#that love shooting me with spells and bullets

[nastymajesty]

touhou is my rebound from project moon she can fix me though. if i believe hard enough she can fix me

[kissenturine]

boothill,, gunplay. thats the thought,, if ur comfortable writing that ofc ofc

𝐋𝐎𝐂𝐊𝐄𝐃 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐋𝐎𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐃 boothill x m!reader — 1.4k words, not proofread, minors do not interact

TO NOTE: gun play, slight chocking, boothill puts his gun in reader's mouth, boothill kind of bends reader over, boothill also makes reader jerk off, uh boothill kinda mean-ish, he pretends to shoot reader, aftercare is not written but it is given! lmk if i missed anyy :3

KAI SAYS: hello guys,, shorter than usual bc ive landed myself in the er due to multiple reasons haha (chronic hives, low blood pressure, fainting spells, dehydration, etc) and i miiight not be able to post until like next weekend maybe (?) so so soso sorry for the inconvenience aaargh, writing this in the hospital too... not dying tho everything super minor so!!

The first time you ever saw Boothill pull a gun was at a training centre. He said something about wanting to work on his aim, and so he decided to head there, late at night. No one else was there—just the two of you.

Boothill pulls out his gun, flicking a few bullets into the spinning revolver with practiced ease before he pulls the trigger. A loud ‘bang’ fills the room, followed by the sound of his metal bullets clinking to the floor after the shot.

“Well color me stoked.” Boothill grins, showing off his sharp teeth. “Seems I ain’t that bad after all!”

“Well, you were always good with guns, anyway.” You respond, returning Boothill’s grin with a smile of your own. He was indeed good with guns, and it was undoubtedly attractive.

Boothill’s hands spin the revolver, watching the metal clink. It was much too fast for you to see, so you didn’t know which one ended up landing. Boothill is quick to draw his gun again, smirking as he pointed it at you—straight into your chest.

“Boothill?” You question. “What are you—”

You are cut off by the loud sound of his gun shooting. Your eyes shut and you winced instinctively, your body tensing up for the bullet that was about to hit your skin.

…Yet it never happened. 

Cracking one eye open, you peer at Boothill cautiously, only to find him gripping his metal abs, a roaring laugh rolling from his lips. “Oh, darlin’ you know I’d never shoot ya!” He laughs again, though this time it was softer. “C’mon, love, I’d never hurt ya.” He murmurs sweetly as he makes his way closer to you, his gun still in hand.

He presses the muzzle playfully against your chest, trailing it up and down your abdomen. Boothill’s smirk only widened as he slipped his gun—along with the hand holding it—under your shirt. He presses the muzzle right against your nipple, watching you shiver at the cool metal.

“Boothill.” You whisper firmly. “What’re you doing?”

He says nothing, only continuing to drag his gun against your skin, sending shivers of delight across your body.

Eventually, his gun finds its way to the hem of your pants. Boothill gives you a wicked smile before he uses his free hand to yank down your pants and boxers, exposing your half-hard cock. “Well, ain’t that a pretty sight.” He cooes, letting the muzzle of his gun rest against your tip.

“Jerk it for me, pretty boy.” Boothill says. You blink up at him, confusion filling your face.

“Huh…?” You question.

“I said.” Boothill groans, pressing the muzzle of his gun harder into your tip. “Jerk it for me, or else I’m gonna be shootin’ this pretty lil’ dick o’ yours.” Boothill wouldn’t really. You knew that. He said it himself. And yet… the fear that he would is still there, forcing small tears to well in your pretty eyes as you looked up at him desperately.

“O-Okay.” You comply, wrapping your hand around your shaft as you slowly start to glide your closed fist up and down.

“Good boy.” Boothill praises, and his voice makes your dick twitch against his gun.

You move your hand, squeezing as you get to your tip and rolling your thumb to spread your precum. You throw your head back, moaning loudly as Boothill rocked the muzzle of his gun in time with your hand.

“Look at ya.” He groans, his free hand going to squeeze at your throat. “Gettin’ off to my gun pointed at ya.” Boothill smirks, rolling the revolver again until the familiar ‘click’ sound resounds around the room. “Pretty thing, d’ya even know what this could do to you? Or are you too dumbed down already?”

“Stop teasin’” You whine, your hand's pace slowing as you turn your gaze away from Boothill’s. “Not that dumb yet…”

“Yet.” He repeats, removing his gun from your dick. “Think I can change that real quick, no?” A sharp laugh escapes Boothill’s lips as he suddenly hoists you up and off the barstool you sat on. He spins your body with only a smidge of grace as he lands you roughly on your stomach against the table, your ass now facing Boothill.

“Aeons, you’re so pretty…” He murmurs, his hands roughly groping the fat of your ass. “Can’t believe yer all mine…”

A whine slips from your lips, high and pathetic as your eyes flutter closed. “Yeah…” You whisper. “All yours…” You feel Boothill drag the muzzle along your back—sliding it under your shirt, before he pulls his arm up, tearing through the thin fabric. You shiver at the newfound cold, goosebumps prickling your exposed skin.

You hear the zipper of his pants as he pulls it down, pulling out his cock and tapping it against your clothed ass before he’s yanking down your shorts. Boothill traces a metal finger around your puckered rim, eyeing you carefully. “Such a cute ‘lil hole…” He whispers out breathlessly. “Can’t wait to fuckin’ destroy it.”

The instant Boothill stops speaking, you feel the tip of his metal cock push past your hole, stretching you out more than you could ever imagine—despite doing this with him before. “Boothill.” You moan out, eyes fluttering as you crane your neck to look at him—only to have your face pushed right back into the table by the shove of his gun against the back of your head,

“Stay still f’me, pretty.” Boothill groans, easing his cock into you. The more he pushes in, the more painful the stretch is… And yet, the more painful it is, the more pleasure your body seems to derive from it. Boothill is only halfway in when you feel like you’ve been stuffed to your limit. A pathetic sound escapes you and you feel his gun press down harder.

Boothill removes his gun from you, using it to force your head to the side. He leans down, spitting a thick glob of spit all over the muzzle, smirking as it gets his gun all messy. “Open.” He taps it against your lips, making sure to smear his spit all over. Boothill’s smirk only widens when you follow, opening your mouth and letting his muzzle sit between your pretty lips. “Atta boy.” He whispers, thrusting with full force his cock into your awaiting hole.

“Boothill…!” You moan out, though it’s muffled by his gun pressing against the flat of your tongue. Your thighs tense at the sudden pleasure. A gurgly whine leaves your throat. “I can’t—”

“You can,” Boothill growls, pressing his gun deeper into your throat. His thumb goes to spin the revolver, making sure it lands on a slot with a bullet before continuing, “and you will. Ya know why, cutie? ‘Cause you're my good boy, and good boys take what they’re given.”

He sets a brutal pace after, thrusting into you relentlessly. It doesn’t matter how you plead, all Boothill does is press his gun further down your throat—until you’re sure your lips will bleed from the stretch. Eventually, his tip knocks against your prostate, sending you over the edge. Your dick squirts a load, all over the table and floor, yet Boothill doesn’t falter.

“Look at you, cummin’ like a slut.” He groans, and his pace seems to increase. He’s suddenly going harder, faster, everything that makes your head spin with the added overstimulation.

You cry against the gun, tears welling in the corner of your eyes. Boothill seems to enjoy the sight, leaning down to kiss softly against the back of your neck, his free hand wrapping around your waist and fisting your spent cock.

“That’s it…” He coos. “You think ya can give me one more?” His hand increases, matching the rhythm of his thrusts as he knocks into your prostate again and again and again. “C-C’mon, need t’do it together.” You nod your head eagerly, drool slipping from between the corner of your lips and his gun.

Boothill thrusts harshly, finally sending you over the edge for the second time, and you feel his metal dick twitch in time with you. Your eyes roll back, ecstasy overwhelming you as Boothill pumps a thick, sticky load into your ass, painting your walls white.

“You’re so good f’me…” He coos into your ear, sliding his gun slowly out of your mouth. With a familiar click, the resounding sound of a gunshot echoes throughout the room as he shoots his last bullet into the table—right by your head. “You’re always so good an’ pretty with my gun…”

𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓: @helloanime @kiekole (send ask without anon to be added)

© KISSENTURINE. do not translate, plagiarize, edit, or repost

[noneorother]

The puns are never ending : Aziraphale's miraculous "visable" bullet.

Aside from this closeup diagram of how to perform the bullet catch being objectively hilarious, it's also got a pretty fascinating *spelling mistake*.

If you look closely at the part of the pamphlet in red, you'll see that the bullet should be hidden in the mouth where it won't be visable. Not "not visible". Not visable. Seems innocuous enough right? But of course, the layers are never ending.

"Visable" is actually a Middle English word, *not* a modern English one. The last time it was used was before the printing press was invented, so pretty old. Here's a little background :

What's really fascinating though, is that just like the expression "dark horse", the word has two meanings : one is "Capable of good judgement, prudent" the other is "Tractable and docile".

There are also only two examples of the word in context that I can find, and they really should be sending you into orbit :

The first one is actually from Henry Lovelich's translation of the French epic poem "The Romance of Merlin" also known as the first English treatment of the Arthurian legends. It's modernized as "He was a worthy knight, valiant and visable in every fight." Which uses the "good judgment" meaning and sounds... a lot like Aziraphale in his role of guardian and protector.

Why do we care? They are standing literally in front of Excalibur, Arthur's sword.

The other one is from "Ipomadon", another middle English epic poem about a hidden identity romance between a beautiful but proud heiress, and her dark knight in disguise. "She was... visable and virtuous, meak and mild, and marvellous." Which clearly uses the "tractable and docile" meaning, but also... kinda sounds like Aziraphale in his damsel in his distress mode, which:

Ahahahah fuck off. But wait, there's more!

I originally twigged to this error because if you, like me, also happen to speak the language of la plume de ma tante, you know there's a reason why the uses happen in epic poems that originated in France: it's a loan word from old French, and still exists today in modern French, but it doesn't mean tractable and docile...

For the non-french speaking among you, it's a derivation of the verb "viser" :

Verb 1 To aim 1.To aim, to carefully direct one's gaze or a weapon towards a goal to throw something at it.

And so, if you happen to be, oh I don't know, a demon and have been alive for thousands of years and can definitely speak all the languages on earth and happen to have participated in the Arthurian age in England, when you read that pamphlet really carefully because someone is making you do a crazy stunt and there's a miracle blocker on, you could *conceivably* have read the instructions as:

"IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT YOU LOVE, DO NOT SHOOT AZIRAPHALE IN THE FACE." ________________________________________________________ Thanks to @thebluestgreen and @embracing-the-ineffable as always.

[yurinaa-world]

Could I request a Knight Argenti x Fem Vash stampede reader who’s a wanted for 60 billion dollars? How would they meet and how Arenti falls inlove with them, also I love your stories!!!

Characters: Argenti x Female Reader

Synopsis: with reader that's like Vash

Warnings: Fluff, spelling mistakes,

Notes: OHHHH YEAHHHHH this is what this blog was made for!! my dearest VASHH (Thank you for liking my writing!!!)

𝒜𝓇𝑔𝑒𝓃𝓉𝒾

Honestly, he was going after you (kind of like what happened with the pompom in his trailer), running for your life with your hood up, and trying to conceal your face with your glasses as extra protection! “have mercy!” You scream with an empty gun—not like you were going to shoot someone! But to scare him?) running into an alleyway to escape from him.

“You the humanoid monster I shall strike you down, starting with your head." Those were the words you heard when seconds later, in that alleyway, you just ran into his chest, looking up in dread. He was there!! And strike down?! You didn’t even do anything!! Dropping your gun and putting your hands up spread out in front “Please don’t! It's a misunderstanding!” Sweat is dripping down your forehead.

(10/10 for not being a good experience) He strikes your head but falls backward, the blade missing you for an inch, your hood falling backward, and glasses off your face. And now, blade to your neck. You're totally done with it!! But he doesn’t slash your neck! He goes down on his knee to get a better look at you.

(Love at first sight) just not saying anything, almost touching your face with his hands, but you run off before he could, leaving your gun there too. Doesn't it look like you get another one since the condition of your clothes says a lot (okay, rich man) stitches of colored cloth trying to match the color of your original jacket, scratched-up face, and such an old gun?

Still a beauty with all that, somehow a beauty without even trying.

He plans on finding you again. You peck his interest with just one "fight.” You could have shot him with the bullets in your pocket (that fell out when you ran away) but didn't, and you added that you stayed away from civilians that you could have brought into the chase but didn't. Why not? You had so many opportunities. You were known for being heartless, like some sort of mob boss who showed no mercy and played dirty whenever you had the chance.

You had been laying low, knowing that if you were to be found out again, you'd get hunted like the only wild (and only animal alive) cow on an island full of hungry people, but the people are more money hungry and looking for vengeance. The few bits of cash you have (a bit from people who didn’t know who you were and pitted you, and some from the ground).

At night, lying in a tree and looking at the low amount of money you have, you wouldn’t be able to eat, not even a doughnut! And your gun. It’s gone! You left it there with the crazy knight! It’s been a few days; you'll have to get a new one, or if a miracle happens, you could get your gun back!

A large bang hits the tree you're on, making the whole tree vibrate. You fall off the tree and hit your head first into the ground before flipping from your head to your back in pain and saying, "Apologies." Hearing those words, you look up to see him. ”I’m fine,” you laugh at getting up from the ground, batting off the dirt.

“Are you going to chase me again?” You look at him, nervous that he was here to finish the job. “No, I’d like to have something back to you," he says, handing you your gun and bullets. "Why?" You ask, looking at your gun, which looked better than it did before.

It was as if it were perfect, just like you and your beauty.

if you liked this, consider tipping me on ko-fi! it'd mean a lot!

[windvexer]

Additional thoughts along with the prior -

For most people, learning how to enter "spellcasting space" is a skill that takes concerted time and effort. There is no point in learning this skill if obsessive thinking is a replacement for sorcerous skill.

It is perfectly good and lovely to practice mental hygiene as desired, including the option of wanting to get on with things and stop thinking about a situation. However, this does not mean that not getting on with things is a sorcerous detriment.

Many methods of spellcasting, including techniques such as actively working over spell jars, multi-day candles, and ongoing work at a dedicated altar, require your ongoing focus and attention towards a matter, even after a spell is "cast."

If it's true that thinking of a spell can ruin it, this would preclude the possibility of casting multiple spells towards a difficult situation, since all the spells would be related to each other and cause you to think of the others. Nonetheless, casting multiple spells is an effective sorcerous strategy for effecting change in intransigent situations. (e.g., banishment of debt, protection against new debt, drawing in fast cash, seeding prosperity).

Obsessive thinking, I think by definition, is probably not healthy or good; but that doesn't mean that it has special metaphysical power, as if just by getting stuck in a loop your brain is randomly shooting magic bullets into the air.

Many sorcerers, myself included, do not very much place a lot of value on the power of "belief" in day-to-day spellcasting. That is to say, my spellcasting is not powered by belief as an active participating energy, and so my spells are not globules of belief at risk of being tainted by further ungood belief.

As it was put to me early on - "If I didn't care about the outcome, why would I cast the spell at all?"

[kaunis-sielu]

Candy Witch: 2

You keep making candy for Peter and his friends. Tony comes in more often than you expected him to, sometimes it’s just him but often it’s Happy or Pepper too.

You’re working on a batch of dipped potato chips when the door slams open, nearly shattering with the force.

“You!” A man yells at your employee, Tanya, “Are you the witch!” He’s completely covered by his uniform and he’s got some symbol you don’t recognize on it.

“W-w-what?” Tanya stammers and you brush past her.

“Tanya, let my favorite customer know I won’t be in today.” You tell her, she nods once, a knowing look on her face, before you turn to the man.

“I am the witch.” He reaches around the counter and grips your arm.

“You’re coming with me.” He sneers and you let him take you. If it comes to it, you have some tricks up your sleeve, including the ability to fight him should you need to. You mostly don’t want Tanya hurt.

“Tell Peter that his order is on the counter.” When you’d heard the man’s snarked demand you’d added a little something to some little spider chocolates.

An hour later you’ve been locked into a kitchen, told you better produce them some spells to beat the avengers or else and you worked for them now. You’ve done nothing but sit and absentmindedly twirl a spoon in a mug of never cold tea.

The man that had come to your shop, they’d called him Collins, comes bursting into the kitchen. A gun in his hand.

“Where are they?” He demands.

“I told you. I won’t make them.”

“Then I’ll kill you.”

“You can try.” You give him a cold smile. “But you’re playing with fire here.” He cocks the gun,

“You think you’re faster than a bullet?” He sneers.

“What bullet?” You ask and when he holds up his gun he’s shocked to see that he’s holding a handful of wheat. You can turn anything he touches into ingredients and it’s going to piss him off.

Sure enough, he grabs a knife, you turn it into sugar. He grabs another knife, you turn it into flour. The building shakes, and he lunges for you.

“Can’t turn yourself into something else.” He sneers and he’s right. You can’t turn yourself into anything else and he has a hand wrapped around your neck.

“I can’t make anything if I’m dead.” You tell him and he laughs,

“I don’t care.” That’s when something shoots across your kitchen and then Collins is yanked away from you.

“Hi.” Spider-Man says from where he’s up on the side of the wall.

“Hello.”

“Cool spell. To help me find you. Might need some more of those.”

“Sounds good. Is it safe for me to leave?”

“As long as I’m with you.” He says dropping down onto the floor and you walk out of the building side by side. Passing, hilariously, several men hanging from the ceiling from webbing.

“Thank you for coming. I’ll be putting up better wards at the shop to keep them for coming back.” You tell him, and Peter nods.

“Can you get back or do you need a lift?”

“I was just going to take one of their cars.” Peter laughs,

“I’m fine with it. See you later.” He says before swinging off into the distance. You get into a car, start it, then head back to the shop.

Tag list:

@andahugaroundtheneck @also-fangirlinsweden @pagina16ps @princesssterek @valsworldofcreativity @dumblani @inkedaztec @loving-life-my-way @animegirlgeeky @shinycupcakebaker @eralen @sophham @gh0stgurl @killcomet @abschaffer2 @wonderlandfandomkingdom @sass-masterkittenmama

[uncouth-the-fifth]

pythia, a supernatural rewrite. phantom traveler, p.3

read it on ao3.

words: 14k notes: hello!!! on the wings of an absolute ARMY of betas, here is a fresh new chapter for you!! since the last one was a little short i took the time to really flesh this one out. I'm a shy idiot who is SO bad at responding, but i see your comments and they mean the world to me. i literally have a folder on my computer full of the sweet words this fic has been given, and i think i've re-read the comments in that folder at least a million times over by now. ty so much for reading, and i hope you enjoy!! bloody mary is next! a very special thank you to my beta readers, bear, M, venice, feeb, and daff, who easily made this my best chapter yet. thank you specifically for keeping me coherent and sane lol <3

PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA - Dec. 4th.

You don’t have to be psychic to know precisely what your mother is going to say when she answers the phone. She’ll pick up on the fourth ring with an occupied, scathing drawl and say, Look who finally has cell service.

Alright. So you’re not the best, most communicative daughter in the world. You call when you can, you honestly do, but there’s not exactly loads of emotional bandwidth to spare on the road. Peeling off all the layers of case anxiety and Winchester grief takes a while, dammit!

Maybe you’d feel less guilty if you vented to Sam or Dean, but it’s kind of lousy to bitch about Mom-stuff to, uh. Yeah. The boys. You could use a simple, uncomplicated statement like, talking to my Mom reminds me of how much of a disappointment I must be to her, and Dean would hear matricide instead. Sam’s blank, uncomprehending look wouldn’t be much better. Looks like you’re alone on this one.

When there’s a natural break in the day’s long research-fest the three of you are riding, you slip away, pace beside the Impala for a while, then finally bite the bullet and call her. Cars whisk through the slurry of snow on the road. Your phone charms rattle in the icy breeze. One ring, two rings… She knew you were going to call, she could sense it, but of course she has to torture you… three rings, four.

“I didn’t know cell service was so hard to come by in Pittsburg,” Beth greets you, sounding preoccupied. Damn, do you know her well or what?

“Hey, Mom,” you sigh. The wind is loud, so you pull your phone further down your face and try to come up with an excuse that is even halfway reasonable. “Sorry I haven’t called. It’s been ages since I’ve been around the boys, and I guess I get a little caught up with them sometimes.”

This is objectively true. She used to have a rule about you getting your homework done before they came over, purely because you forgot about everything and anything else the second Sam and Dean entered the house.

“Forget those losers. You’re my baby, I love you most,” Beth gushes, and you understand that this is her way of saying that you’re forgiven. Both of you have fallen victim to the Winchester spell before, so she can’t exactly blame you.

You’re a little embarrassed by her mushiness, but a relieved, bubbly laugh jumps out of you. “Alright, consider them forgotten. Now… I know I don’t deserve it, but I’m gonna ask you a question, and I need you not to freak out or overthink it, kay?”

Beth snorts. “You mean my two jobs as a mother? Go ahead, shoot.”

This is not the kind of question that you just “shoot,” though. It takes you a moment to string together how you’re going to ask this, and of course, you’re nothing but graceful and delicate about it. “...What do you know about demons?”

Your mother doesn’t say anything for a long, yawning second. Still, you can sense her rising swarm of questions and outrage all the way from Pennsylvania, and you try to stop her onslaught before it starts. “Hey! No questions! Just answers. I promise I would tell you if this was outrageously dangerous.”

“Then you’ve already broken your promise,” Beth utters, slipping into her Sage Grandmaster Psychic voice. Just hearing it makes you deflate. She predicts, “...Let me guess. You’ve felt nauseous. Suffocated. Hungry, but everything you eat comes right back up again.”

You toe a chunk of ice on the asphalt with your boot, grumbling, “...Yeah.”

“Then you’re lucky,” she reveals, her words still ringing with the same crystal ball clarity from your childhood. “That means you haven’t come into direct contact with it yet. I’d hope you never would, but… you are your father’s daughter…”

You know your mom. You know that’s just her way of warning you about the kind of danger you’re in, here, but all the comment does is bolster your resolve. Damn right. You are his motherfuckin’ daughter.

“Tell me,” you push.

Beth sighs through her nose. There’s a squeak on the other line, and you can imagine her at home, dropping heavily into the massive, millennia-old armchair she always took her readings in.

“Demons… well, I won’t explain to you what you can already guess. They’re unlike most legends we know of, because everything that’s written about them is utterly true. Most spirits that walk the natural earth are here to feed—vampires, werewolves—or to take care of unfinished business. But demons… they come to earth to steal, kill, and destroy.”

Welp. Your mother is truly a pillar of optimism. You’d been hoping she’d say something along the lines of, don’t worry, sweetheart, they’re just really messed up ghosts. Instead of, y’know. The most evil creatures man encountered in the bible. Bible, capital B. An uncomfortable, existential shiver rolls down your spine. Now this was something you could bitch to Dean and Sam about.

You’d grown up surrounded by the idea of demons. Even before you’d fully understood that monsters were real, sometimes you’d slip into your mother’s reading parlor while she was gone and play a game with the strange, segmented star pattern on the giant worn-smooth carpet. Don’t hop on any of the lines! Only step in the points of the star! Or, jump from sigil to sigil!

The one time you’d gotten carried away and played for too long, your mother had appeared through the beaded curtain with a stiff frown on her face. Don’t play on the devil’s trap. It’s not a toy.

There was the fraying devil’s trap in your mother’s parlor room, which was one of the hundreds of sigils burned into your mind at a young age. You’d shaken hands with demon hunters before. Most of the rituals your family practiced were in Latin; and the list went on and on into oblivion. You’d always known demons existed, but as you pace the parking lot and take in what Beth is telling you, the ramifications start to stack. Demons. Actual, literal demons. The thing that took down flight 2485—the suffocating, unimaginable presence from your vision—was a real-life demon. When you’d stood in the skeletal remains of the plane and reached out with your Gift, you’d been sensing the lingering presence of a fucking creation of Lucifer. What the actual fuck.

In a strange, backward way, you’re kind of relieved. Anyone would be fainting all over the place in the presence of an actual, real-life demon. Especially somebody like you, with all their senses turned up to 100. It makes sense that you were having such intense reactions before.

What the fucking fuck. You’re suddenly grateful to be on the phone with your mom.

You wandered toward the Impala, (checked first that you weren’t wearing the kind of jeans with the little studs that would scrape the paint), then leaned against it. “...Um. Okay. That’s just… awesome… How do they get… up here, then?”

“I’m not sure,” your mother hums, thinking. “Your great-great-aunt Miriam wrote in her records that they find their way top-side on their own. Bugs through cracks, that sort of thing. Apparently, there used to be a whole lot more of em’—in Miriam’s day it was a Proctor’s job to shove them back where they belonged, but… I dunno.” Beth helpfully jokes, “Maybe we got most of them.”

You huff out a laugh, but it’s not the most sincere. “Maybe we did,” you cough. “But, um, do we have any Proctor family secrets that could help me out here? Did great-great-aunt Miriam have a trunk somewhere full of demon-killing grenades or something?”

Beth smirks. “Great-great-aunt Miriam turned the house into a brothel and carved terrifying sigils in all the ceilings. That’s all we got from her.”

Of course. How could you possibly forget? “Oh, huh. I was wondering why we have old chains and whips in the basement. That fills in a lot more for me, thank you.”

Your mom barks out a laugh at your joke, which gets you laughing too. The sound trails off. There’s that funny pause where you both remember what you just said, then start giggling all over again—and man, does it feel good to just have a moment with your mom. The boys both have an unforgiving radar for “bonding,” and the second they realize that you love them and they’re your friends, they creep right back into their shells. Neither of them were very good at absorbing that sort of thing.

Your mom is just as skilled at spoiling the moment.

“But, seriously…” She stresses. “Please be careful. Avoid contact with these things at all costs, especially with your Gift. It’s made to find the truth, and demons are made of lies. Not a good mix. They’ll rip into your mind… take you apart if they have to. This is a lot more hands-on than you should ever be with your Gift, ____.”

“...Right,” you say through your teeth.

This is the part where you start awkwardly shoving in a goodbye without coming across as an asshole. You open your mouth, about to say something stiff and unsure, when you sense a spike of alarm ripple out from where the boys are still researching in your motel room.

Phone call forgotten, you jolt off the Impala and whip towards the door. Not a second later, Dean’s slipping out onto the stoop and sweeping the parking lot with a calm, guarded stare. He doesn’t look at you—just gestures you inside, holding the door open. Even from the parking lot, you can make out the insane amount of notes and papers Sam has coated your motel room with.

“Jerry just called,” Dean utters. “The surviving pilot from 2485? Chuck Lambert? …He just went down in a plane crash.”

You snap your phone shut and follow him inside.

-

The three of you head to the site of the next crash as fast as you can. But first, you have the pleasure of watching the boys play Winchester Telepathy when you insist on coming along. They’re still worried. You would be too, in their position. (In fact, if the roles were reversed, you’d probably chain Sam to a radiator and call it a day.) But Chuck went down in a twin plane, not a massive, two-hundred-person graveyard, so your Gift should have the legs to handle it.

…And knowing what you’re dealing with has steeled your confidence. You weren’t slashing at the dark anymore, even if what was in the dark was, um. Proof that hell exists. After days of being totally screwed over by this thing, you finally had even the slightest leg up on what was going on. You were going to take that win and run with it.

Chuck’s twin plane was hardly a twin anymore; both the engines had been shredded, the white body of the cockpit twisted like a wrung-out washcloth. The plane had dove so hard into the farmland that the snow around it had melted. You still kind of felt like tossing your lunch, but more out of sympathy than psychic backlash. People had been in that plane. The thought made you taste bile.

Sam and Dean only hover a little bit (a lot) while you open your Gift to the wreckage. You take your glove off with your teeth and touch your right hand to the ashen, snow-soaked remains of the pilot’s chair… and there it was again, the leeching, seeping, violating presence from the vision that’d brought all of you to Pittsburg. A demon.

Your Gift wrings out another scraggly, disconnected vision for you. Chuck was beyond anxious to get back in the saddle after 2485. The co-pilot, Lou, had pep-talked him like any good friend would, reassuring him that the flight would go smoothly. After that, everything—gassing up the engine, takeoff, and the brutal, horrific crash—was blotted with poison ink. Every time you tried to steer towards Chuck with your senses, it was as if the strip of film playing your vision had been burned away. His face had been scratched out of every frame. He had become something else; something terribly familiar.

The research Sam had compiled began to link with what you’re seeing. You could feel, even through the leftover wisp of the demon’s presence on the plane, that it had done this many times before.

You jolted to your feet, scrubbing the palm with the eye tattoo off on your slacks. Dean and Sam reeled back, since they’d both been looming an inch behind you as you worked.

“What’s the verdict, doc?” Dean said, bracing himself.

You turn from the wreckage and bee-line straight for the road, eager to avoid a repeat of last time. The boys follow your lead. They fall into step on either side of you, and for once you feel like the specialist Sam always said you were, complete with stern-faced bodyguards.

“Full-on Pazuzu, just like last time,” you confirm, cursing. You shove your glove back on and stomp through the snow. “I-I get it now. God, it feels so fucking obvious. It’s—it’s playing. It finds these disasters, or it makes them, and then it picks off all the survivors one by one. Chuck Lambert, George Phelps. It possessed them. Like some sort of twisted cosmic-order thing.”

Sam pulls a face. “Final Destination style?”

“Minus the hot girls and the tanning beds, apparently,” Dean pouts.

“It’s trying to finish them off, boys,” you say, swallowing hard. “That’s something we can work with. If it’s only using disasters to do the job, then…”

“...then we need to see if any of the survivors are flying soon,” Sam realizes, finishing your thought.

The second the Impala’s on the road again, Sam is fishing out the passenger manifests from the first flight and chasing down any phone numbers he can find. There is a part of every hunt where your run is forced to become a sprint, and this is that turn-over moment, tensions ramping high. What once was seven people is now five.

As Dean hauls ass back to Pittsburg, you and Sam get to calling. You thank the Mother Goddess above for shitty, awful customer service, because posing as some lousy Delta Airlines representative has Dennis Holloway sitting in seat 21A and Kathleen Willard (seat 25E) swearing off flying for good. Sam uses a similar tactic on Blaine Sanderson (seat 14D). The two of you take the safe bet that the parents of Ava Struder (seat 1C), an unaccompanied minor, aren’t fucking idiots dumping their kid on another flight the second she survives one. That leaves you with Amanda Walker. A flight attendant on 2485… because of course, this job can never be easy.

Sam tries her phone. While it rings, you cross your fingers and hope that she has quit her job and started a new life as a dedicated couch potato. Sam’s forced to leave a message. He snaps his flip phone shut with a curse and throws it into the footwell, where it clatters against his boots.

You curl a cold hand around Sam’s shoulder, soothing, “Gimme the list, baby. I’ll try her emergency contact, at least find out where she is.”

Sam sulkily passes it to you, never once shifting under your hand. You do get a small, grateful look from him over his shoulder, and the urgency and anxiety there makes your gut twist. It would be more than easy to comfort him, to stroke your fingers through his hair, to rub his collar and tell him everything’s going to be fine.

But you’re a shit liar, so you open up your phone and make the next call. Sam’s lingering gaze ducks back down into his lap.

-

Of course, your luck continues to flourish. Amanda doesn’t answer her phone. But her sister does, and she informs you that Amanda, being a flight attendant, is in fucking Indianapolis for a flight. Indianapolis. As in, a good five-hour drive from Philly—and in the complete opposite direction of where you were going. Dean barely waits until the road is wide enough to turn the Impala around. The u-ey he hits sends you, and all your stuff, careening from the right end of the bench all the way to the left.

The drive is not fast. Staring ahead and silently revving yourself up can only waste so much time, so you pull out the mini sewing kit from under the seat and do your best to patch a rip in Dean’s jeans, struggling to thread the needle even more than usual. You feel a bit like a bad hunter distracting yourself from what’s ahead, but just one of you stuffing the car with anxious brooding is enough. Sam passes back a sudoku booklet for you and then goes straight back to his thousand-yard stare.

He used to be excellent when things came down to the wire like this. After years spent in empty motel rooms, counting pennies and waiting for John and Dean to come home, Sam’s patience was unimaginable. But losing Jess… had tilted his axis. These last few hunts, you’ve noticed how crazed he gets on the last couple steps to the finish line—when none of you are sure if there’ll be anybody to save. It happens. But you’re scared of what another round of it could do to Sam, even with a stranger like Amanda; he cared so much…

Dean isn’t happy, either, but he at least has something to do. He alternates between playing brain-melting Metallica or forgetting to reload the tape, so the drive is a strange mix of music you can feel in your eardrums and silence that’s just as loud. The first piece of levity you get is thirty straight minutes of Dean over-explaining the album to you. And, thank god you ask, because Dean rattling on about the “bass and drums feeding off each other” and the “musical integrity of a locked-in rhythms section” bring Sam out of his trance. He pries his eyes away from the rolling fields of snow, scrunches up his face, and sighs, “Can we at least listen to ‘...And Justice for All?’”

You’re an excellent tactician, so you use this opening to nudge them both toward the most surefire argument starter in the Winchester handbook: What’s the best album of all time? It would’ve been harder to lure flies into honey. Dean argues more with himself than he argues with the two of you, dancing indecisively between Zeppelin II, Dark Side of the Moon, and at least twenty other albums that you are vaguely aware exist. Sam outlines that there is a difference between someone’s favorite album (Californication in Sam’s case) and the best album objectively by sales (Thriller).

All three of you play into the argument more than usual. Guess you’re not the only one desperate to think about something other than the two hundred other people who might die tonight. By the time there’s enough of a break in the conversation for you to throw your hat into the distraction-ring, you’re thirty minutes from the Indianapolis International Airport.

“Both of you are wrong,” you decide. “There’s only one reasonable answer to that question, and it’s Rumours.”

Dean audibly grumbles, and when the Impala jams to a stop in front of a red light, he dramatically points at you in the rear-view mirrors and declares: “You are obligated by hippie, witchy-girl bullshit to love that album, Proctor. And it’s good, but it’s not the best. It’s mostly…” he flashes you a mean, big-brother smile, “girly music.”

You know you’re right, so his comment rolls right over you. Cooly, you remind him, “Nuh-uh. Sam loves Fleetwood Mac, too.”

You’d figured that was a good counter-point, since Sam was hardly girly. The hand he was using to keep his notepad on his knee was all kinds of veiny and calloused, and on top of being taller than Dean, he was a lot more comfortable with his masculinity. He didn’t have mile-long lashes or glazed donut cheekbones, either.

Sam hums in agreement, like you knew he would; the two of you listened to Go Your Own Way and The Chain endlessly before he left for school. Sometimes he’d even dance around the attic at home with you.

Dean side-eyes his brother, then barks out a hearty laugh. “Case in point.”

Sam elects to pretend he didn’t hear that, and instead turns around to talk straight to you: “I mean, the end of Silver Springs alone…”

…Maybe if Dean listened to more “girly music,” he’d have more women melting over him the way you melt when Sam says that. Even though you’ve gotten used to having him in front of you again, there are moments like these where you’re stunned by how similar the two of you still are. Dreams would play in your attic and Sam would already be offering you his hands, gangly and shy and bright red for you and only you…

You listened to Silver Springs a lot after Sam started dating Jessica.

INDIANAPOLIS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT - Dec. 4th, night.

All three of you must’ve been hyper-planning what to do the second the Impala parked, because you fan out as soon as Dean jams the break.

Sam uncaps the travel-sized hand sanitizer from your purse and empties it out onto the pavement. You’re a little sad to say goodbye to pumpkin cupcake, but then he starts pouring as much holy water as he can into the teeny bottle, and you’re reminded how clever he is. When Dean gives him a weird look, Sam explains, “3.4 ounces or less per liquid item, dude.”

“Shit,” Dean curses. Right. Travel size restrictions. That cuts your only physical weapon against the demon in half—or into a fucking fifth, I guess. But it’s something. “At least he’ll fuckin’ smell good when we send him to hell. Great.”

You give Sam the marshmallow pumpkin latte sanitizer, too. You’re going to look painfully suspicious walking into an airport with nothing but hand sanitizer and an occult journal, but there’s nothing you can do. There’s no time to check bags or trudge through security lines. Hopefully you won’t have to board, but knowing your luck…

You’re about to go peeling out of the parking lot at top speed, when you turn your boot and feel the warm piece of metal pressed against your ankle. Shit. “God, this is stupid,” you curse, and drop onto a knee. You lose the pocket knife in your boot, then dig around for the loose rock salt shells rolling around in your pockets. There’s a visible pout on your face when you abandon your iron knuckles. Anything that’d be caught by security or picked up on a metal detector goes straight into the trunk.

When you pull your butterfly knife out of your bra, Sam is suddenly very interested in the color of the sky.

The boys follow suit. By the time you’re through the doors and among the harried, criss-crossing crowd of travelers, you’ve lost ten pounds in weapons each. Dean grumbles the whole way about feeling naked. Everything in the airport is overstimulating, even at this time of night. The long, endless squares of glass looking out over the runway reflect the too-bright lights in big glossy spots, and the air is flooded with a constant stream of intercom updates and civilian chatter. You duck and weave all the way to the departure schedule, which is just the right font size to make you anxious.

Sam scans the chart. “They’re boarding in thirty minutes.”

Shit. You wrack your mind for something that could coax Amanda off her flight. But the gears in your head are suddenly muddy, and Dean’s faster than you, anyway. His eyes dart around the floor of the airport. “Okay… we still got some cards to play. We need to find a phone.”

Sam and Dean dart off like twin bomb-sniffing dogs. You move to follow them, but something tethers you in place. The buzzing, bustling commotion in the air pitches up, and then your ears are ringing, and your whole body is stinging with the ugly leeching feelings from before. The demon. It’s close.

You blindly walk in the direction your internal Winchester compass gives you, and just when Dean’s about to take a courtesy phone off its hook, your body extracts the phone from his hand on autopilot. For a brief flickering moment, you’re not yourself. Your powers talk through you.

Your Gift foresees, “That won’t work. Your only option is to board the plane.”

The boys exchange an unsettled look. For a second you’re confused why they’re giving you their Freaked Out faces, then you feel the hollow plastic of the phone in your hand, and you realize you’re a whole twenty feet from where you started. Man… you hate the whole psychic-possession thing. Just for fun, your Gift loves to take over and course-correct you when it thinks you’re being stupid. You drop the phone back on its hook with a heavy click. It takes Dean a second to answer, and he’s still giving you that look. After a long pause, he knocks up his chin and not-so-happily mutters, “...Uh, okay.”

Sam, at least, has learned to roll with your weird psychic bullshit. His voice is soft with conviction. “Fine. Plan B, then. We gotta get on that plane.”

You run your palms down your face, then steel yourself. There’s no other way, and no time to second-guess. Even your Gift has decided it’s your best plan. “Okay. Fuck it.”

The usual authority in Dean’s voice hikes up with a note of panic. “Uh, woah. Let’s just hold on a second–”

“Dean,” you wince, and your hands drop heavily at your sides. “We gotta. I’m sorry.”

Sam, per usual, reads Dean’s hesitance as something else. “That plane is leaving with over a hundred passengers on board. And if we’re right, it’s gonna crash. We have to–”

You watch as they have their usual back and forth; Sam, eager to throw himself at this, and Dean gnawing on the inside of his cheek. It’s easy for you to sense the steam of real, nail-biting terror radiating off your best friend. You feel Dean’s fear all the time–and even then it’s hard for you to picture him being afraid of much of anything, much less planes. It’s even harder for Sam to look past his little brother glasses.

“...Flying?” Sam puts it together. His voice is understanding, but super confused. “You’re joking, right?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Dean flails. He fists his hands as he talks, swaying back and forth to try and work up the nerve. He glances at you, the only other witness to his weakness, just once. “Why do you think I fuckin’ drive everywhere, Sam?”

Sam is genuinely stunned. Slapped-in-the-face stunned. But he takes it in stride, and, also glancing at you only once, he blurts out: “Alright. Uh, I’ll go.”

The anticipation of boarding the flight is making your skin prickle with anxiety, and you can’t help but inch back toward the ticket counter as they talk. But when Sam says this, without question or complaint, you’re instantly stepping up to his side and demanding, “Then I’m going with you.”

You brace yourself to shut down the argument you know is coming, but this Sam continues to be different from the guy you knew four years ago. This answer is just as easy for him, too. “Okay.”

Not, you’re staying here, or even, I won’t let you risk yourself like this. Just a plain and simple, okay. It bugs you. You don’t even have time to dwell on it, though, because Sam’s blatant courage tugs Dean over his fear.

“Man…” Dean utters, face twisted with nervousness. He gives in with a helpless scrunch of his shoulders, and taking that as permission, Sam twists around to buy your tickets not two seconds later.

You both watch him rush off, neither of you over the moon about this situation. Dean’s so anxious that his hands are clammy, and you can tell because he clutches at the sleeve of your jacket like a little kid. He knocks his forehead down on your shoulder with a groan, and your palm automatically loops around to give his back a soothing rub.

“This is fucking… awesome,” Dean gripes. “No guns. Can’t even bring a damn bottle of holy water. Is there some kind of psychic Xanax you can give me?”

Maybe some of your Gift drains into your voice when you promise, “We won’t have to worry about that. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Dean doesn’t make his Freaked Out face this time. He does, however, bump his forehead against your shoulder again, and sink into your touch with a rough sigh.

FLIGHT 424 - Dec. 4th.

You’d felt bad for Dean the whole time he’d struggled to get on the plane. Now, you kind of felt like choking him with your bare hands.

So many people crammed into one space was enough to flatten your Gift with the weight. Adding Dean to the mix, shoved shoulder-to-shoulder against you with his jitters ramped up to eleven, made you feel like picking your brain out with a fork. Your Gift ping-ponged between Dean and Sam, making you bounce between chattering your teeth with fear and thinking things like, wow, I just love the Dewey decimal system.

Maybe it was a good thing. You’d much rather be in one of their heads than yours.

All day, you’d done a pretty good job not obsessing over the things your mom had said over the phone. It was hard with so much time to marinate in the car, but the massive weight of the existence of demons only slammed on top of you once or twice. Boarding had managed to keep you occupied, but then the colossal body of the plane had shuddered and heaved its weight off the tarmac, leaving all chances for escape behind on the ground.

A part of you was resigned to it; it is a simple fact of your life that evil things are real. So what’s one more, right? But at the same time, you thought about the cross Sam wore under his shirt… you thought about being one of those things, being “made of lies,” like Mom had said. That, too, had been gnawing at you—what had she seen to learn all that? How did she know that a demon would “tear into your mind?” The Vague Psychic Thing is fun, until you’re on the receiving end.

“Can you sense who it’s possessing?” Sam’s smooth, calculating voice interrupted your thoughts.

…Oh, right. You’d gotten so swept up in your own head, no doubt influenced by Dean’s incessant foot-tapping, that you’d totally forgotten to scan the plane. Tilting away from Dean and his panic, you subconsciously shifted toward eerily calm, level-headed Sam. Just catching a wisp of the clean cologne he wears cools you down a little bit. Okay. No more freaking out—it’s game time.

You’d hoped that the white noise of the flight would settle your nerves, but the air tasted painfully sterile, dry, and cottony against the back of your throat. Everything felt like cold metal touching an open nerve. If the demon’s influence wasn’t making your powers touchy, then the woman across the aisle definitely was, oozing with homesickness as she watched Indianapolis shrink far below—or maybe it was the guy two rows back, replaying an argument again and again in his head—or maybe the other two hundred fucking people stuffing the plane with their boredom and their tiredness.

You push your knee into Sam’s. He pushes back.

After a tense beat, you whisper to him over the chatter of passengers, “Too many people. There’s no way I can narrow it down to one person—not unless they’re right in front of me.” Sam’s gaze turns expectantly to Dean, who’s still in full-on dissociation mode. He’d spent the whole boarding process humming tracks from St. Anger, and you knew he was really going through it, purely because he’d stopped and restarted Some Kind of Monster three different times now. Poor guy.

One of the things that made the three of you such a natural team was your ability to rotate leadership. In moments like these, with Dean way too wigged out to take charge, you’d usually step into his shoes without much trouble. But Sam has fielded your fainting spells and panic attacks all week, so he’s already got a pep-talk prepared for the two of you.

“...Okay.” Sam checks his watch. His voice still has that touch of classic Sam softness, probably because he knows how hard this is going to sound: “Stay focused. We got thirty-two minutes and counting to track this thing down, figure out who it’s possessing, and perform a full-on exorcism.” You’re about to make a comment about how blissfully easy he makes things seem, but Dean beats you to it. He snipes, “Yeah, on a crowded plane. That’s gonna be easy.”

You snap one of your bracelets against your wrist a few times, thinking. “Who would it want to possess?”

This gets Dean’s head in the game. Easily, he recites: “It’s usually somebody with some sort’a weakness, y’know, a chink in the armor that the demon can worm through. Somebody with an addiction or emotional distress.”

As he explains this, you unlatch Dean’s claws from their death-grip on your arm and give the top of his hand a little soothing pat. Your gaze remains fixed on the pattern of the seat in front of you. “For a regular demon, maybe. This thing might not even need a chink. It wants maximum damage here—so maybe it’d go for the pilot?”

This is not a soothing thought. Checking his watch again, Sam suggests, “Or Amanda… Surviving a crash like that? I’d be pretty messed up if I was her. We should check both.”

You’re happy to spend the little time you have left wisely, so you’re quick to push out of your seat and get moving. Dean puts on a brave face and follows your lead. There are only two ends of the plane to check—this thing can’t hide forever. Just when you start to do an awkward side-shuffle to nudge Dean out into the aisle with your hip, the whole plane thrashes top to bottom, and there he goes, dropping like a rock back into his seat. His spike of panic is so genuine that you end up dropping with him.

“Come on!” Dean hisses through his teeth. “That can’t be normal!”

You and Sam immediately get to shushing and soothing him, and suddenly you understand how married couples feel when their kid starts crying on a flight. Shifty eyes in other seats pretend they’re not glaring at you. Summoning as much strength as you can to share with him, you drop a hand on Dean’s shoulder and order: “Breathe, dude. You’re okay.”

“I’m not fuckin’ four,” Dean whisper-shouts, sulking flat back into his seat.

“She’s right,” Sam whispers back. Should it be worrying you how much he’s been agreeing with you lately? Stern, he says, “Listen—if you’re panicked, you’re wide open to possession. So you need to calm yourself down. Right now.”

A weird part of you is grateful that Dean is having a rough go of it, because it’s giving you something to focus on. You’re usually pretty good with planes. But for a minute there, when the turbulence had hit, your mind had defaulted to oh shit, this is real, we’re all going to die. A slideshow of the last crash had blitzed through your thoughts. Thoughts that had nothing to do with the anxiety you were picking up from Dean.

You know you despise it when Dean uses his Parent Voice on you, so you try not to use it on him when you urge, “C’mon. I think Amanda’s in the back of the plane. I’ll check up front.”

Dean gives an unconvinced, “I’ll go talk to her,” then makes grabby hands at Sam’s pockets, “pass me one of the hand-sanitizers. Fuckin’ uh, pumpkin latte—don’t gimme that face, _____, not all of us can tell with just a look. What if it’s in her?”

“It’s a bit more than a look—” you begin to clarify, but Sam stops your back and forth with a shake of his head. He pulls out the little orange plastic container of your pumpkin cupcake holy water and passes it to Dean.

“We should try to conserve what we got,” he warns, passing you the only other weapon against the demon (marshmallow pumpkin latte). “Go more subtle—if she’s possessed, she’ll flinch at the name of god.”

Now that you’re running out of both time and options, the second Dean unbuckles his seatbelt and steps out into the aisle on coltish legs, you take the opening and bolt out of your cramped middle seat. Anything you can do to get closer to finding this thing will make you feel loads better.

You start down the aisle. As the chatter of the boys fades into the all-encompassing thrum of the plane behind you, you take slow unhurried steps past each row of seats, soaking up what you can get. A girl listens to music in her headphones. A businessman clicks away at his laptop. Each of them you comb over with your powers, and each pass feels like scooping your hand into a bowl of tacks and waiting to get stabbed.

They’ll rip into your mind… take you apart if they have to, Mom had said. You waited for that moment, steeling your nerves the closer you came to the cockpit. If the demon’s on this side of the plane, and it sensed you, would it immediately press into your mind? Would just being near you snap its presence to you like a magnet? You didn’t like the mental feeling that gave you; the stark secret-seeking white of your Gift clashing with the black choking smoke that’d been chasing you all week. When you spoke to a spirit through your Gift, it felt like you were touching fingertips through a curtain. Would it be like that? Would this demon press its claws through the veil and dig around for something to tear, to grab?

The other flight attendant on board pushes past you with her cart, leaving no barrier between you and the cockpit. Behind you, bobbing in a sea of blurry people, your Gift could distinctly make out Sam (practicing the exorcism) and Dean (talking to Amanda). You’re just a few paces from the front exit of the plane when a man emerges from the bathroom cabin, and—

He twists to meet eyes with you. Expecting you.

You’re flashed a clever, haunting smile, then—a set of glossy void-black eyes.

You wait for it. And in its own way, the presence of the demon does overpower you, bringing the heavy-as-the-sky, parasitic feeling from your visions into the real world. For a long ringing moment, you are blasted with dark leeching power hot enough to singe the entire front of your body—like a nuclear bomb had dropped down just a few steps from you. It is spidery and vicious and knowing and awful—

…but the conquering sensation never comes. Beth had said that it would root into your mind, that just feeling it with your Gift, as you are right now, would tear you to pieces. Yet all that really happens is you staring at it and it staring at you, before it shoulders its way through the cockpit door and disappears inside. The only thing you really experience is the shock of seeing it in somebody, puppeting around a person with dreams and thoughts and memories.

For a few moments, you suck down heaving breaths through your nose and stare at the closed door.

Something about it nagged at you. Besides the obvious—how different it felt compared to what your mother had described—you swear you felt something else, some ringing sense of strangeness that you just couldn’t put your finger on. Maybe it was the fact that you’d just made eye contact with a real creature of hell, an evil spirit, whatever. But you made eye contact with evil spirits all the time. This was… closer to home than that. Underneath the writhing mass of bloody, black ink that made up the demon, your Gift had recognized something unimaginably familiar.

Sensing the demon in person had reminded you of… of a sensory memory, almost. It smelled like… warm static. The old staticy TV in your house, the ancient one that sat square and unattractively on your Mom’s slanting sideboard in the living room. You remembered her crystal ashtray propped up on the top, the fizzy sound the TV made when you’d shut it off…

On the nights when it was just you and Sam home, and the house felt so big and empty that the silence throbbed in your ears, the two of you would set up a fort in front of that TV and watch old horror movies well past your bedtime. The silly effects and the dated acting were easy to tease together. You’d much rather watch movies on the newer screen in your Mom’s room, but for whatever reason, Sam insisted on the clunker in your living room.

Y’wanna know somethin’ cool? He’d asked you once, running a finger through the film of static bubbling on the surface of the glass. A little bit of the static in TVs is actually radiation leftover from the Big Bang. How weird is that? Something so old and powerful, picked up by this random piece of junk.

Sam always crashed first, leaving you alone with the white static the TV defaulted to when the movie ended. You could vividly remember how your shoulders bumped against the hard floor through the thin sleeping bag the two of you had shared—how Sam’s warmth had seeped into your shirt where he was curled up behind you, his soft sleepy breaths tickling your hair.

When you’d pulled his arm around your waist to snuggle, a spark of static had shocked you through his touch. When you’d closed your eyes and tried to go to sleep, you swore that the ancient, cosmic hum of the static in the TV ebbed and flowed at the same exact time as Sam’s breath.

In. Bzzzsh. Out. Bzzzsh. Crackling as he breathed.

It wasn’t the demon you were scared of anymore. The ancient, ever-present sting of static you’d felt deep down inside it… that scared you a million, a billion times more, because—

You felt that static every time you felt Sam.

_

It’s like trying to describe the smell of your childhood home.

Logically, you know your house must smell like something. But when you’re in one place long enough your brain filters it out as background noise, and it becomes something you can only notice after a long time away.

You’d known Sam since you were in diapers. Back then, the meager threads of your Gift were already taking him in and absorbing him into your memory. Eventually, you felt him so often that all the pain and optimism in his core, all the stuff that made Sam himself, had smoothed out into warm, familiar background noise to your Gift.

Then he’d left for Stanford. Four years passed, and the only exposure your Gift had to him was the flimsy thread stretched two thousand miles down to California. Because it’d been so long since you’d sensed him in person, hugging him outside his apartment had been like stepping into your home after a long time away—for a brief moment, the filter over your psychic perceptions of him had lifted. You’d sensed for the first time what had always been there, buried deep. The Static.

At the time, you’d gotten so swept up in Sam, Dean, and the adventure of finding their Dad, that it was easy to get sidetracked. Things came up. You got used to Sam again, and his Static faded to background noise.

Until you’d felt that demon with your Gift.

A demon. A creation of Lucifer. You’d always remember what Sam felt like—you’d never forget the smell of home—but in one of them?

Your mind whirls with so many questions that it flat-out pops, failing you. Pulled along on a cloud of white noise, you somehow manage to turn away from the cockpit and start back down the aisle. The demon is possessing the pilot. You have forty minutes, less than, to exorcize it and save the two hundred people on this flight. These are all truths floating around in your head, but no matter how much you try to circle back to one, the static of the demon overcomes you again.

Static. You think of Sam, the crackle of his soft raspy voice through the phone. Your heart is pounding in your ears, thudding away in your chest like a piston. The static had burned in the demon, burned like busted speakers and smoking plane wreckage. Little pins all over your skin pressing in. The space you have until you make it to Sam’s seat seems to yawn, your footfalls sluggish and shivery. Why do they feel the same? Why does he feel the same? The static of the demon worms under your fizzing skin, bubbling, boiling—

You stop in front of Sam’s row, and he’s already looking at you when you get close. He asks you a question. You stare at him, the whole world filled with that awful roaring buzzing, the air tight and dessert dry in the back of your throat. Even though he’s right in front of you, you feel like you barely see him—just the vague burning outline of him in your powers.

Sam reaches out to grab your wrist, tugging it away from the long marks you’re viciously scratching into the flesh of your arm. The touch of his hand causes a literal static shock to jolt from his fingers to yours. You yelp in surprise, but it’s—

It’s different. There’s a similarity, definitely, between what you sensed in the demon and what’s always been in Sam… but his Static is hot chocolate warm and fuzzy and so good. Melt-in-your-mouth good. Your surroundings filter back in, and there are his soft, worried eyes looking up at you under his brow, and his big hand soothing over the irritated skin you’ve scratched raw. Sam. The same Sam he’s always been.

…Whatever it is, whatever weird connection you’ve just made, you’re sure there’s a lot more to it than Sam having something in common with a demon. Right?

Sam takes one look at you, your insane reaction, and your mysterious reappearance, then easily puts two and two together: “One of the pilots?”

“Co-pilot,” you tell him, and one of your absent-minded hands drifts up to scratch at your arm again.

And again, Sam fishes his fingers around your wrist and pulls it away. Now that you’ve noticed it, you can’t un-notice it. His touch makes your fingertips and the ends of your ears tingle, and not completely in the boy-crush way. In the psychic way.

He asks, “You gonna be okay? We got twenty-two minutes.”

That jolts you back to life. Twenty-two minutes until this plane is smoking ashes in a Pennsylvania cornfield. Though the last ten minutes have easily overcomplicated all twenty-four years of your life, you won’t have a life period if you don’t see this job through. When Dean returns from investigating a very un-possessed Amanda, he feels the exact same way.

Your resolve hardens, and you manage to give Sam an absent-minded smile. “I’ll be fine.”

There’s no time for arguing. Dean and Sam unanimously agree that the only possible place to exorcize the demon would be in the back, where Amanda is, since you can’t exactly jump the guy in the middle of economy. You don’t exactly like the idea of roping her into this, but Amanda’s the only one who could potentially lure that—thing to the rear of the plane. It is the world’s shittiest ambush. But by the time the three of you decide what to do, you’ve burned ten whole minutes on anxious chatter. A shitty ambush is the only plan you’ve got.

Dean starts down the aisle for the back of the plane. You stare at nothing for a beat, and only remember to get out of your seat when Sam nudges your elbow. He presses his lips together like he wants to ask you the million-dollar question (“Are you sure you’re okay?”), but there is literally no time. In a haze, you shuffle out of your seat after Dean and make a feeble attempt to get your head into gear. Sam does not make it easy. One of his broad hands brushes against the small of your back as you both squeeze out of the row, and you feel like you’ve just gone down one of those static-charged plastic playground slides.

Your Gift is exaggerating it. It has to be, right? Making big connections out of little things, picking at a fresh bruise. For weeks, you’ve been crammed into a little car with Sam, into teeny motel beds with him with no room between you. Why hadn’t you felt it? Why now? Not when you were four, napping in the same bed after playtime—not when you were twelve, and Sam was the first person outside your family that your Gift had connected with. Had it always been there, living inside him? Had you missed it?

You reach the back of the plane. Amanda is there, a pale, blonde flight attendant straight out of a commercial. You are dully aware that you have twelve minutes left before the demon makes its move, always on the forty-minute mark (...and you don’t like the line suddenly drawn between Sam and such an old, biblically evil thing).

The boys talk. A familiar conversation occurs over your head, which might be why it’s easy for you to tune out. Your mind returns again to thoughts of Sam, so intense and loud in your head that it all fizzles out to nothing, and you’re left standing there with the air pressure making your ears ring. Sam. The demon. It’s stupid and intangible and you’d have no fucking clue how to explain it out loud, but your Gift is made to find the truth. Something inside that demon exists in Sam, too. Something.

You try to reassure yourself that maybe, just this once, your Gift is wrong. Maybe this is the demon getting into your mind—learning your deepest fears and bringing them to life.

Sure enough, Dean’s charm and Sam’s earnest face must win Amanda over, because she flits out of the back room like a frightened bird. The boys peer through the curtain to watch her go, the two of them as still and sharp-eared as twin watchdogs. You’re slapped back to life by the sudden tension in the room, and quickly scuttle up behind them. Right. Amanda’s getting the co-pilot. These next ten minutes will determine the rest of your life.

In the same beat, you and Dean ready your holy water, and Sam gets the written exorcism from their dad’s journal out in front of him. There’s no need for the three of you to say a word. An understanding passes between each of you, hammered in from years of hunting as a team. Sam slides up next to you and Dean gives you a firm nod, squashing your last wisps of fear. You’re here to do a damn job.

A man’s voice floats toward the closed curtain to the back room, followed not-so-closely by Amanda’s. You’re glad she’s not the first one into the room—because Dean instantly slams a fist into their face.

The co-pilot—or really, the thing inside him—goes sprawling. You’ve got a strip of duct tape bridled over his mouth before he even fully collides with you, and for the blissful moment you have him pinned, Dean gets another fierce hit in.

While he’s still stunned, you whip the co-pilot to the grated metal floor. Dean clambers on top of him and keeps him there with a firm fist twisted in his rumpled button-up.

Amanda panics, “W-what are you doing? Y-you said you we-were gonna talk to him—!”

“We are gonna talk to him,” Dean grits.

Then, you’re hosing him down with holy water, splashing it brutally in the man’s pain-twisted face. Your gut clenches with empathy. Did the demon leave his body already? You’re terrified for a moment that you got the wrong guy… until you smell the smoke. It’s not just sulfur, but full-on dead body bloat, steaming up from the big black boils that spring up where the holy water hits skin. You get a mouth and noseful vile enough to make you gag. This thing fighting you? This is definitely not a man.

Amanda watches the demon’s skin sizzle, the usual terror and confusion on her face. “O-oh my god, what’s wrong with him?”

You pour all the psychic clarity and calmness into your voice when you whip around and tell her: “It’s going to be okay. Be calm, go outside the curtain, and don’t let anybody in. Can you do that, Amanda?”

You don’t stop to listen to her answer. Sam’s already tearing through the opening to the exorcism at ninety miles an hour, his pronunciation punchy and fatally clear. That had been one of the less exciting parts of the five-hour drive here; when Sam had run through it over and over, re-training himself. One misspoken word could get everyone on this plane killed.

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus…”

The demon thrashes viciously in your grip, twisting and contorting under Dean in ways the human body can’t bend. Bile rises in your throat as you hear a snap, then two, as the demon does everything it can to buck Dean off. By the time you go to stun it with another splash of holy water, it’s more of a dribble. That’s your first mistake.

Two people are not nearly enough to keep this thing down. It gets a hand loose that instantly sends Dean flying, and before you even see where he lands, it cranks your head all the way to the left in one vicious slap.

Your whole face is blasted with red, stinging pain. You go down hard, smashed sideways into the cramped wall.

The pain stuns you out of the headspace you built to distract yourself, and all at once the presence of the demon is thrust upon you. The black, molten psychic power of it crackles through your body, filling your nose and mouth with the same terror hanging in your visions all week. Until you realize— It fucking backhanded you.

Trying to see past the dots swimming in your vision, you mindlessly shove off the wall, snarling with rage. No fucking way.

And then it speaks (to Sam?), and in the fizzing noise of pressure in your ears you hear it promise, “I know what happened to your girlfriend!” The constant stream of Sam’s exorcism stops cold.

When the demon speaks again, its voice, a spectral twist of the co-pilot’s and something older, drooled with pleasure. “She died screaming,” it rasped, “Even now, she's burning.”

A lot happens in the next precious seconds. First, the little circular light flushed flat to the back cabin’s ceiling explodes. Just—bursts, in shock, spraying sparks and glass all over the little room. You’re stunned enough as it is getting hit in the face, so one more thing to fuck up your vision doesn’t help. But you heard what the demon said to Sam. Through the suffocating evil flooding your mind, you feel the sharp spike of hurt and rage and grief in your best friend—and that’s the precise moment when you decide that you’ve had e-fucking-nough.

These last few days have not been winners. And though you live a pretty shitty life with an impressive amount of shitty days, even before you got to Pennsylvania, your streak of bad luck had only just gotten started. This demon has screwed with your Gift on an unimaginable level. Your last few nights have been plagued with nightmares straight from hell, and your days haven’t been much better, riddled with useless visions that get more and more disconnected every time you faint. It made it even more obvious than usual that you’re deadweight for Sam and Dean. They had to handle your boiling water burns and your freakouts, not to mention your mood swings and your unhelpful visions.

The demon hurt Dean, which is enough to get your teeth grinding. And Sam—it had cut him much deeper.

You wanted to tear it apart. You wanted to reach into it the same way it had reached into you, dig in with your nails, and rip something out. Your mom’s words buzz in your head: contact, truth, lies, rip, apart. Rationally, you know you should listen to her warning. If just looking into its eyes has forever changed your view of the man you’ve loved since you were little, then looking deeper could kill you—scramble your mind. You know that. But beside the rage and exhaustion fizzing under your skin is this desperate need to know.

Demons are made of lies. What if it was lying about Sam? What if it had screwed with your Gift in some new way, tweaking the image of him in your mind? It had to be lying. The Static in him, as warm and as good as you swore it was—it came from something evil. Sam. The man you love, the boy you’d fallen in love with, his soft sleepy breaths as he lays on the floor beside your bed, his freckly arms swimming in his too-big sleeves. How could any part of him be evil? He couldn’t be. N-not your Sam. How could he ever have something like that inside him?

You need to be sure. Consequences be damned.

As the demon rears up to keep snarling in Sam’s face, you slap a hand over its forehead—reach in—and start ripping.

_

She died screaming.

Sam can’t pull a full breath in. The words burn through his body like a syringe of poison, spreading from limb to limb. The demon snarls up at him, its foamy spit hitting Sam’s face and its teeth snapping around Jess’s name—until.

_____’s hand seals over the demon’s face. The demon’s jaw snaps shut. There is a terrible hanging moment where Sam’s brain struggles to connect the touch to what she’s doing; she never, ever psychically connected with the full face of her palm tattoo. Even with her mom Sam knew she put up a barrier, reading Beth with the smooth back of her knuckles instead.

Shit. Another fresh shot of horror lances through him. What the hell is she doing to it?

The effect is instant. Whatever button _____ had just hit, it activates every horror-movie, Exorcist-level instinct in the demon’s body. Surprised yelps echo down the back of the plane as the lights violently flicker. In electrified, strobing flashes, Sam sees it. The co-pilot’s body is diagonal on the floor one moment, and then it’s arching its back three feet in the air, lurching up into ______’s palm like she’d hit it with a defibrillator. The demon floats up and stays up.

…Until Dean brings it smashing back to the floor again, throwing his weight on top of the co-pilot. He barks, “Sam!” Right. Whatever she’s doing to it, it’s the only working distraction they’ve got. Slapped back to focus, Sam stutters out where he left off: “...O-omnis congregatio et secta diabolica—” It’s a blessing that he makes it through the next lines of the exorcism. Sam pours all of his willpower into keeping his eyes on the stained notebook page it’s written on, no matter how many times his gut begs him to check on her. All he can do is have faith. This is what she does—when Dean’s not strong enough and Sam’s too weak, she finds a damn way, come hell or high water. Sam has always had endless faith in that. So when the whole plane gives that terrible shudder that he was expecting, and then tips, and tips, and tips into a full pitch forward, Sam grips that faith with both hands. The demon’s power ripples through the rest of the plane. Everything descends into chaos. Past the curtain, the lights go out in one silent burst, followed by the explosive, concussive screams of the passengers as the oxygen masks drop. Movies are unfortunately good at capturing this precise moment, but nothing could ever replicate the way Sam’s belly swoops as all five hundred tons of the plane heads straight for the ground. Sam and Dean both go flying, crashing sideways into the walls of the back cabin. The turbulence rips the journal from his hands, and of course, with their fucking luck, it goes skidding through the curtain and down the aisle to ricochet under the seats. “Grab it!” Dean screams.

Sam can’t hear him. He staggers into the open doorway of the back cabin, clutching the frame for dear life. A terrifying, unnatural howl whistles through the cabin, even louder than the wails of the passengers. Its wind flutters his hair around his face and sends luggage toppling out of the overhead bins. For a moment, Sam wonders if the plane’s been hit or the demon has done something—but no. It’s her. He flattens himself to the floor—or rather, gravity flattens him—crawling on his belly towards the shadow of the journal under the seats. The passengers sob and shriek. The air is singed with smoky fear, and riding that same fear, Sam surges ahead, lunging for the book where it’s lodged between tossed luggage. He has to twist to get his hands on it, and it’s then that he feels it.

Down the aisle behind him, the wind drags luggage and loose papers into the void-like darkness of the back cabin—where the great, cleansing, sweeping power of her is fighting the demon. Sam believes in what he’s seen; Sam believes in angels.

She’ll buy him enough time. He knows she will.

Sam’s hands don’t shake as he pries the journal open to the right page.

“Ecclesiam tuam securi tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus,” he shouts, and the words ring as clear and clean as a bell. The plane tries to toss him again, but Sam grits his teeth and persists, “audi nos!”

He waits. Sam sees it more than he hears it. Deep in the blackhole darkness of the plane’s cabin, something red and fiery flashes to life… flickers… and dies.

Maybe he’s imagining it, but he swears he feels the demon fizzle out. The heaviness in the air melts away. The lights, which Sam realizes had been snapping on and off, turn on for good. The hissing of the turbines spins to its normal hum. The plane swooshes back up with a slow coasting motion, then sets itself back on its peaceful forward track.

Gasps and sobs of relief chorus all around Sam, and sprawled in the middle of the aisle, he finds himself doing the same. Overhead, the pilot’s voice crackles reassurances over the intercom. As big wuffs of air cycle in and out of Sam, he waits for the moment for his heart to stop thumping, for the big “we won” moment to wash over him—but it never really does. It sits with him. For a long terrible moment, he is on the bed in his apartment in Palo Alto, Jessica’s blood boiling holes in his neck.

Even now, she’s still burning.

INDIANAPOLIS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT - Dec. 5th, early morning.

Somehow, amid all the noise of swarming paramedics, feds, airline authorities, and stunned 424 passengers, Sam manages to remain lost in his own head. He clenches his jaw til’ his ears pop. How had it known about Jess?

The terminal is quickly packed. He’s not in airports often enough to know whether they should be packed at one in the morning, but he’s gonna guess not. It is all background noise for him. Passengers whirl past, getting cleared by cops to go home, and Dean subtly nudges the three of them into the leaving crowd. Sam has a vague notion that he’s putting one foot in front of the other, but everything feels distant and hazy. His neck blazes with that terrible tingling feeling, and he digs into it with his nails until Dean stops him.

“Sam,” Dean orders, dipping his head towards the direction of the parking lot. Apparently Sam isn’t cooperating well. “Let’s get the hell outta’ here.” For a brief moment, the awful burning feeling covering him in a fog parts long enough for him to think, and Sam realizes that he doesn’t know where _____ is. Panic lances through his chest so fast that he sobers all at once, and he opens his mouth to panic more—until he sees her, scrunched up behind Dean.

Well, clutching Dean. Left shameless by whatever she saw in that demon’s head, she’s got Dean’s hand and wrist in a deathgrip, trailing him so close that her shoes catch the heels of his boots. She does not look good. Her eyes are big and wide and she looks straight through everyone and everything, still tethered to the other dimension her powers live in. She’s got her elbows pressed into her ribs and her body bunched up so tight that Sam can almost feel her psychic overstimulation from where he’s standing.

“S’okay, sweetheart, ” Dean hushes, the first in a long, quiet string of reassurances.

Sam stares at her. Even if she’s in her own world, she must be able to feel it, ‘cause she physically leans out of his way. That should hurt him—should make him burn with sympathy—but instead, all he can think is, she would know. She would know if the demon was lying. Sam’s connected with her like that—there’s absolutely nothing to hide, even if you wanted to, so there’s no way she couldn’t see if the demon had been telling the truth.

The line of people seeping through security to get out of the airport slows to a stop, making way for the pack of paramedics hauling 424’s copilot away on a stretcher. The black boils from the holy water have left his body entirely.

He’ll ask her once. He has to try. Sam lets the two of them in front of him, Dean, then _____, almost pressing her face into Dean’s back. When they’re stopped in line, Sam lifts a hand to touch her—but stops himself, not wanting her to feel any worse. “_____,” Sam swallows, trying to keep his voice even. “What did you see? H-How did it know about Jessica?”

Before she even has the opportunity to answer, (if she can even hear him), Dean swings around to shoot Sam a pained look. “Dude, look at her. Now is not the fuckin’ time. Let her get a full breath in before you start with the interrogations, okay?”

Sam recoils. The gnashing, rebellious fire he usually saves for Dad pours out here, instead, and before Sam knows it he’s snarling back, “I can’t ask one question about my dead girlfriend?”

It lasts only for an instant, but Sam gets to watch in real time the way that hit lands. He’s aware that it’s deeply fucked up of him to enjoy throwing Jess in Dean’s face, but it is his backward, comforting reminder that she was a real person; not a four-year-long fever dream he invented to escape. No one says her name but him anymore. At least, when he talks about her, someone else is forced to feel something too.

Dean sets his jaw. He makes the mistake of trying to turn towards Sam, which _____ thinks is an attempt to shake her off—and she lets out this awful, hoarse sob sound that stops them both cold.

Sam feels like a rail spike has been driven through his chest. Dean gives him a look, then mercifully drops it.

Immediately, Dean’s wheeling her back in and soothing her. The angle at which she’s clinging to him is awkward for all three of them, so he endures her trembling and hitching little sobs as he peels off her hands and re-arranges them. Dean loops an arm around her back so he can stroke her shuddering shoulders, uttering, “S’okay, kiddo, s’ all over… ain’t nothin’ gonna hurt you…”

And of course, because Sam can never exist in peace, he watches the way ______ drops all her weight onto Dean and feels his chest squeeze. Suddenly, he’s very aware of what four years have changed between her and his brother.

The rush back to the car is silent, but for _____’s little sniffling breathes. After making it out of the blistering lights of the chattering airport and out into the peaceful snowy parking lot, things calm down.

Four separate times Sam thinks about reaching out to comfort her. The Gift always leaves her freezing cold, and early December in Indiana on top of that has her making audible little shivering sounds as they walk. Sam’s boiling under his coat. He unzips it, then zips it up again, unsure if she’d even want it. Dean gets her in the car and puts a warm blanket around her before Sam can get over his indecision.

They just saved two hundred people. In hindsight, that’s a massive win. Maybe if the demon hadn’t said what it’d said, and maybe if it hadn’t reduced her to this, Sam could celebrate. Seeing her so messed up always throws him. Less than an hour ago, she was the powerful psychic that used to have Dad clutching his telepathy-blocking charm under his shirt.

Sam scrubs his hand down his face, staring blankly at the trembling lump of blanket lying across the backseat. Now, she’s… whatever she saw in that demon.

Dean tucks her feet up onto the seat, then nudges the door closed with his hip. Sam stares past him, through him, at her silhouette in the Impala’s dark glass, because that’s somehow easier than looking at Dean.

The smattering of snow growing on the asphalt makes the whole world sound muffled. Sam feels like he’s talking to empty air when he croaks, “It knew about Jessica.”

“Sam,” Dean calls, softer this time. Asking for Sam to look at him. When he manages to heave his head up, Dean’s face is firm and reassuring. “These things—they read minds. They lie, just like Beth said. That’s all it was. Don’t let that thing get into your head, okay?”

Sam forces himself to nod. They both spare the shaking shape in the backseat one more look, then Dean’s rounding the car for the driver’s seat, and Sam’s sliding in next to him without another word.

PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA - Dec. 5th, night.

Green. It had to be the ugliest color a motel room could be, Sam thought as he stared at the empty room. The walls were this sad limey green color that managed to look awful even in the dark, some parts made even limey-er by the huge neon green vacancy sign right outside their window. Their room was parked right next to it, so there was no escaping the sign even with the curtains pulled shut.

You and Dean, who were positioned right under the ugly green light, had somehow managed to fall asleep anyway. The only sound in the whole world was your soft breathing across the room and the crackle of the ancient TV.

Right now, it was playing a rerun of some televangelist in a big shiny white suit. He paced the screen on mute as Sam watched, curled on his side, laying diagonal to face the screen. Nightmares were so common for him now that the hardest part of the battle was getting to sleep in the first place. His strategy was to get so bored and so tired that his body would simply have nothing else to do but crash. Bored was the key word—Sam had tried reading, sudoku, and counting cars as they whisked by, but all of that occupied his mind too much to work. Tonight was another night where his mind was just too full to sleep.

He hoped Dean was right. He prayed that the demon had just been lying, lips pressed to the cross he kept under his shirt. Most days, Sam dropped into bed and sent off a brief prayer before the fight for sleep began. Tonight, though—tonight was one of those nights where he clasped his cross in both hands and poured his heart out. Sam prayed for his brother, his Dad, and for you, like usual, pleading for protection and strength. Sam prayed for Jessica, too.

(But never for her forgiveness—he knew he didn’t deserve that).

When Sam had first started getting comfortable with prayer, he’d always worried that he was being greedy or selfish by asking for so much. Health, food, lunch money, for Dad and Dean to get home okay. Now, it’s a natural comfort to him. To open yourself up to something higher than you, to give up your pride and ask for help—that is a mark of holiness. Goodness. Sam closes out his prayers and feels clean.

Across the room, Sam hears the covers in the opposite bed shift. He squints sleepy eyes at your silhouette, and even sluggish and drained, the shifting colors from the TV and the vacancy sign illuminate you like something not entirely from this world.

You pad over to his bedside. A soft, ice-cold hand shakes his arm. When you get up close and realize Sam’s awake, you scuttle back in surprise. “Uh.”

Sam shoves his face into his pillow. With his mind still on Jess, it’s hard for him to look at you right now. “What is it?”

It’s funny. From the moment you got off flight 424, you’d been glued to Dean’s side. Sam had kept his teeth pressed together through the entire thing, watching from a distance as you reached for Dean, spoke to Dean, took the food Dean gave you. If Sam didn’t know any better, he’d figure you were avoiding him. Now you’ve decided you want something from him?

The second you touch his arm, every wisp of jealousy in Sam dries up. Not at all in the mood to be touched, he squirms out from under your hand and hoarsely repeats, “What?” You speak to him for the first time in hours. You sound rough and broken, and the edge of that awful sob from earlier today threatens to tip into your voice. “Can I…?”

Sam keeps his face planted in the pillow. At first he’s unsure what you’re even asking for—until you drop a hand on the mattress and he feels your weight tilt closer, wanting to… to lay with him. Like when you were little. When you share beds on the road, there’s often space left between you. That’s not what you’re asking for. If that’s what you wanted right now, you’d be in Dean’s bed.

The soft, choked little voice he can’t resist begs, “I just need to feel you.”

The last sliver of guilt and self-loathing that Sam has been holding onto instantly slips out of his grasp, hearing that. For the millionth time since this morning, he’s reminded of how awful he was to you. You’d been brought to the brink with your powers in a way they hadn’t seen in years, and Sam chose that precise moment to freak out. He wished he’d been better to you. Maybe he can’t pray for Jess’s forgiveness, but he can work to earn yours now.

Sam shuffles back on the mattress and opens the covers for you. “C’mere.”

As quiet as a mouse, you duck under his arm and slip under the covers. Sam immediately realizes that he should’ve fucking braced himself or something, because holy shit, you are so close. He accidentally gave you very little room in the already small bed. To keep from tumbling off the mattress and onto the questionable carpet, you reasonably and logically slot right up against him, your back against his chest and your heads on the same pillow. Holy shit, he did not think this through. Sam has very few gentlemanly places to lay his arm. And even if he found one, your icy cold hand picks up his warm one and—right, okay, you take it and wrap it right around your middle. That’s fine too. Cool. Awesome.

Okay. Forgetting every way he could sabotage this for himself for just a moment, Sam realizes that he missed this. God, he missed it so much. You wiggle back into his body and Sam gives you a big, indulgent squeeze around the tummy, earning this watery little sigh that makes his already racing heart zing out into orbit. Friendly snuggling became a lot less friendly when you were pushing seventeen instead of nine, so Sam hasn’t allowed himself to properly, um… cuddle you… in ages.

That isn’t even the best part. That little squeeze makes him realize just how pleasantly cold you are, a wonderful ice cube in blazing hot soup. Sam’s practically cooking under the covers—and that must be perfect for you and your chilly hands, because you make the same pitiful happy noise that Sam does as you get comfortable against each other.

Maybe if this were any other moment, after any other day, that would be something you might laugh about together. Instead, Sam’s prayers are filled with you and your incredible burden. He hesitates to go all in and hold you like he wants to… until your breath makes that tight, hitching sound again, and Sam’s sure you’re holding back tears. Screw it, Sam thinks. He’ll take care of you this time. Sam presses his face into your hair and entwines your hands on your belly, unsure of what to say and yet wanting to say so much. Dean can’t hold you like this—this is something you only want from Sam.

You both go still. Sam feels you hold your breath. His legs are itching to shift under the covers and your hand awkwardly holds his, the two of you afraid to disturb the magic.

Your thumb slowly caresses along the flat side of his hand. His heart leaps into his throat, and he squeezes his eyes shut, willing himself to relax. You need this. Finally, it’s his turn to comfort you.

Sam swallows hard. There’s no way you can’t feel his heart thudding away, inches from popping clean out of his chest. Neither of you are stupid. If Dean were to wake up, you know exactly what this would look like to him—to the cleaning lady, to the strangers out on the street. But right now, in this frozen moment, there’s no one awake in the world but the two of you and the TV. It is so, so wrong. But when you touch him, Sam feels clean.

Bit by bit, you adjust to one another. Your breath syncs up. The whole time, your eyes never move from the TV, but if Sam focusses he swears something washes over him—that same great, sweeping, cleansing power from the plane, as light as moth wings on his skin. He has to bite back his smile. If you did that to anyone else, they’d find you creepy as hell.

After what feels like forever, you plainly croak, “It was lying about her. It was made of lies.”

That hits Sam like a slap to the face. That’s… yeah. That sounds right. He absorbs the impact as best he can, because although his faith was thin, Sam trusted Dean’s word and he trusts yours, too. There’s—so much that he feels about that, but he doesn’t want any more of his grief to overwhelm your Gift. Sam’s not naive. No matter how good of a person you are, no matter how considerate and understanding and empathetic you can be, Sam knows that talking about Jessica brings you some level of pain. It hurts him, too. And he has zero clue where that conversation would even begin, so he stores his shame and his loss and gives a shaky nod.

Instead, Sam asks, “...What did you see? When you looked into its head?”

Right. Cause’ that was such a better question to ask her, Sam.

You go silent. It’s a weighty, knowing silence, one that chokes the whole room. Sam readies himself for whatever you’re about to share with him. Admittedly, he’s curious. When the Gift was something new in your life, Sam used to pile on question after question about what the world felt like to you. ‘What does it feel like when Dean’s happy?’ A car motor turning on. ‘What does my happiness feel like?’ Dimples and a mystery being solved. ‘You’re joking.’ Not even a little. It fascinated Sam—how does a demon feel in comparison to a regular spirit?

“...It was just an evil spirit, Sammy,” you dismiss. “That’s all.”

Sam highly doubts that’s true. If it was just a spirit, then why did it screw with you so deeply? What had you seen in its head that had scared you? You, of all people, who was built for this? He knows there’s something more here, but after this week and all the ways you’ve fought to avoid being a burden, the fact that you’d crawl to Sam for comfort is a sign of surrender. You’ve given up. Clearly, you don’t want to talk about it. Sam isn’t going to push you. God knows he’s done that enough.

When Sam doesn’t push you, you shudder out a wet sigh and pick up his hand. At this point, Sam expects you in this state to do something weird—and sure enough, you do. You pick up Sam’s hand and you just stare at it. Just stare. Your thumb presses into the meat of his palm, almost like you’re looking for something. Feeling him. Sam’s heart gives another pathetic, noticeable throb. Feeling him and being close to him is, after everything, still a source of comfort for you. His cheeks burn.

Just to fill the silence, Sam whispers, “I’ve lost a lot of my calluses.”

Per usual, his little creep says nothing. You’re still feeling him. Your other hand comes up to investigate too, adding even more soft gentle touching to Sam’s already overloaded system. Your thumbs press into the center of his palm (reading it, maybe?), then over each bump, confirming for yourself that Sam’s real.

Maybe he’d be a bit more resilient if you were doing this to him in a crowded diner or a rowdy college party. Instead, Sam can feel the rise and fall of your breath through your thin shirt, and it’s the only sound in the dead world besides the buzzing static on the TV.

Your gaze turns to the TV. The fingers caressing his hand stop cold.

Sam says your name. He can feel your heart thud thud thudding deep in your chest, like rabbit’s feet hitting snow.

Again, absorbed completely in your own task, you don’t answer him. You roll over very suddenly under the covers. Sam hopes for a minute that being face to face with you will give him some answers, but the flash of your face he sees only serves to scare the shit out of him. You give him no time to process before you’re full-body hugging him, shoving a hand between his side and the mattress and fisting one in his shirt to bodily haul him against you. Sam sputters out a sharp noise and awkwardly slopes his hands down your back. The sudden intimacy gives him a whole world of shameful butterflies and freaks him out enough, but…

You looked terrified. The same bone-deep horror you had on your face after you saw the demon in person—when you trudged up to Sam with those haunting Proctor eyes, staring straight through him and right at his future. What had you seen in that demon?

Sam tries to speak, but you talk over him, just as haunted as you’d been on that plane.

“I love you. So much, Sam. You know that?”

It’s not a sweet, reminiscent kind of question. It is a genuine, unironic, please-tell-me-the-truth, You know that?

Sam’s brain stalls. “...Yeah. O-Of course.”

In case that wasn’t worrying enough, your hands needily grasp at his back, refusing to let Sam go as you duck your face into his shoulder. Sam can feel your entire body trembling from head to toe, can feel your hot breath on his neck choking back tears. “You’re a good person,” you tell him, insisting. “The best to me.”

“That’s—”

“I can feel it, okay?” You snap. One of your hands slips up his chest to smooth over Sam’s heart, and you squeeze him against you, promising, “Here. Right here.”

…Okay. Consider him officially freaked out. Sam manages an unconvinced, “...Thank you.”

You’re so wound up that you’re gritting your teeth, digging your nails into his shirt and clawing him as close as possible. This has to be an effect of what you saw. Which is strange, because that… whatever that was, did not feel like psychic possession or a psychic panic attack or any kind of psychic anything. It felt like you, trying to convince Sam that he’s a good person. It strikes a cold, dark chord somewhere deep within him that he doesn’t like. You’re just… you’re just reacting to what the demon showed you. You’re overwhelmed from stretching your Gift so thin. T-that’s. Yeah. Regardless, you’re scared. You need him. That, at least, is something he can work with.

“Shh,” Sam coos. He rubs a warm hand from the base of your scalp all the way down your back, then up, and back again, repeating the soothing motion until his arm goes numb. “You’re tired. Let’s go to sleep.”

You mumble something non-committal under your breath.

Sam hushes you, blindly reaching for comforting things to say. “S’ okay. You’re okay, baby. You can fall asleep on me.”

Maybe the demon showed you visions of Sam getting hurt. Something. That would explain this, maybe. He fixates on it, purely because it’s a problem in front of him that is much easier to think about than how scared he is for you, and worse, how much he loves this. Being your person. It’s a stupid, selfish thought to have in a moment like this, but—Sam wishes he could take care of you like this all the time.

As your frantic breathing smooths out into a clear, easy in-and-out, Sam wonders, wherever Jess is, what she would think if she saw this.

He closes his eyes and tries to steady his own breathing, the TV still crackling away on the dresser.

In. Bzzzsh. Out. Bzzzsh.

- tags: @samssluttybangs @cookiemumster1 @lacilou @cevans-winchester @leigh70 @seraphimluxe @emily-roberts @emme-looou @aloneatpeace @williamstop @ornella0910 @chaoticshepardplaid @dakota-dream @lcvecstiel @goghkiss @spnexploration @stoneyggirl @urm0mmmbbg @mulattomoon @poeticsorcery @deansapplepie @rennydennyy @babydollfoster @badlandsbrunette @hallecarey1 @pplanetcaravan

[holylulusworld]

Jeannie in a bottle (1)

Summary: Jackpot. Dean found a genie bottle.

Pairing: Dean Winchester x genie!Reader

Warnings: magic, mentions of entrapment, genie!reader, mentions of stalking (very implied)

Jeannie in a bottle masterlist

“Don’t rub the bottle,” the owner of the antique shop warns. “It’s a dangerous object! Stop!”

Sam looks up from the book just in time as his brother is about to rub the Arabian-styled genie bottle he found on one of the dusty shelves.

“Look at this Sammy,” the hunter grins. “They sell genie bottles here. Do you think I’ll get a pretty little Jeannie just for myself when I rub it?”

“DON’T!!!” the owner screams at Dean. The hunter almost drops the bottle. He catches it mid-fall and presses it to his chest.

“Dude! It almost broke because of you,” Dean grunts. He carefully lifts the bottle to his face, humming as he reads the encryption. “Love me to find heaven. Forsake me to find hell. Nice.”

“Nice?” Sam rolls his eyes. “Dean just put it back. We don’t need decoration but these.” He points at the pile of books he placed on the counter. 

“I want this,” his brother insists. “It’s…shiny…” 

Sam frowns as his brother’s eyes look glassy. “Dean. Put the bottle back. I don’t think it’s decoration.”

“He needs to put it away, Sir. Please,” the owner freaks out. He runs toward Dean, almost tackling the hunter. Dean moves out of the way, huffing as the man trips over his feet.

“I want it. How much?” Dean gets his wallet out. “I think it belongs to me. I’ll give you fifty bucks.”

“It’s irreplaceable,” the man cries. “Please give it back!”

“Dean. He’s going to lose his mind if you don’t give it back.”

“Yeah. Not going to happen.”

Dean looks at the golden bottle, as he carefully runs his hand over it. “Dean!”

“Shiny, and beautiful. All mine,” Dean purrs as the bottle begins to glow. “Look, Sammy. So pretty…”

“DEAN!!!!”

Sam drops the book in his hands to run toward his brother. 

It’s too late. 

The bottle drops to the ground. It bursts open and pink smoke covers his brother seconds later. “DEAN!”

“Sammy, I—oh hello there,” Dean purrs. “I got myself a genie, Sammy! A genie!”

Sam can’t see anything but the smoke enveloping his brother. He calls for Dean and tries to cut through the smoke with the demon killing knife. “DEAN!”

“I won’t harm him,” a soft voice whispers in Sam’s ear. “I wasn’t out of the bottle for so long. I need time to put myself back together.”

“What? I-“ Sam watches the smoke form a figure. His eyes grow wide, as the smoke turns into a woman. “How?”

“I told you I got myself a genie,” Dean lies on the ground, grinning dopily. He watches you run your hands over your body and licks his lips. “Isn’t she wonderful?”

You crouch down to pat Dean’s cheek. “It will fade soon, Dean. Sorry for this. The smoke turns the one rubbing the bottle into a love-sick puppy.”

“You don’t look like a genie,” Sam clears his throat. He looks you up and down, drinking your appearance in. “I mean…you’re wearing jeans and a tee.”

“I’m not a genie, you genius,” you sass back. “I’m a huntress…or was.” You sigh deeply as you look down at your body. “What year do we have?”

“Okay, don’t panic but it’s 2022,” Sam says.

“Fuck! I was in that bottle for ten fucking years?” you exclaim loudly and put your hands on your hips. “YOU FUCKING FREAK!”

You storm toward the owner of the antique shop. He crawls away, mumbling another spell under his breath. “Stop that!”

Dean suddenly stands right next to you. He aims a gun at the man’s head, unlocking it. “I said, stop. I got witch-killing bullets in my gun. If you don’t stop. You will die!”

“Well go ahead,” the man grins. “But then my genie will go back and live in the bottle for eternity. She’s only mine…only mine.”

“Shoot him,” you grunt. “I don’t care if I go back in there. He stalked me for a year, and right when I got hold of him, he used a spell and entrapped me.”

“Sonofabitch! Sammy. We need the handcuffs,” Dean smirks darkly. “We will take that bastard with us and put him in the dungeon.”

“I said, kill him,” you grunt.

“Hey, aren’t you supposed to follow my orders and fulfill all of my wishes?” Dean cocks his head to glance at you. 

“I’m not that kind of genie,” you retort. “He banned me inside the bottle because I refused to become his girlfriend. That sick bastard is a little creep.”

“No magical powers then?” Dean sighs deeply. “There I was, believing I found my private genie.”

“Fine. I will grant you three wishes, Dean,” you snap your fingers to change clothing. You’re wearing the costume from I Dream of Jeannie, smirking at the hunter. “Better?”

“Much better,” he purrs while drinking your new outfit in.

“So…what do you want, Dean? But remember, you only go three wishes. And don’t come up with the crap that you wish for more wishes...”

>> Part 2

Tags in reblog.

[reignoftiramizu]

The Kingmaker Histories S3 EP1: Operation ZUWIEbreaker (Because my brain is in shambles. Its so good)

The kingmaker histories SEASON THREE EP1 "OPERATION TIEBREAKER" IS OUT And I live reacted...... Per ushe. I am suffering from nuttybrain. The Cause, The Affliction, The Reason Why: The Kingmaker Histories. If anyone is interested in reading my "flipping the fuck out" for 35:23 mins then look below the cut. Spoilers beware. BEWARE!!!!

Ohh my god that transition of: “but to those who may be less familiar – Miss Culver?” SO COOL

The chair creaking as Ariadne leans closer on the “Since you-know-what” OHHHHHHHAAUAGHH WHAT A GOOD LITTLE DETAIL. I SHIVERED

What a cool fucking death for Schultz. Also Im obsessed with Addison’s delivery on “No you don’t. Not before I get that information!”

THE THEME SONG IS PLAYIINNGGG WELCOME BACK THE KINGMAKER HISTORIES. WELCOME BACK!!!! OH ITS GOOD TO BE BACK

Wow this second scene with the main three, AND Baldinotti (HI AUSTIN) AND MARIA (LIZ PLANT NATION!), IS SO FUCKING FANTASTIC Oh it has so much soul. It holds the soul of Kingmaker. Especially the set of lines where Maria is like “What the hells wrong with you??” And they all list down what happened, and then in-tandem, all go “YES” to extra strength. KILLER S3 START. I CANNOT CONTAIN MY EXCITEMENT AND IM ONLY 10 MINS IN

LOVE MARIA SOOO MUCH. Because Liz is incredible & melds with the returning cast so much. ITS SO GREAT TO HEAR TAQI & BLYTHE & JOSH WITH NEW MATERIAL!!!! THE GANG IS BACK!!!! I also fucking love Maria to death. I will shout it forever.

Gonna make myself a prussian army doctor

“Hey Telsie” “What” “Matching bullet wounds” “Normal couples get wedding bands” “One of us should shoot Colette so she doesnt feel left out” “If you even think about shooting me Ill kill you” I LOVE THEM SO MUCH FANTASTIC LINES AND FANTASTIC DELIVERY. ALSO “Trouble sleeping?” “OH my god. Could you not–“ THIS SCENE IS AWESOME TOO. FUCK. I CANT STOP TYPING. Love hearing Colette somber.

MANDEL!!!!! MY FAV!!!! (FUCK YOU HOLMANN) MANDEL!!!! <3 <3 AND I LOVE ROXANA!!! OMG!!!!!! I LOVE ROXANA’S VOICE

“Beat. Mandel starts to suspect he’s fucked.” Oh the transcript treat. Listening along w reading the transcript is a treat.

What a tense scene between Mandel and Holzmann WHAT THE FUCK!!!! THAT WAS GOOD!!!!!

Ariadne and Winston fucking Churchill are interacting canonly. Only in Kingmaker. Oh my fucking god. Also “What circle of hell did you pick her up from again?”LMFAO

THE KINGMAKER FUSION SPELL SOUNDS. OH MYFUCKIGN GOD. IM SO TENSE THIS WHOLE SCENE. OH MY GOD!!!!!!! A SECOND KINGMAKER FUSION SPELL!!!!!!!! HARLOW NO!!!!! NO!!!!!!O  HMYGOD!!!! BONBON!!!!!! MORE LIKE BOMBOMB!!!!! WE HAVE ANOTHER COLETTE ADJACENT KINGMAKER HOST ON OUR HANDS!!! FUCK!!! THIS IS BAD!!!! THIS IS REALLYFUCKING BAD!!!!! HELLO!!!!!!

"HARLOW: (shaken to his core) Can I leave? ARIADNE: Of course. Give me a call if you want it taken out." Insane. Love this ^ both deliveries

OK. ENDING THIS LIVEREACTION WITH: FUCKING DAVID AULT WAS ALSO WINSTON FUCKING CHURCHILL!!??!?!?!?????

[xxrainstorm]

Raring

Pairing: Joakim ��Jolly” Karlsson x reader

Word Count: 863 Cross posted Wattpad

cw / tags: smut, breeding kink

18 + MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

Authors note: Alrighty I’ve decided to finally start posting my fanfics I have always wrote them just for me but never posted any publicly and decided to finally just bite the bullet and go for it. I am gonna apologize in advanced I’m not very skilled my grammar and spelling may be slacking but desperate times come desperate measures. There is simply not enough bad omens fanfics especially not about Jolly, Nicholas and Folio so that’s what I’m gonna shoot mainly for. Noah gets enough attention as it is so now it’s the rest of the bands turn. That being said if you have any suggestions or ideas DM me or put it in my ask and I’ll do what I can to write for you 🖤 I am still down to write about Noah I’d just really prefer the other three especially Joakim because he is the love of my life even if he doesn’t know it yet 😅

I love criticism. Tell me what you like and what you don’t. Feel free to drop suggestions. Just bare with me I will eventually get the hang of this lol.

P. S. I suck at titles so I apologize I’m advanced for that

Joakim had managed to seduce you into bed for the 3rd time today already having made you cum once with his mouth and once with his fingers before whisking you off to the bedroom yet again. 

He practically throws you back onto on the bed before quickly stripping out of clothes and climbing on top of you kissing you hungrily. He takes his time marking you covering your breasts in hickies before roughly pinning your arms above your head and forcing your legs apart. 

He grabs his shaft and roughly slides his tip up and down your folds teasing your clit with it covering himself in your slick arousal. You were already so sensitive it almost hurt. Your entire body shuddered in response to his cruelty. You can't help but try to grind your hips against him desperate for some relief. 

"Ah...fuck Joakim please" you cry out "Just fuck me already!"

"Such a needy girl aren't you baby" he chuckles lining himself up with your entrance before slowly sinking into you bottoming himself out. He stills deep inside you giving you a moment to adjust to the familiar sting of his size. He leans down and kisses you sweetly before slowly pulling himself almost all the way out of your soaked cunt. He roughly slams his cock back into you making you yelp into his kiss bringing tears to your eyes from the oversensitivity. 

He can feel you clenching around him quickly building up to your third orgasm of the evening and knows you won't last much longer. He also knows the second he feels you spasm around him releasing yourself all over him he will instantly be a goner too.

"Where do you want me to cum pretty girl?" He rasps hot breath tickling your neck  "do you want me to fill you up? Put a baby in you?" he teases 

His words cause you involuntarily clench harder around his throbbing cock. Joakim notices, smiling deviously down at you as he continues thrusting roughly in and out of you. 

" I see, I see" he chuckles darkly "you love the idea of me filling you up don't you Princess?" 

His words alone are making your head spin your third orgasm growing closer and closer with every passing second. He thrusts deeper, and faster than you thought possible his massive cock brushing against your cervix with each stroke pushing you closer and closer to coming completely undone around him. 

"You want me to fuck a baby into you don't you Raring? You love the idea of being round with MY baby" you moan in response and he shakes his head clicking his tongue at you before brushing your hair off of your sweat slick forehead and tucking it behind your ear

"Use your words baby. Look me in the eyes and tell me what you want from me" he coos using his thumb to lightly circle your clit, teasing you just enough to leave you whimpering and begging for more.

"Please, please Daddy use me" you begged looking into his eyes struggling to get the words out between feverish moans  "I need you to fill me I wanna feel you " 

His eyes darken. He grips your hips so tightly you are certain there will be bruises tomorrow. He thrusts into you with such force it causes the bed frame to slam against the wall with each stroke. 

"I know you're close baby, let go cum for me" he groans and that was all it took to send you toppling over the edge. You screamed out his name clawing at his forearms as he continued to hold you still and thrust into you with all his might. A few seconds later he spills into you filling you with his warm cum. He collapses on top of you sweaty and out of breath. You both lay in silence trying to catch your breaths as you feel him soften still inside you. You absentmindedly play with his hair brushing it out of his face while rubbing his upper back. 

After a few more minutes of cuddles he finally pulls himself off of you, both of you wincing as he pulls out. You attempt to get up to clean yourself but he pushes you back down hovering above you. 

"Nope. uh uh I was serious y/n" 

You furrow your eyebrows in confusion 

"I am giving you a baby. You are gonna lay your ass down and stay there filled with my cum. You better get used to it because it's gonna be a daily occurrence until I finally make you a mom" he says 

"I'd like that" you smile up at him "for the record I think you would be an amazing daddy" 

He smiles and leans down kissing your forehead, then your belly then your lips before climbing out of bed and cleaning himself up. He throws on a pair of joggers and gently helps you a pull on a pair of panties and his t shirt careful not to spill any of his seed before turning on a movie and pulling you into his chest where you doze off dreaming of your future family

[blitherbug]

I love the stack in magic the gatjlhering its like, "hey baby you know how humans only experance liner time? Well fuck you non liner time is what we do in here, fuck you, fuck your preconvied notion of cause and effect, im shooting you with a gun, whats that? Your stoping me from shooting you by becoming immune to bullets? Well to bad! I saw you start to cast that spell you pathethitic little worm, and now before you were even going to get shot by the first bullet im shooting you with another bullet from the same gun, and that second bullet is gonna hit first because you, you absaloute fool, you imbicile, you thought that time was linier, well fuck you and every thing you stabd for. Get shot in the face and die "

[maccreadysbaby]

A Hundred Ways to Become a Wayne

batfamily + oc insert

tw: none

wanna read more? here’s the table of contents!

want to read the first fic in the hundred days series so you understand what’s going on here? here it is!

short but crucial moments between the fam <3

part thirty-two

❝ REUNIONS ❞

TUESDAY — AUGUST 18 — 1:07PM

THE FIRST THING BENTLEY HEARD WAS THE BEEPING OF A HEART MONITOR. 

He took a deep breath. He was laying on something comfortable now, and his shoulder — the one that had been shot — felt like it had been tampered with. His right arm was close to his body and he couldn’t move it all that much. Something really warm was pressed up against the whole left side of his body, too.

His brain was still kind of hazy, but a different kind of hazy than before — less of a I’m-about-to-die haze, and more of a painkiller-high haze.

Still, all the painkillers could do was dull the endless aching that originated in his shoulder and reverberated through his bones. He wasn’t sure what had happened — did people stitch up bullet holes? — but it was still pretty painful. 

When he pulled his eyes open, he was blinded by the white lights of the cave’s medbay, and a shooting pain shot through his skull. He made a small whine of discomfort and squeezed them shut. Why were the lights so bright?

A hand landed gently on his forehead, and he almost started crying right then. Because it wasn’t Nico or Asten or Davis or just anyone touching him, it was the real deal, he was actually home, actually alive, and Bruce was actually touching him. He thought.

He peeled his eyes open again just to make sure, and the back of his eyes began to burn at the sight of Bruce, sitting in a chair not a foot from the bed in the batcave’s medbay, his grey-blue irises trained on Bentley’s face.

“Hey there, chum,”

Bentley looked away, (don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.) and instead, focused on himself. He was wearing his own hand-me-down Wonder Woman pajamas now (he’d never loved them so much.) His right arm was in a blue sling, and there was an IV going into his left hand. Really, his entire body was aching in some way or another, but instead of dwelling on all of that, he looked over to the warm thing that was pressed into his left side. 

It ended up being a very worn-down looking Dick Grayson that was curled up on the edge of the hospital bed, sleeping soundly, with an IV of his own in his arm. His black hair was tousled and messy, hanging down over his eyes, and he looked paler than usual. One arm was folded beneath his head while the other was extended toward Bentley, resting on his left shoulder.

He was home.

He worked up the courage to look back at Bruce, but when he plastered on a reassuring smile, Bentley promptly peered into the rest of the cave. The Batcomputer was empty, and Bentley couldn’t see anyone else.

Bruce kept brushing his hand over his hair. “How are you feeling?”

Bentley thought about shrugging, but that would be stupid. He also thought about trying sign, but he didn’t have both hands. He definitely wasn’t going to talk, lest he burst into tears, so instead, he lifted his left hand ever so subtly and finger-spelled: bad.

Bruce took in a breath through his nose, a sort of hazy film covering his eyes as he continued to brush Bentley’s hair back soothingly. “I’m so proud of you, Bentley. You made it home.”

Bentley really had to stare at the ceiling, good and hard that time. Bruce was proud of him? Proud of him for running away, for chasing a supervillain, for breaking into someone’s cabin, for getting himself kidnapped? How was he ever supposed to work up the nerve to tell him all of that? Sure, he hadescaped, he had made it home, but not on his own, only after his idiotic decisions had gotten him there in the first place. There was nothing for Bruce to be proud of. 

You worthless waste of oxygen, John Whittaker’s voice came and left him blinking back a sting in his eyes. Why couldn’t he do anything right? Every time he tried to do something helpful or good it always ended up backfiring, getting him hurt, getting him kidnapped, getting him laid in a hospital bed with Wayne’s at his side. Why couldn’t he do anything right? This time he hadn’t even attempted it alone — he had friends at his side, and still, it was disastrous.

Bentley Whittaker, you are a walking disaster.

Why did the insult hurt worse now than it had then? His father always called him worthless, useless, a disaster. Did it hurt worse now because the Wayne’s went out of their way to tell him he wasn’t, but he still really, really was? And he knew he was? All the evidence was laid out neatly before him: Bentley Whittaker was a disaster. 

And still, they loved him.

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. Bentley looked around the medbay to keep his eyes occupied, at the other hospital beds that were to either side of his. Much to his surprise, he was currently the only one in the medbay, if he didn’t count Dick. Alfred (who he hadn’t seen before.) was running tests on the other end of the room, and the beds that were once inhabited by Tim, Jason, and Damian were empty.

Slowly, he lifted his hand and finger-spelled: Damian?

Bruce smiled fondly. “He woke up… about twelve hours ago. Jason, too. They’re upstairs now.”

Bentley sighed softly, then spelled: Tim?

“He still isn’t feeling well, but he’s doing much better. He’s upstairs as well,” Bruce explained softly.

Bentley glanced over at Dick, his eyes traveling across the IV in his hand. Dick? He signed.

“He’s okay, just a little worn,” Bruce explained, making sure to keep that reassuring smile plastered on. “You were gone for twenty-six hours, and Nightwing was out searching for twenty-three of them. You’ve been in the cave for about thirteen.”

And that made Bentley feel even worse than he already did. He knew that’s not what Bruce intended by telling him that, but it’s what happened, anyway. So Bentley looked back at the too-bright ceiling with a small exhale.

Bruce moved his chair closer with a small squeak. “Should you ever want to talk about what happened, we’ll listen. But for now, we’re just relieved you’re home.”

Bentley said nothing, but like a bell that was coming to save him, Dick began to stir. It wasn’t but five seconds before his bright ocean blue eyes flitted open, focusing on the rest of the room, then Bruce, then Bentley. He inhaled sharply, his blue eyes very suddenly and quickly brimming with tears, before he hugged Bentley as gently as he could and his his face away in his hair.

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, Bentley found himself saying again. There was suddenly a hand in front of his face that finger-spelled: I love you.

So Dick still wasn’t talking, then. Bentley had forgotten about that part. He didn’t mind, though — staring at various parts of the batcave was good enough for him. Communicating thoroughly wasn’t really on his radar at that point anyhow.

For a while (a long while) Dick just cried. Which was fine. Bentley just let him. It felt like he was being eaten alive by guilt, anyways, so the least he could do was let Dick cry it out with him.

Dick’s pain was his fault, his mind kept saying. Everyone’s pain was his fault. Bentley’s. His father was the one who ran the experimenting facility. His father was testing the Synchronizers on other people so he could eventually do it to him. If he’d have just gone through with his father’s plan last year, Keene and his metahumans wouldn’t have a vendetta against Batman. The Secret Keeper wouldn’t be attacking them. If he’d have just done what he was told for once in his life, people wouldn’t be dead, his family wouldn’t be hurt, and Gotham would be fine.

Everything was always his fault. Why couldn’t he do anything right?

He forced himself to keep it together and stared at the ceiling some more. There had to be a way for him to fix this. To destroy the whole empire his father had built, for his family. There had to be a way to do it without involving Asten and Nico, so they wouldn’t get in trouble. There had to be a way to do it alone. Himself, so he’d stop hurting people. Didn’t there?

You’ve gotten yourself into this hole, claw yourself out, John Whittaker’s voice came.

He could do that. He could. After all, John Whittaker didn’t give up. He stillhadn’t. And John Whittaker’s blood was running through Bentley Whittaker’s veins.

He could fix it all.

But for now, fixing it looked like giving Dick a shoulder to cry on. And he could do that.

So he did.

—

The second time he woke up, someone was talking.

“I about decided I didn't like it so much, though, when I spotted that red Corvair trailing me. I was almost two blocks from home then, so I started walking a little faster. I had never been jumped, but I had seen Johnny after four Socs got hold of him, and it wasn't pretty. Johnny was scared of his own shadow after that. Johnny was sixteen then,”

Bentley pulled his heavy eyes open, glancing around the medbay. Dick was no longer at his side, and there was only one person in his vision — the one reading his favorite book to him.

When Bentley fully comprehended that Bruce’s seat had been taken by a certain Wayne with white-streaked hair, he pushed himself up.

“Jason?”

It was the first word he’d forced out since he’d made it to the doorstep of Wayne Manor, all raspy and weird sounding. Jason looked up at him, his bluish eyes dull with something Bentley couldn’t place. He was wearing a hoodie that Bentley was pretty sure he’d seen Dick wear before, and he had the hardcover The Outsiders in one hand.

CRACK!

Dad!

CRACK!

CRACK!

The sounds of a crowbar hitting flesh plagued his mind, and all of his keeping it together seemed to be futile. He hadn’t let himself cry thus far, not when Dick was crying, not when Bruce was talking to him, not ever. But now, when Jason was looking at him with his little white streak that was hanging down near his forehead, reading to him with his Crime Alley drawl, healthy and here and alive, Bentley didn’t have enough willpower to stifle the burn behind his eyes.

“Hey, kid. What’s going on?” Jason asked gently, lowering the book until it rested on the edge of the bed. Bentley brought his left arm up to cover his eyes, but it wasn’t much use. He let out a few small, pitiful sounding sobs anyways.

“Do you want me to go get Dick?” Jason continued, somewhat anxiously as he glanced around the cave. “I’ll go get Dick.”

“No!” Bentley croaked, uncovering his face and scrubbing at his teary eyes. “Don’t go.”

Jason didn’t move, but he didn’t exactly seem comfortable, either. Man, Bentley was just screwing stuff up left and right, wasn’t he?

“I just… Can I… have a hug?”

He really didn’t know what to expect from Jason — he’d always been particular about touching Bentley, abuse survivor to abuse survivor, so maybe the question was totally  out of bounds. Maybe Bentley should’ve thought about it first. (He wasn’t very good at that anymore.)

Jason steeled for a moment, blinking just a couple times, and Bentley looked away, trying (and failing) to stop crying. Jason was next to him and Jason was alive. He wasn’t  Robin, he wasn’t dead in a warehouse. He was alive.

After a moment, Jason replied: “Yeah. Yeah, you can.”

Bentley moved to the edge of the hospital bed sort of awkwardly. The whole thing was kind of awkward, actually, since Bentley was on the bed and Jason was in a chair, but they ended up making it work. Bentley rested his head on Jason’s shoulder and looped his (one) arm around his neck. He could feel his pulse under his fingers — he was alive.

Bentley sniffled deeply, tightening his hold ever-so-slightly. “I’m so glad you’re alive,” He whispered as a few more tears rolled freely down his face.

Jason tensed for a brief moment, and not a word fell from his lips. Had he ever been told that before?

A moment later, the tenseness left, and Jason let out an exhale.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” He replied, his voice thick with something Bentley couldn’t place. 

So was he. He was glad he was alive and Jason was alive and Tim was alive and Dick was alive and Damian was alive and everybody was alive… except maybe Davis.

That sent a pang of sadness ringing through him, and he balled up the back of Jason’s hoodie in his hand. He squeezed his eyes shut when a new wave of tears shook his body for a completely different reason. “I’m really scared.”

Jason adjusted his arms around him. “No one’s going to touch you here,” He replied, exhaling. “I promise.”

For some reason, it sounded more like a threat than a promise. But not a threat toward Bentley.

The child hid his face away  in the hoodie. “I love you.”

There was another moment where Jason tensed, and Bentley was afraid he’d said the wrong thing. Maybe he did. Why would he say that? He held onto Jason in fear he might let go of him.

But he didn’t. 

“Bruce said you read to me,” Jason said, and Bentley felt his hand move ever so slightly on his back. “I could hear you sometimes.”

Bentley sniffed. “I messed up a lot.”

“I was stuck. In the same memory over and over. I would’ve lost my mind if I couldn’t hear you,” He explained softly. “So, thank you. And I… I love you, too, kid.”

Oh, great, now Bentley was really crying. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but he could probably guess what memory Jason had been stuck in — the same one that Bentley had seen in the Synchronizer. And, by extension, it was all his fault. 

How was he supposed to fix a problem so big? Every time he’d tried it just seemed to multiply. Maybe he wasn’t hitting the right places.

If you’re killing a man, you shoot for the heart. If you’re killing a snake, you chop its head off. He didn’t need to go for the Secret Keeper or Dr. Keene or any other branch of the operation — he needed to aim for the most vital part, the source of it all.

Bentley needed to go see his father.

But right now, he settled for hugging Jason.

—

dedicated to @sassenashsworld 💚

—

tag list! (If you want me to remove or add you, ask in comments!)

@fleur-alise @sarcopterygiian @flyrobinflyy @skylathescholar @gayboss-too-close-to-the-sun @xiaonothere

[lovesongbracket]

Reminder: Vote based on the song, not the artist or specific recording! The tracks referenced are the original artist, aside from a few rare cases where a cover is the most widely known.

Lyrics, videos, info, and notable covers under the cut. (Spotify playlist available in pinned post)

Lay All Your Love On Me

Written By: Björn Ulvaeus & Benny Andersson

Artist: ABBA

Released: 1981

Cover included: Amanda Seyfried & Dominic Cooper for Mamma Mia!, 2008

“Lay All Your Love On Me” explores the high emotions and passions that can emerge when falling in love, and documents one woman’s shift into erratic behaviors as she falls under the spell of her new lover. The song hit number one in the US dance charts in 1981, but has lasted in popularity over the years, becoming an ABBA staple. It was featured in the band’s jukebox musical (and its movie adaption), Mamma Mia, and in 2006 was named the 60th greatest dance song of all time by Slant magazine.

[Verse 1] I wasn't jealous before we met Now every woman I see is a potential threat And I'm possessive, it isn't nice You've heard me saying that smoking was my only vice [Pre-Chorus] But now it isn't true Now everything is new And all I've learned has overturned I beg of you [Chorus] Don't go wasting your emotion Lay all your love on me [Verse 2] It was like shooting a sitting duck A little small talk, a smile, and baby, I was stuck I still don't know what you've done with me A grown-up woman should never fall so easily [Pre-Chorus] I feel a kind of fear When I don't have you near Unsatisfied, I skip my pride I beg you, dear [Chorus] Don't go wasting your emotion Lay all your love on me Don't go sharing your devotion Lay all your love on me [Verse 3] I've had a few little love affairs They didn't last very long and they've been pretty scarce I used to think that was sensible It makes the truth even more incomprehensible [Pre-Chorus] 'Cause everything is new And everything is you And all I've learned has overturned What can I do? [Chorus] Don't go wasting your emotion Lay all your love on me Don't go sharing your devotion Lay all your love on me Don't go wasting your emotion Lay all your love on me Don't go sharing your devotion Lay all your love on me Don't go wasting your emotion Lay all your love on me

Demolition Lovers

Written By: Matt Pelissier, Mikey Way, Ray Toro & Gerard Way

Artist: My Chemical Romance

Released: 2002

The Demolition Lovers are the couple seen on the cover for MCR’s next album, Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge. This song, along with much of the album, is a prequel to the story of Three Cheers… in which a man makes a deal with the devil to get his dead lover back by killing 1,000 evil men and giving the devil their souls in exchange for her. This song is most likely where the lover dies. The two “Demolition Lovers” are featured on the cover of the album.

[Verse 1] Hand in mine, into your icy blues And then I'd say to you, "We could take to the highway With this trunk of ammunition, too" I'd end my days with you, in a hail of bullets [Chorus] I'm trying, I'm trying To let you know just how much you mean to me And after all the things We put each other through and [Verse 2] I would drive on to the end with you A liquor store or two keeps the gas tank full And I feel like there's nothing left to do But prove myself to you, and we'll keep it running [Chorus] But this time, I mean it I'll let you know just how much you mean to me As snow falls on desert sky Until the end of everything I'm trying, I'm trying To let you know how much you mean As days fade and nights grow And we grow cold [Post-Chorus] Until the end, until this pool of blood Until this, I mean this, I mean this, until the end of [Chorus] I'm trying, I'm trying To let you know how much you mean As days fade and nights grow And we grow cold But this time, we'll show them We'll show them all how much we mean As snow falls on desert sky Until the end of every… [Interlude] All we are, all we are is bullets, I mean this All we are, all we are is bullets, I mean this All we are, all we are is bullets, I mean this All we are, all we are is bullets, I mean this [Guitar Solo] [Bridge] As lead rains will pass on through Our phantoms forever, forever Like scarecrows that fuel this flame We're burning forever and ever Know how much I want to show you You're the only one Like a bed of roses There's a dozen reasons in this gun [Outro] And as we're falling down, and in this pool of blood And as we're touching hands, and as we're falling down And in this pool of blood, and as we're falling down I'll see your eyes, and in this pool of blood I'll meet your eyes, I mean this forever!

[asaka-lucy-touhou]

Hi! I hope that you're doing well 😊

First of all, thank you for mentioning the Grimoire of Marisa to me last time, I found it in english on the internet, and I absolutely loved reading it! It made me appreciate the games and all its spell cards even more, and I had no idea such a book existed in the first place, so I'm really happy that you told me about it ^-^

But now, I wonder : do Touhou fans have favorite spell cards?

And ( if it's a thing ) : do you have favorite spell cards? If yes, why do you like these ones in particular?

(oh and, of course, feel free to ignore this message if you're not interested in these kind of questions or if it bothers you! and have a great day <3)

Hi Alcibiade!

Wow, I'm really glad to hear you love the Grimoire of Marisa! XD Maybe only very deep Touhou fans have read this book, but I think it's a very interesting book, and you're right, it gives me a very deep understanding of the games and spell cards.

Which spell card is your favorite is a standard topic among Touhou fans, and I'm so glad you brought up this great topic! XD

There are so many spell cards that I like that I can't narrow it down, but I'll try to focus on a few themes:

Spell cards that are fun to dodge

The first thing that comes to mind with my favorite spell card in terms of fun to dodge is this one:

Over The Rainbow is constructed with rain falling straight down and rainbows spreading out from the sides, then the player must make a path by shooting the rainbow and passing between them. I really love this and often want to play Double Spoiler for it. It's not difficult to clear, but the randomness of the rain and the fact that you have to wait until the very last minute to shoot the rainbow makes it a bit challenging. (It is also very close to Kogasa, so you can collide with her.)

I like both the concept of photographing rainbows in the rain and the balanced difficulty.

Also I love Hoshifuru Shinreibyou. I personally think this is an exquisite tension spell card!:

The last spell card of many final bosses is difficult to get through without using bombs, but this one can be gotten without bombs, and I find it fun to dodge the bullets. The randomness of this spell card is quite high, so sometimes it is easy and sometimes it is so hard that it is absolutely impossible, but I never get bored because of that.

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

Spell cards that shocked me with the idea

If I had to pick a favorite boss for the entire battle, it would be Koishi Komeiji. Personally, I think she is the character that is filled with the unique performance of a bullet-hell shooting game. Especially Philosophy of a Hated Person is great:

This spell card consists of bullets that are lined up very regularly and a bullets of roses that seem to be moving very erratically, as if they were writhing. I think it can be interpreted in many ways, but the roses seem to me to symbolize the "hated person", since the player must move away from the roses. I was very shocked when I saw this, because it looks like a very abstract looking spell card, but it looks like a spell card with a clear story.

The movement of the roses is very eerie and scary. In reality, the game is programmed, so there are rules, and after playing it many times, I know that there is a certain safe position to stay in. However, I really like the way it expresses the unconscious movement of Koishi, which is her characteristic.

Also Ichirin's spell cards were very shocking overall.

Who else but ZUN could come up with the idea of a fist flying towards the player in a shooting game? XD

I especially like Fist Smash, where fists come from both sides and collide in the middle. It is very unique, but actually fun to dodge. 😄 (It's fun to get in the gap of the fists!)

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

・My favorite of my wife's spell cards

Finally, I would like to mention the spell card of my favorite character, Alice. I love her spell cards overall because I love her method of attacking with a lot of dolls, but I especially love Goliath Doll in Touhou Hisoutensoku!

(You can see the spell card at 15:00 in the video above.)

In this spell card, a giant doll with two swords chasing and attacking the player. (Huh, why is she doing that crazy thing? 😄)

She generally acts like a smart person, but for some reason her attack in this spell card is completely brute force. I loved Alice even before Hisoutensoku was released, so I was very excited the fact that she was the final boss in Chiruno's story, but I was shocked that she actually did such an incomprehensible attack. But it made me like her even more. XD

By the way, this is not to say that I like the spell card itself, but this is a good opportunity, let me talk about this: I love the fact that a certain spell card of Marisa's in Danmaku Amanojaku is insanely easy to clear if you use a doll. 🤭

It might be hard to understand what happened if you have not played, but in this spell card, Marisa shoots a very wide Master Spark in the direction of the player, but if you place Cursed Decoy Doll, it will recognize that as the player's position, so the attack will not come towards the player at all. 😄 So, Marisa's weakness is a doll, at least in Danmaku Amanojaku. This fact was very exciting for me because I couldn't help but think of MariAli. 🥰

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

Spell cards are very interesting because they express the characterization and story of the bosses, and I can't count the number of times I've been amazed by ZUN's flexible ideas.

There are so many spell cards I like, so this answer is already insanly long, but maybe after I post this I'll remember, "Oh, I haven't talked about that one yet!" 😅 I hope you will not be put off by my geekiness.

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about this! 💖

[thebutterflypoetess]

Loving the Sun and Moon

I was doomed the day I learned your name. 

Cursed to yearn for your admiration across the room,

always chasing it, feeling dirty in my blood.

Losing my breath never bothered me much, 

especially when I looked at you.

So elegantly, I drowned in your irises,

craving your gentle touch, needing your smile.

I swallowed whatever you threw at me,

broken and deprived of acceptance. 

I ate the knives you handed me in the darkest of nights.

The Sun and the Moon couldn’t compare to your cruelty and beauty. 

They seemed bland when compared to you,

the name I cried on paper,

the name I told about the sea. 

A sweet voice shooting my bleeding ears.

Under your spell, I beg for attention,

me, a nobody in the shadows, 

me, a shadow in the nothing world.

But you kicked right where it hurt,

right where it killed me.

Bullets stuck in my mouth, 

you looked perfect, the devil in disguise,

never glancing at me, never acknowledging my last pleas.

As if you weren’t a constant presence in my dreams,

where I kissed your desired lips and took away your indifference. 

My heart got burned, nothing left of it, 

I pick up at wounds you stepped on.

An end with no start it was.

The day you uttered my name for the first time

a star died in the clear sky.

All your gentleness was a fragment of my imagination,

something to live off in the cold days.

Like a smoke, I used you to warm myself up.

Now you have made me a sobbing poet,

drowning in the sea that whispers your name.

[autumnslance]

send LOST for a scene from my muse's past in which they felt lost, literally or figuratively {Zaine}

He was supposed to protect her.

Zaine's axe and armor, Evienne's spells and social acumen. They were a matched set of opposites, a team that had traversed the realm for months now. That's how it worked.

On reflection, he really hadn't known her that long; less than a year. Yet everything they had gone through made it feel much longer, or at least more intense. They had shared their histories, their hopes, more than a few secrets.

Never a bed, though; as much as he'd come to love her, it was not in that way. And she was still mourning the loss of her spouse, besides. So fierce friends and comrades they were.

...They had been.

Zaine was going to tear Gaius van Baelsar into pieces.

"Hey," Yda said, wandering over to sit with him.

"Hey," he replied, taking a deep breath and sitting up. "You doing all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. How--"

"How about Papalymo? And Thancred?"

She frowned. "They're all right, Zaine. Everyone is."

Not everyone.

Before he could say more, she stuck her finger against his lips. "How are you?" she demanded to know, glimpses of her blue eyes through the mask showing her own sadness and resolve. She removed her finger.

Zaine slumped. "I keep feeling like I did everything wrong. Missed something, forgot something. If I'd been a little more on guard--and I know, I know that's not how it works, I know you all rushed cuz you only found out too late, but I--" He rested his head in his hands, clutching his hair.

"I feel like 'it's not your fault' won't help, huh?"

He huffed out a bitter laugh. "No." They were silent for a moment. "I know he targeted her as a caster, as a threat. Even if I had been in her place, even if I had been on guard. And I know...Evienne chose this, same as the rest of us, but it...Gods, this hurts."

"Of course it does," Yda replied softly. "It will for a long while."

He sat back now, leaning on the wall behind him, Yda watching. "If I knew anything of Eorzean etiquette as a boy, I forgot it. Evienne, though...she had impeccable manners. And took it upon herself to teach me better. My rough soldier ways grated on her lady's sensibilities." He smiled thinly. "I don't think I'd have made half as good an impression on all those people without her. And nevermind how many of her own heroics have been overlooked. It's not fair."

"A lot of things aren't," Yda said. "Minfilia's speaking to her sister, and her son. He's so little."

"Yeah," Zaine said. "Not much older than my sister was, when we lost our father. This kid's lost both his parents now and I don't...I feel like I should say something, but what? 'I was your mum's partner but failed to protect her from a Garlean bullet'?"

"Zaine, you can't say that."

"No, of course not, I just," he pinched his nose, trying to stay the renewed feeling of prickling heat in his eyes, threatening another deluge. "I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. She would know; that's what she was good at! It's all her clever words and maneuvering that's made me seem a hero; people think I know what I'm doing, but I don't. And there's still so much happening, no time to sit here and wallow, but Sisters help me, I don't know how I'm going to do it without her!"

The tears fell despite his attempts; guilt and shame as much as grief pouring from him. Yda was silent, simply holding his hand, squeezing tightly, a reminder he had more friends and allies, more people to help, to rely on.

Just not his companion.

--

((As the 1.0 WoL, Zaine traveled around with a Path Companion, who I decided was a prim & proper elezen conjurer named Evienne. There is, however, a famous scene where Gaius shoots the Path Companion, and then fights Thancred, Y'shtola, Papalymo, and Yda. In Zaine's continuity, his Path Companion dies from the injuries inflicted in that incident.))