#I think part of the whole finale will be the proposal and possibly Bobby announcing his retirement | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tripleaxeldiaz · 5 years ago

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subtle as a brick in the small of my back

Eddie’s proposing to Buck. The whole team finds out first. It goes about as well as expected (not well at all)

Or: 5 times the team almost blows Eddie’s cover, and 1 time it’s already blown

read on ao3

In retrospect, Eddie really did this to himself.

But, in his defense, he had to tell Maddie — she was Buck’s sister, his only blood relative, and the only one who would honestly tell him if the ring was horribly ugly. And he had to tell Bobby — the guy was practically Buck’s step-father, and he wanted to avoid any possible lecture from his mother about not being “considerate” or “chivalrous” when it came to asking a man’s pseudo son to marry him.

He should have known, however, that it wasn’t just telling those two — he should have known it was telling Bobby, who would tell Athena, who would tell Hen, who would tell Chimney, who had already heard it from Maddie, and who was now practically skipping around the firehouse announcing it to everyone else.

Eddie watches from the kitchen as Chim flits around like a damn bumblebee spreading the good news about Buck and Eddie’s pending engagement. He’s not a holy man, but he prays to whoever is listening that Buck doesn’t find out until Eddie actually gets to ask him himself.

Whoever hears him has the worst sense of humor.

Buck and Eddie don’t like to be apart after bad calls.

This one could have been worse — four car pile up in the carpool lane with three critical injuries, all kids. They were in the ICU and expected to make full recoveries, but it’s still not easy pulling mangled bodies the same size as Christoper out of wrecked cars.

They sat close in the truck coming back to the station, thighs pressed together, shoulders overlapping. They changed together in the locker room, never far away enough that they couldn’t feel the others’ warmth. They climbed the stairs together to the lounge, Eddie’s hand around Buck’s wrist, making sure he stayed upright until they could fall onto the couch.

They’re better now, overall. They checked in with Carla and Chris (who were apparently in the process of an intricate arts and crafts project that required hot glue and a pound of glitter. Eddie can’t wait to clean that out of the house for the next 10 years). The TV in the lounge is softly playing a rerun of Chopped. Eddie is sitting in the corner of the couch, feet on the coffee table, fingers running through Buck’s short hair where his head is settled in his lap. His other hand rests on Buck’s chest, right over his heart, and he listens to Buck’s critical commentary of each chef’s use of ingredients. They know the bell will probably ring in the next 15 minutes and they’ll be right back in the truck, but for now they sink into this brief moment of peace.

Eddie’s so focused on the show and Buck’s apparently extensive knowledge of ways to prepare salmon that he doesn’t even notice Bobby coming over until the couch dips as he sits down.

“You boys doing okay?” he asks, a soft smile on his lips. Buck adjusts to see him better, sitting up to lean on Eddie’s chest, Eddie’s arm slung over his shoulder.

“Yeah, we’re good. Chris has a surprise craft for us when we get home, though I think the mess he makes will be more surprising than anything else.”

Eddie huffs out a laugh, craning his neck to kiss the crown of Buck’s head. When he looks back at Bobby, the look the captain has on his face seems...sentimental. A little too sentimental, if Eddie’s being honest.

Buck must notice it too. He cocks his head and asks, “Are you okay Cap? You’re lookin’ a little misty over there.”

Bobby smiles and shakes his head, eyes shining. “I’m good, kid. Just...really excited for you guys.”

Eddie narrows his eyes. That’s a weird thing to say.

“Excited?” Buck asks, cocking his head even more. “What, that we didn’t get crushed on the highway?”

Bobby laughs. “Well yeah, of course. But also, you know, just excited that you guys have each other to lean on in the bad times like this. And you’ll have each other for a really long time. Forever, hopefully.”

Now Eddie’s eyes are wide in panic. Seriously? You’ll have each other for a really long time? He gives Bobby a look over Buck’s head that hopefully reads as If you don’t stop talking right now I’ll spray you with the hose and I won’t even feel bad about it.

Buck — beautiful, slightly oblivious Buck — just turns to look at Eddie, a smile lighting up his face (a relief to see after the past few hours). “Yeah, I’m pretty excited about that too.”

Eddie melts a little, returning Buck’s smile. Before he can fully respond, the bell rings, and Buck jumps to his feet. He stretches, shaking off any lingering cobwebs of their last call before heading into another one. He kisses Eddie’s cheek as he passes to head to the stairs.

He watches him bound down to the truck, still smiling, before turning to Bobby with narrowed eyes again.

“I’m pretty sure my 11 year old is better at being subtle than you are.”

Bobby claps his shoulder as he follows Buck to the stairs. “Don’t worry, I don’t think he noticed anything. Consider that a precursor to my speech at the wedding.”

Eddie sighs, hopes he’s right, and follows the team to the truck.

~~~~~~~~~~

Eddie stares at Maddie’s kitchen island in the same awestruck confusion he usually has on Buffridays. This week’s spread consists of lasagna, garlic knots, summer rolls, banh mi, tacos, and what he’s pretty sure is fried cheesecake. He feels Buck come up next to him, hip checking him as he gets one of everything on his plate before returning to the couch to pick their movie for the night. Eddie follows suit, skipping the cheesecake but promising he’ll come back later, before dropping down next to his boyfriend, who immediately turns and gives him a quick peck on the temple.

Eddie does not blush and smile like an idiot, despite this being a regular thing that has occurred for the entire two year duration of their relationship. He doesn’t. He’s totally used to how much and how openly Buck loves him. It’s fine.

Maddie walks over while they bicker about what movie to watch and sits on Buck’s other side. She clears her throat, halting their argument between Booksmart and Heathers, and pulls something out of her pocket.

Buck turns toward her and freezes. Eddie looks over as well and sees her holding a scrap of dark blue fabric. It’s inky and rich and speckled with white dots, almost like…

“The Milky Way Dress? Maddie, I can’t believe you still have this, why—”

“I finally got around to cleaning out the last of my boxes, pretty much a bunch of old stuff I was not ready to deal with when I left.” She smiles, wistful and a little sad. “I found this and just thought it was time to pass it on to you.”

Buck’s in shock, Eddie can tell. His eyes are wide and his mouth hangs open like it did the first time Christopher referred to the two of them as “his dads��, or like it did when Eddie told him that he wanted to spend the rest of their lives together (and no that was not a proposal, Eddie was hopped up on drugs after falling off a second story roof at a call. He barely remembers it, save for the look on Buck’s face. Doesn’t count.).

Buck takes the fabric reverently, turning it in his hands and running it through his fingers. He turns to Eddie, a soft smile on his face, and Eddie places his hand on his thigh reassuringly. He can tell there’s a story, and he’s happy to wait until Buck’s ready to share.

“This is— wow. So my grandma was one of the main people who raised me, along with Maddie. And she was crazy in the best way, very Miss Frizzle. She used to make all her own clothes with crazy fabric, and she always made me a matching shirt or belt or something. She got this Milky Way fabric once, and I was just obsessed with it, I wouldn’t shut up about it. So she went all out — she made me a shirt, a belt, a tie, a damn suit out of the stuff. I wore them as much as humanly possible for the next few years before my parents ‘accidentally’ donated them away.”

“You wore that suit for picture day until you were 13,” Maddie reminds him.

“Yeah, exactly.” Buck laughs wetly, wiping at his eyes. “But Grandma loved it as much as I did and always wore the matching dress when I came to visit. When she died when I was 16, she made it very clear in her will that she wanted to be buried in that dress. And Maddie, genius that she is, cut some scraps off the dress so we could always have a part of her. I lost mine in one of my billion moves, but now��”

“I kept part of this scrap too, but I wanted to give most of it to you,” Maddie says. “I know how close you two were. I used it as my ‘something old’ and ‘something blue’ at my wedding, so I figured you could use it too for...I don’t know, something. Down the line.”

She catches Eddie’s eye in a silent apology. He’s glad she caught herself because he’s still a little too wrapped up in watching Buck relive all these obviously happy memories to register much of anything else going on.

He watches Buck for a little longer as he folds the fabric back up, placing it in his back pocket. He turns and wraps his sister in a patented Buckley Bear Hug, laughing as he kisses the top of her head.

“Thank you, Mads. Seriously, this is...perfect. It’s just perfect.”

“Of course, I’m just glad I found it for you. And seriously, don’t lose it. I have a feeling you’re going to need it soon.” She pats his cheek fondly, sending a not so sly wink to Eddie.

Eddie somehow manages to keep his groan in his head as Buck settles between them again, picking up the remote.

“Alright gang, I really think the only way we’ll be able to balance out all this sappy stuff is with the glorious violence of Heathers…”

~~~~~~~~~~

Laughter erupts as soon as Eddie gets to the front door of the Grant-Nash house, so he waits a minute before knocking. The door swings open, and he’s greeted by the sounds of soft jazz, the smells of home cooking, and the vision of his boyfriend looking happy, relaxed, and definitely buzzed.

“Ah, my knight in shining armor, come to fetch me away!” Buck smiles his lopsided smile as he lets Eddie in and kisses him soundly. He tastes like Merlot and chocolate and just Buck. Eddie’s pretty sure he can get drunk off that taste alone.

“More like your chauffeur in a shining Silverado, but being a knight sounds much more fun.” Buck falls into a fit of giggles, his head collapsing onto Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie can’t help but laugh along with him. Few things fill him with as much joy as seeing Buck so unabashedly happy, and he’ll relish in it for as long as he can, whenever he can.

Buck grabs his hand and pulls him towards the kitchen. “Come sit, Athena said she has some wedding stuff for me before we go.”

Eddie’s stomach drops past his feet, possibly all the way to the center of the earth.

His internal monologue goes off the rails — dammit he should have asked by now, none of the big romantic plans he’s come up with seem good enough so he just keeps waiting, but maybe since it’s all ruined he’ll just do it tomorrow morning when they’re eating breakfast or tomorrow night after they put Chris to bed, and Jesus Christ he should never tell any of their friends anything ever again—

Pull it together, Diaz. Be chill. Maybe it’s nothing. Of all people, Athena would never break a secret so easily. She’s a cop for crying out loud.

“Wedding stuff?” he asks in a voice way too squeaky to ever be considered “chill”.

Thankfully, alcohol is an exceptional buffer to Buck noticing Eddie in a full on crisis. He turns to him with bright eyes and says, “Yeah, for Maddie! She told Athena she’s been dropping hints to Chim for a while now and thinks he’ll pop the question soon. She wants to get a jump start on things so they can have the wedding by the end of the year.”

Well now he’s pissed for an entirely different reason.

Before he can hit send on a text to Chim — what the hell dude are you trying to steal my thunder??? — Athena comes back to the table with three boxes full of binders, pamphlets, and fabric samples. Eddie stands to help, and she gives him a look he can’t quite read before flashing a smile at Buck.

“This should be everything Bobby had. There’s lists of venues with how many people they hold and how much they charge for food. There’s samples for place settings, centerpieces, and decorations. And there’s lists of bakeries for the cake, plus what allergies they can cater to and price estimates. I hope to God there are no other boxes but if there are, I’ll let you know.”

“Wow,” Buck marvels as he flips through a book of flower arrangements. “Bobby really doesn’t half-ass anything, does he?”

Athena chuckles as she finishes the last of her wine. “No he does not. Sometimes it’s a gift, sometimes it’s a curse that clutters up my closet for three years.”

“Well thanks very much Athena, I know Maddie will be thrilled to not plan a second wedding completely from scratch.” He hugs her tight and kisses her cheek before grabbing a box and heading to the door. “I’ll keep these safe for her until Chim gets his ass in gear. Babe, can you get the other two?”

Eddie’s already in the process of grabbing them before Buck finishes his question. He smiles soft and bright when he sees, kissing Eddie’s temple. “You really are my knight in shining armor.”

Eddie’s sure he’s got hearts in his eyes as he watches Buck leave and load up the truck. He’s only able to turn away when he feels Athena come up next to him.

“Speaking of getting asses in gear…”

“I know,” Eddie sighs. “I’m working on it. I just...it needs to be perfect. That’s what he deserves.”

“Honey, it’ll be perfect because it’s you asking. That’s all he cares about. Don’t think too hard about it.”

“Well looks like I have to do it sooner rather than later anyway. I cannot believe Chim’s gonna—”

“Oh, he’s not.”

Eddie squints. “He’s not?”

“No, those are for you guys, not Maddie. I really needed them out of the house and didn’t know how long I’d be waiting.” She levels Eddie with a look again, and he somehow feels like he’s 16 and his mom wasn’t “mad” at him for doing something dumb, just “disappointed”. “I already gave Maddie a heads up so she’ll play along. Just try to ask him before we all start going grey, okay?”

“Yes ma’am.” She smiles and pats his cheek before leading him out the door.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Wow, I don’t think I’ve seen these in person since I was in high school,” Buck says as Hen sits down across from him at the kitchen table, dropping a bunch of small, thick packages Eddie can’t quite see from his post at the coffee machine.

He blearily grabs the two cups of coffee he made, making his way over to the table. He places one mug in front of Buck, earning him a relieved smile and wink as he sits down, looking over to see what Hen brought in. The table is covered in developed pictures from old disposable cameras, dozens of glossy frames of people in suits and cocktail dresses laughing, a beautiful dessert table, something that looks suspiciously like a conga line.

“Are these from an old LAFD gala or something?” Eddie asks as Buck snorts out a laugh. He holds a picture up so Eddie can see Chimney with a tie around his head, perched on someone’s shoulders, yelling at something out of frame. “Oh that’s definitely getting blown up to poster size.”

“Actually,” Hen says, “these are from mine and Karen’s wedding.”

Eddie freezes mid sip of coffee, eyes snapping to Hen, who just stares back at him with feigned innocence and barely concealed glee. Hen’s smart, smarter than all of them put together, and while he knows she won’t tell Buck anything outright, he also knows she is thoroughly enjoying this opportunity to make Eddie squirm.

“Whoa,” Buck says. “There’s got to be at least a thousand pictures here. How’d you get so many in one night?”

“We had a few cameras on every table and told the guests to go nuts. We have some professional shots of the reception, but we wanted to see it how everyone else saw it too. And we decided to wait until our 10 year anniversary to get them developed so we could have a little walk down memory lane.”

“Huh, that’s a pretty good idea,” Buck murmurs thoughtfully, still absorbed in all the pictures in front of him. Eddie agrees, the cameras are a great idea, and he tucks that into the filing cabinets of his brain to use when they have their wedding.

If they ever have their wedding.

Eddie’s working on it. Really. He’s got the skeleton of a plan that will be beautiful and romantic and not too big, but big enough that Buck will know without a doubt how much Eddie loves him. So it’ll be soon, okay? Very soon. As long as someone doesn’t ruin everything before his plan can actually get set into motion.

He sees Hen’s smile get bigger, like she can see Eddie’s brain starting to overheat a little.

She leans over the table, pointing to one of the pictures. “I also recommend doing a dessert table instead of a big ugly cake. You can do a bunch of good stuff too like cupcakes, pie, we just went to a wedding with a candy bar…”

“A candy bar!?” Buck looks at Eddie like a kid on Christmas, and Eddie files that idea away too (while also noting that he’ll have to remind Buck that they probably can’t only have gummy worms at a candy bar).

“And you guys should definitely have a live band, they’re much better at getting people to dance than a DJ.”

Eddie clocks the “you guys” and starts sweating a little more. Hen notices too, eyes widening at Eddie like she knows she went a little too far.

Buck, by some miracle, still seems caught up in the fantasy of a 12-foot table covered in gummy worms.

He looks at Hen, eyebrows furrowed. “You don’t think a DJ is better? I feel like they have way better music usually. Live bands have, like, the same seven songs, and one of them is always ‘Footloose’.”

They continue to debate the pros and cons as Eddie stands to put his mug in the sink, squeezing Buck’s shoulder as he passes. Buck grabs his hand, kissing the inside of his wrist before letting him go, all without breaking conversation on whether “Shout!” or “The Macarena” is a more annoying song. Eddie’s stomach flutters like it always does with Buck’s absentminded displays of affection, but the butterflies also seem to be saying It’s time to get your shit together and ask this man for his hand in marriage, idiot.

Eddie closes his eyes, resting his head on the cabinet above the sink.

The butterflies are right. A little rude, but still right.

~~~~~~~~~~

Eddie knew Chimney was going to be the hardest loose end to round up.

He had stood at the top of the stairs, arms crossed, as Chim came up after telling the station (and probably the entire city of Los Angeles) that Eddie and Buck were getting engaged. “Chim, man, look—”

“No worries, Eddie,” Chim said, holding a hand up to cut Eddie off. “Cross my heart, I will not say a word to Buck. I’m sure you have something big and sappy in the works, and I will not be the person to screw that up.”

Eddie deflated a bit, still eyeing Chim warily. Chim just smiled back, clapping a hand on his shoulder and squeezing reassuringly. “Look, I’m so, so happy for you guys. You’ve both been through the ringer and still managed to find each other and create a beautiful life for yourselves. You guys really deserve it, and I—” He cleared his throat as his eyes filled with tears. He opened his mouth like he wanted to keep going, but he pulled Eddie into a tight hug instead.

“Thanks Chim, that’s...that’s really sweet.” Eddie felt his voice crack around the lump in his throat as he patted his friend on the back. They pulled away, laughing quietly and wiping their eyes.

“Plus,” Chimney said, punching Eddie softly on the shoulder, “we’re basically in-laws now, so there’s definitely a bro code. Add that to the firefighter bro code, and I’m double coded, man.”

“So you’ll...double keep the secret?”

“Exactly.” Chim patted his back as he walked toward the kitchen. Eddie watched him go, still trying to put together the double code thing that was definitely not actually a thing.

In his own weird way, Chim had seemed sincere in keeping his mouth shut. Eddie really thought that had been that.

That had most certainly not been that.

Because since Chim couldn’t let out his excitement with words, he had to let it out in other ways.

Namely, tears. An ungodly amount of tears.

The whole team is in the lounge, flipping channels until they land on Say Yes to the Dress. Chim blinks at the TV, then whips his head to where Buck and Eddie are squished together on the couch. Eddie catches his gaze, watching his eyes begin to water before he’s up and running down the stairs. Hen barks out a laugh and tries to hide it in a cough. Bobby shakes his head and looks toward the sky, either asking God for strength or to smite him where he sits.

They’re at the kitchen table early in the morning, heads bent together as Buck shows Eddie a TikTok on his phone (Eddie doesn’t get the deal with these things, but they make Buck laugh so hard he snorts so he’ll allow it). They’re startled by a strangled sob from across the room and look up to see Chim rushing past them to the coffee machine rubbing his eyes, his shoulders still shaking as he adds milk to his mug. Buck shoots Eddie a confused look, and Eddie just shrugs helplessly before shooting a death glare to the back of Chim’s head.

Buck and Chim are chatting in the locker room when Eddie arrives for shift, dropping his bag next to Buck and giving him a quick peck hello on the cheek. Buck smiles at him, reaching up to push back a lock of hair that had fallen on Eddie’s forehead in his hustle to be on time (he’s growing his hair out again because he likes it that way, okay, not because Buck told him he looked like a sexy Superman when it was longer). They turn back to Chim in time to see tears begin to fall in earnest, which he quickly blames on allergies before scooting past them and out of the room.

“Is Chim like...good?” Buck asks, watching Chim walk away blowing his nose in his shirt. All Eddie had done was smile (probably a little dreamily) at some dumb joke Buck made, but that was enough apparently.

“He’s fine,” Eddie replies quickly. “He’s just...you know. Going through it. I guess.”

Bobby snorts from behind the stove as he flips a grilled cheese.

Buck sighs. “Should we remind him about therapy at least? I’m just worried he’s gonna be perpetually dehydrated or something.”

“I don’t know if therapy is what he needs,” Bobby says, looking pointedly at Eddie. Eddie throws a napkin at him.

Buck turns to Bobby confused but is quickly distracted by the hot sandwich placed in front of him. They launch into a debate on the best combination of cheese for a grilled cheese, Chim’s hydration levels seemingly forgotten.

Luckily for everyone, they’re almost in the clear. Reservations have been made, Chris’s sleeping arrangements have been confirmed, and Eddie’s even picked out an outfit. Everything is finally ready.

Eddie’s excited, more excited than he can remember being in a very long time, possibly since Christopher was born.

He also feels like he’s gonna hurl.

Hopefully that’s a good sign.

~~~~~~~~~~

He settled on recreating their first official date. It’s just cheesy enough that Buck will get a kick out of telling the story over and over and simple enough that Eddie can handle everything without involving one single other person.

It’s really nothing crazy: dinner at their favorite Italian restaurant and watching the sunset on the beach, brown bagging a bottle of wine like they’re in college. Eddie even knows what he’s going to say already, going over it again and again in his head so he can get everything out perfectly.

That first date, Eddie had accidentally told Buck he loved him. He hadn’t planned on it at all, but the words had been bubbling under his skin for so long at that point it was a relief to get them out in the open. He was immediately terrified he had said them too fast, too soon, but Buck simply pushed him back into the sand and kissed him soft and sincere, more teeth than anything once they both gave up on holding back their smiles.

He doesn’t want to be so caught off guard by his own brain this time. Not for something this important.

But that all has to wait until tomorrow.

Tonight, Chris is with Abuela (who slyly offered to keep him all weekend so Eddie and Buck could “celebrate properly”, which Eddie was both thankful for and mortified by, hearing from his grandma), they had ordered Chinese, and are now watching a movie that (blessedly) has no cartoon characters randomly bursting into song.

It’s normal, domestic, something they do at least once a week.

And yet Eddie feels like his skin is on fire, his heart beating so fast he’s sure it’ll break through his ribs at any moment.

He’s looking at Buck, feels his chest on his back, his strong arm around his shoulders, drawing absent-minded shapes across his chest as his attention is focused on Bill and Ted meeting Rufus in the phone booth for the first time. The light of the TV highlights Buck’s jaw and cheekbones, casts an ethereal glow on his unkempt curls. He laughs at something, a rumble deep in his chest, head tipping back slightly exposing the long line of his neck.

He’s beautiful. Stunning, inside and out. The most amazing thing that has ever deemed Eddie worthy of attention and love, aside from his son.

And if he doesn’t ask him to be his forever right now, this minute, he’s absolutely going to explode.

He’s off the couch and striding toward the bedroom before his brain even tries to stop him. He hears Buck faintly call, “Baby? Are you okay?” but is too busy rifling through his sock drawer to answer. He holds the blue velvet box firmly in his hand and takes a deep breath.

He had been waiting and planning and trying his damnedest to keep this all under wraps so by the time he asked, everything would be perfectly romantic and swoon-worthy, a story they could tell their kids and grandkids and great-grandkids to inspire them to find a love like theirs. A moment so perfect that there would be no doubts about how desperately Eddie needs Buck in his life until he’s buried in the ground, and probably even after that. Buck deserves to know that Eddie would go to the ends of the earth to make him happy, have it spelled out in the stars just how deeply he makes Eddie feel loved and safe, and that he’d do anything to make sure Buck feels that in return, always.

But, really, they’ve never been perfect. They’re messy sometimes, and gritty. Too loud or too soft or too much or not enough. They push and pull at each other in good and bad ways, sometimes too far, but sometimes just enough that they come out even better together and apart than they were before.

They’ve never been conventional. So why bother starting now?

When he comes back to the living room, Buck is standing, movie paused, worrying at his hands as he watches Eddie walk in. He freezes as Eddie comes up to him before sinking to one knee, eyes widening as the box opens, revealing a simple, black, titanium band.

And then he’s laughing. Full body, shoulders shaking, like Eddie getting ready to bare his heart and soul to him is the funniest damn thing in the world.

Before he can dive too deeply into his wounded pride, Buck’s kneeling too, placing his hands on either cheek, eyes bright with a little mischief and a lot of love as he says, “It’s about damn time, Diaz.”

Eddie blinks, feels his shoulders slump a little. He wishes he was surprised, but he’s really not.

“Who told you?”

“Oh, no one told me, like, specifically. But Maddie finding our grandma’s dress? And Athena conveniently having all of their old wedding planning stuff? Plus, Chim hasn’t been able to look at me without crying for weeks. I don’t know if you know this, but our friends are really bad at being low key.”

Oh, Eddie knows. He had just been hoping (in vain, it seems) that Buck didn’t.

He breathes out a laugh and shakes his head, leaning into Buck’s hands still framing his face. “Well, can I at least do my speech? I have it memorized and everything. It was supposed to be for tomorrow, but…” He gestures vaguely, encompassing the whole, beautiful mess this has turned into.

“Of course you can,” Buck says, his smile growing by the second. “But hurry up, because I can’t wait to marry the shit out of you.”

And who is Eddie to argue with that?

He takes one of Buck’s hands, squeezing tight. He already knows the answer, but that doesn’t make him any less nervous.

“Evan Buckley, you are the most amazing man I have ever met in my life, and probably the most annoying.” Buck laughs again at that, and Eddie feels all of his insides swoop, his heart filling with so much adoration it’s probably about to crack. “You are unendingly selfless, unbelievably headstrong, kind and gentle, but would kill a man for the people you love without thinking twice. You have shown me more about what it means to love and be loved than I ever thought I could know. You are also responsible for about 75% of my grey hairs.” They’re both crying now, not even bothering to wipe the tears away, wearing them like badges of honor for each other. “You make me a better firefighter, a better friend, a better father, and a better man. I want to spend the rest of my life making sure you know how much I love you, every minute of every hour of every day.” He takes the ring out of the box, holding it up between them. “I want to have your back forever. Will you marry me?”

He barely has the question out before Buck is tackling him to the floor, kissing him so deeply he feels it in his atoms. He gets the ring on at some point, lips never leaving Buck’s, and they get lost in each other, in happiness, in love, in excitement at getting to spend their lives together, as a family.

Nothing leading up to this was perfect. But he wouldn’t trade any of it — their chaotic lives, their ups and downs, their crazy, unsubtle family — for anything in the world.

But next time he’s planning a surprise, he will absolutely be keeping it to himself.

#buddie #9-1-1 #911 fox #evan buckley #eddie diaz #buddie fic #it's been TWO YEARS since i wrote anything and these two finally broke me #that and the quarantine probably #ficcery #soft eddie rights

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years ago

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14x02 watching notes

I appear to be fully booked for the whole weekend through to Tuesday so this may be the only thing I post about the episode until then, hope you all are having as much fun as Cas will at the party he’s apparently gonna throw to prove he’s cooler than all the other angels.

*readjusts my beanbag chair from Professional Sloucher to Serious Typing Mode* It's 5:13am and I've been awake 45 minutes watching this thing download and paused the new Adventure Zone episode for this... Mittens assures me it's well-recieved, so I'll go ahead and assume we burned enough sage to ward off the worst of whatever happens to their episodes...

Or, of course, Speight is directing.

So, expectations are pretty nebulous, because at this point in the story I really don't have demands, hopes or fears, except maybe that Buckleming don't handle or if they do, don't maul having Dean back. I DO miss Dean. It's very possible if he showed up in this episode everyone loves it because Dean-o is back.

I've never voluntarily called him Dean-o before. I think Gabriel's influence over the season is contagious.

Speaking of which... *hits play*

Are we getting a recap of Christian Keyes getting smushed because he, also, is alive? (er, the vessel, I mean) It would balance out Nick a great deal but it's also almost too much to ask I feel

14x01 recap: good, no sign of wirework. 14x02 recap: bad, everyone is levitating.

Also hilarious - no recap whatsoever of the past episode, because we have entered the Buckleming AU. Which is either Speight's shade or Buckleming's hubris that they don't need no canon to tell them what to do.

Nice. Creepy. Good start, sir. 10/10 would immediately go over and try and play that cursed piano despite my fear I would die instantly.

asdhdjsfkdsf the detail that Mikey took his hat off and a dramatic shot of it sitting there with the same reverent detail as the other spooky things from the rest of the intro shots

Interestingly the vampire that Mikey is bleeding is presented in much the same way as Lucifer was in 13x21, left to just stand there and dribble essence from the neck which making small choking noises. This is either stuck pig imagery, or the suggestion from unknown powers that be directing this to suggest that the entire Lucifer concept is being bled dry by wringing Nick out of it too.

This isn't going to end well.

While he's doing that, I would like to ask if that's a smidge of his own grace, or if he went and found Metatron's or something.

It also is very reminiscent of Lucifer creating demons - experimenting and playing to create the worst of the worst. Alastair and Lilith had white eyes and Lilith could do some sort of evil smite. The first demon, and the only one we've ever seen do that. Fandom long headcanoned that Lucifer used his own grace to make her, and it makes sense in a weird way that as he gets more corrupt, so do his creations - from pure white-eyed demons to murky yellow eyes to red and pitch black. Also: get more stupid. Azazel is the best and smartest, and each YED we met, if we assume they're in age order... Asmodeus is so dumb as a pile of rocks that you have to assume Lucifer realised that whatever he did to perfect the recipe in Azazel was tapering off and the good good stuff was over, so no more YEDs before you find out what Asmodeus's little sibling would have been like. His next known canonical attempt to make a demon isn't using his own grace, but using the Mark of Cain to corrupt, er, Cain.

Mikey is falling into this exact same nonsense from the opposite direction of his brother, AU or otherwise - humans are bad, corrupt evil things are better because they're less complicated and as an angel, humans give me a headache. Michael seems at least to have believed that there were good people - if he could just flipping find them - and that if he smote all the sinners maybe some good people would be left. It's coming at the same conclusion from opposite problems - he has earnestly sought out the best in humanity and then ended up scouring even the worst like Kip and those killers he mentioned, and finally settled on monsters, Eve's corruptions of humanity into bloodthirsty creatures motivated only by hunger. And now he's playing with them and using his own power to corrupt them further.

PS: Eve is going to be SO PISSED

That IS a very effective way to smite a vampire.

He's very clean and efficient and while he's "getting his hands dirty" in the metaphorical sense, there's a very careful remove in the actions we see on screen, of him standing watching very impartially.

He also sounds a shade more Dean-ish in that quip, and let's just go ahead and assume that the quip unlocked Dean a lil, or else that being in this vessel so long is beginning to wear on Michael - the influence goes both ways, and it's like seeing Captain Holt from B99 crack and quip, except this is the lawful evil version.

Plus, the flippy flippy and all... He's getting comfortable. I bet Michael might have been able to do SOME cool flip with a knife but trust me, you're possessing the second most blade flippy guy on this planet, second only to his husband, so that's a full perk of being in the Michael Sword and nothing else.

No one has asked Cas how he feels about AU Bobby, which is weird because he and Bobby were BFFs back in the day.

Trust me, it happened off screen. Sometimes Cas flapped up smelling like whiskey and cigarette smoke and Dean would be like dammit did you just come from poker night with Bobby and I wasn't invited?

(True behind the scenes details from season 5)

AUBobby wants a beach vacation as much as Dean does, though. Well, he wants to hunt by the sea.

Okay I never knew "veracity" could be used as a synonym for "voracity" but google assures me that people are literally just really lazy about it because I THOUGHT AUBobby meant voracity, but he SAID veracity, and I was like, why is he saying angels aren't known for telling the truth??? and then my other part of my brain that is more sensible but works slower caught up with the context... This language is stupid. I apologise to second language speakers for that line. It was said "veracity" but it means "voracity" because we are a garbage culture, as english speakers as a whole.

So yeah, angels aren't known for their partying, no offence, party!Cas.

This is now 2x between here and 13x20 that Cas has been directly accused of not partying, plus how he went to a party in 13x22 even if he stood stock still the entire time, so I have to assume that the rise of party!Cas is gaining narrative and symbolic momentum and we WILL see him kicking back by the end of the season.

"None taken, I tend to agree with you." TEND, as in, other angels are stuffy assholes who never party, but I, party!Cas, have stood with my arms by my side and a stoic expression, all through your welcome to paradise!earth party, so *I* am in fact, cool.

He misses those poker nights. Ellen and Jo taught him well.

AUBobby has a perhaps Jim Beaver-honed response to "it's Dean" when worrying about what's up with it. Or, of course, as much as he may have come to like the guy since the AU rescue, this was still a lil test of why they had to be concerned, leaving it to him as the one guy in the room who is still getting to know him, to say what is unspoken by everyone else.

Sam then prompts Cas to give us some clunky exposition on why he can't come, because Michael will sense him.

Buckleming, you literally are the ones who say Cas down in a chair and had him tattooed to ward him against angels. That was your thing. You did that. You.

It may be a sign of improvement that Cas is being left behind with specific explanations for why, but it's still hard to read Misha's expression as between Cas Is Sad He Can't Go Near Dean, which is crazy he's not putting up a fight and going anyway, and I Have To Say This Line To Explain It And They Don't Teach You How To Say Bad Exposition In Drama School.

"Yeah sorry"

This deserved at least 2 more lines of contention and scowling, or, of course, Sam proposing this to Cas on the spot, or Cas himself regretfully announcing that he had to do it to give them the best chance in a self-sacrificing way, then rationalising it with having to stay behind to babysit.

Cas just said Jack wasn't an infant. He's a year old. He's barely even a toddler yet. You really read that many parenting books and don't know that?

Okay yeah. Anyway lumping Nick and Jack together as charges to watch - a suggestion somehow that they're a joint burden? It demeans Jack to Nick's place, in the context. Cas hasn't actually had a great deal of on-screen parenting to Jack except like 2 nice moments basically bookending the entire time they've both been alive on the show in 13x06 and 14x01, and I'm going to have to chalk this up to a lil anxiety about bonding with the sulky teen Jack that it's something Cas now feels apprehension about. He's the father who's rarely home and clocked in the least time nurturing Jack directly, while Mary has a wild lead and Sam and Dean both also a good chunk of it, with Sam pulling weeks ahead of Dean, of course.

A sense of Dad Who Is Always At Work Forced To Bond With Child While Mom(s) Are Gone, to use some heteronormative tropes, feels like it's at play. The dad who is always away on business trips is forced to spend time at home over Christmas with the kid while the other parents are on a wild vacation to Florida... What fun scrappy bonding experiences do they get up to?! :D

Of all the tropes flying around, to stick to heteronormativity, Cas has always been "the father" to Jack while others around him waver between maternal roles or not. But even in the very start, he "completed" the parental "set" with Kelly.

Is that enough airquotes to be clear I support non-traditional family structures? :P

But it puts Cas also in a place of having some of these toxic masculinty types of fatherhood, of being away for work all the time and not putting in the work for the kid or being too eager to fight and sacrifice himself than to be there. Hard as he works to protect them all, his connection IS that of the guardian angel who watches over, the one sworn to protect, who most often talks about his bond to Jack under that obligation and that promise to Kelly, the sense of a duty to protect Jack, but very little in the way Sam especially fell hard on the side of "nurture" in the nature vs nurture debate and put in all the emotional labour associated with the mother in traditional parenting structures.

(This was good for Sam to do considering Dean had done it for him, and because Dean did it for him - being both mother and father - he's largely exempt and can dip in and out of how he parents Jack with impunity, given he had his moment about this in 12x22, days before Jack was born, and was therefore freed from character arcs grappling with it in the same way)

Cas is like "Nick is a MESS" same, buddy.

"He was housing, he deserves a shot at rebuilding his life" Sam is talking about himself here, which is weird because Nick was the topic of discussion a moment ago

I feel weird that Sam is admonishing Cas here, because Cas has not lain on the floor and thrown a tantrum about not going to save Dean, as ungrateful as he is being about babysitting Nick... it's making a weird conflict between Cas and Sam which is now veering into a philosophical argument about Nick, which makes me feel that if this is not just weird Buckleming dialogue issues where they find it hard not to write things as a conflict, Sam and Cas haven't had the rosy bro bonding time together while Dean is gone that it seemed, or that, like with Sam snapping at Mary about her optimism, Sam's in a Mode about this where he's on his last rag with everyone secretly because of lack of sleep. And Chief!Sam may also be struggling with being an authority figure among his own family, as every single one of them "outranks" him in age, parenthood, experience or scowliness, and Sam once described himself as "the least of all of you" meaning Bobby and Cas specifically of the people who in this room he'll find himself naturally deferring to. Sam's leadership is natural among the AU peeps but perhaps a struggle that with his family, he's still the leader, but there's no Dean to have the final word, and that in itself is an awful reminder, when he finds himself being the last word on a subject without Dean's input.

I have to assume this is like 5am and AUBobby showed up early to work to see Mary and the rest of the AU peeps aren't around yet

Cas then throws in the line about how all he can see is the supreme agent of evil, which is fuckin hilarious that it was Sam's trauma yesterday and we know angels are much more likely to relate to the glowy blob possessing a face, and anyway most of Cas's worst Lucifer trauma came from being POSSESSED by him, seeing him wearing Sam's face, or being beat up by Vince fucking Vincente. You only really ever saw Lucifer as Nick in 12x23 and the last few episodes of season 13, bar like one encounter back in 5x10. That is a very very recent association.

Unless, of course, he's still MIGHTILY PISSED that Lucifer killed off 2/3rds of his poker game and that's where his "supreme evil" trauma comes from.

Let's go with that.

Do you think Eugenie forgot that Lucifer was an hallucination in season 7, and also that Cas was dead during that?

(don't @ me about him seeing hallucifer in 7x17, he said in 7x21 that he stopped seeing hallucifer pretty quickly and I'm going with Edlund canon when in doubt :P)

"You talking about my dad again"

Jack. Hon. You have absolutely no relation whatsoever to Nick, except via whatever family line ties him extremely vaguely to Sam as a similar vessel of Lucifer. I don't even know how to describe where that puts him on your fucked up family tree, but trust me, you don't need to worry. Biologically, you are the son of an ex-president of the united states.

But yeah, snarky!teen Jack is here in full force. I'm not sure I'm ready to deal with the baby's angsty melodrama years :'D

Do you think

and I ask this hypothetically while full of dread that I am right

do you think Eugenie has forgotten that Jack is not Nick's biological son

Jack getting the good good framing of standing with his back to the war room, trapped in the library, as he's grounded. This central framing demands the eye to seek out wings, but in this case they're kinda furled behind him, if you see them as the dark shadows of the room beyond.

Of course the war room/library symbolism is always a thing, that action is the former, home the the latter, so this is clever to show Jack's desire, but also that he is stuck, and we see the bar patterned lights on the floor in the war room which are used as prison imagery. Jack's effectively locked out of the war room with a baby gate.

"Let's move," Sam says, with a virile pump of his gun, leaving Cas and Jack to feel impotent at home.

Sam does not get the dick imagery often enough

Blargh Nick again. Hello fuckface. Listen, I just wanna say before we get into this scene, that I've almost universally seen Mark P eyerolled at but said "at least he's a really good actor so the scenes were really good even if he sucks as a person and we hate Lucifer". I do not agree. I think he's a ham who over-acts and it was annoying as Lucifer but by this point expected and had at least transitioned slowly, but seeing Nick do the whole routine of standing up from bed, and then blowing on his stab wound and wincing and fanning it? That whole thing was just... too much for me. Nick should have been still and quiet and sad, but as soon as he started doing that it harked back to Lucifer in 13x13 when he was cold and hungry and over-acting rubbing his poor empty tum tum and rubbing his freezing arms. What made Mark P so good in season 5 was that Lucifer had a slow, cold and STILL menace to him, that while he might have gestured widely and been violent, especially in his dramatic scenes he was still and menacing. That's all gone by now and he acted Lucifer as a clown, and fair enough as an acting choice I guess when this isn't my favourite character or actor, but now it's salt in the wound that Nick was supposed to come across sad and vulnerable, and instead of bestowing some gravitas on him and taking us back to the start and actually TRYING, Mark P fell into clowning as if he thinks doing these funny things is what his fans who are apparently out there want to see, and my stretched to breaking point lie I repeated to myself about "oh he's a good actor at least" shattered because he was just playing the fool again, over-acting as if to gain cheap sympathy points, when his stillness and sadness and NOT overacting was literally the only way to have pulled Nick off without it being annoying.

This is a cake and eat it, well Lucifer is dead but I'm still here, and now I will act almost exactly the same, kind of dealio and I'm pissed and not standing by that self-comforting lie any more because every single step of the Lucifer journey so far since 11 we've placated ourselves with various phrases and concepts to make it okay to do all this but keeping Nick around is where the story breaks and so too does my patience for forgiving it.

*Cas employs his Anti Nick Shoulders* I deeply approve of these shoulders

Could they not give Nick, like, a sudoku book or something? He is just sitting here wallowing in having been Lucifer.

Omg Cas is getting to use this to actually talk about himself. I'm actually liking this. Cas self-reflection is a wonderful thing. Everyone can relate to Nick, even if they hate it. Every single person will file in here and talk about themselves to Nick at some point or another.

Nick's like "why am I heeere" and Mr Giant Teddy Bear is like "I know right?"

Wait is Nick's son called Teddy? That was unfortunate mind-melding with BL I just did. *shiver*

Also hilarious: a chosen flashback to Nick holding a teddybear beside the crib and I swear to all that is holy that Speight is deliberately implying after reading the line "Teddy" that Nick said yes to Lucifer on behalf of his wife Sarah and this bear.

I can SEE his face making a note here about what flashback to cut to.

His sparkling eyes are reflecting off this screen so much I'm getting glare from it.

*Mark P cries a lot* There are a few little leaps in this conversation to get to the point too quickly but overall this wasn't a bad scene... Perhaps because Cas carried it enough with his sinscerity that Nick wailing was at least balanced and the directing matched the intensity of it all. Speight really is good at making things work and this was pretty brutal which means that the overacting is compensated for, and Cas inserted enough genuine emotion from an empathetic character.

It's all hovering unspoken about family where Nick does it for his wife, even if he regrets it now and feels like he has become a monster and is wracked with a guilt Cas can heavily relate to as it drove his season 12 early actions intensely, and his child. Cas also did it for family, and they give this definition of family where it could be anyone beloved in the family, so that platonic overlap is there between Cas and Nick's motivations. But implicit is that Nick's wife was the one that made him say yes, and Cas stands over Nick in much the way that Lucifer stood over him in 5x01 when appearing as Sarah. Cas is/was the wife in the scenario in a weird way to Dean, for whom he chose to be possessed to save from Amara, aka the monster that had come into the house and would kill his beloved ones in their beds.

Promo scene! Aw AUBobby and his rusty FBI skills.

The coroner talking about a spree killer harks to Dean's issues balancing being a serial killer with a saviour, as I talked about pre-episode with the themes connected to Dean being possessed by Michael, and channelling all the worst of him. In this case, the torture AND the wantonly killing vampires

God damn Mary's red suit is awesome though.

"neck wounds" I thought Mikey healed those? I guess I can see residual scarring on this body so maybe healing vampires isn't as neat as healing people, because corruption...

"Why is an archangel hunting vampires in the first place" HAVE YOU MET DEAN? This is how he blows off steam when he gets a HANGNAIL. You think being possessed by Mikey will stop him?

"Huh" Sam says. "huh," I say, because they actually did some Smart Detective Work to come to that conclusion and perhaps this is just because BL needed the next lead but we've never actually seen them ask this specific question about people coming to identify mystery bodies to find the next lead ever. And perhaps because even if it happens off screen it's a dead end in all their other cases, but this was still something BL wrote that put a clever concept in Sam's head, and I am at the bottom of the barrel with them when I'm complimenting them for not making the characters act like complete idiots.

The other thing is, this cuts out an entire scene of them in a motel opening a laptop and googling surveillance footage, and I don't know if they have been banned from writing the everyone sits around and googles the monster scenes, at least since they made Crowley pop in and google a photo of the president in 12x08, and then Dabb openly mocked them for it in 12x23, but it's a pacing GODSEND to have the characters act intelligent and ask questions that solve problems instead of relying on the magical answer box to tell them where to go next.

See again: low low low expectations. Whether it's Speight clean up work or they've been told off, this is great stuff, and files off a lot of the edges that make their episodes wearing on a cosmic, soul level, that between the weird content, they're also just clunky and poorly paced.

Cas n Jack sceeeene.

It's Jack's desk! I'm so happy!!

I asked hypothetically the other day on a promo pic and I'm so happy to see Jack has his own lil desk in the library. He looks like a kid doing his homework

my heart is swelling

with all the table meta - it's another thing where they've changed stuff around to give Jack a space, a place he calls his own in this large weird Bunker. That table had to be dragged from one of the side offices or store rooms and set up for him because it's never b een there before, but now Jack has an alcove of the library he calls his own and he can sit there and do his research... And the alcoves give a sense of an enclosed room space, something comforting and like... library womb like.

The Bunker has adopted him :')

It's so weird seeing a character in this show who habitually doesn't wear a ton of layers around the Bunker - he's been in a t-shirt with nothing over it in both episodes, grey. He's young, open, honest, but hasn't found his way yet, hasn't got a tribal colour scheme. No plaid, and has only worn beige and blue in neutral Cas colours, his main father figure in a sort of aspirational sense, even if Cas is the dad who's always out on work and not there to raise his son.

Jack's identified as human in 13x23 but in a way he is a homunculous - the concept of what was originally believed to be how babies formed in a sort of medieval/rennaisance time (perhaps still is by BL) that the sperm was a tiny weeny complete person and they just got put in the womb with no other input from mommy and grew there. There's definitely a weird shade of homunculous implications in how Jack's parenthood is talked of, and of course he was then born as a fully formed man, which is a sort of transliteration of this nonsense belief, but the concept that he practically was a small adult Jack and then a big adult Jack and at no point an actual baby. Even in the womb in 12x17 we saw him turn and stare at the camera, betraying a sort of primal intelligence, the idea of a bored god waiting in the womb to be born, learning and acting from within.

And only now is he sort of set up to stop being a baby and start being a man when it comes to handling adult intellectual stuff and he's not learning from scratch but is treated like he has a more solid baseline for the world around him these days. He's learned enough to join society, but not enough to have carved his place yet. It's a very strange cusp of growth, and perhaps a good metaphor for being a teenager, in a way: that you realise you have been very stupid up to this point but now you are very smart and ready to be an adult (except, unfortunately, adult peoples will look back at this unformed humonculous version of themselves with the greasy hair and poorly understood radical political opinions and whatever, and be like, WOW, I was an idiot.)

Oh my god are BL really going to keep writing Good Cas Lines this episode? This stuff where Cas schools Jack gently and lovingly with knowledge Jack has been up all night reading then Cas is like yeah this is stuff angels know from angel sunday school but I'll be kind about it and validate what you just read... Like, the lesson is the act of the research, more than the knowledge. It's up to Jack not to feel stupid that he did all that work and Cas was like, yeah. I knew that. I'm an angel.

OH MY GOD Cas is actually having the chat I wanted with Jack about how he felt when he lost his grace

*shoves a fistful of popcorn in my mouth*

Jack all hurr blurr you don't understand I want to go run to my room and slam the door because I'm a teen and I have just discovered human tragedy and angst, NO ONE IN THE HISTORY OF EVER HAS SUFFERED AS I HAVE

and Cas is like, *ruffles his hair* it's okay little buddy, I too was a homunculous in season 9, which Lizzy has a weird deja vu feeling she wrote about but would not for the life of her know where to find that because it was probably buried in watching notes

"what did you have left?" "well I had Sam and Dean... but I had something else"

me: *clutches chest, gasps, hangs on tenterhooks*

Cas: "I had myself"

me: FLAILS WILDLY

Sorry, this isn't very meta, I've just written so much on the nature of grace and of Cas, and whether he has a soul or not still, but he is very much talking about the time when as a human he had a soul and was "himself" without his grace, and though he felt the loss of his POWER he didn't feel a loss of his CORE SELF, of who he is (which is an ongoing question they're all answering about themselves, with Jack Homunculous Winchester as the main example to channel the others through). It's really important to me that Cas has this core self, this certainty of who he is beyond his duty, his grace, everything that is forced on him by Heaven, but that this part of him who he may or may not know is his soul is there and filled with, well... Cas's nougat centre. Because Cas has been playing THAT game far longer than Jack has :P

"The basic me. As Dean would say, without all the bells and whistles"

Dean is reaching through Cas to mock him for us when we don't have him in the room to directly accuse Cas of having a harp, and I love that Cas loves Dean so much that he lets Dean drag him for having bells and whistles (which Cas will take literally) even though he's not here.

That's true love.

They share what is possibly the grossest smile ever and I am going to weep to see all this fondness for each other and for Dean being expressed. Like, ugh, families loving each other and being all wholesome and sweet. What is this garbage.

"You know, Sam and Dean... they weren't born with their expertise" yeah because they're not fuckin homunculi

Cas is basically equating Jack to going back to the start that they had, a do-over on his life, that he lived his first year as a magical all-powerful baby, but in a weird way, losing his grace makes him more settled, gives him a chance to understand himself without his power and learn that he still has a core self, a soul with all the good stuff in it, and to begin again and learn things the slow way, but a way in which he will grow more naturally and take the lessons that are needed to form the real edges to a character that turn into maturity.

"They've been at it since they were children"

and so have you. filed under: ow.

Literally no one on TFW had a normal safe happy childhood free of monsters metaphorical or otherwise.

Anyway Cas then reminds Jack that he has to do things slow to be as good as Sam n Dean, and moves on to it's important not who you were in your past - because this fuckin one and a bit year old already has a gritty past - but who you are and what you will do with the FUTURE. And Cas still wholeheartedly believes in Jack because of Jack once showing him a vision of the future that they might have - the happy ending, world without monsters, all that jazz that Dabb era is eyeing up hopefully.

Oooh Mikey's going to a partyyy.

That fuckin ring on his little finger. It's coded especially in media that he's either in a cult or gay. It's such a weird lil detail for Mikey to have added to the ensemble that I almost wonder if he smited a guy to borrow it wholecloth and took every detail. Though he's a fucking fashionista so maybe he can't resist adding a detail like this.

After all he wore dirty war-torn clothes for years in the AU, but even then had a sense of grandeur about it, an over-dramatic flair with the long coat that said that he dressed well, even for the scenario, and different, standing out from the rest of his minions.

Now he's here on paradise!earth, with all the tailors you could ask for, so he's going to dress like the lord of this planet it's begging for, in all the finery you can drape his fine sword in.

Sword does not approve of bowtie.

DEAAAN! HEY! I'VE MISSED YOU ILY

"GET OUT"

"I don't think so"

WOW, RUDE. There's rules about this, buddy!

"You can't!"

"oh but I can, because, see, I own you." It IS Michael who punches the mirror... I was certain it would be Dean, but it's Michael lashing out at his angry reflection, shattering the image of Dean. What a metaphor. In the Mark of Cain arc sometimes Dean looked at himself in shattered mirrors but it was a passive shattering. This is a statement from Michael that he can see Dean and he's shattering his entire self, refusing his right of consent - in a BL episode it's ironically hilarious so long as nothing else dub con happens, that this is the actually seriously applied good use of consent stuff. And Michael talking about owning Dean - it's that presumptiveness about others' consent that was Dean's biggest downfall in putting Gadreel in Sam, the cosmic karma lashing back out at Dean that he can't punt Michael out like Sam heroically punted Gadreel out, because Michael OWNS him. Dean is historically, cosmically, always for eons before his birth, been "the Michael Sword" - a true vessel with this guy's name inscribed on the hilt, and Michael has calmly taken full possession of his ultimate weapon, because well, why not.

UGH and then Michael takes control again by way of talking into the mirror and his reflection behaving normally because he's wrangled it back into control. A+ DIRECTION, SIR.

(Also because it's not Dean - maybe it's not so much a meta detail but the expectation might be that Dean would lash out at Michael BECAUSE he's angry and lashes out and smashes mirrors so many times, but he has no control to even move an arm to lash out... He's utterly trapped, just like Cas was tied to that chair.)

I love seeing Cas storming confidently around the Bunker running stuff while the others are out, being the one who is looking over Jack, taking the calls about their findings, and now dealing with Nick wandering in to angst some more. This is Cas at home and although it's still weird the AU peeps are ALL taking a day off coming into work after seeing how embedded they were in the hub, it's wonderful to see Cas here and without the AU peeps it is more cozy in the sense of being more like the home they privately kept.

Nick comes in like I WANT TO SOLVE MY COLD CASE THIS IS MY RANDOM DISTRACTION FROM THE PLOT

but then Cas puts his hand on his shoulder and he flicks back to Lucifer in an instant, trying to dissolve Cas in a panic from being touched. Cas is understandably completely and utterly freaked out.

And for all our talk of Rowena and Sam and their trauma from Lucifer, of course Cas has had a lot too even though I'm kinda eye-rolly about him talking about Nick as the face of all evil, of course this episode has been about his Lucifer trauma so far. It's really interesting to see Cas rattled by something because he is so solid most of the time - last episode he exuded "fuck you" from every pore for every moment except briefly when Jack was dragged into the room. But Nick has him on edge and now there's some Buckleming fuckery afoot with ongoing vessel issues, we're seeing the very strange visual of a Cas who is legit freaked out.

Anyway I really like how smooth this was, even with camera changes. Speight is really wringing excellence out of them, and the script, weirdly, and maybe because it's Nick so Eugenie is focused, is actually contemplative and full of interesting emotional conversations, which they often seem to blow off whatever the brief. Even with the dialogue hindrances, the real meaning and depth is being plumbed by the scenes as a whole.

So yeah, here is where I have to grudgingly say MarkP can play evil kinda well but also considering, again, FOUNDER OF THE AMERICAN CAPITALIST PARTY? This is his calling, and he is a caracture of the man who plays the devil.

And this is something rather scary and sinister about what's going on with him which genuinely is played with some of that season 5 gravitas, which is super weird to see because I have got so used to him being a clown, even in his previous episode.

I have to say, due to that, I give Speight a lot of credit because he's really, really good at his job.

"What went through your head just now?" I ask that a lot, and thanks for the reaction gif, Eugenie.

I need very little prompting to assume you are writing Nick and Brad is writing the rest.

Nick is a fine line of guilty and confused, and hiding his intent, either because he doesn't know, or he DOES. It's good. Credit where credit's due.

"Some of his influence still within you" it's CRUEL to give that line to misha.

Kinda meta that there's a cockles joke from an old JIB or something about "influence" as jizz and 13x21 and all the jokes about Gabriel's grace.

But we're getting to a 9x11 parallel in the structure of the episode, but Cas is left behind with Nick rather than Sam, and Sam gets to be out there looking for his brother... And of course Dean within Michael experiences a shattering greater than the Mark of Cain did to him...

"Lucifer may have inflicted more damage on your psyche" yeah no shit we were warning you he would have the Hallucifers

Cas does the most terrified slow shoulder touch ever - there's a real right shoulder wrong shoulder thing going on. Last episode he clasped Jack on the correct (left) shoulder, and this time he tries to touch Nick on the right and nearly gets smote, and then this touch is on the same, as he discerns what's wrong with Nick, and I get a mirror of 11x11 where Lucifer did the wrong shoulder touch to Dean, and have him the only inkling something was up with Cas, that Dean shrugged off because, ow.

Anyway white man has angst. Nick has the Hallucifers and he has to find out who killed his family. He's got like his entire own TV show premise of nonsense going on here and it's going to be crammed in between everything else.

Bet you anything real monsters did it

"And then what

Dude's got nothing to live for

we're so over these murdered wife revenge arcs

The old flipperoo of it being terrifying for a monster when 3 scary hunters bust in weapons drawn. The vampire has a terrible apartment and she didn't even get a new car - it's like she went from one crappy life to the next and the only thing that changed was she was now a miserable vampire. I'm sympathetic to her for now :')

Oh look how surprising, this side of the story is being 2x03 still - aside from AUBobby snarking that vampires "never do" anything wrong, in the position of one who never learned a grey area because lower Winchester exposure, the vamps are feeding on animal blood, and mourning the loss of their nest. This is another Lenore. Of course we started the episode with them in the morgue finding vampire teeth on seemingly human victims, as in 2x03, and the killer is the deadliest hunter in the universe - the heavily Gordon themed side of Dean which has been symbolised by vampires the whole time from Lenore to Benny...

OH this is the girl from the cold open. So I assume she's going to explain how she got away. We have to assume the cold open was several days ago - long enough for her to lie low, Michael to ditch all the vamps, AND for them to be discovered again and moved to the morgue and then for this branch of TFW to come out here. Which explains that Michael must have already moved on and be ready for his party in the present day, which is a stretch of time enough to form his next plan.

"I-if you let me go!" yeah AUBobby lunges at her when he assumes the conversation is over, because he never dealt with this before, but looks over to Sam now, and then Mary does.

We cut away before we find out if Sam decided her fate, so that current silence on the subject may be left ominous or may explain a lot about Sam when we find out whether he had her killed and has turned ruthless, or is still soft Sammy who dealt with Lenore and knows how it goes.

Mikey, what are you up to?

He's tapping Dean's charm but with a hint more of Jensen's whiskey smoothness in his voice than Dean's coarseness, so this is legally defined as assault.

This is horrifying. GIVE IT BACK.

I'm calling the police. Michael has made off with Dean's entire seduction routine to trap this monster, and I am horrified.

Weirder still hearing him just casually called Michael. Brrrr.

Ooh she's a werewolf. Somehow I hadn't managed to work that out in the glimpse in the promo and thought she was a new monster type.

I guess Mikey is shopping around.

Wow she really has prominent teeth. I wonder if that's a sexy trait in werewolves.

He takes a drink as he menaces towards her - he's still got that calm drifting through kinda attitude that Michael had even in the AU when he was Christian Keyes, and he's starting to have fun, which is really really bad.

I don't think Michael has ever had fun in his life.

He's like the perfect little kid who does well in all his studies then sneaks off and drowns the family cat in the back of the garden as an outlet.

"Now. Summon your master."

Is this the elusive Werewolf Alpha who survived even season 6 because the show just Could Not Figure Out What To Do With Werewolves until season 9

Nick has an ENDLESS series of white shirts to indicate he's a sweet innocent dude now

because, you know we have a hard time dealing with that

Nick is ranting like a privileged white man

I mean his family is dead, I just struggle with Nick for obvious reasons

and as soon as his mannerisms cross a line, he loses me again

He's kinda weird with Cas as well because he knows Cas, kinda, and he has to be 100% on board with all the nonsense, so he's just A Bloke dropped in this life now but casually chatting to an angel. it's weird. "You know what a cold case is, Castiel?" liike, he knows Cas doesn't always know stuff but he is also just going off on one.

I think poor Cas has decided since the Nickifer moment that he needs to spend more time actively watching over Nick, and once more is trapped with a ranting annoying man

this is his curse.

"But you're not dead. You have a second chance."

"you don't understand"

Ah, teenagers, such a problem :P

but seriously, this is hilariously the third converastion this episode Cas has been in where he directly relates to the very specific weird metaphysical problem that Nick or Jack is going through because there's literally NOTHING that Cas hasn't already been through. He might yet make an excellent therapist just because of how many weird torments he's endured.

Cas speaking with fondness of Jimmy :') Such a feeling of Jimmy being a good man who went to Heaven, and for Cas, raised as an angel like this, being in Heaven with your soulmate is the ultimate happy ending for good devout people - in 4x20 when he's still in Claire he tells Jimmy he served well and will go to Heaven like it's a reward, and despite everything he still seems to default to that, especially for the comfort of knowing this about Jimmy of all people, because of how directly responsible Cas is for destroying their lives, and knowing that at least they got this is a WONDERFUL coping mechanism for angels to tell themselves it's all okay, when they get the correct vessel with the proper permissions and they're a good and pious person who prayed for it etc etc.

Cas and Lucifer remain the only angels we've ever seen actually court their vessel properly, although it's implied Anael did similar. Most others have hopped right in without securing full and informed consent. Er, not that Lucifer does, but at least he has full and informed bullshit trickery, which, um. Is a thing?

Nick how DARE you call Cas a "stone cold bodysnatcher" who's no better than Lucifer. Jimmy is gone and Cas has had this vessel remade for him like six times since then. It's the Jimmy Model Vessel mk.VI, as sculpted by God or the Empty.

*sobs about Cas saying what happened to Jimmy was his greatest regret*

SUCH GOOD CAS STUFF this episode

The alpha werewolf is a white guy in a suit, surprisingly.

Michael, also a white guy in a suit, sits opposite him, and they're pretentious about their cognac.

"She thinks you're a god" that's the second time that's happened. He kinda liked it when it was applied directly to him but not an accusation of BEING Chuck, just that that's how he comes across.

Oh good he's just the leader of the pack, not the Alpha.

Still wanna know who that is

His sales pitch is about their purity in wanting to kill to eat to live once again. I find it hard to believe a werewolf with snooty opinions about alcohol who wears a suit like that doesn't have some human sins, but it seems that Michael is judging them by their monstrousness first, and waving aside their other habits in favour of the big picture of how they live their lives.

"Fully tested" you fucking liar

He's talking around the truth... It's fascinating watching him threading the line of judging people for sinners without falling into that himself.

I do wonder how he knows about wine unless his previous vessel did... or he's taking from Dean's pop culture and deadpan bullshitting it. Sorry, I'm still stuck on that detail. Character stuff always entertains me so much more than plot :P

"Believe me, it's an absurd dream" He's passively observed at least like 3 attempts to enslave the human race for food just in the last few years. He knows.

Mikey, you can't go around promising that, they know it doesn't work. Dick Roman couldn't pull it off, and you don't have his business acumen.

"Why be the huntED when you can be the huntER"

ANTI DEAN ANTI DEAN ANTI DEAN AAAAAH turning over EVERYTHING he works for

UUUUGH

Okay, Jack's wandered off and found his grandparents without a single warning and I am WOUNDED.

They seriously need to put more warning in for these things because ow ow ow ow ow

Oh my gooood he's named after Kelly's daaad

Look at these nice grandparents

"So you were like her intern" oh ne the intern jokes of last summer have come around and stabbed me

I repent

Oh NO nerdy little Kelly

this is awful

where is this episode coming from? I can't believe someone's managed to wrangle Buckleming into doing good stuff with everything so this is actually emotionally well-told

this is probably their best episode yet and i'm half an hour in

"We have a grandson!"

This is emotionally mauling me like an angry bear

"Jack kind of looks like her!"

*Jack attempts to speak from a lump the size of a planet in his throat*

*Lizzy types from within the bear's mouth, as it tries to stuff my down ITS throat*

NOUGAT GOT HIS HUG

Sam spared the vampire girl!!! YAY

She's called Lydia. You assholes literally used that name before for the Amazon Dean hooked up with

I can't believe Michael took the time to change his suit. He has a suit for business and a suit for meetings.

"the hunters" Oh that's cold. Dean, can you hear how he dismisses your FAMILY?

Oh nooo he metatroned her. This was a traaaaaaap and she was bait

Aww Lydia :(

He smites like Lucifer killed demons with his mind

it's so scary

How can Cas be mad at Jack I just nearly cried at a Buckleming episode

anyway he and Jack are having the equivalent I am your dad and I set curfew, vs I am a grown up I can go out when I want argument for his teen son he's unfortunately not engaged with much.

"the only real family I have left"

Cas gets SO PISSED

I AM YOUR DAD, SON

But he pushes it down and asks if it helped because Cas is good and nice and loves Jack

Once Jack reveals that he looked like the weirdly photoshopped Kelly on a horse (oof) Cas gets mauled by the same Feels Bear and relents completely because he's legally not allowed to cry but he wants to

"I suppose there are worse ways to be human than to be kind," he says as speight exploits the fuck out of the bunker set, having them sit either side of the door between war and home, tables in the centre, them on the pillars flanking it. It's a wonderful image. I'd go into it more but I suddenly think I have no time at all

"So they're going to kill him," lil Hamlet of Nougat says all firmly, re: Michael

Cas switches gears from "this precious child" to "uuuh" immediately

"And if he doesn't leave?"

I can see Cas being that meme where everything is an action blur around his face to express deep horror as Jack keeps prodding worst case murdering Dean scenarios

Listen, when this little ball of damp feathers you call your son is joining in with the entire universe challenging you if you have the guts to see Dean killed for the greater good, you have a problem that EVERYONE can see

"Dean doesn't matter!"

*shock lines intensify*

"You're all so focused on trying to save Dean"

Yeah, he does the same for all of you.

This is the pier conversation from 11x14, but 1000x more intense.

Cas is like "?????????????? HOW DARE?"

Cas can not comprehend a world where Dean dies, but our lil Shakespearean hero is determined that it has to happen because he WILL kill Michael, it's been put on his shoulders and he WILL DO IT DAMMIT.

(later)

Cas did not have this in the parenting books

"Do you think he'd want it any other way?"

"no but i love him"

I can not BELIEVE Jack got a flounce off stage left and Cas is the one left shook

damn, kids are hard

Nick has also wandered off to meet some relatives.

Cas is the worst at keeping his chickens in the coop

what was he doing

lying on Dean's bed sniffing the pillow

Oh dear, but it's the neighbour who as this conversation goes on I'm starting to assume was the one who killed his family.

Is he gonna go all Lucifer on this guy?

Uhoh, bulletproof werewolves

man I am gonna miss my bus if anything else happens

Mary saves AUBobby <3

Hi Deanchael, come to torment this poor family

You know you coulda brought Cas because he knew you were here the whole time anyway

DEAN! HI!

That was a really cool move Dean.

"Sammy"

"It's me"

Unless it's NOT

"He just left"

"why"

"i don't know. I don't know!"

me too bud

Hey look Nick killed the guy with a hammer

What a surprise

Welp now I have to take my 3rd choice for bus to yoga but I finished and now I will be gone all weekend byeee love you yell about this later <3

#14x02 #season 14 spoilers #my stuff

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one-of-us-blog · 6 years ago

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The Chicken and the Egg (TGP, Episode 24)

Today Eli is forced to watch and recap The Chicken and the Egg, the final episode of The Golden Palace. In this installment, Blanche entertains the idea of having another child with a random boyfriend, while Roland uses his martial arts mastery to teach the local elderly community to lay down some street justice. Will the final chapter of the show serve as a fitting conclusion to this epic saga? Keep reading to find out…

Well, here we are! I don’t quite know what to say before I dive into one last recap, as I want to save my thoughts on the project in general for my very last post. With that in mind, let’s do this.

Buttocks tight!

Episode written by Mitchell Hurwitz, directed by Lex Passaris

Sophia enters the hotel lobby declaring that “It’s gone.” Chuy guesses that she is referring to her short-term memory, but Sophia ignores him and wonders aloud who the Mexican is. She says that her purse was stolen by some thug and blames the Bush economy. With a few more questions, she reluctantly reveals that the purse was stolen while within Rose’s now also-stolen car, which Sophia “borrowed” without asking. Additionally, the thief might have gotten pretty far since Sophia had just filled up the gas tank using Rose’s credit card. Roland considers teaching a self-defense seminar at the hotel to deal with these situations, and casually mentions that he has a blue belt in Tae Kwon Do. Blanche is all dressed up and demanding compliments as she has a hot date with Bobby Lee, a cattle baron from Austin. Her daughter Rebecca is also coming to visit Blanche’s (shudder) birthday, so we have all the pieces in place for our final outing!

We cut to Blanche and Bobby Lee in the hotel lobby, and he wastes very little time in sitting Blanche down to propose. He wants Blanche to agree to be his wife! Oh, and he also wants her to agree to have his children. Say what now? She attempts to pump the brakes, but he says that he knows she is older than she claims. Still, breeding is his business and Bobby suggests letting the doctors worry about the details. She simply has to say “yes,” and caught up in the moment, she does just that.

Blanche soon makes an announcement to her friends about her engagement and receives congratulations. She then announces her plan to have a baby and receives mockery. Sophia calls her a fossil, and Rose suggests that perhaps that ship has already sailed. Like, way back in End of the Curse. Rose also speculates that this is all a result of Blanche’s hatred of birthdays, but Blanche says that this is something that Bobby Lee wants and she “owes” it to him to try. Gross. Blanche also points out that medical science has come a long way, and she could potentially have another woman’s fertilized egg implanted. Roland reminds Blanche that she should really consider adoption, and then probably laughs and laughs in his head as he remembers that he is totally off the hook with Oliver, or whatever that little burden’s name was.

Roland dons his Tae Kwon Do garb and prepares to instruct a class of elderly women on the finer points of kicking a man in the balls. Someone hurls a bottle of estrogen at his head and he shames a masculine-looking lady, so things are really off to a great start. Roland attempts to bond with a student names Sylvia, who mentions that she enrolled because she wants to put her bastard husband through a window for calling her frail. To get down to business, Roland reveals that Chuy will be playing the part of the “attacker” in class, and he enters in a padded suit, snarling like a bear. It takes the old ladies approximately 2.5 seconds to swarm and beat the shit out of him.

Blanche has checked in with Bobby Lee about the possibility of adoption and says that he (predictably) has no interest in caring for someone he didn’t help to create. Rose wonders where Blanche will find someone with a compatible medical history to give her an egg, and at just that moment her daughter Rebecca shows up. They hug, and Rebecca says that Blanche can have anything she wants for her birthday. Blanche only has her sights on an egg.

After having a presumably uncomfortable conversation with her daughter, Blanche tells Rose that Rebecca didn’t agree to her request right away and will have to think things over. Blanche insists that she isn’t as old as everyone seems to think she is, and Rebecca shows up again to mildly rain on her parade. Blanche doesn’t want to be lectured, but Rebecca says that although she doesn’t think any of this is a good idea, she is willing to give her mother what she wants despite her objections.

Blanche seems to be having a rough night, tossing and turning in bed. Unable to sleep, she goes downstairs and discovers that she is super pregnant with a huge belly! Actually, Rose says that she went to the clinic with Blanche, and she got pregnant too! The two show off their enormous midsections and Rose complains about all of the morning sickness, varicose veins, cravings, and back pain that come along with pregnancy, and that they had both forgotten about. The surprises keep coming as Sophia is pregnant too, maneuvering her own belly around on a wheeled contraption. The trio somehow manages to gather at the kitchen table, where Sophia gives Blanche a good kicking for talking them all into this mess. Blanche says that she didn’t mean that “anyone” can get pregnant, but it’s too late, this scene has already gone off the rails; Roland is pregnant too and experiencing some major mood swings. We aren’t done yet, folks, Chuy has a bun in the oven as well! More specifically, he is carrying his bun in his backside for the sake of a dumb joke. Blanche apologizes profusely to everyone…

…and then a worried Rose wakes her up from her dream! Can you believe it?

The parking attendant from the neighboring hotel shows up with Sophia’s purse, and everyone realizes that Sophia actually just accidentally valet parked Rose’s car. Unfortunately for the attendant, Sophia and her gang of newly-trained Tae Kwon Do grannies choose this moment to wander in, and they all swarm Sophia’s “assailant.” Blanche needs to talk to Bobby Lee, who arrives at the hotel at just this moment. She is about to tell him that she doesn’t want to have a baby after all when he breaks down and admits that he is sterile. Both parties continue to insist that they are not old, but Blanche says that perhaps they can accept that they are “approaching middle age” and still have some fun together. Bobby Lee throws out a parting reference to his freezer full of bull semen, and leaves. Rebecca then comes downstairs, and Blanche tells her that she was right. Rebecca says that she just wants Blanche to be proud of the person she is, and they hug it out in the show’s final embrace.

For one closing scene, we find Chuy fleeing into the hotel elevator to escape the gang of violent older women that Roland has unleashed on the world. He almost makes it to safety, until Rose foils his plan. The very last image we are ever to see in the Golden Universe is that of Chuy being descended upon by the angry mob.

The End.

I have to say, while this is the final episode of the series and I’d like to go out on a high note, I kind of wish that this episode and the previous one had been swapped. I know I enjoyed the wacky antics of Roland policing vacationing young adults and Chuy building a giant burrito, but the pregnancy dream sequence in this episode just seemed silly without actually bothering to be funny. That, plus I feel like the whole angle of one of the girls (specifically Blanche) lamenting her lost youth and reproductive capability was already done by The Golden Girls, and done better. Bobby Lee seemed like kind of a creep to me, and it also seemed weird that Blanche was ready to marry a character in the very first scene in which he was introduced. It wasn’t a total loss, as I kind of enjoyed the idea of a gang of pissed-off grannies wandering the streets of Miami and stirring up trouble, and I liked that the show’s final message was that you should love yourself just the way you are, so I’ll leave things with that very positive thought in mind. Still, I’m giving The Chicken and the Egg a rating of 3 poofy hairdos out of 5.

I can’t believe that I have written my final recap for this big, crazy project, but I’ll still return one more time to share some final thoughts on the series and what One of Us! has meant to me. But before then, you can still treat yourself to one more recap from the real powerhouse of this duo, as Drew will soon be sharing his thoughts on the most recent Bond film, SPECTRE. Until then, as always, thank you for being a friend, and for being One of Us!

#golden palace #golden girls #one of us

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lostinthemazecalledmyhead · 7 years ago

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EPISODE THREE: DØDNINGEKNIP

Life hasn’t exactly been easy on you. The lemons that were given you were sour. Still you managed to make the best of it. Then one day the Winchester step into your world and change it completely. This is the beginning of your new adventure. Join the road with the Winchesters.

Chapter one: Sparks fly After the whole Banshee adventure the three of you need to recharge, but a new case is never far away... (Links at the bottom)

The three of you just finished eating your dinner and you go back to your own room. At least not really your own, since Sam will be spending the night with you. In separate beds of course. You hear the door close behind you, quickly you turn around, knife in your hand. It’s Sam. He’s still standing in front of the door holding his bag. “I’m sorry. I should’ve knocked.” Sam apologizes. You put the knife back in its holder. “It’s fine.” You ensure him, then turn around to continue to rummage through your bag. “Y/N, I was wondering something.” Sam says. “When you told me to kill you.. was that really you talking?” Slowly you turn around. “You mean if I was in control of my body?” You ask him and he nods. “I was, for some part of it. After I realized that I had lost control I found a way to get it back, but the fight was hard and I couldn’t keep on fighting.” “You really wanted me to kill you?” He asks you. “Sam, I didn’t know that there was another way. Besides I didn’t want to risk hurting you.” You tell him. “Or Dean.” You quickly add. “What happened after you fled from the motel?” Sam asks carefully. “Did you meet up with Selene?” Uncomfortable you bite your lip. “She found me, Sam. Why are you asking me all this?” “I had the feeling there was something between you, like a connection.” Sam says. “There was.” You cry. “We were both Banshee’s and she was my maker. Sam I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” “Okay, I’m sorry.” Sam apologizes. “What did Dean say this time? Is he always this.. how do I say this.. involving?” You ask Sam in an attempt to lighten things between you. Meanwhile you grab your stuff to take a shower. Sam chuckles. “Yeah, Dean is just trying to take care for me in his way, I guess.” Sam says. “He’s been pretty obvious about it, hasn’t he.” “He has an odd way of doing it.” You say holding your clothes folded over your arms. “Don’t love him any less for it, though. Actually it makes me like him more, because of the way he is just way straight forward. And what I like about his brother are the facts that he is smart and caring.” Sam stands there, on the other side of the room, not knowing what to say. Whether to make a move on you or just keep things casual. He keeps thinking what if things go wrong between the two of you? And you must admit that it is something you’ve thought about too. “That’s good.” Sam says looking dumbfound. You bite your lip in embarrassment. Embarrassment for him. “I’m going to go take a shower.” You announce feeling awkward and wanting to get away from him as soon as possible. Relieved you close the door behind you. The water runs down your body while the memory of the Banshee runs through your mind. Her scream echoes in your ears. Being alone, the water isolating you from the world around you. It hurts. There is this feeling that a part Banshee still lingers within you. And that thought terrifies you. You turn off the water and get out of the shower to dry yourself off. Quickly you put on your pajamas to protect yourself against the chilly air. With the towel you wipe to fog from the mirror. Your reflection stares back at you. A knock on the door makes your heart jump. “Yes.” The door opens and Sam walks in. There is something about his face, the way he looks at you, it doesn’t seem normal. It’s different. “I…” Sam begins, but gets stuck on his words. He looks down upon your face. His green eyes locked with yours. “I..” He tries again, but nothing comes out. “What is it Sam?” You ask concerned. He turns around and heads for the door. Then he turns around again. “Whatever.” He says, then puts his hand on your cheek and kisses you. Surprised you back away from him. “What are you doing?” Now that it actually has come to a kiss you are just too confused to act normal. “I’m sorry. I thought.” Sam apologizes backing away. “No, don’t be sorry.” You say, swiftly wrapping your arms around his neck and kissing him. He kisses you back. The tension that has been between you since day one, finally gets set free. His hand goes from your cheek into your long wet hair. With one hand still wrapped around his neck, the other one goes through his dark hair. Sam backs away a bit to look at your face. Smiling he looks down on you while wiping a string of hair away that is stuck on your face. “You know that I’ve wanted to do that since the beginning.” Sam says looking at you as if you are the brightest creature in the universe. “What stopped you?” You ask him, looking at his face just as smitten. “Let’s not talk about that now.” He says before kissing you again. And he is right. Let’s not ruin the moment. Except, there are more ways to ruin a moment. Imagine a brother walking in on you making out. Embarrassing, right? Well, that is exactly what happened. “Didn’t realize I would walk in on some girl on girl action.” Dean’s heavy voice fills the room and both you and Sam jerk your head in his direction. Sam is still holding you. Quickly you back away from Sam. “What is it?” Sam asks his brother annoyed. “Ah, nothing.” Dean says waving his hand. “Just continue.” He walks out the room, Sam following him. You stay behind in the bathroom trying to grasp onto what just happened. Realizing that you’ve finally kissed Sam you sigh and lean against the sink. With your finger you touch your lips. The feeling of his lips on yours still lingers. Staring down at the floor you smile. Though Dean just barged in, it was perfect. There is a lot of chemistry between you and Sam and it feels like there just went a bomb off. If Dean hadn’t walked in.. It may not have stayed with just kissing. You’re definitely not that kind of girl that just goes with it right away, but there is this invisible force pulling you to him. You chuckle biting your lip. Oh, Sam. Meanwhile Sam has caught up with Dean. “What the hell was that in there, Dean?” Sam asks frustrated that his brother ended your make out session so coldly. “Seemed to me like you were sticking your tongue down her throat.” Dean replies playing stupid. “Oh, come on, Dean!” Sam cries. “Don’t play stupid. You’ve been negging me the whole time telling me to make a move and when I do you put a stop to it.” “How should I have known you were about to make babies.” Dean says. “You could have just walked away. So what is bothering you?” Sam says knowing his brother better than anyone. “The same thing that you’ve been thinking about!” Dean cries finally admitting to his feelings. “What if things crumble between you? Then she leaves.” Sam frowns. “You’re scared that she is going to leave if things don’t work out between us?” Sam is astonished. He is wondering why his brother cares so much about your company. “Aren’t you?” Dean asks. “Of course I’ve thought about it.” Sam admits. “But why do you care so much whether she stays or leaves?” “Just like Bobby said she can help us. Besides it’s nice to have more friends than just my brother.” Dean answers. “Look, Dean, I’m not going to screw this up.” Sam ensures his brother. “I promise.” After his argument with Dean, Sam walks back into the bathroom to find you smiling, biting your lip. “Hey.” He greets you, for the lack of better words he can think of right now. Startled you look up. “Hey.” You reply still dazed by the kiss. Of course you’ve kissed guys before, you’re not that untouched. But this, this, was a whole new definition of mind blowing. “Is everything alright?” You ask concerned. “Yeah, yeah, everything is fine.” Sam answers. You hoped that after the kiss both of you would know how to act around each other, but it seemed to have gotten even more complicated. “Sam.” You walk towards him and wrap your arms around his waist and look up into his face. “We appear to have a tendency to make things weird.” “We do, huh.” Sam says smiling. “So, let’s try and not make this weird. At least not too weird.” You propose. “I think that is an excellent idea.” Sam agrees kissing you softly on your lips. “When do you want to start?” You laugh and bite your lip. “Let’s get some sleep.” You give him a quick kiss and walk away from him. Though he lets you go he looks at you like he wants to keep you in his arms until the sun rises. You dive into the bed and close your eyes. You’re so tired that you almost immediately fall asleep.

“Have you ever seen anything like this?” You ask looking at the picture of a dead man whose skin has turned blue. “No.” Sam answers. The three of you are in the motel room looking through the crime scene reports. There have been three deaths already, where people have died from strange diseases and one man has turned blue. “What are we going to do now?” You ask. “You and I are going to pay the local sheriff station a visit while Sam sees if he can find out anything about people turning blue.” Dean answers. “You mean like you did with Sarah McAllister?” You ask thinking back about your neighbor. “The whole feds thing?” Dean has a mysterious look on his face and gets something from his pocket. “Look what I got you.” He holds out your very own fake FBI badge, smiling smugly. “I’ve always wanted to play a fed!” You cry remembering to keep your voice down. Enthusiastic you grab it from his hand and take a closer look. “Wait, how did you get my picture?” You ask looking at the picture of you. Dean just smiles and doesn’t answer. “Let’s go.” Dean gets up and jingles his keys. “Bye, Sam.” You say excited and run after Dean to the Impala. It’s only the second time you have gotten to ride shotgun. The only time without dyer emergencies. “Don’t touch that.” Dean says as your hand goes to the radio. Cocking your eyebrow you look up at him. “Sorry. I guess.” You sit back in your seat. You flip open your phone and see that you have one unread message. It’s from Gus. He’s saying that he saved a little girl from a group of vampires. He hasn’t been able to kill them all yet, but slowly and surely he’s ridding the world of those night creatures. Gus also asks how you are doing. You tell him that you miss him and that you are learning a lot about killing other creatures. About Sam you don’t say anything. Not yet. “Who was that?” Dean asks curious. “Gus.” You answer. “He wanted to know how I was doing.” Dean looks at you sideways. “What did you tell him?” He asks. “Well, that I’m fine of course.” You answer simply. “What more could there be to say?” “Well maybe the fact that you almost permanently became a sexual predator.” Dean answers. You give him a sharp look. “But I didn’t.” You say your tone matching your look. “I don’t want him to unnecessarily worry.” Dean stops the car in front of the local sheriff’s department. “You ready?” He asks before getting out of the car. You smile at him. “Sure.” Dressed in a pencil skirt and white blouse on top of it you walk inside the building. “Just let me do the talking.” Dean says in a hushed voice and you give him a look saying ‘as if’. Dean doesn’t have the chance to make a bossy warning because you’ve already arrived at the secretaries desk and she’s looking at you expectantly. “Good morning.” You greet the woman before Dean can even open his mouth. “We’re here from the FBI, is there someone we could speak to?” You show her your badge. The whole time you look professional, while inside you’re extremely nervous and excited. If Dean hadn’t known better he’d thought you’ve done this before. “FBI?” The woman looks at your badge. “What is the FBI doing in a small town like this?” “Can we see the sheriff, please.” Dean asks her in a tone that tells her not to ask anymore questions. Immediately she stuffs away her questions and picks up her phone. “Two FBI agents for you, sir.” It doesn’t take more than five seconds for a typical sheriff to walk out of his office. The round donut type with a thick mustache covering most of his small lips. “Good morning. I’m agent Lannister and this is junior agent Crawford.” Dean speaks and both of you show your badges. Damnit Dean. He beat you to it. It’s as if he knew that you were going to call him a junior agent and he decided to do it before you could. “Please come in.” You follow the man back into his office. While his back is turned towards you, you and Dean take the chance to exchange a look with each other. “What can I help the FBI with?” The man asks while closing the door behind you and sitting down on his desk. Not wanting to be too close to him you don’t sit down on the seat right in front of him. “We are investigating the deaths of three of your citizens.” You quickly say before Dean can beat you too it. “Those are just some unrelated deaths. Why would the feds be interested in that?” The man asks in a waving it away kind of manner. While watching you and Dean his hand searches his desk for his coffee. Having found it he accidentally knocks it over. He jumps off his desk and starts to dry everything with napkins. You share a look with Dean. This man seems awfully unprofessional. “Three suspicious deaths within a week in a town that normally barely loses three people a year.” You lean on the empty chair. “Now tell me. That doesn’t catches your attention?” Wide eyed the man looks at your intimidating face. His desk is cleaned, still sticky though. His forehead, however, could use a napkin too. Sweat gathers on his wrinkled face. “I haven’t thought about it like that.” He admits, probably sweating out of fear. “As my partner already suggested, that is sloppy.” Dean catches the thrift you are on and continues to sweat this man. “We need all the files on this case that you have, and this time be more thorough.” Poor man. He nods. “I’ll get right on it.”

Night Prowler: Chapter one: Style Chapter two: Clean Chapter three: Bad Blood Chapter four: Everything has changed

Sealgair Dhaoine Chapter one: A place in this world Chapter two: Cold as you Chapter three: Out of the woods

Dodgeknip Chapter one: Sparks fly Chapter two: Innocent

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