#but guess who has a 4th job now ;; me

[theghostofashton]

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[hellfire--cult]

Stripper!Billy Hargrove x Fem!Reader

wc: 7.5k

Request by @pastel-pillows: Billy gets hired for a private party. The only rules is to keep it in his pants and for the clients to not touch him... Unless he says so.

+18 MDNI, stipper dancing, grinding, hard on, fingering, roughness, p in v, billy is OOC, he is not an ass, smut, smut, smut

A/N: This is Stripper!Billy from my Do I wanna Know Series. I love you ash for this request, and I hope you and every other horny person for Billy enjoys it.

REBLOGS are true support.

no charge

Billy looked at himself once more in the mirror before grabbing his duffel bag filled with other clothes and things he would need for tonight.

He pays no mind to these kinds of jobs, and Joyce is the one that arranges them. Clients can approach her to talk about hiring one of the strippers for one night for a private gathering or party. Joyce lays down the rules for every client, and she ensures their safety by having their GPS turned on at all times in their cellphones. The job lasts two hours, and if in two hours Joyce doesn’t have any notice from them, she sends someone to the address of the place they are heading over. 

The client must give many personal details such as their full name, legal address, real phone number and it is all cross checked with their IDs. Joyce is very strict when it comes to the boys' safety, so he is really thankful for her taking care of them this way. Not many bosses work the way she does, but Billy guesses it’s just her motherly instinct.

Today he was hired for a birthday party. The one that hired him was the birthday girl's best friend, and she was very direct when she asked for Billy specifically. He walked down the stairs and to see Steve playing with Eddie with the switch controllers as they stared at the screen. “Stop throwing shells at me!” Steve yells at Eddie who only laughs at his friend as he now stands at 4th place in Mario Kart. Billy rolls his eyes as he walks towards the front door.

“Hey! Remember to put the GPS on! We’ll be watching!” Eddie yells at him and Billy only sighs but internally he is grateful he is being taken care of by his closest friends as well.

“Yeah mom.” Billy retorts and then Steve is the one that speaks next.

“Don’t stick the dick in!” 

Billy only groans at that and walks out of the apartment to start heading to the address of the birthday girl. He knows about the rules and the clients know about them too. This is a dance only. The only hands that can be pressed on him are just on his shoulders and if he allows them, on his chest. They cannot touch him indecently in any way or at any point. If the rule is broken he has all the right to head out because he feels uncomfortable and he gets paid in full anyway. 

That happened a few times, but mostly with the older crowd. Women in their 40’s or 50’s. This party was of people his age from what he had read. He threw the duffel bag in the back of his camaro and turned on his GPS and immediately sent a message to Joyce telling her he was heading to the address. Joyce sent him a reminder to be careful and if at any point he has to bail out, to do so.

He starts his car and drives towards the suburban part of town. He has been here a few times for bachelorette parties, so he knows his way around. He looks at the piece of paper in order to get the street and number right and after driving for two more minutes, he reaches the house and he can already hear the music and some girl yelling. He looks at the window and he tries to figure out how many people are there.

A smirk spreads on his face when he sees the birthday girl. 

Oh, this was going to be one of those nights.

You giggled as you danced in the middle with your best friend, your other friends cheering you on. You had put some pink lights to make the space more fun, more enticing. 

It’s not every day that you turn 25, and what better way than to simply get drunk with all of your friends. It’s been so long since you had fun like this, and you can finally be free again thanks to your decision to break things off with your boyfriend after a year. The problem with him was that he was a prude, vanilla, and sadly that interfered with your feelings for him. It didn’t mean you didn’t love him, and it took a while for you to get over the breakup– even if you were the one that did it.

Attraction is very much needed in a relationship, and you had lost it completely for your ex.

He just didn’t want to try anything at all. You came up with ideas, positions and things you could both try and he didn’t find anything interesting. Not even some spanking. It became harder and harder to reach an orgasm with him, and the attraction slowly started fading away. Emotionally he was perfect, but he didn’t match that physically. It had angered you that he wasn’t even willing to try anything for you, so that also impulsed your decision to break things off.

The doorbell rang and you immediately stopped dancing with your best friend and you looked at her with a confused look on your face and then scanned the room. Everyone was here. You didn’t invite anyone else. You let go of her in order to go get the door but was stopped by her with a smile on her face.

“Don’t! Just, stay there, I’ll get it!” You were frowning at the situation but then you saw all your friends giggling with one another, Jeremiah smiling at you as he got a chair right in the middle of the room. What is going on?

“Don’t kill us…” He says to you and you are still staring at him as he looks over your shoulder and you see him giggle with a blush to his face, stepping back into his chair. Heavy boots could be heard as they walked into the living room and you slowly turned around and you really thought that a Greek god of some sort just entered your house. 

He had the brightest set of eyes you’ve ever seen, piercing even, blonde curls styled and pulled back into a half ponytail with some falling towards his shoulders. He was built, and tall, and you couldn’t help but almost salivate as you stared at his plump lips. Lips that slowly spread, showing off his bright teeth to you. 

“Is this the birthday girl?” The man asked and his voice just sent a shiver down your spine instantly. Your best friend snickered behind him and nodded, saying your name to him.

“This is our gift baby, from all of us.” She was smirking at you and then the room cheered. They… They got you a stripper. Oh dear god… You weren’t prepared for this, you’ve never experienced what a stripper could do, never went to a show but– You should have. If men like this work there then it is worth every penny and you were so grateful to your friends right now.

The man took a few steps towards you, his eyes locked with yours, and it might be the alcohol you’ve been drinking but everything simply grows hot as he raises a hand up and places it on your chin, tilting it upwards for you to look at him more properly.

“I’m Billy.” You were completely certain that you looked dazed, as if hypnotized by this man’s looks. You heard Jeremiah woo at him and Billy only chuckled as he leaned towards you. “One rule for you birthday girl. You don’t touch me unless I want you to, got that?”

You nod dumbly at that request, and it was going to be hard to keep your hands to yourself, but out of respect you knew you had to. Billy lets go of your chin, and he turns around to give a nod to your best friend. She bit her lip and headed over to her phone to change the music. He put a request for songs for tonight, and he had asked your preference of dance.

He wanted to know if you would like it rough, or exciting, or slow and enticing. When he gave your best friend his options, she instantly went for slow, yet rough at some parts because she said, and he quotes ‘You needed it.’. He didn’t press for more questions but Joyce did, just so she would know your mental situation and for Billy to know exactly what to do and what to not overdo. 

You needed to be shown what you have been missing the past year.

Billy sat you down on the chair your friends had placed in the middle of the room as they all were sitting around it, small cheers and whistles being heard as your eyes never left Billy’s. He didn’t expect to dance for someone like you tonight. You caught his eye the moment he saw you whipping your hips from side to side as he looked through the window of your home outside. 

There was this carnal need growing inside of him, but he had to focus on the job, not let it get to his head. One of the things he had to make sure of in these kinds of parties or small side jobs was to never, ever, get hard. It wasn’t impossible to do so really, since he was always the one grinding on the people, but if he does get hard it might give the wrong message, and people might feel entitled to touch him, thinking they can do it, just because he is a man with normal reactions.

‘Renegade’ by Aaryan Shah started playing on the speakers and your breathing hitched at the rain sound at the beginning of it. You took a shaky breath in as he started circling around you, his hand softly grazing all over your shoulders, and when the beat started, his hands pressed on your biceps, dragging them all the way down, slowly, and not putting pressure on his fingertips but it was enough to make your skin grow goosebumps from it.

“I’m gonna make you feel wanted…” You didn’t even notice he had gotten close to your ear from behind, his hot breath hitting your skin making you shiver and his low whisper sent a shock that reached your center. Your mind was blocking out everyone else, slowly, as if your friends weren’t cheering you on, or him for that matter. 

“Please…” You replied to him and he was sure he wouldn’t be able to hear you through the music, but he did, and his eyes almost widened at your boldness. You really needed this. He took the opportunity while standing behind you to push his sneakers off by placing the tip of his foot at the back of each and pulling.

He kept circling you until he was standing in front of you again, a smirk on his face as he suddenly ripped his jacket open, taking it off in one swift motion and you were so focused on his face before that you did not notice that he was wearing a button up shirt that was half closed, showing off his chest and some of his abs. 

Your breathing stopped at the sight and he chuckled at your expression. He definitely knew he was attractive, never an ounce of self doubt about that, and that’s what made this job easy for him. But there was something in your eyes that was different from the other girls and women he danced for– Something that was making his body grow a little hotter at each flick of your eyes towards his body.

There was genuine and pure lust in them.

He knew there was desire for him with all those other clients, but you… There was something else, as if you were hungry, starving even. He motioned for you to give him your hand and you took a second to notice what he was saying, raising a shaking hand to him. He licked his lips and bit the bottom one as he made you grip the middle of his open shirt, right under his pecs. 

He gripped your hand tightly, and made you pull it down in one hard motion, surprising you, and all of his buttons flew away as his shirt flew completely open, revealing all of his abdomen to you. You felt your mouth salivate at the sight, the rhythm of the song blasting in your ears, making the moment much more seductive. 

You were expecting strippers to be rough, manhandling you around as you’ve seen in tik tok videos, or instagram, and even magic mike, and just grinding on you aggressively. You didn’t expect this man to be moving slowly, yet it was sending fire currents all over your body at each sudden movement he did.

Billy took his shirt off and smirked as he threw it towards your other friend, Jeremiah, who squealed in delight at it. You had forgotten about your friends, and your eyes blinked as you looked around and you saw all the clapping and cheering going around, only to be pulled back into that bubble of arousal as you felt strong hands grip your chin again, and make you look up into blue orbs that were staring back at you intensely.

“Your attention is only mine tonight. Keep it that way.” Billy smirked as you stared up at him, an amused look on your face. He never expected responses from his dominance, most of the time they just nod at him and let him proceed, but you… you wiped Billy’s smirk away as you smiled at him and actually retorted back to him.

“Yes Sir.”

That word shot right to his dick. He cursed at you in his mind, shaking the feeling of rising arousal he was feeling to keep going with his job. He pulled his hand away from you only for both of your hands to be grabbed by him, pulling you up from the chair, causing you to gasp as you stand on both of your trembling knees. 

He smirked at how you slightly wobbled and he made you press your hands against his chest and then guided you, very slowly, over his chest and down to his abdomen. He was expecting you to be looking at where your hands were going, but your eyes kept locked against his all the time. Your hands were on fire at every dent you passed by, at the heat of his skin, but you didn’t press your hands on him.

And for some reason, Billy was disliking that.

He licked his lips, a smirk appearing on his face as he looked down at his jeans and then back up at you. You followed his gaze and your eyes widened, looking up at him again wondering if you understood right. He guided your hands towards his happy trail, making you graze your fingertips on his V shape and he almost let out a groan at the feeling. Your eyes were now stuck at his form, feeling the soft hairs that went beneath the hem of his denims.

“Open them up.” There were cheers and whistles around at the request, but you couldn’t hear them, just the soft bass that played on the song. Your fingers swiftly unbuttoned his jeans and you took a deep breath in as you got hold of the zipper and started pulling it down. Billy could feel the tip of your thumb as you glided it down with the metal and he felt it. He felt how his bulge was slowly growing. 

You looked up at him when everything was undone and he tilted his head at you, as if telling you that you are missing something. He nodded once towards the floor and back at you, and you felt your heart beating into your ears as you slowly started getting on your knees in front of him. 

And Billy cursed inwardly once more. You look so fucking beautiful like this. 

He almost never took his pants off at a performance. But oh he wanted to right now. He chuckled as you kept yourself on the floor and he walked to your side and then behind you. He felt himself starting to lose control of his desire because you just looked too exquisite to him. It wasn’t that the other clients were not of his liking, but you… something was coming out of your body, almost like pheromones that were pulling him in.

He pressed a hand on your shoulder and he gave you a soft push, enough to make you lose some balance and get on all fours as your hands landed on the floor. Billy couldn’t contain the smirk inside of him because you were completely unaware of your friends around you. You weren’t paying any mind to them any longer and it was all thanks to him. Now he understands what your best friend meant by you needing it. 

Your heart thumped in your chest and your eyes widened when he pressed his hips against your ass, and you felt him. He was hard. It was something normal, wasn’t it? They grind on clients and it is normal for them to get hard. Billy on the other hand, couldn’t help himself as he pressed against you and that made him even harder than before, not caring any longer about the people in the room, just like you weren’t paying mind to them.

He pressed onto you even rougher, prompting you to finally lay down on the floor, hands on both sides of your head as it turned to look at him over your shoulder. Billy salivated at the hazy look in your eyes, pupils blown wide, and he chuckled at you while getting on top of your body, his face coming close to your ear, softly whispering to you.

“Stay still.” And that you did, feeling your thighs clench at his order, cheeks becoming flushed as you wondered what he was going to do. He smirked as he raised himself up on his hands as he hovered over your body and then he parted his legs even wider so he could have some leverage. His hips started swaying back and forth into a sensual motion, grazing over your bottom half every time he went down.

You gasped at the sensual movement, and you held in a groan as the wetness started to soak your underwear. This man had you in a curse at the moment, and you didn’t know if you wanted it to be cured. Were you that desperate that a stripper is making you feel this way? He is just doing his job which is just dancing, nothing more to it.

But fuck will it rise your expectations for other men now.

Billy’s eyebrow twitched as he looked down at you, and all he could think about was ripping that shirt off your body, to feel your skin under his palm. He stops grinding and his hand snakes to the front of your throat and he pulls you with him as he kneels back up. His chest presses against your back, a moan coming out of your throat.

You wanted to take your hand back, to be able to touch him, rub him, feel him. But your hands were kept in place, not wanting this to be over. If you did as you desired he will stop this and leave, and that’s the last thing you want. Billy couldn’t contain himself as he broke his own personal rule and pressed his bulge against your ass, and you heard him growl in his throat.

Your head was spinning and suddenly you felt his free hand grip yours, and your eyes widened when he guided you to where you wanted your hand to actually be. He made you stick your hand into his open pants and you could cup his hardness into your hand. His breath was in your ear and you were sure he was giving you permission now to do as you please, so in front of everyone, you moved your hand, slowly, up and down on his bulge. 

Billy had made up his mind at this point. He is going to break every single rule, every single warning sign thrown out the window. He was going to get his phone out of his bag, message Joyce, and Eddie and Steve that he will take a little bit longer. You felt a shiver run down your spine as his fingers splayed all over your throat, massaging it gently, and his lips came close to your ear, his hot breath fanning onto it.

“Can I give you a present?” He felt you stiffen, and he smirked as your hand stopped rubbing on him due to shock, but then he groaned into your skin as you began to move your hand even harder on him, surprising him as you turned your head to look at him with a smirk on your face.

“A gift?” You dared to ask and he could only smile at you, his lips coming close to yours, hovering over them, and you were dying to move forward and press them against his. You wanted to taste this man, and the next words he said to you made your body tremble suddenly with an urgent need.

“No charge.”

That’s when he pushed you off him and your eyes seemed to come back to reality for a few seconds, the yelling and cheering from your friends sipping into your ears. Sounds you had blocked out completely all this while, dissociating from the world that was around you and Billy. You looked up towards your best friend who had a wide eyed look on her friend as she covered her mouth with her hand. 

Billy walked around you, a smirk on his face all the while, and he went to grab his bag that he left on the front door, winking at your best friend as he passed by, and then he turned around to face you again, tilting his head as if waiting for you to make the next move. 

“Turn the music all the way up.” Those were your simple instructions and your friends cheered on you as you walked towards the stripper you met just a few moments ago. Your best friend gave you a wink and a motion for you to not lock the door. Your friends protected you just in case… because Billy is still a stranger. No matter what the job is, he still is one and you don’t know him.

What you do know, is the size of his dick. And you definitely need it inside of you.

You walk towards him to get hold of his free hand, his jeans still unbuttoned and open, the bulge just trying to break free from them. You gave him one look as if asking one last time if it was okay and he gave you a wink with a teeth showing grin. You turned the both of you and headed upstairs as the music started to increase in volume. You didn’t really care if your friends heard you, not when you deserved this. 

Billy took the opportunity that you had your back towards him to take his phone out of the side pocket of the bag as it hung on his shoulder. He texted his friends and then Joyce. His boss knows what it means when they say it’s taking a little longer, no need to clarify. She always sends a be careful and to keep the GPS on. Eddie is the one to reply to him and he almost lets out a snort at the message.

‘Wrap it.’

Billy puts the phone back in the bag, and then grabs onto the small metallic package he has there, tucking it into his back pocket, as you walk down the hallway of your home. Billy was amazed by your age and the fact that you own a home. None of his business on how you got it, but it was still intriguing. The music, even if loud, was becoming distant, even if a bit, and you were happy your room wasn’t above the living room. 

You opened the door to your bedroom, and the nerves finally kicked in. All the confidence you had earlier on to make a move were now squashed as you turned around to see Billy closing the door behind him, looking down at you as his bag dropped to the floor. Your breathing stammering slightly, not knowing how to move on from here. It’s been so long since you’ve been with a man other than your ex, so you didn’t know how to start this off like you used to.

But Billy knew what you needed, from the moment he saw you, the moment your best friend said your preference. He knew, and he was glad you needed something like that because he loves it that way. 

His hand shot up suddenly, grabbing you by the shoulders and turning you both around so that he could slam you against the closed door. You gasped at how he manhandled you so effortlessly and just took you completely by surprise. He towered over you, gazing down at your eyes and you could feel your knees trembling at how intense his eyes were. His hand raised up to put it under your chin and hold your eyes to his own.

“You need it badly, don’t you? You need a real man–” He pressed his hips against yours and you could feel his bulge against your lower belly, making you whimper against your throat. “To treat you like you deserve.”

You felt yourself clench at nothing in his voice. He had you in the palm of his hand, and his eyes were looking down at you, as if waiting for something. This man knows you want him, but you also know that this man wants you just the same, and that is boosting your ego and your confidence. You never imagined a guy like him to look twice your way… but here he was. A smile spread on your lips as you answered back to him.

“Yes sir~”

At your purr Billy’s lips instantly slammed on yours, a moan escaping your mouth and into his as he did so. His hands moved towards your wrists and he grabbed onto them, pulling them up above your head and using one hand to hold them together and staying there. You were surprised at the sudden movement, a whine coming out of your mouth, while his lips were pulled into a grin in between the kiss. 

His lips moved against yours, roughly, seeking for more as his body fully pressed against yours, chest against chest, and his other free hand went towards your neck, pressing your head against the door as well. You felt yourself becoming wetter by the second, and you moaned in surprise as his thigh came in between your legs, pressing harshly against your center, the seam of your jeans pressing just right against your clit.

He chuckled into the kiss and pulled away, barely, so he could look at your face. Your eyes turned half lidded and wanton moans escaped your lips every time he pressed his knee even harder on you. He took his tongue out and ran it through your bottom lip, gently. You tasted divine, but he wasn’t here to be gentle tonight. He knew you didn’t want him to be gentle either.

Your hips started moving against his thigh, and he looked down at your movements as you rode him. He felt his cock twitch in his underwear, and he looked back up to your face and he took his hand away from your neck. He was surprised to hear you whine at the loss of his grip, but he then started sliding his hand down, reaching the button of your pants, making your eyes snap wide to look at him.

“Let me show you what you’ve been missing, sweets.” The grip on your wrists tightened as he unbuttoned your jeans and pulled your zipper down. You couldn’t hear the music or anything but your beating heart. It was just a constant pumping of blood in your ear. You felt his fingertips slide into the elastic of your panties, and you shivered at the tickling sensation he was leaving behind each time he inched closer to your cunt.

“Please, please Billy…” You begged, and who was Billy to deny you when you asked so nicely? He smiled down at you as his fingers found the bundle of nerves that made a moan come out of your lips without shame. He gave it a few circling motions and your hips were trying to grind against him.

His face leaned down towards your neck, inhaling deeply to take in your scent, your perfume. You whimpered when you felt his hand moving lower and his lips closing onto the skin of your neck, leaving kisses over it. You gasped when he suddenly ran his fingers through your drenched folds, making your skin flush completely, a chuckle escaping his lips and onto your neck.

“Look how wet you already are, baby.” Your arms were starting to hurt from being pinned for this long above your head, but that pain was thrown out of the window when you felt a finger of his running over and over your folds in order to wet it before entering you. You gasped as you threw your head back, leaving Billy more access to your neck.

He was becoming drunk of how wet you were for him as he pumped his finger in and out of you. Damn, he really wanted to taste you now, but he had to move quickly. He couldn’t spend the night here, nor take his sweet time with you. At least… not today.

“Billy– Billy, fuck–” You were moaning his name, and he couldn’t help himself but bite onto your neck as he inserted a second finger in you, his pace quickening. You couldn’t believe how good you could feel with just fingers. He was curling them in the right position, hitting your spongy spot over and over, rubbing his fingertips against it. 

He let go of your neck in order to kiss you again so he could swallow your moans into his throat. He took the opportunity of your mouth being open and his mouth instantly slipped in, clashing against yours. You tasted divine. If you tasted like this in your mouth, his resolve of not eating you out was wavering. 

His tongue danced with yours, his fingers going deep inside you, curled as he pressed the belly of his palm against your clit and moved his hand rapidly back and forth, making the movements of your tongue falter as loud moans went from your throat to his. He pulled away in order to hear you and your loud whimpers were music to his ears.

“Fuck, look at you…” He was mesmerized by you, your head thrown back onto the door as his fingers kept moving. He then stopped all together, making you whine at the loss of friction. You were feeling so good and he decided to stop now? His hand finally lets go of your wrists and you sigh in relief as you pull them down to your sides once again. His fingers leave you, and he pulls them out of your underwear to look at them. 

You are looking at him as he smirks at you, taking his fingers into his mouth, his eyes closing as he tastes you on his tongue. Fuck, you were sweeter down there. He should have eaten you out instead of fingering you. He moaned into his fingers and you clenched onto nothing at the sound. 

When his fingers left his mouth, he opened his eyes to find yours. His hands then grabbed the hem of your pants and he crouched in order to pull them down along with your now soaked underwear. You couldn’t help but blush in embarrassment. You stepped out of them and he stood up as he scanned you again.

“W–What?”

“Take your shirt off.” You gulped at how demanding he sounded, but you complied in just a second. You pulled your shirt over your head and threw it across the room. He raised a finger towards the strap of your red lace bra, pulling it to only let it go so it would snap against your skin, making you gasp. “Cute, but it needs to go too.”

You lick your lips and you take your hands behind you to unclasp your bra. His eyes were digging holes onto every part of your body from how intense he was looking at you. You took the bra off and threw it somewhere, and you really didn’t care if it got lost. He stood there, just taking your naked body in. His dick twitched again and he knew this was his limit.

You saw him reach behind him and then put something in his mouth. Your eyes widened when you saw the aluminum foil square that is in between his teeth. He smirked at you as he pulled his pants and boxers down. He didn’t step out of them just yet, and one of his hands grabbed onto the foil, and with his teeth he ripped it open, taking the rubber out. 

Your eyes went down towards his dick and, holy shit. He was huge. Your sense of touch was spot on before. His bulge felt… bulky, and now you can confirm it was because he was big. He followed your gaze and he chuckled, making your eyes look back up at him again. He licked the inside of his bottom lip as he handed the rubber to you.

Your breathing was heavy as you grabbed onto it, and you pressed onto the tip to then roll it down onto his cock. He threw his head back in a circle at the feel of your hands around him. The primal part of him switched on, and he was going to show you what he could do, what the others didn’t dare to do to you.

Your hands immediately flew away as you saw him crouch again, his hands cupping right under your ass and prompting you to jump. His hands cupped your ass tightly, your arms wrapping around his shoulders, your legs around his waist so you wouldn’t fall. He smirked at you as he pressed you harder against the wall so he could take one hand away from your ass so he could line himself up to you.

You threw your head back, a loud moan escaping you as you start feeling the stretch of him entering you. His hand went back to cupping your ass, holding you up and onto the wall. He cursed under his breath as he felt how tight you were. He kept moving forward into you, gasps escaping your lips that caused him to grin at you.

“Fu-Fuck–” You were already cock drunk, and he hadn’t bottomed out yet. You heard him call out your name to you and you looked down to see him smirking at you, making you frown slightly only for him to slam himself inside of you in one motion, knocking the air out of your lungs in a choke. 

“You’re so fucking tight, you’re sucking me in.” He groaned out as he felt you clenching around him, adjusting to him as you writhed on his hold. He then moved his hips back and then back in, first in a slow movement as he started building up in tempo, each minute that passed. 

Moans soon filled the room, the slamming of your body against the door as he thrusted in and out of you as you started falling into a state of euphoria. You never felt like this before. You had your share of experiences, but it was never like this, and he just stuck his dick in. He didn’t do anything special, but the foreplay and the edging was enough to make you lose your head the instant he put the tip in.

Your hands were digging onto his shoulders as you chanted his name like a mantra, bodies becoming sweaty as he started increasing his pace, your moans becoming louder and some whimper were thrown into the mix as well. His pelvis was hitting against your clit thanks to the position as well, the burning in your belly starting to form. 

“It feels so good, it feels so fucking good–!” You were starting to moan out words, things you never did before. You never liked dirty talking and that was because it had never been done to you. He chuckled and you felt him grip onto your ass cheeks even tighter and he pulled you both off the door so he could stand up straight, his back a little bit bent backwards.

“Yeah?” He smirked as he used his strength to raise you up and then make you fall down on his dick again. You moaned loudly at that, the new position letting him hit your G-spot perfectly. His hands guided you up and down so you would bounce on his cock, your arms now wrapped completely around his shoulders. 

You nodded dumbly as you felt your eyes becoming teary from how deep he was hitting you and it never stopped, in and out, in and out. Your mouth fell open with silent moans, with whimpers, whines, groans, huffs of air. Billy was trying to hold them in, but you felt exquisite on his dick, tight, and clenching every so often, so many grunts escaped into the air from his throat.

“Shit– Oh god–” Your belly was burning, the coil turning, tightening, and he could feel it, so he braced himself on his feet in order to slam you even harder down on his dick in a slow pace. Your eyes were wide as you looked up at the ceiling, your vision starting to go white as the burning sensation came closer and closer, your walls clenching around him repeatedly.

“Come on baby, cum on my dick, come on… Let me feel you.” The dirty talking did it for you. The elastic band snapped instantly, and you let out a loud cry of his name as your walls clenched tightly around him and he growled as he tried to move but you were sucking him in and not letting go. Your legs trembled around him as your nails started to dig on his back. 

He rode your high until he felt you unclench, the both of you breathing heavily as he sits inside of you. He could feel your body starting to slump on him, making it harder to keep you up. He licked his lips and backed up towards your bed, turning around to throw you into it. It took you by surprise, snapping you back to reality, looking up at him through the tears of your eyes.

“You didn’t–?” You asked innocently and Billy only smirked through his panting. 

“On all fours.” He ordered and you took a deep breath in to hide the gasp as you complied, your ass facing him as your knees and hands were on the mattress of the bed, your calves and feet hanging off the edge of the bed. 

“Like this?” You ask as you wiggle your ass for him, teasingly, and Billy was surprised you still had this spark in you. Maybe it was a spark that never came out before because the chance had never presented itself for you.

“Put your fucking ass up.” You gasped at how rough he sounded, but a small smirk appeared on your face as you slowly laid your upper body down on the bed, your back arching forward so you could stick your ass out even more for him. 

“Like this~?” You purr this time and you hear a hum of approval, only to then feel a hand slamming against one of your ass cheeks, causing you to choke out a moan in surprise. 

“What a view.” He was salivating as he looked at the roundness of your cheeks, wanting to sink his teeth on your flesh. You wiggled your ass at him again and he chuckled in desire as he raised his hand up to slap your other ass cheek, making you yelp and clench onto thin air, a smile on your face that was on the mattress. “Forward.”

You complied and moved your body a little more into the middle of the bed so he could kneel in between your legs. He grabbed onto his dick and rubbed the tip on your clit, slapping it a few times which caused you to whimper. He pressed the tip in through your fold and didn’t wait for a second to grab your hips and slam himself back into you.

You moaned against the bed as his pace turned brutal, piercing even. He didn’t do the slow pace at first like before, but you didn’t mind the roughness, you actually loved it. This is what you always needed, what you always wanted, and it was finally being given to you. 

Billy threw his head back as his eyes closed at how much you were clenching around him still thanks to the overstimulation. He growled when he looked down at the bouncing of your ass against his hips, seeing himself going in and out of you. He raised his hand up and smacked your ass again, seeing it jiggle as he kept thrusting in and out of you.

You choked out a moan and he could see the smile on your face as he repeated the action, two and three more times. He smirked as he pulled himself forward, and his hand came to the side of your head, and he pressed you against the mattress even more, making you instinctively raise your ass up even more as your knees slid down a little bit. 

His thrusts became deep and the sound of skin slapping bounced from wall to wall. Your moans were muffled against the mattress, and your smile was still on your lips as his hand pressed even harder on the side of your head. You were immediately feeling the burning sensation in your belly and you wanted him to touch you, you needed it again.

“Billy, Billy, I need to cum again, please–” SMACK. 

“You’re going to cum with my cock only, so fucking take what I give you.” You moaned at his words, your bodies going back and forth from how deep he was moving in you. 

“Yes Sir, yes Sir!” His dick twitched inside of you at your chants, and he groaned loudly mixed with a moan as he felt his balls clench with the need to cum. He needed to cum while you clenched around him, and he knew you were close thanks to your walls fluttering every so often as he kept thrusting into you, his hand still pressing onto your head.

The thrill of it, the roughness and the sound of his groans from how good he was feeling with you made your belly explode again, even harder than before. You yelled onto the mattress as your vision turned white, your mind becoming mush as you clenched tightly around him as if it were a life source.

“Fuck–” He gave more thrusts, fast and deep ones until the last two faltered slightly and then a moan escaped his lips as he spilled into the condom. He trembled as ropes of cum left him, one after the other. He was breathing heavily as he tried to come back to earth. He looked down at you and he let go of your head to reveal you huffing for air against the mattress. “You with me?”

You gave him one nod and he winced when he pulled out of you, slowly, and you whined at the emptiness of it. He pulled the condom off and he was surprised by how much he had spilled inside of it. It’s been a while since he came this hard. His eyes turned to your figure and a smirk appeared on his face. He called out your name and that made you snap back into reality, turning around on the bed to lay down on your back.

“Yeah…?” It was a soft moan, your breath still trying to settle into a normal rhythm again. 

Billy came back home only to find Eddie still up and talking on the phone with his girl. 

“It’s 1 AM. What are you two doing up?” Billy groans as he walks towards the kitchen, throwing the duffel bag onto the floor. He was wearing the extra clothes he took in there, and Eddie examined him, up and down. 

“Well… was it a good show?” Billy opened the fridge and took a water bottle out and took a long sip out of it. He looked at Eddie a smirk forming on his face once more. 

“I may have found a student myself.” 

A/N: Im getting to write my pending requests, so be patient with me. I hope you all enjoyed this smutty thing, and I love billy so sue me.

I love you ash.

[thebestandrealestever]

..shut up my moms calling !

miles morales 42 x black fem reader

sum: miles is always there . warns : cursing . a/n : the blue story is not coming out right now, i done got my heart played wid so bad . it hurts to much to write that story and i need sum happy . it is coming out just not now, sorry to let u down . and sorry this short i got finals coming up , bop = hoe

based off jace nd crystal from swagger .

miles has always been there , even when he wasn’t he was . you could feel his eyes on you when he wasn’t even in the room , you hoped it wasn’t just you being delusional and your falling out hurt him as much as it did you . now what you didn’t know is it hurt him so much more, it consumed him . and he did swing by your house , your school , and your job . where ever he knew you would be just to see you . you fell out because he was with a girl and he wasn’t treating her the best and u checked him on it . he didn’t wanna be with her and you didn’t want him to either but you’ve known each other way too long to say anything . his parents and yours would often tell each other it was only temporary, you both thought it was weird they stayed in touch but you both hoped it was. you checked on him too , watching his location on your phone or even stopping by the bodega he’s always at . you were actually doing it right now , at the lil corner store miles was always at . you roamed the store just to do it and then you saw curly hair that couldn’t be any one else , you saw your best friend . but to not make it look like you were stalking him, you quietly walked in the aisle he was in . fake looking at the candy while your mind and heart were racing . and he noticed you too , he noticed you walk all the way over there and noticed you looking at candy you didn’t even like.

“hey bop” he finally said turning his head to quickly scan you then turning back and his tone irked you a little but you shook it off .

“who a bop ? anyway hey girl .. “ “ i miss you .” he said in a hushed tone so maybe you wouldn’t hear . “i miss you too, a lot.” you said and his nonchalant demeanor broke , the real him returning , only you could do that . he put his candy down , hugging you as he let out a breath he didn’t know he had . you leaned into the familiar touch , you really really missed him .

“can we not do this again ? life so boring without my favorite hoe .” you said with a sweet smile truly meaning every word , “say it again i bet iah smack tf outta you .” he said laughing and you laughed too, acting as it no time had passed , but you both knew nothing could go unsaid , as the laughter died down and you left the store he spoke up . “ i’m sorry.. about acting like that , i just don’t get why it made you so upset i was with her .” he said walking on the outside of you like he always did . “ion know i guess i didn’t want you with her , you were also treating her like a dog .” you said mindlessly only realizing when it already left your mouth , did you just say that ? ���shit not that like i wanted you or anything, i just didn’t want gwen to be h-“ “she wasn’t you , i tried to see you in her but i just couldn’t .” he said stopping in his tracks pulling your hand to turn around at him , “oh , u want me real bad get off my body damn .” you said obviously kidding to avoid talking about your feelings “u play too much” he said leaning into kiss you for like the 4th time ? you always ended up kissing miles , so you let him and it happened like it always happened . it was special like always, different than anybody you’d ever kissed . “you like me or sum ? you always kissing me like damn nigga get out my mouth !” “yo stfu fore i rly do sum to you lil boy .” he said as he starting walking again and you looked around for the “lil boy” “where he at? ion see no lil boys” you said catching up with him and he just chuckled as his response . “i want you , i want us” he finally said as you smiled at the words you’ve waited so long for , “me too .”

[happysparklingshadows]

A Certain Hunger (4/?)

Chapter 3 ✿ Chapter 5

Summary: It's been a few weeks in this cabin, and thinking about being saved is getting a little bit bleak. So, you have a good idea for everyone to find a job to make things easier for your time being in Canada. You pick up a fishing rod, and everyone else picks up the gun to see who will become the hunter. You reconnect with a childhood friend and start to accept your new home.

Pairing: Surviving!Poly! Yellowjackets x reader (slow burn)

Warnings: Smut, HOMOSEXUAL SEXXX, Lowkey controversial entirely written sex scene with a character yall wouldn't guess lol, depictions of a threeway, Lowkey mean reader, Depiction of a terminal illness and death of a mother, 90s setting with the views of the time, homophobia and internal homophobia, Homophobic slurs, Alcohol/drug use, gore and blood, depictions of mental health, depictions of death, 90s slang is used (411 means giving the tea or details of a situation to someone).

Taglist: @zhivaxo @h-doodles @homopheli @bigtimesalt8196 @juniperjean @scatorccioz @juniperjean @yaakooi @lottieswebs @juchily @freezinggay @deathly710-blog @ghostoflesbianism @marvelous-wandanatangel @errriiie @anskkks @deathvidal @slutforhotpeople @thursdayygrrrl @day-ziez @evewasheretoday @mayasaurusss @captainbabybear @eleanormall @mommyeater2000 @leonchef @mikititta @tigersarrcool @nyasbae @dykepvppy @jax1118 @oakwave @mmiah @dvrkhcld @swiftin0f @opheliadeservedbetter-27 @psychicdreamwonderland @pinkmoonzzz @under-your-bed-not-in-it @sadsapphic-rose @fictitious-sapphic

Word count: 13.4k

Notes: I want to apologize for my hiatus, but it was for good reason. I needed to care for my father, who got very sick around September last year when I was going to write the 4th chapter, and he has since been better. Sadly, I lost my motivation, but I have detailed notes for the following 8 chapters, and I will be trying to finish seasons 1 and two of the story as soon as I can before the third season airs! This year, for NANOWRIMO, I have decided to write for this story and see how far I can go within the next month or two. Thank you to everyone who was so kind and understanding about my disappearance and still loves my story!

“(Y/n), what the fuck is a ratio?” Jackie whispers to you loud enough for Shauna to hear beside you in a lull in math class. Mrs. Goldberg had to leave the class for some reason, you don’t remember why. You smile over at Jackie with her lovely brown eyes and take a good look at her. She’s as beautiful as you remember.  

You chuckle as you look into your notes and say, “From what Mrs. Goldmen wrote, an ordered pair of numbers a and b, written a / b where b does not equal 0.” You read from your notes as Shauna and Jackie looked blankly up at you from the obtuse definition. You laugh with them, “Whatever the fuck that means!” 

Jackie and Shauna laugh with you, but Jackie groans in frustration at the last question. 

Taissa, behind you, leans forward and smiles, “What’s wrong?” 

Jackie turns dramatically to Taissa as she pulls her paper over to Taissa; she just wants the answer now. You look at Jackie moving around as Van pulls your attention with a hand on your shoulder. 

“Hey, (y/n), can you help me with the first question? Jackie stole my answer key.” She joked as you turned to help her. 

You giggle at her joke as you look down at the paper. 

It was blank. 

There weren’t even questions printed onto the page like you thought. You looked at your paper again, flipping it around but finding that it had nothing written on it either. It didn’t have the answers you thought you were writing on it.

You furrow your brows as you look up to Van, but the redhead isn’t there. Neither were the others. A chill runs down your spine as you start to remember. 

The door of your old math teacher's class slams open, causing you to squeal and jump from your desk. That then was the only desk in the room. It was as if when your eyes looked away from something, it disappeared. 

Mrs. Goldmen looks at you with a sad, sympathetic smile as she leads you to the hallway; you don’t have any control at the moment as your legs walk you down the hallway with her. Mrs. Goldmen's hand is on your shoulder as she says words that have been etched into the gray matter of your brain. “Honey, your mother has gone to the hospital, and your father is here to pick you up.” 

You remember this. This was the day your mother’s health got so much worse. The day you became her caretaker. 

Fat tears run down your eyes as you walk to the office door. Mrs. Goldman disappears when her hand leaves your shoulder. You look around for her; the hallways of your old high school are empty, and liminal darkness creeps in the corners of the walls. You felt an urge to go into the office. 

You held the cold handle and turned the knob to the left to open the office door. 

It wasn’t right. 

You are met with the darkness of the woods, which has claimed you as its own. You turn, and the hallways no longer protect you from the cold forest. You scream as you are surrounded by woods again; the door stands alone with its hinges.  

 You feel the ripe cold air coming up your legs and arms; you hug yourself. 

Howls from the trees start to chant above you. Every corner was a howl from a freakish, unnatural octave, and you started to feel the snow melt under your toes and the nip of the winter bite at the skin of your arms. Unbearable and cutting is how it felt—hunger in the air. 

You look down at yourself and see something that drops your heart. 

The gold heart necklace from Jackie’s Sweet 16. 

You don’t think before you run. You run straight and away from trees as the howls follow you. Helpless as sticks and bushes stopped you as you rushed through the 4ft of snow. 

You sob and run, knowing you are coming to an end. You are going to die. You should just stay still and watch with open eyes as they slice your throat, shoot you with an arrow, or stab you with a spear. So why would you run? 

But you ran anyway. 

Raw, cold toes feel the crunching of the snow. Twigs tickle between your toes and scratch when you lift your feet. 

You don’t hear anything anymore. You are in the heart of the woods; the tree watches you as you finally fall onto a mound of snow. Nothing makes any sense. You cry and feel yourself shake with adrenaline; you need to keep going. 

A chanting comes to your ears. You freeze in the moment; you hear yourself. 

You crawl towards the song, French humming and chanting from a distance. 

Over the hill, you see yourself dressed in your old headdress, the pink stain furs of a white rabbit made into a cloak with the head of a doe adorn on the top. You circle the campfire that cooks the meat; the others dressed in their cloaks watch with stabbing eyes. 

The queen in the center watches a younger you dance around the fire. The Antler queen nods her head and looks around the circle. 

You watch yourself take a satisfying bite of the fatty meat from the pan that cooked the chunks. The others immediately rush to the pan and take their share of the meat. The grease shines on your satisfied smirk on the younger self, bubbling in your stomach. “Wake up, " you blurt out to yourself in a panic. 

You gag as your eyes fill with tears. 

No. 

No. You don’t want to remember this. 

This wasn’t even the worst of it. 

Stop. 

Wake up (y/n) wake up wake up wake up wake up-

‘21

You wake up violently from your dream. You feel yourself lean harder onto the surface you were on and feel a darting pain from a rod in your neck. You gasp as you look around, realizing you weren’t in your house again. 

The tree whispers to you again. You know it. 

You stand in the wooded area behind your home. It was always comforting to hide in the trees and smell the sun's sweet earth, playing pirates or whispering about boys you never liked with Shauna and Jackie. This was your hideout as a child. You played fox and hounds and painted nails as you watched the sunset. You hate it now. It screams at you, and it itches your skin to be surrounded again; you need a little distance. Your breath is short again. 

Your hands cling to the tree behind you, and you feel something in your hand: your pocket knife. You turn around to look at what you have done again. You stare back at the symbol. Even when you dream, you seem to find a way to protect yourself, even a little bit. 

You put the knife in your nightgown pocket. And you backed away. Slowly accepting the fact that this is something you will never stop doing, no matter the pills, sleep therapy, or drinking, can make you stop sleepwalking to the trees when you think about them. It follows closely behind, no matter the distance. 

Fucking Shauna. 

When you went to her house last night, you weren’t planning on sleeping with her. Or Jeff. 

You were sitting at her island drinking coffee like you usually do. Ever since you returned from New York to Wiskayok, you reconnected with Shauna because of the brunches with Jackie's parents. You have been coming over for coffee to talk about your lives like regular people. It was refreshing to look at Shauna and see an adult woman instead of the girl you grew up with and survived with. Not seeing Shauna was especially hard after coming home from the wilderness because you were the closest to her before the crash, even before you knew who you were. You still don’t know who you are without her in some ways. 

You both talk about the upcoming brunch, how you'll get a rabbit as a present, and how Jackie’s parents will talk down to you like they always do. But as the conversation continues, Shauna confesses that she and Jeff are in a deep dry spell. They haven’t touched each other in a long time, and how Shauna has not been touched in a long time. Then, without even thinking about it, you two start kissing each other. 

Then, something instinctually comes over you as you kiss and touch each other. You didn’t even notice when Jeff got there, but the planned 40-minute coffee became hours of love-making. You have made love with Shauna and Jeff before, and this wasn’t anything short of the other times you were with the married couple. 

But as soon as the passion ended, you left. You felt satisfied and a little weird from your desperation with Shauna. You got dressed and kissed both of them goodbye. You remember feeling so grateful Callie was sleeping over at her friend's house. 

When you drove home, all you thought about was your day with Misty and Natalie, Travis killing himself, and making love with Shauna. It was a blast from the past. As you entered your driveway, an intrusive thought came to mind: the image of a pan over an open fire frying chunks of meat.

You shouldn’t have gone to bed thinking about the past. This only happens when the team creeps into your space; they always do that if you give them a chance. 

You thought grumpily as you walked back to your backdoor. Your cat, Ginger, rubs on your legs when you get into your backyard. Your nightgown has mud at the ends, and your feet are dirty; your toenails have dirt under them. 

A black van passes by as you walk into your home. It hisses in the wind as it drives by. You look at it, worried someone will see the dirt on your nightgown and think you are some senile old woman. 

You get back into your home and sigh. Rubbing the ache in the back of your neck, you start a pot of coffee for yourself before you start your day. You needed a moment for yourself before you had to act all day, masking all your quirks and characteristics to seem normal. 

“You don’t think people can notice you’re a little crazy, right?” 

You froze as you put your cup of coffee on the counter. You know that voice. 

“I mean, I love you for how crazy you are, but you have been losing it a lot lately.” Jackie’s voice says behind you. She always stands in her yellowjacket uniform with curled hair; she looks precisely how she should be remembered. “Don’t want you to bite someone on accident.”

“I’ll try not to, Jackie. But you never know; someone might not know not to put their hand so close to my mouth.” You say back at her. You feel your eyes well; she was always so sad to remember even more when you see her. Her phantom has been long accepted and dreaded, but something that no one could stop. You didn’t know if you even would want her spirit to leave you. 

“Well, you should comb your hair and take a bath. You look like death… smell like it too,” Jackie says, and as if she was never there, she was gone. 

You sigh and rub your eyes. You turn back for your coffee and pour sugar inside of it, “It’s too early for this shit.” You mutter to yourself. You can’t get angry at this. It’s your best hallucination, and you couldn’t get mad with Jackie, never with her. You got to leave, but Jackie never got to the chance to live out of the cedar and butterfly weeds. 

‘96

“Lottie, I know it is… fucking weird as shit. But we can’t pass up a house in the woods, okay? I didn’t see any books wrapped in human skin.” You say softly to Lottie as everyone finishes their breakfast of berries and gossip. You rub the stinging at the back of your neck that can’t go away. 

“I know, but it just doesn’t feel right being in the same house as a dead body,” Lottie says back. 

“Well, maybe we can make something for the house to ease, you know, the energies.” 

“Like charms?” 

“Maybe? I have never dealt with this situation, but I trust you can settle the energies here. You are so good at being a peacekeeper.” You say to her and put your hand on her shoulder; you take it off quickly because you still don’t know where you stand with her after last night's kiss. Because you know if the others were to look at you and check if you were gay, you would be quickly exposed. 

“Thank you, (Y/n)...” She says, looking down at her shoes.”Are we okay? I didn’t mean to make things weird. I don’t even know what I was thinking.”

You smile, hiding the hurt, and quickly say, “Oh, my god, yeah, we are, Lottie. I get it. We have been through a lot, and we just wanted some comfort. It’s not a big deal.” 

Lottie chuckles out of relief and pats your arm; she nods. “Okay, good; I didn’t want anything to be weird.” 

“No, nothing is weird, Lottie.” You reassure her as you move yourself away. You want to peel your skin off, and a sudden loneliness surrounds you. 

The morning moves on quickly. Travis sits on the porch with a gun, and you just stare at him as you walk to the campfire in front of the cabin with the angler's box and pole. 

“Okay, everyone! We need to talk plans!” You announce in your loudest voice. Everyone circles the fire and the porch to listen to you; every morning since the crash, you have made an effort to set goals for the day and get through the days until rescue. ��Okay, so we’ve been in these woods for ten days. We are low on food but shouldn’t worry too much longer. We now have a fishing line and a working pole with the help of Lottie and Shauna,” You say as you smile at the two. The others do the same, giving little thanks to the two blushing girls. “So, we’re not hopeless right now; anyone who wants to learn how to fish can come with me and see if you want to do that. But does anyone know how to use the rifle?” You ask the group and consider your list of things to speak about today. 

Couch Ben clears his throat and says, “I went hunting with family before, so I can teach people who want to.” 

You nod your head at him and say, “Okay! Everyone should try it out to see who is the best with a gun. We’ve been out here for a little bit, and I am sure we will have to take care of ourselves until they get here-”

Jackie interrupts, “So, we shouldn’t worry about the food because they must be close by now?” 

You look over at her; you know why she is talking. She doesn’t want a job, and she doesn’t want to worry about getting saved. But it has been 11 days since the crash; you don’t want to kill hope. 

“Well, kind of. We should be prepared if it takes them a few more weeks to find us in these woods. Jackie, we’re in the thick of it right now, so it would be better if we all tried to use the gun and see if we can hunt-” 

“Well, are you going to try out the gun?” She asked you with crossed arms and a well-known tone of annoyance. 

You suck your teeth and tilt your head to her, “No, I am going out fishing. I know I am good at it, so I will do that. You can try to see if you are good at hunting. It’s just a tryout.” To end this small conversation, you say, “Okay, so the goal for today is to find some food and learn some skills tonight. Mari, Laura, and Krystal have already volunteered to clean and do the projects we have started at the cabin, alright? Anything else?”. 

No one else had anything to say. You nod as you hold up the fisher pole and say, “I am going to the beach to fish and make a little project. if anyone wants to come with me, you will find me.” You say this as you see that no one will move to fish with you for some reason. You nod and start heading out of the campsite and walking down Natalie's trail to the lake. A few nights ago, Natalie took the time to crave a path to the beach and plane with small crosses on the trees. She wanted everyone to be able to tell where they were in the woods without getting lost.

The days have gone by quickly lately since you all have found the cabin, and it's been getting to you a little bit. You didn't like the feeling of being able to find your way around the woods, even though it was convenient. It still would never replace your home. You missed home, and you can't tell anyone else about it. 

As you walk down the trail deep in thought, the sun hits your eyes through the leaves, it reminds you of your backyard. It’s precisely like where your tree house stands just outside your home, where you can look out the window and see your mother washing dishes. God, you missed your mom. And as of an hour ago, she should have taken her morning medicine and had her legs messaged because she can’t walk around too much. You feel your throat tighten, and your body has a wave of emotional nausea. 

“Hey, Wait up!” Shauna called from behind you on the trail. 

You stop and smile at her, “Hey, Shauna. You coming with me?” you ask. 

“Yeah, I don’t want to touch the gun. I don’t want to kill anything.” 

“I get it. I hate fish, so I like killing them.” You joke to her with the best deadpan voice you can muster. 

Shauna chuckles and shakes her head softly, “You’re a freak, you know that?” 

“Oh yeah? You’re not going to say that when I get a fish.” You cackled. “You can just journal if you want; I am just going to make you help me make a lazy fisherman.” 

“What’s that?” 

“It’s a heavy stick supported with rocks with a hook and line attached. It just catches fish without anyone doing anything. You just raise the line, and hopefully, a fish is hooked.” 

“We have hooks? What was in that box?” 

“Not a lot, but it had a bait hook and a lure for the pole. It had some rusty hooks and oil for the pole. I made some hooks from the pop things on top of the cans.” 

“The tab?”

“Yeah, I kinda cut them and made them like hooks. I’m thinking about making a net while we’re here.” 

“You think we’ll be here long enough for that?” 

“I don’t know; all I know is I will go crazy if I sit still too much. I overthink, you know.” You confess to Shauna as you come across a wide river a little off the trail from the lake. You and Shauna make some marks on the trees to make a path back to the trail. 

After a while, the two of you settle up after making a lazy fisherman. It was easy to be around Shauna. You’ve been sandbox friends, and that kind of love never dies. You mainly talked about school and the annoying people you knew, like Randy. The biggest meathead you’ve ever met. 

“Randy smells like Salmi and is cold to the touch but also is very hot when you stand near him.” You say to Shauna as you cast a line with a little bug at the end. You sit on the river's edge with Shauna sitting against a tree. 

Shauna laughs out loud as she hugs her journal to her chest. And you keep going on your rant. 

“Honestly, girl, If I ever hear him say the words Faggot or Dyke again, to Misty or Kevin or whoever. I’ll write a story about him eating Jeff’s ass and finally getting to feel Jeff’s sweet touch. Because you can’t tell me he isn’t in love with that guy.” You say with a laugh in your tone as you can’t talk straight. It’s ridiculous, but it was so funny to both of you. Shauna is snorting like a pig next to you, making you fall on your back, laughing. 

“What the fuck?!” 

“He thinks about gay people too much to not be gay!” You laugh louder. Both of you laugh until your sides hurt. It felt nice just to be girls for a moment in the woods, and you pretend you were at the back of your house with Shauna. 

It lulls for a moment before Shauna asks, “Randy called Misty a dyke?” 

“Yeah. At the Spring Fling.” You said with a little bit of sadness going through. You felt so bad for Misty in moments like that. “I remember when me, you, and Jackie got there after getting ready seeing Misty-”

“In that big puffy pink dress,” Shauna says, pointing a finger at you. She remembers, and she smirks a little. At the time, unfortunately, you laughed at her dress for being out of date and seemed to be “trying too hard.” 

“Yeah… But Misty was just there and- I mean, I am not going to say Misty is cool or that she isn’t weird. Sometimes, I don’t know if she isn’t an alien, but she isn’t mean or disgusting.” You say as you gently rile in the line. You feel yourself frown a little bit. “She was standing in the corner without a date and any friends, and Randy just comes up to her and calls her an ugly dyke.” You say a little quieter. 

“Oh my god, that is so horrible; why didn’t you tell me the 411?” 

“I mean, I only knew because she cried when I went into the bathroom. I was a shoulder to cry on; I didn’t want to make it a thing if Misty didn’t want to. I wish I could have done something. Fuck Randy.” 

“Fuck Randy!” Shauna agreed. Shauna looks at you fish peacefully as the sound of gunshots rings in the distance. You look over to her and think about the next thing to discuss. 

“So, Jackie is mad at me, isn’t she? Jackie learning how to shoot a gun?” You ask her, point her to talk to you about Jackie. You love Jackie deeply, but she usually causes drama within the trio. 

“Yeah, she is being a bitch lately.” 

“Yeah, I think she has the worst attitude out of everyone, but I can’t be upset that she is trying to come to terms with the crash.” 

“Okay, but she doesn’t have to fight everything you ask her to do. You’re just trying to help everyone.” 

“Thank you. And yeah, I hope she will stop fighting me every step of the way, but we just don’t know how long we’ll be out here, so I just don’t think we should be so argumentative…” You sigh and look at her with wary eyes, “I’ll talk to her. Like I always do. It’ll be okay. We love each other. No fucking gun will get in the way.” 

“You’re right. It’ll be okay. We must be here for each other before we’re rescued.” 

“You're right.” You say as you keep watching your line in the water. Praying for a fish to take a bite

‘21

You smile as your father laughs at the TV. You rub your hands to apply lotion to his shaking ones. You and he were watching “I Love Lucy” because it was his favorite childhood show. 

He doesn’t have fully solid days constantly anymore, and it's the reason you have him in the nursing home. Somedays, he was just like you when you returned from the wilderness. He wouldn’t eat or do anything but watch TV. He would sit in his chair and watch TV; when it was off, he didn’t know where he was anymore. One day, he forgot where the bathroom was in the home he had lived in for 45 years, and he wet himself before you found him in the living room looking in the china cabinet, thinking it was the bathroom. But other days, he was as sharp as nails, playing chess and talking about things from the 70s like it was yesterday. 

You felt your heart drop to your stomach when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and early-set dementia, but you were calm. You were now an adult with savings and a career, and you had the means to care for him now. To repay him for him nursing you after you came back. 

You remember the nights he would pet your hair back after you vomited from episodes of PTSD. How he would sit in your bedroom holding you in his lap with tears in his eyes, listening to you scream in his chest. He just sat there with you and let you sob; no words were needed. He just stood there and let you cling like a little girl again. He let you yell at him and berate him as if he were the wilderness himself because he knew you weren’t yelling at him. He knew when to push you forward and when you needed to be held. 

He helped you through the 5 years of healing after you were found. You had a total of 3 surgeries to make your brain's blood vessels normal again. You had to wear a splint on your neck for 1 year. You had to have countless MRIs throughout your life. Countless painful nights as your neck stabbed at you and caused you to feel no comfort. Your dad was always there with you, sitting beside you at every doctor's appointment and every event. He would only sit outside the waiting room for your therapy sessions. 

Your father looks at you with (e/c) eyes and a soft smile, “I’m so happy to see you, peanut.  How is your job?”

“Well, I'm still stuck around the last few chapters of my trilogy, Trying to fight my publisher for more time," you say as you let his shaking hand down and go to his other to lotion them. They were callous and dry. Your father's hard work was shown in his battered hands, which shivered. “You took a shower already?”

“Yeah, I wanted to look nice for you.” He rasps with a chuckle, his wrinkled face still holding his cheeky smile. He had the same soul as he always had, and moments like these make you think of happy memories of being in the woods with him and your mom. 

“Oh, thank you, dad! I was going to say it didn’t smell like a caveman in here.” You chuckle back with him as you finish rubbing the lotion on his other hand. 

“Oh, hush, you!” He slowly pokes your side and cheek, holding a smile. 

“No.” You giggle back at him as you stand up, your hands moving to comb his hair. “Have the nurses been kind to you?”

“Sweethearts. Kirsta, the night shift nurse, is very kind. She comes in here when I sleep and never has a bad attitude.” He said as he leisurely scratches his nose, “Don’t hate the food.” 

“Well, that's good, Dad.” You say as you look down at him. He looked clean and comfortable in his recliner. “I should get going. I need to get a few words down before I go to bed.” 

“Alright, Peanut.” He says and takes you in. He grabs your hand gingerly and says, “I love you. Be safe. Text me when you get home.” 

You chuckle and nod your head. You find it adorable that your father still wants you to tell him whenever you leave him. Even when you lived with him at your grown age, he wanted to know you were safe. “Of course, Dad! Don’t worry.” 

“You better, " he says as he points at you with a shaking finger. He was so cute to you at that moment. You just laugh and nod your head to him. “I will!” you state back with a big smile.

You leave his room and start walking down the hallway of the nursing home. Walking down the halls, you can hear the other residents talking and watching TV.

You hear a ping on your phone and see Shauna texting you again. You sigh as you click on the notification. 

Shauna  Okay so I did something bad.  You  Like what? Did you rear-end someone again? Shauna  No  Shauna Dinner You Omg you went to the dinner? What happened? Shauna Jeff is cheating  Shauna Jeff is cheating on me, and he isn’t trying to fix some fucking data system. I am just so done. Shauna So I went to dinner.  Shauna  And I stayed for dessert.  You  Omg you didn’t Shauna Yep, and I am going to see him again tonight. You  Shit Shauna!  You I mean, get your lick back but don’t go too far. 

As you approached the front of the nursing home, which had a large circle desk for the nurses, you turned on the curve and accidentally tripped over another woman. 

You look at the woman with a smile, which drops for a second because you know her. It was Misty. You didn’t realize she worked here, where your father is, but you quickly perk your lips up again.

“Oh my god, Misty!” 

“(Y/n)! What are you doing here?” 

“Oh, well. My dad has been here for a while, and I am here to visit! I didn’t know we were going to meet again so soon.” 

“I was picking up my Tupperware, which I left yesterday.” She shows you her red-top Tupperware in her oversized purse. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to have Chocolate Martinis at Antonio’s; they are outstanding.” 

You didn’t want to. You have been seeing the team too much again, and you had sex with Shauna last night. You become increasingly like how you used to be when you get around these women. 

“Sure! You wanna pick me up from my house?” You blurt without a second to stop yourself. You wanted to kick yourself, but you couldn’t stop it. 

“Great!” Misty beams with a big smile as you both leave the nursing home. “I’ll tell you about the Travis situation, " she adds as she walks beside you. 

‘96

You and Shauna sat beside the riverbank for a long time, talking about everything and nothing. It didn’t feel like you were doing anything as you and she gossiped about the others in the wilderness. It was relaxing and pleasing. You kept looking down to your now two fishing lines for any signs of fish. The sounds of gunfire going off in the distance, in an odd way, were comforting because you knew where everyone else was while being far away. 

While waiting for the fish, you started talking about school and dances- anything to keep your mind busy. 

“So, after my mom curled my hair and did my makeup, she left me to get my dress on. You remember the one purple one with the ruffles.” 

“Sophmore year homecoming, right?” Shauna asks as she points to you, trying to remember. 

“Yeah, that one. I don’t know if I have ever told you, but the zipper popped open when I put on the dress.” You said with a smile hurting your cheeks as you laughed loudly from your gut at your story. It used to make you cry thinking about that time, but now it is funny. Shauna bubbled in laughter beside you as you continued, “She was yelling at me, crying and sobbing, that I was going to that dance whether I liked it or not. She just started sewing me into the dress.” 

“No fucking way your mom sewed you into a dress!” Shauna laughed with you as she grabbed your arm. Her eyes water with tears as she laughs with you. 

“No, she did! It was the last time I ever got anything from Macy’s.” You giggle as you glance back to the fishing line one more time. 

Shauna began to chuckle softly, her eyes crinkling slightly as she listened to your story. It made her miss everyday life before the crash. "God, homecoming. I wish we were back there instead of this," Shauna motioned to the wilderness around us with a sigh.

"Yeah, same. I would much rather be crying about being fat over this any day." You sign as you lean on Shauna’s shoulder. You try to keep the good vibes that were made, so you smile and nudge her, "But, hey, we have each other, and people are looking for us. They have to be."

Shauna smiled softly as you moved closer to her. She smiled at you, but inside, she wasn't sure if she believed you'd be found. But she didn't want to worry you. "Yeah, of course. Maybe we're already on the news," she added, attempting to sound optimistic.

"Oh yeah, I don't know how people haven't heard about us,” You said quickly after she finished because you believed you were headline news. “ All our families must be doing everything to find us, and they would have known as soon as the plane didn't land." You added a lump in your throat growing as you said families. You thought about your family's reaction and everyone’s family’s reaction to them being missing. You couldn't imagine the fear and worry they must be experiencing, not knowing where you all were. But you tried hard to push those thoughts to the back of your mind, needing to remain strong.

"I'm sure they're out there looking for us. They'll find us," she said, mostly trying to persuade herself and you. 

"They will, and all we have to do is wait until they do." You nudge her again and smile, saying, “Besides, we have good company.”

As you move your head back, you see the lure dramatically dunking into the water. You quickly grab your pole and start to reel in the fish. As ywou start to move, you can feel how heavy the fish is on the other end. 

“Whoa, oh my god, did you catch a fish?” Shauna asks in excitement as she sits up on her knees beside you and looks at the water. 

“Trying to!” You say back as you keep reeling in the fish. 

Suddenly, after struggling with the reel a little bit, you pull up two fish on one hook. You squeal in happiness as you quickly grab the two fish with pride. Shauna squeals with you as you hold the two big fish. 

You and Shauna hug each other happily as you hold the pole up, “Holy shit! Holy shit Shauna!” 

“They are fucking huge!” Shauna gushed as she grabbed one of the fish and immediately cringed at the feeling of the fish’s slimy-scaled skin. “Gross” 

“I know, right? Come on, let's get this back to the cabin before we get some more,” you say with a big smile. You feel relieved. You all will eat tonight and be full tonight. Your dad would be very proud of you. 

You walk back to the cabin in triumph as you laugh and talk with Shauna all the way up the trail. Before too long, you arrive at the cabin, and everyone starts to finish off firing the gun. 

Van's face brightens like a light bulb as she sees you two walk to the cabin with dinner: “Whoa! Look at you!” 

Everyone’s attention turns to you, and they cheer for you both on for the find. 

“You got a fish!” Jackie squealed as she sat up from her seat on the cabin steps. Mari came over and grabbed the fish with a big smile, holding the fish from the mouth with her finger. “No, they caught two fish!” Mari said back, she looked into its lifeless eye. 

“I didn’t do anything.” Shauna chuckled as you shook your head, wanting to share the praise with her. 

You roll your eyes and look back to Mari. You notice behind Mari that Natalie is looking at you with a serious face that you can’t place in your mind. You couldn’t tell if Natalie was angry, happy, or disgusted by the fish. 

“Yeah, the pole still works, thank god.” You chuckle as you put the pole on the wood seat you all have made around the fireplace. You add, “I think it’s a good sign we got two fish. Maybe it’s the woods telling us we’ll be okay until we’re found.” 

You look up to the group, and your eyes meet Lottie’s as if you were saying, “See, told you so” with your eyes. She warily smiles at you and looks down as you silently converse with just the context from earlier. 

“You are you trying to sound like Miss Cleo? Wanna read my future?” Jackie jokes and snickers at your comments, dismissing them as stupid. You chuckle and shake your head, “No, Jackie, I’m being hopeful! I can overread a thing or two.” You say as you push her shoulder; she looks at you and chuckles. 

You and Mari let the fish rest on the cabin table before you descaled them for dinner tonight. There was more than enough for everyone to eat, and it made you feel so proud to be able to provide dinner for everyone. And because you were going to wait anyway, you both put a bowl on top of the fish to keep it fresh until you return from everyone testing out shooting on cans. 

You didn’t care much for the gun or the loud noise of it going off, it unsettled you deeply. It made you feel uncomfortable and cringe at the ringing in your ears. 

Lottie and Van placed the old cans on a log infront of the group, quickly retreating into the brush of the woods. With your arms crossed, you lean against a tree, waiting for everyone to finish practicing there. 

“Team, this is how this will go down—one final round for all the marbles. You got five targets, five shots each. Mari, can you start us off?’ 

“Um, just a thought. Shouldn’t we be saving bullets, you know?” Laura Lee added with concern in her voice. 

“Uh, yeah, in theory, but lucky for us, the nutjob who lived here before was apparently hoarding for the apocalypse.” Couch Ben reassured as best he could. You could tell he didn’t want to be here, but he was putting up as much of a front as he could.

Mari fires a shot at the cans. You quickly cover your ears as you cringe at the boom. She missed the can, and you recoil before she goes again. 

“The cans,” Travis mocks as he looks at her with narrowed, judgemental eyes. You couldn’t stand him in any way lately. His mere voice made you wish it was a gunshot. “You’re-You’re aiming for the cans.” 

“Shut up,” Mari snapped at him as she cocks the gun, still holding it to the cans. 

“Do you like being this way?” Natalie says to Travis, her eyes slowly rolling to him in annoyance. Waiting for the gunshot, you haven’t moved your hands from your ears. 

“If you shit the bed again, you gonna ask for another do-over?” 

Natalie shakes her head at him quietly as you glare at him. You just want him to shut up with his edgy and macho persona so everyone can get on with this stupid practice. You added, “You don’t ask for a do-over, you just clean your fucking bed, we are shooting cans, idiot.” 

Your hands aren’t as firmly over your ears as Mari fires again. You flinch again as you cover them. Your eyes locked in a broad expression as you looked at the cans; the startling way the sound ripped through you, made you freeze like a deer in the woods, hoping the bullet wasn’t for them. 

And she fires again quickly, this time hitting a can. You smile and nod at her, keeping your hands over your ears. You now see the eyes on you as you react to the sounds. You feel a blush over your body as embarrassment comes over you, but you can’t bring yourself to pull your hands down. “Hey. All right.” Couch Ben says calmly but clearly happy she finally hit a can. “Good job, Mari.”  Everyone slowly claps for her. She smiles, and as she walks back to Akilah, she thrusts the Gun into Travis’s hands. 

Travis immediately starts preparing to shoot at the cans, and he hits four cans until he misses his first. 

“So close, flex.” Natalie teased him from behind. You looked at her with a snicker at her comment. 

Suddenly, Travis turns around with the gun ready in his hand, and he aims it at Natalie’s face. “Don’t fucking call me that!”

“Whoa!” You gasp as you step closer to Natalie out of instinct to protect your friend, your eyes as wide as saucers. 

“Travis! Put the gun down.” Couch Ben shouts demands at him, His eyes wide with panic because he can’t stand and take it away from him. 

You don’t even think as you yell, “Put the fucking gun down, Travis! What the fuck are you doing?” 

He then turns around and shoots at the cans after an intense silence. You cringe again at the sound of his gun. 

“All right, that’s, uh-yeah, that’s good shooting, Martinez. Don’t ever do that again.” Couch Ben says awkwardly as everyone quietly watches on with tension in their shoulders. You felt yourself seething with anger bubbling in your stomach. 

“Don’t choke. Again.” He says to Natalie with an antagonistic glare. 

He then backs away and stands near you. You look at him with disgust as you spit at his feet, “Stand away from me, asshole.” You hiss at him.

He looks at you in surprise that you are still so angry at him that you just keep your mean mug on him, and he steps away. He was surprised at your sudden outburst, as did everyone behind you because you were known for being overly friendly, but you ensured he knew not to be near you. 

You look at Natalie and nod, “You got this, girl.” you say. You cover your ears quickly before she does anything else.

Natalie looks at Travis with the same intensity as you and takes a smooth, deep breath. She then puts the gun to her shoulder and hits each can without hesitation. One by One, they drop to the forest floor. She then smiles slowly as she finishes. Everyone cheers and applauds her for showing Travis up.

You snicker as you look at her. Natalie moves her head towards you first. Meeting your eyes with happy eyes and a big smile, she looks at you quickly over and looks away to the other. You blush quickly, trying not to overthink about her looking for your approval first and your praise, and you don’t think much about her looking you over. She sure wasn’t checking you out. 

After the gun practice, everyone searched for berries and mushrooms in the woods. Travis left to the cabin with his tail tucked between his legs after you kept telling him to go away. He left after you said that you don’t trust him and no one should because he acts like a brat. He looked hurt and looked around at the other girls with eyes that screamed he regretted what he did with the gun, but no one had his back. He just stepped back, and you shook your head as you turned to the others. 

“Are any of these, like, Maple syrup trees?” Laura Lee asks as she looks up at the tall sycamore tree.

“What?” Tai questions as she walks behind her, towards the clearing a few feet away. 

“I don’t know,” Laura Lee mumbled as she walked away. She softly touched your shoulder as she walked by, needing you to stabilize her from the trail's incline. 

You found some chestnuts on the ground. They were fresh and not ready yet, and you put them in your pocket as you heard Akilah smack Misty’s hand. 

“Don’t eat that kind,” Akilah panicked as she pushed the mushroom in Misty’s hand on the forest floor. “It’s poisonous.” 

Misty looks at her with big eyes and a little shaky hands. 

Van says, sarcastically, “Like “Kill you” poisonous, or like, “trip your balls off” poisonous?”

“What? I don’t know. My Girl Scout leader didn’t get all that specific about it.” 

” (y/n)?” Taissa asks as she kneels to the ground with Mari.

You look over to Taissa, looking at tiny button-like mushrooms that grow from decaying animals. 

“Don’t eat that one either. That's a dead mushroom. It is too new to eat if we could eat it. It would be like eating rotting meat. Don’t even touch.” You say as you look for more nuts on the forest ground. “Try to look for nuts. They are on the ground. If it has a hole, just drop it for the animals.” 

“Well, could you just show us something edible so we can get going?” Misty asks kindly, impatiently—this is the first time you have heard her sound like that. 

Taissa looks behind her to Misty, rising to stand over her, “What’s the big furry?” 

“Coach needs a sponge bath?” Van teases Misty with a smirk, and you feel one grow on your lips at the joke, too. Everyone pauses to look at Misty, animals looking down at the runt. As a snicker comes to their lips, Taissa fully laughs, covering her mouth. 

“That’s-That’s so mean.” Taissa laughs as she looks to the ground. Everyone softly holds their laughs as Misty storms off. Van laughs as Misty rushes past and giggles out, “I’m sorry. Whatever.” 

Van puts her arm around Taissa’s shoulders, and you look at them. Jealousy courses through you. Why couldn’t you have someone like they do? 

“Get off me!” Taissa patted Van’s arm away. In response, Van smears a smash berry she hid on her finger on Taissa’s face. “Did you put a berry on me?”

“I did.” Van said, taking her arm off her, and moved herself towards you. 

“Okay, so, everyone, we just need to focus. We know we can’t touch those and those ones.” Taissa spoke to the group, trying to lead them back on track,

“No mushrooms, No mushrooms.” Van says as she starts to look up the trees for the chestnuts. 

“Uh, Guys…” Jackie called out from a few yards away. You all moved quickly to her voice out of concern that she had encountered a wild animal in the woods.

 “Jackie? “What is it?” you called back as you rushed to her. 

“Guys, come here!” Jackie laughed.

“Look! Holy Shit!” Jackie exclaimed. You come over some trees and bushes to see Jackie slapping the door of a small personal plane that has vines and moss growing on it. The woods themselves are almost swallowing it, as it has had overgrowth for at least a decade, only covering and trapping it in place.

“W-what is this doing here?” Van asks in disbelief. 

“It must have been the dead guy’s.” Jackie says as she looks at the wheels being stuck in the mud. 

Laura Lee quickly finds the door and opens it, “I wonder if It still works?” Laura Lee questioned to no one in particular. 

Van gently spins the propeller, “Holy fuck!” 

Laura Lee is inside the plane, messing around loudly. You don’t want to get near that thing. You never want to be near a plane again. You stand away as you watch them touch the plane in excitement, everyone else coming closer to the plane.

Suddenly, as your anxieties manifested themselves to life, the plane started from Van’s spinning the propeller and Laura Lee messing around inside. The engine started with a startling rattle as it crept forward. 

“Holy shit.” Van says as she steps back in shock. Jackie is wholly frozen until she suddenly pushes Van out of the way of the plane. 

“Back away! What the fuck?” Jackie says as she is frozen in place.

“Stop the fucking plane!” You scream out to the plane. You feel yourself planted to the ground. You didn’t even react when Van fell to the ground. Everyone yells to stop the plane, and Laura Lee panics inside the plane, crying out, “I’m trying! I’m trying!” 

The plane stopped just in time to avoid harming Jackie. She looked at the plane with buggy, big eyes and took a deep breath of relief. 

Everyone pauses after the intense change of events. You stand frozen in silence as you look down at the wheels and wings. You had an intrusive thought creep into your mind, but you quieted quickly before speaking it out. 

Lottie looks on, almost disassociated, as she says, “It didn’t want him to leave.” 

You turn your head to her and look at her deeply concernedly. She says what you had thought. Maybe the wilderness didn’t want the mummy to leave. That's why he did what he did in the attic and why the air was so suffocating. 

‘21

You giggle at Misty’s goofy joke about old men as you try not to spit out the chocolate martini in your mouth. Earlier today, Misty called you to ask how you were doing after the road trip because she thought the air between you and Natalie was off. She just wanted to check up. It ended up with you sitting across from her at an Italian restaurant. 

“Yeah, so I just turned off the oxygen tank.” She says to add on to the joke, which kind of makes you laugh harder because you can see her doing that. 

“Stop, you didn’t!” You giggle again as you try to hide your face with a napkin; your face is red hot. 

“I didn’t-” Misty laughs with you as she sips on her chocolate martini. She says, “I wouldn’t do that to anyone.” 

“No, you wouldn’t.” You say it with some sternness from Misty’s character. You make her feel more supported if you sometimes reaffirm what she wants to be seen as. You see her in that way. No one likes to be told who they are. 

You notice her laugh, look slightly behind you briefly, and note it. 

“Well, So, How is your work? Any new boos” Misty asks as she takes another sip of her martini. You feel yourself smile at the question and know she asks for more profound reasons. 

“No, no, nothing special about work. And just little flings here and there. Keep the bed warm,” you say as you look at Misty’s eyes intently. You feel a little tense when you ask, “And you? How is it going with Kevin?” You ask with a soft joke about the last time you saw each other. 

Misty became slightly flustered momentarily and shook her head, “I was trying to get Natalie out of her comfort zone.” Looking behind you again, she says, “But more or less the same. No one special enough to say they dated Misty Quigley.” 

You chuckle and smile at Misty’s last comment, but you look behind you as soon as she finishes talking out of curiosity. You see behind a window of the inside of the restaurant. Dressed up nice, Misty is holding her head on her fist, listening to the man across from her, Natalie. Misty is following Natalie. 

“Misty-”

“I can explain!” Misty says as she blabbers on, “I was trying to keep an eye on her and make sure she is okay after seeing Travis because she might do something crazy or relapse.” 

You quietly listen to Misty explain herself with a soft smile as you scoff softly, pulling out your phone, “And here I thought you wanted to spend time with little old me.” 

Misty squeals, “I did want to see you. I wanted to get a drink.” 

“It’s okay.” You chuckle softly and say, “Sometimes you trade friends out for a night out. It’s alright, girl.” 

Suddenly, Misty straightens her back and smiles softly. She lifts her drink to her lips as Natalie rushes to your table. You lean back on your chair with wide eyes, holding your chocolate martini. 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Natalie hissed to Misty, standing in a black dress. She was clearly on a fate tonight, and you couldn’t help but feel a mumbling jealousy in your stomach as you looked at her.  

“Okay, so, don’t look now, but,” Misty lowers her voice to a whisper and says, “that reporter, Jessica Roberts, is sitting at the bar right now. She’s watching you.” 

“And what are you doing?” Natalie tilted her head to the side as she looked at Misty with suspicious eyes, her tone clear of annoyance. 

“I’m having your back.” Misty stated. 

“Y-you’re having my…” Natalie is in disbelief. “How did you even know I was even here?” 

“I’m a citizen detective, " Misty said, looking at Natalie with big, innocent eyes. 

“I hate to break it to you, but we’re not Rizzoli and Isles. I don’t need you.” 

“Yeah, but, Natalie-” 

“Go the fuck home.” Natalie spat. 

“Alright, you need to stop talking to Misty like that-” You finally cut yourself into the conversation.

“Who are you speaking to?” Natalie snapped her head to you and said, “I expect this from Misty, but you? I don’t understand why you are here.” 

“I’m here, having a drink with Misty. I saw her at her job, and we decided to get drinks.” 

“Oh please, you came here to spy on me! How fucking pathetic. Don’t you have to write a book about rubbing off a genie?” She hissed at you and looked daggers into you. She went too far in your eyes now, and you lean on your elbow on the table as you look back into her eyes. 

“Oh, aren’t you so strong and high mighty?” You hiss lowly to Natalie. Ever since the night in the woods with Natalie, you have had difficulty holding back your teeth when you feel cornered, even a little. “Misty is here protecting you and having your back like always. Because Jessica,” You point to the bar, Jessica looking to the bartender to order another drink, “Is here waiting for you to relapse to spill the beans about it. Stop biting at people trying to be there for you; you might not be so alone. Now go drink, and go on your date with goth freak Kevin Tang.” You cut coldly as you look into Natalie’s blue eyes. You grab your drink, lean back in your chair, take a sip.

“Make sure you don’t go too far. You might need to get another one of your coins, right? What does that make it 9 times you have gotten a sobriety coin?” you stab at her and mention her many times in AA. You didn’t care how hurtful or unnecessary your anger was to her. You must say it to her, and she needed to hear it. She needed to back off Misty. 

It was intense, and it was real. 

You didn’t need to bite so hard. But she didn’t need to bite first.

You two hold a glare as Natalie steps back and scowls at you. She doesn’t say a word. You know why. 

It’s because you are right.   

You feel Misty touching your hand and saying, “Are you alright? That was pretty harsh.” Once, Natalie returned to her table with a perfect smile mask. 

“I’m alright. But I think we should go now.” You say softly as you touch Misty’s hand back, 

Misty holds your hand with a squeeze quickly. She wants to hold you. You have protected her yet again from the wolves in the group. 

You both held the heavy silence as you softly panted a bit.  You felt it in the car; it was surrounding and whole. You were happy and open, as always. 

In the car, you look over to Misty, noticing the flustered face she holds. She was always awkward, but you always found her adoring. As you both drive down to your home, the trees that pass hypnotize you into a calm place. You feel your body, and with each breath you take, cold air enters your nose, and an image of last night's dream comes to your mind. Running past trees, you felt as if you were back there somehow. Maybe it was because of the anniversary, the reporter, or Travis’s death; you couldn’t pinpoint it, but you felt a forgotten hunger you hadn’t felt in a long time. You let it take over like it did them because of the exciting thrill of it all again. It felt youthful and intense. 

“Misty.” 

“Yes?” 

“Do you miss me?” You ask her as you softly touch a lint off her shoulder.

“W-what do you mean? I have been with you for the past two hours.” She says as she drives down your street. 

“No. No, Misty.” You chuckle, and the hunger comes over you. You want to feel warm; you have been far too cold lately. “Have you missed me and the warmth we shared?”

You don’t understand yourself. You sound like you did all those years ago in the woods. How sexual you became without trying. It felt like the air around us darkened into lustful wants and licks. How natural you were with your body. 

Misty was caught off guard by how quickly your words changed the car's atmosphere. The memories of the wilderness and how you looked her over suddenly brought back feelings that she thought were long gone. Misty’s throat tightened, and her heart quickened as she glanced over at you, taking in the expression on your face as you asked her the question. She slowly parked the car, her hands gripping the steering wheel tight “Y-yeah, I did…”

Your hand snakes onto Misty’s inner thigh, and your thumb rubs the fabric of her jeans. Your eyes stare down at your hand. 

“Would you like to feel my heat again?” you whisper, feeling your hot breath hitting off her cheek. You don’t understand the tingling and desperatiness your cunt feels at this moment. You shouldn’t have touched her, spoken to her, or even considered thinking about her. You knew better than to let yourself cave into your primal instincts, instincts you have because of the wilderness with them. All the hurt in the woods manifested into want as it always did.   

Misty’s breath hitches at the feeling of your hand on her thigh, and her heartbeat quickens in her chest as her skin tingles under your touch. It's almost as if no time has passed at all. Your words and desperate tone send a shiver down her spine as she glances over at you, her eyes darkening with lust and need. “Yes… please.” She whispered back, her voice filled with want. Your hand moves up her thigh and softly rubs the fabric at the crotch of her jeans. You could feel her heat underneath. 

You lunged at Misty, cupping her cheeks with your hands. You pulled her into your face and kissed her. Your lips met and mashed together as your hands moved closer to her, pushing her back against the driver’s side door. Thank God you live on a dirt road. 

Misty lets a small gasp into the kiss as your hand moves up her thigh. Her body already feels as if it's on fire. She responds to the kiss passionately, her desire for you growing with each passing second. She reaches up and grips your hair, pulling you closer as she deepens the kiss, her tongue exploring your mouth with desperate need.

(y/n) hands quickly work to unbutton Misty's jeans. You move your kisses off Misty's lips to her jaw and neck. Misty lets out a small moan as your lips move down her jaw. She leans her head back and closes her eyes, surrendering herself to the feel of your lips on her skin. The feel of your tongue moving down her neck, sending small licks and nips here and there, makes her shiver in pleasure. You softly growl in lust as you start to pull the jeans and underwear down her pale legs, your thumb touching the bare skin. She spreads her legs farther apart, allowing you to pull her jeans and underwear down, her breathing getting more labored with each passing second. 

You quickly push your two fingers inside of Misty’s weeping cunt, and she dramatically moves her leg to the center console for you to have more of her. You move her head from her neck and just look at her as you push inside of her, a gasp rattling the car escapes from her. 

You look into her brown eyes for a moment as you see when pleasure takes over her being as you feel her walls tighten around your fingers. You feel her pink, wet hole flex and twitch to your fingers; it feels like she hasn’t had sex in a long time as you start to pump your fingers into her. 

Her hand locks into your hair, or more so your head, as she rubs her other hand on your shoulder. She softly pushes you down to her cunt as she rolls her head back in a deep moan. You feel the vibration on the pads of your pointer and middle fingers. You feel the hotness of her cunt as you lean down, her musk clouding your judgment and making you think of only one thing. 

You lean down, pushing your body to the floor of the passenger’s seat, licking her cunt. You taste her flavor and wetness leaking from her clit. You circle your tongue around the bulb with reckless abandon. You feel her gushing onto your fingers, and her loud moans only encourage you to go harder. 

“(y-y/n)! Honey- right there, yeah!” Misty’s needy, desperate moans fill the car up with hot air. Her legs shake as she rolls her eyes.  She panted like an animal as you tongue into her, sucking up all her wetness as you could. You felt throbbing in your wrist as you curled your fingers up to touch her soft spot. You could have been here for days and not cared. 

Misty grabs her breast as she arches her back to your mouth. She moaned louder and louder to tell you she was going to cum, but you didn’t care. You kept licking and sucking her juices. 

“Sweet Jesus!” Misty whispers to the air as she feels you fuck her harder with your mouth. She finally lets out a high-pitched, needy groan as her feet curl, legs twitching. Her eyes closed as her head hit the glass of her door, and she leaned back to relish in the feeling. You bury yourself in her folds, looking up from her lap, and watch as she shivers, as your tongue doesn’t stop. 

You move your mouth up to her clit again and your fingers into her hole, pounding her with an elemental need to feel your fingers caress her cervix. You don’t move again. You don’t care how uncomfortable it felt as your legs were pinched into the floor, or how the cupholder stabbed into your rib, or that your neck was throbbing so that you could hear your heartbeat. You wanted her, and you wanted to feel her ultimately come undone to your fingers again.

‘96 

The clattering of some forks and spoons scrap across the plates, people talking over everyone else, and the heat of the fire warm the cabin’s first floor. Everyone was in a better mood after shooting practice and settling for the night. Travis sits alone in the corner of the room, rejected by everyone tonight as punishment. You felt yourself thinking about him being sad and alone in the corner. “Good.” 

Jackie and Shauna sit beside you at the table, your attention entirely on them and their discussion about how Pamala Anderson’s sex tape scandal. 

“I mean, she shouldn’t have been a slut and done it, is all I have to say.” Jackie shrugged and took a bite of the white fish, and her face cringed when she pulled out a small bone. 

“No!” You say with a chuckle and shake of your head, “Someone shouldn’t have robbed their safe and sold the sex tape.” 

“She shouldn’t have even done it. Like, who just does a porno if they are not a slut?” 

“She was with her husband. Who else are you supposed to have a sex tape with?” Shauna asked as she shook her head at Jackie.

“No one! No one should ever do a porn! It's so degrading.”  

“I don’t know, I don’t know how someone would want to make one, but she wasn’t with a whole lot of guys.  She’s married to Tommy Lee. And it was supposed to be his thing for tour.”

“Yeah, who wouldn’t think a Mötley Crüe member would have a sex tape? I wouldn’t be surprised if they taped the many other women they have fucked,” You say as you delightfully eat the fish. It was fresh and delicious after days of only eating berries and leftover snacks you could find from the crash. You are having meat, and it feels like a real treat as you haven’t tasted anything as delicious in weeks. 

Before you could continue, Van touched your shoulder as you looked at Jackie. You turned to her as she said, “Hey, do you have a sweater I can burrow? I don’t think anyone else has anything I can wear.” 

You smiled big at Vanessa, nodding your head, and stood up. “Yeah, I have a few.” 

“Where are you going?” Jackie asks sassily as you get up. She tilts her eyes at you. 

Shauna looks up at you and is slightly confused, but she also asks, “Are you coming back?” 

“Yeah, just getting something for Van, hold up.” You say as you start to walk away. 

“Thanks, (y/n). You're a lifesaver.” Van beams as her smile moves with you. You touch her shoulder as you walk past her, and you walk over to the other side of the cabin to the bags. 

You were one of the lucky ones that found all your luggage. You had your carry-on, luggage, and purse still intact and untouched from the fire. You were so happy to have your journal and book you haven’t finished, but you felt bad for everyone still looking for their things. Van could only find her carry-on; some didn’t have anything they packed. You all carried every bag you could find, but some still had missing clothes. Because of that, Van has been coming to you to burrow clothes as the only other heavy girl much smaller than you, so you let her burrow your shirts and hoodies since the crash.

 A small sandwich bag falls to the floor as you open the bag and grab the heavy yellowjackets sweatshirt. It was your stash of weed with the rolling papers and filters. You blush as you quickly grab the bag from the ground and put it into your jeans pocket. You look behind you to see if anyone has seen that, with embarrassment painted all over your face.

You walk back over to Van and hand her the hoodie. You smile widely as you sit down. You didn’t want everyone to know you had weed, but you think that tonight would be the best night to do anything. You smile as you whisper into Jackie’s ear, “I have weed.” 

She stops eating instantly, and her eyes bug out. She looks over at you and laughs, “What?” 

You hit her shoulder softly as she laughs again, “You have what?” 

“What?” Shauna asks, besides Jackie, and when you two make eye contact, it makes you laugh. 

You whisper in Jackie’s ear again. “I have weed. Would we like a joint?” Jackie laughs and hits you on the shoulder, her mouth wide open in shock and amusement. She nods her head and whispers to Shauna, and you turn your head to Van, “Hey, I have a joint-” 

“What?” Van asks as she leans her ear towards your lips. Your lips accidentally graze her ear, and you say, “I have a joint. Tell the other seniors. Don’t be suspicious; don’t tell the underclassmen.” 

Van smirk grew wide on her freckled face as she nods her head, she says. “Okay, I’ll let them know. When are we doing this?” 

“When everyone is asleep, " you tell her, knowing that if anyone overhears you, they will not understand what you are discussing. 

 You light the joint with a twig, puffing the air out of the end of the filter. You hear muffled giggles from Jackie and Shauna beside you. " Stop laughing,” you snicker back and pull the joint from your lips. You pull Shauna and Jackie to the back of the cabin and show them the weed you packed on the plane. You all decide to roll one out. 

“Didn’t know you would have the good stuff,” Jackie smirks with an amused laugh in her voice. She takes a puff and hands it to Shauna with a muffled cough. 

Shauna laughs softly as she also smokes and coughs in response to inhaling the smoke. She covers her mouth with her elbow, and you laugh at her. 

Van moves behind the cabin's hunter shed, and Taissa, Natalie, and Lottie follow her. 

“Hey!" you say to them as you take a hit of the joint and blow the smoke quickly.

Natalie says to you, “Damn, (y/n). Didn’t know you were such a criminal. Hand that over to me.”

You giggle happily as you hand it over to Natalie. You look up at her from your spot on the log. She looks down at you with heavy eyes as she takes a hit. She slowly looks over your face again before handing it over to Van. You felt a blush come over you again as you felt her eyes scan over your features, and you didn’t know what to do. You felt insecure and flattered at the attention but still deeply hesitated to meet her eyes. 

Natalie, who never passes up a joint, reaches out her hand to take it from you while Taissa eyes it. Lottie looks at the joint and then at you with a tiny bit of concern; the others knew she’d probably be the one most concerned about the joint.

“Where’d you get that from?” Nat asks as she inhales the joint.

You felt yourself joke, “Where do you think I got weed from?’ 

“I don’t know. A drug dealer.” Van jokes to you with a scrunch of her freckled nose. 

“Sort of. My mom is the one who has the weed. She has a weed card since she got diagnosed with cancer.” You said without realizing the words from your throat. You hadn’t thought about your mom almost all day, “She grows some behind our house in the woods, Natalie,” You point at her jokingly, “Don’t get any ideas. You have to buy that shit.” 

Everyone laughs loudly at your joke. Lottie takes the joint and smiles, holding the smoke in her mouth. You look at your feet, and suddenly, your mother comes to mind. You think about your mom, and a lump grows in your throat. Did she take her night medicine? Is she watching Frasier? Is she worrying about you?  

From the side of the shed, there is a crunch of leaves and twigs, and a petite figure comes from behind the shed. Natalie turns herself and turns back to face you. She gives you a face of “fuck it's her again.” 

Misty comes from the shed, pushing a curl behind her ear as she looks at the group. You smile at her as Jackie rolls her eyes, smoking the joint beside you. 

“Hey Misty! What are you doing here?” 

“H-hi. I was going to the bathroom. What are you guys doing?” she asks nervously as she approaches the group. 

“Drugs.” Lottie says as she looks at Misty with a humorous tone. 

You laugh as you take the joint from Jackie and wave your hand to Misty to enter the circle, “Come closer, it’s okay; it’s legal here.” You joke, and it makes everyone laugh with bloodshot eyes. Misty chuckles and looks around at everyone in approval. Sometimes, it was painful to see her so desperate for some kind of friendship that it made you feel bad, so in your intoxicated state, you pulled your hand out for her, “You can try it if you want to, Misty. Sit.” 

Misty’s eyes looked wide as everyone turned their head towards you as you invited her into the smoke circle, but no one stopped you. They seemed also to want to see what Misty does. 

“I-I can? Is it safe?” she asks as she approaches the log beside you. 

Jackie snickered and looked at Misty with narrow eyes, “No, that’s why we are all smoking on it.” She condescended. 

You shake your head and take Misty’s hand. “Ignore her. Just don’t take a huge hit. You gotta get used to it, then you’ll want more,” You told Misty gently. You puff the joint before it goes out in the wind. Your body is starting to relax and calm in the woods, and your neck doesn’t hurt as much as it did earlier. 

You hand Misty the joint, and everyone watching the scene plays out with amused eyes. You gently hold your hand over hers to guide her. “Have you ever smoked a cigarette?” 

“No, they’re bad for you.” 

You chuckle and nod, “Yes, but they are just like weed. You take small inhales, not like you're trying to breathe it in, but sip on a drink with a straw, okay? Baby puff.” You say, pulling the joint back to your lips and showing her. 

Your lips wrap around the filter softly as you take a quarter breath in. You then dramatically hold it out and show that you take the rest of the breath through your mouth. You hold the smoke in for a moment and then let it out for her to understand. “You get it now?” you cough. 

“I-I think.” she says as she takes the joint from you, holding it between shaky fingers. She takes a puff and then starts coughing furiously. Natalie took the joint from Misty’s shaking hand before it fell to the ground, she takes a puff inbetween her laughs. 

Misty holds her fist to her lips as she tries to get all the smoke out of her lungs. Everyone laughs happily and claps for her when she does it, enjoying seeing Misty try something for the first time. You put your hand on her back to pat it gently. She seems to relax at your touch momentarily before finally getting her coughing under control.

“You finally tried marijuana for the first time!” You exclaim and rub a circle on Misty’s back, her cheeks crimson. 

“It was amazing,” Misty breathlessly says as she looks at everyone else. Everyone is very high now, and their eyes are bloodshot and dry. You smack your lips, longing for a drink. 

“Misty, have you ever drank?” Lottie asks as she sits with her knees to her chest. She tilts her head to the sides and watches Misty’s facial expressions. You didn’t understand the feeling you felt from her eyes. It felt almost like she was studying and calculating Misty. You have never seen that look on someone. 

Misty studders and says, “Y-Yeah, I have. I stole some sherry from my mother’s cabinet.” 

Van laughs a little “whoa” out as a joke about how mild Misty’s confession was, the smoke of the joint coming out of her mouth like the hot breath of a hunger wolf, and she says, “I’ve done crazier.” 

Taissa looks at Van with a playful glare and says, “Like what?” 

“I stole a whole bottle fo whiskey from my mom. And she didn’t even find out. She didn’t even realize she didn’t drink it, so she just got more for herself.” Van confesses with a smug smirk on her face, and Natalie chuckles and nods her head like she’s done that before to her mom. You felt a little wrong about what Van said because it made you feel like her mom had a nasty drinking problem. 

“I did that before with my mom’s cigarettes.” Natalie says, “They never notice if you just take a few here and there.” 

Jackie smirked and said, “I know every one of my mom's pills in the bathroom cabinet. I took a few for the trip. She’s never caught me before.” 

“My dad is very strict with those things. I don’t think I can do anything without my parents knowing,” Lottie said, looking to the ground with a severe expression. You couldn’t put your finger on it, it her confession felt like it had a little more then she was letting on. Lately she has been off and talking more vague about things, and confessing more things about her life. Lottie’s parents were strict but the more you hear about them it sounds like they hover over Lottie’s every move.  

“My mom just grows the shit, and I just take it.” You blurt out with your words softly slurring because you are high, and you realize you talked about your mom again. Was she okay? 

Everyone laughs at how you talk and starts to laugh at their words sounding like yours—slurred and funny to hear. 

You felt a sudden wave come over you as you laughed with your friends. It felt good—maybe too good—so good that it made you think about your mother. Was she okay? Did she get her pills on time? Did she bathe? Did she go to chemo?

In your laughter, your laughs turn to sobs in a second. You cover your mouth as heavy sobs leave your throat. You couldn’t help yourself. You couldn’t stop yourself. 

Everyone slowly realized that your sounds weren’t in glee anymore; they were out of sorrow and a moment of weakness. 

When you look, you see brown eyes, concerns, and worry on all the faces. You let out one thing that you knew was going to hurt them. Your body didn’t stop itself from letting out deep-seated sorrow. 

“I’m sorry. I really miss my parents and momm- mom so much.” You whimpered as you wiped your tears. You had a full belly and a fire keeping you warm. But inside, you have never been so cold and helpless in these woods. 

Everyone’s faces soften and twist in their sadness. We all know what we are feeling, and they also start tearing up. Everyone missed their parents, and you felt like an asshole even saying anything. 

You sniffle and try to stop your tears. Being strong has worn you down, but you have a “strong shoulder.” Like your father always said, you can handle the hurt. 

You say to everyone, “I think we all need some love right now. Group hug. Please.” Standing up, throwing the dying joint into the fire, moving your plush arms around to urge them to you.  

One by one, they stood, hovered over you, and hugged you and each other—a moment of shared pain and joy. Being strong was hard, but as you felt them hold you, you felt a second wind. You have to get yourself and the others out of here. Out of these fucking woods. 

Note 2: Sorry to anyone who wanted to be on the taglist and I couldn’t add you! I hope you still find this fic!

[theamazingdigitalraceway]

Just read the latest chapter and I must say I do believe everyone deserves a break, and by that I mean why not just let them relax like if they were all actors. Maybe have Abel be what he wants from the 4th wall ask so there isn't any tension, it's just a fun non-canon event to wind down.

BREATHER

A RACEWAY AU ONESHOT

WARNING: none

~~~

"CUT!! Good job everyone, that's a wrap for today." The Author closed her notes for episode 13 of The Amazing Digital Raceway TV series.

As the set crew turned on the overhead lights to start cleaning, Seth tossed his newly lit cigarette and coughed. "Ugh...how much longer am I going to have to pretend to like these things?"

Pomni unzipped her tracksuit to the waist, took off the top half and tied the sleeves around her waist. The tracksuits were hot under the stage lights, so she was much more comfortable in her black tank top underneath. "You know you don't actually have to smoke those, right? They'll edit it in post."

"I'm a method actor. I can't work with this unless it's actually lit."

"...then don't inhale. Really, this is a you problem."

"meh, meh, meh. Shut up." He grabbed her jester hat and shoved it down over her eyes.

"Reeeeal professional." Caine walked up, still covered in electrical burn makeup. "You staying in character or something?" He handed a bottle of water to Pomni.

"Like I said, method." Seth dug around in his pockets for items to give back to the prop department. As he searched, a phone rang in his pants pocket.

Pomni gaped. "You had a cellphone on you the whole time!? AND IT WAS ON!? You could have ruined the scene!"

Seth took out his modern flip phone, ignoring Pomni, and answered it with a smile. "Hey, baby. Yeah, just finished up." He started walking away, paying no mind to Pomni or Caine. "Have you heard back from the Author about your audition? Yeah, I told her if she needed me to have a love interest, I would prefer it be you."

Pomni rolled her eyes. "I can't believe that's guy's your brother."

Caine raised an eyebrow. "He's not."

"But he looks just like you."

"I know, but we never knew each other before the casting call. Wild coincidence." Caine finished his water. "I was wondering...after we finish up here, would you like to join me for drinks? I know this really nice pub."

Pomni smirked. "Now who's method acting?"

Caine chuckled, blushing under his makeup. "Nah...no acting. Just, I think... I don't know...I've felt some chemistry here. I'd be very interested in getting to know you outside of work."

Pomni smiled sincerely. "I'd like that."

~

Gummigoo grunted as the makeup assistant took out the bright blue contacts that covered his whole eye. "These bloody things are awful." There was some relief with the eye wash, but not as much as he'd like.

"Sorry you have to deal with that." Abel said as he glanced over the script draft for the next episode. "But it looks like you're going to be wearing them for a while. Uh, good news, you're getting a costume change at least. Says here you wear a black tracksuit. Don't know why the Author waited an entire episode for the wardrobe change. Seems like an afterthought. I would've changed the moment I reincarnated."

Gummigoo shrugged. "Maybe the Author is taking details like that slower. I mean, think about it. You've supposedly been stuck in the walls for 15 or so years and you jump into the mainframe head first. Did you expect to know how to do things from the inside right away? Your character has never done that before. He doesn't know how to be 'god'."

"eh....I guess you're right." Abel tucked the script under his arm and saw Ragatha walking by with Jax. "Oh hey, you two alright? That was some intense stunt work today."

"I'm fine, dear. Don't you worry. Jax, however is-" Ragatha was cut off by Jax hurling into the barf bag. "...not doing so good."

Jax groaned, "The world is spinning in the wrong direction."

"And you said you could do your own stunts." Ragatha patted Jax on the back. "I'm taking you to the on-site medic for some help. You need to sit down. See you later Abel, Gummigoo." She waved to her co-stars and escorted Jax away.

"Crikey, I'd hate to be him right now." Gummigoo shook his head.

"Yeah...so, anyway, I also wanted to ask: HOW have you been able to hide your Australian accent the entire time you're me? You sound so different." Abel wondered.

Gummigoo laughed. "Lots of practice and American movies."

~

Kinger was a little sore from today. The crashes were a bit more intense than originally intended. But, without complaint, he made his way to wardrobe to change, where he came across Loo. "Oh, hello, Loo. Did you have fun today?"

Loo pouted, "No...I didn't even have a line this episode. I feel like I've been on the story less and less. My character feels so...useless."

Kinger sat next to her. "We don't know what's coming next. I'm sure the Author will figure something out. She's one of the most passionate directors I've ever worked with, and I've been doing this for a long time."

Loo sniffed and wiped her face. "I think she should just kill off my character and let me go home. I'm not needed here."

"Hey," Kinger said gently, taking her hand. "Yes, you are. Every character is important, even the background ones. They flesh out the story and give the audience different perspectives on character struggles throughout the plot."

"What about Bubble? They left after episode 12, and I haven't seen them-"

"Bubble's on hiatus. They had to be written out for a bit. Nothing to do with how useful they are. Don't compare your performance to the others. The sooner you stop doing that, the better off you'll be in this industry."

"...okay..."

"You're young, beautiful, talented and hard working. You'll go far, I just know it." Kinger gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.

"Thanks." Loo wasn't fully convinced, but she was grateful Kinger was trying.

~

"What do you mean you haven't heard back!?" Gangle screeched angrily into her phone at her agent. "I am a Shakespearean trained actor! I have a repertoire longer than all these other actors combined!! Well, maybe not Kinger, BUT STILL!! How have you come up with nothing!? You have 48 hours to find me a new offer or you're FIRED!!"

Gangle almost threw her phone. She couldn't believe it. Years of training and child acting and this backwater TV show was all she had for work. She could do SO much better than this. She DESERVED better than this.

She dialed a new number with tears in her eyes. "...mom? The agent you got me is useless! I'm still stuck with the TV show! I-...yes, it's popular or whatever, BUT I'M NOT THE MAIN STAR! I auditioned for the lead role and I got side-charactered! It's not fair!!" Gangle whined and cried, pulling the bow out of her hair in frustration.

~

Zooble was about to leave for the day, but was flagged down by the Author. "Hey, what's up?"

"A lot, Zooble." The Author sighed. "I need to touch base with you about your role in the next episode. Have you seen makeup and wardrobe about-"

"Oh, yeah, I have. They got the latex molds done. My new look should be done by time you're ready to film my scenes."

"Excellent. Best news I've heard all week."

"You look like you could use a drink." Zooble half joked.

"I really could, but I can't. I have too many projects that require my attention. My producers for Unseen are breathing down my neck for the next script. Not to mention co-witing for the Time Capsule and Harlequin shows. Sometimes I have time for spinoff scripts. Those are fun." The Author runs her hand through her hair.

"Wow. Maybe you're taking on too many projects at once? Take a break. Have a drink."

"....maybe. Once I get-" The Author's phone rang. "Excuse me." She stepped away and answered. "Hello?"

A smooth male voice came though. "I read the script. The answer's yes."

The Author could dance in place. "That's wonderful! I'll have the other drafts sent your way. Thank you for calling me yourself. Your agent was rather uppity about letting me even offer the role to you."

The man chuckled lightly. "He's a card. No, I like this a lot. You can count me in. In fact, I'd very much like to discuss my role in person. Are you available tonight?"

The Author almost dropped her stuff. "I am now."

[1ivinqdeadqir1]

Hi, I hope you’re doing good, I saw your post about exams and same here, it’s hard just to wake up to go to school in the morning. 😭 Anyway, I just read the post about Lalo being your first time, and I was wondering when you could find time, if you could write the same prompt just with Nacho? Oml the brainrot is HEAVYYYY. If not, that’s completely okay! Thank you so much.

Nacho Varga being his SOs first:

A/N: similarly to the Lalo one, I used different ‘ first time ‘ circumstances and I think it turned out pretty cute, gotta love nachito <33

Fem!Reader (implied, though you could very well just use whatever pronouns or gender identity you like)

WARNING(S): mentions of sex, kissing and death, generally just nacho behaviour tbh

First relationship:

he wouldn’t really mind at all, he’d be a little intimidated maybe at first and feel as though there’s a lot of expectations he’d have to fill

But you’d ( of course ) reassure him that he’s doing great <33

I can imagine you meeting at his fathers shop, and he greets you at the counter and he can’t stop thinking about how gorgeous you are

“ I was uh.. if you’re free later maybe we could go for a drink?”

“I’d love to, Ignacio. pick me up at 7 okay?”

His father also adores you. Papa Varga really admires how you bring out the good in his son

Nacho probably has a gym set at his house let’s be for real

Imagine training together ( if you’re into that )

Him accidentally giving you weights that are too heavy and when your muscles ache afterward he apologizes and gives you a massage

“Ignacio, where did you learn to give massages like this?”

“It’s pretty straightforward really… I guess”

He’s not much for PDA, just for his reputation but if it’s just the two of you he’d happily hold you

Once you’re aware of his job he’d be hyper vigilant over you ( you probably have to find out on your own…)

Nacho definitely has a fake ID made for you in his safe. Just in case.

First Kiss:

he initiates it, or at least goes to- and you pull away.

“ sorry, I-“

“No no nacho, it’s me I just… I haven’t…”

“ oh 😳” he’d find it really cute, maybe a little weird since I imagine you’re around 23-25, but still.

You give him a quick peck on the cheek to compensate when he’s not looking, and he can’t help but smile stupidly into his hand.

This all probably takes place with you both sitting watching the sunset from inside one of his cars or an old truck borrowed from his dad for a romantic date night. In the middle of nowhere.

“You’re going to be the death of me” he sighs it out, and you laugh it off, though he’s a little worried that part of him is being truthful.

Not for his sake, more for yours. Because how can he develop such a love for someone-

who then loves him back, for him to just die and leave you all alone?

“You’re so dramatic sometimes… tough guy”

Your first PROPER kiss is probably after the 4th date, something relaxed like a movie at his place and food.

You initiate it this time, reluctantly, but he welcomes it.

“ that was… new”

“ oh shut up and just kiss me already”

And he does, smiling like a fool because he just has such a love for you. He doesn’t say as much as he should, but nacho doesn’t have to say it all the time for you to know.

First time having sex (NSFW):

Your confidence has probably gone up a lot since your first kiss with him, and being with him in general honestly

He’s still nacho, though a lot less stressed than usual, he has you to come home to so now he has something else to fight for.

Some days when he comes home you miss him more than he’d imagined,

I can’t imagine nacho taking you on regular shopping trips, though if you needed something and asked he’d oblige.

Besides, you like earning your own money, it makes you feel… accomplished, and appreciate the work that went into getting it.

So when he comes home and you’ve gotten a new set of underwear or pajamas he’d be so flustered, and maybe a little confused

“I- uh, they look… nice”

You’d initiate it this time, and ask him whether or not he’s going to hurry up and bend you over

As a… half joke, of course

After some very much needed TLC from you and some from him, he’s relatively gentle when it comes to the actual intercourse bit

Especially because he can just guess based on the fact you hadn’t even had your first kiss that you’re more than likely a virgin to

“We can stop if it hurts okay?”

“You’re so sweet baby, it doesn’t hurt”

It does. Not as much as your friends had made it out to be, but still you can definitely feel a slight burning feeling

Aftercare is pretty important to Nacho, just because he likes seeing you so relaxed and carefree sprawled out on his bed as he cleans over your body with a damp lukewarm washcloth.

Expect lots of uncharacteristic hugging and kisses as well

He’s the big spoon, tho he’s not really bothered what he is as long as you’re close to him

“You smell so nice Ignacio”

“Mmhm”

We know he doesn’t talk a lot, but you know exactly what he means

You’d turn to face him and press kisses along his chest and the scar he’d gotten from Tuco

“You're so beautiful”

At first he doesn’t really understand what you mean by beautiful, since he’s a guy, and it seems a bit… odd to talk to a guy like that

But he inevitably chuckles and asks “ how so?”

“ you’re just… a beautiful man, inside and out.”

Damn, talk about a sting to the heart, he’ll definitely remember that in his depressed ass moments

“You’re trying to make me soft hm?”

“No! You just…”

“ I know, I’m only joking”

“You and your jokes… nachito”

You’d both then fall asleep, you first then him.

He doesn’t sleep for long, about 2 hours or so

And when he wakes up he just looks down at you and can’t even begin to wonder what he did to deserve someone so perfect

too bad this was one of the last times you’d ever see him alive 💀

[uncouth-the-fifth]

pythia, a supernatural rewrite. phantom traveler, p.3

read it on ao3.

words: 14k notes: hello!!! on the wings of an absolute ARMY of betas, here is a fresh new chapter for you!! since the last one was a little short i took the time to really flesh this one out. I'm a shy idiot who is SO bad at responding, but i see your comments and they mean the world to me. i literally have a folder on my computer full of the sweet words this fic has been given, and i think i've re-read the comments in that folder at least a million times over by now. ty so much for reading, and i hope you enjoy!! bloody mary is next! a very special thank you to my beta readers, bear, M, venice, feeb, and daff, who easily made this my best chapter yet. thank you specifically for keeping me coherent and sane lol <3

PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA - Dec. 4th.

You don’t have to be psychic to know precisely what your mother is going to say when she answers the phone. She’ll pick up on the fourth ring with an occupied, scathing drawl and say, Look who finally has cell service.

Alright. So you’re not the best, most communicative daughter in the world. You call when you can, you honestly do, but there’s not exactly loads of emotional bandwidth to spare on the road. Peeling off all the layers of case anxiety and Winchester grief takes a while, dammit!

Maybe you’d feel less guilty if you vented to Sam or Dean, but it’s kind of lousy to bitch about Mom-stuff to, uh. Yeah. The boys. You could use a simple, uncomplicated statement like, talking to my Mom reminds me of how much of a disappointment I must be to her, and Dean would hear matricide instead. Sam’s blank, uncomprehending look wouldn’t be much better. Looks like you’re alone on this one.

When there’s a natural break in the day’s long research-fest the three of you are riding, you slip away, pace beside the Impala for a while, then finally bite the bullet and call her. Cars whisk through the slurry of snow on the road. Your phone charms rattle in the icy breeze. One ring, two rings… She knew you were going to call, she could sense it, but of course she has to torture you… three rings, four.

“I didn’t know cell service was so hard to come by in Pittsburg,” Beth greets you, sounding preoccupied. Damn, do you know her well or what?

“Hey, Mom,” you sigh. The wind is loud, so you pull your phone further down your face and try to come up with an excuse that is even halfway reasonable. “Sorry I haven’t called. It’s been ages since I’ve been around the boys, and I guess I get a little caught up with them sometimes.”

This is objectively true. She used to have a rule about you getting your homework done before they came over, purely because you forgot about everything and anything else the second Sam and Dean entered the house.

“Forget those losers. You’re my baby, I love you most,” Beth gushes, and you understand that this is her way of saying that you’re forgiven. Both of you have fallen victim to the Winchester spell before, so she can’t exactly blame you.

You’re a little embarrassed by her mushiness, but a relieved, bubbly laugh jumps out of you. “Alright, consider them forgotten. Now… I know I don’t deserve it, but I’m gonna ask you a question, and I need you not to freak out or overthink it, kay?”

Beth snorts. “You mean my two jobs as a mother? Go ahead, shoot.”

This is not the kind of question that you just “shoot,” though. It takes you a moment to string together how you’re going to ask this, and of course, you’re nothing but graceful and delicate about it. “...What do you know about demons?”

Your mother doesn’t say anything for a long, yawning second. Still, you can sense her rising swarm of questions and outrage all the way from Pennsylvania, and you try to stop her onslaught before it starts. “Hey! No questions! Just answers. I promise I would tell you if this was outrageously dangerous.”

“Then you’ve already broken your promise,” Beth utters, slipping into her Sage Grandmaster Psychic voice. Just hearing it makes you deflate. She predicts, “...Let me guess. You’ve felt nauseous. Suffocated. Hungry, but everything you eat comes right back up again.”

You toe a chunk of ice on the asphalt with your boot, grumbling, “...Yeah.”

“Then you’re lucky,” she reveals, her words still ringing with the same crystal ball clarity from your childhood. “That means you haven’t come into direct contact with it yet. I’d hope you never would, but… you are your father’s daughter…”

You know your mom. You know that’s just her way of warning you about the kind of danger you’re in, here, but all the comment does is bolster your resolve. Damn right. You are his motherfuckin’ daughter.

“Tell me,” you push.

Beth sighs through her nose. There’s a squeak on the other line, and you can imagine her at home, dropping heavily into the massive, millennia-old armchair she always took her readings in.

“Demons… well, I won’t explain to you what you can already guess. They’re unlike most legends we know of, because everything that’s written about them is utterly true. Most spirits that walk the natural earth are here to feed—vampires, werewolves—or to take care of unfinished business. But demons… they come to earth to steal, kill, and destroy.”

Welp. Your mother is truly a pillar of optimism. You’d been hoping she’d say something along the lines of, don’t worry, sweetheart, they’re just really messed up ghosts. Instead of, y’know. The most evil creatures man encountered in the bible. Bible, capital B. An uncomfortable, existential shiver rolls down your spine. Now this was something you could bitch to Dean and Sam about.

You’d grown up surrounded by the idea of demons. Even before you’d fully understood that monsters were real, sometimes you’d slip into your mother’s reading parlor while she was gone and play a game with the strange, segmented star pattern on the giant worn-smooth carpet. Don’t hop on any of the lines! Only step in the points of the star! Or, jump from sigil to sigil!

The one time you’d gotten carried away and played for too long, your mother had appeared through the beaded curtain with a stiff frown on her face. Don’t play on the devil’s trap. It’s not a toy.

There was the fraying devil’s trap in your mother’s parlor room, which was one of the hundreds of sigils burned into your mind at a young age. You’d shaken hands with demon hunters before. Most of the rituals your family practiced were in Latin; and the list went on and on into oblivion. You’d always known demons existed, but as you pace the parking lot and take in what Beth is telling you, the ramifications start to stack. Demons. Actual, literal demons. The thing that took down flight 2485—the suffocating, unimaginable presence from your vision—was a real-life demon. When you’d stood in the skeletal remains of the plane and reached out with your Gift, you’d been sensing the lingering presence of a fucking creation of Lucifer. What the actual fuck.

In a strange, backward way, you’re kind of relieved. Anyone would be fainting all over the place in the presence of an actual, real-life demon. Especially somebody like you, with all their senses turned up to 100. It makes sense that you were having such intense reactions before.

What the fucking fuck. You’re suddenly grateful to be on the phone with your mom.

You wandered toward the Impala, (checked first that you weren’t wearing the kind of jeans with the little studs that would scrape the paint), then leaned against it. “...Um. Okay. That’s just… awesome… How do they get… up here, then?”

“I’m not sure,” your mother hums, thinking. “Your great-great-aunt Miriam wrote in her records that they find their way top-side on their own. Bugs through cracks, that sort of thing. Apparently, there used to be a whole lot more of em’—in Miriam’s day it was a Proctor’s job to shove them back where they belonged, but… I dunno.” Beth helpfully jokes, “Maybe we got most of them.”

You huff out a laugh, but it’s not the most sincere. “Maybe we did,” you cough. “But, um, do we have any Proctor family secrets that could help me out here? Did great-great-aunt Miriam have a trunk somewhere full of demon-killing grenades or something?”

Beth smirks. “Great-great-aunt Miriam turned the house into a brothel and carved terrifying sigils in all the ceilings. That’s all we got from her.”

Of course. How could you possibly forget? “Oh, huh. I was wondering why we have old chains and whips in the basement. That fills in a lot more for me, thank you.”

Your mom barks out a laugh at your joke, which gets you laughing too. The sound trails off. There’s that funny pause where you both remember what you just said, then start giggling all over again—and man, does it feel good to just have a moment with your mom. The boys both have an unforgiving radar for “bonding,” and the second they realize that you love them and they’re your friends, they creep right back into their shells. Neither of them were very good at absorbing that sort of thing.

Your mom is just as skilled at spoiling the moment.

“But, seriously…” She stresses. “Please be careful. Avoid contact with these things at all costs, especially with your Gift. It’s made to find the truth, and demons are made of lies. Not a good mix. They’ll rip into your mind… take you apart if they have to. This is a lot more hands-on than you should ever be with your Gift, ____.”

“...Right,” you say through your teeth.

This is the part where you start awkwardly shoving in a goodbye without coming across as an asshole. You open your mouth, about to say something stiff and unsure, when you sense a spike of alarm ripple out from where the boys are still researching in your motel room.

Phone call forgotten, you jolt off the Impala and whip towards the door. Not a second later, Dean’s slipping out onto the stoop and sweeping the parking lot with a calm, guarded stare. He doesn’t look at you—just gestures you inside, holding the door open. Even from the parking lot, you can make out the insane amount of notes and papers Sam has coated your motel room with.

“Jerry just called,” Dean utters. “The surviving pilot from 2485? Chuck Lambert? …He just went down in a plane crash.”

You snap your phone shut and follow him inside.

-

The three of you head to the site of the next crash as fast as you can. But first, you have the pleasure of watching the boys play Winchester Telepathy when you insist on coming along. They’re still worried. You would be too, in their position. (In fact, if the roles were reversed, you’d probably chain Sam to a radiator and call it a day.) But Chuck went down in a twin plane, not a massive, two-hundred-person graveyard, so your Gift should have the legs to handle it.

…And knowing what you’re dealing with has steeled your confidence. You weren’t slashing at the dark anymore, even if what was in the dark was, um. Proof that hell exists. After days of being totally screwed over by this thing, you finally had even the slightest leg up on what was going on. You were going to take that win and run with it.

Chuck’s twin plane was hardly a twin anymore; both the engines had been shredded, the white body of the cockpit twisted like a wrung-out washcloth. The plane had dove so hard into the farmland that the snow around it had melted. You still kind of felt like tossing your lunch, but more out of sympathy than psychic backlash. People had been in that plane. The thought made you taste bile.

Sam and Dean only hover a little bit (a lot) while you open your Gift to the wreckage. You take your glove off with your teeth and touch your right hand to the ashen, snow-soaked remains of the pilot’s chair… and there it was again, the leeching, seeping, violating presence from the vision that’d brought all of you to Pittsburg. A demon.

Your Gift wrings out another scraggly, disconnected vision for you. Chuck was beyond anxious to get back in the saddle after 2485. The co-pilot, Lou, had pep-talked him like any good friend would, reassuring him that the flight would go smoothly. After that, everything—gassing up the engine, takeoff, and the brutal, horrific crash—was blotted with poison ink. Every time you tried to steer towards Chuck with your senses, it was as if the strip of film playing your vision had been burned away. His face had been scratched out of every frame. He had become something else; something terribly familiar.

The research Sam had compiled began to link with what you’re seeing. You could feel, even through the leftover wisp of the demon’s presence on the plane, that it had done this many times before.

You jolted to your feet, scrubbing the palm with the eye tattoo off on your slacks. Dean and Sam reeled back, since they’d both been looming an inch behind you as you worked.

“What’s the verdict, doc?” Dean said, bracing himself.

You turn from the wreckage and bee-line straight for the road, eager to avoid a repeat of last time. The boys follow your lead. They fall into step on either side of you, and for once you feel like the specialist Sam always said you were, complete with stern-faced bodyguards.

“Full-on Pazuzu, just like last time,” you confirm, cursing. You shove your glove back on and stomp through the snow. “I-I get it now. God, it feels so fucking obvious. It’s—it’s playing. It finds these disasters, or it makes them, and then it picks off all the survivors one by one. Chuck Lambert, George Phelps. It possessed them. Like some sort of twisted cosmic-order thing.”

Sam pulls a face. “Final Destination style?”

“Minus the hot girls and the tanning beds, apparently,” Dean pouts.

“It’s trying to finish them off, boys,” you say, swallowing hard. “That’s something we can work with. If it’s only using disasters to do the job, then…”

“...then we need to see if any of the survivors are flying soon,” Sam realizes, finishing your thought.

The second the Impala’s on the road again, Sam is fishing out the passenger manifests from the first flight and chasing down any phone numbers he can find. There is a part of every hunt where your run is forced to become a sprint, and this is that turn-over moment, tensions ramping high. What once was seven people is now five.

As Dean hauls ass back to Pittsburg, you and Sam get to calling. You thank the Mother Goddess above for shitty, awful customer service, because posing as some lousy Delta Airlines representative has Dennis Holloway sitting in seat 21A and Kathleen Willard (seat 25E) swearing off flying for good. Sam uses a similar tactic on Blaine Sanderson (seat 14D). The two of you take the safe bet that the parents of Ava Struder (seat 1C), an unaccompanied minor, aren’t fucking idiots dumping their kid on another flight the second she survives one. That leaves you with Amanda Walker. A flight attendant on 2485… because of course, this job can never be easy.

Sam tries her phone. While it rings, you cross your fingers and hope that she has quit her job and started a new life as a dedicated couch potato. Sam’s forced to leave a message. He snaps his flip phone shut with a curse and throws it into the footwell, where it clatters against his boots.

You curl a cold hand around Sam’s shoulder, soothing, “Gimme the list, baby. I’ll try her emergency contact, at least find out where she is.”

Sam sulkily passes it to you, never once shifting under your hand. You do get a small, grateful look from him over his shoulder, and the urgency and anxiety there makes your gut twist. It would be more than easy to comfort him, to stroke your fingers through his hair, to rub his collar and tell him everything’s going to be fine.

But you’re a shit liar, so you open up your phone and make the next call. Sam’s lingering gaze ducks back down into his lap.

-

Of course, your luck continues to flourish. Amanda doesn’t answer her phone. But her sister does, and she informs you that Amanda, being a flight attendant, is in fucking Indianapolis for a flight. Indianapolis. As in, a good five-hour drive from Philly—and in the complete opposite direction of where you were going. Dean barely waits until the road is wide enough to turn the Impala around. The u-ey he hits sends you, and all your stuff, careening from the right end of the bench all the way to the left.

The drive is not fast. Staring ahead and silently revving yourself up can only waste so much time, so you pull out the mini sewing kit from under the seat and do your best to patch a rip in Dean’s jeans, struggling to thread the needle even more than usual. You feel a bit like a bad hunter distracting yourself from what’s ahead, but just one of you stuffing the car with anxious brooding is enough. Sam passes back a sudoku booklet for you and then goes straight back to his thousand-yard stare.

He used to be excellent when things came down to the wire like this. After years spent in empty motel rooms, counting pennies and waiting for John and Dean to come home, Sam’s patience was unimaginable. But losing Jess… had tilted his axis. These last few hunts, you’ve noticed how crazed he gets on the last couple steps to the finish line—when none of you are sure if there’ll be anybody to save. It happens. But you’re scared of what another round of it could do to Sam, even with a stranger like Amanda; he cared so much…

Dean isn’t happy, either, but he at least has something to do. He alternates between playing brain-melting Metallica or forgetting to reload the tape, so the drive is a strange mix of music you can feel in your eardrums and silence that’s just as loud. The first piece of levity you get is thirty straight minutes of Dean over-explaining the album to you. And, thank god you ask, because Dean rattling on about the “bass and drums feeding off each other” and the “musical integrity of a locked-in rhythms section” bring Sam out of his trance. He pries his eyes away from the rolling fields of snow, scrunches up his face, and sighs, “Can we at least listen to ‘...And Justice for All?’”

You’re an excellent tactician, so you use this opening to nudge them both toward the most surefire argument starter in the Winchester handbook: What’s the best album of all time? It would’ve been harder to lure flies into honey. Dean argues more with himself than he argues with the two of you, dancing indecisively between Zeppelin II, Dark Side of the Moon, and at least twenty other albums that you are vaguely aware exist. Sam outlines that there is a difference between someone’s favorite album (Californication in Sam’s case) and the best album objectively by sales (Thriller).

All three of you play into the argument more than usual. Guess you’re not the only one desperate to think about something other than the two hundred other people who might die tonight. By the time there’s enough of a break in the conversation for you to throw your hat into the distraction-ring, you’re thirty minutes from the Indianapolis International Airport.

“Both of you are wrong,” you decide. “There’s only one reasonable answer to that question, and it’s Rumours.”

Dean audibly grumbles, and when the Impala jams to a stop in front of a red light, he dramatically points at you in the rear-view mirrors and declares: “You are obligated by hippie, witchy-girl bullshit to love that album, Proctor. And it’s good, but it’s not the best. It’s mostly…” he flashes you a mean, big-brother smile, “girly music.”

You know you’re right, so his comment rolls right over you. Cooly, you remind him, “Nuh-uh. Sam loves Fleetwood Mac, too.”

You’d figured that was a good counter-point, since Sam was hardly girly. The hand he was using to keep his notepad on his knee was all kinds of veiny and calloused, and on top of being taller than Dean, he was a lot more comfortable with his masculinity. He didn’t have mile-long lashes or glazed donut cheekbones, either.

Sam hums in agreement, like you knew he would; the two of you listened to Go Your Own Way and The Chain endlessly before he left for school. Sometimes he’d even dance around the attic at home with you.

Dean side-eyes his brother, then barks out a hearty laugh. “Case in point.”

Sam elects to pretend he didn’t hear that, and instead turns around to talk straight to you: “I mean, the end of Silver Springs alone…”

…Maybe if Dean listened to more “girly music,” he’d have more women melting over him the way you melt when Sam says that. Even though you’ve gotten used to having him in front of you again, there are moments like these where you’re stunned by how similar the two of you still are. Dreams would play in your attic and Sam would already be offering you his hands, gangly and shy and bright red for you and only you…

You listened to Silver Springs a lot after Sam started dating Jessica.

INDIANAPOLIS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT - Dec. 4th, night.

All three of you must’ve been hyper-planning what to do the second the Impala parked, because you fan out as soon as Dean jams the break.

Sam uncaps the travel-sized hand sanitizer from your purse and empties it out onto the pavement. You’re a little sad to say goodbye to pumpkin cupcake, but then he starts pouring as much holy water as he can into the teeny bottle, and you’re reminded how clever he is. When Dean gives him a weird look, Sam explains, “3.4 ounces or less per liquid item, dude.”

“Shit,” Dean curses. Right. Travel size restrictions. That cuts your only physical weapon against the demon in half—or into a fucking fifth, I guess. But it’s something. “At least he’ll fuckin’ smell good when we send him to hell. Great.”

You give Sam the marshmallow pumpkin latte sanitizer, too. You’re going to look painfully suspicious walking into an airport with nothing but hand sanitizer and an occult journal, but there’s nothing you can do. There’s no time to check bags or trudge through security lines. Hopefully you won’t have to board, but knowing your luck…

You’re about to go peeling out of the parking lot at top speed, when you turn your boot and feel the warm piece of metal pressed against your ankle. Shit. “God, this is stupid,” you curse, and drop onto a knee. You lose the pocket knife in your boot, then dig around for the loose rock salt shells rolling around in your pockets. There’s a visible pout on your face when you abandon your iron knuckles. Anything that’d be caught by security or picked up on a metal detector goes straight into the trunk.

When you pull your butterfly knife out of your bra, Sam is suddenly very interested in the color of the sky.

The boys follow suit. By the time you’re through the doors and among the harried, criss-crossing crowd of travelers, you’ve lost ten pounds in weapons each. Dean grumbles the whole way about feeling naked. Everything in the airport is overstimulating, even at this time of night. The long, endless squares of glass looking out over the runway reflect the too-bright lights in big glossy spots, and the air is flooded with a constant stream of intercom updates and civilian chatter. You duck and weave all the way to the departure schedule, which is just the right font size to make you anxious.

Sam scans the chart. “They’re boarding in thirty minutes.”

Shit. You wrack your mind for something that could coax Amanda off her flight. But the gears in your head are suddenly muddy, and Dean’s faster than you, anyway. His eyes dart around the floor of the airport. “Okay… we still got some cards to play. We need to find a phone.”

Sam and Dean dart off like twin bomb-sniffing dogs. You move to follow them, but something tethers you in place. The buzzing, bustling commotion in the air pitches up, and then your ears are ringing, and your whole body is stinging with the ugly leeching feelings from before. The demon. It’s close.

You blindly walk in the direction your internal Winchester compass gives you, and just when Dean’s about to take a courtesy phone off its hook, your body extracts the phone from his hand on autopilot. For a brief flickering moment, you’re not yourself. Your powers talk through you.

Your Gift foresees, “That won’t work. Your only option is to board the plane.”

The boys exchange an unsettled look. For a second you’re confused why they’re giving you their Freaked Out faces, then you feel the hollow plastic of the phone in your hand, and you realize you’re a whole twenty feet from where you started. Man… you hate the whole psychic-possession thing. Just for fun, your Gift loves to take over and course-correct you when it thinks you’re being stupid. You drop the phone back on its hook with a heavy click. It takes Dean a second to answer, and he’s still giving you that look. After a long pause, he knocks up his chin and not-so-happily mutters, “...Uh, okay.”

Sam, at least, has learned to roll with your weird psychic bullshit. His voice is soft with conviction. “Fine. Plan B, then. We gotta get on that plane.”

You run your palms down your face, then steel yourself. There’s no other way, and no time to second-guess. Even your Gift has decided it’s your best plan. “Okay. Fuck it.”

The usual authority in Dean’s voice hikes up with a note of panic. “Uh, woah. Let’s just hold on a second–”

“Dean,” you wince, and your hands drop heavily at your sides. “We gotta. I’m sorry.”

Sam, per usual, reads Dean’s hesitance as something else. “That plane is leaving with over a hundred passengers on board. And if we’re right, it’s gonna crash. We have to–”

You watch as they have their usual back and forth; Sam, eager to throw himself at this, and Dean gnawing on the inside of his cheek. It’s easy for you to sense the steam of real, nail-biting terror radiating off your best friend. You feel Dean’s fear all the time–and even then it’s hard for you to picture him being afraid of much of anything, much less planes. It’s even harder for Sam to look past his little brother glasses.

“...Flying?” Sam puts it together. His voice is understanding, but super confused. “You’re joking, right?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Dean flails. He fists his hands as he talks, swaying back and forth to try and work up the nerve. He glances at you, the only other witness to his weakness, just once. “Why do you think I fuckin’ drive everywhere, Sam?”

Sam is genuinely stunned. Slapped-in-the-face stunned. But he takes it in stride, and, also glancing at you only once, he blurts out: “Alright. Uh, I’ll go.”

The anticipation of boarding the flight is making your skin prickle with anxiety, and you can’t help but inch back toward the ticket counter as they talk. But when Sam says this, without question or complaint, you’re instantly stepping up to his side and demanding, “Then I’m going with you.”

You brace yourself to shut down the argument you know is coming, but this Sam continues to be different from the guy you knew four years ago. This answer is just as easy for him, too. “Okay.”

Not, you’re staying here, or even, I won’t let you risk yourself like this. Just a plain and simple, okay. It bugs you. You don’t even have time to dwell on it, though, because Sam’s blatant courage tugs Dean over his fear.

“Man…” Dean utters, face twisted with nervousness. He gives in with a helpless scrunch of his shoulders, and taking that as permission, Sam twists around to buy your tickets not two seconds later.

You both watch him rush off, neither of you over the moon about this situation. Dean’s so anxious that his hands are clammy, and you can tell because he clutches at the sleeve of your jacket like a little kid. He knocks his forehead down on your shoulder with a groan, and your palm automatically loops around to give his back a soothing rub.

“This is fucking… awesome,” Dean gripes. “No guns. Can’t even bring a damn bottle of holy water. Is there some kind of psychic Xanax you can give me?”

Maybe some of your Gift drains into your voice when you promise, “We won’t have to worry about that. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Dean doesn’t make his Freaked Out face this time. He does, however, bump his forehead against your shoulder again, and sink into your touch with a rough sigh.

FLIGHT 424 - Dec. 4th.

You’d felt bad for Dean the whole time he’d struggled to get on the plane. Now, you kind of felt like choking him with your bare hands.

So many people crammed into one space was enough to flatten your Gift with the weight. Adding Dean to the mix, shoved shoulder-to-shoulder against you with his jitters ramped up to eleven, made you feel like picking your brain out with a fork. Your Gift ping-ponged between Dean and Sam, making you bounce between chattering your teeth with fear and thinking things like, wow, I just love the Dewey decimal system.

Maybe it was a good thing. You’d much rather be in one of their heads than yours.

All day, you’d done a pretty good job not obsessing over the things your mom had said over the phone. It was hard with so much time to marinate in the car, but the massive weight of the existence of demons only slammed on top of you once or twice. Boarding had managed to keep you occupied, but then the colossal body of the plane had shuddered and heaved its weight off the tarmac, leaving all chances for escape behind on the ground.

A part of you was resigned to it; it is a simple fact of your life that evil things are real. So what’s one more, right? But at the same time, you thought about the cross Sam wore under his shirt… you thought about being one of those things, being “made of lies,” like Mom had said. That, too, had been gnawing at you—what had she seen to learn all that? How did she know that a demon would “tear into your mind?” The Vague Psychic Thing is fun, until you’re on the receiving end.

“Can you sense who it’s possessing?” Sam’s smooth, calculating voice interrupted your thoughts.

…Oh, right. You’d gotten so swept up in your own head, no doubt influenced by Dean’s incessant foot-tapping, that you’d totally forgotten to scan the plane. Tilting away from Dean and his panic, you subconsciously shifted toward eerily calm, level-headed Sam. Just catching a wisp of the clean cologne he wears cools you down a little bit. Okay. No more freaking out—it’s game time.

You’d hoped that the white noise of the flight would settle your nerves, but the air tasted painfully sterile, dry, and cottony against the back of your throat. Everything felt like cold metal touching an open nerve. If the demon’s influence wasn’t making your powers touchy, then the woman across the aisle definitely was, oozing with homesickness as she watched Indianapolis shrink far below—or maybe it was the guy two rows back, replaying an argument again and again in his head—or maybe the other two hundred fucking people stuffing the plane with their boredom and their tiredness.

You push your knee into Sam’s. He pushes back.

After a tense beat, you whisper to him over the chatter of passengers, “Too many people. There’s no way I can narrow it down to one person—not unless they’re right in front of me.” Sam’s gaze turns expectantly to Dean, who’s still in full-on dissociation mode. He’d spent the whole boarding process humming tracks from St. Anger, and you knew he was really going through it, purely because he’d stopped and restarted Some Kind of Monster three different times now. Poor guy.

One of the things that made the three of you such a natural team was your ability to rotate leadership. In moments like these, with Dean way too wigged out to take charge, you’d usually step into his shoes without much trouble. But Sam has fielded your fainting spells and panic attacks all week, so he’s already got a pep-talk prepared for the two of you.

“...Okay.” Sam checks his watch. His voice still has that touch of classic Sam softness, probably because he knows how hard this is going to sound: “Stay focused. We got thirty-two minutes and counting to track this thing down, figure out who it’s possessing, and perform a full-on exorcism.” You’re about to make a comment about how blissfully easy he makes things seem, but Dean beats you to it. He snipes, “Yeah, on a crowded plane. That’s gonna be easy.”

You snap one of your bracelets against your wrist a few times, thinking. “Who would it want to possess?”

This gets Dean’s head in the game. Easily, he recites: “It’s usually somebody with some sort’a weakness, y’know, a chink in the armor that the demon can worm through. Somebody with an addiction or emotional distress.”

As he explains this, you unlatch Dean’s claws from their death-grip on your arm and give the top of his hand a little soothing pat. Your gaze remains fixed on the pattern of the seat in front of you. “For a regular demon, maybe. This thing might not even need a chink. It wants maximum damage here—so maybe it’d go for the pilot?”

This is not a soothing thought. Checking his watch again, Sam suggests, “Or Amanda… Surviving a crash like that? I’d be pretty messed up if I was her. We should check both.”

You’re happy to spend the little time you have left wisely, so you’re quick to push out of your seat and get moving. Dean puts on a brave face and follows your lead. There are only two ends of the plane to check—this thing can’t hide forever. Just when you start to do an awkward side-shuffle to nudge Dean out into the aisle with your hip, the whole plane thrashes top to bottom, and there he goes, dropping like a rock back into his seat. His spike of panic is so genuine that you end up dropping with him.

“Come on!” Dean hisses through his teeth. “That can’t be normal!”

You and Sam immediately get to shushing and soothing him, and suddenly you understand how married couples feel when their kid starts crying on a flight. Shifty eyes in other seats pretend they’re not glaring at you. Summoning as much strength as you can to share with him, you drop a hand on Dean’s shoulder and order: “Breathe, dude. You’re okay.”

“I’m not fuckin’ four,” Dean whisper-shouts, sulking flat back into his seat.

“She’s right,” Sam whispers back. Should it be worrying you how much he’s been agreeing with you lately? Stern, he says, “Listen—if you’re panicked, you’re wide open to possession. So you need to calm yourself down. Right now.”

A weird part of you is grateful that Dean is having a rough go of it, because it’s giving you something to focus on. You’re usually pretty good with planes. But for a minute there, when the turbulence had hit, your mind had defaulted to oh shit, this is real, we’re all going to die. A slideshow of the last crash had blitzed through your thoughts. Thoughts that had nothing to do with the anxiety you were picking up from Dean.

You know you despise it when Dean uses his Parent Voice on you, so you try not to use it on him when you urge, “C’mon. I think Amanda’s in the back of the plane. I’ll check up front.”

Dean gives an unconvinced, “I’ll go talk to her,” then makes grabby hands at Sam’s pockets, “pass me one of the hand-sanitizers. Fuckin’ uh, pumpkin latte—don’t gimme that face, _____, not all of us can tell with just a look. What if it’s in her?”

“It’s a bit more than a look—” you begin to clarify, but Sam stops your back and forth with a shake of his head. He pulls out the little orange plastic container of your pumpkin cupcake holy water and passes it to Dean.

“We should try to conserve what we got,” he warns, passing you the only other weapon against the demon (marshmallow pumpkin latte). “Go more subtle—if she’s possessed, she’ll flinch at the name of god.”

Now that you’re running out of both time and options, the second Dean unbuckles his seatbelt and steps out into the aisle on coltish legs, you take the opening and bolt out of your cramped middle seat. Anything you can do to get closer to finding this thing will make you feel loads better.

You start down the aisle. As the chatter of the boys fades into the all-encompassing thrum of the plane behind you, you take slow unhurried steps past each row of seats, soaking up what you can get. A girl listens to music in her headphones. A businessman clicks away at his laptop. Each of them you comb over with your powers, and each pass feels like scooping your hand into a bowl of tacks and waiting to get stabbed.

They’ll rip into your mind… take you apart if they have to, Mom had said. You waited for that moment, steeling your nerves the closer you came to the cockpit. If the demon’s on this side of the plane, and it sensed you, would it immediately press into your mind? Would just being near you snap its presence to you like a magnet? You didn’t like the mental feeling that gave you; the stark secret-seeking white of your Gift clashing with the black choking smoke that’d been chasing you all week. When you spoke to a spirit through your Gift, it felt like you were touching fingertips through a curtain. Would it be like that? Would this demon press its claws through the veil and dig around for something to tear, to grab?

The other flight attendant on board pushes past you with her cart, leaving no barrier between you and the cockpit. Behind you, bobbing in a sea of blurry people, your Gift could distinctly make out Sam (practicing the exorcism) and Dean (talking to Amanda). You’re just a few paces from the front exit of the plane when a man emerges from the bathroom cabin, and—

He twists to meet eyes with you. Expecting you.

You’re flashed a clever, haunting smile, then—a set of glossy void-black eyes.

You wait for it. And in its own way, the presence of the demon does overpower you, bringing the heavy-as-the-sky, parasitic feeling from your visions into the real world. For a long ringing moment, you are blasted with dark leeching power hot enough to singe the entire front of your body—like a nuclear bomb had dropped down just a few steps from you. It is spidery and vicious and knowing and awful—

…but the conquering sensation never comes. Beth had said that it would root into your mind, that just feeling it with your Gift, as you are right now, would tear you to pieces. Yet all that really happens is you staring at it and it staring at you, before it shoulders its way through the cockpit door and disappears inside. The only thing you really experience is the shock of seeing it in somebody, puppeting around a person with dreams and thoughts and memories.

For a few moments, you suck down heaving breaths through your nose and stare at the closed door.

Something about it nagged at you. Besides the obvious—how different it felt compared to what your mother had described—you swear you felt something else, some ringing sense of strangeness that you just couldn’t put your finger on. Maybe it was the fact that you’d just made eye contact with a real creature of hell, an evil spirit, whatever. But you made eye contact with evil spirits all the time. This was… closer to home than that. Underneath the writhing mass of bloody, black ink that made up the demon, your Gift had recognized something unimaginably familiar.

Sensing the demon in person had reminded you of… of a sensory memory, almost. It smelled like… warm static. The old staticy TV in your house, the ancient one that sat square and unattractively on your Mom’s slanting sideboard in the living room. You remembered her crystal ashtray propped up on the top, the fizzy sound the TV made when you’d shut it off…

On the nights when it was just you and Sam home, and the house felt so big and empty that the silence throbbed in your ears, the two of you would set up a fort in front of that TV and watch old horror movies well past your bedtime. The silly effects and the dated acting were easy to tease together. You’d much rather watch movies on the newer screen in your Mom’s room, but for whatever reason, Sam insisted on the clunker in your living room.

Y’wanna know somethin’ cool? He’d asked you once, running a finger through the film of static bubbling on the surface of the glass. A little bit of the static in TVs is actually radiation leftover from the Big Bang. How weird is that? Something so old and powerful, picked up by this random piece of junk.

Sam always crashed first, leaving you alone with the white static the TV defaulted to when the movie ended. You could vividly remember how your shoulders bumped against the hard floor through the thin sleeping bag the two of you had shared—how Sam’s warmth had seeped into your shirt where he was curled up behind you, his soft sleepy breaths tickling your hair.

When you’d pulled his arm around your waist to snuggle, a spark of static had shocked you through his touch. When you’d closed your eyes and tried to go to sleep, you swore that the ancient, cosmic hum of the static in the TV ebbed and flowed at the same exact time as Sam’s breath.

In. Bzzzsh. Out. Bzzzsh. Crackling as he breathed.

It wasn’t the demon you were scared of anymore. The ancient, ever-present sting of static you’d felt deep down inside it… that scared you a million, a billion times more, because—

You felt that static every time you felt Sam.

_

It’s like trying to describe the smell of your childhood home.

Logically, you know your house must smell like something. But when you’re in one place long enough your brain filters it out as background noise, and it becomes something you can only notice after a long time away.

You’d known Sam since you were in diapers. Back then, the meager threads of your Gift were already taking him in and absorbing him into your memory. Eventually, you felt him so often that all the pain and optimism in his core, all the stuff that made Sam himself, had smoothed out into warm, familiar background noise to your Gift.

Then he’d left for Stanford. Four years passed, and the only exposure your Gift had to him was the flimsy thread stretched two thousand miles down to California. Because it’d been so long since you’d sensed him in person, hugging him outside his apartment had been like stepping into your home after a long time away—for a brief moment, the filter over your psychic perceptions of him had lifted. You’d sensed for the first time what had always been there, buried deep. The Static.

At the time, you’d gotten so swept up in Sam, Dean, and the adventure of finding their Dad, that it was easy to get sidetracked. Things came up. You got used to Sam again, and his Static faded to background noise.

Until you’d felt that demon with your Gift.

A demon. A creation of Lucifer. You’d always remember what Sam felt like—you’d never forget the smell of home—but in one of them?

Your mind whirls with so many questions that it flat-out pops, failing you. Pulled along on a cloud of white noise, you somehow manage to turn away from the cockpit and start back down the aisle. The demon is possessing the pilot. You have forty minutes, less than, to exorcize it and save the two hundred people on this flight. These are all truths floating around in your head, but no matter how much you try to circle back to one, the static of the demon overcomes you again.

Static. You think of Sam, the crackle of his soft raspy voice through the phone. Your heart is pounding in your ears, thudding away in your chest like a piston. The static had burned in the demon, burned like busted speakers and smoking plane wreckage. Little pins all over your skin pressing in. The space you have until you make it to Sam’s seat seems to yawn, your footfalls sluggish and shivery. Why do they feel the same? Why does he feel the same? The static of the demon worms under your fizzing skin, bubbling, boiling—

You stop in front of Sam’s row, and he’s already looking at you when you get close. He asks you a question. You stare at him, the whole world filled with that awful roaring buzzing, the air tight and dessert dry in the back of your throat. Even though he’s right in front of you, you feel like you barely see him—just the vague burning outline of him in your powers.

Sam reaches out to grab your wrist, tugging it away from the long marks you’re viciously scratching into the flesh of your arm. The touch of his hand causes a literal static shock to jolt from his fingers to yours. You yelp in surprise, but it’s—

It’s different. There’s a similarity, definitely, between what you sensed in the demon and what’s always been in Sam… but his Static is hot chocolate warm and fuzzy and so good. Melt-in-your-mouth good. Your surroundings filter back in, and there are his soft, worried eyes looking up at you under his brow, and his big hand soothing over the irritated skin you’ve scratched raw. Sam. The same Sam he’s always been.

…Whatever it is, whatever weird connection you’ve just made, you’re sure there’s a lot more to it than Sam having something in common with a demon. Right?

Sam takes one look at you, your insane reaction, and your mysterious reappearance, then easily puts two and two together: “One of the pilots?”

“Co-pilot,” you tell him, and one of your absent-minded hands drifts up to scratch at your arm again.

And again, Sam fishes his fingers around your wrist and pulls it away. Now that you’ve noticed it, you can’t un-notice it. His touch makes your fingertips and the ends of your ears tingle, and not completely in the boy-crush way. In the psychic way.

He asks, “You gonna be okay? We got twenty-two minutes.”

That jolts you back to life. Twenty-two minutes until this plane is smoking ashes in a Pennsylvania cornfield. Though the last ten minutes have easily overcomplicated all twenty-four years of your life, you won’t have a life period if you don’t see this job through. When Dean returns from investigating a very un-possessed Amanda, he feels the exact same way.

Your resolve hardens, and you manage to give Sam an absent-minded smile. “I’ll be fine.”

There’s no time for arguing. Dean and Sam unanimously agree that the only possible place to exorcize the demon would be in the back, where Amanda is, since you can’t exactly jump the guy in the middle of economy. You don’t exactly like the idea of roping her into this, but Amanda’s the only one who could potentially lure that—thing to the rear of the plane. It is the world’s shittiest ambush. But by the time the three of you decide what to do, you’ve burned ten whole minutes on anxious chatter. A shitty ambush is the only plan you’ve got.

Dean starts down the aisle for the back of the plane. You stare at nothing for a beat, and only remember to get out of your seat when Sam nudges your elbow. He presses his lips together like he wants to ask you the million-dollar question (“Are you sure you’re okay?”), but there is literally no time. In a haze, you shuffle out of your seat after Dean and make a feeble attempt to get your head into gear. Sam does not make it easy. One of his broad hands brushes against the small of your back as you both squeeze out of the row, and you feel like you’ve just gone down one of those static-charged plastic playground slides.

Your Gift is exaggerating it. It has to be, right? Making big connections out of little things, picking at a fresh bruise. For weeks, you’ve been crammed into a little car with Sam, into teeny motel beds with him with no room between you. Why hadn’t you felt it? Why now? Not when you were four, napping in the same bed after playtime—not when you were twelve, and Sam was the first person outside your family that your Gift had connected with. Had it always been there, living inside him? Had you missed it?

You reach the back of the plane. Amanda is there, a pale, blonde flight attendant straight out of a commercial. You are dully aware that you have twelve minutes left before the demon makes its move, always on the forty-minute mark (...and you don’t like the line suddenly drawn between Sam and such an old, biblically evil thing).

The boys talk. A familiar conversation occurs over your head, which might be why it’s easy for you to tune out. Your mind returns again to thoughts of Sam, so intense and loud in your head that it all fizzles out to nothing, and you’re left standing there with the air pressure making your ears ring. Sam. The demon. It’s stupid and intangible and you’d have no fucking clue how to explain it out loud, but your Gift is made to find the truth. Something inside that demon exists in Sam, too. Something.

You try to reassure yourself that maybe, just this once, your Gift is wrong. Maybe this is the demon getting into your mind—learning your deepest fears and bringing them to life.

Sure enough, Dean’s charm and Sam’s earnest face must win Amanda over, because she flits out of the back room like a frightened bird. The boys peer through the curtain to watch her go, the two of them as still and sharp-eared as twin watchdogs. You’re slapped back to life by the sudden tension in the room, and quickly scuttle up behind them. Right. Amanda’s getting the co-pilot. These next ten minutes will determine the rest of your life.

In the same beat, you and Dean ready your holy water, and Sam gets the written exorcism from their dad’s journal out in front of him. There’s no need for the three of you to say a word. An understanding passes between each of you, hammered in from years of hunting as a team. Sam slides up next to you and Dean gives you a firm nod, squashing your last wisps of fear. You’re here to do a damn job.

A man’s voice floats toward the closed curtain to the back room, followed not-so-closely by Amanda’s. You’re glad she’s not the first one into the room—because Dean instantly slams a fist into their face.

The co-pilot—or really, the thing inside him—goes sprawling. You’ve got a strip of duct tape bridled over his mouth before he even fully collides with you, and for the blissful moment you have him pinned, Dean gets another fierce hit in.

While he’s still stunned, you whip the co-pilot to the grated metal floor. Dean clambers on top of him and keeps him there with a firm fist twisted in his rumpled button-up.

Amanda panics, “W-what are you doing? Y-you said you we-were gonna talk to him—!”

“We are gonna talk to him,” Dean grits.

Then, you’re hosing him down with holy water, splashing it brutally in the man’s pain-twisted face. Your gut clenches with empathy. Did the demon leave his body already? You’re terrified for a moment that you got the wrong guy… until you smell the smoke. It’s not just sulfur, but full-on dead body bloat, steaming up from the big black boils that spring up where the holy water hits skin. You get a mouth and noseful vile enough to make you gag. This thing fighting you? This is definitely not a man.

Amanda watches the demon’s skin sizzle, the usual terror and confusion on her face. “O-oh my god, what’s wrong with him?”

You pour all the psychic clarity and calmness into your voice when you whip around and tell her: “It’s going to be okay. Be calm, go outside the curtain, and don’t let anybody in. Can you do that, Amanda?”

You don’t stop to listen to her answer. Sam’s already tearing through the opening to the exorcism at ninety miles an hour, his pronunciation punchy and fatally clear. That had been one of the less exciting parts of the five-hour drive here; when Sam had run through it over and over, re-training himself. One misspoken word could get everyone on this plane killed.

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus…”

The demon thrashes viciously in your grip, twisting and contorting under Dean in ways the human body can’t bend. Bile rises in your throat as you hear a snap, then two, as the demon does everything it can to buck Dean off. By the time you go to stun it with another splash of holy water, it’s more of a dribble. That’s your first mistake.

Two people are not nearly enough to keep this thing down. It gets a hand loose that instantly sends Dean flying, and before you even see where he lands, it cranks your head all the way to the left in one vicious slap.

Your whole face is blasted with red, stinging pain. You go down hard, smashed sideways into the cramped wall.

The pain stuns you out of the headspace you built to distract yourself, and all at once the presence of the demon is thrust upon you. The black, molten psychic power of it crackles through your body, filling your nose and mouth with the same terror hanging in your visions all week. Until you realize— It fucking backhanded you.

Trying to see past the dots swimming in your vision, you mindlessly shove off the wall, snarling with rage. No fucking way.

And then it speaks (to Sam?), and in the fizzing noise of pressure in your ears you hear it promise, “I know what happened to your girlfriend!” The constant stream of Sam’s exorcism stops cold.

When the demon speaks again, its voice, a spectral twist of the co-pilot’s and something older, drooled with pleasure. “She died screaming,” it rasped, “Even now, she's burning.”

A lot happens in the next precious seconds. First, the little circular light flushed flat to the back cabin’s ceiling explodes. Just—bursts, in shock, spraying sparks and glass all over the little room. You’re stunned enough as it is getting hit in the face, so one more thing to fuck up your vision doesn’t help. But you heard what the demon said to Sam. Through the suffocating evil flooding your mind, you feel the sharp spike of hurt and rage and grief in your best friend—and that’s the precise moment when you decide that you’ve had e-fucking-nough.

These last few days have not been winners. And though you live a pretty shitty life with an impressive amount of shitty days, even before you got to Pennsylvania, your streak of bad luck had only just gotten started. This demon has screwed with your Gift on an unimaginable level. Your last few nights have been plagued with nightmares straight from hell, and your days haven’t been much better, riddled with useless visions that get more and more disconnected every time you faint. It made it even more obvious than usual that you’re deadweight for Sam and Dean. They had to handle your boiling water burns and your freakouts, not to mention your mood swings and your unhelpful visions.

The demon hurt Dean, which is enough to get your teeth grinding. And Sam—it had cut him much deeper.

You wanted to tear it apart. You wanted to reach into it the same way it had reached into you, dig in with your nails, and rip something out. Your mom’s words buzz in your head: contact, truth, lies, rip, apart. Rationally, you know you should listen to her warning. If just looking into its eyes has forever changed your view of the man you’ve loved since you were little, then looking deeper could kill you—scramble your mind. You know that. But beside the rage and exhaustion fizzing under your skin is this desperate need to know.

Demons are made of lies. What if it was lying about Sam? What if it had screwed with your Gift in some new way, tweaking the image of him in your mind? It had to be lying. The Static in him, as warm and as good as you swore it was—it came from something evil. Sam. The man you love, the boy you’d fallen in love with, his soft sleepy breaths as he lays on the floor beside your bed, his freckly arms swimming in his too-big sleeves. How could any part of him be evil? He couldn’t be. N-not your Sam. How could he ever have something like that inside him?

You need to be sure. Consequences be damned.

As the demon rears up to keep snarling in Sam’s face, you slap a hand over its forehead—reach in—and start ripping.

_

She died screaming.

Sam can’t pull a full breath in. The words burn through his body like a syringe of poison, spreading from limb to limb. The demon snarls up at him, its foamy spit hitting Sam’s face and its teeth snapping around Jess’s name—until.

_____’s hand seals over the demon’s face. The demon’s jaw snaps shut. There is a terrible hanging moment where Sam’s brain struggles to connect the touch to what she’s doing; she never, ever psychically connected with the full face of her palm tattoo. Even with her mom Sam knew she put up a barrier, reading Beth with the smooth back of her knuckles instead.

Shit. Another fresh shot of horror lances through him. What the hell is she doing to it?

The effect is instant. Whatever button _____ had just hit, it activates every horror-movie, Exorcist-level instinct in the demon’s body. Surprised yelps echo down the back of the plane as the lights violently flicker. In electrified, strobing flashes, Sam sees it. The co-pilot’s body is diagonal on the floor one moment, and then it’s arching its back three feet in the air, lurching up into ______’s palm like she’d hit it with a defibrillator. The demon floats up and stays up.

…Until Dean brings it smashing back to the floor again, throwing his weight on top of the co-pilot. He barks, “Sam!” Right. Whatever she’s doing to it, it’s the only working distraction they’ve got. Slapped back to focus, Sam stutters out where he left off: “...O-omnis congregatio et secta diabolica—” It’s a blessing that he makes it through the next lines of the exorcism. Sam pours all of his willpower into keeping his eyes on the stained notebook page it’s written on, no matter how many times his gut begs him to check on her. All he can do is have faith. This is what she does—when Dean’s not strong enough and Sam’s too weak, she finds a damn way, come hell or high water. Sam has always had endless faith in that. So when the whole plane gives that terrible shudder that he was expecting, and then tips, and tips, and tips into a full pitch forward, Sam grips that faith with both hands. The demon’s power ripples through the rest of the plane. Everything descends into chaos. Past the curtain, the lights go out in one silent burst, followed by the explosive, concussive screams of the passengers as the oxygen masks drop. Movies are unfortunately good at capturing this precise moment, but nothing could ever replicate the way Sam’s belly swoops as all five hundred tons of the plane heads straight for the ground. Sam and Dean both go flying, crashing sideways into the walls of the back cabin. The turbulence rips the journal from his hands, and of course, with their fucking luck, it goes skidding through the curtain and down the aisle to ricochet under the seats. “Grab it!” Dean screams.

Sam can’t hear him. He staggers into the open doorway of the back cabin, clutching the frame for dear life. A terrifying, unnatural howl whistles through the cabin, even louder than the wails of the passengers. Its wind flutters his hair around his face and sends luggage toppling out of the overhead bins. For a moment, Sam wonders if the plane’s been hit or the demon has done something—but no. It’s her. He flattens himself to the floor—or rather, gravity flattens him—crawling on his belly towards the shadow of the journal under the seats. The passengers sob and shriek. The air is singed with smoky fear, and riding that same fear, Sam surges ahead, lunging for the book where it’s lodged between tossed luggage. He has to twist to get his hands on it, and it’s then that he feels it.

Down the aisle behind him, the wind drags luggage and loose papers into the void-like darkness of the back cabin—where the great, cleansing, sweeping power of her is fighting the demon. Sam believes in what he’s seen; Sam believes in angels.

She’ll buy him enough time. He knows she will.

Sam’s hands don’t shake as he pries the journal open to the right page.

“Ecclesiam tuam securi tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus,” he shouts, and the words ring as clear and clean as a bell. The plane tries to toss him again, but Sam grits his teeth and persists, “audi nos!”

He waits. Sam sees it more than he hears it. Deep in the blackhole darkness of the plane’s cabin, something red and fiery flashes to life… flickers… and dies.

Maybe he’s imagining it, but he swears he feels the demon fizzle out. The heaviness in the air melts away. The lights, which Sam realizes had been snapping on and off, turn on for good. The hissing of the turbines spins to its normal hum. The plane swooshes back up with a slow coasting motion, then sets itself back on its peaceful forward track.

Gasps and sobs of relief chorus all around Sam, and sprawled in the middle of the aisle, he finds himself doing the same. Overhead, the pilot’s voice crackles reassurances over the intercom. As big wuffs of air cycle in and out of Sam, he waits for the moment for his heart to stop thumping, for the big “we won” moment to wash over him—but it never really does. It sits with him. For a long terrible moment, he is on the bed in his apartment in Palo Alto, Jessica’s blood boiling holes in his neck.

Even now, she’s still burning.

INDIANAPOLIS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT - Dec. 5th, early morning.

Somehow, amid all the noise of swarming paramedics, feds, airline authorities, and stunned 424 passengers, Sam manages to remain lost in his own head. He clenches his jaw til’ his ears pop. How had it known about Jess?

The terminal is quickly packed. He’s not in airports often enough to know whether they should be packed at one in the morning, but he’s gonna guess not. It is all background noise for him. Passengers whirl past, getting cleared by cops to go home, and Dean subtly nudges the three of them into the leaving crowd. Sam has a vague notion that he’s putting one foot in front of the other, but everything feels distant and hazy. His neck blazes with that terrible tingling feeling, and he digs into it with his nails until Dean stops him.

“Sam,” Dean orders, dipping his head towards the direction of the parking lot. Apparently Sam isn’t cooperating well. “Let’s get the hell outta’ here.” For a brief moment, the awful burning feeling covering him in a fog parts long enough for him to think, and Sam realizes that he doesn’t know where _____ is. Panic lances through his chest so fast that he sobers all at once, and he opens his mouth to panic more—until he sees her, scrunched up behind Dean.

Well, clutching Dean. Left shameless by whatever she saw in that demon’s head, she’s got Dean’s hand and wrist in a deathgrip, trailing him so close that her shoes catch the heels of his boots. She does not look good. Her eyes are big and wide and she looks straight through everyone and everything, still tethered to the other dimension her powers live in. She’s got her elbows pressed into her ribs and her body bunched up so tight that Sam can almost feel her psychic overstimulation from where he’s standing.

“S’okay, sweetheart, ” Dean hushes, the first in a long, quiet string of reassurances.

Sam stares at her. Even if she’s in her own world, she must be able to feel it, ‘cause she physically leans out of his way. That should hurt him—should make him burn with sympathy—but instead, all he can think is, she would know. She would know if the demon was lying. Sam’s connected with her like that—there’s absolutely nothing to hide, even if you wanted to, so there’s no way she couldn’t see if the demon had been telling the truth.

The line of people seeping through security to get out of the airport slows to a stop, making way for the pack of paramedics hauling 424’s copilot away on a stretcher. The black boils from the holy water have left his body entirely.

He’ll ask her once. He has to try. Sam lets the two of them in front of him, Dean, then _____, almost pressing her face into Dean’s back. When they’re stopped in line, Sam lifts a hand to touch her—but stops himself, not wanting her to feel any worse. “_____,” Sam swallows, trying to keep his voice even. “What did you see? H-How did it know about Jessica?”

Before she even has the opportunity to answer, (if she can even hear him), Dean swings around to shoot Sam a pained look. “Dude, look at her. Now is not the fuckin’ time. Let her get a full breath in before you start with the interrogations, okay?”

Sam recoils. The gnashing, rebellious fire he usually saves for Dad pours out here, instead, and before Sam knows it he’s snarling back, “I can’t ask one question about my dead girlfriend?”

It lasts only for an instant, but Sam gets to watch in real time the way that hit lands. He’s aware that it’s deeply fucked up of him to enjoy throwing Jess in Dean’s face, but it is his backward, comforting reminder that she was a real person; not a four-year-long fever dream he invented to escape. No one says her name but him anymore. At least, when he talks about her, someone else is forced to feel something too.

Dean sets his jaw. He makes the mistake of trying to turn towards Sam, which _____ thinks is an attempt to shake her off—and she lets out this awful, hoarse sob sound that stops them both cold.

Sam feels like a rail spike has been driven through his chest. Dean gives him a look, then mercifully drops it.

Immediately, Dean’s wheeling her back in and soothing her. The angle at which she’s clinging to him is awkward for all three of them, so he endures her trembling and hitching little sobs as he peels off her hands and re-arranges them. Dean loops an arm around her back so he can stroke her shuddering shoulders, uttering, “S’okay, kiddo, s’ all over… ain’t nothin’ gonna hurt you…”

And of course, because Sam can never exist in peace, he watches the way ______ drops all her weight onto Dean and feels his chest squeeze. Suddenly, he’s very aware of what four years have changed between her and his brother.

The rush back to the car is silent, but for _____’s little sniffling breathes. After making it out of the blistering lights of the chattering airport and out into the peaceful snowy parking lot, things calm down.

Four separate times Sam thinks about reaching out to comfort her. The Gift always leaves her freezing cold, and early December in Indiana on top of that has her making audible little shivering sounds as they walk. Sam’s boiling under his coat. He unzips it, then zips it up again, unsure if she’d even want it. Dean gets her in the car and puts a warm blanket around her before Sam can get over his indecision.

They just saved two hundred people. In hindsight, that’s a massive win. Maybe if the demon hadn’t said what it’d said, and maybe if it hadn’t reduced her to this, Sam could celebrate. Seeing her so messed up always throws him. Less than an hour ago, she was the powerful psychic that used to have Dad clutching his telepathy-blocking charm under his shirt.

Sam scrubs his hand down his face, staring blankly at the trembling lump of blanket lying across the backseat. Now, she’s… whatever she saw in that demon.

Dean tucks her feet up onto the seat, then nudges the door closed with his hip. Sam stares past him, through him, at her silhouette in the Impala’s dark glass, because that’s somehow easier than looking at Dean.

The smattering of snow growing on the asphalt makes the whole world sound muffled. Sam feels like he’s talking to empty air when he croaks, “It knew about Jessica.”

“Sam,” Dean calls, softer this time. Asking for Sam to look at him. When he manages to heave his head up, Dean’s face is firm and reassuring. “These things—they read minds. They lie, just like Beth said. That’s all it was. Don’t let that thing get into your head, okay?”

Sam forces himself to nod. They both spare the shaking shape in the backseat one more look, then Dean’s rounding the car for the driver’s seat, and Sam’s sliding in next to him without another word.

PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA - Dec. 5th, night.

Green. It had to be the ugliest color a motel room could be, Sam thought as he stared at the empty room. The walls were this sad limey green color that managed to look awful even in the dark, some parts made even limey-er by the huge neon green vacancy sign right outside their window. Their room was parked right next to it, so there was no escaping the sign even with the curtains pulled shut.

You and Dean, who were positioned right under the ugly green light, had somehow managed to fall asleep anyway. The only sound in the whole world was your soft breathing across the room and the crackle of the ancient TV.

Right now, it was playing a rerun of some televangelist in a big shiny white suit. He paced the screen on mute as Sam watched, curled on his side, laying diagonal to face the screen. Nightmares were so common for him now that the hardest part of the battle was getting to sleep in the first place. His strategy was to get so bored and so tired that his body would simply have nothing else to do but crash. Bored was the key word—Sam had tried reading, sudoku, and counting cars as they whisked by, but all of that occupied his mind too much to work. Tonight was another night where his mind was just too full to sleep.

He hoped Dean was right. He prayed that the demon had just been lying, lips pressed to the cross he kept under his shirt. Most days, Sam dropped into bed and sent off a brief prayer before the fight for sleep began. Tonight, though—tonight was one of those nights where he clasped his cross in both hands and poured his heart out. Sam prayed for his brother, his Dad, and for you, like usual, pleading for protection and strength. Sam prayed for Jessica, too.

(But never for her forgiveness—he knew he didn’t deserve that).

When Sam had first started getting comfortable with prayer, he’d always worried that he was being greedy or selfish by asking for so much. Health, food, lunch money, for Dad and Dean to get home okay. Now, it’s a natural comfort to him. To open yourself up to something higher than you, to give up your pride and ask for help—that is a mark of holiness. Goodness. Sam closes out his prayers and feels clean.

Across the room, Sam hears the covers in the opposite bed shift. He squints sleepy eyes at your silhouette, and even sluggish and drained, the shifting colors from the TV and the vacancy sign illuminate you like something not entirely from this world.

You pad over to his bedside. A soft, ice-cold hand shakes his arm. When you get up close and realize Sam’s awake, you scuttle back in surprise. “Uh.”

Sam shoves his face into his pillow. With his mind still on Jess, it’s hard for him to look at you right now. “What is it?”

It’s funny. From the moment you got off flight 424, you’d been glued to Dean’s side. Sam had kept his teeth pressed together through the entire thing, watching from a distance as you reached for Dean, spoke to Dean, took the food Dean gave you. If Sam didn’t know any better, he’d figure you were avoiding him. Now you’ve decided you want something from him?

The second you touch his arm, every wisp of jealousy in Sam dries up. Not at all in the mood to be touched, he squirms out from under your hand and hoarsely repeats, “What?” You speak to him for the first time in hours. You sound rough and broken, and the edge of that awful sob from earlier today threatens to tip into your voice. “Can I…?”

Sam keeps his face planted in the pillow. At first he’s unsure what you’re even asking for—until you drop a hand on the mattress and he feels your weight tilt closer, wanting to… to lay with him. Like when you were little. When you share beds on the road, there’s often space left between you. That’s not what you’re asking for. If that’s what you wanted right now, you’d be in Dean’s bed.

The soft, choked little voice he can’t resist begs, “I just need to feel you.”

The last sliver of guilt and self-loathing that Sam has been holding onto instantly slips out of his grasp, hearing that. For the millionth time since this morning, he’s reminded of how awful he was to you. You’d been brought to the brink with your powers in a way they hadn’t seen in years, and Sam chose that precise moment to freak out. He wished he’d been better to you. Maybe he can’t pray for Jess’s forgiveness, but he can work to earn yours now.

Sam shuffles back on the mattress and opens the covers for you. “C’mere.”

As quiet as a mouse, you duck under his arm and slip under the covers. Sam immediately realizes that he should’ve fucking braced himself or something, because holy shit, you are so close. He accidentally gave you very little room in the already small bed. To keep from tumbling off the mattress and onto the questionable carpet, you reasonably and logically slot right up against him, your back against his chest and your heads on the same pillow. Holy shit, he did not think this through. Sam has very few gentlemanly places to lay his arm. And even if he found one, your icy cold hand picks up his warm one and—right, okay, you take it and wrap it right around your middle. That’s fine too. Cool. Awesome.

Okay. Forgetting every way he could sabotage this for himself for just a moment, Sam realizes that he missed this. God, he missed it so much. You wiggle back into his body and Sam gives you a big, indulgent squeeze around the tummy, earning this watery little sigh that makes his already racing heart zing out into orbit. Friendly snuggling became a lot less friendly when you were pushing seventeen instead of nine, so Sam hasn’t allowed himself to properly, um… cuddle you… in ages.

That isn’t even the best part. That little squeeze makes him realize just how pleasantly cold you are, a wonderful ice cube in blazing hot soup. Sam’s practically cooking under the covers—and that must be perfect for you and your chilly hands, because you make the same pitiful happy noise that Sam does as you get comfortable against each other.

Maybe if this were any other moment, after any other day, that would be something you might laugh about together. Instead, Sam’s prayers are filled with you and your incredible burden. He hesitates to go all in and hold you like he wants to… until your breath makes that tight, hitching sound again, and Sam’s sure you’re holding back tears. Screw it, Sam thinks. He’ll take care of you this time. Sam presses his face into your hair and entwines your hands on your belly, unsure of what to say and yet wanting to say so much. Dean can’t hold you like this—this is something you only want from Sam.

You both go still. Sam feels you hold your breath. His legs are itching to shift under the covers and your hand awkwardly holds his, the two of you afraid to disturb the magic.

Your thumb slowly caresses along the flat side of his hand. His heart leaps into his throat, and he squeezes his eyes shut, willing himself to relax. You need this. Finally, it’s his turn to comfort you.

Sam swallows hard. There’s no way you can’t feel his heart thudding away, inches from popping clean out of his chest. Neither of you are stupid. If Dean were to wake up, you know exactly what this would look like to him—to the cleaning lady, to the strangers out on the street. But right now, in this frozen moment, there’s no one awake in the world but the two of you and the TV. It is so, so wrong. But when you touch him, Sam feels clean.

Bit by bit, you adjust to one another. Your breath syncs up. The whole time, your eyes never move from the TV, but if Sam focusses he swears something washes over him—that same great, sweeping, cleansing power from the plane, as light as moth wings on his skin. He has to bite back his smile. If you did that to anyone else, they’d find you creepy as hell.

After what feels like forever, you plainly croak, “It was lying about her. It was made of lies.”

That hits Sam like a slap to the face. That’s… yeah. That sounds right. He absorbs the impact as best he can, because although his faith was thin, Sam trusted Dean’s word and he trusts yours, too. There’s—so much that he feels about that, but he doesn’t want any more of his grief to overwhelm your Gift. Sam’s not naive. No matter how good of a person you are, no matter how considerate and understanding and empathetic you can be, Sam knows that talking about Jessica brings you some level of pain. It hurts him, too. And he has zero clue where that conversation would even begin, so he stores his shame and his loss and gives a shaky nod.

Instead, Sam asks, “...What did you see? When you looked into its head?”

Right. Cause’ that was such a better question to ask her, Sam.

You go silent. It’s a weighty, knowing silence, one that chokes the whole room. Sam readies himself for whatever you’re about to share with him. Admittedly, he’s curious. When the Gift was something new in your life, Sam used to pile on question after question about what the world felt like to you. ‘What does it feel like when Dean’s happy?’ A car motor turning on. ‘What does my happiness feel like?’ Dimples and a mystery being solved. ‘You’re joking.’ Not even a little. It fascinated Sam—how does a demon feel in comparison to a regular spirit?

“...It was just an evil spirit, Sammy,” you dismiss. “That’s all.”

Sam highly doubts that’s true. If it was just a spirit, then why did it screw with you so deeply? What had you seen in its head that had scared you? You, of all people, who was built for this? He knows there’s something more here, but after this week and all the ways you’ve fought to avoid being a burden, the fact that you’d crawl to Sam for comfort is a sign of surrender. You’ve given up. Clearly, you don’t want to talk about it. Sam isn’t going to push you. God knows he’s done that enough.

When Sam doesn’t push you, you shudder out a wet sigh and pick up his hand. At this point, Sam expects you in this state to do something weird—and sure enough, you do. You pick up Sam’s hand and you just stare at it. Just stare. Your thumb presses into the meat of his palm, almost like you’re looking for something. Feeling him. Sam’s heart gives another pathetic, noticeable throb. Feeling him and being close to him is, after everything, still a source of comfort for you. His cheeks burn.

Just to fill the silence, Sam whispers, “I’ve lost a lot of my calluses.”

Per usual, his little creep says nothing. You’re still feeling him. Your other hand comes up to investigate too, adding even more soft gentle touching to Sam’s already overloaded system. Your thumbs press into the center of his palm (reading it, maybe?), then over each bump, confirming for yourself that Sam’s real.

Maybe he’d be a bit more resilient if you were doing this to him in a crowded diner or a rowdy college party. Instead, Sam can feel the rise and fall of your breath through your thin shirt, and it’s the only sound in the dead world besides the buzzing static on the TV.

Your gaze turns to the TV. The fingers caressing his hand stop cold.

Sam says your name. He can feel your heart thud thud thudding deep in your chest, like rabbit’s feet hitting snow.

Again, absorbed completely in your own task, you don’t answer him. You roll over very suddenly under the covers. Sam hopes for a minute that being face to face with you will give him some answers, but the flash of your face he sees only serves to scare the shit out of him. You give him no time to process before you’re full-body hugging him, shoving a hand between his side and the mattress and fisting one in his shirt to bodily haul him against you. Sam sputters out a sharp noise and awkwardly slopes his hands down your back. The sudden intimacy gives him a whole world of shameful butterflies and freaks him out enough, but…

You looked terrified. The same bone-deep horror you had on your face after you saw the demon in person—when you trudged up to Sam with those haunting Proctor eyes, staring straight through him and right at his future. What had you seen in that demon?

Sam tries to speak, but you talk over him, just as haunted as you’d been on that plane.

“I love you. So much, Sam. You know that?”

It’s not a sweet, reminiscent kind of question. It is a genuine, unironic, please-tell-me-the-truth, You know that?

Sam’s brain stalls. “...Yeah. O-Of course.”

In case that wasn’t worrying enough, your hands needily grasp at his back, refusing to let Sam go as you duck your face into his shoulder. Sam can feel your entire body trembling from head to toe, can feel your hot breath on his neck choking back tears. “You’re a good person,” you tell him, insisting. “The best to me.”

“That’s—”

“I can feel it, okay?” You snap. One of your hands slips up his chest to smooth over Sam’s heart, and you squeeze him against you, promising, “Here. Right here.”

…Okay. Consider him officially freaked out. Sam manages an unconvinced, “...Thank you.”

You’re so wound up that you’re gritting your teeth, digging your nails into his shirt and clawing him as close as possible. This has to be an effect of what you saw. Which is strange, because that… whatever that was, did not feel like psychic possession or a psychic panic attack or any kind of psychic anything. It felt like you, trying to convince Sam that he’s a good person. It strikes a cold, dark chord somewhere deep within him that he doesn’t like. You’re just… you’re just reacting to what the demon showed you. You’re overwhelmed from stretching your Gift so thin. T-that’s. Yeah. Regardless, you’re scared. You need him. That, at least, is something he can work with.

“Shh,” Sam coos. He rubs a warm hand from the base of your scalp all the way down your back, then up, and back again, repeating the soothing motion until his arm goes numb. “You’re tired. Let’s go to sleep.”

You mumble something non-committal under your breath.

Sam hushes you, blindly reaching for comforting things to say. “S’ okay. You’re okay, baby. You can fall asleep on me.”

Maybe the demon showed you visions of Sam getting hurt. Something. That would explain this, maybe. He fixates on it, purely because it’s a problem in front of him that is much easier to think about than how scared he is for you, and worse, how much he loves this. Being your person. It’s a stupid, selfish thought to have in a moment like this, but—Sam wishes he could take care of you like this all the time.

As your frantic breathing smooths out into a clear, easy in-and-out, Sam wonders, wherever Jess is, what she would think if she saw this.

He closes his eyes and tries to steady his own breathing, the TV still crackling away on the dresser.

In. Bzzzsh. Out. Bzzzsh.

- tags: @samssluttybangs @cookiemumster1 @lacilou @cevans-winchester @leigh70 @seraphimluxe @emily-roberts @emme-looou @aloneatpeace @williamstop @ornella0910 @chaoticshepardplaid @dakota-dream @lcvecstiel @goghkiss @spnexploration @stoneyggirl @urm0mmmbbg @mulattomoon @poeticsorcery @deansapplepie @rennydennyy @babydollfoster @badlandsbrunette @hallecarey1 @pplanetcaravan

[mirikitakato]

[Translation] 4th Anni Card Episodes of Shino, Heathcliff and Oz.

Because they're nicely written by Bunta so I think I should translate them when I have them in hands. I also like the Oz's one a lot because it's funny but when you think about it, it's pretty wholesome in a very Northern way.

CARD EPISODE: SHINO AND THE DOOR OF DAYS BYGONE…

Akira: I heard that on the shores of Borda Isle, there is a door that allows you to see the past. Speaking of the past, when I first came to this world, I still had a lot of uneasiness in my heart. But when I recalled a certain memory, I felt at ease.

Shino: What memory?

Akira: The memory of a trusted adult reading a book to me as a child.

Shino: Is that so.

Akira: Is there any memories that would act like a talisman for you, Shino? Memories that provide comfort to you.

Shino:..... Somehow...

Akira: Yes?

Shino: I keep thinking about Heath.

Akira: Ah, I see. You two are childhood friends after all...

Shino: No, it's not good because I'm a servant. Memories of being with my master shouldn’t make me feel at ease. By the way, what did Heath say?

Akira: I haven't asked him anything yet.

Shino: What? Why didn't you?

Akira: S-sorry...

Shino: The feelings I had before were not for Heath, but for the time I spent with the master and mistress.

Akira: Would it make you feel at ease to remember that?

Shino: Guess so. Taking care of Heath is just a forced job.

Akira: You're saying that again...but your relationship isn't a forced one.

Shino: I know. Heath is my true master now. I can't allow myself to feel at ease when I think of my master.

Akira: I see...

Shino: I'll set an image for myself to remember. If I repeat it enough times, I can control these feelings.

Akira: Huh......!? Is that something you can control yourself?

Shino: If I have these feelings because a certain image comes to mind, then I can. Hmm, what kind of scene do I need to remember to feel at ease and become stronger?

Akira: (Even if you remember Heath, you won't become weaker though...)

Shino: Maybe Oz? After all, he's the strongest in the world. Hmm...? If I feel relieved when I see a strong guy come along, does that mean I'm weak?

Akira: It feels like a very random stream of consciousness, but thanks anyway...

CARD EPISODE: HEATHCLIFF AND THE DOOR OF DAYS BYGONE…

Akira: I heard that on the shores of Borda Isle, there is a door that allows you to see the past. Speaking of the past, when I first came to this world, I still had a lot of uneasiness in my heart. But when I recalled a certain memory, I felt at ease.

Heathcliff: A certain memory...Can I ask what it’s like?

Akira: The memory of a trusted adult reading a book to me as a child.

Heathcliff: Ah, I see. As a child, I was always drawn to the stories that adults would tell me.

Akira: Is there any memories that would act like a talisman for you? Memories that provide comfort to you.

Heathcliff: Hmm...well...there are many. Compared to other wizard children, my parents' love for me even made me feel guilty. They must have taken extra care of me so that I, who was born a wizard, wouldn't be in pain. My parents told me countless times how much they loved and cherished me. So...I've been living a peaceful life since then. Shino and the people who work at Blanchett also make me feel at ease. I'm so grateful to everyone for being able to live like this.

Akira: (Heath... Just listening to him makes me feel so happy...) (For some reason, he can't catch his breath. Is it because he’s suffocating or because he feels guilty?) (It's like he's talking to himself.) (Maybe because Heath is so sensitive, he knows that his parents and Shino want him to have a happy life.) (No matter what it is, if you're expected to do something, it's bound to put some pressure on you...) (...Heath has it tough too...)

Akira: I'm glad that Heath is surrounded by kind people. I also want Heath to live a peaceful and happy life.

Heath: Thank you, Sage.

Akira: But...I'm not saying I want you to live a perfect, ideal happy life. What I mean is that I want Heath to be able to live freely like everyone else, according to his own will. To enjoy happiness and sadness. Isn't that what everyone else wants?

Heath: Sage... I remember something. A scene that made me feel at ease when I was sad...

Akira: Please tell me about it. What kind of memory is it?

Heath: I may have mentioned this before, but... It's a memory of the orange tree in the greenhouse near Blanchett Castle.

CARD EPISODE: OZ AND THE DOOR OF DAYS BYGONE…

Akira: I heard that on the shores of Borda Isle, there is a door that allows you to see the past. Speaking of the past, when I first came to this world, I still had a lot of uneasiness in my heart. But when I recalled a certain memory, I felt at ease.

Oz: A certain memory...?

Akira: The memory of a trusted adult reading a book to me as a child.

Oz: ........

Akira: Is there any memories that would act like a talisman for you? Memories that provide comfort to you.

Oz: .....Making myself feel at ease with memories...?

Akira: I-is my question strange?

Oz: No... I always win against Mithra.

Akira: Yes.

Oz: I’ve never lost to Owen and Bradley. The same goes for the twins and Figaro, I won't lose to them now.

Akira: I know.

Oz: These memories and achievements make me feel at ease. It's not to the point of being relaxed, but just a statement of fact.

Akira: Okay...

Oz: Is this what you want to hear?

Akira: To be honest, that's not what I meant... It should be more heartwarming memories, right? The kind that can make people relax...

Oz: ......

Akira: (Oz and the Northern wizards, do they not have any memories that make them feel at ease, or any moments of relaxation?)

Oz: A long time ago, when I was still small and my power was far from what it is now... The twins and Figaro made me drink poison.

Akira: Eh??

Oz: Of course, I would never drink it obediently. I resisted with my life, and those guys were also seriously injured. After a few similar incidents, I understood. What they were giving me wasn't poison, but medicine.

Akira: (It's a little story about feeding medicine to a wild beast...)

Oz: I didn't know there was such a thing as medicine back then. I used magic to heal myself from minor and major injuries. And the medicine tasted terrible. But now, I can drink it without worry. Will a story like that do?

Akira: (It's barely heartwarming...)

[ms-cartoon]

Reason’s why I gradually started to hate Stolas from Helluva Boss

So some time ago there was a friend that asked me why I hated Stolas so much. At that time, I couldn’t think of a valid reason, mostly because it was just very few reasons. To them, those reasons weren’t valid enough. This was back when episode 2 season 1 was uploaded, but now that we’re already in season two and we’re about to get our 4th episode, HB has now given me PLENTY of reasons to despise Stolas and call him a bad character. So allow me to make a list. I can go from the first to the latest episode;

EP 1 S1, Murder Family

-- Stolas was watching Blitzo in a scuffle through his bath bubbles, which means he knew Blitzo was in danger, but still decided on calling him at the worst time! “Oh, when isn’t it a bad time, Blitzy~~~?” Umm, I dunno.... Maybe when some crazy psychopath is NOT chasing him with a gun!!! Did he even consider that he would’ve gotten Blitzo killed, and all just to make some stupid deal???  And besides, from what I’ve seen in episode 6 (which I’ll get into later) Stolas was so upset that Blitzo and the rest of IMP got caught by humans, he dropped an f-bomb. And now looking back in ep 1, he doesn’t even seem to care when Blitzo is chased by humans. If getting in trouble on earth like that is such a big deal, why couldn’t Stolas just wait to talk with Blitzo until after his job was done? 

-- Speaking of said deal, Stolas agreed that he would let Blitzo keep the book in exchange for taking it back to take care of whatever was necessary and agreeing to spend one night each month having sex with him.

Alright, there are two things wrong with this. So, first off... Stolas decided on making a deal like this while seemingly knowing fully well Blitzo didn’t want anything to do with him. He knows how uncomfortable Blitzo is around him, about how disgusted and disturbed he is by his flirting but will still make Blitzo agree to this deal because he’s just that horny for him, regardless of how creeped out Blitzo’s is. And he knows Blitzo didn’t have much of a choice in that moment because, well he’s stuck in a predicament while on the phone with Stolas. I guess he might as well just go ahead and make it a deal so he could get the call over with (Or just frikin hang up on him). And also because Blitzo really needs the book to make it to the living world to finish his job.

.....And we’re supposed to believe Stolas actually “cares” for Blitzo?

And here’s the second problem; Looking back on it, this deal is completely pointless now!!! As it turns out, the grimoire isn’t the only access to the living world. In episode 1 of season 2, it’s revealed that there are magical crystals that demons could use to appear on earth anytime and any place they want. So in a way, Blitzo DID have a choice. He could’ve used those Asmodean crystals to go to the living world to continue his business. And sure, maybe it wouldn’t be that easy for him to get his hands on one. But even if that were the case, why not hire someone who does have Asmodean crystals?? Like - I dunno... a succubi perhaps???

Heh! No wonder Verosika and her peers we’re able to travel to earth so easily. Asmodean crystals are willingly given to succubi, which means that they also can go to Earth anytime they want with no issue. Blitzo could’ve at least just hired a succubus or something to help him have access to the living world. Why not do that, instead of having to agree to this deal where you have to have to continuously give the book back and get laid on the same night with a horned-up demon prince, especially when you don’t want to, which would only make your job harder than easier???

(And before some of you bring this up if you’re gonna, I know Blitzo has no room to feel uncomfortable with Stolas making advances towards him since that was kinda his fault. HE was the one that came onto him and decided to go through with sleeping with him outta pity. Even if it was to just to distract him so he could steal the book and leave, he still did it. And now that it happened, he has Stolas continuously flirting with him. I only brought up that Blitzo was feeling uncomfortable about it because that’s what the show made it seem like to us at that time. It wasn’t even hinted that Blitzo was the first to make a move. They just totally retconned that fact. I’m only just stating these based off of how I saw it at the time the episodes were aired.)

My whole point about this is, Stolas is pretty much taking advantage of Blitzo, manipulating him into agreeing to this deal, knowing full well that Blitzo (kinda) doesn’t have any choice in the matter since it would cost him to keep his business going and Stolas could drop this deal and never let Blitzo keep the book. 

 -- Calling Blitzo “My little Imp”. It’s not cute...

-- Him describing how he’ll screw Blitzo (eg. every time his words are bleeped out). This was supposed to be comedic, and while I did smile slightly the first time it happened, all it did was make me feel awkward and disturbed. Those were just the start of my disdain for Stolas. Believe me, it doesn’t end there. So, moving on....

EP 2 S1, Loo Loo Land

-- “I can not believe you slept with an imp! IN OUR F*CKING BED!!!”

“It was unexpected! I didn’t have time to book for a motel.”

Dude - what do you mean it was unexpected? That makes no sense, especially now that we learned you invited Blitzo into your room instead of having him kicked out. Even when he tried to make advances toward you, you still could’ve prevented that from happening. You had the full authority to make him stop and kick him out. I don’t care how drunk you were when it happen. And you didn’t have time for a motel?? More like you weren’t planning on it!! And besides, you’re a demon prince!! I’m pretty sure you could’ve opened up a portal to teleport into another location when you wanted.  All this man is doing making excuses to cover his feathers and they’re not even valid!!

-- Stolas, as I may have established more than a few times already, is a terrible father!! There are a few reasons for this, but one of them being that he doesn’t listen to his daughter. And it’s almost sad, because he’s actually trying to bond with her (sorta). He suggested that he and Octavia go to Loo Loo Land because she liked it when she was a kid. But she’s 17 and doesn’t really care for that anymore, so she tells him no. But he still insists on taking her there, not even hearing her out!

“Let’s go to Loo Loo Land!”

“I’d rather kill myself.”

“That’s the spirit, anything better than staying in this house. Let’s go!”

It’s like he completely brushed off what she was telling him!! I don’t know if this was just for comedic effect or not, but this would count as a good example of Stolas being a bad father as he doesn’t listen to his daughter and is inconsiderate of her feelings.

-- Notices that his imp butler is injured (due to Stella’s rage) and doesn’t even bat an eye at it. Once again, probably for comedic effect, but this just goes to show how non-caring Stolas is of the imp race. The only reason why Blitzo is an exception is because he’s good at sex.

-- Didn’t Stolas just say, “Why don’t we go to Loo Loo Land? Just the TWO OF US?” Which would only imply that he intended to spend some time only with his daughter and nobody else?? Well, he just lied straight to her face!

-- The so-called Demon Prince wants to arrange for security for him and his daughter. He knows damn well he don’t need no security, but Blitzo is the one he decides to call for this arrangement. I think we all know why he really called him specifically.

-- “We’re rich and our hot.”

Referring to your 17-year-old daughter as “hot”. Can’t leave that outta my Stolas sh*t list. Not really something you should say in front of her. Or especially about her.

-- “I’m going to call the only man who can f*ck me.” 

“Hello my big-d*cked Blitzy~~”

Again, not something you should say in front of your daughter!!!

-- Y’all I can’t stress this enough, but this is one of his main issues. The whole time he’s supposed to be spending time with Octavia and putting his attention on her, he’s flirting with Blitzo. Making sexual remarks at him, touching him, trying to get his attention while he’s working, “Blitzy” this, “Blitzy” that, “Blitzy” blah blah blah. Not only is he hardly paying attention to her, he’s doing all of this IN FRONT OF HER!! Not even noticing her grudging reactions or bitter behavior! It’s like he thinks she’s totally okay with her father being a flirt in public, especially with the man he cheated with on her mother.

-- Stolas can’t tell the difference between tears of joy and tears of terror with his daughter’s reaction to Robo Fizz.

-- Is saved by Moxxie and Millie, even though he didn’t need to be, and expects to be body-guarded like he’s a damsel in distress.

-- “Where’s Blitzy? He’s my night and shining armor! Not you... little-o ones!”

Bro-? Shut up and go find your daughter!

-- Doesn’t realize Octavia is feeling bad until she’s crying about it.

-- Makes excuses for his actions, but the show is gonna go ahead and make Octavia forgive him and just be worried about him leaving her so we could be okay with his actions and move on.

-- Decides now he wants to go ahead to turn somebody into stone even though he could’ve done it with a flick of a wrist tons of times before. I know he invited Blitzo to be his bodyguard and he was already doing most of the work, but he only invited him just to have him around and be a flirt like he always is. He really didn’t care about Blitzo protecting him. So yeah, he still could’ve protected himself and his daughter at least once before now.

Ep 5 S1, Harvest Moon Festival

-- Father of the Year here is gonna go right back to continuing his affair with Blitzo!!! That whole conversation between him and his daughter was just in one ear and out the other because the writers are just so desperate to want this ship to happen. And we just HAVE to have fanservice.

-- “My Grimoire shouldn’t be lent out to itty bitty imps, like yourself.”

Then maybe you could... I dunno... Drop the deal and stop exchanging the book????

He mentions that his grimoire is oh so important as if it shouldn’t be in the hands of just anyone, but has no problem willingly giving it Blitzo because he’s just that down and dirty. What does he even need that book for anyway??? We rarely see him use it!! When he does have it, he’s mostly just holding it... and that’s it. And we only see him use it for magic that one time at the festival. He doesn’t read it or even study it. If this book is so valuable to you sir, then ACT LIKE IT!! He could’ve used it as a study guide for Octavia, who’s supposed to be the next heir to the throne. If he’s not even gonna use it for himself, he could teach his daughter how to use it or cast spells with it. And no - a stupid Instagram post is NOT gonna cut it (especially when it’s not even canon).

-- Uses Blitzo’s horns to put out a cigar.... not cool.

-- Stolas invites Blitzo to the harvest moon festival for no reason other than to see him there and flirt with him. He says that it will be fun, as if the last time he invited Blitzo somewhere with him was a blast, but nobody was having fun but him. And the whole idea was for him to spend time with his frikin daughter!!

-- The whole time Stolas is talking to Blitzo, it doesn’t even seem like he’s flirting or being cute with him. He’s more or less just mocking him. (eg. pinching his cheeks and using his horns to put out a cigar.) Seriously, why does everyone act like this character is such a saint and is just as sweet as Charlie from hazbin?? He’s frikin awful!! He doesn’t care in the slightest about imps! He’s not even nice to Moxxie or Millie and he hires imps as his servants/slaves.

-- Don’t get me wrong, if y’all wanna love Stolas, then by all means, frikin ADORE HIM!! I don’t want to offend or insult anybody who does like him. But there is no way you can look passed all the bullsh*t he pulls and just act like he’s so sweet. Viv says that Stolas is flawed and is trying to get better and that’s how we’re supposed to see it. But all I see is a character being a selfish douche and staying a selfish douche while acting like the victim of a heinous crime and trying too hard to make us feel bad for him simply by “caring” about his daughter even though he neglects her and pretending he genuinely loved Blitzo all along and simply wants love from him too, even when he doesn’t deserve it because all he ever did was manipulate him and take advantage of him, seeing him as a sex toy and not a person with feelings! And what pisses me off about this is that he rarely gets reprimanded for his actions. When he does, he’ll start crying while feeling bad for himself and the show tries to make us feel bad for him. What’s worse about this is that he never learns either!! For real though, no matter how bad Stolas’s character is, most people in the fandom won’t even take the time to realize it or will probably look past it, as long as Stolas gets his happy ending with Blitzo. Like I said, I don’t wanna offend anyone, but if y’all think the relationship is anything along the lines of healthy or innocent, then your definition of love must be twisted.

-- “I hereby welcome you all to another year of celebrating the spoils of your labor.”

I’m not gonna hear this from a dude who uses his imp servant as a stress ball.

-- Lol! Bro just keeps stealing the microphone from Wally and interrupting him.

-- He reads a book about how to f*ck imps at dinner while his daughter is still at the table. And no, it doesn’t matter if she didn’t notice, it’s still not very appropriate.

Ep 6 S1, Truth Seekers

-- Stolas only had like less than a few seconds of screen time. He might as well not even show up.

-- Jumps in to save Blitzo and the others. That’s good, but then he adds on “My Impish little plaything” Reminding us that he sees Blitzo as a sex toy.

-- “Are you little creatures not being careful. If you get in trouble, then I get in trouble! We don’t want that, do we?”

Then maybe you shouldn’t have waited until the last minute to save them???? I mean - we all know you we’re watching Blitzo the entire time like a damn stalker. And besides, YOU’RE the one who agreed to lend them the book. If you’re so worried about them getting in trouble, then you could just FORGET about the deal so they could figure out another way to travel to earth, they could get in trouble on their own, and it wouldn’t be your problem anymore! And if you were just gonna get that irritable about it, why didn’t you jump in to try and save Blitzo the first time he almost got killed on earth.

-- Why doesn’t he go ahead and kill the agents?? Why would he let them live?? Since you don’t want to get in trouble so badly, wouldn’t it be necessary for you to kill them. I didn’t think that DEMON PRINCE would be this big of a softie.

-- Bro uses his hands to open up a portal..... (why does he need his book again?)

-- Expected a “thank you” from Blitzo for saving him. This dude’s life was in jeopardy just now, and you’re asking for sex? Very appropriate of you sir. And why is Blitzo reciprocating this lust for him all of a sudden??? The entire season, all he’s ever done was reject Stolas, back-talking him, and showing him attitude. He responded to his constant flirtatious remarks with disgust. He didn’t even like him and was uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping with him just to keep the book. And now he’s suddenly getting turned on??

Obviously, this scene was only written in this episode by Viv as an excuse for more Stolitz fanservice. 

EP 7 S1, Ozzies

-- Stolas is feeling all sad and lonely, watching some corny soap opera while relating to the fact that the guy he has feelings doesn’t love him back...... Honey, ask me if I care. Blitzo would always tell you to f*ck off and you would respond with giggles and mockery. You should already know how uncomfortable he feels about you and most of the time, you don’t even care. What’s with the sudden depression??

-- Speaking of that, why does he suddenly have genuine feelings for Blitzo anyway?? You can’t tell me that he’s just now starting to love him out of the blue. You can’t even tell me he loved him at all this entire time!! The only emotion he’s ever had about Blitzo was nothing but pure lust!! He simply just wanted his d*ck. Not to mention he would look down on him like he does all the other imps.

-- The whole time during their date, Stolas is trying to converse with Blitzo, which is honestly surprising since the only time he ever talks to him is when he’s being a flirt and harassing him. You’d think I’d actually applaud him for that, except I can’t. Cuz, once again, where did this come from??? We didn’t get to see no type of development with Stolas at all. We didn’t get any episode of him slowly progressing to fall in love with Blitzo. Just more lust talk getting turned on.

-- How did Stolas not realize Asmodeus owned Ozzie’s? I think the title on it’s own should’ve implied as much. And besides, he should know that Asmodeus is a demon that represents lust and they’re in the lust ring.

-- Stolas sees Blitzo is pretty much getting laughed at and humiliated during the whole musical number and does nothing about it. Well, Blitzo kinda had it coming for not keeping his mouth shut and also spying on Moxxie and Millie, but I’m just proving a point that Stolas doesn’t even care about Blitzo like we’re supposed to think. He even hides behind his menu after getting called out by Asmodeus.  We are supposed to feel bad for him here right?? Because the writers are just showing me he doesn’t deserve it.

-- While we’re on that subject, why is he hiding behind his menu? Why is he feeling embarrassed about being seen with Blitzo and Ozzie telling everyone his business about it?? This was NOT the only time he was seen in public with Blitzo!! There was episode 2 at Loo Loo Land and episode 5 at the festival, and he openly flirted with Blitzo in public in BOTH of those episodes!!! Hell, he was holding Blitzo’s hand in front of that guard and the other demons waiting in line!! He was sitting at a table in the open where one or two people could’ve taken a glance at him talking to Blitzo!!! He has NO RIGHT to feel humiliated about getting laid with him! 

-- Trying his best to comfort Blitzo by holding his hand, talking to him, and inviting him in his home. He thinks that now would be the best time to cuddle with him after he tried to hide away from being seen with Blitzo. I don’t care what none of the fans say, Blitzo had every right to turn down Stolas and call him out on his bullsh*t. Most fans would say something like “NOO BLITZO!! DON’T BE LIKE THAT!!! STOLAS DOES CARE!! HE DOES LOVE YOU!!” Where the hell was this “love” you speak of the first few episodes these two were seen together??? No amount of cute nicknames, flirtatious remarks, and nightstands are ever going to sell the fact Stolas loved Blitzo.

-- He sits on his porch and starts to cry. We’re meant to feel bad and pity him, but all I’m doing is rolling my eyes.

EP 1 S2, The Circus

-- I don’t care how cute, uwu, or innocent they try to make little Stolas. Nothing in the world is ever going to make me change how I feel about him. He could be under three years old. Viv is pretty much just trying to force cutesy wutsey stuff onto the audience so we could side with Stolas and feel bad for him. All the writers are trying to do at this point is make excuses for his actions and use this whole episode to say Stolas had every right to cheat on Stella and that he actually really loved Blitzo when he really didn’t.

-- It makes no sense that Blitzo and Stolas are around the same age anyway. I don’t fully understand how the whole age and birth thing works with demons in hell, but first off, Blitzo was initially supposed to be in his twenties, meanwhile, Stolas has lived for a LONG A** TIME. Like he was probably born in 4000 BC. He still would’ve been an adult even before the time Blitzo was born. But now they retconned it to Stolas being the same age as Blitzo and them meeting as children just so Viv could force this ship to happen.

--  No way in hell he fell in love with Blitzo at first sight. Viv and writers are really trying too hard to make this childhood friendship cute.

-- Goes along with Blitzo’s game to steal everything in the mansion and completely falls for his trick (did he ever get grounded for that?). 

-- Instead of having Blitzo kicked out because he should be nothing but a stranger to him at this point, he instead invites him to his room so the two can... catch up. Did Stolas ever find out about what Blitzo did when they were children?? If so, then why are you even being nice to this guy?? You cannot be that down and dirty for him.

-- It has been frikin TWENTY-FIVE YEARS since the last time these two have seen each other. Why’re they talkin’ like they’re old friends? They had that one playdate and never saw each other ever again. If anything, I don’t even think they should remember each other.

-- “I know it’s been a long time, but I have a very good memory.”

“What are you doing? I don’t even remember you’re name.”

“Wait, didn’t your name end in an “O”? I remember...”

Oh my god- DO YOU REMEMBER HIM OR NOT!!!???

-- We jump into this softcore scene way too fast. Kinda goes to show you how rushed this show is.

-- For a demon so powerful with standards, he seems to have no problem being submissive and letting Blitzo seduce him. Stolas is shown to be uncomfortable, continuously walking away from Blitzo when he's pursued and I'm sitting here like....you could just...stop him. Why do you keep running away from him when you can throw him out the window?? He's acting like some shy teenage girl who's about to have sex for the first time but secretly craves it and I couldn't help but cringe!! And the first time he did it was with his wife, which apparently wasn't as good. Like I said, I really don't care how drunk he was at that time. He is such an idiot.

-- These two haven’t seen or talked to each other in over twenty years, but suddenly this kinky owl is all for sleeping with him because he’s drunk and got bit in the neck. 

-- “It means so much that the one who wants me is my first-ever friend~~~”

First off, ew.... Second off, you two were never friends. You met him once, had that one playdate, and never saw each other again until now in your thirties.

-- Back in the second episode of the first season, when Stella found out about the affair, she confronted him about it and he tried to appease her and being submissive, saying that what happened with Blitzo was unexpected and making excuses, all the while being a little nervous at her rage. But in THIS episode, Stolas has the balls to rub it in Stella’s face and laugh, marking the affair as the first action of the divorce.

-- Even though he brought up said divorce, for some reason, these two are still living in the same house. Not even divorced yet!! What was the point in you laughing at her face like that if you weren’t even gonna go along with it??

-- He should’ve known that his book was stolen by the time Blitzo left! This means he should’ve realized that Blitzo only slept the night with him to take it and leave. Why are you even catching feelings for this dude?? He manipulated you twice!!!

-- Literally, screw this musical number....

-- Sings, “Was what we had all a comfortable lie?” or something like that. Basically, he’s saying, “Was your love for me all a lie?” Was it all a lie??? He certainly wasn’t playing hard-to-get, dumbass!! Blitzo was shown multiple times to be disgusted with you! He didn’t love you at all, and I’m sure you knew that!

-- Reads about Asmodean crystals. Possibly planning to give it to Blitzo so he could drop the deal. But he never does.

-- “The only reason why I put up with your constant cruelty was for that girl (Octavia) to live a normal life.”

Says the guy who had an affair and continues the affair, making the drama in his family much worse than it already was. What was the point in you two keeping up an image for Via? You already fight in front of her and that was bad enough. It should’ve been obvious to her from the get-go that you to hated each other. It doesn’t even seem like she cares at all about the divorce after this episode, so this could’ve been done a long time ago.

-- Decides NOW he wants a divorce even though it should’ve been done already.

EP 2 S2, Seeing Stars (are they even trying with these titles)

-- Makes a promise about something to his daughter and breaks it.

-- Doesn’t take the time to listen to Octavia when she’s trying to talk to him and instead wants to continue bickering with Stella over the phone like they’re a couple of middle-school ex-lovers. I mean, he could just hang up on her. He probably never even wanted to talk to her anyway.

-- “Via, can we talk about this later? Your mother is being a real B-I-T-C-H.”

For the third damn time... NOT SOMETHING YOU SAY FRONT OF YOUR DAUGHTER!

-- Didn’t realize Octavia was gone until he was called about it and even somewhat blamed IMP for her taking the book and leaving instead of taking responsibility since he is the father and wasn’t paying attention to her. If I had to assume, he was probably still on the phone with Stella at the time and only decided to hang up because Blitzo was calling him, not when his daughter is trying to grab his attention.

-- Has the ability to turn into a human, but is useless without his book when it comes to other magic which sounds like total bullsh*t. He can turn people into stone, make portals, use telekinesis, fly, and turn into a giant bird demon. All WITHOUT a grimoire. He even says he can’t remember a spell for turning other demons into a human, but didn’t he say “I have a very good memory.” back in episode 6? Stolas is only useless when the plot wants him to be.

-- The entire episode, he spends more time with Blitzo and helping him with his issues instead of trying to look for his daughter. She had the possibility of getting into danger, but he’s more concerned with his friend with benefits and what he got going on? Some father.....

-- Is back... to flirting... with Blitzo. Clearly, he didn’t learn a damn thing in the last season. What exactly was he even singing about in the last episode?? They didn’t even talk anything out after the whole Ozzie’s incident!! And of course, the writers are gonna have Blitzo get all flustered and gain feelings for Stolas because they and the fans want this ship to happen soo badly.

-- When Blitzo is in danger, what’s the one thing the powerful demon prince does to save him?

-- Decides NOW to continue looking for Octavia?? Literally, f*ck off!

-- Octavia is forced to forgive Stolas despite his selfish behavior for the second time. Because neglecting your daughter, whether it be for your ex-lover or your walking booty call, is just very forgiving.

-- Screw this happy a** ending...

That’s pretty much the gist of why I think Stolas is a terrible character and why I hate him. I haven’t forgotten the recent episode that was just uploaded a couple of days ago. Believe me, that will be saved for another post I’ll be making soon.

So yeah, Stolas is a terrible character, a terrible person, and a terrible father. I don’t care how innocent or pitiful Viv or Adam make him out to be. At this point, all they’re doing is making excuses for his actions, making every other character around him terrible to make him look good, and forcing the Stolitz ship to happen without any progress or build-up. And God forbid Stolas is ever reprimanded for his actions! If he does, the writers will just butcher that in a way where Stolas is the victim and making him feel all bad for himself while not taking responsibility. Is this enough for you, anon???? I hope so, cuz at this point, it’s enough said.

[jev-urisk]

(Late) WIP Wednesday ✍️

Heeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyy~ Who wants to come be a little distracted today? Here, I've got a slice of my progress for 🌐7 Circles🌐 for yall! This comes from Chapter 9, Tea Party, Kazimier POV.

It had made for a damn dull time. The past two weeks had felt like a cheese grater to the forehead. The same, the same, the same. The same closet-prison-room with no knob, no vents, no popcorn ceiling- just five white surfaces grounded by short commercial carpet. Who would have guessed that gettin’ collared and shipped across the whole of Halkyon would be so.. stale. It had been a relief initially- just because Kazimier didn’t need sleep didn’t mean he wasn’t exhausted after the clusterfuck of tribulations that led him to that closet. So yes, it HAD been nice to sit in familiar darkness that very first night, to stare at that blank door and let his mind sift through all the events that passed and all the events that were waiting right around the corner. That comfort faded quick though- each day felt too much like the last. It was the first time in a long while that Kazimier fuckin’ wished he slept like others do. After dissecting whatever each day dealt him, his mind could only spin in the dark white box and the same 8-or-so hours always felt like 16-or-so hours when the door finally opened again and Klaus reluctantly ordered him up and out. And that- that reluctance. It was an unseeable wound in the man, festering with each barked order and slowly bleeding out until every action was beautifully stained by it. It wasn’t reluctance over letting Kazimier out, or being associated with such a ‘Lower’ as 4th-class hybrid, or even the burden Nexi squawk on about over teaching a criminal to be a ‘respectable citizen’. Ha! Kazimier would love to meet a being capable of making him respectable. No. No.. the reluctance seemed to be over forcing Kazimier to do things, over acting like the owner. Nexi loved orderin’ lowers around like they loved unpronounceable cheeses. Klaus didn’t. He started strong, sure, all- ‘I had to put you in my own clothing’, and ‘This is your final warning’, and ‘your place is either behind me, or at my feet.’ with a curious heat to his voice. He started strong but couldn’t keep up that strength for the life of him- and it’s only been two weeks. How mortal-minded..

I have a new job that's taking up a lot of my brain right now but once I settle in I'm sure I'll be back to the usual posts (and getting around to the small stack of asks in my inbox!). I hope you all are staying safe, and connecting with your communities this week.

7C Taglist: @gioiaalbanoart @biblicallyaccuratefruitbat @lychhiker-writes @autism-purgatory

@wyked-ao3 @cowboybrunch @zackprincebooks @smellyrottentrees @tragedycoded

@aalinaaaaaa @the-golden-comet @quillswriting @nbkuhn @ddgraywrites

@desastreus @theglitchywriterboi @shanakin-skywalker @honeybewrites @sincerelydorky

@the-letterbox-archives (Hmu to be +/- to this Taglist!)

[watcher-servant]

Rusted Arc dialouge lines

This took way longer than it should've, but I did it.

Side note: His 3rd Ascension is a reference to Ragna from Ragna Crimson & Guider to the eternal edge from Granblue fantasy. He is a 3 star servant coming from an event.

Also, the Witch of the Holy Night Collab is coming out for FGO, and Aoko and Soujuurou look amazing. It also applies to Alice as well, but Alice and Aoko take the cake on NPs for the event.

Summoning (pre event): Greerings, I am the rusted knight, guardian of the Ever after. What's that, a fairytale, I see so you have servants connected to stories. Well then master, what story are you trying to tell?

Summoning (post event): Well, didn't think I see you again. Glad to see you again, Master of Chaldea. Since you helped me, it makes sense I do so in return. So master what will you have this freelance knight do?

Level up 1: Oh, I felt a change, it's almost like some chains have been lifted.

Level up 2: Mastery is a journey that almost never ends. I wonder what step is this?

Level up 3: Seems I reached a new step in my journey. Don't worry I'll always be of help when you need me.

1st Ascension: This form, never thought I see this face again. I guess proper introductions are in order. My original name is Jaune Arc. Though at this point it may not mean much to anyone.

2nd ascension: Hmm no changes huh? Well that's fine, though I didn't expect to return to my 19 year old self. Though it is nice Juniper recognize me instantly.

3rd Ascension: This...what is this apperance? These scars, my hair, and yet the strangest thing is, I feel so close to my aura. I think I reached a new understanding.

4th ascension: So, this is my limit as a Pretender. It's not bad, for a time I only accepted the role as the Rusted Knight just so I can survive. Though now, I owe a lot to the original guardian, if it wasn't for them. I shudder who or what I could've become.

Battle start 1: Despite the apperance, I'm tougher than you think?

Battle start 2: Now then what plan, would work on them?

Battle start 3: Which would you prefer, sword, fist, kick or a headbutt from a stampeding animal?

Battle start 4: Let's see what I can create?

Skill 1: *drinks from a cup* Thank you *hands it to a genial gem*

Skill 2: Think you can get past my shield?

Skill 3: Focus...*Quick burst of aura*

Skill 4: Gotta remember the basics.

Attack select 1: Got it

Attack select 2: Understood

Attack select: Grit your teeth

Noble phantasm select 1: As my decree of the rusted knight

Noble phantasm select 2: So shall we hear a quick tale?

Noble phantasm select 3: Looks like we reached a crucial point.

Noble phantasm select 4: A new chapter is about to begin

Extra attack 1: Go Juniper!

Extra attack 2: Get ready to fly

Extra attack 3: I'll mow you down

Extra attack 4: Now fall!

Noble phantasm 1: After all the leasons she learned, and the friends she made and lost. Who has she become? The leaves in the tress rustle on the wind. There was one question. Who are you? [Ever After]!

Noble Phantasm 2: I hope your next journey is more kind to you. [Ever After]

Noble phantasm 3: Everyone one is in place don't worry I'll patch you right up. [Aura Amp]

Noble phantasm 4: I got your back just leave the defense to me. [Aura Amp]

Damage from phantasm: I won't fall not yet!

Defeated 1: So...this is where my journey ends

Defeated 2: Finally I can rest...I leave the rest to you.

Battle finish 1: Looks like we made it.

Battle finish 2: *Sigh* that took more than I thought

Battle finish 3: Just like that job is done.

Bond lv 1: Oh is there something you need master. Or did you come to pet Juniper?

Bond lv 2: Despite me bearing this title, there was another knight in the Ever After. The best way to describe them would be...my mentor

Bond lv 3: Won't lie I feel really out of place here. There's so many heroes around...if I was my child self. I know he would ask for a autograph...or to train them.

Bond lv 4: What? Surprised I can play guitar? I'll be honest it's been so long I didn't think I could. Guess the muscle memory remained after so long

Bond lv 5: Didn't think I reached a place Ike this. I won't lie I'm surprised I was actually summoned as a servant. Trust when I say I wasn't anyone worth remembering...though most likely it was my connection to my mentor that I ever reached here. To be honest there's probably more deserving from my world that should be here...yet here I am.

Dialogue 1: Oh hello master, you mind helping me brush Juniper? Trying to get some of this loose fur.

Dialogue 2: The master servant contract. To think you manage to hold so many, I think that speaks volumes to kind of person you are.

Dialogue 3: To think I can use and mold my aura like this. The possibilities I can do...let's try test them out master.

Dialogue 4 (Child servants): Hmm what's that? You wanna ride Juniper, I don't mind and pretty sure she doesn't mind either. You guys gotta take turns though at least 2 at a time.

Dialogue 5 (Jeanne D' Arc): Hmm there's something about her...that just makes me feel odd. It doesn't help she looks like one of my sisters. Plus her name as well...an ancestor maybe. Huh? Oh uh...it's nothing.

Dialouge 6 (Jeanne Alter): Oh its...wait somethings off. Jeanne Alter? Hmm so there are servants with counterparts. Something tells me she's really caring, despite her attitude.

Dialogue 7 (Voyager): Hmm to think I meet the original Voyager servant. So far there's only 2 of us, but I think we found good company in our current classes. Seems even Juniper took a liking to you.

Dialogue 8 (Deck of heroes reference): It's strange, I swear it was my first time fighting along side them. Yet I could feel I can trust them. A lingering trust...can't be right.

Dialogue 9 (Tamamo no Mae): Hmm, Hmm huh oh Tamamo no mae right? No, it's uh, it's nothing. No, wait, what are you? HEY!?! OH ohhhhhh

Dialogue 10 (Oberon): Fairy King Oberon or Vortigern? Either way, you wouldn't be the first liar I've been around. As you're the first pretender I'll give respect, but that doesn't mean I'll fall for your lies. Dealing with a certain cat was more than enough

Dialogue 11 (Hephaestion): Pyr...no sorry about that. You reminded me of a old comrade from long ago. It's nice to meet you Hephaestion...quick question you mind a spar?

Dialogue 12 (Tlaloc): Wait you embody a city? That's pretty cool...though a part of me is worried if the Ever After takes a servant form. No wait...the blacksmith is the closest I can think of.

Dialouge 13 (Alessandro): The grand scam artist. I'm not interested in any of your tricks

Dialouge 14 (Lady Avalon): Hmm..Lady Avalon? It's a pleasure to meet you though and if you don't mind me asking...what is Avalon like?

Dialouge 15 (Mordred): Oh its you Mordred, something you need? A sparring partner...alright then.

Dialogue 16 (Atalanta or Atalanta Alter): Oh Atalanta, I believe it's my day to watch over the kids. Don't worry me and Juniper will watch them.

Dialogue 17 (Diarmuid): Seems that curse of yours is still causing you trouble? If you want I think we can seal it for a moment. Oh it seems that's that needed. I wonder how different you fight with swords

Dialogue 18 (Medusa): Hmm, think Pegasus and Juniper might get along. I think they would and it seems she likes you as well.

Dialogue 19 (Medea): I think I see why you were hesitant with me for a while. Jason is...a bit of work. Though something tells me there's more to him

Dialogue 20 (Emiya assassin): Kiritsugu...it took some time but it looks like you find some light again. Even got a family as well.

Dialogue 21 (Frankenstein): Oh hello Fran, is there something you need. Alright I don't mind you tying my hair...no full bows though.

Dialogue 22 ( Edmond Dantes or Count of MC): It's good to see you again Lord Count. I can tell despite the change of scenery your act of guardian is still strong. If you don't mind, I want to have a chat when you have the time.

Something you like: Hmm good question, beside Juniper being on this list. I do enjoy a nice meal with people and maybe be it around campfire. That is a idea though, a nice camping trip.

Something you hate: The merciless pursuit of power...getting innocent folks involved and hurt in the exploits. Another I can't forgive...is a fallen maiden, who doesn't deserve any mercy.

About the holy grail: If I was younger I would've made a wish with the Grail. Though with my experience now...there's always a cost when using such powers.

During an Event: Sounds like something big is going on. Wanna go see what's that about?

Birthday: Your birthday? Have you already told somebody it's today? Know what, follow me. I think it's time to show how fast Juniper can run.

[youremyheaven]

Do you think those influencers who dramatically switch from very left wing Marxist alternative etc to very trad Christians (specifically in homophobic/transphobic way) have ketu influence?

You were talking about ketuvians and their struggle to find a sense of self and it made me think of these types of people. I know someone with ketu 1H and magha moon who did this to an extent. She used to identify as non binary and was constantly shifting through different names and pronouns but then one day she just kind of stopped and started saying how she thinks pride is pointless and a waste of time or whatever😭 it wasn’t *that* extreme but I still thought it was a significant shift in belief in such a short time.

I think a lot of people have this dramatic shifts not only out of a need to identify with something due to a lack of sense of self, but also because they like going back to what their parents believe for comfort. I guess those two are interlinked but it’s interesting how my friend is a magha moon and magha is associated with ancestors and whatnot.

I guess mula is somewhat similar as “the root”? Idk about ashwini though

Sorry I haven’t actually had the chance to look into examples since it’s hard to find birth data for influencers and I don’t know that many examples irl 😶‍🌫️ so this is me just going on a tangent and hoping you get what I’m trying to say LMAO

I’m also not sure if anyone else is familiar with this phenomena or if I’m just too engrossed in niche internet drama.

In terms of influencers I guess a somewhat prominent example is Freckle Zelda on tiktok? I never followed her but she went from making cutesy safe space liberal type content in like 2021 and now she’s a Christian and is using it be to super controversial. But like I said I’ve never followed her so idk if this is dramatic enough of a switch to count as what I’m saying.

I also feel like this a rahu trait to switch between extremes🤔 idk lmk what you think

I feel like the capitalist commodification of identity has most adversely affected Nodal people.

If you think about it, spirituality's aim is to transcend the "self" entirely, you stop identifying with labels and attaching yourself to this or that thing. I'm not saying you cease to be a person but you stop trying to "accumulate" identities to hold on to.

9/10 times the reason we identify with something is to feel a sense of belonging but searching outwards for it will only lead to disappointment, when we search within and feel at home within ourselves, we lose the need to externally confined ourselves to rigid "identities"

Yk how people dye their hair, get piercings/tattoos etc to mark a new chapter or the end of an old one or whatever??? It is an attempt to claim something as "yourself" and "solidify yourself". Everything changes all the time, everybody changes yet there are many people who will never dye their hair or change their name or join a cult or whatever (not that all these things are the same) its just that if you're at peace with yourself and truly grounded, you will no longer be shopping for different identities or things to associate with.

Yk those people who have IG bios that read like "Mother, Pluviophile, ESFJ, Petrolhead, UJC'22, Missourian, Ancient Spirit, 1/4th Cherokee, Bitcoin Enthusiast, EDM Lover"

like what do any of those terms say about them?? how on earth is any of this central to your identity? all of these are external ??? is loving rain and being a petrolhead central to your sense of self?? im not trying to demean anybody's interests, im only trying to point out that what we choose to make the focal point of ourselves is up to us and its possible to not be defined by anything?? i think a truly ugly consequence of capitalism is how people try to define themselves by things outside them (their interests, hobbies, job, income level, marital status etc etc) because there is more to a person than all that.

when we retreat within, we base our sense of self on our qualities like kindness, compassion, creativity (this becomes the essence of who we are) so we don't feel the need to claim 87373 other things to describe ourselves

some people overly identify with others like their partners, friends or even strangers and kind of become them. this is also the root of stan culture, by being obsessed with someone to that extent and giving them all your time and energy, you are losing your own qi and harming your Sun (the same way criticizing the appearance of others ruins your Venus)

Rahu is prone to taking things to extremes and Ketu is prone to trying on different identities and losing interest in all of them one after the other. so your observations are right.

i dont really use social media so i dont know any influencers that i can quote as examples ;-; but im thinking of certain celebrities who have had drastic style changes in the past and all of them have nodal influence lol

in the 2000s, the Olsen twins were known for their boho chic hippie style and over the last decade or so they have become known for their "quiet luxury" style. They are Magha Moon

Julia Fox is Ardra Rising and she went from basic to avant garde

Jared Leto, Mula Sun, Ashwini Moon & Rising , he's also the leader of a cult allegedly so👀i guess it all adds up

Adele, Mula Moon & Ardra Rising

im not just talking about her weight loss, just her overall change in style. she got married young and had a baby and in a couple of years she got a divorce and revamped her look to that of an ig baddie

Kylie Jenner, Swati Moon she's changed her style/demeanour every other year since the early 2010s lol

Taylor Swift, Ardra Moon has also had many diff lewkzz throughout the years

before anybody says dont celebs change their styles often?? no they dont, not everybody for sure. look at Jennifer Lopez or Sarah Jessica Parker, theyve been dressing the same since the 90s. constantly evolving style/looks/personality is a Nodal thing. its also a big part of the reason why Nodal people succeed in the entertainment industry and in the material realm (a lot of rich people including Bezos have Nodal placements) because entertainment = illusion, pretending to be someone you're not and for Nodal people, this is pretty much second nature.

im sorry that my response is kind of all over the place. your question provoked some thoughts within me lol and i just had to shareee

i cant think of celebs who have drastically changed their life paths like the example u cited ;-; EXCEPT Bridget Mendler who is an actor, singer, and entrepreneur, has a PhD and went to Harvard Law and now runs a satellite company?? she also adopted a kid during all this? She has Mula Sun

anywayyys thats it for now

tysm for sending this ask!!! its a very thought provoking and interesting question<33hope u have a good day<33

[firstkanaphans]

Hey there! Just wondering, besides Khaotung, who do you think has the best chemistry with First? And if you're feeling chatty, could you list all the pairing couples with First from your most to least favorite and let me know what makes them stand out for you? Thanks😊"

So, I guess this is as good a time as any to come out as a fake First stan because I haven’t actually watched his full filmography 🙈—mostly because I have a super low tolerance for het stuff. But I am always happy to chat about First, so here are my power rankings for the couples I have seen.

Khaotung

What can I say? I’m obsessed with these two. Although I think their physical chemistry could still use some work, no one is going to top them in emotional scenes. You don’t get the “You can be weak—at least with me” scene in The Eclipse if it’s not First and Khaotung. You don’t get that raw emotional connection. There are only three branded pairs working right now that I truly believe make each other better actors and FK is one of them. 

Mix

5 minutes. That’s how long we got to see these two happy and in love. 5 fucking minutes. I kind of alluded to this above, but one of the things I think FK are still learning is how to make their intimate scenes more realistic. Their touches are very…polite. Mix is not polite. He plays sultry really well and is a natural flirt. The fact that First and Mix were able to sell this relationship (and make us root for it) with only five minutes of screen time is truly impressive. I’m looking forward to seeing them work together again in Only Friends.

Gawin

I need slutty First back, you guys. I miss him so much. Him and Gawin both have a very wide range and I would love to see them work together again. A lot of Dan and Yok's interactions are awkward, but they’re supposed to be. For two young actors who had never worked together before, I think First and Gawin did a fantastic job. I mean, they had me shipping my fave with a cop, so they must have done something right.

Ohm

Listen, I will be a The Shipper apologist until the day I die and the PanKhet romance is simply top tier. I’m still amazed at what First was able to do here as a relatively young actor playing two different characters sharing one body and somehow still managing to keep his chemistry with each of the pairs consistent throughout (i.e. First as Kim’s chemistry with Ohm is different than First as Pan’s chemistry with Ohm.) I do have to deduct points, however, for the fact that all of this delicious romantic chemistry was taking place between brothers, but hey. You can’t win them all.

Fluke

Fluke should not be so low on this list and I think if him and First were to work together now it would be an entirely different story, but what makes his chemistry with First a bit more difficult to judge is that for most of their intimate scenes, First and Prigkhing are splitting the lines between them (since they are, you know, sharing a body and all). It’d be interesting to see them work together now, though. I think they would kill it.

Up

LISTEN. Go watch this commercial if you haven’t already. It’s fantastic. And honestly, if I had more material to judge them on, these two might jump all the way up to 4th. You wonder if they even remember filming this? They should make it into an actual BL.

That's everything I've seen, but feel free to let me know in the comments if I need to watch more of First's het stuff. I'll suffer through it for him. Maybe.

And, as a bonus, I would sell a kidney to see him in a BL with Tay Tawan. I know it'll never happen, but a girl can dream.

[schizosupport]

Not asking for medical advice, just commiseration really I guess? Yesterday I came out of my 4th ever psychiatrist appointment having been taken off my meds (which I did ask for) and then summarily dismissed because he'd decided, since our last appointment was in february, that everything I'd experienced was not persistent/consistent and therefore not worth digging into or attempting further diagnosis. He didn't ask me any questions about any of my delusions or psychotic episodes before coming to that conclusion and referring to everything in the past tense, and i even brought up that me and my psychologist, who I employ privately, have been going through the ease scale and I flag up sooooo maaaaany red flags for disorganised thought relating specifically to the prodrome of schizophrenia, and I'm finding it so hard to even think in a straight line, could you please ask me more questions interview-style so we can dig more into it because it's not past tense but I don't know what to tell you about because its getting harder and harder to tell what's normal and what's just normal for me. And he just didn't want to know. I said I really really need some kind of psychotic feature on my notes because every time I go into a+e actively having an episode, I get bounced because they think im overreacting or just having "emotional dysregulation" because during covid an unqualified physician put "borderline traits" on my sheet and now that's all anyone ever looks at, despite it being inaccurate. And he got very frustrated with me for insisting because he considers his office to be totally separate from all the other hospital features, which I get, but why not do me a bloody favour and just make it that much easier to get proper care when I need it? But he doesn't think I have been having psychotic episodes, I think because I was calm and collected in the appt rather than dishevelled and visibly frightened. He considers everything to fall under obsessions and excessive rumination when it's just not the case. I feel so immensely let down and scared for the future. I'm really worried about whatll happen if I get really bad again. I've lost my job again because I was so paranoid and afraid I just stopped going in, and he doesn't consider that fear or paranoia to be disabling enough to even call out of his office and get support for a fit note so I can stay out of work. I hate hate hate the country I live in.

Man, I'm so sorry you were dismissed like that, especially when it has material bad consequences for you, like not getting the right care in other sectors. I despise when psychiatrista refuse to accept that their diagnoses or lack thereof inevitably WILL have consequences on people's lives outside their office.

Also the idea that one can accurately assess anyone without following some kind of semi structured interview to avoid interviewer bias is so arrogant. He's not special. That's not a recommendation because other psychs just suck and can't be "objective like him"... How frustrating. I'm sorry you're dealing with this.

[2treez]

“My boss drove a luxury car everyday and it was my duty to greet him and to open the gates for him, as I worked as a watchman in his villa. But he never responded back to my greetings.

One day he saw me opening the garbage bags outside the villa in search for any leftover food. But, as usual he never even looked at me, it was like as if he never saw anything!

The very next day I saw a paper bag at the same place, but it was clean and the food inside was covered well. It was fresh and good food like someone had just brought it from the supermarket. I didn't bother as to where it came from, I just took the paper bag and I was so happy about it.

Every day I found this paper bag at the same place with fresh vegetables and all that we needed for home. This became my daily routine. I was eating and sharing this food with my wife and kids. I was wondering who this fool could be?! To forget his paper bag full of fresh food everyday.

One day there was a big problem in the villa and I was told that my boss has died. There were too many guests coming to the villa that day and I didn't get any food that day, so I thought that one of the guests must have taken it. But the same thing happened the 2nd day, the 3rd day and the 4th day.

It went on like this for a few weeks and I found it difficult to provide food for my family, so I decided to ask the wife of my boss for a raise in my salary or else I would quit my job as a watchman.

After I told her, she was shocked, and asked me, how come you never complained about your salary for the last 2 years? And why is this salary not enough for you now? I gave her so many excuses but she was never convinced!

Finally in the end, I decided to tell her the truth, I told her the entire story of the bag of groceries, and as to how it was my daily provision. She then asked me as to when this stopped? I told her after the death of her husband. And then I realized that I stopped seeing the paper bag immediately after the death of my boss. Why didn't I ever think of this before? That it was my boss who was providing this for me? I guess it was because I never thought that a person who never replied to my greetings could ever be this generous!

His wife started to cry and I told her to please stop crying and that I'm really sorry that I asked for a raise, I didn't know that it was your husband who was providing me with the meals, I’ll remain as a watchman and be happy to provide my service.

His wife told me, I'm crying because I've finally found the 7th person my husband was giving this bag full of food. I knew my husband was giving 7 people everyday, I had already found the 6 people, and all these days I was searching for the 7th person. And today I found out.

From that day onwards, I started to receive the bag full of food again, but this time his son was bringing it to my house and giving it to my hand. But whenever I thanked him, he never replied! Just like his dad!

One day, I told him THANK YOU in a very loud voice! He replied back to me to please not be offended when he doesn't reply, because he has a hearing problem, just like his dad!”

Oh! We have been wrong so many times judging others without knowing the true story behind their actions. Be kind and courteous in dealing with others, for everyone is fighting a hard battle. Be careful, not everything is about you. Before you assume, there is this thing called ASKING.

Don’t just jump to conclusion, because that is truly not an exercise, it may cause you more harm at the end of the day. Many of our problems are caused by how we process what happens around us. Don’t judge a situation you have never been in. Be humble enough to learn. You do not know it all. Lets change the way we feel about ourselves and others.

There are two sides to a story. Don’t believe everything you hear.

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

🌳🫶🏼🌳

===>> Johnny Gachanja <<===

God Bless y'all!!

[markantonys]

what's wrong with book!Min (gave up on books right now because i can't anymore, i'm on 4th I think? she is just not there)

book 5 is exactly when she started sucking haha so you stopped at the right time! i do get into some spoilers here, though i tried not to say anything too specific that you wouldn't have already known from the first few books (such as the fact that rand has multiple girlfriends and min is one, which her viewing revealed in book 2). also, maybe you won't even want to read this if you'd rather let your opinion of show!min continue on untainted, because i will say that 90+% of the things i'm about to complain about are very unlikely to be a thing in the show.

basically she just gets hit with an abysmal case of Men Writing Women: out of the blue she decides to throw her whole life away to chase rand down and make him love her, she changes her whole personality and style to try to cater to what she thinks rand would find attractive (i'm all for wanting to look hot for your man, but min herself doesn't seem to enjoy her new clothes or find them comfortable, and that's a problem), she stops having any relationships or connections outside of rand, she barely has scenes with anyone but him and in ensemble scenes she's just there to cling sexily onto him while having 0 dialogue because she has nothing to contribute to the plot-relevant discussion going on, she has no storyline besides barnacling herself to his side and being on tap for sex 24/7, she has no narrative role or in-world obligations besides Being Rand's Girlfriend, etc.

and on top of all that, you have fandom calling her ~Best Girl~ and saying that she is the only one of the 3 women who deserves to be with rand because she Puts Her Man First like a Good Girlfriend should, and fuck the other two for having the audacity to have responsibilities outside of being his girlfriend. fuck them for actually being complex, well-rounded characters with independent storylines and character arcs, right? we only like female characters who exist to serve men's storylines!

and on top of all THAT, she DOESN'T EVEN serve rand's storyline! she literally doesn't do anything! she always makes me think of the "let me ask you a very fair question. what DO you do successfully?" vine. you could cut her out of the entire series and very little would change. min fans claim that she was integral to keeping rand anchored during dark times because min and rand claim that is the case, but the actual scenes between them in the text do not back up that claim. i can think of ONE scene where min actually makes an effort to have a serious conversation with rand about what's worrying him; every other time she just stops his doom-and-gloom talk by punching him or waving knives at him or distracting him with sex. and the way people put her up on a pedestal for taking care of rand at his worst (which she doesn't actually do anyway) is a romanticization of the shitty idea that it's a woman's job to be the sole emotional dumping ground for her male partner. i guess it could simply be that Dating Your Therapist is a romance trope i personally dislike, but ugh, i HATE that vibe of their relationship and especially of the way the fandom talks about their relationship.

and on top of all THAT, their relationship is totally logic-breaking at times because rand will go "i'm so isolated and alone! i'm going to go snuggle up in bed with my live-in girlfriend and think about how isolated i am." he will go "i am so dangerous, i have to push away everyone i love! come on min, i'm taking you into the most dangerous magical event of the age during which many channelers will show up to attack us, even though you're a defenseless civilian and there's no reason you need to be there." it feels like RJ wanted to give rand an isolation arc but also wanted him to have a sexy mistress on his arm at all times, and could not understand that those two things are mutually exclusive (unless said mistress is just no-strings-attached sex, but that was not intended to be the case here, although the cognitive dissonance often makes it feel like rand DOES see min as just no-strings-attached sex rather than a real person whose safety he needs to worry about).

her behavior about the whole romantic situation also drives me nuts because she is SO possessive and jealous, which i personally absolutely hate in romantic relationships, though some people do find it attractive, including min herself - there's a scene where she tries to make rand jealous because she thinks it makes the sex hotter and i was like girl wtf? get some dignity. actually "girl wtf? get some dignity" is my attitude towards all her behavior about the relationship because listen, i fully support girls being silly over their crushes, but christ alive the way min comports herself brings me so much secondhand embarrassment. she'll be like "i'm sooooo mature and worldly, i will never lose my head over a man like OTHER women do, because i am Not Like Other Girls, i'm superior to them" (the Not Like Other Girls vibes is another huge annoyance about her character & fandom reception of her character) and then she'll proceed to go plop down into rand's lap and dandle herself on his knee in the middle of a political meeting to show off to everyone present that he belongs to her. girl, you are a grown-ass woman! get some dignity! she also has a shitty attitude towards the polycule situation, i won't say more since the details of that are beyond book 4 and this post is also getting super long, but suffice it to say that, surprise surprise, possessive and jealous people do not work well in polyamorous relationships.

but most of the above is the fault of the author (or the fandom), not the character. i can't exactly separate the two while reading because "RJ is writing min badly" very quickly blurred into "i feel super annoyed every time she is onscreen" very quickly blurred into "i can't stand this character," but it does mean that the show has a good chance to fix most or all of these problems with her because they aren't necessarily intrinsic to her characterization, they're just symptoms of RJ's weird ideas about het romance and gender norms. the show making her a world-weary 30-something-year-old who takes no shit and who is GNC in a queer-presenting genuinely-doesn't-care-what-straight-men-think-of-her-looks way rather than a not-like-other-girls-tomboy-who-still-caters-to-the-male-gaze way is already a HUGE step in the right direction!