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herstarburststories · 3 years

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the first step is always the hardest.

Pairing: au!dean winchester x reader

Summary: Huntercorp!Dean asks you out on a date.

A/N: I'm happy with how this one turned out. It's very different from my usual to do, but so cute! au!dean lives in my and in brazil right now sjhsjs. Anyway, this is my part for @firefly-in-darkness 2k challenge! Congrats again, honey. My prompt was “I’m just a simple man trying to make my way in the universe.” And this was requested by @anaelsbrunette.

Warnings: mutual pining and adorableness.

Some things aren't supposed to be hard. In Dean Winchester's opinion, this is one of them. What he's about to do isn't quite professional or preferred by his dad -- although, not exactly against HunterCorp's strict code of conduct. Alright, he might have to report to HR about the relationship due the anti-harassment policy if you two ever get that far, but that's another point. The fact right now is, it shouldn't be this hard to blurt out a simple 'would you like to go out with me?' towards the woman he had been pining for weeks.

Dean asked girls out before, and three out five said yes. Usually, his goofy way of flirting is enough to make them take the lead. When it doesn't happen, though, the Winchester laces his hang out proposal with wiggling brows and a suggestive smirk. They'd laugh and a date was settled.

He isn't shy. Dean gets embarrassed easily and yes, he is a little too spoiled to have a larger vision of the world, but he can get his way with the women he's interested in. Therefore, it shouldn't be that difficult, right? In theory, safely hiding in the back of his head, it isn't. The hunter remains passing some vague steps on his mind: 1.) Go to you. 2.) Try not to get lost at the sight of you. 3.) Don't try his Spanish to impress you because it's not going to work. 4.) Smile in a boyish way, just being cool. 5.) Ask you out. Samuel said it was a good plan. He just needs to execute it, get through his words and make them into actions.

So why is it so excruciatingly hard?

You, a HunterCorp's rookie, recently graduated in their new worldwide program to recruit willing hunters that weren't born in the life. You are smart, bilingual, pretty, strategic, spontaneous, and strong. You laugh loud as if joy should be going inside everyone's ear, but you also fight to kill with both words and trained combat skills. You, one of the best hunters of HunterCorp, which is the only thing Dean would ever try to say he was compared to you. You, Y/N Y/L/N, the girl with fancy red boots and tight jeans, is everything Dean never dreamed of and way out of his league.

You are a ferocious scream in civility that shakes his ground and makes him want to know how human savagery felt like after years being spoiled. You tease the green eyed hunter, never leading to evilness, and always with a beam that makes him feel lucky to be the fool to your kingdom. Dean feels comfortable with you, like taking his expensive socks off at home and chuckling with his mouth full, or even attempting a new food that makes his tongue experience marvelous flavors never felt before.

The eldest Winchester brother is almost dancing around his own feet for five minutes and counting. Gulping nervously every time he hears the noise of a door opening as he shuts his eyes, picturing the perfect ending of 'asking Y/N on a date' plan.

Okay, fine. Maybe he does have a reason for envisioning the possible difficulties of this situation. How could he not? Dean wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable by asking you out again if you said no today. It's a now or never situation. How can he not be sweating in his levis?

“Duncan?” you ask, your voice exhaling a name that isn't his, but it catches Dean's attention nonetheless. He must have been listening what you were saying before even turning around to catch a glimpse of you. “Duncan!”

You poke his arm, causing him to move quickly to face you. Despite getting his name wrong, you look gorgeous: your hair was a mess like usual after spending too long in your office, sunglasses on the top of your head, and a joyful grin on your painted lips.

He straightens his posture to regain some confidence. “Dean. Dean Winchester.”

Your eyebrows knit together in a weight of confusion. "Who are you?"

This is it, his mind whispers. Rule number four, be cool. Say that thing that guy says in the movie which Sammy made you watch! Dean licks his lips, leaning against the counter. He shrugs, attempting to get in a persona that would only be him in another universe. “I’m just a simple man trying to make my way in the universe. You know, Dean Winchester.”

His shoulders drop as you let out a laugh, and suddenly the perfect threat in his fantasy became a funny joke. He doesn't even waste time being too embarrassed, though: he loves that sound.

“I'm kidding, Dean Winchester. I know who you are. You know, you're kind of the owner of this building?” you say humorously, pointing around the establishment.

Dean's brows arch quickly as he replies: “Technically, it's my father.”

“Who cares about the technical, right?” Of course you would say that with your own sequin smile and a playful wink. Who gives you the right to make his heart go wild? God, he sounds like a chick-flick. “Anyway, do you need something? I noticed you standing at my door.”

“Yes.” His stupendous moment. The stage is his and he better make it worth it. Dean's going to ask you out now, and then, he sees your features changing into curiosity. You're so adorable with your soft frown and head cocked, hair cascading down like one of the surrealistic paintings decorating his office walls. It reminds the Winchester of the way their brilliant colors and space tangle together to make something so gorgeous he couldn’t bear to give it another name but art. God, what if you say no? What if you say yes? What if everything is weird after that? “No. I mean, yes. I...”

“Are you okay?” You place a hand on his bicep. One touch, a blaze starting to burn in the best ways. His heart gives out, beating too crazily to be properly felt -- that doesn't help one bit.

“Yeah, this muchacho is okay.” Dean points at himself with two thumbs. Here goes all the rules in less than three minutes of chatting. He sighs to himself, offering you a pageant smile. “Just forget about it. I was going to ask for a report on your last hunt, but you can send it to my email.”

“Sure thing. I'll send you them after I come back from lunch. McDonald's waits for me.” The Winchester doesn't know if his mind is playing tricks on him, but he can swear he saw disappointment on your face. It could've been that tell, your hair brushing your lips like he craves to, or even how you blink so adorably under the dim light that makes a sudden glimmer of newfound courage hit him. Granted, it's with a trembling voice, but still.

“Maybe I could go have lunch with you?” Dean can practically hear his brother saying, be assertive, ask her out. He rushes to correct himself. “You. You could grab lunch with me. If you want. We could go have lunch together.”

“You like McDonald's?” You bit your bottom lip, arms crossed despite your subtle chortle.

“Of course.” Dean scoffs, gaining a glare of yours for a few seconds before he sighs with a shrug, a flush of pink coloring his cheeks. “No. Processed food isn't a thing in my house. Dad likes to spoil us with homemade meals and scotch.”

“Well, I'm sure John doesn't know how to cook quesadillas. I know the perfect place we can go.” You grab his wrist, and despite all empirical evidence to the contrary of such strong euphoria stemming from a simple touch, he goes against every scientific rule and gets to heaven on earth. “And Dean?”

His voice is lighter, happier by that mere gentle gesture which causes Dean's cheeks to dimple with branded delight as he answers: “Yes?”

You don't bother pulling your hand away. Instead, you intertwined your fingers, smiling like a baby when you notice his sweaty palm. At least you aren't the only nervous here. “Our second date will be at McDonald's.”

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katsidhe · 3 years

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what is the difference between ... coded and ... girl?(for example dean coded sam girl vs. sam coded dean girl?)i'm kinda confused

So a couple of people have asked me something along these lines, which gives me an excuse to go off on a rant about I interpret the “x-coded y girl” lens. My One True Lens. My OTL, as it were.

The notion of coding, linguistically, is all about communication. Literature, being a medium of both art and communication, relies on a shared culture of meaning. At its most basic sense, coding is just sets of symbols laid down by an author that are governed by certain rules, which permit a reader to infer meaning based on their mutual prior understanding on how these rules work. There are many, many types of code in literature. There’s linguistic coding, as in which denotations and connotations are ascribed to which words. There’s grammatical coding, as in what sentence structures imply about the subjects they describe. There’s the literary code of tropes, used to quickly convey eg which character is the ingenue, the hero, etc. There are structural and genre codes—for example, the generic forms of tragedy, or comedy, or parody, all of which are signaled to a reader with tropes and words and packaging meant to interact with their expectations. And of course, there are character codes. A character introduced wearing a leather jacket, in most forms of Western fiction, is being coded with “toughness”. It’s a trope, it’s a meme, it’s a code. This coding is a supralingual form of communication that relies on shared cultural semantics.

To say someone or something is “x-coded”, then, is to say that they, either through deliberate self-presentation or intrinsic characterization, communicate “x”. Maybe they associate themself with tropes that x is associated. Maybe they don’t think much like x, but they act in a way that x acts, or vice versa. Maybe they have some undefinable energy that somehow screams x, in a way that would be apparent to most audiences. Basically, how would this person or concept be written about in a book in shorthand in order to convey to the audience what character tropes we should assign them? This can be a combination of internal and external traits, as long as those traits are actively communicated in some fashion.

“-Girl”, gender neutral, is all about fandom. “Fangirl” is often a diminutive meant to characterize especially female fans as obsessive, childish, or altogether too excited about a niche interest. “Y girl”, then, is a term meant to reclaim and celebrate the act of whole-heartedly embracing fannish enthusiasm without compunction or embarrassment. But in the necessary abstraction of x-coded y girl framing, that doesn’t mean that you have to be a huge fan of “y” in particular. Rather, someone or something who is a y girl is a fan of the traits encoded by y. “Y” is often but not always aspirational: maybe y isn’t how you think or act, but it’s how you’d like to think or act. Maybe y isn’t how you’d like to be, but you deeply admire y. Maybe you don’t even necessarily WANT to value y, but you do, and your life or actions are shaped by those values. “Y girl” is about guiding lights, things we are drawn to, things we assign value to, things we secretly relish, things we can’t put down.

A Dean-coded Sam girl communicates themself with Dean tropes, but is drawn to Sam tropes, whereas the opposite is true for a Sam-coded Dean girl. I’ll give some straightforward character examples.

Ruby is Dean-coded: the toughness, the leather, the stubborn absolutism of believing she’s in the right, the charisma, the devil-may-care persona studded with moments of emotional vulnerability. Some of those tropes are internal, some external, some physical, some not, but they’re all about communication. Ruby is a Sam girl: she is ruthlessly, brutally focused on the big picture; she is more than willing to personally sacrifice pieces of herself to get to her endgame; the costs and the morality of what she’ll do to get there are completely irrelevant to the greater good. She is self-contained and internal; she doesn’t value loyalty or personal love or external reward or even some far off aspirational moral good: she wants the world shaped a certain way, and if she succeeds then nothing else matters. These are Sam-associated values. (Not to be confused with Sam-the-character’s values.)

Harry Potter is Sam-coded. He’s the hashtag chosen one; his life is studded with abuse and trauma; he was scarred with a personal connection with an evil wizard as a baby; he grapples with expectations, stigma, and fear from people around him based on that connection to evil; he’s pretty bad at controlling the narrative of his life. But he’s definitely not a Sam girl. He’s a Dean girl through and through: he thinks first asks questions never, signifying how he values courage and loyalty above effectiveness. He would never compromise himself morally for the sake of his goals, he’d never sacrifice a friend. He values personal love and emotional connections above anything else, including the world and the greater good.

The wonderful thing about my OTL is that it can classify anything, as anything. Simply come up with three to four thematically linked nouns, and start putting people and ideas and concepts into the appropriate boxes. For instance, from {beer wine liquor}, I am a wine-coded liquor girl.

#x coded y girl #i speaks #SCIENCE #harry potter #ruby #ask me about any character and I’ll classify em!

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thegeminisage · 3 years

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I'm curious: in your personal reading of Cas as ace, do you also consider him another orientation (romantic or sexual)? For me personally, I consider him gay and ace, or sometimes gay-oriented aroace.

this is a good question actually lol. most of me wants to say that cas is gay and ace because he did canonically fall in love w/ another man and it means a lot to people to call him the gay angel even though i think he’s the ace angel so like gay ace is a v good compromise i think. ace angel handshake emoji gay angel you know!

however (unpopular opinion warning) i do have a little trouble with meg. with every other woman cas is around he either doesn’t have any chemistry (hannah, daphne), it’s CLEARLY a platonic relationship (kelly), or it’s clearly some kind of comphet weirdness (the orgies in 5.04, the reaper in s9 which also counts as rape in my book). w/ meg though his affection seemed both genuine and...i know but... ??? borderline romantic ??? hard to say. it definitely doesn’t negate or cancel out the obvious and canonical feelings he had for dean, but he liked her! he was dtf! in a way that was very different from his thing with the reaper in cursed season 9.

so like: ??? ace and gay and willing to bang a lady anyway maybe? like because when you’re ace you’re not physically attracted to ANYBODY, so it’s impossible to be physically attracted to whoever you’re banging - ace people have sex for other reasons - emotional intimacy, because it feels good, w/e. so he could have been ace and gay and still willing to nonromantically bang his lady friend just as a form of affection. “biromantic” def feels like the wrong label for cas, even if you slap a “demi-” in front of it - if anything, i’d call him unoriented.

by unoriented i mean: i myself don’t use the split attraction model bc i don’t like it. that doesn’t mean i think it’s bad in general or bad for other people, it’s just not what i like. so when i say i’m asexual that’s the whole label. my romantic orientation isn’t “aro” or “gay” or “bi” or whatever it’s that i just don’t have one. subtle but distinct difference. so i could see something like that for cas, bc what is he there for if not to project on. he fell in love w/ dean because dean is dean (and in “like” w/ meg because meg is meg) and his orientation or lack thereof had nothing to do with it, you know?

this is NOT EVEN GETTING INTO the secret essay i have on how angel sexuality is totally different than human sexuality - because the taboo is to be attracted to humans, and gender has nothing to do with it - this is ALSO because angel gender is probably totally different than human gender, and human gender is totally fucking made up anyway - male seahorses have the babies, you know? it’s not that defining sexuality and gender is bad (labels are good because they help people be comfortable with themselves and find other people with similar experiences!) but we put the label on the experience, we don’t try to make the experience fit the label.

anyway, the point of all this to say that sexuality is weird and complicated (even moreso when you’re talking about the aro and ace spectrum, even MORE SO when you remember that the way we classify it seems to be somewhat arbitrarily based on gender, which again is kind of a fake concept that we made up), and it seems a liiiittle pointless to try and like, qualify cas’s romantic orientation when the sum total of his romantic feelings (except for MAYBE the .1% of genuine connection he had w/ meg) are just wholly devoted to and laser-focused on dean. like, CANONICALLY, castiel loves dean winchester to the total exclusion of other people. what else really matters, yk

that said, dean happens to be male and cas happens to be in a male vessel, so yes, technically the factual thing to say is that he’s gay and ace because that fits canon, it makes the people who him being gay has meaning for happy, and it also keeps exclusionists on tumblr from calling you homophobic. (apparently headcanoning a gay character as being aspec is homophobic even though the two are not at all mutually exclusive and being aspec isn’t code for being straight because aces ARE queer?? bro don’t even get me started lol)

sorry anon this answer got way longer than intended! but yeah i do think cas is queer like twice over - firstly because he loves a human (angel queer), and secondly because he loves one of his own gender (human queer). you might also say he’s some kind of genderqueer too based on your interpretation of angel genders (???) vs the gender cas became when he decided to stick around in jimmy (male, ostensibly, but many other headcanons work for that too). he’s like queer squared. and i love him. my rainbow angel <3

[spn masterpost]

#liz answers asks #anonymous #liz's meta #liz's spn stuff #liz watches spn #spn #destiel #i don't want this in the tracked tag lol i'll get rotten vegetables thrown at me #if anyone comes to my inbox to try and tell me aces aren't queer i will fly to your house and dump cat shit in your bed #liz makes stuff #ace cas

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you-cant-spell-subtext-without · 3 years

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Gonna be the one to do it: Metatron

How I feel about this character

if we were in a FB relationship it would be its complicated. I HATE him. HATE. I mean his plans, his villainousness, his demeanor. but also I LOVE him? LOVE. THE destiel shipper, he gave us All of That In Metafiction about who writes the story (PSA it's Robbie Thompson, Robbie Thompson Writes The Story), the sheer joy of you're in love with...humanity, it was all about saving ONE MAN?!?!?! he tells god his writing sucks???? he leaves little editors notes on the angel/demon tablets?! when he loses his grace he makes weird YouTube videos of graphic murders to sell on the internet? INSANE MAD LAD JIMMY NOVAK CODED CREATURE. Truly I mean he is a wild wild little man and if he was real he would be in this desticule on tumblr dot edu. (but no one would be actual mutuals with him because he'd be THE most annoying even more annoying than me).

All the people I ship romantically with this character

just had the thought that he and chuck should have maybe fucked so there's that I guess

My non-romantic OTP for this character

you know I feel like he and Frank Deveraux could have kicked it did they ever meet I do not recall it

My unpopular opinion about this character

probably all the things I love about him? he's also not like the worst villain there ever was, like yes we hate him but we are supposed to at least he isn't Asmodeus who is about as interesting as a snotty crumpled up Kleenex

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

come back and rewrite the ending for us Metatron bestie please you told us we tell the story we want it told different

(god society if after the closing credits of 15x20 Curtis Armstrong just popped up on the screen and said PS DESTIEL IS CANON AND DEAN IS ALIVE AND THEY ARE KISSING RIGHT NOW LOOK, then pointed right at the screen and it cut to Cas and Dean furiously making out).

character ask game

#Curtis Armstrong make this vid on your phone challenge #you-cant-spell-subtext-without-asks #nonnie #character ask game #ask games

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hearteyes-for-killmonger · 4 years

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1. Withdrawal

I was born an angel of lust, raised in the heat of passion. I cannot adapt to the whims of mortals anymore than you can adapt to me.

That's what I tell the plain and bitter bitches who hatefully judge my personal expression. I am an artíste. Would a swan so readily change herself to belong amongst toads? Certainly not.

The name given to me at birth was Phoebe Avery Flynn Miller, but you can call me Gemini.

xoxo

I study Biochemistry at Stanford, yes, the Ivy League.

Despite the 5% rate of acceptance, little ol' me has wiggled herself in with the big wigs and is now on path to a promising career in forensics.

Relaxed dress code, they said.

It's true, the culture of campus aesthetics is rooted in khaki shorts and ratty flipflops. Still, despite the sea of tie-dye, I can't help but notice that the way I present myself on campus is heavily judged.

But why hate on little me?

Well. It's my clear and supple toffee brown skin. It must be.

Or it's my dipped strawberry ombre wig curled to bounce like jello.

How offensive.

Or no, it's my deep and winding curves. Yes, the jealousy is unreal.

It's not my fault these hips navigate this yellow romper like a country backroad.

It's not my fault half the girls here are built like skinny little boys and the others are built like Frosty the Snowman.

Passing Becky in category one as I walk through the hall, she turns to glare. Who are these sad hoes truly mad at, me or their genetics?

The bold who find their words try their hardest to tear me down.

Slut.

Whore.

Stripper.

Bitch.

And let's not forget the ethnic slurs, I hear it all. But can you guess my response?

"At least I'll graduate with a job and no debt, ya pasty bitch. Ask your man for my business card."

Yep.

It's true, I strip at Mickey's to pay my tuition, okay fine. I've seen several students there peppered in the crowd, a few possibly the boyfriends of some of these Becca faced bitches who come for me on the regular. Again, who are they really mad at?

Yes, I sell fetish content and I work as a domme when I'm not interning because I'm organized and damn good at everything I do. So good and organized in fact that I can drink, smoke, fuck all day and night if I please and still look like a slice of heavenly pie in the morning bright and early in my seat for class.

I'm wonderful. I'm free in who I am, I'm not ashamed.

That's what I preach to my clients. You can't be ashamed. Revel in sensuality of it's who you are. Intelligence, success, and kink are not mutually exclusive.

Unfortunately for my clients, exams are nigh and I've had to pause all sessions including my stripping for the sake of my study schedule. Two weeks is what I've gifted myself and four days through.. it does not feel like a gift.

In four days, I've perfected the art of celibacy. Not a drop of alcohol has touched these luscious, full lips.

No dollop of cum has passed over this skin.

No ocean spray has squirted from this peach.

I've taken no finger, no dick, no strap, no toy.

I've smoked no joint, no bowl.

For 96 hours, I've done nothing but study and prepare as if going to war. I'm hungry for a release, but my A means more.

xoxo

I sit in the first row in class, front and center with my laptop open on the syllabus because I fear nothing.

Call on me, I dare, staring down the professor as he poses his question to the class. Nothing he asks can throw me off.

I fold my arms leaning back and he finally looks to me.

I know I've said this a million times this semester, but I'd fuck the shit out of him for free. Mm, focus.

I cross my leg at the knee for some control.

"tRNA."

"Correct, Ms. Miller."

Of course it is.

"Someone tell me what is the linkage between the amino acid and the tRNA in an aminoacyl tRNA? This will be on the exam which is not multiple choice."

The class upsets, voicing their dissent with complaints that it's too hard. They need multiple choice.

"Aminoacyl ester," I smile cutting off a voice behind me.

"Correct Ms. Miller," Mr. Stevens points, aiming his pen at me as he backs toward the table at the center of the floor to sit on its corner.

"Too easy, what else you got?"

I can feel the pissed off vibes behind me and I show teeth, smiling more. Fuck these assorted crackers. I flip my strawberry curls and stare at Mr. Stevens in wait.

His eyes narrow, but I'm not dumb he's loving this. I am black excellence.

"The genetic code is not read in the...?"

"3' to 5'," you blurt. His brows raise briefly.

"The genetic code is degenerate meaning that..?"

"Most amino acids are coded for by more than one codon."

The corner of his lips turns up and he begins to fire off questions like lightning, but I fire back instantly. You can hear a pin drop the way the room gets quiet.

"Codons representing the same amino acid or chemically similar amino acids tend to be similar in sequence often differing-"

"In the third base? Third base degeneracy."

"Class I synthetases first attach the amino acid to the what on ribose whereas class II attach them to the what?"

"2'-hydroxyl and 3'-hydroxyl."

"The Salmonella test strain used in the Ames test contains a mutation in the histidine biosynthetic pathway, which is used to...?"

"Identify compounds that induce back mutations to permit bacterial growth on histidine free plates."

"What's needed to repair chemical damage in DNA effecting more than one nucleotide, such as cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers?"

"Base-excision repair."

"Wrong."

"Wait!"

"Nucleotide-excision repair," a voice says from the back."

Fuck.

Someone snickers.

"Correct," Mr. Stevens points to the back making no further eye contact with me as he goes into review.

The whole time I'm sitting there, I'm wondering how the hell I messed that up. That was a dumb mistake and I don't make dumb mistakes. I can't get by it, I'm lowkey embarrassed.

At the end of class, students file out of the door.

I stand behind a blonde preppy girl who's asking about a quiz grade. She's trying to debate point loss and based on what I gather, she's wrong. Her answers were wrong. What can he do outside of give her a grade she didn't earn?

"I can't change your grade, Ms. Bertelli," he deadpans from his seat on the edge of the table. His hands are rested comfortably on his thigh.

"I'm not saying change my grade! I'm saying the way you worded these questions made me come to a wrong answer and I would have gotten 100 otherwise, so I should at least get a half point for each," she explains angrily jamming her finger at the paper as she holds it in his face. "It's only right."

Mr. Stevens is unmoved and you can see it in his eyes, the melanated 'bitch please.'

"It does not get anymore clear and if you don't get a handle on this information, Ms. Bertelli, you won't pass this class."

"This is fucking stupid! I'm going to the dean," she threatens.

"Girl, gone somewhere," I laugh. The entitlement!

"Do that. Your responses were incorrect and I suggest you learn this material before this exam. Use this time to take advantage of our reviews," Mr. Stevens says cooly.

"Anyways," I step forward for my turn. "I need an A in this class. A strong A. You and I both know I'm earning it," I dig watching the girl leave the room so it's just the professor and I. "But I'm nervous about this exam."

"A or no A I'm sure you'll get the strongest grade in my class," he mumbles seeming uninterested in anything I say.

"But see, that's not good enough."

"It will be," he stares. "I've seen students as cocky as you. Some make perfect scores, but that's rare, Ms. Miller. I see it happen more often that they... choke," he pantomimes with his hands at his neck like it's a joke.

"Mr. Stevens.. There are two things I don't play bout, my money and my grades. Please be serious with me."

"Serious... Okay. You want me to be serious."

"I do."

For seconds, we stare at each other, him looking at me and me trying to drive into him by eye contact alone how damn serious I am.

"Hm... Let's talk about it.. seriously," he says quietly. "We'll go over a few things related to the.. format.. of this exam."

He doesn't need to say more, I get it. He's giving me the test.

"Meet me in my office today at 7."

With that, he hops up and in a lithe motion, towers over me before walking by to grab his things. I clutch my imaginary pearls watching his back as he moves. My peach is acting up and I don't blame her after four days of denial. She's hungry. I need to get her away from this temptation.

xoxo

#original #erik killmonger #killmonger #erik killmonger x oc

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incarnateirony · 4 years

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Help

So anyway since I’m clowning and have had PLENTY of history talking about... well, fandom history, had a conversation with a friend and I gotta say, A+. Will redact their name. In the ballpark of representation.

occamshipper but yeah I haven't seen destiel fandom spirit this high since S8, and one could argue we're in the same clown car but content compared, not even remotely, much less rolling the corporate dice current canon managed to mount past the bitterness like if you were to compare the material the two circuses were built out of the original one is kinda embarrassing but i think the one thing that gets me is if you leave the few VERY spare cards of LGBT men in this fandom and think of GA I honestly can't see an LGBT man over the age of 30 that did not love their spouse a little bit more again after that episode like yall you wanna talk representation fuck off right now don't touch me

[Redacted] Yup. That's part of what I mean about it being a middle-aged thing. Like The two circus are actually quite different, even if it's mostly the same clowns....and part of the reason is this ain't a secret handshake circus... (they could have chosen to do a callback by mentioning the prayer rather than showing it. They could have even made the prayer about something else -again, that's what I expected- But instead chose to textualize as it being All About Them. 2 minutes of screen time on TV are quite literally w Worth thousands of dollars, and they chose to put their money where their mouth was, without hedging) So, yeah, 1. This is now a public entry circus. But 2. The two people at the centre of the action are NOT the same ppl they were 7 yrs ago. And like shit, man: I'm not the same person I was 2 yrs ago. So yeah, this new version really highlights and is anchored in their evolution as people AND as a couple. That 100% resonates more when you're older (as they are), and have "been there" emotionally. This is queer content with General accessibility. Which is all the queer content I've ever wanted. So really, this circus can take all of my money. I'm cool. 🤡

occamshipper WHOLE MOOD MASSIVE I think what gets me is some people just refusing to admit it's queer content because XYZ landmark and-- no like That's your goalpost for you feeling like they've made Dean's bisexuality overt enough The specifics of the label aren't canon to you The entire life structure is 100% guaranteed queer content guys If it turns out it's an ace aro arrangement, if it turns up blossoming bi, that's okay But it's all queer content yall I promise you the most cursory look at LGBT media history and intersectional representation issues will tell the fandom this conversation has been resolved long before anybody tried to discuss semantics on it: it gay Like people forget representation is what deeply represents junctions of demographic. While middle aged LGBT male queer life is alien to this fandom, it wouldn't be to Dean (much less to Bobo as a middle aged LGBT man). When the widower's procession of burial may be alien to this fandom, it wouldn't be to Dean. All those elements that are MLM coded that whiffs by this fandom? Even shippers? That's not FOR them. Trying to demand unilateral queer rep is tokenism, not representation, and I'm sorry, but I just witnessed a verbatim widower Dean textually comparing Sam's loss of Eileen to his burial of Cas. It doesn't fucking matter what they call each other. Buddy, Best Friend, Everything, Big Win, it's Cas. And Cas is his Eileen. And the episode spared nothing letting us know that. Everything after that is intersectional parts of the LGBT community pulling crab bucket bullshit to stomp over the others. If you're more worried with the textualization of "I, Dean Winchester, am a bisexual" in ELI5 than you are in this all encompassing queer narrative, we've ironically missed the representation boat. As it is they already argued down 15.7 content as "just subtext" despite being text but confirmed queer culture is just called subtext, rather than text, and my head hurts. There seems to be a dividing line of people's attitudes on this of old fandom, which tends to be older people for obvious reasons, and newer gen fandom that came in with the S11 teen choice awards and picked up the angry torches S9-10 fandom had just set down. Ironically older fandom is right here clowning for the most part. The fact that the same line runs mutual confusion with old MLM LGBT culture and old representation/LGBT media history understanding, and what conversations are already long dead, is just... coincidence, I guess? Do people think we went through awkward phases of what to call our spouses just to hit a gay checklist? This is where my angry old activist gay comes out because the amount of foot stomping smashing the cornerstones of queer content being laid out endlessly this season that is ALWAYS attached to rep history blindness while talking about rep activism just makes me want to throw things These are the people that think A stand for Ally instead of Ace or Aro aren't they

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naruhearts · 5 years

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14x18 First Watch Thoughts: Mary Winchester the Mirror, TFW and Destiel

**FLAILS**

My thoughts are practically incoherent because I’m having BIG FEELS right now...VERY big feels re: TFW/Destiel narratives.

I am SUPER glad Berens was the one who penned Mary’s death!! The episode was just well-done all around from start to finish and intensely executed, with the proper solid balance of angst, emotional insight from the characters placed inside Mary’s cathartic contextual role, and the consistent reiteration of Mary as TFW’s overall Parental Catharsis in 14x18′s storytelling (and S12-14′s whole parental premise in conjunction with John Winchester’s ghost).

Mary was portrayed as the singular contrasting foil to TFW’s individual and combined arcs. Absence was, obviously, a core theme, with Mary’s absence -- her death -- playing out as A. familial purpose (accountability and her death as the impetus to work together --> forgive each other, forgive yourself), B. self-purpose (self-realization via Jack: what did I do? Why did I do it? Why do we do things?), and C. romantic purpose on the Dean/Cas front.

Let me explain C. -- well, WE BEEN KNEW. The metasphere wrote about this (my post x).

Dean was HEAVILY subtextually framed as the angry spouse undergoing a rough patch with Cas over Mary’s death (the tension, juxtaposed by sad orchestral strings and soft lighting, Dean lashing out at Cas, romantic framing via Dean’s back turned to Cas, their interactions holding frustration yet still underpinned by certain tenderness etc *sighhhhh*) and Dean continuing down the route of giving Cas, not Sam, frosty shoulders -- emphasized by the romantic visual framing of space between them e.g. Sam preventing Cas from comforting Dean during Mary’s funeral, backs again facing each other, Dean and Cas interacting sparsely, Dean bitter and disengaged, Cas longing for forgiveness from Dean, Sam as the overt brother caught in the middle as he embodies the role of mediator and stable thinker for both of them etc -- just strengthens my belief that Destiel is going to experience another (hopefully) intense romance-coded confrontation as intense as the one they had in the cabin -- one that leads up to a lover’s make-up or some kind of emotional breakthrough/realization which has Cas happy enough to be taken by the Empty (remember, DEAN STILL DOESN’T KNOW ABOUT CAS’ DEAL. Cas’ life to save his son’s life, harking back to Dean’s own fatherly self-sacrificial deal by saying Yes to Michael. He is utterly unaware that he’ll lose Cas) and it’s a double punch here, because Dean will realize how stupid he is for not appreciating Cas -- more accurately, trying to be mutually transparent and honest with him (he has, though, and he’s made leaps and bounds) before it’s too late but failing (final regression before progression). He does appreciate Cas, and Cas means more to him than anyone could ever describe *points at his Mind!Bar 14x10* yet their love languages still don’t align. IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO START ALL OVER AGAIN, DEAN! 14x19 is written by BL so I additionally hope the D/C subtext from this point onwards works in our favour!!

As I said in above and in my liveblog posts, a summary:

The differences in Dean’s grieving are a COMPLETE visual comparison to 12x23, complete with overhead 📸 shots and differing funeral pyre scenes: when he grieved over Cas, he was alone, kneeling on the ground, and was blatantly numb/emotionally incapacitated – Dean mourned the loss of his lover. When he’s grieving Mary, Sam is by his side. Brothers mourning the loss of their mother. Romantic vs familial.

Overt romance-coded parallels with Sam/Rowena keeping constant contact just like Dean/Cas do both offscreen and onscreen

Sam telling Dean IT WASN’T JUST CAS and his own emotional pull in this ep as expressing accountability for TFW’s actions in general – besides internalizing/talking about the self-guilt, shame, and the inevitable pain of losing people despite saving people (also re: the 🔑 theme of doing the wrong, stupid thing for the right reasons) -- was character development on a marvelous scale. Dean was enlightened and began to admit it himself. Honest, open words. Dean and Cas should learn from him!!

Cas was absolutely humanized, subsuming the Winchester Way of Bringing Family Back, and he additionally evoked honesty/an emotional justification while admitting his mistakes and again representing FAITH: faith in Jack narratively linked to FAITH IN HIMSELF and the season-long theme of believing there’s another way -- in believing that good things shall come. As he appropriately told Anael last episode -- loneliness is a construct misconstrued by her; not being in one’s physical presence doesn’t mean they aren’t there -- they are there. They are there for you. Narrative symmetry with 14x17′s presence of emotional acknowledgement despite physical absence re: God (and TFW; just because Cas wasn’t with the Winchesters did not mean he loved them any less) vs 14x18′s absence of full-frontal communication despite physical presence re: Dean and Cas/TFW (being physically present also entails being emotionally present through HONESTY). Berens interlinked the subtext. Negative spaces are being filled. And there’s also an Evil/dark dimension added to this Presence vs Absence commentary: Lucifer’s a visage in Jack’s mind, just like Sam. Jack’s soullessness has come to a psychological crux. He’s teeter-tottering – tried desperately to bring Mary back, and now he might have fucked up the natural order (if BTS pics of zombies in 14x20 is linked to this). Furthermore:

(*clutches chest* There’s the heartbreaking spousal-coded visual narrative.)

Oh, Cas...Jack is BOTH good and evil. This is the intrinsic dualism of human nature. It’s what makes Jack human. And goodness involves badness.

CAS: [Jack] was good for us. Indeed, we know he was. The unhealthily-codependent-abusive notion of family TFW used to possess (where their overarching parental issues -- Chuck’s absence, John’s abuse and Mary’s absence -- crippled their early formative growth, extending into decades) was deconstructed and rebuilt in healthier ways. Being a parent to Jack offset their true capabilities/qualities: FAITH (Cas), HOPE (Sam), and LOVE (Dean), alongside all the stickiness that came with his birth. By direct association, Cas learned (is learning) how to believe in himself. Sam learned (is learning) how to hope in himself. Dean learned (is learning) how to love himself. Mental/emotional release from their internal chains took place (will come to its final culmination in S15). In other words, Jack the Unifying TFW Mirror -- like Mary -- was the great interpersonal conduit for (a Jesus-figure-representation) honesty, appreciation (spending time with your loved ones), positive vs negative self-process, and self-awareness. Keep in mind that Jack has characteristically taken the place of Dean, Cas and Sam’s own dark arcs (Soulless!Sam, in particular) with what looks like a Godstiel mirror in 14x19 -- he’s literally becoming textualized as TFW’s mirror -- and, like his parents, he is going to make his independent (wayward) choices and question the primacy of human nature: good, evil, and the grey in-between. Will he listen to his head or his heart? Most of all, Jack taught them that HuntingTM is filled with pain, horror, and death, but genuine purpose lies beyond it. The lives they live are also innumerably interlinked with joy and happiness. These positive things aren’t as sparse as they think: they have each other.

Mary Winchester is ⚰️ and resides in Heaven (her death successfully made me emotional and packed a deep personal punch; the black and white flashbacks interspersed throughout 14x18 relative to Mary’s influence on TFW was A++). She disappeared right when TFW’s arcs came together to display character progression. Her purpose – pushing TFW to engage in self-introspection, personal growth, and honesty with the Self and others – is done.

Mary, the Cas mirror, carved M.W. into the table with S.W and D.W. You know who should be next, right? CASTIEL W. (and Jack W.) (recall that in 14x17, Mary relayed to Dean that she treasured and enjoyed her time with him and Sam -- channeling Cas’ 14x12 farewell speech. Mary has always embodied LOVE, both romantic and familial, with the great virtue of honesty, and Dean, by proxy, has been telling his family he loves them. Again, who is the next family member he’ll say I LOVE YOU to? What do Dean and Cas WANT? Time to answer this question!!)

WE HAVE COME FULL CIRCLE. Narrative cyclism, y’all. Mary and John Winchester are finally at ✌️, and by so doing, TFW will experience emotional/personal/psychological ✌️ as they leave their past behind to create their own optimistic self-actualized future. THERE’LL BE GENUINE PEACE WHEN YOU ARE DONE.

TFW MUST TALK

I mean, I’ll probably reblog this with new thoughts during the next few days, but yes, ENDGAME’S UPON US, and all the extensive meta regarding Dabb Era Love and...Love, Unity, Family, Honesty, the centrality of interpersonal relationships and Reconciliation of the Past & Future since Season New Beginnings 12/13 over Season Who Am I 14 should be realized in the final two ANGST-filled eps. TL;DR a gigantic multilayered soup of character-positive/relationship growth-positive meta coming to fruition for the main plot.

Berens has killed us all. 14x18 is one of my favourite Emotion-centric episodes yet!

RATING: 10/10

Thank you for reading my sloppier-than-usual word-vomit!

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data-monkey · 5 years

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AO3 stats project: correlations

Okay. Now for some really fun stuff: correlations between different categories of metadata (like, correlations between ratings and tags, character tags and genre tags, etc). And as with the previous post in this series, some of the content I discuss may not be strictly work-appropriate.

Thanks to @eloiserummaging for beta reading these posts; any remaining errors are my own. A Python notebook showing the code I used to make these plots can be found here.

All right. We've got a list of top tags now. How do those tags relate to each other? That is, if I have a work labeled "Fluff", does that change how likely it is that that work will also be labeled "Angst"? I'm plotting, here, a matrix that answers that question directly. I can compute how often "Fluff" and "Angst" would appear together if they were just randomly assigned to all 4.3 million works that I collected metadata for. The blocks I'm showing below are colored by whether the actual number of times "Fluff" and "Angst" appear together is greater or lesser than that expectation. (We do it that way, instead of just counting the raw number of connections, because otherwise it looks like everything is correlated with "Fluff", just because there are a lot of works labeled "Fluff" in the data set.) If I pick two tags--say, "Fluff" on the bottom, and "Angst" on the left--I can follow them to where they intersect, and the color of that little block tells me about whether they're correlated. Things that are pink are less likely than you'd expect to appear together, while things that are green are more likely. The diagonal line is always that pale green-grey color because, by definition, "Romance" appears with "Romance" exactly as often as you'd expect, and the graph is symmetric across that diagonal line because it doesn't matter if we take "Fluff" then "Angst" or "Angst" then "Fluff."

So one really interesting thing is that this plot is mostly green (so things are correlated). Not only do these tags appear a lot, but they appear together more than you’d expect, and even when they’re anti-correlated--that is, when being labeled one makes you less likely to be labeled another--it’s not by very much. The strongest correlation is between “Romance” and “Humor”, so I guess the rom com is alive and well! Angst and hurt/comfort also appear together a lot, which I suppose makes sense.

We can make correlation plots like this for other things. How about pairing types?

Per the AO3, “Multi” means “more than one kind of relationship, or a relationship with multiple partners”, and “Other” means “everything not covered by the other labels”. The structure of this is kind of interesting, too. Remember, pink means things are anti-correlated (appear together less often than expected) and green means they’re correlated (appear together MORE often than expected), so M/M is the Lone Ranger of pairing types, making all other pairing types less likely if it's included. Even more than Gen, which you’d expect to exclude other categories!

Now for the REALLY fun stuff: how do all of these things correlate with other things? Here's an obvious one: ratings vs tags. No more symmetry, because we're showing different things on the two axes.

Not too surprised by this: “Smut” has a really strong relationship with rating, because most works of erotica deserve the higher ratings. The other tags are much less correlated with rating; Fluff and Humor incline to lower ratings, Established Relationship to higher ratings, and the others are kind of in the middle.

Do ratings and tags correlate with pairing type?

Hmm. Interesting. Romance is way more likely to be F/M than you’d expect. (Do we not write as many M/M romances, or do we just call them something else? A couple of friends also pointed out to me that this might mean “romance” as in “the publication genre of romance” not as in “romantic plotlines generally”, which makes sense and would make them more M/F-heavy given publication trends.) Established relationship is very skewed to M/M. Gen anti-correlates with most of the tags you’d expect. Apparently only single-pairing romantic relationships can be fluffy. F/F is neither as funny nor as angsty as chance would indicate.

I think this pattern can be explained this way: Gen is way more likely to be a low rating, and the trend you see for most other things is just that we’re comparing to the average--if Gen is way more likely to be rated General Audiences than is typical, then the other pairing types have to be slightly less General Audiences than you’d expect to make up for it. (This argument doesn’t necessarily apply to the other correlations I was showing, because in those plots there are a bunch of tags I’m not showing and because non-ratings tags can appear together.)

How about the top relationship tags--do they correlate with anything?

Huh. Well, most of these ships have preferentially high ratings--I think that’s the same effect as in the rating and pairing correlation: things without a romantic/sexual relationship have lower ratings, so on average the works containing relationships will have a higher rating. That’s not universal--look at Magnus/Alec, for example--but it’s common. The other two obvious things here are 1) Dean/Sam really skews to high ratings, 2) apparently Harry/Louis fans reject the rating system.

Okay, that’s...less interesting than I was expecting. Lots of Harry/Louis smut, lots of Keith/Lance modern AUs. The most likely established relationship is Derek/Stiles. Magnus/Alex and Yuuri/Victor are the fluffiest. Not much romance, except for Draco/Harry, and that pairing also has an unusual amount of humor.

What about character tags?

Hmm. Looks like there are a lot of teen-rated Marvel works, and Supernatural leans towards the higher ratings (which we already knew).

This basically just repeats stuff we already noticed in the relationships plot, I think. One thing I didn’t notice up there is that John and Sherlock are not that likely to be tagged in Established Relationship works, which is kind of interesting as they’re long-term partners (not necessarily romantic partners) in most versions of the canon.

How about characters and pairing type...are there characters that appear more often in one kind of pairing than you'd expect based on randomness? (Note that all these characters appear most in M/M stories, because those are by far the most common--this is just asking a relative question about how much they appear in other kinds of stories.)

Mostly not super interesting, I have to say. Steve, Tony, Natasha, and Harry Potter are all more likely than usual to appear in poly relationships or in F/M stories, apparently, and Stiles and Castiel are less likely than usual to appear in gen works.

Finally, a really fun thing (that I have to link to an external site to do, because tumblr doesn’t like javascript in posts). Instead of just looking at the top 10 tags, here are the top 100 tags portrayed as dots, arranged in a connected graph: the dots represent tags (with the popularity of the tag represented by its size), and they’re connected by lines whose thickness indicates how often the two things appear together, relative to chance. You can also use this kind of setup to work out sets of interconnected tags that are more closely tied to each other than to the other tags. I colored those sets with different colors, so you can identify them. Hovering your mouse pointer over a dot should tell you which tag it is.

Here are the blocks of tags that the algorithm found:

Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Christmas, Crack, Cute, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Fluff And Humor, Humor, Light Angst, One Shot, Romance, Tooth-Rotting Fluff

Angst, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Dark, Death, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Sorry, Magic, Minor Character Death, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sad, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Violence

Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Crossover, Drabble, Drama, Family, Friendship, Future Fic, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash, Spoilers

Alcohol, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Established Relationship, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Fluff And Smut, Jealousy, Kissing, Mpreg, Polyamory, Sex, Sexual Content, Slash, Smut

Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bdsm, Blow Jobs, Bondage, Dirty Talk, Dom/Sub, Dubious Consent, Hand Jobs, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rimming, Rough Sex, Spanking

Angst With A Happy Ending, Developing Relationship, Eventual Smut, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff And Angst, Friends To Lovers, Friendship/Love, Happy Ending, Implied Sexual Content, Love, Love Confessions, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags To Be Added, Pining, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Swearing, Unrequited Love

I love this! To me, those sets look like: fluffy plot-based tags, violence and disturbing content tags, more action-oriented plot-based tags, less explicit vanilla-ish erotica tags, more explicit or kinky erotica tags, and romance. That’s so cool. (Not everything makes sense--why is Drabble where it is?--but still, cool.)

Or in other words: some numerical routines correctly identified the porn. :)

Up next: what gets kudos?

#fan stats #ao3 #fanstats

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ourloveisforthelovely · 5 years

Text

Maps 1

AU story. Your relationship with Gabriel wasn’t easy. Gabriel wasn’t the best boyfriend. He’s a bit of a man-whore thrown in with a bad temper. Things shatter but eventually Gabriel has an opportunity to win you back however, he has to deal with your older brothers Sam and Dean. Not to mention all of the drama that the past has created in the future.

A/N and warnings: language and vague emotional abuse

Words: 4,915

“Love the way you lie” Eminem

_______

“I love the way you lie” Gabriel woke up drenched from head to toe in a cold sweat from yet another nightmare. Sitting up he pulled his knees to his chest trying to calm his pounding heart. Gabriel ran a hand through his soaking golden hair. Hearing your voice in his dreams was almost a shock to his system. Gabriel cursed under his breath. He had been dreaming about you for almost a month and a half now. From going to barely thinking about you, his ex, to dreaming about you every night with raging hard ons his life was beginning to suck. It had been almost 2 years since the last time he had seen you and each passing day was worse, not better!

It didn’t help that whenever he flipped on the morning news he had to see your beautiful face. He would sit like a fool watching you practically drooling.

“She wouldn’t want me back.”

Gabriel said coldly trying to get the near painful erection to go away. It wasn’t a lie and Gabriel knew it. The relationship that he had with you was the the literal definition of hell. He knew that he was the root cause of most of it. From cheating on you whenever the opportunity presented itself to borderline emotional abuse he was far from a good boyfriend. Now his past doings were coming back to haunt him!

He sighed at the thought of how your arguments had left stuff broken and thrown around the house. Not to mention the times the neighbors called the cops because the two of you were so loud. The two of you would argue over anything and everything. It was mostly Gabriel’s cheating. You put up with it at first. However, as the relationship intensified and admissions of “I love you” happened; you didn’t want to look the other way.

“I don’t care if you care if you want to fall in love with a new person every night you are supposed to be in love with me. Stop being a slut Gabriel!”

Gabriel growled slamming his hand down on the mattress. If he would have just kept his pants zipped and came home to you at night everything would have been fine. His golden eyes rolled to your side of the bed. Gabriel hadn’t changed anything in the house since you had left. Hell, some of your clothes still hung in the closet. He couldn't bring himself to throw anything out!

He still remembered the day that he met you. It was not long after one of his first books came out and you were the reporter to interview him for a small newspaper that you had interned for. Right away Gabriel was flirting with you. He was in love with how your cheeks blushed when he made almost sexually explicit comments. You were young and from what he could tell pretty innocent.

After the interview, Gabriel had talked you into going out for a drink which led to him taking you home with him. After a few weeks of dates and passionate sex, you were moving in with him. Gabriel didn’t care in the slightest. In fact, he welcomed the idea. He had the hottest woman in the world and you were all his! Gabriel didn’t need all the slutty chicks he had hanging around anymore! He also didn't care that your older brothers were throwing a fit over their baby sister moving too quickly with a older guy! Screw them...

Looking back, Gabriel knew that you both had moved too fast. He should have done a lot of things differently. Instead of rushing to get his cock inside of you, he should have been wooing you. He should have showed you that he was in love with you. Also stating the obvious, there should have been no affairs PERIOD!!

For the first few months of the relationship, everything was perfect! He got to know your family better. Sam was a lawyer for a successful firm and Gabriel liked him well enough. He was definitely the nicer of the two! Dean on the other hand not so much. He was the stereotypical older brother who thought Gabriel wasn’t good enough. It didn’t help that Dean was seeing Gabriel’s younger brother Castiel.

Dean took his job as an older brother to an extreme that Gabriel hadn't quiet seen before! Sure, he would be protective over Cas if it needed to happen but the last thing that Gabriel was going to do was bash his brother's love interest....at least to his face.

“You’re too old for her”

“I know all about you”

“You’re a pig”

Those were the three sentences Gabriel had heard from Dean more than he wanted too. Gabriel tried to ignore the comments for your sake though. You didn’t need the bickering!

As all things did with Gabriel however, things began to go downhill. Gabriel wasn’t even for sure when it started. He didn’t have a fucking clue! All he knew that bad came flooding like a flash flood after a severe storm. The of of you were arguing and bickering over the smallest things. Like a cup that was left on the counter caused a world war three level argument that went on for three days and left Gabriel sleeping on the couch.

That’s when the affairs began. Gabriel was back to seeing the girls he had fucked before the relationship began. He could see the sadness in your eyes when he went “out for drinks with friends.” You knew exactly where he was going. He knew that you were no fool.

The night everything fell apart you were getting ready to go to a study group with a few of your college friends at a coffee shop. Gabriel didn’t want you to go because he knew a few guys that you had casually dated was going to be there.

“Stay home with me.”

He had asked sweetly hoping his honey sweet tone would keep you in with him. Those stupid college pricks wasn’t getting their hands on what was his. You rolled your eyes as you pulled on a loose black dress that showed too much thigh for Gabriel’s liking.

“Gabriel, I need to study for this literature test not to mention the calculus test for next week. I'll only be gone a few hours.”

“Study is a code word for getting fucked.”

Gabriel grumbled angrily. You spun looking at him with wide eyes.

“What did you just say?”

You asked, obviously. Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest.

“You’re cheating on me.”

You looked at him like he had officially lost his ever loving mind!

“Gabriel you are insane! You are the one going out to see whores at night. Not me.”

Gabriel couldn’t respond to that. He knew if he denied it you would call him a liar. If he told you the truth, he could beg for forgiveness although he wasn’t the begging type.

“Don’t even try to deny it. I saw the images on your computer and all of your ”dating” accounts. I have tried to look the other way because I love you. I thought I could change you and turn you into something you aren’t. I was very wrong. Do you really care about me or just fucking me?”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow.

“What’s the difference?”

Gabriel knew the response was cold and he shouldn't have said it but he wanted you to be miserable. He wanted you to see how upset he was with the thought of you being around your ex. Instead, your face looked instantly furious.

“It’s over, Gabriel!”

Gabriel’s mouth that hit the floor with that! He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“No! That is not what I want! Sugar, I can change. I just want you.”

You shook her head.

“I said we are done! I can't do this anymore!”

You turned walking from the house. Gabriel followed you, like a lost puppy, pleading the whole way for you to come back.

“Baby seriously it wasn’t you…I know this is me. We have something special you and I. I know you feel it too”

You shook your head as he reached out taking your hand pulling you back into his arms.

“Come on baby. Come back inside. Sleep with me one more night. Let me change your mind….let me show you how much I love you.”

You quickly pulled yourself out of his arms ignoring his golden eyes filling with tears.

“Those crocodile tears aren’t doing shit this time, Gabriel. It’s over.”

Gabriel looked down at the ground sadly. When he looked back up, he had gone into a complete Jekyll and Hyde mode.

“Where are you going to go?”

Gabriel asked smugly. Your friend that you had been sharing an apartment with before had a new roommate. He knew that you didn’t have the money to afford one on your own.

“I’m going home to my brothers.”

Gabriel froze at that. His golden eyes getting dark. Being sweet was getting him nowhere and he didn’t like it. His temper was beginning to show now. Like a snap of ones fingers, he went from boyfriend Gabriel to asshole Gabriel.

“Fine go. You’re right. I don’t want you either. You’re nothing but a spoiled brat, Y/n. I have plenty of girls that can give me everything I want.”

You shook you head. This just proved to you that he would never change. Gabriel would never change!

“Fine.”

The following days were some of the hardest for Gabriel. Immediately he regretted mutually breaking up with you. He had tried non stop to get you to come home to him.

“Please baby. I need you.”

“I’ll let you look through my phone every night.”

“I won’t go anywhere without you. You will know where I am and know I’ll be faithful.”

“Come home, Y/n. Everything I said was a lie.”

On morning 3, Sam and Dean showed up at the door. Gabriel was clearly shocked to see the bigger then humanly necessary Winchester brothers on on his door step.

“We are here to get Y/n's things. Move you little creep!”

Dean said coldly pushing past Gabriel as he began to gather anything of his sister’s he could find. Sam just gave Gabriel a displeased expression. Of the two brothers, Gabriel connected with Sam the easiest. He was an actual nice guy who tried to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Today, however, there was no benefit of the doubt. Today there was cold anger in his eyes.

“Sam, Dean please I need to talk to her.”

Gabriel managed to get out. Sam looked at Dean signaling for him to be quiet.

“Stay away from her, Gabriel. If you keep on bothering Y/n I will be slapping you with a restraining order. She doesn’t want you anymore.”

Gabriel knew at this point tell your brother’s that he loved and need you more than anyone on the earth would be pointless. They wouldn’t care that his depression was going on a downward spiral from the moment you had walked out of his door. If he told them that he was drinking himself to sleep Dean would probably tell him to drink a little more.

“What do you need a liver for anyway?”

As Sam grabbed the last box of stuff he looked back to Gabriel.

“Don’t darken our doorway again.”

Gabriel was pulled from his memory of the worst years of his life when his phone buzzed. He had changed a lot in the last year or so. No longer did he sleep with any woman who showed interest in him. He hadn’t even slept with a woman in a few months. The last girl he tried to date, Kali, turned out to be an epic disaster. Gabriel had called her by your name one night during making love. After that, she wanted nothing to do with him.

That at least gave him time to really work on his career as an author. He had lived comfortably for a while now his career was really taking off. If you were still home, you could have stayed home and maybe…just maybe the two of you could have started a family by now.

“God damn it, I really need to fucking stop.”

Gabriel cursed as he looked at the email from one of his publishers, who was informing him that he had an interview with the news station that you worked for. Gabriel’s heart pounded into over drive when he saw who the interview was with…Y/n Winchester.

In two days Gabriel would see his lover again! He lay back on the bed and turned to the bedside table that held an engagement ring. Gabriel had bought in hopes of smoothing the crumbling relationship over.

“I have to do something….”

Gabriel flipped on the TV and just like always there was your beautiful face delivering a news story. He smiled looking at you with longing eyes,

“Soon baby…”

On the first page of our story

The future seemed so bright

Then this thing turned out so evil

I don’t know why I’m still surprised

Even angels have their wicked schemes

And you take that to new extremes

But you’ll always be my hero

Even though you’ve lost your mind

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn

But that’s all right because I like the way it hurts

Just gonna stand there and hear me cry

But that’s all right because I love the way you lie

I love the way you lie

You looked down at your notebook with a sigh. This was one of the last entries you had made in the diary that you had kept when dating Gabriel. It had been so long since the break up but you still missed him like you did the day you left. Why you missed him you didn’t know. He didn’t deserve a moment of your time, according to Sam and Dean. You knew everything wasn’t Gabriel’s fault. you pushed him too. The fact of the matter was the two of you always knew how to push each others buttons more than anyone in the world.

A small squeak got your attention right away. You looked down to see your and Gabriel’s daughter had started to wake. Your heart pounded as you looked at the baby. When looking at Molly, it was impossible not to think of Gabriel. She looked so much like her father who had no idea that she was in existence. The pang of guilt hit you hard like it always did. You knew that you should have told Gabriel that you was pregnant even though he wouldn’t have cared.

Every time you had came close to calling Gabriel during your pregnancy you would chicken out. Your mind would go to the last conversation,

“Fine go. I don’t want you either. You’re nothing but a spoiled brat Y/n. I have plenty of girls that can give me everything I want.”

If he felt that way why would he want the baby? You knew that he deserved to know but for some reason, you just couldn’t make that call. The original plan was to tell him the night of the break up. Your plan was to come home from the study group and give him the pregnancy test that you had taken a few days before. At that time you were hoping the fact he gotten you pregnant would make Gabriel be faithful. Now you knew it would probably have pushed him further away.

You stood walking to the crib picking your daughter up with a smile.

“Good morning, Molly.”

You said with smile pressing a kiss to the baby’s chubby cheeks. The baby giggled wrapping her hands in her your long curls. You carefully wiggled your hair away so she couldn’t pull. Pulling hair had quickly become Molly's favorite activity. Neither Sam nor yourself stood a chance when Molly got in a hair pulling mood.

“Mama.”

The baby cooed. Molly had been saying simple words for several days. So far she got out “mama” and “dada” which broke your heart! Gabriel should be there hearing his baby ask for him. You knew the day was coming when Molly would ask questions on Gabriel.

“Where is my daddy? Don’t I have one?”

You knew that you would have to tell her the truth eventually. The little girl would deserve it! You would wait until Molly was an adult to tell her everything. You wouldn’t tell the child that her father was a man whore who wouldn’t keep his cock in his pants. The thought of telling her that when she would be an adult sounded awful as well too.

At least Molly had plenty of father figures in her life. Sam and Dean worshiped the ground the baby crawled upon. Cas would do anything the baby could possibly want and Bobby was so into the role of playing grandfather it was precious! It had been Cas that was in the delivery room with your when you gave birth. He was the closest thing to Gabriel that you had.

You knew it was hard for Cas not to tell his brother about his child. Cas however, agreed with you that keeping Molly a secret from Gabriel was a good thing right now.

“Molly doesn’t need to see her father with a new woman every week. You don’t need to see that either. The way Gabe did you was wrong and he knows it. We were raised better than that.”

Cas hadn’t even told their eldest brother Michael about the baby. He acted as though nothing was going on when he met his brothers for coffee from time to time.

A knock on the door pulled your from your thoughts. You looked up as Dean walked in dressed for work. He had been working with Bobby as a mechanic for a few years now and every morning he took Molly to Ellen, who watched her during the day.

“Came to see if Ms. Molly was ready to go to Nanny and Pop pop’s. Still kinda funny seeing Bobby go all mushy over a baby.”

You smiled and began to change Molly into her clothes. Dean watched you for a moment before trying to choose his words.

“Well, today is the day.”

You looked up taking a breath. Dean knew better than anyone that you were a nervous wreck about the interview with Gabriel. You hadn’t seen your ex since the day that you had left him. When you asked to have the interview assigned to another reporter, your boss said no. You knew he had no clue about your “history” with Gabriel and the last thing that you wanted was to let him know about it.

“Yeah, it is.”

Dean frowned.

“Are you going to tell him about Molly?”

You looked up. That had been the thought that was plaguing you for some time. You had a feeling that you would just blurt it out when the two of you started talking. When you were uncomfortable you tended to blurt things out that you really shouldn't.

“I don’t know Dean. I don’t know what I’m going to do... period.”

Dean sighed before taking on his “I am your big brother and I love you” tone.

“Y/n, I know I normally find any excuse to call Gabriel a no good douche bag among other things but I was thinking about our childhood and how dad was with us. He left us wondering so much. It may be a good idea to let him know about Molly. What he does with it after that is up to him. If he ever hurts you or her…I’ll kill him. I just don’t want Molly growing up like us.”

You turned looking at your brother with a pleased smile. This was a huge step for Dean to say something like this! It made you extremely proud of him in the moment!

“You’ve been talking to Sammy haven’t you?”

Dean nodded.

“Yeah…I have. He was right though. Just don’t let that little creep scare you. He’s lucky this interview is now and not when you were knocked up You would have scared the shit out of him. I would have paid money to have been able to see it happen to.”

You smiled before kissing Molly and handing her to Dean.

“It will be okay Dean.”

You said softly. Dean nodded kissing Molly’s head as she grinned up at him. He smiled looking down at the person he loved almost more than anyone in the world. She was the one person that made stuff make sense to him.

“I’ll see you tonight.”

He said with a smile before turning and walking from the room without another word.

Meanwhile….

Gabriel stood in his bedroom looking at his appearance. It was almost time to see you again and he was feeling like some 14 year old who was about to go on his first date. He knew he looked straight up awful. Gabriel hadn’t slept much in the two days since he found out he would be seeing you.

“I’ve got to get my shit together.”

He mumbled taking a sip of the whiskey that was sitting on the bedside table. Gabriel’s eyes went again to the drawer that held that engagement ring. Sitting down on the bed he took it out of the box looking down at the diamond ring. Gabriel sighed envisioning the ring on your finger. Here came the foolish feelings again that he had been dealing with over the past few days. Gabriel could see you in a white wedding dress, your hands locked in his, with that loving smile on your face.

“Now is the time to really knock this pansy shit off.”

A few hours later, Gabriel stood in the news studio trying to not make it obvious that he was looking for you. Playing it cool was the thing that he needed to do at the moment. When you finally appeared Gabriel’s heart began to pound. There you were. His beautiful lover was feet away talking to some girl who had to be an assistant of some sort. Gabriel was thankful that you hadn’t changed!

When turned his way, Gabriel could see the apprehension on your face. Great! This is just the opposite of what he wanted! He didn’t want you to look at him like you were scared of him.

“Please baby. Don’t look at me like that. I won’t hurt you again.”

He thought miserably. You finally gave him a tentative smile as you reached him.

“Hello, Gabriel.”

Your voice was like heaven to him. It’s like all of his dreams were coming alive and all he had to do was reach out and grab you.

“Hi Y/n. It’s good to see you. You look so beautiful.”

Your face went red as you looked away from your ex. Damn, you hated to admit it but you were still so in love with him. Although he looked exhausted and like he had been through hell, Gabriel was still sexy! Whenever he had a new book coming out he worked nonstop until it was done. So looking exhausted was no shock to her. There had been many nights that you had to force him away from his computer to go to bed.

You had to look away from his amber eyes and look elsewhere. It didn’t help that she looked to his hips. Mentally cursing when you realized that he was wearing those tight jeans that made his ass perfect.

You finally knew that it was time to get your head in the game. Drooling over Gabriel was going to get you nowhere. Soon enough Gabriel would pick up on what you were doing and it would all be over.

“We’ll be in this room over here.”

The next hour went pretty smooth. You kept your eyes on your paper trying to be as professional as possible. Getting done early, the two of you sat in an uncomfortable silence. Gabriel finally looked up having enough.

“How have you been, sugar?”

Your emerald eyes rolled up.

“Gabriel, please don’t do this.”

Gabriel sighed. He hated seeing that pain in your eyes. Gabriel was no fool. He knew you was replaying the last fight in your head.

“Y/n, there is so many things I have wanted to say to you.”

You pressed your lips together. This was what you was dreading! Your mind went instantly to Molly as your looked at Gabriel’s annoyed expression. That was the same look Molly would give you when she was frustrated.

“Gabriel, that ship had sailed.”

Gabriel sighed frustrated.

“Y/n, I’m not asking you to get in bed with me.”

You nodded.

“I know. Gabriel, I need to tell you something.”

Gabriel ran a hand through his golden locks.

“What?”

You took a breath. It was now or never. He deserved to know!

“Gabriel, when I left…when I left I was pregnant.”

You were almost afraid to look at his face. It took almost all the bravery that had to look up at him. Gabriel was frozen. He looked at you with a face full of shock.

“We have a baby? WE have a baby and you didn’t tell me?! What the hell, Y/n?!”

You swallowed. This was the reaction that you didn’t expect. You honestly expected him to blow it off like it was nothing. Instead, his amber eyes looked a mixture of heart broken and furious.

“Yes, we do. I didn’t tell you because I assumed you wouldn’t care. Think about it Gabriel how do you think I felt? You told me that you didn’t want me. Why would you want our baby? There is also the way you are. Do you think I would want our child growing up around all of your whores?”

Gabriel sighed. He put his face in his hands before looking back up at you.

“You have a fair point there. Y/n, you should know something though. I haven’t been with anyone in months. I know that’s hard for you to believe but I haven’t. You’re the only woman I have been craving. I did you wrong and you didn’t deserve it. Our baby…what is it?”

You pushed the thoughts of the relationship from your mind.

“A girl. Her name is Molly.”

You quickly took your phone out and flipping to the photo section before handing the phone across the table to Gabriel. You watched his expression carefully. Gabriel instantly smiled as he looked through the pictures.

“Isn’t she beautiful?”

You asked softly. Gabriel smiled letting his finger trace over his daughter’s round face. Never in a million years did Gabriel even plan on having children. One thing he always prided himself on was being careful with his various lovers. He made sure never to risk knocking them up. You was the only girl he never used protection with. It always seemed he was in a huge rush to get inside of you that he never once considered putting on a condom. He liked the feeling of your wet body milking him for everything he was worth. In the moment that was another thing, he considered telling you. He wanted you to know that he never let someone touch him that way. That was just you.

“She’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Y/n, I don’t know what to say. I hate that you even had the thought I wouldn’t care. Sugar, I would have been there for it all.”

He knew you probably didn’t believe him but it needed to come out. You took a deep breath.

“Gabriel, if you want to be a part of her life I won’t stop you.”

He nodded.

“Yes, I want to be a part of her life…and yours…the way we should have been.”

You swallowed looking away.

“Gabriel, I’m not ready to talk about that.”

Gabriel looked down like a sad child nodding.

“I really want to see my baby.”

You walked out of the news studio beside Gabriel. Neither had really said anything since you had shot down his advance of another go at their relationship. Gabriel walked you to your car.

“Do you want me to just follow you to Dean’s?”

You nodded as Gabriel reached out cupping your cheek. You felt your body instantly began to get wet just at the skin on skin contact.

“Gabriel…no.”

He sighed.

“Can’t blame me for trying. See you soon.”

Once in the car, you fought the urge to cry as you watched Gabriel walk to his new Dodge Challenger. You smirked at the thought of how hot he looked in that car but her heart ached watching him walk away. He was so willing to take you back. You could easily tell him that you would go back to being his and he would be happy as a clam.

“This is going to be interesting...”

-------

@untoldshortsofthefandoms

@hankypranky

@wontlookaway

@emiwrites3reads

@fand0maniac

@sprnaturallover

@killtherandomness

@authoressskr

@shadows-and-padlocked-hearts

@shitfaceddaniel

@deanwherescas

@li0nh34rt

@fandom-trash-worth-it

@marichromatic

#Gabriel #Gabriel AU #Gabriel x reader #Supernatural Fan Fiction #reader insert #dean winchester #Sam Winchester #Cas #total au story #Bobby Singer

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mittensmorgul · 6 years

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I feel like this is probably something you have a lot of thoughts on, but you don't have to go in depth if you don't want (if you do that's also great!) Do you think about cas classifying dean as family and vice versa is a hurdle to be overcome if textual d/c is a thing that's happening? Obviously family includes your significant other, but as far as fiction, I feel like it's code for platonic feelings, because I try to think of any tv couple that started as "family" and I can't. Thanks :)

Hi! I’m sorry I’ve been sitting on this message for a couple of days, but it’s not actually something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about. At least not specifically like this.

I mean, the first thing that came to mind at your question was @destieldrabblesdaily‘s post from back during s11 (aah, s11 gave us so much...) about how they were slowly ticking off all these things from a checklist labeled “Obstacles to Canon.”

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/145130443365/hello-all-the-episode-did-in-general-was-tick

There are four main points on Shirley’s list, only two of which I think are so completely obvious in canon now that there’s really nothing more to say on either subject:

the vessel consent issue: It’s Cas’s body. There’s no Jimmy in there. Cas has been rebuilt and resurrected multiple times by God, died and been burned, and came back from the empty with what must be yet another entirely new physical body. That is Castiel’s body. Period. There’s no “but what if...” left to argue on this point.

the concern that the show would morph into something it’s not: the focus of the show wouldn’t somehow shift to Dean and Cas’s romantic adventures. It wouldn’t become a comedy, or exclude Sam. The tone and format of the show wouldn’t need to change at all, and that was pretty conclusively proved not only back in 11.19 with the way Jesse and Cesar’s relationship was presented, but *waves hand across all of s13* the show’s gonna do what the show’s always done. Nothing needs to change about the show’s format or structure.

The other two points might be conclusively obvious to some of us (and honestly I have personally been satisfied by how they continue to handle these issues), but there’s still ground they CAN cover toward making these things more explicit for the general audience. And I’d argue that they HAVE been doing just that consistently, and even rather explicitly now in s13:

Dean’s sexuality: Shirley’s original post covered this extremely well from where we were back in s11 (so go read that right now if you haven’t already). I’ve added a heck of a lot to my Dean Is Bi tag since 11.19, so I’d argue that at the very least it’s not something they’ve tried to back away from over the last few seasons. They may not have come out and explicitly said it in so many words, but the show has continued to escalate the subtext to the point where even the general audience has been noticing it in droves.

The Bromance Zone: Back in Shirley’s original post, this was accepted as fairly conclusively evident from Dean’s pining for Cas back in s11, and how it was made painfully and explicitly clear in 11.18... but whoa have we ever had a lot of logs thrown on the bromance pyre since then. And I think this is the point you’re concerned about in your question above.

You stated you couldn’t think of a single romantic couple in fiction that began as “family” or, I suppose in this case as “found family,” or “family of choice.” But I’d like to suggest that most successful romantic couples do begin as friends, regardless of whether they consider each other “family” before their relationship becomes romantic.

Confession time: I have never watched the show Friends, but I believe they considered themselves a sort of found family, right? And there was at least one pair of them that were actually brother and sister? And didn’t several of them become romantically involved by the end of the series? I remember seeing posts to this effect, but correct me if I’m wrong...

Another canon ship that’s often been paralleled to destiel is Castle/Beckett. If you’ve never watched Castle, they’re a pretty textbook enemies to friends to lovers to HEA, and it took like five seasons for them to get to that point. Thing is, the nature of the work they did together (police work) created the same sort of “found family” feelings that the Winchesters’ collection of allies and friends has. And their relationship included so many of the same tropes that Dean and Cas has... right down to the “deathbed love confessions,” amnesia, miscommunication, mutual pining... you name it... And we thought FIVE YEARS was a slow burn. Thing is, every time they seemed to get close to making some sort of dramatic love confession, for years, they’d back down at the last moment for one reason or another. For YEARS, they settled for what could arguably be considered a sort of familial closeness, because that’s all they thought they could have. Circumstance just kept stepping in the way...

So on that note, I’d argue that practically EVERY slow burn romantic endgame story progressed through this “awkward found family” stage. They’re closer than what could be called “friends” in the strictest platonic sense of the word, but short of confessing undying romantic love and attraction, the strongest word in their vocabulary for the care and affection they feel they’re allowed to demonstrate to one another is family.

So back to Supernatural...

S12 approached this issue from two directions for most of the season, with a Compare/Contrast using Mary’s story paralleled to Castiel’s for most of the season, showing us a distinct difference between what FAMILY feels and does for one another, and whatever the heck it is that Dean and Cas feel and do for one another. On the other side of the coin, they doubled down on demonstrating the blatant differences from how Sam sees Cas as a brother, and how Dean sees Cas as a /////brother/////. It was demonstrated over and over again that despite using the same word to describe what Cas is to them, it’s unequivocally DIFFERENT for Dean. That leaves us to wonder WHY.

12.10 makes it clear what the angels believe Dean is to Cas, his “human weakness.” We were shown Dean’s feelings for and connection to Cas, that Dean refused to save himself from Ishim when he knew that using the banishing sigil could possibly have injured Cas further, or even killed him. It wasn’t a risk he was willing to take. That moment may have been a small part of that episode, but right there, Dean had no reason to believe that Ishim wasn’t about to murder him. He surrendered his own life for Cas.

12.12 has Cas’s deathbed love confession, which people are still debating from a linguistic standpoint. But I’d argue that the fact we’re able to debate it at all is even further evidence that it’s something that we’re supposed to be thinking about, and wondering about. Or else why would it even be a debate in the first place.

12.15 has Cas disappearing back to Heaven, the ambiguous phone call moment where Sam hangs up with Mary and signs off with “Love you,” while Dean hangs up with Cas. Loads of us had a holy hell did Dean just say that??? moment and had to rewind to confirm that it was Sam saying it to Mary. Because of that debate left over from 12.12. Again, the fact that we all had to stop and blink at the implication shows that something is definitely different now.

Which brings us to freaking 12.19 and the goddamned mixtape. No amount of Bro and Pal and Buddy on Dean’s part can negate “It’s a gift, you keep those.” Sorry folks, them’s the rules.

And can we talk for a moment about how explicitly clear s13 has made Dean’s feelings, his grief that he textually admitted by yelling it all in Sam’s face was all about Cas. Grief so powerful it somehow activated Jack’s powers (which he had no control of at that point and didn’t even understand that his powers had any part in Cas’s resurrection even after 13.06) and poked Cas awake in the Empty.

And then we have 13.06. I still haven’t recovered from 13.06.

The connection between Dean and Cas intensifies in 13.07, both through Dean giving Cas that same line from 12.10 (Don’t do anything stupid) which he clarified back in s12 wasn’t borne of anger, but of worry. Worry that 12.12 had honed into love, and 13.01 punched us all in the face with as Dean broke down and screamed his grief at God. I mean, the differences between how Sam considers Cas “family” and how Dean does is inarguable at this point.

I’d suggest that the definition of “family” isn’t so much something the show needs to clarify at this point, but something that’s been written all over the last season and a half in invisible ink, and all they need to do at this point is hold it up to a light bulb for the entire text to become clearly visible to everyone.

#the scheherazade of supernatural #destiel #the destiel #there really aren't any textual obstacles at this point #dean winchester is bilingual #revenge of the subtext #spn s13 #spn 11.19 #spn 11.18 #spn 13.01 #spn 13.06 #spn 13.04 #spn 12.10 #spn 12.12 #spn 12.19 #spn 13.07 #Anonymous

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badbirep · 3 years

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ok so where i live a lot of houses are abandonned and in ruins, which is great for my poor friends and i as our minimum wages asses can afford them.

80% of my friend group works in construction, so there's a lot of "buying a really old broken down house and renovating it yourself" going on, i currently have no less than 4 of my closest friends at various points of the renovation process.

my own house is halfway through because i stopped at livable and didn't go a step beyond that lol (one of my friends is even worse than me, so i don't feel too bad like ok at least i have a FLOOR)

all this to say that i REALLY love the "dean and cas renovate an old house" trope in fic!!!

but also that some times the renos that they're doing don't make a lot of sense :p it always makes my heart warm like okay cool idea but love, that's not how it works :')

oh wait i just had a thought actually, maybe it's me that's totally misunderstanding! here it's all old stone houses, so maybe it's totally different than old american houses that i assume are made out of wood and the good will of god.

like here it's pretty much impossible to make a hole in the ceiling if you fuck up reshingling a roof, but maybe houses in america are not made the same.

however my dean coded ex broke two of the neighbours' tiles reshingling our mutual friend's roof so you know dean would. it was alright in the end because it was an area of the neighbour's roof that he had already agreed to redo before hand so it's all good really.

that's such a nice thought actually cause that's how it works around here, like the neighbour saw him working on the roof and was like hello young man! while you're at it do you want to do a bit of mine! and i can so see dean working on their house and slowly getting hired to do half the village.

#i love house renovations and it warms my heart forever!!#take somewhere nobody wants and make it your own!!!#jayspeak

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areyouthereyaitsmecriticaltheory · 3 years

Text

What is a Novel? Heteroglossia and David Yoon’s Frankly in Love

In reading, we often focus so much on determining what we are reading about and forget to think about how we are reading about it. In thinking about how to define and classify the genre of young adult fiction, I began to think about its parent genre–the novel. The novel is most likely the predominant mode of young adult fiction because of when the genre emerged; according to Michael Cart, in 1942 (Cart 11). Evidently, the popularity of epic and poetry had long been replaced by the novel when young adult fiction’s genesis occurred. The novel has remained the predominant mode of young adult fiction to this day; from the “golden age” of the genre–S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, Walter Dean Myers’ Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff, Judy Blume’s Forever, Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War, Sylvia Engdahl’s Enchantress from the Stars, and Richard Sleator’s House of Stars, to recent YA phenomena like the Twilight series, The Hunger Games, the works of John Green, Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give, and the novel I will analyze today, David Yoon’s Frankly in Love. Although the styles of each work are evidently distinct, from first person to third person, realism to dystopian, and about widely different aspects of adolescence, each work is undeniably a novel. So, in order to determine what the novel serves to represent adolescent experience, one first has to ask what is a novel? Keep reading to find out.

Synopsis of Critical Theory

Although I doubt Mikhail Bakhtin would have intended his notion of heteroglossia (literally different tongues/languages) to be related to young adult fiction, I do not think his argument is inconsistent with the genre. In “Discourse in the Novel” Mikhail Bakhtin defines the novel as “as a diversity of social speech types, sometimes even diversity of languages and a diversity of individual voices, artistically organized” (Bakhtin 32). Then, Bakhtin insists that “Literary language” “is itself stratified and heteroglot in its aspect as an expressive system, that is, in the forms that carry its meanings” (Bakhtin 33). Such stratification, Bakhtin outlines, is “generic,” “professional,” “social,” “historical,” and “socio-ideological” (Bakhtin 33-34).

Thus, the language of the novel reflects the various stratifications of language in real life:

all languages of heteroglossia, whatever the principle underlying them and making each unique, are specific points of view on the world, forms for conceptualizing the world in words, specific world views, each characterized by its own objects, meanings and values. As such they may be juxtaposed to one another, mutually supplement one another, contradict one another and be interrelated dialogically. As such they encounter one another and co-exist in the consciousness of real people – first and foremost, in the creative consciousness of people who write novels. (Bakhtin 34)

Bakhtin also argues that language is at the same time individual and related to that beyond oneself: “As a living, socio-ideological concrete thing, as heteroglot opinion, language, for the individual consciousness, lies in the borderline between oneself and the other” (Bakhtin 35).

Ultimately, through his definition of the novel as heteroglot, Bakhtin concludes that interpretation is infinite: “The semantic structure of internally persuasive discourse is not finite, it is open; in each of the new contexts that dialogize it, this discourse is able to reveal ever newer ways to mean” (Bakhtin 44). Due to the fact that the reader’s relationship to language is heteroglot and stratified in ever new individual ways, people will inherently read the novel in different ways at different times. In thinking about how this relates to the genre of young adult fiction and my own experience of reading works from the “golden age” of YA, I determine (and I think Bakhtin would agree) that it is still valuable to read such works in 2020. Although I may not read Blume’s Forever as someone would have in its year of publication, that does not make my interpretation any less valuable, In fact, Bakhtin’s idea democratizes interpretation, in that no interpretation can be privileged over another, because they are all as individualistic regardless of who the reader is and when they read the work.

Application

Although I could argue for the heteroglossic nature of each work of “golden age” YA I outlined above, I think recent trends in the genre, as exemplified in David Yoon’s 2019 Frankly in Love, allow for a clear connection between the novel and heteroglossia. As YA fiction has become increasingly more diverse so too has its language. For instance, in Frankly in Love Yoon stratifies language between that of English (Californian), Korean, Spanish, text, email, student, son, friend, and boyfriend (Yoon 39, 43, 62, 65, 67, 70, 109, 131, 133, 259, 293-294, 376, 379, 401). This list is not extensive, and I encourage you to see what other types of languages (‘generic,’ ‘professional,’ ‘social,’ ‘historical,’ and ‘socio-ideological’) your students can identify in reading the text.

The novel is self-aware of the various languages it uses to represent the narrative. In fact, the narrator, Frank, explicitly calls out such a practice: “In Language class Ms. Chit would call this code switching. It’s like switching accents, but at a more micro level. The idea is that you don’t speak the same way with your friends (California English Casual) that you do with a teacher (California English Formal), or a girl (California English Sing-song), or your immigrant parents (California English Exacerbated). You may change how you talk to best adapt to whoever you’re talking to” (Yoon 39). Although Frank refers to “code switching” here rather than the stratification of language that is heteroglossia, the variety of languages present in the novel is still the central idea. Thus, the definition of code switching that Frank provides only further highlights the multiple languages he uses, and that consequently Yoon uses in the novel.

Frankly in Love not only exemplifies heteroglossia, but also reflects and encourages Bakhtin’s notion that there are ‘ever newer ways to mean.’ This perhaps is best reflected in the title of the novel, which serves as a pun for the main character’s name: Frank Li. Thus, the title can be interpreted both figuratively and literally. The novel is literally about the protagonist, Frank Li, in love, and is figuratively an honest and “frank” account of being in love. Therefore, the title alone encourages readers to interpret words in multifaceted ways and nods to the multiple meanings of language depending upon the reader and context.

To return to my initial question, then, the novel serves to represent the various languages of adolescents. Consequently, adolescents, as readers, provide a unique perspective and relationship to language that perpetuates words’ quality to possess ‘ever newer ways to mean.’ Ultimately, Young Adult fiction, as a genre comprised of novels, intersects with a variety of languages, but predominantly is defined and interpreted by the language of adolescents.

Discussion Questions

How does Frankly in Love reflect Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia?

How does Yoon stratify language in the novel? What languages does the novel rely upon to tell Frank’s story?

How does Frankly in Love promote the idea that language is both individual and representative of the “other”?

Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Discourse in the Novel.” Literary Theory an Anthology, edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, Blackwell Publishers, 1998, p. 32-44.

Cart, Michael. “From Sue Barton to the Sixties.” Young Adult Literature from Romance to Realism, Chicago, Neal-Schuman, 2016.

Yoon, David. Frankly in Love. New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2019.

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alainawriteswwe · 7 years

Text

Pride and Prejudice and Wrestling - Part 4

Characters: Seth Rollins x Reader, Dean Ambrose

Summary: When a superstar Hollywood actress (The Reader), interacts with WWE Superstar Seth Rollins at Monday Night Raw, sparks fly. Can Rollins overcome his pride and convince the reader to take a chance on him when she’s still recovering from a nasty scandal caused by her cheating fiancé?

Warnings: Lots of flirting, angsty longing and maybe some bad words

Tags: @caramara3 — Part 4: Love in an Elevator

The car ride back to the hotel with Bayley and Sasha was awkward but it was all on my side. They chatted amicably with me but I just wondered if they hated me for my little prank on Seth. I couldn’t blame them. So much for making friends. But when Sasha continued to press me about joining them on their trip to the Performance Center in the morning, I felt like maybe I was not completely the heel in their book.

But I still felt bad I couldn’t apologize to Seth. Who knew that under the fierce ego he displayed to everyone that he was also a man whose pride could be stung so easily. Not that I felt it was his fault. I pushed too hard with the karaoke. We had been battling each other all night and I had mistakenly delivered a knock out blow.

I thought about burying my own pride and asking Sasha for his number so I could at least lamely text an apology. I was about to do so when we arrived at our hotel. As we all turned towards the elevators I caught Seth’s figure in the hotel bar which was miraculously still open. But it was Miami and people partied all night, even on a Monday. Okay. Technically it was Tuesday.

I approached him and noticed Seth was alone too so I didn’t have to worry about Dean blocking me. Seth was the only person sitting at the gaudy pink art deco bar. A bartender was drying newly cleaned glasses, getting ready for the end of the night.

I hung my head and bit my bottom lip. Apology not accepted. I guess I had that coming.

Seth looked at me. “The men in my family have a code. You never let a lady pay for a drink.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that.

The bartender served the bourbon to Seth but he slid it down to me instead. I took a sip for courage. It burned going down.

“Seth. I am sorry about tonight. You didn’t deserve that. I got caught up in our little game of taking swipes at each other and I went too far.”

Seth said nothing. He just took another sip of his bourbon, looking down into his glass as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. Damn it, why wouldn’t he look at me? Give me some kind of in. I felt nervous, as if there was a stone weighing down the bottom of my stomach. It was accompanied by the shame of what I did to him at the karaoke club.

I took a deep breath and continued . “I wanted to pay you back for the things you said at the bar. About us wanting each other. I wanted to prove you were wrong. But it was a low blow. I realize that now, Seth.”

Nothing. The guy who once wore a shirt proclaiming that he, ‘Never Shuts Up’ was still silent.

I didn’t say anything else. I just took another sip of the bourbon. Seth and I sat and drank in silence for a bit. The silence would have been comfortable in any other situation.

“So…how do you recover from a scandal?”

“Don’t have one,” he replied.

“Too late, sadly.”

He took a long draught from his glass. I could tell that this silence was from him thinking through his answer. I gave him some space.

When he finally spoke he still didn’t look at me. “You surround yourself with the people who care about you. Who love you no matter what. Friends. Family. For me it was my mom.”

“Oh.” I took another deep breath before my confession. “I don’t really have a lot of support systems right now.”

Finally he turned and looked at me. Covered my hand with his and gave it a squeeze. I felt that electricity pulse between us again. Why did my body always react to the mere touch of his hand? It was as if the heat from his touch would consume me, if I let it.

“You have friends, then?”

I shook my head, no. “I realized some of my friends’ true colors with the scandal. Not only was my best friend the villain, but she took a lot of our mutual friends with her, along with my fiancé.”

I paused a moment. “Look, I’m not trying to get you to feel sorry for me.” I looked down in shame. “What I really wanted to know is how do you cope with the embarrassment?”

Seth shook his head. “Well I’m drinking bourbon in a bar at 2 am so I might not be the best person to ask.”

“I’m being serious, Seth.”

“I don’t know how to stop that. The embarrassment never goes away. The endless memes and mean tweets. At some point things will ease. Your number will be up and the media, the fans and the haters will move on to someone else.” He sounded sad. “You’re never free of it though, but as long as you can live with yourself. Take each day as it comes, man. That’s what matters.”

I thought on this.

“You were not at fault for what happened to you, Princess. Regardless of what that asshole fiancé of yours said.”

And that was the true shame of my scandal. My fiancé’s accusation that our sex life wasn’t exactly compatible. That was his reason for cheating. He accused me of being cold. He had even used the word robotic in a interview. I wanted to die when I heard that. It was the one bit I knew I would never live down. It was sweet of Seth to try to reassure me.

“With my scandal, I was the asshole fiancé so it was a bit different,” Seth continued. “Getting people to trust me seems to be my life’s work, in and out of the ring.”

Seth drank the last of his bourbon. He didn’t call over the bartender for another drink.

I ran my finger tip around the rim of my glass. “That might be true but people still think ill of me. They feel bad for me. I hear people saying, ‘there goes the woman who can’t seem to keep a man. Her fiancé left her for her best friend.’” I sighed. It was a tired sigh. “You should see the articles in the gossip mags all pitying me for my inability to get or hold on to a new boyfriend.”

Seth turned on the full power of those deep brown eyes. He squeezed my hand again brushing the rough pad of his thumb over the smooth skin of my hand. It was comforting, but also arousing.

“You will survive this, Princess. Each bump you take will make you stronger. In time.”

He let go of my hand and slapped his hands to his chest. “And you can believe that, baybay.”

I couldn’t help laughing at that to the point of snorting in a unladylike manner, which was what Seth wanted. I shook my head and playfully narrowed my eyes at him. “Man, I hate you.”

He waggled an eyebrow at me. “For being irresistible?”

“For knowing you’re irresistible.”

I got the famous, no, infamous laugh for that remark. That infernal sound that was a weird mix of air horn and asthmatic hyena.

I smiled slyly. “Your laugh is a crime. You know that right.”

He shrugged his shoulders like it didn’t matter. “So I have been told.”

He looked up at me and my heart rate increased. There was no mischief in his eyes. Just sincerity. “I could be your friend you know. If you let me.”

It was my time to give the mischievous smirk. “You mean ‘friends with benefits’?”

He shook his head. “No. Just friends. You know, talking and stuff.” He looked uncomfortable saying it but that was because he really meant it.

Seth let out a frustrated sigh. “Ok, look, it’s true I do want to get you in bed. But only because I know it will be great for both of us. But you can use me for more than just my rather incredible body.” He touched those abs of his through his t-shirt. “It’s all the CrossFit, you know.”

“Uh huh. Well then, as my friend, will you accept my apology?” I dropped the banter and was serious. “Seth. I’m so sorry about tonight. I can’t say that enough. I made you take a bump in front of your friends and coworkers. I want to make it up to you.”

“Okay.” He put a finger to his mouth as if he was thinking very seriously. “There is one thing I do want that only you can give me.”

I quirked an eyebrow at him. “Careful, Kingslayer. I’m not going to bed with you as an apology.”

He appeared falsely wounded at that. “No. I wouldn’t expect that. It might not seem that way to you but I can be a gentleman.” He leaned in close. His voice a whisper against the shell of my ear. “When you come to my bed and you will, it will be your decision.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “You’re very sure of yourself.”

“As your friend, I have only your best interests at heart.”

“Uh huh, I don’t believe your heart is the organ you are thinking with at the moment.”

“True.” He tucked a loose strand of my hair behind my ear. “But only when you are around.”

“I doubt that. I am fairly sure any girl in NXT could quickly turn your head.” I didn’t wait for the inevitable denial. “So what is this thing you want in exchange for accepting my apology?”

Seth was silent again a moment. He looked at me with a fierce intensity that was so powerful it made me look away.

His voice was soft. The command he issued, gentle. “Look at me.”

He reached out with his hand and tilted my chin up. I looked up at him and his eyes held mine.

“I want a kiss. That mouth of yours is too much of a temptation for me, even when you are using those lush lips of yours to hurl insults at me. I’ve wanted to kiss you all night, even after you insulted me at karaoke. Only then, I wanted that kiss to be crushing. I wanted to make you admit you wanted me. Admit you feel the same things I do. Have you respond to me and kiss me back so you couldn’t hide away from this thing between us.”

Seth’s hand fell to my shoulder where he stroked the soft curve there. I was almost too breathless to speak at his words and his touch but I still managed. My voice seemed unusually breathy though, deep and husky. “And now?”

He gave me a lopsided grin. “The intensity is still there, but now I don’t want the kiss to be punishing. I want to get to know you through that kiss. Understand who you are and what you need, so I can give it to you.”

I felt heat rise in my cheeks. Damn him, he was making me blush. Oh he was good. And the bastard knew it.

“Okay.” The word was out of my mouth before my brain could process it. I leaned in close to him, and kissed him briefly, my lips barely touching his. My brain still able to send my body the message that I should try and protect myself.

Seth shook his head. “Come on, Princess. That kiss was beneath you. I know you are capable of more. I’ll show you.”

He leaned in then and gently cupped my face in his hands. My pulse leapt at the caress. There was something about that particular touch before a kiss that made me feel protected and well, cherished. And somehow, Seth instinctively knew that’s what I wanted and needed.

The kiss was simple at first. Exploring and sweet, when I expected an uncontrollable passion and heat. Seth pressed his lips to mine as I had done earlier but soon he was running the tip of his tongue along the seam of my mouth, tugging gently at the bottom lip to give him full access. Without thinking first I gave him what he wanted and he deepened the kiss. I surrendered to it, kissing him back as he had wanted. Learning the curve of his lips and the cute way they pursed together. He tasted of the bourbon he had just drank and the dark chocolate cake he chided us all for ordering and yet somehow managed to eat the majority of. I could kiss him all night if he continued like this. His beard was slightly rough against my skin and I relished the feel of it. Thought wickedly of how it would feel with his dark head between my thighs.

I couldn’t help resting my hands on that strong muscular chest of his as I fought Seth for control of that kiss, using my tongue to tease him back. I could not resist touching those pecs of his either. I could feel the heat rising in him too, along with the racing of his heart. I let my greedy hands wander over to his arms, curled my fingers around his biceps. The pleasure from this simple kiss was heaven and it proved as Seth predicted, that the attraction between us was undeniable. I had never felt like this with my ex fiancé.

“Last call folks,” the bartender announced as he stopped in front of us.

Seth broke the kiss. His frustration evident as he covered his glass with his hand to indicate we weren’t interested in a final drink. Poor bartender. He probably just wanted to get home.

Seth pulled out a wallet from his back pocket and tossed some bills on the counter. The bartender was impressed with his tip and we got up and walked through the lobby to the elevator. I felt like everyone was looking at us. Like we were somehow different from that kiss and everyone in the lobby of the Miami Intercontinental hotel knew it. Yet Seth was protective of me. His hand on the small of my back as we walked through the marbled lobby to the bank of elevators.

Once inside the elevator Seth asked me what floor I was on and he keyed that in along with his own. So there would be no ‘back to my place’ conversation. I was disappointed, even if I was probably going to wind up alone in bed tonight anyway.

“The kiss was nice,” I said for lack of anything better to say.

“Yes. A proper apology.”

“Consider us even then.”

Seth seemed insulted by that. “Sure. Even. I guess you could call it that.”

The elevator was slow but I was thankful that no one else got on even though the car stopped on several floors to find no one on the other side of the doors.

I looked at Seth. He seemed to be lost in contemplation. Was he really going to let this end right here like this? Wasn’t he going to kiss me again? Didn’t he want to kiss me again? I wanted him to kiss me again? Damn him and that seductive mouth of his.

Impulsively I hit the stop button on the elevator panel. The car lurched for a moment and then came to a halt.

“Kiss me,” I commanded as I slid my arms around Seth’s hips and reached up on tip toe to kiss him again. He did as commanded and brought our lips together again. This kiss had heat, passion, pent up frustration. It was rough, dominant and full of fire. I loved it.

“More,” I purred. “Please.” Seth obliged me and took the kiss further and deeper, increasing the pressure and intensity of this coming together. He kissed me again and again until I was completely drugged by each touch, each play of sensation washing over me. I suddenly realized he had backed me up against the mirrored wall of the elevator.

He closed what little space was between us, rubbing his body against mine in an exquisite friction that made me want him to take me right here in this elevator. My breasts were pressed against his hard chest. I longed for him to take each one in hand before lavishing them with the attention of his wicked mouth. His arousal was evident against my flat stomach.

When he started a trail of sensuous kisses down my neck and my collarbone, I was well and truly lost to the magic he worked on me. He paused as he got to the soft skin of my shoulder. The kisses he placed so delicately there showed a reverence from him but this was followed by a quick nip there with his teeth. I winced from the pain but it was soon soothed with more kisses. Kisses that made me cry out in pleasure and not pain.

“Damn you Seth,” I managed between more drugging kisses. “Are you marking me?”

He looked down at me guiltily but also like he had no shame of it. “Maybe. I want everyone to know you’re mine.” He kissed the bite again. “Why is it your shoulders drive me crazy? All I want to do is touch them, kiss them.”

I blushed. “I don’t know.”

“If it was up to me you would never wear anything that covers them up.”

“So you want me to be topless?”

“No, just a ban on sleeves. But I will take topless if it’s on offer. I am not stupid.”

Just then, the elevator phone rang. Seth went to pick it up and I felt slightly bereft at not having his body next to mine. I could hear the concerned voice on the other end through the receiver.

“Are you okay? Elevator car is stopped but there doesn’t seem to be a mechanical problem showing up in the system.”

Oh God. I was mortified. They knew. They knew I was busy making out with Seth in a elevator like I was acting out some damn Aerosmith song.

“We’re fine. I don’t know what happened. The elevator just stopped, man. Don’t know why,” Seth answered.

“Okay,”the disembodied voice said. “We’re releasing the car.”

Suddenly the car jerked into life again and we were moving upwards. The elevator dinged to announce our arrival at Seth’s floor.

He closed the distance between us and cupped my face in his hands again. “Spend the night with me.”

I didn’t know what to say. My body was screaming yes! It was only one night. Enjoy this man you have such a strong attraction to. See what he made you feel with a couple kisses. Imagine what it would be like to be with him fully. I mean did you see those abs? Or the tightness of those skinny jeans on those muscular thighs? Don’t think girl. Just do. Do him.

My brain was trying to be logical. See what he made you feel with a couple kisses. He will have your body and your heart by morning. And he is not to be trusted. Not with your heart anyway. Once a cheater, always a cheater.

The time for decisions was here though. The elevator doors opened for Seth’s floor to reveal … Dean Ambrose. He was standing there in a sleeveless undershirt and a pair of boxers with cartoon chainsaws on them. He was also barefoot and holding a hotel ice bucket with the clear plastic liner.

“Renee wants ice,” he said by way of unsolicited explanation. “There isn’t any on this floor. Damn hotels stopped putting ice machines on every floor. Now I have to go to Timbuktu because my lady wants ice.”

Dean then looked to Seth and me, most likely seeing our dishevelment and the love bite on my shoulder.

“I’m interrupting something, aren’t I?”

“No.” I gazed up at Seth in silent apology. “I was just saying goodnight to Seth.”

Seth nodded in understanding at me. “Goodnight Princess.”

He shuffled past me and out the elevator without another glance.

Dean got in the elevator and pressed lobby even though the car was still on a upward trajectory.

I rested my head against the elevator wall and closed my eyes. I wanted to cry. If I was alone I would have banged my forehead against the wall in frustration. Why couldn’t I have the courage to take Seth up on his offer?

“Hey. You alright?” Dean asked.

I wiped a tear away from my cheek and tried to smile at Dean. “I’m fine.”

“Whenever a woman says she’s fine it means she is definitely not fine.”

“Look Dean, I know you hate me after tonight but I am not up for the verbal equivalent of a clothesline from you right now.”

He laughed. “You know your wrestling stuff, I will give you that.”

He pointed at my shoulder. “Seth’s forgiven you too, I bet.”

I looked away from Dean. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“Sure it does. He likes you. A lot. He hasn’t gotten this excited about a woman in a long time. That’s why I was hard on you. You both need to either fight or fuck. And fighting isn’t working so….”

Did I have an unlikely ally in Dean Ambrose?

Suddenly I blurted everything out in a rush to my new confidant. “Seth invited me to spend the night with him. I should have said yes and gotten off the elevator with him. I missed my chance. I can’t even change my mind. I don’t know what room he’s in. But maybe it’s for the best my not going with him.”

The elevator pinged as it arrived on my floor. Despite hitting the button for lobby (why he felt he could get ice in the lobby half dressed was another story) Dean stepped out of the elevator on my floor.

“Room 2012. That’s his room number. I’m getting off here. You can decide if you want to go to him or not. I won’t know. You can have privacy with that decision.”

“Thanks Dean.”

“No problem.” He paused a beat. “The concierge can get me ice right? I mean he can get me tickets for shows and restaurant bookings and stuff so ice should be no problem.”

“I don’t know about th….” The elevator door shut before I could finish my answer. I just hoped that someone in the lobby got phone video of Dean in his underwear demanding ice from the concierge in the middle of the night.

I put that out of my mind though and thought about what I should do. Play it safe and go back to my room alone or be reckless with my heart and go to Seth. Mind made up, I hit the button for the floor I wanted.

#seth rollins #seth rollins fanfic #seth rollins fan fiction #seth rollins imagine

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fangirlingwhileblacktarot · 7 years

Text

Normal Song: A Dean and Cassie Story

Title: Normal Song Author: shoetingstar Fandom: SPN Wordcount: 1,863 Rating: MA rated talk, Y rating action-wise Characters: Dean Winchester, Cassie Robinson, some Sam and John mentions.

Genre: romantic angst with some sexy talk Disclaimer: Dirty talk, heartbreak, death, loss, grief Summary: This is a little story about my lovely couple. An “Imagine you…” type story. You are on Cassie’s shoes while dating Dean back in Athens, Ohio. After a LONG bout of writer's block, I found this a few notes I had started maybe a year ago, fleshed it out, cleaned it up and finished it. I have to share before I lose my nerve and I'm tired of waiting until I'm “perfect” - so please forgive any overlooked mistakes.

I appreciate you taken a few moments out of your day read Dean and Cassie’s story. Shall, we begin…?

******

So, let’s imagine you meet a boy.

First of all, he is hot as hell. Male model face with gorgeous green eyes, tall with the wide, strong shoulders you prefer; Bowlegged like your longing celebrity crush, Keanu Reeves….Just a heaping bowl of manly, goodness for your visual and sexual snacking purposes.

Your first impression: he’s a total player, slightly immature, and doesn’t take life serious. You are in college, you have goals and a career path you're determined to follow. You don’t seem to have much in common. But chemistry can not be manufactured, and it is strong between you. The mutual attraction is undeniable.

You resign yourself to accepting that this will be only about the sex. You are not getting your heart deeply involved with anyone, but a girl does have other needs. And holy shit, it’s the best

sex

your

life. Dean is on some next level shit that you’ve never experienced before. He leads you to do things you never thought you would try, let alone enjoy. Yes, even THAT.

Unexpectedly, he sticks around after these sessions and talks. He.likes.to.cuddle for Heaven's sake. He continually surprises you and challenges some of your former decisions about the type of person you thought he was. During these frequent talks you realize there is more to this guy than you originally imagined. Underneath that confident bravado lurks

thoughtful,

dare you say,

sensitive,

person? He actually listens to and your crazy rants about school, feminism, the lack racial representation on the local news staff. The very topics you were lead by your Ex to believe were too intense for others. Dean actually tries to get to know you, asking you a lot of unexpected questions. He went with you when volunteered at the local homeless shelter. Helping people by action, not lip service seems to be another thing you have in common. You realize that are both closest to your Dads. Dad owns his own car dealership and is active in your hometown. Dean connects with his Dad through a mutual love of vintage cars, fishing trips (that's what you pretend he meant when he said “hunting” trips), and work. He leaves town. You knew it was coming but you take it harder than you care to admit. You will never see him again, probably,

maybe,

you’re sure

you won't. He is working in “the family business,” which you’re not sure about. Accident claim adjusters - they travel a lot. They investigate accidents for insurance companies. His mother died when he was a kid, and his dad was really messed up about it. He has a younger brother who “abandoned” (Dean's words) the family biz to go to college. He listens when you share your opinion that his brother may have just not done anything wrong by trying something different.

Lucky for you, there were no commitments made on you part. You’re a realist, after all. He could easily have a girl-in-every-area-code type situation going on. Like the US Military you adopt the don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Again, no commitments were made. Of course, because life could never be too easy,

you can’t

stop

thinking

about

him. You find yourself listening to the classic rock stations, voluntarily…It’s getting as bad as it could get. You press on, throw yourself into school and work. You proudly tell yourself that you hadn’t thought of him, like, all day (!!), as you are thinking of him. You are completely NOT falling in love with this guy. Nope,. Not you. You are too smart to put your hopes into someone so…nomadic in his life, right? Then he calls. “I can't stop thinking about you,” he blurts out, in the middle of a catch-up session. “Well, that’s nice, Dean. I appreciate that,” is what you imagined saying. However, you open you big, beautiful mouth and admit that you feel the same way about him. Aarrgghh! “Can I see you again?” “Well, of course.” It happens easier than you could have ever believed - you grow closer. He visits for a couple weeks,

leaves,

comes

back,

and leaves

again,

but you make this long- distance thing work. The relationship gets deeper, still. Soon you are telling him things you’ve never admitted out loud: your mom’s racist father who was forbidden from having any contact with you, the asshole who broke your heart and who was now engaged to your former best friend…It pours out as you lay tangled in Dean’s strong, muscled embrace. Of course this was usually after he fucked you **dizzy**, loved your body from head to toe like he was detailing his car. (With anyone else this would be unappealing. But Dean really took excellent, thorough care of his car.). The euphoric high that you created together massaged your emotional courage, causing the inner floodgates to open a little wider each time, and confessions poured out. At times, you could be just sitting in “Baby” (you have semi-mostly-accepted that you are actually dating a guy who treats his car like a woman), listening to the calming beat of the rain poured down outside, cocooned from the rest of the world and he would share little morsels of information about his past, and what he hoped for the future. That was the heart if it all: Hope. The light- bringing that happens in a real friendship.

Graduation was coming soon, and a few opportunities were on the table, back in your hometown and another market. You start to imagine and plan a future, and though you try and test, you can't see it all happening without Dean.

There

were

some

Red flags. His Dad is less than enthusiastic about the relationship and seems to worry that Dean will leave like his brother. And you wonder if he’s really faithful while he’s in the road for days or a couple weeks at a time. Nothing seems quite as stable or predictable as you would like. But God, you love him. Therefore, the eventual cracks appear, as you knew they would.

****** “So, your brother doesn’t know about me?”

He was telling you about Sam possibly asking his girlfriend to marry him. Their communication was sporadic, but his younger brother would inform him about major news, usually after the fact. This time he wanted Dean’s input beforehand and Dean was clear about his position. You were sitting in Baby, a couple hours after he got Sam’s voicemail.

“It can’t work.”

The boy could be stubborn, digging his heels in when his position was challenged.

“They seem to have similar goals. From what you’ve told me he feels supported by her. I mean marriage is not my thing, but Sam is obviously more traditional than we are.” Dean seemed surprised, definitely not happy about what you said “ So you - we- are non-traditional? You don’t want to get married?” Before you could answer or explore his question further, he moves on. “I mean…Forget it. Sam can’t do this. It’s not who we are.” You don’t waste your breath arguing when he’s in this mood. You are intrigued by this situation, however.

“So what does Sam think of you and our relationship” I ask. It was THAT pause that pierced your happy bubble. It was a small hesitation, but it was there.

“He…He doesn’t take me serious when it comes to, uh, you know- dating.”

“So he thinks we're just casual?” “Do I have to remind you that the communication with my brother stinks?” “Ahhh….So you haven’t told him you have a girlfriend. In fact, maybe you haven’t even bothered to tell yourself.” It was awful timing. Your editor- took credit for your work, and then he had the nerve to imply that you didn't belong in that kind of work. And in spite of being careful with Dean, you had a false positive pregnancy that deepened your speculation about what a future with Dean Winchester would look like.

What kind if Dad would he be?

What kind of Partner/ Husband would he be?

Where would you even live? You were ready to go into your apartment, alone to think about next step. You were a damn fool. (He has to be an Oscar-worthy actor to fool you.) He had never been serious about you. (But why would travel so far and so much to see you? Never once did he complain about driving so far). You were grabbing your purse, hand reaching for the door handle when he said it. “Cassie, I love you.” “What?!” He reached over you and made sure the door was closed. He grabbed your hands, looked you deep in your eyes, and stated firmly, “I love you. And while I’m being completely honest…It scares the shit out of me. I don’t know what I’m doing.” “I need to trust you. I mean what are you doing when you're not with me? Do you know I’ve told my family about you?” “What did you tell them?” He smiled proudly. His enthusiasm nearly made you forget you were hurt and mad at him. “That you were handsome, funny, and that you take good care of me….Everything but the sexy parts.” “You didn’t tell Mom and Dad about that new position we tried last night? Or how big my C…?” “No! Especially, not about you being the biggest I've ever had.” “Well, I like hearing that but your parents knowing would make family dinners seriously awkward Some of the tension is released as you laugh it out.

“Here’s the truth. If I tell my little brother that I’m serious about this beautiful, smart, sexy girl, but NORMAL girl, things would never be the same because there will be tragic consequences.“

(Normal?) “Did you grow up on a religious cult?” “No…” “Is it because I’m black.” “Hell NO…” “Then what do mean by consequences?” He was silent, he looked inexplicably grief-stricken. Then something else struck me. In all this craziness I forgot to respond to the most important thing he said (besides the part about me being beautiful, sexy and smart…) “Dean, you wanna know when I knew I loved you and that I was all yours? Tracey’s birthday party. You dressed up in pants of a non-denim quality and wore a tie for my boss's little fancy dinner. That alone was enough to warm my little pessimist heart. Then we get there and you held your own with all their little shallow concerns. But what really got me was the kids.” “Haley and Henry? I mean how could you not feel sorry for a 10 year old with such a Grandpa- esque name?” “I hate to agree, but...Any how, none of them wanted to be bothered with kids and Tracey was stressed out and her husband was frankly useless, as usual. And you, Mr. Tough Guy charmed them, scooped them up took them to the play room and you were so good with them. I was able to imagine…”

Shit, you confessed more than you had intended. “Able to imagine…What?” He prompted. You’re supposed to be a fearless journalist and you can’t just say how you feel??

You take a deep breath and went for it. “I could see us with a house full of family and friends and you being this…Dad. A great one.” “you mean like a DILF?!”

“ Not quite where I was going with it, but total DILF for me. In other news, I could see you being a great Dad.”

“Don’t sound so surprised!” “I’m sorry! So what other surprises do you have for me?” You had no idea at that time about

the

bomb

of a

secret he would drop on you soon enough.. *** Now, here you are.

You weren’t sure he would have the same number, but it was working…ringing right now. You could feel your blood pressure rise, your heart speed up its beats…You hang up. But there would be no calming down for long while.

Okay, fearless, relatively successful journalist - where were your Lady-balls when you needed them? And most of…Dad. You had to find out what really caused the accident that killed Daddy.

This time you stayed on the line. Dean answered on the 4th ring, sounding irritated, grumpy. “Dean?” Even though you knew it was him. Grief-brain was a bitch. “Yeah?” He was distracted. You felt dismissed, a totally irrational response… “Hi, this is…” “ Cassie?!” “Yes.” You feel relief mixed with nervousness, folded into and the constant mental and physical ache of unexpected LOSS…The tears refuse to leave you alone and to not be cried. “What’s wrong?” How did he know? You can hear the worry in his voice. “Dean, it’s my Dad.“ And here comes the burning eyes, the tears… "He was killed last night.” “God, Cassie...I'm so sorry. I know how close you were.” “Thank you. This will sound completely insane, and I feel silly for even asking you this, but…About your Family’s Business, did you tell me the truth? Is that a real thing?” “Yes, it is, “ he said with finality. You wiped the tears from your cheeks, hold back sniffles before you turn into a mess on the phone with your ex-boyfriend, who is probably still upset at you. "I have no right to ask you...”

“I'm there. Just tell me where.”

And he came.

THE END.

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