs for “Romeo, Whiskey, and Bravo’s Roadside Diner”. Most of the crew in the van didn’t understand, but Claire, who had grown up as an ex-navy brat, knew that they were first letters of last names from the phonetic alphabet. She knew this because the logo was wrought with army symbolism, from the stripes along the side to the flashing neon helmet on top of the building itself as they pulled in. It kept “lifting” off of a blonde soldier’s head, and plonking back down over and over again, even in the afternoon sun.

            Claire hopped out and promised it’d only be a moment.

             When she got inside, there were three men behind the counter, each of them with a different job, and each of them ex-military to Claire’s moderately trained eyes.

            “Okay, boys, who’s Romeo, who’s Whiskey, and who’s Bravo?” she asked, sauntering up to the counter.

            All three of them smiled brightly, as if she was the first one in a while to get it without being told about it in a long time.

            “’m Bravo,” the man at the grill said, hair down to the middle of his back and bound tightly in a series of hair-ties. His right arm was prosthetic, but he was still flipping burgers like a champ.

            “I’m Romeo,” said the second, a tall blonde with windswept hair who had a jaw fit to break bricks.

            “And I’m Whiskey, ma’am,” the last said, a tall dark drink of water that dropped her a sultry wink.

            Romeo nudged him, pointing to the claddagh ring on her finger as he did so, and Claire smiled.

            “Do you boys offer take out options or is this strictly an eat-in establishment?”

***

            They were at the sight by three, which was exactly the time Claire had wanted to be there. She’d fallen asleep on the window after eating her food, effectively lulled by good burgers and the road noise around them, until food coma was not only imminent, but demanded. By the time she was roused, and they finished unloading, the sun was beginning to fall behind the horizon nicely. It was getting to be cool enough to set up fully, at long last showing off Claire’s ability to time everything perfectly. They only had one night shoot in the desert, one night of their three leads crawling across the sand in a desperate attempt to escape the soon to be CGI’d -in forces of darkness. It was apt to be rough, wind blowing across the arid desert landscape and turning what had been hot into something much cooler, and all three women in clothing that was practical for guerrilla combat than for sleeping in the desert.

            They were cocked, locked, and ready to rock by the time full dark settled over the desert.

            Claire had never been superstitious about much in regards to film and theater. There were two, however, that she adhered to almost religiously. First, that one never said Macbeth on or in a theater unless it was a part of the performance of said accursed play. Second, that walking under a non-set piece ladder was bad luck. Now, when she said walking under a ladder, she did not, in fact, mean in every day life. Specifically, walking under a ladder during set up was bad luck. She’d never known it to end well. Yet, she could do nothing but look on in horror as Kevin, her DOP, walked under the set Markie was using to set lights. She felt horror down to her very bones, and a cold wash ran down her spine as Kevin came out the other side before she could get to him, and Kate, her AD, watched her face go slack and slightly green.

            “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Claire,” she offered.

            “Kevin just walked under Markie’s ladder,” the older woman whispered.

            “Nothing bad has happened ye-“

            There was a loud crash, and everyone’s head turned to see Kevin holding his leg, top teeth gnawing on his lower lip as he backed away from the cart of lights. Claire sighed, feeling all her good cheer from being set by dark go down the drain. She growled, long and low, and headed toward Kevin.

            He tried to explain, but didn’t even get a word out before she had grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and the scruff of his neck, and began dragging him toward the vans. She sat him on the tailgate and produced, from somewhere in the depths of the backpack she had slung inside during set up, a tightly bound wad of dry sage. She lit it with a lighter, and passed it over his body in silence.

            Whether Kevin believed in what she was doing or not, the crash into the light cart, resulting in two broken bulbs and one bruised shin, was the only thing that went wrong with the shoot that night. Claire was back in LA by six the next morning. However, because the two bulbs had been broken, and not simply had their filaments busted, she spent two hours in the office filling out paperwork.

            Brian called her halfway through.

            “You’re late. You’re also lucky I hadn’t tossed the bath bomb in the tub quite yet,” he said when she answered.

            “Kevin walked under a ladder,” she groused, flipping a page.

            “How bad’s the damage?”

            “Two light bulbs and a bruised shin.”

            “Not terrible then.”

            “Do you know how expensive those bulbs are? The paperwork alone is a nightmare. I almost wish he’d broken a leg or something.”

            “Are your leads alright?”

            “Of course.”

            “Then everything’s fine and the show can go on, right?”

            “No, because I’m going to murdalize my own damn face,” she grunted, signing her name at the bottom. “One light bulb done. Now for the other.”

            “The faster you get that paperwork done, the sooner I can fuck you into the mattress until the bath water gets cold and we have to run more.”

            If the secretary noticed her scribbling faster, she didn’t say a damn word.

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

Round Two, Prompt One.

OH. MY. GODDESS. It's been somewhere in the neighborhood of a year since we were here. Holy shit, a year. However, we're all kinda living in the same place again, and had the bright idea to start this back up, and I decided I'd post the first prompt because I'm a mother fucker like that.

So. Round Two, Prompt One.

Due Wednesday, 00:00 (aka 12:00 AM, Midnight)

You must write about a day on the job with a member of the Unholy Trinity. By a day on the job, I mean a day on their career of choice, not, oh, say, Martie's crappy diner job. It must include: 

- The morning rush to get things done

- The post lunch food coma

- One work accident (does not have to include physical injury)

- Lamentations about paperwork

- Day dreaming

- Significant other visits (optional)

Must be more than 1,000 words, less than 6,000.

And, to the sixteen of you still following this blog, thank you. We love you, and we're sorry we've been gone for so long.

- Knox

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

In Which Ringo Writes Shameless Harry Potter Fluffies

Prompt: Stick the Unholy Trinity into one of your favorite fandoms.

Fandom -> Harry Potter (19 Years Later)

            Holden Hollis – Ravenclaw (4th year)

            Martie Simmons – Hufflepuff (7th year)

            Claire Reynolds – Slytherin (6th year)

Pairings: Rose/Scorpius, Albus/Holden, Martie/Fred

              It wasn’t often that Holden could slip away from his friends to meet Albus in the Room of Requirement. The older boy would tug him into the room, pushing him back against the wall and kissing him sweetly, like a man who had been lost in a desert without water for far too long. Claire and Martie didn’t approve. “He’s too old for you,” Claire had said. “You and Albus want different things from this relationship,” Martie had added. “You’re going to get hurt,” they finished in unison.

            But how could he let go of the one thing that kept him grounded?

///

            Albus pulled away quickly, kissing him once on the cheek before smiling a bit madly. “I’ve missed you, little one,” he said, wrapping long, lithe arms around him and pulling him down onto the sofa. “I wish we could do this more often.”

            His heart hurt a bit at that. It was Albus’s decision to keep whatever they were a secret. He wasn’t ready to come out to his large, famous family. He didn’t want anyone but Claire, Martie, and Rose to know. He knew it wasn’t him – Albus wasn’t ashamed of him. But it still made him feel unwanted, sometimes.

            He made himself comfortable on Albus’s lap, large hands splayed across his stomach, slipping under the white dress shirt and sweater to smooth against his skin. “How have you been?” He questioned. “How’s quidditch going?”

            When Albus Severus Potter got started on a topic, it was hard to get him to stop talking about it. They could go on for hours, Holden tangling his fingers into soft black hair, reddish-pink lips moving as Albus babbled.

            Eventually, though, he had to leave.

            He kissed Albus like it could potentially be their last, and left the Room of Requirement to meet Martie and Claire down in the kitchens.

///

              “This can’t go on, Holden.” Claire had a chocolate latte in hand, and sipped at it every few moments. “You’re his dirty little secret, and I don’t like it. You shouldn’t have to hide who you love, and Albus shouldn’t make you. You deserve someone who will treat you like the little prince you are, and Albus Potter is not that person.”

            Holden looked down at his peppermint tea, and scrunched up his nose. “It isn’t his fault. I would be afraid to come out too, Claire-Bear, in a family that large. His Uncle Ron is pretty conservative, too. He just doesn’t want to lose anyone he loves.”

            “That’s an excuse and you know it.”

            Martie ran her hand over Holden’s short blonde hair. “Honey, we’re just looking out for you.” She kissed his cheek next, and he nuzzled closer to her.

///

              So the next time Albus invited him to the Room of Requirement, he said no, and instead asked him to meet in the Owlery so they could talk.

            Albus agreed.

///

              “Holden?” Albus asked as he entered. Holden wiped under his eyes, the tears gone by the time he turned around and smiled. “You’ve been crying. What’s wrong? Did someone hurt you?”

            He stepped forward so he could tilt his chin up, their eyes meeting. “Albus, I can’t do this anymore.” Albus’s face fell, and his eyes grew dark. “I love you. But I can’t be a secret. Do you understand? I don’t deserve that. Neither do you. And as much as I love you, I can’t be with you unless you’re ready to be with me.” He hesitantly kissed Albus’s stubbly cheek, and then he left the Owlery, walking away from the boy he’d given his heart to.

///

              That night he cried. He cried with Claire’s arms around him, into the wooly fabric covering Martie’s shoulder.

///

              A week passed. Then another. Life went on: Holden went to class, did his homework, and spent the Hogsmeade weekend with Claire and Martie, eating chocolate and watching Martie and Fred Weasley II being absolutely adorable at Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. His heart healed, at least a little bit.

            It was Wednesday at breakfast that everything changed.

            “HOLDEN!” he heard behind him. He was at the Ravenclaw table, reading his Transfiguration textbook. He turned a bit, and there was Albus, loping towards him, glasses askew and tie half-undone. Imagine the surprise when he leaned down, hands on his cheeks, and kissed him, deep, right there in the Great Hall.

            Holden hear wolf whistles and cat calls, but focused on the lips, familiar and warm against his own. When Albus pulled back, he mewled at the loss of contact.

            “I love you,” he said. “I love you, and I miss you.”

            Holden nodded. “I love you, too.” And then kissed him again, because it had been weeks and he was a physical boy. “Wait, Albus, what about…”

            “I believe my Dad’s words were… Albus, if he makes you happy, then he could be an alien from another planet, for all I care.” Albus grinned at that, and Holden had never seen him so happy. “So, Holden Alan Hollis, would you give me the honor of being my one and only?”

            He pretended to think for a minute. “I guess that could be manageable, Albus Severus Potter.” And he reached to intertwine their fingers.

///

              That night, in the Slytherin 6th Years Boy’s Dorm, Holden curled against Albus’s chest. His boyfriend (boyfriend!) was talking to Scorpius about something-or-another, and he could feel his eyelids drooping. Albus pressed a kiss to his hair, and moved him so he could be comfortable against the pillows.

            “I’m glad you finally did this, Al,” Scorpius said quietly. “Rosie and I were getting worried about you.”

            “I’m glad I did as well, Scorp. I think this one and I are going to turn in. See you in the morning.” And then there was a closing of the curtains, and Albus was the big spoon, and he fell asleep against his chest, warm and content.

///

              And when he woke, Albus was there. 

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

Prompt 1,976

Everyone is very emotional over That Show Of Which We Don't Speak the Name. So, what better way to make yourself feel better than a prompt? So. Here we go. You must take the Unholy Trinity and stick them in an AU of one of your favorite fandoms. Naturally, THAT ONE SHOW is not allowed. Minimum 1,000 words, due next Wednesday by 8:00 p.m.

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

Interesting Turn of Events

Prompt 36: At least 500 words (oh Nuwanda, you dick).

              In an interview on his second book tour, Jack was asked about Holden. “What do you see in him?” the woman questioned, the smile on her face obviously fake. He gave the usual, generic answer he always offered about his personal life. She seemed satisfied, and they continued on flawlessly.

            Later on, in the cab on his way home, he thought back to the question, and a familiar warmth settled deep in his stomach. What did he see in Holden, the man he had chosen to spend the rest of his life with?

            He saw his lover, the way he looked as he unraveled, body shuddering, eyes shut tight.

            He saw the hardworking editor, hunched over his desk, laptop open and a mug of extra bold coffee beside him. He saw nights of passing out from sheer stress, tears running down over pale cheeks, tears that he rubbed off with the pad of his thumb.

            He saw the loving father to Ginger and Coriander, the man who kissed scraped knees and made heart shaped pancakes for breakfast. Stories before bed, the two men tucked together with both kids in one of their beds, taking turns reading from the storybook, each delivering a swift kiss to the foreheads of each.

            But, above all, he saw the man who fought the hardest battle he had ever encountered, and still lived to tell the tale.

              When he finally walked through the front door of his home, he expected noise. Children’s laughter, music blaring from the kitchen stereo, anything at all would have made sense, to be honest. Instead, it was absolutely quiet. Sure, he could hear the hum of the heater, but that was it.

            “Honey?” he called out. “I’m home!”

            “Upstairs, Jack!”

            He kicked off his uncomfortable dress shoes, loosening his tie as he ascended the stairs. He wasn’t expecting the sight he encountered. Holden was tucked away in the master Jacuzzi bathtub, body hidden beneath a thick layer of bubbles, glasses off and head laid back.

            One eye opened. “Well? Are you going to join me?”

            Jack did not need to be asked twice. He stripped quickly, nearly tripping on his boxers before sliding in behind the smaller man, who settled back against his chest.

            “Where are the kids?” Jack asked, tracing his fingers down Holden’s arm.

            “Martie has them for the day. She wanted to teach them notes, which I approved, obviously.” Holden turned a bit so they were facing each other. “How was your day, sweetie?”

            Jack did nothing but kiss him. “It was fantastic. I love you.”

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

The Carter Marriage (In Which Knox Contemplates the Idea of Dive Bombing Nuwanda from the Nest for the Word Restriction)

            Most people would assume, when they saw someone like Claire Reynolds, with her long, multicolored hair and her dark nails, that black was a normal color on her frame. This would be, perhaps, the most wrong and awful assumption ever made in the history of the world, because Claire tended to favor bright colors cut with black, or band shirts in dark and heather gray. She was a terrifying sight to behold, actually, in her all black wedding dress, with blue accents.

            Holden waved a hand in front of her, drawing her gaze back to the present.

            “Ready?” he asked.

            “Yeah,” she whispered.

            She coughed to clear her throat, closing her eyes and seeing the first time she’d met Brian, the first time she’d kissed him, the first time they’d actually gone on a date, instead of falling into bed together.

            “Claire?”

            “Yeah, sorry,” she murmured.

            Holden tucked the comb with the veil attached in front of a stack of multi-colored curls, and arranged it so that her face was hidden.

            Brian and Claire had made the decision early on to have a non-traditional reversed wedding. Neither of them were big fans of white, and neither was particularly religious, so it only made sense to do a little less traditional and a little more their own thing. Claire’s uncle, an ordained minister and justice of the peace, had agreed to do a non-religious ceremony, on the grounds that it was exactly what she wanted.

            It was.

            “How are the feet?” Martie asked, helping the woman hop down from the table she was on.

            “Good. We swapped the heels for flats last week when I figured out I was going to die getting down the aisle.”

            Martie chuckled softly at that, and lined up behind Holden, in front of Claire.

            They’d decided to do it outdoors, in a garden up in Napa Valley. The scenery was pretty, but the aisle was a little rocky, and had been impossible to traverse in heels. All that aside, Claire hated the damn things anyway.

            She swept out from underneath the tent, into the aisle, and locked eyes with Brian. It was all she needed to let her breathe easy again, and the world seemed to right itself at the look on his face. It was easily a look that would have had her tackling him into bed, if they were at home. Instead, she had to contend herself with watching him shift, remembering that her uncle was up there with him, and probably getting ready to smack him with something.

            She smiled, and walked into her new life as Claire Carter.

I. Hate. You. I could have done so much more with this, but I had to keep it under five hundred words. -.- You are an evil human, Nuwanda.

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

Prompt 36

PROMPT FROM THE KYRSTEN

I need a story that is only 500 words. It can be about anything, it just can't be more than 500 words.

[theunholytrifecta-blog]

Point of No Return (In Which Knox Uploads the Last Avengers Prompt Response for a While, She Swears!)

Prompt 35- Point of No Return

  A college tale centering on a bar (X); a really bad incident with an undercooked burrito (X); someone drinking on the sly and being confronted about it (X); a marriage proposal; an experiment that goes horribly awry (X); a lockdown scenario (X); a reference to at least one of the following: The Breakfast Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Weird Science, or Better Off Dead (X); a rousing discussion between three or more persons about either the nature of good and evil, the absurdity of 24/7 population monitoring, or science as an art form (X).

              Sarah Collins was not one who typically worked with super heroes. As an intelligence officer with SHIELD, her job had mostly consisted of interrogation and extraction. She was up there with the best, ranked, unofficially, just behind Romanoff in her success/failure ratio. She had worked very hard over the years to keep it that way, because surpassing Romanoff was apt to bring her a heap of trouble with a side order of Clint Barton, and it wouldn’t do to have two super spies sneaking around looking into her. As long as she kept behind Romanoff, kept Barton off her back about her blue hair that never seemed to change tone, and Fury didn’t sniff too close, she had believed that keeping her mutant status a secret would be easy.

            The assembling of the Avengers, the helicarrier having limited space, the intermediary training exercises; she knew running into Steve Rogers was a matter of time. And Steve knew her. Of course he did—one didn’t simply forget the fact of one’s best friend’s steady girl in the 40s. She had changed since then, had scars and pains she hadn’t had 70 years ago. She’d stopped iodining her hair to keep it brown, too. Fear of discovery by Steve, fear of the questions he would pose and the answers she would have to give, had kept her hiding in her quarters aboard the helicarrier, until Barton’s attack.

            It had given her the opportunity to jump ship and head for where she figured the action to be 20 minutes prior to the attack, but had been too afraid to tell anyone about. And that led to her sitting across from an irate Nick Fury.

            “You knew where they were headed,” he accused.

            It had been six months of cleaning up wreckage, of trying to save the world from the things found in that wreckage, and of fear. Because the footage was out there, somewhere, of her swinging around light-posts and grabbing Chitauri out of the air, of the electricity arching from her fingers, of cuts and scrapes and bruises healing almost instantly. She suspected, now that she was sitting across from him, that it had been found.

            “You could have saved countless-“

            “No one would have listened to me,” she countered.

            “Because you had nothing but gut feeling to back it up, or because you’re a mutant?”

            She was out of her chair in an instant, her stance defensive and prepared for anything. Her fast reaction only prompted laughter, genuine, from Fury.

            “You thought we didn’t know? You work for the greatest intelligence organization in the world. You thought you could hide this from us?” he laughed. “Even Agent Romanoff knows, and, quite frankly, she’s pissed you never brought your ‘A’ game. I don’t care about your mutations, and I don’t care how that you use them. What I do care about is that you had valuable intel you didn’t share because you thought you would be caged for it.”

            Sarah’s stance relaxed, and her head was bowed, but she did not sit down.

            “It won’t happen again,” she whispered.

            “Damn right it won’t. I’m assigning you to the Avengers Initiative, based in Stark Tower. They couldn’t put you in a cage if they tried. You ship out in an hour, so I suggest you get packing.

            Sarah nodded, and headed to her quarters.

            Barton was waiting for her, that familiar, lolling grin in place and a comment about her hair poised on his tongue. One look on her face had it locked back and away, replacing it with concern and fear. He knew by the way she didn’t immediately try to attack him that she wasn’t mad they had known. Something else, something stranger was going through her mind, and, when she got closer, he realized it was fear.

            “I thought you’d be excited to join our little Breakfast Club remake. We’ve got all the spots besides awesome janitor covered,” he offered. “At the very least, it’ll get you off the helicarrier.”

            “Yeah. And I’m not cleaning up your messes,” she whispered, but her heart wasn’t really in it.

            “You avoided the bridge that day,” he continued, changing both tone and tactics. “Nat told me. You heard the Avengers were coming aboard, and you holed up nice and tight in here. Refused to come out unless called for specifically. Which one of them are you scared of?”

            This is Clint. He or Natasha will figure it out eventually. And then they’ll tell him themselves, instead of letting me do it. They wouldn’t sacrifice the integrity of their team for me.

            “Rogers,” she admitted.

            Her hands never stopped shoving her clothes and possessions into her duffle bag.

            “Whoa,” he blurted. “Was not expecting that one. I bet Natasha ten bucks it was Stark.”

            She shook her head ruefully, her hands finally stopping their motions.

            “I knew him,” she whispered. “Before Erskine, when he was just a scrawny kid who got into too many damn fights. I went steady… er… dated his best friend.”

            “Oh, shit.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Look, Rogers is a nice guy, and he knows the 40s were an era of intolerance. He’ll get it.”

-*-

            “Oh, God, Steve, I think I’m dying.”

            The fact that these were the first words Sarah heard when she set foot in the tower did not bode well for her. Quickly, her mind catalogued all the possible scenarios, cross referencing them with what she knew of the tower’s residents, and came up with the most plausible solution; Stark had drank too much.

            “I told you Taco Bell was bad for you,” Bruce chuckled.

            Okay, maybe not.

            “And that thing was cold, too.”

            “They undercooked it. Oh, Lord, I’ve got food poisoning.”

            There was the loud splashing noise of someone losing their stomach contents, and that was when things started to go from bad to worse. She stood rooted to the spot as Tony Stark himself was hauled from the couch, Steve’s hands as kind and gentle as Bucky’s had once been. Her breathing sped up as she took him in; broad strokes of muscle against the wide expanse of his body, blonde hair swept to the side peaceably, blue eyes darkened with concern. He looked like he’d only just woken up, unlike the Steve Rogers she had known, who wouldn’t be caught dead asleep after seven even on a weekday. Tears sparked at her eyes as she watched him look up, and the world went blurry. She blinked, and he was staring at her, his grip on Tony still strong enough to support him, but his focus shifted.

            “Sarah?” he asked.

            She dropped the duffle and ran, for the first time in a long time unconcerned with the artifacts that were the only things she had left from her life before the mutations and their implications. Fear was the only thing on her mind, and it was the fear that she would tear apart something he had now that he hadn’t had then, or that she would cause him to revert. She didn’t want to take anything from him.

            Clint grabbed for her, but he hadn’t anticipated her bolting. His reaction was fast, but his hands still closed on empty air. Even as they were closing on the air, he was turning to follow, his own heart hammering in his ribcage as she began to power through the corridors. She jumped Natasha’s attempt to get her, and rolled between Thor’s legs as he stepped out to see what the commotion was.

            On the stairs down, he was passed by Steve.

            Sarah Connor, as he had known her, had been Bucky’s best girl. She was patient with him, kind and caring. She always fed Steve when he came by, even if she didn’t always have the money to do so. She had never been afraid of him before the change, and, he had hoped, she wouldn’t be after. It seemed this was not the case, but he didn’t want her to run from him just because he was bigger now.

            “SARAH, PLEASE!”

            She didn’t stop, pouring on more speed as she jumped up on the railing and slid down the stairs. Four flights from the bottom, she jumped into the center, and landed with a hard crash on the ground floor. She rolled out of the impact crater, and sprinted out the doors, into the New York night. She was fast, but Steve was a super-soldier. Before she could run fully out into the crowds, he had her around the waist, pulling her back and to him.

            “Stop,” he whispered.

            “Let me go!”

            “Sarah, please, I promise I won’t hurt you.”

            “I’m not worried about you hurting me! I’m worried about hurting you!”

            He turned her, so that she was looking up at him.

            “You won’t.”

            He half dragged, half carried her back into the building, refusing to give in to her struggles, even when he felt the pinpricks of what felt like claws. He’d been briefed, of course, on Sarah Collins, the new agent assigned to the Avengers because of the extraordinary things she could do. He had been informed that Sarah was dangerous. But, he hadn’t for the life of him believed that it would be the same Sarah who had gone steady with Bucky Barnes for three whole years.

            When he got the reception area of the entryway, he hauled her off her feet, as she had once done to him, and settled her on the desk.

            “Stop,” he commanded.

            “Let go.”

            “No, not until I’m sure you won’t run again.”

            “I can’t do this, Steve.”

            He pulled her torso against him, so that she was wrapped in his embrace, and he felt her relax a little.

            “Whatever it is you’re scared of, I promise it’s not as scary as what life must have been like for you, living through 70 years of history without telling anyone who you were or how it happened. Please, Sarah,” he murmured. “I promise nothing bad’s going to happen.”

            “You don’t know that.”

-*-

            It looked as if she were conducting an incredible orchestra in her head, because her arms flapped and waved and moved with such brilliance and fluidity that Bruce was surprised she was in her particular line of work. When he opened the glass door to Steve’s light box/art studio, and Requiem for a Tower flooded out, he understood. The piece was powerful, and there was a reason people used it in sci-fi trailers the world over. But the motions of her arms and hands made him believe, for a half a second, that she was in control of the orchestra. Then she dropped her arms to her side, and the music played on, breaking the illusion.

            “Sarah, right?” Bruce asked as she turned.

            “Correct, Dr. Banner.”

            “Bruce,” he corrected, pulling himself up onto a table. “You gave us quite a fright today when you ran off. And now you’re down here in Steve’s art room. You’ve got Tony a little worried.”

            “And he sent you down here to investigate?” she asked, even though she seemed to already know the answer.

            He nodded anyway.

            “I’m not stealing his boyfriend, if that’s what he’s worried about,” she grunted, hauling herself up onto the table opposite, beside an open sketchbook.

            It was an ancient and battered thing, and beside it on the table rested her duffle bag, from which Bruce deduced it had been taken. She picked it up easily, although her touch was delicate.

            “This is my most prized possession. Would you like to know why?”

            “Yes.”

            “Steve gave it to Bucky when he enlisted. A going away present of sorts. It’s all sorts of drawings and things, but there was one very important one at the back that Bucky asked for. Instead of tearing it out of the book, he took the whole thing over to Europe with him when he shipped out. Steve sent it back to me, along with the rest of Bucky’s footlocker when he died. This and his spare tags are the only things I have left of his.”

            She flipped to the last drawing in the book, and handed it to Bruce.

            “I’ve lived with the grief for seventy years, and it gets sharper every day. Beside the fact that Steve doesn’t like chicks, and never has, I doubt highly I’ll ever get over Bucky.”

            The drawing was of her, from something he’d described to him. She was wearing one of his dress uniform shirts and his hat, nothing else, laying on his bed, legs crossed almost demurely, a half-sultry half-nervous smile on her face. She could remember the night as clearly as if it had been yesterday, and, although seventy years should have dulled the pain, it hadn’t, and the memory would always cut her like a knife.

            She had been in college at the time, and Bucky had just enlisted. He was back from basic training for the weekend, and she’d taken off after her last class, dressing her best to go bar hopping. It had started as something harmless; she’d taken his hat and invited him to go dance. He’d held her close, but something in his eyes had been different, darker, more lustful. She had enjoyed that primal bit, had loved it so much that, the next night, even though she was still hung over, she’d picked the lock on his apartment door, stripped to her knickers, and pulled on his uniform shirt and hat.

            She hadn’t been able to walk right afterward, but it had been worth it at the time.

            After a moment, she took the book back from him, closing the book with a gentle snap.

            “Steve never asked about it, and I watched him draw me with the most professional atmosphere I’ve ever seen. Girls have never done it for him, least of all me.”

            “Good to know,” Tony said, and her head snapped to him. “And I’d like to get a look at that notebook sometime, if you don’t mind. Purely recreational purposes.”

            She gave him a sheepish smile and tossed it to him. “There’s a Bucky Barnes original on the back cover that I would avoid if I were you, because I’m pretty sure he drew it just to freak Steve out.”

            “Crude army humor?” Tony asked.

            “Something like that,” Steve said from behind him. “I’ll take her up, if no one minds.”

            Sarah hopped off the table, shouldering her duffle bag when no one protested. She followed him quietly, until they were in the elevator (she knew he only took it up for her, because he still remembered how labored her breathing had been, before the healing factor had settled in).

            “Did you ever go back to school again?” he asked as they rode up.

            “Four or five times,” she replied softly. “I got my medical degree about fifteen years ago.”

            He smiled at her, but she knew what was coming. Her suspicions were confirmed when he slammed the stop button on the elevator.

            “Why are you scared of me?” he whispered. “Natasha informed me quite matter-of-factly that you could kick my ass six ways to Sunday without hesitation, and no one would ever be the wiser, so it can’t be how big I am. And you were never scared of me before.”

            “I… I’m scared that you’ll try to be who you were before around me,” she admitted. “I’m scared that my being here will mess things up for you. I’m scared that you’ll lose everything because of me.”

            “And when has that ever happened?”

            “Statistically, people lose a lot because of me.”

            “You can’t be blaming yourself for Bucky’s death,” he whispered.

            He pulled her close, wrapping her in his arms. It felt so good to smell that familiar scent of Steve Rogers again, so good to know that he was alive and well, and that there was someone in the world who knew her for who she had always been, and didn’t care that she hadn’t really changed much over the years.

            “I’ll always blame myself for Bucky’s death,” she replied, breathing the words into his flesh. “I was the one who let him go over there, remember? I was the one who wasn’t enough.”

            “You were more than enough. He wanted to keep you safe, that’s all. He didn’t know that you could keep yourself safe.”

            “He did, though,” she whimpered. “He knew, and he still went, because he thought I shouldn’t be the only one protecting me.”

            “You told him.”

            “You thought he’d care?” she giggled, despite herself.

            Gingerly, she extricated herself from him, hitting the release on the elevator as she did so.

            “No. I just didn’t think you had told him is all.”

            She shook her head. “It… I… Kind of loose it a bit… during… And that’s… almost impossible to hide… so… yeah…”

            “Oh.”

            “He didn’t seem to mind, though.”

            “It’s very Bucky to embrace all aspects of a girl.”

            She snorted through her nose.

-*-

            Tony was talking in loud and obnoxious tones when Sarah walked into the kitchen for breakfast the next morning, rousted from fitful sleep by JARVIS at eight am, sharp. She blinked blearily at them all, and then made straight for the coffee maker as Bruce was finally goaded into trying to one up Tony with a story.

            “The last time I went out drinking, was with a bunch of my friends from Harvard,” he admitted. “We went to this bar in the middle of Boston the week before spring finals, and everyone sort of went a little nuts. I mean, I was so drunk that I stood up on a table half naked and danced.”

            “I would pay good money to see video of that,” Natasha admitted.

            Sarah glared at them, and dumped an extra spoonful of sugar in her coffee.

            “You okay over there?” Bruce asked, perking up.

            “Fine,” she grunted.

            “Sarah,” Steve called, pushing back from the table.

            Running with hot coffee was a bad plan and, while she knew she should set it down, she also knew from experience that she wasn’t getting out of the tower with Steve there, and Clint and Natasha both had instructions to keep her inside until things calmed down.

            “Nightmares,” she offered finally.

            If anyone noticed her hand turn a light shade of blue, and the steam stop rising from the coffee, no one mentioned it. But everyone lurched a little bit when she drained the cup in a single swallow. She set the mug back on the counter and turned, heading back to her rooms.

            “You think you’re the only one who has them?” Tony accused.

            “No, but I’m the only one who has seventy years of them,” she shot back over her shoulder, never breaking pace.

-*-

            She was downstairs in the swimming pool when she heard the doors slide open and closed, and then the locks engaged, so she figured, if she was under lockdown, she could at least finish her workout. Fifty laps later, she emerged at the shallow end, flopping onto the concrete there breathing heavily. It wasn’t as bad as it had been before the healing, before her corrosive and deadly lungs had healed over into something manageable, but she’d just swum a hundred laps in an Olympic sized swimming pool in a time that shouldn’t have been possible. A little heavy breathing was to be expected.

            What she didn’t expect was the weight of Natasha settled on her pelvis, pinning her to the floor, while Clint sprawled out flat next to her.

            “We’ve worked together for nearly half a decade, and we’ve never seen you like this,” Natasha offered.

            She rolled off so that she was on her other side, staring at the ceiling with both Clint and Sarah.

            “I’ve had a bad day.”

            “I’d say you’ve had a bad seventy years, Sarah,” Clint countered.

            “That to, but I’ve learned to live with that.”

            “Steve wants to know what happened. He wants to know what you’ve done in seventy years that could have made it so painful to sleep at night.”

            Sarah sat up, pulling her knees to her chest so she could rest her head on them. She’d always been able to trust Natasha and Clint, had always known they had her back, even if she couldn’t tell them everything. The three of them together were each other’s liabilities, each other’s weak spots, but they filled in the holes nicely for each other. All that aside, they were spies first, and Sarah knew that breathing a word of what she’d lived through would not only get her kicked out of SHIELD (which wouldn’t be so bad) but convicted of treason (which would be very bad).

            “Whatever it is, it doesn’t leave this room. We even had Tony disable JARVIS in here so it couldn’t be recorded,” Natasha murmured.

            She was still hesitant.

            “We’re not letting you out until you tell us what’s going on.”

            “Thanks for giving me the choice,” she snorted.

            “You didn’t give us one.”

            “I know,” she whispered.

            There was silence, for a while, the silence of wool gathering and thought processing, of trying to find a place to begin. After a moment, she unfolded herself, and headed to the locker rooms.

            “Call the rest of the idiots down, then. That way no one gets it second hand.”

            Sarah had always been quick at changing clothes. Part of keeping your good girl image and still having fun in the 40s was being able to throw on your clothes quickly and appear presentable and coifed, even as you were climbing down the lattice work of your boyfriend’s house and into his garden. Once Bucky had moved out, it hadn’t been so bad, but when he’d lived in the orphanage, it had been hell getting in and out without getting in trouble.

            The fact that the Avengers, plus Coulson, were assembled outside her door told her that they had been waiting to be invited into the discussion, had been on stand-by, prepared for the worst.

            “Nice to see you guys had this planned out to a tee,” she remarked, drying her long, blue hair with the towel as she stepped out.

            “JARVIS, lock it back down and then make yourself scarce again,” Tony barked.

            “Of course, sir.”

            The glass doors slid shut, and Sarah dropped down beside the pool, dipping her toes in.

            “Of all of you, Steve is probably the one who knows how different the world is today than it was seventy years ago. For him, it all happened in a flash. He slept through it, didn’t have to watch what went on that changed our view of this world. The rest of you were born into the world of Vietnam and the war on terror, a world where America going to war no longer meant the good guys coming in to squash the bad guys. War has always been an industry for you. Soldiers are factory workers, people to be used and discarded just as soon as they break down. Back when Steve and I were born, though, soldiers were heroes. War was a battle against evil. The world was different.

            “I lived through the change. I watched it happen. I even helped cause some of it. I would have traded the world to sleep through the sixties, to not have to watch soldiers go to war and die for nothing more than money. But I’ve put flowers in the barrels of automatic weapons. I’ve been to protest rallies. I’ve marched in a world where America isn’t always the good guy. The Sarah you know, Steve; she died fifty years ago. She died when she watched a president get shot because he didn’t want to send boys to die for a cause that wasn’t theirs. And that’s what I have nightmares about. I have nightmares about your oh-so-rigid moral structure coming back because you see me, and it ruining what you have here.

            “Times are different, and so am I.”

            Through all of it, she didn’t look up from the pool, even though she could sense them moving closer to her.

            “Not seventy years of nightmares. Nightmares about seventy years,” Tony whispered.

            “You’re wrong,” Steve murmured, dropping down to the edge of the pool beside her. “Not about that other stuff, about you bringing out the worst in me. You’ve never been able to do that to anyone, let alone me. And, just because you’ve seen it, because you’ve lived through it, doesn’t mean I haven’t heard about it, that I don’t understand it. Because I do.”

-*-

            “The nature of good and evil isn’t just white and black, Bruce!”

            Steve had stepped in it now, for sure, and he wasn’t certain how to get out of it, because Sarah had spotted him, had zeroed her gaze on him, and beckoned him forward in that way she had always had. In six weeks, she and Bruce had never argued before, so he didn’t even want to know what he was walking into.

            “Steve agrees with me,” she growled.

            “What am I agreeing with?” he asked.

            “That good and evil aren’t black and white. They aren’t absolutes.”

            “She has a point, Bruce.”

            “Explain Loki to me then, because he strikes me as inherently evil.”

            Sarah sighed through her nose and glared. “Loki Laufeyson was lied to from a young age, told that he was an Asgardian and that all Jotuns are scum. Odin never told him who he was, where he was from, that he loved him like a son. And that made living in his brother’s shadow all the more potent. He decided he would end his life there by forging his own legacy. Somewhere between wanting to please the only father figure he had and New York, he slipped into madness, but madness with intent. All that aside, we don’t know that Loki wasn’t manipulated by the Tesseract like Clint and Selvig were. And, let me ask you this, Dr. Banner, If something like that is powerful enough to wipe out the mind of one of the most stubborn things in the universe and replace it with something else, what do you think it could do to a demi-god?”

            “That doesn’t change the fact that what he did was evil.”

            “His actions were evil. But we’ve all done bad things for good reasons.”

            “I-“

            “Bruce,” Steve whispered. “Trust me. She’s right.”

            His eyes snapped back to hers, and she slipped them shut, praying that the real rage beneath the easy banter hadn’t shown.

            “What… Sarah, what did I say?” he asked.

            “Nothing,” she replied. “It wasn’t anything you said, Bruce, it’s what you implied you believed.”

            “She worked for SHIELD, Dr. Banner,” Natasha said from behind them, opening the refrigerator door. “You saying good and evil are absolutes is like telling her that she’s scum.”

            “Yeah, Doc. Not just her, either. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of, things that are, maybe a little dangerous to others, things that maybe people got killed for,” Clint added.

            He turned his attention back to her, but she was already leaving.

            “What did she do?” he asked softly, the words slipping off his tongue before he had given his express consent.

            “Sarah has done a lot of things in her life most would consider evil, has killed people in positions far higher than yours or mine,” Steve admitted. “She’s done the wrong things for the right reason. How do you think SHIELD sank their claws into her?”

-*-

            Sarah was sitting in the middle of an ocean of pain. Of course she was; she’d put herself there, had gotten into an argument with Bruce about good and evil, black and white—had she really expected not to dredge up some terrible memories. At the echo of a gunshot from a trigger long pulled, she swigged from the bottle of whiskey in her hand and slumped further down the headboard.

            “I tap out,” she mumbled.

            She drained the bottle in one long swallow and tossed it into the corner, listening to it shatter. She wasn’t numb enough, could already hear the screaming and shattering of glass swelling in her ears again. She reached into the bottom of the bed-side drawer, and grabbed another bottle, this one closed with a cork and full of clear liquid. She uncorked it with her teeth and spat it into the same corner as the last bottle.

            She only got one sip from it before Bruce was in her doorway, looking at her with his sleeve pulled up over his nose. She grunted, trying to haul herself up out of the bed, but she couldn’t even get her elbows under herself.  For a moment, she was concerned by this, and found that she didn’t care, flopping back down on the pillows.

            “Sarah?”

            “You made your point,” she slurred.

            “No. I made an ass of myself.”

            “S’what you believe.”

            He moved through the room. He grabbed the bottle from her hands and settled it on the night stand.

            “I’ve recently been informed that I’ve been hanging out with the wrong crowd to believe good and evil are black and white.”

            “Give me back the bottle.”

            “No.”

            “I have to sleep sometimes, and this how I do it without nightmares. If you don’t like it, get the hell out of here.”             She reached for the bottle again, and Bruce grabbed her hand around the wrist. Even impaired, wracked with nerves and sleep deprivation, she was out of his hold and pinning him to the floor before he could even tell what happened.

            “I’ve had enough of being told and ordered and forced to do things,” she hissed.

            He could smell tequila on her breath.

            “Even if it’s by people that care about you?” he groaned.

            “Care about me? Banner, you don’t even know me.”

            “I know enough.”

            He had learned a thing or two about breaking holds in his time, and he was lucky enough to be trying it on the one day he might actually be able to do it. He rolled over and sat up, pushing her back down to the floor. Instead of grabbing her shoulders, which would have been a more stable position by which to hold her down, he grabbed her wrists, and pinned them above her head.

            “I know you’re the best fighter SHIELD has ever seen. I know you’re the only person in the world who can give Natasha a run for her money. I know you’ve lived through so much shit you barely sleep at all. I know you miss Bucky Barnes more than words could ever say. I know you will never love anyone as much as you loved him. I know the nightmare you have most is the one where Steve calls to tell you that Bucky’s dead. You relive that moment over and over in your head, and on the darkest nights, you wish it was you. And you come in here, and you drink, and you scream, and you cry because it helps you forget why you wear his dog tags around your neck for just a little bit. And the only other thing that I know with any degree of certainty is that yes, I do care about you. We all do. We watch you drag yourself upstairs day after day, hung over, and drink gallons of black coffee until you can see straight, and we wonder what we can do.”

            “There’s nothing you can do,” she whispered.

            There were tears shining in her eyes, real tears of pain and sorrow and suffering, and he knew she was so afraid of what he knew that if he let her up now, she was libel to run off.

            “There’s something we can try.”

-*-

            Sarah was in the middle of the morning meditation routine she had fallen into with Bruce, shortly after they started seriously monitoring her alcohol intake, when the building rocked. She stood up quickly, Bruce following suit, and the only thing she could think of was triggers long pulled and bombs long planted, before she remembered that Tony had been working on better body armor for Steve, and they were testing its explosive resistance in the weapons lab. She took off like a rocket, legs pounding against the flooring, kicking up a proverbial dust trail as she hit the stairs, grabbing the railing, swinging over, and dropping down the five flights to the weapons development level.

            She skittered to a stop in front of the mostly obliterated armor testing lab.

            “Tony? Steve?” she yelled, launching herself into the wreckage.

            A still smoldering pile of muscle stood up, and grunted at her, before hauling Tony up off the floor. Steve had hunkered behind his shield, which was now covered in soot, to protect them both from the blast, which made Sarah smile a bit before she launched herself toward them. Although it should have let her breathe easier that the super soldier serum would help heal Steve from any damages, it didn’t. The entire time Sarah was checking Tony for wounds (there were none), she kept sneaking glances up at Steve.

            “I just saw my life flash before my eyes,” Tony whispered as she stood up.

            “On the table,” Sarah demanded, glaring at Steve.

            He pulled himself up as Tony stood and went to survey the damage.

            “What happened?” she asked.

            She began to peel back layers of clothing until he was shirtless, and she was looking over his almost perfect torso. There were a few red splotches that would fade, but nothing dangerous.

            “Apparently, I missed a lab, when I disabled the auto-defense system I installed for the tower,” Tony murmured. “JARVIS detonated what I was testing the armor with.”

            “Nice job,” Sarah replied, but she stepped back. “He’s fine, by the way.”

            “We never had a doubt,” Steve laughed.

            At about that moment, the rest of the team skittered in.

            “It’s fine,” Sarah called.

            Bruce picked his way across the wreckage to her side, but everyone noticed when her eyes became unseeing. She was looking at the far wall, and she could hear Steve’s voice in her head.

            Sarah had never been the victim of a waking nightmare before. But, before her very eyes, the blown apart room in which she stood became the wreckage of the apartment she’d been in when they’d finally patched the call through to her.

              “Ms. Connors? Captain Steven Rogers is on the line for you,” the operator said.

            Sarah stood in the blasted wreckage of the apartment building in Kagoshima, nonplussed at how Steve had managed to convince them to put a call through to her, especially since he wasn’t supposed to know that she was in Japan, fighting on the opposite front of the war from her lover without his consent or knowledge. It was Captain America, of course; Steve Rogers the scrawny kid had become an everyman’s man.

            “Put him through.”

            Over the shaky connection, she could hear Steve breathing.

            “Sarah?” he asked.

            “Yes, doll?” she replied, ducking under cover. She had to wait for an airlift out anyway.

            “Where are you?” he asked.

            “Downtown. I got a job in Times Square. I left the number with the landlady. What’s going on, Steve?”

            “Maybe I should-“

            “Steve, you’re in the middle of a warzone. You want me to believe that you didn’t go through a lot of trouble to make this call? What is happening?”

            “Bucky’s dead,” he whispered. “He fell. Sarah, I… I’m sorry.”

            She had expected a number of things, but not that. Why would she expect that? She’d lived through it before, and thought that part was over. Stupid, stupid, stupid; she was in the thick of it too, wasn’t she? She was living through the same hell that he was; was in the same danger.

            “How?” she whimpered.

            “We were raiding a train. He fell out the side. I grabbed him, but I couldn’t hold on. Sarah, I-“

            Steve didn’t get to finish his sentence. She threw the army issue phone at the wall, and it burst into a dozen pieces. It would take them two months to find her again, and by then she would have destroyed a dozen outposts all along the string of islands leading back to the states across the Pacific. When they brought her into the Honolulu office for question, she would be ragged and underfed, impossibly dirty and very distraught.

            Through ten months of destruction and rage, the only thing that would replay in her mind was the demand that they wait until the war was over to get married, that she would accept his proposal but not his rush.

              She woke up in a bed in the infirmary, Steve hovering over her with concern on his face. Of course she woke up to that, when in her mind’s eye she could still see the tiny boy who had flirted with her at Coney Island only to shut his friend up. Bruce was off to the side, tucked up to a desk and reading her vitals off a screen.

            “Can you hear me?” he asked.

            “You don’t have to shout,” she whispered.

            “I’m not shouting,” he murmured, lowering his voice despite how right he was about the not shouting bit. “What happened?”

            “War flashbacks,” she replied.

            He nodded his understanding, even though he didn’t. None of them did.

-*-

            “Will you marry me?”

            Sarah looked up from her workstation in the lab (after a year with them, she was glad to finally have her own space), and glanced at Bruce. His expression was deadly serious, even though they’d only kissed once or twice. Emotionally, she was still closed off, although not as totally as she had been before.

            “No,” she replied, tone firm but soft.

            He didn’t ask why not, and, to her trained eye, he looked unaffected by her answer. But she knew him well enough to know it wouldn’t be the last of the question.

            “You knew the answer already,” she surmised.

            “I did.”

            “Then why ask?”

            “Because I needed to hear you say it out loud,” he answered.

            “Does this mean you’ve realized that you’re wasting your time on me?” she queried.

            “I’m not,” he responded. “But that’s not the point.”

            “Then what is the point?”

            “You’re still hiding from me.”

            She looked back down at her work (which was nothing more and nothing less than busy work) and tried to put it out of her mind, to ignore him and discontinue the discussion, but it wasn’t working. That much was clear when she felt him, too warm, at her side.

            “Steve and the others; they’re not trained to notice the subtle signs of someone who is living through PTSD, but I am,” he whispered. “In the last year, you believe that I didn’t notice? That I didn’t care to see it?”

            “I didn’t know you could tell.”

            “Sarah, I’m a doctor.”

            “What was it you told Tony? Not that kind of doctor.”

            “But you are,” he replied. “You knew you couldn’t keep going, even though you’ve gone on longer than most. How long did you fight over there without anyone knowing?”

            “Over where?”

            Bruce appropriated one of her displays, and she watched him pull up an old and grainy photo of her on top of the destroyed apartment building where she’d gotten the call about Bucky. Her response was immediate; her body tensed, and she heard the explosion, and then she was kneeling with her head in the trash can, vomiting, while Bruce rubbed a hand along her back.

            He carried her upstairs, an incredible feet considering all that had been done to her in the intervening years. When they reached his room, he held her up near the sink while she brushed her teeth and gargled mouthwash, and then he carried her to bed, tucking her in. He pulled himself up on the other side, and sat with his head against the headboard.

            “I didn’t… want to fight,” she whispered. “I didn’t want Bucky to either, but I couldn’t exactly tell him that.”

            “You did what you had to do,” he confirmed.

            “They didn’t leave me a choice. There was a department, long defunct, of the CIA that dealt with finding and manipulating people that were then referred to as having certain genetic gifts. They tracked us, and forced us to fight, assigning us branches of the military to serve as a specialized weapon in. I was assigned to the army, and sent to Japan. I spent months infiltrating and destroying secret bases along the coast line, before Steve called me about Bucky. I went off the grid, killing anything I could find, anything that would keep the pain away.

            “I was scared. I didn’t know what grief would do to me, but I knew what it might do, and that was bad enough. So I ran. And I ran. And I ran more. When they finally caught up with me, when they took me back to Pearl Harbor, I locked it away. I was scared enough of it, I didn’t need them to know and be afraid of it. They released me from my ‘obligations’ shortly after. I made a career out of running when the nightmares got too bad. You weren’t wrong, when you said I still dream about that call. But you were wrong to believe it was my worst nightmare.”

            “What is it?” he asked.

            He was carding his fingers through her hair, keeping her grounded, her feet firmly planted in reality.

            “Bucky asked me to marry him, less than two weeks before he shipped out. Said he knew he was going into a war zone and he didn’t want to do it without a wedding band on his finger. I told him I would marry him, of course I would marry him, but not because he was afraid he wasn’t going to live. I would marry him the instant he stepped off the boat and was home, the second he was back on home soil. Not a moment before. I didn’t want fear to be the driving force. I should have married him. Should have dragged him to the courthouse and signed the papers then and there.”

            “You were right not to want that.”

            “But I never got the chance.”