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theconstantsidekick · 5 months ago

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Lit Cigarettes (Part 2)

Pairings: Dean Winchester x Reader, Sam Winchester x BestFriend!Reader, Damon Salvatore x Stefan Salvatore x Sister!Reader (these are the main ones, there are too many others to tag) Genre: Fluffy angst

Summary: While Sam berates Dean for his choice of very pathetic reply, Y/n tells her brothers about said pathetic reply.

(Set after the events of Supernatural season 4 and yes, Y/n's dated a bunch of TVD characters.)

a/n: The two conversations are happening parallel-y, hope that makes sense?

Warnings: Smoking, mentions of smoking, more romanticisation of smoking, a lot of that yes, sorry. Don't smoke kids. Semi-explicit content? IDK, there's kissing.

Part 1 is here.

It’s only when they’ve crossed the Mystic Falls border does the silence in the Impala break.

“You’re an idiot,” Sam tells him.

The car stops abruptly. “How long have you been awake?” Dean asks, taken completely off guard.

“Long enough to call you an idiot,” Sam answers before he opens the door to the back seat, exiting the vehicle. Dean takes a second to realize that Sam’s making the walk towards the passenger seat.

Dean pokes his head out of the window just to be petulant and screams, “THAT WAS A PRIVATE CONVERSATION, you sneaky son of a bitch!”

Rolling his eyes, Sam opens the passenger seat door and gets inside., “You really think I didn’t know about it?.”

“Know about what?” Dean asks as the dumbest dumb person to ever exist as he starts the car back up again.

Sam looks towards him, and his eyes are louder than any words can ever be. His eyes are screaming at him, calling him the dumbest guy to have ever walked the earth. But then he says, “She’s been in love with you for 15 years, and I’ve been her best friend for 14 of them. You really think I’d need to eavesdrop on your conversation to figure it out?”

Dean opens his mouth to say something but thinks better of it and instead asks, “14?” He’s facing the road now, too embarrassed to face his brother.

“The first year was rough, we got off on the wrong foot,” Sam explains. “I think I was mostly just pissed at her for fawning over you like you hung the moon. Not the point. The point is, I don’t need to overhear a conversation to know that she loves you. Everyone and their mother knows that she’s in love with you.”

Dean stays silent for a second, because he doesn’t know what to say. What the fuck is he supposed to say to that? He… He doesn’t know what to say to that.

“It was still rude, bitch,” Dean says lamely, because like he said, he doesn’t know what the fuck else to say.

Sam just laughs, without any humor but all the passive aggression in the world. “What was rude was saying—”

“He’ll pick you up on tuesday!?” Damon yells, mouth agape, hands covered in flour and sugar.

“And what did you say to that?!” Stefan asks from where he sits on the kitchen counter, watching his brother and his adopted sister try (and fail) baking a cake for his birthday.

“I said I’ll see him Tuesday,” Y/n answers with a magnificent amount of shame. She can see both her brothers are about to launch into an all out assault of questions, but she is categorically not in the mood. She cuts them off before they can even start. “He didn’t really give me a chance to say anything else, he just got in the car and drove off, okay?”

“Honestly, I don’t even think I can blame him,” Damon retorts, urging a cocked eyebrow from the other two Salvatores. “I blame you,” he says pointing his goop drenched whisk at her. “It’s your fault for falling in love with a NSYC reject.”

She just rolls her eyes and goes back to cleaning up the mess Damon’s creating at every step of his cake making process. “Do you really think you should be saying that? When you look like you could enter a Gerard Way Look-Alike Contest and win?”

While Damon makes the most absurd voices known to mankind (and vampire kind), Stefan just lets out a soft chuckle. “Okay, okay,” Stefan tries to calm them down. “Let’s just go over the events of the night again, shall we?”

“Can we please not?” She pleads.

Stefan carries on unfettered. “So you told Dean Winchester, the man of your dreams that you love him and he said he’ll see you Tuesday?”

She exhales audibly, “Yes… more or less. Yes. That’s how it went.”

“The fucker doesn’t deserve an announcement of love, if you ask me,” Damon counters, hands back at work, mixing the goopy and frankly probably unsalvagable cake mixture.

“That’s probably why no one asked you!” She throws back, throwing away the paper towel in the dustbin. “AAH! I just needed to say it, okay? Fifteen years is a very fucking long time to keep something like this to yourself. I needed him to know.”

“But you’d told him already, didn’t you?” Stefan counters. “Before he got dragged to hell?” She flinches at the mention of the incident—the memories are far from pleasant—but nods in agreement. “What did he say back then?”

“I know,” she tells them.

“You know what?” Damon asks, face souring at the sludge in his hands. Then he sneakily (not sneakily at all) grabs a bottle of Bourbon and empties almost half of it into the cake batter, mixing in the liquid.

“No, he said that,” she replies.

“Said what?” Stefan questions.

“He said, ‘I know’!”

A look passes between Stefan and Damon and then Damon does the honors, “If nothing else, you gotta hand it to that Timberlake-wannabe, he’s got a great track record of having the shittiest responses to someone professing their love to him.”

“What the fuck else was I supposed to say?! I was about to be dragged to Hell!” Dean defends. “It’s not like I had the ability to focus on anything else.” He’s a fucking liar—his focus was definitely not on being dragged to hell when she said what she did. But Sam doesn’t have to know that.

“Anything, man! Literally anything else!” Sam countered, frustration evident in every single inch of his movement. And it’s always times like these, when Dean begins to think if Sam would side with him if he were to actually have a fight with her. Would Sam keep hunting with him if she decided to part way? “You are such a fucking dick!” Sam remarks. So no, probably not. He’d pick her over his brother for sure.

Dean can’t help but cower a bit at the strength of Sam’s annoyance. “I wasn’t trying to be,” he tries. “I just thought… when in doubt, Han Solo that shit, you know?”

And that apparently is the worst thing to say. “What is wrong with you, Dean? You know, you really are Dad’s son! ‘Cause my God. There’s only one other man who is so incapable of handling their emotions, and somehow, you’re even worse than him.”

Dean doesn’t appreciate the insult to their father but he lets it slide on account of Sam being really fucking angry. “Fine! If you’re so great at this chick-flick shit then tell me what should I say to her. You tell me and I’ll say it to her on Tuesday?”

“Tues—seriously?!” Sam’s veins are about to pop out, Dean thinks. The man is so fucking angry with Dean right now that he’s genuinely worried that he;s about to bust the vein on his temple.

“What?” Dean throws back, cause actually he has no other fucking response.

“You know, I don’t even get what she sees in you. She’s crazy smart, and talented and funny. She’s so freakin’ funny!” Sam says, and Dean has to agree with all that. She really is. “There’s so many amazing people who’re just dying to get even one shot with her, and yet, she’s stuck on you!”

Dean’s jaw clenches. “Then why doesn’t she go after one of those amazing people?”

“I don’t have a single clue,” Sam answers.

“What do you mean? She did give it a shot with one of them, didn’t she? Derek What's His Face?” Hale. Derek Hale. Dean knows his name by heart.

“Derek Hale. Yeah, Derek was pretty great,” Sam agrees, leaning back on his seat.

“Then what happened?” Dean is trying not to sound too curious about it. And if his grip tightens on the wheel, enough for his knuckles to go white, no one has to know about it.

“I’m not sure. I thought it was going great with him but she broke it off with him when we were at Stanford,” Sam tells him, eyes out on the barren road, looking so puzzled, you’d think he was talking about the mysterious phenomenon of raining toads.

“When she dragged you to Stanford,” Dean corrects him, because as much as he'd like to know, the topic is so not his favorite. Neither is this one but it’s… It’s older and the wounds have since healed, become scars.

At his words, Sam’s confusion is gone in an instant. He sits up straighter—as straight as a giant can in a ‘67 chevy Impala. He turns to Dean with something like defense burning in his eyes. “She didn’t drag me to Stanford, Dean!”

“Yeah, right,” Dean brushes it off. “You and I both know, that’s some horseshit. She went there and you wanted to follow her, like you always did.”

“No. Dean,” Sam calls his name in a way that urges him to turn. Once he does, Sam continues, “I didn’t follow her to Stanford. I—I didn’t go to Stanford for her, she went to Stanford for me!”

“What?”

“Dude, she was the valedictorian. She got into 20 different Pre-Med programs, and at least 12 of them were better than Stanford. She just went there cause she knew I wanted to go,” Sam word hit Dean like a tonne of bricks. “And well,” Sam turns back to look at the road again. “She also kinda went there for you.”

“For me?” The fuck is that supposed to mean?

Sam sighs before he says, “She thought that maybe if she were there it would be easier on you cause you’d know that she was there to look out for me.” He smiles then, a small sweet thing. “She went there for you.” What the actual fucking fuck?

Sam turns to him again, and somehow “Don’t get me wrong, she went there for me, but she went there for you too. Everything she does, she does for you.”

“That is—and I say this with all the love I have ‘cause you’re the only Salvatore left other than that dick over there—that is the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard,” Damon comments.

She pushes a buttered up cake tin towards him and says, “Must be a genetic trait then, passed down from generations. Seeing as the only other Salvatores I know are still, to this day, hopelessly chasing after a girl who looks exactly like one Katherine Pierce.”

“ELENA IS NOTHING LIKE KATHERINE!” Both her brothers shout out in unison.

She has to smile at that. “Not even the—” she points at her own face as a demonstration.

Both of them just pass her a look filled with ire. She smiles wider.

“At least we have hope,” Damon defends, pouring the ungodly mixture into the cake tin. “What’s your fucking excuse?”

“I don’t have one!” She really doesn’t. “I just—I just feel the way I do, I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Move on!” Damon tells her.

“For once I agree with him,” Stefan says from the counter behind them. His words are softer than Damon’s, they always are. Stefan’s always understood her dilemma just a little bit better than Damon. She thinks it might just be because Stefan understands the feeling of helplessness a little bit better than their brother ever can. “You really should move on.”

“I want to,” she tells him, with all honesty. “I really, really want to. Don’t you think I’ve tried? I tried! With Derek, with Alaric… and it was working. It really was, until he rejected me.”

“Rejected you?” Damon mocks. “I think it was barely 4 months ago that Alaric died in your arms confessing his undying love for you.”

“Damon,” Stefan reprimands.

“What?” Damon counters, clearly annoyed as he turns to look at Stefan. Stefan, however, just shakes his head, telling him in his small gesture to stop it. The wound is still too fresh, don’t touch it yet. And that’s exactly why despite being fond of Damon a little bit more, Stefan will always be her favorite brother.

“I am not ready to touch that topic with a ten-foot pole so I’ll side step that and tell you that I have tried, extremely hard to move on, and if I could do it. I would. It’s not like any of this is fun for me,” she tries to make them understand.

“It’s not as hard as you make it out to be either,” Damon comments and his voice is somehow softer than before because this isn’t a jab. This is more wishful thinking, she thinks. Damon, for all his nonchalance, hates seeing her pining for Dean. Not just because he doesn’t like Dean but also because he’s seen the most of it. He has always been her drinking companion on endless nights. Pouring her one drink after the other, knowing no other way to sooth the pain on her features. He loves her differently than Stefan does. He would’ve killed Dean by now if he thought that could be a legitimate solution. He’s way more violent in his protection of her than anyone else.

Taking the cake tin from Damon, she opens the oven and shoves it in. She sighs audibly before she says, “Look, I have made my distaste for the Elena situation quite clear already—”

“And it’s still fucking unreasonable,” Damon retorts.

“You’re making me agree with him twice on the night before my birthday, now you’re just being rude,” Stefan chides, smiling.

“She pulls you both in opposite directions, which leaves me in the middle where I’m stuck and neglected!” She can see that both the boys are ready to fight her off on the matter all night but she doesn’t want to. “BUT that’s not the point I’m trying to make here. What I am trying to say is that, with Elena, you both feel what you feel. It’s undeniable and inescapable. You could let go of it even if you tried. You both know what it feels like to be hopelessly in love with someone with your entire being.” When both men stay silent, she knows they agree. So she continues, “Can you at least both do me the courtesy to try to understand that that’s how I feel about Dean? That maybe—”

“—She doesn’t know how not to be in love with you, you know?” Sam says it like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Like he isn’t breaking Dean’s world apart in half. “I mean, it’s definitely not easy for her.”

“Watching him flirt with a girl at the bar while I sit in a shady corner, drowning myself in Bourbon,” she says.

“Watching you come back to the motel, covered in hickeys, and sometimes watching you not come back at all,” Sam says with so much pain, Dean thinks maybe he sat with her on those nights. And then it clicks for Dean why he’d see his brother with bags under his eyes in the mornings after.

Her jaw clenches, she fidgets with the “It's always someone else. Either it’s a cheerleader or—”

“—A receptionist at a motel or anything with a pulse at a bar,” Sam says.

“It’s always someone else and it’s never me,” she notes solemnly.

“And it is so fucking painful to watch,” Sam notes.

“It feels like someone’s tearing my heart out and stabbing it in front of me with a fork just to play with it.” She can’t help but smile sadly at the accuracy of that description. “He smiles those smiles that charms the pants off of everyone. And I have to see it, because try as I might, I can never look away. I can never look away from the way he touches them because I can’t help but imagine how it would feel like to be touched like that… touched like that by him. I can never look away when he smiles like that. Which just ends up hurting a little bit more.”

“I’ve had to watch it over and over again for a decade and if it hurts me this much I can’t even imagine how much it hurts her,” Sam tsks so simply. As if he isn’t burning Dean from the inside out.

“I just wish he—”

“Weren’t so loud about it. If you weren’t so loud about it I think it would be easier maybe?” Sam muses. “But then again, maybe it wouldn’t be. Not that she’d ask that of you, she knows it’s not fair to you so she would never ask you to be any other way than you…” And then he sits up again, facing Dean, and Dean has to try his best to keep his poker face intact, “But I can! So, I’ll do it for her—Dean, please can you be just a little less loud about it?” Dean turns to Sam at that and somehow the action is mistaken by Sam as an offended one. “I’m not asking you to change, just… I don’t know, just don’t do it in front of her. Don’t flirt with the cheerleaders while she’s sitting right next to you, you know?”

And man, Dean might be the one whose vein is about to pop now. “What is up with this cheerleader bullshit? She said it too? I wasn’t that fucking back in high-school!”

Sam just sighs in annoyance, “You ignored her Dean.” Dean’s about to protest, but Sam cuts him off. “And I don’t think it was intentional on your part. It was the first time you weren’t an outcast and it was so much fun to fit in, I felt that way too. But she… She was two years ahead of people her age. And that really doesn’t fly well in a small town like Mystic Falls, you know that. I mean, you were in her class, man! You know that the only person who ever talked to her was you but then you got so lost in the high-school of it all that you just ignored her.” Sam shakes his head. “It wasn’t your fault, you were young but it really wasn’t fun to watch either.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Dean defends very very lamely. “I never meant to hurt her, ever.”

“That’s what sucks about all of this. I know he never does any of it to hurt me, but…”

“But it still hurts anyway?” Damon provides, comforting and gentle.

She nods with a sad broken smile as she says, "To be in love—”

“—And to be hurt, is to be made perfect,” Sam quotes.

“Shakespear, As You Like It,” Dean notes, to Sam’s utter surprise. Which, wow! He reads! And besides, it’s… it’s Y/n’s favorite of the Shakespear plays. Of course, he knows what it’s from.

“Sucks that it has to be this way,” Sam notes calmly, now looking out the window at the passing trees. “I know it’s not your fault, I really do. I also know you really care about her. I know that too. But I just wish I didn’t have to watch my best friend be in love with someone who doesn’t love her back.”

Dean’s had enough. He sees red. “WHO THE FUCK SAID THAT?”

“What?” Sam almost balks at Dean’s sudden outburst.

“You and Y/n keep saying that, again and again, and for all that is un-fucking-holy, I can’t fucking figure out who the fuck said that? Who in the name of fuck told you that?”

“Dean—Dude! What are you talking about?” Sam’s eyes are wide and confused.

Goddamn it, Dean thinks. “Who the fuck told you, EITHER OF YOU, that I don’t feel the same way?”

There is silence then.

It stretches on for a minute but it feels like an hour to Dean.

“Are—are you serious?” Sam finally questions.

Dean clenches his jaw. “You don’t think I have better things to lie about than this?” He’s being snarky but he can’t help it. It’s been a long fucking drive.

“Then—” Suddenly Sam’s excitement level shoot the fuck up. “THEN WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DOING DRIVING AWAY FROM MYSTIC FALLS?”

There are reasons. Dean knows that there are. There was a solid reason why Dean decided to drive away after dropping her off without saying a (meaningful) word. But try as he might, Dean Winchester, cannot for the life of him remember what the fuck it was.

He clicks his tongue, “Good question,” Dean comments before his hand finds the gear shift, and he swerves the car around.

“I am just saying that you cannot ignore it. It’s not a fictional concept. There have been countless tests on the subject matter,” Y/n argues. They’re at the Salvatore Boarding House and the party is in full swing. She’s got a glass of Bourbon in one hand and an unlit cigarette on the other.

“On rats,” Bonnie throws back, smiling.

“Dogs too,” Matt adds from behind her. She smiles at him for the support.

“That doesn’t mean it works on humans,” Tyler cuts in from the couch.

“Of course it does. It’s not a baseless theory. It’s the core facet of every training, ever. You do something good, you’re rewarded, you do something bad, you’re punished,” she explains. “Some people even go as far as to call it parenting.”

Everyone lets out a soft laugh.

“But it doesn’t stick, not always at least,” Caroline counters.

Y/n nods, “Fair enough, it doesn’t. But doesn’t negate the fact that the pavlovian response is quite a real phenomenon. I mean, it’s well known. It’s quite literally used in conversion camps—mind you I do not approve of the abhorrent abuse of it—but that’s what they do. They show you something very straight, that according to their disturbing homophobic beliefs should make you feel aroused and don’t shock you. Then they show you something very gay, that makes you feel aroused and then they shock you. It tells your brain that somehow feeling aroused at this particular thing is dangerous. Then they do it again and again and eventually the entire process just trains your brain to be scared shitless of even thinking of being aroused, because well if you do, you’ll get—”

“Electrocuted,” Elena finishes.

Y/n clicks her finger and points at her. “Doesn’t work though,” she states, as someone plucks the cigarette out of her hand but her point is almost at the end of being made. “Doesn’t stop you from being queer, nothing ever can stop you from being queer.” The cigarette is placed back into her hands. “Queer is who you are, and queer is who you fucking should be.”

She takes a drag.

“Amen.”

Y/n turns instantly at the sound of that voice.

“Dean,” she breathes out.

Dean Winchester and her lit fucking cigarettes.

It’ll be the death of her.

“I thought you had a quota of like 5 cuss words a day,” Dean says with a smirk. Somewhere behind him she can see Sam but her world doesn’t really know how to focus on anyone else when Dean is standing so close to her—barely a couple inches between the two. “I thought you would’ve used them all up… after the conversation in the car.”

“It’s past 12,” she tells him dumbly. She can’t be blamed. WHY IS DEAN BACK HERE? It’s not Tuesday, is it?

There’s a few seconds there, which are just silent. He’s looking at her and she’s looking at him and it’s just silent. Sure, there must be a party in the background but she doesn’t really remember it. His eyes are so beautifully green, she can’t think of anything but The Great Gatsby. She can’t think of anything but the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan's dock across the bay from Gatsby's mansion. The green light which represented Gatsby's hopes and dreams, particularly his longing for a future with Daisy.

“What are you—” she begins at the same time as he says, “I wanted to—”

Their words get jumbled up.

“You go first,” Dean suggests.

She gulps, quite noticeably apparently because Dean follows the motion of her throat with his eyes. “What are you doing here?”

He smiles then, unabashed and wide. “I should have gone first. Would have saved us time. I was gonna say that I wanted to talk to you…” he answers her question.

“Oh,” is all she can muster.

“Can we do that somewhere… not here?” He nods over to the audience they have gathered.

She wants to look at what he’s motioning towards but she can’t really pull her eyes off of him right now. Instead she just says, “Yes… The courtyard.”

Dean nods and looks at her waiting.

What’s he waiting for?

Until Dean just raises his brows with a soft smile and then she remembers.

“Oh yes, courtyard, let’s go,” she says. And she’s about to grab his arm to drag him off but realizes that both of them are full. She looks from the cigarette to the beer. Thinks for a second—decision made, she downs the beer and places the bottle on the closest flat surface.

“What are you doing here?” She asks again once they’re at the courtyard. They are face to face again, but she has actively decided to put a couple of steps worth of distance between herself and the man of her dreams. For precaution.

“I had to see you,” Dean replies.

“Thought you were gonna see me Tuesday,” she chastises with very little heat, taking a drag of her cigarette.

But apparently Dean takes it to heart. “That—yes! That’s what I am here for. That is the stupidest thing I have ever said. Actually, no scratch that, that’s the second dumbest thing I’ve ever said, ‘I know’ is first.” Confused, she scrunches her forehead. So he explains, “When I was being dragged to hell?”

“Oh,” makes sense, she muses. She shrugs then another puff before she says, “When in doubt, go with Han Solo.”

Dean shakes his head but he’s wearing a smile which she can’t really place. “Yes but it—it was dumb, and I’m sorry.”

“No, no, Dean. No. I am sorry. I put you in a very weird position at a very, very wrong time. It was my fault,” she tells him, and she means it. “Even today, I dropped a whole freakin’ bomb on you without any preamble. Your response made sense considering the condition. I’m sorry to have put you in that position to begin with.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Dean says and his words carry so much determination it makes her shiver.

She waves it off or well, tries to. She has to take a couple steps back, pulling her arms across her chest, she leans on the steps just behind her. She takes a long drag before she asks, “Is that what you were here to do? Say sorry for your response?”

Dean nods. “Yes, and to ask you,” he takes a few steps towards her, “I had to ask you…”

“Ask me?” She urges.

“Did you mean it?”

And she has to roll her eyes at that, drawing on her cigarette again. “What kinda question is that?”

“A serious one,” Dean says evenly.

“Fine, yes. Of course, I meant it.”

“You don’t regret it?” Dean questions.

“What?! No!” The idea seems so silly to her she can’t even come up with a sarcastic remark for it.

“And you still feel that way?” Dean asks, with a hint of… is that fear in his voice? “Do you still…?”

The night is quite forgiving to them. The moon is out but not in full force, otherwise there would be one less party guest and one extra dog in the boarding house. Her birthday party fell on a full moon night, sadly the patent group werewolf, Tyler, had to skip that one.

But tonight’s not a full moon, it’s a crescent moon. Shining quite bright, bathing Dean in its light. That along with the warm yellow of the garden lights makes him look ethereal, she thinks.

“15 years I’ve loved you, you think I’ll be able to get over it in three hours?” She throws back.

“A yes or no would do,” Dean rebukes.

“Yes,” she says, sighing. “I still feel that way… but…”

“But?”

“But I think… I think I’ll try to move on…” she acquiesces, a long inhale of smoke, a shorter exhale of the same.

“Why?” Dean bites.

She pulls back a bit before answering, “I understand that the position I put you in isn’t entirely fair. And well, it isn’t great for me either, is it? It would be better for both of us if I just tried to move on… for good this time.”

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“Don’t move on, damn it!”

And that just pisses her off, she throws the cigarette on the ground, butts it with all her fury. “What? Is this some sort of fucking ego trip for you? Look at the hopeless girl in love with me?”

“2 out of 5 cuss words already used. The day’s barely started and you’re left with only 3,” Dean comments with a smile that makes her want to punch his lights out.

“Quit it!” She yells. “You just making fun of me now? That’s just fucking cruel, Dean.”

“2 left,” Dean states but at her glare he takes another step towards her. “I don’t want you to move on.”

“Why the fuck not?!” She’ll probably punch this guy very soon.

“Cause I don’t want you to.”

“Why not? You just want me to stay madly in love with you, keep watching you chase after girls at bars and keep letting my heart break? You want me to keep dying bit by bit, is that it?” Her voice breaks a little at the end.

“No. Of course not! But if you moved on, it would kill me, so I can’t let you do that, Y/n. I can’t.” Dean tells her.

She doesn’t understand any of this. What even is happening.

“I think you’ve finally lost your mind. Hell has clearly gotten to you. You’ve gone mad! What do you want me to do, keep falling deeper and deeper in love with you, torment myself day in and day out when I know that you will never love me back. What is wrong with you, Dean? What the f—”

“Listen to me,” he cuts her off. “You really need to listen to me cause you’ve got just one cuss word left for the day and what I’m gonna say you might need it for that.” He breathes in, slow and deep. “I never said that.”

“Never said what?”

“I never said that I didn’t love you back.”

She… What?

Wait what?

“What do you mea—?”

He cuts her off again. “I saw you 15 minutes before you saw me.” She’s so confused she thinks she might just cry. And it’s all made worse because Dean takes a few steps closer to her. The gap is nowhere near as secure as it was when this conversation began. “I was getting out of the car and you were…” He smiles, so beautifully that her heart aches. “You were smoking, of all things. At the ripe old age of 13, by the way.”

“My parents had just died like, 6 months ago,” she defends like it matters at all.

Dean smiles all the same. “Smoking your first cigarette. That’s how I saw you, and you were—you were smoking that like a champ, honestly. I think you took four drags, before you decided it was too much and then butt the entire thing. You then began your mission to hide it like they were porno mags under your bed that Stefan and Damon could discover any moment.”

“Porno mags would’ve caused less trouble,” she comments absentmindedly.

He smiles wider then. “Fair enough.” He nods almost to himself. “But yeah. I saw you 15 minutes before you ever saw me. So, I’ve been in love with you 15 minutes longer than your 15 years.”

She doesn’t think she remembers how breathing works.

“I have been in love with you since the moment I saw you. And every single day I wake up and I think I could not love you more but then something happens, you laugh at some joke or you talk about how democracy is a concept built on the idea of inequality, or you sing karaoke at some bar or you just are, you just be and I just… I fall harder in love with you. Every moment I spend with you, is another moment where I find out that I can love you more than I already did.” Dean laughs then. “I was stupid, I was so stupid. I kept thinking that I couldn’t have you. I kept thinking that I shouldn’t even try because what would be the point? I was never gonna quit hunting and this life—it’s filled with so much shit. I thought there was something really bad around the corner, so how could I drag you into that mess with me? So I just—I never thought that I could have you but then I died! I fucking died, Y/n. And now apparently there is a goddamn apocalypse around the corner so clearly bad things will happen no matter what! Then why the fuck should I have to go through all of that alone? Why should I have to go through that without you? I can’t do it. I don’t fucking want to.”

He doesn’t want to.

She’s dreaming, isn’t she?

“I didn’t know, though,” Dean says sheepishly, with apologies all over his face. “I never fucking knew how you felt. Of course I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have—All the girls, all the bars, they were just—I didn’t think I could have you, I didn’t think you’d ever want someone like me so I wanted to numb the pain, I never thought I was hurting you in return. I wouldn’t have—”

She takes a step towards him. They are now standing too close, chest pressed into chest. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Dean argues, still feeling so guilty that it’s almost painful to watch.

“It’s okay now,” she clarifies. “Do I get to have you now?”

“Obviously! Of course! I’m yours. I’ve always been yours, Y/n. Only yours—”

She cuts him off by pressing her lips on his. It’s a small, tentative thing, mostly to try it out, but also to shut him up. And shut up, he does.

She pulls away, not too far, never too far, just enough to look up at him.

Then Dean Winchester smiles. Wide, and cocky, and flirty and beautiful.

He pulls her back in, hands on caressing her jaw so gently that a part of her thinks maybe she was made of porcelain all along and everyone forgot to inform her. Because he is being so soft with her, his lips on hers are tender but there is so much love in every movement that she can taste it.

Her hands find his hair, and she plays with the soft spikes, pulling him closer, and perhaps it’s her hunger for him or maybe his for her, but tenderness gives way to passion. They are all hands and lips and desperation. He’s grabbing onto her for dear life, pulling her closer and closer as he wants her whole and maybe he does. She understands though, because she’s holding onto his leather jacket like if she lets go he’ll vanish and urging him closer too. It’s mindless and mindful at once.

Lips slotted together seaking out all that they’d been wanting for, for the last 15 years.

Dean’s hand travels down to her thighs and instinctively she knows to jump up. He grabs her easily as she wraps her legs around him. It’s hungry now, they are so very hungry now. It makes her moan, Dean, ever the man of opportunity, takes that moment to slip his tongue in. Their tongues dance together in a heated embrace. She can’t help herself, she’s seeking some release from the tension building inside her, so she grinds against him, only for both of them to pull away, moaning in sickening pleasure.

And she can’t help it, she laughs. “Fuck.”

Dean laughs too. Pressing his forehead to hers. “That’s all of them, sweetheart. You’re out of cuss words for today.”

“That might be a problem considering the state you’re in,” she grinds against him again, to tease him, to feel him, to have him, cause she can now.

Dean groans before smiling again. “Fuck me, sweetheart. I can cuss all I want, you’re the one who’ll be in trouble.”

“Maybe I want that?” She smiles.

Dean laughs again. “God, I love you so fucking much.”

She kisses him again, it’s a sweet, loving little thing. “I love you too, Dean.

Find Part 1 here.

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muscularmass37 · 2 months ago

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Magnificent Salvatore Sambito

#bodybuilding #muscular body #muscles #bodybuilders #workout #bodybuilder #muscle #flex #massive #Instagram

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24kmagiic · 11 months ago

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Klonnie Weekend: Part One - Domestic Intimacy

Will You Take Thee...?

Mystic Falls, 1001 AD

He peeks at her from the crack between the Juniper trees. Exquisite was the only word that came to mind. The way her skin glistened in the dead of night made him feel as though he was staring straight into the burning light of a harvest moon. Bonnie the Magnificent, or, at least that’s the name he and his brother, Kol had jokingly coined for her.

He had stumbled upon her in Ayana’s garden. Her hair fell to her hips in thick, tightly coiled ringlets and her wet dress clung to her like a second skin. Had he any manners, he’d look away and spare her the ridicule but he was trapped by her beauty; glued to the very spot he stood. His throat dried like the edges of the dead sea and his heart quickened when their eyes met. Rather than shy away from him, her head tilted in curiosity, as if she’d forgotten her unkempt state. His eyes shifted lower where he could see the effects of the night’s air, wrapping her in its chilly grips. Her nipples hardened and so did he but he quickly stamped out that fire as he shrugged out of his furs and stepped into the clearing to meet her.

“Some respite from the night air,” he offered. She smiled and allowed him to wrap her in the warmth he provided, his warmth.

“Thank you, Niklaus.”

“Nik,” he offered, referring to the nickname his sister reserved for him.

“Thank you, Nik,” she corrected. They had known of one another but had never spoken directly. She was Ayana’s eldest child and had left to be betrothed to another, only returning when her lover died in warfare.

“You’re welcome,” he offered. “I take it you’re accustomed to late-night swims?” There was a clearing in the woods that led to a quarry, complete with a waterfall. No one had dared to venture into the quarry, no one but her.

“I am,” she boldly admitted. She shied away from no one and Nik admired that. “It clears my head,” she explained.

“Then perhaps I might accompany you one day, for my head needs plenty clearing.” Though he jest, she could detect the seriousness in his tone.

“Perhaps,” she said quietly, the corners of her lips turning up ever so softly. “Are you asking for my courtship?” Nik’s eyebrows shot up and she giggled.

“Ms. Salvatore I—” She raised her hand to stop him, waving him off playfully.

“Bennett. Bonnie Bennett and I was only teasing,” she assured. He nodded his understanding.

“Bonnie Bennett,” he said and she quite liked the way her name rolled off his incredibly red lips.

“Pleased to meet you,” she said before bowing into a curtsy. “Come, help me gather some wood for a fire.”

And that he did. The two worked in tandem as they formed a cozy fire in the middle of Ayana’s maze of a garden and this became a ritual for them. Night after night, they found themselves meeting at their secret spot, getting comfortable in their tasks. He gathered the wood and well, she twirled around and sang. In truth, he did all the physical work while she entertained him for hours with stories of her travels. He was in awe of her.

One night, after hearing her stomach growl in displeasure, he had an idea. He disappeared for a while and appeared with an armful of items. Ayana’s cauldron, a recently carved serving spoon, and more wood pieces. She watched as he built a stove, using the wood pieces to hoist the cauldron above the pit he’d made. Bonnie smiled and stood to her feet from the log she was perched upon.

“I’ll gather some spices,” she offered before disappearing somewhere within the garden. When she returned, she had a basket (courtesy of Ayana) full of herbs, spices, and vegetables. She watched as Niklaus prepared the veggies, using water from his canister, when he prepared to light the fire, he jumped when flames appeared under the cauldron and smiled up at Bonnie with a knowing smile.

“Every night, you watch me struggle with the tinder…” he began in an accusatory tone.

“That’s because I like when your eyebrows dip and your dimples appear when you stick your tongue out with consternation.” He grins at her feigned innocence before continuing his duties in their makeshift kitchen. It seemed odd for the two of them to be engaged in such activities in the dead of night but it felt right. They didn’t have to answer to anyone about what their intentions with one another were, there was no need to be anything other than themselves.

As Bonnie stirred the contents of the cauldron, Niklaus watched her from behind as she blew on the spoon he’d fashioned and took meager sips to ensure that he’d flavored the stew to her liking. His heart swelled at her thumbs up and he sat upright from where he lay supine with his arms rested beneath his head. Bonnie watched as he searched for whatever he was looking for, his blonde hair curtaining his face as he bent and moved in confusion.

“I suppose a bowl would be necessary,” he mocked lightly. “I’ll be back.”

When he returned, he found her asleep peacefully on his fur overcoat. He’d made a nice pad for them to lay on, the same pad he made every night during their meetups. They’d stare up at the stars and steal glances at one another in the flickers of the fire when they thought the other wasn’t looking. She felt like home, the only home he had ever known.

Asleep, her guard was down and he felt as though he got to see the real her. The one when no one was around, the one she allowed him to partake in, as did he with she. As he scooped some stew into each of their bowls, he delayed waking her, wanting to bask in every second of this moment. Her beauty was eternal, both inside and out. He’d never met a being so pure in who she was. He wanted more from her but it was against standards to pursue a lady in mourning so soon after the death of her husband. Still, he’d wait for her, and within a year’s time, he hoped to declare himself to her.

When she stirred, Nik stooped next to her, wafting the bowl of delicious stew under her nose. The growl of her stomach made her alert and Bonnie sat up straight, ready to devour the food they prepared.

“Thank you,” she mumbled groggily. He smiles at her and her heart leaps.

“You’re most welcome,” he spoke with a tone reserved only for her. She blushes and turns away as she eats her stew, not caring at all about the ‘slurps’.

“You’ve outdone yourself, Viking,” she teased. It was his turn to blush. She reached out to touch his warm cheeks and basked in the feel of him. No matter the time of year, he generated a heat that threatened to engulf her. They had met just as winter was coming to a close and he was as radiant then as he was in the summer sun.

Without thinking, his lips met her palm. Bonnie’s breath caught in her throat but she didn’t pull away. A soft kiss made her shiver and struggle to hold on to the bowl she held.

“I know it’s against tradition, but if you’ll have me…” it sounded eerily close to a proposal but Bonnie couldn’t be sure. Not until his eyes met hers and the electricity in his gaze struck lightning throughout her entire body. With a smile, Bonnie nodded.

“In due time,” she promised. Niklaus wasn’t the burliest of men. When compared to others in his village, he was often overlooked as an eligible bachelor. He didn’t hunt and was labeled as ‘sensitive’ by his own father, but Bonnie saw the real him. He was a provider. He could provide love, lots of it, and shelter if she needed it. Her love didn’t require brute force like some of the women in their village demanded. She’d experience that love and it had left her a widow. She didn’t want that kind of love. The love she wanted had a more gentle approach. The approach that only Niklaus knew how to navigate. Truth be told, he was ‘a bad choice’ for a husband if you went by what society required. But she was always a woman that went against the grain and based on how he carried himself, so was he.

At her promise, Niklaus closed his eyes in relief. To his dismay, tears stung at the corners of his eyes but he was a master at hiding tears. His father had taught him well. His voice was small against her lips but she’d caught them with hers. “Thank you,” he muttered.

Her soft, reassuring kiss was the only answer he needed.

#klonnieweek2023 #klonnie #bonnie bennett #klaus mikaelson #this is going to be a series #i hope #klonnieshippersclub #i found these gifs on google 800 years ago so if they're yours #let me know and I'll credit you #sorry!

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hiiragi2911 · 6 months ago

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@gelataisa panelle tasted strangely for me, but probably I bought it in the wrong place (just felt too excited to be choosy). It was way too greasy and maybe I am just not used to chickpea... Shall try it again in some better place.

Sfincione. It's awesome. I thought it would be good, but had no idea it will be THAT GOOD.

Divinely delicious. It was a wonder even though it was not warm when I ate it. The dough is unbelievably tasty and, it goes without saying, the filling (topper..?) is magnificent.

And tried some local-ohmygoditsevenbetterthansfincione-wine, so I'm not even embarrassed to tag you here. Maybe a little bit. Anyway, thanks for all your recommendations!!! Rooftop of the church of santissimo Salvatore, Santa Catarina (its marble interior is stunning), everything. I'm just in love with this place.

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qvnthesia · 1 year ago

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hello ! hope you are having an amazing day ! so i saw the post you made on the salvatore’s relationship with elena and IT WAS AMAZING. i swear it was the best character analysis of elena and stefan in respect to each other that i have seen. i agree wholeheartedly so i wanted to know rather than the salvatore’s who in the tvd universe would you have liked best as elena’s endgame?

heyy, i'm doing alright <33 i hope you're having a great day too!! omgggg thank youu so so much <33 (literally drowning in love rn).

and now, to answer your question, here are the potential people i see for elena in the tvd universe who i consider best as endgame for elena.

(for anyone who disagrees with this post, please note that these are my personal opinions and i'm absolutely sure there's no need to start a catfight in the comments section <33)

so, for this analysis, i'm considering elena as bisexual (which i generally do, since she's had chemistry with both male and female characters in the show that has potential to be endgame)

elena & tyler — tylena would've been such a delight! both of them had amazing, top-notch reactions every time they had a scene together, be it good or bad and i would've loved it if they were endgame. tyler is incredibly loyal to elena and is also very protective and supportive of his significant others. he's also very passionate and blunt and provides constant assurance to his partner, which is something elena needs in the world of supernaturals. on the other hand, elena would always love tyler with her whole heart and never be afraid of his wolf side and would even aid him in his transformations even if he posed a significant threat to her life span.

elena & elijah — hands-down, the ultimate tvdu power couple. both complement the other's personalities and values. i've written a long-ass post as to why elejah is absolutely magnificent and i'll just link it right here for anyone who is interested to give it a read <33

elena & marcel — power couple in the chat! king and queen of new Orleans, jazz dances in rousseau's, and a much better rain kiss GUARANTEED. that man would literally sweep elena off her feet and everyone else would be absolutely fuming lmfao

elena & rebekah — s4 really just put beklena into the competition. with the constant rivalry they had in s3, s4 just gave a whole new perspective to things. from all the relationships rebekah has had, elena would've been the most healthy partner out of marcel and whoever else she's had a relationship with. plus, in some way or the other, just like elijah, rebekah made elena realize her worth.

elena & bonnie — perfect for friends-to-lovers. plus, both have the all dying and sacrificing thing very common between them. bonlena just speaks for itself and honestly, bonnie is wayyyy healthier for elena's mental sanity and like rebekah and elijah, she also reminds elena of her worth. however, a bonus point with bonnie is that there's a lot of trust and assurance between the two and both of their values hardly clash. it's just another ship that you'd definitely root for as endgame.

elena & freya — the only mikaelson elena has never got a chance to meet is freya. i believe freya and elena woild definitely complement each other. meet disaster turned cute friendship turned into a romance built on everlasting and heart-racing love. and hell yeah they'd definitely hit it off the second they met each other! (plus, both of them would make each other laugh a whole lot more with how serious freya is and how miserable elena's life is)

elena & jackson kenner — both have similar values towards friendship, romance and family and honestly, this is just such a wholesome ship. the thought it makes me positively squeal. if you're open to jacklena and would like to explore more, @sevensistersofsussex's 'throne of blood' is a brilliant place to start <33

elena & klaus — this is an incredibly rare pair which i 100% endorse. i know they may not seem to be compatible with the constant fighting between them. but they can be a beautiful relationship if given a chance and (i assure you) A WHOLE LOT BETTER than delena. for reasons why i ship them, i'll link the post right here. for reasons why i endorse them 100% and find them compatible, i believe my fics are more than enough for an answer. there's also 210+ fics under the klaus/elena tag on ao3 and they are brilliantly written by some of the writers i consider as my family and if you wish to explore, i'm linking my recs post right here <33

elena & kol — again, very self-explanatory. like damon, kol is also very capable of unlocking elena's adventurous style but UNLIKE damon, kol has massive potential to do it in a healthy manner. plus, can you imagine the shenanigans they could get upto? katherine would straight up say 'nope, i am outta here'

elena & finn — istg, our queen is compatible with every mikaelson LMFAO i legitimately love finnlena. they're so precious and they both wish to be human at the end of the day and with finn, i don't think elena would face that much trouble with how less number of enemies finn has (except for klaus and kol lmao)

elena & cami — our two human firebirds would be AMAAAAZING for each other <33 plus, both of them would be requiring a drink at the end of every goddamn day after dealing with the mikaelsons and salvatores.

elena & enzo — bonenzo serves as proof of how much of an amazing and healthy partner enzo is and i think he'd be great for elena! both of them would be an amazing support to each other and they'd definitely hit it off!

elena & kai — i think they'd make a pretty great ship. kai's association with elena might make him think about restraining his murderous tendencies and turn him into an anti-hero like klaus. though, i think he'd have much trouble restraining elena from attacking anyone who tries to harm him or their loved ones (he wouldn't stop her tho, he'd just find a tub of popcorn and enjoy the show)

elena & hayley — they've interacted less, yes, but i don't care, i find the romance side of haylena to be incredibly hot. plus, elena would be a brilliant step-mom to hope <33

elena & lucien — again, they have had zero interactions over the course of the show and its universe. but i find this ship really freaky in a good way and i wouldn't mind seeing elena with lucien 👀

elena & aurora — again, same explanation as lucien & elena's dynamic.

and finally, an honourable mention...

elena & henrik — if the show could've accommodated henrik somehow by bringing him back and possibly him being aged up due to magic, i see fionn whitehead playing an adult henrik. according to, like, my headcanon (based on theory), henrik and klaus are half-siblings of the other mikaelsons, meaning henrik is also esther's child with klaus' father, making henrik a werewolf-vampire hybrid too. he was always quite fascinated with werewolves like klaus and unlike elijah, rebekah, finn and kol so he does seem to be klaus' blood brother and half. he'd definitely be the most interesting mikaelson sibling of all and i think, with given time, elena and henrik would've had a pretty sweet relationship.

these are all from my end! if you have any more elena's potential endgame characters that you think i missed, feel free to comment below!

thank you so much for your ask and have a wonderful day/night ahead <33

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bramblepatch · 1 year ago

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yeah im leaning heavily towards starting with icewind dale, i think itd be fun to start with seeing how drizzt is characterized before being designated giga series protagonist, without me already knowing a lot about the gang. but i suspect if i make it through one book at all, i'm going to read at least both of those trilogies eventually.

i've read a bunch of salvatore stuff as a kid (there was a thing with a nerd who lives at a library and then becomes the chosen of god and defeats his father and his father's boss or something? very aspirational. first time i heard "forgotten realms". and another thing with a guy who is raised by sword fairies to basically become aragorn i think. some other stuff. it's inexplicable i never got into drizzt books except maybe the local bookstore hated drow) so i feel like i roughly know what to expect in terms of tropeyness. i was present for i wanna say the latter half? second third? of the dragon heist thing but we didn't engage with jarlaxle much, in my mind he was just an inconvenient antagonist guy and being surprised that y'all are so into him is a good part of why i started paying attention to the drizzt posting. we did want to steal his hat though.

does all the drizzt stuff hold up or does salvatore eventually start phoning it in? is there like ongoing character arc things or do the character arcs happen in the first few books (i hate saying it like this) and the rest is kinda The Further Adventures Of style?

ty!!

Oh cool! If you've read his Cleric Quintet, some of the characters from that show up in the Drizzt books, too.

Personally, I think the later books hold up? This is kind of a controversial opinion in some parts of the fandom, and I won't deny that there are parts of the series that wallow a little, but it's not because Salvatore has run out of things to do with the characters, it's because he takes their trauma seriously and sometimes that means spending a while with a character who is straight up not having a good time right now. And this is compounded by the fact that Drizzt is a very young elf at the start of the series; around the middle there's an editorially mandated time skip and Drizzt goes from a traumatized teen who is coping through the Power of Friendship to a traumatized young adult who has outlived most of his mentor figures. There is a definite tone shift, is what I'm saying.

I think they're still really good, and Drizzt does eventually regain his equilibrium. The later parts of the series are also increasingly an ensemble act, with Jarlaxle and Bregan D'aerthe taking more of the spotlight. If you went up against the magnificent bastard (affectionate)(also derogatory) in Dragon Heist, you've had a taste for what it's like to be on the receiving end of his shenanigans, and yeah, that's frustrating. (My WDDH party actually ended up allying ourselves with him, and he still manages to be deeply annoying sometimes.) But he can be really fun to watch work when he's not messing with you, and he's a great foil to Drizzt. A lot of the time Drizzt just wants to be left alone to live a life that's not defined by his origins; Jarlaxle is all about drow solidarity and bringing what he's built with him.

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ayliamc · 1 year ago

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Italia

Day 4 - the Leonardo Era: Milano Edition

Steps walked: 19,011

Flights climbed: 13

Vehicles ridden: 3

Points of interest visited: 4

Leonardos spotted: the last supper, pages from the codex antlanticus, the portrait of a musician (but let’s be real, is that one truly a Leonardo?)

At three in the morning, we woke up to pack up and take a cab to the Napoli train station an hour drive away. Turns out we totally could have gone an hour later cuz we sat around the train station for quite a while but we didn’t have a super clear idea of how long things would take when plans were booked. Fortunately also Dan noticed that the driver tried to drop us off at the Napoli airport even though we had correctly listed the train station as our destination. So one crisis averted.

It’s a four hour train ride from Napoli to Milano and I had hoped to read “the Fragile Threads of Power”, a new book in my favorite series by my favorite author. I’ve been intentionally trying to read as slowly as possible to draw it out because it’s so rare to read a new book and know you love it before you even start. (It’s not disappointing so far. I’m delighting in every word.) But I could not keep my eyes open on the train. It was that strange feeling of a total energy drain where your eyelids close even though your brain is awake and wants to do things. (Hint: this is foreshadowing of the looming crisis that I had not yet had tea.) The train ride was made worse when someone got on the train next to me in Roma so I was now sitting by a stranger. Discomfort, I know thy name.

I made the mistake of not getting myself a tea on the train and was becoming increasingly grumpier. But I never panicked!

The Milano train station was an hour walk from our hotel so we took an Uber and were very lucky that they let us check in a few hours early so we could unload our bags in our room.

Gratefully lighter, we walked to the Bibliotecca Ambrosiana (and got an overpriced tea on the way! I try to refrain from buying tea as much as possible because they’re charging you for a 30¢ tea bag… but desperate times. And I did feel much better as a result.) ‘Twas a 25 minute walk and along the way we came across this beauty. (Look closely.)

The Bibliotecca was a relatively new discovery by me thanks to a recent article in the Washington Post. I had never heard of it. And as it turns out, neither have most people. But they hold the largest collection of pages from Leonardo’s Codex Antlanticus. We walked right in (after I chugged my tea of course because I couldn’t bring it in with me) and they have a pretty impressive collection of Italian renaissance paintings, displayed under spotlights in dark rooms.

Then - gasp! - a room dedicated to Raphael’s cartoon of his big philosopher painting-I-can’t-remember-what-it’s-called. This caught us completely by surprise and was staggering in its size and detail. Absolutely magnificent. Dan had to drag me away.

The Leonardos were all displayed at the end of the slightly confusingly laid out museum, but they had several copies produced by some of his students including Salai! Or as I like to call him, “the Little Shit.” It sounds harsh but Salai was the nickname Leonardo gave him which means “Little Devil.” Salai was not much of an artist, though commonly known as an apprentice of the master to justify his having lived with and off of Leonardo for so long. In reality, they were lovers. But Salai did produce copies of Leonardo’s works during his tenure in the workshop. So we saw Salai’s Salvatore Mundi and St John (which I thought was particularly funny since Salai is believed to be the model Leonardo used for his true St John). Also on display was the Portrait of a Musician, which I — as a non-scholar — believe Leonardo may have had a hand in but I don’t think it’s a true Leonardo composition. Still cool. Then the pages from the codex and the original binding of the codex the first time it was assembled from all of Leonardo’s notes.

We also got to spy on some scholars hard at work studying stuff. I got weirdly excited by that. To which Dan replied, “Nerds.”

They also have a crypt on display which is super old or something and Leonardo visited it before. I dunno. Anyway it was very well preserved and Leonardo had drawn maps of it and called it “the true heart of Milan” as it’s in the city’s center.

Dan grabbed a wrap on the way back to the hotel and I ate my leftovers from Sorrento before we crossed the street from our hotel to the Last Supper. Not an exaggeration. We could literally see the church from our hotel. Our commute to the Last Supper was legitimately just crossing the street.

They’re very well organized to give us the best possible experience to see the painting. A small group is allowed in with a tour guide for fifteen minutes to see the work.

I cannot possibly convey how unprepared I was to see it. I thought I was ready. I knew it was big. But I could not have imagined how big. It’s painted above a door, so my scale was all based on that. But the door is huge! What had once been a regular sized door had been expanded by the idiot priests who used the room as a dining hall. They literally destroyed part of the painting to give themselves a bigger door. So in pictures it makes it seem like a smaller painting. But it is massive. And I also expected it to be in much worse condition but the restoration is quite impressive.

People were standing respectfully far back despite a barrier that prevents viewers from getting too close but I kept inching closer and closer because I wanted to see as much as I could, knowing I would never be back here. This is a big bucket list item and it’s very likely one-and-done. We may never come back to Milano.

Anyway. It was awesome. Next door to our hotel was something labeling itself as Da Vinci’s vineyard. Apparently a vineyard that was gifted to Leonardo. We tried to visit it but they closed on Saturday (four days prior!) due to new ownership and didn’t know when they would open again to the public.

We wandered back in the direction of the Bibliotecca to see the Duomo. I kept saying “but I thought this was in Florence!” And of course there is one in Florence because “duomo” is just the Italian word for “cathedral”, and the one in Florence is the one Michelangelo built the David for, so naturally that’s the one I knew more about. But there were tons of statues on this duomo, too, so it confused me for a hot minute. Incredible structure.

Super randomly, one of Dan’s coworkers also happened to be in Milano so we met up with them to say hi. They wanted to go to a very fancy pizzeria for dinner. I’m not gonna lie, I’m already sick of Italian food. When there’s no vegan cheese, I’m just eating marinara pizzas and pasta with olive oil. And like, that’s enough of that, you feel me? We were also pretty tired after such an early start to the day so we grabbed some poke on the way back to our hotel room (it weirdly hit the spot) and found a place that had vegan ice cream which we happily slurped on the way.

Our path had us pass by the Castello Sforzesco, the castle of the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza. He was a major patron of Leonardo and I think Leonardo even lived in the castle for a period during Ludovico’s patronship. He was the one who commissioned the Last Supper. I knew his name from Leonardo’s history and our tour guide at the Last Supper mentioned him. When I talked to Dan about Ludovico afterward it was as though Dan had never heard the name. This became a recurring theme and still to this day Dan knows him only as the Duke of Milan. If you say “Ludovico Sforza” to Dan I swear you will see the words wash over him like he has been cursed to never remember the name. The castle was cool. I decided Leonardo lived there.

I will forever regret not building time into our visit to see the interior.

A few random observations:

* Bidets in every hotel room, but this one did not have a shower. So we got to hose ourselves off with a shower head in a bathtub instead. The bidet was the priority for whoever designed this bathroom.

* The toilets in Milano flush differently. They work more like a faucet than a traditional handle.

* I understand that American portions are too big, but the cups for tea are much too small. Even by my standards.

* How are they all still smoking? And in restaurants while people are eating?? It stinks everywhere and cigarette butts litter every corner.

* The stereotypes of Milan as the fashion capital whatever who cares can be identified by the shops, what they sell, how much they sell it for, and how highly they think of themselves. It does not appeal to me.

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