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ddixons-angel · 4 years ago

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Fated: Season 4

Summary: Gloria Rhee narrowly escapes Atlanta with her brother as the outbreak reaches the city. Luckily, they find a camp outside the city and together, they fend through encounters with the living and undead.

Starts a little before Season 1 and then follows the main storyline of the show.

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Glenn Sister!OC

Warnings: major TWD spoilers, language, violence (the typical TWD stuff)

A/N: This is the FINAL CHAPTER of Season 4! I’ll be going back to posting once a week after this for Seasons 5 and 6 so the first chapter of Season 5 will be up next Monday!!! This is so I can hopefully finish my WIPs for after Fated is over so I won’t need to take a hiatus ^^ Thank you guys for understanding~ Now... ONTO THE FINALE!

also I wanted to find the uncensored version of the gif because it is literally my favorite line of the whole show but I couldn’t get a decent one *sad face*

Chapter 13

The group decided to take up camp inside the tunnel. They had barricaded the other side so that the only entrance would be on the far end of the tunnel and by the time anyone or anything tried to get in, the group would hear it and be prepared. Eugene had created a campfire in the middle of the tracks as the others cleared up the rest of the bodies. Now, they were all sitting by the campfire, huddled together as Abraham told Sasha, Bob, and Gloria about their plans to go to Washington. Apparently, Eugene knew what had caused the outbreak and they were on a mission to fix it, cure whatever disease they were all infected with and maybe even repair the whole world.

“What’s up?” Maggie asks when her, Glenn, Rosita, and Tara, the woman who helped Glenn, joins them by the campfire.

“He just said,” Sasha says, pointing to Abraham, then at Eugene, “that he knows what caused the outbreak.”

“Yeah, he does... and let me guess, he asked you to go to DC with him?” Glenn says, crossing his arms.

“I’m downright tickled y’all found each other. Should spend the rest of the night celebrating, because tomorrow there’s absolutely no reason why the nine of us don’t stuff ourselves in that van and head up to Washington.” Abraham says, matter-of-factly.

“He’s right,” Tara says, “I’m gonna go.”

Gloria looks around the group as they all seem to be in silent agreement, “no, he’s wrong.”

“And why’s that?” Abraham says with a frown.

“Because you said there’s absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t go to Washington together, well I have a reason not to go.” Gloria says, she then turns to Glenn, “now that I know you’re alive, you and Maggie go with them, it’s safer for you in a group.”

“No!” Glenn protests, “no way in hell am I letting you go off on your own, if you’re not going then neither am I.”

“And may we know what your reason is?” Abraham pushes, his tone was condescending as if any reason she gave wouldn’t be enough.

“There’s someone else I need to find, and I’m not going anywhere without him.” Gloria tells him straightforwardly.

Knowing that she was talking about Daryl, Glenn reaches out to her and gently grabs her arm, “then we’ll find him together.”

The group turned in for the night and Gloria took it upon herself to take first watch. She sits on the side of the railroad track and looks out towards the only entrance and exit point of the tunnel. She sighs as she feels the lingering void in her heart. Earlier when they were all sharing their rations, Gloria couldn’t help but feel alone. She was happy that Bob and Sasha had each other, ecstatic that Glenn and Maggie found each other again, and it seemed like Abraham and Rosita had something between them. Being surrounded by couples, it was hard not to miss Daryl. She tugs the shirt that she was wearing around her, wrapping it tightly around her, Daryl’s shirt.

“I hope you’re okay...” she whispers as if he could hear it.

Gloria was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice that Glenn had approached her until he sat down beside her. She quickly wipes the stray tear that fell then glances at him.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” she asks him.

“What kind of brother would I be if I slept while my little sister is crying to herself?” Glenn says, looking at her, “talk to me.”

“I’m scared... what if I don’t find him... what if he’s already...” she sighs deeply, unable to finish her sentence before her emotions take over.

“Hey... come here,” Glenn says as he wraps his arm around her, pulling her into a comforting embrace, “we’ll find him, I already convinced the others to go to Terminus, that’ll be the first place we look, and if he isn’t there, we don’t go to DC until we find him.”

“What if he didn’t make it out...” Gloria softly sobs out.

“He made it,” Glenn reassures her, “if anyone made it out, it’s him, you know more than anyone how much of a fighter he is.”

Gloria nods and snuggles into her brother, “I miss him...”

“I know, and I’m sure he misses you too. He’s probably doing everything he can to find you too. Tell you what, if he’s not there at Terminus when we get there, we can wait for him to find us, what do you say?” Glenn suggests.

A small smile tugs at Gloria’s lips and she nods. She remembers back to Daryl’s words, that he’d always be able to find her. She knew that Glenn was right, if anyone made it out from the prison, it would be Daryl. She felt guilty that she almost gave in to thinking that he might have died in the battle. Gloria needed to have faith and trust that Daryl is still alive and looking for her as well.

---

“So... you and Bob?” Gloria teases Sasha as she walks beside her.

“Ugh, I knew I was gonna hear it from you sooner or later,” Sasha shakes her head but there was still a smile on her face.

“I’m just surprised,” Maggie chimes in, “we both thought you hated him.”

“I did not,” Sasha rolls her eyes.

“Then you just thought he was extremely annoying?” Gloria asks.

“Hey, I’m right here and I can hear you,” Bob calls out, an amused smile tugging at his lips.

“I know,” Gloria grins at him teasingly.

“Guys,” Glenn calls out as he leads the group, “I think we found it...”

It was a day’s walk from the tunnel to Terminus but there it was, standing tall with fences around it. Large letters in the windows that read TERMINUS. The group of nine glance at each other before making their way to the gate, pushing it open and walking towards the large building. They see a sign that directs them into the alleyway between the arrangement of buildings.

“‘Lower your weapons, you will be met. You have arrived at Terminus’.” Gloria reads the sign that was displayed on the main entrance of the building, she looks at Glenn, “should we listen?”

“They’ll only be hostile if we are, so, yeah, I say we listen.” Glenn says.

The others agree with him and enter the premises with their weapons lowered. As they walk through the alleyway, they are soon met by the backside of a woman who seems to be cooking on a barbeque stove. She seems to have noticed the group as she turns around and greets them with a welcoming smile.

“Hi, I’m Mary,” she says as she walks in front of the barbeque, “looks like you��ve been on the road a while.”

“We have,” Maggie responds for the whole group.

“Let’s get you settled and we’ll make you a plate.” Mary says then adds with a smile, “welcome to Terminus.”

“Thank you, uh, I’m Glenn, this is my sister Gloria, my wife Maggie, Bob, Sasha, Tara, Rosita, Eugene, and Abraham.” he says, gesturing to each respective person as he introduces the group.

“Pleased to meet you all,” she says, then she goes back behind the stove and puts some pieces of meat on the grill, “Gareth! Alex! Please come out here and welcome our new group of friends!”

Soon enough, two men come out and greet the group with a smile, “hi! I’m Gareth and this is Alex. First we’d like to welcome you to Terminus. If you don’t mind coming with us to that building over there, that’s where we will be starting the welcoming process, you know the basics, screening, checking your weapons, questioning, and all that. I hope you understand that even though we’re welcoming to every person, we still need to think of our safety.”

The approach of the procedure seemed understandable and so the group agreed to follow Gareth and Alex into the building he had pointed to earlier. Once they were outside the building, Gareth began explaining the details of the procedure.

“As I mentioned, there is a questioning process and I hope you guys understand that we will only be letting in one person at a time. The reason for that is the last time we did a group questioning... well let’s just say that some of the people who were with us when it happened, aren’t here anymore, and we don’t want anything close to that happening ever again.” Gareth explains.

They all nod at this, it seems reasonable since they were only trying to protect their own people. However, something about it rubbed Gloria the wrong way. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she just didn’t get a good feeling about the place now that she was actually here. Abraham was the first one to go in for questioning as he wanted to make sure it was safe for Eugene to go in right after him.

“Older brother,” Gloria says in Korean softly to Glenn, “I don’t have a good feeling about this place.”

Glenn looks at her and responds in Korean, “come on, we already made it and you have a bad feeling now?”

“I can’t explain it but I just don’t...” she says then looks around and eyes the meat on the barbeque, “isn’t this place supposed to be a train station?”

“I think so, why?” Glenn asks.

“Do you smell manure or anything like that?” she asks, earning a weird look from Glenn.

“I don’t. What are you getting at?” he asks.

“This is a train station with no sign of a farm to raise cattle and yet there’s a ton of what looks like fresh meat cooking on the stove, you don’t find that weird?” Gloria points out.

Glenn registers her words and it dawns on him that she’s right. He could probably play it off if this were some kind of meat processing plant with a large freezer to store meat but this was just a train station. Unbeknownst to the siblings, Gareth seemed to be eyeing the two as they spoke in their mother tongue, wary and curious as to what they were saying.

“Everything okay?” Maggie asks, noting their serious faces.

Glenn tightens his lips and forces a smile as he nods to Maggie, “yeah, yeah, everything’s fine.”

Gloria gives him a look and tells him in Korean, “listen, when it’s your turn, ask if you can bring sister-in-law with you, I don’t trust you going in there alone.”

Before Glenn could give her a response, the door to the building opens and Glenn is next in line to go in. He glances at Alex who smiles at him, waiting for him to enter the building. He looks back at Gloria who gives him a disapproving look.

“I uh... I know it’s custom for you guys to just take in one person at a time, but is it okay if I bring my wife in?” Glenn asks Gareth, heeding Gloria’s word.

Alex looks over at Gareth who smiles at him and nods, “I don’t see why not.”

Maggie furrows her brows, slightly confused at the request but goes into the building with Glenn anyway, trusting him. Gloria watches with worry as the door closes behind them and her look is caught by Gareth.

“Hey, Gloria, right?” Gareth calls out, “I know you’re worried about whether or not we’re good people, but I promise you that we are. We just want to survive, just like you.”

Gloria forces a smile on her face and nods. She doesn’t verbally answer him though as she anxiously waits for her turn. Curiosity was eating at her, were Glenn and Maggie okay? Was it really just a simple questioning or was it something more? She is about to find out as the door opens and Alex greets her with a smile. Gloria sighs and enters the building without a second thought. He leads her down a hallway and into a smaller room. The inside of the room looked just like that of a guidance counselor’s office in high school, only difference being that the desk was empty and there were no chairs. Two people were already inside the room but they looked to be guards as they stood in the corner of the room.

“First, I’d like to ask you to put your weapons on the desk, we’re going to be doing a body search before the questioning.” Alex tells her once she’s standing in front of the desk.

Gloria lets out a breath and does as she’s told, removing her daggers from her belt along with the gun she’d taken from Joe’s men. She places them on the desk.

“Good,” Alex says with a smile then he goes over to, “now for the body search, hope you don’t mind.”

“I’ll let you know with a kick in the face if you make me feel uncomfortable,” Gloria spits out, not liking the vibe Alex was giving her.

“Feisty,” he chuckles then begins to check her body for any additional or hidden weapons in which he did not find, “nothing, that’s good.”

Alex steps away from Gloria then he looks behind her to send one of the guards a signal. She frowns as she catches the eye signal and she tries to turn around but she’s caught by the guard. Gloria freezes when she feels a gun pointed to her back and the guard ushers her out of the room and out of the building altogether through another door. He keeps the gun pressed to her back as he brings her to a large red train car with a big white ‘A’ painted on the side. He roughly pushes her forward but keeps the gun aimed at her.

“Open the door and go in,” he tells her, “now!”

Gloria sighs and does as told, sliding the door to the train car open and stepping inside. The door closes behind her almost immediately and she lets her eyes adjust to the darkness of the train car.

“I hate to admit it... but you were right.” Glenn says somewhere in the train car.

She scoffs at that and raises her arms to feel around the place so she doesn’t run into a wall, “I’m always right.”

Once she finds the wall, she leans her back on it, “now what?”

“Figure out a way to get the hell out of here.” Maggie says, standing on Glenn’s other side.

“And how would we do that?” Abraham asks, leaning on the opposite wall of Gloria.

“They have to open the doors here some time, right? Keep us fed, hydrated, if they were going to kill us, they would have already.” Glenn reasons.

“They’re going to kill us...” Gloria says and she feels Glenn throw her a disappointed look although she can’t see it, “the meat they were cooking up, what do you think that was?”

“Long pork,” Eugene pipes up, “I found it bizarre, there’s no emanation of manure in the air which means no livestock. As we may have noticed this is a train terminal of sorts, and in my knowledge there is no equipment within these facilities to act as any form of preservation of meats such as a cooler or refrigerator. I believe that we have just become their livestock.”

Gloria looks at Abraham,” does he always talk like that?”

“He does.” Abraham nods.

“Wait, so you’re saying they’re... cannibals?” Glenn says, a look of horror on his face.

“It’s smart.. Disgusting and absolutely inhumane... but smart,” Maggie says, “they set up signs for people to come to them as a lure... and we fell straight into their trap...”

“We gotta figure out a plan to get out of here before they butcher us...” Gloria stated the obvious with a heavy sigh.

One by one, the doors open to let in the others of their group but after that, no one from Terminus comes to check up on the group. They were all stuck in there, with no way out nor any indication of a schedule for them to try an ambush attack. The only sign of day and night was from the light that poured into the small holes and cracks of the train car.

A full day had gone by and there was nothing they could do about their situation. The only positive to this was that none of them were dead.

“I can’t believe it...” Gloria mutters, “we were all so busy running from the dead trying to eat us, we run straight into a stupid trap for other people to try and eat us.”

“That’s not helping, Gloria.” Glenn groans.

She scoffs and is about to say something else when she hears gunshots coming from nearby, “did you guys hear that?”

“That’s gunfire if I ever heard it,” Abraham says.

“Are they getting attacked?” Tara asks.

“Oh I really fucking hope so.” Gloria says as she tries to look out one of the small holes.

The gunfire continues for a brief moment then stops completely. They all hear a voice that sounds like Gareth shouting but they aren’t able to comprehend what he was saying. Soon the door opens, blinding them all as light floods into the train car. Someone steps in, followed by three others and the door is closed again. It seems that they had just caught more people. Gloria sighs and leans on the wall again while Glenn gets up and walks towards the new people.

“Rick?” he calls, making Gloria look in the direction of the new people.

It takes a few seconds for Gloria’s eyes to adjust to the darkness again and relief floods through her when she sees Rick and Carl, they were alive. She recognizes the woman behind Carl as well, Michonne. Gloria lets out a breath when she sees the figure behind Rick, tears well up in her eyes.

“Daryl...” she whispers quietly, as if she was scared that if she said it any louder he would disappear.

Daryl’s eyes land on her and within a second Gloria dashes towards him, tackling him in a tight hug. His arms wrap around her body in an instant, his hand cradling her head as he presses a kiss to her forehead. She pulls away from him reluctantly and turns to look at Rick who smiles at her.

“You’re here,” he says with a nod, then looks at the others in the train car, seemingly looking at the people he didn’t recognize.

“They’re our friends.” Maggie tells him.

“They helped save us.” Gloria adds.

“Yeah,” Daryl says, taking Gloria’s hand in his, “and now they’re friends o’ ours.”

“For however long that’ll be,” Abraham remarks.

“No...” Rick says, he then steps towards the door he came through, seemingly checking for any cracks or ways out, “they’re gonna feel pretty stupid when they find out.”

“Find out what?” Abraham asks, stepping towards the man.

Rick looks at Abraham, then at everyone else in the train car, “they’re fucking with the wrong people.”

---

Next Chapter

I really hate to leave it here but as you all know, this is literally how they ended Season 4 and they jump straight into it for Season 5, so please forgive me!! At least Gloria and Daryl are reunited~~ I gotta be honest, I wasn’t sure how I wanted them to reunite at first haha I was thinking that maybe Gloria would sneak away from Glenn and the others but Glenn would just freak out trying to find her haha and then I realized I don’t think I’ve ever read any other fics with then reuniting in the actual train car, so I went with it (if there is a scene like that in another fic, please link me, I’d love to read it!)

Please let me know what you thought of this chapter and ending to Season 4! As I mentioned earlier, Season 5 will begin NEXT MONDAY!!! ^^

And as always, I would really appreciate any comments left for me! I’ll be replying to any comments in a new post because this is a sideblog!

Taglist (please let me know if you’d like to be added/removed!):

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strayneoculturekids · 5 years ago

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Believe Me - Han Jisung x Reader

Summary: Han Jisung was perfect. Okay, maybe he wasn’t perfect, maybe he messed up and mucked around a lot, maybe he stumbled on his words (especially around you), but those faults were what made you love him even more. So why, would this perfect guy, out of all people, like you?

Highschool AU, Friend to Lovers AU

Genre: fluff, angst

Requested by Anon: Could I please request a Han Jisung x reader fic where he has a huge crush on the reader and confesses but because the reader has self-esteem issues they don’t believe him and he has to find a way to convince them he likes them?

Word Count: 4.8k

A/N: I’m off hiatus :D I’m sorry that this took so long to come out;;;

----

“Y/N, Hey, Y/N” A whisper and light tap on the shoulder came from your right, the voice seeming to get louder each repeat of your name

You shook your head and took in your surroundings. You were in class, the teacher with her back turned, writing something on the whiteboard. You must’ve fallen asleep. You sighed in relief at having being woken up, and turned to thank your saviour, only to find yourself at a loss for words when you saw Han Jisung.

“Ah, glad you’re awake” He whispered, smiling charmingly, causing red to rush to your cheeks

“Th-thank you” You stutter, trying not to break eye-contact

“Y/N, Jisung” A stern voice calls your guys’ names. The teacher. “I’d appreciate it if you listened,”

“Sorry Ms.” Jisung turns to the front again, quickly followed by you

The teacher resumed the lesson, but you couldn’t help but let your gaze drift back to Jisung. There were multiple times where the pair of you met eyes, only to quickly look back to the front. You, being oblivious as always, didn’t even think about why Jisung would be staring at you, too busy thinking about how Jisung probably thought you were weird for staring at him.

Finally, the class came to an end and the teacher dismissed the class for the end of the day.

“Y/N,” Jisung tapped you on the shoulder just as you were about to leave class

You blushed and refused to meet Jisung’s eyes, quietly asking a ‘yes’.

“I- uh- could you meet me at the park next to school at 5?”

“At the park?” You looked wide-eyed at the boy in front of you

Jisung opened his mouth, but no words came out. Instead, he looked away before nodding, blushing at how cute you looked.

“Why?” You asked

“There’s something I need to tell you”

“Can’t you tell me here?��

“No…I-” He looked around the room before finally facing you again “Please?”

You pursed your lips before nodding, one again, averting your gaze when Jisung smiled at you. You hurriedly exit the classroom without another word, leaving Jisung alone in the room. Shaking his head, Jisung headed out after you, going to get his things to head to his co-curricular class.

----

You gulped as you slowly made your way to the park. You may have left a little bit early in your curiosity- why would Jisung want to see you at the park? Your parents had forced you to bring pepper spray, though, you highly doubted you’d need it. Parents will be parents though, and it’s not like they’ve ever met Jisung- it’s not like you’d ever have the guts to invite him to your house.

Finally, you made it to the green field of grass surrounded by trees. You always liked this area, a lot of dog-owners would walk their dogs here, and in the less busy hours, it was just a quiet, nice outside area. You checked your phone, it was exactly five. Taking a shaky breath in, you sat down on one of the nearest benches.

A couple minutes passed, and you were beginning to worry that Jisung wouldn’t turn up. Did he ask you on a prank? A dare? No, Jisung wasn’t that kind of person…right? It was another couple minutes before you really started to worry. Did he really do this as a joke or was he just running late? You felt your breathing start getting heavy when it hit quarter past. The sun was beginning to set, and the weather was rapidly decreasing. By half-past five, you’d lost all hope.

“Of course…Y/N, you dumbass” You breathed, muttering to yourself

The park was empty now except for you, and it was really starting to get dark. Trying not to cry, you stood up from the bench and slowly walked back the way you came, pulling your coat tightly around your body. You had no idea how you were going to explain this to your parents, but that wasn’t really the only thing on your mind. Jisung wouldn’t ditch you…he wouldn’t…right? You shook your head when you saw steam coming from your mouth. Wow, it really was getting cold. Before you knew it, hot tears were streaming down your cheeks, making a stark contrast to the cold air around you. ‘I’m just overreacting’ you thought to yourself, willing away your tears but failing miserably ‘It’s fine if Jisung doesn’t care about me’

----

“FUCKFUCKFUCK” Jisung ran across the street at top speed, gulping down his saliva, trying to get to the park as quickly as possible “I’m so godamn late,” He panted to himself

Finally, he made it. By the time he had, it was already 5:45, and he fully doubted you would’ve waited that long. It was almost pitch black by the time he arrived, only the moon to illuminate the now black-looking surroundings of the park. Jisung scanned the park, heart dropping in his chest when he saw no one there. Of course you wouldn’t have waited for him. He couldn’t believe he let his practice with Chan and Changbin after school distract him from the time.

He let out a long, tired sigh as he stood in the middle of the park, seeing his breath out in front of him. He was still panting and his throat was dry, but that didn’t matter to him. What mattered was how you probably felt when he didn’t turn up. An overwhelming feeling of guilt welled up in Jisung’s stomach, causing his eyes to grow wet. ‘I’m just overreacting’ he thought to himself, blinking away the mist in his eyes ‘they don’t think I don’t care…right?’

Jisung spent a couple minutes standing still at the park before finally deciding that it was time to head home. He could just explain the situation the next time he saw you, there was no need to worry…probably.

---

That night, you didn’t even bother explaining what had happened to your parents. You just ran up to your room the second you entered the house, carefully closing the door before slumping down onto the ground, burying your face in your knees and letting your tears out, trying to keep them quiet. Of course, there were many, many possibilities other than Jisung ditching you, but none of them passed through your head. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ you asked yourself, wiping away your tears only for them to be replaced with new ones right after.

Once you’d cried all you could, you took off your coat and crashed into your bed, not even bothering to change into your pajamas. It only took a couple minutes to fall into a dreamless sleep.

You groaned and clutched your head as blaring sun shone through the window that you didn’t bother to close last night. A small headache was building up, and it took a second to remember what had happened last night. When you did, your hand immediately dropped down and your scowl at the sun vanished. It was luckily the weekend, so you could avoid Jisung for two days at least. You didn’t want to even look at the boy, much less for him to look at you.

“Y/N?” The voice of your mother called and she slowly opened the door, an encouraging smile on her face “You okay?”

“I’m fine” You answered, trying to manage a small smile

“Did that boy not show up?”

“It’s fine,” You looked down “He sucked anyways”

Your mum chuckled slightly

“Wanna come to the mall with me? Get your mind off things? We can get Cha Time”

You breathed out before looking at your mum once again, smiling, and nodding. She left the room after telling you to get ready. With higher spirits than a couple minutes ago, you got out of bed and threw on a different pair of clothes, only noticing the snow outside when you stood up. The sun was shining off the whiteness, and somehow, it put you in a calm mood.

Once you were ready, you met with your mum outside. She unlocked the car and you both got in, beginning to drive to the mall.

Just like she said, it did take your mind off of things. The first stop was Cha Time, then the pair of you made your way to your favourite shop. A couple hours of walking around and buying something every now and then passed, and just as you two were about to leave, she got a call.

“Crap, it’s from work” Your mum frowned and answered the call, waiting a few seconds before turning to you again with an apologetic look in her eyes “Y/N, is it okay if you catch the train home? I need to go right now,”

“Oh, yeah, that’s fine,” you smiled

She thanked you and kissed the top of your head before running off, waving a short goodbye. You smiled sweetly before turning the other way as well, intending to go to the station. Instead, you paused in your tracks when you turned around and saw Jisung in the music store that was behind you, along with Minho. You took a sharp breath in, lowering your head and turning around once again. You stayed still for a couple seconds, thoughts racing through your mind. You didn’t want Jisung to see you, but what if he was talking about you? Eventually, you let your curiosity get the better of you and you slowly headed into the music store where Jisung and Minho were standing in the mic section.

“So…you ditched them,” Minho said, voice just loud enough for you to hear

“I didn’t ditch them!” Jisung protested, scrunching his nose at his friend

“You invited Y/N to the park, and then didn’t show up”

You gasped before backing away another few paces and half-hiding your body from the pair. So they were talking about you.

“I was late! I didn’t not show up!” Jisung further pushed

“But by the time you showed up, they were gone” Minho raised his brow

“…yeah…” He looked down, most likely in shame

“Just tell them on Monday, it should be fine- oh wait, look, you can tell them right now,” Minho pointed to behind Jisung, right where you were, looking completely casual

Jisung swiveled around in time to catch your shocked and embarrassed face.

“How in the hell did you spot them from there?!” He asked in awe, looking just as shocked as you- now that Minho had pointed you out, Jisung could recognise you, but there was no way he could’ve if no one had told him

Minho shrugged before walking off, leaving you and Jisung comically staring open-mouthed at each other. There was a long moment of silence before Jisung finally straightened himself out and spoke.

“How much of that did you hear?” He asked, smiling with awkwardly clenched teeth

“I dunno…enough to understand what happened last night I guess…”

“Oh...” Jisung finally snapped out of his embarrassed trance and became hyper again, immediately running up to you and grabbing both your hands “I’m really, really sorry! I didn’t mean to! I’ll make it up to you, I promise!”

“Jisung-” you blushed dramatically, not able to tear your gaze away from your crush’s hands that he had intertwined with yours “You don’t- you don’t have to”

“But I do! Do you know what I was going to tell you last night?”

“I- no…” You spoke, curiosity overtaking you

“I wanted to tell you that I liked you” He said, his voice finally becoming quieter and red beginning to paint his cheeks, matching yours

You took a sharp breath in, licking your dry lips.

“You’re not serious…” You looked to him, lips parted

“…I am” He looked serious, eyes staring right back at you

“Jisung…I- I have to go” You brought your hands to your chest, pulling them from his grasp before running out of the store, trying not to make a scene

Jisung stood in the store, lips parted. All the red in his face had disappeared, leaving it looking almost colourless. He took a shaky breath in and began to walk to the entrance. It’s not like he was absolutely sure you would say yes. In fact, before confessing, he went through at least 500 different scenarios in which you could’ve rejected him and how to take it- just so his feelings didn’t get hurt that much, but it didn’t work. His heart was absolutely shattered. You didn’t even give him an answer!

“Just…left” he whispered in disbelief to himself, his eyes starting to feel wet

Jisung jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Minho. Minho looked like he was trying to be consoling, and he directed Jisung out of the store.

Meanwhile, you were still running through the mall, searching desperately for the exit. What Jisung had said caught you completely off-guard. Jisung…so he really was just a stupid liar. Like hell anyone- especially someone like Jisung- would like you! That was the only thought racing through your mind, anyhow. You finally got out of the mall to find the sun setting, and, almost as if a repeat of last night, tears stung at your eyes- tears caused by Jisung.

You slowly walked to the train station, barely daring to breathe, afraid that you might start crying in the middle of the street. Soon enough, you were back home, the train ride and the walk between seemed so much shorter than it usually had, but perhaps because everything had been a complete blur. By the time you’d gotten home, it was dark.

You opened the door to an obviously empty house, both of your parents, you assumed, were at work.

“I’m really that much of an idiot” You muttered to yourself, smiling bitterly while finally letting the wetness building in your eyes to stream down your cheeks

The weekend passed far too quickly for your liking, Monday coming before you could even realise it. You knew that you wouldn’t be able to avoid Jisung forever, you two had a lot of your classes together, but that wasn’t going to stop you from trying. Though, from the way you rejected him, Jisung gathered that you absolutely hated him, so it’s not like he was going to try to talk to you. It was just a stupid high school crush, anyway, it was fine...it would be fine.

Jisung walked into the school gates, shoulders slumped with his bag barely hanging onto his arms.

“Jisung, what’s up?” Woojin came up next to him “Something bothering you?”

“…I confessed to Y/N” He sighed, finally tearing his gaze from the ground and looking up to the sky

“You- and they rejected you?” He asked, raising his eyebrows

“Yeah- well- sort of- they just kind of…apologised and then ran off”

Woojin paused for a second, taking in the new information with his mouth slightly agape. Before long, his shoulders began to shake slightly with quiet laughter.

“What’s so funny?!” Jisung turned to his friend, eyebrows furrowed in slight anger

“Jisung,” Woojin laughed “Y/N likes you”

“What?!” He yelled in shock “But- then how come they-“

“Jisung,” Woojin’s tone and face suddenly dropped, becoming more serious “Y/N’s been through a lot. They probably didn’t believe that you actually liked them”

“How do you know this…?”

“You know very well that I make it my business to know the mental state of every single one of my friends,” He replied, shrugging slightly before chuckling at Jisung’s dumbfounded expression

“I-” Jisung sucked in a breath “I’m confessing again”

“Slow down, Jisung” Woojin sighed “Didn’t I just tell you that-”

“Oh, yeah” Jisung interrupted Woojin, remembering what Woojin had said just a few seconds ago

You walked into the school gates just in time to see Woojin and Jisung walking into the school building. You sighed in relief, quickly following the crowd and making your way to your locker.

“Y/N!” Minho’s voice came from behind you, and you swiveled around, only to freeze in place when you processed who it was

“fuck,” you said aloud as the boy approached you

“Don’t you think what you did on Saturday was a bit mean?” Minho asked, finally catching up your frozen figure “Jisung was really heart-broken”

Blunt as always.

“Why should he have been? It’s not like he meant it” You muttered, half-hoping that Minho didn’t hear you

“Huh?!” Minho squinted at you, but, just as he was about to say more, the first school bell rang and you took the opportunity to flee into the building.

Minho stood in confusion for a short moment, trying to process your sudden disappearance as well as what you’d said. Finally, as he was walking casually towards the school building, he realised that you didn’t believe that Jisung liked you.

You rushed to your locker, quickly throwing your bag into it and grabbing everything you needed for your first period. You were in such a rush that you didn’t remember Jisung’s first period was in the classroom right next to yours.

“Y/N…” Jisung’s painfully familiar voice sounded from behind you

“Please leave me alone…”

“I wasn’t lying” He caught up to you, beginning to walk next to you

“…”

“Please believe me! I-I’ll prove it to you!”

You laughed bitterly, flinching away when you felt Jisung go to grab your hand.

“I will! Please! Wait for me at your locker after school today! I won’t be late this time!”

“…I guess”

Jisung’s face immediately brightened, even more so than it had been before. Just as you two had gotten to the classrooms, the second bell rang and you split up, Jisung yelling an over-enthusiastic ‘goodbye’ to you. You couldn’t help but chuckle at how cute he was, letting your cheeks burn while waving a short goodbye to the boy in return.

The school day seemed to drag on for days and you couldn’t help but look up at the clock every ten minutes- only to find that in reality, two minutes had passed. You tried to reason with yourself, you tried to tell yourself that you shouldn’t be getting this excited over something like this, especially since Jisung didn’t turn up the last time he asked you to meet him somewhere, but the sincerity in his eyes that you refused to meet most of the time struck you so much that you couldn’t help it.

After seven very long hours, the last bell finally rang. Your teacher dismissed you, letting the students stream out of the classrooms and into the crowded hallways. You immediately packed your things and pushed your way through the crowd, much to the annoyance of those around you, but, much unlike your usual self, you didn’t even notice. You luckily managed to get through the crowd of your own class and left into the hallways, quickly rushing to your locker.

As soon as your locker had come into view, you saw Jisung leaning against it. It may not have been much, but it made your heart swell with love and your cheeks burn. He looked so stunning without even trying, it almost seemed surreal. The moment Jisung caught sight of you, his cheeks turned just as- if not, more- red as yours. He was quite busy composing himself and planning out what he was going to say to you, and the last thing he expected was for you to rush to your locker. Jisung gulped as you came closer, and you almost chuckled at how wide and attentive his eyes were.

“Y/N” He cleared his throat before looking behind him, only now just realising that he was preventing you from getting to your locker. He quickly jumped out of the way, rubbing the back of his neck nervously

You laughed slightly, looking down to the floor in an effort to hide the red covering your cheeks. You gathered your things in silence, though, the hallway was so loud and full of shouting that any effort to talk to Jisung would’ve been fruitless anyway. Once you’d closed your locker, Jisung immediately took hold on your hand, but lightly, a grip that would be easy to pull away from, but you didn’t pull away from it. Jisung smiled once he realised that you wrapped your hand around his in return

A couple minutes of walking in silence and you two were out of the school and heading in the direction of the train station.

“Where are we going?” You asked, walking briskly to keep up with Jisung’s over-excited pace

“To the city” He answered, turning around a smiling so brightly that you couldn’t find anything more to say, opting to instead, silently let him drag you along

It wasn’t long until Jisung struck up conversation, and, not-so-surprisingly, he was easy to talk to. The conversation started off with school quickly moving onto your guys’ mutual friends, leading to family and eventually into your guys’ passions. Jisung couldn’t help but notice the way your eyes lit up when you talked about what you loved, or how your voice rose slightly, or how you’d start to use your hands to express things. Everything you did made him fall even deeper in love with you.

Before you or Jisung knew it, you two had made it to the city. Jisung grabbed your hand once again and led you towards the shops happily. You were about to ask him where you two were headed, but just as you opened your mouth, Jisung stopped in front of a Cha Time and led you inside.

“I love cha time,” You commented, slightly unnecessarily, but Jisung appreciated it

“Cha time’s the best!” He said, practically jumping up and down

You joined the thankfully short line of maybe one or two people and, eventually, got to the front. Jisung quickly ordered, seeming to have his order completely memorised. You ordered as well, though you were slower, you still had your usual order memorised. A couple minutes later and both of your guys’ drinks came out. Jisung grabbed two large straws and the two drinks, walking out of the store with you before handing you one of the drinks.

“Jisung…this is your drink,” You said, looking down at the drink the boy had handed to you

“Yeah, I know” He replied casually, getting out the straw and stabbing it into the top of your drink before taking a sip “Oh, this is really good”

“Wha- hey!” You laughed slightly, pretending to be offended

Jisung only smiled sweetly at you in return. You quickly copied Jisung with his drink, taking a much larger sip from it than he had of yours.

“No fair!” He pouted, snatching his drink and giving you yours “You drunk like half of it!”

“Drama queen” You stuck your tongue out

Jisung puffed out his cheeks before looking away, hoping you wouldn’t see the red subtly painting his cheeks.

The two of you spent the next couple hours walking through the streets, occasionally stopping to look inside stalls or to get a quick snack. Somewhere along the line, one of you took hold of the others’ hand; neither of you knew when it had happened, but neither of you made any attempt to take it away once you had noticed. It had felt like no time at all had passed, but, when you looked at your phone, you realised that really, you should’ve started heading home an hour ago.

“Oh crap, it’s late,” Jisung said, leaning over to look at your phone “We should probably start heading home now, huh?”

“Yeah...Jisung...today was really fun,” You, like always, refused meet to boys’ eyes

“Really?!” He jumped in front of you, cupping your face in his hands, making you look at him and his oh-so-beautiful smile “I’m glad you liked it! Does that mean you’ll do this with me again?”

“If-” You gulped, not able to tear your gaze away from Jisung’s intense but joyful stare “If you want to, yeah”

“Yes!” Jisung let go of your cheeks and jumped in the air

Finally, you couldn’t hold it in anymore, and smiled from ear to ear, happily watching Jisung be- well, Jisung.

BONUS

“Y/N, Y/N, Y/N?” Jisung repeated your name, his arms wrapped around you while you were walking down the sidewalk

“Yes?” You asked sweetly

“I love you,” He said simply, coming closer to your ear to say it

You laughed. He had said it a million times, but it still managed to fluster you.

“I love you too,” You replied

Jisung squeezed you before kissing the back of your neck, and, though you couldn’t see it, he was wearing that beautiful, heart-shaped smile of his, looking at you with endless admiration and love.

#jisung #han jisung #stray kids jisung #stray kids #stray kids imagines #stray kids fluff #stray kids angst #stray kids scenarios #jisung imagines #jisung fluff #jisung scenarios #jisung angst #han jisung imagines #han jisung fluff #han jisung scenarios #han jisung angst

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liam-93-productions · 5 years ago

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Nearly five years ago, I saw One Direction live. Twice, on consecutive nights – on the first two dates of their On the Road Again world tour. Once was for work, to review the show. The other was for the sheer, heady, sugar-rush pleasure.

I was, I’ll admit, a little on the old side for a Directioner, even then. Most of the 45,000-odd crowd was much younger – not that that you would necessarily be able to tell from the saucy suggestions on their homemade signs. “I don’t want to draw attention to them,” Liam Payne had said fussilyon stage.

It was an on-brand comment for the then-21-year-old Payne, who, had the harried, slightly anxious energy of a father-of-four at Disneyland. And no wonder: it was clear, even to me, that Zayn Malik had checked out, barely bothering to conceal his rolling eyes. He would be gone within the month, marking the beginning of the end (or “indefinite hiatus”) for the biggest boy band in the world.

“It was a point where every day, you didn’t know whether it was going to be the end,” says Payne, sitting in the offices of his PR company in central London. “It was so touch and go, at every single show. I was slowly losing the plot.”

Now 26 and almost totally tattooed, Payne has a new album on which he raps about getting rowdy on Bacardi and being “free” from 1D. At the same time his very-nearly-naked form is plastered on buses and train stations in a provocative ad campaign for Hugo Boss.

Yet Payne is as polite and agreeable as if he were talking to his best friend’s mother. He is tired he says after an energetic early morning music video shoot. “There was a trampoline involved,” he says, sucking on his silver Juul. “It was hell – but it will look great.”

Gym beast and sex symbol are relatively new tags. His role as the diplomat of the group was established from the time they were first assembled from five solo applicants on The X Factor in 2010.

Payne auditioned when he was just 14, but was told by Simon Cowell to “come back in two years”. He did – and, eyes serious beneath his enormous fringe, blew the judges away with a brassy rendition of Cry Me a River.

Growing up in Wolverhampton, he had been a talented cross-country runner – making the reserve list for the British Olympics team. But a fan of Usher, Justin Timberlake and Chris Brown, he was drawn to singing as “the thing that made my parents proudest”. His backup plan, had he not got through on X Factor, was to follow his father into an aircraft fitting factory.

Once grouped in One Direction it took the five boys, then between 16 and 19, to pull together. “At the start we couldn’t get past our own egos,” says Payne. There would be fights over who got to sing what part, and even personal style. “Everybody had their own little thing – it was like having four older brothers.”

Payne went on to write songs for the group, contributing to two-thirds of their 2014 album Four (arguably their best) and even earning a production credit on 2015’s Made in the AM. But in the early days he would be the one to sing the opening part because, he was told at the time, he “used to settle everybody”.

Payne says he was a more experienced performer than the other boys, and a “bit more mature” – which he puts down to spending more time with his dad than his peers, and being so focused on a career in showbusiness. “I’d lived a different lifestyle from 14 to 16. Most kids try alcohol and experiment – I never did any of that because I thought there’s a chance that I might make it.”

Management took advantage of this, he says, telling him his “very specific role” in the group was to keep the rest in line. “I was like, that’s great, innit – because then everyone in the band thinks I’m a dick.” He remembers one of the band’s first hotel stays. “We’ve got plates being thrown out the window, mattresses being ridden down the stairs, and I’m getting calls from the manager saying: ‘You need to sort it out’.”

It wasn’t lost on the fans. Where Malik and Styles were the heartthrobs, Payne says he was classed as Mr Boring. “When you’re at the stadium, and if you get the least screams, it’s like: ‘For fuck’s sake.’”

After a year playing 1D-Dad he gave up and learned to have fun. “If you can’t beat them, join them” – at which point, he notes wryly, the band’s public image became more cheeky and carefree. “And the more fun we had, the more successful it got.”

He recalls performing to sold-out stadiums night after night, seeing “hundreds” of iPhones being thrown onstage in the vain hopes of their being returned with a selfie. “It’s like the kids just lost their minds.”

“There were parts of it that were a bit shit, like there is with anything,” he says, “and there were parts of it that was just euphoria.”

He recalls seeing 15,000 fans camped outside his hotel room in Lima, Peru. Security had advised them to stay inside all day, and because “they were the adults, we thought they were in charge. Then over time we started to figure out that they weren’t, and that’s when we used to run off.”

Yet the adrenaline peaks of performing, followed by long troughs of tedium, were akin to a drug addiction, says Payne. He turned to alcohol. “Doing a show to however many thousands of people, then being stuck by yourself in a country where you can’t go out anywhere – what else are you going to do? The minibar is always there. ”

For a time, he was also taking an epilepsy drug as a mood stabiliser that he says affected his cognitive functioning under certain lights. Payne says he had been well advised to take it, to counter the “erratic highs and lows” he was experiencing – “I just needed a little bit of help to keep me stable” – “but under certain lights on stage or during interviews, I wouldn’t be able to tell them my name”.

The day we meet, Payne has made headlines for telling Ant Middleton on the pair’s Sky One show that the loneliness of fame had “almost nearly killed” him. When Middleton asked Payne if he had ever wanted to act on those feelings, Payne said that he had: “100%”.

He is not inclined to discuss this today, “because it’s a bit dark,” he says, a touch brusquely – “but yeah, it was very touch and go at times”. This was both in 1D and afterwards, he clarifies. As One Direction got bigger and bigger, he says, “I was like: ‘I don’t really know how to deal with this’. Once you start, you can’t really press the stop button.”

The “indefinite hiatus” button, though, was easier – in mid-2015, four months after Malik’s departure, the band made the decision together. “It was a little bit dark and twisted towards the end of it,” says Payne, “but the last few shows were really beautiful moments because the pressure cooker had been let off.

“It was almost like counting down to holiday – we were going to wake up that Monday morning with no schedule.” Afterwards Payne was in therapy for two years, and took six months off. “It was difficult at the start, because I didn’t really know anything about myself. It was a bit of a numb feeling.”

(...)

That schedule is about to get busier, with Payne’s debut album as a solo artist finally out this Friday. Laden with chart-friendly trop house, trap and Latin pop influences, LP 1 plays like a water cannon aimed at commercial radio – there is even a Christmas song.

It has been a long lead-up: the first single, Strip That Down, was released nearly two years ago and established Payne as the 1D member most influenced by contemporary hip-hop – perhaps too much so. A picture he posted to Instagram of himself in February 2018 wearing a chain necklace, flipping the bird and bragging about travelling by private jet was quietly deleted following ridicule.

Amid the success of Strip That Down, which was streamed over 1bn times, Payne was also still “struggling” with alcohol: “I just hid it very well.” He went on to spend an entire year sober – a necessary if boring step. “My social life completely plummeted. I always feel like you never get past the awkward first 10 minutes at a party, when everyone’s like: ‘Do we get up and dance, or do we just sit here?’ I don’t know whether it made me happier, but it was definitely needed.”

His more recent stint of self-discipline was to prepare for his nude photo shoot with model Stella Maxwell for Hugo Boss. In the lead-up, he was in the gym between “five and eight times a week, sometimes twice a day” and eating mostly chicken and vegetables – with no carbohydrates after 2pm and nothing at all after 8pm. For the last “stripping” phase, he ate nothing but porridge and white fish for a month. “It was horrible – but it definitely works.”

The shoot had been his idea, inspired by campaigns featuring David Beckham and Mark Wahlberg – Payne’s role models, whose cross-disciplinary celebrity shapes his own career goals. Last year he auditioned in front of Steven Spielberg for a part in next year’s West Side Story remake, and has been submitting audition tapes irregularly since. “It’s just trying to manage the time in between (...), singer, model and whatever.”

Between the trap beats, tighty-whities and tattoos is he attempting to put across a new, more grown-up image? “Oh yeah, definitely.”

In One Direction, he was “Mr Vanilla – no one wanted to know a thing”. Then, with the “chain and rapper phase … I didn’t really know what I was aiming for, but it was actually exactly where we are right now. I just needed to find the right keys to make me feel like the man I wanted to be.”

Which is, he jokes, is “like a really English Magic Mike”. Do you like being objectified, I ask? “I think it’s quite funny,” says Payne, clearly delighted. The other day, he says, someone sent him a picture of an old lady walking past an enormous blown-up poster of him in his pants. Not bad for Mr Vanilla, I say. “Exactly.”

Liam Payne’s debut album LP1 is out on Friday 6 December

#liam payne #the guardian #one direction #lp1 #liam's interviews #02.12.2019

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amandaoftherosemire · 5 years ago

Text

Bulletproof -- Part Ten

Fandom: Marvel/College AU

Pairing: Bucky Barnes X Reader, Platonic!Steve Rogers x Reader

Characters: Bucky Barnes, Gamora, Natasha Romanoff, Steve Rogers

Author: @amandaoftherosemire

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 6,927

Format: Series (Complete)

Warnings: Implied smut, platonic nudity, sexual nudity, explicit language, fluff.

Summary: You and Bucky take some time to flirt. You have your last session for Steve’s art project. You run into Bucky in their kitchen and make some plans.

A/N: I wasn’t intending to have a short hiatus but real life intruded. I am working on catching up, however, and this is my first peace offering. I thought about adding angst to the warnings, but for the first time, I don’t think the angst is enough to worry about. This chapter wasn’t difficult to write; I just didn’t have any time to do it. 😄🤷 I hope it’s as much fun to read as it was to write, because I had a blast with this one.

Edit: Added banner by @hellzzzbelle and keep reading break. I should probably not get these ready to post when I’m severely sleep deprived.

Part Nine here

Texts from reader in italic indents; Texts from Bucky in bold indents.

Monday night saw Bucky laying on his bed reading and trying to ignore the faint lingering scent you’d left behind. He loved that his bed still smelled like you, but it was entirely too distracting when he was trying to concentrate. Why he’d decided to major in chemistry as a pre-med student he didn’t know, especially on nights like these when he was being smothered in endless, tedious reading.

Even though he hadn't seen you since Saturday morning, he'd been in a phenomenal mood ever since. Watching you grill Steve had been not only fun, but informative. Discovering that Steve's date was your friend, that you'd introduced them in the hopes that they would hit it off, had been both a surprise and a relief to Bucky.

Surprise because he had assumed you and Steve had been getting closer to dating rather than further away but setting him up with someone else sure made it seem like you were looking elsewhere. Bucky was determinedly ignoring the guilt still sitting in the back of his mind. A small, snide voice would not stop reminding him that Steve may have still been looking at you until you set him onto the mysterious Peggy. That same voice also kept pointing out that if you hadn't been looking at Steve, it might have been because you were too busy looking at Bucky.

Relief and elation were currently drowning out that guilt, however. Relief because he knew now you weren't hurting because Steve had gone out with someone else, had, in fact, picked out the shirt that had so offended Bucky. Elation because he wasn't a consolation prize; you hadn't turned to him out of a need for comfort, but because you'd wanted him with the same mindless desire he had for you.

His current mood also might have something to do with the fact that the last time he'd seen you, earlier today, you'd been across the street running to class as he'd been on his way back to his apartment. You'd paused when he'd wolf whistled at you and given him a long, hot look out of hungry eyes and a sassy grin before you'd blown him a kiss and resumed your quickstep. That look had set him up all day long.

A hint of blue in the corner of his room caught his eye. You’d left the bra you’d been wearing the other night on his floor. He’d hidden it from Steve under a pile of clothes, but they’d shifted and exposed a little of that pretty color. He got an idea and hopped up with a grin.

He grabbed the bra and propped it up on the table he used as a desk. He then grabbed a note card and a sharpie and jotted a quick note:

If you want to see this again, come hang out with me. I miss you. – Bucky

He set the note against the bra and snapped a picture on his phone, sending it to you in a text message. Smiling in anticipation, he settled back on the bed with his phone on his stomach, his book back in his hand, and his eyes unseeing on the page as he grinned.

You heard your phone buzz with a text message but ignored it. You’d put your phone on silent while you did your calculus homework for a reason. You had to take insanely hard math for your degree; you had to concentrate, at the very least while in mid-problem.

Once you'd gotten to a spot where you didn't think your brain would melt if you took a break, you picked up the phone to check what you'd missed. Bucky's message made you grin. You had been planning to get the bra back when you went over for your session with Steve, but if Bucky wanted to ransom it, you'd play along. You snapped a quick picture of the textbook and pages of equations spread across your bed and sent it along with a quick message.

I miss you, too. 😘

Figuring you weren't going to be getting any work done for the next little bit, you decided to stretch your legs and grab a snack. You stuffed your phone in your back pocket and opened your bedroom door into the living room. Padding toward the kitchen on bare feet, you waved at Nat and Gamora as you walked by. Gamora was quizzing Natasha in Mandarin; she was learning multiple languages with an eye toward pre-law.

"Ni hao," you chirped as you passed on your way to the kitchen on light feet, feeling smug. Whatever was going on with you and Bucky, you were having fun. Right now, you were something more than friends, something less than lovers, but the discovery of what exactly you could be to each other was turning out to be incredibly exhilarating.

You were staring into the fridge, ostensibly trying to decide what to eat, but in reality you were daydreaming about that wicked smile Bucky had shot you from across the street earlier. Whatever else, you knew Friday night was not going to be a one-and-done. He was simply too delectable to resist.

You straightened when your phone vibrated in your pocket, coming to a sudden decision and grabbing a bottle of water out of the fridge. You leaned on the counter that separated your kitchen from your living room with your elbows and forearms flat and smiled indulgently at the phone in your hand.

Bucky's message had taken a few minutes because he'd spent most of that time staring at your message with a big, dumb grin on his face. He knew he was being ridiculous, that your message could hardly be taken for a protestation of unending devotion, but he couldn't help himself. For the first time, he felt like everything he wanted was within his grasp.

Huh. It’s cool that you’re learning an alien language but now I'm worried that trying to understand extraterrestrials might break your brain. Is there anything I can do to help?

Not wanting to push it, but desperate to keep the conversation going, he added the little bit at the end as an invitation. He didn't want to fuck up your studies, but he needed to talk to you, to know that he wasn’t merely dreaming, that you were with him in this. Hoping his stupid joke would make you smile, he grinned like an idiot when your response came through.

😄 Says the chem major. But it's standard for engineering, so I'm afraid there's nothing you can do. How are you holding up?

Bucky wasn’t the only one grinning like an idiot. You were also stretching one leg and twisting it back and forth as you beamed at the phone in your hand and typed out your response. Gamora lifted an eyebrow in your direction, shifting Nat’s amused attention to you, not that you noticed.

Bucky, meanwhile, was delighted to see you were willing to keep the conversation going. He was still absently carrying his book around, though he was long since done paying attention to anything but you. He crossed to the desk and went to grab a cigarette out of the pack when he realized he still had the book in his hand. He tossed it on the desk rather than give up the phone, too focused on both answering you as a friend and as a flirt. He sent two texts, one right after the other.

Chem is mostly about algebra, thank god, because I hate calculus. I'm doing okay. I only cried twice this week. I also hate anatomy.

You know, you could come over here and study. Or I could come over there. Then we wouldn't miss each other. 😏

You didn’t know it, but your face was easily giving you away to Nat and Gamora. The two women were much alike, with oddly similar trauma in their childhoods. Natasha was there on a gymnastics scholarship, which was also how she and Gamora met. You didn’t know much, but she’d been born and raised in Russia. Though she was too young to have trained under the Soviet gymnastics model, remnants of that worldview had remained active in post-Soviet Russia. Natasha had gotten caught in one of those remnants. They had made her a phenomenal gymnast and a deeply traumatized woman. She, like Gamora, had a watchful care that made it difficult to hide anything from her.

Right now, your face was sly, an expression they’d seen; but you were biting your lip in breathless excitement, something neither of them had seen in years. Altogether, your body language would have been obvious to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of what a human flirting looks like. You were as subtle as neon.

Once at the open window, Bucky lit the cigarette and kept an ear tuned toward your apartment in the hopes that he would hear something to add to this amazing interaction. He was wrapped up in this minor chitchat with you as though he thought you were about to impart the meaning of life. When your next text came through, he felt like you had.

Why you lying to me like that? 🤨 I happen to know for a fact that is demonstrably untrue. You showed your appreciation for my anatomy quite thoroughly the other night.

Which is how I know we won't get any studying done if we "study" together.

“Who’re you texting, sis?” Gamora called out, using the nickname she used only when she knew you were up to something.

“Nowhere,” you replied, loudly, your voice a little panicked.

Bucky couldn't hear every word coming out of your apartment through the open balcony door, the approaching summer making the fresh air a necessity as the temperature climbed, but he heard enough. Gamora's voice came through loud and clear and he assumed she was closer to the door. As she spoke your text reply came through, and for the first time since Saturday morning you acknowledged what had changed between you. The opening of that subject had him rock hard and riveted.

Now that you'd opened it, he was happy to continue it. When he heard your pathetic response to Gamora's question, a wicked smile bloomed on his face. His eyes sparkling, he tapped out a quick reply.

Baby, I don't appreciate your anatomy. I worship it. And I'll gladly do so again whenever you'd like. And you're right, if I have your anatomy in front of me, I'm gonna want to study you, not my textbook.

Bucky had this expression, this curve to his lips, a dip to his eyelids, a lift to his cheek that caused irreconcilable desires within you. On the one hand, that smug, you-know-want-me smirk made you want to punch him.

To help you protect yourself, and give you (and Steve, who had these lessons also) a better chance of winning one of the many, many fights one or both of you started, Bucky had taught you the basics of bare-knuckled boxing. Sometimes, you wanted to use your fist and everything you'd learned to wipe that smile off his pretty fucking face.

On the other hand, he was right, the fucker. You did want him, and that smirk just reminded you of it, made you want to curl and coil around him like a serpent in search of warmth.

Since you’d now seen him smirking like that while in the throes of passion, his eyes burning and his heart pounding against yours, you had begun to fear that the second desire had become dominant. If you could have seen Bucky as he typed his response, wearing that smirk in spades, you’d have known you were doomed.

The response itself made you squeak a little in agitation as you remembered just how much you'd enjoyed exactly what he described. You'd certainly felt worshipped, and the knowledge that he saw it the same way had your knees going to rubber. However, you couldn’t forget you weren't alone. Because you could see Gamora and Natasha watching you out of your peripheral vision (you were not going to look at them you were not going to look at them you were not going to look at them), you knew you they were about to get nosy.

Going for casual, you straightened and turned around to lean with your back against the counter, tapping out a response as quickly as possible. You didn't know why, but you wanted to keep this flirtation between only you and Bucky for a little while longer. There was something exciting about keeping it secret, though you were doing a terrible job of keeping it.

Straight up? I can't do this right now because both G and Nat are looking at me like they're onto me. Also I have to finish that calc, and there's no way I can do that while trying not to think about fucking you.

Bucky's heart kicked like a mule when he saw your text. He'd always cherished your style of honesty, especially with him, but this was new. He fucking adored this kind of honesty on this exact subject. The blunter you wanted to be in expressing how you wanted him, the more enthralled he was.

So, changing the subject, I took both calculus and algebra this term, like a moron, so I've cried every day. I'm expecting to spend all of dead week in tears.

Still trying to maintain that casual demeanor, you grabbed your water bottle and an orange out of the bowl of fruit on the counter and headed back to your room, keeping your eyes trained on your phone. You didn't even look at Nat and Gamora out of the corner of your eye, too terrified to be caught by one or both. Since you were studiously ignoring them, you didn't see them watch you walk by, identical pitying looks on their faces.

You thought you had a chance of escaping without an explanation. They shared a look. Cute.

Meanwhile, Bucky was having to talk himself out of pushing, of seeing if you were as easily diverted by this subject as he was. He didn't want to go back to his reading, didn't want to let you go back to your equations. He wanted to keep going, to tell you he'd dreamed of you every night since the night you spent together, wanted to ask if you'd done the same.

Bucky stubbed out the cigarette and was considering going to the kitchen for a beer when your answer came in. He wasn’t hearing anything out of your apartment now, so he wandered out of his room, his attention still on his phone. Instead of testing the boundaries, he typed a response that mostly disguised his baser urges, at least for the moment.

Let me know if and when you'd like to come back to this conversation, gorgeous. I'm FASCINATED.

You rolled your eyes in exasperation, but only because your skin was heating just thinking about the other night. You made it into your bedroom before you sighed long and loud in pure lust, leaning against your door. You jumped when your phone vibrated in your hand.

I'll accept the change of subject. For now. 😏 And if you need a shoulder, mine's always available, babygirl.

When you sighed this time, it was pure romance. You knew it was silly, that the offer of a shoulder to cry on was hardly a declaration of undying love and fidelity. But something about the sexual invitation immediately followed by the emotional one was another slug in that useless vest of yours.

Giggling happily, you hopped onto your bed as you texted Bucky back, giving in and enjoying the giddy anticipation for once instead of trying to stifle it.

Good to know. 😊 Now, about that bra. Is there a time frame on when I can ransom it with my company?

As he passed by Steve's studio, Bucky saw the light underneath the door that told him his roommate was once again working late into the evening. It wasn't until the last couple of months that Steve had taken to working behind closed doors. Bucky wanted to knock, to nose his way in and find out what Steve was hiding, but he was busy hiding secrets of his own. Keeping his head down, he walked by without a sound as he replied.

Nope. Only rule is: if you want it, you gotta come and get it.

You were sitting cross-legged on your bed, the papers and books scattered around you long forgotten. You hadn’t had this much fun flirting with anyone in forever. There was something about the way the old melded with the new, the familiar with the unfamiliar, that left you breathless.

You can't be that lazy.

Bucky laughed out loud when he straightened from his stoop to check his phone. He'd grabbed a beer as he went, turning with the intention of raiding the cupboards for anything salty and crunchy he could find in there. Once he'd snagged a bag of chips to go with his beer, he started back toward his room with his thumb tapping out the honest truth, hoping you'd accept it.

I'm not. I miss you that much.

Bucky’s answer had you sighing again, a smile wide and dreamy stretching across your face. Not that you'd admit it to anyone, least of all yourself, but there was a fair amount of giddy anticipation making your heart jump in the kind of excitement that comes from hope.

As soon as I have a spare minute, it's yours. 😊

Bucky sat on the side of his bed to stare at your response, a happy but baffled smile on his face.

Somehow, he was charming you, though he didn’t really understand how. He knew how to talk his way into a woman’s bed. He’d never tried to talk his way into anyone’s heart. But still, every time he saw you, spoke to you, he saw you open a little more to the love he wanted to give you.

Dizzy with delight, but still confused, he fell back on what he was good at. When he saw what he’d typed, however, he decided to let it stand, curious to see how you’d respond.

Do I get to decide what to do with that minute?

You laughed out loud when you saw Bucky’s text, unaware that two sets of ears were listening outside your door and two sets of eyes were narrowing in suspicion. You figured Bucky was up to something, but your curiosity insisted you play along.

I was all, how much trouble can me and Bucky get up to in single minute? and now I’m laughing so hard I might die. But sure. Why the fuck not? 😉

This time it was Bucky’s turn to laugh out loud, delighted with you and the world in general. He hadn’t expected this conversation to turn out as well as it had, but he’d discovered that the thoughts he’d always kept to himself had a match in you. The knowledge was intoxicating.

You ARE trouble, babygirl. Not that that’s a bad thing. I loved being in trouble. Please, let me know if and when I can get in trouble again.

Oof. Bucky somehow managed to find a way with every word to make you feel insanely sexy. He seemed enchanted, addicted to you and the thought was dizzying in its power and possibilities. What if you were enough?

Your heart pounding, an excited smile on your face, you took a chance.

Soon. I adore the way you get in trouble. Have a good night, pretty boy. 😘

Bucky’s laugh had drifted in through the open balcony door and though Natasha and Gamora were listening at your bedroom door, the dark beauty had ears like a cat and heard it easily. Silently, she indicated that Nat should stay at your door while she moved closer to the balcony.

When your final text came through, Bucky muttered, “Sexiest woman on the planet, I swear to god,” and fell back onto his bed to stare at the ceiling in starry-eyed frustration. He shrugged philosophically. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d made do with his hand and thoughts of you. He was simply grateful to now have memories instead of only dreams.

Gamora heard Bucky’s low exclamation and smiled in amusement. Once it became clear that the fun was over for the moment, she and Natasha settled back on the couch and very quietly discussed the situation. Nat, still wary and unwilling to see you hurt so badly again, was less enthused than Gamora, who approved as long as you were happy.

Still, Nat liked to hear you giggling like a girl even if she rolled her eyes. Though she was wary, she agreed to give Bucky the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. Gamora, on the other hand, fully intended to help Bucky woo and win you in any way she could.

She'd thought that your plan to seduce Bucky had been the dumbest thing you'd ever come up with, but based on what little you'd confided about your night with him, Gamora had come to the conclusion that Bucky was as stupid in love with you as you with him. In that case, as long as you kept sashaying cheerfully around the apartment she was on his side and working on his behalf. She understood Natasha’s wariness, but the fact was she’d never seen you happier.

She just hoped he didn’t fuck it up.

The following Friday saw you sitting for Steve for the final time. He was working on the last of the four works that made up his final project and this was the last chance the two of you had to get together before it was due. Thankfully, he was nearly done; he only wanted to see if one last sitting added anything special to this last one.

Steve's final project was four works, each in a different medium and depicting mythical or legendary creatures. Working together over the last few months, the two of you had found a rhythm that allowed you to express a mood or emotion with your face and form in a way Steve could interpret into images. The nature and depth of your relationship had given him an opportunity to do so in a way he would not have had with another model. It had been the best challenge he'd ever set himself and he was incredibly proud of the work he'd done.

Not only was he thrilled with what you'd helped him create, he was deeply grateful for the chance to deepen and strengthen his friendship with you. Over the course of a school term, the two of you had forged an even stronger bond than ever before. The act of trusting him with your body like this made you vulnerable in a way almost more powerful because of its lack of a sexual component.

Steve had been intensely aware of both that vulnerability and the trust you'd shown him in allowing it. His care in the face of that vulnerability had cemented the certainty that he was the best friend anyone could ever hope for. After everything the two of you had been through together, you had already trusted Steve with your life. Now, however, you'd trusted him with your psyche, and he'd taken the utmost of care. You could count on him, no matter what, beyond a shadow of a doubt. You knew it, because you knew him now as well as you knew yourself.

Which is how you knew the creative process was frustrating him at the moment, rather than energizing him as it did when it went well. You wondered what he was struggling with and hoped forcing him out of his head with conversation would help.

"Last one, huh?" You spoke into the quiet, but it was easy, as were the words, and the sound didn't break the silence so much as scatter it. "I'm kind of going to be sad. It was a unique experience."

Steve looked over at you to find you smiling sweetly at him. He smiled sweetly back, but you still weren't wearing the expression he was looking for. He needed something mischievous to match the Kelly-green frock coat hanging mostly open and giving you a rakish look. His lips twisted wryly, thinking back to that first horribly awkward day.

"I know what you mean. Nerve-wracking, but ultimately worth it."

"Right!?" Your voice was happy and excited, and your smile spread to light up your face. "I feel like we're better friends now than we were when we started." Your tone softened, as did your expression as you continued. "It means the world to me. You mean the world to me, Steve."

Steve's cheeks flamed and he ducked his head, a pleased and tender smile on his face. "Feeling sentimental, huh?" he teased.

You lifted a brow. "You're not? Then why are you blushing so hard?"

His face went even redder, if that was possible, and he struck back, partly to tease, partly because he couldn't stand it anymore. "If we're better friends now, why don't you want to talk to me about what's going on with you and Bucky?"

Steve felt like a dick when the smile fell from your face. "Wow." You blinked in surprise at the sudden change of subject. "I didn't know you’d been practicing your passive aggression," you shot back, then immediately regretted it at the look of chagrin that crossed Steve's face.

You'd always been honest with Steve, however, and you felt guilty shutting him out. You just weren't sure what to say, really. You figured you might as well tell him that. "Because I don't know what's going on with me and Bucky," you sighed.

Steve rolled his eyes. "Come on! I’m dying of curiosity over here!" He fixed you with a suspicious look that made your lips twitch in exactly the way he was looking for and his attention immediately shifted back to the painting even as he kept speaking to prompt more of that mischief to light your face. "Bucky’s been in a great mood all week. And you’ve been conspicuously absent."

"Would you like to do my homework?" Your eyebrows lifted in challenge even as the gossip about Bucky sank in. He had been a ray of sunshine every time you'd texted with him but hearing about his cheerful disposition from Steve made you wonder if it had the same cause as yours. You were getting confident enough in whatever was between the two of you to bet that it did.

"I would not." Steve replied quickly and firmly. He wanted nothing to do with your homework, considering you took science classes as electives.

You grinned and Steve got to work adding the lightest of shadows to your face to capture that roguish expression. "I’ve been buried. I feel like we’re barreling towards finals--," Steve slanted you a look of pure commiseration at that, "--and I want to put in an appearance at the boys’ frat party tonight. Gamora asked me to go in case she needs help with Quill. I had to bust ass to have the time to waste on a party."

Now that you mentioned it, Steve could see the signs of sleeplessness around your eyes. Your sunny disposition masked it well, but you were clearly very tired. He understood well. The end of term had snuck up on him, too. It wasn’t the first time and he didn’t expect it to be the last.

“Why would she need your help?” he asked, well aware Gamora was more than capable of dealing with Peter Quill.

Your mouth twisted in sympathy tinged with amusement. Quill had been chasing Gamora all year, but she had been only barely receptive. She had a soft spot because he had a roguish charm that made her smile and a genuinely good heart for all he hid it behind humor and a thoughtless careen through life. She claimed she wasn't interested, but you suspected she didn't want to be, which you knew from experience was a very different thing.

You shrugged, not sure why yourself, and gave Steve the same excuse she'd given you. "In case she decides to turn him down again. She’s afraid she might actually break him this time."

Steve raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment, too focused on the hint of white he was brushing along the curve of your lower lip. He didn't ask again, knowing that he would only need to stay silent long enough. He knew you'd give in eventually if he gave you enough time to feel guilty.

He wasn't wrong, but not for the reason he thought. When he wanted you to feel guilty enough to give in, he gave you what you privately thought of as the eyebrows of disappointment. You couldn't stand this look for more than a couple of minutes. You always gave in because he looked so damn sad and you just couldn't resist it. That didn't mean you liked it.

"Ugh!" you exclaimed, the sad, shamed feeling crawling up your spine and making it impossible to keep silent in the face of that particular expression. Giving in, you continued, telling Steve some of the truth, "Bucky is being… sweet." Your face softened as you thought of the brief but electrifying chat you'd had with him the night before. "Attentive. He texts me every day just to check on me." You shrugged, going for casual, but Steve could see the stars in your eyes. Though it wasn't the expression he needed, he still loved to see you so happy, especially considering who was responsible.

"Last night he texted me on his way home," you went on. Now that you were confiding in Steve, you wanted to keep going, if for no other reason than you needed another brain to help you figure this out and no one knew Bucky better than Steve. "I told him I was slogging through my reading for molecular biology and dreaming about a latte. Twenty minutes later he was at my door with a salted caramel cold brew. I don't know what's going on." The last you said with a touch of petulance that had Steve's lips twitching.

"Sounds like Bucky wants to be your boyfriend." Steve spoke casually, but completely honestly. Bucky hadn't treated anyone that way since high school, when he'd been chasing Dot, the last girl he'd dated seriously. He couldn't help himself; when his heart was engaged, Bucky always went overboard.

Steve realized when your gaze turned inward as you considered his words that he may not have gotten the mischievous smile he'd been looking for, but he'd gotten something far better. His hand was careful but sure as he added the light that had come into your eyes at the realization that you'd have said the same thing if Bucky had been treating anyone but you this way. That astonishing thought led to ideas of how you could test the concept.

Steve didn't know what gave your sly smile the sultry edge it had, but he also didn't really want to ask. He simply appreciated that he'd finally gotten the mischief he'd needed to finish his work.

Bucky twisted the knob on his front door with his heart pounding. He shouldn’t have skipped class again, but he couldn’t make himself go when there was a chance he’d find you here alone.

He had noticed a pattern. If he was right, and you were here, he hoped he could talk you into staying awhile. The smell of fresh coffee had his breath catching. He dropped his bag next to the door and moved toward the kitchen.

He went hard as a rock when he stepped into the kitchen to find you standing at the sink, rinsing out your coffee cup. “Oh, babygirl,” he murmured, his voice already heating, as he leaned against the doorframe. “What are you doing here?”

Your heart had started racing as soon as the sound of the front door closing verified that your dawdling hadn’t been in vain. The mischievous smile Steve had been looking for earlier spread across your face as you set the cup in the sink and turned slowly. "Same thing I’m usually doing on a Friday morning," you replied and braced yourself against the counter, letting the edges of your robe fall open to bare a leg.

Bucky's eyes dropped immediately to that bare expanse of skin, his mind quickly falling into speculation as to how much more of your skin was bare underneath that infuriatingly tantalizing robe. "Which is?" he rumbled as he pushed away from the frame to ease toward you.

"None of your beeswax." Your eyebrow lifted in challenge as you shot him a teasing smirk. You shifted as Bucky approached, but neither away nor in denial.

Rather, your posture seemed to open and invite so that he was smirking in response by the time he stopped in front of you, his arm coming up to grab a coffee cup from the cabinet behind your right shoulder. He was close enough that you could feel the heat of his body seeping into yours.

“Uh-huh,” he retorted as he set the cup on the counter and reached around you for the coffee pot “And why are you still here?” he asked with a knowing smile as he poured coffee simply for the excuse to stay close to you. “Steve should be gone by now.”

“He is.” You weren’t certain Bucky was asking if you were alone, but you confirmed it anyway. “I was finishing my coffee. Do you go to class anymore?”

The sound of sultry teasing in your voice combined with the challenging yet inviting body language had Bucky’s breath shuddering out on a laugh as he put the coffee pot back. “How could I when I knew you might be here waiting for me?” he murmured. Instead of picking up the cup, he moved closer, his hands gripping the counter on either side of you, caging you in with his big, sexy body.

You lifted your hands to slide them slowly up his chest, fascinated by the way his eyes fired in response. “Cocky. Why would that matter?”

“Not cocky,” he rumbled, his arms coming around you and his body pressing to yours, “starving.” His head dipped to breathe into your ear as his hands began to roam over your back. “Because I just can’t stay away from you.”

In the next moment, his mouth was on yours and you were drowning in him once again. You knew you should be worried at how quickly he had you desperate for him, but since he seemed similarly afflicted, you gave yourself up to the heat, letting your heart lead this time, if only a little.

By the time Bucky reluctantly pulled his mouth away to rest his forehead against yours, his hands had a firm grip on your ass as he pressed you firmly together. Your hands were fisted in the hair he’d let grow almost to his shoulders and you were using the leverage to arch and rub against him. “Tell me to stop, babygirl.” His voice was a rasp, and though the words were a warning, the tone was a dare. “I can't stop myself, not when it comes to you.”

“What if I don’t want you to stop?” You didn’t know how or why, but something about the way Bucky treated you, a glint in his eye, the brush of his hand, allowed you to find this seductive creature inside yourself. Powerful in your confidence, and to Bucky’s eyes the sexiest thing he’d ever seen, again, you pulled away to yank at the tie at your waist. Running your hand under the edge to bare yourself to his gaze, you shot him a coy smile and bit your lip.

Bucky’s hands immediately accepted your invitation, following your hand to leave you naked in front of his burning gaze. “Good god,” he almost moaned as you arched into his touch, his hands wandering ever more frantically over you, “is this for me?”

As his hands closed around your bare ass, you boosted yourself up, with his enthusiastic assistance, to wrap your legs around his waist. Your mouth a breath from his, you smiled. “I can’t stay away, either.”

Awhile later, you were still wearing your robe, on one shoulder at least, while you caught your breath pressed between the kitchen table at your back and an equally winded Bucky Barnes at your front.

“Holy shit,” you croaked, your normal voice off somewhere with the rest of your breath.

Bucky wheezed out a laugh in response. “You're dangerous, babygirl," he murmured as he nuzzled into the crook of your neck. "You should have a warning sign on you, like 'Caution: Highly Combustible'."

"Me!?" you exclaimed in mock outrage, prompting Bucky to lift his head so he could see the look on your face. He loved your expressions when you teased him like this, playful and sweet. "You're the dangerous one; everyone knows it." You went on with a raised eyebrow in playful challenge as you pushed at his chest to indicate you wanted to sit up.

Bucky reluctantly disentangled himself from you, though he'd rather have scooped you up to take you to his bed for the rest of the day. He knew that wasn't an option, however, not this close to finals. He'd never be able to talk you into it. He hiked his boxers and jeans back up; he'd been too frantic to be inside you to bother undressing beyond the necessary to make that happen. You'd been too frantic to complain.

He collapsed into one of the kitchen chairs and grinned at you as you sat up and pulled your robe from its tangle around you to slip your bare arm into the other sleeve. "Obviously we've come to different conclusions. We should collect more data." He was smiling sweetly, which had you opening your mouth to retort but you stopped at his next words. "Let me take you out tonight, just you and me. Dinner, a movie, dancing, whatever you want."

Your hands slowed as you tied the robe closed around your waist, though your heart was racing again, this time in hopeful excitement. "Like a date?" you asked, your voice carefully casual.

"Yes." Bucky's voice was anything but casual, and had your eyes lifting to his as they blazed with intensity. "Exactly like a date."

Your expression turned sweet, and Bucky knew he'd made the right call in asking you out like this. He wanted to show you how special you were to him, so he hadn't considered the usual trappings, but he could see he needed to be direct in his intentions as long as you wouldn’t let him speak his heart.

“I’d love to go on a date with you, Bucky.” You were feeling shy and vulnerable, so you got to your feet to allow the robe to swirl around and cover your body.

Bucky hopped up to snag you around the waist and squeeze, making you giggle. “Really?” he asked excitedly, and you realized he was as caught up in this as you were. The thought settled you more than anything else had. “Whatever you wanna do, name it.”

You had opened your mouth to answer when you remembered your promise to Gamora. “Fuck!” you exclaimed, fighting the urge to whine. “I promised Gamora I go to that stupid frat party with her.” You rolled your eyes and sagged petulantly in his arms as you’d done a thousand times before.

Bucky simply tightened his arms, used to your antics of old and happy to play the classic games, absence not making the heart grow any fonder, because he’d always loved you, but making the heart more steadfast, now that it knew the pain of missing you. “Tomorrow, the next day, whenever?” He grinned as he nearly begged.

You straightened to wrap your arms around his neck and look into his eyes. You were seeing everything you needed and wanted there but you couldn’t yet believe you weren’t seeing it only because you wanted to. Still, you were willing to try. “I’m swamped until after finals, but I promise we’ll go out on a date as soon as my last final is done.”

Bucky’s face lit up like the sun and took your breath away. “I’m holding you to that, babygirl.”

“Come with us tonight,” you heard yourself saying and hoped to god you didn’t end up regretting attending a frat party with Bucky considering what happened last time.

His lips twisted wryly, and you wondered if he was thinking the same thing you were. As a matter of fact, he was, but he was also dismissing it as immaterial because he didn’t plan on leaving your side the entire night. “Where would you put my chances of talking you into a closet to make out?”

The roguish grin he shot you had your shoulders relaxing. “Well,” you replied in a considering tone, “that was one of my fantasies in high school, so… high eighties?” You finished with a shrug and your mischievous smile.

“You, too?” he asked with wide eyes and a self-satisfied smirk even as he sweetly nuzzled your nose and mouth with his own. “Then I’m fuckin’ in.”

Part Eleven here

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bakudekuficlibrary · 6 years ago

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Heelloo! This blog is absolutely wonderful. Before sleep, I always come to look for a fanfic based on the lists and it's very helpful. I can't help but sleep like a bear after reading a good fic recommended in this blog. Hope you continuee! And alsoo I have a request... if there is any fic with a jelly Kacchan, but a frequently jealous Kacchan. Because I love reading that type of scenes. Hope you answer meee, thankk youuu!!! ;;;

Hi! Thank you so much for the kind words, and I’m so sorry for the wait! Here’s a link to the Jealous Kacchan mini-list, just in case you haven’t seen it yet. Hmm… I think possessive behavior fics have a lot of Jealous Kacchan moments, so here’s a mini-list! (Some fics are tagged with both “Jealous Bakugou Katsuki” and “Possessive Behavior,” so you will see some works listed on here that were already listed in the other mini-list!)

-Ellie

20 Works.

Before Midnight by DriftingGlass ( E | 211,528 | 28/28 )

Izuku Midoriya takes the same train to and from school Monday through Friday, morning and night. His only company during these lonesome hours comes in the form of another boy his age—a teen with scarred hands and blood gem eyes, a stranger with ash-blond hair who walks in a shroud of danger and mystery.

“Would you stop with that fucking muttering, idiot?”

And before Izuku can find his footing, his life becomes a full-blown collision course thanks to walking cannonball Katsuki Bakugou.

(And along the way he may have found the missing fuel to his fire).

[Graphic Depictions of Violence | Underage | Implied/Referenced Child Abuse | Emotional/Psychological Abuse | Attempted Sexual Assault]

[Abandoned] Alexithymia by DriftingGlass ( M | 61,246 | 10/11 )

It’s as if he’s inhaling a breath of snow and ashes—a shock and choke in his throat, strangely reminiscent of the day he realized that the birthmark blooming on his shoulder was identical to the drawings on his childhood friend’s desk.

Now, twelve years later, it only confirms Izuku’s impending doubts that, yes, he is now legally claimed by Katsuki Bakugou.

[ THIS FIC HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED. ]

[Underage]

[On Hiatus] Lost Omega by GreyDayMoon ( Not Rated | 36,940+ | 12/? )

Izuku was just trying to take care of himself and his mother but a single slip up sends him into unfamiliar territory where he encounters an aggressive alpha who drags him into tribe life.

*On temporary Hiatus*

[Graphic Depictions of Violence | Underage | Dub-Con]

[On Hiatus] And He Was Magnificent by Skaii, SugarbabyIzuku ( E | 4,134+ | 1/? )

Midoriya Izuku is an omega slave, born into a life of subservience. He’s trapped, never to reach his dreams of something more; until he’s thrust headfirst into the world of Bakugou Katsuki, the crown prince of Incendium Kingdom. Now, Izuku must adjust to a new life as Katsuki’s slave—while a war that threatens to shake the land looms on the horizon.

[Graphic Depictions of Violence]

[On Hiatus] Quirkless by InkHound ( M | 29,444+ | 6/? )

Izuku’s heartbroken at the tender age of four— the doctors have confirmed he is quirkless. But the truly crushing blow is when not long afterward, little Izuku has a chance meeting with his number one hero; All Might, who tells him that without a quirk, he can’t be a hero (it’s just too dangerous).

Later that night, Izuku is watching his favorite All Might video in a daze. He puts the question to his mother; can he still be a hero, without a quirk? He watches as she freezes up, pale-faced and wet-eyed before she rushes to his side and speaks in a trembling, tear-filled voice;

“Oh baby, my sweet baby ‘zuku,” she says through her tears, “Of course you can.”

And everything changed.

[Underage]

The Bonds that Bind Us by DMMegsie ( M | 28,298+ | 5/? )

Travelling with his trading caravan, Izuku is on his way home when they stumble across an already heated battle in the middle of an open field in the dead of night. Being mistaken as part of attacking party, Izuku finds himself fighting off the fabled Demon King of the Mountains of Fire.

However, during the battle, Izuku breaks a necklace on the Demon King that held an unspoken promise from his mother from long ago, which changes everything.

Nothing ever as it seems, nor is it simple. As an omega of elven descent, Izuku has a lot to learn about the greater world and himself. The same could be said of the half dragon lord of the mountain.

[Graphic Depictions of Violence | Rape/Non-Con]

Oubaitori by DriftingGlass ( M | 32,666+ | 4/16 )

From the moment he was born, Izuku understood that he was different. He was a rarity, an omega; not necessarily seen as useful or even desirable. It didn’t take long, however, for his entire future to be placed in the hands of an alpha, one by the name of Katsuki Bakugo.

Through many pitfalls, confusion, and pains of growing up in a city where both are outcasts of their own kind, it takes more than just the threads of instinct and arranged contracts to bring two hearts together.

Love isn’t fate. It’s pure luck.

[Underage]

Mark Me Up by Flightless_Bird ( T | 1,674 | 1/1 )

Katsuki’s gaze cut into him again like a lightning bolt and it took Izuku a second to realize what the tilt of the blonde’s head meant: come here.

Hero & Zero by GreyDayMoon ( Not Rated | 8,493+ | 4/? )

Bakugou was the number one hero, surrounded by fans, and loaded with fame and fortune. So why would he care if a boy from his childhood still watched him from the edge of crowds? He wouldn’t give a shit about Deku who would? Who would even be looking for that stupid messy green hair?

Except maybe he would.

The Only One Who Can Make You… by TitanOrphanAnnie ( E | 898 | 1/1 )

PWP One-Shot about some fooling around after class that ends up fluffier than Kaachan was prepared for.

Possessive fuck by Thetrash ( E | 2,585 | 1/1 )

Izuku has a study date with Shoto and Katsuki decides to fuck him before he leaves.

[Dub-Con]

Aphiemi by DriftingGlass ( G | 9,591 | 1/1 )

[ Aphiemi - “to send for one’s self, to forsake, to hurl away, to disregard, to put off.” ]

Emotions are incredibly difficult to control and formulate the way you want to. For one Katsuki Bakugou, he’s made mistakes and placed assumptions on one person he realizes he cannot bear to live without, no matter how much he simultaneously detests and adores the little shithead.

Gagging For It by sagequit ( E | 3,006+ | 2/? )

Bakugou discovers that Midoriya has a bit of an oral fixation. Shameless PWP.

SeriesPart 1 of Bakudeku Filth

[Underage]

Soft Spots by Saysi ( E | 38,613+ | 18/? )

Midoriya and Bakugou don’t have the best of relationships - except when they find themselves alone.

Bakugou quickly finds himself developing a soft spot for the nerd.

Happy birthday Midoriya!

[Underage]

Fake It Till I Make You Mine by AnimeLoversInTown ( E | 8,514+ | 3/? )

All Katsuki wanted was to get away from people and eat his lunch in peace. How is it that after only two short minutes of blissful silence, he suddenly had to deal with Deku bawling, got suckered into listening to his problems, and wound up with a boyfriend? Ah well, at least he wasn’t bored.

[Underage]

Miko!!! by Hermaphrodite ( T | 30,110+ | 6/? )

Izuku isn’t really sure, but hes pretty certian in his past life he must have been a terrible person, maybe a heretic that had a cult following and went on a mass murder spree that cost people their lives or something, because there is no way that the gods could hate him this much for absolutely no reason besides existing. Firstly, he was born as a Omega, almost a second class citizen at this point if he was going to be honest with himself, and now at the age of four being branded Quirkless by doctors who were giving his mother looks of pity that clearly read that they thought just what society has conditioned them to think. To them, he was a quirkless, useless omega.Just because you live in a world where everyone has superpowers and you don’t doesn’t mean you aren’t any less of a hero! World be damned! They’ll just have to watch me do it!(Quirkless Omega Izuku accidentally summons Tamamo-No-Mae and becomes a DemiServant, and now with her power he will shape the world and show everyone Omegas can be Heroes! and well, Kaachan just wants everyone to stop staring at his Deku)

Where the Stars Burn Brightest by DriftingGlass ( M | 18,467+ | 3/? )

In a world where countries are torn asunder through quests for greed, power, and understanding the realm of industrial technology and ancient magic, only the strongest—and smartest—live a full life.

Every individual is born with a phrase marking their bodies, linking them to their soulmate through the threads of fate and time.

Izuku Midoriya is born with only half of a soulphrase on his wrist, destined to never meet the other half. A cruel omen.

Though this has not stopped Izuku from dedicating his young life to researching soul-born magic and science under his master, the legendary Toshinori Yagi. He is determined to manifest his Quirk, with or without a destined soulmate.

However, his life takes an unexpected turn when he rescues a volatile criminal—a man of savage beauty and many secrets.

And so, Izuku realizes rather quickly that in his dangerous new quest, only the most willful survive, and if his new companion is anything to show for it, nothing will prepare him for what’s to come.

[ Rewrite of The Rhythm of Fire and Wind ]

[Graphic Depictions of Violence | Past Abuse]

I Like You Deku, damn it by AjhayLee ( T | 8,364 | 1/1 )

Bakugou Katsuki dreams about his past self as a prince and liking his attendant childhood friend. The thing is, he couldn’t confess his feelings and he wasn’t able to tell him. Upon realizing that he also like the present Midoriya in the process, he does what his past self couldn’t do the fourth time he woke up from the dream.

[Major Character Death]

class act by savedetonate (neverlasting) ( E | 1,696 | 1/1 )

Katsuki is riled up and feeling petty, and Izuku is looking too good to ignore.

[Underage]

Consumed by youreroad ( M | 5,209+ | 3/? )

Izuku and Katsuki had known each other since they where kids. They have their ups and downs and even had a fall out during middle school but in the end they are best friends. Even with Katsuki’s abrassive personality Izuku knows Katsuki cares for him.

He just has no idea to what extent.

In which Izuku tries to date and Katsuki is consumed by his obsession.

#BakuDeku #KatsuDeku #BNHA #bkdkfl ask #w:violence #w:underage #t:abuse #t:dubcon #w:rape #t:pa #w:mcd #curator ellie

179 notes · View notes

transition-of-lanabean · 7 years ago

Photo

Blurry ol’ me. Photos look a whole lot better on a small screen than when you look at them on an actual computer, haha. Also, totally pumpkin time! It’s FALL! The best time of the year for sure! With fall comes these beautiful evenings. This was taken tonight when I was out with my friend for a few games of bowling.

Bowling was pretty fun, and I actually won 2 out of 3 games, which is unusual as it’s normally the other way around. I stunk the first game, then shot up 80 points in the second game, then dropped a bit in the 3rd, but managed to pull it out by 10 points or so. We had some dinner as well, so overall, it was a nice night.

This last week hasn’t been too terribly busy, and the only things to note transition wise is that I managed to update all of my information at my laser hair removal facility, and on the same trip, managed to, for the first and second time, use the women’s bathroom. I see it as... a rather minor victory as it’s the kind of business that’s next to several other businesses and all have a public bathroom that is locked by key and only has one toilet per gender. They didn’t give it a second peak when I not only took the women’s key when I got there, but again before I went home for the long way back, so that was nice. It smelled better, and everything was on the opposite side of the room than the other bathroom, but was otherwise identical. Still, using a woman’s restroom is a victory for me for sure. I’ll take it!. There were two other women that were taking their lunches out in the common room near the bathrooms too that didn’t blink, so that was good. Oh, I managed to finally get my letters from my doctor regarding all the changes, so I *believe* I managed to send Social Security all the updated changes, so hopefully that’ll come back soon with a conformation, because they sure as heck sent me a denial and why it was denied a few weeks ago.

I also have almost everything good to go to get my birth certificate changed too (name and gender), and just need a money order for that and to mail everything off. I made double sure to contact them ahead of time to make sure I’m not missing anything. If I tried to send it at the same time as my social security things, I would have been in the same boat, so thankfully, I pretty much have to send them identical things with just a difference of a letter typed up and signed by me, and a $20 money order so they can send me a copy of the new certificate. They charge $20 by default to mail a copy of a certificate, but don’t actually charge me anything to update my records on their end, so that’s nice. Sounds pretty straight forward. Thank goodness I live in Washington State, as I hear some other parts of the country can be a lot harder, if not impossible, to do at this time.

Other than those things, it’s been pretty routine. I am still adjusting to my new work schedule Monday through Thursday instead of my old Wednesday through Saturday, but it’s only a few extra hours per week overall, and as I get paid hourly, it makes a difference in the paycheck. I’m training a new co worker, and her last week of training is this coming week, then she has my old work schedule. She’s nice and is a pretty good learner, so it’s been fairly smooth overall.

There is a function near me coming up next weekend that my sister and I may attend called Geek Girl Con in Seattle. It’s pretty much as it sounds from what I’ve read, and they seem very trans friendly too, so I wouldn’t be concerned going dressed if I wanted. My sister is in Vegas currently on vacation, so with all that happening, I’m not sure what she’ll want to do. No less, it’s something we may or may not do, so I’ll have to see. I’m guessing she forgot about it as it was a couple months ago she brought it up with me, but you never know, she may very well have tickets.

My roommate still continues to be supportive, and we’re going on a shopping trip soon. That’s... about it from me for now. HRT is continuing to do it’s thing, the chest is still growing at a pretty good pace the last couple months after a hiatus for a long while, so progress is quite good there. Skin continues to soften up everywhere, hair around my body continues to diminish, though at a pretty slow pace. Laser treatments continue to show improvement within 2 or so weeks of each session, so I’ll have to wait for a week or two to see what happens with my session last Friday. The next one is scheduled a couple days before my birthday in early November.

Well, that’s about it for now. Please let me know if you do have any questions, transition related or not, I’d love to hear from you.

I do hope you have all had a great last week, and may the rest of the weekend treat you well!

- Lana

#transgender #transwoman #girlslikeus #transisbeautiful #geek girl con #geekgirlcon #life #HRT #transition #laser hair removal #records #birth certificate #bowling

15 notes · View notes

elizabethrobertajones · 8 years ago

Text

12x23 watching notes

Sucks to be you lot, I got nearly a week less hiatus than you to think about this

(Oh god, hi it's Monday evening after the episode and I've finally made it through a day without a bizarre dizzy spell and limbs made of solid lead. Time to watch this >.>)

expectations: Mittens told me she loved it and she's my barometer so I'm tentatively hoping that it works :P

Also whatever happens, 13x04 or thereabouts is going to be a fucking Scooby Doo episode so there's no way literally anything happens here that won't be better in 4 episodes.

I feel like I don't any anything snarky OR clever to say about the opening montage, which is ominous. About my brain, I mean. Season 12 has been a wild ride.

It's also possible I entirely transcended after the hug in 12x22 and don't actually need anything from the show any more, like, Sam and Mary are happy, Dean's all better and so things will clearly eventually work out with Cas, like... I don't even need to see that to know it happens :P

(I mean I'd have HATED the show to end here because AAAH CAS but just assuming he's fine, this is how it goes now Dean's ticked "parent issues" off his emotional burden and is basically just left with "i'm gay for the angel help" on there :P)

CAS! Hello! He's enjoying the view of the lake.

Kelly gives us a fake-out "prayer" where it turns out she's blaspheming.

I would have no idea if this is important or not for later because even with 12x19's great work we really don't have a strong measure on Kelly as a character as we should have, except that she was originally devout or going along with being devout. She now thinks her baby is a God and if she's taking the original God aka Chuck's name in vain, then yeah. (Also important for Cas, I suppose considering his much more complicated personal relationship with Chuck aka God)

I like it because it makes her position in this all the more interesting because she seems to be asking for help but it turns out she is asking for the strength not to kill "Sven" and if she was really thinking she'd burn down an IKEA, that's using the nephilim's power for harm, because she's 110% capable of grabbing Cas, dragging him back to IKEA, and making him set the whole thing alight for her.

Since it's the opening line of the episode, the whole "not what it seems" element, especially showing her as vulnerable and devout, immediately re-casts her as angry and violent and blasphemous... Obviously it turns out to be on a hilarious level but like with many many things I talk about, the initial suggestion was an honest plea for help. And though it's subverted, what does it say about the actual relationship with God, and how she feels... I mean she was asking for help so that means she feels she doesn't need any help from GOD, just help from this Sven

Also the fact this means they went IKEA shopping is pretty hilarious to me all by itself because Cas and regular human activities. I would assume Cas is indulging her whims for the baby whether he thinks it will kill her to give birth or not, if he's mostly in control of his thought processes and is in general behaving like Cas except for the override switch being thrown on priorities.

Remember back in 12x17 where I was talking about how Kelly would be so much more interesting if Dagon had let her decorate a room in their abandoned hovel of the week? I would still have loved to have seen that version but once again Dabb and I are on a wavelength because there's no way this wasn't already in the pipeline when I was saying all that, so I imagine he got quite a kick out of reading it on my blog, knowing what was to come. I was even thinking she'd paint it yellow. Anywho, as I was saying there, the uncanny valley of making a beautiful baby room in such a location is beautifully jarring and creepy and everything about her trying to treat this as normal and to make the world ready for him in this very specific mundane way, when there is no way in a billion years she could make the world ready for him considering what he means to this world.

Oh no I hit play and Cas said he was good at following orders. I'm pretty sure that's the exact opposite of what he is, but he THINKS he is, or at least thinks that he was MADE to follow orders. Question that this episode may or may not answer: if a being is designed to be the perfect order-following drone, and then attempts IKEA furniture, will it succeed? More importantly, even if it's actually terrible at following orders when it's making emotional calls, will the simple morality-free consequences of building an IKEA thing make it easier and give it one easy thing to do in its life when it's never had it easy before to follow orders without making concerned calls of its own based on its better judgement, or will it somehow fuck up the furniture anyway because it thought there was a better way to do something?

Is this possibly a metaphor

Kelly is angry because she knows she's going to die and wants to teach the baby to ride a bike and get married... Look, you really have a skewed idea of what he's going to be ALLOWED to do. Even if he grows up at a normal speed, if he's left with his powers, I doubt he will ever have a free afternoon to learn to ride a bike in peaceful safety.

"I will give my life for your son. And I will raise him - " *pauses immediately to scowl at the blatant awful contradiction*

"- and I will make him someone you will be proud of"

the other thing is I just can't imagine Cas teaching anyone to ride a bike and I am not sure he has entirely thought this through, because I DO have absolute faith in Cas that if he was allowed and everything went in this saccarine way he would do his absolute best for the kid and raise him perfectly but dear god that means Cas will feel a burden like he has never felt before to learn how the hell to ride a bike and impart that knowledge to a kid on training wheels, and at this point we get so deep into an incongruous mental image I am pretty sure I'm imagining a total AU Cas

on the other hand several watching notes ago I visualised Cas's perfectly normal house in suburbia where he's hidden stuff like the demon tablet, first blade, and whatever the hell it was in season 12 that made me conjure this image up in the first place, and now I think Cas would obviously move the kid there to grow up, and the fact that he hasn't yet is probably mostly because he's a little nervous about what would happen if a nephilim touched the demon tablet.

see there's a secret continuity to these notes

The other thing that makes me convinced the baby will not be allowed to live a normal life is not because its powers are too great to be left alone but because if it's with Cas, he's such a fucking beacon of madness and drama from the rest of the world that he'd have that baby in a baby pouch on his chest, running around smiting stuff, all year long :P Again, getting to the point of a ridiculously incongruent mental image.

This world is engineered towards freedom, not peace, and Cas was the one who by being bad at following orders, made sure it was so. Now he more than anyone pays the price for that

Omg talk about multi-layered. Dean telling Mary about how Crowley is so hard to kill he's like a cockroach, and he'll believe it himself when he sees the body, and burns it. Obviously you got salt n burn of a bad guy, and hunter's funeral of someone he cares about. Which would he give Crowley? All surface stuff Dean wants to indicate at this point is that Crowley's an idiot who somehow got tangled up in Lucifer again and made him their problem, AGAIN, and basically he has no reason to admit his fondness for the King of Hell to his mom who barely gets the situation, and Sam who mocks him about the summer of love at any given opportunity but still probably doesn't *get* what that was for Dean, and really doesn't like Crowley all that much, still, after all this time.

It belatedly occurs to me that Sam forcing out a thanks he mostly means but hates saying to Crowley in 12x15 was a lot like Dean trying to thank Ruby in 4x09 and knowing he actually is sort of grateful but you know... not pleased about her one bit :P

*interlude that allows me to hit the 5 minute mark as we recap Crowley not being dead* He mimics Dean in 4x01 crawling out of his grave, with rather less bizarre sex appeal.

(... I have no idea but Jensen Ackles can make literally anything sexy.)

Also the music is clearly making a mockery of him doing that, like, it's just too overdramatic, while with 4x01 of course the whole thing was treated with the respect and importance it deserved. If Dean had resurrected with the exact same motions it would have been a comedy

I dislike the five minute mark intensely.

I'm just going to assume she'll resurrect herself quietly without a fuss once Lucifer's gone, and go hide out until this is all over, maybe do that spell to punt herself back to the 1400s like she wanted to in 11x22

Hope she has fun on a second time over.

And avoids literally all of this crap

There's a diamond-ish pattern on the wall in the room - fancier than normal diamonds because Lucifer isn't just a regular demon >.>

Oh dear he's waving around Rowena's voodoo doll now. The big black heart patch is even more relevant.

You know I think Sam is genuinely mourning Rowena, all his expected Lucifer panic aside

This place Cas and Kelly are holed up in really really looks like places I saw in Scotland when I was visiting. I may be mourning Rowena.

As I was saying to Mittens I think 12x13 is supposed to be the episode that tied up all their ends and should have been her true farewell episode wrapping up all the MacLeod family drama which truly started in 9x21 shortly before Rowena was introduced in season 10... Buuut they made such a hodge podge of the story I can't even remember without checking what else was in it except for 3 brief interludes about Kelly, which was nowhere near enough to rob all the time from Gavin and Rowena getting a good story, so... I'm confuzzled.

Meanwhile, Cas is being Cas about childrearing. He says everyone poops but HE doesn't poop - the baby may poop if it's more human in physiology, but that's not actually a 50 50 chance if it turns out to be more angel than not, and it's certainly so powerful what's left for the human side of it... i guess except for pooping, until it's old enough to have actual working empathy and reason to discover if it's got free will and compassion

It did something to the truck through Kelly but to my great disappointment there's no Dabb vs cars pay off and it makes the truck magic. It just briefly holds the power until they're not looking, then it dribbles out and floats off to cause trouble elsewhere

"Lucifer's right," Dean says, and probably sacrifices like 3 sanity points to say it (we're doing Call of Cthulu this rewatch instead of D&D I guess?)

It's a fair point that they're really playing on the wrong board here; they can deal with a human problem like the BMoL. A little blood and tears, but they conquered it and the 3 of them solved their family drama and everything's right again. (I assume someone gave Mary the "It's okay you were brainwashed when you killed all those people, it totally doesn't count" speech)... But yeah they don't know how to find Lucifer, their plan is a vague "find Cas" and Dean seems to be relying on making Cas do what they want (he's good at following orders >.>) rather than wrangling the larger problem. Sam says they can hopefully siphon off the baby's grace but if not... they find something else, again, vague and again, no resources to do it - to be clear, they have at the moment, no way to find Cas, no way to kill Lucifer, and no way to deal with the baby if their desperate way doesn't work, and dealing with Cas is a pretty desperate option too, to make him do something when again Dean said "Team Free Will" to him last time they had a real talk, and, yeah.

"I always wanted to punch the devil in the face" I love Mary Winchester

I didn't pause in time to tell Cas not to touch the creepy line of power that came from his truck. I assume he's been transported to an alternate dimension that is loosely connected to his truck. Spiritually, perhaps.

Buffy style demons?

I did not expect to be at this moment as soon as we are. Seemed like a last 3rd of the episode thing, after shit had gone down, but Cas has been thrown into angry truck verse too soon.

I also thought it would be pretty random but I didn't expect HOW random and you know how I said a while back Dabb era is totally random and it's so hard to guess anything that happens because he will just be like "Lol whatever if it gets where we want to go" - this is why I hate speculating this season :P Certain things happen *exactly* on cue and others are like, Cas probably ought not to be around for this part, let's just... put him over here

Kelly to Jack - "you have an angel watching over you!" yeah like that's not already the most corrupt phrase on the show since Mary said it to her own pregnant tummy in 5x13 right when Michael had just happened to Dean (and prompted the saying of "team free will" in the first place. I've been ironically using it as my Mary & her sons (and step son) dynamic tag all season because of that - to refer to the cosmic fuckedupness of their backstory with angels, Mary's attitude towards her boys, their feelings towards her (re: 2x13 and how DEAN felt about Mary encapsulated in that comment and how Sam was left out because he didn't know anything about Mary) and of course the fact they obtained an actual angel to watch over them who is awesome at watching over them and caring about them like Mary always wanted, and Dean was so upset she said but she DIED and he had no faith and angels weren't even real and -

okay when I said the Winchesters were done with their story, the "and Cas" dynamic completely changes the emotional stuff they need to address and I was being pretty flippant about Dean swapping that to making out with Cas, but essentially, yeah. Kelly is showing that this exact thing is still a narratively relevant thing after Dean got some core, childhood trauma level catharsis out of Mary finally, dealing with the absolute baseline of their relationship.

This is still to go, I guess, because Kelly saying this shows there's still some fucked up stuff the Winchesters have to deal with, and faith and angels and is a shared nightmare of a family therapy session for this squad.

Ahahaha Dean's reactions are great. Just punch Crowley in the face and have a knife out in moments.

And yeah Crowley deserves that. As I said somewhere ELSE in my notes over the season, Dean had one lie left to discover, after everyone else lied to him in the second half of the season and he discovered it.

(everyone except Rowena *sobs*)

Sam remains beautifully in character re: killing Crowley. Dean definitely seems like he will but then in 12x19 he packed an angel blade to go yell at Cas. Not sure what level of mad and betrayed those two things compare like but Crowley's already on a barely tolerated frenemies list when Dean isn't compromised by the whole summer of love thing and it's pretty easy to forget that when Crowley let out Lucifer.... So yeah he's got a lot more to be worried about than Cas :P

Crowley admits he kept Lucifer out of the cage because he wanted to win - belatedly giving us the exact same motivations as Cas doing all the betraying and getting dragged off by the nephilim

We very belatedly get to the part of Crowley's arc where he voices he really really hates running hell. I mean, Dabb wrote 6x04 where Crowley was immediately displeased with doing the job because he couldn't trust anyone else to do it (the sort of people who want to run hell are... pretty volatile. And the ecosystem only supports one Crowley type personality doing well there :P) He says being in the rat made him realise he hated it, but it's been clear since season 10 that this is where it was all going for Crowley, another plot thing that got dragged out (and is filed under my lesser complaint that they didn't know what to do with him at the end of the season just like Cas because they both ended up having such a weird non-role in the end of the season...)

Anyway I suppose we're getting back to that, while Cas has been on a much more well developed emotional journey since the start of season 11 so it's less like he's just been on ice :P

And Crowley bargains with closing the gates of hell, because I guess all our talk about how season 8 was all over the place with the killing hellhounds thing and nephilim and all that... It was enough to actually prompt someone to ask me if Crowley could I think, so kudos that anon if I'm not imagining it. I remember saying somewhere or other that Crowley could shut the gates of hell in an afternoon if he was fully in control of Hell because he'd have all the resources available to him. Including someone to do the trials for him so he doesn't have to die for it :P I doubt he'll get a chance to actually do this, but it's nice to have a reminder, if only to bring to the surface that this has been the theme all year.

I feel like the weird spiky realm that looks freakishly expensive to film will probably be the realm we have to worry about though :P

*Kelly wanders around looking for Cas, also concerned about him*

He's back! And he immediately lies about what happened to him, probably not to worry her, but... Yeah, something happened. Whoever he met there, he's back and not commenting, so he's either alive and fine despite everything, or being impersonated.

I guess it just wants to open a portal to a dimension of weird spiky demons because why not. Kelly's labour pains are stressing the portal Cas went through, so assume birth is going to tear it open and birth a whole bunch of spiky demons on this realm to go along with the nephilim.

If anything goes remotely predictably.

Is Crowley about to lampshade how boring 12x08 was?

"Is this what you do when I'm not here? Type?"

You know, I don't think Dabb likes sitting through Buckleming episodes any more than we do.

Uhoh, weirdness in the Pacific Northwest.

Look I spent the entire time I was facedown in a load of cushions between these episodes airing and now watching most of Twin Peaks in one go.

I also caught MORE than enough references back to it from other episodes in Supernatural to be confident that Robbie, Dabb and Edlund have been going around quoting it all the time in their episodes since the start, so there's that. :P

Oh no Cas is using "James Novak" to rent the house. I suppose everyone who cares about Jimmy is at peace now but it still makes me weird to think about how that's still legally who he is as long as he keeps hold of stuff like Jimmy's driving licence and for all we know life savings

"It's about time," Crowley says, still lampshading how boring 12x08 was.

Cas is being really sweet. He took a class online to help him help Kelly give birth. He's like... the nicest guy ever

I don't think he's quite twigged that humans have no idea how to do half this stuff either from a standing start... unwittingly walking the path of the expecting father without knowing everyone freaks out this much without the whole "helping give birth to a nephilim in the shack in the woods with no medical professionals around" side

Yeah the glowy thing is still there Cas... Still not telling her about it, I see. She's as they think going to be dead in 12-18 hours anyway so no point worrying her about the fact the birth of her son is opening a portal to this-world's-hell-isn't-actually-scary-anymore

"Thank you, for everything." "of course"

*generic exchange from the Destiel playbook*

He tells her a bedtime story of his vision of the Future, reminding us with the visual of the nephilim's power creeping up his arm and taking over his eyes - and she grabs his hand again. A world without pain or hunger or want. Sounds... a bit unrealistic as he gets to a world without fear or suffering or hate - he saw paradise, which is confirming he's doing the same thing as Mary with the "world without monsters" mantra that nearly was her total undoing. He's got a world without suffering, just the same deal, on a bigger scale. I love love love how he's the centre of everything - Mary sharing one side, Crowley using the same story about wanting a win in his own selfish way, and Cas in the centre with the much more deep, complex story going on utilising all of this.

Nyooom

Cas knows that motor anywhere

Oh dear he has his angel blade out to meet them

"Dean." (Mary and Sam also walk into the hall)

Sam does eventually take the lead on telling Cas they seriously need to worry about Lucifer right now - a shared thing between them, I guess. Dean and Cas are hostile but Sam moves around to stand behind Cas. Dean says they'll work through their crap later because they always do. Accepting that fights are transient parts of being a couple (uh, family) and obviously they might be mad at each other now but that doesn't mean an end to it.

*Cas angrily heals Dean's knee and I'm sad he didn't grab his knee but amused at how pissed off Cas was because he was never not going to heal Dean when he saw he was hurt but he doesn't have to be happy about it*

Sam takes the time to wander further into the house and Cas has to chase after him to defend the odd garden feature from him

Too late.

Oh dear it's a tear in space and time. is it showing the future that will happen if the nephilim is born and that's what Cas has been seeing despite describing paradise to Kelly?

Aww it's just an alternate dimension.

Sam and Dean relate to this because they remember The French Mistake. Oh dear. :P I never thought that would get mentioned again.

"How did this get here?" Asking the real questions, Sam. You know, after the deviation to reminisce fondly about 6x15 while staring at a hole in the fabric of reality.

Cas tells them they don't want to know what's on the other side, but Dean says they need to. You can't just hide things from someone because you don't want to worry them, especially when it's staring them in the face with a great big glowy rip in reality.

Oh, it's daytime now. Guess it runs backwards to their world with timezones.

Cas has to defend that he thinks it's perfectly okay to hang out here because the nephilim opened the portal and will close it again and he has faith. Dean is like !?!?!? okay no??

Calls him a dumbass again

hey it's the guy from the 2 in 1 promo. C'mon, turn out to be Garth with padding.

Fuckin knew it

Go a year without seeing that face on our screens? Never.

Also let me just rewind and yell about Cas calling him a friend and Dean being grumpy about Cas having friends but listen, Cas and Bobby is the best and truest friendship on the show shut your mouth Dean.

you know technically Bobby is "garth with padding" in the sense that Garth metaphorically took over his role after his death, while being a lanky guy.

I'm calling that a win.

Correction: beret!bobby. He's awesome.

Making up for being killed off-screen in the opening of Endverse

I love how Sam and Dean keep on trying to make Bobby know who they are even after Cas keeps on trying to explain that he has no idea who they are

You know Cas seeing a world that Sam and Dean never saved while he's currently helping the nephilim be born in a way that is utterly terrifying for the fabric of their reality should probably make him a lot more nervous, but he's fine because he has faith

for Sam and Dean, it's a different thing to see altogether, because sure they get they saved the world and they didn't NEED to see how awful it would be without them to know they did a good thing. But Dean literally just made peace with Mary over this and Sam seemed to as well although honestly he's been going along with it all so much as it happens maybe he needs a great big set piece to see all this and muse on how their lives changed the world because it gives him a very external way to see and process that Mary's deal may have sucked for them personally, and kinda damned him for a little while etc etc Dean gave her the sob story on Sam's behalf last episode, but if he was ever going to have a similar way to be at peace with Mary compared to Dean getting the personal one, it's revisiting the early seasons Kripke Era mytharc and asking what would have happened if it hadn't happened.

Ironically in 4x03 Cas sets Dean on his little quest to silently observe everything with "you have to stop it" but if anything his actions set things in motion and averted this world... Quite a self-fulfilling prophecy that Heaven and Hell were so obsessed with the bloodlines and the prophecy and the blah blah blah that they managed to avert the apocalypse by trying to make it happen.

Blah blah nothing we didn't already know with Mary and Kelly although nice they're talking female character to female character >.>

Getting a bit worried they were like omg Lucifer's coming and then Sam and Dean and Cas all go have a vacation elsewhere and leave Mary alone to defend Kelly. I suppose we know Cas comes back because there was the promo scene with him kissing Kelly on the forehead presumably as she's dying but I didn't analyse the video very much at ALL so I can't really remember what else we haven't seen as we've now seen all the bits I think anyone was yelling about and forcing our attention to

Bobby called his gun Rufus :')

It's angel killing bullets. :O Dean is like "awesome" and Cas side-eyes him with the best side-eyes Cas has had in years like, I was SHOT with one of those, you dick.

I don't think Mary's going to keep the hand :P

Oh they made it back.

"Are you alright?" Cas immediately asks Dean, personally, if he's alright and Dean's like "NO" and his voice creaks as he describes being trapped between Lucifer and Mad Max

"I don't even know where to start!" yep still on with that theme from earlier. They've been witnesses all year, really - just showing up in episodes as events unfold, and they really, really haven't had a handle on stuff. Even the BMoL situation played out in such a way that Mary killed Ketch and Jody killed Dr Hess and Ketch killed Mick and Toni, and Mary killed that awesome lady who attacked them at the start of the season - whether it's the brothers specifically not being allowed to kill too many humans too causally on screen or what, combined with being witnesses to round after round of the Lucifer thing, the only "win" they thought they got was banishing him, and Crowley fucked that up too so no wonder Dean hit him

Oh he's back

hi crowley

"Turns out I'm the answer to all your problems"

(did they seriously think he couldn't get out of being pinned to a table with a knife and no other restraints? I mean it HURTS but it doesn't actually incapacitate him from doing stuff like... pulling the knife out...)

Anyway didn't we have some speculation Crowley was maybe going to dramatically hero moment the day?

(Ah maybe something silly I was saying to Mittens in 12x08 when I was joking about what could possibly happen next with the vague teasing that something ridiculous was about to happen)

Kelly and Mary are now BFFs and Mary is unwittingly Kelly's hand holding friend through this. I suspect this is just to tie up some things about all the Dagon and Mary as parallel mothers that was going on at some point in 12x17 or 12x19 when she was villain monologuing

Is Cas going to tell her that her son is opening holes in reality? Or just whatever the plan is Crowley showed up with

Dean has the pre-drama chat with Sam about having faith in their family. Weirdly includes Crowley in that too despite almost killing him earlier, and adds a "sometimes" - he's got used to rely on Crowley to want to save his own bacon via using them and incidentally saving THEIR bacon enough times it almost looks like friendship :P

(Also... summer of love.)

You know it was totally sweet in context where Cas kissed her on the head. Definitely nothing to actually be concerned about in this episode - the whole opening was so funny and cute with guardian angel plays at being dad but the fact he was doing it AS a guardian angel was very very clear

Anyway Lucifer showed up

Sam makes a bizarre out of left field play telling Lucifer that Chuck wouldn't allow him to do whatever he wants to do, though 12x07 had Lucifer's big meltdown (literally) in front of them about how abandoned and miserable he felt. Not sure if this is part of the plan or Sam's buying for time hoping to get him ranting again.

(I mean. Lucifer is ranting again so.)

If there IS a random Chuck and Lucifer second attempt at reconciliation at this point I wouldn't put it past Dabb although not currently sure what part that plays. Chuck did choose these losers to defend the planet on his behalf after all

You know, Lucifer thinks this world sucks. A very obvious solution is just to let him chase them around the house, then someone kick him into that portal right before Jack closes it, if he is indeed going to do that

"Apocalypse take two. That's your plan." "When in doubt, go with the classics" You know, Lucifer, did you ever ask what happened to your brother Raphael?

Cas. Cas happened to him.

Anyway part of the great season 6 redux. How does it go this time? Well there's a lake literally right there and a portal full of nasties, and Bobby did some basic lore info on them so I have to assume it's not totally random what was through there, but at least SOME of it is going to be a problem for them next year

"See you on the other side" yeah that's... a thing that Dean said

LOL Dean and Sam turn and leg it around the house

*glances at Dabb* I worry about how much I think like him sometimes.

They lure Lucifer in out of curiosity. It's power, he's interested, and... I really hope Bobby kills him

"You wanted the apocalypse, you got it" this honestly seems like almost a kind way to retire Lucifer without killing him. Just shove him in a world even worse than endverse and let him have a crack at things where he's not the biggest fish in town and has some catching up to do

Dean gets to shoot Lucifer a billion times with an assault weapon because, well, he already shot the grenade launcher today, he needs something more fun to do now

Oh dear, now he's out of bullets

Lucifer really likes puching Dean in the face. He probably still feels he owes him some more face punches since 5x22

Dean is happy to volunteer his face up as a distraction, at least because Lucifer won't kill him instantly because he prefers punching Dean and making it slow...

Oh wow gee doing a spell that seals the rift needs someone to stick around and -

not just do it, a life apparently. Uh, Crowley... Are you gonna do this just to spite Lucifer?

Sam and Dean employ the tactic of running away again

Lucifer teases Crowley for wanting to make it personal by not locking him away in the cage and just ending it when it should have ended.

I think personal spite is going to play a biiit of a role here :P

*Crowley villain monologues like a champion*

Time go, Sam and Dean

"Bye, boys"

BYE CROWLEY

Maybe

for now anyway

The MacLeod Family Drama definitely ended this season anyway - I do think 12x13 ought to have been a showstopper of an episode with all their laundry aired and stuff to make it fair, and of course to have resolved the time travel nonsense better

but anyway, I think Rowena and Mary have a huge thematic overlap for what they do for Dean and Crowley - it did resolve Crowley's emotional arc in a way where rounds of villainy and winning/losing could be an eternal pattern with the Winchesters. Even if it ended badly it still ENDED and they all came to a point where there was closure of some sort. And Crowley is still the dark mirror to all this, and same for Rowena, even if she also softened to the Winchesters in the last season. (And Sam softened enough to Crowley to say thank you to him - him getting the hug and thank yous was a real doom :P)

*a lot of things happen very quickly to which my reaction is just ????*

I suppose Cas either had no idea what was going on and charged in to save the day when it took too long, or the nephilim sent him in to kill Lucifer because why not. Mary just got knocked out and Kelly's glowing

I kind of feel this is Cas wanted to be there because the writing moved him there

CAS

Oh my fucking god remember how terrified I was last episode of Jody standing with her back to the open door because the same thing happened to that random hunter?

ALSO I tried to rewatch the season before I got sick and everything ground to a halt and all these episodes suddenly happened, and the opening road so far recapping 11 had that random angel who died and looked like Cas in the promo for 11x09 and freaked everyone out and it looked pretty much exactly like this, so if you can somehow retain the entire season in your head, uuh

Fuckin Dabb era fucking - GAH

Did Lucifer really just growl at Mary

Brass knuckles! Work on angels too

Repeating 12x01 where Ms Watt (rememebred her name) was so badass and unstoppable with them and kicked their butts until Mary stopped her. Mary is the unstoppable force

Oh didn't want to see a random shot of dead cas not thinking about that lalalala

We forgot Adam

Lucifer didn't

*swan songs Mary out of there*

Technically Michael did that to HIM but I guess flippy flippy everything's reversed, Mary's going to the reverse verse anyway

Dabb era is freaking inside out

Run, Mary.

Okay I can see what they said about Purgatory, but that is a reverse of it completely, Mary alone in a hostile land but with Lucifer instead of how Dean was with Cas, and whatever they were in season 7 and however it looked like Cas flapped off and abandoned him at the end, he wouldn't be a threat to him

Sam sees the light is flashing in the house as Jack is being born, Dean is a bit distracted looking at Cas in a way that made my brain ache so much I saw stars and had to pause

I drank half a bottle of water and hit play and I mostly screamed at Mittens about the following succession of events in incoherent caps but my conclusion is, that long shot of Dean having fallen to his knees then falling to sit down in despair looking up while right beside Cas and we have wings and... yeah that is the Worst Shot On The Entire Show and will never ever ever be topped by anything they ever do ever again. I have seen the image that my Hell will be wallpapered with.

I didn't even believe in Hell until just now :P

Anyway Sam has stuff to worry about

Hey look Kelly put herself to rest except for the open eyes

bye bye

now where's the baby

Oh look it has adult sized feet

Is Sam ending the season in a room with a crib because yiiikes Dabb. Yikes. Jack is after all metaphorically connected to him strongest of anyone because of the whole original Sam arc that this season has been aaaaaaaaall about

Yeah he's ending the season in a room with a giant naked baby with yellow eyes huddling by its crib

Anyway what the fuck.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

I don't like being in hiatus with you all it was actually nice being horrifically ill and binge watching Twin Peaks.

#12x23 #my stuff #Dabb vs cars #Dabb vs everything #Dabb like I'll kick your butt I'll kick your mums butt I'll kick my OWN butt #ow

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kfrinhamburg · 6 years ago

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My train was cancelled?

Sorry for the hiatus, between a few more trips, and working on a presentation for class, I haven’t been able to motivate myself to write up a new post. However, I am hoping to get the blog back up to speed with my recent trips to the some more Scandinavian countries (the Netherlands and Denmark). First though, as promised, I wanted to give you a little insight into the much less glamorous, and often stressful side of travel. And, perhaps knowing that I hadn’t yet posted about this topic as promised, the universe decided to give me a second instance of cancelled train in Germany (which now puts me at a 2 out of 2 losing streak). This is going to be a long post with a fair bit of detail about my miserable train night. If you don’t want to read all about that misery you can stop here and hold off till my next, more fun post.

Coming back from Munich, the best (read cheapest that would get me back in time for class on Monday) option was an overnight train to Hamburg. Although not ideal, I felt like after “roughing it” in a tent for the weekend, it was a perfectly acceptable way to get myself back safely. I also had wonderfully high hopes, given the punctuality and cleanliness of the train system in Switzerland. Unfortunately, I was in for a rough night. I arrived back from my tour a little earlier than I had initially planned, but I figured it would be a good chance to charge my phone, get some snacks for the ride and get myself organized. My tour guide very helpfully let me into her key only hostel (where she works) which gave me a safe place that wasn’t the train station to hang out for a few hours. I was in high spirits (though tired) and recharged a bit before heading back to the train station. Everything seemed in order when I got back, my train was on the board, I got to my platform and waited for the train to pull in to the station, which it did about 20 minutes early (or so I thought). Upon finding myself an open seat and settling in, I hear an announcement in German which I vaguely understand to be saying a lot of numbers (which I am moderately ok at mentally translating at speed) but the real meaning was lost to me. I do however see a lot of people moving, and after a second stilted announcement in English, I learn that this is in fact not my train but a train going to Zurich. More than a little confused, and now highly concerned that I was going to miss my train (it was supposed to leave at 8:44 and it was 8:40) I grabbed my backpack (luckily I travel very light) and rush off the train to check out the board for the correct platform.

This is where the real stress of the evening began. Next to the listing for my train there was no platform number, rather “Zug abgesagt”, along with some other unfamiliar German words, is scrolling across the screen. Using google translate I learn this means “train cancelled”. “WHAT!?! Can they do that???” Well, yes. Yes they can. Apparently there were storms that caused the train to just be cancelled. And no, there was no immediate alternative option presented for me to travel back home. After some frantic questions to the man working nearby, I lined up at the customer service center to hope for some sort of solution. Arriving at the front, and showing her my ticket, the woman writes up a new ticket (by hand) and gives me a print out of a train leaving at midnight, that will route me through Frankfurt, but will get me back in time for my second class and to hand in my materials to get my German visa so i can stay in the country legally!! At this point its 9:15, and I need to find a safe place to sit myself for a few hours, even though it’s late on a Sunday and most of the shops are starting to close up. I was able to find a place in a tea shop and charge up my phone a little more, but sadly this closed at 10 :/ I then spent the next hour sitting on the train platform, near some outrageously drunk people (because if you’ve forgotten it was Oktoberfest) feeling exhausted, cold, and wildly unhappy. I eventually located a Starbucks around 11, and wandered my way in, found a stool, and parked myself there hoping to have a fully charged phone for the trip and some wifi to confirm what was going on.

Feeling a little better, and perked up from my cup of tea. I made my way to my new train to try and make sure I snagged a seat, and waited. And waited. And waited. The new train was delayed 40 minutes. When it pulled into the station, there were more people than seats and it was a scramble to find an open spot. Well lucky me, I did happen to grab a seat (although it was potentially reserved for a different portion of the trip). So briefly, in Germany a lot of these trains are local, and so they can oversell a train for seats. The potential for overcrowding was not helped by Oktoberfest and a cancelled train. This first train was set to take about 4 hours, and there was the potential to be standing for that entire time without a seat. My exhaustion and stress level at this point is terribly high. I was on a train in a seat that I might get asked to vacate and thus be forced to stand for hours, going to the wrong city, hoping to catch a connecting train to the correct city that only had a 20 minute cushion, that was now very likely to be missed because my replacement train was 40 minutes late. There was no conductor or anyone who worked for the company to ask, and the train set off with me hoping to sleep a little and that the train would make up some time.

Sadly, I was unable to sleep because of the aforementioned stress. And half dozed, half kept an eye on both people getting on at every stop to see if they’d kick me out of my seat, and if the train was going to get me to my connection in time. After about 2.5 hours, I did in fact get kicked out of my seat, but luckily snagged a new spot a car or two over. At first I was super excited to just have a spot (and one that didn’t have a reservation potentially coming to kick me out of my seat). Unfortunately, I soon learned why my seat was empty, the man next to me was kind of a vile human being. He was in rumpled lederhosen with trash all on the floor and seat pocket in front of him. He was snoring quite loudly and would kind of throw his arms and end up hitting me or touching my leg (in his sleep so it was still creepy but not as awful as it might be). But of course, I didn’t want to stand for an hour and a half and was going to stick to my seat. After about 45 minutes of my trying to get comfortable, commiserating through looks with the woman to my left, the man wakes up farts aggressively loudly basically right on me, and gets up and walks away. This was just the kind of stupid miserable thing that really felt like it belonged as part of this night. For the last 45 minutes or so I had the seat to myself, somewhat dozed and was happy to see we were making up the time from the initial delay. We arrived in Frankfurt as initially scheduled. It was cold and I was exhausted and felt gross, but I was going to make my transfer! The last leg went off without a hitch, and I got back to Hamburg in time to hand in my visa materials, though given the 2 hours of sleep I managed to get I ended up having to leave class early and had just enough energy to shower, change into PJs and then slept 15 hours (and through the alarm to go to my language class on Monday night).

Despite the misery of this trip, I booked a train to Copenhagen, this time with a friend. This train was also cancelled (as I said 2 for 2), but they scheduled a replacement train immediately so none of the ticket window nonsense of the last time. The replacement ended up being an hour late, but at least we got seats together! UNTIL, the ferry crossing, where the replacement conductor for the Danish part of the trip didn’t show up. We had to board the ferry separately and try to catch a different train that didn’t show up on the other end. Ended up being delayed again to wait for this train. When it did show up we had to shove our way on to a standing, non-air conditioned car (which was about 30 minutes). This train then announced it was going out of service, but luckily we were able to quickly hop on a different one (air conditioned with a seat!) for the remaining hour and a half of our trip. We ended up getting in about 3 hours later than originally scheduled (which caused us to miss a random sighting of the Queen of Denmark with a friend who arrived earlier). Although this bit was frustrating and turned a 5hour trip into 8, it luckily was during the day, with a friend, and the authorities handling this bit were significantly more aware and helpful at getting us transferred to where we needed to go than the first time.

After all this, all I can say is I’m disappointed in the German train system, which is not as efficient or reliable as I had anticipated they would be. Thank GOODNESS English is widely spoken, and that I now have the ability to use data in Germany because otherwise all this would have been impossible to navigate. And finally, I’m sticking to planes so long as they are priced reasonably, and otherwise I’ll probably try to go with busses!

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lotsofdogs · 7 years ago

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Mother’s Day Weekend 2018

Hi friends. How are you guys doing today? I definitely did not mean to go dark on the blog yesterday but my Monday had a bit of an unexpected start. I woke up feeling okay, but the minute I stood up and stepped out of bed, I felt like the whole room was spinning. I couldn’t walk a step without holding onto the wall or a dresser. It freaked me out and the intense dizziness lasted for a few hours and only dissipated when I closed my eyes and laid down. It was also coupled with nausea and vomiting.

I am so grateful Ryan was able to take the day off work to help with Chase and take me in to see my doctor. Thankfully the dizziness got better throughout the day and everything seems to be okay with our baby and my health. (My blood pressure was a bit lower than normal and my doctor thinks I was slightly dehydrated.) I was sent home with instructions to rest as much as possible, drink lots of fluids and eat some salty foods and come back in if the dizziness worsened.

I am relieved to be feeling much better today and hope that is a good sign for the rest of the week. Ooph!

I worked on what I hoped would be Monday’s blog post a bit over the weekend, so now I want to dive back into it and share a recap of our weekend with you guys this morning!

Friday

Our weekend kicked off on a great note with a date night out!

For my birthday two weeks ago, Ryan surprised me with dinner reservations at Heirloom, a local farm-to-fork restaurant we’ve been dying to try, and tickets to see an improv comedy show. We booked a babysitter (the one I creepily approached at the park last Friday) and headed off to dinner soon after Ryan arrived home from work.

Heirloom was fantastic and we decided to splurge and each do the tasting menu as both a birthday and before-baby treat. Everything was so fresh and flavorful but the duck entree and s’mores-themed dessert stole the show for me! Oh… and the complimentary hot-from-the-oven roll that came with our soup was unreal. Is that weird to say? I don’t know but so often the pre-dinner bread restaurants serve is stale but man oh man this roll was warm, buttery and melt-in-your-mouth GOOD. (And yes, my affinity for refined carbohydrates is goin’ strong over here right now!)

After dinner, we headed off to the main event of the night: Whose LIVE Is It Anyway?

Ryan booked tickets to this live-show take on the improv comedy television show Whose Line Is It Anyway? and we were both looking forward to a night of laughter. The show absolutely delivered (I even got called on out of the audience and immediately started sweating!) and we loved every second.

We arrived home late but sacrificing a little sleep in favor of such a fun night out was more than worth it.

Saturday

Chase had all of us up bright and early on Saturday and we spend the morning hanging out around the house. Since Chase and I did a massive grocery shopping trip at ALDI on Friday morning, we had a bunch of food on hand and prepped some brown rice and slow cooker salsa chicken before heading off to a Mommy and Me Boot Camp class at Burn Boot Camp.

Since we loved this Mother’s Day weekend event at BBC so much last year, I really wanted to make sure we attended again this year and to say Chase was in heaven would be a huge understatement. He gave the workout 100 percent effort 100 percent of the time and was running and jumping all over the place.

We spent some time chatting with friends after the camp and ate a snack on a bench outside before heading home. Unfortunately getting Chase into the car was a bit of a beast – we’re talking a major car seat battle – and I could tell he was completely exhausted from no nap on Friday, an early wakeup on Saturday and a very active morning. We went from super happy and joyful to cranky and weepy in 2.5 seconds, so Ryan and I scrapped our morning plans and laid low at home before we put Chase down for an early nap.

He fell asleep within 5 minutes and while Ryan went to work on our boat, I tackled thank you notes! I managed to finish the notes for my family from the baby sprinkle my aunt hosted and it felt good to check something off my to-do list.

Ryan arrived home an hour or so later and while Chase snoozed away, we dug into salads for lunch.

They came together quickly thanks to morning food prep!

Once Chase was up, we headed out on the boat and spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening swimming and playing at a local sandbar. It was so fun and got me way too excited for summer even though I know I’ll be on a bit of a swimming hiatus after our baby arrives.

And yes, you better believe we brought Chase’s potty on the boat with us.

We weren’t taking any chances! Also, huge thanks to those who messaged me about this portable potty option on Instagram stories after I shared that pic! I immediately ordered it and think it will be a great travel potty option for us as we’re still mastering potty training around here.

Sunday

Sunday was Mother’s Day and the definition of a family day through and through! Since temperatures were supposed to eclipse 90 degrees for the second day in a row, we took advantage of the semi-cool morning weather and took Sadie on a family walk after breakfast.

We managed to cover around 3 miles which felt like a victory since Chase rarely tolerates more than 30 minutes in a stroller these days. Thankfully pointing out every bird we saw on our walk coupled with a variety of snacks, books and a few truck toys kept him stroller-bound and happy!

When we arrived home, we ate another snack and headed back out on the boat!

Spending time on the water with my family was high on my list of Mother’s Day activities, so it was a great way to spend our Sunday.

As we were splashing around, Ryan and I heard the familiar tinkly music of an ice cream truck and were shocked to see an ice cream boat floating along in the water. What a genius idea, right!?

We arrived back home ready for lunch and dug into sandwiches before Ryan settled Chase down for a nap and sent me off to get my nails done!

Apparently making an appointment to get your nails done on Mother’s Day is a good idea because I ended up visiting three different salons before I found one with an opening. I don’t get my nails done often and have never had any issues with drop-in appointments but I quickly learned Sunday is “nail day” for many women and that, coupled with Mother’s Day, meant nail salon overload!

I almost threw in the towel after my second visit but really wanted the SNS nails I had done for my birthday taken off professionally since I peeled two off myself and could tell it was a horrible idea for my nail health to manually remove them. Once my manicure was done, I headed back home and spent the rest of the evening relaxing with Ryan, Chase and Sadie… and plenty of ice cream!

I hope you all had a great weekend and that you’re enjoying the week so far. Thanks so much for stopping by PBF today!

[Read More ...] https://www.pbfingers.com/mothers-day-weekend-2018/

#health #fitness

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amtushinfosolutionspage · 7 years ago

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Daniel Bryan is Back. Now What?

On April 1, 2012, Daniel Bryan competed in the opening match at WrestleMania 28, dropping the World Heavyweight Championship to Sheamus in an embarrassing 18-second comedy bout and stunning the many fans he had in the audience that night who were hoping to see him shine on the biggest stage of his career to date. It seemed to confirm the worst fears of his most highly-devoted acolytes: As good as he was, he just didn’t have what it took in the eyes of Vince McMahon and the WWE braintrust to be considered the very best of the best. The next night their disappointment turned into outright revolt and the resulting “Yes Movement” propelled Bryan onto a two-year odyssey that saw him become the most popular wrestler on the planet, and culminated when he finally came full-circle and won the now-unified WWE World Heavyweight Championship in the main event of WrestleMania 30 in a Triple Threat Match against Randy Orton and Batista.

It was one of the greatest long-term underdog stories WWE has ever told, filled with iconic moments, seamlessly weaving together fiction and reality—like all great wrestling stories do—as both character and performer struggled to be taken seriously as the top talent in the company. Then, just as Bryan was ready to take the next step in his career after finally ascending to the absolute highest peak the industry had to offer, it was all over.

He relinquished the title due to injury a mere 64 days after his “Miracle on Bourbon Street,” and after a brief comeback in 2015, he was forced to retire for medical reasons—specifically a series of concussions and an apparent, as he described it, “brain lesion.” For those that had followed him on his journey from obscurity to superstardom, it was an incredibly disappointing end to the saga to see Bryan, a wrestling savant who went about his work with an unmatched intensity and passion, forced to hang up his boots, only to later return in a non-physical, authority figure role where he was tantalizingly close to the action but never able to participate in it.

Then, on Tuesday night, he un-retired. In an emotional promo on SmackDown Live, a teary-eyed Bryan announced that he was finally medically cleared to return to the ring, declaring triumphantly that “If you fight for your dreams, they will fight for you.” By the end of the night he was mixing it up with bad guy best friends Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens, eventually taking an apron powerbomb from Owens—one of the riskier moves there is—before being carted off on a stretcher, finally, at long last, just pretending to be injured.

It appears that Bryan really is back, and has eschewed the training wheels. His return is going to have a seismic impact on WWE storytelling moving forward, and while it raises many interesting questions about how he’ll be used, in a broader sense it’s also worth wondering why it took so long for him to return. What about his brain has changed between now and the last time he was able to compete, nearly three years ago?

Bryan hasn’t been shy in talking about the events leading up to his retirement, and it’s been clear for months that the only thing keeping him out of a WWE ring were WWE doctors, a position that he respected but didn’t seem to necessarily agree with. In a candid podcast interview with former WWE Superstars Edge & Christian from July 2017, Bryan admitted that after his last concussion, he was repeatedly cleared to return to the ring by outside specialists only to have WWE deny him each time he raised the issue of returning to the active roster.

Eventually, after a last-ditch experimental treatment, a doctor told him they discovered a lesion on the temporal parietal region of his brain, which appeared to be the last straw. He was gently nudged by Vince McMahon himself to immediately retire at the Monday Night RAW in Seattle, Washington just days later.

But throughout his subsequent return and on-camera stint as retired authority figure, he’s continued to get rigorously tested, and the results have repeatedly said that his brain is healthy. He now classifies the lesion diagnosis as a “misunderstanding” in terminology and claims that he’s no more at risk of serious injury than any average person. But if that’s the case, why has he been retired for the last three years?

WWE conspiracy theorists may very well look at Bryan’s injury timeline and come to the conclusion that the company simply didn’t want to deal with the constant pressure to make him a top draw that resulted in debacles like the 2015 Royal Rumble, when Bryan loyalists in Philadelphia booed the winner, Roman Reigns, along with his cousin, The Rock, out of the building at the conclusion of the event.

It’s also entirely possible that they just didn’t want to take a chance with Bryan’s health—he did have a particularly scary moment in a match against Randy Orton during the buildup to his WrestleMania triumph, when a “stinger” caused him to temporarily lose feeling in his arms and ended in the first medical stoppage of a match in the modern era, something that might feel more commonplace now, but at the time was extremely rare. Bryan does come from the old school wrestling mindset of continuing to perform through any injury—he once finished a match with a detached retina—so perhaps WWE, by keeping him away from the ring despite technically being medically cleared, was simply doing what it thought was necessary to protect him.

Questions as to why WWE is finally re-activating him now are sure to linger, but the easiest answer is that Bryan has clearly indicated that he plans on performing again, and if WWE passed on the opportunity, it’s impossible to ignore the value he could add to a company like New Japan Pro Wrestling, currently riding an unprecedented wave of stateside popularity. Or the Young Bucks/Cody Rhodes-masterminded, 10,000 seat home run swing indie supershow, All In, coming up Sept. 1 in Chicago. If Vince McMahon has demonstrated one quality over his career, it’s a pathological refusal to let his would-be usurpers get a leg up on him.

Whatever the exact reason for Bryan’s three-year-hiatus, or his upcoming in-ring return, he is back, and that is going to have a profound impact on the WWE landscape. His brief pseudo-feud with The Miz in 2016 produced some of the most compelling television the company aired all year, and did a lot to legitimize Miz as a genuine A-List star and not just a gimmicky pretender. His old roommate and opponent Shinsuke Nakamura, a long-rumored Bryan dream opponent, has already expressed interest in finally making that match a reality. Bryan was having classic throwdowns with current WWE Champion A.J. Styles over ten years ago, and has missed out entirely on Styles’ dominant, long-overdue run in the company. His rivalry with Cena was a massive part of his run to the wrestling stratosphere in 2014, and it will be fascinating to see them interact, or possibly step in the ring together, given their storyline and real life connections. He’s instantly elevated the Zayn/Owens feud with Shane McMahon, which had been fizzling, into absolute must-see TV and finally turned the two longtime friends/rivals into the hottest, most despised act in the company. Really, the WWE roster is perhaps at its highest ever peak when it comes to the level of sheer in-ring talent on contract, so there’s no limit of Daniel Bryan dream matches that, all of a sudden, feel like they could become reality.

It’s become immediately obvious, though, that WWE is going to be faced with the same problem it faced throughout the last few years of Bryan’s run with the company—that audiences simply refuse to accept anything less than a starring role for him, regardless of the creative machinations that are happening behind the scenes. Even throughout his tenure as a non-wrestling authority figure on SmackDown Live, Bryan never stopped being the most popular performer on the roster. His ability to connect with and unify crowds, which could never fully get behind anointed top stars like Cena or Reigns, remains unparalleled.

How WWE walks that line creatively in the coming months or years is going to be fascinating to watch. For now, it’s enough just to soak in the moment as we collectively realize we’re once again going to see Daniel Bryan get to do what he loves to do more than anything else. Yes, indeed.

Daniel Bryan is Back. Now What? syndicated from https://australiahoverboards.wordpress.com

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flauntpage · 7 years ago

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Daniel Bryan is Back. Now What?

Daniel Bryan is Back. Now What? published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

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itsworn · 8 years ago

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First Drive: 2017 Dodge Challenger T/A 392

Chrysler really hit its stride during the height of the muscle car era. During a time when “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday” was a wholly viable marketing tactic, homologation specials were an important element in any performance brand’s automotive roster. Hot on the heels of the wild looking ’69 Charger Daytona, which had been put into limited production for the specific purpose of making the Charger more aerodynamic (and thus more competitive) on the high-speed NASCAR circuits, the 1970 model year would see the introduction of the Dodge Challenger, and a special model of its own with the limited-production T/A.

Like the Charger Daytona, the Challenger T/A was conceived to satisfy the homologation rules of the production-based racing class that Dodge wanted to enter it in – in this case the Sports Car Club of America’s Trans American Sedan Championship (TransAm) – where it would go toe to toe with the likes the Ford Mustang Boss 302, Chevrolet Camaro Z/28, and AMC’s Mark Donohue-driven Javelin SST on road courses across America. The SCCA’s rules specified that in order to run a car in the series, manufacturers had to build a certain number of road-going examples for sale to the general public.

This meant a uniquely configured high performance version of the 340 small block V8, heavy duty suspension and brakes, side exit exhaust, and stickier rubber (along with visual tweaks) for the Challenger T/A production car, all in the name of bolstering the coupe’s handling prowess while complying with the SCCA’s rulebook.

After a 46-year hiatus the T/A nameplate has returned for 2017. But the Trans Am series has changed substantially over that span of time, switching over to tube chassis cars long ago, thus negating the need for production car homologation specials.

Although the concept behind the new Challenger T/A differs from its original reason for being, there are still plenty of tweaks that make this new model special. After getting our first glimpse of the car in the flesh at the 12th annual Spring Festival of LXs, we spent some quality time with the Challenger T/A 392 barreling down the twisting tarmac of the Angeles Forest just outside of northeast Los Angeles to see if it does its namesake justice.

The New T/A Formula

It’s been nearly a decade since the Challenger was reintroduced to the market, and over the years Dodge has sought ways to keep their big coupe viable with a steady succession of new models. 2015 saw the lineup grow to include five distinct models (SXT, R/T, R/T Scat Pack, SRT 392 and SRT Hellcat), and 2017 sees the options continue to expand with the addition of the T/A package.

Available in both the 6.4-liter Hemi V8-powered R/T Scat Pack model as well as the standard 5.7-liter R/T model, like the original T/A this package seeks to up the visual ante while also bolstering the Challenger’s handling and braking capability.

While the output remains unchanged for both models – which means 485 horsepower and 475 pound-feet of torque for the 392ci motor in R/T Scat Pack-based models and 375 hp and 410 lb-ft for manual gearbox-equipped, 345ci (5.7L) V8-powered Challenger R/T – performance enhancements are provided by brakes, wheels and tires that have been handed down from models higher up the food chain.

For the T/A 392 model seen here, that means the six-piston Brembo brake package from the SRT models along with wider 20 x 9.5-inch forged aluminum wheels and optional Pirelli P Zero high performance summer tires.

The visual upgrades borrow generously from the 1970 model with T/A side stripes that are paired up with a satin black hood, roof, trunk lid and fuel door. The hood also sports a functional Air Grabber intake, while another intake inside the driver’s side parking light (a la the SRT Hellcat) provides an additional breathing path.

Inside, all T/A models get white face gauges while the T/A Plus and T/A 392 also score heated and vented Nappa leather seats, an 8.4-inch UConnect touchscreen infotainment system with Apple CarPlay/Android Auto, along with a bespoke hard button for the Dodge Performance Pages.

Behind The Wheel

With all the various V8-powered Challenger models currently on offer, it can be difficult to discern which one comes with what hardware. For the T/A 392 it’s easiest to think of it as splitting the difference between the standard R/T Scat Pack and the SRT 392 – both share an identical power train, while T/A package adds the SRT’s wider wheels and tires as well as its brakes.

One place they still differ, however, is the suspension package. In a somewhat disappointing move, Dodge chose to leave the T/A 392’s suspension unaltered from the R/T Scat Pack’s, which means it utilizes fixed-rate Bilstein dampers rather than the three-way adaptive setup found on the SRT models, or some sort of third option that would be bespoke to the T/A, like the SEMA concept car’s coilover setup.

It’s still a reasonably sporty ride, particularly in contrast to the components used on the base R/T and models below it, exhibiting minimal body roll when pushed hard and allowing us to pilot the Challenger T/A 392 down demanding mountain roads with haste.

It strikes a solid balance between taut manners at speed and grand touring comfort around town and out on the highway, but folks hoping for a serious, track-tuned setup might be left wanting something more substantial. Still, the T/A 392 provides more confidence at speed than a standard Scat Pack simply by virtue of the additional grip on hand as well as the beefy Brembo brake setup, which feels more balanced with the grunt that the big 6.4-liter Hemi can deliver.

Like all Challengers the interior of the T/A feels positively cavernous in comparison to just about any coupe on the market aside from a Bentley Continental, allowing for normal-sized adults to pile into the back seat and sit in relative comfort. The white faced gauges and T/A stitching on the front seats provide a subtle implication that this is something special, but otherwise the T/A’s interior will feel largely familiar to folks who’ve spent any time in a 2015 or newer Challenger.

It’s certainly not understated on the outside though, eliciting nods of approval from muscle car fans almost anywhere we took it. The T/A’s various visual tweaks suit the lines of Dodge’s coupe well, and the functional cold air intake system offers some additional credibility when you pop the hood despite the fact that it doesn’t provide a bump in power.

The Road From Here

While the original Challenger T/A was a one-year, limited production affair, that’s unlikely to be the case here. The Challenger’s transition to an all-new platform based on the architecture that underpins the Alfa Romeo Giulia was recently pushed back to at least 2020, so it’s likely that the T/A package and its Charger counterpart, the Daytona package, will stick around at least for a few years to come.

Additionally, folks looking to save a few bucks while bolstering their R/T Scat Pack’s performance capability and maintaining a slightly lower profile can order just the mechanical upgrades of the T/A 392 by checking off the Dynamics package on their order sheet to get the upgraded brakes, wheels and tires without the visual tweaks.

That’s not the way we’d have it though. With the Mustang and Camaro recently transitioning over to smaller, sports car-like platforms, the Challenger has become a something of a muscle car outlier in the automotive realm, and perhaps no other iteration of Dodge’s two-door celebrates its tire-shredding heritage with more pride than the T/A does.

The post First Drive: 2017 Dodge Challenger T/A 392 appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/first-drive-2017-dodge-challenger-ta-392/ via IFTTT

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twilight-deviant · 8 years ago

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I'm not entirely convinced that Flynn killed Anthony, what's your take on the whole thing?

I dunno. I’m a little wary of theorizing too much without some big hiatus before the next episode. Because odds are we’ll get our answer Monday. But! I’m down to discuss it definitely.

Flynn… and Anthony.

I mean, the thing about Anthony is, yeah, we didn’t know him very well. He only left the Mothership a few times when his expertise was necessary. But we’re still sad he died. Because he was a good man and he went out trying to do a good thing. I mean, he was a really good man. Like aaaaaaaall the way back to the Pilot, his introductory scene. (I’m derailing to mention this in case people haven’t noticed.) Anthony told Rufus to leave and go get tacos. He told Rufus to take Jiya with him. At this point, Anthony had already called Flynn. Connor said Anthony made a call to an unknown number (since disconnected) 30 minutes before Flynn arrived. Anthony knew Flynn was coming. But before that happened, he tried to get Rufus and Jiya out of the building so they wouldn’t get hurt. Just the fact that it was Taco Tuesday and Rufus’s turn to go get them sort of implies Anthony scheduled the siege specifically for that day. My heart. Okay? Anthony was good and he cared about his babies and I hurt.

So anyway, Flynn killing Anthony. I want to say it sounds impossible. They were friends, confidants. A lot of their relationship is just implied or behind the scenes. But they were close, definitely. They were the closest thing to a friend for months. Amidst revolving mercenaries of an unknown count, Flynn and Anthony were always the two with a conscience. To me. (Granted, Flynn tries to bury his deep, but we KNOW it bothers him.) Nothing beats this look they share in 1.08 when that man is being murdered behind them. Sorry didn’t feel like editing out network logo in corner.

This glance is my everything. Looking away, closing eyes and ears. The guilt they share! They don’t want to kill people. But they’ve come too far to stop. And they are, together, sacrificing their own morals for the bigger picture. There is an understanding between them. Honestly, I think Flynn needed Anthony more than he would ever admit to. Anthony was his peer. He’s not going to talk with or confide in any of the other guys. He’s above them. So now he just has Emma. And he is trusting her way too quickly, imo. I think he’s so in need of a die hard supporter in the fight against Rittenhouse that he’ll take anyone.

But there’s the thing, yeah. Anthony wasn’t a super important main character, but if he’s taken out, it will be by another important character, not a goon. So that leaves us with two suspects in his murder: Flynn and Emma. I’m not gonna lie. I want it to be Emma. Because I don’t want it to be Flynn. I really don’t want it to be Flynn. (May I blather more about their friendship in a minute?)

Thinking about Flynn’s mindset right now, it isn’t… too out there that he would become really emotional about Anthony’s betrayal. Because it’s coming directly after Lucy’s. Flynn is still feeling that one. Then Anthony too?! It’s a bit final straw, ya know. Lucy and Anthony, Flynn trusted them, and they let him down. I can see him becoming very upset at Anthony’s plan to blow up the Mothership. Possibly to the point of shooting him. It would very much be a heat of the moment kill though, not premeditated. I’m saying he most likely caught Anthony in the act. Not that he saw the C4 and waited until he saw Anthony planting it. And the fact that the shots were in the chest and dealt at close range implies the person was in front of Anthony. They were standing, facing, having a conversation. Doesn’t tell much, but Flynn would give Anthony the chance to talk his way out of it.

But THEN we get into the impracticality of Flynn killing Anthony. It’s like we were seeing the sped up version of Jiya being trained to replace Rufus. As soon as Emma (another pilot) hit the scene, Anthony became expendable. Except no? Anthony is worlds ahead of her. He was the smartest pilot. She was in the woods for ten years. She’s out of practice flying. Way out of practice. Not to mention that she has no experience with the Mothership. She only ever flew the Lifeboat. It is ASTOUNDING she even got it to take off before they blew up the warehouse. And while the Mothership is fairly self-sustaining with its pretty battery (made by genius Anthony Bruhl), it does need maintenance. We just saw him doing some in 1.13. Not only was Emma impressed to see him doing it away from Mason Industries (implying she can’t) but, once again, she. does not. know. the Mothership. Okay? She did not have a hand in building it. If something goes wrong, she is sorely handicapped in fixing it. Which is one of the many reasons why killing Anthony is such a ridiculous decision. And I just can’t see Flynn making such a grievous error. He is a strategist. It’s what he does. He makes plans. Why would he shoot himself in the foot like that?

So yes, I do want to believe it was Emma who killed Anthony. Which is a relief in its own way but worrisome in another. Because that would mean Emma has put Flynn in a situation where he needs her. The man can do many things, but he cannot pilot a time machine. So if she is anything less than a trustworthy ally, she has him over a barrel. In a way, she has all the power in Flynn’s team now. Flynn can plan and shoot and recite history, but he cannot get to these places unless someone takes him. So he just has to hope that she’s as cooperative as Anthony was. And if he shot Anthony, it means he’s putting a lot of faith into someone he just met. (And this would be coming from a man who’s just been twice betrayed?) But if Emma shot Anthony, her motives in doing so are nothing good. Just the fact that she quickly changed her opinion from wanting to destroy the machine herself to seeing its advantage probably means that she has a plot for it so horrible that she killed the man who helped her fake her death. It’s… worrisome.

I’ll wait and see who the killer is, but I would like for it to be Emma. Even though it does start her on the villain path. I’m worried. Flynn’s at her mercy and I don’t even think he’s realized it yet. Anthony didn’t abuse it and instead did everything Flynn said. But we don’t know this woman. We don’t know if she’ll go along with all of Flynn’s plans or interject some of her own.

But anyway, may I speak more on Flynn/Anthony’s friendship now and why him killing Anthony seems out of character? (I am, of course, excluding the option of spontaneous emotional killing.)

As far as the job is concerned, Flynn and Anthony were more like comrades just working together out of necessity. But you have to look deeper, okay? Because they really were the closest thing they had to a friend. For months. They were equals, intellectuals. They spoke to each other, confided in each other… cared for each other? Wait, waaaaait. Let me back that last one up. I can explain. It’s subtle and you can miss it, but there’s so much implied by one line of dialogue.

In 1.08, Flynn checks in with Anthony on a payphone. He is displeased to hear about our team interfering and asks if he should come back. But Anthony tells him, “No, what you’re doing is too important.” Before the reveal of Flynn’s business with Maria, she’s implied to be Part B of their mission, thus the mentioned importance. But no. Nope. And after we found out what Flynn was really doing, Anthony’s line there meant a lot to me. Saving Gabriel had no outcome on the fight against Rittenhouse. Anthony wanted Flynn to succeed in a personal errand. He wanted Flynn to save his brother and make his mother happy. That’s friendship, right? Or a… reasonable facsimile. Friendship born from needing someone under difficult and trying circumstances. And not only did Anthony want Flynn to save his brother, but it means Flynn confided in him about it, to the point that Anthony understood why it was important. Flynn opened up and shared something incredibly personal. And what did Anthony do? He actually went and made a file on Maria. He confirmed that she would be at Lockman. He helped Flynn save his brother. It’s sweet, right? And on the flip side, Flynn… didn’t… kill Rufus when Anthony told him not to. Aww?

And just their little conversation in 1.03. Flynn says, “I told you there’s gonna be casualties, Anthony.” Makes me wonder about the conversations they had together. And the phone call Anthony made telling Flynn when to come steal the Mothership. I’m really curious about their relationship before the series began. I’m guessing Flynn found out about Anthony and his hesitance with Rittenhouse through the journal. Sought him out. They spoke together, devised a plan. I’m curious about that. They’re friends, okay? They were friends. In a very loose definition of the word, but yes.

So obviously I really don’t want to believe Flynn killed Anthony. It hurts too much. But if he did do it, I know it undoubtedly hurt him too. And I’d like to see the fallout of his guilt and regret. I better get it. I already feel incredibly deprived of the actual scene. I would have LOVED to see Flynn’s reaction to betrayal. And everything after it up until Anthony’s death. Give me that over a “dramatic reveal” of Anthony’s body.

And if I can just draaaaaag this conversation back to my shipper trash priorities. Anthony betrayed Flynn and was shot twice for it (allegedly). Lucy betrayed Flynn and walked away. I’m not saying he can’t kill her, but I am saying he really, really, really doesn’t want to… and probably can’t. Lucy can get away with so much more than other people. She has immunity from his wrath. ♥

tl;dr: Maybe it was Emma? Flynn/Anthony bffs.

#j-watsonia #Ask #Garcia Flynn #Anthony Bruhl #Timeless #I will exploit the implications between Flynn and Anthony until I imagine them having late night discussions together #BFFs #No one else to talk to #Everybody needs somebody #Same boat #Fathers and husbands #Love their family #Their friendship has been like this B plot I've been thinking about in the back of my mind #So when I say the end of 1.13 hurt me #I mean it reeeeeeally hurt me #I am sad #Boo

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