#It's not defined as a conclusion lol

[crow-caller]

Been alrerted we got lightlark 3 details, and damn, this summary literally says nothing. There is not one new plot detail or plot direction and what we do get is the exact same conflict from book 2 rehashed yet again. There's not really anything to say about it.

I like the stupid snake's lil snowglobe. Where's that second tail coming from. Who's to say

[acertifiedmoron]

yeah overthinking prophecies is the mind killer but i have to say my piece re azor ahai, that is, if it's really meant to be one character, then the best narrative choice is dany. not only because she fulfills every word of the prophecy an entire book before we even learn of its existence. but also "no one ever looked for a girl," aemon tells us. in-universe her gender precludes her from being imagined as the saviour figure and on a meta level even the readers don't think the 16 year old girl with this much power (dragons) will be allowed to keep that power and fulfill an important narrative destiny as a hero of the story. the expectation is that the character will be brought low and/or surpassed by the classic warrior hero archetype of jon. which is why i think dany being AA is the most subversive choice. and would actually make jon the red herring.

[aerithisms]

overall a very weird dw season to me. i really like the middle 4 episodes, and thought the first 2 and last 2 were okay-to-bad. for only 8 episodes 50/50 isn't a bad track record but i think the season arc and character drama doesn't land so the season is less than the sum of its parts. much better than chibnall era, still not on the level of s1-10 dw and probably my least favourite rtd series. and yet i have hope!! bring on season 2 i want to see varada sethu

[cushfuddled]

I finished Hazbin a bit ago and call me crazy but I honestly hope Sir Pentious' ascension had nothing to do with redemption as a concept.

I hope it was just a glitch in the matrix from like, the raw, holy power of Adam's laser blast + whatever magical artillery Pentious had revved up at the helm of his ship. I just think it would be VERY funny if Adam accidentally baptized some guy so hard he rebooted him to Heaven.

[communistkenobi]

the thought I am about to voice is going to be very messy and rough and probably overly generalised, but I’m coming to the point in my education (& I’m picking out Fanon, Said, Cesaire in particular here) where I feel like empiricism as a system of thinking is at a crisis point for me. rationalism and positivism and scientific discovery broadly as a way of systemising information and thinking about the world has been so deeply bound up in projects of capitalism and empire, legitimising the “civilising efforts” of colonial occupations of various “irrational” societies across the world, producing “The West” as a political entity that is seen as ultimately rational, and creating this body of secular authority (“scientific knowledge”) that is imbedded in the maintenance of “The West” and its component states, an authority that can only be understood and contributed to as an academic via the same capitalistic market logics that govern everything else - that to be “empirical” about the world, to present myself as someone whose beliefs are informed by provable discoverable “facts” about reality, feels very similar to an allegiance to capital-E Empire in general.

And Marxism has been very clarifying for me in this regard, to be able to use empiricism and make empirical claims that are fundamentally counter-hegemonic to capitalism, but it still comes out of this same European enlightenment tradition. But absent that I don’t know what else there is lol. Like empiricism feels like the only game in town but it’s a game with so much blood on its hands that I don’t know if it’s something you can export out of capitalism. To use an example, is eugenics a “misuse” of science? My answer to that question is both yes and no - yes in the sense that a belief in eugenics is not backed by evidence, that when you put the idea that some “gene pools” are “better” than others and that you need to get rid of “the bad ones” to scientific tests, this does not stand up to scientific scrutiny because the categorical bins you use to define good and bad gene pools are also not biological or scientific (eg race), as well as a bunch of other issues, so eugenics fails the empirical smell test. But eugenics is also effectively “true” because the belief in it has produced unquantifiable amounts of imperial violence. It’s “true” in the sense that it has become a rational logic by which empire justifies itself, and so imperial powers behave as if it is true. And because eugenics emerges out of enlightenment scientific thinking, a project itself that emerges from capitalism/colonialism, can it really be called a misuse if it’s accomplishing exactly what European imperial powers need it to?

Like I guess basically what I need clarified for me is, is it possible to believe in empiricism as an epistemic authority without it being ultimately used for imperial ends. If you believe that capital-T Truth is discoverable, and that the more that Truth is used to inform the organisation of society, the better off society will be (which, as a communist, I generally do believe), does that lead you to fundamentally imperialistic conclusions?

[venterry]

i used to think i might be a lesbian but it turns out i just really care about women #FEMINISM

[sickgraymeat]

Trying to make peace with the fact that most of my biggest writing influences have always been narrative poetry and song lyrics so yeah. Plot is not something I’m inclined to focus on, and it probably never will be, as much I wish it would 🙄

[destielfandomlore]

As you can prob tell I miss academia

[delightfuldevin]

Okay so, after about 4 hours of research (including last night before I fell asleep), I’ve come to the conclusion that the Borealis/Mushroom Kingdom area will be loosely based on the Netherlands and Rosie and Peach shall be the Mario world equivalent to Dutch. The Mushroom Kingdom won’t just be based on the Netherlands, as there are already some inspirations in the games (such as Toad Harbor being similar to San Francisco + Liberty Peach statue). A lot of the other kingdoms are also inspired by multiple locations (the Sand Kingdom being mostly Mexico with a hint of Easter Island/Japan; the Lake Kingdom being mostly Greece, but alluding to Scotland; etc) so it works

[evandore]

my life has reached the lowest point yet. i dont even use reddit outside of asking very specific questions on whatever subreddit will answer it. and yet here i am. embroiled in a debate with a STRAIGHT MAN. because i - a punk butch lesbian - was wondering how bad the homophobia would be in red state iowa. like objectively its just a very straightforward question. im not dogging on the state bitch im going to live there. and he said i had a bad attitude and was being very mean and had a ‘victim complex’

[notherpuppet]

Is there any particular reason you use ship names with qpr relationships? (Like using a / or radioapple for examples) It makes it a little hard to tell what's meant to be romantic and platonic in fandoms sometimes, no shame for using them obvi and not pushing you to change your tagging or anything. Just wondering

Well the QPR I'm depicting is pretty affectionate (I mean mostly just xo's, not xxx hahaha) so even if it's NOT romantic, it probably may still be perceived as a ship between characters. I'm purposefully displaying a bond that is affectionate and loving, albeit platonic. So I still consider it a ship and that's why I tag it as such.

So with QPRs like radioapple, radiorose, almimzy, radiostatic, etc. etc. (alastor ships pretty much lol) I just figure that if people don't like to see characters in this ship, they're able to just block the tag. There are ships that I don't particularly like, but I just scroll away. It doesn't really bother me, but yknow; we get to cater a lot of our own social media experiences. There's the block and mute options for a reason.

As for ascertaining whether a ship art is QPR or not, I think someone can inquire or just do a little more legwork to figure that out themselves tbh. Some things may not have been written to be QPR, but may fit inside that idea for someone engaging in the artwork/fanfic. Some things may be intentionally written to be QPR and not coincide with a fan's taste or personal ideas. For example, someone may depict a QPR that includes sex. These are valid QPR experiences. On the flip side, someone may not be depicting a QPR and they include nothing explicit or affectionate, but it still fits into someone else's idea of what a QPR can look like. It's not black and white. There is nuance.

We should individually do the work of assessing if a fanart is something that we appreciate or not. AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO TELL AN ARTIST IF YOU DON'T LIKE HOW THEY DO SOMETHING BTW. Just saying. Pretty RUDE ACTUALLY so yknow I would advocate for NOT doing that. I also don't think we need to put it on the artists to define exactly what they're depicting, since it can be a pretty difficult relationship to pin down. Affection and friendship can look very different for lots of people. And I don't think it's necessary for an artist or writer to spell out their intentions for us. Art is a means to express oneself and to have fun. If we choose to engage in an artwork, then we can also interpret it and come to conclusions of our own.

TLDR; I'm gonna go ahead and tag QPRs as their fandom ship names and I think it's up to us as users to cater social media to our tastes individually.

[magicspeedwagon7]

i don't think transandrophobia is motivated by a passionate hatred for trans men, especially not the kind we see in queer/feminists spaces. i just think our existence disturbs the foundations of radical feminist framework (i.e. patriarchy defined as class warfare of all men against all women) a bit too much. within this paradigm, "woman" is the exact synonym for "marginalised gender" and thus "men being oppressed by patriarchy" sounds heretical.

therefore not only transandrophobia doesn't and most importantly shouldn't exist.

so, it's easier to come to the conclusion that trans men are the collateral damages of "something else" (cf general transphobia, misdirected misogyny etc) and you cannot expect more from TIRFs and all the people who will never question the core tenets of their feminism

a change of paradigm is imperative because you'll never achieve "trans liberation" if you need to actively ignore roughly one half of the trans community (if you don't care about trans liberation that's a whole other issue lol)

[nyancrimew]

oo if we’re doing queer confessions i got a bit of a long one

first relationship, classic story of not realizing we were into eachother for the longest time, even after regularly kissing and cuddling for almost a year lol (calling him bf 1). went really well actually after we properly got together

after about a year or so, bf 1’s ex (not on any sort of bad terms INITALLY) (calling him bf 2) who was my best friend asks if we wanted to just be in poly relationship together since we all had confessed to eachother at once point and we say yeah sure we still all like eachother, it took bf 1 a few months to think over first which was fine by all of us, so we just continued all being close friends for a few months till then. few months later, he says yea sure that’d be fine and so we started trying it out since we had all been really happy with eachotehr up to that point

literaly the same exact night that happened, bf 2 changed his attitude towards me completely and despite being very good friends before this and loving eachother he started ignoring me and claiming he just didn’t have energy to do anything ever, while constantly showering bf 1 in overwhelming affection and hundreds of smaller things like that where i’d get left in the dust while he would get mounds of attention. he was just as unnerved by it as i was.

i was a bit dumb and so didn’t really act on this for a while despite realizing immediently it was weird, and after a few months me and bf 1 started talking about it privately and realized he was just flat out lying to both of us and expected us to like. not talk about it?? like super blatant things llike telling me he didn’t value sex in a relationship at all and didn’t want it with me while minutes later telling bf 1 that sexual intimacy is the thing he valued most and wouldn’t want a relationship otherwise

one of the worst thing though (atleast in terms of how much it damaged my understanding and acceptance of myself)) was despite him being nb (he/they) and even experimenting with being a girl for a while he started constantly hanging our own gender identities over our heads and sayin shit like “well i’m gay so if you start identifying as a girl i’m gonna leave” to me when i brought up to him, the first person i talked to it about, that i wanted to be a girl which stunted myself growth by years and similar things to bf 1 who was very openly nb (which, wow i’m relazing as i’m typing this how casually mysoginsitc he was, he made all sorts of “jokes” about how inherently disgusting traditionally feminine bodily features were)

after about a year of this (me and other bf were just too scared to leave, but we definently should of) he actually broke up with me , and tried to speak on behalf of bf 1 claiming they just both wanted me out of the polycule, also just a straight up lie as when i talked to him about it . after talking for a while and asking some mutual friends we figured out he told literally every single person a different, conflicting story and putting the pieces together we came to conclusion that he was just using me as a throwaway tool to get back together with bf 1 to squeeze himself in the relationship, and tried dumping me out so he could be monogamous with him only.

needless to say bf 1 dumped his ass less than a week later after we finally were able to decipher the literally 10 different conflicting stories, and this story actually does have a really happy ending!! me and bf 1 are still besties and kiss a lot while he found another much sweeter and nicer boyfriend, i got another girlfriend with a shared pet kittygirl shortly after that helped me through the whole thing and i’ve never been happier about my body image/self image and gender identity in my life. IM FINALLY A CUTE GIRL WITH A CUTE GIRLFRIEND WE MADE IT NYALL :3!!!

(and as a nice bonus ontop, the only time i hear about him now is from other people realizing how scummy he was and cutting him off, leaving himself to rot in a hole of his own making surrounded by people jus like him. feels great to be away from that whole toxic friendgroup in general. freedom.)

(anyway thanks, “but we stay silly :3” was a quote regularly said to myself during the recovery of all this )

yipppeeee, we really do stay silly!!!

[sad-leon]

Part 22 :D

Leon is home! He has definately been grounded lol

there is... one chapter left (and it's the conclusion for the 2012 bois), so we'll leave Leon to rest with his family. He's had a long day and he has a long journey ahead of him.

Masterpost || Next

[anikaluv]

TOO MANY CURLS —

❤︎︎ pairing: Miles (e!1610) × Miles (e!42) × fem!black!reader

❤︎︎ genre: fluff

❤︎︎ cw: Miles (e!42) is named Myles (creative Ik), Myles being tender headed lol, reader gets relaxer, cussing, reader is tender headed :(

❤︎︎ summary: Spider-Man!Miles and Prowler!Miles as Twins where you get a relaxer and they lose their shit (feat. Rio Morales)

❤︎︎ w/c: 1k

❤︎︎ a/n: Thought it would be funny to write this like drabble, also I feel light in the Morales home they take hair routine VERY seriously so I wanted to write what would happen if this played out.

You’ve been embracing your thick curls since you were a little girl. Your love for your natural hair was absolute, but lately, the maintenance had become overwhelming. Wash days were a struggle, the pain of detangling made you dread the process, and the amount of combs you had broken was making a run for your money.

So you decided to get a relaxer.

“It was either that or the big chop” you reasoned with yourself. It had to happen at some point you concluded. 

Months have passed since you made the switch, and you've had mixed feelings. You sometimes miss the bouncy curls that used to define your look, but it’s like a weight has been lifted off your head, literally.

On this particular day, you decided to visit the Morales family after receiving a heartfelt text from Mrs. Morales,  “Necesito a mi dulce ángel de vuelta a casa (I need my sweet angel back home)."

Walking through the familiar corridors of the apartment building, you feel a sense of nostalgia. These hallways have witnessed your growth since childhood. As you approached the Morales' apartment door, you gave a soft knock, hoping to find the family inside.

The door slowly creaked open releasing sounds of blasted music, pots and pots clicking, sports of tv and various other noises. You giggled to yourself. This family will never change, you thought.

The door opened further, revealing it to be Miles. “Hey, chiquita, how are you-“ . His words trail off as he takes in your appearance. His jaw drops, and silence fills the air as he gazes at your transformed hair, clearly shocked by the change.

Miles’ eyes well up with tears as he embraces you tightly, his hands gently rubbing your back. "Oh, cariño (sweetheart)!" he exclaims, overcome with emotion. "What happened? Did some cabrón (asshole) come into your room and take down your braids?" His concern is evident in his serious tone as he looks deep into your eyes.

You raise your eyebrows in surprise, not expecting Miles to jump to such an extreme conclusion. Playfully shaking him off, you assure him, "No, of course not! I-"

Suddenly, Myles appears at the front door, searching for you. His reaction is no different from Myles’, “Miles is [your name] here yet- Oh lord.” He covers his mouth in shock, his eyes wide with disbelief. Anger fills him as he looks at your hair, his protective instincts kicking in.

“Who did this to you, mami?”, Myles asked bringing his fists together angrily. You wondered how this situation is getting out of hand so quickly. “You know me and Miles can run up on a guy.”, Miles nodded, agreeing with his twin statement as he also brought his fists together. 

Raising your arms in defense at the both of them, you tried to explain what happened carefully, “Guys, relax. I did this to myself guys, I just got tired of my hair. I had too many curls. It was too much”, you admitted. The boys scoffed in disbelief. They refused to believe that you would get rid of your perfect hair for that reason.

Before you could continue to further explain yourself, Rio Morales enters the doorway with a plate of snacks. She drops the plate in shock when she sees you, her eyes filled with sorrow. Cupping your cheeks, she exclaims, "Dios mio (Oh my god)! Who did this to you, angelita (angel)?” Her motherly instincts kick in, ready to protect you. "You know Miles and Myles can find whoever did this and teach them a lesson," she adds, echoing the boys' sentiments. The twins nod in agreement, standing by their mother's words.

Rio's fingers glided gently through your now straight hair, memories of the beautiful little girl with the luscious curly afro that you had proudly worn over the years flashed through her mind. It seemed as though time had slipped away, taking that part of you with it. She couldn't help but feel a sense of loss, and she knew she had to do something about it.

"We're going to the store. Now."

Confused, you furrowed your eyebrows. "What? Why?" But before you could get any answers, you found yourself being swiftly dragged out of the house, just as abruptly as you had been brought in.

The atmosphere in the Morales home was loud and vibrant. Soul music playing through the Morales speakers as laughter and lively conversations swirled around the room.

You sat comfortably on the floor as Rio applied the leave-in “curl enhancing” moisture conditioner into your hair. The sun setting casting a gold glow inside the room, adding to the cozy essence in the room.

As you gazed out of the window, watching the cars zip by on the busy streets below, you couldn't help but express your gratitude to Rio. "Thank you for today. Even though I tried to ignore it, deep down, not having my curls felt… different," you confessed.

With a gentle touch, Rio hummed and continued her work, applying the hair products she had carefully selected for your curls. She massaged them into your scalp with care and responded affectionately, "Anytime, baby." Her smile filled you with a sense of comfort.

As Rio went to set a timer for the conditioner, you turned your attention to the Morales twins. Miles had his bonnet securely in place while Myles sat below him, enduring the detangling process while having a fit. “Bro you doin it too hard be gentle!”, Myles whined. Miles popped him with the comb when Myles tried to put his hands in his hair and hold it down. “I don’t wanna hear this from you after you skipped cleaning your braids for almost a month!”, Miles snapped back while sucking his teeth and shaking his head disapprovingly.

You found yourself giggling at the twins antics, appreciating the support and love that the Morales family extended to you. They were there for you, even when you didn't realize you needed them, ready to lend a helping hand and stand by your side.

Now every time you feel like doing your hair is too hard , you do your wash days at the Morales home and receive all the help you need, and face the problems together.

ENDING A/N:  I thought this would be a funny idea lol, I tried to make it seem like the Morales family wasn’t forcing her back to curls against her will, yk? I think that reader would most likely miss her curls a lot, and be happy she got a lil push back to ‘em :)

TAGLIST: @janaeby @bellstwd @nmgstuff @axeoverblade @zaddyskye69 @agstuffsworld @spidrstar @laylasbunbunny@missusmorale @popeheywardssecretgf @lumineliax@fukingsad @wisteriaflowersss @crxss01

TAGS:

[prentissluvr]

literary parallels — sam winchester

pairing : sam winchester x gn!reader ➖⟢ genre : light angst, fluff ➖⟢ cw : small injuries, few seconds of physical fighting (self-defense), no use of y/n, you have a dad and i gave him a name (rick lol), mentions of death of loved ones, sort of case fic, kinda ignores canon timeline in terms of a few minor things but canon doesn't matter much in this fic lol, poorly edited most likely ➖⟢ wc : 3.6K summary : sam is someone from your past at stanford university, and the last place you expect to see him again is on a case. that's exactly where you find him. i plan on doing a part two for this one in the future! :))

today is one of those days where the reality of your life feels strange, unwelcome, and somewhat foreign. it’s not as if you’re new to the hunting life; it’s just the opposite, and yet, you often feel removed from it, especially after having lived normally at college for a few years. but you were ripped back into hunting without being able to finish your degree by your father after the death of your closest cousin. 

so now you’re cooped up in a crappy motel room searching endlessly through detailed lore websites and the few books you have on you, trying to make sense of the odd patterns of killings in the small california town. that’s part of the pit in your stomach for today; the beach town, cayucos, is only three hours from stanford. 

being so close to your former university after almost a whole year brings back a whole lot of mixed feelings. mostly longing for the normalcy that you loved and lost, but also a renewed urgency to find what killed your cousin. she had been studying at a different college just an hour inland from you. when she died, you had wanted to salt and burn her body and move on. but when your father showed up with proof of odd circumstances, he pursuaded you to rejoin him in the hunting life.

the deaths in cayucos are certainly odd, but they lack the defining features that would allow you to identify the creature at fault. so, you’re searching for anything with a grudge against hot men and a killing cycle of seven years since those are about the only patterns so far. your dad is at the coroner’s office, meeting with an old hunter friend to check out the body of the latest victim.

that’s been another reminder of your brief time at a normal school with normal friends and normal hobbies. when your dad first told you he called in a friend to help, he’d asked you, “d’you remember john winchester? you met him once when you were a kid, he’s an old buddy of mine.” you shook your head and he shrugged, saying something about how it makes sense; you were young and only met him once. but the name stuck in your mind as he left, and it had nothing to do with hunting or when you were a kid on the road, stuck in motels, school if you were there long enough, or the town library if you were lucky.

that name, or the last name anyway, comes from the stanford part of your life, the one you keep cherished in the most protected corners of your heart. sam winchester was one of your few friends during your time there, and after hearing his family name spoken aloud, he’s floating through your mind all day.

he disappeared after jess, his girlfriend and one of your other few friends, died, mere weeks before your own cousin died and you left standford as well. you’ve always wondered what happened to him, the best conclusion you could come to being that he couldn’t bear her death. they were absolutely in love with each other, but you know jess would have wanted him to finish at stanford, then head to that law school he was bound to get that full-ride to. sam always had an air of strength about him, so it surprised you when you never saw him again. he wasn’t even at her funeral, and to this day, that’s your singular bone to pick with him. 

but, you can’t afford to think about him too much as you search for answers about the case. abandoning the lore websites for the meantime, you look over the police records of all the deaths that you can find, hoping to draw together any more patterns that you can use to narrow down your research. you’re jotting down a few notes, thinking you may have found something regarding accounts of a few of the men being last seen with a woman, when your train of thought is interrupted by an unexpected knock on the door.

on instinct, you draw your gun as you cross the room, looking through the peephole and silently cursing when you realize the light out front has gone out. all you can make out is the tall, broad silluete of a man thanks to the dimness of the twighlight sky.

you wait for a moment at the door, hoping he’ll just walk away after he doesn’t get an answer. but you’re unlucky, and he knocks again before calling out, “hello? rick sent me here to … help with the case, he said his kid was here. i’m john winchester’s son, sam.”

if you were in an old-timey cartoon, your jaw would’ve dropped to the floor. sam … sam winchester. it sounds just like him. trying to keep your head, you swap your gun for a nearby canteen of holy water and slip a silver knife into your pocket for accessibility. it’s too much of a coincidence for you to believe it.

you crack the door, just enough for him to hear you a bit better. “sam winchester? like stanford full-ride, lawyboy sam winchester?”

“i– how do you–” there’s a moment of silence, and you know that he’s piecing together the few clues he has; your voice and the last name you must share with your dad, the man he knows as rick. his voice is just as cautious as yours as he says your name like he can’t really believe it.

for a moment, you stop thinking when you hear his voice saying your name after so long, and you throw open the door and let him in. the light from the motel room finally illuminates his face, and it’s him, it’s really him. and the moment you think that is the moment you realize that could absolutely not be the case.

the second he turns to you from closing the door, you’re splashing holy water in his face so fast you barely catch the look he was about to give you; eyes so full of surprise and wonder and confusion and something akin to joy. you react quickly to his lack of reaction besides the normal surprise at getting splashed in the face, slashing at his arm with your silver knife to finish testing him. but he reacts just as fast as you, grabbing both of your wrists, spinning you around and pinning you to the flat surface of the door.

his hold is quite strong, but he doesn’t have the time to bear his full weight into holding you down before you react, so you’re able to manuever out of his hold with practiced ease. you lift one arm up as you yank the other down to make it so you’re able to slip down and to the side, out of his hold. then you’ve got a strong hand to his back, shoving him face-first against the door and your other arm bringing your knife to his throat.

the thought that his profile view with his pulled-taut eyebrows and the grimace on his mouth looks pretty has the audacity to float up to the forefront of your mind before you can squash it down. the whole struggle had taken mere seconds, and he resigns the minute you’ve got him pinned down.

“it’s me,” he pants, “i swear. ‘m not a shapeshifter or ghoul or anything, it was just instinct. sorry,” he explains quickly, “go ahead, test me.”

you debate saying “don’t mind if i do,” but decide that you don’t have to be teasing or snarky about it. instead, you tamp down your hesitance to hurt him, even a little bit because he still sort of feels like innocent, regular, lawboy sam to you, and you draw a thin line of blood at the spot where his neck slopes into his broad shoulder. there’s no burning, just a normal wince from his mouth, so you loosen your hold on him and step back, internally cringing at the small bit of blood beginning to slip down towards his collarbone.

“sorry,” you say, far more sincere than you would be if it’d been anybody else. this is the norm for hunters, but you haven’t quite wrapped your mind around the fact that sam is a hunter. you’d never once would have guessed, though you suppose that was the point. you had done everything you could to hide that part of your life during your time at stanford.

“it’s fine,” he gives you an awkward half-smile, just as sincere as you. “just, y’know, your turn.” you’d been so busy taking in the sight of him standing there, looking almost exactly the same, but not quite, as he had in college, that you forgot about the courtesy of testing yourself too.

“right,” you clear your throat, “of course.” without the hesitance any normal person would have, you take the knife to your forearm and splash a bit of holy water on your skin. “there we go. no demons or shapeshifters or the like. that’s good.” you feel incredibly awkward all of the sudden, still so bewildered and thrown off balance by the collision of your two words. it feels like too much of a coincidence for you to be this close to your old school, be thinking about sam winchester, a symbol of that old life, then for him to show up and flip your whole entire understanding of him. there’s just about a million things running through your mind at just about a million miles per hour and it’s starting to make your head hurt.

the movement of his hand, reaching up to hold the small cut you gave him is what brings you out of your short lived reverie.

“god, i’m sorry. let me get you something for that.” you don’t give him the time to politely tell you, “no, it’s okay,” like you know he would before you’ve turned your back and crossed the room to grab a first aid kit from your bag and some rubbing alcohol from the bathroom. “sit down,” you urge him when you turn back to him, motioning towards the table you’d been seated at when he arrived.

he complies and once again, you’re thinking about the strangeness of sharing this sort of space with him. you’re used to seeing him in libraries so big that they’re almost grand for quiet study sessions or in the dining hall with his nose buried in a book or in the lecture hall where you first met him in a gen-ed class. you’re used to seeing him on one of the grassy quads with jess by his side or him in the big, open, and fancy old university buildings. now he looks right at home in the dingy motel room, so small it feels like his tall, broad frame shouldn’t fit in here, so dim that his sometimes blue or green eyes look sort of muddy. they’re pretty, nonetheless.

you set the first aid kit on the table and pull out a large bandaid and a bit of gauze. you reasses the cut to be sure he doesn’t need any other sort of bandaging and almost sigh in relief when you see how shallow it is. sam doesn’t speak or protest that he’s fine to do it himself as you pull the collar of his t-shirt aside just a bit. you’re sure his mind’s busy with a whole load of questions for you, just like you for him. the brush of your knuckles against his skin suddenly makes his presence feel more real. whatever contact you’d had during the short-lived fight you’d had was completely surreal; you weren’t sure he was really even sam, and if he was, it would feel like a lie anyways, for his hands to be rough or so quick in a fight.

he doesn’t so much as wince when you press alcohol soaked gauze to the cut, and though the wound is small and shallow enough that you’re sure it barely stings, it still feels like a sign of his being a hunter, being used to pain. you don’t like that thought; sweet, sincere, and ever so smart sam being used to pain. as you take care of the cut, he lets his eyes wander around the room, probably taking in how familiar it is, and how weird that it’s your motel room and all of your belongings packed into a single bag and your computer screen displaying hacked into police reports and the very same lore websites he frequents to solve a tricky case.

when you’re done he thanks you with a small smile and you take the seat across from him. as your fingers had brushed over his bare skin and felt a whisper of his strong shoulders, you’d gotten the strong urge to hug him. you missed him even more than you thought. that urge doesn’t leave when you move away from him.

you make a confused face at sam when he reaches for the first aid kit and pulls out another set of bandaids and gauze. he just hands you a gauze now soaked with alcohol and nods at you.

“for your arm,” he explains, because you’ve already forgotten about that as you accept it with a questioning brow.

“right,” you chuckle softly, swiping over the cut with the gauze, then taking and applying the bandaid that sam opened for you. when you’re done you have to drag your eyes up to meet sam’s gaze. there’s tension in the room, and though it’s not bad per se, it’s begging to be addressed and you’re not sure how to even start. it seems like sam’s not sure either.

so, you choose to jump right into the fire.

“it’s so good to see you, sam,” you confess, pushing all your sincerity into your voice, “i mean, this is absolutely insane and i can’t quite wrap my mind around it, but i guess i don’t really care because it’s so good to see you. i worried about you so much after … after jess died, i mean, you just dissappeared and … and i can imagine that has something to do with the fact that you’re a hunter, which is sort of incomprehensible to me, but–,” suddenly you’re hit with a new realization. if sam’s disappearance had to do with the supernatural, you wonder if jess’s death did too. but you don’t want to ask, not right now. “oh, god, and i never got to tell you how sorry i am. i– i mean. i can’t imagine.” there’s where your voice trails off and you look to sam to be the one to say something now.

“thanks,” he answers simply, voice gentle but a little pained, rightfully so. “she was your friend, too. i mean, we were all friends. and i’m sorry i disappeared like that. i, um, well, you’re right. hunting dragged me away. it’s complicated and i’ll explain it to you later. you deserve to know what happened to jess, but– but it’s a lot.” a moment of silence allows that to sink in; so something did happen to her, something more than just faulty electrical wiring in her apartment. sam’s genuine as he goes on, “and it’s great to see you too, really. it’s so strange, i mean all of this, obviously, but it’s even stranger how close we are to stanford. i was already thinking about it, about you all on the way over, and the next thing i know, you’re the suspicious hunter throwing holy water in my face.” 

you cringe a little at that, but sam smiles a little wider than he has all night. “that’s a good thing,” he half-laughs, “i don’t care how weird this coincidence is, i’m glad for it.” his hand twitches, almost as if he’d wanted to reach over and grab your hand, but thought better of it before it could happen. “i gotta ask, did you finish your degree?” the way he asks is so hopeful, and you immediately know how much he wants the answer to be yes. he’s thinking, if i couldn’t finish, please tell me at least one of us could. that one of us poor and foolish hunter kids who thought we could escape managed to long enough to finish a degree, prove that we could make something of ourselves in the normal world. it would be so nice to see that, if it couldn’t be me, it could be somebody, it could be you.

his face falls a little when he registers the sad smile on your face. your expression is more than enough of an answer, and the fact that he wanted so badly for you to have made it makes your heart break a little, for both him and you. we deserved better, you think.

“just about the same thing happened to me,” you begin to explain, “you remember my cousin, bex?” sam nods, recalling the way the two of you acted like siblings the few times he met her, how much you liked alike when you smiled, already sad for what he suspects he might hear. “she died a few weeks after jess. she and i both grew up hunting, and we both thought we got out of it, at least for a little while. we almost lasted all four years … i didn’t think there was anything weird with her death, but … my dad showed me proof of just that at her funeral, convinced me to come back to hunting with him. she was– she was hiding something, and, honestly i’m still not sure what happened. progress on her case has been slow. real slow, so we’ve been working on others in the meantime. keeping busy, you know.”

“oh, i know,” sam sighs, and you completely believe him. you wonder for a moment what bigger things he’s digging into before deciding it’s best if the two of you stick to what’s in front of you. if you go too deep, having each other, a new kind of steady presence from better times, might start feeling too unreal again. 

you want to preserve this delicate balance, where sam is still stanford sam and you’re still stanford you, but now there’s just a deeper understanding of each other. a knowing of what it’s like to grow up with a hunter for a father, to want to get away from it all, to want a sense of normalcy, and to want to learn and become something more and say “screw you!” to all of the expections. and on top of that, knowing how it feels to get so close to the finish line, only to have it ripped out of your hands like you’re a child who’s parents think they’ve had too much candy. only it’s far worse than a half eaten lollipop in the trash because people that you love died, and it was all so much more than just chasing after a momentary sugar high. 

“i’m sorry about bex,” sam says, this time actually reaching out and placing his hand on yours for a moment. his voice is as full of empathy and sincerity as ever. “she was amazing the few times i met her. i could see how close you two were.”

“thanks, sam.” you give him a small smile because those words feel so much better coming from him than just about anyone else. with that, the air seems to settle a little, and it’s far more bearable. you’ve still got a hundred and one questions to ask and a hundred and one more things to say to each other, but to find out you have this near-exact shared experience is like having so much of the weight of loneliness lifted from your chest. and it all feels even better because you know sam. you know him already. 

sure, there’s a whole lot you missed before, but you don’t doubt for a second that the sam sitting in front of you is as kind, funny, smart, witty, sincere, adorably awkward, and good as the sam you met and came to know at stanford. in fact, knowing he grew up the way he did just reaffirms his goodness to you. it’s not easy to live like that and continue choosing to be kind and well-meaning and true to yourself. then there’s this feeling of admiration for sam, just blooming in your chest and you hold back a wide grin because the timing’s not quite right. you still can’t shake the urge to hug him.

“well,” you smile casually, if not a little rueful as you say your next words, “i think our dads will go all hunter-dad-crazy on us if we keep playing catch up. i’ll give you a run down of everything i’ve got, then we can do what dropouts from the west coast’s most prestigious school’s do best; research.”

sam’s smile matches your own, and it’s achingly familiar. “well, we can’t have those asses ruin our not-quite-stanford-alumni reuinion. let’s get to work. we can pretend it’s like the good old days, spring freshman year, all of us cramming for the way-er exam at the back of the library and getting shushed by the librarians. we can pretend john and rick are the librarians.”

for the first time in a long time, you let out a loud laugh, surprised and pulled right out of you without warning. he smiles wide at the sound and finally, without restraint, you grin back. god, you missed him.