#closed starter

It was a normal night in Santa Carla. As normal as a place infested with vampires, werewolves, magicians, sirens, and all manor of supernatural can get anyway. And tonight one of the vamps was out hunting

// closed starter for @norabarnes143

Tony had been up for a few days now.  He wasn’t great at sleeping at the best of times, but since the whole ‘hole-in-the-sky-with-aliens-pouring-out’ debacle, he’d been having nightmares.  He was scared to go back to sleep, not that he’d admit that to anyone.

He’d been distracting himself in the lab when he wasn’t actively out being Iron Man or taking meetings with people. Since the Battle for New York, he’d made twenty-three new versions of his Iron Man armor.  All the different versions lined the walls of his workshop in different cases.

He was waning though.  In the past when he felt like this, he’d head out to a club, pick out someone to take home, and hope the sex would give him an endorphin high that would get him a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.  Tonight, he went to the communal kitchen to make himself the strongest coffee he could.

Ava was nervous to meet the Avengers. She had been told great things about them, and Stephen obviously looked up to them in more ways than one, so the stakes was high, but when she met them? Oh god, she was so happy it went okay. She got along with Natasha right away, and Tony also was cool. Steve intimidated her, but that was only because she knew Captain America was still, after all these years, America´s sweetheart. Ava had on her cute summer dress that hugged her upperbody, it was wavy around her legs, reaching mid tigh, she had beautiful long legs, blond hair, light make up. She was simply a natural beauty. She wore some white heels aswell, wanting to be on her bed behaviour... atleast for now. Ava was a short girl, 5´1. "So, you still need to meet the last two, Bucky and Clint, they are actually a couple," Natasha explained and nodded softly smiling a bit. "Hey guys!" Natasha spoke, and Ava couldn´t help but have her jaw drop just at how hot they are, and together? They where absolutely to swoon for. Ava swallowed and nodded clearing her throat, getting her anxiety in check before she walked over and held her hand out for them and smiled softly. "I´m Ava. I´m joining you guys from now on," she spoke gently, however she was weak in the knees just by how hot they where.

Bucky and Clint hadn’t really been paying too much attention to the comings and goings at the tower today.  It was their day off and they were much more caught up with getting to spend some quality one on one time with each other.

They’d been together for a few months now, but there had been at least a full year of flirting and a certain super-soldier figuring out his sexuality and realizing he could let himself be happy if he wanted to.  They were well and truly in their honeymoon phase, where sex was exciting and they wanted to try out so many different things, and they just wanted to live in each other’s pockets whenever they could.

They were cuddled up, playing MarioKart on the couch in the Avengers common area when Natasha came in with the rather pretty blonde.  They both looked up and Clint jumped to his feet.  “Oh yeah?” he asked, coming over and offering her his hand. “Welcome to the team.  What can you do?  Laser eyes?  I hope it’s Laser eyes.”

“Clint,” Bucky scolded.  “Give her some breathing room.”

closed starter for @justa-tinman

It felt like Steve just kept losing - that maybe his whole life was defined by loss.  His parents, Bucky, Peggy, everyone he knew, his life.  He’d tried building it back again, and somehow managed to lose a lot of it, when he’d disagreed about the Sakovia accords and ended up on the run.  Then the absolute worst had happened.  Thanos had come and taken out half the life on the planet.  Almost everyone he’d known was gone. Bucky - again.  Sam.  T’Challa and his little sister Shuri.  Wanda.  Vision.  Nick Fury.  Maria Hill. Scott Lang.  Clint’s whole family.

Then there were the ones they couldn’t confirm.  He had no idea where Sharon had gotten to and he could only assume the worst.  Clint had gone awol. That kid that had worked with Tony was gone and so was Tony.  The last he’d heard they’d both climbed on one of Thanos’ ships but even if they had survived the snap, Steve had no idea how they were going to get back.

It only left a handful of people and of that handful.  Thor, Bruce, Rhodey, Natasha, and they had a new friend, a talking Racoon called Rocket.  And that was it.

———————

To say Grace was getting a bit bored while drifting through space towards Erid would be an understatement. Sure, he had Rocky and an almost endless amount of digital media to look through, but being in a small space gets to you after some time.

But really, Mary detecting an odd signal from some part of space made hum way more excited than it should have.

Grace had been lazing about at the window while Rocky slept, though he should be close to waking, when Mary cut through the dead air in the ship with a loud announcement.

“Incoming transmission. Language unknown. Attempting to decipher…”

Grace shot up, nearly falling out of the little indent for the window as he scrambled up to his feet. “Wh— a transmission? What do you mean?”

“Unknown transmission.”

Climbing the ladder up to the control room, Grace huffed, “Yes, Mary. I caught that. Where is it coming from? Can you display the message?”

“Message coming sixty two degrees from the top of the Hail Mary. Displaying message.”

Grace pulled himself up into the room, grabbing the sides of the display screen and squinting at hit as he tried to fix his glasses. All that was displayed was a bunch of boxes with question marks in them. Like when someone puts in an emoji your phone doesn’t know or something.

It had been months since the soldier and Ari had met on that sidewalk, not that she'd know it. Even with Ari hacking the tracker, she proved difficult to follow. The tracker always went dark once she was extracted from an assignment--a safety measure, most likely, to prevent people like Ari from finding them. But still, she could follow the soldier when she was out.

She'd been defrosted 3 more times in those months, on the three different assignments. Every time, the wiped her. Every time they reconditioned her. And every time, something cracked anyway. She was getting harder to control, just like her predecessor. She was bound to snap eventually. They just overestimated how long it would take.

She abandoned her assignment. She didn't really know why. She couldn't explain it yet. But her body knew. It remembered something her mind couldn't. Something better.

She didn't really remember meeting Ari. She didn't really remember the lab. But her feet took her there anyway. Breaking in was easy, she could sneak into buildings in her sleep.

@symphonyofmalice

Daniel Malloy had been searching for death, but it eluded him.

One night he’d gone home with a handsome young man from a gay bar. Daniel had been hoping for an interview and to maybe get lucky too. Much to Daniel’s morbid delight this man was actually a vampire. Unfortunately, Louis had only wanted to vent about his ex lover. There were endless hours of tape where Louis droned on about this devil of a man. Daniel lost track of how much drugs and alcohol he consumed. ‘Make me like you’ Daniel had pleaded. Louis tossed him onto the street. It was all a blur now.

What Daniel did know was that vampires existed. There was no way he could go back to his old life with that knowledge. At the same time, no one would believe him if he told them.

The truth was, Daniel had always had a hole inside of him that could not be filled, always craving more out of life. When he went home with Louis that fateful night, Daniel finally knew what he had been searching for. Louis dangled it out of reach then vanished into the night.

Daniel listened to the tapes a hundred times, desperate for clues. He searched and searched for another vampire. Surely Louis was not the only one in the world. Daniel would find another and perhaps they would grant him his wish that Louis denied. Luck was not on his side though. As time went on, his hope faded. He was driving himself crazy spending his days searching for vampires. He began to despair.

Daniel knew what normal people did, but he was not normal. He knew what his family expected of him. He knew the future that was ahead of him. He would marry a woman he despised because it wasn’t acceptable to marry a man. He’d have a house with a white picket fence. He’d have children who would inevitably resent him. He would never write anything significant. He’d end up getting old and most likely teaching journalism classes to a bunch of idiots. It was so boring he’d rather fling himself from a very tall building. If he couldn’t be a vampire, then he didn’t want to exist any longer in misery.

Daniel fell on a dark street corner, collapsing into a dirty puddle. He wasn’t sure if he’d tripped over his own feet or a beer bottle. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know how much time had passed since the doomed interview. He was so tired and so broken.