#i watched this episode three days ago and it's fucking haunting me still i feel fucking defeated bro

[alexwilltellyouthings]

Entirely self indulgent rating post about the top 10 TV shows that made me fucking insane for some reason

10. Sense8

God, this was so good. Such a blessing. I saw part of the cast during a Pride Parade and it's one of my favorite memories. I felt every possible emotion with this show, I love it.

9. The Last of Us

This is kind of a cheat, because the obsession comes from the games, but it is what it is. It's one of the few games that had a big impact on me and I closely relate it to my relationship with my dad. Can't wait to cry my heart out at season 2.

8. Good Omens

It's a given, isn't it? That stupid angel with his stupid demon and their stupid God. GRRRAAWW. A lot of thoughts and feelings came from the fandom, I have to point out. It's been very nice.

7. The Umbrella Academy

I have the first issue of the comics autographed by Gerard Way!! I mean, yes, it's because I'm a MCR fan, but it became even more precious after I got into the show. I'm rewatching right now, preparing for the last season. I'll be a mess when I say goodbye to them. Can't even really think about it too hard or I'll cry right now.

Continues under the cut

6. Our Flag Means Death

LISTEN THIS CHANGED EVERYTHING TO ME. What do you mean we can have a show THIS queer? It's all I want now. I ate it up. I smiled so much. I wanted this so badly and had no idea.

5. Interview with the Vampire

Feels like it should be top 3 honestly but I'll get there. This is also a cheat, I've been reading the Vampire Chronicles since I was like 15. Growing up with Anne Rice probably messed me up but hey at least I have great taste. And seeing them on screen? The way they made it BETTER? And Lestat?? Who has been haunting me for 15 years on and off??? And the second season and their reunion and and and?????????? I'm STILL insane about them and will be forever, I'm afraid.

4. Doctor Who

Listen. Listen. Okay. Yeah. What can I say? If you get into it, you're doomed. And I have been doomed for 10 years at least. I stopped watching for a while and got back last year, and it hit me all over again. I love this dumbass genius alien in a way that's calm, even. Just a permanent part of who I am now.

3. The Untamed

The year was 2022, it had been a while since I had a proper fixation and I didn't think it would happen with this danmei live-action, but then came Wei Wuxian. Guys, if I tell you I fell in love. Couldn't stop thinking about him. Everyday I was plagued by his smile and red ribbon and tragic backstory, yadayadayada. I really like other characters too, and their stories, but WWX did something to me that I still don't quite understand.

2. Queer as Folk (US)

This was a looong time ago and it didn't really persist over time like the others, but it was my first actual obsession. I was clinically insane over these gays. I had no one to talk to about them, so for every episode I wrote several pages of notes to comment to my (only) friend at school the next day, the poor thing. It was pretty much all I talked about because I spent EVERY MINUTE we had to talk going over the notes and explaining the episode. Like, between classes, during breaks, everything. Months of that. She held on firmly because she was a good friend, but I'm aware it must've been terrible. Like I said, insane.

1. Dead Boy Detectives

Maybe I'm putting this up here because it's my current hyperfixation? Maybe. But I don't think I have felt something hit as strongly as this since QaF over there. This time I can participate in fandom so I don't need to write every thought I have because it's all a big talk anyway, but I'm still pretty much having those thoughts all the time for *checks notes* nearly three months. I'm writing more than I have in years. I'm back at Tumblr after I don't know how long. I'm staring at GIFs over and over like I have the fucking time for that. I'm distracted at work daily. I talk about it in therapy. I have the main cast's notifications on. I'm getting involved in fandom discourse sometimes even knowing I shouldn't. It's a nightmare. I love it. I love them.

If you read all of this, congrats! Now you know how my mind works, kinda!! I'm open to talk about any and all of these shows. It's amazing how they mess us up. It's also scary, but anyway.

[waxwing-saint]

5 books and 5 fics

@lumosatnight, I may have tweaked your tag game, but I’m just as curious about people’s fic choices as I am their book choices. (consider yourself tagged for your 5 fic picks)

Books

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. It’s a classic for a reason. I read it probably too young and it jump-started my lifelong obsession with both Agatha Christie and isolated closed-circle mysteries.

If Not Winter fragments of Sappho translated by Anne Carson. Listen, I am a renowned sapphist. I am a sapphist in the deep aching longing kind of way, in the fleeting touches kind of way, in the openly watching each other across a crowded room kind of way. Anne Carson understands this vibe in a way no other Sappho translator does.

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado. I love short stories, but the problem with short story collections is that there’s always one or two bangers and the rest are mid. All of these are bangers. While it’s true that some are slightly less bangery than others, every short story in this collection is incredible, haunting, painfully well-written. Like I just don’t have words for how good it is and I’ve been trying to find the words since the day I started reading it.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. I see people who read this book in like three hours and I am confused and disturbed. This is not a long book, but I don’t know how to talk to anyone who can manage this book in under a month. The current record in my friend group is 29 days, which is frankly impressive. Reading this book is a lot like trying to look at an eldritch being—it is equal parts intoxicating and dismantling; the prose is so painfully beautiful, the grief and frustration so true to life, that you have to put it down after a few pages. And that’s the story of how it took me two months to read a 240 page book.

Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. Is it cheating to include a short story? Who knows, I’m making the rules. This is my favorite short story of all time, and it is available in a collection with many other decent short stories (big props to Hell is the Absence of God) but none of them come close to this one, so much so that including the collection to rec this story feels disingenuous. There is something so special about a piece of art being created perfectly in the perfect medium. Would The Lament for Icarus slap so hard if it wasn’t a painting, but a novel? Could Artemisia Gentileschi have captured Judith fucking wrecking Holofernes in a gif? Both would be beautiful and poignant still, but it wouldn’t be the same. Story of Your Life needs the short story medium to do what it does best. Arrival was a good movie, but it lacked so much of the nuance found in the source material. (For further reading, please see the stage play The Last Five Years)

Fics

Spindle, Spire by @summerlightning. I don’t know why this is such a hard sell, maybe it’s the fandom or the fact it’s only available on tumblr, but of all the fics I rec this is the one the fewest people check out. Listen to the words coming out of my mouth: this. is. the. best. fic. i. have. ever. read. I would never fuck with you on this. You don’t need to know anything about the fandom or characters, leave this list, go read it (and then hmu so we can scream about it). I reread this fic at least twice a year. The aesthetic alone is enough to send me to an untimely demise. It is gritty, it is fucking gross, it is undeniably beautiful, it is a masterclass in writing with a strong narrative voice. There are pieces of this that haunt me to this day (“There’s another breakroom but it’s a scummy pond, mostly, and the cabinets fell off the walls long ago and rest in the water now like bloated wooden alligators with rusty hinges for teeth.”) shut up don’t fucking talk to me.

Watchers by a whole mess of incredible people. The Buffy spin off that was at times better than Buffy itself. And holy shit I go to this site all the time to read old episodes or feel nostalgic and shit and when I went to grab the link for this post I saw they’re planning new content. Fucking catch me screaming lads. Will be monitoring this sitchiation closely.

Ballads by @lipzlipzlipz. If we’ve spoken for more than forty-five seconds I’ve already reced this series to you(and I’ve also already told you to read it in post order not chronological order). Here I am recing it again and until my dying breath. Sometimes people make indulgent mistakes and then continue to make the same indulgent mistakes as they destroy themselves and all of their loved ones for one more chance to make that mistake all over again. Is it busted and bloody heartbreak? It is. Is it also the realest tragedy I’ve ever seen? It sure fuckin is babes.

Personal Jesus by @perfectly--random. This is the best fic I read last year, period, end of fucking sentence. It is a fic I think where it’s better to go into blind, so I’m not going to say anymore, but please someone come talk to me about this I’m dying.

Of Blood & Carnations by @rice-and-beans. This is the best fic I’ve read this year, period, end of fucking sentence. I’ve read a lot of excellent fics this year but I cannot imagine a world in which 2024 comes and this isn’t still the best fic I read this year. It’s so good that I can’t breathe when I think about it. It’s giving you Prometheus Bound and that’s all I’ll say about it because it’s another fic you should go into blind but take off the blindfold and peep the tags fist babes because she’s a doozy and you shouldn’t be unprepared. All that to say, beans cannot miss, hit up that author page and read them all, every one is a banger. This is the juice. This is the mineral the girlies crave.

Now. I limited my fics to completed works but if I hadn’t I’d have been struggling to fit in Danse Avec la Vie and Of Gods, Kings, and Men both by @sosh022, who I know can, in fact, finish a fic (contrary to popular opinion) and I can’t wait to one day have a headache fitting both of them into a list not unlike this one.

As per tag game rules I am required by law to offer up sacrifices to the altar so please tell your mothers not to draw me a bath only to stab me in the neck (I had a war to win). @sosh022 @lipzlipzlipz @perfectly--random @flyingpoptart @rachelc978 @drabsyo @terra-wisp actually you know what anyone. If you see this on your dash, consider yourself tagged m8 😤

[uniformbravo]

how am i supposed to collect my thoughts after natsuyuu. how am i supposed to watch this and then be like *thinks about literally anything else*

[mandareeboo]

SU Music Rankings

Bc I can and I wanna start some Disk Horse rip. These are all in order of preference, with explanations, etc. It’s a long bitch. That said, I’m not counting little short jingles or small joke songs like Little Butler. This is the meat and potatoes of SU music- just under 30 songs. I might do the rest if people like my takes lol.

I scored it mostly on three bases- how dear it was to my heart, how much/often I relisten to it, and also what it means to the plot. That said, little fun songs don’t automatically go farther down than big, plot-heavy songs either! It’s a strange little balance.

Special Note: I don’t dislike any of this music! I love SU and that includes its bumps and glitches. I just pick favorite children lol.

1.) Change

Was there ever a more Steven moment than when he wiped the blood off his face and kissed it into sparkles? I think not. 

If “Be Wherever You Are” is an ode to young Steven, then this is teen Steven’s. Talking about change, and how much and how little it can do. How he holds his arms up for Spinel to hug him, so trusting. How he seems able to just. Break into soft tears at will, and not to be manipulative- it’s just his kind nature. The warmth in his voice. Fuck yesssss.

2.) Change Your Mind

This song is only fifty five seconds and it’s EVERYTHING to me. It really felt like someone was speaking the words I’d always held deep inside of me, unsure of how to say. It feels like a goodbye to someone who never really loved me. 

As much as I enjoyed Future, if this was the finale of SU, I would’ve been perfectly okay with that.

3.) Drift Away

This song gave me legitimate shivers the first time I heard it, and it still haunts me to this day. Spinel stayed, and waited, and all she got was a transmission thousands of years later. Fuck.

4.) Here We Are In The Future

THE MOVIE IS SU AS ITS BEST AND I WON’T BE SWAYED ON IT. Steven being a teen who loves his weird family but is growing just a bit sarcastic to their drama. The adorable love he and Connie share. His slow realization that he will always be working, always have things to do, is both somber and real. The Crystal Gems won’t be safe with one epic battle. They’ll be safe with years of hard work and love. HIS LITTLE HANDSHAKE WITH AMETHYST.

This is a helluva bop and a great way to summarize the main character’s backstories.

5.) Let’s Only Think About Love

Did ya’ll know that Zach Callison killed his throat with that last note? He gave his all for this performance in a vocal range he no longer comfortably do and by god did it SHINE. The FLAIR. The FORESHADOWING. All of the Gems all being awkward about Rose and Steven trying to bring them to the present. Peridot having a mini-existential crisis in a cute yellow dress. I love Zach Callison’s normal singing voice but man is that a fucking bop. Nothing will ever beat it.

6.) Here Comes A Thought

This bad boy helped me out a LOT with some mental issues I was dealing with in high school. I was unmedicated, unsupervised, and full of anxiety. I’d have break downs when I tried to speak about certain things. I couldn’t function. This song inspired me. It helped me feel okay with my intrusive thoughts.

And the episode! -chef’s kiss-. Once again bringing up the morally gray area of training child soldiers. Connie expanding her social group. Steven’s trauma hauling ass in that second half. The ANIMATION. Stevonnie’s gorgeous singing voice. GOD yes.

7.) It’s Over Isn’t It?

Just barely squeaking above Stronger Than You, this ballad is everything gorgeous. The whole episode is. I think Mr. Greg stands in the top five of my episodes for the entire show. It even got nominated!

There’s just so much about this song that I love. The gentle melancholy of Pearl’s voice. How the crew had to redo the shots for this bit bc Deedee went so fucking hard. The hard cuts between Pearl, remembering the love of her life, and Steven, who has begun to feel like he took her away. I’d recommend this song to anyone, regardless of what they do or don’t know about SU, simply bc it tugs so many heartstrings of love, loss, and responsibility.

8.) Stronger Than You

Did you realize this episode aired SEVEN years ago? This bitch was what got me into SU! Hearing about Ruby and Sapphire made my little gay heart so happy inside, and then getting a whole song confirming that they were a couple, that their love powered the strongest Gem on the team? Aaaaaaaaa

To this DAY I get excited when I hear Estelle start singing. This song is timeless. This song will live in media history. God I fucking love this song.

9.) Other Friends

I’m not the biggest musical person, so I hadn’t heard of Sarah Stiles before her casting as Spinel, but JESUS CHRIST the lady went hard. She went SO fucking hard. Sarah Stiles started on 100 and somehow just kept CLIMBING. You can just hear the sheer manic energy building in her voice, the anger and resentment. 10/10 Sarah Stiles is a queen.

10.) Independent Together

This made the list entirely bc the crew was like “you’re gonna get a himbo ass Steven-Greg fusion singing with Opal while Garnet flies across the moon on Lion while floating” and I am forever thankful to them for it

11.) Who We Are

Bismuth deserved more songs. ‘Nuff said.

12.) Peace and Love (On the Planet Earth)

It Could’ve been Great is EASILY one of my favorite s2 episodes. I love the entire concept of this song. Of Steven making music to reflect how much Earth means to him and his family. Of him teaching Peridot some self-care. Also Peridot’s singing voice is really cute and squeaky. 

I know it’s silly, but I would’ve really enjoyed a flip around of this in Future! Like Peridot reminding Steven how much he loves music, that he needs to take time to relax for himself, maybe with a new verse or just a remix of the original song!

13.) Something Entirely New

I watched this episode as it aired, and I legitimately almost cried. I love Charlyne Yi’s voice so much ya’ll- her raspy, not perfect singing voice against Sapphire’s deep soothing lull is great.

And to have Ruby and Sapphire’s meeting be the way it was- for Ruby to bemoan Sapphire losing Homeworld, to being stuck with a single Ruby, while Sapphire is a noble who has always been taught everyone in her “caste” is vitally important (and has, in her own mind, taken that to mean every Gem, as she should) and how they come together and make each other happy. Good shit good shit.

14.) I’m Just a Comet

The fact that Greg’s music career never really blasted off pisses me off to this day bc Tom Scharpling’s voice is fucking BUTTER. Also the song really feels like a jab at his parents now that we know the kind of dynamic he had growing up. “This life in the stars if all I’ve ever known” is definitely him wiping away their existence after reminding them (and himself) the things they used to say about him.

15.) Do It For Her

This episode. This fucking episode. This episode got me permanently hooked on SU. I’d just binged season 1 and was kinda meh about it overall after the bop of Stronger Than You. “Oh,” I thought to myself, foolishly, “I’ll probably just casually watch this from time to time.”

Like three days later Sworn to the Sword aired and that was it. I was hooked! Pearl’s gentle training song turning darker and darker, Connie’s accompaniment from nervous to determined to fully into such a toxic mindset. The fact that SU had the BALLS to discuss the repercussions of training child soldiers, now and later. This episode was everything to me, STILL is everything to me.

Six years and well over 100 fanfics written later, I think it’s safe to say this show swallowed me whole and never let go.

16.) System/Boot.pearl_final(3)

I debated putting this on the list because it’s not anything crazy important, just a way to show things are Wrong, but I had to do it entirely bc Pearl is so damn SALTY.

Like telling us about the Gems makes sense, she felt like she was given a duty, but she went so damn petty. WHY is that Ruby alone. Gross. This Amethyst is a trash dump. Wtf are you people.

17.) Full Disclosure

This episode really feels like a turning point for SU. Before, the show had its dark moments- but now we’re in the thick of it, and it’s not going away. Full Disclosure felt like an rebuff to the idea of returning to any normal we’d established in season 1. Gems are actually a giant species now. Gems tried to kill us now. There’s this Yellow Diamond bitch who got namedropped. Something about a Cluster. 

The song itself is BALLER, with its ingenious use of Steven’s ringtone and photos as he tries to decide whether to clue in Connie on all this nonsense. Meanwhile we, the audience, already know damn well Connie about to yeet some common sense into him.

18.) What’s the Use of Feeling Blue?

I’mma admit it- I’m a Yellow Diamond stan. I’ve always loved her- her anger, her poise, her hardworking nature. I actively argued against the “Yellow Shattered Pink” theories back in the day. But, man, when this arc leaked? I got so overexcited I was too jittery to watch it for like two days. It’s easily my favorite arc of the series. The sheer alien nature of the zoo, the Famethyst, and absolutely Patti Lupone’s beautiful ballad. Goddamn. Yellow singing to Blue to try and help her regain her old status, the warble in her voice as she reminds Blue she misses Pink too, the movement of the bubbles as she talks about attack. It gives me shivers to this day. FUCK.

19.) Tower of Mistakes

This is, fun fact, that only SU song I have completely memorized. The story itself is kinda funny! See, we lost internet at my house for a solid 5 to 6 months when these episodes aired, so I only got a very brief window to view them all. But this was the first Amethyst song in a long while, and I didn’t want to forget it! So I keep replaying it in my head for ages. And that’s still definitely a thing.

Anyway will never not be sad that this entire song was about making it up to Garnet for Amethyst’s perceived slights with Sugilite (which was a two-way road), only for Garnet to pressure her into fusion later when pissed and never discuss it again bc Garnet probably never thought twice about it and Amethyst has the emotional openness of a clam that’s just been told its ugly. Helluva way to make someone feel like shit, G. Helluva way to bottle that shit, Ames.

20.) On the Run

I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: Amethyst! Needed! More! Songs! 

The dichotomy between Steven’s play and Amethyst’s honest desire to run away from home is so well-done, especially when you consider a lot of Steven and Amethyst’s actions are playing together. The song is also near and dear to me simply bc it’s my favorite Amethyst episode to exist (well, maybe second to What’s Your Problem, but not by much). Moments like these are all the proof I need that they were right to fuse first.

21.) Be Wherever You Are

This tune really just feels like an ode to who Steven was as a kid. Trapped on an island with no way home, and he’s just happy to be with his friends. The stars are beautiful and not oppressive. Also that one animatic with Lars and the Off Colors playing in the Homeworld Kindergarten to this music was iconic and made this song get stuck in my head for a solid month.

22.) Familiar

I ADORE how the crew use bright neon colors to show how alien Homeworld can be. And Steven recognizing that the Diamonds treat him how the CGs used to, and how prepared he is to “fix” a broken family. It’s a soft, gentle tune about melancholy. Also the Pebbles are beautiful.

23.) Let Me Drive My Van Into Your Heart

Such a cute little love ballad, but every time I listen to it now I just imagine the heart attack Rose must’ve had at the line “And if we look out of place/Well, baby, that's okay/I'll drive us into outer space.” like there’s a Vietnam war flashback if I ever heard one

24.) What Can I Do?

I’m kind of neutral on this one? Rose and Greg both have great voices, but the song itself lacks many lyrics. I think it was definitely a good way to show Rose’s flaws in thinking.

Also, I’m shocked they managed cram that much vaguely sexual innuendo into two minutes, followed by how Not Hetereo that dance between Rose and Pearl was, and not get their asses chewed by it. You go guys.

25.) Cookie Cat

I love a lot of the vibes this song has. The lyrics are so damn prophetic, but they also sound like the kind of weird 90s commercials I grew up on. It’s been like two decades since I saw the Shirley Temple commercial but I’ll be damned if I don’t remember “Animals crackers in my soup! Monkey and rabbits loop-de-loop.”

26.) Giant Woman

I am. NOT the biggest fan of Steven’s original singing voice. I feel bad saying that, since it was just Zach Callison as a kid, but he never jived well with me for some reason. So I wouldn’t listen to this on the fly. 

The song itself is still really good though, with all sorts of fun animation of Amethyst and Pearl being bitchy to each other. It’s a bit sad in hindsight to see tiny Steven trying to get his moms to get along. Ahh, season 1.

27.) Strong in the Real Way

This song has SUCH a strong start. Pearl reflecting on Sugilite’s problems, but the show making sure to show us that Pearl’s lack of enthusiasm towards her also lends itself to jealousy as well as just general malaise. How much she cares about Steven, and wants him to grow up strong. 

And then Steven just kinda. Ruins it? I appreciate his enthusiasm for tryna bulk up but to take what was starting as such a rich, personal song and broadcasting it to random strangers just makes me a bit sad. Almost a bit angry on her behalf?

28.) That Distant Shore

I KNOW this is gonna create some discourse, but I’m just not the biggest Lapis stan. I love her voice. I love the visuals of the song. And I get why she felt afraid and needed to flee.

But Lapis never got to take responsibility for her own actions. And, in the end, the song feels hollow to me- because we all know she’ll never talk to anyone about it, know she’ll burst back in and destroy the barn, and no one will ever question it. I like Lapis a lot, but I feel like her arc never was fully finished. She never got help. She never learned to feel safe.

29.) Dear Old Dad

I’ve yet to meet a single human being who likes this episode tbh. There’s some great discussion about what kind of parent Greg is from it, and what kind of dynamic he has with the Gems that he felt he had to fake an injury to hang out with his son. Honestly the first half was fine and dandy. It’s just that then they Greg just went out of his way to drag Steven away from missions and such. It never jived well with his character before or after.

Also, is it just me, or does Zach himself sound like he hates the song as he sings it? There’s no passion or heart in his voice. It sounds like they told him to read off cue cards and he did. Tom Scharpling’s best attempts didn’t save this one for being a skipper. But the episode, unfortunately, isn’t, so it gets a spot on here.

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed - Episode 02

Warning: Spoilers for all 50 episodes!

(Masterpost ) (Previous Episode) (Next Episode)

Donkey Riding

way ho and away we go, donkey riding donkey riding way ho and away we go, riding on a donkey

Wei Wuxian and Apple are doing their best for the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. 

Xiao Zhan had trouble riding the donkey sitting side-saddle, so the Department of Questionable Practical Effects made him a fake leg to wear while riding regular style. 

Can you spot it? It’s very hard to spot. It is very convincing.

Simple Pleasures

Wei Wuxian takes his time wandering up the nearest mountain, and half of the cultivators in the land also wander up this mountain because...Night Hunting! The cultivators are hot and thirsty from walking because they forgot that they all know how to fly. 

Wei Wuxian relaxes by a well and listens to people stanning him. 

Also

I’m going to say it: Wei Wuxian never met a drinking vessel he couldn’t blow.

Everything is Beautiful at the Ballet

The actress who plays A-Yan is named Zhang Linran. She probably has studied dance since she was 4 and now she gets her big break which turns out to be feeding an apple to a donkey. So let’s pause for a second to look at how beautifully she moves.  

Reunions are Awkward, Part 1

Wei Wuxian meets up with one of his family members and it goes super well. 

I...like Jin Ling? He’s much less of a douchebag than his dad, his uncles Jin, Jiang, and Mo (the three stooges), and every damn one of his Jin cousins. He’s genuinely brave (his Dad’s primary good quality) and his hair is on fleek. He’s still a whiny diaper baby, but I like him. 

(much more after the cut!)

Then Jiang Cheng shows up, looking fine as hell and radiating peak arrogant-prick energy.

When he discovers that ‘Mo Xuanyu” stuck a piece of paper to Jin Ling, he tells the child to literally murder him. Excellent uncleing! A+++++ would recommend.  

“In fact, literally murder anyone who uses Yiling Laozu’s tools, like talismans, lure flags, or spirit compasses - basically murder everyone in the Lan Clan plus those other fanboys we saw coming up the hill. Then get out there and make some friends, goddamn it!”

These nets full of cultivators on this daytime night hunt are the only time we ever see anything in a net during a night hunt.  In fact dudes constantly go night hunting and the only prey we ever see is rock lady, murder turtle, and a couple of rag mops in the lake. 

You Are Not Qualified to Speak to Me

Also radiating arrogant-prick energy on this occasion is Lan Wangji. He has been using pettiness as a weapon since long before he met this Jiang Cheng turkey, and he *brings it* when Jiang Cheng tries to have a conversation with him.

Letting your eyes wander everywhere except to his punchable face while you ignore his passive-aggressive questions? Quality work. 

Dropping a silence spell on his child and then letting your own child explain it to him? Golden. 

Lan Wangji is never ever going to forgive Jiang Cheng for what he did on cliff day, and his silence here is as pointed as an ice pick. I suspect the last words Lan Wangji actually spoke to him were “Jiang Wanyin, stop it,” sixteen years ago. 

Jiang Cheng is actually the bigger person in this particular interaction, visibly mastering his temper and telling Jin Ling to take his medicine. 

Reflecting

Wei Wuxian hangs out by a beautiful river and hallucinates for a while. River Jiang Yanli is nurturing and River Jiang Cheng is pissed off, so there are no surprises there.  River Jiang Cheng thinks that Wei Wuxian is a promise-breaking douchebag. He’s not exactly wrong. 

Courtesy of convenient gossiping cultivators, Wei Wuxian discovers that the 16 year old arrogant kid from the Jin clan who his brother from the Jiang clan has custody of is actually and quite obviously Jin Rulan.

Well fuck I guess now I care about something, that’s inconvenient. 

Needing to help parent the child of the sister who parented him is what draws Wei Wuxian fully into his new life. 

As soon as he has this realization, Apple comes back from roaming around, and never gives him any trouble after this for the rest of the story. Which...probably doesn’t mean anything. 

Wen Gravesite

Does Wen Ning hang out here because it’s where he and his (dead) people came from? Oh great, now I am sad. 

Judging by all the leaves on this grave thingy I’m going to say that this grave tender dude is, ah, not very good at his job. 

Get him, Jingyi!

I feel like maybe we all focus too much on how Lan Jingyi is so hilarious and sardonic and not enough on how he is a such a biscuit. 

Soul Grass

As mentioned in the previous post, Chinese spiritual concepts don’t always translate well into English. Soul grass? Sure, why not. 

This is where Wei Wuxian’s Sherlock Holmes brain starts to work, although he still doesn’t remember really basic stuff about Dafan Mountain. Dying and changing bodies is rough on the old neurochemistry. This creates more opportunities for flashbacks, however, and if there’s one thing The Untamed deffo needs more of, it’s kissing flashbacks.

Temple Statue

Presumably grave-tender dude is also in charge of clearing away spiderwebs at the temple, because it’s not getting done. 

Jin Ling walks into the temple blaspheming at full volume. 

Since this isn’t a Greek story, he isn’t immediately struck blind for this. Then when he wishes for the statue to come alive, it obligingly does.  Everything’s coming up Rulan!

Wei Wuxian shows up to rescue all the kids by throwing talismans at the monster which does not tip anyone off to who he is. 

Baby Cultivator Babysitting

Lan Wangji chills out in the cultivators’ pavilion with Jiang Cheng and their mutual hate boners.

Meanwhile, Wei Wuxian forgets all about his nephew and turns into cool professor guy, explaining the basics of soul-eating to the baby cultivators and gleefully encouraging their fear of Hanguang-Jun’s punishments. 

Because the Lan babies are good filial children they are super respectful and engaged with this random adult who is lecturing them. They also - like their own Hanguang-Jun at their age - see and admire Wei Wuxian’s intellect. It’s easy to forget how extremely smart Wei Wuxian is, because of how extremely dumb Wei Wuxian is.

Lan Jingyi suddenly figures out Wei Wuxian is not crazy. 

Bis. Kit. 

Then Rock Lady shows up and Jin Ling sticks 6 arrows into her while Lans Jingyi and Sizhui stand around not bothering to draw their swords.

I see a lot of comments about the bad effects in the statue sequences but I think Rock Lady is all right. The figure animation is decent and the lighting is no worse on her than on everything else in the scene. Her hair is nice, for a rock person.

Admittedly I just finished watching Guardian which has CGI monsters so bad they may have injured my retinas and possibly also my DNA, so the bar, for me, is pretty low. Rock lady clears it with room to spare.   

Note: Wei Wuxian’s flute playing does zippity towards controlling the statue. Not sure what his plan was here.

Wen Ning Kicks Ass

Now we get to meet Wen Ning, who appears to be a stone-cold badass. Later we will discover how hilariously inaccurate that assessment is. 

While all versions of Wen Ning are delightful, this version of Wen Ning is also...strangely attractive? He’s got a Patti-Smith-Horses-Era vibe here, instead of his more usual lost-baby-dork vibe. And his dreamy “I have nails in my head” expression is intriguing. 

I mean, he’s not a total snack like zombie Song Lan or pre-zombie Song Lan or blind Song Lan or post-zombie Song Lan, but this look is a good one for Wen Ning, is what I’m saying.

Reunions are Awkward, Part 2

Lan Wangji, who has 99% already recognized Wei Wuxian because of the haunted sword and the fierce jawline and beautiful neck and tiny tiny waist, is summoned by his flute playing as inexorably as the Ghost General was. 

Jiang Cheng also recognizes Wei Wuxian and goes into full beatdown mode, thwarted (silently) by Lan Wangji. Wei Wuxian attempts to preserve his incognito by sassing Jiang Cheng in as sibling-like a manner as possible. 

Hanguang-Jun’s Pro-Ghost Agenda Has Been Clear for Some Time

This Jiang/Lan fight is hilarious when you consider the implications.

Macroexpression vs. Microexpression

Mo Xuanyu brought Wei Wuxian back using sacrifice summons, a dark ritual invented by Wei Wuxian that he, most likely, did NOT show to Lan Wangji back in the day. So it’s a pretty safe bet that Lan Wangji doesn’t know that Wei Wuxian was gifted a body, rather than stealing one.

when your brother turns around, you must whip him you will never live it down unless you whip him

When Jiang Cheng lets loose with Zidian, it’s not just because he’s angry. He’s using purple power to force Wei Wuxian’s ghost out of the body he’s apparently possessed. And Lan Wangji instantly STOPS him from doing that.

Clan Leader Jiang: this person has been possessed, against their will, by an evil ghost

Future Chief Cultivator Lan: Counterpoint: I am banging the ghost

Flashback Time

Welcome to your 30-episode flashback!

Once I used to join in Every boy and girl was my friend Now there's revolution, but they don't know What they're fighting

Let us close our eyes Outside their lives go on much faster Oh, we won't give in We'll keep living in the past

Road Tripping to Summer School

Gosh I’m looking forward to younger, kinder, more relatable Jiang Cheng.

...prick. 

Incidentally, until now this episode didn’t know that Jiang Cheng has smile muscles, and neither did the person who glued his wig on for him.

I Like Rabbits

Here we have our first rabbit in a large collection of rabbit iconography that appears in The Untamed. 

Instead of sending everyone to the Wikipedia page for Tu'er Shen I’m going to take this opportunity to rec the short film Kiss of the Rabbit God by Andrew Thomas Huang (tw: blood, tw:body-mod cutting) which you can read about and watch over at  Nowness.com 

Particularly if you are a queer person of Chinese heritage, check it out. 

So. What the fuck are these? Are they food? 

Are they made from wax? Or corn starch? or pig intestines? 

Wei Wuxian runs off to get laid drunk and Jiang Cheng grumps about it. Jiang Yanli reminds him that being free is a Jiang Clan Rule, so really Wei Wuxian is following the rules by not following the rules. Does that mean he’s not free? My head hurts. 

Jiang Cheng: yes but grump grump grump

Jiang Yanli: Nothing bad will ever happen because of A-Xian’s choices, trust me

Outro

Wei Wuxian faint tally: one  Caught by: the cold hard ground

Soundtrack: 1. Donkey Riding by Great Big Sea 2. Living in the Past by Jethro Tull 3. Whip It by Devo

Fic prompt:  Lan Wangji’s internal monologue while he sits in the pavilion with Jiang Cheng 

If you write a fic from this prompt and want to share, please post a link in comments!

Bonus: Wang Zuocheng, macro-expression king

Episode 03 Restless Rewatch coming soon!

[aki-mochi]

Ch. 7: I Love You

It’s been a few weeks since the incident during training with Jean and Y/n’s mental state became worse. Throughout the days, she’s skipped meals and barely gave any effort in combat training. During cleaning sessions, her mind would either go blank or wander towards a certain Captain. She often worried about his injuries from the war but knew it was inevitable to do so since he constantly avoided her whenever she was within his eyesight. Most days she would hide in a vacant room whenever she had another PTSD episode and would usually last a few hours, wondering if she’ll ever overcome the hell inside her head.

Tonight she sat at one of the dinner tables in the Mess Hall whilst picking at her food, once again not having an appetite. Her gaze was empty before she heard a low feminine voice call her name from across the table, snapping her out of her empty thoughts.

“Y/n?”

She looked up and saw Mikasa. She gave a slight look, wondering how long the female Ackerman had been sitting there. “Hm?”

“Your eyes are red and puffy.” She stated. “Were you crying?”

Looking down, Y/n raised an arm to her face to wipe away any tears that might have escaped. “N-no…I’m fine….”

When she lifted her head again, she saw Levi walk into the room as he kept his balance with his cane. The stoic man silently walked by her table as he avoided eye contact. Her heart wrenched at the sight of him. How she wished he would just talk to her so they can settle things between them. When Mikasa saw the broken look on her face, she grew concerned.

“What are you looking at?” She asked as she looked where your sight was locked on to. When she saw Levi placing himself at a table with Hanji, she instantly knew what was wrong since she knew Y/n and Levi had broken up a few months ago.

“Oh…” turning her attention back to Y/n, Mikasa reached across the table to place both her hands on top of hers. “Y/n, you know I’m here for you, right?”

“I’m fine, Mikasa, really.” She gave a smile but Mikasa knew it was fake. “I just didn’t sleep well, that’s all…”

“Okay…” the ebony haired girl didn’t really believe her words but decided not to push her as she got up. Giving a small wave goodbye, she left with Eren and Armin as Y/n sat alone while watching her friend leave.

Giving a quiet sigh, her gaze went back to her untouched food before feeling a pair of eyes burning holes at the back of her head. Looking up once more, she turned to look over her shoulder to find Jean sitting in his spot with a hand at his cheek as he watched her. You stared back at him for a minute before he realized you had caught him looking at you, probably wondering about the incident at training. Biting her lip, Y/n turned back around in her seat to avoid the awkwardness between you too and continued to pick at her food some more before debating whether or not to throw it away. A few minutes pass before you see movement in the corner of your eye. Turning her head once again, she saw Jean had gotten up and started to walk over to her.

“Y/n? Are you okay?”

Y/n blinked. “Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Apparently her response wasn’t the one he wanted to hear as he suddenly grabbed her arm and pulled her up from her seat as he started to drag her outside, unaware of a certain pair of eyes watching them. Y/n staggered behind him, noticing that his grip was aggressive, she could tell he was pissed. She couldn’t help but get scared from the familiar grip, remembering how much it hurts. Once he rounded a corner of the building, he pinned her up against the wall, leaving no room for her to escape.

“I know you’re not okay, so don’t even try to lie to me. So, tell me…did Levi do something to you? Did he hurt you?”

Her body stiffened. “H-How did you…?”

“You know you can tell me, right?” He frowned.

“No, Jean. I’m fine, I promise he didn’t-“

“Bullshit!” He cut her off, his voice raising in volume. It started to scare Y/n but Jean continued his rant.

“People don’t cry out of the blue like that for no reason!”

“J-Jean…please stop yelling…” she said as tears welled in her eyes.

“All I’m asking is for you to trust me! You never tell me anything! I have to find out from others! I thought we were friends but you never come to me! Why don’t you-“

“Just leave me alone, Zeke!” Y/n screamed out. Her legs gave out as she sat in a fetal position on the ground while she cried.

“Zeke…?” Jean looked down at her shaking form before an intense glare etched onto his face, severely pissed. “What the hell did that bastard do to you?!” He yelled before a hand had placed itself on his shoulder.

“Hey, that’s enough. Screaming at her won’t make her tell you anything, idiot. Now get inside.” Levi ordered.

Jean slightly relaxed his shoulders before looking down at you. “Yes, sir…” Silently, he made his way back inside the Mess Hall to finish his food.

Levi watched as Jean walked off before looking down where Y/n still sat. Her hands were covering her ears as her body trembled.

“Y/n….” Levi’s thin eyebrows furrowed at the sight, his heart ached as he went to touch her shoulder only for her to pull away. His cold stare softened as he carefully and slowly knelt down to her level. Reaching out his left hand, he tenderly cupped her cheek and stroked it softly with his thumb.

Her shaking had stopped the minute she recognized the familiar touch that’s on her cheek. Slowly looking up, her tear filled eyes widened as she saw Levi sitting in front of her. Y/n could barely believe that he was here before suddenly, yet carefully, throwing herself onto him as she clung to him for dear life. This took Levi back by surprise but instinctively wrapped his arms around her, noticing how much weight she’d lost within the weeks. Sobs racked her body as her fingers crinkled at his shirt, letting out all of her stress to him.

“It hurts, Levi! I can’t sleep, I can’t fight, I can’t live my damn life and I can’t fucking close my eyes! Not without seeing his stupid face!” She cried out.

Levi tilted his head down as his hair shadowed over his eyes, his arms bringing her closer to his body as he stroked her hair. “I’m sorry, Y/n….I couldn’t protect you….this is all my fault…”

“L-Levi…” Y/n couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“If only I’d gotten to him sooner…I could’ve stopped him….” His voice cracked ever so slightly.

“No…if only I would’ve told you….because I was scared to lose you and I didn’t know what’d to do….” She hiccuped in his shoulder.

“I know…and I shouldn’t have left you…” a single tear escaped his eye as he nuzzled his nose into her hair, inhaling her scent that he loved so much. “I’m never leaving you again…because I love you, Y/n…”

Her eyes widened, having to have missed him saying those three words the last few months. Before she could respond, he continued.

“I don’t expect you to feel the same for me anymore. I just…needed to say it…at least once…”

Y/n pulled back enough to face him while still in his arms. Her hands declawed themselves from his shirt and made their way to his scarred face, cupping both sides with the utmost care as her thumb stroked the scars along his cheeks lovingly. He watched her as she tapped her forehead against his, stray tears cascading down her own cheeks. “I love you too. And I always will, Levi.”

His eyes widened at her words as his heart felt like it would beat out of his chest. He was finally able to forgive her, and she had forgiven him. Without a moment’s thought, he leaned in to close the gap between them to give her a tender kiss. Both of them had found their peace, and he was more than ready to help her fight the nightmares that haunt her dreams as long as it takes.

He surely is never going to leave her side again.

[inkdemonapologist]

In our BatIM Call of Cthulhu game we had a pretty crucial/magical bit of the Ink Machine stolen, and Joey has whisked us off to New Orleans to track it down. You would think the music boys would be having more fun here, but thINGS ARE ALREADY GETTING WEIRD

“His eyes hang throughout the city” was a phrase that the others found scrawled on the walls of JDS after Sammy had one of his Prophet episodes about a week ago, but it wasn’t until Sammy and Jack got the distinct feeling that the strange symbol cropping up on local banners was Watching Them that Sammy started to fear his ink-induced prophet rantings may have been, uh, actually somewhat prophetic!

Anyway if y’all want some out-of-context quotes from session one, THIS IS THE READMORE FOR YOU:

[Sammy is played by me, Joey is played by Boo (inkyvendingmachine), Henry is played by Maf (inkcryptid), Jack is played by Mochi (whatyouwantedmetosee)and Thren (haunted-hijinxer) is our GM!]

[Sammy] (I can't believe Joey Drew is going to hecking die.) [Jack] (I can.)

[Henry] How early in the morning is it? [GM] Around 2 AM [Henry] Ohhhh god,... [Henry] Henry is groggy but alarmed, because Joey doesn't usually call this late unless there's an emergency, or maybe if he's veeeery drunk. [Sammy] Prohibition DID just end! [Henry] Well for Joey's sake it BETTER be an emergency,

[Joey] Joey just requests Henry to get down to the Studio, because there's something going on. [Henry] Oh god, it IS an emergency!

[Joey, after calling both Henry & Jack] Once Joey has exhausted all routes-- [Sammy] That's it! That's all of Sammy's friends!

[Jack] (Someone broke in, started writing on the walls, and Prophet Sammy was like, eXCUSE ME!! That's MY job!!!)

[Sammy] Sammy didn't notice the newspaper, he's just got someone accusing his alter-ego of being a false prophet. Or, himself, accusing someone else of being a false prophet! Unclear. [Jack] Could be both. [Henry] Duelling prophets. [Sammy] (dueling banjos plays in the distance)

[Jack] Jack just adds it to the bullet point list in his head of: "Things That Happened In Haiti???"

[GM] Sammy and Jack both notice that Henry's eyes are glowing. [Sammy] WELL that hasn't happened since UHHHH... HAITI? [Henry] Oh. Shit. Fuck. Um. Listen, I took a LOT of that potion. [Sammy] What's happening now? [Henry] ...sometimes I can still see things. [Jack] Jack's just thinking, yeah, sure, this can happen! Just add it to the list!!!!

[Sammy] But yeah, I think that wraps it up, tomorrow will be a normal day, at Joey Drew Studios. Gonna actually do normal animation, and sound, and nothing weird will happen, [Sammy] [Sammy] ...and Joey will NOT drag us off to New Orleans-- [Joey] *interrupting immediately* aCTUALLY, ABOUT THAT,

[Joey] Joey gathers everyone in his office and informs them that he will be going to New Orleans to try to get the stone back. [Sammy] Good luck. [Henry] *resigned sigh* Henry will come...

[Sammy] *sarcastically* Fantastic. I'll come so I can stab you if you cut yourself again. [Joey] *cheerfully* Great! That's wonderful!

[Jack] Jack isn't sure how much help he'll be-- [Joey] Think of it as a vacation! [Sammy] I've heard this before... [Jack] -- but he will... hesitantly agree, [Joey] Great! We won't be wasting any train tickets now! [Joey] He immediately pulls out itineraries for everyone.

[Sammy] *to Jack* It will be nice to have someone sensible. [Henry] Offended Henry noises! [Sammy] OH SORRY, you apparently never thought to inform us that you can just SEE secret golden messages all the time, so you've been knocked out of that category!

[Sammy] Sammy's still a little iffy on the idea that he ever agreed to go on the Haiti trip. [Jack] I mean, you just agreed to go to New Orleans! [Sammy] That was SPECIFICALLY for the purposes of potentially stabbing Joey in the eye.

[Henry] (Can we bring the Lurker with us?) [Sammy] nO he's gonNA DIE!! [Henry] Ah dammit, that's right, [Jack] Nooooo! Our emotional support cartoon character!! That's the real reason Jack needs to come. [Sammy] Yes, Jack, you're our backup emotional support cartoon.

[Sammy] The last time I brought my banjo on a vacation it got snapped in half and I bled on it so maybe I won't do that this time. [Jack] But how will you stress-play banjo? Emotional Support Banjo... [Henry] Bring one of the banjos he doesn't care as much about! [Sammy] *laughing* Sammy just, standing there in his apartment, looking between like three banjos, trying to make thIS AWFUL CHOICE,

[Joey] He just needs something to fiddle with, [Jack] To stop Sammy from getting violin-t, [Sammy] (SHAZZ is gonna get violent in a second!!!)

[GM] These eldritch bad guys don't seem to be above appropriation. [Sammy] Time to cancel the Masked Messenger.

[GM] Jack notices that Joey is still wearing his gloves and hat to have coffee indoors, apparently. [Jack] Hm!.... I mean, I feel like Jack has no right to judge!

[Sammy] He should not bring Sammy, because Sammy is no help in talking to humans, but here I am anyway. [GM] That's what Jack is for! [Jack] I thought Jack was here to hold things. [Sammy] That's good too, he's doing a good job. [Joey] He's holding onto all these terrible What Happened In Haiti facts! [Jack] He's holding onto the brain cell.

[GM] You notice that Joey apparently brought a hip flask and is making use of it. [Henry] Watcha got there? [Jack] Share with the class! [Sammy] You can't have it unless you brought enough for everyone.

[Sammy] Once Jack's sharing all the information he magically acquired from just looking pleasantly at this man -- [Jack] It's called friendship, Sam.

[GM, reading off a reporter's notes] "I see that yellow sign thing in my dreams..." [Joey] That definitely sounds like the weird ass bullshit that we're chasing... [Jack] I don't know, it's clearly unrelated!

[Joey] Joey's actually going to come up behind Jack and ask if Jack can talk to the guy up front for him. [Sammy] wh... [Sammy] ...jOEY DREW??? [Jack] First Sammy delegating, now Joey starts asking people to talk for him? Next Henry will ask Jack to start doing the animation!!

[Sammy] That sure is an icebreaker. [Jack] So, how about cults, huh?

[denimbex1986]

(Sebastian’s interview plays from from 49.26) 

“It was a wild time because I, I had made like three different audition tapes. I was shooting this tiny movie in Germany and I was making tapes, sending them from there - and, I made a tape for Steve, all, all for Steve, and, and they didn’t say no, they kept giving me notes so I was re-doing them, and then I didn’t hear anything for a while and I was gonna actually go to Romania, where I’m from, after Germany, and instead like, this is where I’m like, I don’t know if, you know, life could’ve gone a very different way had I gone, I don’t know, but instead I, I actually ended up coming back to LA, and then I heard that they were like; ‘Oh, you’re in LA?’ So then, so then I finally went in for like a fourth audition, you know in Sarah’s office, and I did the audition there with her, and then they called me to do a screen test and, which was for Steve, and - and I was like ‘a screen test?’ I had never even - I did one other screen test in my life which was for Star Trek, with JJ Abrams, and it was like - and I, and I obviously did not get that but, but it was like in a, you know it was like in an office with, with, a regular office. I mean this apparently was, we were actually gonna shoot like a scene - you shoot like a whole scene; you put on a costume and everything, you know - I put on this 1940′s like, whatever that suit that Chris has in the, in the movie, in the first Captain America movie, and I, you know you have hair and make-up done, like, it’s like a big tease but you still don’t have the job, you know, it’s crazy. And then you go in there and you’re like, “Oh my God” at the lighting and the camera, and, and I remember doing that, and it was me and like a bunch of other people and, and as soon as I got out of that, like four days later they were like, “You know, it’s not gonna go any further” - you always hear that; “It’s not going any further”, and then, so I was kinda like “Ah fuck after all that..” you know, I was really bummed. And then I got a call saying, “But maybe you shou - maybe we can talk about this character” and, and I never even knew anything about a James ‘Bucky’ Barnes ‘cos what I did like, even for the - I never knew anything about Captain America, I never knew anything about - you know, I never read the comics - so I, and I didn’t wanna read any of it before the audition anyway; there was no script, there was just this scene, and so I really didn’t know anything about Bucky Barnes.”

“Well, so we had that meeting right, like where they, they were like, telling me about James ‘Bucky’ Barnes; again; I don’t have a job. Like, I’m like listening going, ‘Are they - like, this sounds fantastic - but like what, are they just seeing if I’m interested?’ Well yeah, I am interested, like, I wanna be in a movie. But um, they were telling me about his story and they said yeah, and then you know, he becomes The Winter Soldier, he ends up sort of being captured, he falls off this train, he loses an arm, gets recaptured, they they brainwash him, they turn him into this assassin and he comes back, and you know, eventually you know, he comes back around, he gets his memories - like they, they told me the whole story but that was it, there was no more. And then we - and then we were shooting the first movie and, I fall off the train in the movie, and I realised when I went in for a costume fitting, they had given me a costume that was missing the left arm so I was like, ‘*Gasp* Okay that means that they’re - they’re gonna do it’”, you know like - and then, suddenly we were gonna shoot this scene and I had the costume that had both arms and I was like, “Err, why’s not the arm?” and they’re like, “Ah you know what? They just decided that they’ll see if anything - you know, they’d rather have both arms just in case and stuff”, and I was like, “Oh fuck, maybe they’re not gonna do it”, you know? So then I fell off the train in the movie and, the movie comes out, everything’s, you know, cool; 2011, I’m at the premiere of Captain America The First Avenger, and meanwhile like, I’m not, you know, I’m still like, really fighting for a job, like 2011 was one of the hardest years of my life. Like, you know, I was going to this premiere but I, Iike, it was - I needed a job, I was running out of money, like, it was like all this stuff was happening and, and then it wasn’t really until I wanna say like, whenever the San Diego Comic Con in San Diego happened, and a friend of mine called me and said; “Dude, they just - they just, uh, let out the new, uh, title for the sequel and it says ‘Captain America The Winter Soldier.’ in it.” And I was like “What?” That’s how I sort of found out and then a call happened  and we were like, ‘Okay we’re gonna do this sequel’ - that’s how that sort of happened. I mean, I never knew.”

“Well, I mean I think, I think the only thing, uh what’s different is, is the level of experience, right like, I feel I’ve grown so much as a, obviously as a human, you know from experience, but also just as an actor, like how I’m approaching things now is on such an deeper, more specific level than I did ten years ago, you know? I mean, like I’d gone to school and I knew what I was doing and you know, but, but then I think you just learn yourself better, you know, you learn to access yourself in, in different ways, so I feel for me, the work is always deeper now. Like, so I, I guess that sort of changes approaching the character but also the character had - had evolved, you know, cos he’d sort of gone from - through that whole Winter Soldier journey, and then we kind of had him, you know, on these redemption paths like all through Captain America Civil War and into the Infinity War, Endgame stuff. But it was really for me like the, The Winter Soldier movie and the Civil War movie were, were probably the biggest character development moments that he had right? ‘Cos he didn’t really in the - in Endgame and Infinity War; he was there and, and it was still-  it was still travelling towards something, and, and, really the show now - like, this show was the first time we kind of really dove into more things with him, deeply, um, and yeah, I just think, it’s just a life experience to kind of come back to a character, and in a way, you know you add to it. Like, I, I don’t know what filming - I mean it’s not like A Boy’s Life, right, that movie that Ethan Hawke did, but they came back through the years, and there was maturity there and a growth and I, I can’t help but think that to some extent, if I sat down and I watched Captain America First Avenger, and I watched all of the movies with that, this character’s in, including our show, I, I 100% would probably see a character that’s has grown because the actor that’s playing him has, you know?”

“Um, I think we all discussed that we wanted to find a way back for him towards a more stable place, or a better sense of self, you know? He’s gotta own everything he’s experienced; he’s gotta kind of like, The Winter Soldier persona per se is - it’s like a demon that’s a part of him that he’s somehow come to terms with and, and he’s learned how to turn it into a strength, rather than it you know, suddenly like he’s just gonna be cured of this thing because; they are comic book heroes but like, and some more than others, but they all have these emotional complexities to them and, and, and one of the things that I love, like I was lucky with this character, is that he really does have this sort of relatable arc, you know? Um, we’ve all kind of go through - we all have to like face our pasts, we, we’re all haunted by things that have happened to us; trauma, things that we’re trying to like overcome or, you know, people deal with addictions, people deal with - you know so, so there’s all these pieces to that character kind of as he’s like trying to find a better way of life, you know, and fit into the world better - and also give him, give him - give him a new life so to speak, uh, without you know, in, in the shadow of Steve Rogers, you know, and, and exploring how that character now can be in the world, you know, um, and properly function, even for audiences. I think for both of them that was - that was also, uh, another piece.”

“Well I just, but again, like for me like, I knew, I knew this character really well. Uh, like I feel like the preparation that before you start shooting is the most crucial time ever because and, as you know like with you what I’m currently doing, like, it’s just like, you can see, others can’t - yet. Um, it’s insane to try to become someone else or whatev - like, you’re always trying to find ways to relate, you’re always trying to understand; the whole thing is a big sort of study project. Uh, with this character, I mean I was very, yeah I was very protective you know, while we were shooting and there were things that we were trying out, that, that had been tried out on the page that weren’t working, you know, and things that needed to be reshaped you know with us now being kind of like getting into the dialogue - getting in, getting there on set, you know, dynamics, and, and it was great that we had, we were allotted the freedom, Anthony and I, to really take what was on the page and make it our own you know, and kind of bring our own experience from the movies to this, you know? And there were times when I was like, ‘Hey listen, like, he wouldn’t do that or he wouldn’t say that here. He would - he would do this - we haven’t earned this yet.’ You know? I think; I can’t speak for everybody, but you know, for me, I, I wanted to really explore a different side of him. Obviously one that was comedic with Anthony right, the dynamic of what that is, and it really, I started looking at it going like, ‘Oh my God, they’re like the - it’s, it’s the Odd Couple.’ That’s what it is. Like, Anthony’s you know, Walter Matthau and I’m Jack Lemmon, like that or it’s like the other way around. Like, that’s the bickering thing, that’s the comedy, you know and, and Bucky is a guy out of time who’s like an old guy trapped in this body trying to fucking figure out what the hell’s going on. And, and, uh, that’s the comedy - like that’s where; and that’s also where the truth is with him, you know? Um, but I was, I was like always reminding them being like ‘Guys, just remember he was a fucking assassin’, you know; he’s always have this chip on his shoulder you know, to some extent, and, you know - and also he’s really gonna - he is, at the beginning of the season, he’s coming from a very defensive place because his - his sort of big purpose up until that point right, like had been, ‘I know I’m not a perfect individual, right, but I know this guy, my best friend, the guy who’s been by my side since I fucking remember anything, Steve Rogers, is a good man, and I’m gonna do everything I can to try to make sure that guy’s okay, you know, and, and follow his lead’, and, and I know like that was like the, the moral compass; Steve Rogers was his moral compass right, and now you’ve taken that out, so he’s going, it kind of is a little bit like, ‘Well now what do I compare - what do I base myself off of? Like what do I, what’s my target, what’s my purpose, what’s my direction? What’s my sense of, where’s my GPS?’ You know like, it’s a little but like that and, and he’s in a very defensive place at the beginning because he’s - he hasn’t confronted the emotional implications of that yet, and throughout the season obviously he does, you know, but you see that he’s sort of like, instead of confronting, he’s kind of hunting certain questions and fears like further down the road and kind of trying to drive an agenda and, and for a minute, you know, before he actually takes a step back and go, and goes, ‘Wait a minute, what does Sam Wilson really want? Like, who, you know, who is Sam and, and therefore who am I?’ and like ‘What do we really want and what is it really about?’, you know, and so I guess those were all the things we were tackling.”

“I always thought there was a conversation that took place you know, before that scene, that, before the final scene of Avengers Endgame, where you see Steve Rogers much older and there’s a sort of right of passage you know that,  that happens, that I - I always feel thought there was a conversation between him and Bucky before that happened, you know, and in that conversation, where it was like, ‘Bucky, you don’t have to worry anymore. I found my - my peace you know? I’m - I’m, I, I finally got that life I wanted, you know, I took, I’m - I’m taking one for me, you know, and I’m good. Now it’s your turn to go and take one for you, you know? We both served this thing, the shield, this ideal, whatever you wanna call it, like, we’ve done our time - like, let’s find our life like before like, while we still have it’ And, you know, I think Bucky kind of honoured that, and I think, and I think, essentially it was goodbye. It was like, ‘Okay buddy, like, you know, it was a good run, like let’s, good luck and, and let’s go and see what happens’ you know?’ And so I don’t think it’s - does Bucky know where Steve Rogers is? That’s a good question. Um, maybe, maybe not, you know? Uh, I mean I, I don’t even know if I have the answer to that question and I, and I definitely don’t. Yeah, so, so, so I, I treated the season very much like, ‘Alright, this is where it’s at, you know, and how good - I don’t have to, thank God I’m not, I’m not standing over a coffin, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m looking at my friend who’s smiling into the sunset and, and, and being like ‘Yo I had a great life, like, I’m good, you know, so now what is it about? You know what? It’s about the legacy he left behind, you know, I’ll protect that.’ But again, he’s not making it about - Bucky’s not making it about Bucky - he’s again making it about Steve, and of course as you see the season, Sam goes, ‘No, you gotta look at you. You gotta, you gotta make it about you. What do you want?’”

“That was before. And, and it was one of the - episode 5 was like really the first one we were, we were filming. I mean, we all - the whole thing was like a movie; we never broke up the episodes. Like, but that sequence in, at Sam’s house was all at the very beginning of the, of the show, you know, and, and it was crazy because we were shooting a really important scene very quickly, not having had, you know, a lot of the journey yet. That was literally probably day three, you know and, and I that think one of the things that was so wild is, obviously we were shooting the show and then, you know, we were supposed to be the first show out and stuff, and then the pandemic happened; all the tragic events of the pandemic, everything, you know, that was happening in this country, everything we were witnessing, all the way up until this January, you know what I mean? And we were going ‘My God’, like, how, how relevant our show sort of suddenly even became even more you know, because there was a lot of questions that were being asked even before anything had happened.”

“Well yeah, I mean Kevin and I; you know, I, I, yeah, I, I remember having a really good long chat with him before we started you know, just to, just to talk about Bucky and, and kind of like, you know, making sure we were on the same page and everything, and, and I love that. I love talking to him, I mean he’s, he’s like an encyclopedia. You know, I mean there’s just - there’s so much he knows about everything, um, so I, that was my main source, and then, and then Kari and I spent a lot of time talking.”

“Well yeah, I mean. Unless a role requires a certain kind of, whether it’s like gaining weight or losing weight or whatever - I usually, I, for my own, like, I just, the, the workout regimen has just always been part of my life and, and really started with Mar - like, with this character and Marvel ten years ago, you know what I mean, just, is when I really, really - I was trying so hard to get into such good shape around those movies that it just kind of - I mean, I, I don’t go as crazy def-con 5 about it as I do when we’re shooting something or when we’re preparing, but yeah, going back to it, of course. I always try to go back, get really - get into the gym, and, and into the diet specifically like three months before, and um, and it’s a whole process uh, and, but I’ve gotten a little bit more comfortable now, in my, sort of my strengths versus my weak points, you know. Uh, I think like in some - somewhere around the Civil War movie I was just, I was like, ‘I just want to be as massive as I can’ or something, like I was just really - and now I’m kind of more, ‘Okay, I, I know what works for me a little bit better and not’, but yeah, it’s always - especially because of the stunt stuff. And yeah, you know, I, like it’s a, it’s a - it’s a blessing really because, in a lot of ways, you know, I don’t have - Bucky doesn’t have any head covering, anything. Since we started, I’ve managed to do a lot of stunt stuff. Whenever there’s a physical sequence, like we, we always get passes at that, you know what I mean, and it really is on us like how much we wanna be involved or not and I always want to be as involved as possible and it’s been amazing. I mean I think what happens is - when you do it so many times, like I was so obsessed with it on the Civil War I would even go up to the Russos and even if like the camera wasn’t on me, I’d still wanna do it. You know what I’m saying? Like at one time I like pulled my back. Because you can’t - like, if you’re doing that sequence like 30 times, or whatever, like, even like, you’re exhausted, You’re, I don’t care, how, what - you know, maybe a super-trained athlete, whatever, like, they’re training for that fight, right, they’re training for that two hours like for months, but we’re going eight hours a day. Like, I think, even some of the stuff like it’s - I’ve always had a good amount of stuff that I was allowed to do, and that for me is super fun because he’s much more hand-to-hand combat. You know, he’s got his arm; like he can’t fly, he’s not throwing hammers and spiderwebs and stuff like, he’s just, it’s much more hand to hand and, and, and it’s because I wanna be in shape to be able to do that. So for the pandemic, I was running - a lot, and then what I did was, um, I had pull-up bar in my apartment and I was literally running up and down stairways and then I was doing 100 - I was doing 100, 200 push-ups a day, 100 pull-ups a day, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats, like I would just do that over and over again. And yeah, that was the only way.”

“Oh God, that scene is like - you know, those are the scenes that when you read a script you’re like, ‘Oh yes, this is gonna be amazing’, like you’re like, ‘oh I love that, that’s amazing, it’s gonna be like the moment’, and then it starts to be like this iceberg ahead, that you’re like slowly going closer and closer to it. It’s like, ‘Oh God that scene, oh God that scene’s coming up’ - and then you just have it marked on your calendar like, ‘two weeks until -.’ You know, and it’s just - and even up until that point, it’s just always - it’s a scary thing to always be thinking about because you know, you have to go to these places and you have to go there - and um, yeah, we did it, we did it a few times and, it was a good day.”

“Oh my God, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, just like thinking about it now, with like the whole Chadwick thing is just so crazy. I’m like - with him I was always like really enamored, because I remember on that Civil War movie we met and, and  um, you know, he had come in and, and he new and he - it was sort of like the introduction of his character and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this guy is gonna, he’s blow everyone away.’ You know what I mean? Like it was - there was such, like a commitment and dedication to everything he was doing; it was just so crazy, and we had a lot of these fight sequences and I remember being terrified of going in those scenes with him, um and, and, and we went for it - like we went - we really went for it. ‘Cos I was like, ‘Okay, he’s really showing up, I gotta, I gotta stand tall, I gotta show up’ you know, and then afterwards, we would just do these little fist bumps, you know like, ‘Cool, we’re good.’, you know, like, and then after we shot, you know I spent some time, a little bit, on the press tours and we would be laughing, and it was really cool, and I just, in my head, I would always hope that there was just gonna be more. And so, it’s just crazy to even wrap my mind around the idea of being in any world without him there, you know? I just can’t even imagine it really in my mind, you know, but obviously, I always felt like, I always - in my little scene, you know in my little scene at the end of Black Panther, I was always like ‘Aah, I’m part of the worl - I’m part of that movie.’ I always - I felt, I felt so good, you know, with that little scene and I, and I just loved working with Ryan Coogler, you know on that, he - it was so cool, ‘cos that was, he directed that scene and I remember being there that day, and, and so I kind of got to work with him a little bit, and, and I just, it was a really cool experience. Like, I really, really liked him as a director. And I loved Fruitvale Station; I loved all of his movies, um, I love Creed, I, I - so, so the idea of working with him again in some capacity is really cool and, and you can bet, I’ve, I’ve definitely raised my hand and I’ve said, ‘Hey man, whatever I can do, I’m in.’, but it’s just, it’s gonna be wild to tackle you know any - any of that going forward - I’ve no idea. I could just keep sending - I could, you know what, I should just send him an email once a week just ‘Wakanda.’ But it’s kind of cool, you know like, I love, I, I, again like, I felt really, like, grateful and proud that I was included even with that little scene, ‘cos sometimes, like you know, like I’ve, I’ve told this story before but I don’t know, I, I love telling it, you know, like I was on this airplane one time, and I was flying home, and, and I remember the stewardess came up to me and she gave me - she just handed me this tiny piece of paper and like walked away. And I was like ‘What?’ So, I was like, I don’t know, maybe it was a number, I’ve no idea what - you know, and, and I open it and it just said ‘Wakanda Forever.’ You know and then I like turn around to look down the aisle and she just goes (makes Wakanda symbol). And I was like, ‘Oh my God, okay’, like but it was - so I know, um, I, I love that, that people remember that Bucky’s a part of that in some way, so, you know hopefully, maybe there’ll be more.” 

[mariaantonnietta]

Okay, the promised is debt.let"s talk about Gintaka moments!!!

I said a long time ago I was gonna do a compilation of Gintaka/Takagin moments. And I will deliver right now! (op skimmed the jp twitter and is excited/can’t wait to see the movie )

Ok, no, this will be mostly my disorganized headcanons, moments where I can see the ship with my shipper googles on, some paralels? Haha, honestly just to show the ship some love!!!

It’s also my perspective on why I love this ship!!

Of course, I'm going to talk about all the series and go back and fort, so there’s going to be spoilers all around, so if you have not seen the manga end, best skip it.

The rest is under the cut, let’s go!!!!!

So, I started shipping  Gintaka/Takagin  after the Shougun Assasination arc, best  strangled friends story I have ever seen.  I like a lot of Gintoki ships, but it became my favourite really fast. Then, looking back, I noticed these haha:

the first meeting in the show (ep 17). I know it was threatening, but watching it again the fireworks exploded over their heads as they met.Isn’t that  a romantic troupe? (and also in this scene makes Takasugi face scarier, haha). And also how Gintoki stopped Takasugi blade, so obvious for point one that they knew each other.(the interactions here are so painful in retrospective 'When his father saw his son's head, imagine the rage he felt?😭')

(and then there’s also , in the extra episode where the yoroyuza go to China, they help a poor dude with his first date with a girl, and Gintoki comments how the first date  should have fireworks, haha, at the time there were some images on pixiv of child Gintoki and child Takasugi seeing the fireworks together, it was so lovely, good headcanon!)

There's the Senbonsakura arc, and Takasugi appearing at the reunion scene looking at the moon, woah (there's also them crossing paths, but that's more dramatic of the ideologies maybe, still this a shipping post so ' them crossing paths there, the athmosphere of fated (rivals) people!!!')

( ‘They both had sad eyes’)

I like how even as they are different their core is the same, even if not these character are so raw together in their feelings

Let's talk about the movies for a moment: in the movie version of the Benizakura arc, Gintoki dreams with Takasugi, and IDK, but for how haunting it is, it also feels intimate, and that makes it hurt most.

About the second movie when we saw it we didn't know what the hell happened to Takasugi, but looking back he's dead by that time....maybe. (why didn't you give us a clear answer at the end sorachi).Okay but for practical purposes of what the cast knows he's dead (maybe...ahhh let's says it's like that) and well, haha, gintoki of the future dying looking at the sunset haha don't think of him daydreaming things.(When I saw the movie I had the impression that takasugi was dead, for both katsura clothes that are not called as a joke, and future gintoki 'the only one that can kill me is me', if takasugi was alive, he wouldn't let gintoki claim that so hypotrically, that's what I believed.)

There's the mini arc of the underseas dragon palace, (I remembered this one because of takasugi 'monster' form) I'm just gonna said that even if I read too much into ot there are some interesting paralels maaaaaybe, this one is a strech.

Talking about far fetched things, you people remember the Love Chorris arc? The one with the virtual girlfriends game? I think I am not the first person to point this out, but if you analyze Gintoki girl:

Gintoki selects her and (accidentally)kills her son.After that, she is bend of killing him in return in revenge. With his son corpse at her back to haunt him too.

She later confesses to him that she knew he wasn't at fault for her sons death, and that she focused on blaming him to be able to handle the pain, that she's grateful of Gintoki for understanding this.

The spirit of her son aproves their relashionship.

Now tell me this doesn't remain you of someone in particular and his relashionship with gintoki. And this is gintoki mind perspective and hopes, and fears.

(Well it probably isn't that deep, its the chorris arc, but still)

The way you can see Sakamoto’ jokes as a friend teasing because he knows they like each other. The fight when they to a red district gaining another lining.

The rajuko arc, when they exchanged blades to save the other newfound friends/family. The fucking red string of blood that they form together.

In the manga there was the famous saying attributted to takasugi historical counterpart :

'I want to kill all crows in the three thousand world, and sleep in with my heart's master'

This if I remember correctly because crows caw mark the morning, and in a brothel you have to leave.

So the meaning is ' I want to kill all crows in three thousand worlds(so that morning never comes) and sleep/stay in (forever) with my heart' master'

(Of course this could refer to shouyo, but it could be about gintoki, they go directly to meet the other)

It's a famous saying used in songs, I believe.

The part when he doesn’t want to see more rain, its of course because seeing gintoki's crying was imprinted in his mind for so long and influenced how he thinks. He is so important to him!!

And of course the final arc, where they are more open to each other,(the strangled friends are so happy to be together again) both Takasugi who finally let go of that 'burn the world down' and of Gintoki that walks besides him. The way Gintoki looks at Takasugi with a soft expression on his eyes. Matako ' I have never seen before Shinsuke sama with those eyes, I couldn't stop them'

The Glorious Days ending, that's when one (me) realises, 'oh ... this two care about each other and want to save the other' and while it isnt surprising for Gin, it was for Takasugi at the time.Rewatch the openings and endings in general, and see Takasugi place in them. IDK, he is usually the last alone waiting under the moon. And it gets me...cant really explain that.

The radio call, how we couldn’t see gintoki's initial reaction as Takasugi talked to him, gintoki even pretending not knowing (painfully bad) he didn’t know the other voice.

And of course the myriad moments in the final arc, Gintoki promply saying he is the one he wants to protect, the death sequence 'maybe we were just born under that kind of (tragic) star'

Gintoki teading takasugi that his parents would cry if they see the delincuent he is bringing home 🤣🤣.

Fuck, in the spin off Takasugi as a student novel, when he and Gintoki meet they can't keep the skit up, they talk directly to each other.

Also about the special episode, there's another...uh this is more of a paralel, and purely a headcanon, but here it goes: the yorozuya meet with kamui while trying to help a woman about her mother setting her up in blind dates, and in one moment she starts mothering both kamui and kagura and they get, well their eyes are animated different in that moment, and then they start listening to her. They were probably remainded of their own mother. And then I realised that I have seen Kamui make those eyes before (I will look for a pic, it's a very distintive shift), when talking to Takasugi. Is in one op too.

Of course the childhood friends dynamic. Regardless of nature, nobdy can deny the deep connection these two have.

(Here's the image from the op, is less obvios in the ep I think...or I'm overthinking, that's more possible)

Here’s Kamui and Kagura’s eyes when tehy get scold by the mother:

(I’m not crazy, they are similar XD Maybe XD)

I remember thinking to myself at the time 'woah, Kamui shows a admiring expression with takasugi somentimes' and now I fully believe is a childlike more like expression because takasugi reminds him of his mother(subconsiously). I can see the resemblance, especially towards the end of the series. As Gintoki and Umibozuo paralel too(both of them act like Kagura's dads) I just....haha parallel things.

There's a hundred things more, I'm sure I'm forgetting some (may add in a reblog after). All their fucking dialogue with each other is so intense. I I just love this ship sooo much

Totally up to talk about this ship if someone wants to!!

[supernatural-jackles]

Owe You One - Part 4

Title: Owe You One - Jefferson’s Starship

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Word Count: 7,067

Warnings: Minor Angst, Sexual Harassment, Self-Loathing, Anxiety, Fluff, Smut, Friends with Benefits

Summary: Dean Winchester has been your best friend and neighbour for the last year. A year of finding comfort in random drop ins and casual conversations, but neither of you know the pasts that the other has. Not fully. Pasts that come back to haunt you, and ruin everything you want in life. Can you find what you’re seeking in a couple of favours and a good time between the sheets or is history doomed to repeat itself?

Owe You One - Masterlist

Squares Filled: Bartender!AU ( @spndeanbingo) FWB Relationship ( @spnfluffbingo)

A/N: Part 4!! I hope y’all enjoy this part!! As always, feedback is greatly appreciated!! Happy reading!!  

 You stirred away at the pot you had on the stove, getting dinner ready for yourself. It was Friday night, and you had just gotten home from work about half an hour ago. You changed into your comfortable pyjamas before deciding to cook yourself a nice dinner. You were going to curl up on the couch for a little while and maybe turn in early. You had nothing extensive planned. Nothing but your PVR and previous episodes of The Walking Dead to catch up on.

 You reached for a bowl in the cupboard next to you, placing it on the counter before pouring your pasta into it. You heard three loud knocks at your door, pulling you from your meal for a moment. You placed it back down on the stove before heading over to the door, opening it up. You rolled your eyes with a smile when you found Dean standing there with a smile playing on his lips. You walked away from the door, letting him walk in without protest.

 “You want something to eat? I made enough pasta for two,” you pointed out. “Four cheese.”

 “Oh fuck yes,” he nodded, taking a seat at your counter. You reached in the cupboard, grabbing another bowl before pouring some into it. You took two forks out of the drawer, bringing Dean’s bowl over first before your own. You hopped on the chair next to him, looking forward to tasting your meal.

 “Thank you for this,” he smiled, taking a forkful.

 “You’re welcome,” you beamed, taking your own bite.

 “So what are you up to tonight?” he asked nonchalantly.

 “Stuff,” you answered smuggly. “What do you want?”

 “How do you know I want something?” he claimed, his voice went up half an octave.

 “Because you didn’t call or text before coming over tonight. You usually do if you just want to hang out for the night. So I’ll ask again, what do you want, Winchester?” you chuckled.

 “Okay, I have a huge favour to ask and seen as how you’re wearing your cute comfy pyjamas, I know you aren’t doing anything tonight. I also know for a damn fact that you would never let any guy see you in those so you’re not getting laid tonight.”

 “Thank you! I get the point,” you scoffed playfully, taking another bite.

 “I need help at the bar tonight. Sammy’s gonna be late and all I’ve got is Benny. You’re the only one that I can trust,” he stated. “I’ll pay you, of course. And whatever tips you make are yours.”

 “So you want me to bartend at Jefferson’s Starship tonight and I get paid?” you chuckled. “Actual money?”

 “What, you think I’m going to pay you in sex again?” he laughed, shaking his head. “‘Cause I can if you want me to. A little touchy touchy-”

 “Shut up, Dean,” you giggled, shoving him a little. “How late do I have to stay?”

 “Just until Sam gets in,” he assured you. “Not all night.”

 “Alright, let me eat. Then I’ll go get changed. You’re lucky I like you,” you side-eyed him.

 “I owe you big time,” he breathed out in relief. “Like huge, sweetheart.”

 “I’ll take you up on it at some point,” you winked. “Really though, you don’t owe me anything. Remember, you helped me out of a very low point. That isn’t easy.”

 “I still owe you a little. You literally never go out to the bar,” he pointed out with a sad smile.

 “You are more than right. Remember that,” you winked. “How was your day anyways?”

 “Eh, it was okay. Pretty busy as usual. I kept to myself at my station. My dad worked on what he needed to do. I fixed up a couple of cars and got all my paperwork done so I don’t have to do any this weekend. Fresh start Monday morning,” he explained to you. “How was your day?”

 “It was okay. Boring as hell, but that’s my job for you,” you shrugged.

 “So you were going to use this time to unwind, huh?” he said sheepishly. You could see the guilt he felt sores across his features. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

 “It’s okay, De. I should probably try to get out more anyways. Sitting at home alone isn’t going to do me any good,” you breathed out.

 “I mean, you’re not entirely wrong. Sometimes alone time is what you need. But in this case, you’re coming out. Not to mention, I own the bar,” he smirked.

 “Yeah yeah,” you tried not to smile.

 You managed to eat your pasta in record time. You figured you’d do the dishes in the morning after your breakfast. You knew Dean had to be there soon, and you didn’t want to leave him or Benny screwed. This was a job for you and you were going to work with professionalism.

 You grabbed something comfortable and presentable to wear to the bar. A pair of dark skinny jeans with a rip in the knee. You pulled on one of your white shirts and threw one of your red flannels over it to keep with the Winchester look. After that, you grabbed your comfortable boots and your bag, heading out the door with Dean by your side.

 Dean opened up your door for you and you slipped inside. There was a part of you that wondered if this was a good idea. After all, he and his brother owned this bar; his family. Last you knew, his family hated you. All but Dean. You didn’t want Sam to walk in and kick you out or worse, yell at you in front of everyone. You didn’t want to ruin their business. This was important to both of them because they started it together. You weren’t going to be the one to come between them. You were simply going to help your friend out and go on your way home. If Dean wanted to join you later, that was fine. But you weren’t supposed to mix business with pleasure.

 Dean parked in his designated spot out the back of the bar. There was a spot for him and a spot for Sam. No one else had access to park back here. You kicked your door open, circling around the car to the front. Dean motioned for you to follow him to the doors around the front of the building.

 The second you walked into the empty bar, you smiled to yourself. This bar wasn’t like any of the bars you had been in and you had been in many of them during your college days. They wanted their place to feel like home in some sense. There was a jukebox in the corner that played only classic rock. Lots of room for people to dance. Enough tables for people to sit. Booths for those who had bigger groups. Couches and chairs set up around the tv. By the actual bar, he had stools set up all around and a tv up on the wall so people could watch from there. He had all his liquor on display and coasters stacked, ready to go. All his glassware was branded with the bar's name, and a cowboy hat. This place was something to be really proud of, that was for certain.

 “Well well, look who it is,” Benny smiled. “I’ll be damned if it isn’t miss Y/N walking in for the first time in forever.”

 “Hi Benny,” you grinned

 “Hiya darlin,” he beamed. “What can I get for you tonight?”

 “I’m working tonight,” you told him, circling around the back of the bar. “Boss needed and extra set of hands.”

 “If you need help with anything, Y/N, just let one of us know. I know you know what you’re doing,” Dean nodded.

 “You’re damn right I do,” you said confidently. You grabbed an apron from the shelf beneath the cash register. You had a notepad, a pen and a cloth in there, ready to get to work. It had been a long time since you had stepped foot behind a bar, but you were sure you were going to snap right back into it pretty quickly. “Let’s do this.”

 It wasn’t long before people flooded into the bar. Some people just getting off work, having a drink to wind down. Others coming in in groups. The three of you worked in a perfect sync with one another. Pouring and mixing drinks the fastest you could get them to the customers in a timely manner. In record time, you had about fifty dollars in tips. The night was just getting started.

 You glanced around the room as soon as the first rush died out. Everyone was distracted in some way. A group of guys watching a game on the couch by the tv. A few women sitting at a table, gossiping about their week and their husbands. Then there was a few loners sitting at the bar, sipping away at a beer or a glass of whiskey. Trying to unwind after the week. You wiped down the counter top.

 “Hey there,” a man greeted you, taking a seat at the counter right in front of you. His smile was wide as he placed his hands on the countertop.

 “What can I get for you?” you asked, taking a deep breath as you tucked your cloth back in your apron.

 “Your phone number for starters,” he smirked, wiggling his eyebrows twice. You wanted to scoff but you were working. You weren’t about to ruin Dean’s business because some guy decided to hit on you. Not to mention, he wasn’t that cute. A man like him would be just like the rest of them. They’d get off and you’d be left finishing yourself off in the shower. You weren’t doing that again.

 “Your drink order, sir?” you corrected him, trying to keep your tone in check.

 “Whiskey neat,” he stated. “And that phone number.”

 “Whiskey it is,” you declared, putting the glass down on the napkin in front of him. You reached for the bottle of whiskey behind you, knowing full well he was staring at your ass. He was treating you like you were easy and that wasn’t okay with you. You weren’t doing that anymore. No more shitty guys.

 “Don’t play hard to get, baby,” he frowned. “I saw you eyeing me the second I walked in here tonight.”

 “Enjoy your drink,” you said, your voice void of all emotions. You walked away from him, taking your cloth once more before heading out to the customers area to begin cleaning up empty glasses and bottles. Dean and Benny were still working behind the counter, serving people. It had slowed down a little more. They still had the odd person come up to them.

 You wiped down every table, gathering all the empties. You snapped back into bartender mode pretty quickly. It was something you had done for years during your college years. Dean ran a really nice bar. Everything was really clean, but you also had a feeling that his brother had something to do with it. You took note of what needed replenishing to bring it out during your next trip. You gathered up what you could, placing it on the bar to move to the back when you had the chance to. You wiped down your last table before heading to the back. You could feel the creepy guy’s eyes on you and that told you to move quicker.

 “Baby c’mere,” he cooed, standing up. Your heart began to pound in your chest. You needed to move quickly.

 “Not interested,” you stated clearly, backing away from him. He was a big guy now that you saw him compared to you. He was tall and had a strong build. His hand made its way down to your ass, tugging you into him against your will. You tried your hardest to shove him off of you, but he barely budged. “Get off of me!”

 “Hey! Hey!” Dean shouted, making his way around the bar. “Hands off of her. Now!”

 “We were just getting to know each other, right baby?” He smirked, tugging you in once more. Hearing him say those words only angered you more.

 You pushed him once more, successfully getting him off of you, but not getting as far as you would have liked. “Get the fuck off of me.”

 Dean stepped between you and the douchebag, getting in his face a little more. You could see it in the way his jaw clenched that he was pissed. When Dean was pissed, no one wanted to be near him.

 “House rules. Respecting others, especially women is the second on that list. Sexual harassment is unacceptable. Get the fuck out of my bar,” he warned him, “I’m not going to ask you again.”

 “Whatever, she’s a cheap piece of ass anyways,” he scoffed, throwing down a bill on the counter before grabbing his jacket, heading to the door.

 “You okay, sweetheart?” Dean asked as he turned to face you. His hand came up to the side of your head.

 “Yeah,” you nodded.

 “You want a drink,” he offered you, smiling softly.

 “No thank you. I’m good,” you smiled before heading around the back of the bar to finish cleaning up. You also knew you’d be safer behind the bar and that was where you wanted to be.

 “You sure, darlin’?” Benny raised his eyebrow. “I can make you a mean drink.”

 “I’m sure. I don’t drink,” you stated, placing the empty bottles in the bin.

 “Since when?” Dean furrowed his brows. “We got drunk together a few months back.”

 “Since whenever,” you shrugged.

 “I feel like there is more behind this then you’re leading on,” Benny side-eyed you with a bit of concern.

 “There is, but we’re dropping this now, okay?” you smiled, heading over to the counter to serve the next customer.

 As you handed the customer their drink, Sam walked into the bar. His hair was a bit of a mess and he looked to be in a bit of a rush. You stiffened a little. After all, Sam had to know all about you now. His mom had to have said something to him. He had always been nice to you, but that was back then. There was a whole other side to you and your family now. Sure, Sam was nice, but he wasn’t going to be happy you were here if he knew anything.

 “Hey,” Dean greeted his brother. “How’d it go?”

 “Good,” he smiled to himself. “Place is picked out and booked. We officially have a date.”

 “Don’t leave me in suspense, Sammy. Wedding date now,” Dean chuckled, wiping down a glass.

 “September 15th,” he grinned widely, reaching his hand up to the back of his head.

 “I’ll save the date,” he nodded with a big smile. “Congratulations, little brother!”

 “Thanks, De,” he shrugged, as if it wasn’t a big deal.

 You stood behind the bar awkwardly, not knowing if you should say something, or go do something else. You didn’t want to be in the way of him. This was his business too. You pulled your cloth back out, and decided to head back out to the floor to wipe down the tables again.  

 “Dean, what is she doing here?” you heard Sam say.

 “She’s helping us out because I asked her to,” Dean stated.

 “Dean, you know-”

 “Sam-”

 “No Dean, if mom or dad was to walk in right now, you’d be in so much shit,” he stated. That was your queue. You weren’t welcomed and you weren’t going to ruin a family business. You had no idea why you even agreed to in the first place. Mary told you that you were never going to be good enough for her family. Why did you think you’d be good enough to work at her son’s bar?

 “Sorry,” you breathed out, as you untied your apron. “I’m- I’m gonna go, Dean. I don’t want to ruin your business or your relationship with your family. You don’t have to pay me for tonight.”

 “Y/N, wait,” Dean called out as you began to walk away.

 “Dean, it’s cool,” you nodded, assuring him it was.

 “No, it’s not cool, Y/N. I invited you here tonight,” Dean declared, walking over to you. “My mom and dad don’t own this bar. Sammy and I do. I’ll tell you again. I don’t care who your mom is or was to my parents. I care about you and who you are to me. If Sammy has a problem with it, then he can stow it for tonight. You are welcome in this bar.” His hands made their way to your arms, holding you in place.

 “Dean, I’m not worth the trouble, okay?” you smiled weakly, pulling the few bills out of your pocket, handing them to him. “This is yours.”

 “No, they are yours. You earned them tonight. All tips are yours,” he stated.

 “Y/N, please stay,” Sam called out.

 “Please, sweetheart,” Dean pleaded, holding his hand out for you to take. “You’re off the clock. Just hang out with us for a little while. You said you needed to get out more.”

 “You want a drink Y/N?” Sam offered, grabbing a clean glass from beneath the counter.

 “Okay,” you nodded. “Water would be great.”

 “W-water?” Sam furrowed his brows.

 “She doesn’t drink,” Benny added in.

 “Ah, okay,” Sam nodded.

 You walked around the bar, taking a seat on the stool behind the bar. Sam placed a glass of water with a few ice cubes on the counter in front of you, giving you a soft smile. You knew he was trying to keep a smile on his face to keep you around for the night. It was forced at best.

 “So, no guy in your life right now, Y/N?” Benny questioned you. “You usually have someone-”

 “Nope, I don’t. Not right now,” you smiled at him, bringing your water up to your lips. Great, even Benny knew you got around, you thought to yourself.

 “You want someone? ‘Cause you know, I’m single and you’re-”

 “Benny, knock it off,” Dean warned him. “She doesn’t need another guy hitting on her tonight. House rules.”

 “What? ‘M I not good enough for you,” he teased playfully before serving the next customer.

 “You’re not my type,” you giggled. “My track record states that I only go for dicks. You’re a nice guy.”

 “So Y/N, I gotta ask,” Sam started, taking another stool, sitting close by. “I know you grew up with your mom-”

 “Sam,” Dean called out, his voice laced with a bit of anger.

 “It’s okay Dean,” you assured him.

 “Was it just you and your mom or was your dad ever around?” he questioned. You knew he was curious, and he didn’t seem to want to cause any harm to you. It was a simple question. Nothing you hadn’t been asked a hundred times before.

 “No. It was just me and my mom. I never knew my dad, in fact, I’ve never met him or know his name for that matter. My mom always told me he didn’t want anything to do with me and that was why he wasn’t around. He didn’t want me and that’s why it was the two of us. I have no idea who my dad is, or if he’s even alive at this point. I never knew anything about him,” you shared with him.

 “Were you ever curious?” Dean added in, stepping closer to you and Sam.

 “Yeah, of course I was. I grew up without a dad. The kids at school were terrible to me because I didn’t have one,” you began. “I mean, look at me now. I’m a mess ninety five percent of the time. I just wish my mom would’ve been straight with me. But at the same time, my mom slept around a lot. She had a new boyfriend every month. I doubt she even knew who my dad was.”

 “Do you think she was hiding it from you?” Sam brought up.

 “In some ways, yeah. I asked her when I was eighteen, before I left for college and she said there was no point. My dad was probably dead.”

 “If you ever wanted to find out more, Y/N, I’m sure I could do a little digging for you,” Sam offered you. It was a kind gesture but it wasn’t worth it.

 “I’m not worth that kind of trouble, Sam. I don’t want to cause any more issues with your family than I already have.”

 “Your mom’s issues weren’t your fault, sweetheart,” Dean reminded you.

 “Dean’s right, Y/N. What your mom did in the past has nothing to do with you. It bugs the hell out of my mom because you look like her. It’s still wrong that she treated you the way she did. You’re nothing like your mom,” Sam said with a sad smile. It was really nice to hear those words coming from Sam. Especially now that you were here. You didn’t want him to hate you like his family did.

 “Okay,” you breathed out. “I’m giving you the okay to take a look. It can’t hurt to find out my family history. And I’m curious as to what my mom hid from me all my life. But I don’t want to make any contact if we find out who it is.” In reality, it was probably good to find out in case you had a family history of cancer or something like that. It was too late now to ever have a father daughter relationship like you dreamed about when you were ten.

 “Deal. You are always welcome to change your mind later on, okay?”

 “Thank you,” you smiled softly at him. “Means a lot to me that you want to do this.”

 “Well well, look who decided to show up for work,” Dean greeted the two people as they walked in.

 “I thought you were short tonight, De?” you furrowed your brows.

 “Chuck and Cas work later so we can go home at a decent hour,” he told you. Both of them walked behind the bar, settling their stuff underneath the cash.

 “Hey,” a man with curly-ish hair greeted you. “I’m Chuck.”

 “Y/N,” you waved at him.

 “So uh, how you doin’?” he wiggled his eyebrows.

 “Chuck,” Dean warned him, shaking his head.

 “Oh shit, sorry. Is she your-”

 “No she’s not my girlfriend. She’s my best friend,” he stated, earning a chuckle from both you and Sam. Dean was very protective over you, and you actually kind of liked that he was.

 “Oh god, that’s worse,” he breathed out sheepishly. “It was very nice to meet you, Y/N.”

 “You ready to head out, Y/N?” Dean offered with a smile.

 “God, yes please!” you beamed, hopping off your stool.

 “I’ll grab your number from Dean,” Sam nodded, giving you a wink. Dean grabbed his jacket as you circled around the bar for the last time. You couldn’t wait to go home and change into your pyjamas. You couldn’t wait to be in the privacy of your apartment so you could finally unwind for the night.

 Dean followed behind you as you lead the way to the impala. It was just after eleven when you looked at the clock in the impala as Dean started her up. It was a long night, and some parts of it sucked, but for the most part, you were glad you did it with Dean there. His friends were also nice people to be around so that certainly helped.

 “You did good tonight,” he smiled at you as he turned out of the parking lot.

 “What can I say, I’m an ex bartender,” you chuckled. “Thanks for asking me to come out tonight.”

 “You’re welcome,” he nodded.

 “If you’re up for it, you wanna hang out at my place for a bit?” you asked him. “Only if you want to.”

 “Yeah, I’d love to,” he agreed.

 It was almost eleven thirty by the time you arrived at your front door with the keys in your hand. Dean stood right behind you, keeping a close distance. You figured after that creepy guy at the bar tonight, he was keeping you close in case something was to happen. You really did enjoy how protective he was of you. He had been ever since that day the two of you made up. It was nice to have someone want to keep you safe from harms way.

 You threw your keys on the counter as soon as you walked in. Dean locked the door behind him and kicked off his shoes on the front mat. You leaped onto the couch, flopping down on your back, earning a laugh from your best friend.

 “Long night, huh?” he said as he sat down next to you.

 “Very! I love being hit on by creepy guys. It’s my favourite,” you joked, moving up to a sitting position to give him more room on the couch. Your couch was big enough for two people to sleep on, but Dean just had to sit close to you.

 “You used to enjoy guys like that,” he teased you.

 “Eh, I wouldn’t say I enjoyed them. I prefer guys with a little more respect. Not guys that grope my ass in a crowded bar while I’m working,” you breathed out. “I don’t know. Lately I haven’t been interested.”

 “In what?” he cocked his head to the side, looking over at you.

 “Dating. Men in general,” you shrugged, leaning against the arm of the couch. “Too much to focus on and I’m a mess most days.”

 “Not even sex for you?” he questioned.

 “Eh,” you smirked. “I’ve got my own ways of handling things in that department. It’s not like any of the guys I slept with before knew what they were doing. I’m just not wasting my time.”

 “Good,” he grinned. “You deserve better than that.”

 “What about you, Winchester? You’re nearly as bad as I am for taking random people home,” you pointed out.

 “Not as of recently,” he confessed, looking down at his hands. “Part of it is how busy I’ve been. No one has really caught my eye. Everyone these days are dating, and settling down. After Cassie, I don’t really want to date right now. Especially since she left things open for when she gets back.”

 “I don’t blame you,” you nodded. “Would you get back together with her if she were to show up at your door right now?”

 “Deep question there, sweetheart,” he chuckled. “I don’t know. I haven’t heard from her since we broke up. Not even an email. If she were to knock on my door, I don’t think I could just settle back in like nothing happened.”

 “That’s understandable,” you nodded. “At least you’ve moved on a little. We slept together.”

 “You’re the last person I slept with,” he admitted.

 “You’re my last too,” you nodded. “We’re doing awesome. Although, I certainly can’t complain. You were damn good. You kept up your end of the bargain beautifully.”

 “Well, technically I owe you one for tonight,” he joked with a smirk. “I know how to drive a good bargain.”

 “I’m down if you are,” you wiggled your eyebrows with a soft smile.

 “Actually?” he cocked his eyebrow.

 “What’s the harm?” you shrugged. “Not like we haven’t before.”

 “I’m definitely in if you are,” he nodded. “No pressure at all. Only if you want to.”

 “You’re too nice to me, you know that?” you smiled at him as you moved over. You threw your leg over his legs, settling down over his lap. His hands instantly reached for your waist as his eyes went wide.

 “I wouldn’t say nice,” he breathed out. “I just care ‘bout you is all.”

 “Well, thank you. I really appreciate that you care,” you smiled. “I care ‘bout you too.”

 “Alright, this is getting too chick flicky for my liking,” he stated, leaning forward. He captured your lips with his in a soft, heated kiss that had you instantly craving more. You wrapped your arms around his shoulders tugging yourself closer to him as your tongue slipped over his bottom lip.

 His hands reached beneath your flannel, pushing the material over your shoulders in record time. You had a feeling this was going to happen fast. It was late after all, and you both had been working since nine this morning. It was going to be a quickie at best and that was more than okay with you. A quick fix to make you both feel good and that would be enough to put you to sleep right away.

 “You’re sure about this?” Dean asked you, pulling away a little.

 “Yes, more than sure,” you breathed out, pushing his flannel over his shoulders. “No foreplay this time.”

 “Got it,” he nodded. “Just a quickie?”

 “Quickie then bed,” you smile at him.

 “Roger that,” he agreed, tugging the hem of your shirt up your body, throwing it to the floor. You did the exact same to his, tearing it off of him as quickly as you could. He bucked his hips up to yours, and you could feel the bulge of him already. The thought of having him once more sent heat pooling in your core.

 You climbed off of his lap, toying with the button on your jeans before shoving them down your legs along with your panties. Dean unbuckled his belt, making quick work of removing his jeans and boxers, pushing them down his legs. His hard cock standing proud between his legs. Fuck, was he perfect.

 “Condom?” you asked him.

 “Wallet,” he nodded, reaching down to his jeans, pulling out the leather pouch. He opened it up, taking the foil packet from his wallet. You stepped forward, straddling him as he opened the packet with his teeth, taking the rubber out. You watched as he took his cock in his hand, rolling the condom down over himself. You reached behind your back, removing the final article of clothing from your body to reveal yourself to him once more.

 “You’re beautiful, you know that?” he smiled softly at you.

 “Dean,” you grinned, shaking your head.

 “You are,” he shrugged. “I like that I’m the one you went home with tonight after all the guys that hit on you.”

 “Thank you,” you half smiled. “You’re sexy as hell.”

 “Hell doesn’t sound all that sexy,” he teased you.

 “Shut up, Winchester,” you giggled. “Do you want me to fuck you or not?”

 “Please,” he chuckled.

 “Then ask me nicely,” you played, wanting to test him just a little.

 “Y/N, will you please let me put my dick inside you?” he let out a laugh, not able to keep a straight face through the entire sentence, making you laugh along with him.

 “I can’t believe you actually asked,” you cackled.

 “Shut up,” he shook his head, trying not to laugh more than he already had. “The things I do for you.”

 “Hey, the way to a girl’s heart is through humor, Winchester,” you pointed out.

 “Yeah yeah,” he scoffed. “Alright, I’m going to touch you now. Make sure you’re ready for me.”

 “By all means,” you pulled your bottom lip between your teeth. His right hand came down between your legs, his middle finger brushing through your folds to see if you were ready enough for him. You knew you were more than ready to take him. The mere sight of him had you ready to go. The kissing certainly helped you get there too. He was a damn good kisser.

 “Fuck, sweetheart,” he whispered. “You’re sure?”

 “Yes,” you nodded. “You’re sure?”

 “I am,” he agreed. “Whenever you’re ready.”

 You balanced yourself on his shoulders, moving up his body to get ready. You reached one of your hands down, taking his cock before lining it up with your entrance. Your eyes met with his as you positioned the tip in place. He nodded his head, not daring to break the eye contact you held. You let yourself sync down on him, slow and steady. His eyes fluttered shut as you surrounded him in your heat.

 “Fuck, Y/N,” he breathed out as he bottomed out inside you. You could feel him twitching a little as your walls grew accustomed to him. He finally opened his eyes, meeting yours as a smile played on his lips. He slipped his hands around your back, ready to help you move on him.

 “You feel amazing, De,” you told him, leaning forward, pressing your forehead to his.

 You made yourself more comfortable before beginning to move on him. He repositioned himself beneath you, making it easier for you to ride him, and for him to meet you halfway. As you sank down on him, he thrusted upwards. His grip was tight on you, keeping you close to him. He felt amazing inside of you. Hell, almost better than he did the first time. From this angle, his cock brushed over all the sensitive spots, getting you there a little bit faster than you were expecting him to.

 His lips trailed on your neck, making your fingers curl in his shoulders. Your walls fluttered around him at the sensation. You brought your hand up to his hair, carding through his soft locks as you continued to bounce on him.

 “Shit Dean,” you cried out.

 “Feels so good,” he muttered, pulling away from your neck. “So close.”

 “Faster,” you urged him on.

 His hands slipped down to your ass, pulling you closer to him. He shifted quickly, your back hitting the couch as he fit between your legs. He snapped his hips against yours, picking up the pace to get you both there. One of his hands reached between your bodies, toying with your clit to heighten your pleasure.

 “Dean, Dean, Dean,” you moaned. Your grip tightened around his shoulders, desperate to grab onto something to keep you grounded. You were panting profusely. You felt the tightness growing in your abdomen. You were so damn close.

 “Come for me, sweetheart,” he urged you on. “Let me feel you.”

 Your walls came crashing down around him as you let out a wanton moan. Your eyes fluttered shut as you threw your head back, letting the pleasure course it’s way through your body. Your fingers curled into his back, trying to hold onto something to keep you from floating away. Your vision went white and your body began to shake just enough for you to notice.

 “Atta girl,” he encouraged you as he bucked his hips into yours. You knew he was damn close to the edge. He just needed that final push.

 “Feels so good, De,” you whispered, trailing your shaky hand up into his hair. “Come for me, Dean.”

 “Shit-” he growled, picking up his pace just a little more. He gave three hard thrusts before his cock twitched. His seed filling the condom before he collapsed on top of you, letting out a breath.

 Your hand carded through his hair, playing with his soft locks as you both came down from your highs. You turned your head, looking at the time on the clock above your tv. It was just after twelve fifteen. You knew you had to get up and get ready for bed.  

 “I just realized we did that with the curtains open,” you giggled, glancing over at the big open window.

 “Well shit,” he let out a laugh. “I hope they enjoyed the show.”

 “We should get up,” you told him. “Get ready for bed.”

 “Yeah,” he breathed out, shifting himself up. He reached down, grabbing the base of his cock to remove himself with care.

 You were the first one off the couch, leaving your clothes on the floor. You headed into your bedroom, going straight to the bathroom. Dean wasn’t far behind you, throwing the used condom into the trash in your bathroom.

 “Uh, you’re welcome to stay if you want to,” you offered him. “Or you can go, whichever you want to do.”

 “Whichever you’re more comfortable with. I don’t want to overstep,” he stated, taking a step back.

 “We literally just had sex,” you reminded him. “I don’t know what would even be considered overstepping at this point.”

 “True,” he chuckled.

 “Well, if you’d like to stay, there is an extra toothbrush in my drawer and boxers in the top drawer in my bedroom,” you told him with a soft smile. “I’m going to shower to get the smell of sex and alcohol off of me. If you want to do the same, you know where the towels are.”

 “Alright,” he nodded, turning towards the shower. You watched as he turned the nozzle, setting it on hot. “You shower first and I’ll clean up out there.

 Dean was out of the bathroom, giving you a bit of privacy. You shut the door a little, giving yourself the comfort of being alone to do what you needed to do. You went to the bathroom before slipping into the shower.

 The water was the perfect temperature for you to clean yourself up. You were just going to have a quick shower to wash your body. You could wash your hair in the morning. You just wanted to feel clean. You had the feeling Dean was staying with you tonight, and you weren’t against it persay. You didn’t want him getting the wrong idea. You weren’t looking for a relationship. You hoped it was just sex for him. That you could handle with ease. You didn’t want to do the whole ‘feelings’ thing. Not with your best friend. Sleepovers were normal for friends. Two friends could have sex without it being weird. There was nothing wrong with casual sex.

 You washed your body quickly. You could feel yourself getting more and more tired the more you stood under the stream. You just wanted to get out, brush your teeth and head to bed. Nothing more.

 The water shut off and you stepped out onto the mat you had set out. You wrapped your towel around yourself, making sure it was tight. The mirror was all steamy, and you could barely see. Not that it was going to stop you from brushing your teeth.

 “Dean, you’re good,” you called out, reaching for your toothbrush. The bathroom door opened, revealing Dean in his boxers and nothing else. He was quiet as he went about, gathering what he needed to shower. You tried your hardest to keep your eyes off of him while he moved around.

 He hopped in the shower as soon as you finished brushing your teeth. The mirror was just starting to clear when you turned away, giving Dean the privacy he deserved. You noticed as soon as you were in your bedroom that Dean had thrown your clothes in the laundry hamper. His clothes were set on the chair in the corner of your room, folded nicely.

 You grabbed the first pair of panties from your drawer, and an oversized shirt to wear to bed. You could feel yourself starting to overthink this. You didn’t want anything to change between you and Dean. You didn’t see him as anything other than your best friend. You didn’t want to date him. You didn’t want a boyfriend or a serious relationship for that matter. You didn’t want him to get the wrong impression.

 You got dressed quickly, throwing the comforter back, slipping beneath the sheets. You heard the water turn off, which meant it was only a matter of time before he was joining you in bed. You lay on your back, adjusting the covers over your chest.

 Dean emerged from the bathroom in a pair of clean boxers, shutting the light out. He circled around the bed, following the same steps. He joined you in the bed, resting on his back, looking up at the ceiling.

 “You tired?” he asked you.

 “Now that the lights are out, not really,” you chuckled. “You?”

 “No not really,” he let out a laugh. “That was fun.”

 “It was. And I’m not usually for being on top,” you admitted with a half smile.

 “Why this time?” he questioned, turning his head to look your direction.

 “I don’t know. I guess I feel a little more comfortable around you. I’m not as nervous about some things, like the way I look for example,” you confessed.

 “You’re beautiful,” he said with a laugh. “Hell, I wouldn’t mind doing it again.”

 “What, like that?”

 “That. And sex in general,” he shrugged. “I’ve got what is probably not a good idea. But you said that you’re not looking to date anyone. I’m not ready to date anyone. We’re best friends and speaking from previous experiences one and two, sex is great between us. You’re comfortable with me, and I’m comfortable with you. Why don’t we continue sleeping together? You know, get each other off, try some new things?”

 “Like a friends with benefits kind of thing?” you inquired, furrowing your brows.

 “Yeah I guess so,” he breathed out.

 “How is that going to work, Dean?” you turned to face him. “It literally never works. There are too many rules, and someone always gets hurt in the end.”

 “Not if we don’t let it,” he reminded you.

 “Fair point. If we’re going this, and that’s a big if, Dean. I don’t want stupid rules and shit, okay? Friends who have sex, try new things; whatever. Nothing about our friendship changes,” you declared.

 “Done deal. I can agree to those terms,” he nodded.

 “Good. I’m all for sex, but as soon as something goes sideways, of gets complicated, I’m out, okay?” you breathed out.

 “More than okay,” he smiled at you. “Now, are you going to deny me after sex cuddling?”

 “We had sex like half an hour ago,” you scoffed playfully.

 “Friends are allowed to cuddle, you know,” he reminded you. “It’s not going to hurt you.”

 “Fine,” you shook your head. “You’re big spoon though.”

 “Turn around then,” he smirked.

 You turned over, trying to make yourself comfortable on your side of the bed. Dean slipped his arm around your middle, his chest pressing against your back. You let yourself melt into him, feeling safe in his hold. You knew for a fact that he was going to keep the nightmares away tonight.  

 Maybe after sex cuddling wasn’t so bad after all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Part 5 coming Tuesday!

Did you like it? What was your favourite part? Any theories? Please share your thoughts with me via reblog, reply or send me an ask! Nothing is stupid! I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! Your response is the ONLY thing keeping me sharing this story!

Dean Babes

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Owe You One

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[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

Hi, I would like to hear more about a mystery inc. buzzfeed unsolved au

you really want me to do headcanons for scooby mcfucking doo now??? fine

okay so it’s entirely Shaggy’s fault

but not on PURPOSE. He didn’t think anyone would take him seriously. He’s still not down for all this ghost hunting shit

the Gang(tm) was in the middle of their weekly routine (watching Ghost Adventurers and eating pot brownies in Daphne’s basement) and Shaggy, who was like, Far Out Man by this point, made some off hand comment that they’d be way better at ghost hunting than Zak fucking Baggins (whom he hates for legitimately no clear reason, likely stemming from a hallucination during a bad trip, but his friends find the unexplained grudge from the normally chill Shaggy hilarious and that’s why they always watch the show lmao)

anyway. he was JOKING

but when he wakes up the next morning, Fred has already created a youtube channel, contacted three different local haunted locations, and is using Daphne’s credit card to buy a shit load of equipment. alrighty.

 Daphne is All Fucking In for this idea, because she secretly never grew out of her middle school witchy girl phase, and she wants some damn validation. She’s already running a marketing campaign online and starting up a merch store. Daph. Daph it’s 8:30 in the morning. Daphne Babe I made the joke like two hours ago,

but she won’t be stopped

Scooby Doo himself abso-fucking-lutely has a legendary shitpost twitter and nobody but the gang knows an Actual Dog is running it but anyway Daphne figures out his password and starts promoting their ghost hunting show there ‘first episode dropping in a week!!!’ and it gets millions of retweets lmao

Shaggy dedicates all morning to trying to talk the two of them out of this

and when Velma finally wakes up she’s like are you guys,,,,, insane,

“Please don’t make me be the type of person who agrees with Shaggy”

at one point she was like ‘Well maybe you two can go be stupid together, this doesn’t really need to be a group thing’ but Fred and Daphne just went 🥺🥺 and her and Shaggy were like ‘Goddammit’ 

So they agree,

and by like the next damn day they’re in a decrepit building. It’s really gross. Shaggy’s desperately calling the vet to make sure Scoob is up to date on his shots gross. There’s an ominous thunderstorm. Very mood appropriate right

they’d spent the afternoon filming the bits where they learned the history of the location, because Daphne is a fast working journalist thanks, and the boys are all sufficiently spooked but Velma’s just like ‘why do I put up with all of you’ lmao

so they’re doing their walkthrough, they’ve got a mix of nice cameras and shitty shaky phone cameras, there’s a go-pro on Scobby’s head, and every single noise Velma refutes. Every single shadow she debunks. Every cold wind she hand waves away

there’s one point where Daphne is like ‘Velma honey you just need to open your mind’ and Velma is like ‘if ghosts are actually real than may God smite me where I stand’ and almost immediately the window next to her gets hit by a lightning strike and she just calmly looks up and deadpans ‘You missed’ 

during their solo walks Shaggy and Scoob come face to face with a full bodied apparition that chases them out of the house and when they’re reviewing the footage later Velma’s insisting it’s Fred in a cheap costume being a dick and Shaggy’s insisting that Fred has never successfully done anything in his life, why would he start now? And Fred is standing behind them looking offended and Daphne’s cackling off screen and anyway the first episode is a FUCKING HIT

even taking Scooby’s twitter audience into account they weren’t expecting this kind of a response 

but everyone’s obsessed with their group dynamic and how well the video managed to shift from comedy to horror so everyone’s hooked

they rush out a second episode that’s just as wild as the first

Fred, scared from seeing the footage of a legit ghost chasing Shaggy and Scoob, turns up with nun-chucks ‘‘dipped in holy water’‘ and whacks himself in the face with them while trying to show off. Daphne thinks the reported ghost looks cute in the pictures she dug up and starts getting flirty during the evp session. Fred has a great idea that they can bait the ghosts using costumes and Shaggy’s like ‘that’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said’ and then we hardcut to Shaggy and Scooby looking like this:

Scooby: “Rye rook rike rah dick”

Velma’s still shredding everything like she Won’t believe they even get an evp that says ‘can the chick in the glasses shut up’ ksjddfskjh

look I know traditionally mystery inc unmasks the ghosts and everything but I feel like they wouldn’t be able to post that online with their following??? I feel like that might mess up some criminal trials??? so we’re just going with the early 2000′s ghosts are real angle here, deal with it 

one time Velma says something particularly mean about the ghost’s previous life and they almost immediately pick up crying on the spirit box and Fred’s like ‘You hurt her feelings :/, tell the ghost you’re sorry Velma’ and she’s like no????? that’s clearly just a cat?? and then a rock almost hits her head but she insists it was because Scooby must’ve bumped into a shelf 

 some running gags for their fans include:

Obsessing over how Scooby can talk. Almost every Q&A video they get a question that’s just like ‘how the FUCK is the dog doing that please’ and the gang is always just like ‘What do you mean?’ and then Scooby just goes ‘Reah, rwhat ro rou mean?’ and then they just move onto the next question sdkjsdf

Velma and Shaggy making the hotdogga specifically to piss off Daphne, only instead of hotdogs it’s scooby snacks

 Daphne implying in one episode that she did, in fact, manage to successfully fuck a ghost, but she chose to exclude the footage to preserve modesty 

‘spot how many joints you can see in this episode’ 

 “Shaggy Rogers Buy A New Shirt Challenge” 

Velma once referred to Fred as the ‘communal sugar baby’ and no one is capable of moving on from that statement

one episode where Shaggy went on a five minute rant, uninterrupted, about how he could totally kick Zak Baggin’s ass. Daphne slowly pans in on his twiggy arms the more heated he gets. Zak Baggin’s retweeted the video without comment.

before episodes drop they always put up polls that are like ‘how do you think Fred’s plan will backfire this week?’ lmao

Velma’s glasses falling off right before a full bodied apparition appears before the rest of the group and since she didn’t see anything she thinks they’re talking bullshit so for like a month everyone was flooding her social media just begging her to buy some contacts

bets on what absolutely impractical but killer outfit Daphne will be wearing to a condemned building each episode 

okay I’m sorry I love this but I’m getting tired right now but anyway basically the entire dynamic of this show is:

Fred

Scooby

Daphne 

Shaggy

and Velma

and it’s very iconic I love this idea lmao

[mrs-dynamight]

Be Nice To Me 5

Part 4.

*************************************************

Pairing: Katsuki Bakugou x fem!Reader, Denki Kaminari x fem!Reader

Warnings: Eventual mature content, angst, hurt/comfort, love triangle, the reader is lowkey toxic, everything will be adressed in every episode (:

Chapter warning: Swearing, steamy make out session (borderline porn but not really), mentions of other couples form 1A

Chapter: 5/?

Synopsis: You're in love with your best friend Bakugou, and you're cofessing to him but things get a lot more complicated when Denki starts to treat you different *wink wink*

Word count: 3.9k

Author's note: This is sooo long, but I loved writing it, I deeply suggest you listen to the song of the title (here). I'm honestly living my coming-of-age indie kid fantasy with this chapter, as always any suggestion is welcomed.

Chapter 5 First Day of my Life- Bright Eyes

Thank to every single Deity that my weekend was packed with internship work so I didn’t have a minute to think about the emotions bubbling up in my heart and my mind, I came to my room exhausted and directly to sleep.

I didn’t talk to any of my friends that weekend, I had a couple of texts from the groupchats, in one of them there were unresolved questions about my date with Katsuki, and on the other one were the flashes for the Fridays gig and good luck wishes to Bakugo who was going to leave the morning after the show, so they planned a goodbye party in the dorms after the gig, Aizawa surprisingly agreed but under any circumstances we were allowed to having alcohol or any other illicit activity inside the UA facilities, not like that could’ve stopped my favourite trio of dumbasses, Mina, Denki and Sero were already planning on smuggle some liquor to the dorms, that was going to be one epic night.

Monday morning finally came, and as much I would love to just spend the day in my bed sleeping and watching Tiktok I needed education, my muscles were sore of the whole weekend roaming the city with Mirko, who seemed unable to getting tired, but I stilled reunited the forces to get dressed, brush my teeth and tried to look like a decent human being, emphasis in the tried part.

As I climbed down the stairs to the common room for a bite of whatever was in the fridge, I saw a beautiful ash blonde guy drinking his usual morning juice with protein powder.

-Morning Draw, you look like shit-

-Well you look handsome as ever ‘Tsuki, thanks for the kind words of the day, you know how to make a woman start the week in the best way possible- I replied while heading to the kitchen

-But seriously what is that Bunny forcing you to do on weekends? Crack? -

I didn’t reply but instead I just blowed him a kiss and start munching on a toast with excessive amount of jam, Tsuyu and Ochako were eating cereal next to Deku, the three of them saw my whole interaction with Katsuki with those weird eyes that just screamed “marry him already”, I told them I had to talk to them, and they all agreed that lunch time with Tenya and Shoto were the gossip time of choice, I waited for the girls to finish eating and we headed class.

------------------------------------

-YOU TWO FINALLY KISSED?!?- Ochako screamed with excitement

-Is he a good kisser? - Asked Deku pulling out his notebook in the “Kachaan” section

-How’s that relevant to the hero notebook? – I asked Deku

-Wait, isn’t he going to another country on Saturday? –

-Well yes Tenya, that’s the other thing I wanted to talk you guys about-

Then I started to explain the whole predicament of waiting for him and his words about that.

-Wow did he really said that having a girlfriend would be a distraction? - said Tsuyu with a concerned look on her face

I didn’t really thought about that harsh phrase, but it was Bakugo, right? He always says things that hurt other people’s feelings, that’s just him

-He sounded honest, but he shouldn’t have hurt your feelings like that-

-It didn’t hurt my feelings, Shoto, I’m used to him saying things like that all the time-

-That can’t be good Y/N, you can’t just get used to people hurting you, especially if you want to have a relationship, and a long-distance one, where things usually get a little tougher- Said Ochako

-I would consider wait for him to return Y/N, so that way you can both be clear about what you expect for each other- Deku said hiding his face in the Katsudon plate in front of him

I wanted to talk to them about what happened with Denki, but I was afraid they just said that I was overthinking, we’ve always been very close friends; but so were they, why was I so reluctant to talk about me and Denki? Maybe saying it out loud could somehow make it more real.

We finished our lunch and headed to class, the rest of the day went pretty neutral, as well as the rest of the week, but the thought of Bakugo leaving haunted me, he didn’t said or did anything special, we didn’t talked about our kiss or our lovely words, it was like it didn’t happen at all, we came back to being just friends. Denki was purposely avoiding me, I could notice it, anytime I wanted to talk to him he just made up some excuse and leave quickly, the rest of the Bakusquad was busy with the whole party preparations and the Dekusquad was as lovely as always, they told me a million times in that week that they will be there for me no matter what I choose to do; as for me, I was just as confused as Monday morning.

I didn’t wanna go to the party, or the gig, I just wanted to go to my room, listen to sad music, and feel pity for myself until I ceased to exist, but it was definitely off limits, I promised Denki I would go with him to the soundcheck, there was only this last one class, but I wasn’t really in the mood for maths, so I decided the best for me was head back to the dorms and stop thinking so much about everything, missing a class wouldn’t kill me.

When my life crumbles down there is only one thing in the whole world that could make me feel better, and that is loud music, so there I was, headphones to the max, airplane mode on, eyes closed and mouthing every word like a prayer, I felt like every lyric was washing away my worries and doubts, reassuring me that everything was (not) okay, I was so concentrated in my music I didn’t heard the knocking on my door, and didn’t heard a certain blonde calling my name, it was until I felt a big hand in my shoulder that I realized that Bakugo wasn’t in class either, but in my dorm room, with a worried face.

-Fucking dumbass, why aren’t you in class? You’re going to fail math, again-

-I wasn’t feeling like going to class- I said with a bit of guilt, it probably sounded like a lame ass excuse, but at least it was the truth

-Not feeling like going to class? What the fuck do you think this is, a game? Math is your worst subject and if you fail I won’t be here to tutoring you, you can’t fail-

He was worried, I could tell, he just turned every emotion in pure acidic rage, not like knowing this would make his words hurt less, I didn’t want to admit that the thought of being far from him made my heart ache and my eyes water, and it didn’t help the lack of contact of the week, I was looking forward to another one of his tender kisses, or any sign that what happened last Friday was real

-I’m hurt Katsuki, a week ago it seemed like you wanted to be with me, despite everything and this past days you were acting like nothing happened, I don’t know what to think or what to do, I don’t know what's going on with you, how are you feeling, you don’t say anything, you don’t do anything, you just hide your feelings away in your cocoon of rage-

-See, that is exactly why I didn’t want to kiss you in the first place, I knew it would only lead to problems, that’s the reason I didn’t want to tell you I liked you before going away, I knew you would react like this, I told you the truth, I can’t be your Boyfriend, I���m sorry if that hurts your feelings-

And surprisingly I found myself inside his big arms in a tight hug, his face hiding in the crook of my neck, I put my arms around his slim waist and we just stayed there for a solid ten minutes before breaking the contact.

-I don’t want this to hurt you Y/N, I can’t be with you right now, I can’t give you what you need, and as I told you the other night, I don’t want you wasting your time waiting for me-

-I don’t wanna let you go ‘Tsuki- I said with tears in my eyes

-You won’t, think it like this, if this is meant to be, and I know it is, when we see each other again, in a better place, in a better time, it will happen. I don’t know where or when, but I promise you we will be together, but please don’t throw your life away waiting for me-

- That sounded as if we were breaking up-

-We aren’t, this is only the beginning, I promise-

I was being selfish, it was obvious that this was also hurting him, he was being mature and caring, thinking about what was good for the both of us, before the things we wanted, maybe he was right, this was meant to be, just not right now, right person wrong time troupe right, but with a happy ending, right?

That was one of the most bittersweets moments in my life, I was happy to know that Bakugo thought about us as endgame, just like I did, we were still young, we had plenty of time, all the time in the world, I shouldn’t have worried about his feelings, he told me I should never doubt that he liked me, and I was willing to make that compromise.

-Let’s have a good time tonight, ‘Tsuki, for what I know, tomorrow you could be kissing some European woman and forgetting our promise-

-You get jealous that easy, Draw? Already afraid you’d lose me, huh? - He said with a smirk on his face and getting closer to me

I swallowed with nervousness, but I didn’t break the visual contact

-Aren’t you afraid I fall for another guy in the meanwhile? -

-You’ll have to find someone better than me first, and we both know there isn’t such thing, and besides that, you’re not mine, I don’t owe you, I only own the feelings you have for me, and as long as those exist I’ll do everything to be with you. So, that’s a no, I don’t care about any other guy- He said with his lips softly brushing against mines -But right now, I want to be the only thing in your mind- And saying those words he kissed me.

He wasn’t being gentle like the last time we kissed, there was a hunger, a neediness within his kiss, he wasn’t being rough tho, but I could feel the burning intensity in his movements. He pulled apart and looked into my eyes for any sign of discomfort, but when he met my half lidded gaze filled with love, he slammed his lips against mines one more time, his tongue brushed my lips asking for consent to enter my mouth, to which I responded opening it just enough for him to start moving it, massaging it with my own with a rhythmic pace, his hands travelled down to my hips, it seemed like he wasn’t nervous at all, but I on the contrary was almost shaking, we broke the heated kiss with flushy cheeks and sweaty hands, I looked into his eyes and I could see the lust behind his crimson irises. A million questions started bubbling in my mind, does this means he want to have sex with me? Right here and now? He must have noticed the concerned look in my face because his next words were

-Hey, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, sorry if it was too much-

-It wasn’t, it’s just I’ve never, I mean I haven’t… have you? – I asked with an obvious blush on my cheeks

-Just once, it wasn’t bad, but I figured out it could have been better if it was with someone I loved, like you. We don’t have to do anything tho, I just wanted to kiss you-

A strange relief passed my body, he didn’t want me to give myself to him in this exact moment, and I was glad for it, as much as I loved him I felt like this wasn’t the right moment for it, but I still wanted to do other things with him, I mean, this was his last day in the UA, and my first time making out with somebody, we still had a few of hours before the soundcheck. I lead him to my bed and pushed him into it so he could be sitting.

-Y/N are you sure you want to do this? – He wanted to be sure that there was no pressure in doing anything I didn’t want to

-We don’t have to go all the way in, I just want to make sure you feel loved and have fun on your last day, and besides, we already missed math class- And just as this last words escaped my lips I sat in his lap and started kissing his cheekbones softly, his hands went from his sides to my hips as he started to plant open mouth kisses in my neck, sending a shiver down my spine.

-And what about you? You want to feel loved too? – He said against my ear, nibbing at the lobe, I nodded softly, closing my eyes and giving myself in to the feeling of his strong hands in my body, his raspy voice in my ear and the feeling of his lust between my legs.

Our heated make out session made me forgot everything I had in my mind, I was only focused in Bakugo, I couldn’t even began to explain how loved he was making me feel in that moment.

-I have to go packing, but I really like your lips, see my problem here? – He said with a sigh, after a while -I’m actually not in the mood for a party tonight, I would rather having a good night of sleep-

-You’re so boring ‘Tsuki, you sound like an old man with two divorces who is starting to get bald-

-‘Tch, would you rather seeing me drunk and staying up late and doing dumb shit I’ll regret about when I sober up like the rest of those losers? –

-Yes! Only this one time, before you have to go away, let’s get drunk and watch the sunrise, then I could go on with my life in peace-

- Ugh and being hungover in a 7-hour fly? Really, that is your idea of a last night with me? –

I tried to make the best puppy eyes I could as I just said “pretty please” in the most dramatic way possible.

-UGH fine, but don’t you forget that you owe me something for being a fucking loser in Mario Kart-

-Anything for you ‘Tsuki- I said while planting a kiss on his cheek

With a smirk on his face he told me he would tell me what he wanted right before leaving, and I was okay with that, we said goodbye with one last kiss and he went to his dorm room to finish packing. Then I remembered I had my phone on Airplane mode, as I deactivated it I saw a bunch of unread messages, most of them were from my concerned friends asking if I were okay, I answered in the dekusquad groupchat that everything was fine, and immediately they began asking questions about Bakugo and me being both missing math class, I replied a single smiling emoji and they knew we were together. Denki messaged me about ten minutes ago “Hey Y/N I can’t wait for you to come to the soundcheck with me” followed by a cursed image of someone T-posing on top of a drumset, I couldn’t help but laugh, and I replied with an even more cursed image.

-------------------------------------------------------

I was in Denkis car, Katy Perry blasting through the speakers and Denki and I having a carpool karaoke singing Last Friday Night like our life depended on it, it felt like he hasn’t being avoiding me all week, there we were laughing and having a good time. The soundcheck was actually really funny, Jirou who is usually very quiet was obviously the leader, giving orders here and there, I wasn’t completely alone while the band was getting ready to perform, Momo was an official member of the band but she didn’t continue playing with them, but she never missed one of Jirous’ performances, they were obviously very much in love, I couldn’t help to notice the way she looked at Jirou the whole time, and I wondered if that was the same way I looked at Bakugo, I remembered the words that Tsuyu said to me, does everyone knew I was in love with Denki?...

Shit, my mind pictured Denki when my train of though was about Bakugo; it probably were because I was watching Denki plugging his guitar and waving at me at that exact same moment, or did I really thought of Denki when I was thinking about love? A feel of guilt started to build in my heart, just a few hours ago I was making out with Bakugo, and now I was watching Denki going different directions with cables and amplifiers and I couldn’t help but feel like I was in love with him. Momo probably noticed my worried expression because she asked me if everything was right, I just had to lie and tell her that I was okay when in reality I was panicking, I excused myself and went to the bathroom to splash some cold water in my face like the actresses do in every movie to calm themselves down, and apparently it worked, so with more confidence I walked out of the bathroom. When I came back to the table Momo and I were sharing I noticed that people were starting to arrive, I sat next to Momo again and tried to have a casual conversation about school, training, internships and just normal student stuff when I felt a well-known pair of hands covering my eyes.

-Hi Denki- I said as I chucked

-How did you knew it was me? – He genuinely asked

-How couldn’t I? -

-Hey Kaminari, we’re starting in ten- Said Jirou planting a kiss in her girlfriends’ lips

Bakugo arrived just in that exact same moment, I almost forgot he was also going to perform, I didn’t know how to act with other people around us, I wanted to kiss him, but I also didn’t want Denki to see it, I couldn’t help but feel like an awful person for my last thought.

-Hey Draw, long time no see you- Said Bakugo like his tongue wasn’t on my throat a few hours ago

I flipped him off with a smile and blowed him a kiss and continued talking with Denki about who would win in a fight between a bear and a shark, we were currently discussing how long the bear could hold his breath, I turned my head to look at Bakugo and he was already staring at us with the saddest expression I’ve ever seen, and as he noticed my eyes on him he changed it to his usual annoyed one

-You two are the dumbest persons I know- He said, giving us one of his angry looks

-Guys, we’re up- Said Tokoyami grabbing his guitar pick and heading to the stage

-Break a leg guys! - Said Momo giving Jirou one last good luck kiss

Bakugo winked an eye to me and went to the stage without saying anything, my eyes followed his figure to the stage when a sudden voice in my ear made me jump a little bit

-Keep your eyes on me- Whispered Denki in my ear before planting a kiss on my cheek

They started the show, the powerful voice of Jirou quickly caught everyone’s attention, they gotten better over the years, you could tell they were in their prime, usually my eyes were always fixed in the blonde drummer, but tonight they were mesmerized with Denkis fingers skilfully playing with his guitar chords, pearls of sweat in his forehead, a big smile on his face, and golden eyes all over me, he looked perfect.

Suddenly I began to notice everything the boy did, every time his voice intertwined with Jirous’ for a perfect harmony, every movement looked so natural and… sexy? I didn’t noticed I was holding my breath until I heard Shotos’ voice next to me, trying to be heard over the noise coming from stage

-Sorry we’re late, Tenya got lost-

I heard it, but my mind was somewhere else, it was in Denkis’ Kaminari palm. It was almost an hour of absolute bliss, without a single thought crossing my mind just the image of the boy in front of me. I heard the last song of their setlist and prepared for the usual announcement of the end of the show but instead they all waved and came down from stage, all except one, Denkis’ voice was a little shaky when he spoke on the microphone:

-Hi everybody! Thank you so much for coming today, hope you’re doing alright, now we don’t usually do this, but you’ll see, tonight is a very special night, the last one for a while because we’re going to be drummerless tomorrow morning, sooo anyways, I would like to sing a very special song for a very special someone who is here with us tonight, she’s just everything to me, Y/N this is for you-

I felt like I was on fire, the rush of blood went straight to my cheeks, I was suddenly shaking with nervousness, my palms were sweating and I swore everyone could hear my heartbeat, I didn’t wanted to look away from Denki, but I could feel my friends eyes on me. Was this actually happening? The first chords of Denkis’ acoustic guitar confirmed that it wasn’t a dream, his soft voice drowned every other sound, suddenly everything else went dark, it was only the two of us. I paid attention to the words he was saying, he was pouring his heart out, in front of everyone, for me

"Yours was the first face that I saw

I think I was blind before I met you"

This was a love song; Denki was telling me he loved me with every syllable coming out of his mouth and every note from his guitar

"And so I thought I'd let you know

Yeah, these things take forever, I especially am slow

But I realized that I need you

And I wondered if I could come home"

It was perfect, I couldn’t help but tearing up, nobody has ever done something remotely as romantic as this, he sounded so sincere, so drunk with affection, he was obviously nervous, but his eyes were fixed on me

"I'm glad I didn't die before I met you

But now I don't care, I could go anywhere with you

And I'd probably be happy

So if you wanna be with me

With these things there's no telling

We just have to wait and see

But I'd rather be working for a paycheck

Than waiting to win the lottery.

Besides, maybe this time is different

I mean, I really think you like me."

The last strumming of his guitar vanished in the air, and suddenly everything went back to normal, the people around us, the noises, the shocked faces in my friends faces, and the absence of Bakugo.

************************************************

Wowowow this was an emotional rollercoster, but what can I say I love drama, thanks to @warrior-princess1 for proof-reading this

Taglist: @mikasalt

[almostkoo]

Blue Moon Rising | Min Yoongi

pairings: yoongi x oc

summary: the past week oc’s roommate, yoongi had been acting strange, being short with them and disappearing quickly when one day oc decides to follow yoongi out to the woods to see what’s going on and discovers a big secret

word count: 1.5k

warnings: language, unedited 🤡

author’s note: sixth spooktober story ! one more and we’re all done !! as always i hope you guys enjoy !!

link to my main masterlist :)

Min Yoongi was odd.

He was a lot of things. Sweet, thoughtful and caring. But odd was definitely up there in the defining traits of him as a person.

You’d coined Yoongi as an odd individual since you had met him about a year ago. He’d place an ad looking for a roommate after his previous one had moved out. He was relatively easy to live with. He did all the cleaning per his request. But was oftentimes never at the apartment. You’d see him there on Tuesdays and Saturdays and that was it. You had only seen him on Tuesdays only but that changed a month into your residence. He’d caught you sitting up on the couch late one night binging some old show that got placed on Netflix, he quietly joined you and it just picked up and the next weekend you found yourself again with Yoongi on the couch and it just continued like that for a while. Until he randomly stopped. Then you caught him on Tuesday sitting at the kitchen counter drinking black coffee when he quietly said:

“I’ll catch you this Saturday.”

So you now currently danced your way around the kitchen, preparing snacks for your Netflix binge. SNSD and SHINee blasted from your portable speaker. Wiggling around the kitchen as you popped popcorn and arranging the various bowls of snacks and candies.

You wiped sweat from off your brow, dancing in a Cinnamoroll onesie was a workout. You brought the bowls into the living room placing them on the coffee table. You sat back on the couch picking up the remote to flip through Netflix waiting for Yoongi to join you.

You sat back toggling the options between Unsolved Mysteries and The Haunting of Bly Manor. The door to Yoongi’s bedroom opened up and he came out in a Kumamon onesie. His black hair was slick down to his head and he looked like he wasn’t feeling well.

“Hey Yoongi if you want we don’t have to binge Netflix today we can just wait until next weekend if you want.” you offered. Yoongi shook his head as he leaned back slowly into the couch, wincing in pain.

“I’m fine. Just a little tired. I’ve skipped out enough with you, it's no problem.” he said, leaning his head back into the cushions.

“Are you sure?” you asked him.

“Yeah it’s fine. What did you pick?”

You hummed. “I’m thinking either Unsolved Mysteries or The Haunting of Bly Manor. But Unsolved Mysteries is longer so I’m not sure if I want to watch that.”

“Just watch The Haunting of Bly Manor. I don’t really like true crime shows that much anyways.” he said, you flipped to the option and clicked play. Looking out the corner of your eyes to check out Yoongi who had his arms tucked into his sides holding onto himself.

About three episodes in and the clock swiftly nearing midnight. You felt yourself getting sleepy but unable to fall asleep. Anytime you felt your eyes start getting heavy with sleep and ready to close Yoongi would start shifting around on the couch in an attempt to get comfortable. How many times could he do that within 15 minutes you had no clue but was slowly getting irritated with his restlessness. You leaned forward grabbing the red bull you had placed on the coffee table, cracking it open and taking a sip.

Before you could finish it you heard soft snores leaving Yoongi’s mouth. Head tilted back, the hood of his onesie covering his eyes. You laid back pulling out your phone to scroll through it, hardly paying attention to the au pair on the tv and the ghosts haunting the manor.

Another three episodes in and you found yourself nodding off again, phone weighing your hand down as you kept falling asleep and waking.

You jumped awake when you felt Yoongi jump up off the couch muttering a “Shit, I gotta leave.” and then dashing out the door not even putting on shoes, slamming the door behind him. The artwork you had framed on the walls rattling in his wake. Yoongi left before you could even get out a word of protest. Scratching your head in confusion. You found yourself trotting over to the door sliding your feet into your sneakers and following behind him.

You ran down the steps to the apartment. Yoongi was nowhere in sight in the apartment. You made it outside, the cold October air made you regret not snatching your jacket off the hook when you left. Your head whipped around until you spotted a black figure with hooded bear ears that you recognized as Yoongi running off into the trees on the side of your apartment. You sighed, you were probably about to run off into the forest to your death. You started running off following behind him.

One thing you didn’t know was that Yoongi was a very fast runner. You found your lungs burning and begging you to stop running when Yoongi came to a stop a few feet away from you, he fell to his knees breathing heavily.

“It’s nice … to know .. that running.. kicked your ass too.” you huffed out in between breaths.

Yoongi’s heavy breaths turned into groans. “Y/n you can’t be here right now. You gotta go.”

“First of all you shouldn’t even be out here you’re gonna get sick. It’s fucking cold out here.” you persisted.

“You shouldn’t be here right now” Yoongi turned around looking at you, his sharp, feline like eyes usually brown glowed a bright gold, taking your breath away. “you gotta leave before something bad happens.”

You couldn’t find the words. But you were confused and definitely binged enough supernatural teen dramas as a youth to grasp what was going on right now. “Uh Yoongi..” you trailed off.

“You gotta leave. I can’t control myself right now. I might hurt you.” Yoongi said, as you caught a glimpse of his elongated canines against his bottom lip, creating a small lisp when he spoke.

“I uh-“ you found yourself stuck, unable to move as Yoongi hunched back over, groaning in pain. “Yoongi, are you alright?” you dumbly asked, finally feeling yourself able to move foot backed behind you ready to run if necessary.

“You need to leave now!” Yoongi yelled, the snapping of bones filling the air. Your feet took off, setting you off balance as you took off stumbling before catching your balance taking you off to your apartment.

You made it back to your apartment. Slamming the door and locking it behind you. Hoping your neighbors didn’t make a noise disturbance complaint against you. You sat down at the counter throwing back the hood of your onesie. Taking deep slow breaths attempting to calm yourself down. What the fuck did you just see? That couldn’t be right. No that was the Red Bull you had that fucked you up. Yeah? That sounds about right. That’s what it had to be. No way that Yoongi was a werewolf. You laughed out loud to yourself. That had to be it. It was your fourth Red Bull after all. You’d only drunken two in a day before. Four obviously had to be testing your limits and making you hallucinate weird shit. Yeah. You thought to yourself, laying your head against the counter, drifting off to sleep contempt with the story you told yourself.

You woke up to a soft knocking at the door. Your eyes blinked open as you got up going to the door. Looking through the peephole was Yoongi, you opened the door quietly letting him in. His Kumamon onesie was tattered and ripped in some spots, his hair was all over his head making him look more disheveled than he already was . He sat at the kitchen counter and you went around to join him sitting on the other side. You sat there for a few moments waiting for the silence to break.

You cleared your throat. “So uh, last night was weird.” Yoongi coughed, eyes darting around the room.

“I’m not human.” he sighed.

“You know I was really hoping last night was a Red Bull fever dream.” you ran your hands down your face.

“I tried hiding it from you for as long as I could. It’s been.. hard? Controlling this side of me. Everything is still so new and I tried staying away but everyone needs human contact.” he whispered, the last part. Your shoulders dropped, as you felt yourself grow sad for him.

“When did this happen?” you asked.

“My old roommate bit me. Then skipped town and left. I have no one to teach me how to go through all of this. I’m just dealing with it the best way I can.” Yoongi held his head in his hands a frown painting his features.

“Well I know I don’t know anything about this at all” you said, reaching across the counter to grab his hands. “we can get through this rough patch together. We’re friends, I got your back.” you said, softly. Yoongi looked up, a subtle smile on his face.

“It gets ugly at times.” he said.

“I imagine it would. That’s okay though. But this can’t repeat itself. I don’t like being scared out of my mind. I almost dirtied up my favorite onesie.” You and Yoongi laughed.

“Things will get better from now on. Since I have your help.” he smiled.

“Yes they will. Let’s keep being optimistic.”

[ravenvsfox]

klance holodeck fic 1/2

Lance is gone. Lost in the plunging gaps between astral bodies, sewn into an invisible seam in spacetime. Missing, for two long years. It’s impossible, to think of the time he's already lost with him. Time passes strangely in a war, and stranger still in space. Stars gasp their dying breaths and ripe dust clouds give birth to whole planetary systems. Some light reaches them with its centuries-old fingers and some can’t weather the journey. So many beings shiver and die. Lance would be twenty now. He tries not to think about it.

Keith can't bring himself to grieve when he knows Lance is still out there. Instead, he follows versions of him down holographic rabbit holes, trying to pry closure out of his memories, and losing himself to an obsession with the simulated landscapes where Lance was never lost.

(Read on AO3)

At first, it’s a french restaurant.

Slate grey and stationery white, sunlight drooping over the tablecloths like curling petals on calla lilies. Keith presses the knot of his tie into the hollow of his throat and swallows against his fingers. The get-up is ridiculous—grey suit, red tie, cufflinks, Italian leather shoes.

He’s never worn anything so expensive or well-tailored in his life, and he can already picture the precise geometry of Lance’s expression when he sees him: badly suppressed smile, like a slipped disc, his cheeks puckered.

Keith seats himself next to the window, fiddling almost immediately with the circlet of his napkin ring. The trees outside rustle and drizzle shade over buskers and vendors across the street. His designer watch has both hands folded over the twelve. A waiter breezes past and lays a rectangle of cardstock in front of him, smiling conspiratorially. As soon as he’s out of view, Keith has forgotten his face.

He looks at the menu, and the transition from the burbling restaurant to the cramped typeface is disorienting, like a cut scene in a video game. When he puts the menu down again, his head is swimming sickly with words like bordelaise and remoulade. And then, like a sweet apparition from a terrible dream, Lance drifts through the doorway.

For a moment, the sight of him is impossibly painful.

Keith’s fingers go again to the knot of his tie, and he makes an involuntary noise, gulping air as if surfacing from extreme physical exertion.

“Lance,” he chokes.

Lance smiles, quicksilver. “Hello.”

“You’re here,” Keith says, staggering to his feet. He crosses the bistro to take Lance bracingly by the wrists. The napkin holder is still in his hand, and the circle of it presses into Lance’s forearm so tightly that his skin bulges through it a little. “Do you—do you know where you’ve been?”

Lance should be defensive, or sly, or angry, or bashful. He should be telling a story that Keith can barely follow at a pitch that he can barely stomach, bragging about all the stupid things and downplaying all the impressive things.

Keith knows that’s not how this works, but still. It’s the Lance he knows.

He focuses on the brittle warmth of his body, the details that are just right. His heart breathes into the paper bag of his chest.

Lance just keeps smiling wanly. His hair is styled wrong—there’s too much volume, and it swoops down too close to one eye. His tie is robin’s egg blue. “No need to get up for little old me.”

Keith shakes his head, off-balance. “What?”

“I’m here to spend time with you! Why don’t we take a seat?”

Keith swallows painfully. It’s like looking at an animatronic figure of his friend—a jolting uncanny robot at an amusement park. “Lance, look at me.”

“How could I not?” he says cheekily, and winks. But his eyes haven’t quite settled into the same groove as Keith’s.

“Tell me—“ Keith starts. “Tell me what you remember. Tell me who you are.”

“Oh, you know me,” he says. “Name’s Lance ‘Loverboy’ McClain, blue paladin, sharpshooter extraordinaire, and defender of the universe.”

“Please.” It’s meant to be derisive, but it ends up falling somewhere closer to desperate. His hands slide up from Lance’s forearms to his shoulders. The napkin ring clatters pointedly to the floor. In a wide, embarrassing moment of weakness, Keith says, “you have to--be him. At least try.”

Lance chuckles.

Keith shakes him, and his shoulders jitter unnaturally.

“Come on. What’s the point if you can’t even act like him? Who would fucking buy this?”

“I don’t—“

“Stop using his voice,” he warns. His hands have crept up to Lance’s neck, and abruptly he lets go, repulsed at the almost-familiar feel of him.

“I would also be pretty overwhelmed to meet an intergalactic celebrity,” Lance assures him.

He’s starting to breathe too fast. He keeps seeing the real Lance—craned into the three-dimensional spread of a star map, brow furrowed, freckled hand curled loosely in the handle of whatever hot drink he found planet-side—superimposed over this stranger’s weird, unblemished face.

“Who am I?” Keith demands.

Lance grins. “My date.”

Keith pushes him hard in the chest. He nearly topples into a neighbouring table, and it’s unlikely, how he keeps his gangly legs underneath his body.

“Easy, sweetheart,” Lance says. “This isn’t the place for roughhousing.”

It’s the wrong cadence, but it’s so like something Lance would say that it’s debilitating. Keith stumbles through the momentum of another graceless shove.

“I told you to stop using his voice,” Keith snaps. “This is cruel.”

“Didn’t you want to meet me here?” Lance asks innocently.

“Of course I did. But you’re not—not—” Suddenly, he’s so fatigued with disappointment that he can’t speak.

After a long moment, he feels an ephemeral hand on his shoulder. And with the help of the ghostly waitstaff, the false Lance maneuvers him back to his place at the table. “Just tell me where to look and I’ll go there,” Keith begs, half-stumbling, half-dragged into his seat. “I swear. I know I can find you, I’ve faced bad odds before.”

“How about a drink?” Lance is saying, apparently unfazed.

“I thought that if you thought like Lance, maybe I could talk an answer out of you,” Keith says. Lance cocks his head, pleasantly receptive. “But really I thought I would look at you and I would feel better. Or at least I would feel angry. But you’re worse than a punching bag.”

“Red?” Lance says, and Keith’s heart is—airborne.

“What?” he asks sharply.

“Wine,” Lance explains. “Red or white?”

His whole body caves in. Rockslide. Catastrophic. He looks into Lance’s wide, earnest eyes, feeling uncomfortably like he’s levelling a shotgun at a newborn. “Neither. End simulation.”

The bistro melts instantly into the oily blackness of the Paladin Simulator.

His jaw is clamped tightly with shame and grief, and as the dark presses in, he folds his arms self-consciously over his chest. He’s ending his session an hour early, and he’s grateful, now, for the uninterrupted quiet.

He shouldn’t have let himself do this.

It should have been obvious what a bad idea it was when he didn’t tell any of the other paladins what he was planning; he was already falling back into his old, knee-jerk isolation, trusting only himself with his secrets.

He just couldn’t take any more of their pity. It was constant, wide-eyed, confused—why would the person who got along with Lance the least feel his absence the most? Sometimes, Hunk looked at Keith exactly the same way he looked at an old clunker of an engine that was in need of replacing.

Keith had heard tell of the simulators years ago, they all had. Liberated planets with the tech (and the admiration) had started building little cyber shrines to Voltron. Like a hyper-advanced arcade game, you could plug in your specifications, step into the simulator, and play out your wildest fantasies.

He’d gathered that tittering fans, unexceptional nerdy types, and bright-eyed kids were the most common customers; the lettering on the swinging board out front promised all kinds of adventure and celebrity:

Join Voltron! Become one of the gang, fighting Galra scum and saving the galaxy from tyranny!

Enjoy a candlelit dinner with the paladin of your choice, and get up close and personal with your hero!

Pick up your very own bayard, and spar with living combat legends! Who will win?!

Although it’s more advanced than the training room controls on the castle of lions, the programming still has its limits. The likenesses aren’t really supposed to stand up to the scrutiny of someone like, say, a paladin himself, but the experience is still sensory, impossible, the science fiction daydream of someone on Earth.

Lance used to love the idea of it, joking that it was the Star Trek filler episode he always wanted. He said he would win every game, romance himself, and beat up holo-Keith without feeling bad about it. He said he could finally stop pulling punches when Keith was just, like, light particles and shit.

In his grief, Keith convinced himself it was right and just and necessary to believe in a false lead. He told himself that the coat rack in the dark looked enough like a person that maybe he could hang all his hopes on it.

And so he had sought out the small, ever-bright planet of Seachmall, where night lasted for twilit months, and massive outdoor markets boasted every good and service you could possibly think of. Continent to continent there were melting, zipping lights, sky-high neon encircling tall buildings like bangles, and criss-crossing lanterns—buoyant in the low gravity—coasting up towards their celestial cousins.

In the capital, the local population joyfully shared liquor and arm-clasping greetings, speaking in the fast creole dialect of a port city, dancing to reality-bending music that haunts every forking path in a dizzying labyrinth of market stalls. Every single day on Seachmall was a feverish, luminous midnight that raged unceasingly past its breaking point.

And every step in the springy too-dark soil, every halting conversation in common, every sizzling technological spectacle that borders on nightmarish, Keith thought that Lance would have eaten this experience alive.

But Lance is gone.

Lost in the plunging gaps between astral bodies, sewn into an invisible seam in spacetime. Missing, for two long years.

It’s impossible, to think of the time he's already lost with him. Time passes strangely in a war, and stranger still in space. Stars gasp their dying breaths and ripe dust clouds give birth to whole planetary systems. Some light reaches them with its centuries-old fingers and some can’t weather the journey. So many beings shiver and die. Lance would be twenty now. He tries not to think about it.

Often, he resents those years he spent on a space whale, cresting out of his teenage years faster than he could track, trying to staunch the flow of memories with the paladins before he lost them all. He gets double vision looking at his mother, thinking of what he knows about love and struggling to apply it to this stranger.

When Lance disappeared just months after Keith returned to the castle of lions, he understood, finally, that loss is the bitter shrapnel of love.

In an alternate universe, Keith would have threaded Lance’s difficult needle, held his jaw, sharp and slight as a paring knife, and told him every wriggling, guilty, breathless feeling he’s inspired in him since they were sixteen.

In that universe, he stepped out of the time warp and into Lance’s embrace, and they were never parted again.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, Pidge started to refer to Lance in the past tense. Allura took over piloting Blue full-time, and Keith Red. The castle, already barren with the loss of Altea, became even more eerily quiet. Keith’s guilt swelled up and took any of their remaining teamwork hostage.

Space is so massively large and radiantly indifferent, but Lance is out there, surely, or Keith would have felt Voltron’s current being disrupted, as it had been when Shiro blinked out of the Black lion. But time stretched on, and he felt nothing at all.

When Lance disappeared it was from the middle of a battle for a nothing quadrant of space, and he was practically teleported out of the fray. They recovered his lion on a smalltime Galra ship within the hour, no sign of a struggle, no sign of Lance.

It was eery. Impossible. They interrogated sentries and hacked systems, combed entire light years of space using Allura’s wormholes. They waited for a distress signal, an apology, a triumphant return. But he just—vanished.

Keith ripped through the galaxy for any scrap of him, a blue flash, those bright ringlets of laughter, the flush of his skin tone in a kaleidoscope of different species.

Allura and Shiro joined him on the ground at first; Pidge, Coran, and Matt worked tirelessly to devise a tracking system, while Hunk took Red apart, hoping to unlock the moment that she and Lance had detached—but it was like her memory had been wiped clean. All they could feel was the panicked thrum of her loose bond with Lance, Keith more than anyone.

Romelle and Krolia hadn’t known Lance for long, but they always came when called. More bodies in the search party, more hands in the alliance. Once, he caught Romelle’s lip wobbling during a debrief, and he remembered the way that Lance had dragged an extra chair in for her first team meeting, winking, and then laughing himself to stitches when Romelle tried to wink back and couldn’t.

In pieces, Keith understood that he loved Lance, and as always, he was processing an obvious truth too late. His grief was swollen purple, and even as he told himself that no one would ever, ever understand, he knew they did. All around him they did, loudly and at length, hurting at such a frequency that Keith was scared it would drown out Lance’s return.

He left the castle of lions more frequently, turning over whole populations, infiltrating Galra ship after Galra ship, singularly driven—but also callous and unbalanced without his team, participating in more violence in six months than he had in five years of war and survival.

Once, Keith stumbled into Lance’s abandoned room and pulled clothes and trinkets out of his closet, stirring up the smell of him and crying like a child. He picked fights with his mother, because she had been a terrible absence once, too. In the artificial light of castle dawn, he sparred more than his body could sustain, and when he found a planet full of unmarked tombstones in his search, he ripped at the ground with his bare hands until his fingernails tore.

The longer he looked, the more he found that the whole universe was exquisite with death, every piece of it burnt out and drifting into expanding blackness. He was so tired of feeling like space rock himself, fast, deadly, and aimless, waiting to burn up in the atmosphere somewhere. So, heart striving ahead of his body like an eager dog, pockets full of tokens, he wandered Seachmall until he found the flashy booth where he would waste the next eight months of his life.

He leaves the simulated french restaurant that first time fully believing that he’ll never be so weak again, but it’s barely twenty vargas before he’s back, trembling all over.

He finds Lance in a simulation of battle, and in the rush, it’s much easier to forget that he’s a fake.

“Not this time, amigo,” Lance crows, looping around an enemy ship and blasting ice the whole time, showing off. Keith is shocked to find a smile bruising his own face. His hands close over fake-Red’s controls. It’s so strange, not feeling her at all while he’s piloting. It’s as impersonal as a Garrison sim, but eons more advanced, nearly authentic. He can feel the heat of battle through Red’s visor, and as always, his calloused thumbs creak against the wheel when he turns too sharply.

“On your right,” Keith warns.

Lance dodges dutifully. “Thanks!”

I know, Lance groans, in his memory. I’m out here flying too, Keith, this isn’t one of those drills where I’m fucking blindfolded—

“Red Paladin,” Allura’s voice cries, weirdly high and operatic. “The evil lord Zarkon is moving in for the kill. You must help us form Voltron!”

“Yeah, right,” he huffs.

The forming itself is so stupid, obviously programmed by an outside observer who’s never felt the itch of unity, the reverse detonation of an impossible bomb, where every scattered thing fits back together to be whole again.

There’s a silly bit of choreography, and fake-Red goes on rails, like a carnival ride. And then, without feeling anything concrete, Voltron pulls in around him.

“Hooray!” Pidge says, sounding like a munchkin from The Wizard of Oz.

“Nothing can stop us now!” Shiro says, sounding like Shiro.

“Can we get back to putting Zarkon in a second grave now, please?” Keith says.

“Always the fighter, Red,” Lance says. Keith blinks.

“I love you,” he blurts.

“Aw,” Hunk says. “I love you guys too.”

“Lance—“

“Use your sword? Exactly what I was thinking,” Lance says.

“Let’s do it,” Shiro says. “Use your bayard, Red.”

“I know,” Keith snaps.

It’s obvious that the simulation has programmed Red in as shorthand for whatever player is in his spot. It would be the same no matter what lion was chosen, but hearing Lance’s nickname for him out of Shiro’s mouth is just—stunningly wrong.

The world trembles from the impact of a Galra bogey, uncomfortably real, and his instincts press him into action.

He turns his bayard in its slot, and the sword shimmers into reality. He watches at a remove as Voltron slices at Zarkon’s craft.

It’s actually starting to get to him, the memory of this battle, the reality of which was a lot more challenging, and much, much uglier. He remembers his frenetic pulse in his fingertips, the threat pressing endlessly past their defences, the damage to Green’s hull, and the awful discovery of Black’s empty cockpit afterwards.

He shudders.

“End simulation.”

In the dark, the adrenaline eases its panicked hands from his throat. You’re alive, he reminds himself. You survived. So did Shiro. So will Lance.

______

The next day, he goes back again.

He spars with himself, out of curiosity, and then with Shiro and Lance, but the holo-paladins are uninspired, easily blocked, programmed to strut and preen through choreography more than they are to improvise and adapt. Lance doesn’t play dirty even once, and Keith shuts down the simulation again, gutted. He wishes there were different difficulty levels, like the bots in the castle. You could program almost anything into—

He stops, midway back to his cruiser, the braid of market-goers loosening around him.

He taps twice on his communicator, and hastily opens a channel with Pidge.

After the long, peculiar swish of the line connecting, she answers, “‘sup?”

“I need you to do something for me.”

“Urgently?” she asks, distracted. He can hear the clatter of keys and the beep and whir of her latest project.

“It’s about Lance.”

The clatter stops. She doesn’t speak for long enough that Keith feels truly bad about himself. And then, “well Jesus, Keith. Isn’t it always?”

He breathes out. “How comfortable are you with the holodeck interface?”

“Very,” she says, no hesitation.

“And do you still have those files from a couple of deca-phoebes ago? That user profile thing you tried to instate, the uh—“ he dodges a Seachmallian waving a kebab in his direction.

“Yes, Keith,” Pidge drawls. “What, do you think I burn data when my projects don’t pan out?”

He shrugs, though she can’t see him. “I would.”

“Forgot who I was talking to,” she says flatly. He’s paused at the ice-cold entrance of a shop selling edible soap bubbles, light and iridescent.

“Do you think you could put together a—a simulation, compatible with a more advanced operating system?”

There’s a throb of silence. “What exactly are you asking me to do, here?”

He closes his eyes, still ducked under the awning of the store, feeling the cold move through him. “Don’t make me say it.”

“You want Lance,” she says. “On a fucking USB.”

“I want to find him,” he growls. “Remember when you wanted that too?”

“That’s low,” she says, deadly. “I’m not the one who’s trying to sleep with a hologram of my dead friend so I don’t have to grieve him.”

He cuts off communication. He feels feverish with embarrassment, and completely sick to his stomach. Candy bubbles breeze past him, over the apron of the booth across the way, which is advertising robot fights—both in Seachmallian and blocky common.

He remembers Lance, a lifetime ago, saying, when I go, I want all the stuff in my brain stored in a giant ship.

His comms ding, and he jabs the accept button on his wrist.

“Fuck you,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” Pidge says. “I don’t know why I said that.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” he says fiercely.

“I know.”

“I just need to know if it was premeditated, if he ever had a safe house or a code in case we got separated, something we could look for.”

“It’s not the worst idea,” Pidge says thoughtfully.

“I know.”

“But I do think it’s a pretty terrible idea for you to do it.”

He grits his teeth, upset in a directionless kind of way. “I can handle it.”

“I know you’re on Seachmall,” Pidge says, “and I already thought that was going to get pretty gnarly. All they’ve got is, like, the mythology of us. Can you imagine what the information in the Altean databases could do to that kind of tactile VR experience?”

“Sort of,” Keith says.

“It would be like if all the OG broadway actors showed up to participate in a high school production of Cats, comprende?”

“No,” Keith says, waspish. “Less.”

“It’s the next step for Altean hologram technology for sure. It would probably revolutionize AI. It’s also not real, Keith.”

“I don’t need it to be real,” Keith snaps. “I need a lead.”

“Well,” Pidge says slowly. “You know I can do it. Can you wait a few quintants?”

He sets his jaw, and against the deep blue horizon, a billboard gleams so brilliantly yellow that for a moment, he thinks it’s the sun.

“As long as it takes.”

______

Keith meets Pidge when she touches down on Seachmall, windswept and gaunt, and although he doesn’t really understand what she intends to do, he dutifully distracts security as she futzes with the control panel.

It’s barely fifteen minutes before she beckons him into the alley adjacent to the simulator room, a sample platter of bolts and wires spread out around her knees.

“Alright chief, it should be compatible, now.” She pulls a stray length of cable from where she’s been holding it between her teeth and pockets it. The little nib of her ponytail bobs as she stands.

“So it’ll be him this time?”

“I mean, almost exactly. I programmed his profile into the grooves set into the existing simulation, but I softened the edges a little so he’s not too self aware. I don’t want him realizing he’s a projection, I’m not that cruel.”

“Right,” Keith says, uncomfortable.

“If you don’t find what you’re looking for and you have to go back in, all you’ve gotta do is punch in this code.” She jabs him in the chest with a folded piece of card, as close to paper as they’ve been able to find out here, and twice as durable. She could have sent him the info, but they both know this transaction is better left under the table. “The system should wipe itself automatically when you’re done. And Keith—“ Her hand flattens on his dark chestplate, and her eyes are troubled. “Please don’t forget why you’re doing this.”

He nods, and puts a gloved hand over hers. “I won’t. I’ll figure this out, and I’ll find him.”

She nods back, a wobbly smile rolling over on her face.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay, I gotta go. I can’t—I wish I could see him, but.”

“Yeah,” Keith agrees sadly.

She smiles again, fleeting, and gathers her kit. “We can’t spare another paladin,” she says, quickly, like it doesn’t matter. “Don’t get lost in there.”

He opens his mouth to reply, but she’s already putting her visor down, and walking out into the crowd.

______

This time, he finds himself on a boardwalk during a powder pink sunset. The air smells blisteringly of salt and roasting meat, and faceless people mill over the beach: parents holding hands with kids, couples sharing shaved ice, a galloping golden retriever in a red bandana.

The leftover scorch of the day blows in off the coast to meet him, like the wave from an open oven door.

He walks purposefully onto the sandbar, craning in circles, trying to catch a glimpse of a familiar face. He feels—pre-heartbroken, caught in the final moments of a long walk to an open casket.

“Where’ve you been?”

He whips around, and Lance is pulling one earbud out, squinting into the sun at him.

“Lance?” he asks, through what feels like a mouth full of marbles.

“Uh-huh,” he says, eyebrow quirked. “The one and only.” He settles back into the shade of his umbrella.

Keith shakes his head to clear it. There’s a red and white striped towel set out next to Lance’s, and he sinks down onto it, overcome. Is this Earth? Did Pidge program this specifically? Is it one of the date settings on the simulator? He can’t remember. He can’t see past the illusion at all.

Lance offers him an earbud. “Come on, Red, will you relax? Pretend you’re not the kind of person who sleeps with a knife under your pillow.” He accepts the bud, numb, and tucks it in his ear. He’s expecting synth pop, but it’s an old R&B song, smoky and familiar. “No overthinking on the beach.”

He can’t stop looking at him. It’s uncanny—the dusky chapped lips, the mole next to his mouth, the cowlick over his ear. His eyes are intelligent, laser-focused on Keith. “Where are we?”

“Dear sweet Keith. Senile at age twenty. So sad.”

“Shut up.” He has to look away, to mask the full-colour magazine spread of conflicted feelings on his face. It all feels a bit like a lucid dream that he shouldn’t jostle too hard. “I’m not used to this.”

Lance’s expression softens. “Hey man, I get it. Being home is weird. Sometimes it’s like—I can’t even remember how we got here.” He shakes his head. “But also I’m so happy to be back, I’m like—screw PTSD.”

His chest aches, badly. “I don’t think it works like that.”

“Rich coming from you, Mr. repression,” Lance says, rolling his eyes.

“I’m not doing that any more,” Keith says. “I’m working through my shit.”

“How admirable.” His mouth twitches. He produces a Palm Bay from his slouchy little backpack, tossing it from hand to hand as if testing its heft. “I’m drowning my sorrows in coolers, personally.”

And then he lunges, spritzing the can open in Keith’s face.

“Jesus, Lance,” he sputters, smacking it out of his hand. They scuffle, briefly, and that helpless, ebullient laugh blows past him like candy bubbles.

“Your—face—“

“You’re so immature—“

“Easy, cowboy, don’t you remember what team bonding looks like?” He pinches Keith’s cheek teasingly, and Keith grabs his wrist.

A pulse flutters under his fingertips.

He scrambles backwards, clothes dragging against the sand, a stray sandal popping off. The heat and grit is so real. If he focuses hard enough on the smell of meat coming off the boardwalk, his mouth waters. Lance looks at him incredulously.

“What? That’s too far for you? I barely touched you!”

“You touched me,” Keith repeats. He can still feel that pulse, like a second heart in his own body. He stands up, shedding sand, and Lance looks up at him, mild expression tinted with hurt. Keith sways, sidelined by a wave of vertigo. He can’t be here right now. “End—“

“You’re being so weird. Like Kuron all over again.”

He stops. “You think I’m a clone?”

“Obviously not really,” Lance says, getting up on his knees. “But that is the level of weird we’re dealing with here. You’re looking at me like you’re about to cry.”

“It’s just—home.” He gestures awkwardly. “Tandem bikes. Coconut sunscreen. Seagulls eating fries out of the trash. The ocean. Earth reminds me of you.”

"Birds eating garbage reminds you of me?" Lance quirks a skeptical expression at him. “Maybe you are working through some shit.”

He reaches for his abandoned sandal, dusting sticky sand from the straps. “You can’t even imagine.”

“Try me.”

Keith looks across at Lance’s calm, determined face, and the words rise up in him like a groundswell.

“I know I haven’t earned it, and I know it doesn’t make sense to you, but I miss how things used to be. And the worse everything gets the more I keep wondering what you would say, or do, and I hate that—god,” he breaks off, and presses his palms briefly to his eyes. “I mean, you would’ve had no way of knowing how I felt. I didn’t even know. But I should’ve—I just thought we would have more time after the war, or I would die and it wouldn’t matter. And I guess I assumed you were always going to be there, because you always were, even when I didn’t want you to be, and now—I don’t know, Lance, I don't know how I’m supposed to go to the castle, or pilot Red, or look at the planet I grew up on without remembering how much you loved it, and how much I love you—“

“Keith, what?” Lance says, alarmed. “You’re freaking me out.”

“Where are you?” he frets.

“I’m here.” He crawls closer, but Keith can't look at him. He watches the fussy waves coming in off the shore instead. “I’m right here.” He rests his hands on Keith’s ankles, and he has to steady himself on Lance’s shoulders when his knees go loose. “Man, I shouldn’t have joked about PTSD. I mean, I feel like this sometimes too.”

Keith looks down into his face. “What?”

“You know, like I’m back there. Like—time doesn’t even exist. Being off-planet was such a bitch sometimes. You feel like you can disappear in all that open space. And sometimes you want to.”

“Lance,” Keith whispers. “You wanted to disappear?”

“Yeah, sometimes,” Lance says, serene. “Just for a while. Let someone else defend the universe for a bit, preferably an adult. Hey, don’t look at me like that, I didn’t do it!”

“You would have told us,” Keith says, through bloodless lips.

“Sure,” Lance offers.

“No. No. You would’ve said something.”

Lance takes his hands away uncertainly.

“I wouldn’t have done it,” he says flatly. “I’m just telling you that I understand being pissed off, and I understand wanting to—hit pause.”

“What about hitting stop?” Keith asks. “What about disappearing so thoroughly that whole galaxies full of alien technology can’t find you?”

Lance’s face is a spinning wheel; he cycles through all manner of confusion, impatience, and worry before settling on defensiveness. “What the fuck are you talking about? Are you out of your mind?”

“If I am, it’s your fault,” Keith snaps. “How could you leave us?”

“How could I leave?” There’s no question now, that this is data from his Lance. His tetchy, self-conscious anger is unmistakeable. “You’re the one who ditched us for the Blades right when we were at a tipping point. You’re the one who wadded two years up and threw them in the trash. You didn’t have to care about us but you absolutely should’ve talked to us. We were a team.”

“You think I don’t care about you?” Keith laughs. “That’s fucking hilarious.”

“I’m really laughing,” Lance says sarcastically. “I don’t know what sort of crazy pills you took that made you think that I’m the deserter out of the two of us. I wish I could be that delusional. I may have wanted out once or twice, but I would never, ever leave the people who need me.” He’s fuming, and the wind is blowing through his curls like it’s trying to placate him.

Keith’s anger wobbles. It hurts, to hear Lance talking this way after so long. It’s not the reunion they deserve.

“I know. I know that.”

Lance sits back on Keith’s towel, frowning. He brushes the drained cooler away, and the remnant dribbles out and darkens the sand. “I don’t know why you always have to ruin everything.”

Keith’s throat aches, and he crosses his arms protectively over his chest.

“Me neither.”

Lance glances up, surprised. And then his gaze slides purposefully beyond Keith, considering. After a moment something comes over him, and his whole demeanour changes. “Keith,” he says softly. “Did you say you loved me?”

Keith screws his eyes shut. After a moment he hears Lance moving closer, reaching out, fingertips barely grazing the back of his hand—

“End simulation. Please.”

He crouches in the dark. “Please.”

______

“Oh, fuck you,” Lance crows. He ducks out from under Keith’s staff, and then grabs the end of it, using the momentum to slide through Keith’s wide stance.

He spins around, and Lance is five feet away, holding his own staff up to his eye like a sniper rifle.

“Bang,” he says.

“This is close combat,” Keith reminds him. He throws his weapon like a spear at Lance’s ankle, and he yelps when it makes contact.

“How is that close combat? You javelin wielding motherfucker. You should be disqualified, and jailed for your crimes.”

He watches Lance shake out his foot like it really hurts, testing his weight and pretending to stumble, falling forward—and then whirling around in time to clash staffs with Keith.

“Shit,” Lance laughs, up close, hot with exertion, putting the pressure of his body weight on the cross they’ve made between them. “Thought I had you.”

“Do you want to surrender?”

“Do you want to kiss my ass?” Lance retorts.

Keith steps out of the way, and Lance’s momentum sends him tumbling head-first to the floor.

“Sure,” he says coolly. “Turn over.”

“What the hell,” Lance says, rolling onto his knees, flustered.

“You lost.”

“Yeah, whatever, like six to five.”

“Six to four,” Keith corrects, and offers him his hand. Lance pretends to spit into it, then flops back onto his hands instead.

“If we were duelling with pistols, I would humiliate you. You would have to drop out of Voltron.”

“By that logic, you should be packing your bags right now.”

Lance throws his head back and laughs. “I’m going to fucking kill you, Kogane.”

“Try me.”

Lance shrugs, but just as Keith starts to look away, he throws himself at him. It’s so unexpected that Keith actually goes down, wrists slammed to the mat on either side of his body, wind knocked out of him.

Lance laughs breathlessly, looming messy and sweaty above him. “Wow, that was embarrassing for you. Your arrogance is your downfall.”

“You’re my downfall,” Keith says, a little too flat and sincere across the top, and Lance purses his lips.

“You’re taking this too seriously, dude.” He lets go easily, and rolls out on his back next to him instead. He flexes his wrist in the air above them both, and Keith watches his fingers work. “Why does it feel like it’s been forever since we sparred?”

“It has,” Keith says simply.

“I guess,” Lance yawns. “I can’t even remember the last time.”

His heart is still pounding from the first serious, sustained training he's done in months. When Lance goes to sit up, Keith puts a staying hand on his chest.

“Hey, Lance," he says. Lance hums. "If you got separated from your lion for any reason, would you—what would you do?”

He frowns. “I dunno. Alert you guys. Rescue mish.”

“What if you couldn’t contact us?”

Lance looks sideways at him. “Not loving this thought experiment. Why are you being so weird?”

“Please,” Keith says, taking Lance’s sore wrist, feeling for the artificial thud of his pulse. “Just—answer.”

“Uh. I don’t know, am I captured? Or planet-side?”

Keith swallows. “Planet-side.”

Lance nods, considering. “If the locals are part of the alliance, I would get their intel, and find a way to reach you. If not, I guess I would lie low. Wait for a friendly ship and signal them.”

“That could take years. It might never happen, depending on where you ended up. Like—alien vessels aren’t cruising over Earth very often.”

“Says you,” Lance jokes. “The truth is out there.”

“You could die waiting,” Keith insists, dropping his hand. “What if the atmosphere wasn’t compatible? The flora and fauna? What if your suit was compromised?”

“I would heroically overcome all obstacles, whistle for my trusty lion, and ride off into the cosmos,” he replies sardonically, “what do you want from me?”

“I just think we should have more rescue protocols in place in case something goes south.”

“Right,” Lance says slowly. “Well, I mean—and I’m going to try and get through this without gagging—I have your back, man. And if we get separated, I’m pretty sure you can take care of yourself.” He gestures at their discarded staffs. “Not as well as me, of course,” he sniffs, glancing sidelong at Keith to see if he’s cheered him up.

Keith feels the phantom weight of Lance’s body crushing him to the mat, a window of weakness pried open, broken and entered. He breathes out. “Yeah. You’re too good for that.”

______

He asks Pidge for more scenarios, and more user profiles. For fleshing things out, he tells her. For recreating the circumstances under which Lance was lost, testing his reactions to different situations, and introducing as many variables as possible.

Slowly, inevitably, he starts to lose control of it all.

He’s still a correspondent to the Blade of Marmora, and he’s on call as a paladin, but they haven’t been able to form Voltron in years. He’s perpetually out of sync with the rest of the universe, living more and more like a washed-up casino-goer, existing only for the market stall where he can plug his friends in and relive the past.

He pays off the owner not to ask questions, and gets an apartment on Seachmall, barely the size of a lion cockpit, just a sparse kitchenette and a twin cot. He spends hours in the simulator and crashes on his bare mattress, bathed in the constant, spectacular glow from the street lights.

Every time he staggers away from the market he has to remember that the real Lance is rotting somewhere, and he’s here playing dress up with shadows.

It’s all easier, in the holodeck.

He loads the original paladin line-up into battle, relives their victories and rights their wrongs. He finds himself in the kitchen of the castle of lions, in a ballroom overlooking a fathoms-deep canyon, curled in Lance’s bed so he can finally sleep. He takes his friends to Earth a hundred different ways.

There’s always a fog, a strangeness about them when they think too hard about where they are, but he knows it’s a mercy. He ends each simulation on the verge of spinning out, functionally pulling the trigger on his dearest friends.

Reality sags out of his grip. Pidge and Hunk call sometimes, and often Kolivan or Allura will give him status reports, scattered missions, and lectures that walk the line between morally superior and deeply, uncomfortably worried. When Shiro starts up daily check-ins, he understands that they all know what he’s been doing, lost on Seachmall for so long.

“You’re taking care of yourself, right?” Shiro asks.

“Yes,” Keith tells him. He’s staring at the empty wall across from his bed, absently sharpening his knife. “I’m just killing time.”

“We really miss you around here. It’s too quiet.”

He tests his blade, rolling his shoulder. “I’m not exactly bringing the party when I’m out there.”

Shiro hums. “I don’t know, you certainly keep things interesting.”

Keith snorts.

“I’m serious!” He can hear the smile in his voice. “There’s only so much quantum mechanics and ancient magic I can take before I want to hit something. I want my sparring partner back.”

They lapse into silence, and Keith traces patterns in the air, enjoying the fine metallic sound of a weapon without a target.

“You know we’re still looking, right?” Shiro asks. Keith stops cutting the air, and puts his knife down on the bed beside him.

“Are you?”

“Yes,” Shiro says. “Of course we are. Allura and I are visiting every contact she has, and Hunk and Pidge are working—overtime. We’re picking up a lot of slack here.”

The back of his neck prickles with guilt. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Shiro sighs. “I’m telling you this because you’re my brother.” But he has his diplomat voice on, which Keith has always hated. “And I don’t know if you’re thinking about what it’s going to do to the rest of us if you don’t come back from this.”

“From a simulator?” he asks, incredulous.

“From grieving,” Shiro corrects. “I would never tell you to stop looking, but I think you know you’re not going to find him in those projections.”

“I could,” he says stiffly. “He tells me things—every day he gives me clues and he doesn’t even know it.”

“He doesn’t tell you anything,” Shiro says gently. “Because it’s not him. Do you remember when Allura had to let go of her father? It was so easy for her precious memories to be corrupted, and even easier to get swept away in the illusion. Everything in a simulator is finite, Keith, but you can’t be. You have to grow, and change, and move on.”

He thinks of every different shade of Lance he’s seen, every secret door that gives and leads to another wing. “You don’t get it.”

“Of course I get it. If Adam—“ he cuts himself off, and his breath shudders over the line. “You’re not the only one to be feeling this loss, or to be struggling.”

“But I never even got to love him," Keith argues. “I never got close enough to put any of these feelings anywhere, and now they’re everywhere. No one ever gives me the chance to love them before they—“ he swallows, and when he goes to speak again he finds there’s nothing else to say.

“I know how hard it’s been for you,” Shiro says sadly. “But Keith, understand—we all love you. No matter where we are or what we’re doing. We don’t have to verbalize it to feel it.”

“Okay,” he says, numb.

“We love you,” he reiterates. “Lance did too.”

“Thanks for checking on me Shiro,” he says, and hangs up.

______

“No way, no way, no way,” Lance crows. “This is slander.”

“It can’t be slander if all of us were there to see it,” Hunk says, but he can’t look at Lance without cracking up.

“You’re remembering wrong,” he says. “She asked me to give a speech.”

“She asked you not to,” Pidge says, rolling her eyes. “Begged you, even.”

“Boo,” Lance laughs. “I was just trying to have a good time at alliance banquet number five zillion.”

They’re clustered on blankets between the yellow lion’s hulking paws, in the soft local vegetation of one of the last planets they liberated as a team. They were buzzed, when this conversation actually happened, but Keith hasn’t been able to replicate that particular feeling through the simulator.

“I don’t know why you always have to lie to these people,” Keith says, just as he did on the actual occasion.

“Embellish,” Lance protests. “I live by the principle that everyone wants to hear the best possible version of the story, and you owe it to them to tell it.”

“But the best version is almost never the real version,” Hunk says, exasperated.

“I dunno man, what’s real anyway?” Pidge says, easing back into the blankets. “Our lives are such a clusterfuck as it is. The line of what’s actually impossible gets farther away every day.”

“Yeah,” Lance says. “What squidge said. Lying is cool.”

“Ugh, don’t call me that,” Pidge complains.

“What, I’m agreeing with you,” Lance says, grinning. He leans over to give her a big-brotherly hair-pull that she intercepts with a karate chop.

“People deserve to know the truth,” Keith says mechanically, following the script, but then feeling flushed and hypocritical all at once.

“Okay, here’s a truth, universally acknowledged: Keith sucks,” Lance says.

“Hm. Sounds like another lie to me,” Hunk says, and Lance reaches up to steal his headband in retaliation. Hunk rolls his eyes and lets him have it, like he’s appeasing an overactive puppy.

Something skitters in the dark, beyond the dunes of Yellow’s paws.

“Don’t you have a rebuttal, Keith?” Pidge asks, sitting up on her hands.

“Why are you encouraging them?” Hunk groans.

Keith shrugs and stays silent; Lance’s gaze narrows shrewdly.

“You aren’t one of those weepy drunks, are you?”

Keith picks at a loose thread in their shared blanket. “No, I just changed my mind,” he says, veering off-book. “I don’t know why I was acting like it was ridiculous that you like telling stories, when it obviously makes people feel better to believe them.”

“Oh. Well. Glad you came to your senses,” Lance interrupts, overly loud. He always seems to hate it when Keith gets sincere like this. He begs for attention but recoils when he gets too much.

“Most of these alliance parties happen after a long period of unrest. So… what, you helped grieving people by acting like a superhero? To them, you are a superhero. God, I couldn’t stand that you took so much credit for our victories, but I should’ve given you more.”

Lance blinks at him.

He remembers with fire-bright clarity how this scene actually played out, the way Keith kept needling at Lance’s hero complex, accusing him of making things up so he could pretend he’d been helpful. Lance had dialled his bravado to a screaming pitch so he could hide the soft, spoiled look in his eyes where Keith had lodged a cruel sword that he couldn’t pull out.

Now, Lance purses his lips so he doesn’t have to figure out what to do with his expression.

“Huh,” Pidge says, chewing on a pseudo-protein bar from their rations. “That’s some unexpected character growth.”

“Are you… feeling okay?” Hunk asks.

Keith looks miserably down at his own crossed legs until Lance says, “not that I don’t appreciate it, but you did just do kind of an impressive one-eighty.”

He looks up. “Yeah, sorry. I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.”

Lance smiles a little, relieved. He waggles the flask they’ve been sharing in his direction. “You just need to drink more.”

“No,” Keith disagrees, shaking his head. “I want to remember this.”

______

He opens his eyes to the world on its side, gritty endless flatlands sprayed out against a hazy auburn sky.

He rolls, putting his arm over his face, a visor against radiant twin suns.

He doesn’t have to look to remember the architecture at his back, a cubist explosion of edges and colours, each shape squared off and set into the hills. When the paladins liberated Imedemaa, they were offered accommodation in homes that corresponded to their lions: terracotta red, cobalt blue, mustard yellow, foliage green, and a brown so dark it could pass as black.

It’s his favourite place to visit: brilliant views, kind people, warm bed, privacy and proximity bumping shoulders comfortably.

Keith rolls again, sitting up. He feels heat-sick, and if it were real, he knows he would be bruised tan in the coast-to-coast sunshine. He’s spread out on the same outdoor palette where he fell asleep nearly three years ago. His apartment is warm, dull red, nearly orange. The shimmering public baths sparkle with activity just below his balcony.

“Yoo-hoo, neighbour.”

Keith squints over the waist-high wall and finds Lance clambering from his own balcony onto Keith’s.

“You’re going to fall to your death.”

“Nah,” Lance says, swinging a leg down over the railing and sitting contemplatively with one foot dangling over empty space and the other brushing the floor. “There’s a pool down there. Worst case scenario I perform an exceptional and history-making canon-ball.”

Keith watches him climb the rest of the way over, staggering and sitting heavily on Keith’s palette next to him.

“Oof,” he says. Lance's skin is dazzling in this climate, dark and freckled like granite. The simulation reminds him that he smelled like lotus, this day, fresh from the baths, warm shoulder and drizzling wet hair. “Are you ready to absolutely blow this popsicle stand?”

“And do what?” Keith asks, a little breathless from proximity.

“Did you seriously forget? It’s racing day!”

“Oh,” Keith says faintly. “Right.” They used to rent speeders for fun sometimes; the whole team participating at first, and then Keith and Lance alone when they surpassed friendly competition into bet-making and sabotage.

They would sneak back whenever they could swing the time off, careening around dusty corners and ramming one another’s speeders into hysterical tailspins. They would sob with laughter and then spritz their canteens all over each other, tussling in the dirt, so coordinated that it was almost an embrace.

The thought of it had driven him out of bed this morning, but he felt sick and shaky as he typed Pidge’s code into the simulator, setting the modified location of Imedemaa and rolling into a memory so fine and warm that it reminded him of death itself.

“Woah. easy, Red,” Lance says, his voice sharp with concern. Keith comes back to himself to realize that he’s angling into a panic attack, holding his own head in his hands. He can’t spoil this memory. Not this one.

“I—I—“ He can’t speak. Lance makes a dismayed noise, his entire demeanour turning inside out.

“Can I hug you, man?”

Keith jerks his head ‘no’. “I—can’t—you—“

Lance gets to his feet, and Keith grabs at him, hooking fingers in a belt loop, a fistful of shirt, whatever his hands find first.

“Hey, shh, it’s cool, I’m just getting you some water.”

Keith shakes his head again. “Don’t leave me.”

“Will you tell me what’s wrong?” Lance asks softly, sitting back down. “We don’t have to go racing today.”

Keith huffs this weird cartwheel of a laugh, and scrubs a hand over his eyes and nose.

“I think I dreamed you were dead,” he tells him. He doesn’t look up into his face, but Lance’s chest is steady in front of him, rising and falling evenly with each breath.

“Who, me? I’m fine, Keith, look at me.”

“It felt real.”

“Pretty sure it wasn’t,” Lance says, laughter tucked into his worry like a concealed weapon. Keith looks up at him, and Lance beams under his full attention. He wipes the tears from Keith’s cheeks with his thumbs.

Abruptly, he can’t stand it.

“You’re a hologram,” Keith whispers. Lance’s smile falters.

“What?”

“Do you remember how Pidge took our mental blueprints?”

Lance nods quickly. He’s not brushing Keith off, he’s not slow with disbelief. He’s clear and sharp and his face is increasingly overcast with fear.

“I’m using your data in a simulation. This holiday on Imedemaa, it was years ago. You’re not the real Lance.” It hurts, to admit it, but it’s clear that it hurts Lance much, much more.

“No,” he chokes. “No, I feel real.”

“I know you do,” Keith says, reaching for his hand.

But Lance jerks away, standing and reeling backwards, hands splayed out on red paint, which could be gore, really, bleeding out from Lance’s palms like that. “I was so fucking scared of this.“

“I’m sorry,” Keith says, watching this shade of Lance shaking through self-awareness, and feeling the weight of the words that could end it in his mouth.

“Why—where—“

“He’s gone,” Keith whispers.

“Gone as in gone?”

“Gone as in I can’t find him.”

“So why the fuck are you wasting time on this Black Mirror shit, and not out there looking for me?” he demands.

“I’ve looked everywhere.” The agony of his failure slides home all over again. “The search party is a million strong by now. I’ve talked to a hundred versions of you looking for an answer.”

“A hundred,” Lance says. “So what, when I tell you what you want to hear, you delete me?”

“I’m not wiping the data or anything, I—I don’t know how it works,” he admits.

“Jesus. Jesus Keith, this is fucked up.”

Tears start to well up, and he wipes them away furiously. He never used to cry like this. He never used to feel so constantly ravaged by guilt and fear. It used to live in his gut and press at his throat, but he could keep it wrapped and sealed inside his body.

“I miss you,” Keith tries, and Lance’s face twists with despair.

“I really wish it didn’t take this horror show to make you say that.”

Somewhere, something splashes and someone shrieks with laughter. Lance looks at him miserably, hunched in the shade from the terrace, brow damp with terrified perspiration. He absolutely shouldn’t have told him. He remembers Pidge laughing darkly, I’m not that cruel.

“What do you want me to do,” Keith asks quietly.

“What choice do I have?” Lance asks. “I’m a fucking video game character. I’m a dead man walking.”

“Do you want to do anything? Before I end this session.”

Lance swallows, considering. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I do, actually.”

______

They race.

What feels like all day, ripping in circles under arching rocks and through clinging, dragging sand, until the suns are setting, twin flames set into the desert like jewels.

Lance is extra reckless, gorgeous, perched high on his speeder and arched forward to reach the controls. His face, below the goggles, is streaked with mud, and he keeps crying out when he tips over too far or pulls triumphantly ahead of Keith, cathartic, unfiltered.

“One more lap,” he shouts, over the thrum of noise from the speeder.

“I’ll beat your ass,” Keith calls, trying for normalcy, but they’ve both kind of been crying on and off all day, and this is the last thing this Lance will ever do, and really, he’s not that cruel.

“Fucking try,” Lance says, pulling his bandana up over his mouth and taking off.

“Hey!” Keith laughs. “No countdown?”

“I think I deserve a head start,” he calls over his shoulder, but most of his voice is whipped away by the wind.

The speeder rips sideways, sliding over a natural boulder ridge that drops off into nothingness. Strange gravity keeps him on the right side of the cliff, and he hoots with joy, galloping metres and metres ahead as Keith eases through the same turn.

“You’re gonna—“ get yourself killed. He bites his tongue. Lance can’t hear him anyway. He zigzags through natural obstacles, glancing back in disbelief when Keith pulls up behind him. His face is red with the effort of staying upright.

“Can’t you let me win for once,” Lance cries, slamming on the thrusters and stirring up a fog of dust behind him. Keith coughs and dodges, feeling on the very edge of an awareness too big to name, like being able to feel one stage of grief ending and another beginning.

Sometime during Lance’s luxurious lead he’s taken off his helmet, and now the desert wind is whipping his hair straight.

He takes the next corner much too fast, and Keith’s heart is in his throat as he inevitably spins out, in smooth little frictionless circles at first, weightless as a bumper car—and then the rear of the speeder catches on a jutting rock and he’s ejected altogether. He topples out into the sifting dunes, rolling half a dozen times and stopping himself so abruptly that Keith can hear something snap.

He pulls up hard, tumbling off the speeder and throwing his helmet out into the sand, running as best he can to where Lance landed.

When he reaches him he’s cradling a severely broken arm to his chest, and the bone is piercing through the skin. There’s blood everywhere, weeping through his fingers, streaked high on his hairline, staining his shirt and the tawny sand beneath him.

“Would’ve been great if you could have programmed me not to hurt,” Lance wobbles. Stiff upper lip, terribly pale.

“Didn’t know you were going to throw yourself off a speeder.”

“Yeah, well. Me neither.” He hisses as Keith takes his wrist in his hand, unfathomably gentle, turning it this way and that.

“This looks terrible.”

Lance snorts. “Thank you doctor Keith.”

“I don’t think we brought any first aid,” he mutters, frowning, digging through the pack at his hip.

“I don’t need it.”

“Are you kidding me? You’re—“

“Keith.” He looks up at him, smudgy and sweaty and splashed with five kinds of red in the fading light. “I don’t need it.”

Keith trembles, still searching for a bandage or a stopper or an answer of any kind. “No. I hate this.”

Lance smiles grimly. “I don’t love it that much either. But hey, maybe there’s a way to bring me back. This exact version of me. From the ether somewhere. Doesn’t feel quite as permanent as capital D Death.” His eyes narrow. “As long as you don’t lose me, Red.”

“I won’t,” he whispers, parched and grief-torn. “Never again.”

“Okay. Okay.” He makes himself comfortable, stretched out on the sand, arm folded over his chest. “Hey, Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you not—raise me from the dead again? I don’t think—I mean. A hundred versions of me and you haven’t found what you’re looking for.”

“But I have,” Keith says fiercely. “I always find what I’m looking for, because I’m looking for you.”

Lance laughs, coughs, squeezes his eyes shut. “That’s real romantic.”

Keith’s mouth twitches. “I’m glad you think so.”

Lance cracks an eye open. “Just find me the old fashioned way, will you? No more beautiful Lance casualties.”

“I—don’t know if I can promise that,” he says. “I miss you,” he reiterates.

“Yeah. More, I bet, when you’re looking right at me. Ever wonder why that is?”

Keith shakes his head fast.

“Dumbass,” Lance says fondly. “It’s literally always gonna hurt, trying to live in the past. Makes you feel like you don’t have a future.”

“Maybe I don’t.”

“That’s a pretty insensitive thing to say to a dying guy.”

Keith laughs wetly. “You’re being melodramatic.”

“When can you be melodramatic if not on your deathbed?”

Keith brushes the sticky hair from Lance’s forehead. He turns his face and Keith’s hand softens and cups his cheek comfortably.

“Pidge can do anything,” Keith tells him. “All your ones and zeroes will be safe somewhere until she can figure out somewhere for you to go.”

“Yeah, okay,” Lance says, like he barely heard him. He’s determined, heroic. Fucking heartbreaking. “I hope the real me gives you hell.”

Keith nods jerkily. “He always does.”

“I hope he—I hope he’s good to you, too.”

Keith’s face crumples, and he puts his forehead to Lance’s, feeling him wince when his chest grazes his broken arm.

“Sorry, sorry,” he sniffs, holding his face, wiping the blood and muck and tears back.

“It’s okay,” Lance says, starting to slur. “It’s okay, Red, just end it, quick.”

“You’re the last one,” Keith promises.

“Good,” Lance says, “because you’re not gonna do better than me.”

Keith laughs, putting their foreheads together again, and then kissing the place where a tear has rolled down into his hairline.

“See you soon,” he whispers. Lance leans up, golden, bloody.

Keith shudders, and says “end simulation” into his mouth.

Imedemaa winks out, and his whole world narrows instantly to a pinhead. He’s huddled on the floor over nothing at all, caught in the throws of fantasy, like a sleepwalker. When he licks his lips though, he swears he can still taste salt.

______

He leaves the simulator into the whiz and pop of another Seachmall night. The owner nods at him, looking vaguely troubled, possibly by the amount of time that Keith has been locked in his simulator today, and by the look on his face now, which he can only imagine is ripped in half by loss.

The market is busier than usual, stranger, overfull with alien tourists, so much so that the paladin simulator has accumulated a long line-up.

He sidesteps their stares, slipping soundlessly into the alley, already dialling Pidge on his communicator. She said the system would automatically wipe after each use, but he’s certain she can retrieve whatever information would be inaccessible to the public. She said herself that she doesn’t burn data.

He waits through the suck of the empty line, feeling antsy and keyed up, aching from a day of racing but incongruously clean and dry.

“Come on, Pidge,” he mutters.

Somewhere in the market, there’s a great clamour of voices. Something clatters to the ground, and someone apologizes profusely in common. Keith chews his lip distractedly, waiting for a thief to run by, a sheepish tourist, or scuffling rival business owners.

The line connects and disconnects in quick succession, and Keith kicks a trash disposal chute so hard that it dents.

He frets, thinking of Lance’s final moments, the wilting fear on his face, his mouth split open like fruit.

A hoverbike rounds the corner, and Keith only steps barely out of the way, nearly clipped by a wide fender. It crashes to a stop, making a thin, rumbling sound, and then its rider has whipped all the way around to stare at Keith. Achingly humanoid. Cobalt blue Motorcycle helmet. Rippling with motion even while sitting still.

They swing a leg over the seat of the bike, staggering closer, and Keith knows. He knows when a slender, gloved hand reaches for the visor, and when twin pistols clink and gleam from their holsters. The helmet falls, rolling into the dirt.

“Keith,” Lance breathes.

[highandlowculture]

MEET THE NEW WEST, SAME AS THE OLD WEST

In the second act of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, washed-up actor Rick Dalton is on the set of a TV western as his stuntman and best buddy, Cliff Booth is revisiting Spahn Ranch, a former set for movie westerns. The ranch has been taken over by a bunch of hippies who follow some guy name “Charlie”. The heavy of the hippies is a fella by the name of Tex Watson. When conflict arises between Cliff and the hippies, one of the girls runs off to fetch Tex, who’s busy showing a tourist couple around the ranch. Hearing that there’s trouble brewing, Tex snaps to it, galloping across the western landscape on horseback and wearing a black hat. It’s a sweeping shot straight out of a John Ford film. That’s when it clicked for me…

Tarantino has made his third western.

Although there were always spaghetti western elements in his films (especially in Kill Bill vol. 2), QT hadn’t made a full-fledged western until 2012’s Django Unchained. Though entertaining and with an African-American lead, the film is his most straight-forward movie. We know who the heroes are, we know who the villains are. Wrongs are righted with a six-shooter and a hero’s grin. Its followup was another western, 2015‘s The Hateful Eight, a much darker and far less heroic film. All of the characters are flawed if not outrightly fucked-up. If Django Unchained was the sumptuously shot crowd pleaser, The Hateful Eight was the claustrophobic, nihilistic reversal. The western myth of heroes and villains is subverted by an unsavory group of characters who drag each other through snow, blood and racial slurs. Maybe the Old West was a pretty rough place to live in after all!

And now, in 2019, QT transports us to another Old West: 1969 Hollywood.

Fifty years ago. Half a century. Pretty old, right?

Already contentious with reviewers, one of the main debates surrounding Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood is its handling of Sharon Tate and the Manson Family. In the summer of ’69, when Tate, her unborn baby and her houseguests were brutally murdered by three members of the Manson Family, it sent shockwaves throughout Hollywood and America. The utopian dream of the 1960s was over. That’s the sanitized, less complicated history anyway. At the time many people were blaming satanism and Tate’s husband Roman Polanski for his hedonistic ways. Plus anyone deep in the trenches of late 60s hipdom knew that some of the peace-and-love spouting Flower Children might be psychopaths that could turn on a dime. Such darkness was foreshadowed in the music of The Doors and Velvet Underground. As Joan Didion recalled in her seminal work The White Album:

“Black masses were imagined, and bad trips blamed. I remembered all of the day’s misinformation very clearly, and I also remember this, and wish I did not: I remember that no one was surprised.”

Knowing this I find it disappointing just how many reviewers fail to see how sympathetic QT is to Sharon and her friends. They’re shown as cool people with a good vibe (only Roman is shown to be prickish when he speaks rudely to a dog). Sharon and Jay Sebring like to listen to records and enjoy life. No satanism. No orgies. And Sharon’s a generous person. She picks up hippie hitchhikers and buys her husband a Thomas Hardy novel. She relishes the communal experience of watching herself in the Dean Martin film The Wrecking Crew. It’s not just about her. She’s enjoying the connection she’s making with the theater’s audience. On the infamous August night, the film’s narrator talks about how Sharon, in the late stage of her pregnancy, was feeling hot and anxious. In short, Sharon is humanized. She’s a thoughtful, spirited and benevolent presence throughout the film. I think reviewers who view her just as “a Barbie doll” are revealing more of their own lack of empathy than QT’s. And people getting hung-up on how many lines her character speaks have some skewed priorities. As if the only way a person has worth is if they talk a lot. Talking. Talking. Talking. There are so many empty vessels running at the mouth these days. Social media voices bombard us constantly. There’s something to be said for some quiet dignity every once in awhile. Regardless, Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood isn’t Sharon’s film and it’s not a biopic. It’s Rick and Cliff’s film and it’s a western.

If comedy is “tragedy plus time”, then the same can be said for any work of art. The mythology of the Old West often mixed historical and fictional characters. Whether they were Billy The Kid, Wyatt Earp or Butch Cassidy, we’ve seen countless retellings of their exploits, never exactly the same, never entirely accurate. That’s what makes it a myth. A good portion is made-up. Going back to Homeric and Arthurian legends, the foundation of storytelling has always been a collision of fact and fiction, chronicle and embellishment. People make too much of QT altering historic events. Are the Nazis of Inglourious Basterds and the Manson Family of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood any different than any other mythical villains of earlier works of art? If a filmmaker can’t riff on a fifty-year-old historical event, then what are we really doing here? Do we just want the cinema of Marvel Comics and discreet biopics? QT doesn’t treat history any different than the filmmakers of the 1960s treated the events of the 1860s. Tex Watson, galloping away in his black hat, is a signpost for this. It’s QT’s way of saying: “Every time has its myths, every time has its black hats and white hats”. And the Manson Family, filled with bloodlust and megalomania from the top down, fulfill the role of black-hatted villains quite perfectly.

Does this make Rick and Cliff, two middle-aged white guys who love booze and hate hippies, our white-hatted heroes? Hell, no. With the exception of Django Unchained, that was never QT’s bag. He’s all about the anti heroes of spaghetti westerns and Sam Peckinpah films. Men who have done plenty of bad, sometimes unspeakable, things. They’re only the hero because they wrestle with their past and because there’s always a meaner, badder fella waiting to shoot it out with ‘em. Clint Eastwood’s character in the The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is only “Good” because Lee Van Cleef is so clearly “Bad” (and Eli Wallach “Ugly”). In 1992’s The Unforgiven, Eastwood’s character talks of killing “women and children” in his past. Yet he’s still clearly our hero. The Old West is a morally complex time in which one’s heroism is often defined by a greater and competing villainy.

So when it’s revealed that Cliff possibly murdered his wife and got away with it, he’s stepping into the role of anti hero with a dark past. Is Cliff haunted by his past? Not seemingly. He’s more inclined to shrug it off with a smirk and swig of beer. Shit happens y’know. This makes him exactly the type of guy murderous hippies shouldn’t fuck with. They justify their bloodlust with a self-serving philosophical bent: Entertainers taught them to kill via TV and movies, so it’s okay to kill the people who are involved in making TV and movies. QT makes the bold and provocative choice to not confirm whether Cliff did or didn’t kill his wife, but if he did, he probably wouldn’t dress it up as anything other than a burst of brutish violence that he was lucky to get away with. He loves his dog though, and he’s a good friend. In real life that might not justify liking the guy, but in a western that’s usually enough. Ultimately these character choices made by QT are to set up a mythic showdown between Cliff and the Manson Family. He’s good because they’re bad. It’s the same reason Cliff was shown going head-to-head with Bruce Lee. Masked racism by QT, a known lover of Asian and martial arts films, or a way of building up Cliff’s status to mythical proportions? There was once this ex war hero, who became a stuntman and maybe killed his wife, and he once threw Bruce Lee into a car door on the set of The Green Hornet! Cliff is Paul Bunyan. He’s Bill Brasky. A folk hero for stuntmen and for his time.

And did you hear that one tale about Cliff and the Manson Family…?

Rick’s bread and butter is now guest-starring on various TV shows in which he plays the heavy and gets his ass kicked by the show’s star at the end of the episode. Rick is a boozy, bloated hot mess of a man who’s prone to crying. A lot. His first burst of tears in the film is at the Musso & Frank parking lot, after an agent gives Rick a harsh dose of reality regarding the state of his career. Cliff, always keeping his cool, gives Rick his sunglasses and says, “Don’t cry in front of the Mexicans.” Remember — this is a western. Anyway, if Cliff fills the role of macho, gives no fucks, murderous outlaw, Rick is the contrasting “modern man” or, to use a western term, “tenderfoot”. The film begins with a behind the scenes segment for Rick’s old show Bounty Law. In it an interviewer talks to Rick and Cliff about what a stuntman does. During the interview there’s a quip about Cliff carrying Rick’s load. So right out of the gate, QT brings our attention to the idea that Cliff is the real deal and Rick’s the actor playing a role. This notion is repeated throughout the film (even one of the Manson Girls, “Pussy”, makes reference to Cliff being more authentic because he’s a stuntman rather than an actor). Regardless of whether Cliff murdered his wife or not, he’s an ex military man and war hero, so obviously he’s killed people before. So in addition to taking falls and performing dangerous stunts for Rick, he’s more of a bona fide western anti hero than Rick ever could be. Fittingly, while Cliff and the Manson Family black hats are sizing each other up at Spahn Ranch, Rick is busy acting in a TV western. And Rick keeps crying. A lot. He even cries in front of a little girl who simultaneously coddles and reprimands him. No doubt, Cliff would view this as potentially worse than crying in front of Mexicans. But Rick can’t help himself. He’s both a man of his time and out of time. He can’t roll with the hippies and spaghetti westerns but he’d never last a day in Cliff’s shoes let alone the wild frontier. Even at the end, in which Rick finally gets the chance to become an avenging hero (involving possibly the greatest payoff in cinematic history) if one steps back and thinks of the climactic set-piece, Rick is merely stepping in at the end to grab all the glory after Cliff and his wonderful dog Brandy did most of the heavy lifting. Thus Cliff is yet again carrying Rick’s load.

But this doesn’t mean Rick doesn’t have a victory. He does. It just comes at the midpoint, and it’s the closest thing to a real-life victory in the film. When Rick shows up to play the heavy in the TV western, he’s reached his low-point. Like a different part of the anatomy going into ice-water in Raging Bull, Rick is submerging his face into ice-water in his trailer, struggling with a hangover and hopelessness. Making matters worse, the artsy director shows up and tells Rick he wants him to play a hippie-style outlaw with a fringe jacket, mustache and long hair. The only thing Rick does more than drink and cry is insult hippies. He’s living his worst nightmare as an actor. QT makes another one of his most interesting choices by showing the subsequent scenes from the TV show in the same film stock and style as the main narrative. Thus when juxtaposed to Cliff at Spahn Ranch, Rick’s battle with his growing irrelevance as an actor is given the same cinematic weight. This isn’t just a TV show within the movie — it is the movie! This battle or showdown is just as important as Cliff’s eventual showdown with the Manson Family. Rick struggles. He fucks up his lines. He comes totally unglued in his trailer. This looks like the end of the road for him as an actor. He eventually gets his shit together, embraces the role and goes for broke. It’s a credit to both QT as a filmmaker and Leo DiCaprio as an actor that the villain Rick plays in the TV show ends up being more intense and visceral than the one he played in the main narrative of Django Unchained. Rick’s chops as an actor are restored and he decides to go to Italy and star in spaghetti westerns. He learns to maximize his talent in order to roll with the times.

A protagonist who is at odds with changing times might seem regressive or even reactionary to some people today, but it’s also a hallmark of westerns, especially the westerns of the late 1960s and early 1970s. From Once Upon a Time in the West to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, an impending future of railroads and industrialization is always treated with uneasiness by the heroes. These changing times aren’t going to include them. Their wild and free ways will soon come to an end. Nowhere is this theme most prominent than in the work of Sam Peckinpah. In many of his westerns, The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the heroes are viewed as endangered creatures who are all too aware of their fate. The character of Cable Hogue even meets his end when a motor car rolls over him. He’s killed by the modern age! Another Peckinpah film from this era, Junior Bonner, is set in 1972 Arizona but can also be considered a western (creating a template for QT’s western that’s not set in the canonical “Old West”). The protagonist and title character is an aging rodeo star (brilliantly played by Steve McQueen, who perhaps not so coincidentally also appears in QT’s film). In Peckinpah’s film, Junior has lost his edge and returns home to take a breather and maybe get his chops back. His struggle is not unlike Rick Dalton’s. They’re both aging entertainers and they both fear they’re washed-up. And as with all of Peckinpah’s westerns, encroaching progress is a threat to Junior’s simple cowboy ways. All of these above mentioned westerns are filled with a bittersweet quality; a nostalgic snapshot that’s destined to become yellow and brittle. The power of myths is they suggest immortality for our heroes.They might be long gone but they live through these tales. Whether’s it’s the Old West of outlaws in dusty little towns or the Old West of ’69 Hollywood, people once lived in these places and they lived vibrant, foolhardy and sometimes dangerous lives. Maybe they didn’t live or die exactly as the tale accounts, but they did indeed live and they did indeed die.

In his film QT references another “man out of time” western: The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. Written by John Milius, directed by John Huston and starring Paul Newman, the film is a highly-fictionalized account of the life of Judge Roy Bean. At the climax an elderly Roy Bean reemerges from a self-imposed exile to have a showdown with businessmen who have surrounded his beloved town with oil rigs. When his enemies ask who he is, Roy Bean shouts “Justice, you sons of bitches!” This is immediately followed by a shootout in which Roy defeats his foes, blows up the surrounding oil rigs and goes out in a blaze of glory. In real life Roy Bean died in his bed after a heavy bout of drinking. What’s most interesting is how QT referenced The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. After the climax of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood there’s a triumphant but wistful epilogue in which one of our heroes is faced with a future that we all know is a fantasy. Over this scene is an evocative piece of music that sounds like it’s from a fairytale and it plays over the end credits. The piece of music is entitled “Miss Lillie Langtry” and it’s the main theme from The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. Lillie Langtry was a British-American socialite Roy Bean was enamored with and he even went so far to name the saloon in his town after her. “Miss Lille Langtry” plays over the end credits of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood and the opening credits of The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. But before the credits in Roy Bean we see written in storybook fashion:

“Near the turn of the last century the Pecos River marked the boundaries of civilization in western Texas. West of the Pecos there was no law, no order, and only bad men and rattlesnakes lived there.

…Maybe this isn’t the way it was… it’s the way it should be.”

With Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino pays homage to a socialite/actress who was tragically murdered before her time and two endangered heroes—one an outlaw stuntman, the other an entertainer—neither of who existed but men like them did. For two hours and forty-five minutes, the onward march of tragedy and time is defeated through a spirited, Old West mix of bravado and audacity. Maybe it’s not the way it was…

But it’s the way it should be.

[mementotori]

I was tagged for a catch up by @orime-stories

You’re awesome and I love you <3

2020 was wild so y’all bear with me

Three Ships:

The most consistent ship I’ve been focusing on for the year has been with two OC’s that are in my own little side project I’ve been working on for YEARS now. With the quarantine and especially being a DM that’s had the opportunity to work on the world it’s given me a lot of time to work on them. I really love how they’re turning out so maybe one day you’ll all properly meet Poppy and Padraig.

As far as fandom is concerned? I’ve been playing Skyrim a lot lately but POE was more of a regular haunt for me during the year. I really love Watcher X Eder and I’ll happily die on that fucking hill. You’re gonna tell me that man doesn’t have feelings for the Watcher no matter their race of gender identity? Get out of here with that nonsense, Obsidian. I just think him and Faraligh are very soft together and I’ll ride that slowburn to the next game too gdi.

Nothing got to me more this year in the last couple months than Wayhaven. I adore Adam du Mortain X The Detective so much I swear I’d spend hours and hours replaying the game just to see different options with just that stuffy English bastard. I’ve gotten over the idea that self-insert's are inherently evil so naturally the Detective is a small part of my personality and when @mad-mod said Adam was my type THEY REALLY WEREN’T LYING.

Last songs listened to:

Spotify will tell you I’ve listened to a lot of video game music but it’s because I have specific playlists I put on during dnd or when I’m writing. It’s easier for me to write to things that don’t have lyrics, which is a big thing I’ve learned this past year despite how long I’ve been writing. My favorite playlist is actually one I made for the BBEG (who is also the Big Bad in my massive writing project that involved Poppy and Padraig). I love Ta’Vathi’s playlist so much, it’s the thing I’ve been listening to when I have to leave the house early in the morning to get hyped for work. A few favorites are “Mary on a Cross” and “Faith” by Ghost,  and obligatory Rammstein songs “Engel” and “ICH TU DIR WEH” among a few other bops.

Currently watching:

It’s been a weird time for TV shows for me tbqh. All the mental strain has been making trying new shows very lackluster so usually I throw on episodes of The Office or I’ll restart Critical Role from season 1 for background noise.

Currently reading:

I’ve been so bad about reading if I’m gonna be honest. I picked up a few books on Norse Mythology with the intention of spending more time studying to better my worship to the Gods but most times I’ll use the spare moments to get writing done.

How’s it going:

I think we can all agree that 2020 was the shittiest year out of a long run of bullfuckery. Not to say some good things haven’t happened, I’m grateful that I’ve had this spare time to work on my writing like how I’ve been wanting to. Ngl there was a long while I went completely dark because of some very personal things, and I’m still trying to get past it. I think every day it gets a little bit easier to handle and for that I’m blessed to have the people in my life that I do have. I feel my husband and I have been blessed with the fact that he does have a stable job despite C*vid and we’ve been relatively okay.

There was a point just a year or two ago where I decided to say “Fuck it”. I wasn’t going to bite my tongue anymore, I was going to say what was on my mind and learn to be okay with just being myself. I know I’m not as close as I used to be with some people, and maybe that’s the reason why, but that’s something I’m really okay with. 

After a few years of medical issues I finally got back into the job force, I take care of infants five days a week. On paper it’s a dream job, but I’m finding many of my coworkers to be a bit toxic so I’m doing my best to just be a good caregiver to the few babies I have. I really don’t think I could express properly how much I love them with my whole heart and soul, and I get very very irritated when something is done wrong. I feel I’ve been falling back into old habits of putting 120% into my job, even though I purposely took the part time position to try and cut down on that. I think I spend a good portion of every day just cleaning and sanitizing and it just gets to you after a while. 

I’ve been trying to better my mental health, I had never seen a therapist before in my life but I sure as fuck feel a lot better for having accomplished that. I had always been too stubborn to go, my problems were my own and I didn’t need someone else knowing my business. But there’s something freeing in a stranger telling you that your feelings and the way you handled things were completely valid.

Not every day is going to be a good one, and I’ve learned that’s okay. I really hope that this coming year is another one that I can spend on personal and professional growth. This is something I wish for all my friends, both in person and online. As the old adage goes: Do no harm, but take no shit.

I invite all of my mutuals to try this, even if you don’t post it in the end. It got weirdly more personal than I expected LMAO