#jess really reamed into him

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

I Am All In Rewatch - Luke & Jess - Episode 4x13

That kids a movie star. He's a movie star. You cannot not look at him...He's just so solid, you know. He's so good. He's so solid...I think all of the the Jess stuff has never been more powerful because he's never had more to do. He's confronting his mother or avoiding his mother, he's confronting Luke and reading  Luke the Riot Act and telling him, which was a devastating scene by the way, because he wasn't wrong....That Danes bloodline causing some...They're stirring it up aren't they?...It's it's easier than you think and harder than you think. Yeah it's both. Um. Because when it goes wrong, when it goes bad, it goes really bad. It's like it's like the outtakes are pretty funny because it's like it all goes south and it's just like it's hysterical because it's so bad. It just doesn't work. It doesn't work. It doesn't work like beautifully, you know...You know, that was a brilliant scene between Jess and Luke, but I think it was incredibly unfair,and petty and easy and cheap shots. It was just, you know, Luke was formed. Uh you know, people are formed through their experiences, right, and they are who they are through their experiences in life. That's what teaches them and that's how Luke became. And for somebody to just rip the mask off that, I thought it was cruel and I thought it showed um a depravity on Jess's part that is completely debilitating him. Jess, I think it said. I think it said more about Jess than it than it does about Luke. And I think there's some truth even though there's some truth to what he was saying, Um, the manner in which that information was delivered was cruel, and it was heartless, and it was mean spirited. Deeply troubled person. Uh And and my opinion of him went down a couple of notches. Um. It's it's either he's so troubled that he's lashing out at everything, which is probably the case because he was you know, it looks like he was raised by a couple of addicts who didn't want to bother with him. Um, So this is a deep seated anchor.....The ultimate rebel, the ultimate bad boy. But boy, he just he just ripped Luke a new one. Wow.... I think it's a sign of strength in Luke that people try to call him out that it's actually a sign of their weakness when they say these things like I never asked you to help me. That to me is a sign of extraordinary weakness and ingratitude on somebody's part when they say that that is the worst thing you could That's the most revealing thing you could say to somebody. I never asked you to do that. When somebody steps up and does the right thing for somebody and then resents that person for doing it because they don't feel like they want to owe somebody something because I never asked you to do that...But you saved my ass... Okay, but screw you because you have problems and you know you want to feel like a martyr and you want to do this, Well, guess what, You're just trying to justify your own crappy behavior and ingratitude to what a person that you respect to. So that's why I thought it was such a low blow, because people like that drive me crazy. Drive me nuts. He quits life, he quits people, he quits on himself. He knows how to quit. He is he is the definition of a quitter. And it's tragic because he's so he's so appealing in so many ways, and he's so smart, and he's so you know, he's that guy that needs somebody that's not related to him to come into his life and inspire him to stop quitting, you know, somebody, because there's there's such a well of talent there. You just know it, you just feel it that Jess can do will do extraordinary things...So I see him as as having that depth of talent because he's so smart. -Scott

[exton-mess]

With all the new Jesse scenes in not just the novels but now Challenger, I speculate that there is a lot of hidden facets of Jesse and a lot I speculate can tie in with his dad, Robert Coste.

In both the novels, we see scenes of their dynamic from Seiji's perspective, even if he doesn't glean a lot of the undertones of it. It was made clear by Mr. Katayama that how Robert spoke the boys after losing a slot away from gold was despicable, but Robert acted surprised with a "they won't improve if-" and thats all we hear of it.

However, I theorize that most of Jesse's obsession of being number one comes from his dad if this is how he usually reacts to him losing. This is referenced by Aidan who remarks on the possibility of Jesse ever NOT being number one, and in fact, he probably thinks about it most of the time. Based on little Jesse's somber act after Katayama drags Robert aside to really ream into him, it's not difficult to imagine that Jesse, who obviously loves and idolizes his dad, probably goes to great lengths to make sure scenes like this, where he is yelled at by Robert or that he's verbally torn into, never happen if he can help it.

In the new challenger comic, there are alot of scenes that visualize a good relationship between father and son, like fencing practice and fishing. But that doesn't mean that isnt a troubling dynamic to the two, and from this scene it seems Jesse even hides his fallout with Seiji from his dad and his expression just screams out that Jesse is a kid that puts on a lot of airs when it comes to his dad, and probably hides a lot from him too.

Personally, I would love to see the hidden facets of Jesse and just how harmful Robert's obsessive coaching is to Jesse in the long run, who was referenced to obsessively watch all of Jesse's training and matches, almost to a fault.

If I could go a little off center, it would actually be really cool to have an "Elemental" scene with Jesse. Specifically where he is like Ember, and the combo of Seiji and now his new scenes with secret half brother Nicholas, might start to rub at Jesse perfect image. To the point that, at one point he will just break in on himself with a simple yet powerful line:

"I think I'm failing."

Losing control of this ideal of being the perfect son and number one fencer. And because I'm a shipper at heart, I really hope its Eugene who hears it and witnesses the vulnerabilities behind Jesse's diamond hard composure, and maybe the first to not only see but realize, Robert Coste isn't the ideal anyone should try to live up to.

[goldeneyedgirl]

TwiFicmas23 Day 9: to ground (jasper/archie)

Good evening! An early post tonight because I am fueled by chocolate frogs, the potential for some amateur surgery tonight (doctor approved, it's fine), and the promise that the holiday season is nearly upon us and I'll stop waking up in a terrified haze that I've forgotten to order something that Amazon doesn't stock locally.

It's been a weird day.

Tonight I bring you what at least three people have requested: an Attempt at Jasper/Archie. This was started for Pride and I've continued working on it. This is the first draft, so it'll undergo some polishing and edits before it hits AO3, not to mention a ream of author's notes for context.

This is my first time writing m/m, so I'm oddly fascinated with how this turned out. I think it's okay? I think my biggest issue is characterizing Archie right and making sure I capture what we know about him with what we know about Alice.

I probably need to do more world/lore building for the boys like I have with Jess and Alice, but c'est la vie. I tried and I hope for all the people that wanted this, you enjoy it!

going to ground. The motel is dim and smells damp, some rundown place halfway to Olympia that was never more than half full, used by truckers and seasonal workers on their way to Peninsula and back home again. The bedspreads were shiny, discoloured polyester; the smell of mould and stale air permeating every crevice.

Archie isn’t happy. But it’s easier to be pissed at the state of this motel to distract himself.

Jasper’s stripped to his waist in the bathroom, prolonging the inevitable. Hot water will alleviate the pain for a short time, but he’s damn well pushing it. He’s not even treating the wounds anymore; he’s just hiding.

It’s always been Jasper’s habit to go to ground when he’s injured. In Calgary, in New Hampshire, and now in Forks. He won’t - can’t - even be around the Cullens when he’s that physically vulnerable. Archie always privately wondered if Jasper brought him alone so that someone had his back, or if he knew Archie would follow him to the ends of the Earth no matter what, or maybe so that he knew that Archie was protected.

His boy was wretchedly overprotective.

Which was, frankly, the reason that they were in this mess in the first place.

Scowling, Archie nudged the bed ruffle with his toe and nodded to himself when it crinkled like plastic. This place really was a dump. Normally, Jasper would take them out in the middle of the forest somewhere, carefully chosen for their inability to be tracked. After Calgary, it had taken Archie weeks to convince Jasper to go home, that it was safe. That they were safe, Maria was gone, and the Cullens were their family - they were no danger to them, they weren’t angry or upset with them for what Maria did (though Esme had been nigh hysterical at their sudden disappearance) - and they needed to go back.

New Hampshire had been somewhat easier; it had only taken a week to get Jasper home, and that hadn’t been an emotionally loaded incident, just some territorial nomads.

And now Forks.

Jasper had driven them here, and it was an unexpected that he hadn’t simply insisted on plunging into the Olympic National Park for days on end. But maybe that was more strategy - the woods were the first place the Cullens would look. A shitty motel halfway to Olympia wouldn’t be a place anyone would come looking for them for days - especially with both Bella and Jacob wounded.

Archie scowls again, and decided he’s been patient enough. He’s not one to sulk over big things - he wants the air cleared and everything resolved. But Jasper hates arguing so much that he’ll cloister himself rather than face Archie. It doesn’t matter where, as long as he can hide - in his study, in the garage with Rose, or - apparently - in a motel bathroom only a few steps above a truck stop.

The pain would be excruciating.

He’s been in there long enough.

“Jas.” He knocks on the door, and hears nothing besides the running tap. He waits a beat before he tries the knob - surprisingly, it’s unlocked and Archie wonders if he missed Jasper unlatching it, or if he just assumed it was locked.

Jasper’s slumped against the wall, his eyes pitch-black. There’s something about them that when they’re thirsty; vampires look gaunt and slightly grey-er than usual. A little closer to dead. Probably not noticeable to humans but to him, who looks at Jasper every single day, he looks miserable.

Archie moves closer, crouching down. Jasper’s eyes are tracking him, but he says nothing.

“Show me,” Archie says gently, but Jasper’s eyes have dropped to Archie’s right arm, covered by his sweatshirt.

“Jasper, you need to let me help you.” He can smell the venom - mostly Jasper’s, but there’s a sharp, foreign note that makes Archie worry. The scent is strong enough that the wound is still open, and it’s been hours. “Please.”

“Let me see it,” Jasper says hoarsely; speaking sounds painful. He needs to hunt, on top of everything, and he can’t. Not yet. Not til they take care of this.

“You first,” Archie replies firmly, but Jasper doesn’t move, his eyes fixed on Archie’s arm.

Sighing, Archie shoves the sleeve of his sweatshirt up; there’s an old ace bandage wrapped around it whilst the skin repaired. But after he removes it, the wound is obvious - the angry purpling of the bite has faded, now that it has been cleaned of foreign venom, it’s only slightly darker and will fade completely in a few hours, especially if Archie goes hunting. It’s a shallow wound, will barely scar. Frankly, Jasper’s given him more impressive marks in bed.

But Jasper doesn’t even stop the horror from rolling off him at the sight of it.

“Your turn,” Archie says in a voice that brooks no arguments, trying to squash the irritation down. It’s been a long time since Jasper’s been this… shaken up over anything, and it’s easier to pretend that it’s him being dramatic over Archie’s bite mark right now.

Jasper nods, and gets on his knees to lean forward.

It looks exactly like Archie’s visions showed him. Worse, actually, because this is real life.

The fissure runs down his back, parallel to his spine, from where his neck and shoulder meet, to his waist. The flesh has split like a geode, and Archie can see all the petrified fat and muscle right down to the bone, with an eerie golden sheen over it all. The edges are purple-black from the foreign venom, almost blistered. In contrast, the bite mark on the back of his neck looks benign, even though it should scare him more.

The whole thing makes him feel sick and frankly, Archie doesn’t feel even a tiny bit capable of dealing with this. He would give anything to have Rose or Carlisle here to patch Jasper up, whilst he flirted and made jokes to distract him.

But Jasper wouldn’t trust them. He might respect Carlisle, and love Rose, but when it comes down to the meat of it, he doesn’t trust them like he trusts Archie.

“Don’t be mad,” Jasper says in that same hoarse, flat voice. “Please don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad,” Archie replies, and it’s not totally a lie. He’s panicking internally, he’s still annoyed and frustrated, but he’s not angry.

Jasper lets out a sound that’s somewhere between a groan and a whine, and that pushes Archie into action - Jasper’s in pain and he’s sitting here navel-gazing.

“Come and lie on the bed, and we’ll clean this up. I promise I won’t make any moves on you,” Archie tugs him to his feet, his lame attempt at a joke falling flat. Jasper limps after him, looking miserable.

The groan Jasper lets out as he lies face-down on the bed is made uglier by the way the wound pulls and shifts as he moves. Archie’s not one with a weak stomach, but knowing that mess is attached to the person he loves most in the world… it’s hard to look at.

He almost understands why Edward’s so fixated on keeping Bella safe. If Jasper were as vulnerable as Bella…

There’s no one else to help them, so it has to be Archie.

The bag from the convenience store is on the nightstand; salt, a bottle of cheap vodka, and a tube of aloe vera. It was a goddamn crude kit; Carlisle would be horrified at the use of vodka. Actually, he’d be horrified by this whole set-up. In a perfect world, they’d be back at the Cullens and Archie would be allowed to do this properly.

But they aren’t and he can’t.

Archie had honestly never asked Jasper how they discovered flammable fluids could purge out foreign venom, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know -the vodka would draw out any venom that stuck to the open wound, since foreign venom gained a nearly honey-like stickiness to it after a short time. The inability to purge it successfully was nearly always what caused scarring. Salt worked to purge the rest of the foreign material out of it, and aloe vera kick-started their cells healing again.

It’s not human blood; human blood would do the heavy lifting if they used that, but both of them know that it’s a slippery slope, and one that is best left alone for many reasons. The least of all is the fragile alliance they’ve formed with the Pack. Archie feels like they wouldn’t take kindly to them stealing blood from the hospital, even for injury treatment, so he didn’t even suggest it.

Carlisle would adore to discuss all of this in great detail - he’s been fixated on vampire healing principles for years. Archie should suggest it to Jasper as a holiday gift for next year. Hell, one page of notes would keep Carlisle and Eleazer occupied for days.

The worst part of treating Jasper, Archie decides as he very quickly douses Jasper’s back in salt and alcohol, is the fact that Jasper stays silent. Protesting the pain, even the smallest noise, is a sign of weakness. The only indication of the agony that he’s in is the tightening of his back and arm muscles.

So Archie talks. Everything spills out, all the inane shit that goes through his head - that he’s still disappointed that Bella didn't want to go to senior prom because the dress he had in mind would have been a showstopper, and no he wasn’t going to use it for her wedding dress because that dress has been drawn and cut for a while now.

He complains about the fight, that the wolves blocked his visions and there were one or two half-visions that looked like they spelt doom but nothing came to pass so now he’s reconsidering the accuracy. Or was the fact the wolves are unknowable affecting the outcome?

He’ll have fun debating that one with Edward at some point.

Archie isn’t sure when he runs out of easy words to say, but it does happen as he watches the foreign venom burn out of the fissure, and the room is silent. The only real communication they have is Archie’s hand rubbing Jasper’s shoulder soothingly; the only form of reassurance that he can offer right now. Too many things need to be said. Even more need to not be said.

So, they sit in silence. When the wounds look clear, Archie carefully helps Jasper lie back on the bed. It’ll take a while for them to heal, and it’s draining - Jasper told him that years ago. He’ll need to hunt immediately after this. Jasper lies back with a sigh, a breath released now that the worst of the pain has been dealt with, and closes his eyes. Archie takes up his spot in the rancid-looking armchair, hugging his knees to his chest, and waits.

Jasper breaks the silence after a couple of hours.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He sounds clearer, better, and it’s a tangible relief. Archie immediately crawls onto the bed, motioning for Jasper to lean forward so he can check his back. The fissure already looks so much better; the bite too has lightened, but both are going to leave a nasty scar.

“You still need to hunt,” Archie informs him, absently pressing a kiss to Jasper’s shoulder blade before settling Jasper back against the pillows.

He’s delicious and it doesn’t matter how many years pass, Archie still gets butterflies looking at him. Shirtless and in worn out jeans really is his very best look. If this were any other moment, just a quick getaway for some privacy…

But it isn’t.

“Talk to me,” Jasper said insistently, his hand reaching up to cup Archie’s cheek. “I know you’re still mad.”

“It was a stupid fucking risk,” Archie says precisely, but without the vehemence he had earlier. “I had everything under control. One bite is not the end of the world.”

“It is to me,” Jasper said simply. “When it’s you.”

Archie closed his eyes to drag up some patience. “Jasper. One bite verses this,” he waved his hand over him. “You were mauled. It was opportunistic and you could have gotten killed.” His voice rises and he has to stop himself, keep his temper. It’s the fear of what could have happened that makes him angry, he knows that. “I have seen you get hurt so many times over the years… so many near misses, so many times you’ve been so close to not coming back, not being there, that the fact you take those risks…”

He closes his eyes for a moment to compose himself, and instinctively lies next to Jasper, curled to rest his head on Jasper’s shoulder. It brings back memories, the scent of Jasper’s skin (the same leather-sun-wood he’s known for decades, but tinged with the venom and alcohol that leaves him uneasy) not quite soothing Archie’s anxiety. He remembers the visions where Jasper was too far gone to fight but he still went into battle. How many times did he nearly lose his head, did he nearly get overrun by enemy soldiers desperate to prove themselves by bringing down the Major of Monterrey?

How many times did Archie watch everything he ever wanted fade away for a second, because Jasper took a stupid fucking risk? And he was certain those days were over so many times - when they met; Ohio in ’49; Calgary is ’76; New Hampshire in ’81, and now Forks. It just never stops; it’s always going to linger, that idea that Jasper is never going to be safe, never going to be protected.

“If you’d been able to see it, would you have stopped me?” Jasper asks softly, one arm wrapping around Archie.

“Duh.” He’s tracing the scars on Jasper’s chest now, scars he knows so well he could draw them with his eyes closed - an absent gesture that calms him. “You never would have noticed.”

“Exactly.” Jasper waits for Archie to acknowledge his point, but he doesn’t look up. “I saw what was happening and I stopped it. The same way you would have for me.”

“But you were…” Archie scrunches his eyes up and turns away. “I would have been okay. One bite is nothing compared to all of this!”

Maybe this will turn into a proper argument. They haven’t had one since Calgary. Maybe they’re due for one.

“Come back,” Jasper says, and he sounds so tired that Archie rolls back over reflexively, but sprawled half-across Jasper’s chest this time, staring up into Jasper’s black eyes.

“I’ve seen arm bites go terribly, terribly wrong,” Jasper said in that low voice that he used just for Archie’s ears; intimate and almost dark. “You’ve seen Peter’s scars; that’s one of the better outcomes from a bad bite. And there is no part of me I wouldn’t sacrifice to make sure you aren’t the one with a mutilated arm - if we managed to save your arm at all. That newborn wasn’t going to just bite you; he was prepared to take his pound of flesh, and I…

“The injuries I’ve seen on the battlefield… Arch, I know what our venom can do to vampire skin. I’ve seen it go half necrotic, I’ve seen it eat through flesh until you just have to amputate at the shoulder. Neither Maria or I ever figured out why that happened to some bites. Only that it did and there was nothing we could do. It might just be a bite, but I couldn’t risk it. I wouldn’t risk anything about you, ever.”

Archie leads out a huff of breath and Jasper chuckles, brushing his hair from his face.

“I’m not gonna lie to you, it got away from me for a moment,” Jasper continued, his hand cupping Archie’s face again. “But I knew you were there and you had my back and that everything was going to be okay as long as you were.”

“You know that it’s the same for me, right? That it’s only going to be okay for me if you are?” Archie’s contemplating kissing him right now, but not if that’s going to interrupt this talk so that they have to finish it later. “I need you to… I need you to be selfish and be safe. Every time I think it’s gonna be okay and we don’t have to worry about dying any more, something changes and I’m tired, Jas. I’m so, so tired.”

Jasper ghosts a kiss over Archie’s cheek, and it’s not enough. “I’m never going to apologise for protecting you, and I’m never going to stop making sure you’re okay,” Jasper murmured, frowning as he shifted on the bed to redistribute their weight. “But I swear I will always come back to you, okay? When it’s our time, we’ll go together.”

Archie nods, and that’s when Jasper surprises him by pulling him flush and kissing him hard. It’s the kind of kiss that is always a precursor for more, especially if Jasper’s hand on his belt is any indication of how the rest of the night is going to go.

And he’s okay with that, as long as Jasper doesn’t mess up his back any worse.

Tomorrow, he’s going to have to check in with their family, reassure them that everything is okay, and drag Jasper home and pretend they just ran off to fuck in the woods and everything is fine. There were no grievous bodily wounds tended to in a rank little highway motel, there were no meltdowns.

But right now, he’s going to take this kiss, and the next one, and just be here and now, with the battle over and won and everyone in one piece. He’s going to get his boy naked and have one of those nights they don’t get to have very often in a family of seven where they don’t have to be quiet or subtle or keep one ear out for potential interruptions.

And he’s going to turn those words over in his mind - “When it’s our time, we’ll go together” - warm and safe, until he can trust and believe that they aren’t just a promise, but their future.

[athingthatwantsvirginia]

Out of Nora Ephron

PART SEVENTEEN OF THE DO YOU SEE HER FACE? SERIES

Pairing: Jess Mariano x Original Character (Ella Stevens)

Warnings: mentions of parent death and family issues, one mention of vomit, we’ve made it to the swan episode my dudes, plentiful pop culture references

Word Count: 5.2K

Summary: In which Jess gets beaked in the eye and miscommunications follow.

Despite the chilly breeze, red blossoms lined the streets of Stars Hollow. Town square was fragrant and sweet, and Ella would have been lying if she said it didn’t lift her spirits. Though she wasn’t one to go all out for holidays, she wore heart-shaped earrings and a pinkish color on her lips. Valentine’s was not especially important in Stars Hollow, considering how many other times per year there was a celebration, but it received an adequate amount of fanfare. Her skin was perfumed with a gardenia spray her aunt had given her, and there was a slight skip in her step. It made her feel almost silly, to be excited for such a holiday. And she knew Jess wouldn’t care about it. She wasn’t expecting anything. But it was nice to for once not be lonely on Valentine’s.

She waltzed into the diner, trying to hide the smile which played on her lips. Miss Patty was seated at the table by the door, and called to Ella before she even had a chance to hang up her coat and bag. Glancing behind the counter, she found both Luke and Jess to be working reasonably well together, and decided they could spend a couple more minutes without her help. After school, she’d stayed behind to help her art teacher hang some of her works for the open gallery they were having on Friday night. Late was late, no matter by how long. And she’d told Jess to explain it to Luke. The diner was rarely busy at three in the afternoon on a Wednesday anyway. She wasn’t sweating it as she might have in the past.

“Hi, Patty,” she said, leaning down to let the woman kiss her cheek. Ella didn’t even mind the red kiss-mark she knew would be standing out on her freckled skin. Fiddling with her necklace, she sat down across from Miss Patty.

Patty smiled widely at the girl. “Hello, darling, how are you? How’s that man of yours?”

Blushing, Ella stole a glance at Jess, who was ringing up a customer. She wanted to roll her eyes at herself. “Fine. Everything’s fine. What about you? You’ve gotta have some fish on a hook for tonight? That’s what my grandma used to say.”

“You truly learned from the best,” Patty laughed, gesturing with her arm, draped in dark red fabric. “Oh, I do. José and I have some reservations. And then I’ll have him for dessert.”

Hiding her face in her hands, Ella chuckled. If they were in the dance studio, she wouldn’t have felt so naked. But the diner? There was some strange instinct in her to keep a semblance of professionalism, even though most of the townspeople had bore witness to her vomiting down her front at the summer carnival when she was three. Old habits die hard.

Raising her head to Miss Patty again, she wished her cheeks would cool. “Well, I hope you have a nice night. But, I’m off to sweep those chimneys now. Just let me know if you need me to fill in at all for the spring recitals.”

Patty nodded, offering the girl one last smile, and Ella made to leave. “You make sure Jess treats you tonight. All the keepers do.”

Saying nothing else, Ella smiled back and was still giggling when she went behind the counter. Tying her apron around her hips, she greeted Luke and Jess with a nod of her head. Immediately, Luke furrowed his brows at her.

“What’s got you so happy?” he asked.

She snorted a laugh. “I don’t know. What’s with your Fred Mertz impression?”

“Who?” Luke looked to her blankly.

“I Love Lucy,” Jess chimed in, refilling mugs of coffee.

Ella smirked at Jess, knowing about his odd love of old black-and-white TV. Then, she turned back to her boss. “Don’t you have a lady friend? I figured you’d be at least a little more chipper.”

Luke grimaced. “Don’t call Nicole my lady friend.”

She raised her hands in mock surrender. “Fine. White flag. Continue with the curmudgeonry.”

Only rolling his eyes, Luke stepped around her to go take some orders. Sometimes he wondered how he didn’t see the relationship between Ella and his nephew brewing earlier. When Ella came back out from the back, her hands freshly washed, Jess laced an arm around her waist and pressed a chaste kiss to her forehead. Then, he licked his thumb and wiped Miss Patty’s red lipstick off her cheek.

Ella scrunched up her nose and groaned playfully. “More Jess spit.”

Jess smirked. “Would you rather Luke ream you for not looking work-appropriate?”

Scoffing, she turned and leaned back against the counter so she could face him. “Wow, my hero,” she deadpanned.

“I got you something,” he said, his smile turning more genuine.

“For a Hallmark holiday?” she asked, confusion painting her face, though a smirk threatened to cross her lips.

He rolled his eyes. “You’d be surprised, Daria. The lake after work?”

“You have no concept of weather. It’s gonna be freezing,” she said.

“I like to live dangerously. Haven’t you heard?”

“Whatever, James Dean. Sounds like a plan. I got you something too.”

.   .   .

Sitting cross-legged, Ella shivered. She certainly appreciated the poetic return to the spot where they’d decided to try going out, but it was still a Connecticut February. Their breath came out in whitish clouds. Icy breezes blew by them, smelling clean and fresh and cold. She heard geese fly overhead, and almost laughed. Shouldn’t they be south? The light had long since waned to blue darkness, but the moonlight reflected off the water and onto their faces. Ella’s mind wandered to the schools of fish below, the imagined mermaids. The taste of apple pastries, from a basket made by Miss Patty, filled her mouth, and smiled. Jess’s voice brought her back to her current reality, when they sat shoulder-to-shoulder, fingers entwined.

“Where’d you go, Stevens?” he asked, watching her blink the fantasy from her eyes.

Clearing her throat, she looked over at him and sniffed. “The past. Back when we weren’t developing hypothermia.”

He rolled his eyes. “What a talent for exaggeration.”

She snorted a laugh, then reached over to rummage through her shoulder bag. “Alright, jackass, let’s end the suspense, shall we?”

Smirking, he watched as she turned back around, a book in her hands. It was hardly a surprise, but his expression turned fond as he took it from her. He recognized the cover: Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac.

“I can’t believe you don’t have this one,” she said, gesturing to the book. “Given that your Jack Kerouac fetish pretty much equals my Stevie Nicks fetish. I think you should look inside.”

“Oh, should I?” he teased, eyebrows raised.

“I have a hunch that you should.”

Chuckling, he opened up the cover, and found a chunk of her messy cursive, dark ink against the weathered yellow page.

Something else for my James Dean to sulk with.

And below, he found a few poems, which he recognized as Dickinson from the many long dashes. He furrowed his brows slightly, and tilted his head at her in askance.

“From Final Harvest. They’re the ones you put notes beside, conceding that I was right about Emily Dickinson,” she explained, smile wide.

Jess scoffed. “A gentle reminder of your superior tastes?”

She shook her head. “No, just the ones that make me think of you now.”

His heart started to beat faster against his ribs, and he swallowed down the feelings which rose in his throat. Before she could notice his scarlet blush in the dim light, he put a hand to her cheek and kissed her softly.

“Thank you,” he whispered when he pulled away.

“You’re welcome, Jess,” she replied, tucking a strand of hair which had fallen from her low bun behind her ear. A tiny smile on her face, she fiddled with one of her heart earrings.

He cleared his throat in the comfortable silence, reaching a hand in the inside pocket of his jacket. Averting his gaze, he handed her a modest set of charcoals, bought from the arts store three days earlier. In spite of himself, he felt nerves build up within him. He didn’t see his gift standing up to hers at all.

A wide grin blossomed on her face, taking them from him gently, as though they were fragile. “Jess, this is fucking awesome! I’ve never had charcoals before!”

He shrugged humbly, a small smirk on his face. “I just figured...those might smudge a little better than your regular pencils. Or...not smudge? Shade? I don’t really know the names but-”

Placing a cold hand on the back of his neck, she effectively cut him off. She bit back a laugh; it was still rare to see him flustered. “Jess. I love them. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Kissing, they smiled against each other’s lips, and pulled away laughing.

Ella smiled down at the charcoals again. “I can make my drawings even scarier now.”

“That’s the goal, huh?” he asked.

“Always.”

“Will I get to see some horror movie stuff at the gallery walk on Friday or did the school censor you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No, they let me have my artistic freedom.”

“Good. I can’t wait to see.”

“Don’t get your hopes up, Mariano.”

“Too late,” he smirked, kissing her again. Just as the kiss deepened, a shiver rolled through her and she pulled away, eager to make out in the comfort of her own bedroom.

“C’mon, let’s go someplace above freezing. Look at us, right out of a Nora Ephron movie,” Ella teased as she stood up, holding a hand out to him.

He rolled his eyes, scoffing self-consciously as he grabbed her hand. “I never should’ve let that slip.”

“Can’t turn back now, Mariano.”

.   .   .

The key on her necklace was cold against her flushed skin. Fluorescent lights flickered above her, as she watched family and friends crowded around the works in the hallway. All of a sudden, she wished she could be serving coffee at the diner, comfortable in her apron. Instead, she stood before three of her paintings, and two of her drawings. They weren’t anything to write home about, and she was acutely aware of it. Her palms were sweating, and she was lost in her own thoughts when the art teacher, Ms. Menken, came up next to her. She was a tall, kind woman with black spiral curls and large brown eyes. Ella had been in her class all four years of high school, sometimes ate lunch in her room, and spent every spare moment she had working on her projects. It was her hiding place, her safe space, during school hours. She was never as comfortable at school as she was in the diner, not even in the art room, but it was a haven of sorts.

“Have they shown up yet?” Ms. Menken asked, dressed in all paisley and jewel tones. She looked like she would fit in much better in San Francisco.

Ella shook her head, leaning back against the white cinderblock wall. “No. I mean...my dad and Fiona...who knows? She said she wanted to ‘support me.’ And Adam could probably take it or leave it. My boyfriend should be here soon, though.”

Ms. Menken nodded, a doubtful glint in her eye. “Right. Mr. Mariano.”

Sighing, Ella ran a hand through her hair. “He’s a good person.”

A few more suspicious words were exchanged before Ms. Menken went on her way, Ella insisting she go mingle with the students whose families had already arrived. Jess was hardly a superstar among the Stars Hollow High faculty and staff, even the cooler members. Again, she stood alone, biting at her nails and looking over her shoulder at the artworks. Her favorite was a painting of a ghost, adorned with hydrangeas. It was the only one she’d wanted to put up, but Ms. Menken had encouraged her to flesh out the display a bit. By her watch’s time, it was half past seven when her father, Fiona, and Adam walked through the big swinging door. She couldn’t hide the look of surprise on her face. The show was set to be over at eight, and there was still no sign of Jess.

He’d seemed so excited to come, promised he’d show by half past six, during his break from the diner. She’d stood. She’d waited for Jess. And soon she felt silly, angry at herself for wanting him to see it. To be proud of her. Ella sighed as her family approached. At least they had come. Maybe they would feel like enough, no matter how much Jess was the only person she truly wanted there.

“Ellie,” her father said, nodding slightly. He pulled her in for a rigid hug, which she reciprocated coldly.

Fiona’s hug was far more affectionate, longer, with an added kiss on the cheek. It made Ella want to grimace, but she managed a smile at the woman, her new stepmother who was always trying so hard. Over the course of the last month, Ella had been attempting to make an effort with her, no matter how unpleasant it was.

Adam had already wandered off down the hall, to take a look at the array of amateur art. He squinted at the abstract pieces through his thick glasses, analytical as ever. With Noah off to get a degree in history, and Ella probably bound for something humble in the humanities, Adam was the only Stevens sibling destined to make any real money. He was the one with the mathematical brain and boundless potential; he could end up as anything from an accountant to a rocket scientist.

“Thanks for coming, guys,” she said, swallowing down the storm of emotions raging on the sight of their arrival.

“We wouldn’t miss it, Ella,” Fiona said, beaming. The woman stepped back to view the paintings and drawings hanging on the wall. Each had her trademark mixture of flora and horror, and Ella could practically see Fiona fighting off her look of appall. She was the kind of woman who never wanted to watch sad movies, never spoke on taboo subjects, never faced a state of balanced reality.

Her father stood quietly, his hands in his pockets, saying nothing. But the look in his eyes was telling. Ella knew it hadn’t been his idea to come. But she thought she saw the tiniest bit of pride on his face. In all her life, she thought she’d never known exactly what her father was thinking. And probably never would.

Five minutes of awkward conversation passed slowly, Ella’s eyes flitting to the door every so often. Eventually, Jess blew in, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans and his gaze trained on the floor. A relieved smile crossed Ella’s face, but it fell instantly when he approached and lifted his head to her. His left eye was bruised deep purples and blues, scabbed at the edges.

“Hi,” he said flatly as he came closer to her, gaze roaming over her work. “Jesus, Stevens, these are...amazing.”

“Young man,” Ella’s father began, dark brows furrowing, “what exactly happened with your face?”

“It looks terrible,” Fiona observed, disgust flashing across her features.

Jess shrugged, nonchalant, and only went back to the art. Had her parents not been there, he would’ve been able to express what he felt. How seeing her paintings, alive with color, and her drawings, dark with the pain she felt, brightened up his shitty day so instantly. But there were too many eyes on him, his tongue tied with sheepishness. And he certainly didn’t want to talk about what had happened to his eye.

Ella huffed out a breath in exasperation, waiting for an answer, but it never came. Her father took a step forward, a face she recognized. And the last thing she wanted was for him to make a scene at the show. Everyone already talked about her dead mother, she didn’t need them to know about her hothead father too. She didn’t care what they thought, but she certainly didn’t want to be the subject of their speculation. Instead, she put herself between her father and her boyfriend. She flashed a plastic smile at her father and Fiona, dragging Jess down the hall and into the art room by the sleeve of his jean jacket.

“An accident at the diner today. Nothing major!” she called, hoping they bought it. “Back in one second!”

Luckily, there was no one else in the art room. Only the eyes of the figures painted across the walls, papers lining every available surface. She pulled him in by the first table, where she usually sat and worked. Dried paint covered all inches of the light, worn wood.

“What the hell?” she demanded, arms crossed over her black floral dress. The one she’d put on special. Still casual enough for school, but dressy nonetheless. And she’d worn her good red lipstick. No matter how nervous she was about showing off her work, she’d still had some sort of foolish excitement swelling inside her.

Jess sighed heavily. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Oh, you don’t?” she asked, eyebrows raised angrily.

He refused to look her in the eye. “No, I don’t. Look, I’ve already had a lousy day-”

“Really? So have I. I’ve been waiting. You said you’d be here by six-thirty,” she interrupted.

Running a hand over his mouth, Jess shook his head softly. “Elle, I’m sorry. Something came up. But can’t I just go back out there? I didn’t get to-”

“No.”

“No?”

“Jess,” she said, dropping her eyes to her boots, “my dad isn’t gonna get off your back with your eye like that. He’s gonna end up screaming, you’ll end up screaming back, and I don’t think either of us wants to give all the other families free dinner theater.”

Jaw set tightly, he crossed his own arms, mirroring her defensive stance. “You want me to go?”

“Unless you tell me what happened.”

“Didn’t realize you needed to know every detail of my day, Nancy Drew,” he snapped.

She shook her head. “Jesus, Jess. That looks like it hurts. Now’s not the time for that Holden Caulfield bullshit. I’m your girlfriend. Just tell me.”

He was silent, eyes narrowed in frustration.

“Fine. Fuck it. Just go,” she yelled, gesturing in annoyance. Her cheeks were flushed red, and a crease formed between her brows. Fire burned in her hazel eyes. “I was waiting for you, Jess.”

And with that, she stormed out the door. Jess stood with his hands in his pockets, face drawn in shame and dejection.

.   .   .

Instead of biting her thumbnail, an attempt to ward off old habits, she chewed at the eraser of her pencil. Jess was on dish duty, but there was a lull in the customers around mid-morning and she knew he would reappear in the front soon enough. Saturday was danish day, but they were all gone by ten. Rory and Lorelai had just popped in with armfulls of shopping bags. Ella sketched mindlessly as she made conversation with the two of them, pointedly ignoring most of the business around her. Even Luke, not known for his emotional intelligence, could sense the tension in the air. Her page was covered with vampire bats and women with bites on their necks. She’d caught a midnight showing of The Lost Boys the night before.

“So, Bender’s not talking?” Lorelai asked, commiserating.

Sighing through her nose angrily, Ella nodded. “Apparently, I’m just not worthy of such information from Mr. Hyde.”

“Well, maybe it’s finally time for our Thelma and Louise bit?” Rory offered, sipping from her steaming mug.

Ella tried to smile weakly. “I wish. But I’m working a double today.”

Lorelai faked a gag. “My condolences.”

“Damn the man,” Ella said, shaking her head tiredly.

Soon, Rory and Lorelai were back to their conversation of weekend plans and left with final sympathetic looks at her. Ella went on drawing, but eventually the tip of her pencil broke off with the intensity of her work. Sighing heavily, she tossed the pencil behind her and snapped the sketchbook shut.

“Careful, Mickey Mantle. You’ll take someone’s eye out,” Jess snapped as he came around behind her, grabbing his book and sitting on his stool.

She groaned under her breath. “Shove it, jackass.”

“Eloquent.”

Rolling her eyes, Ella crossed her arms over her chest and turned to face him. “Right back at ya. What a chatty fucking Kathy.”

At that moment, Luke stepped in, having overheard snippets of the interaction warily as he helped a customer check out. His breathing was huffy as he spoke to them, hands on his hips.

“Alright, Ella, on break. Now.”

Chewing on her bottom lip, she unlaced her apron and threw it over the hook in the doorway of the kitchen. “Okay. Fine. Maybe talk some sense into Jake LaMotta, formerly known as your nephew!”

“LaMotta?” Luke asked, but Ella was already donning her coat and bag.

Jess rolled his eyes, not looking up from his book. “Raging Bull.”

Luke muttered something under his breath, then grabbed Jess by the collar and pulled him into the stock room. “Alright, Petey the Dog, when did you get in a fight with Dean?”

.   .   .

Water sloshed against the sides of the boat as Jess and Luke floated along Larson’s Lake. Lying in wait for the swan which had beaked him in the eye a night earlier, Jess held a ladle tight in his hand. The air smelled sickly sweet with the early-blooming flowers. The last couple days had gotten above freezing, and the flowers were making a premature appearance. A cold front would roll in soon enough, and the flora would die all over again. In the back of his mind, Jess thought it would be something Ella would read a poem about, draw a picture of.

“So, how’d Jake react to your eye last night?” Luke asked, breaking the silence.

Jess sighed. “Not great, Doctor Phil.”

“Guess it wasn’t so good before, anyway.”

“She told him some accident happened at the diner. I don’t know.” Jess shrugged, gaze roaming over the greenish water.

Nodding, Luke still didn’t look away from his nephew. “You know shutting her out isn’t gonna help, right?”

Jess said nothing, a scowl twisting his features.

But still, Luke went on. “Keeping things from her is pointless. It’s only gonna drive her away.”

“Didn’t wanna talk.”

Luke frowned at Jess’s flat tone of voice. “Look, when you’re with Ella, it’s all the way. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but she can hold a grudge like it’s her job.”

Snorting bitterly, Jess still didn’t look over.

“With this girl, it’s all or nothing, do or die. Hiding things will get you nowhere,” Luke continued. “And she doesn’t need you. She picked you.”

Jess scoffed in exasperation. “God knows why.”

“She knows. That’s all that matters,” Luke said. “If you really want her, you’ll swallow your pride.”

.   .   .

She had to admit, the charcoals were wonderful, no matter how pissed she was at Jess. Shadowy figures covered the pages of her sketchbook, black smudges littering her small desk. Lavender candles perfumed her air, and she shut out the rest of the world, Lou Reed crooning through the speakers of her record player. Her hair was damp from a shower after her shift, fragrant with shampoo. The rest of the day was only marginally better than the beginning. When she got back from break, Jess hadn’t been there, hadn’t shown up by the time she got let off. Luke wouldn’t say much, but she wasn’t surprised. Though she tried not to let her mind wander into dramatic territory, there was still fear coursing through her. Anything was possible. Maybe Jess would pick up and leave again? It had been their first big disagreement, and though it wasn’t nearly as bad as a car accident, Jess still had a loose canon history. And Ella had a history of being left in the afterboom, not just by Jess.

At first, she thought the branches of the oak tree were blowing up against her window in the late winter wind. But, as the small dinks continued to sound, she sighed, wiped her hands free of the charcoal on a wet washcloth on the desk, and got up to see what it was. It wouldn’t have been the only time a bird had come up and started pecking against the window, begging to come in. She’d only obliged once as a child before learning her lesson. Instead, she found Jess, sullenly mysterious as always as he threw pebbles from the gravel driveway against her window pane.

Biting back a chuckle, she opened the window and leaned out. “Y’know this is a one-story house. Doesn’t quite have the same Shakespearean effect as it would if I lived in an upstairs.”

He shrugged, a weak smirk on his lips. “I tried.”

A long moment passed, a crease between Ella’s brows. Wind whistled past them and she saw Jess hunch his shoulders to shield against it. With a final sigh, she stepped back from the window and called to him. “Alright, Romeo. If you’re coming in, come in.”

Nodding, he hoisted himself up and through the window. She could feel the scar on his hand when he grabbed her own for support.

“You really think I’m a Romeo?” he asked breathlessly, stalling as he shut the window.

She crossed her arms, let a little smile form. “In all reality, you’re a Mercutio, but I’ll give you Romeo tonight for the pebbles on the window bit.”

“Well, I appreciate that.”

“Don’t mention it.”

He sighed heavily, standing near the window with hands in his pockets. Eyebrows raised expectantly and arms crossed, Ella waited.

“Alright, I’ll tell you what happened,” he said, avoiding her gaze, “but only if you promise not to laugh.”

She nodded gravely, confused but not letting it show. “Sure. I promise. Cross my heart.”

Sighing again, he finally looked at her. She could see his bruise had yellowed slightly, but was still mostly just dark and angry. Jess ran a hand over his mouth once before he spoke, hesitant. “I was throwing a football with a buddy and he-”

“Jess, I’m gonna stop you right there,” she said, putting a hand up. “I thought you were gonna tell me the truth?”

“That is the truth!” he insisted, suddenly defensive.

Ella scoffed. “No, it’s not. You’d never play football. I doubt you’ve spent more than two minutes with a football in your hands your whole life. And there’s no one in Stars Hollow you’d throw a football with, and certainly no one who you’d call a ‘buddy.’”

His shoulders sagged in defeat, and he shook his head. He heard Luke’s voice in his head. Swallowing dryly, he rubbed at his mouth again.

“Alright, fine, you know Larson’s dock?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I was walking by there on my way to the art show and...I got attacked by a swan.”

She tilted her head, eyebrows knitting together. “What?”

“It hangs out there, and it saw me walking by, minding my own business and it just...beaked me! Right in the eye!” he exclaimed finally, exasperated, as though choking out the words pained him. Embarrassment crept hotly up his neck and face.

There was a long moment of silence, Ella processing the words in her head. Once, then twice, she opened her mouth to speak. She chewed on her bottom lip. Then, she took a couple slow steps toward him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Initially, he didn’t react. But, soon, his own arms laced around her waist and they held each other in a tight embrace for what felt like several minutes. His words were muffled into her shoulder when he finally spoke, and Ella couldn’t quite make them out.

She pulled away from him, hands placed gently on his shoulders. “What’s that?”

“When you saw my eye, you were the only one who didn’t immediately assume I got in a fight with Dean.” He let his gaze linger on her for a long moment, watching a wide smirk bloom on her face.

Ella shrugged. “Well, when I think Jess Mariano, I’m much more likely to think ‘lover’ than ‘fighter.’”

“You are?”

“I am,” she replied, nodding, a smile still present.

“Hey, you promised no laughing,” he told her pointedly, seeing her amused expression.

“I’m not! I’m smiling. I never promised no smiling.”

He narrowed his eyes playfully but said nothing more.

“Thank you for telling me.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, sheepish once again. “I’m really sorry for being late to the art show. I didn’t know what to do about my eye and I knew your dad might come. And I know you were so excited and I was so excited to see your name up there-”

“It’s okay, honey,” she said, shaking her head to dismiss his worry.

Tension released from his muscles, and a smirk crossed his lips. “You’re the ‘honey’ here, Stevens.”

Again, she shook her head. “Not tonight. This thing of ours is a two-way street.”

Ella brought a hand to the side of his face, careful to avoid the bruising, and he leaned into it. A crease of concern formed between her eyebrows once again.

“Must hurt like hell, Mariano,” she muttered, assessing the injury up close for the first time.

“Yeah,” he sighed, giving a teasing pout.

“Bet I could make it feel better,” she said quietly.

“Oh yeah?” he asked, eyebrows shooting up.

Ella nodded, then brought him closer to place a gingerly kiss on his purpled skin. He could barely feel it, her soft lips light as a feather. Then, she went on to kiss his forehead, his cheeks, his chin, everywhere but his mouth.

“Think you’re missing a spot,” he told her, wicked smirk returning.

“Ah, of course,” she said, then kissed him on the lips deeply.

His hands went to her hips, and she felt herself grow light headed with pleasure, sparks of joy making her entire being buzz. Each time she kissed Jess, a real kiss, she could feel it everywhere. And before meeting him, she’d thought ‘weak in the knees’ was an exaggeration. Not so. A  rustle of activity in the house, voices, a TV turning on in the living room, her brother’s door shutting, brought her back to the present moment. They separated and Jess couldn’t help the look of disappointment on his face. Ella chuckled, then went to tug on her boots.

“To be continued,” she assured him. “For now, let's go to the apartment. Rent some Empire Records perhaps?”

Jess nodded, his heart returning to a normal speed. On the way over, he’d felt nauseous with nerves. The sight of her smile was finally calming his body and his mind down. “Only if you do the dance moves with them.”

She rolled her eyes, picking up her coat from where she’d tossed over the back of her desk chair earlier. “You’re already hurt. And you and I both know my moves could be lethal.”

“I’m willing to risk it.”

[welcometotheocverse]

Ilsa and Kit and/or Kirsty and El headcanons?

Ilsa and Kit

You already know Kit would be Such A Big Brother to this kid.

Luke is their dad but also...Kit would be like “I need to be her dad” since he’s like five lol.

Considering this is Kit’s reaction to Friday Nights Dinners sometimes I can totally seeing him just being “hey Ilsa, ride with me?” for one or more of them and then calling like “oh shucks mom the tires got shredded..yeah..no it’s cool Gypsy owes me from helping out at the garage but we can’t make it” and just...ditching with her and getting ice cream or something.

Kit would call out Emily and Richard every single time they’re assholes and fight them for her.

Though he’d also hide from her the fact that they treat him pretty badly too ( esp compared to Rory ) because he wants to protect her/he’s older ;A;

Would probably spend a lot of time with her since Rory’s always busy with school stuff and would have been the sibling to babysit her when needed. 

Bonus: He’d probably be a bit jealous of her bonding to Jess so quickly and calling him her “big brother” ngl though he would get over it eventually. 

Kisty and El

I actually have a lot for these two so picking five was so  hard I ended up narrowing it to seven lol 

They run/jog together? Like for El he likes the woods and reserve and jogging helps relieve anxiety and for Kirsty because she’s athletic/dances. It can be something they share. 

They both tend to know when the other is nonverbal. El goes nonverbal the most but Kirsty also does it sometimes. 

She’d probably be able to do that thing Rory does where she talks in a way it takes the attention away/makes people not notice El is nonverbal. El ( and Rory) do the same for her when it happens to her.

RIP Christopher in that scene in El!verse where he calls El not dating/being aro “a phase” like even Rory reams him out but Kirsty existing probably leads to carnage. 

He would make sure she knows that she can rely on him too but without pushing? Like “You know you can talk to me if  you need to”/”you’re always looking out for me I wanna make sure I can look out for you too”

He, Kirsty, and Jess being friends and hiding out when Christopher comes is actually my new everything like I love it. 

Bonus: our verse’s Lorelai are kinda differnet but in a xover they’d sorta merge is how I see it? So in an xover El would have to deal with Lorelai not really getting the mental illness thing and I think that would make him and Kirsty closer because they’re in the same boat on that one. 

Send me a crossover and I’ll share 3-5 headcanons for it

[honorpmoved]

`

[stellaluna33]

Ugh. This is why I don't go on Reddit. There is SO much wrong with this, and so much that is being taken out of context.

Firstly, Rory was at that internship for TWO WEEKS before Mitchum decided she "didn't have It." Two weeks! So yeah, she was observing and fetching coffee and not "taking charge" yet, because she was a freaking INTERN who had only been there for TWO. WEEKS.

Secondly, what Mitchum offered her was not "constructive criticism." For criticism to be "constructive" it has to be something you can build on, not something meant to tear you down. Constructive criticism would have been, "Learn to speak up more. Be assertive. If you think you've got good ideas, put yourself out there," and see how she learns from there, NOT treating her first two weeks of an internship like a pass/fail exam or an elimination round of the freaking "Apprentice," where Donald Trump comes in and tells you, "You're fired!"

And these people bringing up Mitchum's "If she's tough, she'll bounce back and prove me wrong." SHE DID! She freaking DID. YES, this messed her up for a while, and yeah, maybe she shouldn't have let him get to her, but these people are talking like she never recovered! She was at the elder Gilmore's house for one summer, and then she only missed two months of the fall semester. And then she came back!!! And she came back with so much determination.

And these people claim that "Doyle agrees with Mitchum" because of one example of Doyle thinking one of her pieces was a little lackluster? Well, what about the actual editor of the actual paper Rory was interning for? The actual guy working with Rory? What did he have to say? I just watched "the Prodigal Daughter Returns," so this is fresh in my mind. He literally told her to ignore whatever Mitchum said to her, because he thought Rory was a great writer and a great worker with a lot of potential, and he'd be happy to recommend her to anyone. He told her that Mitchum pisses off a lot of people in the business. You are not supposed to come out of this thinking that Mitchum is this "great guy" who's the only one brave enough to tell Rory The Truth.

And once Rory was back at the Stamford Eagle Gazette, determinedly angling for a position (which she got!), she seemed to have taken Mitchum's criticism and MADE something constructive of it! She was being assertive, she was putting herself out there, she was speaking up with ideas without being asked first. She learned! Mitchum's mistake was not in seeing room for improvement, but in telling her that she should just give up and essentially "be a secretary."

The criticisms about the Revival... I've talked about this before, but people don't really take the time-jump into account. Rory had BEEN a successful journalist for a while, but was burnt out and stuck freelancing. The interview she bombed was for a job she didn't want, and a place that had been wooing her for some time, based on writing she'd already done. She would never have gone to an interview she WANTED that way, again, as shown in "the Prodigal Daughter Returns," where she had reams of examples of her work, multiple idea pitches, and the determination to badger the editor for a position he kept insisting he didn't HAVE. We were supposed to see Rory in the Revival, not as a "bad journalist," but as someone who is tired, worn out, and unsure of what she wanted anymore. As Jess said, she was in "a rut." We can argue that the writing could have made that clearer, but I'm pretty sure that was the intention.

Lastly, what frustrates me the most about things like this is the idea of "exposing the Truth of the Real Rory Gilmore." No. There IS no "Real Rory Gilmore." She is a fictional character! The "truth" about her character is whatever the writers WANTED her character to represent, and from there, we can argue about whether it was well-written, or whether they portrayed journalism accurately, or whether they could have written the character in a more satisfying or sympathetic way. But the fictional world exists as its own reality, and the most important question is, "What story were the writers TRYING to tell?" And I am 99% sure that "Mitchum was right" was NOT IT.

Gilmore Girls: 10 Ways Mitchum Was Right About Rory, According To Reddit

I adore Rory, but... This is... Not wrong...

@stellaluna33

[handstitchedcircuitboards]

Good Medicine

Hanzo takes the good doctor's order that he leave the medbay to let the patient rest under advisement, but that's not quite the same as following the order. 

Cross posted from AO3

               Hanzo shifts his grip on the ledge, worrying his lip ring as he plans his next move. There’s another window sill but there’s also a gap where the prefab units weren’t joined properly. The sea breeze blows up again, whipping his bangs across his eyes. He cannot wait until they’re long enough to tie back with the rest of his hair, though he supposes he’s lucky he didn’t lose the top of his skull when that lock was shorn short by a stray bullet. He still wishes he hadn’t forgotten to borrow a few bobby pins from Hana.

               He decides on the gap in favor of the window sill. There shouldn’t be anybody in that hallway to see him, but the risk isn’t worth it. He wedges his fingers in the gap, replacing his hand on the ledge for his foot, and then shoves off. Despite the sheer drop into the ocean below, he’s as confident on the outside of the building as he is walking inside it, and it doesn’t take him long to traverse the entire hangar to reach the outside of the medbay. It is an older section of the building, and the windows have a lip running around all four sides, perfect for standing on. He counts off windows under his breath until he reaches the right one.

               He reaches down and pulls up on the top of the lower sash, and it slides up almost noiselessly. He slips inside, taking a moment to survey the dark room. Medical equipment lines the walls, most of it off. A few plastic chairs (criminally uncomfortable) line the wall. The room is dominated by a single bed. Standard hospital supply, and currently occupied. Hanzo turns to retrieve the piece of paper he’d wedged into the window that afternoon to keep it from locking properly and stuffs it in his pocket, shutting the window after. He walks to the side of the bed.

              “Jesse?” he says softly. If Jesse’s asleep, he doesn’t want to wake him. He brushes his thumb across the back of Jesse’s hand.

               “’M awake,” he says. "'M watchin'."

               “Of course. You sound very alert.” Hanzo’s lips quirk as Jesse blinks up at him blearily.

               “Not fair. Angie let me have a crack at the happy bin since she locked me in here.”

               “I remember, I was there.”

              Hanzo reaches down to unbuckle his boots and then climbs into the bed with Jesse. It takes a little shuffling to get two grown men settled, and Jesse is especially uncoordinated with a full dose of painkillers in his system, but they manage. Jesse turns his head to look at Hanzo.

               “Hey, handsome,” Jesse says. “You come round here often?”

               Hanzo huffs, brushes some of Jesse’s hair out of his eyes.

               “Far too often. There’s this man, and he just won’t learn to be careful.”

               “He sounds like a handful.”

               “Yes. He’s lucky I find him charming.”

              Jesse hums, practically preening. Hanzo rolls his eyes. He knows better than to feed Jesse’s ego, but here he is doing it again. Maybe a little ego stroking is acceptable when he’s in the medbay.

               “You should get some rest.”

               “I’ve been restin’, I was laid up all day.”

               It’s hardly rest what Jesse’s been doing. He’d taken a piece of shrapnel in the meat of his thigh nine hours ago when things got hot on what was supposed to be some light recon in Turkey. He’d technically come off the Orca under his own power, but he was leaning pretty heavily on Lucio and Morrison, of all people. That right there told Hanzo how much pain he’d been in, if he’d let Morrison help him with anything. Dr. Ziegler had been furious, and for a brief moment Hanzo had thought she’d kill Jesse herself. She’d stared him onto the stretcher and then wheeled him into the medbay, muttering the whole way.

               The wound, while not superficial, wasn’t beyond a commercial biotic patch once Dr. Ziegler deemed it clean. She’d demanded Jesse stay in the medbay to monitor for inflection, though that struck Hanzo as more punitive than curative. She’d chased Hanzo out at precisely 2100, but, well, it hadn’t taken.   It hadn’t been a particularly close call, but Hanzo wasn’t inclined to let Jesse out of his sight just yet.

               “Sleep,” Hanzo says. Jesse sighs and closes his eyes. He’s still for a moment, but he starts to fidget and turn.

               “Bed sucks,” Jesse grumbles.

               “If you hadn’t been so stubborn, we could be sleeping in your bed.”

               “Could be your bed.”

               “No, yours, because you’re not bleeding on my sheets.”

               “Aw, I bet not. Let’s try and go for it. It’s prolly—”

               Hanzo’s hand darts out to grab Jesse’s. It had been a few scant inches from picking at the bandage.

               “Do not touch that.” Dr. Zeigler really would kill Jesse if she found it even a millimeter out of place. Hanzo pulls the hand to his chest, for safekeeping. Hopefully Jesse’s high enough to have forgotten about having two hands.

              Jesse pouts at him. It’s a dirty move, but Hanzo refuses to be swayed. He closes he eyes, hoping Jesse will follow his example. Jesse mutters something Hanzo refuses to acknowledge and curls into Hanzo’s chest, tucking his head under his chin. Hanzo relinquishes the arm, wrapping his around Jesse’s shoulders instead and tugging him closer. Jesse sighs contentedly, and starts to relax.

               For all his bold talk, Hanzo doesn’t want to sleep himself. He’ll have to leave soon, Dr. Zeigler will undoubtedly check in sometime in the night. He wants to savor this quiet contentedness while he has it. The infirmary bed is cozier than his own with Jesse in it.

               ---

              Angela shuffles down the hallway towards her medbay. Luckily, there’s only one room occupied, and if Jesse possessed even a modicum of self-preservation instinct it wouldn’t be. But since he’ll undoubtedly have pulled off the biotic patch by now, she’ll have to apply a fresh one. By morning the risk will have passed, and when he ignores her advice it’ll at worst leave him with a scar, rather than sepsis.

              She presses the button for the door to Jesse’s room, and it slides open soundlessly. It wouldn’t do to have squeaky doors waking her patients. She squints into the dark, wondering if she has to bother with a light or if she can get by with the moonlight, when a sound catches her attention. Or rather, two sounds. She stares hard at the bed, and now that she’s paying attention, she can see far more than one Jesse McCree’s worth of mass in that bed, and she can hear two very distinct snores.

               Hanzo. Naturally, he’d come back. Angela has half a mind to ream him right now, but she thinks back to how frightened he’d been when Jesse walked off the Orca covered in blood, and how he’d helplessly trailed behind the stretcher all the way to medbay. Jesse had been a much better patient than usual with Hanzo making himself sick with worry in the corner.

               She creeps closer to the bed, because she still has a job to do, and pulls back the blanket. The biotic patch is exactly where she’d left it, even though it must have started to itch. Angela turns a calculating eye to Hanzo.

               She thinks he can stay after all.

[draculaurennn]

#squad for jun, padrika and lucid

dfghjk u always ask me bless y wyoc ask meme . — jun, padrika, and lucid  #squad: who's friends with who? what are the squad dynamics like? 

idk if this means are they friends w each other or friends w other ppl so ???? ill just break down both !!jun . —friends w padrika and lucid? probably not. lucid and jun have nothing in common, and lucid’s apprehension of literally anything electronic means jun would... do that weird, toxic association thing where she goes “that means you don’t like ME EITHER.” lucid’s really good and level, so i know she’d take that sort of accusation in stride, but they wouldn’t be friends at all. lucid also doesn’t have any interest in drama and childish attitudes, so she wouldn’t be willing to be around jun for very long. padrika’s more tolerable for jun, but she’s pretty, tan, thin, and athletic, and she may be dumber than a box of rocks, but i think jun would feel pretty threatened by her. which is hysterical tbh, bc their bi energy is off the charts and pad would probably actually adore jun. actual friends? jesse, lux, genji, & sombra. sombra was her first friend. they met in illegal circuits, and they bonded. sombra’s chaotic energy and tendency to play a double field means jun feels a weirdly genuine trust towards her. genji’s kind of the same for her; she has no real investment in him romantically, but he has her back at work, and that’s how he grew on her so quickly. lux is jun’s BEST friend. she didn’t like her for about half an hour, and then suddenly she was spilling her guts to her. lux makes jun feel safe, and liked, and she doesn’t ever feel like lux is lying to her. everything about her is genuine, and watching lux brighten up other ppls’ lives and take her problems in stride makes jun want to do the same. or at least try. jesse is her OTHER best friend, and love of her life. and she made it really hard for them, because he’s so damn genuine and easy going, that no matter how much she pushed against him in some weird, unkind test, he just took everything and gave her the respect she needed. he’s sunny, like lux, which is good, because jun is a gross little mushroom who really needs some sun in her life. squad dynamics! jun’s the shitty sister that doesn’t know when to quit being mean until someone’s feelings are hurt. she’s the one who tells people that no one gets to make jesse/lux/genji cry BUT her. her hot temper makes her quick to stand up for her friends, even if she’s also going to ream them verbally for being stupid. she can’t cook for you, she can’t really patch up an injury, and she wouldn’t really want to, anyway... but she’ll drag anyone’s carcass through the mud to get them out of a bad situation alive. her only mode of nice is mean, because she doesn’t seem to know how to be vulnerable, but she’ll literally die in battle for any one of them if it gets them out safe.  padrika . —friends w jun and lucid? padrika would likely be the “middle man” for these two. pad’s pretty chill; she has a short fuse, sometimes, but on a drama scale of one to ten (zero being no drama, ten being drama all the time), she’s like a 5. padrika’s sporty, but relaxed, stupid, but supportive and willing to learn. her valuable assets lie in her weird misdirection - she has no real goals, so nothing is too daunting to try once. she’d get along well with lucid because lucid would be the balance to reign her in; likewise, she’d always be willing to listen to whatever lucid had to say. she’d get along well with jun because jun’s technical skills are something padrika can admire, and padrika always has questions about anything. plus, they can horse around together.  actual friends? sera, ciri, jaskier, & geralt. sera is her closest friend. padrika considers a lot of people close, but sera is someone she can understand at a basic level. they’re monsters, after all, and no one lets them forget that. it means that every weird feeling padrika’s ever had, that she does and doesn’t know how to string together in a sentence, she knows she can tell to sera, and she hope’s it’s the same in return. sera’s life seems to have a lot more purpose and goal-orientation than padrika’s, so she’s fixated on helping the vampire find what she needs to know. ciri she adores about as much. she’s a person she can spar with, joke with, talk honestly with, get into trouble with... bully geralt with. it’s nice. it’s nice to feel like a person around someone. padrika didn’t really know what that was until sera and ciri. jaskier’s fucking trouble, and she loves that. his bardic nature works well with padrika’s innate need to sing, but his penchant for getting into trouble is not something she shares with him (anymore). still, he’s fun to horse around with and be noisy with. he’s never boring, so she’s never bored. padrika adores geralt. she doesn’t like to tell him; she’s no good at sentiments and she likes to tell him not to let things go to his head. but he’s strangely alone for a person so surrounded by love and support, and padrika doesn’t... get that. that wasn’t a thing she grew up with, so support is all she can really give him. even if she’s bad at it, and even if it’s just her standing around, or punching things. she knows she’s no beautiful, fabulous sorceress with destiny tied to her name. she also knows she’d wait forever from below the waters, if she had to. it’s not something she likes to think about, though. squad dynamics! padrika’s your drunk bi sorority sister who only joined because of liquor and scholarship money. she’s not responsible, calm, or smart enough to be your mom, but if you need bail money at 3am and to ask her not to tell mom, she’s your girl. padrika’s dedication is steadfast, and she knows she doesn’t bring much to the table, and she’s not really important like others, but she’ll give everything she possibly can. she’s hard to shake off, and she takes a lot of shit, even if sometimes she does lose her temper for it. her honesty is one of the only good things about her, though. she’s there, and she will be. lucid . —friends w jun and padrika? yes and no! there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that lucid would be able to handle jun’s attitude for more than a dose of minutes. lucid feels there’s a strong difference between sulking and being a baby (she should know), and people who only work to perseverate their misery and not try to be open or make anything better are people she just cannot work with. jun’s bratty, petty, and fabricates things people didn’t say; lucid has zero patience for that kind of attitude. she’d do well enough with padrika, though. she’s much less aggressive, but she doesn’t mind closing down a bar with someone, and she doesn’t mind talking miserable, magic binding curses.  actual friends? ria, vincent, tifa, & zack. her relationship with illyria is strange, because much like zack, it’s hinged on a motherly mindset first, and a friend mindset second. she’s protective and directive, and her first instinct is to nurture and correct before it is simply to just be a friend. it can make her answers redundant or scolding, at times, but it’s simply because she’s trying to keep everyone alive and in one piece. it takes a lot for her to put them back together. tifa’s easy and kind to speak to. they just sort of meshed, two mom friends bonding over... being mom friends. they can speak honestly and without embarassment, something lucid wasn’t used to (and sometimes still isn’t) outside of the bar and outside of three or four drinks. it’s also nice to have a friend who she knows she can speak too without meddling... they can just talk, and it’s nice to get problems out that way.lucid hated vincent when they first started working together. she thought he was rude and sulky, and that kind of attitude isn’t something she likes to be around. people who only choose to wallow... especially over one thing? it’s ridiculous, and a waste of energy. but, it turned out there were more layers than she expected there, and more similarities than differences. he’s the other side of her coin, her absolute everything, and she’d not let a day go by without him if she could avoid it. the only hard question is which one’s undying devotion is going to get which one killed for the other first. lucid likes to think that won’t happen. squad dynamics! lucid’s your kitchen witch wine mom. in the chaos of zack running headlong into fights, illyria blowing up for science, and vincent falling apart from the inside-out or outside-in (depending), lucid’s there to keep picking up the pieces with pieces of her. she’s sturdy, and she’ll listen to anything anyone has to say, but she won’t accept or tolerate useless, miserable behaviour, and she’ll let them know it. thankfully, liquor is always there to help her get through the madness and cool off. and if not liquor, then she has vincent, too. 

[kvetchlandia]

Dave Gahr     Sam Shepard and Patti Smith in Front of the Chelsea Hotel, New York City     1971

He would call me late in the night from somewhere on the road, a ghost town in Texas, a rest stop near Pittsburgh, or from Santa Fe, where he was parked in the desert, listening to the coyotes howling. But most often he would call from his place in Kentucky, on a cold, still night, when one could hear the stars breathing. Just a late-night phone call out of a blue, as startling as a canvas by Yves Klein; a blue to get lost in, a blue that might lead anywhere. I’d happily awake, stir up some Nescafé and we’d talk about anything. About the emeralds of Cortez, or the white crosses in Flanders Fields, about our kids, or the history of the Kentucky Derby. But mostly we talked about writers and their books. Latin writers. Rudy Wurlitzer. Nabokov. Bruno Schulz.

“Gogol was Ukrainian,” he once said, seemingly out of nowhere. Only not just any nowhere, but a sliver of a many-faceted nowhere that, when lifted in a certain light, became a somewhere. I’d pick up the thread, and we’d improvise into dawn, like two beat-up tenor saxophones, exchanging riffs

He sent a message from the mountains of Bolivia, where Mateo Gil was shooting “Blackthorn.” The air was thin up there in the Andes, but he navigated it fine, outlasting, and surely outriding, the younger fellows, saddling up no fewer than five different horses. He said that he would bring me back a serape, a black one with rust-colored stripes. He sang in those mountains by a bonfire, old songs written by broken men in love with their own vanishing nature. Wrapped in blankets, he slept under the stars, adrift on Magellanic Clouds.

Sam liked being on the move. He’d throw a fishing rod or an old acoustic guitar in the back seat of his truck, maybe take a dog, but for sure a notebook, and a pen, and a pile of books. He liked packing up and leaving just like that, going west. He liked getting a role that would take him somewhere he really didn’t want to be, but where he would wind up taking in its strangeness; lonely fodder for future work.

In the winter of 2012, we met up in Dublin, where he received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Trinity College. He was often embarrassed by accolades but embraced this one, coming from the same institution where Samuel Beckett walked and studied. He loved Beckett, and had a few pieces of writing, in Beckett’s own hand, framed in the kitchen, along with pictures of his kids. That day, we saw the typewriter of John Millington Synge and James Joyce’s spectacles, and, in the night, we joined musicians at Sam’s favorite local pub, the Cobblestone, on the other side of the river. As we playfully staggered across the bridge, he recited reams of Beckett off the top of his head.

Sam promised me that one day he’d show me the landscape of the Southwest, for though well-travelled, I’d not seen much of our own country. But Sam was dealt a whole other hand, stricken with a debilitating affliction. He eventually stopped picking up and leaving. From then on, I visited him, and we read and talked, but mostly we worked. Laboring over his last manuscript, he courageously summoned a reservoir of mental stamina, facing each challenge that fate apportioned him. His hand, with a crescent moon tattooed between his thumb and forefinger, rested on the table before him. The tattoo was a souvenir from our younger days, mine a lightning bolt on the left knee.

Going over a passage describing the Western landscape, he suddenly looked up and said, “I’m sorry I can’t take you there.” I just smiled, for somehow he had already done just that. Without a word, eyes closed, we tramped through the American desert that rolled out a carpet of many colors—saffron dust, then russet, even the color of green glass, golden greens, and then, suddenly, an almost inhuman blue. Blue sand, I said, filled with wonder. Blue everything, he said, and the songs we sang had a color of their own.

We had our routine: Awake. Prepare for the day. Have coffee, a little grub. Set to work, writing. Then a break, outside, to sit in the Adirondack chairs and look at the land. We didn’t have to talk then, and that is real friendship. Never uncomfortable with silence, which, in its welcome form, is yet an extension of conversation. We knew each other for such a long time. Our ways could not be defined or dismissed with a few words describing a careless youth. We were friends; good or bad, we were just ourselves. The passing of time did nothing but strengthen that. Challenges escalated, but we kept going and he finished his work on the manuscript. It was sitting on the table. Nothing was left unsaid. When I departed, Sam was reading Proust.

Long, slow days passed. It was a Kentucky evening filled with the darting light of fireflies, and the sound of the crickets and choruses of bullfrogs. Sam walked to his bed and lay down and went to sleep, a stoic, noble sleep. A sleep that led to an unwitnessed moment, as love surrounded him and breathed the same air. The rain fell when he took his last breath, quietly, just as he would have wished. Sam was a private man. I know something of such men. You have to let them dictate how things go, even to the end. The rain fell, obscuring tears. His children, Jesse, Walker, and Hannah, said goodbye to their father. His sisters Roxanne and Sandy said goodbye to their brother.

I was far away, standing in the rain before the sleeping lion of Lucerne, a colossal, noble, stoic lion carved from the rock of a low cliff. The rain fell, obscuring tears. I knew that I would see Sam again somewhere in the landscape of dream, but at that moment I imagined I was back in Kentucky, with the rolling fields and the creek that widens into a small river. I pictured Sam’s books lining the shelves, his boots lined against the wall, beneath the window where he would watch the horses grazing by the wooden fence. I pictured myself sitting at the kitchen table, reaching for that tattooed hand.

A long time ago, Sam sent me a letter. A long one, where he told me of a dream that he had hoped would never end. “He dreams of horses,” I told the lion. “Fix it for him, will you? Have Big Red waiting for him, a true champion. He won’t need a saddle, he won’t need anything.” I headed to the French border, a crescent moon rising in the black sky. I said goodbye to my buddy, calling to him, in the dead of night.

--Patti Smith, “My Buddy”  The New Yorker, Aug. 1, 2017

-

Sam Shepard  -  1943-2017  -  Ave atque Vale

[torrid-wind]

(I was unaware that Sam Shepard passed away a couple of days ago. However, while looking for something completely different, I came upon this beautifully written tribute written by Patti Smith. Check it out.)

My Buddy

By Patti Smith August 1, 2017

He would call me late in the night from somewhere on the road, a ghost town in Texas, a rest stop near Pittsburgh, or from Santa Fe, where he was parked in the desert, listening to the coyotes howling. But most often he would call from his place in Kentucky, on a cold, still night, when one could hear the stars breathing. Just a late-night phone call out of a blue, as startling as a canvas by Yves Klein; a blue to get lost in, a blue that might lead anywhere. I’d happily awake, stir up some Nescafé and we’d talk about anything. About the emeralds of Cortez, or the white crosses in Flanders Fields, about our kids, or the history of the Kentucky Derby. But mostly we talked about writers and their books. Latin writers. Rudy Wurlitzer. Nabokov. Bruno Schulz.

“Gogol was Ukrainian,” he once said, seemingly out of nowhere. Only not just any nowhere, but a sliver of a many-faceted nowhere that, when lifted in a certain light, became a somewhere. I’d pick up the thread, and we’d improvise into dawn, like two beat-up tenor saxophones, exchanging riffs.

He sent a message from the mountains of Bolivia, where Mateo Gil was shooting “Blackthorn.” The air was thin up there in the Andes, but he navigated it fine, outlasting, and surely outriding, the younger fellows, saddling up no fewer than five different horses. He said that he would bring me back a serape, a black one with rust-colored stripes. He sang in those mountains by a bonfire, old songs written by broken men in love with their own vanishing nature. Wrapped in blankets, he slept under the stars, adrift on Magellanic Clouds.

Sam liked being on the move. He’d throw a fishing rod or an old acoustic guitar in the back seat of his truck, maybe take a dog, but for sure a notebook, and a pen, and a pile of books. He liked packing up and leaving just like that, going west. He liked getting a role that would take him somewhere he really didn’t want to be, but where he would wind up taking in its strangeness; lonely fodder for future work.

In the winter of 2012, we met up in Dublin, where he received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Trinity College. He was often embarrassed by accolades but embraced this one, coming from the same institution where Samuel Beckett walked and studied. He loved Beckett, and had a few pieces of writing, in Beckett’s own hand, framed in the kitchen, along with pictures of his kids. That day, we saw the typewriter of John Millington Synge and James Joyce’s spectacles, and, in the night, we joined musicians at Sam’s favorite local pub, the Cobblestone, on the other side of the river. As we playfully staggered across the bridge, he recited reams of Beckett off the top of his head.

Sam promised me that one day he’d show me the landscape of the Southwest, for though well-travelled, I’d not seen much of our own country. But Sam was dealt a whole other hand, stricken with a debilitating affliction. He eventually stopped picking up and leaving. From then on, I visited him, and we read and talked, but mostly we worked. Laboring over his last manuscript, he courageously summoned a reservoir of mental stamina, facing each challenge that fate apportioned him. His hand, with a crescent moon tattooed between his thumb and forefinger, rested on the table before him. The tattoo was a souvenir from our younger days, mine a lightning bolt on the left knee.

Going over a passage describing the Western landscape, he suddenly looked up and said, “I’m sorry I can’t take you there.” I just smiled, for somehow he had already done just that. Without a word, eyes closed, we tramped through the American desert that rolled out a carpet of many colors—saffron dust, then russet, even the color of green glass, golden greens, and then, suddenly, an almost inhuman blue. Blue sand, I said, filled with wonder. Blue everything, he said, and the songs we sang had a color of their own.

We had our routine: Awake. Prepare for the day. Have coffee, a little grub. Set to work, writing. Then a break, outside, to sit in the Adirondack chairs and look at the land. We didn’t have to talk then, and that is real friendship. Never uncomfortable with silence, which, in its welcome form, is yet an extension of conversation. We knew each other for such a long time. Our ways could not be defined or dismissed with a few words describing a careless youth. We were friends; good or bad, we were just ourselves. The passing of time did nothing but strengthen that. Challenges escalated, but we kept going and he finished his work on the manuscript. It was sitting on the table. Nothing was left unsaid. When I departed, Sam was reading Proust.

Long, slow days passed. It was a Kentucky evening filled with the darting light of fireflies, and the sound of the crickets and choruses of bullfrogs. Sam walked to his bed and lay down and went to sleep, a stoic, noble sleep. A sleep that led to an unwitnessed moment, as love surrounded him and breathed the same air. The rain fell when he took his last breath, quietly, just as he would have wished. Sam was a private man. I know something of such men. You have to let them dictate how things go, even to the end. The rain fell, obscuring tears. His children, Jesse, Walker, and Hannah, said goodbye to their father. His sisters Roxanne and Sandy said goodbye to their brother.

I was far away, standing in the rain before the sleeping lion of Lucerne, a colossal, noble, stoic lion carved from the rock of a low cliff. The rain fell, obscuring tears. I knew that I would see Sam again somewhere in the landscape of dream, but at that moment I imagined I was back in Kentucky, with the rolling fields and the creek that widens into a small river. I pictured Sam’s books lining the shelves, his boots lined against the wall, beneath the window where he would watch the horses grazing by the wooden fence. I pictured myself sitting at the kitchen table, reaching for that tattooed hand.

A long time ago, Sam sent me a letter. A long one, where he told me of a dream that he had hoped would never end. “He dreams of horses,” I told the lion. “Fix it for him, will you? Have Big Red waiting for him, a true champion. He won’t need a saddle, he won’t need anything.” I headed to the French border, a crescent moon rising in the black sky. I said goodbye to my buddy, calling to him, in the dead of night.

[cyberrat]

54th Batch Of Fics: 4th Fill

Angelo Solo – Milky AU – Part 44 – same as last part! the evening goes on and on... Gabriel slowly gets into Schaefer's head :)

---

“Holy shit this hole is so good… I love getting to fuck the ones that get sent back. They get so nice and desperate…”

He is grabbing the corners of the box, head tilting back as he fucks loose hipped and without a care in the world that a bunch of guys are standing around and waiting for their turn.

They’re patient about it, too; just waiting to use the hole like they would for any other facility.

One has moved over to the side of the box to play with the cow’s cock out of simple boredom, fingertips pinching the foreskin and pulling down on it idly.

Nobody takes any notice of the sobbing coming from inside the crate, or that the cow is trying to form words, begging them for… who even knew what.

He is too far gone to really form words anyway; just instinctively sobbing and whining as he gets fucked by cock… after cock… after cock…

“Hey… can’t you put the stream on that big screen? Kinda wanna see the face…”

“No! What the fuck? Go into the observation room for that…”

“Just want to fuck a whole, if I’m being honest.”

“It’s the best part, man. You only got to pump a load out and don’t have to worry about a single thing…”

The guy rolls his eyes and grumbles something, crossing his arms. “Yeah whatever. You guys don’t know what’s good. Schaefer got the best seat in the house anyway. As always.”

.o.

“It’s always kind of funny when someone like you gets all hot and bothered for a cow.”

Schaefer’s shoulders stiffen slightly, moving up to his ears a little. He clears his throat and throws Gabriel a disgruntled look. He had been trying to dissuade him from going along this interrogation path with little success.

He seems intent on getting some answers out of him, even if he has to resort to dirty tactics.

“Someone like me?” he asks despite knowing better. He throws Gabriel a very brief glance but quickly looks out again toward the group reaming Angelo and making him slowly but surely lose his mind.

Part of Reyes reminds him of Jesse, somehow. They’re both so… cheeky and have no shame.

“The uptight types. The ones that would rather fill out a bunch of forms before they get down and dirty.”

That does make him huff, hand automatically going up to play with the top button of his collar that he has obviously closed primly.

“I do not see any harm in making sure a partner is fully consenting to any eventualities that could come up. I do acknowledge that the main opinion is that these more… racy scenarios are more ‘exciting’ or something-” here, he nods toward the observation room where one stud is changing out for another right now, “-but there is beauty and sensuality in a calm and collected encounter as well.”

“Tell that to the young, virile cow on your hands,” Reyes croons.

Schaefer can only see him from the corner of his eyes but he seems to be moving closer bit by bit.

“You know as well as I do that they want to fuck and fuck and fuck. The nastier the better. He’ll have a field day in whatever farm he’ll end up in. Probably won’t see him for a few days once you drop him off like he’s at a damn daycare.”

Gabriel is watching his reaction intently, and probably is not prepared for Schaefer to nod and relax again.

“In all honesty… I think I would be having a field day as well. I have to admit that I have been thinking of the day that Jesse will leave us both with dread and anticipation.”

“The fuck?” His response comes so deadpan, that even Schaefer has to smile, ducking his head, if only for a moment before his eyes are drawn back to the readings Angelo gives them while he is being fucked again and again, nobody paying attention to him having his orgasms and begging for mercy.

“I admit… it is selfish of me to want him here forever. His progress has simply been… absolutely astounding. The way his body and mind adapts to the changes – it is awe inspiring, really. A true natural cow. I wish I… that is… we… could spend more time with him. Study him just a little more…

But… I know that he will be very happy on a farm. He isn’t the only one of our patients that is craving for ‘the real thing’, but I believe he will really find his calling there which he doesn’t even know yet.”

“...You kind of sound like Jack, really.”

Schaefer looks to him in surprise, unsure whether he should feel pleased or disturbed. He still very much likes to think of himself as someone who is not… falling for a patient.

“Yeah. In a… really nerdy ‘stick-up-my-ass’ kinda way. But still pretty close.”

That… doesn’t make it easier to discern whether it is an insult or noth, so he just throws him a weird glance and looks back into the observation room, thoughts far away.

.o.

He’s used like an object, and Angelo knows it. There’s no thought in his head other than how many cocks might still be lined up to use him like some kind of public toilet, fucking his stretched-out hole and dumping yet another load of warm, slippery cum in his intestines.

His belly feels heavy and swollen with it though that can’t be possible… can it? He doesn’t know. It feels too hard to make himself think about it. He’s just coasting on the feeling, awkwardly spreading his knees so his thighs won’t press against his stomach any longer.

A next stud is sliding their cock in nice and easy. No resistance, no hesitation. Nobody has asked him in ages how he is doing and that’s good and fine… he’s just a hole right now. Just a hole in a box ready to be fucked and fucked and fucked.

Every now and then the pleasure in his body will crest and his face will go slack, eyes rolling into his head while he shoots his own load, insides trying to clench around whatever they have stuffed into him at the time.

He is kind of sure that it’s not always cocks… or is he? Are they all cocks or are they starting to fuck him with random objects they found standing around? The thing punch fucking him right now could be a cock… or an arm…? Or a bottle of water?

Everything gets muddied up in his overheated brain. He hasn’t struggled against his headphones in a while. A voice keeps telling him what a good cow he is in irregular intervals, shattering all his thoughts and making him relax again and again… and again…

Whoever is being fucked on the video they show him, he can’t stop watching. There’s a puddle of fluids surrounding the bottom of the crate. They’ve gotten fucked so often, their hole is obscenely swollen, looking more like a donut than anything else.

Wow… lucky.

[athingthatwantsvirginia]

In the Company of Anne Sexton

PART THREE OF THE DO YOU SEE HER FACE? SERIES

Pairing: Jess Mariano x Original Character (Ella Stevens)

Warnings: plentiful pop culture references, mentions of violence, a slow burn at its core

Word Count: 3K

Summary: After a fist-fight, Jess invites himself on a carriage ride with Ella during the Bracebridge Dinner.

Thumbing through one of her most beloved copies of Virginia Woolf, Ella sat on the steps of Stars Hollow High waiting anxiously for Lane to emerge. They walked out most every day, with Lane on her way home and Ella on her way to the diner, but Lane had informed her during lunch she would have to stop by the cheerleading coach’s room for some secret business. Ella didn’t bother asking any questions, having seen the rabid excitement in Lane’s eyes. She had a feeling she would get let in on whatever was going on soon enough. Maybe even that evening, as she, Rory, Lane, and Lorelai had their annual viewing of It’s A Wonderful Life planned. Then, possibly, Die Hard. Usually, though, they just ended up talking through Bruce Willis’ quest. Snow blanketed the ground, but had grayed in the two days since it had fallen. There had been no melt, and street sweepers had cast it off in large, rocky clumps. Ella wondered at how magical snow looked falling, and what a nuisance it became in its aftermath. Like the happiness of a new marriage and the pain of a divorce. She was just getting to one of her favorite passages in To the Lighthouse when she heard the roar of a crowd growing on the lawn before her.

Looking up with curious hazel eyes, she found a group circling two boys in the midst of a fist fight. She only needed a moment longer to identify Jess as the aggressor in the center of the swarm of teens, though the other boy was holding his own perfectly well. Without thinking, she shoved her book in her bag, slinging it over her shoulder and running over, careful not to slip on the icy patches in her black Doc Martens.

“Jess!” she called, pushing her way through the hoard of pubescent teens. Obviously, she got no response, but that wasn’t exactly the intent of the exclamation in the first place. Her feet carried her farther into the brawl before her mind could stop them, and soon enough she had Jess by the shoulders, pulling him away. “What the fuck are you doing?!”

He squirmed in her grasp, wondering who’d had the nerve to touch him. Eventually she took him around the waist and pried him away from his opponent, who was panting and bleeding from one lip. The crowd began to dissipate almost instantly, victims of a short attention span, though a few stragglers remained. Ella’s heart pounded in her chest and she felt a little sick to her stomach at the sight of the violence. Her veins buzzed with adrenaline, though she had only been involved in a small fraction of the action.

“Get off me!” Jess yelled, still not entirely sure who had grabbed him, but able to deduce it was a girl from the height and the feminine quality of the voice. When he fought though, the rest of the world usually became nothing more than a blur but the person in front of him.

When they were far enough away from the other guy and she felt mostly confident the incident was over, she finally released him, though he was larger than her and she had been hanging on by a thread anyway.

“Jesus, Jess!” she shouted when he finally turned around to look at her.

“Eleanor?” he asked, shocked to find her there.

A startling anger raged in his eyes. What concerned her more, though, was the bruise already blooming on the apple of his cheek and his bloodied knuckles. The dichotomy before her had her stomach doing flips. She’d heard plenty about this side of Jess, but had never had the misfortune of seeing it before. His hair was mussed up, and his lips were pressed in a thin line. The smirk she always found was gone, as was the joking air in his voice.

She went against her better judgement and took a step forward, eyes on his injuries.

“Back off!” Jess snapped immediately, beginning to leave. She recoiled at his volume.

But, her voice followed him up the road as he made his way for Luke’s. He hoped to sneak past his uncle without having to endure an interrogation. “I’m trying to help you, jackass! What the hell was that?!”

“Peter Smith’s an asshole, that’s what that was! Now, I suggest you run along!”

She scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest. “No, Jess, you don’t get to walk away from me! Rory just reamed you for that stunt you pulled at Doose’s! I thought you were gonna get it together for Luke!”

“Yeah, well, sorry to disappoint!” Jess roared, winded but maintaining his fury.

As she swallowed down her irritation, the redness began to drain from her face. She knew it was no use to argue with him when he was in such a fiery state. For a minute, she debated leaving, going back to find Lane as she planned. Instead, she grabbed his wrist and spoke again in a calm, resigned tone.

“Jess, stop.”

He whipped around to face her again, pulling his arm back from her grasp, hiding a wince at the throbbing pain in his raw knuckles. “Don’t touch me right now!”

Ella held her hands up in surrender instantly, though she stood firm. “Okay. I’m sorry. But you’re not gonna get past Luke like this, if that’s what you’re thinking. You’re gonna need to at least cool off a little first.”

Sighing through his nose, he stayed silent. At that moment, it was as good as a verbal concession or agreement. He was just beginning to catch his breath, his pulse thumping loudly in his ears.

“You wanna go get some ice? I’m sure the nurse has some,” she offered, and Jess felt his confusion growing at her kindness.

He shook his head, stuffing his hands in his pockets despite the pain. “No.”

“Alright. Look, I’ll go clock in. I’ll tell Luke you had some test to make up or something. Go fix yourself up somewhere and you might be able to fool him,” she suggested, working out the kinks inside her head. Luke was a good guy, but he wasn’t the most observant person she knew. She suspected if Jess could get the bleeding to stop he might get by unscathed. Though she was more doubtful about the bruise on his cheek, she decided it was better for Jess to be placated before he returned to work anyway.

Jess nodded as Ella turned back to go find Lane. She felt slightly better, but still a little anxious about the possibility of a fight between Jess and Luke which still remained. It was one thing to work with them when they were at their usual level of bickering. She didn’t know if she could handle an entire shift of them screaming at each other.

“Thank you,” Jess muttered when she turned on her heel, only just loud enough for her to hear.

She sighed a little in relief, tossing a glance at him over her shoulder. “You’re welcome.”

.   .   .

Ella licked the last bit of melted marshmallow from her thumb, having eaten more than a few of the s’mores they had prepared with skewers over the stove burner. Instead of Die Hard, they had elected for the 1950s version of A Christmas Carol. They were watching as the ghost of Christmas future showed Scrooge his own grave. Lorelai sat above her on the couch, french-braiding her hair, while Lane and Rory shared a bag of chips on the floor next to her. Ella loved the Gilmore house, with its homey decor and welcoming atmosphere. Many times, she envied Rory for the kind of mother she had. All times, Ella felt more love in the Gilmore house than in the Stevens house.

“What do you want written or your gravestone?” Lane asked, her eyes trained on the screen, the picture reflecting back on her glasses.

Humming thoughtfully, Ella went with the first idea that popped in her head: “Here lies Ella Stevens, soon to become the world’s best ghost.”

“An award-winning haunter,” Lorelai quipped.

“My biggest, most long-term ambition,” Ella agreed. Soon, her hair was done and Lorelai tied it off with a proud smile.

“Okay, Rapunzel, my work here is complete,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“Well, now that that’s over with, let’s hear it,” Lane demanded, turning at a ninety degree angle to face Ella expectantly.

Ella furrowed her brows. “What?”

“What happened with Jess? You yelled at each other in the courtyard today, right?” Rory asked.

“Nothing happened,” she assured them. “I simply suggested he could wait for his knuckles to clot before he tried to fly under Luke’s radar. Unfortunately, it was an uphill battle. Once he saw his purple cheek, Luke dragged him up to the apartment by his collar. But, he was back down in one piece fifteen minutes later. Wasn’t too catastrophic.”

“That kid is bad news,” Lorelai groaned, shaking her head. “He’s got Sid Vicious written all over him.”

Scoffing, flopped down on the carpet, staring up at the ceiling. “Really? I see him more as a Richard Hell type.”

“Well, that makes me feel better,” Lorelai mocked. “I’m serious, Ella, that is a screwed-up, angry kid. The vandalism, the fighting. He touches a hair on your head, and I will personally organize a whole torches and pitchforks event.”

“We can make it like a parade,” Rory suggested cheerfully. “And then Dean can punch him as a big finale. They can’t stand each other.”

“You guys have gotta calm down. We work together, that’s all,” she reasoned. “I only helped him out to avoid a major migraine. The grunting I’ve gotten used to, but man when Luke gets going…”

“Tell me about it,” Lorelai grumbled. “Just promise me you won’t be wooed by that unwashed miscreant.”

Rolling her eyes at the dramatics, raising her right hand and holding down her pinky with her thumb. “Scout’s honor.”

.   .   .

Twirling her key ring around her finger once for good luck, Ella made her way up the path to the Independence Inn, Doc Martens crunching through the packed white snow. The storm had come and gone, but the damage was done all over New England. The fancy invitees for the annual Bracebridge Dinner were snowed in, so Ella had the pleasure of being invited in their place. She was almost excited, having the opportunity to dress up and her old junker out, since she usually walked everywhere. Opening the giant french doors, she was enveloped in the Inn’s warmth, and she could smell the extravagant dinner cooking already. It made her stomach growl. Her cheeks pinked up pleasantly, and she shed her peacoat almost immediately. She smoothed down the front of her simple black dress, stealthily looking at her patterned tights to make sure they hadn’t sustained any runs or rips since she’d donned them an hour earlier. So far, she’d been successful.

“Ella!” Rory greeted her cheerfully, her voice like a bell chiming in the busy noises around them.

“Ah, it’s been so long!” Ella joked, rushing up to Rory and Lorelai, giving them hugs.

“So, no plus ones I take it?” Lorelai asked, looking at the girl who stood with only the shoulder bag she used to carry school books and her jacket in one of her hands.

Ella smiled thinly, shaking her head. A bashful lilt came into her voice. “No, I invited them. My little brother actually was gonna come and then this afternoon...”

“Well, that just means no one will be hogging you tonight!” Lorelai cut in, sunshine in her voice. It made Ella’s smile grow wider and into one more genuine.

.   .   .

Descending the stairs after unpacking in her room, she caught sight of most everyone else arriving. She had the habit of being early to everything. Equipped with only her jacket in her arms, which included a volume of Anne Sexton poetry in one of the pockets, she felt a wave of anxiety. It wasn’t exactly shyness, only uneasiness. It seemed everyone in the room had a partner, but she’d come alone. There were two beds in her room, and one would remain entirely untouched. Not that bringing Adam along was the ideal situation anyway, her little brother had actually become kinda funny after entering middle school. He wouldn’t have been the worst possible company. In a crowd full of friends and family, she felt so utterly alone.

Lane arrived eventually, along with her mother. Mrs. Kim was not the biggest fan of Ella, what with her dark makeup and clothing, her unsavory homelife. Over the years, however, she’d earned a bit more credit with Lane’s mother due to her grades and time working at the diner. Ella marveled at the beautiful floral arrangements and mahogany adornments, wandering around mostly silent while Rory and Lorelai rushed around, finalizing things and greeting people. Her eyes roamed over the crowd, and she spotted Luke and Jess arriving at the door. Jess’s big brown eyes caught her own. He offered her a teasing wave, and she smirked in response, nodding a little. After a moment under his gaze, she let her eyes fall as her cheeks warmed, and she felt at the chain around her neck as a reflex.

.   .   .

Sniffing slightly in the frigid air, Ella bit her lip as she ran her eyes over the familiar words of Sexton’s poetry, waiting as the many carriages of horses peeled away. Watching Rory squish into a carriage with Dean and his little sister had been entertaining, but she had felt some shameful envy nonetheless. The seat next to her just looked so empty. But she only sighed, turning back to her reading after marveling at the beauty of the sparkly, frozen nature around her. In all honesty, she had no interest in going on a pathetic carriage ride alone, but Rory and Lorelai had gone to so much trouble, who was she to deny the opportunity? She barely noticed when the horses began trotting along, the winter wonderland of Stars Hollow passing her slowly.

“Eleanor!” she heard, jumping slightly but rolling her eyes. There was pretty much only one person in Stars Hollow who called her by her full name. Before she could even look to see his face, Jess hopped in the carriage from the side, nearly stumbling but ending up impossibly smooth.

“What the hell, Jess?!” she exclaimed, marking her place in her book with an old receipt from Doose’s.

“Gotta keep you on your toes, don’t I?” he drawled, cracking his usual crooked smirk.

Sighing, Ella mirrored his smile in spite of herself, running a nervous hand through the ends of her hair. “No, actually, I don’t think that’s a requirement.”

“Exactly. It’s one of many perks of associating with me.” Jess put on thick gray gloves as they spoke.

She scoffed. “Yes, I’m so honored, Mariano.”

“You should be.”

Ella chuckled breathily, clearing her throat as a pause stood between the two of them. Her eyes lingered on the bruise on his cheek, nearly invisible, having yellowed over the three days since he’d sustained it.

“Pretty, aren’t I?” he asked.

She blushed, looking away as her face dropped. “Sorry.”

Jess furrowed his brows, losing his teasing air. “It doesn’t hurt.”

Nodding, she sat up straighter and trained her view on the scenery.

“Look, I didn’t mean to scare you the other day,” he said, tilting his head to try to catch her eyes again.

“Don’t flatter yourself. You didn’t...you don’t scare me,” she assured him, forcing her tone to remain light. She felt as though they might be dancing around a forbidden subject, she just didn’t know what it was.

“Okay. Didn’t mean to be presumptuous,” he said, leaning back in the cushioned seat of the carriage. The clomping of the horses hooves offered a rhythmic undercurrent to their conversation, soft but constant.

Raising her eyebrows, she finally turned back to him. “Well, you didn’t mean to be presumptuous but you were still being presumptuous.”

“Alright, sorry,” he said, slightly huffy, eyes wide and gloved hands raised in surrender.

“Apology accepted.”

“I’m happy we sorted that out, then.” His tone was dejected but she didn’t let it rile her.

“Me too,” she breathed slowly, watching a white cloud form in the air with her words.

Regarding her as she turned away again, Jess tasted the crisp frost of the wind.  One side of her hair was pinned back, the rest cascading down her shoulder. She wore dark eye makeup and something shiny on her lips. But still, she was bundled in her old black peacoat. It reminded him of the beatniks. All she needed were big square glasses. He noticed how thin her stockings were, how she lacked gloves or a scarf or a hat. Just looking at her made him unconsciously.

“Are you here by yourself?” he asked. “Anne Sexton keeping you company?”

“I am. And she is. Did Luke drag you along?”

Jess shrugged. “Sort of. It’s better than a night of scraping greasy plates at the diner.”

“What high standards you have,” she said. “Are you scraping plates over winter break or are you going back to New York?”

“My mom didn’t want me up there,” he said nonchalantly.

“She said that to you?” she asked, eyebrows raised angrily.

They were passing the town square, decorated with snowmans for the town competition. At night, to Ella, they looked like the blue ghosts in a Charles Dickens story.

“Luke told me it was his idea that I should stay. It wasn’t his idea.”

Humming in irritated acknowledgement, she crossed her arms tighter around herself. Her ears were going numb in the icy winter breeze. “Well, if it makes you feel better, I’ll be at work everyday the next two weeks, silently protesting everyone else’s holiday cheer. You’re welcome to join.”

Jess smiled. “Will there be complaints of all the noise, noise, noise?”

“Every year.” She nodded in commiseration, a sardonic twinkle in her eye.

“Looking forward to it.”

[gabrielamunin]

My Buddy: Patti Smith He would call me late in the night from somewhere on the road, a ghost town in Texas, a rest stop near Pittsburgh, or from Santa Fe, where he was parked in the desert, listening to the coyotes howling. But most often he would call from his place in Kentucky, on a cold, still night, when one could hear the stars breathing. Just a late-night phone call out of a blue, as startling as a canvas by Yves Klein; a blue to get lost in, a blue that might lead anywhere. I’d happily awake, stir up some Nescafé and we’d talk about anything. About the emeralds of Cortez, or the white crosses in Flanders Fields, about our kids, or the history of the Kentucky Derby. But mostly we talked about writers and their books. Latin writers. Rudy Wurlitzer. Nabokov. Bruno Schulz.

“Gogol was Ukrainian,” he once said, seemingly out of nowhere. Only not just any nowhere, but a sliver of a many-faceted nowhere that, when lifted in a certain light, became a somewhere. I’d pick up the thread, and we’d improvise into dawn, like two beat-up tenor saxophones, exchanging riffs.

He sent a message from the mountains of Bolivia, where Mateo Gil was shooting “Blackthorn.” The air was thin up there in the Andes, but he navigated it fine, outlasting, and surely outriding, the younger fellows, saddling up no fewer than five different horses. He said that he would bring me back a serape, a black one with rust-colored stripes. He sang in those mountains by a bonfire, old songs written by broken men in love with their own vanishing nature. Wrapped in blankets, he slept under the stars, adrift on Magellanic Clouds.

Sam liked being on the move. He’d throw a fishing rod or an old acoustic guitar in the back seat of his truck, maybe take a dog, but for sure a notebook, and a pen, and a pile of books. He liked packing up and leaving just like that, going west. He liked getting a role that would take him somewhere he really didn’t want to be, but where he would wind up taking in its strangeness; lonely fodder for future work.

In the winter of 2012, we met up in Dublin, where he received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Trinity College. He was often embarrassed by accolades but embraced this one, coming from the same institution where Samuel Beckett walked and studied. He loved Beckett, and had a few pieces of writing, in Beckett’s own hand, framed in the kitchen, along with pictures of his kids. That day, we saw the typewriter of John Millington Synge and James Joyce’s spectacles, and, in the night, we joined musicians at Sam’s favorite local pub, the Cobblestone, on the other side of the river. As we playfully staggered across the bridge, he recited reams of Beckett off the top of his head.

Sam promised me that one day he’d show me the landscape of the Southwest, for though well-travelled, I’d not seen much of our own country. But Sam was dealt a whole other hand, stricken with a debilitating affliction. He eventually stopped picking up and leaving. From then on, I visited him, and we read and talked, but mostly we worked. Laboring over his last manuscript, he courageously summoned a reservoir of mental stamina, facing each challenge that fate apportioned him. His hand, with a crescent moon tattooed between his thumb and forefinger, rested on the table before him. The tattoo was a souvenir from our younger days, mine a lightning bolt on the left knee.

Going over a passage describing the Western landscape, he suddenly looked up and said, “I’m sorry I can’t take you there.” I just smiled, for somehow he had already done just that. Without a word, eyes closed, we tramped through the American desert that rolled out a carpet of many colors—saffron dust, then russet, even the color of green glass, golden greens, and then, suddenly, an almost inhuman blue. Blue sand, I said, filled with wonder. Blue everything, he said, and the songs we sang had a color of their own.

We had our routine: Awake. Prepare for the day. Have coffee, a little grub. Set to work, writing. Then a break, outside, to sit in the Adirondack chairs and look at the land. We didn’t have to talk then, and that is real friendship. Never uncomfortable with silence, which, in its welcome form, is yet an extension of conversation. We knew each other for such a long time. Our ways could not be defined or dismissed with a few words describing a careless youth. We were friends; good or bad, we were just ourselves. The passing of time did nothing but strengthen that. Challenges escalated, but we kept going and he finished his work on the manuscript. It was sitting on the table. Nothing was left unsaid. When I departed, Sam was reading Proust.

Long, slow days passed. It was a Kentucky evening filled with the darting light of fireflies, and the sound of the crickets and choruses of bullfrogs. Sam walked to his bed and lay down and went to sleep, a stoic, noble sleep. A sleep that led to an unwitnessed moment, as love surrounded him and breathed the same air. The rain fell when he took his last breath, quietly, just as he would have wished. Sam was a private man. I know something of such men. You have to let them dictate how things go, even to the end. The rain fell, obscuring tears. His children, Jesse, Walker, and Hannah, said goodbye to their father. His sisters Roxanne and Sandy said goodbye to their brother.

I was far away, standing in the rain before the sleeping lion of Lucerne, a colossal, noble, stoic lion carved from the rock of a low cliff. The rain fell, obscuring tears. I knew that I would see Sam again somewhere in the landscape of dream, but at that moment I imagined I was back in Kentucky, with the rolling fields and the creek that widens into a small river. I pictured Sam’s books lining the shelves, his boots lined against the wall, beneath the window where he would watch the horses grazing by the wooden fence. I pictured myself sitting at the kitchen table, reaching for that tattooed hand.

A long time ago, Sam sent me a letter. A long one, where he told me of a dream that he had hoped would never end. “He dreams of horses,” I told the lion. “Fix it for him, will you? Have Big Red waiting for him, a true champion. He won’t need a saddle, he won’t need anything.” I headed to the French border, a crescent moon rising in the black sky. I said goodbye to my buddy, calling to him, in the dead of night.

[dewittsend]

‘The Defenders’ Review [Episodes 5-8] {REPOST}

“Come as you are,” for better, and worse.

Something I neglected to fully delve into in my last review is the technical genius of episode four, easily the best episode of the series. Those color pallets I mentioned? Each of them is represented in this Chinese restaurant the foursome has escaped to. The bright neon lights both within and outside of the eatery are casting all sorts of beautiful shades onto our main characters and the colorful painted walls within, helping to create the perfect atmosphere for the delivery of some pretty A-game dialogue and performances. And the episode ends, as you might recall, with the Rolling Superstones getting ready to square off against Elektra. In fact, let’s look at that image again.

It’s a great moment. And one of the few this series has left to offer.

Well, crap.

It’s almost laughable how immediate the drop-off in quality is from the first four episodes, which are traditionally the ones screened ahead of time to critics. After the tantalizing cliffhanger of “Royal Dragon,” where we see Blink-MCU ready to take on Elektra, the fifth episode, “Take Shelter”...begins with classical music...and Madame Gao mobilizing her men...and Sowande (the “White Hat” Luke was tracking) in a van with HIS men...and oh, this dude Murakami is on the rooftop...and he jumps down and crashes into the middle of the fight, which has apparently been going on for some time.

We missed it.

It was such a sloppy way to open up an episode, and a total letdown for me, considering that throughout most of these fight scenes, the heroes are just knocking out randoms in black suits. It would’ve made a difference to see them take on a “mini-boss” like Elektra all on her own. This may seem like nitpicking but it’s merely a precursor to the other dropped balls in this second half.

Summarizing eps. 5-8 actually won’t be as hard as 1-4, because there isn’t a great deal of character or plot development. During all the chaos at the Royal Dragon, Matt of course tries to get through to Elektra, convinced that there’s still good in her because she’s hesitated on each of the multiple occasions she’s had to kill him, but she escapes before he can seal the deal. She does NOT, however, escape before Murakami can see them having a moment, and she attacks him for attempting to kill Matt, leading him to question her loyalty.

There’s an unnecessary side plot with Colleen that starts up when she gets her stomach sliced open by Bakuto (surprise! This asshole’s back!). She’s taken back to the police precinct, where all our supporting characters have been relegated for protection. After she gets patched up by Claire because I guess Iron Fist forgot he can heal people, she reveals a feeling of general uselessness to her friend. MIND YOU, she’s like a triple black belt in four Japanese martial arts and knows how to use a katana, which is kinda the same thing everyone else in this show is doing, yet she thinks she’s outclassed.

Though in Colleen’s defense, it seems that every single member of The Hand can teleport, because they all do the Batman disappearing trick, and I’m as SICK OF IT as she is.

After the skirmish at Royal, Luke captures Sowande. Now, they all try to get information out of him. Jessica Jones...punches him back INTO consciousness, which I don’t think is possible, but whatever. He taunts all of them, knowing there’s no pain they could put him through that would make him divulge any information about The Hand or their motives. “Cut off a finger,” he tells Stick, “and you can still use a hand.”

I guess HYDRA and The Hand had to flip a coin on sinister slogans at some point.

There’s a pretty great torture moment where Daredevil slings his billy club cord around Sowande’s throat and gradually tightens it, but of course, the hardcore nigh-immortal super ninja doesn’t give in. He’s actually able to escape his bonds and briefly takes Danny hostage, before Stick beheads him.

Ep. 6, “Ashes, Ashes” contains a standout in a show full of people flipping and punching each other in the face, and that is Daredevil vs. Iron Fist. Prefaced by a tense escalation of dialogue between them both, Matt and the rest try to explain that they think the best way to keep The Hand from getting to Danny is to keep him away from the fight. Essentially, he’s being grounded. Perhaps rightly so, Danny feels betrayed. His anger starts to boil, and despite efforts from Luke to keep him civil, he punches Matt right in the face. But we all know the Devil eats those for breakfast. So the fight begins, and I gotta say, I had a good time watching it! It’s well-choreographed, WELL-LIT (don’t. get. used to it.), and a bit more satisfying than Cage’s match with Blonde Ralph Macchio, if only because Murdock feels no need to hold back. And it’s interesting to see their fighting styles collide, with Matt being much more aggressive, and Danny’s wushu-inspired training favoring deflection and redirection. (((Except for the fact that he starts it.)))

*EDIT: I MADE GIFS OF THIS FIGHT SEQUENCE. ON GIPHY. AND THEY WERE REALLY NICE LOOKING, BUT THERE WAS A PROBLEM. KEEP READING TO SEE MY OTHER EDIT LATER ON AND GET DETAIL. SORRY.*

In the end, it takes the efforts of all the heroes to put Danny down (although again the show dodges an opportunity for a mini-boss moment, as for the majority of this fight, everyone else is just watching this happen). They tie him to a chair and try to formulate a strategy. While Jess and Matt reestablish contact with John Raymond’s family to gain information about exactly how much he knew, Stick and Luke keep watch over Danny. This allows the latter pair to try and act like they have chemistry.

Matt and Jess discover a map of the Midland Circle tower in John Raymond’s piano (after Matt...plays the theme song of the show...on the piano..?) and are on their way to bring it back when Matt senses some SHIT GOIN DOWN. Because while Luke and Danny were yuckin it up, Stick concocted some sort of sleeping inhalant. He uses it to knock out the Black man of steel and is about to kill Danny, because, of course, this is the only way he sees to completely deny The Hand. The other two hurry back, but it is actually Elektra who {somehow} finds their hideout and {somehow} is just in time to save Danny’s life by trying to kidnap him. She kills Stick before Matthew can stop her, and proceeds to knock the rest of them out one by one, managing to {S O M E H O W ?} PULL Luke Cage onto his back with some TV JUDO — I’m sorry. I am. But I have to address this.

This is another big issue. In her resurrection, Elektra is constantly referred to as the “Black Sky.” We’ve heard about these things beforehand. Apparently, they’re natural-born killers. And apparently apparently, they come with some form of enhanced strength and durability. At least, that’s what I’m forced to synthesize. Elektra is twice, two whole times, struck directly in the chest by Iron Fist’s iron fist in this show, and somehow doesn’t return with her ribs protruding through her back. Super-strong and actively remorseless Jessica Jones smacks her around numerous times, but she isn’t phased. And LEAST LOGICALLY OF ALL, she repeatedly manhandles Luke Cage, and it’s as if this dipshit forgot he shoulder-checked a van and tanked an RPG blast like two months ago! Her abilities as a Black Sky are completely ill-defined. ‘Well Justin don’t worry about it, because she’s, like, the best fighter ever probably,’ which, based on what the show demonstrates, translates into “She’s stronger than a man who can wring metal pipes like a towel, but when she punches Matthew Murdock in his de-helmeted face he’ll still {s...ome..how} keep all his teeth.”

So, whatever, Stick’s dead, and it almost means something, but then doesn’t. The only time it’s mentioned is when Matt tells Foggy in the precinct. And Charlie Cox acts the scene well because he’s phenomenal, but it doesn’t quite feel adequate.

Gee maybe if....you had made.....a little more than eight episodes.....you could’ve given some time.....to this major character’s departure....

Next, Elektra brings Iron Fist back to Alexandra. Yeah, remember her? This show sure doesn’t. Every time she shows up, it’s a surprise. To be accurate, it’s not like she totally disappears. There are scenes between her and the other Fingers of The Hand, but they’re all boring. These people have known each other since the dawn of time, but they can’t be bothered to say anything interesting to each other, or have some emotion when they find their brother with his head REMOVED from his body.

And yeah, I’ll say it — it doesn’t look good that the Black immortal was the first one to die.

After Finn Jones gives us some of his patented “I Am Vibrating With Anger!!!” acting and has brought his small face to peak punchability levels, he’s wheeled off to his episode wrap, and we get a closing moment that honestly made me shout.

Alexandra is confronting her dissident cohorts and putting her foot down about who’s in charge around here, damn it, when she gets shanked in the back with a sai.

*EDIT 2: YEAH SO I REALLY WENT INTO THE EFFORT TO USE GIPHY TO MAKE MY OWN GIFS AND I TRIED FOR HOURS BUT COULDN’T UPLOAD THEM PROPERLY OR AT ALL. I’M REAL SALTY AT TUMBLR RIGHT NOW. SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO RESOLVE THAT. UNTIL THEN, ENJOY THE CRAPPY GIF OF THIS MOMENT THAT TUMBLR DID HAVE AVAILABLE.*

^Sigourney isn’t even acting in this moment. She’s legitimately confused about why her time was wasted.

Yes, Elektra kills Alexandra, and I shouted because it was a shocking twist. But that didn’t mean it was a good one. I mean for God’s sake. You hire NATIONAL TREASURE and SCI-FI ICON SIGOURNEY “GET AWAY FROM HER YOU BITCH” WEAVER AND ALL YOU DO IS MAKE HER A POSTER-CHILD SO THE CRITICS WILL GIVE YOU A NICE SCORE ON ROTTEN TOMATOES? This GREAT actress was PIMPED OUT for four episodes and then REAMED.

What are we DOING, Marvel?

That question is in my notes several times. Let’s hurry up and finish ep. 6 so I can tell you why.

The show has a fleeting chance to get interesting again after taking out its best performer by perhaps turning Elektra into a rogue agent of chaos. Perhaps she manages to kill ALL the “fingers” and assumes her place as The Hand’s leader, a position she does hold numerous times in the comics. Or, even the vanilla option of her trying to fight Alexandra’s siblings and fleeing, wounded, to find Matthew and restore their bond, eventually standing with The Defenders against The Hand — either of these would’ve been better than what actually happens, which is that she’s turned into a nonsensical and lazily-written sociopath with zero authentic motivation to be doing any of what she does in these last two episodes.

Penultimate chapter “Fish in the Jailhouse” opens with a flashback conversation between Elektra and Stick to remind you that he mattered at one point. It’s just a retroactive and very obvious attempt to make you understand the emotional weight of the fact that she killed him given the father-daughter dynamic they’re supposed to have.

Episode six ended with a big “RUH-ROH” moment because we were shown police lights flashing over the unconscious Matthew’s face. Our heroes wake up in the precinct, where the cops, namely Misty and her captain, are understandably perplexed as to why a lawyer would be found unconscious with two superheroes and two very dead bodies. It’s a nice way to generate conflict between Matt’s dual lives, but it ultimately leads nowhere. Jessica, Luke, and Matt all break out of the precinct to go find Danny.

Meanwhile, Elektra has The Hand’s balls in a vice. Bakuto, Gao, and Murakami are all like ‘Aye maybe you should chill out trick, cuz there are three of us and we all know how to pluck a chicken, nahmsayin?’ and Elektra is all ‘Nah fam cuz we ain’t got no more of that magic sludge to bring you back if I murk your ass so try me if you want to.’ And that’s enough to get them to listen to what she has to say, which is...nothing.

Seriously, Elektra’s arc makes no sense! Alexandra was the only person she listened to or took orders from, so she kills her, but we never find out why! It wasn’t FOR the good guys, even though she says “His name is Matthew” to Alexandra when she sticks her (Weaver’s character had earlier ordered Elektra to kill Daredevil, “whoever he is.”). Maybe she just did it to prove that she could, but again, if she’s feeling that bold, why not try to murder the rest of the leadership? It’s not as if you need them for anything! Clearly you can handle all four of The Defenders on your own!

Whatever. Elektra still wants to find out what’s trapped behind the wall at the bottom of the pit underneath Midland Circle oh, crap. I haven’t explained this part.

Iron Fist is the MacGuffin of this series because his chi can open the door to a secret passage buried hundreds of feet underneath New York. The Hand have been burrowing tunnels, and finally found the spot they needed. What’s behind the door? A giant F*%$#!G dragon skeleton, the reveal shot of which is pretty sick. I’ll update with a GIF or image if I can find one. But this is all that’s left of Shao Lao the not-so-Undying, the dragon who Danny Rand had to face in order to receive his power. Although there is no, no, zero, NEGATIVE reason for this incalculably powerful dragon to be buried underneath New York!!! How does that work? Isn’t K’un-Lun in another dimension? Oh, it doesn’t matter? We only have eight episodes to resolve this? Okay. My bad.

The insinuation is that it is from within the vestiges of this dragon and others like him that the Fingers of The Hand receive the substance that revives them. And that’s the setup for the finale. But before I can move on to episode 8, I have to talk about...the World’s Worst Thing.

There is a fight scene that occurs...between the Fingers of The Hand...and the three Defenders who come to rescue Danny...and....there’s no splitting hairs about it: this scene is atrocious.

It’s heinous. It’s an affront to fight scenes everywhere. Every fight scene ever made at least tried more than this one did. In 19 years of life, a huge chunk of which has been spent watching action and martial arts movies, I’ve almost never seen a comparable mess of close-ups, cuts, and crap choreography. Never mind that the entire encounter could’ve been filmed inside an elephant’s rectum it’s so dark, but when you CAN see something, it’s Mike Colter and Krysten Ritter pushing cinder-blocks back and forth with an ancient telekinetic Chinese woman and then pretending to punch her in the face or swing a car bumper into her. And then they replace that ancient telekinetic Chinese woman’s 73-year-old actress [Wai Ching Ho] with what can only be described as a digital bean bag so it looks like she can withstand that kind of force as she’s tossed into the cement floor. Meanwhile Charlie Cox is over on the other side busting his behind to make these stunts and strikes look good against the other two bad guys, who for what it’s worth also probably trained extensively, but you can’t appreciate ANY of their hard work because you’re just watching silhouettes bop around in an arena too cramped for MICE to wrestle. It’s so, so terrible. Easily the worst sequence in the whole of the MCU.

Episode 8 is called “The Defenders,” and it’s basically just a lotta punching. Colleen steals a ton of C4, confiscated from John Rayburn’s home, from the evidence room in the precinct. She brings it to the Defenders, along with Claire, who doesn’t need to be here, except if she was gonna die! She does not, and this is also the first time she interacts with Matt in the entire show’s run. I don’t even think either of them reacts to this fact.

🎵Whaaaat are we dooooiiiiiiing, Maaarveelll???🎵

They all decide they have to blow up the building to stop The Hand permanently, so while Colleen and Claire go to set the bombs, the rest of the team heads to help Danny. God knows he needs it.

Daredevil, Jess and Luke find a secret elevator to ride down to the bottom of the pit, where they haul off on the rest of The Hand, who seem to just be sprouting up from the ground at this point. Colleen and Claire are interrupted in planting the charges by Pretty Boy Bakuto. I wanted to see this slimy, second-rate Ra’s al Ghul actin, discount yet still older Orlando Bloom lookin fool get his spine pulled out through his nose, but his actual death is just a beheading. Not quite as satisfying. In the process of the battle, Misty shows up, and loses an arm protecting Claire. This is a setup for her to receive the bionic replacement she bears in the comics, and it’s honestly not the avenue I expected Marvel to trust itself in taking. I applaud them for it, even though Misty was otherwise useless in this show.

I’m really trying to finish the summary so I can get to my conclusion. It’s not that things are complicated, it’s just that there’s so much noise to cut through here. Once Bakuto is dead, Colleen realizes that “RUH-ROH,” the timed detonator was accidentally triggered. So down below, Luke, Jess, and Dan are all like ‘Ayo Double D, we gotta double-dip on outta here!’ and Daredevil’s all ‘Nah, I can’t. Iss mah shorty, she’s actin’ wiiiilllld, she won’t let me go out. But I think I can help her remember she’s good, nahmsayin?’ And the others are like ‘Nah you’re mad weird!’ But they leave him anyway because we really, really have to make sure that our fans think we’re killing Daredevil.

Matt and Elektra have an emotional sex-fight, wailing on each other and saying nonsense lines. Again, it would mean more to me if Elektra was indeed still brainwashed for sure, but I can no longer tell what her character is, so it’s just two hot people in red kicking each other. The bomb blows up, we see them embracing and then the screen is covered by an onslaught of dust.

The wrap-up of this finale is probably the best part. I don’t mean that cheekily in that it’s close to the end, but it feels more paced and well-planned than anything else in the last few episodes. Each character gets a pretty obvious setup for the next season of their respective shows, and then, surPRIIIIIIISSSSEEE, if you're a five year old—Matt wakes up in a nunnery, bandaged and badly bruised, and the nurse tending him tells someone to ‘Get Maggie. Tell her he’s awake.’ Or something to that effect. It’s a visual callback to the Frank Miller comic Born Again, if I’m not mistaken; a beautifully written graphic novel that takes Matt Murdock out of his element. Disbarred and living on the streets, Matt is reduced to his basest instincts, his rage ever-building while Kingpin rises to influence yet again, and Daredevil’s reputation is slandered. Meanwhile, the enigmatic Sister Maggie may share the most important link with Matthew yet. If season three is going to follow that storyline, I’m definitely intrigued for what’s coming.

That, ladies and gentlemen, was Marvel’s The Defenders. And, despite my tough tone, it’s not all bad. It’s just frustrating to see the pattern throughout these shows whereby all of the effort and funding is poured into the first few episodes so critics will give it a good grade and then the next six (or in this case, four) episodes are so clearly lackluster by comparison. There are some nice moments between the supporting cast while they wait on their super loved ones in the precinct, and there’s a stellar moment between Foggy and Karen when Matt doesn’t walk through the door with the others. But, like I said, Claire Temple, who we first met in Daredevil (where Rosario gave her best performance out of all these, if you ask me) has no time at all to spend with Matt. The lack of a scene between the two of them reflecting on how this all started was jarring! Or a moment for Jessica to realize that Luke is with Claire. The foundation is being well-paced for their eventual romance, but right now it just seems like that’s because Luke is omitting the mention of his relationship with Claire. I think with just two more episodes--scratch that, even just ONE more, we could’ve had time to do these things. We would all have watched it. Your investment would not have been in vain, Marvel.

I also found myself annoyed because while I understand we may never see Jessica Jones drink space bourbon with Rocket Raccoon, or watch Luke Cage arm-wrestle with Thor, I don’t understand how any conversation about “getting help” for this massive threat to New York City doesn’t at some point have someone say: “Oh what about Tony Stark who lives literally twenty blocks away in the tallest building on Earth? Maybe we can at least try to contact him? Maybe we can at least think about trying? Danny? Billionaire to billionaire? No?” Marvel keeps shoving “THE INCIDENT” down my throat, so we know that this is indeed the same universe where aliens attacked New York, but The Avengers came out five years ago and not one of these people can even say “Hey where’s Iron Man???” The joke is RIGHT. THERE! A RICH GUY on your team has the word IRON in his NAME! JUST MAKE THE JOKE! Give me a BREAK!

What ARE WE D--forget it.

Now, for some good reactions: although she was essentially robbed, Sigourney Weaver brought her absolute best to her part. And as far as the Defenders themselves, I think Krysten Ritter and Charlie Cox were really pulling their weight the most. Their scenes together were always the most entertaining to watch, and they just both have such a good grip on their characters. Not to speak ill of Mike Colter. I think at times he falls victim to what I like calling “the Superman Syndrome”: a character is indestructible, and therefore the writers make him unrelatable. He does have a number of good moments, though, especially when paired with Ritter. Plus, he’s charming, and looks so much like the Luke Cage on printed page that I don’t even need to suspend my disbelief. This man probably really is bulletproof. The cinematography and screenplay of the first four episodes is prime. 

I can also appreciate the inverse to the threat the Avengers faced, which came from the skies above, where the Defenders are combating evil from beneath. If they even thought about it that much. And there is some really cool fighting. Aside from the end of episode seven, very little of the choreography is actually bad, it’s just that after watching people do handsprings into flip kicks for six hours your brain kind of turns it all off. The big battle in the pit at the climax of episode eight is #1. too damn dark, aGAIN, and #2. filled with more of the same we’ve seen these characters do aaalllllllll theeee tiiiime. Danny and Matt do a barrel roll. Luke and Jessica awkwardly shove folks. And, on that note, anyone remember the first time we saw Luke fight and he only needed to tap people’s foreheads to knock them out?

He was backhanding crackers into Limbo! But now he needs to cock his elbow to put someone to sleep? Just keep up with yourself, guys. Come on.

Personally, I would’ve liked more team-up super combos from them. Allow me this one childish desire to see Luke Cage and Danny Rand simultaneously pound the ground and send out a radial shockwave that puts everyone on their backs. Can you ALLOW ME THAT, WORLD?

In the end, I would still recommend this series, if only because we’ve been building to it for two years now and people should see what’s been offered to us. While it is an incomplete package, it’s still not the worst of the bunch.

However the finale doesn’t give me the impression these four people will ever team up again. And, honestly, that may not be the worst thing.

THANK YOU for reading if indeed you did read! Stay tuned for an unscheduled upload like this sometime in the indeterminate future. Keep watching, my friends. And as always, Blessings & Blexcellence!

[rizlowwritessortof]

Choices

This is my sixth installment for @mrs-squirrel-chester ‘s Album Fanfic Writing Challenge. My album is Smokin’ Hearts and Broken Guns - Shaman’s Harvest. This one was inspired by Silent Voice from that album. This is probably my favorite song from the album, and it always brings to mind the sacrifices they have made, for the world, and for each other. Sam and Dean know what it’s like to embrace the darkness. And they have always fought like hell to bring each other back. Lyrics are below.

Well you know you’d better run, to the hills and the convents. With hair raisin' goosebumps you can feel the man comin’. Oh with the watchers and the scapegoats, you were hidin' in the rain. With a back cut and music, you were bleedin' out your pain. Oh where you think you're gonna run to when the man is you. And hold me close, you'll never see You're the only one who understands the storm in me. And I'll wait for you here, with silent voice. God only knows I never wanted you to make this choice. Well you loathed down in the mire, cuz you didn't wanna face it. With a gunslinger's desire, you'd rather burn out than save it. Oh with the watchers and the scapegoats, you were hidin' in the rain. With a back cut and the music, you were screaming out your pain. Oh where you think you're gonna run to when the man is you. And hold me close, you'll never see You're the only one who understands the storm in me. And I'll wait for you here, with silent voice. God only knows I never wanted you to make this choice.

Sam

I tried. Tried to deny it. Tried to hide from it. Tried to run from it.

I tried to fight it head on.

But I always knew. I always felt it, even when I was a kid. Felt unclean. Felt unworthy. Not good enough. Not strong enough. Not enough.

When Dean came after me, asked for my help, I knew. I wanted to pretend like I was out, like I’d escaped. But deep down, I think I knew. When they murdered Jess, I could feel it rise up in me.

And yeah, I talked big, thought I was strong enough to fight it. Got pissed off at Dean when he doubted me.

And I thought I could wrestle Lucifer, could let him in and still be able to drive. Didn’t work that way.

When it came down to the end, though – Dean was there for me. He pulled me back, gave me the strength to take the leap into hell. He’s always been there when I really needed him.

I came back from the cage without a soul. No conscience, no emotion, just an efficient killing machine. Even tried to kill Bobby. Dean wouldn’t let it go. Went so far as to die to talk to Death, get my soul back.

And when I was in that church, five seconds away from finishing that last trial… all I knew was that I couldn’t let him down again. I had nothing left, and when he told me… When he said it would kill me, I said, “So?!” And I meant it. From the fucking center of my soul, I meant it.

But he wouldn’t let me go through with it. And I think, maybe, that we’ve learned something about the balance of things in this fucked-up world.

Have we made sacrifices? Yeah. In spades. Have we made mistakes? I’ve lost count of mine.

But we’ve done a hell of a lot of good. We’ve saved a lot of people. Saved the whole damn world a few times. Sometimes we make a mess, and we have to clean it up.

Things haven’t been easy. We’ve hurt each other, fought with each other, tried to go our separate ways. But we’ve learned one thing, through all the blood, and pain, and loss.  

We’re stronger together. Always have been. I guess I’ll always need my brother.

Dean

God, when I was young… the whole fucking thing was an adventure. Huge adrenaline rush with an ego to match. I mean, I thought I was immortal.

Then that rawhead fried my ass, and Sammy found a way to save me. At the cost of someone else’s life. He didn’t know, how could he? I just added that to the pile of guilt I carried all the time. Pulling him back into the life? Yeah, I was a selfish bastard. Dad was gone, and I didn’t want to carry the load alone. When he started having those visions, I felt like… like if I had left him alone, left him at Stanford, he would have been okay.

When he died… I couldn’t live with it. I felt like it was my fault, and I couldn’t… I just couldn’t. So I made the deal. Brought him back.

And then, a year later – I put him through the same fucking thing.

Not only that, but I came back with more blood on my hands than I’ll ever be able to pay for. And he knows what I did, but he’ll never know, you know? He’s never – never thrown that in my face, even when I was reaming his ass for the demon blood. He was trying to do good, just in the wrong way, and Ruby played him, took advantage of how lost he was.

And I can’t say much, I let Crowley manipulate me right into the Mark of Cain. Hook, line and sinker. I’ll say one thing, I finally understood, a little, the pull of that darkness, that power, that Sammy felt when he was on the demon juice. There was nothing like it.

Yeah. And then I went completely dark side. I’ve done things I’ll probably never know about, things that I remember that I have a hard time forgiving myself for, but Sammy pulled me back. Even when I was gonna kill my own brother… he never gave up on me.

We’ve both been the things that nightmares are made of, things that people should be afraid of, should run from. But we’ve always brought each other back from the darkness.

Things still aren’t easy. Things never will be easy, not for us. That’s not the life we live. That’s not our purpose. But Sam and me – we’ve learned that we can’t do it alone. We balance each other. We keep each other human.

We’re stronger together. Always have been. I guess I’ll always need my brother.