#damnstevens

Day 2 || The Muses || Coldatom Aesthetic 

I Love Rock and Roll series

Dying in Your Arms Tonight

Legion of Sunshine  @damnstevens (dametokillfor)

He needs to slip away from under the strong arm, wrapped around his waist and fluffy hair tickling his chin. The warm breath across his chest and the sweet smile on his bedmates face. He looks so peaceful, so happy like this. Leonard needs to climb out of bed, shower and get out.

...

Leonard’s kiss is warm, familiar and comforting. It feels like home, the cool ring, the way his hands settle perfectly at Ray’s sides, the way Leonard lightly nips his lips before pulling back. It’s everything Ray has been missing the long weeks he’s been away.

---x

“Merlin, if you’re not going to take advantage of these Elton tickets with me, then I won’t be held responsible for what happens backstage without you.”

“You can’t say that to your husband,” Eggsy half-whispers, feeling a curious mixture of horrified and excited and looking between Harry and Merlin like they’re players in a tennis match.

“I don’t see why not,” Harry says, looking thoroughly unconcerned. “He has my full blessing to sleep with Marianne Faithfull and Dolly Parton if the occasion ever arises.”

“What, like, at the same time?”

He hears people talk about it and he sees it in movies and magazines and plastered all over every screen, everywhere. He wonders at the idea of people giving up everything for it, the things they do, the way they act.

He can’t imagine it. 

Romance.

What’s the big deal?

Even Snart falls into it at times; mooning over big brown eyes, over lanky nerdy boys with hearts of gold. Snart, usually so rational and clear-headed, goes gaga over carefully styled hair, sweet smiles, and bad jokes. 

It doesn’t make any sense.

Yeah, okay, there are people Mick likes better than other people, that part he gets. But the swooning and the heart eyes and the obsession, none of that rings true. 

It’s not until he stumbles upon Nate in the library one day that he figures it out. Nate is asking Gideon about the concept of something called aromanticism, and asking how he might possibly date someone who is aromantic.

Mick listens to Gideon explain it, and things click slowly into place. No romantic attraction? No interest in romantic relationships? 

Halfway through Gideon explaining the concept of queerplatonic partners, he steps into the room, and Nate frantically tries to silence Gideon. 

“Is that about me?” Mick asks, staring Nate down.

Nate swallows. “Maybe? Is it? I--I won’t, like, put words in your mouth, but you haven’t, like, responded in any way to my flirting, not even in a negative way, and I don’t really know what to do with that so I thought, maybe--”

“Yeah,” Mick grunts, cutting Nate off. “Sounds right.” And it does, it fits. 

It fits like a glove, and Mick likes the feeling that comes along with having a word, now, to help him figure out and navigate relationships.

And that whole queerplatonic thing, that sounds nice. There are certainly some people he likes better than most others. 

Anyone who has been to Ray’s lab – or anywhere near Ray, really – can tell you that Ray Palmer is fantastic at sketching schematics. He doesn’t need a ruler to draw a straight line, and the details in his mechanical designs are exceedingly intricate and complicated. It’s almost mesmerizing to look at, sometimes.

He can also draw landscapes. He’s able to sketch out the scenery in front of him, and everything on the horizon. Having eidetic memory definitely helps. He’s able to sketch most things, inanimate objects, backgrounds. Those things Ray are good at.

One thing he can’t draw, though, is people.

It’s impossible, he thinks. People are soft, unlike his inventions. People are always moving, always on their way, always living, how is he supposed to capture all that on paper? How do you take all that life and energy and beauty and compress it into a single frame?

There are people that are able to do it. Ray Palmer is not one of them.

nice thank u vanessa. here u go i’ll do a full 5 songs n 1 extra bc i love u and i have so many songs that could work w this one lmao

bad romance - lady gaga

disgusting - miranda cosgrove (listen it’s a cover of a ke$ha song but. miranda’s is actually so much better tbh??)

love me dead - ludo

flesh - simon curtis

love like war - all time low

When Ray was young, Saturday morning cartoons felt like home. He would wake up before Sydney, running downstairs past the room where his parents slept, and curl up a foot or so away from the TV, on the rug. 

He’d keep the sound down low, to not wake anyone and get in trouble, and he’d sit, rapt, watching the cartoons. 

Ray would flip-flop between Ewoks and Muppets, leaning forward to click the channels. He’d watch Droids, Ghostbusters, Smurfs, anything with a little bit of weirdness and a little bit of magic. 

Not magic like spells or wizards or anything, just something otherworldly, something odd, something bright and hopeful and different. 

It made him feel like he wasn’t wrong, like this is how people could be and they didn’t have to be mocked for it, didn’t have to be shuffled off to the side because they were different and hard to deal with and can you look me in the eyes when you speak to me, Raymond, and why can’t you just sit still for two seconds, please. 

He doesn’t grieve for what he’s lost. His mother leaving, Lisa’s mother leaving, that’s on them. He has to focus on what’s ahead, on protecting his sister. 

On protecting himself. 

Lisa comes first, always. There’s no time to waste, no energy to spare on grieving for people he never should have relied on in the first place. He can only rely on himself. 

Of course he can rely on Lisa, too, but he’d never put that on her. He pries every bit of weight from her shoulders that he can, and takes it on himself. 

His back hurts with the weight of it, but he doesn’t grieve for what he lost, or what could have been. 

He just has to keep moving forward, keep pushing on, keep shouldering the weight of the world. Of his sister’s world.

She’s confused.

She’s changed so much, been flung back and forth through emotions and catastrophes, and she doesn’t know who she is anymore.

Nothing feels right, nothing hangs right.

She wants to curl back up in schoolgirl skirts, curl up on the couch next to her mother.

She wants to wear something tight and revealing, to keep it all inside, and make sure that people are looking at her, but only at the surface, so they don’t know how broken she is.

She wants to wear something loose and comfortable, to spar--not with her father, never again with him. Just to flip and kick and spin, the fabric flowing around her legs, a crop-top keeping her movements free and unhindered. 

She wants the suits, still cute and flirty, but professional, so people look at her like an adult, like someone who is capable and smart and commands respect. 

And she wants the suit. Red, fitted, bold. An echo of Roy, an echo of Ollie, an echo of Malcolm. It never really felt like hers, never really felt like her.

She wants it all, and she wants none of it. None of them are her, not anymore, and she sheds them like second skins. She says goodbye to each iteration of herself as she sloughs them off.

So what’s left when all of them are gone?