#if only anything could be a witch mirror then they could all cell chat and communicate cause the travel time in this one is rough

[acourtofquestions]

Dont be angry, Finnula said. Be smart.

[tricksters-captain]

Weasley Twins/Cedric Diggory Imagines - Accidental Meeting - Part 1

AN: So I may have fallen back into my Harry Potter phase at the moment and I came up with a fic idea for a Reader x Cedric and Reader x George Weasley fic and I have the whole thing planned out so I figured I may as well write it down and publish it... And what better way to celebrate the 1st of September; going back to Hogwarts day!

Overall Summary: (Y/n), is a young witch who always kept her head down due to her complicated past; one day she bumps quite literally into one of the most popular boys in Hogwarts, Cedric Diggory, and that’s when (Y/n) plan of keeping her head down seems to go up into the air. Things only seem to worsen when two redheaded twins start to take notice too...

This Chapter: It’s (y/n) 5th year at Hogwarts and things have gone swimmingly until she happens to come across 6th year Cedric Diggory... (Y/n) first day of 5th year suddenly becomes a lot more eventful than she had planned. 

Pairing(s): Cedric Diggory x Reader, (Eventual) George Weasley x Reader, (Platonic) Fred Weasley x Reader, (Platonic) Oliver Wood x Reader

Word Count: 3,947

Warnings: None 

You smiled as you heard the familiar sounds of the train station fill the air with a buzz. You had still yet to reach Platform 9 and 3/4 but even just standing in King Cross brought the familial warmth of knowing you were going back to Hogwarts. 

It didn’t take you long to reach the platform and load your belongings and yourself onto the train. It had been a long and boring summer with your uncle and you were glad to be heading back to the infamous castle. 

You walked through the train until you came across Wood sat inside one of the large compartments of the train with several of his 7th year friends. 

“Bout time you got here, I was starting to think you’d gotten lost and was hiding in the bathroom again.” Oliver stood with a bright smile and hugged you. 

“That happened once, Wood.” You rolled your eyes, waving at the boys sat in the compartment before taking your seat next to Wood. 

Now, from the outside, your friendship with Wood was random and a little confusing considering the fact you weren’t a massive fan of Quidditch... But once people heard the story it soon made sense. 

You had liked to keep your head down from the start of Hogwarts. When you received your letter to attend Hogwarts, you almost didn’t want to, you didn’t want to learn magic only to spiral down a dark path like your parents did. 

Your parents were famed Death Eaters and extremely loyal to he who shall not be named. So, when you opened your letter, you were almost sick with anxiety. After the downfall of Voldemort, your parents were arrested and sent to Azkaban and the worst part was they were the most well known for their crimes and passion for the Dark Lord alongside Sirius, Black, Barty Crouch and Bellatrix Lestrange. 

When you first arrived at Hogwarts, you tried to hide who you were but it wasn’t long until the whispers stirred and the rumours spread which lead to a large group of girls bullying you. 

That’s when Wood came into the picture. 

Wood didn't care for your heritage, he only cared that people were being horrid to you for something you had no control over. 

You belong to Gryffindor house and some of the Gryffindor girls were saying how you belonged in Slytherin and they couldn’t have some bad blooded evil Death Eater in the house.

Wood shut them right down before making sure you were okay and from there, your friendship blossomed. 

Wood was like the older brother you never had and you were forever grateful for him but this year was his final year at Hogwarts. 

“How was your summer? You barely even wrote me.” Oliver asked as he took his seat back beside you. You moved closer to the boy and rested your back against his shoulder as you sighed. 

“Boring. I had nothing to write about.” You shrugged and the other boys in the carriage laughed at your honesty. 

“Well, I had plenty to write about and you missed it all.” Wood argued, just trying to be awkward to annoy you.

“Well then talk! We have a long train journey and it’ll stop me from already opening my new books.” You told him and with that his jaw didn’t stop. 

It had been a few hours and you had zoned out of most of the conversations between the boys and you had in fact cracked open a new book to make the time fly faster when Wood included you again.

“You hear that, (Y/n/n)?” He asked, the mention of your nickname drawing your attention back to the group. 

“What?” You lifted your chin and looked at the boy.

“Since is it my final year, I expect you to be at every quidditch match including the final when we win the cup” He repeated what you had missed with a bright smile. 

“Every match?” You groaned, frowning at the boy. You enjoyed Quidditch but if the weather wasn’t any good or you had some work due close to a quidditch night, you’d rather hit the books. 

“Every match. Last year was your poorest effort yet and you have to make up for it.” Wood practically scolded you. He loved his Quidditch more than anything at Hogwarts so hearing you complain about it was mind boggling for him. 

“I only missed three matches last year.” You defended yourself, 

“Three winning matches.” He argued, his accent thick as he emphasised. 

The conversation was brought to a halt as the train began to slow on the tracks and the lights flickered.

“What’s going on?” Wood asked, looking towards the corridor of the train.

“Maybe we’ve broke down?” You suggested, closing your book as you watched the sky darken outside. 

The air grew colder as the train came to a stop. You pulled your arms around yourself as Oliver stood up to see what was going on. 

Suddenly, a black blur flew past the window, making you feel nauseous with nerves as you realised what was happening.

“It’s a dementor...” You whispered just as you heard the train doors open and felt the whole carriage shake. 

Every carriage of the train seemed silent as the dementors searched the train. You buried yourself into the corner of your seat and Oliver sat beside you, leaning forward protectively. 

“Did they really think Sirius Black would have gotten on the train?” One of Olivers friends asked as the Dementors finally left. 

“He escaped from Azkaban. I’m sure he can sneak onto the Hogwarts Express if he really wanted to.” You spoke plainly. 

The reminder of Sirius Black brought forward the anxieties in you about Azkaban, Death Eaters and your parents. 

You asked Oliver to follow you into the corridor for a private conversation when the train started to move again and he immediately did as asked. 

“Do you wonder if one prisoner can escape Azkaban, can more? At this point, there must be so many dark wizards in there that they can’t keep track of every cell in there?” 

Oliver knew you meant; what if your parents could escape?

“No one is getting out of Azkaban after Sirius Black. The security there will be on high alert. They wouldn’t let it happen again.” Wood held you by the shoulders reassuringly, “(Y/n), you’re safe.” you tried to believe him but the hairs on the back of your neck wouldn’t let you quit worrying. 

“Look, there was a dementor on our train just now. That means one less dementor at Azkaban, doesn’t it?” You crossed your arms over your chest as you lowered your voice so that a passing 4th year couldn’t overhear.

“(Y/n), the ministry canny risk losing anymore prisoners, they already have half of the country’s witches and wizards questioning the safety of their children if they’ve managed to let one prisoner slip. No one else is getting out of Azkaban.” Oliver was right, the ministry couldn’t afford more death eaters escaping their clutches, it would only cause chaos. 

“You might regret saying that so confidently.” You murmured, running your hand through you hair as you looked down the empty corridor. “I think I’m gonna go change into my robes now.” 

Oliver didn’t say much else as you left to find a toilet to change in. 

You shuffled your way down the tight corridor when you clocked a tall handsome boy exiting his compartment with a bag in his hand too. 

Just at that moment, three first years ran past you in their flowing full black robes, forcing you to go fall flat against the boys chest.

The boy caught your wrists steadying you after your stumble. 

“I am so sorry.” You flushed red as you pulled back to see the handsome face was Cedric Diggory from the year above. He was a popular Hufflepuff, liked by everyone and a very good student, not to mention nearly every girl in your year had crushed on him at one point or another.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it.” He smiled at you, still holding onto you without realisation. 

“I was just going in there to change.” You nodded to the toilet door beside you both and he smiled again. 

“Go ahead, you can go first if you like.” Cedric offered.

“Really? I don’t mind waiting.”

“I insist, honestly.” He opened the door for you and you ducked under his arm to go inside. 

“Thank you.” You blushed again as you closed the door and fell against it. 

You shook off the encounter knowing that really it was nothing as you changed into your school uniform. You brushed down your robes as you took one last look in the mirror before leaving the bathroom to see Cedric chatting with some other 6th year. 

You slipped past and returned to your compartment where Wood was also changed and seemingly falling asleep. 

Wood opened one of his eyes and smirked as he pulled out a chocolate frog box from under his arm. 

“You missed the trolley.” He said as he handed you your favourite sweet. 

“You’re too good to me, Wood.” You beamed a large smile as you took it from him and opened it a tad to see the charmed frog inside. 

As the train finally pulled into it’s destination, everyone jumped out their seats ready to get off the train after the long journey. 

You peaked down the corridor to one of the exits to see Cedric dressed in his robes, looking over at you.

When your eyes met his, he started to push past some of the other students to reach you. 

“You know, I never got your name.” Cedric said as he reached you.

“(Y/n). And you’re Cedric, right?” You took his hand as he offered it. 

“Cedric Diggory.” He introduced himself as if he needed to. 

“May I?” You had noticed Cedric’s tie was wonky and you were desperate for him to fix it. You were a bit of a stiff when it came to tidiness, you took after your uncle that way. 

Cedric looked down at his tie where you had gestured and then shrugged, lifting his chin, giving you his permission. 

You reached up and straightened his tie, tightening it to the collar before quickly withdrawing your hands. 

“Diggory.” Wood’s voice startled you as it reminded you he was stood just beside you. “Congrats on making captain this year. I’m looking forward to seeing you on the pitch again.” Oliver shook Cedric’s hand as he took the attention away from you and onto Quidditch. It was his speciality. 

“Thanks man. I reckon we may have a chance at winning this year.” Cedric’s smile was contagious, you found yourself looking away just to stop your own smile. 

“Not while I’m still here, Diggory.” Wood joshed. 

The whistle blew loudly as the doors opened. The 1st years were first to get off, being guided by the head boy and girl as well as Hagrid to the boats where they get their first full view of the castle in the night sky. 

The rest of the school followed, taking the carriages to the castle, you stuck with Wood, sitting beside him in the great hall for the welcoming feast.

You couldn’t help but notice Potter further down the table. You wondered if he knew who Sirius Black was and what he did. Everyone knows that he would be Blacks next target if Black wasn’t in hiding right now. 

Beside Potter were his friends, Hermione and Ron, and then closer to your side of the table was Ron’s bothers, the Weasley twins and then head boy Percy Weasley. 

The table was alive with chatter of what happened on the train with the dementors and you were surprised to hear that Harry Potter fainted after coming face to face with one. 

You glanced around the room as the first years were being sorted into their houses before the feast can begin. You found yourself looking towards the Hufflepuff table and that's when you spotted Cedric, watching the Gryffindor table, searching for you. 

“Who are you looking at?” Wood turned around to catch you staring at Diggory and within that moment, Diggory’s eyes found you too. “I thought you didn’t do boyfriends.” Wood teased you as you both returned your gaze back to the first years. 

“I don’t. He was looking at me.” You tried to defend yourself but Oliver always saw straight through any of your lies. 

“Welcome! Welcome to another year at Hogwarts.” Dumbledore finally announced his welcome as all the first years were sorted and the frog choir had sang. “Now, I'd like to say a few words before we all become too befuddled by our excellent feast. First, I'm pleased to welcome Professor R.J. Lupin, who's kindly consented to fill the post of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Good luck, Professor.” 

The new professor was young, his face was scarred yet he still remained handsome. You could see his friendly demeanour as he smiled at the students all looking up at him and found yourself actually looking forward to your next DATDA lesson. 

“Our Care of Magical Creatures teacher has decided to retire in order to spend more time with his remaining limbs. Fortunately, I'm delighted to announce that his place will be taken by none other than our own Rubeus Hagrid. Finally, on a more disquieting note, at the request of the Ministry of Magic, Hogwarts will, until further notice, play host to the dementors of Azkaban. Until such a time as Sirius Black is captured. The dementors will be stationed at every entrance to the grounds. Now, whilst I've been assured that their presence will not disrupt our day-to-day activities, a word of caution... Dementors are vicious creatures. They'll not distinguish between the one they hunt and the one who gets in their way. Therefore, I must warn each and every one of you to give them no reason to harm you. It is not in the nature of a dementor to be forgiving. But you know, happiness can be found even in the darkest of times; if one only remembers to turn on the light.” Dumbledore’s speech about the dementors didn’t seem to help the overwhelming nerves inside your chest. 

“You alright?” Wood leaned into you with concern in his eyes. The colour had drowned from your face, not that you had realised. 

“I’m fine. It’s just another year at Hogwarts with some soulless, cold, creepy extra security, right?” You tried to joke but Oliver wasn’t convinced. 

The first years and prefects were the first ones to leave the hall as the first years always had priority when it came to seeing their new common rooms and dormitories. 

You finished off your pudding and left Oliver chatting with his quidditch team about the new tactics he’d been thinking up over the summer. 

You left the great hall, loosening your tie and tossing a hand through your hair as you realised just how tired you were. 

“(Y/n)?” You heard a voice come up behind you and you spun around to see Cedric jogging down the corridor towards you.

“Cedric?” You furrowed your eyebrows, curious to why he was giving you this much attention today. 

“What, um, what are you doing right now?” He asked as he stopped in front of you. 

“Nothing... Heading back to the common room.” You were taken back by his forwardness. 

“Would you... Would you like to, uh, go on a walk with me?” Cedric asked, pointing his thumb over his shoulder. 

“Shouldn’t you be looking after the first years, Mr Prefect?” You had saw him leave earlier with the new Hufflepuff students. 

“They realised the kitchens was right beside our common room so I think they’re preoccupied for now.” Cedric smiled at you and you couldn’t help but smile back. 

“It’s getting late.” You stated, looking up at the night sky from the arch beside you. 

“A short walk then?” Cedric offered his hand. 

Your eyes fell to his palm and you gnawed on your cheek as you contemplated. 

“I don’t bite.” Cedric pushed, his grin never faltering. “I promise.” 

“A short one.” You didn’t take his hand but you walked past him, encouraging him to follow. 

“So, how come we haven’t spoken before?” Cedric asked as he chased after you, his hands in his pockets. 

“I don’t know.” You admitted honestly, “One of the many reasons could be you’re a Hufflepuff, I’m a Gryffindor. I’m 5th year, you’re 6th year. I don’t really have many friends, you have a lot. I like to be alone too. People don’t speak to me that often.” You suggested many reasons but you knew the whole fact was you just barely spent time socialising outside of your friendship with Wood. 

“How come?” Cedric furrowed his brow as he glanced down at you. 

You went quiet as you rounded a corner to enter the courtyard. 

“(Y/n)?” Cedric caught your elbow and brought you to face him.

“People just don’t trust me, I guess.” You pursed your lips into a thin line as you avoided his eyes. 

“Why would they not?” He asked. 

“Cedric.” You looked up at him with a frown, “My name is (Y/n) Seyler.” 

“Seyler? As in...” Cedric didn’t react in fear or disgust but more confusion. 

“As in Lorelei and Mikael Seyler.” Cedric could see the anger flicker in your eyes when you said your parents names. 

“Why would anyone not trust you because of that? They’ve been in Azkaban since you were a toddler.” Cedric seemed genuine about his confusion but you knew that people were judged far too easily at this school by their family names; Weasley, Malfoy, etc.

“People think evil can be inherited. I can’t tell you how happy I was being sorted into Gryffindor, at least I wasn’t following their footsteps then. My father was a Ravenclaw and my mother a Slytherin. I would have even been happy as a Hufflepuff.” You pulled Cedric’s tie out of his jumper and stared at it. 

“What’s wrong with being a Hufflepuff?” Cedric took it from you with a fake hurt on his face. 

“The fact I know Hufflepuffs prefer hanging around with Slytherins than Gryffindors.” You wiggled your eyebrows, it was a known fact throughout the school that if you were a Slytherin you probably had a Hufflepuff as your out of house friend. 

“I guess that’s changing.” Cedric smirked, cocking his eyebrow at you. 

You were speechless at his attempt at flirting but you felt the heat rise to your cheeks. 

“I, um, I better head back to the dorms. Need to unpack and all.” You made up an excuse to excuse yourself.

“I can walk you if you like?” Cedric offered but you had to deny in fear that if you spent much more time with him, someone would notice. 

“It’s okay. Yours is closer from here, it would take longer for you to walk me to the fat lady and then back to your common room. Don’t want to be getting in trouble for being out late on the first night back, do we?” You started to slowly walk backwards as you spoke. 

“I guess that wouldn’t be a great start to the year. Goodnight then, (Y/n).” Cedric nodded his head at you, his soft brown hair bouncing on his head, his smile just as soft.

“Goodnight.” The word came out faster than expected and Cedric just chuckled. 

You turned your back and rushed to the Gryffindor common room. 

Most students were inside now, all heading to their dorms to unpack and relax after the large feast. 

You were greeted by some of the boys in your year who were sat around with the Weasley twins and you politely greeted them back. 

When you reached your dorm, the beds were mostly taken and the girls were nattering about their summer romances and getaways. 

“Hey (Y/n), did you have a nice summer?” Angelina was the one who quietened the girls by speaking to you. 

“It was okay.” You smiled a small appreciative smile at the girl for trying with you. Angelina and Katie were both on the Quidditch team with Oliver so were more friendly with you than most of the girls in your year. 

“Oliver was already talking our ears off at supper about this years Quidditch cup. I don’t know how you sit with him for the whole train journey, he must put you to sleep.” Katie joked which made you and Angelina laugh.

“I’m pretty much immune to his constant chatter by now. I know what and what not to listen to.” You retorted, smiling at the girls. 

“That train journey was pretty scary. The dementors coming aboard was horrible.” Angelina folded her clothes as she spoke. 

“Well, Black breaking out of Azkaban is pretty horrible. If he has any sense he won’t come near Hogwarts.” Katie couldn’t help but let her eyes flicker to you when she mentioned Azkaban but you pretended not to notice. 

“He may not have any sense. Azkaban can drive you mad. The only good thing about that is he’ll caught quickly if he tries to come here.” You kept your eyes down as you unlocked your trunk to find your pyjamas. 

The girls went quiet but soon picked up some other conversation that you weren’t interested in. 

When you felt you had sorted all your belongings out, you slipped on your slippers and went down to the common room. 

Wood was sat on the sofa by the fire. 

“Waiting for me, Oli?” You made yourself known and he grinned up at you. 

“I know your personal schedule way too accurately, Seyler. I was just drawing up some strategies.” Wood showed you his notebook and you just shook your head, taking and closing the book.  

“No more Quidditch talk today, I beg!” You flopped on the sofa beside him, pulling your sweater sleeves up your wrists as you brought your knees up to your chest. 

“Okay... Well, how about we talk about your little evening walk with Cedric Diggory?” 

“How did you find out?” You stared at the boy in disbelief. 

“Percy saw you two together in the courtyard.” He admitted. It was a pain that they shared a room. 

“He asked me to go on a walk with him and I said yes. There’s nothing else to it.” You started, 

“Isn’t he a little old for you, (Y/n)?” Wood asked, almost teasing you. 

“He’s a year older. Anyway, like I said, there’s nothing else to it.” You argued, 

“We’ll see about that, shall we?” Wood rolled his eyes at you which made you whack him.

“I can’t believe it’s your last year.” You tried diverting the conversation to him as you tucked yourself under his arm.

“Finally! I won’t have to spend any more time with you after this year.” Oliver smirked. The cheek of that boy!

“I am a delight!” You whacked him again. 

“You’re a bully. I’ll come up in bruises tomorrow, just you see.” 

“Speaking of tomorrow. We have lessons. We should get to bed, it’s been long day of travelling and if I hear one more of your strategies for this year I may fall asleep on this sofa.” 

“Like I said, a Bully...” Wood stood up and pulled you with him. 

You both returned to your rooms and you fell asleep quicker than expected, the last image in your mind was Cedric with that smile in the train corridor. 

(PART 2 HERE)

[angelofthequeers]

Not a Good Look: Chapter 7

@thequeenofpotatoeunicornss @lady-charinette @elmokingkong tagged as requested :)

Chapter 6 | AO3 link

Disclaimer: I don’t own ML.

Thanks to everyone who’s enjoyed this fic! It was just a little something I had to get out because of this whole quarantine crap…and then I misplaced my brain cell and picked my presentation topics with the same due week as my essays, so this was a welcome break from four assessments at once.

Because I got a few queries about Gabriel hearing the conversation after he was Venomed and realising that Adrien is Chat: considering that the driver in 'Queen Wasp' was delirious and didn't know what the heck was going on, I see Venom as freezing all the senses and basically making you black out. So no, he doesn't have a clue what happened after he was Venomed.

Also, you'll notice that I don't actually mention Emilie at all. That's because the investigation's still ongoing and they'd have to know to look behind the painting, let alone the combination to it, and they won't have that without Gabriel telling them or without some good tech if they did suspect it in the first place. Unlike in 'Hold Me', it's only been a few days since the takedown, not a few weeks, and Adrien doesn't have the knowledge about Emilie and the secret lair here that he did in 'Hold Me' when Gabriel physically showed him, so he can't go and tell any of the authorities. Just figured I'd throw that in before people start asking XD

“I can’t believe it!” Alya throws her hands up and almost steps onto the road in front of a speeding car, which honks furiously at her as it passes. “All that evidence against Lila and you’re not letting me air it?”

“Hawkmoth is fair game,” Marinette says. “And they’ll probably use the footage in court to prove that he was grooming an underage girl. But if you air that footage, you’re giving her a free ticket out. She’ll have solid proof that she was being manipulated by Mr Agreste. And honestly…Adrien’s right. Sure, we can expose her over the internet, but what then? It follows her everywhere she goes. She’s got no chance of ever growing past this evil, self-absorbed phase that she’s in because it’ll haunt her for the rest of her life.”

“That’s surprisingly mature for someone whose life was almost ruined by said phase,” Alya mutters.

“You think I’m happy about this?” Marinette says. “I want nothing more than to throw all her lies in her face and cackle like a witch about it. But I don’t want to sink to that kind of person. Being her for five minutes, even though it was an illusion…it made me pity her. She’ll do anything for her fifteen minutes of fame, even if she has to make deals with creepy old men who try to intimidate her, and she’ll squash anyone who gets in her way. And honestly? That’s just sad. I’m the one with true friends. I’m the one who’ll still be standing when the dust settles. Not her. I told her I had faith in my friends and look where we ended up.”

Alya reaches over and rests the back of her hand on Marinette’s forehead. “Are you sure we got the Butterfly and Peacock on Wednesday night?” she says. “You sure there’s not an akuma that’s making you say this stuff? Or that you’re not a sentimonster?”

“Oh, ha, ha,” Marinette says, rolling her eyes. “And besides, the police may or may not have told Ladybug that they were arresting Lila yesterday for colluding with a terrorist, since there’s enough doubt in the footage of me as her to at least claim that she had a clue that he was Hawkmoth. And even though she’ll most likely wriggle her way out of it because that proof’s not a hundred percent solid, at least she won’t be playing everyone like a puppet anymore. There’ll be just enough doubt that they’ll start to question her and then her lies will just…fall. And it’ll kill her more to have no attention than to even have bad attention.”

Alya blinks at her. “No, seriously, who are you and what have you done with Marinette? I know there’s no way you’d come up with that all by yourself.”

“Okay, fine!” Marinette crosses her arms. “Tikki talked me down from going ballistic last night, and Adrien, Kagami, and I had a good talk about what to do about her.”

“I knew it!” Alya says, jabbing Marinette in the chest. “That’s way more complex than your single brain cell can handle!”

“Excuse me?” Marinette splutters. “How dare you? I’m the saviour of Paris! You have my posters in your room!”

“And I’m also your best friend, so I’m allowed to ruthlessly roast you,” Alya says smugly. “Too bad, so sad.”

Sure enough, as Marinette had predicted, Lila’s at school today and is holding court in the classroom, strategically sobbing into her hands when Marinette and Alya enter the room.

“Oh, Marinette! Alya! I’m so glad you’re here!” Lila cries. “Marinette, I’m so sorry for everything I’ve done to you! I never wanted to hurt you but, well, Mr Agreste took advantage of my lying disorder and our natural rivalry and he – he –” She sniffles and blows her nose, and Marinette resists the incredibly strong urge to roll her eyes at the theatrics. “He manipulated me! He promised me modelling contracts and favours and that I could spend time with Adrien, since I had a crush on him, and – and oh my gosh, I feel so dirty!”

“It’s okay, Lila,” Rose says soothingly, patting her on the back. “He took advantage of you. It’s nothing to be ashamed of!”

“I always knew that Mr Agreste was a dirty old man,” Alix growls. “On top of being a shitty father and a supervillain!”

“I mean, we were all used by him as akumas,” Chloé scoffs, delicately touching up her mascara in her compact mirror. “You’re nothing special, Rossi. And Adrikins is staying at my hotel now, so which of us ended up winning, hmm?”

“Well, we might never be friends, but I forgive you for everything you’ve done,” Marinette says as everyone glares at Chloé. Kind of rich of Chloé to say that, considering what she’d done as Miracle Queen, but no one actually remembers that, so…oh well. “And I’m…sorry for the way I treated you. I should have believed you about your disabilities even if you didn’t have that lying disorder.”

As much as it pains her to do so, this apology is necessary. As Tikki and Adrien had pointed out, their classmates had in fact been in the right to believe Lila about her disabilities instead of forcing her to prove every little thing, and Marinette had wilted when Tikki had asked her to remember how she’s felt whenever anyone’s doubted her claim of being autistic because she “seems normal enough” and demanded that she provide evidence. But Marinette’s not apologising for or excusing Lila’s evil manipulations and every other lie of hers, especially the ones that got her expelled, and Tikki and Adrien had thankfully taken her side on that point.

“Oh, of course I forgive you!” Lila says dramatically. “And I agree! Even if we never end up being friends, I’d much rather be on friendly terms than unfriendly!”

“So, what happens now?” Sabrina says. “My father told me that you were arrested yesterday!”

Lila’s face falls. “Oh, yes, they had to arrest me for colluding with a terrorist, but it’s all a formality and I’m sure to be let off in the trial! Especially since their only evidence is some footage of me talking to Mr Agreste that’s clearly doctored, since I’ve got an airtight alibi, and Alya’s interview of me that she had to get as more evidence against him! Ladybug had to summon an illusion of me to trick Mr Agreste into confessing, of course, and I was so scared that he would take it out on me if our plan failed, but I’m fully prepared to give media statements, even if Ladybug can’t confirm or deny that we were working together for my safety…”

Marinette’s eye twitches as Lila spins some tale about the grand plan that she’d been part of to take down Gabriel Agreste. But, to her surprise, their classmates aren’t falling over themselves to ooh and ahh at her story. They’re not calling her out, of course, but they’re just…losing interest the longer she talks about herself. Huh. That’s never happened before.

“What’s going on?” Marinette turns to whisper to Ivan. “You don’t believe her?”

Ivan shrugs. “She’s got a lying disorder. She can’t help it. Not gonna be mean for something she can’t help but…yeah, I don’t believe Ladybug would use a civilian like that.”

“I pity her, honestly,” Nathaniel pipes up from behind Ivan. “But I’m also kind of wondering what else she’s lied about, especially if Mr Agreste made her. Even if she wasn’t doing it to screw us over…she was still lying to us.”

Marinette could sing to the heavens. Finally, someone’s using their brain! It might not be immediate, but Lila’s downfall is just around the corner, and honestly? Marinette had been telling the truth earlier; all she can feel right now is pity for when Lila’s eventually left alone, surrounded by nothing but her lies as her empire crumbles around her. And honestly, maybe fading into obscurity like that is a worse punishment for Lila than being targeted and called out, since that would still be giving her the attention that she craves. But this? This is nothing.

Although Marinette keeps an absent eye on the door for Adrien’s entrance, she’s not expecting to see him, since she already knows that he’s not coming to school today as well. Not that she can blame him, really, after the whole “Hawkmoth exposed” thing that Alya had posted on the Ladyblog that’s generated so much traffic that poor Alya can’t even check up on it since it keeps crashing (much to her gleeful annoyance). Marinette doesn’t think that anyone will accuse him of being in league with Hawkmoth but, well, it’s inevitable that there’ll be some dicks who pull the whole “like father, like son” crap, so it makes sense that he wouldn’t want to expose himself to that.

However, that doesn’t stop her from making a beeline for Le Grand Paris after school, where Adrien and his bodyguard are staying temporarily since the mansion’s now considered a crime scene. It’s so…weird. Hawkmoth and Mayura have been taken down and Adrien’s life has been utterly turned on its head and shaken some more, yet the sun still casts its weak rays down on Marinette’s back. The pigeons still coo and rustle their wings, with Mr Ramier no doubt nearby. The cars still zoom past, leaving acrid trails in their wake. The world just…keeps on keeping on, with no regard to the massive shock that’s turned people’s lives upside-down. All these people – these animals – they won’t know, they won’t care, what she and her friends have had to go through, being used like pawns in a chess game and giving up so much for the greater good, in ways that will stay with them forever –

“Marinette!” Warm hands grab her by the shoulders and a pair of brown eyes root her to the spot, grounding her so that she doesn’t float away from everything that’s currently assaulting her brain. She lets out a shuddering gasp and slumps forward, allowing the person to fully embrace her, and she buries her nose in the damp skin of their neck and inhales sweat and sharp deodorant, along with the faintest traces of what smells like some kind of incense.

“Kagami,” she croaks and digs her fingers into the back of Kagami’s blazer. “Why? What did Adrien do to deserve this? What did we do to deserve this? Lila – Mr Agreste – am I really that bad that they teamed up to break me –”

“What they did to you isn’t a punishment for anything,” Kagami says, firm but soft at the same time. “They colluded like that because they’re awful people.”

“But the way I treated you and – and stalked Adrien – I stole his phone, I followed him around, I tried to sabotage you with Chloé at the movie event because I was jealous – it’s been bothering me but I didn’t – it didn’t hit – not until now, when I realised how Mr Agreste and Lila treated him like – like a toy –”

“Marinette –”

“Why do you even like me? Why does Adrien like me? He said I’m good but I’m not. I’ve done bad things and it’s like – everyone acts like me being Ladybug makes me a saint but I’m not, I’m just a teenage girl and I can’t cope, I can’t do this –”

“Yes, you can.” Kagami undoes Marinette’s pigtails so that she can run her fingers through Marinette’s hair, stroking it in a rhythmic pattern that hypnotises Marinette into a blurry trance. “Hawkmoth and Mayura are dealt with. I’m here to talk to Adrien, just as you are, and we’ll figure it out, okay? We always will. And I can’t say that I haven’t acted jealously before either, because I definitely clung to Adrien to make a point to you and Chloé at the movie premiere, so you’re not a bad person just because you did a few bad things. And your flaws don’t mean that Adrien was lying when he said that you’re a brilliant girl. I wouldn’t have feelings for you if you were anything less than extraordinary. Why do you think I like Adrien?”

“God – I’m a mess –”

“It’s okay. I moved us to an alleyway, so no one will see. And now that there aren’t any more akumas, you deserve this, Marinette. It’s okay.”

Dimly, Marinette registers her legs caving underneath her as she sobs into Kagami’s shoulder and clutches fistfuls of the other girl’s blazer, finally exorcising everything she’s had to keep bottled up for fear of akumatisation, because Kagami’s right: now that there aren’t any akumas, there’s no threat for expressing her emotions, and it’s so good to be able to just break down like this, rather than having to suppress everything and paste on a smile for the greater good. She almost jumps out of her skin when someone leans against her back and wraps their arms around her from behind, but then she gets a whiff of their musky, earthy smell and she melts into their embrace because it’s Adrien; it’s her kitty, and he’ll always be there for her no matter what.

“Wow, you weren’t lying when you said she was a mess,” Adrien murmurs, his voice distorted as though they’re underwater. “What brought it on?”

“I don’t know what triggered it, but I believe the underlying cause is not being able to express any of this with Hawkmoth around. She just…exploded.”

The voices turn to a dull buzz after that as Marinette gasps in air and her tears finally start to die down. The next time she’s able to discern individual words, it’s Adrien talking to her as she finally stops crying and just slumps against Kagami with her eyes closed and her limbs like lead weights.

“It’s okay, Marinette,” he’s saying. “I forgive you for stealing my phone and following me and Lila home and everything else. And Kagami forgives you for trying to embarrass her.”

“But why?” Marinette croaks. “It’s not normal. I’m not normal. Why don’t you h-hate me? I’m a creep.”

“After what Hawkmoth and Lila did, you still think you’re a creep?” Adrien says. He gently pulls her back, detaching her from Kagami, and he pulls her into his lap and tangles his fingers in her hair, his warm breath ghosting across the top of her head. Through her blurry eyes, Marinette sees Kagami snuggling up to Adrien’s side and pulling Marinette’s legs into her lap while she rests her head on Adrien’s shoulder. “I said I forgive you, bugaboo, not that you didn’t do anything wrong. So, you know, that means that I know you messed up and I’m okay with it. It’s not like I’ve never made mistakes either.”

Somehow, it’s the admission that yeah, she’d screwed up, but he forgives her for it, that manages to calm Marinette down the rest of the way; if he’d tried to excuse her actions and brush them off as her never doing anything wrong, that probably would’ve just brought on a fresh emotional meltdown. She sags against Adrien and closes her eyes, allowing the last of her meltdown to seep out of her and into the world around them, and when Kagami shifts under her legs, she acts purely on instinct and wraps her legs around Kagami to pull her closer.

“Looks like Ladybug never skipped leg day,” Adrien says when Marinette pulls Kagami to lean back against her. Although Marinette can’t see him, she just knows that he’s wearing that shit-eating grin that Chat Noir always has, so she punishes him by elbowing him gently in the gut. “Meowch!”

“So, I’m guessing this means we’re…a thing?” Marinette says. Her voice cracks halfway through her sentence, like she’s a teenage boy in the middle of puberty, but thankfully, neither person around her calls her out on it.

“I’m happy with that if we take it slow and don’t jump straight into the deep end,” Adrien says. “It’s pretty lonely in the hotel, but hopefully Gorilla or Nino’s mother gets custody of me soon. I don’t know who they’re leaning towards. And after what just happened…well, if both of you want to give me kitty cuddles, I won’t say no. And, uh…I have to confess. One of the times I messed up as Aspik was because I…couldn’t stop staring at Multimouse’s butt. So, uh, I think that beats out any creepy things you’ve done.”

The shock of hearing Adrien confess to looking at her butt like he’s a little kitten confessing to being naughty jolts a laugh out of Marinette, and then she’s sagging against Adrien in a fit of piercing laughter as tears roll down her face. Alya had been right the other night. What the hell is wrong with them? How did they end up in a two-person love square that turned into a tangled polygon when Kagami had entered the room?

“Then it’s official.” Kagami laces her fingers with a hysterical Marinette’s and rests their hands on her stomach. “I have a tentative boyfriend and a girlfriend. But Adrien has a moral obligation to punch anyone who makes any disgusting remarks about him having “two girls”.”

“You act like I wasn’t gonna do that anyway,” Adrien grumbles. “I’ll also throw in an additional punch if they ask you two to make out with each other.”

“Our hero,” Marinette tries to say dryly, but the effect is ruined when she chokes it out in the middle of the hiccups of her dying laughter. “Whatever would we do without you?”

“Well, your life would be –”

“No, wait, don’t finish that sentence. I know you’ll make a pun out of it somehow and then I’ll be forced to punch you for it.”

“Aww,” Adrien whines, while Kagami snorts. “But that’s half my charm!”

“Getting punched? I agree,” Kagami says innocently. Adrien whines again and Marinette can’t help but laugh again and realise that, while navigating the territory of having two partners at the same time won’t be easy, the extra support is probably exactly what she needs right now. With her two partners and her two best friends by her side, there’s nothing the five of them can’t do; especially with no more supervillain terrorising Paris and no more attention-seeking teenage girl trying to ruin everyone else’s lives.

It really hadn’t been a good look for either of them after all.

[imagineteamfreewill]

Behind A Mirror

Title: Behind A Mirror

Pairing: Reader x Sam

Word Count: 5,269

Warnings: Captivity, small cuts (not outside of canonical injuries), pain

Summary: The reader makes her way towards a false sanctuary, only to get caught by Rowena, who has nefarious plans of her own.

A/N: This is part ten of the The Switch series. Enjoy, and please leave feedback!

X

The Switch Series Masterlist

Your name: submit What is this?

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The rumor about the hunter’s haven in Canada had been just that—a rumor. You’d spent weeks walking north, fighting your way through overgrown forests thick with monsters. By the time you finally arrived at where you’d thought the sanctuary would be, you were exhausted. You were more than ready to give up when the curly-haired witch had caught you off guard while getting a drink.

“What do we have here?”

The witch who’d captured you circled around the chair, peering down at you. Excitement glittered in her dark eyes, but you were too exhausted to care about what she had planned for you.

“If you’re going to kill me, you might as well just do it now,” you told her, not even bothering to lift your head and look at her. Your neck was aching from being bent for so long.  “I promise I’ll make it easy for you.”

She clucked her tongue. “Now, that’s no fun. What happened to little Y/N, so full of fight and life?”

Confused, you slowly raised your head and squinted at her. “You know who I am?” you asked. The witch chuckled and you straightened up in your chair a little, the ropes across your chest and around your wrists rubbing harshly against your skin. “Who are you? How do you know who I am.”

“I’m nobody. But,” she added with a smile, “my leader is not.”

“Your leader?”

“Yes, dear,” a new voice answered, and you turned your head to see a different woman, one you’d never seen before, standing in the collapsing doorway. She smiled at you before stepping inside the room, her black, floor-length gown brushing against the dirty floorboards. “Their leader.”

“And who are you?” you asked. You pulled at the ropes around your wrists again, gritting your teeth and wincing when they dug into the already tender skin.

The woman chuckled and brushed her bright red curls back, her movements more graceful than anything you’d seen in years. She looked as if she’d never worked a day in her life, judging by her dress and the way she stood and moved. She spoke eloquently, her words lilted by a Scottish accent that almost screamed refinement. If you hadn’t been so frustrated at your captors, she might’ve been someone that you’d looked to for help. Then again, anyone who still flourished after the Switch was surely a monster of some kind.

“You don’t know who I am? Well, maybe you’re not as smart as I thought you were, then. Are you sure that the Winchester never mentioned me?”

“I don’t know,” you huffed. “Maybe if we stopped playing Guess Who and you told me your name I could answer that.”

She laughed again and came closer. “Rowena MacLeod, High Priestess of the Mega Coven.”

You stopped squirming and stared at her, remembering what Sam had said. Rowena has never been good, you recited. She only does things if there’s something in it for her.

Looking back, this most certainly wasn’t how you pictured Rowena’s appearance, and part of you wondered if she’d changed at all since the Switch. Had she gained her status as the High Priestess afterwards, or had she used her position to get what she wanted? Both were just as likely.

“You’re the one who caused all of this,” you growled, furious. “You’re the one who got thousands of people killed, or worse! You’re a monster!”

“No, dear,” Rowena chuckled, settling down into an elaborate, throne-like chair near yours before accepting a glass of dark red wine brought in by another woman. “I’m a witch.”

Furious, you struggled against your bindings, ignoring the pain from the ropes and the fingernails of the other witch when she dug them into your shoulder. Rowena watched you for a moment, looking away in disinterest and taking a sip of her wine. She hummed thoughtfully as you glared at her, straining against the ropes until the other witch finally mustered enough strength to push you flush against the hard wooden back of the chair. Her nails dug painfully into the meat of your shoulder and you grit your teeth against the feeling.

“Now,” Rowena sighed, giving you a polite smile. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?” She set her wineglass aside, turning on her seat so that she was facing you. “I’d like to talk to you about the Winchesters. How are they?”

You blinked in confusion. “How are they,” you dumbly repeated. “You want to know how they are?”

“Yes,” she smiled, leaning forward in interest.

“I wouldn’t know,” you finally told her after a minute, eyeing her warily from your seat. Turning your head, you looked over your shoulder at the other witch and glared at her. “Will you please extricate your obviously fake nails from my shoulder?”

The witch glared at you and opened her mouth to say something when Rowena interrupted, “That’s enough, Marie. You can leave now.”

“But—”

One look was enough for Rowena to silence Marie, sending her scurrying out the door like a frightened mouse. You watched with interest before turning your attention back to Rowena, who’d picked up her wine for another sip. She smiled graciously as you adjusted yourself in the chair.

“What do you mean that you wouldn’t know? My sources tell me that you’ve been with them for several months now. I don’t take well to liars, Y/N, and if you’d like my assistance, I suggest that you cooperate.” She was clearly threatening you, but her gentle way of speaking masked the threat as if it was nothing more than a polite conversation between two friends.

You snorted, not stopping to change your tone when your next words came out bitter and full of anger, “Well, your sources are wrong. I haven’t seen Sam or Dean in weeks. They kicked me out.”

It was Rowena’s turned to be surprised. One perfectly manicured eyebrow raised as she took another sip of her wine. “Really?”

Nodding, you shifted your wrists again, this time wincing at the abrasiveness of the ropes. “Listen, if all we’re gonna do is chat, can you at least untie me?”

“Do you think I’m daft?” Rowena asked, chuckling.

She set her drink back down on the table before standing and crossing the room to look out the tiny window that looked out towards the forest. Morning sun poured in through the panes of glass, illuminating all the dust motes floating through the room. You’d passed by that same window on your way towards the border, but you hadn’t dared to venture near it. Now, you were thankful that you hadn’t attempted to seek shelter inside. Who knows how long Rowena and her crew had been hiding out here?

“Maybe,” you shot back. “You were dumb enough to believe whoever told you that I’ve been in Kansas the past few weeks. Speaking of… If you know where Sam and Dean are, why haven’t you gotten rid of them? You clearly have a vested interest in them, and I can’t imagine that they make your life very easy, especially now that you’re number one on their public enemies list.”

Rowena waved her hand dismissively and turned to face you again, one hand on her hip. “Y/N, those boys aren’t a threat to me, not anymore! I knew about their little counterspell from the beginning! In fact, you could almost say that I helped them find it.” She smiled kindly at you and for a brief second you found yourself believing that she was as good as she was pretending to be. The notion passed quickly, however, and you narrowed your eyes.

“Why? Why help them find the spell if it made your own spell less potent?”

Her smile turned cruel and malicious excitement glittered in her eyes. An involuntary shiver ran down your spine. You glanced toward the window, hoping that maybe you’d see some sort of sign that help was on the way, but disappointment came all too quick.

“Because, Y/N,” Rowena said, stepping closer to you, “their pain is valuable to me.”

You watched her for a long second before it dawned on you that she’d known all along that you hadn’t been in the bunker. She was just trying to get information. She was playing with you like the cat plays with the mouse before it feasts.

“What are you planning? Why did you capture me?”

Turning her head away for a moment, Rowena smiled to herself and moved back to her original seat. She didn’t sit, instead choosing to pick up her glass, finishing the last of the wine before setting it back down in its place.

“Answer me,” you demanded. “Answer me or I swear I’ll—”

“You’ll what, Y/N?” Rowena turned to face you, smiling. She chuckled at the frustration on your face. “Oh, sweet girl! You can’t do anything to me. The Switch affected my powers too, just like everyone else’s. A mere side effect, however.” She waved her hand dismissively. “

You narrowed your eyes at her. “What do you mean that it was only a side effect?”

Rowena gave you another secretive, malicious smile, her eyes glowing purple for a brief moment before she glided out of the room. A wave of her hand shut the door and dust rained down from the ceiling as it slammed against the door frame. Not willing to give in to her game, you sat in silence, waiting for her to come back. When she didn’t, you shouted out for her in hopes that your anger would rouse up something inside of her. The cabin remained quiet in response and you struggled against the ropes around you, furious that you’d been both captured and tricked.

After what seemed like hours, you spotted the cell phone that Cas had given you lying on a table across the room. None of the witches had come back to check on you and you cast a cursory glance at both the door and the window before attempting to scoot your chair across the floor. It moved with less difficulty than you’d expected and though your ankles were tied to its front legs, you found yourself in front the table before the sun had even gone down.

“Come on,” you grumbled, gritting your teeth as you wiggled one hand to try and get out of the bindings one last time. Much to your surprise, your hand slipped free without much effort and you frowned, looking towards the door. No one was there and you slowly pulled your other hand free, letting the still-tied ropes fall to the floor behind you. They fell away too easily for your likely, especially since they hadn’t budged only minutes before. Though suspicious, you hurriedly grabbed the phone from the table and unlocked it. It still had enough battery life for you to make a call and you sighed in relief.

You called Cas first and you let out a sigh when he answered on the first ring.

“Y/N,” he said, sounding worried but nonetheless happy to receive your call. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

You couldn’t help but smile a little at his words. At least someone back at the bunker is happy to hear from me. I’m not sure that Sam would have been so welcoming.

Keeping your voice down, you glanced at the door before replying, “It’s good to hear your voice too, Cas. I’m really glad you answered.”

“Is something wrong? Why are you talking so quietly?”

“Listen, Cas,” you whispered, cupping your hand around your mouth for an extra layer of protection from the witches’ ears, assuming they were still in the building. “Rowena’s got me. I’m somewhere in North Dakota, I think. I don’t know how far they carried me when they grabbed me. Cas, I—”

“There’s no need to explain any further,” Cas said. His voice was suddenly louder and you twisted in your seat to look behind you, smiling wide when you saw him standing in the middle of the room.

“Cas. Thank God.”

He smiled back and rushed to untied you. Your legs and your knees were stiff from being tied up for so long and Castiel helped you to your feet without a word. Almost as soon as his hand was in yours, the world spun around you and you found yourself standing in the library of the bunker. It hadn’t changed a bit since you’d left.

“Cas,” you sighed, pulling your hand from his. “You shouldn’t have brought me back here, you should’ve—”

You were cut off by someone pulling you into their arms and hugging you tightly. Surprised, you hugged them back, only stepping away when you realized that it was Sam who was hugging you.

“Sam!” You cleared your throat, immediately moving out of his reach. “I, um, I didn’t think that you guys would be here.”

You idiot, you cursed yourself internally. Where else would they be? Sam, especially. The bunker is the only place he can be.

“It’s good to see you,” Sam replied. He didn’t look angry anymore, you noticed.

You stared at him for a long moment before looking towards Cas, only to see that he’d left you to your own devices. “Give me a day and I’ll be out of your hair, I promise.”

Without another word, you moved to go to your old bedroom, wanting more than anything to take a long, hot shower and sleep in actual bed for the first time in weeks. Sam reached out, however, grabbing your arm and stopping you before you were even past the long wooden tables.

“Y/N, wait. Please.”

You stopped and waited until he dropped your arm to look back at him. When you did, you saw that Cas had disappeared.

“I was wrong to kick you out. I was… angry and hurt and I should’ve tried to understand why you did what you did. I understand now,” he added.

“What are you trying to say?” You watched him carefully, keeping your expression neutral despite the pounding of your heart.

Sam ran his fingers through his hair, opening his mouth and then closing it again as he tried to form the words he wanted to say. Finally, he replied. “I remember the dreams now. Cas used his grace to unbury them and—”

“Unbury them? What’s that supposed to mean?” You crossed your arms over your chest and shifted your weight, ignoring the soreness in your legs and feet.

Sam sighed and glanced over at one of the many sets of bookshelves. “We figured out who brought him back. Apparently,” he sighed, his jaw twitching with unspoken anger, “Rowena’s been messing with all of us for a long time, even Dean. She did something that made me forget the dreams. We didn’t know until Cas went to heal my hand after I sliced it open.”

You cursed under your breath. “Of course it was Rowena! I knew she was up to something! She wouldn’t have let me go that easily if she wasn’t!”

Confused, Sam frowned, his eyebrows furrowing. He reached out for you when you went to walk away again. “What are you talking about, Y/N?”

“We need to warn Dean and Cas right now,” you told him, grabbing his hand to pull him behind you before he could ask you anything else. Hurriedly, you walked down the hall, peering into all the open rooms until you finally found both men in the kitchen.

Once you spotted them standing by the counter, you turned into the kitchen and began talking, interrupting their conversation. “Rowena’s up to something,” you announced, and both men looked over at you in surprise. “We have to figure out whatever it is before something even worse happens to us.”

Dean didn’t seem surprised to see you and you had a feeling that Cas had explained what had happened after he’d left you and Sam in the library. With that thought in your mind, you looked back at Sam. His hand was still held snugly in yours.

“She and two other witches captured me a few hours from the border and she kept talking about how she’s been keeping tabs on the four of us for a long time. Right before she left she said that the Switch enhancing all the monsters’ powers said that was only a side effect, and that she was the one who helped you guys find the counterspell you used to diminish the strength of her original spell.”

The three men exchanged a look, each of them frowning in concern as you continued, “She let me go too easily. The ropes practically fell off and she left my phone in plain sight. No one even showed up to fight back when Cas came in. The place wasn’t even warded.”

Dean dropped his head, setting down his beer and mumbling a curse under his breath. “She’s right, Sam. That’s not Rowena’s M.O. We gotta look into it, as much as I hate to think that we’ve been played even more than we thought.”

Sam nodded and let go of your hand. You couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed at the loss of the feeling of his warm skin against yours, but you suppressed the emotion and tried to focus on what he was saying.

“—don’t know what she’s talking about with that spell, but we should ask around if anyone’s seen her poking around in Kansas or if she’s using magic to keep track of us.”

Dean and Castiel nodded in agreement.

“I can reach out to my contacts and see if they know anything,” Cas offered.

“That’d be great, Cas. Dean, you wanna give Jody a call and see if she’s heard anything?” Sam asked.

Nodding, Dean grabbed his bottle again and followed Cas out of the kitchen. Before he left he stopped by your side and put a hand on your shoulder, squeezing slightly.

“It’s good to have you back, kid.”

You offered him a hesitant smile and he left. You didn’t move as you listened to the sound of his footsteps grow quieter. Deep down inside you hoped that Sam would follow his brother, and you stared at the empty sink, silently willing your hope to come into existence.

“We never finished our conversation,” Sam said after a minute, and you closed your eyes.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” you replied.

He sighed. “Y/N…”

“Sam, maybe we’re aren’t soulmates. I don’t care what Cas says, it doesn’t seem like we’re very much of a match.”

“So you’re just going to ignore all the signs? The dreams, our souls being connected?”

“I’m not—” You sighed and turned around to face him, crossing your arms over your chest. “I’m not ignoring them, Sam. I just…” You gestured helplessly and then dropped your hands back down to your sides, trying and failing to get Sam to understand what you were trying to say.

“I just think it’ll be easier if we were just friends,” you finally explained.

Hurt flashed in his eyes and you immediately regretted your words. It was a weak excused and both of you knew it.

“Just friends. That’s really what you want?”

“I don’t know what I want,” you answered honestly. “I never believed in soulmates and all of this is really confusing and I don’t…” You shook your head. “I don’t know if I can be in any kind of relationship with all this stuff going on. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.”

The room was quiet for a minute before Sam opened the fridge, pulling out two beers. He held one out for you and you took it gingerly, unsure of what to do next.

“Sit?” he asked, and you nodded in response, following him to the table. He pulled a chair out for you before sitting in his own and twisting the cap off his beer, taking a long swig. You sat down in silence and waited for him to speak first, your own bottle left sitting unopened on the table.

Finally, Sam said, “Y/N, I… I don’t want to be just friends. I had a lot of time to think about it while you were gone. I even talked to Cas about the whole soulmate thing, which is how we ended up finding out that I couldn’t remember those dreams because Rowena buried them in my subconscious.”

“And?”

“And,” Sam set down his beer and turned it in circles, watching it for a second before looking back at you, “I remember them now. I remember everything.

“Everything?”

He nodded. “They were good dreams, Y/N. I haven’t had dreams like those in a long time. I haven’t had that kind of… that kind of connection with anyone but you. Not even being with Jess could compare to what I felt during those dreams.”

You looked down at your hands, staring at the dirt under your nails and the scratch you’d earned when you tried to grab a knife you’d dropped into a dead, thorn-covered bush. Silently, you twisted the old silver ring you’d found in your bedroom shortly after moving in.

Fight well and love hard, you thought, the inscription popping into you head. Fighting is easy—it’s the loving part I can’t seem to get.

“I don’t know, Sam. It’s just…”

“It’s just what?”

“It’s just… a lot,” you sighed. “I know that’s a dumb reason, but I don’t know what else to say. I just don’t know if I can do the whole ‘meant to be’ thing right now, not with the Rowena stuff and Cas just coming back. I’m still not even sure if I believe in soulmates.”

Sam was quiet for a moment before reaching across the table and taking your hand in his. You lifted your head, curious and confused.

“Is this okay?” he asked, and you nodded in response. Sam smiled slightly and shifted his grip so that his thumb was tucked further under your palm. His hand was warm and calloused and you swallowed thickly, unsure of what to say or do.

“Y/N, we don’t have to jump right into this—not if you don’t want to. And I agree with what you said about everything going on with Rowena. I don’t know if I can focus on any kind of serious relationship either. It wouldn’t be fair to you. I haven’t had anything like that in a long time, not since Jess, and I don’t know how good at it I’ll be.”

“You’d be great,” you murmured, not looking away.

Sam smiled a little more and gently squeezed your hand. “All I’m saying is that I want to try and have something with you, even if it’s just spending more time together. I mean, you said you loved me, didn’t you?” Hesitantly, you nodded, and Sam squeezed your hand again, then continued, “I love you too, but I don’t want to force you into anything you’re not ready for just because we said that we loved each other in a dream. And if you don’t believe in soulmates, that’s okay too. I can’t make you believe in anything you don’t want to believe in, and I definitely don’t want you to think that just because we’re supposedly soulmates means we have to jump right into the deep end of things. I want whatever we have to be as real as Dean’s love for the Impala.”

You couldn’t help but laugh a little at that. Sam chuckled as well and let go of your hand, pulling his own hand back to pick up his bottle and take another sip of his drink. You opened your bottle while he drank, then took a sip while you thought. After a moment you answered,

“I’d like that, Sam. Maybe… Maybe we could start by watching a movie or something? I mean, that’s assuming you’ve got a way to watch movies and stuff. I couldn’t find anything downloaded on the laptop and it’s not like my Netflix account is still valid.” Sam laughed and you warmth blossomed inside of you. It was silly to be happy just because he thought something you said was funny, but the butterflies inside your stomach hadn’t seemed to grasp that concept yet.

Smiling, Sam nodded and stood. “I’ve got a bunch of stuff downloaded on my laptop in my room. We can hook it up to my TV and lay on my bed while we watch them. If you want, that is,” Sam quickly added. “We can use the TV in Dean’s man-cave, if you’d rather.”

The fact that Sam was courteous enough to think that you might not be comfortable lying in bed with him, even to watch a movie, made you smile up at him from your seat. He truly was a great guy.

I’m lucky to have him.

“Your bed is fine, Sam,” you told him as you stood and grabbed your beer, then his. “Besides, it’s not as if we haven’t slept together already.” Sam’s cheeks grew pink at your comment and you couldn’t help but laugh, “You know what I mean! Now come on, lead the way.”

He ducked his head slightly—hiding his adorable smile from your eyes—before turning and walking out into the hallway with you close behind him. You followed him to his bedroom in silence, your mind working quickly to figure out all the possible endings to this evening. As soon as you stepped into the room and saw his bed, however, all those thoughts disappeared and you cursed under your breath.

“I haven’t showered in weeks,” you explained when he looked at you, frowning a little in confusion. “I don’t really want to get in your nice clean bed like this. It’s… I’m really gross, Sam!”

Sam laughed. “It’s okay, I understand. I’ve been there. Go clean yourself up, take your time. I’ll catch up on some research and get everything set up for when you come back.”

Relieved, you gave Sam another smile before slipping back out the door and making your way to the bathroom you used to use. All of your toiletries were right where you’d left them and you did just as Sam said, taking your time to scrub every inch of your body. By the time you turned off the water, your skin was red from the heat and your efforts at getting all the dirt off yourself. A few cuts were still stinging from their thorough cleaning—I need to remember to ask Cas to heal those for me, you told yourself—but as you wrapped up in one of the large towels that the boys had supplied you with, you’d never felt better. You were clean, Sam was waiting for you in his room, and you were back home at the bunker, exactly where you belonged.

“It’s good to see you so comfortable.”

You shrieked at the sound of Rowena’s voice in your ear, whirling around and almost slipping on the wet tile as you tried to figure out exactly where her voice was coming from. She laughed and you could practically picture her sitting in the rickety chair back at the cabin, another glass of wine perched daintily between her fingertips.

“What the hell?” you asked, pushing open a shower curtain to reveal another empty stall. “Rowena, I swear to God, if you don’t show yourself—”

“You’ll what?” she crooned. “Slice me with your razor? Gag me with your wet towel? Y/N, you’re a wee babe compared to me! You couldn’t hurt me even if you tried!”

“What do you want?” you growled.

“I want you to lure him out.”

“Him?” You spotted a foggy flash of red in the mirror as you spoke, and you quickly crossed the room to wipe away the steam from the glass. Rowena’s reflection stared back at you, her teeth bared in a devilish smile.

Rowena let out an exasperated sigh and you watched as she shifted the wineglass to her other hand, then met your eyes. “Sam Winchester, dear. I need him outside of that bunker of yours.”

“He’ll never leave,” you told her, crossing your arms over your towel. “It’s the safest place in the world for him. You shouldn’t even be able to get past the wardings! Besides, why would I do what you want?”

She chuckled and leaned to the side, setting her drink out of your view before straightening up and clasping her hands in her lap. “Y/N, sweetheart, nothing is too difficult if you’re the most powerful witch in the world.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Why do you want Sam out of the bunker so badly that you want me to do it? If you can get past the warding so easily, why don’t you just come in and get him yourself? And you still haven’t answered my question!”

“If Sam Winchester is not out of the bunker before midnight two days from now,” Rowena ground out, narrowing her own eyes at you, “I can promise that your death will be much more permanent than Castiel’s.”

“I’m not scared of you,” you spat. “You’re the one hiding behind a mirror.”

“Am I?”

Pain ripped through you before you could come up with another snarky reply and you fell to your knees, letting go of the towel and catching yourself on your hands before your face could hit the floor. You let out a sob when the pain intensified and you were only half-aware of your surroundings as it finally faded away. Someone’s hands wrapped your fallen towel around you again, then picked you up and carried you out of the humid bathroom. Not bothering to open your eyes, you let yourself be tucked in under the covers of somebody’s bed, still dressed only in the damp towel.

“She’s fine now, I think,” Sam whispered, and you moaned a little at the sound of his voice. You had to tell him about Rowena, but right now sleep was much more welcoming than opening your eyes and facing the lights and noises of the waking world. Your head was pounding and your ears were ringing, as if the pain you’d felt had merely shifted up your body and transformed into a debilitating headache.

“What happened?”

Dean, you recognized. You tried to swallow and open your mouth, but your tongue felt thick and heavy, and your mouth was as dry as sandpaper.

“I don’t know. We were gonna watch a movie but she said she needed to shower first. Everything seemed fine until I heard her scream. When I got in there she was on the floor.”

Two fingers pressed against your forehead and you let out a heavy sigh when the headache and the ringing in your ears disappeared.

“She should be fine,” Castiel told them, and you heard both Winchesters sigh in relief. “Her pain was not from natural causes, Sam. Something happened to her while she was in the bathroom, but I’m not sure what. Nothing magical should be able to get in or out of the bunker.”

But Rowena did! Rowena was able to get in!

The room was silent for a long moment before you heard footsteps, and then the mattress beneath you moved. Someone’s arm wrapped around your waist.

“I’ve got you, Y/N,” Sam murmured, his voice soft and warm against the back of your neck. “I’ll keep you safe.”

I know you will, Sam, you thought. I’m gonna try and keep you safe too, even if I have to face Rowena all by myself.

_______________

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[winchester-ofthe-lord]

Classic Winchester Adventures - Chapter 6

Square Filled: Motel

Rating: gen

Warnings: none

Word Count: 2.7k

Summary:  Sam and Dean have to find out what’s going on in the “Haunted Motel” they discovered in chapter 2

read on ao3       read from the beginning

A/N:  hiya guys, this is chapter 6 for @spnclassicbingo ’s challenge. MASSIVE thanks to @thefandomforme for helping me with this <3 Stay tuned for the next chapters :)

_____________________________________________

A couple of days later, the Impala - now (un)fortunately back to black - rolls off of the highway, and onto the narrow forest road leading toward the “Haunted Motel” Dean is already very keen on entering. The building is only a few minutes outside of town, but for whatever reason about half a mile into the woods, accessible only via a bumpy track that doesn’t really benefit Baby’s suspension.

“Who the hell came up with the stupid idea of building a motel here?” Dean complains, wincing when one of Baby’s tires hits a pothole, rattling both the car and the two brothers like children in a washing machine. Dean sighs internally, externally, and most of all, eternally, as he tenderly strokes over his steering wheel, muttering plaintive apologies under his breath.

They reach the parking lot, or rather the slightly more flattened area in front of the bedraggled building, and let their eyes roam the shabby house facade that seems to be crumbling away right before them, the abandoned, rusty-looking swing hanging from the tree in the ‘front yard’, the wall of trees surrounding the parcel of land and the road, and a decayed sign that says ‘Welcome to Coal Creek Motel - Enjoy your stay’. Homey.

Today is the eleventh, meaning that they’ve got two and a half days left to find out what exactly they’re even hunting here, why it’s killing people, and how to annihilate it. Easy as pie.

“Why is it always Friday the thirteenth, anyway?” Sam asks as he opens the Impala’s trunk to grab his and Dean’s guns and knives - they decided to scan the area first, then the, at this time of the day hopefully empty, building, before they’d interrogate the owners and possible previous victims. “I mean, why not… I don’t know, why not Thursday the 25th or something?”

Dean takes the proffered weapons from his brother, shaking his head with a soft huff, “Hell, if I knew.” He tucks the gun into the back of his jeans, the knife into the sheath at his ankle, and locks the car. Checking his flip phone for the time, he also sees his most favorite notification: no service. Awesome. “Okay, Sammy, cell reception is shit out here, so we gotta make sure we’re both back at the car in about-” he checks the time again, because he sometimes has the attention span of a goldfish- “one hour and fifty minutes, before the owners open the motel for the nightly tour. You copy?”

“Yes, sir!” Sam scoffs, grinning smugly while he salutes to his brother.

______________________________

Neither of them found anything on their search around the property. No weird symbols, no dead bodies, no creepy altars, no traces of blood, nothing. Which leaves only the house itself to examine.

The brothers accompany a group of seven other people on the tour through the motel. Their guide is a grumpy old man with an unkempt beard, and a generally unkempt outer appearance. But he answers most of the questions some of the overly excited visitors ask him, so he’s at least doing his job.

Unfortunately, even though the tour includes the entire building, nothing Dean and Sam didn’t already know is brought to light. Except for maybe the horrifyingly poorly done getup of the whole “Haunted Motel”. Including faux skeletons and cobwebs (although, looking at the overall condition of the house, the latter ones might actually be real), fake blood stains on the walls and floorboards, eerie paintings and soiled mirrors in the most random places, and a bunch of other stuff that doesn’t bring the Winchesters closer to solving the case.

They let themselves fall behind the group for a moment to share their thoughts, but none of them noticed anything off, or even slightly suspicious, so they decide to come back in the early morning to sift through the house on their own, without that creepy old dude watching their every step.

______________________________

“Hey, Dean,” Sam yells from somewhere on the first floor while Dean lets the yellowish beam of his flashlight wander across the walls in the hallway on the second floor. “I think I found something, get your stupid ass down here.”

It takes him almost two minutes to find his way back through the maze structured building until he finds Sam standing right in front of the front door, illuminating the ugly rug splayed on the floor. More precisely, the rug is rolled to the side, revealing dark wood planks underneath it. There’s a faint outline of a symbol...or a sigil maybe? drawn in dark gray paint (it probably used to be black, but over the years it must’ve faded) onto the floor, looking like a big ‘T’ with some sort of swirl above the upper horizontal line, and another swirl on the right next to the vertical line. “A tulpa?” Dean asks, squinting into the blinding beam of his brother’s flashlight pointed at his face.

“Sure looks like it.” The blinding light lowers toward the floor again.

Awesome. Just. Awesome. Tulpa means they can’t kill anything, and have to convince possibly hundreds of people, if not more, that there’s nothing going on here. Easy. As. Pie.

Which also means that they can’t do anything at the moment.

“Let’s get back to our motel and get some shut-eye. I’m so fucking tired, man,” Dean says and kicks at the rug, causing it to roll unceremoniously back over the painted planks. He opens the door and waits for Sam to walk past him before he follows suit.

______________________________

After sleeping until late morning - they came back from their self-guided, private motel tour around 4:30 am after all - they spend several hours reading stories about people’s experiences in the “Haunted Motel”.

“Holy shit,” Sam curses at his laptop sitting on the desk in front of him, “there’s someone who ran away from about 500 giant tarantulas that were scattered across the entire house.” He taps viciously on the touchpad of his laptop to scroll to the next entry. “And then there was a guy who said he, quote, ‘was torn apart by giant cockroaches with wolf heads’. Damn, that shit sounds terrible.”

These stories go on for quite a while, and Dean isn’t so sure if they’re really dealing with a tulpa in this building, or if they’re entirely on the wrong track here. “Isn’t a tulpa like, a bunch of people believing in the same shit?”

Sam nods his affirmation. “Yeah, a tulpa is created when many people are concentrating on the same thing while looking at the Tibetan Spirit Sigil we saw on the floor in front of the door. Once created, the tulpa takes on a life of its own and doesn’t need people to believe in it anymore. But Dean, I’m not that sure anymore if it’s really a tulpa going nuts in that motel.”

“Yep, just my thought,” Dean says, leaning forward to scrub his hands over his face. “I mean, first off, the sigil is under that ugly ass rug, so people aren’t really likely to see it, right? And every single person is seeing something different? Shouldn’t most people at least see the same thing? That doesn’t make any sense.” Heaving an exasperated sigh, he sinks back into his chair, closing his eyes, trying to sort through the given information.

Sam shuts his laptop with a soft click, and sighs almost as loud as Dean did mere seconds ago. “I don’t know, man. But I think you’re right.” He sighs once more, running a hand through his girly hair. “But if it’s not a tulpa, what else could it be? We only have like, one more day to find out what it is and how we can kill it, Dean.”

His brother is right. And this year, Friday the 13th only happens twice, so they have to kill whatever it is now, or they won’t get another chance for a rather long time.

______________________________

“No no no no no no no. Fuck. No. Nope. Nu-uh. Big. Fucking. HELL NO,” Dean repeats over and over again, a little under his, but mostly out of breath, as he’s running down the hallway on the second floor of the motel. Why he’s running? Oh, just the blonde woman in a white nightdress, looking suspiciously similar to his mom, chasing after him while screaming bloody murder.

Oh. And she’s on fire. Literally.

All of a sudden, she appears right in front of him, causing Dean to come to an abrupt halt, almost face planting into the wall to his right in his attempt to change the direction of his stampede.

“Where are you going, Dean?” his not-mother asks in a malicious snarl. “Don’t you love your mommy?”

Dean jerks his head around to look for another escape. “Not real,” he mumbles under his breath. “Not real, not real, not real, not real.”

The blonde, burning woman reappears right in front of Dean once again as he tries to make his way downstairs where he suspects his brother. Just that now he watches his mother’s face slowly melting off her bones, revealing charred flesh that starts to turn into a new shape.

It’s black and gooey for a few seconds, but little by little, the charred shape merges into a new face.

“Dean, why on earth is my car pink? What have you done?!” the slightly contorted replica of his father asks in an accusing tone. What the fuck, John isn’t even dead. This fucking tulpa is obviously on crack. Besides, the car was pink. It’s black again. Thankyouverymuch.

“SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM,” Dean shrieks into the hallway.

Mary-John-now-flaming-Vampire-Hellhound dissolves into thin air, only to re-materialize behind Dean, growling threateningly at him, and drooling hissing acid on the creaking floorboards. Where the fucking hell is his idiot brother?

The day before, while Sam was busy doing research on the origin story of the tulpa, Dean was equally busy chatting with Nancy the witch via text messages on his flip phone. She may have mutilated his car for a day, but she was also pretty darn hot, and Dean’s never been one to miss out on an opportunity to do some horizontal tango. During all his, what could easily be called, sexting, he pretty much blanked out the Samsquatch and his findings, so Dean doesn’t actually have any idea what’s really going on in that “Haunted Motel” after all.

He vaguely remembers Sam telling him something about Harry Potter fans staying at the motel in 2000, the year after The Prisoner of Azkaban was published, and something about Boggarts. Dean thinks that Sam mentioned the fans “summoning” the Tulpa-Boggart more or less by accident, when they talked about how interesting and frightening the idea of the physical manifestation of one’s worst nightmares would be - while standing right over the giant tulpa sigil in the entrance area.

There was also a good reason why it’s always Friday the 13th, maybe it was because one of the fans was thinking about Jason with his ugly hockey mask. But maybe Dean got that wrong. He wasn’t really paying that much attention, to be honest.

Sam seemed to know and have a plan, so that was enough for the older Winchester.

This plan included an attempt at “exorcising” the Tulpa-Boggart by performing some kind of spiritual cleansing Sam found in one of his books. Or on the internet? Whatever. The important thing is that he did have a plan including the destruction of… something. They’d hoped that by destroying this something, the Boggart would vanish.

It did not.

“Dean?”

Breathing a relieved sigh at the sight of his brother ascending the stairs from the first floor, Dean takes a step toward him. “Took you long enough, asshat. We really need to get outta here. This thing is driving me ins- WHAT THE HELL?!” His relief quickly fades away into nothingness when his brother’s head, rather unexpectedly, bursts into a thousand pieces, painting the walls around the staircase in blood splatters.

Worst fucking nightmare.

Dean scrubs viciously at his eyes, trying to scratch the disturbing image from his retinas, while stumbling forward, and rushing down the stairs. Please let Sam be here somewhere.

“Sammy?” Dean tries carefully, peeking around the corner and into the room where he hopes to find his brother.

Two strong hands clasp at the lapels of his jacket and press him against the wall. “Dean? Please tell me it’s you.”

“‘Course it’s me, you dipshit,” Dean grunts into his brothers face, squirming slightly in his attempt to free himself from the persistent grip. “Now get your giant Sasquatch hands off of me. We need to get the fuck out of here.”

Finally, Sam lets go of Dean’s jacket with a nod, takes a step back from Dean, and briefly skims the room with an unnerved expression. It’s been quite a long time since Dean’s seen his brother that panicked. If it wasn’t for fear of his own life, he actually might find it hilarious.

“What does it look like for you?” Dean asks as he leans around another corner to make sure the entrance area is empty, holding his fist up as a sign for Sam to stay behind.

He hears a grumbled, defeated sigh before Sam answers, “Clowns. Yours?”

“Mom.” This time it’s Dean who exhales a shaky sigh. Only a couple more steps until they reach the front door. “And then Dad lecturing me on defiling his car with the pink velvet shit.”

Sam stops next to him, furrowing his brows in a judgemental expression. “Really Dean, that’s your worst nightmare?” Dean’s eye-roll is basically a full body move. He yanks at the door handle, and says, “Well, now it certainly is.”

They step out onto the front porch, down the stairs and toward the Impala where they take a couple of minutes to catch their breath, and process their respective nightmares. Leaning against the side of the car in the middle of the night in front of an eerie building somewhere in the woods is definitely not one of Dean’s favorite things to do.

“What the hell are we supposed to do now, huh?” Dean pinches the bridge of his nose for the hundredth time tonight before refocusing on his brother. “I mean, technically, there’s not really much we can do. We can’t kill it. We can’t stop people from coming to this fucking motel. We can’t find these damn Harry Potter fans and make them, I dunno, unthink the Boggart out of existence. We can’t do shit, man.”

For once, his smart-alecky brother doesn’t have a witty remark. All he manages to do is a somewhat forlorn shrug, letting his arms go limp by his sides, exhaling wearily.

“Okay, then,” Dean says and pushes himself away from the car, swatting his thighs once, “let’s burn that shit down.”

“What? No, we can’t do that, Dean!”

“Why not?”

“Uhm, because it’s wrong? And what if they just rebuild it?”

Dean rolls his eyes again. “Then we’ll come back and burn that down, too.”

There’s a minute of pregnant silence until Sam speaks again. “You know what? You’re right. Let’s burn it down. The building’s empty now, so at least nobody will get hurt. And it’s not like they’re making a fortune with that shit house anyway.”

So they do exactly that. They each take a gas can from the Impala’s trunk, and spread the highly flammable content around and inside the house, soaking the already rotting wood of the first floor and the porch - neither of them dares to go upstairs in fear of another nightmarish encounter, but well, if the first floor burns down, so will the rest of the house, right?

While Dean is already back at the car, getting it ready to head off by driving it toward the narrow path leading back to the highway, Sam spreads a trail of gasoline from the front door of the motel down the stairs of the porch and several yards away from the building, until he’s next to the car.

“Would you do the honors?” Sam asks his brother, holding out his favorite Zippo with a knowing smirk. As much as the two of them enjoy solving cases, actually killing the monsters they’re hunting, and leaving haunted places...not haunted anymore - it’s also fucking amazing to destroy things. Besides, watching a house burn down does have something oddly meditative.

And the truth is, not everything can be saved.

__________________________________________

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[mbergansmile]

Worst of you// part 2

Other Parts: Part 1 

playlist 

Leaning over the bathroom sink, y/n tried to forget one thing . She had kissed her boss. This was not something she had dreamt or something she had imagined in her head. Nope it actually happened and there was nothing she could do except to forget. He was right,no one could know. He had his wife and She had this job. Y/n hands gripped tighter on the sink. It wasn’t even the kiss that was bothering her, it was what happens after the kiss. Usually whenever Y/n would hook up with someone it would mostly consist of making out and drunk conversations. Then she’d leave and never really see them again.Even if she did see them again it wouldn’t be awkward giving the time gap and they would just share a hello as they pass one another. 

But this wasn’t a drunk hook up and she actually had to see him again this time. Her thoughts kept circulating in her head. Not knowing witch Instincts to follow. She obviously had never been in a situation like this before. It was completely new territory for her. 

Y/n had let the water running in the faucet. She placed her palms under the running water and splashed some onto her face. 

“ it’s gonna be fine” she mutters to herself “ Just walk in there like nothing happened “ she continued trying to giver herself the courage. 

“ it’ll be fine”  She looked away from the mirror and grabbed on of the towels and rubbed it on her face. She was going to be fine, she was going to get over this. It was going to be alright.  

                                                                                                                                      Y/n pulls up to the parking lot in her fathers old hand me down Jeep. That Jeep had been in the family for over 2 decades. She remembered riding in it for the first time ever. She was about 12 years old. Before than her father always kept the car in the garage. He would always look at her and say “ This car honey, this car is for special occasions only” It was his most precious possession. The car was a dusty military green with the exception of the roof that was black. 

That day when her father took her riding in the car, she had just overheard a fight between her parents. 

Her father had taken her out that day on a car ride to get her mind of things. But really it was for him. The whole town looked different that day. She looked at the trees and the street lights differently. The things that had looked so casual to her only days before were now suddenly a nostalgic memory. She had the same exact thoughts and feeling when she drove for the first time through her hometown. 

“ you little- watch where you’re going” She snaps, she doesn’t even look up. When Y/n lifts her eyes she’s sees a male. He had pale skin and raven hair.His hair was styled in a prince charming like hairstyle en it honestly made him look younger. His eyes were empty, they looked as if he hadn’t said or seen the outside world for over a month. Dark circles were under his emerald green eyes.Making Y/n wonder what actually had happened to him the day before. He had spilled Doritos. Cheddar floured Doritos, fell out of the bag and onto her. Favourite white blouse. She wanted to scream at him and tell him not to eat junk food near a high state building. That building probably had pencils worth more than that guy.  She couldn’t believe it. The crumps had a light sound as she stepped on the fallen Dorito-chips. Y/n closes the car door annoyed. 

“ holy shi- I’m so sorry” 

“ My names Fionn, I just thought you wanted you know ” He said. Was he seriously introducing himself in this monent. There weren’t sharp stains, in fact you couldn’t barley see them until he tried to get the stain off. Because he already had Dorito crumps in his finger tips it just ended up smudging the blouse more. Y7n pushed his file hands away from her blouse and started walking away. 

“ I truly am sorry “ he continued. She was to far by now to hear anything, if he even did say anything. Her first priority was to get rid of the stain. Y/n looks at her clock and sees that she still has about 15 minuets till work starts. Plenty of time to get her shirt cleaned. Y/n walks over to Janice and leans over the desk eyes her “ you wouldn’t know if we have a washing machine of some sort” Janice looks at her as if she was the dumbest person in this world “ I dunno hot stuff, why don’t you ask the cleaning ladies ?” Janice was clearly not having a good day either or maybe she was just annoyed to be the information guide“ calm down Janice, I was just asking” Y/n replied with a condescending tone. Just as she had cleared her mind a little she remember that she actually had an extra shirt. It was tucked away in her bag, she remembered that she had put it there for emergency’s like this. She gave Janice a small ignorant smile before leaving for the bathroom. Could this morning be any worse? 

   Y/n runs into the bathroom, she checks the time on her wrist “ Shit 5 minuets”she mumbles to herself as she stripped the shirt off her Body. Picking up the new one and put on. It so simply fit her body, even if it was a somewhat oversized sweater. 

Y/n tucked it into the jeans and walked out of the bathroom running over to her desk. 

 Getting to her desk just in time, she threw her stuff beside her chair and sat down. Tom called her into the office. His voice was sharp and stern. A little frightening-yes but she did as she was told. 

“Late again I see” He said. A fake smile form on her lips 

“ I know I’m sorry” The muscular man has wonder in his eyes, it can almost be portrayed as desire. He eyes the woman in front of him closely.Most likely wondering why she was wearing a white aliens are rad t-shirt.  Curling his lips as he utters the words “Would you be so kind and close the door”y/n walked over and closed the huge enchanting door. They were Victoria like almost but still had the brown colour of the wood. She turns around graciously and sits down. Sitting face to face with Tom felt comfortable, weird and it wasn’t something she enjoyed. He wasn’t saying anything to her, he just looked at her closely. Y/n shifts in her chair, her breathing getting louder and louder in her head. 

“I uh” he pauses and puts his hands together, intertwining his fingers and starts to fiddle his thumbs. There was something about Tom that always made Y/n wonder, was this all to much for her.? “I’m sure you know why I want to have a little chat?” She did. She knew exactly why he wanted to talk to her “ obviously the kiss was a mistake a mistake never to be repeated, understood” she nodded.Thomas Stanley Holland was mostly a self absorbed ass who didn’t care about anything other than himself and his company. Y/n knew that and she actually had been debating if she could put up with it. She’d heard awful Stories about him from Tabitha. It was clear to her that Tom Holland was not a good person. “ You may leave now” Y/n got up and started walking over to the big wooden doors.

“Oh and miss y/l/n make sure to see if my father is still set for our meeting later and also don’t let anyone in. I have a lot of work to get done and don’t want to be disturbed “ She nodded and walked out the door. Her finger runs through her hair as she exhales, she had been holding her breath the entire time trying nit to say or do anything stupid. She looks up at her surrounding trying to make sense 

Y/n sat back down behind her desk and called Domenic “ Hello Mr Holland, yeah it’s Y/N Y/L/N Tom’s assistant. I was just calling to check in the dinner meeting was still on ?” 

“Is Thomas being a little paranoid ?” His dark husky voice vibrated through her ears. He sounded like Tom, if Tom was a smoker of 30 years.  

“No sir, it’s just my job to check up on meetings incase there’s been any changed of plans” She explained, lying of course. Tom was being paranoid or at least not never trustful of his father. She wondered how Tom and Dom could sound almost identical but have two different ways of speaking. Dom was well calm and collected to his tone, Tom was the opposite. You could tell by the way he spoke that he was insecure. He didn’t have everything under control and She’s pretty sure that is what Dom thinks as well. 

“Tell my son that he doesn’t have to worry” he hung up the phone. Just as Y/n looks up from the cell phone she had just placed back into it’s operator a female walked past her. Y/n watched for a second before remember that she was not allowed to let anyone in “ Hey Miss you can’t go in there” the gorgeous female turns around and smiles “ Darling, I can go wherever I want whenever I want” she turned to doorknob and walks inside the office ‘Shit I’m getting fired’ y/n thought and got up. She ran after her into the office “ Sir I tried to stop her but she wouldn’t listened, should I call security?” Tom was watching the golden haired beauty with hearts in his eyes “ no need she’s my wife” she just nodded and stood by the doorway. She remembered that Tabitha had mentioned something about a wife. Y/n turns around leaving the office and closing the door behind her. 

I'm so sorry for another shitty ass chapter next one will hopefully be better and be up quicker lol. It’s just I'm currently writing a novel, like an actual young adult novel and I'm really excited and so that is why I haven’t updated. Again I am so sorry I hope you at least enjoyed this.

tags:

@peteryesparker

[not-ash-sunny]

1: 6 of the songs you listen to most?

The Irony of Choking on a Lifesaver by All Time Low Mr. Brightside by The Killers Everything is Temporary by Cavetown Best Friend by Rex Orange County Somebody Out There by A Rocket to the Moon Peach by The Front Bottoms

2: If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be? My lost cat, Ky. 3: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17.

“He had the suffering-in-silence thing down to an art,” (Extraordinary Means: Schneider, 2015)

4: What do you think about most?

Will I ever be geniunely happy and contented?

5: What does your latest text message from someone else say?

“Hi Ash, Kamusta yung assessment mo?”

6: Do you sleep with or without clothes on?

with

7: What’s your strangest talent?

I can sleep anywhere, anytime. standing. sitting. during my graduation. at a coffee shop. name it.

8: Girls… (finish the sentence); Boys… (finish the sentence)

Girls can and should rule the world.

Boys “are rats, listen to me, they're fleas on rats, worse than that, they're amoebas on fleas on rats. I mean, they're too low for even the dogs to bite. The only man a girl can depend on is her daddy.”

9: Ever had a poem or song written about you?

yes. more than twice.

10: When is the last time you played the air guitar?

I have never?

11: Do you have any strange phobias?

not really a phobia. but swimming at somewhere deep give me panic attacks.

12: Ever stuck a foreign object up your nose?

none that i know of?

13: What’s your religion?

Roman Catholic by contract.

14: If you are outside, what are you most likely doing?

eating or window shopping.

15: Do you prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it?

Behind.

16: Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band?

A Rocket to the Moon

17: What was the last lie you told?

I can work during the weekend.

18: Do you believe in karma?

yes, absolutely.

19: What does your URL mean?

Universal Real Link ??? lol idk

20: What is your greatest weakness; your greatest strength?

Greatest weakness: I’m a bad liar. Greatest strength: I am very friendly?

21: Who is your celebrity crush?

Aidan Gallagher.

22: Have you ever gone skinny dipping?

haven’t! but its on my list.

23: How do you vent your anger?

ranting to other people, but mostly of the time to myself.

24: Do you have a collection of anything?

Albums? Bags? Shoes?

25: Do you prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online?

Video chatting.

26: Are you happy with the person you’ve become?

not yet.

27: What’s a sound you hate; sound you love?

hate: horns! love: sound of nature.

28: What’s your biggest “what if”?

what if i wasn’t afraid?

29: Do you believe in ghosts? How about aliens?

yes. yes.

30: Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm.

right: big ass wall mirror left: my phone

31: Smell the air. What do you smell?

somehow, the smell of ironed clothes?

32: What’s the worst place you have ever been to?

near smokey mountain.

33: Choose: East Coast or West Coast?

west coast.

34: Most attractive singer of your opposite gender?

35: To you, what is the meaning of life?

life is bittersweet.

36: Define Art.

Art is diverse, yet unified.

37: Do you believe in luck?

no, but I believe in lucky people.

38: What’s the weather like right now?

Fucking hot.

39: What time is it?

10:24pm

40: Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed?

not yet, or maybe never?

41: What was the last book you read?

The Becoming of Noah Shaw by Michelle Hodkin

42: Do you like the smell of gasoline?

nope.

43: Do you have any nicknames?

ash. 

44: What was the last film you saw?

Sex and the City?

45: What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?

Sprain.

46: Have you ever caught a butterfly?

haven’t.

47: Do you have any obsessions right now?

fanny packs and bucket hats :(

48: What’s your sexual orientation?

honestly, don’t care.

49: Ever had a rumour spread about you?

none that I know of.

50: Do you believe in magic?

I believe in witches hehe

51: Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong?

not really.

52: What is your astrological sign?

star: virgo  moon: pisces

53: Do you save money or spend it?

SPEND IT.

54: What’s the last thing you purchased?

Chicken curry.

55: Love or lust?

love, ofc.

56: In a relationship?

yep.

57: How many relationships have you had?

3 serious ones.

58: Can you touch your nose with your tongue?

can’t.

59: Where were you yesterday?

Alabang.

60: Is there anything pink within 10 feet of you?

yep.

61: Are you wearing socks right now?

nope.

62: What’s your favourite animal?

cattttttttsssss

63: What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you?

my weirdness, humor, and spontaneity.

64: Where is your best friend?

they are everywhere.

65: Give me your top 5 favourite blogs on Tumblr.

I only have one ever since, http://blossomfully.tumblr.com/ .

66: What is your heritage?

Filipino and Spanish, I think?

67: What were you doing last night at 12AM?

ML.

68: What do you think is Satan’s last name?

Morningstar.

69: Be honest. Ever gotten yourself off?

what?

70: Are you the kind of friend you would want to have as a friend?

yes, I think so.

71: You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do?

call someone to help me save the dog, then call my boss about the situation.

72: You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid?

I won’t tell anyone. I’ll do everything and anything. I would be afraid.

73: You can only have one of these things; trust or love.

love. with love there is trust.

74: What’s a song that always makes you happy when you hear it?

Mr. Brightside by The Killers

75: What are the last four digits in your cell phone number?

6140

76: In your opinion, what makes a great relationship?

accepting the changes and still loving.

77: How can I win your heart?

cats.

78: Can insanity bring on more creativity?

yes.

79: What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far?

volunteering.

80: What size shoes do you wear?

8

81: What would you want to be written on your tombstone?

Alis Propriis Volat.

82: What is your favourite word?

meow.

83: Give me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word; heart.

love.

84: What is a saying you say a lot?

“this is all I got”

85: What’s the last song you listened to?

Idk.

86: Basic question; what’s your favourite colour/colours?

yellow.

87: What is your current desktop picture?

cats.

88: If you could press a button and make anyone in the world instantaneously explode, who would it be?

ignorant people.

89: What would be a question you’d be afraid to tell the truth on?

90: One night you wake up because you heard a noise. You turn on the light to find that you are surrounded by MUMMIES. The mummies aren’t really doing anything, they’re just standing around your bed. What do you do?

Initially I would automatically cover myself with a blanket and just have a panic attack.

91: You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What is that power?

I don’t want any super-power. I just want to be a witch. I guess, scarlet witch’s power ?

92: You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again?

The days I was travelling freely and happily.

93: You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?

I won’t erase anything cause I believe its part of who I am and it would be an excellent story to tell.

94: You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be?

currently not idolizing anyone. but, Matty Healy!!!

95: You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go?

Vietnam!

96: Do you have any relatives in jail?

None of I know of.

97: Have you ever thrown up in the car?

YAS HAHAHHAHA and it was a taxi cab. I’m sorry.

98: Ever been on a plane?

yep.

99: If the whole world were listening to you right now, what would you say?

Spread love, positive vibes, and always be kind.

answered as of March 31, 2019.

[mattzerella-sticks]

Worse Than a Slap (Coda to 12x11 “Regarding Dean”)

During the spell, Dean managed to find time to send a message out. Only thing is he can't remember what he said. Now Castiel is avoiding him, and he can't figure out why that is? But when he does, he knows exactly what to do. (AO3)

            Castiel sits in the war room, surrounded by papers, maps, and books. They go unnoticed, untouched, as Cas stares at his phone. It rests in his hand, his grip on it tight. It-He is shaking. The pin board is just a few feet away, Kelly’s smiling face in the center staring at him, laughing at him-

           “Cas, we’re home!”

           Castiel looks up, whipping his phone away, hiding it in his pocket. He stands, just as Sam walks into the room, a bag of take out in hand.

           “Sam,” he attempts a smile, “good to see you. Is Dean-“

           “Right, here, Cas,” Dean walks in, a grin plastered on his face. He’s already got a drink in hand, and takes a sip out of it.

           “Dean,” Castiel smiles, “You remember me?”

           Sam and Dean share a glance at Castiel’s reaction. Dean walks forward; just enough to see Castiel’s blue eyes were starting to get glassy.

           “Of course,” he starts, “Why wouldn’t I?”

           “The memory spell,” Castiel says, tilting his head, “the one you told me about?”

           “I did?”

           “You don’t… remember?” Cas closes the gap, frowning, “is it… do you-”

           “No, no,” Sam answers, walking towards them, “we handled it. Dean’s better.”

           “I have no memory of anything that happened while under the spell,” Dean shrugs, “but thankfully, that’s the only thing I can’t remember.”

           “Oh…”

           Dean and Sam exchange another glance as Castiel steps back, hands reaching into his pocket.

           “Did I,” Dean asks, “Did I say anything el-“

           “No,” Cas cuts him off, blushing, “you called to assuage me of any worry. Although telling me about it did nothing to help.”

           “Sorry Cas,” Dean chuckles, laying his hand on Castiel’s shoulder, “wasn’t in my right mind.”

           “That’s right,” Cas says, shaking his head, “you weren’t.” He doesn’t look at Dean. Dean swallows hard, and turns to look at Sam. Sam shrugs.

           He walks towards the table, putting the bag down. “We were just about to have dinner, Cas,” Sam says, “would you like any-“

           “No,” Castiel says, stepping away from Dean, “I think I’ll just go lie down. I’m… tired.”

           “Really? I thought you couldn’t get-“

           He walks away before Dean can finish. All Dean can do is watch him go.

           “Dean?”

           “What?” Dean says, gruff.

           “You sure you can’t remember anything from the curse?” Sam asks, pulling out the food, “Like, at all?”

           “It’s just one, big black spot Sammy,” Dean sighs, moving closer. He waves his hand by his head, “’S’all gone!”

           “Well, you better hope it comes back,” Sam says, “because something tells me your little chat with Cas wasn’t just that.”

           “You and me both,” Dean mutters, taking one of the containers and popping it open. He takes a bite of the rice, and looks back at where Castiel walked out.

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

            Sam is sitting at a table in the library, looking over the spell book Dean and he had acquired. He’s been making notes on them, their translations, trying to glean any useful spells he and Dean might need in the future. That is, until he hears the sounds of footsteps. He looks up to see Castiel standing in the entryway, wringing his hands together, and looking everywhere but at him.

           “Something on your mind, Cas?” Sam puts the book down.

           “May I,” Castiel starts, “May I speak with you?”

           “Of course,” Sam smiles, “you know that.”

           Castiel nods, still not meeting Sam’s eyes. He shuffles forward and takes a seat across from Sam. He drums his fingers on the wood. Castiel takes his time talking, so Sam does the first step for him.

           “Does this have anything with how you’ve been avoiding Dean,” Sam says, startling Castiel into looking him.

           “You noticed?”

           Sam rolls his eyes. “You haven’t been exactly subtle,” Sam leans back, “maybe don’t run out the second he enters a room.”

           Castiel blushes, remembering what Sam is talking about. A few days ago, Castiel had been in the kitchen looking for something, anything to do. His head was in the kitchen and the general humming distracted him from listening. That’s why he didn’t hear Dean until he was right behind him.

           And how Dean scared him enough to hit his head on one of the shelves.

           He bolted the second he could, refusing to look back at Dean. If he did… he wouldn’t have left.

           “It may,” Castiel answers Sam’s first question, leaning back as well.

           “What is it?”

           “Dean, when under the spell,” Castiel says slowly, choosing his words carefully, “How… how was he?”

           “How was he?” Sam parrots, eyebrows raised.

           “Yes.”

           “Well, he was fine… for a bit,” Sam tells him, “it was kind of funny, too. He got slapped… forgot the names of things… even forgot which key was Baby’s. But then, then he couldn’t remember his name or-or my name. He forgot more and more with each passing minute it… it scared me. And through it all he was just-happy.”

           “Happy?”

           “He couldn’t remember his life,” Sam says, “the life of a hunter. Anyone would be happy to not have this life.”

           “Does he,” Castiel swallows, “Does he wish he still doesn’t remember all that we-all that he did?”

           Sam raises a brow at Castiel’s misstep, but answers him anyway. “No,” he says, “he doesn’t. Sure, being able to live a life without being a hunter is rare, but it wouldn’t be Dean. It must have felt nice, for a bit, too escape, but Dean knows this is what he wants in his life.”

           “Huh.”

           Sam can see Castiel thinking, and then watches as he pulls his cell phone out from his coat pocket. He plays with it, fiddling with it while looking up at Sam every few seconds. Sam waits, not wanting to scare him off.

           “Hey Sam I was-Cas?”

           “Dean!”

           Castiel stands, pushing the seat back. He stares at Dean, eyes wide and mouth open. Dean mirrors him for a few seconds, then comes back to himself.

           “Cas-“

           He turns and walks out, leaving Dean standing there, his hand outstretched. Dean frowns, lowering his hand. He looks to Sam, only for Sam to roll his eyes at him and shrug. Dean slumps, and walks over to take Castiel’s seat across from Sam.

           “Do you have any idea what I did?”

           “I might have,” Sam snorts, “before you spooked him.”

           Dean throws his arms out, “Really?”

           “It must have been something big, Dean,” Sam says, “I bet you wish you were back dealing with slap-girl.”

           “I wish all Cas did was slap me,” Dean says, looking down, “at least it’d hurt less.”

           Sam’s about to ask what he means when Dean pushes back his seat, eyes locked on something.

           “What is it?”

           “Cas’s phone,” Dean answers, holding up the small, black object, “he must’ve dropped it when I… yeah.”

           “His phone?” Sam’s eyes widen, “you know what this means?”

           “We can text Claire and play a prank on her?” Dean huffs, “I don’t know, Sam!”

           “We can see what you said to Cas, idiot,” Sam tells him.

           “Oh… right,” Dean smiles, then frowns, “Wait… how are we even gonna do that?”

           “Leave that to me.”

           Sam holds his hand up, and Dean drops the phone in his hand. Dean gets up and moves to Sam’s side, hovering over him.

           “How’d you even get in?”

           “I knew the passcode.”

           “What was it?”

           “Zero-nine-eighteen.”

           “Zero…nine…” Dean’s face scrunches up in confusion, “Wait, isn’t that the day we-“

           “Here it is!” Sam says, “but… it’s not a call.”

           “What is it?” Dean leans in closer.

           “It’s a… voicemail.”

           The brothers look at each other. Sam asks Dean if he should press the button, seeing as how it’ll be Dean’s voice they’ll hear. Dean nods, because he’s just as curious as Sam. Sam presses play.

           “Hey Cas! It’s Dean… I know, it’s Sam’s phone but-uh, he told you I broke mine right? I’m sure he had, too-look, that isn’t important. I just wanted to tell you, before I… before… I-uh, no, no keep it together, Winchester. I… sound crazy, don’t I. I also don’t have another shot of recording this message given… well, I won’t draw out the suspense Cas, I’ve been hit by a curse. Some witch got me and… I’m forgetting. Everything. It’s hitting me in bursts like, one moment I’ll have forgotten how to use a pen and the next I don’t… don’t know my own family. And, well-I just wanted to tell you something before I forget. Something I thought I’d get to tell you in person, maybe after a bit too much to drink and I’m a little less afraid. I don’t know if Sammy and me’ll be able to get out of this one. I don’t even know if I’ll know what I’m in in the next hour. But… I want you to know, even if I forget, that… that I love ya, Cas. Not as a brother and not like a friend but, like, the real deal, Cas. I feel it in here-in my heart-whenever I look into your eyes. And the sad thing is I’m even starting to forget what color they are which-which is crazy because they’re my favorite color and-look, I just I wanted you to know because after everything we’ve been through, you deserve to hear these words before either one of us bites it for the last time. I just… didn’t think it’d be now. …What do you mean I’m almost out of time? Who are you to tell me-“

           The message cuts out after that. Sam takes a quick glance at Dean from the corner of his eye. His brother is frozen, staring at the device slackjawed. There’s a tear near his eye threatening to fall, and Sam can feel Dean’s body shaking.

           “Dean-“

           He turns, heading in the same direction Castiel went, running after the angel. Sam watches him go.

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

           Castiel is in his room, lying on his bed. He holds onto the pillow, resting his chin on it as he stares at his blank television screen. He’s just about to turn it on when he hears a banging on his door.

           “Cas!” Dean calls from the other side, “Cas, open up!”

           Castiel does nothing but watch the door with wide eyes. He doesn’t even move, careful not to make a sound and alert the elder Winchester to his presence.

           It doesn’t matter.

           Dean kicks down the door after a few minutes. He walks in, staring at Castiel with something burning in his eyes.

           “Dean!” Castiel yells, shocked, “You kicked down my door! What are you-“

           “Why didn’t you tell me?”

           Castiel’s eyes widen a fraction before they return to normal size. Castiel looks away, fingers playing with the pillow.

           “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

           “Seriously, Cas?” Dean asks, adrenaline making its way out of his system. He collapses onto the bed, a hand resting on Castiel’s ankle. He rubs his thumb across it. Castiel watches him carefully. They sit like that for a few minutes. Castiel dare not run, because he knew Dean would quickly hold him down.

           “I heard what I said.”

           “How-“

           “Dropped your phone,” Dean chuckles, “by the way, September 18th?”

           “It… means a lot to me.”

           “It means a lot to me, too.”

           “Dean, where are you going with this?”

           “I meant it, y’know.”

           Castiel raises his brows at Dean’s confession. Dean isn’t looking at him, but the flush is fairly visible crawling up Dean’s neck.

           “I thought you said you couldn’t remember?”

           “I did,” Dean says, “but, hearing myself I… it all just came back to me, and… you want to know what I was thinking, when I called you?”

           “I’m surprised you know what you were thinking back then.”

           “I was a little miffed, when I got your voicemail,” Dean chuckles, “but then I started to forget what I was trying to do so I… I focused on your voice. It brought me back. And then, when I was talking, I tried remembering all the little things about you that I… your trench coat, your jokes, how you always look out for me, even when I want to throw you against a wall because of how you do it… your eyes.”

           “I thought you couldn’t remember the color of my eyes?”

           “For a second,” Dean tells him, “but I looked up at the sky, and I remembered.” Dean turns to him, “Cas, don’t think for a second that this spell made me say something I didn’t really feel. When I was trying to hold on to the most important things, when my head was fogging up worse than San Francisco, my love for you was one of the things I kept a tight grip on. I just wish I didn’t end up losing it, s’all, even for a night…”

           “Fuck you, Dean Winchester.”

           Dean looks up at Castiel to see tears in the angels eyes.

           “Fuck you for calling me,” he continues, “for giving me everything I ever wanted and then ripping it out of my hands.”

           “Cas-“

           Castiel pushes the pillow away, and moves closer. “The next time you have something to tell me, something important,” he growls, grabbing Dean by the shirt, “don’t wait for the next time your life is in danger.”

           Then he kisses Dean. Dean is surprised, but soon enough melts into the kiss, raising his hands and threading them in Castiel’s hair.

           Castiel turns them around, pushing Dean on his back and straddling him.

           “By the way,” he says, pulling away to give Dean some air, “I love you, too.”

           “Awesome.”

           “Dean? Dean?”

           Sam is walking down the hallway, Castiel’s phone in hand, trying to find Dean.

           “Look, Dean, I know you didn’t want me to hear what I did,” he says, walking closer to Castiel’s door, “but know I still love you, and don’t think any less of you.”

           “Okay, good, do you mind shutting up?”

           Sam startles, turning to Castiel’s open door–and instantly regretting it, turning back with a heavy blush on his face.

           “Dude, seriously?” Sam yells, “you could have closed the door.”

           “Sorry,” Dean giggles, body pressed up against Castiel’s under the covers, “guess I forgot.”

[booksummarieswithkatz]

Winter Wolf by R.J. Blain, a summary

Okay, first we need the basic terms for this world. Also, sorry I messed up and spelled Fenerec as Feneric, my bad.

Fenerec: Werewolves, they’re weak to silver and must constantly keep their animal selves under control. There are three types of Fenerec separated into four social stratas.

TYPES

-Born Fenerec: the children who are born Fenerec to Fenerec parents.

-Made Fenerec: Humans who became Fenerec through a special ritual, this usually requires the person’s consent but it can be forced upon them.

-True Fenerec: Fenerec born under one of two circumstances- a human baby born to wolves, or a wolf pup born to human parents- they are extremely rare, valuable, and powerful Fenerec

STRATAS

-Alphas: Protectors of the pack, they are the strongest and most dominant in their packs.

-Dominants: Fenerec that have instincts pushing them to take control of their surroundings and protect those they see as reliant on them.

-Submissives: Fenerec who do not feel the need to be in charge, they are valued in their packs because dominant wolves are soothed by their presence, since they don’t see them as rivals.

-Omegas: Fenerec who do not feel the need to be in charge yet still have all the same protective instincts of dominants; they are the rarest and can play any role necessary to stabilize their pack.

Witches: Humans who have connection to a specific element of nature; fire, water, air, or earth. They gain powers based on that element as well as boosted health and lifespan. They can also form a pact with Fenerec to help preserve their humanity.

Wizards: Humans who can basically break most of the laws of magic so long as they are able to afford the price. They are killed by other supernatural beings on sight.

Sorcerers: A human whose magic is powered by harming others, in order to become more powerful they must rape, murder, and torture others. Needless to say, they are killed on sight.

The Plague: A disease that only affects Fenerec. It is magic and quasi-intelligent, manipulating other illnesses into infecting the host. The host’s fever then gives the proper breeding ground for the plague, and when the host shifts, they become trapped in a half state – that is to say – their bodies rip themselves apart and don’t coalesce into their wolf form. There is no cure, and only true born Fenerec are immune.

The Inquisition: A shadowy group that is part of most modern government and was born from the Catholic Church. They “protect” normal people from the supernatural. They often demand witches join them and wolf packs register themselves in exchange for the lives. They kill almost all other supernatural beings on sight, and offer massive bounties for same, as well as “rogue” witches and wolves.

The Shadow Pope: this person with a dumb-ass name is the head of the Inquisition, below him are the Archeons and below them are the Cardinals.

Now that that’s out of the way let’s get on with the story.

Just so you know, this is technically a prequel to Inquisitor.

Meet Nicole Thomas, real name Nicolina Desmond, an actress living in L.A. struggling to make a living because her body is covered in huge scars and she has chronic laryngitis (turns out directors don’t give speaking roles to many women with sandpaper for a voice). She is currently living under a falsified identity for three important reasons; one: Nicolina Desmond was a big time singer before she lost her voice and she’s too ashamed to live in the shadow of her past self, two: her parents and her twin sister are Fenerec and she’s terrified/hates all Fenerec after an incident scarred her severely and put her in a coma for a year, and three: she’s a wizard and if anyone catches on she’s a dead woman.

Now, unfortunately we will have to digress from the story to talk about what a wizard’s abilities are, because they are kinda complicated. Wizard powers are focused entirely on the manipulation of energy. The simplest applications of this are the control of electricity and heat. A wizard does not produce their own power, it needs to be absorbed from other sources. This means that wizards have a set of senses attuned to the most easily acquired energy: the electricity used by normal humans. Coupled with a wizards ability to sense and control electric current and the devices they follow, the energy they absorb can be used for basically anything the wizard can fathom. A simple rule of thumb is: if some one else can do it, then a wizard can do it, and if no one else can do it, then a wizard can probably do it anyway but someone might die to make it happen.

Okay, now we can get on with it. The book begins with Nicole entering a mall because her agent, Dominic, told her to buy a bestselling zombie apocalypse novel for “homework.” So she as she makes her way into the mall, she begins opening as many battery destroying apps on her phone as she can, since her magic’s need to control the electricity around her can be channeled into keeping her phone topped up rather than causing catastrophic power failures. After a nerve-wracking (for her, not the reader) walk to the book store, she approaches a woman whose phone is dying and “accidentally” bumps into her to give the battery a boost. Oddly enough the woman recognizes her from her movies despite the fact she’s always an extra. They talk briefly before the woman get a phone call and when she answers we find out her name is Laura, before she excuses herself to talk to whoever called her. After seeing Laura off, Nicole asks a friendly employee named Scott for help finding the novel. As they  chat they grab the book and head towards the registers to check out, however, nothing gets to be simple in this sort of book so when she’s at the register and talking to Scott and another employee the power goes out. Now Nicole already knows that power outages are usually her losing control of her powers and begins to panic, and then as she thinks about the Inquisition finding her she starts bordering on a panic attack as Scott starts screaming like a banshee. SPLAT! The power comes back on it’s own to reveal that where Scott once stood is a twisted mess of flesh and there is blood everywhere. So this whole store is just staring in shock until the police appear, that’s when the vomiting and the screaming starts.

So the Police rounds everybody up and questions them about the events of the evening, Nicole in particular is questioned by the lead investigator, Detective Harding, as she was standing right next to Scott when the incident occurred. Detective Harding proves to be a pretty swell guy, and he offers to drive Nicole back to the mall from the station to pick up her car. Unfortunately it only get more complicated by the fact that on return, the pair find Nicole’s car to have been broken into, with the windows smashed, the seats slashed to pieces, and the only thing she left in their, the car manual, ripped up and strewn about the interior. It is then that Nicole gets a call from an unknown number, at Harding’s request she answers on speaker phone, only to have the caller say they have a message for Nicolina Desmond, to which Nicole responds with a not at all suspicious “nope. Wrong number. No one by that name here. Definitely not. Bye.” before handing her cell over to Detective Harding as evidence of this odd series of coincidences. It’s just a shame that her car getting fucked up serves no purpose in the story except to give the detective a reason to request Nicole to enter witness protection. Of course, someone who is trying to hide from the Inquisition would certainly go into a program they designed, right? Nicole gives a rousing but polite “Not on my life motherfucker” and asks for a ride home.

The next day she goes to a storage container she rents and picks up some stuff to investigate what happened to Scott. Because trying to find out what happened to someone you knew for all of five fucking minutes is definitely worth risking discovery (and death) by doing some serious wizardry right? So Nicole grabs a a silver mirror, a bronze celtic knot, some candles, ancient Egyption coins called debens she stole from a museum, rocks- I mean- focus stones, and a little book that just so happens to talk and tricked Nicole into becoming a wizard after stealing her voice, as one does. Our good ol’ main character uses all the blood Scott so kindly sprayed all over her to send her mind back in time to the moment of his death. Of course, the book tells her that you can’t be in two places at once so instead of free floating as a spirit or watching through her own eyes, she has to live the moment as Scott himself, which offered some interesting insights. Scott was actually stalking Nicole through the store, turns out he was a Fenerec whose wolf decided it wanted her as a mate the moment he laid eyes on her, so when the lights went out and he could smell her adrenaline and panic, his wolf freaked out and forced him to shift to protect her. This was a really big problem because Scott was infected with the plague, and thus he exploded into a shower of viscera all over her. Good job Scott. Really made her feel safe there. Dipshit.

After this set of revelations, Nicole has an important meeting with her toilet about the contents of her stomach deciding they wanted to exit the way they came, and then she goes to meet with her agent. Dominic is your standard metrosexual whose main form of humor is sass, and he informs Nicole that he has gotten her a closed audition at Silver Moon Studios (real subtle there) the next day. This basically means that they are gonna ask her to try a scene and as long as she doesn’t fuck it up really bad she will be handed a contract. Seeing this as a much needed opportunity, Nicole gets an early rest before heading to the studio.

At the studio they strip her down and the make up lady goes “not enough scars bro” which is pretty weird overall but Nicole runs with it since the scars covering her everything are not being used as a reason to mock her, which is pretty cool I guess. Then they put her in some clothes, hand her a live rifle (with blanks in it) and say that this will be her new best friend, along with her two co-stars: the biggest canines she’s ever seen. After she witnesses everyone in the studio act like these absolutely massive “German shepherds” (cough werewolves cough) are a bunch of terrifying monsters, she slaps the handler upside the head and calls him a disgrace. The dogs (lol) get along with her like a house on fire and they do a quick scene before the director says they need some action shots of them all with another actress named Marie. Then the entirety of the rigging falls down on top of them. Luckily the dogs (lol) make a quick save and the two ladies are just fine. But Nicole finds something suspicious with her electronics-senses: someone forcefully bypassed the breaker, and all the wires surrounding them are still live and fatally dangerous. But wizards are wizards and wizards are op as hell so she shorts the entire system with her mind and all is good. Until the cops come bursting in cuz they had been watching Nicole to see if anyone was  targeting her. Nicole asks Dominic to take care of the dogs (lol) and goes to the station again. Low and behold, the cops come ‘round again to see if she’s really sure she doesn’t want to go into witness protection and, now thoroughly convinced she’s surrounded by idiots, she politely says “even if I was going to burst into flames and be chewed on by Satan I would not do that shit bro, the fuck’s wrong with you?” So later she goes out to a… new age herbal store… and a woman with an Eastern European accent dressed up like a Roma traveler sells her three semi-precious stones of luck and protection- citrine, rhodonite, and a moonstone old enough and powerful enough to give her the good ol’ telepathic “fuck you”. She considers this to be the friendliest greeting a magic rock has ever given her.

As she treks back to her apartment, Nicole realizes that someone was watching her, and decides to fuck with them; she takes a cab, walks a mile, takes another cab, gets out, gets another cab, and finally goes to an all-night movie theater just to be sure. After waiting around in the bathroom to lull the watcher into a false sense of security, she exits and checks around for any persons of interest. The only people worth noting was a pair of super hot, definitely not Fenerec, brothers who walk out of the men’s room as she exits the women’s. Because literary irony is always the right way to hint at someone being super important instead of just, you know… introducing them so we can get some real and interesting character interactions.

When she finally makes it back to her apartment, she finds one the dogs (lol), Rocky, is waiting outside for her. Her agent “lost” them. So after spending the entire night trying to find the second dog (lol), Silver, they go back and have a nice five minutes of sleep before bullshit plot convenience rolls around for another protagonist potshot. And who would’ve guessed it, Nicole decides that the dogs (lol) can’t just shit in her bathroom like people, so she walks with them to a nearby dog park. She uses her magic to open the locked gate and as the dogs (lol) go scampering around the totally empty park some guys appear behind Nicole, taze the shit out of her, and tosses her into a waiting vehicle after shooting at the dogs (lol). Oh, and just in case you were wondering, that thing with the falling set pieces at the studio, it has no bearing in the rest of the story and was, despite the fact they mentioned someone tampered with the electronics, a totally random event.

So Nicole gets tossed into this car and they start driving her off towards Vegas for some reason (it’s never explained why). After a rousing game of one of her kidnappers groping her and getting shot and thrown in the trunk as punishment (he was fine after a few minutes), an oncoming car swerves out of nowhere and causes the kidnapper behind the wheel to flip the car trying to get out of the way. It’s then that we get to see Nicole have a full-blown panic attack as she is trapped in the vehicle and fucks up her hand repeatedly smashing the window to get out. Once she escapes, the kidnappers grab her and pretend like she’s the leader’s girlfriend to move suspicion away from them as they talk to the guys from the other car. And guess what? It’s those super attractive guys from the movie theater the night before, and they are reeeeaaaally insistent on waiting to for the tow-truck with Nicole and her captors. So the leader of the Brady bunch goes to pull out a gun when Nicole flips her shit and goes for a mad scramble for the weapon. Upon her success she aims for the leader’s head and “abducts” the hot guys, and takes them and their sports-car to Vegas to stay at their penthouse sweet in the Venetian. Since hot boys with lots of money apparently aren’t super great with subtlety, Nicole tricks them into admitting that they were following her and they reveal that they are Fenerec from Canada who are helping her because she looks like someone else. This someone else is her twin sister, Lisa. Shocker.

It seems that Lisa works as an Inquisition wolf and acts as an investigator and executioner for them. Surprisingly, this means that lots of people don’t like her and given that Nicole is pretty much close enough to be mistaken as her, people that don’t like Lisa might just take it out on Nicole without even realizing that they are even related. Also Lisa has been missing for months and everyone’s got the plague. So Nicole is all like “my families wolves and you saved me from kidnappers and you’re wolves so I guess if I can save y’all with my OP wizard powers I will.” Nicole tells the two hotties (their names are Richard and Alex, Dick’s the alpha and Alex is his brother) that she needs them to grab her wizard shit from her apartment and they tell her she has to call her dad.

So Mr. Desmond (henceforth Big Daddy D) has a rousing chat with Nicole about “WHERE HAVE BEEN FOR FIVE YEARS- hey dad I kidnapped some Fenerec what’s up with the plag- FIVE. YEARS. -C’MON DAD, PLAAAAAAGUE” and it is found that only one person has ever cured the plague, they were called the Winter Wolf and they disappeared over a hundred years ago so nobody knows how they did it. Nice work immortal werewolves, you had one job. So from this we learned basically nothing except that the plague should have a cure, and that Big Daddy D is 300 years old, for some reason.

After their nice conversation, a witch friend who works for Ricky and Alex shows up and BAM it’s Laura (remember her?)! Turns out Laura’s name is Amber and she works for the Inquisition, but that’s fine because they pay her an obscene amount of hush money so she doesn’t blab about Nicole being a wizard. Amber and Nicole have a heart to heart about magic and then Amber kidnaps her for three days to teach her how to use guns at the nearby Inquisition gun range, using the excuse of “she’s a normal who looks like Lisa Desmond and we want to keep her safe.” So after three days of non-stop gun training, they hand Nicole a berretta and a carry license and say “go help us catch a magic rapist and serial killer running around Vegas.” Nicole says okay and the intrepid duo go and make some magic rocks. Nicole puts enchantments on the citrine and rhodonite to taze the shit out of the killer, and then have a heart to heart with the moonstone, which agrees to the enchantment so long as it can blast the killer into oblivion.

The girls get gussied up for a night on the town and it’s about five minutes of shopping before they meet the guy. After they agree to hang with him for a while, the magic talking book (remember them?) tells Nicole that he’s a sorcerer and is eating Amber’s will to resist him through touch. So Nicole lures him up to their suite by virtue of Amber being magically ruffied and then interrogates him. He squeals that he was hired to gather power from fucking people up for someone in L.A. and he was raping and killing wealthy women specifically because he liked it. The moonstone says that’s all it needed to hear, and drains Nicole of all her magic to turn the sorcerer into a fine layer of ash coating the floor.

The two Fenerec show up and get pissed that they put themselves in danger like that, before deciding to head back to L.A.. Once back in L.A. Amber brings Nicole to get samples of some diseases that infect Fenerec once they get the plague, and also a sample of the plague itself. So they try teaching Nicole how to sense the plague in order to teach a disease that follows the plague to kill it. This does not work at all, and they call in Big Daddy D to study his immunity as a true born Fenerec instead. While Amber goes to pick Big Daddy D up from the airport, Nicole has to meet up with Dominic to talk about the contract from that movie from way back.

So at Dominic’s house, Nicole meets Dominic’s friend Patrick, who creeps on her hardcore and his touch makes her skin crawl. Dominic asks Nicole and Patrick’s help in finding a prop gun for Nicole to practice with for the movie, which is weird since the director insisted on her holding a real rifle but whatever. So after exploring the basement, Nicole find a door to another room, and inside is OH SHIT! IT’S A FENEREC BOIS! So Nicole is like “wtf?!” and Dominic is like “Patrick get her” and Patrick is all like “ima sorcerer guys!” and everyone comes to a standstill in front of the cage. Nicole gets the feeling this female wolf is not actually Dominic’s lover as he claims, and slams open the cage.

Now, here’s the lowdown on the situation. This wolf is a woman Dominic stuck in his basement until she agreed to be his lover, she was infected with the plague and to save herself, decided to stay in wolf form so the need to shift wouldn’t explode her. Dominic, seeing that she was still dying anyways, hired a bunch of sorcerers to gather power and perform a ritual to swap Nicole and the woman’s souls, leaving Nicole a dying werewolf and the woman free to be his... whether she wanted to be or not.

So the wolf bursts from the cage and seeing that Patrick has started the ritual, decides to kill Nicole so it can’t be completed, she fails, Patrick succeeds, and Nicole wakes up sometime later in the wolf’s body, alone. Nicole finds out two interesting points, one: she is immune to the silver lining of the cage, and two: her wizard powers now manifest as ice and snow instead to invisible energy. So she opens the lock with her magic and heads upstairs to find her stuff. Luckily nobody was watching it and she grabs her gun, the magic book, and the moonstone. The gun in its holster goes around her neck like a collar, and the moonstone decides that it likes her now that she’s a Fenerec. The book says “freeee” as soon as she touches it and crumbles to dust, and now instead of the book talking in her head there is a wolf spirit… somehow...?

So Nicole circles the outside of the building and realizes she’s dying of plague, so the moonstone is like “naw girl you got dis” and teaches her how to kill the plague, since being a Fenerec wizard give a +∞ modifier to the Diplomacy check to change the moonstone from “Hostile” to “Helpful.” And then Nicole whips out her gun using magic and shoots Dominic and Patrick dead through a window. Good climax author, real suspenseful. So it turns out that when Amber and Big Daddy D showed up and couldn’t get in they called the cops, and the gunshots from Nicole killing the two villains gave them probable cause to enter, they see Nicole in wolf form whining and putting on a pitiful puppy act. They bring her outside and leave her with Alex, who is dying of the plague, and Richard – who is immune btw – goes in to look for Nicole (dropped the ball there dickhead). Nicole cures Alex of the plague and they go in to find that – surprise – the woman who swapped bodies with Nicole is actually her sister Lisa!

So here we find out some stupid outta nowhere bullshit. Nicole is a true born Fenerec, but her twin Lisa was not. This meant that the two would have to be separated or Nicole would try to turn Lisa, killing her. However, Nicole would freak out if they were separated so her parents chose to use forbidden witch magic to kill Nicole’s wolf spirit. Rendering Nicole human. Also, Nicole and Lisa visited Richard and Alex’s pack a few years ago; Lisa and Alex fell in love, got married, became Fenerec, and tried to get Nicole to become one as well. Three problems though, Nicole did not want to be a Fenerec, Nicole and Richard apparently hated each other, and also Nicole was already a Fenerec so the ritual just could not work in the first place. So some pack-members got it into their heads that she was a racist and that their alpha hated her, and took it into their own hands to “deal with the problem.” Needless to say, Nicole got super fucked up, stole Richard’s car, and got in an accident so bad she was covered in scars and was in a coma for over a year. When she woke up, she tried to make a career out of singing when she met the book and lost her voice. So I guess the book was actually her wolf spirit and when she got a wolf body the two could become one again… or something?

Anyways, everybody goes home after falsifying some evidence and they decide that what just happened to Nicole was super damaging and trying to force her to turn back now what probably fatal. So the next day Amber and Nicole head to a Nuclear power plant and Nicole siphons a metric fuck-ton of power from it to cause an enormous snowstorm that carried her power to kill the plague, and unleashed it on the city to save all the Fenerec that lived there. Yay.

But the two are trapped in Amber’s car during the blizzard, so they get Nicole to become human shaped again and Amber hands her a bunch of records that reveals something kinda important I guess: Richard and Nicole had everyone fooled and they got Nicole’s mom to forge her father’s consent and got married and were all in love and shit, unfortunately the incident that left Nicole in a coma involved severe cranial trauma so she forgot basically all of that. Nice.

Once the blizzard let’s up, Nicole meets up with Richard and reveals what she now knows, retrieving their marriage rings and being all-like “werewolf healing is helping me get my memory back so let’s figure out how to restart this whole relationship thing, okay?” Aaaaaaaand that’s the end. Just right there. Kinda abrupt.