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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Doing some writing today off and on between errands and work, and jumping around various Kings of the Sky installments, specifically Dick, Jason and Cass stuff, so probably gonna post snippets from a bunch of them as I go.

(Kings of the Sky is an AU that goes canon divergent from the point of Jason calling Dick for advice for dealing with Bruce after the Garzonas case and where things end up going dramatically different from that point on. Including Jason not dying, being part of his own lineup of Titans between Dick and Tim’s, Dick being adopted not long after the Church of Blood incident, Cass being the third Wayne kid to be taken in and adopted and with Tim and Duke being next and then Damian coming along later once they find out about him. This is basically my ‘the family’s alright’ AU with largely ‘Good Dad Bruce’ except for Dick and then Jason yelling some sense into him about the other, respectively, in the first two installments, just FYI).

Anyway, this bit is from a story called “In Their Shadows Grow Trees Of Good and Evil,” set about a year after Cass has been adopted, when she and Jason are both sixteen and Dick’s twenty-one. Also just FYI, because canon has never been specific about what ways Cass is neurodivergent due to the comic-book style ‘rewiring’ of her brain so that she could learn to speak later in life, I tend to go with her being dyslexic and having aphasia. She sticks exclusively to sign language and being a silent presence in her costumed personas, so that there’s no chance of people connecting the dots between Black Bat and Cassandra Wayne, as she mostly speaks verbally in her civilian persona and doesn’t hide her aphasia. The reason there’s not likely to be any obvious signs of aphasia in the snippets of her I post is because I wait until I complete something to choose words at random to replace with aphasia-born mixups, so its more realistic and I’m not gearing her dialogue towards deliberately placed moments. Just in case you were wondering.

In Their Shadows Grow Trees of Good and Evil

“Hey Todd,” sneered an exquisitely obnoxious voice. “Why’s your sister so fucking weird?”

Jason sighed the sigh of a soul a mere century into its eternity of damnation as he rose from the lunch table he’d been studying at and crammed the rest of his books into his backpack. Then he pasted a cheerfully bland smile on his face and turned around, geared for academia warfare (teenage prep school edition).

“Hey Craig,” he said brightly. “Why’d you come out of the womb so ugly your parents had to tie a piece of steak around your neck just to get the family dog to go near you? Mysteries abound.”

The advancing junior slowed a step, momentarily rocked by his truly impressive return volley. The grimace Craig’s already gargoyle-esque features twisted into made his face even more unpleasant to look at than usual, which was quite the feat. Jason would have applauded if just looking at it hadn’t already turned him to stone.

But the bargain basement basilisk kept on towards him rather than turn tail and skulk off to pop his emotional blisters, so Jason sighed a sequel to his first one. Looked like it was one of those days where Craig felt up to powering through. Guess someone had eaten their self-esteem Wheaties that morning. Joy.

“You think you’re pretty hot shit, don’t you, Todd?”

Jason shrugged. “I mean, to be honest I kinda have a one track mind, so right now I’m mostly just thinking about punching you in your mistake.”

“My what?”

“Your face,” Jason elaborated with exaggerated patience.

“Huh?”

“Oh my god, I’m saying your face is a mistake. See, its not as fun when I have to stop and explain it to you. Ugh, you ruin everything.”

He neatly sidestepped the older boy as R2-Dumbass stayed frozen, smoke coming off of his internal CPU while trying to catch up. For a second Jason thought he was home free, but then he remembered the universe fucking hated him so haha, sucks to suck. Also, a small crowd had gathered to witness the verbal jousting match, and nothing invigorated an asshole like Craig more than an audience of like-minded peers. So there was that too.

“Whatever. Laugh it up all you want, you little shit,” the junior rallied. “But just remember, mocking your betters will never change the fact that you were born street trash and you’ll be street trash until the day you die.”

Honestly? Not his best effort. Jason almost felt bad using any of his good material. Seemed like overkill at this point. But he did have a strict Scorched Earth policy to maintain, so.....

“Yeah but my dad could buy out and ruin your dad so that means I still win, right?”

He smirked as the barb landed and Craig’s face set into a sunset vista of strangled purple and furious red. Bam. Direct hit.

“Listen, you - “

“Oh for fuck’s sake, it was rhetorical,” Jason interrupted. “I don’t actually care what you think even a little bit. Nobody does. You don’t matter. Please go be irrelevant elsewhere, you’re fucking dismissed, you loser.”

“Speak for yourself, charity case.” Oh goodie, Craig’s backup singers had finally arrived. Now if only he could remember to care enough to learn their names in the first place. Seriously, who told the extras they could have lines? “All the jokes in the world can’t change who and what you are.”

Jason shrugged and continued nonchalantly up the hill to where his sister was standing with arms crossed, staring down at something on the other side.

“True genius is never appreciated in its own time,” he tossed back over his shoulder. “I’m sure I’ll be immortalized in song eventually.”

The mob of morons deigned to let him go without further incident. Though he suspected that had less to do with his scathing wit and more to do with him being headed towards Cass. She was immaculately presented as always, wearing the Gotham Academy uniform like she was born to it despite hating its uncomfortable stiffness every bit as much as he did. But that was just Cass for you.

For all that she still struggled at times to engage verbally or speak up in social settings, her mastery of body language remained without peer. She could chameleon-camouflage her way into matching poise and posture with anyone - a skill that had allowed her to walk into school on her very first day with her head held high as though she owned everything in her sight. Exuding so much Queen Bee Intimidation Factor even the other hive queens were afraid to approach her themselves. Sending forth their drones to try and woo her into an alliance, only to see her remain oh-so-casually above it all, a slightly contemptuous smile adorning her lips.

Basically, she scared the shit out of their classmates without them having anywhere close to a true understanding of why, and Jason was outrageously jealous. Rude. Unfair. Why did his siblings always get all the cool toys when all he had was his rakish charm, scintillating intellect and debonair.....nah, who was he kidding. He was fucking awesome.

“Sup, sis,” he said, cresting the hill to stand beside Cass. “Just FYI, I just took a popularity bullet for you, which means you owe me your dessert tonight. Its a family rule that’s totally a real thing and definitely not something I just made up right now because Alf is making chocolate soufflé.”

She made no acknowledgment and remained stock still, a Colossus at Rhodes peering down into the shifting shadows of the parking lot below.

He peered down as well, though with absolutely no idea what they were looking at. Solidarity, yo.

“So are we staring fixedly at anything in particular, or should I just pick my own spot and commit?”

His humor was totally wasted on her as always. Instead of laughing and telling him what a lovable goof he was, she just inclined her head in the direction of a blonde girl where she was standing next to the driver’s side door of a Mercedes-Benz, dictating final commandments to her peons before departing. Well, probably. Jason was just guessing, based on his own body language reads, and like, general disdain for literally everyone at this school that wasn’t related to him.

He made a face. An extra special one reserved just for this classmate in particular. “Ugh, Madison Dunleavy? She’s the worst.”

Cass raised a cool eyebrow. “I thought Craig Hendricks was the worst.”

“He is. They’re both the worst. Its a hotly contested position here at Gotham Academy.”

She rolled her eyes and nodded back down at the Queen of Air and Darkness. “So. You know her?”

“Nope,” Jason said. “Come to think of it, I’ve actually never seen her in my life. No idea who that is. Can’t help you, sorry. Shall we go home?”

The Eyebrow of Inquisition speared him with clear intent. Who the fuck needed words when you could pack the Encyclopedia Britannica into a single facial expression?

Jason sighed gustily.

“I had a slight altercation with her freshman year that led to her declaring her undying enmity for me until the end of time. The word nemesis may or may not have been thrown around once or twice. I can’t recall.”

The Eyebrow of Inquisition lowered nary an inch. Ugh, she wanted more? Why did everyone in his family hate privacy, with the obvious exclusion of himself when snooping through Cass and Dick’s rooms for blackmail material, which was actually intel-gathering and thus another matter entirely.

“Okay so basically what happened was my first week here I overheard her talking shit about me and not even twenty minutes later she was pretending to kiss my ass in homeroom, like probably because of Bruce, y’know? So I just busted out laughing and told her to fuck off and die and she has inexplicably loathed me ever since.”

Avoiding further Eyebrow Inquisition-ing, he made a show of peering around aimlessly. When the silence extended and it was clear Cass was absolutely not going to break first, Jason waved a hand in dismissal and took to peering oh so casually at his fingernails. "I suppose I was less tactful back in those days.”

He chanced a look up, finally, and saw his sister’s eyebrow had somehow managed to mighty morphin power ranger its way into a configuration evoking both judgment and disbelief, with the latter perhaps aimed at the idea he was significantly differing in the tact department these days either.

“I don’t love the implications your face is making right now,” he told her.

She ignored him, because of course she did.

“Does she know Dick?” She asked instead. Jason shrugged.

“I mean, maybe? She’s probably seen him around at one of those stupid galas we have to go to, and actually I think maybe she has an older brother who was either in Dick’s grade or like, one above or below it? I don’t know.”

Now both eyebrows were doing the dance of disbelief. Okay, so maybe that was poor situational awareness on his part, since it wasn’t like Gotham Academy was a big school with a ton of other kids and also he’d only been in the same class as Madison for like over two whole years, but whatever. There were extingent circumstances.

“Look, she’s a total snob who’s always looked down on me and in return I willfully ignore both her existence and that of everyone and everything even tangentially related to her. Its called equality, Cass.”

She pursed her lips and went back to the peering, because of course in the mind of Cass it made total sense that the Grand Inquisition didn’t need to be followed up by any explanation on her part, what the hell. Like was he supposed to have inferred it?

“What’s this all about anyway?”

“I heard her talking about Dick earlier,” she said without peeling her eyes away from her personal recon mission. “I don’t know what she said though, I just heard her say Grayson, and then I was busy looking at what her body was saying. I know it was about Dick because she shut down when she saw me. And I didn’t like the way she....looked....before that happened. The way she was talking. It was.....”

Jason frowned but held back any follow-up questions while he waited - with total patience because he wasn’t an absolute cad, thank you very much - for his sister to find the word she was hunting for. It was a major source of frustration for her, that whatever neural map her brain followed put body language and spoken language in totally different regions of her brain, separated by a fairly great divide. Meaning she usually had to make a conscious choice to focus on body language or conventional languages - whether verbal or sign. But it tended to be one or the other; she’d yet to master taking in and comprehending both forms of ‘language’ at the same time. And none of them had quite figured out how to convince her that she wasn’t actually missing anything when she chose to focus on one specific form of communication - that she was still observing far more than most people ever would.

“Proprietary,” Cass settled on at last. She nodded her satisfaction with her choice of word, and Jason waited a whole two point five seconds before sticking his whole foot in his mouth.

“Proprietary?” He asked with a scrunched nose as he weighed that for possible context and implications. “You sure?”

She glared. He winced. It was a whole thing.

“Yeah, I know, sorry, sorry, I heard it the second it was out of my mouth. We don’t actually have to experiment with the legitimacy of if looks could kill.”

Cass rolled her eyes, but eh. That could’ve gone worse.

Jason swiftly redirected attention anyway. Discretion is the better part of valor, after all.

“So. The Queen of Air and Darkness was talking about our big bro, and her mood was.....proprietary, huh?” He recapped while digesting the info like a boss. “Well. Definitely not loving that, I gotta say. Hold please.”

Pulling out his phone and pulling up his most recent texts, he began typing furiously.

“What are you doing?” Cass asked.

“Texting Tom,” he replied, because duh. Hah, now it was his chance to have the answers that should be patently obvious and thus make with the ‘are you kidding me’ when she asked obvious questions she should know the answer to! How do you like them apples, sis?

“Why are you texting your boyfriend right now?”

Jason rolled his eyes, because fair is fair, but never ceased texting for a moment. Time was of the essence here, probably. Well, maybe. Okay probably not. But it’d still been like half an hour since he and Tom had last texted and that’s a very fucking long time in teenage years.

“To be our getaway driver tonight, obviously.”

She stared at him. He didn’t look up, but he could feel it anyway. He was very intuitive like that.

“What?”

Jason heaved another sigh, one keyed to tones of ‘oh my god, do I really have to spell this out,” exasperation. He was just racking up the bonus points here. It was really too bad this wasn’t an actual competition he could actually win and this was all just pettiness taking place wholly in his own head. Lame.

“Well, clearly we now have to go snoop in Madison’s house aka lair to see if its actually a house or a full on lair. Because she’s either a creeper or like, legit evil, and its important to know which one before we proceed, because obviously we can only bust her for being a weird creeper about our brother as Jason and Cass, whereas if she’s legit evil, that’s gotta go down as Robin and Black Bat. I’ll handle the snooping, you’ll take look-out, but we still need a wheelman and that’s why I’m texting Tom. This is all very mission-oriented, okay. I’m a professional.”

“Right,” she affirmed, while sounding anything but convinced. “Why don’t we just tell Bruce?”

Without looking up or breaking stride, he said: “I’m going to give you til I finish typing this sentence to figure out what was wrong with what you just said. Remember that we are talking about hypothetical danger to our brother, and also Bruce’s idea of a proportionate response to any of his children being in even hypothetical danger. And also our brother’s idea of a proportionate response to Bruce’s idea of a proportionate response. Look, you’re still new so I’m gonna need you to just trust me on this one. Its gonna be a no on telling Bruce without further intel.”

Cass said nothing in response to that, which meant that she was conceding the point and recognized the wisdom of his words. Or maybe that she was just gonna go ahead and do what she wanted anyway and just wasn’t bothering to fight about it, but it was probably that first thing.

“Well you better not just make out with your boyfriend all night,” is what she said at last, and that got his attention reeeeeal quick like.

“Umm. Wow. Okay. So, first off, you’re not the boss of me and who I make out with and when, so jot that down. And second, now I’m definitely going to make out with my boyfriend extra hard, with the exception of when we are actually on our recon mission because as previously established, I am a professional. And also, again, you’re not the boss of me.”

Jason ignored her Eye Roll With Extra Emphasis, and instead just held up his phone to Text With Extra Emphasis, as he read along with what he was typing.

“By the way babe, we have to make out extra hard tonight,” he said, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth while he dragged out his dictation with the kind of focus that usually led to Bruce asking why he couldn’t apply as much intensity to training as he did to pettiness. “Cass has suddenly decided she can dictate terms to me and I need to shut that shit down ASAP, so thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter. Smoochies and other gay stuff to the best boyfriend ever.”

Jason frowned as a response pinged back seconds later.

TheCatsMeow: ....the things I put up with for the sake of your weird family dynamics.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Yeah, yeah. You’re a saint among were-panthers. Must you mock? Why can’t you just tell me I’m pretty instead?

TheCatsMeow: Sorry. Let me try again. OMG you’re so pretty Jase how did I get so lucky xoxo.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: No. Its too late. It feels forced and unbelievable now. You’ve ruined it forever.

TheCatsMeow: Got it. From now on I will only tell you that you’re repulsive and hideous.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: I’m breaking up with you.

TheCatsMeow: But after I help you with your mission tonight.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Obvsly. I’m a professional. Why do people keep forgetting this?

TheCatsMeow: And also the making out to spite your sister.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Yeah we should do that first too. I mean we already penciled it in.

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corancoranthemagicalman · 3 years

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So @nebulous-bondage , you said that you liked Dean being an idiot with internalized issues that he confronts, misunderstandings and miscommunications, and long-suffering Sam. I attempted to do a bit of everything but adjacent to anything I would usually do, took a movie metaphor and ran. I hope you like it!

Great love and hugs to Sophie over at @starrynightdeancas for hosting this AWESOME event for a fabulous celebration (and once again congrats on the milestone!!) I got to meet at least TWO new cool people from it. (My gifter and giftee.) If you want some amazing content, please check out Sophie’s stuff that I totally drew inspiration from. Figured if my giftee was a fan of Sophie’s, I couldn’t go too wrong taking a card out of that deck.

Lots of love!

🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺

The crux of the issue if you asked Dean, was this:

He was an idiot.

Okay, he was not—he wasn’t stupid stupid. He has got mediocre intelligence, right? He wasn’t like Sammy and his multiple languages thing or Bobby and his random lore thing and—

The point was Dean, while not stupid could be a massive idiot. And that was the conundrum that led him to soaking in the middle of a diner in Nebraska of all places with his mother gasping at him and his brother facepalming at him and Jack glaring at him—

And Cas… well, Cas was just. Looking. But his face was, if Dean had to pinpoint some emotion, reading like it was a heartbreak that he had just experienced.

Maybe Dean should start from the beginning. Just so you understand his perspective, okay? Because he wasn’t—he wasn’t stupid. This wasn’t entirely his fault, except that it might have been. And he might have a lot of talking to do. Which sucked, because Dean kind of hated talking.

Okay, maybe not the beginning. The beginning was fire and brimstone and sulfur. The beginning was something Dean was told, but didn’t remember. Or the beginning he did remember, which was lightning and fear and salvation—well.

Dean was far from the beginning. The real beginning. It had been longer than a decade. An entire lifetime—more than that—separating him from what he was. What they were now to what they were then.

But there is a beginning to every stage in Dean’s life, he’s found. And that’s what he means. This thing Dean had for Cas? It began long before Dean was aware of it. This particular circumstance that led to a soaked shirt in a corny booth? Well, Dean with the benefit of retrospection could pinpoint it exactly.

In the Bunker’s library was where this had all started.

Cas had just walked in, deeply conversing with Jack. All of the conversations that Cas had he treated with that same seriousness. Even back when he had just been newly revived. Newly in Dean’s passenger seat, donning a cowboy hat, and calling himself Huckleberry.

(His Huckleberry. Dean’s Huckleberry. Even if he didn’t mean it like that. Could never mean it like that. Because angel’s didn’t feel like that.)

Jack had spotted Dean first, or at least turned to face Dean first. Dean had wondered if Cas had that same peripheral awareness as him. If his eyes always looked for him when he entered a room. If he could feel the charge he exuded with every step.

(Probably not. It was probably an angel thing that made Dean aware of Cas. Something about electricity and grace. Even though Cas’ grace was fading by the day, he was an angel. Would always be an angel if Dean could do anything about it.)

The point was, Jack had turned from Cas. Had asked Dean something about courting rituals in film. Dean had scoffed, reminding Jack that he didn’t watch chick-flicks. Because he didn’t. And had given him some sort of half answer.

(Ten Things I Hate About You didn’t count. And neither did Dirty Dancing. Ledger was not starring in a chick-flick, and Swayze always got a pass.)

Frowning, Jack had made some comment to Cas. It was probably regarding their previous conversation, and that’s why Dean hadn’t retained it. Didn’t really get it. He was, as stated previously, an idiot. And maybe if he had paid more attention, he would have stopped this before it had started.

But he didn’t. Instead, he had turned to Cas. Because he had been thinking about Dirty Dancing. And how Cas hadn’t seen that yet. And Dean had asked Cas if he wanted to do a movie night. Just—just the two of them.

(He said it was because Jack was four, and maybe Cas should vet the movie first. And Sam hated Dirty Dancing. And Mom wasn’t even home. Which was all true. But it wasn’t often that Dean had the excuse to be alone with his best friend.

At the beginning of their friendship, Dean hadn’t had to share Cas with anybody. That was his best friend. His buddy to laugh harder with than he had in his entire life. His buddy to watch movies with and make jokes with. Now even Mary liked circling around Cas—not that Dean would blame them. But maybe—maybe he would like to be a bit selfish. Just this once.)

Jack’s face had lit up like a Christmas tree, and Cas’ eyes had looked as gentle as soft-serve. “I would like that,” he had answered, and that had been that. They had watched the movie, just the two of them. And if Cas sat closer into Dean’s personal space—well. Cas never knew what that was, did he? No need to correct him now.

And it was small things like that. Adjacent to what they had been doing before, but somehow different. Maybe Dean was laughing more. Maybe Cas was smiling more. Whatever the hell it was, it was nice.

(Nice in the way that butterflies in the stomach felt. Light and dizzying and wonderful and terrifying. Not that it was butterflies. Not that this was even remotely anything like that.

Because, if Dean were to be honest about it, butterflies didn’t come close. The butterflies in Dean’s stomach had once had jetpacks. But now? Now they were settled. They just lived there and Dean was used to it and it was—

It was more than butterflies. In theory.)

And it was Sam shaking his head at them. Them laughing. Jack sitting across from them with a board game on a team with Mary, facing head to head. And it was… nice.

(Nice should have been Dean’s warning.)

Jack’s movie night picks were always varying, but he had recently shoveled 90s romantic films into the fray. Sam, as predicted, had ducked out to FaceTime with Eileen when Dirty Dancing had made it to the top of the list, but otherwise stuck it out. Dean couldn’t even begin to list all of the names that had bled together and the faces with their generic, lovestruck expressions.

There was Jack’s wide smile, though. Sam snorting a laugh and shoving popcorn into his mouth. Mary, intrigued and curious, asking as many questions as Cas might have once upon a time. And Cas was there, right next to Dean’s arm, and warm beside him. Lovely and warm and giving that same smile Dean thought was beginning to make a regular appearance.

Sitting with his entire family—all of them safe for once?—of course it had to go wrong.

(Of course Dean had to be the one to ruin it.)

It was an entire nest of vampires out in Nebraska of all places. Mary had been in the area and willing to meet up with them. Jack had been desperate to learn more about hunting, a fact that reminded Dean of a far off memory of Cas newly returned from Purgatory. A gummy smile and determination braced into an angel who still had his wings. Dean would be damned if Jack wasn’t a spitting image of that.

(But, maybe… Maybe Jack could go without all the terrible things that happened during that time. Cas, back from Purgatory and not in control of all of his faculties. Cas, longing for penance and willing to pass vindication on Dean’s guilty conscience. Even if Dean wasn’t a great role model. Even if the first few weeks with Jack had been—

Sam called it living with John Winchester again. Dean hadn’t known what to call it. Didn’t know if he could call it anything. But that—

Well, that was for another time. Dean would always be living with that guilt, but for the moment, the guilt bloomed in a Nebraska diner sitting across from Cas.)

Laughing, smiling—things that seemed to subtly be a new normal for them. It made Dean lean back in the booth, sling his arm over the back of it and relax into his seat. He turned to Jack, ruffling the kid’s hair after Jack shot a syrupy smile to Cas across the table. Cas offered a shy smile, ducking his head.

Beside Cas, Sam rolled his eyes and resumed his conversation with Mary. Mary had squeezed into the side with Dean and Jack. Five people didn’t work for booths, and Dean couldn’t help but think that in another life he would have prevented this exact thing from happening. But he didn’t mind being half on a seat, Mary squeezing between Jack and the window, and Sam sitting across from her laughing. Cas’ still shy smile on him.

“I did have a question,” Mary raised a brow. “I mean, when did movies start getting so… formulaic?”

Sam huffed a laugh, giving a shrug of his shoulders. “Well, they’ve kind of always been that way, haven’t they? Old Japanese myth becomes Hollywood cowboys becomes modern Sci-Fi.”

“Hey,” Dean spoke pointedly. “Treading dangerous waters there, Sammy. You can’t go wrong with cowboys or aliens.”

“Oh! Or Cowboys and Aliens,” Jack beamed, pointing with his fork before returning most of his attention to the remaining stack of pancakes.

Dean acquesied the point with a crooked grin. “That too.” He took a sip of his coffee, enjoying the slow burn of hot caffeine into his system. “What sort of formula are we talkin’ about though? Are we talkin’ young girls getting hypnotized by weirdly boyish supernatural creatures?”

“Even that has some basis going back to at least 1897,” Cas pointed out, “at least from what most people with any familiarity of fiction are concerned. Stoker’s Dracula was also a youthful seeming figure who enchanted a young woman.” His brow furrowed in that thoughtful way of his before he continued. “Though, I suppose that since some scholars believe it is possibly an allegory for sexuallly transmitted diseases, that does reaffirm the belief that it is meant to be an alluring but dangerous figure threatening the virtue of a young woman.”

Mary chuckled, shaking her head with wide eyes. She still wasn’t used to Cas being… Cas.

(There were times where Mary forgot Cas was an angel. Not in the sense that she was not always aware of the supernatural aura around Cas, but in the sense that sometimes Cas was so human. He was thoughtful and kind. His words were provoking and caring. His emotions were as volatile and as gentle as any man Dean had ever known.

Perhaps better than most men Dean had known. More human than some men that Dean had known.)

“I meant the whole boy meets girl thing.” She gestured with her free hand. “I mean the movie dates and the plastic solo cups. It’s all so… basic.”

“Not exactly the boomboxes and the mermaids, is it?” Sam smiled gently, nodding. “I guess people just like it… simple. Y’know? That love can just be something as simple as movie dates and sharing milkshakes.”

Dean ran his fingers through his hair, rubbing at the back of his neck. Sam nailed it on the head. The best part of movies was that they were simple, and you always knew how they were gonna end.

(The hero always beat the bad guy, always saved the girl, always lived happily ever after. Didn’t mean Dean didn’t like movies where the cowboy rode off—grievously injured—into the sunset where you knew he would fall off of his horse after the fade to black. It was just that sometimes—

Dean knew that was going to be his ending. The cowboy holding his bleeding side. No one beside him but his trusty horse. Orange sunset on his face. That’s where his life was heading.

So sometimes it was just… nice. To pretend those stories didn’t exist. And Dean wasn’t living in one.)

“I guess,” Mary sighed, “I just miss the romance of it.” She looked forlornly at her drink. Dean wondered if she was thinking of John. Thinking of a jukebox and Zeppelin songs that he knew all the words to.

“I suppose everyone has their own unique definition of romance,” Cas offered diplomatically. “Humans tend to think romantic actions are circumstantial rather than objective.” He turned a small smile to Dean. “Take for example movie dates.”

Scoffing, Dean rolled his eyes. “Just ‘cause I like movies doesn't mean I think that’s romantic.” He could feel his cheeks burn, causing him to scratch at his scruff with an index finger. He was going to have to shave, wasn’t he? His hair was getting long—

“What.” Jack’s voice pulled Dean from his pondering. It sounded a touch colder than Dean was used to coming from the kid. Usually, Jack was sunshine and rainbows. Storm clouds and thunder. A spitting image of his dad—the one he called dad—but softer. Softer because Cas had done his damnedest to not let Jack be hardened into a soldier.

(Not like Dean had been. Not like Sam had been.)

“What what?” Dean furrowed his brow. Sighing, he rested his forearms on the table. “Look, movie nights? They’re nice for getting a girl alone in the dark and getting handsy on the couch or whatever,” he shook his head. “But romantic? Hardly.”

(He wanted to say that he didn’t believe in romance. Maybe because he didn’t want to believe that romance was out there, but not for him. It was hard to say that though, when thinking of his mother and her Zeppelin songs.

When thinking of a tape full of Zeppelin songs.

So he didn’t say any of that.)

“So,” Cas began slowly, “you don’t like movie dates.” He nodded, folding his hands on the table in front of him. “I see. What sort of dates would you prefer?”

Dean quirked a brow at Cas, letting out a chuckle. “Cas, I don’t do dates.” He shot a wry grin toward his brother. “Sammy prefers the wining and dining, but I’m more straight forward. If I want to hook up with someone, I just ask.” Looking at his hands, Dean confessed softer than he had meant to. “I’m too old for messin’ around.”

(And it was true. He was too old for it. He was still a handsome son of a gun. Still drew some attention, but—

But any time he had tried, he found himself just wanting to be home. Just wanting to be on that couch with Cas beside him and Jack sitting at their feet watching a movie. Sam and Mary coming and going as they pleased but there. Home.)

“You don’t… date?” Mary’s voice sounded careful and her gaze felt scrutinizing. “I—I was under the impression—”

“Mom,” Dean stopped her, feeling an embarrassed flush overcome his features. “C’mon. Don’t pretend like people didn’t do hookups back in your day too.” He tried to come off as teasing. Tried to lighten whatever was strengthening Jack’s glare, whatever was making Cas’ eyes grow a far distance away, whatever was raising Sam’s hand to his forehead.

Jack fixed his jaw and Dean had to swallow the bile that rose in his throat. He could recognize that look from the mirror. And that was a terrifying thought, that Jack looked anything like him.

(Made him think about the weeks where Jack was living with John Winchester. Made Dean wake up in a cold sweat that maybe Jack had been learning from them during that time too. That despite Cas’ hard work, Dean would’ve turned Jack into John anyway.)

“Movie dates aren’t romantic,” Jack listed, “and you only want to hook up?”

(And none of that was really true, was it? Dean liked watching movies. And he liked doing it with Cas. He had admitted as much to himself even if the circumstances of those daydreams weren’t romantic.

But the idea of it being romantic wasn’t lost on Dean. That he could want it to be romantic. If asked, though, he’d say maybe movie watching was more domestic. Somehow that meant more to Dean. His little house and his little family watching a film, Cas pressing close and smiling.

But he wouldn’t say that. Couldn’t say that.)

“Love isn’t like the movies, Jack,” Dean huffed. “And I sure as hell don’t want it.”

This was where we were now. Dean’s shirt soaked. Mary gasping. Sam’s face in his hands. Cas’ face being etched with something sharp.

“Jack!” Mary reprimanded, hand resting on his shoulder.

Jack held his chin up in the air, looking down at Dean despite not having the height on him. “Isn’t it customary that when the guy says something stupid, the girl throws her drink at him?” His eyes squinted, head tilting, and it might have made Dean’s heart seize in his chest despite the frightening cold from the water clinging to his chest. “Cas is too kind to do it, so I did it for him.”

Cas was too kind for a lot of things, but—

“Thank you, Jack, but there is no need.” Cas spoke softly, but his face did not reflect that gentleness he always aimed at his son. Instead his eyes were still distant. Still lacking that shade of blue. “I believe this is, ah.” He shook his head and Dean could recognize that self-deprecating crook of his mouth from any distance. “This is the part of the film where the girl grossly misunderstands what is happening.”

“Can someone explain to me what is going on?” Dean snapped, jerking into action to dot at his shirt with napkins. “I’m freezing in Nebraska and we’re still talking about chick-flicks! Life isn’t a movie!”

The crook of Cas’ mouth shrunk, turning a touch sad. “I know,” he spoke calmly and pushed himself out of the booth. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I need some fresh air.”

No one kindly mentioned that Cas had never needed air before.

Dean was left staring at Cas' retreating form, that trenchcoat quickly crossing the horizon. It reminded Dean of the cowboy movies he had been thinking of. The injured cowboy carrying himself out of town, retreating from burdening his loss of life on anyone else. Bleeding and lonely.

Silence fell over the table, the napkins clutched in Dean’s grip quickly soaking some of the water from his shirt but doing little else to dry him. Sam’s elbow thunked against the table and shook Dean out of his reverie.

“So…” Mary began slowly. “You and Cas… aren’t dating?” She cautiously spoke, pushing her mug closer to the window as if that might spare it of whatever her words would stir within Dean.

(There was, admittedly, only one thought to cross Dean’s mind.

No, that wasn’t true.

There were precisely twenty-five different thoughts that had crossed Dean’s mind all at once. The largest of these—the loudest of these—was in a voice Dean ignored.)

“Mom, what the hell?” Dean furrowed his brow. “Cas is my best friend!”

Mary looked contrite, thinning her lips into a line. “I know that,” she reassured gently, “I just thought that…”

“Thought what? We were playing tonsil hockey or something?”

“Gross, Dean,” Sam sighed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. He lifted his gaze to meet Mary’s across from him. “No, they’re just. Always like that.”

Dean swiveled to face Sam. Sammy was always insightful and usually right. But sometimes he spouted things that just… they didn’t—

(It didn’t make sense. To think of Cas and Dean as Cas and Dean. Not when Cas could never feel that way. Not when Dean was adamantly not thinking about it.)

“You told us that guys ask girls to movies when they like them!” Jack argued, pointing a finger accusingly at Dean.

“I what?” Dean furrowed his brow. “We do movie nights all the time! Watching a movie with someone isn’t a date!”

Jack turned to his pancakes with that same laser glare. Kryptonian son of a Kryptonian man. Super-human strength in the most unassuming package. Maybe the kid would have laser eyes. “We asked you why guys asked girls out to the movies in movies, and you said it’s just what people do.” He huffed. “Then you asked Cas to watch a movie. Isn’t that just what people do?”

It was then Dean realized he had no idea what conversation Jack was referring to, and he would have asked as much had it not suddenly come to his realization that—

(That—)

“Cas thought I was dating him?” Dean let out in a harsh whisper that felt like a whip to his heart.

Jack stabbed at his pancake, muggish and solemn with his movements. “I was so excited. I thought I had figured it out.” He let out a slow breath. “Cas tried telling me that… that sometimes humans say things and don’t mean it, but I thought…” Jack rested his chin on his balled fist. “And Mary said that her husband gave her a mixtape of Zeppelin too, so I thought—”

“Wait, wait,” Dean waved his hands in front of himself, speaking over Sam’s squeaking. He could feel his brain fritzing. Blowing smoke and threatening to stop in its tracks and never resume to whatever destination it had been plummeting toward. “Stop. Cas thought I was dating him. And he never said anything.”

Sam snorted a laugh, cracking a smile for the first time since this whole conversation had started. “When have you ever known Cas to say something?” He shook his head, hair curtaining his face. “He’s like the definition of happy with what we have.”

“Another movie trope!” Jack pointed with his fork, lifting his head from his plate. He turned with his silverware pointed at Dean this time. “See? You guys are like a movie!”

“It’s exhausting,” Mary let out in a quiet breath.

Dean could see her mulling over her abandoned coffee before he was distracted by Jack brandishing the fork near his face. He pushed the fork away with a single finger, furrowing his brow.

“We’re not a movie,” he admonished. “We’re people. People who’ve got—” Dean felt the words snap in his throat, clogging it with something thick. “He’s Cas. I’m me. Got it?”

“What the hell does that mean?” Sam furrowed his brow, matching Dean and leaning forward across the table. “You’re you and he’s him. Cut the bullshit, Dean.” Dean could feel Sam’s eyes on him like a searchlight. Felt it beam into every nook and cranny Dean kept hidden. Spotting the rats and the liter festering in corners.

Shaking his head, Dean pushed himself up from the booth. “I’m not having this conversation with you.” He spoke pointedly, looking at his family. His little, broken family.

(He could remember Lilo & Stitch. That had been one that Jack had insisted on watching. Dean couldn’t deny the kid the full cinema experience for a classic.

Sitting on the couch, watching the film, Dean could spy the intensity in Cas’ gaze. The way the green of the film reflected on his blue eyes. Dean caught himself before he leaned into Cas too far, but Cas caught the movement. Caught him staring.

“I just…” Cas had trailed off. “I hadn’t realized how much I could relate to a small, animated alien.” He shrugged. “I suppose now I understand how you could form a parasocial relationship with the talking dog.”

How could Dean put into words how much Cas was Stitch? Something alien and far away. An answer to silent prayers. Something that added to their small and broken family.

But still good.

Yeah, still good.

Instead he had just shrugged, made some remark about Scooby-Doo being everyone’s best friend until Sam had aggressively shushed him into silence.)

The problem was Dean knew he had to talk about it. What was worse was that he knew who he had to talk to. This wasn’t a conversation for his family in the middle of Nebraska. This was a conversation for Cas—wherever he was.

Running his fingers through his hair in aggravation, Dean could feel his boots stomp across the floor. He could hear Sam sigh and place his palm to his forehead. Feel Jack’s Kryptonian stare. Sense his mother’s fight-or-flight instinct kicking in.

(The truth was this:

Dean wanted to run too. Wanted to hide away from this conversation and never resurface. Hide beneath every shout from every hunter he had seen growing up.

But he was getting too old for this shit. And he was tired. And Sammy was always insightful and usually right. And if Dean’s gut was saying what Dean’s heart hoped it was saying? Well.

Well.)

“Cas,” Dean called out, spotting the slowly soaking shoulders of his trenchcoated angel as soon as he turned the corner. “Why the hell are you standing in the rain, man?”

Cas sighed, turning his heavenward face to the concrete. “I wanted to take a walk. It started raining. I didn’t let it deter me.”

“Doesn’t look like you did much walkin’,” Dean gestured to how close the diner was. Its comfortable brickwork was still three feet from Cas’ figure. Stepping closer, Dean inhaled sharply. “Cas, talk to me.”

“What would you like me to say, Dean?” Cas furrowed his brow, turning his entire body to face Dean. Dean didn’t know which was worse. The sharpened profile made of millennial old granite, or the thousand eyed stare that had raised him from perdition.

(It was neither of these.

It was a pair of blue eyes, a shade darker than those of Jimmy Novak’s, staring at him in a barn. Telling him he deserved to be saved. And continuing to tell him he deserved to be saved twelve years later.

That was the face that did Dean in. Always.)

Huffing, Dean could feel an instinctual, defensive fire burn in his chest. “First off, you could start with how the hell I was supposed to guess we started dating.”

Cas’ face hardened and crumbled. It reminded Dean of an old cookie. Stale and full of raisins. It was hard to look at. “We never started dating, Dean.” He spoke sharply. “I… I had made an assumption, and I know what people say about assuming.”

“Let me get this straight,” Dean shook his head. “My best friend of twelve years thinks I asked him out on a movie date in front of his kid, yeah?” He did not wait for Cas’ answer before continuing. “Then he just, what? Thinks that nothing would change? We’d just keep watching movies together forever?”

“I would ask for nothing else,” Cas confessed and his whisper was almost lost to the sound of the rain picking up, thundering against the roof of the diner beside them. “Nothing had to change. Nothing has to change.”

Dean growled. “Then why storm out, huh?” He bit. “If nothing has to change, why are you out here taking a smoke break in the rain?”

Cas inhaled sharply, turning away from Dean. “I…” he began, “I thought for once we were on the same page.” He let out a breath. “I just needed time to… think. Reconceptualize some things.”

“Reconceptualize things.” Dean echoed, ignoring the increase of the rain falling on his skin. “Cas, I don’t even know what to say.” He threw his arms with a shrug. “What am I supposed to say?”

Hadn’t he known what conversation he was supposed to have? Why was it so hard to speak to Cas about this?

Wasn’t it supposed to be easy? If Dean wanted this, and Cas wanted this, then wasn’t it that simple? Just like a movie?

(The problem, Dean figured, was this:

He actually didn’t know what Cas wanted at all.

All that time thinking Cas couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Now here they were, and Cas thought they were dating, but he hadn’t done any of the things Dean would have done if they were dating. What would dating Cas even be like? What they had already been doing for weeks? Years?)

“Cas,” Dean inhaled a fortifying breath. “Man, what do you want?”

Cas brow furrowed and his head tilted, scrutinizing Dean. Being solely under that powerful gaze made Dean shiver. The angel’s eyes widened and he took a measured step forward. “You should get out of the rain—”

“No!” Dean gripped tightly at Cas’ shoulders. “No, I’m not leaving until you tell me what you want Cas!” He shouted and he was certain his voice would have bounced throughout the nearly empty parking lot of the diner had it not been for the deafening rain.

“What do I want?” Cas shouted in equal force. He shrugged Dean’s hands off of his shoulders, pressing forward into Dean’s space.

(Suddenly, Dean was reminded of an alley. Of Michael and Lucifer. Of Cas pressing him against the cold, damp wall. Beating his convictions into him.

It felt holy, those dangerous touches. Punishment at the hands of an angry god reminding Dean what he was fighting for. Even if he hadn’t lost sight of it yet, and even if Dean didn’t know it yet—

Cas would always hold him to that.)

“What I want,” Cas growled, eyes squinting against Dean’s features sharply, “is the one thing that I know I can’t have—”

“And how do you know?” Snapping, Dean took the last step between them. Their faces were close as they had been in the past, but…

But it had been so long since Dean had been this close to him. And it was somehow not close enough.

Cas’ eyes widened, breath that he didn’t need hitching. Dean watched in fascination as the blue of his eyes was slowly overtaken by the dark of his pupils. His crows feet somehow diminished with his wide eyes.

Youthful.

He looked like an echo of a Cas Dean once knew. But this was the Cas Dean always knew. Just older. Wiser. Kinder.

(And Dean loved him more with every day.)

“Cas, I'm tired.” Dean confessed. “I'm tired of lying to myself. I’m tired of pretending that I don't—I can’t—” he stumbled over his words, searching for some hidden strength that might have resided on Cas’ skin. “I keep telling myself you couldn’t ever feel like… like that. And it’s easier that way. Maybe if you can’t ever feel like that, then it’ll never happen so why should I hope for anything else, right?”

Cas made to interrupt him, but Dean wasn’t finished. Not by a mile. And Dean had been driving all of his life. Knew the comfort of driving. There was something like that here, with Cas.

(There always had been.

On a park bench in a small town Dean couldn’t even remember the name of. Cas saying he wasn’t a hammer. Dean listening. The first smile or the first joke that wasn’t a barb. Or both.)

“But that's bullshit, isn't it? ‘Cause you feel like nobody I’ve ever met, Cas.” Dean laughed breathlessly and it felt like oxygen deprivation. The kind that made you dizzy and squeezed your chest. “You feel so much all the damn time. That's the whole reason Naomi hated your guts. You’ve got this—this heart, man, and I gotta tell you, I’m jealous.

I’m jealous of every person who gets that from you. That gets a piece of you. ‘Cause I want all of it. Isn’t that nuts, man? That I’m too chicken shit to get over myself but I want you completely like that?” Dean gulped in a fresh lungful of air but he still felt like he was choking. Cas’ eyes taking on the appearance of mist, glistening and open, growing the thing beating its way out of Dean’s ribcage.

Dean swallowed, closing his eyes and trying to finish what he had to say. What he knew he had to say. Dean wasn’t good at talking. He didn’t like talking.

(But he loved Cas.

That probably balanced it out.)

“I’m scared, Cas,” came the confessional, “I’m terrified that I’m gonna—about everything.” Opening his eyes, Dean looked to Cas again. Found the remainder of the strength he needed looking back at him so intensely. “But there’s, uh, there’s this guy who sort of makes me feel better. About all of that. And I think I could move fucking mountains for him if he asked me to.”

“Dean,” and Cas spoke it like absolution. Like forgiveness for all the things that Dean had done. All he would ever do.

(And maybe he did. Maybe Cas did forgive Dean of it. There was so much to forgive. Little to forget. But maybe—

Maybe Cas saw Dean. All of Dean. The John Winchester that he was and the John Winchester he could be. The Mark of Cain on his arm and the Demon in his eyes.

But maybe he saw Lilo, too. On her knees and praying. Hoping. Someone who was trying.

And god.

Did he want to try.)

Licking his lips, Dean’s eyes flickered to Cas’ mouth for a moment. “Y’know Cas,” Dean whispered. He couldn’t risk speaking louder. Not if it was going to break the spell. Not if it was going to fade to black before he could get this. “I’ve always wanted a movie kiss.”

Cas’ smile spread gently across his face like warm butter over morning toast. “I thought you said life wasn’t a movie.”

Dean chuckled, ducking his head in hopes that Cas wouldn’t catch the burning of his cheeks. He probably did, though. Cas was just observant like that. Knew Dean like that. Bringing his face back up to meet Cas’ gaze, Dean couldn’t help but smile wider.

“It isn’t usually,” he shrugged with a single shoulder. “But, uh, way I see it?” Dean leaned forward, brushing the tip of his nose along the bridge of Cas’. “I think we just might be.”

(And god that was corny. But Cas made Dean corny.

No.

Dean was corny. Cas just made Dean comfortable enough to be whatever he wanted to be. And what Dean was right now was kissing the love of his life in the rain, receiving a foot-popping silver screen worthy first kiss.

Fade to black. Roll credits. Cue the 90s pop cover of the title song.)

#starrynightdeancas gift exchange #the sndc gift exchange #gift exchange #fics #my writing #destiel #spn #thought they were dating #everyone thought they were dating #miscommunication #misunderstandings #dean is an idiot (affectionate)#I hope you like this. I was experimenting and I had fun writing it. So I hope you at least halfway enjoy it?#welcome to the C is insecure channel #but seriously I hope this at least somewhat hit some of the buttons I was aiming for.#Big thanks again to Sophie for running the event.

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writingwithcolor · 4 years

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B’nei mitzvah in spaceship without Jewish community | Jewish character celebrating Christmas

Hi! Thank you so much for running this blog. I appreciate how much time and effort all the mods have put into it. I finished reading through the whole Jewish tag a few days ago, and I’ve learned so much! I’m writing a Voltron fic (I *know* lol) and decided to make one of the protagonists a white nonbinary Ashkenazi Reform Jewish girl. Her astronaut brother mysteriously disappears in space and is presumed dead, so she runs away from home a couple of months before her b'nei mitzvah to find him. Now, she’s in a group of rebels in space fighting against an Empire. I have two concerns:

1. Everyone on the ship misses home, so part of the way they cope is through getting in touch with their cultures. They’re gonna celebrate (a mostly non-Americanized) Christmas because it matters a lot to some of the characters for non-religious reasons. To what extent can my Jewish character participate in the celebration without it being weird? I want her to enjoy herself more because she’s with her friends than because Jesus etc. They’ll also celebrate Chanukah, if that helps. I know Chanukah isn’t a major holiday, so I also want to have her celebrate a more significant one like Rosh Hashanah and/or Purim with them. Is it okay for gentiles to participate in those holiday celebrations, or should she do that alone?

2. Throughout most of the story, she’ll struggle with choosing whether to prioritize fighting the Empire or finding her brother and bringing him home. When she eventually does find her brother (who also turns out to be a rebel), he lets her decide whether they stay or go home. I thought it would be nice if she decided to stay and keep fighting for the greater good after she finally has her b'nei mitzvah. Her friends and other experiences are also a big part of why she decides to stay, but the b'nei mitzvah would be what gives her the final push she needs to decide. I don’t know if it would be okay for me to write the ceremony itself or if she can even have one if only two of the eight people on the ship are Jewish. I read that not everyone has a b'nei mitzvah and that it’s not required, but I feel like it’d be a big deal to her character. Should I keep the b'nei mitzvah idea, or am I heading towards appropriative territory here?

I want to make her Jewishness a big part of her character’s growth, and I really want to make sure I do it respectfully and accurately. I plan on finding a sensitivity reader when I’ve made more progress with actually writing everything out. Thank you for any insight you might offer!

It feels off to me to join a community symbolically when you’re far away FROM the community. Why not just have had her already have done the ceremony before she has all these adventures? That way it could just be a straightforward story about a Jewish teen having exciting heroic adventures in space, rather than a story about what happens when you have to miss aspects of Jewish life because you’re in space. It would also make the “….well, I guess I’m around for Christmas” bit less weighted because then that would be the only one of those instead of having two of those.

–Shira

I’ll cover some other territory here. For those who don’t know, b'nei mitzvah is something you just automatically become at the correct age, the ceremony is simply to celebrate that with the community. Not all people have the ceremony, but if you are Jewish, and of age (for religious purposes), your status changes with or without it. Personally, I’m comfortable with showing a Jewish character finding a way to have a Jewish celebration when the circumstances are less than ideal, for me the other aspects of the story are more troubling.

On the subject of having a Jewish character celebrate Christmas with their friends… look I don’t like this trope. There are many Jewish people, who are completely secular, who don’t celebrate Christmas, because it is explicitly a Christian holiday, and secular Jewish people are still Jewish. Some Jewish people (secular or otherwise) do choose to celebrate other holidays, and I am very comfortable with those folks telling their own stories. What I’m not happy with is the push from outside of the community for every Jewish character to slide into assimilation.

Some Jewish people will go to Christmas parties and not eat the food, because they keep kosher, or won’t stay for a tree-lighting, because that feels like it goes too far, or will give presents but not receive them. There are a huge number of ways we might handle Christmas, and I appreciate that you plan to show holidays other than just Chanukah (and yes, it’s fine for non-Jewish characters to join her in her holidays, if she invites them), but I always question why a non-Jewish writer is so keen to show Jewish characters celebrating Christmas. The most generous version of me wants to assume that you get so much out of Christmas that you want to share it, but the part of me that knows about the pressures to assimilate, and the history of increased antisemitic violence around Christmas thinks… just leave this kid alone. She missed her celebration, she’s far from her community, and now she has to go put on a Happy Assimilated Smile for the culturally Christian folks around her. From a nonbinary Jewish perspective, it’s a little unusual for your nonbinary character to use she/her pronouns, and use b'nei mitzvah as a gender neutral alternative to the gendered bat mitzvah. In secular life, at least in the US, it’s not uncommon for people to use multiple pronouns, but I haven’t met, or even heard of, a single person using gendered pronouns secularly, and using new neutral alternatives religiously. It absolutely could happen but, because it is so unusual, to me it reads as either invalidating the character’s gender, or tokenizing her in the religious sphere.

–Dierdra

Shira, I think that’s a really good idea to make the character post-b'nei mitzvah. That way you just have a Jewish character having adventures rather than her culture being The Conflict. (And also, a pre-b'nei mitzvah seems a bit young for this storyline? Can she really consent to fighting alongside the rebels? Do they habitually take unaccompanied children on their ship? To me a teenager would make more sense, but hey it’s not my story!)

Dierdra, your answer regarding the Christmas aspect was awesome and really thorough. Thanks for your thoughts on the pronouns as well, it also jarred with me but I was waiting to hear your opinion as you have lived experience. My worry is if you use gender neutral terms for one but not the other, you risk falling into to the stereotype that only marginalised religious folks have to change our language etc to be inclusive to LGBTQ+ people, but everyone else is fine.

I wanted to come back to the point about Rosh Hashana. First of all, thank you for acknowledging that we have holidays that are more important than Chanukah! Sooo many OP’s don’t know that. In terms of how she would celebrate it, I agree it’s fine to invite non-Jewish people along. However, given how community-based Jewish life is, making her keep Yom Tov on her own feels a bit like a torture story, especially when others have people to celebrate Christmas with. I wonder if you’ve thought about giving her a Jewish friend on the ship? Especially if you want her Jewishness to be part of her growth as you mentioned, an older Jewish friend and mentor could be a huge help :)

–Shoshi

As you can see, we have a wide range of possibilities for “what happens when you ask a Jewish person about celebrating Christmas.” I didn’t mind hanging around it as an outsider myself until a certain subset of Christians started being mean-spirited about it in the news plus some personal trauma that time of year, as long as everyone involved was clear that I was just participating from the outside and this didn’t somehow change me. (If I may make an analogy: compare it to going to a baby shower when you want to support your friend or family member but also really don’t want kids of your own. You’re going to have a whole different experience if your decision is respected vs. if all the other guests treat you like you being there means you’ll change your mind about not wanting kids.)

That being said, it’s still all over the map. Some people IRL are okay even going to mass with their partner’s Catholic family (without participating in communion obvs.) Some would never, ever do that and are sitting here with shocked faces that I even typed that. But what becomes important is the way it’s written. Sitting around listening to the Christmas story is probably a bad fit for your fanfic, but helping other people bake Christmas cookies or put ornaments on a tree could work. The ornament thing could remind her of decorating a sukkah, and she could point that out to the others.

I guess I’m saying is

keep her participation secular, and

keep her participation from leaning into the idea that we’re unhappy with our customs and would prefer to do it their way.

I have literally never in my life felt jealous of the kids who “got to do Santa” (for example) and while I’m sure some kids were and they’re valid too, I think it’s important to show that it’s not a universal phenomenon.

–Shira

#jewish #non binary #B’nei mitzvah #holidays #Christmas #Jewish Holidays #submission

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samatedeansbroccoli · 3 years

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SamAteDeansMasterlist

My parents said I should be more organized so I started by organizing my Tumblr.

Yo what’s up, I’m SamAteDeansBroccoli, 18+, never learned how to read. I drink angst for breakfast and have hurt/comfort for an afternoon snack. Nothing on this blog makes sense. Run while you still have a chance to keep your sanity.

I go by Stress, Sam, Broccoli, saMatedEansBroccoli, or Samaté Dean's Broccoli for short. Sometimes I write fanfiction, most of the time I just reblog things. Any pronouns.

More about me here!

Ready to lose your sanity? Check out my works shown on my masterlist below!

Currently obsessed with: Call of Duty, Star Wars, Phantom of the Opera, Counter-Strike, DC Heroes, anything medical or aviation related

Wanna contact me elsewhere?

Ao3: Jak_the_ATAT

Discord: call of booty#7229

Instagram: HistoryMightBeFun

My comic sideblog: @comicsoncrack

Join my MW discord!

My COD ask game

How to work this Masterlist

Categories are listed based on what most followers would find the most interesting to the least interesting. Each category will have one recommended suggestion under it. If you want to see more in that category, click on the header to access a page with more choices. This is to keep the masterlist nice and short.

Fanfics

Adler’s Little Fish (Call of Duty, kid!Bell)

A little girl abandoned in Trabzon leaves Adler in a very chaotic lifestyle as he tries to balance his hunt for Perseus with taking care of the child.

Analyses and Headcanons

Adler’s Body Language

Had Bell paid attention more, they would have seen Adler manipulating them.

Art

Mason x Woods chibi drawing

I love these two beans.

OCs

Sim MacCallen (Call of Duty: Black Ops 2/Call of Duty: Mobile)

VTOL mechanic Sim MacCallen continues to wonder why Broccoli can’t spell his last name right half the time.

My shitposts

Click on the header to access the “BroccoliGoneWrong” tag.

NSFW Frank Woods

He’s just that sexy.

Fairly Odd Asks (sometimes)

Cow milk and trans people?

Cow milk and trans people pt. 2

Jeff Bezos on the moon?

RDJ Dogboy p1. 1

RDJ Dogboy pt. 2

Trolling a Sex Account

Trolling a Sex Account pt. 2

Trolling a (Normal?) Account pt. 3

Favorite Reblogs

Anatomy embroidery

Angry frog

Anime sword

Anti-Anxiety Helpers

Are you winning the future, son?

Bitch in Morse code

Camels in the road

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Charging handle FSB vs. CIA

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CTS avoidance exercises

Dead but not really

Drawing Masterlist

Evergiven door stuck

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In-depth Novel Asks

Jeff Leech’s YouTube Comment

Life help hacks

Leet World family art

Legolas’ “And my bow”

Lost generation 1918

Map date flow chart

Masterlist of descriptions

Modern tap dancing

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Miscellaneous

Rickrolling @enderio count

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My Chaotic COD introduction

List of CODs

Please do not reblog this!

Random Words: Oymyakon, recondite, peal

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iamjungkooked · 5 years

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All In

Synopsis:

Jeon Jungkook is everything you have ever desired in a partner. He’s kind, passionate, funny, honest, warm and every positive adjective in the dictionary. He totally gets you and you get him. He seems like the perfect guy for you, except he is dating your best friend. What could possibly go wrong?

The four times you get the wind knocked out of you by Jeon Jeongguk

Genre: Angst (a lot of it) + mild smut + a li’l bit of fluff but mostly angst

Pairing: Jungkook x female reader

Word count: 13.1k

A/N: a huge thank you to you if you read this. Any kind of feedback is appreciated ❤️ I hope you enjoy it!

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

So far there have been two times in your life where you have gotten the wind knocked out of you. The first was when you saw your favourite band in concert for the first time ever. The second is when you see Jeon Jeongguk across the room at your best friend’s party.

{3 years ago}

Standing in the corner of the room, you scan the crowd that has filled the house. As you continue your examination, your eyes catch a stranger across the room. He’s got a beer in one hand, and with the other, he is running a hand through his hair. To say you feel unsteady on your feet and can’t breathe would be an understatement. Immediately mesmerized by his smile, you find it hard to take your eyes off him. He catches your gaze across the room, and you immediately lower your eyes. Fidgeting with your phone, you leave from the crowded living room and make an escape for the front yard of Mina’s house, which is the only quiet place.

The night is silent, save for the sounds of crickets chirping into the distance somewhere. You amble quietly towards the tree in the yard, which is yours and Mina’s favourite spot. Dusting off the roots that protrude from the ground, you sit down and rest your head against the bark.

“I thought I saw someone heading in this direction” the nameless stranger from before makes an appearance, almost making you lose your balance even though you are sitting.

“Hi” you tuck a strand of hair behind your ear

“What are you doing out here leaving that awesome party?” he chuckles as he sits next to you, drawing his knees to his chest.

“It’s too loud. Not my kind of scene” you play with your hands in an effort to detract from the nervousness.

“Thought I was the only one”

You shake your head. “I took you for the parties-are-my-thing- kind of guy”

With eyebrows raised in surprise, he looks at you. “Really? What makes you say that?”

“Only the people swarming around you, and just your general aura. I guess” you shrug.

“Hmm” he nods in thought. “I am Jungkook, by the way” his hand crosses the gap between you, and he holds it in front of you.

You look at his hand for a moment, before sliding yours in. “I am y/n”

“Nice to meet you” his lips stretch in that perfect smile, which is capable of breaking hearts.

“So, if parties aren’t your thing, what do you like?” he asks after a moment of silence.

“Nature, books, Netflix of course, and people watching”

He laughs at your response and nods his head. “I haven’t met a single person to date who doesn’t like Netflix. But people watching, now that is something I haven’t heard before”

“I mean, you would have to be some kind of a monster to not like Netflix. People watching is a weird name for it, but more like observing my surroundings. People more so than other details.” you chuckle at the ridiculousness of it. “The human condition is very fascinating”

“How so?” his interest piques.

“You can learn a lot about someone just by looking at them. I don’t mean giving them a once over, but really observing them”

“So what did you learn about me?” he grins with a twinkle in his eyes.

“You are confident given your posture. Definitely an extrovert, since you just struck up a conversation with a random stranger. You keep an open and inviting body language, which tells me you aren’t afraid of showing your true self and letting people in. What else?” you pause in thought. “That is all I can think of right now”

“Was I just a part of the crowd or did I happen to strike your fancy? I saw you looking at me”

“Oh that…” your lower your gaze partly in nervousness and partly in embarrassment. “I am sorry if that was weird. I was looking around the room, and I saw you and just…” you trail off.

“It’s alright. I am happy you did. Otherwise, I would never have come up to you and I never would have known how intelligent and fascinating you are”

You didn’t expect him to respond like that which eases your nervousness, allowing you to gather the courage to look at him. “You are good at giving compliments. Thank you” you smile at him, heart beating slightly faster than usual.

“Actually, thank you. For saving me from boring conversations” he motions his head to Mina’s house. “I am glad I met you. I have seriously never met anyone like you”

“I have never met anyone like me either” your lips stretch into a grin.

“What do you gather about them?” Jungkook points to presumably a couple in the making sitting on the steps leading to the house.

“Why don’t you give it a shot?” you prompt with a crooked grin.

He mulls the offer for a moment. “Well…” he pauses as he studies the couple. “She’s leaning in, so she’s definitely interested. He might be interested but he’s put a little bit of distance between them. So maybe he’s not sure about her. She’s touching his arm, and she just threw her head back and laughed so she’s totally into whatever he said. Either that or she likes him so much that she’s just laughing at whatever. He’s fidgeting with his hands, so maybe he’s nervous” he looks to you for confirmation. “How am I doing so far?”

“You are a pro at it Mr. Jungkook”

His smile widens. “The effect of hanging out with intelligent people” he winks.

You chuckle and shake your head. “It’s funny isn’t it?”

“What?” he turns to look at you.

“It takes a lot for two people to be together. There are so many layers and so many complexities and so much drama involved. There is no guarantee that we’ll be happy once we find whatever we’re looking for. Yet, we’re all desperately searching for the one person who can give us the validation we need without even knowing where we will end up. It might be a good person or a bad one, but we never stop. It’s like actively looking for heartbreak, and that possibility is somehow better than being alone”

“Everyone wants to be loved. I don’t think it’s the feelings that we crave or even physical contact. I think it’s the fact that someone is choosing us for who we are. You know the whole package of good, bad, and ugly. That is why we have so many dating websites now. Everyone wants in” he replies looking at the couple who is still sitting on the steps.

He gets you. You can actually have a proper conversation with him. He’s the whole package too. He’s smart, and from what you can tell a genuinely kind guy. He’s not just a superficial guy, like many others you have met before who only want to talk about interests and hobbies, and likes or dislikes because those are the topics of conversation when you first meet someone. God forbid, you actually dig deeper and try to unravel the many layers of human personality.

“Do you want in?” you question.

“I-” he’s interrupted by Mina, who is approaching.

“Y/N!” she squeals and you move to stand up, but Jungkook is already offering you his hand.

You slide your hand in his and nod your head for a thank you.

“Oh my god! Thank god you guys met!” she exclaims. “I was so scared to introduce you guys to each other. But the universe took care of it for me” she looks heavenward and sighs.

You can smell the alcohol on her breath. Mina is a typical social animal. She’s got tons of friends, and whenever the occasion arises she hosts parties . Of course, like any other extrovert, she is constantly embroiled in the painful cycle of relationships. She’s had so many boyfriends over the years, you can’t even count anymore. Ever since you met her in grade 1, she’s always had someone she’s either crushing on, or she’s in a relationship with. She is the perfect example of people suffering from “love syndrome” as you like to call it. But she’s also your best friend because, despite everything, she will fiercely defend you if anyone hurts you, and she’s always there for you. She’s been through thick and thin with you and in the 2 decades of friendship, you have gone through a lot with her.

“What do you mean?” your brows knit together in confusion.

“Y/n, this is Jungkook. He’s my boyfriend”

You blink at her owlishly because there is no other way to respond. You never thought there would be a third time when you would feel like you have been sucker-punched. But this is it. This is the third time in your life when you felt like the wind was knocked out of you.

By the end of the night, all the fantasies you had built in your head about marrying him, having a cute family together, and living a cliche suburban life came crashing down.

Because Jeon Jeongguk is your best friend’s boyfriend.

*********

{Present day}

“Please do it!” Mina begs folding her hands, following you around like a child needing attention.

“No!” you shake your head as you pick up the cleaning agent and the cloth and head over to the table that was occupied by a group of high school students. Mina follows you to the table. You begin cleaning the mess the kids made.

“Why!?” she questions.

You can’t give her the real reason. So you settle for the whole I-don't-have-time-to-date-right now spiel. But there is only one reason why you don’t want to date: Jungkook. As hopeless, and wrong it is to have a one-sided love for him, you just can’t seem to invest in anyone else. As much as your instincts and reasoning contradict this stubborn desire of yours, you still can’t seem to detach yourself from the insufferable feelings.

He is, after all, Mina’s boyfriend. So that should make things easy. But not for you. It’s been three years since Mina and Jeongguk got together. It was three years ago you when your pining for him began and it’s three years later and you are still stuck in the same place. Sometimes being around him is suffocating. Sometimes you hate him for being the reason behind your inability to move on. It’s been three years and you have not understood what it is about him that appeals so much to you.

At first, it was the fact that you could have genuine conversations with him. But then you met Kim Namjoon, who is your ex-boyfriend. It was surprisingly easy with Namjoon. You could talk about the most superficial to the deepest things in the span of one conversation. Namjoon managed to stimulate your mind in a way most people can’t. Yet, it didn’t work out because of your inability to invest in the relationship. But you did end up getting another best friend out of it.

Being with Namjoon made you realize that it’s not that you could have genuine conversations with Jungkook that made you like him, but it was the unfathomable truth that you just liked him. That was all there was to it. Love without a reason is the hardest to grasp and it was no wonder you are having difficulties understanding your emotions.

“Bullshit!” Mina yells, startling you with her shrill voice. You turn around to face her.

“Bullshit? My choices are bullshit for you?”

“Yes. You have been doing this for so long to yourself that you can’t even see what you are doing is not good for you” she stares at you unyieldingly.

“If you really knew what I wanted, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. In fact, we wouldn’t even…” you feel the anger which is prompting you to act this way.

“Wouldn’t even what?” she folds her arms against her chest, and motions her head at you.

“Look” you sigh. “I have had a long day Mina. I can’t get into this and trust me it’s better this way” you begin to walk back to the cash counter and shut the tiny gate so Mina can’t enter

She is relentless in her pursuit of you as she follows you to the counter and leans against it. “Why can’t you just go on one date with Hoseok? He’s a perfectly nice guy!”

“Because I can’t date!” you reply.

I only want your boyfriend, which makes me the biggest bitch in the entire world.

“It’s not that you can’t. It’s just you don’t want to and I want to know why. I am not forcing you, babe. I am just worried for you” her brows furrowed together in concern.

“I am sorry Min. I love you but please drop this” you open the cash drawer and begin counting the bills.

“No. This has gone on forever” she digs her heels into the ground to prove to you just how serious she is.

You drop the bills you were holding in the cash drawer, and slam it shut. It’s good that the cafe has closed early because you can actually leave. You turn around and go to the back where you know Mina can’t follow you. But you can still hear her rambling by herself, which she does when she is pissed. You roughly take off the apron and instead of hanging it on the hook, you leave it on the floor. At this point, you just need to get away from her. Grabbing your coat from one of the other hooks, you go back out the way you came in.

Of course, Mina is still there, but she’s sitting in one of the booths, her eyes glued to her phone. You walk past her towards the door and hear her calling out. But instead of turning around you walk right out and take a right on the street. You have no idea where you are going, but you are too wired to try and figure it out.

You put in your headphones and pull the hoodie over your head. The sound of music instantly soothes the anger that had built up. You turn around to make sure she is not following you and when you find yourself on the street alone you let out a long exhale.

You don’t see it because you were somehow too busy gawking at the cobbled sidewalk, but you end up bumping into someone.

“I am so-” you stop midway because it’s none other than Jeon Jeongguk.

“Hi, stranger” he steadies you by putting his hands on your shoulder.

“Sorry I didn’t see you” you pull out your headphones and shove them in the hoodie pocket.

“Are you okay? You look a little stressed”

How he always knows what you’re feeling, you’ll never know. That is one of the things you like about him. You never have to say anything to him and he always knows how you feel, which at times makes you wonder if he is aware of your feelings towards him. If he is, then there is nothing worse and more embarrassing than that.

“Can’t hide anything from you, can I?” you sigh and look heavenward, and stretch your neck to the right.

“No. I know you extremely well” he rubs concentric circles on your arms, and that is when you realize he had been holding you the entire time.

“Your girlfriend and I just got into a little argument and I might or might not have been completely unreasonable and by default a bitch”

“Another date?” he questions, his hands still on your arms as he switches to gentle stroking. You almost want to move away, put some distance. But you like the feeling of him touching you too much to do that. At this point, all you want to do is, collapse in his arms, and let him hug all the negative energy away. But you can’t. It’s absolutely and completely wrong. Even wanting that, makes you feel like you are the worst human being to ever exist. You have to grapple with so much guilt every day that it’s a true wonder you still have the ability to feel the whole spectrum of emotions.

You remember he asked you a question and nod. You don’t even need to ask how he knows. He’s Jeongguk and he’ll always know. So, why you aren’t together despite being so perfectly in tune with one another, you don’t know.

“I am exhausted” you mumble, feeling your lip tremble and a lump form in your throat. It’s the worst possible moment to cry but he’s standing right there in front of you. You already feel too much from your conversation with Mina and now Jeongguk is there and you can’t help it. Loving him is the worst thing ever. It’s like drugs. You know they are bad for you, yet you can’t give them up. You realize what you had told him on the night you first met about human- beings actively looking for heartbreak.

The irony of that statement hits you because you are doing exactly that, despite telling yourself you never would. First guilt, then hurt, and now self-betrayal.

“Hey” he whispers in a soft voice, which makes it even harder to hold your tears back.

You sniffle as they fall one by one. You tuck your chin into your neck so he can’t see you. You should not be crying in front of your best friend’s fucking boyfriend. But there you are, doing exactly that. It almost feels cheap because you feel like you are forcing him to react in a way that he shouldn’t because he’s Jeongguk and he’s nice and he’ll do whatever he can do to comfort you. So knowing him you know what’s coming next.

Sure enough, he wraps one arm around your waist, and with his other, he gently pats the back of your head. You bury your face in his chest.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to” he continues to gently caress your hair.

You sniffle again and press your face in his chest further. He doesn’t say anything and holds you. But he shouldn’t because Mina isn’t there. It’s too intimate.

You sniffle again and remember how wrong this is. “I am sorry” you pull away from his arms.

Jeongguk almost looks shocked, and a little bit disappointed too. Maybe you are being delusional. He nods and slides his hands into his jean pockets. Neither of you say a word and stand in the middle of the sidewalk unable to look at each other.

“A-anyway” you croak. “You should go check up on Mina” you offer a weak smile.

His lips push into a thin line. “Take care y/n”

You walk past him, your arm brushing against his. A few steps down the sidewalk you look back and see him disappearing into the corner and then he’s gone. That's’ when you finally break down.

Why does it have to be him?

*********

Mina hasn’t spoken to you in 24 hours which is a record for her, considering she is a chatterbox. You don’t know how to approach this new development in your friendship. If anything, it strengthens your resolve of preventing Mina from knowing your feelings. Because if she is this angry when you refused a date with another guy, it’s easy to imagine how angry and hurt she would be if she knew your feelings.

The only person you can think of at the moment for help is Jeongguk. But you will be damned if you ask him. You need to stay as far away from him as possible and figure your life out because you have decided you cannot be a pathetic loser for the rest of your life. So the only way to kill two birds with one stone is to do what you are about to say.

“I’ll meet Hoseok” you glance at Mina and then pretend to flip through the magazine.

It’s silent. That is not what you were expecting. You look up to confirm if she is there and that she heard you. She is present alright. But she’s frozen at the spot, and she is staring at you with the eyes of someone in complete disbelief. If they open any wider, you are sure her eyeballs will pop out of their sockets.

“Are you serious?” she moves so quickly, you don’t even register she is sitting next to you on the couch.

“Yeah” you close the magazine.

“Oh my god. I never thought you would say yes!” she wraps you in a hug so fast that you both end up toppling over and you hit your back against the couch.

“I’ll go” you pat her on the back.

“Yes!” she squeals and sits up, allowing you to do the same. “Well, since I know how much you hate going on first dates, I already invited him over for dinner tonight” she looks at you with anticipation.

“How did you know I was going to say yes?”

“I know you better than you know yourself, honey” she laughs.

“That is true” you laugh with her.

“I cannot wait for you to meet him y/n. He’s so sweet and I am already imagining your cute babies together!” she exclaims and wraps you in another hug.

*********

Mina left the house to go get groceries. She wasn’t exactly a good cook, so obviously, Jeongguk was going to come over and cook for everyone. He was going to come anyway since Mina had arranged a dinner. He was perfect in every way possible. Mina was such a lucky person to have found him. He was lucky to find someone as caring as her too. The only unlucky person is you, who is stuck with horrible unrequited feelings.

It comes as no surprise that Jeongguk arrives earlier at your place. The weather suddenly takes a turn for the worse with lighting and thunder making a sudden appearance in the sky every so often. You can hear the wind howling outside the window. Jeongguk enters the house completely soaked.

“Oh my god Jeongguk” you exclaim and sidestep quickly to let the poor man in.

“I am okay” he sneezes.

“Yeah. Totally” you roll your eyes and take the bags from him and leave them on the kitchen counter. “By the way, Mina went to get groceries. I guess she didn’t inform you”

Jeongguk sighs and shakes his head. “As usual, she did not”

You hurry to the bathroom and grab a spare towel for Jeongguk. You hand it to him and he runs it through his black locks, which fall over his forehead. “I am going to wash up before I catch a cold” he sniffles.

“But your clothes…”

“Mina’s room” he supplies.

Your heart sinks. Of course, Mina has a spare set or two of his clothes. He is her boyfriend, you remind yourself.

“Right” you smile halfheartedly.

Jeongguk turns on his heels and disappears into the bathroom. While he’s gone you arrange the groceries on the counter so it’s easier for him when he’s cooking. You know you shouldn’t do nice things for him because it only makes you more attached. But somehow when you see him every resolve you have ever built goes out of the window.

{2 years ago}

“I wish I had met you before I met Mina” Jeongguk muses in his drunken state as you support him. If you knew holding him up would be such a nuisance, you would never have let him drink this much. Mina is a similar story if not worse. By the time you get into the taxi, Mina is already asleep and snoring away and Jeongguk is softly mumbling something you cannot make out. Shutting the backseat door, you get into the passenger seat and give the driver the address to your apartment which you share with Mina.

The car starts moving and you look back to find Jeongguk’s and Mina’s limbs entangled with each other. You chuckle and face forward, hoping that getting them into the apartment would be a better experience than getting them into the taxi. You arrive fairly quickly.

The taxi driver was kind enough to lend you a hand with Jeongguk, after you settle Mina into her bed. You give him an extra tip for kindness because you couldn’t have supported Jeongguk all by yourself, especially since people tend to feel heavier when they are asleep.

After paying for the taxi, you enter the apartment and take your shoes off at the entrance. You can hear Jeongguk rambling something in his sleep once more, and go to check on him. Throwing your purse on the coffee table, you crouch down and take his shoes off. Then you collapse next to him, feeling like all energy has been drained out of you.

Jeongguk snuggles up to you, which causes your breath to catch in your throat. “Jeongguk” you try to push away his arm from your waist, but he has you locked in. Even in a drunken state he’s that strong.

“Jeongguk” you call him again, hoping this time he would let you go.

“Just stay like this” he mumbles. “You smell good”

“I am y/n. Not Mina”

“I know. I am drunk but not that drunk” he tightens his hold around your waist and snuggles further into the crook of your neck. “Please. Stay. I like you y/n. Don’t leave me”

The moment he utters those words, you forget to breathe. He’s completely wasted and he won’t remember any of it which means you shouldn’t react to it at all because it’s meaningless. Yet, your body reacts. Your heart quickens, stomach tightens in knots. Out of guilt you glance at the partly closed door of Mina’s room.

“No you don’t. You’re drunk” you manage to say as you turn to look at him. His eyes are closed and he’s half asleep yet he insists he isn’t that drunk.

“I know you think I am wasted. But drunk people don’t lie y/n. I like you and I wish” he stops. “I wish really badly that you and I…” he trails off and the sounds of his heavy breathing fills the room. You look down at him sleeping soundly and only one thought occupies your head.

“Why does it have to be you Jeongguk” you whisper to yourself, closing your eyes and letting slumber take you.

The next morning, you wake up alone with a blanket drawn over you and Jeongguk isn’t there.

*********

“Y/n” you are drawn out of reverie by Jeongguk’s voice. “Where are you lost?” he asks.

You blink away the thoughts in your mind and focus on him. “Uhh.. nothing. I was just thinking about something”

“You think a lot you know?” he chuckles as he moves behind the kitchen counter and starts washing the vegetables and laying them out on the cutting board.

“It’s a disease” you reply with a smile of your own. Grabbing the water jug, you pour yourself a glass of water. Being parched around Jeongguk is like an occupational hazard because loving him somehow has become your full-time job. You are in the midst of taking a sip when-

“But that’s what I like about you” he replies in a mindless manner, all focus directed at chopping the vegetables that he doesn’t even look at you.

You choke on the water, followed by a coughing fit which immediately grabs Jeongguk’s attention. He rushes to your side and begins stroking your back in a gentle manner. It only makes you cough harder because that what happens when he touches you; whatever you are feeling in the moment is amplified ten times more.

“I am okay” you croak heavily, grabbing your throat.

“You scared me for a moment” Jeongguk shakes his head. “You good?”

You really want to ask him what he meant by his earlier statement, but that will only cause you to spiral. You will dissect it to the point of driving yourself nuts. When it comes to him, you are back to being a fucking teenager. It doesn’t really get much worse than that.

“Yeah” you clear your throat and stay at your spot while he turns his back to you and resumes chopping the vegetables and you-- well-- you stay you.

“Hey” Jeongguk looks at you over his shoulder. “Did Mina mention anything to you?”

“Like what?” you question, suddenly curious.

“We just had a little fight. So, I thought she might have said something to you”

“Surprisingly enough she didn’t. Would it matter if she told me?” you prod further and move closer to where he is standing.

Jeongguk abandons the knife and his intention to prep for whatever he’s making as he does a 360 turn to face you. “It matters what you think” he shrugs. “To me” he adds whilst leaning his back against the kitchen counter and scrutinizing you in a most intense manner.

You stare at this lovely man who stands in front of you. A man you love so much, that you don’t know what to do with your feelings. A man who makes you want to cry every time he’s around because everything is hopeless. In fact, if you could, you would cry right now because when he’s around there is always a tight feeling in your throat which you have to keep swallowing down.

“Why do you always say things like that?” suddenly things become much more serious. You can feel it in the air.

He’s silent as he regards you. You wait, feeling the weight of it as every moment passes.

“I am not supposed to say this. Hell, I am crazy for even thinking this but I have wrestled with this for so long” he scratches the nape of his neck.

Don’t Jeongguk, You scream inside your head

You have an inkling as to what he’ll say.

“Don’t” you shake your head before he even opens his mouth. He looks at you and you know he understands what you mean.

“So you know” he steps closer, and you take a step backwards.

“No” you whisper. He takes another step forward and you take another backwards. “I didn’t know. Until now” the words fall as another whisper through your lips. He moves forward, and you move backwards.

“You?” he questions. “Do you?” he prods. He doesn’t even need to complete the question because you know what he’s asking. You have waited for this moment for three years. You clearly never imagined it would happen so suddenly, nor while he was still with Mina.

“Will my answer change anything?” You continue your little dance as you step back again while steps towards you.

“Maybe not” he speaks so softly, it’s almost at the edge of a whisper. The only sounds in the room are that of the refrigerator and the sound of the heating system as it turns on.

“We shouldn’t be doing this” you look him in the eyes. That is when you realize how terrifying it is to look in someone’s eyes and see how they feel.

“I know” he takes his final step forward and has you pinned against the kitchen counter. He places his hands on either side of you on the white marble. “Is it bad that I want to” he leans in and his lips hover so near to yours, that you can almost taste his signature strawberry scent.

You know what you should say, but it’s not easy because you want it too. Maybe this is your chance. Maybe if you just say ‘no’ now it will put an end to all those painful feelings. It’s right at the tip of your tongue. You can’t believe you are actually considering it. But then an image of Mina flashes to your mind, which pulls you back into reality.

“Yes, it’s bad. We can’t. No matter how much we want to. We can’t do it. We’re good people” you lick your lips as your eyes bounce to his lips.

“What do I do?” he whispers against your lips. “You make me want to be a bad person y/n” he caresses your cheek and reaching up your hands clench onto the material of his shirt.

“ It’s only a moment. It’ll pass. I know you won’t do it, no matter how strongly you feel about this. You’re a good person Jeongguk.” your voice cracks because you are so close. You are so close yet so far from him that it breaks your heart for the millionth time and tears well up in your eyes.

“And that’s the problem isn’t it?” he bites his lip. He rests his forehead against yours and closes his eyes. For the next few moments, your breathing even out and matches with his. You stand there trapped between his arms, trying your best to soak this feeling because it will never happen again. The fact that you are doing this simple thing is wrong on so many levels you begin to feel the guilt creep up. You begin to feel ashamed of yourself for even letting him this close but goddamn it, you want him so bad you can’t help it.

Taking a deep breath he pulls back and steps backwards, putting some space between you.

You smile at him.

“How can you smile at a time like this?” he muses softly, eyes resting on you.

“Just knowing how you feel is enough. It’s more than enough Jeongguk”

He regards you in silence, his eyes bouncing from your eyes to your lips and back again.

“I am already feeling weak y/n. Don’t be that nice. I might just kiss you”

“And knowing that is enough. You’re with Mina and I could never do that to her. I know you would never do that to her either. Maybe one-day karma will bless us with something good” you pause. He waits in silence for you to continue. “Just not today”

He nods very slowly. “Just. Not. Today” he repeats softly.

*********

You, Mina, Hoseok and Jeongguk sit on the circular dining table. If there was ever a slim chance that you could skip one moment of your life and go to the next, it would be this one. Never have you felt so awkward. It’s not Hoseok. It’s not Mina. It’s Jeongguk. It’s the way he looks at you when you speak to Hoseok. It’s the way his eyes tell you to stop when you laugh with Hoseok. When you told him the first night you met him you were good at reading people, you meant it. Because you can read him like a book right now. His halfhearted smiles, listless eyes, closed-off body language clearly express his disinterest in the entire evening.

He hasn’t spoken a word to Hoseok the whole time. Jeongguk has only glared at Hoseok or completely avoided looking at him. You glance at Mina and Hoseok who are completely immersed in their conversation. It leaves you and Jeongguk. But you won’t say anything to each other. Not after admitting you like each other in the vaguest way possible. It’s because you can’t be together that makes it awkward.

Mina and Hoseok are immersed in their conversation which leaves you and Jeongguk to do the same per social rules. But it’s too much, too soon. You can’t even look at him properly without wanting to cry. But somehow knowing his feelings has lessened the burden of your own feelings.

“Y/n” Mina puts a hand on yours. “Help with the dishes please” she motions her head to the kitchen

You comply, but only after glancing at Jeongguk. He shakes his head signalling you not to go because he’ll be left alone with Hoseok. You mouth ‘sorry’ to him and follow Mina into the kitchen.

“So. What do you think of Hoseok?” Mina questions as she puts all the plates in the sink.

“He’s…. Nice” which is true. But he isn’t Jeon Jeongguk and therein lies the problem.

“Do you like him?” Mina turns around to look at you, and places her palms behind her on the counter and leans against it.

You should say yes because it’s the only way you’ll move forward. But since you have been hit with the disease of stupidity all you can manage is a shake of your head. “ I am sorry”

“I know. I can tell” she smiles.

“I know I shouldn't bring this up because this is about me and not you. But did you and Jeongguk fight?”

“He told you?” she doesn’t even try to deny it.

“No” you lie. You wouldn’t throw him under the bus. “It’s the way you are with each other today. You are distant from each other”

“Goddamn, you and your people-watching skills” Mina sighs. “I am not going to lie to you y/n. Things are not the same anymore. We’re trying. We are trying so hard to get back to the way things were, but you know that connection you feel when you get together with someone? It’s just not there anymore. But we promised we wouldn’t give up on it and try to make it work”

Unsure how to feel about it, you offer a halfhearted smile. On the one hand, you should be happy your best friend is working for her relationship, but on the other hand, this means that you might actually get your chance with Jeongguk someday. You try to shake the latter thought away because it is wrong. No, in fact, it is immoral for you to think that way about your best friend’s situation like that.

Just then Hoseok strolls into the kitchen. “Everything okay ladies?”

“Yeah. Actually, I need to speak with Jeongguk for a moment if you two will excuse me” she smiles at you knowingly before she leaves the room.

Surprisingly enough you don’t panic. Normally, you would be internally freaking out, trying to think of every which way you could get out of this situation. But you’re not doing anything like that. It’s probably because you know how Jeongguk feels now and the element of the unknown has been erased from the equation. Now that you know, you don’t have to kill yourself over and over again for thinking it’s just you. It’s him too which makes it easier to move on because now you should. It feels like closure. Not to move on, would be akin to sabotaging their relationship. And a saboteur you are not.

“Jeongguk seems like a nice guy” Hoseok muses as he looks down at the floor.

“ Yeah. He is” you clear your throat, definitely surprised at him for bringing Jeongguk up. It’s not exactly a first “date” topic of conversation.

“Let’s be real with each other y/n” his eyes move from the floor to you. “You and I are both not interested in dating each other. I can tell by looking at you. I also know that something is definitely up with you and Jeongguk”

“No-” you try to speak but he raises his hand.

“Don’t worry I won’t tell Mina” he reassures you. “Since I know that about you, it’s only fair I tell you that I feel the same way about Mina as you do about Jeongguk”

“What!” you look at him with raised eyebrows.

“I have liked her since the first day we started working together. We talked about a lot of things and I just felt this connection with her. But she told me she has a boyfriend, so I let it go. But working at the same place and seeing each other 5 days of the week doesn’t exactly make moving on an easy task” he sighs.

“I can understand that” you offer in agreement.

“So, I am in the same position as you except I don’t think Mina feels the same way about me that Jeongguk does about you” a corner of his mouth rises up in a sympathy-smile.

“No” you shake your head vigorously as if that will change his opinion. “You have got it wrong. Jeongguk doesn’t”

“I see the way he looks at you y/n. It’s the way I look at Mina. Love doesn’t know what’s right and what’s wrong and our bodies respond to it without us even noticing. I don’t think he knows it either. He looks at you the way a connoisseur of art looks at paintings. Bad metaphor, but it’s true”

“I honestly don’t know what to say to that because anything I say will be wrong” you huff through your nose as your shoulder slouch.

“It is tricky. But it is what it is. We can’t change how we feel any more than a cow can learn how to fly” he chuckles.

“You really have a thing for metaphors don’t you?” the corners of your lips stretch into a smile.

“What else can a man do but pull out bad metaphors in a situation as dramatic as this” she shrugs casually in his defence.

“I agree. Don’t worry I’ll keep your secret too” you reply. You are in no position to interfere with this matter because you are doing the exact same thing as Hoseok. You would be the last person to throw Hoseok under the bus because you totally understand him.

Silence befalls, but it’s the comfortable kind of silence because now you both know each other’s deepest secrets. And that makes you more than friends. So you feel comfort in knowing that you are not the only one. Not that it makes the guilt feeling creep back into the shadows.

Just when he is about to say something, your attention is stolen away by the sound of what seems like arguing. You can clearly distinguish when Jeongguk is speaking and when Mina is. Hoseok and you share a look before treading a few steps closer to the entrance of the kitchen.

“Well, why the fuck are we even here then?” Mina shouts.

“Because we wanted to try didn’t we? Goddamn it!” Jeongguk replies in an equally loud manner.

“I can’t do this right now Jeongguk”

“Me neither” Jeongguk replies.

Then you hear the sound of the door slamming shut. You and Hoseok look at each other, clearly aware of how sour the situation turned very quickly. Both of you make your way to the living room where the sounds were coming from. The closer you get, the sound of sniffling gets louder.

“Oh Mina…” you hug her and she cries on your shoulder. You gently stroke her back and let her cry it out. Because God knows this is the least you can do to be a good friend because you haven’t been a good friend to her at all.

“You- you h-h-heard that didn’t you?” she chokes in between sobs.

“I am sorry. But we were in the kitchen and we could hear everything” you squeeze tighter around her waist as her body wracks with violent sobs.

She pulls away from you and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. She glances at Hoseok and then at you. “I am sorry you guys had to see this”

“It’s alright” Hoseok interjects as he sits down on the other side of Mina.

“Where did Jeongguk go?” you ask Mina.

“I don’t know” she sniffles and Hoseok hands her a tissue that she uses to wipe her nose.

“I would ask Hoseok to go, but they don’t know each other. Is it alright if I go check up on him?” you ask Mina for permission because it’s the right thing to do.

She sniffles again. “He’s probably off somewhere crying his eyes out too”

You chuckle at the thought of it because it sounds sweet. “Thanks, Min” you kiss her cheek before standing up. Glancing at Hoseok, you nod at him and does the same in understanding.

*********

“Hey stranger”

Jeongguk turns around to face you. The wind whips through his hair, making his hair stand up in every direction. He turns back around. You approach him slowly with your hands behind your back. You pause next to the bench on which he is sitting and watch as he stares mindlessly at the black sky twinkling with hundreds of stars.

“I thought I would find you up here on the roof” you glance at him but he’s still preoccupied with looking at the sky. You take a seat on the other corner of the bench, ensuring you put plenty of space in between.

“I guess you know me as well as I know you” Jeongguk deliberates.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” you turn to look at him, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear as the wind blows through your hair.

“It would just complicate things even more” he shrugs and fidgets with his fingers.

“Does my being here make you nervous?” your eyes flicker to his fingers and then to his face.

“Yes,” he replies in a soft, almost inaudible voice.

“Do you want me to leave?” you question, heart thumping in your chest waiting for his answer.

He remains silent, still playing with his fingers. Still not looking at you. So, you take that as your cue to leave. You get up and pivot on your heels, about to leave when you feel his hand hook around your wrist. You turn to look at him and he shakes his head, pleading with his eyes as they bore into yours.

“‘Stay” he manages to say.

So you sit down. Silence falls and both you gaze at the sky. Even silence with him isn’t terrible like it is with other people.

“Hey, do you want to go get coffee?” Jeongguk turns to look at you.

“Now?” your brows rise in question

“Yes. Coffee Monster would still be open”

You mull it over for a moment. How ‘right’ would it be for you to get coffee with him when Mina is downstairs in a sad state? Not at all. You should be with her because she is your best friend. You should be the one consoling her right but Hoseok is doing that for you. He’s there when you are not. Instead, you are on this roof with Jeon Jeongguk; the last person you should be alone with given your predilection for him, seriously considering if you should take him up on his offer.

“If you are thinking it’s wrong for us to be alone like this. Let me remind you we are friends too” Jeongguk poses with a shoulder shrug casually.

“Okay. Let’s get coffee” he manages to put you at ease. It is enough for you to agree.

*********

Just like the world is starved for love, it’s also apparently starved for coffee. There is some kind of coffee place at the corner of every block. It’s ridiculous. You walk side by side, hands warming in your pockets, occasionally glancing at each other but not exchanging a single word. Jeongguk kicks his feet as he walks, and you copy him, making a game out of it. Maybe for this one night, he can just be your friend, and you don’t have to feel guilty about your feelings for him.

You arrive at Coffee Monster, and like the gentleman he is, Jeongguk opens the door for you.

“Thank you, kind sir” your lips widen in a smile

“No problem m’ lady” he tips his head graciously.

The smell of coffee wafts to your nose and you inhale it all in because nothing like coffee to make you feel better.

“I’ll go get our drinks” he offers kindly.

“I want-”

“An iced caramel macchiato, with soy milk, and extra caramel on the top. I know” he smiles.

How does he always do this? It warms your heart every single time and makes it that much harder to let go of him.

“As usual, you’re right” you mirror the smile.

He goes to the ordering counter, while you go to find a spot to wait for him. You pull out your phone and send a quick text to Mina.

You: Mina are you doing okay?

A second later your phone chimes

Mina: yes, I am okay. How is Jeongguk?

You wonder if you should tell her you are getting coffee with him just to be transparent. But then you decide against it because what if she takes it the wrong way? You don’t want to upset her more than she already is.

You: Yeah. He seems to be doing okay 😊

Mina: Okay, love. Take care of yourself and him 🤗

You look up to find a girl next to Jeongguk, with long brunette hair, and modelesque features, chatting with him at the pickup station. She’s leaning into him with a suggestive smile on her face, gently touching his arm and throwing her head back as she laughs at something he says.

Your brows furrow as your watch from afar, feeling a little hurt. But then you notice Jeongguk hesitate and step back a little. Just as she leans in, he leans back and tries to put space between them. You watch as he taps his foot on the ground and angles his body slightly away from her.

You approach them with a grin. “I thought you ran away with our coffee’s” you stand next to Jeongguk, wrapping your hand around his arm

Jeongguk looks down at you and immediately grins. “I would never”

“Who is this?” you question as you look up at him.

“She just wanted to talk” he shrugs casually. The girl frowns at the sight of you, clearly unable to hide her dislike.

“Are you a friend?” she asks

“I am his best friend” you squeeze his arm tighter and he takes it as his cue. He wraps an arm around your shoulder, the one you had been holding onto and pulls you in closer. “A little more special than a best friend”

“Oh… alright” her face falls, and her previously self-assured demeanour disappears and so does she.

You wait for her to get out of sight before separating yourselves from each other.

“Thanks, y/n” Jeongguk smiles at you.

“I am sorry if that was weird. I saw you getting uncomfortable so I thought I could help you out” your gaze lowers to the ground.

“No. It was actually nice” he partly pulls his lower lip between his teeth.

“Damsel in distress” you tease him.

“The biggest damn one you will ever meet” he grins

“One iced and one hot caramel macchiato for Jungkook” your conversation is interrupted by the barista.

Jeongguk picks up both the cups and hands yours to you.

“Are you copying me now?” your brows knit together in a mock frown.

“Did you know that people who like each other, tend to copy each other’s actions?” he says casually but then a second later he realizes what he has just said isn’t so casual after all. His smile disappears into a thin pursed line of his lips as he avoids looking at you.

“Yeah. We like each other, so what? We’re friends” you try to lighten the mood but somehow it just gets more awkward.

“Right” he nods and takes a sip of his coffee. “Friends” he scoffs.

*********

You walk the same path you had come from. Both of you are silent again, avoiding eye contact with each other as best you can. You try to distract yourself by studying your surroundings but your mind is still preoccupied with Jeongguk’s proximity and the occasional brush of his arm against yours.

“How was Mina?” Jeongguk glances at you.

“As well as can be expected. She was crying” you bite your lip.

“Shit” he exhales. “I am the worst boyfriend ever”

Hearing that word from him is like reality slapping you in the face. Your relaxed demeanour vanishes and you tense up because it triggers the return of guilt. You should seriously not be here with him.

“Fuck. I am sorry y/n” he stops in his tracks. You are forced to do the same but you would much rather keep walking. “I should not have said that. I am sorry” he turns to face you and you do the same.

“It’s fine. It’s true so it doesn’t matter how I feel” you shrug casually tying your best to pretend you are not affected by it.

“I care about how you feel. I have since that first night we met. I mean, fuck. Why couldn’t I have met you before I met Mina?” he laments.

“You can’t do anything about how I feel. You cannot even do anything about how you feel so what’s the point in talking about this?”

“But why can’t we?” he runs a hand through his hair. “I mean, what is so wrong in talking about this. About us?”

You scoff. “Us? Jeongguk there is no us. There can never be an ‘us’. It’s not happening”

“Wow” he looks at you with raised eyebrows. “So, you won’t even stop for one moment to talk about it?”

“What is the fucking point Jeongguk?” you look at him wide-eyed.

“For fuck’s sake y/n. It’s been three years. Three whole fucking years we’ve been skirting around each other. We have been tiptoeing around our feelings for one another for so long, we have forgotten what it feels like to be any other way. I mean I can’t remember a single time when being around you wasn’t a painful reminder of what I could have had with you. The least we can do is talk about it!”

“It’s not fair to Mina!” you exclaim

“It’s not fair to us!” he matches the loudness of your voice.

“You’re right. It’s not. It’s not fair that you’re with her and not with me. It’s not fair that we both have to go through this endless cycle of pain and hurt. It’s not fair that we both have to keep silent about all this. But Jeongguk, that’s how it is. That is our reality and we have to accept it”

“Bull-fucking-shit!” he responds.

“You think it’s easy for me to watch you be with her!” you pause to swallow the thick lump of emotions that has risen to your throat. “I have been heartbroken so many times you have no fucking idea. But what’s wrong is wrong. Loving you is wrong. It just is. I can’t change that. I desperately wish I could. I wish I could say to you that it was right. But it’s not. You are my best friend’s boyfriend Jeongguk. She loves you. I can’t get in the way of that” your chest heaves and falls with effort

Jeongguk blinks owlishly at you. “You love me?”

Shit

“I- I. No! No, I don’t love you” you shake your head as if you are trying to convince yourself more than him. You look at the cemented sidewalk because God knows you can’t look at him.

“Then look at me and say it” he steps towards you.

“You should go home to Mina”

“Shut up” he takes another step forward and you can feel him towering over you. “Look at me and tell me you don’t love me”

You choke on a sob and press the back of your hand against your lips.

“Look at me y/n” Jeongguk presses.

You shake your head in response.

“Please”

You shake your head again.

“The only way to get over this is to tell each other how we feel” he steps towards you once again, and places his hands on your shoulders and presses his forehead to yours. “Please look at me” he whispers.

He pulls back to look at you and you finally find the courage deep within yourself to look at him too.

“I love you” he exhales and closes his eyes, waiting for your response.

Something breaks inside you. Whatever inhibition was holding you back vanishes the moment you hear those three words from him.

“I love you too” you reply before you can even think about it. The weight of those words you had been carrying around for three years lifts. You feel light like a load has been taken from you. Your tense body relaxes, and your frantic breathing begins to even out. There is a sense of relief beyond all the other layers of emotions you feel. If you had known you would feel so much better after telling him, you would have done it years ago.

*********

As it turns out moving on isn’t exactly easy.

As it turns out, you still love Jeon Jeongguk

As it turns out, Jeon Jeongguk still loves you.

It also happens to be that Jeon Jeongguk is still with Kim Mina and you are back to square one.

But not completely because one single revelation is about to change things.

“You did what!” you blink at Mina, slightly unable to comprehend what she said.

“IkissedHoseokandthenweslepttogether” she mumbles quickly and avoids eye contact, pretending to be busy doing something on her laptop.

“I am sorry” you crouch in front of her. “You kissed Hoseok and then you slept together?”

She nods, shutting her laptop and hiding her face behind her hands.

“Mina! Oh my god!” you fall on your butt.

“I know. I know” she whines and topples over on the couch, still hiding behind her hands.

“I thought you and Jeongguk were trying to work things out” you look at her wide-eyed, hardly able to believe it.

She finally reveals her face. “We are, or were. But things have been different between us. Since that fight we had when Hoseok came over, Jeongguk been different. I mean I can’t say I am hurt because I am not. He’s avoiding me and to be honest I am relieved he is!” she whines. “That night when you left to go check up on Jeongguk, Hoseok really helped me and then he told me he likes me and then he leaned in for a kiss and I kissed him and then we slept together. That night I realized I like him too” she rambles to explain herself.

“Then why in the world did you try to set me up with him?” your face contorts in confusion.

“I just thought that pushing him towards someone else would force me to move on. And I knew that if it happened to be you, I wouldn’t act on my feelings” she exhales. Oh, this is the worst thing ever”.

You knew all too well what she meant and the fact that she would back off if Hoseok got together with you makes you feel even worse because you couldn’t do the same with Jeongguk. “Do you love Hoseok?” you question.

“I guess. I mean I am not sure. But I do know I don’t feel anything with Jeongguk anymore. I feel suffocated around him. I love him y/n. I do. I truly do and I only want the best for him. But I am not in love with him anymore”

“Does he know?” you ask.

“I don’t think so” she shakes her head.

Just when you thought things would start getting better, they just got worse. You love Jeongguk, Jeongguk loves you. Mina doesn’t love Jeongguk anymore, and she thinks she likes Hoseok. But Hoseok definitely loves her and you don’t know what Jeongguk feels for Mina.

Your head spins just thinking about it. “I need water” you announce from your position on the floor. You stand up slowly to avoid getting dizzy because lord knows you are on the verge of fainting. You slowly retreat back to the kitchen and pour two glasses of water. You head back to where Mina is and offer her one glass.

“So what now?” you ask once you had your fill of drink.

“I guess I have to talk to Jeongguk. Because we can’t do this” she sighs and so do you because who knows what is going to happen next?

*********

{3 weeks later}

The clock strikes at 8 pm. Mina isn’t home. She’s working late and you hope to God she isn’t fooling around with Hoseok because she and Jeongguk broke it off only three weeks ago. But you cannot control her life any more than you can control your own. Besides, she has the full liberty to make her own decisions as an adult. All you can do is make sure she doesn’t do anything that will harm or hurt her in any way.

You flip lazily through the channels, with your feet propped on the coffee table. All you need is a glass of wine in one hand and you would be the advertisement for a lazy Sunday. It’s been too long since you have had the apartment to yourself. The quiet save for the sounds of television is exactly the kind of relaxing environment you need. Sometimes solitude is the best company one can have.

Your stomach grumbles as a commercial plays on TV depicting the perfect, juiciest steak you have ever seen. So it is naturally a given that you abandon your perch and head to the kitchen to fix up some food. Rummaging through the refrigerator all you find are a few eggs, some asparagus, a carton of milk, a loaf of bread that is expired and some apples. You really need to go buy groceries.

You look through the pantry to see if you can find something. You find a bag of chips hidden in the corner so you settle for it. You drag your feet across the marble floor and make your way to the living room. Settling down back in your spot you turn up the volume.

Just then the bell rings and you get up with a sigh and make your way towards the door. Through the security system monitor you see Jeongguk standing on the other side of the door.

“Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit” you panic because you are in no shape to be seen by Jeongguk in your PJ’s, with dishevelled hair, and bits of chips on your shirt. You run back to the living room and fix the coffee table, and shove the bag of chips underneath one of the cushions. Running to your room, you quickly take off your PJ’s and grab whatever comes into your hand as you throw open your closet. It’s a white shirt and you grab a random pair of jeans. The shirt gets stuck on your head because in a panic you end up trying to put the sleeve through your neck. Once you figure out the shirt mess, you fix your hair up in a ponytail, while another bell rings at the door.

“Coming!” you shout and race to the door skidding to halt right in front of it. You take a few deep breaths and compose yourself as you place your hand on the doorknob. You unlock the door and try to put on your best smile.

“Hey! Come in” you usher him inside.

He hangs his jacket on the coat hanger by the door and goes to the living room.

“Do you want anything to drink?” you ask as he settles on the sofa with a thud, and you proceed to the kitchen.

“Water will be good” he rubs his face and rests his neck against the back of the couch. “Do you know where Mina left the box of my stuff?” he calls out.

“In her room!” you call out and hear faint footsteps going in the direction of her room.

You go back out into the living room with a glass of water and leave it on the coffee table for him. Just then he comes out carrying a big brown box of his stuff and he leaves it by the door under the coat hanger.

He comes back to the living and you notice he’s staring at you with raised eyebrows.

“What?” you question, patting your cheeks and your face to see if you have something on your face.

“Your shirt is on inside out,” he says and presses his lips together to hold in his laughter. But you can see his chin quivering, and his eyes getting glossy.

“Fuck” you look down and sure enough it is inside out. You collapse onto the couch grabbing one of the cushions and hiding your face behind it.

You hear him break out into laughter and feel the sofa dip beside you. He continues laughing for a good minute and for the duration you ensure to keep your face hidden behind the cushion.

“I am sorry” he chokes out between laughs. “It’s too funny”

“Yeah. My misery is obviously funny” you mumble against the cushion

You look up to find him bent over his knees, holding his belly. “ Sorry” he laughs.

“It’s your fault” you pout at him.

“Me?” he points to himself, chest still heaving with the effort of laughing.

“Yes. You showed up so suddenly, unannounced I didn’t want you to see me in my PJ’s and bedhead hair”

“You didn’t have to do that you know?”

“Yes, I did. You would have never let me live it down if you saw me like that” you try to suppress a smile.

“That is true” he nods.

He looks around the living room and peeks his head into the kitchen.

“Have you eaten yet?” he questions.

“I was actually going to buy groceries. We’re out”

“Let’s go then” he stands up and offers you his hand.

“You want to come with me?” you look at him in question.

“How could I ever miss the chance of grocery shopping with you? It’s so domestic” he grins, clearly enjoying the idea of domesticity more than anything else.

“I’ll just go fix my shirt” you tell him to wait and within thirty seconds you are out and by the door

“I didn’t know you wanted to do this so bad” you ask him as you crouch to the floor and tie shoelaces.

“I am a free man now y/n. I can finally follow my heart” he offers you his hand and once you place your hand in his, he interlocks your fingers and leads you out.

*********

The mart is close by so you and Jeongguk decide to walk. The whole way there you walk hand in hand, swinging your arms like children and laughing for no reason other than pure excitement.

You arrive at the store and you are about to let go of his hand to grab a shopping cart, but he pulls you back and shakes his head. Instead, he grabs the cart with his free hand and maneuvers it like he’s done it a hundred times.

“I am not letting go of your hand” he squeezes tighter.

“I can see that. But you know it’s a little impractical” you motion to the cart which is going sideways instead of going forward. He fixes it so it movies in a straight line

“I have wanted to do this since the first night we met. I have wanted to spend time with you for so long, so now I am going to make up for it. No matter how weird, crazy, or impractical you think it is” you walk hand in hand around the store.

“It’s only been three weeks since you and Mina broke up” you remind him. “Isn’t this too fast?”

“A month, technically. Anyway, one, we broke up mutually because we both fell out of love with each other and fell in love with different people. Two, it’s not fast for me because I have waited years for this. Three, I want everyone to know how I feel about you. In fact, I want you to know how I feel about you because I am sick of hiding it”

You stop in your tracks and tug him by his hand towards yourself. “How do you feel about me?”

Jeongguk stares at your eyes and then your lips. “Fuck it” he mumbles and he presses his lips to yours. His hands enclose your waist and he pulls you in further. You rest your hands on his shoulders and melt into the kiss. It’s everything you imagined it would be and more. He feels like home and never in your life have you felt calmer than that moment. No heart racing, no tight knots in your stomach. Nothing. Only a sense of calm that washes over you as he holds you in his arms and spills all his love into the kiss. It is tender and soft. His lips are warm against yours, and his kisses are even warmer. He pulls back to look at you and tucks a strand of hair behind your ear.

“Perfect” he murmurs as he cups your cheeks. Then he kisses your forehead, your left cheek, right cheek. He plants a soft kiss on your nose followed by a quick peck on the lips.

You giggle like a little girl. “I did not take you for the romantic type”

“I’ll show you just how romantic I am” he entwines your hands once more and hurriedly leads you out of the grocery store.

*********

You are completely pressed between the wall and Jungkook as he kisses you. You gasp as his lips trail down your neck. He stops to look at you, as if for confirmation.

“Just kiss me” you pull him in by grasping the fabric of his shirt and he doesn’t hesitate.

He lifts you up, and you wrap your legs around his waist, kissing him as if you will never have tomorrow with him. He leaves gentle kisses everywhere and you don’t know if you have ever felt this euphoric in your life ever before. Every part he touches is left in goosebumps and tingles.

“I love you” he breathes against your lips as he captures them again in a kiss.

“I love you too” you gasp as his hand traverses down your abdomen.

And love you, he does. It’s an indescribable feeling to be wrapped up in each other, limbs tangled, soft kisses left here and there. His hands never rest for a single second because he wants to explore every inch of your body. He wants to know you in a way no one has ever known you before. You lose count of how many times you come undone as you lie in his arms and he shows you how much he loves you.

*********

The next morning Jeongguk acts like a baby and doesn’t let you get out of bed.

“One more kiss and I promise I’ll let you go” he whines and grasps your wrist and tugs you back into bed. You are helplessly pinned underneath him.

“Fine one more” you tap his lip with your index finger. He pushes your finger away and his lips are onto yours once again. Unlike the first time he kissed you, this feels more rushed like he’s scared he that he’ll never have another day with you.

“I could do this all day long “he mumbles as he pulls away.

“Unfortunately for you Mr. Jeon Jeongguk. I don’t have all day to do this” you shove him and he falls on his back on the bed.

“Yes you do” he sits up on his elbows and stares at you with a suggestive look in his eyes. “Round 2?” he questions.

“No more rounds Jeongguk. I have to go back to the apartment and figure stuff out” you pull your shirt over your head. You sit at the edge of the bed and put your pants back on. The bed dips behind you and you feel Jeongguk’s arms enclose around your abdomen and his chin rests on your shoulder. He kisses your cheek gently.

“There is nothing to figure out” he whispers close to your ear.

“Yes. There is the matter of telling Mina about us” you place your hands on his arms and lean into his chest.

Jeongguk sighs and digs his forehead into your shoulder. “I know” he mumbles.

“So” you pat his arms. “Let go of me so that I can go and figure it out for us. Plus it’s her birthday in 2 weeks and I want her to know before then to save everyone any drama that might occur because of us.”

“Us” Jeongguk muses. “I like the sound of that”

*********

The silence weighs heavy in the air. Mina is chewing on her lip as she deliberates what she has been told. She mumbles and nods to herself which kind of scares you because she only does that when she is angry.

“Say something” you look at her in concern.

“Well, there is nothing to say y/n. He loves you and you love him. I am just mad for not seeing it sooner. I should have picked on it” she sighs in frustration. “Looking back at it, to be honest, I don’t think we ever loved each other” she muses the last part to herself.

“I am a terrible friend, aren’t I?” you try to swallow back the tears.

“No!” she moves closer to you and wraps one arm around you. “If anything, I have been a bad friend to both you and Jeongguk. We should have broken it off a long time ago”

“Doesn’t make me feel any better. I know you loved him. But I still had these feelings for him. I swear to you I tried my hardest to forget about him. I even dated people I shouldn’t have dated just to distract myself from Jeongguk. I thought maybe I would meet someone worthwhile and I would forget him. But I couldn’t and I am sorry. I am a terrible person and a worse friend”

“I am not going to lie. It’s a little bit weird. I mean you and Jengguk. It feels strange to even say it and I am going to need time to adjust to it and it’s not because I am hurt or disappointed in both of you. I am perfectly okay with you guys dating because Jeeongguk and I were over a long time ago. We just held on because we were too scared to hurt each other” she pauses to look at you and you nod for her to continue. “But I have no feelings for him. It’ll just take me time to get used to seeing you with him just because I dated him too once and now he’s with my best friend. I hope you understand”

Of course, you understood.

“Thanks, Min” you wrap your arms around her in a hug.

“I am happy for you babe” she squeezes you gently.

*********

Jeongguk’s late.

He’s not winning himself favours by being late. You tap your foot on the footrest of the barstool impatiently, quietly sipping your drink. A sports bar was the last place you wanted to be at, but of course, Mina wants to celebrate her birthday at a place that serves booze. You sigh and signal the bartender for another cocktail. You had no clue Mina knew so many people. But then again she is a social butterfly so there are close to one hundred people present. Somehow she even managed to get a small section of the place cordoned off for her birthday party.

You look at your wristwatch, and the clock keeps ticking. Yet there is no sign of Jeongguk. You crane your neck to check the entrance but it’s as empty as ever.

“Where is your boyfriend?” Mina makes an appearance from her tight schedule as she has to keep floating around between different groups of friends she has.

“What boyfriend?” you scoff, annoyed by Jeongguk’s tardiness.

“Ooh” Mina winces. “He’s in trouble” Mina looks over your shoulder. “Speaking of” she motions her head towards the entrance and none other than Jeon Jeongguk is approaching you with a grin on his face. “That’s my cue” Mina leaves.

“Hi, there stranger” Jeongguk props himself up on the seat next to you.

“Hi” you avoid looking at him and keep your eyes affront.

“So what is a beautiful girl like you doing sitting alone at this bar?” he leans into the palm of his hand as he looks at you, a grin simmering at the corner of his lip.

“Waiting for my boyfriend” you sip your drink.

“Well he’s not a very good boyfriend if he’s making you wait”

“Clearly” you turn to face him.

“Hmm. How about we remedy that?” he offers you his hand.

“Are you making a pass at a committed woman?” you squint your eyes at him

“No. Just asking you for a walk outside” his lips curve into a smile. “Besides, I am a better man than your boyfriend”

“I think all men are the same” you slide your hand into his and he helps you down the stool. You then let go and walk past him towards the entrance.

Outside it’s dark. Cars and buses are passing by and the street is really busy.

“Are you still mad at me?” he slides his hand into yours and interlocks your fingers.

You huff. “I am not mad at you”

“You look mad” he turns on his heels and tugs at your arm to bring you closer and then wraps an arm around your waist. “I am sorry I was late, but I was getting this” he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a tiny red ring case.

“Are you…” your blink furiously as you glance between his face and the case in his hand.

In answer, he opens the ring case and you find one silver ring, embedded with his name on it.

“Jeongguk” you look at him as tears well up in your eyes.

He takes hold of your hand pulls out the ring and slides it onto your ring finger. “It’s a promise ring”

“A promise ring?”

“Jeongguk..” you whisper as your vision gets blurry. “I don’t have a ring” you choke on a sob as tears stream down your cheek. “But I promise that I will be honest with you every step of the way, I will offer you my unconditional support in whatever you choose to do, and that I will love you till the day that I die”

“I promise that each day I spend with you, I will love you. I will choose you every day knowing that you aren’t perfect. I promise I will give this relationship the best of me, and that I will honour your heart and your feelings for the rest of my life” He uses his thumbs to wipe away the tears on your cheeks.

“You remember when we met the first night at Mina’s house party?” Jeongguk holds both your hands in his as he faces you.

“Of course”

“Do you remember you asked me if I want in?”

You nod again because every single detail about that night is still fresh in your mind.

“Well, I want in. I am all in. With you” Jeongguk dips his head and places a chaste kiss on your lips.

And that was the fourth time in your life you felt like the wind had been knocked out you and it was always because of Jeon Jeongguk.

End.

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rainydaydream-gal18 · 4 years

Text

Steve Rogers x Reader: The Nutcracker (AU) Part 1

[Author’s Note: Sooooo I started this story last year and never got around to finishing it, so I ended up taking the parts I’d written off tumblr. This time, I finally wrote an end to this story and felt like it’d be a nice thing to post around the holidays.

It’s an Avengers fanfic, but it’s the story of the Nutcracker (more like the Barbie one where the reader is not a little girl lol)

Warning, these are long]

With a sigh, you watched the clock tick from a spot on the floral-patterned couch as you fiddled with a pencil and blank sheet of paper and thought of something to draw. Your younger brother busied himself playing with the action figures your grandparents got him as a Christmas Eve present. He was so spoiled it drove you crazy. It seemed he got everything he wanted at the drop of a hat. Grandparents are supposed to spoil you a little, but it felt like everyone took part in spoiling him. Meanwhile, you worked hard and tried to earn what you wanted on your own.

Your grandfather entered the sitting room, pocket watch in hand. “Your Aunt Lily has arrived,” he announced. “Why don’t you kids help her with the bags?”

He was so cute. To him, the two of you would always be “kids.” You immediately got off the couch to help, but paused.

“_(brother’s name),” you called to your brother. He glanced up from his action figures. “Are you going to help?”

He resumed moving the action figures around. “I’ll be there in a minute.” Translation in little brother language: Never.

Sensing your irritation, your grandpa nodded. “I appreciate you helping out, Gumdrop. Thank you.”

You couldn’t be upset anyway because Aunt Lily was here! She was definitely the cool aunt that took you out shopping and encouraged you to be yourself. You had actually formed a friendship as you grew more mature. Only problem is, she was almost constantly trying to interest you with a guy. Every Christmas it was the same thing; her gesturing to handsome strangers and giving you suggestive looks. Still, she was very fun to be around.

“____________!” she greeted as you emerged from the hallway into your grandparents’ kitchen where some of the relatives gathered to welcome her. “There’s my favorite niece! Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas!” You said with a laugh as she pulled you into a big hug. After a long squeeze, Aunt Lily released you. “How was the trip?”

“It was good! Long, but good.”

“Awesome,” you nodded. “Let me help you with your things.”

“You’re such a sweetheart,” she grinned. “There are a few goodies in the trunk of my car if you don’t mind grabbing them for me. Thank you so much!” You grinned back and headed to the front door to slide on your boots. A part of you hated stepping out into the snowy afternoon. The icy winds chilled you to the bone instantly, but seeing everything clad in sparkling white was worth it. You folded your arms and hurried past the dozen cars belonging to other relatives until you reached Aunt Lily’s. After retrieving the big Christmas bags and a suitcase, you locked the car and went inside.

“I think that’s everything,” you stated, kicking the snow off your boots at the doormat. Some snow may have gotten on your Captain America socks. Ugh.

“Thank you again!” Aunt Lily took a few bags off your hands. As you helped her put gifts under the tree, you both got caught up. She told you about her most recent road trip, the hotel she stayed at and even the celebrity she ran into, while you listed in wonder. In turn, you told her about college and all the latest friend group drama. After everything was unpacked, Aunt Lily reached under the tree and picked out a wrapped gift. “This,” she began, handing it to you, “is for you. An early Christmas gift from me.”

“Oh,” you smiled. “Thank you!” You in turn grabbed a particular gift from under the tree and handed it to her. “This is for you!”

She gave you a kiss on the cheek. “You’re such a sweetie.”

After unloading the remaining things from her car, you found a quiet place away from the family hustle and bustle to open your gift from her. Your brother came running into the room.

“Look what Aunt Lily got me!” He held up a box of building blocks set. The picture on the front of the box showed what the finished product would look like. This one resembled superhero compound, complete with the heroes in figurine form. “What did you get, ___________?” He asked as he climbed over into your personal space. But of course, he couldn’t leave you in peace for five minutes.

You rolled your eyes. “I don’t know yet, bro, I haven’t had the chance to open it yet.”

“Oh,” he shrugged. “Well then, carry on.”

With a few rips, you tore through the wrapping paper like you had when you were a kid just for fun. As soon as you saw the red, white, and blue shield you gasped.

It was a Captain America themed nutcracker! He was so adorable too! His outfit was red-white, and blue, and sort of looked more like the usual princely garb a nutcracker would wear instead of his usual costume, but he held the shield in one hand.

“Oh wow! This is so neat!” You exclaimed.

“I’m so glad you like it,” Aunt Lily said. She had entered the room to watch your reaction. It was no secret that you went crazy for this sort of thing. You were a total geek when it came to Marvel movies as well as Marvel-related merch, and you were proud.

“I wanna see!” Your brother whined as he struggled to reach for it.

“__(brother’s name)__,” Aunt Lily scolded. “That is ____________’s. I got you something of your own. Why don’t you go put it together?”

He immediately became preoccupied with his own project, and you mouthed the words “thank you” to your aunt. A dazzling smile played on her lips in response. She was the coolest.

The whole family squeezed into your grandparents’ dining room for dinner. It was a lively meal with people chatting and catching up. Some relatives lived far away and could only visit a few times a year, so this was kind of a big deal. You were asked a million questions about college, your part-time job, and friends. You filled everyone in on the deets about classes and the part-time job you got working at the local bookstore.

“We’re so proud of you,” Aunt Lily said, and you couldn’t help but grin back. That was always nice to hear.

“This one is so smart. Always has her nose in a book, whether it is for school or just because she enjoys reading,” your mother said. You blushed at the attention.

“That’s good,” your grandma said. “Keep it up. Keep learning.”

A few conversations later, the family went to their rooms to get changed into pajamas for the evening. There would be a Christmas movie or two in the living room shortly. Since your brother was the youngest in the family, he got to pick the movie. The two of you exchanged knowing looks, and he chose Polar Express.

“Yesss!” you gave him a big hug.

As much as the two of you could be annoyed with each other, he was still your brother. Both of you sat next to each other in pajamas and shared a bowl of popcorn as your grandpa tried to figure out how to work the DVD player. Technology had developed to the point where any movie could be accessed digitally in an instant, and he was still trying to understand how DVD players worked. You felt bad, but you and your brother tried to hold back giggles.

At the start of the movie, you were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. As it progressed though, you began to feel tired. Before you knew it, you were drifting off to sleep.

- - - -

“I’m sorry, __________,” someone sobbed. You were awake instantly, blinking your eyes open. The living room was empty. It was after midnight, and everyone must have gone to bed already. The TV was off, but a cozy fire warmed the room with a dim light from the fireplace. You rubbed your eyes and focused on your brother who stood in front of you, crying.

“What? What’s wrong?” you asked with a sigh.

“I...I didn’t mean to do it. I just wanted to play…”

Your eyes went from his teary eyes to what he held in his hand. It was your Captain America nutcracker. His arm had been twisted at an odd angle. Your brother held the shield, which had broken off, in his other hand. Your first instinct was to get angry.

“What did you do?” you demanded. “You shouldn’t have been playing with him in the first place. Aunt Lily gave him to me. You got your own present!”

“I know, I’m sorry,” he cried. “I didn’t mean to break him.”

You sighed again. It was apparent he really felt bad, and you knew he would never have broken something of yours on purpose.

“It’s okay,” you said finally. “Well, it’s not okay, but I forgive you. Thank you for coming to me instead of trying to hide it.”

Relief washed over his face that you weren’t going to freak out on him, but he still showed signs of guilt. “I can get you a new one.”

“No, no, that’s okay. This one is special from Aunt Lily, and I’m not going to give up on him just because he had a little rough patch.” You gently took the nutcracker from your brother. “You don’t give up on people just because they’re broken.”

You focused your attention on the Captain America nutcracker in hand. He still needed a little fixing. Your brother went and fetched some glue from the miscellaneous drawer in the kitchen. You used a ribbon from the package Aunt Lily gave your earlier to make a sort of temporary sling to keep the nutcracker’s arm in place. You looked into his painted blue eyes and smiled. They seemed to sparkle now. Perhaps they had always been this bright, and you just hadn’t noticed before.

Your brother returned with the glue, and helped you reattached the shield. He did a good job.

“There,” you said. “He’s looking pretty good.”

“Yeah, he is.” Your brother agreed. Then, he wiggled his eyebrows. “Good enough to kiss?”

You gave him a look.

“What? I heard you talking to your friend on the phone once. I know you think Captain America is ‘hawt,’ so don’t even deny it.”

You rolled your eyes and grabbed the nearest couch pillow to fling at his face. “Alright, you just ruined the brother-sister bonding moment.”

He stuck his tongue out at you.

“What are you, two years old?” You threw another couch pillow. “Anyway, it’s late. I’m going back to sleep.” You gathered the pillows again and fluffed them up before lying back down on the couch. “I think I’ll stay out here and enjoy the fire.”

“Okay, I’m going to my room,” your brother said. “Goodnight, thanks for not killing me.”

“Goodnight,” you opened a sleepy eye to watch him leave the room. Then, you chuckled. “Oy, I’m tired…”

- - - -

Crash. You were ripped from a cozy, deep slumber to the sound of glass shattering. A loud bang sounded. More glass shattered. You would have blamed your grandparents’ cat if it weren’t for the fact that they haven’t had a cat in years.

That’s when you really woke up. Fear gripped you as the sounds came from behind the couch, near the Christmas tree. It had to be an intruder. But what the hay were they doing near the tree? Stealing presents? A part of you was scared to look. Still, you slowly and quietly poked your head up just enough to peek over the back of the couch.

What you saw amazed and horrified you.

Your Captain America nutcracker was launching his shield at what looked like a miniature Chitauri.

“What the actual heck?” you whispered.

The Chitauri was decapitated, but another leapt out from behind the Christmas tree. The nutcracker charged at him and engaged in hand-to-hand combat. More jumped in, and he fought them off skillfully. But he didn’t seem to notice another sneaking up behind him.

You weren’t sure what came over you. Whether this was a dream or not, you did not want to see Captain America get mauled by one of those creepy things. You hurried around the couch.

“Watch out!” you called out, and fortunately, you reached him in time. Without thinking, you stomped your foot. Ew. There might be creepy chitauri gunk under your slipper now…

Your nutcracker looked up at you, his painted blue eyes seemingly sparkled more now.

“Thanks,” he said.

“No problem…” You managed a smile and a shrug. This was crazy. It had to be a dream.

He seemed to sense your unease. “This must be strange for you,” he said as he resumed fighting oncoming enemies. “I will explain soon.”

“Sure,” you nodded, biting your lip as you noticed a particularly large group of chitauri crowding around your feet. It was no trouble. A few swift kicks sent them all flying.

“Hm, darling,” a strangely familiar voice spoke. “This isn’t going to work…I cannot afford any flaws in my plan.”

“Loki?” you said in disbelief. “But it’s been years since the first Avengers came out…Why are you still the bad guy?”

He emerged from behind the tree, a little shorter than your Captain America nutcracker, except he had used his illusion abilities to look like a mouse. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “However, I do know that you are getting in the way. You’re too tall, I’d rather you be small…” He waved his scepter, and suddenly everything around you began to grow.

Or rather, it was you who was shrinking.

The chitauri that were coming at your feet so pitifully became more of a threat as you reached their eye level. You squeaked as they crowded you, one grabbing your arm. Just then, a few of them roared and began to back off.

Your nutcracker came barreling into the mob, quickly wrapping a wooden arm around you and pulling you from the danger.

“Y-you rescued me,” you gasped. “Thank you!”

“Of course,” he replied. “But don’t thank me yet, _________.” He released you, but kept holding your hand as he raced away. “We’ve got to get out of here and back to the Kingdom.”

“What?”

“Yes, to find the Sugarplum Princess. She’s the only one who can change you back and rescue us all from the Wannabe Mouse King.”

“Oh, goodie.” You clung to him as he leaped up onto a tree branch. “And how do we find this Sugar Pear-“

“Sugarplum Princess,” he corrected gently. “And I’m not sure.” The two of you became the climb up the tree. You had done some tree-climbing as a kid, but this was something else.

You wondered why the heck the two of you were climbing the tree if you needed to get back to this “Kingdom.” Your nutcracker remained at your side, ensuring you didn’t fall whenever your foot slipped on a branch.

“We have to get to the star of the tree,” he said, as if reading your thoughts. “It’s our way out.”

Behind you, a few chitauri-minions began climbing too. The Mouse King with Loki’s voice shouted commands and threats to them as you and the nutcracker managed to reach the top.

The star looked so big and bright to you in this size. Was it just you, or….was it glowing brighter?

Nutcracker-Steve ushered you closer to the star. He took your hand in his and touched it to the star. With that, there was a flash of light, a sensation of falling, and suddenly you felt chilly.

Opening your eyes, you saw a blanket of white stretching out miles and miles before you. Snowy mountains stood strong and beautiful to the left of the scene, and a frozen lake far on the right.

“W-where are we? This does not look like my grandparents’ living room.”

“This is the Kingdom,” Steve said. “This is what I’m fighting to protect. The Mouse King desperately wants to rule over this place and its people, but we can’t let that happen. I’ve already wandered so far off track.”

You had to admit it was beautiful here. Everything was coated in sparkling light, resembling Narnia when the Pevensie children first arrived. Only you got here through a tree star, not a wardrobe. And it was still night here.

“So, what do we do?” you asked, hugging yourself to try and retain some warmth. Steve’s painted eyes seemed to soften sympathetically.

“I’m sorry about the cold. Well, I’m sorry about all of this, actually.”

“It’s fine. You can’t really help it.” Your breath rose up in a cloud through the air with each word.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said, running a wooden hand down your arm in a pointless attempt to warm you. “We’ll head to the nearest town for some warm clothes and supplies. Then we need to find out where the Sugarplum Princess is.”

“Sure, it seems I don’t have much choice. I might freeze to death otherwise,” you mumbled. Steve attached his shield to his back and began trekking through the snow. You followed in his footsteps, hoping to avoid getting lots of snow in your slippers. Unfortunately, it was inevitable. Before long, snow had gotten into your slippers and melted around your feet, making them ice-cold. The snow began to pick up, and it seemed to become a blizzard.

“The Mouse King knows we’re here,” Steve shouted to you. “He’s trying to make things more difficult.”

“But of course he has ice powers,” you complained, teeth chattering.

Not much longer after that, you saw a warm light in the distance. It glowed faintly through the intense snowfall. The sight of it alone made you think of warm blankets and clothes, sitting comfortable and dry by a fireplace. Oh, you hoped they’d be welcoming.

“Almost there, _________,” Steve told you. “We’re almost there. Hang in there.”

PART 2

#avengers #avengers reader insert #avengers fanfiction #steve rogers x reader #captain america x reader #avengers x reader #steve rogers #captain america #reader insert #captain america imagine #avengers imagine #steve rogers imagine

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thechembow · 4 years

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To the woman who assaulted me at Ace Hardware today,

Jan. 15, 2021

I am your neighbor in Frazier Park. I love this mountain and feel so blessed to live here. You must enjoy its beauty as much as I do, because it is unsurpassed. The woods and wildlife give me solace. I have also always had good experiences among the humans of the mountain, shopping locally, where we all know each other and everyone is friendly. I like supporting our community and keeping everyone working and happy. I’ve never had a bad time shopping in Frazier Park, so it was somewhat of a shock to meet you this way today.

My husband and I were picking up some bird seed at Ace Hardware. If you live in Frazier Park and not in Pine Mountain Club, it’s still legal to feed the birds! We love our feathered friends. They have also been giving me nice brass shavings from their key machine which I use to make orgonite, an energy device which promotes rainfall, clears air pollution, and makes living with EMF safer. My husband, Gabe, and I have been making and gifting orgonite for almost seven years now, and we have covered all of California and much of the US west to end the drought. You might be interested to know that we have put orgonite all over this mountain too. It sure has been snowing more and more every year since we got here and the forests are alive with new baby trees, far outnumbering the trees that die of old age. There were awesome wildflower blooms out in the Antelope Valley and Gorman these past few years. It might also comfort you to know that there are Earth pipes along San Andreas Fault here and at the top of Mt. Pinos, healing the damage that was done here by your ancestors, who stole the land from the Chumash Indians and clear-cut the forests. This will help prevent earthquakes. We have gifted somewhere around 200 orgonite pieces to these mountains, from the Grapevine to the Central Coast. I wrote a book about it too. Our life and most of our resources have gone into planetary healing.

Now that you know a little more about me, I would like to know more about you. I wasn’t covering my face today like you were because I am not a member of your religion. We should be tolerant of other peoples’ beliefs. I am tolerant of your choice to hide your face from your Creator, although I don’t agree with it. I would never hit you and insult you for wearing a mask or for any other reason. What told you that I was to be deplored because of my exposed nose and mouth? When you called me a “f-ing b-tch” and punched me in the ribs, it didn’t hurt physically because you’re old and weak. But I was wondering if it was your mom or dad who taught you to do that? Did you learn it in school or in church? I’ve never been cursed at and hit by an old woman before.

I put on the mask in order not to offend you, although I didn’t have to. You continued to yell, and you were very close to me when you yelled that I would infect you. If I’m so disgusting and disease-ridden, it would be a good idea to stand a few feet away from me when you insult me. I think about 6 feet should do it. It’s also not a good idea to punch a sick person because you could get my germs on your hand. How come you disappeared out the back door when I called out, “She assaulted me!” If you’re right, you should stick around.

Incidentally, soon after we met, I tried to run into the grocery store to grab some garlic. Like at the hardware store, the employees there never get on my case for my need to breathe and show the face God gave me. I got verbally assaulted there by a customer again, which wasn’t as bad as being hit and verbally assaulted at the same time. But the woman there was much younger than you, so you may want to give her some pointers on how to really hurt your neighbor. She said, “You’re killing my family.” She also blamed me for her sick dog. It was more likely a combination of pinworms, Ascaris, a variety of liver and intestinal flukes, some tapeworms, solvents and heavy metals that killed them, along with the ventilators they pop peoples’ lungs with if they come into the hospital with a cold. I’m reading a fascinating book right now called The Cure for All Diseases by Dr. Hulda Clark. It explains all of these diseases you think are infectious and how to cure them. You need to zap your parasites and stop sharing your worms! Stop putting filth in your mouth and reinfecting yourself, says Dr. Clark. Germs are not jumping around in the air. You can learn to heal anything that’s wrong with you with this book.

In your case, you’re definitely watching too much news. I would venture to guess you’re also taking an assortment of pharmaceutical drugs which are masking symptoms of your own worms and the bacteria and viruses they carry. You probably use a smart phone. Lots of old people who don’t even understand the technology do. I wish you would be more like my grandma, who never hit a lady in the store nor uttered an obscenity. She never would have used a smart phone either. She was beautiful, strong, dignified, spoke several languages, loved fine art, cooked great meals and enjoyed life. It’s sad what a shriveled lump of fear you’re become. My grandma survived the very oppression you are doling out today by a miracle of God. Goodness knows, her life was in danger every moment for being Jewish and from Germany at the wrong time. Now I also feel like I’m in danger. If you’ll physically assault a stranger for having a different belief, then what if someone stronger or armed would do it? This is not something I want to find out. Fortunately I have a relationship with God who protects me and am saved by Messiah Yeshua. He reconciled me back to God who forgave my sin of falling into pagan culture like you have. Your world is a fantasy land, but it’s really more like a nightmare, and it is dying like you have died.

There were a few people in the store after you fled the scene who showed me sympathy. But I now know how bad things have gotten. You showed me that today. You made me feel physically sick, not just emotionally distressed, with a little help from your insane ally at the grocery store. Just last week I could go into most places in Frazier Park with my face showing. It seems your time is running out and your world is spiraling out of control. For now, I would rather not argue with you. I will cover my face in your presence and you won’t know I don’t worship your god. It gives me more inspiration to become more self-reliant and less dependent on the businesses of your world. I hate the mask with a passion. I hate what it represents and how you look in it. I think it’s very sad that you love your pathetic false god and believe this absolutely ridiculous narrative to the point that you would assault another woman. C0VID is a mental illness!

Well that’s all for now. I hope to hear from you soon. Maybe you will realize it was wrong to hit me and curse at me and I’ll forgive you. Then we can be friends and have a kosher barbeque when the weather warms up. I’m not holding my breath, no pun intended.

Your neighbor,

Sharon Daphna

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 4 years

Text

Eccentricity [Chapter 9: Now I Love Your Shadow And I Love Your Curls]

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. Potentially a better love story than Twilight.

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “Til I Die” by Parsonsfield.

Chapter Warnings: Language, references to sex, violence, and drug use.

Word Count: 7.6k.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @bramblesforbreakfast @maggieroseevans @culturefiendtrashqueen @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @escabell @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee @deacyblues @tensecondvacation @brianssixpence @some-major-ishues @haileymorelikestupid @youngpastafanmug @simonedk

Field Trip

“You want to go to Chicago with me?”

I coughed, having almost inhaled a chunk of pineapple off my slice of GrubHubbed pizza. We were sitting on the grass outside Forks And Spoons under the shade of the maple trees, which were turning from jade to ruby to amber to fool’s gold, rejoining the earth they once rose from one fallen leaf at a time. It hadn’t rained in almost four days—was that some kind of record?!—and the leaves littering the ground crunched when I stepped on them, which I did purposefully and often. The breeze was soft and whispery and temperate. I could get used to this whole having actual seasons thing. “What, in like a hypothetical, at some point in my life kind of way?”

Joe smiled. His U Chicago hoodie of the day was black. “No, as in this weekend.”

“Really?”

“The Cubs have a game on Saturday, and it’s supposed to be rainy and overcast the whole time, and I just thought...” He shrugged, toying with a piece of pizza crust before tossing it to the squirrels. He’s nervous, I realized. How the hell do I have the ability to make the sexy undead Italian man nervous? “It might be nice for us to be able to get away for a few days. Away from my family. Away from Charlie. Not that I don’t appreciate the ambient noise of his snoring from the living room couch, it’s super endearing, I seriously consider dating him instead of you at least twice a week.”

“Go for it. Charlie could use a rich husband. His pension is pathetic.”

“You wouldn’t miss me?”

“I am not necessarily opposed to clandestinely seducing my sugar daddy stepdad should the occasion arise.”

Joe crossed himself like a nun passing tattooed, cursing, lip-pierced teenagers on the sidewalk. “Lord, protect me from this harlot.”

A weekend away. No Charlie, no constant and chaotic whirlwind of Lees, no Ben. I hadn’t spoken to Ben since our misadventure in the Lee kitchen; if he wasn’t avoiding me of his own volition, he was following orders to stay away. Joe claimed that they’d talked it out. I wasn’t sure if I believed him. “I accept your invitation. Although, truthfully, I’d rather get hit by a bus than watch an entire real-life, no-commercial-breaks baseball game.”

“I accept your acceptance. And I’ll throw in a visit to the Shedd Aquarium, just for you. They have baby sea otters.”

“Sweet.” I checked my iPhone. “I’m gonna be late for Chemistry.”

“Anything fun planned?”

“We’re doing a lab involving hydrochloric acid. I’m highly concerned that Ben will accidentally spill some on himself. The miraculous instantaneous healing thing might raise a few questions.”

“Hm,” Joe replied. But he wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at my bandaged hand. And he wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Joe, I’m fine.”

“Yeah.” He took a preoccupied swig of his Dr. Pepper. Solemnity never seemed right on him; it was like he was wearing somebody else’s skin. “You’ve mentioned that.”

“Hey. Mob guy.”

Now his eyes flicked to mine.

“No more sad spaghetti.”

“Okay.” He surrendered, took my face in his hands, gave me a kiss on each cheek and then one quick parting peck on the forehead. “You win. I’m not sad. I’m ecstatic, actually. I’m gonna be eating my weight in hotdogs and mustard-slathered pretzels on Saturday. What’s there not to be ecstatic about?”

“The fact that your license says you’re only twenty and consequently can’t get a beer?”

Joe blinked, remembering. “Fuck.”

I drained my Diet Coke, flung my pizza crust to the skittering grey squirrels—no eerie albino forest friends today—and pulled on my backpack. “See ya. Have an awesome time in Game Theory.”

“Thanks, I probably won’t!” he chimed, waving, grinning compliantly; and yet did I still sense some lingering menace of disquiet, of fear? I suspected I did. Chicago would cure everything.

Ben tensed when I walked into Professor Belvin’s classroom, ran his fingers through his unruly blond hair, peered fixedly down at his notebook and feigned obliviousness. There was already a metal tray of Erlenmeyer flasks, labeled bottles of solutions, burettes, goggles, gloves, and an unassembled ring stand crowding our small table by the open window. Autumn air poured in like seawater through cracks in the hull of a ship.

“Guess who’s gonna see the Cubs play up close and personal this Saturday?” I announced.

He pretended to have just noticed me. “...You...? But that doesn’t sound like you.”

“It was Joe’s idea. I’m acting like I’m not totally thrilled and freaking out about it, but I am. Don’t tell him.”

Now Ben was the one staring at my bandaged hand. His green eyes were large and unfocused.

“I’m fine,” I insisted.

“Sure,” Ben returned noncommittally.

I started skimming through the packet of lab instructions and setting up our titration experiment as Professor Belvin circulated through the classroom, observing, commenting, offering suggestions and critiques. My wounded hand—still sore in the lull between Advil doses and relatively useless—was quite the embarrassing hinderance; I fumbled with a large glass flask and almost dropped it.

Ben shook his head and reached out to stop me. “Here, oh my god, this is so pitiful, sit down. Please sit down. I’ll set it up. It’s the least I can do.”

“Thanks.” I peeked at his notebook. “Your handwriting is atrocious. Haven’t you had like a century to work on that?”

“Penmanship was never at the top of my to-do list, tragically.”

“What language is that, anyway?” The phrases scrawled in black ink in Ben’s notebook definitely weren’t English. Or Italian. “Elvish? Are you a lowkey Lord Of The Rings fan? Magic and self-sacrifice and nearly insurmountable evil, I could see that being your thing.”

He smirked, struggling with the ring stand. “It’s Welsh.”

“Welsh,” I repeated, perplexed. “Welsh...like how Gwil is Welsh?”

“Precisely.”

Professor Belvin checked in on us, nodded in approval, reminded me that I was always welcome to stop by at bowling league activities, and resumed his wandering.

“Gwil still speaks it,” Ben continued. “The rest of them speak it too. At least enough for basic communication.”

“I didn’t know,” I said, fascinated, examining the long, unfamiliar words riddled with Ls and Ws and Cs. “But that must be very useful.”

“It is. Welsh is nearly a dead language at this point. It’s like talking in code. I always refused to learn it on principle...or maybe I was just being difficult. I would study other languages, Arabic, Japanese...but not Welsh. That was always Gwil’s language. Their language. It was a Lee thing. But now...”

“Now you’re sort of a Lee too,” I finished for him, smiling.

“Whatever,” Ben said, hiding behind his bangs.

I watched him as he at last tamed the ring stand, secured the burette, placed the Erlenmeyer flask. Then he began reading the labels on the solution bottles. “Guess what else.”

“What, Baby Swan?”

I grinned, showing off my unremarkable, entirely benign human teeth. “I’ll bring you back your very own U Chicago hoodie.”

That night, after a pleasantly prosaic dinner with Charlie—burgers, one veggie and one of the conventional variety, and milkshakes at Danny’s Diner—I started packing a small, Arizona-sky-blue suitcase as sparse raindrops pattered against the roof and moonlight streamed in through the open window. Then I ticked off my mental inventory.

“Jeans, sweaters, pajamas, socks...”

I pawed through the top drawer of my old, scratched dresser—the same one that had once upon a time been Renee’s—and contemplated the bra and panty options. Would my theme be comfort and practicality, or feral impenitent seductress? Friday and Saturday in Chicago would be our first nights alone together. That had to be significant, right? After some deliberation, I gathered a handful of lacy, transparent, and/or exceptionally skimpy lingerie from Victoria’s Secret that Jessica had more or less forced upon me during a shopping trip in Port Angeles last month. As I dropped them into the open suitcase, I glanced up to see the albino owl outside my open bedroom window.

“You never know,” I told the owl, shrugging.

It leered judgmentally back at me with those gory red eyes.

“Oh shut up. How many eggs have you laid in your lifetime, Casper The Unfriendly Ghost? Probably like a bazillion. Freaking feathery trollop.”

The owl had nothing to offer in its own defense.

“Why don’t you ever come around when Joe’s here? I’m sure he’d love to meet you. He’s pale and weird too. Although I like his eyes a little better than yours. No offense, Snowflake.”

The owl blinked, tilted its gaze at me, ruffled its feathers and sent the raindrops that had gathered there flying in every direction.

I slid my iPhone out of my back pocket, spun around, and snapped a quick selfie with the owl in the background. “Say cheese, Marshmallow!”

The owl immediately unfurled its wings and flapped off into the trees, vanishing.

“Huh. I guess homegirl is camera shy.” I texted my selfie to Archer, typing out with my thumbs: I am the Steve Irwin of Forks. Behold, one of my many forest friends.

Archer replied a few minutes later: WOW! Pasty and mildly disturbing. Exactly your type. :)

“Yours too, apparently,” I murmured, smiling in my empty room.

I went to my full-length mirror with the plastic, teal-colored border, briefly appraised my reflection, felt a dull swell of approval for what I saw there. The version of myself that had once been so consumed by fears of inadequacy seemed impossibly far away, maybe even fictitious, a dream so vivid I could mistake it for truth. Three things were taped across the top of the mirror: Joe’s Official Citation!! No More Sad Spaghetti!! post-it, his Official Whatever You Want Pass, and a photo of us dressed up together and standing in front of the limo in the Lees’ driveway just before the Calawah University Homecoming dance. I peeled off the Official Whatever You Want Pass, carefully folded it into a neat little square, and tucked it into my wallet.

When the rain began to pour and thunder rolled in off the Pacific Ocean, I closed my bedroom window; but I remembered to leave it unlocked for Joe.

Departure

“Got your license?”

“Yes, Dad,” Joe sighed.

“Got your airport snacks?”

Joe held up the gallon-sized Ziploc bag filled with pumpkin and white chocolate chip cookies. “We’re ready to rock.”

“Call me when you get there safe,” Mercy fretted, hugging me and then Joe. “And Joseph, sweetheart, you make sure you keep an eye on her. She’s never been to Chicago before, it’s a big city, and O’Hare is an absolute nightmare, it’s so easy to get lost...”

“I don’t think he needs any reminders, love.” Dr. Lee laid a hand on her shoulder, stroked his neatly-trimmed beard with the other, watched us with a vague and wistful smile.

Mercy went back to trimming the flowers she had spread out across the kitchen countertop, white calla lilies that she threaded one by one into a translucent sapphire blue vase. “Now don’t forget to say goodbye to your brother. He’s out back feeding the new ducks. And I expect these ones to stick around for a while, thank you very much.”

“Mom, I don’t need to say goodbye to Rami. I’ll just think it. Really loudly.” Joe rubbed his temples with his fingertips and squeezed his eyes shut. “Peace out, you nosy bastard.”

“Joseph,” Mercy pleaded.

“Okay, okay, I’ll go say goodbye. Don’t get all aggressive. Don’t take it out on the flowers.” Aggressive...what a joke. I doubted that Mercy Eleanor Lee, formerly Martin, had a single aggressive bone in her immortal body; not even the infinitesimal stapes of her inner ears or the sesamoids of her feet.

“They’re calla lilies,” she replied dreamily, tending them like children. “And they symbolize love, and beauty, and fidelity...”

My nostrils itched and burned faintly in dissent. “I think I’m allergic to them.”

“You’re allergic to fidelity?” Joe asked, raising his eyebrows. “That’s it, now you’re definitely not getting my reclaimed virginity. No ma’am. I am not hit-it-and-quit-it material.”

“Oh sweet baby Jesus,” Mercy murmured.

“I’m going,” Joe said, showing his palms in capitulation and disappearing out the back door. I dragged my suitcase to the front one, politely declining Mercy and Gwil’s offers to help.

Lucy—her bleached hair in a high half-ponytail and wearing polka-dotted black tights, combat boots, a plaid miniskirt, and an extremely Octoberish orange sweater—was sitting cross-legged on the roof of Gwil’s Volvo. God, he’s such a dad. “Have a nice time,” she chirped artfully.

I opened the hatch of Joe’s Subaru and threw my suitcase inside. “Why do you sound like you already know I will?”

“I might have some relevant clairvoyant insight.”

“No way.” I stared up at her, stunned, my hands on my waist. “But you can’t see me, right...?”

“True. But this vision wasn’t of you. It was of Joe. You just happened to be there.”

Interesting. Very interesting. “And what transpired in this vision?” A night full of hot, steamy, blissful vampire sex? A girl could dream.

Lucy closed her eyes, recalling it fondly, maybe even cherishing it. “You were sitting in the stands of a professional baseball game. I could hear the crowd roaring, the umpire’s trumpeting interruptions. Blue and white...everyone was wearing blue and white. And you were there together—Joe a vampire, you human, side by side, almost entwined—shouting to each other over the thunderous noise and laughing and pushing nuggets of soft pretzels into each other’s mouths. So happy. I’d never seen Joe so happy.” Her striking pale eyes came open. “And he’s someone who’s already rather prone to happiness, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“I have,” I agreed.

“He’s never been serious about anybody else. I hope you know that.”

“I know that’s what he tells me.”

“It’s the truth,” Lucy insisted. “I would know if it wasn’t. Rami would know, Ben would know. Joe...he’s kind of the opposite of you. He’s always been the easiest to read. He’s the one Rami hears most loudly, the one who shows up most often in my visions. He’s clear, you know? Uncomplicated. Authentic. And what you mean to him...it’s something everybody sees. It’s a contagious sort of lightness, of joy. So thank you for that.”

And if whatever mysterious genetic switch that renders me immune to your talents wasn’t flipped, I’m pretty sure I’d look the same way. “I should definitely be thanking you,” I said. “You guys have a pretty cool existence going on here. And I’m so grateful to be invited into it.” For however long this lasts, anyway.

“None of us really invited you,” Lucy demurred. “We just let it happen.”

“So everyone knew I was coming? Because you saw it?”

“Everyone but Joe.”

“You never told him?”

“No. Not even now.” Lucy turned sharply towards the trees, as if she heard something in the soaring western hemlocks that swayed drunkenly in the wind. After a moment, she continued. “I’m not sure if I can even explain why. It wasn’t that I feared changing the timeline or something...my visions always come true regardless. Always. But I guess...” She tugged on her short half-ponytail, pondering. “I guess I didn’t want to cloud any of his decision-making, any of his emotions with the specter of the inevitable. I wanted whatever he felt for you to be completely organic. And it is.”

I considered her. “You are extremely thoughtful for someone who spends as much time shopping as you do.”

Lucy laughed in a high-pitched, almost juvenile trill, netting her fingers beneath her chin, her elbows resting on her bent knees. “I do like to shop. I didn’t always though.” She peered off into the trees again, this time pensively. “Did Joe tell you anything about my life before Gwil saved me?”

“Aside from the copious hippie jokes, not really.”

She nodded, her eyes far-away and still lost in the forest. “Gwil and Mercy are inordinately wonderful people. My biological father and mother, unfortunately, were not. And maybe they couldn’t help it, because from what I understand their parents were monsters too. I don’t think of them very often now, not even to resent them. But when I was alive I burned with it, with all that hatred, with all that bitterness. Every bruise was another log on the fire. Every screaming match or hurled plate was a splash of gasoline. So I ran away and found what I fancied to be a new family, and I lived on basement couches and out of vans and in abandoned buildings, and I explored increasingly inventive ways of putting that fire out.”

The October breeze cascaded through the trees, carrying echoes of birdsong and disembodied distant voices and the scent of pine. It reminded me of Joe.

“Chemically speaking,” Lucy said, “that first hit of heroin, that first high...it’s the best you’ll ever feel in your entire life. Nothing else will ever compare. Not skydiving, not backpacking through Southeast Asia on some Pulitzer-prize-winning journey of self-discovery, not winning the lottery, not the births of your children, not falling in love. And once you accept that, what’s the point in stopping? Everything you ever experience will live in the shadow of that needle. You’re twenty-five and you’ve already seen the endgame. You’re born, you suffer, you catch a glimpse of paradise, you pay bills and push shopping carts down the aisles of grocery stores and insipidly smile your way through your husband’s work parties until you die. What’s the fucking point? So I didn’t stop shooting heroin. And the whole time, I knew it was killing me. That’s what they don’t tell kids when they force them to make those idiotic classroom promises to never do drugs. You know it’s killing you, but you don’t care. Because it feels so goddamn good. Because it becomes the only sliver of your existence that doesn’t cut like glass beneath your skin. Sometimes you love things so much you let them kill you, isn’t that ridiculous?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer her; still, I heard my own voice: “Yes, it is.”

“It took dying for me to see that life is worth living. That there’s magic in the mundane and the frivolous. And that there’s beauty everywhere if you bother to look for it.” Lucy uncrossed her trim legs, leapt gracefully off the Volvo, and—with definite but not unkind scrutiny—pulled at the collar of my thrift shop sweater. “Even in your very, very, very misguided fashion preferences.”

The front door of the Lee house swung open, and Joe jogged out, carrying his suitcase. Gwil, Mercy, Scarlett, Rami, and Ben appeared on the porch to wave us off.

“What’d you do?!” Joe demanded, pointing at Lucy.

“Nothing,” she quipped.

“You guys gotta stop doing this!” Joe exclaimed. “You know what you’re doing, you know exactly what you’re doing, you gotta stop cornering people and forcing them to listen to your creepy tragic backstories! Nobody freaking asked!”

Lucy chuckled patiently and stood on her tiptoes to hug him goodbye. “Have fun.”

“You know it.” Joe tossed his suitcase into the Subaru and opened the driver’s door. “Ready, Baby Swan?”

“Almost.”

I walked to the wrap-around porch, climbed the steps, held my hand out to Ben. My stitches had almost completely dissolved over the past week, and the clunky impediment of bandages was no more. Joe crossed his arms and watched from beside the Subaru with an uneasy frown, but he didn’t try to stop me. He nodded to Rami, so subtly I almost didn’t notice. Rami nodded back.

“I will miss your melodramatic brooding immensely,” I told Ben. “Please do some fun family stuff while we’re gone. I’ll see you soon. Dan eich bendith.”

“Dan eich bendith,” he replied, taken aback. And then, after a moment’s hesitation, he ignored my outstretched hand and embraced me, his grasp so strong and yet so careful. His scent like crisp leaves and salted caramel and autumn sieved into a bottle unfolded in my lungs like an opened book.

“I Googled that especially for you,” I whispered. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m in awe.” His words were characteristically sardonic, but I heard warmth in them as well. When Ben pulled away, I saw that everyone else was smiling. Mercy had tears in her eyes.

I retreated back down the porch steps and met Joe by the Subaru. “Okay, mob guy. I’m good.”

He slid on his sunglasses, shook his head, flashed a proud and toothy grin. “You definitely are.”

All the way down Route 101 to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, we listened to Joe’s classic rock mixtapes and my NOAA Ocean Podcast episodes, reviewed the weekend itinerary, ran through the bare essentials for me to understand an MLB game (“Which I am totally not excited about whatsoever,” I informed Joe, who knew enough not to believe me).

When the Boeing 747 ascended above the clouds and unimpeded sunlight poured in from the other passengers’ windows, Joe put on a black sleeping mask over his sunglasses and reclined his seat, tried to nap, passed the time until he would be safe beneath the curtains of the sky again.

Somewhere over the Dakotas, as I leafed through a book about the Great Barrier Reef for my Marine Botany class, Joe’s hand bumped mine. “Hey,” he said drowsily, seriously; and I braced myself for some emotional declaration, some dire warning, some grave realization of the futility of what we agreed—almost always wordlessly, and yet unfailingly—was love.

“Yeah?”

“It’s an emergency.”

“Uh oh,” I replied, smiling now.

“Flag down the flight attendant and get some more of those honey roasted peanut packets,” Joe said. “I’m starving myself back to death over here.”

The Windy City

The bat cracked deafeningly against the baseball pitched at nearly a hundred miles per hour. It was a home run. The crowd erupted into mindless, primal shrieks of conquest; and when Joe jumped to his feet, clapping and cheering and nearly spilling his blue-and-white bucket of popcorn, I found that I did as well. I screamed for the team of a city I’d never lived in, sank back into my seat beside Joe, nestled against his chest as his right arm closed around my waist and hauled me in closer, as his left hand teased me with a soft pretzel nugget hovering just out of reach. And in that moment, I felt like Lucy, snatching Polaroids out of the space-time continuum of the present and the future and the past. There was where Joe and I were right now, of course; the day we had met each other in the nonfiction section of the Calawah University library; the dance floor at Homecoming; the first night he snuck soundlessly into my bedroom window; all those years we still had left to spend together. Not forever, but perhaps long enough.

“I like this baseball thing,” I told him over the roar of the crowd, twirling my fingers around the curling locks of dark hair that stuck out from under his Cubs cap. Or maybe I just like you.

“Whew, thank god.” Joe wiped his forehead with the back of his hand in mock relief. “Now I don’t have to break up with you.”

After the game—a 5-3 Cubs victory, close enough to keep the spectators’ blood pumping throughout—we boarded the L, held onto the metal railings as the packed train car bumped and swerved along, and disembarked in Little Italy. Historic brownstones were interrupted by a freckling of pizzerias, Italian ice stands, and sports bars spilling out shouts of triumph and despair. We were staying in the Four Seasons with a view of Lake Michigan; but we had an hour of daylight—albeit chilled, dreary, and forever threatening rain—left in our Saturday. Tomorrow would be the aquarium, and then dinner before catching our flight back to Seattle, back to the greenery and fog and eternal dampness that I was beginning to think of as my home. Had I really only left Phoenix two months ago? Had I ever really lived there at all?

“So,” Joe said as we walked under shedding green ash and black cherry trees, his arm draped across my shoulders. “Guess what the University of Chicago has. In addition to a killer Economics PhD program, which yours truly will be graduating from in approximately 2027, astonishingly aged not a single day. Maybe he’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline.”

“Hideous sweatshirts?” I guessed.

“One of the best Marine Biology departments in the world. And the affiliated Marine Biological Laboratory up in Massachusetts, where they send their PhDs to do research.”

“Wait, seriously?” I stopped abruptly, the heels of my boots squealing against the sidewalk. “You mean...for me?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, for my other girlfriend who is also inexplicably super obsessed with the ocean. I clearly have a type.”

“You want me...to come to Chicago...with you...after graduation? For like...a five to seven year commitment?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Well, that just sounds...serious.”

“Huh. What do you know. I guess we’re serious after all.” He took my hand and pulled me gently forward, leading me down West Taylor Street. He seemed to have a destination in mind.

“How is this going to work for you, anyway?” I asked, beaming uncontrollably now, trotting along beside him. “Living in a place that isn’t Washington or Scotland or Alaska?” Chicago was cold and cloudy for a lot of the year, true, but few cities were Forks-level wet and sunless. Forks-level tyrannically depressing, I would have said two months ago.

He shrugged, unphased. “Night classes. Sunglasses. Faking a chronic illness so I don’t have to leave our house. I’m really good at that one. Plus I can get a doctor’s note any time I want one. I’ve got connections, you know.”

Our house. He said OUR house.

Joe came to halt in front of a stately yet plain brownstone which now operated as a trendy bookstore, the kind that sold six dollar lattes and hosted anarchist poetry slams on Friday nights.

“Is this where we’re going to crack hipsters’ kneecaps as a bonding activity?” I asked.

“This is where I grew up.”

I looked again, studying the earth-colored stone quarried over a century ago, the wrought iron railings that framed the front steps, the rectangular windows revealing the illumination and shadows of other families’ lives. “Joe,” I said softly, leaning into him, searching for my words.

“There were eight Mazzello kids: Joseph, Charles, Mimi, Salvador, Donna, Lucia, Bianca, and Giuliano.” He rattled them off like a jingle from a fast food commercial. “And I was the oldest. So when my dad dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of his shift at the Zenith Radio factory, it was my job to step up and figure out how to keep everyone fed. I was seventeen and completely hopeless at school back then; Sal was always the smart one, the disciplined one, he ended up as a math professor at Loyola University. I was just some directionless, grieving kid who never shut up. But there was a place for boys like me in Chicago in the 1920s. The mob could get you money. The mob could turn that same incessant chatter that got you bruised at school into something useful. And the mob could give you a family.”

Joe watched the brownstone solemnly, meditatively, his hands in his pockets.

“My mom sobbed for an hour the first time I brought home an envelope full of bills with Hamilton’s face on them. She knew how I got it. But how could she say no, how could she tell me to stop? We’d never seen money like that. All my siblings could finish school. My sisters could have new dresses on days that weren’t Christmas and Easter, my brothers new shoes, Sal the glasses he needed so badly. My mother always had something to put in the offering plate at church. And once you were in the mob, it wasn’t exactly easy to leave. But they took care of their own. After I died, they sent my mother money for years, until her own children were established enough to support her. That’s when I learned that money wasn’t just something that put food on the dinner table or kept the lights on. It’s a way of showing loyalty, of giving people peace and comfort and meaningful choices in their lives. It’s how I’ve been taught to give back to the world. So I guess I shouldn’t have disparaged my fellow vampires back in Forks, because there’s a slice of my tragic backstory, Baby Swan. Now you know. And you should know everything, since we’re in this thing together. Or maybe I just want you to.”

I laid my palm against his cool and flawless face, ran my thumb lightly across his cheek. “You really are serious about me.”

“I am alarmingly serious about you.”

“Even though this thing of ours has an expiration date?” Since I can never become a vampire. Since I will never have the distinction of being a permanent fixture of the Lee coven.

“That’s not a problem for today. That’s a problem for ten or fifteen years from now, whenever you decide you want to settle down and have kids and do the whole Great American Dream bit. You’ll be sick of me by then anyway. You’ll be dying to get away from us. Hahaha, get it? It’s a pun. Dying to get away from the vampires.”

I couldn’t imagine ever being sick of Joseph Francis Mazzello. Still, ten or fifteen years felt almost as good as forever to me. Fifteen autumns, fifteen Christmases, fifteen journeys around the sun that he avoided so deftly. “Why me, Joe?” I asked, incredulous. “You could have anyone. Any human, any vampire. Why me?”

“Because you’re you,” he said simply. And his mystified dark eyes added: What kind of a question is that? “You’re smart and you’re hilarious and you actually care about the world, about where it came from, about where it’s going, about people and places and animals that you’ll never meet. You’re indomitable. You’re fearless almost to the point of recklessness. And yet you’re so kind. You’re even nice to Ben, and humans are never nice to him...they’re either horrified or confused, or they’re too busy fantasizing about him to remember that he’s a real fucking person. But you’ve always tried to see the good in him. Even when he didn’t deserve it.” Joe shook his head, marveling. “And yeah, I’ve...I’ve screwed around, full disclosure. I’ve done the hookup thing. And it was great for what it was. But I never wanted more. I never felt some gnawing, sentimental, Hallmark-channel need for connection, to understand who they were as people. And then I met you, and...I want to know every single goddamn thing about you. I want to know your favorite color, what books you read, what the hell is so appealing about pineapple pizza, what you dream of. I feel like I could never get tired of trying to understand you.”

A refrain circled through my mind like a whirlpool, dragging every other thought down into oblivion: I love him, I love him, I love him. “Blue,” I said at last.

“What?”

“Turquoise blue, like the sky in Arizona. That’s my favorite color.”

The smile, slow and wonderous, rippled across his face. He took my hand again. “Come on.”

Joe led me onwards, down a few blocks and around a corner, as the muted sun receded from the sky and the first stars took its place, pinpricks of celestial light in a blanket of violet, azure, amber, rust. He stopped in front of the Church of Saint Lawrence, established in 1902 according to the sign mounted on the brick wall that faced the street, perhaps the same church that he had once visited with his family as an impatient child, snickering with his brothers and sisters and kicking the back of the pew in front of him with shoes that never fit quite right. There was a fountain bubbling with transparent water, a statue of the Virgin Mary at the center, coins made of copper and nickel and zinc glinting through the water under corridors of silvery luminance cast by the streetlights.

“I lied about not having my own superpower,” Joe informed me mischievously, not at all serious.

“Oh, did you now?”

“Absolutely.” He opened his wallet, rooted around, pulled out a penny and handed it to me. “I can make wishes come true. So go ahead.” He nodded towards the fountain. “Make your wish.”

The penny was worn and nearly indecipherable, but I was just barely able to read that it had been minted in 1928. The same year Joe was turned. “Joe...I can’t just throw this away!”

“You’re not throwing it away. You’re exchanging it for a wish. Now wish.”

I closed my eyes, chose my wish, tossed the penny into the fountain. The plink it made when it hit the water was bright and yet mournful somehow, like windchimes, like flickering candlelight.

“Outstanding job,” Joe complimented.

He was so visibly proud, so content, so faultless. The streetlights threw shadows across the sidewalk, the fountain, the whole world it seemed. I laced my fingers behind his neck, gazing up at him. “What are we doing tonight, mob guy?”

“I’m so glad you asked. You see, we have options.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“Door Number One,” Joe began. “It’s been a long day, and you’re exhausted from the illustrious honor of witnessing a Cubs victory firsthand. So we go back to the hotel, find some shark documentary on tv, order room service, shower, and drift off into a peaceful slumber. Just like last night.”

“Not bad. How about Door Number Two?”

“Door Number Two. You’re tired, but not that tired. We go back to the hotel, find that same aforementioned shark documentary, but totally ignore it and make out instead. Maybe we even round second base, in the spirit of the Cubs. Whatever you’re up for. Then we shower and drift off into a peaceful slumber.”

“Even better,” I said, and I meant it. “And what’s Door Number Three?”

Now Joe became jittery; his eyes darted to the fountain, the church, the cars that rolled lazily by. He was so desperate to conceal his hope, to not impose any undue influence upon me. I felt infinitesimal, almost weightless drops of rain against my cheeks, my collarbones, the downy undersides of my arms. “Well, uh, Door Number Three is...it’s...well...uh...it’s...”

Door Number Three is a home fucking run. “I want Door Number Three.”

“Really? Because you don’t have to say that, you can say no, that’s completely fine, it’s more than fine actually, it’s awesome, it’s totally cool, I’m seriously fine either way, and you can obviously change your mind whenever—”

“Wait.” I broke away from him, yanked my own wallet out of my purse, found the Official Whatever You Want Pass, hastily unfolded it, and presented it to Joe. “I want Door Number Three.”

He barked out a shocked laugh, accepted the pass, studied it in disbelief. “You are full of surprises, ma’am. It took me a hundred years to find a woman like you. And I don’t think I ever will again. Makes one wonder if this whole eternity thing is all it’s cracked up to be.” He tucked the pass into his pocket and kissed me beneath the streetlights, beneath the stars. “So there’s one tiny caveat to my wish-granting superpower.”

“Yeah?”

He smiled impishly, nudging the tip of my nose with his. “You have to tell me what you wished for.” He was joking, as he almost always was; I didn’t have to tell him anything. He wouldn’t press the issue. I doubted that he was really expecting me to answer at all. And yet I wanted to tell Joe; I yearned, for once, to be as clear as Lucy had said he was.

“For you and me,” I replied in little more than a whisper. “And for forever.”

Home

The only thing that startled me was how profoundly unstartling it all was, how wholly uncomplicated, how effortless.

I didn’t feel like a different person afterwards. I didn’t feel that some latent spark of lust, of carnality had been ignited, had singed through me, had left me forever marked like the heights of children ticked off on a doorframe over decades; I felt neither ruined nor awakened, no wiser, no older, no more enlightened as to the incalculable eccentricities of the vast and enigmatic universe. I felt only happiness, and exhausted satisfaction, and a deep, dreamless peace that engulfed me like frothy fingertips of waves dragging pebbles and shells back into the sea. I felt only a homecoming that was measured not in miles but in soul.

We slept in as the morning sun rose over Lake Michigan, bought Ben a hoodie (black, of course, per his usual aesthetic) from the University of Chicago gift shop, strolled unhurriedly through the dimly-lit, relentlessly blue pathways of the Shedd Aquarium. As I stood in the glass tunnel and watched sawfish and blacktip reef sharks soar by overhead, Joe linked his arms around my waist, tucked his chin into the dip of my collarbone, kissed the slope of my jaw.

“What do you think?” he asked, perhaps a touch apprehensively. “Could you get used to the Chicago life for a few years?”

“I would be tempted to kidnap some of these guys and bring them home to live in our bathtub. But yes.”

And Joe murmured, smiling, his lips to my temple: “That’s illegal, ma’am.”

Our flight back to the West Coast took off after dusk, and there was no blinding sunlight for Joe to avoid; only immense glooms of clouds and gleaming distant stars and the unfathomable void of space, cursed with crushing pressure and darkness like the cervices of the ocean floor.

Fifteen years might not be enough, I thought, resting my forehead against the cold airplane window as the city lights died behind us, as Joe’s hand weaved through mine on the armrest. But forever sounds just about right.

Larkin

There once was a boy born in a stone cottage with a dirt floor in a vanishingly inconsequential village just west of Clifden, Ireland. It was February 9th, 1672, bitterly cold, miserably wet, and the sea was murderous with storms. His mother was illiterate, as her mother had been, and as her mother had been as well, all the way back to people who painted mammoths on cave walls with their fingers; she was thirty-three and already exhausted with living, her seven children forever underfoot, her full and ruddy cheeks perpetually smudged with dirt from the field and ashes from the fire. Her husband was a failure and a drunk, but half a day’s worth of work once or twice a week was better than none at all; and as much as she never would have admitted it, he was a tether for her in a world that was often, as she had learned, both lonely and cruel.

She gave the baby boy a name—a strong Irish name, none of that audacious English rubbish—that meant rough or fierce, just like the sea that rose and ruptured against the rocky cliffs outside. He would need to be rough to survive in this world. He would need to be fierce.

He began like all the other children had been: sweet and yet anonymous, yielding, needful, worryingly small. She rocked him absently with one arm as she stirred the stew pot with the other. She sang to him, told him stories long before he could comprehend them, tales of the Lord and the saints and all their malevolent adversaries: serpents, pestilence, demons, dragons. She tossed stray sticks to him so he could carve pictures into the dirt floor and keep out of the way as she labored with the laundry or the sewing. And he grew, and he grew; and there was nothing remarkable about him at all, that boy speckled with mud and soot and the perpetual bruises of children mostly left to their own devices, that boy with pallid skin like his mother’s and black hair like his father’s and eyes so light and vibrant a brown they were nearly gold.

The boy was a baby, and then a child, and then a young man. And his mother realized one day—all at once, as a mother does when their attention is divided among so many other lives, when the children’s analogous faces bleed into each other and even their names sometimes escape her, even those names that she had chosen herself from the stories her own mother once passed to her through threadbare whispers—that people had a habit of following him, of listening to him. That there was an ether of allure that hovered around him like the mists that clung to the precarious, crumbling cliffs that touched the sea; that there was something like what the heathens called magic. And when the war came, that boy who was no longer a boy left his mother’s stone cottage and enlisted in Clifden, lied about his age, signed his name with an X because that was all he knew how to spell. But he was sure to tell the man who handled the ledger that he did have a real name, a good Irish name, a name apt for a soldier, a name that his mother had told him meant rough or fierce: Larkin.

There are men who join wars out of loyalty, principle, love for their homes; and then there are men who join to escape their homes, perhaps to forget them entirely. If you were to consult that ledger signed in a pub in Clifden, Ireland in 1688, you would read that I fought for Ireland, for the Catholics, for Christ the Lord and all his saints. But what I really fought for was my own resurrection: to take that boy stained with dirt and ignorance, drown him in the blood of other mothers’ trivial sons, and dredge up some greater version of myself that I had always known existed, that was hidden somewhere in the netlike darkness of the marrow of my bones.

People follow me, and they always have. I couldn’t tell you why. When I called them to enlist, when I thrusted swords and pikes into their calloused farmers’ fists, when I told them they could fight and live to see their wretched homes again, they believed me. I climbed the ranks like a ladder, like a mountain made of bones. And all those other mothers’ sons laid down for me so I could walk across the bridge of their spines to what I mistakenly assumed was invincibility.

At the Battle Of The Boyne, my horse was shot out from under me. A Williamite caught me beneath the ribs with his dagger. And as I bled out, staring up at the sky and impatiently waiting for the pain to vanish as my consciousness withdrew like low tide, I became aware that someone was lifting me, holding me, spiriting me through the battlefield and then the wilderness; and that my pain, in a disconcerting turn of events, had swelled to a vicious and unrelenting inferno.

Three days later, I woke to find that I was resurrected again, this time as something more than human. The man who turned me was blond-haired, light-eyed, agile and yet gentle, ancient and yet ever-changing.

“I thought you’d survive,” Nikolai said in a thick Slavic accent, standing over me with a kind smile. Then he helped me to my feet. “You have greatness in you. It sweats out of your pores, it’s in every word you speak. What a shame it would be for all of that to go to waste.”

He taught me everything: how to read and write, how to hunt, how to dodge the sunlight, how to survive an existence that was both theoretically endless and yet forever on the precipice of being cut short. He introduced me to the Draghi, to vampires who were remarkable for their ferocity, or their creativity, or their curiosity, or their cleverness, or all those things at once: Victorien, Honora, Elizabeth, Kestrel, Zhang, Sergei, Ana, Gwilym. And most crucially, Nikolai showed me that my human talents were magnified several times over, that his own followers were not immune to them, that there was power in collecting exceptional individuals like pieces of china stacked in a locked cabinet; and that if I could learn to climb immortal bones, the ladder never needed to end.

You never quite get used to the power, to the invincibility, to the promise of eternity. You never take it for granted. It hits you, again and again, in ceaseless and victorious waves. Once I was a barefoot toddler who sketched dragons and Catholic saints from the stories my mother told me into the dirt floor of our drafty stone cottage. Now I live in palaces with marble floors, with spiral staircases and libraries and gold-dripping ballrooms, with unobstructed views of any sea I choose. Now I am the dragon.

My phone rang, and I checked the name on the screen. Then I answered. “Hello, beauty. How’s the other side of the Pacific treating you?”

And Liesl answered, in a soft and astonished voice: “I don’t think Lucy can read her. I don’t think any of them can.”

I could feel it again. Another wave, crashing through me like the ocean, like the unstoppable rolling of time: power and insatiability and exhilaration. I smiled in my twilight-lit study as long-dead stars rose outside and the wind howled like wolves over the East Sea. “You know what to do.”

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jawritter · 4 years

Text

The Arrangement

Part 8

Summery: You are a young girl that was raised in a small church in Dallas, TX. One of the only churches left in the state that still practices arranged marriages. When your betrothed ran off to California you thought you'd escape the fate you were trained for ever since a small child. Now upon the death your parents your fate seemed to be inescapable as he's returned, and is ready to take you as his bride.

Book Warnings: Arranged marriage, loss of virginity, smut, unprotected sex, angst, language, suicide attempt, battles with anxiety, struggles with mental illness, age gap (about 11 years), I think that’s it, chapters will have warnings of their own!

Chapter Warnings: Almost smut, feels, angst, that’s pretty much it

Word Count: 1693

A/N: This book is a book about Christian and church based arranged marriages, I would like to take this moment to say that I DO NOT have ANYTHING against the Chirstian faith, and mean absolutely no harm to anyone! Especially Jensen’s family! This is a complete work of fiction, and should be treated as such!

Beta’d by the amazing @deanwanddamons who was awesome enough to do all this for me! It was a lot of work, and she deserves all the praise for it!!

Pairing: Jensen Ackles x Reader

Want More? Check Out My Masterlist!!

***MASTERLIST***

***SERIES MASTERLIST***

Jensen's POV:

Jensen sat alone in the early morning hours on the back porch of the hillside home he and Y/N had been living in for the past week, a cup of coffee steaming on the table next to him, mostly untouched.

He watched as the sun was just starting to reach pink over the trees, stretching odd colored rays of sunlight through the tall trees, and into the clearing of the backyard.

A light mist hung low over the grass from a rain storm that came through sometime in the middle of the night. It was as close to autumn as you could get in Texas. Cooler weather didn't come very often, and when it did you took advantage of it, because it sure wasn't going to last very long.

Everything seemed damp, still, a cool crisp to the air. One not cold enough to make you light the fireplace, but cool enough to make you throw on a light sweater.

Adjusting to this new life he was starting with Y/N had been easier for him than he thought it would be. She did mostly everything, and that was one thing he wasn't used to at all. She cooked him usually three meals a day, she cleaned, she did everything that he used to watch his grandmother and mother do as a child. It was a strange change from having to hire someone to do all those things, to having someone who would rather do it herself.

It made him wonder if his previous marriage was more of a sham than what he really realized. It also made him question his take on life in general. He still felt slightly guilty over not doing this when he should have done it years ago, and he couldn't help but wonder how different his life would have been, and how different Y/N’s life would have been, if he’d have stayed and married her like was always planned, instead of running from everything like a scalded dog.

She was still very distant to him, and he was a little afraid that she may be afraid of him. So he hadn't tried to be intimate with her again. He hadn't even left the house with her. He didn't want to make her feel like a hostage, he just didn't want to dump too much on her at one time.

It was a Sunday, and was forecasted to be a pretty day in Texas, so today he thought he'd make the best of it and take Y/N down to the boardwalk. Let her look around the shops and things that are down there, get her out of this house for a little while, maybe even go have lunch with Jared and Gen. More than likely they would be grilling today, seeing as it was Sunday, and it was a pretty day.

Jared had been on to him since the news broke that he'd remarried. It didn't take long once the pastor had filed the marriage license in the courthouse before people found out that he and Y/N had married. That was another reason he'd been hanging around the house for a week, and not leaving. He wasn't ready to expose her to that world. He also wasn't ready to share her with the world just yet either. They barely knew each other, why should he share her, when he didn't even really know her himself yet?

Still, he knew that his business being blasted all over the place was just part of his life. It was a choice he made though, not her. Why should she be subjected to such scrutiny, just because she was married to him. People were mean. That's that.

Running his hands through his hair in frustration he started to second guess the whole getting out day thing he had planned. Maybe they'd just go to Jared's later after they'd spent some more time together.

He wanted more than anything to make Y/N fall in love with him. He didn't want all those nasty people on the internet and in tabloids pushing her farther away from him. This part was harder than he ever thought it would be.

Your POV:

Fighting against the sleep intruder that was the sunlight invading your peaceful sleep, you roll over to find the side of the bed that Jensen and yourself had been sharing cold. Meaning it was probably pretty late in the morning, and Jensen was already out of bed.

Stretching your body, trying to get yourself to function enough to where you could wake up and go make breakfast for the two of you, you felt the bed dip with Jensen's weight, pulling your body close to his as he took his place on the side of you.

"I was just coming in to check on you when I saw you moving around." he said, nuzzling his face into your neck, planting little kisses from your jawbone to shoulder.

"I'm sorry I overslept. Give me a minute and I'll get your breakfast fixed." you tell him as he continues his kissing.

"M'not hungry, rather lay here with you." Jensen said, pulling you closer to his warm body and you couldn't help but melt into him. Jensen normally, or at least normally from what you can guess from only being with him for a week, wasn't that affectionate. He had his little things that he did all time. Holding your hand, kissing your cheek, sitting with this arm around you on the couch while you were watching TV, but he never basically refused to let you away from bed this way.

Rolling your body you face him and bury your head in his neck, taking a deep breath, the smell that was just uniquely Jensen filling your lungs, and you sigh a little in contentment as he starts to play with your hair.

Kissing you on the forehead, then the eyelids that you were still struggling to get open, then the checks, finally making his way to your lips. Brushing his across yours softly before returning to place his lips gently on yours.

Kissing you slowly, sweetly, taking his time with you. Getting to know you, learning the way your lips moved against his, the way his tongue felt moving over yours.

His hands travel from your hair, down your spine, and over your thigh in a feather light touch that sends shivers through your body. Every so slightly you reach up, and run you hand down his solid chest. Feeling his muscles move under your touch through his thin T-shirt.

Grabbing your hips and pulling his as close to yours as possible he ground his hips down into yours. You could feel the bulge beginning to form behind his thin sleeping pants, and boxers that he was still wearing, moaning a little into your mouth.

The sound sends a shock wave of arousal straight to your core. Your hands begin to get a little bolder, running across his shoulders and down his back. He arched himself into your touch,breaking away from kissing, and taking a deep breath like he was trying to clear his head and stay focused.

Pulling back to look at you, his astonishing jade eyes search your face in the light that was pooling into the room from the window. He put his hand on the side of your face, running his thumb over your cheek lightly before brushing his lips over yours.

This time kissing you a little deeper, with more need, Jensen rolled himself on top of you, his hand lightly up your shirt across your stomach creating little goosebumps in his wake.

Right as you were about to pull his shirt over his head his phone began to ring on his nightstand.

Putting his head down on your forehead he growled at his phone.

"It's Jared." he said, looking at the caller ID then back at you apologetically. "Give me just a few minutes okay?"

Reaching over he grabbed the phone and rolled over onto his back. You sat there quietly listening to Jensen, your mind still a little bit cloudy and breathless from what just happened to between the two of you.

You'd never allow yourself to behave that way, and your own actions caught you by surprise.

Quickly losing steam you sat up on your side of the bed a little, pulling the covers closer over your body.

Jensen finally hung up the phone and looked at you, his eyes drinking you in like it was the last time he'd ever see. Reaching over to you for to lay your head down on his shoulder.

"Jared wants us to come over to his house today for dinner. He's been throwing a fit to meet you."

You let his words sink in. This was the first time that you were going to go anywhere as a couple, and that scared you more than a little.

You didn't know how Jared would accept you. You didn't know anything at all about him really, aside from his being the co-star on the show that Jensen played on for years. You didn't know if he was a typical Hollywood douchebag. You didn't know if his wife would hate you. You didn't know anything. It scared you more than you wanted to admit to Jensen.

"Okay" was all you could manage to get out. You knew you had to face other people sooner or later, you knew you had to function in the world, you couldn't just hide away in this house.

"It'll be fine sweetheart." Jensen said, kissing your forehead lightly.Sensing your apprehension, he put his hand on the side of your face, making you look up at him. "I'd never do anything, or bring you around anyone that would hurt you okay. It will be fine."

You nod your head and nuzzle closer into his neck.

You hoped they would at least accept you. That they wouldn't hate you, and think you were just some freak or gold digger because you and Jensen were in an arranged marriage. You didn't want to know what Jensen would do if his friends rejected you, and you couldn't stand the thought of being sent back to Dallas alone.

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caranfindel · 4 years

Text

Initial reaction 15.14: Last Holiday

Well, friends, here we go. Are you ready?

(I'm not. But here we go anyway.)

THEN: Cuthbert Sinclair. (Really? That's a deep cut.) Abbadon. Larry Ganem. (And S8 Sam, who is fucking gorgeous.) Oh, and God and Jack and all that stuff, in case you forgot.

NOW: Sam's in the library, doing research, and is distracted by some ominous noises. Ominous in a machinery-breaking-down kind of way, not in a monstery kind of way. Enter Dean, wearing an apron. "What's with the apron," asks Sam, "because it's only protecting your jeans, not the Red Shirt of Bad Decisions." At least that's how it sounded in my head. I mean, who only gets dirty from the waist down when they're cooking? (Well, that lends itself to all kinds of double entendres, doesn't it?) Or maybe Sam doesn't say that because he hopes the RSoBD will be destroyed in a tragic burger accident.

Seriously, Dean, that shirt is precious and you need to protect it, no matter what Sam thinks.

Dean complains that the pilot light keeps going out, and the hot water is unsatisfactory (and we know how he feels about his showers), and Sam reminds him that if the bunker was ever state-of-the-art, it was in the 50s. They exposition for us that Jack is hiding in his room. "Can you blame him?" Sam says. "His soul is back. Everything is hitting him. Everything he's done..." And Sam continues, but I'm sorry, I'm stuck here, thinking about re-souled Sam with everything hitting him. {sob} However, neither of the Winchesters seem to be thinking about this, so. Carry on.

The guys remind us that if Jack kills God, he'll have to kill Amara as well. Which I assume means Amara isn't going to get killed? Just saying. As much as I talk about foreshadowing (too much, please stop!) this show teases us with anti-foreshadowing with equal fervor. And Cas is apparently looking for Amara? What does he hope to accomplish? "Excuse me, but we're killing your brother, so you have to die too. Condolences. But if we follow canon - not that there's any reason to assume we will - you have to die at about the same time. So I need you to come with me while we figure out where he is and how to kill him."

There's another ominous noise, and Dean says "Oh, come on. Now the air?" I hope he means the air conditioning, and not the air purifying/exchange/whatever that Ketch shut off when he locked them in the bunker back in... whatever the BMoL season was. Hey, remember when the guys were locked in the bunker and they were running out of air and they wore single layers and goggles and got all sweaty and depressed? Because I've kind of never gotten over it. But I digress.

Sam is surprised that Dean expects them to fix it. "We've fought the devil," Dean says. "I've killed Hitler. I think we can handle a few old pipes." Surely this isn't the first time they've had to do some repairs around the place.

Deep within the bowels of the bunker, Sam reads some ancient instructions and complains that they can't just call a plumber. Dean refers to the bunker as the most "secretive, secure supernatural hideout in the world," which makes me laugh, because remember when Larry Ganem told Sam it was secure against all manner of evil? What a joke. Is there anything or anyone evil who hasn't been able to get into the bunker? My house is more secure against evil than the bunker, and all I have for protection is a circle of termite bait and a couple of ancient dogs.

They locate the "bunker grid control center thing thingy" (oh Sam, I adore you), complete with reset and standby buttons. Standby is glowing. Dean hypothesizes that it will work just like his computer, which needs to be shut down when it gets too many popups (I suspect you need some virus protection, dear boy), and slams down the reset button before Sam can stop him. Everything goes dark, but then starts up again, so Dean considers it a success. He calls himself "Meat Man" again and heads upstairs to finish cooking his burgers.

Time jump. Dean goes into his room, carrying a burger and a beer, and is astonished to find a middle-aged woman there. She's wearing a plaid wool skirt I owned in the 80s and is folding his underwear. "Oh, hello dear!" she says cheerfully. Dean yells for Sam.

Gosh, Dean, it's like this place isn't secretive or secure at all.

The horrified Shaggy and Scooby boxers are ~chef's kiss.~ Well done, someone.

Title card!

Library. The woman tuts at dust and wonders how they've lived in "this filth," which reminds me of an awesome Tumblr post which theorizes that faeries actually keep the bunker clean, and only first-born son Dean can see them. "Lady, who the hell are you," Dean demands, and is chastized for his language. He calls for Sam again, and gives him the story of how he walked into his room and found her "folding my underthings."

She explains that her actual name is indecipherable in "your tongue," but "Mr. Ganem called me _Mrs. Butters."_She's a wood nymph. And she's not in the woods, nymphing (thank you Dean) because she has more important things to do - she lives in the bunker and takes care of the Men of Letters. I.e., "my boys. My family."

Dean invites her to leave, but this is her home, and she's been here since "before the war." And she thinks it's 1958. "Well, I hate to tell you," Dean says, "but it's 2020." YES, DEAN, WE ALL FEEL THAT WAY ABOUT 2020. Mrs. Butters is horrified to learn all her boys are dead. And for some reason Dean tells her they were murdered by a demon instead of saying old age, or they went to a farm upstate, or whatever. She spots a photo of the last group of MoL, which we've never noticed before, and realizes that this is why they never came back from that last ceremony. When they didn't return, she decided to put the bunker - and herself - in standby mode.

But she also realizes that if these boys are like those boys, it's been a while since they had a home-cooked meal or celebrated a holiday. Or washed their clothes, as she makes a face. That's uncalled for, lady. We all know that Sam Winchester smells like rosemary and mint no matter how long it's been since he did laundry. Sam explains that they're not really "holiday people," which rings true coming from the guy who didn't want to celebrate Christmas and hates Halloween. (And only had one real Thanksgiving in his life and his brother still holds that against him but NO I'M NOT BITTER.)

Dean is more interested in what "standby mode" is. Mrs. Butters says the MoL used her magic to give the bunker "extra oomph," and snaps her fingers. Voila, extra oomph! There's some humming noises, the telescope alcove lights up (!), and an alarm sounds. Because the map table is actually a monster radar, and it indicates a nest of vampires 50 miles away. And gives the address. WELL.

{Sidebar: Why didn't the BMoL know the AMoL had this capability? Why was their focus on "you're not as good as us" instead of "you used to be as good as us; what happened?" Discuss.}

Do I care? No. Because look at these precious perplexed faces.

Dean's ready to go (and it earns him another stern warning about his language), but Sam wonders if they can trust her. "Look at her," Dean says. And I agree. She's a dumpy middle aged woman in a brown plaid wool skirt. She's basically me. And who could be more trustworthy, more concerned with the Winchesters' health and safety, than me?

Um. Anyway.

Not to change the subject or anything, but the pretty is strong tonight, y'all.

Dean suggests they give her the benefit of the doubt, and if it turns out she's not what she says she is, "then we deal with it." The music turns ominous. "What about Jack?" Sam asks.

Oh, Jack is actually in this episode? I thought maybe they were explaining his absence earlier, like they always do with Cas. (Because I always cover the guest star credits on first watch. Spoilers.) But it turns out Jack is actually with us tonight. Sitting on his bed, looking depressed. Dean knocks on his door and tells him they're going out, and there's a "probably harmless" guest making snickerdoodles. This sparks Jack's interest. It would work on me, too. I love snickerdoodles.

Impala. Sam's not sure it's a good idea to keep Mrs. Butters around, even if she is legit. He's concerned about Jack, but Dean brushes him off.

He'll be fine. I mean, I've been through worse and look at me. I'm the picture of health.

Ignoring your trauma doesn't make you healthy.

Sure it does.

Oh, Sam. Just listen to yourself. No, I mean, please. Listen to yourself.

Sam feels like Jack is hiding something, and I wish there were someone around who had also done awful things while un-souled, and remembered what it felt like to deal with that afterward. Someone sympathetic and empathetic. With soft puppy dog eyes and beautiful hair. Oh well. I guess Jack will just have to go unburden himself onto whoever he comes across.

Bunker. Mrs. Butters brings Jack a sandwich. He doesn't open the door, but she leaves it for him.

Vampire nest. A couple of vampires are watching Dark Shadows (so meta!) and drinking blood stolen from a blood bank. So, are these, like, maybe not bad vampires? Maybe they don't kill people? We'll never know, because Sam and Dean walk in and cut off their heads. And come home to... Christmas. Lights are strung all over, jazzy Christmas music is playing, there's a huge decorated tree and gifts, and Mrs. Butters has a tray of homemade cookies. "We are so keeping her," Dean says. Sam looks unsure.

Kitchen. Mrs. Butters tells Sam that since he and Dean have been so busy killing monsters, they haven't had a chance to celebrate anything. But I can barely pay attention to a single word that comes out of the woman's mouth because LOOK AT SAM IN THIS T-SHIRT. LOOK AT IT.

Single-layer Sam is something to celebrate.

She insists that Sam "enjoy the world you're fighting for" (which is never gonna happen, lady) and excitedly talks about all the holidays she wants to make up for. Then Jack enters, and her mood changes instantly. Even Jack's adorable little dorky wave doesn't melt her. "What are you?" she asks coldly.

Enter Dean, wearing a real-life version of the purple "sleeping robe" and nightcap he wore in "Scoobynatural." OH MY GAWD. I really hope this was a surprise for the rest of the cast.

And I also hope he's not really going commando underneath... or do I?

Mrs. Butters is distracted enough to decide that if the boys vouch for Jack, he must be okay. She hands Jack a smoothie but tells Dean he must have tomato juice due to his cholesterol. And she pronounces it the Patrick Stewart way, not the Mark Hammil way.

Before Dean can drink his to-mah-toh juice, the monster radar alarm goes off, and the guys rush off to prepare for a hunt. For future reference, when you leave the kitchen, Sam's room is to the right and Dean's is to the left. We next see the guys fully dressed, receiving sack lunches from Mrs. Butters. Dean's sandwich has the crusts cut off. {Sidebar: Sam never had someone to cut the crusts off his sandwich. Hold me. And also, how many reminders am I going to have of "Dark Side of the Moon" tonight?} She tells Sam the monster is a lamia, the blessed knives are in the trunk, and she just waxed the car so Dean needs to take it easy.

As the guys rush off, she turns to Jack and his smoothie mustache. "Well. What shall we do with you?"

NOTHING GOOD, I'M SURE.

As Jack helps wash dishes, he fills her in. Lucifer was his father, Mary was his family and his friend but he killed her. Mrs. Butters is very supportive, telling him "life gives us second chances and it's our obligation to hold onto them." And she presents him with another smoothie.

Montage! Thanksgiving dinner. More hunts. More sack lunches. Halloween (and even Sam seems to enjoy it). Fourth of July. (Yet another "Dark Side of the Moon" shoutout). A hunt requiring the grenade launcher and Thor's hammer from that episode whose title I can't remember! Sam's birthday! By the way, none of these holiday celebrations include Cas.

Mmmm. So worthy.

Time jump. Jack catches Mrs. Butters looking at something in a file cabinet and being very sneaky about it. He requests another smoothie to get her out of the room, and then finds what she was looking at. It's her MoL file, including a reel of film. The film shows Cuthbert Sinclar talking about File 5150 (aw, RIP Eddie Van Halen). The subject was actually recovered from the Thule (aw, "Everybody Hates Hitler") and we learn that wood nymphs "react violently when home or family are threatened." Sinclair says he "conducted a series of experiments designed to show this strange and magical being of our mission" and convinced her to join the MoL family. Huh. Wonder how he did that. Then Mrs. Butters demonstrates her devotion by literally ripping the head off a Thule. "Son of a bitch," says Jack, because he's been spending a lot of time with Dean.

Jack runs into the war room looking for Sam (and yes, I'm petty enough to love that he looks to Sam first), who is off getting ready for a "big date." Huh. Okay. Mrs. Butters offers him soup, but then Sam walks in, giving off some pretty strong Hot Professor Sam vibes (hello again, "Everybody Hates Hitler") with a sweater vest and tie, and I am thrilled with this development.

Thrilled, I tell you.

Mrs. Butters tells him he looks wonderful but offers to trim his hair (back off, lady, I will cut you) and Dean enters in time to make a weak Abercrombie and Bitch joke. Sam tells him Eileen's in town, and he's taking her out to dinner and "some privacy, something."

"Heavy on the something," Dean says, and we're going to talk about that later, I promise. But for now, Mrs. Butters tells Sam to take one of the old cars from the garage. Finally. Can we just make this permanent? Can Sam have his own fucking car, please? She produces a bouquet of roses from nowhere and sends him on his adorably anxious way. Then she tells Dean she found a broken TV in one of the rooms and fixed it. "The Dean Cave?" Dean is off like a shot. I wonder if that's the TV he smashed with a hammer, and if so, how did she fix it? (Also, hello again, "Scoobynatural.")

Jack is still unsettled. He follows her into the dungeon and tells her he saw the film. {Sidebar: The film showed her killing one of their enemies because she's protective of the MoL. Is it really that awful? Discuss.} "And how did that make you feel?" she asks. "You relished his pain, didn't you, Jack?" Oh, turns out that was a setup - she wanted Jack to see the video, so she could confirm that he was a bloodthirsty little monster. And do the Winchesters know how powerful he has become?

They should be scared of you!

I would never hurt them.

You have before, haven't you? Have you ever thought that Sam and Dean keep you in here, closed in, secure, because they're scared you'll do to someone else what you did to their mother?

Well, I mean. Now he has. She flings Jack into the wall. He tries to use the glowy eyes on her, but he finds himself powerless. She snaps the magic handcuffs on him. "You didn't think those smoothies were for your health, did you? Oh, I've learned a few things while I was doing the dusting around here. A little yarrow root, some ground jawbone for texture, and voila! You are as weak as a puppy."

Wait. That's all it took? To power down a nephilim, who is canonically more powerful than his archangel parent? So when the Winchesters were trying to take down Lucifer and AU Michael, all they needed was some yarrow root and ground jawbone? And the answers were all right here in the bunker?

(Sigh. Don't think about it. That way lies madness.)

(Also, canon! Ha ha ha ha.)

She tells Jack she's making the bunker safe again and getting rid of all the monsters. Like you, sweetness. Aw. Sad Jack.

Kitchen. Dean comes in looking for a snack and is immediately presented with some kind of grilled sandwich. She tells him to eat it, because he'll need his strength when they go kill Jack. Aw, that's the sound of a heart breaking.

Dean is disappointed that their good thing has gone "full Nurse Ratchet," and glances longingly at the sandwich he has to leave behind. He takes Mrs. B's knife and suggests they let Jack go and pretend this never happened. The only logical conclusion is that Dean is under Jack's spell, so he gets tossed into the dungeon too. Oh, cool. Does that mean Sam gets to be the hero and save them?

Spoiler alert: Ha ha ha ha no.

Hello, Demon Dean. That's the only other time we've seen this expression, isn't it? {Or is it simply the only one branded onto my brain? Discuss.)

Map table room. Sam comes in and is met by Mrs. B. "Bit past your curfew, Samuel," she says curtly. He's no longer wearing his tie. Hmm. So, let's talk about the Eileen situation. Isn't it weird that (1) Dean didn't know she was in town, and (b) she's not spending the night at the bunker? Wouldn't you think she'd be a house guest? I mean, she's not "in town" for the heck of it. The only thing that would bring her to Lebanon would be Sam. So why isn't she here seeing Sam? Is she just driving through on her way somewhere else? She can't even spend one night in the bunker? And the tie? If Sam removed his tie, doesn't that strongly suggest Dean was right about the "something" going on? Did they do it in the back of the old car? At a hotel? I have questions, friends.

Anyway. Sam asks where Jack and Dean are, since it's late and they should be sitting around the map table waiting for him to come home and not, like, in bed or anything. "Well, I have some good news, and some bad news."

HERE IS SOME GOOD NEWS INDEED.

Honestly, I like this look better without the tie.

Time jump.

So, Jack has taken over Dean's mind. And they're both downstairs, right now, ready to be killed by us.

You were always the smart one, yes.

Sam, who is the smart one, says he's going to go to his room and get his gun, and he'll meet her in the dungeon. "And we can... get to the killing." I LOVE HIM. {Sidebar: I have watched his fake relieved sigh several times and it makes me smile every time.} Once he’s safe in his room, Sam calls Dean and starts to tell him about Mrs. Butters.

Went psycho, we know.

Why didn't you call me?

Well, I mean I, you know, I figured you were "practicing your sign language."

And that's more important than coming to save you?

...

Dean?

It's been a while for you, man, you know?

Aw. Always the supportive big brother. {Sidebar: As long as Sam is doing something Dean thinks Sam should be doing. But I digress.}

{Sidebar: I love Dean, y'all know I do. Warts and all. He'd be boring if he were perfect.}

Dean suggests Sam shoot her, although they don't know if a gun will kill her because neither of them got around to researching it because they were distracted by Christmas and Thanksgiving and breakfast on Boxing Day. That's how you get killed, guys. {Sidebar: How much do I love that Sam calls it Boxing Day? For my Brit friends, that's not really a thing in the U.S., although it's gradually starting to become one. And I love it.}

Dean then suggests that putting the bunker in standby mode might put Mrs. B in suspended animation again. Meanwhile, Jack and Dean are stuck in the dungeon. Jack suggests using his power to remove the cuffs, but Dean points out that the power surge would catch Chuck's attention. But what power surge? Jack already tried to use his power against Mrs. B and it turned out he didn't have any.

Jack suspects there are other reasons Dean doesn't want him to use his power, and suddenly decides it's time for a deep conversation.

Do you still think I'm a monster? Okay, I'm just gonna say this, okay? Just get it out there. Jack, I'm trying, okay? I really am. But what you did, that's not easy to forget. Now, I was angry with you. For a while. And maybe I still am a little bit, okay? But I'm not gonna let some evil Mary Poppins take you out. You understand?

Okay. Good talk.

Sam shows up in the library looking for Mrs. B, and trying to hide his gun, as if he hadn't told her he was going to his room specifically to retrieve said gun. But Mrs. B realizes he's trying to kill her, and freezes him. She's not mad, she's just disappointed. She tosses him into a chair and keeps him there with the power of her mind, not with rope or anything, in case you were wondering. {Oh, hello, "Funeralia" and "The Trap."} She tells him that when the MoL first found her, she didn't realize how important they were. But Mr. Cuthbert explained it to her. And since Sam is her favorite, she's not going to give up on him. Yet. She's going help Sam the same way Mr. Cuthbert helped her understand. Well, that doesn't sound ominous at all.

He's my favorite too! And I also think he needs to be hurt! See, she's basically me!

Dungeon. Dean is going to try to chop Jack's handcuffs off.

You're sure this is gonna work?

Let's say yes.

Aw. That was a perfect opportunity to bring back "maybe 90% sure." And it doesn't work - Jack is sent flying into a glassed-in cabinet that I've never seen in the dungeon before. Dean says "dang it" before remembering that he can use his big boy words, which is adorable. And then he gets an idea.

Upstairs. Mrs. B tries to convince Sam that Jack is a monster because he's Lucifer's son. Sam, of course, takes the opposite side of this debate. "Now, Mr. Cuthbert taught me that pain can be a wonderful teacher. Let's see if it can't correct your ways."

I SWEAR, Y'ALL, SHE IS ME.

Sam could sneer at her and say "I've been tortured by the devil himself; what can you do to me?" but we don't have that version of Sam any more. Mrs. B, without tools, yanks off one of his fingernails. {Oh, hello "A Very Supernatural Christmas!"}

Meanwhile, downstairs, Dean has a different theory on pain. It's just "weakness leaving the body," he tells Jack. We get a little "on three" bit, where he actually does the thing on one. And the thing is that he tries to cut Jack's handcuffs again, but this time Jack is strategically placed in front of the dungeon door. So when he's thrown back by the blast, he ends up breaking the door down.

Upstairs. Sam's been relieved of even more fingernails.

Downstairs. Dean takes a hammer (!) and smashes the reset button. Why doesn't he just push it with his hand? I mean, sure, we get the hammer, and the red lights and warning klaxon, and all of that turns me into Pavlov's dog {Hello, "Soul Survivor"}. But still. Seems unnecessary.

Upstairs. Mrs. B seems to be gone, and Dean bends over like he's untying Sam's wrist. But Sam's wrists aren't tied to anything, so. I got nothin'.

Downstairs. The runes that seem to hold Mrs. B in stasis light up, but do not stay lit. Well, that can't be good. And then the bunker grid control center thing thingy starts shaking and springs a leak. Ooops. Here she comes, complete with glowy green eyes.

Upstairs. Dean finishes untying Sam from the chair he wasn't tied to, and remarks on how gross his tortured hand is. Mrs. B shows up, yells that they've all been very bad, and flings them across the room. She's sure Sam will thank her someday for killing Jack, because it's so important to kill monsters and keep the MoL safe. It's why she couldn't go back to her forest. Sam explains to her that Mr. Cuthbert tortured her and used her, and Dean tells her Jack is going to save the world. Oh, okay then. The regular lights turn back on and Mrs. B tearfully says she misses the MoL so much.

Aftermath. Mrs. B heals Sam's hand and apologizes and all is immediately forgotten and once again, Sam gets to forgive his torturer and turn the other cheek. Yay! Sam, what was it you said earlier?

Gif stolen from @michaeldean

The guys send Mrs. B back to the woods, but first they have this conversation:

Sadly, without my magic, the bunker will revert to standby mode, so. Ah well, things were getting too easy anyway, you know? Who needs a monster radar? Or whatever that telescope thing is? It's an interdimensional geoscope. It's a what? I looked in it earlier; I didn't see anything. Oh. Well that's not good.

Holy crap, you guys. Interdimensional. It let the MoL look at the alternate worlds. And now you can't see anything because all of the alternate worlds have been destroyed. Gotta admit, this is an excellent little twist.

Jack presents Mrs. B with the photo of the MoL. "Oh look," she says. "The man who tortured me and kept me from my home, right here, front and center." Well, no, she doesn't. But I do.

Mrs. Butters gives them some last instruction. "Dean, eat your vegetables. And Sam, cut your hair. And Jack, go save the world." Well, I'm in favor of one or two of those things.

Try to tell me I'm wrong. Just try.

After-aftermath. Jack tells Sam that he doesn't know if he can kill God, since he was sidelined by a wood nymph "because I was stupid." He asks if Sam thinks he can do it.

"Jack, you're the only who can." No pressure.

Dean shows up with a truly awful-looking birthday cake for Jack. "I made it myself. Obviously." But Jack is thrilled because it's from Dean, and it means Dean loves him and has forgiven him, until the plot requires otherwise. He makes a wish and blows out his single candle. Fade to black.

So! There were parts of this that were simply marvelous. There were parts that were kind of dumb. There were parts that would have made me very angry if I weren't so tired and jaded. But the good parts were darn good, and the pretty was dialed up to 11, and we all know I'm a sucker for a pretty episode. And there was NO B PLOT. AT ALL. Thank you baby Jesus.

And let’s just refuse to consider the possibility that these were, in fact, their last holidays. Thanks.

Now I get to see what you thought about it. And, as always, please help me stay unspoiled for future episodes, including episode titles and casting info. {smooches}

#spn #15.14 #initial reaction #recap #tv recaps #spoilers

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