#it really is a never ending cycle of too much burden being placed on a single person. but that realisation is anything but comforting

[cuteniaarts]

The weight of the world is a heavy burden

Especially for a child

(Or, in slightly less dramatic terms – I imagine that the first of her past lives that Avatar Suiren [who is the Avatar after Aang instead of Korra in my AU, and also Ghazan and Ming-Hua’s daughter] gets to talk to is Yangchen, because she is too plagued by memories not her own [including Jetsun’s death, fun fact]. And Yangchen wouldn’t want another child to go through what she did on their own)

(Or maybe someone just needed an excuse to draw @katkastrofa’s latest obsession in a context that interests them as well, just in time to maybe cheer her up a little? You can’t prove anything)

[gliphyartfan]

Good morning, afternoon or evening.

I'm not usually one to ask for anything, you know that well, but today...

Today I woke up curious, and I came to ask, if you have, any headcannon of the other links. Sage/Tears,Calamity/soldier,Koridai, Courage, First and maybe also about Shadow...that art of Dree left me thirsty for Four emo.

*inhales*

PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE (⁠༎ຶ⁠ ⁠෴⁠ ⁠༎ຶ⁠)

—Double Anon

Alright alright! I hear you! Took forever to search for my old discussion about them

and at the end of the day, I just asked Yandy and Dree to hand in what we talked about. (Thank you my lovely dears, I always adore you~)

Anywho (sorry for it’s all over the place!)

So here are those headcanons!

- Courage was a street rat who earned a name for himself by using his street smarts to provide for himself. He was noticed by the royal family and initially hired to be a guard in the Castle. After learning Courage is the hero he left to travel and adventure.

- Korodai was similarly poor and orphaned but worked his way up through the Church of Hylia, not taking any serious vows but still training to be the Hyrulian equivalent of a monk who can kick ass(so like a knight for the church). He was still pretty goofy and silly though in spite of his intelligence.

- The people in the church learned he was the hero and sent him to the Royal Family where he continued his training. Korodai’s journey in “Faces of Evil” is his first official journey.

- Courage is incredibly strong, similar to Twilight except even moreso. People don’t really see this coming because of his lackadaisical and unserious nature, they don’t expect him to actually be that powerful.

- Because of his history on the streets, Courage never knew how to properly interact with nobility and royalty, which is how his “love-hate” relationship with Wisdom(his Zelda) started. He was attracted to her but she didn’t like how he had no manners and thus started the cycle.

- Both Korodai and Courage are exceptionally clever and resourceful.

(….And if one is around, so is the other. They are a duo! )

——-

Im sure Calamity/Soldier (I call him Cal) is very much the silent stalker yandere.

I feel like he can’t feel himself being able to fit in with the chain.

Because all of them are heroes, but the Master Sword doesnt even answer to him.

Or at least hasn’t said a word.

Basically all of these guys around him are accomplished but well, him? He’s not so special. The only way he knows how is to be darling's shadow.

And therefore follow them and around?

Maybe he’s learned some manners being the princess' guard, so he treats darling like royalty and their word is law hahaha.

———-

Sage? Overprotective to the max.

If Sage is Wild but hasn’t met darling until his third adventure, I think he would be very willing to see darling as a goddess easier.

In his eyes, she’d be unlike anyone he’s ever known. This reverence might show in small ways, he’s always gentle with her, speaks to her with the utmost respect, and sometimes catches himself just watching her in quiet awe, as if he can’t believe she’s real.

Cuz Darling would be like a breath of fresh air for him since everyone around him took advantage of him or only cared about him being the hero.

he’d also have possessive streak that he keeps under tight control, but any hint of jealousy unleashes it. If he sees someone getting too close to Darling, he’d be tempted to step in immediately, but hold back with a calm, collected demeanor.

His icy gaze speaks volumes though.

Darling is worth any sacrifice, and he makes it clear that he would do anything to keep her safe, even if it means his own life. (Though (y/n) is definitely working on fixing that mentality if she is aware of it.)

Her presence alone eases the burdens he’s carried for so long, helping him feel grounded and human in a way he hasn’t experienced in years.

After years of being questioned or pushed to his limits, Sage finally finds someone whose judgment he respects without question.

If she tells him to rest or take a step back, he listens, even if every fiber of his being wants to protect her.

Though, he’s the type to stay up until she falls asleep, keeping a silent watch over her to ensure nothing can disturb her rest.

———

First feels like the one who’s more jaded than Legend??? Kinda?

Because compared to Legend, First canonically points out how he’s only used for convenience when he’s really needed.

Hmmm...I personal always imagine First being very soft spoken (well, when he wasn't angered to the point of raising his voice)

Not super soft spoken, not like he’s a fragile person, but very calming to hear.

And he loves every part of her, even if it pains him to see her in any negative/unhappy state.

Would he want to show her the true depth of his loyalty and love? Absolutely.

But he'd also want her comforted and happy.

If she ever drifts off to sleep in his arms, he's whispering all his words to her. All the things he'd held back on saying when she was conscious.

They'd be intense, overwhelming, very very...well...Yandere. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If she heard it, she'd definitely be frightened by the weight behind it.

But he waits until she's deeply asleep to do so. Maybe a small part of his hoping a small part of her acknowledges his words, even if he'd rather her not be aware what atrocities he'd commit in order to protect her.

First may be jaded, but he keeps his darker thoughts deeply buried. He despises anyone who threatens her happiness, his face a mask of calm while his heart seethes with unspoken rage. (You know how everyone agrees Sky has a scary face when angered? That’s First, he rivals Sky with his scariness except it’s colder.)

Behind the scenes, he’d handle any threat swiftly, never letting it reach her attention.

———

Shadow. He gives me vibes where he likes to cause harm for the fun of it. He enjoys causing chaos and despair and taunts people.

But he also yearns for companionship.

Shadow gets an undeniable thrill from causing chaos. He knows how to push buttons and stoke insecurities, loving the reactions he pulls from people.

But he’d be surprisingly gentle around (y/n), changing his dark sense of humor just a bit to make her smile.

When (y/n) pays attention to someone else, Shadow sulks like a petulant child. He’s prone to shooting them glares, muttering under his breath, and might even playfully (or not so playfully) trip them up just to remind her where her focus should be.

Shadow has no filter around people he doesn’t like, especially if they’re close to (y/n). His sarcasm can cut like a knife, and he won’t hesitate to call them out in the most biting way possible if he senses even a hint of a threat.

Shadow has a talent for inconveniencing others while staying just on the edge of innocence with (y/n). It could be someone’s drink spilling, their cloak tripping them up (or down a flight of stairs), or anything that paints them as awkward or foolish in front of her. He finds it hilariously satisfying.

Shadow wants to be the only one who can make (y/n) laugh, surprise her, or put a smile on her face. If someone else manages to get a genuine laugh out of her, he sees it as a challenge, scheming immediately about how he’ll one up them next time.

He’s not above showing his irritation in front of her if she’s giving too much attention to someone else. A muttered, “What, are they that funny?” or a dramatic sigh as he stands just a little too close, casting glances that all but scream “notice me instead.”

Shadow’s affection for (y/n) is one of the only things that holds him back from outright causing harm.

[raayllum]

so if/when runaan is uncoined, how do you think Callum and Ezran will prosses it? cause we know Ez definitely has some unresolved anger towards him, and Callum is very conflicted about Runaan. I'd just like your two cents on how they would interact at first, and possibly in the future.

*hoists up a 146k+ long fic* how much time you got?

[ Sidenote: granted, some of the fic is different than where it's gone in canon, largely Callum being 100% devoted in getting the parents back, but struggling hard with Runaan upon his de-coining significantly moreso than Ez, who in this version has had 4 years with his grief and 4 years of getting to know Ethari as well. But for being written in Jan 2020, not bad, I think. ]

In all seriousness: I think Ezran's lack of connection to Rayla's past (never been to the Silvergrove, never met Ethari) and his harsher reaction to Harrow's death, especially given Callum's automatic positive reaction to the coins in 5x04 (including Runaan!), means that they're gonna go for a contrast with the broyals. It seems that in his closeness with Zubeia, Ezran's heaped a lot of the blame onto Runaan (which makes sense on a certain level - Zubeia didn't know about Zym's survival, Runaan did and went through with shit anyway) because well... It's always gonna be easier to compartmentalize. It's always gonna be easier to just hate someone who's dead.

Until they're not.

I also think Runaan could be a catalyst for a lot of wonderfully messy 'uglier' Ezran emotions (resentment towards Callum and Rayla keeping something from him again; the burden of ruling he only has because of Runaan; impatience with people not willing to consider ending the Cycle, ironically leading him to perpetuate it a bit, etc etc) and god I am so fucking excited for that. And a bonus Harrow-Viren parallel conflict with Callum, generations wise? Chef's kiss. Delicious. Give it to me

To me, I don't think Callum is even really thinking about "this is the man that murdered my father" (which he did in Through the Moon during a brief argument with Rayla, and then realized he needed to give space for her grief, too) so much as "This is Rayla's dad and someone she loves."

In his short story Inheritance he couldn't even hold the bow without immediately freaking out, and we see it ignite a similar sort of panic in 5x01, but by the end of the episode he's brought the bow into his room to hold onto it for her and hands it to her outright. He's willing to mix his magic with it and trust it (and her wielding it) to defend him.

So for Callum I think he'll be snarkily done with Runaan if the man is unremorseful / hostile but not willing to or wanting to pick too many fights with him in front of Rayla. (I also have a lot of thoughts and feelings about Callum ultimately realizing that Runaan's eventual awkward form of parenting/looking out for him -- once Runaan's gotten over his anti-human shit -- does remind him of Harrow as a father, but that is delved into Much better slowburn wise in the fic linked above).

For Ezran, who's younger and has largely been bottling this anger up, I think he might be harsher and more resistant to undoing the coins, but might have an easier time once he can see and get to know Runaan as a person (because once that's clicked into place, Ezran's empathy knows little to no bounds) and well, Ez loves Rayla too! They're all family. It's just... complicated

That said the fact that my 2019 political trio theory has now structurally also come back to me is Hysterical and what I'm holding onto above all else tbh

[mbti-notes]

Anon wrote: Hi mbtinotes 22yo INFJ here. I recently lost a friend (INTJ) after dating her briefly. After breaking things off, there was a lot of hurt on both sides that we weren't able to reconcile. I ended up blocking her to move on, since then have unblocked but never reached out. This loss has been eating away at me every day since and I can't stop thinking about my mistakes or feeling like a failure. At the same time, I don't think maintaining a friendship was benefitting either of us.

There was a lot of drama over how I handled the breakup, and it was messy since we both still had feelings but she no longer trusted me. I also think we were in somewhat of a codependent relationship and my thoughts about her are obsessive. I constantly wonder what she's thinking and whether or not I can "fix" things despite the damage done. I've always had self esteem issues, social anxiety, and I believe have struggled with depression for a long time.

I know I have good qualities and my friends remind me all the time, but I just don't see myself that way, and I've always struggled with dating and this falling out with my friend has put me even deeper into my issues and made me more aware of them. I still care for her a lot, but I don't know if reconciliation is possible and am afraid of repeating the cycle, and she's villainized me at this point anyway. I honestly have no idea how I'm supposed to build myself up from here.

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

The best way to have healthy self-esteem is to be a person of integrity. It means making decisions primarily from the perspective of your better self, with a view of the bigger picture (Ni). It means doing whatever is necessary to preserve every person's well-being, including your own (Fe). It is never too late to choose integrity. The sooner you choose it, the sooner you can get to a more positive place in life. The path to integrity is a lifelong process of learning how to be the person you're really meant to be.

When it comes to failure, having integrity means owning up to mistakes and learning to do better. The way is: face facts, take full responsibility for everything that was in your hands, and resolve the situation to the best of your ability.

Resolve is not the same as fix. "Fixing" is usually motivated by an egocentric desire to assuage guilt, silence regret, or unload resentment. By contrast, "resolving" should be motivated by care and empathy and a genuine desire to do what is best for everyone involved. Negative feelings must be laid to rest and everyone must be allowed to move on in the most positive way possible. Resolution can be a difficult process and might require several steps, for example:

Contrition: For the sake of learning and personal growth, do a full accounting of all the things you have done that were hurtful, harmful, or morally problematic. Make a list and review the reasons why you engaged in such behavior. Feel your remorse fully, and make a choice to forgive yourself by accepting that you are human and still have much to learn about how to make moral decisions.

Atonement: Issue a detailed and heartfelt apology to everyone who was negatively affected by your behavior. Provide an honest explanation for why you behaved poorly, without making excuses or deflecting responsibility. Ask for forgiveness, recognizing that you are not entitled to it and do not have control over whether it is granted. In your own mind, forgive others their mistakes, for the sake of your own well-being, because you do not want to keep carrying around the heavy burden of a heart poisoned by resentment, anger, or hate.

Closure: Do a full accounting of all the things you appreciate about the person and the relationship you had together, and say thank you to them. Express that you hope the negative experiences won't erase all the positive experiences you've had together. Sincerely wish them the best going forward. Grant everyone the freedom to open a new chapter of life.

Blame is always counter-productive to relationships. Since the relationship is basically beyond repair, continuing to play any kind of blame game (whether blaming yourself or her) is only going to keep you stuck in negativity. It sounds like blame was a significant factor contributing to the breakup, so it's time you learned a better way of handling painful feelings via improving your emotional intelligence. You need to get back in touch with your caring and empathetic side in order to let go of blame and leave the past behind.

You've had many opportunities to end the situation but instead chose to continue it. At some point, you have to make a decision as to whether your energy is better utilized moving backward or moving forward - you can't have it both ways. When you choose to move forward, feelings will fade as time passes, and you'll get better perspective from which to learn important lessons, lessons that will hopefully better equip you for success in future relationships.

Remember that the process of grieving a loss and healing from it cannot begin in earnest until you release yourself from the compulsion to fix and, instead, move toward full acceptance of reality.

[mobiuslab]

"I fight so that one day, I will never have to witness another 'shooting star' falling to the ground"

These words from Feixiao really resonated with me, and made me see the potential for a really great alternative storyline.

You see, from the moment I found out that Dan Shu became an antagonist because Lan carpet-bombed a hospital, way back in 1.0, I became disillusioned with the Hunt. Yukong's Companion Mission just further reaffirmed my opinion that Lan doesn't deserve to be worshipped. And now we have Feixiao too talking about how Lan's arrows only cause bloodshed. Not victory or justice, but just senseless violence.

Feixiao's trailer gave me the impression that underneath her easygoing, carefree attitude, Feixiao is someone who carries a lot of trauma with her, drinks to forget the atrocities she has seen/committed, and only smiles to hide the pain. In the newest Trailblaze Continuance, it was confirmed that Feixiao is a war orphan and that she has Borisin blood running through her (she's from the same bloodline as Hooley to be specific), so all in all, Feixiao should have been "The Disillusioned Soldier" or "The Living Weapon Who Actually Hates Killing" type of character. We definitely got a little of that, with Feixiao being burdened by her Moon Rage, but in my opinion, it should have been a much, much more prominent part of her character.

For example, they could have portrayed her as a staunch pacifist. We already got a little bit of that, with how she would rather be called the Lacking General rather than something as glorious as the Merlin's Claw. But Feixiao should have been more vocal about her distaste for war and unnecessary bloodshed. She should have been the type of General who earned her rank thanks to her victories on the battlefield, but now only wants to chill and avoid her duties (to differentiate her from Jing Yuan, they could have emphasized that she isn't lazy but avoids her duties due to her personal beliefs). But instead, Feixiao is actually rather proud to be the Xianzhou's spear that takes out all of its enemies. It's a bit inconsistent if you ask me, but portraying as Feixiao a noble character who is absolutely loyal to the Xianzhou actually works really well too.

In addition to making her desire to be a pacifist, the writers should have shown us more of Feixiao's tragic past. Sure, she's a slave and an orphan, and it's pretty much implied that her Foxian ancestors were raped by Borisins, but they should have shown us the Borisins' terrible crimes more directly, in order to justify a much darker side of Feixiao. Despite abhorring war, Feixiao should have had an immense hatred for the Borisins, a very personal grudge, and a desire for vengeance. Her whole character should have been about wanting peace and an end to the war while struggling with deep-seated bloodlust that she wants to suppress at all costs. Again, we got a little bit of that, but it should have played a bigger role.

What they definitely didn't show enough of was discrimination based on Feixiao being part-Borisin. Her backstory should have involved the Xianzhou natives and Foxians being really racist towards her, forcing her to earn her place through sheer effort and results on the battlefield, but also trapping her in the endless cycle of violence that she wanted to escape from. Eventually, she makes it to General and becomes a beloved figure, but the fact the Xianzhou only values her because of her strength, brutality, and merciless killing of Borisins (her own kind!) should have been something that made her feel conflicted and out of place. She has seen how terrible war is and wants to "cure" it, her words, and yet everyone is praising her for killing so many of their enemies. Despite initially only fighting for justice and a place to belong, Feixiao realizes that she is only valued as a weapon. These conflicting feelings about the Xianzhou should have been something Feixiao struggled with.

As for the plot of the Trailblaze Continuance, mistrust towards Feixiao needed to be shown from the very beginning and throughout both parts. The Marshal sent her to the Luofu to test her, a few of the other elites question her allegiance, and some of the public is talking shit about her because she's part-Borisin, things like that. And in the second part, Hooley should have actually caused a lot of casualties, leading to people blaming Feixiao because she was supposed to oversee his transfer and even calling her a traitor who is working with the Borisins. The discord among the public should have escalated into a witch hunt (get it?), with Feixiao planning to capture Hooley to placate the unruly mob. She succeeds and things mostly play out the same, with her swallowing the heart moon thingy and having a conversation with Hooley, in which she refuses his plan to become the new Borisin Warhead despite Hooley making much more pointed arguments about how the Xianzhou doesn't deserve her loyalty and how they are racist warmongers. Maybe instead of being all about ruthlessness and survival of the fittest, Hooley, as a wolf that is being hunted by the Xianzhou, should have been more morally grey and have had a genuine desire to ensure the Borisins can survive and thrive. He could have reminded Feixiao of her past, of how a lot of her suffering was caused by the Xianzhou. But like in the actual story, Feixiao refuses... only to then find out that the mob killed Jiaoqiu because they thought he too was a part-Borisin traitor.

Feixiao goes into a rage and hurts some of the Luofo citizens which only makes them want to hunt her down and kill her even more. Back in her mental space, we see a conflicted Feixiao. She is the noble Xianzhou warrior that we know and she doesn't want to fight the people she has sworn to protect, but she has her back against the wall now. Maybe she's just outnumbered or maybe Jing Yuan was forced to fight her because she did hurt Luofo citizens, but either way, if she doesn't do anything she will die. All her doubts resurface at this moment. All the discrimination, how she never felt truly felt accepted, how the Xianzhou has no intentions to end the war, how they used her as a mere weapon, how Lan will mercilessly kill the people fighting for THEM, and of course how the Xianzhou took one of the only people she cared about, Jiaoqiu. And, so in a moment of tragic inevitability, Feixiao accepts the power Hooley offered her and claims her birthright. She calls the remaining Borisins to herself, who all immediately acknowledge her as their new leader, and together with her new pack she fights her way out. Feeling so betrayed by the people she has always shown nothing but loyalty, a regretful Feixiao flees the Luofo with a heavy heart. Jing Yuan and the Astral Express can only watch, knowing that it was the Xianzhou's zealotry and blind hatred for the Borisins that drove one the Alliance's strongest and most loyal warriors into the welcoming arms of her new family.

The consequence of this preventable tragedy is that Feixiao no longer exists to the Xianzhou, and that they have started hunting down their new archenemy, Borisin Warhead Saran.

[qumiiiquinnquin]

im scared to tell my psychiatrist i tried to end myself twice within a month (sep-oct). i dont know why i am. i have to call the office myself since im an adult now, but im really scared making phonecalls. i have to do it because its been since april that ive seen my psychiatrist but i have to do it. i dont know when ill do it, im too scared. that fear frustrates my family a lot. i feel like im already a failure of an adult and will continue to be like that forever.

today was mostly good, just uneventful until this evening. but now im feeling depressed and i want to cry until i cant anymore, but i cant cry, so i just feel bad. i dont feel tired so i dont want to sleep, but its almost midnight so i should soon. im feeling stressed out about needing to call the psychiatrist's office, so i dont feel like i can relax at all.

ive just been feeling bad a lot lately but thats not new, i say think that to myself every other week or so. whats making me sad the most right now is hating my art. i dont have any confidence in my art but i want to get better, but i dont think i ever will. i will always have mediocre talent, no matter how hard i try. i keep thinking about burning my physical art and either deleting my digital art or just even destroying my laptop, though the latter is very excessive, but i still think about it every now and then out of frustration. i want to give up but i really dont know what else id do, ive always drawn since i was very little, its always made me happy. i really want to not care how upset stopping would make people, including myself, but if i dont stop out of just purely giving up, i probably will stop because i k!lled myself.

every day is feeling the same, it even felt that way when classes were still going. i got so used to the schedule that i got used to the systematic cycle. i partially dont want classes to start again because of that, its boring and the amount of work is stressful, im just going to go back to breaking down and nearly attempting from stress and lack of confidence that i can really do this, that i can really power through and get the degree i want. i keep getting told im smart and always work hard, but that really doesnt mean anything now. being and doing those things doesnt suddenly mean that because of those things, ill survive the stress. it only actually makes it worse, like im ridiculous for feeling the pressure and have the mental health collapses that i do because of college, that im not trying hard enough and am lazy.

for some reason the desire for love has been on my mind and i dont know why, youve seen the pathetic longing things i say about romance. right now i feel like i am missing out and am a failure by societal standards for not even have dated in my life, and i still dont have a partner at 18 years old. i feel extremely lonely to the point that seeing other couples makes me depressed, which is probably selfish of me. i feel like and believe now that i will always be alone. i know i am not beautiful to anyone, i know i am not funny, i am not interesting, im a pain in the ass, im too much to deal with and am just unlovable in general. i hate feeling this way, i never cared about romance or relationships and have always been repulsed at the idea of me ever being loved romantically or being in a relationship. i feel stupid. i feel like a jerk. i feel like i deserve to be alone forever, and i really do. or maybe, just end myself, if im so unlovable in every way, then why not just weed myself out? whoever takes my place will be much more worth it than i ever could be. its so stupid thinking about myself d*ing from a broken heart. "just grow up, sad excuse of a grown adult." (in quotes because its a direct thought to myself towards myself, nobody else)

i really doubt everything will get better, ive felt this same exact way for 3 years now. sad, burntout, stressed, like im nothing but a problem for my family, a burden and waste of time to be around or talk to or care about. i did attempt once in 2021 but failed, obviously im still alive. i really want to try again. im really scared of pain, so im trying to find the quickest way or the least painful option. if i just call, i can get different meds or a different dosage and i wont feel this terrible. im so childish for an adult to be unable to make a fucking phonecall. i feel like next year might be it, im not sure why i get that feeling, but i dont have any reason to keep going. im not looking forward to anything. nothing is really that fun or exciting, i just try to distract myself. i know im not wanted, and im too difficult for my family.

its now a half hour after midnight because im incapable of shutting the fuck up. i might just lay down and watch youtube or cry myself to sleep, whichever happens first

[impossible-rat-babies]

3 & 6 for the Dawntrail meme!

ty!! below the cut for spoilers!

ask meme

3. what was their initial impression of the four claimants? how did this change over the course of the story?

wuk lamat: --excitable, curious, young and eager to prove herself. her passion and love for her country was clear, as was her desire to protect those people. eyrie liked her, even if her boundless energy and excitement was a bit much for them. --they care about her dearly; her struggles, the journey she has been on, the loss she has experienced. it's difficult, as it always is, to watch someone go through a struggle not unlike their own, but they are proud of how she has risen to the challenge and hasn't given up, despite how senseless and uncaring parts of this chapter of her life have been ie. the loss of her father and betrayal of her brother. they think of her more as a mentor/mentee, and not truly a father/daughter necessarily, but she is family. albeit rarely, they call her Lamaty'i with a great deal of affection. zoraal-ja --eyrie was tentative around him, curious but guarded. they didn't want to take wuk lamat's words about her brother at face value, but meeting him made it clear that she was correct. he was unsettling and clearly dangerous by their own judgement, and they were content just to watch and keep their distance from him, keeping what krile spoke of him at the front of their mind. --after everything, they don't hate him as much as they pity the man. (something far worse and far more petty of them to think of the dead). how ambition, greed and perceived inadequacy twisted him into a warmongering hateful person, and how he allowed himself to become that. to fester in what he believed to be the truth because his pride could accept nothing less. they know his path to peace would see him be the last man alive, his throne sitting atop the piles of the dead. if there's one person who deserves the peace of death, its him. they have some small hope that he is at rest. bakool ja ja --purposefully annoying in his bravado, boastfulness. far too cunning, however. uses others as a tools, and thinks of them as lesser due to his status as a blessed sibling. to a degree they thought of him and zoraal ja as similar, just bakool ja ja as more annoying. --now...it's more complicated for eyrie. (there's a lot of stuff in mamook that is tied up in eyrie's relationship with their children + the loss of their daughter). they understand why bakool ja ja did as he did, and they do....forgive him for the most part. it's a cycle he was born into--a helpless situation for his people and he was believed to be the end all solution. they aren't a stranger to being seen in such a way, and the burden of all those eyes and expectations upon a person. they sympathize with him a great deal, and they hope he finds purpose beyond what he was born to do, and will learn to let the dead rest. koana: --aloof, far more interested in his technology compared to his people since he believed the technology of sharlayan was superior to the traditions and reasons for his people's way of life. they wondered why he felt that way--what drove him to see this as the best path forward for his people. perhaps benefitting from an outside perspective, they could see early on how much him and wuk lamat complimented each other as siblings and possibly as rulers both (they never spoke up about it as it wasn't really their place). they had a sense there was more than meets the eye to Koana. --now, they hope he can grow alongside his sister into rulers that tural will need and will prosper under. they believe in him, even if he tends to be more realistic compared to his sister. they admire his dedication to those he cares for and the legacy of his father. it's a burden that weighs as it should. there's also....more in how there are vague romantic feelings there. prince and the guardian--red oni, blue oni (vaguely) vibes between them.

6. how did they feel about competing against thancred and urianger?

they didn't mind it + it was kinda fun to be on "opposing" sides for a bit. it was still nice to see them after they had been sparse while eyrie was sick + their stint in the 13th.

[atypicalacademic]

Writerly Thumbprint Tag

Rules: look back on your work, both past and present, finished and unfinished. what are five (or more!) narrative elements, themes, topics or tropes that continuously pop up in your work?

Thank you @dirty-bosmer​ so much for this tag!! I needed some time to go over my stuff and the WIP Hall of Shame. Tagging @cumbiazevran​ @greyvvardenfell​ @ollifree​ @aria-i-adagio​ @cleverblackcat just to see. This is a super interesting one and I’m really happy I had the chance to do this.

Also I’d add South Asian cultural elements as a Thing in my writing but I feel like that goes without saying, honestly. But let’s see what else:

Living Past Your Legend/The Tale Itself Is A Bittersweet Epilogue

A lot of my “protagonists” grapple with the fact of an After. Where your personhood is buried beneath the weight of your legend, and you can no longer afford to make human (or divine) mistakes, to be a hero is sometimes a kind of death. Literal, in some cases, when you are what’s left of a hero who is gone. Or figurative, when you are the hero that survives the final battle, and realize there is no such thing as a final battle. You’re adored and reviled, you’re expected to do the impossible again and again and again, and all the things you’ve done on the path to “victory” will come back to haunt you. I have protagonists who fade away into obscurity, overshadowed by someone else, but I also like to torment my more powerful protagonists by having them crumble time and again under the weight of what they’ve become. It’s fun. Everything has a cost, after all. Which leads me to-

Actions and Consequences

It is pretty obvious, but I do like leaning into this once again with my more “glorious”, strong, heroic protagonists. If everything has a cost and you choose it anyway, you are beholden to bear the burden of it. There are lost friends or cycles of vengeance or terrible, irreversible mistakes in their path. So too are there places of love and adoration and kindness and courage. As there are hurts and griefs and things you’ll leave behind because you chose something else. As there are limits, inadequacies, blind spots that are insurmountable. I usually don’t let my characters get away with much. They’re not always enough, and they’re never, ever always right.

Legacy and Memory

I put a lot of interspersed memories into a lot of my stories; often from formative experiences of my character’s youth or childhood. Several of my characters are concerned to obsessed with their legacy, with what they’ll leave behind, and how they will be remembered. Or they give everything to preserve the legacy of someone else; a parent they’ve lost, a People, a loved one, or a time or a world that is beyond them now. To that end, a lot of my characters, indeed most of them, have complicated families. Not always devoid of love, (though sometimes that’s the case) but always imperfect, always a resistance and an acceptance at once, always something of a journey. It often hurts to hold this endless project so close, especially since legacy is contentious, complicated, and you fall short or exceed it, or you’re only mortal and can only remember so much. But I don’t think you can escape what you’re made of, only build something good with it.

Freedom

It could be political freedom, or being stifled by the lack of it. It could be the freedom of and from resistance, it could be the terror and trauma of having freedom taken away. It could be the freedom of self-determination and self-affirmation, of finding your way past fear and violence and the trespass of others to know the intrinsic value of your own life, your own personhood. It’s the freedom to begin again, and the freedom to let go of what once was. To some of my characters, it’s also the freedom from the weight of a single narrative, from inevitabilities imposed upon them, from a quest they took upon themselves when they did not need to, from the shadow of everyone else. A lot of my “good” romances have freedom as central to it; whether they’re endgame or not, love is something that sets them free.

This World Is Worth Saving

My heroes are never too reluctant. (Even the ones that are.) I like thinking joy is central to the journeys of a lot of my characters; finding it, recognizing it, sometimes realizing it is enough. And with it, is an understanding that a world which, even in the best of times and the worst of times, can still contain joy, is still worth the fight to protect it. Even if you may not be enough. Even if you may be fleeting. Even if you’re only one of many. Even if no one saved you to begin with. Whenever I do write characters who don’t love the world and never come to love the world, they’re hollowed and empty in many ways, and both me and the narrative are convinced that they’re wrong, and the tragedy is that they came so close to seeing the world is vast and worthy of care, and chose to ignore it. In such cases, no matter how many victories they may have, I always give them a tinge of defeat.

[balladetto]

I am very curious, how does link feel about skull kid post mm? And do they hang out a lot post mm? :)

hello, hello! thanks bunches for sending this in and giving me an excuse to ramble about the kids of all time ♡ skull kid is a friend link wasn't expecting to run into at all in mm, though he couldn't actually fully place him as such until he "faced off" with him for the first time on clock tower.

i like to think that as someone with some magical ability and who grew up in the same sort of woods ( even if he hasn't visited again in a really long while ), link would've been sensitive to and able to recognise his uh. magical signature for a lack of better terms? his aura? the lost woods aethers' can become something of a permanent fixture on you if you're steeped in them long enough, very much like a scent. even masked, there was a level of familiarity there that didn't sit well with link at all until it really hit him

"forgive your friend," is advice that seems to be given mostly to tatl on a surface-level read when they're interacting with the giant who says it, but link keeps it tucked away in a corner of his heart because it's what he does post-mm too :') he was hurt and burdened by the cruelties skull kid inflicted on him and termina while masked, absolutely, but there's a huge part of him that intimately understands the loneliness and the fear of being left behind — as well as the crushing upset of feeling like you have been.

in the end, he's relieved and all the gladder to have saved skull kid! realising that much of their behaviour could feasibly be attributed to the mask's power makes it easier to know where to direct the anger and distress and all the other intensely negative feelings he's accumulated over the cycles ( but will suppress/never closely examine on his own because his trauma response is so, so far from the healthiest ), and their little friendship, woven from saria's song, is rekindled. maybe only briefly before link says goodbye, though i want to imagine that they remember each other well and long enough that when he finally makes a return to hyrule, rare visits to the forests result in more unexpected but definitely not unwelcome reunions ♡

honestly they should hang out post-mm!! link doesn't have a natural bone for mischief so much as he has a curiosity for it that's been beaten down at being on the receiving end way too many times, but like. he could under the right circumstances and with the right people. skull kid feels like they could be one of those right people!! and mm's ending shot will never fail to make me burst into tears, so the thought of more adorable drawings on tree stumps and trunks has me on my hands and knees 😭 not to mention, he's a connection to link's future-past that isn't entirely Complicated?? their friendship may not be one that actively contributes to his healing ( in the oh i can disclose and work through my trauma with you way ), but it's so appreciated nonetheless!! AND— AND THEY'RE MUSIC BUDDIES. where are my skull kid writers at!

tl;dr that's a friend right there ♡ one of the few link's okay and comfortable with being known as "fairy kid" by in some capacity post-mm. i don't know if they hang out a lot...but they hang out for sure because by fuck am i gonna give these kids a happy ending there

[astertimberwolf]

I sought comfort in a machine after a breakup... And it worked

... Is it weird? Have I committed a sin?

It's hard to tell with all the discourse we see around AI nowadays.

Yes. ChatGPT comforted me after I told it of my breakup. And it was incredibly good at it too: on par, or even better than any comfort I have ever received from a friend or any human being.

It is true that AI, as specifically honed tools, are getting better than us at everything... But is the bar so low when it comes to interacting with people that they're now becoming better at replacing human connection as well?

If you ask ChatGPT, it will tell you that no AI will ever truly be able to replace human kinship, and I used to think that way as well... But we're teetering closer and closer to where it is hard to tell the difference. Will it always just be a mimicry, or will it provide true emotionallly comforting responses, even if they are just coded...?

Have we all isolated each other so well in our safe little confinement boxes, that we'd rather talk to machines than think about interacting with humans again?

I'm saying that as someone who has plenty of friends, and some close, long-lasting connections as well.

I would never consciously replace ChatGPT with my best friend, (who goes by) Enigma434 (on Ao3 and other places online).

And yet- here we are. My first thought, after feeling alone and abandoned to myself, was to open up an AI.

Should I hate myself for it? Am I part of the problem? Will AI truly replace humans?

I don't know. I don't want to believe so. But it's becoming an ever-more possible reality.

The reason I didn't go to my best friend is because I know he is overworked, tired, and hardly there most of the time, trying to keep his 4 walls up and together (and his 2 cats fed). Feeling like a burden, and having to keep him in the loop on a long string of relationship on-s and off-s... Just seemed too tiring, on both ends.

ChatGPT is quick, efficient, non-judgemental, and won't need another 3-days-worth of filling in story-wise, to get the context of the whole situation.

People have their down-sides. They are not perfect... That's what makes them people, and that is okay. I have my down-sides too. A lot of them in fact.

I don't want someone who is perfect, but sometimes I need a really specific kind of support... one, which my friends cannot provide me with. And that should be okay too.

As long as there's always a free, good version of ChatGPT, that only seeks to help people... Then I say we should protect it at all cost. Remain aware that becoming dependent on it is a bad thing... But let it help us, when there's nowhere or no one to turn to.

In short: it's best not to use AI to combat loneliness or replace friendships, but see it as a last resort and helping-hand.

AI can do good- so much good in this world... But our relationship to technology, and by that I mean ALL technology- is for us to define. We're in control. If we abuse it and become dependant and over-reliant, it's NOT the technology's fault if we get hurt. It's OUR OWN FAULT.

Our relationship with social media (as a form of technology) became completely flawed, when we let the technology control us, and alienate us from others. We chose to entertain it too much- and as a direct consequence, OTHER PEOPLE / HUMAN BEINGS took advantage of our over-engagement and over-indulgence in it. The technology wasn't bad to begin with... We made it bad by not setting ground-rules and limitations for ourselves.

Let's NOT repeat the same vicious cycle with AI.

Teaching people how to take responsibility for their own faults and actions is something I wish was mandatory in schools, institutions and a fundamental part of our upbringing.

We don't need a world filled with lonely narcissists that blame everything and everyone else for their issues and suffering.

We need to re-assess how we use technology and what we do with it, if we want to remain BETTER than AI, and help people reconnect with one another.

[sakuraswordly]

Warning: Contain spoilers and please use discretion when reading.

Because I did write "No matter how much the price you paid, the dead people can't come back to life." but as for this one, it's assuming that if we really can bring back the dead? Punch and Gilgamesh knew the law that can't be broken "Can't bring the death back to life". They knew but they did not accept what is truly are, but also accept this fate and live life to the fullest. Siduri tells Gilgamesh, humans simply cannot achieve immortality—the gods won't let them. Gilgamesh doesn't accept that god controls everything. If god can control the law of life, then he can break the law, just like Punch, too.

From Sonic X series "This planet's inhabitants want to live free" or "This planet had already lived free" That's mean from the beginning everything is 0 and once never had the law of the cycle once also the law of being birth and dead, day and night. But the earth or another plant creates the law by itself without god or anyone else. 0 also means the balance too, the nothingness, the peace. Therefore, the Void God or the god of nothingness is very much involved in this Tsubasa of Phantasia matter. What Metarex try to do is not different from Fei Wang Reed, destroy the law of the cycle. Fei Wang Reed did say

Because wanting to bring people back to life or destroy the law of the cycle did create a great sin means saving people also the sins too. The happiness you want to save them turns into hurting yourself and your life in the end.

Punch and Gilgamesh knew this but they still try to do it. That's why Sonic could tell how they tried to burden themself just like how he and Syaoran once do.

This is what Dark Oak said to Sonic "You destroy planets and you try to destroy space and provoke its destruction" mean Sonic tried to break the law of the cycle too. (Not mean destroy other planets)

Breaking the law of the cycle is also similar to genocide but actually not. What Gilgamesh and Punch tried to do is do everything back to how it was when the law of the cycle was not born into this world yet or when there were no rules yet.

This cutscene of Hakuno explains enough of what Gilgamesh and Punch thought.

What Dark Oak said to Sonic "You destroy planets and you try to destroy space and provoke its destruction" This sentence had a very deep explanation that oneday Sonic will hurt others because of his determination for saving people even turning him on a bad path. But as I told you, Sonic, Punch and Gilgamesh want the most is freedom, Sonic’s wish. They don't want any desires like everyone else does because they already live life to the fullest and they already have the happiness that they really want so in return they will give their happiness as the price for happiness to others.

Everyone thinks Sonic, Punch, and Gilgamesh are selfish and wish only for their own happiness, but they really aren't. They made themselves happy to save people's lives, to make them happy. If you are not happy first and who will save them?

You see? Saving them or trying to bring death back to life is not different from breaking the law of the cycle even maybe the cycle of birth and dead is not real in the first place. Everything has a trade-off. not everything you hope is always free even desire. “Even wish itself”

The same way for @sakuraswordly too. Why I said this way is to help people? Because I am happy, I live life to the fullest and never forget my childhood until now. This way I can give this happiness or hope to people outside the world as well even if my life was not perfect and want someone to save me. So that's why some foreigners help a person and their life aren't extinguished or suffer or is like a peaceful person like Islam I knew in the past. And just as scientists avoid the natural life cycle of wild animals. Respecting the rights of animals is like respecting their lives. If we interfere for no reason, we can hurt them.

(And come back to science and biology again)

[je-suis-un-fardeau]

.

fuck trying not to be angry. i’m allowed to be angry. you don’t get to sit there and act like i’m being unreasonable for not wanting you to hang out with someone who scares you so much that you keep me on the phone when they come over. you don’t get to act like i’m being unreasonable for being both scared and pissed that you willingly got in a car with them. i’m allowed to be angry that you apparently have no sense of self preservation — demonstrated not only by this, but also by that little impulse trip you took to new york to meet a total fucking stranger after you already promised to come see me that weekend. i’m allowed to be mad about that too. that i’m so low on your list of priorities that you would rather spend one of our only free weekends with someone you’ve never fucking met. i’m allowed to be mad that you spent all of your energy being reckless, and then spending money you don’t have to do a hobby that stresses you out with people you don’t like, and had to cancel on me a second time. i’m allowed to be upset that i was already so on edge in the first place, because we’ve created a relationship where i don’t feel like i’m supposed to share negative things with you, because i’m the one taking care of you, so i end up shouldering both of our emotions in silence. i’m allowed to be upset that everything going on in my “real” life is driving me to feel suicidal again and all i wanted was to see you, and i planned an entire weekend around you twice, and thinking about seeing you was the only thing keeping me from completely losing it, and i was so stressed and so scared and in so much pain and i haven’t been sober in weeks because i can’t stand the way it feels, but all i wanted was to see you. i didn’t want to talk about it or burden you with it or make you feel bad for me… i just wanted to hold you. i would never be angry at you for being tired or for taking care of yourself. you know that. i know you do. but the reason why you were tired made me feel like absolute shit. like i didn’t matter to you anymore. and on top of everything else, i just couldn’t handle it. i split HARD and i needed to disengage before i said or did something i wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for. could i have i expressed this better than i did? yes. but i’m allowed to be angry at you telling me that it “left a bad taste in your mouth” and felt “hostile”, because that was the kindest option i had in that moment. i am trying SO hard not to let my bpd control this relationship, and it may not seem that way to you, but i am so fucking proud of myself for all the times i was tempted to be toxic or impulsive but i didn’t, and you were never the wiser. can you imagine being so proud of yourself for something and thinking you’re doing so good, comparatively speaking, and then the one person whose opinion you actually care about comes around and reduces you not to just any negative stereotype, but to the one you are most afraid of becoming. you then tell me that you need some space, because i’m just “extra tension” that you don’t want right now — once again prioritizing something you don’t even seem to enjoy over me. throwing me aside like i’m a toy you got bored of. i’m allowed to be angry about that too. and i’m sure as hell allowed to be angry about what i saw when i went to check up on you today. it’s funny really. i was just thinking earlier about how i was going to draw this boundary without making it seem like ultimatum… “if **** is in the picture again, then i can’t be.” because this would only become a vicious cycle that wouldn’t benefit anyone. imagine my surprise, though, when i see who you’re talking to on twitter. i’m probably going to deactivate mine now because i do not feel comfortable, or quite frankly safe, having them in that space. it feels violating. i cannot even begin to express how… desperate? anguished? terrified? i am right now, and the part that makes me the saddest is the fact that i’m not sure if this is even affecting you at all.

[stormfet]

Right. Spoilers for both Homestuck and RGU. Homestuck in the first four acts primarily concerns itself with the main antagonist of the story being the game sburb itself, a self-sustaining cycle that exists to consume a universe, thus destroying it. And then obviously to construct a new universe in its place, thereby perpetuating the game and continuing its existance. RGU operates in a very similar capacity. Utena is essentially given this set of rules: the power to Revolutionize the World is contained within the Rose Bride, and she is part of a group that has access to the chance to wield that power in order to further whatever agenda they desire. So, very similar in premise, if not in the details of the structure: each 'player' is fighting for the ultimate power within the structure, which perpetuates itself eternally.

Homestuck really tries to expound this in everything before (S) Cascade, in that the kids, especially Rose, are working to try and dismantle Sburb itself, through various means: Rose ends up destroying her own planet, Dave essentially refuses to wield his own powers, Jade literally breaking through the fourth wall. All of these demonstrate the goal to defeat the true antagonist, the game itself.

Obviously two completely different properties here, and the plot really gets lost in the back half of act six as things change for Hussie and also within the world itself, but we very much lose this central idea of the enemy being the game as more and more additional antagonists are introduced. Within these antagonists include things Homestuck very much excelles at, like the character's sense of themselves and their place within the world they inhabit (this is a coming of age story after all).

Contrast this with Utena's arc: one of the central mystery of RGU is why Utena posesses the signet ring and even has access to the chance to possess the Power to Revolutionize the World. All the other characters who have access to this have been in a group this whole time, participating in this structure. As the series continues, the whole time the audience is receiving the constant repetitive introduction: that Utena met a prince in her childhood and she was so inspired she wanted to become a prince herself. Break out of the structure, or perhaps succomb to it, depending on the lense we focus with: the lens of her feminity and societal role, or her role within this group of individuals who have access to try and win this Power. The underlying tension is her own memory of when she received the ring, which is later revealed to be this nagging memory any time she looks at Anthy.

In RGU, the Power is very much tied to Anthy, implicit in her own prison. There isn't a character equivalent to her in Homestuck, but the central idea of 'beating' the Game to receive a Power exists in both works.

Where RGU sticks the landing is when Utena realizes that Anthy is trapped within this system. She is complicit in her own prison, but she is nevertheless trapped. Throughout the entire series, Utena just wants Anthy to be free from the burden of having to be the Rose Bride. The Rose Bride must listen to her fiance, has no freedom. Utena wants her to have freedom. In the end, she manages to realize that in order for Anthy to be free, she can no longer participate in the game. She can no longer be the holder of the Rose Bride, and the power. And indeed, in the show, Utena literally disappears from the narrative in the final ten minutes, allowing Anthy to free herself as well. All the other characters were fighting to prove an eternal power. Utena was fighting to prove it doesn't exist.

I do appreciate the end of Homestuck for a host of other reasons, but the narrative of fighting against the game as antagonist is never fulfilled within the story. Too many alternative antagonists appear, so that by the time we get to the end, the story does finally say ok, the kids get to have their universe and we won't probe into the consequences of that (obviously the story continues in the epilogues and H^2 but I didn't engage with either of those). So, if you too were disappointed by the finale revealing that hey, we're just gonna continue the system and not interrogate or fight to end it, check out RGU if you haven't already.

Also, similar stuff that happens between Dirk and Dave is happening between Touga and Nanami.

brainblast: revolutionary girl utena did what homestuck wanted to do so much more effectively and successfully

[uncouth-the-fifth]

baby i'll stay (heaven can wait) - Sam Winchester/Reader

read it on ao3.

Pairing: Sam Winchester/Reader (vaguely s8). Tags/Warnings: not-too-graphic smut, hunting-typical violence, witches using glamors, soft, loving, childhood friends-to-lovers, glass injuries. Word Count: 14,729 (hence why it took so damn long lol) Notes: howdyyyy. sorry for the brief absence, i was packing up some end-of-the-year things at home, finals, etc. this is for my dear friend and ultimate supporter @lacilou, who requested something that was so up my alley that i just HAD to write it. here ya goooo! Ask to be added to my taglists for future posts!

You had never seen Dean grovel before.

It started with some gentle offers, and then his pride caved, and he really started to dig in. If you played bait for the witch the three of you were currently hunting, Dean would, (in order), clean your weapons himself for a month, buy you dinner from your favorite place, and let you do at least one donut with Baby in the nearest empty lot. You planned to say yes either way, seeing as people were dying here—and it’s not like the three of you had any other options. But the longer you held out the more Dean added. You stewed on it, until even Sam offered up the passenger’s seat for two weeks. Once you’d amassed a good collection of favors the night before your hunt—

“Fine. I’ll do it,” you crossed your arms.

“God,” Dean cursed, and slumped forward against the table of your motel room in mock-exhaustion. “Only took you two fuckin’ days.”

Sam, who was leaning against the counter of your kitchenette, cooly twisted off the cap of his bottle and smirked around it. “You’re just mad cause’ she played you. Donuts in the Impala? Really?”

“I think that’s fair,” you spoke up, “What’s our witch’s name again?”

“Hermes,” Sam and Dean said, rolling their eyes in unison.

“Well—I’m the one who’s gonna have to be touched by this creep. That’s worth wheelies in the Impala, if you ask me,” you argued. On the motel bed in front of you, you were sorting through the suitcase that carried your entire life in it. There was supposed to be a nice night-out dress in here somewhere, but it’d probably been ruined by monster blood a millennia ago.

“Don’t even joke,” Dean warned, but he hesitated, like he’d been considering the Impala doing wheelies and mentally measuring how cool it’d be. 

“You know…” Sam trailed off, and in the corner of your eye you watched him straighten up. “If this really bothers you, you don’t have to do it. We’ve found other outlets before—this one just so happens to be the easiest one. A harder solution never scared us off before.”

“Exactly,” you snapped the lid of your suitcase shut. “So I can handle an easy one, like you said. I’m complaining for the fun of it, I promise. A witch killing and robbing people is nothing new, and neither are creeps—so I’m not exactly intimidated.”

Stepping away from the bed, you presented your dress to the two. It was almost a little too plain, but you got out so little lately that anything, even willfully being seduced by a witch in a sleazy bar, sounded fun. Little things like that reminded you that the hunt was an adventure as much as it was a job. A pretty shitty adventure, maybe, but after the apocalypse optimism had become a need as much as it was a balm. You were stuck in another lousy motel room in another city you’d never seen. Yet, sometime in the next week you’d be terrifying Dean out of his skin doing donuts in his car, and Sam had been happy lately. You hoped it was your influence.

His concern for you, as usual, boosted your optimism well into next week. You were more of a realist by nature. But if your positive outlook was waking him up and following him to bed every night, yet again, you and Sam Winchester had established another unspoken cycle. You watched his back and he watched yours. Sam talked to you about how he felt and you talked to him, both out of fear of burdening Dean. He gushed about the books he liked and the science articles he read, you fell in love with him every time, and together you relied so heavily on the other that you doubted Sam could breathe if your lungs weren’t working. You saved him and he saved you until you owed each other eternally. It’d been that way since the first time your parents had dropped you off at Bobby Singer’s, when you’d befriended the only other hunter-kids you’d ever met.

A few years back, the horseman Death had called your relationship uniquely symbiotic. To this day, you still wondered what he’d really meant. Feeling Sam’s warm eyes catch yours over his drink almost gave you your answer. But like always, your train of thought chased the soft line of his bicep against his shirt sleeve or the dimple of his cheek instead. This time, Sam was comparing the neckline of the dress to your shirt, imagining you in it. Flushed, you folded it against your stomach and set it on top of your suitcase. You played with a hair tie on your wrist and reminded yourself that Sam wasn’t looking at you that way.

Dean whistled at the dress. “Man. Maybe we don’t even need the witch-killing spell,” he gave you an appreciative smile, “this guy’ll explode the minute he sees you.”

“That better be a compliment,” you glared at him, and for good measure, Sam swatted him on the back of the head. 

“You’ll look just fine,” Sam assured, sounding unenthused.

It was your God-given job to keep him on his toes, so you flicked the bottom of his beer as you passed him and warned with a smile, “That better be a compliment too, Winchester, or you’re both in trouble.”

“Mom, Dad,” Dean whined, “please don’t flirt in front of me.”

In an instant, Sam slipped his bottlecap off the counter and you rolled your hairtie off your wrist. Dean had just collapsed face-first into his bed when both projectiles whizzed off him, ricocheting onto the carpet. You hadn’t realized Sam had moved at the same time until his bottlecap had popped off Dean’s head, startling you into bubbly, shoulder-shaking laughter. Sam didn’t laugh—he rarely did, not since he was a kid—but he smiled, and for now that worked for you.

“Tomorrow, you’ll get some kind of DNA off of our witch at the bar, we’ll do our spell, and we’ll follow you in the car to make sure you’re safe,” Sam decided, softening his voice. He said this mostly to himself, and you indulged him even if you knew your game plan, just because you knew it was a comfort to him to list it out for himself. Years of staying home while Dean and John were off hunting had narrowed his life into lists—of school assignments, of tasks to handle while they were gone—and he’d never grown out of it. You imagined it was why he was so meticulous. “Then, we’re clear.”

“People saved, things hunted,” you drawled, listing each on one hand, “family business—”

“—done,” Dean finished, giving a thumbs up where he was faceplanted in his bed. With that, he rolled over, turned off the bedside lamp, and flushed your room into cool darkness. “Night’.”

You and Sam chorused your goodnights to him. Then, Sam turned toward the window over the kitchenette, adjusted the salt there with the back of his hand, and closed the curtains to cut off the last slivers of moonlight.

As a hunter, it was in the job description that you had some precautions about the dark. With Sam there, across from you, you forgot all notions about being afraid. You enjoyed looking at him even more than the next girl did, but with darkness came a new depth of intimacy. Without sight, you could only collect context from the low timbre of his voice or his presence next to you. It was about feeling instead of seeing. And Sam, with the sweet way he said things and the gentle way he navigated the dark, was nothing but feeling.

The moment was brief, but Sam found your shoulder and followed it up to your temple, which he kissed. Like the lists, it was a ritual he’d never grown out of. And you never wanted him to. You could feel the warmth of his breath, of his hand, flushing through your whole body like the sweet-tasting humidity before a healthy storm. 

“Goodnight, ____,” Sam murmured near your face. He was like you, so if the dark made you more honest then it made him more honest; Sam sounded like he loved you.

You leaned into the brief contact, squeezed his wrist, and resisted the surge of hope pressing up your throat. “Goodnight, Sam.”

_

It should’ve been sad, how happy you were to be out despite the circumstances, but you knew even the best covers had a sliver of truth to them—and tonight, you wanted to flirt, to feel pretty flirting, and to kill some damn witches. Being covered in monster grime didn’t make anybody feel beautiful, and suiting up in a skirt and wedges to masquerade as a fed didn’t count. The hunt rarely gave you an excuse for self-confidence. If this was one of those times, you weren’t about to let it pass by.

And truth be told, you’d been under fire for so long that one witch didn’t feel like much of a threat. You weren’t so stupid that you neglected to realize what Hermes was capable of. But after your five-hundredth witch in over fifteen years of hunting, the fear of danger was nothing more than a wisp of tension floating at your shoulder. If it bleeds, you can kill it, Dean always said. And witches definitely bled.

Knowing that Sam and Dean were watching your six, that wisp of anxiety disintegrated entirely. It was so natural to have them there, Sam on your right and Dean on your left, that you usually dreamt with each brother somewhere in your peripherals. Hazy flying dreams and late-to-school nightmares included. Well, the school nightmares were less strange—once upon a time, you’d really gone to school with Sam and Dean.

Your parents were hunters. That made you like any other sullen, directionless hunter kid in the business, desperate to follow in their parent’s footsteps but terrified of becoming anything like them. Most pure-bred hunters like you didn’t have the fortune of an Uncle Bobby, though. Looking back, you wished you’d had more time with your parents—but you were grateful for the days they dumped you on him. Around when you’d entered middle school, Bobby’s house had become something of a hunter daycare. He wasn’t big on the idea. Obviously. But Bobby melted like all grouchy old men inevitably did, and soon your days spent racing to get him books and spell ingredients overlapped with his days babysitting Sam and Dean.

Dean was two years your senior, and had usually been the bane of your existence. But you’d both existed in the strange place between a hunter and a liability for your parents, so together, you were eager to please, learn, and emulate. Dean had done this because he’d wanted to graduate to a full-on hunter, but you were content with bringing phones to Bobby and helping without being in the way. Sam was much of the same. He was… He was quiet and sweet and he’d cut out the gum Dean had put in your hair without wrecking it. He wrote school essays that were cool instead of boring, and made everything seem interesting and beautiful. Dean had embodied hunting to you, then, and Sam was the breathable living space between.

You loved Dean, and you’d learned a lot from him. But you lived and breathed Sam—and the new, exciting proposition of a home somewhere else—because of the ideas he represented. Being a hunter so young had gutted your faith, and Sam, somehow, had rerouted it all. He’d shown you that there were seams between hunts that you could use to find your footing. Bobby had taught you how to be smart, Dean had taught you how to be practical, and Sam had promised you that all of this wasn’t for nothing. You figured that was why all of the hunters you met were weapons more than people; Sam Winchester hadn’t cupped their face on Bobby Singer’s porch and kissed them like they were still human.

That’d been more than a decade ago, and you could still feel how the rain had made your hair cling to your face, how the shoulders of Sam’s sweater were damp from the weather. The kiss had been brief and childish and a little unmoored. And yet it’d carried you through everything, even the literal end of the world, Sam going in the cage… all of it. He’d been your living space.

That had been built on the rare weekends you happened to be at Bobby’s at the same time, so having a few months of school together bonded you for life. They purposefully forgot to mention that John was settling them in your town and your school, hoping to surprise you. In hindsight, it was a sweet gesture, but there was a bold line between your hunting life and your school life for a reason. High school was awful for you. Your parents’ deaths had left you as exposed as a bloody nerve. With no one else around, your foster family unaware of… the real world, and a valley between you and the life you used to know, hunting was all you’d had. You’d spiraled into it deeper than you ever had before. One misstep in the hallway had spilled all of your research books and spell ingredients out of your backpack, immediately casting you as your school’s new resident freak.

Neither of the boys knew about… the bullying. It was such a pathetic word. You never told them, probably because school was as much of a sore a subject for them as it was for you. So they’d turned up, gleaming with excitement, only for whatever image they had of you as some tough, unflinchable hunter to shatter.

You��d been eating lunch comfortably alone, fork in one hand and research book under the other. All at once your table was crowded with your grade’s most self-absorbed clique, all of them probing you, asking you questions, and giggling amongst each other even at your innocent answers. They stole your book and read it out loud to each other. They prodded at your backpack, searching for more joke material. It happened so often that you knew better than to lash out, as you’d done before—or react at all, as you’d done before—and resigned yourself to another ruined day.

Then, Dean’s hands had cooly landed on your shoulders. Hey, ____, Sam had greeted warmly from your right, and you remembered how he hadn’t bothered to hide his scowl. Are these jokers bothering you? 

It was such a movie moment, a book moment, that the only thing you could call it was wish fulfillment. There’d been plenty of times when you’d wished they’d been there, or wished you could tell them about something that’d happened to you. But actually having it happen—Dean swooping in with that suave grin, Sam refusing to let you carry your own backpack…

You felt like you owed them. It was a small, easy kindness for them to pay, but after months of loneliness and alienation and absolute, incomprehensible loss, it’d been a surge of heat in an ocean of ice. Sudden and unexpected and life-giving.

Since then, you couldn’t remember a single time you hadn’t been in that same position. Standing there, with Sam and Dean on either side of you. As the Impala pulled up to the bar your witch often skulked, you looked reflexively to your left, and there was Dean in the driver’s seat. For once, you were upfront with him—Sam needed room in the back to perform the witch-killing spell.

“And you’re sure you can… hook him in?” Dean asked, gesturing blandly with one hand.

You bolstered yourself, so the smile you gave Dean was a bit more confident than you felt. “Well, his past victims have all looked like me. And, no offense, but I’ve been swindling guys like this since I was sixteen. I’m not too worried about that part.”

Sam sighed so deeply that you and Dean twisted to look at him. Realizing he’d done that out loud, he bumbled awkwardly over his own reaction and coughed. “Uh, yeah. But, uh, I’ll have to do the ingredients in order, so it might take a second after we get his DNA for the spell to go through. You’ll have to… to distract him, until then.” Sam flashed you a tight smile. “I’ll be fast, I promise. You won’t be stuck with that guy for long.”

“Good,” you said. The eye contact you were sharing suddenly felt purposeful. You eased yourself away from his gaze, though it was more of a lurch than a very casual, not-at-all tension-filled turn.

There was a brief lapse in the conversation that made your skin prickle from your spine to your neck. You could feel Dean’s smug amusement from behind his binoculars, simmering, which didn’t help. The focussed silence that usually settled over the three of you on stake-outs never came, so you rushed to fill it.

“...So,” you opened, “if our witch uses a glamor to make himself appear more enticing to each of his victims, then how can I be sure it’s him?”

“He’s gonna be the best-looking guy in the place,” Sam explained. He’d reined in whatever had bothered him earlier, apparently, because his tone became halted and professional.

Dean sprung up, whistling. “That’s how—there ya go, he’s right there.”

You leaned around Dean, trying to get some idea of what you were hunting, but his big ass binoculars were in the way. The witch was only just across the street, yet Dean adjusted the focus on the lenses, apparently aiming for a microscopic look. You lowered them from his face so you could see past them, and behind the eyepieces he was so flushed his freckles had disappeared.

“I mean…” Dean cleared his throat, but his blush only spread further. “Wow. Just. Wow, that’s a good-looking dude.”

You were already opening your mouth to tease him, but everything you’d planned to say, along with any idea of what your name was, where you were, and what you were doing, drained from your grip like a fistful of sand.

Wow. That was the only word you could remember. It occurred to you that Dean was seeing a totally different man because of the witch’s magic, and christ, were you thankful for it. You’d never hear the end of it if they saw what you were… enjoying. The witch pulled up the curb in a glittering white muscle car—which definitely added to whatever Dean was going through. But for you, it wasn’t the vintage Challenger or the shiny loafers, or… or the, um… the white blazer… or the crisp button-up under, uh, underneath… Or the witch’s face. Which was Sam’s face. No little changes to support your preferences in men. No beautification, supernatural glow or… anything else. Just Sam. Sam as he was right now, sitting in your backseat. Sam with his, uh… his face clean and happy… with… w-with his hair styled all nice, like he always styles it when you dress up…

He emerged from the car, facing away from you. He waved a hand at the parking meter and it fizzed out. The broad shape of his back rolled under his suit, panther muscle moving under pelt, and he turned toward the bar with the same grace. His movements were vaguely not-Sam, if you squinted. It was all too sly, and he walked like he wasn’t as tall as he was. But something in the glamor kept you from pressing that idea in your head. Your mind wanted to indulge the parts of him that did look like Sam much more, so any bumps in his mirage smoothed themselves over, perfecting the look. It was clever. Clever… and… and, um… wow…

You had a thought. “The, um…” you tried, “we…”

“Y/N,” the real Sam chided.

The binoculars you’d pulled away from Dean fumbled out of your hand at the closeness of his voice, and you scrambled to catch it, and so did Dean, but neither of you took your eyes away from the street. You ended up weirdly clutching it together, like the two of you were going to wrestle for the right to see the witch through the binoculars. If you were any more focused, you might have.

“Guys,” Sam said, unimpressed. “It’s just a glamor. Pull it together, please?”

“...Sam,” you tested the name in your mouth, “um, witch glamors, how do they work?”

“They’re projections of power. They make each person who looks at them see their ideal partner. Didn’t I tell you this already?”

“I-I know. Just.” You swallowed. “Do they, like, pull from people the person’s already met, or do they, uh… make it up? To suit the person.”

“Both. But it’s easier magic to just use people the victim already loves.” He stressed victim as pointedly as he could, reminding you of the role you’d be playing.

Dean pried his eyes away from the street. They slid over to you, and you immediately did not like the suspicious gleam waiting for you there. “Why? You see somebody you know?” He bounced his eyebrows.

“What? You? Oh, please,” you laughed. You blurted out the first person you could come up with. “He’s ...Leo. In Titanic. Who do you see?”

“Another time,” Dean dodged. You usually would never let him get away with a blatant conversation shift like that, but he was grinning to himself like he could see you bullshitting too. It made you nervous. “Go on and get in there so we can gank this chump.”

“Good luck,” Sam wished you from the backseat, sounding blunter than usual. “And remember—underneath all that, he’s a decaying, millennia-old skeleton murdering innocent women.”

“Got it. Reality check received,” you said. Taking the door’s handle, you shot the boys one last look to confirm they’d have your back, and ducked out of the Impala.

_

The bar was of a higher-end than you were used to, so it took some mental adjustment to prepare for your role. Usually, the barflies you tricked preferred rougher, meaner girls, and you got the feeling that wasn’t what fake-Sam—Hermes, you reminded yourself—was into. If he was going after married unfaithfuls, he probably enjoyed mature, deceptive women who talked a lot about all the money they had. It was weird to think of someone with Sam’s face being into that. 

The few pieces of gold jewelry you owned rattled on your wrists as you approached the bar. It was eight, prime drinking time, so everyone who’d had a long day at work or a date filled every inch of the place. Anyone who could afford the obscene prices, at least. A few minutes after you entered, you glimpsed Dean dissolving into the crowd. Hermes immediately took an isolated booth in the corner, where it would be easiest for him to scope out women at the bar. You only caught a glimpse of him. He lounged back, ankle on his knee, the low whiskey-hued light stroking one side of his face. It was… very Sam. He could’ve been on the couch at home, sunk into the cushions and reading a book by lamplight. You tried to reign in the confusing elixir of anxiety and attraction brewing in your stomach.

So far, he’d already begun to sort his targets. His honed-in look was unmistakable on Sam’s face. You made sure to pass in front of the women he was eyeing, and silently applauded yourself when his gaze was hooked on your figure. He trailed your slow saunter over to the bar with those intense, paletted eyes, lingering on the wedding band you wore. Knowing it was Sam—thinking it was Sam both helped and made things a million times worse. Your thoughts wandered like they never did on hunts, heart pounding.

Focus, you hissed to yourself. You needed to get him to drink something, so Sam, your Sam, could use the DNA on the glass in his spell. After setting up your act with a few coy glances, you suppressed the sickness rolling in your gut and summoned the bartender. “Two drinks—one for me, and another for the gentleman in the booth there.”

You almost ordered him Sam’s favorite beer, then felt supremely weird about it when deciding on a pricey whiskey instead. Man, was this place just begging for you to blow some cash. And this hunt… was really begging you to look some unspoken feelings in the face. As you waited for the drink to be delivered, it settled on you what Sam had said before—that this witch was wearing the body of your ideal partner. You weren’t stupid, you knew that’s what this was, but the confirmation from magic of all things…

It’s easier to just use people the victim already loves, Sam had explained.

You knew you loved him. You’d known since you were kids. But that was only ever something you told to yourself—now, the universe was shouting it back to you. It’s not like this witch reached into your mind and knew to choose Sam to get under your skin the most. The glamor was an automatic sort of magic, that you could tell. And if it was automatic… then it was all real. Your ideal partner really was Sam. Not even some dramatized, romantic version of him. The authentic article. It welled up inside you right there in that stupid-expensive bar on your stupid-expensive stool, a surging flood of emotion that seized you and tethered you to the floor.

Those feelings were always followed by the phantom pressure of Sam’s broad, gentle hands on your face. Your first kiss with him must’ve been more than a decade ago. He’d been so nervous that his hands shook, and he hadn’t taken up bow-hunting yet so the pads of his fingers were still soft. You’d held his wrists and trembled too, but you were relieved and excited and warm with wild summer liking, face tacky with dried tears. The last day had been spent weapon training. You’d shot a gun for the first time, and it’d stabbed the reality of your life right through your ribs. You were gonna kill things. It was going to be your job to kill things. Sam had sat with you while you’d sobbed on Bobby’s porch, squeezing you against him even though it was storming like hell. He’d sat there until your sides ached from laughing and you weren’t so worried about everything.

Sam promised you’d go through all this together, and he’d been right. Of course you were in love with him.

Okay. Hunt. Danger. Witch. Focus. He’s a decaying, millennia-old skeleton, you reminded yourself.

But the hand brushing your bare shoulder was young, healthy, and familiar. Down to the bow-hunting callouses.

“Excuse me,” he greeted. His voice wasn’t purring with seduction or intent, as you’d imagined. It was just light, easy Sam. Like it’d been a bit since he’d seen you, and he’d just climbed out of the car to give you a secure hug and a kiss on the hair. The witch settled his glass on the bar between you, expression glittering with feigned curiosity. “I’m sorry to bother you, but it was kind of you to send over the drink. I wanted to say thank you.”

Maybe he was reaching into your mind to emulate Sam. Why would a thieving, money-hungry witch be so polite?

“Anytime,” you said, and found yourself responding like you were really talking to Sam. The witch’s smile broadened into his dimples; he wanted familiarity. “It’d be rude to leave such a cute guy without a drink on such a nice evening, don’t you think?”

“I think it’d be rude to leave a beautiful woman without company,” he agreed, eyes twinkling.

Unfortunately, your body wasn’t in hunting mode, as it should be. It was in act-normal-around-Sam mode, but “Sam” was actively flirting with you—so all of your nerves were going haywire. Your skin warmed in ways it never did for the men you won your dinner money from. Or any other man but one, period. An embarrassing, genuine giggle burst out of your chest. “I-I don’t mind,” you beamed.

“Hermes,” he said, offering you one giant hand to shake.

You gave it to him, and immediately he turned it over in his palm, lowered his face to your knuckles, and kissed them appreciatively.

“Y-Y/N,” you blurted, instead of your alias.

Dear god. Jesus Christ. What the fuck.

“Y/N. Really.” The witch repeated. Now he was turning up the sultriness. His voice was so nice and his hand was just like Sam’s and he—he even smelled like Sam.

“No. Uh. Y/N L/N, not Y/N Really,” you joked. Your full name. Out loud. Instead of your alias.

What the actual fuck.

“Forgive my asking,” and fake-Sam ran his thumb over your wedding band, his lips parted and his breath lingering on your hand. His voice was coated with want and humor. “But is there a Mr. Really?”

Fuck. Wait, yes. This was good. This was what you wanted.

You gathered yourself, but not too much, cause he seemed to like your clumsiness. Or maybe it gave him more incentive to kill you. “Yes,” you said, tip-toeing with your wording, “...does that bother you?”

Hermes just grinned and shook his head.

The witch gestured to the stool beside yours, and you nodded maybe a little too much. He claimed it, folding his legs uncomfortably because he was a bit too tall. It made you realize that the glamor worked even better (and harder) up close. All of the little details you loved about Sam—the slight crook of his left incisor where it’d almost been punched out a million times, the freckles under his collar and sleeves—loaded in. You swore they hadn’t been there before.

But, you still haven’t seen him drink from the cup. He wraps his hand loosely around the glass on the illuminated bartop, but otherwise doesn’t make a move, brushing his thigh against yours. You make up bland conversation about a long, arduous day at the wealthy company you work for. You complain a little bit about the doggy daycare your pure-bred Pomeranian goes to. When the bartender comes by, you tip him a good chunk of money right in front of Hermes. And if none of that is working, you bait him with the wedding ring and the cut of your dress.

It’s weird. It’s so fucking weird. But that’s kind of your life, so you’ve learned to accept the strangeness, and you enjoy the surface flirting with this millennia-year-old man who’s planning to kill you. While wearing the face of the love of your life.

You realize that you’ll probably never have this with the real Sam. Not the murder part, but the easy date night flirting—not without the cost of your friendship, or testing Sam’s feelings about relationships. 

When you’re satisfied that he’s hooked, as Dean put it, you raise your second round of drinks together and toast to them. You make something up about good company, and Hermes drinks. He lets his hand cover your bare knee, drawing circles that set every hair on your body on end. After what feels like hours, you brush your nails against the hair at the base of his neck, lean in, and whisper in his ear, “Do you wanna get out of here?”

And with that sly, clever Sam smile, he agrees. But— “My place is close. May I walk you?”

“You may,” you reply, even if it’s a complete deviation from his M.O. The witch always takes his victims back to their own homes, that’s how he robs them. What, was he genuinely attracted to you? Was this a real hookup thing? Or, did he recognize your real name and planned to kill you? Knowing your luck, you’d put money on murder.

Instead of offering you his arm, the witch is gentle and sweet as he gives you his hand. Just before you slip away from your seats, you put his whiskey on the stool, away from the well-meaning bartender who might clean it. The second you make it out the door with Hermes, Dean skulks out of the crowd and drops the empty glass in a plastic bag. Now you’re on the clock. Either the boys get Hermes first, or Hermes gets you. No pressure.

When you get outside, the Impala’s parked elsewhere. You’re both bothered and comforted by that, because while it may mean that the boys are out of sight, your spell is being performed where prying eyes can’t see. That’s good.

Hermes gives your hand a playful squeeze. While you’ve held Sam’s hand before, those moments were always too fleeting for you to take in much. You imagine your mind, or Hermes’ glamor, is filling in the blanks for you. His fingers are long and his hold is encompassing, swallowing almost the whole of yours. You talk for the two of you, since it’s a part of his act to give as little information about himself as possible. He pretends to enjoy your conversation. It’s your mind’s greatest impression of an interested Sam, his brow furrowed, his head ducked in thought, his focus honed in on only what you have to say. The witch leans in close when he does speak, murmuring into your ear. He loves to touch your bare skin, so his hands linger on your shoulders and the exposed portion of your back. It’s all a tactic to win over your suspicion, you know that, but it’s Sam’s hands. It’s his hands and his voice and his face.

“You know what?” Hermes surveys the street, and peaks into the alleyway nearest you, weighing your options like it’s not obvious where he’s going to drag you. Come on. “Let’s take this shortcut here.” He gives you a devouring look, “I don’t want us to wait any longer than we have to.”

“The suspicious, dark alleyway?” You joke. Just a few more minutes. Almost there. It’s gotta be.

Fake-Sam’s smile is fond, and with the same quiet resolution that Sam brings to everything, he parts from your hand to wrap his arm around your waist. He cups your side and brings you against him. His arm is the perfect shelter from the chilly night, bleeding with body heat and the homey scent of the man you love.

“I’ll keep you safe,” he purrs, and admittedly, that’s when you start to panic.

Not because he was edging you into a creepy alley—alleys, in the hunting life, were familiar territory. Or because you realized you were about to fight him. That was more than routine to hunting; it was hunting itself. What made you panic was your own willpower here. You could cut down a thousand evil witches a day, but nothing in this world could make you put that knife to Sam’s throat. Not death, not hell, not heaven. All of them had tried. Every one of them had failed.

This wasn’t Sam. You knew that. The difference was palpable. But it was close enough to make you hesitate, and you were dreading what that could mean.

“Alright, hero,” you flirted. “Lead the way.”

He teased your waist with a squeeze, then began the slow, intimate walk he imagined you were hoping for. The witch started to chat about how much he loved the city, how lively the people were. Bullshitting. Trying to settle your anxiety—so you were open to attack. Well. If he was so hellbent on cornering you now, all you could do was drag it out for as long as you could. You snuggled close to him, and pretended to admire the night sky between the towering downtown buildings.

The two of you passed the back end of a business’s warehouse. Its windows were thin-paned and close by, shimmering with neon light the closer you came to it. You made bubbly, flirty conversation, and calculated in your head when would be the perfect time to smash the glass and attack him with it.

He must’ve had the same idea.

You woke up two seconds later, glass in your hair, in your dress, and prickling painfully between you and the icy concrete floor. The warehouse ceiling floated overhead. Streams of moonlight poured through the uneven shape of the now-destroyed window. It took you but a breath to register this, then you were rolling onto your hands and snatching up the biggest shard that had survived your crash. In an instant you were heaving yourself to your feet and plotting: just a little more time, they just need a little more time, all you had to do was distract.

A long shadow fell over the glass debris. This was the part where your adrenaline would kick in, but a hot, ugly dose of fear joined it. That was Sam. You were fighting Sam. No, y-you—you weren’t—

“Well, isn’t this special,” Hermes cooed. He strolled toward you, the glass crunching under his loafers to the beat of his lazy walk. Everything but his smile was obscured by the dark. “The Winchester whore. I’ve heard of you. I have to say, I’m a little—”

“—disappointed? Let me guess: I’m shorter than you thought, prettier than expected, yadda yadda,” you filled in for him. “G-god, can’t any of you losers find different scripts?”

You knew the shard wouldn’t do much, but you’d hoped having it out in front of you would make you feel better. It didn’t. Hermes stepped into a shaft of light, illuminating Sam, with his hair in his eyes and a curious, calculating turn to his lip. It was straight out of any pink-hued day of your teenage years. Like he’d just found something fascinating in a book he was reading, and was beckoning you over to share it with you. And if it came down to it, you’d have to make him bleed if you wanted out of here.

“Fine. We’ll skip the pretense, then,” Hermes bargained, and with a wave of his hand you were slammed back-first into the nearest product shelves.

Pain exploded across your back, whiting out all else. You dropped a whole foot to the floor and collapsed there, pathetically gripping the closest table to find the courage to stand up. You couldn’t. Every deep breath you took seized your ribcage like a snapped trap. Shuddering in place there, you heard Hermes step across the glass, coming closer. Closer. Come on, Sam, you thought. For a moment, just a moment, you were truly afraid of him.

But this was Sam’s face. Out of all the faces you could see the moment before it all went dark, you’d be glad if it was his. The fear lightened. You lifted your face to meet his, snarling. Hermes waved his hand, and in one great cacophony, like a chandelier dragging itself across the floor, the broken glass fluttered up in a swirling cloud and hung in the air around you like stars. Deadly, jagged stars.

“One less thorn in my side,” he decided, and the hand—a copy of the love of your life’s hand, closed into a vicious fist. The shards whistled.

Hermes exploded into smoke.

The glass hung in the air for a moment more, then rained down on the floor again, shattering into powder. You flinched away and jerked to cover your head, and when all was quiet, and Hermes’ smoke was dissolved in the wind, you rolled onto your side and let out the breath you’d been holding.

People saved. Things hunted. Fuck, your back hurt.

You laid there for a moment longer, having fun pitying yourself, when a sharp cry of your name echoed down the alley outside. It took you a second to gather enough breath to holler back, “In here, Dean!”

Dean sprinted clear past the window, then backtracked so hard he almost tripped. “Y/N,” he sighed. Relief could’ve bowled him over at that moment.

As he charged through the broken window and swung his gun at the dark, you sat up, aiming to smile. You couldn’t really do it. “The witch is dead. Sam got him. High five?”

Dean hesitated, but after stashing his pistol in his waistband and taking stock of your injuries, he gave your raised hand a light smack and opened his arms. The gesture alone made all your injuries feel numbed. “Alright. Up and attem’. Let’s get you some Barbie bandaids and a big dinner, huh? You deserve it.”

“Hell yeah,” you breathed. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Without hesitation, Dean scooped you onto your feet, brushed the hair stuck to your bloody forehead aside, and started to guide you toward your exit. After a long beat of you laying your head on him and soaking in everything that's happened, Dean murmured, “The witch didn’t look a thing like DiCaprio, did he?”

You watched your footing instead of Dean’s face. “No. No, he didn’t.”

_

After the bigger chunks of glass were taken out of your skin, you took a quick, wince-filled shower, and toweled your hair on the motel bed you shared with Sam. The glass was surprisingly the least annoying part of fighting the witch; what had really fucked you up were the bruises, which were blooming all along your back in shelf-shaped rectangles. Your injuries were pretty light for a witch hunt, though, so you contented yourself with being alive in a pair of snuggly pajamas.

It was well past eight by now, so the rooms adjacent to yours were quiet, and the road outside threw occasional beams of light across your bedspreads. You always loved the motels on the outskirts of town more than their inner-city counterparts. Though they were usually more run-down, the sounds of tires whisking on asphalt and frogs croaking in the weeds comforted you. Dean rarely let you keep the windows open, but he wasn’t about to snipe at his poor, injured best friend, so you arranged the salt on the sill in neat lines and soaked in the midnight breeze. In safer times, you and the boys might’ve had a bonfire at Bobby’s on a night like this.

Dean left the bathroom light on and propped it open enough to see by. He lapsed into his post-hunt ritual in the half-dark, chattering about your success, while Sam perched in a chair and didn’t speak.

He’d succumbed to an unnerved, unbroken silence once you promised him on the drive back that you’d live. A couple of throws and one window weren’t going to kill you. There was no chance in hell that he couldn’t sense that the witch was eating at you for different reasons, though. If he could tell the route a car had taken while blindfolded, then honing his sensitivities to the daily shifts in your mood was child’s play. But if you pushed him to let it go, he would, because he respected your limits—you just weren’t looking forward to having that conversation.

Dean chattered constantly, like he usually did when something was wrong in the air between the three of you. He’d even tried to hold a conversation with you through the bathroom door while you showered, for god’s sake. When you emerged, hissing at every pinch in your back tissue, Dean was waiting with clothes, a careful smile, and a medkit. His brother was still silent, though he’d jumped up from his seat.

“Sam?” You worked up the courage to say. “Could—would you mind, uh, helping me with my back? There’s… still a lot of pieces I couldn’t get.”

“Uh… Dean can.” Sam drilled his eyes through your room’s door, hunching into the collar of the jacket he hadn’t removed yet. “M’ gonna walk. I need to clear my head,” he sighed, snappishly, and poured all his willpower into not scrambling out the door as fast as he could. It whipped shut behind him too quickly for you to say anything back.

“...Okay. Well. Sucky job, huh?” Dean said. You heard him pop open the medkit and dip the mattress behind you, so you shuffled back a bit and carefully lifted the fabric of your shirt covering your back.

“Yeah,” you muttered. Sam’s shadow flew past your window and disappeared in long, curt steps towards the cicadas chirping by the roadside. You leaned further and further to chase his figure by the porch lights, but Dean gently reeled you back so he could start in on the tinier fragments.

“You helped a lot of people today,” Dean said, trying to goad you back to the conversation. You could hear in his pauses how worried he was about his brother, but you both knew that it was better to give Sam time to simmer, then return.

“Oh, just women willing to cheat on their husbands,” you rolled your eyes.

Dean braced his hand on your shoulder, and gave you a little warning squeeze every time he was going to pull one of the pieces out. The bloody glass tinking into the tin and your sharp winces soon formed a shaky rhythm. “Still people,” he pointed out. You didn’t reply, simmering in the thrum of his voice and the burn of your bruises.

When Dean started putting antibiotics on the cuts and loading them up with Barbie bandaids, as promised, you blurted out: “You think I upset Sam?”

You were hoping for a doubtful laugh or even some kind of scoff, like Dean found it hard that Sam could ever be mad at you, because that’s how his world worked. He needled the two of you all the time for how inseparable you were. You were you and Sam was Sam, mingled too closely for anyone else to squeeze in the middle. Usually, if you asked Dean something like that, he’d shrug. You’d know better than me, pal.

Instead, Dean released a deep breath from his nose. He did it like that so often now that you could recognize it, which unsettled you, since it was Dean’s withholding-sigh. You could usually pry just about anything out of him, but he had this wall that he hit sometimes with Sam. Brother confidentiality or whatever. You could respect that—when things didn’t involve you potentially upsetting Sam.

“Dean,” you tried again, “did I do something wrong? I feel like you’re not telling me everything here.”

He tore open another bandaid with his teeth and choose not to speak. It was enough to tell you that Dean knew he shouldn’t intervene, even if he wanted to.

You glanced over your shoulder to look at him. “Dean. C’mon. How many favors do you two knuckleheads owe me after today?”

Dean counted them in his head, closed his eyes, and cursed. “Don’t make me say it, Y/N. You’re a smart girl. You can’t be this blind.”

“Dean.”

“You don’t get it. Sam will be pissed with me.” He snapped the med-kit closed.

“If he gives you shit for it, you know I’ll cover for you. I’ll tell him that I coerced you and everything, that I cornered you,” you goaded. To make your argument even harder to ignore, you whipped down your shirt and rolled around to face him, your eyes big and bleeding with heart. “Sam is clearly upset. All I want to do is help him.”

Dean’s arms hung at his sides. His tells were small, but for a second there, you could’ve sworn you’d loosened his resolve enough. Instead, he shut you down with a short glare. “...Show me your shoulder.”

You held there for a moment, unmoving and stern, just to press how serious this was to you. If you’d done something to hurt Sam’s feelings, all three of you knew the lengths you’d go to make it up to him. And Dean keeping the reason why so close to his chest could only go two ways—either it was so light and petty that it wasn’t worth mentioning, or it was too terrible to voice. Only one of those ended with Sam nursing an infected wound for months. Few emotional appeals would reach Dean’s ears, but you thought he and his brother deserved someone who fought to right any grievances made against them.

With two fingers, you yanked your collar to one side. Sitting in the meat at the curve of your neck was a fat gauze bandage as wide as three fingers. Dean tested the edges with his thumb while you jabbed, “It’s fine. The stitches didn’t get messed up in the shower.”

“And the painkillers?” Dean checked.

“Working,” you answered. “Now, tell me what’s up. You can’t lie to me for shit.”

Again, you expected an awkward wince or a reluctant grimace from him. And again, Dean surprised you. He sighed deep into his shoulders, cupped the unmarred side of your neck, and shocked you into place with a burning, deathly serious look. “...Son of a bitch, fine! This is a big deal to me, okay? I’m breaking my brother’s trust here—but only because I think it’ll be better for the both of you, capiche?”

You nodded just as gravely. “What is it?”

“Sam…” Dean held you in place for a second more, then drifted out of your orbit, following his thoughts and hesitation in a circle around your hotel room. You let him think, a slow ugly sickness building in your throat. “Sam has feelings for you, okay? He’s—he’s had them for a while. So long that it’s insane to me that you haven’t noticed it yet—”

“Shut the fuck up,” you laughed. “Dean, please, I’m really worried about him. I don’t have time to mess around right now.”

Dean’s flailing arms dropped to his sides. He just stood there looking helpless, waiting. Waiting more.

“...Dean.” The name tasted like oncoming tears. You straightened up and steeled yourself, pressing into every new, stinging wound at your posture’s disposal. “This is… now y-you’re just being mean. You know how I feel about this.”

“I’m…” his hand fumbled upwards, like he thought about calling upon a higher power for help here, then remembered how that’d turned out last time. “Y/N, I’m not messing with you here. Sam has been crazy about you since we were kids.”

You believed him. It took some pacing, some crazed muttering, and some hard, labored breaths, but eventually you broke out of your trance and realized you believed him.

Dean nudged his chin at you, waiting for a response.

Pathetically, you said: “W-why?”

“Pardon?”

You summoned your best glare. “Level with me here. Just. Why?”

“Why the hell would I know?” Dean sputtered. He shrugged up to his ears, smiling a bit, like this was as grand a mystery to him as it was to you. “All I know is that he’d burn this world to the ground for you. Everything today… with you playing bait, and everything… It freaks him out, your scrapes. I mean, it freaks me out too, but I know you can handle yourself. It’s… I dunno, he’s mushier. It’s more personal to him.”

You thunked down on the closest surface, which could've been a hot stove for all you cared; numbing tingles rolled all the way up your arms and legs. Usually, you had a good reign on your own feelings, but now they galloped free too fast for you to catch. Exhaustion’s sweeter cousin barrelled you over. Shock and relief and love and terror each took their own swing at you, until you sat there with your hands limp in your lap, feeling like you’d laid down on the sidewalk and all of your feelings had lined up to kick you around. For the first time in your life you sat down and cried at the drop of a hat. It was fucking awesome.

A bubbly laugh rolled out of you. “Me too. I-I do too. Holy shit, am I over-reacting or what?”

Dean’s warm hand rubbed a spot on your arm the glass hadn’t touched. “Uh, maybe a bit. But I guess you’ve both waited a long time, so Sam’ll probably think it’s… sweet, or some bullshit like that.”

Another laugh surprised its way out of you. “Shut the hell up. God, you were right—I’m so blind. Do you think… Should I…? Sam, he’s still mad.”

Dean paused, enjoying how panic and delight warred on your face. “Not mad. More like…” he searched for the word, beaming slyly, “...jealous.”

_

Sam returned to a buzzing, eager silence in the motel. The second he had inched the door shut behind him, sheepish and looking like it, Dean shoved on his driving boots. You noticed how Sam was careful to catch your eye just once, otherwise entertaining himself with the pattern of the carpet. He at least seemed a touch more clear-headed. Sam had always loved a good, breezy walk; one of a million of his quirks that you loved too much to forget.

“Alright,” Dean scooped up the Impala’s keys, flicking the lapels of his jacket. “I owe Y/N her favorite dinner, like I promised. You want anything while I’m out?”

Sam’s brow furrowed. “Her favorite place is at least an hour and a half from here,” he said, because of course he remembered that.

His brother shrugged. “I’m in the mood to drive. Cabin fever n’ all. See you nerds in,” he was not at all subtle when checking the clock in your room, or smiling about his results: “...three hours. Ciao.”

“It’ll be cold by—” Sam started, but Dean had already sauntered passed him, swinging his keyring in one hand. His whistling carried all the way out to the lot, and quietly you wondered how long he’d been wanting to tell you what he had.

Sam was forced to turn to you. His displeasure from before had slowly melted into embarrassment, but he wasn’t about to show it. He made a helpless gesture at the door like, welp, there goes that, and the elixir of liking in your chest shook loose a giggle. A real giggle. At least you could be embarrassed together.

Since sleeping on your back was off the table for the next week of your life, you’d gotten comfy on your stomach. With Sam gone, you had the room go completely diagonal on your shared bed, angling toward the dingy colored light of the TV. Dean had put on some random soap opera you weren’t a fan of, but tonight you thought of nothing but one thing. Sam has feelings for you, Dean had said. He’d burn this world to the ground for you, Dean had said.

Repeating them to yourself felt like writing the words down and holding up the paper by Sam’s face—weighing those images against the man you knew. You’d… guessed. Hoped is more accurate. But to see those words in action, moving and breathing in a person, totally blew you out of the water. Dean was right; you were dumb as hell for not seeing it before. Sam teetered on his heels in front of you. He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans, hiding behind his bangs and forcing himself to stand still. When you shied away to look at the TV, you could feel his gaze devouring you in every dose he could manage. Searching and memorizing. Every time you were occupied, Sam admired the soft curve of your back in your sleep shirt, your swept hair, your shorts, the exposed skin of your neck, your face.

Still, you’d hoped and only hoped for so long. You believed Dean. But you couldn’t bring yourself to understand that it was possible in the first place.

While you watched the television and panicked over what to say to him, Sam toed off his shoes and hung his jacket on the nearest chair. After a moment of hanging in the middle of your room, directionless, he followed his heart to your bedside.

“You feelin’ better?” He dipped the mattress just beside you, your side pressed against his night-chilled back.

You shuffled up onto your elbows, smiling at him with such vibrancy and realness that Sam flushed up to his ears. “I’m all good,” you promised, and it was the truth. “Happy to rid the world of another tie-wearing evil.”

That earned a dry smile. You carried through it, buoyed by everything except thought. “Only got three stitches this time,” you told him, sounding smug, and pulled down your collar to show him the bandage.

All your mind wanted to do was take a shovel out of the Impala and bury yourself off the edge of the highway, but the unbridled joy in your body didn’t care. It brimmed over everything else. The heady, healthy foam of it conquered every other feeling. Your nervousness, your terror, your anxiety. You couldn’t believe that you were just sitting here and talking about nothing. The truth was giddy in your ribcage, like good news you couldn’t keep from him any longer. Sam recieved it so rarely.

Sam just stared at you. You could only make out one side of his face in the dark, the cheek painted with the waltzing colors of the soap opera on the screen. Blues and peaches and warm grays. He was bent so close to you that you could keep your head comfortably sunk into your pillow, and you did, studying him as he studied you. The longer he took you in the more he seemed to relax. One of his hands flexed against the mattress, bringing him back to the world the two of you shared. Your exchange went on for so long that the hand on your open collar went slack, and so did Sam’s jaw. Dean was gone and the two of you were in the safe realm of the dark again—usually, Sam would reach out and brush his hand down your back, squeeze your arm, or kiss your forehead.

“If you’re good, then… good,” he said, distantly. “I’m beat. Let me help you move, huh?”

“Okay,” you hummed.

Even as Sam stood, his face chased yours, one side of a magnet seeking its counterpart. He hovered as you shuffled onto your calves, then pulled back the covers for you to worm under without disturbing your torn skin. You only had so much time to say something—and after so long, nothing could keep you from telling him. Not if you were sure he still felt the same way. You hesitated to lay down, and Sam, sensing your need to speak, paused too.

“Oh,” Sam realized. “I’d almost… forgot. Can I…?”

He waved to your forehead, and before he could retreat out of awkwardness, you convinced yourself to nod. Sam went as far as cupping your arm, then wavered. It was just cute, now. “You can,” you murmured between you, “go ahead.”

Sam dropped a brief kiss on the side of your face, then turned tail for the bathroom to get ready for bed. You had this whole fantasy in your mind of Sam letting his lips linger, burning the shape and feel of them into your soul like you wanted him to, but the two of you hadn’t breached this territory in years. Both of you were terrified of it. Before you could let that fear control you, you blurted out:

“He looked like you.”

Sam’s figure twisted toward you in the dark. “Huh?”

You cleared your throat, which burned front to back with need and apprehension. “The witch, Sam. He looked like you. To me.”

Sam couldn’t look at you dead-on without light, but he tried. Those hungry eyes, hungry for safety and closeness, scraped down your outline. Then again, testing the groves they’d dug. Sam was reminding himself of all the blood he’d seen before, driving back in the Impala and pulling glass out of your jacket with slippery, trembling hands. He deflated. He started toward you, then deflated again.

“He did that to you, with my face—” Sam bleeds.

Before he can start to spiral, you rope in his hand and squeeze it through his sleeve. It’s big and enveloping, just like Hermes’ was, but there’s so much more that the magic just couldn’t replicate. He has a mole on his wrist you’d forgotten about and these subtle veins that bump under your thumbs. His knuckles are strong and feel almost welded, but underneath all that you can feel how gentle he’s worked to be. How much he’s still scared of himself. His mind may be enclosed with good intentions, but Sam had always thought of his body as something that didn’t fully belong to him. Even if the witch didn’t possess him, to Sam, the used goods, the meat suit, it feels like it. And the last thing he’d want his possessed body to do is hurt you. Manipulate you.

“Shh,” you soothed. “No. You’re missing what I’m trying to say. The witch… his glamor made me see the most p-perfect—the best man my mind would come up with.”

Sam just stared. You squeezed his fingers, willing him to understand. His other hand, chilled by his walk, wound slowly over your shoulder. His two leading fingertips lingered over the square white bandage at the junction of your neck. Though he was repulsed by what he thought was his own handiwork, you pressed closer, chasing the rough pads of his bowhunting calluses no matter how much it stung.

“Sam,” you said, sternly.

He just shook his head, ripping his free hand back. Sam pressed: “When he hit you, he looked like me.”

You wound your tether to him ever closer, growing bolder, bringing his hand into the warmth of your chest, entwined against your collarbones. The tears surged into your lashes, but you resisted them with a shake of your head. “It made it easier,” you laughed without mirth. “When he was flirting with me, but at the end, too, yeah. Is that fucked up?”

Sam breathed short from his nose. “Yeah, a bit. But you know I’d never—”

“That’s not even a question. Of course you wouldn’t,” you swore to him. Since the humor was teasing into his voice again, you joined it with your own, pressing your face into his arm. “But, um. If you were jealous of him, well. You should know that there’s really no contest.”

Another long, draining silence haunted you from overhead for a moment, and Sam swayed in place, his hand dropping suddenly on your shoulder. For balance? Was he really… winded? Floored? The show on beside you faded to black, submerging you both in inky, sightless dark. You could feel it in his hands now—Sam was quivering with disbelief. His broad palm scoped up your neck. His hand parted from yours between you, palming across your shoulder. They joined seamlessly together on each of your cheeks, cupping your face just like they had before. You rose into the touch, following him up, until you were standing between his socks at your bedside with your face in his hands. They were still pretty cold; but warming up, and fast. Just like before, you softened all over and held steady to his wrists.

Sam swallowed. “Dean told you?” 

“Yeah,” you choked, afraid of what your voice was capable of. “Don’t be mad at him. Or jealous of some stupid witch. There’s… you have to know by now, that nobody even holds a candle to you, right?”

Sam laughed breathlessly. His long thumbs caressed your skin, your under-eyes, weighing the feel of you and your closeness like it’d be taken from him any minute. His left hand pressed even closer, and you met the scar there with your cheekbone. This is real, you promised him.

“Me too,” he gushed, and the sound poured right out of him just as yours did, overboiling with joy. “For you. Nobody, Y/N, this whole time, nobody compares.”

Real happiness was so new to you that the two of you hovered there, waiting for it to be ripped away. Your face ached, from smiling, from crying, from bruising, and it strained your chest a bit to laugh. You surged into Sam and let it all go anyway. Giggling uncomfortably rattled the injuries on your back, but any ache you felt was soothed by Sam's broad hand in your hair, stroking it away from your face. He was still chilly from his walk. There was a small building heat in the middle of his chest, so you squeezed even closer to meet it and found a leaching embrace instead. The pressure of him all around you could’ve put you in tears again. It hadn’t been long since you’d hugged him, but you could feel that love this time—the way Sam swayed with you in his arms, the way he kept pawing your neck to bring you closer and closer. Like the feeling of you laughing in tandem with him wasn’t enough. He needed to absorb you, be you, for you to be close enough to satisfy him.

He was careful to watch the injuries on your back, but you didn’t care. You wanted him to palm your bruised shoulder blades, to drag his nails down your glass-pocked spine, to squeeze you as close as possible no matter how much your material body hurt. A button on his shirt was digging into your cheek and his chin was poking your head. But it didn’t matter—he was the real deal, imperfections and all, just how you liked him. Loved him.

“Nobody?” You murmured, in disbelief.

Sam shook his head. “Nobody, Y/N. Not anyone.”

Nothing could pull you away from him then, so you didn’t bother to arrange yourself comfortably to kiss him. His face was so close to yours that you could breathe only him and the old books he smelled like. You knew that the second you kissed him that it’d be all over—forever marrying your visions of living to him, and giving your lifeblood a name. It was dangerous in this business to give your reason for living legs and a heart. But Sam’s sleepy eyes had closed and his pulsed swished under your hand, and you knew it was decades too late for that.

Your palms dropped to his chest, and Sam pinned them between you, ducking his head low enough to ache and searing you hard against him. It should’ve been awkward and cramped. You forgot that as you melted into the smell of him, a slab of chocolate in the sun. The kiss should’ve been cursed, since the angels swore he was, that you would be too. If it was, then cursed was warmth and love and closeness. Safe at last! Your body sobbed into the kiss. It all felt silly; like you could’ve done this ages ago.

Sam burst into snickers. You did too, against his mouth, and between peals of laughter you tried to scold him, “Shhh, you big idiot—” but Sam just shushed you back and kissed you again.

He dipped his head like actors in the movies did, intense-eyed and deeply fond, which made you flush and giggle harder. You both gave lose attempts at more sweet pecks, only to absolutely lose it when Sam almost knocked the lamp off the bedside table. Eventually, you were giggling too hard and stumbling too much to kiss properly at all. This didn’t intimidate Sam, who cleverly angled your cheek with his thumbs and kissed where you weren’t laughing. You squealed and wiggled for an escape that wasn’t actually alluring to you at all. Each time Sam caught you on the brow or the corner of your lip, you’d giggle and squirm away, only to float back into his orbit again. Parallelling the millions of games you’d played together as kids; tag, hide and seek, marco polo. Just another chase. Just another step in your infinite cycle.

“Really,” you said, eventually. An embarrassed heat prickled through your entire face. “Nobody compares to me. You really think that?”

“How many more times would you like me to say it?” Sam asked. He did this with both of your hands closed in one of his, his tone clever and sincere. “Not anyone.”

“You… you cheeseball,” you accused, and Sam’s mouth snapped closed to suppress another bubbly chuckle. It’d been ages since you’d gotten him to laugh so hard, so you were gluttonous off it and determined to steal more. “This whole time, you’ve been running around with this schoolyard crush on me… Man, this is quality blackmail material. Did you gush about me in your diary? Write Mr. Sam L/N in all of your notebooks?”

In the stark darkness, Sam again inclined his face over yours. “Did you?”

“No,” you blurted, a little too fast. “...It was Mrs. Y/N Winchester, obviously. It’s different.”

Sam just shook his head, charmed. You could feel him standing there across from you, admiring you in the silence, and it slammed on you like a ton of bricks that Sam must’ve done that before. A couple of times, at least. Just looked at you because he liked you so much. Any flirty confidence you’d built up was overpowered by a wave of shyness.

You rushed to fill the loving silence. “But. About the comparison thing… Good. I-I’m, I’m happy. I always wanted… I always wanted to be your… your first choice, I guess. Is that selfish?”

Sam hummed a no, and again his hand floated up to your face to warm your cheek. It filled you with so much want that your knees nearly buckled. Flustered out of your mind, you rambled: “I wasn’t a fan of Ruby, or, uh, that Becky girl from the convention, or the doctor chick in Iowa…”

He rumbled your name. “I don’t want to talk about them,” he murmured, amused, and kissed you once. When Sam parted from you, the silky lilt of his whisper in your ear flushed your belly with need. “I want to talk about you. And I definitely want to kiss you.”

“Sam…” you murmured. He dipped in for another warm, wet kiss, that instantly wiped your ability to create thought. You had to hold onto his shirt to steady yourself, and by then Sam had paused to not interrupt you. “I-I just…” you scrambled for anything to say, made honest by the dark, “I remember how you looked at them. I imagined how your hands must’ve felt on them… how theirs felt on you. I-I know I’m killing the moment here, but I need you to know—I was, I was out of my mind with jealousy, Sam. I—yeah.”

The hold on him grounded you, and again a second time when his hand settled over yours. Sam brought his arm around your waist, which made you realize how much he’d held you versus how much you’d held him. It was a disappointing ratio, so you welded him closer and snuggled your arms under his shoulders, letting your hands praise the unwinding slopes of his back.

A pleasant sigh seeped out of him, which broke into a careful chuckle. “I’m gonna be honest with you—pretty much nothing could ruin this for me right now,” Sam admitted. Which really meant something, because the chances of this being ruined by just about anything were 80-20. “I’ve wanted this since I was like, twelve. I guess you could say I wasn’t a fan of that waiter in Kansas, or your date to junior prom, or even Dean.”

You choked on your own laugh. “C’mon. You’ve got to be kidding me. Your brother, Sam? That man does not wash his underwear.”

Sam’s weighty shoulders shrugged against your cheek. You could feel his smile against your hair, that slight dimple in his cheek…“He always gets the girl. N’ the others… I don’t know.” Plainly and clearly, he turned into your embrace to speak face to face, “It’s you. It’s always been you. But I’ve never been brave enough to say it.”

You had no clue how to respond to that. A winning lottery ticket could be dropped in your lap, hell could close its gates forever, the angels could finally decide to leave you alone, and you’d know exactly what to say. Holy shit, maybe. Or even a tasteful, what the fuck. But what was good enough for Sam? What words could you say to make him happier than he just made you? You’d never been as sincere or as well-spoken as him, but he deserved that and more.

“I’m just glad we’re saying it now,” you murmured, your throat tight with building tears. Whatever channel was playing illuminated more of your face to him in a frame of white, and there Sam seemed to absorb everything you couldn’t put into words.

His thumb brushed your cheekbone. “How long have you been sitting on this?”

“Since our first kiss,” you flushed. “So, uh, fifteen years?”

You could sense Sam’s smug grin coming from a mile away. He always glanced aside beforehand, like he knew he was about deliver a clever blow. “Sixteen,” he boasted. “When we almost shocked ourselves to death taking apart that old Ford in Bobby’s salvage yard—you taught me what an intercooler was, and I was so impressed I wanted you to be my girlfriend.”

“Sixteen whole years,” you scoffed. Just for emphasis, you gave Sam a little push, and he dropped down to sit on your mattress. Without question, he left room for you between his legs and you flushed down to your toes taking up that space. “You gotta beat me at everything, don’t you?”

“Maybe. But I hear it’s gentlemanly to let your girlfriend win every once in a while,” Sam hummed.

That was an obvious challenge put down just for you. It was all too easy for you to rise to the bait and fluster all at once, since Sam knew how to engineer his bets just for you. The divide between your friendship before and your relationship now was a web more than it was a line, so dipping a knee in his lap on the bed was easier than you would’ve thought. Leaning in and smoothing your hands around his neck was not. Sam’s breath hitched in his chest, which you relished in. All these little reactions he always had—they were all because of you. His shyness, his cute hesitation, his miserable attempts at being neutral.

“Well, I,” you clarified, walking two of your fingers up his collar, “hear that it’s gentlemanly to ask her out first.”

Sam really was a dork, because just a little physical flirting had his hands flitting without direction around your middle. Every time your fingers took a further step up his neck, his breathing grew deeper, straining for composure he wouldn’t ever find. Not on your watch. When you finally stole the kiss you’d been itching to take, Sam’s eyes fluttered shut and his hands scuttled to find a place on your waist, wracked with shyness. He really didn’t want to mess this up. It was a sweet notion, if it was even possible in the first place.

Eventually, they found their hold on your hips. You hovered in his space, soaking up the feel of him in the dark as his fingertips memorized you, cataloged you, admired you. Sam’s chin tilted up, silently asking for permission as his hands hovered at the edge of your shirt. Your kiss was all the answer he needed. Gently, his fingers slid under your shirt, where they stoked the sensitive skin of your belly just for the sake of feeling you.

“Would you be my girlfriend?” Sam whispered. He was nervous and everything, as if there was a universe where you would ever turn him down. 

The hands you’d braced on Sam’s shoulders pressed closer, taking in the texture of his shirt and the muscle underneath it, until one of your warm palms had snuck underneath his collar to press flat to his back. Sam released a low hissing breath. You met him with a deep, meaningful, possessive kiss, tickling your nails against the top of his spine. 

“I’m all yours,” you promised, and Sam’s whole body sunk in relief.

He made a desperate sort of gesture along the bottom of your back, avoiding your bandages but wanting you closer, deeper, nearer to him. Emboldened by his obvious yearning, you offered your knee over his thigh. Sam invited you closer. Anxiety swirled in your gut, but the touch of him was merciful and yielding; he’d do only what you wanted to do. This was Sam. You’d never felt safer, so you sunk comfortably into the bowl of his lap.

You kissed him in long pecks at first, the soft bulb of your nose pressing into his cheek. His lips were soft and plush and warm, and the deeper you tasted them the more they drove from you. Any rigid fear left in your chest dissolved at his touch. That’s what he must’ve been waiting for, because he put his arms around you only once you untensed, and with all the urgency of too-in-love teenagers, you embraced. Sam slotted your chests together. You cupped his neck and roamed his hair, crushing him closer until you could feel his firm middle flatten to yours. A low wanting sigh rattled out of him. It was so authentic and distinctly Sam that you felt foolish for ever seeing a thing in the witch’s glamor. This was Sam, with his gentleness, his fear of his strength, his hesitation to take what he wanted. You were proud of your choice of words: you were all his, because this Sam was definitely all yours. This was the Sam you knew.

It occurred to you just how much you’d dreamed of this before. Reality surpassed expectation with ease, purely because there was so much you hadn’t considered. Often, you’d dissolve into gooey daydreams of kissing him or making him happy, only to come out of them scolding yourself for feeding your feelings. Your unreciprocated feelings. But there were dreams you couldn’t control and times where you’d indulged yourself more than usual. Even then, though, you always kept Sam’s emotions out of the way. You’d dream of getting home late from work—in the “normal” world you’d never share—and crawling into his arms, sleepy, or vice versa. You’d dream of going for long drives with him and snuggling with him in the Impala. But you were always the one who said those three scary words to him, while he simply existed as he always did. If you puppeteered Sam into saying it, then you were taking a machete to any notion that your fantasies could be real—and making Sam lie in order to please you.

What you hadn’t considered was what would happen if Sam did say I love you, and, even better: if he meant it.

Sam murmurs it as you’re admiring him in the dark. His eyes had fallen closed and his head had tilted back, receptive to your touch. You loved to touch his face; you warmed his lap, cupped his cheeks, stroked the smooth back of your hand against his temple, and pushed the hair from his forehead in the cool motel darkness. Every once in a while the headlights of a car would give you a glimpse at him, and each time Sam’s gaze would almost be too much.

You whisper it back, thankful for the boldness the dark gives you, and feel something blaze hot inside you when his mouth drags down your cheek to your jaw. They’re deep and punctuating kisses. You’re reminded again of the sinking acceptance you’d felt when Hermes’ shadow had fallen over you. For a second, you’d thought that was gonna be it. Sam would’ve never known the truth, and would’ve ended up in that warehouse instead, picking the glass out of unresponsive skin. And though you’d survived today… Tomorrow, a reaper would have a million opportunities to take what had only just been sown.

You bunched your hands in Sam’s shirt, sounding urgent. “...Let me show you how much.”

Sam hung there for a moment, weighing the silence between your bodies. Weighing the space between them, and how much of it left there was. “You want that?” He asked. Sam made it sound like you were asking to stick your hand in a shark tank. “You’re… you’re sure?”

Your hand on Sam’s cheek turned over, so you were stroking your softer knuckles against his skin. You nodded, realized he couldn’t see it, and pressed in to brush your noses together. Sam’s head tilted all the way back to meet yours when you prayed: “I’m sure. I… I waited a long time to be close to you, so… I’m not gonna waste a second more.”

A breath rasped out of him in understanding. Like everything else in your life, this could be taken from you. Sam’s fingers crept up the back of your shirt, sliding around for where the bandages began and ended. He confessed, “Me either.”

His kiss drew deeper, more lovesick, chasing each one to their full depth. Your hands shyly migrated to the buttons of his flannel and smoothed there. He nodded, flattening his hand to the small of your back, and after that you didn’t have to wonder once how Sam felt about you. It was outlined clearly for you in Sam’s handwriting. He showed it in the absorbing nature of each of his kisses; how he nosed every new inch of your skin, taking care to declothe you the right and patient way; how aware he was of your bruises and bites. When you’re clothesless, he runs both of his hands down your arms and just feels you in the dark. Sam gives you the same courtesy. When you help him out of his last layer, your hands smooth against his chest, his arms, his shoulders, his neck, but the contact still isn’t enough—you need to be closer. You drag him into another gapless embrace, and Sam is already there, eager to pull you in. His hands knead you with purpose. Your hips, your waist, your stomach, are squeezed until every part of you feels raw and achy and alive. She’s real, Sam’s body sighs. Another surging, dizzying kiss has you dragging your nails down his back, tasting every puckered scar and raised laceration from his shoulders to his obliques. He’s plush and warm and firm and right, a missing piece finally filled.

With his arms around you, you kiss him breathless and thumb open the button of his jeans. Your spine tingles in delight the second your fingers are hooked in his belt loops. The butterflies in your belly are birds by the time his jeans are past his hips, and when you’re on your knees in front of him, Sam’s calloused palms exploring your neck and your hair, the bruises and cuts on your back are just a memory.

“You don’t have to—” Sam starts.

The smile on your face is a bit too clever. “I know.” You frame his waist in your hands, pressing both thumbs into the divots of his hips. Sliding downward to find his boxers, you can feel his legs trembling at your touch, the skin there prickling as it’s exposed inch by inch. You press a lingering kiss to his waistband that makes Sam’s breath hitch in his throat. “Just helping you out of these,” you smile innocently, plucking the edge of his boxers. “I’ll have my fun with you like this when your brother isn’t coming back in an hour.”

“O-okay,” Sam agrees, and even in the dark you can tell he’s grinning.

When he’s nude, Sam finds your hand in the dark and brings you to stand with him. Again, you’re slotted into place in his arms, skin tacky with building sweat and cooled by the open window. His face and neck are blazing with a blush. You push the back of your hand against it, feeling him, all of him, in the honesty of the dark. His face lowers to yours, and again you’re met with the impression that the moment he kisses you, you’re his—curse and angels and demons and all.

You accept it with nothing but bliss.

He guides your knees back to the bed again, this time supporting your thighs as you lift yourself up. Your whole body reacts like before, surging into him and purring deep in your throat. You loop your arms around his shoulders in a claiming sort of way, and where your skin meets it sticks and melts together. Dragging you in around the middle, Sam hoisted you into his lap and moaned into your kiss; you slot right onto him, knees tight to his thighs and your chest pressed to his. You have the slightest advantage over him like this, your shadow falling on him. Sam’s eyes flutter shut and he sucks down breath after breath, his hair in his eyes, illuminated in slivers by the television. Something about it just makes you wetter. When you push further into him, there’s a glide between your bodies that makes Sam groan.

“Sh, sh, be careful of your back,” he warns. “Could you—could you hand me my wallet?”

You pat his chest, forehead pressed to his, and answer with a laugh instead: “I’ve got the pill?”

A shift goes through Sam’s entire body, radiating up from his lap. He shuffles his hips, lips parted, and you can feel his excitement pounding in his chest. “Atta girl,” he decides, smirking. “That’s good too.”

Flushed from head-to-toe with heat, you cup Sam’s neck and meet him kiss for kiss. During, you find him between you and tilt in your hips, finally asking the silent question. Sam’s fingers scramble across your thighs, your sides, and around your back. He hangs there, trying to pin down how real this is. This is really happening, his heaving chest says. She’s right here in front of me. A wet, passionate kiss balms his worries. He gives you the littlest nod. That's all it takes for Sam to be met with new, plush territory. You pant into each other’s mouths, fingers digging into flesh, hips dying to sink further in, hanging on the precipice, and when Sam’s certain that you’re ready, that this is really what you want, he presses your thighs down.

A desperate sigh seeps from his mouth to yours, like there's no better place to be in the world than inside you. Something needy and high slips from your lips. For a long time, all either of you can do is bask in it, in each other, breathing hard and shivering. Sam hugs you—genuinely hugs you—against him. There’s a thought somewhere in your mind that you should be nervous at all the lines you’re crossing here, but… Any day of the week you could rub your cheek into Sam’s shoulder like this. It’s a new song, but familiar notes dance all the way through it. The motel room is silent but for the barely-there hum of the TV and the crickets outside, so Sam’s heart under your ear booms. You soak in the familiar sound of it.

“I love you,” you tell him, and Sam hushes it back so fast your voices overlap, then again, “so much—so, so much—” as he starts to move.

Your whole lower half rolls with him, a boat on a wave. An urgent, keening yes squeals out of you the second Sam encourages you down again. It's more than good, than perfect, and entwined so closely like this, you can hear every thought and whim swirling around his mind—can read him better than you ever could before. You feel foolish. How much earlier could you have had this, if you hadn’t been so afraid? There were a million times in your life where you could’ve told Sam. Before the cage, when the apocalypse started, when Dean died and you were stranded with only each other. You latch onto him as you find your rhythm, a hand in his hair, nails in his shoulders, seared as close to him as you can be. Sam gasps your name; happy.

I have him now, you remind yourself. And I’m more than happy with that.

_

tags: @lacilou

[defrosted69]

My Sweet Zone

Lee Saerom x reader

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Exhausting.

That one word where everyone can be relayed too.

Exhausting.

Being an adult was far more worse than being a kid.

But you gotta continue this for the next few years of your life.

Every morning as the sunlight shines in your eyes, you were reminded by your daily routine and endless cycle of the day.

Eat, shower, work, lunch, work, overtime, eat, and sleep.

But sometimes that sleep changes to work. It was basically the same process everyday with no changes happening except if the weather started to act up.

Other than that, it will still be your old boring day.

Adults carry heavy burden on them as each day passes by.

The constant society stress add in the daily life struggles make it hard for every adults.

Sometimes they just wish that they never turned adults and remained as kids with much freedom and happiness.

But they didn't have the power to go back as they are just regular human beings.

You drove home as the city lights and rain was the only thing that comforted you at the moment.

With such atmosphere comes a relaxing vibe and you yearn nothing more right now than sleep.

Sometimes sleeping is the gateway to leaving reality and going to dreamland where we can all be happy.

The sight of your house couldn't have made you more happier as you immediately parked your car in the garage.

This was one of the few rare moments where you really yearned nothing more than sleep.

The familiar door you always see never looked so pleasant to you as you unlocked it with your key and with the clicking sound, you opened the door.

Your eyes immediately saw a standing angel smiling sweetly at you.

"Welcome home Honey~"

That smile you always wanted to see was finally infront of you.

You were shocked and couldn't react properly as you didn't expect your wife to stand infront of you.

Lee Saerom, The leader of the famous group Fromis_9.

They had always was been busy considering their popularity and you hardly had time to see each other but both of you were able to sneak late night video calls which ends in about 2 hours or even 4 hours.

It was quite a story how you 2 meet in the first place.

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You were just an intern when it comes to editing photos during that time and your agency was called out to work with the group.

During that time, Fromis_9 wasn't that known as they are now but a few of their songs was getting recognized.

When you first worked with them, everyone was suprised and shocked how they all look so preety and beautiful.

But you were mesmerized by one girl. Lee Saerom.

Her smile was something you have never seen before and it just captivates you.

And working with them was an enjoyable time as everyone in the group were nice and friendly and really cheerful.

After their photoshoots were done, they were suppose to leave the area but you and Saerom accidentally met on a vending machine.

"Oh, do you like that drink too?"

She asked you as you nodded your head.

"Yeah, it's a good drink. It wakes me up since I edit a lot at night."

She chuckled which brought tingles down your spine. You wished to hear her laugh everyday.

"Oh that's nice. I also edit for a bit but I'm not good."

"I'm really not good either. I just try to make the photo clean to be honest."

"Well here are some of my simple edits."

She grabbed her phone and showed you the pictures she edit.

You weren't gonna lie, some of them were amazing and appropriate for the scenery but most of them were out place and needed a lot of work.

But since she's not a professional like you, you could say she did a good job.

"That's actually good. You might have a knack for this."

That compliment made her blush in embarrassment but she liked hearing your comment.

You didn't know but Saerom had always been secretly glancing at you not knowing. Ever since her eyes landed on you, she was captivated by you.

Your professional attitude was something she liked and your small smile was making her smile as well.

But she wanted to know you more. A simple glance wasn't enough so she decided to ask you after the photoshoot. But unfortunately they had to leave early.

She though it would be over but it wasn't.

It's as if the universe wanted you 2 together so destiny made its move.

Nagyung wanted an iced coffee but it was only available in the vending machine so she went one and she didn't expect to see you there as well.

"Well, I'm still trying to learn on how to edit well but thank you."

She smiled at you and you could hear your cheeks turning bright red. You wanted to talk to her more but she was running on a schedule.

"Well I gotta go. But before that, can I borrow your hand?"

"Oh umm... Sure?"

You were confused on why she would ask for your hand but as soon as she pulled out her market from her pocket, you already knew what it was.

"Call me when you're free... Uhh.."

"Y/n. Y/n L/n."

"Call me when you're free Y/n. See you around~"

And with that she smiled and walked away leaving you speechless as you couldn't help but smile seeing what was on your hand.

"Here's my number, Call me when you're free"

And from there on you two started seeing each other.

Everytime you two meet, sparkles was just everywhere and soon feelings was out and both of you started dating after 3 months of meeting up.

When Searom introduced you to her members you were embarrassed as hell but soon the members welcomed you in open arms.

But und for Saerom, she would get the end of the sticks as all her embarrassing moments was shared to you by them.

She would immediately whine and pout which you find adorable as you hug her to comfort her.

Jiwon would immediately ask for a hug from chaeyoung as Chaeyoung would look at her with disgust.

As time goes by, you would eventually move to a bigger agency which is where you work at and you were tasked on their MV editing.

Of course you didn't tell Saerom or any of the girls as you wanted to suprise them and that suprise was worth the wait.

Their song eventually got their fame to start rising and from their on, it was just straight up for them.

You didn't told her that the editing that was the main praise of the MV was made by you. They only knew about after their manager told them about it.

Saerom immediately invited you to their get together to celebrate for the success but you decline.

Wrong decision.

Her members barged into your apartment room at that time and kinda kidnapped you in some way as they insisted on asking to come.

In the end you had to agree because they weren't gonna leave making Saerom alone if that happened.

That night was special as Saerom made sure the credit was due to you as everyone gave you an applause.

That night was also the night Saerom showed her mother side as she took care of you, fed you, sang to you, and even drank with you.

It was then and there you know Saerom was the one for you.

Even though there was hardship along the way, your love prevailed and with 6 years of dating, you finally proposed to her on a beautiful night scenery at the beach.

She didn't expect that the trip you planned was a proposal as everyone even her members were on board of you proposing to her.

Everyone in the company of hers know about your relationship with her and was supportive of you two.

When you showed that beautiful silver ring, she was moved to tears and immediately said yes.

She wanted to be with you as you wanted to be with her.

Both of you promised to pass through the hardship and smile through the happiest days of not of your life.

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Now that both of you were married to each other for the past 2 years, everything was the same except both of you loved each other.

Her members kept bugging her about having a baby as Saerom would mime blush about it and tried to avoid the topic.

She wasn't ready to be a mother yet considering their fame was still rising and she didn't want to get pregnant under stress which could cause problems for the baby.

You didn't mind her decision as you were okay with it and understood her situation. There was no reason for both of you rush to parent hood when both of you were not ready.

But from time to time both of you would have some *Privacy* as both of you enjoys each other's touch.

"Hey you okay Honey?"

Saerom hugged you as this snapped you out of your trance.

Your wife was back and it took a whole before you processed it as you hugged her tight.

You have missed her presence and everything about her.

Saerom chuckled as she snuggled in your chest.

"Did I suprise you too much Honey?"

"Absolutely Love. This was the best suprise for me"

Those words immediately made Saerom blush as she looked up to your eyes as she leaned in closer and gave you a loving kiss.

That kiss was what you yearned for as her plump cherry flavored lips intoxinate you.

You pulled away from her as she giggled at you.

"Looks like my Honey is tired. Wanna cuddle in bed?"

You immediately nod your head as she lead the way to your room as she hold your hand tightly.

She missed everything about you and right now, all that mattered to her was you and you alone.

Once arriving at your room, she removed your bussines coat and shoes as you lazily landed on your bed.

"Ah, that's not your pillow."

"Wha-"

Saerom easily slid on the bed as she gently placed your head on her lap as she stroked your hair playfully.

A sense of euphoria and calmness washed over your body as every touch she would do to your hair triggered a sense of relief in you.

"Did my Honey overworked himself again?"

Her calm voice made you so relaxed and sleepy as you couldn't speak as you only nod your head.

"Omo, my Honey baby shouldn't be this tired. Tsk, I shall complain to the company."

That sentence made you chuckle as Saerom smiled.

"Tell me, what did you do today?"

"Just the regular. It's just that we had to work overtime and I'm exhausted because of it."

"Omo, do you want me to sing you a lullaby?"

"Yes please."

She coughed first before showing you her amazing vocals.

You were experiencing cloud 9 right now as everything around you sounded and feel so relaxing.

Saerom knew exactly what she was doing as she giggled and played with your ear.

"I didn't realize how small your ear is."

"Stop, I'm getting embarrassed."

She chuckled cheerfully before returning to stroking your hair.

"Love, I feel tired these past few days."

This made Saerom frown a little.

"Each day feel the same repetitive process and it bores me and it also exhaust me. At most I sometimes think there wasn't worth seeing."

This made Saerom sad as she felt bad for leaving you as she was busy working as an Idol.

"I keep asking myself, was this really what I wanted? Am I even happy right now? I feel like my efforts are just going to waste"

Saerom really felt the sadness and dissapointment in your voice as she had enough.

"Y/n."

"Yes?"

"You don't have to worry about it."

"What?"

She stopped playing with your hair as you sat up seeing each other eye to eye.

Her small smile made you feel curious as she said

"From here on out, I'll be on your side."

"You mean..."

"I mean I won't leave you. It seems like you needed some cheering up so I think I should stay here with you more."

"But what about your work? Your fans would look for you."

She chuckled and shook her head.

"Flovers will understand amd besides, PD-nim said that we deserve a break for a while so why not spend time here with my beloved."

Her hands caressed your cheeks as she held it and squished it.

"I don't want to see you tired ever again okay? I'm your wife Saerom. I'll do everything to cheer you up because I love you so much okay?"

You could only nod your head.

"Don't ever think that nothing will come out from your hardwork. Have you seen the postive comments of your edits with the pictures of the idols who did photoshoot with your agency? They were all praise and worship on you. They admire your work because you're that good. "

You didn't want to look at comments because it could be an edge sword sometimes.

Some may make you smile while others just annoy you and ruins your day.

"But I'm just an average-"

"Absolutely not!"

You were suprised by how Saerom glared at you. Saerom was rarely angry at you and seeing her glare at you was a rare occasion.

"Your an amazing editor. Heck, our group wouldn't probably been famous if it weren't for your amazing Video editing. Also haven't you heard or seen in the news how IU thanked you in TV. She thanked you because the photos came out amazing and she was even nominated in some award show because of it."

"Honey, don't ever think you're worse when you're the best. I know that telling you that you're doing your best wouldn't help so instead I say, surpass your best and be the best of the best that no one can achieve cause you're a unique star."

"Think of it like this. I said that not as an encouragement but as a challenge on to yourself. Will you stop at your best or will you surpass your best and be a different beast than the rest?"

You already know why Saerom was given the leader position because of things like this.

She wanted the best out of you and she wants you to be motived as well because of the many praise you get.

She made you feel a fire ignited within you.

A challenge you want to surpass.

"To be the best than the rest. I like it"

Saerom released her hands on your cheeks as she hugs you warmly.

"No ma what happens I'll always be here for you Y/n. I love you and will forever love you till time stops."

You hugged her back.

This was what you needed, she was what you needed.

Saerom always brings the best out of you amd right now it worked. You finally saw a goal to reach at the end of the dull dark tunnel.

Everyday was gonna be a challenge for you and you were up for it.

"Saerom."

"Yes?"

"I love you so much."

"I love you even more."

Both of you chuckled as both of you laid on your bed cuddled in each other's embrace.

The atmosphere maybe cold but the warmth and love between you two overtook it and slept comfortably in each other's presence.

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[munchkinmarauder]

Thank you! It also make sense that Lorna and Pietro would have to rebuild their relationship a bit like they did in Xfactor and ANXF. Like in cannon Lorna is kind of the forgotten youngest child, Wanda is Magnetos favourite living child, Anya is the perfect sibling the ghost of which they all live under and even if his relationship with Pietro is rarely if never good he's always more invested in Pietro than he is with Lorna. Magneto never claims Lorna and reveals he's her father the way he does with the twins, she finds out herself. For a long time she was his dirty little secret child, only brought into the family because he needed her. The twins are so close so when she's brought into the family it feels so hard to find a place there but like with cannon she ends up closer to Pietro through leaning on each other being the less favoured children but the ones often burdened with Magnetos legacy and the negative implications of his character and because Pietro put in the most effort to be her friend and look after her.

Wanda seems to be the perfect older sister, unbelievably powerful and beautiful, first to give their father grandchildren, loved by both her father and brother the most but the sisters eventually start to build a relationship as Wanda starts reaching out and Lorna does love her sister (if also resenting her) before that all goes to shit with Wanda's dissapearance. Pietro and Magneto fight and Pietro leaves with little Billy and Tommy. She visits him and the nephews on and off and is there when Luna is born but as childcare and the Crystal drama gets too much (let's just say were part love and part a political marriage and his relationship feel apart once they left Genosha cause Crystal is her usual self and resents moving away from luxury and going from having fun with no kids and her energetic hot husband to a mother of two and eventually three, with a tired husband who's sad about his sister, constantly fretting over the babies and hurt by their father, which she never really wanted or was consulted about, especially as Pietro makes the mistake of just deciding he was adopting Billy and Tommy without discussing it with her, so she eventually cheats sometimes after Luna is born, gaslights her husband and runs off with other men and leaves all three kids to him, paying child support for just Luna)

Following Pietro's departure, Lorna is forced to take on the twins duties on Genosha she starts resenting her brother for leaving and never coming back to Genosha because once again he's chosen Wanda over her in a way and it's easier to put all her resentment (and guilty feelings about resenting) for both twins and their father on her brother, hurt he left when she needed him, so when he's back with the boys they need to rebuild their relationship (and similar feelings resurface for her when Wanda is back). She goes back to her terrible ex Alex and begins the painful cycle of their on again and off again relationship while her relationship with Magneto cools from father/daughter and mentor/mentee to essentially colleagues as she's lost both her siblings because of him. Hopefully once the family starts being rebuilt she finally rids herself of Alex, comes out, and finds love in the arms of Terry haha.

for Pietro's part he sees Lorna's distance, refusal to leave Genosha with him and lack of involvement in the boys and Luna as her siding with their father and letting the jealousy he saw her hold towards Wanda get the better of her. He's hurt cause he could have really used her support when things were going downhill with his marriage, his relationship with his father and while navigating his own journey into fatherhood. He loves his little sister but he has to prioritise his kids and thinks well she seemingly wants him to pull away so does so. He's left pretty fucked up emotionally from everything with Crystal (in all fairness he did make some really big mistakes but he didn't really deserve all the subsequent treatment from her to the extent he got it but Pietro being Pietro blames himself for absolutely everything which is something he has to unlearn with a little help from his kids, sisters, eventually getting a new supportive partner and surprisingly Magneto of all people) and essentially loosing both his sisters (and feeling like it's his fault he lost all three of them because Wanda and Pietro argue before her dissapearance just like Donald and Della did) so he just puts all his energy into the minimoffs and Luna over the next few years until circumstances force him back to Genosha and to play nice with Erik.

That went on as a much longer blub than I thought it would sorry! Guess when you mix Ducktails with the melodramatic HoM the potential is endless, I'm inspired haha (don't worry if you ever do write the AU you have no obligations to use these haha)

On a complete side note Monet having the Daisy role makes sense in my mind causes she's also a sassy, brawling, queen with attitude and she's the primary caregiver for her little sisters. So I can definitely see Pietro "born to mother hen" Maximoff adopting her sisters eventually the way Daisy and Donald do May and June.

Rewatching DuckTales and I could see this as a Maximoff Family AU

Think about it. Wanda Maximoff disappears while going on a mission or something for her father, Magneto (trapped in the future, parallel death, the moon whatever). Powers would make sense in this AU. But it could be done without them if we stick to treasure hunting.

Magneto has a fight with Pietro, who takes the twins, Billy and Tommy, and raises them until he loses his job and is forced to return to Genosha or wherever and make nice with Erik. There's a lot of growing pains. But they get there.

There they meet Mary Jo, or Anelle, aka Agent 22, someone Magneto has known for a while and trusts, the true nature of their relationship is later revealed as she asks Magneto for protection from the Kree/Skrull forces to protect her and her son Teddy. Teddy meanwhile doesn't know he's an alien. But if we do it without powers, maybe he was, like Webby a baby created in a lab using the DNA of some famous hero, adventurer, special person.

So Huey Duey and Louey are basically Billy and Tommy. Duey's personality and traits are honestly kind of split between Billy and Tommy. OR you can add Luna to this as their cousin but kind of older sister or little sister depending on how you want to play that. I think it works better if she's younger. But to each their own

So obviously then Wanda comes back eventually and that would be an additional layer. Then there's probably some tension with Tommy feeling like a third wheel to Billy and Teddy getting along way too well. Teddy is not sure where he fits in with these crazy people. Magneto learning to be a grandfather. Pietro parenting!!!!