#Sam thinks he is a rich kid who’s trying to pull a prank

[dclovesdanny]

Musicals ships

Epic the musical x Everlasting Insomniacs

Tim, while infiltrating Amity Park, was enrolled in the local high school along with Steph. Steph signed them up for the musical the school would be performing.

Tucker wasn’t going to sign up for the musical until he realized it was going to be Epic the Musical, one of his favorites. So, he dragged both Sam and Danny along with to audition. He even bargained with Sam, swearing to eat vegetarian with her for a week (His sweet, sweet barbecue would have to wait.)

So they all auditioned.

Sam got the part of Athena (a part she never realized she would relate so much to.)

Tucker got the part of Eurylocus (which may have exacerbated some of his fears of succumbing to his own insecurities and risk his friends lives.)

Steph got the part of Hermes (which she adores) and an extra crew member who dies to Polyphemus (which she is mostly ambivalent to, but loves the chance to watch the drama)

And Danny and Tim? They got the main couple, with Tim being cast as Odysseus and Danny as Penelope.

The issue?

Sam doesn’t trust Tim because she recognizes him from some galas, Tucker is struggling with his sexuality because Danny was always cute but now Sam and the new guy are flustering him??!? And Danny is just a flustered mess until he gets on stage.

Steph and Valerie (who is playing the roles of Circe and an extra suitor without lines) have made it their personal mission to get these four idiots together.

[yetanothergreyjedi]

Left and Returned: Definitely Nothing Wrong

Danny Phantom x Supernatural Crossover

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Ao3 (includes additional notes)

Chapter 6:

"Did the police find any razors in the rest of the candy, Mrs. Wallace?" Dean listens to his brother interview the victim's wife as he searches for anything ‘weird.’ 

"No, I mean, I don’t think so… I just – I can’t believe it. You hear urban legends about this stuff, but it actually happens?"

"More than you might imagine."

Dean finds it, the hex bag stuffed between the fridge and the counter. He holds it up behind the widow's back so Sam can see. 

Sam sighs, "Mrs. Wallace, did Luke have any enemies? Anyone who might have held a grudge against him?"

"No, and if someone wanted to kill my husband, don’t you think they’d find a better way than  razors in a single piece of candy when there's an entire bag?"

And the lady would have a point, if they weren't dealing with a witch.

---

Dean bit into the chocolate, it was the cheap stuff that people didn't mind giving out for free, even when it he was and adult man two days before the holiday. It was too sweet and had a weird after taste. Not great but worth it when Sam made a face.

"Really?"

"It's Halloween, man."

There's a rustling sound, Danny pulls another candy from its wrapper. He pops it into his mouth.

"You too? After the the razor blades?"

"I don't mind a few metal bits, adds crunch."

"Seriously?" Dean turns to the kid, who's watching them innocently, "You chowing down on sheet metal when we're not looking?"

"I might be, you'll neeever know."

"Uh-huh." Dean was pretty sure he was messing with them. Pretty sure. "Find anything interesting Sammy?"

"Hexbag has some serious stuff. This plant has been extinct for 200 years, this coin looks real, 600 years old real... and this," Sam lifts the little burned thing. "Is the charred metacarpal bone of a newborn baby."

"Gross. Witches man, I hate'm."

"Well, we're dealing with a powerful one. Getting stuff like this, wouldn't be easy."

"That or they're super rich." Danny offers. 

"What would a super rich guy get out killing a soccer dad?"

"Wants revenge on the guy who married his college sweetheart who got away?"

"Uh... sure? Do you have a name?" Sam asks.

"No, I was just throwing out possibilities."

"So we have nothing."

---

Then there was the second hex bag in a random high-schooler's party, a girl boiled alive in room temperature water. 

"Maybe this witch isn’t working the grudge, maybe they’re working a spell..." Sam skims over an old creepy book. "Three blood sacrifices over three days, the last before midnight on the final day of the final harvest. Celtic Calendar, the final day of the final harvest is October 31st."

"That's an incredibly inefficient way to summon Frighty." Danny mumbles. 

"Frighty?"

"Fright Knight, Spirit of Halloween."

"The demon the witch is trying to summon, Samhain? You know him." Sam clarified, Dean watched the kid carefully.

"Not by that name.” He flopped back on the unclaimed bed that would probably Dean's but was currently serving as a couch. “Names are important. And he's not a Demon he's a spirit."

"Samhain, the origin of Halloween, the Samhain the Celts believed in.  October 31st was the night of the year when the veil was the thinnest between the living and the dead, Samhain’s night. I mean, masks were put on to hide from him, sweets left on doorsteps to appease him, faces carved into pumpkins to worship him. He was exorcised centuries ago."

"And in those centuries Halloween changed, became trick-or-treating, pranks, parties, candy and horror movies. The idea of Halloween itself, the spirit of Halloween. Fright Knight shed his old name and became something to reflect that. He won't like you dredging up past identity."

"You're sure you don't just know a different guy?" Dean asked. He wouldn't believe this if he hadn't still had the Autumn Dance's song echoing in his dreams.

"Yeah, Frighty's sensitive about it."

"So this witch is summoning what? More Halloween fun?"

"No, he'll be mad. Probably send her to a nightmare realm, but it won't go past that."

"Well... good."

"And you're sure?" Sam asks, "According to this once he's raised he can do raising of his own."

"Frighty wouldn't."

"Alright... still we should find this witch before she kills anyone else."

"Of course."

---

A whole day of stakeout to find out that the cheerleader had lied to their faces, she'd had access to both houses, claiming to never have heard of the Wallace's. Then they find her history of violence, the fact that she's emancipated and very well could be living fake ID to fake ID.

Finding her on the other hand... was proving more difficult. 

Danny had even walked them through a couple of front doors, like straight through the front door, like they were the ghosts. It was weird, and cold, and super useful even though it didn't amount to much. 

They needed a gameplan. And a gameplan seemed much more likely to drop into their lap when Danny opens the motel door and says, "Oh, hi Castiel! 

"Danny," Castiel greets, "Dean. Sam."

"Oh my God!– er– uh– I didn’t mean to– sorry. It’s an honor, really, I– I’ve heard a lot about you." Sam expertly fumbles as he moves out of the entryway. 

"And I, you. Sam Winchester... The boy with the demon blood... Glad to see you’ve ceased your extracurricular activities." Wow... awkward. 

"Let’s keep it that way." Adds a guy staring ominously out the window.

"Yeah, okay, chuckles." Dean turns to Castiel. "Who’s your friend?"

"The raising of Samhain, have you stopped it?"

"Not yet, what's it to you?"

"Have you found the witch?"

"We know who she is."

"Is she dead?"

"Why do you care so much?"

"The raising of Samhain is one of the 66 seals."

"So this is about your buddy Lucifer."

"Lucifer is no friend of ours." Says nameless angel #2.

"It’s just an expression."

"Lucifer cannot rise. The breaking of the seal must be prevented at all costs. And the witch knows who you are." Castiel lifts a Hexbag.

"This was inside the wall of your room. If we hadn’t found it, surely one or both of you would be dead. Do you know where the witch is now?"

"I would've found it. I only just got back." Danny defends and both angels' attention snap to him. 

Danny has offended #2 "You cannot be certain of—" 

"It's a pretty strong energy, I doubt some drywall would stifle it much." 

"Regardless. You need to leave this town immediately." 

"Why?"

"Because we’re about to destroy it." Castiel informs them. And Dean expects it when the air goes cold. The angel's shift uneasily, but they don't pin Danny as the source.

"Your plan is to smite the whole friggin’ town?"

"We’re out of time. This witch has to die, the seal must be saved."

"There are a thousand people here." Sam argues

"One thousand two hundred fourteen." #2 corrects.

"And you’re willing to kill them all?" Dean can hear Sam's faith shattering, and he hates these guys even more.

"This isn’t the first time I’ve… purified a city." #2 tells them

"It is regrettable." Castiel sympathizes.

"Regrettable?"

"We have to hold the line. Too many seals have broken already."

"And we're just supposed to let you?" Danny asks. "Because of your apocalypse's prophesied precursors?"

"It’s the lives of one thousand against the lives of six billion. There’s a bigger picture here."

"And ten years ago they said Phantom was inevitable. They said only one half'a life, against six billion. But guess what? We're all still here."

"The abomination." #2 recognizes, from whatever this story Danny is telling is. Frost snakes up the windows. Their breaths fog in the air, but #2 is undeterred. "This is not the same."

And the Angel's do notice the change, but instead of Danny, they turn to glare at Sam .

"No," Dean lies, because he doesn't want to know if Danny is being stupidly arrogant or if he actually can take these guys. Part of him knows the collateral of either outcome... he doesn't want to know. And he's ticked off, and the angels are looking at Sam like they're going to smite him for something he's not even doing. So, he bluffs, if it backfires then Danny can do whatever he planned to do. "if you’re gonna smite this whole town, then you’re gonna have to smite us with it, because we are not leaving. See, you went to the trouble of busting me out of hell. I figure I’m worth something to the man upstairs. So you wanna waste me, go ahead, see how he digs that."

"I will drag you out of here myself." #2 tells him, and just him, Dean realizes. They aren't offering to save anyone else. He's even more sure this is the right thing.

"Yeah, but you’ll have to kill me, then we’re back to the same problem. I mean, come on, you're gonna wipe out a whole town for one little witch. Sounds to me like you're compensating for something." He turns to Castiel who, oddly, is more sympathetic than his friend. "We can do this. We will find that witch and we will stop the summoning."

"Castiel! I will not let these peop–"

"Uriel, that's enough." Castiel holds up his hand, silencing #2 whose name is Uriel, apparently. Castiel watches Dean for a long moment. "I suggest you move quickly."

---

"Do you guys have this? I think I should spy on them." Danny says when, presumably, they're out of the angel's earshot.

"You trust this Halloween guy?"

"With the jewels behind the throne." At some point Dean will stop being thrown by the things the kid says. At some point.

"Right... Then they're the bigger threat. We'll figure it out, call us if they're planning a double cross."

Danny vanishes from the back seat. 

"You okay?" He asks Sam, who still looks miserable. They do say to never meet your heroes.

---

"The decision's been made." Castiel tells Uriel. Unfortunately, he does not elaborate on what decision, or what outcome has been decided on.

"By a mud monkey." Uriel laughs bitterly.

"You shouldn’t call them that."

"Ah, it’s what they are, savages, just plumbing on two legs."

Danny flips himself over the bench the angel's share, so he sits between them, upside-down so his feet hang over the backrest and his head dangles off the edge of the seat. It's not a defensible position... for someone worried about silly things like corporeal objects. "That's mean for a guy who's currently wearing a human person. At least show some respect for him."

The angels don't jump, and he didn’t really expect them too, but it's always fun when they do.

"And it's close to blasphemy." Castiel warns Uriel, but Danny heeds the warning as well. Castiel seems to be on team let-the-town-live instead of team nuclear bomb, and Danny would like it to stay that way, so he's not going to try to narrow down where in the realms these guys are from. (At least today.)

Uriel sighs, "Very well. But I do not take orders from this one, regardless of his involvement in the Abomination's unmaking."

Huh? 

"Of course not. Why are you here, Danny."

Huh? Okay normally when beings like this start throwing around words like abomination, they're talking about him.

"I'm keeping an eye on you guys. Obviously."

"We are not planning to break the seal. Your priority should be the witch."

"Yeah well, Frighty hasn't expressed desire to end an entire town."

"We are trying to prevent the end of your world." 

Danny doesn't say 'I am the end of this world.' Because he's not, because he refuses to be and they probably won’t get that he's joking. He doesn't say 'I could've been the end of this world' because... they don't seem to know that?

"Like the Observants failed to do?" He says instead and he wish- no he was disappointed he hadn't sat so he could see the angel's faces. He wonders if they have members in that group.

"The Observants succeeded." Uriel corrects. And isn't that interesting. Did the Eyeballs lie to angels? Danny wouldn't put it past them.

"No, no they didn't. They handed it off to the Timekeeper, who disobeyed. The "Abomination" just didn't feel like much destruction."

"It lives?" Uriel demanded. 

"Nothing dead lives." Danny lied. 

"It still exists, and you know where it is." Castiel guesses.

Danny stands, like a normal person would stand because apparently angels can't tell what they're talking too. Maybe it's the anti-Vladco-tracking-device device in his shoe? But yeah, standing like that means he has to awkwardly unhook his legs and climb off the bench. "Obviously."

"Where?"

"Ah, no. I thought we established that I don't trust you."

Uriel stands, fast, so fast a human might not track it. "You will tell us."

"Will you try to make me if I'm under his protection?"

Uriel stops, doesn't quite get in his face.

"The world isn't going to end." Danny tells them, it's almost a promise.

Castiel stands. "So you'll ignore what Samhain will do? Because you don't believe the seals hold power?" 

Danny sighs, “ Fright Knight , his name is Fright Knight.”

“Does his summoner know that?” Uriel asks, with the smugness of someone who knows old magic. 

“What do you know?”

---

Dean feels a little uneasy when Fright Knight rises in the dying man's body. He feels doubt when he calls the witch beautiful, hopeful, when he kills the witch, and doubt again when he calls her a whore. Like sure, but it doesn't feel like something Danny's friends would say, you know? Then again, he's Danny’s friend and he's not really above it? Maybe he's just reading into it because of Ruby, and Lilith, and every other demon who's shown utter disdain for their followers. Still, he thinks the kid would at least give the guy a disappointed look.

But Fright Knight didn't seem bothered by them playing dead on the ground, faces covered in blood because of Sam's quick thinking.

He didn't seem delighted by the trick-or-treating or the decorations like Danny said he would be. They follow him to the cemetery and arrive just in time to hear the screaming start.

They split up, Dean frees the kids and starts in on the zombies. It's easier to let the rage flow as he hacks at the hungry undead. It's easier than confronting the thought circling the back of his mind.

Danny lied. Danny lied. Danny lied.

The kid shows up around the time things start to get tight. He drives someone into one zombie's eye socket and blasts another away with some kind of green fire. It gives Dean the moment he needs to lock the rest inside their vault. 

Then Dean punches him in the face. His fist connects. Danny staggers back, clutching at his nose, but then his eyes go wide.

"The witch didn't summon those, did she?"

"Ya think?!" Dean swings with the weapon. This time the kid dodges cleanly and is running. Dean gives chase.

"Where's Sam?! If I was wrong about this, then—" he cuts himself off, deciding which path to take as it forks. Dean swings again, this time Danny blocks and disarms. Intangibility, Dean realizes, Danny simply just pulled the weapon from his hands. Then he tosses it away. "Dean, where's Sam!?"

The panic looks real. Feels real, Dean can taste it on the air. Can Danny fake that? What would be the point of pretending after he's won?

Dean shakes himself, and points in the direction Sam went. They both run in that direction.

They arrive to see Samhain throw Sam across the room.

"Fright!? What are you doing?" 

Samhain sees them, and Dean is flying backwards. He hits the wall hard.

"Fright! It's me!" Dean blinks and Danny is floating off the ground.

"You should know better," Samhain tells him, "than to use a name unclaimed by one such as me, Phantom."

"That is the name you gave to use!" Danny flies back, joining Dean in a hard impact against the wall.

"No longer!" Samhain shouts.

"No!"

"I am far more than you can ever—" Samhain chokes. Sam stands on the other end of the room, his arm outstretched. His face twisted in struggle. 

Then demonic smoke pours from the man's mouth. It crackles on the ground, Dean sees a glimpse of hellfire before it vanishes. The body Samhain inhabited, crumples to the ground.

---

"Where do you think you're going?" Dean demanded. Danny stands with the motel door half open. 

"There's something I need to do."

"After that? You think you're just walking away?!"

Danny holds the door open for him. Dean looks to Sammy.

"Want me to come too?"

"We'll talk later." Dean decides, because he doesn't want to be sidetracked by a fight with his brother. (And it will probably be a fight.) He walks out, and follows the kid down the street.

Danny pays a trick-or-treater twenty dollars for a plastic costume sword. He steals a jack-o-lantern off someone's porch, and finds a place where they're not likely to be distributed for a while.

"Are you helping, or just waiting to see if you need to shoot me?" Danny asks, there's no threat or demand in it, just weariness.

"What would I do if I was helping?" Dean asked. Danny turned the plastic blade in his hands and started carving into it with his knife. 

"I need a devil's trap." 

"You're summoning a demon?!"

"...Not if this works..."

"Explain."

"They're the same person, Fright Knight and Samhain. But the witch summoned Samhain, pulled his past self to the forefront, and Samhain rejected the new name... maybe, if I summon Fright Knight by his way... maybe it will bring him back?"

"And if you're wrong?"

"Then even if I'm making the trap, you're checking it beforehand."

Dean sighed. If the kid had been his usual joking self, he'd tell him off. But he was solemn, sad, and was etching symbols into cheap plastic like it was a gravestone.  "Can I stop you?"

"No." 

Dean sighed and started drawing. He was always careful with devil's traps. But he paid extra attention to this, he made it as detailed as he was certain of without going back to consult Bobby's books. He checked and rechecked. As Danny made his own circle in mystery sigils around the pentagram. 

"It's ready." He told the kid, who checked his own work. Then he plunged the plastic blade into the pumpkin. He said some words in a language that wasn't Latin, and slowly pulled the blade free.

The blade that emerged was not made of plastic. Dean didn't know what it was made of, but the embedded sigils matched the ones Danny had carved, and its blade looked deadly sharp. Once the entirety of the sword was pulled free, a storm began inside the pentagram.

Samhain had been exorcised from the body he'd possessed earlier. Now trapped without a vessel, he amassed into a roiling black cloud that thrashed against the invisible walls of its binding.

The storm spoke with thunder and static. Danny replied with the cracking of lake ice and the silence of an infinite nothing. 

And Dean understood. 

Rage. 

Betrayal.

Mocking. 

Demand: Return. Return. Return.

Mocking. Destruction's intent. 

Dean sees it. In a year's time, what was Fright Knight's will, will no longer be in transition. People will do as they always do, preparing in joyful tradition for a night celebrating youth and horrors that they do not have to fear. Factories will churn, parents will spend precious dollars or days crafting or both, people will carve into pumpkins and hang cobwebs and plastic imitation corpses— and they will all do so, not with the intent of warding away Halloween's Patron, but with the intent to welcome him. Such power will be Samhain's. There will be ruin unlike any humanity has seen before.

 Fury. Betrayal. 

Plea: Return.

Mocking. 

Acceptance.

"Dean, can I borrow your knife?"

The English words pull him back from... whatever that was, but not quite pulling him free. If he gives him the knife, Danny will have both it, and the sword of unknown power.

He responds with a ground scuff of readying feet,  the fabric rustle of a repositioned gun.

Danny nods, replies with a turn of the sword. He holds it by its blade, holding it out to Dean handle first.

Dean takes it. 

Danny doesn't let go for a moment. "Careful," he warns, "Soulshreader is bound. She will try to return to her master."

Dean tightens his grip on the handle and Danny releases her. Dean pulls the demon killing blade from his belt and hands it over in the same manner.

Danny steps into the circle with Samhain and Dean watches a demon die. 

Danny steps back out of the circle and chokes on his sobs.

[footballfanfictions]

The thrill of the chase - Chapter Three

Pairings: Mason Mount/OC, Ben Chilwell/OC

Authors Note: Apologies again for how long this has taken to write, life has been absolutely manic the last couple of weeks. As always, I hope you enjoy this and feedback is gratefully received.

--------------------------------------------------------------

 He’s pinning me down against the bed, leaning over me. His hands are everywhere, touching and caressing me wherever he can reach and his mouth is on my neck, sucking a patch of skin to mark me.

My hands are in his hair and I’m tugging at it to get him to look at me, so that I can connect our mouths again, but when I pull his face to mine, it isn’t Ben anymore. It’s Rory.

I wake up from the fantasy in a cold sweat, my bed sheet stuck to my slick back and my pyjama top crumpled. I put my head into my hands and sob quietly. I’m not crying because I’ve had some sex dream about a footballer that snogged me. I’m crying because once again, I*’m thinking about my ex boyfriend and it’s becoming obsessive.

I sit up in bed and find myself checking his social media. His facebook has him check in to some fancy hotel in the Cotswolds with his girlfriend. They had met not long after we broke up. In fact, the gap between us breaking up and them supposedly meeting was so slim that it made me wonder if he had been talking to her before we called it quits. I had no proof of that of course, but that didn’t make me feel any better about any of it. I imagined the two of them sharing a bed together in their hotel room, enjoying the comfort of sleeping next to someone. It had been so long that I barely remembered what that felt like. 

I almost texted Bri, she would have been happy to talk even if I woke her, but I wasn’t quite ready to share what I had been thinking about recently. It would be hypocritical of Bri to judge me for thinking about Rory when all she went on about at the moment was making her ex jealous. That made me think of Billy and how much he liked her. I had this awful feeling that if he did ask Bri out that she would use it as an opportunity and not give him a fair chance. Billy did not deserve to be used like that. 

I ran my fingers through my damp hair and collected it into a ponytail, tying it with the band that I had kept around my wrist since letting my hair down before bed. I had this weird habit that whenever I was feeling stressed, needed to really concentrate on something or make a decision, I would always tie my hair up. Rory had always thought it was nuts. I had noticed from their instagram pictures that his girlfriend never really wore her hair up. I always called her that, his girlfriend because giving her a name would make her feel real, and maybe there was a part of me that didn’t want her to be real and still clung onto the idea that we were just on a break, exploring our careers and travelling only to come back together again, get married and have three kids and a dog. 

My parents had tried really hard to hide their devastation when I told them about the break up, telling me that there were plenty more fish in the sea and that the timing just wasn’t right for me to meet someone. They had then of course both reminisced about their university partners which had led to a row when my dad spoke about his university girlfriend Mandy a little bit too fondly. 

I stared down at my phone, deciding that I needed a distraction, and the best distraction was work. I logged out of my own instagram account and clicked on the first saved profile in my list. It was the player that I had been posting for the other day before Billy had his accident. I checked his recent posts and likes and nothing seemed to be out of place, except perhaps for the fact that it was around 3am and he was getting regular messages, the name Sam appearing on my screen once again.  By this point in my maddened, ex-stalking state I will admit that I was curious. I clicked the icon that took me to his inbox and began to read. 

They were conversing about his impending separation from his wife and about how they couldn’t wait to be together. I felt like throwing up in my mouth that one of the players that I worked with would behave like that, although I hadn’t really met this player in particular. His name was Jorginho and he was known as somewhat of a joker.  I kept out of his way for that very reason, not being a big fan of practical jokes and pranks.

I was about to close his inbox when another message came in.

What do we do about Ben?

I blinked and re-read the message several times. Ben? 

What on earth could Ben have to do with Jorginho cheating on his wife and leaving her for this woman, I wondered.

I clicked on her profile then and scrolled back through her pictures. She was a stunning brunette and her posts were mainly bikini pictures with the odd paid promotion thrown in here and there. I scrolled until a picture stopped me dead in my tracks. It was a picture of her with Ben, both smiling into the camera, their arms around each other and a caption that read ‘my everything’.

There were a few more pictures of them together and it was very evident that she had once been Ben’s girlfriend. At first I felt a bit numb, then I felt a pang of jealousy, and then I felt angry that she was conducting an affair with one of his team mates right under his nose and probably planning on lying to him about it.

I didn’t know what to do with this information.

He never has to know. I’m spending one more season here then my contract expires and we can go anywhere. 

I read his response, that confirmed what I feared. They were going to sneak around and hide this from Ben, probably until the divorce was finalised and then they would disappear off to another country and Ben would be left to read about it in the press. Unless i did something about it. 

 --------------------------------------------------------------

I had a meeting with Marina this morning. She commented that I seemed really distracted and I commented that I needed content other than Mason Mount to post onto social media. Marina had laughed and said that he was increasing our social media engagement and that we had new fans and shirt sales as a result of his appeal. I muttered something rude under my breath about what I thought about his appeal.

Marina and I had a really good working relationship and could banter with each other whilst still acting professionally and having a great deal of respect.

We had decided that I could capture my own content for our social media whenever I liked and would be provided with equipment such as a camera to enable me to. I had agreed to this to get me out of just posting Mason, but it did mean extra work for me, doubling up on the job of the club photographer and that I would need to spend more time outside on the pitches with the players, something I wasn’t sure I particularly fancied doing.

I hadn’t spoken to Ben since he kissed me, and now I felt even worse about it because I had been thinking about Rory, and had discovered that his ex and his team mate were sleeping together.

It was only the first of September, but I had started thinking about content for Halloween and maybe even thanks giving as we now had an American player at the club. 

I was just messing around with different shades of orange in photoshop when there was a knock on my office door. 

I got up from my desk slowly, silently praying that it wouldn’t be Ben because I couldn’t face him without blurting out the secret. 

Instead I had the displeasure of opening the door to find Mason Mount stood there.

“What do you want?” I sighed. 

“God you are sunshine and rainbows this morning. You look like you haven’t slept.” he said grinning. He was trying to make me laugh by jokingly insulting me and then cupped my face with his hands and started to stroke beneath my eyes with his thumbs. I was about to ask him what the bloody hell he was doing when he said “just smoothing out the wrinkles”. 

I shook him off and crossed my arms over my chest.

“Sorry.” he mumbled. 

I let him in then rather than the two of us just standing in the door way. He walked over to my desk and perched on the end exactly like Ben had done before he had kissed me. Except surely Mason wasn’t going to do that.

“What can I help you with?” I asked, trying my best to be polite to him. He had tried after all to make me laugh. It wasn’t his fault that I was so worried about everyone and everything else going on around here.

“I have a bit of a problem. My girlfriend is in this girl band and they are doing a music video next week that she wants me to be in so that they can get more views. The thing is, I’m not sure it really fits with my brand.” he explained, looking down at his shoes and the carpet, his eyes darting back up to me every few seconds while I considered a response. 

“Well footballers have been in music videos before without it affecting any of their sponsorship or brand deals.” I responded, thinking about the music video Fernando Torres had been in for a spanish band years ago. 

“Maybe it’s not my image i’m necessarily worried about. I feel a bit used but don’t know how to tell her.” as he spoke he looked vulnerable for the first time and the cheekiness was all gone. 

“So if I’m getting this right, they’re a band kind of breaking through and you being in the video would get them a lot of views and might get them really famous. Don’t you want your girlfriend to be successful?” as I asked him, he looked thoughtful, and then sad.

“I don’t really want to be with someone that now only wants me because I’m famous, and wants to leech fame from me.” he shrugged. 

I remembered the rant I had at him about how privileged he was for being rich and famous at such a young age, but I now started to consider that it must come with some drawbacks like not knowing if the people closest to you actually like you for who you are or if they want to use you for fame and fortune. 

“Well if you like, if they ask us for permission I will say no and that i need you for one of our campaigns whenever it is scheduled for and that it’s non negotiable because the club pays your wages.” He grinned and hopped off the edge of the desk. 

He made to step towards me but I held out my hand to stop him.

“No need to thank me.” 

He nodded and proceeded to head towards my office door. I stopped him just before he grabbed the handle by saying “Can I give you some advice? I don’ think that you should be with someone like that either.”

Without turning back to me, he sighed and responded “I don’t think that you should be with someone like Ben Chilwell”.

Before I could say anything else in response he opened the door and left

 ------------------------------------------------------

By lunchtime my brain was completely scrambled. I had busied myself with my idea for a thanksgiving tribute to Christian Pulisic the American player and planned special catering for the day to include a full turkey dinner in the canteen for him. That would of course give me the perfect opportunity for a post about how we are so thankful for him and want to make him feel at home. Marina would love it. 

I thought about hiding in my office until everyone returned to their jobs or their training and then going to the canteen, but I knew if I did that there would surely be no food left.

I was just loading my tray up with small items from the tapas menu when someone tapped me on the shoulder. Looking over it, I saw that it was Billy. His smile was 50-watt and could light up any room.

“Hey Billy, are you okay?” I asked him.

“Oh yes.” he nodded. “I’ve got a plan to ask ye friend out. Wanted to run it by you if you’re free?” 

I looked around and most of the tables were free so I agreed and said we could sit together and talk about it over lunch and that maybe Bri would join us if there wasn’t some kit emergency keeping her away. He smiled at that.

We sat down at a table by the window, a nice amount of sunshine came through it which warmed my back and the back of my neck nicely.

Billy went off immediately into explaining his plan to ask Bri out. He was going to have one of the lads accidentally rip his training shirt during the morning session so that he would have an excuse to go and see her.

“Hang on - tell me what day you’re planning this and I can distract her dad for a bit.” I interjected.

“Already got that covered sweetheart. He’s on a conference all of next week!” he grinned.

I looked puzzled and he laughed at the expression I was pulling. What kind of conference would a kit man need to go to? Were they brining out a new range or under armor or something like that?

“I know it sounds mad.” 

“It doesn’t just sound mad, it sounds like a good opportunity, go on.”I encouraged him.

He was going to fill one of the old unused offices with flowers and somehow convince Bri that she needed to follow him there so that he could ask her. It was so sweet and completely something that Bri would go for so I told him that his plan sounded brilliant and that I would help him in any way possible.

“I’m going to get her thinking about you in preparation you know.” I said, showing Billy a freshly edited picture of him on my phone screen that I was planning on posting that afternoon when I got back to my desk. “This beauty is going on all our social media pages. By the way, why did you never tell me that you used to model?”

He blushed bright scarlet when I brought up his modelling career and then we both descended into fits of laughter over it.

“You’re a really good friend, you know” he smiled. “If I can call you that.”

“Of course I’m your friend Billy.” I agreed.

“Well seeing as we are now best pals, do ye want to tell me what’s on your mind?” he asked.

I gulped, my mouth and throat suddenly feeling dry and uncomfortable. I couldn’t tell him what I had learnt about Jorginho, but maybe I could at least be honest about Rory.

“I had a really bad break up about a year ago and it’s still bothering me. Just you know, seeing other people happy and wondering what could have been.” I shrugged, trying to seem not fussed. I was bothered though and talking about it made the pain in my chest when I thought about him that little bit worse. I felt tears threatening to form.

Billy put his hand over mine and squeezed it.

“If you’re still following him or still friends on facebook, you need to delete him so that you can move on. Do you want me to do it for you?” he offered, holding his hand out to me for my phone.

Billy was right, I needed to let go of the part of me that still missed Rory, the part that felt jealous every time I saw what he was up to, and I could never get over that while it was accessible to me. 

I gave Billy my phone and told him Rory’s social media names even though he was the top person in all of my search history.

“Oh Katie, I’m sorry. It can’t have been nice to see him announce his engagement on here.” he said sympathetically.

It took a second for my brain and heart to catch up with each other and I felt sick to my stomach as I ask him to repeat himself.

I hadn’t heard him wrong and he showed me the post. I must have missed it by being so preoccupied with Ben’s situation. He had taken her to that fancy hotel in the Cotswolds to propose to her. Their grinning faces staring back at me from the picture didn’t feel like people I knew anymore.

“That’s that then. The end of that chapter of my life, officially.” I scraped my hair back and tied it up quickly.

“He’s gone from your virtual life too now.” Billy said, passing the phone back to me. 

“Thank you.” I said quietly. 

It’s hard to describe how you feel the second your hope for something shatters. The reality was that Rory was never going to realise that he had made a mistake and come back to me, because the reality was that we weren’t the same people we had been when we had first met at university and we had genuinely drifted apart. I could point the finger and blame him for possibly cheating, sure, but what good would that do me? Truth is we weren’t meant to be together and he hadn’t made a mistake. He had done the right thing to lead him to the person that he was supposed to be with. I just wished that I didn’t feel this way. I was sure that if I had moved on and met someone else my reaction would have been different. I might even have congratulated him. 

That evening I went home and cracked open a bottle of wine, and once I reached the bottom of it I cried myself to sleep.

[sanchoyo]

danny phantom episode 4-7 Thoughts: (under a readmore because, these got kinda long!)

-the outfit danny had to buy for dash's party. CLASSIC 2000S i cannot stop laughing. And also showing up to the party and everyone is dressed like the trio is hilarious. and further proof that everyone looks good dressed goth.

-dash has a closet full of cute lil bear plushies?? LOVE that. adorable. also his response to danny trashing his room fighting a ghost was SO valid if somone BROKE MY BED IN HALF ID BE PISSED TOO.

-technus being like 'oh smart, u should be a tutor!' then later being like 'forget tutor, be a teacher!' :) supportive king <3 I also really like his upgraded suit/design. AND SPOCK CAMEO??? HELLO??

-the music in this show is super. its so funky. I looked it up and the guy who does it, guy moon (awesome name) also did music for other cartoons like fairly odd parents, barnyard, chalkzone, billy & mandy, AND some actual movies like FIGHT CLUB??? the whiplash I got from reading that)

-sam being rich explains a lot about her, actually.

-I know the moral of the episode was supposed to be 'dont ditch your friends for popular people/spend a lot of money on clothes that arent You to Fit In'. but tbh. it wouldve been easy for danny to have been like 'well, okay, ill come but only if my friends can!' but I get. that hes 14. so. not a lot to say there.

-BOX GHOST IS BACK!!!!! also, danny sitting up and wearing the dress/wig/makeup. umm thats how I dress everyday LMFAO. unironically me. (hate the jokes that boil down to 'haha funney man in dress' tho. but this is a look)

-jazz being protective of her brother once again being like NOOO YOU GUYS BETTER NOT STAKE OUT HIS (actually haunted) LOCKER!! shes aware of how people perceive him and she wants to help :( which is also probably why she told dash to invite him to that party even tho she had no interest in going!! she wants to help him out :(

-gotta say im with tucker on the whole 'should danny use his powers to get back at bullies' debate. 100% yes. let him teach kids to fight back. making dash throw his food at paulina out of the blue? no. but when hes actually about to pick on someone? yeah! for self defense? YEAH! if dash and his friends just threw food at him, I think rather than. idk doing sneaky shit with frogs he couldve just threw it back and not pulled punches if they tried to fight. I kNOOWWW its a kids show so they are like 'if u fight back ur just as bad!! violence bad!!' but. theyre HIS POWERS. WHO CARES.

-like my only gripe is that dash really isnt LEARNING ANYTHING WHEN DANNY GETS BACK AT HIM IN THE MOST PETTY INDIRECT WAYS. whatever they had to add a bully psa episode I guess. I hate it and I hate the way cartoons usually handle it because these methods simply Do Not Work. 'aND YouRE USinG YOur poWErs FOR EVill???!' this is Not Evil. even when poindexter takes dannys body, theyre only being 'nice' bc hes stealing soda for them!! bitches deserve what they get (nothing too brutal bc theyre high schoolers but damn, if they pick on danny he doesnt need to be the 'bigger person' he needs to start biting people)

-SAM TRYING TO SMUGGLE FROGS OUT OF THE BIO LAB?? girl in middle school when we had to dissect frogs we could opt out, also, they came to us already dead and preserved...

-sidney's lingo and the fact hes in black and white is sending me. also, danny is a ghost celebrity apparently for being a halfa?? ok. thats interesting to know

-the DENTIST BEING EXCITED ABOUT THE COTTON CANDY FLOOD IS THE FUNNIEST THING SO FAR.

-I LOOOVE the trope of 'wishes gone wrong'. not crazy about the stereotypical genie, or the use of the dreamcatcher looking design. (also, I KNOW theyre scientists but the way theyre handling a cold...are the fentons ANTIVAX)

-the genie. she. whitewished paulina. JKASDFHKJ. (the ghost literally just being hello kitty???? im dying) 'why do i feel that im special and wonderful? because I AM! <3' paulina ilu self worth queen. felt bad for her also getting possessed by (2) boys later who were arguing INSIDE HER. WTF.

-imagine being the guy trapped in his now flying car. he thought danny and tucker were HALUCINATIONS. imagine being trapped in a flying car with two, what you think are imaginary arguing 14 year olds convinced ur gonna die. i WOULD say this dude is gonna need so much therapy, but he seemed totally fine and excited when they landed (I would be happy too if a chicken was on my head. chickens rule) stoner rights

-sam's bat slippers??? iconic. SO cute.

-I think desiree's backstory is so :( do all ghosts have messed up sad backstories?? poindexter's was sad too...cannot imagine box ghost has any kind of fucked up backstory. but what if. his mom got pushed off cliffs by boxes...........a la cruella... anyway her 'no man may lay a hand on me' iconic. ilu

-I know danny has no concept of how much bras cost but my god dont attack tucker with some girls bra. those are so expensive.

-its really. well its not a GOOD THING he went into the portal and got fucked up, but its good danny was the one to do it rather than sam or tucker. because even tho he was being influenced by desiree and kept getting more malicious and it prob wasnt 100% him...he sucked as a ghost like most the people he 'pranked' were innocent ppl just Chillin and he didnt want to help anyone at all. I think danny is the most responsible out of them but also, hes 14 and shouldnt HAVE to feel obligated to fight every ghost. hes a good kid and wants to, but I also feel like he feels like...responsible for the portal turning on?? because his parents did give it up,, but it was an accident and not his fault (if anything, why was the on switch on the inside. why was it that easy. why was there no safety measures. that seems like smth OSHA needs to hear about). like thats my son. hes a good boy. and hes never done anything wrong in his life, ever. if anyone hurts him im killing everyone in this room and then myself. etc.

-danny's curfew is 10PM????? DUDE. when I was 14...shit I couldn't be out that late, I had to be back at like, 8 at the latest, and my parents had to know exactly where and who I was going with, AND i had to call/text them regularly...is this a case of my parents being overbearing, or the fentons sucking??? the only time i could EVER be out that late was if I was at an overnight sleepover or smth...

-the vultures have lil fezes. why do they have fezes...theyre so fuckin funny 'ask him for directions' 'I KNOW WHERE IM GOING' these ghost vultures are my new grandpas. pick them up, put them in the adopt box.

-'I wonder why those guys were trying to waste dad!' THEYRE GHOSTS. YOUR DAD HUNTS GHOSTS. why is that not a conclusion you'd immediately jump to??

-*jazz voice, clearly disgusted* WISCONSIN???

-mrs fenton with the lab coat and leg warmers and PERM. YESSS STYLISH.

-was going to say 'ew billionaire' @vlad but. super valid he used his powers to assumedly steal and cheat to get that money, thats how all billionaires do it! but ew hes a SIMP. and spending your billions on FOOTBALL STUFF?? you are Not Valid overall. I DO respect the fact you have a castle instead of a mansion. in wisconsin. if youre going to be stupidly rich might as well go all out, torches on the wall and all. I DO like his ghost form's little kitty ears. catman. and his cape! every design can benefit from a cape. and how different his forms look, like danny looks the EXACT SAME IN BOTH FORMS ASIDE FROM COLOR CHANGES. vlad's is like,, I could believe they were different people!! also I love the drama. but dude you are fighting a 14 year old. lame. also he was like, telling danny he wanted his mom and him and like, wanted him to renounce his dad?? WHAT ABOUT JAZZ?? bitch. those r MY kids and they are both important and special. I do agree they need better parents but thats not u sir <3

-I thought vlad's 'little badger' nickname for danny came from the football mascot of the packers, but google says they have NO MASCOT?? so now I'm like?? is it because his hair is sometimes black and sometimes white?? I hate to give him props but thats a PERFECT NICKNAME. theyre also tiny and vicious!

-why did I get so excited that Skulker is back!! its been like. 2-3 eps LMAO. AND THE DAIRY KING. ICONIC I LOVE HIM. hes the nicest guy ever :) more nice ghosts please. danny cannot be fighting alone everytime with no ghost buds like every ghost being hostile sucks :(

-mr. fenton knew vlad was controlling him, but a few episodes ago he had no clue danny was doing the same thing...is it something about how malicious the ghost is?? he just seemed to think his memory had gaps the first time, this time he was INSTANTLY LIKE 'GHOST'. then again in this ep when danny did it again he was just slightly confused but not immediately freaking out like he did with vlad possessing him!!

-'my parents will accept ME NO MATTER WHAT' so. so why haven't you come out to them yet, danny?? if you really think that?? if theres no harm, and you're sure??? if vlad is a real problem, wouldnt that make dealing with him easier, to expose him???? SO WHY HAVENT YOU COME OUT YET?? COULD IT BE,, MAYBE YOU HAVE DOUBTS ABOUT WHETHER YOUR PARENTS ACTUALLY WILL ACCEPT YOU??? 🤔 ... 🏳‍🌈 I get why people say He Is Trans. I totally totally get u danny.

-sorta unrelated, but it just occurred to me in one of these eps they go to casper HIGH not casper middle school??? theyre 14?? dont highschools usually do ages 15-18? (I didnt go to hs so I might be wrong, if I am ignore this...) freshmen are usually 14-15, could just be a case of them not turning 15 yet but they will sometime in the school year (I say they because tucker said he was 14 too)? I know the show has 3 seasons, so by the end of it will they be older? thatd be neat but usually cartoon characters stay the same age...I love shows where you can see the characters age and grow up, though...three seasons seems like a long time to spend on like, 1 year...

[cipheress-to-k-pop]

Amadeus Cho x Rand!Reader

A/N: I can’t believe I’ve never done a Rand!Reader before?? Like how?

Also I totally wrote a Danny Rand as your older brother kind of headcanon so if you want those big brother feels definitely check it out here

Your favourite time of year was Christmas

Why?

Because it was the time that reminded you of K’un-Lun the most

The white snow

The beautiful lights

And just the Christmas spirit is why it’s your favourite time of year

It’s also your favourite time of year because you love to buy people presents

But since you moved the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy it’s been more difficult to buy presents because the amount of people in the team has increased

So, everyone settled for doing a Secret Santa

And you were notorious for buying extremely extravagant presents

So, everyone always wanted you to get their name

The new students at the academy just heard about your generosity like a legend

“Once she got me an apple watch.”

“She got me the latest iPhone.”

“She took me to Italy.”

And Danny’s just there wondering if you’re spending too much money before being like eh what the heck people like it

So, it’s the same deal this year

You get first pick because everyone wants an equal chance of their name getting picked

Everyone had to do a thorough check because Sam tried to cheat once by only putting his name in the draw

So, you draw out your piece of paper

Read it with such an inconspicuous face and wait for the others to pick theirs

After a while some of you leave for training

The only people left in the mess hall are Luke, Peter, Sam and Amadeus

“Who’d you get?”

“Ava.”

“Squirrel girl.”

“Miles.”

“(Y/N).”

And everybody turns to Amadeus like he’s cursed

And he’s like “what?”

And they’re like you’re so screwed

“(Y/N) is rich, she can have anything she wants, which means you have to get her a great gift.”

And this poor baby is just confused like “She doesn’t seem like the type to be very money minded or anything.”

“She isn’t but what if she got your name? If you get her something she won’t like, then it’s gonna make you look bad.” Peter explained

“Once, she got Luke a whole expense paid trip to a 5-star hotel and spa. And he got her socks.”

“SHE SAID SHE LIKED THEM OKAY!”

“Of course, she’s gonna say that! She’s an angel! But you don’t give socks to an heiress!”

And that makes little Amadeus just so worried and nervous

He obviously wants to give you something that you’ll love because he has a teensy tiny crush on you

But he’s also not made of money so he can’t exactly say sky’s the limit

So, he goes to the person who knows you best

Your brother

Danny says that you really don’t care what you get

“Something personal is always the best way, maybe cook her something? Or get her something that has meaning to it.”

But he knows that he can’t cook for his life so he goes to every old store trying to find something but nothing seems good enough

So, he’s just about to give up hope until he passes an empty training room

You’re talking to a friend on the phone

“And Mistletoe is banned here! Just because Nova tried to hang mistletoe in the doorway whenever Fury passed by as a prank! Now no one is allowed to bring Mistletoe here! Like why?! I was so looking forward to it this year!”

And boom

Lightbulb

He’s not sure if you’ll like it

But deep-down he really hopes you do because he wanted to ask you out on a date if you did

So, it’s finally Christmas Day and everyone is opening their presents in the mess hall

And it quickly stops being Secret Santa because everyone says who has who before giving the presents

You got Ben a trip on a private jet to Fiji because he said he wanted to see the beach and do some water sports

It’s a family trip so he can take the spider boys and May if he wanted to

And that’s how you end up underneath a spider pile with them thanking you and you just giggling

And it’s finally your time to open your gift and you’re so excited

Amadeus hands you a small box that’s about the size of a ring box and everyone is waiting eagerly to see what he got you

“I heard you say that you really wanted this the other day, so I hope you like it.”

You open the box to fine a little mistle toe pin sitting inside

It isn’t huge or gilded or something

But he sees the huge smile on your face and his heart skips a beat

Then you chuckle and turn to him

“This wasn’t what I wanted though.”

And his heart just breaks

Everyone literally stopped in their tracks because you have never said you haven’t liked anything before

Even Danny who’s first response is to scold you can’t even process it because you’re never disrespectful this way

And Amadeus knows that

‘So, she must really hate it.’ He thinks but doesn’t know what to do when you’re looking at him that way

“We can return it, if you want.” He says in a really small voice

“Really?”

“Yeah, we can get anything you want.” He says and his heart is just clenching because he really thought you’d like it

And if you didn’t, he thought you would appreciate the thought he put into the gift

“Anything I want?”

“Yep.”

So, you hold out the mistletoe pin and he thinks you’re handing it back to him

But then you hold it just above his head

And plant a slow, soft kiss to his lips

Pulling back and giving him a small smile

“Thanks for the Christmas gift, Amadeus.”

Before getting up and leaving like a boss

But as soon as you get into your room you’re screaming into your pillow and squealing

Meanwhile everyone is just SHOCKED af

Amadeus is actually frozen in place

Once the others actually process what the heck is going on, they all start teasing Amadeus

Flustered Amadeus is my favourite kind of Amadeus

And then Danny is just glaring at him like

“I don’t like what just happened here.”

And the two of you just avoid each other for the next few days

Even though everyone and their mother is invested into your “relationship”

Even Nick keeps an eye (literally) on the two of you

Danny asking you about it but you just blushing and hiding your face in his chest like “Please don’t ask”

You actually don’t see each other for a few days

Until on New Year’s you had been planning to talk it over with him

But then there was an emergency that called for the Spider Boys so you missed him

Just at the stroke of midnight however

Amadeus flies right in front of you and grabs your cheeks

Kissing you underneath the fire works

“Happy New Year, (Y/N).”

Before flying off again to fight crime

You could’ve sworn your heart stopped

As a couple, it’s very easy to tell that you’re kids

Because you’re always just doing the most childish things together

The epitome of young love

Not doing any cheesy shit though cuz Amadeus is an awkward baby

Making breakfast for him all the time

You all share a dorm so when you ask him for a glass of water in the night, he gets out of bed to get you one

Starts keeping water bottles underneath your bed because you always forget but are always thirsty

The type to notice when you get hurt in battle and will tend to you after it’s over

“Be more careful next time okay?”

You’re always wearing the mistletoe pin and then kissing him

“It’s not even Christmas.”

“Oh, so you don’t want a kiss?”

“Get back here!”

Initially everyone really liked to tease you

But the two of you quickly managed to turn it into teasing them

“Oh, you’re just jealous because you haven’t had a girlfriend since you came out of the womb.”

And Sam just walks away like a kicked puppy

To say that your relationship gets old to them quickly is an understatement

“WE GET IT YOU’RE IN LOVE CAN YOU STOP RUBBING IT IN OUR FACES!”

Danny is, conflicted

On one hand he wants to be cool and calm about it

On the other hand, he wants to sit on Amadeus

It feels like the only peaceful solution at this point

But you know he likes Amadeus because let’s be honest, they are very cute together

Danny’s like a mother hen to him

Anyways

Naps in the corner of the lab while Amadeus is working and he takes breaks to check if you’re stirring

Meditating together but it’s just your meditating while Amadeus thinks and then gets an idea and just has to write it down

Cuddling in the leather seats of your private jet because people keep interrupting your dates

And none of them have the keys so they can’t even disturb you

That doesn’t mean they don’t try

But you and Amadeus just put on eye masks and cuddle

Just holding hands after a mission with your head on his shoulder

Quietly appreciating that the both of you survived

Just being such a wholesome, pure couple that is just so full of love

[katymacsupernatural]

Butcher’s Hollow

Dean Winchester x Reader

1600 Words

Written For: @spndarkbingo

Square Filled: Ruby

This is kind of a  halloween themed story. Thank you to everyone who sent in their Haunted house stories, it was much appreciated! Warnings will be given at each chapter. There should be 3 to 4 chapters. 

Warnings: Horror/haunted house, blood, gore, scary situations, angst

“A haunted house?” Sam asked for the fifth time, staring at the run-down factory uneasily. You didn’t blame him. The place looked as if it could fall down on your heads at any given moment. Lights struggled to cover the large expanse of the building. Windows were boarded over, some so dirty you wondered how long this place had been abandoned. Only a couple of people stood in front of the double doors leading into the place, a much smaller crowd then you would have imagined for a Friday night. 

“Listen, we don’t get to relax and have fun very often,” you argued, leaning back into Dean’s waiting arms. “And there’s not much else to do in this tiny little town. So it’s either a haunted house or the newest romance movie over at the theater.” 

Dean wrapped his arms around you, blocking the October chill from your skin. “I don’t know Sammy, this could be fun. Monsters and scary stuff that we don’t have to kill. Maybe even a clown or two for you to freak out about.”

Sam rolled his eyes, but you knew he wasn’t going to argue anymore. Instead, he went off to buy the tickets, leaving you and Dean to stand in line. “Maybe we should have left grumpy back at the bunker,” Dean suggested. 

“Why? I think I would prefer our dates a little more...nicer.” 

The group that had been standing in front of you had already gone inside, their screams echoing through the thin walls while you waited. Sam was back, tickets in his hands, a weird look on his face. “What?” Dean asked him. 

“The lady just gave me the tickets. Said it was her treat,” Sam muttered, turning to look back at the ticket booth, but it was empty, the sign turned to closed. 

“Welcome!” A large voice boomed, the doors pushed wide open, but there was no one there. “Enter if you dare, and meet your worst nightmares come to life!” 

You reached for and squeezed Dean’s hand, mostly for the contact, not because you were nervous. Sam went first, his broad shoulders barely fitting through the pitch-black hallway. You were next, Dean following close behind, his hand still in yours. 

While growing up, you had been to a couple of haunted houses, but this one seemed a little different. The usual smell of fake smoke and make up was gone, and you could smell dusty mold and sulfur. The lights flickered above you in the first room, and your hunter’s clicked on high alert.

“Something doesn’t seem right,” Sam muttered, stopping so suddenly that you ran right into his back. 

Peering around his shoulder, you had to agree. There were three doors in front of you. Writings covered the walls, blood splattered everywhere. But it wasn’t the sugary corn syrup blood. This had a metallic smell to it and was a deep, dark red. 

It was then you had noticed the screams had quieted down. It was eerily quiet in the haunted house, exactly the opposite of what it should have been. “Guys, are any of you getting a weird vibe?” Dean asked, his hand still holding yours tight. 

You nodded, stepping closer to him, your nose picking up the scent of sulfur once again. “I think Sam was right. This wasn’t the greatest idea. Let’s get out of here.” 

You turned back the way you came, but the door was no longer there. It was just a solid wall, the words “I DON’T THINK SO,” scrawled in blood. 

“Damn it,” Dean grumbled. “Why can’t we have one night? Just one night to relax and not deal with freaking Monsters!” 

You agreed with him. Why did a monster have to ruin your one night of fun? “So, whaddya think we’re dealing with? Pranks brought on by kids? Angels, Demons?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe even a trickster,” Sam muttered, peering around the room, searching for any sort of clue. He reached down, picking up a small item, that he quickly dropped to the ground. “That was a finger. A real finger.” 

You weren’t too eager to take a look for yourself, but Dean went over by his brother, both men staring down at the decapitated appendage curiously. You moved to the three doors, knowing that soon you would have to make a decision. All three were the same size, same grimy white color. Numbers were written on each door, in the same bloody red print as the wall across from you. The handle was rusty, cold against your skin as you grasped it.

Pulling it open slightly, you only intended to look. But the door swung open wide to a long hallway. Glowing faces lined both sides, wails coming from each and every one. “Y/N, don’t!” Dean exclaimed, but it was too late. There was a strong force pulling you into the hallway, and you had nothing to stop you.

Your eyes wide with fright, you glanced back at Dean before the door slammed shut, separating you from the brothers. “No,” you muttered, your skin crawling as the faces turned to watch you. Turning to beat on the door, it was gone, just like the other, leaving you trapped in this creepy hallway. “Dean!” You cried out, pounding on the wall, but it was useless. He was beyond the wall, who knew how far away. 

“He’s not going to save you,” the faces on the wall taunted, their eyes all on you, their smiles full of razor-sharp teeth. “You’re going to die!” 

“Leave me alone!” You screamed, jerking back as you got to close to one and it sank its teeth into your skin. Blood slid down your arm as the faces continued to chant. “You’re going to die!” 

Terrified, you reached into the back of your jeans for your knife, but it wasn’t there. Staying as close to the middle of the hallway as you could, you could see a sliver of light at the end. In that light was Dean’s face, full of pain as he yelled your name. “Dean!” You yelled, racing forward, working hard to stay away from the snapping teeth of the faces. 

The hallway seemed to go on forever, the faces taunting you, Dean’s voice calling to you. “Y/N, help me!” 

“I’m coming!” You called out, the faces laughter echoing through the hallway.

“You’ll never save him. You’ll all die! Die!” They yelled before you suddenly ran into a different room. Breathing heavily, you glanced around, the doorway you had just run through magically disappearing. Dean was nowhere to be seen. 

The room seemed like something out of a western movie. An iron bed was against one wall, covered in rich brocade. The walls were pasted with red and gold wallpaper, the floor covered with an oriental rug. Everything seemed perfectly normal for a vintage house, but that’s not where you were. You were in an abandoned warehouse, trapped by some unknown Monster. Who knew where Sam and Dean were. 

“Imagine my surprise when Sam, Dean and his little girlfriend decided to show up at my place of business,” the voice purred from behind you. Spinning around, you noticed no one there, but the voice continued to speak, strangely familiar. “I’ve been waiting for the three of you, especially Sam. Watching as the three of you built a life together. Hating the fact that you were still out there while I was stuck here. Planning on my revenge. And the second you stepped through that door, I knew my time had come. I could take everything away from those Winchester brothers. Starting with you!” 

A woman suddenly appeared in front of you, her face full of fury. She had shoulder-length brown hair that brushed against her black leather coat. Her full lips were drawn back in a snarl as she crossed her arms over her low cut black t-shirt. 

Her eyes flashed black before turning back to warm chocolate. “Who are you?” You asked, wishing you had some sort of weapon in your hand.

“That’s right. You weren’t in the picture when I was last around,” she chuckled darkly. “But you might remember the name. Ruby.”

Hearing the name brought back memories. Not your memories, but the stories Sam and Dean had told you. You had hated her even though you had never met her, and all three of you had thought she was gone for good. But you were wrong, and here she was, turning your life into a cheap horror movie.

“Ruby! I thought you were dead!” 

She chuckled again, waving her hand to open the curtains on the window. You could see Sam and Dean make their way down another hallway, Sam with his knife held out in front of him. Behind them you could see a man, his face grotesquely misshapen, wielding a rusty chainsaw. He looked your way, winking with one eye which fell out of the eye socket, getting squished under his boot and you gagged. “Sam! Dean!” You screamed, pounding on the window, but they couldn’t hear you.

Suddenly the figure pulled the cord, the chainsaw roaring to life. Dean turned around, his eyes widening as the figure began running awkwardly down the hallway, raising his chainsaw right at Dean.

“This is your choice,” Ruby spoke up. “You can stay in here, safe and sound, watching as Sam and Dean get torn to bits. Or you can walk out that door and try to find them while facing horrors of your own. Which do you pick?” 

Dean/Jensen Tags:@acortez82 @acreativelydifferentlove @adoptdontshoppets @a-girl-who-loves-disney @akshi8278  @bebravekeeponfighting  @brindz30 @cap-just-said-language @colette2537   @deansgirl215   @its-not-a-tulpa @jerkbitchidjitassbutt @just-another-winchester @karouwinchester @keikoraventeller  @krys198478 @librarygeekery @misspygmypie @mlovesstories @mrsambroserollinsacklesmgk  @mrspeacem1nusone @nothinbuttrouble2 @ria132love @ruprecht0420     @sortaathief @superseejay721517 @squirrelnotsam @thing-you-do-with-that-thing @torn-and-frayed @tricksterdean @wonderfulworldofwinchester @woodworthti666

Butcher’s Hollow Tags: @lucysnoww @thefaithfulwriter @dragonrider10 @maddiepants

Forever Tags: @aditimukul @alexwinchester23 @algud @amanda-teaches @andreaaalove   @artisticpoet @atc74 @be-amaziing @camelotandastronauts @caswinchester2000 @chelsea072498  @closetspngirl   @docharleythegeekqueen @emoryhemsworth @ericaprice2008  @esoltis280   @gh0stgurl @girl-with-a-fandom-fettish @goldenolaf25 @growningupgeek  @iwriteaboutdean @hobby27 @horsegirly99 @internationalmusicteacher @iwriteaboutdean  @jayankles @jensen-gal @just-another-busyfangirl @karlee-fay-my-wayward-son @lifelovelaughangell123 @li-ssu @linki-locks11 @littleblue5mcdork  @lowlyapprentice   @maui137 @mogaruke @monkeymcpoopoo @musiclovinchic93  @nanie5   @percussiongirl2017 @plaid-lover-bay25   @roonyxx @ronja-uebrick @roxyspearing @samanthaharper2018 @samanddeanmyheroes @sandlee44 @shamelesslydean @simonsbluee @sillesworldofwriting @sgarrett49 @spnbaby-67 @spn-dean-and-sam-winchester @spnwoman   @superbadassnatural @thatcrazybookwormgeek   @thewinchesterchronicles @vvinch3st3r @wecantgiggleitsafandom @whimsicalrobots @winchester-writes @zombiewerewolfqueen

[fortunate-cookie]

Danny, his visit to Gotham over, goes back home none the wiser about what chaos he has inadvertently caused. He decides to keep up on news from Gotham, because honestly? Most stress-free weekend he’s ever had. He’s probably going to make that city his go-to vacation spot.

In the following days, he sees the gossip rags start to come out. At first, he thinks it’s funny that everyone started talking about some other Danny right after he was there. What a coincidence, am I right?

Jazz points out that they are very obviously talking about him, and even interviewed him on the way out of town. (Cue Sam and Tucker laughing in the background while Danny.exe crashes)

Next comes the realization (and mortification) that he accidentally pretended to be a billionaire’s son. Are the Waynes mad at him? They must be, right? Who wouldn’t! He can never show his face outside of Amity ever again. He is, of course, unaware that he has become the much beloved scapegoat of the family group chat. Patron god of pranks. All of them swear they don’t have a favorite brother except for Jason who says it’s Danny.

Tucker and Sam think the whole situation is hilarious: their secret hero friend is finally gaining some notoriety… for accidentally cosplaying as a Wayne. Amazing. It gets even more so when Vlad shows up and starts complaining. He declares Bruce Wayne his new mortal nemesis. Sam is ALL ABOUT making the billionaires fight, but Danny thinks he ought to go back to Gotham and somehow warn the family.

Hard cut to Tim, ordering an ungodly amount of caffeine from a nearby cafe. He, much like Bruce at that gala a week ago, is operating on 30 minutes of sleep and a healthy dose of spite. What can he say, it runs in the family.

Tim never got in on the Danny jokes, not because he didn’t think they were funny, but because he’s been working a case and hasn’t had the time. He saw the gossip, remembered the last time this happened, and brushed it off. Saw the “breaking news” of Bruce confirming it at a gala, and immediately chalks it up to the all-nighter that the two of them had pulled in the cave. Bruce has had mishaps similar to this before, after all. (There was that time that he accidentally started talking about Jason, completely forgetting that the public at large still thought him to be dead.) The BatChat starts talking about Danny, and Tim — being a reasonable and smart man — knows that they’re taking the piss, as usual. He is correct on all three accounts, because he knows his family, but he doesn’t actually check.

So here he is, waiting in line, minding his own business and ignoring the glances being thrown his way by fans… when suddenly, the general volume of the place raises: everyone is whispering, the door opens with a ding, a few people go “oh!” And turn to openly stare at Tim. Before he can see who’s come in, his order is ready.

He grabs his drink, turns around, and oh my god that’s Danny.

Bruce actually adopted another one, and Tim didn’t notice??

(For maximum amount of crack, have this happen to multiple members of the family, until they all come to the same conclusion that… surely they can’t all be mistaken? Danny was actually adopted and nobody knew for a week because of Bruce’s (everyone’s) terrible communication skills!

Danny is very worried and confused. Grateful, too, that they’re cool enough to let him crash at their manor for a few days (who knew that rich kids were funny enough to commit to the bit?), but mostly he’s just worried about how trusting they are. He would try to help them out a bit, maybe talk about stranger-danger to their youngest at the very least, but he doesn’t really have the spare energy to worry about that when he’s got to watch out for Batman getting mad about the new metas feuding in his city… he’s gotta hurry up and catch Vlad.)

Okay so we all know how Danny fits into the 'Wayne' look with dark hair and blue eyes. But hear me out. Bruce adopts kids too fast for the majority of the population to keep up so when citizens see Danny they just assume Bruce already adopted him and they just haven't checked the news yet.

Just Danny going to get a burger and the guy behind the counter goes, "on the house!" Danny doesn't question it and moves on. People just keep treating him with great respect thinking he's a Wayne and Danny is just oblivious.

At the end of his trip or whatever he explains how he has no idea why people complain about muggings and crime, everyone was just so nice there.

Not until like a week later at a fancy party a news person asks Bruce where his newest son Danny is and Bruce is just so fucking confused. He doesn't remember adopting a Danny, but he doesn't want to be wrong and look like a bad father for forgetting one of his kids so he panics and says he's in his room or some bs.

Later he realizes that he has adopted no Danny but now people think he did and he can't say "Oh I don't actually have a son Danny" after telling someone that he did have a Danny.

The news gets curious on why they don't ever see Danny. Bruce says that poor little Danny is camera shy and isn't ready to be in the spotlight yet. The rest of his kids are absolutely dying watching to see how far this lie takes Bruce and tell him it's his fault for not remembering his own kids.

[orderoftheavengers]

Ant-Nimagus:

Summary: Azkaban delinquent turned ant-nimagus

House: Slytherin

Species: Human (Ant-nimagus)

Blood Status: Half-blood

Wand: Cecropioa, 6 inches, doxie antenna core

Patronus: Carpenter ant

Broom: Custom job, by Professor Hank Pym

Specialties: Transfiguration, flying

Familiars: Antony, Ulysses S. Gr-ant, Ant-tonio Banderas, Marie Ant-toinette, the Grand Duchess Antnastasia, Ant-ie Em...

Sorting:

Scott was a toughie. He's got strong traits of every house, so the Hat had to sort him by process of elimination.

Scott was a chillax, open-minded, sociable family-guy, which screams Hufflepuff to many. And his motivation for his crimminal activity was to fight the wealthy corrupt corporations and defend the "little guys." That sounds like a Hufflepuff crimminal... but Scott really struggles to stay loyal and hard-working and responsible. Just because he's he's a chill friendly dude who love his kid and looks like Justin-Finch Fletchly doesn't make him a Hufflepuff.

His crimminal history might say Gryffindor to others, since he recklessly broke the law for his percieved values. But Scott leaps back out of bad situations as qiuckly as he leaps into them. And in any case, his fighting style is too sneaky and dodgy to be Gryffindor. (If simply being any kind of "brave" got you into Gryffindor, this whole series would get boring fast.)

Scott's sneaky and crafty specialties would serve him well in Ravneclaw, and Ravenclaws can certainly be reckless. But if Hank Pym just needed a Ravenclaw to be the Ant-nimagus, he wouldn't have had to look as far as Scott.

The Hat knows it's a stereotype for crooks to be Slytherins. But the fact is, Scott Lang's biggest strength is his cunning, and his biggest weakness is resisting the urge to do what he wants. He may not seem particularly "ambitious," but leading illegal heists is pretty ambitious, and so is trying to leave a lifetime of crime to become a good father.

Story:

You want Scott Lang's Hogwarts story, in a concise, summed-up nutshell?

Sure, no problem!

(Bongos)

Scottie starts his wizarding school at Ilvermorny and he's this super-chill guy who's friends with everybody except the assholes and breaks all the rules, and he's into flying and has crazy dark hair like an American Harry Potter, only without the glasses or the lightning-bolt scar or the get-out-of-trouble-free-card-cuz-you're-the-Boy-Who-Lived coupons, so when he teams up with three other pranksters from different parts of the wizarding world he's all like "Hey I'm Scottie wanna go rob Gringotts and be rich crooks and stuff?" I'm all like "yeah man count me in even though I'm going to like a whole other school in Mexico, and our other friend Kurt is from Durmstrang all the way over in Europe, but we coordinated with our owls and made this kickass heist. But we weren't doing it for the money! 

That's a lie. 

We did do it mostly for the money. 

But we were gonna give  some of that money to the muggle-borns and half-breeds and all those oppressed peoples. But still keep enough to have a castle in the Bahamas. We were like Robin Hood. And then we get caught and we all go to Azkaban and get expelled and Scottie's like 'WTF why does that dork Harry Potter get to fly a car into the Whomping Willow and enter a tournament underage and sh*t and it's okay, but we rob one little volt from some trolls and we're expelled?" and the Ministry of Magic is like "Shut up your magical careers are OVER muchachos!" And they broke all our wands in half. And then Scottie's wife divorced him, so when they broke his wand it was like a symbolism of Scottie's life being broken in half and being separated from his "other half."

Wife? Yeah, Scott was married....

Family:

Yeah, so Scottie he was married. Yeah, he's still a teenager at wizard school. Yep, he's got a kid, who's walking and talking. No, no, it's not weird! See I'll explain, real quick....

(Bongos)

So Scott's this impulsive teenager who does the nasty while he's still in high school, and the nasty is a blond classmate named Maginhilde La Fey, who goes by Maggie. Only Maggie's like half Nymph right? So like two days after her and Scott are rolling around under the Quodpod bleachers she's all "Hey asshole I'm five months pregnant!" and Scott's like "WTF? Oh sh*t you're part fairy-person so our baby's gonna age super fast! Let's get married real quck so this isn't weird." But then we do that heist stuff and he's in Azkaban and Maggie divorces him. So then Scott wants to change his ways and go straight to be a good dad to his kid, whose named Casseiopia, Cassy for short.

I'm outta breath, can I get some water?

Ant-Nimagus:

* A note from the editors: Our narrator has been given a glass of water, and a sedative, so as to make the story more accessable to an audience that isn't on Speed. You may continue, Mr. Luis.

Okay, awesome.

(Slightly slower bongos)

So this Professor Hank Pym used to work at Ilvernorny, but quit because Howard Stark was an asshole. So now he's at Hogwarts and he's head of Ravenclaw House. And he's thinking, "Harry Potter's retired and the Order of the Avengers are all off their meds and dropping castles out of the sky and stuff, the world needs the Ant-Nimagus again! But I can be the Ant-nimagus anymore. Look at me, I'm like a hundred!"

(A note from Professor Pym: "I'm 74, thankyou very much.) "

Who do I train to be the new Ant-nimmagus? I have this ex-student guy named Darren Cross, who's this buff handsome Gryffindor, and everyone would think he'd be the hero, and he thinks he's supposed to be the hero, but his mind is all corrupt and evil so scratch him out. The Ant-nimagus has gotta be more humble and smarter than a Gryffindor, but he can't be just a boring Ravenclaw, no I need someone who can break rules...."

So Pym, who's this genius Ravenclaw type, deduces that he needs a Slytherin to do his bidding. So he sets up a trap inside Hogwarts for a group of Slytherins who think they're gonna pull some big school prank by stealing an Invisibility Cloak. But Scott unwraps it and "WTF? I can see this cloak just fine, this ain't no Invisibiilyt Cloak. Imma try it on." And then suddenly he's tiny and has an extra pair of arms, and he freaks out, but Pym changes his mind with his ants, who are like his minions, and they bring tea nad sugar over across the table for Scott--

Ant-nimagus. Sorry, right.

The Ant-nimagus is, I guess, like a normal animagus, only with size-changing powers. So he can turn into an ant, but he can be a normal ant-sized ant, or a giant "Them!" ant. And he can also be a tiny human, or a normal sized human or a giant. And the cloak is more just for magical protection, it just mixes badly if someone who isn't an animagus tries wearing it. So Pym trains Scottie, and Scott's doing this kinda Han Solo and Princess Leia thing with Pym's daughter Hope, who's all "I'm not attracted to you, I'm a walking Ravenclaw stereotype, look at my hair, I'm all buisiness, but damn if I wanna kiss you" and they all fight an evil Gryffindor on a wizard chess board, and it's really badass! And Scott's finally redeemed himself and got his kid back, and his ex-wife and her snotty Prefect husband are his friends and his kid has a giant pet ant and it's all happy but then Captain America comes in--

Uncivil Quidditch Match:

(Bongos)

--and goes "Yo, be on my team in this totally unauthorized Quidditch match, I'm not drunk!" Scottie, he's all, "Sir, this is an honor, even though I'm a Slytherin and you're a Gryffindor. I hero-worship you man, cuz you stick up for the little guy. We are totally breaking the stereotype here, with a Slytherin gushing over a Gryffindor, and then going on to troll another Slytherin for said Gryffindor! Hey Stark, I'm your conscience! Or your sex life or whatever the funny line was. I'm Team Cap's answer to your snarky antihero!" But then Stark's like "psych, I win, you're all in a giant squid detention now. Only I feel bad about it, but I only feel bad about Sam, Wanda and Clint; you I'm just gonna kind a go 'Who are you again?' so you can do the Star Lord 'why does no one know about me and my badass exploits?' thing."

So Scott gets out of the squid and takes a plea deal so he doesn't go back to Azkaban, he just has to do community service and stay in his commonroom on all his off hours. And Hope and Hank are pissed, cuz they're like "You think we're proud of you for being a dumbass for Captain America? Everyone only loves that guy if his name's in the movie's title. This is an 'Ant-Man' movie, Gary Stu got no power here! So we're through with you." So then Scott has to redeem himself again, and he does! But then the whole Pym family gets dusted, and the giant ant plays the drum set, so we have to wait till 'Avengers 4' to see how Scott's gonna save all their asses and redeem himself again.

Endgame: 

(Final round of bongos) 

So just before Thanos’s dusting spell, Ant-Man and the Wasp and the Old Ant-Man and the Old-Wasp wanna help their new ghost friend Ava Starr, and they’re all “Scotty, go to the Spirit Realm and get some Ectoplasm for our ghostly friend” and Scott’s like “WTF is ectoplasm?” and his girlfriend’s like “Ghost sh*t.” And Scott’s like “Screw that I ain’t touching no ghost manure!” But then his girlfriend’s mom goes “Just think of it like ghost-honey.”

So Scott goes to the Spirit Realm and OH SNAP, the whole Pym/Van Dyne family is Dusted! So Scott’s stuck there for the whole summer, until one of the Weasley family rats named Scabbers the Fourteenth nibbles him free, and then POOF he’s back out! 

His half-nymph daughter has had another fairy growth spurt over the three months and is now the same age as her dad, which is awkward. And her mom and stepdad are dust, which is depressing. And me and Scotty’s other two friends are also dust, so he makes our ashes into cute little memorials with our faces drawn in. 

Scott hears what happened with Thanos, and also that Thanos destroyed all of the Time Turners in the world. But then Scott tells the Avengers how the Spirit Realm can be used for time travel. So Tony Stark, Bruce Banner/Professor Wolf, Rocket Raccoon/Niffler Hybrid, and Princess Shuri all brainstorm in a lab until they get it to work. 

Scott and Tony put their Slytherin brains together and try to out-cunning Loki in the past, but they get distracted by America’s ass, and Scott does some damage to Tony’s hole, and Loki gets away with the Tesseract. Then Scott’s mad at Tony, and Tony and Steve are mad at each other, but they’re also all mushy for each other, and Scott’s like “Get a room!” So they yeet off to the 1970s and Scott goes to eat a taco, but loses it. 

Then, the final Battle of Hogwarts! Finally, Scott thinks, I can do the badass thing we’ve all been waiting for! Imma go up Thanos’s ass! But fun fact: Titans don’t have assholes. Which means they’re always constipated, which might be why Thanos is such a jerk. (He’s an asshole cuz he doesn’t have an asshole.) So Scott just kicks ass as a giant ant, and is reunited with his girlfriend and all his friends.

Wand, Broom, etc: 

Scott's wand is carved from the Cecrepoia, a rainforest tree that carpenter ants tend to live in. His ant-themed broom can shrink and grow with the rest of him, but he may sometimes lose it in the chaos of a fight and have to improvise with something else, like one of the wingged keys.  Scott relies on the ants to deliver his mail, and is growing to hate owls, who he often calls "murderers!" when they eat his ant familiars out of the air during missions.

Notes: Scott came out looking like a "Fairly Odd-Parents" character, for some reason. Oh well. Gotta be honest, sorting Scott into Slytherin had a lot to do with his interactions with other characters. I really loved the idea of Pym hiring Scott as a Ravenclaw logically deducing that he needs a Slytherin. And a Slytherin teaming up with a famous Gryffindor hero, and sneaking into a fellow Slytherin's broom to troll the crap out of him. Among other things, a sad consequence of Rowling's House stereotyping was the missed opportunity of all the great Slytherin vs. Slytherin interactions there could have been.

[revisitingstoneybrook]

Kristy’s Big Day: Chapter 12

It’s rehearsal dinner time and Emma almost manages to bring the BSC to their knees.

The girls take the bags of clothes and the kids and go off to various parts of the house to get them changed. Kristy opens Andrew's bag and pulls out a yellow dress. Wow, is Watson such a lazyass father that he can't even put together a change of clothing properly? Or is he such a stereotypical rich guy that Andrew hasn’t been breached yet and has to wear a gown like the Victorians did?

Kristy thinks she pulled it out of the wrong bag by mistake but Katherine and Grace say the dress isn't theirs. And sure enough, the bag has Andrew's name on it. While Kristy ponders this, Mary Anne calls her from the kitchen. Leaving two 5-year-olds and a 4-year-old unattended in the playroom, she goes to see what the problem is. There's a bow tie and gray flannel pants in Beth's bag and a long white slip in Tony's bag! Geez, are all the parents so clueless they can't even pack clothing for their kids without screwing up? Since this is Stoneybrook, I wouldn't be too surprised. Either that, or they had Sharon prepare the bags.

Claudia calls for Kristy from the living room and before Kristy can go see what's wrong, Stacey storms into the kitchen with Emma, who looked as if she couldn't decide whether to giggle or cry. So it wasn't the parents or Sharon in a drug-induced stupor. Emma pranked them by switching the clothes around while everyone was eating lunch. If Karen had done it, Kristy would just laugh, shake her head and get to work sorting the clothes, while praising Karen for being so silly and funny. But this is Emma, and Kristy is, needless to say, pissed. Mainly because it's their last day babysitting and Emma's just thrown a wrench into the perfection that was their biggest babysitting job. That being said, it was a pretty clever prank for an 8-year-old.

Kristy tries to control her temper and Emma starts crying. Tears aren't enough to soften Kristy and she makes Emma sit alone in the den and think about what she did while she and the other babysitters try to sort the clothes out. Thankfully, some of the clothes have nametags, the older kids can pick what belongs to them and their younger siblings and they use common sense to sort everything else out in time. Everything works out for the BSC!

Half an hour later, Kristy lets Emma out of the den, who apologizes to her cousin. Kristy says, “I felt sort of mean. I could tell she'd been crying.” First Kristy, then Dawn. What's with being in charge, then feeling guilty about it when you discipline kids for being bad? Wimps.

Since there's two shots left on the Polaroid, the girls pose the kids for a nice picture and they have Claudia arrange the kids because her one personality trait is being artistic. Well, that and having the same reading level as the kids in her group (2-3 years old). She instructs Berk to not sit on the back of the couch but on the couch like a regular person. With how you dress, you have no right asking someone to be a regular person, Claudia.

First picture comes out bad, because kids are pulling each other's hair and poking each other and have their eyes closed and Kristy tells them to try again. With her babysitting magic, the second picture comes out perfect and her babysitting magic also brings the parents in at the same time too. The babysitters remain quiet when the parents question why some of the kids are wearing different clothes.

With that, the kids and their families head back to Watson's to set up for the rehearsal dinner. Kristy remarks that she's going to miss the kids. After spending a week babysitting for them and having to endure not just the wrath of Karen but the wrath of Emma? That BSC Kool-Aid is really getting to her. Sam and Charlie finally show up again and say they won't miss them. Kristy says they've made sure to come home everyday that week five minutes after everyone left. Charlie's probably spending the whole day indulging in unmentionable time with Janine.

Elizabeth thinks the week they spent together will be enough to have David Michael and Karen get along better. Sam, like most of us, says, “Don't lay any bets on it.”

“We hate you boys, we always will. We hate you boys, you’re such big pills!”

Thankfully, we're spared the details of the rehearsal dinner; it sounds like the wedding party had their rehearsal at church, while all their guests prepared for the dinner itself at Watson's. At the church, Karen pitches a fit (Karen pulling a Karen!) when she learns the florist was unable to get her yellow and white flower petals on such short notice. Gee, I wonder why? Could it be because they gave the florist a week to get everything together? So she'll have to make do with just white. Karen's worried because the white magic of her flower petals will crash into the black magic at Morbidda Destiny's house and BA-ROOM (her word, not mine), cause total destruction.

Watson the Millionaire, for once in his life, gets off his ass and does some parenting. “Karen, not another word about that nonsense. Not one.” Well, he tried. Because we know Karen will never shut up about Morbidda Destiny.

The dinner's at Watson's and Kristy says the BSC got all dressed up like they were going to one of their many school dances. And, oh yeah, Kristy wears a dress again and she let Claudia help her pick it out! Uh oh...this has the potential to look awful. “It was a gigantic white sweater with silver designs woven into it. It was a very un-Kristy type dress - and I felt glamorous.” Ok, not too bad. But...a big sweater dress at the end of June? How is she not melting?

Kristy shows the other girls the room she picked out and Dawn's first reaction is “It's...it's big.” I think that warrants a...

Stacey's more excited about the slumber parties they could have in that big of a room. You know she means the ones where she gives everyone a one-on-one lesson in French kissing. While Claudia gives Kristy advice on how to decorate with a mural or a canopy bed, Mary Anne acts all sad. She isn't moving to another country, Mary Anne, you'll both still be BFF! And I guess Karen's been messing with Kristy's mind, because she says she's relieved her new room doesn't look into Morbidda Destiny's yard.

And the girls get paid, $130 each - $120, plus an extra 10 because they did such a wonderful job. And Kristy still doesn't know what to get Elizabeth and Watson. Oh yeah, another subplot that went nowhere.

[platonic-plots]

Don’t Tell Sam.

Request/Summary:  just once, you’d like to go out and have fun - like everybody else

Pairings: sister!winchester x sam, sister!winchester x dean

Words: a lot like 2145 ish

Warnings: tiny bit of swearing, mentions of underage drinking, bit of sexual harassment & bit of violence

Specific time/Important info: reader is a teenager, my entry for @winchesters-favorite-girl ‘s 31 days of halloween challenge - october 27, ‘sneaking out’

i’ve never really wrote anything like this before so it isn’t the greatest thing in the world but hey ho i tried

You had a strange relationship with Halloween. On one hand, it was a time to have fun and eat candy. On the other, it didn’t feel quite right to see people dress up as the monsters you knew weren’t quite as harmless as the people wearing the costumes. But you tried to think less about the latter, and more about eating all the chocolate you could get your hands on.

This year was no exception. Like always, a group of kids in your year at school were holding another halloween party for the entire grade. Like always, you wanted to go, and be with your friends who went every year, and eat too much sugar that’ll make you vomit, and listen to music that’s too loud, and pretend to be normal so you can just fit in. Like always. Dean didn’t have a problem with it. But like always, Sam refused to even consider letting you go. 

“Sammy, please. C’mon- I’ve got straight As at school, I never go against you, I always help do the research for a hunt. Do I not deserve this one night? I promise I won’t do anyth-”

“No.”

“But Sam, you say this every year. And every year I do what you ask, I just want this one time to h-”

“I said no.”

“Please, Samm-”

“Y/n. You can either stop this and go about your day, or you can carry on arguing and stay in your room for the rest of the day. The choice is yours.” He left the library mumbling something about ‘teenagers’ as you turned to your left, dragging a hand to rub the back of your neck. Sam wasn’t usually like this - in fact, it was only really in October when he got this way. Every year near Halloween, his research into local cases got ten times harder because of all the pranks and fake stories spread around towns. You couldn’t blame him for being a little more stressed out than usual.

“Enjoy the show, De?”

“Honestly, I had a great time.” Your brother smirked as you dragged yourself to the chair next to him. “You know, he’s just worried about you, Y/n/n. Neither of us want anything bad to happen to you.”

You looked at your brother. “No- I know, I get it. It’s just.. I mean, you of all people should get where I’m coming from.” You paused slightly. “Wait. You are on my side, aren’t you?”

“You already know I am.” You looked at him hopefully. “But you know he’ll never let me convince him to let you go tonight.”

You frowned slightly. “It was worth a shot,” you started to get out of your chair.

“However, you may or may not feel so sick that you have to stay alone in your room all night,” you looked at your brother like he had two heads, “and I may or may not take Sam out to pick up some food at 7:30, so there may or may not be 15 minutes tonight when nobody but you is in the bunker, and there may or may not be somebody stopping you from doing whatever you so wish to do.”

You looked at your big brother with weary yet thankful eyes.

“I’d have wanted to do the same thing at your age. And we both know I’m not necessarily the best role model for shit like this. Just stay safe, alright? No funny business with anyone, you hear? And, for the love of God, don’t drink any alcohol while you’re there.”

You raised your eyebrows at that last one.

“I’m serious - I know how rich that sounds coming from me. But please, Y/n.”

“You have my word.”

As you hurried out of the library, you shot an extremely grateful “Thank you!” at Dean. You didn’t have the time to stay - you had an outfit to figure out. Besides, you didn’t want to infect Dean with your sickness.

19:27

…

19:28

…

19:29

…

19:30

Each minute was slower than the one before it. What felt like hours had barely been seconds; it didn’t matter now, though. You were in your outfit (you ripped up an old shirt that Sam had given you so you could be a gore-less zombie), Sam and Dean were currently in the Impala, and your friend was on her way to pick you up. You were about to spend a night surrounded by your friends and dancing to your favourite songs. What could go wrong?

A lot. 

A lot could go wrong. As you stood down the street from the party, tears threatening to fall down your cheeks, you gripped tightly onto your brother’s shirt. Sam was right. Deep down, you knew he would’ve been since you first mentioned your plans for tonight. But you just wanted this one time to prove him wrong, to prove that you could be responsible, to prove to your friends that you were just like them. 

The party had been fine when you first got there. Yes, there was alcohol. No, you didn’t drink any of it. Although you wanted to fit in, you wanted to keep you promise more. You filled a red solo cup with diet coke and entered the room of sweaty teenagers and overpowering music. You and your friends found a fairly empty corner and danced with each other. For once, you were actually having fun. Were. Everything was going fine at first, but you couldn’t help the fact that all the underage drinking around you was making you feel quite uncomfortable. You obviously knew it’d happen, and it wasn’t the drinking itself that made you feel uneasy - it was how it made some people feel like their actions were okay.

Teenage boys + a seemingly bottomless cup? Not always the greatest combination. Some of them weren’t so bad - in fact, the group dunk guys in the middle of the room screaming the lyrics to Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies’ only improved the night. What made it worse, however, was the boy (whose name you didn’t even know) who thought that it’d still be a good idea to grind on you after you politely, and then maybe not so politely, asked him to stop over and over and over again. You attempted to step around him to get to the bathroom. He didn’t like that.

He grabbed your chest. “Where do you think you’re going, babe?”

Your eyes grew wide and you shoved him off of you. Anger poured into your veins and you couldn’t help but feel vulnerable. He smirked. Without thinking twice, you brought your foot up to his shin and rushed past him. You should’ve listened to your brother.

Feeling like you were trapped in a labyrinth, you eagerly pushed past everyone. You needed to get out into the fresh air and away from whoever the boy was. When you got through the front door, you were met with a sparsely crowded front yard which left you slightly relieved. At least if he followed you, he couldn’t do anything. Although there were fewer people outside than in, anything he did would be a lot more obvious - he wouldn’t have the guts to do it.. right? 

Wrong. He stormed through the door almost straight after you and his face reflected something that was anything but happy. Fuck. He squared up to you, trying to make himself seem as intimidating as possible. It worked. You didn’t want them to, but your hands began to shake as soon as you looked the stranger in the eye. 

“Think you’re funny? Doing that in front of everyone?” His words slurred so badly that you struggled to piece together what he was saying. You opened your mouth to try and formulate a response, but the wind was knocked out of you before any noise could leave your lips. Pain simultaneously spread from your cheek and your gut and you doubled over. ‘All of this,’ you thought to yourself, ‘because I didn’t want to dance.’

He left almost instantly. Not because of guilt. Not because of shame. But because a friend had called him back inside because he was ‘missing out’.

You were disgusted. You wanted to cry, scream, shout at the people watching. You wanted to, but you didn’t. You couldn’t. They’d just say you were overreacting. So you left.

You walked as far as the street would take you, until you could no longer hear the music from the house. You reached in your pocket, pulled out your phone and dialed Dean’s number. When he picked up, you kept your voice as calm as possible whilst you told him the name of the road and the small store you were stood in front of. He asked what had happened - his big brother instincts instantly taking over - and he knew you were lying the second you opened you mouth. You were about to hang up. “J-just please, don’t tell Sam.” You pressed the red button.

The sight of Baby pulling up tipped you off the edge. The tears you’d tried so hard to keep back fell down your face. In seconds, Dean was out of the car and engulfing you in a hug. 

“I’m so sorry, De. I promise I-I didn’t drink, it wasn’t my fault.”

“Shh, sh, y/n/n. It’s okay.” He was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

Your eyebrows furrowed.

“He heard the call.”

You turned your head to the Impala, and sitting in the passenger seat was no other than Sam Winchester. Your heart dropped further into your chest and more tears spilled from your eyes.

You got into the car, pulled your knees to your chest and refused to make eye contact with anyone. The silence surrounding you lasted until the end of the street.

“Tell us what happened.” The voice was emotionless. 

“Sammy,” Dean could clearly see that you were distressed. As much as he wanted to know what had happened and why you were in such a state, he was aware that right now probably wasn’t the best time to ask.

“What? She’s big enough to go against the one thing I asked of her, so she’s big enough to tell us why she’s upset.”

“Sam-”

“Dean.”

You glanced at the older brother and saw that his knuckles were turning white. “Sam, I get that you’re pissed. I know that I shouldn’t have encouraged her to go and I know that you’re angry. But shut the hell up. Y/n should have listened to you, but she didn’t and there’s nothing you can do to change that. Our sister is obviou-”

“He came over to me. I-I don’t even know his name, but he was drunk,” you interrupted their argument, “a-and he started touching me. I didn’t like it so I told him to stop. B-but he wouldn’t listen.”

The car was deadly silent. 

“I-I kicked him, hard. In the shin. And I ran away from him but he followed me and he, h-he was angry. He shouted at me and slapped me and punched me and” you couldn’t hold it together anymore. Voice cracks turned into sobs, tear drops became floods. By the time you’d finished talking, Dean was parking the car at the bunker. You chanced a look up at Sam, fully expecting him to be staring straight ahead. His eyes were locked on you, his mouth parted slightly. Your brother’s eyes were full of pity and sorrow, and still a little bit of anger.

“I’m so, so sorry Sammy.”

Dean lifted you up, kissed your head, and took you inside. He tried to take you to your room; you refused. You didn’t want to sleep yet - your mind was still racing. You asked if it was okay for you to stay in the library for a couple of hours, and he said yes. Before he put you down, he held onto you for a few moments. Despite not making a sound, you heard every word he wanted to say. 

You didn’t sit alone for very long. The other Winchester knew where you’d be and decided to sit next to you. You weren’t mad. You didn’t know what you felt, but you knew you weren’t upset with your brother. He’d just been trying to help you and you just assumed that you knew better. Your hand rested on the table silently, and his reached up to join it. You couldn’t help the way it flinched away, in something that was almost like fear. You could almost feel your brother’s heart crack next to you. You hated this. You hated the way you were too scared to talk. You hated the way you felt some sort of fear towards your brother. You hated the way you had become so weak in such little time.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.”

damn this is so rushed and i feel like i ruined it even more with the ending but i had no idea what else to put bc my other ending idea just felt even worse but y’know what we’re gonna roll with it, thank you so much to everyone who read this far & thank you to @winchesters-favorite-girl for letting me take part in your challenge :)

[sammyhale]

J2 ChiCon 2017 Main Panel

*Reminder: if possible, watch the panel videos for full context/info.

Boys make their entrance and do their jump onstage. 

The dick tweet from last night is brought up. Rich, Rob, and Jensen are all teasing Jared lol. Someone in the crowd yells, “Size doesn’t matter!” Jared: Yes it does! Jensen to the fan: That’s just what people say who don’t have it. 

Jared: I got my phone stolen last night. Well, it wasn’t stolen, I gave it away like an idiot. Jensen: After you tweeted something very personal. Jared laughs and jokes: Oh crap, I hit send here hold this! Everyone cracks up. Video

Fan sneezes. Jared: Chuck bless you. 

ChiCon is special since it was the first convention that started it all. Jared: It’s where we started realizing what this family is. 

Fan: You’re the Power Rangers. Jensen: Wrong show. That’s down the hall. 

Jared: I’ve watched more Power Rangers in the last 2 months than my whole life. Jensen: Why? Jared: ‘Cause Tom and Shep... Jensen: They don’t watch. You MADE your kids watch that. 

Jared: Never had anyone yell “You’re Power Rangers” at me. Jensen: Why would you? Jared: They just did! Jensen: THEY ARE IN THE WRONG HALL. 

Jared to a fan: What are you wearing? Fan: It’s a blanket. Jensen: It’s a serape. 

Fan: Most difficult thing about raising twins? Jensen: Our four-year-old. The twins aren’t moving yet. Jared (behind Jensen) freezes like he’s not moving with his arms in the air lol. 

Jensen to Jared: I can see you on the screen! Ain’t my first rodeo. 

Another tweet: Jared imitating the twins not moving. Jared: Oh you can see me on the screen? Jensen: Yeah I can! *busts out laughing*

Jared: Someday JJ is gonna see these videos and be like “Hey!” Boys are cracking up.

Jared: What if in 15 years kids see these videos and are like WHAT DO YOU MEAN I WAS THE DIFFICULT ONE?!

Jensen says Bram is a mini him and Arrow is a mini D. 

Jared says favorite brotherly moment to film was the end of Sacrifice. 

Likes “I got your back” episodes. Jared will always be proud of defining brother moments.

Jensen: When we took the pickaxes to the wall at the end of last season. It was a cool moment for the brothers and me and Jared when we broke through the wall at the end of s12. Fun for them. 

Jared: It was a poignant moment, the brothers talking about their legacy and it could have been me and Jensen [talking about themselves] on SPN. 

Jensen: Because we’ve lived with these characters for so damn long, it’s hard to tell us apart sometimes. 

Jensen: In Baby arguing about the burrito wasn’t scripted, that was me and Jared alone in the car.

Fan apologizes for how she’s asking her question because of her anxiety. Jensen: You’re doing great so far. 

Jensen: People don’t usually try to prank us out of fear of retaliation. The hell we will rain down on them. 

The only person who never feared pranking them was Kim Manners. He did things like dump freezing water on them in that manhole in s2. Crew came up to them with elaborate excuses about why they needed to take J2′s phones before that because they knew what was coming. 

Lots of teasing happening (lots of references to the dick tweet lol). 

They were talking about sit-ups and push-ups in scripts, etc. Jared: I have a pretty long torso- Jensen: So that’s where that length went.

Jared changed it to Sam doing pull-ups not sit-ups. Jensen: So you’d look all elongated *rimshot*

Jared teases back: In all the Days of My Life- Jensen: I was a child! Not a man responsible for my actions! 

Jensen chooses middle of the road success and win an Oscar when he’s 50 lol. Jared teases him about his age: Gonna win an Oscar last year?? *mic drop*

Cutest things kids have done? Jensen: Exist. 

Jared about Odette: “My girl is perfect.” 

Tells a story about Tom and how he picked up a habit of saying, “That’s what I’m talking about” from someone at school and it cracks Jared up. 

Jared talks about how Shep looks up to Tom so much. 

Jared: Tom, what was your favorite thing today? Tom: Walking in the park with you. Shep: Me too! Jared: You were home napping lol. 

Jared to fan, clarifying info she’d mentioned: You have one kid? Her: just one. Jared: That you know of!! 

Fan asks about their favorite monster to kill. Jared says the one he ended up marrying lol. Talks about how that will be awkward with the kids in a few years: “Why is Uncle Jensen holding mommy while you stabbed her??” 

Jared talks about killing Death. Jensen. I did not like killing Death. Jared: Cause he’s awesome. Jensen: Well yes, he is awesome, but, those types of scenes are technically difficult to shoot. Jensen likes to kill monsters with guns ‘cause it’s easy.

Jared is sitting backwards on his chair with one of his legs hoisted up, showing off his flexibility lol. Jensen talks about how Jared sits like that at a nice restaurant, will use his knee as his plate :P 

A fan starts to ask the question: How different are you in real life to your characters? There’s a pause and then she adds: Musically? Jared: Wait, what? Jensen: Answer the question in song. Jensen sings a bit. Jared jokes about being thrown off by the pause in the question lol.

Jensen: What’s your favorite Bieber song right now? Jared: All of ‘em. 

There’s a song Jared has been listening to a lot lately that reminds him of Gen but is having a hard time remembering the name. Thinks the band’s name is Skyline. (Possibly the Austin-based band Skyline x). 

Jensen: Dean likes classic rock. Nothing else is playing in his ears. Jensen loves classic rock, some country, some hard rock, a little bit of everything. Whatever he’s in the mood for. 

Fan says her sister is obsessed with Jared. Jared: She’s awesome! Fan’s question is for Jensen though lol. 

What advice would Jensen give Beyonce about twins? Jensen: B, let me talk at you real quick...Jared: What advice did you give her? Jensen: Let me check my texts lol. Jensen says to sleep when you can, mentions that duct tape is handy because it can fix anything, including your children lol. Jensen’s advice for Jay-Z would be to ask B: “What can I do for you?” 

Jared starts quoting lyrics from Destiny’s Child’s song Bills, Bills, Bills: pay my bills, pay my automobills, maybe we could chill. 

Favorite pie? J2 are arguing over the pronunciation of “pecan” lol. Jensen says Dean likes sweet cherry pie ;) Jensen’s favorite is banana cream. 

Jared’s favorite is pecan. Say Sam has a favorite and starts reciting Pi off the top of his head. 

Pet peeves about each other? Jared: I don’t waste gum! 

Jensen goes off lol. Talks about how “we hang out with each other a lot” and when Jared will come to his trailer every time he’ll take his gum and put it on Jensen’s counter and walk to his fridge to get a drink. Then when he’s done, he picks it up and puts it back in his mouth. Jared: I don’t wanna waste gum! Jensen used to call him out on putting gum on surfaces that aren’t the trashcan. Jared: The gum’s still good! Jensen: There’s no excuse!..Drink your drink with your gum in your mouth. The crowd says eww. Jensen: Oh, that’s ew?! 

Jensen talks about how whenever he and Jared go out to a restaurant, bar, etc, there will be either paper coasters or napkins and Jensen watches in amazement because while Jared is talking Jared, without noticing, has ripped the coaster and/or napkin into little tiny balls and had made a pile and eventually pushes it onto the ground. Jared: Multitasking. Jensen: What is that, though? Jared is just smiling. 

Last question: Fan starts talking to Jared, turns, sees Jensen on the other side. “Oh, hi!” Jensen: I’ve literally been here the whole time lol. 

Four things the colt can’t kill? Lucifer, God, Amara, and the Winchester Brothers. Jared: Wouldn’t that be cool?

This video from the last question shows Jared looking up in the air while standing next to the fan because he felt water on his arm. Jensen notices and without Jared saying anything he tells Jared that the fan is flicking water from her cup (because she was gesturing around in excitement lol) and Jared collapses laughing on one knee saying, “Oh, God!” Jensen: “Jared thought it was raining”- Jared: I was like, what is going on here?!

J2 share their traditional fist bump and thank the fans <3

Info via: Fangasm, Cherie, Carry On, Kristin, Adina, iwinsoiwin, Becky, Christina, Sil’s livetweet list, Audio

[lightshadowverisimilitude]

Responsible Adults and Lab Safety Protocols 1/3

For my bingo square “sex pollen.” Challenger @miss-kitty-fantastico

Watch the cut!

All in all, Tony was disappointed. With rumors of a super thinktank trying to combine all the worst aspects of sodium pentothal, E, and alcohol, Tony had expected more. They’d been hard to find, he’d give them that – as in digitally hard to find. Out in the non-digital world, they were operating out of a strip mall on the main thoroughfare in a tiny township in Minnesota unfortunately named Embarrass.

Since the Avengers trooping through Small Town, Anywhere tended to call a lot of attention, they’d driven from Duluth in a rental van. By the time they pulled into the cramped parking lot, Tony was ready to put a stylus through Clint’s eye. If he had to hear one more chorus of “99 bottles of beer on the wall/ Shoot one down, it shatters on the ground,” ad infinitum, he was going to throttle someone. Since they were mere yards away from a bad guy he could theoretically throttle, he didn’t try too hard to suppress the urge. Nat and Steve had both fallen asleep in the middle row almost as soon as they doors had shut, because they had that whole ‘can sleep anywhere’ thing in common. Sam had earbuds stuffed into his ears, though Tony’s had mysteriously disappeared out of his bag. He felt an acute sense of betrayal.

“Karmic pay back,” Rhodey said, climbing out of the driver’s seat. “Do you remember that trip from Boston to New York your sophomore year?” He smiled sweetly and held out a twenty. Clint snatched it out of his fingers and blew Tony a kiss on his way past, surreptitiously rubbing his jaw.

“It’s not karma if you interfere,” Tony said, but he was secretly impressed. Putting up with three complete rounds of the beer song just to get Tony back for an unfortunate road trip two decades after the fact was dedication.

Rhodey shrugged. “What can I say? Sometimes karma happens to you. Sometimes you’re the karma that happens to someone else.”

“I’m going to remember this,” Tony warned him, snugging his baseball cap down further over his eyes. He guessed that as far as ‘We’re tourists, just passing through,’ disguises went, they probably wouldn’t pass muster for long. He checked his phone, and then looked up. According to his scan, nothing in the area had so much as security camera to its name.

The smallest space on the end of the strip didn’t even have proper signage. When they drew closer, he saw that a set of letters had been frosted onto the glass in what was probably 12-pt font. Dionysus Labs. Original.

Steve, annoyingly alert after his ninety-odd minute nap, casually pulled the door open, and then stuck his foot in front of it and gestured everyone else through. Tony kept his phone up, sweeping the area with infrared as he went. He’d done a satellite pass over the area less than an hour before, and there had only been two heat signatures in the building. He wasn’t surprised to see the same two human-shaped blobs on the other side of the back wall. In two weeks of monitoring, he’d never seen more than two human-shaped blobs.

The reception area was a closet-sized space that they crowded to capacity. It was complete with ugly industrial carpet, three folding chairs under a painting of a lake that might have been stolen from a motel, and a reception desk about the size of a podium. It was empty of even a bored receptionist, which made sense, since there didn’t even appear to be a phone. Rhodey leaned around the desk, feeling underneath the shelves for a weapon, and then shook his head.

Nat put her back to the cheap plywood wood and waited for Clint to give her a nod. She flicked the door knob, and pushed the door sharply inward. It banged against the opposite wall, though the sound was almost drowned out by the startled shouts from within. Clint ran in with his sidearm drawn, leading Steve, Sam, and Rhodey after him. Tony stayed in the waiting room and kept an eye on his screens. Nothing was putting off any troubling energy, and the floor seemed quite solid.

Steve stuck his head back out the door. His lips were twisted in a bemused grimace. “It’s clear,” he said, gesturing Tony in with a twitch of his fingers.

“I am disappointed,” Tony said, following him in. “I was going to be disappointed anyway, but I assumed there would be something for me to do.” The only reason he hadn’t trundled in with the rest of them was that he’d thought a high-budget operation like this one had to be hiding a few nasty tech surprises under their very mundane exterior.

(keep reading)

The room beyond was… a lab. It had been outfitted with metal tables that were stacked with the usual medical lab detritus. Half of the space had been converted into a sterile room, and a ventilation hood took up most of the real estate in the opposite corner. The eye wash station and chemical shower had clearly posted instructions and warnings, and there was a red lab safety handbook on the shelf backed with OSHA posters and cheesy I Am Safe! Graphics of a pencil figure in a hardhat giving the thumbs up. There was a picture of a chambered nautilus on one cabinet, the Milky Way galaxy next to it, and a boxy spiral across the room. Sam was in the process of taking down an enlarged poster of Dr. Foster’s most recent appearance in Reviews of Modern Physics. Thor would have never forgiven them for leaving it.

“Wow. Now I’m… Now I’m just depressed,” Tony decided. Two youngish men in lab coats had already been handcuffed and were slumped in lab stools, still wearing their eye protection. “I mean… I approve of your lab safety, with the exception of the paper thin door that anyone with reasonable hand-eye coordination and baseball bat could get through, but. Wow.”

One of the men sighed dejectedly. He was wearing a plaid shirt with a no-kidding pocket protector. Tony couldn’t decide if he was wearing it with his expensive, tailored khakis as nerd-chic or not. “We were finally getting results,” he mourned.

“We were going to be so rich,” the other added. “I was going to go to Tahiti.”

Tony exchanged a baffled look with Rhodey, who only shrugged.

“We have got to get a better class of supervillain,” Sam said.

Pocket Protector perked up. “Supervillain? Think they’ll write a book about us?”

Rolling his eyes, Sam dropped a heavy hand to the back of the guy’s neck to propel him out of the stool. “No.”

Natasha grabbed the other Supervillain Hopeful by the arm and gave him one of those really creepy Russian doll smiles. “You and I need to talk,” she said.

The guy looked pretty happy with that idea. Tony guessed that they’d have an itemized list of the entire chain of operations by the time the van made it back to Duluth.

“We’ll take these two back in the van,” Sam said, giving his captive a squeeze on the back of the neck that made the man bunch his shoulders up like a cartoon turtle. “Quinjet should be here to help you transport all this…” he waved a hand around the orderly lab with a grimace. “Stuff.”

Tony tossed him a salute and opened an app. He hummed as he tapped away at the commands while Clint, Nat, and Sam lead their docile captives out of the door. Satisfied with the results, he pointed the infrared at the floor to look for a secret lair, occasionally stamping on the floor in likely places.

“This is absurd,” he decided finally. “There is really… nothing. It took us two months to find this place.”

“Well,” Steve ventured, “it did keep them under the radar for more than a year. There’s something to be said about low-tech when you’re going up against Iron Man.” He was thumbing through a binder of pages in sheet protectors, so he didn’t see Tony preening. Tony could just barely make out the words ‘Employee Handbook’ between Steve’s fingers. He shook the binder slightly and held up a page. “They had a 401k plan, and health benefits. They get more vacation days than I do!”

Rhodey snorted. “Guess we’re in the wrong line of work.” He was crouched down beside the transparent door of the sterile room. Tapping one knuckle on the Plexiglas, he noted, “This is more like what I expected to find here. This is four inches thick and bullet proof.”

“Ooo,” Tony said, hurrying around the central table to Rhodey’s side. “Boobie trapped?”

Before Rhodey could answer, his phone went off. He settled back on his heels to answer it, and then instantly jerked the phone away from his ear. ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ played loudly in the background and Clint shouted, “I’m never letting you pay me for favors ever again!”

Tony grabbed Rhodey’s wrist to get at the phone. “If he’s paying you for it, it’s not a favor.”

“Fuck you so hard, Stark!” Clint shouted over the chorus. Tony could hear other voices shouting in the background, and then the van’s sliding door opened. It slammed shut a second later, cutting off the caterwauling of Billy Ray Cyrus and the dismayed shouts of the two unfortunate prisoners. “It better turn off,” he huffed into the phone.

Tony shrugged. “Eh.” He loved high-tech cars with their very hackable computers.

Groaning, Clint said, “Do not pull me into whatever weird prank game you have going with Rhodes, Stark, I swear you’ll regret it.”

Tony fluttered his eyelashes at Rhodey. “Hey, blame Rhodey. He’s the one who got you into this.”

Leaning on Tony’s shoulders, Steve grabbed Rhodey’s arm just under Tony’s grip and pulled up. Rhodey scowled, and Steve ignored him. “Just leave those two locked in the car for a few minutes, and then send Nat after them.”

“Torture tactics? From Captain America?” Clint gasped. “I am shocked. Shocked and severely disappointed.”

“Pleasure to be of service,” Steve said warmly, and then released Rhodey’s arm and levered himself back up without even using Tony’s shoulder for balance. That kind of core muscle response was absolutely not fair. Before Tony could say as much, Steve’s Running Man ringtone went off. He stepped away to put it to his ear.

“Sam -… I’m sure it will turn off eventually,” he said, laughing. “I wouldn’t, if I were you. Well, it’s your life.” He covered the mouthpiece with one hand and leaned over to ask, “You are going to turn that off when they start traveling, right?”

Tony made a vague sound, already more invested in the keypad to get into the sterile room than Clint’s comeuppance. He could feel Rhodey’s eyes on the side of his face and guessed that there was a pre-emptive retaliatory prank already in the works in case Tony had something in mind for him. Tony was going to let him stew in it for a while.

Snagging Rhodey’s wrist again, Tony said, “Hey – stick your head back in the van and say ‘one, one, two’ please.”

“Oh, please, is it?” Clint grumbled, but the vague thumping of music grew louder. “Hey, asswipes! One, one, two,” he shouted over the music. The car door slammed, cutting Billy Ray off at ‘- And if you tell my –‘ “I’m not telling you what he said until you promise to turn that off.”

“I promise I’ll turn it off,” Tony said, pointedly not including when.

“He said, ‘three.’ Mean anything to you?”

Tony hummed, but Rhodey was already keying in the sequence before he could say a word. The door popped open with a hiss. Tony groaned. “Why? I am so..! Two months.”

Steve looked in between them, confused. He frowned at the open door. “What just happened here?”

Rhodey waved vaguely toward the posters of spirals dotted around the room between safety posters. “Zero-one-one-two-three-five. Fibonacci sequence. I am embarrassed for these guys.”

“They sure picked some good real estate then,” Steve said with a grin. He bent over to open a lower cabinet, his face briefly appearing somewhere around his knees. He saw Tony watching him and winked, mouth stretching into a devilish smile.

“I see what you’re doing,” Tony told him, just so he didn’t think he was getting away with it.

“I do not,” Rhodey said, “but whatever it is, stop.”

Steve chuckled and bent his knees, folding smoothly into a crouch. He started pulling out boxes of pipettes, shaking each of them like they were Christmas presents. Tony finally yanked his eyes away from the motion of Steve’s shoulders and followed Rhodey into the sterile room. A row of incubators were on against one wall, the shadow of petri dishes visible behind the dark glass. On the opposite wall was another ventilation hood, and the center of the room was taken up by a workspace and a bank of computers. He glanced up to see five industrial ventilation units in the ceiling – for the size of the room, he would have expected only one, or two. He frowned. Between the heavy-duty sterile room and the ventilation, they must have made a lot of progress over the latest version of the compound they’d encountered.

Rhodey was already taking pictures of the setup, so Tony perched on a lab stool and jiggled the mouse until the computer woke up. The username had been saved, so he tried the Fibonacci sequence again, and then a few others. At least they were a bit smarter with their computer security – not smart enough to keep him out of the system, but smarter than they had been with any other aspect of the operation.

“You know,” Rhodey said, snapping a picture of the incubators, “If it was this difficult to find the lab jockeys, figuring out who bank rolled them is going to be a pain in the ass.” He turned a circle, frowning at the sterile room. “Where are the rats?”

Tony plugged into the computer tower and then looked around again, himself. “Huh.” He frowned. He would have expected a whole wall of test subjects. Shivers skittered down his spine. “They’re either testing offsite…”

“Or they’re not testing on animals,” Rhodey finished for him.

The lock screen vanished and Tony dropped his head into his hand with a helpless laugh. Rhodey came over to stand behind him. He rested one hand on Tony’s shoulder and leaned down to look over the last document their intrepid chemists had been working on.

“… They were testing it on themselves?” Rhodey said incredulously. He reached over Tony’s shoulder to click through the open tabs at the bottom. One was an Amazon page displaying search results for ‘soft stuff,’ two were lab results that they both looked over quickly, but neither of them were chemists. Bruce would have to do the heavy lifting on those. The last tab was a video dated the evening before. Rhodey’s hand curled away from the mouse, and then reluctantly pushed play.

Pocket Protector sat in front of the camera in a hotel room, looking stoned out of his mind. His mouth was reddened from either a lot of rough kisses or an allergic reaction, his eyes were glassy and red, and his shirt was half unbuttoned. It had been pulled open and left that way, his lab coat pulled haphazardly over the top of it. Judging by the dark smear of a bruise under his collarbone, Tony was guessing that he hadn’t been experiencing an allergic reaction.

He stared at the camera with a distant, stupid smile on his face. A woman walked across the frame, only visible from the neck down, and not wearing anything except an equally rumpled lab coat. She dragged her nails down the back of his neck and he shivered visibly, almost violently, before slumping back against her and giggling.

“Thanks for the fun time, sugar,” she said. She leaned down to kiss his forehead, but a curtain of auburn hair hid her face from the camera. “Let me know if you want to do it again sometime.”

“’Kay,” Pocket Protector said drowsily. He turned in his chair to watch her pick up her clothes and walk into the bathroom. The door shut, and then the shower turned on. Pocket Protector turned back to the screen and made an exaggeratedly excited face. He bit one knuckle, slightly muffling his giggling. “Oh… my God,” he said, and then scrabbled around the desk until he came up with a vial of white powder. “Screw AIM, we’re taking this commercial. Fucking fuck. So much fucking, Matt, so much fucking.”

“Okay, well, that was helpful,” Rhodey said, pausing the video. He stepped away with his cellphone already out. “Fucking AIM,” he said under his breath as he left the sterile room.

Shaking his head, Tony scrubbed his hand across his face. They may as well have just left behind an envelope with a big label that read, “EVIDENCE OF ALL MY WRONGDOINGS RIGHT HERE.” Considering how well everything else in the lab had been labeled, Tony wouldn’t have been especially surprised. He clicked through the computer while he downloaded the hard drive, finding detailed records on the entire process. One of the Viagra Duo was apparently a neat freak, because Tony found a spreadsheet outlining every conversation they’d ever had with their benefactors.

Tony started to laugh again. “I am completely stunned that you can be so incompetently competent,” he told the screen.

“Having lots of luck?” Steve asked, peering curiously into the room.

“We can call the interrogation off,” Tony said. “Don’t even bother to give them the yellow legal pad and the pen. We’ve already got their confessions here.” He held up his USB drive for illustration. “Though it looks like what they came up with is more along the lines of fun-time recreational drug than hardcore interrogation chemical.”

“I heard Rhodey muttering about AIM on his way out the door?”

Tony pulled up the spreadsheet and leaned back so Steve could read it over his shoulder. Steve barked out a startled laugh and slapped a hand over his face. “I don’t know who’s worse. These two, or whatever idiot at AIM hired them.”

“If only all the villains kept such impeccable records,” Tony agreed, leaning subtly into Steve’s chest. “We’d be out of a job.”

“We could retire,” Steve said with a pleased hum. “We could move somewhere warm, with a beach. I could learn to surf.”  

Twisting around, Tony demanded, “How have you never learned to surf? We lived in California.”

Steve leaned down and nipped at Tony’s neck in mild rebuke. He nosed under Tony’s jaw and set a soft kiss on his pulse point. “Do you know how to surf?” he asked innocently.

Tony sniffed. “Of course not. I’m not a supersoldier.”

“Of course. Only supersoldiers surf.” He tightened his arms around Tony’s chest and rested his chin on the top of his head. “Mellow recreational drug, hm?”

“Seems to just make for good sex,” Tony replied, wiggling suggestively. “Could be fun.”

Steve chuckled. “Too bad we’re more responsible than our friends, here.”

At the sound of the lab door opening, Steve straightened up, and stepped away. Rhodey came back in, shaking his head. He pointed at the computer, not mentioning the on-mission cuddling he’d certainly seen. “I don’t suppose they mentioned any useful names?”

Sliding backwards off the stool, Tony motioned to the still-open spreadsheet. “The AIM representative was at least smart enough to give them a codename. Mr. Wine.”

“With this group, I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t a codename at all.” He shook his head, and then leaned back. “Bruce should be here in a few minutes. Let’s start packing this junk up.”

Next

[literallybyronic]

What is this thing about sam pulling an about face with Scanlan, I must know, spoiler warnings be damned.

well... okay...  but don’t say i didn’t warn you! (spoilers below the cut)

so Scanlan gets killed during the Raishan final battle, they try to revivify him on the spot but it fails so they take him back to Whitestone to perform a resurrection ritual. Sam was there for the Raishan fight but he was absent the following episode where they try to bring him back, they had Patrick Rothfuss on instead.  So anyway, they go back to Whitestone to resurrect him, and they send Vex with the gate stone to bring Kaylie back to help with the ritual.  The ritual is successful but then he’s in a coma/sleeping for a while.  So then they’re all super relieved that he’s alive, so to lift the tension they decide they’re going to prank him.  So, while he’s still comatose, they put him in one of Pike’s nightgowns, tie his arms to the bedposts, and mess up the room and smear pudding everywhere, planning to convince him that he was waking up from unconsciousness after a wild and deviant sexual escapade.  Then that episode ends and the next one Sam is back.  They go to Vasselheim to bury Senokir’s wife’s ashes and Grog has a duel, and then they go back to Whitestone to see Scanlan.  Scanlan wakes up, sees Kaylie is there, and asks her to excuse them.  He then FREAKS out at the rest of VM, partly for the prank but mostly because they brought Kaylie there in the first place, cuz he had promised her she wouldn’t have to worry about him and now she knows he couldn’t keep his promise and she thinks he’s weak, and then the prank embarassed him in front of her.  It goes on for a while and he’s basically accusing them of not giving a fuck about him and only wanting his spells and comic relief and not caring about him as a person.  It’s soooooo uncomfortable, and you can tell no one knows wtf is going on and they all want to start yelling “SAM WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM” but they don’t cuz they’re trying to stay IC and professional for the stream.  So Scanlan curses them all out and then is like, “I’m leaving VM, I don’t know if or when I’ll be back but I am going to go spend time with my daughter like I should have done to begin with, fuck you assholes.”  They all try to convince him not to but he won’t hear it, and he leaves with Kaylie.  So everyone else is super bummed out but they still have shit to do, so they head to Ank’Harel to bring Ripley’s hand back.  When they get there it’s evening so they head for a tavern.  When they arrive at the tavern, Matt goes on to describe this young blond dude with an iron golem standing outside who sees them and immediately approaches them.  And then Sam pipes up and lo and behold, this new guy is his new character, Taryon Darrington.  As soon as Sam opens his mouth to speak as the new character you can just see realization and then murder bloom in Laura’s eyes as they all figure out that the temper tantrum was an excuse to bring in this new character.  And this new guy is this super sheltered idiot rich kid who knows absolutely nothing about the world and is a complete pompous dipshit.  So they’re all like “ugh we can’t stand this guy and we’re going to give Sam a blanket party after the stream for getting us all worked up but I guess we’ll take him with us cuz he’s gonna pay us a lot”  And that’s how Taryon Darrington joined the party and how Sam made the most awkward episode of Critical Role ever.

[strategicadventure]

Episode 85 - A Bard’s Lament

i kinda already know a big thing that happens in this episode so i’ve not been overly eager to watch

Grog pulling out a piece of paper with a G on it is so cute

“Morpheus is fighting Neo!” - excited for this fight

“its a test already! I hate the SATs!”

“this is a nightmare, I just wanna hit him!”  aww poor Travis looks like he’s breaking inside

“with gentleness there comes clarity” “I think you have to fuck him Grog”

10d10 necrotic damage?!!! OH SHIT

Earthbreaker Groon catches Grog’s attack - “oh god its so awesome!” 

Vex asking if she should flash him and Keyleth saying “it couldn’t hurt the rest of us either!”  nobody on this show is straight, polymachina exists, everything is beautiful

“ooo, he learned to be a dick!”

HDYWTDT!!!!!

GROG GOT POWER FROM KORD!

the knuckles are exalted now this is so cool!! enlarged resistance to cold, fire, and lightening? awesome

oh man that was so close! i wonder what would have happened if Grog had lost

its really interesting how the gods seem to be placing their favor on the various members of VM. the Vecna storyline is gonna be, if not next then very soon, a huge thing and having favor with the gods will be important. I’d love to see more with Kord and Grog and with Melora and Keyleth. I wonder if/when Pelor will make an appearance or more of a presence, given that he is the deity connected with Whitestone

“he did just take down an old man, so our streak against the elderly continues”

“kitten is the baseline hp counter in dungeons and dragons”

“if wizardry is Bob Fosse, druidism is Twyla Tharp” - I just want to thank Marisha so much for this

Oh Scanlan. and Grog’s face when he finds out that Scanlan didn’t hear his contribution.

Scanlan’s points are well made in regarding the knowledge of his parents and personal stuff about him from before VM formed, though he’d always deflect questions about his age. I know all these problems were a long time coming; as soon as Kaylie was introduced I figured Scanlan would have to make a decision at some point, and the pacing of the conclave arc kept him from really addressing it, but it really feels that key things have been going wrong for Scanlan the last few weeks. The others, Vax’s most recently, treatment of him in that period of time did not help at all. When Matt made the point to describe how small Scanlan felt in comparison to the dragons, then Vax picking him up and putting him down I knew that was going to be a defining point. I see where Percy was going with the prank after Scanlan was revived, but that was just one more thing in Scanlan’s eyes.

Scanlan’s hurt for a lot of reasons, but many of them are him lying to himself in some way and then snapping out at the others so they hurt too. Lying about the reasons they were doing things. This argument and division is so painful and real, they’re worse than friends they’re family is right.

[watching this again and its just so real. its one of those big family blowups where everyone says exactly what hurts other people the most. also, Sam looks at his notes to make sure of Percy’s parents names I think]

I keep starting and stopping and starting crying. “I need to be a Shorthalt for awhile”

Scanlan knows Percy’s parents names and Kaylie overheard everything

Grog gave Scanlan his salt lick rock. why is that so sad to me?

Grog going out to talk to Percy, wanting to send spies to keep an eye on the Shorthalts. I mean, obviously what Scanlan is going through, but this is a huge shake to Grog and it’ll be interesting to see how he deals with it

“I know we don’t always agree, and I know I can be unkind, but...you know you’re family right?” “I don’t know much, but I do know that” “its nice having an older brother again” Grog’s little smile at that!

aaaand there’s the final bout of crying! lay me down and let moss cover me

I always sorta placed Scanlan in the role that Troy had on Community - the connection that held everything together. Since the aftermath of his leaving was really only missing a Norwegian troll doll on fire, I feel justified in my mental comparison

and a darkest timeline joke from Keyleth! Life got dark Vex!

Pike and Vax in fun buns is a cute image. except for the fact that they’re hungover and miserable, but still

Grog trusting Pike, Scanlan, and Vex the most - and Vex because he’s seen her tits! then Vex asking if seeing them again would cheer Grog up!  “its so touching and ridiculous at the same time!”

Keyleth asking the Sun Tree to watch over Scanlan and Kaylie

tree lag

OMG their reactions when they find out its Sam’s new character! Laura trying to throw a tissue at him! [I went back and rewatched the Tary section, and as soon as Matt says they see a gold golem Travis quickly leans forward to stare at Sam suspiciously.]

Taryon Darrington. SAM. Sam what is that even. also, this character has a golem scribe ffs SAM.

“new dad’s wearing old dad’s skin” “I hate Tary he’s a dick”; I love that you can tell when Laura is really upset at someone cause she’ll use their full name - “how DARE you SAMUEL!”

“you, little elf girl, what’s your name?”  SAM YOU ARE PLAYING WITH FIRE

I keep glancing at Matt cause the faces he is making are just ugh just, Sam and Matt are such little shits this is amazing and horrible and I love it

Tary is a rich prat who hunts for the trophies

“I don’t like new people right now as of yesterday!”

“he’s like the worst alter ego version of Percy! he’s a rich kid who just buys all of his cool toys! no offense Percy”

“Doty only listens to me. If you had some sort of pet you’d understand” OMG “I’m gonna love Tary so much!” if Sam gets through this character without Laura literally killing him I will be surprised

ok the rod and the invisibility coin are super cool

....is this gonna be the second time they have randomly accidentally killed a normal citizen in Ank’Harel? first the lightening javelin now a crossbow bolt

THE CREW IS REVOLTING WITH NERF GUNS

that was awful and yet perfect. Sam looked way to fucking pleased with himself, Matt too frankly the little shits.