#hurt/comfort season five… manifesting…

[zuppizup]

Breathe

They’re through the worst of it, or so she tells herself. She can already see clear skies up ahead, even if they’re still grey and oppressive right above them.

So, why can’t she shake this unsettled feeling? Why does it feel like she still can’t catch her breath? Like any minute now she’ll go over board…?

Like she’s drowning right now, on deck.

She needs space. Space to sort out her stupid, messed up head, so she pushes herself away from the stern. Tries to slip away unnoticed.

Out of the corner of her vision she sees Callum turn, body shifting in her direction as she hurries away.

Now that the storm has passed, all those without a specific job are watching the churning seas slip away from them. Sink below the horizon. She should be able to sneak away unnoticed.

It feels like her breath is getting harder and harder to catch as she grips the stairs and stumbles down into the cabin. Maybe she just needs to lie down or have a drink or something?

Maybe she’s sick? Not just perpetually sea sick, but actually, properly sick.

She’s never felt like this before. Like every breath is a struggle. Like her arms and legs are almost too jittery and shaky to support her weight… like her mind is full to bursting, but utterly empty at the same time.

She’s sick. That must be it.

That’s why the edge of her vision is going black, why she can’t put one foot in front of the other... why she falls to her hands and knees as her lungs scream for breath...

She tries to crawl to her bunk, but even her arms and legs give out and she collapses to the hard floor, barely even registering the pain as her cheek connects with the rough wood.

Gasping for breath, all she can think is “I’m dying, I’m dying, dying, dying-”

Over and over. Nothing profound or life changing.

“Rayla, are you okay?”

Just relentless terror as her body screams for air but none comes.

“Rayla!”

A voice... far away, she thinks.

Too far to help her.

Boots on the stairs, and then just behind her as she is lifted off the floor and cradled tenderly.

“Rayla, you’ve got to stay with me!”

Callum’s voice, she barely registers.

She thinks her eyes are open but everything is dark as she tries to force air into her lungs. It won’t come though, and her body won’t even obey her enough to sob.

“Shush, Rayla. You’ll get through this.” Callum’s voice is calm and steady as he shifts her in his arms. A hand cradling her cheek, thumb rubbing her skin tenderly. “Breathe. You just need to breathe.”

She concentrates on his voice. Pushes the rocking of the boat far away. Tries to forget the dark, endless ocean that surrounds them… the terror and uncertainty that is everything right now.

She focuses on Callum. On his steady presence, the slow rise and fall of his chest against hers. His gentle warmth surrounding her. Making her feel safe.

She doesn’t know how long he holds her for, how long it takes for her breathing to return to normal. By the time her vision returns, she’s utterly exhausted, like she’s spent a full day training in the hot sun.

Blinking, she looks up at Callum, surprised to see him pale, his skin clammy and lip swollen and red where he’s been biting it.

He smiles when she looks at him though. Big and wide and open and she notices his jaw shake just a little as he sighs and some of the tension seems to leave his shoulders.

Shifting her a little in his arms, he strokes her cheek, smiling tenderly as he blinks his glassy eyes. “Is that a twinkle I see in your eye?”

[witchyafterdark]

—Sebastian Sallow Headcanons; pt. 2

• The Pros and Cons of being with him •

These are just some of the headcanons that might manifest if you ever think about dating this one of a kind man, Sebastian Sallow. Once again, these are my personal thoughts, so take them with a grain of salt. None of these screenshots belong to me. All credits to their respective creators and owners! 💚

・❥・ PROS

Being with Sebastian is like a breath of fresh air every single day.

Even in the most mundane of moments, he won't be short of new things and experiences to enjoy with you. He makes sure that you're always happy in his presence that every time you have to spend some time apart, you can't wait to see and be with him again.

Your safety and security is top-priority to him, in more ways than one.

He has no qualms in joining you break the curfew to go adventuring in the highlands. Whenever he gets the chance, he slips a vial (or five) of Wiggenweld Potions into your robes in case you go fighting spiders, trolls, and Ashwinders without him. And when you come back to the castle with scratches or marks on you, best believe he will fuss over you regardless if you're in public.

But it's the little things that really matter to him.

Whenever you spend the night in his dorm, he ensures you're comfortable in his bed; grabbing extra pillows, giving you an extra blanket so you don't end up struggling with him over it, and casting a warming charm over the foot of the bed to keep your feet cozy.

He might even start to buy ribbons or hair ties for when you need them but don't have any on you at the moment. You're thirsty? He has another water canteen for you. Your seasonal allergies bothering you? He's got another set of handkerchiefs just for you. Your neck hurts from being hunched over while reading? He won't even hesitate to massage the back of your neck in soothing motions. You missed breakfast? Don't worry, he pocketed and kept warm a bunch of fresh muffins just for you.

When you get sick, you can only imagine the things he would do to nurse you back to health.

Sebastian is actually an expert in time management. It doesn't matter if he has classes in fifteen-minutes. He would have asked the house elves to prepare you a hearty bowl of vegetable soup, personally brought it to your bed in the Hospital Wing, and he would truly spoon feed you without hesitation. He would also do all your missed homework for you, and duplicate all his notes for you to go through once you're well. And he will see to it that you're nursed back to health by hook or by crook. He will sneak up to the Hospital Wing in the middle of the night just to check if you're sleeping well, or if you're awake and you need anything from him. He's very, very caring.

Of course, not everyone is a fan of the Hero of Hogwarts.

So, when he hears some students spreading nasty rumors about you, or badmouthing you, he will see to it that this kind of defamation ends within the span of a day. He will not allow anyone to talk bad about you, and would protect your reputation to the best of his abilities; even if he has to... dirty his hands a lot.

You will always feel loved by him, in all the sense of the word.

Even though he would be mindful of his public displays of affection—he actually likes to keep more intimate moments with you a bit more private and "for his eyes only"—he doesn't shy away from holding your hand in public. One of the simple things he enjoys doing is to guide you around with his hand on the small of your back, always keeping physical contact with you. Sweet kisses, hugs, comforting words, unexpected and unprompted gifts, catching him staring at you lovingly (and him denying this cutely), and being at your beck and call are just some of the things he loves to give you.

Beyond the surface, he is actually very in-tune with you and how you fair in the relationship.

Sebastian can perfectly read a person within a given time period. He managed to become Ominis' best friend, who is quite aloof and very guarded. This is because Sebastian has a way of appealing to people in a genuine way. This quality of his definitely extends to your relationship with him. He already senses when you had a bad morning, or when you're not in the mood for anything. He also doesn't push you to explain yourself if you don't want to. He will, however, do whatever to make you feel seen and heard in the moment, and won't invalidate your feelings... as long as you see eye to eye.

→ His romantic and compassionate gestures would grow even further once you've both graduated from Hogwarts, and are free to explore the full extent of your relationship.

╭━━━━━���⋆⋅⋆∙━━━━━╮

・❥・ CONS

He is aware of the weight of his baggage in life, and is quite stubborn about it.

(This one's not so much of a disadvantage but just something to keep an eye on).

Dealing with a lot of traumatic events and death of family members since childhood is bound to change anybody, and Sebastian is no exception. And since things just kept piling up on top of the other as he grows older, he is surprisingly stubborn and immovable about the things that has happened to him. The devastation of Anne's curse and the subsequent death of Solomon had left an indelible mark on his own perception of himself.

If there's one thing about him that you should know, it is that he refuses to be treated as a helpless victim of circumstances. Even if you're coming from a place of good intentions and wanting to help him overcome his trauma, he doesn't like to be helped unless he asks for it. And more often than not, he prefers to bury his emotional torment under a cool and controlled façade.

Talking about wanting to help him heal from his past is one way to push him into becoming emotionally detached from you. He'd rather swallow all the hurt than trying to heal from them; because dealing with them, no matter how beneficial it can be for him, will make him face his perceived weaknesses and supposed failures in life. And if you really push him to talk to you about these things, he will end up projecting all that trauma onto you and the relationship to "give you a taste" of what you're asking for.

With that said, he won't allow you to sway him from things he set his mind into—even if those things are deadly for him and the people around him.

To understand Sebastian, you only need to observe why he does the things he do. He doesn't do things without a purpose, without reason. But when his reasoning becomes severely clouded by his need to succeed, no amount of effort to persuade him otherwise will help your cause. In his mind, you're either with him, or against him. This laser-sharp focus and tunnel-vision can be viewed in a positive light. But too much of something can lead to the worst outcomes. And in his oldest friend's words, "he doesn't know when to stop." He doesn't go to sleep when he's tired, he goes to sleep when he's done. And while that is an attractive quality to a certain point, he doesn't know his limitations. That means he won't stop unless he gets what he sought out to achieve, even with the risk of life and limb.

In the same vein, he will do absolutely anything to get what he wants; and won't take no for an answer.

The ends justify the means for Sebastian. While he can be the type to think before he acts, what usually happens is that he thinks at the same time he acts. And if you ruminate about it, that kind of behavior can be quite alarming due to the notion that he thought about the repercussions or the moral standing of a certain action, yet still acting upon it. He knows what he's doing is wrong but have no problem justifying what he does without hesitation. In a life or death situation, this kind of attitude is beneficial because he can think quick on his feet. But you're not faced with life-threatening situations every single day. This makes you wonder... what kind of moral standards does he have on a regular basis? And what would happen to you if you get in the way of his plans?

On top of it, since he knows how to appeal to people's feelings, he doesn't hesitate to use that to his advantage very well.

Simply put, he knows which buttons to push in order to get you in his side. He will try to make you see that he's doing very questionable—or even downright heinous—things for the greater good. And he can do it in the most genuine, convincing way. He knows that you're attached to him, and he will monopolize on it for the other reason that he doesn't want to go against the person he loves.

But if you try to stand up against him, and try to persuade him into dropping what he's doing, his demeanor will immediately change. He will perceive your lack of cooperation as an act of betrayal, and will resort to other methods of manipulation.

And while he is also hurting from your direct disapproval, Sebastian can find ways to slowly but surely twist the nature of your relationship with him to get you to become co-dependent upon him to break down your defenses. This kind of tactic can eventually degrade the quality of your bond with him, and by extension, the way you behave with him over time.

If you decided to put your feet down and stand your ground against his decisions, best believe you're dead to him.

Sebastian can grieve the loss of his relationship with you, his beloved, but he won't ever let it show in public. It's as if he doesn't know you to begin with. In his mind, if you can betray him like that, then he shouldn't associate with you at all. No matter how painful it is to swallow the bitter pill of his new reality, he'll stiffen that upper lip and act as if it doesn't bother him at all. He is very, very stubborn.

(And yes, this is quite reflective of how he is with us post-credits because let's face it, him not speaking to us anymore was like a slap to the face. Even Duncan talks to us!)

╭━━━━━∙⋆⋅⋆∙━━━━━╮

So, do the pros outweigh the cons for you?

[afictionalwhor3]

Welcome Home

A/N: Hello all, firstly thank you for all the love you guys have shown to my fics now that they are in a masterlist I greatly appreciate it. I promise I am trying to get more fics out, but with my class schedule it is difficult, but I am doing my best. For now enjoy this Cregan smut I have been manifesting for a hot min. Divider by @dingusfreakhxrrington

Summary: Cregan love language is physical touch and he uses it to show how much he missed you

Warnings: 18+, Minors do not interact, oral (f!receiving), overstimulation

Word Count: 1.6k

Cregan's love language always has and always will be physical touch. When you two are walking through Winterfell, he makes sure your arm is wrapped tightly around his bicep. During his meetings, he likes to have you by his side so he can keep a hand on your leg or hip. Since the night you were married, he has insisted that the two of you share a bed where each and every night he tucks you into his side and uses his body to keep you warm through the long Winterfell nights.

Winter has just broken in the North, and despite the warmer seasons coming it was still chronically cold. Northerners this time of year opted for their lighter leathers and pelts. Since the weather finally broke, a group of men including your Lord Husband, left to hunt. It has been five nights since Cregan left, and you sighed as you read the latest edition to your extensive collection by the fire. The moon hung high in the sky as a light fire warmed your and Cregan's chambers. A yawn took over your body as you stood up to stretch your limbs. You decided it was time to venture into the comfortable confines of your bed, so you marked your page and placed it on the small table next to the sofa. You preceded to take your robe off, but before you could do so a knock was heard at your door.

You quickly pulled your robe over your shoulders and tied it up. You walked over to the door reasonably confused about who could need you this late into the night. "You may come in" You call out watching suspiciously as the door opens slowly and Cregan's frame comes into view. A large smile brightens your features as you barely let him enter the door before you practically jump into his arms. You wrap your arms around his neck while also burying your head where his neck meets his shoulder. You breathe him in despite the days since his last bath, the natural musk and woodsy smell was so uniquely Cregan and pleasantly familiar. Cregan wraps his arms around your waist holding you equally as tight as he puts his forehead on yours.

"Hello, my sweet wife," He whispers his voice husky probably due to the days of being in the woods. He presses a chaste kiss to your lips and you watch as a small smile takes over his handsome features. You laugh softly taking your hands and running them across his back and chest checking for any injuries,

"Are you hurt? You weren't supposed to return until the morrow?" You say happily confused about your husband's presence, but also equally concerned something could be wrong. He grabs your hands stopping you in your tracks. He brings each to his mouth laying kisses on both as he looks at you holding your hands in his,

"With winter being over, the men wanted to get back to their families. They were tired and wished to return home. I would have waited until the dawn when it was safer, but they insisted so here I am" He says pressing a kiss to both wrists "And now that I'm back I am glad for the push. I have missed you greatly Y/N" He says and you cannot stop the goofy smile that has been on your face since he walked in. It is your turn to place a kiss against his lips before you pull away to look at him.

"I was just about to get to bed if you would like to join me," You say teasing already knowing the answer. Cregan does not respond, however, and instead opts to pick you up. He easily lifts you off your feet and walks you to your bed, laying you down gently. The plushness of the blankets that greeted you upon your rest soothed your back. You maintained eye contact with Cregan while slowly untying your robe. He bites his lip watching your every move while he himself does his best to take off his pelts, leathers, and small clothes as quickly as possible. In the meantime, you slip the robe from your body and let it find its way to the floor. You start to move the straps of your own small clothes when Cregan stops you pressing his lips to yours in a searing kiss,

"Allow me" He whispers against your lips before kissing down your jaw, to your neck, and then your shoulder where your strap resided. As he slid the straps off you, his lips followed all the skin he touched. He did the same thing to both sides until you lay naked before your husband. Cregan took a deep breath as he took you as if it were the first time all over again, "The gods have truly blessed me," He whispered before pressing a kiss to your navel and then traveling down to your sex. Cregan was a fan of teasing you, loving to see you desperate for a pleasure only he could provide, but tonight he wasted no time attaching his lips to your bud which caused you to moan loudly. Your eyes rolled back to your head as your hands instinctively flew to pull at his brown locks. Cregan looked at you one last time before closing his eyes to enjoy his meal.

Typically you liked to maintain a semblance of your ladyhood by controlling your moans, but tonight your moans of pleasure would be heard throughout the North. Possibly the seven kingdoms if they listened hard enough. You felt your hips grinding against Cregan's face and the way he slid one of his perfect fingers inside of you finding your spot with ease. Yet all you could process was the white-hot pleasure that was shooting from the top of your head to your toes causing them to curl. "Cregan, Husband, I am close. So close oh gods!" You exclaim holding Cregan in place as you get a glimpse of him consumed in eating your sweet cunt and that sends you over the edge. Your back arches and to any unfortunate soul walking past your chambers the sounds were equivalent to that of a pleasure house as you allowed your release to coat Cregan's lips and chin.

You began to come down from your high when you felt Cregan's arms wrap around your hips holding you open for him and if it was possible get deeper in your pussy. To no avail your hands tried to push him away as you shook your head, "Cregan please I can't. So sensitive" You plead with him, but you knew better than to try to stop him when he got like this. All you could do was cling to your sheets as the sounds of him eating your pussy became even more vulgar sounding more akin to a beast who hadn't eaten in days. In a way, you guessed you could describe Cregan that way.

The pleasure was all-consuming as you felt hot tears run down your face. It was all too much, the way Cregan's expert tongue navigated your cunt had you seeing stars. Suddenly you cursed the hot springs that lie underneath Winterfell, for a thin sheen of sweat had begun to stick to your soft skin. Without warning you felt that familiar band in your belly beginning to tighten up and for the second time in as many minutes, you felt yourself close to your peak. "Cregan, please my love. Please don't stop m'close. So close" You whispered while your hips thrashed wildly against his mouth. You were running rapidly towards a release you knew would take over your whole body. And for the first time since he began Cregan opened his eyes to take in your utterly blissed-out state. The frizziness of your hair, the heaving of your chest, and the sweat that gave you a beautiful glow in the moonlight only spurred him on. He slipped two fingers into you and curled them in a way that had your vision going almost black. His tongue continued to perform tricks on your swollen bud and you knew it wouldn't be long now.

"Come for me sweet girl. I got you" He whispers into your heat which sends you falling off the edge of blinding pleasure. It feels as if every nerve in your body is alight while your legs shake desperately in Cregan's hold. Somewhere along the way, everything gets quiet and your vision goes black. When you come to again you slowly open your legs and find Cregan coming back to the bed with a wet rag and gently cleaning you up. You whimper at his touch your body tensing as he shushes you tenderly "I know. I'll be gentle" He says reassuringly. Once you are clean to his satisfaction, Cregan places the rag on the floor along with your pile of clothes. He then gets into your bed finessing you and himself underneath the blankets. The weight of those, combined with Cregan's heavy arm across your middle and his chest against your side has you rapidly losing the battle of sleep. But before you can drift off you manage to get your eyes open enough to look at him and place a hand on his warm cheek. He looks adoringly at you his thumb running soothing across your side as you whisper,

"What about you my love? Do you not wish me to pleasure you as well?" You asked curiously using your free hand to reach down to which Cregan quickly grabbed it kissing your wrist once again,

"Please wife do not worry about me. You are tired and you will need your rest for what I have planned for the morning. Maybe Essos will be able to hear you when I am done," He teases kissing your temple now and releasing your hand. You felt heat rising to your face but in your tiredness, a dopey smile made its way onto your face.

"Well, then I hope Essos is ready for a show. The realm must bear witness to how grateful I am to have my husband back" You say before sleep finally overcomes your worn-out body.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Five Fics Friday: July 19/24

Happy Friday everyone!! It's been a long week, so let's settle in cozily and check out these fics on the radar this week! Enjoy!

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The Scientist's Method by spacemutineer (T, 26,607 w., 7 Ch. || ACD / Granada Holmes Canon || Angst with Happy Ending, Hurt / Comfort, Time Loop, Blood / Injury, Doctor John, Developing Relationship, BAMF John, Temporary Character Death, Guilt, Drug Use / Addiction, Grief / Mourning, Friendship / Love) – Sherlock Holmes has always known the world through the straightforward lenses of evidence, logic, and reasoning. But when Watson is caught in a tragic preventable disaster, his trusted clear lines of reality start to shift and blur, and the scientist detective begins to piece together a grand discovery far beyond even his exceptional imagination. Detection is a way of learning and science is a way of knowing, but as Sherlock Holmes is about to realise, love is a way of understanding.

Tango Between Broken Hearts by curlyjohnlock (E, 38,333+ w., 10/25 Ch. || WiP || Post S4, Slow Romance, Slow Burn, BAMF John, Emotional Hurt / Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Grief / Mourning, Angst with Happy Ending, Gaslighting, Possessive Behaviour, Unhealthy Relationships, Heartbreak, Flashbacks, POV Alternating, Bearded John, Depression, Drunk John, Hurt John / Sherlock, Denial of Feeling, Miscommunication, PTSD, Drug Addiction / Abuse, Family Drama / Secrets, Christmas, Cuddling / Snuggling, Hand Jobs, Protective Greg, Parenthood) – Fate brought Sherlock and John together, but a terrible incident tore them apart. A decade can feel like an eternity when you're forcibly separated from the person you've been desperately in love with. Now that fate is giving them a second chance, unpleasant memories resurface, and the heartbreak they both share is taking more than just time to heal. Will they be able to overcome the past, or will a higher power keep them forever apart?

RECENT LOKIUS BOOKMARKS

Moribund by sticks_and_souls (T, 2,884 w., 1 Ch. || LOKI SERIES || S2 Deleted Scene, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Time Slipping, First Kiss, Making Out, Kissing, Time Looping, Heavy Angst) – Everyone keeps talking about how in all the infinite replays that Loki did, he would have taken time to make out with Mobius. So I manifested a version of that (with just a wee sprinkling of angst).

only looking for a little peace by RunnyYolk (M, 57,051 w., 5 Ch. || LOKI SERIES || Season 1 Divergence, Alternating POV, Developing Relationship, The Void, Emotional Hurt / Comfort, Loki Variants, Flashbacks, Protective Loki, Protective Mobius, Action/Adventure, Referenced Torture, Canon-Typical Violence, Betrayals, Reunions, Grief/Mourning, Trust Issues, Self-Hatred, Jötunn Loki, Catharsis, Touch Starvation, Mutual Pining, First Kiss, Affection, Implied Sex, Jealous Loki, Love Confessions, Crying, Emotional First Kiss, Emotional Love Making, Arguments Leads to Kiss, Hugs) – "Nothing in politics is 'quite' peaceful." "Well, I did no worse than any of the politicians opposite me, I can assure you." "No, that's true," Mobius concedes. "And you did great, really excelled at the game. You laid all the groundwork to be a very successful president. Maybe you would've turned that into more, after a while." "Perhaps." Part 5 of where the edge began

[tsofan1224]

Dear everyone,

I likely have to let my cat go tomorrow. She's 15 years old and probably has cancer. She's declined drastically since January. She's lost so much weight, isn't even resting comfortably, is having breathing problems, and wants to eat, but can't. She's essentially a skeleton wearing a fur coat. It breaks my heart knowing that I'm going to lose her right before my 21st birthday and during the Christmas season, and I wouldn't get to start the new year with her. I probably won't get to bring her home from the vet tomorrow. I've had her since I was five. I'm trying to give her a good last night. We're listening to Christmas music and enjoying rose-scented air freshener. I think she knows I'm sad, because she stares at me and purrs when I cry. I apologize to her for not saving her when I had the chance.

Because of this, I'm taking a longer break from law of assumption and reality shifting. I also feel like an absolute failure as a manifester and shifter, because one of my desires was/is better health for my kitty and shifting to a reality where she's healthy. I now fear I'll never manifest and shift at all, ever. I don't know where I went wrong. I'm apparently supposed to persist, and not spiral or waver, but obsessing over doing and not doing that stuff has taken a toll on my mental health. I feel like it's my fault my cat is dying, both inside and outside of law of assumption. I'm told to persist and to not waver or spiral, but I struggle with these things. I'm aware that things can change for the better at any time, but I need to acknowledge and feel my emotions and process things, even if they're not what I want in the 3D. I need to grieve, even if it's against law of assumption and reality shifting. I wasn't going to just ignore my cat for the sake of doing them, and I never will.

My break will at least last the rest of the year, but I'll pick them back up sometime in the new year. Maybe in the new year, I'll play it by ear to see when I should pick them back up. Maybe someday I'll figure out where I went wrong in manifesting and shifting. Maybe someday I can live the master manifester life I see others living, as well as the master shifter life I see others living. I feel hopeless (don't worry, I'm not gonna hurt myself or anyone else) and helpless in them. I've been on my manifesting journey for almost two years now, and it can feel like I've made no progress. I feel like I should've manifested and shifted by now. As with being a pet owner, it can feel like I'm not doing enough and like I'm doing it wrong. I'm afraid it's going to be a long time more before I finally manifest and shift, if it ever happens.

I don't even know where to start when I come back from my break. I don't even know how to handle my kitty's (likely) last appointment tomorrow.

Signed,

tsofan1224

[pennylogue]

Steven is a Diamond, and that’s okay.

So, Steven’s way too caught up in the fact that he’s a Diamond right now, and therefore a hideous and overpowered monster who can’t hope to be understood by normal humans or normal gems. Let’s talk about that.

For all Steven’s enthusiasm to be a Crystal Gem and to demonstrate his powers, he’s always been weirdly ashamed of how being half-Gem affects his ability to live alongside humans. I don’t think he’s ever really decided how to feel about it. It’s only after seeing Steven growing substantially and changing his hair and getting diamond eyes, now that it’s clear that his physical form is so malleable to how he thinks of himself and what he wants to be, that it really hits me how growing up with Greg and around so many humans has affected his identity. How sort of…quietly unhealthy it was, to go around with his gem covered up all of the time, and his appearance so determinedly human. I mean, think of how upset and ashamed he was when he decided his inhuman aging would screw up his friendship with Connie.

Right now, Steven is a whirlpool of self-loathing mixed into repressed issues and trauma with the Diamonds and hatred for his mother, and because he’s feeling so disconnected from and alienated and misunderstood by both other humans and other gems, because his gem powers are being triggered by his trauma, he’s connected some dots and blamed it all on being a Diamond. 

Looking back at that quiet “No,” at the end of “Fragments”, it’s easy to identify it as one of horrified realization. And you know, this is the logical conclusion of Steven’s feelings about his mother in “Mindful Education”, of “Storm in the Room”, of “Volleyball”—but it’s also the sum of a lot of other things:

Peridot: The Diamonds are the Gem matriarchs! …We live to serve them.

The culmination of Peridot flipping to the Crystal Gems is tied directly into her rejecting the Diamonds. Diamonds are introduced as the symbol of everything wrong with Homeworld.

Garnet: “How dare you fuse with a member of my court? You will be broken for this!”

…

Garnet: Pink Diamond thought for a moment, and then laughed; a wicked, empty sound. “You wish to save these life-forms at the expense of our own? Ha! Don’t be absurd. Return to your post, and I will forget your insolence.”

Diamonds are shatterers. They hate fusion. They hate Earth and organic life. They hate Garnet. They’re the evil queens in Garnet’s fairy tale. 

Garnet: The Earth belonged to Pink Diamond. Destroying her was the only way to save the planet. For Amethyst to be herself, for Pearl to be free, for me to be together. For you to exist.

Free will and the Diamonds are utterly opposed. It might be a tragedy that Pink Diamond was killed, but she was a monster, like the other Diamonds. The  ultimate enemies of the Crystal Gems.

We got almost five seasons of the Diamonds being spoken of this way. You see how terrified every Gem is of the Diamonds, whether they worship them or despise them. 

And then we found out a) Rose Quartz was one of them. And b) that Steven is one of them. 

Hey, quick question–anyone remember what Sapphire said, right in front of Steven, after the reveal?

Sapphire: Of course she was a Diamond. What a long road she took, to torture us all like this...

…Yeah, we never really got his feelings on b, did we?

I think Steven was so overwhelmed by everything else that was going on and everyone’s reactions, and later so eager to jump on the chance that being seen as one of the Diamonds gave him to fix the corrupted gems and help everyone, that we’ve never really seen him process this realization. Steven drew a very clear line in the sand. The Diamonds are the Diamonds, and Steven is Steven. The Diamonds are wrong about everything, so they’re also wrong about him being Pink, the same way everyone else in the series who’s called him another name has been wrong. He’s not Rose Quartz. He’s not Pink Diamond. 

Except…that second part isn’t true. Sure, Steven has a human body. Sure, Steven’s not the original Pink Diamond. That doesn’t mean he’s not a Pink Diamond. 

But it was easy back then, right? Because Steven was so, so different from them. A Crystal Gem. A defender of fusion. Weak. Small. Human-colored. Harmless. And as Steven says in the finale promo:

I don’t hurt people. I help people.

Yeah, there’s no way that building an incredibly black-and-white mindset with impossibly high standards for himself to create and hold on to a sense of identity was going to backfire.

So yeah, we never really saw Steven process that he was supposed to be one of these terrifying rulers. Except now he’s hurting people. In fact, it seems that all he can do is hurt people. And since he’s only able to see the bad things he can do, the amount of horrible power he has and how isolating it is and how terrifying it is–of course he blames it on what’s always seen as the source of so many horrible things. 

No wonder he’s having an identity crisis! He’s always told himself that he’s different than the Diamonds. He’s better than them. He has to be. So if he’s doing everything wrong, if he’s a freak, if he’s a shatterer, than it’s because he’s a Diamond. He’s just like them. He’s just as bad as them. He’s just as much a monster as the Diamonds are.

It’s complicated, what’s going on. Steven’s very, very wrong. But he’s also, strangely, right on target.

The thing is, this isn’t happening because he’s a Diamond, it’s because he’s human. He’s experienced trauma while growing up and is trying to react to it in a very human way. He literally has PTSD and CPTSD, and if you’ll look up the symptoms you’ll see he’s showing all of them. He’s not a monster. He’s part-human, so his symptoms are manifesting in partially inhuman ways. And that means he just happens to have the power to do a lot more damage than other humans when he lashes out in a way that is, once more, very characteristic for humans. But you know, even the best of humans can do a lot of damage, too, especially when they never really get over trauma. After all, Greg sure did a number on Steven. 

The flip-side of this is that the hilarious irony of ancient magical rocks trying to treat themselves as perfect and inhuman alien beings has always been that, that in reality, they’re every bit as fucked up and human as humans are. That’s the whole point of the Crystal Gems and the Homeworld Gems. Remember back when Garnet seemed so perfect? Peridot seemed pretty alien and unfeeling at the beginning, right? Jasper, Topaz, Aquamarine, it goes all the way up to the Diamonds. 

The whole point of the Diamonds and why the old system was broken was that the Diamonds tried to present themselves as perfect beings without flaw, when in fact they were all just as much a disaster as every other Gem. Remember back when Rose Quartz was a flawless goddess? Yellow and Blue were terrifying when we first saw them, but then we saw them comforting each other at the Zoo. They’re literally just a screwed-up family grieving and dealing with the death of one of their own–White’s first appearance painted her as this terrifying and totally inhuman being above even Yellow and Blue, but in the end, every one of the Diamonds is a normal, flawed person…just vested with the power to do a lot more damage than most.

The thing about White, was that she was so sure she had to be perfect, that she had to make everything better, but in the end, the solution was just to…let go. Accept that she was imperfect, and live with the consequences of it. Let other people help her. Stop trying to fit into being something she’s not, and just let herself be who she is. 

Does any of this sound familiar?

All four of the original Diamonds had destructive powers. All four of the original Diamonds experienced a change and made a conscious choice to control themselves and try to stop using their powers to negatively affect others. White Diamond might be stuck being White Diamond, but as “Homeworld Bound” made clear, she’s also the only one who gets to decide what that means.

So you know what?

You can call Steven half-Gem and half-human, but that doesn’t really describe what he is. He’s a human with a Gem. A Gem with a human form. None of that’s good or bad. It is what it is. And as much as it sucks to be different from everyone else, he’s also the only one who gets to decide what being different means to him. Steven Universe isn’t Rose Quartz and he’s not his mom, but just like he’s a human, he’s also Pink Diamond, and that isn’t bad. 

And I think that’s what he needs to hear from everyone. The solution at Steven’s birthday party wasn’t to react to the situation they were in and cheer him up the same way you’d cheer up a baby. He wasn’t just a baby, he was Steven stuck in a body that he didn’t know how to control. What he actually needed was to hear from Connie that she wanted to be there for him, no matter how strange he was. 

He needs the people he loves to stop telling him he’s “better than” his trauma and his diamond powers, to stop freaking out at how much damage he can do or treat it like a problem to be fixed. To not tell him that they know he’s going through, they’ve been there, too. They haven’t, and that’s not what he needs to hear. He needs to hear that none of what he is is bad. That his loved ones will be there for him and will love him unconditionally. 

And I think that’s what will allow him to accept himself; accept that if he’s a Diamond then he’s also a human, if he’s human then he’s also Pink Diamond–and, just like the previous Pink Diamond, he’s the one who gets to decide what that means.

TL; DR I actually really hope diamond eye Steven is permanent for non angsty reasons. This kid needs to stop being ashamed of his identity.

[tuiyla]

Can I ask what are your favorite things about Santana

and what are your favorite things about Brittana? !

Sure you can, I love questions like this. Let's do like, five things each to keep it concise (watch me go on for ages even with that said lol).

First, Santana:

Honestly I just love her flaws, but I especially find her anger so fascinating. She has so much of it and doesn’t know how to deal for the longest time. Yeah sometimes it hurts to watch her dig herself so deep, be so cruel to others and double down but what can I say, I love it. It’s a good character flaw because she recognizes this about herself pretty early on, at least as early as 2x15 “Sexy”, but she still struggles. There’s value in that.

Building on that I love that she tries. Say what you will about Santana but she does try to fight her own worst tendencies. Season 4 is a good example where she’s so lost and tries to find ground by supporting others. She looks out for Marley, helps out in Lima whenever she’s called upon and genuinely tries with Hummelberry. Is she always going about things in the right way, hell no girl is messy af. But she tries.

I love her vulnerability and how difficult it is for her. Santana really, really struggles with opening up and that has many reasons and manifests in different ways. Because of this she always has this “more than meets the eye” feel to her. Santana has so many defense mechanisms and ways of deflecting and it baffles the mind when people take her so literally. The only time she can truly be vulnerable is through song, or in very select moments. And that makes those moments all the more special, and her relationships with the people she’s comfortable around.

Fourth, and this is less deep I suppose lol but I love her wit. She is easily one of the funniest characters in this already hilarious show. Part of that is Naya’s incredible, never miss a beat delivery. Her insults often hurt because I can’t help but think, Santana, hon, don’t do that, but you can’t deny she has some zingers. Her little red book of insults? Wow. There’s a reason there are so many Santana compilation videos.

These have been story focused but I also have to say, her voice, and the way she performs. They way she transforms everything she gets into something even more beautiful, even more amazing. Glee was full of talented performers but I don’t think anyone did acting through song as well as Naya. And that helped with all the favourite things I listed above. I guess I brought it back to story, huh. I mean just look at performances like Rumour Has It/Someone Like You, Santana’s songs do tell stories.

I didn’t even touch on her coming out journey in there but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again that Santana’s sexuality is an integral, inalienable part of her character. When I say that I love all these things about her, including anger and vulnerability, all of that is part of her identity as a lesbian and vice versa.

So on that note, Brittana:

Where to start, phew. Okay, number one would be their transgression. I allude to this all the time when talking about queer stories but they’re inherently transgressive and I love how that applies to Brittana. They went from background cheerleaders to being allowed to have their own story and shining so bright. They went from the slutty girls hooking up with random guys to being in love with - married to! - each other. It’s transgressive on both an in-universe and meta level and I eat it up.

I love their season 2 angst. I think it’s the best season of Glee, one of the reasons being Santana’s arc and the way Brittana develops. It’s not flawless but I always feel disappointed when people try to blame either of them for the issues and difficult emotions that arise. Instead, I think it’s so good precisely because you can really feel for both of them. I feel for Brittany and her need for clarity, I feel for Santana and her feeling terrified at the thought of coming out. Neither of them are wrong even when they end up hurting each other, they’re just kids with all these intense emotions in a shitty situation. But they get through it because they have each other.

Another favourite thing is how they complement and are perfect for each other. It's in aesthetic things as well, like the blonde and brunette dynamic or how at first glance Santana's the meanie and Brittany the ray of sunshine. But it's also in how they get each other in ways that no or very few other characters do. Most look at Britt as an oddball and write her off or even call her stupid but Santana had been saying for a long time that she's a genius and appreciated her unique point of view. Similarly, most people are quick to judge Santana for her worst parts and she really doesn't do well with that, lashing out and doubling down. Not Brittany though because she's always been patient and believed in Santana even when she didn't believe in herself. What is that if not love.

I'm gonna follow that up with saying that their breakup is also one of my favourite things. The scene itself lives rent free in my mind, nay, my heart and I think it was a very necessary step. It allowed them both to grow as individuals and they were better off for it when they got back together. I know it's unrealistic that the Glee kids all ended up with each other but like, people, what did we expect. I don't watch TV so it can be hyper realistic and deffo not Glee. I can suspend my disbelief and accept that the time apart was enough for Brittana to grow and realize they were, after all, soulmates. I like that they didn't get together in s2 and I like that they were broken up right after high school.

Finally, it's just the little things you know? Like the way Santana melts when Brittany looks at her or that damn "I used to count the number of times you smiled at me" quote. They can be so, so soft. The way Brittany relentlessly believes in her and Santana doesn’t let Britt give up on herself. It’s the pinkies and stolen glances, the best friends to lovers dynamic, the whole deal. They are just so cute and I really can’t see, in canon, how they wouldn’t be perfect for each other. And I’ll add this on here too since I’ve already said the best friends to lovers thing, I love that they are genuinely best friends. You know, I can be a sucker for rivalries and “I hated you at first sight but then something weird happened”, that tension can be delicious. But even when they’re angsty Brittana are soft like my winter TARDIS blanket and I love that.

Well, thank you for that opportunity, anon. I do love being positive about things I love! I also love Brittany as an individual character btw but perhaps another time.

[earnmysong]

top 5 things you want for keeley/roy this season, top 5 shippy songs, top 5 fic things that you're sort of thinking about right now

TOP FIVE THINGS I WANT FOR KEELEY/ROY THIS SEASON

roy taking care of keeley in some kind of hurt/comfort capacity - fever, body breakage, emotional turmoil - because we’ve been gifted the reverse several times over and roy would be excellenttttt! i need these visuals as soon as possible!

for their relationship to still be sailing swiftly on blissful seas @ season’s end! there can be conflict, but pleaseeeee let them be united fighting some other entity OR have said strife be of a variety which leaves my perfect duo intact.

some sort of meme/tik tok/viral internet sensation post making use of bb roy’s ‘winner winner football dinner’ rap and his newly-acquired position of premier championship league - i only do baseball and i blanked on the relegation for a sec; oops - coach in a comparative ‘started here | now we’re here’ kind of idea *bonus points if keeley is the driving force behind this surprise*

the return of fluffy pillow couch therapyyyyyy

any and all further adventures of the keeley/roy + phoebe trois mousquetaires fun timessssss

TOP FIVE SHIPPY SONGS

i went somewhat canonical here instead of my own personal headcanons. SO.

champagne [vanessa/usnavi; in the heights]

full of grace: sarah mclachlan [buffy/angel; btvs]

mrs. potter’s lullaby: the counting crows [liz/max; roswell new mexico]

catch the wind: donovan [sydney/vaughn; alias]

hanging by a moment: lifehouse [abby/carter; er]

TOP FIVE FOUR FIC THINGS I’M SORT OF THINKING ABOUT RIGHT NOW

CODA (2021) post-movie fic for gertie/leo! GOOD GOD. they had about six total minutes of shared screen-time in canon, but they’re clearly alwayssss an item. i need all of him teaching her ASL and them ‘talking’ risquely in public because nobody’s the wiser and her giving him mixology lessons. and, yeahhhh, hearts everywhere!

please refer above regarding my keeley/roy musings. any that haven’t manifested by the finale are fair game for ficcing!

i  haven’t forgotten promising @simmerandcry vanessa/usnavi champagne-soaked wager shenanigans. 

sophie/her mr. wilson fic of some sort! probably where he gets himself into a situation in which he must put her teachings/advice into practice - even tidbits she didn’t really mean for him to take to heart ... the kicker? maybeeeee soph’s on comms/watching surveillance or something the entire time?!

[c-130jsuperhercules]

What I believe is the chronological order of the Bigtop Burger episodes.

I feel like these episodes were given to us out of order. I think the actual chronological progression is 3,2,4,1,5, and I'll explain why, under the cut.

TL:DR, 3 shows them as new and a little uncomfortable around each other, 2 and 4 shows them settling into and learning the ropes, and 1 and 5 depict them as they settle a bit more into the strange workplace that happens around Steve. 1 and 5 especially have some connections between them, for instance, the guy in a blue hat enjoying his magic burger.

So, in the third one, they seem to talk about Steve as if he is just "some guy" because they're not fully familiar with his antics yet, mentioning how he has a weird vibe. The three lower clowns seem to be more comfortable around each other than Steve, making him out to be some sort of "other"  by the way they talk to each other about him. Steve, too, seems to not be as comfortable with his employees at that moment, the most eldritch of his powers happening in that episode He referred to Penny as Peggy, impersonated Tim, and appeared as a small boy. He impersonated Tim because perhaps he didn't know if Tim was able to work the grill well, and sort of took his identity/role for a second just in case Tim was unprepared. Right before that, he appears as a small boy, asking for a bowl of soup, an item the burger truck probably does not have. This was to test his employee's ability to handle customers with strange requests, or that were, well, off the beaten path. His shrinking disappearance could signify his approval/disapproval of their customer skills, or perhaps regret on taking a rather oblique evaluation. Next, he manifested physically as soon as Penny says his name. This can be likened to a rookie waiter, checking up on a table as often as he can, or an overbearing boss, micromanaging his new employees. We can surmise that they were all somewhat recent hires.

Next, episode two, which I believe take place at least a week after three. To be honest, two and four could be interchanged, but I'm putting two second because of a little comment Billie makes at the end of four. All signs point to the lower clown trio being a little more familiar with the workings of the business themselves as well. As to the order they were hired, I believe that Tim was first, followed by Penny, who was followed closely by Billie. Or, perhaps they were all hired at the same time, and Tim simply has the most experience in commercial food preparation(signified by him being the only one to actually be referenced working the grill). Either way, they all seem to be more comfortable with each other, the burger truck, and Steve. In two, we observe Steve putting on what can only be described as a show for his employees. That little 'Hrmmm!' he does when he spots the elk is not glee for extra food, but for the opportunity to put on a little entertainment. He goes and plays with the elk, while his bemused, yet worried employees look on. Now, Billie being the the one to step out and offer help adds to my theory about her being the last or least experienced hire. Penny and Tim have spent enough time with Steve to expect the situation to work itself out, Steve bring the chapter to a close in some amusing, strange way, as is shown he is wont to do by episodes 1, 4, and (sort of) three. However, Billie is either concerned that Steve will actually get hurt, or that this will take too long and they will miss the "brunch rush". So, Steve acknowledges her concern, putting a quick, funny end to his act, and rushing her and everyone else back onto the road.

Episode 4 takes place almost immediately after episode two, speeding down the highway to the next town. They encounter Zomburger, who Penny and Tim have briefly encountered either before Billie was hired or while she was taking a day off. I say briefly, as they appear to know the name and motivation of Zomburger, but not much more than that, as this is the first time they hear of their strange business model. Everyone in Zomburger appears to have been long at odds with Steve and Bigtop Burger, spewing comments at the rival food truck that seem to hint at a much longer past. Plus, they appear to know that Bigtop Burger will only go down when Steve goes down, as they aim for him, despite the three lower clowns being much easier targets. This, coupled with the "This is the day you DIE, Bigtop Burger!" comment from Frances hints at a previous flock of (actual?)clowns who worked with Steve, but were killed off by Zomburger, hence their recent human replacements. I believe this happens immediately after episode two for three reasons: one, the lower clown trio all stand bemused, staring at their assailants, despite several cannons being fired at them, as they are still sort of in shock from the whole elk incident, and believe this to be another trick, or are simply unable to really process the danger they are in. Two, Zomburger appears to have been chasing Bigtop Burger, and the little diversion with the elk gave them the chance to catch up. Three, right at the end, Billie asks "Is this normal food truck stuff?" which I believe points to her being jarred enough, first by the elk and second by the attack, to really contemplate and sort of process what the hell is going on.

  Next, episodes 1 and five. The most obvious link is that the customer with the blue hat is in both of them, first ordering and then being halfway through the burger Steve got him. In these episodes, all of them appear to be the most at ease with each other, and the three lower clowns are the least confused and questioning about Steve's strange powers. I heard no questioning about Steve's ability to teleport, to have the strength to rip a stove out of the wall, and questioning not the logic of turning rocks into treats, but using the stove when it's not plugged in. Even Tim's "Now hold on one minute" when Steve materializes the burger was not out of confusion, but indignation, because if Steve can just manifest burgers at will, then what was the need for him to slave away over a hot stove. And then, they don't further question the sudden appearance of the burger, but how he wished someone Merry Christmas in June. Now, Steve manifesting the burger is actually another tie to episode five. It's the end of the day, there hadn't been many customers for a while, so Steve thought he'd fool around with the oven. However, a sudden customer appears, and Steve gives him a burger as quick as possible, so that they could close up shop. Even the times evidenced by the shadows of the light poles seen at 1:52 and 8:37 in the season one video match. Steve and the gang then go for dinner, altogether, as friends. I must say, that must've been a strange first couple weeks.

[brionylarkin]

Thoughts on Klaus in season 2

So there’s a LOT I loved about season 2 but if this was the klaus we were introduced to in season 1 he wouldn’t be my favorite character

In season 1 he was a mess and all over the place and an addict but he was also overwhelmingly kind

Literally his introduction was him encouraging people in rehab to get better. He was likable and kind and brave and he comforted Luther even when Luther was being cruel to him. He went after Luther when he was drunk even though he was in withdrawal and suffering. That was brave.

In season 2? He’s still a mess but his defining characteristic is being a dick. He’s comic relief but in like a cartoon way where the comedy comes from him getting hurt. It’s like they don’t know how to portray him without him being high and falling all over the place.

Even near the end of season 1 he wanted to prove himself to his siblings, he WANTED TO HELP VANYA. He tried to tell them Ben was there and got upset when they didn’t believe him. Where did that go? Why’d he give up on gaining their respect? He seems content to act the attention-seeking addict they all seem to think he is.

Klaus had no reason to not manifest Ben for the others or even just say he was there. His whole arc last season was about being taken seriously. Where did that go? It’s like they abandoned his arc to let him be funny, except they only know how to make him funny when he’s drunk.

Sober Klaus is an unexplored character entirely. What was he doing those three years we missed? How does he act while sober? The show runners havent shown us yet.

I did like the Ben and Vanya scene at the end but the ‘going inside her mind’ thing was completely out of nowhere. That’s not possession that’s dream-walking. I also would’ve liked for klaus to be shown having a more active role in that. It’s his power, not Ben’s. Why were they showing it like it was Ben’s?

The most in character scene he has is when he’s in the beauty parlor with Allison and Vanya. That’s the only time when he seems to be closer to who he was in season 1.

I was looking forward to him and Ben interacting but the only decent interaction was when Ben was convincing him to let him possess his body? That moving closer thing was hilarious, I’ll give them that, and actually showed that they’re friends and do sometimes get along. Other than that, they were just fighting all the time for seemingly no reason.

I also appreciated the scene with him reuniting with Allison. The interactions with his sisters seem to be the only in character moments for Klaus. Everything else was just him being an asshole for no reason.

Diego and him seemed to be close in season 1 too but have nearly no contact this season, which I mean I do get. They were trying to explore different sibling dynamics, but it’s the same with Five and Klaus, and Luther and Klaus.

I’m also kind of worried that next season he’ll be reduced even more until he’s basically just the token gay. That happens a lot with gay characters (see Torchwood season 4 which I’m still pissed about).

Everything with Dave was... painful. I know Dave doesn’t know Klaus and probably has a lot of growing to do before they could fall in love, but his speech about how it’s “an honor to die for your country”? Who is this man and why does Klaus “hippie pacifist” Hargreeves like him? (Also they totally left out the jewish thing? You’d think that be more important)

[passivenovember]

Walking Home (v)., the  Tourniquet

For you @thursday-knight. Lysm

They’re going to let Billy out of that horrible, gray padded room on Tuesday, which Steve snorts at over the phone. 

“What, you think that’s fuckin’ funny or something?”

“No, It’s just.” It’s kind of funny. Steve wraps the phone chord around his hand. Nice and tight, like a tourniquet. “Tuesday’s weird.”

“Tuesday’s...weird?”

“Yeah.”

Steve can hear something, like. The clack of a pen. It’s a common nervous tick, a way to cope, but. Steve’s never seen any one hold a bic the way Billy does. 

Barrel in his palm. Clicking the register with his pointer finger, like. He’s pressing Reagan’s Big Red Button. The one to blow up the world.

“What’s so weird about a Tuesday release, man?”

“Ruining the start of a week by spending it in the hospital and then having to use the rest of it adjusting to life outside?”  Steve shrugs, remembering that Billy can’t see him. “They could at least give you a Friday. Then you’d have the weekend, right?”

Billy’s grin is somehow manifested in the honey drip of his voice. “Been locked up for six months, Harrington, what’s two more days?”

And that could be true.

Steve doesn’t feel like so much time has passed. The rise and fall of the moon, the turn of the seasons, the way Billy has to wear fuzzy socks with those little grips on them to stay warm in beige corridors, have been lost on Steve. 

Tainted. Wrapped in paper the exact shade of survival. Surgeries and afternoons carpooling the kids to Hawkins general, paying Barry Mildred to do Billy’s algebra homework for him, and. 

Convincing everyone.

Himself, too.

That Billy would be alright. Steve had to do everything he could to get Billy ready for the world, or.

The world ready for him.

“Has it really been that long?” Steve wonders.

And Billy laughs. “Maybe not for you, King Steve. Some of us had to spend the whole of it in one room.” It doesn’t sound as painful as it usually does.

Steve just nods again. To himself.

He remembers the leaves changing around the time Billy learned to walk again. Halloween. Bringing left-over contraband to spoil Billy’s strict diet of organic bullshit while his body healed itself. Amber leaves complimenting blue eyes as they made unsteady laps around the courtyard together. 

Steve holding his arm out time and time again, and. Billy taking it. 

Christmas. Snowball fights with the kids, crystals on long blonde eyelashes while that stubborn mouth fought to return every smile Max threw his way. Those very same lashes, wet with tears, when Billy opened a vintage copy of Cider House Rules, on Christmas Eve. 

All, you really shouldn’t be spending the holiday in a psych ward, Harrington.

But they held hands for the first time that night. Steve said, where else would I want to be?

And Billy, just. Took what he could get--nothing more.

Steve remembers a lot of things. Happiness. Rocky, at first, unearned, a slide into friendship which turned into peachy cheeks that rivaled the setting sun.

Summer, Fall, Winter, and.

February.

Steve must have missed it. All of it, while he was busy being grateful that Billy was alive. 

He checks the calendar.

“You’ll be out in time for Valentines,” He says. Because that’s important, somehow. “Got any big plans?”

“Oh, for sure.” Billy clicks his pen. One-two-three. “Got a girl waiting for me on the outside, thought we could catch a movie.”

Steve knows. 

He knows it isn’t true, that Billy’s just yanking his ridiculously short chain, but. Steve’s heart beats in time with the click of a pen. Advancing and overtaking the tempo to orchestrate a symphony of worry.

Of fear.

It used to taste like copper. Black slime and dirty snow, but now it tastes like mashed potatoes served on a hospital lunch tray. Contraband sweets. Change and forced endings and--

Steve chokes on something. A laugh that falls wrong halfway through, like a sob colored to fit summer days. “What are you doing after?”

The clacking stops. “Just fucking with you, Harrington.”

“I know.”

“Was a joke, I’m not.” Billy clears his throat. “Everyone who matters came to see me while I was here.” 

Steve just nods. Frantically, because he hears words that aren’t there. Meaning that couldn’t possibly color his life in broad strokes. He thinks about what Billy’s saying, what he really means. 

Everyone who matters.

“Where are you staying? Like, when you get out,.” Steve mutters. The chord is wrapped around his hand again. He leans against the wall, wincing as the pins from his bulletin board pinch his shoulder blades. “You got a place to crash?”

Billy doesn’t say anything. 

Steve clears his throat. “You aren’t going back, right? You’re not going. Home?”

“To Neil’s?” 

And Steve gets the distinction. Feels it settle like an axe between his first three ribs. “Yeah.”

Billy sighs. “No, fuck that. Figured I’d ask around. See if there are any beds open at RCA.” Recovery Centers of America, that’s. 

“That’s in Indianapolis.”

“Yeah,” Billy says flatly. Steve thinks, distantly, that he sounds almost. Annoyed. “Owens says there’s a car. It’ll take me wherever I want, long as I stay in State.”

“You want to go away?”

“Sure,” Billy says bluntly. “Wouldn’t hurt to leave this place behind, you know. Maybe go somewhere new--”

“Stay with me.”

Steve’s heart is beating in his eyeballs.

The world falls silent. Only for a moment, for as long as it takes for Billy to drop something on the ground and then swear under his breath. His voice shakes, like strands in the wind. “What?”

“At my apartment,” Steve clarifies. He untangles the phone chord which has somehow worked its way to his elbow. “It’s small and shitty, and the couch only has three legs, but.”

Steve closes his eyes and hopes against hope, praying to every god who has ever existed since the beginning of time and everyone who will come after, that Billy can hear every meaning, every hidden word.

“You could.” Steve says softly. “If you wanted to.”

The clacking starts up again, slow and measured. Steve can hear Billy’s breath. The ragged intake of air that sounds painful, like a boy clinging to life in smoke filled memories. Holding on to his hand, saying, I don’t want to die, Steve, please.

It plants Steve’s feet in an ambulance. It tips the string of a tourniquet, bloody and wet with slime in his hands. It makes him remember. 

Pull it tighter, kid, come on.

And.

He’s losing a lot of blood.

And.

Steve, we’re losing him. 

And.

Kid, step away from the body.

Billy clears his throat. “You mean it?” He asks, and.

Steve lets go of a breath. “Of course I do.”

“You’ll get tired of me.” Billy’s voice, it sounds like shattering windows. Steve doesn’t say anything. Can’t respond, because. Nothing in life is more impossible. 

The world falls silent.

Only for a moment, as long as it takes for Steve to close his eyes. “I can’t watch you get in that car and walk away, Billy.”

It’s nothing. Only a part of how he feels. Only a drop of what he wants, but. It sets things in motion again. 

Billy clears his throat. “Alright,” He says. “Give me the address.”

--

Steve wants it to be something other than what it is.

He buys new sheets. Fern green satin, five-hundred thread count and worth a third of what he has in savings. 

They aren’t what he’d usually go for, color or texture, but. The lady at the department store says muted colors are good for preventing overstimulation after trauma and satin is gentle on the skin. Warm, too, which is always a good thing.

Billy says it feels like winter, now. All, I’m a goddamn human snow globe.

Buying sheets on Valentines, it.

Makes Steve hope that this is something else. 

That Billy will insist on putting his new sheets on Steve’s bed instead of the couch in the living room. That they’ll sleep together here, just how they always did in Billy’s hospital bed. 

Chest to chest. 

Billy’s head tucked under Steve’s chin, but.

Mostly Steve being eaten alive by the guilt.

For feeling like this is the start of their lives. That everything before now--living with his parents, fighting monsters, feeling useless in every sense of the word...

All of it was a dream. 

Preparation for the day he would open the front door and find Billy there, waiting.

Steve takes the sheets back to his apartment. He makes up the living room, rearranging the furniture so Billy can have his own space. The couch as a bed and the coffee table as a book shelf.

Billy has a lot of books.

More than anyone Steve’s ever met, more than Robin and Nancy Wheeler combined and Steve doesn’t own any books himself, or. A place to put them. His apartment is the size of a shoebox.

He’ll get rid of the stuff he doesn’t use anymore. 

He’ll make room. 

In his apartment, in his miniscule life, so that Billy has something of his own. 

And maybe after they’re settled in and the bills are paid for the month, Steve will pick up extra shifts at the video store until he can afford buy one. 

A nice, big oak bookshelf for Billy to house his favorites. 

--

He locks himself in the bathroom an hour after moving in.

Which, you know. Throws the evening for a loop. 

He seems happy when Steve opens the front door, dropping his box of books by the shoe rack and toeing his boots off with a grin. 

His body is loose, and. Open, Like he’s comfortable. Billy pokes around the apartment, making fun of the weird shit hanging up on the walls while Steve cooks dinner.

“You gotta get some real art in here, man.” Billy says. It sounds like he’s by the record player, digging through the stack of vinyl's Steve keeps in a shoe box by the T.V. “And some real music, holy shit. How have you been living like this?”

“I’ve been living just fine, fuck you very much.” 

“You have three copies of Waterloo,” Billy snorts. As if that proves something.

He’s crouched by the mosaic of finger paintings left by Holly Wheeler, studying a particularly abstract piece when Steve hands him a glass of sparkling cider.

“Everyone’s gotta have their backup copies of Waterloo, you know, extra in case you gotta dole them out to strangers.” Steve clinks their glasses together. “Cheers.”

Billy swishes the drink around with a lift of his eyebrow. “You trying to get in my pants, Harrington?”

“It’s not alcohol.”

“Why is it bubbly?” Billy accuses, lifting the glass to sniff at it suspiciously. His nose wrinkles, like a bunny rabbit. 

Steve laughs. “It’s sparkling cider. Cherry flavored.”

“Cherry?” Billy snorts, his cheeks glowing pink like little love hearts. “That’s definitely a sex flavor.” 

“It’s a celebration flavor, you dick.” Steve chuckles again. He files through the records he does have, selecting one he thinks Billy can tolerate. “What do you think of Rumours?”

Billy’s wandered to the kitchen. “Hate the activity, dig the album.” He calls.

The sound of cabinets opening and slamming shut echo through the space while Steve figures out the settings for this vinyl, fiddling with the tiny knobs until Songbird filters through at a pace that seems right.

“Ice is in the freezer,” Steve announces, and.

Billy rounds the corner with a bag of chips, happy little smirk on his face. Steve frowns.

“I’m fixing dinner--”

“I haven’t had Doritos in almost a year, Harrington.” Billy says roughly. He rips open the bag, collapsing next to Steve on the floor by the music stand. Billy takes one and licks the cheese dust off the chip, holding the bag out, like. “Want one?”

Steve face hurts from smiling so much. “Nah, I’m good.”

Billy leans back against the wall, rolling his eyes. “What, don’t eat carbs after four p.m. or something?”

And Steve filters through a million answers, all of which make it sound like he’s trying to get laid, so. He settles in next to Billy, letting his eyes fall closed with the sway of the music.

“No, just. Don’t wanna ruin my dinner.”

Billy snorts, bag crinkling loudly as he dives in for another handful. “I could eat twelve bags of this shit and still go ape on whatever rich boy thing you whipped up.” Billy asses him, head cocked to the side. “Bet the cheese makes you fart.” He concludes.

Steve blinks at him. “You’re disgusting--”

“Processed cheese makes everyone shit their pants, man, that’s like.” Billy wipes his hands on Steve’s leg. “Common knowledge.”

Steve makes a noise like a runover chicken, wiping frantically at the trousers he bought at the Goodwill, just for tonight. 

He wets his fingers with spit, wincing and scrubbing at the bright line of orange nacho cheese that stains his corduroy flares. 

The shape of Billy’s fingers is unmistakable. “I’m starting to regret asking you to move in.”

“Thought I was just crashing here until--”

“Now that you’re here I’m no letting you leave,” Steve smiles at him, the weight of it softening when Billy’s cheeks glow pink again. He knocks their shoulders together. “You’re stuck with me.”

Billy falls silent after that.

Shoveling in handful after handful of Doritos and crunching so loudly that Steve can’t get wrapped up in the bass line on the Chain. 

“Dude, you gotta chew so loud?” Steve asks, shoving Billy’s hand away when he reaches to smear nacho dust down the length of Steve’s neck. “My god, you’re a menace.”

“You love it,” Billy giggles, and.

They stare at each other for a moment. Sort of watching the brush of eyelashes against cheekbones while the music plays. 

A backdrop to the start of something Steve doesn’t have a name for.

--

Night falls and Billy doesn’t come out of the bathroom.

The food has been stored, the dishes put away, but the light which escapes like neon strips of gold to kiss the mouth of the hall carpet never flicks off. Never giving way to rest.

Steve thinks about waiting for him. 

He thinks about going to bed, jiggling the handle to make sure Billy’s okay, breaking the door down when two hours turns to three but that seems intrusive. 

If Billy wanted company he would ask. And if he wanted to come out he would, right?

Steve feels like an idiot. 

Pacing back and forth between the living room and the hallway, trying not to make it obvious that he’s right in the thick of gut-wrenching worry. Violent, intrusive images of brain splattered tile fill his mind. 

Billy could be hurt, or. Asleep in the bathtub. Maybe he slipped out the bathroom window while Steve was turning down the couch for him, making the space comfortable.

Maybe he was never here to begin with. Maybe Steve dreamt him up.

Steve paces back and forth, back and forth, wrestling with the urge to call Dr. Owens and ask what he should do, until the clock above the stove reads 11:34 pm and he has no choice but to call it a night.

His knuckles sound like a machine gun when he taps on the door. 

From behind the oak barrier, Billy makes a noise like he was startled out of sleep. Steve can hear him moving around, when he asks, “You okay? Been in there for a few hours.”

Billy opens the door.

His eyes are red and puffy, cheeks a little flushed, like.

“Have you been crying?” Steve doesn’t want him to cry. Tears and hallow feelings, they have no place in the stretch of nightfall that Steve has built for them. 

He feels himself reaching for Billy on impulse, trying to pull their bodies together, but Billy steps back. 

Away. 

To make room for Steve in the bathroom or to make a run for it, Steve isn’t sure. He knots his fingers together for safe keeping. 

“Of course not, don’t be fucking.” Billy’s voice cracks right down the middle, like. A loaf of bread that has been in the oven for far too long. His eyes are glassy when he looks up, and.

Distant.

Steve feels like an asshole. He leans against the door jam. “I can call Dr. Owens, if you want.” 

Billy stares at him. “Why would I want that?”

“You just seem--”

“I seem like what, Steve?” Billy spits. “You gonna psychoanalyze me too, huh?”

Steve grits his teeth against the urge to. Fight back. “It’s just when I started getting the couch ready, you seemed.” Steve runs a hand through his hair, choosing his next words carefully. “Nervous? Afraid, maybe, just a little. Which is alright. It can be scary sleeping alone in a new place, and--”

“I’m not five years old, Harrington, I can handle a sleepover at my friends house.” Billy snarls. He pushes against Steve’s chest until there are rivers between them. Mountains and oceans.

It’s the first time since Starcourt that Billy seems.

Like himself.

The old self, the one that used his fists to keep wandering eyes from getting too close. Figuring him out. If Steve were a younger man he’d fall for it, hook and line, but. 

He knows better.

Six months and a lifetime with Billy Hargrove have taught him a thing or two. He nods, stepping back down the hallway. 

Billy’s eyes track him. Wide and nervous and so, so blue. 

“‘M going to sleep, dude.”  Steve waves a thumb over his shoulder, taking a deep, needed breath. He calls over his shoulder to give Billy some space. “Come to bed when you’re ready. I’ll leave the light on.”

Billy’s footsteps don’t pass his bedroom door until Steve is settled under the covers.

--

He’s starting to think Billy won’t show.

The t.v. is on in the living room, tinny sounds of Yogi Bear filtering through the wall and Steve wonders if he made a mistake in assuming, that.

Look.

Just because they slept together, like, actually slept together  while Billy was in the hospital doesn’t mean anything. 

Maybe Billy is just scraping the bottom of his energy reserves. Maybe he’s getting to the end of the rope when it comes to his friendship with Steve, and didn’t want to move in but had to.

For lack of better options, and like. 

Income and shit--

“Scoot over.” Billy says.

Steve jumps, poking his head out from under the covers to glare wildly at him. “When did you--”

“Move over.” Billy insists, eyes burning like flame in the darkness.

Steve does, all, “Jesus Christ, you’re just a little ray of sunshine, aren’t ya?” But there are butterflies in his tummy. Gently flapping wings that turn into stinging wasps when Billy manhandles his way into the bed, yanking one of the extra pillows out from under Steve’s legs to punch into shape on his side of the bed.

Steve squawks. “I was using that.”

“It was under your knee caps, dork.” Billy mutters, bullying his way into Steve’s space like he did so many times on warm summer nights at Hawkins General, stiff as a board on his government issued mattress.

Steve’s bed isn’t anything like that, it’s like. A marshmallow. Swallowing the two of them whole when Billy presses his face into the length of Steve’s neck, legs coming up to pin him in place.

“I got weak ankles.” Steve pouts. 

Billy doesn’t say anything as he goes limp and heavy on top of his human pillow. Steve instantly feels like he’s over heating; the guy’s a fucking furnace, but.

Billy’s eyelashes are tickling his collar bones.

His breath fans out over Steve’s skin, like cool breezes on summer nights, and. When he starts crying Steve is there.

Like always, Steve sings him to sleep.

[of-a-chaotic-mind]

Finding Out

Summary: Reader visits The Empty to retrieve Cas and finds out who her parents were, one of which was right there with her all along.

TW/CW: Sam Winchester x Daughter!Reader. Angst (towards the end). “Orphaned” Reader taken in by the Winchesters. Mentions of Sam Winchester x Ruby.

Requested?: Yes, a lovely Anon said, “Could you do a Sam x daughter!reader where they found her as a baby but she was half demon so they took her in to try and be good and she grows up with them and stuff and then I’m season 15 instead of Cas going to the empty it’s her going (bc she’s half demon) where they find Ruby and Ruby admits to the reader that she’s her mother and Sams her father”

Word Count: 1,423

A/N: I feel like I should warn that I haven’t watched season 15 yet but I can still write her going to the empty bc I know what it is. I’ll try my best 😊 I hope it’s okay considering I didn’t really know what I was doing lol. I tried to make it somewhat fit into the timeline but it’s a little funky. Anyway, love to all!

Your POV

    Hi, I’m (Y/n). I was adopted into a pretty cool family when I was just a kid. I don’t remember much about it because I was only about three years old. I have an older brother named Jack Kline. He’s what they call a Nephilim which is a half human, half angel. Biologically, he’s the son of Lucifer but he always insists that his real dad is Castiel. Castiel is an angel. Then there’s Sam and Dean Winchester. They’re brothers but they act a lot like I think a mom and dad would to me. Sam is like my mom, he’s always helping me out with my studying, training, and making sure that I remember to eat. When I get in trouble, he’s the one giving me the stern mom look that I’ve seen Grandma Jody give him and Dean. Dean on the other hand usually acts like he’s upset but as soon as Sam turns his back, Dean is high fiving me for being hilarious or smart or whatever but telling me not to do it again because Sam didn’t like it. He also taught me a lot about working on cars because I help him fix Baby all the time. If we ever decide to drop the hunting life, which I doubt we will, I’d love for me and him to open a garage together.

    Anyway, enough about them. You probably would like to know a little more about me. Like I said, I was adopted when I was about three years old because someone left me on the doorstep of the motel that Sam and Dean were staying in then. I don’t remember who it was but I remember them telling me to wait there because the people inside would take care of me until my mommy came back to get me. I never knew where she went and because of it I grew up pretty quickly thinking that she just didn’t want a little child and would come back for a teenager, she didn’t. I became what most people would say is about sixteen or seventeen. I remember Jack doing the same thing after he was born. It surprised Sam, Dean, and Cas when I did it but they assumed it was because of who I am.  You’re probably thinking, okay so you’re a Nephilim, who are your parents? That’s just it. I don’t know who my parents are but I do know that I’m not half angel. I’m half demon. Cas realized that almost immediately. For a while, there was some debate about whether they would keep me but they finally decided that they would, but the search for my parents didn’t stop there.

    They called up an old friend who happens to be the King of Hell and asked him if he could tell who my parents were or at least the demon half of the pair but no such luck. So, as my powers started manifesting themselves, we started training. It took some time but I eventually became able to control them and sometimes I use them on hunts but not often as it attracts a lot of attention.  

    I’m dragged away from my walk down memory lane as I sense something shift around me. I open my eyes and look around but see nothing. Literally, it’s a giant void. I remember now. I came to The Empty to get Cas back. “You’re so much older than I expected. I bet you still have your dad’s eyes huh? Not exactly something you can get rid of,” I hear someone say behind me. Turning around, I am faced with a woman who looks almost exactly like me. She’s a small bit taller and has brown eyes instead of green like mine. She’s also wearing an outfit similar to mine. If it weren’t for the small subtle differences, I’d think that I’m looking in a mirror.

    “Who are you? You’re not like me from the future, are you?” I inquire.

    “That sense of humor sounds a lot like Dean’s,” she says laughing, “No, I’m not you from the future. How would you change your eye color to make that happen?”

    I tilt my head and think for a moment, she has a point. Before I can say anything else, another voice joins the conversation, with a hint of bitterness in their tone, “She’s your mother.” I recognize that voice instantly as Cas appears at my side.

    The woman in front of me smiles and looks at Cas, “Come on, Castiel. I was trying to break it to her gently,” she looks back at me, “I’m your mom. My name is Ruby.”

    I’m quiet for a moment as I process this new information, “So, if you’re my mom then you should know who my dad is right?”  

    Ruby shares a certain look with Cas that I recognize as a, “Do you want to tell her or should I?” look. Cas nods so Ruby looks back at me, “Sam is your dad.”  

    Before I can ask any more questions, a loud noise erupts from somewhere in the darkness and Cas grabs my arm, “We need to go. That’s it.”

    Ruby looks to me with a sad smile, “I love you, kiddo. Always remember that.” With that, she waves her arm and Cas and I are thrown aside. Suddenly, it's hard to tell if my eyes are open and I’m still somewhere in The Empty or my eyes are closed and I’m not. I hear someone calling my name and realize I need to open my eyes. As I do, the light is almost unbearable but squatting beside me are Sam, Dean, and Jack. I sit up and rub my eyes as I try to make sense of the information, I just learned moments before.

    I look up as someone starts gently rubbing my back. Jack is now sitting cross legged beside me and Dean is squatting down to our level but Sam and Cas are nowhere to be found. “You okay?” Dean asks quietly. Before I can answer, Sam and Cas reenter the room. I stand, as do Dean and Jack, and watch Sam carefully, wondering if Cas told him. Sam takes a deep breath before racing forward and wrapping me in a hug. I quickly return it.

    When we pull apart, Dean and Jack look very confused as Sam looks down at me with a smile and moves my hair out of my face, “I’ve had a hunch for a while that you were her daughter. There’s no denying that you look almost exactly like her but I had no idea that you’re mine too.”

    “Hang on, did I just hear you right?” Dean questions.

    Sam and I both turn to look at Dean as Cas answers, “(Y/n) is the daughter of Sam and Ruby.”

    Dean’s shocked expression is almost cartoon like as he opens and closes his mouth looking for a response like a fish looking for water. We all sit down around one of the tables in the library as Cas explains everything that Ruby told him prior to my arrival in The Empty. Apparently, after she and Sam spent their time together, she found out that she was pregnant. When she died, Crowley found me and left me for Sam and Dean to take care of because if he couldn’t just get rid of me and he had his hands too full to take care of me himself. Everyone seemed kind of shocked but processed it rather quickly. I on the other hand felt like I now had a gaping hole in my chest, like something was missing. I just found out that she’s my mom but I can’t ever see her again. I silently get up from the table and make my way to my room. Behind me, I hear Sam tell the others, “She probably needs some time alone. One of us can check on her in a little bit.” As I close my door behind me and flop down onto my bed, the hole in my chest begins to ache and tears break through the dam. I snuggle up to one of my pillows and not for the first time in my life, I wish I had my mom there to comfort me but it hurts even worse now that I have a face to put to the title. Soon, I manage to cry myself to sleep and drift off into dreams that are sure to sting when I wake up.

Masterlist

Taglist: @emiijemii​ @castiels-majestic-wings​

[feverinfeveroutfic]

chapter eight: the red eye

Sam and Alex both climbed into the ambulance together so to keep themselves safe on the way back to Munich. He leaned his back to the inside wall and pulled his knees up towards his chest. She nestled closer to him in order to keep him a little more company on the way back to the hotel.

Her body ached and she still shuddered a bit from the feeling of being so close to the fireball. Nothing a cool shower could rectify for the both of them however.

She still wondered what he had said to her in Russian back to her, especially when she peered back at him and he gazed on at her with a thoughtful look on his face. His dark eyebrows were sharp and his eyes were as clear as a bell. Those tears did something for him just to clear his eyes.

Sam considered putting her arm around him once again, just to hold him close to her once again: she could still see it within those deep set eyes. Indeed, whenever she shut her eyes, the inferno burned itself further into her memory like the cherry at the end of a cigarette.

“Did you see where the girls went off to?” he asked her as he adjusted the blanket draped about his shoulders.

“The Cherry Suicides? I'm afraid not, no.” She shivered a bit even though she wasn't cold.

“You alright?”

“Yeah, it's just—”

“Memory,” he filled in.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, me, too. My chest still hurts from that panic attack. Like I couldn't breathe.”

“You feel like everything is about to shut down,” she followed along, “or like you're about to die of a heart attack.”

“Exactly, yeah! My chest and my stomach are both killing me. Gonna be sore tomorrow for sure.”

The double doors of the ambulance swung open and Greg and Eric climbed inside there with them.

“You guys doing alright?” the latter asked them once the doors shut behind them.

“Yeah, we're just still shook is all,” Sam replied. “You know, every time you close your eyes, and you see it there.”

“Oh, yeah,” Eric nodded his head at that. “Anyways, we're going back to Munich and Chuck said we're probably gonna just go back home after tonight.”

“Just like in England,” Sam recalled.

“Exactly like in England,” Greg nodded his head at that.

She wondered exactly how things would fare for them that night at the castle, especially with Alex so shaken from the incident. Every so often, on the ride back to the hotel, she peered over at his hands rested upon his chest and shoulders, and she noticed his fingers twitching against his shirt. She had no idea if it was from nerves or from the fact that he was a guitar player, but it was the sight to see right next to her. But his breathing had steadied out and he let his knees separate apart a bit. Eric kept his eye on the separating window at the middle of the van, the one that closed them off from the driver and the assistant medic next to him, while Greg wrapped his blanket all the way around his slender body.

“I feel like it's already been a long day,” Eric declared.

“Me, too,” Sam agreed with him.

“If nothing, we can all just go right to sleep on the flight back home,” he pointed out.

“What's the fun in that, though?” Greg asked him.

“Lots of fun in that,” Eric retorted.

“Nah,” Alex shook his head.

“Those seats are rough to sleep in,” Sam pointed out.

“Yeah, they don't recline back!” Alex said with a gesture of his hands.

“They do—sort of,” Greg added.

“Yeah, like an inch and a half or something. But that's about where it starts and ends, though.”

“Can't put your feet up, either,” Sam added.

“Can't put your feet up and you can't recline back,” Alex stated as he stuck out his fingers at the same time, “—it's just not a good time all around, either. Woe betide the poor bastard with a bad back.”

“A bad back, bad neck, bad knees—or just anyone who wants to sit comfortably,” Sam pointed out.

“Yeah!” Alex chuckled right then, a big hearty laugh that came right out of nowhere. She pictured how he would look if someone really tickled him, if someone told him something that was way too funny. She also pictured someone actually tickling him, too: with a laugh like that, he had to be ticklish.

Sam kept close to Alex all the way back there, and by the time they had reached the outside of the hotel, he sighed through his nose and tilted his head back to the wall.

“You know what else sucks to recline back in?” he asked the three of them.

“What's that?” Eric asked him.

“This damn ambulance—” Alex groaned and lifted himself up from that little seat on the wall. He bowed his head forward and hunched his shoulders: Sam considered giving him a little massage but he had already climbed to his feet before she could do anything for him.

The medic at the front of the ambulance opened the doors for the four of them: Eric climbed out on to the pavement first and Greg followed suit, still with the blanket wrapped around his body. The medic held onto Sam's hand as she stepped down from the back there: Alex lingered right behind her.

“You got it?” he asked right into her ear.

“I think so—” She almost had to sit down on the edge of the floor in order to set her feet down on the pavement.

“You have got it, fraulein,” said the medic.

“Danke,” she told him once she had both feet on the ground.

“Ah, gerne geschehen,” he said back to her with a little smile on his face, and then he helped Alex out of there. Once the four of them were reunited with each other, they awaited Chuck, Tiffany, and Louie out of the other ambulance. The Cherry Suicides were nowhere to be seen, such that Eric even made note of it once they all had congregated together on the sidewalk.

“They probably went back to Dusseldorf, come to think of it,” Chuck announced to them as he put an arm around Tiffany. Louie turned his attention to the hotel behind them: Sam could only see the side of his head and the outline of his nose, but that was enough for her to come to the conclusion that he still cared about Zelda. Even with their secrets out in the open, he still had a spot in his heart for her, or at least that was her assumption.

“We've still got time before the show has to start,” Chuck continued, “so you know—if you guys all wanna relax, we all can do that willy nilly.”

“I want a shower,” Sam confessed.

“Yeah, me, too,” Alex added as he took the blanket off and slung it over his shoulder.

“Think we have to give these back, Alex,” Eric told him.

“I think we do, too,” he said with a nod of his head.

Indeed, they handed those protective blankets back to the medics, and then they returned to their rooms within time. Sam thought about Joey, given he had taken a different ambulance from them. In fact, when she put more thought into it, she realized that she hadn't seen him since the explosion manifested over the air field.

When Chuck unlocked the room door so as to let the five of them back inside and Sam ducked into the bathroom with a fresh change of clothes so she could have first dibs on the shower, she kept her mind firmly fixated on him.

He was her boyfriend and yet he had gone away from her, which in turn left her to hold Alex close to her. It was as if he could feel her and read her mind without touching her any further than her hand. She undressed and climbed into the shower, and she switched on the water. The warmth cradled her like she did for Alex.

In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if that was why Alex had forgiven her with such ease: he saw Joey there on the train with her. The conversation she had had with Scott that night before flashed back into her memory. It just made a great deal of sense to her the more that she thought about it. Joey saw Alex, and in turn Joey saw her call out to him. For all she knew, Joey was trying to grab her attention because the train was moving, not because Alex had missed the doors by a few seconds.

There was just too much left unsaid, however. All she had running through her mind right at that moment remained nothing more than an educated guess and a conclusion based on Scott's advice, and even then she had no idea if she could trust his advice. The poor man was losing his hair.

She scrubbed her scalp and her hair with her fruity smelling conditioner followed by the matching shampoo: once she rinsed off, she was quick to clean off her body with the soft smelling bar of soap.

She spared no expense given there was a show before a castle in a few hours time. Once all the soap had been rinsed away, she yanked the clean white towel off of the rung and dried off her body and her hair. As she put her clean underwear on, she noticed that the bathroom door hung open by about a quarter of an inch. For all she knew, it had opened by mere mistake, but she wondered if anyone in that room had seen her in the shower that whole entire time and she was oblivious to it up to then.

She wrapped her hair up in the towel and then she put her bra back on, followed by her black jeans and that same black blouse she wore to the Providence show. She knew that she wouldn't have to take it off for them that night given it wasn't about to be that type of show that evening.

Sam headed out of there so she could let Alex take a shower for himself. She almost didn't see the point of it for him since he was about to take the stage in a few hours time, but he yearned for it regardless of anything else.

The night before she barely paid any attention to Schweinfurt Castle and the surroundings themselves given she was so preoccupied with amending things with Alex: all the lush dark trees that made up the forests and the impending darkness that was East Germany not too far from there. The gray skies overhead gave way to thick fluffy clouds that forebode torrential rain, the first rains of the season no less: Sam wondered if it was going to be anything like the rain in New York and dissipate away into a fine mist as they climbed into their van by the curb. Since they were taking the first plane out of there and back to North America, Tiffany suggested they may as well put all their things in there so they could save time.

Anthrax's van remained right behind them all the way up the autobahn to the city up the road from there. Sam hadn't seen Joey climb in but she knew he was inside of there.

Right across from her, Louie waved his drum sticks about in order to prepare for the mood that night. Alex and Eric cradled their guitars upon their laps all the way up while Chuck hummed to himself.

The darkness outside and the near miss from the fireball made Sam think of black ink drawings, the gloomy look that riddled about them. Something about the spookiness of the Black Forest out there as well as the bright hot flames over the spectators on the far side of the air field. Something to mourn. Something to bleed over with the loss of life and the preciousness of it.

She glanced over at the skull ring on Alex's right ring finger. A carpe diem and a sign that he would never be tied down to any one thing. The clock was his friend as well.

She envisioned what it exactly was that she could draw for herself once she had a chance, be it back in Lake Elsinore or the very flight itself.

Joey's black curls twirling in the wind. The little tuft of gray upon the crown of Alex's head. The trees in the forest outside as they burned in a blaze courtesy of a collision of three Air Force planes over a runway. Something to tie it all together.

She tucked the idea into the back of her mind as they took the first exit from the autobahn and into the heart of the Black Forest. Right then, the clouds overhead unleashed torrents of rain, literal torrents of rain, onto the roof of Testament's van. At one point, as they pulled up to a stoplight, Sam turned her attention to Chuck right behind her in the driver's seat. He had turned the windshield wipers all the way up and yet she could tell they were having a hard time in keeping up with the falling rain outside. Rivulets formed on the windshield and all over the windows next to him and Tiffany.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

But beyond that stoplight was the castle itself and the gravel entrance up to it. Puddles splashed on either side of the van.

“Already a shitload of rain,” Greg said aloud as he adjusted the locks on his guitar case.

“That's an understatement, dude,” Chuck told him. “I don't think we ever had this much rain back in the Bay Area.”

“I don't think we ever had this much rain out in the desert,” Sam added.

“Oh, yeah, and you guys get the monsoon flow big time down there,” he stated with a craning of his neck.

He parked underneath a tall scraggly dark pine tree that loomed up into the swirling darkness overhead. The perfect mood for what awaited them at the stage before that tall dark castle. She slid the back door open only to be greeted by literal sheets of rain all around them. She kept it open as Chuck and Tiffany made their way over to the tent that served as a backstage area between the stage and the castle.

A small group of people across the gravel from them had pitched up a tent over their van. As the five of them awaited for them to return and give word to them, she watched at least one of each of them smack on the inside of the tarp, and it took her a moment to realize that they were ridding of the extraneous water up top.

“Never seen this much rain before,” Eric proclaimed right across from her.

“Not at all,” she agreed.

Chuck yelled out something from in front of the van.

“Let's roll, gents,” Sam told them and she climbed out of there first. The rain pattered upon her already wet head, and thus it never actually perturbed her as they made their way up the gravel trail through the black trees towards the castle as it loomed in the darkness on the slight rise in the earth. Tiffany put an umbrella over their heads once they met up with her right outside of the tent.

Chuck's curls matted to the sides of his face, and his neck and shoulders, and yet none of it appeared to bother him in the very least. The seven of them congregated inside of that tent, away from all the rain as it came down on them even harder.

“I hope Anthrax can stay dry,” Greg confessed as he shook his drenched hair all about.

“Nah, it's gonna be a wet one,” Chuck told him, “mark my words, Gregory.”

Within a couple of hours time, Testament took to the stage, drenched to where their clothes stuck to their bodies. They were so soaked from the downpour that Alex had peeled off his shirt and put on nothing more than a little black leather vest over his bare body. The first time Sam had ever seen him without a shirt and out in public to boot.

The rain had washed away all the colors to where everything appeared as either a shade of black or gray, black and gray to go with the Black Forest and the castle behind them; black and gray to add to the fact that the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain loomed right behind them. She shook her head about against the rains all around them and then she bowed forward. Her hair dangled down, still soaked, much like the inky tentacles of an octopus, much like Joey's inky black curls and ringlets, and then she lifted herself upright so her head of hair flung up into the air. It was right at that moment that she caught a view of Alex on the far side of the stage. Greg and Eric moved out of the way for her.

She watched him move around the stage much like how he did the day before. But there was something off about it, however. He kept his head bowed a little more than usual, such that his rain drenched bangs obscured the look in his eyes.

It was difficult for Chuck to head bang with such wet hair but he did it anyway.

They did that song, “Trial By Fire”, once again, as well another one from The New Order, which Chuck introduced as a song penned by Alex himself: he ran his fingers through his wet bangs and pushed them out of his eyes, and he raised his eyebrows at her.

And she realized what he was doing.

The audience had no clue that they all had almost been incinerated by a fireball.

“This song is called 'INTO THE PIT'!” Chuck shouted into the microphone.

Alex put one foot up on the amp before him once again to get them going. The four men behind Chuck launched into this vast wall of sound, one as forboding and formidable as the border a few miles to the east of there. It was that moment that Alex's little red guitar actually resembled to an ax, an ax to the head of anyone who dared cross him. Red as their blood.

Red as a fever.

Chuck's voice soared into the rain fallen heavens over them.

All she knew about this album was that it was rushed there in the hole in the wall, and yet she knew that, in those mere two minutes, they owned that whole entire corner of West Germany. She glanced over at Louie and his dark hair as it sailed all around his head as if he summoned something out from the earth underneath him.

Two minutes of red. Two minutes of Alex with his head bowed much like Minerva. Two minutes of violent drumming.

Two minutes was all it took.

The crowd before them erupted into the loudest applause she had ever heard: as far as she knew, the Cherry Suicides never warranted that much applause before.

“Danke schoen, Germany! We love you!” Chuck bellowed into the microphone head, and the five of them bowed away from the stage. He threw his arms around Tiffany and planted a kiss on her lips; meanwhile, Eric and Greg took turns giving Sam an embrace right there. But her eyes were fixated on Alex, as he stood before his amp and let the noise bleed out from the guitar strings.

The loud agonizing shriek that pierced throughout the air as a result. All she could think of was the incident at the train station. The way he let the noise meander and twist about, like a boy who had been left behind by someone he considered a friend.

“I bought him a ginger snap for god's sake,” she muttered as she shook her head; she knew Eric and Greg wouldn't hear her, either. Even though they had buried the hatchet between them, she still wondered if he still felt raw about it as he slung his guitar off of his shoulder and strode off stage with it, even as the feedback continued to sear all over the stage.

The seven of them gathered away from there as the stage hands helped clean the place off for Anthrax next.

“Yeah, I definitely say we bounce outta here and get on back to the States,” Chuck declared, “it's getting late and this rain is getting worse, too.” Sam turned her attention to the tent behind her. She spotted Frank as he picked his big white bass guitar out from the case on the floor there, and she hurried over to him with her arms wide open. He lifted his head in time and he showed her a warm little smile: she could smell the peppermint from the piece of gum pressed against his lower row of teeth.

“Gimme a hug,” she told him. “We're flying back to New York in about an hour or so.”

“Aw, you guys are leaving us already?” He was stunned by that as he put his arms around her.

“Yup—the red eye back to New York.”

“You oughta just say 'fuck it' and go back to Marla and Belinda in—they're in Albany right now, right?”

“Yeah. Oh, I know, right?” She chuckled at that. “But I can't, though. All my stuff's back at that house in Lake Elsinore, including my desk. I don't even know where they live anymore, either. And forget it with Aurora, too.”

“D'you talk to Scott, too?” he asked her in a low voice.

“I did,” she replied with a nod.

“Yeah, he actually wants to come back soon. But who knows what's gonna happen, really.” Frank shrugged his shoulders.

“Sam, c'mon!” Eric called out to her.

“Anyways, I gotta go,” she quipped.

“Okay—” They gave one another hug and then she hurried after them and back to the van under the tree. The stage hands had helped pack up Louie's drum kit and stack it inside of the van behind them; soon they were back on the road to the airport in Munich.

It was right then that the fatigue settled over Sam, such that she rubbed her eyes and relaxed every inch of her body. The thought of a long flight, albeit one that eventually lay over in New York City, felt so daunting that all she wanted was to take a nap the very second she sat down in one of those airplane seats. A hard seat that refused to recline back or not, she was ready to fall right to sleep on the flight back home.

She took her spot in the middle section, right across the aisle from Greg and Alex, and right next to Chuck and Tiffany. She set her purse right between her legs; once she opened it up to ensure that she still had her passport on her person, she spotted that journal inside of there. That journal plus a few of her black ink pens.

She decided to draw until she fell asleep given it was so late.

The plane taxied about the runway and then, complete with the light fluttery feeling in the pit of her stomach, they soared through the black sky and embarked on the return to the United States. She took a pencil out from her purse in order to better sketch out the scraggly tree from the Black Forest as well as Joey and Alex as they knelt on either side of it, as if they said a prayer. She recalled what Alex had said about people in East Germany, in how they wanted Germany to be a single country again.

She wished for the two of them to bury the hatchet between them as well.

As she finished the graphite sketch itself, Chuck and Tiffany had fallen asleep right next to her. Meanwhile, across the aisle, Alex himself had leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. It took Sam a few seconds to realize that he hadn't moved a muscle in a long time as well. She leaned forward for a better look at the smooth side of his face and the soft porcelain skin there.

“Is he asleep?” Sam said across the aisle to Greg, to which he nodded in response at that.

“Sound asleep.” He glanced back at Alex and then back to her with a shake of his head. “Poor guy.”

“I know—I held him so close to me when all of that was going down, though.”

“Oh, yeah, I saw you,” Greg recalled as he raked the side of his hair with three fingers. “It was incredible, too. The time I've known him, he's always so calm and collected, and—you know, real stoic. So it was surreal to see him like that, and it was even more surreal to see him being cradled like that, too, 'cause he's a big boy.”

“Yeah, he actually pressed the side of his head to my chest. This big teenage kid just reduced to a helpless little boy. I had to hold him like that, though.”

Greg snickered a bit and he looked over at Alex again. Meanwhile, Sam tended to the ink drawing on the arm rest before her, or at least the first beginnings of it. The steadiness of the plane allowed her to lay the ink down straight up, as if she was drawing back home at her desk. She paid no attention to him and his leaning across the aisle in order to better watch her. She stopped right in place, but then she realized that they were alone there, right across the aisle from one another. But she was unsure if she wanted to move her hand out of the way for him to watch her.

“You know, I've actually been wanting to see you draw,” he said in a low voice. She frowned at that as she had no idea as to how Greg knew that she was the artist herself given he barely saw any art from her, if at all.

“Really?” she asked him, more puzzled before when she put more thought into it.

“Yeah, you know, I sometimes overhear Charlie talking about you in their hotel room, and I know they're talking about you in particular.”

“Did you hear them address me by name?”

“I think have, yeah. Like Charlie talks about those little ink drawings you made for him on the North American stint of their last tour and I think I've actually heard him mention your name at least once before.”

He then leaned closer to her and she angled the journal closer to him so he could see the drawing she was making right then.

“Is that Joey and Alex?” he asked her in a near whisper so as to not wake anyone, and she nodded at him. Drawing Alex was tricky with ink, but she left behind a blank white streak upon his head: at one point, once she had finished filling in the blackness of his hair, she went back and left behind exactly three little markings on the inside of that little tuft of gray hair to indicate that it was hair. Curls upon curls upon more curls as they twirled in the wind for Joey. Both men had knelt down on either side of the tree in meditative repose.

Greg propped his head up in the palm of his hand and watched her fill in the tree with more black ink.

The monotony of it left her eyelids feeling heavy, but she persisted until the drawing was finished. She signed her initials at the bottom of the page, and then she turned it around so he could see it for himself.

“That's fucking beautiful,” he remarked.

“Thank you, Greggy,” she told him.

“No, thank you,” he retorted back to her with a friendly little smile on his face. “You know, that's actually something I think about, too.”

“Joey and Alex just getting along with each other?”

He nodded.

“Thing is Joey's older so the assumption is that he has more experience than he does—and you know, the whole thing about Alex being precocious. It's like a tornado hitting a volcano with these two duders.”

“Surely, there's gotta be a way for them to meet in the middle,” she suggested as she brought the journal closer to her.

“I hope so, too—I think all would be well if that happens.”

Sam rubbed her eyes and Greg fetched up a yawn.

“Hey, the next time you're up in the Bay Area,” he began again, “you oughta to not only come see us again, but you ought to see Exodus, too.”

“I'd love to see them,” she declared, “especially since Marla and I missed them that one time.”

“Saw Testament by yourself—time to see Exodus solo, too.” Greg flashed her a wink and he leaned back in the seat. Sam packed the journal back into her purse with her pens and that one pencil, and she wondered exactly how she would do that given they had to literally break her out of the house in Lake Elsinore. She turned back to Greg to speak to him more, but he had already drifted off to sleep at that point however.

She sighed through her nose and leaned back in the seat herself. No sooner had she done that when she fell asleep herself, that time into a dreamless bout that ended with Tiffany waking her up.

“We're almost back home,” she told her in a broken voice.

“Oh—Oh, okay.” Sam rubbed her eyes and then strapped into the seat; all the while, she wondered as to how long that light over their heads had been on. She peered back across the aisle at Greg and Alex, both of whom had woken up before her and strapped in themselves. The latter kept his head bowed away from her prying eyes and she wondered what was going through his mind right then.

Soon, they touched down in the place she hoped that she would call her home again at some point in the future, the heart of New York City.

She shook her head about every so often as the seven of them filed off of the plane together: Testament had their instruments on their backs every step of the way through customs and to the ticket counter. Sam slipped her passport next to her journal and she rubbed her eyes again.

Fell asleep too late and as a result, her eyes had difficulty waking up.

“Seven to San Francisco,” she heard Chuck tell the attendant there.

She stopped when he said that.

“Wait. San Francisco?”

“Yeah.” He looked over at her with a twinkle in his eye. “I don't want you back in that shithole,” he confessed.

“But—all my stuff is back there, though,” she pointed out.

“It's just stuff,” he told her. “It can be replaced.”

She remembered that she had that piece of rice paper still at the bottom of her desk drawer. But before she could say anything, they had their tickets in hand and nearly an hour wait before the plane was ready.

There was nothing more that Sam wanted right then was a cup of coffee for herself, and she and Eric made their way to the nook of a cafe near the big glass front doors. The closeness of the room and the warmth from the brewing coffee made her even sleepier than before then.

“Couple'a lattes and some Mercyful Fate for the both of us?” he offered her.

“Yes, please!” she declared as she lingered close to the doorway. Something caught her eye and she peered out the door, and beyond that to the front doors.

Alex stood outside there, right at the curb as if he awaited someone to take him back home somewhere there in New York. Instead, he lingered off to the side: he wasn't smoking, but rather it appeared he stood out there for a breath of fresh air. He bowed his head a bit as something lurked close to him. Sam looked more closely at the sight of a little black cat with a white spot on its chest. Genie burst into her mind right then and she wondered how Marla was doing up the road in Albany with Belinda and of course with that cat.

Alex glanced down, and the cat peered up at him with its eyes big and dilated and its tail erect at the sight of him. Sam noticed the collar about its neck: he crouched down to the ground so the cat could smell his fingers and he could pet its head. She watched him pet this cat as it stroked closer to him and rubbed up against his lower legs.

“Doesn't it just warm your heart?” Chuck said right into her ear, such that it made her jump a bit. He laughed at that and he gave his long curls, now smooth and dry, a little toss back with a flick of his head.

“I can't really stop watching him,” she confessed to him with a shrug of her shoulders. “I don't know why, either.”

“You guys shared trauma, that's why,” Chuck explained to her in a low voice. “Shared trauma from a violent event like that is a surefire way to bond with someone because you heal together.”

“Really?”

“Well, I don't really know that for sure, but that's what Tiff tells me 'cause we've bonded a great deal more since that incident.”

Sam turned her attention back to Alex outside when the cat scurried away from him and he lifted his attention to what awaited there at the curb.

“Sam?”

She brought her attention back to Eric, who came over to her with a pair of straws in hand.

“Coffee'll be ready in a couple of minutes,” he told her, to which she nodded her head at that.

“Hey, there's my girl.” She recognized that upstate accent right behind her. She whirled around and there was Joey.

“What the hell, I thought you guys were playing at the castle tonight?” she asked him.

“I wish you didn't have to go back there,” he confessed to her.

“I wish I didn't, either,” she said; and she realized that Joey was oblivious to the fact that she had been legally bound, but she wasn't even close to being in love with Bill. He leaned in to her face for a kiss on the lips when the sound of Eric's voice broke the mood.

“Sam!”

She gasped and she almost fell backwards onto the tiles behind her. And she realized she had dozed off standing up.

“Drink this coffee, man,” Eric chuckled as he handed her the paper cup.

“Thank you,” she muttered as she rubbed her eyes again, that time with one hand. It was only an hour before the plane had to leave, and yet the fact Alex had gone from the doors outside made her a bit nervous. She hoped that, by the time the hour was up, he would find his way back there. A train ride that ran like clockwork throughout the heart of Germany was one thing, but to miss a flight would prove to be absolutely devastating.

And yet she trusted him. He woke up on the flight like clockwork, thus he could return to the next flight plan out to California like clockwork. Doubt still lingered in her mind however. It was a large airport and a bit of a walk to the terminal as well.

“I bought him a ginger snap, for god's sake,” she muttered as she sipped on the fresh hot latte.

[neeterloveschenford]

Thoughts on RNM 3x09

Ok y’all, here we go. Finally we are an official couple! Malex for the win!! (Other things happened, but ya know. Priorities.) I was very happy overall with the progress our boys have made. And as much as I’ve enjoyed this season, I’m glad we’ve had a bit of a time jump. Even if I think it’s only been a few days. I was pretty sure that Kyle and Max would already be up and about. It would have taken too much of an episode to deal with bringing Max out of the pod and Kyle waking up from his coma. Do I feel a little short changed? Yeah. But I get it. There’s only 13 episodes and there is a lot that we have to get to before the finale. So on that note, I’m gonna dive right in. Care to join me?

You go Nora with your badass self killing all those clones. (I mean harsh, but hopefully they were just vessels and had no consciousness to speak of.) And Jones being his crazy dictator self killing that scientist was super harsh. And can we for the love of God get Lucky away from him!?!?!?! He is the goodest boi! He deserves better.

Go on science Liz. I don’t understand half of what she said, but I believe it. And I love how badass she is when she sciences. And there we get our first glimpse of Malex goodness, “Me and Alex are working on the Lockhart machine.” Because of course they are. Because their brilliance only intensifies when they work together. Loved Isobel’s gross face when Liz talks about Noah’s spores. And here’s where we get the Heath story taking off. Max is not gonna like this one!

Ok, Deep Sky doctor lady. I really dig your hair, but do you know who you’re talking to here? Kyle is the premiere alien doctor on this planet. He probably knows more about weird biology than you’ll ever learn. Listen to my boy! And Kyle honey, you are completely justified in your righteous indignation. And you are correct in that no one is more qualified in top-secret ET shenanigans than you baby. (I really need to figure out how to use that line in real life. It’s like the best thing he’s ever said.) I still don’t know whether or not to trust Eduardo. I want to, but I’m still not sure what he’s all about.

I love how dedicated Isobel is. She’s downright obsessed and I love this side of her. And her cockblocking Delmanes was so funny all episode. I also really love that Greg is fully involved now. The Pod Squad needs all the allies they can get at this point.

That phone call almost made me cry. They look so incredibly happy to just be together. I knew as soon as Alex said he wouldn’t forget their date that it wouldn’t happen, but still. Just the fact that they are both ready for that step is amazing. They have both grown so much. I’m just so happy to see them so happy. It was truly amazing. And I agree with Michael. Alex needs to talk codey more often!

It was totally cute that Max had a get Liz playlist, but does he know what the song The Way is about? It’s not exactly romantic.

Heath, you’re in trouble now!

Delmanes are so cute! Isobel is so adorable when she is flustered by a pretty girl!. I will admit though, that I really wish Anatsa hadn’t slept with Max. I mean these guys tend to be a little too close sometimes. But, you know, that seems to be the way this show is going to roll. Blame it on Carina’s lingering messes from the last two seasons and move on.

Of course Alex would manifest Nora. Despite his growth, he still has a lot of guilt over her death and his father’s role in it. I love that Michael is his focus. Alex’s love for Michael will always be the guiding factor in everything he does. He wants more than anything to make sure that Michael has a good life. And I think he’s finally learned that his presence in Michael’s life is what makes it good. I love these two dumbos! (said lovingly) They make me so happy!!

Come on Max. Tell Liz how you not only kept her tapes, but you would listen to them in the desert while crying and missing her! These two are the real dumbos in this show. (said not so lovingly)

I love how powerful Isobel’s become. And that was way cool the way she pulled that pod out of the lake. I’ve really loved her journey this season. And Maria was right, that camp was really beautiful.

I just don’t know if we can trust Eduardo yet! He says all the right things, but he just seems too good to be true! I hope my misgivings are wrong. I really want Kyle and Alex both to have someone who will be a good father figure. They both deserve it.

You know what would have been an awesome twist? If Jesse had shown up when Alex saw the project shepherd tech in Nora’s machine.

I love how Michael just wants to take care of Alex. Lovingly breaking into his boyfriend’s house. What a romantic.

You know what Maria? Get it girl! I think Delmanes is both sexy and adorable. I am ok with them being together!

I love that Kyle is so determined to do the right thing. He has really grown to care about all the aliens. He just wants to do the right thing and I love him for it. He is proving every day that he is the best member of the Valenti family. I’m so proud of my baby boy!

And now we’re getting down to business with Echo. They both have made mistakes and they both have admitted as such, but it still surprises me that Liz cannot see why Max is so scared of his secrets getting out. (Am I really taking Max’s side in something? What is wrong with this picture?) Also, she is so determined to believe the best of Heath that she doesn’t want to see what’s glaringly obvious. I saw this coming like five episodes ago. Just saying.

If Vlamis doesn’t make that shirt part of his next merch drop, I will scream. I would wear the heck out of that shirt! And Eduardo’s face when Michael is standing in his office was the best! And bragging about how smart his boo is! Michael just adores his brilliant hacker boyfriend!

Admittedly, yoda Maria is getting a little old. But I am glad that Maria and Isobel are friends now. They really compliment each other so well. And I loved how Isobel took drinks out of Greg’s hand all ep.

My sweet Alex! I love him so much. Pushing himself so hard to try to help Michael. It’s all about Michael. His capacity to love is so huge. And then Michaell comes to the rescue. He’s always got him. That’s the kind of grand declaration that we need in our lives. The way that Alex grabbed onto Michael’s shirt was everything. They just bring so much joy to my soul.

Isobel and Anaste are cute, but my Kybel heart still beats strong. Also, I still think she’s an alien or something. I have decided to just not trust anyone new.

Michael listening to Alex, comforting him, and admitting he’s had the same fears was beautiful. I love how strong he is now. He’s really putting himself out there to be there for the people that matter the most. And that Sander’s story was so sweet. Of course that would be the perfect date for these two. And the fact that they worked together perfectly to take out the evil PS part and put the machine back together the way it was meant to be was such a great metaphor for their relationship. I can’t believe we are getting so much goodness right now. We are truly blessed.

Still making me take Max’s side Liz. You really are letting me down. Oh wait, helping Michael be less Michael. Yep, Max made me remember why I hate him. Never mind.

So Dallas is an alien. (At least somebody new is!) Not who I thought it would be though. And since we saw him in one of the s4 bts pics, then we know he’s probably sticking around. I am intrigued. And now we know what Heath’s been up to. I guess he’s supposed to be a not so bad guy since he’s trying to help his best friend. But you hurt my Kyle dude. There’s really no coming back from that.

I am still pleased with 99% of this season. We’re coming down to the wire now. I just hope for more and more goodness with every episode. Even if we have to have another episode without Alex, I am expecting there to be some mentions of him by Michael. This season has made me so so happy. I can’t believe we are living in a time when Malex is together and building a beautiful relationship that will stand the test of time. We are a blessed people. And I cannot wait for more! Till next time guys!!

[inevitably-johnlocked]

do u have any fics with John being oblivious? I just ♡ that kind of stuff

Hi Nonny!

Yes! I do have a few that I properly tagged, so I know I’m missing a tonne more, so as always, I’ll give you what I have tagged, and I’ll request my lovelies to suggest their own fics!

CLUELESS / OBLIVIOUS JOHN

Dinner With John by Zang Bluetterfly (T, 505 w., 1 Ch. || Friendship, Romance) – "Let's have dinner, John." Sherlock secretly smiled. Irene had been right: he had rejected her dinner's invitation because he already had John by his side, even though the doctor was still clueless about Sherlock's true feelings for him.

Five Times John Watson Remained Oblivious (K+, 1,154 w., 1 Ch. || Five and Ones, Romance, Friendship, Asexual Sherlock, Queerplatonic Relationship) – ...And one time he didn't. asexual!Sherlock/John.

Untouchable by greengrapegaze (T, 1,368 w., 1 Ch. || Pre-S3, UST/URT, Oblivious John, Lonely Sherlock, Angst with Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt / Comfort, Emotional Sherlock, POV Sherlock, Pining Sherlock) – “He never would. Petty, childish, immature-bitter. Jealous. She had all that he wanted. All he could never have.” Part 1 of Steps to a Bittersweet Symphony

Five Times Sherlock gave John a Pebble and One Time John Returned the Gesture by grimmfairy (NR, 1,895 w., 1 Ch. || Love Confessions, Penguins and Pebbles, Nervous / Pining Sherlock, Oblivious John) – Sherlock isn't good with words, so he decides to tell John his feelings the way penguins do, by bringing him pebbles with different meanings. John catches on.

Love Hurts by Grac3 (T, 2,215 w., 1 Ch. || Magical Realism, Pining Sherlock, One-Sided Pining / URT, Sherlock / John Whump, Angst, Ambiguous Ending) – In a world where someone's physical injuries manifest themselves on the person who is in love with them, John didn't think that there would ever be anyone who was willing to risk falling in love with him - until he got shot on a case, and it didn't hurt. Unrequited Johnlock.

and stand there at the edge of my affection by coloredink (G, 2,683 w., 1 Ch. || Fluff, Letters, Clueless John) – "You've written love letters," Sherlock asserted.

Let Go by thisisforyou (G, 2,743 w., 1 Ch. || Friends to Lovers, First Kiss, Fluff, Anxious / Worried Sherlock) – In the end, separating John's things from Sherlock's in the chaos of their sitting room is like pulling a limpet from a wet rock. Especially when the rock is clinging on for dear life, because Sherlock doesn't want to let go. Short, fluffy h/c Johnlock oneshot.

Until the End of the World by SarahCat1717 (G, 3,049 w., 1 Ch. || Angst, First Kiss, Pining Sherlock, Oblivious John, Drunkenness) – Taking place in Season 3, John listens to an old favourite song and sorts through his memories and feelings about Sherlock and Mary.

The Prize We Sought Is Won by deathfrisbees (E, 4,610 w., 1 Ch. || First Time, Mild D/S, Oral, Military Kink, Bottomlock) – Sherlock's in love, or in lust, or both--unfortunately, the object of his affections is not only his completely oblivious flatmate, but said flatmate would probably run screaming into the hills should he find out. John's been invited to a wedding--unfortunately, the groom used to serve under him back in Afghanistan, and requests that John wear a uniform he's honestly not sure he fits into. Unfortunately for both flatmates, Sherlock's got a military kink the size of Kandahar and John wants to know if he actually can fit into this uniform or if his eyes are deceiving him. It goes from there.

Given In Evidence by verityburns (M, 5,034 w., 19 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Post-TRF, Angst, Drama, Case Fic, Romance, BAMF!John, Submissive Sherlock, First Kiss, Humour) – Coming back from the dead can be a complicated business. With a new case on the horizon, rebuilding a life is one thing... rebuilding a friendship quite another. For Sherlock and John, things may never be just the same...

Five Times John Noticed But Didn't Really by ScandalousMinds (T, 6,383 w., 1 Ch. || Domestics, Fluff/Angst, Bratty Sherlock, Idiots, Pre-Slash, Jealous Sherlock, Love Confessions) – 5 times John (thought) he noticed something peculiar about his and Sherlock's relationship but really missed the obvious.

In Which "John" Becomes a Synonym for "Help" by asignoftwo (T, 7,391 w., 1 Ch. || Injured John, Worried Sherlock, Fluff) –  After the fall Sherlock returns to Baker Street and is reunited with John. When John is injured on a case Sherlock is faced with the reality that he could lose John again, and it tears him apart.

The Wrong Wagon by DancingGrimm (E, 35,663 w., 20 Ch. || Alternating POV, Molly/  John [Molly pines for John], Public Sex, Casual Sex, Obliviousness, BAMF!John, Awkwardness, Angst & Humour, First Time, Virgin Sherlock, Jealous Sherlock) – Molly sees John in a new light and realises that she may have hitched her horse to the wrong wagon...or something like that. John pines for Sherlock and worries what he will think if he ever finds out. And Sherlock doesn't know what Molly's up to...but he knows he doesn't like it.

Classified(s) by blueink3 (E, 36,153 w., 4 Ch. || Wedding Date AU || Fake Relationship, Jealous, PIning, H/C, Idiots in Love, Happy Ending, Mary is not Nice, Escort Service) – Clara's American father is the ambassador to some such territory that Great Britain probably used to own, but she (and Harry’s undying love for her) is the reason John is getting on a flight at 12:30pm, flying across the second largest ocean in the world, and pretending to be in a perfectly happy, healthy relationship with an undoubtedly perfectly coiffed stranger. See, Clara is not only American (and wealthy to boot), she's also best friends with John’s ex-fiancée. Whom she's placed in the wedding party. As Maid of Honor. And John just happens to be Best Man. Bloody brilliant.

A Promise Made to Be Broken by PlantsAreNeat (E, 37,018 w., 7 Ch. || Fake Relationship, Pining, Slow Burn, RST, Eventual Relationship, POV Sherlock) – A young John makes an ‘if we’re still single at 40, we’ll get together’ pledge to a woman who ends up all wrong for him. She keeps reminding him of the promise, and won’t let go of it. John asks Sherlock to pose as his boyfriend at a family wedding, so as to dash her hopes permanently. Sherlock, who has at last acknowledged his feelings for John, reluctantly agrees despite knowing how painful it will be to ‘have’ John, but not keep him.

Points by lifeonmars (E, 53,791 w., 42 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || HLV Rewrite / Canon Divergence, Married Life, Pregnancy / Baby Watson, Drinking to Cope, Boxing / Fisticuffs, Clueless John, Angst, Minor Medical Drama, Tattoos, Christmas, First Kiss/Time, Eventual Happy Ending, Love Confessions, Doctor John, Sexuality Crisis, Slow Burn, Case Fic, Drugging, Blow/Hand Job, Emotional Love Making, Parenthood, Passage of Time) – What if His Last Vow never happened? This fic picks up a few months after John and Mary's wedding, in an alternate universe where Magnussen doesn't exist, but Mary is still pregnant. Life continues -- just in a different direction. And slowly, Sherlock and John find their way to each other.

[staliasjeronica]

Riverdale S5 Ep9 Thoughts

It’s been awhile since I’ve watched Riverdale, I’m getting bored with them going back to Varchie out of literal nowhere and I’m assuming BH will soon follow because they don’t know how to write anything else even though that’s all the show needs to be good. Look how great the show was when they were finally starting to give us Barchie…. anyways thoughts under the cut so this post doesn’t clog up the tag. Also: MANIFESTING JERONICA AND BARCHIE BYE

- Honestly a lot of people are weirded out/annoyed by the alien plot but I love aliens so I’m lowkey okay with it.

- Alice this is Riverdale you really think some bad coincidence couldn’t have happened right after Polly left the phone booth?

- Veronica stop using money for no reason PLEASE. And god more VA scenes I’m so tired of it… though somehow it fits better than them being together as teens. But we’re not forgetting how he cheated on her with Betty, still loves Betty, and is mostly just going back to Veronica because it’s “comfortable”

- TABITHA AND VERONICA SCENE!! They look so good standing near one another ugh

- … if I heard the football coach say that over the intercom I’d literally think he’s a whiny piece of shit and never go to the games in spite. What the fuck was that???

- Jughead acting like he probably wouldn’t have written a story like that kid when he was in school lol okay...

- Reggie pointing at each bulldog and calling them a loser on his way out…. what the actual fuck asdfgjkl;

- Give Veronica literally anything than plots surrounding Archie and Hiram we’re so fucking TIRED

- Veronica needs Archie to talk to Reggie about this boring football bs but will make a wager with her dad that will go against everything Archie would like… please nothing about them as a couple has changed!!! IT’S SO BAD AND BORING!!!! WE DON’T WANT THEM!!!

- We really could have had teachers!Barchie and Jeronica but noooo they’d rather cater to toxic bh and va who don’t deserve to have their boring ships that ruin their characters. Why did Riverdale get stuck with the people who can’t write to save their lives?

- Cheryl and Betty finally having an actually good conversation wow-

- VA once again in bed sigh. The only thing getting me through is that Archie seems much happier with Betty muah

- Veronica stop being cute I’m trying to hate you and Archie getting back together out of nowhere

- Betty please for once in your life stop lying… I know you’re trying to protect her but if Polly really is dead it’s gonna hurt even worse now that you gave her hope

- LERMAN LOGAN AAFJDSHKHFJDFASHJKN THAT’S HIS FUCKING NAME? BRUH-

- “The story could have alluded to stuff happening at home.” “Then you should have come to us!” yes because parents who were abusing their child totally wouldn’t say anything to throw off the teacher who’s just trying to make sure their student is okay…….. why would he go to the parents first?

- #Kangs Cheryl shh we already don’t like them together please stop… anyways Swangs and Keggie when???

- Fangs really dated Kevin for 7 years, weirded out with his bf going into the woods to hook up with strangers and only now is talking about it… and they thought they’d be able to marry and have a baby together??? damn anyways SWANGS AND KEGGIE WHEN????

- But also Fangs is so right that’s why Kevin’s angry

- Adult friends BH is literally so much better than teenage co dependent toxic wannabe detectives but also if this makes them get together, also out of nowhere, I will rip out my hair

- what kind of nick name is T-Dub………… but anyways this scene was so cute

- See adult BH and VA could have been so good if they kept romance out of it since they already milked the shit out of it for four seasons (at least three too long), because them as adults, as FRIENDS feels so good to watch.

- HIRAM BENCHES REGGIE BC HE DOESN’T WANT TO LITERALLY BREAK A CHILD’S LEGS?!?!??!? This is how we get Reggie back to the “good side” and not Beggie sighhhhhhh imagine if we had good writers

- Betty’s like “…… the mothmen……. god I literally grew up to be a real detective what is this bullshit?"

- Also instead of mothmen why not just make it all about aliens by themselves

- This proves that BH is STILL not compatible after five seasons muah I guess I can deal with boring VA as long as the worst of the worst, BH, is gonna stay dead. At least VA is hot

- That edited picture of Betty and Polly I— afsdfhfasf

- Polly deserved so much better… anyways go read my Sweet Pea x Polly drabble!!! based after the time jump :)

- Kevin please if you’re gonna painfully flirt please learn a few actually good pick up lines

- Ummmm okay first of all why did that guy not say anything about Kevin calling him hot if he was straight and not into him hitting on him? Second of all, why does Kevin always get these awful plots, and lastly, what the fuck anyways can’t wait for Fangs to find out and sick the serpents on that Shane guy bc while him and Kevin aren’t together anymore, he definitely still cares about him

- Betty once again resorting to assault……. okay…… what a gross misuse of power

- Kevin feeling ashamed of him being gay because his mom once talked about him wearing husky clothes…? God everyone on this show deserves much better plots what the fuck

- Can’t wait for Betty to be suspended for this bullshit

- I don’t think the Logan’s would like Jughead of all people helping find their son but okay

- Betty is so unstable please how did she become a detective… ahhh right the writers eat from her ass lmao

- Love that Reggie gets no shit for just suddenly switching sides

- also sigh pairing up bh and va for the millionth time. It’s interesting that everyone enjoys the show much better when literally anyone else interact

- more singing…………Cheryl you’re not in high school anymore BUT it is lowkey a bop somehow though

- I know the answer is no but V never told Archie of her dumbass wager huh

- 0 to 52………………. so how is Hiram not gonna win this. We find out he cheated in some way and is disqualified or something?

- VERONICA, REGGIE, AND TABITHA HUGGING AHHH NEW OT3 FUCKKK

- Why is Hiram so mad his team has 52 points I—

- That kiss was so boring please give us Barchie and Jeronica and stop having V go back too Archie

- THEY LEFT RIVERDALE THAT QUICKLY? damn okay

- Betty feeling bad just because her mom found out she lied… like okay I know we’re supposed to want Betty on the case but she really shouldn’t be. She’s such an awful detective. She had potential in the beginning but :/

- anyways thank fucking god it’s over that felt like a million years long of boring bullshit where is Barchie and Beggie and Jeronica and Keggie and Karchie and Swangs ugh make Riverdale interesting again PLEASE I’ve never stopped watching like this, ever…