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biggestxsimps · 1 year ago

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Last Embrace

A/N: I am so sorry for not posting the last couple of months, I've had the worst bloody writers block. I know how much y'all like the Ghost fics so I hope you guys enjoy this! This one's a bit sad, even though angst isn't my strong suit, I really liked writing this and I think it turned out okay.

Just a disclaimer, I know nothing about the military and even less about dying so just let me know of any inaccuracies and I'll fix em.

WARNINGS: blood, mentions of guns and bullet wounds, normal war shenanigans, death (Let me know if I'm missing anything.)

During a mission, everything took a turn for the worse. Ghost urgently gave the order for everyone to evacuate, swiftly conducting a head count, only to realize that Y/N was missing. Filled with concern, he called out for him over the radio. "C/S? C/S, how copy?" Ghost's grip tightened on the radio at the lack of a response. "C/S?! Y/N, what's your position?"

Worry builds deep in Ghost's stomach, an almost nausea-like feeling coursing through him as he speaks through the radio once more. "Y/N. Y/N! I need your location!"

Y/N groans as he hears a loud ringing in his ears, one that fills his mind and brings an ache to his head. His eyes remain shut as he tries to ground himself, though the sound of a familiar voice in his left ear makes his lids slowly blink open.

Though his vision is blurry and everything feels fuzzy, Y/N places a hand on his shoulder and clicks the button on the radio. "Ghost? That you?" Y/N's strained and weak voice makes Ghost sigh in relief. "Ah fuck. Thank god, Y/N." Ghost's voice calms down as he speaks again, his voice stern as he tries to get an answer out of the other man.

"Where are you, Y/N?"

Y/N groans as he tries to look around, his vision still blurred enough to not be able to see anything in detail, he had little to no memory of what he'd been doing before, and the visible bright white walls and floor made him want to close his eyes again. Y/N speaks up once more, his voice holding a slight amusement. "Don't know.. I can't see properly. I'm inside a building, though."

Ghost seems to feel slightly more at ease once he hears Y/N speak, he was glad the man was okay enough to be able to smile through his pain. "Can you see anything? Anything at all?" Ghost looks around at the buildings in the area, Y/N could be anywhere.

"White walls and floors.. I can't make out anything else, though... That help at all?"

Y/N lets his body press against the cold wall behind him, relishing in the relaxing chill shooting through his body. He starts to take a few deep breaths as he tries to keep himself stable, slowly looking around the bare walls, the paint cracked and peeling. His vision gets torn away though, the bright lights starting to flicker, the hall flashing from eerily dark to painfully bright.

An annoying buzz was audible as the light stopped blinking, remaining on. Y/N could see debris on the ground, he wasn't surprised, this was a warzone after all. Y/N slowly closes his eyes, letting himself relax.

Though the feeling of a sharp pain makes his eyes shoot open, a pained noise escapes the man as he looks down at his body. His eyes widened as his gaze trailed down; the only thing he could make out was blood–blood covering his abdomen, blood covering his hands, and blood covering the floor.

Shit.

"Yeah, that helps, Y/N. I'll be there soon, you stay there, alright?" Ghost's voice was gentle, like he was trying to keep the man at ease. But Y/N wasn't listening, his eyes were too focused on the bloody mess in front of him. Y/N's throat starts to close up, the intense smell of the blood making him feel sick.

He brings his hands to the wound, pulling his warm, sticky, blood-soaked shirt up as he tries his best to judge the severity of it. His heart drops as he sees multiple bullet holes piercing his skin, cringing at the amount of blood still escaping him. He was hit with a sudden realization.

"Y/N, you still with me? I'm not far, just stay alive f'me, okay?"

"Ghost.. I don't think I'm gonna make it.."

Ghost's body fills with dread, his heart aching at the sound of Y/N's discouraged and afraid voice. Ghost shakes his head, trying to sprint even faster, his breathing ragged as he speaks through the radio. "Shut it. You're gonna be alright. I'm gonna make it to you, and then we're gonna get you out of here. Alive."

Ghost tries to keep his tone confident, but the shake in his voice shows just how worried he was. He knew that he had to make it there quickly if he wanted the best chance at saving Y/N. His words were rushed as he repeated himself, wanting to hear that Y/N believed him. "Do I make myself clear? I'm getting you out of here alive."

Y/N can't help but slowly shake his head to himself, he could see his wound, he could see how quickly he was losing blood, he could feel the way his body was slowly going numb. His breaths escape him at an uneven pace, his heart racing as he comes to terms with the situation. "Ghost.. I'm losing too much blood. I can't.."

"Yes, yes, you can. You will survive Y/N, I know you will. You have to.."

Ghost ran, ran like he's never done before. He couldn't lose Y/N, not now, not like this. The building was in sight, he was so close to being with Y/N, being able to help him, save him. Ghost could feel the burn in his legs and his lungs and the hard thumping of his pulsing heart. The dry feeling in his throat makes him want to take a breath, but he doesn't stop running, not for a second.

As Ghost ran into the building, Y/N could hear him, his loud footsteps echoing against the bare halls. "I'm here, can you tell me exactly where you are?" Y/N could hear Ghost's urgent yet puffed out voice from both the radio and from the right side of the building, the sound not too far away.

"I can hear you, Ghost.. You're to my right." Y/N's voice was the opposite of Ghost's, he tried to keep his voice as calm as he could, and the strain already being put on his body by the wound, made it impossible to speak any louder without putting himself in even more pain.

"Okay, just.. Just stay there. I'm nearly there, you're gonna be okay."

Y/N's eyes drift to the right side of the building, hearing Ghost's heavy footsteps hitting against the ground. A small and pained smile forms on Y/N's face as he sees the masked man come into sight, watching as he quickly rushes towards him.

A feeling of relief swarms through Ghost's body as he sees Y/N sitting against one of the walls, though the condition the other man was in made his worry come right back. He quickly makes it to Y/N, dropping to his knees as he brings his hands to Y/N's body. "Y/N.. Fuck..." He can't help but take a second to look into Y/N's eyes, his own brown ones showing extreme vulnerability, a look of pure fear.

Y/N lets out a dry and painful sounding chuckle, trying to ease Ghost a little. "Mhm.. it's me." Y/N brings one of his shaky and bloodied hands up, letting it just hover over Ghost's covered cheek, not wanting to get his blood all over Ghost's mask. Ghost doesn't seem to care though, letting his face gently push into Y/N's hand.

Ghost lets out a shaky breath as he feels Y/N's hand against his face. "You're.. You're gonna be okay.. I'm gonna get you out of here, alright? I promise." Y/N gently shakes his head, his small smile faltering as he pulls his other arm away from his wound.

Ghost's eyebrows furrow as he sees Y/N's reaction to his words, but before he can speak, his eyes move down to where Y/N had moved his arm from. Ghost feels his heart shatter as the sight, multiple bullet wounds scattered across his abdomen, blood slowly seeping from each one.

Ghost shakes his head, almost frantically as he brings both hands to the wound, trying to stop the bleeding with his gloved palms. All he manages to achieve though is flooding Y/N's body in pain, evident by the startled cries leaving the injured man.

"Fuck.. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Just let me stop the bleeding, let me.."

Ghost's panicky voice trails off as he sees Y/N's wounds only bleeding more aggressively at his touch. He shakes his head, looking down at the other man's body as he keeps his hands on the wound. The blood soaks through Ghost's gloves, the warm and gory liquid uncomfortably sticking to his skin.

Y/N's hands instinctively reach Ghost's wrists, pulling the other man's hands away. "Fuck! Stop.. stop, Ghost." Y/N's grip was weak and his body had little to no strength now. Ghost slowly pulls his own shaky hands away. "I'm sorry.. I just.. you're gonna be okay, I'm gonna find some way to stop the bleeding, and then we'll.. we'll go back home. We're gonna-".

"Simon."

Ghost's mouth shuts at the use of his real name, an audible gulp being heard. His eyes trail back up to look into Y/N's, the look the other man gave him only made his heart sink, he felt like his world was falling apart. "Please.. we both know I'm not making it out of here.. just-"

"You are. You're going to make it out of here. Shut up with that nonsense." Ghost doesn't want to hear it, he refuses to hear it, to acknowledge it.. to accept it. He tried to keep his voice stern but the tremble that grew with each word made it obvious he wasn't all too hopeful either.

He slowly pulls his hands out of Y/N's grasp, bringing them back down to the surrounding area of the wound, his quivering fingers gently trailed over the scarred skin. He pulled off his gloves, using his bare hands to touch Y/N.

"You.. you can't... You're all I have left.."

Ghost's voice softened, his words paining him as they left his mouth. Y/N rests his hand back onto Ghost's mask, sliding it slightly down as he slips a couple fingers underneath the mask. The injured man remains silent, afraid of the emotion that'll leave him if he dared to speak up.

Ghost feels Y/N's fingers slide underneath the mask, a warm feeling bubbling in his stomach. He brings one of his bare palms to Y/N's hand, holding it in place before slowly, cautiously, pulling his mask over and off his head.

The sight of the rugged man made Y/N meekly smile, his heart fluttering at the long-awaited reveal of the subject of his attraction. He had been into Ghost for quite a while, and he always had a suspicion that Ghost felt the same. It was almost a silent understanding between both men, never outwardly speaking of their true feelings yet knowing they felt them.

Ghost looks down, his eyes falling shut as his grip on the other man's hand tightens, holding him closer against his now bare face. He didn't care for the blood the other man's hand was rubbing onto his skin, he needed this, he needed the Y/N's gentle touch.

"Thank you.." Ghost slowly opened his eyes at the other man's pained voice, watching as Y/N slumps further down the wall, groaning at the pressure it relieved from his wounds.

Y/N lets out a small hum at the feeling of the cold floor pressing against his back, a stark contrast to the warm liquid pouring out the front of him.

Ghost slightly shakes his head, a small smile on his face as he questions the other man. "What are you doing?" The other man signals for Ghost to come closer, his voice strained but trying to keep it sounding as optimistic as he could despite the situation.

"Getting comfortable.. Come here."

Ghost does just that, shuffling closer to the man that was now laying flat on the ground, looking down at him, his eyebrows furrowing as he takes in the man's appearance. One of Y/N's weak hands moves to Ghost's arm, gently pulling him even closer.

"Sit down, relax." Y/N was oddly calm despite the situation, despite knowing his undeniable fate. "Relax? How am I supposed to-" Y/N tugs at Ghost's arm, interrupting him. "Please." The desperation in Y/N's voice made Ghost's stomach wrench, he silently sat beside him, bringing his hands to hold onto Y/N's.

Y/N gratefully hums, his eyes looking over the other man before making a request, pleading evident in his tone. "Think you could hold me..? Jus' for a bit?" Ghost nodded, carefully wrapping his arms around Y/N's shoulders, gently pulling him into his arms.

His senses were heightened, he could feel everything, the warm blood starting to soak through his own shirt and the shake in Y/N's body. The rough and cold hands of the other man, weakly wrapped over whatever part of Ghost he could reach. Y/N lays in his arms, weak and helpless, his skin losing colour and his body shaking more rapidly...

For the first time that evening, Ghost came to terms with what was going to happen, he couldn't deny it any longer, not when it was so obvious. His eyes tear up, his heart thumping louder as all he can do is pull Y/N closer, hold the injured man in his arms as he wishes for this to just be some twisted nightmare.

He couldn't keep himself calm anymore, waves of emotions crashing onto him, flooding his mind and filling his body with unease. His grip tightened, the fabric of Y/N's clothes balling up in his fists, he just pulled him closer, not wanting to let him go, not now, not ever.

"Hey.. Simon."

Y/N looks up at the man holding him, watching as he struggles to hold in the tears his body so desperately wants to let fall. Y/N's cold fingers trace along Ghost's cheek, pulling his face a little closer, his voice quieter and more strained than before. "It's gonna be okay.."

Though the injured man was smiling in a way to comfort Ghost, his true feelings were obvious. His eyes held fear, a fear Ghost had never seen on the usually optimistic man before.

He knew he had to be strong, he knew that whatever fear he felt right now, Y/N was feeling tenfold. He took deep breaths, trying to gather himself. He felt his throat close up, he couldn't speak, not without breaking down completely, he could only nod in reply. He brought a trembling hand down to Y/N's face, his rough fingers caressing the skin with a softness Ghost didn't know he was capable of.

Y/N closed his eyes, humming at the gentle touch, and the contrasting feeling of Ghost's warm hand pressing against his chilled cheek. His presence was comforting, it almost felt like he was cuddled up against a cosy fireplace, like the flames were crackling in front of him and leaving warm kisses on his cheek.

It was a nice thought, a nice feeling, but it seemed like the pain in his abdomen did anything it could to bring Y/N out of his calming mindset. It felt like his body was on fire, but also like he had been out in the cold for days. His feet were numb now and he could feel the way his legs and fingertips also started to lose their senses.

He looked up at Ghost, tears had started to form in his own eyes, ones that were impossible to hide. "I'm scared.. you'll be here.. right? Please.. don't let me go, not yet.." His voice was faint, filled with an uneasy panic. Ghost started to nod, bringing his face closer down, letting his lips press against Y/N's cold forehead.

"..yes, yes.. I'll be r-right here. I'm not moving.. I'm not letting you go..."

Y/N closes his eyes, his head falling to the side slightly as he sighs. "Y'know.. I always looked up to you, Simon.." He leans his head deep into Ghost's chest, his tears slowly falling as he feels his body go numb. He had lost all feeling in his arms and legs, even the ache in his abdomen had started to ease. Ghost shakes his head slowly, biting his lower lip in an attempt to hold in the sobs he so desperately wanted to let go.

"I love you, Simon."

Ghost pulled Y/N closer, letting out quiet, choked sounds. He felt Y/N's body start to go limp in his arms, his hands desperately pulling at the other man's body to hold him in a comforting embrace. "I.. I love you too... Fuck.. don't do this to me.."

"I'm sorry.." Y/N moves his head, digging his face further into the other man's chest. All he could smell and hear was Ghost, the man he had grown so attached to. It brought him some comfort, knowing he would be dying in Ghost's arms, not alone. "Forgive me.."

"Always, Y/N.. always.."

Y/N lets out a weak hum, slightly nodding his head as his body relaxes in Ghost's arms, his head now starting to fall limp, being too heavy for Y/N to move. "..thank you..." Y/N's voice was barely audible, his mumble causing Ghost's heart to shatter.

"Always.. a-always... I-I'm here.. always..."

Ghost cradled the dying man in his arms, soothingly whispering as he slowly swayed his body side to side. "It's okay.. It's okay... You're safe.. you're safe with me.." Y/N's voice was practically inaudible as he tried to mumble back to the other man, his incoherent slurs trailing off into silence.

Ghost felt as if his whole world was crashing down right before his eyes. He could only pull Y/N closer, continuing to cradle the fallen soldier. His movements became a little more frantic as he rocked their bodies, his fingers clawing at Y/N's cold skin.

"Shit- I'm so sorry... I-It's okay.. It's gonna be okay.. It's gonna be okay..."

He whispered into the other man's ear, his voice broken as he felt the tears he had been suppressing, finally fall freely. His words started as a means to comfort his dying partner, but it seemed like he was only trying to convince himself now. He mumbled a mantra of 'It's okay' and 'I love you', the words just tumbling out without his control.

His body trembled, his throat letting out more choked sobs now than it had in the last 10 years, his eyes were screwed shut, his head dug into Y/N's frozen neck. His hands tried their best to pull Y/N's limp head up, his tears pouring down his bloody cheeks as the other man's head just dropped back down.

If only he made it there sooner, if only he was there to protect him; none of this would've happened. He wouldn't be here, holding the corpse of the man that showed him what it was like to be alive, how to feel, how to love. The one person that had been able to break down his walls and make him feel human again.

It felt like hours, hours of cradling his deceased lover in his arms like a child, hours of sobbing and mourning the one person that brought light into this cruel world.

"Ghost? Do you copy?"

Ghost heard the static of his radio before the familiar voice of his Captain rung through his ears. "Ghost?" Ghost's teeth grit as he hesitantly brought his hand to the radio on his shoulder, forcefully composing himself before clicking the button. "I'm here." He looked down at the deceased man in his arms, hugging him close as his body threatened to break down once more.

"Evac's here, did you reach C/S?"

Ghost lets out a shaky breath, his fingers shaking as he grips the radio. "C/S's.. C/S's been KIA." His hand falls from the radio, his blood-stained fingers gently caressing Y/N's cold cheek, gently pulling his face closer. Ghost couldn't help but admire the other man, his eyes closed and his eyebrows relaxed. His lips were tugged into a small smile, his skin devoid of its usual colour. He looked.. peaceful.

There was a few seconds of silence from the other line before it was cut by Price's voice once more. "I'm sorry, Ghost." Ghost placed a soft kiss on Y/N's bloody forehead, speaking through the radio one last time, leaving no room for argument. "I'll be there in a few, I'm takin' him with me."

Ghost snatched his mask from the floor beside him, pulling it on before scooping Y/N into his arms. He lifted him up, holding his limp body against his chest as he whispered. "It's gonna be okay.. I've got you.." He held the man tightly, his eyes glancing down at Y/N's motionless figure every few steps he took.

"I've got you..."

A/N: Could you tell I struggled ending this? I won't lie, I teared up a couple times while writing this, I think this might be the saddest thing I've written. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated, especially since I'm still not too familiar with Ghost's personality. This is also my longest fic ever, about 3.4k words!

Also a big thank you for over 400 followers, we're so appreciative of all your support!

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uncouth-the-fifth · 7 months ago

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pythia, a supernatural rewrite. bloody mary, rough draft.

read it on ao3.

words: 6k notes: hi y'all! yes, you read that chapter title right - this is a little unconventional, but since I've unfortunately shifted hyperfixations and have drifted away from SPN, I thought I would post what I have for the next part of pythia. since I'm moving into resident evil land, I'm not sure if I'm going to come back to this fic—but I absolutely didn't want to leave you guys empty-handed!! I'm so so sorry that this fic will go unfinished (for now), and I'm so grateful to those who were along for the ride with me. I have so much love for all the people who motivated me through writing this fic. all of you are beyond kind!! and I hope you enjoy this dose of pythia content, featuring some of my notes and process-work, lol. I only had a few heavy chunks of the beginning written, but the prose for this chap (ironically) started to get into the meat of what I really wrote this fic for—psychic bullshit between reader and Sam. It was just too plain juicy to not share!! All of my spn fics will remain up, but if you keep up with me, expect lots of Leon Kennedy bullshit and tomfoolery. Again - thank you so much for your endless love and support, I had so much fun writing what I could of season one!! Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy this unfinished chunk of silly/ansty Christmas drama :)

EAU CLAIRE, WISCONSIN - Dec 21st, evening.

Sam drops the stack of glossy, brand-new legal pads into his lap, and flashes his brother a plain smile. “Thanks, Dean. I needed more of these.” From your spot seated on the living room rug, you twist your rings and wait for Dean’s witty reply. With all those notes you’re always makin', Sammy, I’ll hafta buy you some for New Years, too. You wait for him to make a crack about the gift he got Sam, something about diaries or his brother’s girly handwriting.

Instead, Dean shrugs, “Well, then there ya go.”

Voila. And with that, the feeble threads you’d tried to braid into a proper Christmas are cut. Without a word, your Mom picks up the little wooden jewelry case the three of you had thrifted her and recedes into the dark hallways of the house. Dean peels himself out of his seat to clean up. Sam sighs, picking at the plastic seal around his legal pads. Hilariously, this all plays out while Paul McCartney chimes about what wonderful Christmastime he’s been having from the radio in your kitchen.

Technically, you hadn’t just been celebrating Christmas. No, you managed to completely bomb both Christmas and the sacred Winter Solstice sabbat that the Proctors had been celebrating for a bajillion fucking years. The special sabbat that would have a real spiritual effect on you for the next couple months.

You’d given it a good ol’ college try. First, you’d painstakingly picked out gifts for the boys and your Mom. Good ass gifts, too, that you’d been hiding in your duffle since summertime. Hell, you’d been looking for the Eagles album you bought for Dean in tape form for at least two years. (Cool, Dean had said, half alive in his armchair after your chupacabra hunt in Illinois. He was at the ugly front end of a cold. He’d sniffled, Don’t have this one.) And knowing that this would be Sam’s first Christmas without Jess—the one person who had given him any kind of good holiday when he was away from home—you’d poured extra love into his gift, too.

He’d been begging you to read Frankenstein since high school, and you’d dodged it because sometimes books that pushed too far into the “classics” category could lose you. Mary Shelley got a little wordy at times. But you were a big girl with a big brain, so you’d read the whole thing for Sam… and annotated the whole thing for Sam…

He’d taken one look at your labor of love and murmured, “Good. Glad you read it.”

…Yeah. You had half a mind to check if he’d been replaced by a clone, hearing that. Fifteen-year-old Sam would have melted into a babbling, ecstatic mess if someone had carefully combed through one of his favorite books and shared their thoughts on it with him. Bare minimum, you figured he’d at least enjoy having his own copy of Shelley’s work. All his other books had been lost in the fire.

But you’d given the book to a Sam who was twenty-two, not fifteen. Fine. People changed.

The boys being a collective bummer was something you could deal with. Sam was always sullen around the holidays, and you couldn’t exactly be mad at Dean for being exhausted after a stressful hunt. But your Mom…

Beth used to make Yule her bitch. When you were a kid, come December 1st, the Proctor House could easily have been the center of all Wicca celebrations in the world. If working retail during the holidays tested one’s love for festive music, then the non-stop winter songs bouncing off Beth’s vinyl player would’ve made Santa beg to hear something else. Every room would gush with the smell of evergreen branches and holly. Your family’s altar, the home of all the love and joy for the season, would be lush with offerings and presents. The candles you lit as a family to welcome the light of the new year would glow in a neat row—your little silver candle, your mother’s tall red one… and the biggest. Your Dad’s.

Now, your Dad’s candle was tucked away with the rest of the unused decorations in the attic. From your spot on the floor, you couldn’t help but stare at your piss-poor excuse for a family altar. Beth hadn’t “had the time” to find the table runner your great-grandmother had embroidered just for that space. The small bouquet of mistletoe you’d brought sat pathetically on the wide, barren surface, framed by your family’s dollar-store candles: silver for you, red for Mom, and twin green candles for the boys.

It was stupid. Really, you shouldn’t have cared so much. You were almost twenty-five, and the older you got the less people cared about silly, trivial things like a single holiday out of the year. That was just a fact of life.

Still, an ugly ball of bitterness sat in your gut. She couldn’t have tried to decorate? Even out on the road, you’d still found ways to make today a little special for the people you loved. Did she really have such little strength left in her? You’d dragged the boys up to Wisconsin with you so your Mom didn’t have to be alone. Was it really that impossible, after eleven whole years without your Dad, to try and be happy?

Fuck this. Yule isn’t over yet. There’s still time for you to squeeze some life out of today, and you’re going to start straight at the source. You find your Mom in the kitchen, mindlessly swiping invisible crumbs off pristine counters. When she senses you paused behind her in the kitchen doorway, clutching in both hands the gift she got you this year, the radio suddenly needs to be toyed with. Then cleaned. There are gray strands in her hair that shine like tinsel in the low kitchen light.

“Hey,” you say, your voice bright and christmas-card perfect. “I don’t think I got to say thank you for the gift.” (You did. More than once already.) “It’s been a bit since I read this one.” The gift in question is your Dad’s second edition print of The Shining. It’s even older than you are, with soft, petal-thin pages that reek of that wonderful old book musk. Rolling the flexed and cracked paperback between your hands, your Gift automatically picks up the distant echo of the hands that had touched these pages when they were new.

When you were little, you’d always found it kind of strange that your Dad considered this book his favorite. He was a sweet, soft-spoken person, and the mental image of him indulging in uncensored horror novels didn’t mesh with the Ray preserved in your head. Having since grown up and read it for yourself, you understood that it was less about the gore of the Overlook and more about “the shine;” the array of psychic abilities that kept five-year-old Danny Torrance alive through the book.

Years of having book-club with Sam had trained you to form cultivated opinions about the stuff you read, but The Shining existed in a realm that made it hard for you to describe how you felt about it. See, you had Danny Torrance’s shine—on the same level, too, enough shine to power the decades of ghostly ballroom parties and mob conspiracies inside the Overlook for a century. Seeing your Gift put onto a page so nakedly and cinematically made you uncomfortable. Yet, feeling the weight of your father’s book in your hands, standing in the kitchen he hasn’t touched in a decade, you know that it must’ve comforted him. Back then, surrounded by a psychic mother-in-law, girlfriend, and daughter, it would've been impossible to survive without a little shine of his own. You’re sure that your Dad's Gift was faint and unimpressive next to the psychic blackholes of your Mom and Grandma. Just enough to know if you’d skinned your elbow or had a nightmare. On the days that you came home from school tear-streaked and ruddy-faced, Dad would be waiting on the porch with soup.

You can still feel the faint psychic imprint of one of his whiskery kisses on your face. You don’t have many vivid impressions of him left to feel; none that haven’t been rubbed again and again, like the hollow of a fingerprint smoothed into the face of a rock over time.

Your Mom gives a non-committal hum at your attempt at conversation. Not because she doesn’t care—you can feel how much she cares from across the room—but because she’s tired. Adult Tired, like when she’d turn down your pleas to play together as a kid. Not tonight, baby. Momma’s exhausted.

“Mom,” you say, sounding as glossy and clean as a brand-new cookie tin. You open your mouth to say more, maybe to start in on one of your long-winded book-rants that had everyone wondering where Sam had suddenly appeared from. You know the answer, but you ask anyway, “This was one of Dad’s favorite books, right? I vaguely remember him talking about the hedge animals.” Beth accidentally hits a button as she’s dragging a rag over the shiny front of the radio, forcing Paul McCartney to have yet another wonderful Christmastime. She doesn’t look at you.

“Yup. But you knew that already, honey.”

C’mon. Nothing? She won’t even throw you the smallest, most pathetic olive branch? A psychic battle occurs. You get so frustrated all at once that your throat closes up, and that frustration balloons out into your family kitchen like the expansion of a bomb. You push. There is no give. The bubbling stormcloud of grief and loss hanging around Mom is there, then it’s not. The side of the kitchen your mother stands on is suddenly a void of absolute nothingness, empty of any feeling whatsoever, good or bad. She’s cutting you off from reading her—and protecting herself from your explosive emotions, as per usual.

Beth keeps cleaning the radio, her back to you.

Your rage bubbles out of you all at once. One day! One day out of the entire fucking year, the day your Dad always made special, and she can’t even pull herself together for that. You know you should be a good daughter and empathize with the woman who made you, but you’ve been a good daughter about this since you were twelve years old. Eleven Yules have gone by since your Dad passed. Just for one measly moment, you want to talk about him like he’s not a corpse rotting in the living room.

And the worst part is that Mom knows that. She’s known you’ve felt that way all day, a slow-bubbling pot building to a boil across the room. The two of you can always feel each other. You’re the only two who can; she’s the only other radio tower that can receive your station in its purest quality, and yet she has the gall to shut all her signals down.

“Fine!” You burst out, making the conversation physical.

It should feel good to yell, really. After the slow, ungratifying day you’ve had, you’ve been a shaken soda bottle waiting to implode. Instead, since you’re the crazy person yelling at nothing for no reason in the kitchen, your anger booms out of you and fizzes out in the same breath like a faulty firework. Fine. Fuck all of this. If you can’t beat em’, join em’. If everyone’s determined to rot the day away, then you’ll go wallow in self-pity the Proctor-Winchester way, too. Merry fucking Christmas, and a happy fucking Yule.

There is no satisfying door to slam on your way out of the kitchen. You take a sharp right down the front hall, hoping to veer up the stairs and slam your feet down on every single step up to your room. If your Mom wants to live forever in the year your Dad died, by all means—you’ll even bring home your thirteen-year-old self and her childish tantrums, just for time-accurate ambiance. Sam’s standing frozen just outside the kitchen archway, and you catch his deer-in-headlights look as you go peeling around the corner. You’re still keyed up with enough lashing rage to spare, so seeing him, just as hollowed-out and not there as your Mom, only feeds your pyre.

As you get to work thoroughly stomping the staircase to death, you hear him go into the kitchen and ask Beth about soup for Dean’s sore throat.

Upstairs is even more painfully quiet. Through the floor, Paul McCartney muffles down to a cheery mumble. All old houses shift around a little, but yours settles like it's alive, clicking, creaking, swaying. You don’t look at the portraits of Proctor women up the stairwell. The dusty grandfather clock in the hall watches you with its stained glass face, and you’re so lost in your own head—

—and Dad’d be so pissed we didn’t decorate the altar or listen to the Tull Christmas album, he’d riot, he’d talk some sense into her—wouldn’t think any of this is stupid— —that you don’t hear it when it chimes. Muscle memory plants you right in front of your bedroom door. Having a good cry under the covers sounds like a perfect end to the night, right? And yet you stop. Your hand drops on the knob and stays there, unmoving. Maybe it’s your Gift, or good old-fashioned human instinct knowing when something in the home has been nudged two inches to the left, but the air in the hall tastes staler than usual. A draft? Your gaze is pulled all the way down to the opposite end of the hall, where the untouched, stately storage room door is ajar.

Your Mom probably left it open. Maybe she’d gone in there to hunt around for all the heirloom Yule decorations, only to rediscover Dad’s football memorabilia or Dad’s engraved cigarette case and go bolting out of the room. —everything’s different without him, Sam and Mom and Dean too. So am I. Everything’s twisted—without him— Still riding the whirlwind, you stomp from one end of the yellowing, starry zodiac carpet (Aries) to the other (Pisces), the floorboards squeaking under your weight. You push the door and it goes shuddering into the darkness. This was one of many rooms in the house that Mom had banished you from as a kid, mostly as a way to shoo you away from the hunting world. It’d given you this insatiable fascination with it as a result, but when you tug the chain to turn on the closest lamp, what it illuminates doesn’t come close to the spectacular stories you’d made up in your head.

It’s just a room. It has windows and shelves and old things, some from your childhood, some from your Mom’s. Some from even further back than that. The closest fascinating thing is a shiny gold blob poking out of your baby things, which turns out to be Sam’s eighth-grade mathlete trophy. You had no idea what possessed Mom to come up here so often. There was no way she wasn’t in here at least a couple times a week; the tall metal storage shelf where she immortalized your Dad’s things was never dusty, and yet the whole room reeked of rotting books and insulation. You shove the box with Sam’s trophy aside with your foot until it skids out of your way, and then send the heavy door shut behind you with a wall-shaking bang.

A flurry of dust hails down from the ceiling. You cough through the cloud, wandering in your blindness towards the neat row of plastic storage tubs labeled with your Dad’s name. Clothes. Misc. Books. Maybe that’s where Mom had gotten your new copy of The Shining from, halfway through one of her sacred meditations over Dad’s things. You drop a hand onto the cold lid of the tub. Nothing, not even the slightest psychic imprint, reaches back.

What is she even holding onto anymore? You try the clothes next. The rounded corners of this bin have been scuffed gray from how many times it’s been pulled off and then pushed back on its shelf, again and again. The case feels as lifeless to you as it would for anyone else, but you try your luck and slide it out onto the floor. It comes loose with a solid thud.

When you were old enough, Beth would sometimes send you up into this room to grab things (spell ingredients, books you didn’t keep downstairs). You would run full-tilt right up until you hit the storage room door, then pass inside like a stranger in a dangerous realm, watching where you stepped and always, always keeping your Dad’s shelf in the corner of your eye. On brave days you would pick up his silvery cigarette case and roll it between your palms. It grew harder and harder to feel him each time, the ghost of him whittled down like a rock made round by the current of a river.

When you crack off the lid, you expect some kind of smell. You don’t remember what he smelled like, but you have a few guesses—cheap, vanilla-sweet aftershave, or maybe the woody stale smell of cigarette smoke you know you shouldn’t love. Maybe both. It doesn’t really matter. The neatly folded stacks of your Dad’s old shirts and jackets don’t smell like a damn thing. You dip your face into a holey band-shirt with the sleeves scissored off, but all that comes back to you is the rotten smell of dusty insulation. He’s here—he’s right here in front of you, right in your fucking hands, and yet the whole world is dead of him. You can’t sense even a sliver of him left.

The same old reservoir of despair pushes and pushes at your composure, wiggling through your cracks, widening them with a hundred thousand tons of pressure bearing down on you a minute. It is a day by day task to handle the reservoir. You like to think you’re good at handling it, at patching the cracks as they come and letting them breathe when the moment calls for it. But when you lift your face from the bin, the leak springs—really, genuinely springs, like it hasn’t in years.

You fall back onto your haunches, swallowing back sudden stinging tears. The bin and its askew lid go shrieking back onto the shelf with a lash of your foot.

The music downstairs stops. You can’t tell how long it’s been.

When his death was fresh, and you were stuck deep, deep within the reservoir, you’d wondered if it would always feel this way. It got easier, right? And in many ways it had—on most days you could talk about your Dad without it hurting, letting the dam’s water run. The battle was still there, but it was a burden you were proud to carry if it meant his memory lived on in you. He would want you to be happy, your Mom used to urge. So you gave being happy your best shot, loving and giving as much as you could.

That’s what frustrated you so endlessly about your Mom. She’d been right; your Dad would’ve wanted the two of you to move on, and yet she still entombed herself in the bottom of her reservoir far too often. There was no release, no acceptance with her. The dark part of you that wanted to pass blame wondered if this was all because of John, and how well Winchester grief happened to mingle with a Proctor’s. How would your mother’s life be different, if the evil that’d taken Dad hadn’t been put down a week later? Would she be just as hellbent? With your knees sore from pressing into the floor, you knew the answer. You knew if the thing that’d taken Sam or Dean from you was right in front of you, you’d chase it until you were in your own grave. You knew that even after it was dead, you would be digging your nails into the backseat of the Impala and clawing for every psychic molecule of them left in the leather.

And that’s what scared you—was she just going to be chasing Dad forever, til’ there wasn’t a wisp of him left in the world to feel?

Something dawns on you, thudding through your mind like a rock dropped down a chute. With limp hands, you slide The Shining towards you on the worn wood floor, part the pages with your thumbs, and press your nose into the binding. There’s the smoky, earthy scent of old paper first… then something just underneath the surface that no one but you and your Mom can pick up.

Old books. Yes. Yes, that’s what Dad had smelled like.

You’re seated on the floor of the storage room, back pressed to one of the ancient metal shelves holding up your gramma’s VCR collection, when a blot of the future is tossed at you. Cheap deodorant and lemon cough drops.

Around a minute later, the stairs beyond the door squeak under someone’s weight. Even without the roulette glimpse of the future, you can tell by the footfalls who it is. Heavy knuckles rap the door and come straight in without waiting for an answer. Behind him, the silence of the rest of the house is even heavier.

You try to sound like a reasonable adult, but the mopey teenager slips out anyway. “Thought you were sick, Dean.”

He artfully dodges your point. (Dean is, after all, a master of the craft.) You don’t look back at him, but the lemon cough-drops glimpse you got of him creates a clear picture: Dean’s whole body listing into the door frame, one hand on the knob, his face lacking its usual color. His cheeks have graduated from stubbly to scruffy, neglected. “Hey,” he says. It’s the, okay, you’re done cooling down, let’s have a grown-up conversation kind of hello.

You don’t know what to say back. You’re not sure if you can have any kind of conversation right now.

Dean rolls with it, trying to decide if this silence is begging for a subject change or a heart-to-heart. You’re not sure what he goes for when he says, “I had an idea.” “Did it hurt?” You joke. Jokes you can do.

There’s his opening. After a beat, you’re—

—fucking lobbed with a foam football. Like you’re fucking twelve. Dean’s throw arcs straight towards your head and bounces clean off the top, a perfect spiral. You yelp in outrage, and before you can think you’re following where the stupid ball went so you can clock him right in the face with it. Asshole. It loop-de-loops on the floor around an old dining chair, and you clamber on your knees to fish for it.

Just when you get the toy in your hands and you’re about to demolish him with it, Dean ducks behind the doorway, chuckling, “Woah! No face shots! You wouldn’t bash a poor, sick guy’s face in, would’ja?”

God. You can’t fucking believe him. If anyone else did that…

You lower your hackles and drop the foam toy into a basket, far out of reach of congested troublemakers. When his shining eyes appear in the slit of the doorway again, your cheeks are aching with an impossible smile. “You’re lucky it’s Christmas, loser. What is it?”

Dean hesitates a moment more, just in case you’ve got something else to throw at him, then joins you in the storage room with the evil little oily smile you love. The same dust cloud that got you earlier descends on him in a rough coughing fit, but this lets him get a good look at the little mess you’ve made: the book on the floor, your Dad’s things open and askew. When he clears his throat for the last time, he looks pained.

For your sake, you pretend it’s an empathetic kind of pained. And you know that’s a part of it—Dean doesn’t enjoy seeing you and your Mom like this. But it’s an unfortunate fact of your life that you will have four times as much context for him than he will ever have for you. Just breathing the same dusty air as him, you know he’s been nursing a sinus headache since Monday, one that’s made his head feel like it’s chock-full of stuffing, and that Sam made him canned chicken noodle soup—and at first he felt a little smug making Sam play nurse, until he stewed on it more and—

—hate it when he gives me that dead-eyed look, like he can’t even pretend to care anymore. Like he’s just dragging himself through this for our sake. Poor kid scares the shit outta me. Is this how it’s always gonna be? Sammy aching over her, night after night after night—

You know just touching the bins holding your Dad’s things that on a icy February afternoon in 1994, fifteen-year-old Dean had picked up the plastic tubs for your Mom from the store.

So when he gives you that pained look, you know it’s part-concern, part-fear. If this is what you look like eleven years after your Dad’s passing… if John never comes home from his hunting trip, is this what Dean will become? The loyal son, waiting and waiting on that porch for a man who would never come home?

Your whole life, you’ve felt like you were becoming more and more like Dean; lately, it feels like he’s becoming so much like you. Your last four years on the road together had slowly but surely melded you together.

“Okay, so, Yule’s a fire festival, right?” Dean grasps around in his memory for the yearly history lesson your Mom gives about the Wicca calendar. “Uh, we lit candles… I thought about burning Beth’s Muppet Christmas CD with my lighter a couple times. That’s about all the fiery, burny-stuff we did today.”

“I love the Muppets Christmas album,” you pout.

“After the millionth partridge in John Denver’s goddamn pear tree, you’d change your mind,” Dean swears. “But I was thinkin’—we got the firepit in the backyard, marshmallows, and I think I could put together some vodka shots. Then we can blow em' out and eat em' with the s'mores.” Your eyebrows raise. Only he, of all people, could take your sacred family traditions and twist them into such a wonderful, stupid-ass thing. Maybe it’s ridiculous, but… there is chocolate and graham crackers downstairs… and with how cold it is outside, a fire would be perfect… It’s the best blend of weird Proctor-Winchester traditions you need to save Christmas and Yule. Dean takes your silence as glowing awe. “Exactly. I told you, I'm a fuckin' genius. Helluva way to start the wiccan year, right? You in?”

You’re well aware that this is an elaborate plan to coax you away from your moping. Still, it’s just too Dean to turn down. “...Hell yeah.”

At first R hopes that it’s just her and Dean, and that Sam and Beth keep their grief to themselves. But then she realizes how cruel and selfish she’s been—everyone grieves in their own way, and just because she works through it by talking about it doesn’t mean it will work for everyone. It’s not good that Beth is holding on so tightly to her loss, but that doesn’t mean R wants to leave them out.

Lead this into a touch of psychic!Dean and how he has a teeny tiny second sense for what she needs, just like her Dad did. Just enough shine to get by.

R and Dean come downstairs and invite Sam and Beth to their campfire 😀

Or, at the very least, all the psychic happenings in the house echoing between them; if Dean's sharper instincts were as psychically heavy as a shadow falling on grass, then Sam's Static was six feet of snow in an arctic blizzard.

It tingles all the way up to your shoulder when Sam touches you. And that, oh, that was a whole new can of worms. As they get dressed for the snow outside and assemble the s'mores and flaming shots, you try not to head down that train of thought again.

Every time you’ve glanced at Sam these past few weeks, you’d been unable to hide from what you’d sensed there—from what you’d seen in the demon, and what you now knew to be completely and utterly true after reading its mind.

Sam had It. The Gift, the Shining, whatever the fuck you wanted to call it. Not the vague imprint of psychic-ness from loving one or sharing the Impala with one for four years; full-on, unlatched, REDRUM, I-saw-it-before-it-happened psychic abilities. In the weeks you'd had to sit with that revelation, you'd poked carefully at Sam from afar. Obviously, you knew what a fucking psychic felt like. The five-year-old Sam who'd cut Dean's gum out of your hair had not been psychic. Yet this Sam, twenty-two with three-fourths of an ivy league law degree under his belt, was as psychic as a fucking—well. You. He was just as psychic as you.

Without even a sliver of the same control or even understanding of—of what he had, yes, but you were confident that if Sam was pushed, he could reach into your mind just as easily as you could reach into his. There had been a shift, then. At six, having gum cut out of your hair, you had been decidedly less psychic than you were at twenty-four. So Sam had gone through the Proctor Rite Of Passage; some terrible moment had cut him deep, deep enough to pull a new kind of blood to the surface. After Jessica, he had been... yeah.

It was fucking crazy. And yet it also slotted perfectly into some of the weirder things you understood about Sam; about who he was now and the vague, strobing flashes you got of his future. It freaked you the fuck out. Did Sam know? Did anyone know, besides you? Had your Mom recognized that spark in Sam, the same way she'd seen it in you? Had John?

And the plain existence of the Gift in Sam begged the question—why? Had he just happened to drop from the tree as a different kind of apple? Or was this something you could trace back to his mother, the same way it traced back to yours? Had Mary…?

The implications of that took pretty much everything you understood about Sam and Dean’s life, lined it up on the chopping block, and cleaved it in two. Needless to say, thinking about it made you sick. How could you even begin to bring this up to them?

You cursed your abilities with all you had. There were nights when you sat on the bathroom floor, wishing you could dig in with your nails and rip out whatever had put It in your head. Never in a billion fucking years would you have wished It upon anyone else; especially not Sam, good, selfless, wonderful Sam, who already ached so deeply for other people. Seeing their future, too? And even more often, seeing it and being helpless to change it?

He used to cry over squashed spiders as a kid. You'd felt a whole lot more than just spiders die.

…Beside that shuddering horror was another, far more selfish feeling. As scary as the implications could be, when you thought less about the Winchester family and more about your relationship with Sam, you were… excited. Relieved, even.

There were only four people in the entire world that you could share your Gift with. One of them has been six feet under for over a decade. Your Gift was a clingy, possessive creature, too. It was maybe two steps shy of being an eldritch horror. It poked through Dean’s dreams when you slept beside him, sucking them up like cigarette smoke. It breathed down Sam’s neck wherever he went. If you wanted, no one could lie to you—all punchlines and stories were spoiled for you, you knew when people found you annoying or pretty or stupid. If that particular Proctor gene had skipped you, then maybe you’d be able to form relationships with people where you didn’t immediately, intrinsically understand who they were and why. Dean would say, You need a drink. You would know without asking that he meant, You scare the ever-living hell out of me n’ I know I can’t hide it from you. Fucking hell, kid, I wish I could.

You knew you were a freak. The tiny human vessel for the lashing, bubbling, soul-melting, cosmic weight of a star about to bloom into a black hole. Only your mom would ever understand what it felt like to exist on the fringe of time, between the exhaustive influence of the past and the vast, spotty expanse of the future. You were a tool to men like John; an anomaly for men like Bobby; and a responsibility to men like Dean.

But Sam… Your best friend Sam, he’d always tried to understand. Maybe he’d never fully get it, but the point was that he tried to. You remembered sitting with him on the curb outside your old high school, the concrete thrumming with music from the junior prom you’d both left behind inside.

How either of you had gotten dates was a miracle. You, the class weird-freak-emo punchline, and Sam, on his fourth round being the new kid that year, were two peas in a pod. Your date had never picked you up; Sam’s had escaped with her friends long before their first dance. Neither of you were very broken up about it.

The future had sprawled in front of you that night as clear as could be. You must've sat and talked on the curb for three straight hours, pressed together at the hip with Sam’s blazer around your shivering arms.

He was always beautiful in the boy-next-door kind of way, dimples popping with every good smile and freckles rising out of the too-short sleeves of his button-up. But that night he’d been fucking Helen of Troy, and the roar of the past and future slowed to a halt around him.

Do you really see the future all the time? Every second? Sam had curiously tilted his head, sending a gleaming swish of chocolatey hair out of his eyes.

Swallowing hard, you’d hesitated, Not every second. But a lot, yes.

Again, the head tilt, then the swish. His gaze was innocent and intrigued. No existential dread, no sweeping sense of fear. Just plain curiosity. Not even morbid curiosity. Sam had asked, What about right now?

Sam’s cologne—oh god, his cologne—was steaming off his borrowed jacket and floating around your head in a wonderful rosy fog. You’d poked at the future. Sometimes things came back, sometimes they didn’t. That night, the future had come back tasting like Sam’s vanilla chapstick and junior prom punch, and your face had gone up in flames just sensing it. He’d waited for an answer. You’d blurted out the plain truth: In a minute or two, you’re gonna kiss me.

This kind of absolute, unshakable certainty about the future had made other hunters’ blood run cold. You’d braced yourself for Sam’s displeasure or worse, his fear. But instead, there were those dimples again, and Sam had the gall to bat his lashes at you and delightedly ask, Really? That’s what the magic eight ball has to say?

His big hand had dropped onto your knee and you’d squeaked out a shrill, Signs point to yes!

Sam loved the stupid magic eight-ball joke. You could feel him smiling about it as he kissed you, kissed you, hand-on-knee, his face tipping down to yours, the shitty school punch staining his lips as the two of you connected. At fifteen and sixteen respectively, this was the first kissing that either of you had ever done. It’d been wetter and warmer than you’d expected, and Sam’s vanilla chapstick had left the slightest print on your mouth, one that your tongue swiped over obsessively for the next month. Your Gift had chased him for weeks after that, silently and invisibly swarming him every time he entered a room.

Back then, your mind had been on the Curse. But now, you thought about what had led to the kiss in the first place. Sam hadn’t kissed you on a night when your Gift had been crammed down deep where it could bother nobody but you. He’d instead chosen the precise moment where your Gift was most raw, one of Its fingers coming down from the sky to press against the pulse of the future. It was small, but at a time in your life when you’d wanted to claw your Gift out with your bare hands, Sam had gotten the smallest glimpse of It and had fallen in love.

You couldn’t help but see this thing inside him, his Static, and feel the exact same way. His powers were twisted and unavoidably demonic, and yet you kind of loved them. It made perfect sense to you. No one really understood you like Sam did. Now, it's clear why.

tags: @samssluttybangs @cookiemumster1 @lacilou @cevans-winchester @leigh70 @seraphimluxe @emily-roberts @emme-looou @aloneatpeace @williamstop @ornella0910 @chaoticshepardplaid @dakota-dream @lcvecstiel @goghkiss @spnexploration @stoneyggirl2 @urm0mmmbbg @mulattomoon @poeticsorcery @deansapplepie @rennydenny @babydollfoster @badlandsbrunette @hallecarey1 @pplanetcaravan @notanotherthembo

#uncouthspn #spn #supernatural #sam winchester #user uncouth #sam winchester x reader

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seyaryminamoto · 11 months ago

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hello! I really like your meta about Zuko, and I'm so glad that I finally found a person who also thinks that Zuko in book 3 is a much worse person than he was in the book 1. I always thought that something was wrong with me, since literally no one sees this obvious fact for me! But I would like to ask you: What do you think about Katara in book 3? the fact is that she was my favorite character in books 1 and 2, and the way she was written in book 3 upset me a lot. it seems to me that they spoiled her character, but I can't explain why. Please share your thoughts!

Glad you've enjoyed my extensive meta on the fandom's fave, haha. I did write a lot about him, always nice to know my thoughts on the subject are still deemed relevant.

As for Katara... well, I have thoughts on her, too. My experience with her character is quite similar to yours, I'd say, because I too felt a lot better about her character in the first two seasons of the show compared with the third. I don't usually give this a ton of thought, but after your ask, I figured I'd try and figure out what exactly went down with her that made people like us feel so uncomfortable with Katara's portrayal at multiple points of Book 3...

For starters, I'll say I vibed with Katara a lot when I started the show for reasons beyond her being a great character or being written wonderfully: she could very well have been written mediocrely and I would have loved her anyway simply because I ran away from anime to ATLA in an era where anime kept shoehorning incest undertones into every sibling relationship, even in shows that didn't have that as a core subject. It happened at least twice that I can remember, I kept seeing people raving about shows where it WAS the core of it (I still do not understand the Oreimo deal, like, the minute I read that show's title I puked in my mouth and knew I'd never watch it), and I just needed... safety from that concept, I guess?

So when I went into ATLA, and the first sibling relationship you're exposed to is Sokka and Katara, two siblings who very much act like siblings? I was thriving. It was thrilling. I felt so refreshed that I think I didn't care much about the flaws of Book 1, despite my inability to sense direction for most of it, because thank the universe, it was a sibling relationship that made sense to me!

With that as an opening, I'd say that, initially, I thought Katara was fine for most of Book 1. In Book 2? She fell off the radar for me a bit simply because other characters are introduced that just appeal to me so much more than she does. I vibe better with characters like Azula, who tend to be the type of female character I just LOVE, and with characters like Toph, she's a tomboy, I was a tomboy (... was? x'D maybe I shouldn't use past tense...), so I gravitated much more towards those two by no real fault of Katara's core personality traits. Back in Book 1, there aren't as many main characters, so you don't have a lot of variety to choose faves from. It's not that strange, I think, that once the cast broadens, people's interest in certain characters can scatter too.

But then Book 3 happened, and I just couldn't enjoy Katara outside of episodes where she wasn't that important. The Katara-centric episode of Book 3 stand among my least favorite episodes of ATLA altogether, and among the least likely episodes I'd ever want to rewatch. I literally skipped over The Painted Lady in my first rewatches of the show, every bit as much as I skipped The Great Divide or Avatar Day, both of which annoy me a lot in the first two seasons. The Puppetmaster? Not even close to being an episode I could enjoy. Even the Runaway, that's supposed to be Toph-centric, ends up making me count down the minutes for it to end and I'm not even going to get started on The Southern Raiders and the absolute can of worms that episode is...

So, with all this being said, if we peel this particular cabbage open little by little...

After mulling it over, I've grown to suspect that Katara has major inconsistency issues since day one that most people don't particularly like to acknowledge, and that flew over most of our heads from the beginning of the show. She's pretty much portrayed to us as an empath, someone who has so much heart that she can't help but feel everyone's pain and suffer with them all the time. The fandom 100% acts like that's who she is (while also obsessively adultifying her unnecessarily, and forcing her into the mom!friend role, which... we'll talk about that later)

But this is also the same character who, when her brother banished Aang from the Southern Water Tribe as early as in episode 2, protested in a very particular way once Aang was gone. Which one of these statements sound more accurate to Katara's character, and a suitable protest for her to proclaim upon witnessing this injustice against Aang?

"Aang is alone! How could you send him away on his own? He could be in danger, Sokka! He's just a kid!"

"The Air Nomads are gone, Sokka! Where do you think he'll go? He doesn't have a home to go back to and you just sent him away!"

"You happy now? There goes my one chance at becoming a waterbender!"

If you ask the fandom? They'll most likely think that her reaction was either #1 or #2.

Surprise surprise: it was actually #3

I'm not saying she didn't show empathy towards Aang while Sokka was ranting at him, because she did. I'm not saying she wasn't willing to be banished along with Aang until Sokka asks if she'd choose pretty much a total stranger over their family and tribe, because she was. She absolutely did all those things.

... So why would she focus only on how he represented her one chance at becoming a waterbender once Aang is gone?

This feels off to me. I've never particularly liked that line. And you could absolutely say that Katara has every right to be mad at losing her chance to reclaim an aspect of her culture that she cannot connect to, but the way it was framed here? It absolutely makes Katara look more selfish than she actually was. The wording is not good. The show doesn't emphasize, at this point, that bending is such a core and crucial part of their culture and that Katara feels a major responsibility in being the ONLY person in the South Pole that can keep it alive. So it just comes off as a child's tantrum. Sokka's concerns were 100% valid too, even if he went about them while being a jerk (he is, indeed, an older brother...). He wasn't even wrong in the end about how dangerous Aang was to their tribe, since Aang's mishap with Katara on the ship gives away his position to Zuko, and it results in Zuko ramming a huge ship into their home and nearly killing people in the process. But you DON'T see the show fully framing it as though Katara and Aang did something wrong -- it was an honest mistake. We know it was. Sokka is framed as unreasonable for being so paranoid even though later events in the very episode prove he wasn't.

And that's... the crux of the issue with Katara's writing. If you ask me.

There are far too many instances where Katara makes mistakes that she's not held accountable for, that she doesn't apologize for, that run against the core logic and principles of her character and they either get shrugged off or overlooked. There are far too many situations where she acts out, and is a jerk at her jerk of a brother, even unprompted on occasion, and it's supposed to just be funny. One particularly stood out to me when I revisited it a few years ago, I can't really remember what for (maybe when I was writing Jeong Jeong's arc in Gladiator and I had a look at the fishing village...?), but it's the famous flashback episode in Book 1: The Storm.

The scene in question is... humorous. Supposedly. Katara is trying to buy fruit in the market but then realizes they have no money to pay for it. Not only does Katara piss off the vendor, but the vendor actually takes her rage out on Sokka once she realizes these kids won't give her any business: he gets kicked in the rear, as the transcript's description says. No one protests the woman's violent reaction, not even Sokka. Katara most certainly doesn't do it. But that's not all there is to it: Sokka doesn't hold what happened with the fruit vendor against Katara, they have a conversation on how they have no money and no food... and Katara offers him the golden ticket solution to their problems:

"You could get a job, smart guy."

Am I too feminist for thinking it's insane that Katara expects her brother alone to get the job? That she's not saying the THREE of them should get jobs? She and Aang are BENDERS! That's an asset most people aren't likely to find in any would-be employees in the central Earth Kingdom! So... wouldn't it be logical for all of them to do it? But no, instead, Sokka alone has to get the job?

And yes, I know, Sokka is the provider, Sokka is the protector, Sokka would do ANYTHING for his sister and the people he loves: you ask the fandom, though, and that's Katara instead of him. Moments like these simply do not exist in the fandom's eyes and, if they do, they're just excusable because Sokka is boring/weird/annoying/insert-demeaning-nonsense-here and Katara is a queen who can do whatever she wants.

Then, the consequences arrive once Sokka gets a dangerous job on a fishing boat and nearly gets killed in a storm. Aang is the one who shows concern about the potential storm when the fisherman's wife brings it up: from all I can see in the transcript, there's nothing from Katara. Sokka says they told him to get a job, so that's what he's doing, and there's no manifestation of concern from either of them about maybe joining him on this fishing trip to ensure he's safe. Instead, Aang is haunted by his past and Katara goes with him when he leaves, which, yes, is very important for context on the Air Nomads and Aang's life... and yet we don't really NEED for this scene to be Katara and Aang only. It could've included Sokka too. The plot of the second half of the episode would change? Likely. They could've come up with another idea, and not shown us a Katara who doesn't show concern for her brother's safety or any remorse when her unfair demands or expectations from him could result in catastrophic outcomes :') yes, she worries about Sokka's safety once the storm hits, but there's no sign of her feeling responsible for Sokka being out in the storm at all. No apology. Which is ironic, because Zuko apologizes to Iroh in that very same episode, hence, an apology from Katara to her brother could have mirrored that side of the story well, and they REALLY loved doing Zuko-Gaang parallel scenes like that, so it would have fit perfectly! Didn't happen, though.

Point being... Katara's compassion and empathy are not absolute. It's important to keep in mind is that they don't need to be! But precisely because she falters with them in moments where she REALLY shouldn't, with people as important to her as her own brother? It becomes very difficult to believe that she's the empath the fandom is convinced she is, and that the show's narrative tries to push her as.

The real reason why her failure to show compassion to Sokka in "humorous" situations feels so unnerving isn't because she's a typical little sister who takes her brother for granted (which is a perfectly logical/believable behavior!): it's because there are no consequences for it. Maybe at some point or another there were? But I for one can't remember many instances where Katara failed Sokka and it was framed as her fault and her responsibility. Let's look at other Book 1 instances that exemplify what I mean:

She freezes him to the deck of Zuko's ship, which puts Sokka in MAJOR danger, and she just tells him to hurry up as if it weren't her fault that he's frozen in the first place. We don't even see her making efforts to thaw him out of there when she IS the waterbender so it seems logical that she should be able to help with that (and if she's too inexperienced to do it? The least she can do to help her brother out of a dangerous situation is to TRY???). But apparently it's funny that she doesn't help him when it's her fault! So this is fine!

She endangers the entire group over the waterbending scroll, which, of course, the pirates had no right to have anyway and it's reasonable that she'd want it for herself... but she antagonized a group of fully adult, dangerous, potential murderous pirates, against Sokka's constant warnings that they shouldn't pick that particular fight. As far as I can remember? Her apologies on that episode are exclusively about how she hurt Aang's feelings by being jealous over his greater talents as a bender. Basically, nothing for Sokka, no apology for not listening to him about danger, making it worse when the very final moment features Katara proudly telling her brother that she won't steal things... unless it's from pirates. So lesson not learned because it's funny, again, to never acknowledge that Sokka has a point.

She actually cares about Sokka's fate in Jet! But the thing is... the narrative doesn't frame that as Katara's fault. Because it's not. Jet made his choices and he did awful things and he captured Sokka, lied and gaslit everyone, because he had a goal to fulfill and he used Katara to make that happen. As angry and upset as Katara is, it's not exactly shown that Katara is sorry for having trusted Jet when Sokka could have ended up paying a deadly price for it. She's angry at the betrayal, even in Book 2 it's constantly framed as though Katara is upset at him as an ex-girlfriend would be upset at her ex-boyfriend for lying to her rather than, you know, being pissed at him for nearly killing her brother + an entire village. My point is, the narrative framing never holds her responsible for Jet's choices. Which, again, she's not. But she IS responsible for her own choices... and one of those choices was disregarding Sokka's warnings about Jet. THAT was her fault, and her responsibility. She jumped to conclusions and assumed that Sokka was bitter and jealous that Jet was the charming cool leader Sokka could never be. There were no apologies to Sokka over that, either.

I could go on, and on, and on. The truth is, I bring all this up to show with solid evidence that Katara's writing was always a little... unstable. Weird. Disconnected from logic in many regards, I'd say. It's not logical/compatible to tell us that this character has the BIGGEST heart of the entire cast when she fails to show that heart to none other than her own brother, who is inarguably the person who she knows best and with whom she should share the closest relationship, even as her friendship with Aang grows and thrives. That makes no sense, thematically speaking.

Is it meant to be comedic? Yes, every bit as much as Iroh sexually harassing June was done for comedy's sake. That's not an excuse for characters behaving in ways that are thematically contrary to what they're supposed to be portraying... and along with that? No excuse for them facing zero consequences for that behavior. Which is, in fact, my main issue with these flaws from Katara: I have no issue with the writing choices in the scenes I listed just now! I take issue, however, with the lack of follow-up and consequences that you can BET, 100%, would have befallen Sokka if it had been him instead of Katara acting that way. He faced consequences even for things he didn't do, for comedy's sake: he wouldn't have gotten away with disregarding Katara's safety as often as Katara did with him, no chance at all.

Ultimately, these scenes in Book 1 are kind of ignorable in the larger scheme of things (or at least, that's how the fandom has always acted). Not a lot of people take any of this as major proof of characterization for Katara. You won't see a lot of fic writers showing her acting like this. Canon, though, often would go down this route for funsies, and the comics certainly did it plenty too, that I can remember. Part of the issue here is that, as funny as it is, it also makes Katara feel stale as a character, as does the Sokka-Katara dynamic, at large, because there's no progression for it. That's probably my greatest gripe with the Great Divide, believe it or not: it fakes being an episode where Sokka and Katara are going to be confronted over their conflictive tendencies, and the ONLY potential development in that basically-filler episode SHOULD HAVE BEEN Sokka and Katara learning to be a bit more harmonious and respectful of each other? ... And that's just not what happened at all. The status quo remains exactly the same after that episode, and it continues to be like that until the end of the show.

The real reason why Sokka and Katara are deemed the healthy siblings is because, of course, compared with the other main set of siblings in the show, these two appear to get along wonderfully. But the truth is, their relationship is not as dynamic as it deserved to be. And that's part of why Book 3 ends up failing in ways Book 1 might not have, while having similar flaws: Book 1 is when you're still getting to know these kids, and that's why I find its flaws far more forgivable than anything that comes later. When there's basically no development for that connection at all, Book 3 winds up falling flat with characters like Sokka and Katara and the bond between them.

All this being said... I'm not saying that Katara is terrible in Book 1. I still stand by the fact that I really enjoyed her character in many instances of this season, there absolutely are situations where she sasses Sokka that still make me crack a smile, and genuinely humorous situations that don't paint her in a questionable light over her lack of concern for her brother's safety. Her fight to earn the right to be trained as a waterbender is deeeeeply flawed but it's not her fault, it's more the misogyny of the writers/creators that decided that a betrothal necklace from his past would make Pakku unlearn all his sexism and get over his bullshit right after beating up a girl who was fighting tooth and nail to make him acknowledge her. That he only acknowledges her because he wanted to marry her grandmother is... uh... fuckboi behavior even when he's well over 70 years of age? XD

So, yeah, Book 1 still has my favorite Katara of the entire show even though I REALLY wish she wouldn't get away with things that other characters wouldn't get a pass for (... well... other than Zuko...). I can't enjoy her as much as I enjoy other characters because I really don't like it when characters aren't held accountable for serious mistakes they made.

Moving on to Book 2, though, and leaving behind my greatest gripe with Katara's Book 1 writing (lack of direct consequences/self-reflection on her part), Book 2's biggest sin when it comes to Katara is the beginning of the "mothering" trope. I honestly did not feel motherly vibes from Katara towards anyone in Book 1. Sokka is very often the one playing the responsible role, while Aang and Katara are seeing the world, practicing their bending, doing reckless and fun things. The entire thing about Katara being the mom friend started in Book 2 when she suddenly becomes the epitome of responsibility (well... kinda) when Toph joins the group. She still does sketchy stuff with zero consequences (I'll forever complain about how ice is not cold in this show, the kids she froze to the wall may have been dicks, but freezing someone alive that way should have resulted in serious health repercussions, just as ANY case of freezing someone alive should have, ffs, be it Zuko in Book 1's finale or Azula + Katara in Book 3's...), but once Toph is part of the group, she becomes the cool girl who's "one of the boys", and now Katara is "the mom". This dynamic gets forced into the story pretty much right after Toph joins the group. And after that? It doesn't really change for the better often. There are only a handful of instances where Katara wasn't acting wholesome and comforting and kind and compassionate in Book 2 (... particularly with Sokka, ofc), but the point where her dynamics, even with Aang, start to feel motherly is definitely Book 2.

And this adds to the issue, in the end: Katara's appeal as the main girl in the show is suddenly gone because Toph is here, and she's a way more unique character that the writers definitely were having fun working with, probably more fun than they had with Katara. So they had to find a new niche for her, I'd dare guess. Thus, instead of actually building up an awesome and solid friendship between Katara and Toph, they mostly just clash and collide. Toph is basically the ONLY character who gives Katara grief and isn't framed as in the wrong for it, which is its own set of issues (namely, Toph not being challenged enough by the narrative, which stunts her character growth), but among many things, we suddenly get shown that Katara is a girly girl who likes makeup and she ropes Toph into this when nothing we've seen so far suggests that Toph would be comfortable with that. Katara pushes her into doing things because they're the "girls of the group"... and it doesn't often look like Toph's feelings on anything are important when Katara is pushing her around for whatever purpose. I'm not saying Toph hated the spa day, she certainly had fun eventually, but even when the comics made a "Katara and Toph's day out" story, where Toph got to choose what to do for once, the story devolved into Katara's show anyway, and things concluded with Toph deciding they're better off doing girly things together when they want to hang out because Katara is just too intense for the things Toph would like to do.

This isn't even in the show, but it's basically a response to Tales of Ba Sing Se to try and even out Katara and Toph's one-sided dynamic, where Katara calls the shots of their entertainment... and even then, Toph doesn't really get what she's looking for. But Katara does get that out of Toph because all she wants is a girl to do girly things with and Toph provides that in the end, no matter how much of a tomboy she may be. Toph might just want a friend who loves the things she loves, and who knows, Katara could be that person! But the story never leads her in that direction so we never see that happen. And that's why that particular friendship never really... clicked for me. Their dynamics don't really feel enjoyable to me as they were written in the show, even though they very much could have been.

That's one thing I'll always give ATLA: the character potential and synergy they captured with that cast could be absolutely incredible. Team Avatar is so iconic because they really could work well off each other. A lot of teams in other media just aren't this good (... one of my main reasons to not enjoy Voltron and drop it in season 1 was my absolute failure to find any synergy between those characters, it felt like they all hated each other and I honestly did not enjoy their dynamics in the least), but Aang, Katara and Sokka have great synergy due to their different personalities in Book 1. Same when Toph joins them in Book 2. Zuko ABSOLUTELY could have been better in the group than he was if Book 3 hadn't devolved into the Zuko Woobifying Show by the second half, where the only writing priority was making him friends with everyone, and making them all feel sorry for him and have compassion towards him. But, broken down to his core traits, Zuko's personality would have resulted in solid chemistry with everyone else's if they'd gotten off that agenda anyway! So ultimately, ATLA has a big win in this respect that a lot of TV shows would LOVE to recreate but they simply haven't struck the right kind of balance in character traits.

Hence why the way they wrote Toph and Katara's dynamics kind of feels like a betrayal to me. Those two could have been a lot of fun, they have EVERYTHING it takes to be entertaining characters with not a ton of things in common and yet building a solid friendship that hinges on their differences. I've seen a fair few examples of that kind of dynamic in other media, and it absolutely would be possible with Toph and Katara. It's really unfair that they couldn't capture their dynamics in such a way that both characters would SHINE, rather than constantly resorting to conflicts between them that never seemed to truly be resolved.

So: Toph should not be a problem for Katara. She should enhance her character and doesn't because of writing failures. One of the core failures is "mom friend Katara", of course: there's nothing inherently wrong with Katara stepping up and taking care of people she loves, but there's something very wrong with it when she's suddenly portrayed as this motherly figure when she's doing things that Sokka had been doing just fine in Book 1. Main reason why this is the case? Sokka got dumbed down to full-time class clown for whatever reason in Book 2. While he has good moments, a lot of times they went WAY overboard with making him a source of comedy this season and that, too, contributes to mom friend Katara. Since Sokka is being so meh? We even feel relieved that Katara is there to keep things together because nobody can expect the other three to do it, right? But... Sokka was doing it in Book 1. And there's no real development to explain him NOT doing it anymore once Toph joins in besides "Katara is now the mom friend and Sokka is just here to be funny". It's not organic development: it's forcing tropes that just don't fit. And while Katara's mothering doesn't feel as unpleasant as it could here, it ultimately forces a new interpretation and portrayal of her character that honestly isn't all that interesting, most of all when the other characters are constantly portrayed as "more fun" while she's just here to keep them in line.

It just isn't the same Katara we met in Book 1, and it shows in spades. Book 1 Katara would have been hyped to join Aang and Toph in chaos while Sokka screams at them to behave themselves. Book 2 Katara is the one trying to keep the other three in line, and there's genuinely zero development that led things to that stage. It's not organic storytelling. There's no growth that leads to that, and so, it feels off.

But the core problem of all these flaws in Book 1 and Book 2 is that they roll together and snowball into something far greater that then proceeds to just... disrupt everything we thought we knew or understood about Katara. We've been told she's a kind person above all else, someone who cares about people close to her, someone who embodies hope and strength and love...!

... And then Book 3 starts, and we're actually facing a Katara who shifts into a wholly different person with the speed of a whiplash that we're left not knowing who tf this is anymore.

"Mom friend Katara" absolutely comes back in Book 3, why lie? She takes care of people, she tries to provide, she tries to be nice and sweet and then also enforces discipline on Toph (particularly) when she's being irresponsible!

But the reason why The Runaway is such an unpleasant episode is because Katara's behavior is dialed up to a thousand, and the conflict between her and Toph feels WAY too similar to what it was when they were barely getting to know each other in The Chase. Why are they STILL clashing over such things? There are occasional glimpses of friendliness there in The Runaway, sure! But they're not so strong that you actually feel like that friendship supersedes their conflicts and their propensity to bicker and argue and hurt each other. Toph blatantly calls her out on her mothering and fully canonically confirms that Katara is The Mom Friend™. Where Toph is annoyed but eventually complies with doing what Katara wants to do in Tales of Ba Sing Se, this time Katara makes a huuuuuge fuss over Toph's misbehavior and her scamming Fire Nation people. And you could argue that Toph has every right to do it, or that Katara is right to be worried, just like Sokka used to worry about such things in Book 1...

But what we get is a stale dynamic that repeats the same problems we saw in Book 2, as well as Katara coming off as rather hypocritical because she, too, did dangerous shit and picked dangerous fights where she shouldn't have, and ignored everyone who told her not to do it: she gave Toph that kind of grief over things Katara was willing to do back when Toph wasn't in the group (see the pirates thing), and she will try to stop Toph from having fun on her own terms when nobody has ever tried to stop Katara from doing that in hers. Of course, any Katara advocate would read this and go "you're missing the point: Katara was sad and upset that she was being LEFT OUT! That's why she was so mad about this!" Then the irony of the matter is that this argument STILL reflects poorly on Katara. She gave her friend a tough time, called her a wild child and a crazy person, went through her personal belongings because "she could tell Toph was hiding something from her", so she fully disregarded Toph's privacy... all because she couldn't say "Wait, you guys went scamming Fire Nation people? Damn, why didn't you wait for me! I would've gone too!", and there you go, problem solved! Katara's not left out anymore!

Yes, of course, that's not how it WORKS, people can struggle to identify what they feel...!

... And now it's my turn to say that that's not the point.

The point is that Katara said and did hurtful things to her friend. Things she eventually regrets, yes, but that she didn't have to do at all. This is the same person who fed Appa a bunch of food that made it look like he was sick, all be it to keep the group from leaving the Jang Hui river village so she could go out of her way to heal the injured and sick without telling anyone what she was doing. That, too, was a choice she made with no concern regarding how the rest of her team might feel about it: was she doing something nice? Sure! But it's not fundamentally different from Toph doing whatever she wants with zero regard as to Katara's feelings on the matter. Katara KNEW she was stalling their journey and that Sokka wanted them to move on: she didn't care about his feelings or priorities, and the story eventually frames Katara as being in the right for feeling that way. Here, she's in the inverse scenario, only it's with Toph rather than Sokka, and instead of realizing that she, too, has made choices that were irresponsible/dangerous/risky and STILL went all out with them, down to fighting whoever opposed her choices? Katara just doubles down until she, again, breaches boundaries and overhears Toph and Sokka's conversation, WHICH IS ANOTHER CAN OF WORMS DUE TO THE SOUTHERN RAIDERS FOLLOW-UP...

The thing is, Katara as a mom friend is not even a good thing. It's not conducive to fun or interesting storytelling, not in Book 2, not now. It doesn't make Katara a more interesting and dynamic character. The way she's portrayed isn't so she looks tragic for taking this role, it's all about forcing these kids into tropes that don't necessarily add up to who they have been so far. Katara's mom friend status is NOT treated with any compassion. It's not handled as a sore, difficult subject outside of the ONE conversation Sokka has with Toph that Katara overhears. And it's not centered on Katara's tragedy, on how she overcompensates for her mother's absence, it's centered on Sokka accepting her as a motherly person and encouraging Toph to do the same thing. The people who saw further depth in it probably haven't looked at the script itself in a long time: you CAN see more to it, but that's not the point of the scene. That's not where it's going. And the fact that such a tragic situation is what conduces Katara to take up the mom friend role actively makes it look like... she shouldn't have it. Why would she be the mom friend if she's just overcompensating for Kya's death? If she's taking up responsibility by thinking that no one else will (a blatant lie because, again, in Book 1 there's NO SIGN of this behavior and it's Sokka who's in a role of responsibility compared to her), it suggests that EVERYONE ELSE ought to step up and stop "relying" (and Sokka very much uses that word) on Katara being the mom friend. It's not a healthy thing. It's a coping mechanism that seems to be actively damaging Katara: and the story doesn't acknowledge it that way.

So... "mom friend Katara", dialed up to a thousand in Book 3, absolutely has a connection with why her character loses its sheen by this point in the story. There's no attempt to deconstruct this coping mechanism by Katara. No indication from the rest of the team that maybe Katara should get to be a kid just like them and stop being so uptight (even though VERY often she's not that uptight but the show very much tries to pretend she is). It's Katara's initiative to do a scam, it's not Toph or Sokka or Aang who think she needs to join in on the fun, she basically inserts herself in it. So basically, those three take the route of saying "that's what she's like, we just gotta bear with it", instead of actually helping her. If we'd seen that? Mom friend Katara would actually be a fun element to witness deconstructed by the story. And I'm not blaming either Katara or the other three for this:

This is EMINENTLY a writing problem.

Mom friend Katara is not a good trope. It could be if the point was to help her break free from it. It's not. It's simply weak writing that can't handle two girls with proactive, aggressive personalities and a ton of agency, a lack of creativity in realizing how much potential there could be in making Toph and Katara the absolute best of friends. It's seriously a disservice to the two of them that this trope literally blooms over Toph joining the show and then NEVER gets resolved or chased away. And when you have characters like Sokka or Aang kind of joining the bandwagon of "yeah, Katara's a mom!" when the two of them traveled with her in Book 1 and she WASN'T that at all? It makes matters infinitely worse.

So, if you ask me? This is the first thing that makes Katara feel more unpleasant than ever before in Book 3.

The second thing is even worse.

We return to accountability, as well as to illogical flow of thought when it comes to the writing of Katara: in Book 1, we see a hopeful girl who never speaks ill of her father or betrays any manner of displeasure or distrust towards him. No sign of her being conflicted by what Hakoda is doing: the focus is entirely on Sokka's feelings on the matter once it finally comes up in Bato of the Water Tribe, and Katara is a secondary matter, if even that.

This would be fine if Hakoda hadn't come up at all as a subject throughout Books 1 and 2. If Katara had never had the potential opportunity to see her father in any of these instances and had backed out from them for bigger reasons than... plot reasons.

For reference: she's excited, just as Sokka is, when Bato says he can bring the kids to meet their dad again. They're HYPED. We see no sign of Katara being upset at Hakoda for leaving at this point. The only portrayed reason why she and Sokka decide not to go see Hakoda is because they think Aang needs them more and they decide to forgive him for hiding the map. Katara, from the get-go, is not as angry at Aang for hiding the map as Sokka is. Clearly, Sokka wants to see Hakoda far more intensely than Katara does: even so, there's no sign anywhere here that implies that Katara harbors resentment or dissatisfaction towards Hakoda.

Book 2 gives us a similar situation: Katara declines going to see Hakoda and offers to be the one who stays in Ba Sing Se so Sokka can go see Hakoda himself. Sokka is soooo thrilled and thanks her and calls her the best sister ever and Katara very much says she is, indeed, the best. Which she's allowed to, worth noting, I'm not saying her reaction to Sokka's praises was bad, it's actually funny: but what I AM saying is that she knows how much this matters to Sokka and that's why she makes the offer she does. It's also VERY convenient! Because logic dictates that, if Sokka stays behind, he realizes the Kyoshi Warriors aren't themselves far faster than Katara does (even though, to be fair, Katara didn't really have much time to realize it at all), and we wouldn't have Aang suffering over Katara's imprisonment because the one in chains would be Sokka and then Aang might just go "oh okay it's just Sokka, I can go cosmic if it's not Katara"

... yeah I'm being sarcastic I actually don't think Aang wouldn't have saved Sokka, but they very clearly had Katara stay behind first and foremost for this specific purpose...

But Katara's acknowledgement that this is a good thing for her brother makes you REALLY wonder how much of a secret grudge she was supposed to feel towards her father at this stage of the story. The truth, in my opinion? She wasn't actually supposed to resent Hakoda as she did, let alone quite so harshly.

My sister personally told me that she thought Katara's anger at Hakoda was a fine storytelling choice when I told her I didn't like it. She told me Katara herself most likely didn't realize how hurt she had been by her father's leaving, that it wasn't until she was around Hakoda again that she understood she resented him at all, and that she had a lot more pent-up rage and frustrations than she had EVER acknowledged, and they burst out frequently in Book 3. Which, you know, is one possible explanation that tries to make this whole thing more palatable. From a human standpoint? This is valid.

... From a writing point? Not so much.

A Katara who struggles to understand her heart (which... is odd, tbh. As far as they portray her, Katara tends to know exactly what she's feeling, why she's feeling it, and she acts on her emotions rather than brains more often than not) would be portrayed as confused over her own rage at Hakoda. She would not have been written as a snappy teenager who hates her dad. She would have snapped at him and then apologized by reflex, unsure of what's come over her. We would see Sokka trying to mediate between them too, probably asking Katara what's her deal, and she would have no idea how to explain it. Katara would be avoiding Hakoda, knowing she loves him, not knowing why she seems to hate him now, afraid of saying things she shouldn't. Every time she snaps at him, she should worry about what she did, she should fear for Hakoda's feelings, she should reflect on what's going on inside her heart...!

... But that doesn't happen. And that knocks SO HARD on the concept of empath/compassionate Katara that it basically turns her into a whole different person.

As I've said countless times so far: it's not about Katara being perfect. I don't WANT her to be perfect. But I DO want the show to acknowledge that she's not. I want the flaws to REALLY read as flaws. I want other characters to react to those mishaps on Katara's part, and I want HER to reflect on what she's doing and realize she's messing up, just as she does when she hurts Aang's feelings in the Waterbending Scroll, which is most likely the best situation where Katara actually owns up to the exact mistake she made and feels genuine, palpable, obvious remorse for it. But when you feature Katara lashing out at Hakoda, and everyone just staying quiet because "uuuuh, awkwaaaard...", it feels off. Aang asks Katara, outright, what's her problem with her dad! And Katara goes "What? What problem?" She's acting like she's not even aware of the fact that her behavior is out of place, basically gaslighting Aang into pretending that she didn't do anything rude or mean to Hakoda. Aang literally saw it with his own eyes and is the ONLY person to bring it up.

To make matters worse? Katara has been with Hakoda for WEEKS. It's not like they just crossed paths two seconds before Aang opened his eyes. The implication is that she's been behaving like this, or her behavior has been deteriorating towards Hakoda with no one worrying about it or trying to make her reason with it. for that long. Sokka didn't do anything. Hakoda just took the teenage rants and left her alone because that's what she wants. And when the one person brings up that she's not acting like herself? Katara pretends nothing's wrong and acts like everything's fine and she's not acting any differently from herself. Whether she actually is just lying to Aang or ALSO lying to herself is a matter of debate... but what it suggests is she's unwilling to confront the gravity of her choices and how she can be hurting her father with them.

This is NOT to say that Katara has no right to be angry about Hakoda abandoning her in the Tribe. She has every right to be upset and feel forsaken. Their mother died, and Hakoda left with all the men of the tribe, and Sokka was left behind, tasked to protect everyone, and Katara apparently felt responsible for the whole village too: as valid as Hakoda's quest to fight in the war might be, it's not out of this world for Katara to harbor frustrations and resentment over what happened.

What IS out of this world, and particularly, not appropriate to her character, is that her way to convey those feelings was something she gave herself to, completely, only to reason with it once Aang was missing so that the episode would conflagrate her problems with Aang and Hakoda into the same thing.

This is basically a dark expansion of what we've seen in Katara's treatment of Sokka since Book 1: where it was typically "humorous" when she was a jerk to him and paid no price for it, this time it's not humorous. This time, you're supposed to see her being a jerk and then go "aaaaw, poor dear," even if you're not supposed to get mad at Hakoda because he is very much a decent dad. The show was trying to have its cake and eat it too with this situation, because Katara DOESN'T apologize to Hakoda for being unfair to him: HAKODA APOLOGIZES TO HER. Hakoda acknowledges the pain he caused Katara and the damage his leaving has wrought upon his children by apologizing and explaining how much he missed them... but Katara does not acknowledge the pain she inflicted on her father by acting out when he wasn't doing anything wrong. Is this teenager behavior? You could chalk it down to that, but that's precisely why teenagers can be a pain in the ass! And that's very much how Katara is being portrayed if she's unwilling to acknowledge she acted out and hurt someone she loves!

Her problems and resentment towards Hakoda magically go away after that single conversation. After this? She loves him. No hard feelings left. If her problems with Hakoda were this deep and difficult to navigate and work through, either she bottled them up in the rest of the show and stopped them from affecting her father... or she just got over it that quickly. Which would be very unrealistic because Hakoda apologizing for leaving doesn't change the damage Katara suffered through because he was gone. A single apology doesn't fix everything that people read into Katara's deep anguish in this scene and episode. And yet that's very much how the show portrays it: Katara is 100% fine in every single other interaction with Hakoda she gets past the first episode of Book 3. Does that make sense? Is that good writing? No, actually: it's literally digging up a problem, making it up last minute with zero lead-up to it, where the ONLY way to read "lead-up" is to pretend that Katara always had ulterior motives to avoid going to see Hakoda, even though we NEVER were shown that she was hiding anything, something that could be VERY easily shown in the story if they'd always had this in mind. The truth is that they didn't. They made it up for this episode, forced it in there, didn't even write it right because nobody reacts to Katara's behavior reasonably except Aang, and she gets away with it without even having to apologize. That's... not good form for any character, let alone Miss Responsibility and Empathy, is it?

This is why it's such a problem that Katara acted as she did towards her father. It's not because this is an unthinkable flaw: it's because there's very much no lead-up to it, kind of like there's none with Korrasami's big reveal in LOK's finale. It's because there's no follow-up to it either. It's because we don't see Katara living up to her supposed core character traits, where she should have a realization that her choices and actions and behavior have hurt someone else, someone she cares about. None of that happens.

And I will say: it's different when it comes to her clashes with Zuko and her reactions to him in the second half of Book 3. This is basically the MAIN thing the fandom gives her grief for and I hate them for it: she has every right and reason and justification to show no empathy or compassion towards a person who, as far as she could tell, took advantage of her compassion in Ba Sing Se, of Aang's compassion frequently across Book 1, and paid them back for all of it by joining forces with Azula and showing no concern to help Aang when Azula almost killed him. I am no fan of Iroh's... but Iroh jumped in to help Katara and Aang escape, at risk of being captured. Zuko stood beside Azula and did NOTHING to help those two leave. He showed zero concern for Aang's survival. He saw his sister potentially murder someone and had ZERO REACTION. So, no offense but full offense: Katara's unwillingness to trust Zuko is JUSTIFIED. Not only is it justified? It's CORRECT. It's the only writing choice that makes sense. Sokka getting over it relatively quickly feels off to me, no matter if the Boiling Rock adventure isn't as bad as others might be. Aang not holding a grudge for too long kind of fits because it is Aang... but Katara being that mad at Zuko? That's 100% fine. It fits. It works. And anyone pretending that what I said about Hakoda applies to how she treated Zuko is just completely biased in Zuko's favor.

Katara and Zuko do not have a secret magical powerful soulmates bond in canon. Their one instance of bonding comes after multiple instances of the exact opposite thing. Katara and Sokka were 100% down for leaving Zuko to freeze to death in the North Pole, and the ONLY reason why Zuko survives is because Aang can't let that happen to him. It's AANG'S compassion that saved Zuko. Katara felt none, AND SHE DIDN'T HAVE TO FEEL ANY. Let's not forget that!

Moving on to Book 2, Katara actually makes her first offer of kindness to Zuko and Iroh in the Chase when she offers to heal Iroh after Azula's attack. Zuko's reaction is to lash out violently and yell at her to leave: who, exactly, would feel inclined to think this poor beautiful sad boy just needs love when you OFFER HIM kindness and his reaction is, in a manner of speaking "go fuck yourself I'll handle this on my own"? And it's worth bringing it up because it feels like the fandom is hilariously misled into thinking the Gaang magically knows what Zuko is up to and how he's growing and evolving, as if they were part of the audience: they're not. The last time Katara saw Zuko before Ba Sing Se is literally when Zuko refuses her help. We're also talking about Fire Nation people: Katara has every right and every reason to believe that Zuko is refusing her help, not out of personal, internal strife he's dealing with and has no idea how to handle... she very much can read this as "inferior Water Tribe peasant, you will not heal my uncle with your wretched waterbending!" Because... let's be real, that's what Zuko looked like to Katara across Book 1. She has no real reason to think he's any better or different from that until their catacombs scene...

... And he stabs her in the back and joins Azula there. Right after "bonding" with her.

So let's be VERY clear on that respect: Katara has no real reason to forgive Zuko. She has no real reason to feel empathy outside of the show constantly trying to push that she's kind and compassionate with no boundaries, even if she forsakes that kindness and compassion at random whenever the plot requires it. But her death threats to Zuko? They're completely fine by me. I'd be pissed if she had acted any differently, and if anything I hate how easy Zuko had it to befriend everyone but Katara.

... Not to say I'm happy with how he befriended Katara either, but anyway...

As this isn't Zuko meta, we're not going to get into the true core glaring issues in The Southern Raiders, because ultimately, that episode paints Zuko in a disgusting light that his fans are constantly gaslighting themselves about. He was not beinga heroic good dude helping someone he connected profoundly with. His behavior leaves so much to be desired and proves he hasn't unlearned a lot of toxic things he had internalized. He didn't unlearn them in this episode, either. But the GREATEST sin Zuko commits in this episode, without a doubt, is bringing Katara on a journey that ultimately did NOTHING for her. The only person benefitting from it was Zuko himself. I've seen people pretend that Katara finally found closure: she did not do such thing. She learned what kind of scum killed her mother, but she did not forgive him nor did she kill him. Closure would mean peace. Katara did not find peace with the situation. She's shown troubled, sitting at that pier, miserable, when Aang talks with her, she's STILL angry. That's not closure. It never was.

What it was, however, was the journey where Katara thanked Zuko and forgave him because..! Uh... because...

... Why, exactly, did Katara forgive Zuko here?

He brought her to her mother's killer: she found no closure from it. In fact, she learned the VERY disturbing truth that she hadn't realized so far: HER MOTHER DIED SPECIFICALLY TO SAVE HER. Her mother sacrificed herself for Katara's sake. She CANNOT find peace with this reality in a single afternoon because holy shit, who would? Katara KNEW her mother had died. It's not until Yon Rha tells her what happened that she understands what happened in the igloo. Katara herself, her waterbending skills, and the target she painted on her own back because of something 100% out of her control, something that is NOT evil and that the Fire Nation was hellbent on destroying, are the reasons why Kya was murdered. This is DISTURBING SHIT to deal with. And the show completely sidelines this revelation and the dark impact it could have on Katara, which, seriously, is HUGE, way worse than what happened with Hakoda, because it very much could have triggered a profound self-hatred by Katara towards her own skills because how tf could her bending cause her mother's death?! Not to mention the obvious: who was that source? Who told the Southern Raiders that there was a waterbender? Who the hell is responsible, beyond the Fire Nation, for her mother's death?

There's A LOT to unpack here.

And none of it matters because Katara is just supposed to forgive Zuko for exacerbating and worsening her trauma regarding her mother's death :') funny how that works.

This IS the point where Katara should make a display of darker sides of herself that she didn't know or understand. THIS is where Katara turning dark like Aang did after Appa vanished would make PERFECT sense. With this revelation about Kya that's beyond disturbing: not with Hakoda... and certainly not with Sokka.

The cusp of Katara's worst is, by far, her behavior with her brother in the Southern Raiders. I know a million excuses have been made for this moment: my problem is NOT the fact that she lashed out at him as she did and said something DEEPLY hurtful. It's the fact that KNOWING, SEEING HE'S IN PAIN...

... does not matter to her one bit.

Instead of a trite scene with Zuko spouting shit he does NOT mean (aka "violence wasn't the answer... but lol go kill my father okay??"), we deserved a scene with Katara and Sokka talking this out. People pretend it's fine as it is: it's not. Katara has spent the ENTIRE show disregarding her brother's feelings in a myriad of ways: this time, it was way more painful and way more hurtful and SHE KNOWS IT. It's not funny. She's not amused. She's not being a shithead little sister. She's ANGRY. She's UPSET. She has every right to be! What she DOESN'T have a right to do is hurt her brother DELIBERATELY and then escape every consequence from doing that.

There's very much no way to spin that moment into making Katara a decent sister. There's no way she remains true to her core values of being empathetic, kind and wholesome when she will insidiously, vindictively hurt her brother this way. And what I said earlier about her overhearing Toph and Sokka in the Runaway? It actually gets a follow-up in this scene: Katara telling Sokka that he didn't love Kya as she did is basically her WEAPONIZING the information that was NOT meant for her as her alleged evidence that Sokka didn't care about Kya as much as she did. As if his inability to retrieve Kya's memory was NOT a manifestation of trauma, as if it were something he's FINE with! He's not! How guilty must he feel for that? Does that matter to Katara at all? Why... nope. Because all that matters at that point is her own rage, her own feelings, her own fury. Which is, then, entirely against the character we've been told she is.

The lack of apology or follow-up to this horrible moment will never stop being one of the absolute biggest misfires in one of the WORST written episodes of this show. Yes, I said it. The more I ponder The Southern Raiders, the more I realize it's an immensely flawed speedrun to establish a friendship that simply doesn't add up. Katara and Zuko becoming friends after this journey requires some wild, absurd leaps of imagination that, boiled down to basics, don't make any sense. There's no reason for Katara to decide she'll forgive Zuko after she regains enough clarity. Why does she forgive him? Because he proved he'd rather make her happy than defend his nation anymore? Ironically, at no point does Katara show any appreciation of the fact that Zuko is setting aside his firebending supremacist attitude completely for her sake. So maybe that's not it.

Ah... is it because of how he, and he alone, was ready to help her go on this journey of revenge...?! Why, ironically, the only reason why ONLY Zuko goes on this journey is incredibly artificial and fake: this IS intended as Katara's "field trip" with Zuko. None of the field trips make sense, from a logical standpoint, as duo journeys. I've mentioned it to a few people: Sokka and Zuko could have brought Toph with them to the Boiling Rock, a metal location where her abilities would be VERY useful, used her as a false prisoner and turned her in as a captured ally of the Avatar's, who 100% will bait him into coming here to rescue her so that the Fire Nation can get him next! A cover as strong as that one might actually get them further along on that rescue attempt than what they did in canon. But this CANNOT BE... because it was Sokka's field trip with Zuko so nobody else is invited, even if they're very much not doing anything else (as is the case with Toph). Aang? Why didn't everyone join the firebending discovery with Zuko and Aang? They weren't doing ANYTHING in the Western Air Temple at the time. They very much could have gone with them too. But they don't. And that's exactly why Katara's trip works exactly as it does: it's the solo journey with Katara and Zuko, and the ONLY way to make it work is to show Sokka and Aang completely opposed to the concept of finding Yon Rha. I'm not saying I think Sokka and Aang would have been on board if they're allowed to remain IC... but they could have wanted to go on this trip with Katara regardless of not agreeing with what she wanted to do. Hell, as is OBVIOUS: Kya is Sokka's mom too. His opinions, his feelings on this subject, should matter just as much as Katara's do, and fuck anyone who pretends otherwise. These two are NOT supposed to be the well-known unhealthy siblings Zuko and Azula, who each got one parent in their corner and therefore the other parent treated them like they were worthless or a monster. Hakoda and Kya were parents to BOTH their children, and any narrative or interpretation that attempts to say that ONLY Katara's opinion on Kya matters is immediately ruled out, for me, as absolute bullshit spouted by someone not worth listening to. Point blank.

Also, the fact that Zuko USES Sokka to gain this information about the southern raiders, and then doesn't even extend the chance to Sokka to join them? When Sokka is basically his new best buddy? That... does not make sense. It basically portrays Zuko as a disloyal asshole who takes advantage of his friends for his purposes and tosses them aside, disregarding their feelings whenever it suits him.

So Sokka's treatment at the hands of this episode is just deplorable. Both Zuko and Katara are HORRIBLE to him... but Katara is our focus here, she's actively hurts Sokka and then proceeds to not care. Because that's how she has operated so far, and that's how she always will.

Hence: we have a long, long tradition of Katara not treating Sokka fairly all across the show. The reasons why it's not a fair or balanced relationship at all is because Sokka typically pays the price for being a dick to Katara: either she inflicts the punishment herself, such as when he's disrespectful in the Drill and she smacks him with the slurry, or the narrative inflicts some magical punishment instead that CONSTANTLY proves that Sokka is not allowed to be a dick without facing consequences for it. Does he ALWAYS learn the lesson? Sure he doesn't! But the consequences for it NEVER stop. He doesn't get away with being a jerk to his sister. That's forbidden. But Katara? She's allowed to get away with it every single time! And the reason why it gets worse and worse is because we went from relatively silly/comedic things, in which Katara did not apologize because "it's funny that she didn't apologize", to NOT funny things at all, such as this scene in Southern Raiders. Even just a troubled glance at Sokka, or a slight hesitation after seeing how hurt he is, would be enough for me: there's NOTHING. She doubles down and keeps charging ahead. Zero thoughts or concerns given to her brother.

If this isn't why you have issues with Katara, well, I don't know why it might be the case in your case x'D But I absolutely attest that the combination of "mom friend", "selective compassion particularly when it comes to her brother" and "absolute imperviousness to consequences for her mistakes" are the things that fully caused my initial appreciation of her character to shift into ambivalence and then into full blown dislike once I reached Book 3.

Worth noting: THIS IS A COMPLAINT ABOUT THE SHOW'S WRITING. Boiled down to basics, written by any more competent hands, I don't think Katara would have acted the way she did often, ESPECIALLY in episodes like The Awakening or The Southern Raiders. I categorically refuse to write Katara in my stories as someone who gets free passes for EVERYTHING she does. I also refuse to portray her as the mom friend, particularly in Gladiator. There's a lot of depth you can give this character! So much you can do, so much worth exploring... and canon just settled for stunting her and then only bringing her out to play in ways that make her unpleasant, not particularly bright and extremely resistant to character development even after allegedly learning lessons (see how her initial behavior around Hama, who shows red flags often, isn't all that different from how it was with Jet? There's only a handful of moments where it looks like Katara MIGHT be wary, and yet they're quickly overcome by her excitement, which Hama manipulates in her favor until she does the bloodbending reveal). So I'm NOT saying Katara had no potential... but I am saying the show itself failed her, big time, because of how she was written. A quick glance through the transcript of the Puppetmaster to confirm my memories that Katara shows no sign of concern over Hama when Sokka finds her suspicious reveals that, after Hama shows them her comb and that she's from the Southern Water Tribe, Sokka, and Sokka alone, apologizes for suspecting her of being sketchy. Nothing from Aang, even though he was part of it too. Nothing from Toph, either. And certainly nothing from Katara. Only Sokka apologizes. As usual.

So... what does this tell you? What does this tell any of us? That Katara's development is... erratic, at best. That it's not linear isn't a bad thing, but that it contradicts itself non-stop, that her core traits come and go willy-nilly as the plot demands it, that her motivations to do things (like forgiving Zuko) don't add up to her experiences or to any lead-up we've witnessed, is most certainly not good.

If I were to rewrite ATLA, the main characters I'd want to rewrite into making a lot more sense than they do, and making their arcs actually logical, are Zuko and Katara. I'd definitely add a few rewrites for Iroh, particularly to make him WAY more accountable for shit than he ever was, and to show he's not universally loved and shouldn't be, since people would have very reasonable grievances with him. I'd also rewrite a handful of things with Aang, too. Toph, full-stop, deserves a growth arc of her own beyond getting stronger and getting used to having friends. Girl has the range. They just never let her explore it. And of course, I'd change a fair few elements of Azula's writing as well. But I feel like no characters would warrant a deeper intervention than Zuko and Katara, precisely because they constantly fail to live up to all the stuff people keep pretending they're flawless exhibits of.

And this is one more issue we've got going on with Katara:

The fandom ABSOLUTELY has been unfair to Katara. A lot of people hate her for no reason. A lot of people who potentially have unexamined racism making their hearts' choices for them and they despise her just because she dared not have fully-white skin. A lot of people pick completely ridiculous things to get angry at her, such as people who HATE HER because she's "rude to Zuko". Just, fuck off. That's about the stupidest reason to hate this character and stupid reasons for that have been heard plenty.

But Katara's fans have become... reactionary. They appear think that any criticism to her character NEEDS to be fought off with "she was right tho" or "she has every reason to act this way" or "she's HUMAN she's allowed to make mistakes you heathen!! That's what a flawed character is like!"

Here's the kicker, though: if you have justifications and excuses for every little unpleasant thing Katara EVER does? You're basically taking a dump on her character yourself and saying she IS flawless.

Flaws in characters are bad things that cannot be justified. They can be funny! They can be annoying. They can be infuriating. But they're things that inconvenience other characters, that hurt them, that show they're not above or beyond doing harmful things! All of what I listed in this crazy long post are Katara's flaws. The reason why I don't like the way these flaws were handled are all the things I already have talked about: no accountability for flaws is basically saying that these flaws don't matter. No follow-up, no lead-up, means Katara is allowed to be as much of an ass as she wants to be and nobody cares: THIS IS NOT FAIR. This is not how ANY character should be written. This is the core reason why I've spent years feuding with Zuko and Iroh: they get away with shit they should NOT get away with, EVER. They're not held accountable for so much they should be. This happens to Katara too. particularly in her dynamcis with her brother. And when people see those flaws and just start listing reasons why it's actually okay? All you're doing is dehumanizing these characters to pretend everything they EVER do is fine.

Also worth noting... character flaws are the way characters grow. If a character is DEEPLY flawed, you know what kind of work you have cut out for you as a writer. If you're writing a story heavily steeped on character development? Then those flaws are VITAL to the work you have to do in order to develop these characters!

But when Zuko is unnecessarily violent and you're told "it's because his culture and family are!", you rightfully assume that as he drifts away from Fire Nation ideology, Zuko WILL grow less violent. Then, you watch how he picks an unnecessary fight with Aang in the finale because everyone's being lazy, an EXTREMELY violent fight at that, and you contrast his earlier behavior with it and... where's the difference, exactly? How did he grow or learn better if violence is STILL his immediate reaction to anything he doesn't like?

Thus, when Katara's flaws get overlooked, ignored, disregarded? What kind of development does Katara get, if none of her flaws are addressed in a way that makes it look like she's genuinely learned any lessons? At least, none of the worst, biggest, glaring flaws were addressed. None of the things that she SHOULD be troubled by and that she shouldn't be happy with herself over, especially after seeing how she hurts people with her actions. This isn't cool. This isn't a fun way to write a character. And it's so glaringly unpleasant when you can so very easily contrast this with the well-known terrible flaw Sokka displays early on: sexism! And then he gets his ass kicked by Suki and he learns to respect the Kyoshi Warriors... and we never see him displaying that particular flaw again. THAT is what growth looks like! What can we point to with Katara that remotely compares to this? That she accepted Zuko? Yeah, no, that sincerely could not count any less. Her personal arc CANNOT be about Zuko. That she got over her mom's death? She didn't. So that's not it either. That she helped Aang save the world? So her personal arc was about Aang and not herself? Was her whole role in the story to play Aang's cheerleader, then? Because if that's it... she was doing that just fine at it since day one. She's the only person who faithfully believed the Avatar would return well before Aang turned up in her life, if the first episode's introduction is to be believed.

So... what, exactly, was Katara's arc? If it's just her waterbending skills, then she's as stunted as Toph, unexplored and underdeveloped and left to just strengthen her fighting skills while Aang and Zuko and Sokka are getting full character arcs, even if very lowkey but very much effective in Sokka's case, where they develop and grow (or they should) into the men they're supposed to be to end the war! Why don't Katara and Toph get similar arcs? Why aren't they challenged on a level that actually provides them with lasting, solid, provable growth, where you can look at them where they started out and see how they ended up and conclude their journey was beautiful?

I insist... writing. Weak writing. Failures to understand/develop characters properly. And of course, lack of accountability in storytelling. I wrote that one focusing mostly on Zuko... but it's very much applicable to every character who fails to own up to the things they should and deserve to face consequences for.

Anyway... this is what I'd say about Katara atm. I'm not 100% sure this is everything because I might have overlooked some stuff that also made Katara's character kind of backfire (while I'm no Kataang hater, I 100% agree that the ship should have been written better too, and after writing them whenever I have, it's honestly kind of ridiculous how such an easy ship could get fucked over so badly by weird writing choices...). Whether you agree with these assessments or not, ultimately, there are valid reasons to feel offput by Katara and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Most of all when you DID appreciate and cherish the character once before, but her fans just jump to the conclusion that you must be a mindless hater to think she's anything but flawless (this, while claiming they love that she's flawed, then they proceed to reveal they have no idea what a flaw is...).

(final note: SORRY IT TOOK ME FOREVER TO ANSWER! Super lengthy answer to make up for it, I hope :((( sorry)

#anon #I am not tagging the character directly but I bet this is gonna show up in her tag anyway because Tumblr gonna Tumbl #look #if you're the kind of katara fan who cannot stand a single word against her #just don't read this for your sanity of mind #... but if you go ahead and do it anyway?#don't come back at me with a million arguments to prove your fave is indeed flawless #because you're basically just spitting upwards at that point #and further proving that you do not understand character growth or development in the least #she's not a goddamn religious figure she's a fictional character #every fictional character that's worth something is flawed #and flaws are not always going to be cutesy pretty things #such is the case with Katara #the writing of this show is a mess in many regards #but they fucked up in particular with some characters the fandom adores #and I hate how the fandom acts like that's not the case at all #just to take trips into delululand and absolve them of every single thing they did wrong #and all the very deserved consequences for their worst actions #because the show itself dropped the ball hard enough in that respect for the fandom to do the same #you do you #but no argument will change my mind #and if none will change yours?#... skip past this post :')#it's a free world

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rhaegang · 5 months ago

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cattonquick has been eating away at me for months now

there's definitely already a couple fics for this, but i'm obsessed with anything involving feminizing felix, whether it's clothes, makeup, or just highlighting felix's general manic pixie dream girl vibe + the way it brings out oliver's dominant/obsessive side. felix is just So Babygirl & oliver should treat felix like His Babygirl

i love your work btw you're such a talented writer 🖤

This sort of coincides with the previous ask about VS angel Felix. I think Felix is a soft, whimsical little creature who only happens to inhabit the body of a very large white guy with lots of wealth and power. I think he loves to be held, and coddled, and he loves being the baby of his family.

Maybe even some of why he doesn’t connect emotionally with the girls he’s dated is that their mental map of him is incongruent with who he is, so he lives down to their expectations of him.

But Oliver — I think he could help Felix to feel as small and delicate and soft as he wanted, if given the chance.

In fact, I was literally just having a conversation with @rodentsofdisbelief about Oliver maybe stealing a lipstick from Venetia’s dresser as an offering to Felix, encouraging him to try it on, to see himself as a pretty thing.

Strange to think that someone as hot as Felix has insecurities, but really everyone does. I think he’s insecure about how big he is. He prefers to curl up and seem smaller. The fact that Oliver IS so small in comparison fascinates him. He must wonder all the time about being Oliver’s size, about what being Oliver is like. And Oliver picks up on that — he deliberately makes himself smaller for Felix, because he thinks that’s what Felix wants from him, not realizing there is more nuance there.

So when, at some point, it might become apparent to Oliver that Felix wants to be the one who is small? Oliver would be all too pleased to make himself feel larger than life to Felix. And Felix would be scared, of course—at first.

But then, he would start to understand that this is about giving him permission to be delicate, to be fragile, lovely, treasured like a work of art. And that includes things like indulging in his love of pink, of sumptuous fabrics that drape and float, and that he could try another style of earring and ask Oliver’s opinion in private and know he won’t be jeered for it. He could ask a question like “have you ever shaved your legs, Ollie?” and not expect a laugh, only a shake of Oliver’s head, and that curious stare.

“D’you think you could help me shave mine, though?”

There’s just so much of them, you see, that Felix isn’t sure he’ll get it done properly on his own. And all the twisting and bending, what if he slips? What if he cuts himself? He might faint dead away from the blood.

As Felix is explaining his request, Oliver is already moving the stool closer to the tub. He’s already stoppering the drain and running the taps. He’s folding a towel and setting it on the floor, where he kneels.

“Let’s have your trousers down, then.”

And that makes Felix feel faint too, maybe even more than if there had been blood. But he peels his jeans down and steps out of them, then goes to fold himself down to the stool in front of Oliver, who’s wetting a sea sponge and lathering his hands with shaving soap, looking at Felix like there is absolutely nothing odd happening. Like it’s a perfectly normal thing for a guy to want to do in the first place, and just as normal to ask his guy friend to help.

It takes ages to do both legs, and Felix is so glad he did ask for Ollie’s help; he would’ve gotten bored and frustrated halfway if he had tried doing it on his own. But Oliver’s methodical, focused attention seems to put Felix into a sort of trance. It makes the hair on his nape prickle, jolts a strange little shiver between his ears and down his spine. The plunk of the razor into the water. The scrape of it over his knee. The foamy swipe of lather being smoothed up his thighs.

At Oliver’s instruction, he spreads them, and Oliver moves in between them. He rolls the legs of Felix’s boxers up, tucks them into the hinge of his hips. The heat of his breath in Felix’s lap has a predictable effect, but Oliver says nothing about it. He goes back to his task. He waits until the end to have Felix stand so he can finish the backs of his upper thighs, moving one of Felix’s feet up to the stool to make it easier to get at the tender places he needs to touch.

That means Felix can see, in the full mirror facing the tub, his miles and miles of newly-smooth legs. He can see them, and he can feel how strange and soft and naked they are under Oliver’s hands, and he finds himself wishing for something to put on other than his crisp blue boxers. Something that would accentuate his legs better now, frame Oliver’s work like it’s art. Daring himself, Felix points his foot into tiptoe.

“You know, the whole point of high heeled shoes is that they make your legs and arse curve more,” Oliver throws that out casually. Like he didn’t just commit arson, like his words weren’t a molotov tossed through the window of the warehouse where Felix stores all the thoughts and feelings he isn’t interested in thinking or feeling.

It has never occurred to Felix that there might be somewhere a large, ungainly boy could find high heels in a size large enough to fit, but…he thinks, there couldn’t be any harm in it if he asks Ollie to help him look.

#gang asks #rhaegang originals certified fresh

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billthedrake · 2 years ago

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DYNASTY

This story was inspired by A4F Tales' (@talesfromunderthemattress ) story Parental Unit. Consider this an unofficial sequel of sorts.

Kevin was driving. He almost always insisted on driving if it was the both of us. Now as I looked over at my older brother, I was glad he was behind the wheel since it gave me a chance to scope him out. Even now, after 8 years of being married, at least in our minds, I never got sick of looking at him. His hairline was receding but if anything that made his solid coach bod even better looking, kind of the best of both worlds, being a 31 year old dude starting to rock the daddy look a little.

"You think Dad hit the bars tonight?" I asked. Still feeling the glow of date night and the buzz of the extra glass of wine I had because I wasn't driving.

Kevin's normally serious expression turned into a slight laugh of a grin. "Probably bro. You know how he's alwasy going on about not getting enough pussy."

I chuckled and puffed out my chest like Dad as I imitated him. "What you boys have going on is great and all... but I'm 50/50, you know," I said in my best Craig Stansell baritone.

Kevin laughed. "Whatever it takes, babe," he said, looking away from the road quickly to flash me a grin. "Besides, the old man's almost 60. Let him have his pride."

"58 and a very fine 58," I chimed in. "You think we ever push him too much?"

My husband seemed to think that over a second. "Not really, no. If anything, maybe not enough." He patted my thigh. "If he found another woman, you know, settled down again... would you be upset, Kyle?"

I didn't have to think of my answer. "Selfishly, yes. But I want him to be happy bro, you know that."

"I do too, of course," Kevin continued, thinking out loud as he turned into our subdivision, where we'd been shacking up as brothers ever since I moved down to Florida to work under him in the college football program he coached. "I just think, you know, he's kind of what makes our relationship work so well."

I'd thought of that too. Kevin and I had both given up our asses to each other, many times, and would gladly continue to do so. But we both preferred topping and all around loved the rush of fucking a man. "We'd make it work regardless, Kevin," I objected. "But I know what you mean."

He nodded and held up his left hand after he turned toward our street. "It was fun wearing our bands when we go out."

"Fun's an understatement," I growled softly. It had been a nice romantic evening, but my big brother was gonna get me hard, fast. "Wish we could do it more."

"It's risky," Kevin said, lust in his voice. "But we'll have to find a way."

The Florida air was warm and muggy. That's the one thing I'd never get used to, but beyond that this was paradise. Maybe because it's a place Dad could take an early retirement to and not bat an eye, living in an in-law addition behind our place.

"Hey guys," our father said, peeling his eyes off a Ravens-Steelers game on TV. Ever since coaching college ball, Kev and I relished our Sunday days off, and had grown less interested in following the NFL religiously. But Dad was still sports obsessed and maybe missed his own coaching days, more than a little. "How was date night?"

Kevin casually patted Dad's meaty shoulder through the man's T-shirt. It still blew my mind how casually our father had sussed out me and Kevin's sexual relationship, early on and how he not only didn't seem to mind but actually covered for us. Only later did I discover he'd fooled around with our Uncle Rick growing up.

"Great," my older brother said, looking over at me with a wink. "Nice to have some one-on-one time with my special man."

Dad grumbled. "You boys should take your special time any goddamn time you want. Forget I'm here if you have to. You guys are married, and just because you asked me..."

"All right, Dad," Kevin laughed, holding up his hands like he was 17 and being delivered another lecture. "Me and me husband are gonna go to our bedroom and have hot date night sex, OK?"

Dad got a big grin on his gruffly handsome mug. Unlike Kevin he still had his full head of hair though it was almost entirely gray now and maybe not as thick as it once was. "That's more like it."

Kevin patted his shoulder and turned to walk back to our room. I knew he was horny from our conversation, and since yesterday was game day and as usual we didn't usually get around to sex, my brother was undoubtedly feeling as backed up as I was. "Good night, Dad," he said.

"Good night," I said to my father, only leaning in for a quick peck of a kiss. On the lips. "You OK on your own tonight, Dad?" I asked.

"Son... if you don't get back there quick, your brother's gonna have some major blue balls," he joked.

I about asked about his blue balls, but instead just took the hint. "All right, Dad. Have a good one."

Kevin was already naked when I got to the master bedroom. I liked stripping for him as he watched and stroked his fat brother bone. "Jack is doing a great job with you," he said, referring to the strength and conditioning coach for the team. Even if I wasn't a player, I took advantage of the man's expertise and encouragement. While Kevin had a naturally medium-build coach bod, I was getting more jacked, almost like a tight end. The more I did, the more my husband loved it.

"Remind me to thank him," I grinned, stepping forward naked to the bed.

We were both horny but we also loved the physicality of making out before swapping blow jobs.

I took my big brother's dick into my mouth, slowly working him up. "Damn, suck me KS," he urged, using my initials as a pet name ever since we first fooled around, back in the day. "Suck your big brother." Those words never failed to turn me on. I blew him with longer deeper mouth strokes, using my hands to feel his hairy balls and hold his prick. Kevin was in shape, but that coach-bod padding felt real nice and softly furred against my forehead as I managed a deep throat.

"FUCK!" my husband grunted, holding me down playfully on to his hairier crotch. "You're too good to me, man." He let up on his grip and I started bobbing again, trying to work him to a good, heavy cum.

Only as Kev was getting too close, he pulled me off, gently pushing my head back once his thick prick cleared my wet lips. "Let me return the favor, bro."

I nodded and I knelt on the bed, letting my older brother lean forward and start licking me. "God, I love date night," he hissed before he bagan taking me into his mouth."

It was hot, very hot, watching my successful head coach of a brother go down on me, his masculine face getting an intent look as he did his best to blow me. It had taken a few years actually to convince my cocky brother to actually go down on me. Now, he took oral service as a serious job, as much dedicated work as studying game tape. You'd think that approach would be a turn off, but instead it drove me wild to see Kevin treat my pleasure like his biggest mission in life.

I could have let him get me off, but something was on my mind.

"Think we should invite Dad back, bro?"

I thought Kevin might be pissed off or at least bark his usual reminder that it was date night. Instead he pulled off my hard dick and slurped back the excess spit before he nodded, "Go get him."

I leapt up like an excited puppy and strutted into the living room, naked and hard. Dad was still watching the game, and I startled him when I put both hands on his shoulders and gave a gentle squeeze. "Feel like joining us?" I asked simply.

He looked up and his eyes went wide when he realized my nakedness. Kevin wasn't the only one into my new jacked-up body. "Don't want to spoil your date night, Kyle," he said softly.

"When did you ever spoil anything, Dad?" I asked. "But it's up to you. We'd love to have you with us tonight."

He nodded, and god I could tell he was horny for it. "If you're sure."

"Sure I'm sure," I said. I gave a reminder. "But it's the master bedroom."

We had a ritual about this. Turns out Dad was on board, as always. "I want that," he said quietly but confidently.

I appeared first, and Kevin was already lubing up his cock, confident Dad would come in too.

"Hey Dad."

It wasn't Kevin who said that but our father, who was stepping out from behind me and peeling off his T-shirt. His 58 year old frame had always been muscular, an ex-jock's build, but since moving to join us in Florida, he'd kept at the weights hard to stay solid. He was very much a silver muscle daddy, tanned and buff, though with the telltale roughness in his skin from a man that age.

"Pop says you guys want me to join you," our father added, getting into the psychodrama we'd honed over the years. One that played out not every night but at least once a week.

"Come on, son," Kevin said, patting the mattress and scooting to make a spare spot. "We love having you in our bed."

Dad never played favorites, but when we did role reversal like this, Kevin was Dad and I was Pop and that just intensified the bond he had with his eldest. I watched as Dad scooted next to my brother-husband, letting Kevin take the lead to claim a kiss as Dad's furry muscle daddy body almost arched like a cat in Kevin's greedy embrace.

I never got sick of watching those two men kiss. It was romantic and sexual at the same time, in equal parts.

It turned me on to see how much our father loved it. His old man had been a legendary football coach, and after a number of threesomes Kevin and I sussed out that Dad had some giant-sized Daddy Issues of his own. A little role play and pushing the envelope and we settled in on this.

Dad was our son only when joining us in the master bedroom, but we embraced it so heavily that for that time it felt real to us. Real to Kevin, real to me, and real to our dad.

For his part, Kevin outright loved playing Dad to our father. As hot as the sex was between me and my brother, this brought out his more assertive side.

Already he was making his way down Dad's silver-furred body, kissing down that mature muscle and nudging our father's legs up and back. Dad complied. "Oh yes, Dad," he hissed. "Eat out my son hole."

He got into it, into that intimate connection between my brother's tongue and his sphincter, gently loosened from Kev's and my regular fucks. "God, Pop, I love you guys," he hissed as I lay next to him. And like that, me and my father were kissing. Deep, tongues battling, sucking the air from one another.

We got lost in that incest kiss. Me being daddy for my father and both of us loving that head-fuck. Either we made out longer than I expected, or Kevin was real impatient that night. Before I knew it, Dad pulled back and turned to look at Kevin who was holding our father's legs and entering him with that heavy brother cock of his.

"God, yeah," Dad said. "Dick me, Dad. I need it so bad, sir."

The S word was like poppers to Kevin. He growled and plowed right in. The first time he'd taken Dad like that I was pissed off and a little worried. But turns out Dad loved it. Even if that ex-NFL-er cock softened at the rough intrusion, Dad was always back to full hardness quickly.

That's how it played out now. I watched excitedly as the dick that made me steadily got its lead hardness again. I slicked my father's prick up with lube and slowly stroked while Kevin pounded him with harder faster stokes.

"Fuck, son," my coach brother hissed, throwing that beefy body into an athletic performance. Even if I preferred to top more than bottom these days, just watching my husband in rut made my vers side rare up and crave Kevin inside me. We'd have to see how long I'd go before making that a reality.

"Fuck me Dad!" our father bellowed, getting real into it, his hips bucking a little to work his cock in my lubed fist and to meet the fantasy patriarch's thrusts. "Use my hole, sir."

Kevin's face scrunched up and I knew immediately he was coming. One of those sudden, no warning orgasm. His normally confident voice became a succession of whimpers as he ejaculated deep and heavy inside our father.

"Hell yes," our dad his, excited to be bred.

I was horny as hell now. Impatiently, I got up and practically pushed Kevin out of the way. "Fuck 'im babe," he growled, placing his meaty paw on my strong shoulder. I looked down and saw his amazing prick wet with fresh cum. The view of Dad's asshole was better. Legs spread wide, our father showed off the now fucked-open hole and the incestuous creampie oozing out.

I'd never done this before, though it had been on my mind. At that moment, horniness overcame any hesitation I had. I leaned down and started licking Dad's pucker.

"Oh SHIT, Bro!" Kevin exclaimed. I didn't have to see to know my brother's softening prick surged right back into a hard watching me felch on his load. It was evident in my brother's voice.

Dad actually chuckled at how nasty I was being. But didn't care. I licked deeper now, rooting for a stronger taste of Kev's cum. I figured if I was gonna have my first felch experience, I'd go all the way.

Dad helped me out, by pushing out a good bit of Kevin's load. That familiar brother-husband flavor filled my mouth, and it drove me wild to realize just how much he'd cum.

"Oh fuck!" I growled as I pulled back, my throat half clogged with that assload. I rushed as I got into the saddle. I hoped to god Kev's fuck was foreplay enough for Dad, because I was coming in. My entry was rougher and more sudden than Kevin's had been.

"Yeah, Pop," Dad hissed. No softening cock this time, my father's meat twitched in its hardness as I boned him.

The dad-son mating was fevered. Dad clenching at my body and me doing my best Kevin Stansell topping imitation. As I fucked Dad and as Dad called me Pop with every other stroke, I imagined doing this to my father over the years, as the man entered his 60s, and even his 70s...

The idea almost tripped my trigger but I held off so Dad could cum. I didn't want to leave the old man high and dry. So I slowed my strokes and tried to work his butt nut. "Yes," he hissed, getting into the new rhythm. It wasn't a Kevin imitation, but a Kyle Stansell fuck.

My brother had actually gone to piss, like he always does after a good fuck. I guess I'd forgotten about him, because I was surprised to feel his hands on my mind and his kiss along my neck. "You're beautiful to watch Babe," he whispered. Instinctively I leaned back into that kiss and embrace, even as I had to slow my fuck down to a slow hump.

It took me a second to register how greasy Kevin's lubed cock was and how adeptly it was rooting in between my tight-end-worthy ass cheeks. "Whaddya say, bro?" he grunted, licking and nibbling at my ear lobe.

I wanted it. God, I wanted. "Yeah," I replied, and all of a sudden I was the center of attention. Dad's eyes on me, hungry but amused at watching me take my brother's cock. Kevin feeling me up to coax me to relax.

My man knew he had to take his time. And it had been a solid four months since he'd fucked me. I was tight as fuck.

But something about that situation was opening me up. Slowly, then more steadily I felt Kevin's thick tool plowing in. Challenging me to accept all of him.

"He's big isn't he, Pop?" Dad asked.

I looked down in my father's brown eyes. "Feels even bigger going in," I answered.

"It's gonna make you feel amazing, Pop," Dad said with sincerity. "Always does."

Kevin loved being talked up like that, and he now thrust more excitedly into me. It was intense but in a good way. Particularly once Dad's ass started clenching down on my own cock, buried deep inside him. My father was stroking his meat once more and sending shock waves to my bone in the process.

I wouldn't saw we had a practiced rhythm doing a fuck sandwich, but we alternated between Kevin driving things and me being the one to move my hips between these two men.

Dad came first. The excitement of watching his two sons fuck combined with the stimulation in his ass.

"Fuck son!" Kevin exclaimed, watching over my shoulder as heavy spurts of semen spurted from our father's reddened cock. "Give it up, stud."

Just hearing those role play words in my ear got me off. I grunted in orgasm, wordlessly but my body tensing and revealing that I'd crossed the line in a major way.

Kevin's hips were now bucking faster, almost frantic in the guy's realization he had a brief window to get off in me before I lost the sex-fueled openness in my ass.

He made it, barely. My brother-husband's strong hands gripped my waist as he powered his second cum of the night inside me. Making up for no-sex Game Day. I accepted his seed, proud that I'd done this, put out for my man.

My brother gave a soft kiss to the back of my neck and slowly pulled out.

This was always the hardest part of the role play. Not going back to our real-life family roles. But we'd learned to keep it going. Wordlessly, we showered off, first me and Dad in the shower, before I stepped out and let Kevin join him.

"You going to sleep with us tonight, Son?" I asked as I toweled off and watched them rinse under the spray.

Dad looked over at Kevin, maybe expectantly but mostly trying to read his reaction. Kev patted Dad's ass. "Up you, son, but your dads would love to have you join us."

It was wild to see the mature man, a pro-ball veteran and a coaching legend in his own right, act like a deferential college kid with us. He smiled and his dick chubbed out a little as he nodded.

I thought I was spent, but my own prick firmed up at the sight. All the way to full erection. Kevin laughed. He'd cum twice and his beautifully thick prick hung soft, water dripping off.

"Gotta warn ya, Son," my brother said. "Us coaches can be real horny bastards sometimes."

Dad chuckled and I watched as he slipped out of Kevin's embrace and dripping wet, stepped onto the bath mat before crouching in front of me in that classic blow job kneeling position.

"Wouldn't have it any other way, Dad.... Pop..." Then looking up at me he took my son-prick into my mouth.

#drakestories

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jenniquinn · 1 year ago

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Can I Stay? Eddie Munson X Fem Reader

Part One:

It was like all your senses were heightened. He was asleep, that asshole. You thought he would change but that last slap was the last straw. You grabbed the bags you packed. One for you and one for your son Finnick and a diaper bag and bag for your daughter Gracie. You run the bag to the car before waking your son. "Come on baby we have to go" you pick him up and put him in the car before grabbing your 5 month old daughter.

Once they are buckled you peel out of there. There was no going back. You drive for a few hours and you finally make it to your hometown Hawkins, Indiana. You don't know why but you drive to the trailer park and head to Eddie's. To Eddie who you haven't seen in six years when you left with your ex Peter. You park in front of the familiar trailer and get the kids out. You take a breath and knock.

Wayne opens the door and takes in the sight of you and the kids. "Hey what are you doing here" he asks and you cry. He looks at your face and sees the bruises. "Can I stay here? We have nowhere to go" you tell him and he nods moving away from the door so you can walk in. You go to the couch and sit with Finnick and Gracie. "What happened" he asks and you shudder "I got tired of being his punching bag" you say. "How have you been Wayne" he smiles. "I've been good darling and who are these cuties" you smile "this is Finnick and Gracie" you smile looking down at your kids. Tears hit your face again.

"look I'm happy you're back but I don't know how Eddie is going to take it. He is still very mad at you" he tells you and you go to speak but the door opens and you see him. Eddie. He doesn't notice at first "whose car is outside" he asks and suddenly he sees you. He wants to yell but sees your kids. Fuck if that wasn't a knife in his gut. He always thought you would have his children. "What are you doing here" he finally speaks to you. "We had nowhere else to go" you say looking at him and he finally sees the bruises.

"He hit you" he asks and you nod slowly. The urge to kill Peter hits him with a burning rage. "Are you ok" he asks and you just nod. "I told her she could stay here" Wayne says and Eddie looks shocked but nods. "We won't be in your way. I just have to find a job and save for a place. But if it's too much we can sleep in the car" you tell them and Wayne shakes his head. "There will be none of that. You are always welcome here. I hope you know that" he tells you. You nod. "I have nowhere else to go Eddie or I wouldn't be here" you tell him. He nods "it's fine I'm just glad you guys are safe now" he says walking away. Why did that hurt you didn't know.

You know leaving him the way you did would hurt him but he didn't know the truth. He didn't know that Peter had threatened Eddie and Wayne. You knew he would stick to his word. He told you that if you didn't leave with him that he would hurt Eddie and Wayne, Peter knew they were the only family you had. He also knew that you would do anything to protect them. So you decided to sit Wayne and Eddie down and tell them the truth. You walk to where they are "can I talk to you two" you ask and they nod. You look back at your babies who were asleep on the couch and walk into Eddie's room.

You rub a hand across your face and take a breath "I figured it was time to explain why I left. Peter threatened to have you killed if I didn't leave. I was so scared he would do it that I couldn't chance it". You look at Eddie and he's mad "why didn't you tell us" he asks. This was it you needed to tell them. "That's not all" you start and you get nervous. "Peter isn't Finnick's dad" you look at Eddie. It takes a minute but you watch as it hits him.

He sits on the bed " so he's mine? From that one night" he asks and you nod. "The night I told you how I felt. When you said the same thing then two weeks later you were gone" he's trying to process it. "I wanted to tell you but he was so mad when he found out I wanted to leave him for you. He said if you ever found out that it would be the end, not just for you but he would hurt Finn and I couldn't chance it." You wipe your tears.

Eddie stands there with wide eyes. He thought the boy looked like him, but didn't want to think it was true. He had a kid, a son. He gets why you couldn't say anything but that doesn't do nothing for the pain searing through his body. Years gone, years he could have known his son if it wasn't for that jackass Peter getting into your head. He sighs "it's ok, I get it but no more running. Me and Wayne will be here for you whatever you need" he says and you smile. Suddenly a knock is heard at the door and you freeze. Eddie looks and there is Peter waiting for you.

#eddie munson #joseph quinn #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson imagines #eddie x you #eddie munson x y/n

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thegreenleavesofspring · 1 year ago

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I have posted this before but it's been on my mind today so here it is again. An excerpt from a future story that will probably be published, eventually.

There is a perfunctory knock on the worn old door, and Max steps inside. "Thank you for taking time to see me, Pastor."

The neat little man turns away from the desk and offers his hand. “Max. Glad to do it. Coffee?”

"No, thank you, I've already had too much today." He laughs a little and sits down.

“Well, I hope you don’t mind if I do.” The pastor pours himself a cup from the corner table and sits down in the other leather armchair and props his ankle on his knee and says, “Alright. We can small-talk for a while or just get to killin’ rats. Not many guys ask to see me the second Sunday they start comin’. Your call.” He’s got a gentle Southerner’s lilt, his voice far deeper than his trim frame would suggest.

Max bites his thumb briefly before leaning forward, clasped hands between his knees. "I only started comin' t' church recently an' I got some... hypothetical questions."

“It’s a good kind to have.” An unhurried sip of coffee.

A deep breath. "Say a family lost their dad. A big family. Couldn't make it on just th' mom working. So some of the kids... started stealing. Shoplifting an' stealin' food. Ta keep the little ones alive." He looks up from his clasped hands to meet the pastor's eyes evenly. "Say... one of 'em found Jesus, later. Grown up. An'... he couldn't repent of stealin' stuff as a kid, couldn't be sorry he had, because it was all that kept his little brothers fed some days. What... what then."

A thoughtful run of silence. “I think I might find it interestin’ to know if the finding Jesus was accompanied by repentance of other less… desperate sorts of transgressions or not.”

Max looks down at his hands again, swallowing, Adam's apple bobbing. "Yes," he says softly, hands trembling slightly. He clasps them tighter. "It would be."

“There’s that bit in the Gospels where the Lord tells them Pharisees that they like to swallow camels and strain out gnats, you familiar with it?”

This jerks Max's head back up to look at him. "No."

“Well, the idea was that the religious elite of the day would pin fussy little sins on folks with one hand. Not washing their hands enough. Working on the Sabbath. That sort of thing. And with the other hand they’d be covering up sins like adultery and murder and hatred and greed.”

"I hear stealin' is pretty far up there."

The little pastor sits back in his chair, his arms and shoulders relaxed, the coffee steaming in his hand. He says, “What does this kid think that God is like? That might be a question worth pokin’ at.”

Max's knuckles whiten. "If he thinks of Him at all, it's that He's cruel."

“And what do you think He’s like.”

A moment. "That verse about... workin' in mysterious ways."

Another sip of coffee. Listening.

Max doesn't continue.

The pastor sets his coffee down gently on the side table and stands and shuffles back to the coffee pot and rummages a moment and comes back with a plastic sleeve of Oreo cookies.

He peels open the plastic and hooks out three Oreos and sets the sleeve on the table between them and bites into the first one and chews in a mulling-over sort of way.

Max glances at it and then down at his hands again. His voice is very quiet. "Don't know what to think. Bible says He's holy, yeah? An' I know I'm not. So that... really only leaves the option’a believing. An' tryin' t’ do what He says."

“Does this hypothetical fellow think the only way he can come is if he cleans his act up first? And he doesn’t want to do it? So that means he can’t come?”

A faint furrow between red brows. "Come... to church?"

“Come to Christ.”

"...heard that Christ comes first an' cleaning the act up comes after."

“So if I’m understanding right, the… hypothetical… guy is mad at God because of what happened when he was a kid, desperate enough to steal to feed his family, and he doesn’t want to come because God is sitting in some sort of pious disapproval of the theft. Am I trackin’?”

One hand lifts as though Max is going to bite his thumb again, then drops. "Not precisely. Mad as a kid. Grew up into... acceptance I guess. Came to believe." A slow breath. "Asked... did the..." A vague gesture. "The whole... getting saved thing."

“Came to believe what, in particular?”

"That He's holy. We're all sinners an' need His blood to be saved from damnation."

“Any thoughts about what He might get up to once He does the savin’?”

"Then there's a buncha rules to follow. An' if ya do y'll be blessed. Or somethin'."

A thoughtful hum. The pastor eats another oreo. “You got kids, Max?”

"Yeah," Max responds immediately, and amends, "adopted."

“That counts. We have a coupla those, too. Boys or girls?”

A faint smile. "One boy. Allan. He's married with kids of his own now," he adds proudly.

“Good man,” the pastor chuckles. “That’s what we’re after. Tell me this. When he was little and he didn’t mind you, did you whip’im?”

Max shifts his jaw ruefully. "Didn't get him until he was eleven, and he always minded. Sweetest kid ever. I beat the he- the tarnation outta my brothers though. Growin' up. Wa'n't anyone else t' do it."

Another chuckle. “Someone’s got to. Was that one of ‘em I saw this morning? Light-haired?”

"Yep." Max's eyes drift a little in thought. "His wife'n daughter wanted t' come."

“More’n him? Brothers?”

"Five more. I'm th' eldest an' he's the third."

A long low eloquent whistle. “Seb’in boys. And you had to be daddy.”

Max shrugs.

“So… hypothetically… is the one of these fellas with the repentin’ hangup about the stealin’ the oldest one? Or a younger one.”

Max looks down at his hands again. "...th' oldest."

A low thoughtful rumble.

"There were plenny o' hungry days anyway," Max says softly, studying his hands. "The twins wouldn't'a made it if... nobody helped, we tried that first..."

“How old were you.”

"Eight."

The pastor studies his third Oreo for a while. Max steals a glance at him before dropping his eyes back to his hands.

“Do you steal to feed ‘em now?”

"No. Don't need to anymore. Big enough ta work, now," Max says bluntly. "An' they're all grown too. He- heck, Riser's got kids of his own."

The pastor nods and twists the Oreo open and sticks it back together and says to his hands, “Are you familiar with the phrase, ‘Striking a straight blow with a crooked stick’?”

Max looks up at him cautiously. "No."

“There’s a good little handful of times in Scripture where God makes sure we know He used the sinful actions of sinful men to accomplish His good purposes. The death of Christ the most striking one. Paul says that if the rulers of the age had known what God intended to do with their murderous plans—save the whole world—they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.” He opens the Oreo again and sticks it back together. “But there are other less cosmic examples of the same… principle.”

Max eyes him skeptically.

“God says that taking what your neighbor has worked to produce without paying him for it is defrauding your neighbor. God also says that a man who doesn’t provide for his household is worse than a pagan.” The pastor raises his eyes to meet Max’s. “Taking what didn’t belong to you was a sin against some other man who was also trying to provide for his household. Feeding your family was not. It is possible to agree with God on the former, and praise Him that in His kindness He used it to accomplish the latter. These two things need not be in opposition to one another.”

Max drops his head into his hands, scrubbing at his face. "I don't understand."

“Son, how do you think the Lord thinks about all the rest of your sin? Right now. Your anger and your pride and the grudges you’ve carried and the women you’ve looked on, wanting to have what wasn’t yours. All of which I only know because I’m also a man, guilty of all of it, and far worse.” He tips his head, regarding Max steadily. “You say you have believed on the Lord Jesus. If this is true, then the state of all your sin must now be understood a certain way. All of it. How do you think we ought to understand it?”

Max looks up at him, puzzled. "It's filth."

“And has the Lord done anything to address the fact that it makes us filthy?”

Max gives him a look like he's not sure if the pastor is stupid or thinks he is. "That's why Jesus came."

“Good. Yes. Keep going.”

"...an' we have to believe on Him."

“Good. Max, I’m not trying to be condescending here, I’m trying to get an idea of how much you have… apprehended in your understanding of what might be happening to you, okay?”

Max eyes him. "...okay."

“Havin’ to take care of a bunch of little kids, being a father when you were still a kid yourself—that happened because someone somewhere sinned grievously against you. Whether it was your mother or your father or someone else, doesn’t matter. We don’t have to peg it down. You should never have had to be in such a strait. You know that?”

"Yes," Max says bluntly.

“There’s a passage in the Book of Romans where Paul declares there is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, have you run across that one?”

"No. Haven't gotten there yet."

“What this doesn’t mean is that sin is no longer sinful. That we somehow wave it away. There is no condemnation because the rightful condemnation for it has been laid on Christ’s shoulders instead of ours. Yes?”

"If we repent," Max insists. "It's not a blanket cover-all for those who don't want it. Gotta be accepted."

“Legally it’s true before you repent. When you got saved, did every sin you’ve ever committed or ever will come crashing down on you? One and done? Or has it been a slow revealing. Small bit at a time. A little more as you go along.”

Max's mouth tightens. "Feels like both," he grumbles.

The pastor laughs lowly. “Feels like both,” he agrees. “But one and done or bit at a time, the point remains. Repentance doesn’t mean the practice of self-flagellation. Those blows have already landed, and they didn’t land on you. Repentance means you lay it down. You set it aside, because God has done this first.” He shifts in his chair, his eyes on Max’s face. “What this also means is that we don’t actually have to bring ourselves to some sort of emotional resolution about it. If there is no condemnation, you don’t have to try and conjure up feelings of guilt for some sin in the distant past. If you’re stealing no longer, you’re already conformed to God’s will for you in this.”

Max goes silent, pondering this.

“Now, if you came to me and said, ‘Brother Tim, I’m still stealing to feed my family and I ain’t sorry a lick about it’, this conversation would probably need to be a little different in the tone.”

"No. Stopped that years ago," he says quietly.

The pastor nods slowly. “Now, when Zaccheus came to the Lord, he went and made fourfold restoration to those he had defrauded.”

"I don't even remember. Don't know that I could find them," Max says slowly.

“Well, the Lord isn’t an ignoramus about logistical impossibilities. Sometimes things come down to… would you if you could. If the opportunity came. What is the bent of your heart toward the idea.”

"If I could? Yeah."

“So when you say you can’t or won’t repent for stealing to feed your family—hypothetically of course…”

"Can't be sorry for feeding them by whatever means necessary. Hypothetically."

“You got to the parts yet when the prostitute women come to the Lord?”

"At the well?"

“That’s one of ‘em. Coupla others as you go.”

"An' He tells them to go an' sin no more."

“Yup. And there’s a better chance than none that those kinds of girls were a bit like you. Doin’ what they had to to keep someone alive. Mebbe themselves. Mebbe a kid sister somewhere, or a baby, or a parent. What He doesn’t say to them is first you gotta think about what got you here until you feel the right amount of guilt about it.” He bites the Oreo, finally, and says before he’s quite done chewing, “You know the stealing was wrong or you wouldn’t be fightin’ your head about it. You’ve already gone and stopped.”

Max lowers his face back into his hands and scrubs again and goes still and says muffledly, "Okay. I think I got it. Thank you."

“Repenting for the theft is not the same as repenting for the provision, Max. Just because they’re tangled up together doesn’t mean the Lord can’t parse them. You and I can, sitting here, a coupla ol’ Southern boys who probably didn’t finish school ‘tween the pair of us. If we can, He surely can better’n us.”

Max's hands tighten on his face, fingers tensing, but he doesn't answer that.

“Max. Son. Anyone ever told you that you did a good job? A man’s job? Anyone ever told you that?”

He doesn't emerge from his hands. "Couple times. M' uncle, for one, when he... found out what was goin' on."

“He was right. You kept those boys alive. They all still around? You still talk to ‘em?”

"All but two of us are up here visitin' Riser an' his family. Ken's got a shop an' a son back home, an' Cary stayed t' keep an eye on Mom's house."

“Y’all take care of your mama?"

"Yes," he says instantly. "She's here too – I'm sure you've seen her. Hair like mine."

“Met her briefly last Sunday, yessir.”

Max nods decisively. "We take care'f 'er."

“Good man.”

"We all love her. She did her best for us an' never stopped tryin'. Didn't drink or do drugs or anythin', just took on more work and made more time for us."

“Good woman, too.”

"She is," Max says simply.

“What about your brother, you said he has kids? More’n just the one he brought?”

"Little ones, yeah. Don't sit still. Another brother watched 'em while their parents were here."

“Well, tell ‘im they’re welcome too, I’m too old and tired to let a few squirmers bother me.”

Max grins at that. "I'll let 'em know. Maybe not right off though." The smile fades, replaced by sadness. "Say boo too loud and they'll both be gone before ya know it. Mom'n I're tryin' ta draw 'em in slow."

“Your brother’s not where you’re at yet, I take it.”

"Not even remotely." His hands drop back to hang between his knees again. "He barely made it through this morning."

That low, deep chuckle again. “Anything in particular that chapped him?”

"That would be f'r him ta say, not me."

A low laugh, a nod, and, “Well, I hope he’ll come and tell me eventually.”

"I hope so." Max stirs and sits up straight. "Thank you. You've helped."

“Don’t know about that. Nosed up in your business and told you you’re a sinner.”

A rueful half-grin. "Knew that much already," he says plainly. "You helped. Thank you." He stands, extending his hand.

The pastor stands with him and shakes it firmly. “You need to hash on anything else, you let me know. There’s a place up the road makes a half-decent barbecue, I’d buy you a sandwich next time.”

Max nods firmly, smiling a little. "I'll keep it in mind. Thank you, sir." He lets himself out.

#And the authors' commentary from where Max says he'd make amends if he could:#(Be careful saying that Max He likes to go “Really? Let's see” and put you in a situation where you CAN)#(Yes 😂😂)#Sons of the Star #SotS-adjacent #Max Way

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kay-wren · 3 months ago

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youtube

I'll Come Running - R.C. - Chapter 56

Those were the last words Barry heard before his eyes watered and his ears started to ring as the life was literally choked out of him. Jessie observed his lifeless body hanging from the ceiling for just a moment, eventually peeling her eyes away to look at her husband, who was undoubtedly in a state of shock. She slightly laughed as she noticed his mouth hung wide open and his eyes popping out of his head. She walked over to him and physically shut his mouth for him, which brought him back to reality. She gave him a kiss on his cheek, which at the moment felt like a kiss of death to him considering how unpredictable his wife was.

"Earth to Cameron." Jessie joked as she got a little closer, wrapping her arms around Rafe's neck and swaying back and forth like nothing had happened. Rafe finally swallowed the lump in his throat and wrapped his arms around Jessie, now looking her in the eyes still with shock.

"What the hell was that?" Rafe asked, his eyes still wide.

"What, you didn't like it?" Jessie retorted with furrowed brows and a slight smile.

"Oh I didn't say that." Rafe whispered as he leaned in for a kiss. Truth is, he loved it, a lot more than he should have. Maybe it was the alcohol or the weed, but the adrenaline rush was hard to deny for the both of them. Jessie just giggled against his lips and eventually pulled away. "I just... where did that come from?" Rafe asked as he nodded, hinting at the scene behind them.

"Rafe... I told you... I was- I am in a gang. In the wise words of JJ... I've knocked some heads." Jessie tried to lighten the mood, it seemed to have worked.

"Well yeah but..."

"But nothing, Rafe. We did what we had to do. You and me against the world, remember?"

Rafe stood there and contemplated the scene in front of him for a moment, still not believing how easy that was for Jessie. He looked back at her and smiled.

"Right, baby."

That was enough for Jessie to crack another smile and push herself off of his large frame.

"Alright, so we're gonna need lime, salt, and worms." Rafe mouthed as he clapped his hands together and stood looking at Barry's lifeless body that was still clinging to the wall.

Jessie looked surprised, but also relieved that Rafe was finally thinking strategically.

"How do you know this?" Jessie asked with knitted brows.

"Jess... you're not the only one that's had to hide dead bodies."

It was then that Jessie realized he was right... he was doing Wards dirty work long before she ever entered his life. Who knew what horror stories he had locked up in his mind? She shrugged it off and helped Rafe get the body out of the restraints.

- - -

Rafe and Jessie now had the body wrapped securely in an old rug, making sure to sprinkle it with the remnants to decompose it faster. They were now carrying the body out into the woods miles from Tanneyhill. As the two of them struggled, Jessie got a phone call.

"Shit!" She complained as she looked over at Rafe, signaling to him to set the body down. She caught her breath for just a moment long enough to answer.

"Hello?"

"Holy shit, Jessie?! Thank god, I thought ya'll were both goners! Are you guys okay?!"

"Ugh, JJ, it's so good to hear your voice." Jessie sighed and smiled as she wiped a little bit of sweat off her forehead and looked over at Rafe who now decided to start digging. "Yes we're fine. Are you guys okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, we just made it to Nassau. This place is huge! Charley's running around the house right now and Sarah's trying to stop her from breaking shit."

That was exactly what Jessie needed to hear. Although she had worked really hard at being laser focused on the situation at hand, of course she still had her precious daughter in the back of her mind.

"Ugh, I'm so glad. We'll be there as soon as we can okay?"

"Sounds good... is everythiiiiiing?" JJ was trying to ask the very obvious question, but thankfully he knew not to go into specifics over a phone that could see easily be tapped and tracked.

"Everything is just fine. We gotta go. We'll be there soon." Jessie answered, hoping that her brother could read between the lines.

"Good, let us know if you need anything."

"I will, Jayj, thanks. Tell Charley I love her!"

Jessie hung up the phone and breathed a sigh of relief as she looked back at Rafe, who seemed to still be focused on digging.

"Is Charley okay?" Rafe asked through labored breaths as he heaved the shovel into the ground. Jessie noticed the sweat on his face that was now illuminated by the moonlight. To her he looked beautiful.

"Yeah, she's fine. They should be getting her settled in."

Rafe simply nodded his head in satisfaction and continued to breath hard as he dug the trench needed. Jessie stood there awkwardly twiddling with the skin on her fingernails.

"Why're you so nervous?" Rafe asked, less as a question and more as a statement, not bothering to look up from shoveling. He could always feel the tension radiating off of Jessie even when she didn't mean for it to be.

"I'm just... ready for this all to be over with. I'm ready to see Charley." Jessie admitted. Rafe thought that confession was easier than expected. He didn't complain. He was grateful he didn't have to pull it out of her like usual. He stopped what he was doing and wiped the sweat off his face as he walked over to his wife. He looked at her with lust. Now he was the one that seemed calm, cool and collected. He cupped her face with aggression and moved his other hand to her coat pocket.

"If you're so nervous why don't you just relieve some stress?" Rafe said as he showed Jessie the joint in his hand. She completely forgot that she took her fair share of those from Barry. Despite her longing for one, she figured it was best if she didn't. After all, they didn't need to make this a habit. She simply nodded her head. Rafe shrugged in response.

"Suit yourself." He said as he stuck the joint in between his teeth and lit up with her own zippo. He must've dug that out of her pocket as well. His sleight of hand was impressive.

Jessie couldn't believe what she was seeing. It was like a switch had flipped within Rafe. All the times before it took a very slow burn to lead up to this type of behavior from him, but now it just seemed natural. Jessie didn't know whether to attribute that to the adrenaline or something else. Then again, she was the one who told him not to be weak...

She had to brush off the thoughts and continue with their plan. She watched intently as Rafe dug the hole with the smoke billowing out of his mouth.

- - -

The couple finally made it back to Tanneyhill around midnight in Rafe's truck. However, once they rolled up they quickly realized they didn't have a plan after that. Despite Rafe turning the truck off neither one of them moved from their seats. They both were a little drunk and stoned, which didn't help their inability to commence the next phase.

"What do we do now?" Jessie finally spoke up as she looked over at Rafe, who was undoubtedly zoned out. How he even made it home she had no idea. Rafe finally looked over at her and shrugged.

"I'm not tired... are you?" He asked, to which Jessie replied with a head nod indicating she wasn't. Rafe looked back at the big empty house.

"Well the plane can't get here until the morning... and neither one of us wanna go to sleep..."

Jessie didn't know where Rafe was going with this, but she could see he was deep in thought as he stared at the house.

"What're you thinking?" Jessie asked hesitantly, leaning forward a little more to try and get a better read at the smirk on Rafe's face. He finally turned to face her with a smile.

"My bike is still here..." Rafe said in a hushed tone. "Remember when we used to ride?"

Jessie couldn't help but smile herself. She let out a playful scoff as she sunk back into her seat. Of course she remembered.

"You and I are way too drunk and stoned for this shit." Jessie joked.

"Baby, that was always our favorite time to ride!" Rafe replied with a pleading tone. He was so unserious... just like he used to be. Jessie couldn't help but love that side of him. She missed it. Riding late at night on Rafe's bike years ago was the peak of their relationship. Nothing was wrong when they were riding, even if they were nowhere near sober enough to be doing it responsibly. But Jessie hesitated this time, because they most certainly had responsibilities now.

"Rafe Cameron..." Jessie flirted as she leaned over the console to play with his shirt. She looked him up and down with lust. "We have a daughter to raise. Do you remember how many times we almost killed ourselves doing that shit?" She only half joked despite her clear smile and joy filled eyes.

"Jess, come on, I won't do stupid shit, I promise." Rafe responded, this time lazily putting his hand up as if to swear. Just like years ago, Jessie knew better than to believe him. Their adrenaline always kicked in on those rides, making them feel invincible... untouchable. She gave him a knowing look.

"I promise!" Rafe reiterated through a flirty smile. "Come on Jessie... you and I have just about eight hours to ourselves... no responsibilities... only you and me, taking the edge off any way we can. Our daughter is safe and sound asleep in the Bahamas along with the rest of our tenants, I mean... family." Rafe joked, trying to lighten the mood. Jessie just gave him a side eye and a smirk. Still Rafe continued with his speech as he grabbed her hand and brought it to his lips. "Just you and me."

Rafe knew Jessie would always come running back to the nostalgic feeling she chased every day since she found out she was pregnant, and Rafe chased it every day since she left. Now was another opportunity to run wild with no responsibilities and little consequences. Jessie breathed deeply as she eyed Rafe, who had her hand to his lips, clearly begging at this point. She could tell how much he missed it, and she couldn't lie because she did too.

"Fiiine." Jessie finally gave in through a smile.

"Yesss!" Rafe whooped and hollered as he finally got his way. He looked like a little kid with how happy he was, and Jessie felt then and there that it was worth it to give in just for that. She'd always give in to Rafe.

Jessie exited the truck considerably slower than Rafe, and by the time she made it halfway through the yard she could already see Rafe coming back around the corner on his bike. Of course, she heard it before she saw it. Rafe stopped right in front of her with a shit eating grin.

"You're lucky we don't have a daughter sleeping, otherwise you would've just woken her up." Jessie nudged Rafe playfully.

"Yeah, well the one thing we don't have to worry about is being quiet anymore. No more trying to sneak past the Warden!" Rafe replied enthusiastically as he revved the bike harder as Jessie placed herself comfortably behind him. She made sure to put a hand on his shoulder to signal him to wait. He looked back with a curious expression. She rolled her eyes with a playful smile as she searched for something in her jacket pocket.

"I wasn't going to tell you about this but..." Jessie began as she pulled a bag out of her pocket. Rafe recognized it immediately. Although this time, he wasn't upset... not even shocked. "You know I had to search the rest of Barry's pockets... and what's a ride without mixing drugs, right?"

Rafe snickered, as he knew she was right. Every single ride they were slightly strung out on more than one substance, it made it more fun. Not enough to make them pass out or lose control, just enough to enhance the experience. Rafe turned around enough to grab Jessie's face and give her a kiss.

"You're a genuis." He said with a boyish laugh as he ripped open the bag and rubbed a little bit of the powder onto his gums. He figured he was being responsible by not snorting an entire line given the weed and alcohol he had already consumed. Jessie did the same and stuck the coke back in her leather jacket. With that, the both of them were off.

The two of them rode around for hours, Rafe loving the adrenaline rush of straightening out sharp curves and doing burnouts and wheelies along county roads. Jessie remembered the feeling just as much, as she let the wind whistle through her hair and extended her arms to feel the night air catching her fingers. She especially loved holding onto Rafe a little tighter when he did something especially stupid, like seeing just how fast he could go. She thinks he tapped out at 102.

"Let's go to our spot." Jessie suggested as she leaned over Rafe's shoulder so he could hear. He simply nodded, knowing exactly what she meant.

Just a few minutes later and Jessie could see the familiar scene in sight. As they rounded the corner she caught a glimpse of the moonlight shining on the large rocks covering the hidden cove they always loved to swim at. It was the one place they could count on that would hide them from tourists, judgemental Pogues and Ward Cameron especially.

They both hopped off the bike and started winding their way through the small caves and cracks in the rocks, eventually finding the all too familiar water fall that cascaded beautifully into a perfect swimming pool size body of water. The spot was always buried so far in the depths of the rocks that no tourist cares to venture there, and it seemed that no Pogues or kooks knew about it. Hell, the only reason Rafe and Jessie knew about it is because of a night just like this one, when they were too strung out to care about the consequences of going too far into the tunnels.

Rafe and Jessie both breathed a sigh of contentment as they looked up to see the cracks of light coming through the top of the rock. Jessie looked over at Rafe with a smile and they embraced. With no words needing to be said, Jessie pulled away with a smirk on her face. Rafe knew exactly where this was going.

Jessie tossed her beloved jacket aside and undid the button of her jeans, allowing them to peel away from her skin as she kicked them off along with her socks and shoes. Rafe was too busy watching her to remember that this would be the point where he undressed as well. She noticed his distraction and laughed.

"Some things never change." Jessie joked as she stood there in just her underwear and tank top looking at a fully clothed Rafe. He raised his eyebrows as he snapped back to reality, making a silent "oh" with his lips. He quickly followed suit by unbuttoning his shirt. He removed his gun from his waistband before stripping down to just his boxers. By this point they were both in nothing but their underwear.

"You know it's a little different when we didn't already come in swim suits." Rafe laughed as he looked down at the water.

"I don't need a swimsuit." Jessie shrugged nonchalantly.

"Yeah but then you're gonna be riding around in wet underwear." Rafe replied back.

"I didn't say I needed underwear either." Jessie responded barely over a whisper as she leaned over and planted a sweet kiss to Rafe's lips. The adrenaline zipped through his body once again as he realized what she meant. He felt her slip her fingers in the band of his boxers, hinting she wanted them off. Rafe certainly played into it and wrapped his arms around Jessie, now fondling with the hook on the back of her bra. He effortlessly snapped the fabric, eventually taking the rest of what she had on with it off. He followed suit and they both got in the water.

The moment wasn't heated, wasn't overly sexual... it was simply intimate. It was something the both of them needed. They contently swirled around the clear body of water, which was just the perfect temperature. It always was considering it was almost always untouched by the elements.

The moment was perfect, neither of them talking for fear of ruining it. This time there would be no figuring out a plan, no serious problem to resolve, just the two of them enjoying the short day and long night that was given to them.

They couldn't ignore how much they loved the feeling of letting go, and they relived their teenage years as best they could that night, knowing that it was oh so fleeting.

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andromedaexists · 11 months ago

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Chrysalis & Requiem || Quinton Li

★★★★★

TW: ALCOHOL & DRUG USE, DEATH, ABUSE (EMOTIONAL & PHYSICAL), VIOLENCE & GORE, DEATH (MURDER), TRAUMATIC EVENTS, SELF-HARM & SUICIDAL IDEATION

Good News: We are starting off the year with a 5 star read! Bad News: I am going to be sick

I'm trying so hard to explain the absolute roller coaster that this book took me on, but I don't think I can. I think the closest imma get is:

I guess, I should start from the beginning. This is an ARC!! I am on Quinn's ARC team (and hopefully eventually street team if I can spare the time) and I got this review copy in exchange for an honest review!

Because the book doesn't release until March, I will be keeping this spoiler free. Sad for me, as you guys know I love giving the full run down on the book.

When I started this book, I was a wee small child (i started it yesterday). I didn't know what the universe would hold for me, I didn't know the emotional turmoil I would be put through.

The beginning was a bit hard to get into, as most books are for me these days. I'm incredibly sick at the moment and I just graduated from college last month, any story where I have to learn new things is hard. And you do have to learn new things for this book, I mean it is a fantasy novel.

But once I hit like 20% I was hooked. I stopped reading for the night at 24% and thought that I would be able to meter out my consumption (wrong) only to wake up this morning and blast all the way through to the end.

I am a huge murder mystery person, and when I started this book I thought that might be a detriment. But I can assure you, it isn't. You think that because you saw the murder that you know what's going on. You don't. At all.

I had my theories, about halfway through I had my theories. The group chat will probably never forgive me for reciting the "I've connected two dots" scene from Unsolved but I mean, I'm not the only person reading the book in that chat so I couldn't tell them what my theory actually was because they aren't to that point yet!

Then I hit 60%. And I really started to struggle. This is my fault, the content warnings at the beginning of the book say "This book contains references and themes to alcohol/drug use" and I guess I just didn't realize that meant we would see the POV character being out of her mind drunk for an extended period of time. As someone who really struggles to be around alcohol due to my past, this was nearly enough for me to put the book down. But I'm glad I didn't

Because then, at 72% in:

And again, not too long after:

Until finally:

And honestly, I don't think I can explain anything better than this. I highly recommend this book for y'all, but please please please be mindful of the content warnings. Actually, imma put them here too

This book contains references and themes to alcohol/drug use, blood, confrontation to abuse, death, emotional abuse, escalating violence, gaslighting/manipulation, gore, lifechanging injury, murder, corpses, visions about traumatic events, panic attacks, paranormal/occult content, self-harm, sexual references, suicide ideation, and trauma.

now for the part some of you are waiting for: some of my favorite quotes!

Thorns falling away, petals outstretched, bleeding red onto white roses—revelation would be hers and hers only.

We leave behind love when we die.

Beautiful, beautiful, so beautiful. They would be beautiful together.

Girls like you have secrets. I'm going to peel you apart and reveal every part of you. I will consume you.

To create is to be alive.

and then this one, an epigraph for part four of the book:

Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again. — Homer, The Iliad

Y'all know I'm a sucker for a good Iliad reference and this one. This one wrecked me. I sure wrote a lot for someone at a loss of words, so I'm going to end this here and go curl in a ball and cry and try not to throw up. I am sick and this book is to blame.

Thank you Quinn, truly. I'm so fucking disgusted I love this book so much

#andi reads #book reviews #booklr #bookblr #lgbt books #queer books #queer book directory #chrysalis & requiem #quinton li

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k4tisblog · 1 year ago

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08 MEDIA DIARY: Dan & Phil & Privacy

HELLO INTERNET!!!!!!!! If you didn't know me in 2012-2017, you might not know about my little fixation on these two British men on YouTube. Meet Dan Howell and Phil Lester. They started out as teenagers making silly videos in their bedrooms. Dan inspired by and a fan of Phil, made his own content and - come 2009, ended up meeting Phil.

(Moral of the story: Parasocial relationships work! Sometimes!)

Chaos ensues, they bond for life.

Now you can never really think of one without the other.

Without getting too much into it, yes. You know the internet. There was HEAVY speculation on their relationship and sexuality. I never got into it myself, but it was a huge part of the "phan"dom in the early days. Inescapable. Them openly denying that they were gay while their fanbase wrote insane erotic fanfiction (think: hamsters, peeling of skin), made "evidence" edits, and leaked footage from their private lives - It was a wild ride, and dare I say invasive at times. They did come out as queer at the end of June 2019! In Dan's 45-minute-long video titled "Basically I'm Gay", we get to know a lot of his personal battle with his sexuality, yet while still barely scratching the surface of it all.

"Obviously we were more than friends, but it was more than just romantic. This is someone that genuinely liked me. I trusted them. And for the first time since I was a tiny child, I actually felt safe. And the relationship we formed at that point was something that I needed in my life. We are real best friends, companions through life, like actual soulmates." is what Dan says about Phil, choosing not to elaborate further. He sets a boundary with his audience, stating that he wants to keep his personal life private (and so does Phil).

I respect that dearly, and I am glad that the fanbase has matured a bit more over the years to abide by that boundary (at least from what I've gathered. I hope... Looking up their names seems to say otherwise). Learning what to keep private and what to turn into content is a fascinating practice. Especially when you're a celebrity whose entire brand revolves around your person, stories, and hijinks. There will always be people who you can't control - those who view you as a commodity, a story to unpack and watch unfold. I feel like none of us are built to be seen by this many people at once. On a personal account, everytime I've encountered a brush of virality I go a bit cuckoo and I find myself withdrawing into a shell. It really does take a certain strength/dissociation to be perceived by so many.

Anyways, they uploaded a video on their shared gaming channel recently! "A Fan Perfectly Recreated Our House in Roblox". Self-explanatory, and also not clickbait! It was fun seeing their old apartment perfectly recreated as they occasionally showed clips of videos, reminiscing about their old content.

youtube

...Pretty jarring to see their real street views outside their windows, though! (O_o) ( 8:38 ) A bit funny, but also not funny at all. I giggled, had a bit of a haha hehe, but I also worried. There are definitely people out there who stalk creators by going to places they frequent, or even their own homes just from clues online.

Everyone is a content creator to some extent, so we need to be mindful! Digital footprint, guys! Moral of the story is shut your blinds and throw away your phones and delete yourself off the face of the internet and change your name and live off the grid and. I'm kidding... I also wrote this at 1.25am and am unsure how to end it. GOODNIGHT INTERNET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Goodnight Chris.

#youtube #dan and phil #word vomit #blog post #media diary #digital diary

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addictedtostorytelling · 11 months ago

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Okay…that may just be one of my favorite chapters of “An Opposite of Echoes” to date - the sweet conversation between Sara & Grissom in the car, Sara’s conversation with Greg, and poor Grissom - I forgot he had the budget report to do too.

But now I’m suddenly becoming very aware that this series is just getting started as Sara mentions when her next therapy appointment is & when the ultrasound is (and the ever present hint about twins…in my mind I’ve already decided - she’s having twins).

I know you’re a busy person, but tell me that next installment in the Accidents universe isn’t going to be a year away once this story wraps to…please?

hi, @chelsshearman!

aw, shucks! i'm glad you enjoyed this week's installment so much! after putting sara through the ringer in the previous chapter, i thought it would only be fair to give her some quality time with her boys so she could recuperate a bit in this one.

though grissom definitely doesn't get the same kind of reprieve, poor guy! 😂

i'm happy to know you liked reading those conversations. i always have fun getting to "peel back the curtain" and show some of the between-the-action interpersonal moments with the team we so seldom get to see in canon.

it's wild to think there are only three updates left to go before this fic is completely posted—literally just a few more hours' worth of time within the universe of the story!

i will tease: the next chapter contains a couple of my personal favorite scenes, and i'm excited to share them with you and hear your thoughts, if you care to tell them.

as for when you might expect the next installment of the accidentsverse once "an opposite of echoes" wraps up, i honestly can't promise anything in terms of a timeline.

i have three to four more multichapter fics (tentatively) planned to span the rest of the pregnancy and the baby's or babies' birth. the first one would cover the events of christmas and its aftermath (i.e., the next few weeks in the story world immediately after "an opposite of echoes"), including the skype call with betty, sara's therapy appointment, and the 8-week ultrasound. the next one (or two, depending on how i ultimately split things) would cover some major events later in the pregnancy, and the last one would bring us through to the delivery day and the first little while postpartum.

though i know what these stories will cover content-wise, i can't tell you when to expect them.

i am a notoriously slow writer for a variety of reasons both process- and circumstance-related, and i learned long ago that whenever i try to predict when i'll be ready to publish something, i inevitably end up being wrong (and, unfortunately, never in a good "oh! i finished this story much sooner than anticipated!" kind of way).

i do intend to devote myself to "something in you i believe in" for the foreseeable future after "an opposite of echoes," and that fic will be my priority until it's completed, so i'm not likely to publish another big accidentsverse multichapter fic any time soon.

of course, since the accidentsverse is my happy place and still very much where i am currently living in my imagination, i'll say: though i can't state exactly when it might happen, since i always have little scenes and vignettes from this 'verse playing through my mind, there is a good chance i'll end up posting some fill-in-the-gaps-between-the-big-planned-multichapter-fics one-shots sometime before 2024 is out!

i just can't stay away from this geeky little family for long!

anyway, in the meantime, i hope you enjoy the end of the story. thank you so much for reading and for taking the time to share your thoughts and encouragement! 💙

p.s., re: the possibility it's twins: we'll have to see. sara will definitely be holding her breath until that ultrasound, for sure!

#answered #chelsshearman #aoe #csiverse #accidentsverse

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brainrattlers · 2 years ago

Text

Play It Cool - Tyson Jost (39/n)

Pairing: Tyson Jost x OFC (AJ)

Word Count 4272

Need to start from the beginning? Here's where it all began! https://at.tumblr.com/brainrattlers/play-it-cool-tyson-jost-1n/p7no8u1hzuza

Want to catch up on last chapter? Check it out here https://at.tumblr.com/brainrattlers/play-it-cool-tyson-jost-38n/0i8kcvjvk4vq

Warnings: Language, Tyson being cute (you know, same ol' same ol'.) Author's notes: Hey all, sorry about the lack of update last week. Apparently when the Sabres have a bye week, I took it off too. (Real talk, stupid stuff like work and some personal crap came up and I'm still dealing with that. I had half the chapter written for last week and then battled some burnout for a bit. Took a breather to find some motivation.) Tyson's still on the road after AJ's roadie, but she's back in Buffalo, getting the apartment unpacked.

Waking up in Winnipeg, Tyson was conflicted. He had a little extra pep in his step at practice (or strides, as the case may be on the ice) as AJ was his last two games, but he couldn’t help but still wish she was going to be at the game the next night. He was glad she was safe on the ground in Buffalo though, probably up to some sort of shenanigans. It was one of the things he loved most about her.

AJ was dragging. She made it back to Buffalo in one piece after leaving a blizzard in St. Louis, and making her connecting flight just in time to head back. Her ride from the airport actually dropped her off at the hotel one last time, where she piled the few remaining items in their tiny space into Tyson’s Grand Cherokee, did one last sweep of the room, and checked out at the front desk.

The hotel was officially no longer home.

Parking the Jeep next to her own car in the building’s garage in their parking spots, AJ inhaled deeply. Contemplating a nap in Tyson’s vehicle crossed her mind, as her body was exhausted from the stress of the flights earlier. Finally though, AJ got the motivation to get out and start unloading the vehicle, and getting it all upstairs. After four trips up and down and up again, the vehicle was empty, and everything Tyson and AJ had was in the apartment. In boxes strewn everywhere, but in the apartment.

Grabbing her suitcase, she headed for the bedroom pulling out her ziploc bag of toiletries from the flights, and found the box that had the towels in it. Peeling out of her clothes, the hot water of the shower melted away the grime she always felt after a travel day, leaving her feeling loose and, well, still exhausted. Throwing on a pair of joggers and a hoodie, current time AJ was so happy that past AJ put sheets on the bed before she left for the roadie. Pulling back the sheets, she climbed into bed, melting into the feeling that was Tyson’s bed from Minneapolis, from Denver. It felt familiar, it felt right, other than it was missing Tyson.

With a quick snap of a selfie snuggled into the pillows and blankets, AJ sent it to Tyson.

AJ: Home, can’t wait for you to get here. <1 attachment>

Tyson: I will be dreaming of that tonight, and every night until I’m back.

The smile didn’t fade from AJ’s face as she fell asleep, hugging Tyson’s pillow close to her.

After snagging dinner with a few of the guys, Tyson headed back to his own hotel room, coming up with a few ideas of his own in regards to the new place. Just like the last place in Minneapolis, Tyson was letting AJ come up with how to arrange things - she had more of an eye for it than he did. But there were a few things that he wanted to make happen if he could. Trying to recall how AJ had her space set up as far as her computer gear goes previously, the gears started turning in his head as he pulled up the floorplan AJ had originally sent him when she first toured the building. Eyelids getting heavy, he opened a new note on his phone, jotting a few ideas down before giving up for the night.

Fluffing up the extra pillows on the bed next to him, Tyson curled up with them in the hopes it would feel like AJ back home.

“Just a few more nights…” Tyson whispered to himself as he drifted off, dreaming of coming home to AJ after this roadie.

Sunlight streamed in the windows on the east side of the apartment as AJ hadn’t yet hung curtains yet, and it woke her up. Looking at the clock on her phone that was sitting on a box next to the bed, she figured out she literally just slept thirteen hours. Considering her day previously started with an hour and a half of sleep and a ride to the airport at 3:15AM, she didn’t feel bad about it. Rubbing her eyes, there were a lot of boxes to go through in front of her. AJ detoured to get a quick breakfast at the E Cafe around the corner, and was now fueled to take on the morning.

First on the docket was setting up some tech so that the internet worked throughout the rooms. Plus, AJ was tired of listening to music on the tiny speaker of her phone. Within a few minutes, she had set up the modem and router, plugging everything in with a chuckle.

“LET THERE BE WIFI!” AJ boomed, seeing her phone pick up the signal.

Next up was getting a few speakers throughout so music could be heard in all rooms as she traveled around unpacking. With tunes playing, AJ stared at the living room trying to decide which wall the television should be. As she moved the TV stand, the bookcases followed to flank it. Struggling slightly getting the television onto the stand, the cables were hidden, and she turned it on to make sure everything was still working.

In doing so, a lightbulb clicked on in AJ’s head.

Heading to the guest room, AJ pulled a large object from the bed, and placed it on the papasan chair. From behind it in the kitchen, a photo was snapped. Looking at her watch, Tyson should have been awake and probably heading to the arena.

AJ: Well SOMEONE made himself at home. <1 attachment>

Tyson was grabbing a coffee at the hotel before hopping on the bus when his phone buzzed in his suit pocket. Opening up the message, he found Maple the Bear sitting in the chair, clearly not helping unpack boxes.

Removing Maple from the chair, AJ brought him back to the guest room, setting him down next to the giant panda bear that AJ had won for Tyson at the Minnesota State Fair. This gave her an idea for later, but for now, she had to unpack more.

Tackling closets and bathrooms, and finding homes for all of the kitchen gadgets the two amassed took up most of the day. A few texts were shared back and forth, giving Tyson updates on what all AJ was accomplishing, and asking for input. More ideas were coming into his mind, but again, would have to wait until he was back in town. One thing though, he could pull off that night.

AJ’s phone buzzed with a message that wasn’t from Tyson, and it wasn’t from Jess or Nate.

Hi, this is Kevin with Instacart, I have a delivery downstairs for you from Tyson.

Shaking her head, AJ threw her hair back in a messy ponytail and put on some shoes to get downstairs. Kevin was in the lobby, holding a couple bags awkwardly. She dug her wallet out to give the poor soul a tip for having to carry it all inside. Balancing all the bags in her hands, AJ took the elevator back upstairs and down the hall. Once inside, the bags were set on the counter.

Produce, vegetables, meats, boxes of pasta, milk, frozen meals, eggs, cheese… and beer. A six-pack of Blue Moon, to be exact. That made AJ smile, because she could definitely use one this evening with all the unpacking she’d been working on. As food made its way into their new homes on shelves in the pantry, or in the fridge and freezer, she contemplated what she was going to make for dinner, but honestly, really didn’t want to despite the sweet gesture of Tyson sending groceries to her. In fact, she hadn’t quite unpacked all the pots and pans yet, but was getting ready to as it was going to be nice not having to use the same kettle and pan over and over again like they did for months at the hotel.

Just as she was finally coming to terms with it needing to be done, the sound of AJ’s phone vibrating against the kitchen counter snapped her back into reality.

This is Tina with DoorDash, I’m in the lobby with something from Tyson for you.

“What did he do this time?” AJ stared at her phone, smirking as she headed for the door again.

The elevator whooshed down to the main floor, doors opening to let AJ see Tina standing near the desk with a large pizza box. Trading the box for a couple dollar tip, she saw that Tyson had Gino & Joe’s delivered. It smelled delicious as she made her way back up to the twelfth floor again. Opening the box lid, she gasped and giggled.

The pepperoni were in the shape of a heart, filled in with mushrooms. Upon further inspection, a note was scribbled inside the lid.

Hi Eggo, no need to cook tonight, you’ve been working hard. Love you, see you soon. <;3, Tyson

It was nearly 7:00PM, the day went by so fast. Tyson would be getting ready for the game against Winnipeg.

AJ: Tyson Jost, what am I going to do with you? I mean other than love you forever. Thanks for sending everything, especially dinner.

Tyson: I can think of a few things you can do when I get home (winking emoji) Love you

AJ: Kick some ass tonight, I’ll be cheering you on from the sofa with Maple!

Tyson was envisioning AJ sprawled out on the overstuffed gray sofa, box of pizza and a Blue Moon on the coffee table. All the snapshots she’d sent through the day put together a pretty good idea of how things were situated. During his warmup doing a little jogging before getting his gear on, he daydreamed of the next steps in his plan.

Back in Buffalo, AJ settled in with the pizza that she put in the oven to keep warm. Pre-game coverage played on the television. She’d forgotten how comfortable it was to have space, to sprawl out, and to have the big screen TV again - they’d become accustomed to the significantly smaller TV and sofa. Remembering the lamps were set up with wifi plugs, she asked Alexa to turn them off. The glow of the screen illuminated the pretty much set up living room, leaving her to enjoy the pizza and game.

In Winnipeg, Tyson was trying to find the back of the net with six shots on the night, but nothing made it in. Was a solid game for him though, and another W for the team as the points are starting to get important, being on the edge of a wildcard spot for the playoffs.

Between the physical exhaustion from unpacking all day, as well as having a couple beers, AJ’s eyes weren’t staying open. Putting the remaining pizza in the fridge, AJ found her way to her sink in the bathroom (she claimed it anyway, Tyson would just have to deal with using the other one.). After washing her face and taking out her contacts, she grimaced as her stomach wasn’t feeling quite right, although it was a similar feeling that she’d been having the last few weeks, chalking it up to stress and all the crud going around. Popping a few antacids in her mouth, she curled up in bed trying to get comfortable.

A game of Sudoku was interrupted with a notification on her phone from Tyson.

Tyson: One more stop, and I’ll be home. Miss you so much, can’t wait to see what the apartment looks like!

Seeing the words made AJ relax a little bit, her stomach unknotting some.

AJ: Can’t wait to have you back here, it’s lonely in this big space all by myself. Thank you again for dinner, and all the groceries. You’re way too good to me. (heart emoji) Sweet dreams babe, and safe travels in the morning in case I’m not awake yet (sleeping emoji)

Finishing up her game of Sudoku, AJ put her phone down on the box next to the bed, and slept off and on all night, eventually getting up around 6am. Digging her headphones out of her backpack still packed from her flight, AJ headed to the gym downstairs. Her stomach still didn’t feel right, but she powered through a few miles on the elliptical.

Water and crackers seemed to be what was on the menu for breakfast after she got back upstairs and took a shower. Food just didn’t sound good. Sitting at the breakfast bar, AJ scrolled through a few things on her phone - Twitter, Instagram, Reddit. It was too early to text Jess to ask about her thoughts with her stomach, so instead she looked up a few doctor offices in the area. It was time to be an adult and get whatever this is checked out. Once 8AM hit, she started calling a few offices to see if she could find a doc accepting new patients. Somehow she lucked into getting an appointment later that morning as someone canceled at a decently rated doctor in the neighborhood.

In the meantime, AJ looked around at the boxes in the kitchen still, so she started putting in new shelf paper in the cabinets and putting dishes and cooking utensils away. The empty bins started stacking up in the corner, and more floor space was found. And the alarm on her phone let her know when she needed to head off to the doctor’s office.

Halfway across the country, Tyson was landing in Minnesota, and the team made its way to the Xcel Energy Center to have a practice. It was a weird feeling for him being back after the way things ended. No awkward interactions happened though as the Wild were practicing at TRIA Rink that day. A few players asked Tyson for recommendations on places to eat, which he provided, but he wasn’t joining for the night. He had plans with a couple of his former teammates before things would get heated the next day.

It was nice to get caught up on what all had happened in the last couple months, swapping stories. Some of them may not have been Tyson’s teammates very long, but they were still friends all the same. Before he knew it, it was already 9PM, and he had wanted to check in with AJ before she went to bed. He had checked his phone, already seeing a note from her.

AJ: Hey babe, I’m exhausted and going to bed. Hope you’re having a good night, say hey to the guys for me!

Doing the math, she had gone to bed way earlier than the normal late hours he was accustomed to her keeping. Not wanting to wake her up though, he just let it go even though he really had wanted to talk before bed. But figuring unpacking was taking its toll, he pushed down any concern that may have been growing. He sulked a little bit still as he fell asleep in the hotel room bed in a city they used to live in months before.

AJ grumbled at the light shining in the bedroom as the sun crept up in the sky. Still laying in bed, she grabbed her phone, pulling up Target’s website looking at the selection of curtains. Her few plants would love the light from the east side windows, but she needed to be able to sleep a little later in the mornings than the sun was allowing her. As she scrolled through room-darkening curtains, she was interrupted by Tyson wanting to facetime. Before she answered, she scrambled to get her hair down and in relative place and a lopsided smile graced her face.

“Hey babe, how's St. Paul?” AJ was trying to sound chipper despite feeling off still.

Tyson squinted before smiling again, taking in a very tired looking face, “It’s good, hoping to have some good luck tonight. Are you okay? You went to bed early for you last night. I wanted to tell you to have good dreams of me.” He pouted, then smiled trying to keep the feeling light.

“Yeah, I think the last week and change is just catching up with me, I…” AJ didn’t want to worry Tyson, and decided to keep her doctor’s appointment to herself, “I think I just need to get caught up on sleep. But to do that I think I’m going to have to venture out to Target soon and get some curtains. This place has so many windows! So bright in the bedroom…”

An idea hit Tyson’s mind, but he kept up with the conversation. AJ got out of bed and showed some of the spaces she’d unpacked items in, giving an idea of how things were going. He was looking more and more forward to getting home, the place that she was working so hard to create for them to feel comfortable in.

“You know I’ll help when we get back tomorrow, leave some work for me!” Tyson was trying to delegate some of the unpacking duties to himself to allow AJ some rest.

While she tried to hide her bedhead, AJ forgot that the dark circles were still under her eyes. They were a little worrisome to Tyson. But knowing he was going to have to leave soon for a short practice, he encouraged AJ to go back to bed and hide under the covers. He was more than happy to come home and take care of whatever boxes were left in the next few days. Tyson had to make a compromise that he’d allow her to supervise at least.

With a sleepy smile and a kiss blown at the screen, AJ agreed, and closed out the call, finding her way to the kitchen to take some meds and then found solace in the sheets and blankets of their bed. Within minutes, she was sound asleep - it was the best sleep she’d had in days.

The bright light of day was definitely dimmed by the time AJ woke up, unsure of what time it actually was. Frantically searching for her phone that got buried under the blankets that cocooned her, she found it was late afternoon. Her nap lasted almost a full night’s worth of sleep. The bedroom was still out of sorts, so her task for the remainder of the afternoon was at least to get nightstands set up and unpack some clothes into their closet and her dresser. The thought of putting Tyson’s clothes away crossed her mind, but she figured she’d let him put things where he wanted. With most of the bedroom under control, it occurred to her that she had yet to set up her computer rig, which bothered her a bit. Normally this would have been one of the first things she’d set up, but she just wasn’t feeling it. She wasn’t feeling a lot of the things she was normally interested in lately.

Instead of ignoring it longer though, AJ pulled her desk around in the office, and started setting up monitor arms to mount the multiple displays for her computer. Her cameras and mic were set up. Finally, all of the cables were in place, and her computer was plugged in. Sitting down in her chair, something clicked and things felt right in those moments. Firing up some Fortnite, she lost a few hours, and didn’t realize it until Tyson was texting after the game.

Thankfully, she didn’t miss much. And honestly, not watching the game may have done more good for her mentally than she realized. Had she watched the game, she probably would have just gotten angry at the coaching staff again - the whole idea of “getting better, not bitter” was something she was still working on. Tyson wasn’t even upset at her lack of watching, it was a quiet night, and a loss in a shutout. No one was particularly thrilled with how the game played out. The only thing on Tyson’s mind though was getting home the next morning. A fresh start was something he was craving, and those grand ideas he had for the apartment and AJ just kept getting bigger.

It had been a long, emotional day for Tyson, playing back in St. Paul and all, and honestly he was ready for bed. And despite sleeping most of the day, AJ was yawning as well. Both called it a night, excited that with just one more sleep, Tyson would be on his way back to Buffalo.

While he was up early, AJ slept in again, as it was a bit of a dreary day along Lake Erie. Pulling herself out of bed, she made her way to the kitchen to take her meds again, and started picking up a few things around the place. Boxes were shifted around so that there was more of a walkway between rooms. Her Snow Queen pothos was a little dry, so she watered it a bit. Fidgeting, AJ took a shower and put on some clothes, realizing she’d been in pajamas for almost two days. The text she’d been waiting for finally came in.

Tyson: I’m at the airport, come pick me up?

Hopping in her black Soul, AJ floored it heading to the airport. It’d only been a couple days since she saw Tyson in St. Louis, but it’d been a week since they literally were sharing the same space. Navigating the maze of the airport pickup area, Tyson stood with a tired smile, backpack and Normtec bag in hand. Popping the trunk, he tossed his things in before climbing into the front passenger seat.

With a quick kiss, the two were off, heading back downtown. Making up for all the longing and lack of touch, Tyson’s hand never left the top of AJ’s as she held onto the gearshift. He noticed she didn’t look as tired as she had, a good sign. Pulling back into her spot in the garage of their building, AJ carried Tyson’s backpack, while he carried the few remaining items he had with him as they headed back up to the twelfth floor. Key in the slot, the door unlocked.

“Welcome home, Tyson.”

That glint of mischief in Tyson’s eyes was bright as can be as he set his bag down in the hall and picked AJ up, carrying her into their new space. She squealed, pleading with him to put her down. After finally doing so, he grabbed his bags and put them near the door, taking in everything that AJ had set up. Sort of keeping her promise, there were still a few boxes in the living room as well as the bedroom that needed to be put away.

After giving a mini tour, AJ flopped onto the sofa, watching Tyson still exploring the rooms. Her eyes closed briefly, until the sound of Tyson’s voice, laced with concern, brought her back.

“Hey Eggo? What is this?”

Taking a look at what Tyson was talking about, AJ saw him standing next to the breakfast bar in the kitchen, holding a bottle of prescription pills. The look on his face was definitely one of concern.

So much for trying to keep a secret.

Instead of covering it up further, AJ decided to just put it all out on the table.

“First, this isn’t your doing, this is me. Do not blame yourself when I tell you this,” AJ was worried about what Tyson was going to say, so she was stalling as much as she could. “But a few years back, I had some issues. Nothing BAD, but… you know how this past summer was hard on you? I had a period like that too in college. But where you handled it healthily, I… did not. My roommate found me on the floor of our dorm room crying, room completely flipped upside down. I couldn’t find stamps to mail something, and… yeah. I’m not proud of it. But my roommate and some friends convinced me to see a doc, and I got on anti-depressants. I was on them for a while and was doing pretty well, so I was able to get off of them. But the past few weeks, and again, this isn’t anything you did, but some similar feelings were creeping in, so I decided to go to the doctor about it, before it got to that point again.”

Unsure of what to say, Tyson just listened to AJ talk. When she was finished, he thought for a moment before opening his mouth.

“I didn’t even know you were depressed,” Tyson felt crappy. He couldn't even tell his fiancee was not feeling right. “Is there anything I can do? Or anything I should know?”

As she was owning up to things, AJ continued.

“As far as the depression goes, not too much. The meds will hopefully help get me out of this funk I’ve been in. It takes a couple weeks for them to kick in though. Mainly, just sometimes I want a hug, or maybe need to vent and someone to listen. Pretty much the same ol’ things I normally ask for. But I do have to tell you that there are a few other things going on too. Since I’ve been so tired, and not just from this ridiculous roadie I went on with y’all, but like exhausted tired - I’m having some labwork done to see if anything else is going on that needs to be checked into.”

Tyson nodded, realizing that he wasn’t imagining that AJ had seemed to be more tired lately. And to be honest, he was relieved she was being an adult and getting it checked out. The two talked some more about what she’d been feeling, and what the doctor said in advance of the blood work she had done. It was just going to be a waiting game until Monday when her labs would be completed and maybe would have some answers.

Apologizing for darkening the mood with all the mental and physical health talk, AJ tried to change the subject a little with some talk about some things she wanted to do eventually for the apartment. The smirk came across Tyson’s face as she showed him some ideas she’d found online. He made mental notes of what he was being shown. Those gears in his head kept turning.

Interrupting everyone's thoughts though was the sound of AJ’s stomach growling. She hadn’t eaten much and clearly it was trying to make that fact well known. Excited to do so, the couple finished putting away Tyson’s travel items, and headed to the kitchen to whip up a late lunch together. AJ had to show him where some of the pots and pans were, but he was picking up fast. Tyson made some chicken and vegetables as AJ made a simple sauce to go with it all poured over some brown rice. The two had ample space to move about the kitchen. AJ even had Alexa turn on some music so the two could have their first dance in their new home while the food heated up.

With Tyson holding onto AJ’s hips, and her hands resting behind his neck, the two just swayed and smiled, locking eyes until AJ rested her head into the crook of Tyson’s neck and shoulder. The feeling of his fuzzy cheek against her forehead made everything negative on her mind disappear as they lost themselves for a few minutes and a couple of songs. The sound of Alexa’s timer burst the bubble, but AJ was okay with it as the food smelled amazing as she grabbed the plates from a cabinet, and dished up some for both of them.

Lunch wasn’t eaten in silence, as the conversation led to them talking about the next few weeks. One more game at home, and then it would be the All-Star Game break. A lot of teams had their bye week before the weekend of the game. Instead, the Sabres’ bye week was after. A few of Tyson’s teammates were heading to the Bahamas. He’d been invited, but with all the commotion of moving, he decided against it. AJ thought he’d probably head back to Edmonton to see the family. Instead, he surprised even AJ.

“I was thinking, what about a staycation?”

Looking for Chapter 40? LET'S GOOOOO https://at.tumblr.com/brainrattlers/play-it-cool-tyson-jost-40n/rn7wesgrzqa7

#Tyson Jost #Josty #Play It Cool #TysonTuesday #Buffalo Sabres #Colorado Avalanche #Tyson Jost x OFC

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