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hellsitesonlybookclub · 11 months ago

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It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis

Chapter 5-6

CHAPTER V

I KNOW the Press only too well. Almost all editors hide away in spider-dens, men without thought of Family or Public Interest or the humble delights of jaunts out-of-doors, plotting how they can put over their lies, and advance their own positions and fill their greedy pocketbooks by calumniating Statesmen who have given their all for the common good and who are vulnerable because they stand out in the fierce Light that beats around the Throne.

Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip.

THE June morning shone, the last petals of the wild-cherry blossoms lay dew-covered on the grass, robins were about their brisk business on the lawn. Doremus, by nature a late-lier and pilferer of naps after he had been called at eight, was stirred to spring up and stretch his arms out fully five or six times in Swedish exercises, in front of his window, looking out across the Beulah River Valley to dark masses of pine on the mountain slopes three miles away.

Doremus and Emma had had each their own bedroom, these fifteen years, not altogether to her pleasure. He asserted that he couldn't share a bedroom with any person living, because he was a night-mutterer, and liked to make a really good, uprearing, pillow-slapping job of turning over in bed without feeling that he was disturbing someone.

It was Saturday, the day of the Prang revelation, but on this crystal morning, after days of rain, he did not think of Prang at all, but of the fact that Philip, his son, with wife, had popped up from Worcester for the week-end, and that the whole crew of them, along with Lorinda Pike and Buck Titus, were going to have a "real, old-fashioned, family picnic."

They had all demanded it, even the fashionable Sissy, a woman who, at eighteen, had much concern with tennis-teas, golf, and mysterious, appallingly rapid motor trips with Malcolm Tasbrough (just graduating from high school), or with the Episcopal parson's grandson, Julian Falck (freshman in Amherst). Doremus had scolded that he couldn't go to any blame picnic; it was his job, as editor, to stay home and listen to Bishop Prang's broadcast at two; but they had laughed at him and rumpled his hair and miscalled him until he had promised.... They didn't know it, but he had slyly borrowed a portable radio from his friend, the local R. C. priest, Father Stephen Perefixe, and he was going to hear Prang whether or no.

He was glad they were going to have Lorinda Pike—he was fond of that sardonic saint—and Buck Titus, who was perhaps his closest intimate.

James Buck Titus, who was fifty but looked thirty-eight, straight, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted, long-mustached, swarthy—Buck was the Dan'l Boone type of Old American, or, perhaps, an Indian-fighting cavalry captain, out of Charles King. He had graduated from Williams, with ten weeks in England and ten years in Montana, divided between cattle-raising, prospecting, and a horse-breeding ranch. His father, a richish railroad contractor, had left him the great farm near West Beulah, and Buck had come back home to grow apples, to breed Morgan stallions, and to read Voltaire, Anatole France, Nietzsche, and Dostoyefsky. He served in the war, as a private; detested his officers, refused a commission, and liked the Germans at Cologne. He was a useful polo player, but regarded riding to the hounds as childish. In politics, he did not so much yearn over the wrongs of Labor as feel scornful of the tight-fisted exploiters who denned in office and stinking factory. He was as near to the English country squire as one may find in America. He was a bachelor, with a big mid-Victorian house, well kept by a friendly Negro couple; a tidy place in which he sometimes entertained ladies who were not quite so tidy. He called himself an "agnostic" instead of an "atheist" only because he detested the street-bawling, tract-peddling evangelicism of the professional atheists. He was cynical, he rarely smiled, and he was unwaveringly loyal to all the Jessups. His coming to the picnic made Doremus as blithe as his grandson David.

"Perhaps, even under Fascism, the 'Church clock will stand at ten to three, and there will be honey still for tea,'" Doremus hoped, as he put on his rather dandified country tweeds.

"You ought to get rid of that fellow, Ledue," urged Doremus's son Philip, the lawyer.

The only stain on the preparations for the picnic was the grouchiness of the hired man, Shad Ledue. When he was asked to turn the ice-cream freezer he growled, "Why the heck don't you folks get an electric freezer? He grumbled, most audibly, at the weight of the picnic baskets, and when he was asked to clean up the basement during their absence, he retorted only with a glare of silent fury.

"Oh, I don't know," considered Doremus. "Probably just shiftlessness on my part. But I tell myself I'm doing a social experiment—trying to train him to be as gracious as the average Neanderthal man. Or perhaps I'm scared of him—he's the kind of vindictive peasant that sets fire to barns... . Did you know that he actually reads, Phil?"

"No!"

"Yep. Mostly movie magazines, with nekked ladies and Wild Western stories, but he also reads the papers. Told me he greatly admired Buzz Windrip; says Windrip will certainly be President, and then everybody—by which, I'm afraid, Shad means only himself—will have five thousand a year. Buzz certainly has a bunch of philanthropists for followers."

"Now listen, Dad. You don't understand Senator Windrip. Oh, he's something of a demagogue—he shoots off his mouth a lot about how he'll jack up the income tax and grab the banks, but he won't— that's just molasses for the cockroaches. What he will do, and maybe only he can do it, is to protect us from the murdering, thieving, lying Bolsheviks that would—why, they'd like to stick all of us that are going on this picnic, all the decent clean people that are accustomed to privacy, into hall bedrooms, and make us cook our cabbage soup on a Primus stuck on a bed! Yes, or maybe 'liquidate' us entirely! No sir, Berzelius Windrip is the fellow to balk the dirty sneaking Jew spies that pose as American Liberals!"

"The face is the face of my reasonably competent son, Philip, but the voice is the voice of the Jew-baiter, Julius Streicher," sighed Doremus.

Davy Greenhill and his hero, Buck Titus, wrestled in the hardy pasture grass. Philip and Dr. Fowler Greenhill, Doremus's son-in-law (Phil plump and half bald at thirty-two; Fowler belligerently red-headed and red-mustached) argued about the merits of the autogiro. Doremus lay with his head against a rock, his cap over his eyes, gazing down into the paradise of Beulah Valley—he could not have sworn to it, but he rather thought he saw an angel floating in the radiant upper air above the valley. The women, Emma and Mary Greenhill, Sissy and Philip's wife and Lorinda Pike, were setting out the picnic lunch—a pot of beans with crisp salt pork, fried chicken, potatoes warmed-over with croutons, tea biscuits, crab-apple jelly, salad, raisin pie—on a red-and-white tablecloth spread on a flat rock.

The picnic ground was among a Stonehenge of gray and lichen-painted rocks, fronting a birch grove high up on Mount Terror, on the upland farm of Doremus's cousin, Henry Veeder, a solid, reticent Vermonter of the old days. They looked through a distant mountain gap to the faint mercury of Lake Champlain and, across it, the bulwark of the Adirondacks.

But for the parked motorcars, the scene might have been New England in 1885, and you could see the women in chip hats and tight-bodiced, high-necked frocks with bustles; the men in straw boaters with dangling ribbons and adorned with side-whiskers—Doremus's beard not clipped, but flowing like a bridal veil. When Dr. Greenhill fetched down Cousin Henry Veeder, a bulky yet shy enough pre-Ford farmer in clean, faded overalls, then was Time again unbought, secure, serene.

And the conversation had a comfortable triviality, an affectionate Victorian dullness. However Doremus might fret about "conditions," however skittishly Sissy might long for the presence of her beaux, Julian Falck and Malcolm Tasbrough, there was nothing modern and neurotic, nothing savoring of Freud, Adler, Marx, Bertrand Russell, or any other divinity of the 1930's, when Mother Emma chattered to Mary and Merilla about her rose bushes that had "winter-killed," and the new young maples that the field mice had gnawed, and the difficulty of getting Shad Ledue to bring in enough fireplace wood, and how Shad gorged pork chops and fried potatoes and pie at lunch, which he ate at the Jessups'.

And the View. The women talked about the View as honeymooners once talked at Niagara Falls.

David and Buck Titus were playing ship, now, on a rearing rock—it was the bridge, and David was Captain Popeye, with Buck his bosun; and even Dr. Greenhill, that impetuous crusader who was constantly infuriating the county board of health by reporting the slovenly state of the poor farm and the stench in the county jail, was lazy in the sun and with the greatest of concentration kept an unfortunate little ant running back and forth on a twig. His wife Mary—the golfer, the runner-up in state tennis tournaments, the giver of smart but not too bibulous cocktail parties at the country club, the wearer of smart brown tweeds with a green scarf—seemed to have dropped gracefully back into the domesticity of her mother, and to consider as a very weighty thing a recipe for celery-and- roquefort sandwiches on toasted soda crackers. She was the handsome Older Jessup Girl again, back in the white house with the mansard roof.

And Foolish, lying on his back with his four paws idiotically flopping, was the most pastorally old-fashioned of them all.

The only serious flare of conversation was when Buck Titus snarled to Doremus: "Certainly a lot of Messiahs pottin' at you from the bushes these days—Buzz Windrip and Bishop Prang and Father Coughlin and Dr. Townsend (though he seems to have gone back to Nazareth) and Upton Sinclair and Rev. Frank Buchman and Bernarr Macfadden and Willum Randolph Hearst and Governor Talmadge and Floyd Olson and—Say, I swear the best Messiah in the whole show is this darky, Father Divine. He doesn't just promise he's going to feed the Under-privileged ten years from now—he hands out the fried drumsticks and gizzard right along with the Salvation. How about him for President?"

This young man, freshman in Amherst the past year, grandson of the Episcopal rector and living with the old man because his parents were dead, was in the eyes of Doremus the most nearly tolerable of Sissy's suitors. He was Swede-blond and wiry, with a neat, small face and canny eyes. He called Doremus "sir," and he had, unlike most of the radio-and-motor-hypnotized eighteen-year-olds in the Fort, read a book, and voluntarily—read Thomas Wolfe and William Rollins, John Strachey and Stuart Chase and Ortega. Whether Sissy preferred him to Malcolm Tasbrough, her father did not know. Malcolm was taller and thicker than Julian, and he drove his own streamline De Soto, while Julian could only borrow his grandfather's shocking old flivver.

Out of nowhere appeared Julian Falck.

Sissy and Julian bickered amiably about Alice Aylot's skill in backgammon, and Foolish scratched himself in the sun.

But Doremus was not being pastoral. He was being anxious and scientific. While the others jeered, "When does Dad take his audition?" and "What's he learning to be—a crooner or a hockey-announcer?" Doremus was adjusting the doubtful portable radio. Once he thought he was going to be with them in the Home Sweet Home atmosphere, for he tuned in on a program of old songs, and all of them, including Cousin Henry Veeder, who had a hidden passion for fiddlers and barn dances and parlor organs, hummed "Gaily the Troubadour" and "Maid of Athens" and "Darling Nelly Gray." But when the announcer informed them that these ditties were being sponsored by Toily Oily, the Natural Home Cathartic, and that they were being rendered by a sextette of young males horribly called "The Smoothies," Doremus abruptly shut them off.

"Why, what's the matter, Dad?" cried Sissy.

"'Smoothies'! God! This country deserves what it's going to get!" snapped Doremus. "Maybe we need a Buzz Windrip!"

The moment, then—it should have been announced by cathedral chimes—of the weekly address of Bishop Paul Peter Prang.

Coming from an airless closet, smelling of sacerdotal woolen union suits, in Persepolis, Indiana, it leapt to the farthest stars; it circled the world at 186,000 miles a second—a million miles while you stopped to scratch. It crashed into the cabin of a whaler on a dark polar sea; into an office, paneled with linen-fold oak looted from a Nottinghamshire castle, on the sixty-seventh story of a building on Wall Street; into the foreign office in Tokio; into the rocky hollow below the shining birches upon Mount Terror, in Vermont.

Bishop Prang spoke, as he usually did, with a grave kindliness, a virile resonance, which made his self, magically coming to them on the unseen aerial pathway, at once dominating and touched with charm; and whatever his purposes might be, his words were on the side of the Angels:

"My friends of the radio audience, I shall have but six more weekly petitions to make you before the national conventions, which will decide the fate of this distraught nation, and the time has come now to act—to act! Enough of words! Let me put together certain separated phrases out of the sixth chapter of Jeremiah, which seem to have been prophetically written for this hour of desperate crisis in America:

"'Oh ye children of Benjamin, gather yourselves together to flee out of the midst of Jerusalem.... Prepare ye war... arise and let us go up at noon. Woe unto us! for the day goeth away, for the shadows of the evening are stretched out. Arise, and let us go by night and let us destroy her palaces. ... I am full of the fury of the Lord; I am weary with holding it in; I will pour it out upon the children abroad, and upon the assembly of young men together; for even the husband with the wife shall be taken, the aged with him that is full of days.... I will stretch out my hand upon the inhabitants of this land, saith the Lord. For from the least of them even unto the greatest, every one is given to covetousness; and from the prophet even unto the priest, every one dealeth falsely... saying Peace, Peace, when there is no Peace!'

"So spake the Book, of old.... But it was spoken also to America, of 1936!

"There is no Peace! For more than a year now, the League of Forgotten Men has warned the politicians, the whole government, that we are sick unto death of being the Dispossessed—and that, at last, we are more than fifty million strong; no whimpering horde, but with the will, the voices, the votes to enforce our sovereignty! We have in no uncertain way informed every politician that we demand—that we demand—certain measures, and that we will brook no delay. Again and again we have demanded that both the control of credit and the power to issue money be unqualifiedly taken away from the private banks; that the soldiers not only receive the bonus they with their blood and anguish so richly earned in '17 and '18, but that the amount agreed upon be now doubled; that all swollen incomes be severely limited and inheritances cut to such small sums as may support the heirs only in youth and in old age; that labor and farmers' unions be not merely recognized as instruments for joint bargaining but be made, like the syndicates in Italy, official parts of the government, representing the toilers; and that International Jewish Finance and, equally, International Jewish Communism and Anarchism and Atheism be, with all the stern solemnity and rigid inflexibility this great nation can show, barred from all activity. Those of you who have listened to me before will understand that I—or rather that the League of Forgotten Men—has no quarrel with individual Jews; that we are proud to have Rabbis among our directors; but those subversive international organizations which, unfortunately, are so largely Jewish, must be driven with whips and scorpions from off the face of the earth.

"These demands we have made, and how long now, O Lord, how long, have the politicians and the smirking representatives of Big Business pretended to listen, to obey? 'Yes—yes—my masters of the League of Forgotten Men—yes, we understand—just give us time!'

"There is no more time! Their time is over and all their unholy power!

"The conservative Senators—the United States Chamber of Commerce— the giant bankers—the monarchs of steel and motors and electricity and coal—the brokers and the holding-companies—they are all of them like the Bourbon kings, of whom it was said that 'they forgot nothing and they learned nothing.'

"But they died upon the guillotine!

"Perhaps we can be more merciful to our Bourbons. Perhaps— perhaps—we can save them from the guillotine—the gallows—the swift firing-squad. Perhaps we shall, in our new régime, under our new Constitution, with our 'New Deal' that really will be a New Deal and not an arrogant experiment—perhaps we shall merely make these big bugs of finance and politics sit on hard chairs, in dingy offices, toiling unending hours with pen and typewriter as so many white-collar slaves for so many years have toiled for them!

"It is, as Senator Berzelius Windrip puts it, 'the zero hour,' now, this second. We have stopped bombarding the heedless ears of these false masters. We're 'going over the top.' At last, after months and months of taking counsel together, the directors of the League of Forgotten Men, and I myself, announce that in the coming Democratic national convention we shall, without one smallest reservation—"

"Listen! Listen! History being made!" Doremus cried at his heedless family.

"—use the tremendous strength of the millions of League members to secure the Democratic presidential nomination for Senator— Berzelius—Windrip—which means, flatly, that he will be elected— and that we of the League shall elect him—as President of these United States!

"His program and that of the League do not in all details agree. But he has implicitly pledged himself to take our advice, and, at least until election, we shall back him, absolutely—with our money, with our loyalty, with our votes... with our prayers. And may the Lord guide him and us across the desert of iniquitous politics and swinishly grasping finance into the golden glory of the Promised Land! God bless you!"

Mrs. Jessup said cheerily, "Why, Dormouse, that bishop isn't a Fascist at all—he's a regular Red Radical. But does this announcement of his mean anything, really?"

Oh, well, Doremus reflected, he had lived with Emma for thirty-four years, and not oftener than once or twice a year had he wanted to murder her. Blandly he said, "Why, nothing much except that in a couple of years now, on the ground of protecting us, the Buzz Windrip dictatorship will be regimenting everything, from where we may pray to what detective stories we may read."

"Sure he will! Sometimes I'm tempted to turn Communist! Funny—me with my fat-headed old Hudson-River-Valley Dutch ancestors!" marveled Julian Falck.

"Fine idea! Out of the frying pan of Windrip and Hitler into the fire of the New York Daily Worker and Stalin and automatics! And the Five-Year Plan—I suppose they'd tell me that it's been decided by the Commissar that each of my mares is to bear six colts a year now!" snorted Buck Titus; while Dr. Fowler Greenhill jeered:

"Aw, shoot, Dad—and you too, Julian, you young paranoiac—you're monomaniacs! Dictatorship? Better come into the office and let me examine your heads! Why, America's the only free nation on earth. Besides! Country's too big for a revolution. No, no! Couldn't happen here!"

CHAPTER VI

I'D rather follow a wild-eyed anarchist like Em Goldman, if they'd bring more johnnycake and beans and spuds into the humble cabin of the Common Man, than a twenty-four-carat, college-graduate, ex-cabinet-member statesman that was just interested in our turning out more limousines. Call me a socialist or any blame thing you want to, as long as you grab hold of the other end of the cross-cut saw with me and help slash the big logs of Poverty and Intolerance to pieces.

Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip.

HIS family—at least his wife and the cook, Mrs. Candy, and Sissy and Mary, Mrs. Fowler Greenhill—believed that Doremus was of fickle health; that any cold would surely turn into pneumonia; that he must wear his rubbers, and eat his porridge, and smoke fewer cigarettes, and never "overdo." He raged at them; he knew that though he did get staggeringly tired after a crisis in the office, a night's sleep made him a little dynamo again, and he could "turn out copy" faster than his spryest young reporter.

He concealed his dissipations from them like any small boy from his elders; lied unscrupulously about how many cigarettes he smoked; kept concealed a flask of Bourbon from which he regularly had one nip, only one, before he padded to bed; and when he had promised to go to sleep early, he turned off his light till he was sure that Emma was slumbering, then turned it on and happily read till two, curled under the well-loved hand-woven blankets from a loom up on Mount Terror; his legs twitching like a dreaming setter's what time the Chief Inspector of the C.I.D., alone and unarmed, walked into the counterfeiters' hideout. And once a month or so he sneaked down to the kitchen at three in the morning and made himself coffee and washed up everything so that Emma and Mrs. Candy would never know.... He thought they never knew!

These small deceptions gave him the ripest satisfaction in a life otherwise devoted to public service, to trying to make Shad Ledue edge-up the flower beds, to feverishly writing editorials that would excite 3 per cent of his readers from breakfast time till noon and by 6 P.M. be eternally forgotten.

Sometimes when Emma came to loaf beside him in bed on a Sunday morning and put her comfortable arm about his thin shoulder-blades, she was sick with the realization that he was growing older and more frail. His shoulders, she thought, were pathetic as those of an anemic baby.... That sadness of hers Doremus never guessed.

The wise Emma was happy when he was snappish before breakfast. It meant that he was energetic and popping with satisfactory ideas.

Even just before the paper went to press, even when Shad Ledue took off two hours and charged an item of two dollars to have the lawnmower sharpened, instead of filing it himself, even when Sissy and her gang played the piano downstairs till two on nights when he did not want to lie awake, Doremus was never irritable—except, usually, between arising and the first life-saving cup of coffee.

After Bishop Prang had presented the crown to Senator Windrip, as the summer hobbled nervously toward the national political conventions, Emma was disturbed. For Doremus was silent before breakfast, and he had rheumy eyes, as though he was worried, as though he had slept badly. Never was he cranky. She missed hearing him croaking, "Isn't that confounded idiot, Mrs. Candy, ever going to bring in the coffee? I suppose she's sitting there reading her Testament! And will you be so kind as to tell me, my good woman, why Sissy never gets up for breakfast, even after the rare nights when she goes to bed at 1 A.M.? And—and will you look out at that walk! Covered with dead blossoms. That swine Shad hasn't swept it for a week. I swear, I am going to fire him, and right away, this morning!"

Emma would have been happy to hear these familiar animal sounds, and to cluck in answer, "Oh, why, that's terrible! I'll go tell Mrs. Candy to hustle in the coffee right away!"

But he sat unspeaking, pale, opening his Daily Informer as though he were afraid to see what news had come in since he had left the office at ten.

He, who understood himself abnormally well, knew that far from being a left-wing radical, he was at most a mild, rather indolent and somewhat sentimental Liberal, who disliked pomposity, the heavy humor of public men, and the itch for notoriety which made popular preachers and eloquent educators and amateur play-producers and rich lady reformers and rich lady sportswomen and almost every brand of rich lady come preeningly in to see newspaper editors, with photographs under their arms, and on their faces the simper of fake humility. But for all cruelty and intolerance, and for the contempt of the fortunate for the unfortunate, he had not mere dislike but testy hatred.

When Doremus, back in the 1920's, had advocated the recognition of Russia, Fort Beulah had fretted that he was turning out-and-out Communist.

He had alarmed all his fellow editors in northern New England by asserting the innocence of Tom Mooney, questioning the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti, condemning our intrusion in Haiti and Nicaragua, advocating an increased income tax, writing, in the 1932 campaign, a friendly account of the Socialist candidate, Norman Thomas (and afterwards, to tell the truth, voting for Franklin Roosevelt), and stirring up a little local and ineffective hell regarding the serfdom of the Southern sharecroppers and the California fruit-pickers. He even suggested editorially that when Russia had her factories and railroads and giant farms really going—say, in 1945—she might conceivably be the pleasantest country in the world for the (mythical!) Average Man. When he wrote that editorial, after a lunch at which he had been irritated by the smug croaking of Frank Tasbrough and R. C. Crowley, he really did get into trouble. He got named Bolshevik, and in two days his paper lost a hundred and fifty out of its five thousand circulation.

Yet he was as little of a Bolshevik as Herbert Hoover.

He was, and he knew it, a small-town bourgeois Intellectual. Russia forbade everything that made his toil worth enduring: privacy, the right to think and to criticize as he freakishly pleased. To have his mind policed by peasants in uniform—rather than that he would live in an Alaska cabin, with beans and a hundred books and a new pair of pants every three years.

Once, on a motor trip with Emma, he stopped in at a summer camp of Communists. Most of them were City College Jews or neat Bronx dentists, spectacled, and smooth-shaven except for foppish small mustaches. They were hot to welcome these New England peasants and to explain the Marxian gospel (on which, however, they furiously differed). Over macaroni and cheese in an unpainted dining shack, they longed for the black bread of Moscow. Later, Doremus chuckled to find how much they resembled the Y.M.C.A. campers twenty miles down the highway—equally Puritanical, hortatory, and futile, and equally given to silly games with rubber balls.

Once only had he been dangerously active. He had supported the strike for union recognition against the quarry company of Francis Tasbrough. Men whom Doremus had known for years, solid cits like Superintendent of Schools Emil Staubmeyer, and Charley Betts of the furniture store, had muttered about "riding him out of town on a rail." Tasbrough reviled him—even now, eight years later. After all this, the strike had been lost, and the strike-leader, an avowed Communist named Karl Pascal, had gone to prison for "inciting to violence." When Pascal, best of mechanics, came out, he went to work in a littered little Fort Beulah garage owned by a friendly, loquacious, belligerent Polish Socialist named John Pollikop.

All day long Pascal and Pollikop yelpingly raided each other's trenches in the battle between Social Democracy and Communism, and Doremus often dropped in to stir them up. That was hard for Tasbrough, Staubmeyer, Banker Crowley, and Lawyer Kitterick to bear.

If Doremus had not come from three generations of debt-paying Vermonters, he would by now have been a penniless wandering printer... and possibly less detached about the Sorrows of the Dispossessed.

The conservative Emma complained: "How you can tease people this way, pretending you really like greasy mechanics like this Pascal (and I suspect you even have a sneaking fondness for Shad Ledue!) when you could just associate with decent, prosperous people like Frank—it's beyond me! What they must think of you, sometimes! They don't understand that you're really not a Socialist one bit, but really a nice, kind-hearted, responsible man. Oh, I ought to smack you, Dormouse!"

Not that he liked being called "Dormouse." But then, no one did so except Emma and, in rare slips of the tongue, Buck Titus. So it was endurable.

#hellsitesonlybookclub #bookblr #It Can't Happen Here #sinclair lewis

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vaultify-a · 1 year ago

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roster;

effie trinket, the hunger games

peeta mellark, the hunger games

rue, the hunger games

dalina mccure/the lone wanderer, fallout 3

sarah lyons, fallout 3

craig boone, fallout new vegas

carl grimes, the walking dead

nick clark, fear the walking dead

troy otto, fear the walking dead *foil/exclusive to joey

andrea harrison, the walking dead [solely comic based]

clarke griffin, the 100

bellamy blake, the 100

leksa kom trigedakru, the 100

raven reyes, the 100

leon kennedy, resident evil

ada wong, resident evil

tris prior, divergent

tobius "four" eaton, divergent

ellie williams, the last of us

joel miller, the last of us

abby anderson, the last of us

dina, the last of us

theodora ramos/the security captain, far cry new dawn

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disneysooner · 4 years ago

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Disney Jungle Book 1994 Inuyasha AU

Idk, but it came to me in a dream last night, and I can’t let it go.....

Inuyasha - Mowgli

Kagome - Katherine “Kitty” Brydon

Grandpa Higurashi - Colonel Geoffrey Brydon

Kaede - Dr. Julius Plumford

Naraku - Captain William Boone

Miroku - Baloo

Sango - Bagheera

Sesshomaru - Shere Khan

Kouga - King Louie

Shippō - Grey Brother

Other characters include:

Kikyo - Kaa

Kageromaru - Lieutenant John Wilkins

Juromaru - Sergeant Harley

Byakuya - Tabaqui

Magatsuhi - Buldeo

InuTaisho - Nathoo

Some of these roles might not makes sense to some, but these are what came to me. 😂

I’m definitely missing that time when InuDisney was what took over the Inuyasha fandom a few years ago.........

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spine-buster · 4 years ago

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The President Wears Prada (William Nylander) | Chapter 33

A/N: Hope you guys enjoy this one...⛪️

August 7th, 2020

Aberdeen Bloom was nervous as fuck.

It was Game 4, less than 24 hours after giving up a 3-0 lead, and the Leafs were on the brink of elimination. The boys were quiet. Focused. Only had one thing on their mind. They didn’t want to leave the bubble. They wanted to prove everybody wrong – everybody. Their coaches. Their bosses. Their fans. Their haters. The media. Themselves. This was their opportunity to show everybody what they could do.

Aberdeen couldn’t even think about it without trembling. She never in a million years thought hockey would make her feel this way. It didn’t help the love of her life was a major part of it. And it didn’t help that Alec had texted her early this morning.

Looks like the boys might cost you a writing job if they get eliminated early. Not many shenanigans to get up to in, what, ten days? Article might be a bust.

I’ll have 10,000 words written for you as promised was what she texted back. She didn’t want to stroke his ego, play along with his games, or have him think she wasn’t going to produce just because he thought they might leave early. It didn’t matter to her. Even if they did leave early, she could still do it. She knew she could. She knew she had to, because she couldn’t blow this opportunity.

They morning had been anxiety-ridden at best. She hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep, tossing and turning after getting off the phone with William, and then because of the text, she was barely eating breakfast. Apparently, it was noticeable to the boys, because John had come over to her table and brought her a plate stacked fruit. “If we can eat, you can eat,” he said as he set it in front of her. Mitch ended up coming to sit across from her at the table, and John took the other seat. William approached, standing six feet away, and Auston too. They were congregating, which made her even more nervous.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, forking a strawberry and putting it into her mouth reluctantly. “You guys aren’t nervous?” she posed the question to all of them.

John shrugged. “We know what we need to do. We just have to go out there and do it.”

Aberdeen didn’t know how he could be so calm, as the captain of the team. Then again, he was John fucking Tavares, and calm seemed to be his middle name. She nodded her head. “I don’t mean to be a nervous wreck. I’m just not used to playoff hockey, as you can imagine. This is all new. I never knew I could feel this way about a sport.”

That made John laugh a bit. “Not about a sport, but definitely about a book, right?”

She couldn’t help but smile slightly as she forked at a piece of watermelon. “Definitely about a book.”

“How’s the article coming along?” William asked.

Aberdeen almost dropped her fork on her plate. All the guys turned their heads towards him at the same time skeptically, then towards her at the same time, their eyebrows furrowed. Her body felt like it was on fire. She hadn’t told anybody about the article – except William, of course. She assumed Brendan sort-of-kind-of knew since he set her up for it, but she hadn’t said anything to him. William was the only one who knew. Her cheeks flushed red.

“What article?” Mitch asked, turning his head back and forth between the two of them once more.

“Yeah, what article?” Auston asked.

“It uh, it’s—um, it’s a thing for Toronto Life,” Aberdeen stuttered out.

“Toronto Life?!” Mitch repeated excitedly.

“Yeah,” she nodded slowly. “Brendan uh, Brendan put me up for it. It’s, like…an audition. I don’t know.”

“An audition? So like if it’s good they’ll publish it?” Mitch kept asking questions.

“Basically, yeah.”

“Well what’s it about?”

Aberdeen gulped. “Um, life in the bubble.”

The boys looked taken aback for a brief moment. She knew they were trying to hold back the emotion, but she could see it in their eyes. She wondered if they were thinking the worst now. She wondered if Auston was looking at her and thinking that all she wanted to do in this bubble was get a scoop like Steve Simmons. She wondered if Mitch was looking at her and thinking that she was going to write some scathing article about how he was being paid $10.8 million to not show up in the playoffs, like most articles were saying. She prepared for the worst, honestly. She really did. Because she knew these guys had been betrayed before. She knew the media were constantly down their throats. She knew all they wanted was a little reprieve from that. And now, someone they knew, someone they worked with – someone they trusted completely – was writing something about life in the bubble? When she was in the bubble with them?

“Life in the bubble, huh? So, like how we play video games the entire day ‘cause we can’t do anything else in here?” Mitch asked.

Her stomach was in knots. But that follow-up from Mitch was definitely not was she was expecting. Truth be told, she didn’t know what she was expecting – anger, maybe? Caution? Suspicion? – but it definitely wasn’t Mitch saying that. “Something like that,” she said. “I’m trying to, like, capture how hard it is for you guys to be in here. How hard it is to be away from your families. How you guys are…you know, human, and not just hockey players.”

Mitch smiled. “I think it’s gonna be a great article, then.”

“How’d William know?” Auston asked. “How’d he know before any of us?”

William knew he had to think fast. “I saw her writing it the other day when we went out to the gym,” he said. He had approached her on the sidelines that day for a brief minute or two, during a break in his workout, so if anyone was paying attention and saw them, it was an entirely plausible scenario. “She told me what she was writing.”

“Why didn’t you tell any of us?” Auston asked him.

“Because it was Aberdeen’s news to tell, not mine,” William said.

Auston looked towards Aberdeen. “You’re not writing, like, gossip about us, are you?” he asked.

“Auston, what the fuck—” William began.

“Buddy—” Mitch intervened.

“Hey now—” John piped up.

“No no, it’s fine,” she waved the boys off, staring directly at Auston. She knew exactly where Auston was coming from. She knew he trusted her. He admitted so during the phone call when his Covid-19 story became national news. She knew she had to be one hundred percent honest with him if he was going to have no qualms or suspicions about this article. “They want me to. They want me to write about shenanigans. The stereotypical stuff. But I’m not. I refuse to. I wouldn’t…you guys know I wouldn’t do that to you. And I mean…I—I haven’t told them yet that I refuse to pander to that shit, but they’ll know when they get my article.”

Auston’s entire demeanour softened at her words. It was like his entire body relaxed. He knew – he always knew – he just needed the affirmation. But then he realized what that meant. “But then what happens if you don’t get the job because you don’t give them what they want?” he asked.

Aberdeen shrugged. “Then I have keep looking for writing jobs at other magazines.”

Then and there, he realized what was on the line for Aberdeen.

***

As Aberdeen wallowed in her room, she was nervous. As she showered before the game, she was nervous. As she did her hair, she was nervous. As she got dressed, she was nervous. As she opened her door and walked out into the hallway, meeting some of the guys, she was nervous. When she got off the bus and the team went one way while she, Brendan, and Kyle went another, she clutched at her iPad pro. She looked at the boys one last time, catching Willy’s eye, before the disappeared down the hallway, where no doubt a photographer was waiting to get pictures of their outfits before they went into the locker room.

As she sat in the box with Brendan and Kyle, as always, she saw Brendan look her way. “Don’t even think about asking me how it’s gonna go tonight,” she said before he could even open his mouth.

He held his hands up in front of him. “Excuuuuuuse me.”

“I’m so nervous. I barely ate today,” she elaborated.

“Somebody get Aberdeen a Coca Cola,” he called out to no-one in particular. “She’s gonna need the sugar and the caffeine or else she’ll crash by the third period.”

She couldn’t believe how light-hearted he was being. She didn’t know if it was some type of coping mechanism or if it was because he was generally in a good mood. “How can you be so…calm? Such a jokester?”

Brendan shrugged. “If I was doom and gloom all the time, I wouldn’t still be president.”

***

Aberdeen was on the verge of tears.

Cam Atkinson had scored in the first period. Vladislav Gavrikov scored in the second period. Her heart was heavy. Her stomach was in knots. And now, the impossible: she was watching Jason Spezza fighting. The last person who should be fighting. A part of her understood what he was doing, somewhat – trying to fire up the guys – but the other part of her kept asking why the fuck does he have to do this? Where the fuck are they? Why aren’t they playing? WHY AREN’T THEY PLAYING?!

“I can’t believe they’re fucking doing this to him,” she mumbled under her breath through gritted teeth as she watched Jason skate off the ice. Her knuckles were white for how tightly her hands were in fists in front of her mask. Her leg was bouncing uncontrollably. She couldn’t believe what was happening.

“What was that?” Brendan asked, apparently hearing her, his own voice indiscernible but also just…void of any emotion.

She glanced at him quickly before shaking her head. “Nothing.” She looked over at Kyle. She couldn’t tell what he was feeling, either. What was it with these men and being so stoic?

She pressed the palms of her hands together and intertwined her fingers. “God, if you love me…” she began, mumbling into her hands. “If you love me, God, don’t let them go out like this. Not. Like. This.”

***

Boone Jenner scored in the third period. It was 3-0. This was it.

Aberdeen had to come to terms with the fact that they were leaving early. She had to come to terms with the fact that the boys would lose, again. They’d be out of the bubble. She knew that was probably a silver lining, but these guys so desperately just wanted to play hockey and play hockey and win, and for them to crash out like this was just going to be the worst. They’d never hear the end of it. Bee McTavish told her about last year, about how they lost to the Boston Bruins in Game 7 and how hard it was on the boys, particularly Morgan, and how awful the media was to them, and Aberdeen didn’t want to think about what the media would say now. She didn’t want to think about what they’d say about Fred. About Mitch. About Morgan. About John.

About William.

But just as Aberdeen came out of her thoughts, she noticed something weird on the ice. It wasn’t the regular line out there. Sheldon was doing something different. It was…well, it seemed to be the nuclear option. All the top goal scorers were on the ice. William, Mitch, Zach, Auston, and John. Hustling all over the ice. Passing the puck. Shooting at the net.

And then, with just less than four minutes left, William scored.

Aberdeen jumped out of her seat and screamed. The boys celebrated briefly, but they knew more work needed to be done. She looked over at Brendan, who wasn’t blinking as he looked down at the ice. She looked at Kyle, who wasn’t blinking either.

“Please God…please…” she whispered to herself.

Sheldon kept out the nuclear option. They were young. They could do it.

John Tavares scored only forty seconds later.

“Holy fucking shit,” Aberdeen stood up from her seat, saying her words loud enough for Brendan and Kyle to hear. “Holy fucking shit. Holy fucking shit.”

She barely breathed a single breath for the next two and a half minutes. She was standing with her hands over her mouth over her mask and her body was completely still as she watched every move on the ice like a hawk.

William, to Auston, to Zach, who scored to tie it at 3-3.

“HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!!!” she screamed as the boys really celebrated on the ice now. She banged her fists on the counter in front of her as she watched Zach jump on top of William as all the boys on the ice huddled together excitedly. She swore she heard some happy swears from Kyle, and she definitely heard some happy swears from the extra players who were sitting in the seats right below them where the seat covers ended. She barely remembered the period ending.

“They’re gonna fucking do it,” she said to no-one in particular. “They’re gonna fucking do it. They’re gonna make a comeback.”

Everything was a blur as Aberdeen sat back down into her seat. The overtime period. The lines. The minutes. She felt like she was in the twilight zone – some alternate universe where time stood still and nothing else mattered besides hockey. Not even just hockey – nothing else mattered besides this game and what was happening right here, right now. Seven minutes into overtime, Morgan drew a tripping penalty. An enraged Nick Foligno was sent to the penalty box. The puck dropped. It was passed. Marner to Tavares. Tavares to Matthews.

Auston let it rip and scored.

“WHAT!!!!! WHAT!!!!!” Aberdeen screamed louder than she ever had in her life as she jumped up from her seat like a rocket and threw the pen she was holding out into the stands. She began pumping her fist in front of her and pointing out onto the ice. “THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT, BABY! THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!” she shrieked, her jaw somewhere between her face and the floor but her smile taking up her entire face. Then came the excited, can’t-believe-what-I-just-witnessed high pitched uncontrollable laughs. She looked over to Brendan and Kyle. They were stoic. She liked to believe they already freaked out and she missed it.

“Down 3-0 in the third period!” she screamed at them. “Down 3-0 in the third period! Can you believe it?!”

“What are you doing waiting up here? Go down there,” Brendan said, nodding his head towards the exit.

Aberdeen bolted out of the box and rushed towards the locker room as quickly as her feet could take her. Once she got there, she saw the boys filing in, screaming ‘Woooo!’s and ‘Let’s fucking go, baby!’s. William entered the locker room first. He noticed her standing in the room almost immediately and rushed over to her.

She held her breath.

He picked her up and spun her around, causing her to squeal until he set her down. He was wet and sweaty and she could see the droplets of sweat dripping down his face but God if he didn’t look incredible and like the perfect human specimen. “Let’s gooooo!” he screamed once he set her down.

“Let’s gooooo!” she repeated, noticing more of the boys make their way in. Clifford. Spezza. Kerfoot. Barrie. Kasperi. Hyman. Engvall. Rielly. Tavares. Holl. Dermott. Everybody. Everybody. They all came in screaming and did the exact same thing that William did, lifting her up and spinning her around excitedly as they continued to scream and go their stalls and start stripping in front of her. They probably weren’t allowed to do that – they definitely weren’t allowed to do that, be that close together – but it didn’t matter right now. Nobody cared.

“You guys gave me a fucking heart attack!” she yelled at them, clutching her heart as she looked around the room at all of them. She saw a couple of them giggling as they undid their hockey tape and threw it into the garbage.

“Wouldn’t have been a Leafs series without one!” Morgan joked.

Sheldon walked into the room and high-fived Aberdeen. Then Auston walked in and the boys started screaming and yelling all over again. “Let’s fucking goooo, Aberdeen!” he screamed as he picked her up too, one last twirl, before setting her down. “Let’s fucking go, baby!” he screamed to everyone in the room.

It was at that point that Brendan and Kyle walked into the room. Aberdeen composed herself as much as possible as she faded into the background, watching Sheldon give his post-game speech. Everybody looked so happy. So excited.

They could fucking do this.

***

Aberdeen was typing like a furious mad woman in the Notes on her phone. She wanted to write – needed to write all the authentic feelings that were in the air right now as she waited on the bus for everyone. She needed to remember this moment. Every single detail of it. What was said. What was heard. The smiles. The spins. How she was still dizzy.

“Hey Aberdeen! You made it on to TV!” Mitch yelled from the middle of the bus.

Everyone’s head popped up, and she watched as all the guys already on the bus took off their headphones. “What?!” she shrieked.

“They caught you celebrating in the box!” he said, turning his phone and showing her the video.

Aberdeen heard all of the boys get up out of their seats and crowd behind her to watch the video. She noticed the Sportsnet logo on the bottom of screen first and foremost, then listened as she heard the announcers describing the scene, which they replayed in slow fucking motion. “I think that young lady is indicative of most of Leafs Nation right now!” she heard Jim Hughson’s voice as the video showed her jumping up from her seat and throwing her pen. The boys behind her were howling as they watched, and when she began pumping her fist in front of her, they laughed some more. Slightly embarrassed, Aberdeen buried her head in her hands and shook her head. “It’s always me! Why is it always me that gets caught doing these things?!”

“The camera loves you, Aberdeen!” Mitch giggled.

“It happens to all the wives and girlfriends at some point,” Morgan said as most of the guys went back to their seats on the bus.

“But I’m not a wife. Or a girlfriend!”

She could tell Morgan was smiling behind his mask. “Not yet,” he mumbled to himself, shrugging.

Aberdeen turned red. She sat back down in her seat and continued typing away on her phone furiously, making sure nobody saw her skin hue.

***

It was only when everybody got back to the hotel when Aberdeen had to stop typing, but by then, she was sure she’d gotten every feeling. Everybody was still buzzed as they rode two at a time in the elevator up to their floor, and she could still feel the energy even when she was bottled up in her room – like everybody else – and it was eerily silent after just having been so loud.

She had just finished changing into her pajamas when she heard her phone buzz. She knew it was William texting, so she grabbed her phone immediately, ready for his request to FaceTime.

open ur door really slowly so it doesn’t make any noise

Her eyes bulged out of her head. She set her phone down and rushed over to her door, not bothering to look out the peephole, but doing exactly what she was told. She opened it slowly, carefully, making sure not to make a peep. She looked out into the hallway, down to the other wing, and saw William’s head popping out of his own room. He rushed out, closing the door quietly before rushing over to her wing.

“William,” she whispered. Her heart was beating out of her chest. He was not allowed to do this. He was not allowed to do this. She watched as he made his way over. “William what are you—”

She was silenced by his slipping past her and into her room, putting his hand over hers to shut the door slowly so it didn’t make a clicking sound. When it was closed, she tried one more time. “Willy—”

Her attempt was futile. He crashed his lips against hers, wrapping his arms around her as he squeezed her against his body, so much so that he could lift her up in his arms and she could wrap her legs around his torso. He stuck his tongue down her throat. She moaned out at the sensation before realizing that he was walking them into her bathroom – her bathroom that faced the open area in front of the elevators, and not facing or sharing a wall with her room neighbour. He kicked the door closed with his foot before setting her down on the marble vanity sink, her legs still wrapped around his body keeping him close.

“Take this off,” he mumbled as he tugged violently at her pajama shirt, almost ripping it as she shoved her off her body and threw it across the bathroom. She pulled on his t-shirt too, throwing it in the same direction as they crashed their lips against each other’s again.

“We’re not supposed to be doing this,” she whispered out after he bit down on her bottom lip and pulled it away from her. “You’re not supposed to be in my room. We’re breaking the rules.”

“Isn’t that half the fun?” he quipped, a small smirk on his face. Aberdeen could feel her body get hot – hotter than it already was. This was so wrong. So wrong. He wasn’t supposed to be in her room. They weren’t supposed to be touching. They weren’t supposed to be kissing. They weren’t supposed to be doing any of it, yet here Aberdeen was, her body heating up and her core getting even hotter. She scratched her nails down William’s broad and toned chest as he kissed a trail down her neck and to her breasts, sucking and biting down at her nipples gently, causing her to gasp out.

He immediately put his hand over her mouth. Her eyes went wide. He looked up at her from where he was at her breasts. “You can’t be too loud or else we’ll get caught.”

Oh my fucking God. Now she really felt her body light up like a fire. She whimpered slightly. “But Willy—” she tried to mumble against his hand.

“Shhhh…” he cooed. “Can you be quiet, Aberdeen? Can you be quiet while I fuck you?” He was waiting for an answer. She felt a shiver run up her spine. She nodded her head. “That’s my girl.”

William continued paying attention to her breasts before kissing his way back up to her lips and sticking his tongue down her throat again. Aberdeen ran her fingers through his hair and tugged on it slightly before scratching down his back and pulling down his trackpants and underwear. He did the same to her, letting his fingers play with the wet folds of her pussy until he heard whimpers from her again. “Quiiiiiet, Aberdeen,” he cooed once more, bringing his hand that was just playing with her pussy up to her lips.

She grabbed his hand in both her hands and sucked his fingers into her mouth. “I’m not going to be able to,” she whispered, shaking her head.

William pulled her off the marble vanity, grabbing her hips and spinning her around so her back was against his chest. They were able to see each other through the mirror. Aberdeen watched as William’s hand snaked around her body and down to her hot core again. “You’re going to have to be quiet or we’ll get caught,” he whispered huskily in her ear as he played with her core again. Her legs were shaking at the feeling. She gripped on to the vanity.

“Fuck me raw, Willy,” she begged. She had her own tricks up her sleeve. If William was going to play this game, she was going to play hers. She watched his reaction in the mirror and could see his pupils dilate. “I started birth control. It’s okay.”

“You what?”

“I started birth control a month ago. It was supposed to be a surprise but—”

“—Aberdeen—”

“—Please Willy,” she begged, her voice breathless. She could feel his hard cock against her body and was so desperate for it, she didn’t care how wrong this was. “Fuck me raw. Fuck. Me. Raw.”

He bent her over the vanity. She stuck her ass out and kept her eyes on him through the mirror, watching as he positioned himself at her entrance, sliding into her easily. She cried out at the sensation, feeling his hand almost automatically cover her mouth to silence her. When he began moving in and out of her, the sound of their flesh smacking together, she didn’t know if she should close her eyes to revel in the feeling of his slick, hard cock filling her up, or if she should keep her eyes open to watch him fucking her hard and fast through the mirror. She chose the latter. She and William had had many sexual escapades before (sexcapades, if you will), but nothing had been as hot or as raw or as dangerous as this was. The exhilaration of doing a completely banned act – banned since they figured out they were working together, even more so banned now – was giving her the ultimate rush.

His hand was still over her mouth as she arched her back and William pulled her back against his chest. She could feel herself getting close, and when William’s other hand snaked around once more to play with her clit, she tried to cry out but couldn’t. “Are you gonna be quiet when I make you cum?”

She shook her head. “I won’t. I can’t.”

He thrusted into her harder, trying to make a point. She whimpered again and his hand somehow tightened around her mouth. “Are you gonna be quiet?” he asked again. She looked at him through the mirror, seeing the absolute fire in his eyes. She knew what he was looking for. She knew he would tease her and tease her and tease her until she agreed to what he was asking. She nodded slowly. He smiled. “Good.”

He quickened his pace, harder and faster and rougher than before, and Aberdeen continued to watch them fucking through the mirror until she could feel closer and closer to her sweet release. Eventually, her legs began to shake, and she could feel an intense orgasm rush through every single inch of her body. She tried to stay as quiet as possible, but the feeling was too much, and her whimpers escaped her, though they were much quieter than the usual vocal performances she usually gave when she and William had sex, and though William still had his hand over her mouth. At the sound of her stifled whimpers she could feel William’s hot cum spill inside her. The feeling was hot and raw and simultaneously everything she imagined it would be and feel like but also completely new and unlike anything she could have ever expected. His own small grunts escaped his mouth as he felt himself empty inside of her, revelling in the feeling of filling her completely. He eventually let go of her mouth, and her body bent over against the marble vanity again, unable to stand up straight due to the long, intense orgasm. He tried to catch his breath as he continued to watch her body shake, the last of her orgasm rushing through her. He could see her chest rising and falling from her trying to catch her breath.

It was a few minutes before Aberdeen and William could regain their breaths. He slipped out of her slowly, and she whimpered again at the loss of him, still bent over the vanity, though she could still feel a slickness between her thighs. She felt his body bend too, his chest on her back, and felt him kiss her shoulders delicately. She craned her neck to get a look at him. “I better get a writing job soon. I don’t think we’re gonna be able to hold it back for much longer,” she whispered.

William giggled – a low, rumbly giggle from his chest as he smiled and continued placing kisses on her shoulder. “I agree,” he whispered back. “We gotta make sure you get that Toronto Life job.”

She bit her lip. “Did it feel good for you?”

He nodded. “Of course. What about for you? Did it feel different?”

“It felt fucking amazing,” she nodded. “It…it did feel different. I…you’re the first one I’ve ever let fuck me raw,” she admitted.

William nodded in understanding. He knew what she was really saying – that this was, at least physically, the ultimate form of trust, and he was the only one in her life, ever, who she trusted that much. “We can keep doing whatever you’re more comfortable with,” he said.

“I liked this. I don’t know if I’ll be able to go back,” she giggled slightly.

William smiled. He pulled her back upright and, at that point, she could stand on her own again. She spun around so she was facing him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling him down to kiss him. They stood in her bathroom kissing for a while until William pulled away slightly. “I love you so much,” he mumbled.

“I love you too.”

“Sorry I made you break the rules…yet again,” he smiled mischievously.

Aberdeen winked. “Isn’t that half the fun?”

164 notes · View notes

ncisfranchise-source · 3 years ago

Text

AS JANE AND THE TEAM INVESTIGATE AN ANTI-CAPITALIST PROTESTOR’S MURDER, THEY’RE CAUGHT IN A WAR BETWEEN ECO-ACTIVISTS AND A TECH BILLIONAIRE FIGHTING OVER A PIECE OF LAND, ON “NCIS: HAWAI`I,” MONDAY, NOV. 29

“Legacy” – When an anti-capitalist protestor is murdered, Jane and the team investigate and find themselves caught in a war between eco-activists and a tech billionaire fighting over a piece of land. Also, Jane and Captain Joe (Enver Gjokaj) go on a date, on the CBS Original series NCIS: HAWAI`I, Monday, Nov. 29 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network, and available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+.

REGULAR CAST:

Vanessa Lachey

(Special Agent in Charge Jane Tennant)

Alex Tarrant

(Kai Holman)

Noah Mills

(Jesse Boone)

Yasmine Al-Bustami

(Lucy Tara)

Jason Antoon

(Ernie Malik)

Tori Anderson

(Kate Whistler)

Kian Talan

(Alex Tennant)

GUEST CAST:

Enver Gjokaj

(Captain Joe Milius)

Seana Kofoed

(Carla Chase)

Kordell Kekoa

(Kahu)

Keoni Maiwela

(Local #1)

Pualani Avaeoru

(Local #2)

Jason Manuel Olazabal

(Jake Tillman)

Rob Benedict

(Damian Davenport)

Jenna Leigh Green

Jordan Belfi

Patrick Cage II

Tumua Tuinei

(Morgan Davenport)

(Alan Shipley)

(Mike Williams)

(Wilbert Kalili)

WRITTEN BY: Yalun Tu

DIRECTED BY: Lisa Demaine

#ncis hawaii #press release

7 notes · View notes

arcticfox007 · 4 years ago

Text

The Wych Elm and the Cemetery

Happy Christmas @aibari! I’m you’re secret santa and I hope you enjoy your gift!

Thanks to @destielsecretsanta2020 for putting all of this together :)

Wishlist fulfilled: Angst with a Happy Ending, Case Fic, Weird Small Towns (well city in this case), Weird Angel Lore, Hand holding, and Americana (I tried to work in as much as I could) – if you want specific info on all of the Americana I tied in, check out my endnotes on AO3 😊 Also, @aibari I’m happy to list you as the giftee on AO3 if you have a name over there.

The is roughly set during early Season 12, but I’m not married to canon or anything.

***

Dean wasn’t easily impressed these days, but even he had to admit that the tree growing out of the grave was unlike anything he’d come across before. The historic cemetery in the middle of Missouri had its fair share of trees, but they had come here for this one. Cas stood next to him looking like he was attempting to interrogate the tree with his mind. For a moment Dean was distracted by the angel, smiling a bit at the memory of the time Cas had insisted on interrogating a cat. Luckily, Cas had gotten better at blending in, so at least he wasn’t actively asking the tree questions. There was the sound of someone clearing their throat to Dean’s other side and Dean directed his attention back to the cemetery’s caretaker, Mrs. Paige.

“I’m not sure why the FBI would be interested in something like this.” The older woman sniffed and looked at both Cas and Dean suspiciously. Dean turned on the charm and gave her a warm smile.

“Unfortunately, we aren’t at liberty to discuss the details of the case, but we’d appreciate anything you can tell us about this tree Mrs. Paige, or the woman who was killed, Louisa Abbot.”

We’d also like any information you might have on the person who was buried here,” Castiel interrupted. “Most of the marker seems to be missing, perhaps destroyed by the sudden growth of this tree.”

“Well, I can certainly get you the information on who was buried here, this was one of our more famous gravesites. The man buried here died in the early 1800s, he is one of two Revolutionary War veterans laid to rest in the cemetery, his name was William Abbot. I believe he held the rank of Captain. The Boone Historical Society may have more information about him, but he is one of the earliest burials in the cemetery and a lot of those records have been lost over the years.” Mrs. Paige chewed on her lower lip for a moment, staring along with Dean at the tree once again. “The tree will have to be removed to restore Captain Abbot’s grave.”

“Was Captain Abbot an ancestor of the victim?” Cas’ question caught Dean off guard. There was something strangely mesmerizing about the massive twisting trunk rising out of the ground exactly where the remains of Captain Abbot would have been. Dean registered that Cas and the caretaker were continuing to talk, but Dean stepped away to examine the tree more carefully. It’s roots, on the surface at least, didn’t seem to spread out much. Rather they seemed to go straight down into the Earth. Its trunk was thick enough to have been there for hundreds of years despite having only appeared a few days ago. The tree itself was knotted in appearance, with ugly, twisted branches shooting out in all directions. For some reason it occurred to Dean that the tree looked like it was screaming in pain. Dean jumped when he suddenly felt Cas’ hand on his shoulder.

“Dean. Are you listening?” Dean pulled his eyes away from the tree and turned towards Cas who continued to keep his hand on Dean’s shoulder.

“Ah, no, sorry. This,” Dean waved vaguely at the impressive scene before them, “is kind of distracting.” Cas nodded seriously. Dean noticed that the caretaker had left, but was distracted again by Cas pulling his hand back. They always touched a bit longer than was probably normal, but Dean still regretted the loss of the warmth on his shoulder.

“Mrs. Paige said that the victim may have been a descendant of Captain Abbot, but she wasn’t sure. She suggested the Historical Society again, if we needed further information. She did say that she knew Louisa Abbot when she was a teenager. She was one of several teenagers she used to call the police on for breaking into the cemetery after hours to party. Mrs. Paige said she hadn’t really seen her in more recent years.

“Is there any way to tell if the good Captain is still here?” Dean waved towards the roots of the tree. Cas shook his head. “Ah well, I’d be surprised if they were still here. I guess we better find out what exactly Louisa Abbot was into.” They started walking back towards the car.

“I agree. I’d also like more information on the tree. I know it’s a type of elm, but I’m not sure of the significance, if there is any.”

“Call Sam and get him to work on it.” Cas let out an exasperated huff in response to Dean’s delegation of research to his brother.

“Dean. The entire reason we are here without Sam is so he can rest. He needs to sleep to get over the flu, especially since he refused to let me heal him. I am more than capable of finding the information, perhaps while you visit the historical society.”

“Alright. You want me to drop you off at the library?”

“That would be acceptable.” Cas paused to look out over the cemetery again before opening the passenger side door of the Impala. Dean noticed the angel’s hesitation.

“Everything okay man?” Castiel turned towards Dean upon hearing his words and Dean notices the sadness that ghosts across the angel’s face. “Seriously, Cas, what’s going on with you? You seem more, I dunno, out of it than usual.”

“I – this place is a lot like the cemetery where Mary was originally buried. I don’t like the memory of you leaving to die.” Cas looks away abruptly and climbs into the passenger seat. Dean is at a loss for words, so he doesn’t say anything at all. He drops Cas off at the library with all the things left unsaid hanging between them.

***

It’s off season for the small college town, most of the students having gone home for winter break, so the hunters end up with better than normal accommodations. Dean is more than happy to discover a decent grill-themed restaurant practically in the parking lot of their hotel, and Cas is happy to wait until his companion is content with food before telling him what he’d found during his time in the library. Dean talks ideally about the pie store the server had told him about, wondering if they’ll have time to check it out before they leave. Cas lets Dean talk, he finds himself still grateful that he can have these moments, he truly thought he was going to lose him in the attempt to destroy Amara.

Ever since Castiel’s brief time as a human he’s found that the emotions he’d been slowly acquiring over the years have amplified at a rate that he has had difficulty adjusting to. He’d hoped at the beginning that regaining his grace would have given him back some of the control that had spiraled away from him, but he can’t help but dwell on almost losing Dean.

When they reach their room, Dean opts to take a shower before swapping case notes so Cas tries to take that time to compose himself. When given moments away from Dean, where there is a chance for quiet, the angel forces himself to let the feelings he has for the infuriating man wash over him. He lets himself feel the pain at having to let him go up against Amara alone. He lets himself feel the overwhelming joy at seeing him alive once again. He lets himself feel how much he’s fallen in love with the beautiful human being. He recalls talking to Anna at the beginning of what would become his fall, her telling him it only gets worse. He has no doubt now that she wasn’t just referring to his struggle with doubt. An angel that can feel things akin to a human can easily become overwhelmed. They were not built for these sensations, and so, every time Castiel lets go to indulge in the wash of his emotions he pulls on his grace and works to reign them in one at a time. By the time Dean emerges from the shower Castiel has regained some semblance of stoicism.

“So, this lady at the historical society was great. She apparently teaches genealogy classes for free to the public or something, so she was able to pull up the victim’s ancestry pretty fast. Captain Abbot was her ancestor all right, so at least we have that connection. Couldn’t find much out about the family besides that, so we should talk to Louisa’s next of kin tomorrow. I think the police report said she had a sister locally.” Castiel agrees to the plan and pulls out some information he had printed at the library.

“The tree is called a ‘Wych Elm’ and is a common wood used to build coffins, which may explain it’s presence. It’s possible, if Captain Abbot’s coffin was made from this wood, that whatever spell was cast had the side effect of growing a new tree from the wood.” Dean raises his eyebrows skeptically when Cas shares this information.

“It’s called a witch elm Cas; do you really think it’s there because of the coffin wood?” Castiel rolls his eyes at his companion.

“W-Y-C-H Dean, not witch. It means pliable, it’s named for the characteristic of the wood. But no, to answer your question. I doubt it has anything to do with the coffin wood. It’s not a tree common to this area.” Dean waves his hand to indicate Castiel should continue. “You are not the only one to mistake the name of the tree for something else. More recent lore does associate the tree with actual witches as many of them seem to like these trees as ritualistic sites. The rest of the lore associates them with melancholy and death, especially because the trees are known for unexpectedly dropping branches and injuring the unsuspecting people standing below them.”

“Yeah, okay. Does that mean that Louisa was some sort of witch, and grew the tree there on purpose?” Cas thinks about Dean’s suggestion for a few moments.

“Possibly. The other thing these trees are known for is guarding the entrance to Hades, so it may also be a result of an attempt to raise the dead. I cannot be certain as this seems unlike any other necromantic ritual I’ve heard of. I am also uncertain at to the motivation of raising someone who died over two centuries ago, as the more recent dead are usually preferrable to necromancers.”

“Alright, well there’s not much more we can do tonight.” Castiel nods and watches Dean dig through his bag. Dean hesitates for a moment and Castiel begins to wonder if he forgot something at the bunker. Dean shakes his head and pulls a bundle out of his bag, tossing it to Castiel.

“Here, I forgot I brought this for you.” Dean looks expectantly at the angel as Cas looks at the material in his hands.

“Clothing? Dean, I have no need to change clothes.” Castiel’s confusion is evident on his face. Dean sighs rubs the back of his neck.

“I know man. Just try though, you’re more human-like than before with Heaven losing power. I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I noticed that you eat more often, and even sleep sometimes. I think you’ll actually appreciate relaxing in something that isn’t a suit and trench coat.” Cas looks at the clothing in his hands, dismayed that Dean has seen the weakening of his connection to Heaven. He hadn’t wanted Dean to think him less capable but at the same time he’s touched by the thought the man had put into the angel’s situation.

“Thank you, Dean. I will try.” Castiel goes into the bathroom to change and when he emerges, he finds Dean sitting on one of the beds flipping through TV channels. Dean slides over, indicating that Cas should sit down as the TV is only visible from the one bed. Dean complains that the only thing on is a Law & Order marathon because the hotel doesn’t have a streaming service on the TV. Cas doesn’t mind though, sharing the bed to watch television gives him an excuse to watch over Dean as he sleeps without Dean complaining about it. Even nicer is how Dean falls asleep gradually in the middle of an episode and doesn’t seem to notice how he curls into Cas’ side as he does it. Cas smiles and allows his feelings to wash over him again as he thinks about how the softer PJs must be more comfortable for Dean to lay on.

***

The following evening found the hunter and the angel at a place called Warm Springs Ranch. When they called Louisa’s sister, she told them she could talk during her break. The ranch ran some sort of Christmas event and Janice Abbot was one of the people in charge of it. Dean tried to play it cool, but he couldn’t help getting a bit excited over the chance to see the Budweiser Clydesdales. He did remind Cas that interrogating the horses was unnecessary to which he had received one of the angel’s full body eyerolls. Dean would never admit it out loud, but he really enjoyed Cas’ sarcasm. He thought the eyerolling was kind of adorable.

Dean hadn’t meant to spend last night half snuggling with his best friend, but Cas didn’t seem to mind so he wasn’t going to worry about it. Dean figured his secret crush on the guy was his problem, not the angel’s – as long as it didn’t mess up their friendship it wasn’t worth agonizing over.

They had unexpectedly spent the morning at the morgue. There was another strange death last night, something had eaten the victim’s spleen. They’d only received a call about it because the original victim, Louisa, had also been missing her spleen along with several other organs and most of her blood. If it was the same creature it certainly seemed to enjoy the bloodier organs of the body. The only other thing the victims had in common was proximity to the cemetery. The most recent victim had visited the cemetery the previous day according to her wife.

After that trip, they had gotten access to Louisa’s duplex and were now in agreement that she had been a practicing witch dabbling in necromancy. Cas had been on the phone with Rowena during the drive to the ranch giving her a rundown on the information they had in the hopes that she could help then understand more of what was going on. Eventually Cas had given in and called Sam, admitting that the younger Winchester had a much easier time getting Rowena’s cooperation.

When they finally arrived at the front of the line of cars entering the ranch, Dean began to understand why there was a crowd. The lights draped everywhere were impressive and Dean was happy to note that Cas seemed taken in by the display. It always cheered Dean up to see Castiel happy, it felt like those instances were all too rare in their line of work. Dean and Cas showed their badges at the entrance and asked where they could find Janice. They were directed to a side road for staff and Dean noticed the small frown of Cas’ face.

“Hey, want to ask if we can drive through the light display if we have time before we leave? It looks kinda awesome.” Castiel didn’t exactly smile but Dean could tell the suggestion pleased him. Dean wasn’t always sure why, but he was much better at reading Castiel than anyone else. Dean drove around to the back to park his car in what he assumed was the employee parking lot. They made their way through the staff entrance and asked around until they found Louisa’s sister.

“I honestly don’t know what I can tell you guys that I haven’t already told the other cops. I’m sorry she’s dead but Louisa and I were not close. She and I have barely spoken since we were kids. She was friends with some really weird people and did a lot of drugs when we were younger. I’m really not surprised she ended up dead in a cemetery.” Janice was clearly frustrated at her sister’s death and the notoriety it had brought with it. They did manage to find out the names of some of the ‘weird’ friends Louisa hung out with but beyond that she had been more than happy to offer them free access to the Christmas event just to be rid of them.

Dean was fairly certain the interview had been a dead end outside of assuring himself the sister wasn’t also a witch, but he didn’t feel their time had been wasted as he watched Cas roam through the stables. Cas attracted the few colts in residence leading to the kids in attendance following him around so they could see the young horses up close. Dean felt a soft warmth spread out from his chest as he watched his best friend talk with both the children and the colts. The children didn’t think anything of Cas having conversations with horses.

They eventually made their way back to the car and drove through the light display. Maybe they should have talked about the case, but Dean didn’t want to ruin the moment. Cas gazed out at the decorations with a look of quiet contentment on his face and Dean reached for the angel’s hand without thinking about it. Cas threaded his fingers through Dean’s without even turning away from the window.

Later that night, after grabbing burgers at a drive thru, they poured through the case notes together hoping to find something they had been missing. Dean didn’t even remember falling asleep until he woke up to Cas rolling him onto a pillow and laying a blanket on him. He mumbled a drowsy thank you and sunk into a dreamless slumber.

***

Cas thought that maybe it was a mistake, but after last night he didn’t want to be away from Dean. Once he had pulled a blanket over his exhausted friend, Cas changed into the pajamas Dean had given him again and laid down beside him. He stayed above the covers and just watched Dean sleep. He didn’t tell Dean anymore that he’d watch over him as he didn’t enjoy being called creepy. Dean didn’t seem to understand that watching was part of who Castiel was as an angel. While he had rebelled and fallen it didn’t change his need to watch over the man he pulled out of hell. It would be like going to long without air for a human. Cas needed to watch Dean, to protect him, to assure himself that he was safe.

He noticed Dean shivering despite the blanket draped over him and Castiel found himself giving into another impulse that he wasn’t sure Dean would appreciate. He pulled on the smallest amount of his grace to give some substance to his wings and dropped one of them on top of the man he loved. They were broken and battered, but over the years they had healed enough to fill out a bit. Dean quieted as he felt the weight of the wing, and Cas saw a small smile ripple across his face. The angel would just have to pull his wings back from the physical realm before Dean woke up, but it was worth the grace to keep Dean more comfortable as he slept.

***

Dean opened his eyes in the morning to find a sleeping angel next to him. He froze as soon as he saw Cas there, more worried that the angel had fallen asleep than about the fact that Dean was all to happy to wake up to his best friend lying beside him. He reached over to see if he could wake Cas up and ran into – feathers? Dean quickly rubbed his hands over his face and woke up more definitively. Yup, those were feathers. Large, gorgeous, black feathers that shimmered like obsidian in the sunlight. It was as if every color that had ever existed had come together to create the shimmering black of Castiel’s wings. While concerned about why Cas was sleeping and why his wings were manifested when Dean had only ever seen shadows, Dean couldn’t help but be enthralled with the things. His hand reached out to pet the one blanketing him before he actually thought about it. He had just enough time to appreciate how amazingly soft they felt before Castiel awoke with a gasp. The wing pulled back suddenly and Cas was sitting up staring at Dean in shock.

“Sorry, sorry! Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean anything by it, they were just so amazing… I’m so sorry Cas!” Dean held up his hands trying to placate the angel as he also sat up. Cas looked at his wings as if he had just realized they were physically present. Surprise travelled over his features and with a roll of Cas’ shoulders the wings disappeared. Dean tried not to look as disappointed as he felt. Cas turned back to Dean and briefly touched his jaw.

“It’s alright Dean. I was just surprised. They were manifested more than I intended and the sensation of you touching them was unexpected.”

“Did I hurt you?”

“No, like I said it was just unexpected, not harmful. I apologize, I didn’t mean for them to be out for so long.” Dean was surprised to note that Cas looked embarrassed.

“I – I’m glad I got to see them. They’re fucking awesome Cas, the shadows were badass enough, but wow. If I had known you could manifest them like that, I’d have been begging you to show me for years.” Cas laughed and the tension between them evaporated. Dean got ready in the bathroom and found Cas back in his regular clothing hanging up the phone when he’d finished brushing his teeth.

“Rowena thinks she knows what happened, or at least some of it. She’s not completely sure about the role of the Wych Elm, but she did say that it’s likely we will need to use wood from the tree to kill the creature that was raised.”

“Did she say what it is?” Cas nodded in response to Dean’s question.

“She thinks Louisa was trying to make her own vampire. Ties of blood are necessary for control and the age of the corpse increases the power of the risen dead in a ritual like this. Rowena said that no one tries this type of thing though, because the amount of power and control needed are astronomical. She said she wouldn’t try it herself, that there are easier ways to get a loyal servant. Then she said something about how maybe Louisa didn’t have the ‘assets’ Rowena had?” Dean broke into laughter and Cas tilted his head in puzzlement. Dean always enjoyed Cas’ air quotes.

“Don’t worry about it, Cas. Okay, so Louisa was trying to make her own breed of vampire.”

“It would seem so. Obviously, she wasn’t successful, and not just in regards to her lack of control. Whatever the creature technically is, it’s not just drinking blood.” Dean chewed over Cas’ words as the angel did something on the laptop. All Dean could think is that this thing seemed to be some sort of zombie vampire. It didn’t really make a difference though, as long as they had a way to kill it. Or re-kill it as it were.

“So, Rowena said we can use the Wych Elm wood to kill the thing?” Cas didn’t even look up from the screen to answer Dean’s question.

“Not exactly. She said it had to be the specific tree that grew out of the grave. She also said it wouldn’t be enough by itself. I’m looking at the spell now.” Dean decided to leave Cas to it and work on getting their gear together. It was still a vampire after all, even if it was some sort of mutant version.

“Dean. I think this will work. Dead man’s blood should still help to incapacitate it. We also need the ashes of it’s creator and the blessing of the divine.” Dean widened his eyes at that list, but he supposed it was doable. They could steal Louisa’s body from the morgue if necessary. “We use the spell to seal the ingredients into the wood of the elm. Then we have to stab the creature with the elm wood through its heart.”

“So, we have to stake the vampire? Seriously?” Dean was amused at the idea of staking a vampire actually working.

“Yes, Dean. Afterwards I’d still suggest decapitation and burning whatever is left, just to make sure it stays dead.” Cas closed the laptop and pushed it aside.

“Sure. You have a plan for blessing of the divine?” Cas smiled at Dean.

“That’s easy enough.” Cas didn’t even warn Dean, one moment he’s standing there looking at the angel expectantly, the next he has a faceful of feathers.

“Um, I thought you didn’t want me touching them.” Dean couldn’t see Castiel, but he could hear him snickering. Dean pushed the wing away from his eyes in time to see Cas laughing at him.

“I said it was unexpected, not that I minded you touching. Anyway, this will work.” Dean watches as Cas runs his finger through the feathers and finds one that comes loose. In between one blink and the next the wings are hidden once again. Cas hold a single feather in his hand, the echo of his earlier laughter still present in his smile.

“What about the ashes? Do we need to break into the morgue?”

“We don’t need a specified amount; we can get away with most anything. Maybe just hair or something small, we needn’t steal an entire corpse.” Dean sighs in relief, that’s one less complication.

“Well let’s head out then, I’d like this taken care of before sunset. Wait, how are we going to find the thing anyway? You think it’s prowling around the cemetery?” Cas nods.

“Yes, Dean. Rowena seems to think it’s probably tied to the elm and with the other victim also being close to the area I’m inclined to agree with her. Using the tree for the spell may even be enough to draw it to us. If you want to drop me off at the cemetery, I can start preparing everything while you get the ashes.” Dean agrees and grabs his keys.

***

Cas is somewhat relieved to be dropped off at the cemetery. While Dean hadn’t reacted poorly to being draped in an angel wing this morning, or the fact that Cas was asleep in the same bed, he couldn’t help feeling that he had been pushing things too far. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep while also solidifying his wings. He needed to conserve his grace for more important tasks. While Castiel was truly content to just be a part of Dean’s life it was difficult to remind himself that he could not have more, especially with his poor control over the very human-like emotions he now experienced. What was really tipping him over the edge though, was how Dean kept reacting. Dean did not react with anger or defensiveness when he found himself in situations that hinted of a more intimate relationship with Cas. He acted as if it were normal and even welcome. It surprised Cas, but it also gave him some of the hope that he had never really allowed himself to have. It was distracting, which made it all the better that he would be prepping the spell by himself.

Cas collected a branch from the Wych Elm growing out of Captain Abbot’s grave, mindful of the tree’s reputation for dropping branches on unsuspecting passersby. Then Cas took a few moments to make sure the caretaker knew that he and his partner may be around afterhours because of the attack yesterday and was happy to find out that she had already decided to stay with a friend until she felt safer. Cas made quick work of the elm branch, pleased with how easy it was to shape into a stake. The sun would set soon so Castiel got to work engraving the sigil they would need directly into the tree trunk. Once Dean brought the last ingredient it should only take them a few minutes to complete everything. With any luck the vampire would come to them.

He was so absorbed in creating the sigil that he almost didn’t hear the movement behind him in time.

***

As usual, things had not gone according to plan. Dean had arrived to see Cas holding the mutant-vamp at bay, but clearly struggling to gain an upper hand over the creature they didn’t yet have the means to kill. Dean knew better than to jump into the middle of that fight, it was more important to finish Rowena’s spell. He dumped the ashes in with the rest of the material. Luckily Cas had left a copy of the actual spell out by the bowl with all the ingredients. The incantation was pretty straightforward and Dean quickly scooped up the resulting concoction on two fingers and began filling in the sigil carved into the tree. Dean picked up the branch Cas had sharpened into a stake and touched it to the sigil, running through the incantation one more time. In a brief flash of light, the sigil was absorbed into the stake.

“Cas!” Dean threw the stake towards the angel who managed to catch it neatly without even looking. Ducking down as the creature threw itself towards him, Cas pushed the stake up and underneath the monster’s rib cage with more force than a normal human could have managed. Dean breathed a sigh of relief too early, the vamp surged back up and made another run at the rapidly tiring angel.

“Rowena may have overlooked something.” Cas sounded remarkably composed considering how ragged he looked. Dean looked around them desperately for something they had missed. Then he saw how the tree was shivering and pulsing as if trying to reach out to the vampire. Of course!

“Hey asshole, leave my goddamn angel alone!” Dean knew the shotgun wouldn’t work against the creature but it got his attention, and with the impact to its shoulder and the stake still protruding from its ribcage the monster snarled as it barreled towards Dean. Dean was backed up against the tree as Cas turned on him with a horrified look on his face.

“DEAN!” Cas sounded both angry and devastated as he chased after the vampire, but Dean just yelled out instructions, all too aware what this probably looked like from Cas’ point of view.

“Stake it to the tree!” Cas caught on quick and as Dean threw himself out of the way Cas leapt after the thing that had once been Captain Abbot. Cas reached down to where the stake was sticking out and wrenched until the creature’s back was on the trunk of the Wych Elm. Pushing off from the ground Cas slammed the stake further in, until the vampire was stuck to the tree. It screeched as light pulsed from the stake into the tree. The Wych Elm seemed to come to life as it collapsed in on itself, dragging the mutant-vamp back to wherever the tree had come from. Within moments all that was left was a broken gravestone.

“Huh. Guess we don’t have to worry about burning it,” Dean quipped. Castiel rounded on him, clearly not feeling amused.

“What were you thinking? What if I hadn’t been fast enough?” Dean let Castiel rant at him for a few moments, standing up and dusting off the dirt from the back of his jeans.

“I’m sorry, man. I didn’t want to tip it off.”

“So instead, you made it look like you were drawing it away from me? Getting yourself killed for me!?” Castiel’s eyes flashed dangerously blue.

“Yeah, and it worked. For the record, I’d have done that even if it wasn’t to trick the thing though. Better me than you.” Dean was maybe angrier than he expected. He realized he’d been worried about how long Cas would last against that thing as he noted cuts that weren’t healing and the way the angel was swaying as he tried to hold himself upright. He also noticed that the blue in Cas’ eyes was in no way diminishing as he glowered at Dean.

“You. Are. Absurd. You are worth everything to me.” Then, rather abruptly, Cas fell over. Dean’s heart was pounding in his ears, both from what the angel had said and the sudden alarm he felt at a cosmic being fainting. He pulled Cas up into his arms, and damn, he was heavier than Dean had expected. Not just the muscle that Dean could feel, but he idlily wondered if the wings somehow added weight. Either way, Dean eventually made it back to their hotel room, although his back wouldn’t thank him for it later.

***

Cas woke up in the pajamas Dean had given him with an arm thrown over his chest. Confused, Cas turned slowly and realized that they were back in the hotel and Dean was asleep beside him, curled around the angel’s torso. As small rays of sunlight peeked through the curtains Cas could see his normal clothing folded nearby on a chair. He noticed that the wounds his grace hadn’t healed yet had been cleaned and bandaged, and that the blanket was pulled up around both him and Dean. As Dean let out a contented sigh in his sleep and burrowed closer, Castiel thought that perhaps he too was worth everything to someone. Smiling the angel allowed himself to drift back to sleep, happily thinking about how Dean had told the vampire to stay away from “his” angel.

***

@destielsecretsanta2020, @aibari

#destiel secret santa #destiel december #destiel #casefic #case fic #supernatural #supernatural fic #castiel #castiel with wings #dean winchester #sam winchester #rowena macleod #monster of the week #christmas #spn #arcticfox007writes

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papermoonloveslucy · 4 years ago

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BARBARA EDEN

August 23, 1931

Barbara Eden was born Barbara Jean Morehead in Phoenix Arizona in 1931, although for years her birth year was thought to be 1934. It was fairly common for young actresses to lie about their age in Hollywood. After her parents divorced, her mother married a telephone lineman, the same profession as Lucille Ball’s father. Eden's first public performance was singing in the church choir. As a teenager, she sang in local bands in night clubs. At age 16, she studied singing and acting. She graduated from High School in San Francisco in the Spring Class of 1949. As Barbara Huffman, she was elected Miss San Francisco in 1951 and she also entered the Miss California pageant. Her name was changed to Eden by her first agent.

“If gentlemen prefer blondes then I'm a blonde that prefers gentlemen.” ~ Barbara Eden

Eden began her television career as a semi-regular on “The Johnny Carson Show” (not to be confused with “The Tonight Show”) in 1955.

Contrary to popular belief, "I Love Lucy” was not Eden’s first small screen appearance. She had been seen in a November 1956 episode of “West Point.”

She had also made the RKO film Back from Eternity, a remake of a Lucille Ball film called Five Came Back, which would not be released until later in 1957. It was directed by John Farrow (Mia’s father) and co-starred Keith Andes, who would play Lucy Carmichael’s boyfriend on “The Lucy Show” and co-star with Ball in Wildcat on Broadway in 1960. Eden played a college reporter and was uncredited. Coincidentally, the film also featured Tristram Coffin, who played Diana Jordan’s cousin Harry Munson in “Country Club Dance.”

In “Country Club Dance” (ILL S6;E25), the male population of Westport is all agog when sexy Diana Jordan (Barbara Eden) visits. Lucy, Ethel and Betty Ramsey decide that getting glamorous is the best revenge. The now-classic episode was filmed on March 21, 1957 and first aired on April 22, 1957.

Needless to say, that night at the Westport Country Club shapely young Diana’s ‘dance card’ is full! Pat Boone (not in attendance, but mentioned) was Diana’s favorite singer!

William Asher, the director of this episode, would later direct Barbara Eden in the short-lived sitcom "Harper Valley PTA” (1981-82) and "I Dream of Jeannie… Fifteen Years Later,” a reunion special aired in 1985.

After filming was completed, Desilu gave some of its guest stars small gifts. This 10K gold-filled Zippo lighter was a present for Eden.

That same year, Eden appeared in an episode of the Desilu sitcom “December Bride” starring Harry Morgan.

In early 1962, Eden was on the Desilu backlot to play “The Manicurist” on “The Andy Griffith Show.” At the same time, “The Lucy Show” was filming its first season.

The next time Lucy and Eden appeared on screen together was at the 1968 Primetime Emmy Awards. Ball was nominated (and won) for Best Actress in a Comedy for “The Lucy Show”. “Jeannie” and Eden were then in their third season, but failed to break the top 30 and were not nominated, although Eden, as a recognizable TV figure, was present at the awards. Throughout its long run, the popular sitcom only garnered one Emmy nomination, for Sidney Sheldon’s writing. Barbara and Ball were also presenters (not together) at the 1986 Prime Time Emmy Awards.

In 1982, Lucy and Eden were among the many women (and one man in drag) assembled for “Bob Hope’s Women I Love: Beautiful and Funny.” Coincidentally, this special also featured Mary Martin, who was Larry Hagman’s (Major Nelson on “I Dream of Jeannie”) real-life mother. Eden was a favorite of Hope’s, appearing on a dozen Bob Hope specials.

Eden was present (though she did not speak or get credited) at 1984′s “All-Star Party for Lucille Ball.” Two years later they returned for “All-Star Party for Clint Eastwood.” As a former honoree, Lucy hosted, but Eden was still only an attendee.

In 1987, Lucy and Barbara joined a myriad of luminaries for “Happy 100th Birthday Hollywood” although they performed in different segments. A year later, Lucy, in one of her final TV appearances, was with Eden in “The Princess Grace Foundation’s Special Gala Tribute to Cary Grant.” Grant never acted opposite either star.

OUT OF THE BOTTLE!

In 1965, producer Sidney Sheldon signed Eden to star in his upcoming fantasy sitcom “I Dream of Jeannie” that would air on NBC. It was aimed at wooing audiences away from ABC’s fantasy sitcom “Bewitched.” Eden played Jeannie, a beautiful genie from ancient Persia set free from her bottle by astronaut and Air Force Captain (later Major) Anthony "Tony" Nelson, played by Larry Hagman.

Also in the “Jeannie” cast of regulars was Hayden Rorke (as psychiatrist Dr. Alfred Bellows), who first appeared with Lucille Ball on stage in Dream Girl (1947).

Like Eden, Rorke also did a one-off appearance on “I Love Lucy” as new neighbor Mr. O’Brien who Lucy thinks is a spy, but turns out to be just an actor.

He would later be seen on “Here’s Lucy” as a judge deciding if Lucy Carter has held an illegal raffle or not.

Lurene Tuttle, who played the President of The Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League in “The Club Election” (ILL S2;E19) in 1953, played Jeannie’s mother in a 1965 episode.

Phil Ober, Vivian Vance’s ex-husband and the actor who played Dore Schary in “Don Juan is Shelved” (ILL S4;E21) in 1955, played General Stone in two season one episodes of “Jeannie.”

Vinton Hayworth, who played General Schaeffer on “Jeannie” did two films with Lucille Ball: That Girl From Paris (1936) and That’s Right - You’re Wrong (1939).

Like Vance, Eden also was married to one of her co-stars and later divorced him. In 1958, Eden married Michael Ansara, who played many roles on “Jeannie” including the Blue Djinn (above).

On “Jeannie,” Major Nelson was an astronaut. On “The Lucy Show” Lucy Carmichael was an astronaut (for a day) in a season one episode. Like “Jeannie” this episode was written to capitalize on America’s space race.

In 1971, “Here’s Lucy” also did an astronaut-themed episode. By that time, American astronauts had landed on the moon! Coincidentally, actor Robert Hogan (center in both photos) also played an astronaut on “Jeannie” in 1970.

“Jeannie” was produced by Sheldon Leonard, who played himself on a 1967 episode of “The Lucy Show”.

Like “The Lucy Show”, “Jeannie” premiered in black and white before switching to color for the remainder of its run.

Other actors who appeared on both “Jeannie” and “Lucy”: George DeNormand, Benny Rubin, Jackie Coogan, J. Pat O’Malley, Reta Shaw, Richard Reeves, Romo Vincent, Jonathan Hole, Kathleen Freeman, Bill Quinn, Herbie Faye, Milton Berle, Jack Carter, Jamie Farr, John McGiver, Richard Deacon, Don Ho, Alan Hewitt, Don Rickles, Alan Oppenheimer, Jack Collins, Parley Baer, Herb Vigran, Ruth McDevitt, Sandra Gould, Foster Brooks, James Hong, William Fawcett, Stafford Repp, and Sid Melton.

Eden played this role for five years and 139 episodes. In eight episodes, Eden donned a brunette wig to portray Jeannie's evil sister (also named Jeannie) who lusts after Tony Nelson, and in two episodes played Jeannie's hapless mother.

AFTER THE BALL & THE BOTTLE....

Barbara Eden later said in interviews that Lucy was a generous performer and caring person, contrasting to another (unnamed) female star she had worked with. Lucille Ball thought that Eden’s costume was not attractive enough, so Lucy and Irma Kusely (Lucy’s hairstylist) spent rehearsal time ‘bedazzling’ the dress. Ball offered to put Eden under contract at her Desilu Workshop, but Eden found out later that day that 20th Century Fox had picked up her option, so Eden graciously declined Lucy’s offer.

"It was the third job I had in Los Angeles and she was so good to me. I can’t tell you how sweet she was. I had a dress on that she didn’t think was outstanding enough. She asked me to take it off and the next thing I knew, she was sitting there putting sparkling things all over it, just to make it look better.” ~ Barbara Eden, October 2017

In 2005, Barbara Eden traveled to Jamestown to participate in Lucy-Desi Days.

Eden was married three times and had one child who died in 2001 at the age of 35.

“I've never stopped working. If you're active, you can appreciate what you did in the past, you don't feel like it's gone.” ~ Barbara Eden

AS OF TODAY!

AUGUST 23, 2020 - As of this writing, Barbara Eden is one of the oldest known surviving ADULT cast members of “I Love Lucy.” She is not, however, the oldest. Mary Ellen Kaye (Mrs. Taylor in “Lucy Hates To Leave”) is a year older than Eden, and Cher’s mother Georgia Holt (Model in “Lucy Gets A Paris Gown”) is 94.

There is no birth or death information for: Maggie Magennis (Starlet in “Don Juan and the Starlets”), Helen Silvers (Dancer Rosemary in “Lucy is Jealous of Girl Singer"), Barbara Logan (Stewardess in “The Ricardos Visit Cuba"), Milldred Law (Stewardess in “Return Home from Europe”), and Jody Drew (Miss Ballantine, Mr. Reilly’s Secretary in "Don Juan is Shelved").

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ltwilliammowett · 5 years ago

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Cannibalism at Sea

Introduction

Before you wonder what this is all about, please read this introduction carefully. The topic is a very special and not everyone's business and who knows me and reads my stuff regularly knows that I also work a lot with pictures,although I have largely refrained from doing so here. Well for protection reasons the whole article can be found under the read more line. It should be said that this article is about cannibalism at sea and the question whether it is allowed or not. In addition there are some case examples. Whereby I tried to write this as nice and factual as possible.

When you start looking at cannibalism at sea, you get the feeling that it's all just a horror story and that it simply can't be true. Because on a well-equipped boat on a sea full of fish it seems unimaginable that you could eat your friends and colleagues. But when things go wrong in a bad way, precedents show that the vast ocean can conjure up the spectre of "survival cannibalism" surprisingly quickly. In the 18th century, this practice was so widespread that it was known as the "custom of the sea", with some unwritten rules that seafarers in hopeless situations should follow.

The rules of the game

Drifting along the open ocean in a small open boat and facing imminent death by starvation, the moral, ethical and legal implications seem rather trivial, as confirmed by various court cases. Prior to the 19th century, cannibalism was thought to be inherent in man as a kind of instinct and was therefore excusable in extreme circumstances. However, this argument is only valid if those who consume their fellow sailors have already exhausted all other organic food sources. This includes everything from candles to shoes, other leather goods and even blankets.

But the rules of the game go much further. For example, everyone on board must agree to the act of cannibalism before the first incident occurs. And then the dead must be consumed first. Once all the dead are eaten up, they have to stick in some form, or whatever was available has to be pulled to draw lots. The unhappiest one is killed and consumed first, but the next unhappiest one is appointed as his executioner. This process must be repeated until salvation comes or death overtakes all and releases them from suffering.

Examples

The Méduse, or Medusa, was a French warship captained by Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, an aristocrat with limited naval experience. In 1816, the warship ran aground on the Arguin Bank off of the African shore. Of the 400 people on the ship, some elected to stay aboard, while the rest escaped onto lifeboats and a large makeshift raft. The lifeboats had promised to pull the raft, but after only a few minutes at sea, they cut the rope and left the raft stranded.

During the second night at sea, all hell broke loose on the raft. Some passengers got drunk on wine (the raft's only provision, in addition to some "soggy biscuits") and 60 people were either killed or committed suicide. Over 13 days of depravity, passengers of the raft drank their own urine, ate human flesh, starved, became ill, and threw weak survivors overboard. Finally, the French ship Argus spotted the raft and saved the remaining 15 survivors, though five of these died shortly after rescue.

Raft of the Méduse

During a winter storm in December 1710, the Nottingham Galley crashed into Boon Island, located near the coast of York, Maine. The 14 surviving crew members took refuge on the desolate island, eating a seagull raw. When the ship's cook died, they pushed his body into the sea. By Christmas, two weeks had passed, and the 13 survivors sheltered from the cold under a piece of canvas sail, subsisting on bits of cheese that had floated ashore from the shipwreck and some fresh water. However, without winter clothing and the means to make fire, the men were near dying from exposure to the frigid conditions.

In the days before their rescue, the desperate men resorted to eating the corpse of the ship’s carpenter in order to survive. The captain, who had trained as a butcher, beheaded and disemboweled him then cut his flesh into strips before giving it to the crew. After 24 days on the island, help finally arrived to rescue the remaining men.

The Francis Mary was on passage from Canada to Liverpool. On February 1, 1826, the ship encountered strong winds that dislodged the two of its masts. Strong waves washed away the ship’s galley and the vessel was rendered immobile. The crew survived on cheese and bread while waiting for help to arrive. American ships got close to the Francis Mary, but could not offer assistance due to the harsh weather. The food did not last long and people started to die from starvation and lack of fresh water.

On February 22, a man by the name of James Wilson perished and was cannibalized by the crew. They cut his body into fourths and hung the flesh on pins to dry it out before eating. Before their rescue by the HMS Blonde in March, eight more men would die and have parts of their bodies eaten - including their hearts.

The Francis Mary, 1826

The Peggy was an american schooner that sailed from New York to Faial Island in the Azores in 1765. After doing some trading, the crew, including one enslaved African, started their return voyage. They didn’t get far into their journey before encountering trouble when the ship was disabled by a severe thunderstorm. The storm outlasted their rations and the men began to subsist on wine and brandy and eat a pigeon, a cat, tobacco, leather, and candles.

After exhausting all of these options, the men were forced to draw lots to decide who to kill and consume. The enslaved man supposedly drew the shortest lot, but it is speculated that the men predetermined his fate. One sailor ate his liver raw and died three days later, in a fit of madness. The others pickled and cooked the rest of his body. When no meat remained, lots were drawn again, but the crew was rescued by the Susanna just before the next sailor was due to be killed.

The Franklin Expedition, who does not know the tragic Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin who set out in 1845 with HMS's Terror and Erebus to find the Northwest Passage. They left, and then no one heard of the ship - or the 128 men on board.

Over the years, experts have been able to piece together a story of what might have happened, but it is still not possible to do so in its entirety, as parts of the puzzle are still missing. The ships got stuck in the ice and although the crew had supplies on board, they set out to search the frozen land of King William Island for a trading post. Some men died of hypothermia, scurvy, but probably starved to death. The Inuit claimed to have seen signs of cannibalism, such as heaps of broken human bones. Anthropologists who studied the bones found on the island supported these stories. The men's bones were broken and covered with knife marks and also showed signs of being heated, probably to extract bone marrow. One should emphasize that, in both the case of Franklin's men, we have no indication that anyone actively sought to kill anyone else for the purpose of eating them.

A 1945 photo of skulls of some men of the Franklin Expedition, bleached white by the sun, discovered around King William Island in what is now Nunavut

The Mignonette was an English yacht purchased by lawyer Jack Want in 1884, to be sailed from Essex to Sydney. A four-man crew was assembled, consisting of Captain Tom Dudley, Edwin Stephens, Ned Brooks, and 17-year-old Richard Parker. Just weeks after the crew set sail, a wave struck the Mignonette, washing away the windward fortification, causing the ship to rapidly sink and forcing the crew to escape onto a 13-foot dinghy. They were unable to bring any fresh water or food with them, beyond two tins of turnips.

The crew survived for days on turnips, urine, and an unlucky turtle, but they were becoming desperate. Tom Dudley introduced the idea of killing and eating Parker, who had become ill and unconscious from drinking seawater. The perpetrators assumed that Parker's blood would be more edible if he did not die a natural death but was killed. Stephens and Brooks agreed to it, though Brooks refused later to participate. The three men devoured Parker’s body; it kept them alive for weeks until the German barque, Montezuma, found the men after 24 days at sea.

The end of Richard Parker

Change in legislation

With the case of the Mignonette everything changed, whether it was because one did not see here the correct following of the rules as assumed or simply the feeling of such an act as a custom to watch simply no longer there. The Vicorian Era had a very different view of morality and considered many things to be outdated and babaric, so it is quite possible that this new moral perception played a big role.

The three survivors were brought to justice and although the whole population stood behind them and their actions, the three survivors were not allowed to go to court. The three were convicted of murder and should be punished by hanging. However, due to the resistance of the population, the punishment was changed to six months in prison. The three survivors never accepted this punishment. But from then on the custom of the sea was no longer exempt from punishment, instead it is now mostly punished by imprisonment.

#naval history #cannibalism at sea #cw: violence #cw: death #cw: cannibalism #cw:skull #age of sail #age of steam

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