#I have a feeling it was nobody's home by kansas

[toomanystoriessolittletime]

Safe

Summary: “You can’t keep punishing yourself for what happened twenty years ago. It was not your fault. You are allowed to move on. You are allowed to care for other people And no matter how much you tell yourself that she’s only Cargo. You care for her.”

Pairing: Joel Miller x fem. reader

Wordcount: 1.3k

Warnings: G

Warnings: !spoilers for episode 6 of TLOU!, established relationship, mostly fluff, domestic fluff I would almost say, little angst, talking about feelings, comfort, some touching, mention of periods

follow @toomanystoriessolittletime-fics to get notified for new fic updates

It was almost scary how normal everything in Jackson was. The old normal, not the new normal. 

The moment you had seen the fully decorated christmas tree you felt like you were in the twilight zone. 

You had arrived earlier with Joel and Ellie on horseback, almost making Joel laugh as you sang “Yeah, I'm goin' to Jackson, Look out, Jackson town,” against his ear, fully intending to bully him into singing the Johnny Cash song at some point when you found a guitar for him.

If you were honest you would have never thought you actually would find Tommy. Then again you should know better by now. 

Joel Miller could not be stopped once he set his mind towards something. 

You had given them space.

Time for them to catch up and talk. 

Something in Joel had changed after Kansas City. More than once you had caught him staring at Ellie when he thought nobody was watching. 

You knew why. 

This was not just a job anymore or a promise to fulfil.

He was starting to care. 

Years ago when you had come into his life, it had been the same. Once he realised that he was starting to feel something for you. 

It had taken almost a year for him to admit that he had feelings for you too.

Joel was afraid.

Afraid of catching feelings.

Afraid of letting himself care for people.

Afraid of moving on. 

The first time he had spoken about Sarah was almost four years after you had met him. 

You had made the mistake of asking about his watch, genuinely curious. He had looked at you like he had been shot before uttering an excuse under his breath and leaving your then shared apartment. 

He came home after curfew, smelling of liquor. 

And then he started to talk. 

Joel and you…

He was your person. 

He was the one thing that kept you going in this fucked up world. 

The one person who made you feel safe, no matter what was happening around you. 

The man you, against all odds, had fallen in love with while the world was ending. 

And you were the one person he allowed himself to be fully himself with. He let you see the good and the bad. 

It’s why you knew that it would only be a matter of time he would do or say something stupid.

The house was quiet when you finished your shower. You had said goodnight to Ellie before you went to the master bedroom, getting out of your filthy clothes and allowing yourself to just soak under the hot water. 

Maria had spent the whole day showing you around and providing new clothes. She even offered to give you a haircut.

You did not like the way she talked about Joel. She knew only one side of the story, but you had chosen to not start an argument only hours after getting to safety.

For the first time in six years you shaved, using the razor you had found under the sink. 

You felt like in the twilight zone as you pulled the big, surprisingly fluffy towel around your body, grabbing the bottle of shea butter you had almost cried as you spotted it and walked back into the bedroom. 

You sat down on the bed with a sigh, closing your eyes. 

Tonight would probably be the first night since leaving the QZ you might get a full night of sleep.

Pulling the towel down you opened the bottle to start and rub the lotion into your skin. 

The familiar scent invaded your nose, making you remember better days when your biggest problem was deciding what takeout to order while you watched the newest episode of Friends. 

Fuck, you never found out how it ended. 

Chuckling to yourself you shook your head, slowly working your hands up your body. 

You jumped when you heard voices all of the sudden, your eyes flying around the room to spot the closest gun before you noticed who it was.

Joel and Ellie. 

You could not make out what they were saying but it did not sound like a pleasant talk. Setting the bottle of lotion on the bedside table you grabbed the towel to walk back to the bathroom to hang it up to dry. 

You put on an old tshirt to sleep, switching off the lights just when the door to the bedroom opened and Joel stepped in. 

He closed the door behind him, closing his eyes as he took a deep breath. 

You sucked your bottom lip in. 

“Hey,” you whispered. His eyes opened, finding yours. You could see tears in them. 

“Hey,” he mumbled. 

“Are you…” you started to ask but he shook his head and walked past you into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. 

You suppressed a sigh, deciding to give him space as you climbed into the most comfortable bed you had laid in in years, pulling the covers over you, falling asleep within minutes. 

You woke up when Joel got into bed behind you. His nose nuzzled into your neck, kissing your shoulder softly, as his arm pulled you against his chest.

You allowed yourself to melt into his warm embrace, putting your hand over his that laid on your stomach. 

“I asked Tommy to take her to the Fireflies,” he said. You closed your eyes. 

“Joel…”

“I’m old. I’m tired and I’m… I’m fucking scared. I can’t….” he took a shuddering breath and your heart broke. Carefully you turned around, your hand coming to rest on his cheek.

“Look at me baby,” you said and his eyes opened, finding yours in the soft light that came from the lamp on the bedside table. 

“She’s not Sarah,” you whispered. He tensed, like everytime someone mentioned her. 

“You can’t keep punishing yourself for what happened twenty years ago. It was not your fault. You are allowed to move on. You are allowed to care for other people And no matter how much you tell yourself that she’s only Cargo. You care for her.”

He sighed, his arm around you tightening to pull you even closer. 

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said quietly. 

“The heart wants, what the heart wants,” you smiled.

You kissed his nose, the corner of his lips twitching upwards. 

“You should apologise to her,” you said. 

“How do you…?”

“Joel, I’ve been dealing with your moods for almost six years. You probably said something you didn’t mean. I learned to deal with it, but she’s fourteen. And she has no one but you.”

And she’s on her period, but you chose to not tell him that. 

“She has you too,” he whispered. 

“Yeah, but I did not piss her off,” you smiled softly and he groaned and closed his eyes. You let your hand run through his wet hair, making him hum. 

“You smell good,” he said, his nose nuzzling against your throat. 

“I am so stealing that lotion when we leave,” you smiled and he chuckled. 

“Shaved too. I feel like 2003 all over again,” you closed your eyes. 

“You shaved?” he asked and you opened one eye.

“Jep,” you grinned, closing your eye again. You felt his hand run down your legs, his rough hand brushing over your smooth skin. You made a mental note to make him put lotion on his hands in the morning.

“Everywhere?”

“Mhh,” you nodded, feeling his hand go up your inner thigh.

“Joel?” you asked, feeling his fingers brushing over your trimmed pussy.

He hummed.

“Sleep,” you mumbled, feeling his body shake in a silent chuckle. He kissed you softly, pulling the covers up to both your noses. 

“I love you,” you whispered just before you fell asleep, missing how he whispered those same three words into your skin. 

[mcflymemes]

THE GREATEST MOVIE QUOTES OF ALL TIME *  assorted dialogue from famous films, adjust as necessary

[name], i think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

frankly, my dear, i don't give a damn.

i'll have what she's having.

i have a feeling we're not in kansas anymore.

i'm as mad as hell, and i'm not going to take this anymore!

you're gonna need a bigger boat.

nobody puts baby in a corner.

well. nobody's perfect.

you can't fight in here! this is the war room!

get away from her, you bitch!

houston, we have a problem.

when someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes!

i am no man!

i love the smell of napalm in the morning.

you had me at "hello."

i'm also just a girl standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.

don't call me shirley.

i feel the need... the need for speed!

i'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.

i know it was you, [name]. you broke my heart.

just when i thought i was out, they pull me back in.

you can't handle the truth!

i can do this all day.

the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

snakes. why did it have to be snakes?

clever girl.

what, like it's hard?

you shall not pass.

that's my secret, [name]. i'm always angry.

i wish i knew how to quit you.

get busy living, or get busy dying.

ugh, as if!

i'll be back.

there's no crying in baseball!

some men just want to watch the world burn.

take your stinking paws off me!

screws fall out all the time. the world's an imperfect place.

life moves pretty fast. you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

i'm sorry, [name]. i'm afraid i can't do that.

a strange game. the only winning move is not to play.

are you crazy? the fall will probably kill you!

i see dead people.

if you build it, he will come.

with great power comes great responsibility.

roads? where we're going, we don't need roads.

go ahead. make my day.

say hello to my little friend!

are you not entertained?

i'm not bad. i'm just drawn that way.

i've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

i have a bad feeling about this.

you talkin' to me?

what's in the box?

your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!

that rug really tied the room together, did it not?

you cut the turkey without me?

i'm not even supposed to be here today.

you'll shoot your eye out, kid.

boy, that escalated quickly.

you don't wanna get mixed up with a guy like me.

i know kung-fu.

now i have a machine gun.

what is your damage, [name]?

what we've got here is failure to communicate.

here's looking at you, kid.

fasten your seatbelts. it's going to be a bumpy night.

love means never having to say you're sorry.

there's no place like home.

why don't you come up sometime and see me?

i'm walkin' here!

i want to be alone.

round up the usual suspects.

you know how to whistle, don't you, [name]?

we rob banks.

we'll always have paris.

well, nobody's perfect.

a boy's best friend is his mother.

keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into.

what a dump?

[name], you're trying to seduce me. aren't you?

is it safe?

i have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

hello, gorgeous.

a martini. shaken, not stirred.

seize the day. make your lives extraordinary.

snap out of it!

[kwyw]

So according to the interview:

- TK can't shut up about Taylor, even though she "hates" him flapping his mouth about their relationship. (I see some seeds being down.)

- Travis sells himself hard as a sweet, sensitive guy, but even his friends don't know the real him, and Taylor is still trying to figure it out. (I smell an escape strategy.)

- Scott Swift arranged all of this. Like we suspected.

- Travis was a celebrity in Kansas City and a complete nobody outside it, before the promance. Slice it any way you want - Taylor made him famous, is the message here. (Can we say C-L-O-U-T C-H-A-S-E-R? All together now, come on, kids! Spelling is fun!)

- Travis lacks direction and has no idea what to do when his football career expires. He's just throwing whatever at the wall to see what sticks. He needs money. He thinks about money a lot, while driving around town in his half a million dollar customized car. It's not at all obnoxious.

- Travis has no problem telling Taylor's security guards to step down so he can take charge and feel like the man . . . but he can't assert himself against a friend who talked smack about him on a podcast, or argue his worth to the employers who underpay him.

- He doesn't seem to understand Taylor's popularity, thinking a Hollywood reporter will need the concept of the Eras Tour explained to him. Huh? That's not being "a Swiftie" - that's proving how little attention he pays to her as an artist. It comes across like he only knows the most basic, surface level things about her career. 1989 was a smash hit, the Eras Tour is huge right now, Taylor is known for her emotionally-resonant break-up songs. Maybe his team wrote him out a little primer. Taylor 101.

- I did enjoy the comedy of Blank Space being his favorite song though. Someone somewhere is having fun with all of this.

- Everyone who falls into this man's orbit is struck by a sudden desire to write fanfiction about his relationship with Taylor Swift. It's uncanny. She's probably at his home right now! Tapping her toes impatiently while a home cooked apple pie cools on the window sill! Sure, Jan.

- Stalking Taylor's jet has gone mainstream, apparently. Major publications are just openly admitting they track it to guess where she is. So respectful. Let's just put this in a magazine for millions of readers and normalize it. Why the heck not? What could go wrong? No wonder she cut the wings off the damn jet five years ago

- Travis may be the most cornball of all Taylor's beards. "Wish on a star and you might manifest dating Taylor Swift into being!" I need someone to drag Karlie to the nearest observatory and get her wishing, stat 😂

The main takeaway: this was hilarious, and sure was illuminating 🤭

[mintyisms]

Movie Misquote Starters

based on the american film institute's "100 years...100 movie quotes" list

"Frankly, my dear, I don't have any ham."

"I'm gonna make him an offer he might refuse"

"I could've been somebody, instead of a beach bum, which is what I am."

"I've a feeling we're not going to see Kansas anymore."

"The GOAT's looking at you, kid."

"Go ahead, make my souffle."

"All right, I'm ready for my downfall."

"May the Norse be with you."

"Fasten your seatbelts. This roller coaster is not up to code."

"You singing to me?"

"What we've got here is an unsafe amount of potassium nitrate."

"I love the smell of barbeque in the morning."

"Love means always having to say you're sorry."

"I have AT&T. Can't phone home."

"Made it, [name]! Top of the wall!"

"I'm as horny as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

"I think this is the end of a beautiful situationship."

"I ate his shorts with some cheese and a nice box wine."

"Bond. Savings bond."

"There are a lot of places like Rome."

"Show me the honey!"

"You can't handle the vermouth!"

"I'll shave what she's shaving."

"You're gonna need a bigger moat."

"I might be back."

"Today, I consider myself the luckiest man in this bed."

"We rob dispensaries."

"We'll always have that old shack in the woods."

"I see brain-dead people."

"Loser! Hey, Loser!"

"Houston, we have 99 problems."

"You had me at 'Jello.'"

"There's no dancing in baseball!"

"Da-ba-dee, da-ba-di."

"A boy's best friend is his PS5."

"Tea, for lack of a better word, is mid."

"As God is my witness, I'll never be ugly again."

"Say 'goodbye' to my little friend!"

"What a rump."

"Hasta mañana, baby."

"Manwich is people!"

"Conga! Conga!"

"Listen to them. Children with recorders. What music they make."

"Basement! Basement!"

"A martini. Shaken, then stirred."

"Who's on the roof?"

"Life is a bubbler, and most poor suckers are dehydrated as hell!"

"I feel the need - the need to drink mead!"

"Carpe dime. Seize the money, boys. Make your bank accounts extraordinary."

"Bust out of it."

"My mother hates you. My father hates you. My sister hates you. And I hates you."

"Nobody puts [name] in a suit of armor."

"I'll get you, my pretty, and your little hamster, too!"

"I'm the king of this dumpster!"

[bestworstcase]

Wait could you go more into Salem being glinda? (<- person who is bad at allegories but loves your metas)

ok!!

step one is to clear out everything you’ve ever read about rwby’s ozian allusion from your brain because this fandom keeps trying to make it about the wizard of oz and it’s… nnnot about the wizard of oz. the book we’re going to be talking about as the primary text of reference is the second oz book, ‘the marvelous land of oz,’ which is about what happens after dorothy and the wizard go home.

the reason nobody can figure out who rwby’s “dorothy” is is… there is no dorothy. she’s in kansas and not really relevant to this story except insofar as her journey through oz resulted in the wizard’s departure and the end of the wicked witches of the east and west. she’s The Backstory. and—actually as i write this there, um, there IS a dorothy and now i have to go stare at a wall for a little while. 

…

we’ll get there.

context:

at the end of the first oz book, ‘the wonderful wizard of oz,’ the wizard leaves and glinda, the good witch of the south, tells dorothy how to return home to kansas with the glass slippers (which fall off her feet and are lost forever whilst carrying dorothy home)

(the classic film makes something of a mess by combining glinda and the good witch of the north into a composite character, creating the problem of why glinda would not simply tell dorothy how to use the slippers right away. in the book, the good witch of the north sends dorothy to the wizard, who is secretly a fraud, and after he inadvertently leaves dorothy behind she is advised to travel south to consult with glinda instead.)

now, the wizard was the ruler of oz, so his departure created a political problem that he attempted to solve by appointing the scarecrow to rule in his absence. that choice is what ‘marvelous land’ is chiefly about because, you see, before the wizard came along, oz was ruled by a king named pastoria, who had an infant daughter named ozma. then the wizard deposed pastoria, and princess ozma disappeared.

the book’s protagonist is a boy named tippetarius (tip) who’s been raised all his life by the bad witch mombi. tip is in fact ozma, stolen by mombi and transformed into a boy to secure the wizard on the throne of oz. he has no idea; he just knows that mombi isn’t very nice to him and he wants to leave. 

when he runs away, he takes with him jack pumpkinhead—a fellow tip made by carving a jack-o-lantern head for a wooden man, animated by mombi’s magic. their relationship is quasi-parental (jack calls tip “father” but tip is, you know, a boy and not especially fatherly). they’re joined by a living saw horse en route to the emerald city. the trio is briefly separated, with jack and the horse rushing ahead and being received by the scarecrow while tip is waylaid and meets general jinjur, who is leading an army of revolt to the emerald city to overthrow the scarecrow.

that happens. jinjur wins more or less by default because the soldier with green whiskers, who guards the emerald city’s gate, is too cowardly to fight them and simply lets them into the city. the scarecrow flees, along with tip, the sawhorse, and jack. this motley crew heads west to winkie country, once the domain of the wicked witch of the west, now ruled by nick chopper—the tin man. en route to winkie country, the scarecrow mentions to jack that pumpkins rot and jack spends the remainder of the story in a state of ever-present existential dread over his imminent decay. 

anyway, nick accompanies them back to the emerald city, along with the woggle-bug—a very large, knowledgeable bug whom none of them like particularly and whose backstory involves transformation by a professor, an incident about which the woggle-bug has ambivalent feelings—whom they meet along the way. they’re hindered by various illusory traps mombi throws at them because she’s trying to get tip back under control.

reclaiming the emerald city from jinjur does not Go Well. they’re forced to flee again, briefly end up stranded in an inhospitable place on the far side of the desert and attacked by birds. the woggle bug saves them by using a silver wishing pill to repair their means of transportation so that they can reach glinda’s home, in southern quadling country. 

they want glinda to help them restore the scarecrow to the throne of oz. glinda has other plans, because she’s spent all this time trying to find ozma and set right the wizard’s various injustices. she’s narrowed it down to mombi as the culprit, and upon learning that the witch has hidden herself in the emerald city, she… um, immediately lays siege to the emerald city to “starve it into submission” and flush mombi out, then chases her to the impassable desert at the edge of oz, ties a rope around her neck to silence her magical powers, and bodily drags her back to the emerald city to account for her wrongdoing on pain of death:

Glinda had been carefully considering what to do, and now she turned to Mombi and said: "You will gain nothing, I assure you, by thus defying us. For I am determined to learn the truth about the girl Ozma, and unless you tell me all that you know, I will certainly put you to death." "Oh, no! Don't do that!" exclaimed the Tin Woodman. "It would be an awful thing to kill anyone—even old Mombi!" "But it is merely a threat," returned Glinda. "I shall not put Mombi to death, because she will prefer to tell me the truth." "Oh, I see!" said the Tin Man, much relieved. "Suppose I tell you all that you wish to know,". said Mombi, speaking so suddenly that she startled them all. "What will you do with me then?" "In that case," replied Glinda, "I shall merely ask you to drink a powerful draught which will cause you to forget all the magic you have ever learned." "Then I would become a helpless old woman!" "But you would be alive," suggested the Pumpkinhead, consolingly. […] "You may make your choice," Glinda said to old Mombi, "between death if you remain silent, and the loss of your magical powers if you tell me the truth. But I think you will prefer to live." Mombi cast an uneasy glance at the Sorceress, and saw that she was in earnest, and not to be trifled with.

thus mombi is forced to tell the truth, remove the curse she placed on tippetarius (turning him back into ozma), and take glinda’s potion to strip all of her magical power away. 

folds hands. 

here are some facts about glinda:

she rules over quadling country—in the oz books, the cardinal kingdoms are all color-coded; northern gillikin country is purple, eastern munchkinland is blue, western winkie country is yellow, and quadling country? red. (glynda goodwitch’s purple is the first hint that she is not glinda, but rather the good witch of the north who believes in the wizard’s power. her absolute faith in ozpin is the second hint.)

glinda is, despite her youthful appearance, implied to be thousands of years old, and by any measure the most powerful sorceress in all of oz. 

in demeanor, she is always calm and collected and resolutely truthful; so great is her dedication to the truth that she has no power over mombi’s magical deception and illusions, hence the need to force mombi to undo her own curse. she always knows when she’s lied to, but she can be fooled (fleetingly) by powerful illusions. and she can be utterly ruthless in pursuit of what she believes is right for oz. 

she, as noted in the last post, is responsible for freeing the flying monkeys from their enslavement by the golden cap. 

now!

the allusions rwby is making to ‘marvelous land’ are really very straightforward—much like cinder and cinderella or salem and maiden-in-tower stories. it is impossible to read the book with rwby in mind and not see the connections:

the god of light is mombi.

ozma is ozma; as ozpin, he has become the wizard (complicit in his own cursed imprisonment), and within oscar he’s tippetarius (a boy who’s lost his true self).

oscar is jack pumpkinhead, ozma’s heir (thus, symbolically, his “son”), brought to life at least symbolically by light’s power (he’s in the story at all because he’s ozma’s vessel), and preoccupied with existential dread inspired by the looming immediacy of his spiritual death.

qrow is the scarecrow, left to carry the symbol of ozpin’s authority in ozpin’s absence and forced to flee beacon, the “emerald city,” by

summer rose, who is general jinjur, holding beacon academy while she searches for the crown. (jinjur spends a considerable portion of the story trying to get the royal crown.)

lionheart is the soldier with green whiskers: not the fearful but truly courageous lion, but the cowardly old soldier who all but hands jinjur the keys to the city in his terror. 

ironwood is the tin man, ruling over a land once subjugated by the wizard’s bitter enemy (pre-war, fascist mantle) now remade into a shining and prosperous kingdom under the command of the wizard’s ally (atlas)—and it is he who gives sanctuary to the scarecrow and tip’s party after the emerald city falls, and he who leads the failed first attempt to take the city back by force. 

vacuo is the nest of jackdaws where the party ends up stranded, far from oz—they cross a desert to get there and i suspect the point of theodore is to signal that vacuo isn’t “in” oz but rather standing in for the deserts and the lands beyond. because dorothy is in kansas, you see. (he’s not the Real Dorothy, though, we’ll get there momentarily).

the woggle-bug is raven, the maiden of knowledge who knows the secret that will bridge the impassable divide between vacuo and salem; her knowledge of what summer did is the silver wishing pill which, incidentally, poisons tip when he tries to use it. 

and salem is, of course, glinda: ancient and aloof and coldly ruthless in her pursuit of the truth, searching for ozma (<- note the congruence here with rapunzel searching for her prince in the wasteland!) and ready to GO TO WAR to bring the god of light to account for what he’s done. i really must emphasize the GOING TO WAR bit: the glinda of the books is not the soft, mistily benevolent lady the classic film makes of her. she has an extremely well-disciplined standing army which she marches on the emerald city with the explicit intention of delivering a siege to “starve it into submission.” mombi looks this woman in the eye, sees death staring back at her, and surrenders with a whimper. glinda is ruthless.

so it isn’t even “glinda would go to war if she thought it necessary” it’s that glinda does in fact go to war and rwby is, with salem, taking glinda’s decision to go to war to achieve her ends very seriously and putting that in a context where salem isn’t revered as a protector and loved by all. the only difference between salem and glinda is that glinda is beloved by the people of oz!

but i also promised you dorothy. so:

allow me to direct your attention back to what glinda does to mombi after ozma’s curse is lifted. mombi is made to drink a potion that causes her to forget all the magic she’s ever learned, leaving her to live as an ordinary old woman—but she is not left alone to suffer afterwards, because ozma makes arrangements to provide for her indefinitely.

this is, of course, what’s in store for the god of light. he’s going to ascend—that’s obvious—and the fairytale ‘the two brothers’ hints quite strongly that he’ll come back as a man (i’d wager a faunus specifically), leaving his power and memories of divinity behind and given a peaceful life in return. mombi’s resolution in ‘marvelous land’ offers a direct 1:1 comparison to ascension. 

but what about the god of darkness?

he’s– he’s dorothy.

dorothy doesn’t appear in ‘marvelous land’ and she has no presence in the book whatsoever except as one of the two characters whose departure at the end of the last book created the circumstances that allow this story to occur: it is dorothy’s adventure that convinces the wizard to leave oz, and then she leaves too. the wizard—through mombi, the real power behind his throne—retains his influence and authority over the land of oz until she is forced to undo her wrongs, but dorothy is simply… gone. she went home, she’s remembered fondly by her friends, she has nothing whatsoever to do with this story, and the silver shoes that bore her home at the end of the last book fell from her feet and were lost forever. 

(she does eventually make it back to oz, in a roundabout way, by accident. but for rwby’s purposes, and within the context of ‘marvelous land’ taken in isolation, dorothy is Gone Forever.)

afterans refer to the tree as home; they think of ascension as returning home to rest and find renewal after a long journey through the world outside. at the end of her journey through oz, she asks glinda to send her home, and glinda tells her:

“The Silver Shoes," said the Good Witch, "have wonderful powers. And one of the most curious things about them is that they can carry you to any place in the world in three steps, and each step will be made in the wink of an eye. All you have to do is to knock the heels together three times and command the shoes to carry you wherever you wish to go.”

and, as i noted, the shoes carry her home but are lost in the process, never to be found again. 

glinda teaches dorothy how to go home. likewise, salem is a repetition of jabber—the argument between the brothers comes full circle—and through this experience dark realizes that he needs to “go home,” i.e. ascend. he’s been trapped in this same disagreement for thousands of years and nothing has changed; nothing will change unless he tries something new. he shatters the moon on his way out and, unlike his brother, there’s nothing to suggest he’s still present in this world or relevant to this story as anything but backstory… because he ascended and became something new.

(the spirits in the relics.)

(which in terms of the ozian narrative, represent the golden cap, which glinda receives from dorothy before she gives it to the king of the flying monkeys to set them all free, so the symbolic through line between dark-as-dorothy becoming the spirits-as-flying-monkeys through his and their relation to salem is relatively straightforward.)

anyway, behold.

toto.

[bastardrobocop]

not being funny, not being melodramatic i hope, but i feel like the last year has broken me in a lot of ways. 2023 i mean. i watched a long term relationship disintegrate in my hands until the ultimate betrayal of my trust and safety. i was so stressed and so fucked up all the time.

and now like, i can feel im withdrawing from my friends, im engaging in unhealthy behaviors i will not specify here, despite it all im more lonely than ive ever been, my hobbies are starting to feel like dust in my mouth, and while i'm not actively suicidal, the thought isnt far from my mind in that nasty intrusive thought sort of way.

there are nice things. i have the place to myself. the bed to myself. its quiet. but i feel like ive exhausted the amount of patience people have with me talking about what ive gone through. and as is the nature of things i dont feel as though ive built character or come through hardened. i feel mad. hurt. i want to hurt xer back somehow. take something back because something was taken from me. i feel like i have no recourse. god knows if xe'll hurt someone like xe hurt me again. but thats not even my primary motivation. i just hate feeling like theres nothing. no justice. no satisfaction. nothing that makes being raped a more tolerable experience, which is a silly thing to say. but you understand, right? like, sure i could post somewhere highly visible "In December of 2023 well known SCP Wiki author UraniumEmpire sexually assaulted me" but like what would that accomplish? it sure would put me under a microscope. its a surreal sentence too. hard to explain why. maybe its ultraminor celebrity combined with knowledge that inevitably it can just be denied and nobody will listen.

you know before now i never really noticed how much people fetishize sexual assault? "CNC" and the like. i dont care for it. i dont think they know. its frustrating as an adult online trying to navigate adult spaces. i know its an odd topic, but im fully stream of consciousness right now. i'll see something and it hits me in the gut and so i block the user or close the thing or leave the discord call. yet another addition to the list of things that make my tastes so exacting.

i feel like i should come to some overall point but the only thing coming to mind right now is just 'i hate this'. and i do. i hate this so much. i'm crying a lot more. at stupid things. weird things. memories. dreams. this post. the funny thing is that despite it all, despite the content, despite everything, i hope people read it. i like feeling like i exist. i like feeling real to other people. reminding folks that im not just a joke machine. i have an internal world. i have had a life that's lead me here and despite advantages it has not been good.

did i ever talk about how my high school graduation went? odd digression, bear with me. i feel like its emblematic of how things typically go for me. it's the day i graduate high school. i come downstairs to find my mother on skype with my kansas family. my grandfather is dying. they put him on skype. i watch him die over skype. after sitting alone for some time, i tell my parents i do not want to go through with high school graduation. i am forced to regardless. it is the most miserable day of my life. nobody listens to what i need in the moment. i go through with it, and then we are all shepherded to some kind of entertainment center. for reasons i cannot fathom, we are not allowed to leave for a couple hours. enforced fun time. they bring a stage hypnotist. i sit in silence and watch his antics. i get up and ask one of the people supervising us if i can leave now. they finally say yes. my mother takes me home. she asks if i have a nice time. i say of course i didnt. we drive home in silence.

i have have very rarely felt understood. very rarely felt like i was built to exist in the world. i feel as though i have an expiration date beyond the obvious one. i have grown older and watched people i know operate normally in the world and wondered how they do it. it never clicked for me. autism, transness, otherings. experts looked at me, told me i needed accommodations. never really got them, or they didnt help.

this is getting too long. i asked myself partway through if this was a suicide note but concluded that it wasn't. this is primarily because im scared if i die, they'll separate my cats. adopt them to different homes. they're best friends, they should not be kept apart. i love my cats, even when they're breaking shit and tearing open trash bags.

final paragraph. this whole post thing is probably going to sound embarrassing to me when i have hindsight on it. oh well. i am going to hit the post button now.

[frogblast-the-ventcore]

Starfield Thoughts on Pets (and Missed Potential)

A friend of mine and I were talking about Starfield, and some of the story/design choices they made. She mentioned one that really struck her as odd:

"A thing that Major Sanon says the first time you meet her, when you talk about why the terrormorph is concerning, is that humanity has brought across the stars a lot of animals, like pests, pets, livestock, etc, intentionally and unintentionally, but terrormorphs remain a mystery.

"But somehow we didn't bring our Earth animals?

"We're sending settlers to lonely farms on distant armpits of worlds where a latrine is a luxury, but nobody thinks they'll need horses, chickens, cows, etc.?"

"Like, even the pets aside, think of the livestock ideas. A well maintained large chicken coop could provide fresh eggs for a whole community, same with dairy cows. And they clearly have cloning and highly advanced gene tech in this universe, so its not even about bringing millions of cows with them.

"If anything, in the "we have Firefly at home" parts of the franchise, you'd be seeing people basically ranching like if it were 1890s Kansas, with horses and animal labor to make up where they can't bring machines.

"I do strongly feel so hard it's a missed opportunity to do a whole "we wrecked alien world ecosystems with Earth animals and bugs that lack natural predators."

"In a world with breathable atmosphere but no predators, a couple rogue mice could easily destroy the entire ecosystem by eating all the indigenous fruit. A world dominated by tiny animals would be wrecked by a feral cat colony that reproduces unchecked.

"And you could have enviromentalist movements about preserving the alien worlds as they are, conflicting with the economics and emotions of wanting to keep our pets, and wanting to keep eating beef, etc.

"And it's pretty obvious Bethesda thought about the idea from the concept art, but it ended up on the cutting room floor."

The above art is from the official art book, and depicts a clearly cut-content "Pure Planet Initiative", suggesting Bethesda was at least considering these sorts of plotlines.

Here we see what may be an early concept Sam Coe and Cora Coe, on what is likely the Eye, with an actual cat.

So they've clearly thought about all of this.

As to how they might bring this plotline/Earth animals in general back into the game?

Literally just a data core with the genetic information of all the main Earth animals/plants. Space Noah's Ark meets Space Svalbard Seed Vault. That's all they'd need to bring Earth animal life to the rest of the Settled Systems with the exodus from Earth.

I'd buy that DLC in a heartbeat.

[bitch-butter]

11 for the kiss prompt if you're feeling it?

babe, thank you for your patience! I started this prompt as something Completely different, but me and my gf have been watching Fargo all the way through, so it's been heavy on the dome and one of my greatest joys in life is to put these babes in Absurd situations.

so, here is a scene from a fargo!au to the tune of: when one stops the kiss to whisper “I’m sorry, are you sure you-” and they answer by kissing them more

also, sorry this is so long lol i can't hide who i am

This is a true story. The events depicted took place in Minnesota in 2022.

At the request of the survivors, names have been changed.

Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.

* * *

The Kid drove them through the twilight, though Joe was sure his hands were probably slick against the steering wheel on account of all the blood, not to mention the fact that they were going on 48 hours since Joe snatched him and he had to be dead tired.

Not that Joe was in much position to point any of this out, shot as he was, even if it was only in one of his body's many useless patches of meat. Whatever they were using to train those boys down in Kansas City he hoped they stuck with it if they all made such lousy shots. Anybody can shoot anybody in the neck, it takes a real motherfucker to come at you with a knife and all, what with the questions it begged about mortality and the like. And those Kansas City boys were nothing to write home about with a knife, if a measly college kid could take one of them out with just a few superficials to his hands.

Joe would tell the Kid he was proud of him if it would have made any sense to do so. If it would have been less of an odd thing to say, all kidnapping considered. 

As the sun finally dipped below the horizon the Kid pulled into the lot of the first motel he saw, parking as cockeyed as anybody had ever seen, looking over his shoulder to where Joe was sprawled out like an idiot. He was sweating, pale, and looked entirely ill in a way that made his eyes look like moonstones, like alien radioactivity, like the pitcher where his mom used to keep cherry juice.

He might be concussed as well as just shot. 

“We should stop here,” the Kid said nervously, glancing between Joe and whatever he could see out the window. “I mean, we should stop here, right?”

Joe licked at his chapped lips, grimacing at the texture. “Where are we?”

The Kid squinted through the growing darkness, mouth pursed up in thought and making Joe’s swimming head make the sound of a failing ECG. 

“Some place called Bemidji,” he answered, and Joe sighed, nodded.

“Far enough for the night,” he allowed, twisting haphazardly until he could sit up in the backseat, allowing the past hour of his convalescence to slide away like afterbirth onto a dirty floor. Much good may it do him, with nothing but a water bottle and a scarf to patch himself up with. “We need to see about a room, there’s shit for your hands in the glove.”

The Kid blinked at him for a moment, the words taking their time to catch up with him, before he was taking one shaking, bleeding hand off of the steering wheel and reaching for the glove compartment of the car. Joe rolled his eyes at him, having almost forgotten the novelty of the first time a guy won a knife fight, how it made you feel all contained and strong for maybe an hour after the fact but ultimately turned you loose, jittery, feeling all the hurts your head hadn’t wanted you to feel. He busied himself with folding the dark scarf at his side over to its cleaner edge, using his own less than stable appendages to fix it about his neck, covering up at least the worst of the damage. Almost certainly there was still blood somewhere on his person, but the good thing about this part of the Midwest was that nobody wanted to seem impolite when they told a guy he was covered in blood.

Never wanted to make any assumptions, these folk.

“I…” the Kid began, voice sounding weak and fraught. “I don’t think I can use this, is the thing.”

Scowling, Joe looked back at him as he fumbled his cold fingers at doing up the buttons of his coat, nearly releasing a hard, derisive laugh at the sight. The Kid held his gun between two fingers, like he was ready to drop it directly into an Evidence bag, looking almost nauseous at the concept. If he wasn’t so damn annoyed by him Joe would have reminded the Kid that not three hours past he had stabbed a guy through the hand, chest, and face. 

“Not the - Jesus Christ,” Joe shook his head, leaning up jerkily to reach past the Kid, who flinched away from him as though Joe could still manage to hurt him somehow. “There’s gloves, you moron,” he bit out, reaching into the open compartment and grasping at the dark, canvassy fabric and yanking them out, tossing them in the Kid’s lap with a sneer. “Put the fucking piece back before somebody sees you.”

The Kid swallowed heavily, seeming all too thankful to put the gun back where it came from, fumbling at the gloves with his sticky hands, nose bunching up at the feeling of the thick coverings swallowing up his wounds, no doubt sticking to the deep indentations. “What are you going to say?” he managed, looking at him with wide eyes, appearing younger than Joe gave him credit for.

He had to snap the fuck out of this if they were going to make it through the night.

“Not going to say anything,” he brushed off, feeling through his pockets for the wallet he’d picked up at the Minneapolis post office, his fake ID, fake SSN, and real money all lying in wait. “Just ask for a room, is all. Keep your hands close to you,” he ordered brusquely, feeling grimy with stress, with blood washed away by nothing but Chippewa Spring water.

The Kid could only nod at him, his now gloved hands set before him awkwardly, comically, like a doctor about to go into surgery.

Thoughts of doctors made him remind himself to grab his bag from the trunk, and thoughts of the bag made him linger on thoughts of Babe and the Doc. Hopefully they’d made it to…wherever they were going. If Babe had any sense he’d be trying to hoof it back to Fargo by now with the Doc dropped through some thin ice, but Joe’s estimation of his partner's intelligence was not the most flattering right now. Not since he’d fucked up the whole goddamn thing by taking the guy with them in the first place.

They could have been in and out with a fat stack of cash waiting for them in three days, a little lie-low time at the cabin, the Kid incapacitated and ready for the ransom to be paid, but no. Fucking Babe. 

Nothing had turned out as it should.

Huffing, he gave himself a final once-over in the shadows of the car, judging himself at the very least presentable so long as that lodge just beyond wasn’t using overhead lighting. He cast his eyes back to the Kid, who watched him apprehensively, but it was not like the other ways that he’d been looked at over the past few days. At first the Kid had been afraid of him, as he should have been, but he’d soon come to look at Joe with something like disdain. That had been before the barrage, though, and now it appeared that the world had tilted itself to the other side; the Kid was still fearful, but now it seemed his fear was somehow beyond the two of them, outside the car and miles behind in their chase.

“No funny stuff, alright?” Joe threatened meagerly, hoping his face did the talking for him as he glared through the dark at him. 

The Kid tilted his head, looking unimpressed but certainly trepidatious. “I couldn’t try something if I wanted to right now,” he spat out, looking down towards his gloved hands, his eyes blinking quickly. By now it was probably setting in that even if he did go to the cops he was liable to get asked why his prints were on a knife recovered from a crime scene in Brainerd.

Joe almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

“Don’t talk back to me,” he warned, voice a low growl as he reached for the handle of the door, cracking it open and letting a sheet of cold air rush into the car. “Not afraid to smack you again.”

“You barely touched me,” the Kid drawled, glaring back at Joe as he pushed out of the car. “What, afraid to break a nail?”

He hummed a bit with rage as he slammed the door shut behind him, taking a pause beside the door just to let the icy air waft over his face, his breath a trailing comet. It was hard to remember that the Kid was still his hostage and Joe was still awaiting his ransom, Kansas City waging war be damned, and that meant Joe was not to entertain the thought of liking him even the tiniest bit. There was a little bit of slack to be cut for himself, given the fact this job had been more FUBAR than any other job he’d done before, including those haphazard hits he did in his early days. But he had to hold fast to his senses, keep moving, keep the Kid alive for the next three days, collect the ransom, make the ransom money trade to the Kid’s guy before making the trade for the Kid himself, then get his ass back to Fargo to rendezvous with the rest of the guys to fight this war with Kansas City.

The quiet, treacherous part of his mind allowed himself to consider the fact that neither one of them might make it to the end of the next three days.

Sighing, he shook his head into the cold, crossing behind to the trunk and grabbing his bag. He needed sleep, and food, and to clean his wound properly, and this melancholy would lift. Or so he hoped.

The Kid exited the car after him, the jingling of the keys falling away into the depths of his pocket, his face looking drawn and tense as he folded his arms before his chest and looked over the hood of the car expectantly at Joe. Joe looked back at him with a raised brow, rolling his eyes before beginning to make his way across the icy parking lot, feeling stiff and foolish in his attempt not to jostle his scarf against his bleeding neck too badly, the sound of the other man following after him scraping coldly over his ears. 

He should be counting his blessings that Kansas City was after them, honestly, because if they weren’t the Kid would probably be trying to run away from him again. Unfortunately for him the only thing that stood between the Kid and a whole horde of trained killers was Joe Liebgott, who thankfully knew what he was doing. And now that one of their own was dead on the floor of a cabin in Brainerd they could best bet that the Kid’s face was right next to Joe’s in the scope of every gun their rivals had in the Midwest.

There would be no escaping now, save they fight their way out. But that was a thought for the morning.

The door of the lodge jingled open cheerily, but the sound stood in stark contrast to the woman seated behind the desk, her face lined with unpleasantness and her hair piled up in a severe beehive. She looked them both up and down, but thankfully the room itself was only lit by a lamp beside the door and the yellow glow of another lamp upon the desk beside the woman, so she would hopefully miss the dried blood caked up along his neck and the cuffs of the Kid’s jacket.

“We need a room,” Joe said decidedly, stopping at the desk before the unrelenting figure of the woman as she peered behind him towards the Kid, who shuffled anxiously and kept his arms folded close against his chest.

“Two?” she chirped, her voice a shrill, tweety thing.

Joe frowned. “Huh?”

“Just the two or you got more?”

Impatiently, Joe narrowed his eyes at her, the sound of her voice like an icepick in his already spasming head. “Just me and my pet,” he jerked his head back towards the Kid, who scowled at him like the spoiled brat Joe suspected he was. “So give me the reduced rate.”

The woman wasn’t in on the joke as she blinked blankly at him, clearly thinking that Joe was the stupid one in this situation. “So you got pets with you?”

He barely reigned in a noisy sigh. “No.”        

“Sir, if you got pets with you that’s gonna change your rate so I gotta know now if you got pets,” the woman said, abrasive and annoyed, her voice like an evil hotdish come to life.

The Kid ran out of patience before he did, stepping forward to knock hard into Joe’s shoulder. “Two men, one room, one night, flat rate,” he spoke rapidly, his words cutting and quick in the way that Joe could tell his hands were probably giving him the worst kind of grief. “He’s paying,” he finished, giving Joe a dark look before stepping to the side, all but tapping his foot as Joe signed them into the register and the woman, who had obviously had enough of their nonsense, rang it up.

“Little antsy aren’t we, baby?” Joe muttered lowly as they made their way back out the door into the cold, crossing the ice of the lot towards their room. 

“Don’t piss me off,” the Kid snapped, doing his best to walk faster than Joe and giving a sharp slip to the side that had him coughing out a disturbed yelp and had Joe chucking sadistically at him. “I fucking hate Minnesota,” he burst, childish and clearly fraying along the seams as he kept walking, this time decidedly more heavy footed as Joe beat him to the door of their room, unlocking it and opening it for him with a placid, parodic smile. “Fuck off,” he groaned as he passed through the door, leaving Joe to follow after him with a wry grin.

The room was the same as every motel he’d stayed in over the past decade of being a hired gun, but somehow worse because everything north of the cities seemed to just get worse and worse in his estimation. Perhaps it was his neck, which was beginning to smart against the touch of his scarf.

He allowed the kid to snap the lamps on, and he only just remembered to yank their curtains shut before he pulled the scarf from his neck, its woolen membrane sticking to the hot surface of the wound and tugging at it, making him hiss with the pain that roared over his skin.

“Motherfucker,” he cursed, throwing the fabric down before shoving clumsily out of his coat. “Alright, baby, this is where I’m going to need your help,” he called towards the Kid, who had paused in a sort of daze before the thermostat, appearing to forget how it worked, before blinking towards Joe with a look like a man who had just been awoken from a deep sleep. “You with me?”

Swallowing, the Kid paused before giving him a jerky nod. “I don’t know if I can…” he hesitated, watching as Joe unzipped his bag from where he plopped it heavily atop the bed, the ugly brown flowers of the duvet pressed down with its weight.   

“You’re not performing open heart surgery, kid, you’re just going to be my assistant,” Joe said brusquely, methodically unpacking his med kit, even if it only consisted of peroxide, bandages, and a mediocre sewing kit.             

The Kid shook his head, looking green around the gills. “But - my hands,” he excused, holding up his still gloved hands, appearing just as silly as he had in the car, though the Kid clearly saw this as the worst injury that there had ever been.       

Rolling his eyes, Joe gathered up his shit in the crook of his arm. “You know, once back in the late nineties I knew a guy. This was in ‘99,” he went on, crossing past the still dumbstruck figure of the Kid and into the bathroom, hitting the light switch with his elbow. “Guy was almost too stupid for words, didn’t have the sense God gave a clam. Well, as one figures this was also the sort of man who collected authentic Japanese katanas.”

He spoke almost to himself as he set out his materials on the sink, observing the mess of his face in the mirror for the first time. “What a man wants to do with a collection of swords is beyond me, but this guy was pretty dim,” he continued, leaning forward over the sink to get a closer look in the mirror and finding himself looking exhausted but otherwise passably normal. “Anyway, one day he’s showing me his collection, blabbing on about how much this one cost, and that one cost,” he said dryly as the Kid appeared behind him in the mirror, watching Joe curiously. “And I admit I wasn’t impressed, so my challenging him to show off his skills was probably not in the spirit of human kindness, if you catch my drift.”

Behind him, the Kid sagged against the doorframe, blinking slowly as he watched Joe examine his neck, dirty fingers prodding at the area around the redness of the wound, which he thankfully saw was little more than a deep graze. “Not bad at all,” Joe remarked offhandedly, reaching for the pre-packaged bar of soap at the side of the sink. “But as I was saying, the guy didn’t feel like letting me show him up, so he grabs a sword and starts swinging it around samurai-like, you know? Making fucking sounds and everything. But the guy clearly has no skills, no training, so you can guess what happens next.”

“What happens next?” the Kid asked with all the grace of being told a bedtime story.

Joe turned the knob on the sink, hot water pouring from the faucet, and set to washing his hands clean finally. “Guy slices his own cock off,” he shrugged, watching the Kid’s face fall slack with surprise in the mirror. “Well, half off. But you’d think it was all the way off with the way this guy was hollering, screaming and the like. There was blood all over the floor, he’d cut clean through his pants, and I told him, you know, that I’d drive him to the hospital,” he went on, judging his hands adequately washed and turning the water off, reaching for a tan towel hanging next to the mirror. “But before I can get my keys the guy is running over to this candle he has on his kitchen table, and faster than you can blink he’s pouring hot candle wax straight over his half cut off cock."                                                                                                              

The Kid looked somehow even more nauseated, his mouth a fat grimace of disgust as Joe dried his hands and reached for the peroxide. “I don’t know what he was trying to do. Maybe cauterize the wound, maybe stop the bleeding, but I guess nothing you do makes much sense when you have half a cock hanging off you,” he reasoned, opening the bottle and instantaneously squirting a stream of the liquid onto the wound at his neck, making a tight, pained sound as it burned. “They patched it up, to be sure, but I’m positive that thing has never worked right again.”

His story was met with silence as the Kid simply stood with his mouth open, eyes wide over Joe’s hands as they moved at patting the rivulets of peroxide that ran down from his neck dry. After a long moment he nodded, stepping into the bathroom appearing somehow chastened, eyes down and filled with fear, even as Joe remained consumed with the routine of cleaning the graze.

“Would you…” the Kid began, his voice low, and the syrupy drip of it in the quiet of the room, in the sense of safety that was drifting across his warming skin, made Joe feel hot at the back of his neck. “I can help, I just need…” he faltered, waiting until Joe turned to him before he offered up his gloved hand with a tight look over his face.

Joe understood, and that same pitying feeling swept over him. Poor kid, he should have been safe in his own home right now if it weren’t for Joe. Well, if it weren’t for his boyfriend hiring Joe. All the same.

He reached for the Kid’s hand, pulling him closer as gently as he could with just a tug of his wrist, meeting his eyes briefly as he pinched the fat tip of the glove’s finger in his own. The Kid looked back at him apprehensively, eyes big and blue as a daydream, and Joe again reminded himself he wasn’t permitted to get butterflies in his stomach. 

Gritting his teeth, he pulled the glove off with a fast, clean jerk.

The Kid gasped, sucking down a sharp breath as his mangled hand was brought into the light, and even Joe had the grace to flinch back at the copious amount of dried blood there was. But he had seen far, far worse, and so composure returned to him swiftly as he turned the hot water back on, the Kid barely recovering before Joe was easing his injured hand beneath the steady stream. Wincing, the Kid looked at him openly, painfully, and Joe found himself giving him a small, comforting smile before he could stop himself. 

“Not bad,” he shook his head softly, watching as the water washed the first layer of blood from the other man’s hand, mesmerized by the way the water appeared white as it flowed from the tap and ran red from the fleshly barricade of the Kid’s hand. “Not bad at all,” he assured, watching as slowly the Kid’s wounds came to light, shallow and long against his palms, nothing that a good binding wouldn’t fix. Probably not even deep enough to scar badly.

Teeth worrying at his lower lip, the Kid averted his eyes from his bared hand and looked down to his still covered one. “The other one, too, please,” he requested, his voice a rasp of pain, and Joe moved towards the pull of it mindlessly, seizing the fingertip just as he had the first and pulling it free to reveal wounds of a similar nature, the bleeding slowed but still looking ugly, brazen in the manner of knife fights.

“You’re just fine,” Joe shook his head, giving him another bracing smile as he brought the Kid’s hands together under the water, massaging them gently to ease away the thickest of the bloody patches. He glanced to the Kid once more, finding him looking down in his hands with a tense jaw, with cold, clinical eyes that seemed to be actively fighting off his revulsion.

It was different from the wild-eyed look he’d had when he had flown at the guy from Kansas City, but it made Joe’s mouth water just the same.

“You’re a pretty tough kid, aren’t you?” Joe said softly, feeling himself start slightly as blue eyes met his own once more, inscrutable and vague like making shapes out of clouds in the sky.

“I don’t think I am,” the Kid said quietly, head shaking.

Joe huffed out an amused sound, shutting the water off before reaching for the discarded towel. “Well, I do,” he reiterated, leaving the other man’s hands in the bowl of the sink as he began to pat them down, the skin still residually red and irritated with both the heat of the water and the size of the cuts. “I think you’re going to be just fine.”

The Kid let him work, making a short, pained sound as Joe released the peroxide over his cuts. “Has this happened to you a lot of times?”

“Has what happened to me a lot of times?”

“You know, men trying to shoot you.”

Joe sighed, looking at him tiredly. “It ain’t exactly unfamiliar, if you catch my drift,” he said lowly, cleansing the other hand before setting the bottle down against the countertop. “If this is going to happen to you it’s probably best that it’s happening while you’re with me.”

Scoffing, the Kid gave him a dark look. “If I wasn’t with you this wouldn’t be happening to me at all,” he pointed out, watching carefully as Joe gathered up a handful of gauze. “Are you going to tell me who hired you now?”

“Nope,” Joe shook his head, pressing the gauze down against the open cuts of the other man’s right hand.

“Don’t you think I deserve to know why I’m going to die?” the Kid asked sharply, brow furrowed, his hand loose in Joe’s hold.

“You’re not going to die,” Joe shot down, pausing just to give him an irritated glare. “If you die I don’t get paid, and believe me not getting paid is worse than death,” he said easily, returning to his concentration with a stern look down to the bandage, beginning to wind it around the other man’s palm. “So you’re going to be fine.”

The Kid looked at him dubiously. “I don’t trust you,” he said, as though the fact was going to hurt Joe in some way.

“Good to know you aren’t as stupid as you look,” Joe teased, looking at him a millisecond before the Kid was leaning into his space and kissing him.

Woah daddy, his brain supplied uselessly as he was kissed messily, certainly not as plainly as Joe would have expected the Kid to be. He was struck dumb for a moment before he found himself moving into its promise, kissing him back with just as much pent up feeling as it seemed the Kid had in his own end of the confusing display of catharsis. It wouldn’t be the first time he had a confusing sexual experience after a job, why not, why not, why not - 

Because he’s your hostage and you’re supposed to be smarter than this, he supplied, like a hammer coming down on the moment.

He pulled away with no small degree of reluctance, lips pulling in as though to trap the feeling of the kiss between his lips as long as possible. The Kid looked back at him, eyes cracking open from where he had allowed them to close in the heat of their connection, and Joe found himself smiling at him again like an idiot, almost laughing with how ridiculous they both were.

“I’m sorry,” Joe coughed out, unsure what exactly he was apologizing for even among the hundreds of options he had. “I’m sorry, are you sure you -”

The Kid kissed him again, this time with his half bandaged hand cupping the curve of Joe’s neck, the long tail of the bandage trailing down in its wake like a shooting star. Joe released another shocked breath into the press of the other man’s mouth, but didn’t have the strength to stop it as it came at him again, the heat of a mouth on his own an aphrodisiac too strong to resist. And the Kid was beautiful, he’d known it from the start, from the time that he’d trailed him through the Uptown streets, snowflakes getting caught in his hair, and maybe he’d wanted him even then. 

But Joe was a professional, he knew better, he knew better than to be doing this -

“Kiss me back,” the Kid urged against his lips.

He needed no more prodding than that to wrap his arms around the Kid’s shoulders and kiss him for all he was worth (which Joe knew to be $214,865.49). Dipping the Kid against the sink he sank his tongue down into his mouth, sweeping through and gathering up the taste of him, almost moaning at the relief of being alive to kiss someone, as the fear of knowing that just beyond this room there were men after them, who even now might be right next door.

“I don’t want to die,” the Kid managed to say between kissed, his mouth red with their contact, looking gorgeous and debauched and very, very afraid.

Joe shook his head, dipping down to kiss his hair, the corner of his swelling lips. “You’re not going to die,” he brushed aside, diving in to kiss him again before he could allow the thought to linger even further, before the cold outside managed to creep into the room and envelope them both in its grasp, in the certainty of its danger. 

[theabstruseone]

I had an idea once to do a reboot of Superman where Lois Lane basically figures out Superman is Clark Kent instantly because, y'know, reporter. Instead of the song-and-dance of her not reporting on the biggest scoop ever, she comes up with a way around it...if she becomes Superman's media consultant, she could sign a confidentiality agreement. And she spends a couple of weeks teaching Clark how to be Superman, portray the character of the larger-than-life hero.

"But if you recognized me, wouldn't anyone else?"

*Lois throws a picture on the desk* "Who is that?"

"Gee Miss Lois, I don't know. I don't know many people in Metropo--"

"Me, six months ago when I thought bangs would be a good idea. You're looking right at me and can't figure it out. Part your hair on the other side and nobody will ever notice. Do you see how much you slouch?"

"I mean, I kinda hafta on account of doorways being so small and--"

"Stand up straight! Here, studies show if you put your fists on your hips with your legs apart and your chest out a bit, it increases confidence."

"Huh. Ya know, I do feel a bit more--"

"And stop mumbling! I know Metropolis can beat the Kansas out of anyone but you need to put that Boy Scout attitude to work for you. Make big, bold declarations. Who cares if they're cheesy? You're an alien and you're supposed to be the goodie two-shoes one of this bunch! Nobody's going to call you a dork if you can bench press a semi."

"But Miss Lois--"

"And don't 'Miss' with my first name! It's 'Lois' or 'Miss Lane'."

"But Miss Lane, I don't feel like myself when I do all this stuff. I just wanna help people."

"And you will. But this isn't you. You're Clark. Clark can always stay Clark. But Superman needs to be something bigger and better. The more confidence you exude, the fewer people will think you're Clark."

"But I AM Clark."

"You are going to attract a lot of enemies and they don't need to know you're Clark Kent. They don't need to know where your mother lives. Where your cousin lives. Where your high school friends live. You may be faster than a speeding bullet, but they aren't. And there are a lot of nasty people with guns out there. But when you put on that suit, if you act nothing like Clark, nobody will ever suspect you're Clark. Hell, give them your real name. Tell them you live at that ice palace--"

"Fortress of Solitude."

"Whatever, that place. You have a home. You have a name. Why would anyone think you're hiding among humans? So long as Superman doesn't act like Clark, you'll be able to protect those around you when you're not there to protect them."

"I see your point, Miss L-- Lane."

"Good. Now, get in the stance, think confidence, and say something heroic!"

*Clark takes a breath, then lowers his voice an octave* "I fight for truth, justice, and a better tomorrow!"

"...I can workshop it."

[catholicguiltmusicedition]

I love this post and the reblogs, so let me add my two cents about Kansas.

In Kansas, most everyone is crammed up into the corner. You can tell its Kansas on a map because, unlike the other rectangles, Kansas has a bite in it. That bite must've taken something along with the Buffalo because Kansas is a state of "have I been here before?" The further away you get from the crammed cities in the corner the more nothingness you find, stretches of land that surely isn't farmland, crops, likely corn, stretching as far as you can see, trees and nothingness. Sometimes you'll find a small part of civilization, old and dirty, sometimes you can tell the newness creeping in from people trying to develop, many times they stop trying because the nearest store is a Price Chopper and Walmart is a day trip, you can find them trying to change the gravel and dirt road towns with stoplights hanging from wire and a feeling that you shouldn't be there, but nobody new comes because who would want to live in the same town as whatever lives in the cornfields just next door? There the locals teach their kids to avoid the tall grass and crop fields, there kids stay together all through school, there you're likely to find an old friend from your elementary school days at the one big store you have. In Kansas you drive by fields and land that looks the same everywhere and towns coated in dirt that seems its been there since the Dust Bowl, when the earth joined the air and swallowed us whole, in Kansas you drive through towns where you feel like you shouldn't stop but to get gas and a snack, you don't live there, in Kansas you feel as though the ghosts that live in the fields know you're there and you don't belong until you're home, in Kansas those who live in towns surrounded by the farms and dirt stay there or they don't return. In Kansas it's usually at least once in the spring the animals fall silent and shelter, everything is off, it's cold and hot and the trees are still despite the storm overhead, lightning cracks and thunder booms and then, you hear it. A loud piercing wail, a tornado siren. You can find locals to the state on their porches watching. If they can't see the funnel cloud, they won't shelter. They know it'll pass. If the old man who's lived in that town as long as anyone remembers is sheltering, you should too. Kansas is a state of vast nothings and ghosts, of dirt and dust and storms, of stretches of farms with something that's off, but you don't know what. In Kansas, if you listen to the locals and keep a full tank of gas, you'll be safe, stay on the roads, avoid the tall grass, avoid the corn, play the radio, and drive.

it’s all you americans talk about… liminal space this… cryptid that

[chronicangel]

through the jungle, through the dark

Link to this fic on AO3. Words: 2641 Date posted: August 5, 2024

Summary: Of course she was kidding, and of course he knew she was kidding. Even if there was some way to sneakily drop her and her truck off in the middle of the city that wouldn’t get them both caught, she thought this road trip was like some sorta rite of passage. She needed this, needed the last thousand miles stretching between her and the city.

Lana was just grateful her truck didn’t break down.

She’d had the stupid thing since she was 16, and Aunt Helen had it for at least a decade before that, and good, hard-working farm trucks just weren’t meant to haul a half a dozen boxes halfway across the country. The Kents had offered to chip in and help her buy a plane ticket out to the city, which had been awful nice of them, but even with the price of gas, it probably would have cost three times as much to take a plane and ship all those boxes to her new apartment. After she refused that as polite as she could, Jonathan had insisted that she let him drive with her, just so she didn’t have to make the near-24-hour drive all by herself and then move all those boxes up the two flights of stairs into her new apartment, but it would have been hell on his back—both the drive and the boxes—so she swiftly denied that, too.

Martha had given her a tater tot hot dish with aluminum foil wrapped over the top to keep it warm before she left and insisted that she call the second she got to the city. Jonathan had told her that if the busted AC got to be too much and she wanted to turn back around for home, nobody would blame her. Aunt Helen had insistently told her that she would always have a room at the old farmhouse if she wanted and then hugged her tight until her ribs ached and her face hurt from smiling so hard. And then she was off.

When Smallville was nothing but a speck in her rearview mirror, which didn’t take too long all things considered, she rolled down the driver’s side window with the hand-crank until her hair was flying every which way and turned the radio up to max volume and treated the corn fields rolling by to her very own crooning along to Johnny Cash.

Still, leaving home didn’t feel real until she saw the bright blue “Missouri Welcomes You” sign and pressed on the gas a little harder, until she was going closer to 10 miles over than 5. She’d never been outside of Kansas before, not even when Clark decided he was going to up and leave to go to that big fancy university up in Metropolis and she pouted and dug her heels in and all-but begged him not to leave. Those city folk’ll kill you, Kent, she’d insisted, even though she knew better than anybody that nobody could kill Clark, nor would anybody want to.

The heat did start to get a little unbearable once she’d been driving for almost eight hours, and by the time she had crossed the Mississippi and the radio stations started with Ws instead of Ks, she needed to stretch her legs. As a matter of pride more than anything, she waited until she’d crossed over the border into Illinois just so she could still say she’d never willingly set foot in Missouri, and she found somewhere shady to park the truck so she could hop out and stretch. Her back must have popped in at least three places.

While she was stopped, she got a call from Clark himself, and she couldn’t help smiling wide enough that the gap in her front teeth showed in the rearview mirror when she answered. “Just couldn’t wait until tomorrow, huh?”

He laughed in the awkward way he always did when he wasn’t quite sure if he was supposed to be laughing. “I just wanted to check on you. Ma seemed to think you were going to die of heatstroke before you made it here.”

Living in the city’d killed that country hick accent, and she couldn’t help but wonder if the same thing was gonna happen to her. “Well if you’re that worried about it, you can fly your big blue butt over here and pick me and the truck up to fly us the rest of the way.”

His laugh was a lot more natural that time. Of course she was kidding, and of course he knew she was kidding. Even if there was some way to sneakily drop her and her truck off in the middle of the city that wouldn’t get them both caught, she thought this road trip was like some sorta rite of passage. She needed this, needed the last thousand miles stretching between her and the city.

“Are you still planning on getting here at lunchtime tomorrow?”

She looked up at the sky, brilliantly blue with no clouds. The sun was beating down on the chipping paint of her teal truck, threatening to give her a sunburn through the windshield even when she got back in the car. Her only saving grace was the tree she was sitting under. Some birds were chirping not far away, and little bugs fluttered up from the grass between her toes.

“Yeah, I’ll be there for lunch,” she answered after a minute.

“I guess I’ll let you get back to it, then,” he said, in that way that indicated that he’d be smacking his thighs and standing up from an old, worn couch if they were talking in-person.

“Guess so,” she said back somewhat faintly, not fully paying attention. Even after he hung up, she took another ten minutes just to lay in the grass and stare up at the sky.

Once she was back on the road, she couldn’t help but notice that the country music they played on the radio was different the further East you got. Back home, it was all Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton and Waylon Jennings. All the way through Illinois and beyond, there was more of a pop bend to it—older Taylor Swift and Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. It wasn’t bad, it was certainly head-bobbing and finger-drumming worthy, but she didn’t belt it quite so loud.

She didn’t pull over again other than to get gas until it was almost midnight, straddling the border between West Virginia and Maryland. If she really wanted to, she probably could have pushed those last few hours to Metropolis and slept on a mattress on the floor in her studio apartment, but she didn’t really want to. Instead, she sat in the bed of her truck, surrounded by cardboard boxes with labels like “junk I forgot to pack until the last minute” and “the nice plates (FRAGILE!!!)” with a hot dish in her lap that she was eating straight out of with a fork. Even room temperature, Martha Kent’s cooking was enough to make her feel like she’d never left home, even though she was over a thousand miles away. Far away from the city like this, she was also able to get one last, real nice look at the stars before she was in Metropolis where the light pollution would mean she’d never see it again, or at least not for an awful long time.

Sleep folded over her like a warm blanket with the stars over her head and Elliott Smith crooning to her from her truck’s speakers, hot dish still uncovered between her knees.

That was why she was grateful her truck didn’t break down. When she woke up in the morning with the sun rising over her head and gospel music playing over the speakers, she realized that she never fully shut the thing off, and by all rights the battery should have died. That was the sort of miracle that followed you around when you were friends with Superman, she guessed.

The rest of the drive was unremarkable. Five hours of rolling hills and green trees, and then she was in front of her apartment building a few hours earlier than she expected to be and hauling some of the lighter boxes up the stairs. It made the muscles in her back and shoulders burn the same way chucking hay bales to the horses did. There was something almost nostalgic about it.

When Clark showed up, he looked miffed in a way that made her snort before either of them said anything. “You should have called me and told me you got in early,” he said, almost like a whine. It was adorable, and it reminded her of when they were 6 and 7 and he used to huff and get mad at her for racing ahead of him on the track at school. “You didn’t have to lug all these boxes up by yourself. I would have helped.”

“I’m a big girl, Clark, I’m plenty strong without help from Superman,” she teased, confident that the walls in her apartment were thick enough to keep anyone else from overhearing them. He grimaced and looked around all paranoid-like, anyway.

“I’m not helping you out as Superman, I’m helping you out as your friend,” he insisted, and, well, she couldn’t really argue with that one.

“Then you can help me out by putting together that bookshelf over there,” she said, with a nod of her head toward the cheap planks of numbered wood from IKEA. “And when you’re done with that you can start putting the books on it.”

For a long time, they worked together in silence. She got all of her dishes up on the shelves while he stared at the planks of wood like he was worried about snapping them right in half, which he probably was. After a while, she couldn’t take the quiet anymore.

“I was hoping you were gonna bring your little girlfriend,” she said, in a teasing but not quite condescending way, and she couldn’t help but grin at the way that his cheeks flushed. “Ma says she’s the sweetest thing on Earth, which is mighty high praise from Martha Kent. I can’t remember how old I was before she stopped calling me ‘feisty.’”

“Lois is plenty feisty,” he said, with a perfect mix of fondness and embarrassment that made her grin a little wider.

“So you’ve got a type then,” she teased back, and he rolled his eyes even though she could see the tinge of pink to his cheeks. “You don’t go out in the sun enough anymore. You’re paler ‘n Pete Ross, and your freckles are all gone.”

“I never had freckles,” he scoffed. She just shrugged her shoulders. She remembered those freckles and those dimples plain as day, but it wasn’t worth arguing about. “And I don’t have a type,” he added after a minute, when it must have seemed clear she wasn’t going to push the issue.

“Alright, you don’t have a type,” she conceded. Another argument not worth having. It wasn’t like she’d met this Lois gal to make any sort of judgment call about it either way, anyway. And it wasn’t like the fact that they’d dated for nine months in high school said much about his type now, anyhow. “So tell me about her then.”

He stopped and looked thoughtful for a minute, like he wasn’t quite sure what to say about her. Lana raised her eyebrows and leaned a little closer.

“She works at the Planet, too. She’s a little older than me—your age.” She rolled her eyes at that. Like she was several years his senior or something. They were in the same grade in school, it was just that her birthday was a couple months too late in the year to start the year before him. “She’s… stubborn. Curious. Intelligent. She’s got awful spelling, and it’s like she never learned how to turn on autocorrect or something.”

Lana snorted. “Don’t you have to turn that off?” She still had a flip phone. Those tiny smartphones that were manufactured to break after a year or two didn’t have the constitution for farm work any more than half the girls at their high school did.

“I don’t really know. I never really had any use for it, anyhow,” he said, and she could hear some of that country hick accent starting to bleed through again. No matter how much country hick you put in Clark, he was always the sharpest kid in their class.

“Well, she sounds nice,” she said, less because it was true and more because it was the thing that you said when someone finished telling you about their girlfriend—not that Lois didn’t sound nice, but Clark hadn’t given her all that much to work with. “Now that I live in the city you can’t keep hiding her from me.”

“I wasn’t hiding her from you,” he huffed, and she grinned again.

“Well good, because now that I live in the city I’m determined to meet her.” He rolled his eyes and got back to putting the bookshelf together, apparently a little less nervous about snapping all the wood planks in half. With all the dishes put away, she just sat cross-legged on the floor and watched him work.

She’d need to get furniture soon. Clark had done her the courtesy of finding her a mattress, which sat in the middle of the floor between them, but she didn’t have anything else other than the appliances the studio came with. A couch seemed in order, at least. A TV too, probably, at least before football season started. She’d grit her teeth and root for Kansas City’s team since they technically shared custody, even if it was formally for the Missouri half.

It took a little under an hour to put the bookshelf together. It probably would have taken less time if he wasn’t being so careful with it, but she’d also seen him pull door knobs out of doors without meaning to, so maybe the caution was warranted. “I think pizza’s in order,” she announced. That was what you did when somebody helped you move: You ordered pizza, and you sat on the floor and ate it and caught up. They’d already done the catching up, though, so they’d just have to eat in silence, she guessed.

Once the pizza was there, with extra cheese and extra sauce, they sat cross-legged next to each other with their backs pressed against the wall facing the window. Without a TV, that was the most interesting thing to watch. There was a bird fluttering up and down with nesting material. “So remind me,” he started, and she looked over at him. “Why Metropolis?”

She snorted. “I could ask you the same question.” He shrugged and caught a drooping string of melted cheese in his mouth before it fell off the slice of pizza in his hand. She looked back out the window, thinking for a while about her answer. Why Metropolis? It wasn’t like she didn’t have a life of her own in Smallville. She’d gone to college like she was supposed to, gotten a degree in business for lack of anything else that sounded more interesting. There were opportunities in Smallville, plenty of businesses that didn’t yet exist in the small town Midwest. But there was something about Smallville that just felt a little empty after Clark left it, and something about Metropolis that seemed a little brighter. It wasn’t that she needed Clark, specifically, but there was something he represented, she guessed, that she did need.

“Just seemed like the right thing to do,” she said with a shrug.

By the end of the day, her apartment mostly looked like an apartment. Sure, it didn’t have any furniture yet, but there were books on shelves and pictures on the walls. It didn’t look lived in, but it looked like a place someone might live, if that made any kind of sense. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” Clark asked, and she smiled. She missed hearing that, if nothing else.

“You sure will,” she replied, reaching up to ruffle his hair like they were teenagers.

[wizardnuke]

10 ship songs! i wasn't tagged by anyone to do this i just saw it on the dash and wanted to do it - five for beauyasha, five for shadowgast :^)

beauyasha!

cute thing by car seat headrest

i got so fucking romantic, i apologize,

lemme light your cigarette?

come visit kansas for a week of debauchery,

songs and high fives and weird sex.

alone together by fall out boy

i don't know where i'm going, but i don't think i'm coming home

and i said, i'll check in tomorrow if i don't wake up dead,

this is the road to ruin and we're starting at the end.

the only exception by paramore

i've got a tight grip on reality, but i can't let go of what's in front of me here,

i know you're leaving in the morning when you wake up,

leave me with some kind of proof it's not a dream.

butch 4 butch by rio romero

i sing her songs in my garage and make her fall in love with me,

and once we're done, the sun is gone,

we both just sit so nervously.

i talk real slow and speak real low, hoping she'll lean into me.

unknown/nth by hozier

it ain't the being alone (sha-la-la)

it ain't the empty home, baby (sha-la-la)

you know i'm good on my own (sha-la-la)

sha-la-la, baby, you know, it's more the being unknown

so much of the livin', love, is the being unknown.

--

shadowgast!

beautiful crime by tamer

when the sun sets, we're both the same

half in the shadows, half burned in flames

we can't look back for nothin'

take what you need, say your goodbyes

i gave you everything, and it's a beautiful crime.

love from the other side by fall out boy

i saw you in a bright clear field, hurricane heat in my head

the kind of pain you feel to get good in the end, good in the end

inscribed like stone and faded by the rain

"give up what you love, give up what you love, before it does you in"

heatstroke by brick + mortar

be by hozier

the strongest thing i ever felt

was feelings for you

so try to look me in the eye

a difficult goodbye

to all the things we hide

be as you've always been

oh, when there is nobody upstairs to receive us

when i have no kind words left, love, for you

(lover, be good to me)

demolition lovers by my chemical romance

i'm trying, i'm trying to let you know just how much you mean to me

and after all the things we put each other through and

i would drive on to the end with you.

[stuckonvenus]

Love In the Time of Calderas, Vol. II

Ginny Scott was the most beautiful girl in the world. For Ridley, that went without saying. Even though it was obvious she tried too hard for others to find her mysterious and an enigma that begged brokenness, he loved that whenever he did get close enough to her, she was more authentic than anyone else he’d met in his entire life. All you needed was the courage to tear down the walls painted in black nail polish and lipstick at the tender age of thirteen, and you’d discover there was a girl who never stopped talking, adored video games and death metal music, and ironically enough lived in a devoutly religious household wherein she was forced to darn church clothes every week in exchange for her Hot Topic garbs. She would have never admitted it, but she was lucky that her avó was lenient enough to allow her to have a style of her own — except for when it concerned her bedroom.

The first time Ridley visited her house, it didn’t seem like Ginny actually lived there. Her room was imbued with pastel yellows, pinks, and blues that contrasted everything else about her. All that remained of her personality was a single Legend of Zelda poster that was taped behind her metal bedframe, like a sort of trophy, and a Wii that was connected to her early 2000s television set. Rather than play spin the bottle or twenty questions or do anything normal thirteen-year-olds would entertain, they took turns on Twilight Princess, playing through the whole game in an afternoon with no regard for the time that had passed. By the time he returned home at 10 P.M., he’d been grounded for two straight months.

Rather than avoid Ginny out of embarrassment, he pursued more unconventional means — or rather, archaic means — of communicating with her. During their shared classes he would pass notes her way; love notes, anecdotes about their teachers and peers, stupid doodles of the trees outside the window, and four letter rants about his next period. One day, while he was trying to initiate the cycle of passing notes, their teacher turned on the TV mounted in the corner of their classroom after answering a phone call at her desk. As Ginny opened the letter teasingly slow, she read the words: GONNA DIE IN HERE, and while chuckling she glanced up at the sizzling screen to see live footage of Yellowstone being engulfed by lava flow. 

They all watched in awe, twenty-five or so students in a Kansas City classroom witnessing the defining moment of the rest of their lives. It seemed as if time had stopped then and there, because nobody moved, nobody said anything, Ridley was beginning to wonder if they’d held their breaths all at once. They were released three hours early, but no one knew what was to come whenever they returned home.

He walked home from his bus stop with more vigor than usual, as he typically dreaded going home since it meant pestering from his mother about what kind of clothes he wore, or how short his beautiful, curly hair was cut, or any other minor flaw she could find with her son that she only ever saw as a daughter. He had a feeling, though, that day would be different. He entered in through the front door and glanced around. “Mom? Dad?” he called out, a lump developing in his throat where he always wished he’d grow an Adam’s Apple. 

Adam came running down the stairs first, a box in his arms. “Riley, good, I’m glad you’re home,” he tried to give a reassuring smile. “We’re just packing up in case things get too close here.” It was most certainly an order given to him by his wife, but Ridley couldn’t exactly blame his father for following them. 

“Can I help?” he asked as he dropped his backpack at his feet. “I can get some clothes from my room.”

“Go do that, buddy,” Adam nodded along, moving toward the garage where Ridley presumed that the car was being loaded up. He couldn’t help but feel his heart skip a beat at the endearing term, knowing if his mother around it would’ve been swiftly corrected. He trotted upstairs and hurried into his father’s office, moving to unlock his desk drawer and take out the cell phone that was repossessed upon being grounded.

He walked across the hall to his bedroom, locking the door behind him so that he could safely contact Ginny without worrying about being interrupted. Shakily, his hands found the keypad and he typed in her number, hoping and praying she would pick up. He hadn’t even realized how much adrenaline was flushing through his veins, igniting his nerves which jumpstarted tremors in his fingers as the phone kept ringing. The second time he dialed the number, he heard noise coming from the other line and stood up straight — as if she could see him.

“Ginny?” he spoke up.

“Riley?” she returned, sounding much less confident than normal. “My avó is freaking out right now. She thinks it’s, like, Revelation or something. She wants us to go to Florida. Are you home?”

Ridley let out a sigh of relief just from hearing her voice, leaning back against his bedroom door. “I am. I don’t know where my parents want us to go. They’re packing up the car now. Maybe — maybe you could come with us.”

“... Or maybe we could just go together.” Ginny said after a pause passed between them. “Y’know? Me and you against the world. We’re more tech savvy than our parents. They’d probably just drag us down.”

He thought about it for longer than he should have, admittedly. It wasn’t that he necessarily thought his parents would bring him down, but... What if he brought them down? He remained silent as he percolated on the idea of running away with Ginny to God knows where, living off of what was left of the earth, being alone but together. As he listened to his parents argue about what to keep at home and what to bring with them, he could hear Ginny’s voice breaking through his thoughts. Riley! Riley! ... Ridley!

“Huh?” he said, furrowing his brows at the name.

“Sorry, that just slipped out,” she apologized. “I just... Always thought that name fit you more. I dunno. Did you wanna? I can — I can meet you at the park and we can drive out east from there. Maybe slum it in the Ozarks for a while, that’s like a shoreline, right?”

Ridley swallowed dryly, slowly nodding to himself. “We can,” he said as he held his cell phone up with an elevated shoulder, moving around his room quickly to shove everything he needed into his old backpack from sixth grade. It still had his initials on the front: R.A.A. He tossed in tee shirts, a sweater, two pairs of jeans, and managed to squeeze in an extra pair of shoes and his sketchbook along with his charcoal in the front pocket before heading downstairs. He hid around a corner while his parents continued arguing, very carefully reaching out to grab the keys to his father’s vintage car that they hardly ever used, but he’d learned how to drive over the summer without his mother.

He slid out the front door and shut it quietly behind him before dashing toward the parked car, unlocking it and climbing into the driver’s seat. His hands kept shaking until he took a firm hold of the steering wheel after jamming the keys into the ignition. As he tuned the keys, he looked up and watched as his parents began running after him, but before they could catch him he’d forced the gear shift into reverse and peeled out of the driveway, barely clipping his mother’s car as he started to speed down the street; as he watched the other houses pass by in a blur, he saw entire families loading up their lives, one suitcase or box at a time, he saw tears and anguish and confusion, and eventually he had to look away so he could focus on the road ahead. 

“Are you almost here?” Ginny asked on speaker phone while Ridley was narrowly avoiding the red lights that kept flashing at intersections. Thankfully, it seemed like everyone was too preoccupied with their own escape to notice the thirteen-year-old driving a car around Kansas City. 

“I am. I just — I just have to turn this corner—” A sudden jolt sent him half a foot above his seat, the wheels having rolled over a gutter as he miscalculated the turn. He yelped as he grasped onto the seatbelt tightly and lowered his foot from the gas, the car slipping a bit until he finally thought to pull it into park again. “I’m here. I’m here.”

After a few minutes, Ginny emerged from the tree line in her white, ironed church clothes, looking entirely unlike herself but still as beautiful as the first time he ever saw her. She was almost like an angel, until she opened her mouth. “Fucking drive, Ridley!” 

And so he fucking drove.

They made it about fifty miles on empty backroads before they needed gas, which Ginny fished out all her money for out of her pocket just so they could fill up the tank for the rest of the drive. He hardly knew how to operate the pump, but eventually he figured it out and secured it back in its place before hurrying out of the gas station parking lot, lest someone notice the two young strangers. He kept driving until the sun set and he had to use his brights to see the world around them; the GPS had lulled Ginny to sleep with its soothing voice, guiding them throughout the Missourian wilderness. He didn’t dare turn on the radio or try and distract himself with anything except his own thoughts, not wanting to disturb her. At the very least, she deserved rest. Maybe he did, too, but he wasn’t going to get it before he got them where they needed to be. 

After a three hour long drive total, he pulled into an abandoned parking structure for the Lake of the Ozarks and reached out to nudge Ginny. 

“Gin,” he whispered. “Ginny. We’re here. We made it.”

Waking up slowly, Ginny rubbed her eyes and glanced around, unable to see the lakes ahead of them with the ash that had begun cluttering the night sky above. “Really?” she asked hoarsely. He reached out and grabbed her hand, lacing their fingers together and giving her a terrified smile. “... We really made it.”

And if you were to tell that Ridley, right then and there, that within five years they would have braved the unending winter in the Ozarks for half a year before moving further across America in his father’s car until it inevitably shit out on them, survived extreme circumstances crossing into the Appalachians, adopted a pet wolf that would vigilantly watch them at every rest stop they took in the mountains, lost their virginities to each other in a freezing cold cave with almost all their clothes on, found a ship that was taking civilians across the ocean for a hefty price and snuck on board, stepped on European soil only for Ginny to come down with a nasty cough their first week and a worse case of blisters the week after that, if you’d have told him that he had to let someone else kill the most beautiful girl in the world — he wouldn’t have believed you, because how could things go so wrong when they were so right together? 

So, in that moment, as they sat holding hands in the warmth of his father’s car, he smiled at her. And after waking up more, she smiled back.

[phyripo]

46 and robul?

46. “Hey, have you seen the..? Oh.”

Uhh… That looks like a humorous prompt, so have something… Creepy? It’s a mix of the fact that I played some Rusty Lake games again combined with the fact that I’ve started listening to Welcome to Night Vale again that spawned this, soooo… I hope you like it, sorry for the long wait!

Dragos is Romania, Stefan is Bulgaria, aaaand Luca is Moldova

Send me a pairing and a number and I’ll write you a fic

There was nothing unusual about the mist.

It had rolled in across the lake as it oftendid on spring mornings like these, greying out the little island Dragos livedon. The familiar trees were looming shadows in the fog, the old well a blurrymystery. But it was just mist, and the shadows were just shadows, so Dragoswasn’t sure why he felt so unsettled whenever he looked out of the windows.He’d lived here for years now, in this little refuge he and Stefan had built onthe island. It was safe.

“Stupid mist,” he grumbled at no one, shakinghis head and going to the next line on his typewriter with too much relish. “Ishouldn’t read so many books.”

Still, he was relieved when Stefan returnedhome after his work on the mainland, where he ferried wood back and forth. Hisshape was familiar in the fog, and he smelled comfortingly of the forest whenDragos kissed him quickly as he kicked off his heavy shoes.

“It’s cold out,” Stefan said, running a handthrough his slightly damp hair.

“Looks cold, yeah.” Dragos took his coat. Themist had lingered throughout the day, seemingly not lessening at all, althoughit must have—the news on the radio reported sunny weather on the shores of thelake. “It’ll probably clear out by tomorrow.”

Stefan hummed absently. Of course, he hadn’tbeen stuck in the middle of the white haze all day; he wasn’t as unsettled. Heusually wasn’t. Dragos was more prone to that. There was a reason they’d movedto this island, where no one could judge them because there was no one elsehere.

“Please tell me there’s something to eat, Dra,”Stefan was saying, walking further into their cottage.

Dragos laughed, going after him.

“Of course there is.”

The evening was pleasant in its ordinariness,spent listening to a record and reading or writing or filling in crosswordpuzzles. Dragos closed the curtains against the pressing darkness the mistbrought with it, and had nearly forgotten all about it when he went to sleepwith his arm draped over Stefan’s upper body.

It was all the more surprising when he woke thenext morning to an, if possible, even greyer world.

The fog curled against the small windows of thecottage as if asking to be let in, like a ghost knocking on the door. Dragosdrew the curtains again and told himself not to think about it, not to imagine thathe didn’t know the shapes outside or the muffled sounds of the water and theforest. He typed, ripping sheet after sheet out of his typewriter because thewords wouldn’t listen to him. They curled into unfamiliar shapes, his fingersstraying from the right keys without his permission.

When Stefan came home in the late afternoon, hestartled Dragos from a haze of terribly non-productive writing and brought agust of cold, damp air with him.

“It’s dark,” he said, quizzically, and made toopen the curtains over the dining booth.

“It’s—” Dragos leaped up from his chair andflung himself in front of him. “It helps me work.”

He gestured at the heap of paper lyingscattered on his desk, bathed in lamplight. He wasn’t sure what he had written, certainly not his next novel, but at least itlooked like he’d been doing something useful while Stefan worked.

“Alright,” the man said slowly. His eyes werebright in the gloom, their deep forest green a comforting color after nothingbut the grey outside, the orange of the walls, and the black and white of wordson paper to keep Dragos company over the course of the day.

It had been sunny on the shore, Stefan toldhim, taking his jacket off to reveal short sleeves underneath it. The slightestof tan lines were visible on his pale skin, if Dragos squinted.

There was nothing unusual about the mist.

Weird weather phenomena were not unusual,Dragos mentally repeated like a mantra when they went to bed, later, staring upat the whorls in the wood of the bedroom ceiling. His imagination wasoveractive and it would pass. It would all pass, and their island could go backto its usual unusualness—which was mostly just Dragos himself.

The next day was a Saturday, which was Stefan’sday off, and also the day Dragos’s younger brother always called, so that was agood excuse not to go outside no matter what Stefan said about Luca alwayscalling after three, which left them plenty of time to do something together,never mind the mist, Dragos, it’sjust water.

“I thought you were the smart one,” Stefan saidjokingly, shrugging on his jacket. He hadn’t shaved today, and his stubblescratched Dragos’s jaw when he leaned over to kiss him, when he laughed againsthis mouth as Dragos tugged him down to deepen the kiss.

While the ensuing tussle was playful and funand quite pleasurable, it only delayed Stefan’s going out into the ever-presentmist by half an hour, because he thought they would need more firewood soon,and the wood would need to dry if it was to be of any use.

“You’re a strange man, Dra,” he told himwonderingly. Dragos ran his hand through the man’s mussed hair, biting his ownlip.

“You love me.”

“Never said I didn’t. Guess that makes me alittle strange, too.”

Smiling despite himself as Stefan untangled hisbody and stood, Dragos replied, “Very strange. Be careful, alright?”

He gave a jaunty little salute and was off intothe fog, where he was nothing more than a shape no more familiar than thegnarled trees. Dragos frowned at it through the window for too long, but themist hurt his eyes and his head, so he pulled the curtain mostly shut again,leaving a strip of light to spill outside.

Just in case Stefan forgot his way back.

The phone rang promptly at three, and Dragoswent to pick it up in relief, leaning against the wall in the hallway where ithung.

“Hey, Luc!” he greeted.

There was a long, staticky silence in reply.

“Hello?” Dragos tried, his heartbeat ratchetingup.

More static. A sound like a voice speakingbackwards. Dragos bit his lip so hard it started bleeding, clutching the handsetwhite-knuckled.

“What’s going on?” he asked, voice unsteady andlouder than he intended.

The voice continued, pouring unintelligiblesounds through the telephone line. If the mist had a sound, Dragos imagined itwould be this, creeping around in his head, just syllables without meaning nomatter which way he turned them.

He slammed the handset back on to the base andwas on the verge of ripping the whole contraption off the wall, when the phonerang again.

“Get out!” he yelled into it, on the verge oftears. Something was wrong here, andhe hated it.

“What?” replied a seemingly perplexed Luca. “Dra,is that you?”

He swore. “I’m so sorry, Luc. I’m sorry.Something weird is—sorry.” The plastic of the handset creaked in his grip, sohe tried to ease it a little.

“Are you alright?” Luca asked. Dragos leanedhis free hand against the wall and hung his head.

“God, I don’t know.” He tried to breathesteadily. His mind felt fuzzy, but the feeling was subsiding little by little. “Probably.”

“That sounds reassuring.” Luca laughed alittle. “Is Stefan alright?”

“Possibly. He’s out.”

“Well, I hear the weather’s good for it over th—”

The line cut in a flash of static. Dragosdropped the phone.

He scrambled to grab it where it swung againstthe wall, bouncing. It was difficult to press the little buttons with hisfingers shaking, but he managed to dial his brother’s number from memory.

“Luca?” he whispered, and when there was juststatic in reply, he slammed the handset back down again and tried again.

Stefan found him sitting with his knees drawnup to his chest in the hall, the phone dangling next to him and his fingers inhis messed-up hair.

“Well, this doesn’t look good,” he said,kneeling down in front of Dragos. Tiny water droplets clung to his hair, hiseyelashes. His eyes were curiously mossy, and Dragos pressed himself tighter againstthe wall.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked.

“Out. I got firewood, remember?” Stefan reachedfor him, pushing wispy strands of light brown hair out of his tear-streakedface with cold fingers. “Maybe you should come outside for a bit, it’d do yougood.”

Terrified, Dragos shook his head as hescrambled to his feet.

“I’m not—I’m not going anywhere. Jesus Christ, Stefan, what is going on?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” hereplied calmly.

“Stef, Stef—” Dragos put his hands on the man’sjaw and searched his gaze, and he couldn’t even say what was wrong, but something was, and the front door wasopen behind him, which was wrong. Heleaped towards it, slamming it shut on the mist. As he leaned against it, hecould feel himself shaking.

“Hey, you should lie down,” Stefan was saying,carding his fingers through Dragos’s hair again. “I’ll get some food going,alright?”

Dragos wasn’t sure how he got from the hall tothe couch, but once he was there, he couldn’t bring himself to move, or even thinkabout what the hell was happening on his little, safe island. Against all odds,he fell asleep.

When he woke, the room was dark, but that didn’tmean anything with the curtains drawn and the mist most likely still heavyoutside. Silently, he sat up, cracking his neck and stretching his arms beforewalking over to the window and peering into the forest.

The trees stood silent in the fog. It mighthave been evening or it might have been morning. Dragos honestly had no ideahow much time had passed. He turned back to the room, flicking his desk lamp onand finding a sandwich sitting next to his typewriter. On the paper currentlyin the machine, a short message was written.

Dragos, you lookedlike you needed the sleep. I hope it helped. I’m going outside, find me if youneed me.Stefan

There was no indication of when the message wasleft. It was six, according to the grandfather clock over the desk, but Dragoscouldn’t say whether it was evening or morning. He felt rested, although stillwary.

Eating the simple cheese sandwich, he went overto the radio to turn it on, hoping to find out the time, but the speakers onlyblurted out more static, shot through with maybe-human sounds. With shakinghands, he tried to tune into a different channel, but everything else justbroadcast the static that was normal—they didn’t get great reception out hereand were usually only able to receive the one channel.

One channel that was now garbled nonsense.

He put the remainder of his sandwich away andwalked quickly to the bedroom. The bed looked unslept in, but Stefan’s radioalarm clock displayed a time of a quarter past six in the morning—the radioitself was broadcasting the garbled static.

Dragos swore.

“Stefan!” he called through the house,flinching at his own voice. There was no answer, and he wasn’t surprised.

This wasn’t to say that he wasn’t terrified.

Unable to swallow past the lump in his throat,Dragos paced back to the living room, then changed his mind and rooted throughthe bathroom and the kitchen, where he found nothing out of the ordinary. Thetelephone was still dangling from its cord in the hall, spewing static, andDragos shivered.

Was it cold or was that him?

He peered through all of the windows into theunforgiving white and grey that was the forest. Nothing moved.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he chanted, dragging his hands over his face.

He’d have to go outside.

Although his heart was trying to beat out ofhis chest and his breath was too high to do any good, he managed to find hisboots, his duffel coat. He threw the sheets of paper that he filled with hisnonsensical words yesterday into his shoulder bag along with—he didn’t knowwhat he was putting in there, he had no idea what he was doing. Closing the clasps of the bag proved difficult with hisshaking fingers, but he fumbled until they were shut.

After one last desperate sweep of the cottage,Dragos took a deep breath and opened the front door.

The mist—felt like normal mist. It was cold,and damp, and clung to Dragos’s eyelashes and wispy hair.

Somehow, he felt the urge to hold his breath.He went back into the house and found a scarf to wind around his head, coveringhis nose and mouth. It felt marginally better.

Trying to be silent, he made his way frommemory to the shed where Stefan sometimes worked. Nothing out of the ordinarythere, either.

The trees were still as he walked past the oldwell, but he couldn’t shake the feeling they were watching. Maybe not him inparticular, but watching all the same. Sometimes, something seemed to move inthe distance, but he couldn’t tell whether it was human and didn’t know if hewanted to know.

The island was small. Dragos must have beenwalking in circles or time must have stretched out in weird ways, because itfelt like hours before he saw a familiar shape among the grey. Stefan wasstanding motionless between the trees, and although the trees were motionlesstoo, they had all stretched their branches towards him as if they wanted himfor their own, like Dragos had wanted him for so long now, like Dragos hadgotten him.

He was Dragos’s. This island was Dragos’s, mist or no fucking mist.

Trees didn’t move. Trees had never moved.

“I’ve never seen a tree move,” Dragos said tohimself, his voice barely a whisper but there. He took large steps towardsStefan. They couldn’t take him away from Dragos, nothing could.

Stefan stood silently, slowly resolving intoseparate colors as Dragos neared. His green, short-sleeved shirt, hisbellbottom jeans, the dark of his hair. His back was to Dragos.

“Trees don’t move,” he repeated to himself. Andthen, “Stefan, have you seen the— Oh.”

Because he turned, and his eyes were not theirusual, comforting forest green.

Dragos stumbled back, catching his heel on atree root that may or may not have been there before and flailing to keep hisbalance.

“Stefan?” he whispered, but he knew, as certainas anything, that it wasn’t Stefan. The man—being—looked like Stefan and heldhimself like Stefan, but his eyes, his eyeswere a terrible haze of barely-there green. It was as if the mist had settled insidehim, pulled itself over his eyes.

“Hey, Dragos,” not-Stefan said, and his voicewas a wisp.

Dragos ran.

He tripped over swirling roots, and the mistthickened until he couldn’t see his own feet carrying him across his island. Heran blindly, scrambling up when he fell, pushing his scarf over his nose. Hisheartbeat rang in his ears, or maybe it was the island’s heartbeat, the treesin their terrifying unison.

Eventually, the trees gave way to sand, and heknew he’d reached the shore of the island. He couldn’t see anything out on thewater, so Dragos followed the sand until he found the dock and could scrambleonto it, his boots slipping on the damp wood.

The boat, he needed their boat.

“Dragos!” he heard Stefan, or not Stefan, callfrom the edge of the forest, louder than he should have been able to when themist dampened everything. He panted in almost-sobs, trying to squint along thedock for the little boat.

“No, no,” he whispered when he couldn’t findit. He dropped to his knees to feel along the dock for the rope.

Footsteps crunched through the sand behind him.

“Dragos!” Stefan called again. He soundedclose. Dragos’s numb fingers grappled uselessly against the scaffolding. “Nothingis wrong, Dragos! Come, I’ll take you home!”

Dragos heaved a sob through his scarf.

Footsteps on the dock.

A dull, roaring sound farther away. Somewhereon the lake. Oh god, what was out there?

“Dragos,” Stefan said. His voice sounded ashazy as his eyes had been. “It’s just mist.”

The roaring became louder, and then the mistwas breaking open at the end of the dock to allow Dragos to see that what wascausing it wasn’t something even worse, wasn’t the lake itself rising up againsthim as well.

“Luca!” he yelled, leaping up and runningtowards the motorboat his brother was driving towards the shore. “Don’t dock!Turn around, now!”

“What—” Luca started, and behind Dragos,footsteps clattered across the dock. He didn’t dare look.

“Just turn! Fast!”

Luca stared at Dragos or what was behind himfor a long second before he abruptly steered the boat in the oppositedirection, racing back along the dock. Dragos kept running, and he didn’t evencare if he was going to miss the little boat altogether—he dove towards it thesecond it shot by close enough, crashing against the wood and rolling along sofar that they almost capsized, but Luca kept going until they were clear of thedock, now just a shadow in the mist.

“Where’s Stefan?” he yelled, but Dragos couldn’tspeak, his voice was stuck somewhere in his chest. He breathed in sobs, curlinginto himself on the dirty floor of the motorboat. “Should we go back?”

Dragos shook his head. There were tears on hisface, and they were scorching hot.

They broke out of the mist and into brightmorning sunlight as suddenly as if it had never been there. Dragos still didn’tdare look back.

“I thought I’d check if you were okay,” Lucawas saying. “What’s—what just happened?”

“I don’t know,” Dragos choked out. “I just… I justdon’t know.”

He looked over his shoulder, and there wassunny lake as far as he could see, from the coast to the mountains. His heartbeatrang in his ears.

[mystic-shadows42]

Holding Out Hope

A/N: This was just a simple quick write so there are probably mistakes.

Pairing: Clark Kent x reader

Warnings: Language

Summary: Clark has a hard time trying to find his place in the world but when he takes a job he’s unlikely to stay in for long, there’s an unexpected person there that he can’t simply walk away from.

Joe.

That’s what he said his name was. When you first met him, you didn’t think it suited him. He was a tall dark-haired, muscular, blue-eyed man with a gentleness to him.

Right away he stood out.

Joe was brought onto the crew by your father, the captain. He was quiet but observant. He always listened and remembered things that other people would long forget about.

He wasn’t the type of man you’re used to seeing on your father’s crew. He was actually nice and not handsy like the others.

You met him on his first day and told him of the small shop you worked at and he made it a habit to go whenever he was back from his fishing trips.

During his visits, you’d both make small talk. He was private about his life but was definitely curious about yours. You wanted to respect his privacy so you told him the truth of yours.

You were the youngest child of four. All of them had left to start their own lives elsewhere but would call occasionally. The home life wasn’t too great. Your mother had left and your father was a drunk. He would only stop drinking when he had to work and needed more money for it.

There were times when you’d ramble on and sneak a look over at him to see he was hanging on to every word. 

Occasionally, you’d treat him to lunch but even then you could tell he was still putting up a front as if he couldn’t simply relax. Sometimes he’d even leave abruptly after apologizing profusely.

It was understandable but after what seemed like the umpteenth time you started to think it was because of you. Perhaps you weren’t as good company as you thought.

Joe must’ve noticed your uncertainty because he would sometimes surprise you with gifts. Needless to say, it didn’t take much for you to fall hard for him. 

There were obvious signs there for something to flourish between you both but he was always the one to pull away.

So when you were on your break outside the shop with him you asked him what you’ve been dying to know.

“So, I have to ask. Why have you stuck around doing this job? Most people leave after the first week.”

He looked away and smiled then looked back at you. At his expression, you nudged his arm playfully.

“I find that staying here a little while has its benefits.”

You gave him a look which he knew what you meant. He didn’t give you much to go off of.

“My dad doesn’t pay you enough to think like that.”

“It’s not always about the pay.” He threw you a look that simply melted your heart. “Would you believe me if I told you the best part of my day is coming into the shop and seeing you?”

You slightly tilted your head not expecting the deemed quiet man by the crew to actually say this to you. Joe was far too handsome to be into you. Just by looking at him, you knew he didn’t belong in a less than ideal place with nothing to offer him whatsoever.

“Well, I don’t actually believe you.”

He had a faint smile on his face. “Open your hand.”

You held out your hand and he took something out of his back pocket and placed it in your hand.

“A gift?”

He nodded and gestured for you to look at it. You opened the small bag pulling the strings apart to see pearls inside.

They were beautiful and bigger than any you’ve ever seen. You inspected them more closely.

“These are South Sea pearls. I only know because my father obsesses over finding some one day.” You looked up at him astonished. These pearls were worth a good amount of money. “There’s no possible way you found these fishing.”

He put his hands over yours covering the pearls.

“I’m going to be leaving soon. Use these to get out of here.”

Your heart sunk at the news of him leaving soon. He was the whole reason you got excited for the day and dressed up. 

Just seeing him affected your whole day in a better way.

“I can’t. This is too big a gift to have.”

“They’re yours now.”

He said it so calmly as if obtaining them wasn’t a big deal. Even though you knew people would kill just to get their hands on them.

“How’d you get them?” 

“I flew,” he said, a small smile gracing his face before he turned his back to you.

“Joe.”

Even as you said his name he didn’t react. He hardly ever responded to it. You always suspected he was hiding something. Nobody simply ignores their name when called.

“Wait!”

He turned and you ran to catch up to him.

“At least tell me your real name.”

He sighed and you knew then that he wouldn’t. It did hurt a little that after all these months of knowing him that he didn’t even trust you enough to know his name.

It made you sad that nothing significant ever blossomed between you both though you knew he could feel the connection too. You didn’t think it’d hurt this much to lose a person you hardly knew anything about.

He lowered his head when you started to drop yours in disappointment. He looked genuinely concerned. It was hard to determine if he would even miss you or even thought of you the way you did him.

“I promise you that one day when I’m not running anymore. When I find out who I truly am, then I’ll find you and tell you my name.”

You shook your head. “That’s impossible. How will you ever find me?”

“Don’t lose hope.”

He moved closer to you and leaned down a little to be leveled with you. Your lips parted and your heart started to race at how close he was. He had his eyes closed already so you closed yours as you moved forward.

You were finally going to kiss.

“Hey, dipshit! It’s time to go!”

You groaned and opened your eyes to see he already opened his and was watching you.

“I have to go.”

You reached out for his hand and saw him smile down at your joined hands. He gave yours a small squeeze in reassurance.

“Captains tired of waiting! Hurry it up!”

His hand slowly slipped from yours. He smiled sadly and turned his back to you as he began walking away.

****

In your time of finding a place, you were tracked down by a determined reporter named Lois Lane. Her presence took you by surprise especially when she shared her story with you.

He was going by the name Liam. She told you briefly of her findings and how he saved her life with his ‘abilities’ yet somehow you began to think over your encounters with him.

The constant short meet-ups with him weren’t excuses. He was actually going out and saving someone’s life.

It just all seemed fitting for him. 

A savior.

Lois had questioned you explaining that his time fishing was the longest job he stuck with and she suspected it was because of you. She kept smiling at the stories you’d share of her with your encounters with him. 

There wasn’t much to go off because he was so discreet but it was the way he made you feel that made it seem everlasting. That much she could tell in your eyes and words alone.

Before she departed her last words to you were that he’d definitely find you again.

The idea lifted your spirits but you certainly missed his company.

After about a month and a couple of weeks you still hadn’t found a place to settle in. Nothing ever seemed like home to you.

You felt like a ghost going from place to place. Seeing a new area was nice but there was still that never-ending feeling of being alone.

The thing you missed from your old town was the view of the ocean. So that’s what led you here, to the beach.

You were walking aimlessly on the shoreline when you looked up after a huge sudden gust of wind hit you.

You gasped at the sight of ‘him’ standing just a few feet in front of you. He was smiling once he saw your reaction. He looked the same, only he was clean-shaven and he seemed more relaxed.

He began making his way to you still having his bright smile on his face. You immediately dropped your sandals and ran into his arms. He hugged you to him feeling his deep chuckle rumble through his chest.

“I told you I’d find you.”

You pulled back but still stayed in his arms.

“Now I know how you got here. You flew,” you chuckled remembering his words from before. He brushed the hair in your face back and smiled. 

“Yeah, I did.”

“So are you going to tell me what your name is or do I have to keep calling you Joe?”

“My name’s Clark. Clark Kent. As you may have heard, I’m not of this world but raised into it.”

“I’ve heard some stories.” 

You didn’t quite know what he was or how he came to have these abilities but all you knew was that you cared for him deeply. Nothing else mattered.

“How are you liking your new life?”

“I felt like how you used to. Not really belonging anywhere. Going from place to place. Missing you and our annual strolls.”

He rubbed your arms once you started to get goosebumps. His touch felt safe and warm. Something you could get used to. Everything about him captivated you in every way.

“Close your eyes.”

You took a deep breath and closed them. 

After a couple of seconds, he told you to open them. All you did was stare at him admiring just how handsome he truly is. He chuckled seeing your entranced state and told you to look down.

Confused, you looked down and saw that neither of you were on land anymore. You were both floating and had a vast view of the landscape.

Naturally, you gasped wrapping your arms around him thinking you were going to fall. You could hear him laughing but the thought of being so high up had overtaken your thoughts.

To capture your attention, he turned your face to him and looked down at your lips as if silently asking for your permission. You nodded and that was all he needed to kiss you. 

His lips were soft but the force was rough. You both had been desperate for this moment. It had been put off for far too long.

“I’ll never let you go. Never fall, never get hurt, and never leave you all alone again.”

His words were tender and sweet.

“Would you like to come to Kansas with me?”

This time you were the one with the permanent smile on your face chuckling. You had unshed tears in your eyes at how happy you were.

“I’d love to go to Kansas with you, Clark.”

[emotionallyits2009]

deancas fic rec list!

hello everyone! happy christmas to those who celebrate it, my gift to you is my fic rec list that i said i would make like a month ago. the only thing it is organized by is canonverse vs alternate universe. tried to cover a variety of subjects but there are in particular many fics of the genre “postcanon where cas is human and he and dean live together and slowly finally get their shit together” because i know what i’m about, son. HOPE U ENJOY. and if you wanna talk about any of them or rec me other fics please do. :) 

Canonverse:

where the weeds take root by deathbanjo, 30k, explicit “Are you happy? Y’know. Just—being here,” Dean says, gesturing to the yard with his beer bottle. “Being with—I mean, you used to fight in celestial wars and—and save the world. Now you’re growing vegetables and talking about chickens.” There are many fics set in a post-canon universe where Cas is human and he and Dean live together and slowly fall into a relationship. Imo this one is the best of the best of that genre. This was one of the first fics I read back in July when I was getting Back Into Supernatural where I was like oh fuck I’m like in this. Dean builds Cas planters and bookshelves and a chicken coop and they fight and work through it.

Cuckoo And Nest by komodobits, 10k, explicit For a long time, Castiel thought that every earthly possession other than the immediately necessary was excess to requirement. But Dean – Dean who named his car, who keeps a photograph of his mother in his wallet, some thirty-plus years after her death, who still has the crumpled ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign with a sleeping pelican emblazoned on it from the Microtel outside of Roanoke where he first kissed Castiel, clumsy and unsure, under the unsteady fluorescence of an exhausted bathroom bulb – is sentimental. It puzzles Castiel, where Dean draws the line between what is meaningful and what it is worthless. Really Gets the dynamic of Cas doesn’t think Dean wants him to stay/Dean thinks Cas will leave the first chance he gets. Also a nice example of Cas thinking he’s not wanted if he’s not useful/powerful and being told otherwise. Another all-time fave!

lonely hearts by outphastthemoat, 4.5k, gen He thinks he might give up having his own anything just to be able to step foot inside the room next door and sit on the edge of Dean’s bed instead. This one is for the CAS GIRLS who know what LONELINESS feels like.

Helionneiros by aeli_kindara, 24.2k, mature In which Dean visits his mother, and Claire takes Cas on a hunt. I’m always on the lookout for more fic with Claire and Jack. Jack doesn’t show up until the end here but the relationship between Cas and Claire is really nice.

Crawl by aeriallon, 11k, explicit It’s been almost four years since Castiel left Kansas; he'd eventually settled in an island town where he has a job, a house, and a life without the Winchesters. Every winter, Dean drives down to the coast to see him. Another fic where Cas is human but in this one he took some time for himself and got some distance from the Winchesters! He gets to be competent and weird as a human and we love that for him. I must warn you all that this fic contains one use of the phrase “making love” which would normally put me right off but it’s still worth reading. The first of a three-part series.

home where you hold me by microcomets, 1.6k, gen Cas and Dean, in the moments between their battles, ache for quiet spaces. Technically this is a coda to 10x20 but you don’t need the episode for context. Short and very sweet.

Build a Home by domesticadventures, 20.1k, teen After they save the world, Dean expects Cas to come back to the bunker with them. He doesn’t. This one is so cute it’s like what if once they were done saving the world Sam and Dean actually invited other hunters to move into the bunker with them. Obviously Dean wants that to include Cas but doesn’t know how to use his words.

the taste of gravel in the mouth by deathbanjo, 22.4k, explicit This is what Cas gave up Heaven for: greasy diner food, shitty motel rooms with even shittier cable, long car rides spent in complete silence except for the same six tapes playing over and over again, and a burnt-out husk of a man who can barely hold a conversation anymore. Angst fic! They go on a road trip and Dean is severely fucked up post-Mark of Cain.

Unknown Quantities by xylodemon, 8.6k, explicit No one ever tells Dean anything. Another nice getting-together fic.

Creature of Habit by trinityofone, 5.2k, teen The more you love someone, the more you want to kill them. Or: How Cas developed some bad habits, and Dean coped surprisingly well. This one is ancient by destiel standards (written during season 5) but it manages to nail the married couple vibes they give off in later seasons. Cas is a bitch and Dean likes him so much. <3

The (Mostly Accidental) Courtship of Dean Winchester by Tuesday, 11.2k, mature Angelic marriage rites were never intended to go quite like this. Another old one that is a lot of fun! They get Accidental Angel Married and if you don’t enjoy dumb fanfiction tropes like that I don’t know what to say to you.

Vena Amoris and Other Old-Fashioned Bullshit by pyrebi, 4k, teen In which angelic marriage bonds are apparently stupidly easy to trigger, Cas wages multidimensional war in Heaven, Dean can't catch a break like ever, Sam rather enjoys being a dick, love saves the day, and nobody consummates anything. The OTHER accidental angel marriage fic written in 2010. 

Crazy Diamonds by pantheon_of_discord, 24.8k, explicit A week ago, Dean was pulled out of Hell. Now, he’s apparently woken up in 2018, and the angel that a mere twenty-four hours beforehand had threatened to chuck him back into the pit is sleepily pouring himself coffee and wearing Dean’s second-favourite Zeppelin shirt. It all seems like a perfect happy ending, but with Hell’s scars still so fresh, Dean can’t imagine how he could have possibly gotten there. At the same time, the Dean who went to sleep in the bunker, right next to Cas, wakes up on Bobby’s couch in 2008. He’s instantly bombarded with questions by a Lilith-obsessed brother and a man who’s been dead for years, and must decide between keeping his finally-perfect life intact, and the lives he could save by re-writing history. Regardless of these choices, both Deans are trapped in the wrong decade, and their only way back lies with a Castiel still very much under Heaven’s thumb – one who might find the future Dean describes difficult to believe. Time travel is FUN. There’s an excellent part where (minor spoilers) future!Dean is like, “Guess what, asshole? You like me so much you marry me!!!!!!!!!!!” to 2008!Castiel that made me laugh out loud the first time I read it. Also just a good reminder of how most problems in life are temporary and if you could go back in time to talk to your younger self you’d be like, “Hey man. Chill out. You get through it.”

The Path of Fireflies by museaway, 63.7k, mature After his humanity is restored, Dean wakes up in bed with Castiel, a wedding ring, and no memory of the past twelve years. There’s a lot of amnesia fic and djinn fic out there were Dean wakes up ~suddenly together with Cas~ but I like this one in particular because he’s initially very confused and kind of a dick about it until he acknowledges that being with Cas makes him happy.

take the long way home by dothraki_shieldmaiden, 95k, explicit Three months ago, when Dean decided to retire, he thought his life was going to end up differently. He'd thought that he might get to have it all, Sam, Cas, Jack, and nice little place to live. Instead he gets Sam and Jack off on their Summer of Love Tour, radio silence from Cas, and a never-ending road trip consisting of himself. Still reeling from the loss of his grace, Castiel travels the country in search of hunts. Driven by a need to prove his usefulness, he pushes himself beyond all limits of endurance. Together, with the help of a few friends, a crumbling Victorian house, and a stray cat, Dean and Castiel patch themselves back together and create a home together. Do you wanna read almost one hundred thousand words of Dean and Cas having extremely intense feelings but refusing to voice them aloud? Haha of course you do that’s why you’re here. There’s also a lot about Cas adjusting to being human and being depressed about it which might resonate if you’ve ever felt weird about having a body. To be honest the author could stand to use a few more commas but there were also half a dozen moments that made me put my phone down and drag my hand slowly over my face and whisper “oh my god” to myself which is like, the ultimate measure of a good fanfiction so it gets to be on the list.

like moses and batman and james dean by saltyfeathers, 31.6k, explicit dean used to turn tricks. over a decade later, he met cas. Have you seen the fanon (apparently pioneered by Mr. Jackles “Original Deankin” Ackles himself) that Dean used to prostitute himself to feed himself and Sam when they were younger? Are you interested in exploring that concept in fanfiction? Well, this is the only fic you need. Mind the tags on this one! It’s not what I’d call happy but it’s good.

Some Assembly Required by narrow_staircases, 47k, mature It’s September of 2005, and Dean Winchester, in an attempt to outrun old mistakes and painful memories, finds himself in southern Kentucky on a wild goose chase. He’s completely certain this weird religious movement he’s “investigating” is a hoax, despite the miraculous healings people report, and he’ll be back on the road in a day or two. Things are looking up when he meets Cas, an awkward (and gorgeous) graduate student who’s actually doing honest-to-god research into the local tent revival meetings. When that research takes a weird and personal turn, Dean’s left to face two very serious realities: one, this may be a real case after all, and two, he’s fallen way harder for Cas than he should ever have let himself. Stanford-era AU of Dean trying to avoid his father and getting in over his head on a case.

Alternate universe:

And This, Your Living Kiss by opal_bullets, 57k, mature Only a very few people in the world know that the celebrated and reclusive poet Jack Allen is just Kansas mechanic Dean Winchester, a high school dropout with a few bucks to his name. Not that it matters anymore; life has left him so wrung out he never wants to pick up another pen. Until, that is, a string of coincidences leads Dean to auditing a poetry course with one Dr. Castiel Novak. The  professor is wildly intelligent, devastatingly handsome...and just so happens to be academia's foremost expert on the poetry of Jack Allen. Mundane AUs in this fandom have to be really, really good to catch my attention and this one is! It’s exactly what it says in the summary and the characterization is spot-on. 

Out to Drift by deathbanjo, 20.9k, mature Dean drives a black car with a loud engine. He lies too easily. He keeps a gun in the back of his jeans, and Castiel isn’t sure, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Dean has killed someone before. Two people in fucked-up unstable situations meeting and forming a connection. Honestly guys I really just love deathbanjo.