#he in fact did not want his sammich | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

willow-salix · 3 years

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TAG MiniBang 2021

Because the combined bad influences of Flyboy and Sonata were at work here we also decided to bend the rules a little and post early...

I was privileged to work with one of my best friends on this project, @misssquidtracy . We went a little rogue (seems to be a theme for us) and shared both parts of the challenge with both of us contributing to the art and the writing. Squiddy provided a beautifully done pallet knife piece as the background for my foreground art and we plotted the story together to ensure that it worked for both of us. We had been looking forward to sharing the writing but unfortunately, due to life constraints on her part she was only able to write a little of the fic but what she did add perfectly compliments the tone and style of my writing.

Big thanks to @tagminibang ) @godsliltippy ) for organising this event.

So, here it is, our offering to the TAG Mini Bang. We hope you enjoy it.

Ting ting ting

“Not again,” Virgil groaned, hauling himself up the stairs from the kitchen to the lounge. He regretted ever giving Gordon that bell, he really did. Yes his brother had gone through a tough time, yes he had scared the hell out of them when the Chaos Crew had left him at the bottom of the ocean in his mangled craft, yes they were incredibly grateful that he was alive and mostly whole, but if they had to hear that dinging one more time they might possibly murder him themselves.

“Yes, Gordy, what do you need?”

“I’m lonely, and I’m hungry, come and sit with me for a bit?”

“Sure-”

“But maybe make me a sandwich first?”

“A sandwich?”

“Yeah, with extra cheese and a pickle on the side, not too large a pickle but not too small that it’s gone in one bite. I want to taste it, you know, but not be overwhelmed.”

“Sure-”

“And can you get me a drink too? One of my special milkyshakes, you know, with the ice cream and frozen banana in it?”

“Coming right up,” Virgil sighed, heading back down to the kitchen again.

“Gordon still demanding everything and anything?” Scott asked as he jogged in from the poolside. His T-shirt was sticking to his chest and his hair was damp with sweat but he still looked like he could do it all again. Not that they would have time, they were lucky if they got to do any planned exercise at all, usually they were forced to skip it and work out on the job when a call came in.

“Of course he is,” Virgil growled, slapping a slice of cheese on a piece of bread with far more force than necessary.

“What did the cheese do to you?”

“It’s guilty by association.”

“Ah,” Scott said, like that explained things perfectly.

A few slices of chicken received the same treatment and Scott wondered if the meat had actually been dead when it arrived on the island or if Virgil had simply smacked it into submission so well that the chicken had flown clear into next week and arrived as sandwich filling.

“Can you fix his drink?” Virgil asked.

“Can’t gotta shower this off before Grandma accuses me of stinking up the place again.”

“Any excuse,” Virgil scowled. “It would only take you a second.”

“A second too long, bro, I’m escaping while I can and you’d be wise to do the same,” Scott said, heading for the stairs and freedom.

“How can I escape when Gordon needs help?”

“You’re forgetting one important thing,” Scott told him wisely.

“I am? And that would be…”

“John’s home.”

Virgil snorted out a laugh. “He’s less likely to do it than you are.”

“No, you're misunderstanding me. If John’s home that means…” Scott let his sentence trail off into silence heavily filled with insinuation.

“Sel’s here,” Virgil finished triumphantly, catching on perfectly.

“Give that Tracy a prize,” Scott grinned, shooting triumphant finger guns his brother’s way as he headed up the stairs.

And they said that John was the genius in the family, they hadn’t seen Scott at his most devious. Virgil wasted no time in yanking out his phone and texting the witch to come and take over.

“Here’s your sammich, Squidward,” Selene cooed, plonking the plate down on Gordon’s lap while smacking a kiss to his forehead. “Virgil started it but I finished it for you, Brains called him down to his lab with some kind of air filter emergency so I took over. I brought you some of those crisps you like from my private stash too.”

“The cheesy curl ones?” Gordon asked hopefully.

“Yep,” she grinned, waggling a family sized bag of Quavers in his general direction.

“Did you bring my drink?” Gordon asked around a mouthful of chickeny goodness. Say what you wanted about Virgil but he made a damn good sandwich, even if Gordon could taste that this was made with a little less love and a little more impatience than usual.

“No, sorry, did you want one? Virgil didn’t say that. I’ll go get you something, just wait right there.”

"Not like I can leave if the mood takes me," Gordon grumbled as he opened the chip bag.

She was already gone, only to race back in a few moments later with a can of coke.

“What? What’s wrong, boo?” Selene asked when she saw the pouting look of disappointment on Gordon’s face.

“It was supposed to be one of my special milkyshakes,” he whined.

“Right, got it, my bad!”

She was gone again, taking off to the kitchen where, upon closer inspections, she did indeed find the beginnings of a milkshake. There were two scoops of ice cream already in the blender, melting in the warmth of the room. A half peeled banana sat abandoned on the counter next to a carton of milk.

“Typical,” she groused as she set about breaking up the banana, pouring the milk and setting it to blend as she tidied the mess away. Once done she poured it into a tall glass, added a straw and a few slices of fresh banana to decorate the edges, just as he liked it, and delivered it to the waiting aquanaut.

“Great, thanks, Sel,” he grinned, handing her his now empty plate and swapping it for the glass. She put the plate on the coffee table and sat on the couch opposite him.

“Anything else I can do for you?”

“Sit with me and keep me company?” he begged, looking so miserable and pathetic that she couldn’t say no.

“Of course I will.”

Gordon swung his injured leg up and she moved to sit next to him on the couch, placing a cushion on her lap for him to rest his cast covered foot on.

Gordon settled down with a contented sigh, sucking happily on his straw, the milkshake level in the glass steadily dropping.

“I’m bored,” Gordon bitched five minutes later.

“That peace lasted a long time,” Selene laughed, putting her phone down on the side table to give him her full attention. “What can I do to help? Do you want to watch something or play a game?”

Gordon made a face. “You’re crap at games, Sel.”

One eyebrow rose in disbelief. “I wouldn’t exactly say crap…”

“You tried to play with Alan and died three times in two minutes, lost all your lives and were forced to float along behind him as a ghost for the rest of his turn.”

“Anything is crap when you say it like that,” Selene huffed.

“Only when it’s true.”

“Tell me then, oh great games master, what do you want to do?”

“Nothing.”

“Then don’t moan you’re bored,” she pointed out.

“I mean there’s nothing to do. No one is around.”

Selene gestured to her chest. “Am I suddenly invisible?”

“No, of course not,” he scoffed. “That would be far too cool, why don’t you have witch powers like that?”

“Because I live in the real world, not a movie?”

“Lame,” he declared, dismissing it.

“Back to the original point that I am, in fact, right here. Therefore your comment that no one is around is redundant.”

“I meant no one I can do anything with.”

“Thin ice, bub, thin ice.”

“I meant like my brothers or someone. Alan is busy revising for his final exams, Virgil’s with Brains and I’ve no idea where Scott is but I think he’s avoiding me, which is just mean if you ask me. I’m a delight.”

“Yeah, you sure are,” she drawled, not sounding too convinced. “You’re also forgetting a brother.”

“Who?”

“John? You know, gorgeous ginger love of my life that’s chilling in his room right this minute? That brother?”

“John? No way.”

“What’s wrong with John?” she squawked indignantly. Her man was the most perfect of people, amazing and fabulous, just all round awesome. Although she might be a tad biased.

Gordon shrugged, scrunching his nose up in a ‘meh’ kinda way that said everything and nothing.

“No, come on, tell me what you meant,” she demanded.

“No offence, Sel, but John’s a bit…”

“A bit what?” she asked, her tone warning him that he was in very dangerous territory.

Gordon, with the grace of an elephant and confidence of a man that knew he was injured and therefore wouldn’t get slapped, plowed on.

“A bit boring.”

“Boring?!” she hollered, her voice travelling to the four corners of the island so effectively that Alan lifted his head, wondering if some distant God was echoing his thoughts as he slogged through his history homework.

“How very dare you!” Selene continued, working up a good glare that Gordon was completely immune to. He simply sipped the last of his milkshake, smacked his lips and raised an eyebrow, daring her to do something about it.

“He is not boring.”

“Matter of opinion,” Gordon shrugged, handing her the glass to put down on the table.

“Right, that’s it, you can besmirch my fun factor but I will not allow you to do so to my man. That’s a step too far.” She gently, for which he was thankful, shoved his leg off her lap and dragged his hover chair over from its spot beside Virgil’s piano.

“Get the hell in, hoppy, we’re going for a ride.”

-x-

"You deal with him, he's driving me nuts and pissing me off at the same time."

"Me? I'm the very picture of perfection, I could never drive anyone nuts."

John declined to comment on that one for fear of never stopping, he had twenty-four years worth of stories after all.

“The pissing you off is subjective too,” Gordon finished triumphantly.

"He's your problem now," Selene announced, shoving Gordon's hover chair further into the room before making her escape, slamming the door shut behind her.

John closed his eyes, praying for patience. His fiancée was well known for her legendary patience when it came to pampering and mothering his family whenever any of them were sick or injured. She'd spent almost every day with Gordon since his run in with the Chaos Crew and had done so with relentless cheer, for her to have given up now was not a good sign.

"What did you do?"

"Nothing!" Gordon protested hotly.

"Are you sure?"

Gordon averted his gaze, suddenly taking great interest in a dust particle dancing across the shaft of sunlight filtering in through the window, "Yes, I'm sure. I wasn't doing anything. That was part of the problem."

"Ah," there it was. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"I'm so bored," Gordon wailed. "And your girlfriend is being mean to me."

"Fiancée," John corrected him, not looking up from his work.

"It's not my fault I hate sitting around doing nothing all day. I’ve gone from a physically and mentally intensive, fifty plus hour a week job, to sitting on my ass from dawn until dusk. Can you blame a guy for getting twitchy?"

"Unfortunately, you don't have much of a choice at the moment," John reminded him, quite needlessly he thought.

"Gee, thanks for the reminder," Gordon huffed, trying to cross his arms although the cast and sling he was sporting prevented it. That just seemed to annoy him even more.

"I can't do anything right now! How do you do it?"

"Do what?" John asked, squinting through his magnifier at the small window frame he was carving from a piece of polymer clay.

"Just sit around all day."

John raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "I don't sit around all day."

"OK, float around then. It's not like you're actively running around like the rest of us are."

"I'll pretend I never heard you say that," John scowled, wishing Selene had dumped his brother into the sea instead of into his quiet, peaceful room.

"You're sitting around right now," Gordon pointed out, gesturing to the desk John was sitting at, which was currently doing double duty as a work table for his latest project.

"One day you'll learn to appreciate the benefits of a quiet, occupied mind and a still body," John told him.

Gordon sighed, propping his good elbow on the desktop, his chin resting in his upturned palm as he watched his brother fiddling with tiny things that seemed utterly useless to him.

"What are you even doing?"

"Working on a series of book nooks for Sel's side of the bookcase," John answered, sounding slightly distracted as he measured the finished window against its place in an intricately carved brick wall.

"Why?"

"Because she likes them."

"I mean why are you making it? Can't you just buy her one? It's not like you can't afford it."

"Where's the challenge in that? Besides, things are always more special when you make them yourself."

Gordon yawned and leant forward to rest his head on the tabletop.

"Do you want to help?" John offered, although honestly Gordon's version of helping was always patchy at best.

Gordon scooted closer to look over John's shoulder, eyes darting over the rectangular box that he was building the nook inside. About the size of two thick books sandwiched together, the nook already had a little cobbled street and two shop fronts in place. The tabletop was scattered with a selection of impossibly tiny screwdrivers, picks, scalpels and other instruments of possible torture that he couldn't hope to name.

"Pass," he announced decisively, flicking the control of his hoverchair so he spun in a wide circle, pointing to the door. "I'm out."

"Peace at last," John sighed, flicking his magnifier back into place over his right eye as he set aside the window to be baked later and reached for a fresh blob of clay.

-x-

"What ya dooooooing?" Gordon yodelled, slamming the bedroom door open so hard that it smacked into the wall and shook several picture frames. He scooted his way into the room without even waiting for an invite.

"Gordon!" John huffed, clutching his heart where it was trying to leap out of his chest from the shock of his brother’s sudden, and very noisy, entrance.

"Hi, I got bored, thought I'd drop in on my favourite big brother," Gordon grinned as he glided his hoverchair closer.

"Are Scott and Virgil busy?" John asked, that would be the only reason Gordon would have promoted him to his favourite.

"Yes," Gordon admitted, "but that's not the reason why I'm here."

John turned his head to shoot him a raised eyebrow of doom, clearly communicating without words that he didn't believe him in the slightest.

"So, what are you doing?"

"Working on this book nook," John replied patiently, holding up the small cauldron he was crafting.

"The same one?"

"Yes."

Gordon’s eyes nearly fell out of his head, "Still? It’s been four days!"

"Yes," John hissed out, starting to get frustrated by the constant questions.

"Why?"

"Because it takes a long time. If you're going to do a project you should do it right."

"At the speed you're going it's gonna take forever," Gordon snorted, casting an assessing eye over the work John had already done.

"That doesn't matter," John assured him. "It's not really about the time it takes or the end result, it's about the process, the journey to get there."

"Sounds lame to me," Gordon yawned.

"Obviously," John drawled, rolling his eyes.

"What do you mean by that?" Gordon demanded to know, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"Because it's you."

"Hey! Rude."

"Accurate," John said, placing the little cauldron down and selecting another piece of clay which he placed on a ceramic tile.

"Why?"

"Because it requires a calm mind. It's good to slow down sometimes and just be still."

"Says the console jockey."

Console Jockey? He did not just say that!

"So you don't think my job is stressful? Or as tiring and important as yours?" John snapped, wondering if it was bad form to smack your injured brother around the head with a partially constructed book nook. He glanced at the nook, he had put a lot of work into it… It would be a shame to waste it. That thought alone saved Gordon.

“Well, yeah I get that it might be a bit stressful, but it’s not like you have to do much that puts you in danger, not like us,” Gordon continued, digging his hole even deeper, a hole that John was looking forward to shoving him into.

“We all have our specialities, you couldn’t do your job without me doing mine,” John retorted, trying very hard not to let Gordon’s comments get to him. Gordon would never understand what it was like for him to be stuck so far away from the action, away from his brothers when things were going wrong.

Gordon, thankfully for him, had been unconscious from the moment he had activated his emergency code. He hadn’t heard the frantic calls going out over the comms as the family mobilized to help him. He hadn’t heard the desperate scramble as Thunderbirds took off, racing to the scene. But John had heard it all.

John had been the one to stay on the line with Gordon, talking to him the entire time, knowing that he probably wouldn’t hear it but feeling that he needed to say it all the same. He wanted to know that if his little brother regained consciousness for even a second he would hear a familiar voice, that he would know that they were coming, that they would rescue him. He would know that he wasn’t alone.

He knew what it was like for people that were in danger, knew the comfort they got from someone talking to them, listening to their stories, being there for them verbally if not physically. John was often the one that spent the most amount of time with those they rescued, keeping their spirits up as much as possible until his brothers got there.

His brothers were seen by their rescuees as the real heroes, the ones that leapt in and plucked them out of danger, but John was the one that got them that help, the one that made sure the rescue played out as best it could, liaising and coordinating until the job was done. But Virgil, Scott, Gordon and Alan were the ones that got the thanks , the ones that got the hugs after they dropped their charges off, not John.

Not that he minded too much, he knew that his job was just as important as theirs, maybe even more so because, when someone put out that call for help, when they sent their desperate plea out into the world, they deserved to know that someone would always be listening out for it, that someone would hear and that help would come.

He knew all of this, and he knew that Gordon did too, it was just the frustration of inactivity that was making him say the things that he was. John just wished that that knowledge made it easier to listen to.

“I might not be doing the physical rescuing,” John continued, feeling the need to push his point home. “But I work just as hard, when you’re home you’re off duty until a call comes in, you can relax, swim, watch movies and laze around until you’re needed. When I’m up there I’m on duty 24/7 and even when I do manage to catch some sleep it’s not deep or particularly restful. Any little noise, any call that triggers the system's keyword algorithm gets transferred automatically, I have to go from asleep to awake in seconds to take it.”

Gordon was quiet for once, watching him closely. John didn’t like it, it made him feel like an exhibit in a zoo. And here we have the little seen Tracy, see how he stays inside his hide and hardly ever ventures out… he knew how they saw him, why they likely thought he had the easy job.

“These help, they give me something else to focus on. I need to keep my mind active and challenged while still trying to relax.” John paused, trying to think of a way to explain his thinking that Gordon might understand.

“These are almost like a meditation,” he started. Gordon understood meditation and finding your zone. “Creating something out of almost nothing. It keeps my mind focused, helps with finger dexterity and hand eye coordination with the added bonus of it relaxing me. It’s good to slow down and take some time to do something creative, you should try it some time.”

Gordon listened to his brother and he tried to take in all his words, he tried to understand the meaning behind them, he really did, but it just didn’t make any sense to him. He understood about wanting to be lazy, to sit around and do nothing sometimes. He loved to laze on the couch with his snackies and an Into the Unknown marathon playing out on the holoscreen, but that was watching something exciting, interesting, to him that was relaxing. This...whatever it was that John was actually doing, made no sense whatsoever to him. The idea of trying to relax by actually thinking...that was the most alien concept of all.

Gordon knew, probably better than his family gave him credit for, what it was like to be mislabelled. Within every sibling pool, there were the mandatory roles: the serious one, the caring one, the smart one, the funny one, the calm one, the angry one, the one who sang in the shower, et cetera. He’d proudly embraced the role of ‘the funny one’, and had diligently flown the flag for the humour camp for as long as he could remember. If a brother came home from a rescue in a slump and needed a cheery pick-me-up, it was Gordon who stepped up to the task, irrespective of his own mood. His smile and laugh were infectious, and he had yet to encounter a frown he couldn’t (eventually) turn upside down.

But with every ‘role’ came misconceptions. Scott was serious, therefore people were quick to automatically assume that he was a killjoy. Similarly, John’s intellect and preference for solitude often went hand in hand with him being branded antisocial, since there was apparently no possible way someone could enjoy their own company so much, yet still pursue and maintain meaningful relationships with actual people.

Gordon was no stranger to this treatment. He liked to laugh and be spontaneous, and consequently, was often regarded as the Tracy who didn’t take his work seriously, the Tracy who had the attention span of a gnat (albeit a very handsome one), and the Tracy who couldn’t be trusted with anything that required delicacy, be it physical or emotional. His affinity for making people laugh, though an exceptional quality, frequently acted as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, his relentless optimism made him the most effective of the bunch when it came to emergencies involving children and young adults. On the other hand, it sentenced him to a fate where the bad jokes he cracked would always be two steps ahead of the secret deep thinker that lay within.

“Let me see it again,” Gordon sighed, trying his best to be a supportive and understanding brother, since he did feel a little bad about the things he had just said. He hadn’t meant to say them, they had just come out. That was the trouble with being laid up from an injury, not only were you out of action but you were in pain, and pain made you grumpy and less likely to monitor the things that came out of your mouth the way you should.

He knew that John worked hard, hell he knew that what his brother had said was right, John was never truly off duty. They were all aware that he didn’t get enough sleep, enough down time, enough time to relax and just be. They knew that if John was on Five he would consider himself on duty, at work, and therefore he’d never allow himself to take time out. Things had changed since Selene had blundered her way into his life, now he spent a lot more time on the Island, which meant that he was finally taking some time out for himself. If one of the ways he chose to do that was by crafting ridiculously tiny things out of clay to stick in a hollowed out box that was his business. Gordon wasn’t there to judge, he was there to spend time with his brother.

John moved aside a little so Gordon could get a closer look, trying to resist the urge to smack his hand away every time Gordon reached for a tiny piece that had taken him hours to perfect.

“These are really small,” Gordon mused, poking at a window that John had just finished painting, leaving behind a smudged fingerprint. “Woops, sorry, Bro.”

“Maybe you should try making something of your own,“ John suggested, carefully removing the window from his brother's possession and picking up a brush in order to attempt a fix.

Gordon nodded and John passed him a ceramic tile and a miniature rolling pin.

“How about you try cutting me out a few shop sign bases?” John suggested.

“Do I get one of those scalpel things?” Gordon asked, a little too eagerly for John’s liking.

“Maybe we can work up to that,” John hedged, subtly moving the scalpel out of his brother’s reach and passing him a square cookie cutter. “Use this cutter for now.”

Gordon shrugged and spent a few minutes rolling and squishing the clay trying to get the thickness to the exact measurement that John insisted on. It wasn’t easy or fun.

“Nope!” Gordon announced, giving up and pushing the tile away. “It’s still boring. Pass.”

He swung his hoverchair around and headed in the direction of the door. “Later, Bro.”

“Oh...OK...later, I guess,” John stuttered, wondering just what he had done to deserve such a chaotic family as his.

“Oh, hey, boo, where are you go- WAHH!”

John’s head shot up as Selene’s yelp rang out from the hallway.

“Sorry!”

“So you should be, you little shit,” she grumbled to his retreating back as she thumped into the room.

“What happened, love?”

“Let’s just say that if his chair had wheels I’d have lost a few toes,” she said, wincing in imagined pain.

John scooted his desk chair back and patted his lap in offer, one that she happily accepted.

“So, why was Gordy doing his boy racer bit? What did you say to him?”

“Me? What makes you think I said anything to him?”

“Because I know you two?”

“Fair,” he sighed, sliding his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder. “I don’t know what to do to help him.”

Selene turned her head to look at him, not liking the helpless look on his face.

“Babe, you are helping him, you’re there to keep him company or talk to him if he needs it, that’s more important than anything. What happened to make you think that you weren’t helping?”

“He was asking me about these again,” John nodded towards his work area on the desktop. “But he didn’t seem to understand, that or he just didn’t want to.”

“He’s Gordon,” she sighed. “You know what he’s like, he’s full on, he’s in your face and he’s not at all subtle. Taking his time with things just doesn’t compute with him.”

“It would do him good though, if he doesn’t learn to embrace it he’ll be exactly the same as he was last time.”

“Was he really that bad?” she asked, concern lacing her voice.

John nodded. “He doesn’t do inactivity well. When he had his hydrofoil accident his therapist talked him into signing up for a virtual college degree in Environmental Management of Rivers and Wetlands. It was supposed to take him at least a year as a part time course with ANU in Canberra, but he blew through it in the first semester and earned himself a distinction for his insights on the impact of Anthropogenic Noise on Wetland Habitats. His professor was so impressed he offered him a fully funded PhD, citing his time with WASP and the time he spent in the bathyscaphe as practical experience that would make up for his lack of degree. Obviously he turned it down, but he still likes to rub our faces in it now and then.”

“Wow,” Selene breathed. “Forget his professor being impressed, I’m impressed.”

“He has a phenomenal brain,” John said, a small but very proud smile on his face. “When he actually decides to use it to its full potential, that is. There is nothing he can't do when he chooses to focus on something, he’s all in. It really helped him to feel like he was gaining something and moving forward even though he was sitting still.”

Selene nodded, understanding completely. She knew that all of her boys were wicked smart, but Gordon always presented himself as the least academic. He was more of a doer, wanting to be out in the field, learning as he went, diving in head first to every situation.

But as Selene and John both knew, appearances could be deceiving.

“If that’s what helped him last time, then we need to find a way to convince him to try something new,” Selene insisted.

“I tried, he’s not interested.”

“That was with your things, babe. We need to find something that’s a little more him, and I think I know just the thing.”

-x-

“I have arrived!” Gordon yodelled, announcing his entrance in his own unique way. He slid his hover chair in through the open door like the boss that he was, bringing his shining presence in to brighten up his middle brother's obviously dull existence. “Didja miss me?”

“Like a hole in the head,” John grumbled, turning to look at the grinning face of his brother. His eyes immediately began to water as they were assaulted by the far too bright colours of the shirt Gordon was wearing, a tie dyed monstrosity that Selene had made for him for his birthday.

“A little more gratitude, if you please," Gordon huffed.

“Grandma finally released you?”

“Yep,” Gordon stretched out his injured leg and patted the air cast on his now slingless arm. “Got time off for good behaviour.”

“I find that hard to believe,” John teased, then nodded to Gordon’s arm. “How’s it feeling?”

“Not too bad, my grip still isn't great but Grandma promised me that once the bone has finished knitting I’ll just need to exercise it and build the muscle strength up, then it’ll be as good as new.”

“That’s great, it won't be long before you're able to go back out with Virgil and stop, how did Sel put it, 'haunting the house like the ghost of Christmas future'?"

"Can't come soon enough," Gordon sighed, butting his chair right up close to John's, knocking his arm in the process. "What you do- you're still doing that? Still? It's been a week!"

"It's not like I get a huge amount of down time," John pointed out. "I'm only here now because Sel said she'd dump me if I didn't make an effort to come down earlier in the evenings so I could actually eat a meal with you all."

"You actually believed that threat?" Gordon laughed.

"Of course not, she'd never dump me, but I thought I had better humour her and let her feel like she at least had a little sway," John shrugged, pushing aside the little piece of doorstep he had been painting. "Honestly, it's nice to come down for a meal and family time, I hadn't realised how much I'd missed it until it was happening again."

"I guess we all got a bit too caught up in International Rescue after we lost Dad," Gordon admitted.

"Like we had nothing else in our lives," John nodded, completely understanding.

"Yep."

Gordon fell silent and John let him, concentrating on mixing the perfect colour acrylic to add a few highlights to his stones.

"Can I have a go at making something? I bet I could do it quicker than you," Gordon asked, reaching towards what Selene called the sharps tub. John smacked the lid down on it just in time.

"Actually, we got you a present."

"You did?" Instantly distracted, Gordon sat up straighter, excited by the prospect of a gift. "What did you get me?"

This," John answered, opening his desk drawer and extracting an interestingly shaped bottle, upright with a thicker, rounded bottom and a thinner neck, ending a cork stopper.

"Wow, is that an original?" Gordon asked, taking the bottle carefully and turning it to study it from all angles. He knew exactly what this shaped bottle was, there had been a collection of them in Commander Shore’s office that he would stare at every time he got called in for some reprimand or another.

"19th century," John nodded. "Sel found it in a little shop in Mayfair. They assured her it was a genuine, used on a ship, captain's decanter from around the time of the civil war. They hadn’t fully traced it when Sel bought it but they think it came from one of the ships that fought in one of the smaller skirmishes around 1861.”

“This is really cool, thanks,” Gordon smiled, still turning the bottle over and over.

“It’s to hold this,” John continued, drawing Gordon’s attention back to him.

Grinning, John delved back into his desk drawer and pulled out a rather faded and quite dusty box. He brushed the dirt off the top and slid it over to Gordon.

"A ship?" Gordon frowned.

"Yep, Selene and I thought that you needed a little project of your own, so she had the idea to get you a ship in a bottle. You don’t see them a lot these days, but apparently her Grandfather had a couple and they always fascinated her.”

“So you put the ship in the bottle?”

“Yep, instructions are inside, go nuts.”

“Pfft, instructions,” Gordon snorted. “No one needs instructions, they’re a waste of time.”

-x-

“Ouch,” John hissed, hopping in place on one foot as he bent down to pick up what looked to be a tiny piece of mast that had attacked the sole of his foot. “Gordon, why are there bits of ship all over my floor?”

“Because I dropped them,” Gordon replied, his voice muffled due to the tongue of concentration that was peeking out from between his teeth.

Huffing, John gathered all the pieces off the floor, both pieces of ship and bits that they had been cut out of, and deposited them on the desk next to Gordon.

“How’s it coming along?” John asked, settling in his own chair. He’d only been gone a day but Gordon had managed to take over the entire bedroom, spreading his belongings, bottles, snack wrappers, his phone and a discarded hoodie, all over the place, as well as half the contents of the vintage ship box.

“It’s ridiculous. I think it’s missing pieces or something, it’s broken.”

“Well it was an old kit, but we were assured that it was complete,” John frowned, sliding the tray over that Gordon was supposed to be storing all the pieces in. “Have you checked the contents list and matched each piece to make sure they’re all there?”

Gordon looked at him blankly, like he was talking a foreign language.

“Did you check that everything was there before you started?" John elaborated.

“Of course I did,” Gordon promised, crossing his fingers and hoping his brother didn’t see.

“Against the list?” John clarified.

“I eyeballed it, OK?”

“Not good enough,” John insisted. “That’s not how you go about doing things like this, you can’t just slap them together and hope for the best.”

“Why not?” Gordon whined. It worked for him in almost everything else he did in life.

“Because this happens," John gestured to the mess surrounding them.

“Fine, I’ll read the damn instructions.”

Leaving Gordon to it John slid his almost completed book nook over and picked up his paintbrush to start adding some finishing touches before he started on the wiring for the lights. He’d barely done more than five minutes when Gordon started huffing.

John waited a little longer, trying his hardest to ignore the ever increasing sounds of frustration and impatience from his brother. In the end he couldn't stand it a moment longer, he had to ask the most loaded question ever.

“What’s the problem?” John asked, pushing his own work aside.

“These instructions don’t make sense,” Gordon bitched, flapping the paper in John’s face. “Look at the little picture here, you have to stick this little pole into that hole in the deck but the deck doesn’t want to stay together and that piece there keeps sliding and the pictures make no sense.”

“That’s because you missed around eight steps in between,” John told him, praying for patience.

“No I didn't, I followed the pictures exactly,” Gordon insisted.

“The steps aren’t in the pictures,” John explained. “See right there?” he pointed to the words above the pictures. “The pictures are a diagram of each finished stage, not how to get there. They are for reference only, not instructions.”

“Urghhh, this is going to take forever,” Gordon pouted, crossing his arms. “What’s the point?”

“The point is that by the end of it you’ll have something unique that no one else does, something you can be proud of and know that you built with your own two hands.”

“I’m not sure it’s worth the effort,” Gordon muttered.

“It is,” John promised. “I’ll help. How about I read out the instructions and you follow along? We’ll get through it quicker that way.”

Gordon wasn’t convinced, but John looked so hopeful that he didn’t have the heart to refuse him, especially since he and Selene had gone to so much trouble to get the things for him in the first place. He might be a miserable little sod, but he wasn’t that ungrateful. He knew that they had gone out of their way to get something they thought he’d like, the least he could do was make the thing, even if he knew he wouldn’t enjoy it. Maybe John was right, working together they could get through it quicker, and that could only be a good thing.

“Alright,” Gordon agreed, “let’s give it a go.”

Slowly, methodically, John read out each piece that was needed and Gordon located them, storing them neatly in a wooden box that Selene provided when she popped in to bring them drinks an hour or so later. She stayed just long enough to steal a kiss from John and drop one on the top of Gordon’s head before she beat a hasty retreat, not wanting to get roped into helping. She wasn’t the best at following instructions and didn’t want to get grumped at.

By the time they had all the pieces checked and catalogued they had discovered there were indeed two pieces missing, but thankfully they were easy fixes, just a small , round piece of wood to represent a porthole, which they could easily make a replacement for and a piece of mast. One snipped toothpick later and that was sorted too.

John started with the first set of instructions, reading them out patiently as Gordon found and fitted them together.

“So, how’s work been?” Gordon asked, like a chatty hairstylist, as he carefully dipped the end of a thin dowel into a small pot of wood glue.

“Same as ever,” John deadpanned, “a bunch of idiots that got themselves into trouble and needed help, and only half of them related to us.”

Gordon sniggered, glancing at John, seeing the sly smile on his brother’s face. He’d forgotten just how amusing John could be when he delivered something sarcastically witty with such a serious tone. Gordon hadn’t realised how much he’d missed it, wondering just what his more serious brother would come out with next. John was always like that, he seemed so quiet and reserved but, when he was relaxed and in company he was comfortable with he’d take you by surprise by letting loose a zinger that you couldn’t help but laugh at.

“Let’s not talk about work,” Gordon suggested, “we haven’t hung out properly in ages, you’re either up in Five or there are other people around.”

“Is that your way of saying you’ve missed me?” John teased.

“Maybe,” Gordon allowed, “but if you ever tell anyone I said that I’ll deny it and tell Grandma you want her to make your birthday cake this year.”

John held his hands up in surrender, although he couldn’t hold in the laugh that bubbled up as he reached for the instructions again.

“OK, let’s get this done before we stop enjoying each other’s company.”

They worked slowly but steadily over the next few hours, putting together the structure for the first mast. Once it was done they called it quits and abandoned it for another day, the smell of something tasty coming from the kitchen proving to be too much to ignore.

-x-

“Gordon, that’s my finger.”

“Oh, sorry, can you just like… I don’t know, yank it off?”

“If I wish to leave half my identifying fingerprints behind, yes.”

“Do you really need them?”

John didn’t dignify that with an answer, the look he threw at his brother communicated his thoughts perfectly.

“OK, OK, I’ll get some dissolver from Virgil’s studio, wait right there,” Gordon instructed him, grabbing his crutches and hobbling his way out of the room.

John sighed, keeping his hand perfectly still, the hull of the boat dangling from his fingertip. He was still there five minutes later when Gordon clumped his way back in, Selene hot on his heels. She had the glue dissolver under one arm, a large bag of chips under the other and a plate of sandwiches in each hand.

She dumped the plates on the desk, then the chips, before turning to see the state her fiancé was in.

“Do I even want to know?”

“Probably not,” Gordon winced, dropping down into his abandoned desk chair and reaching for a plate.

“Can you at least help me before you start stuffing your face?” John asked, waggling his hand, which made the boat sway violently from side to side.

“Can’t, eating,” Gordon mumbled around the massive mouthful he had just taken.

“What did I say?” she demanded to know. “No hurting the hands, you know how I feel about that.”

John wiggled his fingers again, drawing her attention to his plight. He looked so pathetic with the half built little ship swinging from his hand that Selene took pity on him, intervening when he looked like he was about to grab the thing and yank it off himself, fingerprints be damned.

“Oh for the love of the Gods, let me do it!” Taking his hand she used a paintbrush to smear glue dissolver around the area of skin it was stuck to. She took her time, rewetting and using the brush bristles to push the dissolver under the boat, trying to ease it free from his skin with minimal pulling.

“Thank you,” he sighed, sitting patiently while she worked. Thankfully it didn’t take her too long, although it took a lot of cursing under her breath and the odd ouch from him to get there.

“One boat,” she announced, placing it triumphantly on the desk.

“Fanks,” Gordon said, spraying chip crumbs as he did so.

“Welcome,” she said, brushing at her leg which had unfortunately been in splatter range. Still holding John’s hand she bestowed a kiss to each of his abused digits before releasing him.

“Right, I’m out of here. Play nicely, you two, I don’t want to have to send Grandma in to babysit you both.”

“It won’t come to that,” John assured her, reaching for his own sandwich. “We’ve not got much left to do now. We just have to attach the rigging to the masts, check that they fold properly then insert th-”

“I’m out, I don’t need to hear anything about insertion, not after you just glued a boat to your hand,” Selene declared, her exit swift and to the point, the door shutting firmly behind her.

“She has a point,” Gordon admitted, swallowing his last bite. He pushed the chip bag in John’s direction, although there was barely more than a handful and a few crumbs left in it.

“But we’ll never admit it to her face,” John insisted, steadily munching through the large sub she had brought for him.

“Never,” Gordon agreed.

-x-

Gordon sighed dramatically as he crutched his way down the hall from his bedroom. John’s bedroom door was open but his brother wasn’t inside. The ship, now fully rigged, sat beside the bottle on the desk, just waiting to be placed inside once some sand had been poured in as a base. Gordon had chosen all different shades of blue to represent the sea and had even watched a few videos on how to do sand pouring art, something he’d never expected to find even remotely interesting, yet he couldn’t bring himself to go in and make a start on it.

John had barely been home the past week and when he had it had only been for food and enforced sleep. Even then he had been known to sneak out of bed the second Selene was asleep, being discovered on numerous occasions sitting at their father’s desk until the small hours working on this, that or the other.

Emergencies, and therefore the need for their services, had seemed to increase three fold, something Selene was blaming on the moon phase and mercury going retrograde and, for want of a better explanation, they were all inclined to agree. There was no rhyme or reason for the surge in idiots that were calling in at all hours of the day and night with trucks caught under a too low bridge causing a pile up, hands stuck down toilets, drunks climbing to the top of electricity pylons and repair men getting trapped inside ATM machines they had been fixing.

His brothers had been on the go near constantly, whether it was from rescue call outs or working on their plan to find their father, but none more so than John. While Selene had always been good at what she liked to call Tracy Wrangling, none more so that when she was dealing with a stressed out Scott, even she had admitted defeat and left them to their own devices. Self preservation was key after all.

John had been dealing with not only rescue calls and Chaos Crew sightings, but signal tracking, GDF liaising and general hoop jumping, all of which had kept him far too busy.

It had been over a week since they had done anything to their project and Gordon was feeling the loss. Not so much of the project, although that really had helped with his frustrations at his lack of physical ability, not that he would ever admit that to John, but in spending time with his brother.

Much to his surprise he’d found that he was reluctant to work on it alone, it had become their thing to do together. It was a time where they would hang out, shoot the shit, reminisce about childhood memories, times that they had spent together talking about their hope for the future where they would find their father alive and bring him home.

Both of them knew that it wouldn’t be easy, that if they did manage to find him there would be no telling what physical or mental state he would be in. Gordon knew from experience just how tough physical injury, limitations, and recovery could be on the mind and the body, especially in someone who had been as active and viril as Jeff Tracy.

They all knew, although no one seemed to want to talk about it, that as hard as it was going to be to actually locate him and hopefully bring him home, that would only be the beginning of what could potentially be an incredibly long and difficult journey of rehabilitation and reintegration into the family and the world as a whole.

John had been right, taking some time to be quiet, to slow down and think while keeping your mind and hands busy really was a productive way to spend your rest hours and, stupid as it sounded, Gordon didn’t really want that to end.

He was only a week or two away from potential cast removal and a return to physical activities like his beloved swimming and strength training in their home gym and, while he couldn’t wait to get back to it, he knew he’d feel the loss of his enforced quiet time.

He glanced again at the abandoned ship on the desk and turned away, clumping down the hall towards the stairs. So it would take them a little longer to get it finished, Gordon was fine with that because for once he wasn’t feeling the need to rush.

-x-

“Remember to pour it slowly,” Gordon instructed as he held the funnel in place, its long pipe reaching right down into the bottom of the jar. “Start with the darkest one, that’s going to be our base colour.”

“I’ve got it,” John assured him, selecting the tub of midnight blue sand and scooping some out into a smaller pot to make things easier. At Gordon’s nod he began to slowly and steadily pour the sand into the open neck of the funnel. As he watched Gordon expertly directed the tube, allowing the sand to pour out to pool in the bottom of the bottle.

At Gordon’s signal John stopped pouring and waited while Gordon carefully removed the tube and used a long metal skewer to poke and prod the sand into something that looked vaguely like waves.

“The next colour up,” Gordon requested and John did as he was asked. They repeated the process four more times with different shades of blue, John pouring in a little at a time, Gordon directing the tube to deposit more in one place than others, mimicking the movement of sea waves as best they could. In between each layer Gordon used the skewer to poke and mix the colours here and there, blending the layers into a smoother transition.

“That’ll do,” Gordon said confidently, twisting the bottle so John could see the full effect.

John had to admit that he had been pleasantly surprised when Gordon had announced that he had ordered some coloured sand and looked up how to do sand art on the internet. He hadn’t really known what to expect, although he would admit, if only to himself, that he had thought that Gordon would be a little heavy handed and impatient, but once again he had proved him wrong. He really had done his research and the result was a beautiful mix of colours that really did give a perfect impression of a gently moving sea.

“That’s looking great.”

“I know,” Gordon grinned, modest as always. “Where’s that resin gone?”

“Here,” John answered, pushing it across the desk towards his brother. “Make sure you read the instructions and measure the amounts accurately or it won’t set and you’ll ruin the sand and the bottle.”

“Yeah, yeah I got this,” Gordon assured him as he did indeed read the instructions through properly. Once he had familiarised himself with the ratio of resin to hardener, he measured carefully and poured them into a mixing jug. Once it was fully mixed he slowly, gently, poured the mixture a little at a time into the bottle on top of the sand. With each little pour he waited for the resin to trickle down between the grains, slowly adding to it until all the sand was covered.

“And now we wait,” John said, carefully placing the bottle in the patch of bright sunlight coming in through the window.

“Wanna watch a movie?” Gordon offered casually, not really expecting his brother to agree. John hardly ever watched anything with just him, they had vastly different tastes in movies and John usually made some polite excuse to escape.

“Sure, sounds good.”

“Really?” Gordon goggled, his eyes almost falling out of his head. “You don’t have anything more important to do?”

“More important than watching a movie with my little brother? I don’t think so,” John grinned, retrieving Gordon’s crutches from where they were leaning against his bookshelf and tossing them to him one by one. “Come on, last one to the lounge picks the movie.”

“Hey, no fair!” Gordon yelled, scrambling to his feet as he fumbled with his crutches. “You’ve got legs like a giraffe and neither of them are broken!”

“Sucks to be you,” John tossed over his shoulder as he took off down the hall to victory.

-x-

“Careful,” John warned.

“I am being careful,” Gordon snapped. “I got this.”

“Your hand’s shaking.”

“Thanks for that, Captain Obvious.” He steadied his, only slightly shaky, hand by propping his elbow on the desk for stability. “OK, let’s do this.”

They both held their breath as Gordon maneuvered the body of the boat through the opening in the bottle, making sure each sail stayed carefully folded down and the strings remained untangled before he fed it down the neck and into the bottle.

“Phase one, complete,” John intoned in such a serious voice that Gordon couldn’t help the laugh that he snorted out.

“Pass me those long nosed tweezers?” Gordon asked, holding out a hand.

John slapped the requested instrument into his brother's hand like a nurse in an operating theater, provoking another burst of laughter.

“Thanks.”

“Welcome.”

Making sure the strings of the sails were still dangling outside of the bottle, Gordon carefully moved the body of the boat further down into the bottle with the metal skewer until the stern touched the top of the resin and sand layer.

“Now the sails,” Gordon whispered, hardly daring to breathe as John moved in to help, taking over the holding of the strings while Gordon reached in with the tweezers.

Gently, working together, they started the delicate process of tugging gently on each string, unfolding the paper sails and locking them in place.

“String one.”

“Got it. Watch number four sail.”

“Yep, thanks...OK… can you just give string five a little pull? Perfect.”

“Sail three is flopping!”

“Gah, hang on, just got to tighten that...yep that’s got it.”

“Maybe if I gather…”

“Yep, that’s good, do that again.”

“This next bit is going to require a delicate touch, maybe I should-”

“Hey! I can be delicate!”

“It’s not coming up...back sail two is stuck, release it...careful!”

“There, saved it.”

John gently pulled the strings a little more and there it was, their ship, sails proudly upright and everything. He kept hold of the strings, while Gordon held on to the boat with the tweezers as they carefully lifted the bottle from its side to its proper upright position.

Using the skewer John maneuvered around Gordon’s hand and nudged the boat into a better position before he carefully released the strings. They both held their breath, hoping and praying that the sails wouldn't collapse the second the strings fell.

The boat, with its sails, stayed strong.

“Yes!” Gordon cheered, holding up his free hand for a high five, grinning when his brother’s palm smacked against his own.

“Scalpel,” Gordon joked as John handed it to him so they could lop off a little of the trailing strings. Then, using the skewer, they arranged the strings around the edges of the boat.

With the boat finally upright and in place, they added another layer of light blue coloured sand with a sprinkling of white to mimic the tips of the waves. They finished it off by pouring in a little more resin, both to set the sand and hold the boat in place, using the tweezers to make sure it was correctly positioned.

“Phew,” Gordon breathed, leaning back in his chair and stretching out his cast covered leg. “We did it. Go team.”

“We did,” John smiled. “And it looks damn good.”

“It really does,” Gordon agreed, shifting his head to look at the bottle from all angles.

“Nothing left to do but let it dry and put the stopper in,” John said. “How do you feel now it’s done? Was it worth the time?”

“I still think we could have done it a lot faster if you’d just let me skip a few steps in the instructions and do it my way, but it wasn’t that bad,” Gordon admitted. “I’m oddly proud of it.”

“You should be, you did good,” John leant back in his chair, crossing his arms as he relaxed. “Are you going to stop teasing me about my book nooks now?”

“Pssh, no,” Gordon snorted. “Ships are cool, yours will always be boring.”

He didn’t see the bottle of water coming until it was too late.

-x-

Gordon walked straight to John’s room from the infirmary, feeling oddly free without his crutches and casts. Six weeks was a long time, after all.

The bottle with its little ship sat exactly where they had left it in the center of John’s desk next to the abandoned book nook that was still not finished. It took him very little time to insert the cork stopper and pour a little of Selene’s spell bottle sealing wax around the top, a bright, cheery yellow wax that matched his beloved Thunderbird Four.

He smiled as he thought of his little craft, waiting down in her dock for him, ready to be taken out when the next call came in. It had been a long and frustrating time but finally, blessedly, that time was over.

He poked an experimental finger into the wax seal, checking that it had set properly. It had, and he couldn’t help feeling a little sad about it. It had been a project that at first he’d had very little interest in, but slowly it had turned into so much more. Not just something to wile away a few hours but a chance for him to reconnect with the brother he spent the least amount of time with.

Years ago, back when he had been small, John had been his everything. When Alan had been too tiny to be of any use and Scott and Virgil had been too old to be bothered with him hanging around, it had been John that had been there for him. It was John that had patiently listened as he read aloud from his sealife books, who had watched movies with him, played with him, and spent the most amount of time with him. Back then, their three year age difference had seemed like so little but so much at the same time, an older brother that made him feel wanted and included when the other two saw him as an annoyance.

Gordon couldn’t quite put his finger on when things had changed, when they had slowly drifted apart. John had seemed to grow up so much faster than he had, Alan had welded himself to his side, looking up to Gordon as he had to John and things had never been the same again.

It had been too long since they had been able to just hang out, to laugh, to tease each other without things going too far and one of them getting annoyed. It had been nice and Gordon had realised that he didn’t want to go back to nothing but hollocalls to Five when an emergency came in or the odd family dinner and movie night where he had to share with the rest of the family. John was the only brother that Gordon didn’t spend one on one time with as standard and he realised that, no matter how much he might blame it on John being so far away, in reality it was as much his fault as John’s.

Gordon picked up the bottle, leaving a box in its place. The model kit of the Mercury Project space capsule and its launch pad had been hard to find even with his junker contacts. In fact, he had almost given up and admitted defeat before he'd thought to look at the label on his ship box and sent the shop owner an email.

Smiling to himself, knowing that there was no way John would be able to resist that challenge, he took the finished bottle, with its little ship, to his room where it would take pride of place on his bookshelf, a constant reminder that even in the worst of times, positivity could still be found.

“Thanks, Bro.”

#tag mini bang 2021 #tagminibang2021 #Gordon Tracy #John Tracy #thunderbirds are go #thunderbirdsarego #thunderbirds fandom #thunderbirds 2015 #thunderbirds fanfiction #thunderbirds fanart #TAG Mini Bang 2021 #TAGMiniBang2021

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basilhearsanoise · 3 years

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Guardian Angels - Chapter 1

A Memory Formed, Then All but Wiped Away

Dean Winchester was born on a cold January morning in 1979, when the sun had not yet risen. He wouldn’t hear his name for a few years after that, though. You see, when Mary, Dean’s mother, found out she was pregnant, her husband John said, “We should name the kid after your folks. Always talk about how you miss ‘em. Be a good way to keep ‘em alive,” and Mary liked that idea very much.

So when the doctors told them they were going to have a baby girl - because doctors like to play god in these situations almost as much as God does - Mary knew that she would name the child after her mother. Deanna was a beautiful name, after all. It was only a few hours after they got home from that visit, however, that their two sons burst in from over 30 years in the future, and brought the preamble to the apocalypse with them. One of whom, they’ve seen before - as a hunter on a case, as a car enthusiast. As a man. Who says to her, “It’s kind of hard to believe. I’m your son.”

Mary doesn’t get to remember her son’s face for very long, because angels are meddlesome creatures and time travel doesn’t usually rest easy on the human psyche. But she finds herself thinking of the strange hunter who was there that night with the yellow-eyed demon. He’d really been trouble, but he’d tried so hard to help. Her memory of him became more sentimental, somehow, without her even really noticing the change. She wonders if that hunter was some kind of spirit, a ghost sent to warn her about that night. The night she tries to not ever think about, but yet, always comes crawling back to the front of her mind. It all seems to have so much - so much meaning, something more that she can’t quite put her finger on. Suddenly, she feels a cosmic presence in her life, and she knows, deep down, it’s because of her baby.

“I’m tellin’ you, this kid is gonna be somebody,” she says to John as she dotes over their newborn. “Isn’t that right?” She coos. “That’s right! You’ve got angels watching over you!”

—

“No. Dean,” Dean corrects his mother, chocolate melting in his tiny three-year-old hands. It’s all over his face. Some of it’s in his hair, too, like tar stuck to a bail of hay. His voice is garbled, a toddler unable to properly enunciate to save his life, but still, alarmingly clear and concise.

Mary, exhausted, at her wit’s end, holds the dress out to him for the millionth time. “Deanna, pl—“

“No!” Dean is more hurt, now, and the tantrum is well on its way. “I won’t! I don’ like it!” The rest is mostly unintelligible screaming. Smearing his chocolate all over the dress, he turns and runs, crying.

John tries to pick him up and cradle him but he kicks and yells and punches. They have to have a talk about violence after that, that it’s not nice to hit and scream. It’s the first and last conversation on the topic Dean will ever get from his parents.

Not long after that, the preschool calls, says Dean has “caused a scene in class.” They tried to separate the boys and girls for a game, and he went with the boys. When they tried to stop him, he threw a fit and had to be excused for the rest of the day. And then the next day, and the next, and the next.

Mary and John are at a loss. Their son is insisting he is their son, but like any parent, they are having trouble believing it. Mary thinks about the hunter from that night more and more now. What did he say his name was again? There was something so familiar about all of this, almost like Mary was back on an old hunting case. But no, she gave that up…she couldn’t call any of her contacts and see if they know anything about her kid…could she?

…Ring, ring.

“Hello Mary,” Missouri answers, the grin already apparent in her voice.

No matter how many times she did that, it always freaked Mary out, just a little. But at least you knew she was the real deal as soon as she picked up the phone.

“Hi Missouri, it’s good to speak to you.”

“Mm. I don’t think it is. At least, the subject matter doesn’t seem like it will be good.” Missouri twiddles the phone cable around her finger. “John’s not going to like it. You’ll warm up to it though. I’ll be over soon.”

Click.

Laughing, but mostly out of shock, Mary puts down the receiver. After all this time, you’d think she’d stop being surprised by how good Missouri is. But that level of psychic ability is uncanny enough to throw anyone through a loop. Better make sure John would be gone that afternoon. She was not ready to explain this to him.

When Missouri walks in, she throws her arms around Mary warmly. “Now,” she asks, looking around. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you Mary, I haven’t even met your boy. Go and fetch him, I want to meet him before we get down to whatever nasty business you called about.”

Mary pulls the sides of her mouth back in a gesture that could only be interpreted as: yikes.

“Missouri, I…I don’t quite know how to say this, but our…” The words feel strange in her mouth, but what’s really strange is that…she thought they’d feel stranger. “….my son…is what I called about.”

Missouri raises an eyebrow.

“Is there something wrong with him? I haven’t sensed any evil presences in the house.”

Mary still doesn’t quite know what to say, stutters a little.

Perplexed, but intrigued, Missouri says, “Well go and get him. I’ll see for myself.”

With a shrug, Mary goes to the kitchen. “Honey…put down your toys, Mommy wants you to meet a friend.”

Dean waddles into the living room, still clutching his favorite toy car. He clings to his mother’s skirt, but waves at Missouri, who looks him up and down from his dirty shoes to the top of his baggy overalls.

“What have you got there?” She asks.

“Vroom!” Dean answers, showing her how the car shoots forward when you wind the wheels back on the floor.

Missouri laughs heartily in agreement. “Yes, sweetheart. What a lovely toy. It’s nice to meet you, Dean.”

His little eyes shimmer up at her, his face slowly peeling into a wide, wide grin. He giggles and keeps playing with his car.

Mary stares at Missouri in disbelief, opens her mouth to speak, but can’t find words. She slowly sits down on the couch. Dean follows his car back into the kitchen and can be heard vrooming about the house. For a moment that’s all the noise there is, until Mary can finally gather herself enough to say, “Missouri, I…I don’t understand.”

Missouri walks over and sits next to her, gently takes her hand. “Mary, you know that there are things in this world that are not easy to understand at first, but that doesn’t make them any less real.”

“Well, yes,” Mary replies, flustered, afraid. “Ghosts, ghouls…but you’re not saying he’s a monster, are you?”

Missouri’s expression darkens a little. “The world will surely tell you he is one. But nothing could be further from the truth. People like Dean have always existed, just like people like me have always existed. It’s perfectly natural. Most people just don’t believe we’re real.”

Mary is still completely at a loss. Missouri squeezes her hand. “Your son is transgender, Mary,” she continues gently. “I can see into his soul and see that he’s a little boy, just like any other, except he’s in a world that can’t see him the way I can.”

It’s as if someone took a needle and jabbed it into Mary’s brain. Flashes of Dean’s adult face begin to swim through her mind.

“I’m your son.”

Could these memories be real or was she going mad? It was all so overwhelming. She throws her arms around Missouri and begins to sob. Missouri can sense that something in her mind has opened up, that had been locked tight, and it unnerves her to think what could have turned the key. She holds her dear friend close until she can recover enough to catch her breath.

“What do I do?” Mary whimpers, looking towards the kitchen, towards Dean.

“You love him,” Missouri replies. “You respect him.”

“H-…how?”

“Well…” Missouri tries her best to be matter-of-fact. “First you have to talk to John and get him on board.” Mary’s eyes roll a little. Getting John to change his mind about anything was going to be a hassle. “Then…you call the school. Tell them to call him by the right name. Tell your friends to call him by the right name…not much else to it, darling.”

“But…what happens when…he grows up? How will…”

“I have some friends who might be able to help you,” Missouri says warmly. “But you can cross that bridge when you come to it. It’s all about doing what’s necessary now, and simply listening is the most important thing when children are young. Follow his lead, honey. He knows what he needs.”

Dean runs into the living room again. “Mommy, sammich?” He beams.

Mary can’t help but laugh as she wipes away her tears. Dean notices and instantly hugs her knees. “Don’t cry, mommy,” he pleads. “I love you.”

“I love you too…Dean,” Mary shakily replies, rustling his hair the way she always does.

Dean looks up, his face somehow happier than before. He reaches up to her in the way all toddlers do when they want to be held, and she scoops him up into her arms. Missouri smiles at the sight.

“You want a sandwich?” Mary asks her, still processing, but trying to inject some humor into the situation now.

“That sounds lovely,” Missouri answers. “I think I’ll have mine with the crusts cut off, too. That’s your favorite, isn’t it, Dean?”

“Yes!” Dean gurgles happily as Mary places him at the kitchen table.

“Alright, three sandwiches, hold the crust, comin’ right up,” Mary laughs. Later, she knew things were going to get messy. But for now, they could all sit down and enjoy a nice snack.

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willddheartt · 4 years

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Your Shirt | Randall Carpio

Summary: Basically sparked out of the thought that Randall would always give you his shirt/jacket/hoodie/etc... when they found you after a change.

Warnings: Mentions of death, im not sure, lil angst in there for spice

Word Count: 1363

Masterlist

Most times there was time for you to quickly pull off your clothes before you changed into a full wolf, but there were other times where Midnight simply wouldn’t wait. Times when you had to be quick. You were still a new knight, it had been a month since the hide jumped you when you were helping jack find a book in the basement. Nobody was surprised it was Midnight, saying he’d jump anyone close enough. You hadn’t yet figured out how to control the wolf when Midnight wanted something he didn’t let anyone get in the way. That being said, there were still times when you’d wake up on the forest floor, completely naked with a body somewhere nearby as Randall, Lilith and, Hamish called your name looking for you.

Today was one of those times, you woke up with twigs in your hair and blood smeared over your nude body. Not too far away you heard the faint calls of your name, Randall and Hamish. They always came looking for you when you inevitably wolfed out.

“Here!” you yelled out to the boys as you got up, crossing your arms over your chest. “Hey,” Randall said as he handed you his hoodie that he just pulled off “Thanks,” you whispered, turning around to slip it over your head. “Do you remember what happened?” He asked, brown eyes boring into your soul You shook your head and noticed Hamish looking around for a body. “Not after I left the house last night,” “There’s no body so that’s something,” Hamish pointed out after looking around a bit “Yeah,” Randall nodded in agreement, “C’mon, we’ll go back and you can get cleaned up,” He carefully slid his arm around your back as he guided you back the path.

The first time you transformed and had waken up with a body lying next to you, you were terrified, thinking something else was out there with you and was going to come after you next, only getting more uneasy when your clothes were missing. Then before you knew it, Randall was coming up to you with his jacket held out for you. Hamish and Lilith cleaned up the boys while Randall took you back to the house to get you new clothes and explain what happened. Even though you were there when Jack first transformed the thought that you killed the dead body you woke up next to made you freak out because you couldn’t even kill a fly without feeling a little bit bad.

“How do you guys control it so easily?” You asked Randall as you walked up the clearing to the old house “It starts by learning to control the switch, and then it gets easier from there,” The boy said “I can’t even get that, how am I supposed to do this, Randall?” You asked, “There’s gotta be some kind of way to reverse this, can’t you just take the hide out or something?” Randall shook his head, “You were chosen, you’ll get the hang of it, it’s only been a month.” He tried to comfort you as you walked inside. Without another word you parted ways, going upstairs so you could get cleaned up.

Since becoming a knight the invitation to live at the house was open, seeing as how you were living in dorms you jumped on the opportunity to have a space that was truly yours. After getting out of a much-needed shower, you sat on your bed in just a towel trying to remember what happened last night and why Midnight kept taking over without your control. You didn’t freak out as much before but the thought that you might have killed someone and their body is out there waiting to be found by their family was killing you. You hated Midnight for the things he’d done but you were disappointed in yourself the most because you couldn’t get a stupid wolf hide under control to stop it from killing people. With the thoughts of what happened last night running through your mind you scrambled to get dressed, thinking you could distract yourself. Just as you were pulling on your shorts you lost it, sliding to the floor with your back leaning on your bed you completely broke down, tears streaming down your cheeks.

“Woah, hey are you alright?” Randall asked, running over to your side. You shook your head, “I can’t stop thinking about it,” “What?” He questioned “Wondering if I killed someone and left them for their family to find,” You sobbed

He pulled you into his chest, resting his chin on the top of your head, “You didn’t, it’s alright, it was probably just an animal,” Although the thought of killing an animal made you sob as well, it was better than a person. Randall handed you the hoodie that was laying on your bed, which happened to be the one he gave you earlier in the woods, to pull on over your sports bra.

“We can work on helping you control the switch if you want,” He offered. You nodded and leaned into his side.

Randall had been helping you the hang of small aspects of the switch for a week, every night you’d meet in the basement and you’d work on one thing over and over until you got it. At first, you worked on your control of the claws and kept building up little by little. Tonight you were working on fully switching. You stood on the cold cement floor of the basement with Randall standing across the room, both of you having just towels wrapped around you.

“Remember,” Randall spoke, “Don’t think about it, just let it happen.”

You nodded, taking a deep breath. ‘Ok, Midnight,’ You thought, ‘We can do this, okay? Just work with me,’ You thought that by talking to the hide it might help the wolf work with you, so far its been working.

You nodded at Randall and let out the breath quickly. The hide was finally working with you, Midnight let you transform with full consciousness and control. As you transformed before him Randall’s eyes light up

“Hell Yeah!” He yelled as you transformed back. “I did it!” You yelled hugging him tightly, ignoring the fact you were completely nude. “One more time, one more time,” He said pulling out of your hug. Taking another deep breath, you transformed as you let the breath out, and changed back after a few seconds.

“Oh my god!” Randall yelled hugging you again “I got it! I got control!” You were almost jumping with joy “Midnight finally found someone he can work with,” He smiled, his brown eyes almost looking a shade lighter You nodded, “He’s not that bad anymore,”

The sound of Hamish clearing his throat from the steps pulled yours and Randall’s attention to the man standing with cocktails. “I heard all the commotion and thought a victory drink would be nice,” He nodded Almost immediately you became very aware of the fact you weren’t wearing any clothing, not even the towel anymore. Randall seemed to pick up on the fact as he moved in front of you more.

“Thanks, Ham Radio,” He smiled, “Toss me the robes?” “Don’t call me that,” Hamish rolled his eyes at one of the ever-changing names Randall gave him but threw the two bathrobes over to Randall who caught them and handed you yours first.

Once you were more decent you took the glass from Hamish, being blown away by the amazing taste of the drink. “Honestly, Hamish, I wasn’t sure alcohol was supposed to be good until I met you,” You chuckled, taking another sip. “So you can control Midnight now?” He asked You nodded, “It seems so, he’s not that bad once you get used to him,” “It’s awesome,” Randall said putting his arm around your shoulders as he took the other drink from Hamish, who gave him an odd look. “Randall, if you were helping y/n with their transformation why are you also wearing nothing?” Randall shook his head, “Body positive, Ham sammich,” taking his drink he walked past the other boy and ascended the steps.

#the order #randall carpio #jack morton #alyssa drake #hamish duke #lilith bathory #the order imagine #randall carpio x reader #jack morton imagine #alyssa drake imagine #hamish duke imagine #lilith bathory imagine #randall carpio imagine #jack morton x reader #alyssa drake x reader #hamish duke x reader #lilith bathory x reader

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Goof Week: Goofy Birthday Shortstacular!

Hyuck all you happy people! And HAPPY BIRTHDAY GOOFY! The celebration already got on track today with a look at the two part goof troop pilot. You can find that here.

That review kicked off GOOF WEEK my weeklong look at all things Goofy, but as is tradition on this blog the birthday of one of the big three wouldn’t’t be complete without a look at their theatrical shorts career. And with this one i’ve covered all three of Disney’s biggest stars having covered Donald last june (and will again next month) and Mickey in September so it’s long overdue that my boy gets a shot and even longer overdue I watched some of his classic shorts.

A large part of why I started doing these is because I love classic theatrical shorts and the reason I love looking at the Disney ones is, unlike Looney Toons or Tom and Jerry, I didn’t grow up with these and Disney never replayed them. At most you’d get one or a small slice of one in a House of Mouse episode. So this is a fun way to dive right into history and see a piece of Disney I’ve only started scratching the surface of.

This is a fun one too. I ended bumping this up to 12 shorts again, and i’m glad as it allowed me to take a look at some of the weirder stuff and we go all over the place: We have dancing, goofy begging for a smoke, goofy devlopnig a split personality that calls him fat a bunch, a prototypical max who is a LOT, trips to medevil times and cowboy times, a tex avery esque noir short, and the lead in short to National treasure. If any of that sounds like a real good time to you, then keep reading under the cut!

Mickey’s Revue (1933)

Goofy was created by his VA Pinto Colvig, who based the character on the local happy go lucky moron from his home town, and after a dicussion with Walt it was decided to roll him into Mickey’s growing supporting cast.

My guess from here is they decided to do a dry run to make sure the character worked with audeinces before giving him a full time roll. Given Goofy’s been both a staple of Mickey’s supporting cast and often more popular than the mouse or even the duck, you can see how that went.

Colvig was awesome. While Bill Farmer is my preferred Goofy, I still tip my hat to the original and it’s clear this was a character he was born t play and it shows: a lot of characters take a short or too to really find their personality. Goofy.. has his early shorts persona straight out of the box> The only weird thing is he’s an ol dman here.. but otherwise his schick here, loudly eating peanuts, laughing a bit too loud and annoying everyone around him with no genuine malice.. that’s Goofy and Pinto really hit onto something and as we’ll see today had a TON of range beyond this.

As for the rest of the short.. it’s forgetable. It’s not BAD, but it’s just Mickey and friends capering on stage. Nothing really out of the oridnary for these early Mickey Shorts, especially since some of them could get really damn creative.

The Whoopee Party (1933)

Now we have Goofy’s first proper appearance, going from joke character in the crowd to full member of Mickey’s friend group.

This one is also just okay, but better than the last: Mickey and friends throw a wild party, with Mickey, Goofy and Horace making the sammiches. Goofy dosen’t do much btu gets a good gag or two, and overall it’s alright. Enjoyabl efor it’s lively animation and not much else.

Goofy and Wilbur (1936) Three years later we get Goofy’s proper debut, a cute short about him using his Cricket friend to fish. That’s not the exestitnal nightmare that it sounds like mind you as Wilbur simply tricks them into Goofy’s net an donly gets eaten when they catch on and Goofy runs to his aid. The short really is more about Wilbur but it’s fair: like with Donald , who was paired with Pluto in his first solo short, they wanted to test the waters before having Goofy carry a cartoon himself. As we’ll see he very well could, but it’s fair to want ot backdor pilot it first and it’s easily one of the best shorts of today’s batch.

How to Play Baseball (1937)

First off while they make a good effort I already know how ot play baseball short...

How To Play Baseball is my faviorite of the Goofy Shorts on Disney Plus, which is a VERY small batch. Especailly since most of Today’s shorts aren’t at all problematic or inapproriate for kids. This one is a gem though. It’s one of the How To Shorts where a narrator goes ove rgoofy trying and failing at an activity though this one’s a tad diffrent.

The How To Narrator teaches us about baseball before narrating the world series game. It’s full of cleve slapstick, high speed animation and plain fun. It’s also part of the trend that would dominate Goofy’s sports career of putting him in whatever roll the shorts needed. Here he’s everyone at once, others he’s his old goofy self, other time sh’es just a normal joe. But Colvig does every version amazingly, so it all meshes and that general goofy design is so appealing it just WORKS. So yeah while i’m not into sports I do genuinely love the How To shorts, as they were my faviorite part of House of Mouse and still are, and the originals are every bit as classic as their reputation says they are.

A Knight For A Day (1946)

This one is the only other one of these on Disney Plus and it’s decent enough. Nothing incredibble or extra specail: Goofy plays a Squire who has to fil lin for his Knight in a tournament and tries to win a princesses hand against another douchier goofy. Simple stuff iwth some fun gags, but it just dosen’t feel all that fresh, especially since Disney already did a much better shorts with knights with Mickey’s “Ye Olden Days”. It just dosen’t feel as fun or creative as that one was btu on it’s own it’s fine. Nothing great, nothing terrible, just fine. First short of the day to feature Goofy’s faceless blonde love interest who in domestic shorts is his wife and by the same extension Max’s now dead mother.

Tomorrow We Diet (1951)

We’ve got three from 1951 here. By this point Goofy had traditioned from lovable bumbler to every man, taking on a more generalized personality to fit into every day slice of life scenarios, using those to brilliantly contrast the goofy animated comedy with the more mundane setting it comes from. And sometimes it’s just straight up sticom humor with the ocasoinal joke you could only do in a cartoon. And sometimes.. you get a version of Goofy who lives in a mirror taunting Goofy over being fat and then trying to keep him on his diet while it’s not clear if thi sis a split personality, a mirror ghost tormenting him that took his form and is doing this so Goofy breaks the mirror and frees him, or his evil doppleganger from another universe.

Yeah .. one of the centerpieces of this short is Goofy’s reflection/split personality/earth 3 doppleganger/some sort of evil genie taunt shim abotu the fact he’s putting on weight startnig by saying “Hey Fat”... because apparently in this unvierse the best weight joke they can come up with is literally just calling someone fat. I bet I know who rules THIS timeline with an iron fist....

youtube

The first half of this short is Goofy being told he’s fat by a bunch of people and the second half is his hallucination/psychotic break/guardian asshole tormenting him with the diet. And I do mean tormenting: He knocks away all of Goofy’s food, then suggests he not even eat his carrot and STARVE himself, which is just deeply unhealthy, and earlier forces Goofy to let him read his book and then tell shim to just diet anyway. Which granted dieting IS sensible.

So yeah this short as you can probably guess by the fact it involves the term “Hey Fat” which was only said by a human being once.. Dick Kinney or Mick Shaffer, the writers of ths short, when one pitched the line to the other and they laughed for some reason and put it in the script. But with that you can wager this short is REALLY outdated> Overating CAN be a problem and fat shaming still exists, but it’s far less tolerated and far less of a thing.

And hell I can tolerate a good natured weight joke, the Critic had some great ones, especially as a fat guy myself... but this isn’t good natured. The entire joke is, as the man said above HE’S FAT.. So as a legit short. it’s deeply unfunny at best, horribly insulting at worst. But as a so bad it’s good short? it’s GOLD. From the whole mirror goofy thing, to the fact fat is seen as a legit insult here or something to just call fat people because that’s what the writers thoguht humans, even in the 50′s talked like it’s just riffably cruel.. though it will obviously depend onthe viewers tolerance for both fat jokes and how creepy the short can be and again as a short it sucks. As something to be mocked for fun.. it’s fat with potential

Father’s Are People (1951)

Hey Kids you wanna see Max and Goofy reenact Problem Child?

Given I did Goof Troop earlier this week and i’m finishing this week with A Goofy Movie, it shouldn’t come as a huge shocker that I wanted to cover the first short with Goofy’s son Juinor, who’d later be remolded into Max.

The short STARTS promising with Goofy having a kid and the hyjinks that comes from having a baby child: Goofy passes out Cigars because Lung Cancer was the preferred way of celebrating having a child in the 50′s, runs himself ragid helping out, which I give the short credit for as “Donald’s Diary” three years later would play a man helping a woman around the house for horror. Here George (Goofy would often go by George Geef in later shorts) pitches in and while he’s clearly exausted he is trying to help with the boy.

It takes a turn though once we jump ahead to a toddler Junior. Seriously a red head named junior... there’s no way that’s a coincidence. Anyways, the problem is unlike problem child, where Junor dosen’t really go after his dad but the assholes around his pushover dad who genuinely deserve it, this Junior goes after Goofy who at wors tis mildly negelectful but clearly loves his boy> He also DOES try to take a brus hto the kid... but it’s hard to be too mad about that as it was acceptable at the time and he dosen’t actually paddle a three year old. It’s like a less horrfying version of donald puttin ga penguin to a shotguns face in that the targeted party dosen’t see the threat and that goofy isn’t some form of sociopath in this short like Donald was there. It’s just not very funny and only worth watching at all for the historical value.

No Smoking! (1951) (Patreon Selection by WeirdKev27)

This is my first of two Patreon selections, my patreon is here if you want to chip in a buck to pick a short for Donald’s birthday next month, by longtime friend and backer of the blog Kev. He suggested this one for the sheer absurdity of Goofy smooking.. and was right on the money> This one is DELGITHFUL.

It works on two levels: it works on the modern level of seeing such an iconic cartoon grapple with trying to quit smoking, first smoknig so constantly a giant cloud appears over him and he has about 80 cigs in his mouth at once, but then trying to quit and being surrounded bycigs before finally DESPERATELY begging for one. As I discovered you really HAVEN’T lived till you’ve heard goofy madly call out “Smoke, smoke gotta have a smoke”.

But while the novelty IS great.. it’s also just a good cartoon. Outside of some blatant racisim at the start, with a native american sterotype introducing smoking to colmbus which feels so wrong to type I need a shower and really puts a damper on the short which after that.. is just really funny. From the smoking through the ages, to the very creative smoking gags it’s just fun.. and it is CLEARLY anti-smoking, showing both the insane amount of cigrte smoker can go through and how mad the addiction can drive you. It’s not bad... though if you can’t stomach the blatant and terrible racisim.. I get that and it’s fair.

Two Gun Goofy (1952)

This is one of two “put Goofy in another setting all together” pieces, both in the same year which tells me they were trying to find new stuff to do for Goofy. Thi sisn’t unheard of in cartoons: Around the same time and before Bugs Bunny went all over the world and thorugh time and space, and Mickey went through the looking glass and had two fantasy shorts, so i’ts not unusual

But what IS neat about these next two shorts is they combined the two goofys: he has his goofy demanor and oblivoiusness from the classic shorts, but still has his deeper, slightly less goofy voice from the everyman shorts and is still treated as an average joe, just one now undertaking genre careers, here a cowboy and next a detective

This short is decent. I’m a sucker for cowboy episodes apparently: either old west style showdowns or having the characters go to a dude ranch or something. So naturally I picked this one and was told Max was in it an dhe is... in a two second cameo when Goofy has a thought bubble after meeting faceless lady.

But this is a really enjoyable picture. not Disne’y sbest but good stuff. It also pairs Goofy with pete which really is a perfect pairing, putting our scowling rotund villian against our skinny well meaning hero. And while i’ts a common gag in a lto of things I do love Goofy accidently beating the shit out of pete as the short finds fun ways to do it. All in all worth a watch.

How to Be a Detective (1952)

This one was a REALLY fun one. Like with westerns i’m a sucker for a good noir parody, even if ironically I haven’t watched much of either genre proper. Add in the fact this is clearly inspiried by Tex Avery’s work and i’m sold on this fun madcap romp with an approraitely more noirsh narrator.

Goofy is naturally a detective and hired by the faceless woman to find “Al” having to contend with both a goon he keeps failing to recognize and The Chief of Police, played by Pete, who keeps telling him “I told ya to stay off the case Goof!”. It’s just the delivery makes it funny any time he says it as does his instance... and the punchline, which I won’t spoil to both that an dthe overaching mystery i sa gem. This one’s on youtube, seek it out, it’s damn fun. Before I go thoguh I also love how Goofy is Given “Goof Balls”. Yes GOOFY GETS DRUGGED and I am here for it

Father’s Day Out (1953)

I couldn’t find any GIF’s for this one, not even one’s in teh same tag that were unrelated so here, have more smoking Goofy. It will never not be funny.

This one is ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhtastic. Goofy is overworked, wnats to rest on his weeknd, and stuff gets in the way. Oh and halfway through he abrubtly has to take Max to the beach. It’s.. not much honestly. It’s like the simpsons if it wasn’t funny.

How To Hook Up Your Home Theater (2007) (Emma Fici Patreon Selection)

You may notice the MASSIVE time jump here. That’s because while Disney still does theatrical shorts nowadays, in part because Pixar’s shorts turned out to be a huge hit, they almost never use the classic cast. This delightful anamoly is one of the few exceptions and was picked by Emma out of sheer curosity. And she picked well this short is fun, feelnig like a big budget version of the House of Mouse How To Shorts I loved so an dhaving a modern yet still ultimatley timeless subject: while the tech featured is missin ga streaming box and 4k, otherwise it really has aged incredibly well and getting all the diffrent modes set up and what not is a hassel we al lcan agree with.

It’s a fun short with lots of good gags and humor as Goofy tries to set up his Home Theater before the big game, and worth a watch. Weirdly not on Disney+ though try explaining that one.

One final note is for whatever reason this was paired up with National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

My BEST GUESS i sthat it appeals to the kinds of dads who’d watch National Traesure: Book of Secrets as well as kids since it’s an adventure film. Though it now makes me want to see Nicholas Cage voice goofy. Get on it Disney. Not forever though, Bill’s a treasure. Just for a gag like Don Cheadle vocing Donald.. oh god put them together.. and then have them do a movie together I don’t think they have and do not know why.

Final Ranking: As a bit of added fun to close this out and as a new feature for these i’m ranking today’s shorts from best to worst How To Be A Detective How To Play Baseball No Smoking Goofy and WIlbur How To Hook Up Your Home Theater Two Gun Goofy The Whoopee Party Mickey’s Revue Tommorow We Diet A Knight for A Day Father’s Are People Father’s Weekend

For the record despite not being a GOOD short Tommorow we diet is at least intresting, hence i’ts ranknig while Father’s weekend is just a boring 50′s version of problem child. Fathers are People at least has some good gags to set it off.

So thank you for reading and if you liked this review give it a like and consider joining my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. As a patron you’d get access to exclusive reviews, the patreon’s discord and to pick a short each time I do one of these shortstaculars. Donald’s comnig next month and the deadline is in only a few days to join up for said month so the clock is ticking. Even a dollar a month helps me reach my stretch goals so please i fyou can sign up today and if not, I understand and i’ll see you at the next rainbow

#goofy #disney #goofy's birthday #goofy goof #max goof #mrs goof #pete #peg leg pete #peg legged pete #pete pete #pinto colvig #disney shorts #disney plus #disney+

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feverinfeveroutfic · 3 years

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chapter twenty six: wet dreams and frisbees

“I can't believe your dad actually helped us with that,” Eric said aloud to her with a shake of his head. All she knew was she had to be there for real that time around: after their album dropped, her father had invited her back up to the Bay Area before anything else huge happened between them.

The day following the release of that new album in the first week of May and all the while the video for “The Ballad” had hit everyone's television there in the Bay Area and also down in Los Angeles. Sam was sure that Testament hadn't had such a stronghold like that of Metallica given they had started a year after Cliff was killed; but every time she turned around or went anywhere with a television screen, she saw Chuck's face there as he crooned out that song.

There was that plus the video for “Practice What You Preach” which never surfaced as much, but she swore that she saw them everywhere there in California. They always came on after Prince and Michael Jackson it seemed like, and it traded off between the two of them. There came a point in which after not even a week in which Sam began to associate Testament with either doves crying or pretty young things.

It was also around the time she headed back up to the Bay Area when she caught a glimpse of a rather darkly lit video which followed the one for “The Ballad” there in the bus station.

She frowned with the feeling of unfamiliar familiarity. She had no idea where they were from, but she knew them from somewhere. Within time, through the shades of rich royal blue, she recognized Kirk's black curls and Lars' sharp eyebrows. James' eyes pinched shut.

Jason there on the stool with a pair of wire framed glasses upon his nose.

Her mouth dropped open.

It was the first time she had ever seen Metallica in a music video. Even though she couldn't hear the music over the hustle and bustle in the bus station, she could feel it in her bones. The very sight of it almost brought a tear to her eye. Jason there on the stool in Cliff's shoes: there was no way he was echoing him, but rather he continued on from where Cliff had left off in the three years before. She adjusted the brim of her hat and sniffled a bit at the sight up there on the wall.

She thought about it all the way up through the outer rim of Los Angeles and into the Central Valley, such that she had plunked open her journal at one point and sprawled it across her lap. All she could think about was Jason and the pensive look on his face.

She yearned for something rich and dark like black ink for her new drawing, and yet all she had at her disposal at the moment was her kit of pencils. She got about as far as the sketch, albeit in cartoon form, but she had one with her regardless of anything she had with her.

Something to remember her dead love to, and something to exemplify his band's membrance of him as well. It was yet another secret drawing she had on hand, and one that she had no idea as to when she would finish up, either.

In the meantime, there on her second trip back up to San Francisco, Eric and Greg picked her up from the bus station in Hayward and as they drove back to the rehearsal spot together, she remembered the bet she had made with Alex as well. She had drawn him and thus she had to get alone with Greg whenever she found the chance.

She could only hope that Alex had told him about their bet, and if he didn't, there had to be a way in which she could explain it to him and in the best way possible as well. She sat there in the front seat next to Eric: at one point, she peered into the rear view mirror and through the dark lenses of her sunglasses, she noticed Greg tucking a lock of wavy dark hair right behind his ear.

That long hair and that soft scruff on his chin and on either side of his face.

It was hard for her to imagine it, even her having known Greg for a few years at that point. She strove to picture that scruff against her thighs; her holding onto that hair and giving it a pull; figuring each other out. All fuzzy and difficult for her to really think about.

She peered over at Eric and his little baby face from the side.

All five of them with long black hair and round faces, except they were all slightly different in some fashion: Alex with the obvious tuft of gray over the right side of his forehead, Chuck with the similar grave Native American look to his face like Joey, Greg with the scruff on his face, Louie looking serious, and Eric being the odd man out with the look that started it all.

“I just realized I've never really been to Catalina,” Eric said at one point.

“It's gorgeous,” she told him with a sparkling smile, “especially when it snows.”

He frowned at that where she giggled and held her journal close to her lap. They rolled up to a stop sign and he looked over at her, and she had no idea if she was looking at the journal or something else. He gave that smooth stripe of dark hair on the right side of his forehead a little toss back with a flick of his head and then they rolled forward along the block towards that low white brick building in question; right next door was a little bistro. Greg was quick to climb first, even before Eric pulled up the parking lever.

“My goodness,” Sam remarked.

“I know, right?” Eric showed her a little smile.

She took off her sunglasses and ran her fingers through her dark hair, and then he cleared his throat. She turned to him: it looked as though he wasn't ready to climb out of the car as of yet.

“I wanna ask you something,” he started in a soft voice.

“Go ahead.”

“Seeing as you're here and not back East anymore—you wanna do something some time?”

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Like what? Like a date?”

Eric shrugged his shoulders.

“I dunno if you could call it that,” he said, “I just think of when we took you over to Castro Valley to visit the place where James and Lars spread Cliff's ashes, and you and Alex got behind the building there... it was kinda hot, to be perfectly honest with you.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah. I catch myself thinking about from time to time.”

“You know, my dad lives there now,” Sam pointed out.

“Oh, yeah, that's right! Have a little fun near your daddy's place.” Eric flashed her a wink at that. “Anyways, I mean it. I wanna do something with you. Like maybe have dinner at your dad's house or something of that nature. I gotta spend a bit with the little Sammich at some point.”

“You're just saying that because I'm a girl surrounded by a bunch of boys,” she scoffed at him, and albeit with a roll of her eyes. He shrugged at that.

“Not necessarily,” he clarified with a raise of his eyebrows. “It could be from the fact that you're a girl who likes to chill with a bunch of boys.”

“I chill with girls, too, you know, Eric,” she pointed out.

“Kinky.”

“Kinky?”

“Kinky.”

“You little fat rat,” she teased him with a shake of her head.

“Little fat rat, is that what you called me?” he chuckled.

“Yeah, 'cause you're little—you're fat—” She reached for a poke of his little belly and he flinched back in the seat, and his face turned bright pink from the feeling.

“I'm not fat,” he scoffed.

“You're chubby,” she corrected herself.

“I'm not chubby, either,” he said. “Chubby means you're cute and round—fat implies you've got too much on you. I'm neither of those things.”

“Really?”

“I dunno. I just think that's the assumption surrounding it and that's according to your dad, too.”

“My dad told you that?”

“Yeah. Your dad is quite the interesting man if I do say so myself. Maybe that's why you're so amazing.”

She gasped at that and then Eric climbed out of there and into the bright sunlight before she said anything further to him. She clutched her journal to her chest and slung the courier bag over her shoulder, and she followed him up to the front step. He held the door for her all the while: she dared not sashay her hips at him with each and every step.

Once she entered that first hallway followed by that cool, dark front room, she spotted Greg before the table on the side of the room with a glass of beer in hand. Alex was nowhere to be seen. She walked on over to him and he turned to her as he took a sip from the glass.

“What's up?” he greeted her; she peered over her shoulder and Eric ducked into the next room over.

“I have to tell you something,” she began in a low voice.

“Go ahead,” Greg encouraged her as he leaned in closer to her.

“Close the door, too—” He did just that with his free hand around her shoulder.

“I dunno if Alex told you this,” she said, “but I made a bet with him that if I draw him, I have to have sex with you.”

Greg hesitated for a second and then he burst out laughing.

“Did you really draw him?” he asked her as he took another sip of that fresh beer.

“I did, yes! And here's proof.”

She opened her journal to that drawing she had made for him back up at her dad's house. Greg took another sip from his glass and he raised his eyebrows at it.

“Oh, shit,” he sputtered. “I'm in trouble now.”

“He also told me to keep it between us—yeah, I don't get it, either.”

“He wants the three of us all to be hot shit,” Greg explained, “at least that's what I think he wants—I dunno, I can't read his mind. That's a gorgeous drawing, by the way.”

“So,” she stated as she closed the journal and gave her hair a toss, “what do you say?”

“Can I at least have my drink first?” he asked her with a sly little smirk on his face.

“Of course! Take your time with it.”

The door swung open right then and it caught the both of them off guard. Sam whirled around and she recognized that rich black curled hair and that little cleft in his chin.

“Hey, Charlie!” she greeted him, and his face lit up when he recognized her.

“Oh, hey!” He threw his arms around her. “Oh my gosh, I feel like I haven't seen you in ages—how are you?”

“I'm well—I've been living!”

“I should tell you—I got in touch with a woman who might help you out with promoting your art because you need it, Sam. You really do.”

“I'm not sure, though, Charlie,” she confessed. “I'm just trying to find my voice in the wake of being in school.”

“Take it anyways,” Greg told her as he took another sip of beer.

“She also offered to help Marla out, too,” he added, “because you ladies are damn well and good at it.” He handed her a little creamy white card with the words “Scarlett Valentine: art agent—New York, New York” inscribed on the front in rich red swirled letters.

“So should I call her whenever I can or whenever it's convenient for her?” she asked him.

“Whenever you can,” he replied, “mention my name, too—tell 'er you've been Benante'd as a result of this.” His expression then turned serious. “Also, I have good news and some bad news, and they kind of go hand in hand.”

“Go ahead,” she coaxed him as she tucked the card into the interior pocket of her purse.

“Good news is Anthrax is heading back into the studio, hopefully soon,” he said in a single breath. “Bad news is I'm not sure what Joey's doing right now, but I don't think he'll be joining us.”

Sam frowned at that. “What do you mean?” she asked him.

“I called him yesterday and we talked—for a long time, almost two hours. He's not really feeling good even though I told him he sounds good and we kind of need him.”

“What do you think he should do?” Greg chimed in from behind her.

“Well, I told him—take your time with it. When it happens, I'll call you and tell you about it. Your well being and your health comes first. I really want him on it, just to clear up any confusions that he might have about it. He thought we had fired him, for god's sake.”

“What if he says yes to it?” Sam added.

“If he says yes to it,” Charlie continued, “it'll be up to him as to how he does it. Vocals come last, you know.”

“Absolutely! I hope he can do it.”

“I hope he can, too,” he admitted. “Scott's written a bunch of new songs and I can't really imagine anyone else singing them. I mean—I can kind of, but I know they would fit Joey's voice like a glove. They were made with him in mind.”

“Who else can you imagine singing them?” Sam asked him.

“Mark from Death Angel, believe it or not. Just 'cause they have a similar range.”

“Yeah, they do!” Greg chuckled at that.

“That reminds me,” Charlie wagged a finger at him, “a word, Gregory.”

He opened the door and stepped out first; Greg followed right behind him, and the last thing he did for Sam was shrug his shoulders.

“Eventually,” he mouthed to her all the while, and then he followed Charlie out of there and back into the hallway. She spotted Alex by the door, and thus, once she tucked her journal into that courier bag, she headed over to him.

“Hey, you,” he greeted her as he took off his sunglasses and showed off those deep eyes to her.

“So that little bet you made with me,” she started with him and with her arms folded across her chest, “how if I drew you, that I had to do it with Greg—” She stopped and he slowly turned his attention to her with his eyes wide open like big marbles.

“Did you?” he blurted out, stunned.

“I almost did. He didn't seem to ready about it—not like you.”

“You'll have other chances,” he said with a wink, and she gave him a little smirk as a result of that and she knew she would have more chances to see sexy Alex at his best as well.

“By the way, what happens if I don't do it with him?” she asked him in a low voice. Alex shifted his weight right before her and then he walked around her back to that room. She followed him back inside, right as he took a seat before that table. He gestured for her to take a seat in front of him, and she did, albeit with her courier bag on the table top next to her. He shifted the chair around so he faced her straight on. He set his hands on her knees and he lingered right before her face as if about to kiss her. Instead his eyes closed part of the way as if he was seducing her right then and there.

“Come on tour with us?” he whispered to her.

“I'd have to pick up and leave more and more, though,” she pointed out.

“You'd be with us, though. You'd be with me.”

“But what about our secret, though? Our keeping ourselves a secret?”

“Greg can take secrets to his grave,” he said, “and I can, too.”

The palms of his hands pressed right into her knees. Her chest rose up a bit as he closed his eyes and took in the smell of her shampoo on the right side of her head. She brought her hands to his chest as if about to push him back. Instead, she stood to her feet and he followed suit.

They were alone in that room together.

She kissed him right on those soft lips and all the while, she kept her hands on his chest. His body was warm and soft even while being so thin. He was so sensual and tender towards her, such that she wondered where this side of Alex had been this whole entire time. He was like a diamond fresh out of a mine, or a rock straight off of the summit of Mount Whitney: all he needed was a bit of polishing and then she could have a better look at him.

She could still taste the ginger from the ginger snaps on his lips.

She could feel that right amount of softness staying perfectly intact all around his hips and his waist. She thought about his sentiments about getting so heavy by the time he reached middle age, and she smirked at the thought of Alex getting chubby while staying as lovely and sensual as ever.

He brought his hands up her back towards the hooks on her bra. She could feel the warmth from his chest and his stomach, that sweet sense of fever. She could feel how firm he was getting in between his legs. She moved her head back from him and she gazed right into those deep eyes.

“Careful,” she warned him in a near whisper. “We go a little bit far with it, I'll end up like Aurora.”

“We won't,” he whispered back to her. “I promise you, Samantha—I won't go that far with it.”

Sam brought her mouth to the side of his neck once again for another little love bite there, but instead she kept her nose there. She relished in his scent, there on his skin and on the underside of his hair. She kept her hands right over his hips: his skin resembled to silk. She imagined him even softer and more tender than ever at one point. The softer and the rounder he was, the more she could hold him and feel him.

“Mmm, baby—” she whispered to him.

“Baby, is that what you called me?” he retorted back to her.

“'Cause you're soft and sweet like a baby,” she told him and she ran her tongue along her top row of teeth. She ran her fingers through his soft black curls and he tilted his head back a bit and showed off more of his neck to her. For a fleeting moment, she thought about that encounter in the closet with Frank back in Charlie's old apartment. The way in which she caressed his soft lush hair, except Alex's hair was even more plush and even lighter. She brought her lips back to his, but she never kissed him.

Instead, she moved her right hand to the front of his jeans.

“What if I—” Her fingers caressed over the zipper and the button. She was about to slither down even further when he flinched back a bit.

“Easy now,” he warned her in a husky voice.

“What?” she teased him.

“You do that, I might not keep it together later tonight when I go to bed.”

“Oh, yeah, like you'd have a wet dream about me.”

He nibbled on his bottom lip and gazed on at her in the dim light: those deep eyes as deep and dark as they had ever been up to that point.

“I actually have had a couple of wet dreams about you,” he confessed.

“Oh, have you now?”

“Yeah. It's funny—I didn't think I'd have wet dreams about anyone before.”

“All dripping wet and hot,” she teased him.

“Not if I get you dripping wet and hot first—”

“You want me to bite you again?” she offered him.

“How 'bout down by my belt this time?” he suggested. “The last time—when you got me right here on my neck—I had hell of a time explaining it to my parents when they saw it. My mom was like 'oh mah gawd, Alex, what were ya doin'!”

She burst out laughing and then she clasped a hand to her mouth so as to not to draw attention to herself. Alex lowered his eyelids a bit as if seducing her himself, but she was the one who had done it in the first place. He lifted the hem of his shirt and showed her his slim stomach to her: the edge of his belt hung right underneath his belly button so she could do it with such ease.

The door hung ajar by about an inch but she knew no one else was around. Eric, Greg, and Charlie had gone somewhere else in there, but they were alone as far as she could tell.

Alex leaned back on the table so she could better reach his waist. With the tips of her fingers, she caressed his smooth white skin there over his belt first.

She brought her teeth onto his skin for a gentle nibble. She tried to imagine him with a bit of weight on his body at the same time, all from eating too many ginger snaps.

To think she was a few inches right above his genitals all the while.

“C'mon, Samantha, you can do it a little harder than that,” he encouraged her with his voice still husky and low. She nibbled a little harder on his skin and he gave her a soft groan from the inside of his throat in return.

“C'mon—you can do it,” he encouraged her again, that time through gritted teeth. A little harder and he started to breathe harder as a result. His chest heaved from the feeling there.

“Oh, god, that's hot—”

She closed his eyes as she nibbled on his skin, a sweet little love bite. Alex breathed harder and he gave her soft little whimpers all the while.

“I'm a bad boy,” he blurted out. “I'm a bad boy! Suck me—suck me—like you did last time—I'm a bad boy, Samantha.”

She put her lips there for a little sucking, and she traded in between the two. Her lips puckered and her teeth ground up against his skin, right there next to his belly button.

More silence ensued on the other side of the door so she traded in between the two for what felt like an eternity. All the while, Alex breathed harder as if he had just run a mile.

She bit extra hard on him and he gasped from the feeling.

“Tasty,” she whispered as she slithered her tongue along that little bit of bruised skin there. She had left a genuine bruise the size of a dime there on his skin, right next to his belly button. Alex let out a low whistle.

“Oh, man, that was hot,” he whispered to her as she finished up with a few little kisses there. “That was really hot.”

“Sam?”

She kept her lips there on Alex's skin as she glanced over to the door. Ruben's voice carried in from right there behind the door.

“Damn it,” he muttered. She gave him another kiss there and then she tickled him there. “Easy now.” He giggled at that and she moved up to his face; he kept his shirt pushed back so she leaned up right against his bare belly and gazed right into those deep eyes. His body was warm and soft, much warmer and softer than before that little vampire bite.

“So now what?” he asked her in a broken voice.

“I go hang out with my daddy now,” she told him, “I think he's gonna take me home, too.”

He pouted his lips to her a bit as if he beckoned another kiss from her. He closed his eyes so his face was extra soft. She moved in closer to him, right before his lips, but neither of them did anything further.

“Go to bed and dream of a beautiful gray stripe,” he breathed right into her mouth. He then looked right into her face, complete with the come hither look in his eyes and a softness about his face.

“You know I will, sweet boy,” she whispered to him.

“Sam?” Ruben called out from the next room.

“I have to go, baby,” she told Alex in a soft voice.

“I'll see you soon,” he vowed to her with a wink. She moved away from him and she ran her fingers through her hair before she picked up her bag and headed out of there, as warm as the sunny day outside. She smiled back at him as he shook his head and in turn his hair about: he showed her his slender neck and his beautiful pale skin all the while. The little tuft of gray over his forehead seemed to glimmer even under the dim light there.

“If you see Aurora again,” he said, still in a husky voice, “you should talk to her.”

“You think so?” she asked him, and he nodded at her.

“You really should.”

“Okay, baby.” She flashed him a wink before she ducked out of there. She spotted Ruben at the far end of the hallway there, and his face lit up at the sight of her.

“There you are!”

She greeted him with a hug and a little pat on the cheek. Ruben treated her to lunch at the bistro next door: they sat there on the porch which overlooked a small stretch of grass, still lush and green with the onset of springtime all around them. While he was inside there, she spotted Zetro and the guys from Exodus on the far side of the grass. She noticed something round and orange over their heads. She knew she had to see more of them as well.

Zetro lifted his right leg and chucked the Frisbee from underneath his thigh to a few kids on the far side. The Frisbee landed on the grass not even a foot away from him and they all burst laughing at that. Sam propped her chin up on the palm of her hand and watched them.

A woman stepped onto the porch right before her, and she recognized that head of black hair and those Korean features. She looked exhausted. It didn't help matters that her belly protruded out so massively at that point, such that her blouse struggled to stay over the roundest part.

“God, Aurora's huge already,” Sam remarked to herself. “She looks like she just ate a whole turkey.” She chuckled at that, but then she thought about what Alex had told her before. She knew what he meant by that: he had forgotten the whole thing between her and Aurora, which meant it was time for her. She took off her sunglasses and Aurora flashed a glimpse over at her before she stepped inside of there.

Her blouse was tight up top and Sam struggled to fathom how she could get any bigger.

“Aurora—” Sam started and she dropped her gaze down to her big belly. She looked as though she was ready to give birth any second there as she pressed a hand to the small of her back.

“Sam,” she greeted back to her.

“C'mere,” Sam coaxed her.

Aurora kept that one hand on top and her other hand on the small of her back. She was enormous and Sam tried to think about her pregnant with her daughters.

“When are you due?” Sam asked her, much to her surprise.

“You know, I'm glad you're here and I'm glad you asked,” she said.

“Really?” Sam glanced over her shoulder as if someone listened in on them.

“I'm due next month, actually,” Aurora continued, “although—” She ran her other hand over her belly. “—it feels like it could be way sooner than that. I'm having a son.”

“Aw, that's cool.”

“You're about to say hello to Theodore Samuel Young-St. Vitus,” she added, to which Sam gasped.

“Samuel!”

Aurora nodded her head and Sam lunged for her with her arms wide open: her breasts were snug and so tight, and her belly rose out before her, as hard as a rock, and yet it felt like hugging her mother. The first time she had hugged her in so long. Those old wounds, while still raw, could heal from the mere sound of his name.

“It's the least I can do,” Aurora explained. “I really feel terrible for having been such a bad friend to you after Emile and I got married. It's my way of apologizing to you as well as thanking you for being such a good friend to me. Being a mom has made me reconsider just about everything, Sam, especially when it comes to my friendships.”

They held one another once again and Sam was about to leak out even more tears.

“We both went to New York from here in California,” she recalled with a slight break in her voice; she moved back again for another look into Aurora's face, round and glowing with the life within her.

“You went with the boys where I settled down with a single boy,” she noted, and her face fell at the sound of that.

“Do you ever feel like you could continue with it?” Sam asked her with a sniffle.

“Somewhat,” she confessed, “although I can't imagine not being a mother, though. I love my daughters and I already love Teddy—”

The door swung open and Ruben stepped back out onto the porch with a root beer float in either hand. Zetro said something on the far side of the grass right then, something about Exodus' new album being about women and children first; Aurora backed up from him.

“Oh, my god, those look good,” she remarked as he took his seat across from Sam.

“Sam's mother always wanted ice cream when she was pregnant, too,” Ruben joked. Aurora kept one hand on her lower back as she headed inside for something. Sam picked up her glass and held it out as to give a toast.

“To our boys, Testament,” she said.

“To our boys,” Ruben echoed, and they clinked their glasses together. Sam sipped through the red and white striped straw right then.

“Aurora's a trooper,” he noted. “When your mom was about to have you, she had lots of energy. Even the day she gave birth to you, it was like nothing was about to slow her down.” He shook his head. “Not gonna lie to you, Sam. I miss your mom sometimes.”

“What's done is done, though,” she said.

“What's done is done, right. It's a new chapter of life.”

“She's having a little boy,” she told him, “and they're naming him Theodore Samuel Young-St. Vitus.”

Ruben raised his eyebrows at that.

“His middle name is gonna be Samuel!” he exclaimed, and Sam couldn't help but choke up at that.

“She's naming her kid after me,” she sputtered, and Ruben stood up and held her close to him. She sniffled and brushed a tear from her eye. “Teddy. He's gonna be named Teddy, too.”

“I just think of teddy bears,” Ruben confessed, “or better yet—graham crackers.”

Sam thought about Alex right then. She thought of running her hand down the small of his back and she pressed herself closer to his body. Still soft despite having reached his twenties and having lost enough weight to where he was so thin. Soft like a teddy bear himself.

Holding Aurora close to her body made her want to hold onto him even more as she gave her father a big hug.

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tiffthenerd01 · 4 years

Note

bokurodai or bokuakakurotsuki, bed sharing?

I swear I never forgot about this ask. I pushed it aside because I wasn't confident enough to write the characters together, but now that I've gained more experience, I'm gonna give it a go!

Sammich- Bokurodai Bed Sharing

This is not what they signed up for in the slightest. A captains' training camp, yes; only one bed between three of them, no. Not that it was a small bed by any means, but they're three guys from different teams. For a solid ten seconds Daichi had considered the floor and then realized there wouldn't be enough room even if they didn't have luggage. The inn is small and so is the camp, but only one bed small? Apparently.

"I guess there is no other option," Kuroo sighs deeply, "we're about to become instant best friends."

Daichi simply gives him the side eye before nodding as Bokuto laughs and slaps Kuroo on the back. All three of them choose spots for their luggage in the small room and change into their respective uniforms using the tiny bathroom that's attached then leave to attend the first day of the three days of camp.

By the time dinner is done and they've taken their baths that one bed looks like heaven. Between actually playing volleyball and being lectured on how to be the best captain possible, everyone's stamina is gone.

"Should we play rock, paper, scissors to see who sleeps in the middle?" Kuroo asks with a smirk.

"Nope, it's me!" Bokuto volunteers before bouncing into the bed and sliding under the covers in the middle. "I'm everyone's best friend so it makes sense that this is my spot."

"Oya?" Kuroo quirks an eyebrow at him.

"Oya, oya," Bokuto assures him. Daichi just watches the exchange before chuckling to himself.

The three of them had talked extensively over the course of the day, during breaks, meals, and team building exercises. So, it's not like he isn't sure about them, in fact, he's already rather comfortable with them, but it's clear the two of them are a lot closer.

Climbing into bed isn't a ceremonious affair and they all settle in quickly, ready to sleep off the long day. Except for Daichi who is awoken abruptly not even ten minutes after he drifts off.

It seems Bokuto moves around a lot because Daichi finds himself halfway off the mattress with Bokuto's butt pushing against his hip. First he attempts to shake Bokuto awake to no avail followed by whispering his name loudly which also proves to be a futile effort. It does, however, wake up Kuroo.

"What is your issue, Daichi?" Kuroo grumbles at him.

"Bokuto is pushing me off the bed with his ass," Daichi huffs back at him.

"Ah, yeah, he does that sometimes," Kuroo mumbles, reaching behind him and pulling Bokuto closer to him, "just push back if it happens again, he's pretty pliant."

Settling down again, Daichi slips off to sleep for a couple of hours before waking up again this time because he's shivering violently. No, he and Bokuto are both shivering against each other and of course, Daichi is barely staying on the bed thanks to Bokuto. Doing as Kuroo suggested, he pushes Bokuto back and then rolls over to find the blanket which is wrapped around the cat captain himself.

"Kuroo," Daichi says loudly, waking both of the other men, "share the blanket or I'll make sure Bokuto asses you off the bed next."

Bokuto giggles tiredly and takes their share of the blanket back. "Poor Daichi is having a rough night," he comments playfully.

"Thanks to the two of you," Daichi murmurs as he covers up again.

"That can be solved," Bokuto tells him before he practically springs out of bed and shoves Daichi into the middle spot.

As much as he wants to protest, Daichi is too tired and instead falls back to sleep, warm and safe from the edge.

Weak sunlight filters in through the crack in the curtains and birds are faintly chirping when Daichi wakes up again. To his surprise he can't move and upon further inspection finds that he is wrapped up in Kuroo's arms. Part of him wants to yell Kuroo's name while the other part wants to stay there. And he does for another ten minutes where he is nearly falling asleep again until Kuroo begins to stir.

A kiss to his forehead has him opening his eyes and it's followed by a raspy 'G'morning, Bo.'

"Good morn-" Daichi cuts off and tenses.

Kuroo pulls back and squints at him for a moment before mumbling, "wrong one."

"Yes, wrong one," Daichi whispers, wishing that wasn't the case and then internally yelling at himself for thinking that way. Another kiss to his forehead makes him stop.

"Good morning, Daichi," Kuroo murmurs into Daichi's messy hair. It takes a moment for Daichi to register that Kuroo did it on purpose and not teasingly either.

Burying his face in Kuroo's chest, voice muffled, he replies "good morning, dear." The deep vibration in Kuroo's chest tells Daichi that Kuroo is laughing, but he doesn't let go of him.

Bokuto presses to Daichi's back and holds the other two men in his arms. "Now the sammich is complete," Bokuto informs them happily.

"Sammich?" Daichi asks, pulling away enough to look at Kuroo and over his shoulder at Bokuto.

"Mmhmm'" Kuroo agrees, "it's always just Bokuto and I, but with you here we have a whole sammich."

Burying his face again, Daichi says, "I like being part of this sammich."

#answer the ask #tiff tells #this time tiff tells a story #bokurodai #bokuto koutarou #kuroo tetsurou #sawamura daichi #haikyuu #hq #bed sharing #humor #fluff

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misha-moose-dean-burger-lover · 4 years

Note

So I want a fanfic crossover. Supernatural and Good Omens. Good omens Gabriel is scaring Sam Winchester shitless. So Spn Gabriel fights the snobbie bastard

Sam walks out of the shower, hands combing through his wet hair. The water trickles down the back of his neck, and slides over the slope of his chest, all the way down to where his hip-bones peek from above a loosely wrapped towel.

“Thank you for my pornography,” Breathes out a voice, stunned and silly - and it’s a voice Sam’s never heard before, so he freezes midstep.

He turns to face the intruder - slowly, in case he has any weapons pointed at him - but all there is, is a man wearing a white scarf, sitting in a fairly ridiculous fashion with his knees crossed, and black hair done up slick. He’s - powerful, if Sam’s instincts are anything to go by. And they are.

Last of all, there’s an obtuse smile on his face which Sam files away as foolish.

“Who are you?” He growls at the man, suddenly conscious of the fact that he’s not wearing any clothes, when he tries to reach for his gun. “And how did you get in here?”

“I’m Gabriel, and I cannot say. Not my department.” The man declares, way too pompous for his words.

Sam squints at him. “You’re not Gabriel.”

“Of course I am.” Not-Gabriel’s face does something weird, and his eyes widen. He says it like it’s the only spot of truth in a sky full of lies. And he says it like he’s not used to repeating himself. “I’m Archangel fucking Gabriel!”

Sam’s about to retort that he’s clearly not, because Gabriel’s short, and dressed usually in smaller Dean-like outfits - but his attention is captured by another part of the sentence.

“Archangel.” He repeats, swallowing.

For some reason, Sam doesn’t think he’s lying. There’s an archangel in his room. And Sam doesn’t have any knives or guns - or pants or shirts, for Christ’s sake. He was not expecting something like this to come up -

“Indeed.” Not-Gabriel pipes into his reverie. “And you are -”

“Sam. I’m Sam Winchester.” Sam’s hands instinctively go to where he’s tucked the towel, securing it there. Not-Gabriel’s eyes wander his form, though they’re not exactly predatory. More like inspecting, like he’s about to employ Sam to fight in a war for him. Which is not entirely crazy to assume, since it’s happened before.

“I was just going to say,” He corrects Sam. “You’re not soft.” Sam frowns harder. “But it’s okay. You’ve gotten to introduce yourself and all that. Good for you.” In a fraction of a second, his voice traverses the distance from cheerful to irritated. “Now shut your stupid mouth and take me to Sandalphon already.”

“Sandal-who?” Sam lets out, before shaking his head. “You’re not going anywhere. In fact, I’m not -”

“How dare you?” Not-Gabriel stands up, and Sam jumps back involuntarily. There’s something intimidating about a man who’s clearly not been refused a lot of things.

He inches closer to Sam, who continues to back away, now on purpose. “Wait!” He protests, blinking annoyedly, and Sam notices that this man - archangel - has purple eyes. He’s never seen eyes like his before - and all they are, to him, are weird.

But he realizes they’re meant to be beautiful.

“Stop getting away from me!” Not-Gabriel whines, frustratedly, like an archangel who hasn’t killed a lot of humans, or even mojo-smashed them against walls. If this were one of the archangels Sam’s known before, he’d have gotten flung out of the way at least thrice. “Stop it!”

He raises his hand.

Sam’s eyes widen.

The Winchesters’ secret to never backing down from a staredown with an all-powerful immortal is to keep reaffirming to yourself that had they actually wished to kill you, you’d be dead already. If they’re waiting, they just want to scare you. Or are really into monologuing. It had been John’s mantra - though it had worked a thousand more times for Dean and him.

But this feels different.

This archangel isn’t waiting for him to fall to his knees and beg for his life, or to lecture him on victimization. He’s just trying to reach Sam, before he smites him. Maybe he hasn’t done a lot of long-distance smitings, wherever the fuck he’s from, cause Sam knows firsthand that those work.

Not-Gabriel lets out an irritated huff. “I asked you to -”

Sam takes a larger step back. For the first time in a long time, he’s actually scared. He’s trying not to let it show - but he knows it might. He knows that this might be it. All his life, all those monsters, all of that evil - and this is how he goes out.

He doesn’t even have Dean - or Cas - right here.

This is it.

“STOP!”

This voice, Sam knows.

“Gabriel!” He turns, and his eyes seek out the source - the right Gabriel. He’s wearing a scowl, and carrying a blade Sam hasn’t seen in a long time. “You’re back.”

For what is probably the first time in their entire acquaintance, Gabriel looks past Sam. Weirdly, it’s the one time Sam’s half-naked, and goddamn damp.

Instead, he focuses his glare on the Not-Gabriel - who’s glued to the floor, indignant look on his face, as if mildly displeased by the inconvenience Sam caused him by not allowing him to kill him. “I knew you’d be here.” Gabriel - Sam’s Gabriel - says to his impostor.

“Who is he?” Sam demands, because it’s evident that Gabriel knows.

“I already told you!” Not-Gabriel recoils, looking a mixed shade of appalled and aghast. “I’m -”

“You’re not Gabriel.” Sam glares back, interrupting. He still feels winded, but trying to pretend he’s not, is much easier now that Gabriel’s here too. “Hell, if you had been, this place would be filled with candy-wrappers at this point!”

It isn’t a very good point, but it’s the first thing which comes to his mind. And Gabriel gives him a look which assures him he’s delivered it well.

“I do not sully the temple of my celestial body with,” Not-Gabriel furrows his eyebrows. “Gross matter.”

“That’s enough.” Gabriel cuts him off, sounding more passionate than before. Must’ve been the insult to his dietary habits. “First you show up in this Universe, Gabriel, and then you show up in Sammich’s room, and now you call candies gross! Oh, you’re -” He starts to advance, blade in stance -

Sam steps in. “So he is Gabriel?” He pauses. “The Archangel?”

“Yeah.” Gabriel finally answers.

Sam stares at him, incredulously.

“But he’s from a world where Luci’s a horned underground devil, some Crowley’s the snake of Eden’s garden, and Michael and Dad are women!”

***

Chuck leans back on his revolving chair, hands crossed behind his head and an easy smirk on his face.

"Is that all?" Asks his editor, the poor angel whose duty in creation is to read whatever God writes, the moment he writes it. And spur him on, probably, but godly writers don't get writer's block. All they get is an inflated ego from something they've written.

"For today, yeah!" Chuck thunders, and it's almost scary. Because he's all-powerful and loud. "Isn't it amazing? All you gotta do is insert some famous quotes between the lines, and -"

The angel didn't tell Chuck that the quotes weren't between the lines. They were a little bit extra and everywhere, was what they were.

"What happens next?" He asks then, instead of what he wants to know: is all of this even leading up to somewhere?

Chuck answers with a smug grin. "I'll make something up. That's not the point. It's going to be a hit."

The angel nervously smiles, as Chuck goes on. Of course he does. He's not done being full of himself, just yet.

"Readers love crossovers!"

#supernatural #good omens #supernatural crack #chuck shurley #sam winchester #gabriel #go gabriel #sabriel #chuck only cares about readers and not about the plot but it's okay cause at least he puts in quotes 😂#crossover au #spn goodomens crossover #good omens gabriel #sam winchester stan #sam winchester crack #gabriel crack #sam x gabriel #spn fluff #go fanfiction

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rynhaswritersblock · 4 years

Text

hallway bookworm (hc) | p.p.

a/n: hi my name's ryn and i'm in love with writing headcanons... they let me show my two personalities: deep-loving-philosophical-bubbly + memebot-rat-tiktoker-minecraftGOD which i ADORE

summary: girls reading and crying while walking in the hallway sure do seem to have an effect on peter parker.

warnings: some cussing (as per usual), uhhhhh fluff?? yeah????? oh yeah and terrible writing i couldn't deliver as well as i wanted i'm sorry

+ + +

- AIGHT FOLKS so listen

- you're in the middle of a really good book, right?

- like, really good

- btw pretend this is your favorite book

- so you're like right in the middle of a SUPER important scene and guess what

- the GODDAMN BELL DECIDED TO RING

- TIME TO GO TO CLASS

- BUT ARE YOU GOING TO STOP READING?

- ?????

- ???????????????

- HELL NO!

- so you're like... autopiloting your way to class, nose stuffed in book, tears streaming down your face bc you're at a serious part

- and that's when peter parker sees you for the first time

- NOW

- we all know that peter is a complete disaster

- especially when it comes to pretty girls in the hallway who also appear to be nerds according to the fact that they're literally reading and crying while walking to class in the middle of a highschool hallway during passing

- so naturally

- this mans stops walking

- let's be honest: who expected peter effin parker to be able to function after seeing what he saw??

- who?????

- "peter-"

- unresponsive.

- "peter, move your flat ass," ned mutters, shoving him from behind as peter watches you walk in the opposite direction to your class

- he finally regains himself (jeez)

- poor guy's heart is racing and chocolate eyes are wide in bewilderment as he stumbles alongside ned to physics

- "why do you look like you just did drugs for the first time, dude"

- "i just saw a girl"

- "of course you did"

- "no, nED" peter says, looking over at his best friend, a smirk on ned's lips.

- "she was like, reading a book, tears streaming down her face. and she was still walking without even watching where she was going! and she was like, beautiful, too, ned-"

- "jesus, peter! calm down. but yeah, i saw her. that was y/n." ned states, way too calm for peter's chaos

- this man stops in his tracks

- "you know her?!"

- "yeah, like everybody does. she's not one of those people, but like, she's really nice and funny and she's captain of the debate team." (a/n: if one of y'all DARES to say something like "couldn't be me" or "bitch i wish".... first of all this is fanFICTION so we're all pretending to be a better version of ourselves WOOT WOOT and second you can be anything you put your mind to my dudes!!!!!!)

- peter sighs as they walk into class, mind stuck on your name, not paying attention to the lesson at all

- ...WHEW

- so that was very in-depth

- in case you couldn't tell

- NOW HERE'S A SUPER ROCKING FUN TIME (babysitting service iykyk) LIST OR WHATEVER OF THE REST OF THE STORY YAYYYYYYYYYYY

- peter became dedicated to finding out your classes and where you'd be at certain times just so he could see you for at least a second

- like

- homeboy was WHIPPED

- and to his luck

- !!!!!!

- one day after a particularly long day of school, our boy headed into delmar's to get his sammich (i giggled while writing sammich fyi) before he went on patrol

- and GUESS WHO WAS SITTING AT ONE OF THE TABLES, LEGS CURLED TO YOUR CHEST, BOOK IN ONE HAND AND SANDWICH (sammich) IN THE OTHER?????

- YOU!!

- the boy froze in his spot, the door almost crushing him as it flew back in the doorway before he finally snapped out of his trance

- his gaze didn't leave you as he walked up to the counter, mr. delmar clearing his throat after a few seconds to get pete's attention

- "oh! sorry,"

- "it's fine, kid. i see you're particularly interested in that young lady-"

- "UM i'll have a number five with pickles and smush it down real flat, please, thanks" the words tumbled out of peter's mouth, cutting mr. delmar right off

- the man's laugh rumbled as he nodded his head

- pete hesitated before leaning over the counter

- "you wouldn't, uh, you wouldn't know anything about her, would you?"

- a knowing grin tugged at mr. delmar's lips

- "y/n. she comes here at least twice a week, orders the number eight with a coca-cola every time, and always reads a book while eating."

- a slight, crooked grin grew on peter's face as he comprehended everything

- "good to know, thank you, mr.-"

- "go and sit with her."

- HAHA

- FUNNY

- POOR PETER'S FACE JUST

- HIS EYES GOT WIDE AND CHEEKS BLOOMED BRIGHT RED

- HAHAHA

- "you want me to.. what now?"

- " go sit with her. she won't bite." with that, mr. delmar handed the kid his sandwich and a pack of gummy worms, nudging his head in the direction of you

- peter nervously took the items, clearing his throat and mustering up all the confidence he had (which honestly wasn't much, especially since he wasn't in the spider-suit)

- and he walked over to you and plopped down right across from you

- you jumped (scaredy-cat), eyes leaving the page and meeting peter's, a look of surprise instantly etching your face that made peter regret every decision he'd ever made

- you relaxed slightly when you recognized the face in front of you, setting your book down (still keeping it open though)

- "oh, hi, peter,"

- HI WHO??????

- ME??????????????????

- THIS BOY COULD NOT COMPREHEND THE NAME THAT JUST LEFT YOUR LIPS

- "you know my name?" peter stuttered out incredulously

- "of course i do, you're on the decathlon team. plus i'm friends with ned and sometimes he just can't shut up about you."

- homeboy silently scolded himself for not even knowing who you were until like a week ago

- "oh," he laughed nervously, "cool,"

- ako-taco moment of silence

- "i'm y/n," you blurt, "by the way,"

- "i know," peter nervously laughs

- by SOME force of nature

- the two of you strike up a conversation!! YAY PETER

- you talk about the book you're reading and decathlon and debate and school and life and stuff

- and honestly peter just about forgets he has to go on duty

- until he hears sirens in the background, eyes widening

- "UHM, uh, i just remembered my aunt needs me home-"

- this kid rambles on a bit too much

- you laugh and wave him away

- "go do your thing. it was great talking to you, peter"

- poor petey was going to FAINT if you said his name like that again

- and so

- THE RELATIONSHIP HAS BEGUN! (reread that in korg's voice it makes it even better)

- peter would often hang around delmar's longer just in case you'd be there

- he deadass made spider-man a second priority to you (although he didn't admit it)

- he's WHIPPED

- alrighty guys real talk i'm in love with this whole concept itself but i don't know how to deliver it right so i'm just gonna give a brief rundown of the rest of the story and let you guys' imaginations do the rest

- you two keep running into each other at delmars

- eventually it leads to you two hanging out at peter's apartment (HOMEBOY WAS HIGHKEY FREAKING OUT LETS JUST SAY)

- (HAVING A PRETTY GORL IN HIS ROOM MADE HIS HEART BEAT LIKE HOW IT DOES ON THE LAST ROUND OF MARIO KART IYKYK)

- and you two become gr8 friends!!!!!!

- UNTIL

- PETER WORKS UP THE BALLS TO ASK YOU OUT YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

- and you live happily ever after woot woot

+ + +

the writing in this sucked

it's a really cute concept i am just unable to deliver

oh well lmao

#peter parker #tom holland #peter parker imagines #marvel #mcu #spiderman #peter parker x reader #spiderman x reader #fanfic #fluff #writing #peter #parker #thomas holland

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shipper-trash-bag · 4 years

Text

TV Time

Gabriel had been staying at the bunker for three and a half years, and for every single one of those days, he’d been flirting with Sam in one way or another. When they were researching and Sam figured out whatever it was he was trying to find, Gabriel said he had a sexy brain. When Sam would come back from a jog, he’d offer a ‘different kind of cardio’ if Sam was interested in sweating together with a saucy wink. When they went grocery shopping together, he’d slide in the largest box of condoms in the cart with a double eyebrow pump and a simple ‘just in case’. Even when Gabriel got so sick he had to be hospitalized for three days, puking his guts out with a nurse running a cold cloth on his head, he still flirted with Sam before passing out due to exhaustion.

Sam was annoyed after the first six months, but by the full year mark, he just figured he’d let Gabriel tire himself out and it’ll be over. Not the case. In fact, the past three weeks between the two of them saw Gabriel doing little things for him around the bunker without being asked, too. He ironed Sam’s Fed clothes, brought him coffee first thing every morning, even went so far as to help Dean with organizing the archive so that Sam could sleep in as long as he wanted - and needed, to be quite honest.

“I think he’s in love with you,” his mother supplied, peeling the carrots for dinner as Sam re-read the recipe.

“Huh? Wait, what? Who?”

Mary scoffed. “Gabriel, obviously. Your father loved me, but he never ironed my clothes for me. My parents had a hard time saying ‘I love you’, but they always showed it. Gabriel’s showing it to you, and you should pay attention to that.”

Sam couldn’t believe his ears. What on earth was she talking about? Gabriel flirted with everyone! Well, almost everyone.

Except for last month, and the one before, and- oh shit. She was right. Sam’s brain felt like it was exploding, but with a deep breath, he knew he had to do something about it. “Thanks mom.”

She smiled and him and nodded her head. “Of course, I’m not going to let you make a fool of yourself any longer...”

——

“Hey Sammich! Want to watch a show?”

Sam’s head snapped up from where he was hunched over the table, trying to digitize some of the older, rarer books the library held to see Gabriel already in his sleep clothes waiting expectantly. Now that his mother had pointed it out, he could see it too. The way Gabriel looked at him was more than a joke, a flirt. It was raw, vulnerable fondness, it was, very obviously, love. “I could use a break, yeah. What do you want to watch?”

Gabriel shrugged, seeming to take his time deciding. “Oh, I don’t know. You pick. Let me guess: it’s a toss up between true crime and something with a fantasy theme.”

Sam shook his head, standing and stretching his arms over his head as he felt every bone crack in his body. Everyone else had gone off to bed, but the two night owls were still up, still a bit too wired to sleep. “Guilty. I’d be down for something else if it were compelling enough though.”

“Like what? I haven’t exactly been keeping up to tv trends.”

Sam lead the way to the Dean Cave, wishing he had the good sense to change out of his jeans but saying nothing on the matter. “Netflix has some good documentariy shows, including one about food and one on toys. They’re good for light watching.”

Gabriel hummed as he launched himself at the couch, earning himself an eye roll from Sam, though he wasn’t paying much attention as he turned the tv on. “As long as it’s not featuring a kidnapper or a colonel sanders looking guy, I’m easy going.”

Sam never thought Gabriel would be easy going about anything, let alone tv, but he said nothing. “Let’s watch Merlin, then. It’s been on my watch list forever and I’ve yet to start it.”

“As you wish, my lord,” Gabriel said, with a flourish.

He sat next to the shorter man, a bit closer than he usually did, and boy, if the eyebrow wiggle he receive didn’t let him know it, the smell coming off Gabriel sure did. He was equal parts rosemary and vanilla with an undercurrent of honey and electricity. It was intoxicating. How he’d never noticed it before, Sam had no idea.

It was easy watching the show together, complaining on the outdated special effects, the over the top acting, the ribbing of how oblivious Arthur was to Merlin’s magic. It was like the two of them had always had this. Like they were always meant to be together.

“I’m just saying,” Gabriel lamented a third time, “that if I had someone look at me the way he looks at him, I wouldn’t let something so trivial as a family legacy keep me from being in love.”

Sam nodded, and as he caught Gabriel’s gaze, he leaned down and did something he didn’t expect of himself, a chaste kiss.

“Woah. That was...”

“Perfect, I hope.”

Gabriel did what Sam had never expected. He melted. “Yeah, it was. But what was that for?”

“Go on a date with me?” Sam asked nervously, wondering if he was pushing his luck.

The smile on Gabe’s face said otherwise. “Yeah, I’d love to.” He’d never heard Gabriel talk so softly, so quietly before. It was like sharing a secret between them. He had that look upon his face again, that vulnerable living look that made his eyes sparkle. “When?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” Gabriel reaches out a hand and Sam clasped it fiercely back. It felt like the beginning to something great, and he could feel his heart beating so rapidly in his chest it could burst. “Want to cuddle and watch tv together?”

He nodded, hair falling in his face. “Sure,” he replied confidently, standing to grab the blanket on Dean’s favourite chair to wrap them both up in.

As far as first dates go, this one was pretty good, even if it weren’t official just yet.

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5typesoftrash · 4 years

Note

A prompt for you: Sam makes a new years wish that comes true.

This got super sappy so be prepared for about 1k of pure cheesy adorableness.

It wasn’t like Sam didn’t have dreams. He’d just, somewhere along the line, kind of given up on chasing them.

Dean claimed he wanted Sam to be happy, but he didn’t, not really. He wanted Sam to be with him, making sure that he was happy. And Sam had sort of just made his peace with that. It wasn’t as though he didn’t want his brother to be happy, and he was happy - or happy enough - when he was with his brother.

So he managed to suppress his dreams, to convince himself there was really no point in indulging in his fantasies.

At least until New Year’s Eve.

Suddenly it was “the time for dreams, Sammy, and you can’t tell me there’s not one thing you want out of life besides bein’ stuck with me all the time” and Dean was right, of course, Sam couldn’t tell him that, because it’d be a lie.

(Not that Sam didn’t lie to Dean all the time. But then, Dean lied to him all the time too, so he figured they were kind of even.)

So New Year’s Eve found Sam indulging, the exact thing he’d sworn not to do.

He prayed. Only once, and to no one in particular, but still. He prayed. I just wish I had someone to share the new year with, he whispered to his empty room. He doubted his prayer would be answered, but he prayed for it anyway.

Because, well... he was lonely. He had Dean, of course, and Cas, but Dean and Cas had each other, and they were constantly (and very publicly) demonstrating that fact, and well. It wasn’t as though Sam was particularly interested in dating either of them.

He wanted someone to share his life with, because he was a sap like that, and he knew it, so stop ribbing him for God’s sake, Dean. He just wanted a partner, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, a something.

Not that he’d get one.

Or... well, so he thought.

#~+~#

“C’mon, Sammy, have some champagne!”

Sam groaned, rubbing his forehead. “Leave me alone.”

“Sam. It’s 11:30 on New Year’s Eve. You have to get at least a little drunk before the ball drops.” Dean knelt in front of him, holding an empty champagne flute in one hand and a full bottle in the other.

“Why?” Sam demanded. “Why can’t I be sober and go to bed at a normal time?”

“Cause it’s New Year’s!” Dean announced, like it was obvious.

“Time is a social construct,” Sam argued halfheartedly. “The New Year means literally nothing to nature, only to humans.”

“Yeah, well, it means something to me, so please have a drink.”

Sam sighed. “Fine,” he muttered before wrenching the glass out of his brother’s hand, filling it with champagne, and draining half the glass. “Happy now?”

Dean grinned at him. “Hell yes, I am.”

Sam scoffed and buried his face in the couch.

Twenty-five minutes later, Dean was on the edge of his seat watching the television eagerly, Cas emulating him with a look of confusion, and Sam trying to make himself as small as humanly possible.

And then-

“Heya, Samsquatch!” a cheery voice called, and Sam groaned even louder, swore a little into the pillow his face was squished into, and pretended he didn’t exist. “Didja miss me?”

Sam sat up, glaring at the new arrival. “No. Not in the slightest.”

“You sure?” Gabriel asked, grinning as he climbed on top of Sam.

“Yep.”

“TEN!” Dean shouted, apparently oblivious to Gabriel’s presence.

“Sure you didn’t pray for me?”

Sam’s head snapped up.

“EIGHT!”

“What do you mean?” he asked cautiously.

Gabriel shrugged. “What do I mean?”

“FIVE!”

“Are you...”

Does he want me?

Did he want me like that?

Did he feel the same way back then?

Gabriel smirked.

“TWO!”

“Maybe I did, Sammich.”

“ONE! HAPPY NEW YEAR!” Dean and Cas screamed together, and Dean kissed his boyfriend passionately, and Sam, before he could stop himself, grabbed the archangel, pulled him down, and smashed their lips together.

“Happy New Year, Samaroo,” Gabriel murmured, face flushed and breathing hard.

“I hate you,” Sam muttered without any heat, trying to hide his smile.

#sabriel #deansil writes #deansil ask #sam and gabriel #new year's #fluff and cuteness #idk i just love my oblivious idiots

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kanemayfield · 4 years

Text

Chivalry... A Rest In Peace Tutorial

It may not be dead... but it definitely could use some therapy and a green juice.

I can't even re-tell this story in full, but I shall enumerate the 5 lessons of the day, and give my final thought like Jerry Springer.

1. If you are buying sammiches... at 3am... in the south bronx... let's not act like you are innocent.

Bitch ain't nothing out this time of the night except the devil, people who met him, and muhfuckers who too dumb to know better.

You're wearing a long tee shirt and knee-high boots... you're already out of line. You look like a fashionable ghost..

Unless you selling that rhubarb.

In which case your pimp or lady pimp.. or whoever answers the email on your OnlyFans page should have handled this sammich run. Doordash niggas look like berserker vikings for a reason.. they deal with creatures of the night. Like Spawn.. or Michael Jackson.

2. If a gentleman of leisure walks into a sammich shop saying "Ayooo.. I just robbed me a nigga, turn dem cammas off so I can use deez creddy cars to buy shit"

AND is DEAD serious...

Making the “I don't know math so let me fight the teacher for calling on me” face.

Yeah... you should leave him alone if you cant scrap. PERIOD. Nothing about this mans life seems like it has prepared him for complex decision making or whatever goes through the mind of people who don't beat you up.

This ain't tag team.. I don't know you OR him. Sun got on black "I shot the party up" air force 1's and NBA jeans.

If he backs that thing out and I get hit in the crossfire and you DONT... my dying breath will be used to call you all types of bitches and dog headed bitches and stank hoes. I’m not an avenger. I'm high. I ain't sign up for the Kumite. Fuck you think this is. You selling that rhubarb or what?

3. You start wilding on that crazy dude like chivalry ain't dead and my mother knows who you are, I will let you get Worldstar’d. I will watch said crazy nigga sweep your leg like Karate kid and I will go have a Pepsi. In fact, I will tell you to shut up all the screaming as I order extra fixings on my delicious sammich from Aki and say tandem Muslim prayer for you.. and high five sun as I leave the scene of your accosting. How do I sleep? Like a fucking newborn.

4. Putting your hands in the face of a crazy nigga when you're clearly not interested in telling me how handsome I am does not provide much in the way of motivation for me to go all Batman Begins on said crazy nigga.

The last thing ANYONE wants to hear after taking a few lead poisoning strenth haymakers is "aaww.. Naah, I'm into girls... but thank you sooooo much... muah 💋". So fuck that... you should have winked at me when you walked in here. I’m not a mind reader.

5. Turning to me and Aki and saying "yall just gonna let him put his hands on me?"

Yes.. yes I am.... technically YOU started it. I may say "is that lady bothering you sir".

"Oh.. yall some whole bitches... bitch ass men ain't even help a WOMAN".

Yeah... that don't make me feel bad. It makes me want to pull out my phone and see if I can find a RZA instrumental that has the BPM’s of your ass whipping. Need a good backdrop for the Kung Fu noises and sound effects I plan on adding in post edit. This could have been avoided, but you wanted to make a stand... and you did.

Now we all know who's "not allowed to ask for your phone number mid robbery”.... at 3am.... in a sammich shop... in the south bronx.

fuck outta here sun. His beef was with the dude who ain't wanna turn off the cameras for his theftwich hold the mayo (and most probably Newport 100's) so he could use credit cards he just stole.

There is a wallet deprived man suffering from blunt force trauma because this mf'er don't feel like repeating himself when he said run it...

Time is the only thing standing between him and ramen noodles with cut up beef jerky in it and telephone lectures from his baby mom bout why she not visiting this time.

Think of the thought process behind a person like that... and you want to call him all types of pussy ass niggas and fuckboy faggots and mush him in his subway series hat. You are a crazy sob. You mushed a robber...mid robbery... or theftwich or whatever....yeah.. not my problem.

MORAL TO THE STORY: If you are a woman... or a beautiful womanly man or whatever... and you are a "hands in the face" type, you might want to know how to fight. Personally, I am not a beater of wimmins, but nor am I a street vigilante. My heroics are on a case by case basis. You slapped my girl cousin... which one.. some of em might have had it coming. We are a mouthy tribe.

I don't go running off all willy nilly into trouble because a woman yells help... that's how Rosewood started.

Minding your business is a delicate process, like heart surgery, or pickpocketing. For moms and grandmoms I fight eternally, for sisters and close girl cousins.. until I get tired, but anything below that pay grade, you might want to call the cops, your man, your dad, the nigga you are currently dutty whinin', a nosy neighbour, a less jaded nigga than me, or keep your opinions to yourself in the Bronx at 3am, cause I ain't helping you. Unless (as we have covered) my mom knows you, or I think you will let me ladle that fondue as a parting gift.

Love,

Emmett ... who ain't in it

See if Aki got a cold compress for that eye.

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havenoffandoms · 6 years

Text

My love, my life

Pairing: Sabriel

Summary: They both knew this was crazy. Gabriel had been especially surprised when Sam had ‘proposed’ – if you could call the casually spoken I think we should get married a proposal at all.

Warnings: none

They both knew this was crazy. Gabriel had been especially surprised when Sam had ‘proposed’ – if you could call the casually spoken I think we should get married a proposal at all – considering that Dean would not be there to celebrate it with them. The archangel had been even more surprised when Sam had told him that he did not want anyone to be present.

“It’s not about them, Gabe… it’s about us. You are mine, and I am yours… I want there to be no doubt about that. So, let’s get married”

Gabriel had hesitated. Not only did he have the inkling of a suspicion that Sam would regret not inviting his mother, Cas and Jack – and most importantly his brother – the broken archangel also knew that marrying a human would mean going against Heaven’s most ancient laws. He had told Sam about his concerns, not wanting his lover to regret his spontaneous decision later and resent Gabriel for it. Sam had been categorical on the matter.

“Gabe, we are not even sure if we will manage to get Dean back. I don’t want to wait any longer, I want this. Dean will understand, so will the others. They’ll forgive us, but I would never forgive myself if one of us died and we never got married… please, just trust me on this, okay?”

“What about Heaven, Sammich?” Gabriel had offered weakly, feeling all resistance fade from him.

“Well, technically all Heaven forbids is the creation of nephilims. We are two males… there should be no ground for worry, right? We can’t have a child… and you’ve been having sex with other people for what, centuries now? Surely Heaven doesn’t care if you decide to commit to sleeping exclusively with me for the rest of my life?”

Damn this beautiful moose and his infallible sense of logic. Damn his law student instincts that managed to find what could be considered a fucking loophole in divine law. Sam made it extremely hard for Gabriel to say no.

“Do you know what Sammich, why the hell not. What could go wrong, eh? It would take more than the threat of a fricking apocalypse to dissuade a Winchester”

Gabriel had fully intended the sarcastic undertone; however, he could not help the small smile that appeared on his face at the sound of Sam’s happy, albeit slightly dumbfounded guffaw. The hazel eyes lit up as he met Gabriel’s golden orbs, and it made the archangel’s grace stir contently at the sight.

“So, we are doing it? We’re getting married?” Sam asked, his voice hopeful and pleading at the same time, almost as if he feared that Gabriel would change his mind last minute. The archangel offered a reassuring smile.

“Yes, Samsquatch. Let’s do it”

That’s how they ended up here. At the edge of a cliff overlooking a rough sea in the middle of nowhere, Gabriel had not been precise about their location. Sam was actually not entirely sure if the archangel had not just conjured a romantic, but imaginary setting. The sound of crashing waves travelled all the way up the precipice, a mere rustle by the time it reached Sam’s ears. The noise was soothing and contrasted with the picture of the agitated sea in the background. Not that Sam paid much attention to the scenery.

He had eyes only for Gabriel.

“You did not bring a priest as I can see…” Sam commented casually, trying to hide the fact that he was very much nervous about the whole ordeal. He was getting married … to the angel he loved. After Jessica’s death, he had never thought he would ever love someone so much that he would want to bind himself to them for the rest of his life. This was a big step, and Gabriel knew this.

“You have an actual archangel of the lord standing in front of you… really if that doesn’t do the trick, I don’t know what will” Gabriel reasoned, his voice dropping an octave as his eyebrows wiggled suggestively, “I could easily change into a priest outfit if that’s what you’re into, Sammich”

“Gabriel!” Sam punched the archangel’s shoulder disapprovingly, blushing at the implication. Gabriel merely giggled adorably.

“You are far too innocent for your own good, Sam. Now, before we begin” Gabriel clicked his fingers and before Sam knew it, he was dressed in a smart beige tuxedo over a white dress shirt, while Gabriel wore something that looked like he jumped out of a Picasso painting. It hurt Sam’s eyes to look at him, but the whole ensemble was so clearly Gabriel that it warmed the younger Winchester’s heart.

“Wow…” was all Sam managed to whisper in an awe-struck voice.

“I know, quite impressive I can pull this off, right?”

“You are… you look really handsome, actually” Sam confessed almost sheepishly, feeling his cheeks flush. Gabriel merely smiled tenderly at him, taking both Sam’s hands in his as he stood on his tip toes and placed a lingering kiss on the taller man’s lips. Sam let out a content sigh.

“You’re doing this in the wrong order…” Sam joked.

“Who says? Hollywood?” Gabriel countered wittily, winking at the human before him. This was the time both of them had been waiting for, and neither really knew how to begin, nor what to say. Sam decided to break the awkward silence that had settled between them, broken only by the crashing of the waves on the beach at the bottom of the abyss. Clearing his throat nervously, the older Winchester struggled to find the right words.

“Uh… Well, Gabriel” Sam addressed the shorter angel, shooting him a pointed look, “uh, I never considered myself a very poetic person, so bear with me if I sound over-the-top-cheesy or whatever…”

“Just go with what feels natural, Samsquatch” Gabriel advised gently, tightening his hold on Sam’s hands which gave the younger Winchester comfort. Sam nodded, offering the archangel a grateful smile. This was harder than he had expected. He knew exactly what he wanted to tell Gabriel, but he could not bring his brain to formulate this in a coherent sentence. Damn, whose idea was it to have vows?

Oh yeah, that’s right… Sam’s goddamned idea.

“Gabriel…”

I’ve never felt this strong

I’m invincible, how could this go wrong?

No, here, here’s where we belong

I see a road ahead

I never thought I would dare to tread

“… you saved me from myself. You really did, and I don’t mean the demon blood, or the PTSD because of Lucifer, or anything like that. You helped me get over Jess’ death, something I never thought would ever be possible. You made me feel like I was strong enough to face my demons. You taught me to love again, and for that… I don’t know how to thank you, or how to show you how grateful I am. I… I guess what I’m trying to say is… I love you, Gabe. And this, as crazy as this wedding is, it’s what I’ve always dreamed of. It’s something I never expected to have, so thank you for giving it to me”

Gabriel tried hard to blink the tears away that were starting to well up in his eyes. Nope, he was stronger than his human emotions. He was an archangel, for God’s sake, he could hold himself back surely. What a warrior he made now, huh? Would certainly made all the other angels laugh if they saw how pathetic the once mighty Gabriel looked like in this instant. After all, was he not the broken archangel Gabriel, who had fled all his life, who had been defiled by Asmodeus in so many ways, who was about to marry a human…

Gabriel would tell all these angels to get screwed nice and deep.

He allowed a single tear to run down his cheek, wanting Sam to see what effect he had on him. It was a sign of trust, and of vulnerability. Gabriel found he did not care what his family thought about him. There was a time where that might have been the case, but Sam had changed this. Sam gave his human side a meaning. Sam had fixed him piece by piece, and even though there was still a lot of work to be done on the whole Asmodeus-trauma front, at least Gabriel knew that he was not alone.

And he would never again be alone.

I held you close to me

Felt your heartbeat

And I thought: I am free

Oh yes, and as one are we

In the now and beyond

Nothing and no one can break this bond

“Samuel William Winchester… nah, screw this. I am not one for soppy love declarations, so I’ll keep this short and sweet, just like me” Gabriel smiled as Sam snorted. The sound his amused moose made was like music to his ears. “You are not like any human I’ve ever met before. True, I’ve met many, and you might argue that I have met a lot of humans who resemble you. You would be correct in assuming so, however… none of them ever had such a bright and appealing soul. From the first day our paths crossed, I have felt my grace being drawn to your beautiful soul. Fair enough, it was distracting at first, especially since I could track your every move… which for the record, I never did”

“Liar…” Sam smirked.

“Alright, maybe a little bit… just to make sure you were safe” Gabriel admitted, not able to look sorry if he tried, “today, I realise that I would not have it any other way. The attraction my grace felt towards your soul, this bond we shared… it was what kept me grounded when Asmodeus… well, did his thing. You say that I saved you, but sugar believe me when I say that were it not for you, I would not be here today to get married to this giant handsome moose”

Sam rolled his eyes at the last comment, but Gabriel noticed the moist eyes and the agitated fidgeting of Sam’s fingers as they rubbed the back of the archangel’s hand nervously. Sam was trying to hold back. He was trying hard not to show any emotion, and Gabriel understood. That’s the way Sam had been raised, and he had learned from being a hunter that showing your weaknesses could get you killed. The teary smile that came from the taller man was all the archangel needed to see.

“Not soppy, huh?” Sam managed to croak awkwardly, chuckling slightly as Gabriel smacked his arm playfully.

“Yeah, well you ain’t exactly an emotionless Scrooge either, pumpkin”

“Do you have more cheesy nicknames like that in your pocket, angel?” Sam teased, pulling a seemingly offended archangel close to his chest and wrapping his strong arms around his waist so Gabriel could not move away. Not that Sam could ever hope to restrain an archangel, but Gabriel always melted in his embrace. It was the younger Winchester’s ultimate weapon.

“I actually do, Samshine. In fact, cutie pie, I believe I can come up with more cheesy nicknames than you own plaid shirts, and that’s saying something considering you could put all the lumberjacks in the world to shame with your collection, sugar cane. Also, honey, how about we put a stop to the soppiness and get down to the actual ceremony, puff pastry? You think that’s a good idea, sugar?”

Gabriel rejoiced in the disgusted look on Sam’s face, trying to fit in as many stereotypical nicknames in one sentence as he could. Despite the younger Winchester’s protests, Gabriel did not relent, making his lover cringe with the sheer amount of fluff that was thrown his way.

“Okay, stop you made your point. Let’s just move on to the actual thing before it starts raining” Sam suggested, shooting a sceptic look towards the sky almost as if expecting the downpour to hit them any minute. Gabriel merely tsked him.

“Have some faith, sugar. I won’t let it rain on our wedding”

Before Sam had the time to come up with a clever remark, Gabriel placed his index over the taller man’s lips, effectively shushing him. Golden eyes bore into hazel ones, nothing but love and adoration reflected in them. Sam felt like he would melt into a puddle at Gabriel’s feet. The archangel interlaced his fingers with his lover’s, and not before long, Sam felt a pleasant warmth envelope him like a cocoon. He knew from experience that it was Gabriel’s grace reaching out for him, but this time it felt stronger, more intimate. Sam could see the shadow of Gabriel’s wings as he gently brought them to successfully shelter him and their owner from the wind. It all felt so right, and Sam knew instantly that he had made the right choice. This is where he wanted to spend the rest of his days.

“Sam… I promise you to love you as much as I love candy, and to not hold your obsession with healthy food against you. I will protect you from clowns, and tolerate your morning jogs as long as you don’t make me go with you. I value my sleep, you know. But most importantly, I promise to love you in this life and in Heaven. I promise you that we will always find our way back to each other. You are mine, and I am yours forever and always”

Sam enjoyed the warmth of Gabriel’s grace and wings around him, the comfort making him feel sleepy. His eyes fluttered shut as he took a whiff of Gabriel’s scent, feeling his muscles relax instantly. When Sam opened his eyes again, he noticed the worried and expectant glance Gabriel shot him and the younger Winchester realised he had to reciprocate the vows.

“Oh uhm sorry… I eh…” clearing his throat, Sam regained his composure before starting over, “Gabriel… I promise to love and cherish you until the end of my days, and when I’m in Heaven… If I go to Heaven…”

“Sam…”

“Not the time to talk about this, though. I love you with all my heart, and I don’t ever want to lose you. God be my witness, if he cares at all, if anything were to happen to you I would give my life in exchange for yours. You are mine, and I am yours forever and always”

The two looked at each other, secretive smiles on their faces as their faces came closer, closing the gap between their lips. Their kiss was sweet, yet filled with the passion they held for each other. Sunshine filtered through the dark clouds, basking the two in a halo of light. Almost like God was watching over them, but Sam knew deep inside that Gabriel was behind this. Not that it really mattered.

All that really mattered was him and Gabriel, lost in each other’s embrace. And that was all that would ever matter in the future.

My love, my life

Are the words I try to find

My love, my life

But I know I don’t possess you

With all my heart, God bless you

You will be my love and my life

You’re my one and only

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