marvel soulmates au

Big Bird has been waiting for the store to open for a very long time now. He’s a patient bird, and he knows about waiting his turn, but his watch has the big hand on the three and the little hand on the nine and he’s pretty sure that Alan usually open the store when the little hand is on the seven.

Finally, when the little hand goes all the way to the four, the door opens.

“Hi, Big Bird,” Chris says, his eyes red and puffy. “We aren’t going to open the store today.”

Big Bird doesn’t understand; Hooper’s store opens every day. “Why aren’t you opening the store, Chris?” Big Bird asks. “I need beakpaste, I’m all out.”

Chris just looks sad. “Big Bird, did you hear about The Snap?”

“No,” Big Bird says, and the way Chris is talking is very scary. He feels like he might need to sit down. “I don’t even know how to snap!”

Chris steps out form behind the door and gestures for them to sit on the stoop. When they’re settled, Chris takes a deep breath before he speaks. “Well, a bad man named Thanos came to Earth. Do you know about Thanos?”

“Yes,” Big Bird nods He heard some of the grownups saying that name. “He fought with the Avengers.”

“That’s right,” Chris says. “And the Avengers lost their fight. Sometimes, even when grownups try really hard, they can’t do all the things they want to do, and sometimes that means that bad things happen.”

“Did a bad thing happen?”

“Yes,” Chris says, taking Big Bird’s wing in his hand. “Because of Thanos, a lot of people are missing. And Alan is one of them.”

Big Bird has to think about that for a moment. He went missing one time, when he was a blue bird in a circus, but his friends found him and brought him home. But something about Alan’s face tells Big Bird that this isn’t the kind of missing where your friends can find you.

“Is Alan dead, Chris?” Big Bird asks. “I remember when Mr. Hooper died.”

“The honest answer is that we don’t know. He might be. Or he might just be missing.”

Big Bird tries to understand that. “Missing?”

“Yeah,” Chris says. “He might come back some day, and he might not. We just don’t know.”

Big Bird wants to cry. He loves Alan, and he doesn’t want any of his friends to be missing. “Is anyone else missing?”

“Yes,” Chris says. “Some of your friends may be, or their parents, or yours cousins and uncles and aunts. A lot of people are. And it’s very scary.”

“What can we do?”

Chris is crying a little, a few small tears pooling at the side of his eyes, and Big Bird wants to do something, wants to say something, but he kinda feels like crying too, and doesn’t know what will help. “I don’t know,” Chris says. “I think the only thing we can do is be here for each other, and love each other, and take care of each other. When things are scary, and when bad things happen, the most important thing to do is look around at the people who are still here, and try to do your best for them.”

Big Bird nods. “Hey Chris?”

“Yeah, Big Bird?”

“Do you want a hug?”

Chris nods. “I would very much like a hug, thank you.”

make me choose: pepperony or spideychelle

"I thought about you. I mean, I knew it would never happen. But I couldn't help… picturing us. Like, on an actual date. Bowling. Normal shit. You're the first person I ever pictured a future with. You're also the first person I ever shot in the head. If you… when you wake up…I'm not gonna be around to screw up your life anymore. Probably because I'll be dead. But maybe Kilgrave will be dead, too."

1) Bruce is totally playing Gamora. You don’t think Bruce Banner has played Dungeons & Dragons before? Bruce Banner has absolutely played Dungeons & Dragons before. He played all through high school and college and when Bucky announces the campaign Bruce jumps at the opportunity because he just misses it so much (mostly rose-tinted nostalgia goggles but). So he sits Bucky down and asks him for every bit of info he can on the setting and spends a whole night with a pot of tea drafting up the five-page backstory for his space assassin and her family tree and her struggle with her relationship with the villain and comes to Bucky with a fully-ready character sheet and a list of things Bucky will need to OK before Gamora hops in.

Bucky quietly resolves to integrate as much as he can into the story, mainly because Bruce came up with some better ideas than he’d had.

2) Tony is definitely playing Quill, because Tony has never played D&D before. You don’t get to be where Tony Stark is in life and have much free time. He does what a lot of newbies do and bases a character on himself, or at least the parts he likes: clever, snarky, pre-’90s musical taste, beds space babes, heroic sometimes probably. He wants to be cool but has no idea how to be cool within this context (“My character’s name is Starlord.” “What? Tony, no.”). He hogs the spotlight all the time (all the time) but clearly has no idea what he’s doing and when someone who seems like they know what they’re talking about gives him advice he always takes (“I’m going to need that guy’s leg.” “Seriously? Alright” *Rolls to grapple*).

Quill’s backstory is primarily Bruce’s doing. Tony just handed it in with a “yeah whatever’s on there.”

3) Thor is playing Drax but didn’t join until a few sessions in when he tagged along and decided it looked like fun (“THIS PLEASES ME! ALLOW ME TO JOIN YOUR TALES OF ADVENTURE!”). He definitely needed help constructing his character sheet, but he had no problem coming up with a character. Bucky asked him what he wanted to play and got that glint in his eye and responded “I WILL FORGE A HERO WORTHY OF THE ANCIENT TALES OF ASGARD.” And he put a lot of thought into Drax, both in personal history and personality. He’s mostly modeled on Thor’s favorite Asgardian folk heroes, with some personal flaws and quirks thrown in that Thor thinks are interesting.

Of course Thor doesn’t really understand the game part of it, he’s in it for the story (“Thor what the hell man there’s no way we can take on Ronan at this level!” “AH BUT THINK OF THE THRILLING DRAMA OF THE MOMENT DRAX AND RONAN MEET AGAIN!” “We are all going to die.” “AND IT WILL BE A THRILLING TRAGEDY!”)

4) Steve is absolutely playing Rocket but what started as a complete joke ballooned into a fully fleshed-out character with a tragic backstory. Steve’s an artist, he’s a creative guy and little too creative for his own good sometimes and bouncing his ideas off of Natasha turned a simple joke into a more elaborate character dynamic than even Bruce’s. He trolls Bucky a lot and it’s even better for Steve when he really gets into Rocket’s character and plays up the drama, partly because Bucky can’t tell if he’s joking or not.

5) Somewhere in the brainstorming session, Steve and Natasha decided that Rocket has a partner who is a talking tree. Natasha pitches this idea completely straight-faced to Bucky and after the fiasco of Steve’s character idea Bucky’s just too tired to say no to the tree-man. Natasha gives him a bit of a backstory and how Rocket and Groot got together and it sounds pretty solid, so whatever, tree-man can stay.

Then when all the characters get introduced Natasha just hovers over Tony and puffs out her chest and says in her deepest voice: “I am Groot.”

And Steve snickers and nobody has any idea why.

A session later Natasha is responding to everything Tony says with that same deep “I am Groot.” and Steve goes blue in the face trying to hold in his laughter and Tony cracks and the game has to pause for 10 minutes while Nat and Steve recompose themselves.

Nat also has a better grasp of the rules than Bucky realized and completely tweaked her character into being able to do basically anything she can justify. And it’s all right there in the book, Bucky can’t even argue from a rules standpoint. They’re only level 5 Groot shouldn’t be essentially bulletproof but through some loophole in the rules, yep, there it is.