#Ann and Mark's first date
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Amy Poehler in Parks and Recreation (2009–2015) The Stakeout
S2E2
Leslie sets up a stakeout with Tom to find out who's growing marijuana in the community garden she set up in the pit, but it also gives her an opportunity to scout out Ann and Mark's first date.
#Parks and Recreation#2009 episode#tv series#comedy#sitcom#Amy Poehler#The Stakeout#community garden#forbidden#Ann and Mark's first date#mistaken for criminal#just watched
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30th birthday
i just can’t believe harry is 30 and this is my way to cope, i hope you like this 🥲
MASTERLIST | MY PATREON
The calendar marked February 1st as the date, which meant that it was finally Harry's 30th birthday.
You woke up earlier than him, in order to make him his special birthday breakfast that was a tradition by now, and as you stood alone in the cooking in the kitchen, you couldn't help but reminisce about all the previous birthdays you've celebrated with Harry.
From celebrating his birthday at a restaurant with his brand new band mates and friends after a day of The X Factor rehearsals, having big parties thrown for him with celebrities in attendance, flying off to Japan to celebrate there and throwing a concert to spend his special day with his fans, you couldn't believe Harry was turning 30 and you were able to grow up by his side.
"Love, where are you?" his raspy morning voice made its way to your ears, and you couldn't help but smile.
"Over here, in the kitchen!"
You turned around to see Harry stumbling into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes sleepily. His hair was tousled, and he was wearing an oversized t-shirt that you recognized as one of your favorites.
"Morning, birthday boy," you greeted him, leaning in to give him a soft kiss.
"Morning," he replied, his eyes still half-closed. "What's all this?" Harry gestured towards the spread of pancakes, eggs, and bacon you had prepared on the table.
"It's your special birthday breakfast, as always," you pecked his lips again.
"You know, you could've woken me up with a 30 minute long blowj-"
"Harry!" you cut him off before he could finish his sentence, "Every single year, you say the same thing! When will you stop being a menace."
"Can you blame me?" Harry shrugged, "You still look as hot as you did when we first met fourteen years ago."
"Fourteen, huh?" you said, tilting your head, "How does it feel to not be a twenty something anymore? You're basically an old man now."
"I feel good, honestly," he said sincerely, his eyes locking with yours, "I mean, I'm happy and healthy, I have the job of my dreams, a family that loves me, supporting friends and the best girlfriend in the world, I'm a very lucky old man."
"You're too cute," you kissed him again, "Now eat your breakfast, we have a lot of celebrations to do today."
The day went by smoothly, Harry answered a couple of calls and texts from friends and family and you spent the afternoon cuddling up before it was time for his birthday dinner.
Harry wanted something small and intimate, with just a handful of close friends and family invited, so you decided to host the birthday dinner at your home. As the evening approached, the house was filled with the delicious aroma of the special dinner you had prepared for him.
Jeff and Glenne were the first ones to arrive, carrying a homemade cake that Glenne insisted she had baked all morning. Sarah and Mitch came next with their baby boy who giggled and clapped as Harry made silly faces, clearly enjoying the attention from the famous Cool Harry, because he refused to be called uncle.
"Damn mate, I can't believe you're 30 now," Jeff said, wrapping his arm around Harry's shoulders, "I still remember when you were twenty and my parents basically adopted you, I feel so old."
"You feel old? Imagine how I feel, that's my baby brother!" Gemma chimed in, entering your house with her boyfriend Michal and Anne, "Happy birthday, H."
"Thanks, Gem," Harry smiled, hugging his sister tightly. "And thanks for reminding everyone that I'm officially old now."
As more friends and family arrived, the laughter and chatter of loved ones filled the air, the dining table was adorned with candles, flowers, and a beautifully set dinner that everyone enjoyed.
Once your bellies were full, Mitch opened the champagne bottle Harry Lambert brought with him, filling everyone's glasses to make a toast.
"Alright, everyone, gather around," Mitch announced, holding up his glass, "To Harry, on his 30th birthday, may this year be filled with even more success and love. Cheers."
Everyone clicked their glasses, smiles on everyone's faces.
"I think the missus should give a speech!" Gemma teased, pointing at you.
"Not a missus yet, still no ring," you teased back, raising an eyebrow at Harry and hearing the whistles from his friends.
"Well, uh, maybe we'll have to do something about that soon." Harry chuckled nervously, scratching the back of his head.
The room erupted in laughter and even more whistles, and you couldn't help but blush and roll your eyes with affection.
"Alright, alright," you began, holding up your glass, "Here's to the man of the hour. Harry, you've filled my life with so much joy, laughter, and love all these years. It's been an incredible journey growing up with you, I still remember when we were just kids, celebrating your 16th birthday before you became the star that you are today, I'm so proud of you and living life by your side has been the best thing that has ever happened to me. Happy 30th birthday, my love. May this year bring you everything you desire."
Harry couldn't help but melt at your words, standing up and hugging you tightly and kissing your lips.
"Thank you, everyone," Harry began, his voice carrying a hint of nostalgia, "I can't believe I'm standing here, celebrating my 30th birthday. It feels like just yesterday I was a wide-eyed 16-year-old auditioning for The X Factor, not knowing what life had in store for me," he paused, glancing at each person in the room with watery eyes, "But here I am, and I couldn't be more grateful for each and every one of you. To my family, who has been there from the start, and to my friends who have become family. And to this incredible woman right here," Harry said, placing his hand on your waist, "who has been with me since I was I was an annoying teenager, growing up by my side."
"You're still as annoying as a teenager," Jeff interrupted him, making the entire room laugh, "But we love you, mate. And we're grateful for you."
As the night continued, the homemade cake adorned with candles was brought out, and everyone in the room sag "Happy Birthday" together, Harry made a wish and blew out the candles, surrounded by the people he loved the most.
After the cake-cutting and more chatter, everyone decided to call it a night and head home, leaving you and Harry at me comfort of your house.
"Thank you for everything," Harry whispered, wrapping his arms around you.
"It's your day, love. I'm just happy I could make it special for you," you replied, resting your head against his shoulder.
"You always make every day special," he murmured, placing a gentle kiss on your forehead.
You stood wrapped around each other for a few minutes, enjoying the final moments of his birthday.
"This has been one of my favorite birthdays ever," Harry admitted, breaking the comfortable silence.
"I'm glad you think so," you smiled, snuggling closer. "And, by the way, the 'no ring yet' comment earlier, totally just teasing."
"Oh, really? Because I was serious, maybe it's time," Harry smirked, giving you a playful look.
"Don't tell me you're about to propose, not on your own birthday, Harry!" you said nervously.
"Not right now love, but soon enough," he winked and you let out the breath you were holding, "I love you."
"I love you more, Harry. Happy birthday."
#harry styles fanfiction#harry styles imagine#harry styles writing#harry styles fluff#harry styles fake instagram#harry styles one shot#harry styles blurb#harry styles x reader#harry styles x you#harry styles headcanon#harry styles fic#harry styles au#harry styles fake social media#harry styles story#harrysfolklore#harry styles masterlist#harry styles fic rec#harry styles brithday#1k
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let the plot bunnies run wild babes
"Eat, guys," you tell them. "I'm just going to change real quick."
"You don't have to-" Vanessa started to protest but you wave off her concerns.
"I like this shirt and I wanna get it in cold water anyway." You answer shrugging. "Eat," you press, "Christ I'm not dying and I refuse to have people go hungry after I cooked all day." You start towards the bedroom and call over your shoulder, "Logan, help yourself to the beer in the fridge. I'd tell Wade to get it but he's shit with bottle openers."
"I have delicate hands," Wade protested.
Logan rolled his eyes but took you up on the offer. It felt weird eating food you cooked while you weren't sitting there. Even if you clearly didn't mind. And it gave him a chance to see more of your space without being weird.
Younger than Wade but more mature somehow. Wade wasn't a slob exactly. But it was clear you were more settled. You wanted stability. Your kitchen wasn't large but you made do and made the most of the space. Photos on the fridge. You with friends. With your brother. Some pretty old. Wade had you on his shoulders in one. You would have been maybe 6 or 7 and you look sick. But at least for then you're beaming. Another is a birthday, Logan assumes. Wade's. You're on one side and Vanessa is on the other kissing his cheeks. You're older. Grown. The childish roundness is gone from your features but there's still puppy fat- you haven't quite grown into yourself yet.
Friends. Parents. Trigger. Wade. All there. But no boyfriends? He heard Vanessa ask about a date but Wade's yammering drowned out your answer. Weird that there wasn't one. You're a cute kid.
He shook his head and grabbed a beer popping the top and putting it in the cup marked "tops only" on the counter that had pop tabs and bottle caps in it. And went back to his seat, relieved when you walked out of the bedroom.
"Much better now that I don't feel like a horror movie extra," you declare, taking a seat.
"Extra?" Wade scoffed. "Butterbean, you're final girl material."
"If I didn't trip and bleed out on a curb first," you muse. "Also I'm not funny and I don't think my boobs are big enough to-"
"Jamie Lee Curtis made it work," Vanessa pointed out.
"Who?" Logan asked.
"You're not the worst Logan, you're just from the worst timeline," you tell him. "Who was in your Halloween movies?"
"In what?"
You blink at him, "Logan, I- I'm stunned. Halloween is only one of the BEST horror movies of all time."
"Bullshit," Wade said.
"Fuck you," you snort, "You think the Warrens actually fought a Ragedy Ann doll."
Logan caught Vanessa's eye when she raised her glass in mock toast with a wink and dug into her own plate and snorted. Taking advantage of the bickering to eat. And he thought, for just a second, that it might kill him. It took actual effort to stifle a moan.
How Wade could talk between bites was baffling. Logan could tell everything was made from scratch- even the noodles. And he couldn't remember the last time he'd had something like that.
Even more impressive was how you managed to argue with your brother and keep plates and glasses full- and keep him from feeling excluded. Even if he never spoke. Your body was never fully angled away and you glanced towards him, unobtrusively fussing. Hostessing properly, he supposed.
"I guess," he said, clearing his throat as he helped you clear plates to make room for the dessert and coffee, "I can stop stabbing Wade in the head."
"I appreciate it," you tell him, smiling a little as you take the plates from his hands.
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Provenance | Supernatural Series Rewrite | Dean Winchester x Reader
Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader (Eventual)
Warnings: canon violence, canon gore, j e a l o u s y
Word Count: 6703
A/N: Taglist will be closing at the start of season 2! if you aren't currently tagged, and you'd like to join, please please let me know within the next two posts!!
Mobile Supernatural Series Rewrite Masterlist
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You gripped your beer tightly watching Dean getting a girl’s number across the bar from you.
“(Y/N), if you hold that thing any tighter, you’re gonna break it,” Sam snorted. “What’s your deal?”
You looked back at Sam but were unable to pull your eyes from Dean and his new “friend” for longer than a few seconds. “Nothing.” You took a swig of your drink.
“Are you sure you don’t know how you feel about Dean?” the brunet taunted.
You shot him a glare. “Shut up.”
He snickered in response and returned to looking over the papers in front of him.
You waved Dean over, who held a hand up behind the woman’s back to get you to wait. You gestured again and his smile dropped. He said something to her quickly before making his way back over to you.
“I think we got something,” Sam told his brother.
Dean grinned over his shoulder. “Oh, yeah, me too. I think we need to take a little shore leave; just a little bit. What do you think, huh? I'm so in the door with this one.”
You rolled your eyes. “So, what are we today, Dean? Rock stars, army rangers?”
“Reality TV scouts,” he grinned at you, ignoring the bite in your voice. “Looking for people with special skills. I mean hey, it's not that far off right?”
“If by ‘not far off’ you mean ‘completely off the mark,’ then you’re spot on,” you deadpanned.
Dean shot you a look while he turned to his brother. “By the way, she's got a friend over there. Possibly hook you up. What do you think?”
“Dean, no thanks, I can get my own dates,” Sam responded to his question.
“Yeah, you can, but you don't.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Dean shook his head. “Nothing. What you got?”
“Mark and Ann Telesca of New Paltz, New York were both found dead in their own home, a few days ago. Throats were slit. There were no prints, no murder weapons, all—” He trailed off as his brother looked back at the women at the bar.
“Dean!” you snapped your fingers at him.
He turned back. “Huh, what?”
“No prints, no murder weapons, all doors and windows locked from the inside,” Sam continued.
“Could just be a garden variety murder, you know, not our department,” Dean answered.
“No. Dad says different.”
“What do you mean?” Dean’s interest was piqued at the mention of his dad.
You pointed at the map. “John noted three murders in the same area of upstate New York. First one here in 1912, second, right here in 1945, and the third in 1970. Same M.O. as the Telescas. Throats slit, doors locked from the inside; the whole nine. Now, so much time passed that nobody checked the pattern. Except for your dad. It’s frustrating how much better he is at this than me sometimes,” you muttered at the end of your sentence.
“Alright, I'm with ya. It's worth checking out. We can't pick this up ‘til first thing though right?” Dean asked, trying to contain his excitement.
“Yeah,” Sam answered.
“Good.” Before you could stop him, Dean was off to the two women again.
You were fuming; staring daggers at him and downing the rest of your drink.
Sam snickered at you. “Let’s get you out of here before you end up killing one of those girls.”
“Nah, I’d kill your brother. They didn’t do anything wrong,” you responded, helping Sam pick up the papers scattered about the table. “How ‘bout the Telescas’ house?” you asked.
***
You and Sam headed back to the motel you were staying in to research the history of the Telescas’ home. You sprawled out across Dean’s bed with your laptop, and Sam sat on his bed with his laptop.
“Finding anything?” you asked him.
“Nope. You?”
You shook your head. “Nada.”
He shut his laptop. “So? You wanna talk about it?”
You shut yours, too. “About what?”
“Dean?”
“Oh, hell no,” you snorted.
“You two are made for each other,” he deadpanned at your boxed-up emotions.
“Fuck off, Sam,” you retorted. “What about you? Still not ready to jump back into the dating pool?” You snuggled into the blankets on Dean’s bed, reveling in his scent emanating off them.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“What was she like?” you asked after a moment.
“Who?”
“Jessica. You never told me much about her.”
He sighed. “She was just… the best, man. You two would’ve gotten along great, honestly. She was—” he grinned sadly at the thought of her, “—so smart. So beautiful. Quick, witty, and…” he shook his head. “I was looking for wedding rings. Few weeks before she...”
You smiled sadly at him. “She sounds amazing.”
“She was,” he responded. A quiet settled over the room.
“Don’t you think she would’ve wanted you to be… I don’t know, happy? Do you think she’d want you to move on? It’s been almost a year,” you said. “Jesus, I’ve known you guys for almost a year now," you realized.
He chuckled before going quiet again momentarily. “I think she would. But Jess… I don’t know if I’ll ever be fully over her. She was my best friend, y’know?”
You nodded. “I get it. I’m glad you had that with her, though. Sounds like you really loved each other.”
“We did.”
You and Sam went silent once more, and you succumbed to the tiredness of your limbs and mind. You were so comforted by the scent of worn leather, Dean’s cologne, and whiskey, that you slept better than you had in years.
***
When you woke up the next morning, Sam was standing over you, shaking you gently. You popped up and grabbed his wrist, twisting it and putting a hand to his throat. “Hey, hey,” he tried to calm you down, “Dean’s back.”
You released him immediately. “Sorry, dude. Uh… reflexes,” you laughed awkwardly.
“It’s okay. Dean does that, too.”
The man in question stumbled into the room tiredly. “Move your asses. Let’s go.”
***
You and Sam had just swept the Telescas’ house for EMF while Dean slept in the car trying to get over his hangover. When you returned to the car, you beeped the horn. Dean shot up a foot in the air and groaned.
“Man, that is so not cool.” He adjusted his sunglasses and leaned back against the car door. You and Sam climbed into your seats and began to explain what you had been up to.
“We just swept the Telescas with EMF. It's clean. And last night, while you were, well, out—” Sam trailed off.
Dean’s smirk made your stomach drop. “Good times.”
“—we checked the history of the house.”
“Nothing strange about the Telescas, either,” you said, swallowing your feelings.
“Alright,” Dean’s gravelly voice came, “so if it's not the people and it's not the house, then maybe it's the contents. Cursed object or something.”
“The house is clean,” you said.
“Yeah I know, you said that.”
“No, no, it’s empty. No furniture, nothing,” you explained.
Dean turned back to you. “Where's all their stuff?”
***
You felt so out of place in the swanky auction house the Telescas’ belongings had been brought to. Even the Impala looked like an outcast in the parking lot full of McLarens and Corvettes.
You and the brothers wandered around the auction house, and you wrapped your jacket tightly around yourself.
“Consignment auctions, estate sales. Looks like a garage sale for Wasps if you ask me,” Dean commented. He took some food from a tray table as a man came up behind you.
“Can I help you?” the man questioned.
You wheeled around to face him.
“I'd like some champagne please,” Dean said in a mock posh voice.
You could’ve killed him. “He’s not a waiter.”
Dean cocked an eyebrow at you, and you held out your hand to the man. “I’m (Y/N) Dewitt. This is Sam and Dean Connors. We’re with Connors Limited. We’re art dealers.”
The man didn’t give you the courtesy of a handshake. You fought the urge to make an inappropriate comment.
“You. Are… art dealers,” the man said, clearly having difficulty grasping that concept. “I'm Daniel Blake, this is my auction house. Now, this is a private showing, and I don't remember seeing you on the guest list.”
“We're there, Chuckles, you just need to take another look.” Dean, of course, talked through a mouth full of food.
You shot a sharp look at Dean as he took a glass of champagne off the tray. He turned and walked off, and you followed him.
“Can you chill out?” you asked him.
“What?” he asked through a mouthful of champagne.
You rolled your eyes. “You know what I’m talking about. I don’t like this crowd either, but relax.” You noticed a painting just beyond where you and Dean were talking. It was of a family in an American Gothic style; presumably from the early 1900s. The family contained three young girls in frilly dresses, a man with a gaunt and creepy face, and a woman you assumed was the mother seated in a chair.
“A fine example of American Primitive wouldn't you say?” a woman’s voice called from behind you.
You turned to the place the voice came from to find an extremely good looking woman in a sleek black dress with glossed lips descending the staircase. You noticed Dean beginning to ogle her as Sam answered her. “Well, I'd say it's more Grant Wood than Grandma Moses. But you knew that, you just wanted to see if I did.”
The woman smiled as she approached you. “Guilty. And clumsy. I apologize. I'm Sarah Blake.”
“I’m Sam,” he said. “This is my… brother, Dean.” Dean was still stuffing his face with food from passing trays. “And our friend, (Y/N).”
“Dean. Can we get you some more mini-quiche?” Sarah questioned.
You snorted. You liked her.
“I'm good, thanks,” he smiled through a full mouth.
“So, can I help you with something?” she asked Sam. You knew she liked him; she was giving him the same look you often gave Dean.
“Yeah, actually. What can you tell us about the Telesca estate?” Sam asked her.
She grimaced. “The whole thing's pretty grisly if you ask me, selling your things this soon. But Dad's right about one thing, sensationalism brings out the crowds. Even the rich ones.”
“Is it possible to see the provenances?” Sam asked.
The man from earlier came up behind you. “I'm afraid there isn't any chance of that.”
“Why not?” you asked.
“You're not on the guest list. And I think it's time to leave.”
You rolled your eyes, dropping your polite disposition. “Don’t have to tell us twice.”
“Apparently, I do,” he said.
“C’mon, Dean,” you said, dragging his arm out.
***
You and the brothers found a decently priced motel and approached the rooms you had been assigned.
“Grant Wood, Grandma Moses?” Dean scoffed at his brother.
“Art history course. It's good for meeting girls,” Sam replied simply.
Dean unlocked the door to his room and chuckled. “It's like I don't even know you.”
You walked a little further down to the room next to theirs and unlocked it only to find a gaudily outfitted room full of obnoxious disco decor. The "do not disturb" hanger was even of John Travolta’s silhouette from Saturday Night Fever.
“Huh.” You dropped your bag off and headed back to the boys’ room.
“What was… providence?” Dean was asking as you entered the room.
“Provenance,” you corrected. “It’s like a biography for a painting. You use ‘em to check the history of the pieces; in this case, to see if they have a freaky past.”
“Alright, professor,” Dean taunted you. “Well, we're not getting anything out of Chuckles, but Sarah…” he smirked at his brother.
“Yeah, maybe you can get her to write it all down on a cocktail napkin,” Sam smirked back.
“Not me,” Dean laughed.
You shot a look at Sam, too.
He seemed only mildly horrified. “No, no, no, pickups are your thing, Dean.”
“It wasn't my butt she was checking out,” Dean snorted.
You giggled despite yourself.
“In other words, you want me to use her to get information,” Sam deadpanned.
“Sometimes you gotta take one for the team. Call her,” Dean instructed his brother.
Sam rolled his eyes, but took out his phone. You weren’t sure when he had gotten her number, but he left about an hour later to take her out to dinner.
You and Dean sat in awkward silence for a bit.
“So…”
“So…”
You went silent again.
“What’s goin’ on with us, (Y/N)? You’ve barely spoken a word to me this whole trip.”
You huffed. “Nothing.”
“Obviously, it’s not nothing.” Dean held your challenging stare.
“Seriously, drop it, please,” you said.
“Fine. You wanna go get some food?”
You smiled despite yourself. “You know I do.”
You and Dean found a crappy diner with deliciously greasy burgers to stuff your faces with.
“So, how ‘bout you, sweetheart? Why don’t you ever go out?” Dean asked.
“On dates, you mean?”
He nodded.
You nibbled on a fry. “I’m just not one for hookups. I can’t take ‘em,” you admitted. “You, though, are king of the unattached drifters.”
He chuckled. “What’s wrong with hookups?
“I get too attached, which kind of defeats the whole purpose,” you replied. “The idea of being intimate with somebody I don’t even know makes me want to throw up.”
“Why? You’re gorgeous. Anybody would kill to get with you," he said casually.
You ignored the way your heart swelled in your chest. “It’s not that, it’s just…” you sighed. “I’m, like, allergic to vulnerability.”
“I get it,” Dean chuckled. “You know by now I’m not exactly the best with it, either.”
“Oh, yeah, you’re worse than me,” you quipped. “You look like you’re gonna throw up any time you have to tell me you’re sorry or something like that.”
“Maybe it’s just your face,” he retorted.
“Hey!” you giggled. “You can’t call me gorgeous one minute then tell me looking at me makes you sick the next.”
He chuckled. “I just did, so…”
“Whatever, Winchester. What is it about hookups you enjoy so much, anyway?”
He shrugged and took a bite of his burger. “Sex is just fun, I guess. Always helps me blow off steam.”
You scoffed. “I’m sure it does.”
“I’m serious! Helps me take a break from… all this.” He gestured around him.
“That’s why you have hobbies, Dean. Sex is not a hobby.”
“It can be! You draw, Sam reads, I fuck."
“Well, get a better one,” you scoffed.
“What would you suggest I do? Knitting?”
You rolled your eyes. “No, just… something a little more wholesome, maybe. You said it yourself, it doesn’t always make you feel great.”
“Never should’ve told you that,” he responded.
“Well, ya did, so.”
He snorted at you. “It’s frustrating how well you know me sometimes.”
“Oh, look at that, another crumb of vulnerability from Mr. Closed Book.”
“That’s the best diss you could come up with?”
“Hey, it’s not easy being effortlessly funny all the time,” you retorted. “It’s a lot of pressure.”
***
When you and Dean returned to the motel room, you pulled out your whetstone to sharpen your knives.
“Who you plannin’ on carvin’ up, sweetheart?”
“Haven’t decided yet,” you answered.
“Remind me not to piss you off,” he remarked.
“You do literally all the time,” you quipped. “You’re lucky you’re still in one piece. If you give me yours, I’ll sharpen ‘em, too.”
“Thanks,” he said. He handed his knives over to you.
Sam burst through the door at that moment holding a stack of papers. “Got ‘em.”
“So she just handed the providences over to you?” Dean questioned.
“Provenances,” you corrected.
“We went back to her place, I got a copy of the papers—”
Dean raised his eyebrows expectantly. “And?”
“And nothing. That's it. I left.”
“You didn't have to con her or do any… special favors or anything like that?” Dean questioned.
“Dean, would you get your mind out of the gutter, please?” the younger brother scoffed.
“You know when this whole thing's done, we could stick around for a little bit,” he suggested.
“Why?”
“So you could take her out again. It's obvious you're into her, even I could see that.”
Sam ignored his brother. “Hey, I think I've got something here.”
You headed over to Sam’s seated position at the desk and looked over his shoulder at the papers. “ ‘Portrait of Isaiah Merchant's family, painted 1910’,” you read off.
“Now, compare the names of the owners with my dad's journal,” Sam said.
Dean pulled it out. “First purchased in 1912, Peter Simms. Peter Simms murdered 1912. Same thing in 1945. Oh, same thing in 1970.”
“Then stored, until it was donated to a charity auction last month. Where the Telescas bought it,” Sam continued.
“So what do you think? It's haunted? Or cursed?” you asked.
“Either way, it's toast,” said Dean, getting up from his bed.
***
Under the cover of night, you and the brothers broke into the auction house. You were consistently impressed with and sexually frustrated by how easy scaling tall fences and gates were for Dean.
“Come on!” Dean urged you.
You disarmed the security alarm, wearing gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. “Go ahead,” you whispered.
Dean picked the lock at your cue. You shone your flashlight ahead of you searching for the painting. When you found it, you and the boys were in and out within minutes. You and the boys had clearly been breaking and entering for years. You found it comical almost how good you were. You brought the painting out to a field behind the arthouse and set it alight.
Dean dusted off his hands. “Ugly ass thing. If you ask me, we're doing the art world a favor.”
***
Dean banged on your door the next morning. “We got a problem. I can't find my wallet.”
You opened it. “How the hell do you lose your wallet?”
“I think I dropped it in the warehouse last night.”
“Fuck, dude, that’s bad.” You started pulling on your boots as he paced around the room.
“Yeah, I know. It's got my prints, my ID— well, my fake ID anyway. We gotta get it before someone else finds it. Come on.”
You and the brothers hurried around the auction house searching for the wallet. Sam was clearly frustrated with his brother until he caught sight of Sarah.
“Hey guys!” she smiled.
You wheeled around at the sound of her voice and attempted to act cool.
“Sarah! Hey,” Sam breathed.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Ahh, we.... we are leaving town and, you know, we came to say goodbye,” Sam responded.
“What are you talking about Sam, we're sticking around for at least another day or two,” Dean grinned as he strolled up to the two. He took his wallet out of his pocket and shot a look at Sam. “By the way, I'm gonna go ahead and give you that $20 I owe you.” He turned to Sarah. “I always forget, you know.” Dean chuckled and you grinned as he held out the cash to his brother. Sam took it and glared at him. “Well, we’ll leave you two crazy kids alone, I gotta go do something… somewhere.”
“Smooth, Dean,” you told him as you walked away from Sarah and Sam. The two of you headed back out to the Impala and sat in it waiting for Sam. When he returned, he was frantically saying the painting was back in the auction house.
“I don't understand. We burned the damn thing,” Sam rushed out.
“Yeah, thank you, Captain Obvious,” Dean remarked.
“Alright, we just need to figure out another way to get rid of it. Any ideas?” you chimed in.
“Well, um, in almost all the lore about haunted paintings it's always the painting's subject that haunts 'em,” Sam began.
“Yeah. So we just need to figure out everything there is to know about that creepy-ass family and that creepy-ass painting. What were their names again?”
“Merchant,” you answered. “I say we find us a bookstore.”
***
And so, that was where you headed. You found a proprietor whose personality was interesting, to say the least. You found his quirk had a bit of charm to it.
“You said the Isaiah Merchant family right?” he asked you.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Sam said.
You and Dean were flicking through a book with pictures of guns in it. The proprietor laid a book of newspaper clippings on the table in front of you. “I dug up every scrap of local history I could find. So, are you folks crime buffs?”
“Kinda. Yeah. Why do you ask?” you responded.
He held up the newspaper article before him. It talked about the sinking of the Titanic, and just next to it, read “Father Slaughters Family, Kills Himself.”
“Yes. Yeah, that sounds about right,” Dean replied.
“The whole family was killed?” You tilted your head.
“It seems this Isaiah, he slits his kids' throats, then his wife, then himself. Now, he was a barber by trade. Used a straight razor,” the proprietor explained.
“Why'd he do it?” Sam questioned.
“Let's look. Ahh... ‘People who knew him describe Isaiah as having a stern and harsh temperament. Controlled his family with an iron fist. Wife, uh, two sons, adopted daughter…’ “ he skimmed on. “Yeah, yeah, yeah… ‘There were whispers that the wife was gonna take the kids and leave.’ Which of course you know in that day and age, um, so instead, old man Isaiah, well, he gave them all a shave.” He drew his hand across his throat and made a noise to go along with it. You and Dean joined in laughing with the proprietor.
“Does it say what happened to the bodies?” asked Dean.
The proprietor shook his head. “Just that they were all cremated.”
“Anything else?” you asked.
“Yeah. Actually, I found a picture of the family. It's right here. Somewhere. Right— here it is.”
It was a picture of the painting, but something seemed off to you.
“Hey, could we get a copy of this please?” Sam asked the man.
He nodded, and returned a few minutes later with it.
***
You and the boys sat at a table in the motel room and looked over the copy of the picture.
“I’m telling you,” you started, “The picture at the auction house, Dad’s looking down. Here, dad’s looking out. The painting changed.”
“Alright, so you think that Daddy dearest is trapped in the painting and is handing out Columbian neckties like he did with his family?” Dean questioned.
“Well, yeah, it seems like it. But if his bones are already dusted, then how are we gonna stop him?” Sam asked.
“Maybe other things changed in the painting, too. Maybe it could give us some clues,” you answered.
“What, like a Da Vinci Code deal?” Sam asked.
“Maybe,” you shrugged.
Dean looked down at you, confused. “I’m lost. Still waiting for the movie on that one. Anyway, we gotta get back in and see that painting.” He walked over to his bed and laid back, crossing his arms. “Which is a good thing ‘cause you can get some more time to crush on your girlfriend.”
Sam huffed. “Dude, enough already.”
“What?” he responded.
“What? Ever since we got here, you been trying to pimp me out to Sarah. Just back off, all right?” he said defensively.
“Sam, relax,” you told him.
“Well, you like her don't you?” Dean pushed.
Sam threw his arms up and looked to the ceiling.
“Alright, you like her, she likes you, you’re both consenting adults…” Dean trailed off with a smile.
“What's the point, Dean? We'll just leave. We always leave,” came Sam’s frustrated response.
“Well, I'm not talking about marriage, Sam.”
Sam snarled angrily. “You know, I don't get it. What do you care if I hook up?”
“ ‘Cause then maybe you wouldn't be so cranky all the time,” Dean answered calmly.
Sam stared at him and huffed before looking away.
“Look, I’m not crazy about hookups either, but maybe it would be helpful,” you suggested.
“And this isn't about just hooking up, okay?” Dean continued. “I mean, I think that this Sarah girl could be good for you. And... I don't mean any disrespect, but I'm sure this is about Jessica, right? Now I don't know what it's like to lose somebody like that, but... I would think that she would want you to be happy.” Sam’s eyes welled with tears as his brother continued to talk. “God forbid, have fun once in a while. Wouldn't she?”
“Yeah, I know she would,” Sam responded softly. “Yeah, you're right. Part of this is about Jessica. But not the main part.”
“What’s it about?” you asked.
He wouldn’t answer you.
“Well, we still gotta see that painting, which means you still gotta call Sarah, so…” Dean trailed off.
Sam picked up his phone and cleared his throat. Dean shook his head and closed his eyes, settling back on his bed.
“Sarah, hey, it's Sam… Hey, hi… Good. Good, yeah. Umm. What about you?... Yeah good, good, really good.”
Dean opened one eye and looked at his brother. “Smooth.”
You suppressed a laugh.
“So, ah, so listen,” Sam continued. “Me and my brother were, uh, thinking that maybe we'd like to come back in and look at the painting again. I- I think maybe we are interested in buying it… What?!”
At Sam’s tone, you and Dean snapped to attention.
“Who'd you sell it to?” Sam stood up.
Dean rose and came to stand next to you.
“Sarah, I need an address right now,” Sam urged her.
Once she’d given it to you, you and the boys sped away in the Impala to an upscale neighborhood. You and the boys were surprised to see another car parked right outside the building: Sarah’s.
“Sam, what's happening?” she asked as you and the boys ran up the front steps of the house.
“I told you, you shouldn't have come,” he responded.
“Hello, anyone home?” Dean banged on the heavy front door.
“You said Evelyn might be in danger; what sort of danger?” Sarah asked Sam frantically.
“I can't knock this sucker down. I gotta pick it.” Dean crouched down in front of you and you moved over to the windows, banging on them with all your might.
“What are you guys, burglars?” Sarah yelped.
“I wish it was that simple. Look, you really should wait in the car. It's for your own good,” Sam told her.
Dean got the door open and you followed him inside quickly.
“The hell I will. Evelyn's a friend,” she said, trailing behind you and the boys. “Evelyn?” She moved over to the elderly woman sitting half-turned away from you. Something was wrong and you knew it; the woman’s gaze seemed completely empty. “Evelyn? It's Sarah Blake. Are you alright?” She touched her shoulder gently.
“Sarah, don't. Sarah!” Sam told her.
Evelyn’s head tipped back, exposing her slashed throat.
Sarah jumped back in horror and screamed. Sam put his arm around her and led her out of the room. You and Dean stared up at the painting before following the younger brother out of the house.
***
Back in the motel room, you and Dean clacked away at the keys on your laptops while Sam paced in front of you. A knock on the door stirred all of you from your thoughts. Sarah stormed into the room and brushed past Sam.
“Hey. You alright?” he asked her.
“No, actually, I just lied to the cops and told them I went to Evelyn's— alone— and found her like that,” she answered, wheeling around.
“Thank you,” Sam nodded.
“Don't thank me. I'm about to call them right back if you don't tell me what the hell's going on. Who's killing these people?”
Sam looked back at you and Dean, and you shrugged.
“What,” he told her.
“What?”
“It's not 'who'. It's 'what' is killing those people,” he explained.
Sarah was still looking at Sam like he was insane.
“Sarah, you saw that painting move,” he sighed.
The woman began to pace. “No, no. I was— I was seeing things. It's impossible.”
“Yeah, well, welcome to our world,” Dean grinned.
“Sarah, I know this sounds crazy, but we think that that painting is haunted.”
Sarah laughed humorlessly but had tears in her eyes. “You’re joking.” She looked between you and the Winchesters. “You're not joking. God, the guys I go out with.”
“Sarah, think about it. Evelyn, the Telescas, they both had the painting. And there have been others before that. Wherever this thing goes, people die. And we're just trying to stop it. And that's the truth,” the brunet told her.
“Then I guess you'd better show me. I'm coming with you,” she said matter-of-factly.
“What? No. Sarah no, you should just go home. This stuff can get dangerous and… and I don't want you to get hurt,” he admitted.
“Look, you guys are probably crazy, but if you're right about this? Well, me and my Dad sold that painting that might have gotten these people killed. Look, I'm not saying I'm not scared, because I am scared as hell, but I'm not going to run and hide either.” Sarah strutted over to the door. “So are we going or what?” She walked out.
“Sam?” Dean said. “Marry that girl.”
***
You and the boys returned to Evelyn’s house to scope out the crime scene a little further. Sam picked the lock to let you, his brother, and Sarah inside.
“Uh, isn’t this a crime scene?” Sarah protested.
Dean smirked. “You've already lied to the cops. What's another infraction?”
Once inside, you and Sam got the painting down from off the wall to examine it.
“Aren't you worried that it's gonna kill us?” Sarah asked.
“Nah, it seems to do its thing at night. I think we're alright in the daylight.”
You took the copy of the painting out of your pocket. “Sam, check it out. The razor: it's closed in this one, but it's open in that one.”
“What are you guys looking for?” she asked.
“Well, if the spirit's changing aspects of the painting, then it's doing so for a reason,” Dean explained.
“And look, the painting in the painting,” you pointed out. “Looks like a crypt, or a mausoleum or something.”
Dean grabbed a thick glass ashtray and used it as a magnifying glass. You ignored how your body came alight as he wound his arm around you to reach the painting. “Merchant,” he read out.
***
Your next stop was a graveyard. Several, in fact. You stepped over gravestones carefully to avoid disrespecting the dead even further.
“What, are you superstitious?” Dean asked.
“A little, actually. I think I’m in such deep shit with the spirits already; I don’t wanna make it worse,” you laughed.
“You are somethin’ else, woman,” he smirked. “This is the third boneyard we've checked,” Dean addressed your group. “I think this ghost is jerking us around.”
Sam and Sarah talked amongst themselves behind you and you and Dean walked a bit ahead.
“Over there,” you said, pointing to a mausoleum. The group followed you into the mausoleum where you found four urns in front of little glass-fronted boxes on one wall. On the opposite, there were five brass nameplates.
Sarah looked at one of the boxes containing a little porcelain doll with brown hair. “Okay, that right there is the creepiest thing I've ever seen.”
“It was a sort of tradition at the time,” Sam told her. “Whenever a child died, sometimes they'd preserve the kid's favorite toy in a glass case; put it next to the headstone or crypt.”
Wind blew in the mausoleum, sending a chill down your spine.
“Notice anything strange here?” Dean asked.
“Ah, where do I start?” remarked Sarah.
Sam snickered.
“No, that's not what I mean. Look at the urns,” said Dean.
“Yeah. There’s only four. Where’s the dad?” you questioned.
***
You and Dean discovered that Isaiah’s body had been buried in that same cemetery away from the rest of his family. You returned there that night with Sarah in tow.
You stood watch with Sarah while the boys dug the hole down to Isaiah’s corpse.
“You guys seem to be uncomfortably comfortable with this,” she said.
Sam climbed out of the hole laboriously. “Well, ah, this isn't exactly the first grave we've dug. Still think I'm a catch?”
You giggled when Dean’s shovel tapped something hard. “Think I've got something.” He cracked the coffin open to reveal Isaiah’s rotten bones. You helped him out of the ground and began pouring salt and kerosene over the body.
“You've been a real pain in the ass, Isaiah. Good riddance.” Dean tossed the match he’d struck down on top of the body.
“God, I will never get used to that smell,” you commented.
“What? Burning flesh?” the older Winchester turned his head to you.
You made a face and scrunched up your nose to which Dean just smirked at you and chuckled.
***
You returned to Evelyn’s house soon after to make sure the job was complete and bury the painting. You and Dean remained outside and told Sam to go in with Sarah. You and Dean smiled at each other before turning the radio up. A love ballad played loudly through the speakers, and Sam turned to the two of you. You both snickered at the “what the fuck” gesture he was giving you. Sam motioned for the two of you to cut the music. You sighed and turned it off.
Before you and Dean could say a word to each other, the door slammed shut behind Sam and Sarah. You and Dean jumped out of the car and ran across the lawn, trying your best to unlock it.
“Guys! Hey! Is that you?” Sam called from inside.
“Sammy, you alright?” the older brother asked. Moments later, you got a call from Sam.
“Tell me you slammed the front door,” you said after you answered.
“Nope, it wasn't me. I think it was the little girl,” he told you.
“The little girl? What girl?”
“What’s he saying?” Dean interjected, leaning close to your ear and the phone.
“Yeah, she's out of the painting. I think it might've been her all along,” Sam said.
You snorted humorlessly. “The dad was trying to warn us all along. He was looking down at her the whole time.”
“Hey, hey, hey, let's recap later all right? Just get us out of here," the younger brother rushed out.
“Well, Dean’s trying to pick the lock, but the door won’t budge.”
“Well, knock it down!”
“Okay, smartass, just let me get my battering ram,” you remarked.
“(Y/N), the damn thing is coming!”
“I know, I know, just hold it off til we figure something out. Get some salt or iron or something,” you responded. “Stay on the phone with me!”
Moments later, you heard Sam say to himself, “What kind of house doesn't have salt? Low-sodium freaks.” Another minute or so went by before he spoke back into the phone. “Uh, (Y/N), give me a sec, don't go anywhere.”
You and Dean began to walk around the outside looking for an alternative entrance. A bit of yelling and crashing was heard on the other end of the phone. “You okay, dude?”
“Yeah, for now,” he responded.
“How’re we gonna waste her?” you asked.
“I don't know, she was already cremated. There's nothing left to burn.”
Dean got close to the phone again.
“Then how's she still around?” you challenged.
“There must be something else!” Sam went silent on the other end, but you could faintly hear Sarah’s voice.
“(Y/N), Sarah said the doll might have the kid's real hair. Human remains; same as bones.”
“The mausoleum,” you and Dean said in unison.
“Hang tight, Sam,” you said, snapping your phone shut. You and Dean sprinted back to the car, and Dean drove as fast and as wildly as he possibly could.
“One of these days, your driving’s gonna fucking kill us all,” you said, gripping the leather of the seat next to you and the door.
“Not now, (Y/N),” he responded evenly, driving even faster. He plowed straight through the fence of the cemetery and drove right up to the mausoleum. You and Dean jumped out of the car and hurried into the building.
Dean pounded the door of the glass box containing the doll with the butt of his gun, and then went to walk out of the mausoleum. “Come on, Dean,” he grimaced. “Cover your eyes!” He told you. He shot at the box, and you shielded your face as he did so. You leapt back into action and knocked away more of the glass with your hands, cutting them as you did so. You ignored the burning in your palms and took the doll out of its case.
You held the doll’s hair over the lighter, which Dean was having trouble lighting. “Come on, come on!” he said. Thankfully, the lighter caught the hairs of the doll and sent it up in flames. You dropped it on the floor between you and Dean and watched the rest of the doll burn.
Dean pulled out his phone moments later to call his brother. “Sam, you good?” He breathed a sigh of relief and hung up the phone.
You looked down at your bloodied hands. Dean followed your gaze. “(Y/N), you maniac, what were you doin’ pawin' at that glass with your bare hands, huh?”
“It seemed like a good idea in the moment,” you mumbled.
“Let’s get you cleaned up, huh?” He guided you back to the car. He held your wrists and sat you down in the front seat of his car. He went to his trunk and returned a few moments later. He sat next to you and gingerly began wiping down your hands. You hissed and grabbed his hand at the pain. He looked back up to you and paused momentarily.
“Sorry,” you said.
“All good,” he responded and went back to work. He gently cleaned your wounds with an alcohol-soaked rag and began to wrap up your left hand. You watched as he worked, heart swelling at the kind gesture.
“Thank you,” you said.
“You’d do the same for me,” he muttered.
“I would,” you affirmed, smiling.
He picked a piece of glass out of your right hand. You hissed again.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” he said. “This one’s probably gonna need stitches.” He handed you his flask. “Drink this.”
You did as told and took a sip, swallowing sharply as you felt the first prick of the needle in your palm. “I’m not trying to be a little bitch. I’m really not when it comes to pain,” you said. “I can finish stitchin’ me up on my own if you wanna get back to Sam—”
“No. Let me,” he responded authoritatively. He looked up through his eyelashes at you before returning his attention to your fingers. He ran his along yours and gingerly cleaned the cuts, giving special attention to the deeper ones before bandaging the exterior of your hands. You flexed them painfully.
“Thank you. Seriously,” you said softly.
“Any time,” he responded.
***
“This was archived in the county records. The Merchant's adopted daughter, Melanie. Know why she was up for adoption? 'Cause her real family was murdered in their beds," Dean explained to you. “Who'd suspect her? Sweet little girl. So then she kills Isaiah and his family. The old man takes the blame. His spirit's been trying to warn people ever since.”
“Huh,” you said. “Psycho bitch.”
He scoffed. “You know you’re talking about a kid, right?”
“Yeah. Psycho bitch all the same.”
You and Dean were waiting outside of the auction house for Sam to finish talking to Sarah. You and he leaned against the car, watching Sarah and Sam talking at the door. Sam turned away from her before turning back moments later. He grabbed Sarah’s waist and pulled him to her, kissing her deeply.
“That's my boy,” Dean smiled.
“Alright, perv,” you remarked. You shoved him down into the car.
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the thing is i do think dean does misogynistic things i just think counting bitches isnt the way to accomplish analyzing his misogyny. like demon dean did a Bunch of misogyny and this is depicted as unusual for dean because it's primarily when he's a demon, and im not talking about using bitch hes fully calling a woman a slut and treating her like garbage. but the thing is i would actually like to hear similar instances of that coming from non-demon dean's mouth (and im sure they exist, 10x22 and 10x23 don't count to me because he was very obviously deep under the thrall of the mark of cain), but everyone is so focused on counting the number of "bad words" while not approaching any other character that way.
like sam viewing any character that sleeps with dean as a sloppy messy person is legitimately an instance of misogyny to me, even when he calls ruby a bitch im not taking it that seriously bc every character calls other characters the word "bitch" and personally that word doesn't bother me that much (maybe that means i've failed as a woman idk).
but i really struggle thinking of instances where dean is misogynistic to a woman like that, while in his right mind.
unrelated: this is why sam doesn't like castiel, bc he views him as sloppy and messy for wanting to fuck dean.
"does this mean he's being misogynistic to castiel" yes because that's funny to say.
lmaooo misogynistic to castiel CANCEL HIM!!!
This post may be of interest.
As for season 10 demon Dean/MoC Dean, it's actually really interesting when you look at everything holistically, because it isn't as simple as saying MoC/Demon Dean says/does some misogynistic things. He does do that undoubtably. Yet he's also very specifically angry at and violent toward men who mistreat women.
When Demon Dean sees a man (perhaps an ex boyfriend) mistreating Ann Marie (and we get the vibe that this man is stalking her) Demon Dean beats the fuck out of him. When Crowley asks Demon Dean to handle a contract for him, Demon Dean immediately clocks that the client (Lester) who wants his wife murdered cheated on his wife first and now wants her dead for cheating back. Demon Dean climbs into Lester's car and points this out to him. When Lester says "It's different when guys do it", Demon Dean rolls his eyes, scoffs, and then punches Lester in the face so hard it knocks out his tooth, then he murders him, breaking the contract he was supposed to fulfill. When a group of men try to traffic Claire, MoC Dean ends up blacking out and slaughtering all of them. When MoC Dean realizes in "Girls, Girls, Girls" that he's on a date with prostitute who wants payment for sex, though we know Dean isn't necessarily against sex work in general, he instantly clocks that Shaylene is not happy with the situation she's in, and his gentle tone when he says she doesn't look like she actually loves her job leads her to open up to him about being forced into sex work by demons. When MoC Dean finds a man who hurt Claire in 10.20, who then proceeds to call her a bitch in defense of his actions, MoC Dean slams his head into a table for insulting her. While MoC Dean's handling of the case of the dead girl 10.22 is clearly delivered through a misogynistic lens, just by looking at a photo, he clocks her father as having abused her and ends up blaming him for what happened to his daughter (and I'll come back to this in a moment).
So we have demon dean telling the woman he's sleeping with that he sleeps with every skank in every small town dive he passes through (which btw—is not even remotely true of regular Dean), and Demon Dean getting grabby with a stripper, and MoC Dean in 10.23 at first victim blaming a murder victim because of the clothes she was wearing, but then we also have... all of the rest of this. And if we look at all of it together, there's much deeper and more interesting questions here than "Is Demon Dean/MoC Dean a misogynist or not and what does that say about regular Dean if anything".
I think we're actually getting insights into 1) Amara's rage at Chuck working through Dean's hands, causing him to react violently to men who imprison/cage the women in their lives physically or psychologically. 2) Amara's rage exacerbating Dean's feeling about his own history with sexual abuse and his problems with John. In 10.09, the same episode where Dean kills the traffickers who targeted Claire, he tells Cas a story (at Sam's behest) about a time he was drugged in a club by adults as a teenager. He snuck out looking for a good time, and he probably figured sex wasn't off the table when a group of women invited him to join their table, and he joined them enthusiastically. He was not cognizant of the fact that a group of adults showing interest in someone who was "way underage" was a blinking neon sign screaming "run". He was plied with alcohol and drugged, and it's made pretty transparent that he would have been raped (and maybe killed or trafficked too) if John had not followed him. Cas concludes that John "saved" Dean, and Dean agrees with that framing at the time, and admonishes his younger self for yelling at his father for "embarrassing" him when he put himself in a foolish situation. In 10.23, MoC Dean encounters the case of a girl who snuck out to meet someone for sex and was kidnapped by a monster. When he first sees her corpse, he says she shouldn't have worn the outfit she had on (and we already know this is completely ooc for regular Dean). But as MoC Dean learns more about the case and when he meets her father, his view of the situation shifts. I created a gifset comparing this scene with the one from 10.09 because I think there's a really interesting connection here. The girl's father suggests that his daughter going out looking for sex would make her a slut. MoC Dean responds, "I'll admit that thought crossed my mind. Then I came here, and I smelled the deceit and the beatings and the shame that pervade this home. And you know what? I don't blame Rose anymore. No wonder she put on that skank outfit and went out there looking for validation, right into the arms of the monster that killed her." His word choices are colorful and carry negative connotations, but he's actually defending her decisions, and at the same time, I think he's reflecting on his own decision as a kid to go out in search of validation to a club where he was nearly raped. It isn't her fault and it wasn't his fault. Their fathers mistreated them and blamed them and failed them, and they went out looking for someone—anyone—to show them care they were starved for.
In the same way, when Demon Dean has this exchange with Ann Marie in 10.01:
ANNEMARIE: I wait tables at a roadhouse. I meet the bad guys. I meet the good guys. And maybe for a second there, I thought you were a good guy playing bad. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Maybe you're just -- DEAN: The kind of guy who sleeps with every skank in every small-town dive that he passes through? Well, you really do know how to read people, 'cause that sure as hell sounds like me.
His language doesn't just suggest she's a skank—it suggests he's a skank. He engages in casual hook ups, and therefore he is a bad person, and she shouldn't look for any sort of redeemable qualities in him. These things obviously aren't true—neither Dean nor Anne Marie are "sullied" by their sexual histories, and their interest in casual sex doesn't make them bad people, but that's one of the narratives of the world Demon Dean accepts at the beginning of the season. By the end of the season, MoC Dean rejects this narrative about him and people like him. The desire for connection through sex doesn't make someone bad or deserving of harm.
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Eternity, Growing Up, and Why Buffy Keeps Dating Vampires
Vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, on a most basic level, represent stagnation, a desire to stay young forever, the refusal to grow up. The show emphasizes this several times: in the show's very first episode, Buffy recognizes a vampire by his outdated outfit, and in 2.07 "Lie to Me," Ford claims that becoming a vampire will allow him to "die young and stay pretty," the dream of "every American teen." Buffy's role as the titular vampire slayer can thus be read as a metaphor for her choosing to grow up and become an adult in the face of temptations to do otherwise. So what does it mean, then, that Buffy's two most narratively significant love interests are vampires -- that she repeatedly, across seven seasons, courts eternal immaturity? I would argue that Buffy's relationships with Angel and Spike represent her inner struggle to accept the reality of growing up and getting older.
Buffy and Angel's relationship is marked by repeated references to the concept of "forever" or an eternal relationship: "When I look into the future, all I see is you" (2.12 "Bad Eggs"); "Love is forever" (2.19 "I Only Have Eyes For You"); "Forever. That's the whole point" (3.01 "Anne"); "You still my girl?" / "Always" (3.17 "Enemies"); Buffy's "Buffy & Angel 4ever!" doodle on her notebook (3.20 "The Prom"); "How's forever? Does forever work for you?" (5.17 "Forever"). At first glance, this may appear to be a romantic cliche, but taken in context of what vampires represent, the motif takes on new meaning. To be eternal is to be like a vampire -- to stagnate, to never change or grow or mature. Indeed, Angel's final line on the entire show, in his and Buffy's last scene together, is, "I ain't getting any older" (7.22 "Chosen"). In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, immortality is synonymous with immaturity. To want a "forever" relationship, then, is to want to never grow up.
(This idea is revisited in the Angel episode 2.13 "Happy Anniversary," a disturbing tale about a man who responds to his impending breakup with his girlfriend Denise by attempting to freeze them both in time mid-coitus forever. Lorne's response -- "I can hold a note forever. But eventually that's just noise. It's the change we're listening for. The note coming after, and the one after that. That's what makes it music." -- is a perfect summation of the Buffyverse's stance on the concept of eternity. To last "forever" is not romantic or beautiful; it is simply to be in stasis.)
Buffy and Angel's relationship is also frequently associated with death, and Buffy's death in particular: "When you kiss me, I wanna die" (2.05 "Reptile Boy"); kissing against a gravestone reading "In Loving Memory" ("Bad Eggs"); Angel's dream of Buffy bursting into flames in the sunlight like a vampire after marrying him ("The Prom"). The implication is that, if Buffy stays in the relationship, it will metaphorically kill her, cut off her future, freeze her in this moment of teenage love until the end of time, like the first episode's vampire whose fashion sense was stuck in the past or, indeed, like the fate that almost befell poor Denise. To borrow a metaphor from Revolutionary Girl Utena (another show very concerned with the dichotomy of eternity vs. growing up), Angel and Buffy's relationship is their coffin. They can choose to stay trapped in it forever, to never grow or change, and thus to metaphorically die; or they can choose to leave, to grow and change and mature, to gain "the power to imagine the future" (Ikuhara Kunihiko, Utena DVD commentary), where before they could only imagine each other.
It's no coincidence that the second season's finale, an episode all about "becoming," about growing up and maturing, is when Buffy finally finds the strength to kill Angel in order to save the world. In doing so, she rejects her desire to stay young forever, trapped in her coffin with Angel for all of eternity, and chooses to continue to grow up instead. But, of course, growing up is never quite so simple; Angel comes back, and Buffy falls back into her relationship with him, falls back into her desire to pretend the events of the second season never happened and she is still the same young girl who never lost her "innocence" at his hands. Even when we consciously choose to grow up, it is all too easy to seek comfort in the idea that maybe, if we try hard enough, we won't have to. In the end, it is Angel who recognizes the harm their relationship is doing to Buffy, and he departs, taking Buffy's childhood with him. Her youth leaves her, as it leaves us all, whether she wants it to or not.
But Angel is not the last vampire she has a relationship with. In the show's sixth season, Buffy emerges from her literal coffin only to climb right back into a metaphorical one. In the time since she said goodbye to Angel, Buffy has attended college, had to drop out of college, had another romantic relationship fail, lost her mother, essentially become a parent to her newly-acquired sister, died through suicidal self-sacrifice, and been resurrected only to find that she is still just as depressed as she was before dying and is now swamped with bills she cannot pay. Her problems are firmly in the realm of adulthood, and at many points throughout the first half of the season, she longs for the grave she left instead of the life she has: "I was happy. [...] I think I was in heaven. [...] This is hell" (6.03 "After Life"); "There was no pain / no fear, no doubt / 'til they pulled me out / of heaven" (6.07 "Once More, with Feeling").
It is at this point that she begins a sexual relationship with Spike, her second dalliance with eternal immaturity. Buffy and Spike's relationship is also marked by references to death, with an emphasis this time on graves: Spike notices and verbalizes the shared experience they have of clawing their way out of their graves ("After Life"); Spike and Buffy fall into a grave together during Spike's song, during which he beseeches her to "let [him] rest in peace" ("Once More, with Feeling"); several of their sexual encounters literally occur inside the crypt Spike lives in; this crypt is brought into focus especially in 6.13 "Dead Things," in which Buffy and Spike place their hands on either side of its door, separated by her status as living and his as dead. Buffy additionally uses Spike as a proxy to call herself "dead inside" ("Dead Things"). Buffy may have literally risen from the dead, but in a metaphorical sense, she is still trapped in her coffin, unwilling to leave it.
There are, of course, multiple layers to the grave and coffin motif in Buffy the Vampire Slayer's sixth season. But I would argue that one such layer is that it serves as an extension of the death metaphor from Buffy and Angel's relationship, in which death signified Buffy never growing up. In this reading, Buffy's longing for the "heaven" granted to her by the grave is really a longing for the innocence of youth, now lost to her as she must continue to grow up. In Buffy's confession to Spike in "After Life" about where she was in death, she makes particular note of how "time didn't mean anything" in the place she labels "heaven," whereas in the real world, it's hellish "just getting through the next moment, and the one after that." Unlike Lorne, who saw beauty in the progression of time, Buffy sees only suffering, and longs for a time in her life when time itself seemed not to march forward at all.
It is no wonder, then, that she seeks comfort in someone who is frozen in time, who can never grow up. If Buffy's relationship with Angel represented her childhood desire to stay young forever and never face the hardships of adulthood, her relationship with Spike represents her adulthood desire to return to that period of youth and never leave it, to curl up in her coffin and close the lid. But unlike Buffy and Angel's relationship, which is littered with references to eternity, Buffy repeatedly insists on the temporary nature of her dalliance with Spike: "What we did is done. But I will never kiss you, Spike. Never touch you, ever, ever again" (6.08 "Tabula Rasa"); "Not gonna happen. Last night was the end of this freak show" (6.10 "Wrecked"). Buffy is furious with Spike for his hold over her and hates herself for wanting him, but returns to him again and again. She believes she shouldn't want to return to her unattainable youth, she knows she should accept her adult life and face its difficulties head-on, yet when confronted with its difficulties, she repeatedly goes to Spike to escape them, as in 6.11 "Gone," 6.12 "Doublemeat Palace," and 6.15 "As You Were."
If Angel represents Buffy's youth and Spike her nostalgia for that youth, then of course it follows that Angel must leave Buffy, but Buffy must leave Spike. Nostalgia, unlike youth, does not depart from us so easily. But she does leave him, and in the sixth season's finale, she finally crawls out of the grave she's been trapped in, represented by her leading her sister out of a literal grave and smiling at the world before her. As Buffy tells Dawn: "Things have really sucked lately, but it's all gonna change. And I wanna be there when it does. [...] And I want to see you grow up" (6.22 "Grave"). Change, the inevitable forward march of time, the reality of growing up -- these things no longer strike Buffy as hellish, but rather beautiful. She is an adult, and she is living in this ever-changing world, and she embraces that reality fully, leaving the coffin of youth behind for good.
What to make, then, of Buffy's relationship with Spike in the show's seventh season? I would argue that her evolving feelings towards Spike in the final season represent her reconciling with and forgiving her past self, the Buffy that didn't want to grow up, before finally letting that part of her go. She comes to recognize that Spike, like her past self, was capable of change, eternally immature though he may seem. She forgives herself for wanting him. When he offers to leave, she tells him she is "not ready for [him] to not be here" (7.14 "First Date"). She has already chosen to embrace and accept her adulthood, and she no longer resents her desire to return to childhood, but she still needs her inner eternal child with her.
It is in the very last episode of the series that she lets go, demonstrating her full-hearted and joyful acceptance of ephemerality in the process. Buffy has not told a romantic partner she loves them since Angel, although she told Angel she loved Riley in Angel 1.19 "Sanctuary," and from episodes like 4.03 "The Harsh Light of Day," it is clear how much the unexpected transience of her supposed-to-be-forever relationship with Angel has haunted her. But in 7.22 "Chosen," Buffy tells Spike she loves him in a moment when she knows for sure that his death is imminent and that their joint existence together is temporary. She no longer fears a love that is not eternal. Through Spike, she expresses her love for her past self and for the part of her that never quite grew up, and then she lets that part die with him, and with Sunnydale itself, the place where she spent her adolescence, another representation of the grave that was her dream of forever childhood. Despite this destruction and loss, Buffy only smiles in its face, and it is this smile we leave her on. She has grown up, she has forgiven herself for not wanting to grow up, she has let go of the last remnants of the childhood she once hoped would be eternal, and she has come to not only accept the ephemeral, ever-changing nature of life, but to meet it with love and joy. "The power to imagine the future" is hers to wield. And her smile tells us that she is finally ready to wield it.
#so anyway if you like btvs you should watch utena. is my point.#buffy the vampire slayer#btvs meta#buffy summers#btvs#it's what you do afterwards that counts#i'm gonna be a fireman when the floods roll back#it's gonna hurt a lot#her great catastrophe his great revelation
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Disney TVA Universe Timeline (Forever and Always)
⚠ Contains spoilers from: Gravity Falls, Amphibia, and The Owl House.
Summer 2012: Gravity Falls events take place. A division of the FBI is sent to investigate the location, but they come back with apparent amnesia. Bill Cipher is defeated
2016: In Amphibia, a frog finds 3 strange numbered diaries with golden marks shaped like 6-finger hands on their front covers near Wartwood, storing them in the local library.
2017: Dipper and Mabel Pines finish school.
2018: Dipper and Mabel start attending college. Dipper pursues a career in journalism. Mabel pursues a career related to tourism and business management.
May/June, 2019: Anne steals the Calamity Box during her 13th birthday. Anne, Sasha and Marcy are teleported to Amphibia.
October/November, 2019: Anne returns to Earth with the Plantars, escaping King Andrias.
January, 2020: Anne and the Plantars return to Amphibia and join Sasha and Grime in the Wartwood Resistance. They plan how to defeat Andrias and rescue Marcy.
April/May, 2020: Frog-Vasion to Earth begins in Los Angeles. The Core is defeated. Anne, Marcy, and Sasha leave Amphibia and return to Earth. The Calamity Stones are destroyed.
June, 2020: Amphibian technology remains are taken to Area 51 in order to be studied.
Summer 2020: Marcy Wu moves to Massachusetts.
2021: Due to his actions during Frog-vasion, as well as his actions in covering an event of such magnitude months after, Mr. X is promoted to Special Agents in Charge (SAC) within the FBI, taking command of the Unidentified Supernatural Affairs Division (USAD).
Summer 2022: Luz Noceda gets trapped in the Boiling Isles.
September, 2022: Luz and the Hexsquad try to stop Belos and the Day of Unity, but they are forced to escape back to Earth by the Collector.
November, 2022: Dipper and Mabel graduate from their respective careers. Mabel returns to Gravity Falls, Dipper moves to San Francisco. March, 2023: DARPA develops the first successful hybrid technology prototype derived from Amphibian technology.
Summer 2023: Mr. X and the FBI initiate an undercover investigation related to an unidentified wildlife virus in Gravesfield, Connecticut.
October 31st, 2023: Luz, Camila, and the Hexsquad return to the Boiling Isles Belos is defeated, and the Collector becomes an ally.
2024: Project "Amber Genesis" becomes operational.
January, 2025: The US government stablishes "Protocol Black Moonlight."
February 2025: The FBI is rebranded as the "Federal Bureau of Intervention" by the US goverment. Shock Force 51, or the "Shock Division Against Unidentified Treaths" is created.
2026: Luz starts a new life in the Boiling Isles.
May/June, 2029: Anne Boonchuy celebrates her 23rd birthday. An unauthorised failed portal attempt to Amphibia is carried by Dr. Terri and Mr. X.
May/June, 2030: "Operation Calypso" takes place in the Bermuda Triangle after a series of strange quakes. The Scatter is awakened. Mr. X and his division are considered KIA. Protocol Black Moonlight is activated. Anne Boonchuy Celebrates her 24th birthday.
Well everyone, here's a brief timeline of everything related to the crossover universe, all carefully pieced together! 🕰️✨
Took me a sweet time to put everything in order and make it feel connected, as well as to figure out when did some things happened, given how shows like The Owl House in particular don't count with canon dates, only a few clues to figure out when did some stuff took place.
I also used the so-called "Recovered Files" videos I made as a way to to promote the fanfic, which back when I was just starting helped me organize everything and tie it all together now 😊
This timeline was inspired by requests from readers who wanted a clearer picture of when the events of the fanfic take place, so I hope it helps you navigate the story’s timeline and enhances your reading experience! Let me know what you think! o(* ̄︶ ̄*)o💬💜
#f&aproject#gravity falls#amphibia#the owl house#toh#fanfic#gravity falls spoilers#the owl house spoilers#amphibia spoilers#fanfiction#ao3 fanfic#ao3 link#ao3fic#ao3#archive of our own#crossover#crossover fandom#fandom fusion#the owl house fandom#toh fandom#gravity falls fandom#amphibia fandom#crossover fanfiction#amphibia fanfiction#gravity falls fanfiction#fanfics#fanfic writing#ao3 writer#gravity falls timeskip#amphibia timeskip
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From The Library of Anne Rice (Part 1)
A list of books owned by Anne Rice including annotation information taken from auction listings at Bonham's, October 2024. Will continue in Part 2.
Frazer, James G. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (abridged edition).New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1963. She writes on the flyleaf in June of 2012: "When I bought this book I don't know. I know I read it or a copy of it in the 1980s when writing The Vampire Lestat. It is essential to me." On the jacket spine she has added "Sacred!"
Frazer, James G. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. 1981. Marked on the cover, "Gift to Stan from Anne 1985 / Save Always, AR," and internally reads in Stan's handwriting: "A gift to me from Anne because I've never read it."
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Tales of Mystery & the Macabre. Wordsworth edition, 2007. bears Rice's ownership signature to title page ("Anne Rice / May 29, 2012 / The Desert") and is tabbed and annotated throughout.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. North and South. Penguin Books, 2000. bears her ownership signature on the title page.
Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls. New York: Charles Scribner's Son, 1940. Original beige cloth stamped cover and spine, in facsimile dust jacket. First edition with the Scribner's "A" on the copyright page. With Post-it note to front pastedown indicating that the book was a gift "From Becket and Christina / Christmas / 2012."
King, B. B. & David Ritz. Blues All Around Me: The Autobiography of B.B. King. New York: Avon Books, 1996. First edition, inscribed to "To Anne / All the best to you / B.B. King / 10-18-96."
Montgomery, L.M. Anne of Green Gables. Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books, 1976. Anne Rice ownership signature dated February 7, 2015, Palm Desert. Annotated on front pastedown; "It's immediately a pleasure, and making me want to write."
Montgomery, L.M. Emily's Quest. Oxford City Press, 2009. Anne Rice ownership signature dated February 21, 2015; annotated and tabbed.
Montgomery, L.M. Emily Climbs. Sourcebooks, 2014. Anne Rice ownership signature dated February 12, 2015.
Montgomery, L.M. Emily of New Moon. Ameron House, c.2015. Anne Rice ownership signature dated February 6, 2015, inscribed: "Reading the paperback and loving it so much I had to have a hardcover."
Montgomery, L.M. The Blue Castle. Sourcebooks, 2011. Anne Rice ownership signature dated May 12, 2015 to title page.
Puzo, Mario. The Godfather. New York: Putnam, 1969. Book club edition. On May 26 and 27, 2013, she writes, "Badly need this, Studying in detail" and on page 74 she writes, "Note how easily it flows." She has great praise for the nimbleness of the novel's p.o.v. and is often asking herself "how can I learn from this?" On p 225 she writes, "This is a most impressive piece of work and is masterly. Again I marvel at vocabulary, tone, and placement—organization of the book. I fight OCD as I write, I've come to see that, and this helps me to see what this novel accomplishes. Presenting the Don as a 'great' man, a 'genius,' without apology is a conscious approach that is so powerful."
Puzo, Mario. The Godfather. Another copy, later edition, lacking jacket. With Anne Rice's ownership signature.
Puzo, Mario. The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions. London; William Heinneman, 1972.
Puzo, Mario. The Fortunate Pilgrim. New York: Random House, 1997. Anne Rice ownership signature.
Wallace, Lew. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1908. Anne Rice re-read this copy of Ben-Hur in 2006, a used copy she picked up somewhere, leaving detailed marginalia throughout and summing up her thoughts on the first flyleaf: "12-12-06: This is an amazing achievement: a Judeo-Christian novel. Jewish history and honor are here! And a woman tells this history to her son! How did we get away from this to The Robe ... 12-15-06: I've spent over two days reading & studying this wonderful book. It does seem unique—and it covers an amazing amt of material including a physical description of Our Lord, the crucifixion, etc. It is not anti-semitic. It presents Jews as exotic, 'oriental.' It has a primitive quality ... why is the prose so difficult? so 'dated'? Compare to Dickens." Rice's notes in the margin often compare the novel to (presumably the 1959 version of) the film, finding the novel superior in every way, and commenting more than once on its structural similarities to Dickens: "the whole spectacle and the co-incidence" (p 166).
Cleland, John. 1709-1789. Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. New York: Penguin Books, 1985. Annotated and with ownership signature to the title page: "Anne Rice / January 2014 / Palm Desert." Rice underscores Cleland's descriptions of bodies and physical acts, and in particular, wonders about the novel's p.o.v.: on p 108 she writes in the margin, "Is this a man's view? A gay man? An author who is male and female?"
Clinton, Bill. Born 1946. My Life. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2004. Jacket spine with label "From the library of Anne Rice" laid down to tail. First edition, inscribed on the title page, "To Anne—After doing this book, I admire you even more—Bill Clinton." with: a note on the Office of William J. Clinton letterhead: "2/17 —Huma—For author ANNE RICE.—Thanks, Sally." When Clinton published his memoir in 2024, Rice was one of the VIPs to receive a presentation copy, in which he expresses his admiration for her work after having written a book of his own.
Bellman, Henry. 1882-1945. Kings Row. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943. Annotated and with ownership signature to front free endpaper: "Anne Rice / June 27, 2013 / Palm Desert." Rice has carefully read and annotated this copy, complementing the writing (particularly when Bellamann writes about Father Donovan) and adds a long note on the rear pastedown: "Pages & pages of this book are about the mind—about how the mind learns, expands, grows, experiences." Sometimes her comments are in conversation with the text, as when, on p 153, she underlines the town of Auvergne and writes "Auvergne, what a coincidence! As I plan a trip there and write about Lestat!"
Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. New York: Penguin Classics, 2014. With ownership signature of Anne Rice dated June 11, 2018, tabbed and annotated throughout. On the preliminary leaf of Copperfield, Rice writes, "Again with my beloved David, and my beloved Dickens. I have just read Claire Tomalink 'The Invisible Woman' and her later bio of Dickens. I'm writing my new novel in my head."
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008. Signed and dated June 15, 2018, tabbed and annotated throughout.
Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnen. South Moon Under. New York, London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933 (undated later facsimile edition).
Mitchell, Margaret, Gone With the Wind. New York: [Simon and Schuster], 2011. Rice reread this copy in March of 2015, tabbing dozens of pages and commenting in the margins.
Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2007. The first date on this copy of War and Peace is June 30, 2010, and Rice writes: "The Desert / Being reborn in Tolstoy, studying at his feet—Searching for the Christ who is bigger than religion." In a different ink, Rice adds at the top of the same page, "Revisiting 7-16-17—Having seen much of the new BBC series with Lily James as Natasha." Rice has tabbed the pages throughout this volume and made extensive notes on character development and theme. On the rear flyleaf, she adds, "'Life is everything...' p 10064— use for L" as well as "The guiltlessness of suffering (do we make ourselves suffer to be guiltless)?"
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karinina. Translated by Rosamund Bartlett. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Signed and annotated February 19, 2015. Heavily tabbed, especially in the center part of the novel, and noted on the front flyleaf: "Reading chunks of the story of Levin & Kitty / So beautiful and smooth—"
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presents THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY
based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … December 31
HAPPY HOGMANAY! What's is Hogmanay you say? Why the roots of Hogmanay reach back to the celebration of the winter solstice among the Norse, as well as incorporating customs from the Gaelic New Year's celebration of Samhain.
In Europe, winter solstice evolved into the ancient celebration of Saturnalia, a great Roman winter festival, where people celebrated completely free of restraint and inhibition. The Vikings celebrated Yule, which later contributed to the Twelve Days of Christmas, or the "Daft Days" (really) as they were sometimes called in Scotland. The winter festival went underground with the Protestant Reformation and ensuing years, but re-emerged near the end of the 17th century. A very Scottish thing Hogmanay. Wear a kilt to this evening's festivities to set the mood right!
192 – The Roman emperor Commodus died on this date (b.161). It's New Year's Eve and, after a long year's journey, we are finally at the end of this year. To be on the safe side, why not stay home and watch old reruns of Guy Lombardo and spend a quiet evening in memory of the emperor Commodus, who called his exceptionally well-endowed cup-bearer "my donkey," and was strangled by an over- enthusiastic wrestler named Narcissus on this day.
In 2000's neo-blood and sandals epic Gladiator, Commodus was portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix in an Academy-Award-nominated performance. The historical character of Commodus is fictionalized in the movie as a deranged megalomaniac who murders Marcus Aurelius to usurp the throne. There is no historical evidence suggesting Marcus Aurelius was murdered, much less by his own son. However the movie removes some of the most bizarre eccentricities of Commodus. The film's protagonist, Maximus Decimus Meridius (played by Russell Crowe) is loosely inspired by Narcissus, and was named so in a previous draft of the screenplay, but as in The Fall of the Roman Empire Commodus is killed in hand-to-hand combat. Commodus's death marked the end of the Nervan-Antonian and of the Pax Romana.
Dressing Tony Curtis for "Some Like It Hot"
1897 – Orry-Kelly was the professional name of Orry George Kelly (d.1964), a prolific Hollywood costume designer.
He was born in Kiama, New South Wales, Australia, and was known as Jack Kelly. His father William Kelly, was born on the Isle of Man and was a gentleman tailor in Kiama. Orry was a name of an ancient King of Man. Jack Kelly studied art in Sydney, and worked as a tailor's apprentice and window dresser.
He journeyed to New York to pursue an acting career. He shared an apartment there with Charlie Spangles and Cary Grant. Director Gillian Armstrong writes of this time:
''The big secret is that when Orry first got to New York and was trying to get his start, painting murals on walls and selling hand-painted ties, he ended up rooming with a young British actor called Archie Leach. They definitely became lovers and were living together for about five years.''
The job painting murals in a nightclub led to his employment by Fox East Coast studios illustrating titles. He designed costumes and sets for Broadway's Shubert Revues and George White's Scandals. His lover, Archie Leach, went on to become Cary Grant.
Orry-Kelly went to Hollywood in 1932, working for all the major studios (Warner Brothers, Universal, RKO, 20th Century Fox, and MGM), and designed for all the great actresses of the day, including Bette Davis, Kay Francis, Olivia de Havilland, Katharine Hepburn, Dolores del Río, Ava Gardner, Ann Sheridan, Barbara Stanwyck, and Merle Oberon.
He worked on many films now deemed classics, including 42nd Street, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Arsenic and Old Lace, Harvey, Oklahoma!, Auntie Mame, and Some Like It Hot.He won three Academy Awards for Best Costume Design (for An American in Paris, Cole Porter's Les Girls, and Some Like It Hot) and was nominated for a fourth (for Gypsy). A longtime alcoholic, he died of liver cancer in Hollywood. His pallbearers included Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, Billy Wilder and George Cukor and his eulogy was read by Jack Warner. His Academy Awards went to Jack Warner's wife, Ann.
1948 – Joe Dallesandro, is an American actor and Warhol superstar. Although he never became a mainstream film star, Dallesandro is generally considered to be the most famous male sex symbol of American underground films of the 20th century, as well as a sex symbol of gay subculture
Born into a dysfunctional family, Joe was placed in foster homes. Dallesandro began acting out and became aggressive. He repeatedly ran away from his foster home until his father finally relented and allowed him to live with him. At the age of 14, Dallesandro and his brother moved to Queens to live with their paternal grandparents and their father.
At 15, he was expelled from school for punching the principal, who had insulted his father. After his expulsion, Dallesandro began hanging out with gangs and started stealing cars. In once such instance, Dallesandro panicked and smashed the stolen car he was driving through the gate of the Holland Tunnel. He was stopped by a police roadblock and shot once in the leg by police who mistakenly thought he was armed. Dallesandro managed to escape being caught by police, but was later arrested when his father took him to the hospital for his gunshot wound. He was sentenced to Camp Cass Rehabilitation Center for Boys in the Catskills in 1964
The following year, Dallesandro ran away from Camp Cass. He supported himself by prostitution and later nude modeling, appearing most notably in short films and magazine photos for Bob Mizer's Athletic Model Guild.
Dallesandro met Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey in 1967 while they were shooting Four Stars, and they cast him in the film on the spot. Warhol would later comment "In my movies, everyone's in love with Joe Dallesandro."
Dallesandro played a hustler in his third Warhol film, Flesh (1968), where he had several nude scenes. Flesh became a crossover hit with mainstream audiences, and Dallesandro became the most popular of the Warhol stars. New York Times film critic Vincent Canby wrote of him: "His physique is so magnificently shaped that men as well as women become disconnected at the sight of him."
A Warhol photograph of the crotch bulge of Dallesandro's tight blue jeans graces the famous cover of the Rolling Stones album Sticky Fingers. Dallesandro explained to biographer Michael Ferguson, "It was just out of a collection of junk photos that Andy pulled from. He didn't pull it out for the design or anything, it was just the first one he got that he felt was the right shape to fit what he wanted to use for the fly."
As Dallesandro's underground fame began to cross over into the popular culture, he graced the cover of Rolling Stone in April 1971. He was also photographed by some of the top celebrity photographers of the time.
He continued to star in films made mainly in France and Italy for the rest of the decade, returning to America in the 1980s. He made several mainstream films during the 1980s and 1990s. One of his first notable roles was that of 1920s gangster Lucky Luciano in Francis Coppola's The Cotton Club. He also had roles in Critical Condition (1987), Sunset (1988) , Guncrazy (1992), Cry-Baby (1990), and The Limey.
In addition to films, Dallesandro has also worked in television. In 1986, he co-starred in the ABC drama series Fortune Dane. The series lasted only five episodes. Dallesandro has also made guest appearances on Wiseguy, Miami Vice, and Matlock.
In 2009, Dallesandro wrote and produced the documentary film Little Joe. The film chronicles Dallesandro's life and career.
Dallesandro, who identifies himself as bisexual, has been married three times and has two children. He is semi-retired from acting, and currently manages an apartment building in Los Angeles.
1948 – The American singer Donna Summer, was born on this date (d.2012). She was an American singer, songwriter and artist, best known for a string of disco hits in the late 1970s that earned her the title "Queen Of Disco" and as one of the few disco-based artists to have longevity on the charts through the late 1980s and beyond.
The question with Donna Summer is, "is she or isn't she?" Homophobic that is!
In the mid 1980s, rumors began circulating that Summer had allegedly made anti-gay comments regarding the AIDS epidemic as being a punishment from God for homosexuality. The fallout from the alleged quote had a significantly negative impact on Summer's career, which saw thousands of her records being returned to her record company by angered fans. However, Summer denied making any such remarks and many years later she filed a lawsuit against New York magazine when it reprinted the rumors as fact, just as Summer was about to release her latest album Mistaken Identity in 1991. According to an A&E Biography program in which Summer participated in 1995, the lawsuit was settled out of court with neither side discussing details of the settlement.
D.L. Groover of Houston's OutSmart magazine wrote that after a 1983 concert in Atlantic City, Summer was talking to the fans, as she liked to do at this first- comeback point in her career. A man with AIDS asked her to pray for him, because he knew of her born-again Christian beliefs, and she said she would be delighted. Someone else piped up that she was being hypocritical. At that point, all accounts get fuzzy and overblown, but every witness says that the heated situation deteriorated, with many outraged patrons shouting as they left the auditorium. In more than one account, Summer said that AIDS appeared in the gay community because of its reckless lifestyle... but did not say that AIDS was God's punishment. She and the gay fan prayed together, she asked him to turn his life to Christ, and she embraced him - a courageous act at a time when most people would have run screaming from the room to get away from someone with the deadly disease.
For her part Summer told The Advocate in 1989 that "A couple of the people I write with are gay, and they have been ever since I met them. What people want to do with their bodies is their personal preference. I'm not going to stand in judgment about what the Bible says about someone else's life. I've got things in my life I've got to clean up. What's in your life is your business." Make of that what you will.
Rick Sandford as Ben Barker
1950 – Rick Sandford (d.1995) was a documentary research assistant, editor and actor of gay erotic movies and author.
Rick Steven Sandford was born in Denver, Colorado, and grew up in the Lake Tahoe area. His early difficulties learning to read led his parents to enroll him in a private school.
After his graduation in 1969, he first went to Los Angeles on vacation, to see the musical, Hair and the Russian motion picture version of War and Peace, and after 1972, Sandford remained in Los Angeles employed in various positions, from an usher at Grauman's Chinese Theatre to a television show stand-in.
In 1977 he met Josh Becker, American writer and director, of films and television, who would become his long-time friend, according to Becker, Sandford only heterosexual friend.
Initially living in a bungalow behind a house in West Hollywood, Sandford was evicted and with his best friend, Stacey, with whom he had grown up in Reno, he moved into a one-bedroom apartment at 666 N. Van Ness.
Sandford received credit as research assistant on 50 Golden Years of Oscar: the Official History of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and Ronald Haver's David O. Selznick's Hollywood. Sandford served as assistant on the 1990 documentary Hollywood Mavericks.
Sandford appeared on television shows and in motion pictures as an extra and in a few bit parts: in episodes of Police Woman in 1974 and Step by Step in 1991. During the late 1970s and early 1980s he worked as an editor on 3 gay erotic films and appeared as Benjamin Barker or Ben Barker in 13 gay erotic motion pictures including Kip Noll and the Westside Boys, Rear Deliveries, Skin Deep, The Class of '84 Part 2 Jocks, Gold Rush Boys, The Boys of San Francisco, A Night at Halsted's, and Games.In the mid 1980s, Don Bachardy sketched Sandford for his book, Drawing of the Male Nude; both Bachardy and his partner Christopher Isherwood were friends with Sandford. During this time, Sandford introduced Bachardy and Isherwood to Yale-trained actor Peter Evans and his then lover Craig Lucas. Sandford and Lucas had a fling, and Lucas remembered
"He came to New York with a strip show. To [the song] 'Another Hundred People' from 'Company', he arrived onstage with a suitcase, and met invisible New Yorkers, stripping for them, looking for love. Afterward, we had to wait while older men went into his dressing room to make appointments. Or something."
In 1991, his short story Forster & Rosenthal Reevaluated: An Investigative Report was published. In 1994, another of his short stories, Purim was published. Two more of Sandford's short stories were published posthumously, The Gospel Of Bartholemew Legate: Three Fragments and Manifest White. In 2000, his novel, Boys Across the Street was published, also posthumously.
Boys Across the Street is a candidly hilarious look at the gay life of Rick, an exporn star, who lives near a boy's Hasidic school, as he becomes obsessed with building relationships with the boys, leading to a fascination with Hasidism, which reviles his sexual orientation.
Sandford died of AIDS during the evening of September 28, 1995.
1958 – David Pevsner is an American actor, singer, dancer, porn star, and writer. Pevsner appeared in the 1990 revival of Fiddler on the Roof, 1991 revival of Rags, and some other theatrical productions. He also wrote three songs for the 1999 musical Naked Boys Singing!, including "Perky Little Porn Star." He wrote and produced two one-person shows, To Bitter and Back (2003) and Musical Comedy Whore (2013). Pevsner portrayed mostly minor roles in films and television. His major screen roles are Ebenezer Scrooge in Scrooge & Marley, the 2012 film adaptation of A Christmas Carol, and Ross Stein in a 2011 web series Old Dogs & New Tricks. He recorded the 2016 album Most Versatile, whose album cover pays homage to Bruce Springsteen's album Born in the U.S.A.
David Pevsner was raised in Skokie, Illinois. He attended Niles East High School in the same Chicago suburb and participated in its theater program. He graduated from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
He appeared in the 1991 revival of the 1986 musical Rags, set in 1910, portraying the dual roles of Saul and Nathan. He appeared in the 1995 theatrical play Party, portraying the role of Kevin. In the play, Kevin, a college teacher who lives with his partner, hosts a party at his apartment, where the males characters play the naked truth-or-dare game. Pevsner appeared in the two-act gay revue musical When Pigs Fly from 1996 to 1998. Pevsner appeared in F*cking Men, the 2009 explicit play written by Joe DiPietro about the lives of gay urban men, portraying Jack, who commits adultery with another man, while his husband does the same.
Pevsner co-wrote the 1999 musical Naked Boys Singing! with the writing team. He wrote three songs for the musical, including "Perky Little Porn Star" and "The Naked Maid."
Pevsner appeared in films, mostly portraying minor roles in such films as The Fluffer (2001) and Adam & Steve (2006). He also portrayed a major role of Ebenezer Scrooge in Scrooge & Marley, the 2012 film adaptation that tells the gay interpretation of the 19th-century novel A Christmas Carol.
Pevsner also portrayed minor roles in television series, particularly a bartender of a gay bar in an episode of NYPD Blue.
Pevsner recorded the 2016 album Most Versatile, whose title was inspired by his being voted "Most Versatile" in a survey back in high school. The album's working title was Shameless, named after his Tumblr blog and "for [being] something with a little skin." The songs of the album explores "a whirlwind of one man's gay experiences" and feature Jim J. Bullock, Maxwell Caulfield, and some others as guest artists. He wrote the lyrics of all thirteen songs.
In his 60s Pevsner is today earning money doing erotic performances on OnlyFans.
Pevsner is Jewish. He is also openly gay.
1969 – The first performance of The Cockettes took place on New Years Eve 1969, at the Palace Theatre in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood and soon became a "must-see" for San Francisco's hip gay community, combining LSD-influenced dancing, set design, costumes and their own versions of show tunes (or original tunes in the same vein). Initially, shows were performed every six weeks, performing on stage prior to the Saturday midnight "Nocturnal Dream Show" of underground films at the Palace Theatre. Show titles included Gone With the Showboat to Oklahoma, Tinsel Tarts In A Hot Coma, Journey to the Center of Uranus, Smacky & Our Gang, Hollywood Babylon and Pearls Over Shanghai.
Word quickly got out that nothing like these shows had ever been seen before, and within a few months the Cockettes were getting enormous attention from the media. Not only hippie magazines, such as Earth and Rolling Stone, wanted stories on the Cockettes, but also mainstream magazines such as Look, Life and Esquire were anxious to do features as well. The Cockettes were the subject of a documentary called, of course, The Cockettes. If you haven't seen it, do. Torrent users can find it on isoHunt.com
1993 – Transman Brandon Teena is murdered by the same young men who raped him a week earlier after discovering he’d been born female. His story is captured in the film Boys Don’t Cry. The headstone on his grave is inscribed with his birth name and uses female descriptors. Teena’s murder, along with that of Matthew Shepard, led to increased lobbying for hate crime laws in the United States.
2014 – Russian large gay club called Central Station was forced to close after countless attacks of sprays of bullets and being gassed. It later reopened with the use of bulletproof glass.
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New short story: Shades of Silver Lining
A/N: This work is marked as part of a series, BUT you don't have to read anything before this short story. I do cover and explain all essential points from the first part (unrevealed now, requires editing).
Summary: January, sixth year. Amberlyn just wants life to feel normal for once. But at sixteen, wielding Ancient Magic she struggles to control, constantly needing to prove she isn’t a threat to magical society, and navigating her first crush-turned-(secret)relationship, normality is rather challenging to come by.
Ominis is determined to make it through his remaining years at Hogwarts, the only path to freeing himself from the dark shadow of his family’s legacy—a legacy that keeps haunting him and that now threatens those he holds dear.
Meanwhile, the Auror, investigating a case involving that mysterious and extremely dangerous girl, decides that keeping her friend, Sebastian Sallow—who's already missed half a year of school—close at hand might be more useful than anyone expects.
tags: Post Canon, Adventure & Romance, Slow Romance, First Love, Teen Romance, Teen Angst, Eventual Fluff, Protective Ominis Gaunt, Good Friend Sebastian Sallow, Mental Health Issues, traumatized teens, Hogwarts Sixth Year, Room of Requirement, Legends and Myths, Magic theories, First weeks dating, Gaunt Family - Freeform, Unreliable narrator, POV multiple, Sebastian and Anne are not at school, a bit of mystery, a bit of thriller
(teaser) Ch. 0: Déjà vu - or is it? ⬇️
Ch.1 ->
word count: 456
wattpad, ao3
Alyn lost the sensation of magic pushing back, into which she had channelled her few remaining reserves of strength. Caught off guard by the sudden ease, she instinctively stepped forward but couldn't keep her balance and collapsed to her knees. The sand dug unpleasantly under her nails—today, of all days, she was wearing fingerless gloves.
The orb of bright light began to fade, slowly plunging the cave into darkness. Alyn’s eyes stung from the grains of sand stirred up by recent relentless casting. The first thing she noticed was the man, who, just moments ago, had been screaming with all his might. He had collapsed too. Was he... dead?
What had just happened?
She didn’t rush to get up and didn’t want to be the first to approach this man. She could see Sebastian from the corner of her eye as the light dimmed further. He stood frozen a few steps to her right. His left hand was extended towards Alyn as if attempting to protect her from a distance. His wide-open eyes were locked on the man on the ground, lying in a grotesquely unnatural posture. Alyn could hear Sallow’s heavy breathing echoing off the stone walls, much like her ragged gasps pounded inside her head along with her frantic heartbeat.
A rustle behind her caught Alyn’s attention, and she quickly turned her head, lingering panic making her desperate to locate the source of this noise. Ominis, still kneeling, was running his slightly trembling hands over the sand, searching for his wand. This time, Alyn’s heart ached not for herself but for him—his movements were growing more erratic as his wand seemed nowhere to be found.
With each agonisingly long second that passed, Alyn became more aware of how the sight of the body—was he really dead?—made her stomach clench. Sweat on her forehead, once burning hot, cooled unpleasantly on her skin as nausea threatened to overtake her.
It was harder to see through the encroaching darkness.
When did all this start going so terribly wrong? Was it two months ago, when that terrifying incident at dawn occurred, when this all started? Or perhaps, had it all begun last year, when she first discovered her magic, and this nightmare would only grow worse, following her for the rest of her life. How much longer could she even live if such things kept happening around her? The scene now felt as an eerie echo of one of her worst memories, as if it had returned to force her to relive it all over again.
But no, there definitely weren't any green flashes. What on earth?..
The orb of faint light vanished into thin air, finally casting everything around into utter, impenetrable darkness.
tag list: @theladyofshalott1989 , @crvcioking , @savingsallow , @gyattoru thank you for your huge support you fuel me so much, @ravenwind-75 whenever you're ready np 🫶
let me know if you don't want to be tagged or if you are not tagged and want to be as well - tell me🫶
#snowcactus SSL#done with drafts and almost all chapters so i can start posting yay#ok bye i'll go hide in cave because i'm still terified to post fics#also english is my third language so i might be looking for beta for next chapters#bear with me for now pls#hogwarts legacy mc#my writings#hogwarts legacy fanfiction#hogwarts legacy#hogwarts legacy fanfic#ominis gaunt x f!mc fanfiction#ominis gaunt x mc fanfiction
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Think Outside The Box
Pairing: Jennifer Jareau x Female!Reader
Word Count: ~2.6k
Warnings: fluff
Summary: Before you and JJ had even gotten together, you were working on how to progress your business to reach more customers. Things were moving slowly so you forgot about it until today. Until you get word from your architect that he’s ready to move forward. However, JJ doesn’t know about it. You want to tell her but you’re not sure how to go about it.
There’s Beauty in Tragedy Masterlist
Square Filled: expert (2023) for @cmbingo
Author’s Note: i'm not sure if i've given the reader's assistant a name in the previous chapters. i tried looking back but didn't see it, but i skimmed it. if i did, her new name is ingrid :)
x
“Are you forgetting something?”
You lean out of the window and smile at JJ. She turns and walks back over to the town car you own and kisses you through the open window. Despite living with her, you can’t ever get enough of her kisses.
“I’ll be back at five to pick you up, okay?” you ask.
“Sounds good to me.”
“Have a good day at work.”
“You, too.”
You wait until she is inside the building before your driver pulls into traffic, heading towards your building. Just this weekend, you two finished unpacking the last of her boxes despite living together for nearly three months. Everything you know about JJ, you love, and everything you don’t know about her, you get to know with both your names on the mailbox. It’s been wonderful waking up next to her every morning.
The thing with Mark is behind you and you see yourself only moving forward.
You get out of the car when your driver gets to your work, and you make your way to the top floor where your office is. Ingrid, your assistant, stands when she sees you and smiles brightly.
“Good morning, Y/N. I have messages for you that came in.”
“Thank you. Anything I should be warned about?”
“Just client calls.”
You walk into your office and sit at your desk. You pull up your calendar before going through your messages because you need to coordinate when the best time is to meet with them. Clients you’ve worked with before like Kim Kardashian, Beyonce, Cate Blanchett, and Madonna. There are two new clients you’re excited to work with, Anne Hathaway and Angelina Jolie.
The last message is from your architect, Randy Miller. He’s one of the best in America, and he built all four of your homes including two of your families’ homes. The second you hear his voice over the phone, guilt racks your entire body. Why should you feel guilty? You’re working with him on designing a new building for one of your new branches… in London. JJ doesn’t know this because of two reasons.
One, you’re not sure about the details and it’s in such an early stage that things can change at a moment’s notice. Two, you’re not sure how to bring it up to her. This has been in the works even before you two started dating. It just hasn’t gotten to the blueprint stage until now. How will she react? Will everything go according to plan or will it blow up in your face?
You pick up the phone and call Randy back, and he answers on the first ring.
“Ah, I was wondering when you were going to call me back.”
“I just got into work. I got your message. Can you send over the blueprints?”
“I can do you one better. I’m in the area. I’ll stop by.”
“Okay, Ingrid will let you in when you get here.”
You hang up the phone and sit in silence for ten minutes. During that ten minutes, you think of what you might say to JJ when you bring it up to her. You have to tell her. The last time you opened a branch, you had to be there to oversee the progress. Her life is here. She won’t like the idea of moving much less moving to another country.
A knock brings you out of your trance, and you open the door to reveal Randy with rolls of plans under his arms.
“Wow, did you get tan?”
“My wife said the same thing. The last project I was on, we did everything outside. I burned at first but then the tan broke through.” He walks into your office and sets the blueprints on your long table. “I have two sets here. One is the base for the building while the other is what I think the building should look like. Check it out.”
You roll out the plans and scan every inch of the papers.
“I like what you’ve done with the open floor plan for the lobby. If I may,” Randy gestures to the prints, encouraging you to voice your opinions, “there needs to be more room inside the labs. I want to add four more stations and a bigger gowning room.”
“Is that all?”
“For right now. You built everything I own. I trust you to do the right thing. I’m going to hire more lab staff, so I wanted a bigger space for them.”
“More lab space. You got it.” Randy jots that down on his planner. “Did you talk to JJ about this?”
“No,” you mumble.
“Y/N, I am not going to start hiring builders until you do.”
“Who are you, my mother?” you scoff.
“I have designed all of your buildings and all four of your homes. I think I’m entitled to say this.” You huff out in annoyance. “I’d hate to do such an award-winning job with no one to run it.”
“Okay, I will.”
“Good. Call me when you do, and we’ll go from there. We should go to lunch soon and catch up.”
Randy packs up the prints and leaves, and you sit at your desk in thought. You don’t want to blurt it out to JJ, so you think a present might suit the situation better. It might cushion the blow a bit. Since you’re rich beyond compare, you love to spoil JJ as much as possible. So, you have to think outside the box for this gift.
You scroll through Google mindlessly, picture after picture, article after article, until you’re so deep that you don’t know what website you’re on or how you got here. However, you’re not mad at what you see. You’ve stumbled upon abstract gifts like paintings. You don’t have enough paintings at home, and you’re always looking for something to bring color to your white and gray home.
This isn’t what JJ would want but maybe you’ll find inspiration through this. If you’re going to get art, you’ll want to get art from an expert, and you know the best expert this country has ever seen. Leo Castillo is known for hosting grand galleries that showcase not only up-and-coming new artists but also long-standing artists who make millions per piece. He’s not only into art that is showcased in galleries but he’s well known in the auction world.
If anyone knows of any good art pieces, it’s him. One phone call from you, and he’s eager to meet up at one of his galleries.
“Push all my meetings until tomorrow, Ingrid. I might be all day. You can keep them at the same time as today.”
“Okay, will do.”
You leave the office and head across town to the most elite art gallery. Leo is inside with a customer when you arrive, and you give them their privacy. This gallery might look empty and bare at first glance but world-renowned artists come from all over the world to get showcased in his galleries. Leo quickly finishes with his customer before heading over to you.
“Y/N, it’s so nice to have you here. Welcome in,” he smiles.
“Hi, Leo. Thank you for meeting with me on such short notice.”
“Anything for you, darling. What are you looking for?”
“I’m not sure. I wanted to get a gift for my girlfriend and I stumbled upon a website full of art. I don’t have enough pieces on my wall. What do you have that’s new?”
“Ah, follow me.” You follow Leo to the back past the mainstream art he keeps on display. At the very back is his more private collection, and you look at the different pieces he has on display. “I have four new artists that I’m not putting out to the public until next week. Which one do you like?”
Nothing about these artists speaks to you until you get to the last one. You pause and stare at what looks like a painting of a forest with a silhouette of someone running away. However, instead of oils or charcoal, the artist has used something you’ve never seen before. The paint is red, and the farther the trees are, the darker it gets. The closer they are, the lighter it gets to give it some depth. The paint, though, looks like it’s bleeding. The paint drips down in perfect tear-shaped droplets that look wet to the touch.
That would make a beautiful collection line. Blood-red rubies in the shape of a raindrop. You mentally take a note to explore that option when you’re back in the office.
“What about this one?”
“That one just came in,” Leo explains. “He’s a new supplier. Most new artists who get showcased here are flexible in the price, but he was very adamant.”
“How much?”
“2.5 million.”
“I’ll take it,” you say without hesitation. “Also, do you know of any good auctions?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. The man who made this painting is actually part of it. There is an auction in a few days. I can get you on the list if you want.”
“Please.”
“Alright. I’ll have this boxed up and sent to your address within a few business days. My assistant, Laura, will handle the payment. Laura!”
After paying for the painting, you leave to pick up JJ from work. She doesn’t look the same as when you dropped her off this morning. She looks more stressed. Maybe a nice dinner will take her mind off whatever is bothering her. However, even after a nice dinner, that same nagging feeling hasn’t gone away. May as well rip the bandaid about London off while you can.
“Hey, there’s something I need to talk to you about.” You look up and see the look on her face. She’s stressed. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing. Just work.”
“Tell me. If you can.”
She sighs and rests her elbows on the kitchen island. “It’s just this unsub here in Virginia. He’s kidnapping young women faster than we can catch up. He dumps their bodies after he drains them of blood. We’re not sure what he does with that.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yeah. I just hate not being able to do anything. He snatches a woman and disappears until he dumps their bodies.” There’s no way you can tell her about London. Not now. Not while she has bigger things on her mind. Plus, you still have a lot of time left before you need to make a decision. “What did you want to tell me?”
“Nothing. It can wait until after your case. You’re doing a good job, baby.”
“Thank you,” she smiles.
“Forget the dishes for tonight. Let’s go to bed.”
“Okay.”
You kiss her sweetly and take her hand. There is one way you can make her forget about her troubles. You wish you could stay in your little bubble a little while longer, but you have work to do just as much as she does. She doesn't know about the auction, and you’re going to keep it that way.
The day of the auction comes sooner than you think it will, and you’re in line to check-in. Like Leo promised, you’re on the list so there’s no issue getting you in. This auction is only for the elite; for people who have so much money they don’t know what to do with it. You’re given a book of the items that are being put up for sale, and you take your seat while browsing through it. There are a few items here that JJ might like, so you have your eyes set on those.
Someone might try to outbid you, but you’re secure in your money enough to know you will win.
As soon as everyone finds their seats, the auctioneer begins. First are the jewelry items, but you don’t pay them any mind. If you’re going to wear jewelry, it’s going to be designed by you.
“Next on the list is a white gold Patek Philippe wristwatch. A new self-winding perpetual calendar has been added to the Patek Philippe collection. It comes in a Calatrava case with beautifully scalloped lugs and applied Breguet numerals. Ultra-thin mechanical self-winding movement. Interchangeable solid and sapphire crystal case backs. Alligator strap with square scales, hand-stitched, shiny navy blue, fold-over clasp. The starting bid is fifty thousand dollars.”
“Fifty,” you say and raise your paddle with your seat number on it.
“Sixty,” a woman says.
“Seventy,” you say.
“One hundred thousand.”
“One hundred thousand! Do I hear one hundred and ten?” the auctioneer asks.
“Two hundred thousand.”
The woman must think that’s too much for a watch, even for Patek Philippe, so she doesn’t say anything else.
“Two hundred thousand going once… Going twice… Sold to number 219!”
You hide your grin at the prize you just won for JJ. The next several items don’t interest you until they get to the paintings. The same kind of dripping paint you saw in Leo’s store comes into view, and you remember him saying the artist has items in auctions. This painting isn’t a forest, though, it’s a body of water whether that be a lake or the ocean. Looks like several people are interested in buying it because it goes quickly.
“Now, for the last item, I have a modern cabin in the woods designed by Zaha Hadid located in the Appalachian Mountains. This modern cabin has five bedrooms and four bathrooms along with a home theater and a game room. The starting bid is three hundred thousand dollars.”
Almost everyone puts up their paddles for this until it’s down to two. You and the same woman as before.
“One million, five,” you say.
“One million, seven.”
“Two million.”
“Do I hear three?” the auctioneer asks. The woman grumbles in annoyance but doesn’t put her paddle back up. “Two million going once… going twice… Sold! 219! Thank you all for coming but that is the end of this auction. Stay tuned for more items in the future. Winners, please claim your items with our staff off to the right.”
You get up and walk to one of the workers who bring out the watch you won. The title of the cabin will be sent to you in the mail along with anything else that comes with it. You go home that night and see JJ on the couch with a glass of red wine in her hands. You were hoping this would soften the blow of the whole London thing, but maybe not.
“Hey, I got you something. A present for being so damn amazing.”
“You’ve already given me so much,” she chuckles and sets the glass down.
“I know but I know you’ll love this.” You hand her the wrapped gift. “Open it.” She does and she gasps when she sees the watch. “I know your watch broke and I thought you could use a new one.”
“Baby, this is gorgeous. Where did you get this from?”
“I was at an auction today. Patek Philippe is very good. Do you like it?”
“I love it. Thank you,” she grins.
“That’s not all. I also got us something we can both use. I bought us a cabin located in the Appalachian Mountains. I know how much you love snow and nature, and I thought this would be perfect for us to spend a few weeks in the winter. The title will be mailed to me along with pictures and such.”
“What did I do to deserve you?”
“You must have done something right,” you grin and kiss her.
This is supposed to be a new chapter in your lives, so you’re going to push the London thing as far as you can right before it all comes crashing down around you.
x
Want to be tagged? Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)
#jennifer jareau#jennifer jareau x reader#jennifer jareau fic#jennifer jareau fanfiction#jennifer jareau fanfic#jennifer jareau fluff#jennifer jareau angst#jennifer jareau fiction#jennifer jareau fan fiction#jennifer jareau fan fic#criminal minds#criminal minds fic#criminal minds fanfiction#criminal minds fanfic#criminal minds fluff#criminal minds angst
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You Can Start A Family (Extra: Telling the Parents & Celebrating the Holidays)
Summary: It's time to celebrate the holidays with Mitch, Harry, and Sarah's families but before that can happen, you need to fill them in on the truth about your relationship.
WC: 3.2K
CW: mentions of past family deaths, alcohol consumption
AN: I've been feeling oddly nostalgic about the beginning of this series (I cannot believe I posted the first chapter a year and a half ago!). I wasn't sure exactly where this extra would take me, but I like that I was able to go down memory lane a little bit.
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The first holiday season spent as a foursome was very laid back. You were still recovering from your pneumonia and septic infection, so it was decided very quickly that you would take it easy. You’d spent quality time together doing all of the classic Christmas traditions.
Your favorite thing about that time was naps by the tree. You, Sarah, Mitch, and Harry had spent an afternoon together decorating it, and it looked perfect. The living room looked straight out of a Christmas card, and was just so cozy, especially with the fireplace going and jazzy holiday music playing softly in the background. Plus your girlfriend and boyfriends were more than happy to cuddle you at any time.
So yea, snuggles on the couch while living in a winter wonderland was the happiest Christmas you’d had in years.
This year though. This year would be a bit different. Not bad! Just, a lot more activity.
All four of you would be traveling to England to spend the holidays with Harry and Sarah’s families.
You had worked out a system that would make everyone happy. Thanksgiving with Mitch’s family, Christmas with Harry’s and New Years with Sarah’s. It was the perfect plan!
Except that you hadn’t yet told their families that all four of you are in a relationship. And you all knew that had to happen before seeing them for the holidays.
You’d been with Mitch and Sarah for a year and a half at this point, and Harry and joined a few months later. But no one really knew how to explain the details of your relationship. Sure the four of you were always together, but everyone assumes it was two separate couples, like a constant double date situation. It’s time to finally set the story straight.
You start with Mitch’s parents, since you see them somewhat frequently. When you sit down and tell them, it’s clear that they’re confused. But after a bit of explaining, they seem to understand. Or at least they try their best, but it’s definitely a learning curve. You’re all just relieved that they’re not upset in any way, and after a couple more dinners together, it’s clear that Mark and Tammy are fully on board and supportive.
Sarah’s family is next, done over Facetime. They’re very free spirited, and apparently a four person relationship is no big deal to them. They like Harry, and they’ve heard good things about you from Sarah, and seeing more people love their daughter is a good thing in their eyes.
Harry’s family is last, also done on video calls. You start with his sister, Gemma, since she has been around the four of you most. When Harry starts to explain she has a look on her face you can’t quite figure out.
“Guys, you think we don’t know?” Gemma says when Harry is done telling the story.
All four of you are taken aback, not having gotten this reaction yet.
“What do you mean?” Harry asks.
“Mum and I have known for a while,” she says.
“How long?” You ask.
“We started wondering last year when you were sick. I guess we technically didn’t know for sure, but we’ve assumed since then,” she answers.
With this new information, you guys decide to add Harry’s mum into the call. She’s confused at first but Gemma cheekily says, “They have something to tell you,” and Anne’s face turns from befuddled to knowing.
It’s an easy conversation, and she is nothing but happy that the four of you have each other.
With all the families in the know, your stress over the holiday season has lifted. Now you’re just excited to actually celebrate with other people. In the years since your immediate family had died, you’d always received invites to spend the holidays with friends or more distant relatives.
It was nice to be included, but it hurt more to see these happy full families celebrating together. The year prior to meeting Sarah, Mitch, and Harry you had decided to stay home for the holidays. It was dark, and lonely, but at least you didn’t have to pretend to be happy and having fun.
But now you have people to share it with. And you find yourself counting down the days with excitement rather than dread.
Thanksgiving at Mitch’s parents isn’t all that different from a typical dinner with them. But you are in that small group who actually loves turkey and all the traditional sides, so it’s a real treat for you.
The house is decorated with classic autumn colors and the lights are dimmed, allowing candles to create a soft glow for the evening.
It’s so lovely to be able to share affection with all your partners. For so long you could only be this close with Harry, and it always made you feel like you were leaving the others out.
While you’re not huge fans of public displays of affection, there are occasional kisses and hand holding. When you all retire to the living room to chill with some post dinner drinks, Mitch’s parents don’t bat an eye that you are curled up to Mitch’s side while Sarah and Harry sit close together.
You know it must be a lot for them to come to terms with, having seen their son with his wife for years. Learning he now has another boyfriend and girlfriend is a big change, and you’re grateful that they are so chill about it.
Later you’re in the kitchen washing some of the wine glasses when Mitch’s mom comes up to you.
“I guess I shouldn’t really be surprised,” she says.
“About what?” you ask curiously.
“About the four of you. When Mitch started working with Harry, he talked about him all the time. Which, as you know, is a bit out of character for him. Part of me thought maybe something was going to happen between the two boys. When Mitch met Sarah he couldn't stop talking about her either, and it was clear there was something special there. And then came you.”
She pauses for a moment, but before you can worry she continues. “During the hardest time in my life, you appeared, like an angel who delivers delicious Italian food,” she says with a laugh. “From the start you were family to us. I could see the way Mitch and Sarah cared about you. And there was a shift after that weekend Mark and I spent at the cabin and you stayed here with them. When you told them about your family. I thought they were just more protective after hearing that your loved ones had passed. But it was more than that, wasn’t it?”
You blush and shyly answer, “That was the first time they kissed me.”
“I figured. And you’re happy with the three of them? They make you happy, take care of you?”
“Oh absolutely. They’re wonderful to me, all of them. I feel so safe and loved when I’m with them,” you reply.
“Then that’s what matters. I will say, it’s a bit of a new concept to me, but the four of you seem to have something special, and I’m glad you all have each other. And if there’s anything you ever need, you know I’m here for you too, right?”
You smile and nod before she pulls you in for a tight hug.
Having finished up in the kitchen the two of you walk back to the living room together, and you catch the pleased look on Mitch’s face as he watches you interact with his mom. The evening wraps up shortly after that, and the four of you make your way home.
In bed that night you reflect on your conversation with Tammy. You know that no one will ever replace your parents, but it’s nice to have people so willing to help fill that gap in your life. With a full heart, you fall asleep wrapped in Sarah’s arms.
The next couple of weeks fly by in a flurry of holiday planning.
When it’s time for your flight to England, you’re happy to have three people to travel with. Sure, you’re good at being independent, and you’ve managed to travel solo a few times before, but it’s always nice to have other people with you. Especially when the weather delays, then cancels your flight. You’re impressed watching Harry so quickly fix the situation and get you all on a new flight leaving only a couple hours late.
You’re all tired once you finally take off, and you rest your head against Harry’s shoulder, trying, and mostly failing to nap.
When you arrive in England, it’s clear your group has been spotted. Harry keeps an arm around you, ensuring you’re protected in case there are any fans or paps who get out of hand.
Luckily it seems to be just a few respectful fans who only want to say hi. They aren’t disappointed when Harry politely tells them he has to keep moving, as his sister is there to pick them up and he doesn’t want to keep her waiting.
When you do make it outside, Gemma comes running up, first hugging her brother, then pulling you in a tight embrace. “I’m so glad you’re all here!” she exclaims as she hugs Mitch and Sarah as well. You all load into the car, and Gemma begins the drive to their mum's house.
Anne greets you with warm hugs and a delicious meal, fretting over all of you after your long day of traveling. After everyone finishes eating lunch, Harry quickly gets up to start cleaning the dishes.
“Put that down, love,” Anne says. “I appreciate the help, but you guys look like you’re about to pass out. You should go rest for a little bit. Harry, show them up to your room, everything is ready for you all.”
“Are you sure?” he asks, ever the helpful gentleman.
“I’m sure. Go rest so you can help me with dinner,” she replies with a smirk.
Harry does as he’s told and leads the three of you up to his bedroom. He’s surprised when he opens the door and sees his desk is gone in order to make room for a new, very large bed.
“Mum, what is all this?” he shouts out.
Anne appears and answers, “Well, I figured the four of you would be quite squished on your old bed. It was starting to wear anyway, so this made the most sense.”
“You didn’t have to do that. At the very least I should be paying for it-”
“Nonsense,” she says, cutting him off. “I’m happy to do it. I want you all to be comfortable here. Make sure you keep coming back for visits!” she jokes.
“Thank you,” Harry says, leaning down to give her another hug.
“Of course my darling. Now go, rest, all of you,” she replies, ushering the four of you into the room.
She’s absolutely right about you guys being tired, and within minutes all of you are asleep in a big jumble on the bed.
Feeling refreshed later that evening, you have a lovely dinner with Anne, ending the night with Christmas movies in the living room.
The next day is Christmas Eve, and there’s much preparation that needs to be done. Luckily there are plenty of you to help with all of the cleaning and cooking, since a bit of Harry’s extended family will be coming for dinner.
Around midday you’re in the kitchen with Anne, helping prepare some of the side dishes. You work in companionable silence for a while, and you can’t help but think about your family. How you wish they were here with you, could see how happy you are. A wave of grief threatens to overwhelm you, but then Harry pops in the room, giving you a big smile and pressing a kiss to your head.
Mitch and Sarah enter a moment later, their faces bright and cheerful as well, and just like that they’ve prevented overwhelming grief. You’re still sad, still miss your family, but this reminder of the love you have surrounded you makes it bearable.
The evening is lovely, and you enjoy getting to meet more of Harry’s relatives. The dinner is delicious, and everyone shares happy stories. It’s a room filled with joy, but even then, you still feel just a bit of sadness for those who are missing.
In bed that night you curl up next to Sarah, Mitch on your other side and Harry behind him.
Sensing that something is on your mind, Sarah asks, “Are you alright, love?”
“Yea,” you reply in a quiet voice. “I just love you all, so much. Thank you for loving me.”
They know that there’s more than what you’re saying, but you’ve been together long enough that they don’t have to ask. Holidays are hard for you, and they all vowed to support and comfort you long ago. So they do just that, holding you tighter and telling you how much they love you, how happy they are to have met you, how excited they are to spend life with you.
Soothed by the three people you love most, you fall into a peaceful sleep.
The next morning you’re all greeted to the best surprise. A light coating of snow fell overnight, creating the most picturesque Christmas scene. It’s a calm morning filled with gift exchanges and a delicious brunch. Harry then leads the three of you on a walk around the neighborhood, pointing out places that are special to him.
It’s one of the best Christmas Day’s you’ve had in years.
The next few days are peaceful, and you find yourself wanting to stay there forever, hiding in this perfect little bubble.
But you’re also excited to go spend time with Sarah’s family. You haven’t spent much time with them before, having only seen them briefly on two different occasions. And while you’re nervous about making a good impression, from what you know of them, they’re very laid back and nonjudgmental.
It’s a tearful goodbye as you leave Cheshire. Never one to hide his emotions, Harry does nothing to stop the tears that slide down his cheeks as he leaves his mum’s house. The sadness is short-lived though, and by the time you get to Sarah’s an hour later, everyone is cheerful once again.
Sarah’s parents are unlike any parents you’ve ever met before. Which shouldn’t surprise you, knowing Sarah as well as you do. Any parents who encouraged their young child to follow their passion and become a professional drummer are probably pretty chill.
Within the first hour you’re there Sarah’s dad says, “Heard my daughter’s been teaching you to drum.”
“She is,” you reply with a smile.
“Alright, let’s see what you’ve got,” he says, walking out of the room.
It’s clear you’re meant to follow, and you’re grateful that Sarah comes with the two of you. It’s not that you’re uncomfortable, just unsure of what is about to happen.
He leads you to the garage, where album art decorates the walls and numerous instruments are scattered throughout the space.
“Sarah, go get those boys of yours, let’s see what you all can do together,” he says.
While she’s gone he turns to you and says, “So, four people together. Bit unorthodox. But you all seem to make it work.”
“Yea, we’re really happy together. I can’t imagine my life without all three of them in it,” you answer.
“Whose idea was it?”
“Uhm, well, Mitch and Sarah both approached me, so I’m not really sure.”
“Bet it was Sarah. My girl’s never been afraid to go after what she wants, even if it’s not what's ‘normal’ or ‘typical’. Now, show me what she’s taught you so far.”
It’s a bit nerve wracking to be playing for him, but from the second you pick up the sticks that fear washes away. Because he’s immediately smiling at you and nodding along. There’s a look of pride that you assume is for his daughter, that he’s impressed by her skills and her ability to share that with others.
Sarah walks back in with the boys just as you finish playing and he walks over to her. He wraps an arm around her and says, “Excellent job teaching her, my love.”
You smile and you watch the interaction and then he’s walking over to you. He places his hands on your shoulders before saying, “And you! You have real talent, and I can tell you’ve worked very hard. You should be very proud of that, I know I am.” It’s one of the best compliments you’ve received in a while, and it means so much coming from him.
The rest of the afternoon is spent in the garage playing music before you all head to a nice restaurant for dinner.
The next day is New Years Eve, and Sarah’s parents have a tradition of going downtown for the celebration thrown there. The few blocks in the center are roped off, and once you pay to get in you can get access to all the stores, restaurants, and bars.
The night starts normally with a casual dinner together. And then things start to get a bit more wild. After the third different bar you lose count, but the one with the piano battle may be your favorite.
When the clock strikes midnight the four of you all exchange kisses, for once not worried what people will think.
An hour later the six of you are walking back home. It’s not exactly a short walk, and it is quite cold out, but in your group’s inebriated state, it seems like the best idea.
You’re hand in hand with Sarah, her father on your other side with his arm slung around your shoulders.
“Ya know,” he starts. “I was always surprised when Sarah settled with a man. Always thought she’d at least bring home a girlfriend or two, even if she was into men as well.”
“Dad!” she exclaims through embarrassed laughter.
“No, no, don’t get me wrong. I love Mitch, you know that. Honestly you kids seem to have it figured out. The four of you are really great together, that’s easy to see. You get to have all these different dynamics, and three people to lean on when you need them. And I do love your boys, but I will say, I’m grateful you got me another daughter.” He ruffles your hair as he says that, and while you know these are drunken ramblings, you can tell he’s sincere. It makes you feel so warm inside, and you feel Sarah squeeze your hand, as she’s fully aware of how much this means to you.
The rest of your trip to England passes in a blur, and after an uneventful day of traveling back to the states, you’re glad to be home.
Sitting in bed that night you reflect on the past month and a half, how different it’s been and how happy it’s made you.
Having Harry, Mitch, and Sarah as your partners has been an absolute blessing. But being so accepted by their families is a true gift, and you’re so grateful to have all of them in your life.
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AN: Happy holidays! Thank you so much for reading!
The next extra will be spicy, potentially one of the dirtier/kinkier ones I've written sooo we'll see how that goes haha
Taglist: @akkatz @pandeebearstyles @walkingintheheartbreaksatellite@theekyliepage@numafarawayglxy @booberry019-blog @hillzrry@ssareidbby @gem1712 @acesofspadess@houseofdilfs@shaquille-0atmeal-1@kissitnhekitchen @amateurduck @poguestyleskye@n0vaj3an@snwells@drunk-teens-doing-drugs ; @fdl305
#harry styles x reader#mitch rowland x harry styles#mitch rowland x reader#sarah jones x mitch rowland x reader#sarah jones x reader#one direction fanfiction#one direction x reader#mitch rowland x sarah jones x harry styles x reader
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My Rock Star
Word Count: 3.6K || Rating: M
A/N: I knew I wanted to write a Grammys fic and had drafted one a couple of weeks ago. But after last night, it underwent a major overhaul to capture the magic of the evening. I really enjoyed writing this one and hope you enjoy reading it. Would love to hear your thoughts!
***
It was too soon.
And besides, he almost never brought anyone special to any of these events.
“You get that, right?” he whispered against your hair, fingers scratching lightly at the exposed skin of shoulder as he held you close in bed.
For anyone else, the two-year mark almost guaranteed attendance at your partner’s work events, but Harry’s situation meant you all played by a different set of rules.
“I get it,” you said, even though deep down a part of you felt hurt by his continued refusal to bring you into all facets of his life. You knew it came from a place of well-meaning, but that didn’t make it sting any less. You counted the freckles on his chest to distract yourself from the frustration brewing inside.
“I’m not happy about it,” Harry said somewhat forcefully. “If I could have you there I would.”
“And you can. You’re just choosing not to.” His hand stopped mid-scratch and you could feel him suck in a breath. “That was a low blow. I’m sorry.”
“You’re just being honest,” he said. It was clear he was trying not to snap back at you.
“No, I’m being petty and unfair.” You twisted and propped yourself up on your elbow to look him in the eye. “I know why you’re like this. It all comes from a place of love but sometimes I just want to celebrate my boyfriend. I want to support you.”
“And you do, love. Just because our situation isn’t traditional doesn’t mean it’s wrong or bad.”
You looked down at him. His eyes were clear, if a little tired, and you could see a faint puffiness under his eyes. He’d been working so hard recently, squeezing rehearsals, wardrobe fittings, and writing sessions in between shows. It was cruel to take out your anger on him when he hadn’t done anything wrong. You knew what you were in store for when you started dating and understood that this would always be part of your relationship. You ran your hands through his hair, gently scratching at his scalp. “You’re right,” you said. “What we have is pretty damn great.” You planted a kiss on his lips. “Now how about we go to bed. I’m a little tired and I think you are too.”
Harry sighed. “I am. And I have to be up in…” He squinted, looking at the clock on your nightstand. “...five hours. Fuck.”
“Don’t think about it. Just go to sleep.” You rolled over and turned off the light, hoping to force him into getting at least a couple of hours of rest. “Goodnight, H.”
Within minutes you were listening to the sound of his quiet snores as your mind continued to swirl with thoughts of what it would be like to share just one celebratory moment with him.
***
Sunday afternoon and you were still in your sweats while the man of the hour was being helped into a sparkly patchwork jumpsuit.
You’d offered to step out and grab lunch with a girlfriend to give him some space, but he’d been insistent that you stay near. Which meant you’d been orbiting him and his team all day, sitting far enough away that you wouldn’t be in the way as Jeff came in and out of the room with updates and Lambert helped with last-minute fittings, but remaining close enough that you could see Harry when he went looking for reassurance.
You bounced between your book and phone, reading a few pages before responding to messages from Anne and Gemma, giving them the play-by-play and glimpses behind the scenes they so desperately wanted, until you felt someone tap your shoulder. Looking up, you saw Harry.
The room had cleared out, leaving the two of you with a moment of privacy for the first time all day. Harry pulled you into his chest, holding you tight.
“Nervous?” you asked, lips pressed to his chest. You felt him shrug. “It’s OK if you are. If you can tell anyone you can tell me.”
“I–I know I tell everyone shit like this doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t, but I really want to win. Prove to everyone that I matter.”
“You do matter, Harry,” you said, cupping his face in your hands. “And if it wouldn’t make you late, I’d make you sit down and listen while I listed off everything you’ve accomplished in the past couple of years.”
“I mean I wouldn’t be upset if you did that.”
You pinched his cheek, earning a giggle from him. “What I do want to talk about is this outfit.” He was decked out in a tight, low-cut jumpsuit in a sparkly geometric pattern that somewhat resembled an afghan that had rested on that back of your grandmother’s couch for a number of years. “Maybe it’s a good thing I’m not going,” you teased. “I wouldn’t have been able to match you, fashionista.”
“I would have liked to see you try.”
“I’m sure you would.” You stepped back to fully take in Harry’s outfit. “You look really good, baby.”
“Yeah?”
You nodded. “Promise me something?”
“Anything.”
“I’m the one that gets to take this off of you tonight.”
Harry licked his lips and you could have sworn you felt something stiffen below his waist. “Uh, I think I can make that happen.”
“Good. Because you owe me.” You pressed up onto the balls of your feet, wrapped your arms around his neck, and pulled him close, and slotted your lips over his. The kiss was gentle at first, but as soon as you got a taste, something came over you. You nibbled at his lips, and when he returned the gesture with even more fervor, you slipped your tongue inside, deepening the kiss and pulling a low groan from Harry. You dug your fingers into his shoulders and started to stroke his growing bulge when you heard a slight cough from the doorway.
You parted, only to find Jeff standing there, artfully avoiding eye contact. “Car’s here, H,” he said as you all caught your breath. “Need to head out now.” He nodded your direction before walking purposefully out the door.
“Going to need a sec, Jeffrey,” Harry called after him.
“Fuck, that was awkward,” you said, feeling your face grow hot with embarrassment.
“He’s seen worse,” Harry offered in an attempt to help.
“Not with me, so I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“Oh stop, you know you’re my one and only.” Harry inhaled. “It’s going to be good, right?”
“Of course,” you said in one last attempt to reassure him and calm his nerves. “Just go out there and make me proud.”
“Don’t know if I’ll be able to do that.”
“Yes, you will. Just by being you.” You pinched his cheek again. “Bringing home the big one will just be a bonus.”
“H! Car is leaving now!” Jeff called from the hall. “Adjust yourself on the way there.”
Harry leaned down to steal one final kiss. “See you at the party?”
You nodded, acknowledging your plan to meet him at a private afterparty some of his friends had organized. “I’m counting down the minutes.”
“Alright…”
“Harry, you need to go.”
“I know.” He picked up his phone and sunglasses from the table. “See you later.”
“Mhmm. And don’t forget your promise.”
“I won’t.” A cheeky grin had returned to his face. “You’re the only one undressing me tonight.” He turned towards the hall. “OK, Jeffrey,” he shouted, smacking his palm against the top of the door frame as he walked through. “Let’s go. We’re already late because of you!”
You rolled your eyes, pretty certain that Jeff would not appreciate Harry’s jokes when they were 15 minutes behind schedule and already fighting a losing battle against Los Angeles traffic.
Alone in the room, you turned your attention to your own outfit, a simple party dress you’d worn to bachelorette parties and nights out. In fact, you’d been wearing it when you’d first met Harry. It had to have some sort of luck, right? You slipped it on as you said a silent prayer for the night.
***
You’d already downed a drink before the ceremony started and were almost done with your second. Which meant you weren’t sure if Harry’s category was first or second or later in the show, so you played it safe and settled onto a small velvet couch, attention solely on one of the many televisions scattered around the room. You chewed on the straw as the telecast ran through the nominees, bracing yourself to hear a name that wasn’t Harry’s, only to be completely shocked when his name was read off the card.
The room erupted in screams as people shouted with joy, jumping up to hug one another, you stayed still on the chair, too surprised to move. It wasn’t that you didn’t believe he could do it. Hell, he’d done it once before. But you’d spent so much time preparing for the worst, thinking about how you’d soothe the sting of losing that you hadn’t spent much time thinking about how you’d be celebrating.
By the time you’d calmed down and returned to normalcy, Harry was already walking off stage. You smiled, thinking of how his short and direct speech was so…him. Seeing him holding that trophy had you breathing easier. One thing checked off the list.
Things slowed down after the win, you could tell he was nervy the second he stepped on the stage to perform, and after that, several losses in a row had dimmed the energy of your group. With just one category left, everyone was preparing to hype up the man of the hour when he arrived. You had started to tune out the broadcast as album of the year was announced, and you were convinced you were hallucinating when Harry’s fan read his name off the card. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion as you watched Tom and Tyler and everyone around him pull him into a warm embrace before he made his way on stage. You tried not to think about how you wished you were the one holding him up there.
Waiting for him to finish up his interviews and photo calls after the show was the most agonizing thing you’d ever experienced, and no matter how many people you talked to, no matter how many appetizers you ate, you couldn’t stop thinking about Harry. Countless minutes later, you were alerted to his arrival when you heard screams and cheers coming from the entrance. You walked over to the bar to get him a drink, pausing when you felt someone behind you.
“Have you ever slept with a Grammy winner?” a voice purred in your ear.
You turned around to find Harry, curls flopping over his forehead, body clad in a nearly all black ensemble, save for the low cut white tank he had on underneath.
“Actually I have,” you said with a laugh.
“Shit, I messed that up. I was supposed to say three-time Grammy winner,” Harry slurred.
“Started the party early?” you teased.
“There may have been some libations passed around the backseat on the way over here, but I could never start celebrating without my best girl.”
“Who me?”
“Yes you!” Harry leaned his forehead against yours. “I-I really wanted you there,” he said softly. “Was thinking about you the whole time. How you should have been there beside me. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” you murmured, stroking his cheek. “I get you all night.” You kissed him. “And tomorrow.” Another kiss. “And the day after that.”
“You have me forever, love,” Harry said, eyes clearer than they had been all night.
You were about to respond when Tom and Ben bounded over, jumping on Harry’s back. “Fuck yeah! Album of the year!” Tom shouted, pulling Harry back to the center of the room. You laughed, picking up your drink and Harry’s, finding a quiet corner to chat with the band while Harry made his rounds.
***
It had been close to midnight the last time you looked at a clock. Any other night, you’d be fading about now, ready to head to bed, cuddling with Harry if he was in town, but tonight, you felt energized. A lull had fallen over the party as revelers searched for a third – or fourth – drink or chased down one of the trays of appetizers that had been moving around the room. You were trying to decide what your next cocktail would be, when someone grabbed your hand, jerking you out of your stupor.
“Harry?”
“This way,” he said, pulling you over to a door that led to somewhere unknown.
“What are you doing?”
“You’ll see.” You all wound up in an empty room that might have been used to store tables and other furniture when they weren't in use. “So,” Harry began. “I know I promised you something today, but I’ve clearly not held up my end of the bargain.”
You were confused. “Uh, what are you talking about?”
“I promised that you would be the one to undress me. And while you didn’t specify which outfit, I have a feeling you were partial to the jumpsuit. I’m hoping this,” he gestured to his jeans and tank. “Will suffice.”
You took a shaky breath. “I think I can work with this.”
“Well, go ahead.” Harry lifted his arms as you blinked incredulously.
“Wha-here? Now?”
“Why not?” He shrugged. “It’s not like anyone will hear.” You stared at him. “Love, you’re loud, but not that loud.”
“Harry!”
“Everyone has been drinking since noon, they’re not going to notice we’re gone.” You chewed on your lip, unconvinced by his reasoning. “You know what, we can wait,” Harry said after a moment. “We’ll head home soon and then –”
“No! I don’t want that.” Harry’s brows jumped up his forehead. “I want you. Here. Now,” you continued.
“OK, love,” Harry said softly, as if he didn’t want to break whatever trance had come over you.
You approached him, kissing him fiercely as you pulled the jacket from his shoulders. He kissed you back, his dexterity not impacted by the large amount of alcohol he’d consumed that evening. When the jacket hit the floor, you untucked his shirt, grazing your fingertips along his skin as you pulled the garment over his head, depositing it on top of the pile. His pants were next, and you took your time undoing his belt, unbuttoning the trousers, and slowly peeling them down the muscle of his thighs and calves. You could hear him inhale, then let out a slow breath when your hands grazed over his hips, face just inches away from the bulge in his pants that was growing by the second. He kicked off his pants and was left standing nearly naked.
“Now this feels unfair,” he said, teasing evident in his voice.
“This was my consolation prize,” you said with a smirk.
“Well what do I get for winning?”
“This.” You brought his hand up your thigh and under your dress, pushing your panties to the side.
“Fuuuuccckk,” he moaned, feeling the dampness between your legs.
“You can’t expect me to watch you parading around on the carpet like that, walking up on stage, winning a fucking Grammy and not get wet for you.”
“Fucking hell,” he breathed. His fingers swiped at your center, barely there, the teasing touch only winding you up more.
“May I?” he asked.
“Of course.” You swallowed. “I got mine and now you’ll get yours.”
You could have sworn he growled as he thrust his fingers inside of you, thumb readily finding your clit. You were so slick that his fingers slipped out of rhythm several times before he was able to steady himself. The constant stopping and starting only built your desire, and you found yourself biting down on Harry’s shoulder to keep from crying out. He continued to circle your clit and you started to feel that sensation behind your belly button, like you were climbing up a hill and when Harry finally touched you just like that, you found yourself falling over the edge and into his arms.
“I’ve got you,” Harry said, his arms steadying you as you rode out your orgasm. “I’ve got you.”
You looked up at him, still dazed, and were only able to utter a single word. “More.”
Harry was quick to respond, stepping closer to you until you were backed up against the wall. “Up,” he said against the column of your throat where he was sucking kisses against every inch of exposed skin he could find. You jumped, or at least did the best impression of jump you could manage in your state, Harry’s arms catching you, and holding you close against him.
He could feel him, hot and hard against your core and in that moment you knew you needed him. All of him. Here and now in whatever room of this downton hotel you all had commandeered. You pawed at the waistband of his briefs, trying to pull them down. When they were pooled around his knees, Harry lined himself up with you, catching your eye and waiting for you to nod your consent before he pushed inside of you.
You all both cried out as you clenched around his cock. You always felt filled to the brim when he was inside of you, but tonight, it was like it had never been before. A perfect fit. Like you all were made for each other.
“Is this good?” Harry asked as you adjusted to him.
“Yes, so good,” you whined.
He rocked his hips, thrusting deeper, inching closer to the spot that drove you wild. He repeated the action again and again, moving farther each time until you were crying out with pleasure.
“H-, don’t stop, please,” you moaned.
You felt his fingers dig into your hips as he pulled you even closer to him as he increased his pace. His hips rammed into you, more aggressive than he usually was, until you could feel them falter. He was close and you needed to feel him spill over the edge.
“Come on, H, please baby, you’re close I know it.” You wrapped your fingers in the tangled curls at the base of his neck and tugged, pulling his face from your neck so you could look him in the eye. “Cum for me baby. My rock star.”
Harry groaned and when you felt his body shudder and that telltale warm wetness inside of you, you knew he’d finished. He was still for a moment, but when he adjusted, ready to pull out, he moved in a way that triggered your own orgasm, even better than the first. Numb and tingly in the best way possible, you gave him a hazy grin and leaned in to kiss him.
“Not the worst way to celebrate,” Harry said, breathless. “I should win awards more often.”
“There’s always Saturday,” you shot back.
“I like that way of thinking,” he said, patting your ass as you bent to straighten and adjust your panties. You’d need to clean up before you made your way back to the party. “That’s what I keep you around for.”
“My brain?” You smiled and tossed Harry his pants.
“Something like that.”
He’d just pulled his pants up when there was a knock at the door.
“H? You in there?” It sounded like Jeff and some others.
“Fuck!” Harry shot you an apologetic look.
“Go,” you urged, handing him his shirt and jacket. “They want to celebrate you.”
He pouted. “But maybe I don’t want to.”
“You were fine with celebrating a minute ago.”
“Yeah, because I was naked with you.”
“Go,” you repeated. “I’ll see you later.”
“Oh? You coming home with me?” He grinned and you swore you swooned. Dimpled grin and disheveled curls, he was a sexier version of a matinee idol.
“You know I am. I always come home to you.”
“Yes, you do.” He kissed your cheek, a surprisingly chaste gesture when he’d been knuckle deep inside of you just minutes earlier. “I really do wish you had been there with me tonight.” He cleared his throat. “Tom and Tyler might have helped make the album, but it never would have existed if it hadn’t been for you.” His eyes were watering and he swiped at them with the back of his hand.
“Well that’s bullshit.”
“It’s not,” he said, firmly. “I feel like I never treat you as well as I should and that you could do so much better.” He gave your shoulder a squeeze. “I have my reasons. Doesn’t make it better, but I do it because I care. One day, I hope I can give you everything you deserve.”
You were at a loss for words and settled for hugging him as tight as you could, until the crowd outside began to pound on the door. “I think your admirers are waiting,” you said. You pushed him forward. “Go, have fun.”
Looking over his shoulder, Harry walked across the room and opened the door. His friends embraced him and you had to fight the urge to intervene when a drunken Tommy and Tyler tried to hoist him onto their shoulders. Harry was laughing hard, and even from your distant vantage point, you could tell just how much love surrounded him.
There were a lot of challenges in your relationship, the chief one being having to share him with the rest of the world. But as you caught his eye and shared a smile, you were sure of one thing.
He’d always be your rock star.
#harry styles fanfic#harry styles fanfiction#harry styles writing#harry styles blurb#harry styles fic#harry styles fan fiction#harry styles one shot#harry styles ff#harry fic#harry styles fluff#harry styles smut#harry styles fan fic#harry writing
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In this moment
Pairing: Melissa Schemmenti x Reader, Reader x oc!Liam (platonic)
Warnings: toxic Melissa, hint to miscarriage, pregnancy, angst, depression, let me know if I missed anything also unedited
Pt.3 of why did you invite me? Pt.2 Pt.4 Pt.5
8 years ago…
I sat alone in the empty hall, Melissa had just left all but slamming the door behind her while I had the pregnancy test in my back pocket. I tried to tell her when I had gotten home that I took one at work but her bags were stacked and she was ready to go.
The words left my lips and all I could do was cry “M-mel baby” but she only looked away “Mel!” It was a weak attempt. I reached out and grabbed her arm as she continued to pack “Melissa stop!” But she wouldn’t.
“I’m pregnant!”
“No you’re not”
We had been using both Melissa’s and mine’s dna so far there had been a few losses “Melissa, I really am!” My voice caught in my throat. “You’ll only lose it again!” She yelled finally facing me “it-it wasn’t my fault” the redhead shook her head before grabbing her things and leaving.
It wasn’t my fault…
Getting used to her absence was hard and as my stomach grew it became much harder it felt like learning to live once again. There were days where the shower felt out of reach, food didn’t feel necessary and I couldn’t move- glued to the bed I once shared with her.
I couldn’t change the sheets for a while, trying to hold onto her scent pretending she was just on a trip until her scent faded and reality hit. She was gone.
She was gone.
And I would raise our child alone
Liam came over a week after she left and looked over at me in sympathy before rolling me off the bed and into the bath. He sat with me and washed my hair just talking to me, I loved him and I hoped he knew “Liam, how will I do this?” I asked him.
“You have me”
I have him
“Thank you” I cried into my hands still in the tub as he rubbed my back
“This clump of cells is also part Liam” he joked
“Careful people might think you’re straight” I rolled my eyes causing him to gasp “as your best friend, you should be thankful I would go straight for you”
“You’re a dick” I laughed “now help me out please the water is getting cold”
-
“It’s a girl” the doctor smiled as my eyes remained on the screen, a girl, a girl, my little girl. Melissa had wanted a girl.
This was all we had ever wanted
-
I stared in the mirror, four months and I felt huge. I traced the stretch marks expanding across my stomach. There is a child in there I thought with a bittersweet smile my little girl, I hadn’t given her a name yet.
-
My due date was nearing
Soon I will have my little girl in my arms, Liam stood in the kitchen making lunch while I finished decorating the nursery. My hand gently glided across the crib back and forth while I glanced around the room, it was a fairytale’s dream.
Fuck you Melissa Ann Schemmenti
I cursed mentally as I sat on the plush rocking chair, Ann- Anna that’s the name of my girl. Pollyanna a name that I had always loved.
My Pollyanna Leah Schemmenti
-
“Congratulations Mama” Liam choked out as he handed me a small bundle of pink blankets this had to be the first time in fifteen years I had ever seen him cry.
I peaked over the blankets looking at her, my girl, and I laughed sadly “she’s fucking ginger” Fuck you Melissa Schemmenti.
“My girl”
#melissa schemmenti x daughter!reader#melissa ann schemmenti#melissa schemmenti imagine#melissa schemmenti x reader#lisa ann walter x reader#lisa ann walter#abbott elementary#hurt/comfort#angst
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On 28th September 1928 Alexander Fleming, a Scottish researcher discovered penicillin.
I know we all like to blow our own trumpets and us, as Scots gave the world a lot, certainly punching above our weights, per head of population, but let’s be honest, Fleming never had much of a clue what to do with his discovery at first.
The discovery of penicillin, one of the world’s first antibiotics, marks a true turning point in human history — when doctors finally had a tool that could completely cure their patients of deadly infectious diseases.
Many school children can recite the basics. Penicillin was discovered in London in September of 1928. As the story goes, Dr. Alexander Fleming, the bacteriologist on duty at St. Mary’s Hospital, returned from a summer vacation in Scotland to find a messy lab bench and a good deal more.
Upon examining some colonies of Staphylococcus aureus, Dr. Fleming noted that a mold called Penicillium notatum had contaminated his Petri dishes. After carefully placing the dishes under his microscope, he was amazed to find that the mold prevented the normal growth of the staphylococci.
It took Fleming a few more weeks to grow enough of the persnickety mold so that he was able to confirm his findings. His conclusions turned out to be phenomenal: there was some factor in the Penicillium mold that not only inhibited the growth of the bacteria but, more important, might be harnessed to combat infectious diseases.
As Dr. Fleming famously wrote about that red-letter date: “When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I guess that was exactly what I did.”
It took another 14 years before other scientists worked out how to successfully develop the drug when Anne Miller became the first civilian patient to be successfully treated with penicillin, lying near death at New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, after miscarrying and developing an infection that led to blood poisoning.
Much has been said about how penicillin is not as resillient as it once was, that may be true in some cases, but it is still the go to drug to fight infection all over the world.
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Story and photographs by Ronan O’Connell
September 26, 2023
In the middle of a field in a lesser known part of Ireland is a large mound where sheep wander and graze freely.
Had they been in that same location centuries ago, these animals might have been stiff with terror, held aloft by chanting, costumed celebrants while being sacrificed to demonic spirits that were said to inhabit nearby Oweynagat cave.
This monumental mound lay at the heart of Rathcroghan, the hub of the ancient Irish kingdom of Connaught.
The former Iron Age center is now largely buried beneath the farmland of County Roscommon.
In 2021, Ireland applied for UNESCO World Heritage status for Rathcroghan (Rath-craw-hin). It remains on the organization's tentative list.
Rooted in lore
Spread across more than two square miles of rich agricultural land, Rathcroghan encompasses 240 archaeological sites, dating back 5,500 years.
They include burial mounds, ring forts (settlement sites), standing stones, linear earthworks, an Iron Age ritual sanctuary — and Oweynagat, the so-called gate to hell.
More than 2,000 years ago, when Ireland’s communities seem to have worshipped nature and the land itself, it was here at Rathcroghan that the Irish New Year festival of Samhain (SOW-in) was born, says archaeologist and Rathcroghan expert Daniel Curley.
In the 1800s, the Samhain tradition was brought by Irish immigrants to the United States, where it morphed into the sugar overload that is American Halloween.
Dorothy Ann Bray, a retired associate professor at McGill University and an expert in Irish folklore, explains that pre-Christian Irish divided each year into summer and winter.
Within that framework were four festivities.
Imbolc, on February 1, was a festival that coincided with lambing season.
Bealtaine, on May 1, marked the end of winter and involved customs like washing one’s face in dew, plucking the first blooming flowers, and dancing around a decorated tree.
August 1 heralded Lughnasadh, a harvest festival dedicated to the god Lugh and presided over by Irish kings.
Then on October 31 came Samhain, when one pastoral year ended and another began.
Rathcroghan was not a town, as Connaught had no proper urban centers and consisted of scattered rural properties.
Instead, it was a royal settlement and a key venue for these festivals.
During Samhain, in particular, Rathcroghan was a hive of activity focused on its elevated temple, which was surrounded by burial grounds for the Connachta elite.
Those same privileged people may have lived at Rathcroghan. The remaining lower-class Connachta communities resided in dispersed farms and descended on the site only for festivals.
At those lively events they traded, feasted, exchanged gifts, played games, arranged marriages, and announced declarations of war or peace.
Festivalgoers also may have made ritual offerings, possibly directed to the spirits of Ireland’s otherworld.
That murky, subterranean dimension, also known as Tír na nÓg (Teer-na-nohg), was inhabited by Ireland’s immortals, as well as a myriad of beasts, demons, and monsters.
During Samhain, some of these creatures escaped via Oweynagat cave (pronounced “Oen-na-gat” and meaning “cave of the cats”).
“Samhain was when the invisible wall between the living world and the otherworld disappeared,” says Mike McCarthy, a Rathcroghan tour guide and researcher who has co-authored several publications on the site.
“A whole host of fearsome otherworldly beasts emerged to ravage the surrounding landscape and make it ready for winter.”
Thankful for the agricultural efforts of these spirits but wary of falling victim to their fury, the people protected themselves from physical harm by lighting ritual fires on hilltops and in fields.
They disguised themselves as fellow ghouls, McCarthy says, so as not to be dragged into the otherworld via the cave.
Despite these engaging legends — and the extensive archaeological site in which they dwell — one easily could drive past Rathcroghan and spot nothing but paddocks.
Inhabited for more than 10,000 years, Ireland is so dense with historical remains that many are either largely or entirely unnoticed.
Some are hidden beneath the ground, having been abandoned centuries ago and then slowly consumed by nature.
That includes Rathcroghan, which some experts say may be Europe’s largest unexcavated royal complex.
Not only has it never been dug up, but it also predates Ireland’s written history.
That means scientists must piece together its tale using non-invasive technology and artifacts found in its vicinity.
While Irish people for centuries knew this site was home to Rathcroghan, it wasn’t until the 1990s that a team of Irish researchers used remote sensing technology to reveal its archaeological secrets beneath the ground.
“The beauty of the approach to date at Rathcroghan is that so much has been uncovered without the destruction that comes with excavating upstanding earthwork monuments,” Curley says.
“[Now] targeted excavation can be engaged with, which will answer our research questions while limiting the damage inherent with excavation.”
Becoming a UNESCO site
This policy of preserving Rathcroghan’s integrity and authenticity extends to tourism.
Despite its significance, Rathcroghan is one of Ireland’s less frequented attractions, drawing some 22,000 visitors a year compared with more than a million at the Cliffs of Moher.
That may not be the case had it long ago been heavily marketed as the “Birthplace of Halloween,” Curley says.
But there is no Halloween signage at Rathcroghan or in Tulsk, the nearest town.
Rathcroghan’s renown should soar, however, if Ireland is successful in its push to make it a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The Irish Government has included Rathcroghan as part of the “Royal Sites of Ireland,” which is on its newest list of locations to be considered for prized World Heritage status.
The global exposure potentially offered by UNESCO branding would likely attract many more visitors to Rathcroghan.
But it seems unlikely this historic jewel will be re-packaged as a kitschy Halloween tourist attraction.
“If Rathcroghan got a UNESCO listing and that attracted more attention here that would be great, because it might result in more funding to look after the site,” Curley says.
“But we want sustainable tourism, not a rush of gimmicky Halloween tourism.”
Those travelers who do seek out Rathcroghan might have trouble finding Oweynagat cave.
Oweynagat is elusive — despite being the birthplace of Medb, perhaps the most famous queen in Irish history, 2,000 years ago.
Barely signposted, it’s hidden beneath trees in a paddock at the end of a one-way, dead-end farm track, about a thousand yards south of the much more accessible temple mound.
Visitors are free to hop a fence, walk through a field, and peer into the narrow passage of Oweynagat.
In Ireland’s Iron Age, such behavior would have been enormously risky during Samhain, when even wearing a ghastly disguise might not have spared the wrath of a malevolent creature.
Two millennia later, most costumed trick-or-treaters on Halloween won’t realize they’re mimicking a prehistoric tradition — one with much higher stakes than the pursuit of candy.
#Rathcroghan#Connaught#County Roscommon#UNESCO World Heritage#Samhain#Imbolc#Bealtaine#Lughnasadh#Tír na nÓg#Oweynagat cave#Ireland#remote sensing technology#Birthplace of Halloween#Halloween#Royal Sites of Ireland#Halloween tourism#Medb#Oweynagat#Iron Age#Irish history#archaeological site
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