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ft-dads-au · 4 years ago

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Wildflowers

A collaboration by @mdelpin and @oryu404

Fairy Friendship Week 2020 Prompt: Bonds Pairing(s): Natsu & Igneel, Natsu & Erza, Eileen x Igneel

AO3 | FF.Net

Summary: The Dragneels take advantage of a warm sunny day to enjoy a family picnic in the East Forest.

July 14, 2001

Erza 10, Natsu 7

“Momma, momma, look at me!”

Eileen and Erza looked up from the flowers they’d been admiring, drawn by the sound of Natsu’s excited cries as he ran towards them, or rather tried to. For no sooner had he uttered the words than his sandals got caught on the overly large pants he was wearing, causing him to fall face-first on the soft grass that grew all along the East Forest.

Not one to be easily discouraged, he got right back up, grabbing onto his belt with his left hand and holding the pants up as he continued to hurry towards them. His right arm was swallowed up by the too-long sleeve of the dark jacket he was wearing, while around his neck hung a scarf that Erza immediately recognized, as their father rarely took it off. None of these things diminished Natsu's proud grin in the slightest, and Erza’s heart fluttered at how adorable her little brother looked dressed in their father’s clothes.

“Daddy’s clothes fit me perfectly!” he crowed once he reached them, but rather than standing still so they could admire him, he shifted his weight from foot to foot in an almost gleeful dance.

Erza giggled, “No, they don’t, they’re too big, Natsu.”

Natsu pouted at his sister, but before he had a chance to reply, Eileen had picked him up, hugging him to her chest and kissing his head even as he squirmed in her arms. “You have gotten much bigger, darling,” she agreed and was immediately rewarded by a beaming smile.

“Still shorter than me, though,” Erza teased, standing up straight to demonstrate her height.

Eileen set Natsu down, watching with amusement as he took off after Erza, who continued to taunt him, the chase even more comical as Natsu continued to fall every few feet.

“I am, however, curious as to why you felt the need to take off your clothes,” she mused, her words full of fond exasperation.

The blanket had been spread out under the shade of a large fir tree, the food basket she had so carefully prepared already sitting atop it, along with the clothes Natsu had been wearing. Her husband, Igneel, also sat on it wearing nothing but a pair of black boxers and an impish grin that was identical to their son’s.

“Maybe I just wanted your attention,” Igneel flashed her a roguish grin, patting the space next to him invitingly. Eileen snorted but indulged him, feeling his arms wrap around her middle and pulling her against his chest as they watched their two children play.

Natsu had finally caught up to Erza, but rather than get into a fight with her, he’d wrapped Igneel’s scarf around her neck, and they now walked hand in hand, Erza leading him back to the flowers she’d been looking at and telling him all about them.

“She is so good with him,” Eileen commented as she observed Natsu’s rapt attention at his sister’s words.

“Are you really that surprised?” Igneel placed his head on her shoulder, “She takes after you, after all.”

“While Natsu is just as troublesome as you,” she responded playfully.

“He’s got a lot of spirit, as does Erza. I can’t wait to see what they’ll be like when they’re older.” Eileen could hear the wistfulness in his voice and placed her hands over his.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, I know how lucky I am. I thought I’d never get to have this again. It’s just I can’t help but wish…” Igneel trailed off.

“I know they’ll get to meet him someday.” Eileen assured him, “But for now, we need to respect Zelda’s wishes.”

“As my Queen commands.” Igneel turned his head, placing a gentle kiss on Eileen’s lips.

“You are ridiculous,” Eileen chuckled, “Think you can manage to get your clothes back from our son before the mosquitoes eat you alive?”

“You’re no fun,” Igneel pretended to pout, but he released her from his embrace and got up, sneaking another kiss before walking over to where Erza and Natsu were playing and calling out, “Natsu, I need my clothes back.”

“You gotta catch me first!” Natsu exclaimed, running off and squealing happily when Igneel gave chase.

Erza sat on the blanket next to her mother, “Are you sure Daddy’s an adult?” she shook her head as she observed her father attempt to tackle Natsu, who somehow managed to evade him and keep running.

Eileen only laughed, “I think you’ll find that the best adults manage to retain a bit of their child selves. Would you like some fruit?”

Erza nodded eagerly, and they opened up the basket, searching through its contents for some grapes.

“Daddy, no!” Natsu’s laughs were loud, and Eileen and Erza couldn’t help but smile at the sound.

“I guess he finally caught him,” Eileen remarked, splitting the contents of the basket onto four plates.

“I give! I give!” Natsu’s laughter became more breathless as Igneel tickled his sides. He got up and stripped off his clothes, handing them back to his father until he was the one standing around in his underwear.

When everything was arranged to her satisfaction, Eileen called out for them to come eat, but they had disappeared. She put her hand up to her forehead, squinting to try to find them within the shadows created by the surrounding trees. It didn’t take her long to sight them. Igneel, now fully dressed and looking as handsome as always, walked back towards the blanket, carrying a wiggling Natsu on his shoulders, and an incredibly pleased smile on his face.

“They’re up to something,” Erza commented.

“Indeed,” Eileen agreed, sounding unconcerned even as she watched them approach, “those two usually are.”

In one swift movement, Natsu dangled upside down in front of her, his legs clamped around Igneel's neck to keep himself in place, while Igneel placed a hand on his chest to make sure he wouldn't fall.

“Here, Momma, I picked these for you!” Natsu looked very pleased with himself as he handed Eileen a messy bouquet of wildflowers.

“Thank you, darling, they’re lovely.” Eileen kissed him on the cheek, which for some reason, amused the dangling Natsu.

“And for my princess,” Igneel announced, presenting Erza with a much more orderly bouquet he’d managed to hide behind his back.

“They’re beautiful. Thank you, Daddy!” Erza leaped to her feet to give her father a hug, examining the flowers as she waited patiently for him to set Natsu down and bid him get dressed so they could eat.

"I'm gonna eat a lot!" Natsu said with his mouth already full, "And then I'll get big and strong just like you, Daddy! I'll fit your clothes for sure!"

Igneel laughed and moved one of the sandwiches from his plate onto Natsu's. "I don't doubt that for a second. Here, have a little extra then. You need it a lot more than I do."

“That’s for sure,” Eileen teased, laughing at Igneel’s outrage when she caught the grape he tossed at her and popped it in her mouth.

Soon they’d eaten all the food, and with the sun warm and pleasant on their backs they spent a lovely afternoon exploring the forest, looking for any animals brave enough to show themselves. It wasn’t long before Natsu started to lag behind, exhausted by all his previous running around.

Igneel picked him up, carrying him in his arms so that Erza and Eileen could spend a little more time in the nature they both loved. Natsu’s warm breaths puffed ever slower against his neck, and with a sleepy, “Love you, Daddy,” he succumbed to sleep.

“I love you too, buddy.”

#fairy tail #ftdadsau #ftguildevents #natsu dragneel #igneel #erza scarlet #eileen belserion #media #fics #Fairy Friendship Week 2020 #prompt: bonds

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goodluckdetective · 4 years ago

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Fic Snippet: Best Man

A preview clip from a fic I may never finish (because it’s already 2k and I can’t write anything short). AKA the one where Castiel def visits Sam on Earth as the world’s best angelic carrier pigeon, a wedding is held and Eileen is the smartest of them all.

Post Carry On. Finale Fix it.

BEST MAN

He calls Castiel a few days after he proposes to Eileen.

Cas appears at once, a grin spread across his face as he wraps both Eileen and Sam into a tight hug. Sam laughs, still giddy she said yes and when he pulls back from the hug, he’s still chuckling. Cas looks at Eileen’s hand for a ring and when he doesn’t see one, he frowns.

“I thought a ring was customary for this human tradition.”

Eileen smiles and pulls on the chain around her neck, holding her engagement ring. It is a simple band, engraved with protection sigils. Beautiful and practical, just like her.

“Chain makes it easier not to lose it,” she says. “But he could have given me a knife and I still would have said yes.”

Sam is struck by how much he loves this woman all over again.

They celebrate with a small dinner, even though Cas doesn’t eat. Cas shares some word from Dean and promises to tell him of Sam’s engagement. Sam’s heart aches that he cannot tell Dean himself, and while that ache is not as painful as it once was, it still hurts. Eileen grabs his hand and squeezes, a comfort. She also has ghosts that will haunt their wedding.

“He will be disappointed he cannot be there,” Cas says as Eileen finishes the last of her beer. “He would have liked to be the best man.”

That hurts too, but it also reminds Sam of the other reason he called Cas down here. He clears his throat and squeezes Eileen’s hand. She gives him a knowing smile. They discussed this already and she wholeheartedly approved. Not that Sam expected her to argue. They both like Cas.

“About that-“

Cas looks to him, brow raised, head cocked slightly to the side. He frowns, pained. It’s a look he often gets when he feels he has not done enough. Like he hasn’t already given the world everything.

“Sam, I’m afraid I cannot bring your brother back to-“

“No, not that-“ Sam interrupts. “I know you can’t. It would be nice, don’t get me wrong, but I know. But just because Dean can’t come doesn’t mean I can’t still have a brother there.”

Cas still looks confused. “Adam is also-“

“No, not Adam-“ Sam shakes his head. He reaches forward with his hand not holding Eileen’s to grab Cas’ shoulder and squeeze it. “Cas, I meant you. Will you be my best man?”

Cas doesn’t answer. He looks shocked. Eileen brings her hand up to her mouth to hide an amused smile. There is something eternally amusing about catching an ancient heavenly warrior off-guard.

“You’re like a brother to me,” Sam continues, because “no chick flick moments” was Dean’s rule and Sam has no obligations to enforce it. “You should be there. It’s not like you don’t have the formal wear for it. And if Dean can’t be my best man, I can’t think of anyone else better for the job.”

Sam doesn’t say it, but he knows Dean would approve. When he went to take on Amara, Cas was the one Dean entrusted with watching over Sam. He won’t be offended Sam asked Cas to take his place. In fact, he’ll probably be pleased. It might not be official, but Cas is practically his brother-in-law at this point. Dean would be mad if Castiel didn’t attend.

Cas looks to the hand on his shoulder. He reaches up and places his hand over Sam’s. His eyes look watery.

“I would be honored, Sam.”

“I knew he would say yes,” Eileen says, smug.

Half a year later, they have the wedding. It is practically a hunters conference with how many folks come. They have it in a church, not for religious reasons (obviously) but for the warding it will apply to any monsters that try to crash the nice day. Some try anyway, a pack of vampires, and Sam almost laughs when half of the guests pull out weapons they have concealed on their person in response.

The blood on some of their second-hand excuse for formal attire is a shame, sure, but Sam gets to kiss the bride regardless, and that’s what matters.

The ghosts of those they’ve lost make the event bittersweet but they don’t ruin it. Sam doesn’t think he could ever marry someone who didn’t understand what it was like to live in gaps of those losses, someone who didn’t understand how empty space could feel suffocating. Eileen invites a pair of hunters who were friends with her adoptive mother to serve as father and mother of the bride, and they are both delighted and shocked to see her settling down.

“She’s always insisted on working alone,” they tell Sam at the reception. “You must be special to make her change her mind.”

Sam thinks she’s pretty special too.

Charlie and the girls make-up half of Eileen’s wedding party, Charlie taking Maid of Honor. Her and Eileen have become close since everything happened, their grit complementary. On Sam’s side, Jody steps in as Mother of the Groom with delight, and Donna takes other Mother of the Groom because “I said so.” Garth organizes the bachelor party instead of Castiel, which is for the best since Castiel finds party planning “intimidating.” His daughter is delighted to be the flower girl.

And then there is Castiel, best man. He gets a formal tux for the occasion and everything, even though half the guests idea of “dressing up” is having clothing without new stains. He’s by far the best dressed there. Sam hugs him so tight before the ceremony that he’d be worried about hurting him if not for the angel thing.

“I am so glad you came,” he says, getting weepy way too early. Castiel just hugs him back tighter.

The reception is an open bar and the first dance is awkward, but fine. Charlie gives a speech and then it is Castiel’s turn. He looks nervous and pulls out a sheet of paper.

“Hello everyone. Thank you for coming,” he says, like he’s giving orders to a troop about to go into battle. “I was informed that it is custom for the best man at these events to give a speech but I am afraid I am not well suited for such a task.” He glances at Sam and smiles. “So I asked a dear friend if he could help me write one instead. Since he should be the one standing here instead of me.”

Sam’s breath catches. He feels stupid he didn’t consider this possibility sooner. Castiel winks at him, a gesture he had to learn from Dean, and clears his throat as he begins to read.

“Hey Sammy. Sorry I couldn’t be here in person, so I sent our favorite angelic carrier pigeon to deliver this instead. Please make sure to tip him: cross planar delivery is a lot of work.”

Sam is already crying. Eileen hands him a ziplock bag of tissues out of nowhere. He raises an eyebrow and signs.

“You knew about this.”

She signs back after she deposits the tissues into his lap.

“Someone had to smuggle extra tissues in her wedding gown. I’m the inside woman.”

The speech is pure Dean, ribbing at Sam’s more silly failures (losing his shoe, getting wasted off a light beer as a teen), crowing over his his biggest achievements (sealing away Lucifer, saving Dean from countless monsters) both woven with a sentiment underneath to tie it all together. Sam bawls but no one seems to mind. A lot of the guests are bawling too.

“You treat Eileen right,” Cas says, wrapping up the speech. “Because she’s awesome and you know it. Live long happy lives and go buy some furniture not from IKEA. You both deserve it. Don’t rush up here anytime soon, but when you do, I’ll be here waiting at the end to buy you both a beer,” Castiel smirks in a way that is so Dean, Sam is convinced he’s been practicing the expression. “Love you, bitch.”

Sam’s too choked up to respond with jerk but he doubts anyone blames him.

Castiel gets another hug after the speech, Sam getting tears and snot all over his tux. Castiel doesn’t comment, because he rocks, and simply hugs back.

“Thank you so much,” Sam says.

“You’re welcome, Sam.”

#iz writes #spn #supernatural #sileen #spn for ts #supernatural for ts

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nellie-elizabeth · 4 years ago

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Supernatural: Inherit the Earth (15x19)

That was somehow simultaneously a crowded mess, and a complete anticlimax. I'm literally just like... super confused and afraid about what the finale is going to be now.

Cons:

Sam's the dog person. That's part of canon. I liked the moment when Dean found the dog, or whatever, but I wish Sam had gotten a moment with the puppy too, before Chuck took it away. A small thing, but one of those typical wrong details in Buckleming episodes, where it just honestly doesn't seem like they know the characters very well.

Lucifer and Michael have a fight in the Bunker and Michael takes Lucifer out really, really easily. So like. Remember when the first five seasons of the show were the buildup to the Apocalypse, and Sam sacrificed himself for an eternity in Lucifer's Cage to stop it from happening? Apparently a fight between the two archangels is just a bit of fisticuffs, nothing to get worked up about. That annoyed me. But I guess consistency has never been something this show has cared much about...

Also just... Lucifer in general, coming back for like five minutes so he can mug at the camera and then be unceremoniously killed? Here's the thing: we had Billie as Death, and she hated them but maybe it would have been interesting to see her and the boys team up to figure out Chuck's ending... but instead, she's gone, Lucifer gets a pointless return, provides us with another Death, who is there for two seconds, says a couple of vaguely funny lines, and then dies... and we still never find out what's in the book.

The fight with Chuck was so badly edited! It was so weird to see him just wail on Sam and Dean, and repeated shots of him hitting them, and them getting up, while he kept saying "okay fellas, enough, please stay down" over and over again. Given that the whole "erasing the people from the world" thing was so much like Infinity War, I kept comparing this fight with God to the climax of Endgame. In that instance, you have a small group of intrepid fighters going up against a big bad evil, and then just at the moment when they're run down and helpless, the whole crowd of friends returns and joins in the fight. Instead of that, it's just Jack showing up and absorbing God's powers, and then they leave him begging on the beach. Not a bad ending for Chuck, which I'll get to in a moment, but the epic-ness was seriously missing from this final showdown.

So, when Jack returned the world to its normal state, did he bring back all of their friends, too? I want to believe this was something that Covid took away from them, where instead of seeing shots of Charlie and her girlfriend, of Donna, Jody, the girls, Bobby, Eileen, they were forced to use stock footage of just random people around the world returning. Would have been cooler to see the epic return... and also super weird that Sam and Dean sit quietly in the bunker talking about free will, and we don't see Sam pull out his phone and call his girlfriend, like... I get not wanting to muddy the ending of the episode with a lot of fallout stuff, and I'm sure we'll get that next week? Like, I hope, anyway? But as it stood for this hour of television, it was super weird to me that the boys didn't immediately want to check on all of their friends to make sure everyone had returned from the dead.

Jack becoming the new God is actually a totally appropriate ending, people were speculating that he'd be the new God or Death or Empty, or some cosmic entity, anyway... and this honestly felt very fitting... BUT, I will say that there are two really, really stupid things about it. One, his "I'm everything and everywhere now" speech was super cheesy... "I'm in the air and the rocks and every drop of rain" or whatever. Such a cliche, I was almost painfully embarrassed listening to him. I honestly would have preferred less is more, here. Like, what if he'd said the stuff about how humans can be their best when they need to be, that was a good line... and then Sam says "what if we want to see you? Grab a beer?" And Jack just says "I'm around" and then vanishes, leaving it vague? I think the idea of a hands-off deity is perfect, of course... makes sense for the "free will wins the day" ending we've got going here, but I didn't think stating it outright was the best move.

The second reason Jack becoming God was rendered kind of comedically awful in the way it happened is... well, elephant in the room, let's talk about how Cas was handled in this episode.

Here's a quote from last week's review:

"I'm worried that Cas dying is gonna get swallowed up with everyone dying and not get its due, thus making the confession completely isolated. Like, here you go, gays, have this one scene, which, in isolation is quite heartfelt from Cas' perspective, but can be carefully boxed up and not touched for the last two hours of the show. If they don't want to touch on how this would affect Dean specifically, they don't have to. He can be generally angsty and sad about Cas, but they could get away with never bringing it up again, and that is some grade-A level bullshit right there, my friends."

And... yeah. Look, I know there are people on Tumblr right now saying that this episode being the "brothers only" ending means that next week we'll get Cas back and Dean will confess his love or whatever... but y'all, it's not going to happen. I'm sorry. I'd love to be wrong. If I'm wrong, I will gladly eat crow and celebrate along with the rest of you, but I just... I've been burned before. I know what's going on here, and it's not what you think it is.

Dean was undeniably devastated in this episode. We see him drinking to excess, falling asleep on the floor, grasping onto tiny moments of joy like with the dog and then being furious and upset when they fall through. But that devastation was not textually about Cas specifically. Sure, there were moments, like him telling God to bring everything back, and then namedropping Cas specifically. Or the way he ran up the stairs when Cas' voice was on the phone. But what I'm saying is? Those are crumbs, there for those of us who care to gobble up, easily ignored and subsumed by the larger losses the boys are suffering. Sam is devastated too, guys. About his girlfriend, about Charlie, about Donna, and Jody, etc. etc. etc. Who's to say their grief is any different from one another, even though they're handling it with different coping mechanisms? The "I love you" wasn't even on the "previously on".

Like. There's a universe where Dean does get a moment of Cas-related catharsis in the finale, even though Misha's not coming back. Maybe he has a private moment to grieve just for him, to contemplate that specific loss. But I'm telling you: I don't care if an openly gay man wrote 15x18, I don't care that Misha found it moving. The bottom line is, Cas confessing his love for Dean was the moment of catharsis the show was willing to offer us. We ain't getting much else.

So going back to Jack, why on earth does nobody suggest that maybe when he's popping the rest of the world back to the way it's supposed to be, he also brings Cas back? This is what I'm talking about with contrived sacrifices. Last week, they could have written a way for Dean to get out of that scrape without Cas dying. And this week, Jack's determination to be a "hands-off" God is not enough to explain why he wouldn't restore his father Castiel from the Empty. Especially since Chuck brought Lucifer back from the Empty, proving that God can do that. Even though that contradicts earlier lore but whatever. The point is, I'm saying it's sloppy. Cas' death, Cas staying dead, does not feel like an earned inevitability to me. I'm prepared to eat my words if they bring him back in the finale, but even if that happens (which it won't), he's not going to be smooching Dean Winchester on the mouth, y'all. He's just not.

So then that ending. "Finally free," says Dean, completely unaware that he's echoing the theme from the end of season five but making it hopeful now for some reason? And that end montage felt like an ending 100%, and I won't say it was bad to see it, see all the memories, the characters... I mean, Charlie dancing in the elevator, getting glimpses of Ellen and Jo, Bobby, Crowley... I'm not going to complain about that, it was honestly quite fun, but it also felt extremely anticlimactic and gave us no sense of where the characters are going to go from here. And yes, I know we have an episode next week, it's just...

Here's the thing I'm scared of, and I'm going to go ahead and put it here in the "cons" section because I don't know where it belongs yet. Despite my complaints about this episode, thematically there was one thing it got right: the answer to defeating Chuck wasn't destined, it wasn't in a book of preordained endings. They had to come up with it by themselves, using the tools at their disposal, and they won, and they get free will now, they get the release from having someone else tell their story. Great. So... what does that leave us next week?

As mentioned above, I really don't think the final 43 minutes is going to be an epic gay love story where Dean fights to get Cas back, I really don't. That leaves us two options: either a tepid re-tread of the themes already established, an epilogue of sorts where we just get to see a life in the day, a new normal for the boys. I wouldn't be furious about this, but I also think it won't really feel like closure for me. They just keep hunting? They keep saving people? That's fine, I guess, but they can't really walk back the fact that God is their son, can they? When they die the next time, do they go to the Empty? Who is Death, now? Are Heaven and Hell okay? Are we meant to be convinced that nothing will ever come back to bite them in the ass, they'll live long lives, and a benevolent afterlife is waiting for them when it's over? I'm not convinced I believe in things being that simple, so it sort of seems like the show would end by saying "okay, and more of the same."

The second possibility is worse, though, that being a total status-quo shift, like the end comes and the Empty is after them and they have to become the new Death and Empty as some speculated, or some wild harebrained plot twist gets thrown in at the last second and undoes the actual good parts of the theme established here. I hope for the first, but I don't know that it'll make me happy, to be quite honest. I really don't want it to feel this way, but Cas being gone is the big elephant in the room, for me. It truly is.

Pros:

I did like the earlier parts of the episode, the eeriness and the helplessness of them being alone. Continuing with the Avengers comparisons, it was very similar to the long, slow opening to Endgame, where we see a lot of grief, a lot of helplessness, an lot of directionless moping. That felt appropriate and it made it all the more invigorating when Michael showed up, giving us a spark of direction in which to move.

While I thought the fight with Chuck was edited really strangely and didn't work for me, I did like this ending for Chuck. Very much like the end of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Chuck doesn't die, which he honestly would have found a satisfying, creative ending for his story. Instead, he gets to live on as a normal human, sans powers, and be forgotten. Brutal and appropriate! It ties back into the free will thing. Chuck can do whatever he wants with his remaining time, but he can't steal other people's choices from them any longer. It's the black and the white, the good and the bad, of being just... human. Which ties in with Sam and Dean being more or less hopeful about their outlook moving forward. (God, I'm so fucking scared they're going to screw up the few things I liked about this episode in next week's finales.)

Like I said, I did find Jack becoming God an appropriate ending for him as a character. It's the right type of bittersweet: he's there, and we can imagine that in the future, he does go visit Sam and Dean for a beer. Or maybe he doesn't, and that's okay too. Knowing he's at peace, knowing he's benevolent, and that he'll do the best he can for the people of the world(s). It's nice, a comforting deity instead of a manipulative overlord. And the fact that his benevolence and kindness and compassion are born out of a human mother, and two human fathers, and an angel who embraced humanity with everything in himself... instead of from Lucifer, who tried to create him in his image? Well, that's a lovely resolution for a character that became a surprising favorite over the years.

As I think I mentioned last week, I'm willing to let this show manipulate my emotions here at the end, when it can manage to do so. So yeah, of course I loved that Cas and Jack's names are added to the table along with SW, DW, and MW. Obviously that's adorable as hell. And as I said, the montage worked for me, it was certainly quite lovely. I just... like I said at the start of this, I'm just frankly terrified of what's coming next week.

I mean, here's the thing, I want an ending that honors Sam and Dean as the protagonists of this show, but I want it where they live in the bunker, and Eileen and returned-from-the-dead-Castiel live with them as their partners. If someone told me I couldn't change a thing about what's happened so far, but I could decide how the last episode went, that's how I'd end it. Showing a network of hunters getting support and able to live more stable, reasonable lives while still doing a dangerous job. Sam embracing his intellectual prowess and running things from the bunker, Dean and Cas going out on the road, Sam and Eileen going out on the road, or any combination therein. Jack watching over them benevolently from above. Jody and Donna and the girls living their best lives. Kaia and Claire as a couple, onscreen. A glimpse of a more stable afterlife, now that Jack is there to run things, the confirmation of a peaceful ending whenever our human protagonists do finally shuffle off this mortal coil. Peace, but change, too.

I just don't believe that's what we're getting. I can't believe it, and that makes me really frightened for what comes next week. I'm prepared to be pissed off. Quite frankly, I'm expecting it.

6/10

#review #supernatural #supernatural review #spn 15x19 #spn

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mrslittletall · 5 years ago

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Prompt: Be Careful What You Wish For

Fandom: BloodborneCharacters: Gehrman the first Hunter, The Plain Doll, Retired Hunter Djura, Eileen the Crow Word Count: 2.106 AO3-Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18718291/chapters/56571127

Written for @badthingshappenbingo The blood vials are already filled out, the madmen’s knowledge are already planned. Every prompt that isn’t marked so far is still open and up for requests.

Summary: Gehrman had just a simple, little wish, but he asked the wrong entity for help.

(Author's note: This is kind of a character study about Gehrman and the Hunter's Dream, mostly headcanon based because we don't know a lot lorewise about it. I hope you enjoy my take.)

He only had wanted to see Maria's smile again...

Gehrman's mind wandered, back to that fateful day. The day where Laurence and Micolash finally had figured out how to summon a Great One. The Moon Presence they called it, he remembered.

He had still been stricken with grief back then. Maria's death had been a few months prior and he hardly ever left his workshop, not wanting to face a reality without her and dreading to see Laurence, which once had been like a little brother to him, but now stepped back whenever Gehrman came too close. No wonder, after Gehrman had punched him in the face, practically blaming him for Maria's suicide, even though he knew it wasn't true, her depression had been lingering for a long while and he simply had failed to see it.

So when Gehrman managed to get out of the workshop, he simply listened in. He was used to staying in the shadows and that is when he heard about the plan of summoning a Great One and while he knew that Laurence surely wanted to summon it to get some answers, Gehrman's grief stricken mind whispered to him that this would be his chance. The Great Ones were said to be able to do things that were completely out of the understanding of the human mind. Surely... surely it would be able to give his love her life back.

So once the summoning began, Gehrman had stepped forwards and told the Great One his wish. “Just let me see Maria's smile.” again. The Great One had come close, awfully close. He still could feel the touches of her tentacles, yes, in the meantime he had learned it was a her, and the shocked expression on Laurence' face as he realized what Gehrman was doing.

The next thing Gehrman knew was that he was back in his workshop and in front of him, was Maria, who blinked at him and he pulled her into a hug, practically sobbing until he realized something strange.

She was cold. Her skin felt strangely smooth and... could he feel joints? However, the thing that spooked him the most was the voice coming from the thing. It was her voice and she spoke: “Good Hunter. How may I serve you today?”

Gehrman broke the hug and stared at the thing. That wasn't Maria. That... that was the doll he had build in her image. For some reason, she was able to move and talk, with the very voice that Maria had possessed, but that doll in front of him...

That wasn't Maria. That was just a doll. Gehrman dropped it in horror and ran, wanting to get outside of the workshop, back to Laurence. He had to apologize, what had he done? Only.. there wasn't a door anymore. In fact, there wasn't an outside world. Gehrman had to realize that the workshop had been transported into some kind of... another dimension? If only he had listened to Laurence' and Micolash's theories more clearly. The fact is, he was trapped. He was trapped in his workshop and his only company was the doll he created and that somehow had been given life.

Actually, that wasn't completely correct. The moon was shining constantly over the workshop and sometimes he could see the shape of the Moon Presence in it. Sometimes she would talk to him, not many words, either because his human mind couldn't take it or because she didn't know many words in the human language. The thing she told him didn't shed much light on his situation. Only that this place was called the Hunter's Dream and that he was the host of it. At first, Gehrman didn't knew what she meant. It was during the time he still spend his days trying to find a way out, praying (to whom? If Laurence had proved one thing, then that there were no gods) and hoping that Laurence would free him. Maybe even Willem. Surely after Gehrman disappeared, Laurence would have forgot about his little dispute with Willem and ran back to Byrgenwerth to get all the help to get Gehrman out of this place.

However, day after day passed and nothing happened. Gehrman's only company was the doll and he got so annoyed that she called him Good Hunter all the time, despite him not even being able to hunt anymore, that he one time screamed at her to stop it, he had a name. Since then, she only referred to him as Gehrman and even time he heard her say it with that voice, his heart broke a little.

Then, one day, Gehrman suddenly wasn't alone anymore. A young man appeared in the dream, shaking and confused, muttering: “But... I died. I have died...”

The young man turned out to be named Djura and was associated with a group named the powder kegs. He managed to tell Gehrman about the outside world. There was a blood moon hanging over Yharnam and Old Yharnam had faced the worst case of the beastly scourge any Hunter had ever seen. It not only had killed hundreds, it also meant that the Beastly Scourge had gone public and during this time the Vicar had locked himself in and refused to leave. That at least explained why Laurence wasn't coming for him, but Gehrman was confused.

It sounded like since the blood moon appeared only a few days had passed, but he could have sworn he had been in the dream for months. Was the passage of time convoluted? Or was he loosing his sense of time because it was always night in the Hunter's Dream?

Djura turned out to be different from Gehrman. He had a mark with him that he didn't recognize having before and could actually come and go into the dream as he pleased. It turned out, that he was literally tied to the dream, because should he die in the hunt, he would awake again, as if everything just had been a bad dream.

That still didn't answer Gehrman's question just why he was the host of the dream, but one day that question should be answered, when Djura came to him, with slow steps and his shoulders drooped.

“Gehrman, I can't do this anymore.”, he said.

“What are you talking about, Djura?”, Gehrman asked.

“Hunting. Dreaming. I... I can't... we are in the wrong. These poor people aren't he beast, we are the beasts. I beg of you, free me from this dream because I shall be a hunter no more.”

Even though Gehrman should have no clue how to actually free someone of the dream, he seemed to know. He told Djura to meet him at the meadow.

And there they met and Gehrman got up from his wheelchair in what felt like years, even though it only had been a week or so. Djura kneeled in front of Gehrman as he demanded and the Burial Blade beheaded him.

The next thing he knew was that the Doll was tending to a grave. Djura never came back to the Hunter's Dream ever again.

However, Djura didn't stay the only one who visited the Hunter's Dream. It became apparent to Gehrman just why this place was called the Hunter's Dream. The only people who visited it were Hunter's and each and every one of them possessed a Hunter's mark and they all had in common that they couldn't die. They called it dreaming. When they died, that had been a nightmare, that had never happened. They simply had seen a possibility where they died and learned from it to not make this mistake when it depended on it. Gehrman wasn't too sure about this. For him, it felt like they really had died, but their death had been undone. The only way they could die or rather, being freed from the dream, was through his hands.

Over the years, a lot of Hunters visited the dream. They came in and stayed for a while. They used the workshop or the doll. In the intended way, of course Gehrman sometimes caught the ones who thought to use it in a different way... He didn't care about whatever they did with her, that was just a doll anyway, even though Gehrman usually put it back together whenever a Hunter had found it funny to test a new weapon her. It gave his hands something to do and he wouldn't drift to sleep where the nightmares would await him...

The Hunters who visited the dream were many and not many of them stand out much to him besides Djura, the first Hunter who ever had visited the dream. Most of them came into the dream and fulfilled a task and then they felt they were done and asked him to be freed of the dream. None of them would get the hints he dropped into the workshop, the hints to try and find out just what he hunt is, none of them tried to stop the hunt for good. They just wanted to see the next sunrise again.

Over time more and more graves appeared in the Dream, graves to which the doll tended. Gehrman could barely remember the names of the Hunters. The ones he waited for never arrived. Neither Laurence nor Master Willem came for him. He started to lose more and more hope. Hope that Laurence was still trying to save him. Hope that any Hunter would be strong enough to free him.

There was one Hunter he had the feeling might have been able to do it. A Hunter with the name of Eileen, donning a crow mantle and the mask of a plague doctor, speaking with a foreign accent. She was strong, fierce and swift and she called herself a Hunter of Hunters. A Hunter who would search and dispose of those who had become blood drunk and insane.

Gehrman had high hopes that Eileen might have been able to free him, but one day she also came to him, just like Djura and told him that she wished to stop dreaming, so he fulfilled her wish and never saw her again.

Gehrman wasn't even sure what would happen if someone would kill him in the dream. Would it mean that he would be free or would he just die all alone? Would he get replaced by the one who took him down? He couldn't believe that he Moon Presence would let her precious little host leave that easily.

So, Gehrman waited. He waited many, many years, saw many, many Hunters come by. Over the years, his hair greyed out and his face got crinkled. He grew old. Over these years, his hopes dwindled that someone would ever come for him, even though sometimes he heard the doll talk to a Hunter and she told them that he spoke in his sleep. Was he still hoping for Laurence to come? When Gehrman was an old men, in a place where time seemed to be absent, how would Laurence look like? Would he even be still alive? And Master Willem, who had been already old when Gehrman had been a kid?

No, Gehrman was stuck and he more and more accepted his fate to be stuck here forever, though every time he laid eyes on the doll he got a harsh reminder that someone should be careful what they wished for, because it could make their lives only worse.

All he wanted was to see Maria's smile again, he never had asked for this. If Laurence would ever manage to find him, if his old friend even was still alive, he would warn him to not meddle with the beings known as the Great Ones. Humans were merely toys for them, something they could play with until they broke. He wished he had just stayed in Byrgenwerth, stayed the ground's keeper and that Laurence had listened to Master Willem about the Old Blood.

At this moment, it was a day like any other in the Hunter's Dream, only that a new arrival had appeared. Gehrman had hid himself away like usual and observed them, saw how they picked out the Sawblade as their weapon and stared at the doll with confusion.

When they came back to the Dream hour's later, Gehrman knew they had a successful hunt because they backed away when they saw the doll moving.

Gehrman wheeled himself back into the house and waited for the Hunter to come find him.

Maybe this was one would finally be able to free him from his own personal nightmare.

#badthingshappenbingo #be careful what you wish for #bloodborne #fanfiction #gehrman the first hunter #the plain doll #retired hunter djura #eileen the crow #littlewritesstuff

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colleenmurphy · 4 years ago

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Snippets & Bobs: Changes

@writervega a blurb for you and Hel & Bobby. Because feelings. <3

There were many sides to his wife that David Sullivan, has become acquainted with over the far reaching span of their relationship. There was day to day Colly who would give anyone the shirt off of her back. There was drunk Colly, even more affectionate than normal and ready to dance a jig no matter where she found herself. He had seen her in every way shape and form over the course of their years together except like this. She was currently sprawled out in the middle of their living room floor with a cool damp cloth over her forehead and a basin just within reach in case she needed it. An open sleeve of saltines and a can of flat 7 Up sat on the coffee table as the overhead ceiling fan circled lazily. Sully was beginning to worry, he’s never seen someone throw up that much that forcefully in his entire life. Until now.

Do I ask her if she needs anything? Do I call 911? Do I call Helene since Eileen is out of town on that bingo trip? What the hell do I do?

A curtain of long dark hair flew up as his girl friend found the strength within herself to sit straight up, grab the basin and heave violently into it. It was like watching a car crash, he just couldn’t look away.

“Hey...uh...Colly. I..I’m uh gonna..”

A groan could be heard from the confines the bucket she clutched as she brought her head up to look at him. Normally sparkling green eyes were red rimmed and her long dark hair was haphazardly pulled up into a bun on the top of her head.

“I need you to do a favor for me, Sully. Please.”

Call Doctor Hastings? Drive you to the Emergency room? Go and pick your mother up from that god forsaken bingo parlor over on Shore ave? Anything, just name it and I’ll do it.

“I need you to pick up a test for me from Mercer’s drugstore. I can’t go like this I’ll never make it in once piece and I have a feeling that this isn’t food poisoning.”

The cogs in his mind ground to a dead halt. He was sure he was hearing either television static or the ocean in his own head. Had he heard her correctly?

Drug store. Test. Not food poisoning.

Anything except that.

“Oh don’t freak out on me now, Dave. Just go and get it and we’ll know. It shouldn’t even take five minutes. It’ll take longer to get there than anything else.”

“Can I phone a friend?”

“You can take the entire street and my mother with you if it helps. Just go and get the test, please.”

Two minutes, one bedraggled Bobby Shatford and a ten minute drive a town over and David Sullivan was still near flipping his lid.

“Remind me again just why you had to bring me with you?”

“Moral support, dude.”

“You woke me up from a perfectly good nap for this? Dude just pick up.”

“But which one?”

“I don’t know! Just go with whatever you think Col’d buy or somethin’.

Five more agonizing minutes pass and the wall of pastel pinks and blues overwhelms him. Somewhere over the next aisle he hears a fussy baby let out a wail that rivaled any air horn he’d ever heard. Plus signs and smiley faces and every conceivable ( he snorts at his own turn of phrase there ) all but overwhelm him. Before he knows what comes over him he’s snatched not one or two but six tests and yanks bobby up towards the check out counter. Fifty bucks lighter in the wallet and nearing critical breakdown point Sully sits behind the wheel of his car, his most prized possession next to the girl that captured his heart and his record collection and he fumbles for the keys. How the hell could he manage to fit a baby seat in the back of this car? This car, his bright orange beauty a work of true art is the ‘70 Plymouth that he lovingly restored and painted himself is not a family car. It’s a fun couples car. There was barely room anything in the backseat, well, there was that one time he and Colly had gotten creative parked up on the point overlooking Good Harbor beach but that was besides the point.

Probably how you got her in trouble in the first place, Sullivan.

That snide little voice of reason sniped from the back of his mind.

“But Squier was on the radio and we’d had like two drinks down at the Nest and my god she was wearing that shirt that hugged her in all the right places...the one with the leopard print...”

“Dude! What the fuck is goin’ through that head a yours? Just take me home!”

Sully actually forgot that Bobby was still sitting shotgun and staring at him like he’d grown another head.

“Did I say that out loud?”

“Yes! It’s bad enough you basically kidnap me I don’t need to know what happens in the backseat of your car, Jesus!”

“It was actually the front seat, Bobby.”

A look of total bewilderment and shock crossed his best friend’s face. For a split second he thought for sure Bobby might even cry. Nope, he simply let out a disgruntled squawk and clutched his hands to his chest. The visions his mind was conjuring were not pleasant ones that he wanted of the couple he considered very very dear friend, family even.

“Cripes Dave! Jesus!”

Sully fumbled for the keys once more before threw them at his best friend.

“For the first time in my life I’m going to allow someone else to drive my car. Bobby. You do it, I can’t. I feel like I’m gonna faint.”

“You feel like you’re going to faint? I’m sittin’ in the spot my godchild was probably conceived, Dave! Move over.”

A well placed shoved a fumble before the car roared to life and hey were parked out behind the Crow’s Nest preparing to go back to respective apartments down the street.

“It’ll be okay, man. Kids are what makes the world go around, right?”

“Then why don’t you and Hel have a gaggle by now?”

“We’re pacin’ ourselves.”

“So were we.”

“Well, obviously you missed a sharp turn back there, Sull.”

“You know you’re about as funny as a busted rubber, Shatford?”

“So I’ve been told. Good luck, man. Lemme know if. you want a good price on a minivan, alright?”

“Get out of my car, Robert.”

“Jeesh, looks like David can’t take a joke today. But seriously I’ve got a cousin out in Annisquam that can hook you up.”

“Out.”

“See ya later, bud.”

Grabbing the flimsy pharmacy bag Sully ducked out and sprinted for the door of the tiny apartment that he and Colly called home. He noticed that she had moved herself into a sitting position on the couch and was now surrounded by empty water bottles and looking like she was going to burst.

“Thank god you’re back!”

Tossing the bag into awaiting eager hands Sully started to pace.

“How...all I needed was one. What’d you do buy’em out?”

“Nope, went to Ipswich and they’ve got a bigger selection. Go. I’ll time you.”

An hour and six tests later he stood staring at the assortment of tests spread out on the bathroom counter.

“I can’t look. What do they say?”

“They’re all positive. A few very odd choices for positive results but all signs point to yes.”

A war whoop erupted from his wife as she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him in for the tightest hug he’d ever had in his life.

The walls being as thin as they were they heard a yell from the direction of Helene and Bobby’s place.

“Sweet mother of Christ the world just ain’t ready for a baby Sullivan! Helene! You’re not gonna believe this!”

#Col & Sully #Hel & Bobby #Perfect Storm verse

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themoonandotherslikeit · 5 years ago

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What the Rain Can’t Wash Away- Chapter 15

*FINAL PIECE IN THE LOOK IN HER EYES TRILOGY*

Sixteen years after Lucifer rose and Dean lost his wife, he finds himself with a teenager, a Nephilim, an angel, and his brother living out a Full House rerun with some seriously dark undertones. How will he be able to raise his daughter, fight monsters, and deal with the loss of the love of his life? Sometimes moving on is the hardest part, but with the Winchester’s there’s always something harder around the corner. Isn’t there?

Chapter Fifteen, Of Course She Did

Ava

Four weeks later

Dean was asleep. Sleep had been rare for us in the last few weeks. We all split up. Claire and Jody took one end of the country, going on any lead that Claire could think of. Sam took Jack to the other end of the country, following anything that seemed suspicious. Rowena was working every spell and contact that she had. Dean and I were searching locally, to stay close to the bunker in case she tried to come home. She never did. Castiel hopped in the old truck and drove out to the sandbox which, according to Dean, was a portal to Heaven. I wasn’t sure how Heaven was going to help us, if God was AWOL, but we would take all the help that we could get. Everyone was doing their part.

We didn’t understand how there had been nothing to report in so long, so when Castiel called with news we all rushed back up at the bunker to talk. No matter how much Dean tried to convince him to tell us before he arrived, Cas thought it would be best to be discussed in person.

Dean was asleep, and bless his fucking soul, looking at him made me want to cry. My heart ached for my daughter, for the same little baby who had a pout just like the one that was placed on Dean’s relaxed face as he slept. His eyelashes were still wet from the tears. He wasn’t a crier, but he’d done everything else at this point. He bashed one of the cars with the crow bar, he tinkered with Baby long past the maintenance that she needed, and he drank himself to sleep. We couldn’t find our daughter. She went missing while we were out trying to buy a goddamn bar. We both felt sick about it.

He didn’t blame me, or so he said. He still slept with his arms curled around me, and he didn’t yell, but that was almost worse. We were supposed to be done. It was supposed to be me, Nel, and Dean. We were going to be a family. I never understood how God could allow someone like Dean to be in so much pain. How much did he have to sacrifice before he was done? How much?

I slipped out of bed, sliding out from under his arm. I wouldn’t be gone long, the last thing I needed was to have him wake up alone. I crept out into the kitchen and looked around. I don’t know how to do this. I wanted to scream. I wanted to break something. Instead, I fell to my knees in the middle of the dark kitchen and clasped my hands together.

“Listen here, God or Chuck. Whoever you are. I know you’re on vacation, but we need to talk. You met me before, remember? I came to your house with Dean when we asked you about the books. Yeah, well, as I’m sure you know, my daughter is missing. Dean’s daughter. I know that you care about him. You’ve saved him so many times. He’s your guy , isn’t he? So just... get your ass down here and make it right. Please.”

“I’m sure he will love hearing that,” a female voice said from the shadows.

I sat up a little straighter, my eyes meeting a set of green ones as a redhead in a long dramatic dress stepped out of the shadow. By her thick accent and fiery hair, I recognized her as Rowena, the witch. “I’m not exactly good at praying,” I said forcing a smile. I stood up, dusting the knees of my black leggings. “I’m Ava.”

“The wife,” Rowena said, eyeing me. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Why are you hiding in the shadows?”

“I’m here for the wee one. I just arrived and let myself in.”

It was unsettling to me, how much things changed. Jack, Castiel, Crowley, and now a witch. When Dean explained to me the complicated list of ally’s that we now had, my head spun. He was always shoot and ask questions never . Some things change, I suppose.

“Do you... do you have any leads?” I asked, desperately. I pulled my long sleeved shirt over my hands.

It was mid December. The Christmas lights were blinking all over Lebanon as the town prepared for the Christmas Carnival. We weren’t exactly in a celebratory mood, especially since my last Christmas was spent at the hospital with a newborn and a dead husband. My eyes stung. I wanted to see her, to hold her. I didn’t want to spend her first birthday without her. I wanted to see her turn seventeen.

I always had this idea, that I’d climb into bed with her at midnight on her birthday and cuddle up with her and tell her all about the day she was born. I’d tell her about how strong Sam was, supporting me, and about how beautiful she was. I’d tell her then about how Dean looked the first time he held her. How despite everything, that we were so happy. I’d tell her about when we found out that I was pregnant, and how Dean would talk to my stomach. I’d fall asleep holding her, just like I did when she was little.

Her birthday was so close. I had a bad feeling that we wouldn’t be spending the holiday together.

“I don’t, Ava. I’m sorry. I’ve tried everything I can. The little one is powerfully cloaked. She does not want to be found.”

“How is that possible? She’s just a girl... something must’ve taken her.”

“Or someone,” Castiel’s voice greeted them at the top of the stairs.

I just about jumped out of my skin at the sight of him. “God, you two are so fucking sneaky, you know that?”

Rowena snorted and eyed Castiel. “Hello Angel.”

“Rowena,” Cas said flatly. His eyes looked tired, two purple bags hung under his eyelashes. His whole face looked like it’d aged since the last time I saw him, of course it hadn’t , but the stress was evident. “Where is Dean?”

“He’s asleep. He hasn’t slept at all lately, Cas. I’m worried.”

“He functions off minimal hours.”

“I know that,” I snapped, frustrated. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t fair for me to be angry with him. I was just angry in general. “But he hasn’t even slept minimally. Let him rest.”

“Is Samuel back?” Rowena asked, curiously.

“Yeah,” I sighed, rubbing my eyes. “I think I heard him and Jack come in a few hours ago. Jack was talking to Clementine.”

“And Claire?”

“Yes. Her, Jody, and Donna arrived yesterday.”

“Great,” Cas said with a nod. “Get them up. We all have something to discuss.”

“Fine,” I sighed, twisting my wedding ring on my hand. I glanced between the two supernatural beings in front of me.

I went down the hall, gently knocking on the doors that our guests were resting in. Donna was fast asleep, hugging her pillow. She looked up at me with tired eyes and a quick nod, shuffling into her teddy bear slippers. Her blonde hair was sticking up all over the place. “What’s going on?”

“Cas is back, he wants us all to meet in the kitchen. Can you start a pot of coffee? We are all going to need it,” I explained, gripping the edge of the door.

“Oh you betcha,” Donna said, offering an encouraging smile. She met me at the doorway and caught my shoulder in her hand as I turned to leave. I met her eyes once more, they were kind. “We will find your girl, Ava. We always find them.”

I put my hand on top of hers and gave it a squeeze. I didn’t trust myself to respond without losing the little composure that I had left. She was kind, and I understood why the boys attached themselves to her so tightly.

Jody was still up on her laptop when I went by her room. “Castiel is back. Meet in the kitchen?”

She gave me a quick nod, moving her research supplies off her lap and into her arms.

Claire was sleeping in Nel’s room. She wasn’t happy with me and hadn’t been since Nel disappeared and I dldn’t blame her. I pressed an open palm against the door before knocking softly. There was no answer so I opened the door slowly, only to find Claire curled up in a ball in the middle of the bed. She wore one of Eleanor’s sweatshirts from her school, and her hair was back in a messy, haphazard braid. She hugged her pillow tightly. Her cheeks were stained black from crying.

My heart ached for her, because I’d been there. I’d been there more times than I could count. “Claire,” I said gently, touching her hair. “Castiel is back. He has some news.”

The blonde looked up at me with tired eyes, red from exhaustion and crying. “Fine, I’ll be out there.” She moved her head out from under my touch.

“Okay,” I said softly, standing up, my hand returning to my side. I noticed, then, that Jack and Clementine were curled up asleep on the floor at the end of the bed.

“I’ll get him up,” Claire said with a nod. “Go do whatever you need to.”

I gave her a tight lipped smile. It wasn’t about me, she was just afraid, but it still hurt. I always pictured that whoever Nel grew up to be with, that they’d love me. I pictured a lot of things differently than the way that they turned out.

I’d wake Sam, and then the sleeping bear, I decided. I wanted to give Dean all the time to sleep that I could. I knocked on Sam’s door, opening it basically at the same time. “Sam, hey, Cas is back he...”

I didn’t know what I was looking at.

Long dark hair spilled over bare shoulders, Sam’s beard and messy hair looking up at the woman who was straddling him. She was naked and grinding against him. I was not proud of the anger and embarrassment that bubbled up inside of me. Ava fucking get a grip!

I didn’t realize I was staring at him, my eyes locked on his jaw until he turned and caught me. “Shit,” he muttered, pulling the blanket to cover the girl up. He made eye contact with her and moved his fingers a bit before pointing.

She turned to look at me, and I noticed her hearing aid. His girlfriend, of course!

“Cas is here, meet us out in the kitchen whenever you’re done. Nice to meet you, Eileen,” I said tightly as I blocked my eyes from view.

I turned quickly on my heels and let the door click shut behind me. I pressed my back to the door, trying to calm my breathing. What the fuck was that? I needed to relax. As fresh as my wounds were with Sam, they weren’t actually fresh. I wasn’t in love with him, but somehow I still looked at him and felt like he was my Sam . He was my best friend, my hero. He was the one who fixed me when I was broken, so sue me if I wasn’t interested in some hoe coming in. That’s not fair, there’s no way Sam would date some hoe. Eileen is probably delightful. Somehow that was worse.

Dean

I woke up with Ava’s nose brushing against mine, and I thought for just a second that maybe everything was okay. I felt twenty-seven again, snuggled up with the girl I wasn’t supposed to want, but once my eyes opened and the blur of sleep faded, I realized that I was just me. Me in the bunker. Me in this fucking life. I grunted. “Yeah, babe?”

“How are you feeling? Rested?”

I groaned softly, stretching my aching legs. I could sleep more, I definitely could. I could fall back into the world where everything was warm. A world where my kid was safe. Where I wasn’t such a fucking failure. “Kinda.”

“Cas is back,” Ava said softly, her lips brushing the stubble on my chin. “He has news.”

I said straight up in bed. “Fuck, when?”

“A few minutes ago.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?” My heart was racing, my temples pounding. Fucking hell!

“I did, Dean. I just woke you.”

I rubbed my face, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. I was unreasonable. I was a dick. “Sorry, I’m just...”

“I know. Me too.”

Eleanor is her daughter, too. Of fucking course she is afraid. The fuck kind of husband am I? I sighed and took her hand. Just because she didn’t raise her, didn’t mean she didn’t care as much. If anything she was being strong for me, which is more than I deserve for getting us in his fucking mess in the first place.

She laced her small fingers within mine, and I gave her a gentle squeeze. “Hey,” she murmured, tugging me closer. She stood up on her toes, and I leaned my head down to meet her. She pressed her forehead to mine, and I felt a sense of calm wash over me. “We are going to find her. She’s our girl, Dean. She’s our baby. We are going to find her.”

Ava was trying to be strong, but I could hear her voice threatening to break. There was only so much hurt one person could take. I captured her lips in mine. “I know we will,” I said, hoping to god that I was right.

Castiel stood in the middle of the kitchen with his hands in his pockets. He looked fucking beat. Not that the dude slept, but he looked like he needed a nap. “Hey buddy,” I said carefully.

”Hello, Dean.”

Everyone was sitting in chairs, or leaning against the counter around the room. Everyone that we consider family, well, almost everyone. “Where’s Mom?”

“She picked up the scent of another case with Bobby,” Cas said, meeting my eyes. He shook his head briefly.

Of fucking course she did. “Sure,” I grunted, my annoyance obvious. She was always bad at putting family first. She hadn’t exactly been Grandma of the year, so I wasn’t sure what I expected. Everyone was looking to me for guidance. Wasn’t Sam supposed to be the chief, or whatever? I was done being in charge. I was spent. “Alright, Cas, out with it. What’d you find out?”

There was no joy or hope on the angels face, and it left me feeling pretty goddamn empty. He let out a heavy sigh, and it sounded like someone was sitting on his chest. Ava gripped my hand tighter, her spare arm twisted around mine.

“When I went to Heaven the first time, no one had any information. Angel radio has been quiet for awhile. It was essentially turned off since the fall. So I’ve been searching by other means and coming up short. I never understood, though, how a child could be so powerfully warded from me. Especially since we marked her at a young age for her protection. She would be virtually invisible to anyone but me.”

I watched Cas pick his words carefully, his low gravely voice work through the best way to say whatever the fuck he was trying to get out. It worried me that his usual bluntness was being avoided. His news wasn’t good. I could feel it in my gut.

“Cas,” I said to him, and he met my eyes. “Tell me.”

I could feel his gaze burn right through me like sunlight through a magnifying glass. I swallowed hard, my mouth going dry, and my stomach falling through my ass and smacking the floor.

“I spoke to Anael, and she told me what I was afraid to hear. Michael is back. He’s possessing Eleanor.”

I didn’t hear him. It felt like I was underwater. Everything felt muffled. All I could see was the little five year old girl crawling into my bed after a nightmare. My best friend, my little girl with her pigtails and her toothless smile. I felt like I was going to throw up. I released Ava’s grip and turned sending my fist into the wall. There was a deafening crack as the bones in my hands splintered. I fell forward, my legs giving out, only to catch myself with my uninjured hand against the wall. Ava was at my side immediately, holding me up and rubbing my back.

“No,” I grunted. “You’re wrong. She would’ve had to say yes. She never would’ve said yes. She’s smarter than that.”

“She would have,” Claire spoke up. I turned to look at her. Her gaze was hard, fixed, and serious. “She would’ve done it to save you. She is you, Dean. Of course she would say yes.” Her voice was full of hurt, but not surprise. Just a hardened disappointment.

“She shouldn’t have... She... fuck. I’m the parent. She never...” I couldn’t catch my breath, and Sam came to me with a paper bag. I put my mouth to the opening and breathed in and out.

“So what is the play?” Jody asked, standing up from her seated position.

I couldn’t catch my damn breath. I couldn’t hear over the crinkle of the paper bag, but I trusted that Ava was paying attention. This was all too fucking much.

Ava

Castiel had an idea of where Micheal would be. Anael was contacted by Micheal initially, but her loyalties were wobbly at best. We just needed a plan of how we were going to capture him, or get him out of El.

It all got to be too much for Claire, and she walked out, her sleeve covering her eyes. “I just need a minute.”

There wasn’t a good answer, not really. We didn’t want to hurt Nel, and even though Castiel was able to mend Deans broken bones in his hand, he wouldn’t be able to heal any real damage that Micheal could do to her. “She is the perfect vessel. Her psychic abilities make her mind strong, and she is a direct line from John and Dean. She is the next sword. He will not give her up willingly.”

We would fight to the death for her. We would do anything.

“I’m gonna make some more coffee,” Sam said with a sigh, he turned to Eileen and signed something brief to her before she nodded back to him.

I glanced up at the stairs. “I’m going to check on Claire. She’s been gone awhile,” I sighed, standing up.

“I’ll go with you,” Dean said, giving my hip a squeeze.

We walked up the stairs and pushed out into the night. It was really late, or maybe it was really early. I took in a deep breath of the crisp winter air and felt my chest sting and my nose tingle. I needed to lose it. I needed to break down, but I couldn’t. I had to be strong. I folded my arms across my chest, and Dean wrapped his arms around me. “Are you okay?”

“Are you?” I asked, my voice not sounded half as strong as I wanted it to. I closed my eyes to try to center myself.

“I’m not, Ave.” He placed a kiss into my hair and buried his face into my curls. “You’re not either.”

A single sob escaped my lips, shook my chest, breaking through. “She’s our little girl, Dean.”

His arms moved up to wrap around my own arms, and he squeezed me gently. He held me tightly, keeping the cracks in my heart from breaking. I gasped a bit and let myself collapse. I cried, my chest shaking, and my head dipping to my chest. It hurt, but letting it out, screaming, sobbing, and digging my nails into my arms.

I let myself relax, when there were no tears left in my body. My eyes were swollen, and my throat stung. I was gasping for breath. “You’re okay, Ave. I’ve got you,” he whispered into my hair.

I turned around to face him, and I hugged him tightly. “I love you with my whole heart.”

He pressed his forehead to mine, his hands rubbing down my back. “Love you with every breath in my body.”

I wiped my eyes and released our embrace to look for Claire. We’d given her enough time. We gave ourselves enough time. Well, at least all the time we could allow.

“Claire?” I called, looking around.

“Biker Barbie? Where ya at?”

The frost on the grass and driveway were undisturbed, and I suddenly had a terrible gut feeling. “Dean?”

He turned to me with a tilt of his head. “What’s up?”

“I don’t think she came out here.”

“Then where is,” he began, before something clicked in his head. I watched his eyes widen and his eyebrows shoot up. “Oh son of a bitch!”

He turned on his heels, pulling me back into the bunker. We opened the door to the garage to see a line of cars, all kept pristine. Dean’s speed picked up as he jogged to the end of the line. He saw it before I did, but by his reaction I knew exactly what happened.

“Mother fucker!” Dean shouted, collapsing to his knees, his fists colliding with the concrete ground of the garage.

Claire took the Impala. She was going after Michael.

—————

Chapter Sixteen, Out of My Mind

Get caught up!

Tag list:

@deans-baby-momma

@xjamiedennettx

@linki-locks11

@sonnierae26

@ricky-666s-blog

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avaliveradio · 3 years ago

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Pop Country Songwriter Eileen Carey's New Release 'Leave It All Behind'

Artist: Eileen Carey

New Release: Leave It All Behind

Genre: Pop-Country, singer-songwriter

Sounds like: : “Carey— a little bit cosmopolitan, a little bit country, a true musical chameleon, blending pop and rock and country influences with ease .Fans have recognized Carey’s star-quality for years, but now the critics are starting to take notice as well”. – (ElmoreMagazine.com)” 2017 “Blending pop, country, and rock in a music that feels uniquely hers.” (POPDOSE) “Eileen Carey is a singer-songwriter-vocalist in the Pop-Country genre who has emerged over the last few years as both an accomplished storyteller and effective, appealing stylist, while making music that deftly combines country influences with pop arrangements. Her songs also offer distinct, prominent messages about personal empowerment and emotional fulfillment.” - Ron Wynn, Nashville Music Guide “The crowd was hooked from the moment “Hearts of Time” kicked off the night. Carey’s sassy yet humble stage demeanor gave off Gretchen Wilson meets Miranda Lambert vibes, which clearly appealed to the crowd, which engaged in hand clapping, line dancing and singing along.” - Heather Allen, Music Connection

Located in: : Altadena, CA 91001

Onwards and Upwards: In Motivational “Leave It All Behind” Single, Artist of the Year Eileen Carey Urges Listeners to Move On From the Past “Blending pop, country, and rock in a way that feels uniquely hers.” (POPDOSE) HEAR EILEEN CAREY’S ODE TO INDEPENDENCE “LEAVE IT ALL BEHIND” HERE In both her new single “Leave It All Behind” and her overall career trajectory, it’s onward and upward for New Music Weekly AC/Hot AC Breakthrough Artist of the Year Eileen Carey. Continuing her knack for crafting perfectly blended country and pop, Carey’s latest single is the latest testament to her positive, forward-looking approach to life and love. “Leave It All Behind” is available June 21 via _______. Carey is heading to her home away from home, Nashville, Tennessee from June 15 to 20 to record new songs and will kick off the summer concert schedule with a show at the Orange County Fair on Saturday, July 24 (1:30 PM on the Hanger Stage). Co-written by Kathryn Grimm and Travis Allen, “Leave It All Behind” is an upbeat anthem of self-belief, endurance, and independence. Described by Elmore Magazine as “a little bit cosmopolitan, a little bit country,” the critically acclaimed Carey explains how “Leave It All Behind” is meant to inspire listeners who feel trapped in a negative situation: “Sometimes we get stuck in the past or in a mess that we can't get out of. We then think everyone else somehow has the answer. But the truth is that we will always find a way - if we believe in ourselves.” Believing in herself seems to come naturally for Carey. The chart-topping singer has forged a wildly successful career through her tenacity and her desire to let love rule. Nashville Music Guide best explains why Carey and her feel-good blend of pop, rock, and country has connected with fans and critics alike: “Eileen Carey has emerged over the last few years as both an accomplished storyteller and an appealing stylist. Her songs offer much needed messages of emotional fulfillment and personal empowerment.” Now situated alongside household names like Post Malone, Five Seconds of Summer, and the duo of Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, Carey has done things her own way and very much on her own timetable. The result is an astonishing eighteen music awards in half a decade, including: IMN Fan Favorite Female Country Artist for 2020 Reverbnation #1 Regional Country-Pop Artist for April 2019 Los Angeles Music Awards Crossover Artist for 2018 Los Angeles Music Awards Country Music Performer of the Year for 2017 Independent Radio Network Crossover Artist for 2016 Carey also uplifts women via her blog The Music Mom. Much like “Leave It All Behind,” The Music Mom reveals Carey's desire to positively impact others through the sharing of her experiences and wisdom: “The world is filled with ups and downs, so I want to help people see things in a more positive light and find a better place in life.” For more information on Eileen Carey, visit her social media: FACEBOOK | TWITTER | YOUTUBE For press inquiries, please contact ________

This single represents Eileen's continuing move over to Pop. So many influences Sheryl Crowe, Martha Davis, Keith Urban, Singers like Celine Dion and Whitney Houston. Songwriters Lennon McCartney and Diane Warren

Right now we are...

Heading to Nashville Tuesday, June 15, going into the studio at Nashville Tracks to lay down a number of vocals on her new material.

Artists Bio..

A Long and Winding Road: How One Night’s Drive Turned Eileen Carey into a Pop-Country Phenom By Matthew Kayser As the late twenty-something wife and mother of two daughters drove home from yet another exhausting 15-hour shift, something snapped within Eileen Carey. After spending years booking entertainment for a Los Angeles hotel, Carey realized that it was now her turn to write, sing, and perform the songs she loved. Yes, she had been the consummate family woman, fully devoted to her kids and her husband. And yes, she knew that most professional artists launch their careers when they’re young. Or at least younger. But the California-based Carey has a habit of trusting her heart. And her heart was quite emphatic in insisting that now was the time Country to pursue her lifelong dream of a career in music. That now was the time to prove to her daughters that any woman - no matter her age or her social status - can achieve whatever it is she wants.

Besides, Carey thought, if not now, when? And with this realization, Carey’s most unlikely and inspiring music career began. Eileen Carey has always been a lover and a fighter. The chart-topping country pop artist has forged a wildly successful career through both her tenacity and her desire to let love rule. Carey has proven that very good things can come to those who wait - and work. While Elmore Magazine describes Carey’s sound as “a little bit cosmopolitan, a little bit country,” Nashville Music Guide best explains why Carey and her feel-good blend of pop, rock, and country has connected with fans and critics alike: “Eileen Carey has emerged over the last few years as both an accomplished storyteller and an appealing stylist. Her songs offer much needed messages of emotional fulfillment and personal empowerment.” Empowerment is evident in Carey’s long and winding path to being named the New Music Weekly’s AC/Hot AC Breakthrough Artist of 2019 and 2020. And in 2018 was their Country Breakthrough Artist. Now situated alongside household names like Post Malone, Five Seconds of Summer, and the duo of Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, Carey has done things her own way and very much on her own timetable. This includes crashing the low glass ceiling facing women in country music: “When I was thirty, an A&R guy in Nashville told me, “You’re too old. Go home.” He is now one of my biggest supporters. I don’t believe that anything should hold back talent, effort, and aspiration. Not gender, age, or race.” Carey credits her urge to push for equality to heroes from multiple spheres of social influence and her desire to positively impact her daughters: “I am inspired by the huge numbers of women making waves in society, whether it’s in sports, business, or the political arena. I have two daughters, so this is very important to me.” Fueled by her hunger for equality, her self-belief, and her love for her family, Carey followed her car-ride epiphany with the release of two tracks, one a cover, and one original. The cover was Carey’s take on Patsy Cline’s hit “Walking After Midnight.” Carey’s rendition of the Cline classic was the winning track in a Nashville radio syndicated fan contest. Carey just so happened to beat out Martina McBride. Carey’s other track was “That Town,” a nostalgic look back at the songwriter’s youth spent in Ohio. “That Town” soon took off on Adult Contemporary radio. Carey’s first two songs convinced her that she really did have the goods to succeed in the music industry. A look at her list of accomplishments since then has proven Carey correct. She’s won an astonishing eighteen music awards in half a decade, including: • New Music Weekly AC/Hot AC Breakthrough Artist of the Year for 2019 & 2020 • Reverbnation #1 Regional Country-Pop Artist for April 2019 • IMN Fan Favorite Female Country Artist 2020 • Los Angeles Music Awards Crossover Artist for 2018 • New Music Weekly Country Breakthrough Artist for 2018 • Los Angeles Music Awards Country Music Performer of the Year for 2017 • Independent Radio Network Crossover Artist for 2016 Perhaps most indicative of her magical rise is the who’s-who of legends with whom Carey has shared a stage, including Rita Coolidge, Wilson Phillips, Don McLean, Jefferson Starship, Martha Davis, Johnny Rivers, Peter Noone, Nelson, and Tal Bachman. Following in the footsteps of what The Hype Magazine calls a “long line of radio hits,” Carey’s recent single “Keep Your Love to Yourself” is a rally cry for women who find themselves in abusive relationships. The song’s message is loud and clear: every woman deserves a healthy, positive relationship in which they are treated as equals - and anything less simply won’t cut it. It is this unrestrained tenacity and commitment to positivity that has inspired the songstress to take part in several projects aimed at making Carey and her fans healthier and happier human beings. Whether it’s promoting physical and mental health via kickboxing and time spent outdoors, caring for animals through her work with FixNation and her family’s nonprofit organization Stray Paws Animal Haven, or providing thoughtful parenting advice on her blog The Music Mom, Carey strives to offer support and encouragement for listeners everywhere: “I try to give people a different way of thinking about the world and their role in it. I want them to focus on the positive aspects of life. I genuinely believe that very good things will happen for them if they do.” In addition to positivity, two other words perfectly describe Carey, her music, and her career: passion and persistence. Carey’s endless enthusiasm and determination to see the good in life has produced a career that teaches a valuable lesson: slow and steady may win the race, but genuine and likable earn the winner much applause. And while she was familiar with applause due to one of her hotel management chores being the booking of the entertainment many years ago, it took a fateful drive home and lots of hard work for Eileen Carey to finally be on the other end of it. Written by Matthew Kayser [email protected] an accomplished writer, teacher, and musician.

LINKS: www.EileenCarey.com www.TheMusicMom.com www.cdbaby.com/Artist/EileenCarey www.facebook.com/EileenCareyofficial www.Twitter.com/EileenCarey https://www.instagram.com/eileencareymusic/ www.youtube.com/user/Rolley23EileenCarey https://soundcloud.com/EileenCarey www.reverbnation.com/EileenCarey https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/eileen-carey/id4240542 https://www.linkedin.com/in/eileen-carey–1775528

Reviews:

Mountainlady of Back to the roots wrote:

“Great song, just way too pop for my current playlist, reminds me of my teen years when I liked music like that:) I look forward to listening to more form you in the future.”

Post To Wire wrote:

Thanks for sending your track our way . This is right on point for that country pop listener. Keep up the great work.

Run Hundred wrote:

"The guitars remind me of U2—while the soaring vocals make for an excellent contrast—but the tempo is too slow for our audience otherwise I would have posted you for sure.”

Glasse Factory wrote:

“The vocal styling in this has a bit of a commercial feel for what we like to share with our audience but you have a great song and vibe to your music.!"

EarToTheGround Music wrote:

"I appreciate the pop energy here, unfortunately with country we're looking for a bit more of a throwback style overall. Great work.”

Nam Radio wrote:

"Awesome track, it is lively and I enjoy listening to your music.”

Press:

CBN Network of Caribbean Broadcast Network has shared "Eileen Carey - Leave It All Behind" on 6/16 in rotation. They had this to add: Greetings, your MP3 was distributed to our stations' DJ's (32) and was played and will continue to be played by DJ’s who choose to include it in their regular line ups and or when they play at events! ♛♬

Mark-Xtreme of Ejazz Radio has shared "Eileen Carey - Leave It All Behind" here: 17th June 1-2pm EAT.

They had this to add: Radio link : radio.ejazzug.com

Playlists Supporting this single:

🔥Release Radar New Music Playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2JOBcgSYgGmV2g27N1CUXx?si=PQFpAPUbQ0m4ByZEbtBtLg

🔥JAX DAILY Morning Coffee Playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7pEY8BiSj6sLLSHAoOo9k0?si=IrwIjmHVRN2vswRyw_P6gA

🔥Songwriter Gold https://open.spotify.com/playlist/68x51bTCMLuLi4o6vqwGfh?si=hXz5kG-rTN-bGkZBJuPm9g

🔥SUMMER SINGLES Fresh Indie Music Finds https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7oQCpI2xEN2RaGWLcRGQJX?si=o93Tf3RwSH2HLg4B57qAVw

🔥Road Trip Best Indie Folk 2020 Music Playlist - Indie / Pop / Folk / Rock https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1PLd9drToDxT0rUcGWGpZ9?si=FvfbaXtcQ1-HJyHf3h59oA

🔥 Country Gold https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1mOu6js2o1Vqwst3r6Znq3?si=j-WKFuWfQ8qPw3nx2nwryg

#Eileen Carey #Country Music

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ravenstyx · 7 years ago

Text

A Spider’s Web

Rated: M/A for violence, drug and alcohol use and addiction, sexual content

Summary: A collection of inter-connected one-shots in the Cardinal Universe, for now, exploring the relationships in the aforementioned story. Jerza, Miraxus, Miraza, Gruvia, Nali, Gildarts x Eileen, Eileen x Acnologia. I reserve the right to add in others as I please.

Also found HERE

Running narcotics in the city was never easy. Doing it for Tante Eileen while trying to get on her good side again was even worse. Juvia wasn't a runner. Not by trade. She was a singer. She was a server. She was a girl that did her best work on her back. She was Eileen's whipping girl because Tante Eileen wasn't sure if she was still loyal to Tante Kyouka and Juvia… she didn't know, either.

Unlike her mother, Tante Erza was nice enough. She didn't put Juvia down. She didn't swear. She didn't do much of anything, really, except scheme and lay with the bartender and escort Mirajane. Did Erza suspect that Juvia didn't know what they whispered about in the room next door when the lights got low and their clothes came off? Perhaps not. Tante Erza was good, sure, but she was new. Juvia collected her secrets and she kept them because that's what good whores did when they wanted to stay off the map long enough to figure out which route was the best route.

Today, Juvia took the shipment stamped with a brown recluse, the same spider that was tattooed on her neck, to the old automotive shop on Jesper Street. It wasn't the most inconspicuous meetups she could think of but Tante Eileen and thusly Tante Erza never cared much about what their runners faced. Let the dogs sniff out the holes for the coyotes, why not, while the wolves sat on their thrones.

She came out of the woods on foot in a pair of shin-high boots and tights, the mornings were cold now, and adjusted the backpack on her jacket-clad shoulders. It wasn't a very big shipment that she carried. Hardly worth the run at all, really, considering the kinds of deals Somnium usually made. There was a time when Juvia was more suspicious of the make work like this but it had been a long time between fixes. Tante Eileen was holding out on her and so was everyone else on her orders. Aside from that, though, Aria started school a few weeks ago and Juvia wanted to get her something nice. There had been a purple Sparkle My Little Pony backpack that had caught her eye the last time Juvia had dared to take her into Costco, brave only because Kyouka was by her side and Gray was in jail for a murder he hadn't committed but had confessed to, and she would give anything to have the thirty dollars it cost to buy Aria that bag. Anything.

Tante Eileen promised that it would be purchased and delivered; she just had to do this job.

Juvia checked her surroundings before she stepped foot on the broken concrete driveway. There was nothing but highway and treeline for as far as the eye could see; northern forest that was good for blueberry growing, northern highway that carried transport trucks full of food and supplies bound for the northern territories. Nothing else. No conspicuous cars in the parking lot, no cars on the road. She hiked the bag high again and scampered across the lot, feeling like the criminal she pseudo-was. Prostitution was legal in Magnolia. Drug-running was not.

No one stopped her as she skidded to a halt beneath the Imperial Automotive awning. The white plaster building threw sunlight and blinded her. She held her breath and her backpack as a huge Dempster's Bread transport rumbled down the highway, trying to make herself one with the building. When it had passed, she let out all the air in her lungs and tried the man door for the ancient oil shop. It opened with a squeak and a groan. Dust fell from the ceiling and went into her hair. Juvia held off on brushing it out, focusing instead on surveying the building.

There were tired lift jacks, a tire or two, some dusty bottles of engine oil, grease stains on the floor, a grease gun, the tube descending from the ceiling in a coiled mess. To the right was another man door and beyond that was a desk that had, at one point, been made of plywood. Now it was sagging and rotted through, hard northern winters taking their toll on everything. She breathed in mildew and crisp autumn air. She breathed in aftershave. Juvia was tense even before turning but upon doing so and seeing his gnarled and exasperated expression, she thought her heart would explode. She backed away from him quickly even as Gray grabbed her wrist. It wasn't the first time he'd taken her hard enough to bruise.

"Ow!" she chirped and Gray loosened his hold on her immediately, as he hadn't last time when he wanted her attention and all she wanted to do was get away from him. It seemed he was ashamed of the handprint he left on her arm; Juvia took advantage of his contriteness and twisted out of his hold. She didn’t get far, turning into the chest of his partner. He pushed her back roughly; Gray was there to keep her from falling. Juvia felt all of the fight leave her system in a weak whoosh that could have been defeat. She would not cry. Would not. It was a close thing as Gray stripped her of the backpack she wore. He rooted through the contents right then and there in his black Narcotics uniform, moving methodically and professionally. She almost remembered why she loved him then. He was so detached. She almost remembered why she hated him, too.

"Where's the rest of it?"

"That's all," Juvia replied.

“This is a long run from the city for that’s all.”

“But it’s true.”

Gray scowled up at her, trying to see the lies in the truth. Juvia licked her dry lips and Gray thought he latched onto a nervous twitch. "Get the team to search the area," he told his partner. "Try to dig up her car and any associates she brought with her."

“On it.”

"It was just me," Juvia said. “And my car is empty.”

Gray ignored her like she thought he would. "I'll get her loaded and bring her down to the station."

"Yeah." His partner made to do his bidding and Juvia was strapped with a pair of handcuffs that were this side of tight. She bit back her complaints.

Imperial Automotive's door slammed and Gray got on his phone, a huge satellite contraption because there wasn't much signal so far north. He called in the bust to head office, then got on the phone to whoever had dropped him and his team off there likely hours and hours before. When he hung up, he grabbed Juvia by the elbow and corralled her toward the exit.

"You're a lot more cooperative than my last bust," Gray murmured when she hurried her steps to match his long ones.

"Should I fight?" Juvia returned.

"I don't want for things to get ugly."

Hilarious. "They are already."

He stepped out into the sunshine and the light was kind to him. There were a few crow’s feet by the corners of his eyes and his mouth had worry lines, there was the odd shot of grey in his hair that hadn't been there before Aria was born four years before, but he was handsome. Heartbreakingly so. Juvia turned her eyes out toward the highway where a black Yukon roared over the northern road to their position. It was safer that way. Not looking at him. When the truck stopped, Gray opened the back door and ushered her inside. She wished he'd waited for another vehicle but he climbed into the front seat. There was a cage separating them and he remained facing forward while one of his men drove but Juvia had a clear view of the back of his head. She looked at him shamelessly and wondered at all of the things she'd somehow lost.

The MPD was as monstrous as ever. A building made of old and new. Skylights kept it bright when the floors and walls were made from deep wood and black tile, the bustle of every day traffic kept it alive. Juvia counted the railings as she ascended the stairs to the interrogation room. Fifty-seven. Eyes were on her, some from the public, some from the police department, men and women that had seen plenty of criminals come and go. Not her, though. She'd bet she and Gray were the talk of the town. Narcotics frontman Gray Fullbuster and his renegade addict baby momma. She'd spent years sliding under the radar during Kyouka's rule at Somnium, or Dreaming Tree as it was colloquially known on the streets, a bordello and a front for one of the biggest cartels in Magnolia, second only to Acnologia's Prodigure, but here she was, tripping on her feet, and why? Someone had ratted over a small shipment of fentanyl.

At the top of the stairs, Captain Milkovich stopped their progress, her hand on Gray's arm just a little too intimate. Juvia had seen enough to know when two people were fucking but trying to keep it secret. Her voice was caramelized sugar; Gray leaned into her subconsciously. Juvia hated her immediately for the way she wrapped him up around her finger without doing a damn thing. She hated her further for the way that she had everything together. For the way that she saw Aria more than Juvia did. For the way that she was…

Better.

In every sense of the word. Just better. Ultear Milkovich didn't stare at the fentanyl patches on Tante Eileen’s desk for hours fighting the urge to stick one on her skin just so she could feel nothing at all. Just because she'd done it too many times before and couldn't seem to stop. It didn't chew at her. Ultear Milkovich didn't kneel at Eileen Belserion's feet, hoping that the Tante was feeling charitable that day and would not stick her downstairs with Tante Kyouka—not Tante, Juvia reminded herself, not anymore, just Kyouka. Disgraced Kyouka—and punish her as she did Kyouka for betraying them all to Acnologia.

"Do you want me to call in someone else?" Ultear whispered. Juvia bet that she imagined she was being secretive; there wasn't enough space between the three of them for that.

"It's fine," Gray said.

"This is a conflict of interest," Ultear maintained.

"I can do it, Ul. Doesn't mean anything to me," Gray said. He had perfected a blank face; Juvia knew he was a liar. It meant something. It had to. He didn't tighten her cuffs too much because it meant nothing. He didn't leave his handprint on her wrist months ago for nothing. "Trust me."

"Alright," Ultear said without as much fight as Juvia expected. Maybe they were in love? Or maybe it was a ploy to make Juvia feel comfortable. Did Ultear suspect that Gray could get information from her that someone else wouldn't be able to?

Whatever the reason, Ultear stepped aside and Gray took Juvia into an interrogation room that was all too familiar. The walls were dark but there were so many bright fluorescent lights hanging off chains that the room didn't seem dingy. She could perfectly see the concrete floor stained with old blood. She imagined that it belonged to one of the officers—beating prisoners was frowned upon these days. On the opposite side of the room was one-way glass. Juvia stared at it, trying to see through; of course she could not.

"Sit," Gray told her. Juvia took one of the chairs bolted to the floor and leaned back. Gray sat opposite her and did the same. "Here we are again." His voice was full of disappointment.

"This is the only way I get to see you," Juvia said offhandedly, half-sarcastic, half-genuine and was glad when he recoiled some. Good. He recovered, though.

"You know how this works." Those simple words cut deeply; Juvia scowled and Gray was careful to keep his triumphant expression under wraps. "I'll go over everything anyway—"

"Just go," Juvia said.

Gray looked like he was going to go into the details anyway. Then he sighed and the interrogation began. He was right, she'd been through all this before, for the same reasons. She'd spent a few weeks in jail for it, even, and had anticipated Gray's line of questioning. She hadn't anticipated the way he'd look over his notebook with something anguished in his eyes when she didn't tell him what he wanted to hear—where the drugs came from, where they were going. She didn't anticipate the way he sat back when he was done. The way he said, "You're free to go, Juvia."

"I'm…?"

"Good to get out of here. Go home. I don't want to look at you again."

She was wary, not ecstatic. "Why?"

"Because a few units of the patch aren't enough to justify clogging up the jail cells."

She chewed her cheek before speaking. "If you think I'm going to lead you to the supply—"

Gray stood so he could sit in front of her, one leg on the ground, the other on the table. "I know it comes from Somnium," he said. His eyes were on the spider tattooed on Juvia's neck. "I know something else, too, that I think you should know."

Her curiosity was strong. So was her wariness. "What's asking going to cost me?"

"Nothing," Gray retorted. "I'll tell you for free. The Spider sold you out."

"Pardon?"

"The Spider. Eileen Belserion. It was her that made the call. It was her that told me to set up at Imperial."

Juvia's response was immediate. "She just called you up and said Hey, Detective, this girl is running drugs up north, better catch her and her tiny supply. Few hundred bucks, it'll be worth the effort. Sounds legit."

"That's not exactly how it happened. She led me to believe that there was a larger shipment which makes me think that either you were a decoy, or she wants you out of the picture, Juvia."

His words sunk in. "If that's true and you let me go…"

Gray didn't fill in the blanks for her and Juvia was afraid to. She had to ask herself if she was more afraid of Eileen Belserion or jail. She had to believe that she was still useful to the Spider. If she bailed now, she'd be killed, but if she went back… maybe Eileen would appreciate her mettle and forgive her for her association with Kyouka.

Maybe.

She rose and held out her hands. Gray unlocked her handcuffs; the tips of his fingers were calloused on her forearms and palms, but gentle. Juvia felt his eyes on her back all the way out of the Constabulary.

This side of Magnolia was trapped in soft decay. There were flowers on rusty lampposts, there were murals on the sides of decrepit buildings, professionally painted ones. The old town train station, the Ojibwa chief in a time before industry gripped the city, the old post office's side painted with a road traveled by a horse pulling a buggy.

It was all surface gloss. There was unkemptness to it all; the beauty truly faded when one stepped out of the main road and into the alleys behind the buildings. Away from the light and into the shadow where the dumpsters were scrawled upon with graffiti, where the garbage gathered against soggy fence posts, where a knock on the right apartment door would get you almost anything you wanted, a rainbow of pills, bowls full of herb, everything from salvia to the tamer green of marijuana.

Juvia felt a twitch in her muscles as she navigated the familiar area to a corner where the police didn't often patrol. Longing, that's what that feeling was. Hankering. She wanted her head to spin, she wanted her muscles loose, she wanted to feel nothing while she did this. So badly.

Breathe.

Because she needed to focus. Typically, she didn't partake in such a dangerous task—wandering around late at night, propositioning those that would rather risk paying a prostitute on the streets than go through the official channels, enjoying their experience at an official bordello under the rule of a registered Matriarch.

Juvia supposed she could go to Somnium and beg Tante Eileen and Tante Erza the use of one of the upstairs rooms. That would have been fine. Somnium would reap a percentage of her profits, as was the way, and she wouldn’t be taking her life into her hands, but Tante Eileen would never accept the money Juvia made in her establishment as payment for the money she lost when she didn't sell the fentanyl. It wouldn't matter that the drug was confiscated during an arrest, that profit was lost and it needed to be repaid.

She parted with the blue coat she wore, though mid-October was cold, and adjusted her dress so it sat low around her chest and high on her legs. She shed her tights, too, bundling those up with her coat and tucking them behind a blue recycling bin. When she was ready, she stepped out into the setting sun, trying to milk whatever warmth she could from the fading rays, and prepared for a long night.

She had men come and go, ones that wanted everything from a grope to the full package. Some tried to short change her, others tried to not pay at all, some overpaid with a smile and a wink.

The moon was high and Juvia's pockets were far from full when the headlights of a truck pulled down the alley. She wished there was warmth to be had in the light's bright glow but there was only October's bitter wind and the rustle of leaves hustling down the street, dekeing between the truck's tires.

The vehicle pulled up beside her and the window came down; hot air rushed out and made goosebumps rise on Juvia's arms. She rested her forearms on the windowsill and leaned in. The greeting she'd been harvesting dried up on her tongue when she realized she recognized the person sitting behind the wheel. She leaned away without a word. Gray's voice called her back.

"Get in, Juvia."

She almost listened but caught herself. "No, thanks."

He’d always been bossy. "Get in or I'm calling you in."

"What are you going to say? You saw me standing in the Stacks?"

"That you're trying to sell yourself on the street in the Stacks."

"That's a big assumption." She started walking away. Gray found his accelerator and followed her.

"That's the only reason girls like you come by here. Stop with the games and get in."

"Why?" she asked viciously.

"So I can drive you back to Somnium," he said immediately. When that didn't stop her, he said, "It's not safe out here."

"Looked safe enough to me until you showed up."

Gray didn’t let her words cut him. Pity. "It wasn't so long ago that the Cardinal killings stopped."

"That man is dead and his associates are behind bars," she said succinctly.

He huffed exasperatedly. "Juvia—"

She reeled on him. "I don't care, Gray. I'm more afraid of what's going to happen to me when I go back to Somnium then I am of the off chance of some client getting rough. Now, if you don't mind, I have a lot of work to do before I can even consider returning to Tante Eileen."

He didn't just recoil at her harsh tone, he slowed down. Juvia thought that was the end of it. He revved the engine and caught up to her again a moment later. "I can help you," he said, and he sounded much more sincere. “You won’t have to deal with the weirdos that can’t get what they want in the bordellos.”

"Oh, will you put me into protection for selling a few cheap secrets?" she asked sarcastically.

"If that's what you need."

"I'll be dead before the first day is done.” Tante Eileen’s reach was far. Maybe as far as the Black Dragon’s. “What I need is money, not protection. Unless you're handing it out, leave me alone."

Gray said again, "Get in."

"Fuck off."

His voice snapped against her like a whip. "Juvia. Just get the fuck in. I'll—"

Juvia snapped back. "You'll what?"

He looked up and down the back alley, into the windows of the apartments above. He got an all clear so he felt safe enough to open the console and pull out a wad of cash. "Give you this. To pay your debts." Juvia stopped in her tracks, and the Sierra stopped as well. She reached into the cab for the roll; he held it back. "Get in."

She'd gotten into stranger's vehicles for less. What was getting into Gray's? She climbed in and Gray, true to his word, passed it over. He put his foot down then and accelerated. Juvia didn't panic. She counted the bills. It was enough. She clutched the money, feeling like it was a lifeline, and chewed her cheek. "Where are we going?"

Gray stared at the road. "I don't know."

"You don't know?" There was a wobble in her voice. Sometimes, he scared her and she couldn't hide it. He was too intense. Unpredictable when he was under pressure.

"Away from here."

"You're just going to drive forever?"

"No. Of course not," Gray said.

"Then? Back to Somnium?"

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Somnium is poison.”

“It’s my home.”

“You should leave.”

“And go where?” she asked. “Maybe Daisy’s is hiring. Oh, wait, they don’t like girls with a runny nose.”

His jaw flexed. “You need to get off that shit.”

“And you need to mind your own business.”

“I would if Lyon didn’t tell me he got a call two weeks ago about a girl passed out in the bathroom of a fucking Starbucks, ODing on shitty powder cut with fentanyl. Sound familiar?”

She’d been doing fine until that moment but now all Juvia could think about was the burn down her nose, the drip in her throat. She took a deep breath into hollow-feeling lungs. That didn’t help. She dug her fingernails into her legs. Gray noticed. He reached across the console and took her hand away from her leg. She tore out of his grasp and tried to make herself small by the window.

“Juvia…”

“Stop the car and let me out.”

Maybe he had a hearing problem; he didn’t even feather the breaks. “I’m worried about you.”

“I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

“You will be. If you keep trying.” The silence that webbed between them lasted for all of ten seconds. "Aria said to me this morning that she wanted to see you."

It was a ploy to distract her and to make her feel better. It worked. Juvia lifted her head away from the window. "She did?" The last time she'd seen her daughter, Aria had been by her side in Somnium, seeing too much, hearing too much. Aria was all too excited to go back with Gray when he was cleared. It almost killed Juvia. She had to admit, though, that this was better. She loved her daughter enough for that.

"She loves you."

"She does?" The words were out before Juvia could stop them.

Gray didn't look at her; he squeezed the steering wheel until his knuckles were white. "Of course she does. Did you want to visit?”

“Yes.”

His shoulders dropped their tension as soon as he had something to focus on, a destination. “Then that’s where we’ll go.”

She felt the hot press of tears against her eyes. She choked them all back and watched the world go by. Buildings, bus stations, houses. The world opened up and the city fell away; trees took the place of skyscrapers. They traveled to the sound of Pink Floyd's Lunatic. Juvia mouthed the words; it was her song of choice when she was digging her nails into her arm hard enough to draw blood while in the grips of withdrawal. It helped her now, too. She didn't look Gray's way, she didn't sob into her hands, she didn't think how fucked up she was, in too deep and trying to keep her head above the water. She thought about her daughter.

The truck slowed. Juvia looked up and watched as the white brick bungalow came into view. She'd never lived there, it was bought long after she gave up and gave into Tante Kyouka, but looking at its siding, the yard her daughter romped in with the little fluffy dog that went everywhere with her, she wished that it could have been hers.

Those were wants for a different girl.

But hell. As soon as the truck door slammed behind Gray, the front door burst open and Aria came spinning out, Weiner the little spaniel at her heels, Juvia thought she'd give anything to have this.

"Daddy—" Aria's words died off as soon as she laid eyes on Juvia. Wiener had been barking in joy, now he barked because there was someone he didn't know on his property. Juvia held her breath. Aria squealed, "Mummy!" and started running again. When she hit Juvia's legs, Juvia thought she'd fall over, off balance physically and metaphorically.

"Hi, baby."

Aria peppered her with a thousand questions in a matter of seconds. Juvia could barely keep up and fell off the track completely upon seeing the babysitter in the doorway. She was young and stared at Juvia even while she talked to Gray, who was handing out money again. She disappeared into the house and reappeared a second later with her school bag and purse. She called goodbye to Aria, who waved enthusiastically, and then she was gone.

Gray said, "Come on, Aria. It's dinner time."

"But Mommy—"

"Is coming to eat with us," Gray replied without looking at Juvia for confirmation. They hadn't talked about dinner. Juvia thought she could use it, though, probably, because she couldn't remember the last time she ate or felt hungry for anything, really. She let Aria take her hand and bring her inside the modern bungalow. It was nice. Simple. Cleaned, though there was evidence of Aria's presence—a toy box in a play room off the foyer that had been left open because she had too many things. Juvia simultaneously felt stupid for wanting to get her the sparkle backpack and justified—everyone else had given her things but Juvia—she hadn't much to contribute.

"Let's go wash up," Gray told Aria. Aria released Juvia's hand and raced down the hall. Gray followed behind. Juvia lingered, migrating into the toy room where she gazed down at the toy box. Some items she recognized. My Little Pony's, Peppa Pig, and a Batman doll. There was a picture taped in the top left corner of the box lid—Aria, Gray, and Ultear Milkovich at an amusement park. Gray held Aria and didn't touch Ultear at all, but Juvia felt cold and bitter. This woman was living the life Juvia couldn't.

"Juvia?" Gray asked from the doorway.

"Hm?"

"Dinner is on the table. Laki set it out before she left."

Juvia left the box and hopefully, the bitter expression on her face, and found a smile somewhere in her repertoire. She did what she hadn't in years: sat down to a family meal in a kitchen that looked like it climbed out of the colonial era, all pale pine cupboards, burnt pine floorboards. Rustic. Nice. Gray did well with his salary, apparently.

Dinner was lasagne. Juvia took a small piece, afraid to eat too much just in case it didn't sit well with her. It didn't always happen, but sometimes when she went too long without a hit.

Aria sat next to Juvia and Juvia distracted herself by asking her about school. Junior Kindergarten. Aria spilled everything. There was a boy in her class that was her best friend. They played with a farmhouse just like Daddy's. Her teacher was nice. She tied Aria's shoes if they came undone. They got three recesses and in the play yard, there was a purple dinosaur that rocked back and forth when it was sat in. Her best friend got sick in it yesterday and the teacher needed to spray it out.

"Aria," Gray scolded.

"It's true."

"We're having dinner."

"I'm done," she informed him.

"There's still stuff on your plate," Gray said.

"This is Weiner's. See?" She climbed off the booster seat before Gray could get another word in and plopped the plate on the floor. Wiener scampered over.

"Aria."

"He's hungry." The food was already gone in the spaniel's belly; the plate was clean. "He says thank you and—" She grabbed Gray's arm and tugged him down for a wet and lasagna-filled kiss on his cheek. Juvia laughed, truly laughed. Aria joined her.

Gray's protest fizzled. "You're a butt." Aria tried to run away. “Hang on.” Gray grabbed her up while she squealed and laughed and held her while he wiped her face with a damp cloth he had already at the table. This was a common occurrence, apparently. When he was done, she squirmed out of his hold and tore out of the kitchen with her shirt up around her belly button. Juvia raised her brow and laughed again.

"Don't let her energy fool you. She'll be asleep in thirty minutes," Gray said. "Guaranteed." He picked up the plate off the floor and shooed out the begging dog. He took Juvia's, too. She'd eaten it all. Juvia watched him go to the sink and do dishes. It was so domestic.

"Did you want a coffee?" Gray asked over the sound of the water.

"Yes," Juvia said just because. She wanted to linger there longer. Gray read her mind.

"I'll call you a cab when Aria's in bed, if you want to stick around until then.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. You can put her down, too. She'd like that, I think."

“Okay.” Juvia fed off the scraps he gave her and pretended that she was unbothered by it. Why the generosity? Why think about it at all. She dragged her fingers over the lacquered wood counter. It was so, so nice. Nicer than almost anything she'd seen. Nicer than she was good for. Juvia made a fist. It gave her the courage to blurt, "I'm buying Aria a backpack."

Gray stopped filling up the kettle to look at her. The expression on his face tried to break her apart: hopeful but skeptical. Hadn't she promised before to buy things but it just never worked out, that look said. Yes. This was different, though. Kyouka wasn't here breathing over Juvia's shoulder. She wasn't feeding her long white lines. She wasn't controlling everything.

"It's purple," Juvia said. "And—sparkly. For Sparkle. It's a pony. One of the My Little Pony's. Aria's favourite. She’s okay. The pony, I mean. Aria is great."

He turned off the water and put the kettle back on its element. "I'm sure she'll love it."

"We found it. In the store, Aria and I." She was blathering. "I wanted it to be a surprise then so—I didn't get it." Gray saw through the lie dusted in white powder, she was sure. Juvia didn't care. "I thought she could put her lunch in it and maybe extra sweaters in the winter. Socks. I don’t know if it’s big enough for boots, too, but—"

Gray finally stopped her. "Juvia. Relax."

She was always running at high-speed and Gray was always telling her to relax. The routine was so familiar that Juvia had to stop for a whole new reason. It hurt. Gray, too, seemed to feel that ache. His face pinched and his knuckles turned white on the kettle and he stopped talking.

Aria came back into the kitchen. "Daddy, it's Thomas Time."

Relief broke across Gray's face. "Yeah, sweetie."

She looked at Juvia as she asked, "Can Mommy come, too?"

Gray answered for Juvia. "Yeah. Sure."

Aria looked at Juvia expectantly. Juvia got her stiff legs to move and took her daughter's out held hand. There were no calluses on Aria's skin. No telltale hardships she'd had to endure just yet. There was just the softness and the innocence of youth. Juvia was selfishly glad in that moment that Aria didn't seem to know what was going on during her short stay at Somnium. Innocence should be treasured.

The living room was like the kitchen, too, too nice. There were two large and comfortable looking couches, pushed together in an L shape; there was an ash coffee table, and a large screen TV. On the other side of the room was a huge window that looked out into the forest. Aria took her to one end of the couch. Juvia settled down, Aria got in beside her and held out her hand for a trailing behind Gray. He sat on Aria's other side and it almost felt nice. Like it could be right. Like Juvia could belong.

Thomas and Friends came on the TV with Gray's help. Juvia pulled Aria into her side and rested her head on top of Aria's. She smelled like blackberry shampoo. Juvia closed her eyes and breathed her in.

A blanket resting over her body pulled her gently from sleep. Juvia blinked. It was dark in the room. The TV was off now, so were the lights. Gray knelt beside the couch, illuminated by the light of the moon bleeding through the large window. He was like a ghost with at-odds hair, raven’s wing locks tousled out of the hold the pomade had it in. He’d been shoving his hands through it too many times. What was he thinking about when he did that? She used to know.

"Is it late?"

"Yeah," Gray whispered. "I didn't mean to wake you, sorry."

"Aria..."

"She's in bed. She fell asleep just after you did," Gray responded. "I watched the rest of Thomas by myself."

"Sorry."

He looked at her for a long time. "You were tired, I guess."

She hadn't been sleeping well lately. Juvia kept the tidbit to herself and propped herself up. Gray was there waiting, watching her as she pulled up the neckline of her slipping dress. "Thanks for spending some time with her."

"I miss her," she said.

A look came over him. Pained. He asked, "How long have you been clean for?"

She wanted to lie. She couldn't. "Days." And not necessarily by choice.

He gathered up her hands and squeezed them together in his own, eyes the colour of over-burdened storm clouds searching hers. She could feel his hot exhale and imagined that he was breathing life into her. If only he could stay that way, she might be okay. "That's good." She smiled weakly and Gray opened up a bit more, saying, "I miss this. I miss you."

Such a simple admission; it made her heart beat and bleed. Gray wasn't thinking about Ultear just then, he was thinking about her, Juvia. The Juvia that used to be. Juvia wanted to be that person again, very, very badly. This, right here, was the closest she'd come to the old, dead her. She leaned forward. His mouth was familiar and his kiss chaste. Only his breathing betrayed him; short. Juvia came back, trying to give him a chance to figure out if he wanted to continue. Gray followed her back into the couch. It almost hurt, that kiss. He was too rough; it had been too long since the last time they'd done this. Juvia didn't care. She took everything he gave out and more. His chest pushed against hers, rising and falling with harried breaths. Juvia grabbed his forearms and held him tightly. She could feel his pulse move in his veins, she could feel his desperation. It ached in time with her own.

Gray's mouth slowed and eventually stopped. Juvia waited, feigning patience as he touched her hair, smoothing it back from her face, hands continuing down over her shoulders. He started again, relearning her body and seeing something she never did when she looked in the mirror. His voice came out hoarse. "Juvia?"

"Yes?"

He hesitated. Thinking about his words, his actions. Not too deeply. "Did you want to go upstairs?"

There had been a nervousness building in Juvia's stomach, she'd been afraid he was about to tell her to go. It fled. "Okay."

Gray rose from his crouch and took her hand. She relied on him to lead her through his house, a little bit because she was afraid of tripping in the unfamiliar territory, a little because if he was going to crumble the foundations of what he built here, Juvia wanted him to be the one to swing the hammer, not her.

Every other stair creaked. Gray moved carefully; Juvia mimicked his steps. At the top of the stairs were three doors, the one to the right was the very last of the bunch, and the only one with the door open. Juvia searched for Aria's room and found it at the opposite end, a soft light coming from its bottom. A nightlight. Gray pulled her along into the darkness that was his room and closed the door, taking the sight away from her. Now there was only shadow, the smell of his sheets, and aftershave faint in the air.

Gray didn't bother with the lights so Juvia couldn't pick out the particulars of his room—pictures? Decorations? What kind of bedspread did he have? It all remained a mystery. Gray stepped into her and she thought it didn't matter. He still felt so strong wrapping his arms around her middle; he could almost envelop her twice; she was too skinny. He noticed; Juvia knew he noticed. He didn't lecture her. There were times when Juvia thought she was the only problem. Then he'd treat her like this—like she was the drug he couldn't stop thinking about—and she'd remember that they were both addicts.

Gray brought her to the bed and pushed her down by her shoulder. He joined her after undoing his pants and letting them sit loosely on his hips. His weight settled on her and she wrapped her arms around his back, holding him near. He kissed her on her neck over the spider tattoo and it was like a poor welding of old and new. Who she was meeting who she used to be. It left her almost crippled, his soft press of lips, his tongue sliding on her skin, his breath the gentlest of hammer strikes, slamming her into a place where she could barely breathe and only felt.

Juvia got her hands between them and pulled her dress down, needing to move forward from this place just to prove that she could. Her breasts came out and Gray occupied himself with those. Nothing changed, not really, those were still his favourite. Juvia worked around him and unbuttoned his shirt. She missed a button and had to come back. Once it was undone, Gray sat up so he could get the material off his shoulders. His pants could remain where they were; they weren't that much of an obstacle. Juvia bothered only to pull them down another few inches, making it easier to pull him out. He only let her jerk it without a condom, holding her back when she tried to slide down and put it in her mouth. She decided not to be too hurt by it.

"Here." He leaned back while she slid her hands up and down his length and searched blindly through his nightstand. He came back; Juvia listened to the sound of plastic rustling. He put the condom on in the dark. How many other girls had he had with the lights out? She knew he frequented Black Glove, another bordello in the city. She even knew his favourite girl there. A blonde with massive tits that demanded when she was in the thick of it that he call her Jenny, though that wasn't her real name. The tidbit of information was gathered solely for the purpose of torturing herself—Juvia didn't need to know, or even really want to know—which girl Gray loved to pay to fuck.

He edged into her and moved his hips slowly while he massaged her at the same time; Juvia's thoughts cleared. Gray liked to get into it right away but he would never leave her wanting. He knew how she liked it and did it flawlessly, too. Juvia bowed into him, holding in breaths and sighs as only his fingers increased speed, aware that it wasn't just them in the house. The bed creaked occasionally. Gray held the headboard in one hand, Juvia’s hip in the other. She wrapped her legs around his back and met each of his thrusts, thinking that would keep things quiet. Not really. He never stopped, though he did slow sometimes, coming all the way out just so he could get her closer and closer to orgasm, smacking his cock on her sensitive body.

He was a patient lover, squeezing out every bit of enjoyment he could. When it was time, Juvia came biting her lip. Gray didn't last too much longer after that and collapsed on top of her while still inside. He kissed her and she thought she could cry. He was too sweet after lovemaking. Always. She kept expecting him to get up and retreat into himself but he took his time before rising, kissing her chin, her neck, her mouth. When he was finally ready, she felt his absence like a hole in her heart.

He came back out, of course, and turned down the covers. "Come under," he told her.

Juvia hesitated. "Don't you want me to go?"

"It's late," he replied and again urged her beneath the blankets. Juvia let her apprehension go and did what he asked. He slung his arm around her body and put his head into her shoulder and she thought she could know peace like this.

Gray ruined everything. He usually did. "I know a doctor at Shoals."

Shoals. A rehab center.

"If you get in there... Aria would like to have you around more."

Tante Eileen would never allow for it. Juvia didn't tell him that. He'd get the hint when he woke in the morning and she was gone.

#Gruvia #gray fullbuster #juvia lockser #ft #fan fiction #fairy tail #my writing #this might be the prettiest thing I've written #killed me a little inside #cardinal universe

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sandiegodjstaci · 5 years ago

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Victoria & Michael's Lush Estancia Wedding in La Jolla

Of all the San Diego wedding DJs calling America’s finest city home, Victoria & Michael chose me to DJ and MC their Estancia wedding in La Jolla on Friday the 13th of September, 2019. The following write-up is based on San Diego DJ Staci’s crazy organized & detailed outline for this Estancia wedding.

THE ESTANCIA WEDDING CEREMONY

Prelude ➔ All the Small Things – Vitamin String Quartet, Bad Guy – Vitamin String Quartet, Doin’ it Right – Vitamin String Quartet, Don’t Stop Believing – Strung Out Strings, Jurassic Park Theme – John Williams/Vitamin String Quartet, Hide and Seek – Vitamin String Quartet, Home – Vitamin String Quartet, Lost Woods – Patti Rudisill, Million Reasons – Vitamin String Quartet, River Flows in You (original) – Yiruma, Still Into You – Vitamin String Quartet, Legend of Zelda Main Theme – Koji Kondo/Vitamin String Quartet, The Only Exception – Vitamin String Quartet

Everyone Else’s Processional ➔ Feeling This Vitamin String Quartet

Bride’s Processional ➔ “The Winner Is,” DeVotchka

Ribbon Handfasting Ceremony ➔ no song

Recessional (start song during kiss) ➔ “Running,” No Doubt

THE COCKTAIL HOUR & DINNER MUSIC

While San Diego DJ Staci offers couples pre-set cocktail & dinner playlists to choose from, Victoria & Michael opted to hand-select their background music for their Estancia wedding in La Jolla.

Cocktail Music ➔ 1. A Walk Through Hell – Say Anything, 2. Cabin By the Sea – Dirty Heads, 3. Dreams – The Cranberries, 4. Hard to Concentrate – Red Hot Chilli Peppers, 5. Ho Hey – The Lumineers, 6. I’ll Be Here Awhile – 311, 7. Lazy Afternoon – Rebelution, 8. Lucky – Jason Mraz/Colbie Caillat, 9. Moon, Roll Me Away – You, Me, and Everyone We Know, 10. Pretty Woman – Roy Orbison, 11. Only One – YellowCard, 12. Passionfruit – Drake, 13. Riptide- Vance Joy, 14. Rollercoaster – Bleachers, 15. Sherry – Frankie Valli, 16. Space Song – Beach House, 17. Stand By Me – The Trojans, 18. Sun Flower – Post Malone/Swae Lee, 19. Tijuana Sunrise – Goldfinger, 20. Vacation Town – Front Bottoms, 21. Wagon Wheel – Old Crow Medicine Show, 22. What’s My Age Again – Richard Cheese, 23. Wouldn’t It Be Nice – The Beach Boys

Dinner Music ➔ All of Me – Billie Holiday, Can’t Help Falling in Love – Elvis Presley, Come Fly with Me – Frank Sinatra, Cool – Gwen Stefani, Crimson And Clover – Tommy James and The Shondells, Dammit – Thin Dark Line, Divine Intervention – Taking Back Sunday, Earth Angel – The Penguins, Falling Slowly – Glen Hansard, Feeling This – Richard Cheese, First Day of My Life – Bright Eyes, Fly Me To The Moon – Frank Sinatra, Fooled Around and Fell In Love – Elvin Bishop, Happy If You’re Happy – Matt and Kim, Hey Ya (solo version) – Obidiah Parker, I’ll Be Seeing You – Billie Holiday, I’ll Be There – The Jackson 5, I’m Yours – JasonMraz, It Don’t Exist – Bayside, I Want To Hold Your Hand – T.V. Carpio, I Want to Know your – Say Anything, Kiss Me – Sixpence None the Richer, Landing Feet First – Bayside, Linger – The Cranberries, Lost Stars – Adam Levine, Montauk – Bayside, My Girl – The Temptations, On Love, On Life – Bayside, Oye Como Va – Willie Colon, Quando Caliente El Sol – Django Williams, (Sittin’ On) the Dock of The Bay – Otis Redding, Sloth’s Revenge – Dirty Heads, Take Me Home Country Roads – Mountain Man, Thank You – Led Zeppelin, The Only Exception – Paramore, The Very Thought of you – Billie Holiday, Underneath it All – No Doubt, What’s Up? – 4 Non Blondes, A Real Hero – College, Come and Get Your Love – Red Bone, Hotel California – Gipsy Kings, Lovefool – The Cardigans, Such Great Heights – The Postal Service

THE ESTANCIA WEDDING RECEPTION

My Welcome ➔ “Good evening! Welcome to Victoria & Michael’s wedding reception!!! I am the Master of Ceremonies, DJ Staci. Please take your seats so we can officially welcome our guests of honor. Please be sure to post your photos today with #TurningOverANewLeeph. Be sure to stop by the photo booth outside & get your photo taken as well. If you need to charge your devices, I do have a mini charging station up here including some universal chargers…Ladies & gentlemen, are you ready to meet the wedding party…?”

Grand Entrance ➔ “Take on Me,” Reel Big Fish

1. Give it up for Bridesmaid Alyssa & Groomsman Joe!!!

2. Show some love to Bridesmaid Mary & Groomsman Matt!!!

3. Please welcome Bridesmaid Jodie & Groomsman Eric!!!

4. Give it up for Bridesmaid Jessie & Groomsman Paul!!!

5. Show some love to Bridesmaid Rachel & Groomsman Sean!!!

6. Please welcome Maid of Honor Natasha & Best Man Joey!!!

➔ “Have Faith in Me,” A Day To Remember (cue to 2:26) ➔ Ladies & gentlemen, get on your feet to welcome–for the FIRST TIME EVER—Mr. Michael & Mrs. Victoria T——-!!!”

➔ First Dances ➔ “Down by the Water,” The Drums (fade out @ 2:34) ➔ “Grow Old with You,” Adam Sandler (start at 0:28) ➔ fade last song early: no ➔ no announcement

➔ Newlywed Brief Welcome/Thank You Speech ➔ yes

5:55 PM +/- ➔ Meal Served: plated

6:40-7:00 PM ➔ B&G offsite sunset photos

7:10 PM +/- ➔ Toasts ➔ champagne pour ➔ “Ladies & gentlemen, may I have your attention please for the toasts. Please welcome our first speaker:”

➔ Best Man Joey

➔ Maid of Honor Natasha

➔ Father-Daughter Dance ➔ “Good Night My Angel,” Billy Joel ➔ fade early: no ➔ “About her father, Victoria says: My favorite memory from childhood with my dad is when he rocked me to sleep under the colorful Christmas tree star light. The most important thing he taught me was proper spelling & grammar. And now lets welcome Victoria & her father, Chef Joe, to the dance floor to share a special dance.”

➔ Mother-Son Dance ➔ “Ooh Child,” Five Stairsteps (fade early: 1:20) ➔ “What Is Life,” George Harrison (fade early: 2:00) ➔ “About his mother, Michael says: I am so grateful for the life my mom gave me. She is always supportive, & I can always turn to her. Now let’s welcome Michael & his mother, Jeannie, to the dance floor to share a special dance.”

➔ Group Photo on Dance Floor

➔ Open Dancing

8:35 PM ➔ Bouquet Toss ➔ “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” Jim Sturgess

10:25 PM ➔ Last Dance ➔ “Laugh Til I Cry,” The Front Bottoms

VICTORIA & MICHAEL’S DANCE MUSIC RECIPE

Music Rating ➔ R &X-rated OK

Requests ➔ no requests*

Priority During Dancing ➔ maximum dancing/use my expertise to read the crowd

Genres ➔ Top 40/Pop, 80s Pop/Rock/New Wave, 90s R&B/Boy Bands/Pop, Oldies, 70s/Classic Rock, Motown/Funk, Electronic Dance Music, 2000s

M U S T – P L A Y S

Come on Eileen – Save Ferris, Plastic Stars – Freezepop, Doin’ It Right – Daft Punk, Don’t Stop Me Now – Queen, Grown Up – Danny Brown, Brown Eyed Girl – Reel Big Fish, La Bamba – Ritchie Valens, Bad Guy – Billie Eilish, West Coast – Fidlar, Doses and Mimosas – Cherub

P L A Y I F Y O U C A N

1. Ain’t No Mountain High Enough – Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell, 2. American Girl – Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, 3. A Praise Chorus – Jimmy Eat World, 4. Be My Lover – La Bouche, 5. Build Me Up Butter Cup – The Foundations, 6. California Love – 2Pac, 7. Daylight – Matt and Kim, 8. Day ‘N’ Night (Nightmare) – Kid Cudi, 9. Diane Young – Vampire Weekend, 10. Enola Gay – Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, 11. Feel Good Inc. – Gorillaz, 12. Firework – Katy Perry, 13. Fly – Sugar Ray, 14. Get Away – CHVRCHES, 15. Get Lucky – Daft Punk, 16. Giving Up The Gun – Vampire Weekend, 17. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger – Daft Punk, 18. Hooked on a Feeling – Blue Suede, 19. I Love It – Icona Pop, 20. I’m a Believer – Monkees, 21. (I’m Gonna Be) 500 Miles – MXPX, 22. In Too Deep – Sum 41, 23. Jump in The Line – Harry Belfonte, 24. Just Can’t Get Enough – Depeche Mode, 25. Just Dance – Lady Gaga, 26. Lose Yourself to Dance – Daft Punk, 27. Mambo No. 5 – Lou Bega, 28. Memory – Sugarcult, 29. Mickey – B*Witched, 30. Midnight City – M83, 31. Move Your Feet – Junior Senior, 32. Pon De Replay – Rihanna, 33. Pretty Fly (For a White Guy) – The Offspring, 34. Pump Up The Jam – Technotronic, 35. Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop- Ba- Dop- Bop) – Scatman John, 36. September – Earth, Wind, Fire, 37. Shoop – Salt-N-Pepa, 38. Smoke Two Joints – Richard Cheese, 39. Spirit In The Sky – Norman Greenbaum, 40. Steal My Sunshine – Len, 41. Superman – Goldfinger, 42. U Can’t Touch This – MC Hammer, 43. Vacation – The Go- Go’s, 44. Wake Me Up Before you Go-Go – Wham!, 45. What is Love – Haddaway, 46. Work it – Missy Elliot, 47. You’re The One That I Want – Grease, 48. You Spin Me Round – Dead or Alive, 49. Good as Hell – Lizzo

D O N O T P L A Y S

None

ESTANCIA WEDDING FLOOR PLAN

Again, I was honored to be the one and only San Diego wedding DJ Veronica & Michael trusted with their Estancia wedding in La Jolla. Thank you!

—

*DJ Staci no longer DJs weddings in which guests are not allowed to make requests due to the negative online reviews the guests leave.

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