#some of this has probably been updated on my word doc but. anyway. continue with the tags i put:

[howlsofbloodhounds]

hello! i am brand new to everything about undertale au's, by so i mean maybe two months in. it's quickly become one of my favorite things, and while i mostly focus on the apple twins, i've grown to love killer a lot. i thought this might be a good place to ask, can you explain him to me? from backstory to what the the different stages are (this mostly). i know very little about him, and this is an issue, so feel more than free to go into crazy detail if you want, or even throw in personal thoughts. learning about him pleases me

Hello! I will try to answer, but i feel it is first important to state two things.

1. Killer has a lot of lost media, a lot of his canon information and materiel was deleted—including an entire ask blog. So if someone ever claims something about Killer is true, it’s probably best to ask for some sort of proof for this. Such as a link or a screenshot from his creator, rahafwabas.

2. Rahafwabas has also said that every interpretation of Killer can be canon. She was very loose and free with her character, and just wanted people to have fun. So don’t worry too much about sticking close to what little remains of canon.

What we have of Killer’s canon now is basically his Something New comics (origin), a few more scattered comics and drawings here and there, and some fun facts.

I have links to some of Killer’s canon stuff in the top of my pinned post if you want to give it a look, but if not, here is a link to a Google Doc someone made about canon Killer (I didn’t make it.) It’s also no guarantee that every single thing has been found and archived.

That being said! I will give a summary of the first origin, before the updated one that involved the Player and how we altered Sans’ codes to create kill_sans. Undertale: Something New has multiple endings as well, but I won’t get into that just yet. Because this is just about Killer, not how he met Nightmare or Color or any of that.

In Rahafwabas’ own words, Something New was described as something along the lines of how, after going through so many Resets—being constantly killed, fighting, watching everyone die, repeating multiple different days and outcomes over and over—Sans eventually shuts down emotionally and stops caring, loses hope, and becomes like the human.

The human notices, and starts proposing something new. A deal. Sans joins them on a Genocide, and they’ll stop Resetting and let the world move on—Sans wants to continue, or stop (die, erase the world), is what the human says he wants.

Sans spits in their face and refuses. The human brutally and violently murders him in response.

Rinse and repeat for a couple thousand unknown Resets—and something changes one day. Suddenly, Sans is thinking about something new. He’s thinking about how everyone deserves to die anyway—they’re all weak, he can’t save them, Papyrus is so fucking lucky.

Who cares anymore.

The thoughts happen so slow he doesn’t catch it—so focused on trying to tune the kid out, even as their words work their way into his mind and nothing feels real. Sometimes he catches his thoughts, confused and distressed—because it’s not true. He doesn’t hate Papyrus, he doesn’t want to join the kid or kill anyone.

And yet something in his minds insists he does, in his own voice, in his own thoughts. Perhaps it wasn’t uncommon to find Sans arguing to himself with increasing distress and confusion, even. Arguing as if he’s two different people.

His mind starts slipping, he can’t tell what is and isn’t real anymore. Is he going insane? Is he losing his mind? Has the kid done something to him?

Or is this just genuinely what he wants. He didn’t think he was like that. He’s not, surely.

“Am i going insane?” “Heh. Yeah.”

“This isn’t right..” “But we don’t have a choice.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore..” “Yes I do.”

Whatever. Who cares anymore. Not him. Not him.

Eventually it all comes to a head when Sans, all big dead eyes and empty smiles, shakes the devil’s hand and gets to hunting. We don’t get to see all of the first Genocide route, but we see Sans kill Flowey, Grillby, and eventually..Papyrus.

I won’t spoil the entire scene because I personally find it devastating enough to read on your own. The moment where we see how manipulated Sans has become—manipulated into hating and despising his own brother, enough to gleefully reveal he has been dreaming about this moment. Where he gets to make Papyrus experience even half of the pain Sans went through.

It isn’t until a broken, bloody, battered Papyrus opens his arms wide and tearfully declares that he’d happily die if his presence was causing his brother so much pain, that Sans snaps back. He remembers who he is, and more importantly, he remembers who Papyrus is.

It was never an enemy. It was never his tormenter, mocking him with his happiness and safety. He was his little brother, and now he’s dead.

Because of him. And he can never undo that.

We get to see how truly fragmented and disoriented Sans has become after this—too busy arguing with himself to truly notice when Chara skillfully slides in, offering comfort and reassurance to their new partner, their new best friend, as they welcome him to the Genocide run.

From here the Genocide route continues—with some of the dialogue up above happening. We see Sans and Chara having fun with it now—tossing around a monster’s hat, laughing and cheering as they kill Undyne. Sans is confused as he laughs and smiles and giggles—he hates himself. Why is he doing this again.

he doesn’t know. He smiles as he gifts Chara a knife, and their happy surprise is perhaps enough to make him feel.

…They put on Papyrus’ scarf. He can’t help but stare. But they are right—he’s being ridiculous. He has killed his brother before.

…at least they take it off.

He confronts Alphys. But then she confronts him—…Sans, why are you doing this? Is the human making you?

Sans is confused. He’s doing all this of his own free will, right? Of course the human doesn’t have any control of this. Of course not. He’s doing this because he wants to feel something.

…Why is he even explaining himself. None of them will understand. Only Chara does.

Then there’s suddenly a feeling of someone standing behind him, watching him mournfully, when Alphys mentions him. No, he’s not real. He’s not real. He’s not real. He’s not—

Alphys is dead.

there’s no going back now, and Chara insists on just one more route. Just one more. And another and another and another and another and another and another—

He’s having so much fun! So much fun. So much fun. Chara watches on with a smile as Sans just hysterically laughs and cries and laughs and cries and laughs and—

…San is tired. He’s…exhausted. He feels drained, and empty. why is he even still here. how did he get here.

…The two continue on. There’s no more laughing or cheering or crying. It is what it is.

..Sans notices some type of black sludge sliding down his cheek one Reset (how many has it been now?…who cares). He dismisses it. Who cares.

There’s a growing, burning ache somewhere in his chest yet another Reset. The sludge slides down more frequently..

..The pain keeps growing with every single Reset. He can’t take a single step without this black sludge sliding from his eyes, his nose, his teeth. What’s happening to him? What’s happening what’s happening what’s happening—

..It hurts. It hurts so much, make it stop, please. He turns to Chara one Reset. What’s happening to me? What’s happening to me? Please, it hurts.

He can’t see Chara anymore. His vision is so blurry, they look so different. He stumbles and falls to the ground, frozen with pain and fear—unable to realize that he has fallen into a bed of golden flowers.

His SOUL hovers outside his chest, a black spot slowly, painfully growing and expanding in the middle as if a parasite is wiggling its way inside. Curling around, eating everything it can and burning away the rest. Forcing its victim into the desired state.

The only explanation Chara has for him is something along the lines of, “Your soul is becoming like mine. Neither beast nor man, and you will feel nothing. Wait here, and I’ll go deal with that stupid flower.”

Sans is left to ponder those words as he starts fading in and out from life. But then he hears laughter, someone calling his name.

Papyrus.

Sans’ last words—his last thoughts—are of Papyrus.

“Papyrus..I’m sorry. I will miss you all.”

His SOUL is filled with DETERMINATION as it snaps into the target shape. Sans dies with a pathetic mournful whimper, as Killer silently takes his place.

{ @lucid-cups }

[low-fantasy]

1-9 update on july to-do list

1: drum rudiments, ~600 words of drafting, played ~4 + several mini porpentine works, finished objectively terrible true crime book and started salt slow by julia armfield. also made (burned) a strawberry cake that didn’t taste very good.

2: strange dreamscapes. woke up with a page crisscrossed by overlapping notes, took abt 10 minutes to decipher (e.g. “half in and half out of the porous boil” was written over top of “they liked the sound of flamingo”, etc). ~600-700 words of drafting. made granola and lunches for the week. cleaned a box in the guest room. practiced jigsaw. rudiments. made a cup of tea and forgot about it. miraculously, it was still hot twenty minutes later.

3: decided on a birthday present for dani. rudiments. jigsaw at 35 bpm, need to work on the transitions.

4: was wondering where i was getting all this recent (past 2ish weeks) energy. popped on tumblr for a bit and saw some things i wish i hadn’t and now i’m feeling bummed out and drained. think i’ve been spending less time online engaged w strangers’ drama and i need to keep it that way. anyway. played a bunch of fe7 today. went to a public market and played a bunch of porpentine’s works. am writing a doc of my thoughts on each but i don’t think i’ll be sharing. rudiments, practiced the jigsaw transitions. spent some time writing. cleaned a box in the guest room. some say it’s a holiday.

5: drafted, rudiments, jigsaw at 65 bpm.

6: ?? i believe i wrote?

7: went to a cafe and played thru some of porpentine’s games. NOT RECOMMENDED. had to keep hunching over the screen to hide “pussy”.

8: rudiments, jigsaw. i also emptied the last 4 boxes from the guest room so now there are no more boxes, only piles and piles of unsorted junk.

9: rudiments. i think i’m up to like... 85bpm on jigsaw? the actual speed is 166 bpm (all 8th notes ofc). now have about 5k terrible drafting that needs to be edited/rewritten. i printed the pages but cannot bear to look at them.

mustering up the courage to start rewrites this week. also about 1/4-1/3 thru porpentine’s twine works. finished a murakami book and started the hospital by ahmend bouanani. also worked out most days... and was pretty consistent with instrument practice. setting extremely short goals (~20 min on drums and 10 on guitar) has been helpful. work continues to be weird schedule-wise which makes it hard for me to schedule extended times to write... which i think is also probably an avoidance thing. spending long periods of time on something is difficult with variable schedules.

[pinkfey]

nineteen dollar ursula lore. who wants it 😩

okay this is actually just a leedle rundown on her old crew and some of the history that has Gone Down. i finally typed it up last night after literal months of stewing on it. so here we have it!! the crew of the scarlet serpent <3

Captain Evre, a tusked orc with a dark red complexion, the very serpent the ship was named after. The Serpent was gifted to her by her ex-lover and renown pirate True, who she seems to maintain a tentative relationship with. Many rumors have been spread as to how she got her scars, yet none have been confirmed. Though Evre is known for her ruthlessness and cunning, she does have one weakness: her adoptive daughter Precious.

First mate Ursula, a freckled aquamarine drow of mysterious background and infamous, like the rest of The Serpent, for her loose morals. Ursula took on a role similar to that of a quartermaster, responsible for keeping the crew in line. She is the unofficial second-in-command of The Serpent and one of the three de facto advisors to Evre, the other two being Reikhi and Avril. Before joining the crew, Ursula had escaped from her unfavorable living conditions in the Underdark in her late teens with her childhood friend and eventual girlfriend, Talyss. Her most notable feat from her time at sea was her defeat of a young kraken, which earned her celebratory spiraling tentacle tattoos under her eyes.

Boatswain Reikhi, a dwarf woman with medium brown skin, twice-braided black hair, and a pierced lip—long lusted after for her beauty prior to her life at sea. Reikhi oversees the supplies and stock of the ship, though her skill with a blade could only be bested by Evre. She has a playfully antagonistic relationship with fellow de facto advisor Avril, but this did not stop her from coming to his defense during a nasty gargoyle attack, winning her a scar wrought by the creature’s claws slashing across her cheek.

Sailing Master Avril, an olive-skinned wood elf who could easily be passed off as unremarkable were it not for his heterochromia—one eye brown, one eye red. Originally a ranger belonging to clan of druids, Avril had an almost intrinsic talent for charting the stars. His responsibilities are to navigate the seas and chart courses. Reikhi believes he has a stick lodged in his ass, but the truth is he is just as bad as the rest of them, just more cautious.

Carpenter Talyss, a pale indigo drow who joined The Serpent with Ursula many years ago. While Ursula had a fondness for sneaky tricks and shadows, Talyss, the softer of the two, took to more artisanal pursuits. Her carpentry and bardic charm combined with Ursula’s shifty pickpocketing kept them afloat for a long while in the Underdark. On The Serpent she is responsible for repairing the ship and healing and possibly providing prostheses for injuries—most notable of these being Pollux, who lost his hand in an accident on deck. After an argument between Talyss and Ursula over the fate of a boy they were holding captive, Talyss was kidnapped and supposedly murdered by the crime lord the boy worked for. Talyss, ever the superstitious one, used to wear a pendant to bless their travels—which Ursula now wears.

Cannoneer, the Disgraced Lord Balen Firelight. After a devastating experimental explosion (as Balen calls it, a “mishap”) wrecked two stories of Lord Balen’s ancestral home—the second explosion of its kind—his family disgraced him, cutting off all funding for his exploits and banning him from all properties. Balen jumped at the opportunity to put his “talents” to use on The Serpent, and despite his frivolous hats, merry catchphrases, and uncomfortably thick mustache, Evre was charmed and allowed him aboard. Balen is easy to spot—just look for a huge feathered hat and listen for the word “tallyho!”

Deckhand Pollux, a half-elf boy with rich black skin and thick hair. Pollux was a stowaway found by Reikhi as he rifled through a barrel of potatoes (this later earned him the nickname “spud”). When Reikhi brought him before Evre, Ursula was the one to vouch for him. In an accident involving a loose rope and a heavy crate—and too far out to sea to seek a healer—Pollux’s hand was amputated by Talyss; later he was given a mechanical prosthesis crafted by Talyss and Balen. Still too young to do much more than just chores, Pollux is most often found perched in the crow’s nest with a spyglass in hand.

Deckhand Precious, a dark blue tiefling with flat horns and fiery orange curls. When Precious was a mere toddler, her father Lawless, an old friend of Evre and True’s, sought Evre out. He was plagued and dying and knew no one else who was willing to take in a tiefling baby, and Evre, hurting for her old friend, could only promise to take care of her. More than a decade later, Precious has become a breath of fresh air aboard The Serpent. She found she has an affinity for cooking. Follow the sound of clanging pots and melodic humming and you’ll soon find Precious.

Pirate Queen True, a pale magenta tiefling with teal green hair and, most notably, a missing eye covered by a patch. Shrouded in mystery save for her solid reputation for being bad news, True has ruled the sea for decades. Many boasted their sightings of True, but with little to ever back their claims, she became more a myth than a legend, and she encouraged this—“Everything you’ve heard is true.” The infamy and intrigue surrounding her grew when she suddenly vanished after a schism between her, Evre, and Lawless, whose trio of ships were previously never far apart. Evre herself did not know where her ex-love had gone and was content in leaving it a mystery—until she reappeared on the deck of The Scarlet Serpent fifteen years later with a gaping black hole in her chest.

[redorich]

May I request the aftermath of Cleo learning about the magic restrictions please and thank you.

The unfortunate thing about the Dream SMP is that there is no such thing as neutral ground. Everyone's in a faction, and everyone's got beef with everyone else. The only "neutral ground" is the unsettled wilds. When Philza reports this back to Cleo, who reports it back to Xisuma, Cleo wears a put-upon look and says that her and Joe's castle will do just fine, thank you, so stop worrying about it.

The day of the meeting comes, and though Philza is hesitant to return to the castle that scared Techno half to death and activated Ranboo's main character energy, he didn't spend all that time with Cleo handing out the invitations for nothing. Cleo herself won't be present, but her partner in crime Joe will be.

Inside the castle, past the courtyard teeming with armor stand faux-life, there is a meeting room with a table. There are exits on each of the four walls, so no one feels trapped, and the table is circular so that no one feels less important than anyone else. It's all a very Socratic setup.

At the far end of the room, where the head of the table would be were it rectangular, Xisuma sits calm as can be despite the powder keg of important people with grudges he's invited into his presence. On his right is Joe, whose eyes are lit up bright white, though he's still wearing his glasses. To Xisuma's left is Grian, and to Grian's left is Doc. Continuing around the table, next sits Eret representing the Pride Palace and, to a lesser extent, the Dream SMP as a whole. After them, the next person is Philza representing the Syndicate, then Bad representing the Eggpire.

Given the antagonistic nature of the Eggpire, Bad's neighbors have been chosen very carefully; on his other side sits Ghostbur representing L'Manberg. (Philza had awkwardly told Cleo that inviting a L'Manberg representative wasn't necessary, since the place was gone, but she insisted that it was "the principle of the matter". Ghostbur seems happy enough to be invited, anyway.)

On Ghostbur's left, Sam attends on Dream's behalf. Obviously, no one is going to invite Dream, and as Dream's would-be warden, Sam was nominated to attend in his stead. Next to Sam there's an empty chair for George; Philza and Puffy both warned the Hermits that George was allergic to "lore", whatever that meant, but his place at the table was set nevertheless.

The last person to fill in the table is Tubbo, representing Snowchester. He quietly expresses to Sam that he's wary about how few Hermits there are in proportion to the number of Dream SMP citizens. Sam shrugs, and murmurs back to Tubbo that there's probably more Hermits hiding somewhere nearby. After all, isn't that what the Hermits do?

Xisuma claps his hands together once in a polite bid for everyone's attention. They settle down slowly, and once they do, he stands.

"Right, everyone-- thank you all for coming. Let's get right into it, shall we?" He smiles, though it's hard to see beneath the helmet. "With some help from Puffy and Philza, my friends and I were able to figure out why we were trapped in your server."

Sam crosses his arms. He doesn't give much of a shit about the Hermits, he tells himself, unless they have something to do with Dream-- Sam's greatest failure. (It's a lie. He looks at Doc, the only other creeper-person he's ever met-- the first creeper-person, who fought a god and won the right to live for all mob hybrids who came after him. Doc, whose eyes are fixed solely on Xisuma.)

Clearing his throat to cover up the moment of weakness, Sam speaks up. "That's great and all, but why do we care? No one was living in L'Manberg anyway; it was practically free real estate."

The callous words net Sam a glare from Tubbo and a hurt look from Ghostbur. Before either can protest, Xisuma cuts in smoothly.

"It's an issue with your server," he says, "one that Dream should have fixed. It's the reason for this meeting, actually; if there was a responsible admin in the server, I would have just told them. First, a history lesson-- Doc, if you please?"

Doc nods somberly, savoring the opportunity to ham it up a bit. "For those of you who don't know, there are three Eras. The first is the beginning of time, when Mojang created the world as we know it. Players had infinite respawns, the world was less advanced, and redstone had just been created."

"Don't you think you're going a little too far back in history?" Bad asks skeptically.

"He's getting there," Eret defends.

Doc picks up where he left off. "In the Mojang pantheon, there was a god named Notch who wanted to expand the world's horizons, to give them new biomes and mechanics and blocks they'd never seen before... but you can't make something out of nothing. He needed magic to make his big updates a reality, and he stole it from the players behind the other gods' backs."

Ghostbur gasps, horrified. "He stole magic?"

"And so the gods killed him and gave the magic back, end of story," Sam snaps, then instantly regrets it. He's too on edge.

Thankfully, Doc either doesn't mind it or doesn't notice. "Not quite," he says. "When Notch took the magic from players, they lost the ability to respawn at all, marking the beginning of Era Two-- the Hardcore Era. When the gods found out, they were angry at Notch, so they exiled him to the Void. They tried to give players back their magic, but Notch had already taken too much, and servers and updates kept needing more and more... That's how Era Three started. It's the one you live in now, with the three life system."

"So... why does this matter?" Tubbo asks. "I mean, what does this have to do with why you're stuck in our server?"

"There's a parasite on your server, eating up all the magic," Xisuma says carefully. "Your server needed extra magic to keep up, so when we went through the infinity portal it grabbed us. As a group comprised mostly of Era One players, we have the magic that the server needs to compensate for the parasite."

Most of the Dream SMP citizens look either nauseous or extremely worried at the thought of a parasite. With a furrowed brow and a chewed lip, Eret breaks the silence.

"Do you know who it is?"

They all look around the table with wary gimlet eyes, attempting to suss out the imposter among them.

"A parasite..." Sam snorts derisively. "Sounds like that damn egg."

"Language," Bad snaps, but doesn't resort to violence.

"No no, he's got a point," Grian speaks for the first time. He'd been told to stay silent, but he's not a man who will ever pass up an opportunity to meme.

Bad's face falls, and he takes on a placating tone in an attempt to persuade the Hermits to his side. "Hey, don't be like that, the Egg's never done anything wrong!"

Sam's eyebrows raise practically to the ceiling. He looks at Bad in disbelief. "Never done anything wrong?" he says. "Remember when you--"

"That was me, not the Egg," Bad cuts in with a nervous laugh.

"You tried to kill Puffy over it, then killed Foolish instead," Philza says solely because he wants the Hermits to be mad about the Egg.

"Hm," Joe hums to himself. Up until this point the man everyone knows as Herobrine has been quiet, fading into the background, but now that he's made his presence known they can't help but be wary.

He drums his fingers on the table. "Yeah, I think we need some backup. False, Iskall?"

"On it," Doc grumbles, and reaches under the table to flip a couple trapdoors.

Out of nowhere, as though they'd ender pearled in, a blonde woman and a cyborg man appear behind the Hermits' end of the table. Bad stands up suddenly, knocking his chair backward, but Doc presses another button and all four entrances to the room are shut by pistons.

The woman, False, vaults herself over the table with nothing but upper body strength and tackles Bad to the floor. While the demon is still stunned, Iskall dashes around the circumference of the table to flank him. Doc once again presses a button and the floor opens up to reveal a secret staircase, which False and Iskall drag Bad down kicking and screaming. Once they disappear into the depths of the basement, the floor closes back up and the doors reopen like nothing ever happened.

"Well," Xisuma says with a small smile, lacing his fingers together as he addresses the group.

They stare back at him in horror.

He clears his throat awkwardly. "So, with the removal of the Egg, your server will stabilize and we Hermits will be able to leave you in peace..."

"I'm sensing a but," Eret says tentatively. They take off their sunglasses with a minute sigh, reminding themself that it's because of these Hermits that their curse was removed, that they can take off their sunglasses and have gray eyes again.

Taking a deep breath, Xisuma speaks. "We think we have a way to fix the three-life system."

[knickynoo]

Do you have any thoughts on Marty and his self esteem issues? In most of the trilogy, I feel like Marty ranges from experience a lot of insecurity at best, to like a considerable amount of self loathing at worst, (like pls Marty, Doc getting struck by lighting was not your fault? You’re not Thor?) . And there’s the whole chicken thing, so I was curious if you had any thoughts on where it stems from, how it’s affected him etc etc? Okay lmao that’s it, have a great day !!

Hello! Do I have thoughts?? Yes. I do.

So, one of the things I like so much about Marty as a character is that...he's kind of an enigma of sorts? Like. Here's this kid who skateboards, rocks that denim jacket and the cool sunglasses, plays guitar, has a pretty girlfriend, etc. You take all of that, and it should reflect a really confident, popular person. I mean, with all the stereotypical "cool guy" attributes considered, Marty should have Ferris Bueller-level confidence and charm. He should be strutting around, smooth-talking everyone, laughing in the face of danger, and possessing unshakeable self-esteem. But he does/has none of those things because, as we all know, Marty is A Mess (affectionate). And yeah, a lot of it seems to stem from self-esteem issues, which we do see sprinkled throughout the trilogy. Where's it all coming from? Well, a lot of places, most likely...

• FAMILY: Probably the biggest factor. Though I'm sure George and Lorraine were sincerely in love for a while at the beginning of their relationship/marriage, I think it's fair to assume that any real spark between them had pretty much fizzled out by the time Marty came along or when he was a young kid. Take a loveless relationship between a meek, subservient man and a woman who drinks away her feelings, factor in a 17-year-old boy who's probably never had any real semblance of parental stability in his house, and it's highly likely that kid is going to have some issues. It's really difficult to believe in yourself & feel secure when the norm is having parents who are wrapped up in their own worlds/rarely interact with each other, seeing your father get emotionally (& physically!) pushed around by his supervisor, and watching your mom cling to alcohol and sink into depression.

• Plus, there are the separate relationships George and Lorraine have with Marty. Granted, we don't see much of it, but what we see at dinner is probably a good example of a typical interaction. George is quick to steer Marty away from any situation where he may face rejection or hardship. And yeah, he may think he's protecting his son, but this strategy is actually pretty harmful. I can imagine that any time Marty is feeling nervous or let down, and goes to his father seeking encouragement, he's only left with the impression that it's better not to take any risks at all because he might fail anyway. Instead of being built up, any potential self-worth is being chipped away at by George.

And as far as Lorraine is concerned, I get the impression that she's (more often than not) critical and judgemental of Marty. She's not shy about airing her strong dislike for Jennifer, during which Marty stays completely silent and unresponsive. Perhaps Marty's general default around his mom is silence, due to him having learned a long while back that he's better off keeping his mouth shut. I can see Lorraine lecturing Marty often, picking apart every little flaw she may see in him (friends, grades, attitude, etc.), especially when she's had too many drinks and especially when you consider that Marty is probably her most "difficult" child. Sad as it may sound, I can't picture Marty walking away from very many interactions with his mother feeling good about himself.

• GENERAL ANXIETY/NEURODIVERGENCY: Marty is an easily flustered, anxious guy. And whether that stems from his home environment or genetics (I mean, look at George), I don't know. But he definitely seems to be a sort of nervous, hesitant kid, particularly in the first movie. I also, like most of the fandom, headcanon Marty as having ADHD. And like...if that's the case for him, it certainly isn't helping at all with the self-esteem stuff. He's written off as a slacker at school, told he'll never amount to anything, and probably struggles a lot to keep up in his classes and survive in an environment that almost definitely doesn't offer any form of support or accommodations. That would be a big blow to his self-worth as well.

People with ADHD also tend to be very critical of themselves, worry about what others think of them, and have a hard time with rejection. Hence, the one rejection at the audition followed by, I'm just a big, stupid failure and I'll never ever be good enough. My world is crumbling, I should just give up everything forever =(((

(What do you mean those weren't his exact words??)

• BONUS: Marty might also face a decent amount of social isolation/teasing due to his friendship with Doc, which would take a toll on confidence too. Also, I just...don't think that Marty has many friends??

When you take all the above factors, Marty's self-esteem issues make a lot of sense and, if not for Doc, would probably run a lot deeper than what we see in the trilogy. ALSO!

• Marty blaming himself for Doc getting hit by lightning in the DeLorean: I've seen a few people comment on this and how they think it's ridiculous that Marty felt guilty but...it's always made a lot of sense to me, actually. No, Marty didn't cause the lightning, but he did set off the chain of events that led to Doc being there at that moment. If he'd had the inner strength/self-control to walk away from Biff outside of the dance, he could have just joined Doc on the roof with the almanac and they'd have been on their merry way. And even if Biff had continued to challenge him, or even followed him, Marty likely could have created a diversion or gotten an adult at the dance to help and still made it up to the roof before the worst of the storm hit. But because he couldn't stand being called a chicken, he ended up taking a door to the face, had the book stolen back, and had to go on that little side adventure to retrieve it, which led to Doc needing to save him. So yeah, I'm actually team Marty on this one. His choice did lead to Doc being catapulted into the Old West, lol. I'd have been consumed with guilt too.

• The Chicken Thing: I'm not going to go into too much detail (HA!) because this is already ridiculously long, but I will say that I don't go by the more popular headcanon that says Marty's sudden inability to handle being challenged is due to the updated timeline taking effect and "altering" him. Essentially, that Marty growing up with a confident, successful father made him have higher expectations put on him, and so he was always striving to prove he could live up to them.

I actually don't think any ripples from the new timeline catch up to Marty yet during the course of the trilogy. (I tend to headcanon that as happening gradually in the coming weeks and months after he gets home). Instead, I think that Marty's inclination towards becoming feral at the words "chicken", "yellow", etc. is because of his life in his original timeline. Growing up with a jellyfish for a father, it makes sense that Marty would want to distance himself as much as possible from being associated with weakness. He'd want to prove himself that much more because everyone around him would probably think he's just like his cowardly old man.

And though I know it's not really possible (because they weren't planning on a 2nd or 3rd movie), I think a case can be made that there's a glimpse of the "chicken thing" in the first movie, in the scene of Marty and Lorraine in the car at the dance. I mean, he gets all upset and tells her not to drink, but then she calls him a square, uses the classic peer-pressure tactic of, everyone's doing it, and he caves instantly and takes a swig. Could be because he doesn't want to be thought of as a square, or could be because he's desperate to calm his nerves a bit. Either way, Marty doesn't seem to fare too well when challenged or put under pressure, so I lump this scene in as a "chicken" moment.

I...need to stop. I set out to write a quick response to this. Like, a paragraph or two. But this question activated Hyperfocus Mode, and I blinked and now it's 2 hours after I started and I have AN ESSAY.

Thanks for the ask! *goes to lie down*

[birlcholtz]

Fic Questions

tagged by @the-lincyclopedia thank you!! (fun game: watch my writing get progressively less formal as the post continues. by the end it’s like what is capitalization)

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

77!

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

434,378 as of this week but it does go up quite regularly

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Okay so in terms of what’s on my AO3, I have Check Please, All For the Game, Sharp Zero, HP, and Miraculous Ladybug. I also have The Forbidden LOTR and PJO Fanfiction (as in, I’ve written it, but it’s never seeing the light of day)

(technically there is a PJO fic out there that has seen the light of day but I orphaned it because I was tired of getting comments asking about when it would be updated)

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

and then i met you (and the whole world changed)

for the better

Knew It Was You

come home (to you, to us)

sin bin schematics

All of these are Check Please and all of them except Knew It Was You are part of my Zimbits Airport AU!

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do! It’s actually a very recent thing that I’ve started not responding to literally every single comment. Mainly I respond because I love talking about my writing so I am going to seize that opportunity when it comes up

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Oh, DEFINITELY Happy Birthday (HP). Check out that MCD tag ahah. (I say HP but what I really mean is that I write fic about Regulus Black. The Regulus Black-centric tag is my home in the HP fandom)

fun fact: this is a very short fic that I wrote when I was 15 and basically forgot about until recently, and then I reread it recently and went holy shit?? I pulled NO punches????

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the wildest one you’ve written?

Not a ton? I think a lot of the fandoms I write for don’t really mesh that well. That being said, the aforementioned orphaned PJO fic is actually a PJO/ML crossover, so there’s that

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Nope! Sometimes I get comments that are just.... really confusing? And a more common thing is that in my AFTG fic I’ll get comments from people who are so focused on Andreil (or the most common ships in general) to the point that like. they miss the point of what I actually wrote. Those are annoying but they’re not hate, they’re very enthusiastic, they’re just... enthusiastic about a story I’m not writing? So it’s a bit frustrating.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

No sjflskgjhgf I struggle enough to write kissing, I think if I ever tried to write smut my brain would just shut down. I’ve managed some fade-to-blacks (which are mostly in WIPs that haven’t been posted) but they rely HEAVILY on the powers of implication

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, although I have occasionally made a brief go of it, not to post, more as an exercise for myself in a language that I’m learning. Anyway I never finish them so I’m gonna say no

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not really? I’ve definitely group brainstormed fics and then written them (the best example of this being Q&A (AFTG), which was the product of a truly off-the-walls group chat), but I tend to do all the actual writing myself. I think the way I write would drive a co-writer up the wall since it’s very disorganized and I don’t write stuff down because ~I know what’s gonna happen I don’t need notes~ and it would infuriate me if I was co-writing with me lmao, so I won’t inflict that on someone else

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I regularly move through ships I’m SUPER focused on, like it’s kind of a rotation. I will forever and always ship Percabeth though.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Okay so if you follow me at @birlwrites you may know this already, but i have this ‘warmups’ document that is just like, random ideas i get that i don’t necessarily want to finish but i just want to try out for a bit? and i have a rule that once a ‘warmup’ is more than 10 pages long (so 11+) then it has to be moved to its own document, just to make scrolling through the warmups doc easier. but usually, a warmup only passes 10 pages when i’m INTO it. so i have a bazillion wips i will probably never finish. i complain about this a lot. i have so many wips. i don’t need more.

here’s one: it’s titled ‘interrobang doesn’t know they’re dating’, it’s basically a full outline for a chowder/tango fic and it would be SO cool if i could ever like. get around to writing it. but i am constantly swamped with writing projects, so it’s probably not gonna happen. if anyone’s interested in adopting it though i’d be down for that!! i think it’s a fun idea i just almost def won’t write it myself

15. What are your writing strengths?

SNAPPY DIALOGUE AND SNARKY INTERNAL MONOLOGUE. my writing is COMEDIC, 90% of my ideas are based on a funny snippet that popped into my head, a lot of my worldbuilding is based on ‘hey you know what would be hilarious’ (whenever i explain how larai selects a chosen one in the rainfall universe i start laughing, which is a STARK contrast to how it plays out on the page), i love writing funny stuff!!

also i think my writing sounds nice, a lot of the time i pick words/syntax based on sound and flow so there’s that too. and i have lots of ideas! i don’t struggle much with writer’s block because a) i have a lot of strategies to deal with it and b) i have a lot of ideas to help get around it/work with it

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

PHYSICAL INTIMACY LMAO, sometimes in my end notes on shippy fics you can see me complaining ‘it took me literally 4 hours to write that very brief kiss’. also sometimes the humor in my writing gets in the way a bit, i have to very consciously put it away so characters can actually have serious, genuine emotions. also i don’t like outlining and i tend not to get betas for fanfiction so like..... i do my best continuity-wise but having really tightly plotted stories is just not my focus lol. (and i do put more effort into that for original stuff, it’s just fic where i kind of go wild)

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

If the reader’s supposed to know what it means, then writing it in another language is iffy for me. (stuff like terms of endearment which come up a lot in fic are fine imo, you can just put a note in to translate them and your reader will prob remember)

If the pov character isn’t supposed to understand it, and it doesn’t matter if the reader understands it, then ig it’s fine? but unless you already speak the other language (and i am NOT confident in my ability to translate english into literally any other language), then i think it’s way easier to just note that a character’s speaking x language and provide tone indicators, body language cues, etc. so the reader understands as much as the pov character.

That being said there are def times when it’s used super effectively--the dialogue in spanish in cemetery boys comes to mind! that’s not fanfic but it’s still creative writing so w/e

so i guess it comes down to: does actually writing out the dialogue in the other language serve a purpose? if it doesn’t, then you’re filling up the screen with words your reader isn’t likely to understand, which i try to avoid doing

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

so the first fandom i actually *wrote* for was PJO, but i distinctly remember creating warrior cats OCs when i was little. i never actually did anything w them but i had them and my favorite was a riverclan warrior named shellstream i remember this VIVIDLY

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve ever written?

oh boy. okay so this is hard because i feel like i’m continuously improving as a writer. like in the sense that my writing is getting closer and closer to really matching my own taste? my favorites tend to always be my current projects as a result. and i do really love set those ghosts alight (HP) but it feels a little like cheating to say a fic i haven’t even finished writing yet. even though it’s def not cheating, that’s just the direction my brain is taking it.

i’m gonna say and then what? (OMGCP) because i’m super proud of the prose (especially ch 2 aka the first actual prose chapter), survived by (HP) for SUCCESSFULLY WRITING AN EMOTION and making readers cry :), and Q&A (AFTG) because i’m literally the one who wrote it and yet it still makes me wheeze. those are all fics i reread occasionally, because i’m big enough to admit i enjoy rereading my old stuff! (just like. to a point. some of my old stuff i can’t look at anymore because all the mistakes stick out to me like they have spotlights shining directly on them)

this was fun!! i’m gonna do an open tag because i just started my fall semester and brain tired. i know sometimes people see open tags and assume the op didn’t really mean it but I MEAN IT, PLEASE DO THIS AND TAG ME!!!!! YES YOU READING THIS

[vtforpedro]

LONG POST, medical update. ptsd, suicide TW: I’m really tired. I feel like I’ve been saying that for a year but I am exhausted. mind, body and soul exhausted my head got better after I lost the water weight my chemo pill was packing on (I was 15lbs lighter than the three weeks previously. so it was pretty bad lol) but now it’s getting bad again. it never gets to the point of relief, but it gets manageable and now it’s becoming unmanageable again. it’s not water weight but it might be cause I’ve put on a couple pounds over the holidays (just barely a couple pounds, I’m eating much lighter in general) anyway I don’t see the point of being scared to name what it is my neurosurgeon and I believe this is anymore. my psychiatrist thinks it makes sense, my pcp, even the ER doctor I saw on dec. 2nd lol but I am 99.9% sure this is what I have and it does makes sense but every fucking time I think about it for a while it makes me so angry. so so so angry y’all. I wish I could sit every single medical professional I interacted with over the last year or so who didn’t believe me and tell them it’s all been real, they failed me to such a degree I have ptsd and anger problems that I’m going to need therapy for, and tell them to learn how to be better providers. blegh so I saw my neurosurgeon (one of the best in the country) for the first time in april. his thoughts? anxiety with muscle tension in my back and neck that led to tension in my head. as in the muscles around my bones, not inside of my skull. didn’t listen to me or believe me, thought all my crazy symptoms were just anxiety and possibly the chiari malformation but there’s no treatment for that beyond surgery and mine is so mild no one wants to go that route (me most of all lmao) I put off seeing him again because I saw different neurologists and my PCP over the months who basically all said the same thing. like my PCP believed me and gave me referrals to the neuros, but one told me to ‘stop worrying about this and just enjoy life’ and the other sat with me for an hour, the first half of which she was all on board the ‘anxiety is fucking with you, none of this is real’ train until I had to tell her to LISTEN TO MY SYMPTOMS firmly enough that she did. she went the opposite way then and said yeah ok something ‘mechanical’ is happening, you need to go back to a neurosurgeon. turned out she loves the neurosurgeon I saw in april (worship the ground he walks on, were her words) but told me maybe I still needed a second opinion. she did also mention that I’ve been living with this for so long that I’m ‘married to it now’ which still implies I’m making it worse than it actually is but :) whatever, she couldn’t think of what it could be decided to just go back to that neurosurgeon and tell him the physical therapy he prescribed in april I had to stop because it made things worse. his PA tried to prescribe me more PT on the phone before I firmly told her I needed to SPEAK with him face to face because my quality of life is gone, because I get close to killing myself weekly because of how bad this is and nothing has improved since april. only gotten worse. so I had my appt with him in late October I think? I explained all of my symptoms (again) and told him how nothing has changed, things have gotten worse, when I do x y z I have an episode, etc etc. he said he still doesn’t think it’s the chiari but he said it *might* be IIH idiopathic intracranial hypertension first time I’ve ever heard of it and even though it was over 11 months into this, it might just save my life now that I have idiopathic = we don’t fucking know why this happens, intracranial = HAPPENING IN MY SKULL AND BRAIN, hypertension = technically high blood pressure, but for here just high pressure cause my BP is good it is rare, it is unknown why people get it and why others don’t, it is most common in women of child bearing age who are obese. the thought is that the weight on the body causes the brain to very slightly inflate, decreasing spinal fluid flow and increasing pressure in the brain, sometimes CAUSING a chiari malformation to appear, which can cause other symptoms on top of IIH it used to be called pseudotumor cerebri because IIH makes the brain behave like it has a tumor while no tumor is actually present (which means normal MRI/CT scans and the main reason everyone told me I was faking it) I gained 80lbs in less than two years due to severe depression and ptsd. I’ve been at the same weight for almost two years now and was at that weight in Feb 2019 before things started happening in Dec 2019. sometimes it does just come on one day. it can be chronic, it can randomly go into remission and come back, and they have no idea why it even happens. it’s rare enough that no neurologist I saw could even think of it. rare enough that one of the best neurosurgeons in the country didn’t think of it until he decided he believed me lol he leans even more heavily into this because I gained weight so quickly (one of the hallmarks of getting IIH) and I had not a single symptom like it before the weight gain I don’t trust anything or anyone right now and I am extremely pessimistic and have no hope. but the one thing that’s given me a little hope, that’s made me believe this is what I have, is the fucking wikipedia page on IIH. it lists one specific symptom that I’ve seen nowhere else (and is EXTREMELY specific lmao) that I have and that everyone thought I was crazy explaining. beyond destroying your quality of life, the one thing IIH can do is cause permanent blindness. I’ve had a fuck ton of problems with my vision since this all started happening. one of the worst is that if I’m in the middle of an episode and I look up or to the left, it makes it h u r t and makes the episode worse. which is on the wikipedia page! which explains why I couldn’t fucking do EMDR therapy which involves rapid eye movement from side to side :) :) :) even my therapist was thinking this was all in my head and I was just letting my anxiety tell me EMDR would send my head into an episode instead of it actually happening lmaaaao god I am so angry y’all my mom and my uncle The Doctor wanted to commit me in March/April. I had an entire ER nurses station mock me for ten minutes for coming in repeatedly and having bizarre symptoms that, because they were unexplained, they thought I was faking. they belittled me when talking to me. one put the tv remote (no tv in the room) instead of the call button in my hand when I was too out of it to notice. the ER doctor that day told me I was making up a story, none of this was real, and to continue seeing my psychiatrist. I went home that day, told my mom I was fine for her to go back to work (she was angry with me and wanted me to go to a psychiatric hospital), took a shower and planned on swallowing a bottle of pills. I was in agony, utter agony, every single day multiple times a day I thought I was going to die, and it was being made clear to me that no one, not even my mom, believed me. I told my best friend and she talked me out of it, but I came very close and I will forever be heartbroken and angry beyond belief about this (my mom came around not long after this after seeing that this wasn’t going away and has thoroughly apologized for wanting to commit me. she has been helping me every single day since this started even tho she thought it was anxiety. I’m angry but I don’t hold it against her, not after the incredible sacrifices she’s made for me for a year) so yeah. every bizarre symptom, every agonizing thing I go through, the weird discomfort, pain and burning, vision problems, etc etc, all explained by IIH. the very specific ‘looking in a certain direction makes it worse’ has been there since day one. it’s because pressure has increased on the nerve behind my eyes so looking in a certain way aggravates the affected nerve further gaining all that water weight and having my head get so so so severe, enough to send me to the ER again, made me also think this was a real possibility and the ER doc agreed that the fluid retention was making pressure in my brain even more severe and it did ease quite a lot once that was all gone, another reason I believe this is IIH if you read up on IIH or read stories by people with it, it is life altering, debilitating, and agonizing to live with. most people will also have the same story of doctors not believing them and saying it was anxiety before getting this diagnosis the good thing? there’s a cure and while some people may need additional help later on, it works for most people. and it is, very simply, losing weight. 10-20% of body weight (some places say relief can start at just 3%) seems to completely cure it for most people because the brain is no longer inflated and because of that, any chiari malformation (cerebral tonsils sitting in the spinal cord opening) will actually go away, because it makes room in the skull for the tonsils to go back to their normal place I have some trouble knowing that I am partially at fault for gaining weight like I did, but my mom keeps telling me it’s so rare and how could I have possibly known and it was after severe trauma so. trying to deal with that too lol but yeah! weight loss journey. my chemo pill, if you read my last update, completely fucked me up for a while (including the fuckin weight gain despite a low calorie, low fat diet since like nov 1st) so it’s made it hard to lose weight. but now that I’m off of that pill, I’m down 7lbs and I will continue to lose. I have never been more motivated in my life to lose weight lmao and I’ve successfully done it before! I can’t exercise but my neurosurgeon said as the weight comes off and my symptoms start getting better, I will probably be able to incorporate more movement in my life. I can’t even walk around my apt for too long right now cause it builds pressure in my brain. it fucking sucks because this is something they don’t understand, it’s really only diagnosed if everything else has been ruled out (and with a lumbar puncture, but I am too fucking traumatized to have that done. but if I showed high pressure with no reason for it, it would be an ‘official’ IIH diagnosis). but I’m choosing not to do the LP because if I start to have my symptoms relieved as I lose weight, it’s pretty obvious that’s what this has been from the start my brain thinks it has a brain tumor and is going absolutely batshit insane and no matter how much I tried to get people to believe me, it took 11 months to get there. I will carry this with me for the rest of my life and once covid eases, I’m finding a good trauma therapist and working through this if my symptoms DON’T ease, we’ll talk brain surgery. but I think this is what I have and I think I’ll be okay when I lose enough weight (and I’ll feel better all around lol) anyway I’ve had an extremely bad couple of months and I wanted to get this off my chest, sorry it’s so long. if you can please, please, please cross your fingers for me and wish me luck that this is what it is and that over the next handful of months I lose the weight and get my life back, I will appreciate it more than I can say I’m going to thank all of you ahead of time because I lack spoons to reply right now and I also want to thank you all for your support over this last year and never doubting me. for always offering me words of encouragement and for being angry on my behalf. thank you thank you thank you I love you all <3

[aelaer]

Re: Blood in Your Veins

Hey so uh.

As anyone who’s been following me for a while knows, I started the serial “The Blood In Your Veins” about this time last year (it used to be ‘my veins’ but retitled it on its move to AO3 because execution of prompt had changed a bit over writing). It’s a prompt that I couldn’t stop thinking about and just dabbled in slowly to see where it went. Then 2020 fully hit and my writing came to almost a complete stop until about October, which is when I began again on Illuminating the Shadows, which was finished and posted in December.

Anyway, I’ve been poking and prodding fairly continuously at The Blood in Your Veins. The first four parts that I posted originally here on tumblr are now all on AO3, and once part 5′s up I’ll link it here and link everyone who wanted alerts to the updates then so they can see the new part. Then all future parts will be linked here as well.

(Cut because why the *hell* did I write this much about this?)

I’ve been slow in posting because I, against better judgement but why not, decided to post it as a WIP. But that means I keep on making edits to older parts because I think of something new that should be addressed earlier in the story. Like uh, when I was writing part 9, I realized I needed to go back to part 5 and add an addendum. When I was writing part 12, I realized I totally forgot a part that I ended up adding in part 8, because I needed it for a future connection. This happens all the time in my writing and makes posting WIPs almost dangerous because my thinking is rarely linear if the story takes place over a course of more than a couple days. Thus the very slow posting.

So this silly little prompt thing that I was just prodding and poking at to see where it went? The farking doc passed 50k words tonight. Yup.

Granted, like 10k of that is probably outlining, personal notes, and A/Ns filled to the brim with meta, medical science, fake science, and technical/computer engineering because I love talking about it and giving people info to access easily for their own knowledge. I figure I can’t be the only one who finds this stuff super fascinating and fanfic makes it unique in that it’s not a book where the research is irrelevant, you can show off all the interesting stuff right here and talk about it with people! I love that about fanfic, so much. Sometimes the A/Ns are just as interesting as the story in some stories.

So it’s gonna be a bit slow for however long, but I finished 11 parts (with 10 betaed), have the 12th largely written out (though I’m not 100% sure about it yet so I want to poke at it more), and parts uh, 13 to 17ish outlined. But considering I was like “yeah this is 8 parts at most” like, at the beginning of this, that number is bound to change because characters keep saying things and doing things (including the supporting OCs, who are demanding to be fully fleshed out within the bounds of supporting character roles).

And yeah, this is just a ramble of what I’ve been mostly doing as I haven’t been super active on tumblr this month as this has consumed most of my free time. I haven’t read a lot of works either, and once this is completed I hope to remedy that, before I go into my next two big projects (which were meant to be what I was working on *now*, but then this took over and what will you do. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to complete three novel-length fics in the course of the year, but I’ll see what I can do. I really want to tell these stories).

Uh, this was really long. Sorry, I’m super verbose and don’t know how to be like, succinct. My old boss, two bosses ago now, used to quote Twain about brevity being a sign of wit, but if it is, call me 100% unwitty because I like to ramble. And then I always feel a little bit guilty for writing *so much* about my bullshit, so I feel like if you read this far, you 100% deserve to read a preview of an upcoming section. Especially since you pressed the Read More button! So here you go, thanks for reading my rambles. This is a section from the longest part so far, part 8. It’s a long little bit!

---

"How high's the toxicity now?" Tony asked as he stepped off the scale.

"Yesterday's blood sample came back at 0.45 milligrams per kilogram of your weight," Stephen replied. He snapped on a pair of latex gloves.

Tony offered his arm for the blood draw. "And if 3 milligrams is the magic number for fatality, that'd put my current blood toxicity at 15%."

Stephen inserted the needle at the crook of Tony's elbow and watched the tube fill up. "That's not quite how it works."

"It makes sense to me."

"That's still not how it works." He removed the needle and capped the tube, and as he put everything away, explained, "Saying that your blood toxicity is at 15% implies that you're talking about the whole volume of blood in your body. You're probably at about 5,500 milliliters with your weight, and with the density of blood equaling about 1.06 grams per milliliter, it is like you're saying—"

"That 874.5 grams of my blood is toxic, yeah, yeah, I know," Tony interrupted. By now he was setting up the table for their breakfast.

"I was getting there."

"You were going too slow," he shot back easily. Stephen gave the engineer a look at the comment, but Tony ignored it. "Yeah, I know it's not my whole body's blood volume. Obviously. But putting a percentage on how long until I reach the point that I'm dead makes sense to me. I'm not measuring the whole volume of my blood, I'm measuring how much more can I handle until I'm dead."

Stephen shot him a frown. "It doesn't make sense to call it 'blood toxicity' then."

"Maybe not to you, but it does to me. And I'd design such a measuring tool for me."

The statement caught him off guard. "Design?" He finished packing up the kit and joined Tony at the table.

"Well, if I wasn't stuck in here, I'd design something to automatically read a blood sample, like how glucose meters read blood sugar levels. Wouldn't be hard to engineer something like that. And I'd have it give me the amount of toxicity as a percentage relating to how far along it was until the amount was lethal. Sure, I could memorize the numbers, but the percentage would be more concrete in my head."

Stephen smeared butter over a piece of bread as he listened. He shook his head at the end of Tony's explanation. "Wouldn't work for the consumer market; there's too much room for interpretation as to what the percentage means."

Tony huffed. "Well, like I said, it'd be for me. Not the consumer market."

His brow furrowed. "You're telling me that you can make a blood test as simple as the one used for testing blood sugar levels for something as rare as palladium poisoning?"

He narrowed his eyes. "... yes…"

"You can make it portable like the glucose meters?"

"Yeah, of course."

"And affordable to most hospitals?"

Tony looked up in thought. "I don't usually factor in the costs of materials and manufacturing in personal projects, and others do the number crunching to see if my ideas are viable for production in company projects. If they aren't, but I really want them to be, I'll tinker a bit more, sure."

Stephen couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Do you realize the amount of money you could save for both hospitals and patients across the country with such technology? Specialized blood tests—like for many metal poisonings, for instance—aren't offered at every hospital. It may not be available even in every state. Those types of lab results can take weeks to get back to a doctor and the patient. And you're saying that you can not only potentially create this type of technology, but that you may be able to make it affordable if you really want them to be?"

"Well yeah, sure. I've done it a few times with other things. I could probably do that with a blood meter thing. I doubt the tech's that complicated."

His mouth was partially hanging open, Stephen realized this, but he couldn't bother at the moment. He was flabbergasted. The first thought that came to mind went to his mouth, unfiltered. "And you spent the last two decades building weapons."

"Don't." The word was sharp and filled with an overabundance of emotion.

Stephen fell silent. He crossed a boundary he had yet to see before now, and he was not so callous as to push against it. Instead he turned to his meal and focused on eating. He avoided looking at the other man.

A couple minutes later, Tony spoke again. It was low, pensive. Thoughtful. "There was a good reason I shut down weapons manufacturing after I got back from Afghanistan, you know. If the department ever comes back, it will be with major restrictions and modifications. Likely more defensive than offensive. More shields, less missiles. But in the meantime I've been restructuring. Expanded in commercial aerospace and industry. We entered the energy market properly. Consumer products is coming soon—end of the year, probably." A pause. "Don't see why we can't look into medical tech, either. Certainly wouldn't hurt to try."

He could only nod and say, "It certainly wouldn't."

[harryskalechips]

Too bad I’m attracted to you Part 2

A/n Hello I am back with this fat update. You know reading part 1 made me feel a bit bummy, I thougt it was poorly written. I hope this one isn’t as shitty. Anyways, enjoy today’s post has smut, fluff and a lot of angst hahaha

Part 1

Word count: 7336

2 years later.

Winter

“Large Iced Caramel coffee for Adeline!” The barista yells out in the busy coffee shop. I make my way through the busy crowd to pick up my order.

“Thank you.” I smile sweetly as I head straight out the door. Today was a busy day, I had just finished my 2nd lecture and I knew I had to make my way home now to study or else I’m going to fall back down in a rabbit hole of binge-watching my favourite show on Netflix.

I gather my phone and coffee in one hand as I rummage through my purse to find my keys to the apartment I lived in. I wouldn’t say I came from a rich family but my parents were hard workers who had very comfortable positions in their careers that they were able to get me an apartment near campus. The only con about this place? It was a constant reminder of the man who changed me.

He wasn’t able to help me move in here but he sure was with me when I first visited this empty place. He inspired me and helped me picture how this place would come alive. He left small details of himself everywhere in my life that it was hard to not notice them.

“Do you need a hand?” The soft brunette smiled at me as she watched me try to open the main door. I was guessing she was a visitor since she didn’t have a set of her own keys. I nod my head silently as she lets out a small laugh. She takes her hand out as I pass her my coffee and try to slip my phone in the backside of my jeans. I swiftly find my keys and open the door for us.

“Thank you!” I give her an embarrassed expression as she hands me back my coffee. “I’m sorry, I’ve opened the door many times this way I guess today was just not my luck.” She laughs and takes her purple beanie off and shoves it in her trench coat.

“It’s alright, my financé thinks he can multitask all the time too yet he’s only lucky once in a while.” I laugh at her comment out of politeness. Just as she mentioned her engagement, I noticed the simple diamond resting on her finger.

“So do you live here?” I ask to kill the awkward silence as we walk into the elevators.

“No, I’m actually just here to visit my friend.” I nod my head silently, waiting for the digits on the wall to reach 11.

“This is my floor, I got to go. It was nice meeting you though!” I wave at her as I walk out. She probably thought I was a teenager living with my parents considering how I was dressed. I had my own beanie on, with the maple leafs logo on the front. I had my dyed blonde hair in braids as I carried my thick tote with my laptop inside. I also forgot to mention how I was wearing my doc martens and my teddy coat. Yes, I definitely still dressed like a basic white girl.

~

Some days I feel lonely in the apartment when it’s late at night and I’m studying or if I want to watch a movie before bed. I try to talk to my friends as much as I can. My best friend from high school Mya was still my best friend but it’s hard to keep in contact with her when she’s at another university living her best life. I talk to Rachel and Sam but they’re both in and out of their houses and I only really get to catch up with them if we were in class or if we were studying together. It’s not like I’ve always been the type to be a social butterfly, I always preferred a tiny circle of company than a big one. Things did start to change however after I decided to cut the attachment I had with the man I once knew. I tried to numb the pain and isolation by going to parties. I tried hooking up with guys and I did but I know full well now that I regret it…. I regret everything.

Sometimes I wished I never asked the man for help, to be mentored. Maybe, I wouldn’t feel so fucked up as I am today.

After my relationship with him ended, I felt undesired as if I was unlovable. My parents didn’t notice a thing but my sister, Marla did. Coming home from his place that night made me scrub my skin in the shower until it was fiery red, until my body and my mind screamed at my heart to stop. I began to wonder about my last moments as a senior in high school.

Did I feel violated? No.

Did I feel regretful? Yes… no… I don’t know

Did I feel used? Yes. Definitely yes.

I know you can’t force one to love you the way you love them but that night when he told me he didn’t expect us to be together as I entered University, I knew I had to leave. Why? As a young naive teenager, I believed he was the one man in my life who would ever make me feel this way. Yet, all he did was fail me and show me that our relationship wasn’t worth jack shit. Funny thing was I had no clue that the girl I met in the foyer was going to link me back to him.

~

“Hi! Excuse me, I don’t know if you remember me?” The voice of a familiar girl calls out my attention as I enter the building. I stomp the snow off my boots to look at the girl. She was standing in front of the couches with the pretty abstract paintings on the wall. I walk over to her and smile as I take my left airpod out and put it back in its case.

“Yeah, I do what’s up?” She had an anxious look on her face. Should I keep talking to this girl or was it kind of suspicious how very approaching she was to others? She seems really nice though.

“I’m sorry to bother you but is there any way you can sit with me until my fiancé arrives to come and pick me up?” I give her a confused face. “Here sit down I’ll explain.” I take my tote off my shoulder and sit beside her.

The unnamed girl today was wearing a sleek leather jacket while I sat next to her in just my tights and my parka. “My name is Valerie by the way.”

“Adeline,” I reply back shortly.

“My fiancé has been calling me for hours and I thought I left my phone at my house so I never bothered to check my bag to see it in there. I stayed here at my friend’s place and my fiancé found out. Let’s just say he’s angry because he knows my friend here isn’t a good friend at most times to me.” As she continued to ramble on, I was so confused as to why this girl was in such a messy position. “Is there any way you can pretend to be my friend? I promise I have good intentions, I just don’t want my fiancé to know I was here with Kacey. That’s the friend I’m talking about.”

“Um, sure?” Her fiancé was mad about her hanging out with her friend? Seems like a bad fish that needs to be let back into the sea, in my opinion.

~

A familiar range rover pops in front of the glass doors at the same time I look up. I notice the unfamiliar guy barely parking his car as he tries to catch the door of the person who unlocked it to get in. He had a beanie on and the hood of his jacket was on, I couldn’t see what he looked like.

“Valerie.” The familiar voice called out, my ears perking up to the sound, knowing how I once was so in love with him.  I used to remember the way he spoke and the way he sounded. I listened to it all year long.

He seemed angry as he marched his way in determination towards us. What the fuck did I get myself into? I keep my gaze on the floor as I watch Valerie in my peripheral view stand up to go hug him.

“I’m sorry honey, My friend Adeline and I went on a walk around the area, I left my phone in her apartment.” With that, I look up to see him as I catch him already looking at me.

It’s been two years and he looks so different. He seemed more broader now and he was growing a little scruff. He looked older yet he seemed to carry that aura that I once found security in. His arm was wrapped around Valerie as his other one just laid against the side of his body. I try to mask my face as I stand up to walk towards him. I give a fake smile and glance at Valerie… his fiancée

“It’s nice to meet you. I’m Adeline.” He gulps and nods at me.

“I’m Harry.” He pauses and glances at Valerie. “How did you two meet?” I stand there, dumbfounded. Little did he know I was covering for his finacée.

“Adeline and I met down at the coffee shop a block from here!” Valerie interjects and moves her weight onto Harry. “Anyways, Adeline it was nice spending time with you and getting to know more about your brother in the military. I think Harry and I should get going though.” The humour in all of this was both Harry and I knew I didn’t have a brother. Just a sister.

Yeah Valerie, good luck digging yourself out of this one.

I nod my head silently and watch as they both walk out. He opened the door for her, the same like he used to do for me. I noticed how fidgety he became as if the anger he felt for Valerie was no longer important. I’m pretty sure he’ll deal with her lying another time. As he makes his way around the car, he glances once more time at me to see if I was still there. I was. He started the car and drove off in a flash leaving me alone with my heart beating so fast

~

In my apartment now rushing in without a care in the world, I toss my bag onto the floor and rummage through the drawer of my nightstand looking for my inhaler. Fuck, where was it! Freshman year of university was tough for me. I was going through a heartbreak, the anxiety of exams were weighing on me, and I couldn’t get myself to trust people after a long time. This time, I saw him again. What did I expect? I mean I live near him too. I’m just surprised that I never caught him in the local grocery store or something. Now? He’s engaged. My first love is engaged. He found someone to love and it wasn’t me!

As I continue to toss things out onto my bed, I find my inhaler in the depths of the drawer, I pull it out and without another second, I press the button letting the air blow into me. I sit on my bum and rests my back on the side of the bed, taking in deep breaths as I unzip my jacket. Why am I broken?

…

My buzzer wakes me up as I try to snuggle more into my white sheets. I wasn’t expecting anyone who could it be? Still dressed in my tights and a loose tee, I get up and press on the mic of the electronic pad.

“Hello?” I can’t help but yawn.

“It’s um Harry.” I pause for a moment to think. What is he doing here? We haven’t talked in 2 years but how does he remember which apartment I was in? Why is he here tonight?

“Yeah, What can I do for you?” my voice turned more cold.

“Can I come up and uh talk to you?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I rest my forehead on my wall.

“I have to talk to you.”

“You had 2 years to do that.” One part of me knew he wasn’t going to come up here but another part of me was begging to see him, that maybe I can get closure and move on with my life. He is engaged after all, it’s not like he’s here to seduce me.

“Adeline, please.” The softness in his voice made my mind go crazy. I remember the days when he used to use that tone with me all the time.  How special I felt knowing none of my classmates knew that behind the teacher who gave us endless papers to write, there was a real softie, a real hopeless romantic.

“Alright, come up.” Without another moment, I cleaned up my tiny place as fast as I could. It was easy since I was pretty neat but tonight will be his first impression of me after 2 years. After fluffing my living room pillows, I sprint into my room to toss on a UFT sweater and brush my hair as I let it down from the messy bun it’s been in all day.  The expected knocks scare me as I set my brush down and make my way to the front door. Glancing at the clock, I noticed it was just about 9 pm.

“Hey.” I smile softly as I open the door wider to let him in. Don’t show him how fucked up you are. My brain screams at me as I get a whiff of his cologne. It’s been two years and you don’t care about what happened! I try to chant to myself as I observe him looking around my apartment.

“Wow, your place is just what I’d expect it to be.” He unzips his jacket and rests on the futon beside my door.

“Yeah, would you like some tea? You can just sit on the couches.”

“Alright, thank you.” I move quickly into the kitchen making his tea, trying to ignore the feelings I have after making eye contact with him once again.

As I walked back into the living room, I noticed he was sitting while holding a frame of me with Rachel and Sam during orientation day. I place the tea on the coffee table in front of him and sit beside him, making sure to keep my distance.

“So orientation camp huh?” He smiles still looking at the picture.

“Yeah.” I smile as I look at it too. That smile was real, it was one of the first moments in my life where I didn’t care about what happened at the end of high school graduation. He sets the picture and mumbles a thank you while taking the blue clay mug and taking a sip of it.

“Still remember how I like it.” He compliments and sets the mug back down. “Did someone make this for you?” I glanced at the detail he was looking closely at. It had a handwritten sentence on it. The days have always been dark in our favour but I would change that for you.

“Yeah, my friend Chase did.” It was a gift he made me after I decided to cool down our friends with benefits status. He was willing to give me more but I wasn’t ready. I’m still not.

“He seems like a poet.'' The man bites his inner cheek and clenches his jaw, not too noticeable but I caught on.

“He has a way with words.” Not like you though, my mind had thought as I went through a mini flashback of listening to his love letter for me the first time.

*

It was summer and just as the days grew longer so did my time with Harry. Lying to my parents I was going to sleep over at Mya’s but instead I was at my teacher’s house. He seemed to be too focused on a letter he was writing while I laid on his couch playing a stupid game on my phone. His soft voice called me to get my attention.

“Baby,” He looks up to see me sprawled in my short shorts and a tank top. “I wrote a letter and I was wondering if you can tell me if it sounds good.”

“Who’s it for?” I sit up and toss my phone onto the couch as I make my way to sit in his lap.

“For you.” He holds onto me lovingly as he starts to read the letter. I close my eyes and rest my head on top of his, trying to remember this night.

*

“I’m sure you do too.” The man interrupts my thought as he looks at me. “How’s the university life, you’re in the second year right?”

“Yeah, two more and I’m out of school.” I shrug my shoulders and play with the split ends of my hair. “Still teaching at Clement’s?”

“Yeah. I'm not teaching English anymore though, I’m teaching history.”

“Oh, that’s something new. At least you get to use your history minor.” He laughs and shakes his head. I just began to observe what he was wearing. He was wearing a grey long sleeve and blue jeans. Guess some things stay the same.

“Valerie lied to me today. I came here because I wanted to know the truth before confronting her.”

“Ha-” I pause, he looks uncomfortable as I continue on. “Never knew you were the type to be possessive. You shouldn’t be like that, especially to your finacée.”

“You don’t understand, whatever she told you, I have a reason to act this way.”

“Why then?”

“First tell me why she was here.” Harry pleads. We both sit up more as I let him know.

“We met in the coffee shop and we became Fri-”

“Adeline, please tell me. Have you seen her in this building multiple times?” He asks as I can feel his frustration seeping through.

“Yes, why?”

“Fuck!” He mutters as he stands up abruptly. “Fuck!”

“Ha-... What’s wrong?!” He looks at me immediately as he sits back down beside me.

“You can’t say my name.” He calls me out. “Adeline, say my name!” I give him nothing but a blank look. He rubs his face in desperation.

“It doesn’t matter, I’m just petty. I don’t feel-”

“Why do women always lie to me!” Harry interrupts me. “Did I fuck you up so bad, you can’t even say my name?” He looks at me with tears in his eyes. “Please tell me.” I nod silently as he closes his eyes. “Feels like karma you know? After letting you go, I thought I would never be happy again until I met Valerie last year at a club.” He glances at me as I sit there quietly, letting him continue. “Want to know a funny thing? I caught her in this apartment two months ago sleeping with her ex-boyfriend. She had her locations on and when she called me, I was so confused so I searched for his name on the list downstairs. Stood outside for hours until she came out of his apartment with hickeys all over her.”

“I still don’t know why I asked her to marry me last month. She begged me to stay with her and I just thought that maybe we deserved each other because we both like to sabotage our own relationships.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper to him as I move forward to rub my palm on his back.

“She’s still cheating on me.”

“I know.” And without another moment, he turns towards me and hugs me into his arms. All the anger in me dissolving because of his story, because of this moment. “I’m sorry.”

Spring

The club was very busy tonight and after waiting in line to get in, all I wanted to do was go back out and probably sleep in my bed.

“So you couldn’t hang out with us yesterday because you and Harry had dinner?” Rachel asked me earlier while we were in line going in. All Rachel and Sam knew were that Harry was my ex-boyfriend and we dated for 6 months.

“Yeah.” They didn’t know that Harry and I have been spending a lot of time together after he ended his relationship with Valerie. Valerie didn’t know anything about us, which was nice. I didn’t want her to get angry at me but I also knew she deserved it. My newly formed friendship with Harry, however, as beneficial as it was strictly platonic. It’s been two months and I feel like my mental health has improved. Maybe if Harry decides to leave my life again, I’ll be okay. I also learned how to say his name again without feeling my heart hurt. The times now have been good, I’ve been good

“Still can’t understand how you felt so in love with him, only after dating for 6 months,” Sam called out as we entered the club. She didn’t know what Mya knew. I ended up telling her at the end of summer when the break up happened. Mya told me I was 100 percent reasonable because I was involved in a serious relationship for the first time in my life.

~

“Hey, that guy has been eyeing you for a while,” Rachel smirks at me as she points discreetly at the cute blonde guy glancing at me while talking to his friends. I make eye contact with him and smile. As the night was still young, he made his way over to me. After a few more drinks, I knew my mission was to bring him over to mine

...

As I wake up in my sheets alone, my head pounds making me groan. Sitting up, I noticed I was in the unnamed boy’s polo. After brushing my teeth and using the toilet in my ensuite, I headed out to realize the ruckus was coming from my living room.

“Good morning beautiful.” The blond boy smiles as he sits at the dining table eating breakfast take out. “Your friend is here by the way.” He nods his head to the kitchen. As I walk into the room, the tiles sting the bottom of my feet. There, I see a pissed Harry making tea.

“Hey.” I tuck my hair behind my ear as I’m surprised he’s here. He looks at me and passes the mug into my hand without another word. “Thanks. How did you get here?”He looks behind him to see the boy eating while watching something on his phone. The unnamed boy seemed to be around my age.

“Thought I would get us some breakfast since I hadn’t heard from you yesterday but Jamie here buzzed me in without a word. Came here then he took your breakfast so he could eat. You can have min-”

“Thanks.” I smile and take a sip of the tea. “I think he should go though I didn’t even know his name until you mentioned it.” Together, we walk out and I notice Jamie finishing his container or mine.

“Thanks, Henry! Breakfast was delicious.” Harry widens his eyes then nods quietly.

“Jamie, is it alright you leave now? Harry and I have somewhere to be.” I ask nicely as he stands up and cleans up after himself.

“Yeah angel, just let me get my shirt back then I’ll be out doing my walk of shame.” He smirks as he watches me. I glance at Harry who seems to be angry again.

After Jamie leaves and Harry and I sit together on my couch using two forks sharing his bacon and eggs, he speaks up. “So that’s what you were doing yesterday huh?”

“Yeah.” My cheeks flush as I purposely only eat the yolk of the eggs, knowing Harry hates that part.

“I know it’s not my business but do you have one night stands a lot?”

“Um. last year I only had three then Chase and I had benefits until this year, after that Jace… I mean Jamie has been the last one.”

“Oh.” He says silently. “That’s cool.”

“Don’t you have one night stands a lot?” I tease as I take a sip of his coffee since my mug is empty.

“You know I'm not really keen on those. Before you, I wasn’t really into it. After you, I fell into some deep hole so yeah I did. Valerie’s my last.” I nod and glance at the quiet TV. “You know the year when you left, I was a really mean teacher. Mrs. Raisell had to speak to me and ask me to pass all my students because ⅔ were failing.”

“Maybe they deserved to fail?” I shrug my shoulders and laugh.

“No, I was purposely marking hard.”

“Are you still hurt about Valerie?”

“If I’m being honest with you, I was waiting for something to break us up. I couldn’t imagine marrying her.”

“Why not?”

“Always pictured it would be you.”

Summer

Today was going to be my first day entering Harry’s house again. I was nervous but the thing that kept my spirits up was that I was going in with Harry and the broken part of me was fixed once again. To me, it didn’t matter that Harry broke me because he fixed it, at least I have his presence here again and I don’t feel lonely anymore.

“We’re here.” Harry smiles as he steps out to open my door. I glanced at his house that seemed to bring comfort to my heart as I saw Harry nod his head for me to follow him. After locking his car, we enter his house. It smelled the same and looked just a bit different. I noticed how there were fixed holes in the wall, some of his books were missing from the shelf, and he had new windows and a new TV.

“Did Valerie change some things around here while you guys were together?” I ask as I take off my shoes and sit with him in the living room. I used to remember staying in here and cuddling him. Sometimes, I would ask him to edit my essays. He would tell me all these tips but I would drown him out, pretending to listen yet my attention was on the TV show he was watching.

“Actually, No. Valerie and I were only together for 4 months plus we were never really here. We spent most of our time at hers.” He sits down and turns the TV on.

“What’s up with the holes and missing books in here.” He looks at the holes I was staring at. He lowers the volume and speaks to me.

“Mind if I get something upstairs.” And with that he sprinted upstairs, leaving me on the couch.

As he made his way back, he handed me a mini leather journal. It was a bit torn up but it seemed to be in good condition.

“Um,” he pauses as he sits down. He turns towards me and keeps his eye contact on the closed journal. “You can read that when you get home but I can tell you what happened here.” I nod my head and take the journal and hug it into my arms. “When you left, I uh... felt like that was a bad moment for me. I just- you know why we broke up. I just didn't expect you to love me.” he looks at me while I stare at him breathe a bit heavier. This was the closure I was asking for.

“Addy, I was so excited that night and when you told me you loved me, the insecurity I had for the past 9 months just buried me. I don’t know how to explain it. I just- I was scared you would take that back later when you realized how much potential you have and how you can have a better relationship with a boy that was going through the same stuff you were. I’m sorry.” He looks at me and bends down to wipe a tear down my face.

“I always thought about your parents’ reaction if they found out about us, I thought about your friends, I thought about my parents. It was so messy in my brain. Then when you left, I realized that I loved you too but you were gone in an instant. I got so angry at myself for letting fear take over me. So um I decided to punch the walls and throw my TV through a window. Decided to take each romance book out of my shelves and pour alcohol on them.” He laughs to himself. “I even remember crying so hard, trying to tear out the pages of my favourite book, you know a copy I gave you for Christmas. Anyways, I was really mad at myself that I didn’t try to get you back. I mean I took your senior year away from you. You should experience Uni and I guess that’s what made me decide to let you go.” I cry harder and look at the almost bookless shelves

“You fucking ruined me, Harry. I tried to have fun but all I was fucking looking for was something to numb the pain you left me!”

“I know baby and I’m sorry okay! I’m sorry for not being strong enough! I’m sorry for fucking doing that! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m fucking sorry!” He yelled as we both cried on his couch.

“I fucking loved you and you threw that back in my face. I rubbed my skin so hard that night when I left this fucking place. Do you understand that? I had- my skin peeling for days after trying to get you out of my skin, trying- to … rinse your.. Scent off m-”

“Baby, are you okay?” Harry’s eyes alarmed as he watched me hyperventilate. “Fuck, Addy, you don’t have asthma!” I grasp onto his shoulders as he quickly lets go of me and runs to his kitchen, as he walks back he has his own inhaler in his hands. “Here, it’s alright, baby. I’m here now, it’s okay.” As I take in a breath, I fall into his arms and hug him.

“I love you, Adeline. I love you. Two years or not, I don’t give a fuck. I love you.”

…

The night was quiet as we cuddled together on his couch. We were both speechless about what happened earlier and now we have been watching infomercials for the past hour. Harry was petting my hair as I laid on his chest playing with the journal he gave me. “Want me to read that for you. It’s just little lines I wrote about you.” I nod my head and he takes the journal into his hands. He soon began to read each page out loud. I closed my eyes on his chest, trying to remember this night. The same way I did when I first listened to him read out his love letter.

I know you were way too bright for me

I’m hopeless, broken, so you wait for me in the sky

All the lights couldn’t put out the dark

Runnin’ through my heart

Don’t you call him “baby”

We’re not talking lately

Don’t you call him what you used to call me

Forget what I said

It’s not what I meant

And I can’t take it back, I can’t unpack the baggage you left

Sunflower, my eyes want you more than a melody

Fall

“Ahh, Harry let me down!” I scream as I feel his arms engulf me as he lifts me off my feet. “If I don’t unpack my things then I’m going back to mine!” I tease as he laughs putting me back down but not without stuffing his mouth in between my neck so he can leave kisses there.

“You can’t, you sold it already. You’re living here with me forever!” He murmurs against my jaw as he turns me around and leans me against his counter. “You’re here with me now.” He smiles as I kiss him on the nose.

After rekindling our relationship, I decided to sell the apartment and live with him since I’ve spent more time at his place than mine. When I told my parents about Harry, they were happy and they agreed with me moving out. Little did they know that I was dating Harry back when I was still his student but I think that’s a story for another time.

“Oh no, what did I sign up for! I’m living here with you… forever!” I pretend to sigh but he pinches my hips and lifts me onto his dark blue counter.

“Promise baby it won’t be too bad. We’ll redecorate the place just how you want it. We can spend so much more time together and… we can have sex anywhere you want.”

“Hm, I like that.” I kiss him on the lips as I wrap my arms around his neck.

“I know you do baby.” He laughs. He kisses me harder then pulls away. “Are you done unpacking your mugs or should I organize the bookshelves myself?” He smirks as he watches me pout. I tug on my pigtail and hop down the counter.

“I want to help you, of course!”

That night we spent hours reorganizing his book collection. I even added some of my own since I’m an English major too. The shelves that were once empty were now filled with many genres of books but I made sure that the majority of them were romance.

~

“Baby, are you almost finished?” I knock on Harry’s office as I see him marking his last stack of history papers.

“Mmm, I don’t think so.” He looks up at me and sighs as he glances back at the hill of papers that don’t seem to shrink.

“I was hoping you and I could spend some time tonight since I just finished my homework.” I walk inside the room and close the door. I make my way onto the couch that I’ve grown used to and sit down. Harry was wearing his glasses with his grey sweatpants and a plain white tee. I was wearing his polo and just my panties. Tonight though, no funny business. I’m here to keep him company yet let him focus on marking. “You know I took AP history, maybe I can help you with the marking like old times.” I lick my lips as he glances at me from the paper he was reading, he took a bit too long to respond since he was too focused.

“Yeah, alright, go grab a paper. The research question should revolve around world war 1 and Canada’s involvement.” With that, I took the paper from his stack and picked out a pen from his mug. I got him that for Teacher Appreciation Day when I was still his student.  

A couple of hours after, I didn’t realize I fell asleep on his couch as I watched him finish the last few. All I remember is him carrying me to our bedroom.

“Oh, I’m sorry I fell asleep?” I yawn as I watch him beside me getting settled into bed. The fairy lights around our room set the vibe since I decided to hang them up because Christmas was just around the corner again. “You should’ve woke me up instead of carrying me to bed.” He looks at me and laughs, bending down to kiss my forehead.

“It’s okay baby, plus you could be awake and I’d still carry you to bed. Thank you for helping me mark tonight. It reminds me of the old times.” He hovers over me and intertwines both of our hands on either side of my face.

“It’s alright.” I smile as I watch his eyes look at me. “ You know I was thinking, if we don’t count the two-year break, we’ve been together for about 15 months.” He licks his lips and kisses me on the lips.

“Feels weird huh? Feel like I’ve known you forever.”

“Yeah, I think so too.” He kisses down my neck even though we both know we’re both very tired. “I love you,” I whisper.

“I love you so much more,” Harry whispers back as we finish the night with sloppy, slow sex.

Winter

“Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday dear Harry, Happy birthday to you.” I sing softly as I carry a stack of pancakes with a lit candle on top. Harry was just waking up, surprised at the view of me in just his shirt. I carefully crawl on the bed so he can blow the candle out. He reaches out and closes his eyes for a moment before blowing the flame out.

“Thank you.” Harry murmurs as he comes closer to kiss me. “I love you, Addy.”

“I love you too.” I kiss him back. “Here’s your fork, let me just get your coffee downstairs!” I was just about to get out of bed but he holds onto my hand.

“Stay, I can get some coffee later.”Since it was a Saturday, we were very lucky to stay in bed and watch TV all morning. Harry was feeding me a couple of bites while I would let my fingers massage his scalp for hours.

“You know I don’t know how I got so whipped for you, Ms. Chastain.” He murmurs against my jaw after he sets the plate down on his nightstand. “Saw you standing there, the first day in class and I knew I just had to get to know you.” I laugh and sink myself more into the sheets so he can hover over me.

“You know I didn’t know we would get back together. Thought I would never see you again.” He rubs himself on me as I let my fingers graze over his newly shaved chin.

“Are you happy to be with me?” He asks seriously as he kisses my jaw.

“Mhm.” I moan.

“You love me yeah?”

“I do.” He looks up and smiles at me. He kisses my forehead then lifts up my (his) shirt off my stomach. “Harry.”

“I love you, Addy. So fucking much I do.” The wetness of his tongue teases my stomach as he makes his way back to the top of my chest so he can suck on my nipples. “So fucking beautiful you are.”

“Harry.” I pant as I watch him take a nipple into his warm mouth. His other hand playing with my panties and teasing my core.

“Can’t believe I let other guys touch you. You should’ve been mine only. To touch, to love on, to moan for.” He inserts his fingers in me as I scratch his back. “Moan for me baby, scream my name.”

“Daddy, fuck, oh my god. Faster please!” he gropes my boobs and slaps my wet pussy.

“Too bad I’m attracted to you yeah? Don’t give a fuck what you do, who you sleep with. I just want to love you all day long.” He whispers in my ear as I touch his hard dick and try to jerk him off too.

“Love you, you’re so big, daddy!” Without another moment, I come undone as he moans too at the sight of me. He takes my hands off his dick and teases my entrance a bit before putting it in.

“Remember that time I gagged you with your panties and blindfolded you with my tie.” I nodded. “Fucked you so hard and bent you over my desk that day. So difficult after you left me to mark homework on that desk. I couldn’t stop hearing your moans in my mind baby. You fucked me up so hard.” And with that, he thrust into me so fast as he reached forward to choke my neck.

“Daddy!” I open my eyes to see him, biting his lip watching himself fuck me hard.

“Open your eyes love, want you to see me tear you apart.” He helps me sit up and rests my back on the headboard as I watch him fuck me over and over again. “Fuck, don’t look at me like that, I might just have to turn you over right now and spank you.” He takes his thumb and puts it into my mouth so I can suck on it.

“Then turn me over daddy, spank me while I feel you in my stomach.” He bends down to kiss my lips and just as I was about to kiss him back he turns me over on all fours. Slapping my ass twice before putting himself back in me.

“So wet, baby.” He pulls my hair out of my face as he thrusts faster. I clench my fingers around our pillows, trying to also hold onto the headboard. “You fucking like that when I fuck you hard? Such a slut for my cock baby. So wet, you’re fucking leaking for me.” He teases his finger around my other whole. “Look at this one, I might have to try and give this one attention next time what do you think?” As I moan, attempting to reply he cuts me off, “Maybe now is a good time.” He spits onto the hole, teasing his finger around it. “Are you okay with this Addy, do you like how it feels?”

“Mhm.” Harry pulls onto my hair a bit harsher.

“Answer me correctly, say it properly. Let daddy know.”

“Yes!” He slips his thumb into my now wet hole as he fucks me faster.

“Fuck, I wanna put a baby in you so bad baby.”

“Put one in then.” I moan and reach down to rub my clit.

“Get off birth control and I won’t doubt for a second to put one in.” He grits his teeth and flips us over so I’m riding him. “Be a good girl, show me how good you are.” He whispers and slaps my butt. I watch his face turn into pleasure as I roll my hips onto his, trying my best to fuck him well. My moans were seemingly uncontrollable as I feel him deep in my stomach.

“Come for me daddy please fill me up!” I whine and without another second, we come together. Harry reaches quickly for my neck, choking me as he thrusts his hips upwards. His seed fills me up as I un slide myself off him and reach down to taste us. He watches me with a smirk as I lay back down beside him. I feel him move his arm underneath me, as he searches for something. As I lay beside him looking at the ceiling, I watch his hand open a black velvet box in front of me.

“Harry,” I whisper, turning to look at him.

“I know it’s my birthday but the only wish I had in mind was if you said yes to the question I’m about to ask you.”  He sits up a bit as I mimic his position.

“Adeline Chastain, I knew you ever since you were 18 and I’ve loved you ever since then. You would make me the happiest man in the world if you would marry me?” I watch him as we both cry so happily together.

“Yes, Harry, I will!” He takes the pear-shaped diamond engagement ring and slides it onto my finger. He kisses me softly as his fingers touch the necklace he bought me for graduation.

“I’m very much in love with you and I promise to take care of your heart, to protect you, and make you the happiest woman in my life.” and with that we kissed again, leading us to the never-ending hours of activities in the bed.

When I was 18, I was naive. I thought Harry would be the only man in my life who would ever make me feel this way.

And I was right.

[the-blind-assassin-12]

Goals & A Backwards Glance

Writing Edition

I know NYE is usually reserved for looking ahead at what new things the coming year will bring. But I always like looking back, too. Perspective is always a good thing, and what I’ve found is that things almost always look and feel different with a little space in between. So this is basically my little look back at some of the things I’ve written this year, and a hopeful list of the things I want to accomplish in the new year.

Writing Goals for 2021:

Finish ISY and Simplify. These two were the first two series that I started writing on this blog and they’re still unfinished. I know what happens in both of them, and I have for a long while now. I think the main reason that they’re still in limbo is because my writing has changed quite a lot since I started both of them. I’ve also worked with those (and other) characters a lot more since I started them, and so I feel like a lot of the things that I wrote for both that version of Billy and Logan don’t quite fit the way that I see them now- because I think I have a much deeper understanding of them both as characters now than I did a year and a half (that’s embarrassing) ago. My main concern is making sure that they don’t feel disjointed in terms of the storytelling- I know they’re disjointed insofar as time between updates but...  nothing I can do about that now except close the books on both of ‘em. 2 more sections for Logan, probably about 4 or 5 for Billy. So if you’ve been waiting on either of these stories to finish, I’m very sorry. I have actually been creepin in the ISY document lately so look for that in the coming week 

Find John’s Voice again. I had it, plotted out pretty much the entire storyline for LFtM&D, and then completely lost both his voice and my confidence in my ability to convincingly write the story that I want to write. He’s just such a precious cherub and I want to make sure that if I write him, I do him and all his charm and whimsy justice. So getting him back on track is a must. 

Complete an entire series before posting it. I’ve tried this in the past and have only managed to hold back like two chapters at a time. I’m working on something new for Billy though, and I really want to make sure that I take my time with it. While I know I’m hard on myself when it comes to writing, I tend to be even more critical when it comes to my interpretation of Billy (hence ISY and my hang ups with it.) And I really want to make sure that there’s nothing I’ll wish I had done differently by the time I’m posting the final chapter. It’s a few thousand words in now, and I’ve already made some major changes so I’m glad I am sticking to this method. 

Branch out with my writing. I started writing something for a different fandom... like... 5 minutes ago. I want to finish it, see where it takes me, and hopefully have the guts to post it here. 

Non-fic related projects. The last few years I have been focusing a lot of my attention on writing fanfic over original pieces. I regret absolutely nothing because doing that helped me out of a years-long wordless drought. I have learned so much in the last few years about my style and the things that are important to me when I write, so I think now that I feel like I found my feet again, it would be a good time for me to revisit my non-fic related projects. A few need complete overhauls and some need to just be junk-drawered while others have been patiently waiting to jump from my notes to a real, live google doc of their own. I’m in no way done with fic writing. On the contrary, I actually have a ton of fic ideas that I still  want to get to. But I want to split my time and attention towards both branches of my writing, because I’m ready to take the steps that I need to to advance this from a hobby into something more. 

2020 Writing at a Glance: 

Series finished: Jigsaw, The Jilted Tourist, 

Series continued from 2019: Too Good to be True, I See You, Simplify, Passing Through, See You in New York, Made Man, Our Time

New Series in 2020: Core Drive, In the Arms of the Ocean, Let’s Face the Music & Dance, The Last Dream 

Favorite New Series: Core Drive (Logan)

Favorite One Shot: Luckenbach, Texas (Ryan)

Favorite Request Result: Lonely Stranger (Ryan) 

Biggest challenge: Navigating the storyline for Core Drive. It’s built on flashbacks and dreams and inner thoughts, so keeping it all straight enough when it’s not really meant to be linear can be a challenge. 

Most proud of: The OCs I created for In the Arms of the Ocean. Vash, Sereia, Coralia and Cheepimeek make me smile just thinking about them. I’ll be really sad to start fucking up their world in the next part of that story.  

Anyway, if you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! I hope that this keeps me accountable for the things that I want to accomplish with my writing. If you’ve read this list please feel free to call me out and help keep me on the path towards completing it. 

And if you’re one of the people that have been reading my stories, thank you. Those words always feel insignificant whenever I say them, but I truly am grateful for anyone who has ever interacted with my writing in any way shape or form. Sharing my stories with you makes it far more fun to write them. 

And on a final note, I won’t beat a dead horse and talk about how shittastic this last year has been for a lot of people. But what I will say is that I hope this next trip around the sun brings a lot more light and happiness to everyone. Happy New Year, guys, we made it through another one. 

** I have something planned to post tomorrow that will hopefully start the year off on a positive note, so if you love Ryan Brenner and you know it clap your hands...and check your notifications tomorrow ;) 

[shirbertshitposts]

Things you can do to help Anne With An E be Renewed

There are so many different ways big and small you can help in the fight to get Anne With an E renewed. I’ll do my best to compile all the ways you can contribute.

1) One of the easiest ways to let networks know there is a demand for more Anne With an E is to request it on their help page. Request Anne with an E season 4 so they know you want the show to continue. There is also no limit to the number of times you submit requests.

https://help.netflix.com/en/titlerequest

https://help.disneyplus.com/csp

For Disney+ click “Give Feedback” then “Request a film or show” then you can type in Anne with an E season 4

2) Watch Anne with an E on Netflix. Just constantly stream it in the lead up to the season 3 premiere. When the show premieres Jan 3rd make sure you stream the new season that day and in the days after. Not only do we want Netflix to know that the new season has a big audience, but we also want as many people watching at the same time for the show to make it to the “Popular on Netflix” category. New people may be attracted to the show if they see it is popular on Netflix.

3) Write emails to Networks. Netflix and CBC are not the only options when it comes to Networks that could renew Anne with an E, since it seems that the rights to the show are currently owned by Northwood Entertainment the production company behind Anne with an E. Many other fans have done the hard work of compiling lists of emails of network executives. I will provide links to various tweets I have seen with important emails. (of note, most will probably not check their work emails again until after the holidays, so you can draft emails now and send them out after Jan 1st) Also below is a google doc that includes emails of many network executives.

https://twitter.com/LeaOux/status/1205485569691680768

https://twitter.com/KindredsParty/status/1208518970002870272

https://twitter.com/KatVal11/status/1206141522820976640

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1StN_dHgHjhPhYkfgS_7AbeMbmu0KXhrtJW1ytAASUaw/mobilebasic

Template for writing emails and email addresses to send emails to: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nkEu-ZyIiBkCABleKRBLU21T8lRSwRxwWXuVDZ7cxeo/mobilebasic

4) Write emails to magazines, newspapers, websites, etc. Any form of Press about Anne with an E will draw attention to the show from people who may not have heard of it before. You could write emails to ask them to cover the news of the show's cancellation, to review the new season, to discuss certain topics the show addresses that set it aside from other shows and more. Anything that you could dream up that could be an article that could be written about Anne With an E you could pitch the idea to someone to write about. 

5) Appealing to other fandoms with similar interests. Two big movies that are about to drop that have an audience that may be interested in a show like Anne With An E, would be Little Women and P.S. I Still Love You (To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before sequel). Little Women is also a period piece with a feminist heroine, so you could point out the similarities in the stories’ themes to appeal to fans of that film (which premieres Dec. 26th). For P.S. I Still Love You, the big connection is that in the third book of the To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy, Forever and Always, Lara Jean,  Lara Jean states that Gilbert Blythe is her ideal man. Screenshots of this quote have been going around all over tumblr and twitter since the P.S. I Still Love You trailer dropped. The selling point could be that if you enjoy the films and relate to Lara Jean then you should check out the stories and adaptions of those stories that Lara Jean considers peak romance. ( It also helps that the premise of the films relies on love letters and AWAE season 3 features love letters as well). When entering into other fandoms tags to recommend Anne With An E make sure you are always being RESPECTFUL and don’t just spam the tags with Anne promotion. You could always create side by side edits of the two programs to demonstrate how similar they are. Basically, make sure your posts in their tag don’t seem like a blatant promotion for AWAE.

6) Rate Anne with an E on IMDb. (Note: It is listed as Anne(2017) on IMDb). Right now Anne is listed in Top 250 TV Shows, but it is toward the bottom of the list at #248, with an average show rating of 8.4 stars. If enough fans rate it, the show could move up on the list, which may attract new people to watch the show. You can rate the show overall, and rate each episode individually. Plus you can leave a review. 

7) Watch the Anne With An E Netflix trailer and share it with others. The more views on the trailer the better. The trailer is available on Youtube and Instagram. On twitter, people are organizing trailer boosting parties for Dec 23rd - Dec 30th. 

This calendar shows when trailer boosting parties have been planned detailed descriptions of what those events include with links to tweets and posters

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=potatolightbulbs%40gmail.com&ctz=America%2FNew_York

8) Sign the petition for the show to be renewed and get anyone you know who likes the show as well to sign it as well.

https://www.change.org/p/netlfix-awae-fans-renew-anne-with-an-e-for-season-4?recruiter=916548586&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition

9) Recommend the show everywhere. On twitter search “What to watch on Netflix” or “tv show recommendation” and reply to any of these tweets with Anne With An E and maybe a reason why you recommend the show. If someone has already recommended Anne With An E don’t recommend it again, we don’t want to spam or annoy strangers. This can also be done on reddit search “What to watch” , “Netflix recommendations” , “Period Piece” and comment on any of the relevant results with Anne With An E.

10) Tell EVERYONE you know to watch Anne With an E. A great way to spread the popularity of the show is by word of mouth. People trust the opinions of people they know, so your friends and family are more likely to listen to your recommendations than strangers on the internet (but there is no harm in trying #9 anyway). 

11) Continue to be your amazing creative selves. Gif sets, fanart, video edits, memes, etc. All of these can help attract new fans to the show, so continue to create and post things related to Anne With An E.

12) Make bookmarks or small promotional posters and leave them in public places. I have seen a trend of this on twitter and it's not a bad idea. One amazing fan even took it to the next level and made tiny posters that have QR codes on it that when scanned takes people to the Anne with an E trailer or the show on Netflix. Below is a link to tweets showing what those looked like and how they dispersed them.

https://twitter.com/itsMaeWithAnE/status/1208618422768033792?s=20

Here is a tweet thread with templates for the posters if you want to print them out yourself:

https://twitter.com/itsMaeWithAnE/status/1208816797555671040?s=20

13) Buy official merchandise for the show and wear it around. You could be a walking advertisement for the show if you want (and can afford to). There is different merch available on the official Anne With An E shop website and on Amazon.  Also sales of the merch may be considered by networks when they consider whether to renew the show. 

https://shopannewithane.com

https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/A8C18641-8ECE-4892-A276-6A0A952A125C

14) Join the r/Anne community on reddit. There has been some encouragement to grow the size of the community on this thread because it shows a static number of how many people are apart of it. This number could be used to approximate how much interest there is in the show. It currently only has 2.5K members. Even if you’re not very active on reddit, joining the subreddit would be helpful.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anne/

15) Donate to the campaign to have a billboard to promote the show. Details can be found on the gofundme page.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/renew-anne-with-an-e?sharetype=teams&member=3295372&rcid=r01-157601384514-6d847f2ab5bb49bd&pc=tw_co_campmgmt_w&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet

16) Donate to campaign to run instagram ads for Anne With An E. More details on the gofundme page below.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/anne-with-an-e-season-3-ad-campaign

17) Let’s Make Some Noise Campaign. Some fans are encouraging people to write messages on white rags, like the ones the avonlea students use during their protest, and sending them to various streaming networks or Northwood Entertainment, the production company behind the show. Details can be found in the tweet below.

https://twitter.com/kindredsparty/status/1206624186342559745?s=21

18) Rate and review Anne With An E on Rotten Tomatoes. You can do this for each season. Currently there are a fair amount of negative reviews so it would be incredibly helpful to explain why you love the show. Good reviews would attract new potential fans to start watching.

19) Vote Anne With An E up on Ranker.com lists. This might attract new get people interested in the show if it consistently ranks high on lists of best shows.

https://m.ranker.com/list/the-best-new-original-shows-on-netflix-hulu-and-amazon-of-the-last-few-years/ranker-streaming?ref=also_ranked&pos=2&a=0&l=85370943&ltype=n&g=0

20) Take care of yourself. THIS ONE IS MOST IMPORTANT. Don’t sacrifice your health in your efforts to get the show renewed. If you need to take a break please do. Also don’t feel guilty if you need to step away or you can only do one or two things on this list. Every effort counts and is greatly appreciated.

I’ll try to update this as more stuff comes up. Good luck with all your efforts Kindred Spirits!

Remember “Dreamers change the world”

[mummybear]

Strangers In The Night - Part 6 - Too Soon

Words: 3181

Warnings: Swearing, Hurt/Comfort, Guilt, Mentions Of Past.... Think that’s it!

Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Bobby Singer, Veronica (OC), Sebastian (OC) 

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Veronica (OC)

A/N: I know it has been a long time since the series update but this will be the second to last chapter! So enjoy! Working on the final part now :)

Series Masterlist

Sam shifts awkwardly in his chair, very aware that he has probably just fucked up by letting Veronica walk out of that door. He wants to go after her but he knows that he can’t leave Seb and Dean on their own when they’re unconscious. Something isn’t sitting right with him, with the way that she’d left, not even able to really look at Dean, that just wasn’t her. She was incredibly hurt and blaming herself for everything that was happening to her brother and his own brother.  So he does the one and only thing that he can think of, calling the only man still alive that he trusts enough to protect his brother the same way he would.

Sam knows that Dean would never be able to live with himself if Veronica sacrificed her life for his. She was the only woman that wasn’t their mother that Dean had truly loved his entire life, no matter how much the pair of idiots danced around it, Sam knew better back then and he certainly knows better now. Pulling out his phone he dials Bobby’s number, hoping he’s not in the middle of a job, or worse that he’s completely out of reach.

The phone rings twice before someone picks up and sighs, clearly already irritated.

“What’ve you pair of idjits got yourselves into now?” 

Sam runs a hand through his hair looking over at his brother and has to swallow the lump in his throat before he can even attempt to speak.

“It’s Dean, Bobby. He’s really not doing so well, he was stabbed during a hunt and he’s in really bad shape. I need you to come here, I really need some help.” Sam tries to hide the shake in his voice but fails miserably.

“Hey kid, It’s gonna be fine, try not to think about the worst case. He’s tougher than he looks, I’ll be there in….” There’s a pause and Sam can hear swearing and banging around. “....Give me half an hour, I’ll be there as soon as I can.” 

“Thanks Bobby, V’s in trouble and I don’t want to leave him on his own, just in case. But I need to go and find her,” Sam pushes back the thought of losing his brother as soon as it enters his mind and clears his throat. “V’s brother is here too,” 

“I’m on my way, just hold tight and don’t do anything stupid, if you can manage that.” Bobby sighs but before Sam can speak up again, he hears Bobby calling his name. “I just remembered somethin’, Dean called me on the way back from mine the other day when Veronica was taken last time. Think you were sleepin’, said that he wanted me to track Veronica’s phone. So, it might be worth lookin’ into that.” 

Unfortunately Sam can’t let himself feel the relief that he should be able to. Because he’s almost certain that he already knows where she’s going at this point anyway and it won’t end well for any of them. 

With a final thank you and a quick goodbye to Bobby, Sam looks back down at his phone, worrying his lip between his teeth as his thumb hovers over the tracking app Bobby had sent him for Veronica’s phone. Knowing that he needs to confirm his suspicions, Sam finally caves and presses the screen and loads the app. 

Sighing deeply Sam looks over at his brother, as his suspicions are confirmed with a ping sounding from the app. With the direction that she’s heading in Veronica is far too close to a crossroads for Sam’s liking. Running a hand through his hair once more, he stands from his chair, pacing the floor between the two beds in the room, he’s way too nervous to sit still and all he can do now is wait for Bobby to turn up.

Twenty Minutes Later 

Sam gets what must be his tenth coffee in as many hours, still impatiently waiting until he can leave, Veronica is now just ten miles out from the biggest crossroads that Sam is aware of, according to the tracking app on her phone. She clearly doesn’t understand demons the way that he and Dean have learned to. Sam knows that as soon as any demon finds out his brother is injured and almost defenceless, they won’t think twice about tricking her and they’d be here seconds later killing him. The Winchesters were wanted dead and that’s the end of it, no demon would ever fall for that deal again.

When Sam looks up from his coffee he sees Bobby finally walking into the room, “well hell.” Bobby sighs, pulling up a seat at the side of Dean’s bed, after he claps Sam on the shoulder. 

“So, how bad is it? What’re we lookin’ at?” Bobby asks, looking like he might be a little nervous as he looks between an unconscious Dean and back at Sam.

Sam gives Bobby a brief run down of Dean’s condition, “the good news is the doctors are hopeful that he should continue to improve, since they got the results from the scan back and they aren’t as bad as the doc first thought. But Veronica left before they told me.” Sam reveals worriedly, standing from the chair to pull on his coat.

“You think she’s gonna make the deal?” Bobby asks, watching Sam carefully.

But before he can answer the Doctor interrupts, “any changes?” Sam asks immediately, stepping in front of the doctor.

The doctor offers Sam a gentle smile, patting him on the arm. “Your brother has improved significantly over the last hour, so we’re very hopeful. He may even wake up soon.” 

Sam turns to Bobby with a wide smile, finally allowing himself to take that breath he felt like he’d been holding since they’d arrived. 

“Thank you very much doctor, our dad is gonna stay with Dean, I just have to head out for a little bit. Just got a work thing to deal with,” Sam explains vaguely. 

The doctor turns to Bobby with a genuine smile and shakes his hand. 

“I’ll be back as soon as I have more information.” The doctor assures them both before leaving.

A groan from behind him makes Sam whip around, so many emotions washing over him all at once. He’s relieved to see his brother starting to come around, but he’s terrified of his reaction when he notices that she’s not there and that he’s the one that let V leave. Let alone what his reaction will be when he finds out where she’s gone and what she’s gonna do.

“Sammy. Bobby? Where’s V?” Dean grunts as he tries to sit up, Bobby gently pushes him back into the bed. 

“Boy, sit your ass down before you hurt yourself anymore.” Bobby huffs out, pulling Dean’s covers back up and pushing him back again when he tries to get up for the third time. 

“Don’t make me strap you down!” Bobby warns.

Sam looks at his brother and swallows hard, “It’s so good to see you awake Dean, we were so worried,” Sam smiles the best that he can but he can tell by the look on his brother’s face that he knows that Sam is hiding something. 

“Spit it out Sammy. What is it?” Dean grunts, holding a hand against his stomach as he shifts up the bed slightly. 

“Nothing Dean, just gonna go get some coffee, so uh yeah, be right back.” Sam tries to assure his brother, unfortunately before he can even turn away it’s immediately clear to everyone that Dean knows something is wrong and he isn’t convinced by what Sam is telling him.

“No you don’t, that’s not gonna work on me. Why the rush?” Dean demands gruffly, “you’re lying to me, Sammy. Spill it.” Dean warns him, a pained expression covering his face when he moves again and Sam sighs.

“Fine. It’s Veronica. She’s gone to do something stupid, so I need to go and stop her.” Sam relents finally.

“You’re fucking kidding me right? You let her leave? Sammy!” Dean exclaims, sounding exhausted and exasperated. 

“Son of a bitch.” Dean grunts finally dropping his legs over the side of the bed. Bobby rushes to his side trying to get him back into bed.

“Let me go! She’s gone to make a deal right?” Dean demands, causing Sam to wince a little at the look on his face and the sound of his voice.

“Dean, please I’m sorry. I’ll stop it!” Sam promises, shaking his head at Bobby. Both men know it’s no good to try and get him back in that bed right now.

Dean angrily rolls his eyes at his brother and almost falls to his knees when he finally stands from the bed but luckily Bobby catches him.

After changing a little awkwardly, Dean walks over to Sebastian’s bed. Frowning when he sees something white poking out from his hand. Dean carefully opens his hand and a note falls from it and onto the floor. Sam picks it up and hands it to his brother. Rushing to open it, Dean swallows hard when his eyes fall on her writing, he’d know it anywhere. 

Dean’s eyes flick over the words and he feels a pit hit his stomach growing considerably deeper, when her words confirm his worst fears. He wipes his eyes before the tears can fall, of course she’d blamed herself, just like he would but she didn’t deserve this weight on her chest. She’d done nothing wrong, she’d only tried to help people. 

-

Veronica feels every bump of the road as it moves beneath the wheels of the car she’d stolen back at the hospital. The tears haven’t stopped streaming down her red cheeks since she’d left their sides and all she can do is picture the two men she loves the most. Both unconscious and fighting for their lives, all because of her, both of them, both of those incredible men’s lives were threatened because of her. This was the only thing that she could do to help, even if it’s a little selfish, she needs them back and the world needs Dean Winchester alive. She hopes that once Dean and Sebastian wake up that they can forgive her for this. 

She’s not stupid, Veronica knows that the demon wont give her long to live, if she gets any time at all. The only thing she really wants is to see him wake up, for those gorgeous green eyes to be the last thing that she sees.

The road is beginning to blur again as the tears become too thick. She wipes them away with her sleeve and slows down, she doesn’t want to die before she gets there. Her heart feels like it’s breaking and it takes her everything to just keep her foot pressed against the gas. Her phone has been ringing for the last half an hour, she wants to answer it, to look at it but she can’t bring herself to see the bad news. Whatever it is, it can wait because she can’t allow herself to think about what it might be, not right now, she’s just about holding herself together as it is. 

There isn’t much further to go now and all she can think about is Dean, his huge smile that day at school when they’d first met. Their nights down at the lake, the way they would just sit for hours and talk, there had always been more there between them but they’d ignored it. Now it’s all she can think about, the life that they might have had. It wouldn’t have been perfect but they would’ve had each other at least.

Veronica hopes he finds someone who will treat him the way that he deserves, she just wants him to be happy. The ringing of her phone once again makes her sigh, glancing down at it for what feels like the hundredth time she sees Dean’s name flashing on the screen. But it couldn’t be him, right? Sam had to be using his phone. Yeah, that was it. Yet there’s something that tells her she should answer it. 

Swallowing hard she finally gives in, picking up the phone she presses answer and holds the phone to her ear. 

“I’m fine Sam, please just stop calling. I’m just getting some air.” She says into the phone before anyone on the other line can speak. But she’s met with static noise.

Clearly the hospital signal wasn’t great. Sighing, she drops the phone into the passenger's seat. 

-

“Son of a bitch!” Dean shouts, throwing his phone at his brother who catches it with ease. “Signal crapped out, she didn’t hear me.”

“Dean, it’s gonna be okay. We’ll get there in time.” Sam tells him, trying to comfort his brother but knowing that his tone is less than convincing. 

Angry tears fill Dean’s eyes but he blinks them away, looking back at Bobby and Seb in the backseat.

“How is he?” Dean asks in an effort to distract himself.

Bobby checks him over again quickly for what feels like the hundredth time at Dean’s request.

“Yeah. Same as last time, he’s fine son. Stop worryin’” Bobby assures the eldest Winchester, acknowledging Dean’s nod with one of his own, watching his knuckles go white with the grip that he has on the steering wheel.

Dean leans over with a grunt, popping a few of the pain meds he’d swiped from the hospital and swallowing them dry. He knows he’s basically gonna be useless in this upcoming fight but he doesn’t let that stop him, his foot pressed flat to the floor as the Impala barrels down the final stretch of road, which he knows leads to the crossroads.

He keeps thinking about what he’s gonna say to her but he doesn’t know, he just wants her where she belongs again, back in his arms and this time he’s never letting her go. Why couldn’t he have woken up sooner, then she never would’ve left, this was all his fault, how could she think this is what she needs to do. It’s all very well for everyone to keep telling him to stop worrying, for the longest time he felt like that was all he did. He remembers a few days ago where he had shared V’s bed, when he’d woken up that morning with her in his arms and realised he’d never felt more at home in his life.

The impala comes to a screeching stop, just in time not to bump into the back of a car abandoned on the road. Dean doesn’t even think before he all but falls out of the car, quickly followed by Sam and Bobby. 

“Someone needs to stay with Seb,” Dean states firmly, loading his gun and pushing it into his jeans before grabbing the demon blade and some holy water.

“That should probably be you,” Bobby sighs as soon as the words leave his lips at the look on Dean’s face and holds up his hands.

“I know, I know. I’m stayin’ with the kid. I know you better than that, ya stubborn ass.” Bobby huffs climbing into the passengers' side in case they need a quick get away. 

“Just be careful.” The older man warns him. 

Dean nods at Bobby, silent appreciation passing between them, turning his attention to the tracks visibly leading away from the abandoned car with Sam following closely behind him. 

They keep their movements slow and careful, not wanting to startle the demon into hurting Veronica. It doesn’t take them long to spot either though, engaged in a fight which has even the Winchesters wincing. They watch in horror as Veronica is thrown halfway across the road. 

In a practised move Dean tosses Sam the demon knife and he goes for the demon, while Dean runs straight for Veronica.

Unable to stop the wince as he breaks into a run, Dean falls skidding to his knees at her side. He gasps in relief when her eyes flutter open, watching the mix of emotions that rush through her beautiful eyes in a split second. She’s covered in bruises and blood, cuts and scrapes but he only sees the girl from his childhood and the woman he’s been in love with for almost his entire life. 

“Sweetheart, are you okay?” he asks gently, gritting his teeth as he pulls her into his lap the best that he can. 

Veronica shifts in his arms, a shaking hand reaches up to his face and cups his cheek, like she’s checking to see if he’s actually there, if he’s real. Dean lets his eyes flutter closed briefly.

“Dean?” She gasps through a choked sob, “you’re okay. But, how are you okay? I don’t understand.” She rambles off in confusion, tears streaking down her face.

Dean smiles down at her as his eyes open once more, giving her hand a gentle squeeze when she searches his hand out. 

“We can talk later sweetheart, can you walk? We need to go.” 

“Y-Yeah, I think so.” She half mumbles, letting Dean help her to stand. Both of them glanced over just in time to see Sam plunge the knife into the demon's stomach. 

“Wait. Seb? Where’s my brother?” She asks urgently, pulling away in an effort to sprint towards the car. 

Luckily Dean catches her hand before she gets too far. 

“Hey! Veronica, come on. Did you really think I wouldn’t bring him?” Dean asks, sounding a little hurt.

Veronica sighs with relief when the two of them round the corner and she spots her brother in the back of the impala. “Sorry,” she smiles awkwardly at Dean, “I just panicked. Who’s that?.” Veronica frowns at the older man in the car, she swears that she recognises.

Dean chuckles lightly, “yeah, we’ve got a lot to talk about sweetheart. I’ll give you the rundown on the way back to the bunker.” 

“Okay Dean, I’d like that. Thank you,” she tells him gently. A thought that crosses her mind makes her smile widely.

“You can finally show me what it looks like when Dean Winchester has a bedroom. You always said that you had an idea of what you wanted when you finally had a permanent home.” She tells him, smiling at the memory of those same green eyes.

“You still remember that?” He asks surprised as the pair come to a stop right beside the impala. Veronica gives Sam a quick smile when he walks past them and squeezes her shoulder, watching him climbing into the impala. Before she turns her attention back to Dean.

“Of course I do, we talked about it alot. I haven’t stopped thinking about a lot of things, since I almost lost you, again.” 

“Yeah well, I hope you enjoyed the break. Because that isn’t happening again.” Dean winks, making her laugh.

But the laughter is cut short when Bobby starts honking the horn repeatedly. The door swings open and Bobby hollers out the door, “get your asses movin’! We’ve got company!”

Tags: @chewie-redbird @julzdec @lettersofwrittencollective @stiles-o-dylan24 @mogaruke @all-alone-he-turns-to-stone @dylanholyhellobrien @desireepow-1986 @emichelle @lilulo-12 @22sarah08 @deanwanddamons @simsadventures  @charmed-asylum @nicole-lynne @hazel-eye-coffee-shop-girl-blog​ @defenderrosetyler @emilyshurley @emoryhemsworth @foxyjwls007 @mylovelydame21 @sunshineandwings86 @akshi8278 @peaches009 @fandom-princess-forevermore @flamencodiva @hobby27 @akshi8278 @littlelonewolfgirl @ladywinchester1967 @screechingartisancashbailiff @maddiepants @spnfanfic-reblogs​ @holylulusworld @mrswhozeewhatsis @sonofabringmesomepie @mrsjenniferwinchester @hhiggs​ @pisces-cutie @trina44sb @heartsaved @matsumama @adoptdontshoppets

[pertinax--loculos]

Weekly Update 29/08

Note: shaking up the format this week, mostly because I just can't stop talking. These updates are gonna become purely about draft progress -- I'm going to include the titles of the books I've read/am reading at the end, but will post my thoughts separately as something of a 'review' (which will likely just be a collation of my stream-of-consciousness thoughts. Or just those thoughts unedited, depending how I feel). I'm also going to post the excerpt in a dedicated post of its own, so keep an eye out for that! ;)

Currently Writing Absent That Night (tagged: WIP: ATN)

wordcount this week:  19,981

total wordcount: 58,127(note: I know this jumped; it's because I realised that I was a week behind with adding to the total ooops)

[new addition] total time writing: 9hrs 10min

re: the above point -- I think this is a much more productive way of tracking my progress. As I've mentioned, I'm an egregious overwriter, so wordcount goals really don't motivate me too much (I could get 1000 words down and only be like a quarter of the way into the scene dear god help editing this is gonna be hellacious). So I think by scheduling time instead, it's going to force me to be a lot more productive and hopefully get me well on my way to my goal deadline!

re: deadline -- need to do a proper recalculation of where I actually am, because I think I'm a little bit behind. Something to do for next week, however!

I've also started pretty hardcore scheduling this week. It's kinda a mess due to my ridiculously inconsistent work schedule (and the way they often ask me like three hours beforehand if I want to take a shift), but it's great to have time blocked out for certain things. Definitely gonna continue it until this draft is finished, and then reassess whether I like it or whether I'd prefer something more flexible/any other adjustments

briefly considered/considering swapping to google docs for convenience's sake, but I am a) Wary of The Cloud and b) I am not using a writing app where I have to hit two buttons to get italics. I use far too many goshdarned italics to goshdarned do that fucking bullshit. The fact that text colour is still easily accessible but italics is not also makes me unreasonably angry

so instead I'm trying evernote. ^_^ Seems okay so far...?

[deleted a rant about evernote as well given that I figured out what was annoying me and we’re all good now 😅]

work is legit fucking killing me, man. The work itself is not too hard, but being essentially on-call (because I still don't have a roster so need to take the shifts in case I don't get others) makes scheduling so damn hard. I was literally halfway through a scene the other day when I had to stop and do Life Things before my unplanned shift. I'm thankful I have a job I can go to during lockdown, but dear lord I cannot wait until I know how many shifts I have and can a) plan around that and b) say fucking no if I want to

seriously considering dropping one of my suspect subplots. I keep forgetting about it, and the plan was always to dead-end it at the midpoint anyway. Plus I think including that one I have... seven? serious suspects, so could probably go with some simplifying. 😅 At the moment I'm thinking I'll leave it out, and if I think the next section needs the extra tension or anything I'll write as though it's there and add it in later if needed

honestly the difference between writing a scene I've had planned/been looking forward to and one which is only a vague notion/I've added because it's 'required' is stark. I just absolutely blow through the former, and sometimes it's like pulling teeth with the latter. But I am getting them done! They just take a right chunk of time sometimes. -.-

related to this, I really need to get my ass in gear with some scene-by-scene planning of Act II. Goal it to at least get some ideas for scenes jotted down for the first half this week!

think I do actually dislike writing at night. I've been forced to by work a couple times this week, and the problem is I stay up too late, and even then sometimes don't complete the scenes (which is generally my aim). But also, it puts my brain in Writing Mode, which not only makes it harder to sleep, but also generally results in my crafting beautiful sentences and even whole scenes whilst I'm trying to sleep that I promptly forget upon waking the next morning. Ugh

this week I also managed to stumble over some books that seem to fit the same genre as ATN. Not 100% on what that genre actually is (still) but there does seem to be a (niche?) area of paranormal/fantasy/crime/mystery-that-is-not-set-in-a-contemporary world (ie not exactly urban-fantasy/mystery). Definitely have added all the ones I've found so far to the reading list!

clearly I have hit the middle of this draft, because I've been hit hard by a Shiny New Idea. Amalgamating all the advice I've read on the subject, I've jotted down all my thoughts and put it to the side until I finish this damned draft first

ultimately, still having fun, still loving this world and all the characters, still loving attempting to work to a deadline. Everything is shiny and happy this week. ^_^ Let's hope it stays that way ahaha... ha.

 This week's goal: complete minimum five scenes; map out scene-by-scene guide for first half of Act II

As far as reading... current read: Midnight, Water City by Chris McKinney

finished Survive the Night by Riley Sager

[chipper9906]

Bound To You - Chapter 3: Internal Talks

<--- Previous Chapter

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR SEASON 15

NOTE: Pairings and Ratings Will Change As Story Is Updated

Pairings: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester

Rating: General Audiences

Chapter Word Count: 6,133

Overall Word Count: 17,730

Status: Multi Chapter Fic - In Progress (3/?)

Chapter Preview: 

“You know, just once it’d be nice for the Universe not to screw us over. You’d think we’d earned a break by now-,”

Dean was interrupted by a splash of holy water hitting his face, about half of it getting into his mouth. He scrunched his eyes shut against the onslaught of water, swinging his mouth closed and leaning his head to the side to spit the holy water onto the floor.

“Fair enough…” Dean mumbled, pulling up the bedsheets and drying off his face. “Pretty sure soaking a cripple on his first day earns you a one-way ticket to Hell, Sammy.”

Link To Fic

OR

Click Below To Keep Reading

Character Key For Telepathic Conversations

'Italic Text' - Castiel

'Bold Text' - Dean

* * *

Seeing his older brother like this was heart-breaking.

They had both had their fair share of injuries. A few stints in hospitals across the country over the years. Of course, the introduction of Castiel into their lives had dramatically reduced those visits, having their own personal angel who was willing to heal up any scrape or… potentially life-threatening injuries.

Dean had always been a pillar of strength in his life. Only in rare times did he ever see his brother look so broken, so dependant on another. Now, seeing his frail body in this hospital bed, surrounded by multiple beeping machines with countless wires coming out of him… it was a sight he almost couldn’t bear to see.

Eileen’s gentle touch on his shoulder pulled his gaze away from Dean. He turned on the uncomfortable plastic chair to face her, giving her an appreciative smile as she handed him yet another cup of coffee.

“Are you sure you don’t want to try and get some sleep?” Eileen asked him, rubbing her hand across his back soothingly. “I can stay here and watch over him.”

“I’m okay,” Sam brushed off her concern, though made sure to brush her arm by his back to show his thanks for her worry. “I don’t want to leave him yet… I’ll have to get back to the bunker soon anyway to pick up some stuff for him. Ah, and... I’ll have to try and find a pet-friendly motel nearby…”

Eileen’s hand paused on his back. “…Why?”

“Oh, right, I forgot to tell you,” Sam said with an amused huff. “We, uh- Dean actually found this dog after… after Chuck wiped everyone off the board. She got wiped away too shortly after because Chuck… well, he’s Chuck. She was brought back when everyone else got brought back and… Dean couldn’t leave her there.”

“Didn’t you say Dean wasn’t really a fan of dogs?”

“I think Miracles an exception. Don’t tell him I said this, but… I think Miracle is the only thing keeping Dean together after what happened to Cas. He’s not doing great even with her, but if she wasn’t here with us…” Sam closed his eyes, shaking his head as the awful memories flooded back. “You didn’t see him when Cas died right as Jack was being born. Mom was gone, and we had to see Lucifer shove that angel blade right through Cas, and… he couldn’t move. He dropped down by Cas’s side, and… He wasn’t the same until Jack brought Cas back. It was scary to see him that way. The anger I could deal with, you know? It was how Dean coped, finding something to blame, and… he directed all that at Jack. But when he wasn’t angry… it was like a part of him died with Cas. Like he wanted to just… give up.”

“They really mean a lot to each other, don’t they?” Eileen said wistfully.

“You have no idea,” Sam chuckled. “According to Cas, he and Dean ‘share a more profound bond’.”

“A what?”

“Cas’s words, not mine,” Sam raised his hands in the air with another short burst of laughter. “I assumed it was because Cas rescued Dean from hell, but Cas did the same for me and we never formed a ‘profound bond’ like Cas has with Dean.”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you sound jealous,” Eileen teased him, giving his shoulder a light squeeze with a playful smile.

"Oh, trust me – I’m glad Cas directed most of his attention towards Dean. Do you have any idea the number of times I’ve been caught in the middle of the conversation between the two of them with just their eyes? Cas got better over time, but the staring? He was always kind of awkward with stuff like that, but with Dean… they somehow managed to talk to each other entirely with looks.”

“It makes sense,” Eileen noted. “Cas probably learned a lot about humans from Dean. He’s probably able to get a better read from Dean on how he feels by looking at him than just listening to him. I know I haven’t known Dean as long as you guys have, but I get the feeling Dean isn’t the kind of guy to tell the truth when it comes to how he feels?”

“It’s a rare occasion…” Sam mumbles. “I made the mistake of asking him what actually happened to Cas. He told me and Jack that Cas died to save him, but that was it. I know it’s painful for Dean, but… I miss Cas too… He’s one of my oldest friends, and I don’t even know how he died.”

“What happened when you asked?” Eileen pried.

“Just repeated what he told me before. Said ‘Cas saved my life, Sammy. That’s all you need to know’. Next morning, I found him slumped over the library table with books about the afterlife splayed about the place and an empty bottle of scotch in his hands.”

“Afterlife? You think he was trying to find a way to get Cas out of the Empty?”

“Must have been. I’d done the same… but there’s barely anything about the Empty in any of the documents the Men of Letter’s keep. It’s been so unknown for so long there’s just… nothing about it anywhere.” Sam told her, a hint of frustration creeping into his voice.

“Hm… I know if our roles were swapped, and it was you trapped in that place? I don’t think I’d be coping much better than Dean is.”

Something about the sentiment behind Eileen’s words sparked a realization within Sam’s mind. His gaze switched from Eileen to his brother, his face slipping into an expression of pity as all the strange moments between his best friend and his brother connected in his mind. “Oh, Dean… you’re never going to get over him, are you?”

“No, he won’t,” Eileen said, her words getting Sam to turn and face her again. “What Dean’s lost… you never really get over it. The pain never truly lessens, but… you get used to it.”

* * *

Sam had been slumped over in his chair, dead to the world when he was woken abruptly by Eileen roughly shoving his shoulder.

“Sam!” She called his name urgently. “Sam, it’s Dean! I think he’s waking up.”

Sam snapped back into consciousness at that, blinking rapidly to adjust to the bright lights of the hospital room. His gaze landed on Dean’s form, his breath hitching in surprise as Dean’s eyes flutter open. He sees the moment Dean truly comes to, eyes widening in panic at the unfamiliar surroundings. Dean raises his hand to his nose immediately, very nearly tugging out the IV line in his hand as he attempted to remove the nasal cannula wrapped around his face.

The doctor from before was by Dean’s bedside before Sam could even fully stand from his chair, who was forced to stand awkwardly behind the Doctor as he looked over Dean.

“Mr. Winchester? I’m Dr. Sullivan, I’m a surgeon here at Aultman Hospital in Canton, Ohio,” Dr. Sullivan told Dean as he gently pried Dean’s hands away from the fragile medical equipment. “Do you understand what I’ve told you so far?”

Dean’s panicked eyes fixated on Dr. Sullivan, giving a quick nod of his head at the doctor's question.

“Where’s Sammy?” Were the first words Dean croaked out.

“Your brother is right here, Mr. Winchester,” The doctor stepped off to the side, placing Sam into Dean’s line of vision. The panic visibly dropped away from Dean’s expression the second he caught sight of Sam. Then, Dean’s gaze slid over to where Eileen hovered nearby Sam, his face quickly twisting in confusion as he took her in.

“Now, I just need to perform a few quick checks on you, Mr. Winchester.” Dr. Sullivan continued on, not privy to the dumbfoundment Dean was currently trying to work through. “Can you tell me your name?”

“Dean,” Dean answered, knowing there was no point in giving a fake name seeing as the Doctor already knew his last time. “My name is Dean Winchester.”

“Fantastic,” Dr. Sullivan commented with an encouraging smile. “And we’ve already gathered that you know your brother and what his name is, so I guess we can skip that one. Do you remember what happened to you?”

Dean turned anxious eyes over to his brother. It was very unlikely that Sam told the Doctor what actually happened. Otherwise, the Doctor wouldn’t be holding together his professionalism quite as well as he is right now.

“I was attacked,” Dean went with something safe. “I… there was this metal bar… it went through me.”

“Good,” Dr. Sullivan said. Dean almost laughed. How was that good? “How do you feel?”

“Like I got impaled by a metal pole…” Dean responded dryly, wincing at the pulsating ache that sat within his back.

The Doctor cracked a sly smile at Dean’s comment, pulling a clipboard off the end of Dean’s bed. “Sense of humor’s good, a good way to cope. But to be more specific Mr. Winchester, I need you to rate your pain on a scale from one to ten. One being mild discomfort and ten being the worst.”

“Probably around a six,” Dean answered truthfully. Sure, the ache in his back was painful, but he knows it could be worse.

“Okay…” Dr. Sullivan mumbled under his breath as he scribbled away at his clipboard. “Your IV drip is attached to a steady supply of morphine right now; It should help to dull some of the more intense pain, but the effects may begin to wear off after some time. If the pain gets worse, let us know and we’ll up the dose for you.”

“Eh… I’ve been through worse, Doc.” Dean let his head drop back into the scratchy hospital pillow, closing his eyes against the bright ceiling lights.

“I’m not too sure I believe that Mr. Winchester. Though I can tell you you’re a lucky, lucky man.”

“Yeah? I don’t feel too lucky…”

“I’m not sure what else you’d call surviving a rebar to the chest other than ‘lucky’. How it missed all of your organs…” The doctor’s voice trailed off as he shifted off to a table to the side, plucking up a pair of latex gloves and snapping them on his hands. “Now, Mr. Winchester… during your surgery, we discovered some severe damage to your thoracic lumbar-,”

“My what?” Dean interrupted Dr. Sullivan.

“It’s the section of your spine just below your shoulder blades, running to the center of your back,” Dr. Sullivan answered. “When the rebar entered your back, it was forced in between two of your vertebrae. Those two were shattered, and a few above and below were fractured and pushed out of alignment. The damage to the vertebrae themselves, we were actually able to fix for the most part with the help of some titanium pins. Unfortunately, we noticed some evidence of trauma to your spinal cord.”

Sam’s heart twisted in sympathy at the way his brother's face fell. Perhaps Dean had been expecting to hear this, for he didn’t look shocked by the doctor’s words, but he most definitely looked crushed.

The doctor peeled back the sheets covering Dean, exposing his lower body to them. The doctor stepped down to the end of the bed, pressing a glove covered finger into the middle of the underside of Dean’s foot. “Can you feel this, Mr. Winchester?”

Dean couldn’t only weakly shake his head side to side, not trusting his voice to keep steady right now. He followed the doctor’s movement as he straightened back up, taking a step forward and placing a hand over Dean’s lower leg, giving his calf a gentle squeeze. “How about this?”

Again, Dean shakes his head no.

“Can you try moving your legs for me? Nothing too strenuous, just a small shift to the side will do.”

Dean stared down at his legs lying motionless on the hospital bed, certain he had never concentrated on a part of his body so hard in order to get it to move. But… no matter how hard he tries to get his legs to move… they don’t. Nothing happens, not even a twitch of his muscles. They just… lay there.

Dean doesn’t have to say anything for them to know he couldn’t do it. His face said it all.

“I’m going to touch your upper body now, okay Mr. Winchester? We just need to get an idea of where the paralysis starts.”

Paralysis. That single word bounced around in Dean’s skull. It… it couldn’t be possible. That happened to other people. It… it couldn’t happen to him, could it?

Dean’s thoughts are interrupted by the doctor’s prying fingers pressing against his ribs. Dean instinctively hisses at the pain – healed, but still sore- raising an arm to swat away the Doctor’s hand.

Wait a minute… He could feel that.

“Well, Mr. Winchester, it seems you are just full of surprises,” Dr. Sullivan said with a pleased smile. “We assumed that, with the damage, you would have lost all feeling below the injury. Seems like you still have some sensation of touch in your upper body, and we’ve already seen that you still retain full control of your arms. I think we’re well past calling you ‘lucky’. It’s a damn right miracle.”

“And what about my legs?” Dean couldn’t help but ask. “Will they… will they be like this forever? Could they heal?”

Doctor Sullivan sighed, peeling the gloves off his hands. “I want to be honest with you here; it’s very unlikely for you to regain feeling in your legs. I’m not one to say never however, and with the rapid advances of modern medicine, we really never know. But I also don’t want to give you false hope, Mr. Winchester.”

“So, this is it?” The defeated tone in Dean’s voice crumpled what was left of Sam’s strength. “I can’t walk?”

“For the time being… no. I’m sorry, Mr. Winchester. I truly am,” Dr. Sullivan shifted his sympathetic expression over to Sam and Eileen, giving them a respectful nod as he began shuffling over to the exit of the room. “I’ll be back later to run some more tests. I’ll give you three a moment.”

“Thanks, Doctor,” Sam just about got out before Dr. Sullivan slipped out of the room. Dean was staring dejectedly down at his legs, willing them to suddenly fix themselves and start moving again. Sam shot an anxious look over to Eileen, who looked torn between comforting Dean or comforting Sam.

“…You okay, Dean?” Sam asked, taking a few awkward steps closer to his brother’s side. The glare Dean shot up at him answered his question in more ways than words could. The glare quickly dropped from Dean’s face, crumpling in on himself, trying to hide away from his brother’s woeful gaze.

“I’ll be fine,” Dean assured them, putting on a clearly fake smile. “I’ll get used to it… ‘s gonna take some adjusting, is all.”

“Do you need anything?” Eileen offered timidly, hanging by Sam’s side. “Some water, maybe?”

“Could use a stiffer drink than that,” Dean joked. “Could also use an explanation as to how you’re here? You were gone when Chuck snapped everyone away.”

“Well…” Eileen said uncomfortably, sharing a worried look with Sam. “I don’t actually know…”

“It’s one of many things we’re trying to figure out. Shortly after I got you here, Eileen was dropped back where she was.” Sam said.

“What, two weeks after everyone came back?”

“Seems like it,” Sam said.

Dean leaned his head back, closing his eyes with an exasperated sigh. Sam took the opportunity of Dean averting his eyes to reach into his pocket, pulling out a metal flask and quietly unscrewing the lid.

“You know, just once it’d be nice for the Universe not to screw us over. You’d think we’d earned a break by now-,”

Dean was interrupted by a splash of holy water hitting his face, about half of it getting into his mouth. He scrunched his eyes shut against the onslaught of water, swinging his mouth closed and leaning his head to the side to spit the holy water onto the floor.

“Fair enough…” Dean mumbled, pulling up the bedsheets and drying off his face. “Pretty sure soaking a cripple on his first day earns you a one-way ticket to Hell, Sammy.”

Before Dean could crack another joke, Sam had slid the angel blade out of his pocket, advancing towards Dean. He could see the moment Dean recognized what was in his hands, eyes widening in alarm as Sam moved closer.

“Woah, Woah, wait – Sammy!”

Sam didn’t let him say anything else, He grabbed his brother by the arm, pulling it straight and slicing across the tender skin. To Sam’s horror, the cut that appeared quickly flared with a bluish light, stitching up the small gash instantaneously. Sam’s eyes flickered up to see that same blue light appear in Dean’s eyes, completely overtaking the green of his irises until all Sam could see was that dazzling blueish white light.

“Sam, stop!” Dean’s posture had changed completely. He had straightened up as much as his damaged spine would let him, his movements stiff and uncoordinated as he reached out a hand to stop Sam. His voice had dropped a few octaves, impossibly deep in tone to the point it sounded like Dean’s vocal cords were being shredded apart.

Sam pressed the angel that was possessing his brother into the bed with one hand on its shoulder, holding the angel blade against its neck. The thing using Dean’s eyes glances down anxiously to the blade, the angel’s hand on his arm insistently pushing him away. Eileen stood nearby, checking the door to make sure no one would come into the room.

“Stop cutting Dean,” The angel commanded urgently. “I don’t have enough grace left to keep healing him like this.”

“Which one are you?” Sam spat at him, pressing the blade even closer as a threat. “Why the hell are you possessing my brother?”

“To save his life,” The angel insisted. “And to save mine. Sam, it’s me. It’s Cas.”

Sam blinked in surprise, lessening the pressure on Dean’s neck without really thinking about it. “Cas? No, that’s… that’s not possible… Dean said, he… You’re dead.”

“And so was Eileen,” Castiel pointed out, giving a small nod of his head towards the woman in question, careful not to catch himself on the blade against his neck.

“I don’t believe you,” Sam said with a shake of his head. “You can’t be Cas. You just… you can’t be.”

“When we first met, Dean had to stop you from shooting me,” Castiel began, the statement catching Sam off guard. “You were rather star-struck upon meeting me; having been the first time you had met an angel. My opinion of you at the time was rather harsh: the boy with the demon blood. But Dean helped me to see you in a different light. In the way he sees you. It was enough for me to be willing to dive back into Hell and recover your soul after you sacrificed yourself for the world.”

Sam was frozen in place, gaze fixated on the eyes that were his brothers, but also weren’t.

“Once, years after meeting you, I realized just how similar we were. Our fear of failing those we love, of letting down those we lead. Our willingness to sacrifice ourselves for the ‘greater good’. You nearly got yourself killed trying to make things right, to track down Gadreel and bring him to justice. But I wouldn’t do what you asked. I had to make you see your life was more valuable than that.”

The blade slipped away from Cas’s neck, held loosely in Sam’s hand as he stared down at Dean Cas in disbelief. “…Cas?

Castiel visibly relaxed as the blade dropped away from his neck, giving Sam a firm nod in response. Sam stood agape for a few more seconds before throwing himself forward, wrapping an arm around the back of his neck and pulling Cas into an awkwardly angled hug. Sam knew it was definitely Cas when Dean’s hands come to rest at his back, giving Sam a few clumsy pats before committing to the hug and squeezing Sam closer.

Yep. That’s Cas, alright.

“How the hell are you alive?” Sam asked once they broke apart, glancing over to Eileen to gauge her reaction. Eileen was still stood by the door, looking unsure as to what she should do now. Sam tucked the angel blade back into his jacket, sitting back down in the chair next to Dean’s bed. “Dean said you were gone?”

“I was,” Cas answered. “I’m… I’m sorry I didn’t tell you or your brother. Dean knows now of course, but… I had made a deal.”

“What kind of deal?” Eileen asked warily from beside the door, eyes flickering between Sam and Castiel. “A demon deal?”

Castiel shook his head. “I have no soul to barter with a Demon, so, no. This was shortly after Jack had succumbed to his illness, you see. When I found him in Heaven, we were being chased by the Empty.”

“The Empty can get into Heaven?” Sam asked.

“Apparently so. It believed that, since Jack was part angel, he belonged to the Empty after death. However, Heaven had already claimed Jack, because of his soul. I didn’t have a choice, Sam. I offered myself up to the Empty in exchange for Jack’s life. The Empty took that deal.”

“But… it’s been over a year since we lost Jack,” Sam questioned, brows furrowing in his confusion. “Why hadn’t the Empty taken you? Why now?”

Castiel tore his gaze away from Sam, looking at anything in the room other than the two pairs of peering eyes. “The Empty added an extra part to our deal. It would only take me… once I experienced a moment of true happiness.”

Sam glanced over to Eileen at this, matching expressions of wonder on their faces. It was rare to see Castiel this uncomfortable during a conversation.

“Billie was dying, and she wanted to take me and Dean with her,” Castiel continued before Sam could add anything.  “Dean and I had barely just escaped her for the moment, but I could only buy us a few extra minutes before she got to us. So… I did the only thing I could. I summoned the Empty by fulfilling our deal, and it took Billie with me.”

“And… you fulfilled your deal by… experiencing a moment of true happiness?” Sam timidly asked.

“Yes,” Castiel was still refusing to meet Sam’s gaze, staring down at his hands in his lap.

“…You’re not going to tell me what that was, are you?”

“No.”

Castiel’s answer wasn’t all too surprising to Sam. While it was true that Castiel had opened up to him more over the years they’ve known each other, he was still quite reserved when it came to these kinds of things. Probably something he picked up from Dean… And yet, Castiel’s hesitation actually gave away more than he was probably intending to. A moment of true happiness. Castiel had managed to experience a moment of true happiness – with Dean. And now, as Sam thinks to the extra bottles of beer he found lying around the Bunker, and Dean’s sudden urge to be all cuddly with Miracle… he’s beginning to understand why Dean had been mourning Cas just a little differently than he had last time.

“Cas… if the deal was fulfilled, then… how did you get out?” Sam asked.

Castiel was grateful for the subject change, some of the tension in his posture slipping away. “Your brother, I believe. When Dean was… when he was dying, he began praying to me.”

“He reached you in the Empty?” Eileen asked, voice alight with incredulity.

“Dean and I… our bond is rare. There aren’t many angels that know humans on a personal level. Most prayers to angels are of the common ones we get: asking for help, for guidance, for a show of faith. They’re rarely ever directed at those individual angels. And they’re never usually packed with so much emotion. Especially not… not…”

“Not what?” Sam pressed on.

“Those emotions aren’t typically for that angel. Jack was able to reach me in the Empty with a combination of his powers, and his desire to have me back. Dean was able to reach me through his fear of death, his desperation to have someone save him… and his longing to see me again.”

Sam didn’t really know how he was supposed to respond to that. This was a conversation about his brother that seemed a bit more… intimate than he’s comfortable with. Especially when he knows Dean is sat somewhere within his own body, perhaps even listening into their conversation right now.

“Wow… Uh, I mean - - I’m still a little shell shocked at the minute… Don’t get me wrong, I’m… I’m thrilled to have you back, Cas. I missed you. You and Jack. Except, at least with Jack I knew he was still here, but… you were dead, and Dean wouldn’t talk to me about it, and… it’s all been a bit much.”

“I can imagine,” Castiel said with an understanding smile.

“What’s the deal with… you know-” Sam gestured to Dean’s body. “-This. Why are you possessing Dean? What happened to your body?”

Castiel opened his mouth to answer when an odd look twisted across his features. It almost looked like he was trying to listen for something, his eyes dull and unfocused.

“Uh… Cas?” Sam asked, snapping his fingers in front of Cas’s face. “You there, man?”

“Yes,” Castiel answered, a bit more clarity coming into his eyes. “Apologies, but Dean is getting rather uncomfortable being ‘forced into the passenger’s seat’.” Castiel raised his hands to place quotation marks over the words.

“Okay… what does that-,”

Dean’s body straightened up again, eyes flashing with angelic grace before returning to the usual soft green eyes of his brother. Dean blinked in a daze as he came back into his own body, giving a little shiver to try and clear the odd feeling.

“Man, that’s gonna take some getting used to,” Dean muttered, his voice raised back to his usual tone. “I’m kinda glad Michael placed me into that fake dream world while he was possessing me…”

“You say that like this isn’t going to be temporary…” Sam noted.

“For the time being… this is all we’ve got,” Dean replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “Cas is too weak to jump into another vessel after using up nearly all his grace to keep my dumb ass from dying. So yeah, for the time being, Cas is shacking up in my head.”

“For how long?”

“No idea. Current plan of action is to find a way to recreate his body again.”

“Recreate?” Eileen spluttered, interjecting into the brother’s conversation.

“Doesn’t sound easy, does it?” Dean replied gloomily. “The Empty pretty much deleted Cas’s body when it took him. No way of getting it back…”

“Well, what about his grace?” Sam threw out the suggestion. “Isn’t there a way we can ‘recharge’ it back to normal levels?”

‘Not without potentially throwing Heaven into chaos, no.’

Dean startled so harshly at the voice in his head that it got Sam to his feet in seconds, ready to sprint out of the room and find a Doctor in the fear that his brother was having some sort of seizure.

“Jesus, Cas!” Dean spoke out loud to the room, only confusing Sam and Eileen more. “How the hell did you do that?”

‘Do what? Talk to you? Like this.’

‘Yeah, but you’re talking in my head.’

‘As are you.’

‘What?’

‘You’re not speaking out loud, Dean. Only I can hear you when we talk like this.’

“Dean!”

Dean snapped back to reality at his brother’s distraught voice. Sam was shaking his shoulder whilst Eileen had seemingly teleported to his side, an equally anxious look on her face.

“What the hell was that, Dean?” Sam demanded. “You just zoned out on us!”

‘You’ll have to work on diverting your attention between what’s happening and what I’m saying, or you might freak out the doctors and we’ll have to stay in the hospital longer.’

“Whoa…” Dean exclaimed, raising a hand to his head. “This is weird…”

“What’s weird?” Sam asked, voice growing more agitated at Dean’s elusiveness.

“Me and Cas have got this weird Vulcan mind mend thing going on,” Dean answered, tapping at his head. “He’s talking in my head; and apparently… I can talk back to him too?”

“Uh… you sure you didn’t… imagine it?” Sam asked.

‘I can assure you Dean that you aren’t suffering from any brain damage that would lead to hallucinations of my voice.’

“Cas says I’m not crazy, so yeah - I’m pretty sure, Sammy,” Dean answered, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Oh, does that mean Cas can hear and see everything you’re seeing?” Eileen sounded genuinely fascinated by all of this.

‘Yes, so long as you want me to, Dean. With enough effort, you would be able to block me out. Although, at my currently weakened state, it likely wouldn’t take much effort at all.’

‘Nah, I wouldn’t do that to you, Cas. Makes it easier this way anyway – you could probably point out stuff I don’t usually pick up on. And this way, you can still be part of the conversation; though guess I have to be your translator to pass on the message.’

‘Thank you, Dean… Eileen and Sam are looking worried again, you might want to refocus yourself.’

Sure enough, when Dean focused back into reality, Sam looked about ready to slap him back into the conversation. “Sorry, I promise I’ll get better at listening to Cas and talking at the same time. And yeah, Cas says he can hear and see everything I do.”

‘With your permission.’

“With my permission,” Dean adds.

“Huh… must be weird for Cas to be possessing you.”

“Why’s that?” Dean asked with a questioning frown.

“Well – I assume you’re the one that’s going to be in control most of the time, right?”

“That’s the plan, yeah,” Dean answered.

“Then it’s probably going to be weird having it the other way around.”

‘I have experienced this before when Lucifer was possessing me. You are a much better companion than Lucifer, Dean, so it’s not too weird.’

‘Is that a compliment? I’m assuming it’s a compliment. Doubt it takes much to be a better companion than freakin’ Lucifer, though.’

‘I suppose not. But there’s no other human I would want to share a body with than you, Dean.’

“Alright, Cas is getting weird so I’m going to cut him off,” Dean told them with a strained smile. “Cas said he’s cool with it.”

“Uh-huh… That all he said?” Sam pressed his brother for more.

“Hey, I’ll tell you everything Cas directs to you. Everything Cas says to me, is my business.”

The corner of Sam’s mouth twitched as he fought hard to keep his laughter from bubbling out. “Dean, that… you’ve got to realize how that just sounded.”

‘I don’t understand… how did it sound?’

‘Sammy probably thinks you’re talking dirty to me in my head.’

‘Oh… I’m… not?’

‘I know you’re not, Cas. Sam’s just being nosy.’

“Good job, Sam. You embarrassed Cas,” Dean scolded him.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“Yeah, but you implied something, and it made Cas uncomfortable.”

‘Maybe it would be best if I left for a bit…’

‘What? No, Cas – you don’t have to do that. I’ll change the subject.’

“I made Cas uncomfortable? You sure it’s not you that’s uncomfortable?” Sam continued to tease.

“Whatever you say, Sammy,” Dean conceded with hands raised in the air.

“Isn’t there more important things we should be talking about?” Eileen cut into their childish sibling argument. “We still don’t know what brought me back, or why. And rebuilding Cas’s body? Do we even know if that’s possible?”

“We won’t know until we look into it further,” Dean answered, turning cautious eyes over to the door, unsure as to whether the footsteps he heard were heading towards their room. “And we can’t do that until we get back home to the bunker…”

‘Dean… I think the doctors are going to want to keep you in the hospital for a few more days… And I’m inclined to agree with them.’

‘What? I feel fine-,’

‘We’re sharing a body, Dean. I know you’re not ‘fine’. You only feel fine for the moment because of the painkillers you’re on. You need a few extra days for your body to heal and adjust to its alterations.’

‘If the only problem is me handling pain, I can assure you I can do that from the bunker, Cas.’

‘It’s not just that, Dean. I… I can’t heal you anymore. At all. If something were to go wrong, if you re-damaged your back and began bleeding internally… there’s nothing I could do. Please, just… a few extra days here is all I ask.’

‘Dammit… Alright, fine, Cas. Only because you asked so nicely…’

Dean decided not to add his crippling fear of what would happen to Cas if something happened to him.

’Thank you, Dean.’

‘Yeah, yeah… Besides, it’s not like we have to worry about a time limit this go around. You’re good so long as you don’t use any of your grace, right?’

‘Oh, um… yes. Yes, I should be fine if I don’t use any.’

“Alright, clearly you and Cas want some alone time,” Sam teased Dean mercilessly, giving Dean’s leg a light slap as he stood from the chair.

“What? No! That’s not-,”

“I’m joking, Dean,” Sam said with a smile, much too pleased with himself for Dean’s liking. “I need to go talk to the doctor about how long they think you need to stay… Then I really need to head back to the bunker and check up on Miracle; find a place that’ll take her while we’re here.”

“Oh, I see. The dog’s more important than your poor injured brother, huh?”

“Don’t pretend like you wouldn’t kick my ass for leaving her there alone.”

“You two have a very weird sibling dynamic…” Eileen said with a shake of her head.

‘Can you tell Eileen I couldn’t agree with her more?’

‘Don’t you start sassing me in my head, Cas.’

“Cas said he agrees with you…” Dean mumbled dejectedly, passing on Cas’s message.  Sam embarrassingly signed the message to Eileen who couldn’t make out Dean’s mumbles, cracking into laughter at the two brother’s shame at being called out.

“You want me to pick up anything from the bunker while I’m there?” Sam asked over the last of Eileen’s giggles. “Some books, maybe?”

“Could use my laptop for research – and no, not the ‘sexy’ type of research, before you say it.”

‘Sexy research?’

‘Porn, Cas. Porn.’

‘Oh… Um, if you could warn me in advance before you watch such content, I’ll put myself to sleep-,’

‘Stop talking, Cas. Stop talking right now.’

Dean already knew his face was burning a bright red. Sam and Eileen’s questioning looks were enough evidence of that

“…Laptop, got it,” Sam said after quite the gap in their conversation. “Uh… anything else?”

“A new change of clothes for when I get out of here… Don’t really fancy struggling out of here in this hospital gown with my ass hanging out in the wind.”

“You could have stopped at the first sentence. I really didn’t need that image in my head.” Sam said, face scrunching with disgust as he pulled the Impala’s keys out of his jacket pocket. “You gonna be okay here on your own for the night?”

“I’m not on my own. I’ve got Cas, remember?” Dean said, a smile creeping onto his face at the thought. Sam rolled his eyes as he turned away – for what reason Dean didn’t want to think about – gesturing with head to Eileen to follow him out of the room.

‘Ain’t that right, Cas? You’ll keep me company for the night, won’t you?’

The silence Dean got from his head was enough for the light-hearted smile on his face to slip away.

‘…Cas?’

‘You told me to stop talking.’

Dean snorted out loud, the sound catching Sam and Eileen off guard just before they stepped out from the room, sharing knowing looks and sly smiles with one another.

‘Damn… You have no idea how much I missed you, Cas.’

* * *

Next Chapter --->

[thetriggeredhappy]

22 speeding bullet. BREAK ME. (pls?)

not quite Maximum Sad on this one but still real sappy-like. (no warnings)

-

#22. Sad Kiss.

There was something there behind Scout’s eyes that made Sniper feel guilty, and he just couldn’t place exactly what.

They were at the train station. Most of Scout’s things were going to be going separate from him—he’d passed out some of them to other teammates, other things he’d returned to their employer, and what all he kept would be flying back to Boston or was packed into his two suitcases, sitting there next to the both of them, innocuous but heavy in more than one sense of the word.

The majority of the goodbyes had happened outside the base. Pyro was tearful, and Demo was a bit weepy as well. Engie held it together, told Scout to write. Heavy and Medic were entirely professional, wishing Scout a safe journey back home and congratulating him on the good work he’d done. Spy, the absolute snake, hadn’t shown up at all. Engie claimed that he’d been asked to pass along Spy’s goodbye. Sniper was fairly sure he was lying to make Scout feel better.

It was a good thing. Scout was all done, would get to go home and enjoy the rest of his life. He could take all the money he’d accumulated over the years—ten years, it had been ten whole years, almost a third of Scout’s life—and live comfortably. He’d probably get a job anyways, he’d said in the past when asked about it, when leaving seemed like some completely distant and impossible thing. He said he might teach little league, jokingly claimed that maybe he would get a job leading a troop in the Boy Scouts, wouldn’t that be funny? Or maybe he could be a P.E. teacher, or take up marathon running, or work at a gym. He still had a good decade or two left in him, more if he stayed in shape, and he really wanted to keep busy. Keep moving.

Sniper didn’t know which one he would pick. Didn’t know if it even mattered.

Scout looked at him. He looked at Scout.

Ten years. Scout hadn’t changed much in that time. Right up front during the first few months after they all started working together he’d had a bit of an attitude adjustment, going from a loud aggressive bonehead to something else when it became clear that the other mercs didn’t intend to eat him alive. It became clear that he was mostly acting out because he was scared, and the mercs all started working together as a better team, and once Scout realized they didn’t have it out for him, he mellowed out just a little. And a few more years down the line, when he had the secondary realization that they wouldn’t make fun of him or cut him loose the second he showed any signs of weakness, he mellowed even further, relaxing significantly. The majority of the time Sniper’d known him, Scout had simply been enthusiastic, earnest, maybe a little bit on the strange side—all of them were—but he was a legitimately fun and interesting individual to be around. He was sure that himself being a patient person contributed to some of that, Scout indeed being extremely talkative when they landed on a topic he knew a lot about, but overall he really did think Scout was just a sweet bloke.

Very sweet. Increasingly sweet.

They never did get around to telling the team.

And here they were, at the train station, and Scout was looking at him, and he was looking at Scout.

Distantly, a whistle.

“Don’t make me say it first,” Sniper said, voice even a little bit rougher than usual.

The excuse was that Sniper wasn’t busy and knew how to drive the Engineer’s stick-shift truck, and he needed to go out on a quick errand off-base anyways. That was the only reason he was the one who drove Scout to the train station, and alone. All he’d known for sure when he’d gone through all the work of getting it sorted was that he wanted every individual second with Scout that he could get, and couldn’t say his goodbyes in front of the others. He just couldn’t. He hadn’t even started yet, and he was right, his eyes already burned even besides the dust ever-present in the air.

“Heavy told me his contract is up in a couple of months,” Scout said. “Hardhat’s signed on for another year and a half, and Mumbles and the Doc are probably gonna stick around as long as they’ll still get money and a place to stay. I dunno what Spy’s deal is—who the hell does?—and Soldier says he’s around until the next call to action, so, he’s just hopin’ for World War III probably. Cyclops has only got five months left, but he said he’s probably gonna sign another one when it expires.”

Sniper nodded hesitantly. He hadn’t known any of that. He was sure it’d come up in conversation at some point long in the past, but he hadn’t kept track, hadn’t remembered. But Scout had.

He knew he’d probably brought up his own contract before.

Scout looked at him. He looked at Scout.

“Have your ticket?” Sniper asked quietly, throat tight.

“Yeah,” Scout confirmed, and pulled it out of his pocket to show him. He fumbled for a minute before he found the correct pocket, not used to regular-people clothes.

“Some food, wallet, all that?”

“Yeah,” Scout said, patted the strap of his backpack. “All good.”

“Umbrella?”

Scout managed a laugh. “Snipes, I’m gonna be on a train.”

“You never know, could be...” He swallowed to try to dislodge the lump in his throat. “...could be train weather.”

“Train weather?” Scout repeated, laughing even just a bit more.

“Weather on a train. Storms and the like. Could drizzle, and you’d need an... umbrella. For the train.”

He made it exactly three seconds into the silence following his joke before the first sob hit.

“Aw, Jesus, c’mon Snipes,” Scout exhaled, pulling him into a tight embrace in an instant. Sniper returned it, only half-mindful not to crush Scout, shoulders wracked with further sobs he couldn’t seem to stifle. “If you start cryin’ I’m gonna start cryin’, and then we’ll just—we’ll just be two guys cryin’ at the train station.”

“Well I can’t bloody well buggering help it, can I?” Sniper replied, voice very much higher than usual, burying his face into Scout’s shoulder, made softer by his jacket, trying to muffle his sobs.

Scout gave him a few gentle pats on the back, rocking the both of them back and forth in soothing motions. Sniper just held him tight, trying his damndest to memorize the feeling of Scout in his arms. The smell of his hair from the shower he’d had that morning, the cologne still stubbornly clinging to his shirt, the weight of him as he held on to Sniper, the sound of his voice humming through his ear when he spoke, sinking deep into his chest and curling up with a heaviness that registered as immense comfort. “I know. It’s okay. I know, Snipes.”

Ten minutes went by like that, he and Scout just holding on to each other while Sniper cried. And Scout got a little teary as well for a little bit, sniffly and voice going weepy as he continued murmuring comfort to him. But finally Sniper managed to pull himself together, taking the half-step back and dragging a sleeve over his face a few times, sure he looked like a mess.

“Better?” Scout asked, trying for a smile.

“No,” Sniper admitted, nose still feeling a bit stuffy. “I’m just... I’m going to miss you so bloody much.”

“I’m not dying, Snipes,” Scout chided, smile just a touch wider.

“I know that,” he said, and sniffled again.

Scout looked him over, and seemed to decide something. He reached into his jacket. “Gimme your arm,” he instructed.

Sniper did, and Scout pushed his sleeve up, tilting his forearm just so and pulling forth a marker. He scribbled a number down with only minimal pausing to remember it, and Sniper glanced up at his face when he realized what it was.

“That’s my phone number. And you’re gonna call me at least once a week, every week, until your contract is out too,” Scout said in a tone that meant he was not taking criticism or suggestions. He then took Sniper’s other arm and pushed that sleeve up too, starting to write down something else. “And this is my new address, and when you get the chance, you’re gonna turn up there and visit me or else I’m gonna hunt you down and kidnap you if I have to. Get it?”

“Got it,” Sniper agreed, holding still and being patient as Scout stumbled through writing out the address. He looked over the first line, eyes widening only slightly. “...Jeremy? That’s your name?”

Scout jerked slightly at it, glancing up at him briefly. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, that’s me.”

A pause. “We’re not... supposed to mention our real names,” he said carefully.

“Well, I don’t have the job anymore, so...” he shrugged, and finished writing, and capped the pen, and blew on the ink partially just to make Sniper laugh at the ticklish feeling of it. “And... I dunno. If... if Australia isn’t something that you want, I just... most of my brothers moved out and moved on, and it’ll just be me and my Ma, and I bet she’d, she’d like you and all, and...”

Sniper looked at the address on his arm and not at Scout. It was a few years since Sniper’s mum and dad had finally kicked the bucket within a month or so of each other. He only ever got an update every few months from the bloke he’d hired to be in charge of the farm, and to be honest, there wasn’t much left there for him.

“Probably might take a month or two to sort things out back home,” Sniper said. “But... you can come along if you’d like, for that. When that time comes. And... who knows, after that.”

“Who knows,” Scout agreed, smiling at him, relieved. Sniper smiled back.

Both of their smiles faded within a few moments.

“Get back in here,” Scout mumbled, and they embraced again.

“Calls weekly,” Sniper repeated, voice just slightly rasping. “Twice weekly, even.”

“Promise I’ll pick up,” Scout agreed.

“And you’re going to stay away from, from cliffs, from intersections, from any bomb in any context whatsoever—“ Sniper started in, voice shaking.

Scout laughed. “Miss P says I’m in the system still for about two years after I leave just in case someone tries to come and kill me for working there,” he said. “I’ll just turn up at the closest place to Boston—Sawmill, probably.”

“So if we get a stationed in Sawmill you’ll walk into traffic twice weekly—“ Sniper started in, tone so deadly serious that Scout’s immediately registered it as a joke, laughing.

“I’ll be careful,” he promised, a little more seriously.

They were interrupted by the train arriving at the station, heralded by the whistle.

Sniper spoke again when the noise had died down to something he could reasonably be heard over when he raised his voice. “I love you,” Sniper said, honestly.

“I love you too,” Scout replied. And he glanced around their immediate vicinity, saw that practically all eyes were on the train, and reached up to take gentle hold of Sniper’s chin, tilting his face and pulling him down just enough to quickly kiss him on one stubbly cheek. “Only ten months,” Scout said, a bit quieter now. “Then Australia. Then who knows.”

“Then who knows,” Sniper confirmed.

Scout looked back as he was stepping onto the train. Sniper caught sight of him briefly, putting his luggage up onto the rack. He moved over to wave at Sniper through the window briefly, and Sniper waved back.

Then, too soon, the train was pulling away from the station. And he couldn’t see Scout anymore through any of the windows, but he waved anyways, for as long as he could make out the individual windows on the train.

He looked down at his arms. “Ten months,” he repeated to himself. After ten years, it shouldn’t have put such a hole in his chest. But he couldn’t help it.

[anne-with-an-evangelion]

I saw some other ppl doing this and I’m just going to answer them all because I’m very bored.. going to bed at 10 pm on NYE will do that.. I’m so old

1. Long term, def finish some long project I’ve been working on, like RNR or something else. And I really want to pump out some more original stuff. Honestly just getting onto a good update schedule and getting my shit back together would be great, after everything that happened this year, I would love to be more organized and productive with this stuff.

2. Short term, I’m about to get up the next chap of RNR (I started publishing it 2 years ago tomorrow I mean what the heck) so continuing to map that out will be at the top of my list. I have a couple of other things I’ve been working on but I don’t want to post anything until I update that :|

3/4 I don’t think my process or style has really changed much. I think I’ve gotten better just from the practice, but my writing style has been the same basically my whole life and my process is.. not much of a process lol.. I usually ride the wave of inspiration as long as I can but when I get bogged up with real-life stuff I can just stare at a word doc for HOURS, no matter how much I’ve outlined or already written. I usually outline, fill in any scenes as they come to me, anything I’m not sure of I [ put in brackets ] so I can come back later and fill it in. I never delete anything I write bc I so often repurpose dialogue or scenes. Flipping between perspectives in RNR I keep a basic chapter outline so I know what points I have to hit on to keep it all paced out right. Phew!

5. I WILL FINISH RNR it’s not that close to being done but I really had a goal for where I wanted to be rn and I am not there.. so next year I’ll be better! I have some other things they will be multi chap but I haven’t even shared them with anyone yet so that doesn’t really matter, hopefully I will soon !!

6. I’ll probably do Nanowrimo next year because I did it all the time when I was younger and it was so fun, I missed out on it this year. Maybe I’ll try to pick up some other things, I’ve never really done anything else before.

7. RNR obviously.. I also have some others like a sequel to my Britney Spears fic which I guess would count

8. Ok I’ve been working on this Hankcon James Bond ish secret agent AU for like a year and I’m really proud of it but haven’t done much more than string together a bunch of Cool scenes and whatnot so it needs more polish, but I’ll be really excited to work on that more.

9. I have a Kara/Luther fic I want to get up which has been sooo fun and sweet I love them. Also maybe I’ll post it when I’m done with RNR but I have a Sheriff Pedro backstory one shot I wrote sometime this year and I know I’m the only mf who’s got a Pedro/Gary fixation but I still want to share it.. Ugh this is making me look at all my google docs and I have so much to do!! It’s ok I’ll get there eventually

10. NEW FANDOMS OK OK so I have a Magicians fic or 2 in the works but we just finished watching She-Ra and ahhhhhh it was so good I don’t know if I could nail the characters but I am DYING to write some magical space adventure stuff. Catradora is the friends to enemies to friends to lovers shit of my DREAMS but Entrapta and Hordak really got me!!!! I want to see some fun shit. Also I had an ATLA Pride & Prejudice AU ??? And I wrote an Indian in the Cupboard fic but I’m afraid to post it.. anyway I’m not sharing anything until get back on track w RNR so hopefully that is my motivation !!!

Everyone do this !! Happy new year !!