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devendrasbeard · 4 years ago

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Only If For A Night

Prompt: They’ve had a few drinks Relationships: Eskel/Jaskier Rating: E Content Warnings: Drunkness, Drunk Kissing, Drunk Confessions Summary: Eskel is a private driver for a very famous and very successful fashion designer. Having seen the more private side of his boss, he eventually develops feelings for him. One night of drunken confessions can bring a massive change to their professional relationship.

Also on ao3!

"My dear friends, acquaintances, sponsors and clients!" Jaskier's happy voice, amplified by several speakers around the small stage, echoed across the hall. "Thank you for gathering here tonight, so that you'll be the first ones to see, admire, and buy the newest designs from my Dandelions collection!"

A round of applause and excited gasps was heard as a group of androgynous models dressed in wonderfully flowy gowns joined Jaskier on the stage. The clothes were kept in a gender neutral fashion, the fabrics thin as if made of morning mist, but at the same time vibrant with colors, their ethereal vibe contrasted with black hemming at the edges.

"In the next hour the models will be available for you, so that you can get a feel of the clothes, talk about how comfortable of a wear these are. You can even try something on, if the models let you!" Jaskier continued into the microphone. "Just remember - these are real people, not coat hangers! I expect respect towards them and no stepping over any boundaries!"

Eskel stood at the far end of the hall, leaning comfortably against a wall, now and then taking a sip from his glass of water. The day was very hot as for late May, so he was wearing a simple white buttoned up shirt with short sleeves and some black slacks instead of his usual suit ensemble. He loosened the knot in his thin black tie, as he watched Jaskier walk down from the stage and fall into the embrace of his enthusiastic friends.

He liked watching Jaskier, his boss, from afar. Jaskier was fierce, flamboyant and bubbly around his friends, at events, and in front of the media people, but when he thought nobody was looking, his face turned pensive, sometimes even sad. That melancholic, brooding side of Jaskier showed up mostly in the evenings, when the lights went out, his friends went home and it was just him and Eskel driving him home. Eskel liked that side of him.

A few hours into the after party Jaskier approached him, hugging a whole bottle of bourbon to his chest. His cheeks were flushed, blue eyes glistening, his elaborate hairstyle already mussed a little. "Fuck me if this isn't the best collection I've made so far."

Eskel nodded, trying to suppress a chuckle. Whenever Jaskier was tipsy, he forgot about any conventionalities and talked to Eskel as if he was his long time buddy, not his private driver. "It's really good." Eskel admitted. "Need my assistance with anything?"

Jaskier placed a warm palm on Eskel's chest, his bright blue eyes looking up at him. "I wanna go home, my head feels dizzy from all the hugs, fake kisses and congratulations."

"You're sure it's the congratulations and not the bourbon?" Eskel cocked his head, raising a brow in amusement.

"Hey!" Jaskier's long finger was now poking at Eskel's chest. "I pay you to drive me around, not to judge my life's choices."

"Let's go then, I'll drive you home," Eskel nodded and led Jaskier to the door, desperately trying not to wrap a protective arm around his boss' frame.

****

Jaskier ducked his head through the partition divider, resting his chin on his hands. The strong smell of alcohol mixed with Jaskier's flowery cologne hit Eskel's nose. "Do you like me, Eskel?" He whispered, too close to Eskel's ear.

Eskel shot him a quick glance through the rearview mirror, clearing his throat. "How do you mean?"

"Am I likeable?" Jaskier pouted and cocked his head to the side, to lay it on the cold metal frame of the divider. "Do you like me as a person? I know I am trying to be a good boss and I hope you're satisfied with the work you're doing here for me and that I'm not a pain in the ass for making you drive me around... But am I likeable as a person? Can you even look at me as a person and not your boss, slash famous designer?"

Eskel huffed, feeling goosebumps creeping up his neck. So today's drunk Jaskier's mood was philosophical. Through his last year of driving Jaskier around he's seen him in every sorry state - from being awkwardly horny after a hook up gone wrong, through being insanely euphorical and singing at the top of his lungs in the back seat, to being absolutely shit-faced, making Eskel stop the car every five minutes, so that he could get out and barf on the sidewalk.

But Jaskier asking him if Eskel liked him caught him off guard. What was he supposed to say to that? That ever since he started working for him, he wanted to wrap his arms around Jaskier and kiss him so hard he'd forget his own name? That his heart fluttered everytime Jaskier sent him that deep look and loving smile when they accidentally locked eyes in the rearview mirror? That he's been yearning to spend every second of his life with him? That he loved everything about him - his generosity, his laugh, his creative mind? This wasn't Eskel's place, he was just Jaskier's employee, yet he felt compelled to say something. "You're a good person, Jaskier." He tried.

"Then how come that on the day my newest collection premieres..." He stopped, interrupted by a series of hiccups. "Why is that, that people hug me and kiss me and yet..." He plopped dramatically onto the back seat and sighed. "Why am I yet again going home alone?"

Eskel sighed, a feeling of a thousand needles prickling on his skin. He wanted to pull Jaskier up and wrap him in a tight embrace and scream at the top of his lungs that he was there for him, always, forever! Instead he sighed again, turned to Jaskier for a second and asked, "Should I put your fave music on?"

"Yes, please," Jaskier mumbled. "Thank you, Esk."

****

"We're here," Eskel turned to Jaskier after he parked the limo outside of Jaskier's apartment building. "Is there anything else I can do for you tonight?"

Jaskier smiled at him, sitting splayed all over the backseat, his hair a mess and his shirt already halfway open, giving Eskel more than a sneak peek of his thick chest hair and the several necklaces dangling on his torso. Eskel swallowed thickly, his mouth suddenly dry, and then Jaskier leaned forward and whispered, "You can come upstairs with me."

Eskel's eyes widened, a hotness creeping up his neck. It was all he ever wanted, but he felt he shouldn't do it tonight, not with Jaskier in this state of mind. He had to think and be reasonable for them both. "Jaskier... You're drunk and tired, I don't think that's a-" A warm finger on his lips shut him up.

"That bottle of bourbon won't empty itself," Jaskier tried for a seductive smile which turned out pretty wonky, but still managed to tug at Eskel's heartstrings. "C'mon, just one drink? You can probably drive after one drink?"

Eskel huffed, his mind racing and trying to weigh all the pros and cons of the situation he's gotten himself into. Jaskier looked at him with pleading eyes, not saying anything, waiting for Eskel's move. "Okay, one drink."

They got out of the car, Jaskier propping himself up on Eskel's shoulder as they entered the building. "Good morning, Jerome," Jaskier addressed the concierge with a wide smile.

"It's midnight, Mr. Pankratz," the concierge rolled his eyes, the look on his face indicating he's seen Jaskier in this state more than once.

As soon as they got into Jaskier's penthouse, Jaskier moved straight to the alcohol cabinet, leaving Eskel in the middle of the spacious living room. Eskel looked around the place, admiring all the art pieces on the walls and various trinkets scattered around the furniture. But the view from the vast windows was what truly mesmerized him - he moved towards the glass walls, gazing down at the night city, so calm and otherworldly from here.

"Thank you for joining me," Jaskier's voice next to him startled him a little. "I really didn't want to be home alone tonight," he added quietly.

"No problem," Eskel smiled at him, noticing that now besides the bourbon bottle, Jaskier was also nursing a flask of red wine. He held both up for Eskel to choose his drink from. Eskel took the wine bottle and asked, "Should I fetch us some glasses, or do I just chug straight from the bottle?"

Jaskier patted his shoulder lightly, laughing too loud, as if Eskel told a joke, then hiccuped a little. "I'll get us some glasses, you..." he waved towards the sofas and armchairs, "you make yourself comfortable."

Eskel didn't get to sit yet when he heard the sound of breaking glass and a sharp hiss coming from the kitchen. He jumped up, leaving the wine bottle on the table and moved towards Jaskier.

"It's nothing, it's nothing," Jaskier was already kneeling on the floor, clumsily collecting the broken pieces of a wine glass. "Guess everything went too smoothly for me today."

The sigh that left Jaskier's lips sounded more like a broken whimper and Eskel's heart physically hurt at the sight of his famous and successful boss looking so small and pitiful in the middle of his kitchen. He felt like crying. "Leave it, I'll clean it up," he offered. "Maybe you should go to bed, lay down a little?"

Jaskier looked up at him, the gaze of his blue eyes unfocused. He pointed at Eskel with his index finger while standing up. "No, you-... You've promised me that one drink!"

"Fine."

****

Two hours later Eskel knew he wasn't going to make it home that night. The wine bottle in his hands was almost empty, and he felt slightly light-headed and dizzy, but not drunk. Jaskier, on the other hand, was already edging on wasted, his shirt now unbuttoned, cheeks red, his words incoherent and slurry.

"Y'know, I'm fully aware of my... My pre... my pry... My privilege," he blurted out, "but yet I give myself permission to feel miserable from time to time... And now is the day!" he gestured with his hand, in which he held the bourbon bottle, spilling a little on the table.

"Okay, I'll take this," Eskel grabbed the bottle from him as Jaskier plopped back onto the sofa.

"How do you know who's your friend?" Jaskier asked, his gaze focused on the ceiling as if he was trying to find an answer there. "People hug me and kiss me and invite themselves into... Into my life and then what? They want free stuff, they want contacts with my famous friends, they want..." He stopped and looked over at Eskel, his blue eyes sad and pleading, as if he waited for Eskel to give him a solution.

"Look for those who stick around when the lights go out, when the party's over... For-for those who ask you how you feel and not what you can give to them." He felt the hotness of embarrassment creep up his neck, his ears turning red. He was talking about himself and he only gave himself permission to do so because Jaskier was drunk and wouldn't remember it the next day.

"That's... wise," Jaskier nodded and reached out with his hand to pat Eskel's cheek. Then his eyes narrowed as if he was trying to remember something important. "You never asked me for anything."

Eskel cleared his throat, and turned his face away from Jaskier, to hide his unease. "I'm... I'm fine. I'm happy with my job."

"Yeah? What do you do for a living?" Jaskier asked.

That caused Eskel to chuckle, and Jaskier followed with his pearly laugh, although he didn't know what was going on, and in a moment they were both laughing loudly and snickering like children. Jaskier patted Eskel's knee several times before leaning back onto the sofa.

"Jaskier, I work for you. I drive you around, remember?" Eskel said, wiping tears of mirth from the corner of his eye.

"Right." Jaskier nodded. "I hope I pay you well."

"You're a good boss," Eskel smiled. They locked eyes for a long moment, not saying anything. Jaskier licked his lips subconsciously and Eskel had to look away, the sight causing a warm feeling to coil in his stomach. "Alright, boss, time to get you to bed," he cleared his throat. "I'll crash on the couch if you don't mind, can't really drive now."

"Oh no no, no sleepin' on couches in my house! I have guest rooms for guests!" Jaskier stood up abruptly, too quickly for the drunken state he was in. His foot kicked the table leg and he wobbled a little, losing his balance.

He landed in Eskel's lap, Eskel instinctively putting a protective arm over him to save him from falling over and onto his back. Jaskier grabbed Eskel's shoulder for balance and suddenly their faces were incredibly close. So close Eskel could smell Jaskier's cologne, now suppressed by the tangy scent of bourbon. He was so close that Eskel could see those tiny crows feet forming at the corners of Jaskier's eyes, he could notice his flared nostrils and the wet shimmer on his lips. He swallowed audibly.

"Whoo, that was close. Thank-... Thank you," Jaskier laughed lightly and squeezed his shoulder. In a silent reply, Eskel caressed Jaskier's back gently, so delicately as if he didn't want Jaskier to feel it. But apparently Jaskier did, because he leaned forward and pressed a soft butterfly kiss to Eskel's lips. He pulled away and looked Eskel deep in the eyes, while undoing his tie. "Could you... Can you, just for tonight, forget that I'm your boss?" he asked quietly.

Eskel looked at him wide eyed, frozen in place and unable to speak. But when Jaskier gave his tie one last slight tug, he was lost. He's been waiting for that little sign, for a nod of permission, and as soon as he got it, he launched forward, pushing Jaskier off his knees and pressing him down onto the sofa with his weight.

He kissed him, reluctantly at first, but when Jaskier let out the first quiet whimper of pleasure, Eskel was all lost on him. He pressed his lips to Jaskier's, with his eyes closed, trying to put into that kiss all that yearning and longing he'd felt for Jaskier for months.

Jaskier was under him, sighing and panting, arching into Eskel’s touch. Responding to every kiss with passion. Eskel moaned into Jaskier's mouth as his hands roamed under his already open shirt, caressing the soft skin on Jaskier's sides, skimming over his chest hair and slightly tugging at the multiple necklaces on his neck.

Jaskier sat up and fumbled with the buttons on Eskel's shirt, his now clumsy fingers too uncoordinated to undo them. He tugged desperately at the shirt, causing two buttons to pop off and fall to the floor. They both looked at them, Jaskier with a hint of embarrassment, Eskel amazed with Jaskier's strength. Jaskier pulled at Eskel's shirt and dragged him into another heated kiss. "Off! Just take that shirt off," he demanded between kisses.

As he stripped off of his shirt, Eskel noticed how Jaskier's eyes glistened and how he licked his lips lusciously, before launching himself at Eskel. He peppered his face, neck and chest with kisses, murmuring "You're beautiful" and "I love you so much" between kisses, making Eskel writhe with pleasure and whine with emotions, because he so wanted Jaskier to mean it.

"Can I take you to the bedroom?" Jaskier asked while tugging at the waistband of Eskel's slacks. "God, why is the belt so complicated?" He threw his hands up losing his balance and landing on the floor. Eskel reached out to help him up, only to be dragged down to the floor right next to Jaskier.

"Okay, bedroom it is," he laughed into Jaskier's mouth, who already managed to slot their lips in another heated kiss.

****

Eskel woke up with his head feeling very heavy, his mouth dry as if he'd eaten sand. He sat up, rubbing at his eyes, taking in the situation. He was naked, with only the bedsheets tangled around his legs. Jaskier was sleeping next to him, lying on his stomach, one hand draped comfortably around Eskel's waist. He was equally naked, his perky ass sticking out from under the covers.

Eskel watched him mesmerized, noticed how beautifully lean and supple Jaskier's body was, he watched how he moved slightly with every breath... And then tiny bits of memories of last night hit him like a wave. He remembered the passionate kisses Jaskier showered him with, how unbelievably soft and pliant Jaskier's body was under his touch, he recalled the weight of Jaskier's cock on his tongue and how wonderfully he moaned Eskel's name with his hand tangled in Eskel's hair...

One part of him wanted to leave before Jaskier would wake up, spare him the awkwardness of a morning after. They never planned on something like that, after all they were boss and employee, they just let alcohol get the best of them. The other part of Eskel wanted to stay, to savour the moment of absolute intimacy and vulnerability between them. That other part wanted all this drunken mishap to turn into something more than just a one night stand.

Then Jaskier stirred next to him, waking up, pulled himself closer to Eskel's chest and murmured a soft "Good morning." He sat up, dragging one hand through his disheveled hair, taking in the sight of their naked bodies. "So... I guess last night ended up better than expected?" He shot Eskel an embarrassed smile. "Did we... You know. Go all the way?"

"I honestly don't know," Eskel admitted sheepishly, pulling the bedsheets up to cover the both of them. "Are you okay, Jaskier? You didn't go easy on the bourbon last night."

"I'm fine," Jaskier waved him off, but his eyes narrowed and he worried his lower lip and Eskel knew he was trying to recall what happened last night. "I hope I didn't take advantage of you?"

"Everything I did, I did because I wanted to," Eskel said firmly, though he felt the hotness on his cheeks and ears at the memory of their naked bodies tangled together and Jaskier moaning so sweetly into his ear.

"Yeah?" Jaskier scooted even closer to him under the bedsheets. "Care to remind me what did you actually do?"

Eskel exhaled deeply, feeling Jaskier's hot breath on his neck, making his own skin feel too tight. The memory of Jaskier's body arched beautifully under Eskel's touch flashed before his eyes, and he cleared his throat. "I'm... I'm pretty sure I sucked you off."

"Oh." Jaskier's face was painted with astonishment, but only for a moment. In the next he was already straddling Eskel's lap, braiding his fingers in his dark hair, looking him deep in the eye. "I think it's only fair if I return the favour now?"

Before Jaskier moved down on him, Eskel grabbed his hands and made Jaskier face him. "Listen..." he started, mouth extremely dry, more of nervousness than hangover. "You said some very weighty things to me yesterday, that I really wished were true... But I know this could be just the alcohol's doing." He huffed, pressing his eyes shut. "If it's not what you meant, or how you feel about me, I'd rather leave now."

Jaskier sighed, deeply, but he didn't lower his gaze. He intertwined their fingers and placed a kiss on the top of Eskel's palm. "I remember one thing vividly from last night," he said. "And that is feeling loved and wanting to give as much love as possible back." He kissed the fingers on Eskel's hand. "If you felt the same, I'd rather you stayed. Forever, if possible?"

------

@witcher-rarepair-summer-bingo

#witcher rarepair summer bingo #eskel x jaskier #jaskel #eskel/jaskier #it was supposed to be a lighthearted fic about drunken shenanigans #what went wrong idek #hope you're ready for the FEELS #the pining and yearning #and pining #and yearning #and drunk jaskier

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dunkindestieldonuts · 4 years ago

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The Beach Episode

6200 words, rated T (read on ao3) The Winchesters go on a beach vacation in southern California. (Wrote this a while ago but now that it’s finally summer beach weather, I thought I’d post it here too!)

Part I: Dean

Dean loves the beach.

Well, the idea of it anyway, seeing as this was his first time actually going for a vacation. He’d seen it enough in movies and on television to paint what he thought was a pretty accurate picture, though.

The long drive from Kansas to California had ended late that morning. Dean drove with the windows down once the highway ended, waiting for the telltale smell of salt on the air.

When the sea breeze finally hit his nose, he breathed in delightedly. They were still probably a few minutes away from seeing the sand but he was already itching to stretch his legs.

The road was straight for a while, but when it bent around a cluster of low hills…there it was. The ocean.

The sight of so much water took his breath away. The only thing his mind could relate it to was the seemingly never-ending plains of Nebraska, which were a total bitch to drive through. But instead of “HELL IS REAL” signs or dilapidated iron sheds to break up the vast expanse, there were sailboats and red-lined oil barges.

He turned left when the road ended at a bluff, but he kept looking at the water out the window, trying to spot paddleboarders around Sam in the passenger seat.

“Dean,” Sam said, “the road. We’re almost there.” He indicated the beach they’d chosen on the map of southern California spread out on his lap.

When they’d discussed where to go back at the bunker, Dean had insisted on the west coast. He wanted to watch the sunset with his family. To start their week-long vacation, they’d chosen a smaller beach, away from big crowds and attractions (although Eileen did want to try her hand at carnival games at some point during their stay).

They packed all the essential gear: blankets, beach chairs, picnic baskets, beach umbrellas, beach balls and baseball mitts, and a plethora of colorful sandcastle-building equipment that Jack helped pick out. Dean even bought matching Hawaiian shirts for himself and Cas at the first kitschy tourist shop he could find in the Golden State (his was covered in California landmarks and Cas’ was all about the Pacific Coast Highway).

He was looking forward to so many things, like the feel of the sand between his toes, the taste of salt on his lips. He was also very excited to get a piña colada or something similar. With a little umbrella, of course.

Dean probably pulled into the parking lot a little too quickly, judging by the look a surfer sitting in the back of a pickup gave him. He made sure to park far away from the guy.

The first thing he did when he got out of the car was change his shoes, throwing his boots into the trunk and grabbing some flip flops. He fed the meter an entire roll of quarters before helping everyone gather their things.

When they got everything out of the Impala, he rushed down the stairs of the lot, barely containing his excitement. Then someone grabbed the back of his shirt, stopping him from being run over by three bicyclists. He looked down to see a paved two-way bike lane between him and the sand.

“Thanks,” he said over his shoulder. Cas rolled his eyes good-naturedly.

They found a spot away from most of the other people and set up camp. Once the blankets were laid out and the umbrellas stuck in the sand, Dean surveyed their surroundings. He spotted a small building with the words “Surf Food Stand” painted on a surfboard above a serving window, and realized it was in fact lunchtime.

The building and its seating were directly on the sand. They sold food like hot dogs and smoothies, and rented various beach equipment. Dean immediately wanted to rent a surfboard. Sam told him it was a stupid idea, Dean didn’t even know how to surf, he was definitely going to hurt himself!

But it was a word from Cas that finally stopped him from going through with it. He reminded Dean they were staying for the week, and convinced him to sign up for surf lessons the next day. Cas even signed up with him.

They ordered food (Cas even let Jack get two smoothies when his son couldn’t decide between banana and mango) and took it back to their spot. There weren’t any tiny umbrellas, but it was all delicious.

☼ ☼ ☼

Dean sits cross-legged on their blanket with Cas behind him, rubbing sunscreen into his back. Cas has beautiful, broad hands, and Dean appreciates whenever they’re on him. And when Cas starts digging his thumbs into the knots just under the back of Dean’s neck, Dean makes a noise that has Sam looking over in disgust.

“Dude.”

“What? I’ve been driving for hours, I deserve a massage.”

Cas laughs behind him, placing a kiss on the back of Dean’s head. He stops the massage but continues with the sunscreen. He takes extra care to add multiple layers to Dean’s left shoulder.

This would be the first time since he got it that his new handprint tattoo would be out in the sun. He swore it was completely healed - this wasn’t his first tattoo after all - but Cas insisted that Dean still moisturize it daily (it was less of a pain than it sounded, since he could usually convince Cas to do it for him which often led to other fun activities).

When Cas is done he leans forward, putting his arms around Dean’s middle. He rests his chin on Dean’s shoulder. “Done.”

“Thank you.”

Dean leans back into him. He’s so comfortable in Cas’ arms now, like he belongs there. The physical aspect of their relationship was intimidating for Dean at first, but it was something Castiel wanted so he made the effort. The angel deserved to be shown affection in every way possible, deserved to be as happy as he made Dean.

It worked out well - Dean realized early on in the process that it was something he wanted, too. Something he’d been denying himself for a long time.

Really, it was just an extension of how they’d been before: the lingering gazes now ended in pecks on the cheek, the shoulder touching moved down the arm to hand holding.

The way they fit together made Dean sometimes wonder if they were made for each other, if they were always meant to be together. Something unbearably poetic or romantic like that. But then he thinks no, nothing about this is destiny or fate or someone’s grand design. They’d fought against that. Defeated it.

No, this was choice.

It’s all choice, which Dean believes makes what they choose from now on even better. He chose Cas. And Cas chose him, too.

Which is, wow, by the way. Cas is older than the beach they’re sitting on, had seen more in his existence than Dean could ever even begin comprehend…and yet the one thing he wants in all the universe is Dean. Dean couldn’t fully believe it for the longest time. He couldn’t believe it when Cas had first said the words. Wouldn’t believe it, until Cas explained that yes, he meant love love.

At some point Cas had practically begged him to stop asking questions riddled with self-doubt. Things like “You sure? Me? Really?” were always met with the same answer, sweet and sincere: “I’m sure. You. Really.” Then Cas would kiss his forehead, or hold his hand, or let him have the last chocolate chip cookie, and he’d know it was true.

Cas was also helping Dean see himself the way Cas saw him, the way all the people who love him saw him. Dean is a good man. He’d done so much for the world, so much for the people he cared about. And he does deserve nice things.

Nice things like someone who loves him unconditionally and without reserve. Nice things like seeing his brother finally escape the life and settle down with an awesome woman. Nice things like having a son to take care of.

And, maybe, nice things like getting to hang out on the beach with his family without having to stop the world from ending.

He turns his head to kiss Cas on the cheek before getting up to stand in front of everyone.

“Who wants to play pickle?” he asks, rubbing his hands together excitedly.

Eileen raises her hand. “Me!”

Dean grabs the baseball mitts and tosses one to her. “Sam? Jack? Cas?”

Jack jumps up with Cas close behind, but Sam shakes his head.

“Uh-uh, we’re ALL playing,” Dean says as he grabs Sam’s arm.

His brother rolls his eyes but he gets up. “What’s the point of asking ‘who wants to play’ if you’re just going to make us play?” Sam teases. Dean swats his arm.

He explains the rules to Jack and Cas as Eileen sets up the bases by making mounds of sand.

They don’t keep score while they play. Dean and Eileen let Jack be “safe” when they definitely could have tagged him out, the same mercy absent when Sam gets near them. Dean swears Cas kissed him just to distract him while Sam and Jack ran at least once, but Cas won’t admit to it.

Part II: Castiel

Castiel loves the ocean.

Unlike Dean, he had been many times. But he wasn’t going to brag about it. Most of that time had been spent in quiet observation rather than in volleyball tournaments anyway, so he doubted Dean wanted to hear about it.

Dean once told him in passing that people born near the ocean, in the fresh sea air, were healthier. He’d talked about the pull some experienced - people born near water often come back to it, almost always ended up living near it. Castiel could understand why.

Humans that lived around it always had gods for the sea. Often, the sea god was among the more important in the pantheon. Abzu of Mesopotamia was the father of all the other gods. Poseidon was one of the big three in Greece. In some cultures the sea was ruled by a multitude of deities.

The respect people had for the ocean was well-deserved. The fear, as well. It was one of the most dangerous natural forces. But humans were always trying to push the boundaries of their capabilities. They’d gone to space, after all.

Castiel found it interesting that humanity was able to travel through space better than through Earth’s oceans, that more people had been on the moon than had seen the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

He sometimes thought about the more philosophical reasons why they turned their eyes upward rather than down. When he started to spend more time around humans, he started to develop some hypotheses. Maybe humans want to look to the future, and the past is in the ocean. Life started there. Maybe they didn’t want to face Creation, but wanted to Create.

Of course, the simpler answer was that deep sea vessels were required to be approximately 1100 times stronger than spacecraft in order to withstand the pressure. But humans had almost always been more interested in the sky than the sea. There was more funding for space, more media regarding it.

And Castiel did love those stories as well. The stories humans told about space were often filled with hope, while the ocean was filled with monsters (to be fair, the Leviathan had come from the sea, and they were certainly monstrous). Most ocean tales were set on the surface anyway.

But the surface was fascinating, too. It’s near the surface where the most colorful fish in the Great Barrier Reef live: bright yellow butterfly fish, striking turquoise and orange parrotfish, beautifully striped angelfish. It’s at the surface where bottlenose dolphins and humpback whales play, where Portuguese men o’ war float to sting unsuspecting plankton.

He could watch the sea for eons. Had done so, in fact. During the beginning, most of the angels watched humanity. Castiel had often turned his eyes to nature, to the flora and fauna of the Earth. That in turn pointed his gaze to the sea, seeing as how more than three quarters of life on the planet was to be found under the waves (the vast majority even now as yet unidentified by human science).

Some of Earth’s oldest creatures resided still under the rollicking waves of the sea. Most sharks and the lobe-finned coelacanth had hardly changed in the millions of years they’d existed. Castiel knew, because he had watched.

He watched as life arose from the simple organic compounds found in the depths. He watched the first fish climb onto land. He watched as God flooded the world, as Moses parted the Red Sea. He watched humanity’s exploration, as well: Polynesian way finders discovering the tiniest of islands in the Pacific, the mad race to the South Pole that spanned the first few years of the 20th century, the first submarines.

☼ ☼ ☼

Castiel continues his watching today. He sits on a blanket watching Sam and Eileen help Jack make a sand castle, the shape oddly reminiscent of the Tower of Babel. He turns to tell Dean this, but Dean is lying down next to him under the shade of the umbrella, eyes closed under his sunglasses and hands folded behind his head.

Castiel takes the opportunity to let his eyes travel over Dean’s body, admiring the splattering of freckles across his chest. He lingers over Dean’s middle, which has gotten a bit squishy in their time being retired, which Castiel loves. It showed him that Dean was safe and healthy, eating more than he would if he was stressed or on endless hunts. He almost reaches out to poke Dean in the side, but he resists.

When his gaze reaches Dean’s face once again, he’s met with a pleased expression. Dean opens his eyes and smirks, lowering the sunglasses onto his nose.

“I can feel you starin’ at me.”

Castiel smiles down at him. “My apologies. Were you asleep?”

“Well, I’m up now.”

Dean sits up, puts his arms around Castiel, tucks his chin onto his shoulder, rubs his cheek against Castiel’s ear.

Castiel revels in the touch. It had taken Dean a while to be comfortable showing this level of affection, and another while before he was okay showing affection in public. Cas was patient with him, of course. The rewards were well worth it.

Sometimes Castiel got the urge to go overboard, to grab Dean’s face in the supermarket and kiss him till they both can’t breathe, to tell everybody and anybody who would listen at the bus stop that the man that he loves loves him back.

But right now he’s happy with a solid arm around his shoulders. He hums contentedly.

Dean shifts next to him. “Cas?”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

Dean sighs heavily. His hands flex once, then he moves closer to Castiel, settling his body more fully against the angel’s.

“Does part of you hate me for taking this long?”

“No. No, Dean,” Castiel says without skipping a beat. “No part of me could ever hate you. Sometimes I lament the missed opportunities, and yet…even if we weren’t at this stage,” he pats Dean’s arm, “I could tell you loved me, in your own way. Although I thought that ‘way’ was different from mine. But it was enough for me then. I do very much like this, though.”

Dean is quiet for a moment. Castiel swears he can hear the montage of memories going through Dean’s brain. Maybe he’s thinking of all the times he could have told Cas how he felt, all the scenes that would have been different had they been together sooner. All the times he could have said “I love you.”

Castiel knows he’s done the same - gone back and played a scene out differently with only the tiniest of changes. Another sigh from his side makes him rest his head against Dean’s.

“Sometimes I hate myself for it,” Dean says quietly, barely audible over the crash of waves and squawk of seagulls.

“Don’t. Please.”

“I wanna make it up to you somehow.”

Castiel turns to kiss Dean’s temple. “You don’t have to,” he says into his hair.

“Yeah, but I’m gonna.”

“Hmm,” Castiel hums in thought. He looks out to the waves and watches them wash over the shore. The water looks beautiful and, Castiel thinks, inviting. “You could start by going into the water with me?”

He can almost feel the weight lift from Dean’s shoulders. “You got it, sunshine.”

Dean jumps up with newfound purpose and grabs both Cas’ hands to haul him up, dragging him towards the surf. When they pass the others, Sam looks up with a smile.

“We’re going swimming,” Castiel says enthusiastically, letting go of one of Dean’s hands to sign as much to Eileen when he sees her look up at them.

Sam jerks his head, confused. “Do you know how?”

“I don’t think so!” Cas says, smiling.

“Dean!”

“He’ll be fine!” Dean shouts over his shoulder.

They run together the rest of the way, chasing a wave as it recedes. Dean lets go of Castiel’s hand when his feet hit the water.

“Fuck, that’s cold!”

“Yes, the south-moving current off the coast here brings the cold water from Alaska,” Castiel says as he steps in. He shivers and continues. “Plus upwelling brings the deep ocean water towards the surface.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dean says over his shoulder as he goes deeper.

“Indeed.”

Castiel follows him further. He stops when the water reaches his Enochian tattoo, and Dean wades back towards him.

Dean dives under a wave while Castiel hops up to float over it. He tries to spot Dean under the foam, but isn’t able to. Then he feels hands on his hips, and Dean pops up right in front of his face.

“Hey,” Dean says, smirking. Castiel wraps his arms around Dean’s neck.

“Hello.” He smiles before Dean kisses him. Another wave interrupts them.

Part III: Dean and Castiel

Later in the afternoon, Sam and Eileen relax on the beach chairs while Jack digs a hole big enough to stand in. Dean helped Jack dig most of it, but when his knees started to ache from the awkward angle he’d left the rest to the kid.

Now he stands with Cas at the water’s edge, their bare shoulders touching, shirts tucked into the back pockets of their swimsuits. Dean knows Cas could stand still for hours, days even, but he’s getting restless. He looks to the south and spots a small pier about a mile away.

“Walk with me?” Dean asks Cas. He holds his hand out. Cas grabs it with a smile, intertwining their fingers. With a wave at the rest of their family, they go off together.

They walk along the edge of the water, letting the sea wash away their footprints. Dean lets go of Cas’ hand only to run in front of him and splash him with a kick as a big wave comes around their feet. Cas kicks back, but Dean’s already out of range. He makes a pouty face and Dean returns to his side to plant a kiss on his cheek. The next time it’s Cas who gets the upper hand.

Further along, they walk through a flock of birds. They’re not seagulls, so Dean doesn’t recognize them. He asks Cas if he knows what they’re called, and yes, he does. The small gray and white ones with black beaks are sanderlings, specifically Calidris alba. There’s a few larger, longer-beaked marbled godwits, Limosa fedoa, mixed in as well.

“Do you know all the names for things?” Dean asks.

“I know most, yes.”

“That’s awesome, man,” Dean says sincerely.

He watches the sanderlings run back and forth, making it look as though they’re playing tag with the waves. Dean bends to pick up a small shell, no bigger than the fingernail of his thumb. He examines the alternating bands of oranges and white that mark its surface before offering it to Cas.

“I never really learned about this kinda stuff. Honestly I don’t know much about the natural world, y’know? Too focused on the supernatural.”

Cas nods, taking the shell and holding it up. “I could teach you some of it. Gould beanclam, Donax gouldii,” he says.

“Ah, I’m not smart enough to remember it.”

Cas stops walking, turning to fully face Dean with a serious look. “Don’t discredit yourself, Dean. You’re very smart. You didn’t have much of a formal education yet you still know so much. I would even rate the practical, useful knowledge you have over my list of factoids, because why would you ever need to know that scallops have up to 200 eyes unless you’re trying to impress someone with fun facts?”

Dean breathes out a laugh, just a sharp exhale through his nose. He turns to keep walking, using his elbow to nudge Cas along. To anyone else he would seem dismissive, but Cas can tell Dean appreciated what he’d said. He pockets the shell, thinking about where to put it in their room when they get back home.

“Guess so,” Dean says. “And I don’t hafta impress anyone anymore.” He grabs Castiel’s hand again. “You’re already impressed with me, right?”

“Of course, dear, you’re highly impressive,” Cas says just a little sarcastically. Dean squeezes.

“Hell yeah, I am.”

They walk in comfortable silence, watching the birds and the people.

Cas has to jump out of the way of a kid on a purple boogie board. Dean throws a foam football back to a group of players. Cas wonders if he should have brought a bottle of sunscreen so he could reapply it to Dean. Dean enjoys the heat on his back.

After about forty minutes, they reach the pier. They walk down it, avoiding skateboarders and glancing into fishermen’s buckets. Castiel comments on the interesting pale turquoise color of the railing as they lean over it to watch the surfers below.

To Dean’s delight, there is a small aquarium at the end of the pier. They put their shirts on and step inside.

A teenage girl in a blue vest greets them, offering to tell them about the cast of a seal skull she has in front of her. Dean listens receptively, glancing at Cas a few times to confirm if her facts are accurate. He nods each time.

They walk around the small space, sidestepping kids and appreciating the variety of creatures on display.

“You got a favorite fish?” Dean asks Castiel when they reach the kelp forest tank.

“Angelfish,” Cas says immediately.

Dean glares at him. “Wow. You couldn’t even say that with a straight face.”

Cas smiles, proud of his joke. He shrugs, turning back to the tank. “In sincerity, I don’t know if I could decide.” He leans towards the glass, following a Sheephead as it swims in front of the kelp. “They’re all charming in their own ways.”

Dean is uncharacteristically quiet in response, so Cas turns to him. There’s so much unrepressed love on Dean’s face that Cas almost asks him if something is wrong. But then Dean’s smirking at him, trademark confidence on his features.

“YOU’RE charming in your own ways,” he says, quirking an eyebrow.

Cas laughs. “Thank you, Dean.”

Before they head back, Dean leads Cas under the pier.

The sand is cooler and the waves are louder, echoing against the concrete above their heads. Dean leans against a pillar and pulls at Cas’ shirt. Dean goes to kiss him but is stopped by Cas bopping him on the nose with two fingers. He scrunches it in confusion, then he feels the heat bleed out of his face.

“You were getting sunburnt,” Cas says in explanation before kissing him.

Dean worries for a split second if anyone saw Cas heal him, but then Cas’ tongue is in his mouth and he can’t think anymore. Dean loses himself to the feeling of Cas against him for a minute, until some kids shouting nearby reminds him they’re surrounded by people. He pulls back and Cas follows the motion, trying to capture his lips again, but Dean stops him.

“Hey, uh, maybe we should keep it PG, yeah?”

Cas is still staring at his mouth, which makes Dean almost up it to PG-13, but then he flicks his eyes up to Dean’s. “Ah. This is not because you’re embarrassed to be seen with me?”

“No, no, I just don’t want some punk teenager yelling at us to get a room, y’know?”

“We could simply tell them we do have a room.” He keeps his hands steady on Dean’s hips.

Dean laughs. “Yeah, with my brother, his girl, and our son in it, so that’s not - nevermind, I’ll explain later.” He kisses Cas once, quick, then maneuvers himself out from in between Cas and the pillar. “C’mon, let’s walk back.”

On the way, Dean gets an idea.

“So, do you wanna come back here with me later tonight? We could watch the stars, just the two of us.”

“The moon is going to be almost full tonight, we wouldn’t see many stars.”

“Then we could do…something else.”

Cas quirks one eyebrow up in question. “What could we do?”

Dean does a double take, mischievous smile turning into a fond one when he realizes Cas doesn’t understand what he’s implying.

“Ah, you’ll see.”

They return to Jack and Sam hitting a beach ball back and forth, Eileen reading under the umbrellas. Dean runs up to steal the ball and sprints away with it, Sam on his heels. Cas joins Eileen.

“How is the book?” he signs.

“I’m almost halfway done and I still don’t know if I like the protagonist.”

Cas is about to ask if she thinks that was intentional on the author’s part when he hears Dean shout. He looks over just in time to see Sam catch up to his brother and tackle him into the water. Eileen giggles at the way Sam shakes his hair when they surface.

The beach ball rides a wave back to shore where Jack picks it up. He takes it to the blanket and places it next to Cas.

“Can I go swimming, Dad?” he asks.

“Did you reapply sunscreen while I was gone?”

“Yes.”

Cas turns to Eileen for confirmation. She nods.

“Okay.”

Jack smiles at him and Cas feels wonderful. Happy. So very happy. Eileen is smiling too, probably feeling something similar.

They watch as Jack skips down the sand to join the brothers. He runs into Dean’s arms, and Dean swings him around before throwing him into the water. He pops up a second later, laughing. Sam starts a splash war, and Cas and Eileen return to their literary conversation.

☼ ☼ ☼

Soon after they have a second round of hot dogs and burgers from the Surf Food Stand, it’s sunset.

Jack asks why the sky changes colors like that. Cas gives an incredibly detailed and scientific explanation, discussing the bending of light at different wavelengths through the atmosphere. Dean watches them fondly. He turns an equally fond look to Sam and Eileen, silently signing to each other. She’s sitting in Sam’s lap on the beach chair.

Dean sighs serenely, turning to watch the streaks of orange light dance on the water.

They pack up the Impala before it gets too dark. Once they’ve put everything away, they take a moment in the changing room near the parking lot to put on warmer clothes (and, by Dean’s instruction, to get all the sand off so none gets in Baby).

Already having changed into the dark gray hoodie and matching sweatpants Dean bought for him, Castiel takes the time to walk back down the sand to look out over the ocean.

He stands at the edge of the water, just far enough so the waves don’t reach his feet. He sees Venus shining in its place low in the sky. His tracks a few airplanes as they start their journey west over the Pacific.

Then Dean is standing next to him. Castiel looks over to see Dean looking out over the horizon. He admires Dean’s profile, appreciates how the blue light of just-after-sunset softens his features, how it makes his eyes look bluer than usual. He’s back in his usual jeans, with a dark blue hoodie on top.

“We’re ready to go,” Dean says after a moment.

“Okay.”

But neither of them move. They stand there together, silently listening to the steady roar of the waves. The breeze off the water stirs the hair on Cas’ forehead.

“You gonna tell me about it someday?” Dean asks.

“About what?”

“Y’know. All the time you were around before humanity.”

“That would take far too long.”

Dean makes a noise of agreement. “Then the highlights? Tell me what dinosaurs looked like, at least.”

He puts his arm around Castiel and turns him towards the car. He leaves his arm there as they walk across the sand, still warm despite the lack of sunlight. Cas lifts his hand to hold Dean’s where it rests on his shoulder.

“That would take the fun out of museum visits, wouldn’t it?” Cas says. “Me pointing out all the inaccuracies?”

Dean laughs. “Nah, that sounds like a blast.”

☼ ☼ ☼

The hotel room is small, but it has everything they need. Two queen beds take up most of the room, but there’s a coffee table with a small two-person sofa at the foot of one, as well as a small desk with one office chair. They had forgone fancier accommodations in order to be as close as possible to the beach. They were lucky they even found one room in this place, most hotels were already booked up. It was summer, after all.

Dean pulls a pack of cards out of his bag and slaps it down on the coffee table. He drags the chair over to the table for Cas and sits with Sam on the floor in front of the table, Jack and Eileen taking the sofa.

Dean argues for poker but Eileen talks him out of it, citing that the hunters would probably have an unfair advantage against Cas and Jack. They settle on a few rounds of blackjack without betting, despite Dean trying to get some started using the various snacks they’d brought with them (if some snacks are handed over wordlessly between the brothers as they play, no one comments on it).

When it’s time for bed, Jack goes to take his usual place in between Dean and Cas, but they persuade him to go for the other bed. They’re going for a night walk and don’t want to disturb him when they return. Jack just as happily settles in between Sam and Eileen, and Dean promises they won’t be long.

It’s a short few blocks from the hotel back to the beach. When they reach the sand, Cas glances at the empty lifeguard tower. “Is this allowed?”

Dean shrugs, a blanket rolled up under his arm. “Probably not, but who cares? It’s a pretty small beach, dude, no one’s gonna come check.”

Cas smiles conspiratorially, taking delight in this little rule breaking. “Okay.”

The light from the moon illuminates the beach so they have an easy time finding their way. It glints off the foam of the waves. The sand is cool under their feet.

Dean walks to where the sand starts to slope down to the water, so if they sit they won’t be seen from the sidewalk. He lays the blanket down and lies back on it.

“C’mere,” he says, opening his arms up and making a beckoning motion with his hands towards where Cas stands.

Castiel knows what he’s implying this time. He sinks down, knees on either side of Dean’s hips. He steadies himself on one elbow next to Dean’s head, the other resting softly on Dean’s chest. Dean reaches up to grab the back of his neck to bring him the rest of the way down.

Dean loves when Cas kisses him. It makes him feel loved, and it reminds him that he’s worth that love, too. And Castiel loves when Dean kisses him, too, of course. It floods him with relief because it shows him Dean feels the same way he does, because for so long he’d thought that wasn’t true. But it is. They love each other.

This particular kiss is deep, slow, filled with a heat it couldn’t have been with other people around to bear witness. It’s like the ones they save for totally private moments, when Jack is away at Sam and Eileen’s, when there are no wayward hunters taking refuge in the bunker with them, snacking on Dean’s baked goods (he was getting really good - they’d even had people stop by just for his cinnamon rolls).

With nothing but the moonlight and the crash of the waves around them, Dean lets himself be loudly enthusiastic, moaning and making breathy noises into Cas’ mouth. His hands roam up and down Cas’ sides, his fingers rake down Cas’ back. He’s probably exaggerating with the noise a bit, but Cas doesn’t seem to mind.

In fact, he takes it as his cue to go a little further. He runs his fingers under the hem of Dean’s shirt and hoodie, pushing them up so he can explore Dean’s torso with one hand.

Castiel’s hand is surprisingly warm against Dean’s skin. When it reaches his chest, Cas rolls a nipple in between his fingers, the way he knows Dean likes. Dean arches off the blanket into the touch, breaking their kiss to gasp and bite his lower lip. When he opens his eyes, Cas is looking down at him, very pleased with himself.

“Yes, you know how to turn me on. You don’t have to look so smug about it,” Dean says, slightly embarrassed under Cas’ gaze.

“Hmm,” Cas hums before pinching a little harder.

“Ah…”

“I’ve been wanting to touch you like this all day. When appropriate, of course.”

“Is that right?” Dean tries for cockiness, but he’s too breathless to pull it off.

Then Cas is on his neck, leaving sloppy open-mouthed kisses from his ear to where the hood of his sweatshirt covers his collarbone. Dean grabs a fistful of Cas’ hair just to have something to hold onto.

“Uh huh,” Castiel breathes into his neck. The feeling against his spit-slick skin makes Dean shiver.

Dean’s hips jerk up involuntarily, Castiel a solid weight on top of him. He almost whines, almost, when Cas pulls his hoodie back down over his stomach. But Castiel puts his mouth back on Dean’s and he forgives him. Then Cas starts moaning and moving his hips, and Dean isn’t exaggerating anymore.

When Cas moves to unbutton Dean’s jeans, he grabs Cas’ wrist.

“Okay, actually, hold on Cas,” he giggles. “We’re gonna have to slow down because we cannot have sex on the beach.”

“Why not? I thought that was the purpose of being here now.”

“Trust me, there are certain places you don’t want sand.”

“Hmmph.” Cas smushes his face into Dean’s chest and lets his whole weight fall on Dean, his arms splayed out on either side of them. “You’re probably right,” he murmurs into Dean’s sweatshirt.

Dean laughs, which jostles Cas’ head. “I know I’m right.” He gets one hand under Cas’ chin and lifts his head up to look into his eyes. “You should keep kissing me, though.”

Castiel smiles. “Okay.”

“And believe me, I’m flattered that you want me right here right now but - mmph!” Dean’s cut off by Cas covering his mouth with his own.

Dean was right about no one checking the beach. They aren’t interrupted.

After a while longer, Dean’s flip flop clad feet feel like they’re going to freeze off and Castiel realizes the late hour when he checks the moon’s position in the sky. They head back to the hotel.

They sneak back into the room as quietly as they can, but Cas insists they at least rinse off in the shower before going to sleep. When they emerge in their pajamas, they see Jack looking up at them from his spot in Sam and Eileen’s bed.

“Goodnight,” he whispers sleepily.

“Goodnight,” Dean whispers back. Cas goes over to kiss Jack on the top of his head before joining Dean under the covers.

☼ ☼ ☼

The rest of the week goes as planned. Some highlights:

Cas seems to be a natural at surfing, standing up on the board for almost every wave. Dean’s not as lucky, but he doesn’t hurt himself.

Eileen wins a huge unicorn for Sam at one of the shooting games on the Santa Monica Pier. It barely fits in the Impala.

Castiel spots a striped shore crab in the tide pools of Abalone Cove. It scuttles under a rock when the shadow of his finger passes over it as he points it out to Jack.

Dean finally gets his drink with a tiny umbrella at a very fancy beachside restaurant in Malibu.

#my fanfic #spn fanfic #spn fanfiction #spn #supernatural #Destiel fanfiction #mine #beach day #fanfiction #post-canon fluff #fix-it #dunno if ao3 tags work as well here but hey #happy endings all around #saileen #jack kline #Destiel

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wiseabsol · 4 years ago

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WA Reviews “Dominion” by Aurelia le, Chapter 15: Lost

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6383825/15/Dominion

Summary: For the Fire Nation royal siblings, love has always warred with hate. But neither the outward accomplishment of peace nor Azula’s defeat have brought the respite Zuko expected. Will his sister’s plans answer this, or only destroy them both?

Content Warnings: This story contains discussions and depictions of child abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and incest. This story also explores the idea that Zuko’s redemption arc (and his unlearning of abuse) is not as complete as the show suggested, and that Azula is not a sociopath (with the story having a lot of sympathy for her). If that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, I would strongly recommend steering clear of this story and my reviews of it.

Note: Because these were originally posted as chapter reviews/commentaries, I will often be talking to the author in them (though sometimes I will also snarkily address the characters). While I’ve also tried not to spoil later events in the story in these reviews, I would strongly recommend reading through chapter 28 before reading these, just to be safe.

Now on to chapter 15!

CHAPTER 15: LOST

Alright, I’m a little late on this one, so let’s just dive into the ugly sadness of “Chapter 15: Lost,” shall we?

The A/N mentions that Toph, Suki, and Sokka will be back in five or six chapters, and a part of me can’t help but think, “Good, you three are distracting us from the Surround Sound Stereo Angst for the Royal Fire Family.” Joking aside, I am looking forward to Toph’s character development later on, because even though I know some of what is going to happen in future chapters of “Dominion,” I legitimately don’t think that Aurelia and I have discussed Toph’s arc yet. It’s a blind spot for me, but I’m okay with that, since I want to have some surprises in the wings, rather than just enjoying how X and Y parts are executed. Both ways of reading this story are fun, but the former is more enjoyable for reader in me, rather than the editor.

If the outline mentioned in chapter fifteen is still accurate, then that means that we have seven chapters left of “Dominion” at present, before we move on to “Thrones.” That number might be off, though, because Aurelia tends to be more verbose than she expects and has to split the chapters into multiple parts.

On to the chapter itself. Ty Lee and Mai are meeting in a sitting room. Ty Lee is nervous and Mai wonders if Ty Lee thinks that she’s mad at her, but Ty Lee hastens to reassure her. Mai’s aura indicates that she’s anxious and struggling to maintain control during this conversation. Mai is upset about “Zuko’s mistake,” but she doesn’t blame Ty Lee for it—she knows who to blame (Azula, probably, but maybe both her and Zuko). Mai doesn’t think that it was a bad idea for Zuko to team up with June, because the bounty hunter will track Azula down in short order and have her back in custody.

Ty Lee is not enthused about this idea. Despite knowing that Mai isn’t going to like it, she tells Mai that Azula shouldn’t be put back into the asylum. As trash of a human being as J. K. Rowling is, I can’t help but think of the quote, “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends.” Ty Lee, you are the overlooked and unsung hero of this story. There should be shrines in your honor.

Mai never likes it when Ty Lee brings up Azula, and usually deflects the conversation. Ty Lee also sees Mai less than she sees Azula, so they don’t get much of a chance to talk anyway. “Ty Lee still felt a little guilty about that, but Mai was always so busy, and Mai and Zuko would never even talk about Azula when she was the one who brought them all together in the first place….”

A few things here. Ty Lee and Mai are maybe a little like Ty Lee and Zuko, in that they call each other friends, but it doesn’t seem like anyone is putting in the effort to be friends. Mai could be making more time for Ty Lee. Mai could be trying to empathize with Ty Lee over the Azula issue. At the same time, I think Mai has been trying to set a boundary with Ty Lee about Azula, but either Mai hasn’t made it clear enough to Ty Lee that this is a boundary, or Ty Lee isn’t able to respect it because Azula is so important to her. It seems like there are competing needs at work here, and the feelings on both sides are valid.

At the same time, this situation has been festering for years. It’s clear that Mai has never been at peace with her feelings towards Azula, and that this is hurting her as much as it’s going to hurt Azula. I think Mai’s hatred for Azula is founded on the love she once had for her. While a large part of her might think that Azula deserved her fate, and even found it satisfying to see Azula brought low, there might also be a small part of her that wonders if that fall was partially her fault (it was, since Mai accidentally slammed down on Azula’s triggers), and feels guilty for it and for feeling that satisfaction. Also, from the way she’s been behaving, Mai might very well have been just as toxic and false a friend to Azula as she accuses Azula of being to her. She didn’t communicate her needs or desires to Azula, but instead let herself boil alive with resentment. She might blame Azula for how things went down, but she’s ignoring the role she played in it.

As the conversation continues, Ty Lee dances around why it would be bad to send Azula back to the asylum (because Azula is pregnant), and Mai says, “‘She tell you they abused her? And here I thought it was her dad.’”

Which brings another layer into this. I’m going to discuss this in more detail later, but Mai has now been confronted with the idea that Azula was an abused child—just as abused as Zuko was. And besides this recontextualizing Azula’s behavior, now Mai is left to wonder, “How did I never notice?” I think there’s a tiny part of her, one that she denies, that is appalled over what happened to Azula.

Ty Lee, who loves Azula whole-heartedly, is HORRIFIED by this revelation. She feels like the ground is “rushing up to hit her” and remembers how Ozai treated her, the last night she spent in the castle as a kid. And then she…well: “But Azula was so strong, she wouldn’t let anyone do that to her, would she? At least she would have told Ty Lee, they were best friends!” Oh Ty Lee, honey. That’s not how abuse works. Azula wouldn’t have told anyone, both because she was ordered not to by her abuser, but also because that would have meant being vulnerable around someone else. Does that sound like something Azula would do?

Mai says that Azula must have been lying about the abuse, but the thing is, Azula didn’t tell Mai about it. Zuko did. And even Mai doesn’t really believe it is a lie, if Ty Lee’s aura-reading is accurate. Mai’s just trying really hard to believe in her own lie. Mai argues that Ty Lee only ever sees the good in people—which isn’t true, since Ty Lee can see the flaws in people, but is more forgiving of them than the other characters are (except for Aang). Mai wonders if Ty Lee has convinced herself that there’s goodness in Azula where there is none.

And that’s…a lot. Because there’s a mix of good and bad in everyone. Some people lean more towards one end of the spectrum than the other, but if you look hard enough, you’ll always find something that humanizes even the most saintly or heinous of people. My stepmother, who was emotionally and psychologically abusive, wasn’t pure evil. She made my father happy. She was fiercely protective of those she loved. She made the best oatmeal cookies in the world and shared my passion for sappy romances. I’ve progressed enough in my healing that I can see these things, and see her as a troubled person who made mistakes and never got the help she needed. But Mai…she hasn’t healed the way I have. She hasn’t forgiven Azula. She might never be able to do that, either, given recent events (and she doesn’t have to—that’s her choice to make). And as long as that’s the case, it’s so much easier for her to demonize Azula, because if Azula is a demon, then Mai doesn’t have to grapple with the messy reality of Azula as a person, or grapple with how Ozai’s, Zuko’s, and Mai’s own choices damaged her.

Then we get this passage, which I’m going to quote in full, because it’s a slap in the face to absolutist thinking where Azula is concerned:

“‘I know she did some bad things, some awful things even, but that was four years ago and she was just a kid! We all were!’ [Ty Lee] argued [ . . . ] ‘And most of that stuff she did on her dad’s orders, and who knows what he would’ve done if she refused—’

‘Oh yes, poor helpless little victim,’ Mai interrupted coldly, rising to her feet with more grace than Ty Lee. ‘It’s not like she ever had a choice.’

‘She had a choice, but this stuff makes a difference, Mai!’ Ty Lee insisted, desperate to make her see it. ‘It makes a difference how we judge what she did! And we know now she was crazy!’ Ty Lee seized on the horrible truth with more enthusiasm than she would ever have guessed, spreading her hands to offer explanation. ‘Doesn’t that make a difference to you?’”

Context. Matters. It matters so much when you’re judging someone’s behavior. If someone is under duress, or isn’t fully in their right mind, or if they have no good choices, can we really blame them from making bad ones? And in Azula’s case, she was a child. Should she really have been written off by anyone, let alone our heroes?

Mai doesn’t believe that Azula was mentally ill, though. That was just a part of Azula’s scheme, you see. Ty Lee is rightly appalled by this. “‘Even if—you thought she just made it up—to avoid prison or something,’ she grasped at the logic only loosely, because it was disgusting, ‘you can’t deny what it did to her! She starved herself almost to death, she almost died!’” I really appreciate that Ty Lee is disgusted by Mai’s reasoning here. You go, Ty Lee! Four for you, Ty Lee! You’re the only reasonable person from the Fire Nation in this cast, I swear.

Ty Lee reminds Mai that there were witnesses to Azula’s deteriorating mental state, but realizes that Mai is in denial about this: “Realization leaked through cold and creeping as the egg Ty Lin broke over her head that one time. ‘Or maybe you can deny it,’ she whispered, horrified, and took a swift step back with hands raised before her when Mai lifted her head.” Yeah, I’m fully in agreement with Ty Lee’s horror. She’s looking at a friend who is so twisted up by resentment that she has lost sight of reality, in favor of believing a comfortable lie—namely, that Azula is irredeemable and so Mai doesn’t need to care about what happens to her. Even though Mai does need to care about this, because Zuko and Ty Lee will be gutted if Azula dies, and the Fire Nation will probably go to war over it.

“‘I didn’t see her because she treated me like shit,’ Mai spoke deliberately.” Mai is right that she doesn’t have to have Azula in her life if she doesn’t want Azula there. You don’t have to have anyone in your life who has hurt you. But that isn’t all that’s going on here. Mai is still smoldering with anger four years later, and her inability to let that anger go has been eating her alive. It’s making her lash out at Zuko and Ty Lee when they try to broach the subject of Azula. This isn’t healthy for her or anyone else. This is just a continuation of the behavior that plagued her as a teenager—suppressing all of her negative emotions until they explode outwards, rather than allowing herself to feel them, accept them, learn from them, and move on.

When Mai points out that she doesn’t owe Azula anything, Ty Lee replies that she wouldn’t have met or fallen in love with Zuko if she hadn’t been Azula’s friend. This stings for Mai, given that the siblings have had sex: “‘She gives, and she takes away….’”

Ty Lee, being more perceptive than anyone gives her credit for, figures out that something must have happened. She’s very sympathetic, asking if Mai wants to talk about it. Mai panics and has another angry outburst, thinking that Azula must have told Ty Lee about what Zuko did. “[Ty Lee] was reminded uncannily of how Azula reacted to Mai’s rejection at the Boiling Rock, and found it hard to fathom how Mai hadn’t run for the hills on receiving such a look.” This is interesting, because it suggests that part of the reason why Mai loathes Azula so much is because of the similarities between them. There is nothing more unsettling than seeing a dark mirror of yourself in someone else.

Ty Lee doesn’t know what Mai is talking about, and then kicks herself for revealing that to Mai: “Azula would have known enough to pretend she already knew, so Mai would tell her.” Mai shuts down at this point and tells Captain Tadao to take Ty Lee to her rooms, because they’ve “embarrassed each other enough for one day” and that they’ll talk later.

Ty Lee knows that’s bullshit. “They wouldn’t because Mai never wanted to talk about Azula, and was extra unlikely to want to talk about Azula when she had problems of her own with Zuko.” I’m sure that Mai was reluctant to talk about Azula with Ty Lee because she didn’t think that Ty Lee would let her vent about her anger towards Azula, or understand it and not make excuses for Azula. Which is fair, but Mai should have found someone else to vent to to get the poison out, and then circled back to seeing Azula as a human being who fucked up.

Actually, you know what Mai probably needs? She needs to confront Azula about what happened between them, because she hasn’t seen Azula since the Boiling Rock. Yeah, Mai had a cool line about loving Zuko more than fearing Azula, but that didn’t get into her specific grievances, or allow Azula to address or apologize for them to give Mai closure. And we know that Azula feels bad about what she did, because it was what haunted her the most when she was having her breakdown. If Azula really was a monster, then she wouldn’t feel that remorse.

“Ty Lee felt bad about that, and she wanted to help Mai, she really did”—Ty Lee is too good for this sinful Earth—“but Mai wouldn’t tell her anything, and even though her problems seemed bad, Azula’s could get her killed—” Yeah, the most reasonable one of the bunch, our Ty Lee.

Ty Lee begs Mai to do something to help Azula, because she’ll die if the Earth Kingdom catches her. Ty Lee has this heart-wrenching speech: “‘I know you guys had problems, and—maybe you think she was never your friend [ . . . ] But she thought of you as a friend, Mai, she told me so! She fought so hard to get better, she’s a better person now, and she deserves a second chance! But she’ll never get that chance unless we help her.’” Carve my heart out and eat it, why don’t you?

And Mai…is unmoved by this. And condescending about it. “‘I hoped your actions might prove you were ready to cut ties with her too. But clearly you can’t be trusted to know what’s best for you” She’s referring here to Ty Lee seemingly choosing the Kyoshi Warriors over Azula. But also, it’s gross that Mai assumes that she knows what is best for Ty Lee. Fuck off with that, Mai.

Mai doubles down on the whole, “Azula’s awful, I don’t owe her anything, and don’t come crying to me when she hurts you” schtick. If she’d met the adult version of Azula and seen that version of her hurt someone, such as Ty Lee, then this reaction would make sense. What this is instead is Mai holding onto a grudge that is years old and using it as a weapon. She’s clinging to the idea that Azula can never change…even though that’s not how people work. Especially not people in the formative years of their lives, which they all still qualify as.

Aaaand Ty Lee, panicking now, reveals that Azula is pregnant as a last-ditch effort to get Mai to get her head out of her black-clad butt and see reason. Mai goes into despairing shock at this news and accidentally cuts herself with her own knife, much to Ty Lee’s and Captain Tadao’s alarm. One of the guards tries to grab Ty Lee, but Ty Lee chi-blocks him and he collapses. The next one manages to grab her. Mai orders them to remove Ty Lee from the room, and instead of putting Ty Lee in her guest bedroom, they stick her in a study.

We learn that Ty Lee actually likes Tadao, because he works hard and doesn’t dismiss Ty Lee’s suggestions on how to improve palace security. He’s the one who comes to see Ty Lee instead of Mai. He tells her that Mai is going to be fine. She might have a scar on her hand, but she’ll still be able to use it. When Ty Lee wonders why she got so upset, Tadao points out that since Mai and Azula are sisters-in-law, Azula’s condition will have an impact on Mai. This is also “the latest in a recent line of insults.” To put it another way, Mai is bitter at Azula for having sex with Zuko and throwing that wrench into her marriage (namely, by revealing that Zuko is not the person she thought he was). Then there are the political considerations, given that Azula’s kid could have a place in the line of succession, if the kid gets legitimized someday. Which then puts little Lu Ten’s claim at risk.

This also reveals that Captain Tadao knows what happened between Azula and Zuko. For a second, I thought that he was Mai’s uncle, and so the ugly secret was just between them and the Fire siblings. But no, more people know about it, and that is NOT GOOD. But Captain Tadao seems like a good guy (sidebar, but was he the guy who escorted baby Ty Lee out of the palace during the abortion episode? It would be a sweet connection if so), and when Ty Lee asks why Mai won’t confide in her about what is going on between her and Zuko, Tadao is gentle when he tells her, “‘I think you know the answer to that question.’” Ty Lee’s love for Azula and Mai’s hatred of her is something they cannot reconcile, and given how important Azula is in their lives, it’s a potential dealbreaker for them, at least as far as having a close emotional, trusting relationship goes. A casual friendship is still possible, but probably not if Mai or Ty Lee keep pushing each other.

Mai has decided to pack Ty Lee off to Kyoshi Island, and has gotten her a ticket and an escort to the harbor. Ty Lee has written Mai a letter to continue their conversation. I’m struck by how fast Mai is pushing Ty Lee out of the Fire Nation. What if Ty Lee wanted to visit her family? What if she wanted to enjoy some spicy homecooked Fire Nation food? What if she, god forbid, decided to visit Ozai for a nice shouting match (well, shouting at his comatose body, more like)? Alas, the plot beckons us forward!

We find ourselves back with Zuko and June. Hooray? I put a question mark there because Zuko doesn’t appearing to be having a good time with the bounty hunter. He is, in fact, puking his guts out. Traveling with June has the feeling of a boot camp to Zuko, because she keeps trying to “toughen him up”: “It reminded Zuko uncomfortably of his father’s early tutelage, before Ozai gave up shaping him into an unfeeling weapon of war, and turned his sights to Azula instead.” Oh Zuko, if you knew what Ozai was trying to shape YOU into, then why blame Azula for—at least in your eyes—becoming it?

June puts all of the gross chores of their journey onto him, and tries to steal his food to see if he’s cunning enough to get it back. I’m sure she finds this amusing, but I remember how hard Zuko’s journey apart from Iroh was, and I think she might have an overly inflated opinion of her teaching skills.

In any case, they find the Dai Li agent hiding in a cave and June forces Zuko to interrogate him. It sounds like June is doing the heavy-lifting where torturing the man is concerned, though. June keeps telling Zuko to burn the man, and reminds him that Azula will be tortured if she’s captured. Eventually, the man begs Zuko to kill him, and Zuko has a flashback to when he was burned by Ozai: “he could only think of a hand wreathed in flame, reaching for him.” It’s at this point that Zuko throws up. He tries to argue that the man deserves this: “He would have blackmailed me, hunted my sister down like an animal. He wouldn’t flinch from torturing her, even killing her if he was ordered.” This line of reasoning doesn’t give him any comfort, though.

I do want to point out that torture, despite what fiction would like us to believe, is an ineffective tool for getting reliable information out of someone. Oftentimes it’s bribery that works better, such as, “You know we can’t let you go, but if you tell us what we want to know, we can make sure that no harm comes to your loved ones.” People in pain will say anything to make it stop, so gentler methods are more effective. However, it’s become ingrained in our cultural consciousness that torture works, despite what studies have shown. And since hurting the villain can be cathartic to an audience, and a hero hurting the villain can tell us something about them as a person, it comes up a LOT in action stories. And while I am exhausted by it being used in this way (torture as a tool of the villains tracks better, since there is no shortage of people who find satisfaction in making other people feel pain), I do see why it is used here. It’s only recently that the ineffectiveness of torture has become more generally known, whereas Zuko lives in a time period analogous to…probably the late 1800s?

I do wish that the torture here hadn’t yielded the information that it had, or that this information turned out to be bunk upon investigating it. As if it, the Dai Li agent is mostly filling in non-vital information: that he worked as an orderly at the asylum and had a partner there, hence how he got to the beach house on Ember Island so fast. So the partner needs to be taken care of at some point soon. Zuko better remember to send that letter!

Then we get this chilling thought from Zuko: “Zuko considered for the first time what might have happened, if she had not run from the asylum. If the Earth Kingdom grew impatient [ . . . ] it would have been appallingly easy to make her death look like a suicide, an accident overdose, a bad reaction to her medication….” Yeah, she was definitely a sitting duck there.

“He wondered if Azula knew, or suspected, that she was in the care of her enemies when she decided to run [ . . . ] She had an instinct for these things. The only time she hadn’t seen it coming was when her friend betrayed her. And when Zuko left to join Aang in ending the war, if her converse [sic] with absent fathers was to be believed—" I don’t know if Azula ever knew that there were Dai Li agents lurking about, but even Zuko is starting to see why Azula has such bad trust issues.

It looks like June continued with the torture and got the location of her dad out of her victim. I really wish she’d gotten a fake location, but I understand that the plot necessitates a swift end to this subplot. June hopes that Zuko is less squeamish about violence when someone is out to kill him, but I’m sure he would be fine in that situation, because that would be a fair fight, rather than causing someone who is helpless and incapacitated a useless amount of pain. June killed the agent in the end, and when Zuko argues that torturing him wasn’t right, and she replies with, “‘It was necessary. You head one of the most powerful nations in the world, don’t you know what that is?’”

And…(sigh)…yes, leaders need to make tough calls sometimes. But if they choose to do something this ugly, they really shouldn’t be fine with it afterwards. They should acknowledge that it was evil, but that they couldn’t see another way to accomplish their goal. That route accepts more responsibility than hiding behind the idea that it was for “the greater good” and that no one else could have thought of a better path forward. When June says that the torture was necessary, that doesn’t make it not evil. It just means that she didn’t see another way to get what she needed.

June then points out that Ozai was a helpless prisoner when Zuko burned him, which stings Zuko. I would argue that Zuko is right about it being different—his crime was one of passion, whereas June’s was coldly calculated. But both ultimately led to human suffering, so both of them were wrong to do it.

Zuko takes a deep breath to keep from lashing out at June, which tells us that he CAN manage his anger when he wants to. He’s struggling, though, because he’s tempted to tell June what Ozai did to Azula to justify burning his dad. He decides not to: “It didn’t feel right somehow, telling anyone else about the abuse. He wondered if this was how Uncle felt when he found out, and why he didn’t say anything. He still should have said something….” Zuko is right—Azula’s trauma isn’t his to share. He also goes from having empathy for Iroh to being angry with him in a split second, which makes sense. He’s conflicted about how his uncle handled the discovery. At the very least, Iroh should have told her doctors, so she could get the care she needed.

“How many more of [June’s] cruelties would he have to witness or take part in, before this was over?” This is rough and why I am not a fan of characters like June. Azula’s actions in this fic are calculated to minimize harm; June has no such scruples. She’s too much in “the ends justify the means” frame of mind.

Zuko has two thoughts that suggest that Azula is the devil on his shoulder, as far as his brain is concerned. “You would [burn Ozai] again” and “You could kill [June . . . ] Remove the threat.” He describes the latter thought as being “so alien and disturbing Azula might have suggested it herself.” No, my dude. Just like hallucination!Ursa is a reflection of Azula’s doubts, whispering!Azula is a reflection of Zuko’s darker thoughts and impulses, which he deflects onto her because that is easier for him to do than face the darkness within himself.

He then has some off-color thoughts about June, besides the idea of murdering her. “Sometimes Zuko thought she was more animal than woman”—Gross!—“and didn’t know whether to be turned on or disgusted by her antics. He had even wondered once in the long hours he spent riding behind her how Mai would look dressed all in black leather like that.” This would be a much lighter story if Zuko and Mai had just embraced his leather kink, rather than him embracing his toxic desire to possess Azula.

As June taunts him about how he wouldn’t win if he tried to kill her, he figures out that she knows that he slept with Azula. She confirms it: “‘Your secret’s out. I might have forgot to mention our mutual friend let that slip, before the end. He got a message to the others. Looks like we should’ve moved faster.’” This means that Zuko, Azula, Mai, Mai’s uncle, Tadao, June, and now some unnamed Dai Li agents—who will probably pass this information along to their superiors—are in the know. That is very bad! Zuko had better hope that they’ll be able to spin this information as slander against him and his family, because if people believe it, his family is going to have a tough time holding onto the throne.

June throws in that now she knows why he has problems with women, which Zuko denies. I feel like he’s better about women than Iroh and Ozai, but his treatment of Azula is definitely skeevy. June, in any case, isn’t bothered by this information, because she doesn’t have siblings as far as she knows. She also doesn’t have the same cultural teachings as Zuko, so she doesn’t have the same taboos that he does.

We switch over to Mai, who is sulking in Zuko’s study. She’s read Ty Lee’s letter a few times by now and is not impressed. She thinks that she’s entitled to be upset, given the situation, and I can’t fault her for that. “That a man so endearingly awkward and painfully sincere would betray her with anyone, let alone his manipulative bitch of a sister, was a permissible source of surprise.” While I don’t like how she describes Azula, I agree with the rest of her sentiment.

“That Azula would take fullest advantage of his lapse was not.” This is ridiculous, though. What, did Azula plan to escape while she was ovulating so that she would become pregnant when she seduced her brother? Is that how the story is going in your brain, Mai? Why would Azula do something like that? She’d be disgraced if anyone found out, just as much as Zuko (unless she spun it as rape, which IT WAS. But Mai seems to be thinking that Azula would make a false accusation). Azula certainly will be disgraced if she has a bastard. Also, her being pregnant is going to slow her down and make her more vulnerable. That’s such a stupid plan, and when have Azula’s plans ever been stupid?

“Mai bent her head and gripped her bandaged hand, to draw a deep breath against the grief that welled inside her like an aching void. A void that demanded how he could do this, how he could still defend her, how he could think she didn’t plan this, why—” Mai is struggling because she knows that she was mostly betrayed by Zuko (she no longer trusted Azula, so how could Azula betray her?), but she can’t help but think that Azula had an evil plan. Probably because if Azula did have an evil plan, then maybe Mai could someday forgive Zuko for falling for it.

Her uncle arrives and she tells him the news. “And Mai felt a rush of ruthless satisfaction, upon seeing the warden back into the desk adjacent to her, revulsion etched in every line of his aging face. It wasn’t just her. Zuko tried to act like this was a terrible but legitimate mistake, like it was at all comparable to anything he’d done wrong before. But her uncle knew. He knew it was an abomination.” Yeah, Zuko and Azula committed a big cultural taboo. It’s unsurprising that other people are reacting this way. Also, I’m sure some of Mai’s satisfaction is that finally, someone is on her side, rather than on Zuko’s or Azula’s.

Her uncle voices the idea that maybe the child isn’t Zuko’s at all—that Azula is trying to trap him with a lie—but Mai responds that whether it is or isn’t, Zuko will think it is, and that’s what will matter. She then reflects on her own sexual history with Zuko. They were sleeping together before he defected, and they continued to carry on without protection when he returned. It took two years before she became pregnant with Lu Ten, long enough that she’d wondered if Zuko was waiting to marry her until he was sure she could get pregnant. Which even she knows is a silly idea. He probably just didn’t think to make their union official until she got pregnant and he realized that he should do the “honorable” thing and wed her.

Mai is salty about Azula getting pregnant from one night with him, when it took so much longer for her. When her uncle asks her what she plans to do, she comments that Azula’s medical records have gone missing. Zuko might have them?

“‘Supposedly she almost died in the asylum,’ Mai explained, her words ringing strangely hollow to her own ears. ‘Her doctors said she would never fully recover. I wanted to know if I could reasonably expect this to kill her.’ She tried to imagine the princess bleeding out, that she might die screaming in the same agony Mai endured when Lu Ten was born—and couldn’t. But there would be time enough to consider why later.” Mai can’t imagine her ex-friend dying. As much as she hates Azula, I don’t think she genuinely wants Azula dead, as convenient as that would be for her.

She then subtly suggests to her uncle that they could make it look like Azula just bled out like that—a tragic turn of events, but not anyone’s fault. Mai then accuses Zuko of being irrationally protective of Azula and that he’ll set Mai aside if she moves against Azula openly. I’m not sure Zuko would really do that, since he loves Mai deeply, but I don’t think their marriage would ever recover if Mai killed Azula.

Her uncle notices her hand, and we get this sweet moment: “Mai put her hand in his offered palm without hesitation. A reflex born of the first months she spent training with knives under his tutelage, when he had often [sic] to tend nicks and cuts gained in her practice. When Mai showed no signs of firebending by her fifth birthday, it was her Uncle Tom who first put a blade in her hand, and offered his home for the summer, so she might learn to use it.” When Mai mentioned that her current injury was an accident, her uncle adds, “‘A man like that isn’t worth hurting yourself over.’”

This is a genuinely sweet relationship, and it makes me wish that he had been the one who raised Mai, instead of her parents. She probably would have learned how to express her emotions in a healthy way, rather than bottling them up. He also doesn’t seem to care that she was a girl and had gender roles to conform to. Really, I’m glad that he’s in her corner. She needs someone to be, because this situation is legitimately awful for her.

Mai gets a hug from her uncle, which I think she’s needed for a while. She thanks him for being there for her and not saying, “I told you so,” because her uncle never approved of Zuko. They even make a joke about the situation, about how neither of them thought Zuko would cheat on her with his sister, which is some very dark humor.

Things take a turn when her uncle comments that the Royal family has been corrupt since Sozin, to which Mai replies that he should be careful, because her son is one of them. Tsutomu then suggests that he doesn’t have to be—that if something happened to Zuko, Lu Ten could be raised away from the toxicity of the paternal side of his family. Mai doesn’t like this idea, but her uncle keeps pushing, suggesting that if Zuko has cheated once, maybe he’s done so before and will do so again. Mai shoots this line of reasoning down, because she’s questioned their household about it and knows better, and doesn’t think that Zuko will stray again. Tsutomu keeps suggesting that they could have Zuko killed, and Mai tells him to stop thinking about it. He insists that he would never do anything without her consent. I want to trust him on this, but given later events, I worry that he might have some involvement there. If he does, it will be a case of him thinking that he knows what’s best for her, rather than respecting her wishes.

We then shift back to Azula, who was being pursued by Fong’s men, but managed to shake them when she entered the swamp. Unfortunately, her mount broke its leg when they were running down the mountain, so Azula had to put it down. What a waste! It would have been cruel to let it suffer, though. Azula wanted to trade her ostrich horse for a different mount, but the sandbenders never showed up. She travelled in the desert for a while, keeping the mountains in sight to avoid getting lost, but she needed more water before long. That was when she was discovered by Fong’s men, and she has a couple of sardonic thoughts about how her “famous luck” hadn’t helped her out.

She then starts trekking through the standing water in the marsh, and I’m already shuddering at the thought of all of the mosquitos there. Though they’re probably crossed with something like a wasp to make them extra horrible. Azula climbs up a tree to see if she can spot her pursuers, and thinks about how stupid they were to advertise their intentions in a fight. Fair! We also get the interesting tidbit that benders and nonbenders in the Earth Kingdom tend to work together in squads, whereas this team was specifically all earthbenders and was patrolling during peace time. Azula takes this to mean that they were searching for her. We also learn that Azula is heading to an avatar shrine.

Azula’s pack is waterlogged at this point, and she sighs in a way that reminds her of Mai. This thought leads her to reflect on her ex-friend, much like Mai was doing earlier in the chapter. There is a humous moment where Azula thinks that Mai would have given herself up to avoid stepping into the swamp, and then a bitter one as she thinks, “You never minded getting your hands dirty except in the most literal sense. Yet it was you and not Ty Lee who finally suffered a crisis of conscience—” Meaning that Mai’s betrayal really did come out of nowhere for Azula.

At this, Azula starts hallucinating Mai. She nearly falls out of the tree in surprise, with her pack opening up and her supplies tumbling into the water. Hallucination!Mai is offended by Azula’s thoughts, reminding Azula that she loved Zuko and didn’t want his blood on her hands. Azula, after a moment, reminds herself that she’s not in the asylum anymore, so what she’s seeing could just be a trick of the light or her imagination…except the Gaang ran into visions in this swamp, so it might be magic at work.

Azula tries to get herself back onto the branch properly, but can’t manage a full crunch. Oh buddy, I feel you. She then does the way more impressive thing by swinging backwards, releasing the branch, and grabbing the vines to stop her fall on the way down. She notices that her pursuers are spreading out around the edge of the swamp, probably to intercept her when she emerges. She figures they’ll wait for reinforcements and might try to flush her out when they have better numbers.

Azula considers that there might be dangers in the swamp that she’ll have to deal with, such as “deadly beasts or hostile primitives.” (Sigh.) Sometimes, her being from an imperialist society rears its ugly head. She figures that she needs to make her way to the far end of the swamp before her pursuers do. She takes some time to regather her supplies and then starts the wet trek, while being swarmed by mosquitos. She decides to heat the air around her to try to drive them off. I wish I could do that on summer evenings!

We shift over to Zuko, who is fighting with a team of Dai Li. Looks like he and June have arrived at the hideout! June has coated her whip in shirsu weapon, which works well and makes her match with Nyla. Zuko notes that the Dai Li are trying to use lethal force on him and June, since they aren’t there on official Fire Lord business, so no one will know who killed them. June at one point does a handspring that would have impressed Ty Lee, which is a fun detail, and then Zuko pulls a leaf out of June’s book and makes some fire whips. Once they’ve taken care of the team, they go through the cave and pass by the crystal cells, which June doesn’t bother to check because there are no guards around. Zuko has a sinking feeling that some of the guards must have smuggled June’s dad out and they’ll have to start the search all over again, which means that one of the unconscious men they left behind might get a spot of torture. BUT Nyla knocked out the guards before they could flee on ostrich-horseback, so June’s dad is fine and trying to get his cuffs off.

June’s father is a balding man with a squarish face and glasses. He teases June for taking so long, and then notices Zuko. There’s an argument about the logistics of the fight, the point of it being that June wasn’t sure if Zuko was going to hold his own, and that if he got caught, she was worried that he would have told them which way June and her father ran. Zuko is insulted at the idea that he would have ratted them out, and asks if they would have left him behind. June says that they wouldn’t have, mostly because it would have come back to bite them if they had. Zuko reminds her that now that her father is free, it’s time for her to fulfill her part of the deal and track down Azula. June asks him if he has a scent sample from Azula on him, because the last one they had is ashes now, and led Nyla to him anyway.

He thinks there are still things in the house on Ember Island that they could use, and remembers some of what happened that night: “Her lips moved silently, forming the same word over and over again. He knew what word she spoke now, two months too late…. I used her no more kindly than him.” Yikes! That word is father and just…ugh. This twisted family. I was trying to explain the appeal of this fic to a friend last night, and I kept saying, “It’s really dark and heavy, but it’s fascinating from a psychological standpoint!”

The trio decide to head to Ember Island. If nothing there works as a sample, they’ll go to the palace. I don’t think there would be fresh enough scents there, so the beach house will have to work. Zuko thinks that after they find Azula, he’ll “make amends, the only way he had left.” Presumably he means to Azula, but he could also be talking about Mai, since Mai also wants Azula caught, though his sister’s fate afterwards would probably be darker than what Zuko wants.

We switch back to Azula, who is being badgered by Hallucination!Mai. I am a little amused about the joke she makes about Azula never lacking direction, though the direction was sometimes the wrong one. If this is Azula’s self-doubt talking, then that’s an acknowledgement that she’s made mistakes and hasn’t always gone down the right path, which flies in the face of her usual self-confidence. There is a suggestion that this hallucination is actually a swamp vision, rather than a symptom of Azula’s mental illness. Unlike her normal hallucinations, this image of Mai vanishes as soon as she looks too closely at it. “Strange that the hallucinations at the asylum never did that.”

This Mai talks more than the hallucinated version of her did. “‘You ever think maybe I didn’t say much, ‘cause I knew you didn’t care what I had to say?’” this Mai says. Azula, tired and bitter, snaps back sarcastically, pointing out that she asked for Mai’s council many times and trusted her as much as she allowed herself to trust anyone. I suspect part of what’s going on here is that Azula is grappling with her fear about how other people—specifically the people she loved—view her. She fears that they see her as a monster and that they’re right to do so, because of the choices she’s made. It’s one thing to have your family by blood betray you, but another thing to have your chosen family do so.

Azula admits that she used Mai’s “infatuation” with Zuko for her own self-gain (clearly not realizing the depth of Mai’s love for Zuko), but that she “still expected Mai to be smart enough to act in her own self-interest.” She was secure in that belief, otherwise she wouldn’t have brought Mai to the Boiling Rock or let Mai have the “first crack at Zuko.” From the sound of it, Azula thought that she was giving Mai a chance for revenge over being left behind by Zuko. Except that Mai couldn’t stand by as he was killed….

Which Azula doesn’t understand. “‘He was a traitor!’ Azula screeched in disbelief, her fist clenched so hard she could feel every bone in her hand. ‘He betrayed you just as much as me! And you still chose him!’ Her voice broke. I was your friend first. He wasn’t anything to you anymore. He ended it in a letter, too much of a coward to tell you to your face. He hadn’t even left her a letter, or any warning of what to expect, the next time she was called before their father….”

While it was a good thing for the world that Zuko chose to help Aang, these are all solid points. Zuko did betray his Fire Lord and nation, so from their perspective, he is a traitor (who, in addition to defecting, then took the throne from Ozai’s appointed heir). He didn’t break up with Mai in person. He didn’t think about what Ozai might do to Azula afterwards. Zuko could certainly have handled the latter situations better.

Vision!Mai devalues Azula’s friendship next, saying that it didn’t compare to his love, and that Zuko was the love of Mai’s life, whereas Azula was a monster. It’s playing right into Azula’s deeply held belief that the reason no one loves and chooses her is because there’s something inherently wrong with her—something that isn’t wrong with Zuko (even though Zuko has fucked up in this story real bad).

Azula punches a tree in anger and thinks that the hallucinations have said worse to her than this, which is super sad. What’s even sadder is that Azula thinks the same things about herself, even without them around: “didn’t Azula think that about herself every day?” She needs some real therapy, not whatever she was getting in the asylum.

Azula is lost by this point, and decides that she needs to find a dry place to sleep and recover, rather than continuing to drain herself by wandering around. Once she gets into the hollow of an old tree trunk, she takes off her socks and boots to avoid trench foot. Good plan! Though couldn’t she also dry out both with her bending? Probably for the best to let her feet air out, though. She then tries to eat, but her food has bog-water in it, and the rice apparently looks like maggots. Gross! She gets sicks, which could be from her morning sickness, from a blood-borne disease from the mosquitos, from the contaminated food, or from a combination of the above. After throwing up a second time—the Fire siblings both have delicate stomachs this chapter!—she decides to stick to drinking water instead.

Azula is getting chills now, which suggests that she’s genuinely sick. She then sees Vision!Mai again, who gives her a nasty Reason You Suck Speech. She accuses Azula of not knowing what love or trust is—excuse me, Ty Lee is proof that that’s not true!—and then adds, “‘You never respected me, or my boundaries, or anything that was mine.’” I’m trying to remember if there was evidence for this in the show, or if this is Azula trying to come up with reasons for why Mai turned on her, and wondering if it was these things? That Azula feels guilty about this, though, shows that she is capable of seeing what she did wrong and learning from it. She can grow as a person…though she needs to be allowed to do so by the people around her. Ty Lee gave her that chance and now their relationship is much healthier. But it’s hard to grow when the people around you keep punishing you for what you did, and never believe that the growth you’ve made is genuine.

Mai then asks, “‘Why else would you seduce [Zuko]?’” which Azula denies, saying she didn’t mean for it to go that far. Apparently, Azula hoped that the kiss would distract him, and then she’d be able to chi-block him so he couldn’t move. Unfortunately, he reacted by throwing her into a nightstand, and after she twisted her ankle, there was no running away.

Mai accuses her of lying—that she did it because she saw Zuko’s weakness and was exploiting it. She asks, “‘How did it feel when he did that to you?’” and Azula doesn’t respond. I think this is where, if she’d felt any pleasure or satisfaction from the sex, it would sneak in and provide an extra layer of shame. That it doesn’t suggests that all Azula felt was violation and pain in the act.

Mai says that this must be why Azula hates her—not because of the betrayal of their friendship, but because she “played the game better than [Azula]. And [Azula] lost.” If I’m parsing this right, Azula thinks that Mai believes that Azula wanted Zuko, and that because Mai won Zuko, Mai got more political power than Azula, beating Azula at the political game. It’s an ugly take, and while I don’t think Mai’s accusations are fair—because we’ve seen from Azula’s perspective what her motives were—this does show that Azula knows Mai quite well, because the real Mai’s thoughts run along similar lines as the vision’s. Real Mai believes that Azula seduced Zuko to blackmail him and continue playing the political game, when in reality, it was a terrible mistake. Azula might have “started it,” thanks to Ozai’s training, but she never would have considered kissing Zuko if Ozai hadn’t done what he did.

Azula asserts that she hasn’t lost until she’s dead. I don’t think she means “winning Zuko” when she says this. She then puts out the fire and goes to sleep, dreaming about her father. After Zuko was banished, her training went into high gear, with more lessons on statecraft and the like. She was so busy that she didn’t have time to miss Zuko—which is definitely a lie—and he would have spoiled her happiness anyway by sulking and trying to get their dad’s attention. “It had been a source of amusement one, but they were not children anymore.” Oh honey, you both were children during canon. Maybe Zuko and the water siblings came of age during the show, but that age was still below what we would currently consider the age of majority.

Azula wondered what Zuko would have thought about the sexual training Ozai inflicted on her. Not that she would ever have told Zuko. We then get a series of thoughts that were almost certainly things Ozai told her: “[Azula and Ozai were] willing to do whatever it took to succeed, to survive. [Zuko] would never realize that people will use anything against you, unless they are too afraid of your doing the same.” This is a paranoid way of looking at the world and the people around you, and also self-defeating. If people are afraid of you, they will turn on you the moment they think they can get away with it (and sometimes even before then—Mai knew that she was throwing her life away when she saved Zuko, but she did it regardless). Love and trust, on the other hand, are what makes people will stick by you, even if you’re a walking disaster.

“[Zuko] never saw his own peril, until it was too late. Sometimes Azula thought he still didn’t see it.”—Foreshadowing!

Azula then thinks about the training itself. “Her father said it would hurt the first time”—that’s a myth. If you have a vagina and are aroused and lubricated enough, even the first time shouldn’t hurt. “—but it didn’t only hurt the first time. Sometimes it was hard to know what he wanted, and he was as intolerant of failure in this as in her firebending.” This is awful, but also, Ozai sounds like a terrible sexual partner. You’re supposed to communicate what you want and don’t want during sex. You can’t expect your partner to intuitively know that. They’re not psychic!

“As he should. It made her strong.” Azula, that training didn’t make you strong. It destroyed your boundaries and your ability to approach sex in a healthy way.

“It wasn’t always—Sometimes he would stay with her after, and just talk. She liked those times. It made her feel important. It made her feel loved.” She’s shying away from thinking of it as awful, even though she clearly felt that it was. The implication is also that she didn’t feel important or loved during their other interactions. Ozai, you are a TERRIBLE parent!

Which I think some part of Azula knows, because when she starts to feel the vines from the swamp wrapping around her, she imagines her dad molesting her. Still half-asleep, she lashes out with fire knives to free herself from the vines and runs out of her shelter. It’s daytime—Azula missed rising with the sun—and Azula is sicker now than she was the night before: “Her head pounded, her heart hammered, her joints ached like she took a beating. Her skin burned so hot that steam rose from her body when she hit the water.” This could suggest that she was beaten by Ozai at some point, but then again, all of these characters have been in combat, so that might be what this comparison is referring to.

The plants keep trying to grab her, which I think indicates that the waterbenders in the swamp are trying to catch her. I seem to remember them being the ones in control of the vines, rather than the vines themselves being predatory. Azula manages to escape, but is winded from it, which means that she won’t be able to bend. She’s also dizzy, nauseous, and shivering uncontrollably. Plus, it’s actually evening now, so she slept through most of the day. Azula realizes that she has no idea where her old shelter is, so her supplies are lost to her. She’s experienced abdominal cramps, too, and wonders if she’s miscarrying.

“This was what you wanted, she reminded herself pointlessly, though she knew very well what her mother would say. That she deserved this, for wishing her baby dead. Her tears fell on the water when Azula bent forward to hug herself, head bowed as if she could hold the pain inside anymore—” This might be the first time that Azula thinks of the fetus as her baby, which indicates that she might not want to lose it as much as she thinks she does.

She then hallucinates child!Zuko, which is heartbreaking. He tells her not to cry, “his round face scrunched in the look of unstudied concern their mother loved so well, and which Azula could never recall him directing at her.” Ouch! The dysfunction in their relationship went back really far, didn’t it?

“Didn’t he know the world would beat him down over and over again so long as he kept that way? That not just Father and Azula, but every person with an ounce of cunning would take advantage of him when he wore his heart on his sleeve like that? She told him so many times, but he never listened until it was too late.” So she acknowledges that she and Ozai took advantage of his naivety. She certainly did when she tried to trick Zuko into coming home early in season two. But also, Azula has a point. There are people in the world who take advantage of emotionally open and giving people. I don’t think that the solution to this is to harden your heart, though. Instead, you need to surround yourself with people who genuinely care about you. Zuko did that with the Gaang, which is part of why he succeeded and Azula failed. I’ll also note that Zuko would have done better with Azula as his ally, since she would have been more discerning about who was allowed in his court, and could have told Zuko about their ulterior motives and told him the unpleasant truths he wouldn’t want to hear. As it is, Mai has taken on that role.

“Yet in the end, he prevailed. The world bent to him. He got to be himself without condition, but not her. Never her. She didn’t understand….” Zuko allied himself with what wound up being the winning side, due to Aang defeating Ozai. If Aang had fallen, Zuko’s fate would have been much grimmer.

Zuko made a better choice than Azula did, but it’s important to note that he knew he had a choice. I don’t think Azula realized that leaving was an option for her. Why would she, when she believed that her nation was the best in the world, that their cause was right, and that if she stayed loyal, she would be the ruler of it all in the end? She would have lost everything if she’d left, and gained…what? The Gaang, Iroh, and Zuko hated her, so she couldn’t go to them. Mai and Ty Lee hadn’t defected yet, so she would have been abandoning them. And while she would have escaped Ozai’s abuse, she also saw Ozai as the only person who valued her and loved her for who she was. Even if being around him hurt, it was better than being alone.

No one except Ozai, at any point, held out their hand to Azula and asked her to join them. So while she is responsible for her own choices, how much can we blame her for what she chose, when none of her alternatives seemed viable?

Child!Zuko says that they are playing a game of hide-and-seek, which is true in the grand scheme of this story. He claims that he’ll always find her, which Azula says she no longer wants. He’s disappointed, but insists that it’s getting dark out, so he’ll help her find her way. He then lights the tiniest flame in his hand. “Azula’s stomach clenched painfully at the sight, plucked out from her earliest memories and brought freshly to life. How desperately she wanted to bend when Zuko made his first flame, and she saw how their parents explained over him….” This suggests that neither of Azula’s parents paid much attention to her before she first firebent. No wonder she came to believe that their love was conditional, and that she had to excel at what she did to earn it.

Child!Zuko, seeing her sadness, assures her that she’ll learn how to firebend when she gets older. I think it was mentioned already that she learned when she was three, which is mind-boggling to think about, since she would have been a toddler. He adds that she’ll pick it up in no time, since she’s “smart for a girl.” Ah, that sexism. He could have left it at “you’re smart,” but he had to add that qualifier. While the Fire Nation is less overtly sexist than the EK and the NWT, it’s clear that sexism is still a problem there. That baby Zuko is saying things like this is symptomatic of that.

“Half of what he said might be condescending bullshit, but this was still more supportive than Azula could ever remember him being.” This is very sad, since it means that Zuko started treating her as an adversary very early on in their childhood, once she proved better at something than him. He was jealous of her for earning their father’s interest, for all the good that did her. He was “resentful” when she survived her fall at the Western Air Temple, which is so ugly. He should have been relieved. She thinks of other moments where his hatred for her was apparent, like during the Agni Kai, at the asylum, aaaaand….

“The night he raped her.” And there it is. She can’t bring herself to see what Ozai did to her as rape, but she views what Zuko did as such.

“And she couldn’t reconcile it. How the little boy who stood before her could do—” This is a fascinating parallel to Mai’s thoughts about Zuko earlier in the chapter. Neither of them can understand how he did this. I’m reminded of how shocking it is to find out that someone that you know and care about sexually assaulted someone. What do you do afterwards? The safest option is to cut ties with them, but that doesn’t address the difficulty in doing so when they’re your family, or the grief of doing so when you’ve loved them for so long, only to find out that they weren’t who you thought they were.

Azula starts to ask him why he did what he did, but I think she knows the answer to that—because Zuko hated her and wanted to punish her that night. So instead, Azula asks where this good, caring version of her brother was when she wanted him—which, in the context of this fic, was from the time she was a toddler until now.

“‘Dad killed me,’ the hallucination said forlornly. ‘And you laughed.’” Ozai destroyed Zuko’s innocence just as much as he destroyed Azula’s.

I thought this was a reference to Zuko and Ozai’s Agni Kai, but this seems to actually be referring to when Azulon told Ozai to kill Zuko, and Azula’s teasing about it: “Her chest clutched painfully when she remembered that night, the night her mother left. And Azula thought it was cruelly appropriate that it was not Ursa here with her, at the end.” Ouch!

“She whispered, ‘I didn’t mean it.’”—I believe her, but unfortunately, the real Zuko never realized that.

The vision version of him does, though. “Azula felt his presence as clearly as if he sat on the edge of her bed, when she pulled the covers over her head.” At some point, Azula was just a little girl who hid under the covers. “‘I know,’ she dimly heard him speak. And the last thing she felt was him hugging her shoulders, his head laid against hers.” This is heartbreaking. It’s an exchange they should have had in reality years ago, but one that they might never be able to have, now they’ve hurt each other so badly. This is one of the scenes that sticks with me the most, because of how tragic it is and how poignant the imagery is: of the tiny, kind version of Zuko hugging the adult version of his sister, who is being eaten away by sickness, grief, and remorse.

And on that tearjerking note, we have reached the end of chapter fifteen. As always, thank you for the read, Aurelia. Thank you also to the folks on FFN and Tumblr who have been encouraging me to work on these reviews. Your support has been keeping me going!

Until next time,

WiseAbsol

#Dominion by Aurelia le #Azula #avatar: the last airbender #fanfiction review #WiseAbsol

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vendimeyers · 5 years ago

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I’m never going to get over that scene in season 9 of the office after Dwight and Angela spent the entire day taking care of his weird, dying aunt and then kissed on her porch and then Dwight suggests that they get together again despite the fact that she’s married but Angela turns him down even though:

Her husband is gay

Her husband has already cheated on her before

She has already cheated on her husband with Dwight before

They are both aware of all these things

So in her mind she would probably feel completely justified in running away with Dwight if she wanted, something he even points out “he probably won’t even notice that you’re gone” but despite all that she turns him down because she finally knows how much it hurts when someone cheats on you and how wrong it is. And even though she doesn’t love the senator, and she knows he doesn’t love her (and doesn’t even find her attractive due to the fact that he’s gay), she made a vow when she married him, and even though she and her husband both already broke that promise she has finally decided at that point that she has to be better. And there is literally no logical reason for her to do turn Dwight down other than the fact that she made a promise to be loyal to a dude that didn’t even deserve it.

And then, after she turns Dwight down and explains why she can’t be with him, he does something he had never done before and accepts it. Even though it would have been so easy for him to bring up all the reasons she could feel justified in cheating on the senator with him, and it probably broke his heart to do so, he finally respected her choices and the boundaries she set before him. He didn’t do that when she first broke up with him, and he didn’t do that when she started dating Andy, he didn’t even do that when she was engaged to the senator. But finally, after so long of not respecting her boundaries and other relationships, and having so many reasons not to, he finally agrees to let her go.

And even though that’s the scene where Dwight and Angela seemingly end things romantically between them for good, that was the scene where I knew they would make it. Because they finally overcame the innate character flaws that were keeping them apart:

Dwight had to overcome his superiority complex. When he got the temporary opportunity to be manager in earlier seasons he immediately started treating Angela worse because he viewed her as an inferior, which is the same mindset that lead him to killing her cat (an animal that held no value in his mind) and why he refused to respect their breakup and other relationships because, even though he loved her, his innate sexism still lead himself to see her as an inferior. And even though he still retained some of this complex by the end of the series “I don’t have coworkers, I have subordinates,” and probably even some of his sexist beliefs, he finally learned to see the value in those around him and treat people he saw as inferiors with the respect of equals.

Angela had to overcome her hypocrisy. She spent years judging others for not upholding values that she herself didn’t uphold. She judged Pam for dating multiple people in the office even though Angela not only also dated multiple people in the office, she cheated on one with the other, and then she judged Jim and Pam for conceiving Cece out of wedlock even though she also conceived a child out of wedlock with someone she wasn’t even in a relationship with, she judged everyone for gossiping even though she partook too, the list goes on. And the fact that she was willing to string Dwight along while she was dating and then engaged to Andy basically meant she wasn’t emotionally mature enough to retain a relationship with either of them. So in the final season when she finally learns to make her actions align with her values instead of judging other people when their actions don’t align with her values, it shows a tremendous amount of growth, and a readiness to finally be in a committed relationship.

The way that scene illustrates the growth the two of them have undergone is incredibly beautiful, and even though they don’t get together right then, it is incredibly romantic just in changes of the way they treat each other from the earlier seasons. Also, “the 80 or 90 years left I have in this life, I want to spend with you” is freak’n adorable and that’s a fact.

#i know i give season 9 a lot of hate for what they did to Andy #and dont get me wrong everything Andy does in that episode makes me want to die #but other than Andy season 9 for the most part is actually pretty beautifully written #especially Dwight and Angela’s relationship #I think about that scene a lot cuz its just so good and i wanted to spill all my thoughts on it #also the episode where she finds out about the senator and Oscar and Dwight is just there for her the whole episode #YOURE NOT STUPID. JAZZ IS STUPID #I just think its such a contrast to the relationship they retain the rest of the series and its so cute #the office #office #the office season 9 #dwangela #dwight x angela #angela x dwight #dwight schrute #angela martin

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sureira · 4 years ago

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Principles You Can Use From Rowling’s Philosophy of Writing

by Ruthanne Reid

If you’re like me, you loved the Harry Potter series. Maybe you watched the movies or even visited the theme park, and you wondered about JK Rowling’s writing process and the strategy she uses to write her best-selling books. If you’re like me, though, you’ve also been deeply hurt by things Rowling herself has said. On Twitter, on her website, in interviews, and more, Rowling has promoted harmful views of trans people, and you might be one of her many readers who find it painful, or even impossible, to return to the Harry Potter books you once loved.I understand. Before I dive into the wisdom we can draw from Rowling’s writing process in order to write our first draft (or others), allow me to share a principle with you. Death of the Author: Or, How to Love the Book, Not the Author In 1967, a French literary critic named Roland Barthes wrote an essay called La mort de l’auteur, or Death of the Author, in which he states that any piece of writing should be separated from the author that wrote it. In other words, he believed in judging the written work completely on its own merits, without involving personal beliefs or actions of the author in question. Sometimes, this is possible to do. Sometimes, it isn’t, and we readers have to apply discernment to what we read and the lens in which we view things.I have two examples for you. HP Lovecraft First, HP Lovecraft, whose incredible work literally created today’s modern horror genre. Do you enjoy any kind of tale with Elder Ones, or chaos gods, or even just good old Cthulhu? (I know I do!) His work was so creative, so new, that you’d be hard-pressed to find any horror story that doesn’t show at least some of his influence.Unfortunately, Lovecraft was also an extremely xenophobic racist. Now, I enjoy a good chaos god, and I’ve made the decision to separate his xenophobia from his writing. That means, of course, that I must view critically anything he wrote that implies white English people are somehow the pinnacle of humanity.It means I purposely do not allow his racism to infect my way of thinking. By doing so, I am practicing la mort de l’auteur. JRR Tolkien Here’s a second example: JRR Tolkien, whose work defined modern fantasy. Do you enjoy anything with elves and dwarves or made-up languages? We owe Tolkien for that. He redefined and polished the fantasy genre so well that everything from movies to MMORPGs still use his templates. Unfortunately, he also described his orcs as “squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.” Yowza. Now, was Tolkien a racist? Not exactly. In fact, according to the standards of the time, he was absolutely liberal and anti-racist. So then what do we do with this bizarro and racially horrifying description? We see it and choose to discard it. Generations of artists and authors have done exactly that, turning orcs into anything but“least lovely Mongol-types,” and aiding this genre.Again, it’s important to see the problem so you can avoid letting it influence your work. We enjoy the good parts while consciously discarding the bad, rather than being influenced by it. So What About JK Rowling? She’s not dead. In fact, she’s still saying harmful things, even as we speak. Instead of listening to her readers, who (at least initially) approached her in love, trying to help her understand, she doubled down, rejected their experience and their words, and in the process, caused an unbelievable amount of pain. Here’s the thing about la mort de l’auteur: it is entirely up to you whether to apply it to what you read, or to simply discard the whole thing and find less troublesome authors. Both roads are valid. In no way do I condone her attacks on the trans community, or her persistent sharing of misinformation. I choose to apply la mort de l’auteur for the simple reason that I benefited from the good things she’s written, and I wanted to share them with you. However, if you aren’t comfortable doing that, you are absolutely welcome to walk away. In fact, I’d suggest these writing articles instead: Neil Gaiman’s rules of writing, or how to create your own rules of writing. Okay. Awkward stuff done. Ready to dive into the process stuff instead? Let’s go! 9 Rules From JK Rowling’s Writing Process Over the course of her writing career, Rowling shared a lot of solid writing wisdom, and in my opinion, eight writing rules stand out—along with a ninth we can apply from her choices since. Whether or not you’re writing your first book like Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) or last book in a series (like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), I think these rules speak to Ms. Joanne Rowling’s philosophy on writing.They are great writing tips for you to reflect on in your spare moments and then apply to your writing process, for short stories, novels, bestsellers, or even the first time you’ve ever attempted a book. Rule One: Protect your writing time “Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have “essential” and “long overdue” meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it.” This is especially hard for those of us with family. Our loved ones come first, and while that is important, our loved ones also need to understand that we need time to write. Setting reasonable boundaries is a crucial step for a writer—even if they’re as simple as, “Mommy needs fifteen minutes of quiet time, okay?” If you have trouble setting boundaries with loved ones, try setting a reasonable boundary for one week. See how it goes. If it’s too much time or too little, tweak it. Establish a routine that signals to others that it’s your writing time, but also lets them know that outside of your writing space, you’re there for them. Not only will this teach the importance of flexibility and discipline to others, but also that your writing is valuable. It’s your work, and your dream! Needing quiet time to write doesn’t mean that you don’t love your family. Your writing deserves your time, too. Open communication about this can help everyone understand and respect that. Rule Two: Treat your writing like a job “You’ve got to work. It’s about structure. It’s about discipline.” It’s easy to forget that writing is a job. We don’t always feel like doing our job. We certainly don’t always feel inspired. To be writers, we must train ourselves to sit down and write even when we don’t feel like it. Those moments are the ones that really matter, even more than the shining, flying, muse-kissed moments.Writing when we don’t feel like it is what turn amateurs into professionals and rough drafts into polished manuscripts. “The muse works for you. You don’t write at her beck and call—you train her to show up when you’re writing. “ Rule Three: Believe you ARE a writer “I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.” Yes, writing is possible with another job. Yes, writing is possible with other responsibilities. Are you a writer? (I know your inner critic snarled no, but I also know a tiny candle-flicker of unquenchable hope in you whispered yes with so much longing you could cry.) You ARE a writer. That means you write. A runner runs. A painter paints. A cook cooks. You are a writer. You write. Accept this, fight to believe it, and be amazed at how far that takes you. Rule Four: Write what you know “Write what you know: your own interests, feelings, beliefs, friends, family and even pets will be your raw materials when you start writing.” This doesn’t mean you need to experience aliens in order to write about them. It means that all good stories have universal application. A great example is this Google Doodle. (Trust me. I’m going somewhere with this.) Take two minutes and thirty-six seconds to watch this: Halloween 2017 Google Doodle: Jinx’s Night Out It’s adorable, right? Without a single word, this video told an effective story. You felt for the little ghost, both when it was sad and when it was happy, right? News flash: you’re not a ghost. That was universal application. It doesn’t matter what culture you’re from or what language you speak; all human beings know what it is to be lonely, to feel left out, to be frustrated, determined, and to finally be with friends. That story works because the creators used their interests, feelings, beliefs, friends, family and even pets to tell this story. (I’m fond of the kitty, myself.) I’m greatly oversimplifying, but here’s the gist: you already know how to tell a moving story because you live one. If you’ve ever had emotions, ever responded to anything, then you already know what universal application looks like. Listen to the people around you, and apply empathy. You don’t have to be a ghost to write a good ghost story. Rule Five: Read “I always advise children who ask me for tips on being a writer to read as much as they possibly can. Jane Austen gave a young friend the same advice, so I’m in good company there.” Read. Read. Read some more! The more you read, the bigger your arsenal of words will be. The more you read, the better your grasp of metaphor, poetry, beauty, passion, and empathy will be. The more you read, the greater you will be as a writer (and probably human being). It’s like learning more dance moves or impressively difficult notes on an instrument. The more you learn, the better you’ll be. So read in your genre. Read outside your genre. Get in the habit of finding time to pick up a book instead of your phone (unless it’s to open up another book.) You DO have the time to read. Even if that’s just ten minutes a day. Any time counts. And the more stories you read, the more likely you’ll start to implicitly develop the skills you need to become a great writer. Rule Six: Persevere “Perseverance is absolutely essential, not just to produce all those words, but to survive rejection and criticism.” This is one of those unpleasant truths about publishing: you’re gonna get rejected. A lot. I wish there were a way around this. Harry Potter was turned down again and again because that’s just the way it goes sometimes. And it isn’t only publishers: when you get published, and your work is out there, you’ll get bad reviews, too. Mostly, they’ll just be people who don’t understand what you’re doing. Intellectually, you’ll know that. Your heart, on the other hand, is going to break into a thousand pieces. But here’s the secret: you can’t stop writing because of push-back. You MUST NOT stop writing because of push-back. Keep going. Don’t stop. When you get rejected, pick up your pen and keep going (and use the way you feel to put more universal application into your work). And when you’re feeling really discouraged? Remember that when someone doesn’t like your book, they might also just not be your ideal reader. That person just wasn’t your target audience.If your book isn’t to someone’s taste, that’s all right. It will be to someone else’s.Keep writing your book, because your ideal readers need it. Rule Seven: Bring your whole self to the page “What you write becomes who you are … So make sure you love what you write!” Writing is a little like a Mobius strip, in a way: Your beliefs and experiences and feelings all help craft your writing. However, your writing clarifies, corrects, and often reveals your beliefs, experiences, and feelings. As you write, you’ll discover things about yourself. You’ll clarify things, too, because it’s only as you come to write them that you realize they needed clarification in the first place. Now, understand: this means that if you haven’t given yourself a good look to find your biases (we all have them), you will bring those to the page, too. It’s important to see who you are as you bring your whole self to the page. Writing is a brave, bold venture, and life-altering discovery is part of the journey. Rule Eight: Accept that failure is part of the process “Failure is inevitable—make it a strength. You have to resign yourself to the fact that you waste a lot of trees before you write anything you really like, and that’s just the way it is. It’s like learning an instrument, you’ve got to be prepared for hitting wrong notes occasionally, or quite a lot. I wrote an awful lot before I wrote anything I was really happy with.” Failure is normal. Also, it is okay. You’re going to write a lot of crap. You’re going to push past those things and write more crap. It may take you twelve years. It may take you a million words. If it does, then you’re on the right path—the same one your favorite authors walk. Accept that it will take time, and that sometimes, your pencil won’t be your friend. If you accept it, then when it happens, you won’t throw in the towel and set the house on fire. Instead, you’ll be able to go, “Well, dang; that sucked, didn’t it? Knew it would happen. Time to write some more.” Rule Nine: Respect Your Reader Sadly, this rule doesn’t come from writing advice she’s given, but in a way, it’s the final conclusion of the previous eight. This involves bringing your whole self to the page. This involves empathy and universal application. This involves perseverance, never quitting, and willingness to tackle your writing troubles. If your readers value what you created, they will listen to what you say. Your words have the power to uplift or hurt others. None of us can ever really know where someone else is coming from, and it’s essential that both our stories and our interactions reflect respect. Respect yourself enough to be a better person. Respect your readers enough to hear what they have to say. This sounds scary, I know, but I promise you, it’s worth it.

#how to write #writing advice #writing #tw jk rowling #jkr #jk rowling #tw long post #long post #long text post #top writing advice #rules for writing

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queertheology · 5 years ago

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THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF CREATING A SEXUAL ETHIC

I trust you — yes you! — to formulate a sexual ethic that works for you and is in alignment with your faith and your values.

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.”

Matthew 7:15-20

When it comes to sex, you probably have a lot of people telling you what you should and shouldn’t be doing. For those of us seeking to figure out sex within a progressive, LGBTQ-affirming Christianity, it can be tempting to look outside of ourselves for the answers. If the conservative pastor tells us one thing about sex, maybe we should look to a progressive pastor to tell us something different.

I’m not going to do that.

I trust you — yes you! — to formulate a sexual ethic that works for you and is in alignment with your faith and your values. That doesn’t mean that it exists in a vacuum, or that you can’t (or shouldn’t) consult others — trusted friends, spiritual leaders, mentors, and even sacred texts — but what it does mean is that ultimately, the buck stops with you.

You’ve got this.

You are a smart, thoughtful person. You care about doing the right thing. And, just by reading this, you’ve shown that you can look for support when you need it.

Together, we’re going to develop a sexual ethic that resonates with you.

Step 1: Identify your values

If you haven’t already done so, take some time to think about the values that matter to you. You can’t outsource this work, you can’t just simply flip open a Bible because “the Bible says” a whole lot of conflicting things about sex.

You can use this worksheet to jot down what matters to you.

Step 2: Reflect on your experiences

Think back on the sexual and romantic experiences you’ve had and get in touch with what felt good and what didn’t. There’s a spectrum of sexual and romantic experiences so think about everything from holding hands and kissing to penetrative sex (if you’ve had it). And don’t just limit yourself to “traditionally sexual” experiences. You can also meditate on times when your boundaries have been respected or transgressed. When you’ve felt safe and when you’ve felt vulnerable.

Also notice when your desires match or mismatch with your actions or the expectations or people around you. Maybe you really wanted to express your relationship but felt pressure from your church not to. Or maybe you don’t experience sexual attraction to anyone and feel pressured to have sex.

This step isn’t about coming up with a list of “dos” and “don’ts” (those are often context-specific and shift over time). Instead, this is about picking up on throughlines and patterns.

At the end of this process, we’re going to walk away with two things: clarity on what works for you right now and a guiding framework for interacting with others.

Step 3: Step outside yourself

I know that it’s tempting for me to center myself. If I don’t like something, how could anyone? If I want something, why doesn’t everyone?

Step 2 was all about reflecting on our own experiences and it’s important to remember that they are just that: our own experiences.

In this step, we’re going to step outside of ourselves and use each of those experiences to tap into shared values.

As you look at your past experiences, look beyond the specifics (“We were drunk,” “there were lots of candles and rose petals”, “we did this thing,” or “we didn’t do that”) and look at how you felt: safe, seen, understood, respected, violated, disregarded, taken advantage of, excited, scared.

Step 4: Articulate your ethics

This is the step where it all comes together.

You’ve gotten in touch with your values.

You’ve reflected on your experiences.

You’ve stepped outside of yourself and tapped into something bigger.

Congrats: you’ve already done all the hard work. Now it’s just about putting it all together.

We’re not looking to create a sexual rulebook. Instead, we’re looking to articulate an ethical framework.

Merriam-Webster defines ethics as

a set of moral principles : a theory or system of moral values

That’s what we’re developing here: a set of moral principles. What’s right and wrong. What’s helpful or harmful. What’s ethical and what’s not.

Your responses and reflections to the prompts in each step so far point the way toward that set of moral principles. Now you just tie them all together.

I like to “speak from the I” when I share my ethics. In doing so, I own that these are my ethics, they’re how I see the world. I use them to judge people and experiences (more on that in the next step), but I also acknowledge that they’re mine. Yours might be different.

Here are my sexual ethics:

It’s important for me that relationships be grounded in honesty, communication, and trust.

I want sex to be free of force or coercion.

I want people to feel safe and supported in their sexual decisions.

It’s important to me that everyone has control over their own body.

I value informed consent.

I understand that I am responsible for my own decisions — and my partners are responsible for their own decisions. And also, I want us to take care of each other as best we can, in ways that are appropriate for our relationship.

That list is pretty different from the list I heard in youth group growing up (wait until you’re married to have sex, don’t date for more than a year, light kissing is ok, making out is ok if you’re dating … just don’t get too heavy with it, you maybe shouldn’t masturbate, you probably shouldn’t touch each other below the belt, you’re probably going to touch boobs but you’re also probably going to feel guilty about it).

The specific sexual decisions that you or I make might vary from context to context or shift over time.

For instance, Fr. Shay was celibate for many years and now is not … but his underlying sexual ethic didn’t change.

When you create a sexual ethic, it’s not a list of what you want or don’t want to do (though, thinking through that can also be super valuable. Scarleteen has a thorough Yes/No/Maybe list that you could go through by yourself or with a partner). And it isn’t going to tell you what you’ll do in any given situation. Instead it’s a framework that you can refer make to when you need to make sexual choices.

Step 5: Release judgements

Your sexual ethics are the summary of what you value, how you see the world, what’s right and what’s wrong. Sometimes we are called to make decisions about what’s right and what’s wrong, and sometimes we are called to celebrate differences.

It’s important here to distinguish between “judging something as right or wrong” and “judging something as different than me.”

It’s possible for someone who shares my sexual ethics to make completely different sexual choices.

Looking at my sexual ethics, it’s possible that one person could be celibate while someone else might be completely comfortable with casual sex. Someone might be polyamorous while being completely supportive of another person’s decision to be monogamous.

Release judgement against people who are making different decisions than you would make, even if you don’t understand them, as long as they are acting ethically.

Step 6: Assess and Adjust

Sex is messy. And so is life. You’re going to hit some bumps along the way. You’re going to have an experience that shakes you up or meet a person that challenges everything you thought you knew.

My sexual ethic today looks completely different than the one I had 10 years ago and even more different than the one I had just 5 years before that.

Think of your sexual ethic like the United States Constitution: it’s a foundational document, it’s what we base our decisions on, it should withstand (and transcend) the whims of the moment, but also sometimes you need to change it and that’s OK.

YOU NEED TO MOVE FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

The most important part in this process is actually doing it. This isn’t something you can just sorta think about in your head while you’re reading this on your morning commute.

Set aside some alone time. Light a candle if that’s your thing. Use Word, Google Docs, Evernote if you collect your thoughts better on a computer. Grab your favorite notebook or a piece of scratch paper if longhand is more your style. And then write out your thoughts.

If you want to email them in, I’d love to read what you come up with. Send them over to [email protected].

You got this.

THERE'S MORE!

On Tuesday February 4, we’re hosting a free online workshop to really dive into all things faithful sexuality! We’ll look at developing a sexual ethic, making faithful sexual choices, navigating relationships, and more! Plus you’ll be able to ask us your questions and chat with other viewers (if you’d like). It’s happening at 8pm EST and you can register here.

#queer theology #faithfully LGBT #FaithfullyLGBT #gay christian #transgender christian #Christian #transgender #Christianity

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longassr1de · 5 years ago

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Innocence (m)

Pairing: Johnny × fem!reader Genre: smut/fluff, slight hint of angst if you squint Word count: 2k Summary: In which it’s your first time with Johnny, though.. he’s just as nervous as you are. Warnings: slight corruption kink, reader's first time/loss of virginity, random emotional moment, not proofread.

A/N: ....this was supposed to be a fully corruption kink post but it got emotional along the way bc 1) i guess i headcanon johnny that way & 2) i'm in my feels. :( haven't written in awhile so pardon any mistakes in the story,,,

Johnny just couldn't believe you were real sometimes, and that feeling had never been stronger than in this very moment. Lying on your back for him in nothing but your skimpy white lingerie, making you look like both salvation and sin.

"You look so pretty, angel, all spread out for me," he lets out a deep chuckle as his lips trail teasing kisses all over your abdomen, everywhere except where your body craves for him to be. Impatient, you let out a whine, looking at him with watery eyes as you bite your lip. His jaw drops in silent awe, taking in every detail of this wondrous moment.

Like a magnet, Johnny ends up being pulled right back to your lips, mesmerized at how kiss-swollen they already are. Pulling back just enough to look you into the eyes, he murmurs against your lips, "Are you sure, angel? We can take things slow if you want," brushing his thumb gently across your cheek as if you'd break otherwise.

"Please," is all you can breathlessly whisper, "take me, break me, make me all yours. I... I need you baby, I need you so bad." You nearly choke at the end of hour words at the way Johnny grinds his hips roughly into yours, groaning and pressing open-mouthed kisses along your jaw.

"You really are going to be the death of me, my pretty little princess." The change in his gaze sets the current shift in mood perfectly, and you simply couldn't hold back the moan that escaped when his fingers slide your panties to the side, sliding his fingers over your folds.

"So you want me to fuck you, is that right? You want me to be the first one to taste you, touch you, taint you?" You nod fervently, amazed at how much nicer it felt when it was his hands doing the work and not your own. Completely at his mercy, completely unaware of what his next move would be; being on that edge but not being able to jump off it of your own will.

Slowly, so painfully slowly, Johnny slides one of his fingers in, pumping slowly before adding another, rubbing at your clit with the rough pad of his thumb. All of this new stimulation had your thighs shaking, and it wasn't any easier to keep quiet when his free hand pulls down the cups of your white lace bra, fondling one breast while sucking at the other. He continues this for some time before he pulls back with a pop, lips wet with his own spit, and your hips buck of their own volition at the sultry thoughts permeating through your mind.

"Aww, is someone needy? You're just begging to be ruined. You're so cute, angel," Johnny coos at how precious you are, enjoying every moment of watching as your innocence slips further past the brink of no return, soaking in every moan that filters past your bruised lips. The way he compliments you and chastises you all at once does something to you, deep down, and it swirls with the knot already forming deep in the pit of your tummy.

"J-Johnny I'm-" you half-yell, eyes rolling back as your back arches, a silent scream lingering in the air as your mouth hangs open. Your hands claw at your boyfriend's forearm, gasping for air as he continues to thrust his fingers into your core, the sticky gushing noise of it all heightening your sensitive state as you ride out your high.

After he pulls out his fingers, Johnny curiously lets them slip past his own lips, groaning at the taste of you, unconsciously humping the bed as you reach up to run your fingers through his hair. "You taste... heavenly," he murmurs, voice heavy with lust as he licks his fingers clean, leaning down to ravage your lips with his tongue, letting you taste yourself in the process. The longer this goes on, the more you hear the beautiful noises he lets out, and the more you feel his erection pressing into your thigh.

A little worried but still curious, you cautiously slide your hand down his naked abdomen to his clothed erection. Judging by the way he grinds his fully hard length into your palm, you secretly grin to yourself at his desperate state, only to be floored when he sits up and finally discards his pants, the outline beneath his briefs making your eyes widen almost comically.

"Hey hey, look at me, eyes up here," Johnny jokes, and your widened eyes silently obey. You unconsciously gulp, though your thighs rub together without you choosing to do so, simply allowing your gentle giant of a boyfriend to caress your hair and soothe your seemingly frightened state. "We really don't have to go any further than you're comfortable, I don't want you push you in any way," he eyes you warily, smiling to himself as he recalls how nervous he was his first time too.

"I-I'm fine, I promise. I'm just... scared? This is all so new to me," you pause, struggling to find the right words, "having someone else touch me.. where only I ever have before." Johnny nods at you in understanding, placing a kiss on your forehead once you're done speaking. Before he can respond, you unknowingly cut him off, surprising him with your choice of words. "But that doesn't mean I don't want you to be the one to pop my cherry, babe. I want you to give me all you've got." He lets out an incredulous laugh, helping you out of your underwear as you both share a softer series of kisses, languid and loving in their delivery.

"I love you so much, sex or not, I just want you to know how touched I am that you chose me. To love, to hold, to cherish... thank you for allowing me to be a part of your life, and for staying in mine." You're halfway between slapping Johnny and kissing him senseless for choosing such timing to confess something to emotional. But you really couldn't put it past him, you'd always known he was a hopeless romantic.

"I love you too, so much. John Suh, thank you for always being so sweet and caring, for always being the best boyfriend. Thank you for being patient with me, for being the one to wipe my tears, and for being so gentle even in moments like these," you both smile at each other, trying your best to ignore the fact your visions are blurry through the onset of tears forming. "But if you don't help me out here baby, I swear I'm going to fuck myself instead." The snort he lets out would have made you laugh, if you weren't still so damn horny from all his teasing.

"Noted," is all he mutters before pulling off his briefs, allowing you your first glimpse at his weeping cock. He pumps himself lightly, letting out a shaky exhale before biting his lip, consumed by the feeling of finally getting a bit of relief. His eyes slowly open to look down at you, and your breath catches in your throat as how incredibly hot the scene before you is.

You don't feel scared anymore, you realize, you never really had a reason to, not with Johnny. He always put your needs before your own, and respected your boundaries with the utmost care. You could ask him to stop right now, and you know he would in a heartbeat. But you don't want to stop, and you're exhilarated by the realization. For the first time, you're genuinely excited for what lie ahead, ready to become one with Johnny, even if for a fleeting moment.

Sealing the deal with a final peck to your lips, he murmurs another "I love you", helplessly emotional in this moment, absolutely overwhelmed by the loud thumping of his heart in his chest.

Truth be told, you weren't the only nervous one, Johnny had been terrified all night. What if he did something wrong? What if he did something you didn't like? What if he couldn't live up to the perfect fantasy everyone hopes for their first time? His nerves were starting to eat at him, and yet, he could only feel guilty for being wrapped up in his own thoughts and not focusing enough on you.

"John, is something wrong?" your voice calling out to him snapped him out of his daze, feeling terrible when he saw your worried expression.

"I'm fine, just.. also nervous is all," he tries to laugh it off, but you refuse to let it slide, much to his dismay.

"Then why didn't you just say so?," you exclaim, almost exasperated. "You're probably trying to make everything perfect and beating yourself up over it again, aren't you? This isn't a Disney movie, baby, shit is gonna happen and that's fine. Sex can be complicated, but it shouldn't have to be. Just talk to be about it, is that so hard?" Your little pout at the end sends his heart into overdrive, cursing himself for being so utterly weak when it came to you, putty in your hands at the slightest things.

"I'm sorry, you're absolutely right. I just didn't want to add any stress onto you, and yet, here we are. I'm just worried, like what if I can't came you cum, angel? I'd be mortified," he whines out, his face buried into your chest, embarrassed at his own honesty.

"You've already made me cum once, and I have no doubt you can make it happen again. Maybe we don't get it right on the first try, but we'll never know if we don't."

Johnny laughs at the irony of the situation. "How come you're the one talking me down, when it should've been the other way around?"

"Maybe because you've been in your head too much instead of inside me?" And that's all it takes to unleash the lust that had been suppressed by his fears. You take a deep breath through your nose, hands clamped around his own as Johnny slides into you slowly, giving you time to adjust until he's buried all the way between your legs.

"Oh fuck," he mutters, thighs tensing at how wet and tight you were around him. "How are you doing?" he asks, eyeing you carefully.

"Feels a little odd, but it's not so bad," you gasp as he ruts into you a little more, "ooh, definitely not bad."

"Is it ok if I move now, angel?"

"Please do."

The way he moves his hips is both sin and satisfaction, pulling out all the way only to thrust deep into you, leaving you breathless and seeing stars. You wonder why Johnny was even worried in the first place, quickly climbing to your orgasm due to your sensitivity. Clenching around him, he gets the hint, thankful he won't be embarrassed at not lasting for too long with how needy he was himself. It had been far too long since he had last been intimate, let alone how wondrous the you felt.

He grabs hold of your hips to anchor himself as his pace gets sloppy, curling himself into your form, mouthing at the side of your breast as he cums in spurts, fucking you through his own sensitivity as you finally come around his length, buried so deep inside you you swore you could feel him in your belly.

"Oh... ...my god..." he pants, letting out a weak groan as he pulls out of you.

"Thank you," you place a kiss atop his head, "I couldn't have asked for more, that was wonderful, Johnny." He blushes at your praise, doing that silly little laugh he does when he's embarrassed, snuggling comfortably into your side as he pulls the sheets over your sweaty forms.

"It was the least I could do for you, I'd give you the world if I could."

"Oh, but you already have. You're my world, right here in my arms, and that's all that matters in this moment." Smirking slightly, you're proud at yourself for rendering your boyfriend speechless, beating him at his own game of cheesy lines and rosy cheeks for once.

"I really got lucky with you, huh?" he murmurs, mesmerized.

Unable to resist the opportunity, ....you jest "Oh, I'll say, you definitely got lucky tonight.

#nct smut #johnny smut #johnny suh #johnny seo #nct 127 #i accidentally posted this instead of drafting it before i was done with the setup. sorry about that :(#sort of yolo wrote this and ran with it.... i hope it's decent #was just supposed to be like 2 paragraphs max like the jw one but then life happened. so i kinda just let it 🤷🏻‍♀️#my writings #my post #innocence #nct scenarios #johnny scenarios #nct scenario #johnny scenario #nct johnny #john suh #btw yes i did add a read more but it doesn't always work on mobile so i'm sorry about that :[

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cherrywineandmagic · 5 years ago

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Weekly Readings (8/25)

Weekly 1 card tarot readings for the signs. Check Sun, Moon, Rising. Predictions, advice, and general stuff to look out for. Come back at the end of the week and see if things make sense!

Sorry they’re so late! The majority of the signs had reversed cards which I thought was interesting! We’re certainly all going through it rn lol

Disclaimer: This is a collective reading and therefore may not feel applicable to each individual. If the message does not resonate, it was simply not meant for you. Some signs will have longer messages than others. This is up to what the cards want to say.

Aries- The Tower

Change is coming, my dear Aries, whether you like it or not. You’ve been denying this for far too long and clinging onto your past will only make the transition that much harder. There’s finally some clarity, whether it’s you or someone else realizing it doesn’t make much of a difference because at the end of the day, things will have finally moved on. The tower is bringing down all that doesn’t have a place in your life anymore (jobs, relationships, unhealthy lifestyles, etc). While at first it’ll feel like the earth just gave out right beneath your feet, you can rest assured that your heart will thank you.

Taurus- Five of Swords reversed

Someone left a bitter taste in your mouth and you never quite got rid of it. An old wound has opened up but instead of throwing some salt and making it worse, you should focus on forgiving and moving on. Working on restoring harmony is important right now, and it’s better to leave the resentment behind. You’ve been fighting battle after battle and you’re exhausted, but this turbulent time is finally coming to an end. Apologize, make amends, and march forward with a positive energy.

Gemini-Queen of swords reversed

You’re letting your emotions get the better of you, my dear gems. You’re usually such a good judge of character and situations but your relationship with someone is clouding your judgement. You’re not seeing things as they are because you simply don’t want to. You’re preferring to stay in a fairytale land that doesn’t actually exist. That person isn’t good for you, and dare I say, they’re quite frankly a bitch. Get your rose colored glasses off and analyze the situation correctly. Ignorance has no place in your life.

Cancer- Four of Pentacles reversed

Money can’t buy happiness but it sure feels good to spend, doesn’t it? I’m here to slap some sense into you, Cancer. Shopping sprees won’t bring you real happiness nor love, and while it’ll give you a few fleeting seconds of joy, it’ll also leave you broke. You’re looking for stability and what you’re causing is chaos! Next time you get the urge to spend direct your energy elsewhere. Try organizing your closet or alphabetizing your bookshelf. A little control will help you feel better.

Leo- two of swords

All I can say is YIKES. We have got ourselves a situation here, and you know which one. The one you’ve been ignoring, the one you’ve brushed off and said “that’s not a real problem.” Well guess what, Leos. That problem is here and she’s ready to knock down the door. Now is the time for logic, not decision making based off of your heart’s desires. Draw those boundaries that need to be set. If you feel that you’ve shut down that simply means it’s time to start up again. Don’t cling to unhealthy coping mechanisms.

Virgo- six of swords

You’re making the best out of a shitty situation and I commend you for that. Logic has guided you to this point and while the heartache is real, so is the fact you’ve made the right choice. The worst is behind you. You’ll see sunny skies soon enough.

Libra-Ace of wands (reversed)

Passion! Ideas! Energy! All things you have! But you need direction, my wonderful Libras. How can you go anywhere without knowing where you want to end up? You need to zero in on what your passions are. Find something that you love and feel motivated to work towards or else you’ll end up feeling bored and find yourself without purpose. Timing is essential so take not of when to start up new projects and when to advance in old ones.

Scorpio- the wheel of fortune (reversed)

Stop. Being. Stubborn. Seriously, you’re resisting this change and it’s just bringing on more stress! Take some accountability for your life right now. If your luck seems to have turned for the worst, analyze what exactly made it happen because chances are that they were your own bad decisions. Remember that once you hit rock bottom the only way is up.

Sagittarius- Knight of Cups

Harmony and romance! All these positive things for someone who is thrilled to thrive off of them. You’re making decisions based off of your intuition and she’s leading you the right way. Perhaps someone has charmed you. A poet? An artist? Someone who loves with their heart on their sleeve and has managed to capture your attention. Know their intentions are pure.

Capricorn- Queen of Wands (reversed)

You have finally found yourself, my dear Capricorn. You stand firmly on your beliefs and know what you deserve and what you want out of life. This level of self-respect is something to be celebrated! Give yourself a pat on the back for such a wonderful feat. You may feel the need to be alone this week and that’s perfectly okay. Take all the time you need to linger in the background, alone time does the soul well.

Aquarius- Six of Swords (reversed)

An intensely personal journey is leaving you isolated. You keep trying to rationalize why you should stay where you are and that you can handle it, but your heart knows that’s not true. This can be a job or relationship that’s no longer serving you. Take a look at what it is that’s making it so difficult to move on, and try to resolve your issues so that you may transition peacefully.

Pisces- the Lovers (reversed)

You tend to romanticize things and that’s part of your nature. You’re a romantic. You love love and that’s a wonderful thing. However, you shouldn’t romanticize someone more than they do you. There’s no balance here. Someone is more invested than the other and that means someone is going to get hurt. Love is endless, so know that it will always find it’s way back to you in time.

#weekly tarot #tarot #tarot reading #astrology #aries #taurus #gemini #leo #cancer #virgo #libra #scorpio #sagittarius #capricorn #aquarius #pisces

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shadowsnlace · 5 years ago

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Now, back to your regularly scheduled content...

I’m so sorry everyone! I know I’ve been posting stuff lately where I’ve explained why I’m not going to write something. I promise, it’s all just my effort to be kind enough to give a response instead of just deleting something and letting someone wonder what happened to their ask.

Although, I will admit that those kinds of posts make me feel really awful.

I am going through all of my asks to find what I just know isn’t my cup of tea or doesn’t speak to me for whatever reason.

I am not trying to be preachy, or judge anyone’s choice in the fiction they like to read. This all has to do with my comfort levels and whether or not I feel I can write something and do a good job. If I’m forcing myself to write something then it’s going to reflect in the writing -- it’s gonna be shit and I never want to half-ass something for y’all.

I’m learning that I have to set boundaries and I truly hope that you can all understand and respect that. I hate having to say ‘no’ to an ask, I really do.

There are also one or two asks that I’ve seen asked on other blogs and I’ve decided that I’m not going to do those asks. I’ll be answering them with a link to the blog that answered it. One in particular I know I can’t do any better than has already been done. I prefer to be very original and asking me to repeat what another writer has done makes me feel like I’m disrespecting that writer, like they didn’t do a good enough job so you’re expecting me to outdo them.

That’s just my opinion and I’m sure some people just want to get an idea expressed from different voices. That’s completely fine. However, please keep in mind that for me (and probably other writers too) it makes it that much harder to write because we all have to make sure we don’t plagarize each other. I’m talking about really specific things, not general stuff -- that’s totally fine because it leaves us all room to be creative. (Example: Asking how the captains would react waking up as the opposite gender is really specific. Asking how a character would behave in a relationship with someone petite, or “what are the captain’s kinks” is general and leaves lots of room for multiple people to write it differently.)

And, please, don’t misinterpret, I LOVE asks that are specific. It gives me an idea exactly what you’re looking for. Just, please, if you’re going to ask me something so specific please don’t go and ask every other Bleach fanfic writer to do it too and vice versa. I read their blogs and they all do an awesome job. I’m not gonna do any better than they did.

While I hate having to do this, in future I will be deleting any asks that I’m not comfortable with for any reason. I won’t be explaining myself in posts when the asks are anon. It makes me feel judgey and I never want to do that. If someone sends something and I can answer privately then I will do so in a respectful manner.

Whatever I accept will be on the to-do list. If you made an anon ask and you don’t see it there then please send a request to see if I got it because Tumblr can eat asks. It is not any trouble at all to check with me that your ask made it to my box. If you have to send it anon, then I will simply answer, yes that I got your ask. If it’s not on the to-do list, then I’ve given it a pass.

So...now, I will be getting down off my soapbox -- hopefully for good -- and getting back to putting out fun, sexy, full of feels (and sometimes drama) content for all you lovely people!

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alekakers · 5 years ago

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The Story So Far (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Existential Dread)

- 32-

When I was a kid I thought of thirty-two as this incredibly significant age. For whatever reason I viewed it as the epitome of reaching adulthood. Of course as a child I thought of everyone older than me as an adult. You know that weird skewed perspective thing, when you recall memories from childhood and even high school kids looked like grown ups. But in my head thirty-two was a mythical age that solidified your status as an adult. An age that once reached meant you were no longer a young man/woman, but a full fledged adult-y adult.

Now as I sit here looking back on thirty-two years of life I can say I had no idea how my perspective on age and life would change over the next couple decades. But in some strange way I wasn’t completely wrong either. I had wanted to do this kinda thing when I turned 30 but that was a chaotic time so I never got around to it. So now with two more years behind me, here is a reflection on a simple life and what I’ve learned from it. Let’s start at the beginning...

- Born On The Bayou -

I was born in the early afternoon in Nassau Bay, Texas. I grew up on the same 25 acre ranch my mom was raised on. 30 minutes outside of Houston, 20 minutes from the Gulf of Mexico, and 10 minutes from the Johnson NASA Space Center where my grandparents were instrumental in the Apollo and space shuttle programs. My grandfather was an Oklahoma farm boy that crossed the Mississippi in a covered wagon who ended up putting men on the moon. My grandmother came from New England and was breaking ground in the country’s fledgling space program when she fell in love with a cowboy rocket scientist and brought my mom into the world. Unfortunately they died when my mom was in college. I wish I could have met them.

My dad grew up in a sleepy suburb outside Portland, Oregon. His mother was an eccentric, loving, and strong-willed woman. It was her grandfather, Aleksander Justice, that I’m named after. A wolgadeutsche immigrant, he moved to America to start a new life for himself and his family. My grandmother was harshly old-fashioned to say the least, but she loved me and my sister with all her heart and was in our lives more than any other extended family member. Her passing a few years ago wrecked me more than I thought it would.

My father’s father was an orphan adopted and raised by his Uncle. As an angsty youth he enlisted in the navy to avoid jail time, served as a frogman in Vietnam, worked as a motorcycle cop for decades to support three kids, helped raise my cousin after my aunt got divorced, and was a volunteer firefighter and loving grandfather and great grandfather when he passed a couple years back. He was and will always be the prime example of the man I judge myself against. I miss him a lot.

- Beans and Cornbread -

My parents met in college and were soon after married and the proud parent’s of a baby boy. My dad was serving in the navy when both I and then my sister, Erin, were born. After his tour of duty my parents moved to the property in Texas that was left to my mom and my uncle. Despite being crazy young, dirt poor, and perhaps in retrospect being wildly unprepared to raise a family, my parents managed to keep us fed and clothed and sheltered. Most importantly they instilled in us the values and morals I still hold dear. Treat others with kindness. Be grateful for what you have. Work hard, try your best, and never give up no matter what life throws at you. In some ways I’m grateful for my modest upbringing and the appreciation it gave me for the little things in life.

Even though my friends lived in nice suburbs while I lived in a run down ranch house, even though they had nintendos and nerf guns while I had cheap plastic toys, even though we ate on a shoe string budget and couldn’t go on fancy vacations, even through the emotional trauma of it all, I still look back on my childhood fondly. I am eternally grateful for those years. Wandering around the pasture. Erin and I letting our imaginations run wild. Going to cub scouts every week. Making our own fun roaming around the church after hours while our mom was there to do whatever she was there to do. My parents scraping every penny to make holidays and birthdays special. I wouldn’t trade all the dinners of beans and cornbread for anything else. I’ll always be a humble country boy at heart.

- Misty Mountain Hop -

Three months after my 11th birthday we packed up the house, loaded the moving truck, and drove half way across the country to start a new life in Washington. My dad had been unemployed for a while and ended up finding a job with the boy scouts in Everett. It would give our family a modicum of economic security and put us closer to my dad’s family in Oregon. It was a jolting transition to say the least. Shortly after we moved puberty hit like a ton of bricks. My early childhood was firmly left in Texas and my teenage years made their angsty debut in Washington.

We moved into a quiet suburb 30 minutes north of Seattle and for the first time our family had a level of comfort we had never had. We could afford name brand cereal! But simultaneously my father’s anger issues were coming to a boiling point. Also my sister and I were diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. It was a very tumultuous time. My defense mechanism was to retreat, and I became terribly introverted and detached, retreating into music and video games. My sister went the opposite direction and became a loud, boisterous spit-fire, finding herself at home in the world of theater. I think we both already had the predilections for these respective personality traits, but the dissonance in the family only exaggerated them.

After a few years we moved into another house around the block. It was around this time that my father’s temper finally became too much and he started seeking help to work through some things. It took some time but I can’t stress enough how much of a different person he was after that. Night and day. I was in high school at this point and it was also around this time that I started to become disillusioned with the status quo of society. The modern school system seemed pointless, I started smoking weed, and music became the end all be all of my existence. It still is. Music is life! I dropped out of high school and decided to live the life I wanted to live.

Throughout my teenage years I played in different bands, experimented with all kinds of drugs, met and broke up with my first true love, entered the work force, and started the slow painful transition from adolescence to adulthood. It was a wild time! While part of me wishes I had stuck out high school, I have never regretted the choices I made. I saw that so much of the reality around me was a construct of our culture and I sought to push the boundaries of that reality. And I’m glad I did. I learned lessons the hard way, on my terms. I saw past so many lies and illusions and fallacies of how we’re expected to live our lives and perceive the world. I created my own world of truths and morals instead of blindly accepting the ones being pushed on me. It was an incredibly eye-opening and freeing time in my life and I credit those experiences for a lot of the wisdom and knowledge that I’ve absorbed.

*Disclaimer: I am grateful that I came out of that time in my life relatively unscathed. I know/knew many people that couldn’t claim themselves so lucky. It takes an incredibly strong will to toe the line and step back without going over the edge. Even though I wouldn’t change a moment of it, I wouldn’t recommend the life I led to anyone.

- Retreat and Rebirth -

After the last band I was in during those days broke up, our collective friend groups started to dissipate. As the realities of adult life started to pull from different directions most people rose to the occasion. I did not. Burnt out from the crazy ride and being overwhelmed by life I retreated to a world of isolation. A little solitude is healthy. I consider myself an outgoing introvert (A term a like a lot). But I took it too far. Unemployed for three years. Letting many friendships dwindle and slip away. Spending my days doing nothing but smoking weed and playing video games. It was unhealthy and I didn’t know how to change. Then the universe decided it was time. Just after my 22nd birthday I finally cut ties with a very close but deceptively toxic friend. After smoking half a pack a day since I was 16 I decided to quit. And I decided to take a break from smoking weed. Then to top it all off my childhood dog that I had had for 14 years died. To this day that remains the most transformational time in my life.

I spent that spring and summer reconnecting with myself and what was important in life. Taking care of my diabetes. Eating healthier. Gardening. I leaned into making mixtapes like never before. It is still my main hobby. Musica es vida! I had what I can only describe as a spiritual awaking. Come fall I was smoking weed again but with a renewed respect for the plant. I had a job doing something I had unexpectedly developed a passion for, cooking. And I found myself coming out of my social isolation. It was like I ended a three year hiatus from the world. I still think of my life in terms of before that time and after.

Then three years after I hit the reset button on life I was ready for another change. I was 25 and the inexorable march of time wasn’t stopping. So I finally moved out of my parent’s house. No shame! Science says that adolescence in modern humans lasts into our early twenties. And I was definitely still weening out of my teenage years at that age and was lucky to have such amazing supportive parents. It wasn’t until 24/25 that the existential dread of life started to set in and I thought, shit I gotta get outta here. December 2012, the apocalypse didn’t happen, and I moved in with my sister in downtown Seattle. She herself had spent the last few years overcoming her own traumas and wrestling with her own demons, and she helped me step even further outside my comfort zone into the greater world. I am so grateful for the two years we got to live together as fledgling adults.

- She Saved Me -

Just shy of a year living among the sights and sounds of the city, I found myself falling into a dangerous rut. I had been at the same job for three years. Commuting between the suburbs and downtown. Six years since my last relationship. Not much of a social life. And finding escape from the dull routine at the bottom of a bottle. Get up. Go to work. Come home. Get drunk and high and play video games or watch tv. Rinse, repeat. I suddenly found myself back where I was. And again I didn’t know how to break the cycle. Then I met the one person that would change my life in ways I never could have expected. The one person that would rock my world, wake me up to the true possibilities of existence, and become the one person that I could truly never live without.

One fall day I walk into work to see a new face. Olivia was her name. Damn she’s cute, I thought. And I quickly became enamored with her personality. But it would take 6 months of quietly pining for her before I had the courage to try my hand. Then on a fateful day in May we spent a whole day together. Then a whole week together. Then the summer that would change my life forever. We fell madly in love. I stopped drinking like a horse. My heart was opened to another for the first time in many many years. My mind was awakened by a mind I so closely related to. My body was refreshed by the passion I had been so long without. It was another rebirth of the soul, the kind that shook me to my very core. I had almost resigned myself to being alone forever, working a dead end job and drinking the nights away. Then she saved me. She remains my best friend, my rock, and my favorite person in the whole world.

- My Place -

Invigorated and encouraged, I found a new job. A slight step up in the culinary sense. Challenging yet rewarding. Olivia moved in with us. Then a few months later we got our own place in north Seattle. Shortly after we got a pupper. It was an incredible time. Feeling truly independent and self-supportive for the first time. Developing an amazing relationship with the person that I quickly realized I could spent the rest of my life with. This was the first time in my life I could attest to feeling the slightest bit like an adult. Of course I had realized long ago that you never really feel like an adult. You don’t just wake up one day like a switch was flipped and go, oh I’ve got it now. Life is a constant journey of growth and learning. We’re all just faking it till we make it.

But this was the first time in my life where I felt like, ah okay this is it, this is life, this is being an adult. Waking up every day, doing your best to navigate life, and constantly trying to figure out what it means to be you, what's important to you. Then life set up to deliver another wave of challenges to overcome. It was around this time that my family experienced a huge upheaval. We almost lost someone very close to us and it rattled me to my core. Then my boss was involved in a car accident and as his assistant I was suddenly interim kitchen manager. A couple months later the owner was impressed enough to make it official and I toke my first salaried job.

I relished the opportunity and strove to run that kitchen the absolute best I could. I went above and beyond. I poured everything I had into it. I learned so much about the restaurant game, management, cooking, and above all about myself. It was an intense period of personal growth. At the same I was coming into my own as a leader and a cook, I was also dealing with multiple family tragedies. And as much as I loved the work, the restaurant, and the owners, the stress of the job started taking its toll. Salary is a double edged sword in any industry, but especially in food service. If you know you know. I was doing my best to soldier on but I got to a point where enough was enough. I had come into some money and decided to take some time off. I left on good terms and will never forget the lessons I learned and the people I met.

- Intermission -

I had just turned 30. I had spent the last two years running myself ragged as the kitchen manager of a bustling Seattle restaurant. I put my blood, sweat and tears into that place. It was time for a break. I invested most of the money I inherited, and then set enough aside to to take some time to live life again. I rested. I remembered how to not be anxious every waking moment. Olivia and I went on a cross country road trip to see the national parks and visit my home town in Texas. I proposed. She said yes! It was so incredibly cathartic and needed. I am still grateful I had the opportunity to take the time I needed to reset.

Later that year it was time to go back to work. I ended up back at the little place in the burbs where I started my journey. I was happy to take the lessons I learned and come back as kitchen manager. It was just what I needed to ease back into the industry. The perfect place to put into practice my new found appreciation for work life balance. Meant to be a temporary step, as soon as I did all I was able to do to help them right the ship, it was time to move on. My father in law put me in touch with the chef he worked with and he brought me on board. It was a significant step up in the culinary scene, and I’ve been tapped to take over for the sous chef.

- And Now For Something Completely Different -

Now here I am. 32 years old. That mythical age I held in random esteem when I was a kid. Looking back on my life and thinking about what I’ve learned along the way. Even though I still struggle with my less savory qualities - I fear change and the unknown. I’m scared of success. I suffer from impostor syndrome and doubt my own strengths. I avoid confrontation. - I’m working on it. For the most part I love who I am. I’m proud of the person I’ve become. But it took a time. And work. I made peace with childhood traumas. I fought through pain, did some serious introspection and soul-searching, and came out the other side a better person for it. I looked inside myself to find the strength to overcome my demons. I think it’s inside all of us. Some people attribute it to a higher power. Some people find peace and comfort in the company of others. Whatever it takes, we’re all capable of making changes for the better.

If there is one thing life has taught me it’s that we are never done learning. We never stop growing. We never “figure it out”. We’re constantly being tested by the realities of life and doing our best to rise to the occasion. At 32 I may be an adult by most standards, but I’m still sorting out what that even means, what my purpose in life is, and waking up every day just trying to be the best me I can be. That’s life. And I’m grateful for the safety and security that gives me the luxury of musing on such ephemeral topics. I’m grateful for every day I wake up and get another whack at this crazy thing called living. I’m grateful I got to exist at all. I don’t spend much time these days waxing on the countless possibilities of the what’s and why’s of reality. At the end of day it’s a mute point. My consciousness still inhabits this physical body in this physical realm, and if I wanna keep seeing how far I can take it I have to play by its rules. Even if I occasionally see how far I can bend them. Whatever comes next, whatever is beyond the great void, my reality exists in the here and now. I’ve come to terms (for the most part;) with my mortality and the existential dread. It reminds me that its up to myself to find purpose in life. So I try to live in the present, to work on my shortcomings, make the best of every day, and treat others how I would want to be treated.

As I stare down the barrel of the “best years” of my life, I am hopeful and optimistic about the future. If not for the world at large (jury’s still out on that one) than at least for my ability to navigate it and make the best of it for myself and others. I'm engaged to my best friend, I'm in a kick ass band making music with some of my oldest friends, and I've got a job that I'm incredibly excited about. Lao Tzu said, “If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future.” Wise words. But at the same time I think its important to remember where we came from and retain the lessons we’ve learned along the way. As well as looking to the future so that we may live with purpose. I think living is a delicate balance of keeping in mind all that was, all that is, and all that may be. And we’re all just doing our best to find the balance. Do whatever makes you happy as long as it doesn’t hurt others. Try to leave the world a better place for those that come after. Be nice and work hard. Love yourself so that you can love others. Namaste!

- Alek

TL;DR - I just turned 32. Life is crazy. Be nice and work hard. Love yourself and love others. Do your best. Namaste!

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