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#ITS LIKE THE . THE DOCTOR WHO EPISODE WHERE HE'S JUMPING THROUGH ALL THE CARS IN THE TRAFFIC JAM
ashthehermit · 1 year
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Legends of Tomorrow: A Retrospective 1.9
I do remember this episode pretty well.  The series has felt like it was treading water, and is growing in confidence with itself.  It's far from being good, let's not lie, but it's getting better.  There was a reason I kept watching this nonsense show when it first came out.  There's enough in it to keep going.  Sure, it's like the first season of Parks and Rec.  It's probably not worth it, but you can see it grow all the time.
LEFT BEHIND
We pick up where we left off.  Kronos pilots the Waverider, abandoning half the team.  Rip makes a plan to distract Kronos and allow the others to go to the jump ship.  Silently, Snart decides to stay with Rip.  A sound moment of heroism!  This character has more development than the others combined, honestly.  They don't even need to dwell on it.  Snart might disagree with Rip at any opportunity, but he's still backing him.
And now - a twist!  Kronos takes Snart and leaves on the jumpship.  That's not what we thought he was after. I'm sure that means something.  But anyway, the ship is crashing.
'If you have a time machine, you're never late.'
Sara, Ray and Kendra come to the unhappy conclusion that they have been abandoned.  They need to hide from Savage, so they get into car theft.  This episode skips forward in time more than anything else we've seen so far.  It's a nice change of pace.  Getting left behind is hardly the newest of time travel ideas.  The Umbrella Academy made full use of it.  Through furniture montage, we see the trio settle into 1958, and only Ray is active in getting back.  He makes a device that looks like the sort of thing the Tenth Doctor used to make to track stuff.  I'm surprised it can't also fry an egg.  Sara decides to leave for no apparent reason.  She's annoyed at Ray, sure, but that's part and parcel of knowing him.
Bill Gates' father is in Ray's class (after a two year jump).  There aren't many references to famous figures in Legends yet.  Is this the first one?  I haven't been paying enough attention.  We'll be meeting Einstein soon.  Ray decides to destroy his time beacon to commit to a life with Kendra.  We have gone from zero to one hundred with this couple.  They move far too quickly for the audience to really connect with their relationship.  That's also because we have spanned two years in two minutes.  Ray goes from desperate to go home to keen to stay in 1960 in that time.  And we didn't even view this from the Waverider's perspective.
'Sorry we're late.'
Sara went back to the league of assassins.  I viewed this as incoherent from my angle, as they won't know who she is for at least another forty years.  Also I don't know much about the league of assassins.  It's another Arrow thing that I don't want to get into.  From what I can see on the surface, it doesn't interest me.
But wait!  It's twist time!  Kronos is Mick Rory.  Who would have thought?  It's not a very foreshadowed twist.  Kronos has not looked at Rory and decided not to kill him.  He hasn't tried to kidnap Snart before now.  Snart abandons Rory in the woods, and there's no sign that the Time Masters were nearby, or looking for Rory.  Rory spends a decent amount of time being trained by the Time Masters, but it'll be largely brushed over in future episodes.  It is one of those storylines that later on, the show decides it doesn't really want to remember.
'It's basically a life extending jacuzzi'.
We are deep in Arrow things.  Rip stops to tell the team not to use their powers or future tech, which means that they will use both of those things.  I still can't figure out why Sara came back here.  Perhaps it's still because I have never watched Arrow.  I refuse to.  The show should be able to get its most important character beats in, without relying on another, very long show.  I have that problem with Marvel too these days.  I recently watched the Multiverse of Madness just to understand the new canon.  I did not care for it!  I knew I wouldn't, and still I had to watch it.  I should have had more self-control, you might say, but I like Wanda Maximoff, and I stand by that.  
This episode hinges on something Rip calls 'time drift'.  He says that when one spends too long in another timeline, one loses touch with one's former identity.  Sara has apparently regressed because of some sci-fi gobbledegook.  Legends will abandon this in the future again.  Zari and Behrad apparently never experience time drift, nor does Amaya.  Kendra apparently lost her powers while living in the fifties with Ray.  They have a very deep emotional discussion in front of everyone.  
'I think we all wish you would have had this moment in private.'
Why do all these people have bows and arrows indoors?  Do they not know that they are a ranged weapon?  Rip pulls a Tyrion and demands a trial by combat.  It's a set up for Kendra and Sara to fight.  I'm more invested in the adventures of Mr Snart, trying to pull himself along a railing.  I know where it's heading, and it's another of those moments that made me think that the tone was perhaps too brutal than what it needed to be.
Snart uses his foot to operate his gun and freeze off his own hand.  Then he smashes it.  For all that I said it was tonally odd, it has more tension than the Kendra/Sara sword fight.  It's intense, emotional, and desperate.  Sara gets pulled back from the edge just by hearing the words 'white canary'.  The whole action sequence is pretty boring.  All of these sequences tend to blend together.  Give me Snart smashing his hand any day.
'Yes, it's quite remarkable Mr Rory is working for the Time Masters, considering you killed him.'
Snart reveals that he only let the gang believe he killed Rory, and that was all to easy to do.  They come up with the idea to reform him.  Only Kendra is particularly upset that he was Kronos, and killed her son.  Her voice is pretty lost in the whole thing.  We are distracted by the revelation that Gideon can regrow entire limbs.  Snart's escapade has no apparent repercussions.
'You'll see that miracles abound in this old timeship.'
Ray's bedroom has a screen where you can see the beach.  I've no idea why this is the case.  He has a single bunk, which is pretty awkward considering the scene you see it in sees Kendra reconfirm her love for him.  Where's she gonna sleep?  
Rip reveals that he's always known where Savage is, he's just been unwilling to go there.  This does feel like it makes all of the previous efforts useless.  He's always known?  Now the next episode has to prove that the period is as awful as he claims.  Otherwise, this was a bit of lazy writing, as far as I can tell.
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deerskewl · 3 years
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Ozzy I dreamt that you adopted kittens but somehow they were like. Your biological siblings. And you came over to show us and I picked up one of the kittens and just totally accepted that you would be able to do that
I'm canonically a furry now huh /j
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subwaysurf45 · 3 years
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Winter Makes Ice (Ep.3)
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Summary:  you’re captured after a brawl at the Avengers building, Bucky and others must save you before Hydra makes a new Winter Soldier out of you, Bucky has given up that title.
Words: 2799
Episode: Three
Warning: not much, flashbacks, talks of violence
Masterlist! Winter Makes Ice Episode: Two
Time: 1:00pm 
Date: October 2nd 2024
It didn’t take long for everyone to board the helicopter and for it to take off, no one was lounging around this morning so they assembled quickly. Bucky sat by himself on the heli, the file was still open in his hands with the page turned to Dr. Wright. Bucky looked over the information that was given; he double and triple checked. There was a car waiting for them when they were going to arrive, Bucky would get dropped off and then Steve, Nat, and Wanda would drive around Halifax but would keep watch for a distress signal. Bucky made it clear it would only be him talking to the doctor, he was practicing his script in his head. 
“Five minutes ‘till landing,” the pilot spoke into his headset, the sound went to their ears sounding like a 1940s radio show. 
“Copy,” everyone replied without unison. 
The plane got lower and lower until it touched the ground; it was a private tarmac for primarily military forces and other important people; SHIELD was always allowed to use it. Everyone got off the plane after the propellers began to slow down, Bucky had jumped off once while they were still at top speed and got flung forward but the air. The all black car stood a ways in front of them, they all took their bags and headed over. 
“What a ride…” Steve muttered as he ran his hand against the perfect hood, this car was brand new and probably had never been in the sun before. It wasn’t a low sport car but rather an everyday car that was bullet proof and decked out with an AI on the inside, no one would take a second glance at it but the four of them marveled at how this car could fit in amongst others. The black rims matched the black tires and the black paint, this was Bucky’s dream car. 
They all got in and the ride began, Steve drove while Wanda sat in the back with Bucky, Nat was in the passenger seat playing her music. Every so often Wanda would look over to Bucky, he could see her out of the corner of his eye, she’d give a sympathetic glance and maybe open her mouth as if she was about to say something but chose against it. Bucky had Dr. Wright’s address on the file sheet; he was giving directions to Steve as they drove through the colourful houses. 
They had never seen houses like this, around four to five houses lined up next to each other, each of them were painted a different colour but they looked the same. Flowers grew in little holders under the two window sills at the front of the house, tulips were the most popular, vines would grow on the side where the sun didn’t shine too much and pain would chip around the bottom of the houses. Some houses still had Halloween decorations up, red leaves scattered on the ground and blew everywhere. There was a brown hue to the world around them, pumpkins were scattered on some door steps while other people still had Christmas lights up from last year. 
Bucky tapped Steve’s head rest and the car slowed to a stop, they looked out to their left to see a house that looked like it belonged to the community. It wasn’t modern and square with sleek grey tiles on the outside, it was old and run down. A ghost hung from the single garage light, one pumpkin was sitting on the doorstep. This house didn’t look like one of a nazi group member, nevermind just a person with their doctorate.
Tons of leaves crunched under Bucky’s combat boots, the road was littered with them, it made it seem like it was a red and yellow road. He looked both ways as he crossed even though no cars were on the road except for the military grade undercover car, Bucky looked over his shoulder to see Wanda waving. They were going to head to a farmers market in this town to pass the time, and Bucky would walk over there when he was done. He gave a thumbs up and the car drove away and down the street, he didn’t watch to see it disappear, Bucky only had one thing on his mind and it wasn’t some apple pies Wanda was looking for. 
The driveway looked new as well as the cobblestone walkway, one car was in the driveway and it looked to match the house, no crazy sports car. There was a screen door before an actual green wooden door, Bucky pulled back the screen and didn’t bother with the doorbell, he banged on the door. When he pulled his fist away there was a flake of green paint on his middle finger’s knuckle, a quick swipe and it was gone. Bucky stood back because he saw that in the movies, his back turned to the door as he looked out to the town. It was a lovely day, most people were probably at this farmer’s market, Bucky had never been to one even though you had offered to take him. 
His head whipped back at the door opening, the same man, but only older, opened the door. He looked tired and worn out, this was probably his last Halloween. The cane he was holding was shaking in his grip, the other hand gripped the side of the door extremely tight. You could see the white through the speckled skin. 
“What can I help you with, son?” the old man spoke with a smile, he licked his gums. A Canadian accent seemed almost cartoon-ish. 
Bucky froze as he looked at this man, the sight of him brought him back to his nightmares and everything he’d been through. The name ‘son’ rolled off this man’s tongue and down Bucky’s spine and sent a shiver running all through him, it was obvious this man didn’t know who Bucky was. Bucky almost felt bad that he was bothering him, it was obvious he wasn’t a walker and standing seemed to be his exercise for the day, but at the same time Bucky couldn’t help but think about all the ways he could rip this doctor apart. 
“Son?” the name came again. 
Bucky looked up with a shake of his head, “hello, are you Dr. Wright?” he asked quietly. 
“Yes it is, what do you need?” he didn’t seem freaked out that Bucky knew his name, it was a small town. 
“My name is James Buchanan Barnes,” Bucky started but the man didn’t seem to figure it out, “I am the Winter Soldier- used to be actually…” Bucky added. 
“Are you here to kill me?” the man’s voice shook, “because if you really are him then you have every right to do so,” he stepped back and opened the door for Bucky to walk in. 
“I’m here to talk, you’re not going to die.” Bucky walked in and kicked off his combat boots, he’d heard it’s a thing in Canada to take your shoes off in the house. He also heard there was bagged milk which didn’t make any sense to him, but he wasn’t about to argue. 
“That’s always good to hear, eh?” the accent slipped out again, it was weird for Bucky to see this man who haunted him just laughing. “Would you like some hot chocolate?” Dr. Wright asked as he made his way into the kitchen. 
His house was small, not many walls as one room just faded into another. Knick-knacks littered shelves and tables, everything brought a homey feel to it all, the house was very lived in. “No thanks,” Bucky waved up a hand to signal no. 
The doctor came and sat across from him, Bucky was sitting on a chair while Dr. Wright took the sofa, they both were wrapped in plastic. It made a squeaky sound when either of them moved but it didn’t seem to bother the doctor at all, Bucky one final time before swearing he wasn’t going to move again and hear that annoying sound. Both of Bucky’s hands were clasped in front of him, he felt too large and bulky for this petite chair, his fingers fiddled with each other. He’d pick and poke at the massive gloves he wore, his long sleeve was covering everything he needed. 
“So, Dr. Wright-”
“Jacob, son,” he corrected, “though I am a doctor,” Jacob hesitated, “I go by Jacob.”
“Is that your real first name?” Bucky asked, he was met with a smile and nod, “then call me Bucky, please.” Bucky smiled back, there was a growing tension between the both of them but they chose to ignore it. 
“Nice to meet you, Bucky.” Jacob seemed to relax at the name, he was scared of Bucky and Bucky could tell. This man had seen Bucky train for years on end, and Jacob knew what the Winter Soldier was capable of. “What do you need to talk to me about?” his cane rested beside him, his hand found its way there and just held it. 
“I need to talk to you about Hydra, any information you have on the Iceland base- or any base in Halifax, Iceland, Greenland, and there’s one more…” Bucky brought a gloved hand to his stubbled chin, the leather making a rough noise when it brushed against the facial hair. “Oh! It was Newfoundland, anything you knew about those four places.” 
Jacob thought for a moment, he didn’t have stubble to rub. Though he was old it was obvious he still thought that it was the old days, hair slicked back and a very fresh shave, facial hair wasn’t allowed unless you had grown it out in private. Bucky had always remembered Howard Stark’s mustache; he couldn’t picture him without it. 
“I mean, I was just a scientist, I ran labs and tested things on animals. I didn’t come up with the world ending plans, I was never told the reason for what I was doing, I was just told to do it.” Jacob sounded worried, “when I used to work for Hydra I was worried for my life everyday, they were so paranoid all the time that someone could be a rat. If you said ‘hail Hydra’ a little too quietly then you’d have a bullet between your eyes, I just kept my head down and did what I was told.” Jacob’s hand got increasingly tighter on the handle of his cane. 
“Was there something new they were working on?” Bucky asked, and he pulled out a little flip book to keep track. 
“I quit a total of ten years ago, when I was seventy-one, the only thing they were thinking of was keeping you in their grasp, there was no other plan.” Jacob shrugged, “Hydra couldn’t see a life source without you, they never intended on losing you the way they did.” 
“So you have no idea what they could possibly be working on, at all?” the hope Bucky had was falling, this was the only lead they knew and if all he could say was there was never a plan B, you were screwed.
“I’m sorry Bucky, I really want to help, but I just don’t know.” Jacob stood and walked back to the kitchen. He filled a glass of water and grabbed three pills from a container before heading back over to his seat. 
“Out of the four places I mentioned, Iceland, Greenland, Halifax, and Newfoundland,” Bucky paused and watched Jacob mutter them to himself and then take the pills, “which one is the strongest?”
Jacob swallowed his pills with water, “Iceland.” without any hesitation, no second guess, nothing giving away he was lying for didn’t know. “Iceland was hell for me, it has the best of the best for agents, scientists, and…” he glanced out the window, “cells and tourture.” 
Bucky shot up right away, he headed to the door. Jacob followed him, glass still in his hand. When Bucky was about to leave Jacob placed a hand on his shoulder. When Bucky turned back around the hand traveled along the center of his chest, “I'm not wired, Jacob.” Bucky eased. 
“Some things just come second nature, son.” Jacob kept his head down, “y’know, I never wanted to hurt you. I thought I was making my old man proud, but I never stopped to realize what I was doing was actually wrong.” Jacob looked up with glossy eyes, “I actually wanted to find you at some point because I know I was the one who woke you up last, I remember clearly the way you looked, right then, I knew I needed to leave that place.” Jacob shuffled over and stood completely square to Bucky, Bucky just looked down at Jacob with a face of horror. The man Bucky saw every night was crying and apologizing to him, he didn’t know anyone who worked with Hydra had a heart. “I’m sorry for everything I did to you,” Jacob reached in his back pocket, he had placed the glass of water on a side table. “Here, take some money-”
“No, none of that, Jacob, really,” Bucky held his hands out, “you’re forgiven, don’t worry about all that, I just need to find someone.” Bucky reached for the door. 
“What do you mean?” Jacob fished in his wallet. 
“Hydra stole my girlfriend, I think she's in Iceland.” Bucky’s eyebrows knitted together at Jacob who was given him a coin. 
“I think you’re right,” Jacob dropped the coin in Bucky’s palm before closing the door, the screen door creaked as it shut quickly with the wind. 
Time: 2:33pm
Date: October 2nd 2024
Steve, Nat, and Wanda were walking around on the closed road, stands of every fruit and pastry lined the streets. Wanda was on top of the moon, she had a tote bag with some apple turnovers in them, that was really all she wanted. Nat had actually bought something too, Steve was genuinely surprised when Nat bought some earrings from a vendor, they were very small and dainty moons that would go in her ear lobes. Steve didn’t buy anything but just liked walking around, there was a lot to see but in a good way, no screens or jumbotrons, just people being people. 
As Bucky made eye contact with Steve, Steve’s phone rang. Nat and Wanda rushed up to Bucky and were asking how it went, but the unknown caller was what Steve was focusing on. 
“Steve Rogers,” Steve lowered his voice. 
“Captain Rogers,” an all too familiar voice hit his ear. 
“King T’Challa?” Steve turned his back to the group. 
“We have three Hydra agents in custody, they tried to take out my sister,” his accent flowed and bounced as he talked.
“Keep them in the cells, we’re on our way.” 
“Will there be more of them?” T’Challa asked before he could hang up. 
“I don’t know, but hold them and don’t kill them, they might be our only hope.” Steve said his goodbyes and hung up. 
When he turned back to Bucky and the rest of them, they seemed scared, Bucky had overheard Steve’s call, super hearing, and was looking at him weird. 
“What was that?” Bucky asked. 
“King T’Challa, says there was an attempted hit on Shuri, doesn’t know where they came from but they want her.” Steve shoved his phone in his back pocket, “what did you find?” 
Bucky just held up a silver coin, “we’re going to Iceland.” 
“We need to go to Wakanda,” Steve stepped forward. 
“Not all four of us,” Nat pulled everyone aside from the farmer’s market, “I’ll go with Steve to Wakadna, you go with Wanda to Iceland. We’ll be talking and before you ambush the Hydra base in Iceland we’ll confirm y/n is in there, deal?” She looked to the other three. 
“Deal.”
“Deal.”
“Deal.”
Winter Makes Ice tag list: @small-death-and-codeine​ @commonintrest​ @buckyys-doll​  @lil-baby-nor
let me know if you want a tag!
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luci-in-trenchcoats · 3 years
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15x20
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Spoilers for Season 15x20 finale
Summary: This is a semi-rewrite of episode 15x20...
Pairing: Dean x reader (reader is treated more like an OC than a typical reader)
Word Count: 2,000ish
Warnings: language, major 15x20 spoilers
A/N: I wrote this for myself honestly. I know it is idealistic and was never going to happen. Again, I’m sharing simply if you’re interested but please feel free to ignore. This picks up from a very obvious point in the episode...
______
Dean POV
“Fuck,” said Dean, his hand over his chest. Something big was stabbing into his back. This felt wrong though. A dull, achy pain trickled up and down his spine and across his chest. His heart was racing up and slowing down when it wanted and Dean shut his eyes as he recognized the feeling in his bones.
He was dying. The kind of dying a doctor can’t fix.
“Jack!” shouted Sam, Dean peeling open his eyes as he realized Sam was besides him, hand covered in blood. A few seconds later Jack appeared in front of them eating a bar of nougat. “Jack fix him. Please.”
“He said he was hands off,” said Dean with a wince, his whole body shaking. Jack cocked his head and walked over, touching Dean’s forehead. The next thing he knew, Dean was sat on the ground and taking a deep breath, the pain gone as he looked up. “You said you were hands off.”
“You’re my dads. Why wouldn’t I help you?” he asked, a confused look on his face. Dean chuckled and nodded, still holding onto his chest. “You seem upset. I’ll pop you guys home.”
“Kid there’s-”
“Those boys are okay,” said Jack, snapping his fingers. Dean was suddenly sat on the steps up into the library, Jack mentioning something about taking some nougat from the pantry before he headed out. 
“You alright?” asked Sam. Dean shook his head and he took a seat. Dean rubbed the heel of his palm against his chest and shuddered. “Jack got there in time.”
“If he hadn’t-”
“Dean-”
“If he hadn’t...because it was bad, Sammy. If he hadn’t...I’m so proud of you and I love you, so fucking much. I couldn’t have asked for a better baby brother, a better best friend. You just gotta tell me something. When the time comes, you’ll be okay without me. Tell me Sam. Please.”
“I’ll be okay,” said Sam quietly. Dean nodded and moved his hand to his lap, Sam scooting closer. “Let’s get out of here.”
“What?”
“Let’s get a house. We can get a big yard for Miracle. Run an operation like Bobby did, do the occasional case. Let’s go live more,” said Sam. Dean paused but rubbed his chest again and smiled.
“Dibs on the master bedroom,” said Dean. Sam chuckled and nodded. “Yeah. This place is home but I wouldn’t mind an upgrade.”
Two Months Later
“Miracle!” called Dean when he ignored the ball Dean had just thrown across the yard and ran around the corner of the house. “Miracle!”
“I think your daddy’s looking for you,” Dean heard a voice giggle. He walked around the house and saw a woman knelt down and ruffling the dog. “You’re so cute. You’re so cute.”
“Yes, I am,” smirked Dean as the woman popped her head up. “So, how can I help you and why are you parked in my driveway?”
“I’m Y/N. Y/N-”
“I heard of you. Hunter out of Alaska right?” he asked as she nodded. “You work a lot of Canada cases.”
“I did,” she said with a shrug. “I was thinking of retiring down south. Wondering if you got any tips on how to adjust.”
“A dog helps,” he said and she smiled, Dean looking her up and down. “You do realize this is Austin, Texas right?”
“This is south to me,” she said. “I know Donna through a friend of a friend. She said it’d be cool if I came and talked to you?”
“Uh, yeah, sure,” said Dean, Miracle running over to the ball and rushing back with it. He nudged Dean’s hand and Y/N smiled. “You mind chatting while we do some fetch?”
“Not at all, Winchester.”
“Kinda funny how Eileen and Y/N know each other,” said Sam, Dean looking out the back window to where the girls and Miracle were sat on the back deck after dinner drinking a beer. Dean hummed and dried a plate, Sam nudging his arm. “You like her, don’t you.”
“You like her.”
“Dean.”
“Yeah, I like her. What’s the big deal?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A gorgeous, former hunter with your kind of humor, love for pie, muscle cars and classic rock that’s single just happens to have stuck around long after she got done talking to you.”
“I invited her to dinner.”
“She understands the life Dean. All the shit we carry. You’ve never tried with a hunter. Give her a chance.”
“Tried what?” said Dean, putting the plate in the cupboard. 
“You can have a relationship Dean. I’m pretty sure she likes you too,” said Sam.
“Hello, Dean,” said Castiel, both guys jumping as they spun around. They stared at the angel as Cas looked around. “I enjoy your home. The air is fragrant.”
“It’s a candle,” said Sam, pointing to the flickering light on the countertop. He blew it out and Dean walked around the island, shaking his head. 
“Where the fuck have you been?” said Dean, giving Cas a hug. Sam joined them and Castiel shrugged.
“Rebuilding heaven is labor intensive process,” said Cas before turning to Dean. “I felt you would be coming there soon a few months ago.”
“Why didn’t you pop down when you knew he was dying?” asked Sam.
“You are humans,” said Cas with a pout. “You will die someday. It’s an inevitable fact. Time is very strange in heaven in its relation to earth. I assumed you were an old man.”
“No, not old,” said Dean.
“Would you two like for me to prevent your deaths until a certain age?” asked Cas. 
“No,” they both said, Dean smiling. 
“But if we ask for help, you will help?” asked Dean.
“Always,” said Castiel. He tilted his head and looked out the back window. “Who is the woman with Eileen?”
“Y/N. Hunter from the Yukon area. Dean has a crush,” said Sam. He smirked when Dean whacked his arm, Cas still cocking his head. “You know her?”
“She’s quite drawn to Dean. Metaphysically speaking.”
“Yes cause whatever you just said was very clear. Like I’m five Cas,” said Dean. Cas sighed and pursed his lips.
“Jack has given me some extra power to help assist him better. I can see more of a person now,” said Cas. “Their energy, soul, things of that nature.”
“Okay...so what does that mean?” asked Dean.
“Oh your souls are quite intertwined. She’s your soulmate,” said Cas.
“Really?” said Dean, allowing a brief smile to cross his face.
“She also has a growing inoperable mass in her head that will kill her in the next few years. She suffers from headaches quite frequently,” said Cas. Dean sat down at the counter and stared out the back door, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Why can’t I be happy?” he breathed out. “For a fucking minute I can’t even be happy before the rug gets pulled out.”
“...Did you not want me to heal her?” asked Cas. Dean rolled his eyes and Cas’ glowed blue for a moment. “She’s fine now. You seem...emotional.”
“Well I am Cas,” said Dean. 
“You’ve been off since that hunt and the barn,” said Sam.
“Sam I shouldn’t be alive,” said Dean. “I got lucky.”
“You have sacrificed your entire life for others, Dean,” said Cas, Sam taking a seat next to Dean. “You should take advantage of your powerful friends. Let others care for you now. I will speak to Jack about the remaining monsters and their relocation to somewhere better suited for them, perhaps a new world.”
“Everything alright?” asked Y/N, slipping in through the back door with an empty beer bottle. 
“Yeah, we’re all good,” said Sam.
“Liar,” she said, smiling at Dean. “I’ll be right back.”
She excused herself to the bathroom, Sam and Cas going outside. Dean got another set of beers out just in time for Y/N to return. 
“Can I ask you a question?” she said.
“Shoot,” said Dean, handing her the drink.
“Your friend, the angel, did he just heal me? I’ve had constant headaches for awhile now. Brain tumor. I feel different. You guys wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with that would you?”
“You deserve to enjoy your retirement,” he said. “A very long retirement. You’re fine now.”
“I won’t be mad about that,” she said, leaning against the counter by him. She took a long sip and smiled. “I like you, Dean.”
“I like you,” he said.
“I’m gonna stick around town for a bit, see if things work out,” she said. He nodded and smiled, watching her smirk. “So there’s really no more monsters?”
“Uh, what?”
“I overheard Castiel when I walked in. Guess we’re really out of jobs now,” you said.
“I got an offer for a construction manager,” he said. 
“You gonna take it?” she asked.
“I think so. What do you think?” he asked.
“I think it’s a great idea,” she said. “Gotta keep busy somehow.”
“What’s your retirement look like?” he asked. She shrugged and smiled. “Now that death isn’t imminent.”
“Maybe I’ll find a guy, try the domestic thing,” she said, a soft smile staying on her lips. “Know anyone who might be interested?”
“I’m sure I can think of someone, sweetheart.”
One Year Later
“So what do you think?” asked Sam as he spun around in his suit in the family room.
“What do we think junior?” asked Dean, the baby on his lap clapping his hands. “He says dad’s gonna score tonight.”
“I fear for you teaching my son things when he’s a teenager,” chuckled Sam.
“That’s what Uncles are for,” said Dean as Y/N got up from the couch and started fixing Sam’s tie.
“And what Aunt’s are for to rein them in,” she said, smoothing it out. 
“Thank you,” said Sam. “Hey, when you two gonna have a kid?”
“Who says we aren’t?” smirked Dean. Sam went wide eyed and she rolled hers.
“We’re trying just recently. You will literally be the first to know once we do,” she said. She winked and Sam narrowed his eyes, looking back and forth between them then down to her stomach. 
“You’re so pregnant.”
“Ugh, we were gonna surprise you guys. Let us surprise, Eileen at least,” she said.
“You guys are pregnant!” said Eileen from over the balcony upstairs. Y/N laughed and headed up, Sam taking a seat next to Dean and plucking his son into his arms.
“You’re gonna be a real good dad. You got a lot of practice,” said Sam. Dean shrugged and Sam gave him a side hug. “I’m really happy he gets to know his Uncle, Dean. You’re gonna do great.”
“I’m really happy I get to be here too,” said Dean. He sat back and shut his eyes. “I owe you one.”
“For what?”
“The barn. I thought Jack wouldn’t come. I didn’t even bother. I thought that was gonna be it,” said Dean. “I didn’t want to go yet.”
“You don’t owe me for that,” said Sam, handing the baby back when he heard feet on the stairs. “Be good for Uncle Dean, baby boy.”
“Go have fun on your date, Sammy,” said Dean.
“You have fun on your stay at home date,” chuckled Sam. “See ya later, De.”
“Later, Sammy.”
_________
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everlarkficexchange · 3 years
Text
the song of my heart (plays in you)
Written by: @thelettersfromnoone
Prompt 108: Everlark fall for one another over a blood transfusion. It happens not once, but twice. His blood runs through her veins, and now hers runs through his. What are the odds they would save each other’s lives? [submitted by @mandelion82]
Rated: Teen and up; mentions of: car wrecks, physical and mental trauma, amputation.
Tags: One-shot, Soulmates, Time Jump(s), Blood-Oaths.
Word count: 2342.
Notes: Unbetaed. All mistakes are my own. Thanks to @javistg and @xerxia31 for being amazing hosts for this exchange ❤️
“The blood [of the covenant] is thicker than [the] water [of the womb].”
“Mama, tell the story again?” Grey eyes peek up shyly through dark eyelashes, fingers curling the folds of her mother’s nightgown. “ ‘bout the dream-people?”
“It’s late, darlin’,” Mama murmurs with a soft smile. She presses a kiss to her daughter’s brow. “Papa will tell the long version tomorrow, hm?”
The girl’s lower lip pops out in a pout- papa is the better storyteller, but she wants to hear the story tonight. She snuggles against her mama’s belly, whispering a ‘night-night’ to the baby they say is growing in there.
“There once was a boy who was called to war, to fight for a king in a land far from home. Though he survived many times in battle, one day, an enemy struck him, and he was hurt, something terrible. At death’s door, his friends brought him to a healer’s house, who saved his life. As he recovered, he grew to love the healer’s daughter, and she grew to love him. In time, when he was recovered, his king came calling on him again. Before he left, the boy and the healer’s daughter made a blood-oath. They drew their own blood, and held their wounds against one another. They vowed that, from that moment until they met again, the song of their blood would call out for one another, no matter how far.”
Her little hand reaches over to mama’s, pressing their palms flush. “Like this?”
“Mhm,” Mama interlaces their fingers, kissing her daughter’s knuckles. “Just like this. Every night, while he was away, all they needed to do was close their eyes, and they could feel one another’s feelings, and see through one another’s eyes.”
“Till forever?” The little girl’s eyes are growing heavy, a yawn coming in spite of her best efforts. “Mama, it’s til’ forever, right?”
Mama doesn’t answer straight away. When she does, it’s soft as a butterfly’s flight; “Till forever, until they found each other again.”
The little girl’s breathing evens out, eyes slipping shut. 
(She’s always wanting a happy ending.)
She’s twelve and using the computer unsupervised the first time she looks it up on a whim. She is meant to be researching poetry, but that quickly becomes dull. 
Instead, the rabbit hole of the web sucks her in.
According to the internet page that comes up, a Blood-Oath Soulmate is defined as a myth, steeped in legend: a couple who, when faced with separation, make a blood-oath that allows them to see, hear, and feel one another across the thousands of miles. 
The origin, exactly, is unclear. It’s a myth with several cultural variants- in her own region, Twelve, and in the northern regions of Åtta, Tio, and Tretton, the war is won, and the boy returns to the healer’s daughter. By contrast, in the southwest, they say the boy earned a glorious warrior’s death, and the girl grieves but honors his memory. In almost all the other regions, the myth is drawn out, many side-adventures and evils hinder the boy’s path home, and by the time the boy finds his way back to his love, amidst a continent of misery, they both are old and grey. It’s not clear where the myth started, some say it’s a retelling of an old Sumerian tale; others, that it comes from Viking oral lore. Some, still, argue that they all are true, that the same fate spreads itself throughout time, throughout the world, in different ways. 
All modern experts, essentially, concur on the matter of the story’s implausibility. The human body replenishes its blood count within weeks, one discussion board points out.
It was just a myth to make humans feel their love could be impermeable, or withstand the tests of distance and challenges, claims another. Or, one user with a profane avatar states, the modern meaning is just guess-work and the cultural context and any kernels of truth will forever be lost.
And everyone knows there’s no such thing as a soulmate.
Kat feels her stomach clench as she quickly exits the browser, lonely in the wake of her father’s death, and her mother’s subsequent depressive episode, and still clinging to her mother’s hushed telling of a love that is palpable down to the bone.
(She can’t decide if knowing it’s ‘just a story’ hurts or helps more. The veneer of childhood is always treasured for a reason.)
She is seventeen when it happens. 
A flash of a medical room. Harsh fluorescent lights. Thick, strong hands trying to block the light out. Starched sheets, scratching skin. A pinch of a needle and stifled shout- 
She wakes covered in sweat. 
Something is wrong, niggles at the back of her mind. Her pounding heart beats out wrong, wrong, wrong. She pushes it away, presses the thought down. She manages to lull herself back to sleep, a deep, imageless thing, but the wrongness sticks with her. 
The next night is nearly identical, except the stranger’s hands are tearing off the bedsheets. A stump of a knee rests where a leg should extend. A panicking voice, a nurse, shouts for help as the struggling and screaming begins-
“Where’s my fucking leg?!”
Kat wakes with a jolt, strangled gasps as she pushes her own blankets off, hands grasping at her limbs, the phantom terror and horror bringing bile up her throat. 
What was that?
A dreamless sleep doesn’t find her again, her eyes bruising with nights of nightmares and days of exhaustion. The hospital, the scratchy sheets, the nurses and medications and injections. 
One week, then another.
She’s in Civics class when it occurs to her. 
The blood drive, at the beginning of May. She’d turned seventeen, and finally weighed enough to donate blood.
Could it be…?
She sleeps in, one Saturday morning, when they are fitting a prosthetic on her stranger; crutches and halting steps as those beefy hands grip support bars.
“Just a step further,” a voice encourages. 
Shame and frustration, and a deep, croaking voice lashes out of the throat-
“I can’t!”
You can, you can, you can, she tries to will the stranger her confidence.
The figure stills, and for a moment, she thinks they can hear her. 
“I’m done,” they say, and in spite of the disappointment on the nurse’s face, a man in a white lab coat agrees, and helps them back into a wheelchair.
Kat feels the sinking failure, the desperate yearning to help this person, this stranger. There are only nurses and doctors, in her dreams. She knows what it means to be lonely, even when there are people around; what it means when you wake up in emotional pain, but have no one to share it with.
She wants to tell her stranger it will all be all right, but the weeks pass and she can only confide her secret to herself. They wouldn’t believe her, even if she could say it in person.
Where is your family? she tries to ask.
They never seem to hear her.
(Waking becomes harder, but she can’t confide in anyone that she wakes wishing she could live in her dreams without them thinking she’s gone mad.)
They are kneading dough, seated at a wood table in a cluttered kitchen. The prosthetic is fitting to the leg, tender today but not sore, exactly. She can smell the flour and feel the silky-smooth texture between her fingers. Smoothe jazz music is playing, from a radio over on the counter. She feels a hand squeezing her stranger’s shoulder.
“Looks good, Pete.” It’s a gruff voice, but not unkind.
“Needs to rise,” her stranger- ‘Pete’!- retorts. They don’t look up, but she can feel a flush on her ‘Pete’s’ cheeks.
“We got some coursework from the school, then.”
(She doesn’t realize this is the last she will dream of her stranger.)
The dreams evaporate, after eight weeks, as abruptly as they had begun.
In the aftermath of her first dreamless night in over a month, she wakes to the dawn breaking with no images from her stranger. 
‘Pete’. 
She tries to will herself back to sleep, compel visions back from the brink. It’s the first night she thinks to try and remember the names of the doctors and nurses, or the location of the hospital. The nametags are foggy in her memories, a nurse Jackie or Jenny and a last name they had abbreviated to, ‘A.’ 
The internet doesn’t help her any more than her own mind can. ‘An amputee named ‘Pete’ who likes to knead dough and is doing high school coursework at home’ doesn’t do much in a White Pages search. 
She writes it all down, then, each snippet and sound she can recall. She keeps the journal under her mattress, knowing her mother won’t bother, and her baby sister wouldn’t dare to look. 
Like a madwoman, she rereads her own accounts, adds notes to it every morning, hoping the dreams will start again. But every morning, the dreams seem more as if they were fantasies, and her journal reads like fiction.
A year passes. 
Her dreams now are either blank, or memories of ‘Pete’.
She could blame it on her family friend, and his stupid insistance that she attend Prom; or maybe the girlfriends she eats lunch with, who guilt her by saying that everyone needs a life outside of school, and after-school jobs.
Kat had only driven into town because she needed a damn dress. Two weeks later, and she would have been exhausted from Prom as she crossed the school stage, collecting her high school diploma.
Nothing pans out the way she imagines it will, though.
She’s alone in the car when a truck in the oncoming lane overturns at a curve in the road.
Pain bursts on her head. Flames against her skin. Crushed metal, and broken glass. In the distant fog of wailing sirens, she can hear first responders attempting to call out to her. 
The only thing she remembers seeing clearly, between the accident and the hospital, is smoke rising into a blue, cloudless sky, through a shattered windshield.
“You lost a lot of blood, Kat,” the doctor says, tone not unsympathetic. “We had to do a transfusion.”
“Oh.”
She blinks, a haze of morphling in her preventing her from fully comprehending. Some broken bones. A neck brace. Burns on her face and arms, but not as bad as they first had thought- she won’t need skin grafts.
All small mercies.
Her sister and mama are there, balloons and flowers and hugs a-plenty. Get-well-soon cards from several classmates and family friends.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” her mama murmurs, as the doctor leaves.
“Okay.”
Mama runs her fingers through Kat’s knotted hair, while her sister clings and tells her how much she loves her.
She’s not numb, not beneath the morphling. But she’s so damn tired and her skin itches under the bandages. 
(She can’t comfort her family while they try their hand at comforting her.)
She is washing her hands in the hospital room sink, when she feels a jolt, a compulsion; a chill down her spine and gooseflesh down her arms. She looks in the mirror, and feels in awe, feels a foreign elation. A burst of affection, a warmth. 
She can’t reckon with it, can’t justify it. 
It’s just… her own face. Sloppily braided dark hair. Healing stitches on her cheek, and forehead. Silver eyes, surrounded by a bruise, set in a narrow face. She gulps, leaning in closer, and trying to grasp the sensation. Out-of-body, might be the right term- dissociative, she’d read about once, for Health and Wellness. 
There’s a knock on her door, the nurse doing a check, and as Kat turns, the warmth dissipates.
The nurse comes in not long after, checks her vitals and asks a series of questions.
“My name is Katniss Everdeen.”
That warmth in her chest is back, the hair at the base of her neck stands straight.
She scrubs her hands over her face, focusing on the simple questions the nurse is asking.
“I’m eighteen years old. I’m graduating from PPH12 in Sommen in one week. I’m at Merchant Memorial Hospital.”
In the bathroom that night, she stares at her own reflection, and wonders if maybe that feeling of someone looking over her shoulder- more like looking through her eyes- if maybe….
She fogs up the mirror, and writes her room number. She stares at it, for a time, before scoffing at own ridiculousness, and wiping it away with her towel.
She only has one day left before being discharged, though she’ll miss graduation and the parties that would entail. She can’t say she is particularly disappointed; she’s never been a party person.
She’s awake when the door to her shared hospital room opens. She pays it little mind. The curtain around her bed is pulled taught, her roommate jabbering away on their phone about the food service as if this were fine dining, rather than a hospital. Kat is reading a get well card, this one signed by the whole senior class and class advisors.
There’s a thrumming in her veins, but that might be them weaning her off of the morphling.
Curtain rings scrape against metal, and she barely glances up, the nurse rounds due any minute now. Normally, though, the bubbly nurse who does the day-shift is already bustling with an overwhelming enthusiasm that makes Kat question how exhausted the nurse is at the end of the day.
Maybe it’s a different nurse or a doctor or mama, or- 
The blue eyes that are boring into hers are ones she has only seen in her dreams; she can finally see blonde curls framing them, familiar thick, strong hands brushing through the curls. 
“Pete?” she croaks, certain she’s finally lost her damn mind.
His eyes widen at the sound of his name, lips parting. 
“I found you.” 
A tone of surprise, as if he’d driven all this way, but in expectation of disappointment.
“Peeta,” he introduces himself, edging closer. His hand carefully takes hold of her own. “And… I’ve waited a long time to meet you, Katniss.”
(Her name has never been spoken as sweetly, and her heart has never felt so full.)
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Text
24 Hours
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Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reader
Warnings: You get buried alive and uhm... I think a curse word or two?
A/N: So, before you notice, yes this is largely based on season two episode nine of Bones, Aliens in the Spaceship. Also, yes this is a criminal minds imagine and yes I’ve hopelessly and irrevocably fallen in love with Matthew Gray Gubler. Please like, comment, reblog, and send me asks, I love that shit. Also, if you’ve never seen criminal minds, you should watch it. Even if only for Dr. Spencer Reid aka Matthew Gray Gubler. You’re welcome in advance.
___
“Hey Spenny, I’m going out to get some coffee. Do you want anything?” Your voice echoed around in Spencer’s head, the image of you waving at him from the door as you walked away imprinted into his mind. Would it be the last time he would ever see you?
“(Y/N) (Y/L/N) has been buried alive,” Hotchner stood in the front of the room with Spencer’s phone on speaker. The whole team sat around the table with varying degrees of horror displayed on their faces as the realization dawned on them, “Wire transfer five million dollars to the following Grand Cayman account.” Spencer buried his head in his hands, his fingers tangling into his hair.
Your eyes were on him as you waved over your shoulder, stepping through the door with just a glance and a smile. He kept playing it through his mind in slow motion. Now you were underground, running out of air and running out of time.
“Upon receipt of the wire transfer, I will provide you with Agent (Y/L/N)’s GPS coordinates. You have 24 hours. This will be my last communication.” The BAU jumped into action, people pulling the files from the previous abductions and swapping theories.
“Where in the hell are we going to get five million dollars? The FBI has a strict policy about not paying ransoms.” Morgan slammed a fist on the table, gritting his teeth as his mind raced.
“Her parents.” Spencer looked up, pulling himself out of his head. He needed to be actively helping. They had twenty four hours and sitting at the table with his head in his hands wouldn’t help anything.
Pushing away from the table, the young doctor stood up to look at Agent Hotchner.
“When her parents died they left everything to her. She’s never touched it, said it felt too much like blood money.” Hotchner nodded, looking across the room to Garcia who looked as shell shocked as Spencer felt. Not only had her dear friend been abducted and buried alive, but she had been telling secrets about her parents to Reid and not her?!
“Garcia I need you to find out who she banks with, JJ get them on the phone and see what you can do. If we can pay the ransom we will. If not, we’ll have to figure where she is.” Both women nodded, rushing back to Garcia’s office. The remaining agents started to map the location of every burial site.
“Well, at least we know she’s in Virginia.”
...
When you woke up, rolling into the leather backseat in you car, your brain felt like it was exploding. Your entire body ached, and for a minute, too focused on the pain, you didn’t realize where you were.
It hurt to sit up, to breathe, to look around, and when your brain connected every dot it hurt to think.
“I’ve been buried alive.” You said it aloud, staring at the rocks and dirt that pressed against every window. Thinking felt like walking through sludge, but why?
You’d been working on a case. Four victims in four months, all buried alive, all coming from wealthy backgrounds. Every victim varied in age, race, and sex. It appeared you were number five. There would be a call, maybe two hours after you’d been buried. It would be the only means of communication, there would be a high ransom.
None of this information could help you though. You were underground, what is around you, (Y/N)?
In your glove compartment was a small digital camera, a pen, and some napkins. In your center console was a bottle of water, a small tube of sunscreen, and some loose change. Your phone was on the floor but the battery had been taken out, and sitting in the backseat was a box with a book delicately placed inside.
A first edition copy of Sonnets from the Portuguese, the pages yellowed with age. To just anyone, it was an old book with some poems inside, but you knew that Spencer would understand the moment he opened the box. Elizabeth Barrett Browning had written the series of sonnets to her husband as they were courting. Inside was a poem you had confessed to Spencer was your absolute favorite.
“I’m kind of a cliche hopeless romantic,” you laughed, afraid to look at him for the fear that he would think you were just a silly girl. “But my favorite poem is How Do I Love Thee?”
“By Elizabeth Barrett Browning?” When you looked at him, his expression hadn’t changed from that of a simple curiosity. You relaxed a little, glad to reveal the intimate detail about yourself without backlash.
You had spent such a long time trying to bury the persona of a teenage hopeless romantic underneath the facade that you were only concerned for logic, knowledge, and psychology. You’d never understood why wanting to love and be loved made you any less intelligent.
“I’ve dedicated that poem to the man I hope to marry one day.” A small smile twitched at the edges of his lips as you looked down at your nails, picking at the dirt underneath them. Your face felt like it was on fire. Why had you told him that?
In an uncharacteristic display of affection, Spencer reached across the divide between your desks and put his hand over yours. He squeezed, his expression gentle when you met his gaze.
“He will be a lucky man.”
Tears pricked at the back of your eyes at the thought of Spencer. Would you ever see him again? Would you even be alive in twenty-four hours?
Panic seemed to take control, propelling forward. You screamed, crying hysterically as you pounded against the windows.
“Help me! I’m in here! Please!” You didn’t stop until your hands were bruised, not caring about the amount of oxygen it had taken from your already limited supply. After the panic came a numbness that spread through your body and mind. You weren’t sure how long you stayed staring into your hands, sitting cross-legged in the front seat, but when you finally came back to yourself you knew you had to truly fight.
Gathering everything you’d found in your car, you started to think of what you could do. A camera, a phone, a pen, a napkin, some change, a book, sunscreen, a bottle of water.
Think, (Y/N), think. What is around you?
“Dirt.” Then you gasped, scrambling back to the front of the car. Using the window crank, you let bits of the dirt fall inside before rolling the window back up and grabbing a handful.
Just by looking you could tell there was ash, a couple of sniffs told you there was nitrogen and sulfur. You spit into the dirt. Coal rich soil. But that was all of Virginia, that didn’t tell you anything.
Think, (Y/N), think.
A camera, a phone, a pen, a napkin, some change, a book, sunscreen, a bottle of water. A camera, a phone, a pen, a napkin, some change, a book, sunscreen, a bottle of water.
“That’s it!” Carefully, you shifted the dirt to the top of the center console. Mixing a dab of sunscreen into the dirt, you powered on the camera and grabbed the pen which, conveniently, had a laser on the end.
Just like that you knew where you were. You just had to find a way to tell the others.
...
“We can’t get the money from the bank, she has it completely closed off from anyone touching any of that money. They won’t even tell us how much she has.” JJ ran her fingers through her hair, turned in her chair to face the team that had gathered into Garcia’s office.
“It was a long shot anyways, you typically have to have your name on the bank account to be able to withdraw any money.” Hotchner looks to the rest of the agents clustered next to him, hoping that one of them would have something.
“Did we get anything from the geographic profile?” He made direct eye contact with Reid, watching as he stepped forward and nodded for Garcia to pull up a map. Red lines popped up at each of the four crime scenes, connecting to the location the victim lived. Salem to Lovingston. Stuart to Winchester. Boydton to Marion. Louisa to Yorktown.
“Each of the burial sites is two to four hours away from where the victims lived which would put (Y/N) in this general vicinity.” Using his finger, Reid circles an area on the map around Quantico. No one mentions the shaking of his hand.
“There’s nothing else to narrow down the search.” His voice cracks at the end and no one can meet his eyes. JJ flinches at the sound, tightening her hand around the edge of the desk. It isn’t until Hotch goes to send the team back to work that a chime breaks the silence in the room.
Reid scrambles for his phone, fishing it out of his pocket and flipping it open.
“Who is it from? The Gravedigger? What did he say?” Everyone crowds around him, trying to get a peak at the message.
“It’s from (Y/N).”
6 7 16 M1.4
“What the hell does that mean?” Penelope says.
...
You’re not sure how long its been, but you can feel the oxygen getting low. Your eyes feel heavy, like you’re tired, and if you move just a little too fast the world shifts and sways like you’re on a boat.
After hot wiring the phone to the car, you’d leaned against the horn and typed the shortest message you could as fast as possible. When the phone sparked and died, you weren’t even sure if the messsge had gone through. You could only hope.
For now, you’ve crawled into the back, opening the book to read through it. If you’re going to die, at least you can read your favorite poems one more time. With every sonnet comes a memory of Spencer.
“Actually,” Spencer begins, stepping forward to point out something no one had even thought of, gesturing between pictures and referencing something only he could see in his mind. You’d worked a couple of cases with the team at this point, getting to know each individual who sat at this table with you.
Spencer turned back to the group and there it was, for just a fraction of a second he looked at all the older people at the table like a little boy looking for acceptance and recognition. Looking for approval. Your heart flipped over itself and your crossed your arms, hoping this wasn’t the start of a silly crush.
You flip to the next sonnet, reading it in a whisper as another memory hits you.
“I’m scared, Spencer.” You met his eyes, heart hammering in your chest as JJ strapped a mic to your bra strap. You were going undercover in an attempt to lure out the unsub, and although you knew every single one of your team members would be ready to have your back at a moments notice, you couldn’t shake the fear.
“Why?” It wasn’t harsh the way he said it, looking at you from the desk he was sitting on as JJ stepped away and out of the room to give the two of you some privacy. You started to button up your shirt, trying to breathe away the shaking of your hands.
“I’m afraid something is going to go wrong. That I’ll say or do something that will tip him off and he’ll kill me.” Spencer stepped forward, not touching you but looking into your eyes as you smoothed your hands down your sides.
“I’ll be there before he has the chance. I’ll take that shot. But I don’t believe I’ll have to do that because I know you have the ability to do this without a hitch. You’ve got this.” He raised his eyebrows, waiting for you to be okay. He wouldn’t let them send you in if you didn’t give him the okay. You could see that in the way he positioned himself between you and the door, ready to take the brunt of any frustration in order for you to feel safe.
“Okay. I trust you.”
And you did trust him. That’s why you were saving your last trick, waiting for him to put together the last of the puzzle piece he needed in order to save you. Spencer was going to find you, you had no doubt.
You just weren’t sure if you would survive the trick or not.
...
“Six, seven, sixteen, M, one point four.” Spencer stood staring at the board where they had copied the text, going over every possible meaning he could think of.
A book? No.
A math problem? No.
Coordinates? No.
Theories were being thrown across the room at rapid fire, everyone trying to think of the meaning to the cryptic message. They were all still huddled into Garcia’s office, so the voices echoed and bounced around the room.
“She’s been down there for fourteen hours, we’ve got nothing! She’s already running out of oxygen, I’m honestly starting to doubt it means anything.” Derek passed a hand over his face, patting at his cheeks as his eyes grew heavy.
“No. She’s highly intelligent and extremely resourceful, the message means something but wh-” Reid froze. In his mind he could see the periodic table.
“What is it, Reid?” Gideon looked at him, watching as his brain started to fly.
“Garcia pull up a map of Virginia.” She did as she was told, pulling up the map with one point in Quantico.
“Six on the periodic table is carbon, seven is nitrogen, sulfur is sixteen. She’s telling us the dirt she’s in.” Quick to catch on, Garcia zoomed the map onto coal rich soil in Virginia. It wasn’t enough.
“Coal can’t be distinguished by mineral composition, it’s all the same. However, macerals are unique in that they flouresce at different levels. In this case, 1.4, which is rare. It only occurs when there are high concentrations of inertinite.” The map zoomed, Penelope’s fingers flying across the keys as Spencer spoke.
“Got her.”
...
Settling your napkin letter atop the book, you nestled the lid to the gift box back on top. You tied the bow tight before tucking the whole thing into the waistband of your jeans. There was no guarantee it would make it, there was no guarantee you would make it, but you had waited long enough.
Grabbing both ends of the wires you’d stripped, you climbed into the back, hands shaking at the thought of what you were about to do.
“I’m scared.” You said. You heard Spencer, saw him leaning against a window seal in your mind. He looked at you from behind those glasses that always reminded you of a 60’s NASA engineer. His hair was pushed back, the ends curling around his ears in a way that made you itch to loop them around a finger.
Why?
“What if I never see you again?” Tears you hadn’t even known were in your eyes spilled over onto your cheeks, dripping onto the thighs of your pants. He changed now, taking on various Spencer’s from your past.
Spencer looking up from paperwork to listen to a question, eyebrows raised and eyes wide. His lips parted ever so slightly while a piece of his hair dangled out of place on his forehead.
Spencer leaned against the bar, waving down the bartender mid laugh. His tie is loose and his shirt is untucked, his hair is adorably disheveled and his eyes are crinkled around the edges.
Spencer asleep on the jet home, his cheek cradled in one hand, his elbow propped on the armrest. His long legs are stretched out, his other hand splayed on top of his chest which rose and fell with each breath.
Spencer standing in the elevator, the surprise of someone calling his name turning into a small smile when he recognizes you racing to the doors. He reaches out to press a button before using both hands to grab onto the strap of his bag. He looks down at you as you enter with a look in his eyes you’ve never been able to identify.
And the Spencer you’ve only ever dreamed about.
His eyes fluttering open after a long night spent proving his love, the sun filtering through the window and reflecting on him in such a way that it makes you wish you could paint. The sheets are bunched around his waist, his chest is bare, and his smile is so sleepy that it swells your heart to ten times it’s normal size.
We’ll see each other soon. You’ve got this.
“Okay,” you say it with conviction, forcing your hands to stop shaking, “I trust you.” And then without a moments hesitation, tears still running down your face, you touch the wires together.
The world explodes.
“There!” Spencer races for the place he saw the puff of dirt, nearly tripping over himself as he runs faster than he’s ever run before. Everyone follows, dropping to there knees with Spencer as he starts to push at the stone and sand at his feet.
“Please be here. Please be here.” He keeps saying, his heart climbing into his throat with every passing second he doesn’t find you. That is, until his fingers brush across an arm. He shoves down into the dirt, ignoring every instinct that tells him to stay clean. It’s you, it’s your arm. Then it’s your head, your shoulders and chest, your stomach, your legs, and then it’s you.
He pulls you on top of him, laying in the dirt with you pulled so close that you could meld into one person. You groan into his ear, pushing up just a little to get a better look at the man under you.
“I forgot your coffee.” He laughs, tears spilling onto the sides of his face as he wraps his arms back around you.
...
It’s late by the time you’ve been seen by what feels like every doctor and psychologist in the state. There’s bruises on your wrists and ankles you hadn’t noticed during your time underground and a cut on the back of your head where you’d been hit in order to be knocked unconscious. Not to mention the tiny cuts all over your arms and face from crawling through a shattered windshield and up through rocks and dirt.
You stood in the conference room, arms crossed as you leaned against the table and stared. Staring back at you was your own face, tacked to the evidence board with four other victims.
“I tried going to your apartment, but nobody answered the door.” Spencer is standing in the doorway of the conference room, holding a box in his hands. You look down at it before looking back at him. Try as you might, you can’t tell if he’s opened it or not, either you aren’t a good profiler or you were just really tired.
“You left this at the hospital. I figured it was important if you brought it up with you from the car.” Moving into the room, he holds the box out for you to take from him. The ribbon you tied around it is still tightly knotted, the ends shredded from being dragged above ground. There’s specks of dirt that you reach out to brush to the floor before looking back at Spencer.
“It’s yours.” You reply, scooting back to sit on the table, watching curiously as he looks back down. Pulling the box back to his chest, he slips the ribbon off in one fluid motion. The lid is next and you watch as he reaches in to pull out what you had believed to be your last words.
It isn’t much, and there’s a possibility you don’t feel the same way, but I’ve realized that I’m hopelessly and irrevocably in love with you. I trust you with my life and my heart. I’m only scared now of losing you. -(Y/I)
He doesn’t look up at you and he doesn’t set the napkin aside, only moves his hand so the note is out of his line of sight as he sees the book inside.
“‘I love thee with all the breath, smiles, tears of all my life.’” He says it almost in a whisper before setting the note back in the box, and the box on the table.
“How long have you been waiting to give this to me?” When he looks at you, finally, there is wonder in his eyes, amazement.
“I bought the book last month, but I’ve known how I felt about you for six months.” You pick at the edge of the table, swinging your legs ever so slightly. Spencer moves in front of you, blocking your view of the evidence board.
“I don’t believe in love at first sight. Robert Sternberg developed the theory that love is made of three components; intimacy, passion, and commitment. None of which can be present during a first meeting. But I think I knew that I would love you. I knew from the very first time you walked in those doors and you bumped into me.” He reaches his hand out, only hesitating for just a moment before he takes you cheek in his hand.
“Can I kiss you?” He leaned so close that if he were just a hair closer, you lips would brush together as he spoke. You’ve already closed your eyes, every nerve lit up like the Fourth of July in anticipation.
“Yes.” You barely get it out before his lips collide with yours, you can feel every emotion from the last twenty four hours being poured into this kiss; fear, anxiety, sadness, confusion, anger, relief, love, safety.
You reach out to loop your arms around his neck, the kiss deepening as he grabs your hips to slide you closer. When he finally breaks the kiss, his chest heaving and his cheeks flushed, it takes him a minute to open his eyes.
“Why aren’t you at home?”
“I’m scared.”
“Why?” You loop the hair that curls against his neck around your index finger, licking your lips before responding.
“Because I’m afraid this will all be a dream and I’ll wake up back in that car.” Your breath hitches in your throat, the panic grabbing at your heart and lungs and barely leaving you anytime to process the plethora of things that have happened to you in the last thirty minutes.
“Come sleep at my place, that way you wake up with me by your side.” He steps away from the table, reaching out a hand for you to take. It takes you no time at all to make your decision, grabbing his hand and sliding off the table.
“Okay, I trust you.”
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luytenae · 3 years
Text
Back with the kisses!
Hiya! I know it's been a while, but, good news! Have some sappy JKRM beach episode
Kiss number 26: as an apology
“Are you ready, hun?”
The doctor asked while he went down the checklist. Organized as he was, he insisted on checking every item that was lying by the sofa right in front of him, in order to make sure they wouldn’t forget to bring anything important. It was finally August, and Jakurai’s summer holidays had just started. And, with that, their summer trip.
“Ngh-- Almost! Oof!--”
Replied the younger one, as he tried to close a small suitcase by sitting on top of it. Jakurai, intrigued by his partner’s frustrated noises, went to see what was going on in their bedroom. As soon as he stepped inside, he found the designer struggling with his luggage.
“What on earth could you be possibly packing, Ramuda-kun? We’re going to stay at the hotel for a week, not a month.”
The doctor said that mockingly, but Ramuda stopped right on the spot, looking at him as if he just asked the most stupid of questions. How dare he question his fashion needs?
“And? You never know when you will need fancy clothes! What if I need more shirts because I get mine dirty? Or--!”
Jakurai sighed, drawing a half-smile on his face. This was their usual procedure, after all. Ramuda insisted on packing –excessively– extra clothing, and he had the task of making him see he didn’t need that many.
“You never cease to amaze me.”
After a quick rearrangement and a couple of pouty faces, Jakurai made the pink-haired man realize it was alright to leave behind a three-piece suit –which he wouldn’t have needed anyway– as well as, at least, 7 extra shirts and tees. No need to say that it took them a little while, because Ramuda was stubborn and refused to leave without the garments, but the doctor managed to convince him. He just knew too well how to deal with him at this point.
“It’s good to be ready ‘just in case’, but that was… exaggerated”
Once everything was settled, Jakurai checked his mental list again, trying to recall if something was missing. Meanwhile, Ramuda fastened his sandals and waited at the entrance, swinging his feet back and forth playfully.
“Good thing we’re driving there, cuz if we had to take a train, we’d have probs missed it by now”
The taller man raised an eyebrow as a response, turning to face him.
“Says the one who made us lose our time because he couldn’t decide whether he should bring a blue or yellow sweatshirt on August”
“But!-“
“A sweatshirt. August.”
Ramuda puffed, unwilling to recognize his defeat. The doctor gave him a small pat on the head, offering him his suitcase as a truce.
“Let’s go, then. Our holiday awaits, doesn’t it?”
The younger’s gloomy face suddenly lit up, and it only took the designer a small jump to stand on his feet again. He waited with their luggage outside –since he was already wearing shoes– while the doctor checked every door and window. He knew they had asked their teammates to keep an eye on their apartment just in case, but he couldn’t help but double-check before leaving.
“C’mon, Jaku! It’s gonna be night by the time we arrive!”
It was undeniable that the younger man was excited. Sure, he had the liberty to have his holidays whenever he felt like –benefits of self-employment–, but going on vacation together felt… different. It felt better, just like the old Kuujaku Posse days. It wasn’t their first trip together, he knew that. The designer could never forget their training camp, after all. However, he was beyond excited: it was their first trip to the beach since he got the mastectomy. Ramuda couldn’t wait, and Jakurai was also looking forward to it.
As soon as they got everything in the car and were ready to go, the doctor started driving to their destination: Oarai Sun Beach. They were in for a ride that would be two hours long, which the designer was planning to spend between snacks and Instagram stories while his partner drove. Besides that, Ramuda had a self-imposed duty in every single one of their road trips, and that was to take pictures of the scenery and, more importantly, of his boyfriend. Jakurai wasn’t the only one fascinated by his partner; and the younger man loved to see how every single scenery and light managed to boost up his partner’s mature beauty.
The hours went by, and before they could realize it, they were already reaching their destination. The pink-haired man screamed enthusiastically as he saw the sea through the window, losing interest even on the snacks he was eagerly devouring merely 30 seconds ago. After 20 minutes or so, they arrived at the hotel, did the check-in, and rushed to the beach. Jakurai would have loved to take his time, but his partner’s actions didn’t seem to agree with his ideas.
Energetic as always, Ramuda rushed towards the sea as soon as he saw it from the seafront promenade, without caring about the sun cream nor leaving his tee somewhere that wasn’t the sand after launching it. That took Jakurai by surprise –although he should have seen that coming–, quickly finding himself running after his partner, as if he was running after a dog who had something in his mouth that he wasn’t supposed to have.
“AMEMURA-KUN! CAREFUL! THE BODY MUST ACCLIMATE SLOWLY! –“
The designer laughed at the top of his lungs, ignoring his partner’s yelling. Having fun was his top priority right now.
“Oh, shoo! Don’t be such a party pooper! The water’s warm!”
The doctor stopped at the shore, sighing. The younger man was already splashing around in the water, and there was nothing he could do against that. Oh well, at least he was happy.
“You could have waited until I had prepared everything here… Or until you had cream on”
He complained again, as he picked up the t-shirt from the sand, shaking it a little before folding and putting it inside the bag. While the designer was swimming around, the doctor started to set up their beach umbrella, as well as two chairs and a small fridge. He watched Ramuda having the time of his life, now free from the burden of having to wear swimming t-shirts and a binder under it. He could see his boyfriend jump, swim and run in the beach with a liberty he hadn’t had before; and, for him, that was enough to make the trip worth it.
The taller man took his time with the sun cream, and he headed to the water only after being sure it was absorbed. The pink-haired man didn’t hesitate to approach him, sporting a pink and white striped short swim trunk, decorated with lollipops. It was part of his new summer collection, as well as Jakurai’s: his had a light-grey and white plaid pattern and was knee-length. Although it wasn’t as colourful as Ramuda’s, it still had his touch, since it had little lilac plum blossoms around, as well as lilac laces.
Spontaneous as ever, the smaller man jumped into the doctor’s back, taking his chance to braid his hair and make said braid into a low bun. He left a kiss on his partner’s shoulder before jumping back into the water, splashing around once again.
“I wonder how many ways of braiding my hair you know”
Ramuda laughed cheerfully, swimming by Jakurai’s side as he entered the water.
“I’ve always liked to do your hair! So there’s nooo absolute way I’ll ever stop doing so!”
Jakurai stopped walking as soon as the water reached his waist, took a deep breath and submerged for a couple of seconds. Ramuda clapped and followed him to do the same, only to find out that, while that depth was acceptable for Jakurai, it covered his chest and almost his neck. The doctor tried to suppress a laugh at the scenery of his partner floating because of his short height, but in the end, the effort was in vain.
“What’s so funny?! Not everyone’s a damn tower, you know!”
Jakurai laughed again, picking the designer up and letting him sit on his shoulders.
“Then, how does it feel to be one, then?”
The pouts and complains quickly were changed by laughter, as he held tight onto his head, watching his surroundings from his privileged seat.
“It feels… weird! But it’s also funny! It’s like I could crush everyone under my feet like widdle ants!”
They both laughed at the designer’s comparisons, and after a couple of minutes, he took the freedom to launch himself back into the water from his shoulders, swimming somewhere where he could reach without problem –or, at least, stand–. Pitying him, Jakurai followed his partner and stood by his side once he found the perfect depth for himself: now the water was at Ramuda’s waist level, and barely reached Jakurai’s hip.
“That’s on you for being so tall, you know”
The doctor sighed, shaking his head.
“And there’s nothing I can do about that either, my little one”
Ramuda splashed him in response, cracking a laugh. Accompanied by that laugh, the doctor saw behind his blue eyes that he had mischief planned. Whatever it could be, he had no idea.
Like a shark ready to attack its victim, the younger man kept watching his partner closely. The doctor realized his gaze upon him, and although he was ready to counteract, he didn’t pay too much attention to it. He thought that, perhaps, Ramuda would get tired of waiting and would eventually forget whatever he had in mind ready to mess with him. However, he was wrong in thinking that, and he definitely should not have let his guard down. It is not as if he had ever had his guard up around Ramuda, after all.
As soon as the designer noticed him trying to go out of the water, he ambushed. His plan was to run towards him and throw him back into the water. Still, it was quickly thwarted by Jakurai’s height; since he just kind of stumbled against his legs on an attempt to sink him.
“OH, C’MON!”
Jakurai watched him bump against him, raising an eyebrow with curiosity. Ramuda crossed his arms with frustration, sitting in the water by his side.
“Was that your attempt at… sinking me?”
“Yes! And it didn’t work!”
The lilac-haired man laughed playfully, ruffling the younger’s wet hair.
“I’m sure you can do better than that”
Obviously, Ramuda took that personally. He got up and sat back in the shore, arming himself with patience. There, he waited until the doctor tried to leave the water again, and prepared his attack once more: this time, he charged against Jakurai’s knee pits and successfully made him fall into the water. What he didn’t plan, though, was that he would fall with him too, making a splashing mess that could have ended in broken bones if it weren’t for the doctor’s quick reflexes.
“What were you thinking now, Amemura-kun? You could have hurt yourself! What if I had fallen on top of you? Did you think we could have gotten serious bruises, or even worse?”
The designer quivered at his partner’s angry tone, lowering his head while he was being scolded. He just wanted to joke around, but ended up taking it so seriously that he didn’t really think it through. The fact that surprised the designer was that Jakurai wasn’t concerned at all about himself, but rather about him.
“I’m… I’m sorry…”
He replied in a quiet voice, looking at Jakurai with honest puppy eyes. The doctor tried to hold his ground, but Ramuda did know well his weaknesses. He clicked his tongue, sitting on the shore and placing his boyfriend on his lap.
“Are you alright? Does it hurt somewhere?”
The designer climbed onto his lap, hugging him and leaving a shy kiss on the taller-man’s lips. Jakurai replied tenderly, pressing him against himself in an embrace, as he realized it was Ramuda’s silent apology.
“Next time you’re tempted to do such a thing, at least do it where the water covers me”
Ramuda nodded, and said gesture earned him another kiss as a way of settling things up.
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itsclydebitches · 3 years
Text
YYH Recaps: Episode 1, Surprised to be Dead
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Hello, all you hypothetical readers! It's a beautiful spring day and I have a free afternoon ahead of me, so what better time to start another massive project while I guilty stuff my other WIPs deep into the depths of my hard drive? Yeah. Iffy life choices aside, someone mentioned a few weeks back that they'd love for me to recap a show I have more positive things to say about than negative (RIP RWBY) and ever since Netflix announced that their live-action adaptation of Yu Yu Hakusho is in the works, I've been itching for a re-watch of the anime. With the RWBY hiatus underway, it seemed like the perfect time to fulfill both desires.
Before we begin though, I'd like to touch on a few things that are going to influence this project.
First, YYH is near and dear to my heart. Written by Yoshihiro Togashi in the early 1990s and later adapted for an American audience by Funimation, I had the pleasure of experiencing this story five different ways: as a serialized tale in Shonen Jump, a binge read when I had the money to buy the manga, tiny snippets of the anime on Adult Swim late at night — don't tell my parents ;) — as an after-school treat on Toonami, and then years later as a re-watch when I introduced it to a friend (who, in turn, blessed me by having us watch Fullmetal Alchemist next). I used to keep a Hiei bookmark in everything I was reading, the spirit gun made it into our witch-wolf-space adventures on the playground (middle school was wild), and there was a long period of my life where I tried very hard to teach myself to stand with my hands behind my back, precisely as Genkai does. Spoiler alert: I failed. So to say I love the series is... a little bit of an understatement. I bring this up simply as a way of demonstrating that there's more than a bit of nostalgia attached to YYH for me and that will inevitably cloud my reading of it. How can it not? So that's just something to keep in mind as I work through a series that, like any having hit its 30th birthday, has its outdated, flawed, and other questionable aspects.
Second, but very much connected to the first point, is that these are pretty casual recaps. I summarize and extrapolate, focusing primarily on plot and dialogue (but with the occasional cinematography aspect tossed in). I'm not conducting research on the cultural history here — something that will come up at least once in this episode — I'm not arguing an overarching thesis, and I've never been someone who focuses on the author/production/trivia of a series. I'm here for the story as the story is presented to the viewer. If you've read my RWBY Recaps, this will function precisely the same way, with the only difference being I'm engaging with a finished text as opposed to an ongoing one, so there’s a lot less, “Maybe ___ will happen” theorizing going on. 
Third, I obviously recommend that you watch the show yourself (you can find it on YouTube!), but you don't have to know the series to follow along. As these massive paragraphs attest, I tend to be both detailed and verbose, so we'll be covering every major plot point — and most of the smaller ones too.
Finally, I'm working from the dub. I know, I know, the horror. But it's what I grew up on and, honestly, I think it's superior to the sub. YYH's dubbing is in a class all its own and to this day there are very few shows that compare to it. Trust me, it's a good call.
That's enough of the boring chit-chat though. Let's get started!
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Our very first episode "Surprised to be Dead" opens on a crowded street. We see lots of traffic, people going about their business, and a pedestrian crossing sign that, crucially, turns red. This is our normality and, like in every genre story, you need to break that normality at some point so that the protagonists can go on their fantastical/supernatural/science fiction journey. YYH eases us into things by first breaking the normality of an everyday afternoon: there's a screech of tires, quick shots of a man pushing a child out of the way of an oncoming car, and then his back is hitting the windshield. We begin this story with a horrible — but otherwise mundane — car crash.
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Now, these flashes alone have a fair bit to unpack. Despite later getting a brief shot of the man's scared face right before he's hit, the moment's focus is really on the child. He's the one foregrounded in the initial, slow-mo shot. He's the one who appears in color while the man is kept in shadow. This isn't just a hit, it's a rescue. The camera is also careful to follow the soccer ball this kid was playing with (more on that later in the episode), with it flying through the air as the man is hit and bouncing to a stop in the street, acting as the dramatic finish. It's childhood! It's innocence! It's play on a sunny afternoon! And it's all gone wrong.
This moment is chaotic and even a bit confusing. Not in the sense of what's happening — that is quite obviously a guy being hit by a car — but who the victims are, how precisely this came about, or even why we're meant to care about this beyond a generic capacity to feel for other human (fictional) beings... that's all removed. And it works. As the crash takes place, the camera pans across the stunned crowd and we, the viewer, become a part of that crowd. They don't know what precisely is going on either. We're all just horrified onlookers as a sudden tragedy takes place. We're all watching the same show.
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So everyone realizes this guy has been hit. People are staring in shock and someone calls for an ambulance. We see the driver fall to his knees in the street, distraught, shakily saying, "I didn't mean to..." It's a very serious and emotional scene that —
— is immediately tempered by this guy waking up, complete with a cute 'pop!' sound effect when he opens his eyes.
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This is YYH's brand, this Very Serious Circumstances skillfully interwoven with casual indifference/comedy. It's admittedly far from a unique brand, but it's an excellent choice given that this is the same attitude that will drive 99% of our protagonist's interaction with the world.
Speaking of said protagonist, our guy wakes up, opens his eyes, and realizes that he's floating. There's a great, disorientating shot from his perspective where everything is upside down, causing him to nearly fall out of the air. Well would you look at that, he's as confused as we are. It's our audience surrogate!
A narrator says, "And so it all begins. This boy's name is Yusuke, he's fourteen years old, and he's supposed to be the hero of this story. But oddly enough, he's dead."
Game of Thrones might have made it popular, but YYH did it better.
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(Yeah, yeah, I know one death kick-starts the journey and the other is a shocking twist. Just let me have this.)
Now, it's a weird introduction, right? At least at the end. The announcement that change has occurred, a name, an age... that all checks out. But "supposed to be the hero"? What the hell is that “supposed to” mean? Our narrator gives us the easy, surface answer: "But oddly enough, he's dead." We're capitalizing here on the audience's expectation that death ends a character's journey and though they may have been a hero previously, they can no longer be one moving forward. That function within the story has passed. So it's this intriguing question of, "What kind of hero do you have when that hero is dead from the start?" but as we'll see soon, there's an additional meaning here of, "How can Yusuke be the hero?" As this premiere sets up, Yusuke doesn't act like the hero is “supposed to” act. 
Until he saved this kid.
But right now he's just confused: "Okay, this is weird. Stupid weird."
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Two EMTs arrive on the scene and are hilariously useless. You know how in any medical drama a doctor will stop CPR after a couple of seconds because obviously you're not going to spend half the episode on realism? Well, that's this only a thousand times worse. One guy just looks at the kid and announces he's fine except for some bumps and bruises. Meanwhile, the kid is sobbing.
"Well, at least one of them is," replies the other EMT, because I guess he can tell Yusuke is beyond hope without taking a pulse or anything? "I hate cleanup," he complains as they load his body onto a stretcher because that's? An empathetic response to have??
Honestly this scene is wild.
Yusuke is understandably upset that he's, you know, dead and all. He starts hounding the EMTs who, unable to hear him, just go about their business of taking the kid and his body to the hospital. "You think you can just do whatever you want because you have that stupid uniform on? You can't just write me off. Listen to me!" and Yusuke tries to punch one of the EMTs in the head, resulting in him floating right through.
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What a great way to introduce your protagonist's personality. We see here that when things go wrong Yusuke's default emotion is anger and it starts creeping in even before he thinks the others are ignoring him: "Stupid weird." He has problems with authority — "You think you can just do whatever you want because you have that stupid uniform on?" — is used to others listening when he gets angry — "You can't just write me off!" — and is poised to use violence at the slightest provocation. Yusuke is a guy who, right now at least, is ready to punch first and ask questions later.
As Yusuke floats back up into the air and the ambulance drives away, he finally cools down enough to try and think his way out of this. "It's not like this is the first time you've been in a jam,” he thinks. Yusuke recalls that yeah, something was different about today...
...he actually went to school.
Catch me laughing that this idiot boy equates the weirdness of him dying with going to school. Good lord. 
Anyway, this jumpstarts our flashback. We open on a generic, anime middle school (that always feels like a high school to me) where the principal is calling for Yusuke through the loud speaker. Oooo someone’s in trouble! We follow a young girl up to the rooftop and she gets a classic hair-blowing-in-the-wind moment to  establish that she's our love interest. Meet Keiko Yukimura.
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Keiko finds Yusuke hanging out and immediately starts lecturing him for trying to chew gum and refusing to wear the boys' uniform. "Oh, give me a break, Keiko. I look better in green." Note that it's here we learn her name and it's an easy, casual way to introduce it. I bring this up because Yusuke's introduction via our narrator is very much... not that. It's an on your nose statement about his name, age, and importance to the story, and if you're just starting the show in 2021, it might come across as a rather armature move. Like something out of a kid's show, perhaps. Yet here we see that this was a deliberate choice, considering that YYH is capable of introducing character information naturally when it wants to.
This moment also tells us that Yusuke cares a great deal about his image. More on that in a bit. Because Keiko isn't finished her list of grievances yet, going on to say that his attendance record has hurt their entire class, hurt her as class representative, and if he keeps going down this path he won't even graduate middle school. "Sometimes I think you don't care about anyone but yourself and then you don't even do that right!"
They're legit complaints. Too bad Yusuke is busy looking up Keiko's skirt.
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Yeeeeah. Sadly, this is common for anime, particularly a 90s anime like YYH. Even presumably more progressive series like My Hero Academia feature characters like Mineta, whose entire personality is being a pervert, and the creation of abilities that "require" kids/young women to be scantily clad. See: Yaoyorozu. YYH is no different in this regard, with various forms of sexual harassment functioning as a shorthand for how much Yusuke secretly likes Keiko. "Boys will be boys," right? Obviously not. 
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Like so many others series, the creators get away with it because they’re framing it as a bad thing. It's totally fine because look, Keiko slaps him! This is  teaching the viewer how wrong this behavior is. Never mind that this is clearly an established habit between them, that Yusuke laughs off Keiko's discomfort, and that the whole scene is meant to be funny for the viewer. That's the real purpose here; it’s not a PSA on harassment. 
That, and to establish the long-suffering love Keiko has for Yusuke in turn, largely stemming from a life-long friendship. "Dumb boy! He hasn't grown up a bit since he was four years old." We see that Keiko's early interactions with Yusuke have given her insight that others lack. As she heads down from the roof she runs into two girls hiding around the corner, too scared to come out lest "the great Urameshi" set his sights on them. Isn't Keiko terrified of what he might do to her? "Or worse, what others might say of it?" Like any classic high school middle school setting, one's reputation is king. Yusuke cares about how others see him — maintaining that tough boy attitude — and the girls care more about what the rest of the school might think of Keiko's interactions with him than the presumed harm Yusuke could do to her. They heard he can summon 2,000 men with just a whistle and that he "kills for fun!" But that means nothing in the face of people talking about you. Despite being one of the most popular girls in school, Keiko is the outsider here via her disinterest in what other people think.
The animation changes here, giving us a good look at how the girls picture Yusuke: tough, scowling, surrounded by shadows, and backed by an entire army.
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In contrast, we've already seen what Yusuke is really like.
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Keiko laughs the image off too. Yusuke is more like a "lamb" than a killer and besides, he couldn't order around two people, let alone two hundred. "He doesn't have many friends."
"That's not what I heard," says one of the girls. 
"Yeah," goes the other. "I think we would know." 
Again, rumors rule here, with whispers in the hall considered more reliable than someone who interacts with Yusuke on a daily basis. Keiko doesn’t have a hope of changing their minds. 
Oh, as a side note, I love that they gave Keiko Miyazaki-esque hair. It's very emotive.
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Yusuke escapes outside where the principal is still calling for him to report to his office. He overhears a conversation around the corner and we cut to two boys, one of which is showing a wallet off to the other. He explains that some bully tried to rough him up, but he said he was Urameshi's cousin and the bully took off, dropping his wallet in the process. The guy's friend is impressed, but what is he going to do if Yusuke ever finds out he lied? Not to worry, he says, that "blockhead" would probably think it's true even if he did somehow hear.
Yusuke, obviously, does hear about this and he, also obviously, does not believe this guy is his cousin. He looms ominously and they scurry up against a wall, terrified and offering him the wallet as an apology.
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"You think I want your money?" Yusuke yells.
YYH is, in many respects, a rather simple story, but I appreciate the hints of complexity in these otherwise straightforward interactions. It's not that this guy used Yusuke's name to steal a wallet, he used it as a form of protection against another bully — a far more sympathetic motivation. It's not that Yusuke's fearsome reputation has resulted in any genuine respect because once people think they're safe they reveal how little they think of his intelligence — he's a "blockhead." And Yusuke, though intimidating and violent, is not your average, schoolyard bully. He doesn't care about money, only the insult and the damage this guy using his name might have done to his reputation. There's a little more nuance here than you might otherwise expect.
Also, note how dark the boys' standard uniforms are and how much they blend into the rest of the world. Yusuke, as our protagonist, stands out in his bright clothing. He was right, he does look better in green!
So he's ready to clobber this kid when one of the teachers arrive: Mr. Iwamoto.
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Iwamoto demands to know what's going on, but the boys are too terrified to rat Yusuke out. Noticing the wallet on the ground, he assumes that Yusuke was after their money, something that greatly offends him: "Whatever!" Iwamoto goes on to say that, "No good weeds like you should have been plucked a long time ago," making it clear that he considers Yusuke a hopeless case. The positive aspects that Keiko sees, as well as the complexity the viewer sees — to say nothing of his introduction of saving a kid — aren’t considered here.
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Notably, Iwamoto exists in part to show us what Yusuke could become. Not a teacher (he's obviously not attending school enough for that!), but a cynical man who is cruel for cruelty's sake. Yusuke is already barreling down that path, ignoring Keiko's advice, terrorizing other students, trying to punch EMTs, etc. If his life (or afterlife...) hadn't changed through that accident, this is the kind of person Yusuke might have grown up to be, and we can see that clearly in the visual parallels between them. Dark haired men dressed in green who scowl with ease and toss out cutting insults. Yusuke is staring his future in the face.
For now he walks off with a final shot, "You shouldn't talk. It makes you sound stupid." This time Yusuke makes it to the school's entrance and tries to enjoy his second attempt at chewing gum, but someone hits him in the back of the head.
"Okay, somebody's DEAD — ah. Sorry, old man."
"That's Mr. Takenaka to you."
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Our principal has finally left the office and hunted down Yusuke for himself! Putting this interaction immediately after the one with Iwamoto allows the viewer to compare them. Yusuke might be irreverent towards his principal, but it's clear there's still some kind of respect between them. Yusuke only starts threatening because he doesn’t realize who hit him and once he does realize it's Takenaka, he immediately apologizes. That "old man" comes across as a teasing insult and Yusuke allows himself to be briefly dragged back towards school, rather than throwing a now classic punch. In turn, Takenaka cares enough about Yusuke to try and keep him on the straight and narrow. He utilizes Yusuke's preferred language — violence — but in a casual way, nonthreatening way: slight hit to the back of his head, noogie, pulling him along by the ear. 
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It's the sort of physicality we're used to seeing in media between a parent and child who are outwardly antagonistic, but actually share a deep bond. Takenaka is also careful to frame their return to his office as a "discussion," not a punishment, and offers Yusuke tea along with the conversation. Whereas Iwamoto considers Yusuke to be a "weed" that should have been plucked from their school long ago, Takenaka is determined to help Yusuke bloom.
If we're continuing the flower metaphor :D
Yusuke isn't in the mood to play along though. He gets away by using a fake ear, startling Takenaka when it unexpectedly pulls free. Yusuke escapes the school grounds and Takenaka, suffering a back twinge from his fall, can't chase after him. Poor guy. I understand that pain lol.
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Yusuke heads home where we're introduced to his mother, Atsuko. Most notable in her first shot is the soft lighting that highlights her looks. We're not told how old she is here, but I believe she's around 28 — and she looks it, if not younger. Given that Yusuke is 14, that means Atsuko was a mom at his age. This is a quick and subtle way to tell us about Yusuke's home life. There are more overt details in this scene — it's at least lunchtime and Atsuko hasn't left her bed yet, she demands that Yusuke make her coffee instead of greeting him, it's all meant to imply (before we actually see) that she's an alcoholic — but her age is another way to highlight the broken household here. There's no partner in sight and she clearly had Yusuke as a teenager. He hasn't had a strong parental figure to take care of him. If anything, Yusuke is taking care of Atsuko here.
"Oh great, mother of the year!" basically sums things up.
Atsuko wants to know why Yusuke isn't in school and he says that everyone is pissing him off today, particularly with their preaching. "Dear, if you hate preaching so much you should live on your own... but you can't do that, can you?" Alongside a rough upbringing, Yusuke is suffering from the common problem of being trapped in a dead-end life. He hates his school, his town, and coming home to find his mom hungover. Yusuke has no prospects and, outside of one principal, no one who is actively working to help him find some. Even the little things he hates, like being preached to, are unavoidable because if you want to live on your own, that requires money. Good luck pulling that off as a middle schooler whose only skill is street fighting!
Yusuke walks off in a huff, literally shouting in a street about what a bad day he's having (and hilariously scaring off pedestrians in the process). His shout brings trouble though. A couple guys appear to ambush him, their boss close behind. The music increases the tension, Yusuke's expression is serious, and we even get a Dutch angle thrown into the mix. 
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For any who don't know, the Dutch angle is a popular film technique to establish that something is wrong. There's tension in the scene, something uneasy is at play, and the world is now literally off center. It's perhaps most famously used in Do The Right Thing to establish the friction between an Italian-American pizzeria and the predominantly African American neighborhood it's based in.
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But it's also used a great deal in horror as a way to say: yup, shit just got real. Scary real.
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This Dutch angle introduces a character you may not appreciate at first, but absolutely should: Kazuma Kuwabara.
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He's initially the comic relief and that's clear in his introduction. Within seconds we move from that intimidating arrival to, well, seeing him. To be clear, I've got nothing against redheads with big chins, but compared to Yusuke's design, Kuwabara is meant to be the funny looking one. His threat level plummets the moment we get a look at his face, especially in a series that will occasionally use looks as a (supposed) measure of intelligence. 
Also, Kuwabara is dressed in light blue so, like Yusuke, we know he's important!
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Any assumptions that his appearance isn’t meant to imply a goofy, embarrassing personality are put to rest when Kuwabara starts rambling about how they last time they fought Yusuke just got a cheap shot in and he'll definitely win this time. Yeah, he won't. Yusuke is thrilled by this diversion though and we get a shot of him looking almost as creepy as Keiko's friends think he is. Whatever else might be said about Yusuke, he is absolutely a monster in a fight.
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Which we see here. If anyone picked up the series without knowing this was a fighting anime, they'll realize it now. Yusuke's choreography is stylized to show off his skill: he disappears with a 'whoosh' and dark lines to suggest inhuman speed,
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attacking Kuwabara with a knee to the face, utilizes flying kicks, lands perfect, precision punches, and ends it all with the toe-tip landing we've come to expect of all powerful fighters. Kuwabara never even got a hit in. 
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Happy as a clam now, Yusuke wanders off whistling and Kuwabara's friends are left to pick up the pieces. AKA, his likely broken bones. I love that they're legit friends though and not just nameless goons for the sake of giving Kuwabara a small gang (though their names won't come up until later). "That makes 0 wins an 156 loses!" one of them cries, trying to get Kuwabara to stop ending up in the hospital, probably. We establish that Kuwabara is The Most Dramatic Ever when he pulls his broken body into a seated position, shouting, "No! I almost had him that time!"
Then he passes out.
Kuwabara, honey, you obviously did not almost have him, but god bless you for the outlook. The most optimistic thing on this Earth is a well-loved Golden Retriever, but Kuwabara comes in at a very close second.
With his dream to one day beat Yusuke in combat established, we cut to Yusuke wandering the street where the episode opened. "Okay, I'm remembering" he says in a voiceover. "After that I met the kid."
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The soccer ball reappears as it rolls to a stop at Yusuke's feet. He grabs it and immediately starts yelling at the kid. Horrible protagonist, right? Well, Yusuke is trying to instill in him the danger of using this street as a playground, a worry the viewer already knows is 100% justified. “Listen, kid, that’s dangerous! There are cars going by that will splatter you into the pavement!” It's one of those quick moments where we get to enjoy Yusuke's duality: he's someone who is nearly making a toddler cry, but for rather understandable reasons. He's got the right idea, but needs to go about it in a more mature manner.
Which is precisely what he attempts to do. Sort of. Yusuke changes gears, though whether it's a more "mature" route is certainly up for debate lol. He tries entertaining the kid instead, raising and lowering the soccer ball to reveal goofy faces.
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When these fail to impress, Yusuke goes full out by stuffing the ball into his pants, pushing his nose up with a pair of chopsticks he got from god knows where, and generally just putting on a display.
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So Yusuke cares very deeply about his reputation... but only when it comes to those who are an established part of his life. Keiko, Mr. Takenaka, and the other kids at school all need to maintain a particular image of Yusuke, one that he's carefully cultivated. But random pedestrians on the street? Who cares about them? Let them talk.
This shows us that Yusuke does indeed have priorities over his own, selfish goals. Namely, the happiness of some kid is more important to him than looking "cool" for a bunch of strangers. Lots of characters with Yusuke's surface attitude would sneer at the idea of degrading themselves for — their words — some brat. But Yusuke, as we constantly see, actually does have that heart of gold. “Well, if all else fails I can still make kids happy.”
Although... I'm not sure what to make of his display itself. I have the distinct sense that there's something prejudiced here that I'm not able to fully articulate, what with the chopsticks, slanted eyes, bald head, and the like, though to be entirely frank I don't have enough knowledge of Japan's history to say precisely what it might be. Or, really, whether it exists at all. Just something to chew on.
What I am sure about though is the importance of having the child label Yusuke as monster — "Yeah, monster! — but in a delighted manner. Yusuke is indeed some kind a monster, someone who disappoints adults and terrifies his classmates, a demon fighter on the streets too, but here that identity is reworked into something positive.
Having successful secured a laugh, Yusuke tells the kid — calmly this time — to go play elsewhere. The toddler stares up at him with the blank expression only kids can manage.
Well, kids and whatever headspace I'm in after writing these metas.
To absolutely no one's surprise except Yusuke's, the kid does not go elsewhere. Instead, he continues kicking the ball down the street, causing Yusuke to exclaim, “Dammit, what’s the use? The kid can get smashed by a car for all I care!” Liar, liar. 
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The picture becomes desaturated as the kid kicks the ball and it flies into the street, time slowing down to show it landing precisely in the middle of the road. Yusuke again yells for him to stay put, but when has a toddler ever listened? He begins to walk into the road as our driver arrives, speeding, swerving, and paying more attention to the girl at his side than what's in front of him.
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This time, we see the accident from the front with both Yusuke and the kid presented equally.
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There's a cut to black and when we return we're in the present, Yusuke floating above the policemen now investigating the scene. “So that’s it? I’m roadkill?” As Yusuke realizes he's dead, specifically that he's a ghost, a voice goes,
"Bingo! Bingo! You win the prize!"
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A woman has appeared who is quite obviously othered by the standards of the episode so far. Unlike the greens, blues, and browns of the series' modern clothes, she's dressed in hot pink kimono with blue hair to match. She's also, you know, floating on an oar.
“I didn’t expect you to figure it out so quickly," she says, referring to Yusuke's revelation that he's dead. Apparently, those who meet unexpected and/or violent ends tend to take some time coming to terms with their demise. It's a nice acknowledgment of Yusuke's intelligence in an interaction that's otherwise... not great for his self-esteem.
Meaning, this woman is about to drag him lol.
She introduces herself as Botan, pilot of the River Styx and guider of souls to the afterlife. You might also know her as the Grim Reaper.
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(Hey, RWBY fans: I originally wrote that as Grimm Reaper 🤦‍♀️)
It's an claim Yusuke takes issue with because 1. Botan is too pretty to be the Grim Reaper and 2. If she was really some god of death she'd be taking this much more seriously, not laughing and saying, "Bingo!" For the audience this does two things. First, it acknowledges our own expectations and validates them. Yusuke's world isn't so far removed from our own that he takes Botan's looks and personality at face value, he also expected a skeleton with a scythe. So don't worry, all the weird stuff in this series is weird to our protagonist too. They'll be explanations. Or, even if there’s not, you’re not wrong for being surprised. 
Second, it sets up the very common theme in YYH of undermining those common assumptions again and again and again. We've already seen it with Yusuke, wherein characters who look and act a certain way are, supposedly, destined to be that person and nothing more. Yusuke is meant to be just a "weed," a dumb, violent, angry loser who goes nowhere in life... but we already know he's more than that. Botan is supposed to be scary and serious, but she says nah, I want to be cute and bubbly instead. No character in YYH embodies who they're "supposed" to be when you look past those surface characterizations. They play the part of archetypes — and do keep certain parts of their expected personalities — but they're also far more well-rounded than that. Which yeah, is something most people expect from any story nowadays, but YYH is particularly adept at making you think you're watching Simple Show A only to turn around and surprise you with More Complex Show B.
It's great, trust me.
So Yusuke is pissed that Botan isn't adhering to those expectations, in the same way that he works hard to validate others expectations of him. He doesn't know how to deal with someone challenging his world view yet. Rather than angering Botan though, she just nods and says that this response makes sense for him. “Rather than being scared, or surprised, you yell a lot and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about." Taking out a notebook, she quickly summarizes everything we learned in the flashback — minus Yusuke's complexities: he's fourteen, in middle school, is ill-tempered, violent, hates authority, and is a horrible student.
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Typically, Yusuke responds by getting angry and trying to snatch the booklet out of her hands, only for Botan to pull it out of his reach, laughing. The tables have turned! Rather than being surrounded by people who cower at Yusuke's imposed authority, he now finds himself faced with someone who laughs at his transparent attempts to take control of the situation.
Calming down, Yusuke wants to know if the kid he saved is really alright and Botan offers to let him see for himself. That offer produces Yusuke's first, genuine smile.
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They fly to the hospital where a doctor is in the process of giving the kid a clean bill of health, his mother crying with relief. 
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That's enough for Yusuke. “Alright, Botan, I’ve got no regrets, so you can take me to hell or wherever it is I’m going.”
That tells you all you need to know about Yusuke's self-worth, despite his bad boy attitude. His life is a dead-end as far as he can see and most of those around him haven't done anything to dissuade him of that idea. He says he doesn't care if the kid lives or dies, but then instinctively saves him. Post his death, Yusuke doesn't have anything he considers a regret, or anything he'd like to do before he leaves, like saying goodbye to a loved one. Oh, he's also pretty sure he's going to hell and has resigned himself to that without a fight.
Uplifting!
Botan just laughs though, saying that she's actually here to offer Yusuke an "ordeal" that could bring him back to life. See, he wasn't supposed to die today — let alone die saving a kid — and frankly they don't know what to do with him. It's another neat summary of what we've already learned: Yusuke is a far more complicated case than the afterlife assumed and now, when push comes to shove, deciding whether he belongs in heaven or hell is... muddled.
There's a fantastic story there about the problems with an afterlife that reduces a person's entire life to a few surface characteristics recorded in a book, refusing to acknowledge the context of their situation, or their capacity for change. “Run someone with your credentials a thousand times and they never would have saved a kid like that." Except, of course, Yusuke did save him, so those "credentials" are suspect, to say the least. However, YYH is not a story that explores these issues. Instead, I recommend you watch this!
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Rather than being upset at the afterlife's low opinion of him (because let's be real, Yusuke shares it), he latches onto a little detail Botan let slip. If he wasn't supposed to die today... then was the kid?
Mmm... no. Actually, without the chaos of Yusuke jumping into the road, the driver would have swerved at the last second and the kid would have not only lived, but actually come out with one less scrape.
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So Yusuke is obviously upset by this news! I would be too!! Holy shit, hang onto the "it's the thought that counts" message with everything you've got.
Also, don't think too much about the fact that the afterlife apparently knows exactly what will happen to people, down to how many cuts they accumulate in an accident. Also, don't think too much about where the afterlife foreseeing the crash begins and the unexpectedness of Yusuke interfering ends. That way lies madness. This will never come up again, so just let it go.
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Sorry, 2013 me hijacked the post for a second.
As said, Yusuke is understandably upset by this revelation and as he fumes I'm reminded that this series likes to pull some amazing expressions.
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Botan reiterates that it's all fine because Yusuke can come back to life. Weren't you listening? He should feel honored, in fact, considering that an offer like this only arrives every 100 years or so. Well, that explains why all of humanity isn't grappling with people coming back to life on the daily. One person every generation isn't going to cause much of a stir.
However, instead of jumping at the chance Yusuke announces that Botan is just like the teachers at school: she doesn't know what she's talking about. “You said yourself my life was kind of pathetic, right?” he says, going on to explain that everyone will be happier now that he's dead. His school won't have to deal with his behavior, Keiko won't have to nag him, and his mom will be able to party whenever she wants. It's a win-win for everyone involved. 
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Hmm, this feels familiar. 
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Don't worry, Yusuke doesn't need to experience a whole alternate reality to get the message.
“I’m sorry you feel that way at such an early age," Botan says and she is sorry, because despite her teasing nature that's a legitimately horrifying thing to believe. Yusuke won't budge though and after a little back-and-forth Botan leaves, telling Yusuke he should think it over while visiting his wake. She'll come back once he decides what to do.
“Do you have worms in your ears, lady? I did decide!” but Botan is long gone.
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We cut to that night where Yusuke has indeed decided to attend his own wake. Maybe because of Botan's advice, maybe because he's just morbidly curious. We’re not given insight into the decision. 
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Atsuko is a mess, to put it mildly, not dressed for the occasion and sitting slumped against the way, staring vacantly as the guests offer their condolences. Yusuke is surprised by the fact that his entire class is here, but quickly writes them off when he sees two of the boys laughing. I'm on the fence about this detail, which I'll unpack in just a second.
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First though, Yusuke sees Keiko exiting the house, inconsolable in her grief. She collapses on the ground with her two friends trying to offer comfort, despite the fact that they had nothing good to say about Yusuke himself. Good on them.
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Before he can think too long on this though, Yusuke is distracted by Kuwabara's arrival. Unlike Keiko's crying, he expresses his grief through yelling. Specifically, yelling at Yusuke. For dying. For daring to "run away." His own friends are physically holding him back as he charges into the wake, screaming, “Who am I gonna fight now, huh? Who am I gonna fight?" It's not really about the fighting, of course. At least, not the fighting alone. "You’re supposed to be here for me," Kuwabara finishes, the punch he's thrown at Yusuke's photo going limp and catching his first tear.
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You know, for all the  goofy expressions, this show really is gorgeous. Just wait until we get to the fight animations.
Kuwabara's reaction is why I hesitate to write off the classmates like Yusuke has. Granted, we have no reason to believe that they care for him as Kuwabara does — they're nameless background characters defined only by their terror of "the great Urameshi" — but it's still a split second taken out of context. We don't know what they were laughing at, or if laughing is a part of their grief. God knows I personally laugh at the most inappropriate moments. If you tell me someone has just died there is a very good chance I will laugh awkwardly as I try to process that. It’s just a reflex. All of which I bring up not because these side characters are important, but because Yusuke's perception of his own worth is. The point of each of these moments is to show that those around him have always cared for him, even if Yusuke didn't notice. It's nice to think that extends to his classmates too. The variety likewise exists to show us how people grieve differently, with Kuwabara's friends not understanding that this is how he's working through the trauma: “This place is for mourning!” He is mourning, even if his way of mourning isn't as socially acceptable as Keiko's. So if screaming and throwing punches is valid, crying is valid, staring stoically in a drunk stupor is valid... why not laughter too?
Not likely, perhaps, but possible.
As an additional possibility to chew on, watching this premier again, it struck me how more emotional Kuwabara's scene is compared to Keiko's. Don't get me wrong, crying and calling Yusuke’s name gets the point across, but it's two seconds of generic grief compared to a much longer scene rife with intensity. When Kuwabara arrives the music swells and everyone is forced to pay attention to him. His grief is loud, violent, and given symbolism with his fist and the photo. There's more effort put into his reaction, frankly, so it wouldn't surprise me if fans started shipping them after this. That grief combined with an "enemies to lovers" possibility is a pretty potent mix. To be clear, Yusuke/Keiko is the (oh so obvious) canonical endgame and in the fandom Yusuke/Kuwabara can't compare to another slash ship that will turn up later, but this is a good example of how writers can craft some Very Gay Scenes without realizing it. When you have the girl crying prettily for a second and the guy absolutely losing his mind over Yusuke's death, questioning his purpose now, his support network, and then collapsing in grief... don't be surprised if your audience goes, "Oh hey, maybe they'd be a good couple instead."
But I digress.
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The only people who are unquestioningly happy about Yusuke's passing are Mr. Iwamoto and his co-conspirator, Mr. Akashi. You know Akashi is another bad guy because he has bucked teeth and "ugliness" is an easy way to code for evilness. YYH is not immune to those mistakes :/
These two are really something else though, standing in the middle of a wake and claiming it's “too bad that car wasn’t big enough for them too," referring to Kuwabara and his friends. Wow! What stellar members of the academic community. Iwamoto goes on to say that Yusuke dying at least accomplished something good. Not, mind you, saving the life of a child, but rather looking good for their school's reputation. Akashi agrees, but says it's likely Yusuke only accidentally saved him while trying to steal the kid's lunch money. Remember, that accusation of theft is the one thing Yusuke has said outright that he does not do.
He's pissed listening to all this — wouldn't you be? — but knows by now he can't do anything about it. In another fantastic shot, Yusuke hovers his hand over Iwamoto's shoulder, desperate to grab him, when Takenaka's arrives there instead.
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“What do you suppose is more disgraceful? That boy showing his misery, or your insensitive and idiotic words!”
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HELL YEAH. You tell 'em, Mr. Takenaka.
Yusuke gets his third shock of the night at this passionate defense. Takenaka leaves the teachers to go pay his respects, but admits to Yusuke's picture that he just can't speak well of him. He was surprised to hear that Yusuke gave up his life for another and it's a fact that he acted selfishly. Though he doesn't say it in as many words, Takenaka explains that he's not grieving because Yusuke was a good person, but because it's so clear to him that he might have been. “Why didn’t you stay? You could have made something great out of yourself.”
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Normally, "Why didn't you stay?" is just something for the living to grapple with, as the dead obviously don't have any say in what happens to them. But Yusuke does. It's here that the lighting grows soft again and Yusuke considers Takenaka's words. Keiko and Kuwabara grieve for who he was, but Takenaka grieves for who Yusuke could have been — someone that might still exist if Yusuke decides to undergo this ordeal.
Atsuko adds fuel to the emotional fire, breaking down and hiding her face in her knees.
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Finally, the kid Yusuke saved arrives with his mother. Because yes, Yusuke saved him in every way that matters, considering no one else knows — or will know — that he'd have lived anyway. I like that the show doesn't allow that knowledge to undermine the emotion of their arrival, or what Yusuke’s act meant to them. 
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The mom tells her son to pay his respects and the kid thanks Yusuke for saving him, and for "making faces." He clearly doesn't get what's going on here. This is confirmed as the two leave and he asks his mom if he can play with Yusuke again tomorrow. “I know some people sounded angry at him, but he’s really nice!" 
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They're probably just crying because they want to play with him too, he thinks, which just makes his mom join in. Everyone is crying in this club tonight.
Those words are the cincher for Yusuke and with a brief montage of all the grief he's witnessed, he makes his decision.
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We cut to later that night where Yusuke floats above the city, admiring the moon. Botan reappears and he asks, “Have you ever not known about something that seemed obvious to everyone else?” Yes, everyone has experienced that at one point or another. She asks if he's made his decision and Yusuke agrees to try and come back to life.
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Emotional revelations out of the way, we're allowed another tone shift as Botan yells with joy, speeding off and causing Yusuke to grab hold of the end of her oar, lest he be left behind. Cranky as always, he demands to know where they're going. "To the spirit world, of course!" They're off to see someone who can explain the ordeal and give Yusuke the tool needed to complete it. Just hang on and enjoy the ride.
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Thus ends our very first episode! Ah, the nostalgia. This is part one of a four arc series, with the anime cutting out a lot of the filler stories found at the start of the manga — a smart decision, I think. They primarily do the work of teaching Yusuke what he learned at the wake, so if you can accomplish that as quickly as the adaptation did, all the better. Especially since Yusuke needs to grow a great deal beyond the basic understanding that people might, sort of care for him, and that work will occur primarily through a job he's going to take on. The series isn't really about his death and it's not about an attempt to come back either — it's about what happens once you get that second chance. So this is the setup, but it's important setup all the same.
No need to skip ahead though. I've blathered enough for one recap. I hope you enjoyed and I'll see you when the writing gods next bless me with energy! 💜
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keenesbeans · 4 years
Text
Two Heads are Better than One
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Requested by @amofbebbanburg: Hello! I know something to write 😝😝😝 if you haven’t written this already, how about a Spencer Reid x reader where they both are geniusses and both can get extremely involved in discussions and the team is always flabbergasted as they don’t understand a thing about them, except.. That Spencer and her have a crush on eachother and they make Spencer fonally act on it? Maybe some NSFW to it ❤
A/N: Takes place during season 5 and mentions Spencer being shot in the knee. Introduction takes place in season 5, episode 5 “Cradle to Grave” Sorry I went a little off of the request I had an idea and I ran with it, I still hope you enjoy!
Taglist: @amofbebbanburg  @thatsonezesty13​ @slutforthegubes​ @hazel-howell​ @rachelssafespace​ @lindaze​
Requests are Closed!
Category: FLUFF and SMUT! (NSFW)
Couple: Spencer Reid x BAU! reader
Warnings: Oral sex (male receiving), penetrative sex, chocking, Dom!Spencer, degradation 
Word Count: 2,889
******
"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits."
-Albert Einstein 
You were sat at the corner of Spencer's desk as he rambled on about a blog he had just found, you wouldn’t have stayed and listened cause the subject was boring to you, but you stayed because you loved to watch the first genius in the BAU ramble. Especially since he was shot you couldn’t spend a moment away from him, afraid that something like that would happen again.
You were happy to see Derek walk in to the office finally someone else that Reid could talk to besides you. But, before you could give Reid to Derek, he was questioning Reid.
“Reid, what did I miss?”
“Oh, man, you're not gonna believe this. Some moron just posted a blog called "what would Carl Sagan do?" Spencer completely oblivious to what Derek was asking him about.
“No, Reid, the case.” Derek asked him again annoyance clear in his voice. “What's the case?”
“What are you talking about? I don’t know about a case, do you know about a case y/n/n” Spencer now directed his attention to you. You shook your head no “Nope I didn’t hear about any new cases coming in.” You told the boys.
“These emails from Hotch.” "take a look at this, " "new case to review."
“Emails from Hotch? I didn't get any emails from Hotch,” Spencer replied back to Derek while he typed on his computer. “did i? Nothing.” Both you and Spencer were clueless about what Derek was taking about. 
The whole time he talked you and Spencer shared questioning gazes between the two of you as you played with his crutches, him stealing them away from you before you hurt yourself or broke them. 
Derek had walked to Hotch’s office before you could ask him what was going on you and Spencer just went back to talking about the blog, you both assumed that Hotch had asked Derek to consul on a case before it was brought up in front of the entire team. 
*****
“Kristie Taylor, runaway, drug addict, Reported missing from Farmington, New Mexico 3 years ago. Yesterday, she turned up off a freeway Outside of Rio Rancho.” JJ had begin debriefing the team about their new case.
“Sexual assault combined with ligature marks on her wrists and ankles.” Spencer stated reading off of the case file. 
“She was asphyxiated.” You shuddered as you stated that as you hand was brought up to your neck, you hated whenever victims died from this, thinking that one day it could be you. In the bedroom you were know as the kinky submissive type, completely different from the dominant personality you used at work. And one of the things that could always get you off was a little bit of breath play, choking, you just loved it when a man took complete control of you, when your life was in his hands.
Those hands, god you had to get over this crush on Spencer ever since he was shot you realized your feelings were more of the “I want you to absolutely destroy me”, then the overprotective family type that they other members of the team had for him.
Spencer shook you out of your thoughts as he mouthed to you “are you okay” you simply nodded your head “yes” and went back to listening to JJ talk about the case.
When you had tuned back in Rossi was talking about how “There are a lot of guys out there who like chains.” You giggled to yourself and girls too, you thought to yourself. Spencer was confused as to way the mention of chains made you giggle, but figured out the answer when he saw the way your pupils were dilated, the rising blush on your checks, and the way you bit you lip with desire. 
He blushed to himself, trying to get the imagine of you tied up in chains for him and only him out of his head. He cleared his throat and tried to get rid of the growing bulge in his tight pants.
Rossi asked JJ  “ Are we sure this is the same unsub?”
“Kristie Taylor's autopsy report also indicates a second connection between these victims.” JJ replied back to him
Spencer informing the team of the connection, “she was pregnant.” Flipping the case file closed as JJ said that she had just given birth, she was killed within minutes of giving birth.
You had a theory, “This unsub isn't your typical sexual sadist. Captivity and assault we've seen before. What we haven't seen is this signature-- The role he forces these women to fulfill before he kills them. Motherhood.” you told the team all of them looking shocked and terrified.
“Journalist William D. Tammeus wrote, "you don't really understand human nature "unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round "will wave at his parents every time around And why his parents will always wave back."
“So why would a sexual sadist make women carry his children?” Emily asked the team with absolute confusion as to the unsubs motive.
“Gary Heidnik kept a harem in a dungeon. His goal was to create a large family As a replacement for his own broken home.” Spencer answered then turned to look at you, you continued his explanation.
“Josef Fritzl kept his daughter in a cell in his own house, And they had several kids together.” 
You and Spencer were always like this, you guys were known to finish each others thoughts almost as if you too shared the same brain. It was absolutely sickening how adorable you two were with each other when you would get into your genius debates, rattling factoids about anything to prove which one was smarter. They were always wondering when you two would finally get together.
And to be honest you had finally had enough of the back and forth of the will they won’t they and you had decided (much to Penelope's constant nagging) that after this case you would finally tell Spencer how you felt, and fingers crossed, jump his bones.
***** The case had finally rapped up after what had felt like forever and you were glad to step foot back into the bullpen, determination coursing through your veins as you eyes landed on Spencer.
“Hey Spencie want to get takeout and do a movie night?, I’ll even let you pick out the first movie” You asked him hoping that he said yes, but he usually always did Spencer could never say no to the puppy dog eyes you were know to give him.
“That sounds amazing,” He replied as he laced your arms together walking you towards the elevator “your place or mine?”
“Yours” If this plan was going to end in the way you hoped it did you wanted it to be done at his place. You wanted him to take you on every surface of his apartment. You felt yourself getting wetter at the idea and before you even realized it Spencer was opening the car door for you to get in, you blushed as you thanked him for being such a gentlemen and got in the car.
*****
You had made your way to Spencer’s apartment without exciting yourself to much, in case he didn’t return the same feeling of attraction.
You sat on the couch as Spencer placed your usual order at your favorite Chinese restaurant. “It’ll be here in 20 minutes” he told you as he joined you on the couch and he set his crutches down on the ground you gathered up some courage to place your hand on his knee. 
“Does it still hurt Spencer?” You began to bring your hand up and down his leg in a teasing manner making sure not to put too much pressure on it. 
“Umm no-o not that much only when I-i try to put too much pressure on it.” Spencer didn’t know what you were trying to do but, he was hoping that you were finally going to tell him how you felt. 
“OK that’s good just tell me if this hurts” 
“If what hur...” Before he could finish his sentence you straddled yourself on his lap combing some hair that had falling in his face behind his ears. You smiled deviously as you felt his growing bulge resting at your core, you moaned at the sensation. 
And in that moment, Spencer had lost all control, the years of him holding in his feelings were finally able to be set free. He grabbed your chin bringing your face inches away from him. You felt his hot breath fan over your face, another moan escaping your mouth.
His pupils were extremely dilated, they were filled with lust and desire. “Is this why you wanted to do a movie night y/n, huhh?” He left one hand on your check as the other wandered down to your throat giving just enough pressure to make you a whimpering mess in his lap.
“Yes, Doctor” That’s all you needed to say to him before he captured your lips in a breathtaking kiss both of you moaning at the sensation of finally being together.
“That’s what I fucking thought.” Spencer manged to get out in between kisses.
Both of you exploring each others bodies like you both had dreamed about. 
His hands now harshly gripping your hips and grinding you against him. You ran your fingers through his lengthy curls, tugging at the ends eliciting several moans from him. He begin to work his kisses from your lips down to your neck leaving love bites in his wake, marking you as his.
With every kiss and bite you were a whimpering mess for him, grinding your hips against his, your core was pulsating and you needed him so badly at this point it hurt.
You finally began to undress each other, the want of him being inside of you taking over your body. You stood up to help remove his clothes making sure that you didn’t hurt his leg.
“Are you able to hold yourself up against a wall” You asked him with a smirk.
“Yes” 
You grabbed his hand and shoved him against the wall before getting down on your knees, you stripped yourself down to your bra and underwear. Spencer had to stop himself from practically cumming at the sight.
“You are so fucking gorgeous” He manged to get out in between moans as you began to palm his erection through his underwear. 
Finally having enough of teasing him you grabbed his underwear and dragged it down to his ankles, him kicking them off. You were shocked at the sight of him.
His tip was pulsating red with pre-cum as it rest against his stomach, you had never felt more aroused then you were in that exact moment you couldn’t wait any longer, you had to feel him.
You wrapped your hand around his erection, staring to stroke him gently. You stuck your tongue out as you drug it up and down his shaft, bringing it up from the base to the tip. You looked at Spencer, having a feeling that eye contact was a turn on for him, he moaned at the sight of you, which only egged you on even more. 
You finally wrapped your lips around the tip, giving it a kiss before you began to to take him in your mouth. You wanted Spencer to fuck your mouth and that is exactly what he did. You felt his grip on the back of your head tighten as he began to thrust rapidly into your mouth, you made sure to relax your jaw to allow him more room inside of you.
He guided your mouth up and down his length, him loving the control that you gave him. 
“You fucking love letting me you use that pretty mouth of yours. Fuck, it feels so good baby, you are taking it so well, like the good, slut that you are.” Between the praising and the degradation you were soaking wet and just dying to feel Spencer inside of you.
You loved that you were the only one to see him like this, the complete opposite of how he acted in work. He never cursed, he barely had the courage to take control. But, in this moment he was in full control and both of you were high off the feeling.
Spencer was so close to the edge as much as the idea of cumming down your throat excited him he needed to know hat it felt like to be inside of you first.
You pouted as Spencer yanked you off of him, dragging you up by the hair. You know stood practically dripping from how wet you were on shaky legs as he had to hold you up as he wiped the spit from your chin and the tears that fell from your eyes.
“As much as I wanted to cum into the pretty mouth of yours I think we would both enjoy it much more if I come in your fucking cunt.” Each word made you wetter by the second, he pushed your ruined panties to the side.
He started with two of those perfect and long fingers, that slipped with such ease inside of me, he roughly finger fucked me. He had to hold me up with one hand as we made out like horny teenagers.
As he pumped his fingers inside of me he began to rub my clit with his thumb, he could feel how close your were, the way you were clenching around his fingers, you had stopped kissing him to preoccupied with the feeling of his fingers deep inside of you. 
“Are you going to come for me, as I finger that tight pussy up against my apartment wall, for all my neighbors to hear. I want you to fucking scream my name as you moan. I want everyone to know who you belong to.” 
As soon as the words left his mouth, you came hard and quick a sting of curses and the doctors name falling from your lips. He never stopped his assault on your pussy, he kept pumping his fingers in and out of you as you came down from your high.
“Good girl, so fucking responsive to me and the real fun hasn’t even begun.”
He lead you to his bedroom him climbing up on the bed first carefully as to not hurt his leg, as soon as he was situated he told you to take off your bra and underwear as he patted his lap.
As soon as you straddled him he gripped your throat making your eyes roll to the back of your head, as his other hand guided his length into you. 
Your moans were echoing through the bedroom as he entered you, filling you to the brim completely stretching you out. “Fuck, you take my cock so good baby, so fucking tight.” He stated as he began to pound into you from below you ground your hips against him trying to keep up with his pace.
His hand still tighten wrapped around your throat he pulled you towards him capturing your lips in a kiss that seemed a lot softer compared to the situation that the two of you were in now.
“Fuck, Spencer you fill me up so good.” He moaned at your words only pulling you closer to him and thrusting deeper inside of you. You felt yourself coming closer to release as he groaned against your ear.
The hand from your throat was removed only to move to your bundle of nerves circling it, “I want you to come all over my cock baby, before I fill you up with my load. Understood?”
“Yes, Doctor.” 
“Come for me baby,” he pleads as he feels his release is close. A hot panting mess, you still managed to scream his name as you came.
Spencer wasn’t far behind you still thrusting into with such force, your pussy tightening around him added to his orgasm as he came deep inside of you.
“Oh, god, fuck that feels so good baby.” 
You two just sat there for awhile in pure bliss, both of you hot sweaty messes but neither of you cared. After a couple of minutes he pulled out of you you whimpered at the soreness that you felt, but knew that Spencer would take care of it for you. 
He gave you a quick kiss on the forehead before he hobbled (since he left his crutches in the living room) his way to the bathroom to grab a washcloth to clean you up, you flopped over onto your stomach feeling completely drained.
You couldn’t stop the giddy feeling that coursed throughout your entire body you had never thought this moment was going to happen, especially with a co-worker that you fantasized about on a daily basis. You had finally realized you were also madly in love with this man.
Unbeknownst to you Spencer had felt the same giddy feeling as he stood just there in the bathroom staring at his reflection in the mirror with a smile that spread across his entire face. He had to realized the love he had for you and couldn’t be happy then to tell you.
*****
“Some love stories aren't epic novels. Some are short stories. But that doesn't make them any less filled with love.”
- Carrie Bradshaw 
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youraveragebtsstan · 3 years
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A Buddie FanFic: "The Things We Never Could Say" (A Season 4, Episode 13 Epilogue)
Genre: Fluff, Angst
Pairing: Buck x Eddie (Buddie), Evan ‘Buck’ Buckley & Edmundo ‘Eddie’ Diaz
Word Count: 2.3k (2,266)
Summary: Buck knew he would have to face his feelings sooner or later, but he never thought he might not get the chance. As his best friend lies in the hospital suffering from the wounds of a sniper, Buck struggles with the idea of losing the love of his life, without the possibility of saying the things he’s always wanted to say. (Events of this Fic take place after the final scene of Season 4, Episode 13. As of writing/posting this Fic, Episode 14 has not yet aired.)
AO3 (Archive Of Our Own) Link: Click Here
-----------------------------
Night had come in a blur.
The sun had faded, smearing itself in the sky, until there was nothing left; not even the moon. The sky was simply dark. There was no need for Buck to look up just to know he was alone. Though, it was nothing more than a feeling… He knew.
For the past few hours, time swayed by drunkenly. Buck swore he was still standing under the sun. He breathed in the daylight, exhaling something of content when the first shot was fired. He didn’t recall hearing anything. Not the sound of the bullet rattling through the barrel nor the screams of those that cried out in a panic as they fled around him. His focus was occupied by more important things.
The look of confusion on Eddie’s face burned, etched in his mind. As his body jerked at the push, he fell limp. A fearful stare gleamed in his eyes as he laid on the ground; the hand that reached out as his blood pooled around him… his blood. Buck could still feel the warmth of Eddie’s blood as it splattered on the side of his face; soaking into his hair, it melted onto his shirt. The stains had already dried, cracking on his skin.
Blinking into reality, the sounds of the faucet drew him in. His head hung low in the bathroom mirror. Leaning against the sink, he watched the water flow down the drain for what seemed like an eternity.
How did he get here?
All Buck could remember was climbing in the ambulance, sitting by Eddie’s side. He remembered holding onto the gurney as they rushed him through the hospital doors. Chaos ensued as doctors and nurses shouted to each other, carting in other victims one by one. He remembered sitting in the waiting room, eventually pacing the halls as his adrenaline struggled to catch up with his surroundings. As he tried to trek through the mess that was his thoughts, he began to get overwhelmed. When did he leave the hospital? He was too afraid to leave; afraid he would miss something important. No, he wouldn’t have left on his own accord. He couldn’t have. Did someone bring him home? He couldn’t imagine driving himself, not in his condition. He was disoriented and absent-minded. Had he told anyone about Eddie being shot? Did Maddie know? Chim? What about Christopher?
Right, he still had to tell Christopher… He remembered calling Carla shortly after arriving at the hospital; blood smearing on his screen as he swiped to find her number. Thankfully, she and Christopher spent the day together, visiting the park and an ice cream parlor or two. Buck breathed a little easier, knowing Christopher had a few more hours of joy remaining. Carla, being the kind woman she was, assured Buck she would stay by the younger’s side until he went home to clean himself up and pack a bag for the next few nights.
Right, he needed to get moving.
Taking a shallow breath, he glanced toward the shower, eyeing the handle. Buck struggled as he tried to get his feet to move. Glued to the ground, he moved not a single inch. All he needed to do was turn the handle. He had done this countless times, hell he somehow managed to turn the sink on, so why was now so hard? Rolling his neck in frustration, he caught a glimpse of his reflection; he nearly jumped out of his skin. His hair was matted, shirt drenched in sweat and blood. His skin was dirtied in debris; eyes red and glossy, sunken into their sockets. He looked nothing like himself. In fact, he had made up his mind the man before him was a mirage. The pit in his stomach gaped deeper.
Pushing off the sink, he made his way up to his room. He threw open the closet doors, yanking a couple shirts form their hangers. Tossing them in a bag along with a few pairs of boxers and socks he plucked from his drawers, he left his room in disarray. Like a tornado let loose upon his home, nothing was done with care. He felt as if time were slipping through his fingers. Dropping the bag to the floor, he fumbled at the buttons of his shirt. He couldn’t wait to get this thing off his body. He found it hard to move with it on. It weighed heavy on his chest. Unclasping the final button, he crumpled it in his hands, throwing it in the trash can next to his bed. His breath trembled as he breathed in. Though the shackles had been removed, he still trapped; the metal rattling in his lungs. The dried blood on his skin cracked as it crawled along his face.
Buck tried to shake the feeling. It wasn’t real, how could it be?
Trotting down the stairs, he raced to the sink, wanting to drown the sensation in the water. With each step, it’s grip around his throat grew tighter.
Plunging his head under the bathroom faucet, he gasped for air. Cupping his hands, he scrubbed his face, mashing his nose and cheeks in abstract circles. It burned the blood away like acid. His lashes were heavy as they dripped, water falling from his hair, down his nose and back. Small puddles could be found along the floor. Buck braced himself on the edge of the sink. Blowing water past his lips, his breathing lay labored. He gripped the sink tighter; fingers turning a muted shade of white.
Soon, a cry burst from his lips. Through gritted teeth, it resembled a groan of agony. Shaking uncontrollably, tears breached their waterlines. Falling against the wall, he slid to the floor, curling his knees to his chest. He had been sleepwalking. Numb for the remainder of the day, his body functioned purely on autopilot. Finally, his emotions gave in; exhausted and overwhelmed, he cried.
There was no one around to comfort him. No one he could call to ease his racing mind. The one person he needed the most, was the one who left him here alone. He needed Eddie. After all, Eddie was supposed to be there. He promised to have his back, just as Buck swore to have his. He tried to think of Eddie. In a different moment other than today, he played any memory he could think of. Something that would save him from himself. As Buck laid his head against the wall, he stared mindlessly into the faucet.
Funny enough, his thoughts dragged him to another heartbreak. He remembered how he felt the night of the tsunami, ringing and twisting the bands of Christopher’s glasses in his hands. He had spent hours wandering various medical tents, calling out the boy’s name to the point of  blistered feet and a scratchy throat. Tears overflowed his eyes as he fought to look Eddie in his… those brown eyes he adored so much. His heart exploded with relief the moment he saw Christopher back in Eddie’s arms safe and sound; knees buckling underneath him. Wrapped in Eddie’s arms is where things seemed the safest.
He remembered how angry Eddie was when he filed the lawsuit against the department. How Eddie saw red that day in the grocery store. The hurt in his voice masked by rage, as he clenched his fists by his side- Buck swore he was going to hit him… He wouldn’t have mind. The rattle of a fist against his jaw would have felt better than the hole in his heart. The hole Eddie dug deeper the more he ignored him; declining his calls and leaving his texts on read. Though he never admitted it, he cried on occasion. While everyone else ran off on calls, Buck often locked himself in the showers, stood with his back against the door as tears streamed down his face. Drawing a wedge between him and his best friend, he hated his pride that led him to isolation. He hated being alone…
So when Eddie was there for him after his world came crashing down, it was no wonder he couldn’t find the words to describe his appreciation. After 12 years of deceit finally coming to light, Buck found himself in a screaming match with his parents. He felt like a child again. Betrayed and neglected, Buck rambled on and on for what seemed like days at a time- Eddie was there to listen. He made him feel heard. Listening to his various monologues through FaceTime, even as Buck began to blame himself, doubling back on his words and dismissing his own feelings, Eddie always made him feel valid.
Eddie was always there… except now. Why couldn’t he be there now?
Why was he laying in a hospital bed, fighting for his life with IVs and monitors taped to him? It seemed so minute, a shot to the shoulder. If only they had rushed Eddie out of there like he begged, like he pleaded, he would have been fine. There would have been no need for him to pack a bag preparing to spend countless nights between a couch and the hospital. He wouldn’t need to tell Christopher his father’s not coming home tonight, if he came home at all. If only they let him pull Eddie to safety, things would have been fine… But instead first responders hid behind their cars, piling on top of each other, holding him down while Eddie laid in the middle of the street bleeding.
God, he had lost so much blood… Why did they waste so much time?
Time… Buck began to think rationally for a moment, his hopes growing high. Maybe if he showered quick enough, he could go back to the hospital and sit for a while- not for hours like he had before, but maybe an hour or two before Carla went home for the night. Though, he would be wasting away in the hallway; knee bouncing, rattling the chairs next to him. He probably would have worn his nails down to nubs before the doctor came back with any news. Buck pulled his thumb from his mouth at the thought; an old nervous habit rearing its ugly head. He clawed at his jeans, finding other use for his hands. Another the image of Eddie came to mind. Reaching out his hand as he laid on his side, Buck reached further, hoping he could feel his touch only feeling the rough touch of denim.
If only this once, he could hold Eddie’s hand.
He wanted to be by his side, waiting until he woke up… He wanted to be the first thing Eddie would see- not just in the hospital, but all the time. On the weekends, when they were both rarely off from work, he wanted to wake up next to Eddie; seeing him roll over in the sheets, sun shining in his face. On lazy afternoons, when Eddie sometimes napped at the fire station, Buck wanted to see that moment again. The man curled up on the couch, arms crossed over his chest, face plastered in bliss. He wanted to wrap his arms around Eddie as he cooked; with music playing in the background, dancing as he often did when he made dinner. Buck wanted to hold him in his arms, his head laying on his shoulder. That would be his own piece of peace.
The more Buck thought, the more he realized the two men had created a special type of love. Sure it was undefined, maybe even unconventional, but it was love nonetheless. As the wise words of a man he once met ran in his ears, Buck found himself laughing. Tears dried on his cheeks, nose no longer running, he remained laying against the wall, his laugh deep and therapeutic. He used to long for a love like this. Hoping for the day he would stumble upon it, unaware such a sacred love could only be made, molded with one’s own two hands- and By God, they had done it! He loved everything that ever was about Eddie Diaz. He had known for quite some time, the feeling of being in love. Constantly hiding his true feelings and for what reason? It was times like this, he wished he hadn’t. If only he had told him before…
That’s it, he thought to himself. As the light bulb flickered on above his head, he wiped the tears from his cheeks. He cleared his throat with a start. Standing, he flipped the handle on his shower wall, water spitting from the head as a result. Staring in the mirror, reminisce of himself began to reappear. He raised his chin, breathing deep. You got this. There was no need in holding himself down, torturing himself with a nonsensical life without Eddie. He didn’t have time to marvel over ‘what ifs’ or hypotheticals. Reality was now; a breath of fresh air compared to the sadness he had been drowning himself in. From that moment on, he would only allow himself to think fact, for fiction was too painful.
Fact, Eddie was going to be fine. The surgery would go well, and he would return home in no time.
Fact, Eddie would tuck Christopher into bed again. He would once again read his son his favorite stories as he drifted off to sleep in his arms.
Fact, when Eddie did open his eyes, Buck was going to be there… Sitting by his bedside, he would be holding his hand, ready to say the things he never could say.
Completed On: May. 23th 2021
Written By: Carmen Feaster (YourAverageBTSStan)
Feel Free To Reblog- Just Give Credit
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etherrealoblivion · 4 years
Text
Chapter Seven: Spencerspective
Table Of Contents
Fic summary: Owning a bookstore in downtown D.C. came with its fair share of downsides. You never thought that being the target of a serial killer would be one of them. Luckily, a nice FBI agent by the name of Spencer Reid is assigned to watch over you. What's the worst that could happen?
Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reader
Words: 2,512
MASTERLIST
~
Spencer didn’t fall asleep for hours. He tried not to keep watching the door, but keeping Y/N safe was more important than rest.
If you're exhausted tomorrow how are you supposed to protect her?
Finally, with that thought in his mind, he let himself succumb to slumber, which was surprisingly easy with Y/N cuddled against him.
After a night of horrible dreams and tossing and turning, he woke up to the wonderful smell of shampoo and flowers. Following his nose and breathing deeply, eyes still closed, he found himself suddenly with a face full of hair.
Spencer yanked back, eyes blowing open.
No. No. No.
It all came back in a rush. She’d gotten closer to him, holding him tighter than anyone had in a long time. And he hadn’t resisted. He’d given in to her so quickly.
It wasn’t like he didn’t like her. He did. Too much. His job was to protect her, not fall in . . . fall for her. Plus, it was taking advantage. She was only getting close to him because he was protecting her. It was a whole reverse Florence Nightingale situation. If they’d met anywhere else, she wouldn’t have given him a second glance.
But now, with her back pressed up against him — a little too much — how could he resist.
He had to. He couldn’t hurt her like that. He was just going to slip out of bed and go back to the floor. Without waking her up. Easy.
“Mm,” she moaned, stretching her spine and snuggling against him tighter.
Oh no. There was no way he could sneak away with one of his arms under her head and the other wrapped tightly around her waist. Not without waking her up.
How had he even gotten into this position? Looking back, it was his fault for pointing out just how large her bed truly was.
Wiggling a bit, she pulled a pillow closer, pushing herself even closer to him.
Now another problem was . . . rising. Literally.
It was a no-win situation. He could slip out of bed, almost definitely waking her up resulting in a potentially huge misunderstanding. Or, she’d wake up before he could leave the bed and certainly feel his. . . .
He had to get up.
As gently as he could, he removed his hand from her waist and slipped the other one out from under her head, placing it softly back on the pillow.
Her whimper at the loss of his warmth was like a dagger through the heart. More than anything, he wished he could jump back in bed with her and comfort her, holding her how he’d wanted to last night. How he’d found himself holding her this morning.
Why are you so crazy for this girl?! You barely know her!
“Spencer?” even with hours of sleep, her voice was still so melodic. If he weren’t so cold without her against him, he would have melted.
“Hey,” he said softly — too softly, get it together, Spencer!
“Is everything okay?” she rubbed her eyes sleepily, adorably. 
“Yeah, yeah, I just, um, had to go to the bathroom. I didn’t wanna wake you.”
“What time is it?”
He glanced at the clock on the wall.
“Nearly 1:30.”
“PM?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus.”
She sat up and blinked, looking at the space on the bed where Spencer had been. 
Spencer cleared his throat, drawing her attention back to him.
“What do you want to do today?” He tried to say it casually like he cared more about what they’d do rather than what she wanted to do. It was unclear if that had come across.
“I don’t know,” she wasn’t meeting his eyes. “I kinda wanna go out?”
Spencer froze.
“Go out? Like on a . . .” he trailed off.
“Like a date,” she mumbled, then, quickly: “As a cover, of course. I just think it might be a good distraction.”
But Spencer was already shaking his head fervently.
“It’s too dangerous. In fact, nightclubs are responsible for about 60 percent of rapes and 20 percent of murders. It’s the perfect place to commit most crimes. No one is paying any attention and—“
“Spencer!” she interrupted, “I didn’t mean a nightclub. I mean, seeing you dance sounds amazing but that’s not really my scene. What about like a restaurant?”
“A restaurant?”
He considered it. Respectable restaurants had professional waiters, unlike nightclubs; better security; and, best of all, they were more spaced out, meaning less opportunity for a stranger to get close. He’d have to be on high alert, though.
“I know a great place nearby,” she spoke up, breaking his train of thought. 
“I don’t know. . . .” he said, still wary.
“It’s walking distance.”
His mistake was meeting her eyes. She looked so hopeful, so helpless. Oh god, there was a hint of puppy dog eyes. How could he resist?
Seriously, how?
“Okay,” he said, giving in as she let out a little squeak of happiness, heart warming at the sound. “But at the slightest danger, we leave.”
“Yes! Of course!”
“And no alcohol.”
She hesitated for a split second, then sighed.
“Yes, okay.”
“And no dancing,” he added, sliding into the bathroom, leaving the door partially open.
“WHAT!?”
~
“Hey, it’s almost seven.”
Spencer and Y/N had been slumped on the couch for hours watching old episodes of Doctor Who and arguing about the science of time travel.
“Time doesn’t work that way! It’s like a line.”
“But what if you went back and changed something?”
“No, no, no, you can’t do that because it would have already happened. Like if you in the future traveled to right now, it would happen right now, but since you didn’t just now, then it doesn’t happen in the future. It’s the rules of physics.”
She’d scoffed at that.
“Maybe time doesn’t follow the rules of physics.”
“Okay, speaking as a certified genius with a Ph.D. in Chemistry, you are on dangerous grounds.”
And then she’d thrown a pillow at him, the both of them descending into giggles.
Spencer had almost forgotten why he was there. Why he was really there.
“Oh, yeah. Should we go?”
Y/N laughed derisively, gesturing to her t-shirt and pajama shorts.
“Not like this. Gimme fifteen minutes.”
She jumped up and ran to her bedroom, closing the door.
“Door open!” Spencer reminded her.
She stuck her head out and blew a raspberry but she did leave the door slightly ajar. Not enough that he could see what she was doing, just enough to know that she was safe.
Meanwhile, he rummaged through his bags, trying to find something appropriate to wear. Everything he had was either too casual or way too casual.
Finally settling on a cornflower blue dress shirt, a grey sweater to wear over it, dark slacks, and a jet black tie, he stood, waiting by the door and fidgeting with his sweater so it covered his revolver. He knew it made her nervous and didn’t want to put any stress on her that could be avoided.
The door to her room opened and Spencer’s head shot up. His jaw practically dropped.
Sure, her outfit was dazzling, small sparkly black heels, a short swishy blue dress that was both casual and classy (and happened to match his shirt), and long dangly earrings with little clocks on the ends, but what really got him was the way she was looking at him. Expectantly, patiently.
He realized she was waiting for him to say something.
“You look . . .” he tried so hard to think of a compliment that expressed his awe while remaining professional. “Stunning.”
A smile lit up her face and Spencer’s heart soared.
“You don’t look so bad yourself,” she said, adjusting his tie.
The contact made him jump.
“Ahem, shall we?” he opened the door and held out his elbow for her to take.
“We shall.”
So she took his arm and they set off into the night, locking the door securely behind them.
An hour later, they walked up outside a small bistro, Spencer slightly out of breath.
“When you said walking distance. . . .”
“Three miles is walking distance!” she said defensively.
“For superman!”
“Oh come on! You’re in the FBI, I'm sure you do your fair share of chasing bad guys.”
“I’m an FBI profiler. And while I do enjoy the occasional walk through the park, exercise isn’t exactly my strong suit,” he explained, gesturing to his lanky body.
“Suppose not. Then again, I saw the way you ran after that blue car. I know you’ve got some hidden muscles under all that . . . dork.”
He feigned offense at her remark.
“Pardon me, ma’am, I am a nerd. Very big difference.”
“Mm-hmm. Something only a dork would know,” she laughed, booping his nose and walking into the restaurant, Spencer taking a moment to be shocked before following her.
They got a nice table by the window at her request. It seemed she knew the waiter, calling him by his name and exchanging a brief greeting, introducing Spencer as Doctor Reid.
“Have you been here a lot?”
“No, never, but the waiter here, Tom, works at my regular coffee shop. Barista by day, waiter by night.”
Spencer laughed softly.
Okay, so she’s never been here before, meaning she’s never been here before with a guy, meaning she wanted to take you somewhere special. Meaning she likes y—
“Stop it!” he muttered to himself through gritted teeth. 
“Hmm?”
Spencer blushed.
“Oh, nothing. I was just wondering about what to order. I don’t really go to a lot of restaurants, to be honest.”
“Me either,” she smiled softly at him and Spencer found himself smiling back.
“Ready to order, Doctor Reid?” The waiter said, smiling.
“Ladies first,” Spencer said, relishing in the way Y/N smiled at him. This would be a long night.
~
“ . . . and the whole point of his writing is to experience a whole new idea of life!”
“Did you even read Walden?”
After the food came, a chicken empanada for Spencer and a bowl of pasta for Y/N, the conversation had somehow shifted to a heated discussion of what Henry David Thoreau’s ideals were.
“I’ve read . . . parts.” 
Spencer gave her a doubtful look and she sighed.
“I’ve read the Sparknotes.”
“Exactly! His point is to go live in the forest to achieve inner peace. The problem is, as humans, we need society and interactions with others in order to function. I actually had a coworker who had a cabin in the woods and he never mentioned becoming one with nature.”
“Well, maybe he just picked the wrong forest. Like, I couldn’t relax in the Forbidden Forest. It’s all about location.”
“Forbidden Forest?”
“Like from Harry Potter.”
Spencer glanced away.
“You’ve never read Harry Potter?” she said incredulously.
“Nope,” he blushed. “I’ve always preferred—“
“Oh god, please don’t say Twilight.”
“Nooo,” Spencer chuckled, “I was gonna say I prefer Doyle’s works.”
“Oh, I love Doyle!” she said happily. “Everybody always talks about Sherlock Holmes but have you read The Narrative of John Smith? It’s definitely some of his best work.”
Spencer’s mind went haywire. She had brought up his favorite book of all time in casual conversation. Who was this girl?
“Spencer?”
He snapped out of his daydream and looked at the woman in front of him. She was working on two doctorates, she loved Doyle and Doctor Who, she owned a goddamn bookstore, and she walked almost everywhere. How was he not supposed to fall for her? 
“Spencer?”
“Yes, yeah, sorry.”
The waiter came up and placed the check next to him.
“For the gentleman.” 
Avoiding eye-contact, Spencer took out his wallet to pay.
“Hey!” she swatted his hands away, making him drop his wallet into his lap. “We‘re not leaving yet! What’s the rush?”
This relaxed him a little. His nerves were starting to get to him. C’mon, Spencer, you’re a professional. Get it together.
“There’s no rush!” he quickly recovered. “I was simply checking to see if I had the adequate resources for the evening,” he smiled widely, waggling his eyebrows. But she had frozen, a shocked expression on her face.
“What?” she breathed.
Spencer cocked his head, not understanding her confusion. He was clearly reaching into his wallet for a surprise. What other resources did people keep in their walle—
Then it hit him.
“Oh! Oh, no I meant. . .” he fumbled with his wallet, trying desperately to pull out—
“This!” a shiny golden key. “I, uh, have a surprise planned.” It was extremely hard not to blush, and he was even less sure he was succeeding.
But, upon seeing her face contort into one of excitement, he was reassured.
“Okay! What are you waiting for? Let’s go now!”
And she jumped up, leaving the appropriate change in the check.
“C’mon!” Spencer was about to protest her paying, but she was grabbing his hand and pulling him out of his seat, out of the restaurant.
“Hey, I’m supposed to be surprising you, here!” he protested, stopping her just outside the door.
“Fine, lead the way, Doctor,” she giggled, bowing deeply.
Spencer curtseyed and walked off in the direction they had come, his woman on his arm.
A woman, he corrected himself. Not his.
“So,” Y/N said after a while of walking, “Where are you taking me?”
“It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you.”
“I don’t like surprises.”
“Ha. You know, statistically, around eighty percent of people who say that, secretly love them.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” she spun around and started to walk backward, maintaining eye contact, “but I’m not exactly a person that most statistics apply to.”
“So you don’t like surprises?”
She frowned.
“Touché.”
Spencer laughed as she spun back around, walking next to him. Their footsteps became a rhythm and they stayed silent for a while, just enjoying each other’s company.
Then, Y/N’s footsteps started to falter, breaking the pattern.
“You ok?” Spencer knew that people favoring the balls of their feet while walking was a sign of anxiety.
Rather than answer verbally, she yanked him down a dark alleyway, pushing against him.
“Y/N?”
She was holding him against her, her own back to the brick wall.
“I’m sorry, Spencer, this isn’t how I wanted it.”
“What are you sor—Mmf—“
A hand snaked around his tie and pulled him down sharply. Their lips met in an instant.
He should have pulled away. He should have stayed professional. He should have done anything but what he did.
Hands flying to the side of her face, he pulled her closer, coaxing open her mouth and moaning softly into it, feeling her hands travel down his waist, running along his belt.
Her lips were so soft. He’d wanted this so bad. And now that she was against him, lips against his, he realized how much he’d needed it. It wasn’t fair to her. He’d deal with that later.
But before he could process anything else, a sudden weight left his hips, her lips left his, and the unmistakable noise of a gunshot rang through the air behind him.
~
@aperrywilliams @mjloveskids666 @dolanfivsosxox @criesinreid @racerparker @sammypotato67 @lukeskisses @reidcrimes @you-had-me-at-hello-dear @l0ve-0f-my-life @thatsonezesty13​ @yourmisosoup @queenofthebees003 @pinkdiamond1016 @eu-solidao
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iamvegorott · 3 years
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Written by Shadowkitten:
Here’s my notes for my old Wild West au feel free to comb through it for ideas
outlaw au: Wild West au with dark the Sheriff of a small town and anti the outlaw head of an outlaw gang.
Town
Dark - sheriff
Wilford - deputy
Jackie- rookie who wants to be a law man
Jj - bartender at saloon
Google - runs the bank
Marvin- saloon performer/owner
Yan - works as a waitress in saloon
Bing and bim work at the general store
Edward - town doctor
Host- mayor/ runs an inn
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anti- leader of the outlaws
[ anti is the leader of the outlaws, he grew up in outlaw life, orphaned at a young age anti grew up in a traveling band of bandits and swindlers, at 16 a heist went wrong and he got injured with his slashed throat. His old gang left him to die, he was found by chase and a young henrick who saved his life after he heals he stays with henrick and chase whom he finds out are on the run as well. In the years leading up to the story antis gang takes on other members, other runaways and swindlers even some kids. they tried living peaceful for the first few years but after being attacked multiple times by bounty hunters and rival bandits they earned a rather bloody reputation. Anti has killed before he prefers his knives over gunfights, he is skilled in knife throwing. Anti rides a grey and black mustang Named Altair, a wild bratty horse who bucks riders he doesn’t like, he likes anti the best a Robbie second best, he dislikes henrick and disapproves of dark at first.]
Phantom and mare - twin circus runaways who have a flare for the dramatic [ phantom and mare were con artist from the get go, they lived with a traveling circus for the first half of their lives, using the fact of being twins to their advantage phantom and mare would perform sideshow acts as well as main stage shows, the shows would consist of superstitious ‘twinsie’ acts (finishing each other’s thoughts, tricks, appearing to swap items etc) the twins also pickpocketed while they preformed, while one twin kept the crowd entertained, the other worked his way through the crowd snatching coin purses and jewelry. Unfortunately the greedy ringleader demanded most the profit from the performers so the twins were always strapped for cash. One night after earning(and stealing) a small fortune for themselves phantom and mare decided to disobey the ringmaster, almost instantly their money was taken and they were kicked out of the circus with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Angered about the treatment they’d been on the receiving end for the better half of their lives phantom and mare plotted revenge. The twins followed the circus to its next location and waited til nightfall, once they were sure the cost was clear, phantom and mare split up, phantom looted and stole almost all the money the ringmaster had as well as recovered their stolen property while mare poisoned the ringmaster in his sleep. The two then road off on two circus trained horses named ruby and cyclone. They became two notorious outlaws, robbing stagecoaches and bank cars, they had a code to never rob or kill the poor or innocent, but railroads tycoon were neither of those so they were often the twins target. One day they found themselves in a lot of hot water, wounded and running from a bounty hunter, they took a wrong turn and found themselves starring at a dead end below a tall cliff. As the hunter got closer they braced them selves for the end when a shot rang out. Opening their eyes they watched as the bounty hunter dropped dead in front of them. Looking above at the top of the cliff was anti, his pistol drawn and smoking. Soon the twins found themselves surrounded by antis posey, their wounds being tended to by henrick. After hearing their story anti offered them a spot in his band of runaway misfits and they excepted. ]
Phantom is a skilled illusionist and handy with throwing knives, he and anti often trade tricks and have contests between them. Phantom is a smooth talker and a well seasoned trickster he is an expert poker player even tho he cheats every once and a while. Phantoms strongest when mare is by his side
(Phantom rides a redish brown mare named ruby, a cocky horse with circus training, she is one of the fastest of the outlaw horses and the most nimble)
Mare is a gifted gunslinger and trick rider, he’s a fast agile acrobatic person with a gifted singing voice, mare often preformed music for the circus and now sings the best campfire songs. Mare is slightly stronger than phantom often doing more of the dirty work in their partnership but he is no less clever than his twin. He’s hard to catch and crafty in a fight.
He is even stronger with phantom by his side
( mare rides a blue roan mustang named cyclone, a brawny horse with circus training he is an athletic horse known for his jumping tricks and aloof attitude)
Henrick - is the unofficial doctor of the outlaws, [ loosing his parents at a young age henrick was sent to live with his alcoholic uncle, to escape the abuse henrick apprenticed at the local physician’s Office, there he found that he loved to heal people and decided to study medicine, his uncle however made it painfully clear he disapproved and often took his anger out on henrick, one day a man by the name of chase rides into town and gets a job cleaning the barbershop/doctors office, henrick befreinds chase over the corse of a month or so until one day he hears a a rumor that chase is actually a criminal, henrick goes to confront chase but finds him getting ready to leave town, he learns the truth about how chase was falsely accused by his awful ex wife and decides to leave his cruel uncle and continue studding medicine with chase. Henrick rides a white and grey pinto mare named nightingale
She is a fast motherly horse, she can be a great judge of character and very stubborn if she knows something is wrong ]
Mad- a inventor who travels with the outlaws
Chase- looks after the group and the two kids second in command [chase was a rancher who ranched horses and cattle, he had a wife and two kids. His ranch was located is a small western town called dry gulch, thanks to a drought and cattle Rustlers his ranch was going to be reclaimed by the greedy banker of the town and his wife was having an affair with the corrupt sherif, one day while he was tending the cattle his son was injured by one of the bulls and died from his wounds, chase was devastated. Stacy (his wife) blamed him for the sons death, she claimed he was a murder who sent the bull after their son (she wanted to get out of her marriage to him so she could marry the Sheriff) the corrupt Sheriff agreed with her and said for chase to leave by sundown or be arrested for murder. Chase packed his bags and hitched his horse up then road out of town for good, even though he did exactly as the sheriff said the corrupt sheriff put up wanted posters for his arrest. After leaving chase started to hop from town to town taking on what ever work he could find and leaving the moment any news would spread about him would surface. In one of the towns he worked at a barber shop/ local doctors where he met a young henrick who was apprenticing in the medical field and his abusive alcoholic uncle. Chase befriended henrick , helping him with patients and making sure he was safe from the uncles drunken episodes. One day just like the other towns rumors about chase started to spread so he got packed up, right before he left henrick confronted him about the rumors, learned the truth about chase and decided to leave with him to pursue his knowledge and one day become a real doctor.
Chase rides a chestnut appaloosa mustang named whiskey, whiskey is a gentle horse he lets just about anyone ride him but loves chase the most, chase raised whiskey from a colt back on his old ranch.]
Blank and Robbie, two kids they adopted into the group to get them away from a hard life
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dark runs a small town in the western frontier, it’s just a place to pass through but everyone who stays finds it home. Darks reputation as a heartless bounty hunter and Wilford gunfight if skills keeps most the trouble out of town
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inawickedlittletown · 4 years
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Eddie Begins - Some Thoughts
I’m putting his under a cut because spoilers. Also because fair warning it’s over 3k long. I clearly had a lot of feelings. 
Pretty much from the moment that we knew we were getting an Eddie Begins, anticipation has been high and boy did this episode deliver. The episode opens with Christopher’s birth and Eddie is present for it and his emotions are all over the place and so well displayed. I loved the moment when the doctor asks him if he wants to cut the cord and he says no and Shannon just roasts him right there and then “you’re an army medic, but this makes you squeamish?”. The scene does a lot to establish Shannon and Eddie and Eddie is just precious when he gets called “dad” — “I like the sound of that.” 
One thing that we don’t get in the middle of all of this is the birth complications? Nothing about the scene suggest that there were any complications. Christopher is delivered, the doctor tells the new parents that it’s a boy and they have the moment about the umbilical cord. But we were told previously that Christopher was stuck and that his CP might have been a result of the birth complications. So it was interesting that we didn’t get to see that. 
Next we see them post-birth in a hospital room with Eddie’s parents and we get a very interesting tidbit: Eddie’s dad was not present at either Eddie or his sisters’ births. And later in the episode, we also learn that Eddie’s dad wasn’t around much — because he was working — when Eddie was little. It’s an interesting parallel and in some ways this may even go as far as to make commentary on gender roles and how both Eddie’s mother and Shannon were primary caretakers of their children and expected to do so. It even might explain why Eddie felt like he needed to support his family by working rather than by being present. 
When Shannon’s mom arrives, Eddie runs over to hug her. His parents are warm and welcoming, and Shannon is surprised but pleased and they talk about her clean bill of health and everything seems nice and happy but the set up for angst is happening because we know Shannon’s mom will get sick again and we also know that Eddie and Shannon are not going to be happy. The whole atmosphere of the room changes the moment that Eddie is asked how long he’s staying for and Shannon isn’t happy when she says that he’s only there for another week. What new mother would be happy with the prospect of her husband leaving so soon after they had a baby? But Eddie points out that the sooner he goes the sooner he returns and then returns for good. That obviously doesn’t end up working out because as we see later when Eddie is finally back, things don’t go well. 
Shannon gives Eddie the necklace with the St. Christopher charm and explains what it is and Eddie vows to come back and be with his family and as the scene ends Eddie says this: 
“No matter what happens, I’m always going to fight to come home to my family.” 
This of course is when we get that flash forward to later in the episode when Eddie is calling on the radio that he’s alive and yet no one can hear him. It is the perfect transition into the future. The writers have done such an amazing thing in creating this episode and framing it around Eddie’s past in a way that truly gives us so much information about Eddie and yet connects us to the story at present. The placements of the flashbacks just hit so strongly. 
That said, I want to write about the past on its own first.  
The next time that we see a flashback it is 2015 and Eddie has reenlisted in the Army. Christopher was born in 2011, so that puts Christopher at around 4 years old and from the way that this scene plays out it’s also clear that Eddie wasn’t home long before he decided to take on another tour of duty. (Edited to add: apparently Tim says this scene was supposed to be in 2013 which still doesn’t make a lot of sense other than how young Christopher looks)
What we do know is that Eddie was not around when Christopher was diagnosed with CP and that he doesn’t understand it necessarily past knowing that his son is “sick” and that all of what comes with that is costly. We also find out during this argument that Eddie enlisted in the army after Shannon found out she was pregnant in the first place — that was his response to her pregnancy. So he wasn’t around for her from day one. 
Eddie is clearly of the mind that in order to take care of his family, he must be the breadwinner and that he must support them by working and bringing in money. He needs to provide for his family. While I think that absolutely plays a part in his decision to re-enlist, Eddie also doesn’t communicate any of that with Shannon. He doesn’t listen to anything that Shannon has to say and just does what he thinks is best without consulting her and it’s a little bit heartbreaking. Shannon is also looking for other solutions. She hasn’t been working because she’s taking care of Chris and yet she offers to sell the house, the cars, and to start working but to Eddie that’s not putting Christopher first. And this disparity between them is the argument that will never end — Eddie deciding things without consulting his wife and not understanding that Shannon needed him around and that Christopher needed him around. 
Shannon makes a point of telling Eddie that he’s made all the choices even while saying that he has no choice. We know because Eddie and Buck have spoken about it, that Eddie did feel like he was running away when things got hard with Christopher and Shannon and it is hard to watch it actually happen. When he goes to pick up Christopher, it is awkward and unsure and Christopher clearly doesn’t even know him and that just cuts so deep because we know the kind of relationship that Eddie has with Christopher in the present. 
Next time we are in a flashback it is still 2015 (I actually 100% think they screwed up with the year though going off of how 3 months after this incident when Eddie is home Christopher is said to be 6 years old so it would be 2017...except that the last flashback we get tells us it’s 2017 so who knows). Christopher looks older through the video chat and we also learn that Shannon’s mom is sick again. And this whole sequence is all about how Eddie earned his medal and we get to see him in action. But this gives us this beautiful moment to parallel with the present where Eddie is looking at the St. Christopher medal and at a picture of Christopher and it just seems like he’s sure he’s going to die and in that moment he’s thinking back to his argument with Shannon and I think it’s a moment of realization for Eddie for how much he has missed out on knowing his son because as much as he may love him, he also isn’t there for him. As an aside I want to add that back in S2 Christopher says that he wished for Eddie to come home for Christmas one year and that Eddie did. So Christopher knows all about Eddie either from Shannon or from Eddie’s parents — but he knows all about his dad even at a young age. Enough to miss him and want him home and to love him just like any child loves their parents and it’s also something that Eddie probably doesn’t realize until much later on when he does get to be around Christopher and be his dad at last. 
Eddie is injured and he gets his Silver Star and he doesn’t feel particularly deserving or heroic about any of it, but the next time we see him three months later he’s back home in Texas and the whole family is there — at least his parents, Pepa, and his Abuela are around and it’s clear that they’ve come out to Texas to see Eddie and because they’re celebrating his medal. 
Eddie brings out juice for Christopher in a cup with ice and his mom immediately tells him off and while yes it’s true that Eddie may have done something wrong, his mom is also very quick to judge him and his lack of parenting skills. And what’s interesting about this moment is that when he mentions it to Shannon she has clearly been dealing with Eddie’s mom for years and likely getting the same treatment. This would have been the perfect moment for them to bond over that. 
Shannon jumps into asking Eddie about going to California and the thing about the way she asks is a little bit obnoxious. In S2 Shannon and Eddie argue and Shannon says something along the lines of “you didn’t want to leave your family in Texas” and it is implied that Eddie thought he couldn’t leave the support system of his family in Texas. As we come to find out here, she meant that he literally would not leave the family that had flown in to see him on a whim just because Shannon wanted to pack up and take off the next day. 
Shannon lights up at the idea and doesn’t try to understand why Eddie is so against it. She’s just ready to go and we know this is about her mom and that she’s been waiting for Eddie to be home for a long time, but I think she was pushing in a way that was always going to result in Eddie saying no. And what Eddie asks for is more time, but Shannon is done and can’t give him any more time. 
“I needed more time too” is all her note reads after she leaves them. 
Shannon’s feelings and actions are absolutely valid and I think she needed to leave him, but she’s also wrong in doing it the way she did instead of giving Eddie the ultimatum of: “I’m leaving. That’s that. Figure out what you want.” I’m not sure how Eddie would have taken that, but it would have gives us a different perspective of her leaving. Another point to make is that it is one thing for Shannon to abandon Eddie and another to abandon Christopher and leave him behind because she could have taken him with her. She’s his mother and she left him and Eddie is justified in being upset about that. 
The next flashback places us in 2017 and Eddie is talking with his parents who are adamant about having Christopher move in with them because Eddie has three jobs and isn’t around often enough and because they have been the only constant in Christopher’s life — not Eddie and not Shannon. Eddie actually defends Shannon leaving even though he’s also angry at her. I think her mom is 100% justified in blaming Shannon for leaving her son, but it’s interesting that Eddie sees it as Shannon leaving him specifically and not necessarily Christopher. I also find it interesting that Eddie is applying to be a firefighter at this time and that he isn’t doing so in Texas — unless the FD in Texas rejected him? — but he mentions Chicago and LA and obviously we know he goes to LA but I don’t buy it that he decided on LA because of Shannon. I think it’s in part to do with Abuela and Pepa being there and that Eddie isn’t all that sure about finding Shannon. After all, we know that he doesn’t reach out to her at all until he needs to for Christopher’s school. 
I find it fascinating how Eddie’s parents offer him little to no encouragement about stepping up and being a good dad. They acknowledge that Eddie loves Christopher, but then in the same breath point out how Eddie doesn’t know Christopher and how Eddie is inadequate as a father especially if he’s going to be working as a firefighter. It just in some ways drives home for me how much Eddie’s view on life has been shaped by these two people that didn’t truly believe in him and that clearly value the family unit and the idea of the nurturing mother and all of those things are still so present in him later on. 
And then we get the most beautiful scene in this entire episode and it is Christopher sitting outside on his own because that kid can do whatever he wants and Eddie finds him and sits with him and they have this beautiful moment during which Eddie decides to ask Christopher what he wants and Christopher wants to be with his dad — “I missed you all the time” Christopher says and Eddie could never leave this boy ever again. And I think when they start talking about leaving that Eddie is entirely conscious of the fact that he’s going to do it against his parents’ wishes and I just love the way that he holds Christopher in that moment. It’s just precious and perfect and I love it so so much. 
In the present time we have Christopher and Carla stop by the station because apparently it’s show and tell at school later in the week and Christopher is Christopher so of course he’s been searching through his dad’s stuff and he wants to take Eddie’s medal in. But before that we get a nice sequence about working radios and the look that Eddie and Bobby share when Buck fails at using his radio is so full of fond and “why do we deal with him again?” and it is perfect. 
Christopher of course gets his way because he’s Christopher and both Carla and Buck are there just watching Eddie give in like they both clearly knew he would. Also, it’s interesting to note that Buck doesn’t seem to know the story of how Eddie got his medal. Then the 118 are out on a call. A boy is missing. Eddie figures out where he is — in an abandoned well — and then when it is time for one of them to propel down to get the boy, it is Eddie going down and he sounds a little like Buck when he tells Bobby that he’s the one going down there. And the audience is preparing for angst. And because this is 9-1-1, it is the perfect time for the weather to just get worse and worse. 
Eddie pulls a Buck and cuts the line when he almost has Hayden and his thirty minutes are up and it is both a moment of complete trust from Eddie that the rest of the 118 will get him out of there and stupidity. And yet it just makes so much sense for him to do that when he almost had Hayden and when Eddie is sure that if he doesn’t get Hayden in that moment that the kid will likely drown. 
This is the first instance of Buck panicking a little when he says “I lost the weight” and he’s confused and doesn’t want to admit what he already likely knows — that somehow Eddie is no longer attached. They all look so devastated. 
The next thing that happens is one of my favorite things. Bobby immediately tells Chim he’s going down but Buck is ready to volunteer because of course he wants to go after Eddie so that he can save him. Hen points out how horrible that idea is because Buck is just as stupid as Eddie and then the two of them would be stuck down there. 
In the end, Chim goes down and he finds Hayden and Eddie and Hayden is pulled up to safety while Eddie waits. This is exactly the moment when things go wrong again. Lightning strikes and Buck tackles Bobby and there’s an explosion and the truck falls and things underground are even worse than before. 
Eddie is thrown about down below, but Buck is the one having a breakdown because as soon as he realizes that Eddie is in trouble, Buck throws himself to the ground where the hole was drilled and he is digging through the mud as if somehow that can get him to Eddie. Buck is desperate and devastated and his logic is all but gone as he yells and yells Eddie’s name in exactly the same way that he yelled for Christopher during the tsunami. It is absolutely heart wrenching. 
Buck’s reaction here is not normal for a co-worker or for a friend. It is the reaction of someone that loves without any doubt — it is the reaction of someone that knows they could be losing someone especially dear to them. It is absolutely true that Buck and Eddie are best friends and that they are close, but this connection that they have between them just transcends that. It is more than that. As much as we know the others love Eddie, they don’t react this way. They don’t let their emotion overtake them in the same way that Buck does — Buck who doesn’t lose his composure in this way when he needs to be a professional does for Eddie. And it’s a beautiful thing whether we look at this romantically or platonically, either way what is evident is that Buck loves Eddie. 
When Bobby goes to Buck, there is no quelling the desperation and it is as Buck realizes that he can’t do anything that he falls back onto Bobby and it is such a heartbreaking expression that it is difficult to not read more into what Buck may feel for Eddie. 
The next thing we see is Buck cleaning his hands. He’s desperate to go back out there and find a way to rescue Eddie but no one knows quite what to do and there’s a moment when he, Hen, Chim, and Bobby are standing outside the house where it is very clear that everyone is thinking about the odds and the likelihood that Eddie is already gone and for Buck that is not an option — it’s not something he even considers entertaining. There’s a beauty to his devotion and yet so much hurt too. The others are of course not going to give up either, but they are less convinced of a good outcome. 
Eddie meanwhile is stuck down there and now he’s in water and his oxygen eventually runs out and he’s basically on his last breath and in that moment where everything seems lost we hear a voiceover: “Woah, you got a kid,” it’s Buck. 
It’s a flashback montage and the first thing that comes to Eddie’s mind is the moment when he tells Buck about Christopher. Yes, this is literally the first instance on the show where Christopher is brought up, but that didn’t mean that it needed to also be the first thing that starts up this flashback montage especially since the rest of the montage is out of order. Buck shows up a lot throughout all of it and the logical aspect to this is that Buck is just always around when Christopher is, but they made a conscious choice as to what would be shown and I think that does speak volumes about Buck being a part of the family. I’d love to see someone figure out if they even left out any of the moments that feature Buck with Chris and Eddie. The montage is shown while Carry You by Ruelle ft. Fleurie plays which is such a fitting song. (And I will forever give props to the person in charge of music for 9-1-1 because they always know how to pick the perfect song for every moment). We hear Eddie call the 118 his family in a small voice clip from an earlier episode and then a repetition of: “I’m always going to fight to come home to my family.” And it is Eddie fighting to get out of that water and live for Christopher.. Oh, the feels. 
Meanwhile, the 118 is figuring out how to find and rescue Eddie and Buck looks like his whole world has fallen apart. He looks so close to falling apart again because by this point he must believe that they won’t find Eddie. And Eddie makes his dramatic entrance and he just pushes past some other firefighters and no one tries to grab him or stop him. Buck loses not a second to run to his side even though there are a bunch of other people around. Bobby is right there next to him and the shock that Bobby displays and the way he says Eddie’s name in that moment also says so much about Bobby being sure that Eddie was long gone. 
The way that Buck holds Eddie up and actually grasps his hand is a thing of beauty. And Hen is there right behind him telling Eddie they will get him home and Eddie is still thinking about his son and the importance of making that show and tell and being there for Christopher which is what we flash to in the next moment and once more we are hit with how much Eddie treasures his son, his good luck charm. 
This episode was a lot of what I wanted from an Eddie Begins. It gives us a deeper understanding of Eddie, filling in all the gaps that we could only guess at before and giving us a fuller picture of what Eddie and Christopher’s journey has been. Mixed in with that was a rescue that in some ways fit in with the flashbacks and I am so glad that we got this. And yet I also do have to say that more could have been done in terms of showing Eddie’s growth as more than just a parent because at the end of the day the episode ends up being more about Eddie becoming a father and embracing that rather than about Eddie changing and growing in other ways. 
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josie-effortposts · 3 years
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The Woman Who Fell to Earth
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I stopped watching Doctor Who in 2013 after the 50th anniversary special. Up to then I was deeply obsessed by its reams of stories, hidden subspaces and detailed production histories. It wasn’t just entertainment, it was a case study in a massive shared universe, and a direct function of the times and places it had been written. 
It’s never been very controversial to anyone I know to dislike Moffat’s run of the show, and as it drew to a close everything that followed seemed pretty well-telegraphed: Chris Chibnall would become the head of the show, it wouldn’t be very good, reactionaries would blame bad writing on a female Doctor while plenty of others would just lost interest, the ratings would drop and the whole show would become less culturally relevant. It was a Cassandra truth.
But that said, I still wanted to try it. I watched a bit of the Twelfth Doctor and had mixed feelings, and when I watched the first episode of the Thirteenth I found myself taking notes on it. So, without a lot of structure, here are my thoughts.
1. New Who treats first episodes as very important, the first moments that we see new Doctors and their statements to the world. Call it a modern tradition - where “Robot” and “Time and the Rani” play the change for comedy before jumping into the week’s adventures, “The Christmas Invasion” and “The Eleventh Hour” are primarily statements of continuity. By Twelve’s first outing the villains themselves become metaphors for change, and now Thirteen delivers a brief speech about deciding to become different while paying respect to the past.
2. Speaking of that speech, I feel like there must have been an earlier draft that connected the plot to these metaphors a lot better. The villain of the story keeps pieces of his past triumphs with him at all times, but these trophies are body parts taken from the dead, and they disgust the Doctor. At least Twelve’s flesh robots were stumbling towards eternity.
The villain as a whole is just what you’d expect from a low-grade Doctor Who monster, I guess. He’s supposed to be on a hunt, which sounds really cool, but this consists entirely of him walking places and murdering random bystanders by touch. He’s not keeping the masquerade up or succeeding in his goals by doing this, and the rest of the story implies that he’s at least shrewd about getting what he wants. The Doctor’s complaints against him center on him being a cheat who can’t do the hunt fair and square and on his desecrating corpses, but she never seems very angry at him over murdering people. 
The idea of the Doctor stopping a proper hunt actually sounds interesting to me, especially as someone who sat through all of DWAD’s The Most Dangerous Game. There’s a lot of suspense in dealing with an intelligent, directed killer with a small number of targets, be it in Predator or Day of the Jackal, and a villain that stalks, hides or sets up ambushes could be easier on the budget. Or you could keep the villain the same but add a second member of his species to the setting and have them in competition, conflict on conflict. (That sounds like it’d make a good module for TIMELORD, actually...)
3. The Doctor feels simplified. I don’t mean the new personality of this incarnation, although I think the slight amnesia-until-climax is a bit forced. There’s just stuff that comes off wrong. For instance, things are outlawed in “every civilized galaxy” and the villains traveled from “five thousand galaxies away”. Despite ostensibly going anywhere and anywhen, the show’s always respected some species of distance, in that going far enough away or leaving the universe itself is a pretty big deal (especially since so much of it sticks to Earth). This line could’ve been any distance and nothing else would’ve changed, but it kills the idea of space - how can galaxies be civilized? It feels like the setting is shrinking - the word just sounds big and spacey, and this is the part where the Doctor says that something’s out of place, so big, spacey words go there.
This probably sounds nitpicky, but it feels lazy. Where Davies and Moffat both repeatedly made the Doctor or companions into the Most Important People in History, Chibnall seems to take it as read that the Doctor can just do stuff as the plot demands it. The climax involves her making a jump over a dangerous drop to the gasps of all assembled, but her first appearance is after an even longer fall where she breaks through the ceiling of a train car and isn’t even scratched. She "reformats” a phone into some kind of tracking gadget with six seconds of thumb typing and builds a new sonic screwdriver out of random scrap, which then solves basically every issue in the story. And, naturally, she can pinpoint things from a billion light-years away.
My favorite Moffat story is probably “The Eleventh Hour” because it presents the Doctor with a genuine challenge at his most vulnerable. If he had his regular tools handy then it would’ve been a much more straightforward Doctor Who story, but there’s no time to stop and build a new sonic screwdriver, because people are going to die by the time he’s finished. I wish more modern stories had that.
4. I can’t tell how I should feel about the side characters here. Not the companions, although it feels like Chibnall looked at RTD’s companions and thought “why not bring the entire family along?” There’s just this odd tension in characterization between comedy and drama for them, and without a very detailed soundtrack it’s hard to tell what emotions the script’s trying to go for.
One of the hunter’s victims has spent years trying to find his missing sister after another hunter abducting her. Instead of any resolution coming to that story he just gets murdered without ever knowing what happened to her and then the Doctor commandeers his workshop. (It’s even made clear that these human trophies are all still alive, just “in stasis”, so there’s no reason to think they couldn’t save her and presumably several others.) Meanwhile one of the main characters suffers a short fall and dies, taking up most of the final act with a funeral despite us hardly knowing her.
Other victims are worse. A man throws pieces of his salad at the monster for no discernible reason - he doesn’t even seem drunk, and then he dies as the hunter crushes that salad underfoot. A security officer gives a heartfelt goodbye to his family and tells them what a lucky granddad he is, then walks offscreen to be murdered. Neither of these scenes had to happen, and both together don’t even fill a minute of the runtime, so what was the motivation? The first is at least charmingly odd, but both of them feel like bizarre, extremely cheap set-pieces.
The soon-to-be-trophy himself listens to positive affirmations in a crane, then shouts them as he’s being chased. “I’m important! I matter!” The implication would seem to be that this is goofy behavior, and yet the things he shouts are in some ways the themes of the show. Is this self-critical deconstruction, unabashed humanism poorly delivered, a running gag?
5. The other half of a new Doctor, classic or modern, is this shedding of old things. Not always in terms of showrunners, but sometimes in attitudes or fans. The change from Six to Seven was motivated by a desire to change the tone of the show, for instance. Nowadays this is reflected a lot by the fandom - every Doctor has newcomers who jump back out because they don’t want their hero to be replaced, but the jump to Eleven confronted a lot of younger fans with this for the first time. Then Twelve culled some fans who couldn’t stand the Doctor being old and unkissable, and now Thirteen’s wiped out her own contingent of grognards who think the Doctor being a woman is a radical idea invented in the last three years.
That said, I’m not a fan yet. Some Doctors I don’t like as much for aspects of their characters, particularly Five, but Thirteen just doesn’t feel Doctorly. (To be clear, neither did Twelve.) I grew to enjoy Matt Smith’s performance where I thought I wouldn’t, and I’ve found a lot to like in every Doctor, but for some reason both of them still feel like actors playing the role to me, where Unbound Doctors and Mark Kalita have captured whatever the core is.
6. I feel like I’m getting old. So much of the beauty of Doctor Who just feels transparent now. After Moffat the maximalist decades of worldbuilding can never convincingly pretend to add up to a coherent universe and they can’t escape into the freedom of canon-indeterminacy any more than they already have. Even Big Finish, which I used to adore, feels strangled by a mandate to realize and box-set every possible combination of whatever actors they can summon from the show, no matter how many tedious hours they have to fill with cardboard characters and back-of-the-napkin monsters.
There’s no excitement in the adventure for me, because I know the route and the destination. And I don’t know if that’s Doctor Who being formulaic or disenchantment from seeing the patterns too much, or some personal lack of spark and imagination. I feel like there must be some drive I don’t have, one that would re-energize my own perspective in the face of concrete understanding, that would see it as a good thing that I understand another layer of what I enjoyed so much without sacrificing that enjoyment. But if it’s there, I just don’t see it.
But hey. While there’s life, there’s...
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dandannoodl3s · 4 years
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Ahhh so I also managed finishing chapter 2 in the re-imagining of the events post the episode 5.08 (Ian Garvey) if you’re haven’t read part one I’ll attach the link but here’s part 2 it’s slightly long but worth it I promise. Gif credits to @biconicclarkegriffin and @bravebold
Chapter 2
Before Ressler knew it, he was driving towards Liz’s apartment. It was way past midnight now and the thought of resting before beginning his quest to uncover the culprits behind this horrific attack was too much for him to bear. Besides he wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing Liz was in the hospital fighting for her life. Cooper had already alerted the Post Office about the events and a CSI team had been sent to Liz’s apartment. Nobody it seemed wanted to waste any time. As he approached her building he saw a bunch of cop cars parked outside, along with police tape cording off the area. He parked his car but sat in it for several minutes, trying to prepare himself for what he was about to see. He stepped out and made his way under the police tape, taking his badge out to identify himself to the officer in charge of the scene.
“Donald Ressler, FBI”
“Yes Sir, come through”
“Are you okay sir?” said the same officer who had let him in.
As Ressler made his way up the stairs to her apartment, his heart beat faster and faster almost bursting out of his chest, He had to lean against the wall to calm down
“Yeah fine” Ressler chimed in, trying to hide the emotions that were threatening to explode.
“Did you know the people who were attacked?”
“Yeah” he said, sucking a deep breath in.
“It was my partner and her husband.”
“I’m sorry sir. It’s always hard when someone close to you is killed.”
“She isn’t dead. She’s in a coma.” retorted Ressler who was beginning to get irritated at the officer for talking so much but he knew that he didn’t mean to offend him, so he just nodded at the officer and made his way into her apartment. But he was not ready for what he saw. There was blood everywhere along with shattered glass across the living room floor, broken tables and chairs, torn pillows and two dead bodies. He assumed correctly that they must have been part of the team that attacked the Keens and having known that there was no way that Liz and Tom had those many bullets to spare, he knew it had been Reddington and Dembe who had come just in time to rescue the two of them.
The CSI’s had marked all the areas and were in the process of gathering all the blood and any other DNA evidence they could get from the scene. Ressler on the other hand made his way into Agnes’s room. It had been completely tossed. All her toys scattered on the floor, her mattress had been flipped, her cupboard had been carelessly emptied out, and there was nothing that was left in place. He was grateful that Liz had sent Agnes to her friend’s place for a sleepover. He didn’t want to imagine what they would have done to the poor girl if she was at home with her parents. No. Liz would never do that if she knew somewhere in her gut that she was uncovering something dangerous.
Suddenly a paper caught his eye. He bent down to pick it up. It was a drawing Agnes had made of herself, Tom and Liz. They were in the park with Agnes in the middle of her two parents holding both their hands and smiling. It made Ressler tear up. How the hell was he going to get her through this? He folded the drawing and put it in his pocket. He went out, ensured that the CSIs covered everything and left her apartment.
1 month later
The investigation into the attack was just a bunch of dead ends. While they managed to ID the two bodies, there was no other trace of blood, fingerprints or anything. Whoever did this was meticulous. It was planned to ensure there were no survivors and absolutely nothing that could lead back to them. What the attackers perhaps hadn’t anticipated was Reddington. And while the Task Force was doing everything possible, Reddington had surprisingly continued to supply them with names of Blacklisters. I guess it was his way of honouring Liz and it was also the only way everyone could remain distracted.
Reddington had also been actively taking care of Agnes. Ressler was actually quite surprised at his approach towards her. He had asked Samar if she would take Agnes in for the time being since he realised how important it was for Agnes to have a female presence. In another world Red would have jumped at the opportunity to keep Agnes to himself for her ‘protection’ but things were different right now and what Agnes needed was a sense of normalcy, something not possible in his world. Ressler would usually spend the weekends with Agnes, who insisted on building pillow forts with him. She was in the “princess phase” while the pillow fort was her castle and Ressler her knight. It had certainly been a difficult month, and perhaps Agnes was too young to completely understand death and medically induced comas, but there was no denying that behind that smiling face, she missed her parents dearly.
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“Uncle Donnie?” said Agnes one evening that Ressler was at Samar’s place.
“Yes sweetheart?”
“When is mommy going to come home? I miss her.”
Ressler picked her up, setting her on his lap as she cuddled into him.
“Sweetie, I know you miss her. Uncle Donnie misses her too. Remember what I told you about Mommy and Daddy being in an accident?” Agnes slowly nodded her head.
“Well mommy was injured very badly. It’s like when the evil queen sends her army to kill the princess and take her place in the kingdom and the prince tries to protect the princess by fighting the evil queen’s army. Your daddy was the prince who tried to save his princess, and he fought very bravely to protect your mother.”
“You said daddy is in heaven now right?”
Ressler smiled at the sweet child sitting on his lap.
“Yes, daddy is in heaven now. He’s still protecting your mommy and is making sure she is strong enough to wake up. Give it time sweetie. I promise you that I’m here with you till Mommy comes back okay?”
“Okay, Uncle Donnie.”
And with that Ressler picked her up and took her to the room Samar had set aside for Agnes. He lifted the covers and gently placed a sleepy Agnes in bed. He read her her favourite story at the moment “Mulan” as it reminded her of how strong and brave her mother was and watched her fall asleep before placing a kiss on her forehead and making his way out of the room.
6 months later
It had been half a year and Liz had still not woken up. The doctors had lost hope but Reddington being Reddington refused to give up and had her transferred to a private care facility, paying for everything along the way. Other than Reddington, Ressler was the one member on the task force who visted Liz almost every day. Sometimes he would bring her favourite food from Wing Yee and just sit and talk to her while he ate his share. Other times he would tell her about his day, about Blacklisters they caught and about the thrill of the chase. But every single time he spoke to her, he would tell her about Agnes. Her grades, her favourite movies and books at the moment, how she had dyed some of her hair pink after seeing some movie where the lead actress had pink hair, how she had discovered Samar’s lipsticks and insisted that she needed some of her own.
For Ressler, Liz was the only thing he thought about for the last 6 months. Whether it was his feelings for her or the fact that he just utterly missed her, her teasing and her silly jokes, he just wanted Liz to wake up. On the 6 month eve of the attack, Ressler snuck in a bottle of her favourite wine in his coat pocket before making his way to the care facility. When he entered her room he was surprised to see Red sitting next to her, since he usually wasn’t here so late in the night.
“Donald, it’s lovely to see you.”
“Red, what are you doing here so late?”
“Well I know you aren’t as happy to see me but you know what date it is today and I don’t know, I just wanted to be here with Lizzie”
“I know what you mean. That’s actually why I’m also here.”
Reddington looked at Ressler for a long while before saying something that took Ressler by surprise.
“You know Donald, its going to be difficult for Elizabeth when she wakes up, you know with Tom not being here and their attackers being on the loose, but for what it’s worth I’m glad you’re in her life. I don’t think I’ve told you how much I appreciate all that you’ve done for sweet Agnes.
I know we’ve had a colourful history and I may have outsmarted you that one time in Belgrade but you were the only one who ever came close to ever capturing me. In fact, sometimes your personality strikes me as uptight even rigid, but that perfectly sculpted jaw line certainly helps” Reddington chuckled.
Ressler couldn’t help but snort.
“So the only acceptable quality I have are my looks? Tell me something new.” He said somewhat cockily but he was slightly stung by the jab.
“Your face definitely is a sight for sore eyes but that’s not the only thing. In the last few months you have proved my wrong. You’ve been at Lizzie’s side the whole time, unwavering in you love and care for her. You may not realise this but your loyalty and compassion is an envious trait. Something that I have always admired and remember I am not easily pleased.”
The atmosphere in the room was thick with emotion and as a means to break the unfamiliarity of Reddington’s emotional confession, Ressler took out the small bottle of wine from his inner coat pocket.
“What do we have here?” exclaimed Reddington.
Feigning a smile Ressler said “It’s Liz’s favourite cheap wine. Every time we finished arresting a particularly nasty Blacklister, we would sit in our office and pour ourselves this god awful wine in plastic cups and try to finish our day’s reports.”
“Why in God’s good name does Elizabeth subject herself to such ghastly taste in alcohol, I mean why do that when she has a perfectly beautiful collection of aromatic Chilean wines lying in her house, ones that I especially bootleg for her but for some unearthly reason continue to remain unopened? ”
Ressler chuckled.
“Well, one day Liz and I were the only ones left in the Post Office. We had just wrapped up a case that among other things involved seizing alcohol from underage kids who had they known any better were drinking counterfeit wine supplied to them by the Blacklister we were out for, who made millions selling adulterated wine only to poison his wife and daughter when they found out the truth about his enterprise. Anyway, Liz and I were up late, writing our reports and filling in data when we decided to sneak into the backroom where there were several boxes of adulterated wine ready to be processed in the morning. We were both in desperate need for a drink so we opened up a carton and nicked a few bottles, since they were yet to be registered.
One thing led to another and before you know it we had finished two bottles of that awful wine, laughing at how desperate and teenage it was to go sneaking around stealing alcohol. And Liz in her drunken state declared it to be her favourite ‘cheap wine’ going so far as even writing a heavily misspelled review on the now defunct company website. It was also the last case we solved before things blew up and today while cleaning up her workspace, I found another bottle of that wine and couldn’t help but smile and the first thing I wanted to do was come here and share it with her. I know it sounds stupid, but I would do anything to have that time again, stealing bottles of wine from evidence rather than see her life being stolen from her by some ruthless criminals.”
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“It is silly yes, but it is certainly not stupid for you to want to share that memory with her again. We will find out who did this Donald. I don’t plan on letting those scums get away. But until then, let’s open that bottle and judge just how much I need to consider an intervention and possibly a crash course for Lizzie on everything related to the finer things in life.”
Ressler pulled up a chair and poured the wine into two plastic cups and handed one to Reddington as they sat talking about Liz and all her little quirks.
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nataliesnews · 3 years
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Riots, demonstration in Kikar Zion, siren 12.5.2021
Netanyahu is no fool….he is very very clever and many of us had a suspicion of what he was leading up to. I would not be surprised if he calls a state of emergency and continues with his vicious policy of not caring for the county but doing his best to keep himself, his mentally ill wife and son out of jail. Sara Netanyahu once said she did not care if the country burned…and they have succeeded in bringing us to that pass. The first picture is a quote of hers from 2002…… “We will go overseas and the country can burn” and the second a cartoon saying “I said we would leave for overseas and then the country can burn….NOT BEFORE”
    This is a horrible morning. I am trying to put my thoughts into place. The whole country is burning. Tel Aviv. Suddenly after all the years of the south suffering and as they say, they were invisible it has become serious. I doubt that in Jerusalem there will be many more rockets. Maybe because of the holy places, Christian and Moslem, maybe because of the large Palestinian community. I feel guilty as I sit here quietly writing.
 Netanyahu has done a good job of seeing the Israel on fire. Closing the steps at the Damascus gate …so obvious it would lead to troubles. He knew that he only had to give a small push and with his friend the minister of police everything would develop as it suited him. The news media has also been given its instructions and except for Ha’aretz no other paper mentions what is happening on the other side. Today a comment was passed which many people probably did not hear or take in. That the army would target high rise buildings……in which many families live. The army gave messages for people to evacuate……where were they supposed to go and how many of them actually got the message as we have taken care to destroy much of their communication.
 Sunday I did not feel well and it was a furnace outside. Since the episode where I had memory loss and then straight after that had a cold ….many people here dafke in summer are also sick with colds….I feel a lack of desire to do anything.  So  I only went to the shiva for Cecelia in the evening.  My Spanish teacher. I doubt I will go on trying to learn Spanish. I feel as if something has gone out of me. I had a special relationship with her and she was also my friend. I cannot imagine another teacher or a group. And at the shiva it seems that many of her other students felt the same. And every day I hear from someone else who had studied with her.
 Monday I went out with Tag Maier to distribute flowers in the Old City to Palestinians. It was a difficult today because seldom do Ramadan and Jerusalem Day coincide.
 But this is no united city. So divided, Right and left, Palestians, Jews, Hareidi Jews, …united? And yesterday the schism was even clearer. The religious youth took over the city and their arrogance was unbearable. Some of our members gave flowers to them and when I asked one why she had done so, she said she had many interesting exchanges with some of them who did not even know what we were doing or why. But I saw some of them throwing the  flowers into the rubbish bins. No Palestinian refused us and accepted with a smile.
 In the evening I went to my Arabic lesson. I get a lift with Gershon and Edna Baskin and we had just sat down when we heard  a siren. It was faint at first and we looked at one another in bewilderment. Then we heard three loud bangs and realized it was serious. I wondered what was happening in Nofim. I wondered how all these people here, many of whom are less mobile and quick than I am even on the sticks would get down to a shelter. Later I saw the post that one should look for a safe place in your flat as there is very little time between the siren and the fall. So that question is where. My bedroom ….the glass door is next to the bed. The lounge….the windows again. The bathroom….the mirror and the tiles. The corridor is maybe the safest but there are all the painting and photographs in glass. I think the best place for me is next to my door and to put a blanket over myself. I am just sorry for the really old and incapacitated with their carers.  We spent the lesson learning all the words necessary for such an occasion. We came home to a quiet night and then all hell broke through.  Later: My cleaning lady said I should go and sit on the steps between one floor and another.
 Coming back there was an amusing incident. As I got out of the car I saw two girls putting coke tins next to the rubbish and I told them to give them to me. I explained to them what it was for and then the one girl said to me, “Are you from Balfour? Were you at Sheik Jarrar.” And again I know you have all been writing to me to stay home but when two teenagers tell me that they look up to me and for them it is important to see me at these places what can I say? Truly I don’t think I am in any danger. I keep to the sides or anything going on and I doubt that even our violent police would attack an old woman. But whom I am scared of is groups like Lahava or those yesterday on the march of the religious. I feel the hatred around us as I did last night with people calling us haters of Israel and traitors and bitches who fuck Arabs.
 Yesterday I went to the doctor as the time has come to deal with a hearing problem I have and then to the DCO which was very quiet. There is a young soldier there who has been very sympathetic towards us and is now being transferred. He brought his replacement out and this I do not put in my report. Nadav says that when he leave the army he will join Breaking the Silence. He said that his replacement is a good fellow so we are hoping that we will have the same relationship with him.
  I came home and then went to a play. “The Comedians.” It was very funny but I laughed looking at the audience as it was so appropriate for many of us. From a play by Neil Simon about two once famous comedians who are  now uber bottled. When I went out I asked three people to tell the organizer of the transport that I would not be joining them. Later she phoned in anger to ask why I was not on the bus!!! It was so appropriate. I had sat down to phone a friend and when I got up to leave the theatre which was by then pretty deserted I saw a really old lady with her carer sitting outside looking desperate. It turned out that the theatre had ordered a taxi for them and another couple had jumped in and taken it. Being the celebration of Id Il Fitir there were few Arab taxis and they are  a large part of the taxis in Jerusalem.  In the end I stayed with them until I managed to stop a taxi and put them on the way home. I gave them the number of Gett taxi which is more reliable.
 I walked down to the city and stopped at Balfour where some of the stalwarts were sitting. The demonstration at Kikar Zion started off with few people but soon grew. There was no talk of a march but then people did start walking down the main street and also on the tracks of the light train. I did not think that that was a good idea and walked along with them but on the pavement. The police arrived but did nothing. Then we came to Kikar Zion, to the square,  where we gathered and in no way were we disturbing pedestrians, the train or anything else. Then the police decided to attack. I think because where we were walking before there were passers by and wanted it to be where they had us to themselves. First of all they started pushing people back but then we saw that they had brought in the dogs and what dogs. Their trainers could hardly control them and the dogs also started fighting amongst themselves. You can understand how dangerous they were. They were real killers.  I have no photographs as everything was very volatile there and I did not want to put my sticks down. They also tried to sic them on to some people. Then they came with the horses….enormous . You have no idea. My question is why when we were obstructing traffic did they do nothing but attack us when we were not bothering anyone else.
 In the meantime Lahava and the other young fascists had started screaming at us…the police kept us separated but when the police managed to drive us off they left them celebrating in the square.
 I always stand to the back at such times but Eitemar who has stood with us at our demonstrations at Nofim refused to leave me and when one of the policemen seemed to be heading straight for us called to him and said that he was standing with me. He is one of those who is very watchful for me but I tell them to go and do their own thing as I do not want to be a drag on anyone. Last night I yelled at them and said that for 81 years I had been looking out for myself and I could still do so. But when the shunk came we were all away.
 Natalie
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